Good question! First, before trying to answer your question I will have to go into some detail why exactly these religious sites are so important for us.

Indeed, it seems that often the first associations people have when it comes to egyptian ancient history the pyramids of Giza, Abu Simbel, the valley of kings, the Sphinx or – less common – the Ramesseum or the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the latter often associated with a more greek Egypt rather than being of „true“ egyptian origin. Most of these buildings are associated with some form of religious practices, the entombing of pharaos or other important people or worsphipping.

Pyramids have been in the focus of the public for generations. The Napoleon Anecdotes by William Henry Ireland published in 1822 tell the story that Napoleon Bonaparte spent one night inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. While fiction, this story already indicates the impression the pyramids had on society – or at least the parts that had the time and money to employ themselves with such trivial things as history.

Even in times that seem ancient to us already there was a fascination with Egyptian buildings. The pyramid of Cestius, built in Rome in the second decade BC with a tomb inside definitely is an indicator for this. While not entirely proven that Cestius had it modelled after the egyptian pyramids, it is likely. In 38 AD Nero had an egyptian obelisk erected in Circus Caligula. While not inscripted and thus not able to give us further information, it is remarkable that the Romans bothered so much to bring it to Rome – according to Pliny the elder they transported the obelisk on a ship that was as long as one side of Ostia, the harbour of Rome.

Why do historians focus so much on pyramids, temples and other places associated with religion? To put it short: There are barely any places so filled with information about ancient egypt. If you take a look at other major buildings of other cultures, such as the stelae in Aksum, todays Ethiopia and Eritrea, you can see how extraordinare these places of worshipping are for us. While the stelae give us some insight into religious practices in the Aksumite kingdom before the christianization through Frumentius and Ezana, they dont give us such a detailed look into Aksumite culture and daily life such as the egyptian wonders.

The inscriptions inside the pyramids and temples are where a lot of information about ancient egypt come from. They give us a wide range of information about both major traditions such as religious practices or the course of wars and also about smaller details such as usage of ships or the technique of plowing. Furthermore it’s not the case that we have deciphered everything in the already known sites, as you may or may not know, excavations take a very long time, and deciphering hieroglyphs is not an easy task either.

In 2018 we were able to finally make sure where the ancient land of Punt was located, a trading partner of Egypt. while early scholars put Punt in various places across the hemisphere, the Arabian peninsula or even Sri Lanka. The Polish Academia of Sciences presented evidence that this land was indeed located in Africa, due to inscriptions in the temple of Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahari. The inscriptions described an egyptian trade mission with Punt, and the depicted secretary bird that they were able to bring home is native to the African savannah, but there is no evidence it was ever present in Arabia or Sri Lanka.

Well, I have talked long enough about something related to your question but have not answered your original question. I will get to that now. Apologies, I wanted to make sure that you are aware of the importante of the religious sites for todays understanding of Egyptian society and that there’s more to them than simply impressive and cool looking stone blocks. That our interest in these buildings is not only limited to their importance for religious purposes and the depiction of the realm of the dead, but we can extract information of vast range.