The Great Pyramid of Giza
It is said it was built before the wheel. When Moses was found in the bulrushes of the Nile, these pyramids were already 1,000 years old. The Great Pyramid (or Cheops Pyramid), tomb of Pharaoh Khufu, was built 2584–2561 BC and is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing. At 481 feet high, the Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest man-made structure in the world for 3,800 years.
Also in the same 13-acre complex are two other great pyramids–Khufu’s son Khafre and grandson Menkaure, plus numerous smaller pyramids, and the Sphinx. They sit in Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo, west of the Nile, and at the eastern edge of the Sahara desert.
Gateways to the Afterlife
The tombs were built west of their civilization, nearer to the mysteries of the setting sun. People believed that the pyramids were gateways or staircases to the afterlife. And the dead kings and pharaohs had their tombs stocked with earthly things they might need in the next life. Of course, over these last 4,500 years, people have raided and stolen whatever was once there. Either that, or the dead did indeed take their stuff with them.
Click HERE to see a cross-section diagram of the inside of the Great Pyramid.
To see a diagram of how tall the Great Pyramid is compared to other travel icons, click here.
And for an interesting circa 1912 visual comparison of the Great Pyramid’s height to the length of the Titanic, click here.
The Pyramids, the Camels and the Sahara
When I should have been admiring the ancient pyramids right in front of me, when I should have been marveling that I had just exited a 4,500-year-old tomb, I instead became obsessed with the circus of tourists, the camels eating lunch, and the endless horizon of the Sahara.
Stretching for another 2,700 miles west, the Sahara is the largest desert in the world. A world foreign and dangerous. How long until one saw nothing but sand and mirages in all directions, until a living being dehydrated like a raisin? The camels–who most certainly knew the answer–sat with their legs tucked under, munching on their greens.
Please, please, don’t ride the camels
Sadly, the camels are there for the typical tourist photo opportunity. Repeatedly, big and small paid good money for fifteen-minute rides. I groaned to see the camels bellow when their knobby knees unfolded slowly with the burden of two large humans weighing them down. It made my knees hurt to watch.
Minutes later, I laughed when one camel got away from his keeper–don’t worry, he was riderless. He ran like a little kid around and around his kneeling herd of friends, making a giggle sound and eliciting excited giggles from his compadres. It was a game to him.
But not to the human boss-man herdmeister, who eventually grabbed the prankster’s reins. I yelled at the idiot man who used a stick to beat the camel’s front knee caps until he knelt down. What absolute assholes humans can be.
Please, please, don’t ride the camels. Yeah, I know…it’s income for the poor human. But seriously, why do obese tourists need to ride on a long-suffering camel who has had his knees beaten for horsing around? Makes me sick. Full disclosure, I rode a camel once, for a full day in Jordan’s Wadi Rum. Her name was Lulu and she was with her family. The bedouin scratched her ears and neck, cooed to her, and laughed at her 5-year-old antics. They loved her, I’m sure. Nevertheless, I’ll never ride an animal again. It’s beneath their dignity.
Mark Twain and The Sphinx
The Sphinx was buried in sand up to her neck in the 1860s when Mark Twain met her and gushed in The Innocents Abroad:
“After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great face was so sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity not of earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as never anything human wore. It was stone, but it seemed sentient. If ever image of stone thought, it was thinking.
It was looking toward the verge of landscape, yet looking at nothing–nothing but distance and vacancy. It was looking over and beyond everything of the present and far into the past. It was gazing out over the ocean of Time…It was thinking of the wars of departed ages; of the empires it had seen created and destroyed; of the nations whose birth it had witnessed; whose progress it had watched, whose annihilation it had noted; of the joy and sorrow, the life and death, the grandeur and decay, of 5,000 slow revolving years…
It was MEMORY–RETROSPECTION–wrought into visible, tangible form.”
Lady or Lion?
Now, the Sphinx’s body and paws are uncovered, bolstered with new bricks, and she is cordoned off from touchy tourists. Surely, she is stunned by the silliness of human attention. Today, she gazes out at a sea of folding chairs positioned in neat rows for the nightly light show/concert. Far beneath her ancient dignity. Maybe she enjoys the concerts, the spotlights, the audience. Maybe she was lonely out there, relegated to watching Cairo from a distance–albeit a lessening distance as civilization creeps closer.
And yes, my dear Mr. Twain, I feel confident she is a she.
Thank you for reading
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Carol Fletcher is a traveling, dog-loving, tree-hugging, coffee-addicted, Nashville born-and-raised photographer living in Chicago. To see more photo essays and projects, please visit www.carolfletcher.com.
