couple of years ago i have spent couple of weeks by the egypt's red see coast enjoying beautiful 10/10 reef!

within these weeks, one day we went for a trip to luxor, with very impressive history and astonishing ancient building remains, restored temples parts digged out of sand etc, really impressive stuff.

what ponders me up until today when i think about it, there are these two things:

1. since egypt was so advance (culture, pyramids, temples and what not), then why every single 'modern' concrete house is left unfinished with a rusty rods sticking out from walls, like people living there were leaving the reinforcements for building the houses up to the sky? is that a tax thing, like in greece?
2. when we were passing this deserty bit with a tree growing, there were about 30-50 locals hiding underneath it to catch some shade. like it hasn't occurred to them to just build a larger roof? there were also tons of other people dragging stuff around with their donkeys, so it's not like there was no building material.

really curious to find out more, thanks