The Rosetta Stone is closer in time to us than to the Great Pyramid.
It was carved in 196 BC, some 2,360 years after the pyramid was built and about 2,200 years before today.
The events
- The Memphis decree of the Rosetta Stone196 BC · Memphis, Egypt. A synod of Egyptian priests at Memphis issued a decree honouring the young king Ptolemy V in hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek. One copy, carved on a stele, was found by French soldiers near Rosetta in 1799. By comparing the texts, Jean-François Champollion deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs in 1822.
- 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.
26th century BC · 2nd century BC
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 oldest inscribed papyrus is a logbook of stone deliveries for the Great Pyramid.
- 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 · 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.