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lendmeyoureer t1_iqvhtc5 wrote

Reply to comment by Dicho83 in Archaeologists hail ‘dream discovery’ as sarcophagus of Ptah-em-wia is unearthed near Cairo by MeatballDom

I thought I read somewhere that we are closer to the time Cleopatra was alive than she was to the building of the Pyramids.

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madchad90 t1_iqviw3d wrote

The great pyramid was built 2500 years before Cleopatra was born. The pyramid would have been considered ancient by her.

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aaronupright t1_iqvmwy6 wrote

I believe Alexander the Great is about midway between the Pyramids construction and our era.

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And I think Herodotus is almost the midpoint of recorded history.

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zsturgeon t1_iqwczzt wrote

I think the quote is that Ancient Egypt was more ancient to Romans than Romans are to us

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FlutterRaeg t1_iqwijon wrote

It's even crazier to realize they were ancient to themselves.

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Harsimaja t1_iqxn9ii wrote

Yes, it gets brought up under every Reddit post on either ancient Egypt or “facts that don’t sound true but are” or anything about bizarre time gaps.

Part of it of course is that people think Cleopatra was just like Nefertiti, rather than an ethnic Greek/Macedonian after natively-ruled Egyptian civilisation was over. Same story as the Aztec empire only being a particular civilisation in the last century and a bit before Cortes, when people assume it stands for all of (actually very ancient) broader Meso-American civilisation, and similar for the even shorter-lived Incas standing for the even longer-lived broader Andean civilisation.

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Phyzzx t1_iqywwl9 wrote

These are fun. Here's another: Tyrannosaurus lived closer to the period of the moon landings than to the period Stegosaurus lived.

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