Nowadays, we put great importance on ancient artefacts from hundreds or thousands of years ago. However, how did people who lived thousands of years ago think of things that were ancient for them. For example, what did the Greeks and Romans think of the Pyramids and other ancient Egyptian structures, which by then were already thousands of years old? Did they think of them as important simply for being very old, or did they just think of them as something outdated and unimportant?
Adapted my answer to a similar question asked a while ago:
Most ancient peoples had a fairly detailed story of their own origins and prehistory, which tended to begin with the gods or with an age of super-human rulers. Ancient ruins that were poorly understood could be given a place in such stories. For example, the Greeks thought the great palaces at Mycenae and Tiryns had been built by giants in the heroic age.
Some devoted real attention to traces of their predecessors. Even in the age of Rameses II, there were already people in Egypt whose job was to study the nature and purpose of the Pyramids. Their civilization was so old that its early achievements had become a mystery to them, and they hoped to placate the gods and find ancient wisdom by restoring ancient statues and buildings.
Alternatively, they might just encounter ancient ruins in passing. There's a scene from Xenophon's Anabasis in which Greek mercenaries encounter an ancient, abandoned city in the heart of the Persian Empire. This was probably Nineveh, the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Xenophon marvels at the size and circumference of the walls, and notes that some locals have taken refuge from the invading army on the flat top of a pyramid (clearly a crumbling ziggurat).