Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Deep inside a collapsed pyramid,

a team of archaeologists is on a dangerous quest.

MOHAMED: Be careful.

Take your time. Be careful!

NARRATOR: To uncover the unexplored burial chamber of one of Egypt's great pharaohs.

We are now entering a really dangerous area.

NARRATOR: It's a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Yes. Wow. This comes from the sarcophagus.

NARRATOR: Across Egypt, more than 100 pyramids rise from the desert floor.

They span an incredible era of over 1000 years.

Three stand out.

The Pyramids at Giza. Iconic symbols of the ancient world.

Over three generations, King Khufu, his son Khafre,

and grandson Menkaure, built three of the most well-known monuments

in human history, all grouped together on the Giza plateau.

They were surrounded by a complex of ceremonial temples.

Khufu's pyramid was the tallest manmade structure in the world,

for over three-thousand, eight-hundred years.

Pharaohs continued to build pyramids.

But in all of ancient Egypt's three thousand-year history,

they never built one this big ever again.

NARRATOR: Now, archaeologists are scouring the intriguing pyramids that followed.

To investigate the legacy of the famous Giza pyramids

and reveal why these iconic megastructures and Egypt, were never the same again.

I always say we are like, we are like detectives.

This is our investigation site and we come here to collect information.

NARRATOR: Seven miles south of Giza, in Abusir,

14 pyramids break the desert skyline.

Among them, the pyramid of a pharaoh called Sahure.

It's the investigation site of Egyptian archaeologist,

Mohamed Ismail Khaled.

I'm coming originally from Middle Egypt and we have

a lot of monuments around us and that's why I became archaeologist.

NARRATOR: Sahure built his pyramid only 30 years after the last

of the great pyramids at Giza. Yet it's vastly different.

Sahure's pyramid was 150 feet tall.

A third of the height of the Great Pyramid.

Around it was a complex of ceremonial temples.

During previous seasons in the ruins here, Mohamed and other archaeologists,

MOHAMED: Let's go!

NARRATOR: Have recovered nearly one thousand square feet of reliefs

that portray Sahure's life and achievements.

Wow. If you begin like to clean little bit the dust,

it's really amazing to see how the artisan was really carving every single detail.

NARRATOR: This season, Mohamed is back to excavate

the inside of Sahure's pyramid.

I am very really keen to know more and more about his burial place.

NARRATOR: Archaeologists in the 19th and 20th centuries

explored the burial chambers of pyramids across Egypt.

But Mohamed believes they missed one: Sahure's.

When archaeologists first explored this pyramid

over 100 years ago, they found the central core collapsed and filled with debris.

They identified a single room, which they believed was the burial chamber,

but they never found Sahure's sarcophagus or mummy.

Now, Mohamed has discovered a second room just beyond it,

hidden under the debris of the pyramid collapse.

The area is up to eight meters, goes to the west.

And this is enough for holding the burial chamber.

NARRATOR: He thinks this could be Sahure's long lost resting place.

My dream is just to discover the burial chamber

and to uncover every single centimeter inside.

And to see the sarcophagus of the king.

NARRATOR: Mohamed believes that deep below

Sahure's pyramid, a corridor led to a series of rooms.

What explorers thought was the pharaoh's burial chamber,

he now thinks was just the antechamber.

And that Sahure's real burial chamber is undiscovered and

could still contain the sarcophagus of the pharaoh.

If Mohamed is right, and this is Sahure's burial chamber,

it would be a huge discovery and could help unravel what

happened to pyramid building after Giza.

Any piece of information about what was inside here

will add a lot of information about the history of the pyramid.

NARRATOR: But this mission won't be easy.

Working inside a collapsed four-thousand, five-hundred year-old pyramid

is incredibly dangerous.

You could see how the situation of the of the ceiling is right now.

NARRATOR: Three, 10-ton stone beams stacked

on top of each other once formed the roof.

The worst thing for us that we are trying to stop

is just the falling of this big large beam.

NARRATOR: When the structure collapsed, some of the beams came crashing down.

Others are still held in place by the mound of debris.

You see how large it is?

You see that some of them are already destroyed.

It has cracks, you know.

So, if any movement around this area, then the crack will be larger.

Some blocks will fall down, and we do not know the consequences after that.

NARRATOR: To safely explore the mystery room,

Mohamed's team first had to install a temporary wall to support

the unstable ceiling and hold the 26 feet of debris in place.

Okay, so let's go.

NARRATOR: They slowly work their way from top to bottom,

removing the supportive wall in layers and clearing the rubble behind it.

My heart is beating very hard because I'm just--

This is the moment that I was waiting for a long time.

Be careful.

Take your time, be careful!

We have to be careful and working according to our plan.

Otherwise, it will be very dangerous.

NARRATOR: After nearly three hours of painstaking work,

the team makes a first discovery in the rubble.

MOHAMED: So we got a bone.

It's the lower jaw, you know, of a human being.

NARRATOR: The curious jawbone is an intriguing find and could be a clue

the undiscovered burial chamber of pharaoh Sahure, lies ahead.

Just south of Abusir in Saqqara.

Okay. As soon as she's finished with the one inside,

she'll start working on the drawing.

NARRATOR: Egyptian archaeologist, Mohamed Megahed

is also investigating the intriguing pyramids that followed

the iconic megastructures of Giza.

I'm Egyptian, so it's a very,

it's very easy to be an Egyptologist because you are.

Your whole life your your childhood around pyramids, tombs.

So maybe one of the things that comes to your mind,

to study your 'grandparents' and study your heritage.

NARRATOR: Mohamed is excavating the pyramid complex

of pharaoh Djedkare, who ruled 100 years after the last

of the Giza pyramids was built, and 60 years after Sahure.

Just like Sahure's pyramid, Djedkare's is smaller than the giants of Giza.

Last season, Mohamed excavated here and discovered the lost

tomb of Djedkare's wife, Queen Setibhor.

For the first time, we have the daylight inside

the burial chamber of the queen.

NARRATOR: He has returned this season to excavate another

mysterious tomb just beside the pyramid. The tomb's proximity to Djedkare's pyramid

suggests it could belong to one of the pharaoh's top officials.

It could help Mohamed understand why this pyramid

is so different in scale to those at Giza.

From those people you gain so much information about

his rule, about his reign and the society at the time.

NARRATOR: The tomb has a rectangular shape

and is made from stone, a structure known as a mastaba.

First, the team must dig around its sides to try and find a way in.

MALE TEAM LEADER : Come on. Come here, come! Lift. Come on.

NARRATOR: Soon they spot something in the sand.

This is a later burial and it's made or the person is buried in two amphoras.

NARRATOR: Amphoras, large ceramic storage jars, have distinctive shapes.

Mohamed can use them to date this burial to around 500 BCE,

nearly 2000 years after the mastaba was built.

And it's not the only later burial here.

The team is now finding small tombs all around the structure.

It's clear people wanted to be buried close to the mastaba tomb,

evidence of the owner's importance.

Usually from later times, people who will come

and would like to be buried besides important people. Well-known people.

NARRATOR: In 2019, just next to the mystery tomb,

Mohamed discovered another mastaba.

It was lavish, made from white limestone, typically reserved for royalty.

And in its beautifully painted burial chamber, Mohamed discovered a mummy.

He identified it as one of Djedkare's senior officials, a man named Khuwy.

The mastaba Mohamed is excavating now, is in worse condition.

Large parts of its roof are missing, but the later burials around it

suggest it could belong to another of Djedkare's highest ranking officials.

These officials' growing wealth could help explain

the diminished scale of Djedkare's pyramid.

But the search for an entrance to the tomb has run into a problem.

We are blocked and being slowed by those casing blocks

which were falling from this mastaba here.

NARRATOR: Some of the huge stones of the mastaba's

limestone casing have collapsed on one side.

They need to move them one by one to see if an entrance could lie below.

This one of the difficult work we have. The stones are very heavy.

The corridor is very narrow.

NARRATOR: The stones weigh up to half a ton. Shifting them is a dangerous task.

Any small mistake can hurt the workers.

NARRATOR: At the pyramid field of Abusir,

Czech archaeologist Ladislav Bares and his team are excavating a strange tomb.

For us, archeology is not only a profession, but it's a way of life.

I always said that I am half Czech, half Egyptian.

NARRATOR: The tomb could reveal clues to how

the pyramids and Egyptian burial practice

evolved after the construction of the iconic pyramids of Giza.

When the weather is really good, we can see about ten pyramids from here.

So, it really is a heart of the pyramid fields, this place here.

NARRATOR: The tomb consists of an enormous sand filled square,

the mouth of a gigantic rock cut burial shaft

-dropping down into the desert floor. -The main shaft is about 40 meters square.

That is 14 by 14. And at the bottom, there should be the burial chamber.

NARRATOR: That's over two thousand square feet,

about half the size of a basketball court. Ladislav wants to find out

when this massive shaft tomb was built and who was buried here.

The challenge is getting to the bottom of the massive burial shaft.

At present we are at a depth of about two meters,

but it might be about 20, 25 meters deep.

So, we have to remove about two thousand cubic meters of sand.

NARRATOR: That's enough sand to fill 100 dumper trucks.

Excavating it all, could take the team of 50, four months of backbreaking work,

eating up their entire excavation season. But they think they have found a shortcut.

They have uncovered two smaller shafts just to the side of the tomb.

Ladislav hopes one of them will lead straight to the burial chamber.

Thanks a lot.

Anything new, down at the bottom?

NARRATOR: Czech archaeologist Jiri Janak is overseeing the excavation here.

The approximate layout of the tomb should be like this.

So, we are in a small entrance shaft to the south of the main burial shaft.

On the bottom of the burial shaft is the burial chamber.

And those two are connected together here by a corridor.

NARRATOR: It's a shaft system the team has seen before,

in the step pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, Egypt's first ever pyramid,

built 100 years before the Great Pyramid at Giza.

It was one of the amazing deeds of the ancient Egyptians.

NARRATOR: Deep below Djoser's revolutionary pyramid

lies a hidden network of tunnels.

At the center, an enormous square vertical shaft

that drops over 90 feet into the ground to the pharaoh's

burial chamber, seen as a gateway into the underworld.

Branching off it, horizontal corridors, some filled with treasures

for the pharaoh's afterlife, one to access his chamber.

Djoser's revolutionary pyramid was a blueprint for all pyramids

and launched the Pyramid Age.

Its colossal burial shaft was just one staggering feature

of ancient Egyptian engineering.

The enormous square at the center of Jiri and Ladislav's mystery tomb,

suggests the owner copied this incredible design.

The layout and the structure were somehow inspired by

the layout of the Djoser pyramid complex.

NARRATOR: So they think, the builder may have copied

the horizontal corridor leading to the burial chamber,

and that this access corridor might be at the bottom of this second smaller shaft.

It's only six and a half by eight feet wide. There's a lot less sand to remove.

It would massively reduce the excavation time, but it's a gamble.

Every minute spent digging to reach the short cut corridor

beneath means less time excavating the main burial shaft.

So that's why we are desperate to find the corridor.

NARRATOR: A short distance away, inside the pyramid of pharaoh Sahure,

Mohamed inspects the just discovered jawbone.

It's strong bones and, and also the jaw itself. It's big.

NARRATOR: He's on a mission to reveal the secrets of this pyramid,

built soon after the giant pyramids of Giza

and find its long-lost pharaoh, Sahure.

The mass of rubble from a collapsed ceiling and walls,

might hide Sahure's burial chamber with his sarcophagus and mummy.

As Mohamed inspects the jaw, he spots crucial evidence.

This is not a mummified body.

NARRATOR: All the ancient Egyptian pharaohs

were mummified to preserve their bodies for the afterlife.

But there are no traces of mummification on this jaw.

This is not the pharaoh. This is, I think, this is one of the tomb raiders.

NARRATOR: The pharaoh's pyramids were

filled with treasures, hidden in secret rooms.

Tomb raiders on the hunt for these treasures,

broke into every pyramid ever built.

The jawbone could be evidence they broke into Sahure's pyramid, too.

It suggests that with no plan of the layout,

they didn't know which wall might be hiding the loot.

They may have cut through a wall supporting the roof

which collapsed and killed them

If the pyramid collapsed above the robbers' heads and sealed

the entrance for everyone else, there could still be treasure inside.

It's very, very interesting and very exciting.

NARRATOR: The team continues to carefully remove the remains

of the collapsed walls and ceiling, when suddenly the work comes to a halt.

You can't move that. Because if you do,

that part might lean towards the other side.

If I remove it, I'll remove it from here,

just until Ahmad gets a chance to strengthen it.

We are afraid that these two blocks would a little bit move down.

NARRATOR: Two massive stone blocks are looming on top of the debris.

But as you see, it's already hanging there.

NARRATOR: Before the team can continue excavating, they must secure the blocks.

If they move, the blocks could trigger an avalanche

and even worse, take down one of the ten-ton ceiling beams

precariously hanging above the room.

We could really get trapped inside the pyramid.

NARRATOR: In Saqqara, at the mystery mastaba tomb,

next to pharaoh Djedkare's pyramid,

Mohamed and his team have made great progress moving the large stones.

We managed to move the, to lift the block and

they are putting it down and then try to fix it.

NARRATOR: They are searching for an entrance

to get inside and investigate this tomb.

Mohamed hopes it could belong to one of Djedkare's royal officials

and help explain why pyramids became smaller

so soon after the Great Pyramids of Giza.

Every time we found a new tomb, every time we found

a new information, it gave us another piece of or complete

another piece of the picture about the role of the king,

about how the state looked like at that time.

NARRATOR: So far, they haven't found anything below the stone blocks here.

But on the other side of the mastaba, there's been a breakthrough.

In the destroyed ruins, they have discovered evidence

of what would have been the entrance.

We managed to clear a part of the entrance room.

This is the entrance room, actually, the first room in the tomb.

NARRATOR: Mohamed hopes to find the name and titles

of the tomb owner in the ruins of this entrance room.

It's nice feeling when you feel that it's you are very near

to finding name or very near to find who was buried here.

It's really exciting. It's really exciting.

NARRATOR: But the reliefs and inscriptions that used

to adorn the walls here, now lie broken on the floor.

The team must painstakingly put all the fragments back together

in the search for the tomb owner's name or titles.

It's like puzzles. Working with fragments is like working with puzzles.

NARRATOR: Mohamed's fellow archaeologist Hana Vymazalova

carefully examines the reliefs on the wall fragments.

So here, the small remains of the hieroglyphic sign shows us

that this nice figure of a male carrying lotus flowers was a funerary priest.

So, this was one of the people who kept coming

and bringing offerings so that the deceased could live on in the next world.

NARRATOR: The reliefs contain offering scenes,

a wonderful insight into how ancient Egyptians imagined

they might attain an afterlife.

But so far, no clues to the identity of the tomb owner.

Until suddenly...

HANA: Mohamed. Look what we found. Look.

-MOHAMED: Whoa!

NARRATOR: In Abusir, inside pharaoh Sahure's collapsed pyramid,

Mohamed's team are racing o stabilize the two large stone blocks,

dangerously looming on top of the debris.

We need to stabilize them completely, not to move really one inch.

NARRATOR: The team is on the hunt for a burial chamber

and a long-lost pharaoh below the debris here. If they find him,

it would shine a light on the little-known pyramids built after Giza.

But if these two blocks move, they could trigger an avalanche

bringing the team's quest to a premature end.

These two blocks are the most dangerous issue in this room.

NARRATOR: So to seal the blocks in place, the team applies a special

mix of mortar made from gypsum and clear sand.

We was throwing the mortars very hard in order to get into the cracks.

NARRATOR: After three buckets of mortar,

Mohamed is confident there is no imminent risk

and the hunt for the chamber can continue.

Come on, guys!

NARRATOR: Three feet deeper into the debris,

a sharp-eyed worker spots a telltale sign.

This is for the boss.

This part is from the front, facing part around the burial.

Okay. So, we found a small piece with a very smooth surface.

NARRATOR: Mohamed immediately recognizes this polished stone.

MOHAMED: It's part of the of the wall of the burial chamber.

The ancient Egyptians, when they they did make the burial chamber,

they polished all the walls of the, of the inside walls.

And that's why we have this smooth surface.

NARRATOR: It's a great discovery that proves Mohamed's hunch was right.

We now are going inside the burial chamber.

NARRATOR: This room was once Sahure's last resting place.

Mohamed is on the right track to finally find the long-lost pharaoh.

And soon the team makes another intriguing discovery.

It's very interesting now because we, we have found original floor here.

NARRATOR: Even through the thick layer of dust from the debris,

Mohamed can clearly see the neatly polished floor

of the pharaoh's burial chamber.

It's really a great moment for me and for the whole team.

We are standing in an unexplored area.

NARRATOR: Mohamed inspects the 4500-year-old ground.

The original floor is intact and it's in a good condition.

NARRATOR: The floor is still preserved. A promising sign.

That means we could find still, as our structure

still may be in situ, or we could at least find the sarcophagus.

NARRATOR: Carefully, they continue to excavate

until one of the workers finds a smooth black stone: basalt.

-Yes. Wow.

This comes from the sarcophagus.

NARRATOR: In Abusir, at the strange shaft tomb amongst the pyramids,

Ladislav's team is racing to find a hidden horizontal corridor,

a shortcut to the burial chamber.

We very much hope that this is the easier way how to get to the burial chamber.

NARRATOR: Ladislav wants to find out

when this shaft was built and who was buried here.

Answers could help him understand how the pyramids

and burial rites evolved after the iconic pyramids of Giza.

The tomb shaft system seems modeled on Djoser's pyramid,

Egypt's first pyramid, close by.

There, a horizontal corridor leads to the burial chamber

at 28 meters, about 90 feet, below ground level.

The team hope they don't have to dig that deep

to find a shortcut corridor at this tomb.

Actually, we put our bets on. So, my, my guess is 17 and a half.

Someone says 18. Some colleagues say 20 and some even 22 meters below ground.

But you never know with ancient Egyptians.

NARRATOR: Until evidence of a corridor appears, it all remains a gamble

that could cost the team valuable excavation time in the main burial shaft.

So that's, that's the exciting part and most stressful part.

NARRATOR: The workers have been digging for five days.

Now, Jiri and Ladislav check how deep they have reached.

Can we have the tape measure, please?

-LADISLAV: Still? Okay. -JIRI: Uh. 15 and a half.

NARRATOR: They have dug over 15 meters, 50 feet,

but they could have another 20 feet or even more to go.

I hope that with any any stroke, we can find

a hole here that goes to the north with a corridor.

NARRATOR: With the season ending in just eight weeks,

the team can't afford to search for the shortcut corridor

much longer and delay the excavation of the main burial shaft.

So, they have to find it fast.

In Saqqara, next to the pyramid of pharaoh Djedkare.

It's a part of the lintel that was above the entrance to the tomb.

NARRATOR: Mohamed and Hana examine

the relief fragments from the entrance of the mastaba tomb.

Actually, it fits together even.

HANA: Yes, yes. It's a nice piece that comes here.

NARRATOR: They want to identify the owner of the tomb.

He could be a high ranking official in the reign of Djedkare.

The growing wealth of the bureaucratic elite could help

explain why the pyramids of this era were not as grand as those at Giza.

It's really amazing, because here we finally have the titles.

-So it is a lector priest.

-HANA: Mm hmm. - Count or...

-He was a noble. -It was a noble.

-MOHAMED: Uh... -HANA: A lector priest who

could read the spells, or he knew the spells

for the funerary cult. So, he was a very educated

-and high positioned person. -True, true.

-MOHAMED: Wow.

NARRATOR: Hana and Mohamed recognize these titles.

They were typically reserved for only the King's family and closest confidants.

Those titles can tell us he was working very, very closely with the king.

Might be a vizier, which we can compare it nowadays to a prime minister.

NARRATOR: In ancient Egypt, the Vizier

was the most important person after the pharaoh.

He was in the Kings inner circle of most trusted advisers

and was often a member of the royal family.

The Vizier appointed and supervised other government officials

and was the most senior judge.

Djedkare's Vizier would have been in charge of building the Pharaoh's pyramid.

He would have been rewarded with a tomb close by

and the hope of sharing eternity with his king.

It's so satisfying for us because it means we are

adding to those people who were working with Djedkare.

We are adding to our information about his reign.

NARRATOR: And soon the team makes another discovery.

We can see the entrance to another room.

NARRATOR: In the pyramid field of Abusir, at the strange shaft tomb,

30 workers dig to reach a shortcut corridor to the burial chamber

modeled on Djoser's Pyramid tomb nearby.

The archaeologists want to find out who was buried

in this mystery tomb and when it was built.

Slowly down please, slowly.

NARRATOR: Jiri and Ladislav check the depth again

Thank you.

In Djoser's Pyramid, the short cut corridor

and burial chamber are 28 meters, about 90 feet deep.

-So what's the number? -LADISLAV: It's 18 meters 40.

18 meters 40, okay. Okay.

NARRATOR: Jiri hoped the corridor would be at most 17 and a half meters deep,

but at over 18 meters, 60 feet, there's still no sign of it.

JIRI: We are getting a little bit anxious. Nervous.

When will this horizontal corridor appear?

NARRATOR: With every foot, Jiri is getting more

and more worried their gamble might not be paying off.

While the excavation continues, Ladislav heads to the dig headquarters

where pottery specialist, Kveta Smolarikova

is also on the hunt for the owner of this strange tomb.

LADISLAV: Good afternoon Kveta.

NARRATOR: Kveta is examining a collection of 370 ceramic jars

the team previously discovered at the site.

The residue inside them suggests they were used during

the mummification of the tomb owner.

It's one of the largest collections of mummification equipment

ever discovered in Egypt.

KVETA: We know, so far, that he should have been a very powerful man.

NARRATOR: On some of the jars, Kveta has now also discovered a name.

We know his name, which is Wahibra-mery-Neith.

NARRATOR: She is convinced Wahibra-mery-Neith is the tomb owner.

The ancient Egyptians believed the name of the deceased had

to be written in their tomb, so their soul could recognize

their body and reunite in the afterlife.

To have his name is great, excellent find.

NARRATOR: And the shape of an intact jar

gives Kveta a clue to when he was buried here.

Very nice. Very nice jar. Which was typical for the Saite period.

NARRATOR: During the Saite period, Egypt was ruled by a dynasty

of pharaohs from the ancient Egyptian city of Sais.

They reigned between 664 to 525 BCE,

long after Djoser's Pyramid launched the Pyramid Age.

LADISLAV: The ancient pyramids are about two thousand years old

during this time in the first millennium BCE.

NARRATOR: Yet, Wahibra-mery-Neith seems

to be buried here amidst the old pyramids, in a tomb shaft

that replicates Djoser's pyramid, Egypt's first pyramid.

In the time when these shaft tombs have been built,

Egypt was in danger from the east.

NARRATOR: During the Saite period, Egypt was at war with its neighbors.

NARRATOR: Egyptians looked to their ancestors for help and flocked to Saqqara

to pray at ancient sites like Pharaoh Djoser's famed first pyramid.

Inspired by Djoser's burial chamber, the wealthy elites

built their burial tombs deep into the ground nearby.

But their homage to Djoser did not save them.

The Persians invaded in 525 BCE.

The Saite dynasty crumbled, and the last native pharaoh of Egypt lost his throne.

People took inspiration in the great past of their ancestors.

But very soon after the time of building this tomb,

Egypt has been conquered by Persia.

NARRATOR: Back at the excavation, the team has dug over 75 feet down

and finally reached the bottom of the shaft.

But there's no sign of the shortcut corridor.

It should be somewhere here. But it's actually not... Not appearing.

NARRATOR: The team's gamble has failed.

There is no shortcut to the burial chamber.

The small access shaft is a mysterious dead end. They now have no choice

but to excavate the 70,000 cubic feet of sand in the massive central shaft.

It's the only way to reach the burial chamber. And the depths of the small shaft

suggest the chamber lies at over 75 feet below ground.

Cutting this wide and deep into the hard bedrock was a gargantuan task.

The Saites invested heavily to hark back to the golden pyramid age.

Even 2000 years after the first pyramid in Egypt had been built,

the pyramids were still most important for the people as part of their iconic past.

NARRATOR: These iconic structures have never lost their allure.

And I am sure the legacy of the pyramids

will live on not only in Egypt, but everywhere in the world.

NARRATOR: At Abusir, inside the Pyramid of Sahure...

Give me the brush.

NARRATOR: Mohamed examines the black basalt fragment

his workers have just recovered from the Pharaoh's burial chamber.

All the pyramids inside is built of limestone.

And the only thing that made and built of basalt is the sarcophagus.

So, this comes from the sarcophagus.

NARRATOR: It's an incredible discovery. A piece of Sahure's sarcophagus.

It could mean the sarcophagus was smashed and remains under the rubble.

I cannot expect my feeling now.

My eyes is shining and I'm really like, my, my my heart is beating very hard.

NARRATOR: Now, the team needs to clear all the burial chamber,

but they will first have to work out what to do with the two large blocks

they temporarily secured with mortar.

We need to find a proper solution in order to avoid that

those large blocks will fall down.

NARRATOR: The blocks will need to come out.

But first, the team will have to build supporting walls

to bear the weight around them.

It will delay the excavation, but allow Mohamed to achieve his goal.

Then we can go deeply inside the burial chamber to see the sarcophagus at the end.

NARRATOR: So far, the mission has been a great success.

I'm very proud of my team. They were able to take

this initiative and they have, they have done something extraordinary.

NARRATOR: The team has found the unexplored burial chamber

of one of Egypt's great pharaohs, Sahure.

It's really the best moment of my career when you

really find something that no one did it before you.

And you will be the first. You are the first.

NARRATOR: The fragment of basalt rock Mohamed has found,

is likely part of Sahure's stone sarcophagus.

It is evidence his final resting place lies ahead

at the end of a once beautiful white burial chamber.

Sahure was buried deep inside a pyramid,

just like the three Giza pharaohs that came before him.

His pyramid was smaller, but surrounded by a complex

of temples covered in reliefs proclaiming his achievements.

Here, worshipers kept his name and memory alive,

so according to their beliefs, he could live forever.

Sahure's stunning complex marked a change in belief.

Pharaohs reimagined pyramids. Elaborate decoration and inscription

became more important than size.

It was a revolutionary new take on pyramid building.

It's a unique pyramid complex and I wish that we will find the sarcophagus

then to know more and more about this great man.

NARRATOR: In Saqqara, Mohamed and his team

have painstakingly removed the sand from the mastaba tomb

next to Pharaoh Djedkare's Pyramid complex.

In this area we found until now four storerooms.

Two are partly clear now and I believe behind these walls are another two.

NARRATOR: They have just discovered evidence

of four large storerooms or magazines.

Magazines are very important for us because

it shows the wealth of the owner of the tomb.

In those magazines, all the equipment for the offering were kept and stored.

NARRATOR: In the time of Djoser and the Giza pyramids,

Egyptians believed only the pharaoh could resurrect and live forever.

Now, around 100 years later, his high officials expected

and planned for an afterlife too.

They covered their tombs in beautiful paintings

and filled storerooms with everything they would want in their next life.

And their ambitions were getting grander and grander.

I think the owner of this mastaba was very wealthy

to build the magazines in the size.

NARRATOR: It is evidence of a shift in wealth and power in the years after

the Giza pyramids, that also explains why pyramids became smaller.

At Giza, pharaohs built great pyramids in the hope of eternal resurrection.

When later pharaohs expanded Egypt's borders,

they had to rely on a growing army of officials to govern distant regions.

These high officials used their new wealth and power

to build rich mastaba tombs in the royal necropolis.

The pharaoh's power decreased. And so too, the size of their pyramids.

The number of those officials were getting bigger

and bigger and at the end, it result in the collapse of the state

because they were much more powerful than the king himself.

NARRATOR: With the collapse of the Egyptian state,

the Golden Pyramid Age came to an end.

It's been a great season for Mohamed and the team.

This is an amazing discovery.

This tomb can tell us so much about the reign of Djedkare

about the king and the pyramid.

NARRATOR: Archaeologists continue to unravel

the secrets of Egypt's lost pyramids.

Their investigations uncover how the pharaohs

had to innovate when a growing elite diminished their power to build big.

They conceived a new way to achieve eternity, where the size of their tomb

didn't matter as much as worship and keeping their name and memory alive.

Pyramid building continued for nearly 1000 years after its high point at Giza.

Even long after the last pyramid was built, generations of ancient Egyptians

copied the fascinating tombs of their ancestors,

that still capture our imagination to this day.