Original subtitles

Deep inside a 4,500-year-old pyramid...

We are going to try to enter inside the pyramid.

...archeologists hunt for the last resting place

of a king.

I think if my wife knows this, she will kill me.

Goodbye.

They are searching for new clues

to how these colossal tombs were created.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, my goodness.

Wow.

The pyramids,

massive tombs built for ancient kings and queens.

Over a hundred of these iconic structures

have towered over Egypt for thousands of years.

But how did they begin

and why did they evolve over time?

We follow investigators as they explore

the pioneering engineering

that crafted these enduring structures,

why the first pyramid's shapes changed in radical ways,

and how pharaohs used the awe-inspiring power of their tombs

to guarantee eternal life.

In Abusir...

archeologist Mohamed Megahed

is aiming to reach the heart of this 4,500-year-old pyramid.

It's so exciting to be working

in the great pyramid of Abusir.

The largest of 14 royal tombs originally built here,

Abusir's Great Pyramid was built just a century

after the Great Pyramids of Giza.

It dates to a little-known era of experimentation

in pyramid design,

when pharaohs tried out new materials

and construction techniques to create their dazzling tombs.

This pyramid was built for the body of King Neferirkare.

Around 4,500 years ago,

Neferirkare succeeded to the throne

after the death of his father King Sahure.

During his reign, he maintained a peaceful and prosperous Egypt

and commissioned a pyramid for his eternal rest,

a limestone core ringed with red granite.

We are going to go inside the pyramid

and to try to find its layout

and if we are lucky, we will reach

the burial chamber of the King Neferirkare.

It's a massive task.

Hundreds of stones have slumped to the ground

making the pyramid inaccessible.

Mohamed's team is already hard at work

clearing broken blocks from the entrance.

When they first came here, everything was covered.

This debris was covering the whole area.

We had to remove hundreds of stones, large stones.

It's a rare opportunity for modern archeologists like Mohamed.

No one in recorded history has ever excavated

this king's burial chamber.

On his journey to the heart of the pyramid,

Mohamed hopes to uncover hints

of how its builders engineered this colossal structure.

This is a mystery for us, and we are going to open this mystery and solve it.

Pyramids from this experimental era

aren't built to a fixed blueprint.

Passageways can lead in any direction.

But this king's burial chamber must lie beneath ground level

because of the angle of the entranceway.

This is the original floor of the descending corridor.

From this piece, we can collect many informations.

We know that it was built of white limestone,

we know that the slope of the descending corridor

was about 25 degrees.

The team carts away collapsed stone

that blocks the route.

As they clear, Mohamed spots something.

This oil lamp can help us to understand

the history of the pyramid.

This oil lamp would have lit the way

to the dark heart of the pyramid.

But it is hundreds, not thousands of years old.

It's very roughly made, I have to say cheap,

so it was used by the common people

who were coming here to cut the stones,

the stone robbers.

Tomb robbers didn't just take precious treasures.

They also stole the very materials

that pyramids were made from.

Monuments to great rulers, clad in glistening limestone,

the pyramids were built to be seen from far and wide.

But their prominence was also their downfall.

In the pyramid of Neferirkare,

limestone was not only on the outside.

It lined tunnels and chambers.

The prized stone was removed in medieval times,

robbers reusing the slabs in other monumental structures.

But without the stones supporting the weight of the pyramid,

the corridors were at risk of collapse.

The stone robbers' work means Mohamed and his team

must be extremely cautious from here on in.

The stones are very dangerous.

Two miles south at Saqqara...

Egyptologist Chris Naunton is exploring

how the original idea of the pyramid tomb was born.

This is such a special place.

It's difficult not to feel shivers when you're here.

All around me here are the burials

of no less than 11 kings of Egypt's formative age.

For many people,

this is the world's greatest royal city of the dead.

The Saqqara Necropolis extends for four miles.

Its vast size a tribute to one pioneering king.

Generations of kings chose this place for their tombs

because they wanted to be buried close

to the very first pyramid builder,

a pharaoh called Djoser.

What he built was unprecedented, magnificent,

a building on a scale

that nobody had ever experienced in Egypt before,

and it's the prototype pyramid.

The first time anyone had built anything like this size,

it's the first building in cut stone,

the first time a pharaoh had ever commissioned

anything like this as a tomb.

Djoser was the first king of a new royal dynasty

and wanted something different to be remembered by.

Chris believes that he created his step pyramid

as an innovative way to ensure his eternal life.

Prior to this, the tombs of kings,

the tombs of all elite officials,

take the form of these giant rectangular platforms,

lay over the top of burial compartments.

We call them mastabas.

What happened here, having created a platform

and there perhaps comes a moment where somebody says, hey, guys,

looks pretty solid this thing.

Why don't we see if we can go higher?

Djoser's step pyramid appears to be six mastaba tombs

stacked one on top of the other.

What we're looking at here is not just the first pyramid actually

but it-it's a, it's a kind of a great experiment

and a massive moment in Ancient Egyptian history.

Djoser aligned his tomb towards the northern stars,

always visible in the evening sky.

Their guiding light would lead the pharaoh's soul

up this great stairway

to join the gods in the heavens.

How did Djoser's experiment evolve

into the quintessential pyramids of Giza?

To investigate, Chris will have to visit

the strangest pyramid in Egypt.

Less than 200 yards from Djoser's step pyramid,

archeologist Kamil Kuraszkiewicz

wants to solve a mystery.

He's excavating this large non-royal tomb.

What will it reveal about the legacy of Egypt's first pyramid?

Starting an excavation,

basically you cannot be sure of anything.

There are always surprises.

After King Djoser had died,

hundreds of tombs sprang up in the desert around his final resting place.

Many were covered with the quintessential element

of Djoser's pyramid, the mastaba.

The plots closest to his tomb

were reserved for the highest ranking elite,

showing just how much the Egyptians revered Djoser

and his groundbreaking monument long after his death.

The step pyramid itself

was the steps leading to the sky for the king.

Everything else was built around it, close to it.

The tomb Kamil is excavating

dates to at least three centuries after Djoser's reign.

It consists of a chapel and a burial shaft

plunging deep into the bedrock.

The large size, so close to the step pyramid,

suggests this tomb was created for someone important.

But unlike others nearby, it's missing something.

Unfortunately, we don't know the names of the owners.

You can see the inscription says that

the owner was a scribe of magical protection,

a person who, for example, prepared the amulets

to protect people from evil or dangers.

Scribes were high-ranking members

of the Ancient Egyptian elite.

But unusually, this person's name has either been removed

or it was never added to the inscription.

Kamil wants to work out if there is a body

buried beneath the ground.

And if so,

will it hold any clues to the tomb owner's identity?

The team sets up a winch

to speed up the excavation of debris from the tomb's shaft.

Kamil has no idea how deep it will be.

And I wonder what we'll find at the bottom.

In Abusir...

Mohamed is trying to reach

King Neferirkare's burial chamber.

Medieval stone robbers have made the team's mission harder.

We have to clear the debris

and see if those rocks are stable enough to go underneath.

But the thieves' demolition

has exposed something of huge value for Mohamed,

the pyramid's internal architecture.

We are so happy because like this,

we know how the pyramid was constructed.

The builders began by cutting the corridor

and burial chamber into the ground.

They lined the floor and walls with fine white limestone

and rare red granite.

Covering the ceiling with more limestone slabs.

Then to resist the enormous weight

of the pyramid, they added a vaulted ceiling

of massive limestone blocks,

now visible because the robbers removed

the flat ceiling slabs beneath.

If we enter this pyramid

without having this destruction,

we will not know that above the ceiling of the corridor,

we have this vaulted ceiling dividing

all the way to the side walls.

Even among the mountains of rubble,

it's essential for archeologists

to remain vigilant for clues.

Mohamed spots something that looks different

to his expert eyes.

Wow.

Heading south of Saqqara,

Chris is exploring how and why

pharaohs transformed their tombs

from the step pyramid to the Great Pyramids of Giza

within 100 years.

When you think of pyramids,

you can instantly picture kind of perfect geometric form.

Four perfectly triangular sides,

rising to a point above a perfectly square base.

And yet the process of development,

innovation that leads to that happens super quickly,

almost, in historical terms, like in the blink of an eye.

To unravel this tomb-building revolution,

he's come to what may be the world's weirdest pyramid.

What really sets this pyramid apart

is that it's bent.

So it starts off really, really steep,

about 55 degrees to horizontal.

There's then this change about two-thirds of the way up each side

and that angle changes to 43 degrees.

It just looks a bit odd.

The pharaoh Sneferu commissioned this tomb

just 50 years after Djoser's step pyramid.

It's one of the first attempts at a smooth-sided pyramid.

But is this bent monument

really what Sneferu had in mind?

The entrance to this pyramid

lies nearly 12 meters above the desert surface.

It leads to a steep, tight, descending passage.

Deep within the pyramid,

Chris finds the sacred heart of the tomb.

Wow.

This is the burial chamber.

This is where pharaoh's body would have been placed.

It's pretty atmospheric in here.

It's almost completely silent

except for the odd squeak of a, of a bat here and there.

Chris spots evidence

that the builders were still learning on the job.

These wooden beams date from the time the pyramid was built.

They're of cedar, I think imported from Lebanon.

The builders, it seems, must have been concerned

about the structural stability of this pyramid.

These beams I think

are here to-to try and stop the forces

created by this massive weight of the stone blocks,

from crushing this chamber

and causing the whole thing to collapse in on itself.

If that's right...

then this must have been a pretty nerve-wracking place

to work.

Sneferu's architects seem to have added the bracing beams

to reinforce an unsound construction.

What exactly went wrong?

And is it the reason the exterior ended up

with its unusual bend?

In Saqqara...

200 yards from Egypt's first pyramid,

Kamil's team is progressing down the burial shaft.

As you see, it's rather noisy doing the work.

The team is keen to identify

who or what lies inside this tomb.

What can it reveal about the step pyramid's status

in Ancient Egypt?

Everything you find

during the excavation is important.

Everything tells you something.

One item of shaft debris has caught Kamil's eye.

A fragment of a pottery bowl,

a flat one, like something you could put your food on it,

like fruit perhaps, o-or meat.

But painted white which means that

it-it was purified for the soul of the deceased.

So such vessels were put on the offering table

for the deceased to come from the afterworlds

and to eat the food prepared for them.

The presence of part of an offering bowl

increases the chance this tomb contains a body.

Encouraged, the team continues to dig down.

They still have several tons of material to remove.

Now, 30 feet deep,

Kamil hopes the effort will pay off.

Perhaps in the deeper part of the shaft,

there will be... something untouched.

In Abusir...

attempting to reach King Neferirkare's burial chamber,

one chunk of rubble has caught Mohamed's attention.

When I picked it, I thought it's very weird

because it has some dark spots.

I watered it, and it's a piece of basalt.

This hunk of basalt,

a volcanic rock, is a rare and special find.

It's very interesting because the sarcophagus of the king

should be made of dark stone, usually basalt.

It's amazing, you never stop finding you know,

clues and pieces of information.

This is proof that we might have

the sarcophagus of the king inside.

Mining basalt was difficult

because it is hard and dense, and only one quarry in Egypt

had stone of high enough quality for a pharaoh.

Workers had to drag blocks seven miles through the desert

to be shipped to master craftsmen near Abusir.

Basalt was an incredibly difficult stone to work.

So exactly how a solid slab was carved into a sarcophagus

is a mystery to this day.

Complete with a lid, it would protect the pharaoh's body,

its black color securing his passage into the afterlife.

The dark color is connected with Osiris.

Osiris was the God of the afterlife,

and the king, when he join him, he should be Osiris.

It makes us feel that we are on the right track.

There are still many more meters of rubble

between the team and the king's chamber.

We are so lucky because every minute there is a change.

We found the entrance which will lead us

to the burial chamber of King Neferirkare.

But the deeper the team reaches,

the more dangerous it gets.

We have a very huge problem.

I'm very nervous.

The stone robbers have taken so much limestone from the side walls,

one giant ceiling block is at risk of collapse.

This huge white limestone is hanging.

We cannot proceed without supporting this one.

The team stops work.

They can't advance further until it's safe.

At Dahshur...

Chris is investigating the structure of Sneferu's bent pyramid.

Constructed in the century in between the step pyramid

and the Great Pyramid of Giza...

its structure can give insight

into the rapid progression of pyramid design.

As he climbs the steep passage back out,

Chris spots something.

This is really, really interesting.

Up until this point in the passageway,

all of the stones seemed quite nicely aligned,

and then here, the ceiling block looks as though it has slipped,

maybe a foot.

Pretty scary stuff.

Sneferu's bent pyramid was plagued with problems.

It started with a steep slope of 60 degrees.

But the huge weight of stone sat on unstable ground,

maybe causing the slippage visible today.

To support the structure, builders widened its base

and raised it at a shallower 54-degree angle.

But at around 45 meters high, they were again in trouble.

To save weight, they reduced the final angle to 43 degrees,

making Sneferu's pyramid one of a kind.

Despite its imperfections,

it was a major breakthrough.

The world's first smooth-sided pyramid,

paving the way for even more massive monuments.

Looking at this pyramid,

there clearly were problems,

changes of plan.

But, you know, you have to remember that the pyramid builders at this point

are almost making things up as they go along.

They've got no blueprint, there's no template.

This is still an enormously impressive structure

and if you want to create the perfect monumental building,

you just have to experiment a little along the way.

Next, Chris wants to investigate

why Sneferu was so keen on creating smoothly sloping walls

rather than the stepped sides of his predecessor.

At Saqqara...

in the shadow of the step pyramid,

Kamil's team is trying to find out

the owner of a mystery tomb.

After four days of digging, they hit the hard rock

that marks the foot of the shaft,

35 feet below ground level.

They start to excavate the side walls,

looking for a burial chamber.

Above ground, Kamil searches for clues

to help identify a possible owner.

One wall next to the shaft has a faint carving of a false door,

a gateway only the deceased's spirit can cross.

This is the false door

from the point of view of the deceased.

This is the place through which his soul came back

to feed on offerings left for him.

On the side of the false door is an inscription.

It appears to include a job title,

but there's something odd about it.

Something like the royal bodyguard.

The person listed outside

had the title of that of the scribe of magic formulas.

The relief outside is of much better quality than this here,

so it's an indication that the facade and the false door

were hewn in different periods for different persons.

There's even a possible name carved for this later arrival.

Which is Ptahhotep Ipi.

Could this royal bodyguard, Ptahhotep Ipi,

have taken over a tomb originally excavated for someone else?

The tomb is revealing more than expected.

Wow.

Come on.

So here it comes.

At Dahshur...

Chris wants to know what drove Pharaoh Sneferu

to create his smooth-sided, bent pyramid,

rather than the stepped pyramid of his predecessor.

When I entered the pyramid, I did so from the north,

but actually, there is another entrance,

but this one is not in the north face,

it's in the west face of the pyramid.

Maybe that western entrance

says something about a change in the Egyptians' beliefs.

If the north entrance is aligned to the, the pole star

which guides the king into the sky at the end of his life,

then maybe the western entrance is aligned towards the setting

of what would have been for the Egyptians

the biggest and most visible star in the sky:

the sun.

A seismic shift in religious thinking

sparked Sneferu's demand for a smoothly sloped pyramid.

The pyramid shape is no longer like

a stairway to heaven like Djoser's step pyramid.

It's a symbol of the new solar ideology.

Those straight sides mimic the shape of the sun's rays

descending down to the earth.

Before Sneferu,

the pyramids were stairways to the stars,

allowing the pharaoh to rise up to join the gods

in the night sky after his death.

But Sneferu's pyramid symbolized the pharaoh

as a living god here on Earth,

its smooth sides channeling the divine rays

of the sun god Ra.

Sneferu's bent pyramid

expressed the pharaoh's wish to embody the living sun god.

And he didn't stop there.

A mile away, he built another giant structure.

Off in the distance behind me is the red pyramid.

This was Sneferu's next great building project,

a true, straight-sided, geometric pyramid.

It's as if all that experimentation, innovation,

mistakes maybe, yes, okay, trial and error

that goes on over here in the bent pyramid

is what allowed Sneferu and his builders

eventually to accomplish the feat of a true geometric pyramid.

And Egypt's most prolific pyramid builder

continued his quest for greater glory.

Eighty yards away, Chris picks up a trail.

This is really interesting.

It's not entirely obvious,

but there's a linear feature here

running roughly from the area of the bent pyramid.

And when I brush just beneath the surface,

we can see this quite brilliant white color.

So, it's clearly some sort of route

between the Nile Valley and the pyramid here.

This trail of limestone paving

is a causeway.

It's part of an entire landscape

designed to give the pharaoh everlasting life.

Sneferu's journey to eternity

would begin at a temple beside the Nile

where priests would prepare his body and soul

for the afterlife.

When the time came, the mummy of the dead king

would be carried along the causeway,

to a grand pyramid built to protect his body,

while a smaller pyramid nearby

would hold offerings to sustain his spirit.

And there was also a chapel designed for people

to worship the great king

so his name would live on to the end of time.

This was Sneferu's grand plan,

but it's likely that his body was actually buried

in the nearby red pyramid,

perhaps because the bent pyramid wasn't perfect.

Despite this, for the Ancient Egyptians,

the bent pyramid was where Sneferu's life continued,

maybe because its sacred complex is complete.

Even 700 years after his death,

Ancient Egyptians still celebrated Sneferu's name.

For people around the world and throughout history,

pyramids are iconic because of their enormous size

and the simplicity of their shape.

But for the Egyptian kings, they become an indispensable part,

the way the king presents himself as this god on Earth,

and he retains that status for the rest of Egyptian history.

In Abusir...

Mohamed's hope to reach King Neferirkare's burial chamber

has stalled thanks to an unsupported ceiling block.

It's very dangerous, it's very stressful right now.

Mohamed has called in expert stonemasons to find a solution.

The masons recycle blocks

to shore up the 4,500-year-old structure.

The stones itself are cracking. We have to support them.

This is what he's doing now.

He's filling all the joints.

Whilst Mohamed waits,

he spots an opportunity to inspect the roof

above the blocked corridor that lies ahead.

We will try to enter from this hole

which was made by the stone robbers.

If we are lucky, we will manage to have a look.

If it's too dangerous, I have to come back.

I think if my wife knows this, she will kill me.

Goodbye.

Mohamed wants to know if the roof has collapsed

along the final stretch to the burial chamber,

dashing all his hopes.

Oh, my God, okay.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, my goodness.

Wow.

Wow.

The size of the stones is magnificent.

I never saw something like this before...

have so many of the slabs of the ceiling,

some of them in their original position.

The crucial stretch of ceiling has not one but three layers

of weight-bearing limestone blocks.

It's an incredible piece of engineering,

designed to keep the king's body intact for eternity

by withstanding the massive weight of the pyramid above.

With the unsupported block now secure,

the team gets back to work.

Now we will start carefully

removing the stones from the inside.

Turn the flashlight on.

We have power off, I don't know if it's a good sign

or a bad sign,

but I hope it's a good sign, let's see.

Despite the power cuts,

the team progresses towards the king's chamber.

I'm so excited.

In Abusir...

Mohamed and his team are trying to reach

the burial chamber of King Neferirkare.

We are lucky, the light is back.

I have to say it's not dangerous anymore,

it goes very smooth.

As they dig,

something catches the archeologist's eye.

Unlike the pure white limestone,

it has a creamy tint.

This piece of alabaster for me is very touching

because this was made specially for a king.

Alabaster is a soft, translucent stone,

perfect for carving into canopic jars

used to store vital organs during the mummification process.

The king usually is buried with four canopic jars.

This small, tiny fragment, it proves

that Neferirkare was buried with some funerary goods

which helped him to go safely in the afterlife.

We are getting closer to him.

And then Mohamed spots what he's been looking for.

Amazing.

What I see there, a large piece of granite

and it's just there.

This is part of the lintel.

This granite lintel is a crucial find.

The heavy, tough rock marks the gateway

to the king's burial chamber.

It's good news for us because it's in original position,

it's very exciting.

The lintel is cracked and needs special reinforcement.

It means it will be next season

before the burial chamber reveals its final secrets.

But Mohamed has got deeper into King Neferirkare's pyramid

than anyone on record,

shedding fresh light on how these massive monuments

were constructed during the era

when pyramid building was rapidly evolving.

I never imagined that we will reach this point.

We are beyond my estimation.

Sooner or later, we will be on the floor

of the burial chamber of the king.

At least now, we are preserving the pyramid of Neferirkare.

The wish of every Ancient Egyptian

is his name to be remembered, his tomb to be preserved

and his body to survive in the afterlife.

At the Saqqara pyramid's necropolis,

Kamil's team is digging its way towards what they hope

is the mystery tomb owner's burial place.

Doctor. Doctor.

Okay, they need, need me down.

A rare find emerges,

part of a wooden headrest for a body.

And this is very fragile.

The wood is heavily eroded, but it retains its form.

So this is the middle part of the headrest.

It had a flat base

and a curved upper part

to support the neck of the lying person.

This Ancient Egyptian equivalent of a pillow

gives hope there is a body in the burial chamber.

Kamil decides to see for himself.

I'll go down the shaft.

Here we go.

Secured by rope,

he descends the now-empty 35-foot-deep shaft.

So here is the burial chamber.

So evidently, the-the original owner

could not complete his tomb.

Unlike the carefully cut, straight, wide walls of the shaft,

the burial space is cramped and unfinished.

The original owner must have been

unable to be buried here.

Maybe not allowed to.

Maybe he was involved in

some illegal business

and that's why he was

deprived of the right to be buried.

So the tomb stood empty, not used.

If Kamil is right,

that the person for whom this tomb was built

fell from royal favor

and lost the chance of a burial at this prestigious site,

it would explain the missing name at the tomb's entrance.

But there's a burial pit,

and it is really huge.

Kamil spots something

poking up from the pit.

Legs in the corner of the burial pit,

standing upright.

It seems that the body was mummified.

So the rest of the body might be under the debris.

Kamil now has a suspicion who this body might be.

It's not the original owner

of the tomb,

the man who started building it,

but it might be Ptahhotep Ipi.

Ptahhotep Ipi is the royal bodyguard

whose name is carved on the false door.

His job would have had lower social status than the original owner.

It seems that instead of building his own tomb,

Ptahhotep Ipi took over this unfinished, vacant tomb,

gaining a rare and prestigious burial spot

right next to Djoser's step pyramid.

It may not be very impressive

at the first sight

but when it comes to information, it's amazing.

Kamil's discovery sheds light

on the step pyramid's power in Ancient Egypt.

Even hundreds of years after its construction,

when far more impressive pyramids stood not far away,

people grabbed a chance to be buried

close to the original pyramid,

keeping Djoser's memory alive

and perhaps inheriting a taste of his immortality.

I would say that I'm satisfied.

What we have already found is not what we expected,

but putting the pieces together,

we can reconstruct the past.

The awe-inspiring pyramids

are not just tombs.

They are launchpads for an eternal life.

Their incredible engineering has stood the test of time

for four and a half thousand years

and will likely last many more millennia,

giving the kings and queens who created them

a shot at the immortality they craved.