The Pyramids
Why do people come from all over the world to see a really old, really big pile of stones?
The key word here is really old. It is so old that to the thousands of folks crowding the brand spanking new Colosseum in Rome to enjoy an execution or two, The Pyramids were as old as the Colosseum is to us today.
Coming to Egypt, when all the travel warnings say not to, meant that we had most of the sites pretty much to ourselves and for the only surviving site from the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, this is a very welcomed reality and a definite luxury these days.
The Pyramids are big. I loved watching them peak on top of the half-built dwellings of Giza. They stood with dignity resisting the sprawl of the city – magnificent and calm – while we were buzzing around in the car, trying to catch more glimpses of them. Within a few meters we left the hustle of the garbage filled streets and honking cars behind and entered…history.
Chock a block full of just about everything a man could need, from the teeny-tiny precious stones and materials, to a full sized boat, burred in a pit right next to them, those structures may look amazing now, but imagining them in their hey-day, covered in limestone sharp and smooth, makes the picture even harder to take in. This is the kind of stuff people were busy doing more than four thousand years ago. And today it is hard to finish all those couple of story buildings crowding around Giza. No limestone necessary, just smooth them out, slap a lick of paint and voila! But not. Even after being battered by the desert for all those years, the pyramids still look better than most of what surrounds them.
