Slightly off topic. I’ll never forget seeing "The Treasures of Tutankhamun" exhibit at the Met in NYC, 1978. I prepared for it by reading books of the king and his discovery before my ticket date. I got there as early as allowed, and I was literally the last person to be ushered out in the evening. I was enthralled. Mesmerized.

Especially by the king’s funerary mask. I gazed long at King Tutankhamun and wondered if his contemporaries were even allowed to glance upon him. Rays of gold and lapis lazuli radiated from the beautiful god-face. His obsidian pupils drew me into his eternity. The precious elements of his death mask left me in awe of the worship that he must have commanded during his short life. What could the Egyptian civilization have been like to bestow such honor, such love, such devotion to their young god-king?

The glow of the pyramid tombs that you speak of in your article were but the afterglow of the existence of a pharaoh’s life. That glow may be gone forever, but the luminosity of the Egyptian empire will forever be reflected in the blaze of King Tutankhamun golden visage.

The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome owe deference to civilization’s preeminent dominion: Egypt.