Karnak made my cry

Okay folks I’m buckling down and getting Egypt over with so that I can start writing about my everyday adventures again. However, before I start I’ll just tell you about the feeding the babies thing I mentioned before. There’s a hospital right down the road from the Center called the Red Crescent Hospital. The church actually helped a lot in getting it started a while back. It’s a hospital for women specifically and the service couple women go over once a week to help feed the babies. The service committee decided that we’d like to open it up for anyone who wanted to help out. So we had sign-ups and I got to go help feed them a couple days ago. It was such a sweet experience. I had this premie little baby that had just been born that day. He was so tiny…his body filled my palm and a couple inches down my wrist and that was it, smaller than many dolls. He was so sweet. He just stared up at me and kept drifting off to sleep. Oh boy though, for a baby his size he sure could belch! After he was done, I got this beautiful chonkers girl in a pink sleeper. She was huge and I just wanted to take her home with me. All the babies had such dark, thick, hair. I just kept laughing to myself thinking of Lyddie and her wisps of, well, nothing really. Anyway, it was a really, really nice experience. I loved it.
Alrighty, Egypt. First to answer Julie’s question: no, there was not a mummy in the pyramid we went inside. They’ve removed all mummies and everything else that once was inside the tomb to museums and such. But we did see the sarcophagus. It was just really cool. I’ve been inside a pyramid. Dang girl.
Just a cool little fact about the pyramids—the biggest pyramid, Cheops, was built by a pharaoh in the fourth dynasty (I can’t remember his name). But anyway, the second biggest one, Khafre, was built by his son and that’s the one we went into. But, even though it’s smaller than Cheops (said KEE-OPS) it was intentionally built on higher ground so that it looks like it’s the biggest. Those funny competitive Egyptians. Another cool fact that I wasn’t aware of before was that the pyramids used to covered in beautiful white limestone, with a 10-ft gold cap on the top. Get this: Cheops is 481 feet high and had 2,300,000 limestone blocks, EACH WEIGHING 5,000 LBS!!! It’s completely unfathomable. Over the years the people and tomb raiders quarried the limestone and stole the gold to use for building and trading. Sad, huh? Those pyramids must have been pretty been dang majestic in their heyday. I mean, they’re majestic now, so I can’t imagine what they must have been like then.
After going through the pyramid and then making our own human pyramid and taking lots of pictures, we headed over to the Bedouin camel men. They plopped us on camels (two people per camel) and we got a ten minute camel ride, down a slope and back. It was so fun! It’s scary because when a camel stands up, he first stands up on his hind legs and then stands up on his front legs, I really almost fell off. Everyone got a kick out of my high-pitched squeals and giggles. It was an experience to be remembered.
After our camel ride we headed down to the Sphinx. Oh man, I can’t believe I saw the Sphinx. It’s 240 feet long and 66 feet high. His head is that of Khafre, the pharaoh whose tomb we went in and the cool thing is that it is carved out of a single mass of rock. Yeah. Incredible. We had some fun getting pictures of us “kissing the sphinx.” Sweet. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you…I kissed the pyramid when I was inside! I’ve kissed the pyramids! (I’m starting to get a reputation here…first the camel, then the pyramid, and now the sphinx.) Haha.
Okay, so after the sphinx we piled back on the buses and headed out for Saqarra and Ptah-Hotep. Ptah-Hotep was one of my favorite places in Egypt. Probably number three. It’s the tomb of Ptah-Hotep and is known for it’s intricate, complex, colored, detailed, beautiful carvings and hieroglyphics. It was awesome. Not too big, but absolutely stunning. We weren’t allowed to take pictures so sorry about lack of visuals. There’s really no way to describe, it was just wonderful. Right next to Ptah-Hotep is Saqqara. Saqarra was neat. It is the step pyramid that is the first and oldest pyramid in the world. It was the main cemetery for Egypt’s ancient capital Memphis. It contains tombs of at least 14 1st dynasty pharaohs. Cool. When we got there a sandstorm was starting up. It was cool and very unlike what I thought a typical sandstorm would be like. It wasn’t especially windy with sand flying hard and fast everywhere. It was very quiet, almost like when it’s snowing. The sand particles were just gently drifting around in the air, slowly, but our guide, Habibi, said that in one hour you would be up to your neck in sand. Just while we were standing outside talking for a few minutes a pretty thick layer of sand came over all of us. Scary to get lost in, but cool to experience once. After Saqqara we headed to Memphis.
Memphis was the ancient capital of Egypt. There isn’t much there now, a lot of it is still being excavated. But we saw some cool statues of Ramses II (now he was one ambitious fellow) and a smaller sphinx. It was pretty cool.
After Memphis we went to the Papyrus factory. Although factory probably isn’t a correct title for this place. You see, in Cairo there are about 6,329,578,985….etc, etc places that call themselves “The First Papyrus Factory” or “The Original Papyrus Museum.” There are seriously ten on every block…it’s a little out of control. But anyway, we went to the one that our tour guide had a contract with of course and they showed us the process of making papyrus. It was actually really neat. It sure is a labor-intensive process. Anyway, a bunch of people bought papyrus with really cool Egyptian art. I really wanted to get this one of these geese…it’s a copy of the first and oldest painting in the world with color. It was a representation of the uniting of upper and lower Egypt and it was really, really pretty. I actually kind of regret not getting it. But I did get a beautiful Tree of Life Papyrus. It’s really nice. I’ve decided that Papyrus is really nice. I like it. The place we went to was the only papyrus place that sold the Abraham facsimiles. Lots of kids got those.
We headed for lunch at the Saqqara Restaurant. It was this fun outdoor tent-type thing with men playing instruments and women making hot, fresh, flatbread that was delicious. They served us rice and kabob. Mmmm. Way good.
Our last stop of the day was to this silver jewelry bazaar that was really expensive and pretty mac. But lots of the kids went nuts and bought all this expensive, mac Egyptian jewelry. Whatever. All I could think about was a snickers bar. I can’t remember if I told you already, but Egypt had a very strange effect on me. I started craving chocolate…ALL THE TIME!!!! I don’t know what happened, but as soon as I got there, all I could think about was chocolate. So I kinda sorta got into the habit of eating a lot of snickers bars. Yeah. Bad Heather. It continued after we got back and I just barely broke the addiction...I finally finished off the box that I bought and kept under my bed here in the Center. Yes, yes, I know. Pathetic isn’t it? But man, the withdrawals were awful. Now I know what a smoker must go through. I could only think about snickers all the time and I almost believed that my body was in pain from not eating them. Oh boy.
Okay, after that side tangent, we headed to the airport after the bazaar for our flight to Luxor. Our flight was almost two hours late, but it was only a 50 minute flight, so it wasn’t too bad. We got in to our hotel at about 10:30 and they had dinner waiting for us. Sweet. More food. Just what I needed. Haha. Anyhow, we stayed at the Mercure-Etap Hotel in Luxor, literally across the street from the Nile. Every room had a balcony that overlooked the Nile. It was beautiful.
The next day, after breakfast, we took carriages to Karnak Temple. Yes, carriages. It was so rad! Four people per carriage…our driver told me to come sit up by him, so I did. He just smiled at me the whole time and we tried to communicate in broken English. You know, that makes me think of something that I noticed in Egypt that really made me laugh so hard. Most of the people there speak very broken English, but enough to get by. I don’t know why, but because these merchants speak broken English, all the guys in our group felt that they would be better understood if they too used broken English, along with a Middle Eastern accent and huge hand movements. They looked and sounded so ridiculous. Most of them didn’t even realize they were speaking with an accent or hand movements or in completely fragmented English. It was so funny! I bet the merchants could speak better, but that they just wanted to see the Americans make fools of themselves. Haha. It made me snicker. Mmmm…snickers. No! Bad Heather.
Anyway, we got to Karnak and we had to wait outside for a bit while our group congregated and our guide, Habibi, gave us some background. Oh my gosh, guys. I had no idea. I had never heard of Karnak before…I don’t know how I hadn’t because it was one of the coolest places I have ever been in my life. I stood there in the hypostyle hall just silently weeping. I was so overcome with awe that I seriously could not keep myself from crying. I’ve never had that experience before. It was completely non-spiritual (I think)…it really was just being completely overwhelmed. It was incredible. You guys can’t imagine this place. You simply cannot imagine the size, the grandeur, the hieroglyphics, the colors, the complexity of architecture…everything! Construction of Karnak began during the Middle Kingdom between 2040-1700 BC. I can’t remember exactly, but I think it took around 400 years to build and it never was completely finished. It’s construction went through many pharaohs, all who kept building and contributing. Oh man, it was absolutely stunning. Just breath-taking. Unbelievable.
Alright, so after Karnak we got back in our carriages and went to Luxor temple…it was about a 7 minute carriage ride…they’re very close. Luxor was incredible, too. However I wish we had been able to do them on different days because I was already tired and overwhelmed from Karnak and so I probably didn’t get as much out of Luxor as I could have. But it was still really, really cool. It was mainly built by Amenophis III and Ramses II. I just can’t believe I was there. There was a really cool statue of King Tut and his wife in there, along with some cool carvings showing some of the cool traditions of ancient Egypt.
We went back to the hotel for lunch after Luxor and then we were supposed to take an afternoon felucca ride on the Nile, but it was so windy that they canceled the Feluccas and had us go in motorboats instead. It was still really fun. That’s when I took that picture of me touching the Nile. We watched the sun go down on the Nile and just had a ball being crazy college kids. After the boat ride I went with some people to an outdoor bazaar and we looked around. My excellent bargaining skills made themselves evident there. A girl I was with haggled with this man forever to get a scarf for 5 dollars. I wanted one, but I didn’t want to pay 5 dollars for it. I haggled with him forever and he would not go below 4…I wanted to pay 3. So I walked away a couple times and then he would call me back and we’d haggle some more. Finally I really was walking away and got pretty far when I heard him yell, “Okay! Okay! Come back!” When I got there he said he’d sell it to me for 3, but that if my friend who got it for 5 asked me how much I paid for it, I would tell her I paid 5 too! Haha. Funny. But I got a really cute scarf for 3 bucks baby! I definitely have Grandma Jacobs’ genes, although I bet she would have gotten it for 1 dollar. J
After dinner a group of us went over to Brother Draper’s apartment again to learn about the 3rd facsimile in Abraham. It was really neat to learn about it. I wrote down a lot of notes about it in my triple so I’ll have to tell ya’ll what I know when I get back. Cool stuff.
Okay, I am officially half-way through Egypt. I have four more days to go, but this is a good start. Once again, I’m sorry it’s so long. This is acting as my journal so I’m being as thorough as possible. Feel free to skim! Thanks again for caring enough to read about my adventures and put up with my horrible English. Like I said, it’s much more fun to have an audience to write to…it keeps me motivated. Hope everything’s well with all of you! Love ya’ll…