Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

[narrator] in ancient egypt,

A series of legendary pharaohs

Have built the most iconic monuments in history.

Generations of builders have toiled

On these giant pyramids.

Transforming the country and uniting its people,

In the hope of guaranteeing eternal life for their pharaoh.

But cracks in the country's unity are beginning to show.

[crowd yelling]

Increasing amounts of power

Are held in the provinces

Independent of the king.

There are like little local pharaohs all throughout egypt.

[narrator] religious transformation.

[massimiliano nuzzolo] the king would appear here on top.

To demonstrate himself as the sun god.

[narrator] climate change.

It's a perfect storm.

Everything disintegrates.

[narrator] and a weak pharaoh,

Bring the age of the pyramids to a crushing end.

[intense music]

The story of the pyramids is one of innovation.

It was a resurrection machine.

[narrator] mysterious rituals.

[salima ikram] these are things that help the deceased

Re-energize and live for eternity.

[narrator] back-breaking work

And palace intrigue.

Unlock the deepest secrets of the pharaohs.

[mohamed megahed] 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.

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

The pyramids made ancient egypt.

[ominous music]

[crowd yelling]

[narrator] 2,150 bc,

A weak and aging pharaoh reigns over egypt.

His name is pepi ii.

All over the kingdom, people are rising up,

Against a king they believe has lost the favor of the gods.

[suspenseful music]

The harvest has been poor for several years.

The people are hungry, and revolution is brewing.

Pepi ii doesn't know it,

But he will be the last pharaoh of the old kingdom.

To understand how this powerful empire began to crumble,

We must travel back to a time

300 years before pepi came to power.

To the giza plateau,

[tense mysterious music]

And the two largest pyramids in egyptian history.

Each over 450 feet tall.

They were built by the legendary pharaoh khufu,

And his son khafre.

But when khafre's son, the pharaoh menkaure,

Orders a new pyramid on the plateau,

Something has changed.

The last pyramid at giza

Is surprising for its modest proportions,

It tops out at just over 200 feet.

[mark lehner] they did go bigger and bigger,

But then with menkaure, we get a dramatic reduction.

The base area of menkaure's pyramid

Is about 1/4 the area of khufu's pyramid.

[narrator] what pushed menkaure,

A pharaoh from an illustrious lineage,

To build so small?

Why did he allow his memory to be relegated in history

By building in the shadow of his powerful predecessors?

Is that for a lack of resources? Is it a change of heart?

Does he tempt to focus on his temple construction?

[suspenseful music]

[narrator] mark lehner thinks that the bedrock of the plateau,

Known geologically as the mokattam formation,

Could hold clues.

[lehner] what's going on with menkaure?

One idea is that he's running out of space.

The pyramids are aligned on this great diagonal,

On the mokattam formation.

Menkaure's pyramid is right at the edge of the formation.

He's running out of good,

Solid foundation to build a pyramid.

That's one idea.

[narrator] that's a practical explanation.

But there's another theory that could explain

The smaller pyramid and eventual downfall of the empire.

For generations in the fourth dynasty,

You have innovations going on in architecture,

With labor, with administration,

And with the movement of materials.

There was a tremendous amount of wear and tear

On the people, on the land, on the economy.

It just simply wasn't sustainable.

By the time of menkaure,

It seems that the resources for the building of pyramids

Were almost exhausted.

[narrator] menkaure was also worried about the time he had

To build his pyramid tomb.

[lehner] you have to have the confidence of a long life

To lay out a base area

That's as large as khufu's or khafre's.

So, he may not have thought

He had that long to be on the throne.

[narrator] there is evidence that menkaure

Compensated for size with style.

Today, traces of reddish rock at the foot of the pyramid

Hint at the king's plan.

He encases the lower 1/3 of his monument

With expensive red granite.

The granite that menkaure uses in his pyramid

Probably came from as far afield

As aswan on the very southern border of egypt.

So, menkaure's pyramid is smaller,

But it also incorporates

Some much more expensive stone

To haul all the way to the giza plateau.

[narrator] the king may have planned to cover even more

Than 1/3 of his pyramid.

[ikram] and some people think that, in fact,

He was going to take this red granite

All the way to the top, which would be very unusual.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] perhaps menkaure decides that a fancy exterior

Is better use of his limited time and resources.

But even this is never finished.

Around 2,440 bc menkaure dies.

[mohamed megahed] unlike the other two kings buried in giza,

Menkaure died before finishing his pyramid.

[narrator] his son and successor, shepseskaf,

Has to complete the job in a hurry.

And he seems to have other plans.

When this new king plans a tomb for himself,

He breaks with tradition.

He builds 15 miles away from giza, in south saqqara.

And shepseskaf does not build a pyramid.

He builds a low flat tomb called a mastaba,

The shape that royal tombs were traditionally built

Before the age of the pyramids.

Shepseskaf is the last pharaoh in what modern historians

Refer to as a dynasty,

A family who pass kingship within the same bloodline.

The era of the giant pyramid builders began with djoser

At the start of the third dynasty.

It ends with shepseskaf,

The last king of the fourth dynasty.

The fourth dynasty ends

When a new family

Takes control of egypt,

And that begins with userkaf of the fifth dynasty.

[mysterious suspenseful music]

[narrator] exactly how userkaf takes control is a mystery.

We believe that king userkaf,

The founder of the fifth dynasty was not of royal blood.

[narrator] but he will make a series of choices

That will lead to the disintegration of the empire.

When userkaf comes to the throne,

Once again, kingship is rebranded.

What userkaf does on a monumental scale

Is it is essentially let everyone know

In case you didn't realize,

There are major changes afoot here.

So, "I am the proper successor.

And yet, I'm not following

In the footsteps of my predecessors."

[narrator] userkaf decides to transform the tradition

Of pyramid building.

[gentle ominous music]

He builds his tomb next to egypt's very first pyramid,

At saqqara.

But he puts little effort into it.

Today it is not much more than a ruin,

A pile of sand and rock.

But why?

What's changed?

[gentle pensive music]

Archeologist massimiliano nuzzolo

Thinks the answer is hidden under the desert sands.

At a place called abu ghurab, between saqqara and giza.

[nuzzolo] this is the sun temple of one of the rulers

Of the fifth dynasty.

And this temple was built about

A hundred years after the pyramids of giza.

There is a big change in the architecture

In the fifth dynasty, no more giant pyramids,

No more big architecture,

But a huge temple dedicated specifically

To the cult of the sun god.

And through the cult of the sun god to the cult of the king.

[suspenseful music]

[narrator] during this time period,

The sun god ra

Becomes the most important god in egypt.

The pharaoh userkaf now presents himself

As ra's one and only son.

The king's priorities have changed,

And it will have a profound effect on egypt.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] in egypt,

The first king of the fifth dynasty, userkaf,

Has thrown out tradition.

He builds a tiny pyramid,

But a grand new type of monument, a solar temple.

The fifth dynasty rulers

Didn't stop the construction of the pyramids,

But they put most of the energy, in this sun temple.

[narrator] they built them here,

At a place called abu ghurab.

[nuzzolo] it's very interesting to note that abu ghurab

Is placed in such a way to be in the middle

Between the big pyramids of giza to the north,

And the pyramids of snefru to the south.

This is, of course, not by chance.

It's intentional.

The king wanted to stand exactly

In the middle of his ancestor,

In order to be visible to them

And also to interact symbolically with them,

To demonstrate he was the legitimate successor

Of the big kings of giza and dahshur.

[narrator] this is the solar temple of a king called niuserre

Who carried on this new tradition.

It's dedicated to the worship of the sun god ra.

[tense music]

A clear example of this is this unique area of purification

Composed of these ten basins of alabaster.

The priests were pouring the water into the basin

And through this hole,

The basin was flowing on a pavement

With channels going in the east to west direction.

So, following the cycle of the sun and reenacting every day,

The nile flow because the nile is in egypt

The real source of life.

And is also associated with the energy of the sun gods.

So, sun and water together can regenerate nature.

[narrator] these purification basins

Are each carved out of a massive block of alabaster,

A rare and precious stone

Hauled here from quarries 200 miles away.

They sit at the base of the most important symbol of this temple,

An obelisk,

The ruins of which are still visible today.

[nuzzolo] so, we have to imagine this construction

As an obelisk.

But don't imagine monolithic and slender pieces of granite.

Here the obelisk was probably built of blocks of stone,

Limestone in particular.

[gentle suspenseful music]

[narrator] massimiliano has discovered a special stone

That reveals exactly what the monument once looked like.

Well, this granite block is very interesting

Because it's the only block

Where we have the original name of the temple,

That you can see here, at least in part.

The temple was called shesepibre,

This was the sound of ancient egyptian,

And it would look like something

The place of the joy over ra.

And here especially with my finger,

I can point to the hieroglyphic sign

That was indicating the original shape of the temple.

[ominous music]

[narrator] ancient builders constructed an obelisk

Some 65 feet high,

Standing in the center of a wide building

Which the king would enter during rituals.

Nowadays this monument is very damaged,

And it's open to the sun.

But you have to imagine it in the antiquity,

In the time of niuserre, we were entering a very dark space.

There is a sort of theatrical trick.

The king was entering the darkness of this corridor

And then he would have reappeared

On top of the obelisk as the new shining sun.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] massimiliano has been able to identify

The ritual path niuserre walked

During the most important ceremonies.

They took place during the winter and summer solstices

When the days were the shortest or longest of the year.

Here we have one block.

This is all that remains of the ceiling

That was once covering the inner corridor of the building.

And on this side,

We have also decoration of the original ceiling

With the starry sky.

You can still see some blue color.

So, after having climbed the obelisk,

The king would appear again here on top.

To demonstrate himself as the sun god.

And you have to imagine all people gathering downstairs

Around the altar and celebrating the new appearance

Of the sun god or the king as the sun god.

[narrator] a new temple to empower the sun cult,

Born in the fifth dynasty with niuserre's predecessor,

Userkaf.

[nuzzolo] but also, I would say,

This idea does not really come from niuserre.

The first king of the fifth dynasty, userkaf,

Put his temple just 400 meters to the south

Of this one in the same position.

So, this idea comes indeed from userkaf,

From the beginning of the fifth dynasty.

[majestic music]

[narrator] userkaf's decision to build a grand solar temple

And elevate the importance of the sun god ra,

Will transform egypt,

Just as the first pyramids had generations before.

From now on, the pharaohs will funnel resources

Into building grand solar temples.

Their pyramids will get smaller.

[gentle pensive music]

Just like userkaf, they will celebrate the sun,

The primordial source of all life.

[der manuelian] the pyramids tend to shrink in size,

But the temples get more elaborate.

More different materials, more inscriptions,

More elaboration.

[john darnell] one way to look at userkaf's constructions

Is to say that he needlessly diverted funds and work

And material from his pyramid

To a separate mortuary monument.

On the other hand, he may be responding

To certain changes in the priesthood,

In egyptian religion.

He's clearly wanting to emphasize

Certain aspects of the solar cult.

[narrator] the solar temple is a sign

Of the rising power of priests,

Who left offerings at a sun-shaped altar every day.

The walls of tombs from the time

Reveal clues about the rituals performed here.

Every morning priests expose animals

To the first rays of the sun,

Before taking them to the solar temple.

[suspenseful music]

They lead them into the inner courtyard.

This cow will be sacrificed to the sun god ra.

[dagger swishes]

The choice cuts, such as the right front leg of cattle,

Are offered to the god ra to gain his favor.

But the priests and their assistants get the rest.

The clergy of the solar cult

Will grow ever more powerful and numerous.

With the building of the sun temples,

You find another innovative type of architecture.

But this also shows the rising power of the raw priesthood

And how much that priesthood has to be fed.

[john darnell] but it's interesting that it focused

On what we might consider a

Separate but parallel solar cult

Represented by the solar monument.

So, we seem to see a kind of a trickle-down

Of the wealth and authority.

No longer is everything focused purely on the king.

[narrator] the pharaoh himself becomes increasingly isolated.

He alone is the son of ra.

To affirm his divine nature,

He devotes himself to the solar cult

And puts ever less time

Into the day to day management of his country.

In the palace,

The pharaoh will no longer meet with his court.

The king is creating a rift that will fracture the country.

[gentle majestic music]

[narrator] the pharaoh userkaf

Is becoming increasingly isolated from his people.

Now, he even denies his ruling elite

The opportunity to be buried alongside their king.

In the fifth dynasty, there is a big shift

Between the king and his subjects.

That's a big difference with the giza pyramids.

[narrator] at giza, a huge necropolis

Spreads out around the pyramids of the earlier pharaohs,

Khufu, khafre, and menkaure.

Their families and privileged members of their court

Rest for all eternity

At the side of the pharaohs they served.

Granted immortality by proxy.

All the kings of the fifth dynasty

Had a completely different idea, to be secluded

From all the other subject.

The king is standing alone in the center of this site,

To be represented as the son of the sun god.

So, seclusion, isolation,

To demonstrate that he's the only

Representative of the sun god on earth.

-[sparse tense music] -[wind billowing]

[narrator] userkaf and his successors

Claim that they alone are blessed by the sun god ra.

Ordinary people will have to look elsewhere.

[townsfolk chattering]

And they do.

And that's for this reason that in the fifth dynasty

We have also the appearance of the god osiris.

That's a very important figure of egyptian religion.

[narrator] osiris is judge of the dead,

And lord of the underworld.

Osiris appears for the first time,

In the tombs of the people buried in saqqara,

So, it seems that the king gave these people

The possibility to have a personal god,

A personal deity, osiris.

Whereas he had his own deity, the sun god.

[narrator] as userkaf and his successors

Become ever more distant from the affairs of state,

The administration of the kingdom

Is left in the hands of bureaucrats

And high-ranking civil servants,

The class created by the pyramid construction projects

Of previous kings.

When userkaf takes the throne,

He makes a conscious effort to move the power

Out of the royal family, which is where it's been

Through most of the fourth dynasty,

Mainly to circumvent rival princes.

[lehner] there are more officials,

They're not just the nearest family members of the king.

Now there's a professional bureaucracy.

And so, the interesting thing is

The bureaucracy in the state is expanding,

Just as the pyramids are decreasing.

[flora anthony] during userkaf's reign,

He starts to spread out

His power amongst

Officials by marrying out his daughters

To officials

That were the elite

Within the ancient egyptian society.

I don't think he thinks about the long-term ramifications

Of this strategy politically.

-[tense music] -[townsfolk chattering]

[narrator] by ceding power and status to local officials

The king is becoming less relevant

To the ordinary people of egypt.

The change initiated by userkaf

Will create a seismic shift in power,

[suspenseful music]

One that egyptologists have exposed by examining the tomb

Of a powerful bureaucrat called mereruka.

This man was given the job of vizier by king teti,

The founder of the sixth dynasty,

Who let mereruka marry his daughter.

Mereruka has a mastaba tomb

Located a stone's throw

From teti's pyramid at saqqara.

And inside the tomb are reliefs

That tell us so much about what mereruka's life was like.

[narrator] it offers a unique glimpse into the lives

Of the court elite at the time.

Including his favorite hobbies.

Hunting.

Fishing in the marshes.

And relaxing with his wife, princess sesheshet.

She plays the harp for him

And joins him for a board game called senet.

[colleen darnell] these are the sorts of details

That really give a richness

To our understanding of life in ancient egypt.

We even have the lyrics of the songs

That the women were singing.

[narrator] life seems sweet,

But there is also evidence of a brutal authoritarian state.

On one of the walls of mereruka's tomb,

Engravers carved scenes depicting what happens

To anyone who breaks the law.

[tense music]

A local chief is accused of not paying mereruka

The pharaoh's tax.

He is said to have hidden part of his village's harvest.

A bold move.

[megahed] this scene is unique because it tells us

That the power of the country is declining.

Before that time, people couldn't do this.

[narrator] scribes record the offense

And the punishment in their archives.

-[suspenseful music] -[group chattering]

The administrator of the district

Orders him to be escorted to a public area.

Then, tied to a pole in full view of everyone,

He receives his sentence.

-[cane thudding] -[man grunting]

A caning.

The tomb inscriptions reveal

A rising new tension in the country.

It's divided into administrative regions called nomes,

Each with their own symbol.

There are 22 along the nile in upper egypt,

And about 20 more in lower egypt,

Dotted through the delta region.

The capital at memphis is no longer in total control.

Really beginning in the fifth dynasty

And picking up pace in the sixth,

We started to see that the complexity

Of the local administration must be growing,

And it's necessary now to have an official per district

And that person probably needs to be spending

A fair amount of their time in that district.

[der manuelian] if these officials start to focus

On just their own region, just their own province,

Then they become what's called a nomarch,

A sort of governor of a region or a precinct

Or a district or a nome.

And then why are they as interested

In supporting the pharaoh and the state?

[colleen darnell] if your family was already in charge,

Then that same family would continue to hold power.

And what this means is that

Increasing amounts of political and economic power

Are held in the provinces

Independent of the king.

[lehner] there are like little local pharaohs

All throughout egypt.

Those officials began building their own monumental tombs,

Starting in the next dynasty.

Whole family tombs appear in the provinces.

[people chattering]

[cups clinking]

[narrator] the growing power of these civil servants

Begins to threaten the monarchy.

You find various types of decrees that give evidence

That pharaoh is having to give up various control,

Over certain estates or individuals,

And inabilities to tax them.

And so that means that some of the provinces

Are getting more powerful.

So that may have actually decreased pharaoh's wealth.

At least it distributed it more widely.

[people chattering]

[narrator] from the fifth dynasty,

The pharaohs increasingly lose

Their superiority in the nomes.

The future of egypt as a unified kingdom is now at risk.

[gentle music]

In ancient egypt, the pyramid of the fifth dynasty king unas

Hides evidence of a growing unease among royalty.

Underground, the king covered his burial chamber's walls

In mysterious writing.

They are now known as the pyramid texts.

[hartwig] these are texts that

Decorated the king's burial chamber

That give instructions and recitations to the king

To make his journey into the next world

Where he'll become one of the gods

Of the circumpolar northern stars.

[der manuelian] they are a set of spells

Designed to help the king

Join with the heavens, join with the gods,

Defeat bothersome and threatening enemies,

And the orientation and layout on the various rooms

Are significant as well.

[man chants] ho, unas!

The messengers of your ka come to you,

The messengers of your father come to you,

The messengers of ra come to you.

[narrator] words that ensure the pharaoh's immortality.

Written down for the first time.

[der manuelian] the very first example is

At the end of dynasty five,

The last king of dynasty five, king unas at saqqara.

At giza the three pyramids are not inscribed,

So we don't have pyramid texts there.

[narrator] the later pharaohs may be aware

That they are losing their grip on the kingdom,

And cannot rely on future generations to know these spells

Or perform them.

Perhaps one of the reasons that the pyramid texts

Are inscribed insides the pyramid.

Perhaps the kings were worried that their rituals

And the offerings will not be given in the temples.

[ominous music]

[narrator] no rituals, no eternal life.

[der manuelian] they start as pyramid texts for royalty,

They morph or evolve into a coffin texts

In the middle kingdom, available to non-royals as well.

And by the new kingdom, they're called the book of the dead.

So, all of these are a collection of spells

Meant to guarantee a successful afterlife for the deceased.

[narrator] the kings must ensure

That they can survive in the afterlife,

But also maintain control and unity of their kingdom

In the real world.

A challenge for pharaohs whose influence decreases

The further from their capital of memphis they go.

-[gentle pensive music] -[waves lapping]

[birds cawing]

A recent and remarkable discovery

Gives evidence of the dramatic shift.

The find was made in the south of egypt,

In the region of aswan.

During antiquity, this was the first nome of upper egypt

And the furthest from the capital.

It was known as the nome of the countries of the arc.

[camel groans]

On this rocky hill on the west bank of the nile,

Facing aswan, a german-egyptian team is excavating an area

That has never been investigated before.

Friederike seyfried is the director

Of the egyptological museum in berlin.

She has spent four years excavating the tomb

Of a local dignitary,

The ruler, or nomarch of this area.

-[tense music] -[workers chattering]

We are at the region called qubbet el-hawa north,

And what you see here is

A very large ancient staircase,

Because the funeral is coming

From the river nile so they are proceeding

The steps upwards

To the entrance of the tomb.

Which is a tomb of the late sixth dynasty,

Belonging to a certain person named khunis.

Khunis was of course a privileged person

Because only a privileged person could afford

To have a rock-cut tomb of such a size.

They wanted to have a tomb which marked their position

And you want to show your richness and your property.

This is something which is, of course,

Impressive for everybody.

[dramatic music]

The quality of the rock is poor

But having such a view,

Over the river nile, is so beautiful

That you will accept the bad rock.

[door creaking]

[suspenseful music]

[narrator] egyptologists discovered this tomb

After the events of the arab spring in 2014,

During which some locals looked for antiquities to sell.

The tomb raiders unearthed the burial chamber,

Which had remained sealed for more than 4,000 years.

The first thing what you see are two pillars,

Left and right through the entrance,

And both pillars were decorated.

And you see a small servant

Having an incense burner in his hand.

Incense is still something for purification.

That one is bringing something to drink, yeah?

This is typical of a beer jar.

Because you have to drink and eat in the netherworld.

It is fantastic to see that you have these two servants

Coming directly inside the tomb

And giving the offerings for khunis

Who should be buried of course in the burial chamber here.

[narrator] in this room,

Archeologists found a few small bones.

The looters had taken everything else.

So, you have the second row of pillars here.

You have here the depiction of the tomb owner.

[solemn music]

Here you have the title, khunis.

So, he was the sealer of the king,

He was a friend at the courtyard,

And he was a priest.

He was really a distinguished person

Of the elite of the late old kingdom.

[gentle tense music]

[narrator] the tomb is a perfect illustration

Of the changing power structure in egypt.

It reveals that khunis was styling himself

As a regional pharaoh in his own right.

If you are wealthy enough to build up such a tomb,

You are really a person of the elite.

It is something which shows

The richness of the people here.

[suspenseful music]

There are many tombs in egypt which are not decorated,

Which have no inscriptions.

And when we came in for us it was fantastic

To see these depictions and a relief on the wall

And the name,

At least the name of the tomb owner.

So, this was really fantastic for us.

-[tense music] -[camel groans]

[narrator] but this tomb would be amongst the last of its kind.

In the capital of memphis 500 miles away,

A young pharaoh ascends the throne of egypt.

[dramatic music]

This is pepi ii,

And under his rule, egypt's old kingdom

Will finally collapse.

[narrator] in ancient egypt,

Around 2,216 bc,

Pepi ii is crowned king.

[mysterious upbeat music]

He is only six years old.

He will rule egypt longer than any other king before.

Too long as history will show.

When the king reaches 36 years of age,

He seeks to solidify his power with a symbolic gesture.

[collen darnell] after 30 years on the throne,

A king celebrated the jubilee festival,

Literally called the heb sed or the festival of the tail.

And what the jubilee festival meant

Was a renewal of kingship.

So, after 30 years on the throne,

Pepi ii would have renewed his kingship

By celebrating the jubilee.

[der manuelian] this was a kind of recharge

The batteries celebration where the king demonstrate

The fact that he deserves to stay on the throne.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] several physical and symbolic events

Make up this ritual,

Which traditionally takes place in the courtyard

Next to egypt's very first pyramid at saqqara.

In one, the king runs around a marker

Four times in one direction and four in another,

To take symbolic possession of his kingdom.

[majestic music]

[arrow whooshing]

During another ritual test,

Pepi ii must prove his archery skills

In front of his entire court.

He shoots arrows in the direction of the cardinal points

To symbolically show his command over the universe.

[arrow whooshing]

[crowd applauding]

At the time of his first heb sed festival

The pharaoh is still young and in good shape.

But as time goes by,

The monarch begins to show signs of weakness.

Every three years he undertakes another festival,

Inadvertently showcasing his decline.

Egyptologists think that pepi ii reigned for at least 63 years.

[gentle music]

-[arrow thudding] -[arrow clattering]

-[arrow thudding] -[arrow clattering]

It must be clear to pepi's people

That he's no longer in control.

And a catastrophe is about to add to the king's problems.

[colleen darnell] towards the end of the reign of pepi ii

There seemed to be a series of low nile floods

And when there was less of a flood,

There would also be less agricultural production.

So, a series of low nile floods would result in scarcer food

And a greater strain of any food

That had been stored.

[tense music]

[megahed] for an ordinary ancient egyptian,

The king is everything.

He is a living god.

He's a representative of all the gods.

So, it means if there are no flood,

It means the king is responsible.

The king is responsible to bring the water every year.

[ominous music]

-[man yells] -[stick thuds]

[hartwig] it's a perfect storm.

You have massive famine going on in the country.

You have a lessened power

Of the pharaonic state.

The king has succession problems,

Pepi ii simply lived too long.

And on top of that,

You have a separation between the king and his officials.

[narrator] ordinary egyptians believed

That the gods had abandoned the pharaoh.

-[men yelling] -[fists thudding]

The nomarchs in the provinces

Took this as an opportunity to secede from the kingdom.

You've relied on the system of a powerful king

Who redistributes taxes through grain

And food across the country

In times of incredible stress, such as a drought.

And you don't have that resource anymore.

So, having a system

That's fragmented and broken

And no centralized government is highly problematic.

And so, what happens?

Everything disintegrates

And they end up in a civil war

With small little kinglets fighting among themselves.

And the king, once so powerful during the great pyramid age,

Has vanished into the shadows.

[gentle music]

[narrator] today, pepi ii is known as the pharaoh

Responsible for the end of the first golden age

Of egyptian civilization.

The era we now call the old kingdom

Or the pyramid age.

But pyramids themselves didn't completely disappear.

[lehner] they started building pyramids again

In the middle kingdom but they are less well known.

Now they're building pyramids a little out of stone

But mostly out of mud brick.

They carried on into late antiquity, of course, in nubia,

So pyramids had a long run.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] the fragmentation of the country

And the end of the old kingdom

Did not spell the end of egyptian civilization.

A few centuries after the reign of pepi ii,

Egypt will reinvent itself.

New pharaohs will unite the territories

Of the north and the south.

They will reconstruct the state

And reweave a common identity.

These new pharaohs will rely on the incredible advances

Made by their forbearers.

They will use the engineering skills

And organizational structure that built the pyramids.

It's the legacy of the pyramids

That will rebuild egypt itself.

[theme music plays]