One of Egypt's first smooth-sided pyramids came out 'bent'. At a height of 47 metres, Sneferu's builders changed the slope from 54° to 43°, probably fearing collapse, creating the Bent Pyramid of Dahshur.

2600 BC

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The event

• Step Pyramid of Djoserc. 2670 BC · Saqqara. The architect Imhotep built a six-stepped pyramid at Saqqara for Pharaoh Djoser. It is the earliest monumental building made entirely of cut stone and the prototype for all later Egyptian pyramids.

26th century BC

More amazing facts

• 2600 BC · 2560 BC The Peruvian city of Caral, with its stepped pyramids, flourished in the same age as Egypt's pyramids — more than 4,000 years before the Incas.
• 2600 BC One of Stonehenge's stones seems to have come from Scotland, nearly 700 km away.
• 2600 BC · 1950 A board game invented in Mesopotamia 4,500 years ago was still played in the mid-20th century.
• 2560 BC · 2000 BC When the Great Pyramid of Giza was built, woolly mammoths still lived on Wrangel Island — the last of them died out only around 2000 BC.
• 2560 BC · 31 BC · 1969 Cleopatra (born 69 BC) lived closer in time to the Moon landing (about 2,040 years) than to the building of the Great Pyramid (about 2,490 years).
• 2560 BC The oldest inscribed papyrus is a logbook of stone deliveries for the Great Pyramid.

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