Memphis, Imothep & Saqqara

Our first day in Egypt we hit the ground running bright and early. Our first stop was Memphis, one the old capital of Egypt. There is no city remaining, and all that’s there is a few statues that have been salvaged and some vendor stalls. One thing that was interesting there was a statue that had four faces pointing in the four compass directions – it was just like the faces on many of the temples in Angkor Wat. Crazy how two completely different civilizations, thousands of miles and hundreds of years apart, had the same idea.

After Memphis we headed to the “countryside” as the tour guide called it, which was really just the outskirts of Cairo. It didn’t look like what I would picture a countryside to look like, with open fields and rolling hillsides. It was just a less-dense area that was a few miles outside of Cairo, and instead of industry and businesses there were some fields here and there and more animals than in the actual city. Also, rather than the Nile River in the middle of the city there was a trash-filled, filthy irrigation canal.

Our first stop in the countryside was an area called Saqqara, which houses a step-pyramid and the Imothep museum. Imothep was the famous Egyptian architect, and the museum was full of things from the pyramid we were about to see. The most impressive thing in the museum was part of the tomb’s interior wall that was made of beautiful blue tiles. The tiles and their magnificent colors are still in-tact today.

The grounds of the pyramid consisted of a temple/walkway thing with big columns lining the way, the emptied out into a big courtyard with the pyramid on one end. Every few years a pharaoh would have to prove that he was worthy and strong enough the be the pharaoh, so he would have to catch and kill an ox in this courtyard in front of hundreds of spectators. Saqqara was set up exactly in the format in which this would have happened, but it was never used because it was just a set-up so that in the afterlife the pharaoh’s soul would have everything it would have had in the earthly life. Part of the original wall that had surrounded the wall had been reconstructed, and it was lined at the top with the heads of cobras. Cobras were a constant theme in Egyptian architecture and clothing, as they were a symbol of protection. What is unique about the pyramid was that it was only had about five levels rather than the hundreds you picture a pyramid to have. Instead of being inside the pyramid, the tomb was actually beneath in, buried underground. The purpose of the pyramid was so the soul of the pharaoh could have a stairway to heaven when he was resurrected.

Off in the distance you could see a few other “pyramids”, which are really now just piles of rubble. There’s a huge difference between the pyramids that have been resorted and those that haven’t, and it goes to show you that all this stuff isn’t in good shape just by luck. Archeologists have put a lot of time into putting everything back together and it’s amazing that they can turn a pile of stones back into a pyramid.

After Saqqara, we had lunch at a typical Egyptian restaurant (which is relatively atypical in actuality since Egyptians prefer to eat at home). I wasn’t sure what to expect from Egyptian cuisine, but it was pretty much just normal Middle Eastern food. We had freshly baked bread flat bread that was hollow in the middle, kebab meat, and sides like baba ghanoush and pickled vegetables. One dish that is uniquely Egyptian, but which we didn’t try, is pigeon stuffed with rice and spices.