The Lost Gods: The Egyptians (Ancient Egypt Documentary) | Timeline

[Music] from the time before time was first measured humankind has pondered the question of God as the image of that God formed in their minds so they fashioned it in wood paint and stone and house dipped in holy places the ancient world was populated with gods beyond counting today just one garden dominates the world of believers where have the old guards gone our quest is to peel away the layers of time to examine the civilizations that brought the gods to power and honored them in art and architecture and to discover the ultimate fate of the lost gods [Music] [Music] once this was a sea of waving grass on that Savannah gazelle grazed elephants wandered men hunted but seven thousand years ago the climate changed [Music] [Music] Egypt today is largely desert [Music] a moonscape plus still burned by the Sun but this wasteland contains a treasure other civilizations would come to covet the Nile is a thin blue ribbon bordered infertile green Egypt is the gift of the Nile [Music] when hunters and herders became farmers they turned their thoughts to higher things and the gods were born [Music] they had gods for everything because they believed the gods guaranteed my apt stability when the country united under its king he became the chief priest they would call him para the great house the Pharaoh he would guarantee the worship of the gods and the life-giving flood of the Nile but what of the afterlife the Egyptians believed each person had a soul that survived death but the soul needed the body preserved so he could live in it and be nourished through it this belief gave life to the art and architecture of Egypt that is still a wonder of the world today [Music] where will we find the first hint of the glory of ancient Egypt traditionally the dead left the black fertile earth of the Nile for the red sand of the desert and we must follow them [Music] Saqqara is a monumental textbook of the art and architecture of the old kingdom and a picture gallery of its religious beliefs but they were snobbery even in death these tombs were for the nobles this is the remains of a mastaba a mud brick construction it marks a transition in Egyptian architecture from reeds wood and nile lime to stone but the must Abbas did not preserve the body Nobles like eurocopter organized statues of their relatives to accompany them on their journey to the afterlife but money couldn't buy immortality and then they found net from everyday they washed their clothes with washing soda and cleaned their teeth with bread soda when they put the two together they had something that would dry and preserve the body Egypt had cracked the code of eternal life mummification a combination of the salts in washing soda and bread soda which made of Natron were applied to the body to remove all moisture and so preserve the mummy of the Pharaoh [Music] but the mastaba was much too humble for an eternal Pharaoh it was here at saqqara that egypt saw its first pyramid the stepped pyramid of djoser [Music] six mustapha's of decreasing size piled one atop the other but the journey to the beyond was perilous [Music] these are the passwords to the afterlife carved almost four and a half thousand years ago prayers advice and magical incantations [Music] Joseph stepped pyramid was an act of faith a stairway to the Stars for the Pharaoh it was also a prototype for a tomb that would be the artistic and architectural high point of ancient Egypt and markets for [Music] Kairo is a modern capital city busily engaging with the 21st century the Giza pyramid complex is almost swamped by a Cairo suburb [Music] the Pyramid of the pharaoh Khufu is the largest single building in the history of the world it stands on a foundation of rock and rises through two hundred and three steps to a height of 147 meters it weighs six million tonnes the wage of all Europe's cathedrals combined [Music] built over 20 year period the entire structure was covered in gleaming limestone slabs and topped with a gold covered pyramid capstone Giza also boasts the best-known piece of architecture in the world Spinks 57 meters long and facing east to the Rising Sun it symbolizes the sun-god rah and his son the deified Pharaoh the Greeks called it speaks Arabic it is abou el Hall a father of feel it did not defend the ancient kingdom from destruction Pharaoh of Pepe ii simply lived too long raining for 90 years he buried his heirs and when he himself died in to 181 BC the kingdoms shattered it was the end of the ancient kingdom and the beginning of something new and startling in the religion of Egypt [Music] but Mecca is to Muslims so Abydos became to the Egyptians not because of a prophet's tomb but because Osiris the god of the underworld was buried here abydos marks a turning point in Egyptian religious thinking what developed here was the revolutionary belief that each individual was responsible for the life granted them and that the afterlife was open to anyone Pharaoh or farmer why because Osiris like Jesus was the god of resurrection the resurrection of Osiris was also a guarantee that the Pharaohs would last forever through reincarnation [Music] Osiris had come back from the dead and guaranteed the continuity of the Pharaohs according to legend the murdered King Osiris was resurrected by his wife Isis and guaranteed the continuity of the Pharaoh king [Music] but in this life it is people not gods who wield power political priests would proclaim a God born in secret a moon became king of the gods in the new capital of Egypt [Music] a moon was now be God and Carnac was his temple [Music] from the 20th century BC successive pharaohs made their mark here in art and architecture [Music] Kamik became the most powerful religious and economic center in Egypt like the Vatican a state within a state history is written in stone here [Music] the walls tell the story of daily worship [Music] - elegant pink granite pillars recalled the unification of upper and lower egypt in the lotus and papyrus united in the worship of the gods a moon andhra [Music] once a year during the Feast of Auckland almunawara was carried on the Nile to visit his wife and so ensure the regeneration of the crops [Music] if Carnac was the powerhouse of Egypt the looks are was its glory beyond the Sphinx guards Pharaoh Ramses waits to greet the God inside a forest of 74 papyrus topped choreography how were these great walls built by putting down a layer of stone and shoring it with a ramp of rubble as the stone layers reached upward so the rubble rampart provided scaffolding for the workers it was decorated from the top down as the rubble ramps were removed and what glorious decoration [Music] the draftsman stenciled the figure as a guide to the sculptors who itched with copper and bronze chisels finally these were painted with vivid columns [Music] the paint has long gone sand blasted by the centuries but an echo of their glory remains [Music] beyond is a pillared hall of gigantic read columns with floors once silvered to resemble water and ceilings who painted with stars [Music] [Music] death Held's little mystery for the egyptians of this era what really troubled them was the security of the dead the dead Pharaohs would go to the value of the Kings in the West to become invisible underground and safe for eternity the value of the Kings was dry and would preserve the body and it would be protected and served by a small army of guards and priests who lived there [Music] the tombs of the great are all but concealed in this valley in fact some are still to be found the decorations echo those of Giza and sakara in their mystery and splendor it was a cycle of life death and rebirth carefully stage-managed by the priests underpinned with symbols incantations and magic a cycle they thought would last forever in the year 1353 BC the young Pharaoh Amenhotep recited this poem to the son Oh God who gives life the soul God without another beside him you create the earth according to your wish you are in my heart [Music] for a 21st century Christian Jew or Muslim it's an orthodox prayer for a 14th century BC Egyptian pharaoh it was heresy Amenhotep changed his vision from many gods to one he changed his name to Akhenaten in honor of the One God after and he revolutionized the art and architecture of Egypt if the Sun was God then the temple didn't need a roof so the supporting walls could be less massive and what about out went the stylized perfectly proportioned godlike figure of the Pharaoh and in came the Pharaoh watts and all a man like any other Egyptian art had discovered realism [Music] [Music] like Henry the eighth the reforming Judah Akhenaten confiscated the temple treasure and when the powerful priests tried to combat him he closed Karnak and Luxor built a new capital for the new God Akhenaten reigned just 17 years within days of his death all traces of his God and name iterated [Music] the priests of our Moon had their revenge [Music] a moon would be restored but not for long the Persian Empire swept across the desert and engulfed Egypt the priests besieged a moon for a savior [Music] Oscar Wilde said when the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers the savior of the guards granted Egypt was a 33 year old Greek Alexander he did push back the Persians declared himself the son of a moon and then left Egypt because he had other worlds to conquer but he also left a Greek general on the throne the first of the ptolemy pharaohs it was the end of the Egyptian dynasty [Music] so what happened Egypt's religion and its mighty gods a small island here on the Nile holds the answer [Music] file a high up in the Nile was a place of pilgrimage from earliest times but the art and architecture of file a revealed the new reality the mighty figure on the pylon is Greek the Greek notion of space separates the buildings Greek perspective skews the pillars the last Egyptian hieroglyphic was written here on the 24th of August 394 ad an epitaph for the glory that had been [Music] [Music] and there is this the kiosk of trajan a new power was already stretching across the Mediterranean the Romans were coming [Applause] Egyptian religion was founded on stability but stability easily becomes rigidity the Nile floods the crops grow the pharaohs die and live again but then the world turned beneath their feet the whole structure of Egypt an inverted pyramid balanced on one man the all-powerful Pharaoh toppled preservation and adaptation in religious belief as in archeology go hand-in-hand if the Egyptians had accepted that perhaps our Moon Hawthorne and Osiris might not be listed among the lost gods [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 112,967

Rating: 4.5399141 out of 5

Keywords: BBC documentary, Giza pyramid, pyramid, mummification, Documentaries, reincarnation, Christy Kenneally, Cairo, TV Shows - Topic, stories, Full Documentary, The Lost Gods, ancient Egyptians, Full length Documentaries, documentary history, afterlife, Ancient Egypt Documentary, real, history documentary, History, Documentary, Ancient Egypt, Channel 4 documentary, Giza, Saqqara, 2017 documentary, Documentary Movies - Topic

Id: PRyT2KKooSo

Length: 24min 41sec (1481 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 12 2018