A Pyramid Full of 22 Ancient Egyptian Memes to Rival the Collection at the British Museum

Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor

Nov 5, 2025 11:00 AM EST

It's been 103 years since Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered in Egypt by British archaeologists, and ever since then, the Brit's have been "finding" and returning mysterious ancient artifacts back to their little UK island for display. Like many things in the British Museum—stolen, gold-encrusted, and potentially cursed—many ancient Egyptian artifacts have a captive hold over our imagination.

If you were anything like I was as a child, you had hundreds of books about ancient Egypt and scoured endless pages about animal-headed deities, Cleopatra, and the Nile River. Often making a spectacle at the local library, these Discovery Channel books harbored a deeply ingrained fascination with this ancient culture, and much like many historians today, this enchantment stuck.

So while movies like The Mummy and Indiana Jones romanticize a career in archaeology, there is something quite special about studying the lives of the ancients. Through their hieroglyphics and cave paintings, we can read the riddles on the wall, engaging with a long-lost culture in real time. My only hope is that the humans of the future study our present-day art, aka memes, with equal fervor.