From: masri@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology
Subject: Re: pyramids
Date: 11 Nov 92 16:34:16 GMT
Reply-To: masri@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Organization: Brandeis University

I've been finding all the pyramid talk fascinating.  Not having a background
in archaeology but having seen the pyramids firsthand (and having been inside
one---whew! talk about stifling), I love to read anything about them.  Some
of what has been written I've had the priviledge to have seen personally, 
i.e., the pyramids are still aligned because they DO still on a flat "field"
of bedrock (I agree with the person who asked "alignment with the Nile Delta?"), and there are empty sarcophogi (sorry for the spelling) inside the pyramid.

But, what no one has mentioned is the unbelievable power and majesty of the
pyramids just by their very existence.  My first glimpse of them was ap-
proaching Cairo by air.  As we flew over, the pilot dipped the plane's wing
to allow those of us on the right side to see the pyramids from above.  As
corny as it sounds (and I'm not a sentimental person), I actually gasped.
No matter how many times you may see the pyramids in books, magazines and
on TV, you cannot imagine how enormous and stunning they are to see "live".
My next visit to the pyramids was the following morning when my cousin (whom
I was visiting in Cairo) took me to see them at dawn.  Again, an overwhelming
experience in the truest sense of the word.  IF YOU EVER GO TO SEE THE PYRA-
MIDS GO AT DAWN.  Without all the hubbub and commercial nuisance which man-
ifests itself later in the day, the pyramids tinged in red by the rising 
sun and utterly silent are enough to take your breath away.  I took a million
pictures, but when I look at them, they don't capture that feeling. 

As far as going inside, you typically wait in a line forever and when you 
finally get to go in, you have serious second thoughts seeing the people
coming out.  DO NOT GO IN IF YOU ARE THE LEAST BIT CLAUSTROPHOBIC.  For
awhile after you enter, you just walk along a very cramped hallway (always
with other people squeezing by you on their way out).  Then the hallway
gets smaller and smaller (reminiscient of Alice in Wonderland).  Then, in
virtual darkness, you climb up a makeshift wooden ramp in a completely 
cramped position (all the while with traffic getting stopped ahead of you
so that you stand around alot sweating and feeling like you can't breath).
Finally, you reach a small, completely square room with nothing in it but
what looks like an empty, oversized bathtub.  People mill around as long
as they can stand it and then begin the miserable exit process.  All in all
it's not worth it except to say that you did it.  Although I have mixed 
feelings about that too because it can't be good for the preservation of
the pyramid itself (I mean, you should have seen how many people went in 
and out just in the time I did).

And the end of this fairy tale is that my other experience was horseback
riding around the pyramids with a man that I met in Cairo.  The moral
of the story:  I fell in love with him that day and we have now been 
married for 4 years.  Chalk that up to alignment with the north pole
or aliens or whatever......I can't figure it out!!

Debbie