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Tagged “red-granite”

• HIGH WONDER

  The Osirion at Abydos

  Why did the builders of a delicate limestone temple raise, directly behind it, a stark megalithic hall of hundred-tonne granite sunk to the water table around a stone island — and does its archaic, 'cyclopean' style really mean it is older than the New Kingdom?

  c. 1290 BCE (19th Dynasty, reign of Seti I; original date contested) · Abydos, Sohag Governorate, EgyptAdded July 2026
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  Valley Temple of Khafre

  How did Old Kingdom builders quarry, move, and raise local limestone core blocks weighing 100 tonnes and more — then sheath them in red granite cut to joints so tight, and so cleverly interlocked around the corners, that a knife blade will scarcely enter — using only copper tools, stone pounders, sledges, and earthen ramps?

  c. 2570 BCE (Fourth Dynasty, reign of Khafre) · Giza Plateau, Giza Governorate, EgyptAdded July 2026