Tuesday morning before flying back to Cairo, we visited the Coptic Orthodox Christian Church in Aswan, the second largest Coptic Church in Egypt and Africa.  Its sanctuary had just been remodeled, and the woodwork was beautiful.  Unique to the Coptic church are its 3 altars, each dedicated to a different saint.  Normally one altar is dedicated to Apostle Mark who introduced Christianity into Egypt in the 1st century, and hence is considered the founder of the Coptic church; one is dedicated to the church�s patron saint (in this church St. Michael); and one is usually dedicated to one of the evangelists, typically either St. Paul or St. Anthony.  During our visit to Egypt, it�s been amazing to see the parallels between the ancient Egyptian religion and Christianity, probably explaining the ease at which Egypt was converted to Christianity.  A few examples are the Egyptians� key of life and their belief in an afterlife, plus the magical conception of Horus by Isis.  Today, 10% of Egypt�s population are Coptic Christians and 90% Sunni Muslims.
Wednesday was spent visiting the sites of the Old Kingdom that surrounded Cairo.  Since childhood, we had read about the three great pyramids of Egypt, but to see them up close was awe-inspiring.  To think that these pyramids were 4500 years old and built 1000 years before any of the New Kingdom temples!  In all, 107 pyramids were built in Lower Egypt, but these three situated on the Giza plateau were the biggest and in the best condition.  The oldest and largest was the Great Pyramid, the pyramid of Khufu (Cheops).  It stood 480 feet high and contained over 2,000,000 blocks of sandstone, with the average weight per block being 3 tons.  It took 32 years to build and involved around 30,000 workers.
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