Saqqara and Dashur

As suggested by Alice's previous post, we spent yesterday out doing "tourist-y" things. We had a driver, Mohammed, who collected us from our apartment in his clean and air-conditioned car, and then drove us all around the sites and sights of Egyptian Cairo for the day. In the morning we travelled out past the fields of crops and vegetables into the desert to check out the oldest man-made buildings in the world.

The complex at Saqqara was built for the pharaoh Zoser by his chief minister and architectural genius, Imhotep. His famous "step-pyramid" is the earliest surviving man-made structure in the world and is pretty amazing to look at.

We later moved on to the Red Pyramid at Dashur, this being the first "real" pyramid with straight sides. This was built by Snofru (2613-2589 BC), the first pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, after his first attempt was unsatisfactory. He had first had a go at building a pyramid a couple of kilometres away, but halfway thorugh building it realised the sides were going at too sharp an angle and were exerting too much stress. So this "bent" pyramid changed angle halfway up, and set in place the 43° used in all other pyramids, including Great Pyramid at Giza which was built by his son, Khufu. Sadly the bent pyramid is still in a military zone, and so we couldn't visit it up close, but we did have an incredible experience going inside the Red Pyramid...