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00:02In all, more than 100 pyramids were built in the Egypt of the pharaohs.
00:06One of these is a truly unusual edifice, maybe the most mysterious pyramid in the entire country, the Black Pyramid.
00:14Under this amorphous ruin, which looks like it could collapse at any moment,
00:19hides a wonderful secret, an immense labyrinth as inaccessible as it's fascinating.
00:24There's a whole complex of rooms way beyond the simple means of disposing of a dead body.
00:31This is not something you find in other pyramids.
00:35The pyramid is off-limits to the public. Weakened by serious structural problems, it could be dangerous for visitors.
00:43But a few daring archaeologists have risked venturing inside all the same, with our cameras given special permission to accompany
00:49them.
00:50Look at the crack in this chamber. It still looks like it could collapse at any moment.
00:56Even for experts, this little-known pyramid remains a real puzzle.
01:01Together, we'll try to find some clues to help us decipher this millennia-old edifice.
01:06My God, there's still bones in there.
01:09To shed light on all these mysteries, our scientists were granted permission to venture inside Egypt's most iconic pyramids with
01:16a latest generation laser scanner.
01:18It's quite tight in here.
01:20What happened during its construction for this monument to have ended up in such a state?
01:25What did this dilapidated pyramid originally look like?
01:28And why did the ancient Egyptians build such an extensive network of passageways now seen for the first time?
01:35Using 3D models, we will show you everything invisible to the naked eye.
01:40With a few clicks, we can do measurements that would be very complicated to carry out in situ.
01:45This ultra-detailed digital modeling should provide our experts with new answers in this ongoing scientific investigation which began 200
01:52years ago.
01:53And I can point around 200 years.
02:23We can dokräct dilapidated in this case.
02:29Deep in the sands of Egypt is an exceptional site, little known by the public, the Dasher Plateau.
02:38It's around 30 kilometers from Cairo.
02:43This is where the first two giant pyramids of history were built, the Red Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid.
02:52But in the distance, behind these two giants, you can make out a strangely shaped steep hill.
02:58This, in fact, is also a pyramid, one of the last built by the pharaohs about 3,800 years ago.
03:07Villagers living around here gave it its somewhat disturbing name, the Black Pyramid.
03:12It doesn't look very much like a pyramid at all.
03:14Although it's called the Black Pyramid, it just looks like a black, rugged hill with a kind of tower.
03:20It's sticking out of the top.
03:22At first sight, there's nothing to suggest that under this dilapidated construction, there's an extensive maze of passageways,
03:29probably the most sophisticated network ever built under an Egyptian pyramid.
03:40Frank Monnier has been fascinated by the pyramids of Egypt since childhood.
03:45An engineer by profession, he's studied the construction of these monuments in great detail,
03:51in the process becoming one of the world's leading authorities.
03:56Fascinated by the Black Pyramid, he can draw a plan of its apartments almost from memory.
04:04Here I've sketched a view from above of the Black Pyramid at D'Achure,
04:08a view from above the base of the pyramid with its funeral apartments.
04:12Here we have the whole extent of the funeral network.
04:15There's nothing like the complexity of these funeral apartments anywhere else.
04:18So what would be really interesting to scan would be, in priority, the part dedicated to the queens
04:24and the part dedicated to the king to get a clearer view of everything that went on inside these apartments.
04:32Scanning the innards of this pyramid could well be the way to better understand this mysterious edifice.
04:39Because there is still little known about its interior.
04:42Construction is off-limits to the public and is rarely visited even by Egyptologists.
04:48For this unprecedented mission, Frank Monnier has called on archaeologist Albonbris Pampou.
04:54An expert in digital imaging, he'll be able to make a complete three-dimensional and extremely detailed model of these
05:00apartments.
05:04It's a pyramid that's not yet been opened up to the public.
05:07I'll be discovering it myself and I have no idea what the conditions will be
05:11in terms of the humidity and heat.
05:13I feel privileged to be allowed into this monument because very few people have been here.
05:17And that's pretty exciting.
05:21Entering the Black Pyramid is a rare opportunity.
05:26And whenever anyone does, the entrance has to be totally cleared because, just like in the time of the pharaohs,
05:33it is sealed off with blocks of stone to protect it and keep out intruders.
05:40Albonbris is going to be using a very high-performance piece of technology, a LiDAR digital scanner, one of the
05:46most miniaturized that exists.
05:49It weighs only 800 grams, but the insides of pyramids are usually very tight spaces in which it's difficult to
05:57move around, so it could still be a difficult task.
06:00Here I'm configuring it so that the scanner and my phone are communicating.
06:04That means I'll be able to get some feedback of what the scanner is seeing.
06:12We were exceptionally granted authorization to accompany Albonbris on this groundbreaking mission.
06:22It is the first time a piece of modern technology will be used inside this pyramid.
06:30The LiDAR scanner makes a noise as it starts digitizing the space.
06:37After a few meters, Albonbris checks that the device is working correctly.
06:44Here we can see this little green dot. That's where the scanner is.
06:47And it scanned this wall here. This one. So yes, it's all in position.
06:55The laser scanner can record hundreds of thousands of points every second, in every direction.
07:02It can thus measure a space with absolute precision to the millimeter, a totally unparalleled feat of technology.
07:13It's a real labyrinth once you're in here.
07:15The idea is to get a precise scan of all these structures,
07:18with which we'll be able to document in a very detailed way the general dimensions of the spaces I'm surveying.
07:26On a map given to him by Frank Monnier, Albonbris identifies the various spaces to be digitized as a priority.
07:34So we came down the sloping tunnel and through a first passageway,
07:38the first corridor, which was reinforced by some more modern masonry.
07:42Now we're coming to a fork and we'll head towards the area that was dedicated to the king.
07:51But time is limited. The conditions are stifling, with the air inside the pyramid barely circulating or being refreshed.
08:00You cannot stay for long in this subterranean domain.
08:04The humidity is very high and pretty oppressive.
08:07Yes, it's quite tiring.
08:12On his way down the tunnels, Albonbris scans several empty rooms.
08:24We've made progress and we've got the rough outline of a plan.
08:28I've looked into all the little rooms on either side of the central corridor,
08:31and now we're about to go into the antechamber and then the king's chamber.
08:39The king's burial chamber, the spiritual heart of the pyramid.
08:45Albonbris marvels at the pharaoh's sarcophagus, carved out of a single piece of pink granite from Aswan, one of the
08:51most solid rocks found in Egypt.
08:54Despite it being almost 4,000 years old, its state of conservation is impressive.
09:02In contrast, the dilapidated state of much of the walls is quite surprising.
09:10Scanning gives us an overall view of the condition of all these structures.
09:14All the traces you see on the vaulted ceiling, on the masonry joints, you can see how it's crumbling.
09:19There are even cracks.
09:20It's clear that there's enormous pressure bearing down, structurally, on the vaulted ceiling.
09:26The pyramid clearly had a few construction issues.
09:31The results of the scan should help us find out more.
09:35But the pharaoh's builders must have made mistakes in the very design of the structure
09:39for the pyramid to show such signs of dilapidation now.
09:44To get a better understanding, we have to consider the period in which it was built, the Middle Kingdom.
09:52It was Pharaoh Amenemhat III who had this strange pyramid built almost 4,000 years ago.
09:59He reigned in around 1800 BCE and is considered the most powerful pharaoh
10:04in one of the most prestigious lineages of ancient Egypt, the 12th dynasty.
10:09The 12th dynasty of ancient Egypt is part of a period that Egyptologists called the Middle Kingdom,
10:17a kind of classical age.
10:19Amenemhat III was the last great king of the 12th dynasty.
10:23He ruled for 46 years.
10:26And he inherited a prosperous country that was administratively functioning very well.
10:32And he was in an ideal position to do innovative architectures and to develop and expand a building program.
10:40Before the Middle Kingdom, Egypt had been through a period of instability and division,
10:45lasting several centuries, during which no pyramids were built.
10:50But during the 12th dynasty, unity in the country was restored,
10:54and the pharaohs wanted to reconnect with the architectural prestige of their glorious ancestors.
11:00There is a centralized state, there is one strong pharaoh, and the building of pyramids comes back into fashion,
11:08on the same level of importance, perhaps, as it had been in the Old Kingdom.
11:14The country's most famous pyramids, those on the Giza Plateau, were built in the period we call the Old Kingdom,
11:20almost 800 years before the reign of Amenemhat III.
11:25These kings of the 12th dynasty considered themselves the direct heirs of the kings of the Old Kingdom,
11:31thus predicating their legitimacy on the architectural and historic legacy.
11:36They copied to some extent the monuments of the kings of the Old Kingdom.
11:41It is hard to believe now, but when it was finished, the Black Pyramid looked like a classic pyramid of
11:47the Old Kingdom,
11:47the Pyramid of Khufu, for example.
11:55Could it still be possible to find traces of the Black Pyramid's past splendour?
12:01What secrets are concealed under this shapeless hill?
12:05On the outside, today, the Black Pyramid doesn't look very exciting,
12:10but inside there's a whole complex of rooms way beyond the simple needs of disposing of a dead body.
12:19After a few weeks of digital analysis, the results of the scan are finally ready.
12:25The Egyptologist, Mark Lenner, was impatient to see them.
12:28It's the first time he's ever seen the internal network of the pyramid with such a level of precision.
12:35Laser scanning captures every detail of the reality.
12:39It almost looks like the real thing, like you're in there.
12:44You can pan in, you can pan out, and you can twirl it.
12:50Above all, this tool lets the archaeologists save precious time.
12:55To map something complicated like this would take weeks, months.
12:59You go through with a laser scan, and it takes tens of thousands of points per second.
13:04Every point is the equivalent of an archaeologist bending down, stretching a tape measure,
13:10and then drawing it on tracing paper or on a drawing board.
13:17Mark is an authority on the pyramids of Giza,
13:19and therefore used to the fairly minimalist interiors of the pyramids of the Old Kingdom.
13:25The first thing to strike him about this 3D model is the huge extent of the underground network.
13:32It's a complicated internal structure.
13:35In fact, it's considered to be the most elaborate underground structure of any pyramid,
13:41with the most chambers and passageways.
13:45Thousands of kilometers away, in Paris, Frank Monnier is able, thanks to the LiDAR scanner,
13:51to evaluate the unusual dimensions of the passageways.
13:54The operation only takes a few clicks, and gives a result of the utmost precision.
13:59Using this tool, I can measure the expanse of the apartments that are under the pyramid.
14:05Here we have the view from above, and we can carry out a few measurements to give us an idea
14:11of the dimensions of this network.
14:13For example, for this first corridor here, we already have a length of 42 meters.
14:19Let's measure the corridor of the king's apartments, from the two ends, going from one room to the other, over
14:2646 meters.
14:27So you can see that if we add up all the data, we end up with over 400 meters of
14:32passageways.
14:33That really is a lot, and in all about 20 or so rooms.
14:39All the other kings buried themselves in a pyramid with one, maybe two ascending passages, and a few chambers.
14:47In the Black Pyramid, there are tens and tens of rooms, and corridors connecting all of these rooms.
14:53This is not something you find in other pyramids.
14:58But what was the point of this huge underground labyrinth?
15:02Our investigation with the LiDAR scanner may help us understand it somewhat better.
15:07In any case, the sophistication of this network is in sharp contrast to the dilapidated state of the outside of
15:13the structure.
15:14For each time you look at it, the same question comes to mind.
15:17How did this pyramid end up looking like this?
15:24The Egyptologist, Meredith Brand, has come looking for answers in situ.
15:30She's discovering the site for the first time, and immediately spots some initial clues.
15:38When I walk up to it, I don't even see a pyramid at first.
15:41From the distance, it almost looks like a mountain or some kind of natural geological feature.
15:45Like a giant thing of sand almost.
15:48But up close, it's clear that's not the case at all.
15:51It's really solid mud brick.
15:54And each of those mud bricks, I can see the individual ones all throughout the slope on the top.
16:02This strange hill is in fact a mountain of carefully stacked bricks in the middle of the desert.
16:09All the same size, the bricks were made of a mixture of sand and clay extracted from Nile mud reinforced
16:16with pieces of straw.
16:20At the summit, part of this brickwork is still in place.
16:24But on the lower slopes, it's all just pieces.
16:29Wow.
16:31There's so many mud bricks that have fallen from this pyramid all the way down the slope.
16:37So what looks like sand is actually dirt and debris of broken down mud brick.
16:43These bricks are still in a rectangular shape, and we can still see there's remains of some of the dried
16:49out straw that was used inside of them to make them strong.
16:52And there's even some finger impressions from ancient builders.
16:57These mud bricks are proof of just how talented the Egyptian architects and builders were.
17:03They knew what they were doing.
17:04They were able to make mud bricks like this that would last for thousands and thousands of years.
17:11The use of these clay bricks was in fact an innovation in pyramid construction.
17:19The pyramids of the Old Kingdom were made entirely of stone and everlasting material, but which required considerable means to
17:27mine, transport and assemble.
17:32Several centuries later then, the pharaoh's architects opted for more modern methods.
17:38In the Middle Kingdom, kings started to think about the economy, how they build structures,
17:43and they decided that it's too much of an ordeal to make an entire pyramid out of stone.
17:49So instead, they had the genius idea of having the center be made out of mud brick.
17:53It was cheaper. This was an intelligent, money-saving endeavor.
17:57The advantage of mud bricks was that they could be made anywhere in Egypt.
18:01They could produce the bricks and then transport them by boat to the work site.
18:05So the use of mud bricks rather than stone was more to do with logistics than technique.
18:13Millions of mud bricks were methodically laid by the pharaoh's workers to construct the core of his pyramid.
18:21It's estimated that 20 million bricks were required to make the whole pyramid complex.
18:27But the ancient Egyptians still wanted their monument to look like a proper pyramid.
18:34Once the brick core was finished, the whole structure was totally covered with a facing made of a unique stone,
18:41limestone from Tura.
18:45This stone is so pure and white that it can be considered a sort of Egyptian marble.
18:51Originally, all Egyptian pyramids were covered in it.
18:56Thanks to these ingenious construction techniques, the Egyptians were able to construct an absolute giant here.
19:03In fact, the Black Pyramid had a base that measured 105 meters by 105 meters and was 75 meters high.
19:11It was the largest pyramid of its era.
19:1575 meters. That's equivalent to a 25-story building.
19:20Amenemhat III's pyramid became the sixth largest pyramid ever built in Egypt, out of the hundred or so in total.
19:31The only trouble was, the pharaoh and his builders had made a big mistake.
19:35They had underestimated the destructive actions of stone thieves.
19:42These blocks have been looted to reuse the stones and heavy blocks in other building projects to make use of
19:51their power and the history behind these blocks.
19:54Because these stones had a cultic and religious backdrop.
19:58The limestone was stripped away, it was all stripped away, and reused elsewhere, which left the internal structure, the brickwork
20:05structure, naked.
20:06And over the millennia, with rain and wind erosion, the bricks got turned into rubble.
20:13But just like the stone, the bricks too were objects of desire.
20:18Another fact that contributed to the destruction of the pyramid was that people took bricks from the structure to use
20:25as a natural fertilizer on their fields, leaving the pyramid in its present dilapidated state.
20:34Mark Lenner tries to imagine what the pyramid looked like almost 4,000 years ago.
20:41At the foot of the edifice, there is a strange cluster of white rocks.
20:48Did these blocks somehow miraculously escape the stone thieves?
20:55This is amazing.
20:57We can actually see here one of the casing stones.
21:02And it could even be a cornerstone.
21:05This is really nice and smooth, brilliantly white.
21:11This whole galaxy of casing stones that we see here, once covered the entire pyramid, just like Sneferu 800 years
21:20earlier, covered the entirety of his bent pyramid with the same fine quality white Torah limestone.
21:29The bent pyramid, barely a kilometer and a half distant, is the only one in Egypt to have retained most
21:35of its casing of Torah limestone.
21:39While the ravages of the millennia have given the pyramid this somewhat beige look, it would have originally been a
21:45dazzling white.
21:46When you look at the bent pyramid of Sneferu, it gives you an idea of what this dark black tower
21:52once looked like.
21:53It was a gleaming white geometric shape.
21:55It must have been like the sun shining on newly fallen snow.
21:59It must have been truly blinding.
22:02Covered in its facing, the pyramid must have looked like a perfect triangular prism of white stone, reflecting the light
22:08of Ra, the sun god.
22:12This is an amazing testimony that tells us what the pyramid once was when we are confronted by this big
22:19black ruin.
22:20It's pieces like this that archaeologists have to put together to understand the ancient past.
22:31Mark Linner wants to compare the inside to what he saw on the Lidar digital model.
22:37There are no tourists at the site. The place is totally deserted.
22:43In the almost 50 years of his archaeological career, Mark has been inside this pyramid only once before.
22:51I'm very excited to go in this pyramid because it's not open to the public.
22:55I work at the pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx.
22:58Thousands of tourists every day, all around us.
23:01But here, it's way off the beaten track.
23:11Once inside, Mark is immediately struck by the quality of the work done by the Pharaoh's builders.
23:21I have to marvel at the beauty of this place.
23:25The work, the work is just exquisite.
23:29Beautiful white Tura limestone vaulting.
23:32The joins are stupendous.
23:34True finesse in masonry.
23:39The walls of the tunnels dug underground were lined by slabs of Tura limestone, Egypt's most refined stone, the same
23:47that was used to cover the outside.
23:52The beauty of this stonework is all the more amazing when you think that it was never meant to be
23:58seen.
23:59It was all for the king in the afterlife.
24:04It was in this maze of pure limestone that the Pharaoh could enjoy his eternal rest.
24:09Ah, the corridor to the king.
24:15On the Pharaoh's sarcophagus, Mark immediately spots quite a striking symbol.
24:23How nicely done these eyes are.
24:25When the king's mummy was put inside, symbolically, these two eyes, at the far north end of the east side,
24:32allowed him to look out to the rising sun.
24:38This representation is quite typical of the funeral customs of the Middle Kingdom.
24:43On the coffins and sarcophagi of that period, they always represented, looking east, a pair of eyes, which gave the
24:49deceased, lying down inside, a sort of porthole through which to see the outside, and in particular to see the
24:55rising sun, which was the driving force of Egyptian religion.
25:02But for Mark, something in the room does not make sense.
25:06I don't know the exact measurements. I don't have my tape measure with me, but it looks too wide to
25:12come in that doorway.
25:15The sarcophagus does indeed look too wide to have been brought through the corridors.
25:21On the 3D model created by means of the LIDAR scanner, we can now measure the dimensions exactly.
25:28And the measurements confirm Mark's impression.
25:31With its base, the sarcophagus is 2.6 meters long and 1.15 meters wide.
25:37But the corridor which leads to the king's chamber is never any wider than one meter.
25:42So how did the ancient Egyptians get the sarcophagus to this place in the pyramid?
25:48There are grounds for thinking that the sarcophagus was placed there before the pyramid had been constructed.
25:54So they first of all dug pits, they dug pits and trenches, and turned these into the underground apartments.
26:02Most of the network of the Black Pyramid's passages was dug as tunnels in the clay soil of the Dascher
26:08Plateau.
26:13But for certain rooms, they must have dug pits from the surface, into which they could lower the most voluminous
26:18items, such as the huge sarcophagus.
26:24A very impressive feat when you consider the weight of this monolith.
26:30The sarcophagus is pink granite. It's a very hard rock, very heavy.
26:34It alone weighs between four or five tons.
26:39Equivalent to four large cars.
26:43Once the chamber was finished and the vaulted ceiling in place, the pit was filled up with brickwork.
26:54Studying this impressive sarcophagus, Mark Lennar has spotted another symbol familiar to him.
27:02The truly remarkable thing is that the bottom is carved with these gates, which is a series of palace gates,
27:11carved with bastions and niches,
27:14which imitate the surrounding wall of the famous Djoser complex, the Step Pyramid complex.
27:20They're paying honor to the first pyramid builder.
27:27There certainly is a striking resemblance to this wall, built 900 years earlier by a legendary pharaoh, Djoser, founder of
27:35the Old Kingdom.
27:37A model of prosperity, unity and stability for all of ancient Egypt.
27:44This is the best conserved section of the huge, niched enclosure wall, which surrounded his stepped pyramid in Saqqara.
27:51The first pyramid in human history.
27:58So the presence of this motive on the sarcophagus did not come about by chance.
28:03It's not just a nod and a wink, it shows a true desire to anchor their roots in the history
28:07of the first Egyptian dynasties.
28:09It's above all a way of linking Amenemhat III, a pharaoh from the end of the Middle Kingdom, to the
28:14first sovereign of the Old Kingdom, almost a thousand years earlier,
28:18showing that there was a direct line from that legendary king to Amenemhat III.
28:26By depicting this monument, Amenemhat III was confirming his link to the glorious past of the Old Kingdom and its
28:33gigantic pyramids.
28:39And yet, some of the layout is decidedly at odds with what we usually see in classic pyramids.
28:48At the entrance to the king's network, Mark Lenner notices a very narrow corridor.
28:55The way under the southwest corner of the pyramid is a very, very narrow corridor.
29:02And very difficult going.
29:04Everything is difficult because it's so humid down here.
29:08I'm literally dripping with sweat.
29:14The passage is particularly long and extremely hard going because of its narrowness.
29:20With the data collected by Albonbris using the laser scanner a few weeks earlier,
29:25we can measure just how narrow it is, only 60 centimeters.
29:32At the end, Mark discovers a surprisingly small room, it too containing a sarcophagus.
29:40Although cluttered with stones, it is strangely similar to the pharaoh's burial chamber.
29:48A bit further along the corridor is another room, identical to the first.
29:56Here, inside the chamber itself, a burial chamber, you see also a beautiful granite sarcophagus,
30:05carved in the same style, with the same decoration as the granite sarcophagus of the king.
30:14Inside it, an unbelievable surprise awaits him.
30:20My god, there's still bones in there, and even broken pieces of wood.
30:34Have these been in there from the beginning?
30:37I don't know at the moment, but it is truly amazing.
30:44Getting to film these bones is absolutely extraordinary.
30:48But what are they doing here, and to whom did they belong?
30:53The archaeologists who discovered the bones in the 1980s had them analyzed
30:58and then replaced them in the sarcophagus.
31:01And the tests revealed something quite amazing.
31:05Under the pyramid were the remains of two women.
31:10There are two queens that are buried in this structure.
31:13One, we know her name is Ott.
31:16The second is unknown.
31:17We know that one was around 35 when she died,
31:21the other one was around 25, so they died relatively young.
31:25Finding human remains in a pyramid is already a very rare occurrence.
31:30But it's only the second time in history that women's bones have been found.
31:36Usually, in a pyramid complex, there's an enclosure wall with a pyramid
31:40and then satellite pyramids on the side for important royal women.
31:44But Amenemhat III changed all that.
31:47We can see it perfectly clearly on the LiDAR image.
31:50Two burial chambers were built in the western quarters under the pyramid.
31:55These were for the tombs of two of Amenemhat III's wives.
32:01Before this, they took care to keep the queen's apartments totally separated.
32:05But here, there's no pyramid for the queen.
32:07There are just apartments underneath the one pyramid.
32:11But why this innovation?
32:13Why did the pharaoh want to be near his queens?
32:17We don't know why he did this, but one possible reason is that he wanted them to be closer to
32:23him in the afterlife.
32:24The women are no doubt also there to fulfill a protective function for the dead pharaoh.
32:29It's quite likely that a feminine figure would play a role in the renaissance or resurrection of the king in
32:35his funeral complex.
32:36It may have been some kind of particular regard for these two women, but all we can do is speculate.
32:48We'll probably never know why Amenemhat III made this choice.
32:57But it seems that some unexpected incident came to disturb the eternal rest of his wives.
33:04We return to Mark Lennar underground.
33:07What has particularly struck him about the innards of the Black Pyramid is the high number of cracks he can
33:13see pretty much all over.
33:15Everything shows cracking.
33:18That's a crack that runs down the entire length of this corridor.
33:22And you can see the cracks are becoming more and more numerous.
33:27And even here in the floor, it's not only the walls and the lintels, it's even the floor itself was
33:37cracking.
33:41You can imagine as they're dressing this down, doing the final finish work, you can still see their chisel marks
33:46all of a sudden.
33:49It must have been a booming, frightening sound that echoed through all the chambers and passages causing the workers to
33:56put down their tools.
33:57Did they run right away?
34:00We can imagine.
34:04The archaeologists have found indications that these cracks happened while the pyramid was being built.
34:10The fact that this damage, this subsidence, this settling happened during the construction is proved by the patching up that
34:17was done by the ancient Egyptians themselves.
34:20In a lot of corridors and chambers, there are wooden beams which they placed there to shore up where there
34:25had been a crack and there might be a collapse.
34:28We have modern cross beams to hold up everything, but they are supporting ancient cedar beams that Amenemhet's people put
34:41to hold up whatever is above.
34:43These beams are as old as the pyramid itself, and that means they're 3,800 years old, and there they
34:51are.
34:53But what happened here?
34:55Why does the structure show so many signs of damage?
35:01For part of the answer, we have to go back above ground.
35:09The pharaoh may well have picked a poor spot for his pyramid, despite having given it long and careful thought.
35:17Dasher is 20 kilometers south of the Giza Plateau, the site on the outskirts of Cairo of the famous Great
35:23Pyramid of Khufu.
35:25Dasher was a very famous place, especially to reconnect with ancestors.
35:30When Amenemhat III started to build his pyramid, there were already pre-existing structures all over Dasher, such as the
35:38big pyramids of Sneferu.
35:41Sneferu was one of the most powerful pharaohs of the Old Kingdom, a ruler who achieved legendary status for ancient
35:48Egyptians, who went so far as to deify him.
35:53Sneferu was still venerated in the Middle Kingdom.
35:56So 12th Dynasty kings, they went to Dasher to build their pyramids.
36:00And in many ways, they were aligning themselves with the power of this pharaoh from a long-gone era.
36:08It was at Dasher that Sneferu had history's first giant pyramids built,
36:13the Red Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid.
36:17They were constructed in around 2600 BCE, eight centuries before the Black Pyramid.
36:25But what surprises Meredith Brand is the unusual location of Amenemhat III's pyramid in relation to Sneferu's.
36:35Standing where I am at the Amenemhat III's pyramid, it's clear that over there in Dasher, the ground is higher,
36:42and we're here in a depression.
36:44Right here, we are incredibly low.
36:50The LiDAR scanner should provide us with more information about exactly how deep the funeral apartments are.
36:58To this end, Albanbris Pimpot has to walk all the way around the structure to get readings of the level
37:04of the surrounding ground,
37:05to compare to those of the pyramid's underground labyrinth.
37:11Using the data collected by the scanner, the 3D model gives us a perfect cross-section view of the monument
37:17and its various levels.
37:18The color coding used here gives us information about the respective levels of the parts scanned.
37:25The higher up you go, the warmer the color, getting redder.
37:29And likewise, the deeper you go, the colder the color, turning blue or violet.
37:34So we can see perfectly well on this side view that the whole complex of the apartments is deep under
37:41the pyramid and is not inside the pyramid.
37:46Using the 3D LiDAR model, Frank Monnier can now, with just a few clicks, establish the depth of the funeral
37:53apartments underneath the black pyramid.
37:58So, let's measure how deep these apartments go.
38:02I'll pick a low point at random, here in this chamber for example,
38:07and then pick a second point by the entrance.
38:10There.
38:11That gives us a depth of 12 to 13 meters.
38:14So the complex of apartments was dug down to a depth of 12 to 13 meters.
38:21A depth of 12 meters, that's equivalent to a fourth basement.
38:28At this depth, Mark Lennar notices an opening in the ceiling,
38:32which reveals something very strange about the earth through which these tunnels were dug.
38:39Well, this is a good view of the bedrock.
38:41Clearly, it's gray, shale, clay, rust colored, iron deposits, but it's full of crack.
38:50It's actually crackled.
38:52It's not at all stable.
38:55This bedrock is the source of a lot of their problems.
39:00To remain stable, a pyramid should be built on solid rock, not on clay friable ground.
39:12It's a surprising mistake for Amenemhat III's architects to have made,
39:16especially when you realize that the site they chose for the structure seems particularly poorly located in the topography.
39:25People often assume that pyramids are in the middle of the desert,
39:28but in fact, if you visit Egypt, you will see that the pyramids are on the edge of this great
39:34desert escarpment,
39:37and they are actually quite close to the cultivation.
39:42But here, even the experts are surprised by just how unusually close the Black Pyramid is to the Nile Valley.
39:52The pyramid of Amenemhat III is incredibly close to the Nile Valley.
39:56It's just right over there.
39:57The greenery, the agriculture, the civilization, the cities, the towns, it's just a stone's throw away.
40:05The ancient landscape in Dashur was quite different from today's landscape.
40:09The Nile shifted through the thousands of years and moved its bed sideways,
40:15and we have scientific evidence that the cultivated area and the cultivation was much closer than it is today.
40:25For Egyptologists, this decision to build the Black Pyramid so close to the Nile was a total engineering blunder.
40:33The desert is dry. The sand is far away from the water table, and it's a great environment to build.
40:40The Nile Valley, on the other hand, is waterlogged, and the water table is also really high.
40:45So by choosing to construct a pyramid at this site so close to the Nile Valley means that Amenemhat III's
40:52pyramid didn't really stand a chance.
40:54It wasn't built on a solid foundation to last.
40:58The clay soil under the Black Pyramid is porous, so it's infiltrated by any rise in the level of the
41:04extremely close groundwater table.
41:08Water infiltration weakened the ground on which the pyramid was built.
41:13Then this weakened, permeable ground must have undergone localized and irregular subsidence,
41:19which was the cause of all the cracks you can see in the apartments.
41:26As the pyramid rose, its weight bore down more and more heavily on its clay, unstable, and waterlogged base.
41:33The edifice started to sink into the ground.
41:38But there could be another reason for these structural problems.
41:45The 3D model obtained with the LIDAR scanner has shown us that the network of passages under the pyramid is
41:52much more extensive than what is usually found in pyramids.
41:56What if Amenemhat III, by being too ambitious, unwittingly undermined his own monument?
42:03That simply doesn't work inside of a pyramid.
42:06Structurally, one cannot have so many chambers and keep a strong foundation to maintain a huge pyramid.
42:13Too many rooms, too many corridors to consolidate.
42:16Perhaps they quite simply underestimated the reinforcing measures that would be needed.
42:21And this led to structural problems they hadn't anticipated.
42:24There's a lack of additional support from limestone retaining walls, which means the weight of all that mud brick is
42:32not being distributed,
42:33and it's causing those internal facing limestone blocks to crack.
42:40At a certain point, the weight of the structure exceeded what the vaults could support.
42:45The pyramid subsided, pressing down on the rooms and corridors underground, causing cracks to appear everywhere.
42:54But why did Amenemhat III take this risk of weakening his tomb?
42:59It's a bit of a mystery because we haven't found the contents of all these rooms and don't really know
43:04what their purpose was.
43:05We don't actually know how the different chambers were used, but there are studies indicating that chamber systems are an
43:12image of the imagination of the netherworld and of the religious belief system.
43:19The netherworld. This is where the dead must face Osiris, the god who will resurrect them.
43:26The black pyramid has its own root, which is in fact a representation of the complex root that the dead
43:32have to take in order to reach paradise.
43:34Perhaps these rooms are in fact sorts of fictional regions of the netherworld.
43:39The pyramid itself is a 3D representation of the netherworld.
43:43This could be the great paradox of the black pyramid.
43:47In trying to create the best possible imitation of the netherworld in order to guarantee his access to resurrection, Amenemhat
43:55III in fact doomed his tomb to crumbling ruin.
44:06There's one place under the pyramid where it seems only a miracle could have prevented a total collapse.
44:14An incredible place so hard to reach that Alban Brice wasn't able to get in there with his LiDAR scanner
44:20to map it.
44:21It's the part known as the southern network.
44:30Let's go.
44:32Mark Lennar needs to steal his courage to venture forth.
44:40Oh boy.
44:42This is rough going.
44:51This is mud brick.
44:54The walls are made of mud bricks, the same as those found on the outside of the pyramid.
44:59The builders didn't even take the time to cover them with slabs of white limestone.
45:04It's clear that work here was left unfinished, as if the workers abandoned the site in a hurry.
45:12At the end of the corridor, Mark manages to thread himself into a tiny room.
45:16But this isn't yet another burial chamber.
45:21This is difficult. It gets smaller and smaller.
45:25I believe, if I'm not confused, we're in the cot chapel of the Queen.
45:31And here, we find this amazing alabaster's canopic chest,
45:37where the internal organs were placed after being removed from the body during mummification.
45:45The Egyptians had a complicated way of viewing the soul.
45:49So you think that we have our body.
45:52Our double is made when our body is made.
45:55And that is called the ka, a spirit double of your body.
45:59And throughout your life, it exists with you.
46:03Upon your death, it inhabits the tomb.
46:06It was to the ka chapels that one would bring offerings for the soul of the deceased after their death.
46:12Once again, Amenemhat III had been innovative in placing these chapels, for the first time, actually in a pyramid.
46:19A chapel for each of his queens and one for himself.
46:23This is absolutely amazing to find this incredibly beautiful object still in place.
46:29And all of this was put in the most inaccessible part of the most inaccessible pyramids ever.
46:38But after only a few minutes in this ka chamber, Mark judges it wise not to linger.
46:45Look at the crack in this chamber.
46:48This is very serious.
46:49It's separated several centimeters wide.
46:52And the stones are bowing in.
46:56It still looks like it could collapse at any moment.
46:59I think it's time to go.
47:08But in Amenemhat III's burial chamber, one last detail intrigues the Egyptologists.
47:17The lid is beautifully sculpted and intact and relatively undamaged.
47:24In fact, these few chips might be more recent.
47:27You see in tombs that have clearly been looted where the lid is just shoved aside by the robbers.
47:32Or they simply smashed it.
47:34But the fact that it's undamaged indicates that the king's burial was never put inside.
47:43If the lid wasn't smashed by looters breaking into the Black Pyramid, it must have been left open.
47:50So the sarcophagus was never sealed, meaning the pharaoh's mummy could never have been placed inside.
47:57One thing thus becomes obvious.
48:00Amenemhat III was never buried under the Black Pyramid.
48:04It became very obvious that the pyramid was unstable.
48:09Cracks were forming, the ground was sinking up to three centimeters.
48:13So Amenemhat III had to abandon the project and start a new one.
48:16He abandoned this pyramid and decided, oh, I'm going to have a better one.
48:25Confronted with the failure of this overly complex pyramid, the pharaoh simply decided to have another one built at Hawara,
48:3270 kilometers further south.
48:36Also built of mud bricks, this now has a silhouette similar to that of the Black Pyramid.
48:42But its interior is totally different.
48:47Amenemhat III's architects had learnt their lesson.
48:51There was more care taken in ensuring that the Hawara pyramid was not going to suffer from such problems.
49:00Here there was no underground labyrinth.
49:03One simple corridor led to a single extremely secure chamber, a veritable strongbox made of stone.
49:11Amenemhat III had himself buried at Hawara, in a pyramid that was perfect for ensuring his eternal rest.
49:18It was stable, solid, it met all the requirements that the pharaoh had set.
49:24Yet no images exist of this unique interior.
49:28And for good reason.
49:30Amenemhat III could not have foreseen the disaster that would eventually strike at his second pyramid.
49:37It's been totally flooded for over a hundred years because of rising waters resulting from a canal built close by
49:43in the 19th century.
49:49Even if the pharaoh finally decided not to be buried there,
49:53Dashur's Black Pyramid still retains the prestige of a royal tomb.
49:58The Black Pyramid did fulfill its funeral role.
50:01While the king wasn't buried in the pyramid, his queens were laid to rest there.
50:08Underground, the remains of these two queens of Amenemhat III are still enjoying their eternal rest,
50:13but under a precarious pyramid.
50:16I feel quite bad for these women to be left in the sinking, cracking pyramid.
50:22It may not have been quite so gallant a situation.
50:27The failure of the Black Pyramid was, in any case, a turning point.
50:31It sealed the fate of pyramids in Egypt.
50:35The kings were thinking, why am I going to build a pyramid if all the stone is going to be
50:40stripped away?
50:42If it's going to be looted?
50:43King Amenemhat III is the last great pyramid builder.
50:48Djoser is the beginning, Amenemhat III is the end, and together that is the era of the great pyramids of
50:55ancient Egypt.
50:57While the Black Pyramid may keep on deteriorating in the coming decades,
51:01this completely unique modeling campaign using the LiDAR scanner means that we will at least have a digital copy exact
51:08to the millimeter of its present state.
51:11The 3D modeling captures the structure for the future, even if the whole pyramid now would finally collapse.
51:18I mean, God forbid, we don't want that.
51:21And it would crush all the chambers and passageways.
51:23Even if that happened, you have now captured the structure that was once there.
51:28And so that's the value of modeling any ancient monument.
51:34Despite its structural problems and the ravages of time, the Black Pyramid is, for now at least, still standing,
51:41four millennia after it was built, still casting the shadow of Amenemhat III over the Nile Valley.