Egypt Day 7: Dashur/Memphis/Saqqara/Colossi of Ramses

During our long bus ride to the older pyramids Leigh gave her report on Serapis while I tried taking pictures of the different landscapes we passed.

The "bent" pyramid at Dashur was pretty awesome. Some of us climbed up a ways before a guard with a machine gun came by on his camel and yelled at us.

At the "red" pyramid, we explored outside but then descended into the tombs inside.

Despite the poor quality of the one picture I took, it was really neat inside. After we climbed down into a chamber, we had to climb these wooden stairs up into another chamber. The vaulted ceiling was amazing.

Next, we went to see the giant statue of Ramses II in Memphis.

There was also a sort of outdoor museum with other statues outside.

We stopped for a bit to hear Kyle's report then it was on to the mastaba tombs. No pictures were allowed inside, unfortunately. There was a lot of great sculpture and some paintings on the walls. At one point, I tried taking a picture when no guards were around but a creepy guy (but not a guard) came around the corner. He'd been charging people to allow them to take pictures. I stowed my camera in my bag just as he came into the little room we were in and I pulled out my hand sanitizer when he started to accuse me of taking pictures. He then tried to take my hand sanitizer! He insisted he needed it for his wife. I squeezed past him into another room and he followed me. I went outside and then into another tomb and he continued to follow me, still hounding me to give him something. Eventually, when I thought he was going to block my way out a tomb, I gave him a hard boiled egg, which he didn't appreciate, but if he hadn't let me through, I was ready to stomp on his toes and/or punch him in the throat.

Then we had a look at the "step" pyramid (also known as Zoser's pyramid) at Saqqara.

At the nearby funerary complex of Zoser, we stopped in the Heb-sed court for Evren's report.

That's our personal armed guard in the background. You can almost make out the bottom of his machine gun sticking out of his jacket.

We next explored the mortuary complex.

We headed back to Cairo for lunch. Before going back to the hotel, we stopped at the American Research Center in Egypt, located in downtown Cairo. The director told us about the program there and then treated us to wine and snacks.

Since this was our last night in Cairo, I took some pictures of the view from our hotel room. The rest of Cairo didn't look any better than this (and much of it was worse!).