u/wstd

The Norrmén House once stood on the exact same site in Helsinki, where the Stora Enso headquarters now stands. Built in 1897 and designed by Theodor Höijer, the grand, ornate Neo-Renaissance red-brick palace was demolished in 1960. In its place, architect Alvar Aalto designed the stark modernist corporate building completed in 1962.

Menkaure is one of my favorite pharaohs because he feels more humane than his predecessors Khufu and Khafre. While Khufu and Khafre constructed colossal pyramids, Menkaure's pyramid was much smaller. Menkaure’s art shows tender, human-scaled intimacy, which is showcased with this dyad. The queen has her arm wrapped tenderly around Menkaure's waist, showing a marital connection and physical closeness and genuine love that is virtually unprecedented before him.

Nakht, the High Steward who served under Pharaoh Senusret I during Egypt’s Middle Kingdom. As the "Great Overseer of the House", Nakht was the chief operating officer of the royal palace, holding total control over the agricultural estates and logistics required to feed and supply the royal court.

I wanted to see what J.R.R. Tolkien’s original Hobbit illustrations would look like if they were captured as photorealistic images.

Richard Lepsius: Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien: nach den Zeichnungen der von Seiner Majestät dem Koenige von Preussen, Friedrich Wilhelm IV., nach diesen Ländern gesendeten, und in den Jahren 1842–1845 ausgeführten wissenschaftlichen Expedition auf Befehl Seiner Majestät

While Pharaoh Unas (5th Dynasty) is famous for creating the first-ever "Pyramid Texts" covering the walls of his burial chamber, his architects weren’t above some recycling. Deep inside the internal masonry, archaeologists discovered that the builders reused older limestone blocks taken directly from Khufu's (4th Dynasty) complex at Giza. Because these stones were reused, the ghostly shadow impressions of Khufu's erased reliefs can still be revealed today just by lighting the wall at a shallow angle.

Amenhotep III's temple was dismantled in antiquity, and its stone blocks were reused in the foundations of another structure, which is why the origin of this relief isn't completely certain.