billkilpatrick - 2-18-2007 at 12:41 PM
well ... MY! ... trip to cairo turned out to be a bit of a disaster. we arrived late saturday evening and by wednesday morning i was down - in every
sense of the word - with a rocking pneumonia and a boogie-woogie flu. never got to muhammad ali street but i suspect that had i done so - with nose
dripping, eyes weeping and successive fits of sneezing - maurice shehata or murad al-turki (the man i really wanted to see ... simply to shake his
hand) would have been less than willing to hand me one of their beautiful ouds to slobber over.
nothing prepared me for the great pyramid at giza.
Mike - 2-19-2007 at 07:13 AM
welcome home Bill. sorry to hear that you got sick during your trip. what else did you do other than the Pyramids? share some pictures mate.
best,
mike
billkilpatrick - 2-19-2007 at 07:58 AM
only there for 7 days - landed in cairo, went "up" to luxor, on to aswan ... flew to abu simbel ... the usual, quickie, package tour of the nile.
we're definitely going back, mike - we were simply blown away.
here's a photo of horus with a soon-to-be-sneezin' morsel he plucked off the deck of a passing steamer:
(sorry, photo must be too big to post ... i'll try again later)
jdowning - 2-21-2007 at 03:25 PM
Too bad but, of course, you need more than a week to absorb everything that Cairo alone has to offer.
As a retired engineer, I have always been fascinated by the pyramids. Did you have the energy to climb inside the Cheops pyramid and witness the
massive 120 ton blocks of stone forming the ascending corridor leading to the 'Kings Chamber' - constructed so perfectly that a knife blade cannot be
inserted between the joints. Quite astonishing - as is the rest of the structure - that can only be fully appreciated at first hand.
For those interested, a fascinating book about the Great Pyramid of Cheops is "Secrets of the Great Pyramid" by Peter Tompkins.
palestine48 - 2-21-2007 at 09:47 PM
I remember going inside a pyramid at Giza, I am not sure if its the you were referring too. It was a realy interesting experience but I wish I would
do it again.
jdowning - 2-22-2007 at 07:17 AM
yes - it was the Great pyramid at Giza - that was the only pyramid open to the public then (1964) as I recall.
Tompkins in his book gives the history of past investigations concerning this pyramid and concludes that the Great pyramid was not built as a burial
place for a king but was an astronomical observatory as well as a 'standards laboratory'. The foundations of this massive structure are so precisely
aligned astronomically that it is only during the late 20th C that surveying instruments of sufficient precision have been available to verify this -
Tompkins claims - but you will need to read the book to discover all of the fascinating details.