Snofru* was a guy who liked to start a job. He built three pyramids, each of which had one problem or another which caused him to abandon them just before they were ready to use. Rumour’s that his third pyramid was called Gandalf are completely unfounded.
* Everything in Egypt has hundreds of different spellings. Snofru was also known as Snephru, Snefru and Sneferu. In deeply scientific fashion, I choose the spellings that appeal to me.
In jokes aside, the good news is that his sons learnt their lessons well as they went on to build the better known pyramids at Giza. You can see photos of them in earlier posts ot everywhere else on the internet. They are spectacular, but their fame means they are overrun with tourists.
The Dhahshur field is a little bit farther out of Cairo, but not as far as my taxi driver thought. After negotiating the inner city traffic, we blasted out onto open highway and drove for miles at speed before he pulled alongside a truck. While steering with his knees, one hand holding a smoke and the other one required for gesturing, he asks the truckie where Dhahshur is.
Twenty or so of these conversations later the driver worked oput we were going the wrong way. I wasn’t in a hurry and couldn’t speak enough Arabic to do anything about the situation so I settled back to enjoy the show, throwing reassuring smiles his way so that he wouldn’t panic too much. “Dhahshur inshallah”
Eventually we got back to the left bank of the Nile and made our way past Giza and Memphis to Dhahshur. Although I was nicely rested by the unbooked 90 minute tour of Cairo Media City on the way down, 10 minutes after arriving at the Red Pyramid I was panting and sweating after my descent into the heart of the Red Pyramid
I put that last photo to give a sense of scale. The inside of the pyramid smelt like 4500 years of sweaty tourists to which I contributed freely. Being alone in there gave rise to thoughts of how many million kilograms of stone were above me and solidarity with Chilean miners.
After climbing out into daylight again I had a sit-down on a rock and took a photo back down to the carpark. My taxi was the small white car in the centre. In the distance you’d see the pyramid fields at Saqqara if only I had a decent camera.
The next photo is from the carpark looking up at a group of Asian tourists who happily climbed the pyramid to have their photos taken at the entrance and then scurried back to their bus before coming back down without entering the pyramid.
Onward to Snofru’s next folly, the Bent Pyramid. The consensus is that the angle was changed to avoid collapse, or to finish quickly in case the pharoah died, or to line up with something astronomical. So clearly the consensus is really that Egyptologists make it up as they go along.
I spent about an hour wandering around the pyramid. It really is quite striking to see the smooth sloped surface which all the pyramids once had before it all got carried off to build Cairo.
On the supplemental (or Queen’s) pyramid alongside the Bent Pyramid, you can see the markings on the bedrock where the original plan was inscribed.
It’s hard to get a sense of scale with these pyramids so I grabbed the largest portable object of reference I could find and stuck it near a corner of this 101 metre high monster.
Over in the distance in this next shot you can see the Black Pyramid from the Middle Kingdom and it is a stark warning to those who skimp on materials while seeking immortality. This pyramid was mud-brick on the inside and is quite badly eroded. Let that be a lesson for all you DIY pyramid builders. It should be stone all the way down.
Sorry about the long-disatnce shot but it didn’t seem worth the 3km round trip on foot. I’ve seen rubble before. The final set of photos is from the remainder of my wander around the Bent Pyramid.
And that’s what I did today, along with my laundry and organising the Dahab/Petra portion of this trip which starts tomorrow night when I fly to Sharm el-Sheikh and then bus on to Dahab. Two nights there, one night in Petra, then two more nights in Dahab before flying back here to fly down to Malawi.
Right, beer’s all gone, time for bed.