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Original subtitles

Male narrator: The ancient pyramids of the pharaohs...

were they built as merely colossal burial tombs?

The pyramids are an enormous feat of engineering.

Narrator: Or was their real purpose not of this Earth?

The pyramid is this cosmic engine on the grandest scale.

Narrator: Were these mounds of stone designed as transport

ships to carry a pharaoh's soul and all his riches deep into the

- heavens? - The pharaoh was thought to

- travel among those stars. Narrator: - What might hold the

ultimate secrets about how and why they were built?

Those kinds of shafts, with specific stellar destinies, do

not exist anywhere else except in the Great Pyramid.

Narrator: From the searing sands of Egypt to the brilliant

beacons deep within our galaxy, we embark on a journey to

finally unlock an age-old mystery.

Are the ancient pyramids of Giza connected to the universe?

Ancient mysteries shrouded in the shadows of time.

Now, can they finally be solved by looking to the heavens?

The truth is up there, hidden among the stars...

in a place we call... the universe.

Sync and corrections by n17t01 www.addic7ed.com

The ancient pyramids of Giza, mystical stacks of stone that

loom above the desert sands of Egypt.

These astonishing feats of engineering continue to inspire

awe and wonder. They also hold one of mankind's

oldest secrets. Could they be cosmic links

between Earth and the unknown universe above?

Basically what you're seeing with the pyramids is this cosmic

engines on the grandest scale, so by getting the king resurrected in this pyramid, in

this cosmic engine, you basically ensure the survival

- into the netherworld. Narrator: - All we know for

certain is that these elusive monuments once entombed the

great pharaohs who reigned during Egypt's fourth dynasty

4,500 years ago.

The Great Pyramid, the largest of the three, is one of the

Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

It's built for the pharaoh Khufu, the most powerful ruler

of the old kingdom. The second largest is made for

his son, Khafre, and the smallest for his grandson,

Menkaure. For 4,000 years, the great

pyramid is the tallest man-made structure on Earth.

Built from over 2 million blocks of stone, the iconic

structure covers an area of seven city blocks.

The finished masterpiece is originally coated with

glistening white limestone and topped with a gold-covered

capstone. What drove this ancient

civilization to create such grand burial tombs?

Or were they burial tombs? Is it possible that the pyramids

of Giza have a more profound purpose?

The pyramids were first and foremost a burial place because

they held the body of the pharaoh in a sarcophagus, but

it's also a symbolic way to help the soul of the pharaoh to get

- to his final destination. Narrator: - Were the pyramids

built as cosmic engines to beam the pharaohs to the hereafter,

and where in the universe did the Egyptians believe this life

beyond the grave existed?

The burial remains and treasures once sealed in these tombs are

plundered within years of their completion, and no written

documents exist about their construction.

No blueprints have survived. To decode these mysteries,

egyptologists consult the sky for answers.

To the Ancient Egyptians, the sky was incredibly important.

Perhaps you can imagine in a world without electricity, where

there's no light pollution at night the stars are very clear.

You can see the milky way, so it's like a world up there that

is very much present and very much observed.

Narrator: Cryptic clues about the pyramid's connection to the

sky can be found within the pyramid texts, a series of

funeral rituals and spells inscribed on the walls of a

later tomb from the fifth dynasty.

The pyramid texts come about in the late fifth dynasty,

perhaps 150, 200 years after the fourth dynasty, but we can guess

that those texts reflect what was important to their ancestors

- as well. - These spiritual texts

describe the pharaoh going forth into the northern sky and living

among the "Imperishable Ones." These are the circumpolar stars

that never rise or set below the horizon.

After death, a pharaoh's soul is destined to live among these

eternal beacons that symbolize immortal gods.

When the pharaoh died, he was regarded as the emissary of the

gods, going to the sky, being transformed into a celestial

being to participate in the same activities of the cosmic order

that the sky was already carrying forward.

Narrator: But how do the pyramids enable the pharaohs and

their entombed treasures to ascend deep into the universe?

- [Indistinct chatter] - When archeologists begin

excavating on the Giza plateau they make a startling discovery.

The sides of all three pyramids face the four cardinal

directions, north-south and east-west, with extreme

accuracy. What's more, the entrance of

each pyramid faces due north with masterful precision, within

1/10 of a degree. Are these near-perfect

proportions a coincidence, or calculated?

- And for what purpose? - Here we are at the Giza

plateau, at least a model of it, and you see the three Giza

pyramids. Khufu's pyramid, the largest

one, Khafre's pyramid, slightly smaller, and then Menkaure's

pyramid's the smallest one of all.

The one thing they all have in common is that they have their

- entrance on the north side. Narrator: - The north-facing

door of each pyramid opens to a long passageway that descends

down to a burial chamber where the pharaoh was once entombed.

Each one resembles a giant telescope pointed towards the

northern sky. Are the northern doors and

passageways designed to be cosmic portals to the stars?

It's often called the descending passage, but from the

spirit's point of view, it's the ascending passage.

Because it's pointing north, it points to the circumpolar stars.

One of the analogies for the afterlife is that the spirit

joins with the imperishable stars.

What that means, of course, is that the spirit, because it's no

longer physical, will not die again.

It's imperishable, and we can only speculate that this was

perhaps the original idea behind the pyramids of the third and

- the fourth dynasty. Narrator: - The Ancient

Egyptians don't have GPS or even a compass.

So how do they astronomically align the massive passageways

- due north with such precision? - There are a couple of ways to

find true north. One is to watch the stars at night and look at particular

those stars that never set but just seem to circle one point in

the sky. That point is directly over the

North Pole. That's because the Earth spins

in its orbit and the North Pole always points to a single spot.

The North Celestial Pole is the point in the sky that all

the stars rotate around, so even the ancient peoples, they had an

idea that there was a point in the sky that was fixed, that

- everything moved around it. - Ancient Egyptians could've

looked generally toward the north and watched as stars

circle around, and by estimating the center of the circular

motions they could've determined where north is.

Narrator: Once pinpointing the North Celestial Pole, the

Ancient Egyptians could have constructed a descending

passageway towards that northern direction in the sky and then

built the rest of the pyramid on top of it.

The pole star method is a good candidate for how the

Ancient Egyptians would have aligned the descending

- passageway. Narrator: - The passageways of

the pyramids were orientated with sheer precision to the

north in the direction of the imperishable, circumpolar stars.

But did these astronomical alignments imbue them with the

power to propel the pharaohs' soul to live among their stellar

gods of the universe?

Narrator: The pyramids of Giza hold the secrets of an

ancient culture that thrived over 4,500 years ago.

Are these colossal tombs designed to transport the

pharaohs and all their worldly riches to a new home deep in the

universe? And if so, what powers these cosmic machines?

For the Egyptians, life after death was crucial, and the

motion of the pharaoh into the sky to take his rightful place

among the stars in the northern part of the sky was part of

their religion and one of the main functions of the pyramid.

Narrator: To understand how the Ancient Egyptians could

conceive of such a journey we look to the internal design of

the Great Pyramid.

It contains a system of hidden corridors and rooms.

At the heart of the structure is the king's chamber.

It contains an empty sarcophagus, which once held the

- remains of the pharaoh Khufu. - In this sarcophagus, the

pharaoh's body was put to rest, right on the center axis of the

- pyramid that protected it. Narrator: - The pharaoh's body

is also protected through mummification, a process that

involves removing the internal organs and then drying out the

corpse. Once all the moisture is gone,

the body is wrapped in linens. After the deceased decomposes,

the mummified skeleton acts as a substitute corpse, symbolically

preserving the pharaoh's life force, or Ka, so it can join

with the pharaoh's soul, or Ba.

This is important because if the pyramid is a cosmic engine,

the mummy is kind of the core of the battery.

By mummification you brought back together, at the anchor of

- the mummy, the Ba and the Ka. Narrator: - The unification of

the Ba and Ka in the mummified corpse may be what the Ancient

Egyptians believed ignited the cosmic fuel needed to beam a

pharaoh's soul to the afterlife amongst the stars.

That makes sense of why it's important to get the king not

only mummified but also ensuring the deceased relative is set up

- in the afterlife. Narrator: - But is the

descending passageway the mystical vault to the stars?

Or does the Great Pyramid possess other celestial portals?

And just where in the universe might they transport the

pharaoh? On the north and south walls of

the king's chamber are two peculiar shafts.

They penetrate all the way through the pyramid to the

outside. At first, they are thought to be

some sort of ancient ventilation system, or even an illumination

- feature. - There were already

suggestions that they were meant to light the burial chamber when

a certain star passed overhead at a certain time of year.

Narrator: Astronomers begin to study the direction of these

shafts more closely to see if they're aimed at specific points

in the sky. If the pyramids were

intentionally aligned with the heavens, the north star would be

a likely target for the shafts. But it turns out they don't line

up with the north star at all, except that what we call the

North Star today, Polaris, wasn't the North Star for the

Egyptians. This is because stars move about

through time due to a phenomenon called precession.

I can explain precession on Earth with this toy top.

As we spin the top it's like the Earth spinning on its axis.

You can see there is a slight wobble, which is the same thing

as the precession that we see of Earth's spin axis.

Earth's axis of rotation slowly rotates.

It precesses with a period of 26,000 years.

So it points to different locations in the sky at

different times over this 26,000-year cycle.

And we can essentially go back in time and determine where in

the sky it was pointing at a given time.

Narrator: 4,500 years ago, when the pyramids were built,

the North Star was not Polaris but Thuban, and the northern

shaft would have pointed right at it.

The southern shaft pointed near the brightest stars in the

constellation of Orion. Could this mean that rather than

the pharaoh's pathway to the stars these shafts were merely

designed to make the pyramid a gigantic observatory?

There have been very romantic notions about the Great Pyramid

being used as an observatory to observe those stars from deep

inside the pyramid. This is really kind of silly

when you think about it. You can just as easily observe those stars outside.

You don't need to go into a pyramid just to look at them.

Narrator: Upon closer inspection, it's discovered that

the shafts slightly bend at either end so no stars can be

seen directly through them. Egyptologists then begin to

wonder whether the shafts were built for a ritualistic rather

- than practical purpose. - The shafts, as far as we can

tell, are conduits for the king's vital force, for his

soul, his Ba, to go to those places for resurrection.

They are magical shafts. That's why it's so important to

connect them cosmically to the circumpolar stars, to Orion, to

connect the pyramid to the cardinal directions, because

they did think they are indeed connecting to the cosmos.

Those kinds of shafts, with specific stellar destinies, do

not exist anywhere else except in the Great Pyramid.

That suggests, of course, that somebody in designing and

building the Great Pyramid got an idea that this would be a new

and perhaps particularly effective embellishment for the

- pharaoh. Narrator: - And the shafts

would transport more than just the pharaoh's spirit to the

stars. They'd also carry along all the

mortal comforts of Egyptian royalty.

Within tombs have been found the entire household possessions

of the pharaoh, not only personal items, such as the

pharaoh's organs and grooming necessities, but any number of

treasures that would help add comfort and elegance to the

- pharaoh's afterlife. Narrator: - An even bigger

mystery surrounds the shafts. Why are they pointed to the

northern and southern skies? The northern shaft was directed

towards the star Thuban, an imperishable star, representing

eternal life, but the southern shaft is equally significant.

It once pointed to three stars in the Belt of Orion, a

constellation associated with the god Osiris.

Osiris was the god of the afterlife.

He presided over the seasons, the cycle of life and death.

So he was one of the most important figures in all of the

Egyptian pantheon. The pyramid points toward the

culmination of that constellation in the sky and

this connects the pyramid with the sky in a very important way.

Narrator: Reliefs in later Egyptian burial tombs depict a

pharaoh's soul being released to Orion, where it becomes a living

star. There, the pharaoh's spirit

joins Osiris, who symbolizes the cycle of birth, life, death, and resurrection.

Osiris is the principle that brings a plant to life from a

seed and, once the plant dies, allows its seeds to produce new

life and so forth. Does the same thing with

deceased people, whose spirits enter the tomb at night, go into

the mummy, join with the power of Osiris, and receive from that

power the ability to come to life again in the morning.

Narrator: Another startling discovery is made in the queen's

chamber. The queen wasn't entombed there,

but it contains two unfinished shafts.

Its southern shaft once pointed towards the star Sirius, who

represents the goddess Isis, and consort of Osiris.

Could there be a deeper connection to Orion?

What secrets could this constellation reveal about the

Great Pyramid and its connection to the universe?

Narrator: The ancient pyramids of Giza, mesmerizing

monuments built for ancient kings.

Yet their true function is lost to time.

Are they magical stairways to a celestial hereafter, or is there

an even deeper meaning behind their cosmically inspired

design? Perhaps more proof can be found

by looking at the pyramids from above.

Aerial images reveal that the two larger pyramids form a

45-degree angle. However, the smallest pyramid is

slightly offset from the other two.

You see, the three Giza pyramids seemed to be aligned.

But if you follow the line you see that you sort of bump into

Menkaure's pyramid. It's quite off the main line of

- the other two pyramids. Narrator: - Why would the

ancient architects build the pyramids in such a way when each

structure is accurately aligned with only a tiny margin of

error? Some believe the answers can be

found in the southern shaft of the king's chamber, located in

the Great Pyramid. It once pointed to the three

belt stars in the constellation Orion.

The stars form a diagonal line, with the smallest star slightly

offset. They bear a striking resemblance

to the layout of the pyramids. So were the pyramids of Giza

built to honor the three belt stars of Orion?

The basic idea's that the three pyramids are mapped on the

ground to represent the three stars in the belt of Orion.

You can imagine yourself as up above the sky looking down on

the Earth, as if you could get outside the stars, as the

ancients imagined it, and project those stars right down

- to the ground. Narrator: - But there's a

serious problem with this theory.

In the Belt of Orion, the northernmost star is the

smallest one, whereas on the Giza plateau, the northernmost

- pyramid is the largest one. - Here's the problem.

To make it match the pyramids you have to map the

constellation upside down, and we have no reason to think that

the Egyptians, or anyone else for that matter, would do such a

thing. So we know that directions

mattered to the Egyptians, and therefore making a

contradiction with the mapping just doesn't make sense.

That's an interesting hypothesis.

It sort of depends on how you look at Orion.

The belt stars align if you look at it one way and don't align if

you look at it another way, so we don't really know whether

- it's correct. Narrator: - And the

less-than-perfect diagonal lineup of the pyramids may have

more to do with geography and geology than cosmic inspiration.

You should keep in mind that the Giza plateau doesn't really

look like this nice sandy surface.

It actually had a lot of quarries.

Those giant pyramids were basically built from the

limestone of the plateau on which they are standing, so it

might well be that there's also very practical purposes why

Menkaure's pyramid is a little bit off line.

Narrator: Still, the stars in the night sky would certainly

have been important markers to the Ancient Egyptians.

But the most important star is the one they could only see

during the day-- the Sun.

Throughout Egyptian mythology beliefs change over time and

gods fall in and out of favor. By the fourth dynasty, the

Egyptians begin to exhibit a strong religious devotion to the

Sun. At the time, the Sun is viewed

as a powerful, mysterious ball of light that arches across the

sky each day and disappears each night.

They of course did not know what the Sun was.

You can see it going across the sky and setting in the west.

Where does it go? They had no idea where it went

at night. They could only speculate that

somehow it traveled beneath the Earth, and when it set it died.

Narrator: The Ancient Egyptians think their pharaohs

also experience death and rebirth like the rising and

- setting Sun. - The idea is that the spirit,

when the person has died, has somehow gone to sleep and needs

to wake up again every morning. And after this happens the

spirit makes its way through the tomb, just as the Sun finally

- emerges at dawn. Narrator: - Could the Ancient

Egyptians' belief in resurrection explain why all

three pyramids are built on the west bank of the Nile river?

These pyramids have a whole system linked to that east-west

orientation. The Sun comes up in the east.

That's the new life. It then goes over and sets in

the west, and that's where the pyramids are.

So the setting Sun represents death.

Narrator: Perhaps the pyramids transport the pharaohs

to the Sun rather than the nighttime stars.

The geometric shape of a pyramid is often viewed as a solar

symbol. Its steeped-sloped sides are

compared to the Sun's rays, which act as ramps to the

heavens. Even its former white veneer is

interpreted as a mirror reflecting sunlight.

One thing that is clear, they chose white tura limestone to

clad these pyramids for a reason.

This bright, white, gleaming pyramid right up above you is

meant to be the Sun reflecting down on you, like the king being

projected up by this machine. So the symbolism was there.

Narrator: So is the Sun the key to solving the ancient

mystery of the pyramids? New evidence suggests they're

more than cosmically energized tombs in a desert graveyard.

They might be part of a mysterious solar cult.

Narrator: After 4,500 years, the ancient pyramids of Giza

remain shrouded in mystery and intrigue.

Were these massive mounds of stone built to transport the

pharaohs to live among the northern, circumpolar stars deep

in space, or was the real destination closer to home...

The Sun? The passageways leading from the

burial chambers of the pyramids appear to have been deliberately

oriented in the direction of the northern stars.

Yet the geometric shape and geographic location

of these tombs suggest a solar influence.

The Giza pyramids not only have this northern direction,

which is really important because that is where the soul

of the king leaves the pyramids to join the circumpolar stars,

but they also have an east-west orientation and that is related

to the solar circle. So the Sun comes up in the

east, goes overhead, goes under in the west, and in the west is

- where the pharaoh is buried. Narrator: - Do the pyramids

possess a spiritual connection to the nighttime stars or the

Sun? The Giza plateau reveals some of

its coveted secrets when observing it from above.

The southeast corners of the three pyramids form a diagonal

line in the direction of the sacred site of Heliopolis.

Today it's buried beneath the bustling city of Cairo, but it

was once home to a solar cult that worships the Sun god, Ra.

I think it would be a bit radical to suggest that three

generations of pyramid builders at Giza were following a master

plan. But certainly Khafre could have

adjusted his pyramid to Khufu's, and so Menkaure his

pyramid with respect to Khafre's.

Narrator: The diagonal direction of the pyramids

toward Heliopolis raises new questions.

Were these sacred tombs devoted to a cult of the Sun?

I think that the alignment on the Giza plateau is related to

the Sun god Ra because there seems to be a clear link to

Heliopolis. So that really suggests a solar

link, rather than a celestial or stellar link.

Narrator: Perhaps a more convincing discovery is found at

the base of the pyramids. The east-west sides of each

burial tomb are more precisely aligned with the cardinal

directions than the north-south sides.

This suggests that the Ancient Egyptians might have used the

rising and setting positions of the Sun, rather than the North

- Star, to align the pyramids. - Ancient Egyptians could have

used the Sun to determine the direction of north by looking at

a shadow, similar to the idea of a sundial.

As the Sun is rising in the east, a sundial casts a long

shadow pointing generally to the west.

As the Sun rises and traverses its journey across the sky, the

position of that shadow changes and the shadow actually shortens

with time. When the shadow is the shortest,

- it's pointing north. Narrator: - Engineer Glen Fash

has built a solar "gnomon," a vertical rod that acts like a

giant shaft on a sundial. He wants to test how the Ancient

Egyptians might have used the Sun's shadow to accurately align

the bases, or casings, of the pyramids.

The solar gnomon method is basically the same method that

we teach the Boys and Girl Scouts.

It's as simple as could be. You take a rod and you stick it

into the ground, and you watch the shadow produced by the Sun

- over the course of the day. Narrator: - The Sun's shadow is

projected from the gnomon, or vertical rod onto a small wooden

block resting on a platform. The experiment is performed near

the summer solstice when the Sun achieves its maximum elevation

angle, and therefore casts a sharp shadow.

We watch the shadow every minute or so.

We center the shadow in the crosshairs, it's on the angled

block, and we mark it on the paper.

Once it's projected from the block, at that particular moment

we get a line across the paper that's called a "declination

line," and that's the pattern that the Sun makes as it moves

across the sky over the course of the day.

Here we go. Let's see how we did.

At the end of the day you take a piece of string, you draw a

circle around the rod, and that circle is gonna intercept the

declination line at two points. Those two points lie exactly

east-west, so you can draw an east-west line.

Perpendicular to that is north-south.

Narrator: The experiment works.

Dash is able to find true north within 1/20 of a degree using

- this primitive solar method. - I think other people will

come to the conclusion fairly quickly that the Sun played a

major role in pyramid alignments and may have been

the method of choice for aligning the casings of the

- pyramids. Narrator: - But could there be

a deeper relationship between these remarkably accurate solar

alignments and the fate of the pharaohs buried in the pyramids?

Two ancient ships are excavated from elongated pits discovered

around the Great Pyramid. One is a 142-foot-long cedar

vessel with 12 oars. The exact function of these

royal boats is unknown. Are they funeral barges to

carry the mummified king along the Nile river to the pyramids,

or might these boats serve a symbolic purpose, a

transportation system to carry the pharaoh to an afterlife in

- the distant universe? - In Egypt, if you wanted to

get from one side of the river to the other you needed a

ferryman, and they imagined the same thing in the afterlife for

the spirit, to persuade the ferrymen in the next world to

ferry the spirit to the other side.

Narrator: The Ancient Egyptians believe the dead

traverse through dangerous waters to reach their eternal

destination in the sky. At night, the deceased pharaoh

accompanies the Sun god Ra in his boat through the perilous

underworld, between sunset and sunrise.

Night in Ancient Egypt is a very dangerous time, and they

can imagine the same thing for the spirit proceeding through

the night of its death into the morning of its afterlife.

Narrator: The royal boats as well as the shape, location, and

alignment of the pyramids all point to the influence of a Sun

cult on the Giza plateau. But the pyramids' true

connection to the universe might be found elsewhere on the Giza

plateau, behind the mysterious face of the Great Sphinx.

Narrator: The ancient pyramids of Giza.

Are they merely physical tombs, or spiritual vehicles that

propel the pharaohs to an afterlife in the distant sky?

The alignments of passageways and shafts indicate a connection

to the nighttime stars, while the shape and diagonal placement

of the pyramids, as well as the excavation of solar boats, show

a devotion to the Sun. Yet recent archeological

evidence indicates another imposing feature of the Giza

plateau might hold the ultimate secrets of these mysterious

monuments. In front of the pyramids is the

Sphinx, a gigantic lion sculpture bearing a human head.

Taller than a six-story building, the half-human,

half-beast is one of the largest and most famous statues in the world.

The Ancient Egyptians made the Sphinx right out of the

natural rock by quarrying around it and leaving a core from which

they carved the lion body and the pharaoh's head.

Narrator: For thousands of years, the crouching lion

baffles egyptologists. No inscriptions are found on the

sculpture that reveal when it was built or for what purpose.

But within ancient cultures, the lion is a Sun symbol and a human

head on an animal often signifies royal intelligence and power.

There is this idea of the king on a lion's body

representing the power of kingship in relation to both the

celestial and solar theology. The Sphinx protects the cosmos.

The Sphinx protects the order of the entire world.

Narrator: Unraveling the meaning behind the Sphinx

requires examining its eroded face.

Who is this human-headed lion? The statue lies at the base of a

long causeway leading to the second largest pyramid that

entombed the pharaoh Khafre. But does the monumental

sculpture bear the likeness of Khafre or his father Khufu?

I see some possibility that the Sphinx actually could be a

kind of monumental gatepost at the major entrance up to the

Giza plateau over three generations.

Maybe it was begun in Khufu's reign.

Narrator: During the spring and fall equinox, a remarkable

solar phenomenon occurs on the Giza plateau.

As the Sun passes over the top of the Sphinx, it rests directly

between the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre, creating an Akhet,

the Sun symbol of Ancient Egypt. Perhaps the Sphinx is the

guardian of the horizon, protecting the pharaohs as they

follow the path of the Sun over the horizon and into the

afterlife amongst the northern stars.

It seems more than coincidence that they took the

Sphinx and its temple and they moved them like that so you'd

get that alignment, that the Sun sets midway between the Khufu

and the Khafre pyramids. There's very good evidence that

the Sun cult, as we call it, was becoming very important during

- this time. Narrator: - So what can we

conclude about the real purpose for the building of the ancient

pyramids? With the information collected

to date, it is well within reason to consider that the

iconic monuments are designed to launch the pharaohs to the sky,

where they dwell among both the Sun and northern stars.

The Egyptian idea of the afterlife is really cool.

They imagined traveling in the daylight with the Sun on his

boat across the sky, and at night joining with the

- imperishable stars. Narrator: - For the Ancient

Egyptians, the practice of astronomy went beyond myth.

Both the stars and the Sun may have even guided them in their

masterful creation of the pyramids themselves.

They may have aligned the pyramid itself and the tomb

chamber, using the Sun, for the east-west orientation, where

the descending passageway was specifically designed to get

the spirit of the king to the imperishable ones, and that

would have required a celestial alignment.

So it makes sense from a spiritual point of view that

they would have aligned the casings of the pyramid with the

Sun but the descending passageway with the stars.

Narrator: By looking at how astronomy is used to help build

these monuments, we are given a rare glimpse into an ancient

culture that is highly civilized, where astronomy,

architecture, and religion are woven together a one,

a society that is keenly aware of the universe

and its importance to life on Earth,

and their belief in the hereafter.

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