All-inclusive Tour to the Pyramids: Giza, Saqqara, and Memphis in One Day

Anyone booking an all-inclusive tour to the pyramids is usually not booking a tour to the pyramids, but a day with three stops.

The usual combination is Giza, Saqqara, Memphis. It appears in this form or similar in most full-day programs, and it is no coincidence: the three sites lie on a line south of Cairo and can be combined in a single drive. Adding up the travel times, the day is full without any rush.

What is missing from the program descriptions, however, is an honest weighting. The three stops are not equal. One carries the day, one is a solid addition, and one is for most visitors a brief stop that barely features in memory.

First, a classification of the term, because it is used very differently in the offers. "All inclusive" on these day tours almost never means that all entrance fees are included. Usually it means: transport, guide, pickup, and entry to the main site. The interiors of the pyramids and individual areas in Saqqara are charged separately, and that is exactly where misunderstandings arise.

This page says which is which, and names the alternative that rarely appears in standard packages and would be the better choice for many.

GetYourGuide

Full day with Giza, Sphinx, Saqqara, and Memphis

★ 4.7(3,527 Reviews)

• The classic combination of the three stops in one day, in a small group
• Eight hours, German-speaking guide, with hotel pickup
• Plateau entry and priority admission included, lunch as an add-on
• Free cancellation up to 24 hours before start

from 62 €

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Saqqara is the decisive stop

A day tour to Giza, Memphis, and Saqqara stands or falls with the middle stop, for a reason that has nothing to do with size.

In Saqqara stands the Step Pyramid of Djoser, the oldest monumental stone building in the world and the direct predecessor of the structures at Giza. Seeing both places on the same day shows about eighty years of architectural history side by side: first the stepped tower of stacked mastaba levels, then the geometrically closed form. This sequence explains Giza better than any tour on the plateau itself.

Added to that is something that does not exist in Giza. The mastaba tombs of the officials, above all those of Mereruka and Ti, are covered inside with colored reliefs: harvest, fishing, cattle breeding, crafts, music. In Giza you see architecture, in Saqqara you see how the people who built them lived.

One point absolutely belongs here, because it regularly leads to misunderstandings. The official overview of the antiquities administration lists not one ticket for Saqqara but several: for the Djoser Pyramid, for the Serapeum, for individual tombs, plus a comprehensive combination ticket. When a tour program mentions entry to Saqqara, it does not automatically mean that every one of these areas is included. The Serapeum, the underground complex with the sarcophagi of the Apis bulls, is the area most often missing.

The site is open according to the same overview daily from 8 am to 4 pm. That is one hour earlier closing than in Dahshur and another reason not to put Saqqara at the end of the day.

What also distinguishes Saqqara is ongoing research. Since the late 2010s, new finds have regularly come to light there, burial chambers, workshops, animal cemeteries, and parts of the site are therefore temporarily closed or newly accessible. If you are looking for a specific tomb, you should have its accessibility checked on the same day and not rely on an older description.

Memphis: expectation and reality

Memphis is the stop about which the least honest writing is done. That is because expectation and reality are far apart.

An ancient capital is expected. Memphis was for centuries the administrative center of Egypt, and the necropolises of Giza, Saqqara, and Dahshur all belonged to it. Almost nothing of it remains. The city was made of mudbrick, the Nile floods and agriculture did the rest, and what is now called Memphis is a fenced garden plot with statues.

What stands there, however, is first-class. The colossus of Ramses II lies on its back in its own hall, about ten meters long, and a walkway leads over it, so you see the face, jewelry, and musculature from two meters away. Outside stands the alabaster sphinx, over eight meters long and about ninety tons, the second largest in the country after that of Giza. Both pieces are worth the trip.

A historical addition makes the place more understandable. Memphis was not just any city, but for long stretches of the Old Kingdom the residence, and the three necropolises visited on this tour were its cemeteries. Giza, Saqqara, and Dahshur thus belong together, and Memphis is the reason. That nothing remains of the center itself and almost everything of the tombs is the punchline of the day and worth explaining to the children or fellow travelers.

The point is time. A thorough visit takes about three-quarters of an hour. In the flow of a group tour, it often gets twenty minutes, which is enough to take two photos and get back on the bus. If you want to see the Sphinx and pyramids in one day and also Memphis, you should know that the third stop is in practice the shortest.

Swap Memphis for Dahshur

Now to the alternative that rarely appears in standard packages. If you could swap one of the three destinations, swap Memphis for Dahshur.

There stand two pyramids of Sneferu, the father of Khufu: the Bent Pyramid, whose angle becomes flatter halfway up, and the Red Pyramid, the first successful geometrically pure structure of its kind. Both are accessible, and that is the decisive difference. The official overview of Dahshur lists opening hours from 8 am to 5 pm and an entrance fee that is a fraction of what the Giza plateau costs.

The reason why pyramid tours in Egypt rarely include this place is travel time. Dahshur lies furthest south, and including it lengthens the day or cuts something else. But that is exactly the calculation that pays off: half an hour more driving in exchange for the chance to enter a pyramid without a queue.

A second advantage is less obvious. In Dahshur, the two structures stand free in the desert, without a fence in sight, without the city edge behind, and without vendors. If you are looking for the image of a pyramid in empty landscape, you will find it here and not in Giza.

A note on the interior visit applies here as in Giza. The passages are narrow and must be walked bent over for long stretches, and in the Red Pyramid there is a distinct smell that visitors regularly mention. If you skip the interior in Giza for space reasons, you will skip it here for the same reasons.

GetYourGuide

Giza, Saqqara, and Dahshur in one day

★ 4.5(397 Reviews)

• Includes Dahshur instead of Memphis, i.e., the accessible pyramids instead of the brief stop
• Seven hours, German-speaking guide, with hotel pickup
• Plateau entry, priority admission, and lunch included
• Free cancellation up to 24 hours before start

from 88 €

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How to sensibly order the day

That leaves the question of how to sensibly order the day. Two sequences are common, and they differ more than it seems.

Most programs start in Giza and then drive south. This has the advantage that the main attraction comes early and in good light, and the disadvantage that Saqqara falls in the hottest time of day and attention has already suffered.

The reverse order, first Saqqara then Giza, is rarer and better for repeat visitors. You see the development in the correct chronological sequence, arrive at the plateau in the afternoon when the group buses are leaving, and have better light for photos. If you want this variant, you have to ask for it; it is hardly offered on its own.

For planning, a second note follows. The entrance to the Giza plateau, according to the official overview, explicitly does not cover the interiors of the three pyramids. So if you hope to get into the Great Pyramid of Khufu as part of the full-day package, you are planning with a service that is not included and cannot be included.

Regardless of the order, one calculation applies. Such a day consists to a considerable extent of travel time, because between the stops there are each twenty to forty minutes, plus the drive from Cairo. If you book eight hours, you rarely spend more than four to five at the sites themselves. That is not criticism, but the reason why the combination makes sense at all: driven individually, each of these stops costs its own half day.