Some Old Giza

An old man can be called an old geezer. The old Giza I am talking about is something quite different.

The city of Giza sits on the west side of the famous Nile River, in Egypt. The river is the city boundary and to the East of the river is the well known city of Cairo.

The school I teach at in Kuwait doesn't take much time off for Christmas. In fact, all I received was a long weekend. I got the regular Friday and Saturday off as well as Sunday for Christmas day. I decided to take the opportunity to knock something off my top 8 travel list in the area and see the pyramids.

The boundary of Giza and Cairo was actually my first lesson about the pyramids, as well as the elimination of some myths. The Pyramids were not in the middle of the desert, they were in fact in the middle of the city. They were also not built by slaves, as our guide pointed out that would be impossible. I think I will leave a lot of this information to a future post.

The Nile river is a very important part of Egyptian history, as well as their present. There are about 81 million people currently in the country and the large large majority live within striking distance of the Nile river. In ancient Egypt the Nile's importance was no different. Another important thing was the Sun. The ancient Egyptians worshiped many gods, but none were more important than the sun god. The sun god was a symbol of eternity, in the same sense that a circle is. The sun always rises after it sets.

The sun is 'born' in the east and it 'dies' in the west. The pyramids were tombs for the dead Kings. All of them are found on the West side of the Nile because that is also where the sun dies.



The hotel I stayed in was called the Grand Pyramid Hotel, and I was able to see one pyramid from the balcony in my room.