Assassin's Creed Origins: Bayek's Egypt

The story begins under the Temple of Amun at Siwa, where the masked men drag Bayek and his son Khemu to a sealed vault and order him to open it; in the struggle Bayek accidentally kills his own son. The real temple housed the most famous oracle of the ancient world. Greeks called its god Zeus Ammon, and in 331 BC Alexander the Great crossed the desert to consult it; his historians claimed it confirmed him as a god and the rightful pharaoh. Fragments of the temple, with inscriptions from the 4th century BC, survive on the rock of Aghurmi.

Location precision: The pin marks the ruins of Aghurmi, where the remains of the oracle temple stand.

Visitor guidance: Siwa is a long day's drive from Alexandria via Marsa Matruh; the Aghurmi ruins and Cleopatra's Spring are a few kilometres from the town.

In Alexandria Bayek is introduced to the exiled Cleopatra by her loyal follower Apollodorus, and later helps smuggle her into the palace to meet Caesar rolled in a carpet. That scene comes from history: in 48 BC Apollodorus is said to have carried the queen past her brother's guards hidden in a bundle. The game rebuilds the Ptolemaic capital with its Library and the Pharos lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders. Almost nothing of that city stands today; the Citadel of Qaitbay, a fortress of the 1470s, stands on the island where the lighthouse rose.

Location precision: The palace and the Library are lost; the pin marks the Citadel of Qaitbay on the site of the Pharos.

Visitor guidance: The citadel is at the tip of the Eastern Harbour, a walk along the Corniche from the modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

By Bayek's time the pyramids were already 2,500 years old, the same distance in time that separates him from us. In the game the Great Pyramid can be climbed and its passages explored, and the plateau is one of the open world's landmarks. The real Great Pyramid was built for the pharaoh Khufu around 2600 BC from about 2.3 million blocks. At 146.6 metres it was the tallest structure made by humans for more than 3,700 years, and it is the only one of the Seven Wonders still largely standing.

Visitor guidance: Separate tickets admit visitors inside the Great Pyramid; arrive at opening time to avoid the heat and the crowds.

Memphis is the game's second great city, rebuilt larger than life around the vast temple of Ptah, its streets crowded with priests, pilgrims and market stalls. For three thousand years it was one of Egypt's capitals, founded by legend by King Menes, and its temple of Ptah was one of the three greatest in the country. Little of the city survived: its ruins lie among palm groves around the village of Mit Rahina, and with the nearby pyramid fields they form a World Heritage Site.

Location precision: The game's Memphis is a reconstruction; the pin marks the open-air museum at Mit Rahina.

Visitor guidance: The open-air museum at Mit Rahina shows a fallen colossus of Ramesses II and an alabaster sphinx; Saqqara is a short drive away.

Aya sails to win the Roman general Pompey as an ally, but she and Bayek find him already murdered by Lucius Septimius, a Roman in Ptolemy's service and a member of the Order. The murder is history. Beaten by Caesar in Greece, Pompey fled to Egypt and on 28 September 48 BC came ashore at Pelusium to meet Ptolemy's envoys; Septimius, a former comrade, killed him as he stepped ashore. His head was kept to show Caesar. Pelusium, at the eastern edge of the Nile Delta, is now the ruin field of Tell el-Farama.

Location precision: The exact landing place is unknown; the pin marks the ruins of Pelusium.

Bayek tracks the Order's leader, Flavius Metellus, west to Cyrene, where Flavius has used a powerful artefact to enslave the city's will, and kills him at last, avenging Khemu. Cyrene was real and rich: a Greek colony founded by settlers from Thera (Santorini) in the late 7th century BC, it grew wealthy exporting horses and silphium, a prized medicinal plant that seems to have died out in Roman times. Its temples, theatres and baths on a ridge of the Jebel Akhdar are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In the epilogue Aya joins the conspiracy of Brutus and Cassius in Rome and strikes the first blow against Caesar in the Senate, then takes the name Amunet. In history Caesar was stabbed to death on 15 March 44 BC in the Curia of Pompey, a meeting hall at the end of the theatre complex built by his old rival. Its remains were found when the square of Largo di Torre Argentina was cleared in the 1920s, together with four Republican temples; the spot where Caesar is believed to have died lies inside the sunken site.

Visitor guidance: The sunken ruins are in the middle of the square and can be seen from the street; walkways have been built so visitors can go down among them.