Got up around 7:00 today but couldn’t tarry for too long because we were supposed to leave at 8:00 AM for a guided tour of the the Birqash Camel Market and then onto Memphis and Saqqara.
The drive to the camel market takes a bit of time. Not because the market is especially far away, but because the road is narrow and speed bumps are frequent. In Egypt the speed bump is the traffic control measure of choice. I suppose the logic is you can ignore traffic lights and stop signs, but it's hard to ignore speed bumps. Our tour guide says the road to the market is especially slow because not all of the speed bumps are government sanctioned. According to him when the locals want to slow the traffic down to make it easier to cross the road they just install their own speed bumps. There is a bit of DYI simplistic elegance to the solution, and it certainly explains why the speed bumps come in so many different widths and heights.
I read that the Birqash Camel Market is a place for travellers, not vacationers. I think sums up the experience very concisely. The camel market is a regional place to congregate to buy/sell/trade camels. It is not a tourist destination. Besides ourselves, I think I saw one other group of tourists. While I won’t say it was pleasant, I really enjoyed visiting the camel market. For the last few days we’ve been visiting the obvious tourist attractions in Egypt. The draw for us is the Ancient Egyptian ruins. The draw for the Egyptians at these locations is us, the tourist spending money. At the camel market we don’t even figure into the equation. We’re there witnessing a part of traditional Egyptian commerce. There is a photo taking license that we had to buy while we were entering the market, but that is very modestly priced. Once in, the market is a pandemonium of everything camel. The smell of camel and camel poop (which is all over the ground) is thick and clings to you. The sound of camel roars fills the air. Camels make a surprisingly deep sound that is not at all indicative of how calm and friendly they look.
I’m just going to list some of the sights that l saw in no particular order, because honestly, I don’t have nearly enough context to processes all that I saw.
On the outskirts there is a field of decomposing camel carcasses. I guess these are the guys that didn’t survive the journey to the market.
There will be two or more camels being loaded into the bed of a pickup truck. The camels just lay there and look happy that they’re going for a ride. To get them into the truck, the truck backs up to a earthen ramp and the camels walk on up.
Camels are hobbled by tying their front legs so that the lower part of the leg is folded at the elbow/knee and tied to the upper part of the leg. Either one or both of the front legs will be hobbled. This results in a lot of camels either hopping around on three legs or crawling around on essentially their front elbows.
Everywhere camels will be beaten with sticks. Everyone has a four foot stick in hand and whenever they want a camel to do something they hit it with the stick until the camel does what they want.
Occasionally a camel will get free and go sprinting off. It will be chased by several people carrying sticks. Try and guess the next part of the process.
Shifting groups of camels will be herded around. I can’t emphasise enough how important your situational awareness is while walking through the market.
We got to watch a camel auction while we were there. A group of men stand in a circle. A camel is led into the circle. As far as I can tell, the next part is two men begin to beat the camel all over with sticks to show how “stick-proof” the camel is. Eventually they poke the camel in the side of the jaw with the sticks and it roars. I suppose that is so people can see the teeth. Someone gets the winning big and the winner’s symbol is sprayed onto the side of the camel with a can of spray paint. The camel is then led off by the winner.
I can’t stress this next part enough. While all of the above is going on around and to the camels, they all look perfectly serene and friendly. Every camel holds its head up high and wears an expression that seems to say “I am proud to be a camel.”
After the camel market we stopped for a quick lunch and head to Memphis. Memphis was an important city for the ancient Egyptians. It served as one of the first capitals of the united upper and lower Egyptian empire nearly 5000 years ago (it’s an old city). Not much remains of the ancient Memphis. In truth, much of it has been buried and built over. The Nile river used to run along Memphis, but when the modern dams were built to control the river the branch that flowed past Memphis dried up and disappeared. What is left of the ancient Memphis is fragments of the ancient temple that once stood here. Thats mostly statues built for the temple through the ages. They are collected into an “open air museum.”
Open air museums are pretty popular in Egypt. Many of the sites we’ve visited can be classified as open air museums. Basically you find some old stone stuff, drag it all together and put a fence around it. The first time we encountered them we asked about protecting the statues from the elements. It would seem that one would want to stop any of the artifacts from further deteriorating. As far as I can tell the Egyptian answer is that it almost never rains and these statues are already thousands of years old, what’s the rush?
The Memphis collection has a couple of outstanding items from the big names of New Kindgom, namely our friends Ramses II and Queen Hatshepsut. Outside here is a merely large statue of Ramses II.
Also there is a large statue of Hatshepsut dressed as a man. This is part of her media campaign to be accepted as ruler of Egypt. The second largest sphinx in Egypt is at Memphis. This one is carved out of a block of alabaster. The one item not left outdoor is an enormous sandstone statue of Ramses the II. The immense statue is laying down and has a building built around it. Not only is this statue impressive for it sheer size, but for the muscular detail of the pharaoh. The craftsman that carved this was obvious a badass. There is however a small anatomical mistake in this statue that stands out because everything else is so perfect. The ears were carved too high in relation the eyes. Weird.
The last stop of the day Saqqara. Saqqara is a necropolis similar to the ones we visited in Giza and the west bank of Luxor, but older. Saqqara is home to the first stone building complex in Egypt. This is essentially one of the first places on Earth that mankind got the idea that they could carve stone into bricks and build something out of it. That first building just so happens to be the first pyramids.
The story, as our tour guide told it, goes along the lines of previously everything was build out of mud bricks. When kings died they dig out a tomb, and over the entrance they built a rectangular mud brick bench. The first pyramid was built for Djoser by his master architect Imhotep. Imhotep basically said that instead of mud bricks he thought they could build the king’s tomb from stone. A bold new plan. The king agreed and commissioned the work to begin. A white limestone bench was built. Everyone agreed it was pretty spiffy and an improvement. Then Imhotep get an idea that he could improve on it and build a bench on top of the bench. Djoser approved the radical idea and they expanded the first bench out and built a second on top of it. Again everyone was pleased. The king was in good health (and still fabulously wealthy) so Imhotep proposed yet another improvement to add another four benches to the top of the existing two... and the first step pyramid in Egypt was born.
Djoser wanted to take a lot of stuff with him to the afterlife. The stuff in his brand spanking new pyramid wouldn’t be nearly enough. He wanted to take Memphis with him too. At the time there was a precedent for granting the wishes of kings when they wanted to take something impractical to the afterlife. Bury a model of the thing they wanted with them. In this case they decided to build a scale model of Memphis around the pyramid for the king. Remember this is the first complex built of stone in Egypt... everything before it was build out of less durable materials. Which means that while the original temple of Memphis is lost to time, the model built around the step pyramids has persisted.
The thing that’s really cool about the stone model of Memphis is that builders were imitating a structure built with more organic materials. They carved the wooden logs used as columns into the stone and reed ceilings. They carved doors and door hinges into the stone. All the little details of what must have been in the real temple are captured in stone facsimile. The other part of the structure that’s really interesting is how they didn’t trust the stone, not really. Building with stone was new and untested. It’s put together strange and in places buttressed with mud bricks and other supports in case the stone wasn’t up to the task. Little did they know exactly how long their new building would last.
The drive to the camel market takes a bit of time. Not because the market is especially far away, but because the road is narrow and speed bumps are frequent. In Egypt the speed bump is the traffic control measure of choice. I suppose the logic is you can ignore traffic lights and stop signs, but it's hard to ignore speed bumps. Our tour guide says the road to the market is especially slow because not all of the speed bumps are government sanctioned. According to him when the locals want to slow the traffic down to make it easier to cross the road they just install their own speed bumps. There is a bit of DYI simplistic elegance to the solution, and it certainly explains why the speed bumps come in so many different widths and heights.
I read that the Birqash Camel Market is a place for travellers, not vacationers. I think sums up the experience very concisely. The camel market is a regional place to congregate to buy/sell/trade camels. It is not a tourist destination. Besides ourselves, I think I saw one other group of tourists. While I won’t say it was pleasant, I really enjoyed visiting the camel market. For the last few days we’ve been visiting the obvious tourist attractions in Egypt. The draw for us is the Ancient Egyptian ruins. The draw for the Egyptians at these locations is us, the tourist spending money. At the camel market we don’t even figure into the equation. We’re there witnessing a part of traditional Egyptian commerce. There is a photo taking license that we had to buy while we were entering the market, but that is very modestly priced. Once in, the market is a pandemonium of everything camel. The smell of camel and camel poop (which is all over the ground) is thick and clings to you. The sound of camel roars fills the air. Camels make a surprisingly deep sound that is not at all indicative of how calm and friendly they look.
I’m just going to list some of the sights that l saw in no particular order, because honestly, I don’t have nearly enough context to processes all that I saw.
On the outskirts there is a field of decomposing camel carcasses. I guess these are the guys that didn’t survive the journey to the market.
There will be two or more camels being loaded into the bed of a pickup truck. The camels just lay there and look happy that they’re going for a ride. To get them into the truck, the truck backs up to a earthen ramp and the camels walk on up.
Camels are hobbled by tying their front legs so that the lower part of the leg is folded at the elbow/knee and tied to the upper part of the leg. Either one or both of the front legs will be hobbled. This results in a lot of camels either hopping around on three legs or crawling around on essentially their front elbows.
Everywhere camels will be beaten with sticks. Everyone has a four foot stick in hand and whenever they want a camel to do something they hit it with the stick until the camel does what they want.
Occasionally a camel will get free and go sprinting off. It will be chased by several people carrying sticks. Try and guess the next part of the process.
Shifting groups of camels will be herded around. I can’t emphasise enough how important your situational awareness is while walking through the market.
We got to watch a camel auction while we were there. A group of men stand in a circle. A camel is led into the circle. As far as I can tell, the next part is two men begin to beat the camel all over with sticks to show how “stick-proof” the camel is. Eventually they poke the camel in the side of the jaw with the sticks and it roars. I suppose that is so people can see the teeth. Someone gets the winning big and the winner’s symbol is sprayed onto the side of the camel with a can of spray paint. The camel is then led off by the winner.
I can’t stress this next part enough. While all of the above is going on around and to the camels, they all look perfectly serene and friendly. Every camel holds its head up high and wears an expression that seems to say “I am proud to be a camel.”
After the camel market we stopped for a quick lunch and head to Memphis. Memphis was an important city for the ancient Egyptians. It served as one of the first capitals of the united upper and lower Egyptian empire nearly 5000 years ago (it’s an old city). Not much remains of the ancient Memphis. In truth, much of it has been buried and built over. The Nile river used to run along Memphis, but when the modern dams were built to control the river the branch that flowed past Memphis dried up and disappeared. What is left of the ancient Memphis is fragments of the ancient temple that once stood here. Thats mostly statues built for the temple through the ages. They are collected into an “open air museum.”
Open air museums are pretty popular in Egypt. Many of the sites we’ve visited can be classified as open air museums. Basically you find some old stone stuff, drag it all together and put a fence around it. The first time we encountered them we asked about protecting the statues from the elements. It would seem that one would want to stop any of the artifacts from further deteriorating. As far as I can tell the Egyptian answer is that it almost never rains and these statues are already thousands of years old, what’s the rush?
The Memphis collection has a couple of outstanding items from the big names of New Kindgom, namely our friends Ramses II and Queen Hatshepsut. Outside here is a merely large statue of Ramses II.
The last stop of the day Saqqara. Saqqara is a necropolis similar to the ones we visited in Giza and the west bank of Luxor, but older. Saqqara is home to the first stone building complex in Egypt. This is essentially one of the first places on Earth that mankind got the idea that they could carve stone into bricks and build something out of it. That first building just so happens to be the first pyramids.
The story, as our tour guide told it, goes along the lines of previously everything was build out of mud bricks. When kings died they dig out a tomb, and over the entrance they built a rectangular mud brick bench. The first pyramid was built for Djoser by his master architect Imhotep. Imhotep basically said that instead of mud bricks he thought they could build the king’s tomb from stone. A bold new plan. The king agreed and commissioned the work to begin. A white limestone bench was built. Everyone agreed it was pretty spiffy and an improvement. Then Imhotep get an idea that he could improve on it and build a bench on top of the bench. Djoser approved the radical idea and they expanded the first bench out and built a second on top of it. Again everyone was pleased. The king was in good health (and still fabulously wealthy) so Imhotep proposed yet another improvement to add another four benches to the top of the existing two... and the first step pyramid in Egypt was born.
Djoser wanted to take a lot of stuff with him to the afterlife. The stuff in his brand spanking new pyramid wouldn’t be nearly enough. He wanted to take Memphis with him too. At the time there was a precedent for granting the wishes of kings when they wanted to take something impractical to the afterlife. Bury a model of the thing they wanted with them. In this case they decided to build a scale model of Memphis around the pyramid for the king. Remember this is the first complex built of stone in Egypt... everything before it was build out of less durable materials. Which means that while the original temple of Memphis is lost to time, the model built around the step pyramids has persisted.
The thing that’s really cool about the stone model of Memphis is that builders were imitating a structure built with more organic materials. They carved the wooden logs used as columns into the stone and reed ceilings. They carved doors and door hinges into the stone. All the little details of what must have been in the real temple are captured in stone facsimile. The other part of the structure that’s really interesting is how they didn’t trust the stone, not really. Building with stone was new and untested. It’s put together strange and in places buttressed with mud bricks and other supports in case the stone wasn’t up to the task. Little did they know exactly how long their new building would last.
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