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0:02
NARRATOR: Egypt, the richest source of archaeological treasures on the planet. MAN: Oh, wow, look at that! NARRATOR: Hidden beneath this desert landscape lie the secrets of this ancient civilization. (man speaking native language) MAN: I never seen something like this. NARRATOR: Now, for a full season of excavations, our cameras have been given unprecedented access to follow teams on the front line of archaeology. WOMAN: This is the most critical moment. NARRATOR: Revealing buried treasures.
0:42
WOMAN: Oh! MAN: We're lucky today. MAN: Wow! Lots of mummies. WOMAN: The smell is horrible. NARRATOR: And making discoveries that could rewrite ancient history. MAN: We've never had the proof until now. WOMAN: This is where it all started. MAN: My goodness, I never expected this. (clapping) NARRATOR: This time, archaeologists unravel the enigma of the Great Sphinx. MAN: It's the most iconic statue anywhere in the world. NARRATOR: John goes where no archaeologist has gone before.
1:19
JOHN WARD: I'm gonna be the first man underneath this sphinx in 3,500 years. NARRATOR: Alejandro unearths evidence of a crocodile cult. ALEJANDRO JIMÉNEZ-SERRANO: It's a challenge to explain why the crocodiles were mummified. NARRATOR: And Jared discovers a mummified dog. JARED CABALLO PEREZ: It was a complete surprise to find something that you don't really expect. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: The Great Sphinx of Giza, one of the most famous monuments in the world. Egyptologists believe it was built
2:00
around the same time as the Giza pyramids, 4,500 years ago. This colossal statue has an animal's body and a human face. It's as enigmatic as it is iconic. All over Egypt, archaeologists are attempting to unravel the riddles of the Sphinx. Egyptologist Dr. Chris Naunton is on a mission to unlock its most controversial secret: whose face is carved on it? CHRIS NAUNTON: We can begin to sort of imagine how this might have looked in ancient times, and with that in mind,
2:42
we can perhaps begin to compare that face to known faces. NARRATOR: Chris thinks the face was modeled on an ancient pharaoh. In the age of the pyramid builders, the Sphinx had a delicate nose and was painted in bright colors. But whose face is this? It could be King Khufu, who also built the Great Pyramid. He had a square chin, like the Sphinx, but no one is sure. The only image archaeologists have of Khufu is a tiny statue. The Sphinx once had a beard, just like Khufu's son, Khafre.
3:19
When Khafre became pharaoh, he built the pyramid directly behind the Sphinx. But the original beard was lost during antiquity and another one added later. The identity of the face remains a secret yet to be revealed. CHRIS: Trying to match faces in Egyptian imagery is an inexact science. It seems to be that it's a pharaoh of the fourth dynasty. Khafre's perhaps the leading candidate. NARRATOR: The usual role of an Egyptian sphinx is to protect a sacred site. If this is Khafre's sphinx,
3:57
it's perfectly positioned to guard his pyramid tomb. Chris must investigate clues to unravel more mysteries of the Great Sphinx.
4:10
400 miles south of Giza, in Gebel El-Silsila... JOHN: Everybody here? MARIA NILSSON: I believe so. We're late. NARRATOR: Husband and wife archaeologists John Ward and Maria Nilsson are on their way to investigate a site where the ancient Egyptians created sphinx statues.
4:35
But their commute along the River Nile is slow to start. JOHN: The boat's not working.
4:46
MARIA: It's coming. JOHN: Everybody send positive vibes. MARIA: Ohh. Come on, Abdullah. JOHN: By the time we get on site, it will be at least 8 o'clock, so that's another hour lost. MAN: I knew it would happen. (motor starts) MARIA: Yeah! (clapping) JOHN: Ah, only 35 minutes late. NARRATOR: Every minute counts when they only have a limited number of days for excavating. Last season, Maria and John found a sphinx statue at this site. Unlike the Great Sphinx at Giza, this statue has a ram's head.
5:25
It's called a criosphinx. MARIA: Of course, what we see is a raw state of a sculpture, but we got the head here, so the ram's face, the ram's horn. The area in front would most probably hold the statue of the ruling king. NARRATOR: The craftsmen would carve out the sandstone criosphinx right here in the quarry, before transporting it to a sacred site. MARIA: Once it reached the main destination, the artists would continue the process of making it into its fine details and final dressing.
6:08
We have them guarding tombs or other monuments. So in a simplified version, you can say that each sphinx is a guard, it's a protector. NARRATOR: Maria believes this sacred statue was built for the Avenue of the Sphinxes, a road between the temples of Luxor and Karnak, lined with ram-headed sphinxes, but for some unknown reason, it didn't make the journey. It was never finished. Now Maria wants to discover why. MARIA: Why was it left here? Why is this not sitting at the Avenue of Sphinxes
6:44
in modern day Luxor? We're hoping that through this excavation, we will be able to solve a little bit of the mystery of the sphinxes and add to history in general. NARRATOR: A large rock under the sphinx brings the investigation to a halt. JOHN: Watch your toes, guys, watch your toes. (men yelling) (men yelling) MARIA: You guys are amazing! (yelling) (cheering)
7:28
NARRATOR: Now the rock is gone, they can see there's a gap under the sphinx. MARIA: Anyone who watched Indiana Jones, I'm sure will understand the excitement for an archaeologist when you suddenly see a hole. NARRATOR: Despite the danger, John wants to get under the sphinx. JOHN: I'm gonna be the first man underneath this sphinx in 3,500 years.
7:58
NARRATOR: 40 miles south, near Aswan, at the ancient necropolis of Qubbet el-Hawa, Professor Alejandro Jiménez-Serrano heads one of the largest foreign teams working in Egypt today. ALEJANDRO: During the last 11 years we have been excavating this huge complex of tombs where the governors of the 12th dynasty were buried. NARRATOR: These burial chambers were built for the nobles governing southern Egypt, 500 years after the Sphinx was built. ALEJANDRO: We will see what we will find.
8:35
You never know what is going to happen today, what we will find, or which surprise we will have.
8:45
NARRATOR: Close to a cliff side, the team reports a skull emerging from the sand, followed by a second. The huge jaws include some teeth, two inches long. RAQUEL RODRIGUEZ: At first, we can only see this head only, and we was like, "Wow, a crocodile, a crocodile." And then something appeared here, and it was like, "Oh, my God, there are two crocodiles." NARRATOR: The crocodiles are an especially lucky find for Raquel Rodriguez. It's her first-ever dig in Egypt.
9:19
RAQUEL: I asked, "Oh, this is something common?" And it was like, no, no, no, this is the first crocodile that we've seen in 11 years. So, I'm very happy about it. NARRATOR: The crocodiles may be close to the River Nile, but this is not a natural nest. The bones have black marks; the remains of skin and flesh. They are so well preserved, Alejandro thinks they must have been mummified. ALEJANDRO: It's a challenge to explain why the crocodiles were mummified.
9:54
NARRATOR: Mummified crocodiles are an unusual find and have only ever been unearthed at a small number of sites in Egypt. They could be a sign of a rare form of animal worship. As the team slowly unearths more skeletons, they count 11 in total. And they're deteriorating; all except one. ALEJANDRO: Unfortunately, they are not in a good a state of preservation. But this one, it is almost perfect. NARRATOR: The intact crocodile is extremely fragile. They can't risk damaging it.
10:34
Before they attempt to move it, they carefully extract the surrounding bone fragments. In the midday sun, the temperature is over 90 degrees Fahrenheit. It's hot and smelly work. RAQUEL: They say that it smells gross. I'm not smelling anything because I've got a cold, but they say it smells bad. NARRATOR: Now the crocodile is exposed to the air and sun, it's rotting fast. Alejandro has to get it out of here.
11:06
NARRATOR: Raquel is working with the team tasked with moving the crocodile out of the sun. RAQUEL: It's scary, because it's been there for a lot of years, and now you take it off and you take the sand and what's covering it away, and the sun gets into it, the oxygen, everything, so it's deteriorating at each second that pass. So you need to work fast, but not rush, because things can go bad and you can destroy it completely. So, it's a tense situation.
11:40
NARRATOR: They're finally ready to move the crocodile mummy. The main challenge is moving the skeleton in one piece. ALEJANDRO: We basically are following the same protocol that we use with the human mummies. NARRATOR: The tail is not well connected to the body and could easily break off. ALEJANDRO: We are in a very delicate moment, because we want to put the mummy of the crocodile on a wooden board in order to move the mummy to the conservation lab.
12:13
I'm quite nervous now. MAN: Uno, dos, tres.
12:22
NARRATOR: 100 miles north, on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor, archaeologist Professor Miguel Molinero is returning to a 4,500-year-old necropolis near the Valley of the Kings. MIGUEL MOLINERO: My first season working in Egypt was 32 years ago. So it's like coming home every year, always fantastic. NARRATOR: Miguel's team is from Tenerife, in Spain. Last season, they excavated a family tomb at a site called South Asasif. They unearthed mummified remains,
13:03
but their dig permit ran out before they could investigate. MIGUEL: It always happens. The last day something new appears that is exciting, but has to be kept there waiting for us for the next season, and that's what happened last year. NARRATOR: 26-year-old Jared Carballo Pérez can't wait to continue their dig. JARED: Egypt is quite addictive in that sense, and it's always nice to be back, to keep doing the work. NARRATOR: After an anxious year-long wait, today is their first day back on site.
13:37
MIGUEL: We had to leave it as it was found, because we did not have the time to take it out carefully. NARRATOR: The team covered the mummies in an attempt to prevent deterioration. MIGUEL: Now we are anxious to see if the protection has worked. We have been waiting one year to see what happens inside.
14:02
NARRATOR: There's a chance they may have deteriorated over the past year. JARED: So we have to be very careful. MIGUEL: Oh, so, yeah. Oh perfect. They are well preserved. Oh yes. NARRATOR: Now they can begin their investigation. Two mummified human skeletons still intact, and a third, much smaller mummy. JARED: It was a complete surprise to find something that you don't really expect. NARRATOR: As they look closer, they notice it's been embalmed in a very strange way.
14:40
There's just one layer of bandage around the head, instead of three, and the limbs are wrapped together, not separately. But it's the shape of the skull that's most surprising. JARED: First, by the shape we thought it was a baby that was abandoned, but then we started seeing some features right there. By the teeth and the shape of the bones, we can know it's a mummified dog. NARRATOR: A mummified dog in a human tomb is highly unusual. JARED: As far as we know, it's a very rare case,
15:15
because we have found a lot of dogs across Egypt, but they are not next to the human bodies. NARRATOR: The discovery may help shed light on the significance of animals in ancient Egyptian belief. The dog could be a religious offering to a particular god. According to ancient Egyptian belief, dogs are associated with the god Anubis. The jackal-headed Anubis was the god of mummification.
15:48
He weighed the heart of the dead against a feather. If the heart was lighter, the soul could enter heaven.
16:00
But if it was heavier, they were eaten by Ammit, the devourer of the dead.
16:09
Depictions of Anubis would often be present in tombs to offer protection to the mummy.
16:17
This mummified dog could be an offering to Anubis, but there's something that doesn't add up. MIGUEL: When we started cleaning it, we found something very unusual. NARRATOR: They discover a perplexing clue in the alignment of the mummies.
16:38
NARRATOR: In Qubbet el-Hawa, archaeologists are racing to save a rare mummified crocodile. Their discovery may help demystify the ancient Egyptian practice of animal worship. Could it also help explain the purpose of animal statues, like the Great Sphinx?
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Raquel and the team carefully move the crocodile mummy to the laboratory. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ RAQUEL: We made it. We've been working for three hours and a half now in the sun, and it all came out extremely, extremely well. I wasn't expecting this success. NARRATOR: The crocodile survives its journey intact and can now be examined in more detail. Alejandro is puzzled as to why these mummified crocodiles are here. ALEJANDRO: It's something that always happens in archaeology,
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surprises that, well, it's a challenge to explain them. NARRATOR: There could be a connection with a mysterious cult that worshipped an ancient god called Sobek. ALEJANDRO: Sobek is always represented as a crocodile. It's an animal that was living on the banks of the Nile. It's related with the fertility that the river gave to ancient Egypt. NARRATOR: Sobek was the crocodile god who built the world and created the River Nile from his sweat. Ancient Egyptians feared his power,
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but also revered him as a protector and a healer. In some versions of the myth, when the god Osiris was dismembered in a fight, Sobek gathered up the body parts and put the god back together. Some wealthy Egyptians bred pet crocodiles that they adorned with jewels and fed with fine food and wine. When the crocodiles died, they were mummified and buried as votive offerings to Sobek to ensure protection in the after-life.
19:00
But the existence of a crocodile cult at Qubbet el-Hawa is news to Alejandro. ALEJANDRO: As far as we know, there is no reference to the worship of crocodiles in Aswan. NARRATOR: The discovery challenges the idea that crocodile rituals only happened in a small region of Egypt. It's further evidence that the worship of animal gods wasn't just practiced by pharaohs building sphinx statues. People all over Egypt were making offerings to different animal gods in the form of mummies.
19:37
ALEJANDRO: The popularity of Sobek was bigger than we thought before. NARRATOR: Alejandro's team looks for further evidence of a crocodile cult. If these animal mummies were protecting a human burial, a tomb could be close by.
20:04
ALEJANDRO: Two skulls have been discovered. NARRATOR: Just yards from the crocodile burial, Alejandro's team makes an intriguing discovery. ALEJANDRO: Yes! (chuckles) NARRATOR: In the quarry at Gebel El-Silsila, Maria and John are investigating a ram-headed sphinx. Like the Sphinx at Giza, it could have been built to protect a religious site. They're now looking for evidence to explain why it was abandoned unfinished. JOHN: I can't believe I'm putting my head underneath this bloody sphinx.
20:43
She's actually sat on a stone. She's ready to lift. They've quarried underneath her to put a sledge in to lift her to get her out of here. NARRATOR: John's discovery shows how the sphinx was ready to be moved. So why did the ancient Egyptians leave it here unfinished? Maria explores the surrounding area for an explanation as to why the Egyptians gave up on the protective powers of this sphinx.
21:18
MARIA: Well, we're looking for more clues. If they painted something, if they've written something, if they've given us any form of clue.
21:29
Do you see a red mark there, painted? NARRATOR: The red markings are on a nearby plinth, but they're too faint to decipher. Maria needs to get photos for close-up analysis. MARIA: I'm gonna sneak carefully behind here and try not to get the entire wall behind me, which is about four meters of spoil just packed up, try not to collapse it on top of me. So, wish me luck. NARRATOR: Maria's mission is a dangerous one. Loose rocks are piled next to the stone.
22:03
If she's unlucky, one false step could trigger a landslide.
22:12
400 miles north at the Great Sphinx, the ancient Egyptians believed many animal gods had divine powers to protect. If it was King Khafre who commissioned the Sphinx, he wanted to harness that power for himself. CHRIS: The Great Sphinx is one of the great icons of Egypt. You could argue it's perhaps the most iconic statue anywhere in the world, but it remains an enigma. NARRATOR: Chris searches for evidence of how it was built. The ancient Egyptians carved the Sphinx from limestone,
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and it's a match with the surrounding bedrock. CHRIS: The Sphinx wasn't built in an empty space. It was cut out of solid bedrock. So you have to try to imagine, where we're standing now, until the ancient Egyptians came along, was solid bedrock. NARRATOR: The Great Sphinx wasn't built with stone from remote quarries. It was carved out of the Giza landscape. CHRIS: In order to create this sphinx, the Egyptians first have to kind of free it from the natural rock,
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and they did that by creating a kind of quarry around it, and they just left some of the living, natural rock in the center, which they then cut into the shape of the sphinx. NARRATOR: Chris has discovered how the Sphinx was built, but he still wants to solve the mystery of its animal form.
23:49
NARRATOR: The Great Sphinx is a human-lion hybrid. CHRIS: Here, you get such a strong sense of the fact that it's the body of the lion that conveys that kind of sense of strength and power. From this angle in particular, the forelegs of the lion and these massive paws are absolutely huge. It's difficult to imagine a statue that has a human body having that same idea of strength and ferocity of a lion.
24:22
NARRATOR: Ancient Egyptians feared and revered lions in equal measure. CHRIS: The lion is the embodiment of a goddess, Sekhmet, who in a particular Egyptian myth wreaks death and destruction on mankind. NARRATOR: According to the myth, the sun god Ra was furious humans were turning against him. He summoned his daughter, Sekhmet, the lion-faced goddess of destruction, to teach them a lesson. Sekhmet went on a killing spree until the Nile ran red with blood.
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Ra was worried his daughter would wipe out all humanity. So he used a trick to stop her. He poured 7,000 jugs of red-tinted beer onto Earth. After Sekhmet drank it, she passed out for three days. When she woke up, she had been transformed into the benevolent god Hathor, and humankind was saved. Egyptian gods, like the sun goddess Sekhmet, are often portrayed as humans with animal heads. But the Sphinx is the other way around; a human head on a lion's body.
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Chris thinks whichever pharaoh built this statue, he had ambitions to embody the power of the divine, and present himself as a god. CHRIS: The Egyptians looked all around them, all around the natural world, for their inspiration, and that's exactly what you've got here. This great, mighty, powerful animal, the lion, as a kind of a symbol of the king and of kingship. NARRATOR: The Sphinx wasn't just a spiritual guardian. Its creator may have wanted to project himself
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as the protector of the Egyptian people. Or is there an even grander purpose for the Sphinx? Chris explores the remains of an ancient temple at the Sphinx's feet.
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300 miles south in Luxor, at a site built over 500 years after the Sphinx, Miguel and Jared are faced with another riddle. They've discovered intriguing evidence of a different animal also considered sacred by ancient Egyptians. They're trying to understand why this mummified dog was buried in a family tomb with two human mummies. JARED: The dog, curiously, has been put on top of the legs of these two individuals. NARRATOR: According to Egyptian belief,
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dogs are a living representation of Anubis, the god of the after-life. This dog may be mummified as an offering to Anubis, in the hope of his protection in the after-life. But there's a problem. JARED: Normally animal mummies are buried and separated from the human mummies. NARRATOR: Miguel has another idea. MIGUEL: He's buried on the feet of two mummies, one female and one male. So we think it was the owners of the dog and they wanted to keep her company for the after-life.
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JARED: It could be a pet instead of an offering to a god. NARRATOR: If the mummified dog is a family pet, it would be a rare discovery. JARED: We know there were pets in the past in ancient Egypt. It's not something as common as it is as a concept in modern times. NARRATOR: Miguel searches for further evidence to confirm the dog was a pet, and discovers an intriguing inscription identifying the owner of the tomb. At the man's feet is a pet dog.
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MIGUEL: He is sitting on a chair with an offering table in front of him and his dog, whose name is Heken, below the chair. NARRATOR: Miguel and Jared believe the inscription is key to understanding the mystery of the mummified dog, Heken. The people in this tomb wanted their beloved dog buried with them to ensure it joined them in the after-life. JARED: It was kind of touching to find. As modern humans, it's something you can really relate when you have a pet.
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NARRATOR: 100 miles south near Aswan, Alejandro's team has found two human skulls just yards away from where they discovered 11 mummified crocodiles. ALEJANDRO: Another skull. So we have now three individuals. NARRATOR: Alejandro wants to investigate the intriguing connection, but he's under pressure to excavate first. It's the hottest part of the day, and the skulls could crack in the 90-degree heat. ALEJANDRO: We have always toilet paper, but not only for natural reasons,
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but also for research. (laughs) NARRATOR: They spray the toilet paper with water and apply it to the skulls. It's an emergency measure to keep them moist before they are excavated. Alejandro looks for clues to explain why the skulls are so close to the mummified crocodiles. He discovers that one is the skull of a young boy, and as the team excavates, something fascinating emerges with it. ALEJANDRO: The coffin is an empty timber where they put the children inside.
30:06
NARRATOR: The social status of a person was reflected in their burial. The tree trunk coffin is convincing evidence this boy was poor. ALEJANDRO: This boy was, uh, had the honor to be buried here in Qubbet el-Hawa, but was not part of the elite. NARRATOR: Only wealthy ancient Egyptians could afford mummified crocodiles, a religious offering to the god Sobek. It's a puzzle why this apparently poor boy might be part of a crocodile cult.
30:45
NARRATOR: Alejandro looks for answers to explain the boy's grave. The team doesn't just unearth skulls, they uncover three skeletons. And the bone structure of the second one indicates it's a female. It's buried with something interesting. ALEJANDRO: During the excavation of individual number two, it appeared this interesting amulet. NARRATOR: The jewelry is in the shape of Bes, the god of childbirth, who was popular with Egypt's poor. The female skeleton was also buried with something else.
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ALEJANDRO: And beside this skeleton, we have the burial of a baby. NARRATOR: Infant mortality was tragically high in ancient Egypt. Only one child in two lived past adolescence. ALEJANDRO: It's always sad when you find these kind of burials. (sighs) NARRATOR: The skeletons are stacked on top of each other. It's another clue this was a shared tomb for a non-elite family. It could help explain why they were buried near crocodiles in a necropolis reserved for the rich.
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ALEJANDRO: Sometimes it was very important for the people to be buried here beside their master. NARRATOR: They could be favored servants. ALEJANDRO: It's not the quality of the funerary equipment that you might have. In certain ways it's much better to buried beside an important person, because you can benefit from the offerings that he is going to receive. NARRATOR: If these servants were getting the protection of the mummified crocodiles, their rich masters could be close by.
32:33
The hunt for a wealthy tomb filled with treasure is on.
32:40
As the team searches the surrounding area, it's not long before they unearth a mysterious gap in the rock. ALEJANDRO: It seems that it's another tomb. MAN: Good, good.
32:55
NARRATOR: In the quarry at Gebel El-Silsila, Maria is looking for clues to explain why a ram-headed sphinx was left abandoned. MARIA: We got a series of symbols or text that we still haven't been able to decode in a simple way. It's very difficult to work there because of the risk of this collapsing. JOHN: Well, I wanted to go down there, but my... MARIA: No, we can't. It's not safe. JOHN: I'm frightened of this. MARIA: No, no, no, it's not safe. JOHN: If this comes down. Go on.
33:32
NARRATOR: At a safer location, Maria uses computer software to enhance the colors of the ancient graffiti. She begins to see something incredible. MARIA: It is amazing. We actually have a face here. It's a long snout, so the eye is emphasized, and these, they're teeth. We have a crocodile face. NARRATOR: As Maria looks closer, she discovers it's not a crocodile, but something even more intriguing. MARIA: It is indeed a line of the belly,
34:07
and that tells me one thing: this is the hippopotamus body. NARRATOR: She identifies the enigmatic drawing. It's Taweret, the hippopotamus goddess. Taweret was the principal female deity at this quarry, and was often cast in the role of protectress.
34:28
Egyptians prayed to Taweret to keep them safe from harm, and Maria believes a quarry worker drew this sketch. MARIA: It's not a royal official stela dedicated to this goddess. This is a personal wish to be safe-kept and protected from mishaps. NARRATOR: The laborer asked Taweret for protection. Work here was dangerous, and life expectancy short. MARIA: They wanted to be safe. This, for me, is like shaking the ancients directly in their hands. Regardless of all the technologies that we have today
35:05
and how much the world has evolved, we're still looking for safety. We still want to be keeping our families safe and protected and to be able to see yet another day. NARRATOR: Maria investigates further. She needs to date this inscription. MARIA: This mentions the year 34, the opening of this quarry. So it gives us the clue it's the end of the reign of Amenhotep III. NARRATOR: Amenhotep III ruled Egypt during the New Kingdom era, over 3,000 years ago.
35:39
His son, Amenhotep IV, revolutionized Egypt. He banned the worship of multiple gods-- all the animal deities, like Taweret the hippo, Sobek the crocodile, and even the mighty Sekhmet, the lion. Amenhotep worshipped just one: the sun god Aten. He declared himself the representative of Aten on Earth and changed his name to Akhen-aten.
36:08
Maria thinks the inscription is a clue to why the sphinx they found here in the quarry was abandoned. MARIA: We know that Akhen-aten broke off from the state religion, but still we have the production of these beasts at a time when he starts to get into power. Maybe it was that they were abandoned here on site because he came to power. NARRATOR: Akhen-aten instructed the workers to down tools on this sphinx. MARIA: What we know is we had Amenhotep III here.
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When Akhen-aten turned from Amenhotep IV to Akhen-aten, he destroyed everything. This site wasn't used again.
36:53
NARRATOR: In Aswan, at Qubbet el-Hawa, before Alejandro's team can enter the tomb, they must first excavate the entrance. But it's perched dangerously close to the edge of a steep cliff. The soft rock crumbles away. An accident could easily happen. ALEJANDRO: We need to take care of our every step that we make.
37:20
NARRATOR: Finally, they access the entrance, and there's a promising sign they're on the verge of a huge discovery. ALEJANDRO: We have just discovered that the tomb is intact because the stones are sealing the door. NARRATOR: It means tomb robbers haven't beaten Alejandro to it. ALEJANDRO: Fingers crossed to know if we are going to be lucky.
37:51
NARRATOR: Alejandro explores the untouched tomb. ALEJANDRO: Here there is something that is quite strange. NARRATOR: Two coffins lie inside, but it's disappointing news. Termites have got in there first. ALEJANDRO: We have these kind of days in the excavation. What a pity. NARRATOR: Termites are a problem worse than tomb robbers. They destroy coffins. Just before Alejandro gives up hope, he notices another chamber. ALEJANDRO: Oh, it's amazing. NARRATOR: And fortunately,
38:32
the termites haven't destroyed what's inside. ALEJANDRO: For the first time we are lucky and we discover without the problems of the termites. NARRATOR: Two ancient colored coffins. ALEJANDRO: I never seen something like this. NARRATOR: It's a triumphant moment for the whole team. The discovery of the wealthy tombs they've been searching for. (singing) They could hold evidence of a crocodile cult and finally resolve the mystery of the mummified crocodiles.
39:11
The colored coffins need weeks of restoration work before they can be safely moved. Until then, they seal the burial with an iron door, to keep the coffins safe from tomb robbers.
39:26
ALEJANDRO: Perfect. Now I can sleep more relaxed. (chuckles)
39:36
NARRATOR: It's a satisfying end to an amazing day. ALEJANDRO: We did not expect to find anything important. However, we have found two amazing tombs, one with the coffins, and the other with the crocodiles. It has been one of the most intensive days of my life.
40:00
NARRATOR: 400 miles north, on the Giza Plateau, Chris continues to explore the ancient Egyptians' reverence for animal gods and their role as divine guardians. At the paws of the Great Sphinx, he finds a tantalizing clue that could reveal the statue's true purpose. CHRIS: This, we think, is some kind of temple. It's a building which sits right in front of the paws of the Sphinx. It's built in the same way as well, with these absolutely massive local limestone blocks.
40:37
NARRATOR: The temple's limestone blocks are a match with the Sphinx. The Egyptians built it at the same time from the Sphinx's leftover stones.
40:49
Chris steps back to the eastern corner. From here, he notices something intriguing. CHRIS: Where we're standing here, we're looking straight on at the face of the Sphinx, and, in fact, the Sphinx is aligned to the pyramid. So its right shoulder is absolutely aligned along the axis of the temple in front of it, and behind it, the corner of the pyramid. What's even more interesting is that at the two equinoxes, that is the exact point where you see the sun setting in the sky.
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NARRATOR: The temple, the Sphinx and Khafre's pyramid could all be part of one master plan. During solar events their alignment reveals something extraordinary.
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When the sun sets on the equinox, it drops into the shoulder of the Sphinx and the south side of Khafre's pyramid. These two mighty monuments are symbols of the king, and as the sun sets, their shadows become one. On the summer solstice, the sun sinks between the two great pyramids, and looks like an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph that represents the cycle of divine rebirth.
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The architects who built the Sphinx pyramid temple complex had an in-depth knowledge of cosmology. They would have known that Sekhmet the lion is also a sun goddess. CHRIS: Perhaps this helps us to explain the meaning of the Sphinx, and what the Egyptians were doing in a temple like this, what rituals they were performing. If this is a solar deity, then perhaps the worship in the temple was all connected with the sun and the setting sun. NARRATOR: The ancient Egyptians believed the rise and fall
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of the sun equated to human resurrection. The Sphinx could have been central to a complex built by King Khafre to harness the spiritual power of the sun. Today, the Sphinx sits alone in the pyramids' shadow. But back in the time of the pharaoh Khafre, it was at the figurehead of a grand design, a great temple complex with a huge causeway connecting the Sphinx to Khafre's pyramid, the pharaoh's final resting place. The temple complex stretched to the Nile, where there was a magnificent port.
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When Khafre died, it was here that the boat carrying his body would dock, before he was entombed in his giant pyramid to wait for his resurrection. ♪ ♪ The Egyptian belief in the divine powers of their animal gods was so great, they built the Sphinx to be the protective figurehead in a resurrection machine designed to guarantee King Khafre's journey into the after-life.
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NARRATOR: In a mysterious cave system, a few miles from Egypt's Red Sea. PIERRE: We have made 28 meters inside this cave, but it's still not the end. NARRATOR: Tantalizing evidence, linking this site to the Great Pyramid of Giza.
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NARRATOR: The Pyramids of Giza.
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These mighty monuments stood as the tallest structures in the world for thousands of years. Built in the third millennium BCE, over 1,000 years before Tutankhamun. The pyramids were enormous tombs for Egypt's early pharaohs.
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Their iconic shape has long been synonymous with ancient Egypt. The largest is the Great Pyramid of Khufu.
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Here, thousands of workers built a level platform on the bedrock to create a flat square base.
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They sunk slabs into each corner, cut with a socket to lock the stone blocks above in place. They laid over 2 million blocks in horizontal layers. With gaps for the burial chamber.
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Rough cut stones and mortar in the core. And regular stones around the edges.
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Finally, they added a white limestone casing, smoothed and sloped at precisely 51 degrees to complete the true pyramid shape.
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But the Pyramids at Giza weren't Egypt's first pyramids. At least six others were attempted before. And they looked very different. Now archaeologists across Egypt are investigating the mystery of how these iconic structures evolved. Why smooth sides and the specific 51 degree angle was so important, and how the pharaohs managed to build on such a massive scale 4500 years ago.
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At Abydos, over 250 miles south of Giza, American archaeologist Matthew Adams and his team are excavating a unique site. MATTHEW: We're working in Abydos, which is one of the most ancient and one of the most important of Egypt's early sites. NARRATOR: Abydos predates the Pyramids of Giza and was built at the beginning of Egyptian civilization, before 3000 BCE. MATTHEW: It was the first great royal necropolis. Like the Valley of the Kings later or the area of the Giza Pyramids.
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This is where generations of Egypt's first kings built their tombs. NARRATOR: At Giza, the pharaohs had thousands of workers assemble millions of limestone blocks to build their supersized pyramid tombs over several decades. It was an incredible mass effort, all to honor the mighty kings and help them achieve an afterlife, evidence of their immense power. Matthew hopes his work at Abydos can help uncover how the first Egyptian kings and their building projects led to the rise of the pyramids.
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MATTHEW: How did Egyptian kingship become what it was, with this all powerful ruler at the apex of society, seemingly able to do things on an inhuman scale? The pyramids certainly strike us that way today.
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NARRATOR: Matthew first came to work at Abydos as a student when he was just 19. MATTHEW: I'm one of these archaeologists who knew from about the age of eight, that not only was it archaeology, but it was Egypt specifically. A lot of young people become interested in Egypt and pyramids and mummies and so on, but they outgrow it. I never did.
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NARRATOR: Making sense of the ruins at Abydos is incredibly challenging. MATTHEW: Uh huh. So something like that. NARRATOR: The cemetery was used by kings and commoners throughout the entire history of ancient Egypt.
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This means nearly 3500 years of tombs and temples layered over and mixed up with the monuments of the first kings. MATTHEW: It's impossible to get to that early material without also encountering a lot of later stuff. NARRATOR: The only way to get down to Egypt's earliest history is to go very slowly. But the clock is ticking. The excavation season at Abydos is only eight weeks long before the summer heat makes working in the desert unbearable.
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MATTHEW: We have limited time on the ground, so we have to push, push, push to get as far as we possibly can. NARRATOR: Three weeks into the dig, it looks like the hard work might be paying off. Under nearly ten feet of later remains, the team has uncovered two long and narrow structures built into one of the walls. MATTHEW: Look at that. Wow. Wow. We have here a complete or near-complete pottery vessel that's been used as part of the wall construction.
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NARRATOR: Intact vessels are a dream discovery for any archaeologist. MATTHEW: It's really, really important because it helps give us the date. NARRATOR: The vessel's shape and size can reveal the date it was made. If Matthew can date it to the beginning of Egyptian civilization, he and his team will have reached the monuments of the first kings.
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MATTHEW: It's sort of cone shaped. Probably about this tall with a rim about this wide. This is a very diagnostic shape. It's diagnostic for the very, very end of the pre dynastic period. Right at the transition to Dynasty one. The time of King Narmer.
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NARRATOR: Around 5000 years ago, King Narmer, became ruler of the lands along the southern Nile, known as Upper Egypt. His distinctive white crown was called the hedjet.
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In 3150 BCE, he conquered the northern Nile Delta, Lower Egypt, and took their red crown as a mark of his victory.
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Narmer founded the first dynasty of kings to rule over both Upper and Lower Egypt. He combined the crowns of both kingdoms into one and became the first king of all Egypt.
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The pottery vessel is evidence that Narmer built the two strange structures here. They are unlike anything found elsewhere in the vast site. Two long parallel strips filled entirely with strange round pots. MATTHEW: We have a very mysterious structure that doesn't look anything like a tomb. It doesn't look anything like a chapel. It's something completely different. NARRATOR: In Faiyum, in the remote desert, American archaeologist Kerry Muhlestein is investigating
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a mysterious pyramid ruin around 50 years older than Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza. The pyramid of Seila. KERRY: Sometimes I wake up realizing that for three nights in a row I've dreamt about the Seila pyramid and trying to figure out what's going on here. NARRATOR: Kerry thinks this unassuming ruin in the middle of the desert may be the first true, smooth sided pyramid ever built. When Egypt's pharaohs first built massive, monumental tombs over 100 years before the Giza Pyramids,
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they originally were smaller and tiered. The first of these stepped pyramids was built by King Djoser at nearby Saqqara. Nobody knows for sure when and where the smooth sided true pyramid was first attempted. Now, Kerry's investigation at Seila could offer new clues and even rewrite history. KERRY: For a long time, we weren't even sure if it was a pyramid. But now we're starting to think that this may have been the first true or smooth sided pyramid.
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NARRATOR: Kerry has worked as an archaeologist for 15 years, 13 of them trying to work out where the Seila pyramid fits in the evolution of the iconic pyramid shape. KERRY: I was hesitant because it takes so much time away from family, and family is very important to me. But I love archaeology because it's just a way to discover the past and to discover things that ancient people like us did. And they probably want their story known and told, and we're not going to find it any other way.
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NARRATOR: The Seila pyramid was constructed by the king Sneferu, a generation before his son Khufu built the Great Pyramid. Today, it resembles a stepped pyramid, but Kerry has found some key pieces of evidence in the archives of earlier excavations that suggest it might not always have been this shape.
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KERRY: In 1988, they found this limestone fragment here on the eastern side that has this drawing of a pyramid incised on it. NARRATOR: The drawing seems to show a smooth sided pyramid. It's an incredibly rare discovery. A window into the construction of these magnificent monuments over 4500 years ago. KERRY: This may be a scale drawing that someone had made of this pyramid as they're constructing it. And it may be a little clue for us as to what they intended for this pyramid to look like.
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NARRATOR: Kerry has also found another piece of evidence in the archives that suggests Seila was revolutionary. Previous archaeologists discovered a chapel and a passageway on the eastern side, a feature not found in stepped pyramids, but only in the later true, smooth sided pyramids. So now Kerry wants to work out what this mysterious pyramid ruin once really looked like.
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A key factor is the angle of its sides.
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Nearly all known, smooth sided pyramids rise at an angle between 51 and 53 degrees. If Kerry can find a similar angle for the Seila Pyramid, it could suggest it was the first ever true, smooth sided pyramid. KERRY: If we can really piece together and recreate the structure of this pyramid and what it looks like, that would be so exciting for us. This would be a new way of thinking of the beginning phases of the pyramid age. NARRATOR: This season, the team is digging a trench on
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the pyramid's south side to search for the original outer foundations. Finding them should help reveal the original size of the pyramid and help them calculate its original height and angle of incline. Archaeologist Kristin South helps supervise the dig. KRISTIN: This is our first kind of exploratory trench. And then as we have time, we'll do a couple of other test trenches along the entire length of it. NARRATOR: Carefully, the team searches through the sand.
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A few inches down their trowels strike stone. KRISTIN: I just want to have you come take a look at this for a second.
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NARRATOR: The ancient site of Wadi al-Jarf sits in the desert near Egypt's Red Sea coast, over 100 miles from Giza. Deep inside the cliffs here, French archaeologist Pierre Tallet and his team are excavating a series of strange manmade caves in use at the time of the Great Pyramid. PIERRE: We have made 28 meters inside this cave, but it's still not the end. NARRATOR: They could reveal new information about how the pharaoh Khufu evolved pyramid building to its
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full glory and built his super-sized Pyramid at Giza. Pierre's team made a groundbreaking discovery here during a previous excavation season. They unearthed a collection of the world's oldest known papyri records at the entrance to one of the caves, described as the biggest discovery made in Egypt in the 21st century. The papyri date to the pyramid age, around 2500 BCE and are the only surviving contemporary accounts of how Khufu's Great Pyramid was built.
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PIERRE: We found this huge batch of papyri. It was probably the best discovery of all my career.
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NARRATOR: Amongst the papyri was the diary of an official named Merer, who managed a team of workmen during the later years of Khufu's reign. His diary reveals he was tasked with collecting the white limestone used to build the king's Great Pyramid at Giza. Merer and his team used boats to transport 70 tons of limestone blocks down the Nile in one trip, bringing up to 200 blocks to Giza per month.
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The blocks were likely used to case the pyramid and create its smooth sides.
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The discovery of Merer's diary in these remote caves suggests that he and his men also came here on their mission to gather the materials for the Great Pyramid. It's a clue that this unusual site was significant to the construction of Khufu's monumental tomb. PIERRE: Those papyri are clearly a link between the building of the Pyramids of Giza and the Wadi al-Jarf site. NARRATOR: But the limestone for the Great Pyramid was not quarried at Wadi al-Jarf, and the papyri don't explain why
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Merer and his workers would have been here.
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NARRATOR: The 70 strong team camp out on site for the entire six weeks of the excavation season. It's a remote spot far from Egypt's more famous tombs and temples. PIERRE: It's nice to have a place like this one, which is not known at all, so you can make interesting discoveries of things that have never been seen before.
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NARRATOR: It's a time-consuming task to excavate the mud that has washed into the caves and filled them completely over the millennia.
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But today, after three weeks of painstaking work and removing 3200 cubic feet of solidified mud, the team has finally cleared a new cave.
1:00:02
PIERRE: We are expecting to find things. But we don't know what we will discover.
1:00:12
NARRATOR: In Abydos, Matthew and his team are excavating a set of two strange structures from the time of Egypt's first king, Narmer. MATTHEW: We have a long, narrow structure with built sidewalls, these brick like pieces here. In the interior, we have pottery vessels, and on the outside, they're supported by these vertical legs that are attached to the exterior side of the vessel. Like something inside is very heavy. NARRATOR: Matthew hopes discoveries at this site could
1:00:55
help reveal how the pyramids developed. As they work, his team uncovers more and more clues to what these long formations were for. MATTHEW: This plastered surface, it's almost like a ramp that goes from the top of the sidewall of the structure down to the original floor level. And at the bottom, we see this deposit of wood charcoal.
1:01:23
The entire interior of this structure was one gigantic firebox. NARRATOR: It seems that at the time of the first kings, the Egyptians were operating huge ovens in the heart of this royal necropolis. In some of the pottery vessels, Matthew and the team are finding evidence of what they were cooking out here, a mixture of grain and water. MATTHEW: They were making beer. This is the mashing or cooking stage of beer production.
1:01:58
NARRATOR: Egyptians cultivated an ancient variety of wheat for the production of beer. They soaked the wheat grains with water in huge ceramic vats and slowly cooked the mix to produce a mash.
1:02:16
They left the mixture to ferment into beer over two to three days, then decanted it into jars.
1:02:28
Beer was commonly drunk at home by ancient Egyptians as well as at religious festivals. MATTHEW: Beer was one of the staples of the ancient Egyptian diet, bread and beer. These are the most basic things that were the stuff of life for ancient Egyptians. NARRATOR: In ancient Egypt, every house had its own small brewery. But Matthew has discovered six sets of mash ovens at Abydos. It suggests King Narmer had a massive royal brewery here. Matthew must excavate the entire site to find out why.
1:03:04
MATTHEW: The critical question is how many are there? What's the overall scale of the site? NARRATOR: With his excavation season ending in just three weeks, the pressure is on.
1:03:21
NARRATOR: In Faiyum, at the pyramid of Seila, Kerry inspects the ancient stonework just discovered protruding through the sand.
1:03:31
If the limestone block is part of the original foundations of the pyramid, its discovery here would help Kerry calculate the structure's height and angle of incline. This could help show that Khufu's father Sneferu, constructed the first smooth sided true pyramid here at Seila. Smooth sided pyramids were a revolutionary development from the stepped pyramids that had gone before. KERRY: Sneferu was innovating as he built this pyramid. He was experimenting and doing things that hadn't
1:04:02
been done anywhere else. NARRATOR: The radical remodeling of the pharaoh's monumental tombs was likely due to a shift in religious beliefs.
1:04:13
In the middle of the third millennium BCE, Egyptians developed the belief that the pharaoh was the descendant of the sun god Ra. The pharaohs started to build pyramid complexes aligned east to west so they could rise in the afterlife to join Ra in his journey across the sky.
1:04:34
Pyramids now needed smooth sides angled to about 51 degrees to brilliantly reflect the sun and resemble a shaft of sunlight. These true, smooth sided pyramids were no longer just places of burial and worship. They became powerful symbols of the pharaoh's connection to the sun god. Kerry believes that Sneferu had this inspired idea and that his pyramid at Seila could have been the very first designed and built as a shaft of light. KERRY: Sneferu is the father of the true pyramid.
1:05:11
His son, Khufu, builds the Great Pyramid and pyramid complexes are kind of set from then. NARRATOR: Sneferu's builders might have used angled limestone casing blocks to make these perfectly smooth sides. KERRY: It's a transition pyramid as they start to figure out how to do true pyramids. NARRATOR: But he needs to find the original foundations to calculate the shape and angle of the pyramid. KERRY: The northern corner is 33 centimeters south.
1:05:44
Let's take a photo of it in situ with the North Arrow.
1:05:51
That's not very big. NARRATOR: Now fully exposed, it's clear the stone is too small to be a foundation block, but it's a clue Kerry is on the right track. KERRY: It is limestone, so it is from the pyramid. NARRATOR: While the dig team continue searching for the pyramid's original base, Kerry has flown in another colleague who will take a more high tech approach to the investigation. KERRY: Hey! BRENT: Made it. KERRY: You've made it. So, so glad you made it.
1:06:19
BRENT: Yes. KERRY: Got the scanner okay? BRENT: Yeah, we got it. NARRATOR: Brent Benson is a forensic engineer who uses high resolution laser scanners to capture and process three dimensional data. KERRY: So how long do you need for each scan? BRENT: About 12 to 15 minutes. NARRATOR: He is joining Kerry's team to help calculate the Seila pyramid's height and angle of incline. They hope it will be between 51 and 53 degrees, like in most smooth sided, true pyramids.
1:06:48
BRENT: To collect data like this. Reconstruct the structure that's thousands of years old. Try to determine what it looked like back then. It's exciting. NARRATOR: Brent gets to work straight away, scanning the first side of the pyramid. BRENT: Okay, should I start? Yeah. It's scanning. NARRATOR: The high res scanner analyses the reflections of a precision laser to create a three dimensional digital image. Accurate to thousandths of an inch.
1:07:17
BRENT: The machine we're using today has the capability of a really fine resolution. We could see individual insects if we wanted. NARRATOR: Brent can stitch together the scans to create an ultra precise computer model of today's ruin, which will then allow him to recreate the eroded parts of the pyramid. KERRY: We're really, really hoping that we can reconstruct the angles and the original size of the pyramid. I'm so excited. That's going to be fantastic.
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NARRATOR: While Brent continues to scan around all sides of the four and a half thousand year old ruin. BRENT: And start rotating clockwise. NARRATOR: Kerry returns to the dig site. If he wants to work out the perimeter of the pyramid, it's vital he finds the original foundations.
1:08:08
Kerry and Kristin now search for the corner of the pyramid. KERRY: We're trying to get down to the very bedrock where the two corners should meet to see if we can establish what the outer dimensions of the pyramid were. That will enable us to figure out the original size of the pyramid. NARRATOR: The team is looking for a distinct clue in the bedrock. KERRY: They would create a little lip so that the stones, with all the pressure of the stones on top of them, will continually push them out
1:08:37
and the pyramid could fall apart. But if we get, they create a little lip in the bedrock so that those stones can't move. Then it holds everything tightly in place. So when you find that lip, then you know you've got the corner.
1:08:51
KRISTIN: Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!
1:08:55
NARRATOR: In Abydos, Matthew's team are trying to uncover all of king Narmer's brewery. He wants to trace the pyramids' evolution to the very beginnings of Egyptian civilization, and the building projects of Egypt's first kings. Matthew has a hunch the brewery continues southeast with more long beer ovens hiding below the sand. But excavating here, the team faces a new obstacle. MATTHEW: You can see how deep the deposits are that we're having to dig through.
1:09:30
This is a huge spoil heap, an archaeological dump from old excavations more than a century ago. And we've got to get through all of that. NARRATOR: Around 80 skilled workers, armed with shovels and barrows, work tirelessly to move the mountain of spoil before the excavation season ends in just three weeks. MATTHEW: Our time is limited, which means that everybody has to really work as hard as possible to get us there. But I'm confident that with this team, we'll see what we're looking for.
1:10:06
NARRATOR: As the dig continues, Matthew joins specialist excavator Ashraf Zeydan Mahmoud at another part of the site. MATTHEW: Ashraf and I are excavating the interior of one of the pottery vats. We're hoping that this vat might contain some residue from the liquid that it once held. NARRATOR: If Matthew and Ashraf can find some residue in this vat, it could reveal the composition of the beer. They might then be able to recreate ancient Egyptian beer brewed here 5000 years ago.
1:10:45
MATTHEW: For me, the idea of having a sip of the royal beer of king Narmer, there's nothing better than that. NARRATOR: And it seems they could be in luck.
1:10:59
MATTHEW: Wo ho. This looks very promising. This yellow sand on the interior is, this is blown in, wind deposited sand. But this darker material, this also is sand. However, it's sand that has absorbed the liquid. The beer is in there.
1:11:25
NARRATOR: This residue should allow Matthew to recreate king Narmer's 5000 year old beer.
1:11:32
MATTHEW: That's the kind of thing that you live for if you're an archaeologist. It sort of puts you in the place of the ancient Egyptians at that time. NARRATOR: Back at the main dig site, the team has shifted tons of sand to expose more of the brewery below.
1:11:48
MATTHEW: We found exactly what we've been hoping to find. We have the remains of several of the vats. These are the broken off bottom pieces of the vats. NARRATOR: The workers have revealed a new set of vats just over 25 feet to the side of the two long beer ovens they uncovered earlier in the season. MATTHEW: We have here brewery structure number seven.
1:12:15
34 meters. NARRATOR: Each of the seven beer ovens is as long as 110 feet and fitted with up to 80 vats.
1:12:26
MATTHEW: Each one of these, when it was complete, probably held about 70 liters or so, which means that just this structure alone could produce close to 6000 liters of beer per batch. NARRATOR: If all of the ovens have the same capacity, the brewery could have produced close to 90,000 pints of beer in a week. MATTHEW: That's enough beer to give every person in a 90,000 seat sports arena half a liter or a pint of beer. But doing that 5000 years ago, at the very beginning of Egyptian history,
1:13:02
it's almost beyond belief. NARRATOR: Brewing that much beer every week would have been a massive task and suggests king Narmer used vast resources and an industrial sized workforce. Matthew wants to know why. MATTHEW: What is going on here 5000 years ago, that they're producing beer at this, at this scale?
1:13:32
NARRATOR: At the site of Wadi al-Jarf, Pierre inspects the massive new cave they have just excavated. He hopes it could contain more evidence of why Khufu's workers came here on their mission to gather material for his Great Pyramid at Giza. PIERRE: We can see that we have those big storage jars. NARRATOR: The team has unearthed the remnants of large storage jars covering the entire floor. They have made similar discoveries in other caves nearby.
1:14:03
PIERRE: Sometimes we are finding more than 300 to 400 of this kind of storage jar in one single cave.
1:14:12
NARRATOR: They date to the reign of Khufu. Pierre believes Khufu's workers used them to store drinking water taken from the nearest spring over six miles away. The sheer number of jars suggests that the workers needed a lot of water, a clue they didn't just stop to rest in the caves but worked here.
1:14:35
Suddenly Pierre and colleague Severine Marchi spot a faded red mark amongst the sherds.
1:14:45
PIERRE: These two sherds are working together and I can distinguish something which is written in red here. Kind of a big circle.
1:14:57
NARRATOR: An inscription could contain vital information, but it's difficult to make out on the dusty sherd. PIERRE: I think that we will have to clean it to be sure of what is inscribed on it.
1:15:14
NARRATOR: Pierre and Séverine take the sherds to their cleaning station on the desert cliffs above Wadi al-Jarf.
1:15:26
NARRATOR: A faint inscription they have discovered on them might help reveal the site's connection to the building of Khufu's Great Pyramid.
1:15:37
NARRATOR: Careful cleaning reveals more of it. A red circle and line. Pierre has discovered the same symbol in some of the other caves and can interpret the ancient sign. PIERRE: Here we can see that we have this big circle, which is probably a shortened version of the inscription: "The people who are known to King Khufu." NARRATOR: Pierre recognizes it's a team name adopted by a group of Khufu's workers. He has discovered three different team names like this on water jars in the caves.
1:16:11
PIERRE: We know that the pyramids were built by teams and each team is about 160 men. NARRATOR: Pierre wants to continue excavating inside the new cave to find more evidence of what these teams were doing at Wadi al-Jarf and precisely how, it's connected to the rise of the pyramids. Barely noticeable in the sand, he and Severine discover what could be a clue.
1:16:51
NARRATOR: It's a broken tenon, a rectangular piece of wood, the ancient Egyptians used to join together the planks of their boats. Not far away, he and colleague Séverine make another discovery.
1:17:15
NARRATOR: Pierre and the team find telltale pieces of wood and fabric like this in nearly all the caves they excavate at Wadi al-Jarf. In one, they've unearthed a plank as long as two meters, six and a half feet. PIERRE: Once we have found a frame of a boat, that could indicate that the boats that were used here were about 14 meters long. NARRATOR: Pierre believes these discoveries are the remnants of a lost fleet stored inside the cliffs here.
1:17:46
His team's investigations suggest that pyramid workers used these 31 caves as a giant naval base for expeditions across the Red Sea just three miles away. PIERRE: After the expeditions, the boats that are used during the expeditions were stored inside the caves. They were dismantled and stored inside the caves. NARRATOR: And Pierre thinks the destination of their expeditions lies just across the water. PIERRE: From here, it's possible to see clearly the coast of Sinai.
1:18:20
This is a place where the people of this harbor were going and they were going there to fetch copper. Copper at that time was metal that was used for the tools that were given to workers to build the pyramids. NARRATOR: The pyramid builders used copper tools to shape the stone, but the metal was quite soft and quickly wore out. They relied on a steady supply of copper ore to forge new tools. Overland expeditions from Giza to Sinai, around 200 miles east, took about a week.
1:19:00
With boats, they could sail the copper across the Red Sea from Sinai back to Wadi al-Jarf, drastically cutting the journey to just one day. The boats returned with supplies so the workers could stay longer in Sinai and extract more copper.
1:19:18
In the winter months, they disassembled the boats to store them in the caves of Wadi al-Jarf.
1:19:48
NARRATOR: Pierre will continue his excavation of the boat caves at Wadi al-Jarf. But this year's season comes to a successful end. PIERRE: We could say that we are the backstage of the pyramid here. In fact, this is from a place like this that we can learn the way the work force was organized, and the way they were able by logistical means, to build such gigantic monuments as the Pyramid of Giza.
1:20:19
NARRATOR: In Abydos, Matthew's team has uncovered another jar. It could help explain why King Narmer built this massive brewery here, and what the later evolution of the pyramids owes to this ancient site. MATTHEW: This was almost certainly used to store beer once the production was finished. NARRATOR: The team is finding thousands of beer jars like this all around the Abydos royal necropolis. With beer production on an industrial scale,
1:20:49
it's not surprising there are so many beer jars left behind, but it's what Matthew hasn't found that makes these pots so intriguing. MATTHEW: There are no cups found with them. It's just the containers that the beer was transported in. NARRATOR: Matthew has found no evidence the huge quantities of beer brewed here was ever drunk. And there is another curiosity. MATTHEW: They're all found used. They're unstoppered. The contents have been poured out.
1:21:22
NARRATOR: Matthew thinks the beer was poured out in offering to the king. MATTHEW: It seems very likely that that was the purpose of this brewery. It's, it's brewing the beer that's being used in royal rituals. NARRATOR: Matthew's investigation suggests that 600 years before the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt's first king, Narmer, mobilized hundreds of workers to build and operate an enormous brewery in the royal necropolis of Abydos. It is this ability of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs to
1:21:56
marshal mass labor that would later make the construction of the enormous pyramids possible. MATTHEW: This is what they did. This was their genius. And here we see it already at the very beginning of Egyptian history, 5000 years ago. NARRATOR: Narmer's brewery could have produced nearly 90,000 pints of beer in a week. It was likely brewed to be poured away. An unmistakable display of Narmer's power and the prosperity of the Egyptian state. MATTHEW: They did it on a massive scale to make clear to
1:22:34
everyone exactly who the king was and what he was capable of and what he was owed. This is a foundational principle of Egyptian society, and we see that expressed again and again and again throughout Egyptian history. NARRATOR: It was a blueprint for the pharaohs to come, demonstrating their power through their gigantic mega-projects: the pyramids. MATTHEW: It became the hallmark of the ancient Egyptian kings. The ancient Egyptian state, for all of its history, building big.
1:23:11
They just took this and grew it.
1:23:19
NARRATOR: In Faiyum, Kerry and Kristin are searching for the original corner of Sneferu's now eroded Seila pyramid. It could help reveal the structure's original size and whether this might have been Egypt's first smooth sided true pyramid. KERRY: You can see it right here. Right here, because this is, that's the mountain right there. And that's the mountain right there. NARRATOR: They've discovered a lip the ancient Egyptians carved into the bedrock to secure the corners of their pyramids.
1:23:52
KERRY: This is exactly what they want in the corner. They want to build a good niche where the stone can go and it can't move anymore. This is a piece of evidence we can be absolutely sure of when we hit where the bedrock meets the bedrock. You know, the pyramid didn't go out any further than this. NARRATOR: Kerry can now calculate the dimensions of the base of the structure. 110 by 110 feet. KERRY: I'm thrilled to be able to say this is how far out the pyramid went.
1:24:22
NARRATOR: His next task is to work out how tall it was. This should help him calculate whether the pyramid sides were at an angle between 51 and 53 degrees, the hallmark of a smooth sided, true pyramid. KERRY: Hey, Brent. You got some results for us? NARRATOR: Brent has completed 44 scans of the outside of the pyramid and confirmed the dimensions of the pyramid base. He has stitched the scans together to make a stunningly detailed 3D model of the ruins. KERRY: Oh, right there.
1:24:54
Oh, that's so good. Yeah, you can see that step right there. Oh, that's so... look at those stones. You can see the corner in perfect detail. I had high expectations but this is even better than I expected. This is fantastic stuff. NARRATOR: Because the ancient Egyptians built symmetrically, Brent can use the model to reconstruct the original step shape and calculate the overall height of the original structure. KERRY: That looks like it was almost eight stories tall.
1:25:25
BRENT: Well, 24 meters, yeah. KERRY: Yeah, almost not quite. Seven, between seven and eight stories. NARRATOR: Kerry and Brent have the pyramid's height and perimeter. Now they can calculate the angle of its sides. KERRY: Okay, so when we get this line laid on there, what kind of an angle are we getting? BRENT: Just under 52 degrees. So if we create a casing of a true pyramid across each tip of the four individual steps, turns out to be just under 52 degrees.
1:25:55
KERRY: That's exactly what you would expect for this time. NARRATOR: Kerry and Brent's evidence confirms that Seila, once formed a nearly 80 feet tall, stepped structure with four levels.
1:26:10
On the north and east face were chapels used for worship characteristic of later pyramids. And his measurements show that the angle between the edges of each step is just under 52 degrees, similar to the inclines of all the later true pyramids, making it possible that Seila's stepped core was transformed into a smooth sided pyramid, clad with white limestone.
1:26:42
KERRY: This reconstruction shows that there's a really good chance this was a true pyramid. We're going to be able to recreate history with this. You've helped us recreate history. BRENT: Right on. NARRATOR: The team will continue to search for evidence. Angled limestone casing blocks would prove Seila's place in the evolution of the perfect pyramid. But Kerry is more confident than ever that he is on the right track. KERRY: I think we now have pretty good evidence that
1:27:11
this was a true or a smooth sided pyramid. Among the first, if not the first. And it's so fantastic to be able to establish that with this precision, both in combining archaeology and the technology of scanning and the way we are able to do things these days and it's fantastic results. NARRATOR: This season, archaeologists have unearthed new evidence of the rise of the pyramids, a massive royal brewery that led the way, an ancient naval base for the import of essential copper
1:27:43
and what could be the first ever true pyramid. All revealing how the ancient Egyptians built the world's most iconic megastructures.
1:28:06
♪♪ [narrator] Deep inside a rock-cut tomb in Egypt's far south, an archaeologist is searching for a missing mummy. [Alejandro Jiménez-Serrano] The surface is full of stones, pottery, human remains. [narrator] He's hoping to unlock the secrets of a mostly forgotten age of vast megatombs. [Jiménez-Serrano] We have bandages.
1:28:36
Okay, Cristina, are you there? ♪♪
1:28:51
[narrator] The Pyramids of Giza and the Valley of the Kings, icons of Ancient Egypt constructed 1,000 years apart. In between, Ancient Egyptians built other spectacular but lesser-known tombs. Today, across Egypt, archeologists are exploring these tombs to find out more about this mysterious period of Egyptian history called the Middle Kingdom. How its mighty pharaohs reunited a war-torn country, transforming Egypt and leading it into a new golden age.
1:29:31
They're also learning why these achievements and incredible tombs have now been mostly forgotten.
1:29:41
♪♪ Near Luxor ...
1:29:49
Spanish archaeologist Myriam Seco Álvarez has started her unconventional morning commute. [Myriam Seco Álvarez speaking English]
1:30:04
♪♪
1:30:11
[narrator] Myriam is excavating a newly discovered Middle Kingdom tomb.
1:30:17
It's part of a sprawling necropolis with a mix of rich and poor burials.
1:30:24
She's hoping it will tell her more about Egyptian society during this lesser-known period.
1:30:46
[narrator] To do that, Myriam's team must remove several tons of debris from the steep, narrow corridor with a dangerously unstable ceiling.
1:30:57
[speaking native language]
1:31:04
[speaking English]
1:31:19
♪♪ [narrator] Half a mile further north at Deir El-Bahari, Egyptologist and vintage fashion collector Colleen Darnell is on a mission to explore the megatombs of the Middle Kingdom's pharaohs.
1:31:39
She wants to learn more about their rise to power and why they have been forgotten. She begins at the tomb of the very first king of the Middle Kingdom, a pharaoh called Mentuhotep II. [Dr. Colleen Darnell] First looking at this structure, it's quite ruined but it's 4,000 years old and when it was new, it would have been quite magnificent.
1:32:05
[narrator] Colleen is exploring exactly what sort of structure Mentuhotep built for his tomb.
1:32:12
These columns and the overall layout of the architecture indicate that this is a temple.
1:32:21
[narrator] Tucked up against the sheer cliffs of Deir El-Bahari, Mentuhotep built a vast terraced temple.
1:32:30
Inside, over 200 pillars filled the immense hypostyle holes.
1:32:38
The question is, where is the king buried?
1:32:43
[narrator] In the center of the temple, a trench descends to a tunnel.
1:32:55
[Dr. Darnell] This corridor is cut out of the bedrock and it's a rough vault shape.
1:33:02
And it keeps going.
1:33:06
The amount of work that went into this is quite stunning, and I love seeing traces of the original chisel marks right here. This is a marvel of engineering. ♪♪ Wow!
1:33:30
Absolutely unbelievable, to be this far down into the mountain.
1:33:38
♪♪
1:33:48
This is magnificent, the most costly stones that you can use in ancient Egyptian building, this is red granite and they would have come from Aswan, that they've hauled all the way down this corridor. This is the entrance, this is the entrance to the burial chamber itself.
1:34:10
[narrator] The burial chamber is 500 feet deep inside the heart of the mountain. This is astonishing, they went so far as to create
1:34:22
that perfect architectural form of a shrine. And these holes here would have been for the doors that sealed in the coffin of the king. And to think, each of these pieces, and they're massive, had to have been brought all the way down this same corridor that I was just descending.
1:34:46
[narrator] No Egypt pharaoh before had ever been buried in a tomb like this. This is a complete departure from tomb architecture in the Old Kingdom. This is not a pyramid. He's signaling that something different has started.
1:35:05
[narrator] During the age of the great pyramid-building pharaohs , a single king ruled over all of Egypt from the northern capital of Memphis. But when the last of these pharaohs died the kingdom fractured, and rival rulers from the north and south vied for power.
1:35:26
For decades, war raged between the two factions until Mentuhotep II, the ruler of Southern Egypt, ultimately prevailed. He reunited Egypt, moving the country's capital to Thebes in the south, and ushered in a new era now known as the Middle Kingdom. ♪♪ Mentuhotep's unusual burial is a nod to his southern heritage, where terraced tombs, cut into the desert, were popular. Mentuhotep adapts an architectural form of his local ancestors, but builds it on a monumental scale, adding this massive shaft,
1:36:12
making this a tomb fit for a king who has just unified Upper and Lower Egypt.
1:36:19
[narrator] Mentuhotep had led Egypt out of a disastrous period of chaos and civil war. But the country was still scarred by decades of fierce rivalries and warring factions.
1:36:32
Next, Colleen wants to explore how Mentuhotep's successors faced these challenges in their bid to restore Egypt to its former glory.
1:36:48
In Aswan... ♪♪
1:36:56
Spanish archaeologist Alejandro Jiménez-Serrano is back for a new season of excavations at the site of Qubbet el-Hawa. [Jiménez-Serrano] I used to tell my youngest daughter that I'm cleaning the desert as a joke. And basically she used to tell me, "Daddy, good luck cleaning the desert." [narrator] Alejandro and his team are investigating the tomb of a high-ranking Middle Kingdom official. He's hoping to find out more about how the Middle Kingdom pharaohs governed their war -torn country.
1:37:29
[Jiménez-Serrano] Sarenput I was the governor of the Egyptian border with the south, so he was a key figure in the Egyptian state.
1:37:42
[narrator] After the reunification under first Middle Kingdom King Mentuhotep II, Egypt started to expand, invading Nubia in the south. Sarenput was charged with exploiting this new land for precious resources and exotic goods.
1:38:04
He governed Elephantine Island, a vital strategic outpost on this new frontier.
1:38:15
Alejandro has spent the last five years trying to locate the tomb's main burial chamber and mummy. It's become a bit of an obsession.
1:38:26
[narrator] Last season, his team uncovered a monumental shaft and chamber hidden below the innermost chapel of the tomb. We thought that he was going to be buried there, and we were going to find at least the remains of his burial. -[man] Inshallah. -[Jiménez-Serrano laughs] ♪♪ It is bedrock, it is the bedrock.
1:38:54
[narrator] Now, Alejandro is back with a new theory. [Jiménez-Serrano] We think that he was buried there, but then removed some years after, relocated in another part of the tomb.
1:39:08
[narrator] And the team have just discovered a promising spot in another corner of the chapel.
1:39:15
This is a trench that is in the same part of where we were working last year. And we believe that this might be the last place where Sarenput I was buried. So, we are now excavating this, trying to find if we have a chamber, a shaft. ♪♪
1:39:43
[narrator] Several hours later, the workers have removed enough sand for Alejandro to take a first look.
1:39:52
Well, this is a very exciting moment because we do not know what we have behind this sand.
1:40:00
[sighs ] Let's go.
1:40:03
Oh-oh-oh-oh!
1:40:07
It seems-- ooh.
1:40:11
Ooh! It's big. Ha!
1:40:17
♪♪ [narrator] In Abydos, Colleen is investigating the tomb of a pharaoh who lived 150 years after the Middle Kingdom was founded to explore how he restored a war-torn Egypt to its former glory. ♪♪ [Dr. Darnell] Absolutely incredible.
1:40:45
[narrator] Built by a pharaoh called Senwosret III, it is one of the most innovative tombs in the history of Ancient Egypt.
1:40:53
This is entirely carved out of the bedrock.
1:40:59
Here we have a massive shaft. It gives you really an idea of how far below the surface I am here.
1:41:15
[narrator] Colleen investigates a series of small chambers and tunnels.
1:41:21
Wow!
1:41:24
Giant granite blocking stones. [narrator] Two hundred and sixty feet in, pieces of granite nearly six feet tall block the path deeper into the tomb. This is a way of symbolically sealing the royal tomb from any outside influences. It's a good indication that we're on the way to the burial chamber.
1:41:50
[narrator] Colleen explores a roughly cut second tunnel that may have been dug by tomb robbers. It allows her to bypass the sealed corridor. Wow, this is the burial chamber and look at that sarcophagus, at this totally tilted angle. And it's massive! The amount of work that it would have taken to get this, this far deep, into the tomb, solid pieces of stone, these are monolithic.
1:42:25
[narrator] But the tomb doesn't seem to end at the burial chamber.
1:42:31
[Dr. Darnell] The sarcophagus is here but the corridors continue for quite some distance, deeper into the tomb.
1:42:41
[narrator] When the king died, workers hid his sarcophagus in a chamber 130 feet underground.
1:42:54
They then sealed the tomb with bricks from floor to ceiling
1:42:59
and blocked the steep passage with over 300 tons of highly prized red granite. But strangely, the tunnels continue beyond the burial chamber for another 250 feet. They trace a wide, sweeping curve bending back on itself. At nearly 600 feet long, it's a triumph of engineering unique in the history of Ancient Egypt.
1:43:28
[Dr. Darnell] The complexity of the corridors, particularly the snaking passageway beyond the burial chamber, is directly based on how the Egyptians imagined the architecture of the underworld itself. This entire tomb is a model of the underworld. It's hard in the modern world to conceptualize how much effort it would have taken to construct this tomb, just the man hours. [narrator] The scale of this colossal tomb shows that Senwosret was both incredibly powerful,
1:44:00
and able to command huge resources. Records suggest he was a military genius who consolidated his own power across the country and massively expanded Egypt's borders. He didn't just restore his country's former glory. He turned Egypt into a regional superpower. [Dr. Darnell] Senwosret III is one of the most powerful kings of his era. He rules over a time of prosperity, strengthened foreign policy, a highly organized administration. His reign really is a golden age in Egyptian history.
1:44:36
[narrator] But the Middle Kingdom pharaohs weren't done yet. Next, Colleen wants to explore an even more ambitious tomb that contains clues to why these great kings have been mostly forgotten.
1:44:51
♪♪ [narrator] In Aswan, at the necropolis of Qubbet el-Hawa...
1:45:01
[Jiménez-Serrano] Six meters and a half. Hoo! Ha! [laughs] Huge, it is huge. [laughs]
1:45:14
[narrator] Alejandro is searching a previously undiscovered chamber for the remains of Sarenput, a high-ranking Middle Kingdom official. The monumentality of this new space, this room, means that someone very important was buried in this area. [narrator] Sarenput's burial could provide new evidence on how the pharaohs governed Egypt during the Middle Kingdom. [Jiménez-Serrano] We need to open more to see what is inside. [laughs] Yes!
1:45:54
[narrator] Alejandro brings in his workers to remove the rest of the debris blocking the entrance to the chamber. [Jiménez-Serrano] Basically the material that we are excavating now is sand with mainly pottery. [worker speaking English]
1:46:11
[narrator] They thoroughly check every shovel of sand they remove. Even the smallest of finds could hold valuable clues.
1:46:20
[conversing in native language]
1:46:25
[speaking native language]
1:46:36
♪♪ [narrator] Near Luxor, Myriam's team is trying to reach the burial chamber of a Middle Kingdom tomb.
1:46:47
Workers are making steady progress removing rubble from the dangerous sloping shaft. Meanwhile, Myriam joins anthropologist Victoria Peña Romo to examine an intriguing new find from a chamber near the entrance of the tomb. They want to determine whether it's the skeleton of the tomb owner.
1:47:26
[narrator] It's unclear how this man's skeleton ended up here, but their analysis suggests it's unlikely he's the true owner of such a large tomb.
1:47:40
The team needs to get to the burial chamber.
1:47:45
But back inside, the excavation has come to a sudden halt.
1:47:55
[speaking native language]
1:47:58
[Seco Álvarez speaking English]
1:48:08
[narrator] The team is working in a very tight underground space. They can't finish clearing the corridor without removing the boulder. [Seco Álvarez speaking English]
1:48:25
[speaking native language]
1:48:31
[all exclaiming]
1:48:37
[narrator] The boulder weighs over 550 pounds. It's tough work moving such a heavy object in the cramped and steep corridor. And yet this stone is only a fraction of the weight of the sarcophagi and granite blocks moved by the workers in ancient times.
1:48:57
[speaking native language]
1:49:08
[narrator] Halfway up, the team hits a major obstacle, an original wall built out of one of the Middle Kingdom's most used materials, mud brick. [speaking native language] ♪♪ [narrator] In Aswan, at the site of Qubbet el-Hawa,
1:49:31
Alejandro is inspecting a small object they found just outside the newly discovered chamber. We have just found an amulet made of irons. Probably was part of a necklace, and it seems that it has an inscription. [narrator] He is hoping to find any evidence that the Middle Kingdom official Sarenput was buried inside. [indistinct] Beloved of the god Amun.
1:50:04
I need to see it under the sun. -Have you seen that? -Yeah. [Jiménez-Serrano] I want to see more carefully.
1:50:13
It's Horemheb [indistinct]. [laughs] Horemheb beloved of Amun. [narrator] The amulet dates from the time of pharaoh Horemheb, who reigned more than 300 years after Sarenput. It would have been a gift from the pharaoh to someone of high rank, who then took it with them to their grave. It shows how important it is for the team to sieve every single spade of sand. It is special. You know Qubbet el-Hawa is not a royal necropolis. [narrator] A find like this from a much later period
1:50:48
could be a sign the chamber was reused after Sarenput, meaning his remains may now be lost. Alejandro has to get inside to know for sure.
1:51:03
While the workers clear the remaining sand from the doorway, Alejandro joins the rest of his team outside. They've set up a second excavation area just in front of the main tomb entrance. [Jiménez-Serrano] We've noticed that here we have some rubble. What we are seeing here is the material, the rubbish produced by the construction of the tomb was deposit here. [narrator] Alejandro is hoping this 4,000-year-old construction spoil will help them learn more about how Sarenput's tomb was built.
1:51:36
[Jiménez-Serrano] It's something we have no information before, how was the construction and the decoration process of the funerary complex.
1:51:47
[narrator] Workers sift through the sand hunting for clues. [Jiménez-Serrano] Although we are in winter this is 30 degrees. It's hard.
1:52:04
[speaking English]
1:52:09
[speaking native language]
1:52:14
[narrator] Near Luxor, Myriam's team is working out how to safely remove the large stone from their Middle Kingdom tomb.
1:52:23
[conversing in native language] The mud brick wall blocking their way is a symbolic barrier that separated the deceased from the world of the living, much like the granite blocking stones in the huge underground tomb of Senwosret. [speaking native language]
1:52:47
[speaking English]
1:52:56
[worker speaking native language] [narrator] Moving large stones in these narrow tunnels is difficult and dangerous work, just as it was for the original tomb builders. One slip could result in a serious injury.
1:53:12
[speaking native language]
1:53:19
[conversing in native language]
1:53:24
[speaking native language]
1:53:44
[speaking English]
1:53:48
[speaking native language]
1:53:58
[speaking English]
1:54:16
Oh!
1:54:23
♪♪ [narrator] In Dahshur, Colleen has come to a pyramid field 20 miles south of Giza. She wants to explore one of the Middle Kingdom's most ambitious megatombs, The Black Pyramid. It was built by a pharaoh called Amenemhat III, the son of Senwosret who built the 600-foot-long underground tomb in Abydos.
1:54:56
[Dr. Darnell] This is a truly amazing place and although it doesn't look like too much today, this was once a massive pyramid just like we see out in the distance.
1:55:08
[narrator] Today, only the core of the pyramid remains, standing in a pile of its own rubble. But it once rose 250 feet above the valley floor.
1:55:22
When first built, The Black Pyramid was just over half the height of the Great Pyramid at Giza.
1:55:29
It was finished in a smooth outer casing of white limestone.
1:55:34
Underneath it, a mysterious maze of tunnels crisscrossing through the ground. Lined with huge stone blocks and totaling around 900 feet in length, they led to numerous storerooms
1:55:51
and the burial chambers intended for Amenemhat's queens, and the king himself.
1:55:59
The Black Pyramid was designed to be one of the most elaborate tombs in Egyptian history.
1:56:07
Colleen wants to explore why Amenemhat departed so radically from the rock-cut tombs of the Middle Kingdom's founders.
1:56:16
She looks for clues in the network of tunnels beneath the pyramid. [Dr. Darnell] Wow! This system of underground passageways is unbelievable.
1:56:29
It's like a maze down here.
1:56:35
The only other pyramid with similar underground architecture is the first pyramid ever constructed in Egypt, the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, constructed nearly a thousand years earlier. [narrator] Djoser was revered as one of Egypt's most powerful pharaohs. His pyramid built around 2650 BCE sat on top of three-and-a-half miles of tunnels hollowing out the ground below. No other pharaoh attempted to mimic Djoser's design until Amenemhat.
1:57:12
[Dr. Darnell] This pharaoh was really trying to show himself in relation to Egypt's first pyramid builder. ♪♪ [narrator] This was a hugely ambitious move, but also a strategic one. The young king had inherited a vast and prosperous kingdom from his warrior king father. With no need to mount further military campaigns, Amenemhat needed a different way of projecting his power. Linking himself to Djoser and the pyramid kings of old was a way to do that.
1:57:48
Amenemhat III's ambitions with this monument was to draw a connection between his reign and the golden age of the pyramids.
1:57:59
[narrator] Next, Colleen wants to investigate whether Amenemhat's ambitious design paid off, and he was able to match the achievements of the great pyramid kings of old. ♪♪
1:58:14
♪♪ [narrator] Near Luxor, Myriam is finally entering the burial chamber of the Middle Kingdom tomb.
1:58:25
[speaking English]
1:58:46
[narrator] As with most wealthy tombs in Ancient Egypt, the burial chamber has been looted.
1:58:59
[narrator] Myriam searches for any trace of the person who was buried here.
1:59:10
[narrator] Wood was scarce in Ancient Egypt so a wooden coffin could be a clue that the owner of the tomb was wealthy. Myriam hunts for any human remains.
1:59:27
[speaking English]
1:59:37
[narrator] Myriam scours the ground around the skull for any clues to what sort of man this was.
1:59:55
[narrator] Myriam thinks this could be a section of a ceremonial staff, because of its distinctive shape and diameter, similar to staffs found in tombs across Egypt. Only a small section survives in this tomb, but they were often made from expensive, imported wood.
2:00:13
They were only used by the highest echelons of Egyptian society.
2:00:20
The wooden coffin, cane, and sheer scale of the tomb now paint a picture of the sort of person who was buried here.
2:00:37
[narrator] This lavish burial is evidence that the success of the Middle Kingdom pharaohs trickled down through Egyptian society, and led to the flourishing of a new class of wealthy elites.
2:01:02
♪♪ [narrator] In Aswan...
2:01:11
[Jiménez-Serrano] It's difficult to say but it seems an-- a working tool. [narrator] Alejandro is studying the strange stone that's come out of the construction spoil outside Sarenput's tomb.
2:01:24
This is a stone that they use to polish the surface of the rock to, to smooth the, the façade of the tomb.
2:01:33
It's amazing.
2:01:42
[narrator] The team searches for more artifacts deeper in the spoil.
2:01:51
[Jiménez-Serrano] It seems that it's a test from the sculptor, probably trying to test the stone before making the final reliefs of the main door of the funerary complex.
2:02:04
It's very interesting because it show us the process of construction of the, of the tomb. [narrator] These finds suggest that Sarenput's tomb was constructed by highly skilled artisans.
2:02:18
This fits in with ancient texts from the same period. We know from the texts that Sarenput receive a group of royal artisans to build his tomb.
2:02:32
[narrator] According to the story, Sarenput supplied the pharaoh's army on its way to conquer Lower Nubia. The king sent his own artisans to help construct Sarenput's tomb as a reward . It was a huge honor. So here what we have is made by the hands of a royal sculptor.
2:02:55
[narrator] Back inside the tomb... [worker speaking English]
2:03:02
[narrator] The team have cleared the entrance to the new chamber.
2:03:07
Alejandro can finally go inside. ♪♪
2:03:17
♪♪ [narrator] In Aswan, the site of Qubbet el-Hawa, Alejandro is entering the new chamber inside Sarenput's tomb. He wants to see whether it contains Sarenput's missing body. [Jiménez-Serrano] Well, the surface is full of stones,
2:03:42
human remains, pottery.
2:03:49
We have bandages.
2:03:53
Okay.
2:03:57
[narrator] Alejandro hunts for any clues that will help him date the remains.
2:04:04
[Jiménez-Serrano] The pottery seems to date to the New Kingdom. [narrator] Just like the scarab found outside the chamber, the pottery inside dates to the New Kingdom. This confirms that the chamber was reused centuries after Sarenput died, and his remains are nowhere to be found.
2:04:27
[Jiménez-Serrano] [sighs] It's a real pity.
2:04:32
Okay.
2:04:39
It's a unique experience to get into an area where nobody has been since thousand of years. But I found no trace of Sarenput I. [narrator] But a mystery remains : was Sarenput ever buried inside this chamber, or was it built for someone else? Now we have to explain which was the purpose in this chamber.
2:05:10
♪♪ [narrator] While his team starts processing the material left inside...
2:05:19
Alejandro looks for clues in the faded inscriptions throughout the tomb...
2:05:26
in the corridor leading towards the chamber.
2:05:33
[Jiménez-Serrano] By chance I pass by here, and I notice that here there was the remains of an inscription that actually is the name of one of the sons of Sarenput I. So we know who these figures were, and they were the sons of Sarenput.
2:05:54
[narrator] It's a vital clue that Alejandro has never seen before. He now thinks Sarenput himself never used the chamber. It was built for his sons. [Jiménez-Serrano] It has some logic that they were buried in the innermost part of Sarenput I tomb, in a very privileged place. The family wanted to be united in the afterlife. The best option was to bury them in the same funerary complex.
2:06:26
[narrator] Alejandro may not have found Sarenput's missing mummy, but he has uncovered a new piece in the puzzle of this spectacular megatomb.
2:06:37
When Sarenput built his tomb, the pharaoh gave him his elite team of builders, and the finest royal artisans.
2:06:48
They built him a monumental funerary complex with extra chambers for his family.
2:06:57
Ancient texts say it was fitted with an exquisite coffin, a gift from the pharaoh himself and precious grave goods including furniture from the royal household.
2:07:09
The grandeur of Sarenput's tomb is a testament to the way the Middle Kingdom pharaohs governed their country. ♪♪ The monumentality of his tomb is telling us a lot of information about the royal administration here, the prizes the, the king give to the local elite.
2:07:34
[narrator] During the Middle Kingdom, the pharaohs developed a sophisticated system of government. They appointed trusted governors like Sarenput to rule key territories, and kept them loyal by rewarding them with splendid megatombs. For me, the Middle Kingdom is not only a golden age of the Egyptian history, it is the period in which Egypt gets its maturity.
2:08:09
♪♪ [narrator] In Dahshur, at The Black Pyramid, Colleen is exploring whether Pharaoh Amenemhat's ambitious construction project paid off, and if he was able to match the achievements of the mighty pyramid kings of old. [Dr. Darnell] The care that they took in the construction, even in this long corridor.
2:08:36
And yet cracks emerged.
2:08:41
[narrator] She hunts for clues in the network of tunnels below the pyramid. These are modern repairs to shore up the construction. But you can see the ancient beams here, those would have been added almost 4,000 years ago because there was already subsidence in the pyramid structure. And what that would have meant is that there was instability.
2:09:05
[narrator] Unlike the pyramids at Giza, Amenemhat built on the clay of the Nile flood plain, just 33 feet above sea level. Here, groundwater could seep upwards and soften the earth beneath. As the pyramid took shape, its tremendous weight pushed down on its network of underground tunnels.
2:09:29
Cracks appeared in the ceilings, and workers had to shore up the walls with wood and mud brick.
2:09:37
Amenemhat had tried to build himself a megatomb like the kings of old, but he failed. He abandoned his ambitious project and the pyramid began to crumble. One unfortunate result of the instability in this pyramid was that the king was never buried here, only his queen. [narrator] The Black Pyramid took many years and huge resources to build. But ended up being a very costly failure, and Colleen thinks the mistakes made on this pyramid hold a clue to why so many of the Middle Kingdom pharaohs
2:10:11
have also been forgotten. These are mud bricks, this is mud mixed with straw. That is what this pyramid was constructed of at its core, what is in the thousands behind me.
2:10:27
Only the exterior casing blocks were made of limestone, which is a completely different situation from the Giza pyramids where the entire pyramid is made of stone. [narrator] Mud brick was a popular building material during the Middle Kingdom, because it was easy to manufacture, cheap, and light. But it has a fatal flaw. Mud brick simply does not survive the same way as a solid stone pyramid. ♪♪ [narrator] Colleen thinks this is a key reason the Middle Kingdom pharaohs have been forgotten.
2:11:06
They either built their vast megatombs underground where they remained hidden, or constructed mud brick tombs that simply weathered away. Kings of the Middle Kingdom built incredible monuments, but many of them were not constructed in the same way as either monuments before or after. So, so many of the traces of this remarkable period are lost to history. ♪♪ [narrator] Today, archeologists continue to unlock the secrets of the megatombs of the Middle Kingdom . How Egyptian civilization prospered
2:11:43
giving rise to a sophisticated new elite. How it's pharaohs appointed powerful local governors to run the country and kept them loyal with lavish rewards. And why, despite building some of the most spectacular monuments in Egyptian history, they have now mostly been forgotten. ♪♪
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