Egyptian Experience - Day Two

Day One Recap

Yesterday’s visit to the Egyptian Museum had opened the window to experience the enchanting world of an ancient civilisation. On hindsight, if there is one artefact that a serious traveller must absolutely embrace, it is the Narmer Palette. Dating back to around 3100 BCE. It is a ceremonial engraving that depicts King Narmer, who is believed to have unified Upper and Lower Egypt, marking the beginning of the First Dynasty and the dawn of Pharaonic Egypt. There are numerous iconographic characteristics appearing on the Narmer Palette that remain staples in Egyptian art for the following three millennia. The pose Narmer takes where he grasps an enemy by the hair and prepares to smash his skull with a mace, was repeated by Pharaoh after Pharaoh and other rulers through the Roman era more than 3000 years later. We would keep seeing it in mural after mural over the next few days.

Day Two

Day 2 began very early. As per my notes, we left our hotel at 0725 after a hearty breakfast. It was the day to experience the Pyramids – the pièce de résistance of the Egyptian culture. And we started at where it all began – Saqqara.

Saqqara and Dahshur Necropolis

55 minutes after leaving the hotel, I stood awestruck gazing at the oldest stone monument in the world. It was bathed in sunlight. The light was perfect to go click click click. The stepped pyramid was built for the Pharaoh Djoser (3^rd dynasty) around 2670 BC by his chief architect Imhotep. Before that mausoleums were trapezoidal shaped Mastabas. – rectangular base, flat roof, sloping sides. The genius of Imhotep lay in stacking 6 progressively smaller Mastabas one over the other to form the stepped pyramid. Nothing on this scale had ever been tried before and I feel it deserves as much appreciation as the Grand Pyramid at Giza. It marked the transition from mudbricks to stone in Egyptian civilisation. The stones used were locally quarried, roughly cut limestone. Most aptly, there is a temple dedicated to Imhotep, built during the Ptolemaic period (3^rd Century BC). Imhotep was deified as a god of wisdom, medicine, and architecture, and the temple functioned as a healing centre.

The Bent Pyramid built under Pharaoh Sneferu (circa 2600 BC, 4th Dynasty) is an important milestone in the evolution of the Pyramids. Initially, it was constructed at a steep angle of 54 degrees, but due to structural instability, the angle was reduced to 43 degrees midway. This abrupt change resulted in the distinctive “bent” profile. The lessons learned here were crucial for later pyramid construction. Also built under Sneferu, the Red Pyramid was the first successfully completed smooth-sided pyramid. Constructed at a uniform 43-degree angle, it demonstrated a perfected pyramid design. This structure directly influenced the famous pyramids at Giza.

The Pyramid of Unas (5^th dynasty), gave us the first of our many subterranean experiences in Egypt. This is notable for the first religious inscriptions, providing insights into the Egyptian beliefs about afterlife. We also crawled into the Mastaba of Kagemni, a vizier, to look at the carvings featuring scenes of fishing, farming, feasting and other activities from daily life.

Memphis Museum

Next on the agenda was the open-air Museum at Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt during the old kingdom (circa 3100 BC). There used to be a temple here of Ptah, the god of craftsmen and artisans. The city and the temple have disappeared without a trace and the open-air museum displays a collection of archaeological finds from Memphis. Two statues will remain etched in our memories for a long time. One of them is a Sphinx weighing 80 tons and carved from a single block of alabaster; the features are well-preserved even now. The other one is a 10-metre-long colossal statue of Ramses-II. It was discovered buried face down, because of which the features are astonishingly intact. The colossus is laid down in a pavilion provided with a viewing balcony to appreciate its grandeur. In an interesting way to engage the visitor, the museum challenges the visitor to spot and count all the cartouches on the statue. Cartouches are bullet-shaped frames in which the Pharaoh’s names are inscribed in hieroglyphics. But for these cartouches on various murals, it would not have been possible to identify the concerned Pharaoh.

Coptic Cairo

After lunch, we travelled 20 km and leapfrogged 3 millennia to enter Coptic Cairo. The term “Coptic” has a Greek origin and referred to Egypt as a whole, but subsequently acquired a narrow definition for the Christian community. Christianity came to Egypt around 43 AD brought by the evangelism of St. Mark. Today 5-15 % of Egypt’s population are Christians, the wide variation telling its own story. We visited 2 churches in Coptic Cairo.  The first one has the fanciful popular name of “Hanging Church” because from afar it appears to be pinned to the walls of a Roman fortress. The most important feature of this church built in 3^rd C Is the wooden roof shaped like Noah’s ark. The relic of the Virgin Mary’s Girdle is displayed inside the church. The second church, popularly known as Cavern Church has a deeper significance as it is supposed to be built over the cave where the holy family of Baby Jesus and his parents took refuge for 3 months. A plaque commemorating this crypt and also the well from which the family drank can be seen in the church. We also breezed in and out of the beautiful Ben Ezra Synagogue, where photography is forbidden for some unfathomable reason. An imposing building houses the Coptic Museum, which we skipped for the paucity of time. With cobblestoned alleys lined with overhanging balconies, dimly lit shrines and souvenir shops, Coptic Cairo has a quaint ambiance that merits at least double the time that we had budgeted.

I was exhausted, but could not resist gallivanting around the city in the evening. A stranger insisted on showing me the government-run curio shop, repeatedly mentioning that he doesn't expect any "tip" for his service.