[bananamogul]

"The year 2024 is closer in time to Cleopatra than the Egyptian queen’s life was to the construction of the pyramids."

It's truly astonishing how old Egypt is. The sphinx is 4500 years old! I listened to Bob Brier's course on ancient Egypt (from TGC) and it was mind-blowing.

[kitd]

Indeed, Stonehenge is not much older. But given that, in human history, Egypt has always been an island of fertile land in a sea of desert, it's not so surprising that the area has persisted as a separate political, social and cultural entity, even when remembering that in fact it has constituted multiple kingdoms and dynasties over its history.

Egypt's greatest legacy is that its early history was so spectacular, and evidence of that is so visible today.

[warumdarum]

Visit it before the brotherhood takes over and starts blowing up "heathen monuments" like the taliban or isis.

[inigyou]

What you're talking about already happened. The pyramids of Giza used to be encased in a smooth layer of white marble. One out of many ways we know this is that when the ancient Greeks visited them, they wrote about it.

But just a few hundred years ago the near ancestors of the people who live in Cairo right now decided to steal the marble casing, and that's why the pyramids are now jagged granite.