My Pyramids of Egypt

The back story.  My first trip to Egypt was after a stop over in Israel. I had met a girl in college who became the nanny for the a University director in Jerusalem. The invitation was open to visit so I took advantage of it. My 90 day Euro-Rail pass had run out the last day arriving in Rome, where I spent about a week.  

The original plan was to take a ferry to Athens, then onto Istanbul, then go overland through Turkey through Syria and Lebanon to Israel.  As with most plans, especially up to this point in time in Europe, changes were always inevitable.  In 1984 political instability and anti-American attacks in Lebanon were on the rise.  I knew general conditions in Syria and the Lebanese Civil War would present a challenge, but it got much worse.   In September 1984,  Islamic Jihadists, with help from Hezbollah and the support of Iran, bombed the US embassy annex in Beruit, Killing 23 innocent people.  These “on the ground events”  prompted a route change.  I decided to fly directly from Rome to Tel Aviv and take a bus up to Jerusalem.  I’ll cover events in Jerusalem separately, but from there with the help of the University director and my friend,  I managed to get a visa with them and ride on their bus across the Sinai into Cairo. I had made friends with a number of university students, so it was quite enjoyable but once they got dropped off at their swanky hotel, I wandered into Cairo and found a cheap place to stay.  A small room, a toilet and a sink and the most overwhelming odor of insecticide I ever experienced in my life.  But there were no bugs .. My brother joined me at this point in time, so  the next day, we rented a car and headed out  to Giza. We drove all around and saw many of the smaller archaeological finds. The black market in Egypt for cash was thriving at the time and exchange rates around the pyramids at the shops were really really good.  Scarabs, papyrus and clothing were very inexpensive.  For years later, my wife used to wear one of my souvenirs I bought as a nightshirt.   It was the male, traditional long white shirt, which reaches the ankle, known as a thobe, or dishdasha / kandoora.     One of the more memorable experiences was climbing up through the Great Pyramid of Cheops (Khufu), literally on hands and feet,  crouched, on  plywood with a string of light bulbs overhead for dim light, all the way up into Khufu’s large chamber where his large sarcophagus is. Of course the chambers had been almost completely stripped over the thousands of years, but to be deep inside one of the pyramids was amazing. There are no monies in the pyramids they’ve all been moved to the Cairo Museum which is worth the visit, when I was there there In 1984 There were mummies everywhere.   

More to come.

Story of the girls buying tickets

story of the human skull

story of the littlee room with the holes in it and the kid asking for baksheesh

Cairo Museum

hot dark dried dirty taxi ride