379
It's crazy that even on the centuries old photo on the top, Cairo in the background was already that developed!
I didn't know they had such nice cameras either. Really ahead of their time those caironians.
This gave me a much needed giggle. Thanks!
Imagine being the first person to realize that the Empire is dead and you can just fucking climb up there with your buddies and take that gold cap lol.
China has successfully killed the wither and now has the resources necessary to activate a beacon
I think castles in Europe are similar. They used to have plastered, white washed facades. Over time they wore down, giving way to the raw stone look most of us associate with castles.
Classical statues too
Right! Those white Greek marble busts used to be fully painted. But we only think of them as plain white sculptures.
Anyone else feel like we should restore it to it's former glory?
Man, the aliens were sure good at building these
Remember the Great Pyramid of Giza? This is it today. Feel old yet?
These stones were mostly removed from the great pyramid just 700 years ago. After an earthquake people began removing them for a few centuries to build other things until they were all gone. The great pyramid had its casing stones for 85% of its life.
Edit: I highly recommend "history for granite" on youtube.
its amazing how we look at historical constructions and assume thats always how it looked.
You are right, The Pyramids used to be shining white beacons of marble, but the stone was.. "repurposed" for building after the end of the pharos.
Medieval castles too, all anyone sees today are grey, bare rock, dingy, cold, drafty castles.. But when they were new? before photographs and film? They were plastered white, and filled with rugs and tapestries that made them beautiful, stunning, and warm.
There's quite a few Reconstruction Castles, newly built castles that have tried to be as historically accurate as possible
So you don't have to imagine, you can actually visit a (reconstruction of based on evidence of the time) living piece of ancient history
Never been in the "we" category here, it's just so obvious that ruins of any kind and even just old-ish (like within 200 years) buildings rarely look like they were supposed to. It's disturbing and sad that most people can't seem to realise that by themselves.
When kids were shown the white marble buildings in ancient Rome on TV and history books and whatnot, and then end up thinking that's how it was, instead of with colourful paint - if that is disturbing to you, you must have been a rather recent arrival on earth, no?
Thanks for the additional insight!
I see, another wirtual viewer /s
And green/greener lands, as far as I know.
No but shockingly close. The pyramids were built starting around 2630 BCE. But the African Humid Period ended about 5000-6000 years ago, so about 2974 BCE on the near end.
About 350 years is shockingly close. That's about the length of the Ptolmaic dynasty. That's Isaac Newton being active to today. Not recent by any means, but that's "we still know about this" time scales
I think one of the purposes of the pyramids was to be a sort of ancient beacon. The stone reflected the sun and moonlight, making it pretty tough to get lost. In the days of no GPS or electricity, I'm sure this was of great importance.
Have you ever been playing Minecraft and wandered too far from base before building a bed and just had to abandon that base until you find it by accident later? Imagine that IRL and you can't just build a new base real quick
Feels quite secondary to the "I have the biggest" contest that we saw later with cathedrals and now skyscrapers.
I think they just wanted to build a giant titty.
The original original Tomb Raider
I think one of the purposes of the pyramids was to be a sort of ancient beacon.
Aliens needed to know where to land.
From what I understand the polished limestone is accurate for many pyramids, but the gold pyramidion seems to be more of an edge case on some smaller pyramids.
A gold top wouldn’t even be visible from the ground on a large polished white pyramid.
A gold top wouldn’t even be visible from the ground on a large polished white pyramid.
The point of pyramids was of religious nature, it was to be closer to the sky and allow dead pharaohs to go in their version of the after life so it's likely that the gold wasn't to be pretty but for a religious something
Also, i wonder if it was a gold alloy and not pure gold
You are close but gold is conductive. And souls are capable of traveling through such conduits. Especially gold. It is a direct conduit into the sky where they can go back to doppelpopulous to worship Queen doppelpopolis of the doppelgangers.
Why not both?
If it was for religious reasons they would definitely use pure gold
Just looked on wikipedia and they say
"... and were sometimes covered with plates of copper, gold or electrum."
(electrum is an alloy of gold and silver IIRC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramidion
Which makes a lot of sense, gold was and is very expensive
"Plates of" especially makes sense. And you do recall correctly, electrum is a natural alloy, which means they wouldn't have had to create it from scratch.
I remember the signs there and museum did tell that the great pyramids also had golden Pyramidions.
If it was capped in gold, dusk and dawn could have been very pretty.
I believe it’s generally accepted that they were usually capped with electrum, not gold. Electrum is a naturally occurring alloy of mostly gold and silver, with some copper or platinum and other metals.
It looks like gold though
Though given that the white columns and statues of ancient Greece were originally painted in bright colours, can we be sure that wasn’t also the case for the pyramids, at least while the civilisation that built them was maintaining them?
I'm pretty sure, with all the pyramids there are, there'd be some evidence or residue if this were the case. It'd also be an absolute shitload of paint. There would probably be archeological evidence for massive paint making in the region. They did paint stones, but I don't think they painted the outside of the pyramids.
Yup, learned this from Assassin's Creed.
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026
379 points (100.0% liked)
interestingasfuck
9428 readers
669 users here now
For exceptionally interesting content
Rules:
- Posts must be interesting
- Posts must be based in reality
- No hateful content
- No harmful content
- Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS