Original subtitles

[narrator] egypt's great pyramid,

The world's most famous tomb,

Built by a pharaoh with a reputation for cruelty.

[whip cracking]

[in foreign language]

Khufu terrorized his people and he enslaved them.

[narrator] a supposed megalomaniac,

Ready to sacrifice his people in his pursuit of perfection.

[moaning loudly]

Now, archeologists are hunting for the truth

About this king and his pyramid.

It's a good example of how hard this work was.

It was not easy.

[narrator] exposing strange ceremonies,

And an incredible lost city of the pyramid workers.

These are the frozen moments that tell you everything

About ancient egyptian society.

[narrator] is this wonder of the ancient world,

A monument to monstrosity?

[tense dramatic music]

The story of the pyramids is one of innovation.

It was a resurrection machine.

[narrator] mysterious rituals.

[woman] these are things that help the deceased re-energize

And live for eternity.

[narrator] back breaking work,

And palace intrigue.

Unlock the deepest secrets of the pharaohs.

[franck every mummy is different,

You never know exactly what to expect.

[narrator] explore the lives of ancient workers

And uncover the remarkable story of egypt's old kingdom.

[woman] not only did ancient egypt make the pyramids,

The pyramids made ancient egypt.

[air whooshing]

[tense dramatic music]

[narrator] around 2,483 bc, a pharaoh called khufu

Is reaching the end of his reign.

He is about to inspect the most important work of his life.

The largest pyramid in egyptian history.

The great pyramid of giza.

Khufu commanded his people to build him

This colossal monument as a resurrection machine

That will propel him to the afterlife.

[gentle music]

[tense upbeat music]

Today, some 4500 years later,

The great pyramid remains the only wonder

Of the ancient world still standing.

It is more than more than 450 feet high

And is made up of 2 1/2 million stone blocks.

It took over 25 years to build.

Exactly how khufu pulled his country together to do it,

Has long remained a mystery.

[dramatic music]

In cairo, at the egyptian museum,

Egyptologist, salima ikram

Is investigating the pharaoh khufu.

There are 160,000 treasures here,

But only one puts a face to egypt's most ambitious pharaoh.

A small ivory statue, just three inches high.

[salima] it's the only statue we have

Where khufu's name is actually inscribed on it.

But it has the basic constructs

Of what a king should be like.

And it's ironic

Because he is the man who built the biggest pyramid

And yet the statue is tiny.

[dramatic music]

It's bizarre that this king

Should be unattested in any other way.

Where are all the images from his other temples?

Where are freestanding statues?

It's very curious what happened to khufu.

[narrator] could the explanation

For why just one single statue of khufu has survived,

Be linked to his notorious reputation?

[dramatic music]

2,500 years ago, a greek historian called herodotus

Investigated the mystery of khufu and his great pyramid.

He toured egypt to collect accounts and stories

Passed down through the ages.

When he arrived on the giza plateau,

22 centuries after the great pyramid was built,

The monument was still the tallest man-made building

On the planet.

[dramatic music]

Herodotus claims that the egyptians remembered khufu

As a tyrant,

Ranting and raving in his palace.

[in foreign language]

Herodotus wrote really nasty things in his histories,

According to him, khufu was a mean king and no one liked him

Because he was cruel.

[in foreign language]

Herodotus wrote that khufu terrorized his people

And he enslaved them to build his great pyramid.

[in foreign language]

Herodotus paints khufu as something of a tyrant,

Shuts down the temples of the country

In order to focus everything

On his great pyramid construction scheme

And whose own daughter works in a brothel

And collects blocks as payment from her patrons.

[salima] it's very difficult to understand

Who was feeding herodotus these stories

But clearly at that time,

The egyptians themselves had a history of khufu

Being not very kind or gentle or benevolent.

[whip slams]

[narrator] according to herodotus,

This is how the great pyramid was built.

By an enslaved people working for a depraved monster.

But how much of this story is based on reality?

It was thousands of years after khufu

And he was collecting information from people

Never saw khufu, never saw khufu's sons

And they lived thousands of years after khufu.

[narrator] the truth has long remained a mystery.

[tense music]

But one thing historians have learned,

By examining tomb inscriptions,

Is the name of the person directly responsible

For the pyramid's construction.

[dramatic music]

The person khufu puts in charge of construction

Is his vizier, hemiunu.

[colleen] hemiunu was the nephew of khufu.

And apparently, based on his titles,

He is certainly in charge of the construction

Of the great pyramid.

[narrator] hemiunu's family business is pyramid building.

His father was the architect for khufu's father, sneferu.

Experience he'll need to fulfill khufu's enormous ambitions.

[flora anthony] he wants to create the largest pyramid

That's ever been built.

And he's got to get it done really in 20 years or less.

That is an enormous project.

It was very stressful for hemiunu.

[narrator] khufu has another demand.

Build the pyramid away from the tombs of his ancestors.

[dramatic music]

So hemiunu scours the west bank of the nile

For the right spot.

The west is where the sun sets, symbolizing death.

So this is where all pyramids are built.

Picking a site isn't easy,

He's looking for an area suitable for nothing less

Than the biggest construction site

In the history of mankind.

What's the high ground, the low ground,

Where is the slope, if we build a ramp here,

If we build a temple there, is it going to work?

Where do we lay out our cemeteries?

Where will we quarry the stone?

These are all the things egyptians has to think about.

[narrator] hemiunu must do everything in his power

To avoid the fate that befell his father, nefermaat.

He hit a major problem when building a second pyramid

For his king, sneferu.

Midway through the construction

Of an ambitious steep sided pyramid,

The monument began to crack.

The site's foundations weren't strong enough

To support the huge weight.

To avoid total collapse,

He was forced to change the angle of the pyramid's sides,

Giving the monument its name,

The bent pyramid.

The odd shape wasn't good enough for the king

And nefermaat had to start again.

Khufu wants an even bigger pyramid.

Hemiunu can't afford a similar mistake.

[colleen darnell] we can imagine that khufu is also worrying

About whether he too will live long enough

To complete his own pyramid.

Will he be like his father sneferu

Finishing three pyramids before he dies?

Or will khufu perhaps not live long enough

To even finish a single pyramid?

[mohamed] the most important thing

For the king

Is to finish his pyramid during his life.

He has to see the pyramid completed.

[narrator] if the legend of khufu's cruelty is true,

This is not a man that hemiunu can afford to disappoint.

In ancient egypt,

Hemiunu's team of engineers spend days testing the bedrock

To find the perfect location for king khufu's pyramid.

They studied the nature of the rock

And the undulation of the landscape for miles.

Until they finally find the ideal place,

Giza.

[dramatic music]

Today, giza is a bustling suburb of cairo.

4,600 year ago, it was an empty plateau,

20 miles north of the bent pyramid

And not far from the capital at memphis.

What was here geologically, was a big plate of limestone.

It was perfect as a platform

For the pyramids as foundations.

[narrator] mark lehner is an american professor

Of archeology and egyptology.

He's spent three decades investigating the giza plateau,

Hunting for evidence about how the great pyramid was built.

I realized that I had to turn my back to the pyramids

To understand them,

Because I realized that without understanding the people

And their economy and their society,

I didn't understand the pyramid.

[narrator] on the south of the pyramid

There's a clue that exposes another reason

That hemiunu chose this site.

[tense music]

A huge quarry more than 100 feet deep.

So, look.

Here in the face, I can see that the quarry men know.

[metal scraping]

There's a weak vein here.

It's actually an iron vein that makes of stone weak.

As good geologists, natural geologists,

They know where to exploit those veins

To cut the blocks away.

It's like a freebie.

Nature is giving them a little assist.

They take any advantages they can get.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] the quarry is barely 1,000 feet

From the great pyramid,

A clever move by hemiunu to help speed up construction.

[dramatic music]

[metal clanking]

But completing the pyramid in time

Is still going to take enormous human effort

And some help from the gods.

[air whooshing]

[tense music]

Before construction begins,

Hemiunu and the pharaoh, khufu, travel to giza.

They need to perform a sacred ceremony.

A ritual they believe will be crucial

To the pyramid's success.

The pharaoh wears a special double crown.

The white represents upper egypt in the south,

And the red lower egypt in the north.

The crown symbolize the unity of his people

Who he will take with him into the afterlife

If the pyramid is a success.

A high priestess is dressed in the image

Of the goddess of mathematics and astronomy, seshat.

She's brought a measuring device known as the merkhet.

This tool can be used to align khufu's pyramid to the north.

The pharaoh believes that the north holds a portal

Through which his soul will pass to join his ancestors

And the gods.

[gentle music]

So the pyramid's orientation is a powerful symbol.

As is its size.

His surveyors use rope to measure out just over 755 feet

For each side of the monument.

This gives the ceremony its name, pedj-she's,

The stretching of the cord.

[gentle music]

With the sacred foundation ceremony complete,

Khufu names his tomb the akhet-khufu,

The horizon of khufu.

After his death,

The pharaoh will become one with the sun god

And will disappear every evening on the horizon

To be reborn at the first light of dawn.

The ritual is complete, and the gods appeased.

But hemiunu still needs to finalize the design

Of the great pyramid.

[gentle music]

[in foreign language]

The oversized dimensions of this pyramid

Must have worried engineers.

But hemiunu has no choice but to follow the demands of khufu

Who wants a smooth sided monument,

Just like his father sneferu's third and final pyramid.

Sneferu's red pyramid is 344 feet high,

The tallest building in the world,

But khufu wants a pyramid 100 feet taller.

This is going to be the largest construction project

In human history,

Demanding labor and supplies from all over egypt.

He has to obtain the resources from the quarries,

Bring them up to the giza plateau.

He's got to conscript people from around the country

To come work at this site.

He's got to organize them.

[narrator] how will he do it?

[gentle music]

On the giza plateau,

Mark lehner is investigating the truth

About the pharaoh khufu's reputation as a tyrant

Who enslaved his people

And forced them to build his great pyramid.

To find the answers,

Mark turned his back to the great pyramid,

To the remains of an enormous wall built in its shadow.

[mark lehner] it's called the wall of the crow.

The wall is two hundred meters long.

From our excavations, we know that it's ten meters wide

And ten meters tall.

[gentle music]

This wall says that somebody intended it to be permanent.

To the north of the wall, you have the sphinx.

The tombs, the cemeteries, the pyramids.

[narrator] lehner asked a logical question,

If these monuments to the dead lay on one side of the wall,

What was on the other?

To the south I suspected there was infrastructure,

Settlement.

[narrator] mark's intuition proved right.

Beyond this wall he unearthed a vast hidden city.

[lively music]

A twelve-acre metropolis

That once stretched to the banks of the nile

And housed thousands of people.

[lively music]

So, it takes a little bit of imagination,

But underneath this whole area is the city of the workers,

The infrastructure for building the great pyramids.

I think we can call it, without too much hyperbole,

The lost city of the pyramids

[narrator] beneath the sand lies a treasure trove

Of information about the living conditions

Of the pyramid builders.

[mark] we've been excavating here for thirty years.

We always put the sand back.

So that we can come back and continue our research.

Otherwise the site would not preserve.

[narrator] information that suggests,

This might have been more than a massive slave camp.

[dramatic music]

[mark] we've reconstructed one of the small houses,

Right on top of the original.

Because it's a simple house, for rather minor official,

You have in place of the great reception room,

This one rectangular space with a bench,

What's called a mastaba in arabic.

Probably it was covered with reed mats,

Or even rugs and pillows.

Here we have a bed platform

Probably covered with pillows and mats.

Wide enough we think for a man, an official to stretch out

But also not just himself, possibly even a spouse.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] at the back of the house,

Mark's team has uncovered evidence

Of a bread oven and other traces of food preparation.

We found here a round silo for grain, probably wheat.

When they ground the wheat into flour

And probably one of the members of the house

Was on his or her knees,

Grinding the grain into flour

And collecting it into the little jars.

[dramatic music]

The important part of finding this little urban estate,

We call it the eastern town house.

Is that it shows that families were living here.

[narrator] mark thinks this house

Belonged to one of the supervisors.

But what about the ordinary workers?

[dramatic music]

By excavating the entire site,

Mark has been able to figure out where they lived too.

Town planners organized the city into three districts.

One brings together the nobility, supervisors

And the royal guard.

Another holds bakeries, slaughterhouses, breweries

And craftsmen.

The center of the city

Is reserved for the huge pyramid workforce.

They live in a series of dormitories, built side by side,

Each over 100 feet long and housing several dozen workers.

[mark] the barracks, these big corridors, these galleries

Were probably gender segregated.

Probably mostly men and probably mostly young men

Who were rotating in and out of the labor force.

Young men from their own home villages all over egypt.

They probably stayed together in gangs or groups.

[narrator] the barracks where the workers lived

Don't appear to be locked away

Like some sort of slave encampment.

Instead, they're in the center of a large city.

So mark has discovered where they lived,

And there is also evidence of how they lived.

[peter] we know that this people building the pyramids,

Were taken care of pretty well.

There is a lot of meat coming into the site to support them.

[flora] while excavating on the giza plateau,

They found these large bread molds.

So, a lot of people were eating bread

As their main source of sustenance.

We also have catfish remains,

So catfish was actually on the menu also quite a bit

For the pyramid workers.

[narrator] very different from the hand-to-mouth existence

Of most bronze age people.

[john] if you were working on one of these royal projects,

You probably had greater confidence

In the regularity and the quantity of your rations.

[narrator] keeping khufu's workforce well fed

Was vital to the project's success.

[mohamed] if you want the pyramid

To be completed on time,

You have to make your workers happy, you have to feed them,

You have to keep them strong.

[narrator] all the evidence that mark has uncovered,

Seems to counter the legend of khufu enslaving

And mistreating his workers.

By finding this new information about the pyramid,

It's completely changing our knowledge

About how the pyramids were built.

[john] herodotus' account of one hundred thousand slaves,

Finds no documentary evidence from egypt of the time.

What the workmen's village at giza,

Associated with great pyramid shows us,

Is that these are professional people.

We have a large number of skilled people

Who are probably passing these skills down

From father to son, mother to daughter, et cetera.

So, these are professional people,

All engaged in a great building project.

[narrator] but if they weren't slaves,

How did khufu compel these people to work for him?

Clues unearthed in a lost city

Suggest that the builders of the great pyramid

Weren't enslaved by their pharaoh khufu.

Instead he probably formed his workforce

From a mix of paid craftsmen and conscripted labor

In a form similar to military service.

Young men registered for the draft

So that they would work at the great pyramid.

Can you imagine one of these peasants

As he's ferried downstream, comes up to the giza plateau

And in the background, he sees this massive pyramid

Rising in the distance,

Men moving these two and a half ton blocks of stone.

It must have been simply awe inspiring.

[narrator] khufu unites his people behind a common goal,

Motivating them with food, duty and camaraderie

Rather than force.

By assembling a workforce from all over egypt,

Khufu was able to spread his influence and ideas

Across the country.

[mark] one of the positive views of pyramid building,

That they did help to interlace the king's power

Throughout the land.

It did help create a sense of national identity.

Every person participated in this pyramid,

Were thinking and they believed

That by building the pyramid, it built egypt.

They are helping their king to resurrect.

[gentle music]

[narrator] the typical day

For a skilled craftsman or supervisor,

Likely looked very different to the slavery images

Of legend.

[gentle music]

At dawn the craftsman gets up.

He washes himself and dresses in a simple kilt,

Or a linen loincloth.

[gentle music]

Surrounded by his family, he recites prayers.

They worship ra, the god of the sun

And the creator of the universe.

[dramatic music]

His first meal of the day is bread, dried fish and garlic,

All accompanied by beer.

The craftsman then leaves his home,

For what ancient records suggest,

Was a 10-hour working day.

He crosses one of the three main streets

Of the workers' city, which is probably already busy.

Never before has a pharaoh gathered so many farmers,

Craftsmen and workers in one place.

[mark] think if you are a young person,

You come from a village,

That numbers only a few hundred people

And you come here in giza.

So, you join thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people.

When you went back to your village,

You didn't go back the same young person as when you came.

You have this sense of identity, something bigger.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] mark lehner thinks the wall of the crow,

Is the barrier between city and pyramid site.

So, the young men everyday would probably go rank and file

Through this gate.

Because on the other side you have the quarries,

So that's where their work was.

[narrator] khufu's well-organized city

Ensures the workforce are well cared for

And ready to work hard on the pyramid.

These men will need to cut, move and assemble

Some six million tons of stone.

To extract a block of stone,

The workers start by marking out it's dimensions.

Then they dig trenches on each side

And crack open its base to free it.

Workers place stone below their newly cut block,

To break its fall when they tip their finished block

To the ground.

[stone bangs]

A laborious job, which the workers carry out in teams.

[workers shouting]

Egyptologists estimate that 2,000 stonemasons

Worked in the quarry, extracting 200 blocks a day,

Each weighing an average of 2.5 tons.

[mark] so, this is one of the big quarry blocks.

It's a very nice example of where probably one person

Was subdividing this big block like cutting a piece of cake.

It wasn't pleasant work.

I mean, this person or persons must have been in here,

Working all day long.

Just wide enough for one.

With hammer stones, mallet, chisel,

Driving this channel forward.

We know that because you can see the striations.

It's a good example of how hard this work was.

[metal clanking]

[narrator] the work is not just hard, it's also dangerous.

[screaming loudly]

Accidents are thought to have been frequent and brutal.

But if the pyramid is to be completed on time,

Khufu can't afford to lose his workforce

One injury at a time.

The ancient pyramid workers

Suffered from all sorts of issues

Relating to backbreaking labor.

They suffered more from injuries

Relating to moving large blocks,

And having to push and use a lot of force.

We have also information

That some of them were treated on the site.

[salima] and we know that there was a lot of medical knowledge,

With the ancient egyptians,

From the pyramid workers.

Because we have people whose bones are broken,

They've been splinted together,

So you know that it was tied together

And the way it would be today.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] historians have deciphered tomb engravings

That expose more about the medical care

Pyramid builders got.

[colleen] peseshet is a fascinating woman

From ancient egypt.

We know that she lived during the reign of khufu

Because her name is present in a tomb monument

And she has a unique title, overseer of physicians.

Unfortunately, that's where our knowledge ends.

We don't know whether peseshet was herself a doctor.

It gives us more tantalizing hints

At what might be the case.

There were a lot of remedies involving plants,

Sometimes little bit maybe of animal bits as well,

Sort of bone marrow to drink to strengthen yourself,

And so headaches, pains, aches in the joints, coughs,

Runny noses, all of these would have been dealt with.

There were eye diseases that they knew about,

And these too would have had remedies.

[moaning loudly]

[narrator] broken bones were a more serious matter.

Texts from later periods of egypt

Give accounts of how doctors worked.

[dramatic music]

If peseshet herself examined the workers,

She would invoke the god of medicine, sekhmet, to help.

[moaning loudly]

To treat the arm fracture,

She would use a method still practiced today.

She starts by realigning the bone.

[screaming loudly]

Then she immobilizes the arm by fitting a wooden splint.

[dramatic music]

Finally, she covers the wound with honey,

It acts as a disinfectant and an anti-inflammatory too.

For more serious injuries,

Doctors sometimes risk performing

A much more extreme operation,

Amputation.

[groans loudly]

Archaeologists working at giza

Have found the skeleton of a man who survived 14 years

After his leg was amputated.

And religion played a role in medical care too.

Magic was tied up with healing.

So, you could go and have a scorpion bite

And then go to a female healer or a male healer

And they could prescribe you a spell.

[narrator] now, an incredible discovery

Is exposing the importance of religion and magic

In the lives of pyramid workers.

[gentle music]

While mark lehner is investigating

The lost city of the pyramid workers,

A team of egyptian archaeologists

Has made an incredible discovery

That helps reveal what else

Might have motivated them to work.

A guard on a donkey tripped over a mud brick wall.

Clearly there was some kind of structure here,

So they started excavating.

And they found first one tomb,

And then they find another tomb and another.

So, it seemed compelling that what we have here

Is the tombs of the workers who built the pyramids.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] there were hundreds of them,

Just outside the workers' city.

[mark] this was excavated over many years

And it's one of the most important discoveries at giza,

I think, in the last century.

Now I'm standing in the lower part,

You have a little mastabas.

These are all of mud-brick and broken stone.

People buried around us

Were probably, some of them were just workers.

So, it looks like lower status people

Were buried down below, higher status people,

Probably their superiors were buried up above.

[dramatic music]

There was some interesting evidence of this.

For example, one of the people here

Had hieroglyphs in his tomb mentioning the title,

Overseer of the sides of the pyramid.

[dramatic music]

These titles on the tombs

Are like a resumé of all their work.

[dramatic music]

Those who could afford it

Would want to start working on their tomb

While they're still alive.

Make sure the inscriptions were there.

If they got a promotion,

They would want that new title inscribed in the tomb.

[dramatic music]

These are the frozen moments on the giza tomb walls

That tell you everything about ancient egyptian society.

[lively music]

[narrator] the discovery offers archeologists

A unique insight into the lives of the workers.

[flora] studying their bones,

The tomb objects that went along with them,

And any tomb decoration that they had,

Fills in some of those gaps in knowledge that we have.

[lively music]

[narrator] the tombs suggest another motivation

For the workers.

They wanted to hitch a ride to the afterlife

With their pharaoh and his pyramid.

It's hard to say for certain,

But I think the prestige

Of being associated with the great pyramid

Might very well have been part of the motivation

For workers who were part of that project.

So, if you work on the royal tomb of giza,

If you help create the largest pyramid egypt's ever seen,

Then you get rewarded.

Not only with your day to day wages,

But also the potential to be buried close to the king

At giza.

[peter] we can assume that those who were able to build

Their tombs closer to the pyramid,

Would benefit from the semi divine or divine aspect

Of the king in his royal resting place nearby.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] the worker's tombs at giza,

Are yet more evidence to challenge

The account of herodotus

And his vision of a hundred thousand slaves

Being forced to work.

[mohamed] it tells us that those people were not slaves.

If they were slaves,

They will never be buried besides the pyramid,

They will never wish to be in the shadow of their king.

[john] herodotus' account of the slave driving khufu,

Strikes me as being similar to modern responses:

How on earth could anyone build that structure?

And the answer has to be,

You simply had to force everyone to work for you to do it.

[lively music]

[narrator] but archaeologists now think that khufu

Was using an existing and well-trained workforce.

[melinda] 340 limestone blocks

Had to be placed every single day.

And stones had to be delivered every 34 minutes.

That is a lot of workforce.

And that's a lot of administration that you need

In order to build something of this size.

[colleen] the great pyramid of khufu,

Further solidifies

The administrative and economic base of ancient egypt.

We have another generation of workmen and administrators

And craftsmen that are now trained

And making the largest pyramid ever constructed

In ancient egypt.

[narrator] like his father before him,

Khufu sets up farms and estates

To provide for his pyramid builders.

[john] setting up these establishments

Would put in place

People who would turn arable land,

Land that could be put under cultivation.

They would actually then put it under cultivation.

So, as these projects go,

We're also seeing vastly larger numbers of cities and farms

Being added to egypt itself.

The nation is really coming together

Even more than in previous reigns.

Tremendous numbers of people

Are working towards the same goal,

Building a monumental tomb for their king.

So, we see with yet another generation,

That egypt as a whole is working towards a massive

Unified project.

And this, in turn, enhances the stability of the state.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] khufu has done everything he can

To ensure that his pyramid is finished before he dies.

He's picked his vizier, hemiunu,

To head up the construction.

He's built an entire city for the workers

And provides them with food and medical care.

And he motivates them further

With the promise of their own tombs close to the pyramid.

But some 20 years after work began,

The great pyramid is not complete,

And all the work will be for nothing

If it's not finished before khufu dies.

[dramatic music]