👀 Of pyramids, not schemes

#20 | The many layers of the pyramids

I’ve started to resent taking trips down memory lane. Not because I loathe revisiting memories but because I can’t seem to! I was in the middle of an animated conversation about a family trip to Egypt, and I didn’t remember anything! Not one single memory. How does one visit the pyramids and not remember? Not even a vague flash of something. Did I blank out?

So I put on my archaeological robes, fired up my trusty computing engine and took myself on a dig around the Internet. You know, to jog the dodgy memory.

Did you know the first pyramids weren’t built by enslaved people but by over a hundred thousand volunteers and 30,000 skilled artisans? They were once the world’s tallest structures, but nobody came to gawp at them like they do the Burj Khalifa because, hey, no marketing bros or social media or speedy transport in the ancients! Engineers today are still trying to figure out how they were even built; some of those stones weighed more than an elephant, but as always, the Internet has some plausible theories.

The Pyramids of Giza lost out on inclusion in the Seven Wonders of the World, but then the powers that regulate such wonders caved and gave them honorary status. Shouldn’t they just increase the number of wonders to, I don’t know, maybe 10? If they did, you’d nominate this newsletter in a heartbeat, wouldn’t you?

If you gave out awards for conspiracy magnets, Egypt’s pyramids would win every prize. They have forever been the object of fascination, even before the Internet came along, from tenuous connections to a secret society to Dan Brown’s works of (cough) fiction. And they range from odd to bizarre to “ohmypharaoh what are you smoking, and where can I get some?”

So the next time I find myself in Egypt, I will pay a little more attention. And I’ll leave you with this little nugget – Egypt doesn’t have the highest number of pyramids. That honour goes to Sudan. Yup, Sudan.

Aamer