A day in Egypt

Ah, it sounds so pretentious to be somewhere for just a day, but it was because my layover was ten and a half hours.  I loved it!  We went to see the pyramids in Giza, the sphinx, a few pretty cool tombs, and a mosque.  We also ate falafel and shawerma, of course, which our tour guide said made us at least 10% Egyptian.  I was grateful to have a travel companion, Johanna, who I’d only met just before we boarded our flight out of JFK.  We exchanged a few emails beforehand since she’s doing an internship with UNICEF in Kampala and we found out we were on the same flight.  I was excited that there was something we could do for such a long layover and very relieved to be with someone I “knew” as I traveled so far from what I know.  



We also drove around downtown Cairo a bit, seeing the square where people often gathered a couple years ago during the revolution, before we got out to walk around an Egyptian neighborhood.  We dove right into the chaos of shopping, transporting goods, lots of traffic on what should be one-way streets, impatient drivers ceaselessly honking horns, and, once we got closer to the HUGE market, shop owners asking us in broken English to come take a look or telling us that we were pretty.  Johanna has pictures of the big mosque we saw, and there were all kinds of pretty minurets.  It was fascinating to learn a bit more about Islam - I want to know more.

The pyramids were incredible.  I’ve had the blessing to travel to other wondrous ruins from ancient civilizations—Tikal, Tegucigalpa, Machu Picchu, and more—so the idea of amazing things built long ago was not new, but the sheer size of the Giza pyramids was what primarily impressed me.  They’re huge, and that’s fairly striking in itself, but once you realize the painstaking precision used to build these things perfectly, you’re left in awe.  



 Being just 5cm off with one of the massive limestone blocks at the bottom of the Great Pyramid would have resulted in a discrepancy of 15-20 meters at the top.  Everything is perfectly aligned, and all of the stones somehow were polished such that they fit right next to each other and hold together without anything to bond them.  It’s insane.  How does one get two huge blocks of limestone to be so smooth that they can fit so closely that one can’t even slip a piece of paper between them?  Crazy.  It leaves me worshipping God for being the ultimate Artist.  



The whole time I looked up at the pyramids, seeing the seamless transition from one stone block to the next and feeling the smoothness of the outer layer of polished limestone, I couldn’t help but think about how worthy of praise the Source of this crazy wisdom and architectural understanding is.  Imagine how much more stunning these would be if all of the original exterior were there!  Each of the pyramids was originally covered entirely with polished limestone as you see to the right (that's why the top of one of the pyramids looks snowcapped).   Breathtaking.

Inside one of the nobles' tombs

The latest theory about how these multi-ton stones got to the top of the pyramids is an internal switchback-type ramp that circled the interior, and there is French infrared technology that can “see” whether there are gaps in the building where we’d expect them to be if this theory were to be true.  The permissions to check that out will likely come through in the next 5-10 years—how cool!

Johanna and I were exhausted after our ten-hour flight from JFK and seven hours in Cairo, so we plopped down in the comfy airport chairs, tried to connect to internet with little success, grabbed something to eat, and waited to board our flight so that we could sleep.  It was a long day, but a good one.