4. Grand Egyptian Museum and Pyramids - Sept 28th

 First thing this morning I stepped onto the balcony and took this picture.  

Poking over a wing of the hotel complex were the two tallest peaks of the Giza pyramids.  The largest on in the middle of the picture is the Great Pyramid of Giza and is also known as the Pyramid of Khufu.  The other is the Pyramid of Khafre.  

On the drive to the hotel the night before, we did get to see the pyramid silhouettes as we drove by.  They are lit up at night.  There is a haze in the morning sky; and I learn later from our guide Dalia that this is pretty typical for Cairo.

We get ready for breakfast.  Since I’m on the second shift for the bathroom, I’ll meet Judith down in the breakfast area.  I have to ask for directions as it’s out the front door, past the fountains where the vehicles drop off.  

The long entrance path to and from the front of the hotel and where the vehicles drop off.  This is one of two rectangular ponds which makes up this entranceway. It is a beautiful fountain feature.  

Breakfast is served in a lovely area with both inside and outside patio seating.  I eventually find Judith sitting at a table outside on the patio, overlooking the Pyramid of Khufu.  

Breakfast patio view of the Pyramids.  The grassy area holds many events.  There were weddings held both nights we stayed here.  They were fairly noisy, but the all day and night air conditioning created sufficient white noise to drown out the DJ music.  Our guides urged us to attend the weddings as they would welcome us, but we couldn’t find an iron to smooth out our party dresses… (haha). 

The Marriott Mena House Hotel is located outside of Cairo in Giza.  It started as a hunting lodge in 1869, and was expanded and converted into a hotel, the Mena House, in 1886, and named after the founding father of the first Egyptian Dynasty.  It has undergone many significant renovations, eventually becoming a Marriott run property in 2015.  Many famous people have stayed here including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Winston Churchill. Richard Nixon, Frank Sinatra, The Grateful Dead (maybe we’re in one of their rooms!), Charlie Chaplin, to name a few.  And now we can add Judith and Victoria to the list.  

At breakfast I spied an opportunistic bird, helping himself to table scraps on plates that had been cleared and were temporarily sitting on a side tray waiting for transport inside to the kitchen.  He was a motly looking bird.

My Merlin bird app identified this poor looking thing as a hooded Crow.  

The breakfast buffet was extensive and contained many types of western and local foods.  I opt for a little bacon which was too salty for my palette, two eggs cooked over easy by the chef at the egg station, fresh figs, grilled tomatoes and a glass of guava juice.   When I went up for seconds, I had a little croissant pastry stuffed with a vanilla cream filling, a small piece of baklava and green apple slices that I dipped in fresh honey.  I knew the honey was fresh because I scooped from a bowl underneath a large slab of honeycomb that had been secured into an angled tray which allowed the escaped honey to drip into that bowl.  I found the coffee too bitter, so after I finished that cup, I ordered a cappuccino.

We got lost returning to our room.  While the complex isn’t huge, there are several ways to get back to our room and we chose a new path.  We did eventually end up in the right place but we were a few minutes late meeting our guides and driver this morning.  

The view from the 4th level stairwell balcony that helped us get lost on our way back to our room.  I was hoping that we would be able to see the third tallest structure in the Giza complex, the Pyramid of Menkaure, but we couldn’t.

Our guide from yesterday (Yousef) was there to do the hand off to our actual Cairo guide Dalia.  We’ll see him again tomorrow when he transports us to the airport for a domestic flight.  Dalia has been guiding since 1998 after getting her degree in Egyptian history.  Besides her native Arabic, she’s fluent in English, German and can converse a bit in French too.  She’s a very lovely woman with two sons around 20 and 23, both of them in university (medicine and computer science).  Our driver Ashra is the same today and we will see him again with Yousef when we go to the airport tomorrow.  We’ll be going for a 3 day cruise down the Nile to see other points of interest and will come back to Cairo to tour some more.  We’ll see all three when we come back.  

Our first stop is to the new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM).  This is a new facility finished in 2023 at a cost of  $1 Billion US.  It took 20 years to finish from the time the architects were awarded the design contract in June 2003.   There has been postponed opening dates for the museum due to Covid, construction delays and most recently, the war between Israel and Iran.   The official opening is now scheduled for November 1st, but there has been a soft opening going on since about Oct 2024.  The building is massive, about 500,000 sq metres (5.3 million sq ft).  Some of the artifacts have yet to be moved from other museums.  When this is complete, the museum will house over 100,000 pieces with about 1/5th of them being displayed for the first time.  The complete King Tutankhamun collection will be displayed here for the first time ever.  

The grounds for the building are also massive.  Our driver took us from the parking lot which seemed to be large enough to service a medium sized airport like Vancouver.  From there, we boarded a passenger golf cart to make our way up the ramp to the courtyard at the front of the building.  The scaffolding you see is set up for the grand opening preparations underway.  It’s going to be a huge celebration to recognize a new milestone for Egypt.  

The museum building design is strongly influenced by Egypt’s pyramids.  The building entrance is triangular shaped with the exterior facade line with translucent alabaster stone.  

Inside there is a huge atrium that is able to house large statues including the 36 foot tall, red granite statue of Pharoah Ramses II.  It weighs 83 tonnes and was moved to its location in 2018 and the building finished around it.  

The atrim looking back towards the front entrance.  

The rear entrance is fully open and will lead to other museum exhibits including a restored solar barque, a vessel used by the sun god Ra in Egyptian mythology.  This barque was found fully intact, sealed in a pit around 2500 BC beside the Pyramid of Khufu, part of the extensive grave items buried along with the deceased King, intended for use in his after life.  It is 44 metres long (142 ft) and 6 metres wide (19 ft).   

The building is very impressive.  The scale is massive with lots of open space.  Once the tourists come, the space will quickly fill up.  

Large exhibits are positioned on the steps leading up to the 4th level.  These four levels are accessible by 4 moving walkways which are in front of the glass wall on the right of the steps.  The glass wall houses the handicapped escalator. The moving sidewalks to go down are on the other side of its glass partition walls.  

Riding the moving escalator to the next level.

The building uses an energy efficient cooling system known as Displacement Ventilation System which provided a very suitable environment for us when we were there.  The north and south wall of the building line up directly with the nearby Giza pyramids of Khufu and Menkaure.  The roof is a breathable structure which allows for airflow.  

After touring the Grand Hall and the Grand Staircase exhibits, we entered into the Main Galleries which consists of 12 exhibition halls that journey back to prehistoric times to the Roman Era of about 400 AD.  Most of the exhibits consist of curated items behind glass, but there are were several large format screens providing an audio-visual experience.  

We were there for about 2.5 hours going through the various exhibits and I felt we were rushed.  Many of them, including the King Tutankhamen exhibit of 5,400 artifacts and the Khufu solar boat weren’t even open yet.  But there is only so much information you can absorb going through a museum and I felt I had reached my limit.    If I come here again, I will read up on my Egyptian history…

We get back to our van and drive to a papyrus paper making place.  These factory tours are generally interesting, but sadly the papayrus tour was marginal.  We entered into the store and Dalia left us with a guide who explained how papyrus was turned into a writing or painting surface.  There were many many finished papyrus art pieces on the wall, but none appealed to me or Judith.  Right after the exhibit we were led into a room that was full of more papayrus art, but we discovered that when the light was switched off, there was another picture printed with glow in the dark inks.  They kind of screamed “black velvet paintings” and I was fully turned off by now.  

Our papyrus guide let us know there was special pricing for us, but we didn’t bite and instead, found an opportunity to duck outside when he was talking to someone else.  We waited for Dalia and Ashra to come by, which they did a few minutes later.

Our next stop was the Giza Pyramid complex.  Dalia said this was a good time to see it as by now the haze has burned off.  But it’s pretty hot, hitting over 32 degrees C today and even hotter on the sand and pavement.  We get on the hop on hop off Giza buses and make our way into the Giza complex.  The first stop is the Great Sphinx.  To get there we walk through the ruins of a Temple building known as the Valley Temple of Khafre.  It was used as a mortuary for King Khafre and his family.  The body would be mummified here before burial, a process where organs were removed and then the body salted for many days to remove blood and other liquids.

Entering the Valley Temple of Khafre.

Note the large stone blocks lining the walls.  These were fitted without mortar and have stood the test of time.  They reminded me of the Inca walls at Machu

Inside the Temple.  

The woman on the left is our guide, Dalia.

This is the causeway that leads past the Great Sphinx towards the Funeral Temple of Khafre and the pyramid itself.  

The Great Sphinx.

Despite the number of times you see it in pictures, the real thing is a marvel to view.  Carved from a single piece of bedrock limestone about 4500 years ago, it has stood as a guardian in front of the Giza pyramids.   It is about 73 metres long (240 ft) and 20 metres (66 ft) high.  

Most of the Sphinx lay buried in the sand with only the head visible.  It was fully uncovered in the 1930s.  

We left this site and started towards the Pyramid of Khufu, passing a long line of vendors selling lots of trinkets.  

A long row of vendor stalls.  There were also vendors carrying their products coming up to you.  

The Great Pyramid of Giza was the world’s tallest human made structure for more than 3800 years until the Eiffel Tower was built.  Originally at 146.6 metres (481 ft) tall, the limestone casing has fallen off lowering the height by 8.1 metres (27 ft.).  We walk around the pyramids with Judith arguing with Dalia whether the pyramids were actually human constructed. 

Walking up to the Pyramid of Khufu.

The original entry into the Pyramid of Khufu is sealed by two huge chevron blocks.  Apparently there was a way into the original passageway through this main entrance location, but it has since been closed off.  We’re going to enter into the King’s Chamber via the so called robber’s tunnel that was discovered by Egyptian explorer Selim Hassan.  This is a tunnel that had been dug out to access the internal chambers, with an eye to steal treasures.  

Our tour included tickets to enter the Pyramid of Khufu.   We could see people on the pyramid going in and then leaving the structure.  Judith later mentioned that all the people coming out appeared to be sweating a lot, but I didn’t notice this.  The tomb path was carved out long ago and takes you to the King’s Chamber.  There are 2 other chambers (including one for the Queen) but these are blocked off and not part of the tour.  

The face of the Pyramid of Khufu with the entrances.  The main entrance is in the centre above the line of people on the face of the pyramid and about midpoint from the top and bottom of the pyramid.  Two large stone blocks in a chevron pattern is thought to be the main entrance.  

Lower down at the people level, you can zoom in and see the opening in the face near the signboard, which is the robber’s tunnel where we will enter.  

We took the stairs up to the entry and handed over our ticket.  We entered a darkened tunnel which had enough light to see your way.  Our first bottleneck involved negotiating a narrow staircase where we had to give way to tourists coming back down from the Chamber.  The stairwell was tight and didn’t meet any known North American building or safety regulations…. 

The tunnel entry.

Approaching the first bottleneck at the stairs caused by having to wait for people to come down a long ramp 

Right after the stairwell was a long low tunnel of about a metre in height sloping steeply upwards.  We slowly climbed upward hunched over stepping on a wooden boardwalk with cleats built in so that you could get some traction and not slip on the steep slope.  After that the tunnel leveled out into a wider section where the traffic going up and down was divided.  But that quickly ended and there was a final long steep slope that you needed to bend right over at the start, but then you could stand upright to climb until you reached the King’s chamber.  This part was at least twice as long as the previous tunnel.  

Walking up that final set of killer stairs.  The first part of this section has about a meter high and then opened up so we could climb up upright.  

I learned it’s hard to climb upwards bent over by 90 degrees.  Think of doing the Grouse Grind with your hands being able to reach your ankles.  

In many sections, you had to squeeze over for oncoming visitors.  It was hot and humid and I was sweating by the time I arrived at the King’s Chamber, where there was no relief from the heat and humidity in that room.  It’s certainly not a good spot if you’re claustrophobic.  Judith managed to bump her back a couple of times going up.  I decided to tilt my head sideways to I could at least see where I was going. 

A section where people needed to squeeze by each other.

In the chamber room there was a large sarcophagus.  There were no other antiquities present.  There was however several portable air conditioning units at each end of the room.  They weren’t effective as they vented straight back into the room and likely made the room warmer than if they weren’t there.   We stood around that room to catch our breath and stop sweating, but it was basically a sauna in that room.  We decided to leave and navigate our way back through those narrow, steep and often low height passages.   This time, gravity was on our side, so I feel we were slightly faster.  , but still had to squeeze by people or wait our turn to get through some of the bottleneck points.  

Inside the King’s Chamber.  On the other side of the sarcophagus were several air conditioning units that were pretty ineffective as there was no where to vent the hot air.  

We came out into the bright sunlight and I took a moment to adjust to it.  We scrambled down some stairs to get back down to ground level and met back up with Dalia.  I was glad that she convinced me to leave my backpack with her.  It would have been much harder carrying that through those passages.  

Our next stop was lunch.  We take the hop on and hop off bus.  I am glad that there is a guide; even Dalia had to inquire what buses would get us to the restaurant.  We finally make it there and decide to sit in the air conditioned part.  When I walk in, I am pretty light headed and welcome the opportunity to try and cool down.  I’m not hungry, I actually just want a nap.  But Dalia insists that we order a few things so we do.  She had already found a table close to two air conditioners so I was glad that I could get my temperature lowered to a more reasonable level.  The last time I felt like this was decades ago and it resulted in heatstroke.  I wanted to avoid that at all costs.  

I ordered a mousakka as a starter and although it’s not Egyptian it still tasted good.  I had some pita bread with it and some kofta (Egyptian fried meatballs) that Dalia insisted I should order.  They were very salty so I didn’t get beyond having just one little bite.  Judith ended up with some type of white fish (sea bass?) and ate lots of her meal.  

I was able to cool off sufficiently during our lunch.  We went back out to the viewpoint to take a few more pictures.

Souvenir picture of the Giza pyramids

Camels and horse carriages are common here for the tourist trade.  I snap this picture of camels being led back to their stables.  

We take one final bus ride to meet up with our driver to take us back to the hotel.  It’s just after 4:00pm and it’s been a long hot day and I’m incredibly bagged.  Definitely time for a nap which we both do and then skip dinner because lunch was so late.  We have to get up early and be ready by 6:00 am to catch a flight to Luxor to see more sights and board our Nile cruise on the Soleil.