Pyramid of Meidum belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 2610 BCE at Meidum, Egypt. The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
A step pyramid converted into a true pyramid shed its outer mantle, leaving a tower in a rubble skirt.
How it was made
Sneferu likely inherited and restyled it. The collapse is a textbook on casing angle and foundation.
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.
From a distance it looks like a ruined keep. It is actually a lesson that Giza later passed.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 2610 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 23 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.