Cleopatra Lived Closer in Time to the Moon Landing Than to the Pyramids

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The ancient world tends to blur together in our minds as a distant, undifferentiated past — but the actual timespans involved are staggering. The Great Pyramid of Giza was completed around 2560 BC. Cleopatra VII, the last active pharaoh of ancient Egypt, was born around 69 BC and died in 30 BC. That means approximately 2,491 years separated Cleopatra from the construction of Giza's greatest monument. Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon in July 1969 AD — just about 1,999 years after Cleopatra's death. In other words, Cleopatra is nearly 500 years closer in time to the moon landing than she is to the pyramids of her own country. This counterintuitive compression of history reveals just how ancient the pyramids truly are: to Cleopatra, they were already older than ancient Rome is to us today. The same temporal trick applies to other landmarks: Oxford University was already over 200 years old when Genghis Khan was born.