Day 2- The Pyramids

Today we all woke up early in the morning for breakfast and then waited by the entrance at 8:15am. We met our Egyptologist, Amr, and an amateur Egyptologist called May. Amr explained to us everything that was interesting enough to know about Egypt while we drove to the Pyramids. He used a lot of humor while explaining everything so it was a lot of fun for us. We arrived to the Pyramids at Giza and saw the three Great Pyramids from the 4th dynasty that belonged to the king, his son, and grandson. We first went for a tour in the Solar Boat Museum, where we saw the boat that was found in front of one of the Great Pyramids. Amr told us that the boat was found in a pit broken into pieces and they believe that the boat was made for the king of that pyramid. He said that some Egyptologists believe that it was never built and the purpose of it is that when the king dies, the boat is there in his after life to take him to eternity. However one Egyptologist said that the boat was built at least once because there are marks of the ropes on the boat and possible marks of water particles on the wood. But the boat was built in the museum and it was very huge. After the museum, we went to the smallest pyramid to enter it from a small tunnel. Most of us got tickets to enter the pyramid, but not all of us were able to fully enter because we did not know that the entrance to the pyramid was through a small narrow tunnel where we had to bend while walking inside. Amr recommended that if anyone had any heart problems or claustrophobia we shouldn’t enter, and so I didn’t. We then drove to Panoramic and drove camels. The view from the Panoramic overlooking the Pyramids was amazing; it looked like a postcard. After that we went to a papyrus school and they taught us how make them. They also taught us how to tell fake papyrus from original ones. We then went to have lunch at an oriental restaurant with a fine dining buffet. After our delicious lunch we drove again to other pyramids from the 6th century. We saw the step pyramids made for the kings, and we entered a tomb for a high priest and Amr explained to us the hieroglyphics on the walls of each room. The hieroglyphics talked about what the people would do in ancient times during their daily lives, and amazingly people until today follow the same life style. For instance there were scriptures of men feeding geese, and the reason for that is to make them big to sell them for a higher price, Amr said that local Egyptian villagers still do that today. After this we went to a carpet school. Children aged from 8 to 12 were creating amazing hand-made carpets. They also taught one of us how to create the carpets, and surprisingly they are made out of knots. Each carpet takes about 3 months. That was the end of our program for the day and we all went back to the hotel exhausted from such a long day, but it was worth it and we had a lot of fun.