NARRATOR:
The Great Pyramid. One of the most studied
ancient riddles on earth. Yet, questions still remain. There were tens of thousands
of people here building the pyramids. Where's their settlement? NARRATOR:
Six million tons of stone shaped and transported
over 30 years to build an eternal tomb with a sacred purpose. SALIMA IKRAM:
In creating this
magnificent monument, they were going to have
access to the afterlife. NARRATOR:
Now, stunning new discoveries are revealing lost secrets
about the structure. MARK LEHNER:
There's another void, and that void exists right
through this granite wall. NARRATOR:
About those who created it... They actually called
themselves the elite. NARRATOR:
And about how their king mobilized
a proud and willing nation. IKRAM:
Like the space program, there was a sense of national
pride and achievement NARRATOR:
To overcome monumental
disasters... LEHNER:
They're trying again and again
and again until they get it right. NARRATOR:
And achieve the greatest feat of precision engineering of the ancient world. GLEN DASH:
It's perfectly level. It's a remarkable achievement. NARRATOR:
This is how the Great Pyramid united a nation... that would become
one of the greatest civilizations of antiquity. LEHNER:
I think not about how the
Egyptians built the pyramid, I think more about how
the pyramids built Egypt. NARRATOR:
"Decoding the Great Pyramid," right now, on "NOVA." ♪ ♪ Major funding for "NOVA"
is provided by the following: ANNOUNCER:
As an American-based supplier to the construction industry, Carlisle is committed to
developing a diverse workplace that supports
our employees' advancement into the next generation
of leaders, from the manufacturing floor
to the front office. Learn more at Carlisle.com. NARRATOR:
The ancient Egyptians left an indelible mark
on human civilization-- building awe-inspiring
monuments, temples, and tombs; demonstrating remarkably precise
engineering, all to honor their pharaohs
as living gods. Many were crowning achievements
of the Old Kingdom, the first great
flowering of Egyptian art that began 4,500 years ago. The pyramids of Giza stand as enduring
and mysterious relics... Massive structures raised to ensure the afterlives
of three all-powerful pharaohs: Menkaure, Khafre... and Khufu, the pharaoh who built
the oldest and the biggest pyramid of all, the Great Pyramid... The last surviving wonder
of the ancient world. IKRAM:
The Great Pyramid is a testament to
ancient Egyptians' ingenuity, acumen, and technical
and scientific prowess. DASH:
The Great Pyramid is
absolutely elegant and marvelous,
even by standards today. NARRATOR:
How did the Egyptians engineer this enormous monument
with such extreme precision, using only
the most basic of tools and brute human power? (hammers chiseling) Who were
the thousands of laborers who toiled for decades on
this massive project? And how did building
the Great Pyramid transform ancient Egypt? Now, after decades
of intense research, experts have
uncovered a wealth of new evidence
about the construction of the Great Pyramid. LEHNER:
From archaeology,
from ancient texts and even from understanding
the engineering of the pyramid, the people of the pyramid
are coming back to life for us. NARRATOR:
When it comes to telling
the story of the pyramids, it's never been easy to separate
fact from fantasy. The silent enigma
of the pyramids can be like a blank canvas,
ready to accept the latest outlandish theory
about its builders. Such theories drew
a young would-be archaeologist to Egypt in the 1970s. LEHNER:
I came with so-called
New Age ideas about the pyramids,
believing that they had something to say about the lost continent
of Atlantis and so on. And when I encountered
bedrock reality at the Giza Plateau,
it didn't add up to those ideas. NARRATOR:
Now, after four decades
of investigation, Mark Lehner
has become one of the world's leading authorities
on the Giza Pyramids. His work has focused
on illuminating the lives of the workers. From sifting through
an ancient garbage dump... (inaudible conversation) ...to excavating
a highly ordered city that housed the laborers. He's found evidence of a massive effort
that transformed the Old Kingdom. LEHNER:
I think not about how the Egyptians
built the pyramid, I think more about how
the pyramids built Egypt. NARRATOR:
The pharaoh Khufu ordered
the construction of this engineering marvel as a monument and tomb
for all eternity. And yet, we know very little
about the man himself. IKRAM:
This tiny statue is the image
of the man who made one of the largest buildings
of the ancient world. It's extraordinary that
someone who has left us the Great Pyramid,
which is still standing nearly 5,000 years
after it was built, we still don't have
that much of the man himself. NARRATOR:
For thousands of years, the only record of
how Khufu built the pyramid came from the world's first
historian, Herodotus, who wrote a history of Egypt
in around 450 B.C. It describes Khufu as
a wicked and selfish king. Perhaps not
a very reliable account, considering Khufu had been
dead for 2,000 years. Herodotus wrote about
the Great Pyramid as, of course, who wouldn't? Because he came here as a historian
and a tourist. He also, of course,
like any good tourist, listened to what
the various tour guides said, and some of them were not
very complimentary about Khufu. And they accused him of being a terrible, mean king. NARRATOR:
Herodotus's account
provided Hollywood with a box-office-ready story: that Khufu brutally enslaved his laborers to build
his grand monument. ♪ ♪ (hammering) Egyptologists
like Mark Lehner believe this story
is too simplistic. But to reach
a deeper understanding, Mark first had to shift
his perspective. I realized I had to
turn my back to the pyramids to
properly understand them, because to properly
understand them, you need to know about
the people who built them, their civilization,
their society. There were tens of thousands
of people here building the pyramids. Where's their settlement? And that led us to look to
the far south southeast. NARRATOR:
In the 1990s,
Mark collaborated with renowned Egyptian
archaeologist Zahi Hawass, on a remarkable discovery. Just south of
the Great Pyramid, and on the edge
of modern day Cairo, they uncovered the footprint
of an ancient lost city-- the remains of streets,
barrack-like buildings, bakeries,
storage facilities, even what looked like
guard houses gradually emerged
from the sand. Pottery
and other artifacts dated it to the Fourth Dynasty
45 centuries ago, the time the
pyramids at Giza were built. Mark estimates
that long galleries resembling dormitories
could have housed more than 2,000 people. And they were just part of a much larger city that
now lies under modern-day Cairo. The whole thing looks like
an early version of institutional buildings like our hospitals,
schools, prisons. NARRATOR:
Mark has recently investigated a huge ancient Egyptian
garbage pit on the edge of the lost city. Is that the surface
of Kromer's excavation? NARRATOR:
This garbage dump,
originally excavated by Austrian archaeologist
Karl Kromer, is now being
intensively re-examined by Mark Lehner's team. So here is the gravel
that's left behind, even after we sieve. Now most archaeological
projects, I daresay, just throw this away,
they're done with it. But we couldn't do that, because we saw that it's
full of information. NARRATOR:
It may appear to be
just a pile of sand, but it has revealed unique insights into
the everyday lives of the people
who lived and worked on the Giza Plateau. (indistinct chatter) LEHNER:
We're getting quantities and quantities of pottery. Even this clean sand is showing all
this kind of material, the objects of everyday life. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Pottery and clay seals suggests that this debris comes from an earlier period
of the lost city, dating back to the time that Khufu was building
the Great Pyramid. This vast collection of
new finds from both the dump and years of excavations
at the lost city is being processed
at the team's labs, situated in the shadow
of the pyramids. CLAIRE MALLESON:
In this storage space, we have all of the artifacts,
all of the material culture that's come from
the excavations. And it is probably
millions of items. We've listed hundreds
and thousands of flint tools, we have dozens and dozens of large stone pounders. We have broken seal impressions
from sealing and opening and closing boxes and doors. We have metal-working waste
from probably resharpening and reworking copper tools. NARRATOR:
Among the finds is evidence that some of
the Great Pyramid's workers were highly skilled. MALLESON:
It takes a particular knowledge and skill to make a blade
like this. This may well have been
used for scraping things. It's also possibly used
as a cutting tool. So, there almost certainly would have been
specialized workers providing tools for the workers who were
building the pyramids. So it's a complete network, everything fits
together like this. If you haven't got
the craftsmen to create the tools
to provide the people who are going to
build the pyramids, the whole system
falls apart. NARRATOR:
Other discoveries revealed there were
thousands of bakeries, indicating the
mass production of food. MALLESON:
We have bread molds, and this is the
largest size we have, and this is part
of the evidence that they're
doing things on a really massive
industrial scale, because this would have
fed six or seven men, just the bread made
in this one mold. NARRATOR:
Archaeologist Richard Redding estimates that enough
cattle, sheep, and goats were
regularly slaughtered to feed thousands, providing a diet much better
than slave rations. REDDING:
So, they're getting
a lot of food, but they're requiring,
their bodies are requiring a lot of protein,
they're working very hard. They're moving rocks,
they work from sunrise to sunset,
and we estimate they were getting almost
300 grams a day, between 200 and 300
grams a day of meat, which is about,
probably a Big Mac or a quarter pounder
with cheese. NARRATOR:
It's a far cry from the vision in
popular imagination of an army of unskilled, disposable,
and malnourished slaves. IKRAM:
The public thinks that slaves made the pyramids, and
it's very annoying because they were
well looked after, because there's
no point in having a workforce that can't work. So really, it was in
the interest of Khufu to have a happy, well-fed, well-organized,
and healthy workforce. NARRATOR:
But if they weren't slaves,
who were they? Egyptologists
believe there was a readily available workforce. And they weren't
all full-time builders. Most were farmers, working the fertile banks
of the River Nile. LEHNER:
They would plant in
late November, December. The crops would grow, and then just about
when it started getting warm in
the springtime, they would harvest. (thunder crashes) NARRATOR:
But for three to four
months of the year, that rural activity
had to stop. Seasonal rains high up in the Ethiopian
and Nubian highlands flowed into
the branches of the Nile, swelling the river and swamping
the surrounding farmland. LEHNER:
Every year, the annual Nile flood turned the Nile valley and
the delta into one big lake. NARRATOR:
Normal agricultural life
during the flood season became impossible. IKRAM:
So, for four months of the year, the land is flooded. And what are your
peasants going to do? Probably they'd
go down to the tavern and have a drink
or two or more and start criticizing
the government. NARRATOR:
The floods gave Khufu a predictable source
of seasonal labor. They get fed,
they get cared for they get some payment. They also feel involved, and there's a sense
of national pride. So in a way, building
a pyramid is a smart move. NARRATOR:
The artifacts unearthed
suggest that while many laborers took on heavy-lifting jobs,
thousands more were involved in
other ways. We've got estimates
that suggest that there were more people
involved in raising the food to feed
the pyramid builders than were here actually
working on the pyramids. So, the... I think
I've got an estimate of over 1,500 individuals directly involved in
raising sheep, over another 500 directly
involved in raising cattle. That's 2,000 people. You can add them to what... the feeding... the raising
of wheat and barley to make the bread. NARRATOR:
Mark estimates that along the length of the Nile,
over 20,000 people played a role
in the supply chain that ended at
the construction site on the Giza Plateau. Building the Great Pyramid
must have had a dramatic effect on these
one-million-plus people living in the Nile valley
at that time. NARRATOR:
Adjusting for population,
it would be the equivalent of almost
ten million modern-day Americans recruited to work
on a single project. IKRAM:
I think that certainly there are
state projects where people try to get this feeling, a sense of national pride
and achievement. So, you know when the U.S.
had its space program, there was a sense of national
pride and achievement, even if not every individual
was involved in it. NARRATOR:
Mark Lehner believes the evidence that the workforce
was well-organized, cared for, and skilled
makes sense, considering
the audacious scale and precision of
the construction project. But although the Great Pyramid is the biggest pyramid
ever built, it wasn't the first. It was based on
80 years of trial and error by Khufu's predecessors. The first Egyptian pyramid
was a stepped structure built by the architect Imhotep for the burial
of the pharaoh Djoser around 2560 BC. It consisted of six tiers,
rising to almost 200 feet. Then, around two decades later,
came Khufu's father, the pharaoh Sneferu, his likeness now preserved
in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. He launched a campaign of
pyramid building on an unprecedented scale. Sneferu was the most prodigious
pyramid builder of all time. NARRATOR:
He built three great monuments, known as the Meidum Pyramid, the Bent Pyramid, and the Red Pyramid. In building those
three giant pyramids, he basically did all
the research and development that led to the perfection of the Great Pyramid
of Khufu at Giza. NARRATOR:
But as he began building the first true
smooth-sided pyramid, Sneferu ran into trouble. The Bent Pyramid
is named after the abrupt bend in
the angle of its sides. They made the slope too steep, and the structure kept
threatening to collapse. So, twice, they changed their plan and
reduced it to a safer angle. They're trying again
and again and again, they're doing successive drafts
until they get it right. NARRATOR:
The lessons learned during
Sneferu's building campaign would eventually lead
to the Great Pyramid. IKRAM:
Khufu took what Snefru did to the next level, but certainly
without Snefru's work, Khufu would not have
been able to achieve such a stupendous monument. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Everything about the
Great Pyramid is exceptional. Even by modern standards,
it's an engineering phenomenon. The precision of its planning began before a single stone
was laid on site. Its base is a
near-perfect square, each side measuring 756 feet, covering an area the size of seven Manhattan blocks. It's as tall as
a modern 44-story building, and it weighs
some six million tons. DASH:
When the tourists come here, inevitably they take a look
at the Great Pyramid and they look up,
and they look up with awe. From an engineering
point of view, when you come to
a place like this, you look down. Because the clues of
how they built the pyramid are written in stone
on a scale of acres here. NARRATOR:
Although it is 4,500 years old, it was built with
astonishing accuracy. At the base of the monument, engineer Glen Dash
finds evidence that the foundations
were meticulously prepared before construction began. DASH:
We're now standing on the bedrock, and originally,
the bedrock sloped at a six-degree angle from the northwest
to the southeast. They carved all of that way. NARRATOR:
With only simple tools,
the ancient engineers carved an almost perfectly level,
flat foundation into the sloping Giza Plateau. But that still wasn't
good enough to build the perfect pyramid. They would lay out
on the bedrock a platform. The platform itself
is one of the miracles of the pyramids. NARRATOR:
Despite its
unassuming appearance, this stone platform
is one of the pyramid's most impressive and critical
engineering marvels. It's perfectly level
over its entire periphery, almost a kilometer, to
within plus or minus one inch. That was one of the keys: the perfectly flat
perfect platform to build the perfect pyramid. NARRATOR:
Dash's survey reveals that the base and sides
of the pyramid are aligned to the north,
south, east, and west to within a fraction
of a degree. But, in a time before
the invention of the magnetic compass, how could the architects
have laid out the square base of
the pyramid accurately? Glen has a theory. You simply take a stick and you stick it in the ground. The stick doesn't
have to be straight, it doesn't have to
be vertical. You just have to
do the test on either the spring
or the fall equinox. NARRATOR:
The equinoxes are the two days each year
that fall midway between midsummer
and midwinter. And ancient Egyptian
sky watchers would have noticed
that on those days, the sun rose and set
directly east-west, casting a near-perfect
west-east shadow line as it passed. Glen argues that by marking the tip of that shadow
as it moved-- with stones, for example-- the architects could lay out
an accurate east-to-west line. DASH:
If you do that, you get the kind of accuracy
that the Egyptians achieved when they
aligned their pyramids, one tenth of one degree. It's a remarkable achievement. NARRATOR:
But why put so much effort into aligning the pyramid
so accurately? Like every aspect
of its design, the orientation of the pyramid
had symbolic significance. It mirrored the pharaoh's
own supernatural alignment with the sun god Ra. The afterlife of the pharaoh was modeled on the
afterlife of the sun. So, it was the similarity
between the life cycle and resurrection of the sun and the life cycle and
resurrection of the king that leads us to
believe the pyramid was primarily
a solar monument. NARRATOR:
The birth and death
of the sun each day was at the heart of ancient
Egyptian religion. If burial rites were
performed correctly, the sun and Osiris, the god of life, would merge with the
king's soul to be reborn. According to Egyptologist Salima Ikram,
each evening, the sun and the king's soul
traveled together to the underworld. IKRAM:
The ancient Egyptians believed
that you lived forever. Now, if you were a king, you had responsibilities,
because you were not just a human being, you were a god,
and as such you were son of the sun god, and you
allied to the sun god. And, of course, without the sun,
the world doesn't function. NARRATOR:
The Great Pyramid and the king's tomb
deep inside it was the starting point for
the pharaoh's resurrection... ♪ ♪
(woman vocalizing) ...Reenacted each evening as the sun god
and the king's soul disappeared below
the western horizon and began
their nightly journey through the underworld. When the sun did battle
against the forces of darkness and evil
and Apophis, the king was with
the sun god, almost fused with him. ♪ ♪
(woman vocalizing) The king went
across the night sky battling against
the demons of darkness... ♪ ♪
(woman vocalizing) ...and then had to
emerge-- we hope-- victorious the next day... ♪ ♪
(woman vocalizing) so that Egypt would live, so that the land
would flourish and that life would continue. NARRATOR:
The Great Pyramid was built
to house and protect the king's precious
mummified body during his eternal battle for the world's survival
and prosperity. Inside are three chambers joined to the outside
by a network of passageways. None of these
internal structures were ever meant to be seen
once the pyramid was complete. Nevertheless, they are built
with the same precision and attention to detail as the huge platform
the pyramid sits on. At the heart of the pyramid
is a granite tomb where the dead king's
mummified body would lie for eternity. We're in the king's chamber-- more or less in the heart
of the pyramid. Here is essentially this
great granite-lined box built, for the most part, to
contain the body of the king. NARRATOR:
This chamber would be
the starting point of the pharaoh's cycle of death
and rebirth. For Egypt's continued survival, this tomb needed
to last forever. So the engineers turned
to one of the strongest stones available to them-- granite. LEHNER:
It must have made sense
in a magical way-- what we would call magic. There must above been
spiritual power that made them take these choices. NARRATOR:
Building this magical chamber
would pose an unprecedented challenge
to the ancient engineers LEHNER:
They didn't want the weight
of the pyramid, the pyramid that was meant
to protect the king and ensure his resurrection, so that the weight
of the pyramid wouldn't actually crush
and destroy his mummy. Because if you destroy
the mummy, the whole magical machine
is broken. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
But the ceiling
of the king's chamber is flat-- a potential structural
weak point. All of the weight of the stone
between this ceiling and the top of the pyramid
would be bearing down on this flat surface with no support in the chamber
below to hold it up. Yet 4,500 years later,
it is still intact. How is that possible? In 1837, a British antiquarian,
Major General Howard Vyse, solved the puzzle by discovering what was above
the granite slabs that formed the flat roof. He actually put reeds
through the cracks of the great beams and it went into dead space,
empty space. NARRATOR:
What Vyse did next
was highly destructive. (explosion) So he had his workers
blast their way up, making a vertical tunnel. (explosion) NARRATOR:
Vyse used gunpowder to blow a series of holes up
through the heart of the pyramid and discovered not one
hidden chamber, but a stack of five empty
granite roofed spaces. And at the very top:
a large, sloping, gabled roof. They used big limestone beams
and they put them in a gabled pattern to,
we think, so that the weight
of the pyramid would be thrust away
from this stack of chambers and from the king's chamber
below. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
The gabled roof on top of
the secret stack of chambers relieved the downward stresses
on the sacred tomb's flat roof and instead deflected the weight
of the pyramid away from the king's chamber. By today's standards, it may have been an excessively
cautious solution, but they couldn't afford
to take risks. They were over-engineering,
because they had never really done this before. So that the pyramid,
the very thing that was meant to protect the king
and ensure his resurrection, would not collapse and crush
his mortal remains. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Khufu's engineers had learned
from the mistakes his father Sneferu had made. And they pushed ancient
architecture to the limit, turning the Great Pyramid
into a unique monument. LEHNER:
Khufu was the first and the last to attempt this
audacious engineering. And so for that,
the Great Pyramid-- although it's
the classic pyramid in the popular imagination-- is actually the most unusual. It's a huge anomaly. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Despite the unprecedented effort invested in Khufu's
great pyramid, no records were ever found
describing the details of this vast building
operation... Until now. In this barren landscape, archaeologists have discovered
a unique written record. But this isn't Giza-- it's over 150 miles away
at a place called Wadi el-Jarf on the edge of the Red Sea. ♪ ♪ It's here that, in 2013,
archaeologist Pierre Tallet was investigating the remains
of the world's oldest port. Dating to the Old Kingdom,
it played a crucial role in the pharaohs' monumental
building projects. To cut massive stones, the builders needed
high-quality metal tools. The only metal readily available
to the Egyptians was copper, which was mined in the Sinai,
and ferried across the Red Sea to this port at Wadi el-Jarf. Sinai is the main place
where Egyptian were able to fetch copper at that time,
and you... when you are building
huge structures in limestone like pyramids,
you dramatically need copper. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Pierre and his team
began to excavate around the boat houses
where ships were stored when not in use. They then made
a surprising discovery. ♪ ♪ First, we came across
big limestone blocks. It was inscribed with name
of Khufu. NARRATOR:
It was an important find since so little evidence
from Khufu's reign has survived. But nothing prepared them
for what they found next. TALLET:
It was a real surprise. We have got small pieces
of papyri. NARRATOR:
Pierre and his team
had discovered a cache of fragile ancient documents
on paper made from reeds called papyri covered in Egyptian hieroglyphs, including many examples
of the same royal insignia... A cartouche-- an oval frame-- with the name of an ancient
Egyptian pharaoh inside. That name was Khufu. TALLET:
The cartouche of Khufu
is quite everywhere. NARRATOR:
These are the world's
oldest papyrus texts. In 2017, Pierre Tallet published
the first volume of his analysis of these ancient writings. Amazingly, they offer
the only first-hand record of the building
of the Great Pyramid. TALLET:
You have the name of the Akhet-Khufu,
"the Horizon of Khufu." ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Akhet-Khufu,
"the Horizon of Khufu." In ancient Egypt,
the word horizon can mean mountain of light, somewhere
where the sun rises or sets. And the Horizon of Khufu was
the name the ancient Egyptians gave to the sacred
Great Pyramid. ♪ ♪ TALLET:
We have these words, I think, maybe more than 100 times. We were excited--
it was, yeah, kind of a dream. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Dating to year 27
of Khufu's reign, the papyri lists details
of the times, dates, and deliveries of cargo
to the pyramid site. Suddenly here are these
Excel spread sheets of ancient times on papyrus,
giving us accounts of what Khufu's workers
received. We have a diary and a log book--
that's what makes the Wadi el-Jarf papyri
so much more significant. NARRATOR:
Among the entries are records of
meetings with senior officials and the time it took
to deliver a cargo. There was even a note in red ink that someone had fetched
a large supply of bread for the crew. IKRAM:
These papyri are fabulous
because they give us the sort of slice of life,
and it just gives you a sense that throughout Egypt
there would have been these little hives of activity
and people keeping the same kind of accounts, and by putting it all together
you get a much bigger picture. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
The papyri were written
by the overseer of a work team that delivered the stone. ♪ ♪ A man whose name was Merer. And Merer's handwritten notes record how he and his crew
of 40 men sailed the Nile. His was one of several ships delivering fine quality
limestone to the construction site
from the quarries of Turah, ten miles from Giza. But how did they deliver
the stones from the Nile to the site, over 100 feet higher
on the Giza Plateau? The papyri referred to
artificial basins and harbors that Merer encountered as he approached
the construction site. When Merer and his team
arrived in Giza, we have information about
the artificial lakes that were made to allow boats to deliver raw materials for the building
of the pyramids. NARRATOR:
Today, the Giza Plateau sits
on the edge of modern-day Cairo. Traces of the artificial basins
recorded by Merer have been found
underneath these streets. (car horns honking) And thanks to the papyrus, we now know the ancient name
of one of them. ♪ ♪ Ro-She Khufu-- the entrance
to the Basin of Khufu. When the Nile floods filled
this manmade pool, a navigable path opened between
the river and the Giza Plateau. LEHNER:
So we now know that the major influx of material-- both gigantic stones, timber,
wood, grain to feed the people-- happened during the flood season
when the Nile rose and covered the valley
and filled the deep channel where it rose more than
seven meters. And they used this system
of basins and waterways almost like a hydraulic lift
to bring the materials needed for pyramid building. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
If Giza was the beating heart
of the pyramid project, then its lifeblood
was the river Nile. Its annual floods not only
freed up a national work force but enabled the laborers
to deliver supplies all the way to the foot of the pyramid site. The Great Pyramid could not
really have been built if Egypt did not have the Nile
and a complex system of waterways connecting
the land. Because at this time,
the terrain isn't good enough, we don't really do
wheeled vehicles. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Remarkably,
archaeologists at Giza have discovered the remains
of two boats from the time the artificial waterfront
at Giza was at its zenith. One has already been carefully
restored from the 1,200 pieces recovered by archaeologists,
who believe that it was a ceremonial boat
crafted to transport Khufu in his journey
through the afterlife, while the second is now
being meticulously excavated under the watchful eye
of project consultant Mohamed Abd El-Meguid. ♪ ♪ MOHAMED ABD EL-MEGUID:
Now they are extracting
the woods of the second boat. All of this will constitute
the boat itself-- the hull, and the deck, and also the superstructure,
which is the canopy itself. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
These timbers provide
a fascinating glimpse of ancient Egyptian
boat-building methods. ♪ ♪ EL-MEGUID:
The same techniques that we can see
on the ceremonial boat were used for the transport boats that
brought the stones from Turah to here or from Aswan to here. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Building the pyramids
not only involved transporting thousands of stones
up the Nile, but also required importing
copper from the Sinai, which meant sailing
across the Red Sea to the port at Wadi el-Jarf. Mohamed believes these timbers
reveal a cunning design feature that allowed Merer
and others like him to use the same boat
on bodies of water separated by 150 miles
of desert. EL-MEGUID:
They would cut V-shaped channels
in a 45-degree direction and the other one
in the other direction, so he can pass through his ropes
from one side to the other. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
These holes weren't cut
for wooden or metal fasteners because ancient Egyptian ships
were held together with rope. When we look at the Khufu boat, we see that here is a ship with
elegance and amazing engineering but that's entirely
stitched together with mortise and tenon joints and by ropes that interlace through all the parts
of the hull, for example. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
By using ropes instead of nails, teams could dismantle
their boats and transport them across the desert to where
they were next needed. LEHNER:
They took the parts from
the Nile valley across to the Red Sea coast
piece by piece. Then they would
put the parts together, they would basically stitch
the whole ship together, sail across to Sinai,
get their loads of copper, bring the copper back. (hammering, indistinct chatter) NARRATOR:
Copper is a relatively soft
metal, prone to wearing down. The amount of copper required
for tools on the job site must have been tremendous. But nothing compared to the
hundreds of thousands of tons of stone demanded
by the builders. Meeting that need
would have been a massive logistical challenge made even more difficult
because the Great Pyramid is actually built of
three different types of stone. The exterior was an outer casing
of high-quality white limestone concealing a much rougher inner
core of coarse common limestone. And then, deep within
the pyramid, the complex of granite chambers reserved for the sacred tomb
of the king. And that meant
millions of tons of stone had to be shipped to the site. The rough limestone for the core
came from a quarry just 500 yards south
of the pyramid platform while the pyramid's high quality
casing stones were brought by Merer's team and other
work gangs from nearby Turah. Meanwhile, the stone
for the king's chamber had to be shipped from the major
granite quarry in Egypt at Aswan,
some 500 miles south of Giza. These different types of stone
all had to be delivered at around the same time
because all the sections of the Great Pyramid were
constructed simultaneously. They built them in stages,
incrementally and then filled in the mass of the pyramid
around them, step by step, almost like 3D printing
these days. NARRATOR:
All the elements
of the pyramid-- the casing, the core
and the internal chambers-- would rise as one
from the Giza Plateau. But as the pyramid grew,
how did the builders manage to raise the blocks
up the rising and sloping sides of the monument. By looking at what seems to be
in its loose state just rubble, we can have an understanding
of how they built the pyramids because they formed this rubble
into ramps and embankments, some of which like this one
remain together until this day. Probably they enveloped
the entire pyramid with big embankments like this. NARRATOR:
But this was before
ancient Egypt had the wheel. Their solution was well-suited
to the desert terrain. IKRAM:
It doesn't look very pretty,
but it's really important because this is one of the key
sort of tools that was used to make the Great Pyramid. It is in fact a sledge
and you can use them on sand as well as snow. So, here we have this big sledge
that would have been used to take the large rocks on them
and pulled by teams of men up through the causeway, up the ramps to build
the Great Pyramid. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
For the people of Egypt,
this backbreaking work was a physical investment in
the spiritual future of Egypt, their contribution to ensure
the pharaoh would be successful in his journey
through the afterlife. and they did it all with just
the most basic of equipment. ♪ ♪ IKRAM:
It's extraordinary to think that it was built
with very simple tools. You had wood rollers,
you had rope, you had hard stone
on soft stone, and you had a few metal tools,
and, most importantly, you had the brains and the brawn
of human beings. And that's all that they had. (indistinct shouting) NARRATOR:
During the annual Nile flood,
the construction site on the Giza Plateau
would have received a constant supply of stone,
food, and tools brought in by ships. (indistinct shouting) It was an operation
that would strain even a modern supply chain. ♪ ♪ The overseer of all the king's
works had to keep in mind complex logistics
and how to keep this whole workforce fed,
healthy, and effective-- what modern contractors call
the critical path. How to get
from the beginning point to the end point
and deliver the product. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Merer's records give
Egyptologists a unique insight into how this sophisticated
operation worked. ♪ ♪ We were entering
the administrative world of the people that were behind
the whole construction of the monument
like the Pyramid of Giza. (hammers clanging) NARRATOR:
The papyri also reveal the name
of the man in charge. That name was Ankh-haf. And a stunningly lifelike image
of him survives, now on display in
the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Ankh-haf was a noble,
the half brother of the pharaoh. He seems to be, at that time,
the vizier, which is the chief
of the administration. The big boss for the building
of the pyramid of Khufu. NARRATOR:
Pierre believes Merer
may have had several meetings with Ankh-haf. And the papyri note that Merer's
team was part of an "elite" perhaps because their cargoes
of fine Turah limestone were highly prized. Merer was responsible for bringing this limestone
of Turah, which is of high quality needed
to construct the... all the casing, outer casing
of the pyramid of Khufu. NARRATOR:
The outer casing of Turah
limestone gave the Great Pyramid a spectacular appearance. Today the monument has been
almost completely stripped of that outer casing. But 4,500 years ago,
the smooth white limestone delivered by people like Merer, would have covered
the whole of the pyramid... ♪ ♪
(woman vocalizing) ...catching the rays
of the rejuvenating sun in a spectacular display. LEHNER:
We can think of
the Great Pyramid as a colossal special effect-- clad in white limestone,
polished smooth. But for them, such special
effects were not entertainment, for them they were... they were
religious, they were magical. NARRATOR:
The magic was
a constant reminder of the special religious
significance of the Great Pyramid and the dead king's fight
for Egypt's survival. For people like Merer, it was
a privilege to be involved in the king's
grand construction project. LEHNER:
They actually called themselves
the elite. Merer's group at one point
was called in the papyri (speaking Ancient Egyptian
language)-- "the chosen group." ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
It's estimated the people
of Egypt spent some 30 years building the Great Pyramid. Its last and most enduring
mystery is that the mummy
of the God King Khufu has never been found. The granite coffin in
the king's chamber is empty. Many Egyptologists believe it
was cleared out by tomb robbers in ancient times. Others speculate that Khufu was
never buried in his tomb at all. If so, where might he be? In 2017, scientists detected
a mysterious void deep inside the Great Pyramid. An advanced scanning technique
called Muon tomography identified a large cavity
the size of 747 fuselage approximately parallel
with the king's chamber. And that void exists
right through this granite wall at about this level
of the pyramid above the grand gallery
leading to this chamber. NARRATOR:
Many theories for this
mysterious empty space have been suggested. It's possible this void, which is like a very vague cloud
for us right now, is another chamber
with untold treasures or, more importantly, documentation like
the Wadi el-Jarf papyri. But most likely it's dead space
that they framed in to relieve the weight
of the pyramid on the roof of the grand gallery just like the relieving chambers
above the king's chamber. NARRATOR:
Further investigation
may confirm the void is another example
of the masterful engineering that's ensured
this giant monument has stood the test of time. But even without
the pharaoh's body, the Great Pyramid continues
to ensure Khufu's place in history. IKRAM:
Khufu in fact has achieved
his immortality to a certain extent. We might not have his body but his name lives forever. And as each person recites it, he is once again given more
empowerment in the afterlife, and his Great Pyramid
does reign supreme. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Through Khufu's
mighty building project, the people of ancient Egypt
were drawn into the creation of a magical machine
for the pharaoh's journey through the afterlife. IKRAM:
They were creating
this magnificent monument which also gives you
sort of religious credit because you're helping to build
the house of eternity for your god king. NARRATOR:
The amazing discoveries
of the Wadi el-Jarf papyri, the workers' city,
and the preserved boats reveal the phenomenal
planning operation that built the Great Pyramid and unified the people of Egypt into one of the world's
first nation states. The networks that they created
and the national unity and infrastructure--
national infrastructure that they created for building
these giant pyramids, that now was where they devoted
their attention and their energies. NARRATOR:
The new evidence shows how
Khufu's Great Pyramid project became the economic engine
that drove the first great era of the ancient world's
most vibrant civilization-- the Egypt of the Pharaohs. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
