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00:02The ancient mega temple of Karnak, the earthly mansion of the Egyptian gods and the exclusive
00:11playground of Egypt's ruling elite. The feat of engineering here is just astronomical. You can
00:18see the size of it. But just how far back does the history of this place stretch? And what
00:27bizarre rituals went on behind its closed doors. They would sing and dance for the gods because
00:34the gods were easily bored. Today, new technologies and forensic detective work are revealing what
00:43life was like inside the ancient world's largest religious complex. To unearth Karnak's secrets,
00:52we'll explore this mega temple stone by stone. We'll look inside its 30 foot thick walls and decode its 60
01:03foot high columns to lift the veil on life inside one of the ancient world's most secretive wonders.
01:19The sacred Egyptian site of Karnak. Generation after generation of pharaohs built temples here in honor
01:28of their own rule. The result is a sprawling city of religious structures from different eras,
01:36packed together like sardines. Karnak sits at the heart of the Egyptian empire, 300 miles south of the
01:47Great Pyramids. This vast collection of religious buildings was also a seat of power for Egypt's mighty
01:56pharaohs, like today's Vatican and White House rolled into one. What really went on behind these hallowed walls?
02:07Today, as engineers rebuild the shattered remains of Karnak piece by piece, this extraordinary site is
02:15finally revealing its hidden secrets. It's a mammoth task. There is huge blocks everywhere, different kinds,
02:24different periods. It's like a puzzle, big puzzle. The parts of the complex archaeologists have restored
02:33revealed the spectacle that greeted elite guests more than 3,000 years ago.
02:42The elite allowed to enter Karnak were greeted by the massive hypostyle hall.
02:51Here, foreign dignitaries were received and mighty pharaohs rested under the shaded columns.
03:00Behind it, the festival hall obelisks marked an exclusive gateway. Only priests and pharaohs could pass through
03:08to the inner temples. At the heart of this secret inner sanctum lay the most ancient known temple.
03:15temple. But experts suspect that this site was venerated for so long that even older temples may lie hidden in
03:23the ruins.
03:31Antoine Garrick is the current lead on a massive restoration project, rebuilding Karnak to its former glory.
03:40He knows that ancient structures unseen for thousands of years could lie hidden inside this field of blocks.
03:48But to resurrect them, he first has to find the right pieces.
03:54Okay, we are in the block yard south of Karnak temple. There is thousands of blocks. That's where it all
04:00starts.
04:02While hunting out the blocks for his latest reconstruction project, Antoine has learned something astonishing about the Egyptian builders.
04:10They were thieves. Every pharaoh was dismantling other monuments. And also reusing that block. If you turn a block, you
04:22discover a new face just behind.
04:26Examining the scenes of these architectural crimes reveals some incredible surprises.
04:33Perhaps the greatest was discovered inside the ruins of one of Karnak's enormous walls.
04:41Within the fabric of a half-destroyed wall, archaeologists found the remains of hundreds of stolen blocks.
04:49They're the pieces to a near-complete temple called the White Chapel, the crowning glory of Senesret I, a former
04:59pharaoh.
05:02He covered the chapel in inscriptions depicting his jubilee festival.
05:08It once held the king's mighty double throne and honored the sun god.
05:15This holy shrine was callously destroyed to build the legacy of a future pharaoh.
05:25Nine similar towering walls were built on the Karnak site.
05:30The pharaohs that built each one covered them with ancient scripts, boasting of their divine status like a giant billboard.
05:40Today, Antoine and his team are reconstructing one of the walls.
05:46They believe it was carved in honor of the boy king Tutankhamun, more than 3,000 years ago.
05:56By completing this 30-foot-high jigsaw puzzle, Antoine hopes to reveal the forgotten history of King Tut's reign, scrubbed
06:04out by the rulers who followed him.
06:08The complexity of the task is enormous, but Antoine has technology on his side.
06:37Antoine uses special software to see where his photos fit into the wall reconstruction.
06:43Antoine uses special software to see where his photos fit into the wall reconstruction.
06:43When you click and you move your block, you can move it right and left.
06:48Draw on it, I can measure on it.
06:51So that's really faster than instead to build scaffolding to measure all the blocks one by one.
06:56Just with few pictures and it's done.
07:01Once he's sure where the virtual block goes, Antoine can haul the real thing into place.
07:08We have half of the scene on that block.
07:10We just have to adjust perfectly the block with the other joint.
07:17Antoine is confident this is the next piece in King Tut's monster puzzle.
07:32The angle is okay. It's fitting to the ancient wall, so it's perfect.
07:40Today's restorers are lucky to have modern machines to lift the two-ton blocks into place.
07:46Three and a half thousand years ago, the Egyptians had to use much more primitive tools.
07:54Instead of cranes, the ancient Egyptians made bricks from the mud of the Nile.
07:59And stacked them into a gently sloping ramp.
08:05They added wooden tracks and pulled the massive stone blocks up on sleds.
08:11They used water to lubricate the path.
08:16The Egyptians built the ramp higher and higher to add more and more layers to the wall until it towered
08:23over 100 feet.
08:26Once the wall was complete, the ramp was destroyed.
08:29A huge wooden door and colorful flags were added as the final touches.
08:39By rebuilding the ruins of Karnak's forgotten structures, experts have uncovered evidence of the strange rituals and practices of the
08:48ancient pharaohs.
08:50But to truly understand what went on at Karnak, scientists have to look elsewhere for clues.
08:58These grisly human remains were once important people in the working life of the temple.
09:04Can new technology reveal who they were and what they did?
09:20Karnak.
09:21The largest religious complex in ancient Egypt.
09:27With a mountain of ruins to prove it.
09:32Historians believe this walled structure was a thriving miniature city filled with homes and workplaces.
09:40But who was the elite religious society that lived here?
09:44And what did they do?
09:50To find this hidden city, you have to travel deep inside Karnak.
09:55Far beyond the obelisks and into the sacred labyrinth of antechambers, reserved for the king and his spiritual entourage.
10:05Inside these secret rooms, priests and their religious aides would host ceremonies and daily rituals.
10:12But at the end of the working day, they would all retire to the hidden village beyond.
10:18A walled complex of hundreds of mud houses, space for thousands of people to live and work.
10:25A secret society to support the temple's colossal power.
10:34Campbell Price suspects the Egyptians who worked at Karnak may have been every bit as extraordinary as the temple itself.
10:43And today, with the help of his colleague Lydia McKnight, he has an opportunity to put his suspicions to the
10:50test.
10:51We have 20 human mummies, several of whom come from the site of Thebes.
10:57And it's very likely that those people, including this lady here, worked at the temple of Karnak.
11:05100 years ago, explorers unearthed these human remains very close to Karnak in what was the ancient city of Thebes.
11:14Campbell believes the resin-coated mummy is that of a temple worker called Perenbast.
11:21He hopes to unravel the secrets of her daily life by studying her remains and any artifacts hidden inside her
11:29wrappings.
11:31So this is the lead of the coffin of Perenbast.
11:35She was discovered in a sealed tomb.
11:38And down here, we can see some hieroglyphs, which are a prayer to the gods to ensure that Perenbast would
11:47have a successful afterlife.
11:48So is there any evidence on the coffin which tells us what her role was at the temple?
11:52Right at the bottom, you can see her title.
11:55That's it, Shema'it en Imen, which means singer, temple singer of Amun.
12:01And this tells us for sure that she worked in Karnak.
12:06Campbell thinks Perenbast's role as a temple singer would have been very different to that of a church singer today.
12:13We think she was part of a small number of wealthy women who would go into the inner parts of
12:20the temple,
12:20where the god's statue was kept, and they would sing and dance, perhaps, for the gods.
12:27Because the ancient Egyptian gods were often easily bored, so they needed to be entertained.
12:36Perenbast would have sung songs to the statue of Amun-Ra every day to keep the sun god happy.
12:43But at key times in the calendar, her job became even more important.
12:49Perenbast would have spent all year looking forward to the festival of Opet.
12:55When the Nile flooded, the pharaoh called the whole town to Karnak to worship the gods.
13:02Inside the temple, the priest dressed the statue of the god Amun-Ra,
13:06while Perenbast and her colleagues sang his praises.
13:11The statue was carried out of the temple.
13:14Music filled the air.
13:16And the crowd showered the statue in offerings.
13:21The parade continued for many days.
13:25Finally, the statue was returned to the temple,
13:27with the hope that the floods would come again the following year.
13:34Campbell wants to know how old the mummies were when they died.
13:38This could reveal clues to their social class.
13:43Lydia shows him CT scans of a similar mummy she's been working on.
13:47It suggests women like Perenbast were able to reach a surprisingly old age.
13:54So in her spine here, you can see these little bony spurs.
13:57They're a common indicator of osteoarthritis.
14:00It's just by sheer wear and tear on the skeleton as people get older.
14:03Which indicate that she was probably middle-aged, somewhere between 50 and 60.
14:07An ordinary woman in ancient Egypt would expect to live to 30.
14:13For the Karnak workers to live twice as long, they must have lived a life of pure opulence.
14:19Cut off from the grim reality of life outside the high temple walls.
14:25Campbell believes further clues to the social status of the temple singers could lie hidden inside their wrappings.
14:33Scans of Perenbast remains show strange shapes.
14:37Could they be valuable amulets?
14:40A sure sign of a high-status burial.
14:43We can see there on the CT scan are two shapes.
14:48Campbell wants to know what the shapes are, but the wrappings are too delicate to disturb.
14:54Instead, he asks a colleague to isolate the strange shapes from the CT scans.
15:01Then he uses sophisticated software to create a perfect facsimile of the objects in 3D.
15:07This model reveals details unseen for almost 3,000 years.
15:13But as you can see, it's got a very distinctive hieroglyph on it.
15:18It's the eye of the god Horus.
15:20We know in Egyptian mythology, the eye of Horus was believed to be a strong symbol of protection.
15:26By having this symbol on your mummified body, it protected the deceased.
15:33The discovery of the amulets and the fact that she was mummified
15:37suggests that Perenbast was a highly valued member of the elite Karnak society.
15:44She would have lived a life of luxury and adulation, just like rock stars today.
15:50A life unimaginable to those outside the walls of the temple.
15:59Karnak's enormous halls and labyrinth of chambers created an exclusive workplace
16:04unlike anything the world had seen before.
16:08But how and why did this temple reach such an epic scale?
16:14Could evidence unearthed at this ancient quarry offer clues?
16:30The mighty temple complex at Karnak wasn't just designed with humans in mind.
16:36The Egyptians hoped to create earthly mansions for the gods.
16:40Places the immortals would be happy to relax in when they visited the earth.
16:47But how can you create a house worthy of a passing deity?
16:56Karnak's biggest temple needed an equally large roof
16:59to protect the gods from the beating midday sun.
17:06Enormous beams were needed to span the vast distances between the columns
17:12and support hundreds of solid stone cross struts.
17:19In the central aisle, even larger blocks were used to bridge the gap.
17:24These beams were the key to creating a monumental feat of ancient engineering
17:30that plunged the massive hole into darkness fit for arresting God.
17:39But the royal builders faced an immense challenge.
17:43The local limestone, similar to the rock used to build the pyramids,
17:49would snap under its own weight when balanced between the columns.
17:55The ancient Egyptians needed a much stronger material to build this vast roof.
18:01But where to find it?
18:06Archaeologist Maria Nilsson believes the answer lies 100 miles south along the River Nile
18:12at a remote quarry called Silcilla, famed for its super-tough sandstone.
18:20She's uncovered ancient graffiti here that seems to reference a massive ancient quarrying operation
18:26around the time Karnak was built.
18:29We got these figures. They are the masons.
18:32So they're actually chiseling out the block that comes from the mountain.
18:38Further down, they're controlled by the overseer who's standing here with a whip,
18:42making sure that the work is being done properly.
18:46Maria suspects the discovery of sandstone in this quarry was a turning point for the ancient Egyptians.
18:54For the first time, they were able to build bigger, taller, wider roofed structures,
19:00worthy of the gods they were so eager to please.
19:04We believe that during the New Kingdom, Silcilla was considered so important.
19:09And we have pharaohs who come and they write their names commemorating the events.
19:16The pharaohs couldn't get enough of this new, stronger material.
19:21It allowed them to build ever more elaborate roofed structures.
19:28The deeper they got into the mountain, the stronger the blocks would have been.
19:33And that's what they were all after.
19:37But how did the Egyptian masons get these massive blocks out of the mountain and 100 miles back to Karnak?
19:46Maria's research partner, John Ward, thinks the chance discovery of this cracked abandoned beam offers vital clues.
19:55Here we are in the mother of all quarries at Silcilla.
19:59And we're confronted by this huge lintel, which would have been a roof lintel or some kind of architrave.
20:07But it's load-bearing. You can see the size of it.
20:11John investigates the rock face behind this forgotten giant.
20:15He looks for clues to how the Egyptians worked their prized new stone.
20:20Down in here, he would have had the ancient Egyptian quarryman tip, tip, tip, tip away with his mallet and
20:27his chisel.
20:27And as we can see on the wall, we've got the chisel marks still in situ.
20:31One stroke going down, stop. Another stroke going down, stop.
20:35And another stroke going down, stop.
20:39The ancient Egyptians used bronze tools to carve out the sides of each block.
20:45Then they hammered metal wedges underneath the huge lintels to pry the stones free.
20:52John suspects the quarry workers then moved the beams by hand to river boats bound for Karnak.
21:01The feat of engineering here is just astronomical.
21:05To think that this huge lintel was lifted by man onto a sledge, taken down the man-made ramp to
21:14the awaiting barges on the Nile.
21:17John and his team are digging for evidence that the Egyptians constructed an extensive road network to help the quarrymen
21:25pull the huge roof beams out of the quarry.
21:29We're actually defining the road that you can see coming all the way up to where we're standing now.
21:35And this allowed the quarry blocks to be taken down to Nile and the awaiting rafts to Karnak Temple.
21:41Once the giant beams arrived at Karnak, the construction team faced an even greater challenge.
21:48They needed to raise the beams 70 feet into the air.
21:55First, the Egyptians built the columns layer by layer, placing rough blocks in a checkerboard pattern across the hall.
22:06Then they filled the entire area with dirt, and then dragged another layer of blocks into place for 20 layers.
22:16When all the blocks were positioned, the mammoth roof beams were carefully placed on top of the solid mass of
22:23soil, 70 feet high.
22:27Finally, the dirt was removed, and the pillars were carved smooth to create the largest covered space in ancient Egypt.
22:41Sandstone blocks allowed one pharaoh to construct a hall big enough to be worthy of the gods.
22:49But who was it? Who took the adulation for building the incredible Hypostyle Hall?
22:56Surprisingly, for a site covered in the names of pharaohs, the architect of the Hypostyle Hall is hotly debated.
23:04Is new technology about to reveal an incredible story of stolen identity?
23:22Karnak, the religious and political powerhouse of the ancient Egyptian empire.
23:29Many pharaohs built temples here, marking the stone with their name to proclaim their power.
23:36But not all these boastful marks are quite what they seem.
23:43Egyptologist Erika Felig has spent seven years studying the enormous Hypostyle Hall.
23:49She's looking for clues to the architect of the largest temple on site.
23:54I love the detective story. I love figuring out what happened to this column before it ended up looking like
24:01it does today.
24:02Incredibly, her seemingly simple task of identifying who built this massive temple has uncovered a remarkable story of high politics
24:11and royal vanity.
24:16The Hypostyle Hall is a gallery of ancient artwork.
24:23All 134 columns were once adorned with inscriptions from top to bottom.
24:33Every inch of stone told a story in vivid color.
24:38The markings boast of the godlike status of one man.
24:42A pharaoh whose symbol adorns the columns at every angle.
24:48Plastered all along the main avenue.
24:51Is the mark of Ramses II.
25:00Ramses II is nicknamed the Builder.
25:04This powerful pharaoh reportedly constructed more major buildings and statues in Egypt than any other king.
25:12But although his mark covers the Hypostyle Hall,
25:17Erika suspects that Ramses could be taking credit for the work of one of his predecessors.
25:23Today, she uses new technology to record the carvings and search for clues.
25:29This is a task that previous generations of archaeologists were unable to pull off.
25:35The columns have never been recorded in detail and that's mostly because of their enormous size.
25:41Traditional methods involved using transparent plastic sheets to trace over the figures.
25:50Because of the heat, the light, the gravity, all that plastic sheeting would have sagged.
25:57So we would have had distortions.
26:00Instead of tracing the images, Erika uses photography and special software to reveal the smallest details hidden inside the carvings.
26:11She directs photographer Owen Murray to take the images.
26:15I am photographing these columns, trying to get as high definition and high fidelity an image as possible.
26:23The major challenges that we're facing with these columns are height and consistency of light.
26:30The marks Erika hopes to see are so faint they can only be photographed in very precise shaded lighting.
26:39This gives Owen only a small window to work each day.
26:44We're dealing with the position of the sun as it moves throughout the day and trying to keep consistent with
26:50the quality of photographs.
26:52And that has been one of the bigger challenges up until this point.
26:55We haven't really been able to do that.
26:58Owen takes hundreds of photos of the shaded column with an overhead light.
27:03This technique helps him to capture every detail of the carved stone surface.
27:09Erika then uses advanced 3D modeling to stitch Owen's photographs together.
27:14She then unrolls the curves into a single flat image.
27:19Now she can carefully analyze the stone surface, hunting for the remains of old inscriptions, scrubbed out and re-carved
27:27with the name of Ramses.
27:31There are times when we'll take a photo and it's only after two weeks once we process it or play
27:37with the lighting that we realize,
27:39oh, we actually captured something that looks like a re-carved inscription.
27:44If you look closely, you can see traces of what used to be the outlines of some of the hieroglyphs
27:50that were part of that initial decoration.
27:53Erika believes these faint scratches, hidden beneath the main inscription, are the scrubbed out remains of another pharaoh's mark.
28:03Once Erika identifies the overwritten text, she checks it out in real life.
28:08She uses mirrors to manipulate the daylight to help the faint carved lines stand out.
28:14So the two large ovals you can see contain the names of Ramses II, and behind them you can still
28:22see the outline traces of Seti I.
28:25At key points in the hall, especially along the grandest and most visible central walkway,
28:32Ramses' name overwrites that of his own father, Pharaoh Seti I.
28:40And you can still see the faint traces towards the left side of the Ramses II.
28:49Ramses was desperate to replace his father's name with his own.
28:53But the old pharaoh had made his son's deception almost impossible to pull off.
29:02Ramses' father was an art connoisseur.
29:06His carvings were elaborate, with deep outlines and raised figures.
29:11So when Seti died and Ramses took the throne,
29:14the new pharaoh faced an uphill task to erase the memory of his predecessor.
29:21Ramses erected scaffolding around the pillars.
29:24He chopped the raised images off, but he still couldn't get rid of the deep outlines.
29:29In his haste, he scraped his name on top in simple sunk relief carvings.
29:35Finally, he used a thin layer of plaster to conceal the faint traces of his father,
29:41which the weathering of time has only now revealed.
29:47Ramses proclaimed his power by claiming the Hypostyle Hall for his own.
29:51But surprisingly, this towering structure isn't the tallest monument on site.
29:57That prize goes to the nearby obelisks.
30:00How were these colossal single carvings made?
30:04And how did the Egyptians get them here?
30:22Karnak's giant obelisks are one of the greatest marvels of the ancient world.
30:28These massive single pieces of rock have puzzled archaeologists for years.
30:34That's because they're carved from one of the hardest rocks on Earth.
30:39Granite.
30:41Obelisk.
30:42It's a big mystery in ancient Egypt.
30:44Not for the reason why they just make the obelisk, but the reason for how to cut it.
30:50How did the ancient Egyptians work this toughest of materials with only primitive tools?
30:59Although only two still stand today, at its prime, Karnak boasted 13 colossal obelisks.
31:08Six dominated the center of the temple at the festival hall.
31:13The tallest towered 100 feet high.
31:16And all were made from super-tough granite to stop them from snapping.
31:23The tips were painted with glimmering gold to reflect the sun's rays.
31:31Engravings boast they were carved in just seven months.
31:35But how?
31:42Adel Kalani has spent his career unearthing the secrets of Egyptian stonemasons.
31:50He's convinced that the metal chisels used to build limestone pyramids and sandstone temples would have had little effect on
31:58the tough granite used to build the obelisks.
32:02Today, he examines a half-extracted obelisk, most likely abandoned by the Egyptians when the massive blocks split.
32:12Fortunately for us, it is not finished because it gives us a lot of clues how the Egyptians cut obelisks
32:19from hard stone-like granite.
32:22Adel first examines the surface of the stone for tell-tale marks.
32:27But the dents he finds are hard to interpret.
32:32Next, he looks in the dirt under the stone and uncovers something surprising.
32:37We did found ash and charcoal. This is important for us.
32:43That's a proof that fire shooting operation are the main techniques for splitting hard stones.
32:51The surprise discovery of charcoal suggests that fire may have played some part in the extraction of the giant blocks.
33:01To test the theory, Adel lights a series of fires on top of a nearby outcrop.
33:06He wants to see if heating and then quenching the hard rock makes it easier to work.
33:12We need to try and to test the fire setting operation and how it could help for making the work
33:19extremely fast.
33:21The team keeps a close eye on the temperature while checking for any signs of weakness.
33:30We can hear a cracking sound, which is really quite strong.
33:35And that makes the workmen a bit scared that the stone has actually fallen down while they are on top
33:42of this stone.
33:42So that's actually promising that there are some movement, but we have to wait until the fire comes down.
33:50The team quenches the fire with water.
33:57Wow.
33:59If you come close to see, the stone actually just completely cracking.
34:06This is the result of cooling the fire by water.
34:09And this looks like it destroyed the whole surface.
34:12To test if the fire has made the hard rock easier to work, Adel instructs one team to pound the
34:18heated rock.
34:20For comparison, he gets another to pound on the untreated surface.
34:26Both hammer for nine minutes.
34:29Then Adel examines the results.
34:32If you need to comment the distance of the work in around nine minutes,
34:37it's about five centimeters.
34:40And here, it's a few millimeters.
34:45It's a really big difference.
34:49The heat-treated hole is nearly two inches deep.
34:53Seemingly ten times quicker to work through than the untreated rock.
34:57A stunning result.
35:00It's early days, but Adel believes fire was the key to building Karnak's granite obelisks.
35:06But how did they transport these 450-ton monoliths to Karnak?
35:14Historians believe the Egyptians dug canals deep into the landscape,
35:18so water from the Nile would flow towards the quarries.
35:22The obelisk was suspended over the water.
35:25Then a boat was waved down with tons of stone,
35:29so that when it was emptied, it would pick up the obelisk
35:32and carry it down the Nile to Karnak.
35:37At Karnak, hundreds of construction workers then gradually dug away the earth with great precision
35:43to tilt the giant stone upright.
35:47Lastly, they slotted the base of the obelisk into a groove
35:51and attached ropes to haul it into its final position.
35:59The colossal journey of this 450-ton block was complete.
36:06The great pharaohs ruled over an empire of two million people
36:10beneath the shadow of their massive granite needles.
36:14The Egyptians continued to build temples on this site for a further 1,200 years.
36:21But now, archaeologists are unearthing evidence that the work here came to an abrupt end.
36:27The surprising catalyst was the emergence of a powerful new religion,
36:32one that was set to change the destiny of our planet.
36:47The mighty temple complex at Karnak was one of the busiest construction sites in the ancient world.
36:57For 2,000 years, generation after generation of pharaohs built ever more complex structures at the temple.
37:06Yet 1,700 years ago, the construction stopped suddenly, and Karnak fell to ruin.
37:13Why?
37:17Archaeologist Benjamin Durand is unearthing evidence that the fall was triggered by the rise of a new religion
37:24that was set to change the world.
37:27So we are in the sacred area of the temple of Ptah.
37:31What is very interesting in Ptah temple is we have one of the oldest standing buildings in Karnak,
37:37and we also have the youngest.
37:39So here, we really have all these periods concentrated.
37:44The hieroglyphs reveal how the rule of Karnak changed over its final years.
37:50And the last name on the list seems strangely foreign.
37:55This doorjump and the text written on it is very interesting,
37:58as this is the last text written in the temple.
38:02We have here written the name of the Caesar who asked for the writing of this text.
38:07His name is Tiberius.
38:10Tiberius wasn't an Egyptian.
38:13He was the leader of the mighty Roman Empire.
38:18Karnak had been seized by a foreign power.
38:22Benjamin unearthed evidence that Karnak's new overlords brought the temples crashing down.
38:28Because just 300 years after they arrived, the Romans made a momentous cultural change.
38:35What we see here is part of this pot stand.
38:39We can see this fish that is a typical Christian symbol.
38:471600 years ago, the Roman Empire turned its back on paganism and converted to a new faith.
38:54Christianity.
38:56The fact that here we have a Christian occupation means that as they have only one God,
39:02it was not possible for them to accept that there is a religion with a lot of gods.
39:08Roman leaders ordered the immediate closure of all non-Christian sites across Egypt, including the biggest of them all.
39:16Karnak.
39:18Benjamin's work is slowly revealing what happened next.
39:23We are now discovering houses and all the different kind of structure we can found with this occupation.
39:31He suspects that he's uncovered the entrance to a family home.
39:36So what we are looking for next to the door is this kind of red brick.
39:40So when we have this kind of small details, it helps us to understand that, okay, here we must have
39:45a door.
39:46So that's something good for us.
39:49Benjamin is convinced this whole area was once filled with houses.
40:05The Romans transformed Karnak's deserted temples into a bustling Christian community.
40:12With this evidence, we can say that at this time, the temple on the first side was closed and that
40:18the people living around were Christian.
40:22Karnak's downfall was the final nail in the coffin for the ancient Egyptian civilization.
40:28No more pharaohs were buried in the Valley of the Kings.
40:34The Sphinx was lost to the sands of the desert.
40:38And the great pyramids were swamped by the city.
40:42The religion that built these iconic monuments was no more.
40:46Without it, the art, temples and politics that had defined this civilization for 3,000 years had no reason to
40:55continue.
40:56And the world would never be the same again.
41:02Archaeologists continue piecing together the bizarre inner workings of life at Karnak, Egypt's most mysterious religious complex.
41:11Its walls bear the mark of 30 pharaohs, its myriad buildings a testament to their individual quest for power.
41:19What amazing secrets could still lie buried under the towering columns and giant walls of the largest religious complex in
41:29the ancient world?
41:42To be a touch of amazingutan, Egypt is aroad of a Democrat.
41:43I've found a new concept of colonial colonial currency in the ancient world.
41:43Since 2013 is now a city of agriculture in the ancient world.
41:43The tent is now rotten and localizing.
41:51The reason why I have not found this is the most insecure action.
41:51But the way I had not found a city.
41:51It's a ghost of an enemy.
41:51It's a ghost of a wildnung around the world.
41:53As in its village of a castle at Karnak, Egypt's most typical for a nation of the battle,
41:55it's there is a issues of people who are not involved with those who are not involved in a place.
41:56The power of an enemy of the ship.
41:57This is a lead by a mystery called a game of the ice world.
41:59You
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