Cario, Egypt

The pyramids were big. That’s a bunch of rock those Egyptians brought up into the Giza plateau. Those monuments survived empires, sandstorms, being scavenged for building materials and flocks and flocks of tourists. I remember as a kid I would look at diagrams explaining the architecture, positioning and theories of why these things were created. They were one of my main reasons for being here. Truthfully, they live up to the hype.

What the glossy magazine articles don’t mention is that the last of the seven wonders is smack dab in the middle of a noisy suburb. Or that the immense area of the structure is patrolled by camel jockeys and kids hawking cheap papyrus imitations and wooden figurines of dead Egyptian royalty. If the heat and sand didn’t make me exhausted, it was trying to come up with new witty ways to say no, I don’t want what ever you are selling and will you give up trying to start a conversation with me? The longer you get tourists to talk the more likely they will buy something they don’t need. A war of attrition this was.

On the other side of the pyramids is sand. If one can ignore the dude trying to get you to climb one of the smaller pyramids for 20 Egyptian pounds, all one can hear is the silence of the wind. Egypt is mostly desert and if you look off into the distance you can see Libya a mere 2000 kilometers away. Or maybe just sand, I am not sure. The inside of the Pyramids have been gutted of artifacts of interest, but you can still fork over a wad of cash to climb through into an empty room. I have heard it was over rated, but I did anyways since I wanted to look at the architecture a bit closer. Big rocks make the pyramids. And sloped sides make them less dehumanizing. That’s what I learned.

Seriously, the engineering, ingenuity and management skills required to get these things made is impressive. And they would still be all bling bling if the limestone casings weren’t chipped off. Walking through the graves of the once richest men on Earth, I couldn’t help think how silly the whole endeavor was. Or not… as far as human creation is concerned these geometric structures are as permanent as we can get.