This site is known as Saqqara. It is one of the oldest pyramids and it was a huge burial site for a few pharaohs and then countless numbers of nobles and priests.
Saqqara is across from Memphis, which was one of the many capitals of Egypt throughout the Pharaonic period. Memphis was the place where people lived. Saqqara was the place where they went for eternity. Ancient Egyptians put a lot more money and energy into their eternal residence than they did in their living home. This is an archaeological dig in which it is possible to see three different layers of burial sites, as people were being buried here for 3,000 years. The green that is in the background of the picture is the fertile land along the Nile, but the transition from fertile farm land to barren desert is quite abrupt.
Cop on a camel. We never get tired of it.
This is my (rachel) favorite display from the museum. Since Saqqara was such a huge burial site, there is a TON of information about daily life, burial rituals, etc. This is an actual mummy (which we never get to see at most sites). Most of the time you get to see an empty sarcaphogus, but you never get to actually see the mummy. Unfortunately the glare makes it hard to see but you are looking at a mummy's head and the body is wrapped in linen. This mummy (including the linen) is 3,000 years old at least. There is still flesh and even the lines of some veins that are still visible.
This is Zach's pick. It is petrified cheese. There was the faintest fuzzy layer of mold, but I think I have eaten cheese with more fungus on it than these. I am still not conviced, though, that these aren't just rocks put in a bowl to look like ancient cheese.
Here's Zach cruising by a Sphinx. How's that for scale?
This is a giant statue of Ramses II. It fell over and only broke into two pieces. It was submerged in a swampy canal of the Nile when it was found.
1 comment:
Saqqara has a lot in common with the back of my refrigerator.
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