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00:00In the heart of modern Cairo, an expert team of archaeologists and scientists is about to perform a high-resolution CT scan, to forensically analyze one of the oldest, most complete mummies ever discovered in Egypt.
00:23And bring us closer than ever to the lives and deaths of the ancient Egyptians who shaped this powerful civilization.
00:36This is a definite proof how one person can change the course of history.
00:41For 3,000 years, Egypt was the land of the pharaohs.
00:57All-powerful rulers, famed for their extraordinary tombs and colossal monuments.
01:15What were the origins of this great kingdom?
01:19And who forged the mould for the iconic role of pharaoh?
01:27Today, archaeologists are searching for evidence of how the first pharaohs rose to power,
01:34propelled themselves to the status of immortal gods and built one of the world's first and longest-lived civilizations.
01:49In ancient Hebelu, once the rural hinterlands of ancient Egypt, are the remains of a mysterious pyramid.
01:59This season, German archaeologist Richard Bussmann and his team will investigate the pyramid to understand why it is here and what it can reveal about Egypt's first pharaohs.
02:19The pyramid has not been researched very well, so we would like to understand better the building history.
02:26This is, up to the present day, unknown.
02:32Richard believes this pyramid was inspired by Egypt's first, Joseph's Step Pyramid in Saqqara.
02:40This miniature copy stood 35 feet tall and was constructed from four levels of limestone blocks.
02:47Why did the ancient Egyptians build it here, 100 miles south of the pyramid fields of Saqqara and Giza,
02:56and on the opposite side of the Nile?
03:02All the pyramids in Saqqara and Giza are the colossal tombs of early kings.
03:08Richard wants to investigate inside this pyramid to see if he can find a burial chamber.
03:13His foreman, Ale, is responsible for ensuring it's safe to work inside the pyramid.
03:24They enter via a looters tunnel, but the blocks are unstable, and the whole thing could collapse easily.
03:37Carefully, Richard and Ale make their way inside the pyramid.
03:51The workers have erected a wooden scaffold to try and stabilize the hollow core of the pyramid.
03:54The workers have erected a wooden scaffold to try and stabilize the hollow core of the pyramid.
04:10So now we are inside the pyramid.
04:13It's a little bit difficult here really to work, because the more we walk around, the more we remove off the stability of the pyramid.
04:22Richard has discovered some features which are a sign that there was once an internal structure.
04:29Here we can see an aisle, and the aisle seems to lead to this pit in the center.
04:38Richard wants to investigate the pit to see if there's any evidence of a burial.
04:44We can't work here at the moment. We need to develop a strategy for stabilizing the structure.
04:51The workers build a scaffold as a platform on top of the pyramid, so they can work above the hole in the roof,
05:04and raise debris directly from the pit below without dislodging the loose stones.
05:10But even clearing the pit will be risky.
05:14We don't want to remove too much of this material so that the stones start moving.
05:19Once the stones start moving, it becomes dangerous for us to work.
05:23To avoid a catastrophic collapse of the pyramid,
05:28Richard will need to find evidence indicating whether the pit was a burial chamber
05:34without removing all the fallen stone and debris.
05:42In the ancient city of Abydos,
05:49Egyptologist and vintage clothes enthusiast, Colleen Darnell, is in search of Egypt's very first pharaoh.
06:00She has come to the temple of Seti I, one of Egypt's later kings and father of Ramses the Great.
06:07Seti I left a remarkable record on the walls of his temple, which has survived for over 3,000 years.
06:20Wow, this is it.
06:22This is the Abydos king list, a historical catalog of previous kings.
06:27Seti recorded the names of 76 kings stretching back nearly 2,000 years before his own rule.
06:36Before the pharaohs controlled Egypt, the Nile Valley was a very different place.
06:41Long before the pyramids, early Egyptians were nomadic people roaming the fertile banks of the Nile.
06:53Over the course of centuries, they developed agriculture, trade, and established city-states ruled by tribal chieftains.
07:03Two powerful realms took shape, Upper and Lower Egypt, each with their own king and signature crown.
07:15Whoever could unite the rival factions would become king of all Egypt.
07:21Colleen scans the list for who this great unifier might have been.
07:34The Egyptians were exceptionally good record keepers.
07:38They loved to record historical events, and they knew the number of years, months, and even days that previous kings had ruled.
07:45And at the very beginning, we see a cartouche that writes many, often called in Greek, many's.
07:55By putting many first in the king's list, Seti is acknowledging that many was the king who unified Upper and Lower Egypt.
08:04So he gets prime position at the beginning of the list.
08:11Colleen is now on the trail of many.
08:13To understand who he was, and how he unified Egypt.
08:24300 miles north, in modern Cairo.
08:31Behind the scenes of the Egyptian Museum.
08:33Miroslav Barter and his expert team of radiologists are about to undertake a rare forensic operation.
08:44They could just put it on this down.
08:46On the 4,500-year-old mummy of a high-ranking official called Petar Shepsis, who served in the royal court of four early pharaohs.
08:56It is, by all means, a big day I arrived this morning in order to attend this procedure, the CT scanning of this unique mummy.
09:07Because it's been more than a year since the discovery.
09:10When Miroslav and his team first entered Petar Shepsis's tomb, they discovered the complete mummy still inside his stone sarcophagus.
09:24And he was sitting there, as if he were waiting for us to come and saying,
09:31It was on time, Cangu mummy.
09:33So that was my first personal encounter with this guy.
09:35The CT scan offers Miroslav a unique glimpse of how the art and meaning of mummification developed during the early years of ancient Egypt.
09:48It's a very important mummy, one of the first mummies displaying a very elaborate way of mummification.
09:56With Petar Shepsis in position, the team goes to the control room, where they will be protected from the radiation emitted by the CT scanner.
10:11Doctor, I will start.
10:13I hope he's got a lot of stories to tell us.
10:16In ancient Hebenu, Richard is investigating the ruins of this mysterious pyramid, built during the reign of the early pharaohs.
10:32The team is gradually extracting sand from the pit inside the pyramid.
10:38The work in the pyramid is of course delicate, because everyone has to know where to step and which stones to avoid.
10:46But the workmen are experienced, and we have built a robust scaffolding.
10:54Their plan is to remove samples of sand from different depths of the pit,
11:00and sieve each bucket for ancient remains, that could indicate to Richard if this was a burial chamber.
11:08What's the story here?
11:10You can see the last one.
11:13What's the story here?
11:14What's the story here?
11:18Very interesting.
11:20Richard's method has worked.
11:22He now has a theory.
11:24So we have here three different samples of morte.
11:28These are probably different periods.
11:32The yellow one, very likely, is from the original pyramid, that means from the Old Kingdom.
11:37The black and the white one, this might be later, this might be Roman.
11:45The more recent mortar from the pit is evidence that the structure isn't part of the original pyramid design.
11:52It's a hypothesis at the moment that the pit was built in the Roman period and plastered in the Roman period inside the pharaonic monument.
12:02Richard thinks the Romans that lived here over 3,000 years later might have constructed a system inside the pyramid to store water.
12:10It means there's no evidence that it was built as a tomb.
12:15There are no bones, there is no burial equipment, so very likely this is not a burial chamber.
12:23It's a puzzling mystery that leaves Richard with even more questions about this place.
12:28If this was not a burial, what was the function of the pyramid?
12:35He now needs to look beyond the pyramid and search for clues in the earth that surrounds it.
12:42Maybe the ground on which we stand currently, there might be more evidence, there might be more material that shows what was going on here.
12:49Just a few feet beneath the surface, workers unearth a skull.
13:04In the ancient necropolis of Abydos,
13:10Colleen is tracing back through ancient Egypt's rulers to find the true origins of this great civilization.
13:18She wants to understand how the first king unified upper and lower Egypt and became the archetype for what it meant to be a pharaoh.
13:28This is Um al-Gab, a place that I have always wanted to visit.
13:33It is a royal necropolis that dates almost 2,000 years before the Valley of the Kings.
13:39Long before pharaohs constructed the great pyramid tombs of Giza,
13:44or the rock-cart tombs in the Valley of the Kings,
13:48this was where Egypt's earliest rulers were laid to rest.
13:53The stones on the ground mark the outline of one of these simple early royal burials.
14:00Colleen believes this is the tomb of King Narma,
14:04thought by most Egyptologists to be another name for King Many.
14:08He is many of the king's list at Abydos.
14:12These are sand-filled mud-brick chambers, which is where King Narma was buried.
14:18He chose this sacred location because it had already been a burial place for earlier kings before the Unification period.
14:26One hundred miles south of Narma's burial, in Hierakonpolis,
14:33archaeologists discovered an extraordinary piece of ancient art depicting King Narma.
14:41This is the Narma Palate, one of the world's oldest historical documents and one of the most important for the early history of Egypt.
14:48The Narma Palate records the moment that ancient Egypt as we know it began,
14:55and depicts how Narma won himself the title of its founding king.
15:00On one side, we see King Narma wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt, smiting an enemy,
15:06probably one of the last kings holding out against his authority in Lower Egypt.
15:11Then, on the other side of the Palate, Narma is wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt.
15:18And we even see his decapitated foes lined up in front of him.
15:22This is a powerful, symbolic statement of Narma's unification of Upper and Lower Egypt.
15:28The Palate is not only a testament to Narma's victory in uniting Egypt, but also the template for how future pharaohs would style themselves for the next 3,000 years.
15:43This icon of the smiting pose symbolizes his unification of Upper and Lower Egypt.
15:49It is the ideal to which all future pharaohs will strive.
15:58Every pharaoh would follow Narma and seek to reinforce their rule over both lands,
16:05and merge the two crowns as a symbol of unity.
16:09By bringing the people of Egypt together as one kingdom,
16:14Narma founded a powerful country and paved the way for one of the world's greatest civilizations.
16:21Yet he wasn't buried in a grand tomb or pyramid like later pharaohs.
16:27Colleen is now on the hunt for Narma's successors to see how they used their death and burial to elevate themselves beyond mortal kings.
16:36In ancient Hebelu,
16:41Maybe we can start with taking a measurement.
16:44Richard has expanded his investigation to search the perimeter of the pyramid,
16:49in his hunt for clues that could tell him what the pyramid was for,
16:53and why it was built here in the time of the early pharaohs.
16:56One of the workers hits something just feet from the pyramid.
17:05Oh!
17:07This looks like a burial.
17:09This is really a fantastic find.
17:16It's not long before the team finds skeletal remains throughout the whole trench.
17:21We have almost ten burials alone in this square.
17:32So really the people were buried one next to the other.
17:36The team has uncovered part of an ancient cemetery,
17:41which seems to extend under the pyramid.
17:43This burial was hid by the foundation blocks when they were placed there for building the pyramid.
17:54It means the cemetery was already here before the pyramid was built.
18:00This has the ribs here.
18:03And this is where the ear would have been.
18:07So you're kind of, we're turning more towards facing north rather than west here.
18:12Right.
18:14This is where the body was placed.
18:15This is where the head was in the north or the head was in the south.
18:32But not all individuals had the same body position.
18:36The style and depth of the graves beneath the foundation level of the pyramid
18:41tells Richard that these are pre-dynastic burials.
18:45The resting place of the people that lived here 5,000 years ago.
18:50Just before Naama unified Egypt and became the first pharaoh.
18:54It's a rare opportunity to learn more about Egyptian society just before the first pharaohs.
19:01Richard now wants to decode the burials and understand what beliefs these people had about death in an age before mummies and pharaohs.
19:04Richard now wants to decode the burials.
19:05Richard now wants to decode the burials and understand what beliefs these people had about death in an age before mummies and pharaohs.
19:11Richard now wants to decode the burials.
19:20Richard now wants to decode the burials and understand what beliefs these people had about death in an age before mummies and pharaohs.
19:29In the centre of modern Cairo, at the Egyptian museum,
19:40Miroslav and his team are scanning the mummy of the high priest Petar Shepsis.
19:46The discovery of his mummy completes one of the most detailed portraits of elite life in early ancient Egypt.
19:54Around the 1860s, archaeologists unearthed the chapel that sat above Petar Shepsis's tomb.
20:04On the western wall was a limestone carving painted pink to look like granite.
20:11Green hieroglyphs engraved on the stone tell the life story of Petar Shepsis who served four early pharaohs,
20:19married a princess and lived into his seventies.
20:25We will know about him more than we happen to know about our predecessors three generations back.
20:32I mean, this is really what makes Egyptology so fascinating.
20:37I simply love it.
20:40They are starting with the head to see what they can learn about how Petar Shepsis was mummified.
20:46Miroslav won't have to wait long to see what secrets the mummy is keeping as the CT scans start to appear on the monitor.
20:58That must be remains of the brain, yes? Remains of the brain.
21:07Tomáš Belšan is an expert radiologist. He analyzes the scans in more detail.
21:14Wow.
21:15We don't find any artificial hole into the head to remove the brain.
21:23So during the mummification process, the brain simply dried out.
21:27Isn't it unique, really, even for you to see that?
21:31Never ever, in humans, this is my oldest patient.
21:36Miroslav and Tomáš can see from the scan that no attempt was made to remove the brain, as it was in most other ancient Egyptian mummies that have been discovered.
21:48Instead, the brain has dried out during the 70-day mummification process and been preserved inside the skull.
21:55For now, it remains a mystery exactly why the brain was left.
22:04It's a delicate operation to reposition Petar Shepsis, so they can scan his chest and reveal what's inside.
22:12In ancient Hebenu, Richard and his team of archaeologists have discovered a pre-dynastic cemetery, right at the foot of the pyramid they've been investigating.
22:30Now we have found 17 burials, well-preserved, intact, unlooted tombs, which really is an exception.
22:40Now they want to examine the grave goods, to understand what early Egyptians believed about death, long before the extravagant burials of the pharaohs.
22:52Now we have just found another jar in front of this skull, so the situation here is similar to the other burials that we found here.
23:04skull plus pottery, skull plus pottery, skull plus pottery. Maybe this is really for food provision, for eating and for drinking.
23:15These grave goods hint at an early cultural tradition, a shared belief that the dead required sustenance so they could live on in the afterlife.
23:24Right beneath the foundation stone of the pyramid, Pia and Isabelle uncover a striking burial.
23:33In the grave at the moment we have an upside-down bowl. We have another bowl that has a very nicely preserved shell in it.
23:41Pia spots a feature on the bones.
23:50I see another long bone, which is here, and the epiphysis, so the bone ends of the long bones.
23:56They are not fused yet, and if it's unfused that means we have a child.
24:00It's kind of setting in how young this individual is.
24:10As they brush more sand from around the bowl, they make a profound discovery.
24:19That looks bony.
24:21Maybe that's the hand.
24:23Be holding onto the bowl.
24:24You mean literally?
24:29It looks like the child is literally holding the bowl and cradling it.
24:40The mother of Pearl's shell probably came from the Red Sea, over 100 miles away to the east.
24:48It would have been a prized object.
24:50They really took some care to make sure that they're going to have a nice afterlife, and it's really touching to see, really.
24:59Although it would be more than 500 years before the practice of mummification was developed,
25:05these grave goods reveal the early origins of a belief in an afterlife.
25:10After the rise of the pharaohs, these beliefs would grow increasingly complex.
25:15We are excavating here a pre-dynastic cemetery, but 1,000 years later, there are very interesting so-called letters to the dead.
25:26Ancient Egyptians believed the dead lived on in an afterlife, and could control the earthly world from beyond the grave.
25:35People feared that if the deceased were unhappy in their afterlife, they could bring disease or times of hardship to those left behind.
25:46To appease the dead, Egyptians wrote them letters on jars, bowls, and plates, asking for forgiveness and protection.
25:55And when they buried their dead, they would leave these letters alongside offerings of food.
26:04So when we talk about social relationships in ancient Egypt, it's not only the relationships between the living, it's also the relationship between the living and the dead.
26:16The beliefs that started amongst small communities in pre-dynastic Egypt would expand dramatically in the first centuries of pharaonic rule,
26:25coming to define ancient Egyptian society and underpin the power of the pharaohs.
26:36In Abydos, Colleen is uncovering how Egypt's first kings leveraged the widespread belief in an afterlife to project their power and authority beyond death.
26:49This is incredible.
26:51It's the tomb of Den, and even though he ruled only a few decades after Narmer, the scale has completely changed in this royal tomb.
27:00The floor was paved with pink granite all the way from Aswan.
27:06Clearly, Den wanted to harness the power of his kingship in order to make a statement about his authority through monumental tomb architecture.
27:15The belief in an afterlife, which had existed before the first pharaohs, was now a central focus for the king.
27:24Den designed his monumental tomb to ensure his legacy extended beyond death and paved the way for ever more complex funerary architecture.
27:35Just one mile away is a vast mud-brick structure, built around 300 years later by one of Egypt's first master architects.
27:47I've never been here before, and it is absolutely massive.
27:53It is the funerary enclosure of the last king of the second dynasty, a man named Khasakamui.
28:00Literally, the two powers have appeared in glory.
28:03Khasakamui's name signified how he united the warring gods Horus and Set, displaying his power both on earth and in the realm of the gods.
28:17He was the first pharaoh known to have had statues of himself carved, to preserve his image into eternity.
28:28In Abydos, he dug his tomb in the royal cemetery of his predecessors.
28:32It was bigger than any before him, with 58 rooms to store his possessions for the afterlife.
28:40Whilst the separate funerary enclosure was a public space designed for rituals and ceremonies celebrating the king as he lived on in the afterlife.
28:49Other first and second dynasty kings had constructed enclosures here, but they were on a much smaller scale.
29:02This is unprecedented in its size.
29:08Egypt's first pharaohs had begun a tradition that elevated them far beyond mortal beings.
29:13These funerary enclosures were temples to the kings, where long after their death they would be worshipped as eternal living gods.
29:24The ancient Egyptians believed that if your name was remembered, you lived forever.
29:30With this monumental enclosure, Khasakamui has guaranteed his immortality.
29:35Not only is he proclaiming the religious significance of his reign, he is setting the stage for a revolution in monument building.
29:45Khulene is now on a mission to uncover how Khasakamui's successor wielded religion as a tool to consolidate power,
29:54and used it to command and control the entire nation.
29:57In the heart of Cairo, behind the scenes of the Egyptian museum,
30:10just need to scan the pelvis.
30:13Miroslav's team is looking for signs of preserved organs inside Pata Shepsis's chest,
30:19without having to unwrap the mummy.
30:21He travelled almost 5000 years to get here.
30:27So we are doing everything we can with the technology to get the best for him.
30:33As they scan millimeter by millimeter through the body,
30:38the radiologists start to build a picture of what's inside.
30:42They think that there is a good chance to believe that even the heart is still in place.
30:48But then they spot something on the scans.
30:53It looks like heart.
30:55Heart, yes.
30:57It's on the opposite side.
30:59It's just a feeling that we are learning.
31:01You mean like resin pads?
31:04The team expected that like the brain, the heart would have been left intact.
31:09But closer inspection reveals that the chest is full of linen.
31:13For ancient Egyptians it was essential to maintain the physical appearance of the body.
31:21Miroslav believes the embalmers filled the chest cavity with linen soaked in resin,
31:27which would set hard and preserve the shape of the body.
31:31This mummy is, and this is without doubt, a new stage in the mummification process.
31:37It's possible that Petar Shepsis, as a senior figure close to four of the early pharaohs,
31:44was one of the first people to receive this level of mummification.
31:49And seen together with the decorations of his tomb,
31:54suggests he was a pioneer of what today is the definition of an ancient Egyptian burial.
32:00An inscribed wall in Petar Shepsis's tomb features the first known spell to Osiris in a non-royal monument.
32:12In the ancient myth, Osiris died fighting his brother, Set,
32:17who cut his body into pieces and threw them in the Nile.
32:20Anubis reassembled Osiris's body and wrapped him in bandages to bind him in human form,
32:28so he could be reborn as a god in the underworld.
32:32Embalmers preserved Petar Shepsis in the same way,
32:36stuffing his body with linen and resin to keep his human shape,
32:41and wrapping him like Osiris so he could be reborn in the underworld.
32:45His burial marks a significant step in the development of funerary practices,
32:54linking the myth of Osiris with a belief in resurrection and the afterlife.
32:59This is a definite proof how a single person, one person, can change the course of history.
33:07If he wants someone from the 5th dynasty, from ancient Egypt, it's him.
33:13Imagine that somebody would remember my or your name after 4,000, 5,000 years.
33:20It's very unlikely.
33:22He made it.
33:23In Saqqara,
33:33Colleen is tracing the path of Egypt's early pharaohs.
33:38Like Kasakamuyi before him, King Joseph wanted to construct a monument that had the power to immortalize him,
33:50and reflect the strength and prosperity of his kingdom.
33:53Joseph was inspired by the architectural form and religious significance of earlier monuments,
34:03but he wanted to create a more permanent expression of his kingship.
34:07What Djoser created was Egypt's first pyramid.
34:17This is Djoser's monument to immortality.
34:21A tomb and complex in stone meant to last forever.
34:26This pyramid is the first monumental stone structure anywhere in the world.
34:31Djoser spared no expense in ensuring he lived on.
34:49Oh, my goodness.
34:55This is stunning to think of these massive blocks being transported all the way from Aswan.
35:03And to make the sarcophagus.
35:05Now, King is harnessing resources in order to lavish that expense on his own burial.
35:15Not only has he made a statement with the step pyramid and its complex being constructed in stone,
35:22but using the costliest materials for his own sarcophagus.
35:26To embark on such a colossal building project, the likes of which the world had never seen before,
35:34was about more than just personal wealth.
35:38Djoser is making an even bigger statement about his control, the ability to marshal the mineral wealth of Egypt.
35:47Compared to mud brick constructions, monumental stone buildings like the step pyramid
35:52would have taken a whole new level of bureaucratic efficiency and the dedication of agricultural resources
36:00to feed all the workmen that would have done the actual moving and quarrying of the stones.
36:06Plus, you needed more scribes to keep the records to keep the work going smoothly.
36:12The pyramid took at least 20 years to build
36:16and would have provided a lifetime's work for those involved in its construction.
36:20It's testament not only to the power and wealth of the king,
36:25but to the creation of a highly organized society that now surrounded the pharaoh.
36:37In ancient Hebenu,
36:40Richard and his team are exploring the remains of a small pyramid,
36:44built less than a century after Djoser's pyramid tomb.
36:49They have unearthed a cemetery beneath it,
36:52which means there was a settlement here before the pyramid was built.
36:57But this pyramid wasn't built as a tomb.
37:01Its true purpose remains a mystery.
37:04What has not been clear at all is the space in which the pyramid was placed.
37:09Richard is hoping that in the area around the pyramid,
37:13they can find clues about what else was happening here when the pyramid was built.
37:18Close to the burials, one of the workers finds a deposit of mud bricks.
37:23These ancient building blocks have been discarded here, perhaps left over from a nearby building project.
37:42The pyramid itself is not built from mud bricks, the pyramid is built from stone,
37:48so the mud bricks might derive from a building that was attached to the pyramid.
37:53As the workers excavate the mud bricks,
37:56Oh, what is that?
37:58they discover the whole pit is densely packed with ancient ceramics
38:02that could unravel the mystery of the pyramid.
38:05In ancient Hebelu, Richard's team has unearthed a rubbish pit, thousands of years old.
38:18Oh, this is a nicer one, yeah.
38:20It's full of broken pottery, dumped here around the same time as the pyramid's construction.
38:26One of the workers has identified a piece that reveals something about what might have happened.
38:29This piece looks as if it was a piece of overheated pottery.
38:43So if the temperature is too high and there is sand inside it,
38:48the sand almost transforms into a glass-like structure.
38:54So this is why you find this shiny surface here.
38:57That would mean that the pottery was actually made somewhere here.
39:04As the team pieces together the fragments, they identify the pottery as beer jars.
39:11The idea for the beer jars was not to make a nice beer jar,
39:15but to produce quickly a lot of them.
39:18And it's a type of pottery that appears in the early phase of the ancient Egyptian state.
39:23It's crucial evidence for Richard that could solve part of the mystery behind the pyramid's construction.
39:30And beer was a major type of ration given by the pharaonic state to the workmen.
39:38This is where we see what happens when a central administration appears on the landscape.
39:45They need to have a standardized ration that they can give to the workmen.
39:50So what might have happened here is workmen were provisioned with beer.
39:55The beer was consumed and after the work has been completed, the beer jars were deposited here.
40:00It could be that this is rubbish left by the workers who were employed by the king to build the pyramid.
40:09We haven't found any royal inscription, but we believe that one of the successors of Josa commissioned the work here for the pyramid.
40:22And the pyramid very likely was a symbol of royal representation, of royal authority here in the provinces of Egypt.
40:29Josa's step pyramid tomb was such a bold statement of royal power.
40:36His successors may have harnessed this distinctive architecture for another purpose.
40:41Richard believes around 2600 BCE, King Sneferu, first ruler of the fourth dynasty, may have commissioned this small step pyramid.
40:54It's possible that the pyramid was a symbol of royal power, a landmark that stamped the king's ownership and control on this settlement.
41:11King Sneferu and his predecessor, King Huni, built a total of seven near-identical pyramids in other small towns scattered along the Nile Valley.
41:21With the arrival of the old kingdom, the population grew, not least because we see the pyramid here.
41:34It means that the site was already important and the king chose this site to build a pyramid.
41:41But of course also the pyramid might have stimulated more people to come here.
41:46This town prospered in the old kingdom.
41:51Richard's excavations here reveal how Egypt's first pharaohs had to innovate ways to project their authority across the country to hold this fledgling kingdom together.
42:03The first pharaohs set Egypt on a course that would all build to this.
42:10The age of the pyramids.
42:16Building projects that would demand the wealth and labor of the nation.
42:21Solidify the divine image of the pharaoh and define this country for millennia.
42:27Without the impressive achievements of the first pharaohs, ancient Egypt as we know it would not have existed.
42:38From the unification of the two lands, through the rise of complex mummification rituals, to the construction of the first pyramids.
42:49Egypt's founding pharaohs forged the identity of one of the world's most enduring and iconic civilizations.
42:59Original fax ultimately created a gift
43:12For the first two intervenions,haired be lost in the royal kingdom of the kingdom.
43:17For that saved the kingdom of the nation, Oro, is the charge of the kısm Круг.
43:20For the thirdيم Mistress has very well crafted with the sacrifice of os is to benefit the show and get after.
43:24For the third可能 imENTI supporting the indigenous outfit more powerful department.
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