This last week seems to have dominated by Egyptian themes and it’s got me looking back to the last 2020 (BC) as opposed to looking forward to the next 2020.

My youngest daughter’s all time favourite programme ‘Primeval’ returned to our screens on Saturday night. The new episode was set in the Egyptian wing of the British Museum and it reminded me of being in awe of the Egyptian artefacts when I first saw them on a trip to the museum when I was at primary school. On a more recent trip a few years ago I remember that, aside from the architectural marvel of the Museum’s glass roof, the Egyptian wing was the undoubted highlight – as indeed have been similar exhibits in the New York Met and the Louvre.

Earlier in the week I watched a documentary which was about the theories of a French Architect who has devoted 7 years of his life since the turn of this century, using 3D software to painstakingly model how the great pyramids could have been built .

Firstly I found it staggering that the ingenuity of humans 4000 years ago, when the population of the world was equal to half the population of the UK today (around 35 million), was such that we are still trying to figure out how they did these amazing things.

Besides this architect’s ‘internal ramp’ theory (which density scans conducted in previous investigations show could well be the most feasible explanation for how massive blocks were carried to the top of the structures) the explanation for how even more massive single blocks of granite were manoeuvred into place above the main burial chambers using a complex counter weight system was even more inspiring.

Then, a couple of days ago, I settled down to open the latest National Geographic magazine and its lead article is about Hatshepsut – a woman in the Egyptian royal bloodline who decided to rule as a King rather than as a Queen.
Aside from this quirk that has fascinated archaeologists for years and led to a ‘Indiana Jones’ type quest to locate her Mummy (which was finally discovered a couple of years ago and confirmed her gender) Hatshepsut was responsible for many architectural wonders including his/her temple at Deir el-Bahri. This location has become notorious for the terrorist attack on tourists in 1997 when 62 people were massacred but aside from this bloody recent history, the architectural beauty of the structure would not look out of place in the modern world 4000 years on.