00:00In 1850, French scientist Auguste Mariette went to Egypt looking for manuscripts, but
00:06accidentally found a head of a sphinx sticking out of the dunes.
00:11He cleared the sand and figured out the sphinx was guiding the entrance to some underground
00:15construction.
00:16Several months later, he finally entered the Serapium of Saqqara.
00:21Inside he found an enormous granite sarcophagi with remnants of 64 bulls.
00:26Scientists are still amazed by the tech that the ancient Egyptians used to transport those
00:31enormous boxes.
00:34The Serapium was built around the year 3000, before the Common Era.
00:38It was an underground tomb built to honor the sacred Apis bulls of ancient Egypt.
00:43It had a long hallway, almost 500 feet long, with giant stone rooms on both sides.
00:50Some of the sarcophagi weighed as much as 50 average cars, and all of them were made
00:55with super precision with exact 90 degree angles.
00:59These sarcophagi were beautifully decorated with hieroglyphs and carvings that told stories
01:04about the lives and importance of the Apis bulls.
01:08Now there are 24 sarcophagi left.
01:12In ancient Egypt, Apis bulls were very special animals connected to the deity Ptah.
01:17They thought the bulls carried Ptah's spirit and wisdom, helped the pharaoh, and protected
01:22the Egyptians.
01:24Scientists looked for special markings on young bulls to find Apis bulls.
01:28It could be a white triangle on its forehead, which symbolized divine light, a shape on
01:33its back like a vulture's wing, and a scarab shape under its tongue, which stood for rebirth.
01:39If a bull had these signs, they believed it was chosen by Ptah and treated it like royalty.
01:45The chosen bulls lived in a special temple in Memphis, the city where they worshipped
01:49Ptah.
01:51They received the best care and offerings from visitors who wanted their blessings.
01:55When an Apis bull passed away, it was treated with great honor and mummified.
02:01When Mariette entered the serapium, he noticed traces of rollers on the gallery's floor
02:06and found two wooden horizontal winches.
02:10Each had eight levers.
02:11Later, other explorers saw double rails.
02:15The burial chambers were lower than the hallway floor.
02:18To get the boxes into place, workers filled the chambers with sand so the sarcophagi could
02:22be rolled in straight.
02:24Then they slowly removed the sand to gently lower the boxes into perfectly cut spaces
02:29in the bedrock.
02:30A carved stone sign found in the serapium said it took 28 days to move just one sarcophagus
02:37and its lid into its spot during the time of Ptolemy II.
02:42The extreme precision of the sarcophagi with 90-degree angles also has an explanation.
02:49Ancient Egyptians wrote texts, or rather papyrus, on geometry a long time ago.
02:55It shows that they knew the approximate number, Pi, and could calculate the volume of a pyramid
03:01with its top cut off.
03:03If they could figure out complicated math like that back then, it makes sense that they
03:08could also carve perfectly flat surfaces 500 years later.
03:13All this sounds pretty legit, but some people think certain things don't add up here.
03:18The size of boxes is way larger than the size of bulls, yet they buried pharaohs in tiny
03:23coffins that barely fit their bodies.
03:26The sarcophagi are made out of granite with crazy precision, and they could have just
03:31used limestone, which would have made things way easier.
03:35The transportation of the boxes seems pretty simple, but only in theory.
03:41If one person could pull about 440 pounds, then at least 250 people would be needed to
03:47pull just one box.
03:49The tunnels in the serapium are really narrow, only about 2 feet wider than the boxes themselves.
03:54There's no way hundreds of people could have squeezed into those tight spaces to pull
03:59the boxes.
04:01And even if they did, how would they turn the box in the cramped corridor, lower it
04:05into its niche, and place it perfectly in the middle?
04:10Somehow they did this 24 times and every box is centered perfectly.
04:15Plus, the chambers were dusty and there were no signs of soot from lamps.
04:20This means they must have worked in almost complete darkness.
04:25The real use of the boxes could also be different.
04:28A long time ago, even before the Egyptian pharaohs ruled, the local people already
04:32knew how to use fermentation.
04:35It happens when tiny organisms called yeast eat certain ingredients like starch and turn
04:40them into gas and ethanol.
04:42So someone in ancient Egypt probably put food like barley, bread, and even meat inside a
04:48giant stone box, then closed it tight with a heavy lid.
04:53These stone boxes, carved from granite, were so precisely made that they were almost completely
04:58sealed, so nothing could escape from it.
05:01As the yeast inside the box started working, it created more and more CO2 gas.
05:06It built up pressure inside the box.
05:09The granite boxes were incredibly strong, they could handle more pressure than a car
05:13tire can hold.
05:15When granite was squeezed under such pressure, its crystals produced a tiny electric charge.
05:21This effect was possible because granite contains quartz, a material that reacts to pressure
05:26this way.
05:27The process also needed meat or animal parts, possibly to help the yeast grow better.
05:33Meat contains something called oleaic acid, which yeast needs to keep growing and to survive
05:38the bad effects of the ethanol it produces.
05:41As the pressure inside the box kept growing, the combination of gases and electricity made
05:46these boxes not just ancient fridges, but powerful energy systems.
05:52Over time, the pressure inside got so strong that it could push the lid open and the gas
05:57would escape with a pop.
05:59But when people rediscovered the Serapium in 1850, they found old drawings that showed
06:04piles of stones stacked on top of some of the box lids.
06:08So, someone long ago probably tried to make the lids even heavier by adding extra weight
06:13to make it harder for the gas pressure to push them open.
06:18This extra weight also meant the quartz crystals in the granite could keep creating more electricity
06:23under all that pressure.
06:25If someone opened one of these stone boxes thousands of years later, they would only
06:29find bones from bowls that were placed in the box.
06:33And that's exactly what Mariette discovered in the 1850s.
06:38They opened the Serapium for visitors soon after the first excavations in the second
06:42half of the 19th century.
06:44Prince of Wales even had a luncheon with his guests in one of the sarcophagi.
06:49Sands and earthquakes made the site inaccessible for a while, but now you can visit it again
06:54and try to solve the mystery yourself.
06:57With new tech, we could have answers to many other historical mysteries soon.
07:02A team of scientists at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History recently used a special
07:07CT scanner to learn more about ancient Egyptian mummies without unwrapping them.
07:13They gently rolled 26 mummies on custom carts out to the parking lot, where the scanner
07:18was waiting.
07:20They took thousands of detailed X-ray pictures of each mummy and their coffins.
07:24When all the pictures were put together, they created 3D images that showed what was inside
07:30– the skeletons and some artifacts.
07:33The scientists hoped these images will help them understand ancient Egyptian burial practices
07:38from over 3,000 years ago.
07:41Even though the scanning process only took four days, it might take three years to study
07:46all the data.
07:47But scientists were able to learn some personal details about the mummies.
07:52One of the most popular mummified individuals at the museum, Lady Chinetta, was a woman
07:57who lived in ancient Egypt about 3,000 years ago.
08:01It looks like she passed away in her late 30s or early 40s.
08:05To make sure her body looked complete for the afterlife, embalmers put stuffing in her
08:09neck to keep it from collapsing.
08:12They also placed artificial eyes in her sockets so she would have eyes in the next world.
08:17She was wrapped in fancy linen and placed in a beautifully decorated coffin.
08:22The scans revealed that it had been carefully crafted with a slit at the back, which embalmers
08:27used to fit the body.
08:29There were also some artistic details on the surface, like markings for her knees.
08:34It looks like her burial was on the scale of a high-end luxury car.
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