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Ramses II was the greatest pharaoh of ancient Egypt; he reigned for more than six decades and built a myriad of monuments throughout the country, each more imposing than the last. But the real jewel of this builder pharaoh was his mythical capital: Pi-Ramses. Rediscovered at the end of the 20th century in the Nile Delta, after three millennia of oblivion, this city has been excavated every year by archaeologists and reveals new secrets. In 2022, for the first time, a team of archaeologists led by Professor Henning Franzmeier undertook excavations in the very palace of Ramses II.
Director: Laurent Portes
Director: Laurent Portes
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00:01Nowadays, nothing remains of Ramses II's mythical capital, Pyramsi.
00:06It is only through ancient descriptions that we are able to imagine this vast and teeming city.
00:12Built in the 13th century BCE, it took barely 15 years to construct.
00:17By then, tens of thousands of Egyptians lived in a labyrinth of shops and valleys.
00:21Then, less than two centuries after the death of Ramses, the city was completely dismantled stone by stone and used
00:28to build another city.
00:30Tannis, another capital for another dynasty.
00:36Since the end of the 1980s, teams of archaeologists have followed one another to Kantir, where Pyramsi once stood.
00:46Today, Professor Henning Franzmeier from Germany leads the excavations.
00:52He is looking for something that the ancient Egyptians left behind when they dismantled the city.
00:58Something ubiquitous, and not considered valuable at the time.
01:02Mud bricks.
01:03These seemingly insignificant bricks are an essential source of knowledge for archaeologists.
01:08So here, one can really see beautifully this mud brick.
01:15And in between the mud bricks, you have a sandy material, and you always have little fragments of lime or
01:24limestone in the mud bricks.
01:27There are a certain number of sites, for certain epochs, where we could simply build on earth.
01:32And even for the temples in pierre, there were a certain part of these temples in pierre who were also
01:37built in briques.
01:38The walls surrounding these sanctuaries were almost exclusively built in briques.
01:49Technically, it's easy.
02:05These seemingly insignificant bricks are an essential source of knowledge for archaeologists.
02:12Essential, but difficult to identify.
02:16In other areas in Egypt, it's something different.
02:19You have sand, and you immediately see mud bricks.
02:22But here, in the Nile mud, where the bricks are basically made out of the same material,
02:28just maybe with a bit of sand added, straw added, it's extremely difficult to recognize them.
02:38Fortunately, the team can rely on the experience of the local Kuftis, who can be recognized by their traditional dress.
02:47They all come from the same village, Kuft, in the south of the country.
02:54It was one of the first things when I got this position, my predecessor, Edgar Pusch, said.
03:00If they say there's a mud brick, there's a mud brick.
03:03If they say there is no mud brick, there is no mud brick.
03:06No matter what I say or what any other of the Europeans says.
03:14For more than a century, generation to generation, the people of Kuft have been involved in all the excavation campaigns
03:22carried out in Egypt.
03:24A tradition providing them with unparalleled institutional knowledge.
03:31For more than a century, the people of Kuft have been involved in Egypt and in Egypt and in Egypt
03:44and in Egypt and in Egypt and in Egypt and in Egypt and in Egypt and in Egypt.
04:07They have the knowledge, they have the feeling for different types of soil. They really feel it, they can hear
04:17the difference.
04:19So they really know it and I'm simply, I know that I'm not, and I will never be as good
04:25as them in recognizing mud bricks.
04:29Day by day, thanks to the watchful eyes of the Kuftis and the detailed work done by the archaeologists, the
04:36contours of Ramesses the Great's lost palace are gradually being revealed.
04:43So this is a type of mud brick that we don't know so far from any other building in Kantia.
04:48And it's really interesting because it's this really huge mud bricks of a size of 45 or even 50 by
04:5925 centimeters.
05:00And that is much bigger than what we normally have.
05:06These large bricks are very rare in Pyramsy, but common in Tannis.
05:13François Leclerc keeps a plaster molding of one of these bricks in his Parisian office.
05:22And here we go.
05:29And here we go.
05:3046 by 26.
05:32By 11.
05:35There's not very much between the bricks.
05:40So we put the bricks side by side, and then we put a layer of dirt.
05:45This is for the most massive monuments, for example.
05:54A huge monument bordered by a very thick wall.
06:00The presence of these bricks confirms Henning's initial intuition.
06:04The walls of the palace must have been enormous.
06:08So you need at the bottom, in the foundation, mud bricks that are more stable, more resistant than mud bricks
06:15for a normal building.
06:17So this might be an explanation for these really extraordinary mud bricks.
06:27Thanks to this discovery, Mathieu Goetz, the team architect, can now begin a virtual reconstruction of the palace interior.
06:37From the photogrammetry and photogrammetry, we can confirm what we see in the magnatography.
06:43From that, I can trace a few lines.
06:46I can create a 3D palace.
06:49I started to place the columns in the palace.
06:52However, at the beginning, I put all the columns in the same size.
06:56It's surely not like that.
06:57You need to look in detail the dimensions of the foundation,
07:00to know if these columns in this room were perhaps a little smaller than the throne room.
07:05So there are still details to see.
07:073D modelling is another tool that has become indispensable to archaeological research.
07:13On a simple desktop computer, archaeologists can reconstruct lost buildings to better understand them and bring their ideas and questions
07:22to life.
07:22Where were the doors located? How did people move between the different rooms?
07:27In fact, a palace, it's like a temple.
07:29In fact, it's a ritual ritual, a protocol, like Versailles, with all the rules.
07:35And these rules change a little bit from year to year, from year to year, but not as fast as
07:41that.
07:41So we can still think that all these rooms have a logic that we try to keep from one palace
07:46to the other.
07:47For example, towards the throne room, it's always in the axis of the rooms.
07:51That's the logic.
07:52However, after these small rooms next to the four columns,
07:55I'm not sure if it's really where we entered these rooms.
08:00Fortunately, several palaces from the 19th dynasty, the period of Ramses II, have been better preserved than Pai-Ramses,
08:08and their ruins have been carefully studied by generations of archaeologists.
08:14By comparing them with the plan of Kantir's palace, Mathieu can move ahead with his reconstruction work.
08:22It helps a lot to understand the lines in the plan that I see to know what it was.
08:29Here, we also see the walls that there was at Medinet at the end.
08:32We also see what there was at Kantir because of the thickness of the walls.
08:39The Habu palace which Mathieu mentioned belonged to Ramses III, who came to the throne three decades after the death
08:46of Ramses II.
08:48But there is another palace that seems to be even more similar in size and design to the one at
08:53Kantir.
08:55It is the palace built in Memphis by the pharaoh Meremta, the son and successor of Ramses II.
09:03To access the palace, one first passed through an entrance hall supported by four columns, followed by a long open
09:11-air courtyard,
09:13and then a second entrance hall, supported this time by twelve columns.
09:20Behind this was the throne room.
09:26Like the throne room in Meremta's palace, Ramses II's throne room was supported by six monumental columns.
09:34Since its proportions were similar, we can imagine that the throne was also on a pedestal, leaning against the back
09:41wall.
09:45From the other direction, there were two halls with sixteen columns each, which visitors had to cross to reach the
09:53pharaoh.
09:54Beyond them, as in Memphis, a long courtyard.
09:58Then, at the far end of the courtyard, the other entrance to the palace.
10:06The entire structure seems designed to impress visitors, to overwhelm them with the sheer power of the pharaoh.
10:14Perhaps this palace was the backdrop for Ramses II's diplomacy.
10:20Perhaps this is where he even received the Hittite emissaries, who came to negotiate with him.
10:28By 1275 BCE, Ramses had been in power for nearly five years, and had firmly established his authority over the
10:36kingdom.
10:37He felt emboldened to confront Muatali II, the powerful Hittite ruler.
10:45We have a couple of battles in the timeframe of Ramses II, but the most important one was very early,
10:53in his year five and six, this was the Battle of Kaddish.
10:56Because this was really a very strong fight for the influence in this area.
11:03In the spring, Ramses left his capital to lead an army of 25,000 men and 2,000 chariots northward.
11:12In early May, the Egyptian army was camped next to the city of Kaddash, in the south of present-day
11:19Syria.
11:21It was there that the Hittite troops decided to strike.
11:26Ramses was nearly captured.
11:30There are many, many representations in temples, for example, showing this battle, and also a lot of texts.
11:37And I think it was, for Ramses II, the moment of danger.
11:42And if you even see the representations of this battle, then you can see in the back of the king
11:48suddenly you have enemies.
11:50This is something which never before and never later was represented in ancient Egyptian temple areas.
11:59And of course, it also showed that his father, the god Amun, was protecting him and at the end was
12:06helping him to be the winner in this battle.
12:10With this battle, Ramses would forge his legendary identity.
12:16Recounted on the walls of Egypt's greatest temples, sung in epic poems, it would cement his status as a warrior
12:24pharaoh, a protector and a conqueror for 3,000 years.
12:30His arms are strong, his heart is valiant, and he has led his soldiers into unknown regions.
12:37He has driven back the whole world gathered together.
12:40No one knows what multitudes were before him, but hundreds of thousands fainted at the sight of him.
12:48It was not really that Ramses was a big winner of this.
12:52And if you read the Hightal text, and if you read the Egyptian text, they are quite different.
12:58And what we can say at the end, that they really found a compromise, but at home each one of
13:04them was saying, I'm the winner, of course.
13:08The Battle of Kadesh was significant for another reason.
13:12Its name was invoked in the written peace treaty, ultimately signed by the two empires, the oldest known treaty between
13:19two states.
13:21And incredibly, we now have both versions of this text.
13:25The Hittite version engraved on a clay tablet, and the Egyptian version in hieroglyphs.
13:32In it, the Hittite king and Ramses declare that they are brothers forever.
13:36In fact, the treaty inaugurated a period of peace that would last for several decades, well beyond the reign of
13:42Ramses.
13:43It's a wonder to have after this war, after all this anger, after all this fight for the influence in
13:50the Near East,
13:52a solution which was a little bit untypically for ancient Egypt and for the Hittite.
13:58For world history, it's one of the most important steps forward, that between two opponents which had been in war,
14:07there is such a peace treaty in a written form.
14:13After the Battle of Kadesh, it was nearly twenty years before the treaty was signed.
14:19Twenty years of intense diplomatic negotiations, some traces of which have been discovered in Kantir.
14:26And then we should maybe, ah yeah, 2801, we should have a look at the cuneiform tablet.
14:34That for sure would be 2801, 2801.
14:42Okay.
14:47It's always surprising how small it actually is.
14:50There is a little bit of debate about the text, but it seems really to be a royal letter.
14:55And we have the counterparts in the Hittite capital, Hattusha, where we have hundreds of such cuneiform clay tablets with
15:03a kind of diplomatic exchange between the two countries.
15:07And we know that we had in Kantir a kind of foreign office, an office for the exchange with foreign
15:13countries.
15:14And after the peace treaty with the Hittites of Ramses II, we have an almost private exchange between the royal
15:22houses and even the queens are corresponding with each other.
15:29And it's quite clear that there must have been thousands of them, but unfortunately, so far not found.
15:46Without royal letters engraved on clay tablets, archaeologists need to make do with bits of pottery that are found within
15:54the palace.
15:55Fragments that reveal another facet of life in the city of Pyramsi.
16:04The pieces are also together.
16:16This is a fragment of a canonite jar, which is the most typical transport vessel in the whole Eastern Mediterranean
16:24in the Late Bronze Age.
16:25And they were all made in the very same shape.
16:28And here in the Eastern Mediterranean, where you find these containers, you would have traded faience beads, glass, resin, wine,
16:36commodities such as this, or also copper from Cyprus.
16:40Actually, this is a kind of phenomenon that one could call a kind of first globalization, a kind of globalization
16:48in the Eastern Mediterranean, but also far beyond the Eastern Mediterranean.
16:56Pyramsi, the royal city, was clearly a commercial center for the ancients.
17:02Here all sorts of goods were exchanged, coming from all over the known world, as evidenced by this small piece
17:09of pottery, recently discovered by the Kuftis.
17:13This is already the second piece we find in this area.
17:16So it's Mycenaean pottery, which means it's from Greece.
17:21It's Greek pottery.
17:24Here in Kantia, we found in the 40 years we work here, about 350 of these shirts, which makes it
17:33one of the largest corpora of this pottery from all over Egypt.
17:39Which in a way makes sense, we are here definitely in a diplomatic center, and we are in the major
17:45trading hub with all Eastern Mediterranean.
17:52Here representatives from different nations gathered.
17:56The city streets must have echoed with all kinds of languages, and myriad exotic deities were likely worshipped under the
18:03gaze of the Egyptians.
18:12In this cosmopolitan megalopolis, foreigners from Greece, Africa, and the Middle East had the right to live.
18:30Archaeological findings even suggest that some of them integrated into Egyptian societies so well, that they became prosperous and respected.
18:50This theory is demonstrated by the artifact contained in this box.
18:54An artifact discovered by chance by a farmer near the excavation site.
19:05This is part of a doorpost from a house, from a villa, because big villas, big houses, had doorposts with
19:14the names and the titles of the owners of the house.
19:18This is the name of the town of Sidon, which is nowadays in Lebanon.
19:23And here, the name of the person, Yapach, and then there will be Baalu.
19:30So it's a name from the Levant, from this region.
19:33But he had a house here, in Kantia.
19:36And so we know that this person, this foreigner, really lived here.
19:43Amazingly, another fragment from this carved door had already been discovered in Kantia years before.
19:52A unique piece, preserved in Hildesheim.
19:59First of all, the person's name you could find here, and he is called Ipu Baal.
20:06But what is even more interesting is that the picture shows him with a dress, and in particular a kind
20:14of headdress,
20:15which is unusual for ancient Egyptians at the time of Ramses II.
20:19So what we assume is that this Ipu Baal was somehow being ambassador or so in Kantia for the Levant,
20:27or some people who were doing business with the regions of the Levant,
20:33so that he could afford such an estate.
20:36As you could see here in the center of the lintel, we have the name of Ramses II,
20:42which then established a link of the house owner to the king himself.
20:51This lintel suggests that Pai Ramsey was home to a community of traders,
20:56foreign merchants who came to settle in the royal city,
21:00and who supplied the Egyptians with goods imported from all over the known world,
21:07and who, in likelihood, also exported the products of Egyptian craftsmen abroad.
21:16Josephine Barsaghi is an archeological student, and the team's designer.
21:22These small objects that she is working on are an example of the craftsmanship found in Pai Ramsey,
21:29moulds for making jewellery.
21:32I draw it in double size, so in the end it's easier to see, because the object is very small.
21:41There was a mass production here in Kantia in Pai Ramsey of these kind of objects,
21:46and of these so-called moulds, we found more than 1,500 in the course of our excavation,
21:54with all different kinds of motives, and you can see here on the drawings that Josephine did,
22:00other little objects like a rosette, or here a so-called jet pillar,
22:07so it's often small kind of amulets, beads. It's jewellery, in fact, mostly.
22:15Then you have this lightening, which is here between us.
22:19Yes.
22:20It doesn't turn directly from the ear.
22:22Yes, yes, you can see that.
22:25It looks really great.
22:34Ramses II probably chose Kantia as the site to build his capital,
22:39because it blocked the Hittite's access to Egypt from the northeast.
22:45And it is thanks to this unusual location,
22:48that Pai Ramsey was able to become a vital hub for commerce and diplomacy in the Mediterranean world.
22:58But this success would not have been possible without another asset.
23:02An asset that all the cities of ancient Egypt enjoyed.
23:06The Nile.
23:11The Nile is the longest river in the world.
23:14Nearly 6,500 kilometers carved into this ancient landscape.
23:20North of Cairo, it widens into a delta splitting into several branches before reaching the Mediterranean.
23:28Here, the ground is extremely flat, and the river's course becomes erratic and changeable.
23:37Over the centuries, it has moved repeatedly, at times by several kilometers.
23:48Irene Forster-Müller is the head of the Austrian archaeological mission in Egypt.
23:53For several years, she has been conducting excavations on the site of Avaris,
23:59three kilometers southwest of Kantia, a site once soaked by the waters of the Nile.
24:06This is the Pelusic Nile branch, which was in antiquities a huge Nile branch, the eastern Nile branch.
24:12And this connected the splendid city of Pyramese with the Nile Valley, with Memphis.
24:18Now, of course, it's very small, but in antiquities it was more than 200 meters wide, going from here to
24:25the edge of Avaris.
24:27This is the western edge, and the eastern edge is until 200 or 300 meters to the east.
24:36So this was really huge.
24:40This other bank, which Irene points out, is the one where Pyramese stood.
24:51At ground level, it is impossible to find the ancient course of the Nile.
24:55This is an agricultural region, and the constant working of the land has obscured its history.
25:06But minute traces of the river's meanderings may still be here.
25:11And it may be possible to locate them, from the air, thanks to a photogrammetric drone.
25:20To do this, Frank Stremke has called on a team of Egyptian drone pilots who are familiar with this method.
25:30They begin by setting up a relay antenna, synchronized with some 30 satellites.
25:36It makes it possible to geolocate every photo taken by the drone to the nearest square centimeter.
25:47We're going to be flying the area around 3 square kilometers, at altitude of 440 meters.
25:52That should give us, with the lens that we have right now, the 35 millimeter lens,
25:57it should give us around 5.5 centimeter per pixel ground sampling distance.
26:04The archaeologists' goal is to map the entire area once occupied by Pyramese.
26:11An area of a little more than 3 kilometers by 3 kilometers.
26:18To cover it, they will need more than a thousand high-resolution photos.
26:33The team does not have the computer resources to process this huge amount of data on site.
26:42So, it will be assembled in Bremen, Germany.
26:50That's where we catch up with Frank Stremke, a few weeks later.
26:57So, this is the still images that were taken with the drone.
27:01Overall, we took three flights with the drone.
27:04And it took about a week of computing power to process the models to a usable stay.
27:12The result is an enormous map that covers nearly the entire ancient city of Pyramese.
27:22This was of most interest to us, to see how the terrain rises and falls,
27:27to look for the old bed of the river,
27:30and just better understand site formation processes
27:33and how the terrain was shaped and how it is shaped now.
27:38To do this, Frank applies a color filter to the image.
27:42The lighter the color, the higher the elevation.
27:48So, you can just draw a line across the model
27:51and then let the software gather all the elevation information along this line.
27:56And then I can see basically a profile or a section along this line here.
28:06It runs from here.
28:08So, we have the channel here.
28:11And then the village starts.
28:13It gets a bit noisy.
28:14It still remains from buildings.
28:16And then we have this drop-off here on the edge of the fields.
28:20Then we have plain fields.
28:23And then we have the old river branch here.
28:28So, outside of this model, basically here there must have been a Nile branch.
28:32And there was an Nile branch here.
28:35And Pyramese was built probably on an island with additional channels going in.
28:39That's presumed.
28:40And then neighboring sites on the east bank of the river, basically.
28:48The photogrammetry carried out by Frank Stremke
28:51confirms what the magnetic surveys already led the archaeologists to believe.
28:57that the city of Pyramese was indeed built between two tributaries of the river, on an island.
29:09And when the river was at its highest,
29:12ships arriving from the Mediterranean could access the city directly.
29:18In other words, Pyramese, now 60 km from the coast, was probably a seaport.
29:34Pyramese was a strategic position, a royal residence.
29:40But it was also a port, both fluvial and maritime.
29:45In Egypt, we couldn't build any ports on the coast.
29:49Because we had lakes.
29:50We had lakes.
29:51We had lakes.
29:51We had lakes.
29:52We had lakes.
29:53We had lakes.
29:54We had to build all the time.
29:55We had to build all the time.
29:55So, we had to have portuaries.
29:59But they could only be in the back country.
30:01And in addition, it would allow us to protect them more easily,
30:04in the case of the outside incursions, for example.
30:08When Ramses II chose this location for his capital,
30:12access to the sea must have been a determining factor.
30:15However, excavations conducted 3 km south of Pyramese
30:19have revealed that a port already existed there at the time.
30:23The one built 800 years earlier for the city of Avarice.
30:27And here's the connection.
30:29These excavations also revealed that Pyramese extended well beyond its central island.
30:34The city came as far as here.
30:35Its suburbs covered the ruins of the ancient city of Avarice.
30:39The port of Avarice, therefore, was also the port of Pyramese.
30:44The archaeologist Irene Forster Müller is in charge of this site today.
30:52What we can say is, it's clearly a harbor.
30:55It was used from the time of the late Middle Kingdom until the Ramessite period.
31:02The port was located here, on what was then the eastern bank of the Nile, south of Pyramese.
31:10A location confirmed by numerous drillings carried out by Austrian teams over the last 50 years.
31:17This is a deep water harbor, but this is a basin which had a geological formation already.
31:23And of course they cleaned it, etc.
31:25Besides that, we can also say this is the main harbor.
31:29But a huge town like that, and this was one of the largest towns, they had several small harbors and
31:37mooring places.
31:38So you can expect harbors here or, let's say, mooring places, small plots here, posts here, where people land and
31:45just have access to the different town quarters.
31:49All around the port, magnetometry reveals the presence of huge warehouses.
31:56Behind them, what looks like administrative buildings, and dwellings stretching eastwards, well beyond the banks of the river.
32:09In this period, the sea was much nearer than nowadays, so around 20 kilometers to the north, you already had
32:17the beginning of the coast.
32:19And then you had the ships coming from there, and several channels.
32:24So the landscape, as you have now, is not the landscape in ancient times.
32:30So one of the main tasks of archaeologists, as we are, is to reconstruct this ancient landscape.
32:37So you have to imagine the town before, where several islands and hills and valleys, and the people circled with
32:44the boats around.
32:56It is not yet known how far the capital of Ramses II extended, nor how many inhabitants lived there.
33:05But it is obvious that this vibrant, bustling, and colorful city attracted people and wealth like a magnet.
33:17Today, the river flows several kilometers away from Cantir until El Daba.
33:25But the water carried by the Nile from the heart of Africa is still nearby, saturating the earth just two
33:32meters below the surface.
33:35And that level rises regularly.
33:44For several days all around the construction site, farmers have been digging irrigation canals to flood their fields and sow
33:51rice.
33:54It's an exhausting job, and they do it by hand.
34:00This is also how their ancestors worked, 3,000 years ago during the reign of Ramses.
34:11For archaeologists, these irrigation works are a persistent threat.
34:30With the start of the irrigation in the fields, the water was rising by at least half a meter, and
34:37so now we try to pump out the water to be able to finish the excavation in the other squares
34:43without getting the water all over the ground.
34:48Under the water, you can't go deep, of course, and you can't see anything, and you can't make drawings, you
34:53can't take photographs.
35:00A race against time has begun between the archaeologists and the rising water threatening weeks' worth of excavation work.
35:08In the foundation shafts of the columns, the water is already eroding the walls, which threaten to collapse.
35:16The idea is that if we pump the water into the foundation walls, we can also remove the water from
35:22the other structures.
35:26But it's amazing to see how quickly it will be filled.
35:35Caught by surprise, all the archaeologists can do is watch the catastrophe unfold.
35:41One of the walls of the throne room, eroded by water, begins to collapse.
35:48But luck smiles upon them.
35:51In the cavity left by the walls collapse, Henning makes an unexpected discovery.
35:58This piece of a vessel, it is a rim, so it should be something that we could probably date quite
36:04well.
36:05Because it's a diagnostic piece of maybe a kind of amphora, we have to see when we get it out.
36:12And also, to see what kind of stone this is, it definitely has a worked surface, not a decorated one.
36:21This stone could be an important architectural feature.
36:26Perhaps it is even engraved on its other side.
36:30Sometimes you really get dirty when doing archaeology.
36:35Intrigued, Henning decides to have the cavity widen.
36:47This is a long and delicate process.
36:50At this stage, it is impossible to tell how big the artifact is.
36:55And it is important to keep rigorously documenting every step, every detail discovered during the excavation.
37:06Days pass, and the end of the excavation campaign is approaching.
37:11But nothing can be done.
37:13The stone is large and stubbornly remains stuck in the ground.
37:19It's almost impossible to understand what is really going on here.
37:23So this is really just to get a little bit of an idea what we have there in order to
37:29go on next year.
37:32But at least it shows that there is a lot down there.
37:39Henning and his team started their excavation campaign nearly six weeks ago.
37:43They only have a few days left before they must leave the site and return to Europe.
37:52It's time again to indulge in a tradition they've established here in Kantean.
37:57Every year, Henning invites the whole team to a traditional Egyptian meal at the dig house.
38:03Thank you very much.
38:06Thank you very much.
38:07Thank you very much.
38:11Thank you very much.
38:16This year's results are far from insignificant.
38:20The team was able to confirm the presence of a Pharaonic Palace at this location,
38:24and to further their ideas about its original design.
38:28They have collected thousands of pottery fragments, which will be analyzed over several months,
38:33and promised to provide much more information about Pai Ramsey.
38:40For the campaign to be a complete success, all they need now is a beautiful artifact.
38:48The ultimate reward for their many weeks of hard work.
38:53And as is often the case on archeological sites, the reward eventually does come.
38:58But at the last moment, 48 hours before departure, while digging around the large immovable stone, the Kuftis suddenly come
39:08across something.
39:10No, this is an absolutely exceptional piece. I have not seen something exactly like that before.
39:19Ceramic fragments, representing a human face, on which blue pigments can still be seen.
39:25So we definitely also have the rim. This is a piece of the rim, and I guess it's the same
39:29vessel.
39:30So we might have preserved the whole top of the vessel.
39:34It's a piece of obviously a very big vase of this blue painted pottery, which is typical for the 18th
39:43and 19th dynasty in Egypt.
39:45And most likely it shows the face of the god Bes.
39:51In Egyptian mythology, Bes is a protective and familial god.
39:56The only one represented with a grimacing face, supposedly to ward off demons.
40:06There is a couple of them existing, but this quality is absolutely outstanding, and I don't recall any other piece
40:14like that in any museum.
40:16And I also think it's the finest piece of pottery found here in 42 years of excavation at Cantier.
40:26But there are still more surprises in store for the team.
40:30Dozens of fragments are carefully removed by the Kuftis.
40:38With these fragments, it should be possible to reconstitute the entire vase.
40:44An object nearly one meter high.
40:47Only very significant people could have owned a piece like this.
40:57This kind of pottery is something that you would surely relate to temples, the elite living quarters, palaces or tombs
41:07of the elite.
41:08So just this shows something, and it's definitely something that you would probably expect in a palace.
41:20We are in a place where we definitely have to go on excavating next year.
41:27We have so many excavations in necropolis, in tombs in the last 200 years, which of course had something to
41:35do that they are not in areas where people are living today.
41:38But I think it's important that more and more we are looking really to areas where people were living.
41:46We want to know about the history and the battles, but we also want to know something about the people
41:51who were involved.
41:57Sometimes ancient Egyptian culture looks a little bit different than 3000 years always the same.
42:03I think this is absolutely not the truth, and particularly excavating in cities is here important.
42:11After four decades of excavations, the city of Pai Ramsey is slowly taking shape once again, virtually reconstructed thanks to
42:21the efforts of archaeologists.
42:26And the emerging image is nothing like the usual cliches of ancient Egypt.
42:34This was a surprisingly modern megalopolis, complete with residential districts, administrative areas, industrial production, and intense commercial activity.
42:51And towering above it all, garrisons, temples, and palaces, symbols of Ramsey the Great's power.
43:09It will take many more decades to uncover all the treasures of Pai Ramsey.
43:15But this year, the excavation campaign is coming to an end.
43:20Before returning to Europe, Henning Frenzmeier and his team are covering all their excavations with earth.
43:28Soon these areas will be used again for agriculture.
43:31The rice and wheat continuing to protect the secrets of the buried city until next year.
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