Picture Post. No. 3

The recent unrest in Egypt is troubling. I have been fortunate to visit this amazing country three times and have seen the natural beauties of the Red Sea in Sharm-el-Sheik, the fantastic temples of Luxor and, of course, the Pyramids and Museums of Cairo.

I love Egypt. It is a truly remarkable country and there is so much more to do than the highlights noted in the opening paragraph. The people are a delight and the food is good too. I hope that a resolution can be rapidly found that allows this country to move forward without damaging one of it's significant income sources; tourism. This revenue source is massive and a lack of tourist dollars is going to make matters worse.

In the absence of anything exciting from The Pile I present to you this little gem from my archives:-

On the Giza Plateau alongside the Great Pyramid of Khufu/ Cheops stands a peculiar modern structure. It is a museum and it is built over the top of a carefully constructed pit that was covered with truly enormous dressed stone blocks.

Inside that pit this beauty was placed for the use of Khufu in the afterlife. She is referred to as the Solar Boat and is an amazing site to behold. The people in the pictures give you some sense of her scale and, in turn, the scale of the pit and the stone blocks that once protected her.

145' long, 19' wide and truly beautiful

She is estimated to be in the region of 4,500 years old and recent excavations combined with the use of video cameras show that there is another such boat still entombed under the plateau.

Giza Plateau, Cairo, Egypt: Autumn 2008