The oldest inscribed papyrus is a logbook of stone deliveries for the Great Pyramid.
Inspector Merer noted how his crew shipped limestone from Tura to Giza by boat; the papyri turned up on the Red Sea coast in 2013.
The events
- The Diary of Mererc. 2560 BC · Wadi al-Jarf, Egypt. Found on the Red Sea coast in 2013, the papyri of inspector Merer are the oldest inscribed papyri known, from Khufu's 26th year. Day by day, Merer logged how his crew shipped white limestone by boat from the Tura quarries to Giza, where the Great Pyramid was rising.
- Great Pyramid of Gizac. 2560 BC · Giza. The Great Pyramid, built for Pharaoh Khufu at Giza, rose about 146 metres high. It remained the tallest human-made structure for nearly four millennia and is the only surviving Wonder of the Ancient World.
More amazing facts
- 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 Great Pyramid was not built by slaves.
- 2560 BC · 1323 BC · 30 BC Tutankhamun lived almost exactly halfway between the Great Pyramid and Cleopatra: he died about 1,240 years after the pyramid was built and about 1,290 years before Cleopatra.
- 2560 BC · 196 BC The Rosetta Stone is closer in time to us than to the Great Pyramid.
- 2560 BC · 1798 "Soldiers, forty centuries look down upon you" — Napoleon actually undersold it. In 1798 the Great Pyramid was already about 4,360 years old: nearly 44 centuries.