Charles Rigano remembers the moment in 1970 that his fascination for Ancient Egypt started. At work, someone left a book about the Great Pyramid sitting on a desk. He casually picked it up and leafed through the pages...and was immediately absorbed by the subject. That moment led to a lifetime of study and fascination with Egyptology. His interest focused from the full 3,000-year Ancient Egyptian history to architecture during the 500-year long Old Kingdom; the time when a newly unified Egypt made its first mark on history. This was also a time when the full resources of an ancient civilization were harnessed to build enormous mortuary complexes and the pyramids. Through his on-site study of the ancient sites and the discoveries of modern Egyptologists, he developed new insights about the old monuments. He has authored a number of articles about the Old Kingdom, and he made all of them available on-line. Many contemporary authors focus only on the early sites and consider what might have been possible. Charles Rigano focuses on the archaeological record to see where it leads him. This was his approach to his first book, "Pyramids of the Giza Plateau" and his new book “Pyramids of Snefru.” The result was not a re-hash of pre-conceived, old ideas but new insights into the history of the ancient world which he often says surprised him.
