Original subtitles

Amid the 2,000-year-old ruins

of Egypt's Greek and Roman conquerors,

archaeologists unearth something far older:

the colossal face of Ancient Egypt's greatest king.

We have identified the owner of the statue to be Ramses II.

A guardian, perhaps of a giant temple.

Hold on.

...lost to time.

We are about to rewrite history

of the Ramesside period in Middle Egypt.

Of all Ancient Egypt's legendary pharaohs,

none had a greater impact

than the 19th Dynasty King Ramses II.

In an extraordinary 66 years on the throne,

he transformed the face of Egypt...

immortalizing his reign in stone, in every corner of the country.

His powerful legacy endures in hundreds of vast temples and monuments.

Now, archaeologists are searching the ruins

and combing the desert looking for evidence

still hidden beneath the surface.

They want to get inside the pharaoh's head...

to ask what drove Ramses the Great

to build on such an awe-inspiring scale.

In the modern Egyptian city of El Ashmunein...

halfway between the ancient cities

of Memphis and Thebes,

archaeologist Basem Gehad

is scouring the ruins of another ancient town.

2,000-year-old structures testify to the area's significance

as a center of religious power

in Egypt's Greek, Roman, and Christian eras.

But Basem is hunting for something much older.

This is the city of Hermes,

ancient Hermopolis.

What we can see now from the archaeological remains,

this is only the top layer of the city.

Our main goal is to understand the long history

of this city across the history of Ancient Egypt.

We wanted to excavate here to see what no one have ever seen before.

Later religious centers

were often built upon earlier sacred sites.

So, what secrets from Egypt's Pharaonic time

do these crumbling ruins hide?

In 2023, Basem spotted a detail in the journals

of pre-war German archaeologist Günther Roeder,

which gave him cause for excitement.

Even if the excavation of Günther Roeder was small,

they found tantalizing results.

But what comes next, what we have found,

was incredible.

When the German archaeologists excavated this area in 1930...

they uncovered the traces of walls and fallen columns...

as well as the legs of two colossal statues.

But they could not confirm what kind of building

lay beneath the mud.

Last year, Basem's dig revealed a figure more than 12 feet tall

with the telltale beard and headgear of a New Kingdom pharaoh...

features which matched those of the greatest of Ancient Egyptian kings,

Ramses II.

It took two weeks of excavation

to uncover the upper part of the colossal statue.

And it took us enormous amount of effort to lift the upper part, to see the face.

It's an amazing moment.

The discovery's all the more remarkable

because despite his extraordinary long reign

and prolific building program,

evidence of Ramses II in Middle Egypt

is, until now, almost non-existent.

We knew that Ramses II built the enormous amount

of temples around Egypt from Memphis to Aswan.

But in this spot in Middle Egypt,

barely if you could see monuments that still have the name of Ramses II.

Basem has uncovered the first colossal statue

of Ramses the Great ever found in Middle Egypt,

a find of incredible archaeological value.

So, what else lies beneath the mud?

Elsewhere in Egypt, colossal statues had one critical role:

to protect the pharaohs' most sacred buildings.

The German excavation, they highlighted

that this might be the pylon

or the main gate of a very important temple.

It was clear for us that there's lots

to be excavated around this colossal statue,

to uncover one of the lost temples

of this important pharaoh.

This would be something remarkable in this spot.

To discover a missing temple of Ramses II

would fill the mysterious hole in the great pharaoh's story.

But before he can dig down in search of a building,

Basem must clear the precious colossal statue out of the way.

So, what we are doing now is the most complicated part of the story,

of lifting this statue.

So, one single mistake

could turn the statue into small parts,

which we don't want to witness.

It's a high-risk winch operation.

The straps must bear the entire eight-ton weight of stone

without concentrating stress on the statue's weak points.

It is really a nervous moment.

Get it wrong,

and the only colossal statue of Ramses

-ever found in Middle Egypt... - Yeah.

...could crumble to dust.

Near Luxor, on the Nile's West Bank...

as the hot air balloons rise above the site

of Egypt's ancient religious capital...

Egyptologist Meredith Brand is up to see the sunrise

over one of Ramses II's grandest monuments...

his funerary temple, the Ramesseum.

It is so beautiful to be in the Ramesseum

this early in the morning, seeing the sunrise.

No one's here.

This balloon launch behind me, it's just magical.

Ancient records suggest Ramses

took some 20 years carving and raising its giant columns.

Etching reliefs into almost every surface in his own honor.

This is a beautiful temple, and all around

there are colorful paintings and images of Ramses II.

It was built to celebrate the king, ensuring he had a long and happy afterlife

and making sure that his memory lived on

long after his death.

Not only did Ramses II

adorn every surface with reliefs and inscriptions...

he also filled the temple with multiple statues of himself.

The largest now lies in fragments,

its eroded face gazing towards the sky.

Oh, man, this is amazing. This is a mega statue!

This is a statue of Ramses II.

It's fallen over.

But this would have been huge.

It's a colossus. It would have been six stories tall

and weighed a thousand tons.

It was one of the biggest statues ever from Ancient Egypt

and one of the biggest in the ancient world.

Statues like this are why we think of Ramses II as Ramses the Great.

Before its collapse,

Ramses' colossal statue stood upright at the temple's entrance...

a titan guarding the pharaoh's inner sanctum.

It was an architectural pattern

he repeated well beyond his funerary temple.

Ramses built monuments at all corners of his kingdom.

In the south, on a cliff face overlooking the Nile,

he carved the great Temple of Abu Simbel,

featuring four colossal 60-foot-tall statues of himself.

In Karnak, a sacred site founded almost 700 years before his reign,

Ramses stamped his mark by covering the pillars

of its majestic hall with his name.

In the Nile Delta in the north,

he even built an entire city,

Pi-Rameses, so that all of humanity

would know he was the greatest king of all.

As soon as Ramses II took the throne,

he started building amazing monuments like this.

He wanted to make sure that his name lived on

in Egypt and beyond.

All of Egypt's pharaohs wanted to be remembered into eternity.

But none built as prolifically as Ramses II.

Why did he need so many temples?

In Saqqara, in the shadow

of the very first pyramid built in stone...

archaeologist Ola El Aguizy

has returned to hunt for the great and the good

of Ramses II's Royal Court.

I've been here since 2005. I love it.

I feel young when I am working in Saqqara,

and I feel old when I work in my books.

I have back ache and too much work,

but here, I forget everything.

Ola wants to know what impact

the pharaoh's building projects had on Egyptians at the time.

This is the site where there are the high-ranking people,

so maybe we could find the big tomb.

The years of painstaking study

Ola has invested in Saqqara have paid dividends.

In some seasons, it's led her into shaft tombs...

Are we going to be able to get in, yes?

...almost certainly from Ramses' time.

But much of the evidence of the original tomb owners

has been obliterated,

destroyed by the activities of later Egyptians,

reusing the tomb for their own dead.

This is full of skeletons.

This year, Ola is moving west

in search of fresh burials.

For three days her team has been hard at work

hauling sand.

Now, just like in previous seasons...

an ancient structure is beginning to emerge.

What we began to find is this angle here

so this angle shows that it is an entrance to something

and the thickness of this part of this monument is so big

so it proves that this is what we call a 'pylon'.

In Ancient Egyptian architecture,

imposing walls called pylons stood at the gateways to monuments,

especially temples like the Ramesseum.

To find one here is a good sign.

Many tombs at Saqqara resembled the temples of Ramses...

with large pylon gates at their entrance.

Worshippers would proceed through the temple

to reach a pillared courtyard of limestone...

the location of the owner's shaft tomb...

and lay votive offerings at the far end of the temple

in a chapel decorated with texts and images

of the deceased communing with the gods.

The pylon is a strong signal that the structure could be a tomb.

This side, it has to be an important one.

What we are going to find right now, I'm not sure.

It's luck. It's only luck.

To find out for sure, Ola has only one option: to dig.

Near Luxor...

Meredith wants to understand why Ramses II

built more temples than any other pharaoh.

She heads inside to search for evidence

of the Ramesseum's purpose.

One of the things that's striking about this temple

is the sheer number of images of Ramses II and the gods.

Oh, and this, this is a great image.

So, it shows the hawk-headed god Montu, he's associated with war,

and he's holding Ramses II's hand and giving him life, the symbol of life.

And it's like Ramses II is trying to emphasize his divine nature

and his close relationship with the gods.

Ramses inscribed the walls of his multiple sacred structures

with thousands of images of himself communing with deities.

But inside the temple,

Meredith finds one god in particular stands out.

The god most depicted in this temple is Amun.

He's there, he's on all the columns.

The god Amun is everywhere.

Amun, whose name meant "The Hidden One,"

was the breather of life-- invisible, but felt by all.

In Ramses' time, he merged with the sun god

to become Amun-Ra, and rose up to be the king of the gods.

He took on many forms, including a ram, a symbol of fertility.

Egyptians believed Amun was the father and protector of all pharaohs.

To affirm this link, Ramses portrayed himself

with ram horns and promoted the Amun cult...

building many temples to the god.

Egyptians saw the gods as eternal and all-powerful.

Amun commanded the kind of universal respect

Ramses wanted for himself.

Every scene Ramses inscribed on his temple walls...

was carefully composed to send a message...

one that would be broadcast across Egypt by his trusted priests.

In the heart of the temple, Meredith finds more detail.

This is a really lovely image.

It shows Ramses II kneeling in front of the god Amun,

and he's gesturing out to him

and Amun is holding his hand and he's giving him something.

Thousands of years of weather have eroded the inscriptions.

To see what the pharaoh was receiving from Amun...

Meredith has to head east across the Nile River,

to another of Ramses' famous building projects.

At El Ashmunein...

Basem's crew is ready to winch up

the only colossal statue of Ramses II ever found in Middle Egypt...

so that his search for a lost temple can begin.

Clear the area!

The maneuver is risky.

If the statue drops, it will crush his evidence.

It's a lot of tension and nerve in these moments.

Eight tons limestone flying on there.

All what you are thinking is that when would be the moment

that you just put it back on the ground safely.

Like that, this way!

To the back!

Careful, careful!

With the statue's torso

hanging above the legs, Basem takes the opportunity

to confirm the two parts fit.

It's a perfect match.

The job now is to delicately lay the torso down

in one piece...

Slowly! Slowly!

...and return for the base.

So, we have managed to lift the upper part of the statue.

The condition looks really excellent to me.

No cracks, nothing was lost from the statue.

The beard is okay, nose is okay.

This is an almost complete upper part and almost complete lower part.

So, you don't have to debate whether or not they belongs to each other.

Basem's long-term plan is to reunite and restore the two parts

of Middle Egypt's only colossal statue of Ramses the Great.

The priority now is to find out what lies beneath.

The question he wants to answer is,

did the statues once guard a mighty temple?

In Saqqara, Ola's team

has shifted tons of sand

within the rectangular mudbrick structure

she hopes will be a Ramses-era temple tomb.

They sift through every square foot in search of artifacts.

The area is proving to be rich ground.

All these things have been found on the surface.

Sometimes the visitors themselves

leave these as offerings to the gods.

It's not indicating the older tomb but it indicates visitors to the tomb.

Every single fragment will be sent for analysis

to try to establish who visited this site and when.

The high concentration of pottery sherds

adds weight to Ola's theory there could be a Ramesside temple tomb

visited over centuries.

-Suddenly... - Hmm?

...a new find catches her worker's attention.

Look at this.

This is a piece of material.

It's linen sewn together.

This linen probably was covering a mummy.

A scrap of sewn linen is strong evidence.

It seems almost certain there were burials here.

But is there a Ramesside tomb still to find?

And is it at all intact?

To find out, Ola needs to go deeper.

We are still in the level of the mudbrick, not limestone

but as soon as we find anything in limestone

that's what I'm waiting for.

Limestone cladding would not only confirm

this is a high-status tomb.

It could be decorated. It could even reveal a name.

We are on our way to find something important

and something interesting.

So, that's excavations.

Every day we have a surprise.

In El Ashmunein...

...with Ramses the Great's colossal statue

removed to safety...

Basem's team searches the freshly exposed pedestal stones.

A small pile of debris suggests something was placed here

before the statue was moved into position more than 3,000 years ago.

So, this for us is a secure context

where this was sealed beneath the legs of the-- of the statue.

The material could give Basem clues

to the significance of the statue

and whether it guarded a lost temple.

But as the team explores the gaps

between the pedestal stones,

the weather intervenes.

So, it looks like...

-Hold on.

The short-lived dust whirlwind may be uncomfortable...

...but as the flying sediment begins to settle,

Basem's workers discover a clue.

Oh! You see?

Amulets, a scarab.

It's a protection amulet.

Ancient Egyptians placed amulets

of sacred scarab beetles to ward off danger and misfortune.

Finding one here suggests the builders valued the statue highly.

In Ancient Egypt,

colossal statues of pharaohs had special significance,

meant to protect important buildings.

But the statues themselves also needed protection.

The ground around the statue would be carefully prepared,

and a pedestal built from stone blocks.

Sacred items were placed among the blocks,

often jewelry or amulets, charms to safeguard the king's likeness...

before the statue was lifted onto its perch...

to stand guard for eternity.

Basem decides to dig out the pedestal in search of more evidence.

It looks like there are four blocks,

and we want to move them to look underneath.

The exterior surfaces of the blocks

are richly decorated with hieroglyphs celebrating Ramses' reign.

But within the pedestal,

all is not quite what it seems.

There are some inscriptions here.

They were intentionally intended to hide something

which is the old reliefs.

They put face to face internally so no one will see this.

So, this is the first time we see this new information.

If the colossal statue's primary job

was to guard a temple...

...it seems there was also something

it was designed to conceal.

In Luxor, on the Nile's East Bank...

Meredith has come to the sprawling temple complex

of Karnak.

She's here to see what Ramses II was trying to convey to his people...

about his special relationship with the god Amun.

Like the Ramesseum, the columns and walls

of Karnak's temple of Amun are lavishly carved

with Ramses II's well-preserved reliefs...

dedicated to his connection to the gods.

Ah, this is fantastic!

Here it is.

This is great.

It's just like the image in the Ramesseum but there's some more details here.

So, there's Ramses II the King, and he's kneeling down,

and the god Amun is offering him something.

And behind, there's the goddess Mut,

and she's also offering that same hieroglyph,

but like a whole row of them.

And it's clear here, it's not clear at the Ramesseum...

but it says "Heb Sed," the Jubilee Festival.

The object Ramses is receiving from the gods

is a jubilee, a ritual celebration dating to the first pharaohs,

offered only to long-reigning kings.

On the 30th year of his reign, a king enjoyed a festival in his honor,

the Heb Sed, at which he asked the gods

permission to continue his rule over Egypt.

The pharaoh reenacted the unification of his kingdom

by wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt and the red crown of Lower Egypt.

He took part in a ritual run around his temple to prove his vitality.

If the gods were satisfied with his achievements...

they wrote the king's name on the leaf of a sacred tree

to grant him another year of rule.

Oh, this is lovely.

It's Ramses II in mid-sprint.

This race is an essential part of the Heb Sed festival.

It's the king proving that he's still powerful

and vigorous after 30 years of reign.

And if he can run, he can still rule the country.

So unusually long was Ramses II's reign,

he was given multiple Heb Sed festivals...

reaffirming his vitality regularly after his 30th year.

Images of these celebrations cover the walls of the hall.

They're repeated on his temples across Egypt.

The festival was essential for Ramses II's 66-year reign.

It reinvigorated his relationship with the people,

and even more important, it established

Ramses II's relationship with the gods

who gave him the divine right to rule Egypt

for years to come.

Ramses' temples were designed to showcase his divinely bestowed power.

Why was Ramses so concerned about proving his legitimacy

with giant monumental temples advertising his right to rule?

Among the ancient ruins at El Ashmunein,

Basem's team carefully lifts the stones

that make up the colossal statue's pedestal.

The hidden inscriptions

on its interior surfaces

could help Basem piece together the site's history...

and confirm whether the statues

once guarded a temple built by Ramses II.

As the team works to free the remaining blocks...

Basem has a chance to inspect the concealed decorations.

It's clearly that this is Amarna period.

You can see the remains of the cartouche of the Amarna,

but also the solar disc with the raised hand,

which is a sign of Amarna period.

The Amarna period of Egyptian history

dates to a hundred years before Ramses II...

named for a short-lived city

built by Pharaoh Akhenaten of the previous dynasty.

Amarna was just a short river journey away.

Its abandoned buildings could have supplied the stone

not just for a statue base, but for a giant temple.

By repurposing the Amarna stone,

Ramses could not only build something to glorify his own reign,

but also extinguish the memory of his predecessor.

With the statue's pedestal lifted...

Basem now needs to dig down to find evidence

of the building the statues guarded.

Under the supervision of Basem's co-director,

archaeologist Yvona Trnka-Amrheim...

the team searches around the statue's foundations.

Just inches below the mud surface, they hit solid stone.

Do these ones connect?

-This one and this one? - No.

- No? - This one is floor.

This is floor. Floor, okay, yep.

It seems like this may be part of the floor.

A stone floor could mean a lost temple

is just a few feet away.

It's very exciting, it's very exciting!

In Saqqara, Ola's team

has moved hundreds of buckets of sand

in search of a Ramesside tomb,

recording every scrap of evidence on the way.

But one crucial clue is missing.

I dream of finding some limestone fragments

either in situ on the walls

or in the sand

because it proves a lot about which period it belongs.

I cannot say until I find any inscribed material.

The tombs of high officials of Ramses' time here in Saqqara

copied the form of the pharaoh's giant temples.

Evidence of limestone cladding would go a long way

to proving this structure was a temple tomb.

But with only hours to go before Ola's dig

winds down for the Islamic holy season of Ramadan,

time is running out.

Ola decides to get her hands dirty.

Oh, my God, look at this!

As she brushes close to the mudbrick limits of the structure,

the sand finally begins to give up secrets.

So, you see, this piece, this fragment,

limestone, this unfortunately is an empty fragment,

but it shows that it might have been from the tomb itself.

And it has mortar on the back,

so it proves that it was stuck to the wall.

The fragment may be undecorated,

but it proves the structure was clad in fine limestone.

Ola is no longer in any doubt.

This was a high-status temple tomb.

5.5 meters, the whole length.

It is a considerable tomb, it's a big one.

It's not something small.

The first court is more than 18 feet long.

This could be among the largest tombs Ola has found in this necropolis.

Years of diligent research and careful excavation have set her up

for what could be a remarkable campaign next season.

It's very exciting, and I am happy.

We don't know yet whose tomb it will be but still it is a big achievement.

The plan we are finding til now

looks very much like the tombs we found before

which are from the time of Ramses II.

Why exactly the tombs here

take the form of a Ramesside temple

remains a mystery.

But when Ola returns, answers could be waiting

just below the sand.

I want to find the whole tomb

I want to find the shaft.

That is the aim.

We will continue next season.

It's a new day in El Ashmunein...

and Basem has expanded the trenches

around the base of Ramses' colossal statue.

He believes a pair of these statues

once guarded the entrance to a lost temple.

To confirm it, he needs to find the walls of the building itself.

One of the targets of our mission

is finding a complete temple.

The only clue for this is to reach

the foundation of the pylon,

which is the main monumental gate of the temple.

Basem's workers have already shifted

several tons of earth behind the statue's base.

If there's a temple here, the giant gateway can't be far away.

But the site's rich later history

is proving an obstacle.

Currently, we do have mudbrick wall.

Might be later phase, it might be Roman, Byzantine, and that might be attributed

to the church somewhere that was here.

More than 3,000 years of history stand in the way

of any Ramses-era architecture Basem may find.

He can't destroy the more recent mudbrick structure.

He has to work around it,

while also cataloging every find from every era.

Just as the German records inspired Basem,

any single detail here could provide a clue

to future mysteries.

There were plenty of people who were active in this area

from the New Kingdom, Ptolemaic period, Roman period, until the Islamic period.

Whenever we have, like, a unit or layer

that we are excavating, we collect the whole pottery,

and it give us the date of the occupation phase,

who was living here, who was doing what.

The end of the dig is approaching

and final proof of a Ramesside temple still eludes Basem.

My hope today is to end up this trench

with a conclusion that this was for sure Ramses II temple.

If he doesn't find the foundations,

Basem will have to refill the trenches

and come back next season to continue the search.

At Basem's dig site in El Ashmunein...

his team scrapes out earth from a trench

behind where Ramses' colossal statue once stood.

If Ramses built a temple here,

a monumental gateway will be the smoking gun.

Despite the season's end approaching...

the workers have to move slowly, layer by layer.

As an archaeologist, we are familiar

with digging in the sand, it's much easier.

Here, we are doing much more effort

because we need to cut in a very compact clay material.

And it needs a very trained eye to differentiate

between the mudbricks and the compact clay.

For the moment, we keep high hopes

on just tracing the exact limit of the gate.

Suddenly, flecks of white rock begin to catch the workers' blades.

A solid rock surface.

This is what we were just talking about.

Blocks of limestone that could be

part of the monumental pylon, gate.

The limestone surface appears to cut

laterally across the trench behind the statue,

exactly where Basem would expect a gateway's foundations to sit.

Its location a few feet behind the statue

is a huge piece of positive evidence.

We are just two meters, one and a half meters,

which is a quite good distance to put a statue in front of a pylon.

Well done!

Few archaeologists of the modern era

can claim to have discovered a lost Ancient Egyptian temple.

For Basem, it's a career-defining moment.

We have arrived to very solid conclusions

that we have found a temple,

built by Ramses II.

So we are about to rewrite history

of the Ramesside period in Middle Egypt.

It is really emotional,

it is really important.

It's a huge accomplishment.

It's something that you could call it

a benchmark in your career.

Not only is the discovery a personal vindication,

it's an answer to the mystery of Ramses II's absence from Middle Egypt.

Outside of the capital

but also outside of Luxor

very few things that is known about the temples of Ramses II

and how he did these projects.

Excavating this temple will add

one more piece of information

that could link the dots of the history

of this very important king.

Next season, we will come back to the lovely colossus statue

and also the wonderful temple.

If the temple in El Ashmunein

matched the grandeur of Ramses' projects in Upper and Lower Egypt,

this could become one of the largest excavations

Egypt has seen in decades.

At Karnak Temple in Luxor...

with yet another building added to the great pharaoh's countrywide catalog

of monuments, Meredith wants to explore

why Ramses II felt the need to underline his legitimacy

with so many temples covered with divine blessings.

Ramses II built massive monuments

carved with images of him, and the gods, and his Heb Sed festival, and in many ways

this is what kings did, they built monuments.

But Ramses II, he took it to a whole new level

and built on a scale that no king did before him.

It's clear Ramses II wanted to build a legacy,

and he also wanted to show that he was the king

to end all kings.

Ramses' building projects

testify to the ambitions he held to ensure he was remembered.

But what else lay behind the extravagance?

Meredith finds evidence in an object

uncovered over 100 years ago within Karnak's walls.

This is a really lovely statue of a man named Paramessu,

and it's an image of an elite scribe.

He's sitting there with his pallet and his pen.

But Paramessu would later become Ramses I.

So, this is Ramses II's grandfather who was born an elite official,

and then who became the king.

Paramessu was a commoner...

who was the right-hand man of Pharaoh Horemheb,

and finally King of Egypt himself.

When his grandson Ramses II came to power, he had an image problem.

He wasn't of royal blood, so did everything he could

to project his power.

Ramses led aggressive military campaigns

and publicized his image as a warrior king to his people.

He hunted down inscriptions of pharaohs that came before him,

and had their names erased or hidden...

to kill off their memory and secure a legacy of his own.

It seems Ramses II had two aims:

to establish his own right to rule beyond doubt...

and to ensure that history would judge him as the most powerful of leaders.

His building program was central to both.

Ah, I like this image. It's of Ramses II

making mudbricks and building a temple,

laying the foundation.

And maybe Ramses II put this image here because to him, building was so important.

And this image shows Ramses II

not just building a temple, but building his legacy.

In 66 years on the Egyptian throne,

Ramses II transformed the desert through his giant monuments...

not just in the traditional centers of power,

but everywhere.

Today, his name features on more ancient structures

than any other pharaoh.

Ramses II wanted to show

that he was the best king ever from Ancient Egypt.

And in so many ways, it worked.

I'm here talking about Ramses II

3,000 years later, admiring all of his achievements.

And we call him Ramses the Great.