4. There is Historical Graffiti Scratched onto the Temple of Dendur’s Walls

A side view of the Temple of Dendur where you can see the sloping granite platform meant to mimic the Egyptian hillside it once stood on.

There are three different graffiti marks that were made on the temple walls over a period of a few thousand years, reports a New York Times article. The first, a few words scrawled in colloquial Egyptian script, dates to 10 BCE, just 5 years after the temple’s completion. Then in 400 CE, a few Greek Coptic Christian inscriptions were made while the temple was briefly converted into a Christian church. 

The final graffiti marks that made it onto the temple’s walls came from 19th-century travelers who felt like chiseling their names into the sandstone. So somewhere on Dendur’s ancient walls, you can find a permanently etched “Leonardo 1820” (among other inscriptions).