When people start talking about Egypt, one area is almost always the first topic of discussion – the pyramids/sphinx. The area of the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx was the first tourist thing that we did on this trip, so I will talk about that now.
My first vision of the Great Pyramid was very similar to my first vision of the Eiffel Tower. I was in a town car coming from the airport and when I was in Giza, I noticed the Great Pyramid through a cloud of mist off in the distance. I knew what it was immediately, of course, but the mist made it sort of a surreal experience.
I made it to the hotel, met with my tour group, and the next morning we began our tour of Egypt with a trip to the three famous pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx.
I don’t want to have two negative entries in a row, but neither do I want to lie. I found the pyramids to be pretty disappointing. The three famous ones in Giza, including the Great Pyramid of Cheops are impressive in their size, but ultimately they merely are large man-made structures. They don’t sing or dance, but just sort of sit there. Granted, from a historical perspective, they truly are amazing – but, you know how you go someplace and you take pictures and you later think that the pictures don’t do the place justice? Well, pictures do justice to the pyramids. They are what they have always appeared to be, for thousands of years.
It didn’t help that the area around the pyramids was a pig sty and tourist trap. The ground was covered with camel crap and there were throngs of people swarming to every tourist trying to hustle, scam and sell cheap crap for crazy prices. One person in my group was asked by a police officer if he wanted his picture taken by the policeman. After the policeman took the picture, he asked the tourist for 5 Egyptian Pounds (about $1).
One of my favorite scams was that whenever one of the hustlers came up to a tourist he would offer whatever he was selling for a pound. The Egyptian unit of currency is a pound. When the tourist tries to give the seller an Egyptian pound, the seller corrects him and says it is an English pound, which is about eight Egyptian pounds. I saw this numerous times. What I didn’t see, but what I heard was common, is when a seller tells a tourist that the price is a Nubian pound, which is worth whatever the seller says it is worth because there’s no such thing as a Nubian pound.
After the pyramids, we went to see the Sphinx. This was perhaps the one thing in Egypt that I was most interested in seeing. Once again, it was a little disappointing. It reminded me of when I saw Mount Rushmore. I remember thinking, “is that it? It’s much less impressive in person than I expected.” I sort of felt that way about the Sphinx, too.
I went into the temple that is adjacent to the Sphinx, but that was a waste of time. It was sixteen columns, mostly restorations. Nothing, and I mean nothing, else. Well, there was a “wishing well” that gets cleaned out by the guards shortly after closing time. Other than that, there was nothing.
Earlier in the day, we had gone to the Cairo Museum. There was plenty of typical Egyptian stuff in the museum, but the prize pieces, comprising nearly half of the museum, were the treasures of Tutankhamen. The gold death mask and other golden treasures truly were amazing. Our tour guide was knowledgeable and friendly and I think I learned a lot. I enjoyed the museum, though at the time I was mainly just excited about seeing the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx. Little did I know that the museum would be the high point of the day.
After he pyramids and the museum, we left Giza for a train station in Cairo to head to Luxor. That’ll be in the next post. Until then, later.
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