Visiting the Pyramids

May 9, 2006

The pyramids were a natural first stop for our stay in Egypt. I know: they are practically everyone's first stop. But they happen to be the topic of the translation project I will be working on while here.. a translation and commentary on a chapter from the Medieval Arabic historian Maqrizi on the subject of the pyramids. If you listen to guides today talking about the pyramids, you will get a mish-mash of archeological facts processed by the popular imagination. But the ostensible goal is always to describe what the pyramids meant to those who built them. My idea is that the pyramids meant something different to people in different time periods. These later stories are also a part of the pyramids as they show how these huge man-made structures were incorporated into different religious and cultural systems.

The first two pictures above feature Emily taking her first camel ride. And the last picture is Emily emerging into the burial chamber for one of the Egyptian queens.. this is inside one of the small pyramids subsidiary to the largest one. Emily is emerging from a long tunnel giving access to this tomb. Nothing is there but a big empty room..

Visiting the pyramids means running the tourist gauntlet. Those tourists come from lots of different nations. Everyone tries to take pictures that make it look like they are the only people there.. but this is never true.. and has not been true since ancient times. The pyramids are perhaps the first real tourist site in the world, and so we should be proud to fall into this time-venerated practice.

It is hard to get good pictures of us together. Here we are both more worried about the Egyptian man trying to take the picture than anything else..