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The oldest of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world is still standing — built about 4,500 years ago.
📍 Giza, Egypt — see it on the big map →
On the edge of the desert near Cairo, in Egypt, stand three giant pyramids. The biggest, the Great Pyramid, was built about 4,500 years ago as a tomb for a pharaoh named Khufu. It was made from about 2.3 million blocks of stone, some weighing as much as an elephant.
For more than 3,800 years, the Great Pyramid was the tallest building humans had ever made. It was originally covered in smooth, shining white limestone, so it would have gleamed in the desert sun like a giant jewel.
The pyramids were built by thousands of skilled workers — not slaves, as people once thought, but paid Egyptian workers who lived in a town nearby. They are the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing today, and people still visit them to wonder how they were built without modern machines.
The Great Pyramid was the tallest human-made building on Earth for more than 3,800 years.
Who was the Great Pyramid built as a tomb for?