THE PYRAMIDS

The next day was the day we'd all been waiting for.
I got up pretty late-- about seven, because I was so exhausted from the day before, got dressed and hurried off to breakfast. Our hotel was exactly like you'd want a hotel in Egypt to be. Instead of floors on top of each other, we each got a bungalow which was surrounded by palm trees and other tropical plants arranged in pretty, fountain-centered gardens. The day was already hot when I finished breakfast and ran to get a front seat in the bus. But that didn't matter-- it wouldn't be Egypt without the incessant, muggy heat. It was a quick drive through the city.

Though it can be easy to forget when you're live on the delta, Egypt really is a desert. Rain is so infrequent that the moment you're outside of the affects of the Nile’s water, plant life completely ceases. In some places, you can be standing on lush, ready farmland with one foot, and with the other stand on dusty, barren desert. The ancient Egyptians built their pyramids on the latter sort of terrain -- the Giza plateau is only a few feet from the Nile's influence, but you'd never know it standing next to it.

When we disembarked from the bus, we had to stand in a long line (we all squeezed together to prevent anyone cutting into the line) so, hopefully, we could be part of the 200 people who are permitted to go into the Great Pyramid and climb all the way to the ancient tomb of king Cheops each day. It seemed to take forever -- I felt bad for the short girls who were squeezed so as to get little air -- but finally, finally, we were ready to go. To our amusement, they had us hop back on the bus to drive us the 200 meters up the hill to a parking lot that was parallel to the side of the pyramid.

Impatient might be the wrong word to describe what we were all feeling as we stared at the pyramid which rose like a mountain in front of us as our bus carefully parked. We tumbled off, and the first people in our group started running towards the pyramid, eager to be the first people to go into the tomb that day. Believe me, had I not destroyed my knee before I came, I would have been right along with them.

It is difficult to try to scale the pyramids in your mind. Even the night before, while I was sitting and watching the light show, I couldn't really tell how large they are. This may help you to imagine it: when I stood at the base of the pyramid, the stone right in front of me was almost taller than I am. There are MILLIONS of these stones that make up the structure. To even see the top, I had to crane my neck back almost as far as it can go, just like looking at a skyscraper. It's extremely wide too -- we never even walked to the other side of the pyramid, but I can tell you it would take about three minutes at a normal pace to go from one end of one side to the other.

But returning to the tomb…I scrambled after the other people in my class, up the steps carved into the stone to the narrow opening (barely my height) that was left for access into the tomb. They punched my ticket, and I stepped into the rough hewn tunnel.
At first it was almost exactly like a cave--the walls seemed seamless (no pun intended) and the shape of the tunnel was irregular. This quickly changed when I climbed a half dozen recently installed metal stairs, to a very narrow shaft that ascends rapidly to the tomb at the center of the pyramid. 5,000 years ago people were short, I know, but no one is as short as they made that tunnel. Either they decided it was too much effort to make a human height shaft that gave entrance to the pyramid, or they enjoyed walking for almost an eighth of a mile bent double! That part of the pyramid was probably the worst just because it was so uncomfortable. The air quality was poor too -- it's not easy to get fresh air into a cave sealed so tightly that some claim aliens created it. It wasn't long until I was utterly drenched in sweat of a cool, slimy quality unfamiliar to me. There were brief openings in the low tunnel where you could stand for a moment and look up a few hundred feet to where it peaked like the inside of the pyramid. Why they didn't build it all like that is beyond me. Because of our eagerness to get into the tomb, we practically ran up the steep slope, so, in spite of the difficulty, it wasn't long at all until I stood up straight and entered a tall, black doorway to the darkness of the tomb.

The room was only maybe 60 by 30 feet, but the walls reached up two stories above me. They were made of a dark, almost black stone which seemed to suck in rather than reflect the light of the dim florescent tubes built into the sides of the tomb. It was almost completely empty, with walls, floors and ceiling as smooth as marble and so straightly cut I would have sworn it was hewn by a machine. The only object in the room (besides the 20 or 30 of us sweaty, echoing students) was on the far end from the entrance. A long, narrow black box made out of the same stone as the floor, the remains of the sarcophagus, was the instant focus of attention. I quickly walked over to it and stood on the side, my hands joining the thousands that had traced its edges into a polished, slick surface. The sarcophagus had no lid, and one corner was broken off in a V almost to the floor. The inside was just as smooth as the outside with the bottom covered in a thin layer of dirt. It was a while before the first person was brave enough to get in, and a while after that before someone lay down. I quickly realized that my opportunity to lie in the sarcophagus of Cheops, one of the greatest Pharaohs of the first dynasty, would be completely eclipsed if I didn't act before all the students gathered the courage to take their turn. As the fifth person in, I lay down with my head on one end and my toes pointed upward at the other. The coffin was my size, perhaps six inches too long. I crossed my arms over my chest just as everyone else had done, and, though I felt supremely immature, thought about how the people of the first dynasty had laid their God in this tomb after more than a month of mummification, and, leaving the tomb full of priceless treasures which were plundered only a few years later, slowly marched out. I only took a few moments in the sarcophagus, staring up at the black ceiling, sucking in the stale air, before I stood and exited.

While more people filled the tomb, someone started a song -- partly because we were in one of the greatest treasures in the world, and partly because the place echoed. It was "If You Could Hie to Kolob," one of my favorite hymns and one of the few which speaks directly of our theology about the afterlife and the preexistence. A few other songs were sung, and, as people became more comfortable, some of the boys started to hum as though they were mummies rising from the dead. I left about then, thankful that it was almost solely our group in the tomb because I was positive they would assume we were some strange cult. It didn't help that we'd naturally stood in little circles all throughout the tomb...

The descent was less strenuous but more difficult. Should I walk down forward doubled over completely in two, or should I descend more comfortably but with a greater chance of falling and walk backward? I opted for the first of the two, recognizing that my track record of injures due to clumsiness (or idiocy) isn't that great. When we were out, we wandered around on the rocks near the tomb’s exit for a bit, careful not to climb too high and get arrested. I took about a dozen pictures of me standing on the pyramid. For me, this is one of the most irritating things about traveling. I would rather do anything than pose for my thousandth picture! But I know that without photos, memories fade more rapidly. We left soon after, off to see the Sphinx.

We entered through the temple of Chephren, builder of the second pyramid, and the son of Cheops, builder of the great pyramid. His pyramid is, I believe, the one which the transformer in Transformers 2 tore through to get to something-or-other. That movie is really irksome. I don't know why Michael Bay has something against relics of the Near East. Anyway, the temple was spectacular of course, with many wide-based columns as all the Egyptian temples seem to have, and a well at the entrance where you're supposed to throw in money if you ever want to return to Egypt. I didn't throw in money, but my professor said he hadn't either when he was here the first time and, here he was again. So there superstition!

Exiting from the back, we came to stand on the left side of the Sphinx. People don't actually
know why it has no nose. There are multiple theories -- such as the Ottoman's blasting it off because it was sacrilegious, something-or-other about Napoleon or, as the movie Aladdin postulated, because two people flew by on a magic carpet and the distracted sculptor accidentally broke it off with his chisel.

The Sphinx is big, as big as you'd expect -- it still seemed large even though we were standing on a walkway 20 feet above ground level and 40 feet away from it. Apparently, when the Sphinx has been neglected for a while, it becomes covered in sand every few thousand years. In antiquity, because the desert had risen over it, some people believed the Sphinx was only a head planted on the sand. Most recently, when it was excavated, they found a little plaque between its legs. On it, in hieroglyphs I believe (though don't quote me on this) was a story from a Pharaoh on how, as a young boy, he had fallen asleep one day in front of the Sphinx. According to him, the Sphinx sent him a dream and told him that if he would remove the sand from around its body, he assured the boy that he would become king. This the boy did, and years later, as Pharaoh of all of Egypt, he came back to leave record about it.

President Brown, the District President of all the Middle East pretty much and the director of our center, who has been a consultant on such religious and diverse things as the Coptic encyclopedia, the movie Prince of Egypt and the movie Journey of Faith, gave us a brief, spontaneous discourse on how the ancient Egyptian temple system is similar to ours in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was fascinating. A friend of mine took a picture of me "kissing" the sphinx which is actually pretty convincing. Hopefully he'll put it on Facebook so I can have a copy. Realizing that I should purchase something as a record of these places, I got a really overpriced brass pyramid with hieroglyphs on the sides and a "wooden" Egyptian cat. Over the course of that week, I lost or broke both of them. So basically, I will have to go back, just so I can get a proper souvenir.

We left the Sphinx, to my sadness (I was feeling quite chummy with him) and rode around the Giza plateau to a place where we could get pictures of all three pyramids together. From there, we went to a small valley of tombs built into the rock and specifically into the tomb of Ti. If you've never heard of Ti, I wouldn't be too distraught. He was actually just a hairdresser. Really! But for some reason, he was wealthy enough to create an elaborately carved, hieroglyph-covered tomb. We spent a good deal of time standing in a room deep in the tomb whose walls were completely covered in hieroglyphics and drawings of daily life at the time of the Egyptians. The color was even preserved on some of the carvings which were even more impressive because they weren't carved into the stone; the stone around it was carved away so the pictures were raised up and even contoured so you could see the shape of the muscles in the arms of the workers of the field. Our tour guide, Ahmed, bless his heart, spent almost an hour explaining pretty much every aspect of the tomb despite the fact that we were all utterly exhausted and it was ridiculously hot. Through it all, the face of Ti stared at us from the other room. The chamber where we were was the “offerings chamber” where people were supposed to come and offer victuals to the family of Ti. In order so he could see it, they had carved and painted a statue of Ti then put a little hole in the wall where, if you stood directly in front of it, it seemed his dark eyes were staring right at you.

THIS IS A CHANGE FROM THE ORIGINAL (originally I said we went to Memphis this day, but that was actually in Luxor, and here we're still in Cairo...)

What actually happened was that we went to a papyrus factory where we spent quite some time. It was below a really fancy market place for overpriced souviners, and it was constantly being filled by busses of tourists. They had a man demonstrate exactly how papyrus was made anciently, then tell us how to buy some of our own made by the artists there who created them and painted them the ancient way. It was a really legitimate place, very nicely taken care of. Though the papyrus was, of course, over priced. I ended up only buying one as a gift-- a beautiful papyrus of a ship from ancient Egypt. I was too stingy to buy any more. When we left, we were off to eat and then to fly to Luxor.

Because it was still Ramadan (though that night was the end of Ramadan and the beginning of Eid Al-Fitr, or the little feast that lasts three days and is the Muslim equivalent of Christmas), when we went to lunch at a nice restaurant, there were no people there but us. We had an entire staff of 8 people serving us at the buffet and providing us with sodas -- which they didn't tell us cost money until the end. The food was good, and we over-looked the Nile wetlands and greenery filled with palm trees and houses that were falling apart. The manager had a really fabulous sense of humor, so he went up to a girl every once in a while and did this really incredible trick involving a cup full of tea or coffee and a spoon where he would pretend to spill it on someone but then catch it at just the last second. That was also my first experience with being told that I had beautiful eyes like the moon... it happened a lot in Luxor. I spoke with the waiter in Arabic for a bit, so I think he was impressed, and he told me a couple times how "yo have bautaful eyeis," (read out loud, it should sound like an Arabic accent). There was not one time anyone complimented me on the rest of the trip that it was not about my “eyeis.”

As we headed back to our bus they played really loud Backstreet Boys music -- not for us, but in preparation for a party later that night. It was really quite fun to hear though -- at least in Egypt the Backstreet Boys are still cool!

From the restaurant, we drove straight to the Cairo airport where I broke the cat I bought at the pyramids on the security machine. The plane we took to Luxor was sort of small, but the flight was really short and they provided us with seemingly endless drinks. The landing was the roughest I've ever experienced: we bounced at least three times and lurched to the right and left several times before straightening out. I felt ill for about an hour later.

After a short bus ride on our new Luxor busses, we got to the beautiful Sheraton Hotel where we were going to stay the next couple of days. It sits right on the Nile, but unfortunately I got a room on the side that looked over the parking lot! When I did see the Nile that evening, it was a shimmering strip of black, reflecting the lights of the boats gliding over it and the hotels that lined western edge. The moon was barely a crescent and it hung low and golden. It was stunning.

Oh, I mustn't forget to mention how amazing the rooms were. They were modernish, black wood and white beds, and they were equipped with huge televisions that played Arabic soap operas which are exceedingly entertaining to watch, let me tell you. I was exhausted and, still feeling slightly ill, I didn't go out on the town that evening. I went to bed pretty early, excited for the next day.

Coming next: Luxor's temples, and the flight to