"See the pyramids along the Nile
Watch a sunset from a tropic isle
Just remember, darling, all the while
You belong to me.” - 'You Belong To Me', Chilton Price, Pee Wee King, 1952
Saqqara, south of the Giza pyramids, is one of the great sites of ancient Egypt. For thousands of years, people were buried here, both pharaohs and nobles alike. It is here that the first large stone structure was built almost 5000 years ago, the Step Pyramid. But there are also many fantastic tombs dating back to the 4th Dynasty.
Through our friend, Vicky Jensen, the president of the Northern California chapter of ARCE, the American Research Center in Egypt (an organization that does a lot of archaeological work in Egypt), we were introduced to the chief inspector of the entire site of Saqqara, Dr. Hamdy Amin. We set up a time to meet him and he said he would take us on a tour of Saqqara. But first we had to drive there. Zak, our driver from Luxor, whom we had had for the last four days, drove us out there. What ensued was our own version of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride!
Zak is not from Cairo, and unbeknownst to us, had absolutely no idea how to get to Saqqara. But he has an iPhone and a GPS, so no problem. Except the GPS also had no idea how to get there. We started off almost immediately going in the wrong direction and Zak, being Zak, asked almost everyone we passed how to get there. This proved to us, once again, now friendly and helpful Egyptians are. Here we were, in super heavy traffic, and every taxi we drove by Zak would lean out the window and asked where to go. At first this didn't work so well, the directions were off and we ended up going back and forth across the same bridge three times. But eventually we got on the correct road, saw a sign that said "Saqqara" and we knew we would be okay. We arrived only 10 minutes late, Dr. Hamdy waiting at the entrance.
“Egypt is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust.”
…Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
First, Hamdy took us to a couple of New Kingdom tombs that were discovered about 20 years ago and recently open to tourists. One was the tomb of Maya, who is thought to be the wet nurse and nanny to King Tutankhamen. There is a wonderful carving of her and Tut.
Next to Maya is the tomb of Nemtymes. There are some remarkable carvings here, but the really amazing thing is Surapis bull carved carved coming right out of the tomb wall. This is unique in all of ancient Egypt.
"Man fears time, but time fears the pyramids." - Arab proverb
Next we went into the Step Pyramid complex, a huge enclosure of 37 acres. The Step Pyramid is one of the great marvels in the world. Over 200 feet high, it was designed by the first great architect, Imhotep. Not much is known about him, his tomb has never been found and there are only a couple of statues of him ever found, but we know he invented the pyramid and this was his building. It was for the pharaoh Djozer and was built around 2700 BCE. There are miles and miles of passageways underneath the pyramid, including a couple of burial chambers. No treasure has been found and the mummy Djozer is nowhere to be seen, plundered in ancient history.
Next, Hamdy took us to the Unas Pyramid. Unas was a pharaoh 5th Dynasty and although this pyramid is mostly gone, the amazing burial chamber is intact. The walls are totally covered with hieroglyphs and have been a great help to Egyptologists in understanding the ancient religion.
"Egypt is an acquired country - the gift of the river." - Herodotus, c. 450 BCE
Hamdy had to leave us for an hour, so he pointed the way to the Serapeum, the great tomb in which 24 sacred bulls, the Serapus, were buried in giant sarcophagi. It was about a kilometer trek across the desert to this and how archaeologists found it over 100 years ago way out in the desert is amazing. These huge corridors and burial chambers were carved out of the solid limestone and the sarcophagi, made out of basalt and weighing up to 64 tons, were somehow dragged down here.
“Listen all of you!
The priest of Hathor will beat twice any of you who enters this tomb or does harm to it.
The gods will confront him because I am honored by his Lord.
The gods will not allow anything to happen to me.
Anyone who does anything bad to my tomb, then the crocodile. hippopotamus, and lion will eat him.”
Curse inscription from the tomb of Petety, circa 2500 BC
We trudged back across the desert sands (we should have taken a camel) to meet up with Hamdy again. He then took us to some New Kingdom tombs, four in all. The best was the tomb of Horemheb, the last pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty. But when this tomb was built he was the general of the army. It was only after he became pharaoh, not too long after King Tut, that he built a new and gorgeous tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Thebes.
Tickets for the various places in Saqqara...
So with that, Hamdy had to leave us and we visited a few other tombs of nobles with amazing carvings. It was a marvelous day and a very friendly gesture of Hamdy's to spend his time with two Egypt nuts and their driver, Zak.
Lunch at the Saqqara Palms Resort...
No comments:
Post a Comment