I have often spoken of my love for National Geographic magazine. This has less to do with the memory of the yellow-bordered magazines arriving on our doorstep (I just got my latest issue in the mail yesterday), and more about my childhood fascination with antiquities and anthropology, an obsession which stays with me to this day. When we think of the modern challenges in the publishing industry, we find people (like my slightly older friend Gary) who like the feel of a newspaper or magazine in the hands, or people who can’t figure out how to unsubscribe to whatever papers or magazines they get (an ongoing frustration of mine with regard to certain vestigial publications that are tar-babies on my shoes). But some publishers have found ways to embrace the modern while keeping the old. I can’t tell if this just plays to us fading Baby Boomers or whether the young are as engaged by these publishing tricks as I am, but I sure do appreciate them. Just the other day I opened an email from NatGeo, something I do with most of them (unless I’m particularly busy). It led me to an article about some new discoveries in Egypt about the building of the Pyramids.
In 2023, Kim and I went with our friends Mike and Melisa on a trip to Egypt and Jordan. It was not exactly an unusual trip by today’s standards, but rather one that many people have taken and many will continue to take. In fact, to drive home my point, our dog sitter just took the same itinerary, so this path is not something so very exotic or untrodden. But, if anyone ever asks me the most interesting place I can recall traveling to, it would not be the Amazon or Cape Horn, not Malta or Iceland, not the Camino de Santiago or St. Petersburg…not even the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco or the back country of Benin in West Africa. It would be Egypt, pure and simple. There is just something so magical to me about a culture and a place that was created 5,000 years ago. Egyptian civilization is one of the oldest in the world. Ancient Egypt emerged around 3100 BC when Upper and Lower Egypt were unified, making Egyptian civilization roughly 5,100 years old. The pyramids at Giza, for example, were built around 2560 BCE, over 4,500 years ago…and as we know from our travels there, these were among the last of the pyramids to be built, with those further down the Nile in places like Saqqara, being older by some 100 years.
The oldest pyramids mark a fascinating period of architectural experimentation in ancient Egypt. The Step Pyramid of Djoser (c. 2670-2650 BC) at Saqqara is considered the oldest pyramid and the world’s oldest major stone structure. Built for Pharaoh Djoser by his architect Imhotep, it started as a traditional flat-roofed mastaba tomb but was expanded upward in six distinct steps, reaching about 200 feet high. This revolutionary design essentially stacked progressively smaller mastabas on top of each other. Imhotep’s innovation marked the transition from mud-brick construction to cut limestone. The Meidum Pyramid (c. 2613-2589 BC) represents the next evolutionary step. Started by Pharaoh Huni and possibly completed by Sneferu, it began as a step pyramid but was later filled in to create smooth sides – making it the first attempt at a true pyramid. The outer casing collapsed at some point (either during construction or later), leaving the tower-like core structure visible today. Then there was Sneferu’s “Bent” Pyramid (c. 2600 BC) at Dahshur, which shows another experimental phase. It starts at a steep 54-degree angle but abruptly changes to a gentler 43 degrees about halfway up, giving it a distinctive “bent” appearance. This change was likely due to structural concerns or stability issues discovered during construction. It looks today like a big construction boo-boo. The Red Pyramid (c. 2590 BC), also built by Sneferu at Dahshur, is considered the first successful true smooth-sided pyramid. Built at the gentler 43-degree angle throughout, it proved the concept that led directly to the famous pyramids at Giza built by Sneferu’s son Khufu. This 80-year period of rapid innovation and learning from mistakes set the stage for the Great Pyramid of Giza – built just a generation later as the culmination of all these experiments. It is this progression and the most recent findings about it that led to this NatGeo article.
That article is created with a digital device-friendly format that allows me on my iPad to scroll through it and automatically bring up pictures and click-throughs on details and interesting factoids. I’m sure to GenZ sorts, this is child’s play, but to us old magazine flippers, this is great stuff…like pushing panorama buttons at the Chicago of Science and Industry or the New York Museum of Natural History as I did in my youth. I was so smitten with the article that I sent it to my Egypt travel companions, but there’s where the digital divide took hold. Try as I might to “gift” that article to them to get them past the paywall, all they got was the GIF of it and a “please subscribe” notation. So, instead, I sat Kim down to flip her through the piece on my iPad and will do the same for Mike and Melisa this morning if they are at home. I’m not sure any of them are as intrigued by topics like Egyptian pyramid building tactics, but my enthusiasm assumes that everyone wants to know about this sort of thing.
We are sitting in the San Diego airport awaiting our flight to London in a few hours. It will take about 10 hours and we will be landing in Heathrow…just like old times when business would take me to London all the time. That said, I have never flown direct from San Diego and I have to admit to being a little freakishly excited about the direct flight. I think that has to do a little bit about feeling like I’m back in NYC where direct European flights abound, but mostly it has to do with not having to schlep through. JFK terminal (at least not until our return from Prague). Kim is excited about being prone for the next ten hours and I find the prospect of a movie selection for several films to be a familiar and pleasant way to pass the time. We have been debating about how to get from Heathrow to our hotel, which is right next to St. Pancras and Kings Cross Stations. We did that for convenience in getting to and from our Steam Dreams train Thursday and then returning Sunday evening. The added advantage is that access to Heathrow from that area is relatively simple with a number of options. The Heathrow Express train happens to go into Paddington, so that’s less than ideal, but the Piccadilly Line runs right to where our hotel is, so if we feel like wrestling our luggage on the tube, that’s a cheaper alternative. But for the time of day we are coming in (midday, mid-week) a taxi to the hotel will only be a bit more costly and a lot quicker according to Apple Maps. I have a feeling that’s what we will do after the night on a plane…any plane…even in Business Class.
If I start to worry that wrestling my wheeled luggage onto and off of the tube is simply too much work, I can remember those massive earthen ramps that the Egyptians had to build (and eventually take away) to get those 2.3 million huge quarried stones up onto the pyramids from the newly discovered Nile tributary branch than flowed directly in front of Giza and all the way south to the Early Empire sites like Saqqara. It turns out that the Egyptians built the pyramids with almost brains than brawn and I doubt they would understand my luggage problems heading into Heathrow. My ponderous fascination with antiquities continues on….