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00:02The Pyramid of Khufu, the Egyptian jewel, the only wonder of the ancient world that
00:08remains standing. It is the most famous, largest, tallest, but also the most mysterious of all
00:13pyramids. Its exact meaning, because we lack the text, is not clear. So it's an enigma.
00:22They tried to push the envelope each time.
00:24That it's not just a massive pile of rocks. It has enormous interior spaces.
00:32In order to try and unveil the last secrets of the Pyramid of Khufu, built over 4,500 years ago,
00:38we need to take a trip into its bowels.
00:41What was the real purpose of the Grand Gallery are still mysteries to us.
00:48Benefiting from an exceptional permission, we've been able to enter the backstage area of the
00:53Great Pyramid, which is forbidden to the public, and to find out marks left by the builders.
01:00We can see here the name of a royal team mentioning Khufu.
01:06For the first time ever, every nook and cranny of the monument's interior structure
01:11and the king's chamber will be thoroughly scrutinized.
01:14This roof shows very prominent cracks.
01:19To lift the veil on the mysteries around the construction of the pyramids, our scientists
01:24have been granted permission to enter ancient Egypt's most emblematic pyramid with a new generation
01:29laser scanner.
01:31It's quite tight in here.
01:34I'll try and warm my way through it.
01:38This technology will enable them to get a digital copy of the inside of the edifice with utmost precision.
01:44With a few clicks, we can perform measurements that would be extremely hard to carry out on the ground.
01:50These tools will provide our experts with new clues to further a scientific investigation
01:54that started 200 years ago.
02:26We'll see you next time.
02:36Frank Monnier is a French Egyptologist with a most unusual background.
02:41Fascinated by the Egypt of pharaohs since he was a child, he gave up his job as an engineer
02:45to dedicate all his energy to his passion, the pyramids.
02:514,500 years after they were built, a key question still remains.
02:56How did ancient Egyptians manage to erect the world's greatest pyramid?
03:04With Frank Monnier's assistance, we'll try to unveil the last secrets of the Pyramid of Khufu.
03:12On this sheet of tracing paper, I've drawn a sectional view of the Pyramid of Khufu,
03:16with the pyramid itself as well as its burial chambers on the same plane.
03:21It would be interesting to scan the discharge chamber situated just above the king's chamber.
03:25A laser scan would enable us to drop a comprehensive picture of its state,
03:29as has never been seen before.
03:37Situated on the Giza Plateau, a few kilometers south of Cairo as the crow flies,
03:43the Pyramid of Khufu can't be disassociated from its two little sisters,
03:47the Pyramid of Khafra, King Khufu's son, in the center,
03:51and the smallest one, the Pyramid of Menkare, his grandson.
03:57A strange animal of monumental dimensions, with the body of a lion and a human face,
04:02seems to be guarding Egypt's three wonders.
04:10The Sphinx.
04:16Mark Lennar is a world-renowned American archaeologist,
04:20who first came to Giza Plateau in the 1970s and has never left.
04:26Since then, he's been trying to decipher the impenetrable mysteries of these pyramids.
04:35I think the Giza Plateau represents a pivot for all of humanity,
04:41because Egypt was one of the great stem civilizations in the world.
04:47However, this postcard is but the tip of the iceberg.
04:50We're going to scan the bowels of the Pyramid of Khufu to try and probe its depths.
05:00More enigmatic still, the interior of the Great Pyramid holds numerous secrets.
05:06Most people don't know that above this chamber, immediately above the roof,
05:11there's another chamber, the same floor dimensions, but only about three feet high.
05:18And then there's another, and another, and another.
05:21There's a stack of chambers.
05:25This access, right above the king's chamber, is strictly forbidden.
05:30For over a dozen years, no crew has been allowed to film in this area of the pyramid.
05:37We have been granted an exceptional permission by the Egyptian authorities to carry out our mission.
05:47And to do that, we've invited a French expert who applies innovative technologies to archaeological research.
05:54His name is Alban Brice Pampo.
05:58His task is a perilous enterprise.
06:01Our expert will have to go eight meters up to scan the highest part of the pyramid.
06:06Ventilation here is very bad, and at times, oxygen runs out.
06:13This is quite tight in here.
06:21I won't be able to get through.
06:23I see now.
06:24I want to do this.
06:27What's up there?
06:32I'll try and worm my way through it.
06:45It won't be easy to perform a scan, especially a photogrammetric survey,
06:49because there's no backup space, and there's all the rubble.
06:53But I think we'll be all right with the scanner.
06:54Is that a marchier?
06:59This is one of the smallest LIDARs in the world.
07:01With its laser beam, this new technology takes hundreds of thousands of measurements per second,
07:07with which to model the space we're in.
07:13Alban Brice Pampo will be able to determine the dimensions to the millimeter,
07:17and, for the first time in history, replicate the backstage of the Great Pyramid.
07:25It's not easy at all.
07:27There's rubble everywhere, and the ceiling is quite low.
07:32I can see cracks there.
07:35There were some subsidence on one side, and the ceiling cracked.
07:40It takes a lot of trust to go there.
07:54For our mission, we have also hired Aurore Chiavati.
08:01She's going to enter these discharge chambers for the first time,
08:04a dream come true to this French Egyptologist, based in Cairo.
08:13Here we are.
08:16Voilà , this is it.
08:18We're in Davison's chamber, discovered in 1765.
08:31Very few experts have had the opportunity to get into this unique place.
08:36Aurore Chiavati has thoroughly prepared for this mission
08:39to guide us as best she can in the pyramid backstage.
08:43But we're stopped in our tracks by granite beams.
08:49In here, the ceiling height is between 80 centimeters and one meter.
09:03Here we are in the main chamber of this edifice,
09:05which was destined to host the king's remains.
09:10The king's chamber is definitely an architectural feat.
09:13It's roofed by huge granite beams
09:17that weigh somewhere between 40 and 80 tons.
09:20But it's not just one roof.
09:22He put a series of five more roofs above it,
09:27almost like an accordion.
09:30There's one, two, three, four,
09:33and then the fifth one is roofed by gigantic limestone beams, chevrons.
09:42If we add up the weight of the granite beams stacked up above the king's chamber
09:46and the discharged chamber, we're talking thousands of tons of granite.
09:51Over four millennia after the pyramids were built,
09:53experts still haven't reached a consensus on the question on everyone's lips.
09:58What were these discharged chambers for?
10:01There are today many opposing theories.
10:03There's a symbolic approach,
10:05according to which this structure was built to fulfill a symbolic purpose,
10:09which is, by the way, quite mysterious.
10:14The other theories are more materialistic, so to speak.
10:17They claim those discharged chambers were the result of a structural need,
10:21which was to protect the king's chamber.
10:26The question is, why?
10:29Why did they go to such trouble?
10:33They decided to heighten the chevron vault
10:35so that it wouldn't deflect the load onto the Grand Gallery,
10:39which is situated nearby.
10:41A lower chevron vault would have simply distributed the forces,
10:44which would probably have caused the Grand Gallery nearby to collapse.
10:51One idea is that they're over-engineering.
10:53They didn't need to do that much.
10:55But, of course, they were afraid that putting a chamber
10:58so high in the body of the pyramid
11:00that the pyramid, which is meant to protect the body of the king forever,
11:05would collapse and destroy the body of the king.
11:12After years studying the discharged chambers of the Pyramid of Khufu on plans,
11:16Frank Monnier meets Aurore Chebati in Cairo.
11:21The hundreds of millions of data recorded over the past several weeks by the LiDAR
11:25have enabled them to build a 3D model of the interior spaces of the pyramid.
11:30By applying the LiDAR photogrammetry technique,
11:33we can also take a virtual walk inside the pyramid as if we were really there.
11:38This is the general photogrammetry record made by Alban.
11:43We can clearly see the tunnels we walked through to get to the discharge chambers.
11:48Here's the 8-metre ascent to reach the first tunnel.
11:51And then we had to go up the shafts, which are much more chaotic, as we can see here.
11:56Yeah, we can see them very well.
11:58They were made through explosive blasts by Colonel Weiss's teams.
12:07In the 19th century, Howard Weiss and John Perring, two British explorers,
12:12were the first people to enter the discharge chambers.
12:18We can see all five chambers,
12:20which were named after influential figures from the time of Weiss.
12:26Aroo Chiavati decided to take us to the last discharge chamber,
12:31the highest one in the pyramid, which is almost inaccessible.
12:42But you don't want to suffer from vertigo.
12:49It's really amazing.
12:55This is a special chamber, in that it tells two stories,
13:00that of the workers who built this pyramid,
13:02as well as the story of the visitors who entered these empty spaces
13:06between 1837 and the 1920s.
13:14Do these modern graffiti covering the entire chamber
13:18hide the marks left by the builders?
13:20What do they tell us?
13:23The visitors made those graffiti with the smoke from their torches,
13:28which enabled them to inscribe their names and dates of visit,
13:32or even their identities or status and where they were from.
13:46Among those graffiti, we find inscriptions by the members of Weiss's expeditions,
13:51and by Weiss's guests,
13:53as well as a huge number of soldiers' names.
14:02There is, for instance, the inscription of a soldier from Sydney, dated 1915,
14:07and then there are those that mark a more specific event,
14:10such as Sister Martin's statement claiming she was the first woman to enter the discharge chambers.
14:21Egypt then decided to bar the access to the discharge chambers in order to protect its walls.
14:27And in fact, it's in another such chamber that Aurore Chiavati makes an exceptional discovery,
14:33marks left by the builders of the Pyramid of Khufu.
14:37At the end of the granite beam just in front of us,
14:40we can see a mark in the shape of an upside-down triangle and hieroglyphs,
14:44indicating meh-four, which means four cubits.
14:50So this is a very precise measurement.
14:54Ancient Egyptians had their own language
14:56and their own system of measurement, which was called cubit.
15:01Ancient Egypt's system of measurement wasn't based on the meter.
15:04The meter was invented much later.
15:06It was essentially based on the cubit.
15:08The cubit didn't have one uniform value across the country.
15:11Each region had its own standard measure.
15:13A cubit could be 5.25 centimeters in length in a particular place
15:17and 52.3 centimeters elsewhere.
15:21The cubit, used as a standard measure to build the masterpiece of Khufu, was unique.
15:26It's called the royal cubit,
15:28and it's only visible in this discharge chamber.
15:34What's fantastic about this is that,
15:37with the scan Alban is doing at the moment,
15:39we'll be able to match the extremely precise measurements
15:43obtained through photogrammetry
15:44and the measurements that date back to the construction.
15:48We'll then be able to establish the precise length of the royal cubit
15:52that was truly used in the pyramid construction.
15:58That royal cubit was fundamental, as it allowed architects to design the monument,
16:05and workers to build the pyramid that nears perfection.
16:18Khufu's pyramid is an extraordinary thing.
16:22Near the beginning of the pyramid tradition, yet it's the largest, it's the most perfectly constructed,
16:29and it's among the best preserved.
16:32Until very recently, it was the most massive, freestanding monument ever built by human beings.
16:41The first time I saw it, I thought it was, you know, a natural mountain,
16:45but then your brain is telling you, actually, no, it's man-made.
16:56To pull off these monumental construction projects, ancient Egyptians must have been very audacious.
17:02They loved challenges.
17:04The bigger the challenge, the more willing they were to roll up their sleeves and take it on.
17:15Not machines, no electricity, no extraordinary lifting devices.
17:21We see incredible architecture with precision that is mind-blowing.
17:35As soon as Khufu acceded to the throne, a century of pyramid building experimentation began.
17:41It was a sort of race toward ever more monumental buildings which reached its pinnacle under Khufu.
17:47So it's an incredible and very precise monument, but its exact meaning, because we lack the text, is not clear.
17:56So it's an enigma.
17:57An enigma.
17:59The Great Pyramid, which rises majestically before us, still holds a plethora of secrets.
18:06But the one thing that's even more enigmatic than the edifice itself is its commissioner, King Khufu.
18:15Who was that man who decided to challenge eternity
18:18by ordering the construction of the biggest tomb in the history of humankind?
18:24It is perhaps ironic that we know very little about the builder of the greatest monument, perhaps, from ancient Egypt.
18:32The only statue with his name that is incontrovertible is this big.
18:36It probably was not made at the time that Khufu reigned, but it is quite an interesting thing that we
18:42do not have more from the time of Khufu.
18:47Seven centimeters tall, such is the size of the only statue of King Khufu that has survived until today.
18:55There is very little known about Khufu from the point of view of original sources.
18:59We know his father was Sneferu, the first king of the fourth dynasty, and two of his sons, Jedifrei and
19:07Khufrei, all both became kings after him.
19:17According to Greek historians, he was not a nice person and not a great king.
19:23Folk tales start regarding him as some kind of tyrant.
19:28The stories told to the Greek traveler Herodotus talk about him closing temples and compelling people to work to build
19:36his pyramid.
19:43Khufu must have been a powerful, wealthy ruler with a very well-organized bureaucracy because he has the largest pyramid.
19:55An idea that he must have been some kind of megalomaniac to actually build such a thing.
20:08This isn't Frank Monnier's first field trip here.
20:15Our Egyptologist wants to challenge generally accepted ideas about the number of blocks that make up this architectural masterpiece.
20:26We don't know how many blocks there are exactly, because they're all different.
20:31And as they all have different volumes, we can only make an estimate.
20:35The figure often quoted as two and a half million blocks, which is already fantastic.
20:39That's probably not very far from the actual figure, which may be in the region of two or three million.
20:44That's six million tons altogether.
20:48With its almost perfect square base of 230 meters on each side and a height of 138 meters, today the
20:56pyramid of Khufu breaks all records.
20:59We can see the stone blocks at the base of the Great Pyramid are huge.
21:03We're talking several cubic meters.
21:07I wouldn't be able to make an estimate right now, but I'd say between five and ten tons, something in
21:11that region.
21:18Each one of these blocks is unique, with a density that would be equivalent to the weight of three to
21:24six cars.
21:27And they were laid here at a time when ancient Egyptians didn't even know the wheel.
21:35These blocks give away the secret of their origin for those who know how to read them carefully.
21:45On this block we can see interesting details.
21:48We can tell where its limestone comes from, as we can clearly see all the shells and fossils that make
21:54it.
21:55You see there are shells and little urchins.
21:57This is called pneumolytic limestone, and this fossil shell limestone can be found all around the plateau.
22:07Giza.
22:08It wasn't by chance that the kings of ancient Egypt chose this particular spot.
22:13Its rocky plateau, the ideal place to build what was to become the emblem of Egypt.
22:20So this means this block didn't come from very far.
22:24It can't have been transported by river.
22:26It can't have been hauled over kilometers.
22:28It probably came from the surroundings over there.
22:32Or perhaps from a bit farther away, but a few hundred meters away at the very most.
22:51For the first time in his career, American Egyptologist Stephen Harvey has had the opportunity to find himself alone in
22:59front of the Egyptian Colossus, which is usually surrounded by tourists.
23:04It's completely extraordinary to be alone in front of one of the wonders of the ancient world, Khufu's pyramid.
23:14Surprisingly enough, what rises before us, and what the whole world has in mind when we talk about pyramids, isn't
23:21at all representative of what the Egyptians actually built.
23:25If we think back to the time of Khufu, we wouldn't be standing in front of a building, a pyramid
23:30that looks in this way.
23:32It would have looked perfect.
23:34It would have been finely cased.
23:36And that white limestone, the casing would have been polished to a degree where it would have looked bright and
23:42white, shining.
23:44You wouldn't have seen any entrances because, of course, these entrances were kept secret.
23:52Most of the pyramids are made of limestone, and they are also covered by fine white limestone, most of the
23:59time now gone.
24:01On the top of the pyramid, there would have been a pyramidion covered with gold and electron.
24:07The pyramid of Khufu no longer has its original facing, and it now shows a bit more of itself.
24:14In the 19th, 10th, 11th and 12th centuries AD, the Egyptians, the Arabs of that time, decided to remove that
24:22facing and to use the cladding of the pyramids to build the mansions, edifices and palaces of the capital.
24:41Such use of the outer cladding revealed what had once covered the entrance to the pyramid, the vault situated 17
24:48meters from the ground.
24:50This original entrance had a gabled roof, and this kind of rafter vault or gable roof is formed from massive
24:58stones, which are angled to deflect the weight of the pyramid.
25:07That chevron vault has almost completely disappeared because it was taken apart by quarriers in the Middle Ages, but there
25:13are still a few blocks left.
25:15Those remaining blocks weigh around five to seven tons each.
25:20But why did the Egyptians build such a vault?
25:25No one knows the answer to that question.
25:28Frank Monnier is the first Egyptologist to come up with a plausible explanation.
25:33There are several possible explanations, two of which stand out.
25:37The first one is a structural explanation.
25:39A vault, from a structural point of view, is supposed to protect a space like a corridor from the load
25:45on it.
25:49Then, there's the symbolic explanation.
25:51That vault could, by its shape, symbolize the double-leaf door, the stable door that opens into the firmament, in
25:58other words, onto the sky and the afterlife.
26:03A sky vault.
26:05This explanation is backed up by the raison d'etre of a pyramid, to enable the pharaoh to reach the
26:11sky and become a star for all eternity.
26:21For many centuries now, the Egyptian jewel has attracted tourists from all over the world.
26:27The entrance to the edifice is now situated lower.
26:30This opening dates back to the time when Baghdad was the capital of the caliphate.
26:34According to legends, it's possible that the Caliph al-Mamun, in the ninth century AD, pierced into the pyramid.
26:44And one of the holes that we see today is likely caused by that.
26:48There are even stories from a thousand and one knights about Caliph Mamun and this kind of breaking in for
26:56treasure.
27:02We've asked this specialist to analyze our 3D plans.
27:06What I'm looking at here on the computer is a plan of the interior of Khufu's pyramid.
27:11And it really is a nice cut through that shows the descending passageways and then the three main chambers.
27:21And you really see on the plan how big that is, how high, what kind of height they achieve.
27:29The burial chambers of the pyramid of Khufu are very unusual in the sense that such structures can't be found
27:36anywhere else.
27:37Why? Simply because there are several chambers which are situated either below ground level or just above it.
27:44And considerably above it, it's an unprecedented and unequaled development.
27:51Seen from outside, the structure of the pyramid of Khufu looks fairly simple.
27:56However, such apparent simplicity is in contrast with its exceptionally complex interior.
28:03Mark Lenner is going to guide us inside this gigantic maze.
28:07Khufu's pyramid, you have options of entrances.
28:13And right in the bedrock, deep in the bedrock, is a chamber which is unfinished.
28:22It would appear that this chamber was abandoned before completion.
28:27What happened in the head of King Khufu?
28:29He comes along and says, no, I don't think so. I don't like it.
28:33Let's go higher in the pyramid.
28:34So then the idea is that they build the ascending passage and the horizontal passage to the Queen's Chamber.
28:45The Queen's Chamber is nearly finished.
28:50There was a little bit of polishing left to do on the floor.
28:54In fact, the so-called Queen's Chamber very likely never contained the Queen's remains.
28:59That's just a designation coined in the Middle Ages by the locals who, while taking Western visitors on guided tours
29:06of the pyramid,
29:07told them a story to explain the Queen had been laid to rest there.
29:11It was all made up.
29:16And then the idea is that Khufu comes along and says, you know what?
29:19I don't like this either. Let's go up higher.
29:25This interior arrangement is puzzling.
29:28Three burial chambers built to receive only one corpse.
29:33What explains all that? Changes in design? That would make sense.
29:41According to experts, the construction of the seventh wonder of the ancient world lasted between 20 and 25 years,
29:47which is the period during which Khufu ruled over Upper and Middle Egypt.
29:54The designs were made in the very first year of his reign.
29:58They reflected his desire, at a particular moment, to have several burial chambers.
30:03However, along the decades, those desires changed, as is the case with any architectural project.
30:19It takes quite an ascent to reach King Khufu's burial chamber.
30:26The apartment is perched 40 meters above the ground.
30:32Here, we're in the heart of the pyramid.
30:34This is the king's chamber.
30:39This is the whole reason for the Great Pyramid.
30:46All of this is for the king to live forever in the afterlife, by his mummy being secure in this
30:53chamber.
30:56And in the sarcophagus, Khufu's mummy was laid to rest.
31:03Nobody knows today what happened to Khufu's mummy.
31:08The sarcophagus was probably robbed before the Middle Ages, still in antiquity.
31:13What impresses me the most is its simplicity.
31:17It's not like the New Kingdom monuments, full of hieroglyphs.
31:21The succeeding pharaohs, such as Pepe II or Tutankhamun, decided to have richly decorated interiors as their resting places.
31:30In contrast, Khufu's chamber is strikingly simple.
31:34It's just raw, polished granite.
31:38Granite, a red stone with black sparkles and shimmering reflections, is one of the particularities of the Great Pyramid.
31:48The Egyptians here used granite for the interior constructions of some parts of the pyramid, in particular the burial chamber.
31:58So it was brought from hundreds of kilometres away in the south to Giza, which is an incredible achievement.
32:06The granite blocks came all the way from Aswan, so they would have been quarried there under very hard circumstances,
32:14and then floated down river when there was the flood, so that it would be easier to get the blocks
32:19down and faster.
32:25Unlike limestone, granite has an essential quality.
32:30Because it's a very hard stone, it's also supposed to guard the king's body from thieves.
32:36So a lot of the passages leading to the burial chamber, the burial chamber itself, as well as portcullises, are
32:43all made out of granite.
32:47Once more in ancient Egypt, the work accomplished nears perfection.
32:53Some of these granite blocks are put together with only a millimetre between them.
33:00Some of the joints are even less.
33:05Because of its height and composition, the king's chamber was an unprecedented challenge.
33:11The highest degree of complexity was reached under Khufu.
33:15The Egyptians of that time didn't have any experience yet, so they had no idea what they would be confronted
33:20with.
33:22The Egyptians took risks, and now we know that they faced the worst.
33:34As at a crime scene, Mark Lenner carries out an autopsy of the king's chamber for us.
33:40This roof shows very prominent cracks, especially up there in the southeast corner.
33:50There's evidence that this cracking happened during construction.
34:00It happened after they had already roofed the chamber, obviously.
34:08Let's try to imagine the situation. There are workers both inside and outside. That must have produced some serious racket.
34:19Dozens, hundreds of tons in granite beams have cracked and are about to collapse.
34:24That must have been extremely scary.
34:28Our current mission has enabled Frank Monnier to analyze the situation 4,500 years later.
34:34It's marvelous, truly marvelous. With this, we'll be able to describe what happened.
34:41There are cracks practically everywhere. This scan will really allow us to acquire more knowledge about this monument.
34:48And to provide an accurate explanation of the cracks in the king's chamber.
34:53The pyramid is nearly finished. The Egyptians have very good reasons to believe the structure above the king's chamber has
35:00collapsed.
35:03Let's put ourselves in the shoes of the technicians, who must have inspected the monument after that incident.
35:10They must have been very cold-blooded, because before informing the pharaoh, supposing that's necessary,
35:15they have to make sure they know what's going on and what may happen next.
35:20The Egyptians had only one option, to dig a tunnel in haste.
35:28So I'll take the measurements.
35:34I've got six or seven meters. We're talking about six or seven meters.
35:39So they had to dig a passage six or seven meters in length.
35:46We must remember that when they started digging that passageway, they were still concerned about knowing what had happened and
35:54what could still happen.
35:55They had to act urgently. They must have dug very, very fast to take stock of the damage and then
36:01to assess what could happen next.
36:04It's easy to imagine how relieved King Khufu's teams were when they saw that the first discharge chamber remained intact.
36:16Another enigma left on the King's chamber walls has never been solved until our mission.
36:23The evidence of cedar uprights are the big black stains that you see on the bottom of most of the
36:31ceiling beams.
36:35What caused those black stains on the beams?
36:39Two opposing theories exist. And up until our mission, the debate had not yet been settled.
36:48The first one is, those stains were caused by the wooden structures that were used to transport those granite beams.
36:53Basically for a long time, probably several weeks or even months, all the way from Aswan de Giza, those beams
37:01which had been laid on slays or perhaps slipways may have undergone some sort of rubbing which caused the resin
37:06of the wood transport devices to leave imprints on the beams.
37:17The second possible explanation would be, reinforcement wooden props were put up after they noticed fractures on the beams, that
37:27is, after the accident that took place in the King's chamber.
37:35There's an easy way to solve that problem and determine the origin of those stains on the ceiling.
37:41If all the beams of the discharge chambers bear those imprints, we'll have confirmation that those marks were made during
37:48transport.
37:49On the other hand, if we only find in the King's chamber, we'll be able to demonstrate that they're specific
37:55to that chamber, which means that they were the result of some later intervention.
38:09The answer is above the King's chamber, where we went once again to improve our scans.
38:25Egyptologist Aurore Chiavati, on one end, and Albon Brice Pampo, a digital archaeology expert on the other end, will do
38:33all they can to confirm or invalidate Frank Meunier's demonstration.
38:43We should bear in mind that this scanning mission has enabled us, for the first time ever, now in the
38:4821st century, to answer a major question.
38:51This teamwork has enabled our experts to lift the veil on part of the history of the pyramid.
38:57We can clearly see that none of these beams in this chamber have any stains.
39:02This image, like many others recorded during this mission, show us with absolute certainty that there are no stains in
39:09the discharge chambers.
39:11So they are indeed marks left by reinforcement props that were put up in the King's chamber after the accident.
39:22Our mission in the discharge chambers will allow us to reveal other construction techniques.
39:32And thanks to Aurore Chiavati's step-by-step investigation in each one of those chambers, we'll find clues about how
39:39this masterpiece was built.
39:44Unfortunately, the beams here are particularly covered in debris, limestone and sand, which stops us from making out any construction
39:51lines that may be painted on them.
39:57She has to climb all the way up to the penultimate chamber to find this new clue.
40:16I feel really immensely lucky to be able to enter this space, Lady Arbuthnot's chamber.
40:24This is a very moving moment.
40:32What we see here is very interesting.
40:36There are different measurement indications and marks or construction lines.
40:40It's a compelling sight. New builders' marks have just been discovered.
40:44This construction line is an indication that enables builders to align the pieces during construction.
40:55You can see the construction lines painted on the granite beams.
41:03With this unprecedented photogrammetric view, our two French Egyptologists can, for the first time, fully appreciate the skill of the
41:11work accomplished 45 centuries ago.
41:16And in the centre of the beam, you can see that famous vertical line which perfectly matches the alignment of
41:21the tip of the vault that we see on each floor.
41:25So, this line must have been painted after the beam was laid.
41:29Very probably. To make sure the monument rose in the right axis.
41:34So that each floor was at the same level with no misalignment.
41:37Exactly.
41:42Their main difficulty was to build a structure that was perfectly straight vertically, with no misalignment between the chambers.
41:51So, here we do see that those lines were painted on the beams in the centre of a discharge chamber
41:56to determine the position of the discharge chamber above.
42:02And so they all fit perfectly, one on top of the other.
42:04They all fit perfectly.
42:13In these chambers, Aurod Giavati has been able to discover something even more exceptional, left by the king's builders.
42:23Here we are at last. It's amazing.
42:25We're on the west side of the chamber, and the first thing we see is the name of Khufu, engraved
42:32right here.
42:42We can see here the name of a royal team of builders, or gang, with a mention of the name
42:47of King Khufu himself.
42:51This inscription is back to front. It wasn't made to be read. It was meant to be useful at some
42:57point. That's why we see it completely reversed.
43:01To experts, these inscriptions take on a completely new dimension.
43:07What I wanted was to be able to see those builders' marks.
43:14Those marks were purely functional. They were not at all ornamental.
43:18They're not hieroglyphs properly drawn or engraved on the stone.
43:23They're signs hurriedly made with a brush in red ink.
43:27Their purpose was to indicate the gang that was working on a particular block.
43:33The mysteries concealed in these discharge chambers were unveiled for the first time in the 19th century.
43:41Explorer John Perring recorded his findings in a book.
43:48It's a very old book, in quite a bad state, unfortunately.
43:54Its title is The Pyramids of Giza, and it's one of the first publications, along with those by Colonel Weiss,
44:00which report their expedition and the discovery of the discharge chambers.
44:08Here's an example of the first records of marks made by the builders who took part in the construction of
44:14the discharge chambers.
44:17Here, for instance, we can see a gang name that mentions the name of King Khufu.
44:24Nearly two centuries after the first explorers, Orochiavati finds the same marks superbly preserved.
44:34It's amazing to be in front of these marks made by builders over 4,500 years ago, if not longer.
44:43This is the cartouche of King Khufu himself, which qualifies the gang that worked here and left their name on
44:50this wall eight times.
44:58These discharge chambers also contain key information to understanding how the construction work was organized.
45:06Among those marks, we see many times the names of the gangs that contributed to the construction of this monument.
45:14We observe at least three distinct gangs.
45:18The pure ones of Khufu.
45:20Then there's the friends of Khufu gang.
45:24And there's a third gang with a more complex name.
45:27They were the followers of Khufu, also named the white crown of Khufu is powerful.
45:36Those gang names give us the impression that there was some sort of competition at play on the construction site,
45:41which, when you come to think of it, sounds absolutely logical, because they had to break records.
45:46Everyone had to be 300% motivated if the monument was to be finished by the end of the reign.
45:56Each gang was entrusted with a particular task.
45:59One of them would build the north walls, and another one the south walls.
46:04And there was a gang dedicated to the construction of the chevron vault of Campbell's chamber.
46:10Those testimonies by anonymous workers, which have crossed the centuries to reach us, also tell the story of a collective
46:17human adventure.
46:21It's possible that while working on such a construction project, those workers and technicians considered that it was also a
46:29monument for themselves in a way.
46:32They were leaving a part of themselves in it, and so they would also have access to eternity at the
46:36same time as the pharaoh.
46:44The craftsmen who contributed to the construction of the king's tomb had to use their intelligence to create a key
46:50room of this architectural masterpiece, the antechamber that leads to the sarcophagus.
46:59The pharaoh's body, you need to protect it, because the Egyptians believed that the mummy was a lodestone, like an
47:07anchor for the spirit, for the vital force of the king.
47:13The entire Egyptian civilization was based on one belief, life after death.
47:20And everybody associated with him, all the members of his court, the villages, everybody in Egypt, will be secure in
47:28that world, in that city of the afterlife.
47:32But if the king's mummy is violated, the connection between this world and that world is broken.
47:40The most important thing was therefore to protect the king's remains.
47:44The Egyptians had to apply all their ingenuity and more to the accomplishment of that task.
47:52This is like a gigantic primitive machine.
47:56It is truly a lock that locked the door on the king's chamber.
48:03It was the first line of defense against robbers.
48:10There's a ledge up above to receive wooden logs, massive wooden logs.
48:18We have channels, semicircular for ropes.
48:23And here, they carved bars into the granite wall.
48:30They formed slots for big granite slabs, portcullis slabs, that would boom, slide down.
48:40Boom, slide down.
48:43Controlled by the ropes wrapped around the giant logs.
48:48This portcullis system wasn't the only defense in the pyramid.
48:52Another part of outsized dimensions in the history of ancient Egypt also played a key role.
49:00The grand gallery, in its interior arrangement, feels, when you're inside of it, almost like a cathedral-like space.
49:07It's huge.
49:09And what I always think of is this great achievement of the Egyptian architects of creating interior space in a
49:17massive mountain of stone.
49:19It's truly extraordinary.
49:22Forty meters in length and nearly nine meters in height, this was the largest architectural space built until the Middle
49:28Ages.
49:29We're at the bottom of the grand gallery.
49:31It's one of the marvels of the ancient world.
49:37It's a great hall, more than eight meters tall.
49:40It's angled up at 26 degrees and it's vaulted by corbelling.
49:45They brought each course of stone in a few centimeters and the next one a little bit further until at
49:54the top.
49:55What was the purpose of the grand gallery?
49:58Once again, not even the leading experts have been able to determine that.
50:02So you still wonder, why the grand gallery?
50:06Maybe it was a parking garage for the plugging blocks.
50:09This space may have been used as a storage facility until the final construction phase was reached, which would complete
50:15the pyramid.
50:16After they had lowered the portcullis slabs in the antechamber, locking the door to the king's chamber, the workers came
50:25down all the way to the bottom of the grand gallery.
50:29They let loose the brake logs and boom, boom, boom, boom, the plugging blocks slid down into the ascending passage.
50:40One question is left. How did the workers get out after the grand gallery was definitively blocked?
50:47Once those stones were put in, nobody could escape.
50:51And of course, there's these fantasies that, you know, workers died inside and starved to death.
50:57But in fact, they created an escape route down to one of the lower chambers.
51:02And in doing this, they enabled the workers, perhaps once the pharaoh had been buried, to escape and come out
51:08through the entrance hall.
51:12Perhaps this space, with its exceptional vault, also had a symbolic role.
51:18What was the real purpose of the grand gallery are still mysteries to us.
51:23I think it reflects things they were feeling and thinking about the unity of the king as a divine being
51:30with the sky itself.
51:37One thing is certain. With his burial procession, the king passed through this majestic gallery to arrive at his final
51:44resting place.
51:51Khufu set out on his long journey to the afterlife, leaving in the world of the living a heritage without
51:57comparison.
52:03The End
52:04The end
52:05The end
52:06You
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