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00:01Thebes, the heart of ancient Egypt.
00:063,400 years ago, this was the largest city in the world.
00:13For the pharaohs, nowhere was more important.
00:17It's the center of the Egyptian religion.
00:20It's the most holy place.
00:22What secrets does this ancient city conceal?
00:25Can Thebes explain the rise and fall of the pharaohs?
00:31Now, new technology and groundbreaking investigations
00:38may finally solve the mystery behind the spectacular growth
00:43of this ancient metropolis.
00:47To unearth Thebes' deepest secrets,
00:50we'll explore its extraordinary structures,
00:54block by block.
00:56We'll dive inside its massive temples
00:59and uncover its hidden statues
01:02to reveal how it shaped the destiny of an empire.
01:06Was this mighty city
01:08both the source of the pharaoh's power
01:12and the cause of their downfall?
01:21Northern Egypt.
01:24For over 1,000 years, this was the power base of the pharaohs.
01:30Here, they lived and died in the shadow of the Great Pyramids.
01:34But around 1500 BC, the pharaohs set up a new capital,
01:41300 miles south of the pyramids, at Thebes,
01:47now the modern city of Luxor.
01:50What explains this dramatic shift of power?
01:56And why was Thebes so important to the pharaohs?
02:03Today, archaeologists use the latest technology
02:06to probe the inner secrets of this ancient city.
02:11At the center of Thebes,
02:13they're investigating ancient Egypt's most intriguing structure,
02:16the vast temple complex of Karnak.
02:23One of the most exceptional archaeological sites in the world.
02:29This place was bigger, holier,
02:32and more important to the great pharaohs
02:34than any other site along the Nile.
02:39Can this mighty temple and the ruins around it
02:42explain the extraordinary rise of Thebes?
02:50In its prime, Karnak was a marvel of the ancient world.
02:55Most awe-inspiring was the great Hypostyle Hall.
03:00Beyond this soared extraordinary towering obelisks
03:04built out of single blocks of granite.
03:09Only priests and pharaohs could pass deeper
03:12into the temple complex,
03:14to the sacred inner sanctum,
03:17containing the statue of the temple's god.
03:23Why did this sacred complex
03:25and the city surrounding it
03:27replace the region of the pyramids?
03:34American archaeologist Stephen Harvey wants to know
03:36what made the pharaohs move their religious center
03:39and capital to Thebes.
03:42He believes the key to solving the mystery
03:45is to find out what happened in its great temple complex.
03:52Initially, Karnak was not large at all.
03:54Really, just the area we are standing in
03:57with these columns and low walls that are preserved
04:00was all that existed.
04:05At that time, Karnak was a regional temple
04:09dedicated to a god called Amun.
04:12Amun, he was the local god of Thebes,
04:15and as a result, Amun's temple, as Karnak was at that time,
04:20was really not impressive to any visitor.
04:24It would have been a very minor kind of affair.
04:27But at some point,
04:29this ordinary temple experienced a remarkable transformation.
04:36From the remains still visible,
04:38it's clear that Karnak became vital to the pharaohs.
04:45Nowhere in the ancient world were so many monuments, temples,
04:49and statues built in one place.
04:54Covering an area of over 8 million square feet,
04:58this was the largest religious site the world had ever seen.
05:04What momentous event motivated the pharaohs
05:08to build this extraordinary temple complex
05:10right in the heart of Thebes?
05:24To find answers, Stephen travels 40 miles south
05:29to a collection of ancient tombs in the desert at El Kaab.
05:39In one tomb, he finds a shocking account of events
05:42that could explain why Thebes suddenly became so significant.
05:48This tomb is of a man from this area who rose to great importance.
05:55His name is Ahmosa, and he tells us about what he did.
05:58And what he did was fight valiantly against the enemies.
06:04Ahmosa took part in a battle against a foreign people
06:07who had occupied northern Egypt.
06:10Here, he's talking about taking prisoners
06:13and saying that he took a hand,
06:15which means that he cut off the hand of one of these captives
06:19and took it as a trophy for the king.
06:23Stephen thinks this battle was part of a chain of events
06:26that led to the rise of Thebes.
06:31Around 100 years before the pharaohs expanded this city,
06:35a foreign people called the Hyksos invaded and occupied northern Egypt.
06:42They brought new weapons with them, chariots and composite bows.
06:47To fight back, the Egyptians had to make their weapons even better.
06:55The pharaoh's army quickly developed its own chariots.
06:59But to make these really effective,
07:01it needed a better weapon than the longbows it had been using.
07:11Mike Lodes is a specialist in ancient warfare.
07:17He's commissioned a replica of the Egyptian chariot to find out how the pharaoh's army fought back against the Hyksos.
07:27The type of bows that the Egyptians had been using were longbows.
07:31And that is difficult to manage in this confined space.
07:35You can see it starts to bang and get in the way of the wheels.
07:39What you needed was a much shorter bow.
07:42As you can see, I've got much more ability to move around with it.
07:47And I can shoot over there.
07:48I can shoot this corner.
07:49You see it clears the wheel.
07:51I can shoot any which way I like.
07:56Although the chariot and short composite bow were originally introduced by the Hyksos,
08:04the Egyptians deployed them more effectively.
08:08The Egyptians used the new weapons and superior tactics to drive the Hyksos out of the country,
08:15reuniting their ancient land.
08:18The pharaohs gave the credit for their victory to the local god they worshipped at Karnak, Amun.
08:30From this time on,
08:32Amun would rise in favor to become the chief god of the reunified Egypt.
08:39In his honor, the pharaohs expanded his temple at Karnak,
08:44and the great city of Thebes grew around it.
08:48By defeating the Hyksos,
08:50the Egyptians kick-started the renewal of their great empire
08:54and the era known as the New Kingdom.
08:58But there remain many unsolved mysteries.
09:03Who built the astonishing temple complex of Karnak
09:06that gave rise to the great city of Thebes?
09:11And can this extraordinary avenue of sphinxes reveal how the pharaohs held on to power?
09:33Thebes, the capital of ancient Egypt in the time of the New Kingdom.
09:40At its center, a small temple to a minor local god, Amun,
09:46grew to become the largest religious site of the ancient world.
09:51Karnak.
09:53As Karnak expanded, so did ancient Thebes.
09:58But why did a pharaoh first start building here, long before it rose to prominence?
10:05And who built its major temples?
10:11Charlie Labarta is part of a French team of archaeologists that has been excavating and rebuilding Karnak for 50 years.
10:21It's very, very rich. When you work here, you can see one new thing each week.
10:30To find the origins of this religious complex, archaeologists must study the clues carved into its walls.
10:39Ancient hieroglyphs.
10:42Like graffiti artists, the pharaohs covered these new buildings with their tags, called cartouches.
10:52The cartouche, it's a royal name inside the oblong shape like this.
10:58And it's very important for us to date the building of the monument itself.
11:06To find out how this temple complex began, Charlie needs to track down the earliest cartouche on the site.
11:18Within the remains of a half-destroyed gateway, archaeologists find dozens of ancient blocks.
11:25When they reassemble them, they discover they form a small white chapel.
11:38Because these stones were buried in a later building, it must be one of the earliest temples on the site.
11:48But how old is it? And why was it built?
12:01A vital clue comes from the carvings on the reassembled white chapel.
12:08The decoration is really, really amazing.
12:11All the signs are very detailed.
12:15The bird, the bee here.
12:18Beautiful.
12:20The fine preservation means Charlie can easily decode these ancient inscriptions.
12:27Among this decoration, we found a lot of cartouche.
12:31And here we are the cartouche of Senusret I.
12:35He lived 2,000 years BC.
12:39So the oldest temple from Karnak dates from this period.
12:45The white chapel is the most ancient remaining building at Karnak.
12:50And shows there has been a temple here for about 4,000 years.
12:56Of critical importance, the carvings also explain why this chapel was constructed.
13:05They show the pharaoh who built it, Senusret I, giving offerings to a god of fertility called Amun.
13:15For reasons unknown to us today, the people of Thebes had chosen this god to be the patron of their
13:22city.
13:23From this time on, Amun's image with his distinctive headdress of a pair of tall feathers would appear on its
13:31walls.
13:33Later, pharaohs would transform Senusret's small chapel into the vast temple complex of Karnak.
13:40But which pharaohs? And when?
13:47To find out who really started developing Karnak, archaeologists need to hunt down and identify the cartouche of every king
13:57who built here.
13:59But that's a challenge. On some stones, the inscriptions are almost invisible.
14:07So, Charlie and her team use modern technology in an attempt to make them reappear.
14:14It is a granite fragment of a roof.
14:18It is particularly damaged, but I think there is something here, maybe a cartouche.
14:27Charlie hopes digital technology will reveal the hidden name of a pharaoh.
14:35In the workroom, Charlie analyzes the images.
14:42After photographing it, we put the set of images into the computer, and the computer gives us a 3D model.
14:53Specialist software creates what is known as a depth map.
14:57This highlights small indentations invisible to the human eye.
15:03Faded inscriptions lost for thousands of years suddenly reappear.
15:12We can see very clearly the stars here.
15:15And here is the central column of inscription with the name of Thutmur III.
15:21I passed several times next to this block, and it's only with a depth map I found this royal cartouche.
15:36In total, Charlie's team has identified the names of 89 different pharaohs on Karnak's walls and statues.
15:46They enable her to piece together the rise of Thebes.
15:52Around 2000 BC, 300 miles south of the Great Pyramids,
15:58Senesret I built his white chapel on the banks of the Nile.
16:04It was a small temple, dedicated to the local god, Amun.
16:12500 years later, after defeating the Hyksos, the pharaohs of the New Kingdom began expanding the site.
16:20Over the next 500 years, it grew dramatically.
16:26Around it, the pharaohs built more temples, until Thebes became the most populated city on Earth.
16:38It's clear that Thebes was of huge importance to generations of pharaohs.
16:46But why did Egypt's rulers stop building pyramids and start building colossal new temples here?
16:56And could the discovery of hundreds of sphinxes in the center of Thebes explain how Egypt's greatest pharaohs held on
17:05to power?
17:22After the pharaohs reunified Egypt, Thebes became their capital.
17:29All the famous rulers, from Tutankhamun to Ramses II, contributed to its vast temple complex of Karnak.
17:40But why did they lavish so much attention on this sacred site of Amun-Ra?
17:48Did they depend on him and this city for their hold on power?
17:55Egyptian archaeologist Mustafa El-Sahir thinks a giant clue lies right in the heart of the ancient town.
18:04Here, he is excavating a vast, one-and-a-half-mile-long plot of land that runs south from Karnak.
18:14Imagine like this is the largest site of excavation in all Egypt.
18:19Mustafa's huge dig unearths a major discovery, dozens of ancient stone sphinxes.
18:30In the time of the pharaohs, each sphinx was carved in exquisite detail.
18:40Its lion's body and human head were brightly colored.
18:48Alongside it, there were over 1,300 sphinxes.
18:54They lined an avenue 100 feet wide that linked Karnak with another sacred site, Luxor Temple.
19:02But what was this avenue for?
19:05And could it explain why Thebes was so important to the pharaohs holding on to power?
19:14Today, as Mustafa's excavators clear the ground, they discover yet another ancient stone sphinx.
19:21We found that the statue was falling upside down from the pedestal.
19:27You can see the face of the sphinx. Here we can see the ear, that part.
19:32Here we have one eye, and here this is the other eye.
19:35Here we have the mouth, the lips, the face.
19:38All the parts of the sphinx were almost complete.
19:44In ancient Egyptian culture, the sphinx had a special significance.
19:49The sphinx is really one of the most divine figures in ancient times.
19:54The presence of the sphinx gives protection for the pharaohs who are walking here in the avenue sphinx.
20:01Mustafa thinks the avenue was built for ancient Egypt's most important event of the year.
20:07A ceremony that was key to the pharaoh's grip on power.
20:12It began at one end of the route, in Karnak Temple.
20:19At the heart of Karnak stood a sacred statue of Amun-Ra.
20:26The pharaoh visited it for commands on how to run the land.
20:31Their relationship was personal.
20:34The pharaoh was believed to be the god's son.
20:42As the offspring of Amun-Ra, the pharaoh was seen as a demigod, half mortal, half divine.
20:51This gave him the right to rule Egypt.
20:56But each year, that right had to be renewed in a special ceremony known as the Opet Festival.
21:05It starts from Karnak, which is almost two kilometers north from here.
21:10And we are almost close to the end of the avenue sphinx, where the processional way
21:16and all the ceremonies and festivals of Opet comes almost to the end when it reaches here in Luxor Temple.
21:26During the Opet Festival, the pharaoh led a procession along the avenue of the Sphinxes,
21:32carrying Amun-Ra's shrine from Karnak to Luxor Temple.
21:39Here, the pharaoh was ceremonially reborn, giving him the power to rule for another year.
21:49Inside Luxor Temple, inscriptions from the reign of Tutankhamun reveal the details of the Opet procession.
21:59This boat belongs to the king. We can see here the name of the king, Tutankhamun.
22:05So, this is one of the king, carried by the priests, and we have the musicians.
22:11They are making the music by that big drum.
22:16And we have dancers, a really beautiful scene of dancers.
22:21We can see women make it like kind of circles and upside down.
22:29Once at Luxor Temple, people sacrificed oxen and made offerings to the god.
22:36This is the king, giving old offerings to the right, which is that Amun.
22:42That is almost the final part of the celebration before departuring from Luxor going back to Karnak.
22:50In return for Amun's support, the king was expected to commission new buildings for the great temple complex of Karnak.
23:01Every king has to have the acceptance of Amun and his priests to be a king of Egypt.
23:09That is really essential.
23:11So, every king has to put something for Amun inside Karnak Temple.
23:15The bigger and more spectacular Thebes and its places of worship became, the greater and more powerful the pharaoh would
23:24appear.
23:26At its height, over 100,000 people lived here, making it the world's largest city.
23:36But, as well as the great temples on the east bank of the Nile, the pharaohs constructed over a dozen
23:42others on the west side of the river.
23:45What were all these temples for?
23:49And what is the secret behind Thebes' most extraordinary structure?
23:54How did workers build the largest covered space in ancient Egypt?
24:14After the pharaohs from Thebes defeated the invading Hyksos and reunited Egypt,
24:20they founded a golden age known as the New Kingdom.
24:28During this time, almost every pharaoh who built in Thebes' great religious complex of Karnak
24:35also constructed a temple on the other side of Thebes, west of the Nile.
24:41What was this second set of buildings for?
24:45Was it another way of increasing the power of the pharaohs?
24:50To find out, archaeologist Stephen Harvey investigates one of the most spectacular west bank structures.
25:00We're up high looking down on the temple of Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh,
25:04who was one of the first women to take the throne of Egypt.
25:07It's a really impressive temple, one of the first of the large ones on the west bank.
25:14Hatshepsut was one of the first pharaohs to rule after the defeat of the Hyksos invaders.
25:21The location of her temple is Stephen's initial clue to solving the mystery of why these temples were built.
25:29It's in the west, which is the sacred place where the sun sets and where the dead reside.
25:35It's up against the cliffs in the desert zone, which is outside of the zone of the living.
25:41This is really the zone of the dead.
25:44But to uncover this spectacular building's true purpose, Stephen needs to explore it close up.
25:53Deep inside, on one of the innermost walls, he discovers a vital clue.
26:01What I found are the hieroglyphs that read, great temple of millions of years.
26:08And in ancient Egyptian, that's the phrase that lets us know that this is a mortuary temple, built to last
26:14forever.
26:17A mortuary temple, like this one, was thought essential for reaching the afterlife.
26:25Before a pharaoh dies, it's necessary that they have a mortuary temple that can be the place that will allow
26:32their spirit to live forever.
26:35In the temple's innermost chapel, Stephen finds illustrations that reveal how this building was used.
26:43In this room, priests would come in bringing food offerings, meat, vegetables, fruit.
26:50They would burn incense, and they would recite prayers in honor of the soul of the deceased queen, the pharaoh
26:58Hatshepsut.
26:59And by doing that, they would cause her soul to live forever and achieve the mystical union of the pharaoh
27:06with the god Amun-Ra.
27:10Around Thebes, there were two types of temple, some like Karnak, dedicated to gods, and others like this, designed to
27:20help the pharaoh flourish in the afterlife.
27:24The temples on this side were really focused on ensuring that the pharaoh would live for millions of years.
27:32These stand-alone mortuary temples greatly added to the importance of Thebes in the Egyptian world.
27:42Before this time, the Egyptians entombed the pharaoh in a pyramid and constructed a small mortuary temple at its base.
27:54Inside this temple, priests said prayers and gave offerings to the pharaoh to sustain him in the afterlife.
28:05They believed that the pharaoh's soul rose each day to use the offerings, then returned to his body in the
28:12pyramid at night.
28:15When the pharaohs stopped building pyramids, they kept the idea of the mortuary temple, but transformed it into a vast
28:23and impressive building.
28:28Although there's no visual pyramid atop this monument, there are elements from the pyramid complex, such as this room.
28:35So this is a little bit of pyramid hidden inside a mortuary temple.
28:41The pharaohs were now buried in a hidden tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
28:47Instead of dazzling the people with a pyramid, each ruler now astonished them with a large and spectacular mortuary temple.
28:56It proclaimed their godlike status and reinforced their hold on power.
29:06But of all the buildings in Thebes, none was more important to the pharaohs than the great temple complex of
29:14Amun-Ra, Karnak.
29:17How could its builders make this the most impressive temple Egypt had ever seen?
29:25And why did the pharaohs cover Karnak's walls and columns with so many hieroglyphs?
29:33Could decoding these mysterious inscriptions reveal an extraordinary new reason for the pharaohs to keep building here?
29:56Ancient Egypt covered a vast area of land, stretching for over 700 miles along the Nile.
30:06To keep control of this huge nation, the country's ruling elite depended on the great religious city of Thebes, home
30:15of their chief god, Amun-Ra.
30:20Each pharaoh felt he had to show his power and importance by building an impressive structure here.
30:27Ideally, one more magnificent than any that had come before.
30:32But how did ancient stonemasons meet this phenomenal challenge?
30:40At the heart of Thebes, in the temple complex of Karnak, stands the great hypostyle hall.
30:48When first constructed, this was the largest covered space in ancient Egypt.
30:53It's so accurate, you know, the levels are perfect everywhere.
30:58It's amazing.
30:59What did it take to build this on such a colossal scale?
31:09Thebes' great temple needed a large roof to protect its priests from the beating midday sun.
31:21Enormous beams had to span the vast distances between the columns and support hundreds of solid stone cross struts.
31:33In the central aisle, even larger blocks were used to bridge the gap.
31:40How did they carve and raise this extraordinary temple?
31:45And what can it tell us about the pharaoh's ambition for this place?
31:54Antoine Guerrique is the master stonemason reconstructing Karnak.
32:06He rebuilds a wall that was decorated by Tutankhamun 600 years after Senesret built the White Chapel.
32:15Antoine hopes this work will reveal how far the pharaohs would go to cement their power.
32:23What extraordinary feats of engineering did it take to build the hypostyle hall?
32:30We have to replace all the blocks in their original positions.
32:36Of course, the blocks are decorated in stripes, so we have to be very accurate to align all the decoration,
32:47all the scenes.
32:49It has to be perfect, in fact.
32:52But in a time before the Iron Age, how did the ancient Egyptians build so accurately?
33:00Unable to smelt iron, workers had to use tools made of softer metals, bronze or copper.
33:09Antoine wants to find out how difficult it was to build the great hypostyle hall with these less-than-ideal
33:16implements.
33:19Here we are with a sandstone, which is pretty soft.
33:24For soft stone, like here, we're using copper with simple wooden hammer.
33:31I can show you.
33:32At first, it appears that the copper chisel is up to the job.
33:38They were able to cut sandstone, limestone, I mean, soft stones without any problem, just with a wooden hammer and
33:48that kind of tool.
33:49It's quite easy.
33:51But over time, even soft sandstone damages the tip.
33:56So now it's quite blunt.
33:59Workers were constantly resharping the chisels by hammering with the hard stones.
34:09After one minute, it's a little bit better.
34:15With the masons making regular stops to resharpen their tools, carving each block would have been slow work.
34:22To make that perhaps two hours to make the first space.
34:30And with hundreds of blocks to carve, the job would have required a huge workforce.
34:38But this was just a small part of this giant project.
34:44To demonstrate the pharaoh's power, the hypostyle hall had to be more impressive than any temple built before.
34:52To achieve this, workers needed to raise 134 immense columns, some over 60 feet high, then cover them with a
35:02vast roof of heavy 70-ton blocks.
35:07In a nearby courtyard, Antoine finds a clue to how they did it.
35:12Here, we still have mud brick scaffolding, a huge working element still in place here.
35:21Scaffolding like this was the ingenious solution to the problem of building the hypostyle hall.
35:30First, the Egyptians laid out the columns, placing rough blocks in a grid pattern across the hall.
35:41Then, they filled the entire area in between the blocks with earth, repeating this process to build up the columns
35:50layer by layer.
35:52When all the blocks were in position, workers used mud brick ramps to drag the mammoth roof beams into position,
36:0070 feet high.
36:02Finally, they removed the earth and carved the pillars smooth to create the most impressive temple Egypt had ever seen.
36:15The enormous hypostyle hall was an achievement worthy of Egypt's greatest god, Amun-Ra, and a demonstration of the pharaoh's
36:24immense power.
36:28It appears Egypt's rulers were now obsessed with Karnak, Amun-Ra's temple complex at Thebes.
36:36Their hieroglyphs are carved into nearly every structure here.
36:41What purpose did these inscriptions serve?
36:45Were they another ingenious device in the pharaoh's bid for more and more power?
37:05As Egypt's pharaohs built up Thebes, they covered the walls of its vast temple complex of Karnak with thousands of
37:13inscriptions.
37:14But what were they for?
37:18Were these mysterious hieroglyphs the final missing piece the pharaohs needed to complete their hold on power?
37:29A clue lies in the great hypostyle hall.
37:36All 134 columns were once adorned with inscriptions from top to bottom.
37:46Every inch of stone told a story in vivid color.
37:51But the markings boast of the godlike status of one man.
37:58Plastered all along the main avenue is the cartouche of Ramses II, known as the Great.
38:06Why is his name found here so often?
38:15Ramses II came to the throne in 1279 BC.
38:20During his 66-year reign, it is thought he constructed more buildings than any other pharaoh.
38:27But although his symbol covers the hypostyle hall, Egyptologist Charlie Laparta suspects that Ramses could be taking credit for the
38:38work of one of his predecessors.
38:41We can see the cartouche of Ramses II engraving.
38:47Charlie discovers the cartouche of another pharaoh, carved in the same place.
38:53Ramses II left little traces of the original cartouche we can see here.
39:01The marks are identical to a cartouche Charlie spots on another pillar.
39:06We can see the cartouche of SETI I.
39:10It's the same organization as the traces we saw on the other cartouche.
39:20The discovery reveals that the hypostyle hall may actually have been built by Ramses II's father, SETI I.
39:33It's not the only example of a stolen building at Karnak.
39:39Other pharaohs carved their cartouches on top of older inscriptions.
39:45Why were the pharaohs so determined to claim these buildings as their own?
39:54To achieve eternal life, it wasn't only necessary for a pharaoh to build a mortuary temple.
40:01People had to remember and repeat his name ever after.
40:06By his name, the king was keeping alive.
40:11Karnak shows that quest of eternity.
40:15By inscribing these great monuments with their own identity, Egypt's new pharaohs completed all the stages of their quest for
40:23immortality.
40:27It showed they were powerful rulers, worthy of reigning over their new kingdom.
40:39After the Egyptians defeated the Hyksos invaders, the sacred temples at Thebes gave a new dynasty of pharaohs their right
40:48to rule.
40:50By transforming a shrine to a local god into the greatest religious center of the ancient world,
40:57they won power and immortality for themselves.
41:06Archeologists probing Thebes' deepest mysteries have unearthed amazing discoveries about the people who built this city.
41:18From this holy site sprang the great era of the new kingdom.
41:25A 500-year golden age that was the most prosperous in ancient Egypt's history.
41:36The pharaohs were now at the peak of their power.
41:42As they carved out an even bigger empire, they used their wealth to build new temples at Thebes.
41:49From this magnificent city, they breathed new life into the greatest civilization the Earth had ever seen.
42:04To auctions the target people who died...
42:15To
42:16deepens the Shvenant.
42:27Transcription by CastingWords
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