Memphis

Even though stop lights are few in Cairo, it took Nagy, our terrific driver,  about an hour to get us to Memphis, the capital of Egypt's Old Kingdom.

We visited a small museum with a big statue of Ramesses II, who ruled ancient Egypt for nearly 70 years. He's often depicted with his left foot forward, although its missing here.

Cartouches identify pharaohs who, for the most part, don't look all that different from one another in stone.  Think of them as barcodes for ancient kings!

 

Other statutes and carvings in the vicinity couldn't compare to what we were about to see over the next two weeks, although we didn't know it at the time.