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00:02In all, more than a hundred pyramids were built in the Egypt of the pharaohs.
00:06One of these is a truly unusual edifice, maybe the most mysterious pyramid in the entire country, the Black Pyramid.
00:14Under this amorphous ruin, which looks like it could collapse at any moment, hides a wonderful secret, an immense labyrinth
00:22as inaccessible as it's fascinating.
00:24There's a whole complex of rooms way beyond the simple means of disposing of a dead body.
00:31This is not something you find in other pyramids.
00:35The pyramid is off limits to the public. Weakened by serious structural problems, it could be dangerous for visitors.
00:43But a few daring archaeologists have risked venturing inside all the same, with our cameras given special permission to accompany
00:49them.
00:50Look at the crack in this chamber. It still looks like it could collapse at any moment.
00:56Even for experts, this little-known pyramid remains a real puzzle.
01:01Together, we'll try to find some clues to help us decipher this millennia-old edifice.
01:06My God, there's still bones in there.
01:09To shed light on all these mysteries, our scientists were granted permission to venture inside Egypt's most iconic pyramids with
01:16a latest generation laser scanner.
01:18It's quite tight in here.
01:20What happened during its construction for this monument to have ended up in such a state?
01:25What did this dilapidated pyramid originally look like?
01:28And why did the ancient Egyptians build such an extensive network of passageways, now seen for the first time?
01:35Using 3D models, we will show you everything invisible to the naked eye.
01:40With a few clicks, we can do measurements that would be very complicated to carry out in situ.
01:45This ultra-detailed digital modeling should provide our experts with new answers in this ongoing scientific investigation which began 200
01:52years ago.
01:55Covid-1950 mini.
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02:29Deep in the sands of Egypt is an exceptional sight, little known by the public.
02:34The Dasher Plateau. It's around 30 km from Cairo. This is where the first two giant pyramids
02:46of history were built, the Red Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid. But in the distance, behind
02:54these two giants, you can make out a strangely shaped steep hill. This in fact is also a pyramid,
03:00one of the last built by the pharaohs about 3800 years ago. Villagers living around here
03:08gave it its somewhat disturbing name, the Black Pyramid.
03:11It doesn't look very much like a pyramid at all. Although it's called the Black Pyramid,
03:16it just looks like a black, rugged hill with a kind of tower sticking out of the top.
03:22At first sight, there's nothing to suggest that under this dilapidated construction, there's
03:27an extensive maze of passageways, probably the most sophisticated network ever built under
03:33an Egyptian pyramid.
03:40Frank Meunier has been fascinated by the pyramids of Egypt since childhood. An engineer by profession,
03:47he's studied the construction of these monuments in great detail, in the process becoming one
03:52of the world's leading authorities. Fascinated by the Black Pyramid, he can draw a plan of
03:59its apartments almost from memory.
04:04Here I've sketched a view from above of the Black Pyramid at Tashur, a view from above the
04:09base of the pyramid with its funeral apartments. Here we have the whole extent of the funeral
04:14network. There's nothing like the complexity of these funeral apartments anywhere else. So what
04:19would be really interesting to scan would be, in priority, the part dedicated to the queens
04:24and the part dedicated to the king to get a clear review of everything that went on inside
04:29these apartments. Scanning the innards of this pyramid could well be the way to better
04:36understand this mysterious edifice. Because there is still little known about its interior.
04:42The construction is off-limits to the public and is rarely visited even by Egyptologists.
04:47For this unprecedented mission, Frank Meunier has called on archaeologist Albonbris Bampou.
04:54An expert in digital imaging, he'll be able to make a complete three-dimensional and extremely
04:59detailed model of these apartments.
05:05It's a pyramid that's not yet been opened up to the public. I'll be discovering it myself and I have
05:09no idea what the conditions will be in terms of the humidity and heat.
05:13I feel privileged to be allowed into this monument because very few people have been here. And that's pretty exciting.
05:21Entering the Black Pyramid is a rare opportunity. And whenever anyone does, the entrance has to be totally cleared because,
05:31just like in the time of the Faroes, it is sealed off with blocks of stone to protect it and
05:35keep out intruders.
05:40Albonbris is going to be using a very high-performance piece of technology, a LiDAR digital scanner, one of the
05:46most miniaturized that exists.
05:49It weighs only 800 grams. But the insides of pyramids are usually very tight spaces in which it's difficult to
05:57move around, so it could still be a difficult task.
06:00Here I'm configuring it so that the scanner and my phone are communicating. That means I'll be able to get
06:05some feedback of what the scanner is seeing.
06:12We were exceptionally granted authorization to accompany Albonbris on this groundbreaking mission.
06:22It is the first time a piece of modern technology will be used inside this pyramid.
06:30The LiDAR scanner makes a noise as it starts digitizing the space.
06:37After a few meters, Albonbris checks that the device is working correctly.
06:44Here we can see this little green dot. That's where the scanner is. And it scanned this wall here. This
06:49one. So yes, it's all in position.
06:55The laser scanner can record hundreds of thousands of points every second, in every direction.
07:02It can thus measure a space with absolute precision to the millimeter, a totally unparalleled feat of technology.
07:13It's a real labyrinth once you're in here. The idea is to get a precise scan of all these structures,
07:18with which we'll be able to document in a very detailed way the general dimensions of the spaces I'm surveying.
07:26On a map given to him by Frank Monnier, Albonbris identifies the various spaces to be digitized as a priority.
07:34So we came down the sloping tunnel and through a first passageway,
07:38the first corridor, which was reinforced by some more modern masonry.
07:42Now we're coming to a fork and we'll head towards the area that was dedicated to the king.
07:51But time is limited. The conditions are stifling, with the air inside the pyramid barely circulating or being refreshed.
08:00You cannot stay for long in this subterranean domain.
08:04The humidity is very high and pretty oppressive. Yes, it's quite tiring.
08:12On his way down the tunnels, Albonbris scans several empty rooms.
08:24We've made progress and we've got the rough outline of a plan.
08:28I've looked into all the little rooms on either side of the central corridor,
08:31and now we're about to go into the antechamber and then the king's chamber.
08:38The king's burial chamber, the spiritual heart of the pyramid.
08:44Albonbris marvels at the pharaoh's sarcophagus,
08:48carved out of a single piece of pink granite from Aswan, one of the most solid rocks found in Egypt.
08:54Despite it being almost 4,000 years old, its state of conservation is impressive.
09:02In contrast, the dilapidated state of much of the walls is quite surprising.
09:10Scanning gives us an overall view of the condition of all these structures.
09:14All the traces you see on the vaulted ceiling, on the masonry joints, you can see how it's crumbling.
09:19There are even cracks. It's clear that there's enormous pressure bearing down structurally on the vaulted ceiling.
09:26The pyramid clearly had a few construction issues.
09:31The results of the scan should help us find out more.
09:35But the pharaoh's builders must have made mistakes in the very design of the structure
09:39for the pyramid to show such signs of dilapidation now.
09:44To get a better understanding, we have to consider the period in which it was built, the Middle Kingdom.
09:52It was Pharaoh Amenemhat III who had this strange pyramid built almost 4,000 years ago.
09:59He reigned in around 1800 BCE and is considered the most powerful pharaoh
10:04in one of the most prestigious lineages of ancient Egypt, the 12th dynasty.
10:09The 12th dynasty of ancient Egypt is part of a period that Egyptologists called the Middle Kingdom, a kind of
10:18classical age.
10:19Amenemhat III was the last great king of the 12th dynasty.
10:23He ruled for 46 years and he inherited a prosperous country that was administratively functioning very well.
10:32And he was in an ideal position to do innovative architectures and to develop and expand a building program.
10:41Before the Middle Kingdom, Egypt had been through a period of instability and division,
10:46lasting several centuries, during which no pyramids were built.
10:51But during the 12th dynasty, unity in the country was restored
10:55and the pharaohs wanted to reconnect with the architectural prestige of their glorious ancestors.
11:01There is a centralized state, there is one strong pharaoh
11:05and the building of pyramids comes back into fashion
11:09on the same level of importance, perhaps, as it had been in the Old Kingdom.
11:15The country's most famous pyramids, those on the Giza Plateau,
11:19were built in the period we call the Old Kingdom,
11:21almost 800 years before the reign of Amenemhat III.
11:26These kings of the 12th dynasty considered themselves the direct heirs of the kings of the Old Kingdom,
11:32thus predicating their legitimacy on the architectural and historic legacy.
11:36They copied to some extent the monuments of the kings of the Old Kingdom.
11:42It is hard to believe now, but when it was finished,
11:45the Black Pyramid looked like a classic pyramid of the Old Kingdom,
11:48the pyramid of Khufu, for example.
11:56Could it still be possible to find traces of the Black Pyramid's past splendor?
12:02What secrets are concealed under this shapeless hill?
12:06On the outside today, the Black Pyramid doesn't look very exciting,
12:11but inside there's a whole complex of rooms
12:15way beyond the simple needs of disposing of a dead body.
12:20After a few weeks of digital analysis, the results of the scan are finally ready.
12:26The Egyptologist, Mark Lenner, was impatient to see them.
12:29It's the first time he's ever seen the internal network of the pyramid with such a level of precision.
12:36Laser scanning captures every detail of the reality.
12:40It almost looks like the real thing, like you're in there.
12:45You can pan in, you can pan out, and you can twirl it.
12:51Above all, this tool lets the archaeologists save precious time.
12:56To map something complicated like this would take weeks, months.
13:01You go through with a laser scan, and it takes tens of thousands of points per second.
13:05Every point is the equivalent of an archaeologist bending down, stretching a tape measure,
13:11and then drawing it on tracing paper or on a drawing board.
13:18Mark is an authority on the pyramids of Giza, and therefore used to the fairly minimalist interiors of the pyramids
13:24of the Old Kingdom.
13:26The first thing to strike him about this 3D model is the huge extent of the underground network.
13:33It's a complicated internal structure.
13:36In fact, it's considered to be the most elaborate underground structure of any pyramid,
13:42with the most chambers and passageways.
13:46Thousands of kilometers away, in Paris,
13:49Frank Monnier is able, thanks to the LIDAR scanner,
13:52to evaluate the unusual dimensions of the passageways.
13:55The operation only takes a few clicks, and gives a result of the utmost precision.
14:00Using this tool, I can measure the expanse of the apartments that are under the pyramid.
14:06Here we have the view from above, and we can carry out a few measurements
14:11to give us an idea of the dimensions of this network.
14:14For example, for this first corridor here, we already have a length of 42 meters.
14:20Let's measure the corridor of the king's apartments.
14:23From the two ends, going from one room to the other, over 46 meters.
14:28So you can see that if we add up all the data, we end up with over 400 meters of
14:33passageways.
14:34That really is a lot, and in all about 20 or so rooms.
14:40All the other kings buried themselves in a pyramid with one, maybe two ascending passages, and a few chambers.
14:48In the Black Pyramid, there are tens and tens of rooms, and corridors connecting all of these rooms.
14:54This is not something you find in other pyramids.
14:59But what was the point of this huge underground labyrinth?
15:03Our investigation with the LiDAR scanner may help us understand it somewhat better.
15:08In any case, the sophistication of this network is in sharp contrast to the dilapidated state of the outside of
15:14the structure.
15:15For each time you look at it, the same question comes to mind.
15:18How did this pyramid end up looking like this?
15:25The Egyptologist, Meredith Brand, has come looking for answers in situ.
15:31She's discovering the site for the first time and immediately spots some initial clues.
15:39When I walk up to it, I don't even see a pyramid at first.
15:42From the distance, it almost looks like a mountain or some kind of natural geological feature.
15:46Like a giant thing of sand almost.
15:48But up close, it's clear that's not the case at all.
15:52It's really solid mud brick.
15:55And each of those mud bricks, I can see the individual ones all throughout the slope on the top.
16:03This strange hill is in fact a mountain of carefully stacked bricks in the middle of the desert.
16:10All the same size, the bricks were made of a mixture of sand and clay extracted from Nile mud reinforced
16:17with pieces of straw.
16:21At the summit, part of this brickwork is still in place.
16:25But on the lower slopes, it's all just pieces.
16:30Wow.
16:32There's so many mud bricks that have fallen from this pyramid all the way down the slope.
16:38So what looks like sand is actually dirt and debris of broken down mud brick.
16:44These bricks are still in a rectangular shape.
16:46And we can still see there's remains of some of the dried out straw that was used inside of them
16:52to make them strong.
16:53And there's even some finger impressions from ancient builders.
16:58These mud bricks are proof of just how talented the Egyptian architects and builders were.
17:04They knew what they were doing.
17:05They were able to make mud bricks like this that would last for thousands and thousands of years.
17:12The use of these clay bricks was in fact an innovation in pyramid construction.
17:20The pyramids of the Old Kingdom were made entirely of stone and everlasting material,
17:25but which required considerable means to mine, transport and assemble.
17:33Several centuries later then, the pharaoh's architects opted for more modern methods.
17:39In the Middle Kingdom, kings started to think about the economy, how they build structures,
17:44and they decided that it's too much of an ordeal to make an entire pyramid out of stone.
17:50So instead, they had the genius idea of having the center be made out of mud brick.
17:54It was cheaper. This was an intelligent, money-saving endeavor.
17:58The advantage of mud bricks was that they could be made anywhere in Egypt.
18:02They could produce the bricks and then transport them by boat to the work site.
18:06So the use of mud bricks rather than stone was more to do with logistics than technique.
18:14Millions of mud bricks were methodically laid by the pharaoh's workers to construct the core of his pyramid.
18:22It's estimated that 20 million bricks were required to make the whole pyramid complex.
18:28But the ancient Egyptians still wanted their monument to look like a proper pyramid.
18:35Once the brick core was finished, the whole structure was totally covered with a facing made of a unique stone,
18:42limestone from Tura.
18:46This stone is so pure and white that it can be considered a sort of Egyptian marble.
18:52Originally, all Egyptian pyramids were covered in it.
18:57Thanks to these ingenious construction techniques, the Egyptians were able to construct an absolute giant here.
19:04In fact, the Black Pyramid had a base that measured 105 meters by 105 meters and was 75 meters high.
19:12It was the largest pyramid of its era.
19:1675 meters. That's equivalent to a 25-story building.
19:21Amenemhat III's pyramid became the sixth largest pyramid ever built in Egypt, out of the hundred or so in total.
19:32The only trouble was, the pharaoh and his builders had made a big mistake.
19:37They had underestimated the destructive actions of stone thieves.
19:43These blocks have been looted to reuse the stones or heavy blocks in other building projects to make use of
19:52their power and the history behind these blocks because these stones had a cultic and religious backdrop.
19:59The limestone was stripped away, it was all stripped away, and reused elsewhere, which left the internal structure, the brickwork
20:06structure, naked.
20:07And over the millennia, with rain and wind erosion, the bricks got turned into rubble.
20:14But just like the stone, the bricks too were objects of desire.
20:19Another fact that contributed to the destruction of the pyramid was that people took bricks from the structure to use
20:26as a natural fertilizer on their fields, leaving the pyramid in its present dilapidated state.
20:35Mark Lenner tries to imagine what the pyramid looked like almost 4,000 years ago.
20:43At the foot of the edifice, there's a strange cluster of white rocks.
20:49Did these blocks somehow miraculously escape the stone thieves?
20:56This is amazing.
20:58We can actually see here one of the casing stones.
21:02And it could even be a cornerstone.
21:06This is really nice and smooth, brilliantly white.
21:12This whole galaxy of casing stones that we see here, once covered the entire pyramid, just like Sneferu, 800 years
21:21earlier, covered the entirety of his bent pyramid with the same fine quality white Tura limestone.
21:30The bent pyramid, barely a kilometer and a half distant, is the only one in Egypt to have retained most
21:36of its casing of Tura limestone.
21:40While the ravages of the millennia have given the pyramid this somewhat beige look, it would have originally been a
21:46dazzling white.
21:47When you look at the bent pyramid of Sneferu, it gives you an idea of what this dark black tower
21:53once looked like.
21:54It was a gleaming white geometric shape.
21:56It must have been like the sun shining on newly fallen snow.
22:00It must have been truly blinding.
22:04Covered in its facing, the pyramid must have looked like a perfect triangular prism of white stone, reflecting the light
22:10of Ra, the sun god.
22:14This is an amazing testimony that tells us what the pyramid once was when we are confronted by this big
22:21black ruin.
22:22It's pieces like this that archaeologists have to put together to understand the ancient past.
22:33Mark Linner wants to compare the inside to what he saw on the Lidar digital model.
22:39There are no tourists at the site. The place is totally deserted.
22:45In the almost 50 years of his archaeological career, Mark has been inside this pyramid only once before.
22:53I'm very excited to go in this pyramid because it's not open to the public.
22:57I work at the Pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx.
23:00Thousands of tourists every day, all around us.
23:03But here, it's way off the beaten track.
23:13Once inside, Mark is immediately struck by the quality of the work done by the Faro's builders.
23:23I have to marvel at the beauty of this place. The work. The work is just exquisite.
23:31Beautiful white Tura limestone vaulting. The joins are stupendous.
23:36True finesse in masonry.
23:41The walls of the tunnels dug underground were lined by slabs of Tura limestone, Egypt's most refined stone, the same
23:49that was used to cover the outside.
23:54The beauty of this stonework is all the more amazing when you think that it was never meant to be
24:00seen.
24:00It was all for the king in the afterlife.
24:06It was in this maze of pure limestone that the pharaoh could enjoy his eternal rest.
24:11Ah, the corridor to the king.
24:17On the pharaoh's sarcophagus, Mark immediately spots quite a striking symbol.
24:25How nicely done these eyes are.
24:27When the king's mummy was put inside, symbolically, these two eyes, at the far north end of the east side,
24:34allowed him to look out to the rising sun.
24:40This representation is quite typical of the funeral customs of the Middle Kingdom.
24:45On the coffins and sarcophagi of that period, they always represented, looking east, a pair of eyes, which gave the
24:51deceased, lying down inside, a sort of porthole through which to see the outside, and in particular to see the
24:57rising sun, which was the driving force of Egyptian religion.
25:04But for Mark, something in the room does not make sense.
25:08I don't know the exact measurements. I don't have my tape measure with me, but it looks too wide to
25:14come in that doorway.
25:17The sarcophagus does indeed look too wide to have been brought through the corridors.
25:23On the 3D model created by means of the LIDAR scanner, we can now measure the dimensions exactly.
25:30And the measurements confirm Mark's impression.
25:33With its base, the sarcophagus is 2.6 meters long and 1.15 meters wide.
25:39But the corridor which leads to the king's chamber is never any wider than one meter.
25:44So how did the ancient Egyptians get the sarcophagus to this place in the pyramid?
25:50There are grounds for thinking that the sarcophagus was placed there before the pyramid had been constructed.
25:56So they first of all dug pits, they dug pits and trenches, and turned these into the underground apartments.
26:04Most of the network of the Black Pyramid's passages was dug as tunnels in the clay soil of the Dascher
26:10Plateau.
26:15But for certain rooms, they must have dug pits from the surface, into which they could lower the most voluminous
26:20items, such as the huge sarcophagus.
26:26A very impressive feat when you consider the weight of this monolith.
26:32The sarcophagus is pink granite. It's a very hard rock, very heavy.
26:36It alone weighs between four or five tons.
26:41Equivalent to four large cars.
26:45Once the chamber was finished and the vaulted ceiling in place, the pit was filled up with brickwork.
26:56Studying this impressive sarcophagus, Mark Lennar has spotted another symbol familiar to him.
27:04The truly remarkable thing is that the bottom is carved with these gates, which is a series of palace gates
27:13carved with bastions and niches,
27:16which imitate the surrounding wall, the famous Djoser complex, the Step Pyramid complex.
27:22They're paying honor to the first pyramid builder.
27:29There certainly is a striking resemblance to this wall, built 900 years earlier by a legendary pharaoh, Djoser, founder of
27:37the Old Kingdom.
27:39A model of prosperity, unity and stability for all of ancient Egypt.
27:46This is the best conserved section of the huge, niched enclosure wall, which surrounded his stepped pyramid in Saqqara,
27:53the first pyramid in human history.
27:59So the presence of this motive on the sarcophagus did not come about by chance.
28:05It's not just a nod and a wink, it shows a true desire to anchor their roots in the history
28:09of the first Egyptian dynasties.
28:11It's above all a way of linking Amenemhat III, a pharaoh from the end of the Middle Kingdom, to the
28:16first sovereign of the Old Kingdom,
28:18almost a thousand years earlier, showing that there was a direct line from that legendary king to Amenemhat III.
28:28By depicting this monument, Amenemhat III was confirming his link to the glorious past of the Old Kingdom and its
28:35gigantic pyramids.
28:41And yet, some of the layout is decidedly at odds with what we usually see in classic pyramids.
28:50At the entrance to the king's network, Mark Lenner notices a very narrow corridor.
28:56The way under the southwest corner of the pyramid is a very, very narrow corridor and very difficult going.
29:06Everything is difficult because it's so humid down here. I'm literally dripping with sweat.
29:15The passage is particularly long and extremely hard going because of its narrowness.
29:22With the data collected by Albonbris using the laser scanner a few weeks earlier,
29:27we can measure just how narrow it is, only 60 centimeters.
29:34At the end, Mark discovers a surprisingly small room, it too containing a sarcophagus.
29:42Although cluttered with stones, it is strangely similar to the pharaoh's burial chamber.
29:50A bit further along the corridor is another room, identical to the first.
29:58Here, inside the chamber itself, a burial chamber, you see also a beautiful granite sarcophagus.
30:07Carved in the same style, the same decoration as the granite sarcophagus of the king.
30:16Inside it, an unbelievable surprise awaits him.
30:22My God!
30:24There's still bones in there.
30:27And even broken pieces of wood.
30:36Have these been in there from the beginning?
30:39I don't know at the moment.
30:42But it is truly amazing.
30:46Getting to film these bones is absolutely extraordinary.
30:50But what are they doing here?
30:52And to whom did they belong?
30:55The archaeologists who discovered the bones in the 1980s had them analyzed
31:00and then replaced them in the sarcophagus.
31:03And the tests revealed something quite amazing.
31:07Under the pyramid were the remains of two women.
31:12There are two queens that are buried in this structure.
31:15One, we know her name is Ott.
31:18The second is unknown.
31:19We know that one was around 35 when she died.
31:23The other one was around 25.
31:24So they died relatively young.
31:28Finding human remains in a pyramid is already a very rare occurrence.
31:32But it's only the second time in history that women's bones have been found.
31:38Usually in a pyramid complex, there's an enclosure wall with a pyramid
31:42and then satellite pyramids on the side for important royal women.
31:46But Amenemhat III changed all that.
31:49We can see it perfectly clearly on the LiDAR image.
31:53Two burial chambers were built in the western quarters under the pyramid.
31:57These were for the tombs of two of Amenemhat III's wives.
32:02Before this, they took care to keep the queen's apartments totally separated.
32:06But here there's no pyramid for the queen.
32:08There are just apartments underneath the one pyramid.
32:13But why this innovation?
32:15Why did the pharaoh want to be near his queens?
32:19We don't know why he did this.
32:21But one possible reason is that he wanted them to be closer to him in the afterlife.
32:26The women are no doubt also there to fulfill a protective function for the dead pharaoh.
32:31It's quite likely that a feminine figure would play a role in the renaissance
32:35or resurrection of the king in his funeral complex.
32:38It may have been some kind of particular regard for these two women,
32:45but all we can do is speculate.
32:50We'll probably never know why Amenemhat III made this choice.
32:59But it seems that some unexpected incident came to disturb the eternal rest of his wives.
33:06We return to Mark Lennar underground.
33:09What has particularly struck him about the innards of the Black Pyramid is the high number of cracks he can
33:15see pretty much all over.
33:17Everything shows cracking.
33:19That's a crack that runs down the entire length of this corridor.
33:24And you can see the cracks are becoming more and more numerous.
33:29And even here in the floor, it's not only the walls and the lintels.
33:36It's even the floor itself was cracking.
33:43You can imagine as they're dressing this down, doing the final finish work, you can still see their chisel marks
33:48all of a sudden.
33:51It must have been a booming, frightening sound that echoed through all the chambers and passages causing the workers to
33:58put down their tools.
33:59Did they run right away?
34:02We can imagine.
34:07The archaeologists have found indications that these cracks happened while the pyramid was being built.
34:13The fact that this damage, this subsidence, this settling happened during the construction is proved by the patching up that
34:20was done by the ancient Egyptians themselves.
34:22In a lot of corridors and chambers, there are wooden beams which they placed there to shore up where there
34:28had been a crack and there might be a collapse.
34:31You have modern cross beams to hold up everything, but they are supporting ancient cedar beams that Amenemhet's people put
34:44to hold up whatever is above.
34:46These beams are as old as the pyramid itself, and that means they're 3,800 years old, and there they
34:54are.
34:56But what happened here?
34:58Why does the structure show so many signs of damage?
35:04For part of the answer, we have to go back above ground.
35:11The pharaoh may well have picked a poor spot for his pyramid, despite having given it long and careful thought.
35:20Dasher is 20 kilometers south of the Giza Plateau, the site on the outskirts of Cairo of the famous Great
35:26Pyramid of Khufu.
35:28Dasher was a very famous place, especially to reconnect with ancestors.
35:33When Amenemhat III started to build his pyramid, there were already pre-existing structures all over Dasher, such as the
35:41big pyramids of Sneferu.
35:44Sneferu was one of the most powerful pharaohs of the Old Kingdom, a ruler who achieved legendary status for ancient
35:50Egyptians, who went so far as to deify him.
35:56Sneferu was still venerated in the Middle Kingdom, so 12th dynasty kings, they went to Dasher to build their pyramids.
36:03And in many ways, they were aligning themselves with the power of this pharaoh from a long-gone era.
36:11It was at Dasher that Sneferu had history's first giant pyramids built, the Red Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid.
36:20They were constructed in around 2600 BCE, eight centuries before the Black Pyramid.
36:28But what surprises Meredith Brand is the unusual location of Amenemhat III's pyramid in relation to Sneferu's.
36:38Standing where I am at the Amenemhat III's pyramid, it's clear that over there in Dasher, the ground is higher,
36:44and we're here in a depression.
36:46Right here, we are incredibly low.
36:53The LiDAR scanner should provide us with more information about exactly how deep the funeral apartments are.
37:01To this end, Albanbris Pimpot has to walk all the way around the structure to get readings of the level
37:07of the surrounding ground to compare to those of the pyramid's underground labyrinth.
37:14Using the data collected by the scanner, the 3D model gives us a perfect cross-section view of the monument
37:20and its various levels.
37:21The color coding used here gives us information about the respective levels of the parts scanned.
37:28The higher up you go, the warmer the color, getting redder.
37:32And likewise, the deeper you go, the colder the color, turning blue or violet.
37:36So we can see perfectly well on this side view that the whole complex of the apartments is deep under
37:44the pyramid and is not inside the pyramid.
37:49Using the 3D LiDAR model, Frank Monnier can now, with just a few clicks, establish the depth of the funeral
37:56apartments underneath the black pyramid.
38:01So, let's measure how deep these apartments go.
38:05I'll pick a low point at random, here in this chamber for example, and then pick a second point by
38:12the entrance.
38:13There.
38:14That gives us a depth of 12 to 13 meters.
38:17So the complex of apartments was dug down to a depth of 12 to 13 meters.
38:24A depth of 12 meters, that's equivalent to a fourth basement.
38:31At this depth, Mark Lenner notices an opening in the ceiling, which reveals something very strange about the earth through
38:38which these tunnels were dug.
38:42Well, this is a good view of the bedrock.
38:44Clearly, it's gray, shale, clay, rust colored, iron deposits, but it's full of crack.
38:53It's actually crackled.
38:54It's not at all stable.
38:57So, this bedrock is the source of a lot of their problems.
39:04To remain stable, a pyramid should be built on solid rock, not on clay, friable ground.
39:15It's a surprising mistake for Amenemhat III's architects to have made, especially when you realize that the site they chose
39:22for the structure seems particularly poorly located in the topography.
39:28People often assume that pyramids are in the middle of the desert, but in fact, if you visit Egypt, you
39:34will see that the pyramids are on the edge of this great desert escarpment,
39:39and they are actually quite close to the cultivation.
39:45But here, even the experts are surprised by just how unusually close the Black Pyramid is to the Nile Valley.
39:55The pyramid of Amenemhat III is incredibly close to the Nile Valley.
39:59It's just right over there.
40:00The greenery, the agriculture, the civilization, the cities, the towns, it's just a stone's throw away.
40:08The ancient landscape in Dashur was quite different from today's landscape.
40:12The Nile shifted through the thousands of years and moved its bed sideways,
40:18and we have scientific evidence that the cultivated area and the cultivation was much closer than it is today.
40:28For Egyptologists, this decision to build the Black Pyramid so close to the Nile was a total engineering blunder.
40:36The desert is dry. The sand is far away from the water table, and it's a great environment to build.
40:43The Nile Valley, on the other hand, is waterlogged, and the water table is also really high.
40:49So by choosing to construct a pyramid at this site so close to the Nile Valley means that Amenemhat III's
40:55pyramid didn't really stand a chance.
40:57It wasn't built on a solid foundation to last.
41:01The clay soil under the Black Pyramid is porous, so it's infiltrated by any rise in the level of the
41:07extremely close ground water table.
41:11Water infiltration weakened the ground on which the pyramid was built.
41:16Then this weakened, permeable ground must have undergone localized and irregular subsidence,
41:22which was the cause of all the cracks you can see in the apartments.
41:29As the pyramid rose, its weight bore down more and more heavily on its clay, unstable, and waterlogged base.
41:36The edifice started to sink into the ground.
41:41But there could be another reason for these structural problems.
41:48The 3D model obtained with the LiDAR scanner has shown us that the network of passages under the pyramid is
41:55much more extensive than what is usually found in pyramids.
41:59What if Amenemhat III, by being too ambitious, unwittingly undermined his own monument?
42:06That simply doesn't work inside of a pyramid.
42:09Structurally, one cannot have so many chambers and keep a strong foundation to maintain a huge pyramid.
42:16Too many rooms, too many corridors to consolidate.
42:19Perhaps they quite simply underestimated the reinforcing measures that would be needed.
42:24And this led to structural problems they hadn't anticipated.
42:28There's a lack of additional support from limestone retaining walls,
42:32which means the weight of all that mud brick is not being distributed
42:36and it's causing those internal facing limestone blocks to crack.
42:43At a certain point, the weight of the structure exceeded what the vaults could support.
42:48The pyramid subsided, pressing down on the rooms and corridors underground, causing cracks to appear everywhere.
42:57But why did Amenemhat III take this risk of weakening his tomb?
43:02It's a bit of a mystery because we haven't found the contents of all these rooms and don't really know
43:07what their purpose was.
43:08We don't actually know how the different chambers were used, but there are studies indicating that chamber systems are an
43:15image of the imagination of the netherworld and of the religious belief system.
43:22The netherworld.
43:24This is where the dead must face Osiris, the god who will resurrect them.
43:29The Black Pyramid has its own root, which is in fact a representation of the complex route that the dead
43:35have to take in order to reach paradise.
43:37Perhaps these rooms are in fact sorts of fictional regions of the netherworld.
43:42The pyramid itself is a 3D representation of the netherworld.
43:46This could be the great paradox of the Black Pyramid.
43:50In trying to create the best possible imitation of the netherworld in order to guarantee his access to resurrection,
43:58Amenemhat III in fact doomed his tomb to crumbling ruin.
44:09There's one place under the pyramid where it seems only a miracle could have prevented a total collapse.
44:17An incredible place so hard to reach that Alban Brice wasn't able to get in there with his LiDAR scanner
44:23to map it.
44:24It's the part known as the Southern Network.
44:33Let's go.
44:34Mark Lennar needs to steal his courage to venture forth.
44:43Oh boy.
44:45This is rough going.
44:54This is mud brick.
44:57The walls are made of mud bricks, the same as those found on the outside of the pyramid.
45:02The builders didn't even take the time to cover them with slabs of white limestone.
45:07It's clear that work here was left unfinished, as if the workers abandoned the site in a hurry.
45:15At the end of the corridor, Mark manages to thread himself into a tiny room.
45:20But this isn't yet another burial chamber.
45:24This is difficult. It gets smaller and smaller.
45:28I believe, if I'm not confused, we're in the Ka chapel of the Queen.
45:34And here, we find this amazing alabaster's canopic chest,
45:40where the internal organs were placed after being removed from the body during mummification.
45:48The Egyptians had a complicated way of viewing the soul.
45:52So you think that we have our body.
45:54Our double is made when our body is made.
45:58And that is called the Ka, a spirit double of your body.
46:02And throughout your life, it exists with you.
46:06Upon your death, it inhabits the tomb.
46:09It was to the Ka chapels that one would bring offerings for the soul of the deceased after their death.
46:15Once again, Amenemhat III had been innovative in placing these chapels for the first time actually in a pyramid.
46:22A chapel for each of his queens and one for himself.
46:26This is absolutely amazing to find this incredibly beautiful object still in place.
46:32And all of this was put in the most inaccessible part of the most inaccessible pyramids ever.
46:41But after only a few minutes in this Ka chamber, Mark judges it wise not to linger.
46:48Look at the crack in this chamber.
46:50This is very serious.
46:52It's separated several centimeters wide.
46:55And the stones are bowing in.
46:59It still looks like it could collapse at any moment.
47:02I think, um, I think it's time to go.
47:11But in Amenemhat III's burial chamber, one last detail intrigues the Egyptologists.
47:20The lid is beautifully sculpted and intact and relatively undamaged.
47:27In fact, these few chips might be more recent.
47:30You see in tombs that have clearly been looted where the lid is just shoved aside by the robbers.
47:35Or they simply smashed it.
47:37But the fact that it's undamaged indicates that the king's burial was never put inside.
47:46If the lid wasn't smashed by looters breaking into the Black Pyramid, it must have been left open.
47:53So the sarcophagus was never sealed, meaning the pharaoh's mummy could never have been placed inside.
48:00One thing thus becomes obvious.
48:03Amenemhat III was never buried under the Black Pyramid.
48:07It became very obvious that the pyramid was unstable. Cracks were forming, the ground was sinking up to three centimeters.
48:16So Amenemhat III had to abandon the project and start a new one.
48:20He abandoned this pyramid and decided, oh, I'm going to have a better one.
48:28Confronted with the failure of this overly complex pyramid, the pharaohs simply decided to have another one built at Hawara,
48:3570 kilometers further south.
48:39Also built of mud bricks, this now has a silhouette similar to that of the Black Pyramid.
48:45But its interior is totally different.
48:50Amenemhat III's architects had learnt their lesson.
48:54There was more care taken in ensuring that the Hawara pyramid was not going to suffer from such problems.
49:03Here there was no underground labyrinth.
49:06One simple corridor led to a single extremely secure chamber, a veritable strong box made of stone.
49:14Amenemhat III had himself buried at Hawara, in a pyramid that was perfect for ensuring his eternal rest.
49:21It was stable, solid, it met all the requirements that the pharaoh had set.
49:27Yet no images exist of this unique interior.
49:31And for good reason.
49:33Amenemhat III could not have foreseen the disaster that would eventually strike at his second pyramid.
49:40It's been totally flooded for over a hundred years because of rising waters resulting from a canal built close by
49:46in the 19th century.
49:52Even if the pharaoh finally decided not to be buried there, Dachur's Black Pyramid still retains the prestige of a
49:59royal tomb.
50:01The Black Pyramid did fulfill its funeral role. While the king wasn't buried in the pyramid, his queens were laid
50:07to rest there.
50:10Underground, the remains of these two queens of Amenemhat III are still enjoying their eternal rest, but under a precarious
50:18pyramid.
50:19I feel quite bad for these women to be left in the sinking, cracking pyramid.
50:25It may not have been quite so gallant a situation.
50:30The failure of the Black Pyramid was, in any case, a turning point.
50:34It sealed the fate of pyramids in Egypt.
50:38The kings were thinking, why am I going to build a pyramid if all the stone is going to be
50:43stripped away, if it's going to be looted?
50:46King Amenemhat III is the last great pyramid builder.
50:51Djoser is the beginning, Amenemhat III is the end, and together that is the era of the great pyramids of
50:58ancient Egypt.
51:00While the Black Pyramid may keep on deteriorating in the coming decades, this completely unique modeling campaign using the LiDAR
51:08scanner means that we will at least have a digital copy exact to the millimeter of its present state.
51:14The 3D modeling captures the structure for the future, even if the whole pyramid now would finally collapse.
51:21I mean, God forbid, we don't want that.
51:24And it would crush all the chambers and passageways.
51:26Even if that happened, you've now captured the structure that was once there.
51:31And so that's the value of modeling any ancient monument.
51:37Despite its structural problems and the ravages of time, the Black Pyramid is, for now at least, still alive.
51:44It's still standing, four millennia after it was built, still casting the shadow of Amenemhat III over the Nile Valley.
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