Travellers in an Antique Land

We have just come back from Egypt where we have been doing the photoshoot for the Summer 2010 Catalogue which will be out by the end of March. It was a great location for a shoot, but what an amazing place Egypt is. I guess I was a bit "whatever" about the Pyramids, the Pharoahs, the tombs and the temples, and I was not until I really read about them that I learnt just how truly unique and extraordinary they are.

I read the Traveller's History of Egypt, one of an excellent series, and used the DK Eyewitness Guide to Egypt and Michael Haag's more literary and opinionated Cadogan Guide. I recommend them all.

Thinking of the Pyramids for example, they were built 4,500 years ago. In other words Jesus Christ comes into the second half of their existence. There were once over 90 pyramids but it is the three large ones at Giza, now a suburb of Cairo, that we call the Pyramids today. We know a lot about who built them because of the hieroglyph language. They are the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the (Ancient) World and the only ones to survive. They were the tallest buildings in the world until the Eiffel Tower, and the Great Pyramid of Cheops contains 2.5 million blocks of stone with an average weight of 2.5 tons. They were built by farmers during the four months each year when the Nile was flooded and they could not work the land, supervised by skilled craftsmen. They were not slaves, and they believed in what they were doing. The Great Pyramid was built over 20 years from the time Cheops came to the throne to be his tomb. To build the Pyramid in that time meant a 2.5 ton stone was laid every 30 seconds during the four months of the 20 years. There is more stone in the Pyramids of Giza than in all the churches in Britain put together. (I don't know who worked that out, but it is approximately true). Originally smooth sided, the facing stones have been stolen and only the stepped interior stones remain.

150 tickets are sold morning and afternoon to go into the centre of the Great Pyramid, and it is a journey worth making up a steep passageway to the central granite chamber which uses huge stones brought 600 miles down river from Aswan and perfectly fitted together. No one really knows how the stone was quarried and perfectly cut before the knowledge of metal cutting tools, and also of the wheel. But the Pyramids exist and nothing like them could possibly be built today. Truly Wonders of the World.