- 3 months ago
Documentary, PBS Nova Ancient Invisible Cities - Cairo-7
The PBS Nova episode "Ancient Invisible Cities - Cairo" uses 3D scanning to reveal hidden historical secrets in and around Cairo, Egypt, such as a Roman fortress under a Greek Orthodox church and a large well built by Crusader prisoners beneath the 12th-century Arabic citadel. Hosted by historian Darius Arya, the episode explores ancient sites like the first pyramid at Saqqara to understand how it influenced the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Episode highlights
Uncovering hidden structures: The episode uses 3D scanning to reveal ancient layers of the city that are not visible to the naked eye.
Hidden Roman fortress: A Roman fortress is discovered to be hidden beneath a Greek Orthodox church in Old Cairo.
The Well of the Citadel: It explores a massive well, carved into bedrock by Crusader prisoners to supply the Arabic citadel with water during sieges.
Saqqara and the Great Pyramid: The episode examines the first pyramid ever built at Saqqara and its role in inspiring the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Host: The episode is hosted by historian Darius Arya, who uses the technology to virtually explore the sites.
How to watch
PBS: The episode is available to stream on PBS.org and through the PBS App.
Other streaming platforms: You can also find it on platforms like Apple TV and DirecTV.
Local PBS stations: It may also be broadcast on your local PBS station.
The PBS Nova episode "Ancient Invisible Cities - Cairo" uses 3D scanning to reveal hidden historical secrets in and around Cairo, Egypt, such as a Roman fortress under a Greek Orthodox church and a large well built by Crusader prisoners beneath the 12th-century Arabic citadel. Hosted by historian Darius Arya, the episode explores ancient sites like the first pyramid at Saqqara to understand how it influenced the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Episode highlights
Uncovering hidden structures: The episode uses 3D scanning to reveal ancient layers of the city that are not visible to the naked eye.
Hidden Roman fortress: A Roman fortress is discovered to be hidden beneath a Greek Orthodox church in Old Cairo.
The Well of the Citadel: It explores a massive well, carved into bedrock by Crusader prisoners to supply the Arabic citadel with water during sieges.
Saqqara and the Great Pyramid: The episode examines the first pyramid ever built at Saqqara and its role in inspiring the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Host: The episode is hosted by historian Darius Arya, who uses the technology to virtually explore the sites.
How to watch
PBS: The episode is available to stream on PBS.org and through the PBS App.
Other streaming platforms: You can also find it on platforms like Apple TV and DirecTV.
Local PBS stations: It may also be broadcast on your local PBS station.
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00I'm Darius Arya, and I'm an archaeologist going in search of the ancient world, in three of the most exciting cities on earth.
00:11Athens, the birthplace of democracy.
00:15Istanbul, the crossroads between Europe and Asia.
00:20And in this program, the gateway to ancient Egypt, Cairo.
00:27The skyline of Cairo is full of extraordinary historic buildings.
00:33But so much of Cairo's past remains invisible.
00:37I'm going to be exploring its hidden spaces, buried deep beneath ancient monuments and underneath the modern streets.
00:45Not easy getting down here.
00:48I'll be working with a 3D scanning team who are using laser technology to reveal the secrets of Cairo's fascinating past.
00:57But the history of Cairo is not all about ancient Egyptians.
01:05I specialize in Roman history, so I'm thrilled to discover a Roman fortress.
01:11Really impressive.
01:13I explore the magnificent Arabic citadel.
01:17Wow.
01:18Oh, man.
01:19Okay, that's a drop.
01:21That's a drop.
01:23And I'll be using virtual reality to investigate the ancient world in a whole new way.
01:30Welcome to Invisible Cairo.
01:39The river Nile, the life force that flows right through the center of Cairo.
01:56The world's longest river.
01:58It springs up in the African Great Lakes over 4,000 miles to the south.
02:03It truly is a natural wonder.
02:05For millennia, the Nile flooded every year and transformed arid desert into fertile fields.
02:15Cairo is at the point where the river splits up into the Nile Delta to make full use of the river's bounty.
02:26And that's why the same location was so sacred and important to the people of ancient Egypt.
02:32The region that's now Cairo has been ruled by many empires.
02:48But one iconic shape, built by the very first civilization, defines the city's skyline.
02:55The Great Pyramid is the last remaining wonder of the ancient world.
03:08It is so fantastic to be in front of the Great Pyramid.
03:12I mean, it's an image that you know it's so famous, but to be here in front of it, to look at that structure, its mass, it is awe-inspiring.
03:21All of this is not a city.
03:24It's a cemetery of the kings and queens of ancient Egypt.
03:28The grandest cemetery of the whole world.
03:31The Great Pyramid of Giza was built over 4,500 years ago, around 2,560 BC.
03:4620,000 workers built it.
03:49But it was the last resting place for just one man, a pharaoh called Khufu.
03:56Our scanning project, one of the most detailed ever carried out in Cairo, begins here.
04:04And the team is led by Will Trossel.
04:07They're going to create a 3D computer model of the pyramid to help reveal the secrets of its design.
04:13New research to add to existing knowledge.
04:17You guys have done a lot of projects, but here we are looking at one of the wonders of the world.
04:23I mean, it's massive. What are the challenges in this project?
04:26Well, the major one is the temperature, we've got scale, and we've got accuracy as well.
04:31There's three big things there.
04:33I'm with you about the heat. I mean, it's just, it's beautiful to be here in the sun,
04:36but what kind of effect is it having on the measurements?
04:39Just the heat from the sun creates a lot of noise in our data,
04:42so we don't want to be getting aronous measurements of the top of the pyramid.
04:45We want to make sure it's very accurate.
04:47And at the same time, you're not going to be here for months doing this work.
04:50There's a lot of pressure on the team to make sure it all comes together as a really tight model
04:54so that we can check how accurate they will be being when they build the pyramids.
04:58So it's you guys against the ancient Egyptians.
05:00Oh, yeah, I see who wins.
05:03All right, I'll see you. Thank you.
05:05All right, ciao.
05:06It's certainly a challenge.
05:09At 450 feet tall and made out of 2.3 million stone blocks,
05:14the Great Pyramid is still the heaviest building in the world.
05:21I'm going in at the robber's entrance,
05:23where thieves dug a tunnel into the pyramid to steal any treasure inside.
05:29This is going to be good. This is amazing.
05:32Been here once before, but I've never had the opportunity to explore it. Let's go.
05:37Much of the Great Pyramid is closed off to the public.
05:54But we've been granted special permission to enter a mysterious chamber deep below ground level.
06:00It's not easy getting down here.
06:05But what I'm really thinking about is who carved this?
06:09What conditions were they in to go through the bedrock with nothing more than a pickaxe and a torch or a lamp?
06:17And let's see where this leads.
06:19I've gone down a shaft a couple hundred feet.
06:36And then I had to go through a crawl space about 30 feet long where I could barely fit into this, I think it's a chamber.
06:44You can still see the tool marks.
06:47I'm well beneath the pyramid.
06:50I don't know if it's unfinished, but there's definitely something going on right over here.
06:54And it's a big mystery.
06:57What really was taking place in this chamber?
07:02Some Egyptologists believe this subterranean chamber was built to be the burial tomb, but then abandoned.
07:07There's something over here too.
07:11I think this is a dead end.
07:14I have to turn around.
07:16I'm hoping our scans will help make sense of this place.
07:22It's incredibly hard to grasp the layout of the pyramid.
07:25But first, I'm heading up into the heart of the pyramid to meet Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass in the ceremonial passageway known as the Grand Gallery.
07:37Hey there.
07:38Hi.
07:39Hi.
07:40How are you doing?
07:41Nice to see you.
07:42How are you?
07:43Nice to see you.
07:44But of a hike here, this is an amazing space.
07:46You have to imagine how the Egyptians would construct an amazing grand gallery like this.
07:53Yes.
07:54Because this is the entrance of the palace of the king.
07:58The gallery is 28 feet high and 153 feet long and leads up to the king's tomb.
08:06Now I take you to the burial chamber.
08:08All right.
08:10Not an easy space to get through.
08:13The burial chamber is high up in the pyramid.
08:16Wow.
08:18Here we are.
08:19Wow.
08:20And in this room, Pharaoh Khufu was laid to rest.
08:25Magic.
08:26What do you feel?
08:27This is, it's almost electric, just being in all this history.
08:31Electric means more than magic.
08:36Everything here built of granite.
08:39This tomb is now almost empty.
08:42Any treasures stolen by grave robbers just a few centuries after it was built.
08:49Only the sarcophagus that once held the mummified body of Khufu is left.
08:54So tell me about Khufu.
08:55When he died, what happened then?
08:58They take him to the workshop where they mummified the body.
09:02After they mummified the body, they bring him to the entrance and they bury him here.
09:08But that whole process of bringing the body here, that must have been one heck of a ceremony.
09:12It is.
09:13It took 70 days.
09:14This tomb within the pyramid, what did it mean to the people of Egypt?
09:18It is the palace for the afterlife.
09:22And therefore, the king became God.
09:25And he lives in his palace for immortality.
09:28The first scans of the Great Pyramid are in.
09:32And I am hoping they will make sense of its layout and reveal the precision with which it was built.
09:38Hey, well, how are you doing?
09:39Terrence, good to see you.
09:40Nice to see you.
09:41What have we got here?
09:42Wow, something quite incredible, really.
09:44So we've stitched all the scans together from the inside and the outside.
09:48So we've got this now complete millimeter perfect detailed model of the entire pyramid.
09:53Unbelievable, unbelievable.
09:54So yeah, let me show you where.
09:55Yeah, I want to relive the glory.
10:01Ooh, fantastic.
10:02Now that's something we didn't experience because we were going through all these corridors and crawl spaces and chambers,
10:09but you had no idea where even you were in the pyramid.
10:13This way we see it.
10:15This is really interesting over here.
10:16So here you can see the robber's tunnel and compare that to the run next to it,
10:21which is the original descending passageway down to that subterranean room.
10:25You can see the contrast between the two.
10:28Yeah.
10:29One by the robbers, kind of like a big root of ginger as they kind of quarry their way into the pyramid.
10:35They're tomb robbers.
10:36I don't advocate that sort of stuff, of course, but look at the guts that it took to do what they did.
10:41I mean, that's kind of mind boggling to think that they're going to just hack away and remove those blocks to get to the goods.
10:48But man, it's ugly, but it worked.
10:50And that's how we got into the pyramids.
10:54The perfectly aligned descending passage leads down to the subterranean chamber.
10:58There's a lot of effort going to construct that shaft.
11:03I mean, that's no joke.
11:04I mean, going through that's intentional and it bottomed out to this chamber.
11:08What was it used for?
11:09Complete mystery.
11:10Yeah.
11:11It has a very curious shape and form.
11:15Whatever the purpose of the subterranean chamber, we do know the more polished king's chamber higher up was the burial place for the Pharaoh.
11:28This beautiful, incredibly clean, incredibly powerful room.
11:34What an amazing piece of architecture inside the pyramid.
11:37And of course, it was only for the Pharaoh.
11:43So this is something we're really privileged to be able to see it now in this virtual space.
11:47Who was going to see that in the time of the ancient Egyptians?
11:52Basically nobody.
11:55The scans allow us to visualize new aspects of this remarkable structure.
12:02Will has inserted this red band around the base of the pyramid to measure how level it is.
12:07Despite being hundreds of feet apart, the four corners are at the same height.
12:12Within just four inches of one another.
12:16It's confirmed that the pyramid is almost exactly level.
12:21This is not just something done on the fly.
12:23I mean, this is incredible, yeah.
12:25This is great engineering.
12:26You can see that the Pharaoh really did appreciate the design.
12:31The simplicity masks mountains of engineering and ingenuity that went into that to build this.
12:37So I think he was clearly a guy who appreciated design and architecture and engineering.
12:42Yeah.
12:47It's fantastic to see how the scans have confirmed the precision with which the pyramid's been built.
12:52This in a time when the rest of the world was basically living in mud huts.
12:56Even today in the 21st century, you don't have architecture that's always this precise.
13:00And this is a great testament to the greatness of the architects, the engineers, the builders, the stone cutters, the masons of ancient Egypt.
13:09This is their legacy.
13:11To learn more about this advanced ancient culture, we're now going to use our scanning technology to investigate the most famous sculpture in the world.
13:22The scale of the Sphinx is colossal.
13:34It's a monumental figure over 200 feet long, over 60 feet high.
13:38And what is it?
13:39Well, it's got the body of a reclining lion and the head of a man.
13:46But whose face is it?
13:47The Sphinx sits at the foot of a ceremonial road leading up to the second middle pyramid of Giza, close to the Great Pyramid.
14:00This was built for another pharaoh, Khafre.
14:04And he was the son of Khufu buried next door.
14:10The Sphinx was traditionally believed to represent Khafre, a spectacular gesture of self-promotion.
14:18But in 2003, some researchers came to the conclusion that Khafre had instead built it to honor his father, Khufu.
14:30Using our laser technology, we'll scan the face of the Sphinx and compare it with the scans of sculptures of Khafre and Khufu.
14:38In this way, we might answer the age-old mystery of who the Sphinx really is.
14:52The Great Pyramid at Giza wasn't the first to be built.
14:56Researchers now know more about the fascinating origins of pyramid construction.
15:01And the breakthrough was made in an important location 12 miles away, south of the city.
15:07We're dropping across the vast urban landscape of sprawling Cairo.
15:14But we're actually making an ancient journey from the cemeteries of Giza to the ancient capital, Memphis.
15:21The pharaohs of Egypt's old kingdom ruled from the city of Memphis.
15:32Its population of 30,000 people might not sound like a lot, but at the time, Memphis was one of the largest cities in the world.
15:41This was once a cosmopolitan city filled with temples, palaces, and settlements.
15:48But it's really hard to get a sense of that city today.
15:51We can turn instead to this colossal statue of Ramses II that was found in the city.
15:57It once stood over 30 feet high, one of a pair that stood in front of a temple.
16:01And it gives us a sense of how magnificent this city once was.
16:04Made mostly of mud bricks, Memphis has crumbled away to dust.
16:12But just two miles away, the ancient Egyptians built something that would endure.
16:19The Stepped Pyramid of Saqqara.
16:23It was completed in 2650 BC, 80 years before the Great Pyramid of Giza.
16:31The earliest large-scale cut-stone construction anywhere in the world.
16:38To find out more about this prototype pyramid, I'm meeting Egyptologist Yasmin El Shazli.
16:46It's historically very important because it marks the transition from mud brick architecture to large-scale stone architecture.
16:53I'm looking at it right now, and still today, it's very massive.
16:55Before they built this one, kings were buried in mastaba tombs, which are basically flat platforms.
17:02So kind of like the first level of this?
17:04Yes.
17:05What's the thinking to actually go in that direction, to go up?
17:09Some say that it acted like a stairway to heaven, because the soul of the king was believed to unite with the northern stars.
17:16And another theory is that it was built to be a huge monument to be seen from the capital, Memphis.
17:24I'm larger than life.
17:25Yes.
17:26And in death, you know, I'm literally above everybody else.
17:29Exactly.
17:30My God, this is really walking back in time.
17:38Yes, it's amazing.
17:40It's like out of a movie set, except for it's real.
17:43Yeah.
17:45We've been granted special access to explore the very first pyramid.
17:52In this way, we'll find out how it influenced the design of all the later pyramids.
17:57This place is all shored up here. This must be some project.
18:02Well, it's closed to the public for restoration, so you're very lucky.
18:07But be very careful.
18:09Stick to the right here, because there's a hole.
18:12I'll do that, definitely.
18:15Ah, wow. It really opens up now.
18:18Yes, look at that.
18:19That is impressive.
18:20So at this point, are we looking at the center of the pyramid?
18:23Yes, and this shaft is 28 meters deep.
18:28Wow.
18:29That's like 100 feet.
18:30So at the bottom of that is where the king is buried.
18:32Yes.
18:33Wow.
18:34Can we go down this way?
18:35No, no, no.
18:36It's dangerous to go down this way.
18:38We will go the other way.
18:39All right.
18:40Lead the way.
18:41Yes.
18:42Please follow me.
18:43As we explore ever deeper, the interior becomes a confusing maze of tunnels, corridors, shafts, and chambers.
18:54Watch your head and your back.
18:56Okay, yeah.
18:57Well, it is tight down here.
18:58This place is like a labyrinth.
18:59Yes, it is.
19:00Definitely.
19:03These guys could have made it a little bit bigger.
19:06Yasmin is taking me to a small antechamber that tells us more about why the first pyramid was built.
19:15Look at that.
19:16Oh, wow.
19:17So a little bit of the decoration is still here.
19:20Yes, these are blue faience tiles.
19:23All these chambers were covered in them.
19:25Unfortunately, most of them are gone.
19:27Mm-hmm.
19:28But you can imagine what it was like when it was first built.
19:32Yeah, I mean, I can see row after row just how they were inset and so forth.
19:36It's really just great to have this much to recreate everything that was once here.
19:40Yes, it would have been incredible.
19:42So what is the purpose then of this kind of decoration?
19:45How would it fit?
19:47It was actually designed to look like the king's palace.
19:51Okay.
19:52Because to the ancient Egyptians, the tomb was actually the house of eternity.
19:57Mm-hmm.
19:58The first pyramid was built to conceal a palace for the afterlife.
20:03And it was all for King Djoser, a pharaoh who ruled over the newly unified kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt nearly 4,700 years ago.
20:13We don't know a lot about him, but what we do know is that he was a powerful king who led successful military campaigns.
20:22And he was definitely a very powerful king because he was able to mobilize large numbers of workmen to build this pyramid.
20:34This was a national project.
20:35Right.
20:36And you're going to have something which is going to make a big statement to everyone forever that,
20:40look what we were able to build.
20:42This is his eternal home then.
20:44Yes.
20:49Will and his team are already at work.
20:53Our 3D model will help us understand the design of the Saqqara pyramid, revealing clues about how it went on to inspire the Great Pyramid.
21:01While they scan, I'm at the Egyptian Museum in the center of Cairo to find out more about King Djoser.
21:14But first, I can't resist a visit to the most beautiful archaeological object of ancient Egypt.
21:27This is the death mask of Tutankhamun.
21:44It was found over his mummified head.
21:47And this is just part of a vast treasure of the Pharaoh.
21:51The head alone here weighs 22 pounds of gold and precious stones.
21:58Obsidian, lapis lazuli, faience.
22:02It is extraordinary.
22:04And when you think of ancient Egypt, you think of this image.
22:13Tutankhamun became Pharaoh at the age of 9.
22:16He died about 10 years later.
22:20But during his short reign, he restored religious tradition and brought order to a country in turmoil.
22:31But all this was happening many centuries after the building of the first pyramid.
22:35And now, what I've really come to see, a unique object discovered at the Stepped Pyramid.
22:47The only sculpture we have of that pyramid pioneer, King Djoser.
22:51He's not as bling as Tutankhamun, but he's a thousand years older and something very special.
23:00This statue is the earliest life-size statue of a human being ever.
23:06And you can just see how magnificent it is and once was.
23:10It has traces of paint, the mustache, the beard.
23:13His eyes were laid with precious stones.
23:16So not only were the Egyptians pioneers in architecture, they were pioneers in art.
23:28The Cairo Museum also contains a full wall of those blue tiles we saw in the Stepped Pyramid of Djoser.
23:33If you look closely, the design here on the wall was meant to represent brush mats
23:43that would have once decorated the walls of the palace of the pharaoh.
23:48But in the afterlife, it becomes something so sumptuous and a very rich material.
23:55It underlines the fact that they invested so much more in the afterlife than they did in life.
24:01In addition to all the preparations for the afterlife,
24:10King Djoser also had to demonstrate his right to reign during his lifetime.
24:20If a pharaoh's reign lasted 30 years, he celebrated with a ritual called Hepset.
24:25And that meant running around a large arena like this,
24:28and afterwards he had to have a wrestling match.
24:33Now the thing is, Djoser's dead and that's his pyramid.
24:37This arena is next door because it's saying what he did in life,
24:41he's going to continue in death for all eternity.
24:43The construction of the first ever pyramid was a feat of ancient innovation,
24:51and our scans reveal it was a fascinating learning process.
24:54The six well-defined steps of the structure stand out clearly.
25:03But at the bottom layer you can just make out a join between two sections.
25:09Tease this apart and you find a much smaller structure known as a mastaba tomb hidden inside.
25:16This was built first.
25:22But at some point during construction, the flat mastaba was expanded into the full six-story pyramid.
25:29A pioneering process of innovation.
25:31Our scan reveals the whole of the interior is deep below ground level, including the huge central shaft leading down to the burial chamber.
25:45It's all very different from anything at the more streamlined Great Pyramid.
25:50Right next to the base of the burial shaft is the small antechamber with the beautiful blue tiles.
26:03And out from the shaft is a labyrinth of tunnels going off in all different directions.
26:08It's estimated that there are over three miles of tunnels. We were only able to scan a few of them.
26:27The Step Pyramid of Saqqara ushered in a new age of monument building.
26:33But today we look at it as more like a prototype.
26:35Because just 80 years later, the Egyptian engineers and architects refined their skills to build a much more ambitious project.
26:44And that was the Great Pyramid in Giza.
26:49Building the Great Pyramid was a massive undertaking, lasting about 20 years.
26:54Until recently, little was known about the workers who built it.
27:00It's long been assumed the majority were slaves.
27:03Then, in 1990, these tombs were found completely buried in the sand, just next to the pyramids.
27:12Sahih Awas suspected they might belong to some of the builders of the pyramids.
27:23Nothing I like more than seeing an excavation site with the person who actually did the excavating.
27:26Yes, I found this tomb. It's for an artist. His name is Bitteti.
27:32And actually, he was afraid that his tomb will be completely robbed.
27:37Right. And he left a cursed description.
27:40Very nice. And if you look at this cursed description, he's saying at the beginning here,
27:43I never did anything wrong in my life. Of course, he's a big liar.
27:48And he said again, if anyone will touch my tomb, he will be eaten by crocodile, the hippo, and the loin.
27:57Unbelievable. What a horrible way to go.
27:59It's amazing. He was afraid that his tomb would be stolen.
28:02And that's why he left this description. On the other side, the beautiful scene of his wife.
28:09And look, she's almost equal to him. And this is very rare.
28:13In ancient Egypt, always the woman is in a small scale beside the husband.
28:19But it seems to me that this could be love or she was a powerful woman that she gave an order to him.
28:26And the profile is really showing excellent artwork.
28:32So do you think that this kind of portrait too was something that was idealized or realistic features?
28:37This is idealistic. This is what they want to be shown in the afterlife.
28:43Then an ugly lady could show her beauty for the afterlife.
28:48And this to show that not only kings and queens can do that,
28:51but also poor people can go to paradise.
28:57And be buried together over all eternity.
28:59Exactly.
29:02Thanks to the excavations like Zahi's, we now know that the people who built the pyramids were not slaves, but free men.
29:11And carvings on the walls of the tombs show how the 20,000 strong workforce was kept going.
29:17Bakers who made the bread.
29:20Brewers of the all-important beer.
29:23Sculptures from their tombs show us more clearly what they looked like.
29:29This is Intishudu, carpenter who made the boats that carried the stone blocks for constructing the pyramids.
29:36Much of what we think about in ancient Egypt is pyramids and the pharaohs and their lives.
29:48But here in this cemetery, we got insight into the lives of the average Egyptian.
29:53The Mason, the artist, the people that were basically the fabric of society.
29:58And it gave me a much more intimate view of what it was like to live in ancient Egypt.
30:02Earlier, we scanned the Sphinx to try to solve the mystery of which pharaoh it really represents.
30:13The two candidates were Khafre or his father Khufu.
30:17Now, we're returning to the Cairo Museum to scan the faces of their sculptures.
30:28This is pharaoh Khafre, the son of Khufu.
30:32And here he is out of this incredibly beautiful stone called diorite.
30:36And what you have is a very symmetrical pose except for this one clenched fist.
30:43Behind him is actually the falcon horse protecting his head.
30:48He is seated here regally for all of eternity.
30:53This is Khufu, his father.
30:56And this statue of him is only three inches tall.
31:01Now, we know it's a representation of Khufu because his name is on the front.
31:06It's striking that this tiny statue is the only representation we have of the pharaoh who built the greatest and largest pyramid of all.
31:15By scanning the faces of the pharaohs, we'll be able to compare them with that of the Sphinx.
31:24For the scans, the team need two technologies.
31:28So we've got the laser scan, which is maybe five mil of accuracy, and the photogrammetry, which will take us much closer to one.
31:35We really pull out the detail here in the face so we can kind of really zoom in.
31:39And what do you think between Khufu and Khafre?
31:40I mean, this is going to hopefully resolve the riddle of whose face is on the Sphinx.
31:43Oh, I'd love to unlock that riddle. Yeah, yeah.
31:51This is the scan of Khafre.
31:54The face of the Sphinx is superimposed on top, scaled to the exact same size.
32:01We ignore the nose, missing from the Sphinx.
32:05The blue and red areas show points where the faces are most different.
32:09The greens and yellows, a closer match.
32:13And this is the scan of Khufu, the father, with the Sphinx's face overlaid, accurate to nearly one hundredth of an inch.
32:23By comparing the two, we can see there's slightly more green and yellow on Khafre scan, especially along his cheeks and chin.
32:35It's a closer match.
32:39It's not definitive, but our results support those who believe the Sphinx is Khafre, the sun rather than Khufu.
32:50This suggests Khafre built the Sphinx, not to honor his father, but to boost his own ego for eternity.
33:03When the Sphinx and pyramids were being built here, the course of the Nile flowed much closer to Giza.
33:16And harbors allowed boats to unload stone blocks from all across the country.
33:25But over the two millennia of the ancient Egyptian civilization, the Nile constantly changed its course.
33:32But many things remained consistent. All the capitals were always located along the life-giving Nile.
33:48And many religious traditions continued and were consistent over 32 dynasties and over 2,000 years.
33:55Although towards the end of the era, many times they were ruled by outsiders.
34:00The Persians, the Ptolemies of Greek Hellenistic culture, and finally, the Romans.
34:12The Romans invaded the region in 31 BC, a turning point in history as it heralded the end of ancient Egypt.
34:19Egypt's fertile plains quickly became the breadbasket for the empire.
34:28It was said to feed the city of Rome for four months out of every year.
34:37Hello. Hi. Hi. Thank you.
34:40Ah! It's hot. It's really hot.
34:44Mmm. And it's really good.
34:45This flatbread is a staple you see everywhere in Cairo, transported in vast quantities throughout the city.
34:55And it is delicious.
34:59For millennia, whoever controlled the head of the Nile Delta could also control trade and the supply of wheat from the lands along the Nile.
35:10That's why Memphis was sited here.
35:12And now the Romans stationed themselves close by at a place called Babylon, named after the original city of Mesopotamia.
35:22It was a defining moment for the development of the future city of Cairo.
35:30This Cairo street follows exactly along the old riverbed of the Nile River in Roman times.
35:36Today I'm on this street because it's leading me to a beautiful church.
35:39Archaeologist Peter Sheehan has been studying this location for nearly 30 years.
35:53Hi, Peter. Hi, Darius. Morning.
35:55How's it going? It's going good. Welcome to old Cairo.
35:57This is amazing. I just underlined, being inside a Greek Orthodox church, how multicultural Cairo really is.
36:05It is, and particularly old Cairo, full of churches, this Greek church, the synagogue, the mosques.
36:10This is the church of Maragyrgis, St. George. You'll see him all around.
36:15But we're not actually here to look so much at the churches and mosques and the other buildings today.
36:20We're coming to look at the Romans.
36:22Now this is exciting.
36:24So take a look down there.
36:25Okay.
36:26Tell me what you see.
36:28Ooh, that's a big drop.
36:29This church is built on top of a Roman tower.
36:31So what you're looking at through here is three stories of the Roman tower, 16 meters high.
36:36That is fantastic. Now, can we get down there?
36:39We can, of course.
36:46Wow.
36:47Is this right now Roman level here?
36:49This is Roman ground level. Here's the tower on your left.
36:52Wow, really impressive.
36:53All the way up to the height where we were, effectively on the roof of the tower, which is where the church is.
36:58Okay.
36:59It's so impressive that the Romans, wherever they went in their empire, they would build in standard ways.
37:03So here we are way out in Egypt, building the ways you can see in Rome or wherever the empire.
37:07Yeah, and usually because it's done by the legionaries.
37:10Peter is taking me into the heart of the tower.
37:13Wow. Now you've got this, maybe the lower part, the truncated columns here?
37:19Yeah, that's right. These are the ground floor columns still in place, and then at a later point they've been cut off,
37:23and a medieval wall has been built on top of them.
37:26And then up there, that's the, I guess that's where we were standing in the beginning.
37:29That's right, in the church, right at the top of the tower.
37:32After the fall of Rome, Christians in the 7th century AD used the abandoned tower as the foundations for a church, the only circular church in Egypt.
37:46Later, in 1909, this new orthodox church was built on top of the old one.
38:00While the scan team set to work, Peter is keen to show me evidence that the Roman tower is part of something much bigger.
38:06And it's just up the street.
38:13It's another massive construction.
38:15Another massive round tower, like we had in the first one.
38:19Right, so here you would have...
38:20Central open space, this time lots of light.
38:22And you're going to get a really good sense of this colonnade here.
38:25So, what to make of all this?
38:29I mean, you've got two towers.
38:31You got it, two towers.
38:32This is the south tower, the other one was the north tower.
38:35So, here we are.
38:37Wow.
38:38You tell me where we are.
38:39So, these two towers?
38:41That's right, and this forms the western side along the contemporary line of the Nile.
38:46Okay, which is no longer here, out on the street there.
38:48500 meters further to the west there.
38:50Okay.
38:51So, what we're looking at, the two towers are from the western side of the fortress of Babylon.
38:58The Roman Emperor Diocletian oversaw the building of the fortress in AD 300.
39:04The new fortress was crucial for trade along the Nile.
39:08We also have a good idea of why he built it in this spot, which was really to fortify an existing, the existing entrance to the Red Sea Canal, connecting the Nile to the Red Sea.
39:19There's a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea?
39:22That's right.
39:23Just like the Suez Canal in the 19th century, connecting the Mediterranean ultimately with the Red Sea.
39:30This canal was over 100 miles long, a feat of engineering which allowed Rome to dominate trade to countries as far away as India.
39:39Its entrance to the Nile, protected by the Babylon fortress.
39:46I want to see if the scans can tease out the extraordinary history of these very different buildings.
39:52At the top is the Orthodox Church, with its ornately painted interior.
40:11Deep in the foundations is the Roman Tower.
40:21When you take away the church superstructure, you see more clearly that this circular tower is the mirror of its sister.
40:34The two towers are on either side of the entrance to the harbor, guarding the meeting place of the River Nile and the Red Sea Canal.
40:44Our computer reconstruction reveals the full extent of the whole fortress, 400 yards by 200 yards, large enough to hold a garrison of a thousand men.
40:59This has been a truly remarkable story.
41:01From the outside, you would never guess that the Greek Orthodox Church here sits on top of a Roman tower.
41:08You have to strip away the layers to reveal.
41:11And what you discover is that this entire area was once a massive Roman fortification with a channel connected to the Red Sea and a harbor.
41:21And outside, there flowed the Nile, ultimately connecting this part of the Roman Empire with the rest of the Roman world.
41:33The Romans dominated Egypt for 600 years.
41:38But by the 7th century AD, a new empire was rising in the East.
41:50In AD 642, the Arabs conquered Egypt, bringing many new influences from the Middle East and beyond.
42:06The religion of Islam was just 20 years old at the time, yet it would define the developing culture of the city.
42:16These two minarets stand at the boundary of the old city.
42:27The leading Arab army had captured the Babylon fortress and established their own capital here at this strategic point on the Nile, the nucleus of the city that would become Cairo.
42:40The actual origin of the name Cairo is obscure, and there are many versions.
42:45One story is that the Arabs wanted this new city to conquer the entire world.
42:50So they called it Al-Kahira, which means in Arabic, the conqueror.
42:54The Western world has taken Cairo and made it Cairo.
42:59One of the greatest leaders of Arab Egypt was Saladin in the 12th century AD.
43:08Saladin defended the Holy Land from the Crusader armies.
43:12When he secured power in Egypt in 1171, he built a stronghold on a rocky outcrop overlooking Cairo.
43:22Saladin's citadel was to become the center of power for the next seven centuries.
43:34To find out more, I'm meeting Jehan Reda, an expert in Arabic architecture.
43:39Can you tell me a little bit about why Saladin built his citadel here?
43:44Well, mainly to defend the city of Cairo, but also for himself, as a stronghold for himself and his family, and because it's the higher ground.
43:56So he's got a good lookout around what enemies he need to repel.
44:00That's right.
44:01Who would those enemies be?
44:02Well, he was at war with the Crusaders.
44:04They were at continuous warfare, and he needed to make sure that the cities were defended and that they were fortified.
44:13The entrance is right here.
44:16Okay.
44:17Well, we're at a pretty elevated point.
44:19Jehan is going to show me one of Cairo's secret places, the Well of the Spiral, a medieval masterpiece deep below the citadel.
44:28So it looks like people don't tell me too often.
44:31Well, no.
44:32Actually, it's a little bit dangerous.
44:34Oh.
44:35This well would provide the water to allow the citadel to withstand long sieges.
44:40So this is carved right into the bedrock?
44:45Right into the rock.
44:47And actually, we're going down the staircase here, which wraps itself around the shaft of the well.
44:53Ah.
44:54Wow.
44:55So these are the windows.
44:56Oh, man.
44:57Okay, that's a drop.
44:58That's a drop.
44:59That is deep.
45:00Okay.
45:01There's so much rock that was cut through.
45:07I just sort of think about engineering, but also, you know, the labor force.
45:12Do we have any idea?
45:13Is this done by the military or?
45:15Well, no.
45:16Actually, we have an eyewitness account that places crusader prisoners of war at the site.
45:22Prisoners of war throughout history get the short end of the stick and are made to do a lot of hard, back-breaking labor.
45:28Hard work.
45:29All right.
45:30Let's go.
45:31Looks like we're bottoming out here.
45:37Yes, we're almost there.
45:40So here we are.
45:42Wow.
45:43Uh-huh.
45:44Oh, yeah.
45:45It's one thing to look down, and it is another thing to look up.
45:49Yeah.
45:50This is even more impressive from down here.
45:53The 45 meters above you, you can see it all the way up to the sky.
45:57So that's like 100, 125 feet or so, and then there's more.
46:01You're standing above it, actually, so the shaft, the continuation of this one is right beneath us.
46:06My God.
46:07So there are more than a halfway point here, but how's the water getting to this level and all the way up to the top?
46:13All the way up.
46:14So we have a mechanical system made up of two water wheels who fit into each other.
46:18Okay.
46:19We have a set down here on this platform.
46:21Right now?
46:22And it's set up there.
46:23Oh, still today?
46:24Yeah.
46:25Right behind you.
46:26Can we take a look at it?
46:27Right behind you.
46:28In the dark?
46:29Well...
46:30You did say to bring flashlights, so...
46:31Flashlights on.
46:32Ah, now.
46:33So, how exactly is this going to be working?
46:36Well, they're powered by oxen, actually.
46:39They walk around in a circle turning the first horizontal wheel.
46:42Okay.
46:43Which, in turn, turns the vertical one.
46:45Turning the first horizontal wheel.
46:46The wheel lifted up the water in a series of buckets attached to a rope, all driven by the oxen.
46:52All the way down the shaft.
46:54A miserable existence, and I'm thinking, how can you imagine managing to get the oxen all
47:00the way down here to this depth?
47:01Yes, well, they used the spiral staircase to get them down here.
47:04Right.
47:05But it'd be like a kind of a 24-7 kind of procedure if you wanted to.
47:08Hard work, yes.
47:09Really hard work, and I'm feeling really sorry for the oxen right now.
47:13And then it continues up.
47:14And then it continues up using another system like this at the very top.
47:17That is unbelievable.
47:18Jehan told me that the well goes even deeper into a second shaft.
47:31So that hole there is open, and if you fell down, it would go right the way down the hole.
47:38With the help of a climbing expert, we can scan the lower half of the well to discover more
47:44about its remarkable engineering.
47:47The scan team finally reached the level of the Nile.
47:54This water was a precious resource back in Saladin's day.
47:58It would have been cleaner back then.
48:01Visiting Saladin's well was an extraordinary adventure.
48:06And understanding it, many times it's dark, the lighting's not very good.
48:10It's a massive construction.
48:11It's hard to get your head around just really what you're walking through.
48:15And I think that the scans are going to be able to give us a better sense of the construction of the well.
48:21The citadel sits high on its outcrop.
48:33As you come down, you see just how far the well shaft has to descend to reach the water table.
48:43A remarkable 295 feet through solid rock.
48:56And the scans reveal how the two shafts of the well fit together with the middle platform for the water wheel mechanism and those ever circling oxen.
49:05From there, the water was lifted up through the top section to come out into a reservoir like this in the courtyard.
49:20The well and its supply of water helped make the citadel impenetrable.
49:33From Saladin's time until the 19th century, Cairo's leaders ruled from the mighty citadel.
49:41During the later centuries, Egypt was occupied by foreign invaders, the Ottomans, the French and the British.
49:49Finally, in 1953, Egypt broke away from British control and became fully independent once more.
49:59Cairo is now the capital of a new republic.
50:08But of all the cultures that have ruled the region around Cairo, the one that continues to feed the imagination and inspire the modern people of this country
50:17is the civilization of ancient Egypt.
50:23And that's largely due to the architectural jewel in Cairo's crown, the Great Pyramid of Giza.
50:30Now, I'm going to re-enter this world in a new way, using virtual reality.
50:36Ooh.
50:37So, welcome to our virtual studio.
50:41Very impressive.
50:42What do you got in store for me today?
50:43Well, let me teleport you to the Great Pyramid, to a perspective that you've never seen before.
50:49All right, let's see.
50:50Oh, okay, I've never seen the pyramids like this before.
51:03We've got everywhere that we visit, I see all the chambers here just floating.
51:07We have a privileged, almost pharaoh-like view here of the inside of the pyramid.
51:13Oh, it just passed right through the walls, which is great because I can get a breath of fresh air.
51:19That is really cool.
51:21And down below, then we've got our subterranean chamber.
51:26The subterranean chamber here is really amazing, especially when you look up to align it with all the other rooms.
51:32It's amazing, I'm below the subterranean chamber right now, that is intense.
51:37See how all three of them align?
51:39Oh, yeah.
51:41Now I thought I'd be inside the pyramids on my back, looking up through the pyramids, through the chambers.
51:47Wow.
51:48How do they do this?
51:52The subterranean chamber is much rougher than the upper tombs, but its alignment suggests it was part of an original plan.
52:00Darius, do you remember this space?
52:02This is the Grand Gallery.
52:04I mean, what an impressive space.
52:06Instead of walking up it, we're kind of floating in the middle of it.
52:09It's really cool.
52:11And at the top, I can just see in the distance there, I can see floating out there the pharaoh's actual tomb.
52:17So to be true virtual archaeologists, we really should enter the space as we did for real.
52:23Crawling.
52:24Actually, it really feels like we're back there.
52:27And you don't want to pump your head.
52:30Oh, yes.
52:31That is good.
52:32I feel like I've just relived that moment again.
52:34That's fantastic.
52:36Ah.
52:39Although it seems very simple, the engineering required to make this space inside a huge structure is sort of incredible, really, to think about.
52:47So we've shrunk down the pyramid so that we could take this, like, beautiful overview of the whole Giza Plateau.
52:59I love how Cairo now laps up against the plateau of Giza as the river did many years ago.
53:05Amazing.
53:06I'm sure the pharaoh would have appreciated this view, too.
53:17This has been, this has been one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had.
53:20Being in Cairo, I got a new appreciation for the depth and breadth of history.
53:30Just think about the Romans.
53:31We consider them ancient.
53:32But when they came to Egypt, they encountered a civilization that had already been developed and was thriving for thousands and thousands of years before them.
53:41And it's all in the shadow of the pyramids of Giza that are still awe-inspiring and timeless.
53:54Next time, Istanbul, where East meets West.
53:59A lost chariot racing track.
54:02Challenges underground.
54:04Whoa.
54:05This place is huge.
54:06And a Roman engineering masterpiece.
54:18Ancient Invisible Cities is available on DVD.
54:21To order, visit Shop PBS or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
54:26This program is also available on Amazon Prime Video.
54:36here on Amazon Prime Video.
54:38sort of learn more
54:56storage.
54:58For this plan, feel free to join us today at policemanemaking något going on to activate God's endeavor.
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