Inside The First Ever Pyramid of Egypt | The Nile: Egypt's Greatest River | Channel 5#AncientHistory

[Music] in the center of modern Cairo just yards from the River Nile I've come to the Egyptian Museum for a rather special rendezvous this afternoon I'm coming face to face with the great-grandmother of Tutankhamun oh my goodness my heart is actually beating faster why is she special inside this was right and it supposed to be one of the best preserves it is very sweetly she is one of the best preserved mummies that we have this is - yeah she was discovered two decades before her great grandson when we look at her face do you think that could give us any genetic Buddhist what I think that would be a quite possible especially because they've got the same set of teeth sticking out of it what's really extraordinary is that she's not born royal there's a lot of social mobility I mean she starts off quite common just has a priestess and then she's in this blended tomb with all of this gold and stuff it smells like resins and incense so look down here that's actually the resins that a part of the imitation and burial ritual and they were poured over and some of them are still you can see it must have been in a funny position yeah because of the way it's tripled get this millennia old smell that is amazing this is closer than anyone normally gets to - yeah I think all of our conservators are ready it's time to see how the lady herself is faring [Music] [Music] my god look at her [Music] she's just got this beautiful thick head of curly kind of strawberry blonde is that the original color well we did we're not a hundred percent sure but when you're using Natron which we use for my medication it's a bleach so it's like putting salt on you know when you go to the beach and look at her she's got double pierced earrings she does have that Tutankhamun overbite she's even more beautiful than in her pictures by two years time mummification had been practiced for at least twelve hundred years the sophisticated process of preparing and preserving the body would have taken over two months to complete she's a really fully an example of mummification but how can you tell her I mean what here tells you that this is a really room the job well I mean it's a totally beautifully well preserved recognizable face got a little bit of stuffing she looks absolutely gorgeous the gears are so well preserved it's not broken she's got her hair the kind of wrapping the individual wrapping of her Tootsie's is so perfect the fact that she's wearing sandals and really every care was taken with her and from the smell you can also tell that it was really good quality resins okay okay look look this is really cool okay see look at her eyes yeah so what they did was they lifted the lids up and then they put in pieces of cloth which they put a bit of resin onto and made them look like eyes so that she can see things in her afterlife just look at that face what she seen what she's lived through the world that she's experienced my God if she could talk what she could tell us Salima will now check that the humidity of the museum hasn't been effect she's doing very well indeed just to be that close to her face it really makes you realize this was a woman like me a woman who'd had children who lived through a life and was now going really happily through death to another world and I think I think we've got to remember that that we think that mummies are something kind of grisly and gruesome and scary but for these people this is the beginning of the best after-party and whatever happened to her I hope that to you has been enjoying yourself it's difficult to imagine an ancient site more iconic of kids just look at these incredible things however many times I see them I never not blown away by them they just pound with human ambition the west bank of the Nile boasts over a hundred pyramids non-responsive they've been astounding on lookers for four and a half thousand years discoveries to appreciate them properly we're so used to thinking these as desert monuments in a desert landscape but when they were originally built it would have been completely different round here for the Nile now is about five miles away but at the time it came right up close to the pyramids and when it flooded that have been reflected in its glittering surface it's one of these structures in particular I've come to see the Great Pyramid the eternal resting place of the pharaoh Khufu scaling almost 500 feet its completion set new levels for human achievement it was the world's tallest structure for nearly four thousand years this is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and it is the only one that is still standing intact I'm obviously a huge fan of the ancient world of ancient civilizations and there are many amazing things across the globe but this is truly wonderful isn't it there are 2.3 million blocks of stone here and each one has been perfectly sculpted so it fits right next to its neighbor it's incredible the Great Pyramid took two decades to complete with its original polished white limestone casing it would have gleamed out in the Egyptian Sun exactly who built it and how has been the subject of wild speculation for centuries it's been said that this was built by aliens from outer space but goodness some new historical evidence has appeared that tells us without a doubt that this pyramid was made by human hand and it's this remarkable thing this is a copy of an ancient papyrus found just six years ago in a cave near the Red Sea it's the four and a half thousand year old journal of a man called Mara now Mara was no less than that project manager for the Great Pyramid there is remarkable detail in here he's written down how they made this beautiful thing and here there's little line that tells us that the limestone blocks that covered the pyramid that made it an amazing gleaming white were brought from 50 miles along the Nile mara says it takes one day sail for this special stone to reach the site confirming the Niles crucial role in the pyramids construction building the world's first skyscraper was a transformational moment in human history the city of workers that settled here collaborated in a game-changing way and with Marc's help and getting a privileged look behind the scenes to get a glimpse of their remarkable world [Music] so welcome to our field lab thank you so much letting me in here for the past thirty years thousands of artifacts found at Giza have been brought here to be assessed and studied in the archaeologists story you can see it's much bigger than you would think from outside one of the things we find all over the site are what we call dolerite hammer stones here straining my own yeah that's like a countable well when they started using it it is like a cannonball but when they started it was probably pear-shaped and they just use it to smash stone surfaces away and then they'll turn it they keep turning it so in the end they get kind of a ball shape it moans latest excavation he's found remarkable evidence of how the people constructing the pyramid lived and what they ate we found this enormous dump and it was so much animal bone sheep and goat and cattle yeah and there was something very curious about it whenever we separate out the good meat bearing bones we find that the ends are broken off two of our Egyptian field school students said oh so that's easy it's short bit Kawara which is Arabic for like gelatin soup knuckle bone soup and the evidence is that somebody elites people of higher status were eating the meat off the long good meat bearing parts of the bone but people of lower status are eating very high fat high protein knuckle bone soup marks found the casseroles this soup was served in it's so beautiful that and even their bespoke stands it's almost like a Tupperware set so actually it seems like they're getting a pretty good diet indeed that casserole is interesting cuz that's just like a family sized casserole but yeah are they mass producing food as well they were making your standard average kitchen bread mold mhm and bread loaf and then if I may over here mm-hmm they were increasing it they were reaching for it economies of scale by making these gigantic bread molds but but the big picture here is that they didn't have bread factories they were creating their world's first bread factory it's all a long way from the stereotype of sweating slaves toiling away under the Pharaohs web even the tiniest vines are captivating their tubular beads we find these beads everywhere such a tiny little thing but I mean who's wearing these and we're finding them in the workers barracks right where we find all the big heavy dolerite pounders so what are you pounding stone as you're wearing your beaded necklace we don't know fines like these speak volumes helping to jigsaw puzzle together a picture of life for those at the bottom of the pile this morning my authentic Bronze Age desert transport is called whiskey and soda not sure they had stirrups then but you know in the name of security I can do this okay I'm excited we go yeah yeah [Music] see you in two thousand years boy Garamond darling happy eh gosh she's great isn't she she's she's a natural historian she wants to get there this empty desert landscape would once a played host to massive funeral processions as dead Pharaohs were carried to their show-off newly designed tombs pyramids this is the very first pyramid ever built but the step pyramid so you've got a tomb laid out at the bottom and then the Pharaoh decided to build another one on top and another one and another one but there comes like some kind of massive wedding cake he took a kind of experiment really it's when they're going I'm the most powerful man on earth look at me I can reach up to the sky I can reach up to the gods what I've come to see though is another first for Egypt on the other side of the Step Pyramid thank you okay thank you darling you'd be beautiful these are the sorry ruins of the pyramid built for the Pharaoh Oona's would be allowed back in here for the first time in two decades because it wasn't safe in the most restoration work done when it was built four thousand three hundred and fifty years ago this was the smallest pyramid of its era that it was a game-changer this is an extra special treat for me because this is the first time since I've accrued to Egypt that I've been allowed in [Music] I'm very good from work night London London look nice to see you thank you so you've got the key to go in amazing thinking the unique treasure of Lunas pyramid is found underneath it [Music] and I think you should run pitch black this 30 meter tunnel is leading me right under the center of the pyramid three granite slabs once blocked this passage separating the outside world from the burial chambers of universe [Music] oh my goodness this is so beautiful some pictures are very spot never even here floor-to-ceiling you've got the walls covered in hieroglyphs paid and they're so beautifully preserved this was the first pyramid ever to be decorated carved hieroglyphic ritual spells sir I'd say man with quite an ego and we can tell this here because this is his name so here this is the name of it oona sits in what's called a cartouche which is French for bullets its kind of bullet rate thing and once you start you can see the name of absolutely everywhere I think you can see here there's another symbol that keeps on appearing it's these waves of water so there are two here that's one here there's one here this one here there's one here the importance of water and rivers couldn't be clearer one spell even claims unas is he who has caused their land to be under water not only didn't us tell us that he was the most powerful King but that he had divine powers what you saying here is that it's him who caused the Nile itself to flood these hieroglyphs don't always make for pleasant reading they show that the ancient Egyptians often blended brilliance with brutality he says that he holds the hearts of his enemies in his fingers that he burns their houses to the ground but there's something else and actually if you read it it's really shocking Oona's takes the wives of husbands whenever he wants whenever his heart desires this is not a map that I would have liked to have met in the flesh and it seems as though he's no longer here we don't have his body but there's something that's recently been discovered that if you look on the law but if you can see that they're indented in is the ghost of Oona's so he's still here with [Music] Ernest has left a mighty legacy and along the Nile there are other treasures that are still as vibrant today as they have been yes you

Channel: Channel 5

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Keywords: Channel 5, Channel 5 UK, My5, official channel 5, Watch Channel 5, Channel 5 TV, C5, 5 TV, my5UK, channel five, channelfive, cfive, myfive, official channel five, full episode, ancient egypt, river nile, egypt (country), First Ever Pyramid of Egypt, Egypts Greatest River, The Great Pyramid of Giza, Seven Ancient Wonders, Bettany Hughes, Egyptian Pharaoh, Pharaoh Tombs, ancient egypt documentary, egypt country, egypt pyramids, egypt pyramids documentary, egypt pyramids inside

Id: kvoNDfI7duM

Length: 18min 28sec (1108 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 29 2020