ancient egypt
Herodotos was definitely right about the staggering number of ancient monuments to be found in Egypt. What's even more mindboggling is how well they are preserved, surviving millennia of sand and sun, robbers and tourists, often with their original colors intact.
Here's a quick tour of some of the most impressive sites, following the Nile from Cairo to Lake Nasser. Starting, of course, with the iconic Pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx with its vandalized nose, built sometime in the third millennium BC.
Moving south to Luxor, the former "hundred-gated" Thebes, with its ruins of the vast temple complex of Karnak (seen by day) and Luxor Temple (seen by night), both from the second millennium BC.
On Luxor's West Bank, the Valley of the Kings contains some of the most awesome of all ancient Egyptian monuments: the exquisitely decorated pharaonic tombs. Unfortunately no photos of their interiors; the Theban Mapping Project is a great source of info and images.
Further south, nearing the Sudanese border, the temples of Abu Simbel provide another awe-inspiring site. These temples, along with the entire mountain they're carved out of, were relocated in the 1960's to prevent them from being submerged in Lake Nasser. They now guard the lake instead of the desert.
