When is summer time in egypt
Immortal Egypt: The Road To The Pyramids (Ancient Egypt Documentary) | Timeline
can't we'll get up
[Laughter]
this is brilliant this is obviously an
iconic image
taking a camel ride by the pyramids
surely it encapsulates the spirit of
egypt
but such an image is completely
misleading
because there weren't any camels here
when the pyramids were built four and a
half thousand years ago
and that's the thing ancient egypt
is instantly recognizable but all too
often
completely misunderstood
so i'm gonna try and change that
good luck shall crank
the great pyramid of giza final resting
place of king khufu
over 140 meters from bottom to top
no wonder it still pulls in the crowds
and the occasional egyptologist
it's hard to really get it into words
but we are now entering
into the depths of this iconic monument
of ancient egypt
it's a very care it's a very busy iconic
monument though
it's available and as we set foot on
this journey upwards
it's a brilliant metaphor for the way
that the ancient egyptian civilization
literally
rose up from the earth to a real zenith
so come with me and i'll show you
something really brilliant
because the pyramids are really only the
tip of the iceberg
[Music]
oh oh flipping out
[Music]
so all this was a big city overwhelming
that is absolutely superb
in this series i'm going to explore the
story of what i consider to be the
world's greatest
civilization more than 4 000 years of
history that has shaped our world
and left unmistakable marks that can
still be read today
i'll be looking into every nook and
cranny
from little known tombs it's staggering
i've never
ever been into a tomb quite like this
before to the hidden corners of vast
monuments
it's like being on top of the world
isn't it yeah we are in the tub of
[Music]
karnak
so it's really no surprise that weird
and wonderful theories about ancient
egypt
crop up all the time
but what i find so amazing is that this
most intriguing civilization
was actually created by people not so
very different from you and me
and that's the story i want to tell
a story full of secret treasures
dark deeds
and sometimes controversial theories
this mask was originally made for
someone else
and for the first time i'll be piecing
it all together
from the earliest egyptians to the last
of the pharaohs
wow look at that look at that oh that is
oh that is so beautiful
welcome to my story of ancient egypt
the big question is how did ancient
egypt begin
where did the first egyptians and their
extraordinary culture come from
[Music]
this immortal civilization was thousands
of years in the making
so to pull it all together is a daunting
task
but bear with me as it's utterly
fascinating
but we won't begin with massive
monuments but with some enigmatic clues
you could easily miss
[Music]
this is curta around a hundred
kilometers south of luxo
unless you're an archaeologist you
almost certainly won't have heard of it
because there aren't any great temples
or royal tombs to admire
but high in the cliffs you can see real
signs
of ancient life here
[Music]
thousands of years before the pyramids
and this is where our story begins
welcome to kurta joanne thank you so
much for letting me come here it's
incredibly exciting it's the first time
you're here i suppose
nothing escapes the sharp eye of dr dirk
hoyger
and he's got something very special to
show me
not many people have been here before
you because it's it's a quite recent
discovery
these carvings in the rock reveal an
amazing story
about the beginnings of egyptian life
it's a nineteen thousand year old
picture gallery
[Music]
complete with its own hippo
back line very short tail fine legs
belly line front legs and
the mouth is shown you're probably
smiling but then again a nipple is
always smiling
but another type of animal is by far the
most common here
that's that's cattle not just cattle
there's the mighty aurochs the wild
profit wild cattle
and the extremely powerful images that
seem to be in movement
they are the charging down to orders
aren't they
these wild aurochs were ancestors of the
domestic cow
and nearly twenty thousand years ago
beef was the main thing on the menu
about maybe fifty percent of their diet
was composed of all rocks
so they were experts and masters in
representing this animal
[Music]
it's always high on the cliff very
prominent positions that give an
excellent panorama
over what must have been in the
paleolithic the hunting grounds of the
people
it's easy to picture these early hunters
here as they tracked their prey
[Music]
but the landscape would have looked very
different from today
because back then this was savannah
grassland
a green and fertile region
[Music]
do we have any idea why these creatures
were engraved on these rocks here we can
guess joanne but we don't know
maybe they wanted to influence the
hunting
maybe this is some sort of hunting magic
it really is magical to sit here and
imagine
egypt's earliest nomadic people passing
right through this spot
and portraying on these very rocks the
animals that they saw all around them
human figures and boats joined the
animals as the carvings became stranger
and stranger
but these carvings are also the earliest
glimpse of the amazing things to come
these are the first signs of what makes
ancient egypt
well ancient egypt
as for its ancient landscape this
evolved under dramatic circumstances
ten thousand years ago gravity tilted
the entire earth of its axis
by about half a degree and this had a
profound effect on climate
and as the world began to change egypt
would never be the same again
these early people were nomads
seasonally
mobile pastoralists who moved around
following the summer reigns
and these rains really were the vital
life-bringing force which created the
greenery
on which wild animals depended but of
course with climate change
these rains began to dry up okay you can
cut the rain
the diminishing rainfall forced both
animals and people
towards large lakes which formed during
the rainy season
one such area is nabta playa 100
kilometers southwest of a swamp
and here these nomadic hunters began to
settle into communities
but still reliant on the annual summer
reigns they needed to predict
exactly when these would return and so
they
turned to the night sky welcome to the
beginning of time
quite literally because this is egypt's
oldest calendar
at around 7 000 years old this stone
circle from nabta playa
is the earliest evidence of how egyptian
weather forecasters
became astronomers
they aligned its central stones to the
circumpolar stars
visible in the night sky all year round
when the sun appeared directly overhead
the stones cast no shadow
the mid-summer rains were approaching
this meant that the animals would drink
the plants would grow
and the world would survive for another
year
so in many ways this circle represents
the solution
to the very real problem of survival
but the egyptians would take this a step
further
i think the really great thing about
these mini monumental markers
is that this is the earliest example we
have of the way in which the egyptians
are aligning their monuments to various
things to the sky
to the cardinal points and from now on
every tomb
every temple every monument will be
aligned to the heavens
to the very gods themselves
[Music]
if the stars in the rain were this
closely linked
then this world and the next must be won
and the same
[Music]
and this has been described as egypt's
earliest
sculpted stone monument and dates from
around 5000 bc
[Music]
this chunk of sandstone was quarried
over a mile away from where it was
eventually discovered
this certainly suggests a kind of sense
of community
where people were already working
together to achieve a desired aim
in this case the stone was hauled into
place
and then there are clear signs that it's
been sculpted
into a specific shape now you might have
to go with me on this
but some believe that this is in fact a
cow
with its large hindquarters
and this sculpted head
now the cow was a vital part of everyday
life for these people it was a source of
meat
of milk and of blood key sources of
protein they needed to keep them healthy
and yet so important was the cow they
chose to take it
through into the afterlife with them to
sustain them
on a spiritual level and this is the
very beginnings
of the great cow goddess hathor
hathor may have started off as a source
of milk and meat
but eventually she would be loved and
idolized by
millions of egyptians since she
represented love
joy beauty and motherhood
and although her image develops from a
lifelike animal
to a female face with cow's ears
this may be hathor's very earliest
incarnation
[Music]
yet hathor is only one of a multitude of
gods and goddesses
the egyptians just couldn't get enough
of them
over the centuries emerged hundreds if
not thousands of deities
each with a specific purpose and
appearance
some came in human form some had animal
heads
they could be male female
even androgynous
it seems that there were few aspects of
life that didn't have their own gods
we know that in the very earliest times
their gods
resembled familiar things the world
around them
elements of nature and certainly animals
and over time the animals their forms
their shapes their characteristics
distilled down into this sort of divine
figure
each one worshiped for a different
quality in the case of the ram
they were worshiped for their
procreative powers
in the case of the cow for their
nurturing motherly
instincts then of course you've got
rather different creatures the dangerous
creatures the ones that lived
on the edges of the egyptian world the
lions the crocodiles the jackals
but it wasn't just about finding the
appropriate divinity
it was about gaining power over them
the goddess sekhmet was a ferocious
lioness
and the bringer of death to humans
so the egyptians transformed her into a
deity
as a way of controlling her destructive
powers
by a worshipping segment it was believed
that she could be placated
and transformed into a more benign deity
on so many levels the egyptians were
trying to tap into nature
to affect the way that nature then in
turn
affected them
in many ways egypt's unique religion was
the glue
that held society together uniting the
population
and underpinning almost every aspect of
life
it's everywhere in tombs in temples in
everyday life
and yet there is another even more
fundamental element
without which ancient egypt would never
have existed
at all
[Music]
later greek historians famously observed
that
egypt was the gift of the nile and how
right they were
because as the climate continued to
change the desert lakes
eventually dried up leaving the
egyptians
with just one source of water
this is an incredibly special place
located in modern sudan
it nonetheless forms the very source of
egypt
but it's the place where two great
rivers meet
the white nile and the blue nile which
combine
here to form the world's longest river
flowing from the heart of africa
and out into the mediterranean sea
for much of the year the wide lazy white
nile is the main source of water
until annual rainfall in the ethiopian
highlands
swells the fast-flowing blue nile
today the modern aswan dams hold back
these floodwaters
but until the 20th century huge volumes
of water
and fertile silt surged down river
to flood the entire nile valley
bringing life and fertility to the
desert that is egypt this annual nile
flood
was the single most important event in
the lives of every ancient egyptian
for its life-giving waters brought the
nutrients
and minerals which enriched the soil all
along its banks
and this allowed agriculture to flourish
egypt is blessed with some of the most
fertile land in the world
where farmers can grow everything from
sweet corn and garlic
to bananas sugarcane and cotton
bad away it's quite intensive farming
isn't it the land gives
the people a lot doesn't it yes but we
need to give the land also rest
we grow one time and we leave it for
one month then after we use the land
again
to grow again that's amazing that it
only needs one month
rest time and then it can be planted
again yeah sometimes 15 days sometime
one month yeah but it really does
emphasize that
this land of egypt has always been so
rich and so giving to the people it's
always given
the people everything they need
and it's the nile that turned this
desert land into a paradise
[Music]
and seven thousand years ago the people
who could no longer survive in an
increasingly desert landscape were
forced to migrate towards it
as their only source of water so ancient
egypt
took shape as these people came together
along the banks of the nile
in the north settlements clustered
around the delta
and the fiom and in the south
around the kenner bend
this was the beginning of egypt's
so-called two lands
upper and lower egypt which developed
into two
distinct cultures
[Music]
but what they both had in common was the
astonishing fertility
replenished every year by the miracle of
the nile
[Music]
el cab located to the south of the
kennebend
is one of upper egypt's earliest
settlements
[Music]
and while it may lack the wow factor of
the pyramids
it's actually far more revealing to see
traces of this amazing evolution
because here we can see how a nomadic
lifestyle
was soon replaced by a settled social
structure
and although it was a slow and gradual
process
archaeologist elizabeth hart can
identify
each stage of this transformation
wow you do work in an enclave but it's
much cooler down here
it's lovely actually
so down at this level we have sterile
soil where nobody lived
and then starting around 4 200 bc are
layers of
silt from the nile flood followed by
wind accumulated sand
and then another layer of silt and then
more sand and here you can see it really
well
a thin silt layer from the nile coming
up and flooding and then the sand
and over here we have a hearth feature
so this tells us that humans were
actually living
on these and coming into the nile valley
and then moving back out
and we also found lots of pot shards and
stone tools
in these layers you know it might be a
small space but you've got people's real
lives unfolding within it aren't you and
we have
thousands of years of it here when we
started people were just moving into the
nile valley they were just starting to
farm
and by the end here we have pharaohs and
a whole
united egypt it's really impressive when
you think about all the change that
happened
over this chunk of sand
although we are still centuries away
from the grand pharonic monuments
you can still find traces of the lives
these ancient people lived
if you look hard enough for very little
has survived
except for tons of pottery
yeah this one is uh yeah so it's five
thousand years old
five thousand years old
these pots help us to identify when this
early society
began to produce a food surplus a
pivotal transition
which required robust pottery for the
storage of large-scale food and drink
production
these bread molds from slightly later
are one of the most common finds
so you heat the mold then the dog gets
into into it
and by the heat of the mold the the bake
the bread will be
will be baked but this comes in massive
amounts
these are the beer jars ah bread and
beer egyptian staples
oh nice nicer beer jar this is the nuts
and bolts of how egyptian chronology all
came together in the early days isn't it
yes
the pottery is especially fundamental to
understand
how people were living
yet in egypt living was only half the
story
because what really sets the ancient
egyptians apart
is their view of death
to them death wasn't the end of life but
a new beginning
a transformation from the world of the
living into an everlasting
afterlife and such a belief
would shape egypt's most mysterious
practice
and my favorite subject
[Music]
mummification
although the origins of this enigmatic
tradition
are only now becoming clearer the burial
of their dead
had a strong significance from the very
earliest times
this is a typical burial from around
3400 bc
the body is curled into the fetal
position and here placed within a
reconstructed pit grave
surrounded by the belongings he might
have had in his earthly life
like pottery jewelry and a palette for
preparing cosmetics
everything that was important to him in
life accompanied
him into death and i think that's quite
significant because it shows that
already five and a half thousand years
ago the egyptians
wanted to take it all with them they
clearly believed that something happened
beyond death death was simply a
transition
into another state of existence when you
continued to live
and it was assumed you would need
everything you'd needed
in your life on earth his body was
naturally mummified in the hot desert
sand
but its placement here may not have been
accidental
because even when dead the body had to
be preserved
in order to house the soul for eternity
a skeleton simply wasn't good enough
skeletons bones
they are very very anonymous and yet
when the soft tissue the skin the hair
is all present
we are ourselves and that's exactly what
this individual represents
being face to face with one of the very
earliest egyptians
gives us insight into the development of
their ideas about the afterlife
it started off as a practical thing
burying
the dead in a relatively small space
bundled up
and then it developed these layers of
kind of like the symbolism
the fetal position this idea in rebirth
into the next world
it's almost like the seed from which the
egyptian funerary belief system evolved
this is the very beginning of a process
which would be repeated
a million fold throughout egyptian
history
this is combination of the esoteric
underpinned by the practical which
really does sum up
the egyptians in a nutshell
from the very beginning the egyptians
were masters
of making sense of their world no matter
how complex and mystifying it might seem
to us
and this same ability to bring order is
also found in the way they structured
their early society
adopting levels of bureaucracy that
border on the obsessive
in the ancient city of abidos the site
of egypt's first royal burial ground
archaeologists found the origins of a
system
that we still have to put up with today
[Music]
it's most fitting that this city of
death
was the fine spot of the earliest means
of calculating that other great
certainty
taxes
the evidence comes from small bone and
ivory labels like these
which have been dated to around 3250 bc
the originals are probably the size of a
postage stamp
and you can see that each one is
engraved with images of
animals of birds of plants and so forth
and each one is pierced for suspension
to a chest or pottery vessel
which would have contained oil linen
grain and it's thought that these
symbols represent
the regions that produce these
commodities which were then brought here
to abide us
thought to have been sent as tax
payments these tiny labels
show how these early people were already
capable of collecting duties
from a vast geographical area
some experts even believe these symbols
can be vocalized
by turning the simple drawings into
sounds makes this the world's earliest
known
writing
now isn't it interesting that the
world's earliest writing
wasn't developed to express some great
outpouring of emotion
or expressed grand passion it was simply
a means
of calculating taxes
these symbols soon became a
sophisticated
writing system of elegant signs we call
hieroglyphs
which means sacred carvings
and these signs represented every aspect
of the egyptian world
which were only translated in 1822 with
the discovery
of the rosetta stone
[Music]
and a common language was needed as
goods were transported between the two
lands of
upper and lower egypt the people of
lower egypt had also developed trade
links with the rest of the ancient world
but as more warlike regions began to
emerge in upper egypt
it soon became clear that the nile had
spawned
two very different and distinctive
cultures
and in many ways the only thing they
really had in common
was this great river
[Music]
the inevitable clash between these
cultures is recorded on what many
consider to be
ancient egypt's founding document
taking the form of a giant ceremonial
cosmetic palette
this is an exact copy of the original
nama palette
and however idealized and embellished it
depicts the pivotal moment
when the southern king nama defeated his
northern enemy
a split second after this mace comes
down onto this
northern enemy's head and he's executed
he's killed he is no more
nama himself remains the first king
of a united egypt and what this means is
that the whole of the country is now
united
under one man's rule he is setting
himself
up quite literally as the god king as
the one
central figure at the very pinnacle of
the pyramid that forms
egyptian society and from him everything
else
flows egypt is now
the world's first nation state
[Music]
what made ancient egypt ancient egypt is
all here
the art forms the reforms of religion
and even the world's first writing
hieroglyphic script
this is the name of nama the catfish
no and the chisel no no
no striking catfish as the first king of
egypt
narma is protected by the cow goddess
hathor
stands beside horus the falcon god of
kingship
and is dressed in all the same
paraphernalia as every king who succeeds
him
he has the tie on false beard to
emphasize
his virility and his strength and this
is matched of course by the time bull's
tail it's a wonderful feature
this idea you could just tie a little
tail onto the back of the belt
and then take into yourself the power of
a bull
this pallet is egypt's earliest
historical document
it's the blueprint of how every future
pharaoh will be portrayed
in the company of the gods
[Music]
yet perhaps most significant is nurma's
smiting pose
this powerful image with the mace held
high
will be endlessly repeated throughout
egypt's long
history
this is a horrible way to die to have
your brains bludgeoned out
and yet even this the egyptian artist
can show in an almost
ballet-like pose it's been sanitized
it's been
elevated to a piece of art and yet the
message still gets through
for the next three thousand years every
one of egypt's subsequent rulers
would try and link themselves to egypt's
first pharaoh
to rule legitimately and successfully
they had to be absorbed into the
complexities of the egyptian hierarchy
both in this world and the next so their
names were recorded on a series of king
lists
a kind of royal family tree and the best
preserved of these
is here in the temple of seti the first
at tabaidos
it lists himself and 75 of his
royal predecessors going right back to
the very dawn of egyptian history
with the very first king up there king
nama and the other important detail
about this
is that it's essentially emphasizing
that royal continuity because
seti has his own young son ramses the
crown prince
actually reading out these names on a
piece of papyrus paper
so it's as if seti is saying to the gods
look
i'm now pharaoh and this is my son
who'll succeed me
to become yet another name on this
remarkable list
in all egypt had over 300 pharaohs
organized into 30 dynasties
but in the case of egypt's earliest
kings being male immortal
was not enough they needed to prove
their divinity
by exercising absolute control over
their subjects
and the evidence for this was found in
the desolate desert
surrounding the ancient city of abados
[Music]
this was egypt's first royal burial
ground
the original version of the valley of
the kings
now being here you get a real sense of
the importance of this place for the
ancient egyptians
for as the wind funnels down this valley
and swirls around the sand
if you listen very carefully you can
hear a whispering sound
a whispering ones thought to be the
voices of the very dead themselves
and here egypt's earliest kings were
laid to rest
within huge subterranean burial chambers
like this the location of the final
resting place
of egypt's third pharaoh king ger
one of the largest and most complex
tombs of the first dynasty
and although it's been recovered in sand
it clearly demonstrates
the power that juror still wielded
even in death
jer himself was buried here in the
central chamber
but all around a 318 subsidiary graves
of his courtiers
not only that a little way beyond
many others were also buried in total
587 individuals accompanied this man
into the next world which is incredible
enough
but there is evidence of a more sinister
twist
the fact that this tomb was all sealed
over at the same time
suggests these people may have been
victims of ritual sacrifice
perhaps even ritual stabbing as
portrayed in art of the time
and certainly that power over life and
death would give any king
a godlike status
[Music]
now later kings seem to have realized
that killing all their courtiers in one
go
was not the best use of people who were
a precious state resource
after all he'll be around to make the
next king's cup of tea
although this cruel and short-sighted
practice of ritual killing
soon died out it had nonetheless
demonstrated that egypt's rulers
had complete control over their subjects
an essential step along the route
towards building the pyramids
and indeed egypt itself
yet the egyptian people were not slaves
by this time
egypt was a land of plenty where all
could enjoy its bounty
both in life and in death
this is the later tomb of an official
called eru qatar
and here he is greeting us he's coming
to the door of his own tomb
emerging from the walls captured in all
his splendor with his finery on his
jewel belt and his white linen and kilt
even details down to his little sort of
pencil mustache looks a little bit like
clark gable to be honest
the scenes in his colorful tomb depict a
refined life
that's a world away from egypt's
earliest farmers
we have iroquatar seated in front of a
table of food offerings there's fruit
vegetables
wine and so forth the berries are coming
forward with offerings to sustain his
soul
irukata was the royal butcher an
important member of court
and with royal courtiers no longer
sacrifice for burial with their king
they could now make their own elaborate
preparations for the afterlife
there are a couple of scenes up here of
the household servants making
the beds of iroquota and his family
they're stretching
out the linen sheets they're bringing
even a little fly whisk and the ancient
egyptian pillow the
headrest there so even in the afterlife
heru qatar
will be comfortable
hirokita's tomb is in saqqara a
sprawling city of the dead
for egypt's first capital memphis
yet zakara wasn't just the burial site
of courtiers
but of kings and the site of a
revolution in royal tomb building
[Music]
and whereas previously the dead had
tended to be buried away in the desert
hidden away almost here at sacara high
on the desert escarpment
the dead were literally placed on
display
up to this point the egyptians attended
to build their tombs and temples
like their houses from organic materials
from the mud break wood and reeds which
rarely survive
but in the third dynasty the great
innovator king jose
built his legacy in something far more
permanent
for he built in stone which could
potentially last forever
jose built this huge stone wall to
surround his tomb complex
although his architects and workmen
still drew their inspiration
from the natural world you can see that
the masons are just trying to get their
head around
how to actually work with this stuff
what forms to put it in
so we have egypt's first hyper style
hall of columns sure
but it's taking the form of reeds bound
together
to make the kind of columns that would
have been in joseph's palace
down by the nile
but this of course is a house for death
this is a palace of eternity
and must be built in something as solid
as stone
[Music]
at the rear of his complex is an
intriguing stone shrine
where i can come face to face with king
jose himself
the shrine looks like it's suffering a
severe case of subsidence
and yet the egyptians purposefully built
it on this very
definite tilt
it has these two holes here where modern
tourists can see jose
but jose can see them you can actually
see beyond them
because this face is true north it faces
the northern stars
which the egyptians called the
imperishable ones
and so at death jose's soul could rise
up
and merge with these stars so he too
would be imperishable and he too would
never die
in order to ensure that his soul could
live on jose's body
needed somewhere safe to rest within a
tomb
truly fit for a king most burials were
topped by a simple
single-story building called a mastaba
meaning bench
but jose did something radical
josem really wanted to impress with his
funerary monument
so another step was built on top
i think jose must have quite liked the
effect that this gave
and so built a third step
fourth step a fifth step
sixth step when they stood back and
looked
they realized they'd built egypt's first
pyramid
pretty impressive
the step pyramid stands over 60 metres
tall
and still dominates the sacara landscape
at the time it was the largest building
on earth
reinforcing jose's status as a living
god
in the grandest of ways
it certainly secured his place in
egyptian history
with ancient visitors flocking here to
marvel at his achievements
now jose had created a true landmark but
it also created egypt's first tourist
attraction
if you come with me i'll show you the
evidence
because in here we have what many
tourists still leave today
appreciative graffiti and this is the
original
handwriting of a couple of ancient
visitors from around 1300 bc
who were so impressed by what they saw
they described jose's pyramid
as if heaven were in it and they credit
jose
with being the inventor of stone
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but why did jose build this was it just
an ego trip
or an exercise in personal vanity or was
it designed to show the world
just how far egypt had come because in
only a few centuries
these disparate people had come together
to create the world's
first nation state
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egypt was now an unstoppable powerhouse
a nation unified both politically and
culturally
under a single ruler whose authority was
limitless
yet it wasn't just the king who could
achieve immortality
for the man who designed and built
jose's pyramid was destined to become
even more famous than the pharaoh he had
served
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this statue base once held a full-sized
figure of king jose
but carved into its base is also the
name
of his architect and here we can see it
with this reed the owl and then the
little
mat with a little bread loaf on which
reads
and here is the man himself
although most likely a commoner by birth
imhotep
rose through the ranks to become one of
egypt's most powerful officials
he was made the royal chancellor the
prime minister
he was even made high priest of the sun
god
he was the ultimate local boy made good
because he then gained a reputation
as an academic as a great healer and he
was famous the length and breadth of
egypt
he was ultimately worshipped as a god
imhotep represents the ultimate in
social mobility
a kind which was certainly possible
within egypt's unique society
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this was a society in which ideas were
often taken to extremes
with one and a half million people
united by an absolute belief in the
power of their king
and in the certainty of the afterlife
egypt enters
its most ambitious era so far
the pyramid age
over 130 pyramids would be built across
egypt
and they represent the zenith in royal
tomb building
huge state-sponsored civil engineering
projects
that used vast resources of materials
manpower and time
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the largest of all the great pyramid of
king khufu
which took over 20 years to build
and in order to build something so
ambitious
an entire city was created specifically
to house the construction workers
just beyond this monumental wall it's
known as the wall of the crow
and it separated the silent sacred space
of the dead
from the busy bustling city of the
pyramid builders
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this five-hectare site once housed
workshops
bakeries a tool-making facility and a
fish processing area
for this was an integrated
self-sufficient community
of over 8 000 people who even had their
own medical care
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anthropological archaeologist dr richard
reading
has been excavating the site since 1991.
where we are now this is kind of a big
workshop a big industrial park
where there's lots of activity going on
out here
they're probably using granite statue
maybe granite
column we find tools out here for
polishing
the granite we find tools out here for
chipping at the granite
it's very well planned we have three
streets we have north street
main street we're on and we have south
street down there so we're walking down
man you're walking down main street
the pyramid workers live cheek by jowl
in two-story barracks
you would have walked in you would have
been in a very quiet dark
long narrow room this is where they
would have slept
there would have been a a higher bed for
the overseer at each end
and then everybody would have laid down
probably with their head
in this direction or the other direction
exactly like this you would be lying
here like this and this would be your
your nighttime position very comfortable
can i can i try out the obviously
sure you want to try the overseer's bed
there delusions of grandeur
is it this one or that one yeah it's
that's the that's the wall you're the
way right where you are
oh so this is all right so if i if i sat
down here yeah the overseer's bed is
actually buried under a few centimeters
of sand
and the floor here is probably under
about a half a meter of sand
so this is nice yeah i'm keeping my eye
on you now that's right you can see me
if i got up in the night and i tried to
sneak out to go someplace you would see
me
everything the workers needed was here
on site
the team have recovered data that shows
that workers consumed 74
cattle and 257 sheep and goats each week
this coral area could hold a weak supply
of cattle
before more were shipped in from egypt's
grasslands
you could have almost just in time
delivery coming down another small herd
coming down from como hissing or the
delta
coming down and in it's a really
well-oiled machine you can see
now how efficient the egyptians were
obtaining their food
bringing it to the right place at the
right time for the right people it's
brilliant absolutely it was
it wasn't just simply the food it was
everything there was the
copper to make tools there was the stone
being brought in here from
osmond and other areas so a lot of
things were coming into here
these were government workers they got
everything from the government
in many ways this settlement is egypt in
microcosm
a highly ordered social structure with
job specialization
and mass cooperation it's hard to
believe
that in a relatively short period of
time egypt had been transformed
from simple subsistence into a united
state
which could provide for everyone who
worked on its behalf
what we're seeing here is the final
building block
in egyptian culture but not just for the
pyramid age
for once this infrastructure was in
place it would never
change so whether they're building a
pyramid or setting up a colossal statue
the level of organization and
cooperation would remain the same
but this was the foundation stone of
egypt
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the pyramids are eternal testament to
just how powerful
egypt had now become and in many ways
they
are egypt at this time dominating
everything around them on a gigantic
scale
and towering above the giza landscape is
the great pyramid
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it took around 20 000 people to set in
place the 2.3 million blocks of
limestone
it remained the tallest structure
anywhere in the world for 3
800 years until the building of lincoln
cathedral spire in 1300 a.d
it's a phenomenal achievement for any
civilization at any time
but for me its exterior can't compare
to the sense of wonder once you venture
inside
the roof of the grand gallery passageway
is built of multiple layers of enormous
limestone slabs
rising over eight meters high
massive massive blocks of masonry built
on a god-like scale
that's surely what kufu wanted
i sincerely hope kufu's eternal resting
place was rather
less congested than it is today but it
still gives a real atmosphere of the
busyness that must have been
here on a daily basis
these guys were hauling massive massive
blocks hundreds of feet up literally
into the air these guys were magicians
just look how brilliantly these courses
have been laid
these are perfect and if i any modern
architect to be able to replicate this
using the tools that the ancients had at
their disposal
wow here we are at the zenith we're at
the heart of the pyramid now
king kufu's burial chamber and we've hit
it at exactly the right moment
because the pyramid is closed for lunch
so we've got
the whole place to ourselves and you
really get a sense of the sanctity
of this divine mausoleum
the walls and roof of the burial chamber
are lined entirely in granite
and it was within here that the body of
the great king khufu was sealed
ready for his final journey into the
afterlife
at the heart of the pyramid in terms of
its architecture
but we're literally in the heart of
ancient egypt
i feel like i should be speaking in a
whisper because the acoustics are so
extraordinary
it's a sterile
plain stark room it's pretty much like a
bank vault
and when you think about it that's
exactly what it is because it once
contained
egypt's greatest treasure the mummified
body of the god king
which contained the soul not only of
kufu
but of all the generations of pharaohs
stretching
way back to king narma
forget the jewels forget the gold its
real treasure
was in here and it's the first time i've
ever been in here
without crowds and crowds of other
people
and speaking now the sound of the voice
reverberating around
immediately takes you back four and a
half thousand years to the day
of the funeral to the sacred words the
priests would have chanted
to revive the soul of the god king
it's miraculous it's a wonderful
spectacular place that affects every
sense
visually audibly
in every sense it it's it's beyond words
really
i think i probably better stop talking
now
so now all the elements that made a
patient egypt
were in place a well-fed highly
organized population
that unswervingly followed their god
king and
all of whom shed this fervent belief
in an afterlife life in egypt
was good
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now of course none of this could last
economic disaster and famine plunged
egypt into chaos
this is ancient egypt beginning to
suffer
with the pharaoh's power melting away
local warlords ransacked its most sacred
sites
egypt's dark age was coming make no
mistake
this is the home of the dead
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