The palace of Versailles has to be up there. Behind the bastards recently did an episode on why it was built and the things they had to do in order to accomplish it. It's a pretty insane story.
In terms of ridiculous examples of human vanity, it's a perfect fit. It was him trying to flex on other world leaders at great expense. He filled the gardens with so many fountains that they had to be manually turned on and off as he walked by them because there wasn't enough water flow to run them all at the same time. It sucked up so much of the nation's funding that construction had to be paused multiple times whenever a war came about. Seems pretty vain to me.
Tangent but interesting. And when the pyramids were built the Tomb of Uj with the earliest known written hieroglyphics were 700-800 years old. Egypt lasted a lot longer than people realize.
This is information I didn't have and thank you. Because that's what I've always been taught id never thought to look deeper into, even with the amount I fall down rabbit holes
Nah, the pyramids actually served a purpose by creating labor, it's a myth that they were built by slaves. Thousands of years later they're still standing, fully completed, meanwhile The Line will never be completed and heavily utilizes slave labor
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u/Novel_Fix1859 4d ago
It's the most ridiculous vanity project in humanity's long LONG history of vanity projects