Look a little closer
Cleopatra VII lived in the first century BCE, but the Great Pyramid of Giza had been completed roughly twenty-five centuries earlier.
By contrast, fewer than two thousand years separate Cleopatra's lifetime from the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969. Our habit of grouping all of ancient Egypt into one moment hides an enormous span of time.
To Cleopatra, the pyramid builders belonged to a deep past. The comparison works because it replaces abstract dates with events whose distance is easier to feel.
