Original subtitles

[narrator] in ancient egypt, the pyramid age has begun.

Now, a new pharaoh ascends the throne.

To hold onto power, he will marry his sister,

Conquer new territories...

-[men yelling] -[swords clanging]

...Reorganize his entire country.

[dramatic music]

The members of the royal house can't

By themselves control all this.

[narrator] and build not one but three giant pyramids.

You have to think as the architects of the engineers did.

Their life's on the line.

[narrator] the story of the pyramids is one of innovation.

It was a resurrection machine.

[narrator] mysterious rituals.

[dramatic intense music]

[salima ikram] these are things that help the deceased

Re-energize and live for eternity.

[narrator] back-breaking work...

[men screaming]

...And palace intrigue.

Unlocked the deepest secrets of the pharaohs.

[frank] every mummy is different.

You never know exactly what to expect.

[narrator] explore the lives of ancient workers

And uncover the remarkable story of egypt's old kingdom.

[darnell] not only did ancient egypt make the pyramids,

The pyramids made ancient egypt.

[echoing whoosh]

-[dramatic mysterious music] -[sand blowing]

[narrator] in the scorching egyptian desert,

A stone mountain rises almost 350 feet from the sand.

This is the red pyramid at dahshur,

Some 60 million cubic feet of rock.

It's the first flat-sided true pyramid in egypt,

The work of a powerful pharaoh called snefru.

[bright percussive mysterious music]

At the cairo museum, egyptologist salima ikram

Is investigating the greatest pyramid builder in history.

The statue of king snefru comes

From his temple at dahshur.

He's wearing the crown of upper egypt.

He was once beautifully painted.

You can still see the paint in his eyes

And the redness of his skin.

But now, barely anyone has heard of him.

Snefru, who is the person who really laid the foundations

For great pyramid building, lots of monuments,

Ideas of kingship, is all but forgotten.

-[wind blows] -[slow dramatic music]

[narrator] to solve the mystery of why snefru built

Not one but three record-breaking pyramids

And how his ambition brought cultural revolution to egypt,

We need to travel more than 4,600 years back in time.

-[dramatic music] -[gold garments jangling]

When snefru was a young boy, the largest pyramid

That exists is the step pyramid at saqqara,

The first pyramid ever built in egypt.

[soft dramatic music]

A king called djoser

Had ordered it constructed 70 years earlier,

[bird squawking in distance]

Kicking off the pyramid age in egypt

And revolutionizing the country's government

And building capabilities in the process.

-[birds chirping] -[water rushing]

The step pyramid must've made a strong impression

On the young snefru,

Compelling him to dream of an even bigger

And more beautiful pyramid for himself.

An ambitious dream, especially because snefru

Does not begin life as the heir to the throne of egypt.

[soft dramatic music]

He's thought to have been born

To a secondary wife of his father, king huni,

And he has brothers who are closer in line to the throne.

[peter der manuelian] and of course, that would lead

To some struggles for succession.

Children of one queen or one woman

Might be in competition with others.

Legitimation is a key element in kingship.

[megahed] if he's not the eldest son or he's outside

Of the dynasty or the family, he should invent a story.

He should come with something, with a reason

To tell the people that he has a right to be the king.

[echoing boom]

[narrator] history doesn't record

How an adult snefru eventually pushes aside his brothers

To ascend the throne or at what age.

[dramatic egyptian music]

But he did, and to reinforce his legitimacy,

He chooses a queen with unquestionable ancestry,

His half sister, hetepheres,

Daughter of his father and the great royal wife.

It's a clever move by snefru

Because marrying his own sister also reinforces his image

As a god in the eyes of his people.

[colleen darnell] from the very beginning

Of ancient egyptian kingship,

The king is seen as a personification

Of the falcon god, horus.

[narrator] his queen, hetepheres,

Was also believed to be divine.

[darnell] the queen, as the consort,

Is the personification of the goddess hathor.

Hathor and horus, they're both children of ra,

And so they're siblings.

And so actually having brother

And sister king and queen was not taboo at all.

[darnell] so the king and queen together are essential

To the way the egyptians presented their politics

As well as their religion.

[narrator] hetepheres will rule

Alongside snefru as a demi god.

-[soft mysterious music] -[flames flickering]

[ikram] at this time period, women had a lot more power

Than their contemporaries anywhere else in the world did,

And especially royal women.

[footsteps lightly shuffling]

We know that a lot of these women helped rule.

They were really sometimes powers behind the throne

And sometimes equal partners with their husbands.

[narrator] of course, as the king's main royal wife,

She is also expected to produce a son

Who will inherit the throne.

[couple kissing]

-[slow dramatic music] -[water rushing]

Snefru rules over a vast land split up

Into districts called nomes.

[john darnell] each district of egypt,

Each nome has its capital city,

No doubt numerous small villages

And farming communities spread around the nile valley.

[megahed] we can compare the nome with a city,

And we can compare the villages to a district in the city.

[water rushing]

[narrator] but full and ultimate power lies

With the pharaoh.

[melinda hartwig] the economy in egypt

Was very centralized,

Meaning that a lot of the goods that were farmed

Or harvested found their way into the capital.

Your average egyptian

Was living pretty subsistence wise, pretty meager.

[narrator] as taxes in the form

Of grain and goods are amassed by snefru,

He decides to funnel his vast wealth into tomb building.

-[dramatic music] -[flames whooshing]

In the royal palace, the king summons a man

That many believe to be his son.

His name is nefermaat.

Snefru appoints his son vizier,

The second-most powerful position in the country.

If we can compare an ancient egyptian vizier to nowadays,

He is a kind of a prime minister

With all ministers underneath him.

[john darnell] so snefru seems to be trying to keep

At least a lot

Of the important positions in the country

Within the control of the family.

[anthony] the reason that you would want to do this

Is so that power doesn't become spread out

And doesn't become a problem where it fractures the kingship.

-[muffled chatter] -[dramatic music]

[narrator] but with great power comes great responsibility

And nefermaat faces a daunting task.

[muffled speaking]

Snefru has commanded his son to build a pyramid tomb

That will surpass anything ever built before.

The tallest pyramid on the planet

Is djoser's six-step monument.

Snefru's will have eight steps

And be more than 100 feet higher.

[muffled speaking]

[der manuelian] you could look at this

As a bit of a competition

In pyramid building with each succeeding pharaoh trying

To outdo the predecessor.

[colleen darnell] snefru knows the bigger his pyramid,

The greater his legacy,

The longer he's going to be remembered.

What he's looking for is something new,

Exciting, bigger, better, and more perfect

Than anyone has ever created before.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] djoser's step pyramid is built at saqqara.

Snefru's pyramid will be at meidum, 40 miles to the south.

As work begins, nefermaat and his team

Must know that they have a huge challenge ahead.

-[wheelbarrow rattling] -[muffled chatter]

-[slow dramatic music] -[tools banging]

In ancient egypt, the king's son, nefermaat,

Has brought together a huge workforce

To build a pyramid tomb fit for his father.

It's a big task.

Thousands of egyptian civilians

Will be drafted into service.

-[muffled chatter] -[rock and tools banging]

[soft dramatic egyptian music]

To keep control over his people,

Snefru seeks to emphasize his role

In maintaining order and prosperity.

He changes his name to horus neb ma'at,

Meaning horace, the master of the ma'at.

Ma'at is the concept of truth or justice,

Or you might think of it as universal order or harmony.

[anthony] it is the king's most important role

On earth to maintain ma'at.

Ancient egyptians saw the world

Through this lens of order and chaos.

[megahed] the opposite of the ma'at is chaos.

If you have chaos, there is no order,

And the order that is above everything.

[john darnell] so for the king to say,

"I am the lord of ma'at,"

Means basically he wants his reign to be very even

And balance everything out properly.

-[muffled chatter] -[dramatic music]

[narrator] snefru is giving his subjects little choice.

They either obey him or risk the entire universe collapsing,

Good motivation for the thousands of citizens he compels

To work on his grand new construction project.

The ancient egyptians believed that,

By constructing a tomb for the king,

That they were enhancing the order of the cosmos itself.

So pyramid construction during the reign of snefru

Can in some ways be seen as a fulfillment of his own name,

The lord of ma'at, the lord of cosmic harmony or order.

[narrator] crucially, snefru is not the only one

Who will benefit.

[mark lehner] the point of the pyramid

Was to get the king resurrected

On the other side of death,

For him to join the stars and the gods,

And for him to take his entire community with him,

Nothing less than the entirety of egypt.

[dramatic music with choral vocals]

[hartwig] it's almost an ideological idea

That they are building something for the pharaoh

Who is a living god, and they hope, the workers,

Upon their death, that they will be part

Of the pharaoh's reconstituted kingdom in the hereafter.

[lehner] life and death for them was totally intertwined.

That's why it looks like it's they're so obsessed

With death and tombs.

[tools banging against rock]

[narrator] using the building know how

And supply chains set up by previous pharaohs,

Nefermaat's workers make fast progress.

-[tools and rocks banging] -[muffled chatter]

In just seven years, the project is nearing completion.

[dramatic music]

This is the monument that nefermaat was building,

The largest pyramid of the time, rising eight steps,

The so-called meidum pyramid.

[hartwig] when we look at the meidum pyramid today,

The first thing you'll see is you'll see the massive steps,

But then you'll also see that there's a pile of rubble

That just sits around the bottom of the pyramid.

[narrator] today, only the stone core remains standing.

It reaches 230 feet above the ground.

But when this pyramid was complete,

It was higher still, 305 feet.

During the middle ages, builders removed much

Of the collapsed exterior and reused the stones

In their own constructions.

It is literally a monumental achievement,

Seemingly the ultimate tomb for a god king.

But snefru has other ideas.

-[slow dramatic music] -[tools banging]

[hartwig] he started with meidum, and that was conceived

From the very beginning as a step pyramid.

And he works there for a bit

And decides that it's not really adequate.

[muffled speaking]

[narrator] the king sets his vizier, nefermaat,

An even greater challenge.

-[dramatic music] -[footsteps shuffling]

Snefru demands an entirely new monument,

An even bigger pyramid with smooth

And flat sides instead of steps.

It's a revolutionary idea, the first true pyramid in egypt.

[muffled speaking]

To design this second pyramid and meet his father's demands,

Nefermaat must start from scratch.

He begins by choosing a new site 30 miles north

Of his first pyramid at dahshur.

[tools banging]

This new construction site is close to the fine limestone

That nefermaat will need to create the flat outer casing.

-[muffled speaking] -[tools banging]

You have to create smooth-sided casing stones.

So this is going to be increasing yet more the amount

Of work that you have to do in the quarrying

And dressing of stones.

[narrator] but as work begins on the new site,

The team doesn't completely

Abandon snefru's original pyramid at meidum.

-[tools banging] -[muffled chatter]

[hartwig] so what they did as an insurance policy,

They go back to the first pyramid that he started building

At meidum and finish that up in case he dies.

[john darnell] so the infrastructure

That is required not just

To build two enormous monuments but to build them

Not that close one to the other really

Would be something unheard of.

[narrator] two giant pyramid building sites

At the same time.

-[muffled shouting] -[stone thuds heavily]

Snefru and nefermaat are taking on

Perhaps the biggest logistical

And engineering challenge in human history so far.

You can be pretty sure that there is a huge expense

In terms of labor, in terms of goods

That are needed to fund these particular building projects.

-[dramatic music] -[birds chirping]

[narrator] to fund his two building projects,

Snefru sets up more royal estates,

Farms dedicated to the cause.

[hartwig] royal estates

Were the ones that provided the food,

The beer, the cattle that was needed

For the workers that were building his various monuments,

But he expanded it tenfold, particularly in the nile delta.

So snefru's pyramid projects aren't just

About the stone of the pyramids themselves.

They're about the farmland and the herds of cattle

And all of the people associated with those estates.

-[muffled chatter] -[hens clucking]

[dramatic music]

[narrator] the sheer scale of the operation is too much

For the royal family to manage alone.

[der manuelian] the food and nutrition, the raw materials,

The chisels, the hammers, the limestone.

[narrator] all over the country,

Snefru drafts in new civil servants

To enforce palace orders.

[men arguing indistinctly]

[lehner] bureaucracy is increasing.

That's why the state is becoming more complicated,

And that's why the members of the royal house

Can't by themselves control all this.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] snefru will need to recruit manpower

From lower ranks, paving the way

For a new social class to emerge.

Now historians are unpacking the remarkable story

Of one individual who rose through the ranks.

[grain sifting]

It's a story that exposes the silent revolution

Taking place in egypt.

[basket lid softly rustles]

[soft dramatic music]

In ancient egypt,

Snefru's two pyramid construction projects

Are too much for the royal family to manage alone.

Now, the remarkable rise of one non-royal man

Is exposing how egypt's administration is changing.

[grain sifting]

His name is metjen.

[soft mysterious egyptian music]

Clues about metjen's life are inscribed

On the walls of his tomb discovered at saqqara

But now at the egyptian museum in berlin.

[anthony] typically,

Administrators left a list of titles

That they held when they were alive.

But with metjen, he actually fleshes out the works

From his lifetime.

[narrator] the hieroglyphs reveal that metjen was born far

From the splendor of the royal palace,

-[goat bleats] -[muffled chatter]

Probably in a village in the nile delta.

[goat bleats]

His father, a judge,

Ensures that metjen receives a good education.

He learns to read, write, and keep accounts.

We know that the ancient egyptians prized literacy.

We even have texts that say, "you shall love a writing more

Than your mother for it is the greatest of all professions."

[megahed] if you are a scribe,

It means you can get a very important position

In the state administration because reading

And writing was very rare in ancient egypt.

-[writing utensil scribbling] -[soft ethereal music]

[narrator] metjen begins by working in a supply store,

Perhaps supplying workers

At the pharaoh's construction site.

[grain sifting]

He's a tiny cog in a vast pyramid building machine

But a cog that is getting noticed by his superiors.

[muffled speaking]

Soon, the ruling elite, perhaps even a royal family member,

Promotes metjen, giving him the title of rural judge.

-[birds and insects chittering] -[tools hitting ground]

His job is to determine the boundaries

Of fields and other land,

A vital role in an economy based on agriculture.

[muffled speaking]

Once again, he stands out and gets another promotion.

Metjen becomes administrator of the city of xois,

A city in the heart of the nile delta region.

It's his first government position.

[muffled speaking]

So an individual administrator might be

In charge of several different districts,

Apparently at the same time.

[narrator] to reward the loyalty and work of people

Like metjen, snefru creates a new social class

By giving people land of their own.

The pursuit of pyramid building

Is transforming the administration of egypt.

The king is juggling now, maintaining as much control

As possible, keeping as many things as possible

Within the family, and yet, at the same time,

Inevitably trying to maintain control

Of these growing non-royal families of administrators

Who are coming to be much more powerful in the provinces.

-[muffled chatter] -[tools banging]

[narrator] the huge changes in society are mirrored

By innovation at snefru's pyramid sites.

The outside of snefru's new pyramid isn't the only feature

Undergoing a radical overhaul and design.

[dramatic music]

Snefru's vizier, nefermaat, has built the funeral chamber

Underneath the pyramid, as is tradition.

[muffled speaking]

But snefru wants something revolutionary.

He is adamant that the funeral chamber

Is built within the masonry of the pyramid itself.

[writing utensil scribbling]

He has good reason to be concerned

About the chamber's location.

Tomb raiding is rampant,

Often inside jobs by the builders themselves.

Raiders destroy mummies in their hunt

For jewelry and other treasures or amulets.

[anthony] royals knew, essentially,

That creating these large monuments

That drew attention to themselves would also

Draw attention to the goods that were buried there.

[narrator] deterring these robbers becomes a top priority.

In new kingdom egypt, a number of the tomb robbers we know

Were set to be impaled, apparently,

So it didn't necessarily go well.

-[flames whooshing] -[footsteps shuffling]

[narrator] at the time, the egyptians believed that

If a body is desecrated,

The soul would not survive in the afterlife.

[flames whooshing]

So protecting the mummy within an inaccessible vault

Would have been of critical importance to the pharaoh.

[dark dramatic music]

Snefru orders his funeral chamber hidden

In the heart of his new pyramid

And for elaborate blocking mechanisms to be built,

Protecting the passageways with giant stone blocks.

When you look at the outside of the pyramid,

You don't really think about the engineering

That was required in order to create these inner rooms,

Essentially the burial of the king.

[narrator] nefermaat must build a space that

Will withstand the weight of thousands of tons of stone.

Get it right, and he'll create a unique funeral chamber

For the king.

[blocks clatter]

Get it wrong, and the king's very survival

In the afterlife is in danger.

[soft dramatic egyptian music]

[footsteps shuffling]

In dahshur, at snefru's second pyramid,

Egyptologist vassil dobrev is investigating the secret

Behind the monument's revolutionary funeral chamber.

The entrance is high up on the pyramid's north face,

But inside, a steep passageway first plunges 300 feet down

Into the bedrock beneath the pyramid.

Then the route climbs back upwards

Until it reaches a chamber that pokes above ground level.

Vassil has reached the first chamber

That ancient builders needed to keep safe from collapse.

The room measures just 13 feet wide but 55 feet high.

[footsteps thudding]

Reaching this point is quite challenging.

We went up dozens of feet.

We went down almost 300 feet into the ground,

But here, we are at ground level.

But the problem is that the whole pyramid

Was going to be placed directly on this void,

And how do you protect that void?

How did they make sure it doesn't collapse?

And that's where they came up

With this very ingenious solution.

[mysterious music]

[narrator] the builders' solution is a corbeled ceiling,

A room where the walls gradually get closer together

As each layer of blocks is added until the sides meet

At the top, forming a vault that supports itself.

[dobrev] this chamber is the first test.

It worked, and they enlarged it.

Because they'd already planned another chamber,

Which this time would be the burial chamber

Within the body of the monument itself above ground level.

[footsteps thudding]

[narrator] the ancient engineers realized

That the wider the floor space,

The higher the corbeled ceiling needs to be.

So when they build a final chamber

Within the body of the pyramid itself,

They choose modest dimensions.

[soft percussive mysterious music]

Finally, we arrive in snefru's burial chamber.

We must not forget that there is still almost 230 feet

Of monument above this chamber.

[bats squeaking]

[narrator] the long wooden beams they use

To reinforce the room still survive today.

They are cedar wood shipped in from outside egypt.

[bats squeaking]

These beams that are placed in the four walls act

As a surrounding wall that protects the sarcophagus.

Much later in history, we have a spell,

In what is called the book of the dead,

A very well-known list of resurrection spells,

And it says very clearly, "put cedar beams in the wall,

Throw water over it,

And that's what protects you from your enemies."

And that's very interesting because that's a magic spell

That's been passed down for centuries and centuries.

In fact, maybe here is the first time it was used.

[bats squeaking]

[narrator] but despite the huge engineering

And magical effort, archaeologists now believe

That snefru's mummy wasn't laid

To rest in this revolutionary chamber,

And that could be because the second pyramid

Didn't turn out as planned.

[dark dramatic music]

The pyramid was a bit of a architectural disaster.

[narrator] as snefru's engineers build ever higher,

Cracks began to form.

You have to think, I think, as the architects,

The engineers did.

Their life's on the line.

They're building this pyramid for the body of the king,

And so they're trying and trying to cure

Whatever happens to be going on within the pyramid.

They're always looking for new ideas

To save the pyramid so that it can be used.

[narrator] nefermaat and his engineers realize

That the angle they're building at is too steep.

The added weight could cause complete collapse.

They have no choice but to scale back their ambitions

And change the angle of the pyramid sides.

[dramatic music]

[lehner] snefru starts with a pyramid of 60 degrees.

It's slipping and sliding 'cause he's building

On a natural desert surface.

And so he puts a casing or a girdle around it at 54 degrees,

But now the pyramid's getting really huge.

As he's going up at 54 degrees,

They're still having problems.

[narrator] so nefermaat decides to change

The slope of the summit.

The changing angle transforms the pyramid

Into the bent shape we see today.

It may not have been snefru's original plan,

But it was still a success of sorts.

-[muffled chatter] -[tools banging]

[dobrev] it's a change that's perfectly planned

And so well done

That the monument has lasted for millennia.

This is the first time that snefru decides

To make a smooth pyramid.

Of the 120 or so pyramids known in egypt,

It is the best preserved.

It still has almost 70% of its covering,

So even after 4,600 years,

We can still see it almost as it was then.

[dark dramatic music]

[narrator] this double sloped pyramid is set

To become the tallest man-made structure on the planet,

Exceeding snefru's meidum pyramid by almost 40 feet.

But snefru is either hungry for a new record

Or doesn't consider the bent pyramid worthy because,

Once more, he orders nefermaat to build a new pyramid.

You have to wonder what the workers thought.

Here they'd built two pyramids,

And now they're off to build a third one.

[tools banging]

[narrator] once again, nefermaat chooses

To build at dahshur, barely a mile from his bent pyramid.

And once more,

He doesn't abandon work at his previous site.

Snefru is now running three huge projects at the same time,

And he has a problem.

Egypt is running out of manpower to support the workers.

-[dramatic music] -[tools banging]

In ancient egypt, king snefru needs to find new resources

And manpower to support his three pyramid projects,

So he looks outside his kingdom.

[colleen darnell] we have hieroglyphic records

That indicate successful military campaigns

During the reign of snefru.

[narrator] snefru invades the area of modern day libya

In the west and nubia in the south

And is said to return with thousands of captives.

[muffled speaking]

[colleen darnell] I think it's a pretty good guess

That they would've been put to work

For the egyptian state in general,

Probably in an agricultural capacity

Or in some sort of estate that

Would have been adding extra economic resources

For snefru's pyramids.

By capturing foreigners,

Snefru is probably expanding his economic base,

His labor base.

[narrator] records of how these people were treated

Haven't been found, but the practice

Of bringing back manpower from conquests

Was well established.

In addition to this new workforce,

They captured 200,000 cows as well

As raw materials like copper, stone, and precious metals.

[megahed] and this adds to the wealth of the country,

And it adds to the wealth of the king himself,

And it helps him to build his pyramid faster.

[bright dramatic music]

[narrator] the new elite of his administration also benefit.

The elite people who are members

Of the royal court constructed their own tombs,

And they decorated the walls with images

Of their day-to-day life.

So we see farmers working on their estates,

People herding their cattle,

But we get these great little details of what life

Was like for a member of the nobility in ancient egypt,

Music performances, dancing performances, banquets.

We really get these details of a life of luxury.

-[people clapping rhythmically] -[cups clinking together]

[anthony] they had fine clothes, fine jewelry,

And the ability to have freedom, essentially,

Which is not something that a commoner would have.

-[drink pouring] -[people laughing and talking]

[narrator] metjen is now an important figure in the kingdom.

He has a title, "friend of the king."

-[muffled chatter] -[people clapping rhythmically]

-[women laughing] -[water sloshing]

Metjen also holds the position of head

Of the palace of the cities of the southern lake.

This is the palace inhabited

By snefru's various wives and consorts.

[soft egyptian music]

We have abundant evidence that queens had economic power

And their own estates.

So rather than thinking about a harem,

A place where queens were secluded

And had to be looked after to maintain their sexual purity,

Obviously they were expected to remain faithful to the king,

But the queen's palace was also its own economic entity.

[anthony] the women, whether they be concubines or queens,

Actually did live in a area of the palace together.

But the idea of that space is probably lot less alluring

Than the word harem indicates.

This situation is not one that is primarily sexual.

So we just have to reframe the way we think

Of the women's quarters that are connected to the palace.

[light pleasant egyptian music]

[narrator] as well as working at the palace

And enjoying its luxuries, egyptologists think

That women here were probably dedicated users of makeup.

[anthony] makeup use was very common

For the ancient egyptians

For women and men.

They put eye makeup around their eyes,

And this was a type of protection,

Both spiritually and physically.

We see it aesthetically as something that's beautiful,

But it also helped protect their eyes

From eye disease and from flies.

[soft thumping dramatic music]

[narrator] metjen's life has taken him from rural scribe

To supply clerk to friend of the king,

A radical rise to the upper-class

Powered by the pyramids.

-[dramatic music] -[tools banging]

[muffled shouting]

Back at the construction site of snefru's third pyramid,

The builders have been hard at work.

[tools banging]

18 years after they began his third pyramid,

Snefru's last great monument is complete.

Today, this pyramid is called the red pyramid of snefru,

So it's a bit strange when you see the stones

Because they are rather yellow,

But there are reddish veins like this, as you can see here.

The layer that has been deposited on them

Maybe gives a slightly reddish appearance today,

But, in fact, that's not how it appeared at the time.

If you were in snefru's time at the end

Of his reign when all this was complete,

It would have been a beautiful pyramid,

Smooth with a white coating.

[narrator] the red pyramid is the first of its kind,

The first successful move away from a step pyramid

To one with smooth and flat sides.

Like many pyramids in egypt, later builders have removed

And reused almost all the smooth casing stones

That once covered it.

-[footsteps crunching in sand] -[slow dramatic music]

This block has an angle of 43 degrees,

So this is a block from the casing of this pyramid.

Once complete, it was covered

In these white limestone blocks

That shown like the sun's rays.

That's the idea, in fact, because this pyramid acts

As a solid form of the sun's rays.

[narrator] with the red pyramid,

Snefru seems to finally be satisfied.

The completed red pyramid

Was the first smooth-sided pyramid

That really had been finished during the reign of snefru.

And that's the one that we think

That the king was actually buried in.

[anthony] snefru and his chief architect took the form

Of the step pyramid and evolved that form

Into a pure geometric pyramid,

And that's why we still remember snefru

For this moment of genius.

[hartwig] once the red pyramid was done,

You can just imagine the architects

And the engineer and the workers standing back

And taking a look at this magnificent monument.

Here they had the absolutely perfect resurrection machine

For the pharaoh for eternity.

[bright dramatic music]

[narrator] snefru's red pyramid

Beats his own record one last time.

This pyramid is even higher and wider

Than its bent neighbor.

To construct snefru's three pyramids,

Builders needed to use more

Than 120 million cubic feet of stone.

If you wanna talk about moving cubic tons of limestone,

Probably the award has to go to snefru.

It's amazing.

In fact, we couldn't believe in earlier eras

That one king could build so many pyramids.

[dark dramatic music]

[narrator] egyptologists believe snefru reigned

Between 30 and 40 years,

A lifetime during which he instigated changes

That would influence egypt for millennia.

[lehner] people focus only on the pyramids and wonder

About the challenges, but it's not just the pyramid.

We have to think about the changes that are taking place

To the egyptian economy and the egyptian society.

So egypt itself is changing

Because of the emergence of the gigantic pyramid.

Well, it was the time of snefru, the country's getting bigger.

The administration offices are getting bigger,

And it was difficult for the royal family

To keep control of everything.

[colleen darnell] snefru's pyramid projects

Changed society

Because not only do you have to create the organization

To quarry and move all the stones,

The most stone volume ever moved in ancient egypt

In a single king's reign, but you also have to put

In place the agricultural estates.

[john darnell] increasingly

In the northern part of the nile valley,

We're starting to see these new cities set up,

These big plantation complexes that are being established

To support the pyramid complexes of egypt.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] after snefru, it will be his son khufu

Who will take on the task of bringing egypt

And its pyramid-building people to new heights.

[lehner] it was in the reign of snefru

That all the research and development was worked out,

All the mistakes were made, and the corrections were devised

In order to make it possible for

Khufu to come to the throne and build the biggest

And most gigantic pyramid ever.

[dramatic music]