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Facts About Ancient Egypt They Didn’t Teach In School

Khalid Elhassan October 29, 2023 31 min

Egyptian - The Great Pyramids of Giza, as they would have looked when newly built — The Great Pyramids of Giza, as they would have looked when newly built. Quora

Cleopatra is Closer to Us than She Was to When the Great Pyramids Were Built

As seen above, the civilization of ancient Egypt is so old, that woolly mammoths were still around when the Great Pyramids were built. It also lasted for a seriously long time, from before when the Great Pyramids were built, to the annexation of Egypt by the Romans, circa 30 BC. To put into perspective just how long that was, consider this: we are closer in time to one of Ancient Egypt’s most famous queens, Cleopatra, than she was to the Great Pyramids.

Fewer years separate us from Cleopatra (69 – 30 BC), than separate Cleopatra from the Pyramids. Cleopatra famously committed suicide in 30 BC, or 2053 years ago at the time of this writing in 2023. The Great Pyramid of Giza was built around 2580 BC, about 2510 years before Cleopatra was born. So in 2023 Cleopatra is roughly 457 years closer to us than she was to the construction of the Great Pyramid. And the Great Pyramid was not built at the start of the ancient Egyptian civilization, but more than five centuries after it began, sometime around 3150 BC.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.