The Most Remarkable Ancient Archaeological Sites in Africa
7 places in 4 countries · updated 5 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable ancient archaeological sites in Africa are Volubilis (Morocco), Cyrene (Libya) and The Great Sphinx (Egypt). The list covers 7 ancient archaeological sites in 4 countries. Egypt has the most, with 4. Last updated 5 October 2026.
Ancient Africa produced the first monumental state in the world and then drew Greeks, Romans and Kushites into a long conversation in stone. The Nile gave Egypt a narrow, fertile corridor and a desert that preserved almost everything built beside it; upriver, the kingdom of Kush borrowed the pyramid and made it its own. Along the Mediterranean shore, Greek colonists and Roman provincials built cities that dry climates and later abandonment left remarkably intact. The result is a continent where three thousand years of antiquity can be read site by site.
The Great Sphinx at Giza was carved from the bedrock of the plateau, a lion with a king's head usually attributed to the age of Khafre. At Thebes, Karnak grew over some two thousand years into a vast temple city, its Great Hypostyle Hall a forest of 134 columns, while Luxor Temple, built largely under Amenhotep III and Ramesses II, was joined to it by an avenue of sphinxes. In Alexandria, the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, cut in the second century AD, mix Egyptian gods with Roman dress and Greek detail.
South of Egypt, the Pyramids of Meroë rise steep and narrow in clusters over the royal cemeteries of Kush. On the Libyan coast, Cyrene was founded by Greek settlers from Thera in the seventh century BC and became one of the great cities of the Greek world. Volubilis in Morocco, a Roman town at the edge of the empire, keeps its triumphal arch, basilica and floor mosaics in place on an open plain.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Volubilis | Archaeological site | Morocco | ✓ |
| 2 | Cyrene | Archaeological site | Libya | ✓ |
| 3 | The Great Sphinx | Sculpture | Egypt | |
| 4 | Luxor Temple | Archaeological site | Egypt | ✓ |
| 5 | Karnak Temple Complex | Archaeological site | Egypt | ✓ |
| 6 | Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa | Catacombs | Egypt | |
| 7 | Pyramids of Meroë | Archaeological site | Sudan | ✓ |
01 Volubilis
Morocco · 19.1 km from Meknes34.071° N 5.554° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Yolanda from Pixabay Volubilis sits on a gentle ridge below the Zerhoun massif, looking over a plain of olive groves north of Meknes, and the olive is the key to the whole place. Rome's westernmost towns rarely looked this prosperous: the city's wealth came from oil, and the remains of dozens of presses are scattered among the houses, one of them rebuilt with a full-size replica of a Roman press.
Did you know? Hebrew inscriptions show a Jewish community here in the 3rd century, the most south-westerly ancient Hebrew inscriptions ever found.
02 Cyrene
Libya · 0.7 km from Shahhat32.823° N 21.857° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Saleh Tarab · CC BY-SA 4.0 Cyrene was one of the great cities of the ancient Greek world, founded on a ridge of the Jebel Akhdar, the Green Mountain of north-eastern Libya, about 600 m above the sea. By Greek tradition settlers from the island of Thera arrived around 631 BC under Battus I at the urging of the oracle at Delphi, and the pottery found on site confirms a settlement in the mid-seventh century.
Did you know? Silphium, the herb that made Cyrene rich and appeared on most of its coins, was harvested to extinction by the end of the 1st century AD.
03 The Great Sphinx
Egypt · 6.4 km from Giza29.975° N 31.138° E
Image by Makalu from Pixabay The Great Sphinx of Giza is a lion with a human head, carved directly out of the limestone bedrock of the Giza Plateau and facing east toward the Nile Valley. It is 73 metres long from paws to tail and 20 metres high, and is the oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt.
Did you know? In the 1st century AD the Sphinx was dug out again in honour of Emperor Nero, and a stairway over 12 metres wide was built down to its paws.
04 Luxor Temple
Egypt · 1.1 km from Luxor25.700° N 32.639° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by DEZALB from Pixabay Luxor Temple rises on the east bank of the Nile in the middle of modern Luxor, ancient Thebes, and it is the one great temple of Egypt that sits inside a living town. The ancient Egyptians called it ipet resyt, the southern sanctuary.
Did you know? The temple was built of Nubian sandstone quarried at Gebel el-Silsila, upriver from Luxor.
05 Karnak Temple Complex
Egypt · 2.2 km from Luxor25.718° N 32.658° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by nadkol19 from Pixabay The Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak is large enough that Notre-Dame Cathedral would fit inside its footprint, held up by 134 sandstone columns, with the twelve tallest running down the central nave at about 21 metres high and roughly 10 metres around — big enough that a handful of people can link arms around the base of just one.
Did you know? The obelisk now in front of Rome's Lateran Palace began at Karnak around 1400 BC and was shipped to Rome by Emperor Constantius II in 357 AD.
06 Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa
Egypt · 4.5 km from Alexandria31.187° N 29.905° E
Asiatologist · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa are the largest Roman-era burial complex in Egypt and one of the strangest: a tomb where Egyptian gods wear Roman armour. Cut into the bedrock of Alexandria in the second century AD, they lay forgotten until 1900, when, as the story goes, a donkey fell through the ground into the access shaft.
Did you know? The tombs stayed in use for about two centuries, from the 2nd to the 4th century AD, before they were forgotten.
07 Pyramids of Meroë
Sudan16.935° N 33.751° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by mtorrazzina from Pixabay On a low ridge of sand east of the Nile, between the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts, stand more than two hundred pyramids in three clusters. They are nothing like the pyramids of Giza. The Nubian pyramids are small and steep, their sides rising at a sharp angle to a narrow point, and each once had a little temple-like chapel built against its eastern face, where offerings were made to the dead.
Did you know? The earliest ruler securely identified among the royal burials is King Arakamani, known to the Greeks as Ergamenes, who reigned around 280 BC.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most remarkable ancient archaeological sites in Africa?
- On our list, Volubilis (Morocco) ranks first, followed by Cyrene (Libya) and The Great Sphinx (Egypt).
- Which country has the most ancient archaeological sites in Africa?
- In our collection, the most come from Egypt (4), Libya (1) and Morocco (1).
- How old is the Great Sphinx of Giza?
- It is generally dated to the reign of the pharaoh Khafre, around 2500 BC, which makes it about 4,500 years old and one of the oldest monumental sculptures in the world.
- Are there pyramids outside Egypt?
- Yes. Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt, built by the kings and queens of Kush at Meroë, Nuri and El-Kurru. They are smaller and much steeper than the Egyptian ones.
- Why are there Roman ruins in Morocco?
- Volubilis was a city of the kingdom of Mauretania that became part of the Roman Empire in the first century AD. It flourished under Roman rule as a centre of olive oil production.
- How many ancient archaeological sites are on this list in Africa?
- The list covers 7 ancient archaeological sites in 4 countries. Egypt has the most, with 4.