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00:01On the Giza Plateau, Khufu and Khafre loom almost 80 meters over their little sister, the Pyramid of Menkor.
00:11There's something unique about this pyramid. He had a different vision than his ancestors.
00:17He preferred to concentrate on what was inside, on his apartments.
00:23Menkor, Giza's third builder, stands out from his predecessors by his architectural innovations.
00:35Superb. A chamber entirely carved out of granite.
00:39The most discreet of these three Egyptian marvels may yet be the one with the most to reveal.
00:49The Menkor, a pyramid complex, is a little bit like a movie script.
00:54The history and ultimate fate of Menkor are breathtaking.
00:57Two hundred years ago, his sarcophagus sank in the Mediterranean.
01:02And it's never been recovered. So something of a mystery hides out in the ocean.
01:10Menkor, the grandson of Khufu, has entered into legend.
01:15And the construction of his tomb still remains a puzzle today.
01:20To shed light on these mysteries, our scientists were granted permission to venture inside Egypt's most iconic pyramids with a
01:28latest generation laser scanner.
01:31It's quite tight in here. I'll try and warm my way through it.
01:37Using this procedure, they're able to create a very precise digital copy of the inside of the structure.
01:44With a few clicks, we can do measurements that would be very complicated to carry out in situ.
01:48These tools will let our experts discover new clues in this ongoing scientific investigation, which began 200 years ago.
02:04To be continued...
02:28We head to the Giza Plateau, only a few kilometers as the crow flies from Cairo to discover the
02:34pyramid of Menkor.
02:38The Sphinx seems to be watching over these three marvels of Egypt.
02:46The first is the pyramid of Khufu, the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world
02:51that is still standing.
02:53Then in the middle is the pyramid of Khufu's son, Khafre.
02:56And the last, built by Khufu's grandson, Menkor.
03:07The first thing that differentiates this pyramid from its two big sisters is its size.
03:12Why did the third king of the Giza Plateau have a pyramid built that was much smaller than
03:17those of his father and grandfather?
03:21The reasons for this is unknown, but some people say there wasn't enough space on the
03:27Giza Plateau for Menkor to build just as large of a pyramid as his predecessors.
03:36Khufu's pyramid is composed of between 2.5 and 3 million blocks.
03:41A lot fewer make up his grandsons.
03:47It's something like one-tenth the volume of Khufu's pyramid.
03:52That would sound tiny.
03:54In fact, Menkor's pyramid is pretty massive.
03:59One-tenth the volume of the Great Pyramid.
04:03And yet the sides are still 105 meters long and it is 63 meters tall, 10 meters higher than
04:09the Arc de Triomphe.
04:14The experts have put forward another possible reason for this pyramid's dimensions.
04:19Economic resources were more scarce, it was seen as a bit more wasteful to make a massive
04:24pyramid.
04:25Well, there's some logic to that.
04:27For three generations, they've been creating monuments of massive size.
04:33Were Egypt's resources enough to keep this up?
04:41The resources of the country had been stretched to their limit under Khufu and then pushed even
04:47further for Khafre's pyramid.
04:51His grandfather had built Egypt's largest pyramid.
04:55Khufu had expended so many resources that the country had done left for the next generations.
05:01They must have had to put a crazy amount of energy into it, concentrating all the kingdom's
05:05resources into a national project that wouldn't yield any profit.
05:09Such projects clearly had their limits and there came a point when enough was enough.
05:16With Menkor, the Age of Excess came to an end.
05:20The Old Kingdom was going through a transitional period.
05:23At the same time as this, there was probably an elite with increased powers.
05:28Which meant that the pharaoh was no longer omnipotent in the way that Khufu and Khufu had.
05:35I think Menkor's reign marks a turning point in that kind of decision-making regarding what
05:42matters about a pyramid.
05:45And yet Menkor's pyramid is an architectural gem.
05:49The most delicate of the three pyramids on the Giza Plateau when you study it in detail.
06:03The Egyptologist Vassil Dobrev has been studying Menkor's pyramid for years.
06:11Unlike Khufu's and Khufu's pyramids, which were built of blocks of white limestone, Menkor's
06:17stands out for its reddish hue.
06:23There are lots of blocks of granite here, and they were all originally on the outside
06:27of the pyramid.
06:30These tons and tons of scattered blocks of granite were part of the pyramid's facing,
06:35which was wrecked by looters.
06:39Granite was a special rock for several reasons.
06:43First, it had to come a very long way.
06:46This redstone was brought from the quarries of Aswan in the south of the country, was transported
06:52by about 800 kilometers down the Nile to Giza.
06:58Also, it is much harder to work with than the limestone used by Khufu and Khufu.
07:04Their techniques had developed, things got passed on from one generation to the next, each generation
07:09coming up with its own innovations.
07:12Such is one particularly effective tool.
07:15They use so-called sand saws.
07:17When you saw two blocks next to each other, you make them even.
07:21So when you put them together, they stick.
07:23There's no need for cement.
07:26The Egyptians used copper saws.
07:30These famous saws are a bit difficult to imagine.
07:33But they had to have existed, because we can see their traces on the rocks.
07:38As the saw passed, it didn't just go in one line.
07:41One time it'd go like this, and the next it'd go like this.
07:46By using granite, Menkor went for the difficult option.
07:52But he was able to draw on the experience of his ancestors.
07:57What you have to realize is that by this time, they've been building large pyramids for almost
08:01a hundred years.
08:02Well, that's quite a bit of experience, a lot of experience.
08:06Egyptologists have questions about Menkor's surprising choice for the facing of his pyramid.
08:12Did he want to make a totally red pyramid?
08:14Here we have just one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight rows more or less that are
08:20still intact.
08:22Menkor's pyramid has nine blocks, nine rows of granite facing.
08:29And some people think that maybe he intended to cover his entire pyramid in granite to make
08:35up for the fact that it was smaller in size.
08:38A clue in the middle of the blocks of limestone steers us towards another, more probable hypothesis.
08:46A bit higher up there by the gap, to the left of the gap, we can still see a block
08:49of granite
08:50in place, apparently a block of the facing.
08:53This block of granite, on about the 15th row, provides crucial information about the original
08:58facing.
09:00It's cased with 16 courses at the bottom of granite.
09:05So it would have had a different appearance when it was finished.
09:08And in fact, the whole thing was probably never completed to the very end.
09:13The facing of this pyramid consisted of two colors.
09:16At the base it was granite, a dark pink, grayish pink color.
09:20And then the rest of the pyramid was fine limestone from Tura.
09:24So what you saw was a radiant pyramid standing on a much darker base.
09:28It would have been white, gleaming white limestone on the top, and beautiful red-black granite
09:34on the bottom.
09:35So the pharaoh decided that he wanted a two color pyramid.
09:40The remaining blocks of granite provide us with more information.
09:44The blocks were first of all put perfectly in place next to each other.
09:48And then they were smoothed off.
09:50Unfortunately, this job wasn't finished across the whole pyramid.
09:53Some of the blocks were polished.
09:56Others were left in their raw state.
09:59It's a vital clue for understanding King Menkoe's personal history.
10:03What we do know for certain is that Menkoe died.
10:07And we know with a high degree of probability that he died before completing his pyramid.
10:13Because his pyramid shows all the different stages of work.
10:16The complex was left incompleted.
10:20So King Menkoe died before the construction was complete.
10:24And the pyramid was finished in a hurry.
10:26The incomplete nature of the structure provides us with clues 4,500 years later.
10:32The building of a royal tomb in Egypt only took place during the lifespan of the king himself.
10:39Any work after his death was very much down to a bit of some finishing off of things which are
10:44absolutely essential.
10:54To better understand Menkoe's pyramid, we're going to follow Egyptologist Frank Monnier on a mission.
11:01He is an expert who studies the construction and workings of the pyramids of ancient Egypt.
11:09With the aid of a high-tech miniature scanner, he'll help us come to grips with the mysteries of Menkoe's
11:15pyramid.
11:21Here I'm drawing in a very diagrammatic way the funeral apartments of Menkoe's pyramid.
11:27It'd be really interesting to do a scan, first of all, of the antechamber.
11:30This abandoned chamber here and all its characteristics.
11:34And then of the burial chamber itself.
11:36If we carry out a very precise study, then maybe we'll learn a lot about the way in which the
11:40Egyptians built this burial chamber.
11:47We obtained special permission to enter this pyramid, which is closed to the general public, and entrusted this mission to
11:54Alban Brice Pampot.
11:56The internal structure of Menkoe's pyramid has a very special feature.
12:00The funeral apartments are totally underground.
12:04Alban Brice Pampot is employing the latest technology in the service of archaeology.
12:09Equipped with a cutting-edge scanner of millimetric precision, he'll be able to scan the most inaccessible underground parts of
12:16the pyramid, revealing them as never before.
12:18Going into the pyramid with the scanner, I'll be able to capture a huge number of points, the 3D coordinates
12:24of the tomb's walls.
12:25This will create a complete 3D plan.
12:27The idea is to get into all the spaces that are accessible to me in order to document the entire
12:32funeral space.
12:35With the help of the high-precision LiDAR scanner, for the first time in history, Menkoe's pyramid may reveal to
12:41us new clues about its construction.
12:48The End
13:18We've just come down the slope.
13:19We're in a sloping corridor, reaching the first chamber, which is decorated with bas-reliefs.
13:23Then we go past the portcullis stones, another short corridor, and we come out into this great room, which is
13:29a large excavation in the rock.
13:37The scanner can capture 420,000 points per second.
13:43The data are then analyzed in Paris, and the results of the scans will be ready in a few weeks.
14:03What do we know about the man who ordered this pyramid to be built?
14:07Who was this man Menkor, the grandson of King Khufu?
14:12More than 4,000 years since he died, we have few sources regarding the sixth sovereign of the fourth dynasty.
14:21The Greek historian Herodotus was the first to write about the kings of the Giza plateau.
14:27Herodotus recounts that Khufu was a tyrant, that the people hated him, that he imposed harsh conditions on his workers.
14:35The priest here told Herodotus that Khufu had pimped his own daughter to get each block of his pyramid.
14:44Just imagine how many blocks you need to make a pyramid, even a small one.
14:50In contrast, Menkor is viewed as more kind and benevolent and a good leader.
14:59It's interesting that the tradition in the Greco-Roman period was that whereas Khufu and Khafre's memories,
15:08that they were despised by many of the people, the Egyptians, somehow Menkor was loved.
15:17Herodotus also relates another anecdote.
15:19The king may have decided to build a smaller pyramid because of a warning from the gods.
15:26The oracle of Butoh told him that he would die within the next six years.
15:30Menkor wasn't very happy about this. He had to get a move on.
15:36We don't know if what Herodotus tells us is true. He was passing on what he'd been told.
15:42It is hard to trust these old legends.
15:46In an effort to piece together Menkor's story, we have to look for clues over a wider area.
15:54What you have to realize is that it's not just a pyramid that we have here.
15:58It's an entire funeral complex of which the pyramid is a part.
16:01We have a funeral temple on the eastern side, a major thoroughfare which goes east,
16:06and in the valley there's a temple.
16:09The view from above is important here. The temple in the valley is a key to understanding Menkor.
16:16This is where archaeologists made extraordinary discoveries which gave us crucial information about the pharaoh.
16:24Importantly, this is where the American Egyptologist George Reisner, in 1908, discovered stunning statuary.
16:31He found some of the most fabulous pieces in the history of ancient Egyptian art.
16:36The statues of Menkor, the dyad of Menkor and a queen.
16:40These are some of the masterpieces in art worldwide.
16:45You have to go to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, just a few kilometers from the Giza Plateau, to admire
16:51these marbles.
16:53Meredith Brand knows the place well and guides us through the maze to discover the Triad of Menkor.
17:02These statues are pure works of art. There's a beauty and a realism to the faces of the king and
17:09to the goddesses.
17:11They almost become emblematic of the old kingdom.
17:14You have this time of great pyramids, vast architecture that sometimes it's easy to overlook the true artistic qualities of
17:24the craftsmen of the era.
17:25Really we know that during this time masterpieces were being produced in a very prolific manner.
17:33This shows the advances that are made not only in architecture but in art and portraiture.
17:41This treasure of the old kingdom shows stunning realism.
17:47And one detail on the pharaoh's head tells us more about this king and his power.
17:54He's wearing the white crown of southern Egypt.
17:56And the gnome gods and goddesses are all connected to the southern part of the country.
18:01So these statues can also read that Menkor was in control of the entire country and he was using the
18:10economic resources from all over Egypt to develop his pyramid and his pyramid cult.
18:15This way you see the king Menkor showing himself both as human and divine and being ruler and legitimized ruler
18:24of all of Egypt.
18:28To find out more about the life of Menkor, we have to look to the south of his pyramid.
18:35Three even smaller pyramids here give us more information about the life of the pharaoh.
18:42Egyptologist Xavier Henaf is an expert on the fragmentary genealogies of the pharaohs.
18:46The problem with this period is that we don't necessarily have the names of the occupants.
18:52But we can be sure that these pyramids were most probably intended as the final resting places of the pharaoh's
18:58wives.
19:00Menkor had several wives.
19:05Basically we know of two. There was Cameronepti and we also know of a woman called Renkaus.
19:13But we can't attribute a wife's name to any of the tombs here because we have nothing written down that
19:19specifically names them.
19:22Polygamy was commonplace in ancient Egypt.
19:25All the pharaohs had several wives, some as many as seven, and they did not look very far afield to
19:31find them.
19:31At the time of Menkor, it was still the fourth dynasty, and the royal family was quite a restricted group.
19:38What I mean is that it included brothers, sisters, cousins, but in general it didn't go any further than that.
19:45Also, there was a practice which we would condemn today, in that there were marriages between brother, sister, half-brother,
19:52half-sister to produce heirs.
19:56As was the case with Menkor.
19:59Menkor married one of his sisters, and maybe one of his other wives was a half-sister.
20:05Either that or a close relative, but we don't know all the details.
20:12In the meantime, in Paris, Frank Meunier has the results of the scanning mission.
20:17We discover with him what the scan of the pyramid has revealed.
20:28The scan lets us take a virtual tour of the inside of the pyramid.
20:33The scan reveals the base of the pyramid, which we see here.
20:37This is at ground level here, and there's the entrance to the funeral apartments.
20:42And then we go down the sloping corridor, which reaches a small vestibule.
20:48This three-dimensional view shows that the apartments were actually hollowed out of the Giza Plateau.
20:54Here we see a more or less horizontal corridor, which leads to a first large chamber.
21:00And from the floor, there's a sort of sloping corridor, which leads down to the burial chamber that we're familiar
21:08with today.
21:17After analyzing the digital representation, our expert travels to the Giza Plateau to observe the pyramid he's been studying for
21:25so long.
21:32A particularity of this pyramid is the gaping hole in the northern face.
21:35If you compare it to the two other great pyramids, the two giants next to it, it really looks scarred.
21:42This slash, many meters high, is the distinctive mark of the Menkor pyramid.
21:49But it was not done at the time of its construction.
21:53This hole was made by Egyptians in the 18th century, maybe even before.
21:57We know that they were quite eager at the time to dismantle these ungodly monuments.
22:02But they probably also wanted to exploit all the limestone.
22:06Yet the quarrymen failed to get very far against the colossus.
22:10They soon realized that demolishing it would be an enormous, colossal task, and they gave up.
22:16In fact, it's a lot easier to build a pyramid than it is to destroy one.
22:22Despite such affronts done to it through the ages, this pyramid, built almost 45 centuries ago, has remained indestructible.
22:29They attacked it, wanting to destroy it and exploit the limestone and the granite, but despite all that, the pyramid
22:35still looks proud and beautiful.
22:42While this slash disfigures the edifice, it does help us better understand the internal construction of the pyramid.
22:51The monument structure is in fact similar to human morphology.
22:57The human body is made up of the skeleton, the bones, the muscles and then the skin.
23:03Well, the pyramid is sort of the same thing.
23:06The skeleton is the stepped pyramid, the base of the monument.
23:11Then come the muscles, the support blocks filling up the steps and forming the straight sides.
23:17Then finally, the facing was the skin.
23:20And the Egyptians got this right.
23:22It was a perfect covering.
23:25The pyramid of Menkor was looted in ancient times.
23:28And over the centuries, its entrance was gradually covered up by sand until it disappeared completely.
23:39It was only in the 19th century that Europeans took an interest in the pyramids and began major exploration campaigns.
23:48Howard Weiss was a British military officer and a very wealthy man.
23:53He was particularly enamored by the pyramids.
23:56He found out that no one had identified an entrance into the Menkari pyramid.
24:01So what was inside was a mystery.
24:03He became obsessed and he was determined to figure out what was inside this pyramid.
24:10Colonel Howard Weiss called on the British engineer John Pering to help him in his quest.
24:16The two of them decided they would spare nothing to get inside this pyramid.
24:22Some of that story is a little shocking because, in fact, in order to penetrate inside the pyramid in the
24:281830s, they used dynamite.
24:30And I think today we can't even imagine people setting charges of dynamite to explode, to reveal passageways.
24:40American Egyptologist Meredith Brand is going inside Menkor's pyramid for the first time on the trail of the two British
24:47explorers.
24:49So up here is where Howard Weiss had to blast through this hole that existed from the 12th century.
24:57And he tunneled with dynamite all the way through and then down.
25:01Despite the damage they caused, the two partners in crime found nothing.
25:05After thinking about it for a while, they cleared away the sand at the foot of the pyramid and finally
25:10found the opening through which Meredith Brand will now enter.
25:13The entrance is just right here.
25:23By means of these 3D scans done by our team, the Egyptologist Mark Lennar will for the first time get
25:30a complete view of the inside of the pyramid.
25:35It's very nice to see it in the photogrammetry because we can twirl it around and look at it from
25:41different points of view.
25:43With this software, it's possible to take measurements that would be very difficult to carry out in the real world.
25:48We can measure here off the photogrammetric image, the descending passage. Let's see, how long would that be?
25:57Perfect. According to this, it is almost 33 meters.
26:0333 meters. That's the distance Meredith Brand must descend into the depths of the pyramid,
26:11where she will behold a stunning spectacle.
26:20Oh, this is so beautiful. These are gorgeous. The niche paneled facade is really stunning.
26:28This is carved in the original limestone. This all represents the palace facade.
26:34And it's something so special to see this in Giza. In a 4th Dynasty pyramid, to have decoration like this,
26:40it's completely unique.
26:42Menkor was the first king to innovate in this way, differentiating him from his grandfather Khufu,
26:48who had neither antechamber nor carved walls inside his pyramid.
26:52This is the first place that the sarcophagus of the king would go through.
26:56This was the entrance to the entirety of the subterranean pyramid structure.
27:04After the antechamber, Meredith must make her way through a long corridor to this first chamber,
27:09completely hollowed out of the rock.
27:15Oh, wow.
27:20This is incredible.
27:22This must have been really something for any explorer, Howard Weiss, anybody that came before them.
27:29This entire passage I went through would have been covered with debris and they would have to really crawl to
27:34get through it.
27:34And then, and then they enter into this chamber and it opens up and it's such a beautiful space.
27:41The room is exceptional for its dimensions alone.
27:44But looking a little more closely, some details are puzzling.
27:48This chamber is unfinished. It has this rough limestone.
27:54So what was this chamber used for if it wasn't finished?
27:59With her expert eye, Meredith Brand can discover some of the clues.
28:03Here, there's a niche. There's a flattened part. I mean, this is the ideal place to put a sarcophagus.
28:13This would be a wonderful place to have the burial.
28:17Indeed, it would have been a perfect spot for our sarcophagus.
28:22It would make sense that in Menkare's first vision that he wanted to make this his burial chamber.
28:31But clearly it wasn't properly finished off. It's all very rough.
28:38And this is not where they found the sarcophagus.
28:41Egyptologists have put forward various hypotheses.
28:44Could it have been a construction error? Or was it a deliberate choice of the king himself?
28:49Today, it seems that the mystery of the abandoned chamber may have been solved.
28:53Menkare had a new idea, a different idea. And he wanted to make another burial chamber.
28:59The construction of a pyramid began when a pharaoh took the throne and continued all through his reign.
29:05It's not uncommon for a king to change his mind, develop his plans, shift things, move forward and make a
29:14different vision.
29:15Because the architecture was evolving constantly.
29:19So, changing his mind and starting a new path is pretty common in pyramids.
29:24So Menkare decided that this wasn't the chamber in which he wished to be buried.
29:31Generations of men worked on constructing this masterpiece of Menkare's reign.
29:37Frank Meunier gives us an idea of what the worksite was like.
29:41This is a classic facing block which was removed from the pyramid by the quarrymen wanting to exploit the resource.
29:50To try to imagine the task faced by the Egyptians, we have to do a bit of math.
29:57The dimensions of this block are about two cubic meters and two cubic meters of granite weigh about five tons.
30:03So what we have here is about four or five tons.
30:06In this era, when the Egyptians had not yet invented the wheel, how did they shift such blocks?
30:12We know that the Egyptians used sledges to move large blocks of stone.
30:16We have lots of representations of this, of writings describing sledges.
30:20So they put the blocks on the sledges and dragged them with ropes.
30:25To move blocks weighing several tons, a considerable labor force was needed.
30:31It required roughly one man to drag from three to four hundred kilos.
30:35Here we have a big block of four to five tons, so that would have needed ten to fifteen men
30:40to pull it.
30:44Pulling a block along a flat surface was already quite a feat.
30:47The particularity of this pyramid is that everything is underground.
30:52The Egyptians had a real puzzle to solve here.
30:56Imagine the difficulty inside the pyramid.
30:58There's that really narrow sloping corridor, so they'd have to maneuver these blocks weighing seven or eight tons down that.
31:04For the first time, Franck Monnier is going inside the pyramid, where he will be able to see how well
31:09his explanation holds up.
31:17This is really awe-inspiring.
31:20When you see how tiny this corridor is, the really narrow confines of the slope, it makes you wonder what
31:27techniques they used to control the descent of such huge masses.
31:32After studying the structure at length, Franck Monnier has an explanation for how these huge blocks of stone were maneuvered
31:39down this narrow passageway.
31:41They used the slope and the extremely slippery floor, which was specially treated to slide the blocks down.
31:48So what she had was a block weighing seven or eight tons, which had to be controlled by dozens of
31:53workers on the outside holding the ropes and letting it slide very gradually down the slope until it reached the
31:59horizontal corridor.
32:00And it had to be controlled for 33 meters.
32:04So it was a challenge, which they met.
32:07What a fantastic exploit.
32:11And that was not the end of the challenge.
32:13The workers had to be particularly clever to get the blocks even further down.
32:18The ancient Egyptians were ingenious.
32:21They didn't balk at any challenge.
32:23They always found a solution, maybe a simple one, but they always found a way to meet the challenge.
32:29In this first abandoned chamber, Franck Monnier can see for himself the traces, the clues left by the pyramid's builders.
32:37The completely unique character of this chamber comes from the big notches that we see in the walls.
32:43Opposing pairs of them, this one in this wall and a corresponding one opposite.
32:50This abandoned chamber was a crucial working space for constructing the king's funeral apartments.
32:56There are these notches all over this room, large circular holes.
33:00See? I could put my arm in it. They're pretty deep.
33:03The diameters are 30 to 40 centimeters.
33:07These holes, hollowed out of the rock, had a particular function.
33:11These are quite simply the traces of the builders' construction methods.
33:15It's absolutely unique. You won't find this anywhere else.
33:20Using the 3D scans carried out by our team, Franck Monnier can analyze these notches from his computer.
33:28The scan very clearly shows the presence of these circular notches.
33:32If I turn it like this, the holes hollowed out on the sides of this abandoned chamber,
33:37you can see them opposite each other.
33:40One there, and there, and their counterparts on the other side.
33:46The software gives an overall view of the inside of the room and helps us understand what these notches were
33:52used for.
33:54These notches were used for housing the famous maneuvering beams,
33:57the logs that were used along with the ropes to maneuver the blocks of granite, but also to lower the
34:02sarcophagus.
34:04These beams must have been used as the fulcrums for ropes to lift the blocks of stone and move them
34:10towards the master chamber of the pyramid,
34:12the one which received the remains of the pharaoh.
34:17Meredith Brand discovers this chamber for the first time.
34:22Oh, this is so beautiful. This is the final burial chamber. This is where the sarcophagus would have been.
34:32This room is finished so nicely with granite, and when I shine the light, you can see that it sort
34:41of sparkles a little bit.
34:42This is a stone that has special significance for the sun.
34:46There is also graffiti left behind by former explorers.
34:51And this dome, it's really lovely and very rare in a pyramid to have a dome carved out of a
34:59piece of granite.
35:03The work accomplished here by the ancient Egyptians is exceptional.
35:07Even more so when you imagine the conditions in which they had to work.
35:11This is really a small, tight space. I can't imagine what it's like for workers to come down all the
35:21way down into this space.
35:22It's tight. It's narrow. There's not any air. There's no circulation. There would have been no light other than some
35:28candles. That's it.
35:30Using the 3D scans, Franck Meunier can assess the exploit achieved by the teams of the Royal Worksite.
35:37We can measure the depth of the subterranean construction. If we can take as a starting point the base of
35:41the pyramid at ground level and then find the lowest point, like these alcoves down here, we're at a depth
35:47of about 17 or 18 meters.
35:49They dug down to a depth of 18 meters underground. That's the height of a five-story building.
35:55So the Egyptians dug these funeral apartments really deep underground, 17 to 18 meters below ground level, and then maneuvered
36:02huge blocks of stone through very tight spaces.
36:05They were piling difficulties on top of difficulties.
36:07Already, as just a visitor, it's hard to make your way around the funeral apartments. Imagine what it was like
36:12for these workers having to get these blocks weighing several tons into place. It must have been hell.
36:20To be carving and hammering out the stones, pulling, dragging, removing, it would have been so hard, so tough, both
36:29for the people that built this space and for the robbers that came to loot afterwards to tunnel their way
36:36through.
36:36And then all the explorers to come in as well. This is a place where people really needed back-breaking
36:43labor.
36:45Contrary to common preconceptions, the workers who built the pyramids of Giza by the sweat of their brow were not
36:51slaves.
36:58The archaeologist Mark Lenner has been carrying out digs on the Giza Plateau for decades, seeking clues to help him
37:04understand how the ancient Egyptians managed to build such enormous structures.
37:09At the foot of the Giza Plateau was a whole city. Even now today, the modern city has come back
37:17to Giza and is lapping up right at the shores of the Giza Plateau. Cities started here because of the
37:24pyramids.
37:26In this city slumbering under the sand, Mark Lenner has been able to piece together what the living conditions for
37:32the workers must have been like.
37:34We know that the workers who were rotating in and out of our barracks, working on the pyramid, had really
37:40high protein and high carbohydrate diets.
37:42Because we have found dozens of bakeries for making huge conical loaves of bread in special pots.
37:52This excavation has shown that these people were supplied with considerable amounts of food, lots of meat protein, a ton
38:00of cattle, they had fish, they had bread, beer, they had many, many things.
38:05And they were living quite a comfortable existence. It didn't seem forced labor or anything terrible. But even with good
38:14food and with medical attention, the labor must have been exhausting and difficult.
38:21In fact, the structure of society in ancient Egypt was not so different from that of our own history in
38:27Western Europe.
38:28In the pre-modern world, not just in ancient Egypt, labor was obligatory. In the medieval times, in any times,
38:37in medieval France, England, you owed labor to your lord.
38:41This organization of labor so strictly regimented to build the marvels of Egypt shows how well the Egyptian state functioned.
38:49We think that the royal administration actually evolved very rapidly because of the projects to build giant pyramids.
38:59The pyramids are stunning monuments, but they're also monuments to the Egyptian state, to the development of an administration, a
39:10bureaucracy in an economic and political system that could build these monuments.
39:15That bureaucracy stayed to govern Egypt even after the pyramids started shrinking, already here behind me, from Khufu to Menkare.
39:25So that's why we can say it's not just how the Egyptians built the pyramids, it's how the pyramids actually
39:31helped to build Egypt, including the Egyptian government administration.
39:36The artisans of these masterpieces were not slaves, and they never balked at a challenge.
39:46Frank Warnier wants to show us some of their architectural prowess deep in the heart of the pyramid.
39:57Superb! An entire chamber finished in granite, such as hadn't been seen since the reign of Khufu.
40:02This chamber is a long way underground, and all the blocks you see were brought down the sloping corridor.
40:09They were brought down here, moved through really narrow, tight spaces, and finally put into place with great care.
40:15You can see how magnificent the joints are.
40:18As always with ancient Egyptian civilization, the work shows remarkable precision.
40:25Look at the finesse, the incredible finesse of the joints.
40:29Here we have two separate blocks, and the joint is barely perceptible.
40:34Look at the work, how the stone has been polished.
40:37It's such meticulous work, you struggle to see the joints between the stones.
40:43They were placed into position, and then smooth with extreme care.
40:48To see the most exceptional feature of the pyramid, you have to look up.
40:53The barrel vault is constructed entirely of blocks of granite.
40:57The largest of them must weigh around seven or eight tons.
41:00Just think, the weight of an average car is about a ton and a half, so we have a block
41:05of seven or eight tons just for one piece of the vault, and there are 18 of them in all?
41:10It's really amazing that, with what little means they had, they could achieve such perfection.
41:17The blocks are held up simply by leaning against each other.
41:21And the total weight of the blocks that made up the vault is around 80 tons.
41:27To try to understand how the Egyptians managed to shape and position them in this arch shape, the explanation may
41:33be found above the vault.
41:37Our team decides to scan the room above the king's chamber.
41:41There is just one little problem. It is inaccessible.
41:45Albonbris Pampot's idea is to use his extension.
41:49There's enough space between the bars for me to slip the scanner through on the extension.
41:54Then hold it as far as I can, and give the scanner enough time to gather sufficient data.
41:59This space is known as the maneuver chamber, and is sort of the pyramid's attic.
42:04There are plenty of dark areas, so we can just glimpse a bit from here, but I think we should
42:08be able to get something on the computer.
42:10We'll get some of the vault blocks for sure. It's already pretty interesting as it is.
42:16Visualizing this restricted space on the 3D model will give us a better understanding of the work done by the
42:21ancient Egyptians.
42:30No more than five or six men could work at the same time in the maneuver chamber, so clearly brains
42:34had to take priority over bronze.
42:37The height of the maneuver chamber varies between 70 centimeters and 1 meter 30.
42:42A tiny space in which to manhandle blocks weighing several tons.
42:48They really had to come up with ingenious solutions for moving them around and positioning them.
42:54It was probably a system of levers and scaffolding, so they could lower the blocks into position in the simplest
43:00way.
43:02And yet, while the vault is an exceptional achievement from a technical point of view, architecturally it is a different
43:08story.
43:10What's the vault actually doing?
43:11Structurally, it's not doing anything at all. It's not supporting any weight from above. The chamber is entirely underground.
43:19So why did the Egyptians make life so difficult for themselves, constructing such a vaulted ceiling?
43:25The answer is surprising. To understand, let's step back for a moment.
43:30Ancient Egyptian civilization was based on two fundamental factors.
43:34One was the Nile, flowing from south to north, which symbolized fertility. And the other, more important, was the sun.
43:42The sun rises in the east, the land of the living, and sets in the west, the land of the
43:47dead.
43:48The sun was God the creator who gave life.
43:51And of course the Egyptians believed in life after death. That was the guiding principle of their entire civilization.
43:58All the pharaohs had their burial chambers oriented in relation to the course of the sun, east to west.
44:05His grandfather, his father, his great-grandfather, and the pharaohs that came after him. Their chambers were oriented east to
44:11west.
44:14Using the 3D views obtained in the scanning mission, Vassil Dobrev can observe, in detail, one of the particularities of
44:21Mankar's burial chamber.
44:23The burial chamber is oriented exactly north-south.
44:27Menkor was the only king to choose that orientation.
44:32Why did he make such a surprising choice? The reason is related to the vault.
44:36He turns his chamber so as to represent the vault of heaven.
44:43That's how you see the vault of heaven, because the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
44:47So there you get it, the vault of heaven, going from east to west.
44:51This is exactly what Menkor wanted to represent.
44:54The reason then was symbolic.
44:57Menkor wanted to be laid to rest with a representation of the sky above his head.
45:03After this, the kings even started representing stars, the stars of the north, which are indefatigable, indestructible, and eternal.
45:09And Menkor, of course, would become one such star himself, once he ascended to heaven.
45:16Menkor's choice was groundbreaking, the precursor of a new trend which would inspire later kings like Pepi II.
45:24Menkor's is the only pyramid that we know of from that period, the Old Kingdom, the Fourth Dynasty, to have
45:29that celestial vault.
45:30Later, during the Middle Kingdom, they started imitating it.
45:37It was in this burial chamber in the 19th century that John Pering and Howard Weiss came face to face
45:44with Menkor's sarcophagus.
45:47Having discovered this treasure, they decided to take the sarcophagus with them.
45:52But things did not turn out as planned.
46:00It was put on a ship called the Beatrice to be sent to the British Museum.
46:07From Giza, the ship sailed down the Nile Delta to the mouth of the river and out into the Mediterranean.
46:13Then she undertook a long sea voyage along the coast of present-day Libya, then Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.
46:22At last, she came to the Strait of Gibraltar, where she would pass into the Atlantic.
46:26But all of a sudden...
46:30The ship sank in a storm and the sarcophagus went down to the bottom of the sea with the ship.
46:39So Menkor's sarcophagus is right now somewhere at the bottom of the sea.
46:43And it's never been recovered.
46:46So something of a mystery hides out in the ocean.
46:50The story of Menkor is full of twists and turns worthy of a screenplay for a film.
46:56It's almost like a movie.
46:57You have these sort of hero villains of Weiss and Pering that, on the one hand, have this quest for
47:05scientific investigation.
47:07Yet, on the other hand, partially destroyed the pyramid to find what they wanted.
47:13And you have the twists and turns and the eventual loss of the sarcophagus.
47:18It's rather dramatic.
47:22The sarcophagus is now lost.
47:26But there remain traces in Menkor's burial chamber.
47:35Here is where robbers dug up the ground trying to look for gold and treasure.
47:43This is the original floor level.
47:46And then down here is where they dug as much as they could.
47:51And you can even see the spot where the original limestone floor meets the granite wall casing.
48:02Another sarcophagus from the Fourth Dynasty, found on the Giza Plateau, is similar to Menkor's.
48:09The particularity of this sarcophagus is that it's decorated.
48:12Much more elaborately decorated than we've seen in other pyramids of that period.
48:18It's entirely decorated like a surrounding wall, so that's an added protection.
48:24Menkor's sarcophagus went down with its secrets.
48:28But there's one last clue in a secret room of the pyramid.
48:32Albonbris Pimpot is going to carry out one last scan.
48:35We can go further down to reach what was probably a storage space.
48:39But it's a space to which we have no access.
48:42Fortunately, though, the scanner enables us to get information through locked gates, through barriers,
48:48so we can get an idea of the volumes.
48:52This small room, adjacent to Menkor's burial chamber, contains plenty of its own mysteries,
48:57which even the top experts cannot answer.
49:01Menkor has six niches.
49:04Now, why he has six, which is not a usual number to have.
49:08What was in them? We are not sure.
49:10Presumably, these were grave goods. His treasures would be placed there.
49:14There's also niches that can hold canopic jars.
49:18During mummification, the deceased's organs were removed and placed in four separate receptacles,
49:24the canopic jars.
49:26There was one for the stomach, one for the lungs, one for the intestines, and one for the liver.
49:33Perhaps Menkor chose to be buried with all the funerary trappings next to him.
49:43Once the king was in his final resting place, the last stage consisted of protecting his remains from thieves.
49:49The Egyptian engineers came up with the idea of using granite stones, a system called portcullis stones.
49:56The portcullis stones of Menkor's pyramid are no longer there, but we can still see their traces.
50:02It's really, really cool.
50:06This is an entire area of passage that's designed to cut off anyone who would want to break into the
50:13king's chamber.
50:14This is the niche where these stones would fit and slide through and come to block this passage.
50:21And there were three of them.
50:24So any thief would have to bust through one, two, three sliding doors of stone.
50:28And this was so important because Menkor wanted his mummy to be protected.
50:32He didn't want anyone coming in here.
50:34This procedure was one that Menkor had copied.
50:38His grandfather had already employed the three portcullis stone system.
50:47Looking at the pyramids of the Giza Plateau with their apparent differences,
50:51we can all the same recognize certain similarities.
50:54There certainly must have been some kind of architectural knowledge and tradition
50:59that was shared and passed on from generation to generation
51:01because we see innovations in one king that continue to the next.
51:06Which begs another question.
51:09Did these architects adopt these innovations for practical or symbolic reasons?
51:14How and why that was the case is hard to say.
51:17But it's clear that in the progress of building pyramids, things were learned.
51:23And they learned from mistakes, they learned from what didn't work,
51:27but they also learned from what seemed to work.
51:30And yet, despite the talent of their builders, all the pyramids of the old kingdom were robbed.
51:36However, unlike other pharaohs, Menkor, now resting in his sarcophagus at the bottom of the Mediterranean,
51:42still holds some secrets from us.
51:44It's a submerged treasure.
51:46We can always hope we'll find it someday, but it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
51:52Maybe one day there will be a mission to find it,
51:55and provide us with more clues to understand the third pharaoh of the Giza Plateau.
51:59...
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