Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

Mastrelli: He was the most powerful pharaoh

Ever to rule egypt.

A battle-hardened general

Who oversaw the biggest building program since the pyramids.

He was ramesses the great,

And his crowning glory was the construction

Of a magnificent new capital city, pi-ramesses.

A city that vanished from history.

This is the hunt for the lost city of ramesses the great.

For centuries, the mysteries

Of the past have kept their secrets.

But there are clues cast in gold,

Etched in stone, written in blood.

We can unlock them.

(mysterious music)

Egypt, a land once home to a great civilization,

Whose secrets are still being uncovered 3,000 years later.

And one way we're able to uncover them is

By finding clues like cartouches.

A cartouche is a royal stamp bearing the name of a pharaoh,

Like here, tutankhamen,

The ruler of lower and upper egypt.

Cartouches etched into monuments reveal the identity

Of their builder.

And there was no greater builder

In egypt's new kingdom than ramesses the great.

So how did his prized capital

In the nile delta simply vanish?

What happened to the temples, the obelisks?

It can get pretty hot in egypt,

But not hot enough to melt stone.

The lost city of pi -ramesses is a mystery

That's confounded egyptologists for centuries.

Ramesses ii, better known as ramesses the great.

He ascended to the throne in 1279 bce

And his 67 year reign would be the longest

In the history of ancient egypt.

He would become egypt's greatest pharaoh.

And throughout the land, on every temple and statue,

Masons carved his cartouche,

The set of hieroglyphs that form his royal name.

Ramesses, beloved of the god amun.

Ramesses believed the countless statues

And inscriptions in his honor would bring him immortality.

Many of his finest monuments were said

To be at his new capital city, pi-ramesses,

The house of ramesses.

Like egypt's modern capital, cairo,

Ancient texts reveal

That pi-ramesses was a bustling metropolis,

Vibrant and full of life.

Bietak: According to the texts,

Pi-ramesses must have been a splendid city

Full of dazzling houses.

There were palaces.

There were gardens.

Pusch: The splendor of the city is described

In the most marvelous way,

Everybody was dressed in the most beautiful gowns,

Everybody wanted to live inside the city.

Mastrelli: But pi -ramesses was a city

That would become shrouded in mystery.

Because somehow, 200 years after ramesses' reign

Around 1,000 bce, this magnificent city disappeared.

The only surviving evidence

About the lost city comes from ancient texts.

Egyptologist chris naunton examines a transcript

Of the key source that was written at the time,

A papyrus manuscript known as the "hymn to pi-ramesses."

Naunton: It says something like:

Its western part was as the house of amun

And its southern part was as the house of seth.

Suggesting that these two temples dedicated

To these two crucially important gods, amun and seth,

Were at the very heart of the city.

And there's a passage here,

It seems to be suggesting that the city is

The marshaling place of the chariotry,

To use one translation.

The mustering place of the army.

This is a city that is ready to go to war.

Mastrelli: A city decorated with great temples,

Housing a powerful military garrison.

For ramesses, a proud warrior king,

It was the crowning glory of his reign.

But where was it?

Frustratingly, on the crucial subject

Of the city's location, the "hymn to pi-ramesses" is silent.

But fragments of evidence

From other sources do suggest a possible location.

Naunton: There are obscure references in various texts,

And taken all together, our best estimate would be

That the city was located on the easternmost branch

Of the river nile, in the nile delta.

Mastrelli: The nile delta is the area of northern egypt

Where the river nile splits into separate branches

Before reaching the sea.

Zeroing in on the easternmost branch

Should have been an easy task for the archeologists.

Except for one thing.

Over the millennia,

Many branches of the nile delta have silted up,

Where there used to be seven branches,

Now there are only two.

So today, the easternmost branch

Of the nile isn't where it was 3,000 years ago.

Undaunted by this riddle,

Austrian egyptologist professor manfred bietak believed

He could find the lost city

By reading into the river's past.

Bietak: Our task was to reconstruct

The historical landscape

Of the second millennium bc.

We had to search for the minute traces

Of the ancient landscape,

Particularly, the rivers of the nile delta

And the drainage systems.

Mastrelli: Bietak knew that even though

The ancient rivers had vanished,

They had left behind tell-tale features in the landscape.

Over the centuries, river sediment had formed ridges,

Which could be seen on contour maps of the area.

And from these ridges, bietak could work out

Where the lost channels of the nile delta had once flowed.

Bietak: We were able to extract

From these contour maps the main features

Of the ancient landscape.

Mastrelli: Bietak was able to map the ancient branches

Of the nile delta.

He then matched them against archeological sites known

To be from the reign of ramesses the great.

One site stood out.

Bietak: After the study of these contour maps

We were able to pinpoint pi-ramesses, here.

Mastrelli: Bietak concluded that pi-ramesses lay

Near the modern egyptian town of qantir.

This was a difficult hunch to sell colleagues on

Because at qantir, there appeared

To be nothing but empty fields.

(upbeat music)

Today, archeologist dr. Henning franzmeier is

In charge of the site.

There are so many pottery shards

From the time of ramesses the great,

That they litter the fields and paths.

Franzmeier: So here we have a piece of pottery

That is clearly from the ramesside period.

I can tell by the way it is made

And by the clay that was used for that.

Finds like this you come across in an area

Of up to 20 square kilometers,

All around the modern village of qantir,

All around this area.

In every field, you find sherds like this.

Mastrelli: The 3,000-year-old sherds are scattered

Across a vast area of eight square miles,

Revealing that the ancient settlement was much larger

Than the modern town of qantir.

And as farmers clear their fields,

New evidence is turning up, all the time.

Franzmeier: Here we have quite something.

It's a piece of limestone

But what we can see here is traces of hieroglyphs.

It's pretty much weathered

But we can really see here two hieroglyphs,

And this is the hieroglyph for the sun,

A hieroglyph that could be part of the name of ramesses ii.

Mastrelli: But if this was the site

Of the ancient capital of pi-ramesses,

As professor bietak believed, something didn't quite fit.

According to the "hymn to pi-ramesses,"

The capital city was full of awe-inspiring monuments.

And other major cities from the time of ramesses are covered

In the ruins of giant statues and temples.

But at qantir, there's just one tantalizing remnant,

In the corner of a farmer's field.

Franzmeier: So all around these fields,

Even though we have all these little finds in the ground,

We never found anything on the surface except for this.

This is a part of a statue.

The feet of a statue that stood about 33 feet tall

When it was complete, of a seated king,

Which we know because the feet are right next to each other

In this way and not in a striding position.

Here we even have the hieroglyphs

To tell us the name of the owner of this statue,

It is ramesses ii, we have here, the god amun

And here, the god ra,

And so this is (speaking in foreign language)

That is the name of ramesses ii.

Mastrelli: But where is the rest of the statue?

And, why is it the only one they've found here?

Was the site of qantir a dead end

Or could the answers lie below ground?

Mastrelli: The modern day city of qantir appears

To be an intriguing candidate

For the lost city of pi-ramesses.

It's in the right spot,

And pottery from that period litters the surrounding fields.

But, unlike other sites in egypt,

There's virtually nothing left above ground.

It was time to start digging.

(dramatic music)

The first major excavations at qantir began in 1980.

Just a few inches below the fields,

Archeologists detected the foundations of a giant building.

But what was it?

At the roemer and pelizaeus museum in germany,

Dr. Edgar pusch, who led the dig,

Is investigating precise replicas of the finds.

Pusch: One of the first objects we found

In this area was a fully functioning horse-bit,

Like this.

We found the equipment for war chariots

Or hunting chariots, two-wheeled.

We were absolutely sure we do have a chariotry

In connection with horse stables,

Housing about 460, as a minimum.

Mastrelli: Enough to pull 230

Of the 2,000 chariots ramesses was thought to command.

These stables were the largest chariot stables

Ever discovered in the eastern mediterranean.

And they exactly matched ancient descriptions

Of chariot stables at ramesses' lost city.

Ancient texts reveal that pi-ramesses,

Had been an important military base,

Built to counter a specific strategic threat.

Ramesses' empire stretched from modern sudan

In the south to syria in the north,

Where it met the might hittite empire,

Egypt's greatest rival.

At the beginning of his reign, ramesses met this threat

By moving his capital from memphis to pi-ramesses,

In the eastern nile delta.

The new city was to be a defensive bastion,

And a launch-pad for his own campaigns.

At qantir, further excavations turned up masses of weapons,

More evidence that this was an important military site

Pusch: We found arrow heads of all different kinds and shapes.

We found also within the chariotry, daggers.

Mastrelli: What they discovered next was unprecedented

In the history of egyptology.

Pusch: I detected something

Which was never excavated before at that time,

And I, myself didn't know what to make from it.

Mastrelli: Alongside more arrowheads,

They uncovered broken crucibles, charcoal and ash.

They had discovered a metal-working site, a foundry.

Pusch: It is a huge foundry

For producing bronze and casting bronze objects.

(dramatic music)

Mastrelli: Bronze was harder than any metal at the time

And ideal for making weapons.

What was so extraordinary about the bronze foundry

At qantir was that it was part

Of the biggest metal working site ever found

In the ancient world.

And would have been capable

Of turning out thousands of weapons,

For an egyptian army that may have numbered up to 100,000.

Franzmeier: We have nowhere, evidence of

Such a large installation

Of this kind anywhere in the whole middle east,

From this period to the late bronze age.

It does not exist anywhere else.

Mastrelli: Chariots, swords, arrowheads,

A giant foundry to forge bronze weapons,

All of it fits

What the ancient texts tell us about pi-ramesses.

Could the farmland of qantir be covering the remains

Of this once great city?

A ground-breaking new technology would be the key

To revealing what lay beneath these empty fields.

In 1996, dr. Pusch and his team began a magnetic scan

Of the area, to see below the soil.

Pusch: We scanned with the magnetic devices

About two square kilometers.

A magnetic scan has two major advantages.

Number one, it is non-destructive

In comparison to archeology

And number two, what you measure within one day as area,

You need a minimum from eight to 12 years for excavation.

Mastrelli: The results would astonish them all.

(people chattering) (dramatic music)

Mastrelli: At qantir in egypt,

Excavations have uncovered an important military base

From the reign of ramesses the great.

But could it be his fabled capital city, pi-ramesses,

Which disappeared 3,000 years ago?

Dr pusch and his team brought

In magnetic scanning equipment,

To look for signs of a lost city hidden beneath the soil.

The results blew them away.

The scan revealed street after street,

Building after building.

A great city lay hidden beneath the fields.

Pusch: I was jumping, I really and truly was jumping

Because we had the lay out of the buildings,

We had pits for pillars, we had walls of different sizes,

Of different lengths,

And it was just an unbelievable and incredible thing.

Mastrelli: It became the largest magnetic scan

In the history of egyptology.

And what it detected were the foundations of a major city.

Franzmeier: This city is one of the

Largest settlement sites anywhere

In the whole middle east.

We have to imagine where it is now, just flat land,

Temples and palaces, and houses for, most probably,

Tens of thousands of people.

Mastrelli: The evidence was overwhelming,

And there was only one conclusion.

This was the site of the lost city of ramesses the great.

Pusch: The hugeness of it, the finds we make,

All together make it absolutely sure

That this area is pi-ramesses.

Mastrelli: A 3000-year-old mystery had finally been solved.

But now the archeologists faced a new challenge,

To explain what had happened here,

And why there was nothing to see above ground level

Except for a giant pair of stone feet.

The answer lay not in qantir,

But 12 miles to the north in the ancient site of tanis.

200 years after the death of ramesses ii,

Tanis became the new capital of egypt,

And in need of stone, they recycled it

From neighboring and now abandoned pi-ramesses.

Oddly, two centuries after his death,

Countless monuments in this city bear the name

Of ramesses the great.

Although the magnificent super-structure

Of this city was likely shipped away,

The magnetic scan reveals that much still remains

Beneath the fields of qantir.

Pusch: Of course, this is not the complete city,

But we do have palaces, temples, villas,

Houses, streets, alleys, everything.

Mastrelli: At the city's very center is

The unmistakable outline of a giant temple.

This is the next area of interest for archeologists,

And where they plan future excavations.

Gps and the magnetic scan have already revealed

Its enormous size.

Franzmeier: So we are now in south

Of the modern village of qantir.

Here we see massive walls

Which mark the limits of a big precinct,

Of a temple or a palace.

Here in the center we have the central building

Of this temple or palace,

Which is 30 meters wide and around 100 meters long.

(suspenseful music)

Mastrelli: Dr. Franzmeier marks out the foundations

With flag poles to illustrate its scale.

Franzmeier: So we have now reached

The central part of the temple.

And, if you have a look here along this line,

Approximately where now, there is the modern houses,

That is the end, the limit of this central temple building

Which seems so tiny on the plan.

If we take into consideration, the whole precinct,

Then we end up far under the modern

And the recent buildings in the distance, all around here,

And it extends definitely for another 100 meters,

Underneath the buildings.

Mastrelli: From the magnetic scan and evidence

From other sites, it's possible

To reconstruct the great temple of pi-ramesses.

The great temple was the spectacular

Heart of pi-ramesses.

Rising around it were other temples

And a vast palace complex, where ramesses himself lived.

In its heyday, this was one of the most magnificent cities

Of ancient egypt.

And much more remains to be discovered.

And for dr. Pusch,

Helping to solve the 3,000 year-old mystery

Of ramesses' lost city still holds special significance.

Pusch: This is the highlight of my career.

We have really proved, yes, this is not just poetry,

Not just fiction, this is reality.

Mastrelli: A 50 -year investigation

Has finally revealed

How pi-ramesses, despite all its fame and glory,

Vanished from the face of the earth.

(dramatic music)

And all the credit has to go to the incredible team

That made locating this lost city their life's work.

Despite all of the breathtaking sites in egypt,

It takes a special kind of determined archeologist,

With lots of patience and perseverance,

To find what appeared to be lost to history.

It's the archeological equivalent

Of finding a needle in a stack of needles

And proving yet again,

That ancient egypt still has many secrets waiting

To be discovered.