Plans to rebuild one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Pharos Lighthouse, have been approved by Egyptian authorities. The feat of ancient engineering, which is also known as the Lighthouse of Alexandria, was completed around 280BC, and is estimated to have been 130 meters high. The plan is to rebuild the lighthouse a few meters away from where it once stood in the coastal city of Alexandria, as the original location is now occupied by the Qaitbay Citadel, the Cairo Post reports. Egypt's permanent committee on antiquities has approved the proposal and now it's just down to the Alexandria's regional government to sign-off on it, according to Dr. Mostafa Amin, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The Pharos Lighthouse was one of the most famous structures of the ancient world. "The original building comprised three stages: a lower square section with a central core, a middle octagonal section and a circular section at its top," archaeology professor Fathy Khourshid tells the Cairo Post. It guided ships using a mirror during the daytime, and a fire at night. The lighthouse suffered damage during a series of earthquakes and is believed to have been destroyed by one in the early 14th Century.

The oldest pyramid in Egypt, the Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, is being destroyed by the very company the Egyptian government has hired to restore it. The roughly 4.600-year-old structure has been in trouble since an earthquake hit the region in 1992, but in a difficult political and economic climate for the country, those now tasked with preserving the pyramid are doing more harm than good. Egyptian activists claim the company, Shurbagy, doesn't even have the necessary experience to be undertaking the work in the first place, and they have launched a campaign against the Minister of Antiquities, Mamdouh al-Damaty, claiming a "full-fledged crime" has been committed. The crime in question is the breach of building regulations related to the restoration of ancient structures. Amir Gamal, a representative of the 'Non-stop Robberies' movement, states: "Technically, the company and officials of the Supreme Council of Antiquities committed a full-fledged crime. New walls were built outside the pyramid as if the pyramid were a modern construction, which is opposite to international standards of restoration, which prevents adding more than 5 percent of construction to antiquities if necessary." Furthermore, the additions are putting pressure on the structure, putting it at risk of collapse. The limestone step pyramid was originally 62 meters high. Inside is a network of corridors, as well as a granite and marble burial chamber. When the earthquake struck in 1992, large quantities of stone rained down into the center of the pyramid, creating a void at the top and the pyramid was in danger of total collapse. At that time, archaeologist Peter James's company installed an internally supported PVC balloon-like structure, which was inflated and filled with water to support the pyramid from within. In time it was hoped that the stone would be reinforced with steel rods to restore the building to its previous profile. But funding ran out, then political instability set in. In October 2012, the Ministry of Antiquities announced work had stopped on the site because they were unable to pay contractors. Work has since resumed under the responsibility of Shurbagy, but the company has already been responsible for the "major deterioration and collapse" of a whole section of the pyramid. The company has also not completed any one of the six previous construction contracts they have committed to in the last nine years. Adds Gamal, "The company has never restored any archaeological site. All projects it had were to create modern construction at archaeological sites." The pyramid and the Saqqara complex were designed by the engineer-architect Imhotep, and are beleived to be the world's oldest cut stone monuments. With the stepped Pyramid of Djoser marking the turning point from flat-roofed construction to the age of the pyramids in Egypt, it is a tragedy that such an important archaeological legacy could be destroyed by incompetence and lack of adequate funding.

China is famous for its "duplitecture," but one recent example, a larger-than-life-sized replica of the Sphinx, outraged Egypt so much that it called on UNESCO to issue a cultural cease and desist. The structure will now be demolished. The fake Sphinx was built in a cultural park in Shijiazhuang, in China's northern Hebei province, and reportedly took only a couple of months to construct. It's about 30 meters high and 80 meters long, and built out of steel-reinforced cement. A park spokesperson says the Sphinx was only built as a movie props and was always intended to be temporary anyway. Temporary or not, the fake Sphinx certainly drew a crowd, with street food vendors popping up around it to take advantage of the tourist trade. However, Egyp's minister of antiquities, Mohammed Ibrahim, said the replica Sphinx contravened UNESCO's 1972 Convention and is "a violation of Egypt's rights to its cultural heritage and a bad imitation that disfigures the original." Ouch! The park's spokesperson counters that "We did not use it for commercial purposes and did not charge fees from visitors, nor do we intend to make it a tourist attraction," but the park has agreed to dismantle the structure anyway and regrets the misunderstanding. Anyone knows that China is famous for its duplitecture. But did you know that there's a faux Eiffel Tower in China, as well as an entire copy of the city of Venice, complete with gondola-lined canals? In the past few years, builders in China have replicated world-famous buildings and landmarks at a remarkable pace - from the world's first cloned Austrian mountain village to reproductions of the White House, entire English villages and even new architect designs that haven't been built yet, like Zaha Hadid's Wangjing Soho complex. Recently Officials in a Beijing suburb have sidestepped President Xi Jinping's crackdown on government waste by building themselves a lavish office complex reminiscent of the Kremlin. Mentougou, a largely rural district in western Beijing with some 270 thousand residents, is now home to a group of government buildings with onion-shaped golden crowns, arched windows and white walls similar to the Cathedral of Annunciation, the five-century-old Russian Orthodox Church located inside the Kremlin in Moscow. In 2007 Chinese architects copied the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the famous fountain in the gardens of the Palace of Versaille to make their own version of the French capital. Famous buildings and Parisienne style gardens are surrounded by rows of European-style villas in a special gated community called Tianducheng just outside Shanghai. Tianducheng's Eiffel Tower is 108 meters high. China has pulled off a feat that no other country would even dream of achieving: a cloned village. Every detail of the original Hallstatt village, a UNESCO protected heritage gem in Austria, has been copied in a replica situated one hour outside of Huizhou in Guangdong Province. China Minmetals Corporation announced their US$ 940 million plan to re-create the secluded hamlet in June, 2011, and just one year later in 2012, the place opened to visitors. Architect Zaha Hadid's Wangjing Soho complex in China has been praised by designers around the world. The design is so beloved that another developer in Chongqing is ripping it off! Designs of the three-building complex were released in 2011 and construction is already underway, but that hasn't stopped the rival developers from moving forward on a two-building version. Called the Meiquan 22nd Century, the design was clearly lifted from Hadid's plans, and now the two sites are racing to complete construction first. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but Zaha Hadid may not agree with this pirated project. Her original design is a complex of three pebble-shaped curvilinear volumes, in true Hadid signature style. The Meiquan complex, although only having two buildings, is unmistakably similar to the Hadid project, and comes close to a direct copy.