Oldest cut stone structure in world....

 

The Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, the necropolis of the ancient city of Memphis.  Built around 2650 BC, it is about a hundred years older than the Giza pyramids and much smaller---about 60 meters high compared to about 140 meters for the largest pyramid at Giza.  However, King Djoser got the pyramid fad underway!  Called a step pyramid (for obvious reasons), it was originally clad with polished white limestone, very little of which appears to remain.  Pyramids were built to facilitate the king's ascension to the afterlife (although variants on the theories, sub-theories, hypotheses, conjectures, etc. abound).

 The temple complex entrance colonnade, designed to look like bundled reeds.

Back in the land of pricetags and bacon

Dear Readers, No, I am not in prison for blogging about the lack of personal and political freedoms in Egypt, especially if you are a woman!  WMFC has been quiet lately as there was just not enough bandwidth to upload pictures.  Internet access was predictably difficult but my vodaphone dongle worked great for email and checking headlines.  I greatly appreciate your emails and comments----hope you like the upcoming pictures of old and new, arts and crafts.  Egypt was an incredible place, but it demands a lot from you, physically and mentally, in return.

The pyramid of Khafre, second largest of three large pyramids at Giza.  It is the only one with some of the original limestone casing remaining on its uppermost reaches.

love this guy's hat/headdress....

One of the ubiquitous Tourist Police.  They are everywhere, along with many other kinds of uniformed police and military, all carrying weapons of all sizes.  You don't go anywhere, including in and out of hotels, without going through metal detectors with bags x-rayed.  Most behave professionally, especially the tourist police, while others make leering faces (sexual harassment is rampant in Egypt), and some shake you or your cab driver down for "baksheesh", the universal bribing that seems to make the country's economy function.  This quote describes the baksheesh experience just about perfectly: "lavish remuneration and bribes, rudely demanded but ever so graciously accepted by the natives in return for little or no services rendered."  It's exhausting.

For scale, and also gives good indication of air quality.  The smog (dust and pollution) in Cairo is some of the worst in the world.

Evening light, Istanbul

Aya Sofia

and the nearby Blue Mosque....

Istanbul Art gallery, Saturday

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't thinking about recent incident below!

 

cool cats hanging at the hookah bar.....

Bibliotheca Alexandrina

 she took off her gloves to turn the pages

The Mission:  The Library of Alexandria seeks to recapture the spirit of the original ancient Library of Alexandria. It aspires to be:

• The world’s window on Egypt.
• Egypt’s window on the world.
• A leading institution of the digital age.
• A center for learning, tolerance, dialogue and understanding.

 ______________________

Yesterday we were honored with a private tour of the new Library of Alexandria.  In addition to being a fully digital, state-of-the-art library, filled with users (including tons of women albeit still in the ubiquitous veil), the library also hosts numerous museum exhibits spanning all of Egypt's history.  The Anwar Sadat Museum was one of the most moving exhibits in the building.  The director is an amazing Harvard-educated scholar named Ismail Serageldin, sometimes called "the most intelligent man in Egypt".   On his personal web site is the lovely credo he lives by:

- The world is my home
- Humanity is my family
- Non-violence is my creed
- Peace, justice, equality, and dignity for all is my purpose
- Engagement, rationality, tolerance, dialog, learning, and understanding are my means.



(the outside pics above were taken from wikipedia).

Later on the Corniche......

Straddlers and laners coexisting peacefully, working together to transform a three lane highway into a five lane highway.  Wish you could hear the relentless symphony of horns that sometimes spontaneously breaks into harmony.

The Desert Highway, Cairo to Alexandria

I have got to skip ahead and leave posts on Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, carpet/suzani buying and the like for a later date.  Patty (my sister-in-law) and I are now in Egypt.  Yesterday we flew from Istanbul to Cairo where we were met by a hired driver for a transfer to Alexandria (we could have flown but the connections were inconvenient and this three, but closer to five, hour drive seemed like a good way to be introduced to Egypt).

And it was!  I can now report that the entire nation between Cairo to Alexandria appears to be under construction---literally thousands of buildings going up everywhere and new highway spurs breaking off in every direction.  Cairo, with a population of around seventeen million, is one of the fastest growing, and most densely populated cities in the world. 

Based on five hours on the highways, encompassing both inner and outer suburbs of two cities and long desert/agricultural stretches in between, I can also report that two schools of philosophy exist about highway driving in Egypt---there are the “straddlers” and there are the “laners”.  Straddlers generally straddle the painted lane markers, keeping a set of tires in each lane.  This has the advantage of increasing the car’s "personal space" as well as turning a two lane highway into a three lane highway when a group of straddlers are together (cars/trucks centered over center and side lines).  Laners obviously are more conventional, staying within marked lanes.  Problems are greatest when a group of laners meet straddlers and much honking ensues at high speeds as the laners squeeze the straddler first to one side then to the other.  Our driver was a straddler (generally about 1/3^rd of drivers by my reckoning) and he was hampered, as an official tourist vehicle, by a government-mandated governor on his speedometer that prevented him from traveling faster than 100 km/hr (a state-sponsored program aimed at minimizing the number of tourists who die in car accidents).

 yes! a cow tied in the back of a small pick-up who looked desperately like he didn't want to be there.

Finally, I only wish I could have taken better pictures out the van window of all the craziness on the highway, a road shared by trucks, cars, donkey carts, hitchhikers, buses packed with passengers, scooters, bicycles, and, incredibly, pedestrians who thought nothing of crossing an 8 lane highway packed with vehicles at speeds easily exceeding 60 mph (they used a variant of Italian street crossing technique without the stare-down!).  

The Monastic Churches of Göreme

Cappadocia became a monastic center of Christianity between 300—1200 AD when numerous churches were carved into the soft volcanic rock of the region.  Just a kilometer outside of the town of Göreme is the Göreme Open Air Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is the most visited of these monastic communities.  Within this small area more than 30 churches and chapels can be found hidden within the rock spires.  Many are simply painted but others are richly decorated with vividly colored frescoes which date to the 9th to 11th centuries.  If you look carefully at the frescoes you notice that many have the faces scratched out, especially those at ground level.  This was done by later Muslims as the Koran forbids human images of holy people.  A pretty spectacular place.

A collapsed section of a church.....the next few photos are from the deeper recesses of this church.

a nice banquet table....

Goreme and the Kismet Cave House Hotel

Goreme caravanserai filled with carpets

 The Kismet Cave House Hotel

 The breakfast terrace at Kismet Cave Hotel

a door that used to be green.

(Are you lusting after carpets yet?)