So, we finally found ourselves stood next to the Pyramid of Giza and it was simply beyond words. All the noise of the buses and tourists just faded away. It was truly a wondrous sight that made you think hard about how difficult it must have been to build. The heat. The basic tools. The scale. The manpower. A truly humbling experience to stand and admire something built over 4000 years ago.
We hurried off to the second pyramid, which we'd bought the extra tickets to go inside. I think the guide said it was 1 metre wide and less than a metre high, and it felt it. I contorted myself as best I could into half my normal height, not easy for a bloke 6 feet 4 inches tall. I was still taller than Lissa though as I'm sure she didn't need to bend down at all (lol soz Liss). We had to wait for someone to come up (same way in and out) before entering.
The steep angle, impossibly low ceiling, basic steps and oppressive heat made it tough going. It did nothing for my poor knees and Connor kept bashing his head on the ceiling - at least he wouldn't damage anything in there.
After a few minutes descending, there was a brief moment of relief as we emerged into a horizontal passageway. From the times I spent down places like Wookey Hole and Cheddar Gorge as a kid on holiday with my folks, I'd come to expect underground things to be cold... In this tomb, the heat inside was almost as bad as outside. The air was stale, thick and still. The sound was surprisingly dead too, with hard reflective surfaces like rock, I expected it to be echoing, but the walls seemed to soak up our words and the scraping noises of our shuffling feet. It felt like nothing was ever meant to leave the pyramid, and it was doing it's best to ensure things stayed that way.
Continuing on we reached the bottom of some more stairs, we wondered if it was the way out and we'd missed something. I doubled over and peered up the steep, chimney like opening and saw a stream of people coming down towards us. Mostly people from our coach that got out before the toilet-gate affair had blown up in our faeces, I mean faces (lol sorry couldn't resist). We let them pass and asked them if it was worth it... Clearly for some, the pyramids weren't THEIR childhood dream... "it's alright yeah" and other non committal replies came back.
Once they cleared out we headed up and into the burial chamber. It was a tall room about the size of a small banqueting hall, with an open lidded sarcophagus at one end. At the other end was a small, rotund, overheated Egyptian man who began reeling off facts about the room we were in, none of which I heard as I was too busy being in awe of where I was. Ok so there wasn't much to see, but that wasn't the point. All the effort from the design to the build of this amazing place, was done with none of today's modern technology. It was pure skill and craftsmanship. Hard work in oppressive conditions. Time, effort and dedication to their king. Qualities that seem lost on a lot of people today...
We stayed a few more minutes before heading out the way we'd entered, down the steps, along the corridor and up the steps to the outside world again. Creepy, eerie, chilling, fantastic, amazing, otherworldly... Hard to describe the mix of feelings, but it was a relief to be out, that's for sure.
To make the best use of the remaining time, we just started snapping and filming as much as we could. We soaked up as much atmosphere as possible before heading for the coach.
I really didn't want to leave.
It might sound weird but something felt very homely about being here. Like I'd been here before and was coming home... "welcome home" as the Egyptians say... Maybe it was...
Next stop was a short drive further up the hill to see all three pyramids together. There are actually 9 pyramids in all, the three main ones and six much smaller ones arranged in two groups of three. The main Pyramid of Giza is the tallest, built for the Warrior King, Ramses II. He lived into his 90s and ruled for 60-odd of them. The next tallest was his son's tomb, only he wanted it bigger than his dads pyramid, but this is disrespectful. So he complied and built his pyramid 8 metres shorter than his dads... But on higher ground... So from our viewpoint, the second pyramid looks taller than the main one. Clever bloke.
The third (smallest) pyramid is the tomb of the guy that built Ramses II pyramid - it took him 20 years to build the Pyramid of Giza, so having his own pyramid is understandable. We got more pics and video before boarding the coach for our final stop - the Sphinx.
Final instalment in Part 7...
Bye for now!
No comments:
Post a Comment