Ttc Queen History

Ancient Egyptian civilization is so grand that our minds sometimes have difficulty adjusting to it. Consider time. Ancient Egyptian civilization lasted 3,000 years, longer than any other on the planet. When the young pharaoh Tutankhamen ruled Egypt, the pyramids of Giza had already been standing well over 1,000 years. When Cleopatra came to power, Tutankhamen had been in his tomb more than 1,000 years.

The Crusades have been hailed as the driving force that brought Western Europe out of the Middle Ages—and condemned as the beginning of European imperialism in the Muslim Near East. But what really were the Crusades? What were the forces that led to one of history's most protracted and legendary periods of conflict? How did they affect the three great civilizations that participated in them? And, ultimately, why did they end and what did they accomplish?

Stonehenge. Machu Picchu. The Acropolis. The Great Pyramids at Giza. Sites such as these have captivated the world for centuries—even millennia—since their creation. They are works of great beauty whose construction required spectacular feats of engineering, involved the efforts of hundreds of thousands of individuals, and incurred a tremendous financial cost on the civilizations that created them.