Memphis Open-Air Museum

Memphis governed Egypt for eight dynasties and was one of the largest cities in the world for most of the third millennium BC. Almost nothing survives — the Nile shifted, the stone was quarried, and the mudbrick dissolved. What remains is a small open-air museum holding a 10-metre limestone colossus of Ramses II lying on its back in a purpose-built shelter, and a fine alabaster sphinx weighing 80 tonnes.

Founded around 3100 BC by Menes at the junction of Upper and Lower Egypt. Herodotus described it as a great city; by the Roman period it was already in decline, and by the Middle Ages it was a quarry for Cairo.