You’ve missed history’s largest and most enduring stimulus; the building of the Egyptian pyramids.

There’s a great example of an expansion plan, that doubtless brought immediate returns; especially to the whip, chain, stone mason and divinity enterprises and those other folk specializing in afterlife talismans and charms, and off coarse the embalming chemicals trade.

But sadly no real economic benefit accrued from the actual edifice created and concocted out of the parched rock and sand.

Mores the pity, as the painful man hours devoted to the many pyramids could conceivably have been used on something worthwhile; say redirect the Nile waters into the barren desert, or perhaps a channel/canal between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

Such a pity…

Yet ultimately and doubtless unexpectedly a vibrant tourist industry was spawned!

Though across a 3000 year time scale, can you imagine the math involved discounting future cash flows, betwixt a mind numbing currency translation of the then copper/silver ‘deben’ to the modern Egyptian pound – considering that the mud and clay tablet was the spreadsheet of the day …