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The Great Pyramids
A trip to Egypt would not be complete without a visit to the Great Pyramids. It would be like... well, going to Egypt and not seeing the Pyramids! A common impression is that the Pyramids are romantically situated out in the desert when, in fact, they are located on the western edge of Cairo's vast metropolitan sprawl. After an hour negotiating Cairo's chaos of traffic, you enter the necropolis through tourist touts equally as numerous. However, the immense size of the sandstone structures immediately draws one's attention. How did they build these incredible monuments without modern day tools?
The precision of the Pyramids' construction is truly remarkable. The base (13.6 acres, equal to seven midtown Manhattan city blocks) is almost perfectly horizontal, level to within 15mm all round, and the four sides of the bases square are aligned to the four cardinal compass points to within 3 minutes of an arc. The four points are also accurately aligned to true north. Astoundingly, the Great Pyramid was the tallest manmade structure for 3,800 years and is the only member of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still in existence. Incidentally, Egypt was home to two of the wonders; the other being the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria.
Of one fact we can be sure; the Pyramids' construction took a vast number of laborers. Hieroglyphs indicate workers were paid, as we see famine records on the in the tombs depicting workers with ribs showing, which, one could argue, no noble would bother to record of a slave and no slave would presume to record. Other hieroglyphs show workers playing board games during periods of rest (again, unlikely tomb images for a noble to record of a slave). The probability is that both paid laborers and slaves were utilized. What is truly remarkable is the dedication involved. To construct essentially useless objects requiring such mighty effort can be understood only in terms of superstition and religion; indicators of a people who believed their Pharaohs to be Gods.
Although visitors are allowed into Cheops' burial chamber via a long, stuffy and steep access shaft, the Pyramids are too big to absorb when up this close, especially amidst the chaos of tourist touts, camel rides and trinket vendors. A way to get the big picture is to press on half a mile past the Pyramids to the viewing plateau to the north. Set sufficiently back from the site, from here you have the best panoramic view of both desert and Pyramids, and very little of the city. Camel touts compete for your business, but a camel ride, despite the cheesiness, is fun (and once mounted, the other touts leave you alone). Approaching the Pyramids on camelback, one has to remember that all three of Giza's Pyramids originally had an outer casing of smooth polished limestone that gleamed, reflecting the sun and shining like marble. They must then have been quite stunning. The Pyramid of Khafre retains a small remnant of the facing stones at its apex from which one might try to imagine how they used to look, but the majority of polished limestone was cannibalized for local construction over the centuries. Despite the loss of their glossy outer veneer, the Pyramids still evoke a sense of awe in the visitor; an awe on the scale of the Gods... which was, of course, the Pharaohs' main intent.
