Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Ramses II is ancient Egypt's

most well-known pharaoh.

Thanks to his astonishingly well preserved mummy,

even his face seems familiar.

In addition to Abu Simbel,

Egypt has Ramses to thank

for dozens of temples and hundreds of statues.

He left his mark at Karnak,

and his memorial temple was described in antiquity

as "the most majestic of all".

But according to ancient texts,

the most remarkable achievement of this builder and pharaoh,

who reigned more than 3,000 years ago,

was his capital...

..Pi-Ramesses.

Built in the Nile delta,

far away from the established power centres of ancient Egypt,

this glittering megalopolis was a military stronghold

that prevented invaders from the north from entering the kingdom.

Until the 20th century,

the exact location of this city remained unknown.

Today, the remnants of ancient Pi-Ramesses are being

meticulously excavated by archaeologists

who are finally revealing the mysteries

of this renowned pharaoh's lost city.

Nowadays, nothing remains of Ramses II's mythical capital,

Pi-Ramesses. It is only through ancient descriptions

that we are able to imagine this vast and teeming city.

Built in the 13th century BCE,

it took barely 15 years to construct.

By then, tens of thousands of Egyptians lived

in a labyrinth of shops and valleys.

Then, less than two centuries after the death of Ramses,

the city was completely dismantled, stone by stone,

and used to build another city -

Tanis - another capital, for another dynasty.

Since the end of the 1980s,

teams of archaeologists have followed one another to Qantir,

where Pi-Ramesses once stood.

Today, Professor Henning Franzmeier, from Germany, leads the excavations.

He is looking for something that the ancient Egyptians left behind

when they dismantled the city.

Something ubiquitous and not considered valuable at the time...

mud bricks. These seemingly insignificant bricks

are an essential source of knowledge for archaeologists.

- So here one can really see, beautifully...

..this mud brick.

And in between the mud bricks, you have a sandy material,

and you always have little fragments

of lime or limestone in the mud bricks.

FRANCOIS LECLERE IN FRENCH:

NARRATOR: These seemingly insignificant bricks

are an essential source of knowledge for archaeologists.

Essential, but difficult to identify.

- In other eras in Egypt, it's something different, you have sand,

and you immediately see mud bricks.

But here in the Nile mud,

where the bricks are basically made out of the same material,

just maybe with a bit of sand added, straw added,

it's extremely difficult to recognise them.

NARRATOR: Fortunately, the team can rely on the experience

of the local Quftis,

who can be recognised by their traditional dress.

They all come from the same village,

Quft, in the south of the country.

FRANZMEIER: Was one of the first things, when I got this position,

my predecessor Edgar Pusch said,

"If they say there is a mud brick, there is a mud brick.

If they say there is no mud brick, there is no mud brick".

NARRATOR: For more than a century, generation to generation,

the people of Quft have been involved

in all the excavation campaigns carried out in Egypt.

A tradition, providing them with

unparalleled institutional knowledge.

HAGG HASSANI IN ARABIC:

ABU SAOUD IN OWN ARABIC:

NARRATOR: Day by day, thanks to the watchful eyes of the Quftis

and the detailed work done by the archaeologists,

the contours of Ramses the Great's lost palace

are gradually being revealed.

FRANZMEIER: So this is a type of mud brick

that we don't know so far from any other building in Qantir.

And it's really interesting because it's these...

really huge mud bricks of a size of 45

or even 50 by 25 centimetres.

And that is much bigger than what we normally have.

NARRATOR: These large bricks are very rare in Pi-Ramesses,

but common in Tanis.

Francois Leclere keeps a plaster moulding of one of these bricks

in his Parisian office.

NARRATOR: A huge monument, bordered by a very thick wall.

The presence of these bricks confirms

Henning's initial intuition,

the walls of the palace must have been enormous.

FRANZMEIER: So you need at the bottom, in the foundation,

mud bricks that are more stable, more resistant

than mud bricks for a normal building.

So this might be an explanation

for these really extraordinary mud bricks.

NARRATOR: Thanks to this discovery, Matthieu Gotz, the team architect,

can now begin a virtual reconstruction

of the palace interior.

GOTZ IN FRENCH:

NARRATOR: 3D modelling is another tool

that has become indispensable to archaeological research.

On a simple desktop computer,

archaeologists can reconstruct lost buildings

to better understand them, and bring their ideas

and questions to life.

Where were the doors located?

How did people move between the different rooms?

GOTZ IN FRENCH:

NARRATOR: Fortunately, several palaces from the 19th Dynasty -

the period of Ramses II -

have been better preserved than Pi-Ramesses,

and their ruins have been carefully studied

by generations of archaeologists.

By comparing them with the plan of Qantir's palace,

Matthieu can move ahead with his reconstruction work.

(in French)

NARRATOR: The Habu Palace, which Matthieu mentioned,

belonged to Ramses III,

who came to the throne three decades after the death of Ramses II.

But there is another palace that seems to be

even more similar in size and design to the one at Qantir.

It is the palace built in Memphis by the pharaoh, Merenptah,

the son and successor of Ramses II.

To access the palace, one first passed through

an entrance hall supported by four columns,

followed by a long open-air courtyard,

and then a second entrance hall, supported this time by 12 columns.

Behind this was the throne room.

Like the throne room in Merenptah's palace,

Ramses II's throne room was supported by six monumental columns.

Since its proportions were similar,

we can imagine that the throne was also on a pedestal,

leaning against the back wall.

From the other direction, there were two halls with 16 columns each,

which visitors had to cross to reach the pharaoh.

Beyond them, as in Memphis, a long courtyard.

Then, at the far end of the courtyard,

the other entrance to the palace.

The entire structure seems designed to impress visitors,

to overwhelm them with the sheer power of the pharaoh.

Perhaps this palace was the backdrop for Ramses the Great's diplomacy.

Perhaps this is where he even received the Hittite emissaries

who came to negotiate with him.

By 1275 BCE,

Ramses had been in power for nearly five years,

and had firmly established his authority over the kingdom.

He felt emboldened to confront Muwatalli II,

the powerful Hittite ruler.

- They have a couple of battles in the time frame of Ramses II,

but the most important one was very early,

in his years five and six, this was the Battle of Qadesh.

Because this was really a very strong fight,

for the influence in this area.

NARRATOR: In the spring, Ramses left his capital

to lead an army of 25,000 men and 2,000 chariots northward.

In early May, the Egyptian army was camped

next to the city of Qadesh in the south of present-day Syria.

It was there that the Hittite troops decided to strike.

Ramses was nearly captured.

SCHULZ: There are many, many representations,

in temples, for example, showing this battle,

and also a lot of texts.

And I think it was, for Ramses II, a moment of danger.

And if you even see the representations of this battle,

then you can see, at the back of the king,

suddenly, you have enemies.

This is something which never before and never later

was represented in ancient Egyptian temple areas.

And of course, it also shows

that his father, the god, Amun, was protecting him,

and at the end, was helping him to be the winner in this battle.

NARRATOR: With this battle, Ramses would forge his legendary identity.

Recounted on the walls of Egypt's greatest temples,

sung in epic poems,

it would cement his status as a warrior pharaoh,

a protector and a conqueror, for 3,000 years.

"His arms are strong, his heart is valiant,

and he has led his soldiers into unknown regions.

He has driven back the whole world gathered together.

No one knows what multitudes were before him,

but hundreds of thousands fainted at the sight of him."

The Battle of Qadesh was significant for another reason.

Its name was invoked in the written peace treaty

ultimately signed by the two empires,

the oldest known treaty between two states.

And, incredibly, we now have both versions of this text,

the Hittite version engraved on a clay tablet,

and the Egyptian version in hieroglyphs.

In it, the Hittite king and Ramses declare

that they are "brothers forever".

In fact, the treaty inaugurated a period of peace

that would last for several decades,

well beyond the reign of Ramses.

- It's a wonder to have, after this war,

after all this anger, after all this fight

for the influence in the near east,

a solution, which was a little bit untypical

for ancient Egypt and for the Hittites.

For world history, it's one of the most important steps forward

that between two opponents which had been in war,

there's such a peace treaty, in a written form.

NARRATOR: After the Battle of Qadesh,

it was nearly 20 years before the treaty was signed.

Twenty years of intense diplomatic negotiations,

some traces of which have been discovered in Qantir.

- We should maybe...

Ah, yeah. 2801, we should have a look at the cuneiform tablet.

That for sure would be... 2801, 2801.

OK. (chuckles)

It's always surprising how small it actually is.

There's a little bit of debate about the text,

but it seems, really, to be a royal letter.

And we have the counterparts in the Hittite capital, Hattusa,

where we have hundreds of such cuneiform clay tablets

with a kind of diplomatic exchange between the two countries.

And we know that we had in Qantir a kind of foreign office,

an office for the exchanges with foreign countries.

And after the peace treaty with the Hittites of Ramses II,

we have almost private exchange between the royal houses,

and even the queens are corresponding with each other.

And this is quite clear, that there must have been thousands of them.

But unfortunately, so far, not found.

NARRATOR: Without royal letters engraved on clay tablets,

archaeologists need to make do with bits of pottery

that are found within the palace.

Fragments that reveal another facet of life in the city of Pi-Ramesses.

FRANZMEIER: This is a fragment of a Canaanite jar,

which is the most typical transport vessel

in the whole eastern Mediterranean in the late bronze age.

And they were all made in the very same shape,

and in the eastern Mediterranean, where you find these containers,

you would have to traded faience beads, glass, resin, wine.

Commodities such as this, or also, copper from Cyprus.

Actually, this is kind of phenomenon

that one could call a kind of first globalisation.

A kind of globalisation in the eastern Mediterranean,

but also far beyond the eastern Mediterranean.

NARRATOR: Pi-Ramesses, the royal city,

was clearly a commercial centre for the ancients.

Here, all sorts of goods were exchanged,

coming from all over the known world.

As evidenced by this small piece of pottery,

recently discovered by the Quftis.

- This is already the second piece we find in this area.

So it's Mycenaean pottery, which means it's from Greece,

it's Greek pottery.

Here in Qantir we found, in the 40 years we work here,

about 350 of these jugs,

which makes it one of the largest corpora

of this pottery from all over Egypt.

Which in a way makes sense, we are here,

definitely, in a diplomatic centre,

and we are in the major trading hub with all the eastern Mediterranean.

NARRATOR: Here, representatives from different nations gathered.

The city streets must have echoed with all kinds of languages,

and myriad exotic deities were likely worshipped

under the gaze of the Egyptians.

In this cosmopolitan megalopolis,

foreigners from Greece, Africa, and the Middle East

had the right to live.

Archaeological findings even suggest that some of them integrated

into Egyptian society so well

that they became prosperous and respected.

(men chatter in Arabic)

NARRATOR: This theory is demonstrated

by the artefact contained in this box.

An artefact discovered by chance by a farmer near the excavation site.

- This is part of door post

from house, from a villa,

because big villas, big houses had door posts

with the names and the titles of the owners of the house.

This is the name of the town of Sidon,

which is nowadays in Lebanon. And here,

the name of the person, "Yapar",

and then there will be "Bahalou".

So it's a name from the Levant, from this region,

but he had a house here in Qantir.

And so we know that this person, this foreigner, really lived here.

NARRATOR: Amazingly, another fragment from this carved door

had already been discovered in Qantir, years before.

A unique piece, preserved in Hildesheim.

- First of all, the person's name,

you could find here, and he is called "Hipouba'al".

But what is even more interesting is the picture shows him

with a dress and in particular, a kind of headdress

which is unusual for ancient Egyptians at the time of Ramses II.

So what we assume is this "Hipouba'al" was

somehow being ambassador or something in Qantir for the Levant,

or some people who were doing business

with the regions of Levant,

so that he could afford such an estate.

If you can see here in the centre of the lintel,

we have the name of Ramses II,

which then established a link of the house owner

to the king himself.

NARRATOR: This lintel suggests that Pi-Ramesses was home

to a community of traders.

Foreign merchants who came to settle in the royal city,

and who supplied the Egyptians with goods

imported from all over the known world.

And who, in likelihood,

also exported the products of Egyptian craftsmen abroad.

Josefine Bar-Sagi is an archaeological student,

and the team's designer.

These small objects that she is working on

are an example of the craftsmanship found in Pi-Ramesses -

moulds for making jewellery.

BAR-SAGI: Draw it in double size, so in the end it's easier to see,

because the object is very small.

FRANZMEIER: There was a mass production here in Qantir,

in Pi-Ramesses, of these kinds of objects,

and of these so-called moulds.

We've found more than 1,500 in the course of our excavation

with all different kind of motives.

And you can see here, on the drawings that Josefine did,

other little objects, like a rosette.

Or here, a so-called "djed pillar,"

so it's often small kinds of amulets,

beads... it's jewellery, in fact, mostly.

NARRATOR: Ramses II probably chose Qantir

as the site to build his capital

because it blocked the Hittites' access to Egypt from the north east.

And it is thanks to this unusual location

that Pi-Ramesses was able to become a vital hub

for commerce and diplomacy in the Mediterranean world.

But this success would not have been possible without another asset,

an asset that all the cities of ancient Egypt enjoyed,

the Nile.

The Nile is the longest river in the world.

Nearly 6,500 kilometres, carved into this ancient landscape.

North of Cairo, it widens into a delta,

splitting into several branches, before reaching the Mediterranean.

Here, the ground is extremely flat, and the river's course

becomes erratic and changeable.

Over the centuries, it has moved repeatedly,

at times, by several kilometres.

Irene Forstner-Muller is the head

of the Austrian archaeological mission in Egypt.

For several years, she has been conducting excavations

on the site of Avaris, three kilometres southwest of Qantir.

A site once soaked by the waters of the Nile.

- This is the pelotic Nile branch,

which was, in antiquity, a huge Nile branch,

the eastern Nile branch. And this connected the splendid city

of Pi-Ramesses, with the Nile Valley, with Memphis.

Now, of course, it is very small but in antiquity,

it was more than 200 metres wide

going from here to the edge of Avaris.

This is the western edge,

and the eastern edge is two of... until two or three hundred metres

to the east. So this was really huge.

NARRATOR: This other bank, which Irene points out,

is the one where Pi-Ramesses stood.

At ground level, it is impossible to find the ancient course of the Nile.

This is an agricultural region,

and the constant working of the land has obscured its history.

But minute traces of the river's meanderings may still be here.

And it may be possible to locate them...

from the air, thanks to a photogrammetric drone.

To do this, Frank Stremke has called on a team of Egyptian drone pilots

who are familiar with this method.

They begin by setting up a relay antenna.

Synchronised with some 30 satellites,

it makes it possible to geolocate every photo taken

by the drone to the nearest square centimetre.

- We are going to be flying an area around six square kilometres

at an altitude of 440 metres.

That should give us, with the lens that we have right now,

the 55-millimetre lens, it should give us

around 5.5 centimetres per pixel, ground sampling distance.

NARRATOR: The archaeologists' goal is to map the entire area

once occupied by Pi-Ramesses,

an area of a little more than three kilometres by three kilometres.

To cover it, they will need more than 1,000 high-resolution photos.

- (camera clicks)

NARRATOR: The team does not have the computer resources

to process this huge amount of data on site,

so it will be assembled in Bremen, Germany.

That's where we catch up with Frank Stremke, a few weeks later.

- So this is the still images that were taken with the drone.

Overall, we took three flights with the drone,

and it took about a week of computing power

to process the models to a usable state.

NARRATOR: The result is an enormous map

that covers nearly the entire ancient city of Pi-Ramesses.

STREMKE: This was of most interest to us,

to see how the terrain rises and falls,

to look for the old bed of the river,

and just better understand site formation processes

and how the terrain was shaped, and how it's shaped now.

NARRATOR: To do this, Frank applies a colour filter to the image.

The lighter the colour, the higher the elevation.

STREMKE: So you can just draw a line across the model,

and then let the software gather

all the elevation information along this line.

And then I can see, basically,

the profile or a section of this... along this line here.

It runs from here, so we have the channel...

channel here, and then the village starts.

It gets a bit noisy, that's the remains from buildings,

and then we have this drop off here on the edge of the fields.

And we have plain fields,

and then we have the old river branch here.

So outside of this model, basically, here,

there must have been a Nile branch,

and there was a Nile branch here.

And Pi-Ramesses was built, probably, on an island

with additional channels going in, that's presumed,

and then...

neighbouring sides on the east bank of the river, basically.

NARRATOR: The photogrammetry carried out by Frank Stremke

confirms what the magnetic surveys already led

the archaeologists to believe.

That the city of Pi-Ramesses was indeed built

between two tributaries of the river,

on an island.

And when the river was at its highest,

ships arriving from the Mediterranean

could access the city directly.

In other words, Pi-Ramesses,

now 60 kilometres from the coast,

was probably a seaport.

LECLERE IN FRENCH:

NARRATOR: When Ramses II chose this location for his capital,

access to the sea must have been a determining factor.

However, excavations conducted three kilometres south of Pi-Ramesses

have revealed that a port already existed there at the time,

the one built 800 years earlier, for the city of Avaris.

And here's the connection,

these excavations also revealed that Pi-Ramesses extended

well beyond its central island. The city came as far as here,

its suburbs covered the ruins of the ancient city of Avaris.

The port of Avaris, therefore, was also the port of Pi-Ramesses.

The archaeologist Irene Forstner-Müller

is in charge of this site today.

- What we can say is, it's clearly a harbour.

It was used from the time of the late Middle Kingdom

until the Ramesside period.

NARRATOR: The port was located here,

on what was then the eastern bank of the Nile, south of Pi-Ramesses.

A location confirmed by numerous drillings

carried out by Austrian teams over the last 50 years.

- This is a deep-water harbour,

but this is a basin which had geological information already.

and of course, they cleaned it, et cetera.

Besides that, we can also say this is the main harbour,

but a huge town like that,

and this was one of the largest towns,

they had several small harbours and mooring places.

So you can expect harbours here, or let's say, mooring places,

small plots here, posts here,

where people land and just have access

to the different town quarters.

NARRATOR: All around the port,

magnetometry reveals the presence of huge warehouses.

Behind them, what looks like administrative buildings,

and dwellings stretching eastwards,

well beyond the banks of the river.

FORSTNER-MULLER: In this period, the sea was much nearer than nowadays,

so around 20 kilometres to the north,

you already had the beginning of the coast.

And then you had the ships coming from there,

and several channels,

so the landscape as you have now is not the landscape in ancient times.

So one of the main task of archaeologists, as we are,

is to reconstruct this ancient landscape.

So you have to imagine the town before,

there were several islands and hills and valleys,

and the people circled with the boats around.

NARRATOR: It is not yet known how far

the capital of Ramses II extended,

nor how many inhabitants lived there.

But it is obvious that this vibrant, bustling, and colourful city

attracted people and wealth like a magnet.

Today, the river flows several kilometres away from Qantir

and Tell el-Dab'a.

But the water carried by the Nile from the heart of Africa

is still nearby,

saturating the earth just two metres below the surface.

And that level rises regularly.

- (donkey brays)

NARRATOR: For several days, all around the construction site,

farmers have been digging irrigation canals

to flood their fields and sow rice.

It's an exhausting job, and they do it by hand.

This is also how their ancestors worked 3,000 years ago,

during the reign of Ramses.

For archaeologists, these irrigation works are a persistent threat.

FRANZMEIER: With the start of the irrigation in the fields,

the water was rising by at least half a metre,

and so now we try to pump out the water

to be able to finish the excavation in the other squares

without getting the water all over the squares.

Under the water, you can't go deep, of course,

and you can't see anything, and you can't make drawings,

you can't take photographs.

NARRATOR: A race against time has begun between the archaeologists

and the rising water threatening weeks' worth of excavation work.

In the foundation shafts of the columns,

the water is already eroding the walls,

which threaten to collapse.

- (in French)

NARRATOR: Caught by surprise, all the archaeologists can do

is watch the catastrophe unfold.

One of the walls of the throne room, eroded by water, begins to collapse.

But luck smiles upon them.

In the cavity left by the wall's collapse,

Henning makes an unexpected discovery.

- This piece of a vessel, it is a rim,

so it should be something that we could probably date quite well

because it's a diagnostic piece of... maybe a kind of amphora.

We have to see when we get it out.

And also to see what kind of stone this is,

it definitely has a worked surface, not a decorated one.

NARRATOR: The stone could be an important architectural feature.

Perhaps it is even engraved on its other side.

- Sometimes you really get dirty when doing archaeology.

NARRATOR: Intrigued, Henning decides to have the cavity widened.

- (speaks Arabic)

NARRATOR: This is a long and delicate process,

at this stage, it is impossible to tell how big the artefact is.

And it is important to keep rigorously documenting every step,

every detail discovered during the excavation.

Days pass,

and the end of the excavation campaign is approaching.

But nothing can be done,

the stone is large and stubbornly remains stuck in the ground.

- It's almost impossible to understand

what is really going on here,

so this is really just to get a little bit of an idea

of what we have there in order to go on next year.

But at least it shows that there is a lot down there.

NARRATOR: Henning and his team started their excavation campaign

nearly six weeks ago.

They only have a few days left before they must leave the site

and return to Europe.

It's time again to indulge in a tradition

they've established here in Qantir.

Every year, Henning invites the whole team

to a traditional Egyptian meal at the dig house.

- (in Arabic)

NARRATOR: This year's results are far from insignificant.

the team was able to confirm the presence of a pharaonic palace

at this location, and to further their ideas

about its original design.

They have collected thousands of pottery fragments,

which will be analysed over several months,

and promise to provide much more information about Pi-Ramesses.

For the campaign to be a complete success,

all they need now is a beautiful artefact...

..the ultimate reward for their many weeks of hard work.

And as is often the case on archaeological sites,

the reward eventually does come, but at the last moment:

Forty-eight hours before departure,

while digging around the large, immovable stone,

the Quftis suddenly come across something.

FRANZMEIER: No, this is an absolute exceptional piece,

I have not seen something exactly like that before.

NARRATOR: Ceramic fragments representing a human face,

on which blue pigments can still be seen.

FRANZMEIER: So we definitely also have the rim,

this is a piece of the rim, and I guess it's the same vessel.

So we might have preserved the whole top of the vessel.

It's a piece of an, obviously, very big vase

of this blue painted pottery,

which is typical for the 18th and 19th Dynasty in Egypt.

And most likely, it shows the face of the god, Bes.

NARRATOR: In Egyptian mythology,

Bes is a protective and familial god,

the only one represented with a grimacing face,

supposedly to ward off demons.

FRANZMEIER: There is a couple of them existing,

but this quality is absolutely outstanding

and I don't recall any other piece like that in any museum.

And I also think it's the finest piece of pottery found here,

in 42 years of excavation at Qantir.

NARRATOR: But there are still more surprises in store for the team.

Dozens of fragments are carefully removed by the Quftis.

With these fragments,

it should be possible to reconstitute the entire vase...

..an object nearly one metre high.

Only very significant people could have owned a piece like this.

FRANZMEIER: This kind of pottery is something that would surely relate

to temples, the elite living quarters,

palaces or tombs of the elite.

So just this shows something, and it's definitely something

that you would probably expect in a palace.

We are in a place where we definitely have to

go on excavating next year.

SCHULZ: We have had so many excavations in the acropolis,

in thumbs, in the last 200 years,

which of course had something to do that they are not in areas

where people are living today. But I think it's important

that more and more, we are looking, really,

to areas where people were living.

We want to know about the history and the battles,

but we also want to know something about the people who were involved.

Sometimes ancient Egyptian culture looks a little bit different

than 3,000 years, always the same.

I think this is absolutely not the truth

and particularly, excavating in cities is so important.

NARRATOR: After four decades of excavations,

the city of Pi-Ramesses is slowly taking shape once again,

virtually reconstructed thanks to the efforts of archaeologists.

And the emerging image is nothing like the usual cliches

of ancient Egypt.

This was a surprisingly modern megalopolis,

complete with residential districts, administrative areas,

industrial production...

..and intense commercial activity.

And towering above it all, garrisons, temples, and palaces...

..symbols of Ramses the Great's power.

It will take many more decades to uncover

all the treasures of Pi-Ramesses.

But this year, the excavation campaign is coming to an end.

Before returning to Europe,

Henning Franzmeier and his team are covering

all their excavations with earth.

Soon, these areas will be used again for agriculture,

the rice and wheat continuing to protect the secrets

of the buried city, until next year.

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