Position 16 - The Road To The Pyramids, Westward Toward Gizeh

The gay and motley array of the Cairo streets, with their thousand cries and the hum of the particolored bazaars—all this is behind us. We stand far out in the rich verdure of the Nile bottoms, and with Cairo at our backs, we look southwestward across the level, and there boldly breaking the skyline are those venerable forms of which we have so often dreamed, the pyramids of Gizeh.

We saw them, to be sure, from the heights east of Cairo; but from there they barely glimmered above the misty horizon-line. Here they stand out for the first time in all their proud defiance, bidding time do his worst. What a rush of memories the first glimpse of them evokes! But let us disregard these for a moment; we shall have ample time for them before we have done with Gizeh, and at this point much practical information is necessary.

On our right stretches away toward the desert the high road to the pyramids. It is literally a “high road,” for were it not so raised upon an embankment, there would be no communication between Cairo and the pyramids in the time of the inundation, save by boat; and the natives would be unable to reach the markets of the town. The beautiful lebbek trees which line the road on either hand, planted by Ismail Pacha, make the ride to the pyramids shaded and delightful, in a land where shade is a rarity and the sun beats down with fierce and almost vertical rays.

These trees attain a height of 80 feet in forty years, and spread far and wide, casting more shade than any other tree. Beside the road flows one of the innumerable irrigation canals, which we shall later view from the summit of the Great Pyramid out yonder, where we shall command a wide view of the broad Nile flats, which stretch away from the road on our either hand, and be able to follow them with our eyes to the dim horizon, where Cairo lies behind us. You notice how the plain abruptly terminates out by the foot of the pyramids. That sandy slope which leads up to their bases, is a wind-borne invasion from the Sahara desert, known in classic times as the Libyan Desert, on the margin of which the pyramids stand.

Those sands cover the limestone cliffs of the Nile cañon; but the cliffs are here much lower than those which we shall find higher up the river. They are here dropping gradually to the level of the one-time shores of that great prehistoric bay, which the Nile has now filled with soil and transformed into the Delta, for this richest triangle of soil in the world begins just here on our right, north of the road. At the foot of the bluff on our extreme left, you discern the houses of the modern village of Kafr.

Little do the peasants who dwell in the village dream of the life which once teemed and swarmed in busy streets, occupying these very fields before us, which they now turn with wooden plows. For here lay the residence city of the 4th Dynasty, the royal residence of the splendid Pharaohs who built the pyramids before us.

For perhaps two hundred years it was the seat of government for this great people, and here lived the man at whose will the mightiest mass of masonry ever wrought by human hands was reared. Now all that remains of the city is a scanty remnant of the wall, rising here and there from the shrouding sands, which have protected it from the peasant's plow. When that city was laid out, nearly 3000 years before Christ, the jutting desert headland yonder, now occupied by the pyramids, was a bare waste of sand.

The Egyptian always loved to lay his dead where his great sun-god died and went to rest, shrouded in the glory of the desert sunset with every closing day. Hence as we ascend the river, we shall find almost all the cemeteries on the west side, in the cliffs which formed the Egyptian's western horizon, behind which the sun dropped every night. Thus this stretch of desert, upon which we are looking, being immediately on the west of the now vanished city, naturally became its cemetery. But it is not impossible that the first Pharaoh of the Dynasty, having selected this desert headland as the site of his pyramid, located his residence city at this place also, in order that he might always be able personally to inspect the progress of the mighty monument, which was to be his eternal resting place.

Thus there grew up here a great cemetery, where five or six generations of people were laid away, and as the nucleus of it all, rose the vast pyramids which we see before us. The first and most prominent of the group is the earliest, and two others retreating in order of decreasing size as well as age, extend southwestward in a line through the diagonal of the first (Map 5). At the foot of the first there are three small pyramids, which you are here viewing at such an angle, that they appear to be at the base of the second pyramid; while at the foot of the third pyramid there are three more small ones, of which you can see only one, at the extreme left of the group.

The largest three, called for convenience, as we have already done, the first, second and third pyramids, are the tombs of three kings of the 4th Dynasty, the first being Khufu, the second Khafre, and the third Menkewre (Map 5). The Greeks, hearing these names some 2,500 years later, corrupted them into Kheops, Khefren, and Mykerinos or Menkheres. The modern successor of these hoary monarchs of the Nile valley has invaded their ancient cemetery and erected a vice-regal kiosque, which you see at the northeast corner (the corner nearest us) of the first pyramid.

Now note the relative location of these pyramids on Map 5. If you will turn its upper right-hand corner toward you and push the map slightly away from you as you look, you will be occupying to it about the same relative position which we occupy in this view facing the west, with the three pyramids retreating in order of decreasing size and age toward the southwest. Notice at the extreme north (right) of the map the termination of the road from Cairo, on which we stood, with the Mena House Hotel just at the beginning of the bend toward the first pyramid. That road, the three pyramids and the Arabian village (Kafr), will locate you closely. Look also at Map 4 again where the red V (16) shows exactly the extent of the prospect we have just viewed.

Returning to Map 5, trace our coming itinerary of the cemetery.

• Having left the road, we shall view the first pyramid from a point south-south-east of it (Position 17);
• we shall then view it from the northwest (Position 18); then look up the northeast corner (Position 19);
• then climb it for a view toward Cairo (Position 20),
• and of the second pyramid (Position 21);
• and after a view down the southwest corner (Position 22),
• we shall descend and approach the entrance on the north side (Position 23),
• before entering and viewing the grand gallery (Position 24: see plan of the Great Pyramid, page 129).
• Finally we shall inspect the granite sarcophagus of King Khufu (Position 25: see plan of the Great Pyramid, page 129),
• the so-called temple by the Sphinx (Position 26)
• and the Sphinx itself (Position 27).

But before we leave this road (Position 16) look out again toward the desert and see how the plateau slopes to the south (left) above the village of Kafr. That slope drops into a valley just out of our range of vision on the left, and it is from that valley that we are now to view the great pyramid, crossing to reach it, a bridge over the canal. Note on Map 5 the red lines numbered 17 which give this next position and the range and direction of our vision.