Original subtitles

Mastrelli: It was one of the most remarkable finds

In modern archeology.

The giant statue of a pharaoh

Buried deep beneath a cairo suburb.

Experts believe they've found the colossus

Of a forgotten king.

And this discovery could change our entire understanding

Of more than a century of ancient egyptian history.

For centuries,

The mysteries of the past have kept their secrets.

But there are clues cast in gold,

Etched in stone,

Written in blood.

We can unlock them.

Cairo, a city built in the shadows of the pyramids,

And on the remains of millennia of history.

On the outskirts of this congested metropolis

Once stood the ancient city of heliopolis,

A vast religious center dedicated to the sun god ra,

Filled with temples, statues, and obelisks.

Frustratingly for archeologists,

The remains of this city are now buried

Under dense city blocks and residential buildings.

But every so often,

Urban development offers a rare opportunity

To peer into the suburbs' rich past.

And shockingly, the most recent excavation

Has revealed an almost unknown pharaoh,

Whose remarkable reign and legacy

Had been forgotten... Until now.

March 2017, the culmination of a five-year dig

In the working class district of matariya.

Archeologists are completing their investigation

In one area of a vast 3,000-year-old temple complex.

Yeah, we were finishing,

And when we're about to move from the site,

We didn't expect any great discoveries.

Mastrelli: Then, at the far end of the site,

A shovel strikes something solid.

Raue: Suddenly the workman told us there was a big stone.

Mastrelli: As the team clears the mud,

Something remarkable begins to emerge.

Raue: And suddenly we realize

That our workmen are standing on top of a chest.

Mastrelli: Slowly, a giant torso is revealed,

And it's made of quartzite,

One of the most prized stones in ancient times.

Within minutes, a giant head is discovered

Buried upside down in the mud.

Raue: When we got the idea that this was of colossal shape,

Whatever we had found, it was sure it's a human depiction,

But, for example, is it a god or is it a king?

Mastrelli: The only way to find out

Is to carefully lift the head out from the ground

And clear the mud.

Only then is a distinctive cone shape revealed.

Raue: For egyptologists, it was immediately clear

This is a crown, upper egypt.

Mastrelli: The archeologists realize

They've just made the find of a lifetime.

They've uncovered a giant statue of a pharaoh.

It was a very exciting moment,

You know, that you are now in a very big discovery.

Mastrelli: So far the team only has the top half

Of the faceless statue.

But its size, the quartzite stone,

And the intricate detail of the carving

All suggest this was a monument of huge importance.

For egyptologist chris naunton,

It's the location that confirms the pharaoh

They've discovered was one of the greats.

2,500 years ago, this suburb was the site

Of one of the most sacred cities of ancient egypt.

Naunton: Just at first glance,

You might think a sort of an unassuming-looking suburb

Of cairo like this would not be the kind of place

You'd expect to find a colossal statue of a pharaoh.

But this was the site of heliopolis,

The cult center of the sun god ra,

One of the most important places in ancient egypt.

Mastrelli: Archeologists estimate heliopolis

Spread over three square miles

And remained a center of worship for 2,500 years.

In that time it's been linked

To many of egypt's most famous pharaohs,

So which one was this statue of?

The only way to find out

Was to remove the eight-ton fragment from the mud

For closer examination.

After two days of careful digging,

The statue was out of the ground

And moved to its new home at the egyptian museum

Where archeologists could finally get a closer look.

Incredibly, when the mud was cleared,

A series of hieroglyphs were exposed

Cut into the super hard quartzite rock.

Raue: We found four hieroglyphs.

The quality of the inscriptions is amazing,

I mean, it looks as if you cut in a piece of butter,

But you are dealing with one of the hardest materials

Ancient egypt has to offer.

Mastrelli: To the archeologists' disbelief,

The hieroglyphs revealed the identity of the pharaoh.

But this wasn't the name experts were expecting.

Naunton: These are the all- important hieroglyphic signs,

And although this inscription is broken,

The signs give us one of the names of pharaoh.

It's one of the names of a pharaoh we know today

As psamtik the first,

This is a name that's almost unknown,

Except to egyptologists,

And to find it on the back of this statue

Was a huge surprise.

Mastrelli: Despite one of the longest reigns in ancient egypt,

Psamtik the first was not thought

To have been immortalized in such monumental fashion.

Naunton: The identification of this

As a statue of psamtik the first surprised everyone

Because we just don't have evidence

For colossal statuary like this from this time.

Mastrelli: Historical accounts tell us that psamtick the first

Ruled egypt for 54 years

From 664 b.C.E.

At this time,

Egypt was no longer the mighty superpower of old,

And experts had thought that psamtik ruled

When the country was on its knees.

Naunton: This was not the glory days anymore.

Egypt wasn't as wealthy as it had been,

It didn't control the same territory,

It didn't have the same empire.

And we had thought up until now that pharaoh

Just didn't really have the means

To build statues on this scale,

And this statue changes all of that.

Mastrelli: The experts were mystified.

How could a pharaoh in charge of a country in decline

Had been commemorated in a statue on a scale

Only ever seen for the greatest rulers of egypt?

Naunton: This is a discovery that simply is without parallel.

It's a revelation

And it raises so many questions about ancient egypt.

Mastrelli: The archeologists

Had stumbled upon an ancient masterpiece

Of a forgotten pharaoh.

Its discovery is now revealing the secrets

Of a lost egyptian history.

The scale of egypt's ancient buildings is legendary.

Enormous pyramids,

Jaw-dropping temples, and colossal statues.

Experts had thought the era of extravagant monument building

Ended in the 11th century b.C.E.

But the discovery of a colossus of a pharaoh

Forgotten by history, created 400 years later,

Now suggests the scholars were wrong.

Naunton: The years before psamtik the first

Have been called something of a dark age,

And certainly it was a confusing period

Of turmoil and fragmentation.

And there just wasn't as much big stuff,

Monumental building and grandeur,

As there had been in previous periods,

And that's because there wasn't the wealth and power

And influence needed to create such monuments.

Mastrelli: The egypt that psamtik was born into

Was a war-torn country,

Ruled by foreign superpowers.

So how did he end up as a figure

Worthy of a 36-foot-high colossus?

Evidence of the nearly

Insurmountable challenges he faced

Can be found 2,000 miles away from egypt

In berlin, germany.

This is the victory stele of esarhaddon.

It's a pictorial representation

That reveals how far egypt's pharaoh had fallen

When psamtik was born into his pharaonic dynasty.

This one stone proclaims the age

Of the mighty pharaoh was over.

Egypt had been conquered, and the assyrians,

Led by the king esarhaddon, now ruled the north.

Centered around nineveh in modern-day iraq,

Their empire spread across the middle east

And deep into egypt.

With esarhaddon in charge,

The stele clearly illustrates how the egyptian pharaoh

Was seen as nothing more than a slave.

Kirschbaum: What you see here is a supplicating,

Mournful person,

Subjugated by the assyrian king who is represented

By this huge monumental figure to the left.

He is kept on a leash by the assyrian king,

A leash which is sort of attached

To either his nose or his cheek.

He is enslaved by the assyrian king.

Mastrelli: Just like the carving on the stele,

Psamtik grew up seeing his father

Subjugated by the assyrians.

For the heir to this puppet kingdom,

The future looked bleak.

Kirschbaum: Psamtik is nothing.

He is a prince,

But he has no position and no power at all.

Mastrelli: But the assyrians' desperate need for power

Was to be their downfall...

And psamtik's gain.

While the assyrians ruled the north,

The south had been conquered by the kushites.

Both wanted total control of egypt, and both eyed thebes,

Now modern day luxor, as their capital city of choice.

The kushites surge north.

In the ensuing battle,

Psamtik's father is one of hundreds killed.

But the assyrians refuse to give in

And soon launch a counterattack.

The assyrian assault on thebes was merciless--

The kushites were powerless against the savage onslaught.

With psamtik's father dead,

The assyrians pick the young prince to govern egypt.

Naunton: The assyrians perhaps thought

That he was just another local small-time ruler

That they could keep on a leash, but they were wrong.

Mastrelli: What psamtik did next

Changed the course of history.

And it's documented in an ancient manuscript

Held by cambridge university in England.

This is a copy of the world's very first history book,

Written in 440 b.C.E. By the greek author herodotus.

Cartledge: Herodotus is very interested in psamtik;

He appears in several bits of herodotus's text.

Mastrelli: Herodotus records how the conquest of egypt

Took its toll on the assyrians.

Exhausted and now overstretched,

They were soon forced

To withdraw from egypt to protect their own borders.

It was a move that played

Right into the young pharaoh's hands.

According to herodotus,

The key to psamtik's early success were mercenaries--

Or hired muscle.

But these weren't just any soldiers,

They were elite warriors brought in from ancient greece.

Cartledge: The greek soldiers were the prime soldiers

Of their day in the eastern mediterranean,

They would have been therefore the most fearsome warriors

That anybody would be likely to encounter.

Mastrelli: Psamtik had a deadly foreign army at his disposal.

He put it to work conquering the neighboring city-states.

By 651 b.C.E., they'd achieved their objective

And psamtik was in total control of the north.

In just over a decade, the puppet ruler

Had become the genuine pharaoh of lower egypt.

Psamtik chose his home city of sais to be his new capital.

Having settled his mercenary army close by,

He took aim at conquering the rebellious south.

Here he had to win over the powerful priesthood

Based in thebes.

A tablet, kept at the egyptian museum in cairo,

Reveals how psamtik used his own daughter to reunite egypt.

Naunton: This is a historical document;

A text carved in stone.

And it's the story, in fact, of psamtik's daughter,

The princess nitocris,

Whose name is written in the text here.

Mastrelli: The ancient text records

How psamtik's only daughter was escorted to thebes

And presented as the next wife of the god amun.

If accepted,

They'd hold the two most powerful positions in egypt.

To ensure she was accepted,

Psamtik dispatched an intimidating navy

Down the river nile to thebes.

Naunton: Psamtik's plan worked,

And the thebans welcomed nitocris

As the heir to this incredibly important position.

And in this act, psamtik made himself the ruler of thebes,

The ruler of southern egypt,

And by extension, the ruler of the entire country.

Mastrelli: Psamtik had worked a miracle.

He'd brought southern egypt under his control

Without a single drop of blood being spilt.

An egyptian pharaoh was at last

Back in control of all of egypt.

To mark the occasion, a giant statue was commissioned

In a style and size that hearkened back

To the glory days of earlier dynasties.

So how did the greatest symbol of this revered leader

End up discarded in a muddy hole,

Shattered into thousands of pieces?

The discovery of a colossus

Of the pharaoh psamtik the first

Is helping experts paint a picture of a supreme strategist,

Diplomat, and leader.

His greek mercenary army

Helped reunite egypt after years of foreign occupation.

The evidence suggests that psamtik's statues

Stood as a legacy to his incredible reign.

So what can explain how such an important work of art

Ended up in a muddy hole in a cairo suburb?

The largest pieces of the colossal statue

Of pharaoh psamtik the first

Are today on display at the egyptian museum.

But 6,500 other fragments recovered from the site

Are being pieced together

At the state-of-the-art grand egyptian museum.

It's also home to some of the best

Archeological laboratories on the planet.

Naunton: This is the next step in egyptian archeology.

It's where all the priceless artifacts

From the tomb of tutankhamun are being analyzed

Before they go on display in the new grand egyptian museum,

And its where thousands and thousands

Of egypt's most valuable treasures

Are being investigated.

These are some of the more than 1,900 fragments

Of this statue that were found on site in matariya,

And as you can see, this fragment

Has a kind of grayish appearance in some places

And to the touch seems a little bit sort of granular,

Almost kind of sandy,

And actually this is cracked as well,

And that's significant.

This, the geologists think,

Is evidence that the statue had been subjected

To very high temperatures, it had been burnt.

And we know that this was a technique

That was used deliberately

To destroy large stone objects like this.

They would burn them first of all

And then pour cold water over them,

And this causes the stone to crack,

Which then makes it possible to break it apart.

Mastrelli: The evidence indicates the colossus

Was deliberately destroyed.

No one knows who did it,

But they seemed intent on erasing relics of the past.

But somehow, large fragments of the statue survived.

Naunton: This is a miraculous survival

And it's a miraculous discovery and it allows us

To return a great pharaoh to the center stage.

Mastrelli: This colossus was created

To remember a remarkable pharaoh

Who transformed the fortunes of a broken country.

On the foundations of psamtik's dynasty,

Egypt would enjoy 139 years of peace and prosperity.

Cartledge: What made psamtik a success

Was a combination of tradition

And innovation, in particular,

A willingness to look outside egypt for key personnel,

Which is not something we normally associate

Perhaps with the egyptian monarchy.

Naunton: By any measure,

Psamtik's egypt was a tremendous success:

Military might,

A booming economy and a flourishing culture.

This was a seriously successful leader

And one who deserves to be celebrated.

Mastrelli: The discovery of the colossus of psamtik

Is making experts revaluate the forgotten pharaoh's reign.

His name had become little more than a footnote in history.

But now, thanks to this remarkable discovery,

Psamtik's reputation has been restored.

And for egyptologists eager for the next opportunity

To excavate this cairo suburb,

The tantalizing wait begins anew.