High Ho Silver Away: Saqqara, Giza, and the Best Pizza Hut View on Earth
Egypt • Saqqara & Cairo • March 2006
We woke up the morning of our Saqqara trip to an overcast sky. In Egypt, overcast doesn't mean rain. Overcast means sandstorm. Perfect timing for our guide Tarek, who works at an outdoor archaeological site full of ancient rock and sand and also happens to be an Egyptian man who is allergic to dust. I cannot adequately explain how funny I found this. How many Eskimos are allergic to snow? We liked Tarek a lot and felt genuinely bad about how his day went with wind gusts up to 30 miles per hour.
Tarek also had a verbal tic. He loved the word "OK." Here is a sample Tarek sentence: "OK, so we are going to Saqqara, OK? It was built by Djoser, OK? And it is very old, OK? We will see the hieroglyphics, OK?" I lost count somewhere around a million. He was wonderful though, and his context made everything we'd see in Luxor later that week feel so much richer.
Saqqara is home to the Step Pyramid, the very first pyramid ever built. 3,500 years ago. Most of the others there are just rubble now because it took them a few tries to perfect the process, which honestly makes me feel a lot better about my own learning curves. The real highlight is descending into the burial chambers through a long, narrow shaft approximately four feet by four feet. You duck-walk down and then you arrive and there they are: hieroglyphics carved into the walls. Stars covering the ceiling, perfect as the day they were made. 2,321 BC. Still surviving.
The mustabas, pre-pyramid tombs with multiple rooms above ground, completely stopped me in my tracks. I never imagine hieroglyphics being as detailed as they actually are. Bas-relief carved out of the stone, hunting and fishing and daily life scenes, color still intact on many of them after all this time. Some things deserve to survive.
On the drive out through nearby villages we saw things that only exist in pictures for most Americans: a man leading two camels loaded with palm tree leaves, villagers on donkeys with baskets of vegetables, mud brick homes with grass roofs and no water, no electricity. You realize very quickly how small a corner of the world you've been living in.
And then. THE PYRAMIDS.
Everybody says they're smaller than you expect. We thought they were bigger. Way bigger. And as we came around the corner in the taxi and caught that first glimpse, I don't think either of us said anything for a full minute. You've waited your whole life to see them with your own eyes and there they are, just sitting there like it's no big deal, and it is absolutely a very big deal.
What I wasn't prepared for was the neighborhood directly next door. In America, if something like the Great Pyramids existed it would be surrounded by a Ritz-Carlton and valet parking. Here? Dilapidated buildings literally next door. A Pizza Hut approximately 200 yards from the Sphinx with what are, I will admit, excellent views. A tour bus parking lot plunked down directly between the pyramids, which I found genuinely upsetting. Also worth noting: there are actually nine pyramids, not three. Six are tombs for the queens and get no mention in any photo. The queens get no respect.
The Egyptian teenagers at the pyramids were enthusiastic to say the least. They came running from every direction wanting photos, mostly with me, which poor Matt found somewhat deflating. These kids had barely-working cameras and they were so earnest about it, pushing each other out of the way, trying to hold my hand, looping arms. Then one boy gave me a set of small wooden pyramids, a souvenir he'd clearly bought for himself, and we tried every way we could think of to refuse it or pay him for it and he simply wouldn't hear it. He just wanted to give it to me. Nothing to his name and still giving…
The camel jockeys deserve their own paragraph. They are an art form. The opening line is always: "Hello my friend, where are you from?" You say America. "America is number one! High Ho Silver Away!" Then: "Meet my camel Charlie Brown. He is my Egyptian Cadillac. Special price for you. Don't break my heart!" I'm laughing writing this. They can be persistent, but they're also hilarious. We watched some Americans getting absolutely swindled by a vendor who kept saying "not enough" even after he'd been paid way too much for a couple of sheik hats. They looked at us helplessly. Matt stepped in with his best stern bartering voice (it really is a specific voice, all confidence and calm firmness) and the vendor walked away immediately. It's about confidence as much as anything else.
The Sphinx is smaller than you expect but has this quality about it that's hard to describe. Standing next to it with the pyramids behind you, you feel something. Like a low hum.
We had tickets to the sound and light show that evening. We didn't end up using them. Matt made friends with the guys inside that Pizza Hut, yes, the one 200 yards from the Sphinx, who let us onto their fourth-floor rooftop terrace to watch the sunset. Matt scalped our show tickets right on the street outside, which I'm not certain was entirely legal but there were no Egyptian jails involved so we consider it a success. Sitting up there as the sun went down and the call to prayer played out over the city, that classic haunting sound of the Middle East echoing over these ancient stones while the pyramids turned gold and then orange and then dark... that was the highlight of the trip. Not any monument or museum. Just that moment. Just us and those pyramids and the sky.
We came back the next morning for one more pass and a camel ride out in the desert. The pyramids in the distance, the silence of the sand. Honestly, what else could you ask for?
