Lost Treasures of Egypt (2019) s04e08 Episode Script

1
(dramatic music)
NARRATOR: In a mysterious cave system,
a few miles from Egypt's Red Sea
PROF. TALLET: We have made 28 meters
inside this cave,
but it's still not the end.
(dramatic music continues)
NARRATOR: Tantalizing evidence, linking
this site to the Great Pyramid of Giza.
(dramatic music)
So here we have an inscription.
(suspenseful music)
NARRATOR: The Pyramids of Giza.
These mighty monuments stood
as the tallest structures in the world
for thousands of years.
(suspenseful music continues)
Built in the third millennium BCE,
over 1,000 years before Tutankhamun.
The pyramids were enormous
tombs for Egypt's early pharaohs.
Their iconic shape has long been
synonymous with ancient Egypt.
The largest is the Great Pyramid of Khufu.
NARRATOR: Here, thousands of workers
built a level platform on the bedrock
to create a flat square base.
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:
rough cut stones and mortar in the core,
and regular stones around the edges.
Finally, they added a
white limestone casing,
smoothed and sloped at
precisely 51 degrees
to complete the true pyramid shape.
(suspenseful music throughout)
NARRATOR: 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.
(dramatic music throughout)
NARRATOR: At Abydos, over 250
miles south of Giza,
American archaeologist Matthew Adams
and his team are excavating a unique site.
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.
It was the first great royal necropolis.
Like the Valley of the Kings later,
or the area of the Giza Pyramids.
DR. ADAMS: 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
DR. ADAMS: 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.
NARRATOR: Matthew first came to work at
Abydos as a student when he was just 19.
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.
NARRATOR: Making sense of the ruins at
Abydos is incredibly challenging.
DR. ADAMS: Uh huh. So something like that.
NARRATOR: The cemetery was
used by kings and commoners
throughout the entire
history of ancient Egypt.
NARRATOR: This means nearly 3500 years
of tombs and temples
layered over and mixed up with the
monuments of the first kings.
DR. ADAMS: 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.
DR. ADAMS: 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.
DR. ADAMS: 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.
NARRATOR: Intact vessels are a dream
discovery for any archaeologist.
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.
DR. ADAMS: 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 I.
The time of King Narmer.
(dramtic music throughout)
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.
In 3150 BCE, he conquered the
northern Nile Delta, Lower Egypt,
and took their red crown
as a mark of his victory.
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.
(suspenseful music)
NARRATOR: 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.
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 a mysterious pyramid ruin
around 50 years older than Khufu's Great
Pyramid at Giza: the pyramid of Seila.
DR. MUHLESTEIN: 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,
they originally were smaller and tiered.
The first of these stepped pyramids was
built by King Djoser at nearby Saqqara.
NARRATOR: 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.
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.
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.
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.
NARRATOR: The Seila pyramid was
constructed by the king Sneferu,
a generation before his son
Khufu built the Great Pyramid.
NARRATOR: 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.
(suspenseful music)
DR. MUHLESTEIN: 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.
DR. MUHLESTEIN: 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.
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.
NARRATOR: A key factor is the
angle of its sides.
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.
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.
(dramatic music)
NARRATOR: This season, the team is digging
a trench on 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.
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.
A few inches down their
trowels strike stone.
DR. SOUTH: I just want to have you come
take a look at this for a second.
DR. MUHLESTEIN: Can I?
(dramatic music continues)
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.
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 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.
NARRATOR: 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.
PROF. TALLET: We found this huge batch of
papyri.
It was probably the best
discovery of all my career.
(dramatic music throughout)
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.
(dramatic music continues)
The blocks were likely used to case the
pyramid and create its smooth sides.
NARRATOR: 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.
- 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 Merer
and his workers would have been here.
PROF. TALLET: So the archaeological work
that we are doing here is supposed to
give us the missing information that we
cannot get from the papyri.
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.
PROF. TALLET: 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.
NARRATOR: It's a time-consuming task to
excavate the mud that has washed
into the caves and filled them completely
over the millennia.
NARRATOR: But today, after three
weeks of painstaking work
and removing 3200 cubic
feet of solidified mud,
the team has finally cleared a new cave.
We are expecting to find things.
But we don't know what we will discover.
(suspenseful music)
NARRATOR: In Abydos, Matthew
and his team are excavating
a set of two strange structures from
the time of Egypt's first king, Narmer.
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 help reveal how the
pyramids developed.
As they work, his team
uncovers more and more clues
to what these long formations were for.
DR. ADAMS: 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.
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.
They were making beer.
This is the mashing or cooking
stage of beer production.
(dramatic music)
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.
(dramatic music continues)
They left the mixture to ferment into
beer over two to three days,
then decanted it into jars.
Beer was commonly drunk at
home by ancient Egyptians
as well as at religious festivals.
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.
The critical question
is how many are there?
What's the overall scale of the site?
With his excavation season ending in just
three weeks, the pressure is on.
NARRATOR: In Faiyum, at
the pyramid of Seila,
Kerry inspects the ancient stonework just
discovered protruding through the sand.
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.
NARRATOR: Smooth sided pyramids were
a revolutionary development
from the stepped pyramids
that had gone before.
Sneferu was innovating
as he built this pyramid.
He was experimenting and doing things
that hadn't been done anywhere else.
NARRATOR: The radical remodeling of the
pharaoh's monumental tombs
was likely due to a shift
in religious beliefs.
(suspenseful music throughout)
NARRATOR: 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.
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.
NARRATOR: 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.
DR. MUHLESTEIN: Sneferu is the
father of the true pyramid.
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.
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.
DR. MUHLESTEIN: The northern corner
is 33 centimeters south.
(suspenseful music)
Let's take a photo of it in
situ with the north arrow.
(suspenseful music continues)
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.
DR. MUHLESTEIN: 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.
- Hey!
- Made it.
DR. MUHLESTEIN: You've made it.
So glad you made it.
- Got the scanner okay?
- Yes. Yeah, we got it.
NARRATOR: Brent Benson is a forensic
engineer who uses
high resolution laser scanners to capture
and process three dimensional data.
- So how long do you need for each scan?
- 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.
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.
Brent gets to work straight away,
scanning the first side of the pyramid.
BRENT: Okay, should I start?
BRENT: 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.
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.
DR. MUHLESTEIN: 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.
NARRATOR: While Brent
continues to scan around
all sides of the four and a
half thousand year old ruin.
- And start rotating clockwise.
- 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.
NARRATOR: Kerry and Kristin now search
for the corner of the pyramid.
DR. MUHLESTEIN: 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.
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
and the pyramid could fall apart.
But 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.
(suspenseful music)
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.
You can see how deep the deposits are
that we're having to dig through.
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.
DR. ADAMS: 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.
NARRATOR: As the dig continues, Matthew
joins
specialist excavator Ashraf Zeydan
Mahmoud at another part of the site.
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.
DR. ADAMS: For me, the idea of having a
sip of the royal beer of King Narmer,
- there's nothing better than that.
- And it seems they could be in luck.
DR. ADAMS: This looks very promising.
This yellow sand on the interior is
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.
NARRATOR: This residue should allow
Matthew to recreate
King Narmer's 5000 year old beer.
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.
(dramatic music)
NARRATOR: Back at the main dig site,
the team has shifted tons of sand to
expose more of the brewery below.
(dramatic music continues)
We found exactly what
we've been hoping to find.
DR. MUHLESTEIN: 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.
We have here brewery
structure number seven.
(dramatic music)
DR. ADAMS: 34 meters.
NARRATOR: Each of the seven beer ovens is
as long as 110 feet
and fitted with up to 80 vats.
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.
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,
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.
What is going on here 5000 years ago,
that they're producing beer at this scale?
(suspenseful music)
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.
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.
PROF. TALLET: Sometimes we are
finding more than 300 to 400
of this kind of storage
jar in one single cave.
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.
NARRATOR: Suddenly Pierre and colleague
Severine Marchi
spot a faded red mark amongst the sherds.
So here we have an inscription.
PROF. TALLET: These two sherds are working
together
and I can distinguish something
which is written in red here.
Kind of a big circle.
(suspenseful music)
NARRATOR: An inscription could
contain vital information,
but it's difficult to make
out on the dusty sherd.
I think that we will have to clean it to
be sure of what is inscribed on it.
NARRATOR: Pierre and Séverine take the
sherds to their cleaning station
on the desert cliffs above Wadi al-Jarf.
PROF. TALLET: Take these. This way
we can see everything.
NARRATOR: A faint inscription
they have discovered on them
might help reveal the site's connection to
the building of Khufu's Great Pyramid.
Look, look! Pierre, Pierre, Pierre!
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.
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.
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.
NARRATOR: Barely noticeable in the sand,
he and Severine discover what could be a
clue.
PROF. TALLET: This is a piece of wood that
could have belonged to a boat.
What we have here is
probably a small tenon.
It is not complete, I think
it's broken to this side.
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.
It's a piece of tissue that survived
for about four millennia and a half.
In fact, we suspect it could have
belonged to the sails of the boats.
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.
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.
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.
PROF. TALLET: 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.
From here, it's possible to
see clearly the coast of Sinai.
PROF. TALLET: 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.
NARRATOR: 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.
NARRATOR: In the winter months,
they disassembled the boats to store
them in the caves of Wadi al-Jarf.
(dramatic music)
PROF. TALLET: At the time, it was
dramatically needed
to have a huge amount of copper
to be able to build
those gigantic monuments
So this is probably the reason why
they were going to Sinai by boats.
It was a way to intensify the
exploitation of the mines of Sinai.
NARRATOR: Pierre will continue his
excavation
of the boat caves at Wadi al-Jarf.
But this year's season
comes to a successful end.
We could say that we are the
backstage of the pyramid here.
In fact, it 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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
- They're all found used.
They're unstoppered. The
contents have been poured out.
NARRATOR: Matthew thinks the beer was
poured out in offering to the king.
It seems very likely that that was
the purpose of this brewery.
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 marshal mass labor
that would later make the construction
of the enormous pyramids possible.
DR. ADAMS: 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.
(suspenseful music)
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.
DR. ADAMS: They did it on a massive scale
to make clear to everyone
exactly who the king was and what
he was capable of and what he was owed.
DR. ADAMS: 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.
DR. ADAMS: It became the hallmark of
the ancient Egyptian kings,
the ancient Egyptian state,
for all of its history: building big.
They just took this and grew it.
(dramatic music throughout)
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
DR. MUHLESTEIN: 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.
DR. MUHLESTEIN: 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.
I'm thrilled to be able to say this is
how far out the pyramid went.
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.
- Hey, Brent.
- Hey.
DR. MUHLESTEIN: 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.
Oh, right there.
Oh, that's so good.
(suspenseful music)
DR. MUHLESTEIN: 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.
- Good 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.
That looks like it
was almost eight stories tall.
- Well, 24 meters, yeah.
- 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.
Okay, so when we get
this line laid on there,
what kind of an angle are we getting?
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.
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.
NARRATOR: 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.
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.
- 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.
DR. MUHLESTEIN: I think we now have
pretty good evidence
that 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.
It's 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
and what could be the
first ever true pyramid.
All revealing how the ancient Egyptians
built the world's most iconic
megastructures.