Are You Ready to go to Egypt?

This trip was taken from April 21st to May 6th, 2007. This was an OAT (Overseas Adventure Travel) trip. My wife, Vicky, and I went with our friends Ron and Patty on this trip. Everything else below dates back to right after the trip, in May 2007.

Vicky and I recently got back from three weeks in Egypt and Jordan.  It was all about the Antiquities – and Egypt has them.  It was a very hard trip as far as I was concerned.  We had 8 straight days with the temperatures over 100 degrees and as high as 114 in the shade.  The days that weren’t over 100 were mostly in the high 90s.  We were guarded by personal guards carrying AK-47s or Glock 9MM pistols, so they assured us that we were very safe.  We also received many police escorts as we toured – just like royalty.  It was also very windy and dusty on this trip, so some pictures are a bit on the hazy side.  Many of the Egyptians were constantly there with a hand out – for a bribe, a tip, or any other thing they could think of.  But we persevered, had a great time of it, and made it back home safely.

I’ve included some pictures to pique your interest.  The first is of the major pyramids at Giza.  The second is the start of a camel ride from the Nile to the St Simeon monastery. The third photo is the main temple at Abu Simbel. In the last photo, we have climbed the Red Pyramid at Dahshur and are about to enter the pyramid and crawl to the burial chamber. 

Mena House Hotel

We arrived in Cairo, but we stayed across the River Nile on the west bank which is Giza.  We stayed at the Mena House Hotel.  It used to be a hunting lodge for the king of Egypt.  It didn’t get much use, so it was sold and converted into a hotel in 1869.    It was also the place of negotiations and signing of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt in 1979.  It was also in the Movie “Death on the Nile” which was an Agatha Christie story.

Mena House has had a plethora of famous people stay here.  That includes movie stars, kings, heads of state and so on.  Some of the names include Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, William R. Hearst, Chiang Kai Chek, and of course former Presidents such as Roosevelt, Nixon, and Carter.  Now, of course, they can add the Bosworth name (did I mention that I was President of the Sewer Board last year?)

The hotel had plenty of amenities (including a golf course), but all I needed was to be able to see the pyramids.  It was a five minute walk up the plateau to reach the Great Pyramid.  What a start to our trip.

These pictures are just some taken from our hotel – nice. I couldn’t get enough of the pyramids.

Tomb of Mereruka

This was our first stop on our first day of touring.  It was not very important, but it held some significance and insight for the trip ahead and for Egypt as a whole.  Our tour guide told us that we were not allowed to take pictures inside the Tomb of Mereruka.  I thought that I understood, so I left my camera on our bus.  Our guide stopped me as I was getting off the bus and said “Where’s your camera – go get it, you must bring your camera with you!”

I was confused, being the hick that I am.  What I learned is that if you don’t have your camera with you, then the tomb guards can’t solicit a bribe from you to take a picture which is evidently how they earn their living.  I figured that I wasn’t using a flash anyway so I shouldn’t impair the reliefs, so I paid a few bribes and took a few pictures.

The first two photos are entering the Tomb of Mereruka and the area behind this tomb, where you can see that there are other tombs, though none that were too exciting.

My photos inside the tomb were not very good photos. It was dimly lit (from skylights) and a not-so-great tomb, but by golly, these are the first bribes that I’ve ever paid in my life and I want to get something out of them, so I hope that you people appreciate them.  The inside of the tombs were usually limestone walls which were covered with plaster and then painted.  Mereruka was from the Old Kingdom and the 6th Dynasty which went from 2345 – 2181 B.C.  This tomb is thought to date to about 2240 B.C.  It’s a large tomb with some 32-33 rooms.  It’s inside a mustaba (mud-brick building) which was the forerunner to the pyramid.  This tomb was first accessed in about 1892. 

If you look at the reliefs for a while, you can see people, fish, boats, etc.  The walls here were covered with reliefs, but they had large segments missing and these wall reliefs turned out to be not that good compared to many others that we saw during our trip.  You can see Mereruka himself depicted in the last photo.

Titi Pyramid

This was the Titi Pyramid and the first pyramid that we crawled inside.  Titi was the first Pharaoh of the 6th dynasty which was from 2345 – 2323 B.C. His name is pronounced “Tee Tee”.  That was explained to me with a certain amount of vigor.

The Titi Pyramid is not in great shape, but then again, it is very old.  It was actually 172 feet tall when constructed.  It was first entered in 1881.  We did a squat crawl down the passageway into the rooms.  The walls were covered with pyramid texts and there was a sarcophagus (casket) there with inscriptions on it.  Other than being in a very old pyramid, it was not too exciting.  And they really didn’t let us take pictures inside the pyramids.

The next picture is the Titi Pyramid itself.  The entrance was right behind the two fellows standing at the bottom.  It was a small tunnel downward to enter.

The last picture is just one looking south from this area to where we could see some other pyramids in the haze. I was sure that the pyramids were going to keep getting better.

Zoser's Funerary Complex

A pyramid is really more like a headstone over a tomb.  Also, a pyramid is not the whole burial deal, it’s just part of the deal.  Our next visit was to Zoser’s Funerary Complex.  The funerary complex usually included a temple dedicated to the north of Egypt and a temple dedicated to the south of Egypt plus the funerary temple plus many tombs and so on until it was a whole complex (more like a whole cemetery) with an entry way and a wall around it.  The reason for the two Egypt temples was that north and south had traditionally been separate kingdoms and the pharaohs who joined them together wanted to keep them together by paying homage to both parts (north and south) of Egypt. That sounds like a smart politician.

Zoser’s (actually Djoser - and didn’t the Ghostbusters steal that name) funerary complex had a wall a mile long around it.  The complex was about 37 acres in size.  Most of the complex has deteriorated over the years.  They hope to preserve what’s left and dig a lot more out.  I took some pictures of the complex but it wasn’t that exciting.

The first picture is the entrance way to Zoser’s complex.  It’s made of white limestone that’s no doubt not as white as it used to be.

The next photo is just one of the many tombs within Zoser’s complex.

The third photo is the only section left of the original wall according to our guide (though it looks cleaned up and partially replaced to me).  This was probably a tomb for a minor family member or administrative person of the pharaoh. 

The next photo was just walking through one of the temples in the complex.

The last photo is to the south where you can see they are doing a lot more work.  There is also another pyramid out there. Most of the early pyramids were not very well developed.

Step Pyramid

This may not look like much, as pyramids go, but this is a major structure in the history of Egypt, if not the world.  This is the Step Pyramid of Zoser at Saqqara.  It is inside the walls from the last post.  It was the world’s first pyramid, but it was a lot more than that (or so they told us).  It was built about 2630 B.C. in the Egyptians 3rd Dynasty.

It was built by a guy named Imhotep, who was Zoser’s architect.  Imhotep was also a physician, astronomer, high priest, sage, and founder of a cult of healing.  He was deified by the Egyptians some 1400 years after his death.

Prior to his building this pyramid, ‘mustabas’ were built for tombs.  A mustaba was a squarish, mud-brick, adobe type structures that, as such, most have not survived until today.  The Step Pyramid constitutes a milestone in the evolution of monumental stone architecture.  It was the first time anything like it was built.  It is speculated that they originally did just build a large mustaba, but then decided to put another one on top of it (for some reason), and then just kept going from there (6 in total).  Also, they used limestone on a large scale for the first time.  The Step Pyramid was 204 feet tall and the largest building of its time.  It was originally covered with white limestone, but that was all removed long ago, probably by subsequent pharaohs to build their own structures.

The first picture is from another structure within Zoser’s complex.  I couldn’t resist a picture with a row of cobras in it.  Cobras were big in ancient Egypt.  They were carved on many tomb walls and other places, such as you see here.

From here, I will just keep moving closer to the step pyramid to give a better look at it. 

Pyramid is only a headstone

We are still at Saqqara and Zoser’s funerary complex.  These pictures aren’t much to see, but they are all I have to tell you this story.

As I think I said, a pyramid is like a tombstone, the tomb is underneath, along with all the items the pharaoh was taking with him to the next life. 

Underneath this complex, there are three and one-half miles of shafts, tunnels, chambers, galleries, and magazines.  There is a central corridor and two parallel corridors that are about 1200 feet long and connecting 400 rooms.

They will still be excavating places like this in Egypt long after our grandkids are dead and buried.

These pictures are simply photos of excavations or tunnels down to excavations.  I got as close as I could get to take these photos without falling in.  My guess is that it was over 100 feet down to the bottom of these below ground access points.  These photos are all taken looking down below the ground from ground level.

Security

Maybe the second thing we were told when we got to Egypt was that we were completely safe in Egypt.  We didn’t need to worry about our personal safety or any other security issues.  We were quite simply - very safe.

When we got on our travel bus the first day, we were sitting in the front passenger row.  A guy we didn’t know got into the ‘shotgun’ seat across from the bus driver.  As he sat down, I couldn’t help but notice an AK-47 with a banana clip tucked into his back side.  He was introduced as our security guy.  He never said anything, but he followed our group everywhere we went – except inside our hotels.   Vicky got a picture of him at one of our stops.  He’s the guy in the center of the picture and the left one of the two security guys in suits. Our personal security guards always wore suits.

At every ‘antiquities’ stop that we made, there were members of the Egyptian Tourist and Antiquities Police.  Sometimes there were a few, some times, there were dozens of them.   You can see two of those gentlemen in the next two photos.

In addition to those guys, there were others who we weren’t quite sure who they were or who they worked for.  We had security guys on our boat with us (at least 3 armed men), and many other places.  In the last picture (which isn’t very good, taken before sunrise in the morning), this guy was hanging out behind a sheet at breakfast at a farm on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor.

Sometimes we had police cars escort us with a police car in front and a police car behind or just a police car behind.  We never knew exactly why or why sometimes and not others, but they were frequently present.

I would say that I mostly just tried to pay attention to my surroundings.  In doing that, I would say that I always felt safe.  I never at any time felt like I was in any danger.  Then again, we were not out on our own very frequently.  The guards somewhat made me feel a bit more self-conscious or a bit more of a target than when they weren’t with us, but at any rate, we had no security issues on our trip.

Saqqara Agriculture

Saqqara is where Zoser’s and the Step Pyramid are located. It is in the middle of quite a long stretch of agricultural land.  As those of you who know me, I am always interested in what people are growing – especially when I’m doing plenty of eating.

I will tell you that I thought that the crops in Egypt looked very good.  Stands of wheat, barley, alfalfa and so on looked as good as maybe any that I have seen.  The fields were not huge (American size), but the crops looked very consistent in size and color with no weeds or bald spots in most of the fields.  The Egyptian farmers seem very experienced – like perhaps thousands of years worth.

In the first photo, you can see alfalfa in front, then wheat, and more inter-cropping of alfalfa and wheat.  There’s a small patch of corn on the left about center of the picture.  In the back, you can see date palms which were plentiful in Egypt.

In the second photo, alfalfa is again in front.  If you look close, you can see that some has been harvested, but not like we do it.  They only cut enough each day for their animals to eat that day.  So the alfalfa always has patches that have been cut with other sections that are very tall.  You can also see more wheat in the background.  There are also some vegetables growing in this picture.  On the left, I think is a small bit of sugar cane.  And of course, there are more date palms growing here as well.

Much of the farming is being done very low tech.  We saw most people cutting the alfalfa by hand.  In the next photos, I will take a look at agricultural transportation. You can see how much of the crops, or in the next photo - manure, is transported to market or between farms or whatever.  They use a lot of mule power in Egypt.

The same appears to be true on the part of the retail business in Saqqara. 

Even automobiles and trucks seemed to be getting pushed to the limit in the Saqqara area. There are three cows in the back of this small truck.

Great Pyramid (Khufu)

The Great Pyramid is the greatest wonder of the world. It is the only remaining ancient wonder of the world. It is called the Pyramid of Khufu (or Cheops). It was built by King Khufu. It was completed around 2560 BC. It was 481 feet tall or about 45 stories and was the tallest man made structure in the world for over 3,800 years. Its base covers 13.6 acres. The sides are 756 feet long. It was built using 2.3 to 3 million limestone blocks, weighing between 2 and 80 tons each. The whole pyramid includes some six million tons of rock.

Below is a series of photographs as I approached the Great Pyramid.

How Big are Stones?

Now go back and look at my last posting – the progressively closer pictures of the Great Pyramid.

Do you really believe that the smallest stones weigh about two tons each?  That’s what we were told. As I stood there taking the last and closest photograph in the prior post, I was thinking to myself “No way”.  I was only maybe 20 feet or so away from the pyramid and the stones still didn’t look that big.  So I told Vicky to go up and stand right next to the Great Pyramid and one of the stones.  See that photo below. Then I did it myself.

But that still doesn’t really tell you the whole story.  They had some stones that had fallen away or were from other parts of the area.  I took a photo of just such a stone and you can see it in the next two photographs. The end of the stone below is the part that you see behind Vicky. The long length is the part that extends into the pyramid, so that you can’t see its length.

I took another picture of this same stone in the last photo.  These stones are all about ten to twelve feet long.  So when you see the stones on the Great Pyramid and on the other pyramids, you are usually just seeing one of the ends in most cases.  You can’t really tell that the stones are that long. It’s very hard to see the end of a stone and to realize that it extends into the pyramid that far and that it really is at least two tons.

Crawling inside the Great Pyramid

On our last day in Cairo (or the Giza Plateau to be more exact), we had a free day to do whatever we wanted to do.  Five of our group, including Vicky and I, decided that we wanted to go back to the Great Pyramid and crawl inside it.  Now that was difficult.  I have been quite claustrophobic now for several years.  Knowing that I was going inside the pyramid the next morning gave me plenty of anxiety attacks that night.  I also knew that the passageway was only about 42 inches square and solid rock.  I also knew that we had to go in something like 350 feet.  They told us not to go into the Great Pyramid if we were even just a little tiny bit claustrophobic.  But as my wife Vicky said, “I’d like to see them try and keep Bill out of there.”

We hustled up the hill from our hotel, bought our tickets, and hustled over to the opening to the Great Pyramid.  I was the first person to go inside that day, and Vicky was right behind me.  We did sort of a squat step crawl into the passageway.  It’s a long ways in and the small passageway is on something like a 25 degree angle.  First we were crawling downwards and then later we were crawling upwards. We couldn’t take any pictures inside the Pyramid.  We eventually came to a large room, called the Grand Gallery.  It was still quite narrow, like 4-5 feet wide, but it had a high ceiling (like 30 feet) and it was a long room (over 150 feet) with a corbelled ceiling.  At the end, we had to climb up a ladder.  Then we had to crawl into another small passageway.  By the end of that passageway, we were in about 350 feet and close to the center of the Great Pyramid.  The King’s Chamber is about 35 feet by 20 feet and about 20 feet high.  It’s all red granite and the stones are huge (like 30-80 tons).  I’ve read where the roof over this chamber only has about 6-8 stones and together they weigh something like 400 tons.  Of course, it has to support about two-thirds or more of the pyramid still above it.  The room also has a sarcophagus in it which is open.  The sarcophagus is also made of one piece of red granite.  It’s quite large and it would definitely not fit through the passageway, so it had to be inside the chamber before the room was completed.  The red granite blocks were very smooth and fit together so tightly that you couldn’t have put a pin in between the stones.  It was hot as heck inside and very humid too – even at 8:00 in the morning.

In the three photos below, you can first see me with my ticket. Next are four of the five people from our group of travelers that made the trek.  Vicky took the picture. And last, you can see three of us about to go up the steps, some 59 feet up to get to the entrance to the pyramid.

It was exciting going into the Great Pyramid.  Even though many people have been inside before, it felt extremely adventurous.  We stayed inside quite a long time before the next people showed up.  When it started to get crowded, we went back out.  We passed a solid line of people coming in.  The whole length of the small passageway was crowded with people which we had to squeeze past. In the space of about 42 inches square, we had to squeeze past over 90 people going back out of the pyramid.

In the next photo, you can see some of the few remaining “facing” stones on the Great Pyramid.  It gives you some idea of what the pyramid looked like when first completed.  The whole pyramid would have had these stones facing the whole outside of it.

In the last photo, you can see a piece of rock that we found when wandering around the Great Pyramid.  I have no idea why it is shaped somewhat rounded, but it’s a red granite stone, just like in the King’s Chamber inside the Great Pyramid.  The Red Granite is from Aswan, where we will go to next on our trip. The only difference with this stone is that it is not polished, like the stones in the King’s Chamber. They were absolutely smooth.

Pyramid of Khafre

The second largest pyramid in Egypt stands just to the southwest of the Great Pyramid.  It is the Pyramid of Khafre (Egyptian name) or the Pyramid of Chephren (Greek name).  It is 446 feet tall, so it is also a huge structure.  The Giza plateau rises up to the southwest, so this pyramid actually looks larger than the Great Pyramid much of the time.  And since the Great Pyramid has lost 30 feet off the top, the two are very close in size. 

Khafre built this pyramid and he was the son of Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid.

In the first photo, you can see both pyramids.  Khufu is on the left and the pyramid of Khafre is on the right.

Originally, the Khufu and Khafre pyramids were covered with a polished white limestone casing and they gleamed in the sunlight like giant crystals.  I suspect that they could be seen for many miles gleaming in the sunlight.  In the next photos, you can see that Khafre still has some of its original limestone covering up near the top of the pyramid.

Egyptologists speculate that the original plan for the Khafre pyramid was for it to be larger than Khufu’s pyramid.  That’s because the base of it is actually larger than that of the Great Pyramid.  But it got built smaller than the base.  You can somewhat see this in the last photo.  I’m standing on what was actually built as part of the pyramid base but not used.  You can also see that there were some very large stones used as part of the base for the Khafre pyramid and that some of them were facing lengthwise which we didn’t see in the Khufu Pyramid.

Solar Barques

The Pharaohs took most of their worldly possession with them to the afterworld.  That could include things such as their bed, clothes, furniture, utensils, lamps, armor, swords, chariots, pets (mummified of course), food and on and on.

In 1954, on the south side of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, archeologists unearthed one of Khufu’s solar boats (barques).  There are possibly as many as four more buried and they were excavating a second one while we were there in 2007 (and for years to come I’m sure).

In the first photo, you can see the top of the chamber where it was buried, well below the sand ground level.  It was quite a ways down and hidden very well and also made secure by the big stones and confusing layout.

The boat was in 1200 pieces.  Speculation is that this barque was used to bring Khufu’s mummy across the Nile to the valley temple and then on up the Giza plateau to his tomb chamber.  The boat is made of Lebanon cedar.  Some speculate that this might be the oldest boat in existence today.  I stepped it off at about 40 to 45 yards long (or 120 to 135 feet long).  It’s a big boat. 

I took a picture from each end of the boat.  It was hard to capture between the size of the boat, its shape, and the access of the building.

Pyramid of Menkaure

This is the third of the three major pyramids at Giza.  There are at least four other smaller ones still there today, but they are very small.  This pyramid is called the Pyramid of Menkaure (Egyptian name) or the Pyramid of Mycerinus (Greek name).  It was originally about 218 feet tall which made it less than half the size of the two largest pyramids at Giza. 

The most interesting thing to me about the Menkaure pyramid is a large gash on its north face.  I thought it was from inept tomb raiders, but that was not the case.  It turned out that Malek Abdel Aziz, son of the great Pharaoh Saladin, decided to dismantle this pyramid in AD 1186.  I don’t know the reason, but he commanded his people to tear down this pyramid.  His workers spent 8 months trying to tear down this pyramid.  At that point in time, they gave up.  That, to me, is an amazing testimony to the construction and durability of the pyramids.  I suspect when a pharaoh said to tear something down, the masses tore it down.  The fact that they not only couldn’t tear this pyramid down, but in fact, barely dented it, says a lot about how well it was built.

The first two photos are just approaching photos. This pyramid is much smaller than the two largest ones at Giza but it is still an imposing structure.

You can see a closer photo of the gash in the next picture.

One other feature that made this pyramid different was that it was not faced with white limestone, but rather with red granite.  The red granite comes from Aswan which is about a 90 minute flight away, or about a 400 mile long boat ride down the Nile. The red granite facing stones are the ones on the bottom of the pyramid.

The Sphinx

The Sphinx is also at Giza, just down the causeway from the Pyramid of Khafre.  Some people believe that it was also carved by Khafre and even that it was made somehow in his image.  Others believe that it was carved out of the bedrock of the Giza Plateau as many as 9,000 to 10,000 years ago.  There is some science to back this up, but no consensus about it.

The Sphinx is its ancient Greek name - for the mythical winged monster with a woman’s head and lion’s body who set riddles and killed anyone unable to answer the riddles.  The Egyptian name for it is Abu al-Hol which means Father of Terror.  Either way, it’s considered a scary figure.

Most of the Sphinx was buried in sand until relatively recently (mid 1800’s maybe).  In the first picture, you can see the whole beast.  The Pyramid of Khufu is behind the Sphinx’s head and the Pyramid of Khafre is to the left in the photo. 

The next pictures will give you some different angles and looks at the Sphinx. The Sphinx has suffered quite a bit of damage from the ancient years.  One rumor has it that Napolean is the one who knocked off his nose.  His beard is in the British Museum in London.

Coptic Christian Cairo

Some 6 percent of Egyptians are Coptic Catholics.  This is a section of Cairo that once had dozens of Coptic Catholic churches and still has quite a few.  We visited this section and it wasn’t much different from the other sections of Cairo.  The first photo is just one of the Coptic Catholic Churches. 

The second photo is called the Hanging Church or Suspended Church.  It’s built on top of the water gate of Roman Babylon.  It was a beautiful church.  We also visited several others. 

In this same area, we visited the Ben Ezra Synagogue.  It is claimed that on the very spot of this synagogue, the pharaoh’s daughter found Moses in the reeds as this was at the water’s edge of the River Nile back then.  There’s a bunch of history to the place, but who knows.

The third photo is just one I took in the area behind the Hanging Church.  You can see in the photo how all the Nile floods have changed the elevation over the years and also that people just kept building up on top of older buildings.

The Nile no longer gets up this high since the dams were put in up river. For that reason, we now see situations such as the last photo, where they can safely build lower down.

City of the Dead

This was an unscheduled stop that we made.  It wasn’t supposed to be very exciting, but we sure had a good time.  This was a visit to an ancient City of the Dead (local name for a cemetery).  This was originally somewhere on the outskirts of Cairo, but today, it’s more like in the middle of Cairo.  Cairo has long since enveloped this cemetery.  It’s a little different than our cemeteries in that each family had a plot, but it was a large piece of ground, like the size of a house or bigger.  And it wasn’t just empty land.  Even many non-pharaohs had nice mausoleums and tombs.  The family might have had a large building which might have included many different types of facilities within it.  They might have buried family members in their plot for hundreds of years.  Some were quite large and nice and today, many of these mausoleums/tombs/plots have homeless people living in them. 

The first picture will give you a better idea of what I’m talking about.  It almost looks like some sort of dense housing project, but it is, in fact, the city of the dead.

We made an unscheduled stop to look around.  It wasn’t a tour stop, just a stop.  As we were looking at one of the fancier mausoleums, the caretakers (we presume anyway) came by and asked us if we wanted to take a tour of it.  We knew it would cost us a tip, but what the heck.  It turned out to be the mausoleum of a very rich 15th century prince.  It had a cistern that they used for their own water and also to give water to the poorer neighbors.  It also had a mosque inside it with a minaret, many rooms, stairways, etc.  It was very nice.  You can see it in the next five photos.  The first one was taken from the outside as we stood on the sidewalk.

The next photo is inside and I am standing with a fellow traveler who was on our tour with us – a couple of adventurous looking fellows.

The next three photos are also inside this mausoleum. It will give you a better idea of what one of them was like. Again, this belonged to a 15th century prince.

Minaret Tower

We are still in the 15th century mausoleum of the rich prince.  As I said, it had a mosque with a minaret tower.  Our guides asked us if we wanted to climb the minaret tower.  So I asked myself, how many chances in life am I going to get to climb a Muslim mosque’s minaret tower.  (I’ve always wanted to climb one)  The answer of course was YES.  My legs wished that I had said No.

The tower was quite tall.  It was a narrow winding stairway the entire way up with high, narrow steps.  It was over 140 stairs to get to the top.  You can see the base of the minaret tower in the left side of the second photo in my previous posting. 

I’ve included three photos to record and verify our event.  It also shows you a few different looks at Cairo as we were quite a ways up in the air.  In the first photo, I’m standing with one of the caretakers who gave us the tour.

Vicky is holding her hat because of the wind and you can see her hair blowing in the wind.

Khan al-Khalili Bazaar

We didn’t go to as many bazaars in Egypt as we did in Thailand, Turkey or some other places that we visited.  These were difficult in that they were crowded of course, but the vendors in Egypt were extremely aggressive.  They would stick out their arms and block our way sometimes.  They would say silly things like “Come into my shop, everything is free”.  A couple of our group members had a vendor grab their wallet to “help” them make change.  It was somewhat unpleasant in the Egyptian markets.

In the first photo, you can see the end of the market where it spilled out into the open streets.  If you look closely at the top center of the picture, you can see the opening which is the narrow main street of the market.  Most of the market was in very narrow, very crowded, wall to wall people type conditions.  We sort of had to wriggle our way through the market and all the people. For those reasons, I never got any decent photos inside the inner market area.

The next photo was walking towards the inner or main market entrance. The third photo is the entrance to the inner or main section of this market.

Vicky and I broke away from our group and went down some side streets.  It was a bit unnerving being off the beaten path in this area, but at least it was much less crowded.  Some streets were super narrow and it was hard to take good photos on those streets.  The next three photos are of side streets that were quite a bit wider and much less crowded, but right in the same area.  It was too bad that the vendors were so annoying as they had some interesting stuff to look at.  But once you looked at anything, you had a vendor stuck to you.  I took the last photo mostly for the boy carrying the load of pita bread on his head – a common sight.