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Luxor Temple, Egypt
First, there's this 2,000-year-old temple — celestial carvings cover every inch of its ceiling.
And that's still the original paint.
The Temple of Hathor near Luxor is one of the most immaculate temples we have, built by Cleopatra's father (Ptolemy XII) around 54 BC.
Very little daylight reaches the paintwork inside, so its blue glow never faded...
Just up the Nile is the Temple of Khnum in Esna.
Full-color reliefs of the zodiac and constellations adorn every surface, preserved for millennia beneath layers of soot. It was scraped away a few years ago, revealing this...
Further upstream, the Temple of Horus is maybe the most complete structure after the pyramids, lavished with hieroglyphs.
But it was also built in the Ptolemaic Era, right at the end of what we call Ancient Egypt — what if we go older?
There's this temple, inexplicably cut straight into the mountainside.
Ramesses II, a prolific builder, produced Abu Simbel around 1244 BC. Those rock-hewn colossi are just shorter than the Great Sphinx, 65 feet tall.
Believe it or not, the entire site was relocated piece-by-piece in 1968. Otherwise, it would've been submerged by the rising waters of Lake Nasser.
What about the best-preserved tombs?
Ramesses II built this for his beloved Queen Nefertari around 1250 BC, known as the "Sistine Chapel of Egypt". Floor-to-ceiling art accompanied her to the afterlife...
But Ramesses VI's tomb is more staggering, deep below ground in the Valley of the Kings labyrinth.
Those carvings aren't just decorative. They're an entire treatise on the creation of earth, light, the heavens — and life itself.
What about mortuary temples? The finest is probably that of Hatshepsut (c.1460 BC) — another of the great builder-pharaohs.
It can be hard to believe this is really an ancient site. Partly, that's because it isn't...
It was heavily reconstructed after being unearthed in 1893. Sometimes, entire columns or walls were made to match the foundations, or gaps in the original stone plugged with color-matched concrete.
Even older is the Karnak Temple Complex: among the world's largest religious sites, started in c.2000 BC.
The Great Pyramid took 20 years to build. Karnak was built and iterated over the course of 2000 years...
Karnak's Great Hypostyle Hall is its treasure. A forest of columns as high as 79 feet — taller than any columns the Greco-Roman world produced a thousand years later.
Older than all these are the Giza pyramids. It's sobering to be reminded just how old they are:
Cleopatra lived closer to today than to the Great Pyramid's completion — around 2550 BC.
But what about pyramids that came before Giza?
Well, you can see the progression in pyramid building in early examples. The first known one is the Step Pyramid of Djoser (c.2630 BC): a series of rectangular platforms layered above an old burial chamber.
Nearly a century later, Sneferu was the first to achieve a true pyramid. 20 miles from the Giza plateau, his Red Pyramid is shallower than its successors.
It would be up to Sneferu's son, Khufu, to take things to new heights at Giza...
With all of the colossal stone wonders of Egypt, it's important to reflect on just how impressive they are.
They cut these things from solid stone with nothing more than copper chisels and pounding stones...
Modern experiments marvel at this, showing that it takes a whole day's pounding to shift just a few inches of material. Still, this never deterred the Egyptians' love of the colossal...
They cut and carried stones that defy explanation.
Their relentless drive to build toward the heavens is the purest expression of culture rising from chaos — and it has never been topped.
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Best regards,
Mina Shohdy
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