Part 1:Memphis & Sakkara demistified!

This is the first of my serious of my travelogues, to share my travel experiences in Egypt. There are various areas of interest in Egypt that a tourist would want to visit and they are scattered around. Typically one would spend 2 days in Cairo, 3 the most. While in Cairo, the typical tours you might get hitched on is the following:

A full day to tour of the ancient city of Memphis and kingdom of sakkara, where you find one of the oldest cities noted to date. Then in Sakkara, you visit the famous step pyramids and the mastaba’s. Not to mention the kingdom of sakkara. The in the afternoon, you’ll probably spend the entire time at the Pyramid’s of giza, which is actually in the vicinity of cairo city itself. You probably end the day with the sound and light show at the pyramids itself. This is exactly what I did on my first tour.

The tour set me back 750LE’s, approx RM 500 for everything, the tour, an Egyptologist guide, food, camel ride, entrance fees etc. It was a little pricy but it was worth every penny. As I was a lone, I told my tour operator to hook me up with a group as it would be odd to go around alone with a guide.

I was lucky enough to be a paired with 2 lovely ladies from Briton, Diana and Hennah. Both are British born Chinese and we seem to be of the same wavelength, so it was fun. Here’s some pictures to start off the part 1 of this travelogue.

For some of the pictures, I haven’t put any explanation yet, cant remember everything lah. We started the morning early, at 6am, left to Memphis and sakkara which is about 30KM away from cairo. We stopped at Memphis site first. There isn’t much of the city left, only artifacts that were found through excavation work and these were collected and placed in this outdoor museum like place!

This is called a cartouche, which is pretty much a rubber stamp of the Kings ID. The hieroglyphics on the cartouche means something and every king in the ancient world had one. It was reported that whena new king took over, he went around statues of previous kings to erase their cartouche, to make the present king look supreme.

Also, Mummies, artifacts and statues are identified using these. The above cartouche if I’m not mistaken belongs to The great King Ramses II.

The picture above and the following one shows a statue which is believed to be of King Tuthunkamen or the famous King Tut that we hear about in NGC. The status does not have any cartouche on it, but they believe it’s of King Tut because of the baby face of the statue. King tut died young, ruled only for a few of his teen years.

The below picture is a typical example of a tomb cover. This one is built using pink granite, which is removed off another far out state called Aswan, the only palce you find pink Granite in Egypt. It is moved to Memphis, through the Nile, which was the heart of the ancient civilization.

This is just the cover, inside it is hollow and it will be slid ontop of another granite piece. Inside that granite piece lies the mummified body. The coffin will then be placed in what’s called the sarcophagus, which in lay man terms is a BIGGER COFFIN made out of solid rock!

Below if a picture of a statue that was in Memphis, I cant remember who’s it was, could be Ramses II. Ramses II ruled for 76 years, had tons of wife’s and even married 2 of his own daughters, what a bloody pervert!

That is the brief end of what we saw in Memphis. There are more pics, but I wont put them all here, not fun lah. Plus there is so much to know about Memphis which I cant recollect, it was just awesome. There is still a huge part of Memphis which is still underground, below a squatters which houses over 500000 families. Who knows what lies under that. The Egyptin government cant seem to move these people out. The more the government waits, the more artifacts that may be stolen by those living above the ancient city.

Around 10 am, we left for Sakkara, which is supposed to be the biggest archeological kingdom every excavated. It also houses the famous step pyramid of King Djooser of the Middle kingdom(I think it’s middle). See part 2 above for details on sakkara!