Karnak Temple of Amun-Ra belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 2000 BCE at Thebes (Luxor). The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
For two millennia, pharaohs added pylons, hypostyle halls, and obelisks until Karnak became a city of gods rather than a single shrine.
How it was made
Seti I and Ramesses II’s hypostyle hall still holds 134 columns. Some papyrus-bud capitals could hide a dozen people on the abacus.
Why it still counts as a wonder
It never needed a Greek list to be a wonder: the labour, the alignment, or the survival is enough.
It is less a ruin than a palimpsest of New Kingdom piety, still aligned to the Nile and to the winter sun.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 2000 BCE may have been founded earlier, rebuilt later, or famous only in one phase. Where ancient writers disagree — as they do for Babylon’s gardens — we say so.
This is story 13 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.