Day 3: Memphis, Saqqara, & the Pyramids

I start the day with breakfast on patio.  A lovely way to start the day.

Later on I saw this guy roaming the grass.

This was a jam packed day.  Connie, Stephen, and I had a private guide and driver.  We started out in Memphis, the old capital of Egypt.  Everything that was there was cover by silt from the flooding of the Nile.  Apparently there are still a lot of items buried in fields and/or covered over by houses. They have a kind of outdoor museum, which was really nice.

Ramses II must have been here because there are tons of statues of him.  Here he is from the front and back.

 

There was also a marvelous sphinx.  All of these treasures are a bit damaged from being under the nile flooding for so many years, but they are in amazingly good shape--at least what they have on display.

I love this carving.

They found a ginormous lying down statue of Ramses II.  Quite stunning.

We were then off to Saqqara, where you can see one of the first pyramids that was built.  We had a very scenic drive from Memphis to Saqqara.

The ruler Djoser built this step pyramid.  It's pretty spectacular. 

There were so many kings and pharaohs buried at this site, I'm not sure who is who.  This was the entrance to a site that had some amazing preserved wall paintings on the inside.

Then Stephen and I went under ground to this amazing tomb, I think it was Teti's, but who knows.  It was one the first places they found writing inside of a tomb.  We had duck all the way down.

We then when drove over to walk around the pyramids we've been seeing from out room.  The stones are huge on the great pyramid of Cheops.

Next to the great pyramid are smaller pyramids, for family members.  Here's a shot of the three.

We then went into the solar boat museum.  They found a pod right next to the great pyramid and in was buried over a thousand pieces of wood that formed a boat.  This was a major undertaking, but they figured out how to get the boat together and it's hanging in a museum right next to the pyramid.

 

We found this guy sleeping on a pyramid stone.  Very cute!

We then went over to Cheops' son's pyramid--Khafre.

And then on the grandson's monument--Menkaure.  You can see where grave robbers tried to get in.  All three pyramids had evidence of people trying to loot.

We went to an overlook where you could see all 3 pyramids.

We ended with the sphinx, but the lighting was so poor, I got a pretty bad photo.  The one below it is from the web--a much better shot.

Tomorrow we leave for Luxor.  I'm a little sad to leave Giza.  It's been wonderful here.