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Things You May Or May Not Have Wanted To Know About Egypt -
By Glenn Rigby
"Hey, isn't Egypt that place with the pyramid?" We've all heard questions like these a thousand times. But how do we answer them? "Yes," would suffice, but I am inclined to provide more information than needed when it is available.
Now you can, too! The next time one of your friends asks you a random question about Egypt, you can dazzle and amaze them by providing any or all of these interesting factoids.
- Egypt's capital, Cairo, is the largest city in Africa and in the Middle East.
- Egypt is the 16th most populous country in the world (76,000,000 people), and is ranked 30th in total area (386,560 square miles).
The seven wonders of the ancient world were known as:
1. The Great Pyramid of Giza
2. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
3. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia
4. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
5. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
6. The Colossus of Rhodes
7. The Lighthouse of Alexandria
- The pyramids of Egypt, the oldest of the seven wonders of the ancient world, are the only one of those wonders to survive to the present day.
- In order to deter flies from landing on him, Pepi II of Egypt always kept several naked slaves nearby whose bodies were smeared with honey.
- The boat found near the pyramid of Cheops is the oldest complete boat in the world - it is believed to be four and a half thousand years old and had been dismantled into over a thousand pieces before being buried.
- Cleopatra wasn't Egyptian, she was Greek.
- As well as preserving the bodies of their rulers, the ancient Egyptians also mummified birds and animals linked to their gods: cats, bulls, crocodiles and ibises have been found in their thousands, carefully mummified and wrapped.
- In the Middle Ages and for hundreds of years after, mummies were believed to be a powerful medicine and were ground up into powder and drunk in a potion.
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