ALL M&I

Wow this is an overwhelming place! We spent a frantic half day at this huge museum and probably should have spent 2 or 3 days (though that would be even more overwhelming!); the museum is divided into multiple levels (for ages from “old kingdom” to greek/roman) and each into themes (society, kings, beliefs) and separate to all that is a huge Tutankhamen section! Our guide frustratingly ran us through the 12 sections with no time to see anything – I tried to snatch photos as we went! We were then expected to guide ourselves but that was almost impossible when we knew so little about the history (the museum layout means you don’t know where to go unless you already know where to go).

Anyway, here are a lot of photos! As you see the building itself is impressive, but it’s contents are extraordinary (and I have photos of just a tiny proportion of all that is on display)!

I’m going to miss out the solar boats which we also toured (they are huge but hard to photo), and move on to another load of photos just from the Tutankhamen section – and this place was CRAZY crowded, unpleasantly so; the museum needs to do some sort of timed entry here, I think …

There are many more than just the three Giza Pyramids, and today we visited what might be my favorite, the Bent Pyramid. This pyramid changes slope angle partway up, suggesting that the original steep angle was realized to be too much (stability? asthetics? time?) – whatever the reason for the angle change, this pyramid makes it clear that early design was somewhat trial and error …

We later visited the Djoser or Step Pyramid which we were told was a very early design, perhaps initially just a stone platform that then had multiple smaller platforms put on top to give the final stepped pyramid shape. This pyramid is part of a big complex with a colonnade entrance, walls, temples and tombs …

I also spotted the Giza Pyramids in the distance – in this view you can’t see Cairo and it makes those pyramids look much more alone as they might have been many thousands of years ago when they were built:

Of course the biggest attraction in Egypt is pyramids, and Cairo has the famous Giza Pyramid Complex right on the edge of the city. There are three big pyramids there, and a number of smaller ones – and there’s also the Sphinx. The complex has recently been redeveloped and we felt that the visit was well organized and not crazy crowded as we had expected, all good! We began with camel rides to a pyramid overlook …

We then took one of the shuttle buses (which ran regularly, we didn’t have to wait long) down to the pyramids, and spent a long while walking around them and being amazed!

Then a longer shuttle down to the Sphinx; this area was quite busy and it wasn’t possible to get right up to the Sphinx (I think there’s more development needed here to make things better for tourists) …

A few days later we visited a museum that had aerial photos of what the Giza Pyramid Complex looked like back in the 1930s; I thought they were interesting so here they are: