Study Tour - Day Two

The second day of the study tour saw us travel just a stone's throw from our hotel to the Great Pyramid of Giza. We boarded our bus, albeit a little later than we had hoped, and braved the horrendous Cairo traffic once again, in order to see the only remaining Wonder of the Ancient World.

When we arrived, I think we were all in awe of just how grand the three remaining pyramids really are. The largest, the Great Pyramid of Giza, has lost its outer casing of polished stone, but is still an intimidating site. With the second pyramid still having the outer casing at the top, we were able to visualise what they might have looked like in all their glory, some 4,500 years ago! To help, some of us collected samples of white limestone from the ground and poured water over them and mock polished them to get a handle on how they might have glistened in the sun in their prime. No wonder the people worshiped the Pharaohs as gods. The sight of a gem almost 150m high and 230m wide glistening in the sun would have been very convincing! The fact that these pyramids are still standing today is a testament to the genius of the Ancient Egyptians. Sadly, that genius seems to have abandoned them in the modern era, most likely due to corrupt leadership.

One thing that struck me during this experience that I had never really considered before, in spite of knowing the timelines since I was a young boy, is that most of the Bible characters that we know and love would have seen or known of the pyramids. Abraham would have seen them when he went to Egypt, Jesus would have seen them as a child in Egypt, and Moses would have grown up with them in his backyard. This never occurred to me. In fact, given their majestic presence, it is inspiring to think that Abraham never considered the Pharaoh to be anything more than a man, and Moses bringing the people out of Egypt was not intimidated or corrupted by the perceived power they had.

This makes me consider something that our tour guide, Moe, said on the first day at the museum. He spoke of three distinct eras, the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom. These eras were each separated by 100 years of, what he called, chaos. The interesting thing is that Abraham appears in Egypt roughly around the time of the First Intermediate Period, between the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom. The question was raised about whether Abraham might have had some influence in this period coming about. For me, I have known these timelines for some 25 years or so, but I never connected the dots. It was something of a revelation for me, that the people of the Bible and the history of the rest of the Ancient World overlap. How is it that it took me this long to realise something so obvious?

After our visit to the Pyramids, we began our long and arduous journey across the Eastern Desert toward the Suez Canal and beyond to Mount Sinai. Traversing the long road to Sinai, it opened my eyes to the obstacles the Israelites had to overcome as they fled Egypt during the Exodus. The harsh terrain with almost no vegetation, the rocky mountains, the merciless sun beating down, and no water anywhere in sight, I began to understand why they might have been complaining. They had just come from the most fertile land in all of Egypt, the land of Goshen in the Nile Delta, given to Joseph by Pharaoh. To have to trek across the sand of the desert, I can see how they might have felt that Moses had saved them from one form of oppression, only to lead them directly into another. Out of the frying pan, into the fire, so to speak.

I'm not sure anyone on this trip will ever consider the Israelites to be a pack of whingers ever again. One thing is certain, this trip has and will give us a new insight into just what the Israelites went through on their trek from Egypt to the Promised Land, and likewise the journey Jesus would have made as a child with his family, going from Bethlehem to Egypt, and back to Nazareth.