Cleopatra lived closer to the Moon landing than to the Great Pyramid
Ancient Egypt tends to fold into a single picture: pyramids, pharaohs, Cleopatra. That picture covers an enormous stretch of time, and the dates hold a surprise.
The Great Pyramid of Giza was built for the pharaoh Khufu around 2600 BC, over about 26 years.
Cleopatra VII was born in 69 BC, or perhaps late in 70 BC, and died in August 30 BC. She was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, a dynasty founded by Ptolemy I, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great.
Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on 20 July 1969. Put the three dates side by side.
Ancient to the ancients
To Cleopatra, the pyramid was a relic of a remote past, older to her than she is to us. It was also still the tallest building anyone had made. It held that record for more than 3,700 years in all, until long after her lifetime.
Visitors from the Greek world already treated it as ancient. Herodotus wrote about it in the fifth century BC. The historian Diodorus Siculus visited Egypt between 60 and 56 BC, while Cleopatra was a child, and the geographer Strabo came around 25 BC, a few years after her death.
The comparison survives the uncertainties. Dating the pyramid is not exact, but radiocarbon dates from its mortar still put its completion more than 2,400 years before her birth. And if you count from her death in 30 BC instead, the Moon landing is still the nearer event.
It is a useful correction to how we picture the past. Antiquity was not one moment. Cleopatra lived in it, and she too looked back at the pyramids across a gulf of time.
Roughly how old was the Great Pyramid when Cleopatra was born?
Cleopatra was born about 2,500 years after the Great Pyramid was built, and about 2,040 years before Apollo 11 landed on the Moon.
