Original subtitles

Hidden deep underground...

We were able to go down

this huge depth.

Archeologists hunt for a burial chamber

inside an ancient tomb.

I hope we get through.

It could date to one of Egypt's

most enigmatic dynasties, the Sun Kings.

It's extremely huge room.

This is far more than I expected.

The pyramid fields of Abusir

15 miles south of Cairo.

These mysterious structures

were built by a dynasty of pharaohs

who ruled Egypt 1,000 years before Tutankhamun.

Named for their devotion to the Sun God Ra,

they were known as the Sun Kings.

Now, archeologists are uncovering new evidence

about these enigmatic kings of old.

How this powerful dynasty rose and transformed Egypt forever

and what caused their magnificent reign

to fall.

In Saqqara,

archeologist Miroslav Barta

is digging in the heart of a vast necropolis.

This is where the Sun Kings buried

many of their officials.

The team has just identified the top of a new shaft.

So, what you see here

is quite well-preserved mud brick wall.

The same we have on the north and partially also here.

Miroslav hopes to uncover

precious new information

about how the Sun Kings governed ancient Egypt.

I would say you never know

what secrets the sand of a desert may hide.

He hopes that the shaft

will lead him to a burial chamber...

but there is a serious problem.

You can see that the wall collapsed here.

There is a secondary breach there.

The wall is completely missing on the west,

in the northwest corner as well.

After more than 4,000 years

of harsh desert conditions,

the original mud bricks lining the shaft have collapsed.

Once we get deeper by the end of the day,

we will have to stop the work and reconstruct the walls.

Otherwise, we can't let the workers go down.

Be too dangerous.

It's a gamble,

but Miroslav hopes the extra work will pay off.

Last season, in a nearby tomb,

he found a magnificent mummy

that could tell him more about the officials

who governed Egypt in the time of the Sun Kings.

When we finally got

the view of the sarcophagus,

then came a moment of excitement

because he was there, the mummy.

Could see immediately that he was not lying on his back

but sitting in the sarcophagus.

A huge surprise to, um, have a mummy preserved like that,

sitting there as if he were waiting for us.

They found his mummified head

next to his body,

making it the oldest fully preserved mummy

ever found.

Serving under the first Sun King Userkaf,

the mummy was a high-ranking official

called Ptahshepses.

Born into a respectable family,

Ptahshepses grew up alongside the king's own children

as part of the pharaoh's court.

In time, he rose through the ranks

acting as Master of Craftsmen and Master of Secrets.

The pharaoh himself must have held him in high regard.

He even married King Userkaf's daughter

to become a member of the royal household.

Ptahshepses lived a long, loyal life,

helping to run Egypt on behalf of five pharaohs.

Miroslav plans to carry out a full analysis

of Ptahshepses' mummy

to try and unlock the secrets of his life.

But first, he wants to see

if the new shaft next door contains

another important burial from the era of the Sun Kings.

After 11 days of back-breaking work,

his team has shifted over a hundred tons of sand

and repaired the crumbling walls

of the shaft.

As of today, I can say

that we are quite ready to go down

and, uh, feel relatively safe because the masonry is stable.

We are going to go down and have a look.

At 45 feet deep,

a fall down this shaft would be fatal.

So now you can see me for the last time today.

Bye-bye.

At Giza...

Egyptologist Chris Naunton wants to see for himself

how the Sun Kings came to power.

To do that, he is exploring

what happened to their predecessors,

the pharaohs who built the great pyramids.

These pyramids, they were the tallest buildings

in the world for over 4,000 years.

They were built by the kings

who immediately preceded the Sun Kings.

And obviously, they wielded huge amounts of power,

controlled huge amounts of resource,

but it wasn't going to last.

To uncover what led to the downfall

of the pyramid builders,

Chris wants to search for clues

at the tomb of the last great pyramid king, Menkaure.

Menkaure's pyramid tends to get a little bit forgotten,

and it's perhaps the least well studied of the three.

But it can tell us about the way

the history of the period unfolded.

The pharaoh's tomb

was hidden deep underground

at the end of a network of sloping tunnels

and antechambers.

On top were thousands of massive limestone blocks,

forming a stepped pyramid more than 200 feet tall.

Unlike the other Giza pyramids,

the bottom was clad with hard pink granite,

shipped over 500 miles down the Nile from Aswan.

Above that, a layer of white limestone.

Complete with temples and the queen's pyramids,

Menkaure's two-tone monument

was designed to be an imposing symbol

of his absolute power.

But inside the pyramid, there are signs

that the pharaoh's power was already waning.

The thing that's most striking about this space

is just how tight it is.

When the level of the ceiling comes down,

it's really difficult to move.

If you... if you think about the, the Great Pyramid,

the entrance passageway opens out

into this enormous space,

and this is just so different.

Just not impressive somehow.

And on the outside of the pyramid,

there are further signs of the Giza pharaoh's demise.

Casing stones in particular

which are made of this pinkish granite represents

an enormous investment on the part of the king.

But what's really interesting in this case is that

whilst some of the stones, like the ones here,

are beautifully smoothed off

so that the, the surface of the pyramid

appears completely true,

some of the other stones

haven't been finished that way at all.

It's as though somehow they just didn't get to that point.

The Giza dynasty had run out of money,

and Menkaure's successor died without an heir.

Broke and without a leader, Egypt was at a crisis point.

The king who would step in to this difficult period

following the Giza pyramid builders was Userkaf,

the first of the Sun Kings.

Userkaf faced a huge challenge.

He wasn't a direct heir to the throne.

This new king needed a way of proving himself

as the legitimate ruler of Egypt.

But the country's economy was in some trouble,

so building an enormous pyramid like this

wasn't an option that was available to Userkaf.

He was going to need a different way

of showing that he was fit to rule.

On the eastern edge

of the Sun King's Abusir Necropolis...

archeologist Mohamed Khaled

works at the pyramid of Userkaf's son,

the second Sun King Sahura.

New morning every time comes

with a lot of hopes to find more

and more nice information

about this great pyramid complex.

For over 20 years,

Mohamed has been investigating

inside Sahura's collapsed pyramid.

Be careful.

Now, he's looking for more clues

outside the pyramid,

to find out what this huge sacred complex looked like

at the peak of Sahura's power.

Archeologists first excavated the site in 1907.

We have to take quite large amount of sand.

They left large piles of spoil

and debris next to their dig site.

And they simply just dumped

their excavation debris

from the middle to the sides,

but they never checked the sides

before they dumped their excavation debris.

Mohamed hopes that previously undiscovered parts

of Sahura's pyramid complex

may lie hidden beneath these huge spoil heaps.

You could see the line.

So this is the last part

that they started to dump the excavation debris.

So, what's behind here, it's untouched.

I cannot express my feeling when you start to excavate

a completely new untouched area.

Uh, it's really, uh, amazing feeling.

The spoil heaps are about 20 feet deep.

Over the next two days,

the team shifts several tons of sand.

But Mohamed hopes the hard work is going to be worth it.

So, what we see now, it's a new structure,

and it was hidden under the debris.

In Abusir, Chris is exploring

how Userkaf established himself as the first Sun King

despite not being a direct heir to the throne.

Userkaf didn't have enough money

to build giant pyramids like the ones at Giza,

so he had to find another way

to project his power to his Egyptian subjects.

These are the pyramids of the Sun Kings.

They dominate this landscape,

but they've lost almost all their casing

and they've kind of collapsed a little.

But Abusir is distinctive for another kind of monument

associated with these pyramids.

Chris investigates the remains

of one of these mysterious monuments

that dates from the time of Userkaf.

It's a real jumble here.

Huge stones and the Egyptians typically used these

for their religious buildings.

It's a bit difficult to say exactly what this was for,

but it's clearly something very big, very impressive

with religious significance.

A clue to what this site was for

comes from a unique text

inscribed on the face of a piece of black basalt

called the Palermo Stone.

The author is unknown,

but it was written during the reign of the Sun Kings.

This is an incredibly important

historical document

inscribed with records of the activities

all the way down to the period of the Sun Kings.

The section tells us geese and bulls were sacrificed

on a daily basis at a temple dedicated to the Sun God Ra

during the reign of Pharaoh Userkaf.

And we think that this is in fact

that temple of Userkaf dedicated to the Sun God.

Userkaf built his temple

on the west bank of the Nile,

aligned with the path of the setting sun.

At its heart was a towering granite obelisk...

built to honor the Sun God Ra.

In the open courtyard,

two sandstone statues and a mud brick altar

meant priests could make sacrifices

in full view of the sun and Ra himself.

For ancient Egyptians, Userkaf's Sun Temple

was standing proof of his special connection

to this all-powerful god.

Ra had already become important

under the great pyramid builders of Giza.

Userkaf's Sun Temple raised him higher still.

There was a purpose to this.

By elevating the status of the Sun God Ra,

the kings were elevating their own status,

and this, crucially, was a way for them

to establish their right to rule.

By forging a closer relationship with Ra,

Userkaf helped convince his people

that he was the legitimate king of Egypt.

And the Sun Temple would have been in use

throughout the pharaoh's life

as a place for offerings and worship.

But the excesses of the great pyramid builders at Giza

had emptied the treasury.

Without funds, he needed a new way to run the country.

At the northern end of the Sun King's Necropolis

at Saqqara...

Miroslav is descending

into the depths of a 45-foot shaft.

He's searching for an important official's burial chamber.

There is no space for emotions,

there is no space for being nervous

because you have to be pretty concentrated.

You have to hold yourself tight with the ladder

and, uh, be very careful.

An obstacle stands

between Miroslav and the tomb beyond.

Here we have the blocking wall

that was protecting the deceased

from the world of the living.

Imagine the last person leaving used his fingers

and plastered the wall over like this.

You can still see fingerprints.

There is only one way through,

a hole just 24 inches wide.

This hole is not original.

It was broken through by the robbers in antiquity.

They removed one limestone block from here

and probably two more from this part.

It was just wide and high enough to let them in.

And we will use the same,

same breaks to see what's, what's inside.

The hole implies that the tomb has been robbed,

but until Miroslav sees inside, he can't be sure.

I hope we get through.

There's nothing but windblown sand.

This still isn't the burial chamber.

But Miroslav spots something

in the far corner...

a doorway.

It's extremely huge room.

This is far more than I expected.

In Abusir,

at the pyramid complex of the Sun King Sahura,

Mohamed is investigating a mysterious structure

hidden beneath the spoil heap.

If it's a part of the funerary temple,

then it will completely change our idea

about the outline of this pyramid complex.

The pyramid was surrounded

by a huge complex of buildings,

including a funerary temple in front of it.

Unlike a sun temple built to worship the Sun God Ra,

a funerary temple was a place where Sahura's subjects

came to honor him after his death.

But it's unclear if this block

is a part of the temple or a later addition.

Ooh!

There's something here, it started to appear.

Ah!

It's wonderful.

Mohamed has unearthed

the lower part of a pottery vessel.

Interesting color.

The red powder inside the pot is paint,

remarkably still in place after 4,400 years.

They made masonry marks

in order to tell the workers,

to give them instruction.

So, if he said for example,

raise the level of the structure,

then he could make some sign.

This is an important discovery for us

because this is the first time

that we see such things like that.

Maybe it comes from the time of Sahure

or maybe it was moved from another place

and then it was thrown just here by luck

because it was broken.

And we found it also in a strange area,

hidden between the two blocks.

The paint pot is a clue

that the stone blocks Mohamed has uncovered

could date from the time of the Sun King Sahura.

But on its own, it's not enough.

The team must continue digging.

At the northern end of Saqqara,

Miroslav is exploring a doorway at the bottom of a shaft

that could date from the time of the Sun Kings.

Let's go inside.

Wow!

Such dimensions.

It's really a huge burial chamber.

Miroslav could be the first person

to investigate this burial chamber

for thousands of years.

And here we have...

one small fragment of Old Kingdom pottery.

As the Sun Kings were

one of the last dynasties of the Old Kingdom,

this tiny fragment could mean

that the burial chamber is from this period.

Could originate from a beer jar,

but for a beer jar, it's too thick.

Probably from a bedja form.

Bedja forms were used for baking bread in ancient Egypt.

But Miroslav's best clue

to who the tomb owner was

is the grand sarcophagus in the corner of the chamber.

The highlight

is this limestone chest and with the lid.

We can see how they robbed the mummy in antiquity.

They cut an opening over there in the corner

and pull out the mummy through a small hole there.

Miroslav searches for any trace of a mummy.

The sarcophagus is completely empty.

It's a very sad story,

if you imagine that originally he was here complete,

resting forever,

at least that's what he hoped for.

And then you have those robbers coming after him.

The damaged sarcophagus is further evidence

that this tomb was ransacked in antiquity,

like most wealthy burial sites in ancient Egypt.

Though the body and his treasures are gone,

Miroslav spots something unusual

on the inside of the sarcophagus.

Oh!

The lid is carved from inside.

Instead of a flat slab of stone,

the inside of the lid has been shaped

into a perfect curve.

I've never seen such a lid before.

It's an excellent masters hip.

They actually never bothered to do it.

It was such an amount of work.

It confirms that he was a very important person.

This is incredible work.

The stunning sarcophagus

shows that the tomb owner must have been

a high-ranking person.

But there are no other signs down here about who they were

and whether they lived during the era

of the Sun Kings.

Miroslav's last hope

is that the team excavating the area

around the top of the shaft finds a clue.

In Saqqara,

Chris investigates how Sun King Userkaf,

now reigning as the rightful pharaoh,

went about governing a bankrupt nation.

He searches for clues in a new necropolis

Userkaf established for his high officials.

This is a very, very beautiful tomb.

Up to now, tombs like this,

and the positions of power that went with them,

were reserved for the royal family.

But this is not a royal tomb.

Chris is curious about who received this honor.

This tomb is dedicated not just to one tomb owner but two.

They're named Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep.

The question is what role did they play?

Chris looks for a clue

to their relationship to the pharaoh

in one of the reliefs.

It looks like

somebody tending to the hands of another person,

and in fact their main title was the Overseer

of the Manicurists of the Palace of the King.

So, we can assume that they perhaps filed the nails

of the pharaoh himself,

and that might seem like an unusual title

for an elite high official to have,

but of course what's important is

that it gave them close access to the king.

And the manicurists

were just one of the many roles that the king rewarded.

In the days of the Great Pyramid Kings,

a pharaoh's court was kept small.

Just a few members of the royal family

held all the power in Egypt.

But the Sun Kings started spreading their power

among non-royals...

until the court numbered 80 or more.

Titles included Director of Scribes,

Overseer of Craftsmen,

and the Greatest of the Dentists.

But even the Overseer of the Duck Pond,

the Inspector of the Singers,

and Overseer of the King's Breakfast

enjoyed the pharaoh's favor.

The titles may sound eccentric,

but Userkaf had created a huge new class

of talented professional officials.

They helped him govern Egypt more effectively

and were able to collect much more in tax.

This boosted the wealth of the nation.

With more and more titles,

you got more and more officials

amassing wealth and influence.

But Userkaf had sown the seeds

of his dynasty's downfall.

Officials, particularly in the provinces,

began to become more and more powerful,

and that drew influence and authority

away from the pharaoh.

Soon, these officials

would threaten the pharaoh's authority.

The Sun Kings were losing power.

In Saqqara,

Miroslav's team

is excavating near the top of the shaft

for clues to the owner of the empty sarcophagus.

While they do that, he wants to take a closer look

at the mummy he found last season

in a tomb nearby.

He hopes it might tell him more about the life of an official

during the Sun King's era.

How are you today? Fine.

So good to see you again It's very hot.

Yeah.

Dr. Zeinab Hashesh is an anthropologist

who will help Miroslav to analyze the body.

Does it fit? Yes.

Good.

Oh, hello again, Ptahshepses. Yeah.

Wow! Yeah.

And he's got a small chin.

Yes... Like me.

Yeah Small one.

Yeah.

After we analyzed the pelvis

and other features in the mummy,

he is over 60 years old,

so he's an old man.

Life expectancy in ancient Egypt

was around 35 years old.

So at over 60,

Ptahshepses was very old indeed.

He's suffering from many diseases

because he's an old man.

So he suffered from osteoarthritis.

Poor him. Yeah,

do you have an interpretation for this,

why he has osteoarthritis in his neck.

Yeah, I would say, he was a scribe.

So, I imagine him sitting and checking papyri all the time.

So he was constantly bending his neck.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Reading, checking, you know.

Noting, making, making texts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And was it painful, this... Yeah.

Yes, very painful. Very painful.

Zeinab discovers more

when she takes a look at an x-ray.

Oh, look at this, look at his ribs.

It's completely, um...

Repositioned ribs. Exactly.

How did it happen?

It's happened because during the robbers,

they tried to get all amulets and the jewelries,

they disturbed the body.

Mummies were often buried

with their most valuable possessions,

jewelry and amulets, kept on their person.

To search the body for treasure,

ancient robbers had to pull the mummy

out of the sarcophagus.

The robbers left him in sitting position.

Uh-huh. So this is a proof

that he treated badly from the robbers

during the tried to retrieve the...

Yeah, yeah.

For the robbers to go to such lengths,

Ptahshepses' mummy must have been decorated with valuables,

further proof that he was important.

Back outside, it looks like Miroslav's team

at the top of the shaft has found another structure.

At the pyramid complex

of the Second Sun King Sahura,

Mohamed's team is excavating more

of the mysterious structure from beneath the spoil heap.

So, we are now collecting every single detail that we find

in order just to get a complete clear picture for us.

He wants to know if the structure dates

from the time of Sahura,

as the paint pot suggests.

That's graffiti here, original one.

In the next layer down,

Mohamed has spotted some hieroglyphs

in the stonework.

It's a very similar color.

It's an important clue.

The paint from this ancient graffiti

matches the powdered paint from the pot.

So now we will go deep

until we reach the original floor.

So definitely this comes from the, uh, original structure,

and this structure belongs to the funerary temple.

It's very significant.

Mohamed has uncovered

that the foundation stones are embedded in the bedrock.

This means it is a previously undiscovered part

of the temple complex of Sahura.

Now he wants to find out

what the structure was used for.

In Saqqara...

Miroslav wants to know

the identity of the owner

of the empty burial chamber.

This is an amazing discovery.

His team has unearthed a new structure

while excavating near the top of the shaft.

It's a chapel made of beautifully carved limestone

that Miroslav thinks belongs to the tomb owner.

He's hoping it will give him a clue to who the owner was

and when he lived.

Now we have it live finally.

The first column is praying to Anubis for a good burial,

and then we have the most important title,

Medjeh genooty, um, Master Sculptor.

This is it, this is the most important place in the tomb.

This is the name of the deceased

reading Kae-im-he set.

We know who he was, what was his name,

and what were his duties at the court.

Miroslav has uncovered

the burial chamber and chapel of Kaeimheset,

the Royal Sculptor.

It's quite rare to have

the complete evidence.

The architecture of the chapel

suggests that it dates from about 100 years

before the time of the Sun Kings.

Around 2600 BCE,

high officials like Kaeimheset built simple tombs

like these for themselves to achieve eternal life.

At the heart of the tomb sat a false door,

a magic gateway to the world of the dead.

By the era of the Sun Kings,

tombs of high officials like Ptahshepses were larger,

with more rooms to store offerings

for the deceased.

The decoration was far more elaborate,

with beautiful reliefs

depicting scenes of a prosperous life.

Both these men were important officials

in their own eras.

But the extreme luxury of Ptahshepses' tomb

compared to Kaeimheset's

shows how far the Sun Kings

had elevated the status of non-royals.

Miroslav has added another piece

to the picture of how the Sun Kings governed Egypt.

Today is a really good day for our mission,

and I'm happy not only for myself but the workers,

because they always like to discover something.

In Abusir,

at the pyramid complex of Sahura,

the Second Sun King,

Mohamed has excavated a foundation stone

that indicates the structure he found is an original wall.

Now, he wants to work out what it was used for.

The team begins to excavate the area nearby.

It's promising, it's promising.

That's very promising.

They've found a second wall

running parallel to the first.

It's ancient, so it's untouched.

They are already aligned with each other.

It looks like the walls form part

of an undiscovered limestone avenue.

What we will do now is continue the excavation.

I'm looking forward to see

if this wall extends toward the pyramid.

Then of course it will be very exciting news for us.

At the pyramid complex

of the Second Sun King Sahura,

Mohamed is investigating what he hopes

is a limestone avenue.

My hunch is this could be

the beginning of the side entrance

to the temple.

In 1907,

the excavation uncovered a central sacred causeway.

It led to an entrance to the temple

that could only be used by the king.

That's why everybody used the side entrance.

Instead of using the sacred causeway,

priests relied on a second entrance way

to access the funerary temple of Sahura.

Inside the temple,

priests performed rituals in the name of Sahura's cult,

a practice that continued for 200 years after his death.

Sahura's temple also became a place of healing.

Both rich and poor traveled from across Egypt

to receive carvings chipped from the causeway itself.

They believed these carvings offered blessings

that bestowed not only the power

of the Sun King Sahura,

but of the Goddess of Healing, Sekhmet.

For Mohamed, uncovering the priests' avenue

would be a hugely significant find.

I'm very excited because it's still going

towards the-the-the pyramid.

It's a new structure that was never located

or recorded before.

This is an extraordinary discovery.

Every day you find new evidence

that's changing completely

our understanding about this, this monument.

Sahura's funerary complex

became the template for all his descendants who followed.

So, Mohamed's discovery gives him key information

about the Sun Kings Dynasty

and how they were honored after death.

It's, it's great. It's really great.

In Saqqara,

Chris has come to the pyramid

of the final Sun King, Unas.

When he became pharaoh,

an expanding court of officials

was growing ever more powerful.

Unas needed to reassert his authority,

and Chris believes his pyramid might tell him how he did it.

This pyramid might not look like much,

but it is hugely significant.

This pyramid would change Egypt forever.

Whilst the tombs of officials

were richly decorated,

the walls inside the pyramids of the pharaohs

were always bare.

Unas broke with that tradition in an extraordinary fashion.

This is really special.

The decoration inside the burial compartments here

is really something.

The walls are completely covered,

every inch of them,

in hieroglyphs and enormous, lengthy inscription.

Unas' real legacy.

No tomb had ever been decorated

like this before.

Unas' pyramid texts

are a set of 228 spells and hymns

designed to secure the pharaoh's path

to the afterlife.

When a pharaoh died,

priests would recite spells and incantations

to guide the king's soul

on its journey to the afterlife.

But Unas took things a step further.

He instructed masons to carve those spells

into the walls of his tomb

so the pharaoh's soul could do without the priests.

It would be able to read the spells

inscribed on the burial chamber itself.

With the holy words and rituals to guide it,

the spirit stood the best possible chance

of journeying to the afterlife

to take its place among the gods.

By recording the resurrection spells

onto the walls of his tomb for the first time,

Unas was using these pyramid texts

to claim absolute supremacy

over both the gods and his subjects.

Unas' great innovation

was reserved for him.

He was only pharaoh who had the right

to have their burial chamber decorated with these texts,

the key to the eternal next life.

Ultimately, Unas' attempt

to wrest back control failed.

He died without an heir,

and the throne of Egypt passed to a commoner.

The era of the Sun Kings was over,

but their legacy lived on.

The pyramid texts which appear here

for the first time

would continue in use for another 2,000 years.

More importantly,

the ideas that are included in these texts,

so the king's journey to the next life

to join with the gods,

would remain a fundamental part of Egyptians' belief

in the way the world works.

Today, archeologists continue

to uncover new evidence

about how the Sun Kings changed Egypt.

To help them run the country,

they created a new class of officials

and rewarded their closes aides

with beautifully decorated tombs.

But once the Sun Kings began to surrender

their political power to those bureaucrats,

the erosion of their authority was unstoppable.

While Unas' pyramid texts guaranteed his immortality,

he could not produce an heir.

The sun had finally set

on the dynasty of the Sun Kings.