We’re in Egypt!
After a full day of traveling and plenty of months’ waiting we are finally in Egypt! Today we spent the day in Cairo, viewing the three great pyramids on the Giza Plateau. We have also come to see very clearly how the Nile River made abundant life possible in Egypt. Only a culture with abundant resources could build such monuments as the pyramids! If there was no Nile there would be no prosperity in Egypt. In fact, if there was no Nile there would be no Egypt! The Nile’s annual flooding and transportation of new soil from mid-continent (from the African monsoon rains) down to Egypt made lower Nile region the most fertile area in the world.
It is no mistake that God gave birth to his nation, the nation of Israel, in this place. Bringing Joseph and his family to Egypt was like putting his chosen people into a custom-made nursery— complete with lots of food and wealth. Of course, later on the Israelites became enslaved by the Egyptians (a very interesting story all by itself) but God decided to keep his fledgling nation in Egypt. Why? It is always dangerous to try and read God’s mind, but it may well have been to teach Israel the centrality of religion to life (Egypt was a very religion nation). It may also have been to set up the amazing miracle of deliverance from Egypt some 400 years after Joseph. That miracle is central to Hebrew and, later, Jewish identity. Israel is a delivered people!
Back to our tour: As we viewed the three great pyramids of the Giza Plateau our tour guide, George De Jong, led us to ask the question “WHY did the Egyptians build these things?” rather than the more common question— “HOW did the Egyptiansy build these things?” In other words we should ask why the Egyptians devoted such vast resources to building such amazing monuments.
The answer goes back to the ancient Egyptians’ beliefs about life and the afterlife. The Pharaoh, as a man-god, was reliving the Egyptian creation myth in which the gods created order out of chaos. The building of a pyramid was a way to impose order (Ma’at) on life today and to prepare for life tomorrow. It spoke of power, wealth, and cosmic influence.
Now for a few pictures: The first picture below is of the three great pyramids. The second is of the Great Sphinx, the statue positioned in front of the great pyramids in a guarding posture. It was meant, of course, to symbolize strength.
This last picture is of a death ship called a solar barque. It was placed, in pieces, in the pyramid so that the Pharaoh, upon his death, would have transportation to the realm of the gods. This particular one is 144 feet long and took archaeologists ten years to reconstruct once they found it.
