Aswan, Egypt January 18, 19 & 20

Wow….what a whirlwind of days. This is the first down time we have had in 72 hours! This post is to catch everyone up on the general progress of our trip. I am writing this while the class is over to our room watching the inauguration…it is special watch a new president come into office in the USA while sitting 5,000 miles away in Egypt. On a side note…everyone we speak with here is supportive of Obama and excited to see what he will accomplish for the world.
Since several students are here, I thought they could make postings for our activities over the past three days.

Sunday 1/18 - Giza pyramids and the Cairo Museum: (Addie and Lexy)
In the morning we visited the great pyramids at Giza. As you will see in the attached picture we tried to make our own pyramid and discovered it is harder than it looks! We then went down to see the Sphinx.

For lunch we went to a great local restaurant and some students were able to pet and pictures taken with a baby lion. Some of us even got lion kisses!
After lunch we went to the Cairo museum and students were in awe as they were able to walk through rooms and rooms filled top to bottom with Egyptian history. Our wonderful tour guide Joseph gave us the VIP tour of the museum and led us into the mummy display where we were able to see the mummies of Hatshepsut, Ramesses II and many others. Hatshepsut, first female pharaoh of Egypt, was kindly described in the label next to her mummy as, “An obese woman with bad teeth.” Not exactly a description fit for a king. We also saw King Tut’s treasure, his death mask, sarcophagus, and even his underwear! Unfortunately, we weren’t able to take pictures inside the museum, so everyone back home will have to take our word for it.

Monday January 19 – Saqqara, Memphis, Dahshour – Overnight train to Aswan (Addie, Lexy, and Megan)

Although it was great seeing the pyramids at Giza yesterday, today we actually got to go INSIDE the Red Pyramid (Egypt’s first true pyramid)! It was a long way down, bent in half, climbing down a steep “staircase” behind some very slow French tourists with a frightened child. Once we made it down the shaft, we entered the inner chamber, with an incredible stepped ceiling, showing the ingenious engineering of the ancient Egyptians. It was quite an experience.
We also got to go into the smaller pyramid of King Titi. Though the pyramid itself is far less impressive than the Red Pyramid, the interior is much more beautiful. The walls are lined with inscriptions; spells to protect the mummy within. The sarcophagus, the only object left in the tomb, lies under a ceiling of stars, representing Nut, the goddess of the night sky. Lucky for us, the lid of the coffin is broken in one corner, revealing the inscriptions inside written to protect the mummy.

We also went into one of the many funerary temples. This temple had amazing artwork one all of its walls some of which even still had their original colors still present. Joseph also explained to us all how some of the representations of people were rather contorted. We tried to be a life representation of how the art was represented, this was almost impossible. Getting your feet to be in profile, knees forward, torso facing forward, and head in profile was not an easy task. Either way this was an interesting place to visit and learn about.

We also went to see the step pyramid and Immohoteps building. We did not get to go inside the step pyramid but we did learn a lot about it from Joseph and got to walk around. It was really cool to see how pyramids got developed from the step pyramid.

We then boarded a sleeper train to Aswan. It was an interesting experience. The trains we saw go by were kind of run down and we were all worried about what our train would look like. Our train arrived and it had windows and looked pretty nice. The sleeper cars were small and they were really fun to be in. Some thing most of us had not experienced. We were able to walk around the train and head to the bar cart and all hang with each other and then meet some people from LA touring Egypt. A very fun experience.

Tuesday January 20 – Phillae Island, High Dam, Unfinished Obelisk (Megan, Jenny, Lexy)

Today we arrived in Aswan by train and first impressions gave that it was much cleaner than Cairo and a lot hotter. It was nice to be in a cleaner city but it is definitely different living style of living and culture, very cool to see. We then headed over to the unfinished Obelisk and learned a lot about why it was never finished and what the rocks around it were used for. It is amazing to see such a huge piece of rock in the ground.

Phillae Island was amazing to go see. This island has the temple of Isis on it which has the last carved set of hieroglyphics carved into the stone. This was such a massive amount of rock and had gorgeous scenes but very little of its original color left.