Original subtitles

(dramatic orchestral music)

The Great Pyramids of Egypt.

The sheer size of these monuments is fascinating.

The two highest and biggest

were built for Pharaoh Khufu and his son, Khafra.

The Khufu pyramid is 480 feet high,

and each pyramid contains about 2.5 million blocks.

How were they built?

Over the past few decades, significant discoveries

have been made on the very site where they were erected.

But now, far from the Giza plateau,

and miles from the pyramids themselves,

we are gaining more insight into just how they were built.

How these huge work sites were created,

cementing the strength and power of Egypt.

Two teams of egyptologists,

one based in the middle of the desert,

the other located on the Red Sea coast,

are currently discovering more

about the Egypt of Khufu's time,

than at the foot of the pyramids.

What have they found?

How can these new discoveries help them figure out

how ancient Egyptians worked?

By reconstructing their techniques and methods,

will these teams manage to unlock certain secrets

of these great builders?

(dramatic music)

The Khufu pyramid, and those constructed after it,

were built on the Giza Plateau.

This exceptional site was a huge necropolis for centuries,

before being practically forgotten under the sand.

When Napoleon and his troops arrived

at the end of the 18th century,

the bottoms of the pyramids were not visible,

and the Sphinx was half-buried.

For the next century and a half,

after this memorable expedition,

monumental excavation work was carried out

to remove the sand from the Giza Plateau.

In the 1980's, a major new development.

Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and Mark Lehner

discover the village and cemetery

of the workers who built the pyramid of Khafra, Khufu's son.

The vibes of the pyramid builders

began to emerge from the shadows,

and contradict the cliches written in the Bible.

The Pharaoh's workers were not slaves.

They were treated and fed well.

They were organized into 40-person teams.

These men were proud to be buried next to their king.

These excavations have continued for 30 years.

But the occupation and the looting of the site for centuries

and centuries after Khufu's death,

have obscured a great number of clues.

No papyrus, no written document dating from his reign

have ever been found on the Giza Plateau.

The ravages of time have also destroyed

all the large-scale statues of him.

The only likeness of Khufu

that has miraculously survived the ages,

is a tine ivory figurine,

currently housed at the Cairo Museum.

Ironically, today, it's necessary to leave the Giza Plateau

in order to move the investigation forward.

More than 120 miles from the pyramids,

on the Red Sea coast, at Wadi El Jarf,

new discoveries are changing the situation,

and bringing new insight into Khufu's world.

Egyptologist Pierre Tallet and his team

come here every year to excavate for two months.

During their mission,

around 60 workers,

supervised by about 10 egyptologists and archeologists,

live here, self-sufficiently.

Their camp in the middle of the desert

is just a few yards from this ancient site,

that hasn't been occupied

since it was abandoned 4,500 years ago.

What has Pierre Tallet found here

that could not have been discovered

at the foot of the pyramids?

What was the purpose of these galleries

carved into the rock?

We're in a gallery that is typical of Wadi El Jarf,

these galleries had several functions,

but their main function was to house dismantled boats,

that were stored inside these chambers,

between two Red Sea expeditions.

But so far,

after eight years of excavating these galleries,

an entire boat has not been found,

just a few fragments that sometimes bear inscriptions.

Pierre Tallet has not found the boats he's looking for,

but he has discovered traces of Khufu all over his site.

You can see Khufu's cartouche very well.

You have to imagine it.

In fact, it is written vertically,

even if the block is horizontal.

Here you can read King Khufu's full name very clearly,

Khnum Khufu,

which literally means, may the God Khnum protect me.

Here, ascribed through

Khufu's name and cursive, with a brush.

But in the official version in hieroglyphs,

you can see that the sign of the ram,

representing the god Khnum, is clearer.

Pharaoh's names were often linked with a deity,

because they themselves were considered to be like gods.

Pierre has found traces of Khufu

almost everywhere on this site,

which has been untouched by men for 45 centuries.

But the real game-changer

was a totally unexpected discovery,

that any archeologist who has ever excavated

at the foot of the pyramids would have loved to find.

Well, here it is, in this very ordinary hole.

In 2013, between these two blocks,

Pierre Tallet's team found papyrus fragments,

thousands of fragments,

which proved to be the oldest ever discovered in Egypt.

We absolutely did not expect to find

this kind of documentation,

at such a faraway site.

At the beginning we were searching for a Pharaonic carver,

since we had already discovered several.

Very quickly, Pierre was able

to translate a few pieces,

and he realized that they had just found

the detailed reports of a foreman

who worked for Pharaoh Khufu.

You can see that these were logbooks

kept by a lower level supervisor named Merer,

who recounted a part of the Giza pyramid's construction.

This priceless treasure

is now protected in the Cairo museum.

What they found is so fragile and voluminous,

that six years later,

there are still many papyrus fragments

to restore and reassemble.

For this extremely delicate task,

Pierre asked one of the world's foremost specialists

in ancient papyrus restoration

to take care of his precious discovery.

So that's really fantastic.

I don't think anyone's ever seen papyrus like this before.

This papyrus is an administrative report

written by a scribe official called Merer.

It's a bit like an Excel sheet that's 45 centuries old.

It scrupulously records

the movements of a team of workers,

what they do every day, and what they receive in exchange.

Everything in black

is what the team does for the king.

Everything is red is what the government does for the team.

Notice in red, you can see the bread deliveries,

which keep the workers fed for a month.

But what truly new information,

what scoop have these papyri revealed?

This document is very important,

because it allowed us to date all of the archives

that were found on this Wadi El Jarf site in 2013.

We have here the date that corresponds to the year

after the 13th census of large and small livestock

in the reign of Khufu.

During the ancient kingdom,

the accounting of time is done biannually,

according to an inventory of the wealth of the territory

that takes place every two years.

Thy papyrus proves that Khufu's reign

lasted longer than previously thought.

He ruled for at least 27 years, not 20.

That gave him much more time to build his pyramid,

almost a third more time,

which changes the estimations egyptologists have made

to unlock the secrets of this immense monument.

But what were Merer and his team of 40 boatmen doing?

Where where they going?

One clue can still be found atop the Khafra pyramid.

These white and shining facing stones

once covered these gigantic monuments.

There are also a few left at the foot

of the north side of Khufu's pyramid.

These blocks of fine limestone,

different from those that make up

95% of the volume of the pyramids,

come from a quarry located about 12 miles

from the Giza Plateau.

In the Wadi El Jarf papyri,

supervisor Merer explains

how it took him two or three days

to transport these blocks from Tura

to the foot of the pyramids

with his team of about 40 boatmen.

A port had been constructed next to the construction site,

allowing heavy materials to be transported

when the Nile was at its highest level

during the annual flooding.

But that's not all.

It seems that our fragments

indicated an area called (foreign word) Khufu,

literally, "long live Khufu,"

which is supposed to be at the foot of the pyramid of Khufu.

Pierre thinks that the Pharaoh

built his palace in this area,

to have a clear view of the construction site.

After discovering the length of Khufu's reign,

this is the second big scoop

that Merer's papyri have revealed.

Khufu's palace is probably currently located

under the modern city,

and is undoubtedly waiting to be discovered.

Merer recounts

that he stopped in this particular place,

because the royal archives,

containing all the important papyri in Khufu's government

was near the palace.

A real gold mine of information

that could be buried under the modern city of Cairo.

One person in particular is extremely happy

about the discovery of Merer's papyri.

It is the egyptologist Mark Lehner,

who has been excavating the Giza Plateau for over 30 years.

Ah, Pierre.

Hello Mark.

So good to see you.

I am very pleased to meet you again.

Good to see you.

Our lab, it looks small,

but it's actually much bigger inside.

Come inside and have a look.

Here, carefully organized and cataloged,

there are millions and millions of objects

from the village of the workers

who built the pyramid of Khafra.

They are both excited to discuss their mutual finds,

and check if their discoveries match.

This one's unfinished.

All of this, I think is like a detective

at a crime scene, it's making an inference.

When you find texts, then they speak to you directly.

And it's like that opening that window.

We have all the signs,

naming the different files of the gang,

the smaller ones, the bigger one.

You have the crooks for the bigger one.

The four strokes for the smaller one, and so on.

It's almost every time it's scraped.

Oh, that one's broken.

It's okay. But it's perfect.

So this is what you have.

Yeah, exactly.

That's amazing.

We have got I think about 50 of them.

You know there's a huge, huge irony here.

So you are in the periphery.

You're out there in an expeditionary force,

at the edge of the frontier of Egypt.

And you have all these inscriptions and texts.

We are at the center of the bureaucracy

in the Egyptian state,

and all our material culture,

many of which is the same,

is blank, is anonymous.

It's strange.

We certainly are keeping our eyes open.

It'd be great to find the house that Merer stayed in.

How we would know?

Really great.

His name might be on the door.

The name on the room.

Merer lives here.

But why was Merer's diary found

at Wadi El Jarf, and not on the Giza Plateau?

What was Merer doing with his team of 40 boatmen

on the Red Sea coast?

After several years of intensive work at Wadi El Jarf site,

Pierre Tallet and his team

are able to reconstruct part of the story.

A few kilometers from the galleries cut into the mountains,

they excavated a building and port facilities,

where hundreds of men could work and sleep.

(solemn music)

And at the seaside, they found a jetty

from which Khufu's ships set sail for Sinai.

Another important clue,

while searching underwater and in the port buildings,

they found about a hundred boat anchors.

At that time, anchors were simple limestone blocks

with a hole for a rope to pass through.

But what were they looking for

on the other side of the Red Sea?

It's certain that they were going to the Sinai peninsula.

That was certainly one of the major reasons

for building this port,

because Sinai had the largest copper deposits

that the Egyptians could mine directly.

Several copper mines dating from Khufu's era,

and even before his reign,

have been found in Sinai.

At that time, there was no iron,

so the tools that cut the Great Pyramids'

2.5 million blocks of limestone

were made of copper ore.

Starting at Wadi El Jarf,

donkeys must have transported tons of copper

across the desert to the pyramid construction site.

Using this desert road,

Merer and his team may have made several round trips.

Before returning to the pyramid site

with their copper cargo,

they would have first arrived in Wadi El Jarf

with the pieces of their dismantled boats.

(dramatic orchestral music)

From there, they would also have been part

of the expeditions to Sinai,

an adventure that was apparently not without risk.

Local populations didn't really welcome the Egyptians.

We found a veritable fortress that the Egyptians had built

at exactly the same time as a landing area,

so they protected themselves.

The ancient camp at Wadi El Jarf,

that Pierre has yet to excavate

is also higher up.

This allowed them to monitor their surroundings,

and prevent any attacks

that could threaten their expeditions.

In this hostile context,

ancient Egyptians tried to protect

their installations at all costs.

Sometimes several years passed

between two expeditions to Sinai.

Before leaving, to avoid having their equipment stolen,

they stored the dismantled boats in these galleries,

and they carefully closed them with limestone blocks,

cut especially for that purpose.

Bedouins living in the desert

may have been curious about what was inside the galleries.

Using these large blocks as a locking system

was a way to protect what was stored inside.

So these galleries were like safes.

At that time quality wood was extremely rare and precious.

There was none in Egypt.

They had to go and get it from Lebanon,

a land then covered with huge cedar forests.

But how were these huge blocks used to seal the galleries,

cut and transported here?

(in foreign language)

Today, we would really like to know how long it took,

and what techniques were used to create this locking system.

This is a major

experimental archeological project,

that Pierre Tallet wants to carry out

on the Wade El Jarf site.

He asked Franck Burgos,

a stonemason, and a specialist in ancient architecture,

to help him with the project.

Their experiment's goal is to better interpret

all the archeological data they can see on the site,

but also to understand how the pyramid of Khufu

might have been built.

This experiment will take place

about 300 yards from the camp,

just next to the quarry where the ancient Egyptians

carved the blocks used to seal Wadi El Jarf's galleries.

An unfinished block, abandoned before it was finished,

has allowed Franck to understand

some of the techniques they used.

The block is surrounded by trenches

that go all the way around it,

and are used to extract the block.

We realized that there are work stations

that are approximately one meter long.

So every meter, there was a worker,

but then when he entered the trench,

he was in a crouched position.

Then he would cut the stone,

and once he had finished cutting in front of him,

he would turn around and cut behind.

Using this ancient block as a model,

Franck and his team of four workers

will extract a 1.5 cubic meter block

with copper tools.

Now we're going to do an experiment,

to time how long it takes to extract the block.

Franck starts by drawing the trenches

that will define their work area,

and the size of the block they want to extract.

You have to stay at the same angle,

or you'll damage the chisel.

Copper is a soft metal that wears down quickly

when cutting stone.

So the technique is different working with these tools,

than working with steel chisels.

But with the copper chisels,

the work is extremely long and tedious.

How did the ancient Egyptians

manage to produce more efficient results?

Last year, I had the idea to wet the stone,

because I encountered big problems

in my experiment with copper tools.

I realized that there was a lot of salt in the stone,

because salt is soluble,

I had the idea of wetting the stone

to see if it would soften it up.

We made five times more progress when we wet the stone.

We realized that the stone is really crumbly.

You can crumble it with your fingers.

It is less solid than it was before.

So far, no one has carried out

this type of archeological experiment using water.

And this technique is not mentioned

in any ancient documents or bas-reliefs.

If his intuition is right,

it's a real discovery.

All five of them will work eight hours a day,

to carve out this block,

which is about the same size as the average block

in the pyramid of Khufu.

And every half hour they have to sharpen

their copper tools again.

This archeological experiment, using copper tools,

and not steel tools,

has never been done properly before.

The result of this test,

will reveal a lot about the ancient techniques used

during Khufu's time.

(slow rock music)

Wow, I hadn't seen this,

you've made a lot of progress.

With one quart of water,

you can remove about three inches

from an area that's 20 inches squared.

If we hadn't wet the stone,

we'd still be at four inches from the surface all around.

That's a huge discovery.

What's surprising is that it broke at the bottom.

You can see the crack that goes down there.

It split at the lowest point.

(in foreign language)

Thanks to you guys.

Thanks to all of us.

It took us about eight days

to finish this experiment.

Now we just have to transport it.

The tools didn't wear down too much,

and we used about three quarts of water for the experiment.

Without the water, it would have taken us

two or three times longer.

Franck believes that by using water,

ancient Egyptians, who were more experienced

than the men on his team,

could have cut a block in four to five days at the most.

But what did they do with all the rubble?

The extraction waste was used to make ramps,

but also at the entrance of quarries to load the blocks,

to handle them easily.

If it took two million,

or two and a half million cubic meters of stone

to build the Khufu pyramid,

that would mean that there were about

two, 2.5 million cubic meters of gravel.

So according to Franck Burgos,

ancient Egyptians would most probably have also used water

to cut the millions of stone blocks

needed to build the pyramids more rapidly.

At the foot of the pyramid of Khufu,

we can still see the quarries

from which most of the blocks were extracted.

By building the pyramids,

the ancient Egyptians transformed the landscape,

changed the geography of the place.

They literally tore off much of the rocky base

of the Giza Plateau.

The Sphinx itself,

is a remnant of this hard limestone plateau,

an immense area of which was used

to cut the stones needed for the pyramids.

And all the gravel and excess stone this method produced,

would have been reused to build ramps.

But what type of ramp did they use 4,500 years ago

to transport blocks to a height of 480 feet.

The debate is raging between egyptologists and specialists,

and so, many models have been proposed.

A single ramp is either too steep or too long

to maintain a realistic slope of no more than 12%.

Several ramps seem to be a very costly solution,

in terms of time and effort.

Is it an external wraparound ramp,

or the kind of internal ramp

proposed by architect Jean-Pierre Houdin in the 2000's?

For now, there is no definitive evidence

that would settle this debate.

Again, it may be necessary to distance ourselves

from the pyramids to find some answers.

185 miles south of the Giza pyramids,

a Franco-British archeological mission,

with the help of 100 Egyptian workers

is possibly about to make a major discovery.

We are at Hatnub,

one of the oldest calcite quarries in the world.

This is where the great Pharaohs went to look

for a hard and crystalline stone,

that is also called, Egyptian alabaster.

Today, there is no alabaster left in this quarry,

which was totally depleted and abandoned in ancient times.

(dramatic orchestral music)

Clearing all the rubble and sand

accumulated over the past 2,000 years,

is a gargantuan task.

And here, there is no tomb or funerary treasure to find.

So why put so much effort into it?

What Yannis Gourdon's team has begun to find on the site

could revolutionize our understanding

of the major Pharaonic construction sites,

particularly that of the Khufu pyramid.

Because here we know that they extracted and hauled

a huge alabaster block,

to make a 58-ton statue for a Pharaoh.

While they were clearing the quarry

in search of new inscriptions,

egyptologists found steps and holes

carved into the ramp.

They think that these holes were used

to wedge huge wooden poles,

that were part of a very ingenious towing system.

They have one month to clear as much gravel as possible,

around 6,000 tons,

to see if there are similar holes

on the right side of the ramp,

and lower down in the quarry.

But how can we date this ramp,

carved into the rock inside a quarry,

that was used for almost 3,000 years?

How can we be sure that it was used in Khufu's era?

What helps them are the hundreds and hundreds

of inscriptions left there by expedition leaders,

who came all the way here to extract the sacred alabaster.

So let's have a look.

On Khufu's inscriptions.

Roland Enmarch and Yannis Gourdon

are experts in hieroglyphics.

By lifting all the inscriptions in the quarry,

they have identified two cartouches from Pharaoh Khufu.

Even if some of the hieroglyphs have been destroyed,

they can still decipher Khufu's royal name.

Yeah, there's definitely a vase there.

And the quail?

Yes, the quail chick,

and the viper.

Yes.

It is the same signature that has been found

all around the Wadi El Jarf site,

and in Merer's papyri.

Yannis Gourdon, and Roland Enmarch,

decided to dig a trench under a second Khufu cartouche

that's also damaged, to access the bottom of the tow path,

to see if it's possible to link

the Khufu cartouche with the ramp.

(dramatic orchestral music)

A month later, the team has been able to clear

the top of the ramp entirely,

and a large part of the bottom of the quarry,

where the Khufu cartouche is located.

Were they able to find the clues

and information they were looking for?

The amount of rubble and sand deposited here

over the past 2,000 years,

is much greater than they had estimated.

After digging down about 30 feet under the Khufu cartouche,

they have finally reached the base of the ramp.

Yannis and Olivier Lavigne are happy

to find another hole carved into the rock,

that's similar to the one found at the top of the ramp.

Yes, we've got a new structure, here.

Here there are some nice tool marks.

So this means that everything was cut in one go,

in one piece, the wall, then the steps,

and then after, the holes for the poles.

So now the oldest inscriptions on these walls.

Yeah, that's Khufu.

Which means that the whole thing was made

at the latest, during Khufu's era.

Thanks to these discoveries,

they believe that the ramp must have been created

during Khufu's time, or even before.

(soft orchestral music)

And at the top of the ramp, just as they had hoped,

they uncovered more pole holes,

and lots of tool marks.

(softly dramatic orchestral music)

Olivier measured all the tool marks

the workers left in the quarry,

especially on the ramp,

and the holes in walls next to it.

He found the same arcs everywhere.

Here apparently the same teams that arrived on the site

and cut this wall, also carved the steps,

and the holes for the poles, in that order.

In no other quarry

have these types of elements been found.

A ramp at a 20 or 25% grade, or even more,

depending on the location,

and on the sides there are stairs with holes

cut into the rock.

What were these holes used for?

How did this ramp work?

Can it provide new clues

about the construction of the pyramids,

and the ramp system used at the time?

Olivier Lavigne has analyzed all these clues,

and developed a hypothesis.

So here we have a pole hole.

The wall in front of me is vertical,

so the pole was placed here, a large circular pole.

You have to imagine it because it's rather large.

And here we really have a structure that enables,

when a big block gets to the towing path,

to have teams above pulling the block,

and others below with ropes wrapped around the poles here,

and who are able, pulling like this,

to make the block go up again.

They take the ropes and pull towards the bottom,

and that's what actually makes the block move up.

Behind here there's a big structure,

a crossbar that goes here,

that ties, that dovetails the pole

to wedge it just behind, because behind here,

the hole is a little slanted.

It's not easy to make a vertical hole

with this kind of tool,

and there's another hole here that makes a strut,

and arrives here in the upper part,

which supports the upper part of the pole

to prevent it from tilting.

Here you need a log, a tree trunk that's very smooth,

and quite circular,

so that the rope can easily slide around it.

The would have used mud, silt from the Nile,

to lubricate the ramp and slide the block,

eliminating friction as much as possible.

They could move very large blocks

up this tow path.

There's a story about a 58 ton colossus

that came out of an alabaster quarry like this one,

and that could have been possible here.

So as the block advanced,

the teams above would have positioned

the ropes ahead of time, on the next poles,

so that the block would have moved forward

as smoothly as possible.

(dramatic orchestral music)

According to Olivier, this ramp system

could have been adapted to the pyramid of Khufu.

(dramatic orchestral music)

But a ramp on a pyramid was not rock,

it was built with gravel and bricks.

So they had to secure and stabilize the space

between the poles, using wooden crossbars inside the ramp,

and also above it.

But is this system feasible?

This hypothesis needs to be tested under real conditions,

to know for sure.

Of all the pyramids,

Khufu's is the most difficult to decipher,

because its interior architecture is unique.

It raises questions that can't be found anywhere else.

The immensity and ceiling height of the grand gallery

is a mystery in and of itself.

But the most surprising of all, is the King's Chamber,

built with huge granite blocks,

some of which weigh up to 70 tons.

It is the only pyramid that has

this kind of interior burial chamber,

that's located so high up, at 140 feet from the ground.

How did they manage to extract

and cut these blocks so perfectly?

Can you see the chisel marks of the stonemasons

who made the sarcophagus?

Yes, of course, there are several there.

Look here, you can really see them.

What tools and techniques did they use

to shape these angles that are so geometrically perfect?

Part of the answer can be found 620 miles from the pyramids,

in southern Egypt, in the city of Aswan.

The old granite quarries used during the Pharaonic period

are located here on the banks of the Nile.

Some blocks were never finished

and extracted from the quarry,

because they were so gigantic.

The most famous of these monuments

is the unfinished obelisk in Aswan.

This giant stone is 137 feet long,

and weighs about 1,200 tons.

It is believed that they stopped working on it,

because a crack appeared during the extraction process.

These unfinished monuments give astonishing testimony

about ancient Egyptians' stone carving techniques.

They reveal some secrets, like how the masons

were able to work the stone using other stones,

that are even harder than granite.

It's so amazing, the work that's been done.

To extract the obelisk,

you can see the trench that they had to create

with balls of dolerite, which is a relatively hard stone.

It is magmatic rock,

and it is the only tool they had

at their disposal to cut granite.

It's really incredible.

Here, there are the same vertical trenches

as for the obelisk,

but what we have in addition are horizontal trenches

that were used to remove the block, visible here.

It's crazy.

It's very, very uncomfortable.

I think they must have sat down instead.

They were flexible, flexible and small, I think.

So the dolerite balls

were used to extract the granite.

But how did they manage

to make right angles and perfect edges?

Since it is impossible to do experimental archeology

on this historic site,

Franck has decided to launch a new experiment in Cairo.

(tapping)

Sculptor Nathan Doss, and his student, Islam El Sharqawi,

are used to sculpting granite, using modern techniques.

But they have always wondered how their ancestors

carved this hard rock without iron tools.

This test is a challenge for them.

After a few minutes striking the stone

with the dolerite balls,

they have already loosened a large amount of granite dust.

But for Franck, the real challenge

is not to prove the dolerite's effectiveness.

He has no doubt about that.

What he would like to test,

is how to make perfect angles,

like in the King's Chamber, without steel tools.

If we hit the edge of the ridge

with dolerite balls like this,

we'll break the ridge.

(soft jazz music)

According to Franck and other researchers,

who experimented before him,

the perfect recipe is to use an abrasive paste,

composed of Nile silt and emery powder.

Emery is one of the only rocks

that is much harder than granite.

When emery powder is applied with a single copper blade,

it can actually saw the granite.

Okay, do you hear that?

That sound means it's good.

Okay, needs to switch?

You just have to be

very, very, very patient.

Five millimeters.

Really?

Not bad.

We got to a fifth of an inch.

I think we sawed for 25 minutes

to get to a fifth of an inch depth,

but over a short length.

With a longer length, I think it would take a little longer.

For three days, Nathan, Islam,

and two workers, will level two sides of the block,

removing between 1.5 and two inches of their surfaces,

with dolerite balls.

Then, they will start sawing on two sides,

to prepare the cutting of a perfect edge.

(dark music)

In Wadi El Jarf, the mission is coming to a close,

but Franck would like to try to move the limestone block

he cut the year before, to the camp.

To best prepare the experiment,

the workers remove the stones, level the surface,

and smooth the tow path as much as possible.

In a symbolic gesture,

Pierre draws the Khufu cartouche,

and the name of a team similar to Merer's,

whose marks he found on several blocks,

walking the galleries.

Darn, we're not enough, we need more guys.

Under the old blocks,

locking the galleries at Wadi El Jarf,

archeologists found only timber, but no sleds.

Franck therefore, starts with this technique.

His method is to go from the simplest technique,

to the most complicated.

Come on, all together!

(in foreign language)

Look at the path.

It's not good, the wood is slowing us down.

The sand between the stone and the wood

serves to make the stone slide,

to reduce the friction

between the stone and the wood a little bit.

All together, yes!

Yes!

Stop, stop, stop.

Wait, wait.

It's not doing what we want,

and I'm really annoyed.

We don't have the right method, it's not smooth.

And yet, we're on the steepest slope.

We've got to got several hundred yards

to get it where we want it.

Several hundred yards wetting the clay,

all for a fairly mediocre block for a mediocre structure,

I don't think they did it this way.

Maybe we should try moving it with a sled.

Even a rudimentary one, because for the moment,

the block looks like it's stuck to the planks.

I don't know, I just see

that it's a lot of effort for too little return.

We'll see tomorrow.

We'll think about it, together.

And we'll see.

(dark electronic music)

In one day, with 33 workers,

the block only moved 50 yards,

on a 25% downward slope.

Franck has only one more day.

How can he save the situation?

(sawing)

The decision is made to quickly build a makeshift sled.

Wood against wood,

the block suddenly moves much faster.

It's moving much better now.

We just started from there 10 minutes ago.

New test, they try to replace

the sand with wet clay.

So?

(men chanting)

Look, the sled's not moving.

And so?

Well, it's stuck.

When you put a little wet clay

that is supposed to lubricate the system,

the block stops moving.

(in foreign language)

So they go back to the sand solution.

As the experience progresses,

workers learn to work together,

and are more and more efficient.

(men chanting)

They reach the camp at the end of the afternoon,

300 yards from their starting point.

(men yelling and chanting)

Next year, Franck wants to come back

with a real sled and do more tests with purer clay,

and also try to pave the path with some pebbles,

whose marks they spotted near the ancient quarry.

He would also like to do tests

where the block has to go up a slope.

But what can we understand from this first

archeological experiment,

concerning the construction of the Khufu pyramid?

To make a connection with the Great Pyramid,

I think we can expect 35 yards per hour,

for a block of this size.

That might be the most pessimistic estimation.

I think they were more experienced,

they had a much more functional technique

that certainly allowed them to go faster than that.

Before leaving for France,

Franck returns to Cairo,

to the workshop of the Egyptian sculptors,

just as the edge begins to emerge from the block.

For this delicate operation,

Nathan decided to use flint tools,

rather than dolerite balls that are too big,

and therefore, less precise for this finishing work.

They manage to make a perfect angle

with the tools available in Khufu's era.

Dolerite balls, a copper blade,

an abrasive emery paste, and flint.

(laughing)

(in foreign language)

I always read about the ancient techniques,

something that worried me a lot,

since I'm a sculptor so,

to be able to do with yourself,

that's something.

Experimental archeology

really allows us to better understand

the movements and techniques used by ancient Egyptians.

Franck's experiments showed that they probably used water

to cut the two million blocks of limestone

that make up the Great Pyramid of Khufu.

Otherwise, they would not have been able

to cut so many blocks in less than 27 years,

with copper tools.

With this method, they would have extracted

as much rubble and unusable material

as they did cut stones,

which would have allowed them to build ramps easily,

and be able to transport the blocks

up to a height of 480 feet.

Hatnub's ramp indicates that they could pull

large blocks on ramps at grades over 20%,

not just 12% maximum, as previously thought.

They used wood, wooden sleds,

perhaps moistened silt, and maybe sand, to reduce friction.

Many major archeological experiments

still need to be carried out

to try to get a clearer picture.

These tests require long preparation and training

for the teams involved,

because again, the devil is always in the details.

Thanks to decades of archeological work

done on the Giza Plateau,

confirmed by Pierre Tallet's discoveries,

it has become possible to reconstruct the Giza Plateau,

and the workers' daily lives,

during the construction of the Khufu pyramid.

We know where the pools and canals,

specially built to carry the materials, were located.

And where the Khufu palace,

and the royal archives, probably stood.

To build the pyramids,

these exceptional builders

also had to create a strong centralized state,

where everything was planned and organized

down to the smallest detail.

The wood that was essential to construct boats

was brought from Lebanon.

The copper ore to build the tools came from Sinai.

The granite was carved in Aswan,

and transported along the Nile

to the construction site on the Giza Plateau,

as were the stones from Tura.

Without the pyramids,

perhaps ancient Egypt would not have become

the great civilization it was,

a reference, an inspiration,

that has spanned the centuries

and that still challenges our thinking today.

(dramatic orchestral music)