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00:02Over 3,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians built the finest monuments the world has ever seen.
00:11The Great Pyramid, the largest stone building on earth, was constructed with futuristic precision.
00:18How were such quantum innovations ever achieved?
00:24The Valley of the Kings contains over 60 royal tombs decorated with secret codes.
00:30How did the pharaohs reach the afterlife?
00:35Hatshepsut's temple, an architectural marvel.
00:39But why has the face of the pharaoh been erased?
00:44The Sphinx, carved from a single piece of rock, became the world's largest freestanding statue.
00:51What secrets lie behind its silent gaze?
00:56The Karnak temple complex, the largest on earth, became an architectural battleground.
01:02What forces made Karnak prosper?
01:05And who tore it apart?
01:09The temple of Ramesses the Great was carved into a cliff face, with gigantic figures and chambers stretching for 200
01:17feet.
01:18How could it vanish for thousands of years?
01:24And then there's Mount Sinai, Egypt's greatest natural wonder.
01:30The place where God is said to have spoken to Moses and given mankind the Ten Commandments.
01:37Some wonders would shape the course of architecture.
01:40Others would become shrines for all eternity.
01:43Throughout history, they continue to enthrall and inspire as the seven wonders of ancient Egypt.
02:00The End
02:01Beneath the stones of Egypt's wonders lie their hidden stories.
02:05To discover them, we have to travel back through thousands of years.
02:10Back through ancient dynasties that once ruled the greatest civilization on earth.
02:15This was a time when genius and invention laid the cornerstones of the most revolutionary structures.
02:23A time of rivalry and intrigue, conspiracy and deception.
02:29When God would pick his prophet from the royal house of Egypt.
02:34When a queen became a pharaoh.
02:38Kings who with a single hammer blow would destroy the past to glorify their name.
02:45A time when the rewards were so great, some would be driven to any lengths to realize their ambitions.
02:58The kings of ancient Egypt were no mere mortals.
03:03They were gods incarnate.
03:06And the ancient Egyptians cared more for the burial of their kings than any other nation that has existed.
03:15Three and a half thousand years ago, they began to build the most revered cemetery on earth.
03:24The valley of the kings is the most magnificent burial ground in the world.
03:30Sixty-two tombs cut deep into the rock, overflowing with the treasures of ancient Egypt.
03:38Pharaohs like Tutankhamun and Ramesses the Great were laid to rest here.
03:44But before long, this remote valley would become a haven for treasure hunters.
03:57Tomb Raiders and Vandals would break into the secret underground world.
04:08They were followed centuries later by European explorers and adventure-seeking treasure hunters like Belzoni.
04:17Then archaeologists like Howard Carter would make breathtaking discoveries and begin to piece together the lives of the pharaohs.
04:29The oldest tomb in the valley belonged to the king, Thutmose I, from the 16th century BC.
04:38Probably this was chosen as a site for it because of this cleft, which made it easier to begin the
04:45cutting of the tomb itself.
04:47Hidden tombs were the goals for these early kings.
04:52For the next 500 years, the pharaohs would follow Thutmose I and be buried here in the valley.
05:02Ted Brock has been responsible for creating a three-dimensional map of the entire valley and knows every tomb.
05:13Building a tomb was probably in many ways quite similar to quarrying operations that they were carrying out for hundreds
05:19or even thousands of years.
05:22And so it was a similar process of cutting into the rock, cutting out pieces of rock and removing it.
05:32It was hot, dirty and dangerous work.
05:36So they'd have groups of people working there, cutting away at the rock face, tunneling in and hauling the debris
05:43away.
05:43And behind them would be the finishers coming along with the copper and bronze tools, smoothing down the walls, truing
05:52them up, and then followed up by the people plastering the walls in preparation for the decoration.
05:57So you had all these various steps going on at the same time.
06:02After the walls had been plastered, the decoration began.
06:07Outline scribes would draw the hieroglyphics in red ochre.
06:11These motifs were copied from pattern books.
06:15A vizier would relay the progress to the pharaoh.
06:20Once the outline scribe had done his work, then the master artist has come in and made corrections.
06:26You can see that on the head of Horus here.
06:28A nice detail and well finished by the master artist.
06:32See there's no details, red outlines here, so that wasn't even drawn by the outline scribe.
06:40Like the coordinates of a teleport, it was essential for every detail to be correct to ensure the pharaoh's successful
06:47union with the afterlife.
06:50The tombs were decorated with these descriptions of the underworld.
06:55It was taking this hole in the rock and making it the underworld itself.
07:02Most of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings are unfinished.
07:06The work cut short by the king's death.
07:12But the tomb of Seti I is virtually complete.
07:17It was unearthed by the famous treasure hunter Giovanni Battista Belzoni,
07:22who in 1817 was lucky enough to chance upon the longest and deepest of all the tombs.
07:30Belzoni described finding it as the best day in his life.
07:33But it wasn't all easy.
07:36Once inside, the main chambers were hidden behind a false wall.
07:40And in front of this was a well pit 10 meters deep.
07:44He found as he came in that the rear wall was blocked up, except there was a hole which earlier
07:51tomb robbers had entered.
07:55Having discovered the secret entrance, Belzoni went on to explore one of the most cavernous tombs ever found.
08:05They built these large chambers in this tomb and pillars hewn out of the rock.
08:11They're not constructed.
08:12And beyond these other chambers as well, with lots of wall space for more decoration.
08:19The pharaoh's body was mummified to preserve him forever.
08:25He would lie within many coffins before being lowered into a sarcophagus.
08:30This could weigh as much as 10 tons.
08:35The lowest chamber of all, several hundred feet down in the rock, was where the pharaoh was laid to rest.
08:41This is the burial chamber of Seti I.
08:45It's really like a giant sarcophagus with a lid representing the starry sky and the walls describing the sun god's
08:56journey through the underworld.
08:59And each end of the walls has the protective goddess as found on a sarcophagus.
09:06Here the pharaoh would rest, sealed in state and surrounded by his finest and most valued possessions.
09:16The priest and burial party would seal the chamber.
09:22But the generations of workers would always be able to remember where each tomb was.
09:33And soon robbers learned where the tombs were.
09:38So a royal seal was put over the door lock.
09:41But this didn't deter thieves either.
09:43If the central government system was weak and people weren't getting their daily pay and rations,
09:51there's a great temptation to go and plunder these tombs.
09:57When the New Kingdom ended, the tombs were abandoned, many stripped of their treasures.
10:03Some became shrines, others became hidden.
10:07Some may remain undiscovered.
10:11But the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt left behind far more wonders than tombs alone.
10:17The desire for greatness led some pharaohs to immortalize their grandeur in vast temples.
10:23The most splendid of these was built by the pharaoh Hatshepsut.
10:28Like many pharaohs, Hatshepsut liked to be remembered as a great leader and warrior.
10:34What was unusual was that Hatshepsut was a woman.
10:41Built over the hillside from the Valley of the Kings, the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut is the most impressive monument
10:47of Western Thebes.
10:55Hatshepsut's futuristic temple is packed with revolutionary features.
11:00A fitting memory to one of Egypt's most innovative pharaohs.
11:06Yet unlike Cleopatra or Nefertiti, the story of Hatshepsut's remarkable life is little known.
11:14She actually led armies in battle and this was something that early historians really didn't want to have to accept.
11:22She gave orders and Egypt bowed their head. It did as it was told.
11:28Hatshepsut was the eldest daughter of Thutmose I.
11:32And when her husband Thutmose II died, her young stepson became pharaoh, Thutmose III.
11:41Worried that the boy might lose control, Hatshepsut appointed herself as co-regent and later king.
11:50There is no doubt that when she took the throne she was acting unconstitutionally.
11:56But she didn't do as other ambitious women would have done and got rid of Thutmose III.
12:02He's always there.
12:04The thing is, she's the leader.
12:09Hatshepsut set out to finish what her husband Thutmose II had started.
12:14A splendid mortuary temple.
12:17Under her control, it would take 15 years to become the greatest architectural achievement of her dynasty.
12:26Hatshepsut chose as her architect a man called Senenmut.
12:30From lowly status, Senenmut had risen up the ranks to become Hatshepsut's most trusted companion.
12:39She was chief of her works.
12:42He would have been trained on how to choose a site and then to plan the work,
12:49and then to manage the work as it goes along.
12:53As the temple was built up, so its visionary design was revealed,
12:58with multi-faced columns never seen before.
13:02There's no other temple in Egypt that looks like this. It's unique.
13:09Senenmut copied the ramp design from an adjacent temple complex.
13:14But he added other features.
13:16On the colonnades, he placed statues to the god Osiris in front of square columns.
13:23And at the back of the temple was a unique structure,
13:26built to withstand the weight of the cliff above it.
13:30This is the innermost sanctuary, and it's constructed in a rather extraordinary way.
13:34What they have done is to make a corbalt vault, as we call it,
13:39and this is putting one stone on top of another stone
13:42and moving closer and closer and closer to the ceiling.
13:46And then all those little corners are shaved off on either side.
13:50So what you're looking at appears to be a barrel vault.
13:56Hatshepsut illustrated the highlights of her reign on the walls of her temple,
14:01including the very first depiction of an expedition she organised in the ninth year of her rule.
14:07This is the only record that we have of an African village 2,500 years ago.
14:15Hatshepsut sent five ships to the land of Punt, thought to be near present-day Somalia.
14:22The purpose of the trip was to bring back the highly prized incense and perfumes
14:27to offer the god Aman at the temple.
14:30They brought back precious woods like ebony, ivory, gold, skins,
14:35and everything else that they thought would be a delight for the god Aman.
14:40Some say also that the terraces of this particular temple
14:45were used as a place to plant these exotic trees.
14:49Throughout the 15 years of construction,
14:53Hatshepsut worked closely with her architect, Senenmut,
14:56who became almost like family.
14:59Senenmut was one of the favourites of Queen Hatshepsut.
15:03This man was responsible first for the upbringing,
15:08for the nursing of her only and lonely daughter, Nifluri.
15:12There's no evidence to suggest that Hatshepsut and Senenmut ever became lovers.
15:19But Senenmut was privileged enough to have his own tomb built beneath the forecourt of her temple.
15:27But it appears that his rivals may have been jealous of his achievements.
15:32After his death, all images of Senenmut were destroyed.
15:35But one was missed.
15:38Here we have a line drawing of the famous Senenmut.
15:44Unfortunately, we don't know what happened to him,
15:47because he disappears out of sight about the 16th year of her reign.
15:52Senenmut remained an innovator until the very end.
15:55The ceiling on his room is most unusual, because it contains astronomical depictions.
16:03And this is the first time that such things appeared in the tombs of anybody.
16:09And Hatshepsut had them in her chapel as well.
16:15Hatshepsut died after a long rule of 22 years.
16:19A rule when national confidence was boosted by monumental architecture.
16:26Like Senenmut, her face was erased from her monuments by later kings,
16:31who thought it wrong that a woman had not only ruled, but had been a hero.
16:38Hatshepsut was buried in the valley of the kings.
16:41Her tomb was aligned with her temple and beyond,
16:45with vast obelisks she erected inside the Karnak temple complex.
16:50It was here where the kings of ancient Egypt competed to make their mark,
16:55creating the largest religious monument on earth.
17:02Karnak, 2,000 years of triumph, turmoil and tragedy.
17:08Here, the kings of Egypt destroyed the memory of their forebears to build their own destinies.
17:16This was the site where Thutmose I would make his mark of power.
17:21Where Thutmose III would build on top of the shrines of his own stepmother.
17:27Where the exquisite carvings of Seti I would be defaced by his own son, Ramesses the Great.
17:35This is Karnak, the largest religious complex ever constructed anywhere on earth.
17:43How did it develop into a 250-acre site?
17:48When Thebes became the religious capital of Egypt, the Karnak temple became the seat of Amun, the state god.
17:56Karnak was soon home to over 600 priests.
18:00Its buildings spread west towards the Nile and also south.
18:05Obelisks and pylons appeared, followed by shrines and precincts.
18:10Then pylons to the east, a vast hall and giant statues.
18:15Eventually, the entire site was enclosed by a wall.
18:20At the center is a hyper-style hall containing a forest of gigantic columns, some of them 70 feet high,
18:28with capitals so big that 50 people could stand on one of them.
18:35There are obelisks, one of them the largest standing in Egypt.
18:41There are vast statues of kings, their egos frozen in stone.
18:46And there are monumental gateways and vast entrances, pylons.
18:52They are the largest in Egypt and decorated like giant billboards with incredible stone carvings.
18:59Standing up to 100 feet high, it's a marvel that they were built without cranes of any kind.
19:05A clue to their construction still survives.
19:09The vast wall of this pylon was never finished and when the work was abandoned,
19:15the ancient Egyptians left behind a clue as to how it was built.
19:18The mud ramp proves that they used vast earth structures built up against the wall to drag the stones up
19:26to the top.
19:30Building to an enormous scale never daunted the kings of ancient Egypt.
19:34Each king set out to surpass the last.
19:39When an ancient Egyptian came to the temple, he's likely to see the name of the latest pharaoh on the
19:46front.
19:47And a generation later, you have exactly the same thing.
19:51You rebuild, you improve, you make better.
19:56Karnak was about rivalry and competition.
19:59And obelisks were a measure of this.
20:02Obelisks marked the first rays of the day's sunlight.
20:05And Hatshepsut made sure hers outshone her father's, Thutmose I.
20:13At 96 feet high, Hatshepsut's is the tallest surviving obelisk in Egypt.
20:20Weighing 323 tons, it was carved from one single piece of granite 400 miles away at Aswan.
20:29Here lay the highly prized granite quarries.
20:33How were the ancient Egyptians able to cut such a hard stone?
20:38This is a piece of dolerite.
20:41It's a naturally occurring pebble.
20:43Essentially what they did is they pounded the surface with this stone.
20:48And every time they did, they took minute fragment of the stone surface away.
20:53Working day and night in cruise, they slowly but surely would have dug channels like this.
21:01So, at one point, they could break it away from the living rock, put it on a boat,
21:07and take it down to wherever the obelisk was supposed to be delivered.
21:13After the 400-mile river journey to Karnak, the chances of a mistake increased dramatically.
21:30Too much pressure in the middle, and the giant slab would snap under its own weight.
21:36But this was just the easy part.
21:40On arrival at Karnak, the giant granite block was hauled up a mound, base first.
21:47With men to maneuver and sand to do the real work, the giant stone was skillfully lowered into place.
21:55With time and enough labor, anything was possible.
21:59But then, building techniques were about to change, when along came scaffolding.
22:05One king, by the name of Akhenaten, was in such a hurry to realize his ambitions, he invented new methods
22:12of construction.
22:14Under his command, stone blocks were cut to a standard size.
22:19Known as a talatat, they measured about 50 centimeters long, and could be easily handled by one man.
22:26It meant the whole building process was freed up.
22:29An unskilled workman could easily carry the blocks right to the top of a building structure, and the whole process
22:35was much faster and cheaper.
22:39But it didn't last.
22:40Small blocks were quick to build up, but even quicker to pull down.
22:44And the next pharaohs, Tutankhamun and Horemheb, both plundered Akhenaten's buildings, the talatat blocks becoming rubble infill for their giant
22:54pylons.
22:57So the pharaohs returned to building big, and there is one structure at Karnak that not even a giant could
23:04pull down.
23:06The Hyperstyle Hall is the largest single religious building ever constructed.
23:20The vast hall was begun by the pharaoh Horemheb, continued under Seti I, and completed by his son, Ramesses II,
23:29in around 1220 BC.
23:33It's a forest of columns 70 feet high.
23:37How was it put together?
23:39Ancient Egyptian temples are built using huge columns like this one, and architraves that span between them.
23:47This was one of their biggest problems, because the architrave had to support not only its own weight, but the
23:52weight of the great stone roof above.
23:56Extraordinarily, building techniques were only moments away from solving this problem.
24:02We always think it was the Romans who invented the arch, but the ancient Egyptians were building them over a
24:07thousand years earlier.
24:10But without keystones, Egyptian arches had to lean backwards to support each other.
24:15They were used only for utilitarian buildings, like these Marach storerooms over 3,000 years old.
24:25Undaunted, the ancient Egyptians simply carried the weight with enormous columns.
24:32The columns became so big that their bases were built out of two stones like these, brought together the perfect
24:39joint down the middle.
24:40They would be left rough, and the whole column was built on top of it.
24:44Earth was banked up around them as they grew to 70 feet high.
24:50Bridging the gap between each capital was a vast architrave, a single block of sandstone spanning 30 feet.
25:00These could weigh up to 80 tons, and had to be hauled up onto the site.
25:08These architraves were placed onto the roughly built columns.
25:11Now the stonemasons worked their way down, creating beautiful carved columns.
25:17And if a mistake was made, plaster was used to cover the cracks.
25:22Later, these relief carvings were exquisitely painted.
25:26As they worked their way down, slowly the earth mound was dug away.
25:31Ramesses II completed the hall using deep sunken outlines and buckets of plaster,
25:37changing the decorations to his own image and rewriting history.
25:42And he set out to cover Egypt in monuments that glorify his name.
25:46The most famous is his temple at Abu Simbel.
25:57Ramesses' power extended as far south as the deserts of Nubia, where he built seven temples.
26:04The most impressive is at Abu Simbel.
26:08It was built to advertise Ramesses' ultimate power,
26:11and it would become the finest rock-cut temple in the world.
26:18Gangs of masons set to work on the facade,
26:20to transform a cliff face into two pairs of enormous statues of the pharaoh.
26:27Carved out of the living rock, they were to be 69 feet high.
26:32Why did Ramesses choose this remote desert as the site for his temple?
26:37He probably built it because there was a fine piece of rock.
26:41It was located close to the Nile,
26:45and anyone coming from the south would be immediately struck by the majesty of Egypt.
26:53Nubia was important for mining and for traders coming from the south.
26:57Lying far from Thebes, the area was free from the power of the priesthood at Karnak.
27:03And so here, Ramesses could pay less attention to the established gods,
27:08and could concentrate on promoting his own image.
27:12This temple is built far afield to celebrate the king,
27:17so that he's not infringing on the territory of the god Amun.
27:24It's a little more of an egomaniac sort of thing,
27:27but he's doing it in a place where it's relatively safe.
27:31Inside, Ramesses had a hypostyle hole cut from the natural rock.
27:38The Egyptians had the technique down for a thousand years,
27:43fifteen hundred years before this temple was built.
27:46What Ramesses II does is he takes this technique,
27:50and he creates it on an absolutely tremendous scale.
28:12The columns he had faced with giant standing statues of himself.
28:17But it's the fact that it's celebrating Ramesses that makes it unique among the temples that you see in Egypt.
28:26He carves deep, and he carves boldly over huge surfaces, and everybody knows about it.
28:34His triumphs and achievements decorate the walls.
28:38His enemies cower before him.
28:42Syrians plead for mercy.
28:47A Libyan soldier is trampled underfoot.
28:55In the innermost sanctuary, Ramesses depicts himself beside the gods in the middle with Amun-Re,
29:02as twice every year the rising sun would penetrate this part of the temple and illuminate his image.
29:15The vast exterior statues were designed to be seen for miles away for all eternity.
29:25But instead, they would disappear for two thousand years,
29:30until the treasure hunter Belzoni arrived.
29:37Once inside, he realized that fourteen rooms lay behind the facade.
29:42Some of them pillared and cut back some two hundred feet into the rock.
29:48This was a discovery to equal the Valley of the Kings,
29:52and European tourists flocked here in droves.
29:56But in the 1960s, when the Aswan Dam was built,
29:59the temple was threatened by the rising waters of Lake Nasser.
30:04Fifty-one nations from across the world contributed through UNESCO to save the monument.
30:12Piece by piece, the entire cliff face and temple were cut into thirty-ton blocks,
30:17and reassembled two hundred feet up at the top of the cliff,
30:22like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
30:26Not even the waters of Lake Nasser could rise above the king who constructed his own immortality in stone.
30:35Some wonders were never constructed.
30:37They'd become natural shrines and spiritual landmarks.
30:42The most famous is Mount Sinai.
30:54At 7,000 feet high, Mount Sinai, known locally as Jebel Musa, or Mount Moses,
31:00is the highest mountain in southern Sinai,
31:04and one of the most spiritual places on Earth.
31:11According to biblical accounts, it was here that Moses, amidst a violent storm,
31:17scrambled to the top of the mountain.
31:22Here the heavens are said to have opened,
31:24as God gave Moses the Ten Commandments written on two stone tablets.
31:33To mark the site where Moses received the commandments,
31:37a Greek Orthodox monastery was built over fifteen hundred years later,
31:42and dedicated to the Christian martyr, St. Catherine.
31:46The monastery is known today as St. Catherine's Monastery.
31:50St. Catherine herself was born in Alexandria in the late third century.
31:55She was renowned for her wisdom, for her intelligence, for her beauty, and for her wealth.
32:02The monastery is the oldest on Earth,
32:05and has been a center of religious pilgrimage for over fifteen centuries.
32:10Christians have fled here to avoid Roman persecution.
32:14And in 530 A.D., the Emperor Justinian gave orders to build a vast fortification
32:21to enclose and protect an already sacred site.
32:26Towering walls enclose an area the size of a city block.
32:31Like a fortress, there was no doorway to enter.
32:34Until recently, the only way in was by a pulley that lifted any visitor up over the walls.
32:43Once inside, there lies a timeless miniature town from another age.
32:47A warren of ancient chapels and tiny courtyards.
32:53The monastery is one of the finest surviving examples of Byzantine architecture,
32:59and houses a priceless collection of religious art and manuscripts.
33:04According to scripture, it was here that Moses' life would be transformed
33:08by seeing a miraculous vision of a burning bush.
33:13And a species of raspberry bush, Rubus santus, is still cultivated here by the monks.
33:21The first name of the monastery was the Monastery of the Burning Bush,
33:25because this is the place where God appeared to Moses at the bush that burned without being consumed.
33:31It was here that Moses brought the children of Israel,
33:36and here that he received not only the revelation of the Ten Commandments, but the law.
33:45Moses' story began in the New Kingdom of Egypt.
33:49He was a Hebrew orphan, but grew up in the royal house.
33:53This was a time when Hebrews were held as slaves.
33:57But when Moses grew up, he was forced to flee the palace.
34:01He killed an Egyptian guard when he saw the cruelty inflicted upon his fellow Hebrew people.
34:07His life changed from prince to fugitive.
34:10And for 40 years, he wandered in the wilderness of the Sinai Desert.
34:26According to the Bible, it was the burning bush that appeared as God's sign to him,
34:31and Moses' life was to change again.
34:37Charged with new purpose, Moses returned to the palace to persuade the Pharaoh to release his people.
34:44There is a possibility that Ramses was the ruler during the Exodus.
34:50It takes place either 200 or 400 years before the building of the Temple of Solomon.
34:56If it's 200 years, Ramses is a candidate.
35:00You can't pinpoint this precisely.
35:04The Pharaoh would not comply until Moses had unleashed ten terrible plagues upon the country.
35:11The Nile turned to blood.
35:15Animals died and light turned to darkness.
35:19Only then did the Pharaoh relent.
35:24The Bible recalls how Moses led his people across the Red Sea,
35:28parting the waters to make their escape,
35:30before bringing them crashing down, drowning the Pharaoh's army.
35:40After years in the wilderness with his followers,
35:43Moses would return to Mount Sinai,
35:46where God, having tested his faith,
35:49would give mankind the Ten Commandments.
35:58Since the time of Moses, the monks have carved 4,000 steps of repentance up the mountainside,
36:05allowing pilgrims a path to the top.
36:08When temperatures are low, as many as a thousand tourists make the climb each night,
36:13up what is considered to be one of the world's most spiritual landmarks.
36:19The pilgrims that come here today are following in the footsteps of those who have come here for 17th centuries.
36:24It is gratifying to see people who come here as casual tourists,
36:29and then become aware of the tremendous spiritual heritage that is here,
36:34and they come as tourists and they leave as pilgrims.
36:41From this site, Moses is believed to have shown his people the way to their promised land,
36:47and the Jewish nation was born.
36:54Egypt had long had its own icons and mythologies.
36:58The most mysterious of all is the largest freestanding stone sculpture in the world.
37:04No one is certain who it represents, or even who built it.
37:14Half human, half animal, the Sphinx has long been considered the strangest icon on Earth.
37:21At 60 meters long and 20 high, it guards the Giza Plateau,
37:26beside Egypt's two largest pyramids.
37:30For centuries, the Sphinx has been seen as the key to life.
37:35Pharaohs have worshipped at its feet.
37:37Conquerors have knelt down before it.
37:40The Sphinx has been subjected to every test, but remains an enigma.
37:45Why was it built?
37:47Why are the tunnels inside it?
37:49Which king does it represent?
37:51What power does the Sphinx hold?
37:55They call him Father the Terror.
37:58They're afraid of him.
37:59Can you imagine if the locals today are afraid of the Sphinx?
38:02The people at that time were also afraid.
38:04He's just here watching you all the time.
38:08In ancient Egyptian art, the idea of fusing animal with human was nothing new.
38:14But this was the first time a human head was sculpted onto a lion's body.
38:20And in ancient Egypt, there was only one person who could be portrayed in such a way.
38:25The Pharaoh himself.
38:27The king being the manifestation of Egypt, he has to be virile, mighty, fearless and powerful.
38:37So you have here the head of the king representing intelligence,
38:42but the body of a lion representing might and power.
38:45The Sphinx stands in a vast U-shaped quarry before the Great Pyramid built by Khufu
38:51and the second pyramid built by his son, Khafre.
38:55It is thought to represent one of them.
38:57But why build a sculpture in the middle of a pyramid complex?
39:01It's cut from actual rock.
39:03So this huge rock was standing there.
39:06So they decided to do something with it.
39:08And that thing would have been a huge statue that would manifest the king.
39:13And in the meantime, it would be a symbol for the sun god, Ray.
39:21But if the Sphinx manifests the importance of the king,
39:24why is its head so small in comparison with its long body?
39:29The head is made of the hardest of the limestone and therefore was very good for sculpture.
39:36So somebody's got the idea when the shape has been left at some stage,
39:41hey, this might be an interesting design to make as a monument to the king.
39:47But as the stonemasons began carving lower down, they ran into a soft layer of rock and hit a fissure.
39:57This poor stone may have forced the builders to extend the body.
40:01They then had to clad the bad area in a limestone casing.
40:08But it wasn't long after the Sphinx was finally completed that the entire statue would become buried beneath the sand
40:15for over a thousand years.
40:18Thutmose IV rediscovered it and installed a 15-ton granite stella, or inscription, between its paws.
40:28Known as the dream stella, it recounts how as a young prince he fell asleep in the shadow of the
40:34Sphinx's head.
40:36According to the stella, the Sphinx came to him and said,
40:40My son, why do you allow this to happen to me?
40:45Uncover me and you shall become king of Egypt.
40:48So according to the dream stella, Thutmose IV uncovered the Sphinx and lo and behold he became the next king.
40:59But soon the desert sands were to consume the monument again, before tomb builders came to the plateau.
41:07First of all, you have to imagine now the Sphinx when it was covered with sand.
41:13So, it's all covered with sand, only the head is visible.
41:17The Greeks, by the way, believed that the Sphinx was like the statue, standing statue, and they were seeing the
41:23head.
41:23They couldn't imagine the body.
41:26And because the body was hidden, tomb builders and treasure hunters have dug unknowingly into the Sphinx.
41:35From all the times people are curious, you see that during the ages people tried to explore under the Sphinx.
41:42Maybe people believe there are hidden secrets.
41:45Today it's forbidden to make passages, but some centuries ago nothing was forbidden, so we can come and make a
41:53lot of things here.
41:54Human activity is incredible.
41:58This explains the tunnels, but there still remains the enigma. Which king does the Sphinx represent?
42:07When you face the Sphinx, you find that it's in line with the pyramid of Khafra.
42:13And it's very close to the very temple of Khafra and to the causeway.
42:18So, presumably, it must have belonged to the same king.
42:22But other Egyptologists disagree.
42:26When you look at Khafra's pyramid, the normal thing would have been for the king to build a causeway at
42:3290 degrees to the pyramid
42:34and bring it straight down to his valley temple. This was not done.
42:38His causeway had to take a swing over to the side over there because this quarry was already in the
42:46way.
42:47I personally think that Khufu was responsible because mainly the eyes are very wide open and very large.
42:56Another thing is the Nemes headdress that he wears, which is just a head cloth that was striped.
43:02But in his successor's reign, there is not a stripe to be seen.
43:09The Sphinx may indeed represent Khufu, the builder of the other pyramid, the Great Pyramid, which stands at its side.
43:19Khufu's pyramid nearly bankrupted the country. And so the Sphinx could have been built by one of his sons, Jedefra,
43:28to restore national confidence and Khufu's status.
43:31The idea that Jedefra, as a good son, makes a monument for his father, the Sphinx, to continue the cult
43:39of his father, the god.
43:41The image of the Sphinx, in fact, helped because the power, the strength was given back.
43:49He's there watching the Egyptian people.
43:54Whether the Sphinx bears the face of Khufu may never be decided.
43:59For comparison, the only surviving statue of the pharaoh is a tiny figurine just three inches tall.
44:07A small reminder of the pharaoh who would build the largest stone monument the world has ever seen.
44:17The Great Pyramid of Giza holds the number one position as Egypt's top wonder.
44:23It's the oldest wonder of the world and has been standing for four and a half thousand years.
44:29It's the greatest tomb ever constructed and remains the largest stone building on earth.
44:36It was built for the pharaoh Khufu in 2560 BC.
44:41And from that time to this, the Great Pyramid has remained an icon of world architecture.
44:50The idea of a pyramid is very simple.
44:53The ancient Egyptians believed that life is eternal.
44:57They crossed from this life to the eternal life.
45:01But they had to prepare the abode.
45:03Now, it took the shape of a pyramid because this is connected with the sun god.
45:09Now, King Khufu was the first king to put among his titles, Sare.
45:15Sare means the son of the sun god.
45:23The pharaoh Khufu had been brought up with pyramids.
45:27His father had been a builder on a grand scale.
45:30And from the start, Khufu set out to construct a pyramid that was perfect.
45:36Firstly, the pyramid was aligned with the compass.
45:40The points where the north star rose and set were divided to define true north.
45:45Then the base was levelled.
45:47Khufu's pyramid covers 13 acres and is level to within just one inch.
45:53They did this using a rectangular grid of channels in the rock which they could fill with water.
45:59And any protrusion sticking up above the water could be shaved off.
46:06Once the base was marked out and the ground level, building could begin.
46:11This is where they cut the stones to build the pyramid.
46:14To move them, they dragged them from here up a great straight main ramp up to the pyramid itself.
46:30For the lower courses, the blocks weighed five tons or more.
46:35But as the pyramid grew, the weight of the stones reduced.
46:39In total, the workers hauled a staggering 2,300,000 stone blocks.
46:46For the first time in pyramid building, the blocks did not slope inwards,
46:51but were laid in horizontal courses.
46:55One was fitted into place every three minutes.
46:58But despite this pace, Khufu's pyramid would take 22 years to construct.
47:05Inside, the pyramid becomes a puzzle.
47:10From the entrance, a passage descends to the subterranean chamber carved out of the bedrock.
47:16It leads nowhere and leaves us with a mystery.
47:21Above, the queen's chamber is a sealed room for a statue of Khufu, representing his car or spiritual force.
47:30From here, there's a spectacular high-ceilinged passage.
47:35The grand gallery leading up to the king's burial chamber was built using a technique called korbeling.
47:41This is a simple form of arch that the Egyptians excelled at.
47:45Each stone block is progressively stepped in until you reach the top.
47:49And it has the advantage both of reducing the span that they have to bridge and of giving the room
47:54a great feeling of grandeur.
47:56Above this, high up in the pyramid, is the king's chamber, designed to be Khufu's final resting place.
48:05Oh, it's incredible. It's incredible.
48:10It's entirely walled in granite.
48:13And these roof slabs were the biggest span ever attempted at that time, 4,500 years ago.
48:19The Egyptians were so worried about the weight of the slab and the fact it might collapse under its own
48:26self-weight,
48:27that they built a series of voids or chambers above to try and hold the weight of the pyramid off
48:33this roof right here.
48:36And then right at the top, two great stones lean against each other like a V.
48:42And that takes the force, the weight of the pyramid, right down and guides it down these beautiful side walls.
48:49It's the most fantastic space I've ever been in.
48:54Inside the stress-relieving chambers remain the graffiti of the workmen.
48:59One of them mentions the name Khufu, the only record of the pharaoh for whom this pyramid was built.
49:07This is the last resting place of Khufu.
49:11Unfortunately, it was robbed in ancient times, and that's why it was broken at this tip.
49:18The funny thing is, when this coffin was measured, they found that it was a fracture wider than the entrance
49:27there.
49:29So, obviously, it was put here before the structure of the whole burial chamber.
49:37There are other curious features, like two tiny shafts that run from this chamber towards the outer face of the
49:44pyramid.
49:45These are believed to have released the pharaoh's car, or spirit, to the heavens.
49:55On their way out, once Khufu was in his sarcophagus, the priests and the engineers sealed the tomb by dropping
50:01three huge granite slabs down these great slots here, sealing it off forever.
50:11Then the entrance at the other end of the grand gallery was also sealed.
50:16To get out, the engineers now had to climb down a near vertical escape shaft, make their way back up
50:23the descending passage, past the blocking stones, and out through the entrance.
50:30Then the passages were blocked, and the entrance sealed with a flat stone, indistinguishable from the pyramid casing.
50:41Supposedly, nobody would have known how to get in, and even if they had done that, they would have found
50:48tons of blocks of stones blocking the ascending corridors.
50:52Every precaution was taken.
50:54But you know something, at the end, the pyramid was robbed.
50:59How did they do that? God only knows.
51:05These seven wonders all stood within the world's first empire, and have inspired every civilization to follow them.
51:15Whether a natural site or a man-made construction, the seven wonders of ancient Egypt will remain world landmarks for
51:24all eternity.
51:27Good night.
51:29Good night.
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