Khufu Reborn - Dassault Systemes (Documentary)

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you khufu has just died the boat that we flew over in the harbor has just transported his remains into this temple called the lower temple or temple of the valley here we can see the body of the King under the purification tent where it's washed down this is the first step of a slow preparation 70 days necessary for Khufu to be reborn and achieve eternal life these steps will be performed in succession at four points in the funerary complex the lower temple where we are now then the Royal causeway we are flying over now connecting the Avenue to the upper temple and lastly the pyramid in which the king will be buried here it is this fine pyramid the seventh wonder of the world dominating the plateau with its 146 meters of immaculate limestone this is a master coup but it's not a first attempt in fact one does not get to design and build such a masterpiece by chance Khufu's pyramid is part of a well-established tradition of funerary architecture the Egyptians continued to improve their construction technology right from the very first pyramid the stepped pyramid of King Djoser Sneferu the father of Khufu had three built with smooth sides including the red pyramid which immediately preceded that of Khufu this is a magnificent pyramid smaller and less steep than the Great Pyramid but its plan is very pure the distribution of the funerary chambers is straightforward a descending corridor to antechambers for the funerary furniture of the deceased and a chamber in the mass of the pyramid all these chambers are covered with a cobalt vault that is to say a vault constructed of rows of stones that become closer with increasing height and capable of supporting enormous vertical loads the Egyptians had mastered this technique a long time before the distribution of the corridors and internal installations is in line with what is observed in the previous pyramids and here is the pyramid of khufu higher steeper and with an internal layout that is a total departure from previous pyramids there are three funerary chambers the first dug very deep into the bedrock and remaining unfinished the second in the mass of the pyramid and a final chamber at a third of the height this chamber is extraordinary not only because of its location between 43 and 64 meters high higher than anything known before but also because it possesses a flat ceiling and four false ceilings beneath the roof of limestone rafters we will see that this choice of a flat ceiling profoundly influenced the structure of the pyramid and its method of construction one could even say that it was a determining factor as for the corridors they are more numerous than in the Red Pyramid some branching off from the funeral chambers with quite a tortuous geometry finally there is this enormous oblique structure the Grand Gallery unique in the architecture of the pyramids such a revolution is astonishing the Egyptians having previously developed their technology gradually from one pyramid to the next to sum up the Khufu pyramid presents us with two enigmas one in its construction and then the one of this evolutionary leap to construct a pyramid it's necessary first to choose a suitable location and establish an infrastructure on the Giza Plateau overlooking the Nile Valley the Egyptians find an ideal location quite large gently sloping and with limestone in abundance they start to build the infrastructures there they have to establish lines of communication and transportation for the stone they dig the necessary canals to transport the stone including Tura limestone extracted from the east bank of the Nile and Aswan granite quarried 900 kilometers south of Giza there they have to house the workers there will be about 4,000 people working permanently on the site first there are the construction professionals architects foremen Masons carpenters and other qualified workers there are also the seasonal workers for example the peasants who come to carry out a sort of pyramid duty while their fields are inundated by the flooding of the Nile assigned simple tasks like handling materials they're paid in kind food and drink and earn their place in eternity in contributing to the building of their Kings eternal Monument finally there are the ancillary services and all their trades toolmakers and repairers butchers bakers fish mongers contrary to later popular belief there are no slaves constructing the pyramid is an enterprise that is both religious and social it is the big state project that unites Upper and Lower Egypt in one common venture besides the canals and the towns two ports are required a commercial port for the ancillary services and a port to receive the construction materials which were flying over now and here are the red granite beams from Aswan the Egyptians extract them by striking the stone with balls of dolerite a material much harder than granite this is very long and very painful work these beams were ordered right at the start of construction and will not be installed until 14 years later extraordinary proof of anticipation and planning you can see now the limestone rafters from Torah that will top various chambers in the pyramid this very beautiful fine white limestone will also be used for encasing the monument and right here are the limestone blocks from Torah which would form the skin of the pyramid this limestone had a special characteristic it was very soft in the quarry but hardened quickly on contact with the air once mind because the Egyptians did not yet know how to forge iron the hardest cutting material they had available is copper therefore they had to cut the soft stones immediately to their final form complete with beveling these casing stones were then numbered and shipped to the work site a perfect example of prefabrication we look back on the fifth year of construction which also corresponds to the fifth year of Khufu's reign the materials that had arrived at the port would now be transported along a white causeway leading to the work site that we can see in the distance the causeway which we will call the port ramp had a gentle slope of about eight percent and ample width enough for the massive supplies required for the work site following the topography of the plateau it ran judiciously through the of other quarries providing limestone that was of a lesser grade than that from Torah but was abundant on the plateau they would supply the major part of the materials for the pyramid here in red we see the route taken by the granite beams in move the route used to transport the limestone extracted from these quarries that are starting to be exploited and in white the route used for the limestone supplies from Torah you see that the quarry man were working on smooth surface stones and more crudely cut stones at the same time we will soon see why as the wheel did not yet exist the stones were transported on wooden sleds an example of which can be seen in the Cairo Museum the blocks of local limestone would then be pulled up a second external ramp which we'll call the pyramid ramp about 325 meters long with a slope of 8% it was built with the same limestone taken from the local quarries this ramp had two lanes one to allow the stones to be transported the other in the process of being raised in height the Pyramid was constructed in successive horizontal layers called courses during the construction of one course the ramp was elevated to prepare for the construction of the next course in this manner construction never stopped the ramp and the pyramids progressing together as for the Torah limestone blocks intended for the outer casing they followed a very different route they were transported via an internal ramp also with the gentle slope constructed behind the pyramid surface starting from its base here we can see the entrance this internal ramp constitutes the principal idea behind jean-pierre houdin's theory the construction of the pyramid from the inside this is the principle the Torah casing stones were laid first remember that they had been cut side by side at the quarry and numbered so they only had to be laid according to their numbers rather like the pieces of a model the constructor perfect casing right from the start there was therefore no need for facing at the end of construction which represented a great saving of time a special when we consider there were 84 thousand square meters of casing when this was done there was an enclosed working area into which the cut blocks of local limestone were brought by way of the external pyramid ramp for the construction of a second belt about 20 metres thick this structure gave the pyramid its solidity it's these stones that can be seen today the Tura limestone having been removed in the Middle Ages for the construction of the monuments of Cairo once this finally finished structure was in place there was no longer any need for such fine construction speed was of the essence the center of the pyramid was thus filled with very roughly hewn stones blocked with quarry rubble and often a little mortar there was one exception however this sort of finally finished Peninsula visible in the middle of the infill this was to serve as the foundations on which all the internal works as the Grand Gallery and the King's Chamber would be constructed given their importance it was out of the question to build such structures without solid foundations the Egyptians were also smart they constructed the pyramid in another limestone quarry the terrain having a slight slope they kept a section of bedrock about seven meters high this light patch that we can see at the top right inside the monument only the basis of the casing stones were leveled at the start of construction the pyramid was thus anchored solidly on this natural foundation in doing so they used almost 400,000 tons of limestone that was already on site the Egyptians thus continued to construct the pyramid in successive courses from level 7 to level 43 that is from 7 meters to 43 meters high at level 43 the volume constructed represents about two-thirds of the volume of the structure the Egyptians supplied the worksite with local limestone using the external ramp and transported the casing stones of Tura limestone up the internal ramp the start of which we can see on these images from the Katia 3d scientific software on this cross-section of the monument we can see the roots of the funeral procession traditionally put forward entering by the descending corridor the procession turned sharply to climb the ascending corridor this already poses a problem because of the length of the sarcophagus it then followed the Grand Gallery and it's very steep slope which would have made progress difficult to reach the chamber with the portcullis slabs and then finally the King's Chamber this chamber had to be sealed after the ceremony and it's here that the principal problem arises the block used for this purpose is shown in this photograph next to a person to show the scale it remained inside the chamber for almost 1,200 years until it disappeared during restoration work in 1998 this block can only have been put in place from within the chamber it's slightly too big to have come through the Grand Gallery and to have traveled through the small passage crossing the chamber with the portcullis slabs then there's a big problem it would have taken about 10 workers to push this stone in order to close the chamber which means that these unfortunate workers would have been walled up alive this was not at all in the Egyptian funerary tradition moreover caliph al Mamoon responsible for opening the chamber at the time of an expedition in around 8:20 found only a single body the mummy of Khufu in the sarcophagus the commonly accepted route for the funeral therefore appears totally unrealistic but in this case what route did the funeral procession take how was the chamber sealed and how did the officiants and workers leave after the Kings burial this is what we'll attempt to understand but first let's go back to the preparations for the ceremony let us return to the lower temple where we left Khufu in the purification tent the preparation of the body as we've said lasted about 70 days of which the major part was to mummification the first mummies probably came about by chance bodies buried in the desert sand were preserved in an astonishing way because of the heat and dryness impressed by these almost intact bodies which the wind exposed from time to time the Egyptians sought to reproduce this phenomenon voluntarily convinced that perfect conservation of the body was an essential requirement for life in the hereafter mummification procedures were already well established during the Old Kingdom - which Khufu belonged the Egyptians quite understood that humidity was the number one enemy of conservation of the body after purification the intestines were removed from the body an essential component of mummification was then introduced Natron this is a sodium salt that's formed naturally in certain lakes the Egyptians had noticed its properties as a drying agent and so the viscera were washed placed in four vases the canopic jars then dried using Natron as for the body it was stuffed with linen and sawdust impregnated with Natron and it was also plunged into a Natron bath only the heart was left inside the seat of thoughts and feelings later it was sometimes replaced by a golden scarab in this way the body was dehydrated by the action of the salt preventing any decomposition after 30 to 40 days the Natron was removed from the dehydrated body the abdominal cavity and thorax were filled with clots impregnated with aromatic substances bombs and perfumed oil were applied to the body to restore a little suppleness to the skin we move on to the wrapping the body of Khufu was wrapped in strips of linen starting at the extremities the hands and feet for so big a king up to seven layers of the finest linen were used the total area of fabric used could reach almost 400 square meters for such a high personage and the wrapping could take about two weeks between each pair of layers magic amulets were placed destined to assist and protect the King in the afterlife while the high priest chanted prayers the mummy was then wrapped in a shroud and placed in a wooden sarcophagus Khufu was ready to go to his last resting place Khufu left the lower temple with his possession of officiants and mourners and was carried up the cupboard Royal causeway this progression in the shade symbolized that of the Sun during the night like the Sun Khufu had to confront dark forces to carry out his emergence into light and be reborn just as Newt the goddess of the sky swallowed the Sun in the evening to give it rebirth in the morning Khufu disappears into the dark cupboard Cosway we see him again emerging and entering the upper temple which backed onto the pyramid some more rituals before proceeding inside for the burial proper like all the deceased Khufu had to appear before Osiris for this purpose and also to pursue his afterlife it was necessary to give him back his senses and therefore to reopen the seven orifices in his head the high priest or certainly the elder son of Khufu started by burning incense in a small scepter in the shape of an arm this was the purification of Horus then several liquids and resins were poured onto the sarcophagus this was the purification of thought finally the nostrils were touched with an implement called a setup to return breath to the deceased and then in turn the ears the eyes and lastly the mouth Khufu was now ready to appear before or serious for the weighing of the souls where his speech having been returned to him he could make his negative confession leaving this ceremony to follow its course we follow the officiants who were already transporting Khufu funerary furniture into the pyramid in fact the Egyptians believe that the deceased had to find all the objects necessary for everyday life from furnishings right down to the smallest ordinary objects in the afterlife the funerary furniture was usually stored in antechambers adjacent to the burial chamber and this is where the question arises of the observed departure in the Great Pyramid from the internal architecture of the preceding ones especially red pyramid has already mentioned the internal plan of the red pyramid is remarkably simple what's striking about that of Khufu's pyramid besides its greater complexity is the absence of anti chambers some have assigned this role to the underground chamber or to the intermediate chamber known as the Queen's Chamber however the funerary furniture had to be readily accessible to the deceased which then would not have been the case others then thought about the Grand Gallery but it's steep slope makes this hypothesis unlikely so why would the Egyptians have abandoned the plan that was so effective in the red pyramid and why don't we find antechambers adjacent to the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid drum Pia Odin has studied all the pyramids of the third and fourth dynasties he perceived a logical evolution from one pyramid to the next in a handing down of knowledge as the red pyramid immediately preceded Khufu's pyramid it's probable that the designers of the former all their immediate disciples designed the latter therefore there was no logical or practical reason to introduce a major change in the internal architecture of the new pyramid consequently jean-pierre Houdin had the idea of inserting the same arrangement of antechambers as that found in the red pyramid into Khufu's pyramid but raised to the level of the King's Chamber at a height of 43 meters and behind the Grand Gallery this new arrangement worked perfectly in Khufu's pyramid in addition if we observe the result in space it explains several curiosities in the internal plan of the structure especially where the upsetting of the ground gallery is concerned it does not lie along the monuments north-south axis since the anti chambers are on this axis similarly the twisted shape of the shafts from the Queen's Chamber and the King's Chamber becomes logical if these shafts had to bypass the anti chambers and the passageway that connected them to the King's Chamber if we assume that Khufu's pyramid reclaims its anti chambers the true funeral circuit which jean-pierre Houdin calls the noble circuit becomes quite different therefore the entrance in the eastern corner of the northern wall of the chamber that visitors used today is not the one the Egyptians built for the funerary procession to use the true entrance was cleverly concealed in the western corner of the same wall if we look carefully we can see that the red stones form a portico which supports the load of the ceilings installed above the yellow stones in contact only with the red blocks of the portico are simply infill and do not cause any load on the stone that's underneath this block is therefore free of any load which means it can be moved we can still see today if we visit the King's Chamber that the joints between the stones of the wall are perfect with not enough room to slip a razor blade between them on the other hand in the vertical joint between this block and the neighboring block to the right you could insert a credit card moreover micro-gravity metric analysis in 1986 detected a clear zone of low density in this area let's now go through this block and follow this small passageway behind it we descend and penetrate into the first antechamber in which some of the funerary furniture was stored the passageway connecting the two antechambers that were going through now is exactly on the north-south axis of the pyramid now we enter the second antechamber both have corbelled vaults just as in the Red Pyramid of Sneferu Khufu father now we can see the cross-section of the pyramid that unveils the new funerary architecture we will also observe these elements in a series of view is generated by the Katia 3d scientific software showing these various elements we can see the known internal architecture of whose pyramid in green in this 3d model we first need to enter the pyramid and gain access to the new funeral circuit at the entrance to the pyramid and providing access to the new circuit we find two small new rooms in purple they are connected by a short vertical shaft to the ceiling of the descending corridor leading to the underground chamber later we'll see signs of these rooms on the face of the pyramid starting from these rooms there's a first horizontal corridor in yellow rejoining the Queen's Chamber next comes a second descending corridor in yellow leading to the anti chambers we cross the two antechambers in red before climbing towards the King's Chamber starting at the second room at the pyramid entrance there's a vertical shaft we shall see that this shaft rejoins the internal ramp we see a new corridor leading to the Queen's Chamber parallel to the one that we've seen this corridor was detected by radar by the Japanese team of dr. yoshimori from the university of water in the late 1980s let's look at the narrow shaft running north from the Queen's Chamber this shaft according to the official surveys bends for no reason that the conventional theory can provide on the other hand if one accepts the hypothesis of the anti chambers this corridor needed to avoid the access corridor to the first antechamber the bend then seems entirely logical the same goes for the other shaft the one from the King's Chamber this shaft had to avoid a room that contained the mechanism to close the King's Chamber again we find a rational explanation for the turns indicated by the official surveys so these anti chambers inherited from the Red Pyramid fit perfectly into Khufu's pyramid without coming into conflict with the rooms and corridors that we know better still they are integrated perfectly into the complicated layout of the shafts for which they provide a logical justification now let's look at the relieving chambers in truth these rooms do not relieve the Kings chamber at all structurally speaking the Egyptians could have built the roof in an inverted V above the first ceiling to take the vertical loads from the top of the pyramid these loads are deflected sideways by this roof a bit like water on an umbrella and are distributed through the mass of the monument with a single flat ceiling this roofing would therefore have protected the King's Chamber perfectly as for the Grand Gallery because of its sloping form it could very easily have withstood the small loads transferred to it working just like a buttress in a Cathedral on the other hand if we assume the existence of these anti chambers we can see that the vertical loads deflected by an inverted v-shaped roof would have come to bear obliquely on their ceilings and it's there that a big problem occurs because of their structure the cobalt vaults of the antechambers can take enormous vertical loads but they cannot withstand side loads at all consequently it was absolutely necessary to transfer these oblique loads much higher up so that they could pass above the anti chambers this is the true role of the multiple ceilings of the King's Chamber and the relieving chambers do not relieve the King's Chamber but the anti chambers the yellow arrows show the deflection of the loads by the roofing and the pink zone is totally relieved which effectively guarantees the security of the anti chambers on its own the choice of a flat ceiling for the King's Chamber required the construction of the Grand Gallery as a slide way for a counterweight to hoist the granite beams as this traction system had already been built it also allowed this astonishing structure of five ceilings to be built this time to protect the anti chambers but all this obviously cost a great deal and time planning and materials the Egyptians were never to repeat the experience let's now look at the room by the entrance which provided access to the various corridors at the northern phase send some metres behind a common entrance by means of the descending corridors that we've seen we find two successive rooms providing access to a new group of corridors built into the pyramid moving to the exterior of the pyramid let's turn back to look at the facade above the present entrance to the pyramid you can see a big hole at the place where this room is you can also see a double pair of limestone rafters located well above the original entrance now in architecture the installation of such rafters is never arbitrary they always serve to cover a void this archive photograph indicates the position of the rafters in comparison with the corridor the people indicate the scale these rafters appear disproportionate in comparison with the size of the opening and they're positioned too high up especially since enormous beams already cover the corridor we can also see that several pairs of rafters seem to be missing six at the bottom and three at the top all this proves that there really was a first room above the descending corridor a second room is located just behind the big stone with fluting that we can see under these rafters let's look closer at this fluted stone for it could only have been put into position from inside the second room protruding strips of mortar on the outside prove it remember also that the Greek geographer strabo who lived it about the beginning of the 1st century wrote a little way up one side there's a stone that may be taken out when that is removed there's a sloping passage leading to the tomb this is the moment to follow the funeral procession as it entered the pyramid traveling down the descending corridor for a few metres it then climbed a shaft into the first room and passed into the second climbing over the fluted rock it reached the second descending corridor which had climbed up toward a new horizontal corridor that led to the first antechamber here we enter it then pass through into the second one the workers and the priests then had to climb this ladder and make their way up this corridor and finally enter the funeral chamber by the concealed entrance in the northern wall they proceeded with Khufu's burial and the closing of the sarcophagus of aswan granite the funeral procession then left the King's Chamber the priests and officiants followed this route in the opposite direction to emerge from the entrance as for the workers a dozen or so they remained in the pyramid they now had to seal the corridors and especially this chamber so that Khufu could rest there in peace for eternity for the chamber the Egyptians would use an inspired mechanical closing system installed in the bent pyramid the stone that would close the room and be concealed in its northern wall was for the moment in a room behind this wall behind it a second stone and a third one higher up just waiting to push the two of them toward the passageway this wedge just needed to be removed for this stone to be pushed into the passageway with the second one taking its place by means of a wooden piston that they maneuvered by pulling on ropes from the bottom of the second antechamber the workers pushed the block into the opening in the Chamber's northern wall this chamber was therefore closed from the exterior and no one was walled up alive with Khufu having blocked several points on their way down the workers pushed back the fluted stone the Strabo stone under the rafters between the two rooms of the entrance other workers sealed the entrance of the pyramid from the outside you might think that their remaining colleagues inside the pyramid were now trapped this was not so because everything had been thought out when the pyramid was designed don't forget that the second section of the internal ramp passed just a few meters overhead the workers simply climbed back up onto the internal ramp by way of a small shaft then they only had to descend this ramp to the base of the pyramid they just had to seal the entrance an easy operation because it was at ground level not far from the pyramid a well was found dug into the bedrock a sort of model that the Egyptians dug to perfect the details of the junctions of all the passageways in this model they dug a well above a junction a detail that we do not see in the known corridors quite simply because this is the one by which the last workers reach the internal ramp in this old photograph in addition to the probable entrances of the internal ramp we can see several notches high up on the same horizontal line is it by pure chance that they're located at forty three meters from the base at the level of the storage platform later filled in right where the internal ramp is horizontal the Great Pyramid therefore has funeral chambers consistent with those that preceded it it's construction with the rudimentary technical resources of the time emphasizes even more the tremendous intelligence of the Egyptian builders they were completely motivated by one overriding goal that of ensuring eternal life for their ruler so that alongside the gods he could protect Egypt and its tremendous civilization judging from this pyramid still standing after 4,500 years and by the fascination that it arouses we can say without doubt that they largely attained their goal you you
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Channel: Nomad Colossus
Views: 199,997
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Keywords: Dassault Systemes, 3D Experience, Computer Engineers, Khufu Reborn, Great Pyramid, Pharoah, Hidden Chambers, Jean-Pierre Houdin, Internal Ramp Theory
Id: 3NCK99mQUxw
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 39min 23sec (2363 seconds)
Published: Mon Nov 26 2012
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