The last remaining wonder of the Ancient World, the Pyramid of Khufu...
Moving on swiftly…
Considering that I had spent a small fortune (for a guy traveling on a limited budget!) to visit the Mountain Gorillas in the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda, I felt that a reasonably priced, guided tour of the Pyramids of Giza, would be in order…
Menne and the Gypsy Biker take in the Pyramids...
Gareth very kindly made all the arrangements, and I was collected by the tour company and driven out to Giza, where the last remaining “Wonder of the Ancient World” was still standing, 4500 years after it had been built… My guide, Menne, was extremely knowledgeable, and we walked among the Pyramids discussing the history of the Pharaohs that that built them. The three main Pyramids at Giza are all from one dynasty…
Climbing up to the entrance of the burial chmaber in the Pyramid of Khufu...
The largest was built by Khufu, the next by his son, Khafre, and the last by Khufu’s grandson, Menkaure… There is an enormous crack in the Pyramid of Menkaure, caused by an overzealous archeologist, who thought that using dynamite to open the tomb would be far quicker than waiting for his Egyptian crew to struggle their way through a narrow tunnel… In a way, I can sympathize with him, but I would have rather used the dynamite on a few of the Egyptians, as a warning to the rest of the crew to dig faster… I know some my ideas might seem a little controversial, but they DO bring results…
"I've checked Dudes... There's no hidden chamber...!"
The ceiling of Khufu’s burial chamber is made of nine enormous granite blocks, each weighing 50 tons… Can you imagine moving a 50 ton granite block without using Johnson’s Crane Hire…?? The individual blocks fit together with a tolerance of less than half a millimeter, and they used hand tools, for Pete’s sake…!!!
The Pyramid used to be completely encased in a thick slab of white limestone, to make it shine in the sunlight. This limestone was removed by various Arab conquerors of Egypt, to build Cairo and other monuments in the Middle East… Only the Pyramid of Khafre still has a small capping of limestone left…
There are a few smaller pyramids on the site, built for their queens, many of which have been destroyed by looters and the elements…
The enigmatic Sphinx stands between the Pyramid of Khefre and the temple built for his burial ceremony. The half man-half lion statue was carved out of a single piece of sandstone. The lion signified the power of the Pharoah, and the human head his wisdom. The legend that a secret tunnel lies between its paws is complete nonsense… Take it from me… I checked…!!
While we were there, a group of over 2000 Australians arrived from a cruise ship that had docked on the Red Sea… Menne dragged me off the site just as the crowds were piling in… And I so wanted to discuss the upcoming Tri-Nations with them…
Our afternoon was spent in the National Museum in Old Cairo city, where cameras are no longer allowed on the premises. There are over 120 000 exhibits of Egyptian artifacts, but the most important and most visited sections of the museum are those containing the contents of Tutankhamen’s tomb, and the Mummy Room. Trying to remember how the vast history of Egypt fits together, is a bewildering exercise… Rather than try and get it all straight in my head, I wandered around looking into the many sarcophagi that are stored here, and trying to imagine how vast the wealth in the three Pyramids of Giza must have been, before they were ransacked hundreds of years ago.
Tutankhamen reigned for only nine or ten years, and died when he was 19 years of age… He was an unremarkable Pharoah by all accounts, and is only famous because his tomb was found intact in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, and was filled with the treasures we see today in the museum… His face mask alone weighs 14 kgs, and is made from solid gold… Worth a few bob on today’s market…!!
If you consider that other Pharaohs reigned for far longer, and had far larger tombs, their wealth must have been vast… Most of the items that were in the tombs at Giza, were either melted down for currency, or destroyed and therefore lost forever…
It is estimated that perhaps only 50 % of Egyptian tombs have been discovered so far, and many more lie buried under the sands of the Western Desert… There is even a theory that there are two Sphinxes, one that guarded the Eastern side of the Pyramid, and is rapidly disintegrating, and another that guards the Western side, to date still hidden from view… Apparently the whereabouts of many more tombs are known to the Antiquities Committee of Egypt, yet are deliberately remaining “lost” to ensure the continued attraction of those at Giza…
Security at all the ancient sites is tight, and because motorcycles have often been used in suicide missions by extremists, two wheeled steeds are no longer allowed anywhere near where large groups of tourists congregate…
A large herd of camels are used to transport those tourists who feel a visit to Egypt is incomplete without getting their backsides bruised by the hard wooden saddles on a camel… My short trip on a camel in Sudan, completely cured me of the desire to ever ride a camel again… My wedding tackle flinches just at the thought of it…
The Pyramid pf Khafre, which still has it's limestone cap...
The Pyramid of Menkaure, showing the results of the dynamited entrance...
The grandeur of the Pyramids and the Sphinx (which is a lot smaller than I thought it would be…) is certainly worth a visit. The sheer magnitude of the Khufu Pyramid is awe-inspiring… One of those jaw-dropping moments some of us are lucky enough to experience only a few times in our lives… Standing in front of it, makes you want to blink a few times to make sure you are not part of some elaborate hoax… It gave me renewed respect for those Ancient Egyptians, and made me wonder why the modern Egyptians had slid so far into mediocrity, when they had such a rich heritage to draw inspiration from…
Camels can be hired to ride between the Pyramid of Menkaure and the Sphinx... Good luck with that...!!
Camels can be hired to ride between the Pyramid of Menkaure and the Sphinx... Good luck with that...!!
Pyramid Pin-Up... My guide Menne...
They have become a nation of tourist touts and hangers on, and if you consider how much their neighbours have achieved with far less, you have to wonder at where it all went wrong for Egypt… A common question I have been asked, is
“Where does all the revenue that Egypt generates from the Suez Canal go…?” and,
“Why do we have to rely so heavily on Tourism to keep afloat?”
I am hardly the person to be asking… Check with your local M.P. guys…
One final note: If you are considering buying one of the many little mementos sold at the site, you might want to consider that more than 90 % of them are made in China…!!
And that in itself says a heck of a lot about present day Egyptians…
The Pyramid of Khafre, with the Sphinx guarding its eastern front...
©GBWT 2010

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