Kind: captions
Language: en
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the Great
Pyramid one of the most studied ancient
riddles on Earth yet questions still
remain there were tens of thousands of
people here building the pyramids
where's their settlement 6 million tons
of stone shaped and transported over 30
years to build an eternal tomb with a
sacred purpose
and creating This Magnificent Monument
they were going to have access to the
afterlife now stunning new discoveries
are revealing lost secrets about the
structure there's another void and that
void exists right through this Granite
wall about those who created it they
actually called themselves the elite and
about how their King mobilized a proud
and willing Nation like the space
program there was a sense of national
pride and achievement to overcome
Monumental disasters they're trying
again and again and again until they get
it right and achieve the greatest feat
of Precision Engineering of the ancient
world it's perfectly level it's a
remarkable achievement this is how the
Great Pyramid United a
nation that would become one of the
greatest civilizations of antiquity I
think not about how the Egyptians built
the pyramid I think more about how the
pyramids build Egypt decoding the Great
Pyramid right now on
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l.com the ancient Egyptians left an
indelible mark on human
civilization building awe inspiring
monuments temples and
tombs demonstrating remarkably precise
engineering all to honor their pharaohs
as living
gods many were crowning achievements of
the Old
Kingdom the first great flowering of
Egyptian art that began
4,500 years
ago the Pyramids of Giza stand as
enduring and mysterious
relics massive structures raised to
ensure the after lives of three all
powerful pharaohs menare
cafre and
kufu the pharaoh who built the oldest
and the biggest pyramid of
all the Great
Pyramid the last surviving wonder of the
ancient
world the Great Pyramid is a testament
to ancient Egyptians Ingenuity aimen and
Technical and scientific prowess the
great p is absolutely elegant and
marvelous even by standards
today how did the Egyptians engineer
this enormous Monument with such extreme
Precision using only the most basic of
tools and brute human
power who were the thousands of laborers
who toiled for decades on this massive
project and how did building the Great
Pyramid
transform ancient
Egypt now after Decades of intense
research experts have uncovered a wealth
of new evidence about the construction
of the Great
Pyramid from archaeology from ancient
texts and even from understanding the
engineering of the pyramid the people of
the pyramid are coming back to life for
us
when it comes to telling the story of
the pyramids it's never been easy to
separate fact from
fantasy the silent Enigma of the
pyramids can be like a blank canvas
ready to accept the latest outlandish
theory about its
Builders such theories drew a young
woodb archaeologist to Egypt in the
1970s I came with
so-called New Age ideas about the
pyramids believing that they had
something to say about the lost
continent of Atlantis and so on and when
I encountered Bedrock reality at the
Giza Plateau it didn't add up to those
ideas now after four Decades of
Investigation Mark laner has become one
of the world's leading Authorities on
the Giza
Pyramids his work has focused on
Illuminating the lives of the
workers from sifting through an ancient
garbage
dump to Excavating a highly ordered City
that housed the
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laborers he's found evidence of a
massive effort that transform the Old
Kingdom I think not about how the
Egyptians built the Pyramid I think more
about how the pyramids built
Egypt the pharaoh kufu ordered the
construction of this engineering
Marvel as a monument and tomb for all
eternity and yet we know very little
about the man
himself this tiny statue is the image of
the man who made one of the largest
buildings in the ancient
world it's extraordinary that someone
who has left us the Great Pyramid which
is still standing nearly 5,000 years
after it was built we still don't have
that much of the man
himself for thousands of years the only
record of how kufu built the Pyramid
came from the world's first historian
Herodotus who wrote a history of Egypt
in around 450
BC it describes kufu as a wicked and
selfish
King per perhaps not a very reliable
account considering kufu had been dead
for 2,000
years Herodotus wrote about the Great
Pyramid as of course who wouldn't
because he came here as a historian and
a tourist he also of course like any
good tourists listened to what the
various tour guides said and some of
them were not very complimentary about
hufu um and they accused him of being a
terrible mean
King harus account provided Hollywood
with a box office ready
story that kufu brutally enslaved his
laborers to build his Grand
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Monument egyptologists like Mark laner
believe this story is too
simplistic but to reach a deeper
understanding Mark first had to shift
his perspective
I realized I had to turn my back to the
pyramids to properly understand them
because to properly understand them you
need to know about the people who built
them their civilization their society
there were tens of thousands of people
here building the pyramids where's their
settlement and that led us to look to
the far south
Southeast in the 1990s Mark collaborated
with renowned Egyptian archaeologist
zahi Haas on a remarkable
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Discovery just south of the Great
Pyramid and on the edge of modern-day
Cairo they uncovered the footprint of an
ancient lost city the remains of streets
Barrack likee
buildings bakeries storage facilities
even what looked like guard houses
gradually emerged from the
sand pottery and other artifacts dated
it to the fourth Dynasty 45 centuries
ago the time the pyramids at Giza were
built Mark estimates that long galleries
resembling dormitories could have housed
more than 2,000 people and they were
just part of a much larger City that Now
lies under modern-day
Cairo the whole thing looks like an
early version of institutional buildings
like our hospitals schools
prisons Mark has recently investigated a
huge ancient Egyptian garbage pit on the
edge of the lost city that the surface
of Cromer's uh excavation this garbage
dump originally excavated by Austrian
archaeologist Carl chromer is now being
intensively reexamined by Mark Lan's
team so here is the gravel that's left
behind even after we SI now most
archaeological projects I dare say just
throw this away way they're done with it
but we couldn't do that because we saw
that it's full of
information it may appear to be just a
pile of
sand but it has revealed unique insights
into the everyday lives of the people
who lived and worked on the Giza
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Plateau we're getting quantities and
quantities of of pottery even this clean
sand is showing all this kind of
material objects of everyday
life pottery and Clay seals suggests
that this debris comes from an earlier
period of the lost city dating back to
the time that kufu was building the
Great
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Pyramid this vast collection of new
finds from both the dump and years of
excavations at the Lost City is being
processed at the team's lab situated in
the shadow of the
pyramids in this door space we have all
of the artifacts all of the material
culture that's come from the
excavations and it is probably millions
of items we've listed hundreds and
thousands of Flint tools we have dozens
and dozens of large Stone Pounders we
have broken seal Impressions from
seiling and opening and closing boxes
and doors we have metal working waste
from probably resharpening and reworking
copper
tools among the finds is evidence that
some of the great pyramid's workers were
highly
skilled it takes a particular knowledge
and skill to make a blade like this this
may well have been used for scraping
things it's also possibly used as a
cutting tool so there almost certainly
would have been specialized workers
providing tools for the workers who were
building the pyramids so it's a complete
Network everything fits together like
this if you haven't got the Craftsman to
create the tools to provide the people
who are going to build the pyramids the
whole system falls
apart other discoveries revealed there
were thousands of bakeries indicating
the mass production of
food we have bread molds and this is the
largest size we have and this is part of
the evidence that they're doing things
on a really massive industrial scale cuz
this would have fed six or seven men
just the bread made in this one
mole archaeologist Richard reading
estimates that enough cattle sheep and
goats were regularly slaughtered to feed
thousands providing a diet much better
than slave rations so they're getting a
lot of food but they're requiring their
bodies are requiring a lot of protein
they're working very hard they're moving
rocks they work from sunrise to sunset
and we estimate they were getting uh
almost uh 300 gram a day between 2 and
300 gram a day of meat which is about uh
probably a Big Mac or a quarter pounder
with cheese it's a far cry from the
vision and popular imagination of an
army of unskilled disposable and
malnourished
slaves the public thinks that slaves
made the pyramids and it's very annoying
because they were well looked after
because there's no point in having a
Workforce that can't work so really it
was in the interest of hufu to have a
happy
wellfed well organized and healthy
Workforce but if they weren't slaves who
were
they egyptologists believe there was a
readily available
Workforce and they weren't all full-time
builders most were farmers working the
fertile banks of the River Nile they
would plant in late November December
the crops would grow and then just about
when it started getting warm in the
springtime they would
Harvest but for 3 to four months of the
year that rural activity had to
stop seasonal rains high up in the
Ethiopian and Nubian Highlands flowed
into the branches of the Nile
swelling the river and swamping the
surrounding
Farmland every year the annual n flood
turned the Nile Valley and the Delta
into one big
lake normal agricultural life during the
flood season became
impossible so for 4 months of the year
the land is flooded what are your
peasants going to do probably they go
down to the tavern and have a drink or
two two or more and start criticizing
the
government the floods gave kufu a
predictable source of seasonal
labor they get fed they get cared for
they get some payment they also feel
involved and there's a sense of national
pride so in a way building a pyramid is
a smart
move the artifacts une Earth suggest
that while many laborers took on heavy
lifting jobs thousands more were
involved in other
ways we've got estimates that suggest
that there were more people involved in
raising the food to feed the pyramid
Builders than they were here working
actually on the pyramids so um the I
think I've got an estimate of over 1500
individuals directly involved in raising
sheep over another 500 directly involved
in raising cattle that's 2,000 people uh
you can add them to what uh the feeding
the raising of of Wheat and barley to
make the bread
Mark estimates that along the length of
the Nile over 20,000 people played a
role in the supply chain that ended at
the construction site on the Giza
Plateau building the Great Pyramid must
have had a dramatic effect on these 1
million plus people living in the Nile
Valley at that time adjusting for
population it would be the equivalent of
almost 10 million modern-day Americans
recruited to work on a single
project I think that certainly there are
State projects where people try to get
this feeling a sense of national pride
and achievement so you know when the US
had its space program there was a sense
of national pride and achievement even
if not every individual was involved in
it Mark laner believes the evidence that
the workforce was well organized cared
for and skilled makes sense
considering the audacious scale and
precision of the construction
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project but although the Great Pyramid
is the biggest pyramid ever
built it wasn't the
first it was based on 80 years of trial
and error by kuf Fu's
predecessors the first Egyptian pyramid
was a step structure built by the
architect imotep for the burial of the
Pharaoh joser around 2560
BC it consisted of six tiers rising to
almost 200
ft then around two decades later came
kufu father the Pharaoh
sneferu his likeness now preserved in
the Egyptian Museum in Kyo he launched a
campaign of pyramid building on an
unprecedented scale SRE was the most
prodigious pyramid builder of all time
he built three great monuments known as
the maum pyramid the bent
pyramid and The Red
Pyramid in building those three giant
pyramids he basically did all the
research and development that led to the
Perfection of the Great Pyramid of kufu
at
Giza but as he began building the first
true smooth pyramid snaro ran into
trouble the bent pyramid is named after
the abrupt Bend in the angle of its
sides they made the slope too Steep and
the structure kept threatening to
collapse so twice they changed their
plan and reduced it to a safer angle
they're trying again and again and again
they're doing successive drafts until
they get it
right the lessons learned during
sneferu's building campaign would
eventually lead to the Great
Pyramid kufu took what snfu did to the
next level but certainly without sfu's
work kufu would not have been able to
achieve such a stupendous
Monument everything about the Great
Pyramid is
exceptional even by modern standards
it's an engineering phenomenon
the Precision of its planning began
before a single Stone was laid on
sight its base is a near perfect square
each side measuring 756
ft covering an area the size of seven
Manhattan
blocks it's as tall as a modern 44 story
building and it weighs some 6 million
tons when the tourists come here
inevitably they take a look at the Great
Pyramid and they look up and they look
up with awe from an engineering point of
VI when you come to a place like this to
look down because the clues of how they
built the Pyramid are written in stone
on a scale of acres
here although it is 4,500 years old it
was built with astonishing
accuracy at the base of the monument
engineer Glenn Dash finds evidence that
the foundations were meticulously
prepared before construction
began we're now standing on the Bedrock
and originally the Bedrock sloped at a
6° angle from the Northwest to the
southeast they carved all of that way
with only simple tools the ancient
engineers carved an almost perfectly
level flat Foundation into the sloping
Giza
Plateau but that still wasn't good
enough to build the perf pyramid they
would lay out underneath the Bedrock a
platform the platform itself is one of
the miracle of the
pyramids despite its unassuming
appearance this Stone platform is one of
the pyramid's most impressive and
critical engineering
Marvels it's perfectly level over its
entire periphery almost a kilometer to
within plus or minus 1 in that was one
of the keys the perfectly flat perfect
platform to build the perfect
pyramid Dash's survey reveals that the
base and sides of the pyramid are
aligned to the north south east and west
to within a fraction of a degree but in
a time before the invention of the
magnetic
compass how could The Architects have
laid out the square base of the pyramid
accurately Glenn has a theory
you simply take a stick and you stick it
in the ground the stick doesn't have to
be straight it doesn't have to be
vertical you just have to do the test on
either the spring or the fall
equinox the equinoxes are the two days
each year that fall midway between
Midsummer and
midwinter and ancient Egyptian Sky
Watchers would have noticed that on
those days the sun rose and set directly
east west casting a near perfect West
East Shadow line
as it
passed Glenn argues that by marking the
tip of that shadow as it moved with
stones for example The Architects could
lay out an accurate east to west
line if you do that you get the kind of
accuracy that the Egyptians have
achieved when they align their pyramids
1/10th of one degree it's a remarkable
achievement but why put so much effort
into aligning the pyramids so
accurately like like every aspect of its
design the orientation of the pyramid
had symbolic
significance it mirrored the pharaoh's
own Supernatural alignment with the sun
god
raw the afterlife of the Pharaoh was
modeled on the afterlife of the Sun so
it was the similarity between the life
cycle and resurrection of the sun and
the life cycle and resurrection of the
king that leads us to believe the
pyramid was primarily a solar
Monument the birth and death of the sun
each day was at the heart of ancient
Egyptian
religion if burial rights were performed
correctly the son and Osiris the god of
life would merge with the king's soul to
be
reborn according to egyptologist Sala
ikram each evening the Son and the
King's Soul traveled together to the
Underworld the the ancient Egyptians
believed that you lived forever now if
you were a king you had responsibilities
because you were not just a human being
you were a God and as such you were Son
Of The Sun God and you are Allied to the
Sun God and of course without the Sun
the world doesn't
function the Great Pyramid and the
king's tomb deep inside it was the
starting point for the pharaoh's
Resurrection
reenacted each evening as the sun god
and the King's Soul disappeared below
the Western Horizon and began their
nightly Journey Through the
underworld when the sun did battle
against the forces of darkness and evil
and apois the King was with the sun god
almost fused with him
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the king went across the night sky
battling against the Demons of
darkness and then had to emerge we hope
Victorious the next
day so that Egypt would live so that the
land would flourish and that life would
continue
the Great Pyramid was built to house and
protect the king's precious mummified
body during his eternal battle for the
world's survival and
prosperity inside are three chambers
joined to the outside by a network of
passageways none of these internal
structures were ever meant to be seen
once the pyramid was
complete
nevertheless they are built with the
same precision and attention to detail
as the huge platform the pyramid sits
on at the heart of the pyramid is a
granite tomb where the dead King's
mummified body would lie for
eternity we're in the king's
chamber more or less in the heart of the
pyramid here is essentially this great
Granite line box
built for the most part to contain the
body of the
king this chamber would be the starting
point of the pharaoh's cycle of death
and
rebirth for Egypt's continued survival
this tomb needed to last forever so the
engineers turned to one of the strongest
Stones available to them
Granite it must have made s s in a
magical way what we would call Magic
there must have been spiritual power
that made them take these
choices building this magical chamber
would pose an unprecedented challenge to
the ancient
engineers they didn't want the weight of
the pyramid the pyramid that was meant
to protect the king and ensure his
resurrection so that the weight of the
pyramid wouldn't actually crush and
Destroy his mummy because if you destroy
the mummy the whole magical machine
is
broken but the ceiling of the king's
chamber is flat a potential structural
weak
point all of the weight of the stone
between this ceiling and the top of the
pyramid would be bearing down on this
flat
surface with no support in the chamber
below to hold it
up yet 4,500 years later it is still
intact how is that
possible in 1837 a British antiquarian
Major General Howard Vice solved the
puzzle by discovering what was above the
granite slabs that formed the flat
roof he actually put Reed through the
cracks of the great beams and it went
into dead space empty
space What Vice did next was highly
destructive so he had his workers blast
their way up making a vertical
tunnel Vice used gunpowder to blow a
series of holes up through the heart of
the
pyramid and discovered not one hidden
chamber but a stack of five empty
Granite roof
spaces and at the very top a large
sloping gabled
roof they used big Limestone beam
and they put them in a gabled pattern to
we think so that the weight of the
pyramid would be thrust away from this
stack of Chambers and from the king's
chamber
below the gabled roof on top of the
secret stack of Chambers relieved the
downward stresses on the sacred tomb's
flat roof and instead deflected the
weight of the pyramid away from the
king's
chamber by today's standards it may have
been an excessively cautious solution
but they couldn't afford to take risks
they were over engineering because they
had never really done this before so
that the pyramid the very thing that was
meant to protect the king and ensure his
resurrection would not collapse and
crush his mortal
remains kufu Engineers had learned from
the mistakes his father snu had
made and they pushed ancient
architecture to the Limit turning the
Great Pyramid into a unique
Monument kufu was the first and the last
to
attempt this uh audacious engineering
and so for that the Great Pyramid
although it's the classic pyramid in the
popular imagination is actually the most
unusual it's a huge
anomaly despite the unprecedented effort
invested in kufu Great
Pyramid no records were ever found
describing the details of this vast
building
operation until
now in this Barren landscape
archaeologists have discovered a unique
written
record but this isn't Giza it's over 150
M away at a place called Wadi El jar
on the edge of the Red
Sea it's here that in
2013 archaeologist Pierre tall was
investigating the remains of the world's
oldest port dating to the Old Kingdom it
played a crucial role in the pharaoh's
Monumental building
projects to cut massive Stones the
builders needed high quality metal
tools
the only metal readily available to the
Egyptians was copper which was mined in
the Sinai and fed across the Red Sea to
this port at Wadi El jarf Sinai is the
main place where Egyptian were able to
fetch Copper at that time and when you
are building huge structures in
limestones like pyramids you
dramatically needs
copper Pierre and his team began to to
excavate around the boat houses where
ships were stored when not in
use they then made a surprising
discovery first we came across Big lsone
Blocks it was inscrib with name of
kufu it was an important find since so
little evidence from kuf Fu's Reign has
survived but nothing prepared them for
what they found next
it was a real
surprise we have got small pieces of
papar Pierre and his team had discovered
a cache of fragile ancient documents on
paper made from reads called papy
covered in Egyptian
hieroglyphs including many examples of
the same Royal
Insignia a cartouch an oval frame with
the name of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh
inside that name was kufu the C of kufu
is quite
everywhere these are the world's oldest
Papyrus texts in
2017 Pierre T published the first volume
of his analysis of these ancient
writings amazingly they offer the only
firsthand record of the building of the
Great
Pyramid you have the name ofu the
horizon
kuu aket kufu The Horizon of
kufu in ancient Egypt the word horizon
can mean mountain of light somewhere
where the sun rises or
sets and the Horizon of kufu was the
name the ancient Egyptians gave to the
sacred Great
Pyramid we have this words I think maybe
more more than 100 times we were excited
it was a yeah kind of a
dream dating to year 27 of kufu Reign
the papy lists details of the times
dates and deliveries of cargo to the
pyramid
site suddenly here are these Excel
spreadsheets of ancient times and
Papyrus giving us accounts of what kuf
Fu's workers received we have
a diary and a log book that's what makes
theel jarf papay so much more
significant among the entries are
records of meetings with senior
officials and the time it took to
deliver a
cargo there was even a note in reding
that someone had fetched a large supply
of bread for the
crew these papy are fabulous because
they give us this sort of Slice of Life
and it just gives you a sense that
throughout Egypt there would have been
these little hives of activity and
people keeping the same kind of account
and by putting it all together you get a
much bigger
picture the papy were written by the
overseer of a work team that delivered
the
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stone a man whose name was
merror and Mer's handwritten notes
record how he and his crew of 40 men
sailed the Nile his was one of several
ships delivering fine quality Limestone
to the construction site from the
quaries of Tura 10 mi from
Giza but how did they deliver the stones
from the Nile to the site over 100 ft
higher on the Giza
Plateau the papy referred to artificial
basins and harbors that merror
encountered as he approached the
construction site when m and his team
arrived in Giza we have information
about the artificial lakes that were
made to allow boats to deliver raw
material for the building of the
pyramid today the Giza Plateau sits on
the edge of modern-day
Cairo traces of the artificial basins
recorded by mirror have been found
underneath these
streets
and thanks to the Papyrus we now know
the ancient name of one of
them Ros
kufu the entrance to the Basin of
kufu when the Nile floods filled this
man-made pool a navigable path opened
between the river and the Giza
Plateau so we now know that the major
influx of material both gigantic Stones
Timber wood grain to feed the people
happened during the flood season when
the Nile Rose and covered the valley and
filled the Deep Channel where it Rose
more than 7 m and they used this system
of basins and waterways almost like a
hydraulic lift to bring the materials
needed for Pyramid
building if Giza was the Beating Heart
of the pyramid project then its
lifeblood was the River
Nile its annual floods not only freed up
a national Workforce but enabled the
laborers to deliver supplies all the way
to the foot of the pyramid
site the Great Pyramid could not really
have been built if Egypt did not have
the Nile and a complex system of
waterways connecting the land because at
this time the terrain isn't good enough
we don't really do wield
Vehicles remarkably archaeologists at
Giza have discovered the remains of two
boats from the time the artificial
Waterfront at Giza was at its
Zenith one has already been carefully
restored from the 12200 pieces recovered
by archaeologists who believe that it
was a ceremonial boat crafted to
transport kufu in his journey through
the
afterlife while the second is now being
meticulously excavated under the
watchful eye of project consultant
Muhammad ABD El MCU
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now they are extracting the woods of the
second boot all of this will constitute
the the boat itself the hull and the um
deck and also the super structure which
is which is the canopy
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itself these Timbers provide a
fascinating glimpse of ancient Egyptian
boat building methods
these same
techniques that we can see on this on a
ceremonial boot were used for the
transport boot they brought the stones
from Torah to here or from asan to
here building the pyramids not only
involved transporting thousands of
stones up the Nile but also required
importing Copper from the Sinai which
meant sailing across the red to the port
at w El
jarf Mohammad believes these Timbers
reveal a cunning design feature that
allowed meor and others like him to use
the same boat on bodies of water
separated by 15 Mi of
desert he will cut V shaped channels in
a 45° Direction and the other one in the
other direction so he can pass through
these ropes from one side side to the
other these holes weren't cut for wooden
or metal
fasteners because ancient Egyptian ships
were held together with rope when we
look at the kufu boat we see that here's
a ship with elegance and amazing
engineering but that's entirely stitched
together with mortis and Tenon joins and
by ropes that interlace through all the
parts of the hall for
example
by using ropes instead of nails teams
could dismantle their boats and
transport them across the desert to
where they were next
needed they took the parts from the Nile
Valley across to the Red Sea Coast piece
by
piece then they would put the parts
together they would basically Stitch the
whole ship together sail across to Sinai
get their loads of copper bring the
copper
back
copper is a relatively soft metal prone
to wearing down the amount of copper
required for tools on the job site must
have been
tremendous but nothing compared to the
hundreds of thousands of tons of stone
demanded by the builders meeting that
need would have been a massive
logistical challenge made even more
difficult because the Great Pyramid is
actually built of three different types
of stone
the exterior was an outer casing of high
quality white
Limestone concealing a much rougher
inner core of course common
Limestone and then deep within the
pyramid the complex of granite Chambers
reserved for the sacred Tomb of the
king and that meant millions of tons of
stone had to be shipped to the
site the rough Limestone for the core
came from a quarry just 500 yd south of
the pyramid
platform while the pyramid's highquality
casing Stones were brought by meor team
and other work gangs from nearby Tura
meanwhile the stone for the king's
chamber had to be shipped from the major
Granite Quarry in Egypt at Aswan some
500 M south of
Giza these different types of stone all
had to be delivered at around the same
time because because all the sections of
the Great Pyramid were constructed
simultaneously they built them in stages
incrementally and then filled in the
mass of the pyramid around them step by
step almost like 3D printing these days
all the elements of the pyramid the
casing the core and the internal
Chambers would rise as one from the Giza
Plateau but as the pyramid grew how did
the builders manage to raise the blocks
up the rising and sloping sides of the
monument by looking at what uh seems to
be in its loose State just Rubble we can
have an understanding of how they built
the pyramids because they formed this
Rubble into ramps and embankments some
of which like this one remained together
until this day probably they envelop the
entire pyramid with big embankments like
this but this was before ancient Egypt
had the we
their solution was well suited to the
desert
terrain it doesn't look very pretty but
it's really important because this is
one of the key um sort of tools that was
used to make the Great Pyramid it is in
fact a sledge and you can use them on
sand as well as snow and so here we have
this big sledge that would have been
used to take Lo the large rocks on them
and pulled by teams of men up through
the causeway up the ramps to build the
Great
Pyramid for the people of Egypt this
backbreaking work was a physical
investment in the spiritual future of
Egypt their contribution to ensure the
Pharaoh would be successful in his
journey through the
afterlife and they did it all with just
the most basic of
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equipment it's extraordinary to think
that it was built with the very simple
tools you had wood rollers you had rope
you had hard Stone on soft stone and you
had a few metal tools and most
importantly you had the brains and the
brawn of human beings and that's all
that they
had during the annual Nile flood the
construction site on the Giza Plateau
would have received a constant supply of
stone food and tools brought in by
ships it was an operation that would
strain even a modern supply
chain the overseer of all the king's
Works had to keep in mind complex
Logistics and how to keep this whole
Workforce fed healthy and effective what
modern contractors call the critical
path how to get from the beginning point
to the end point and deliver the
product meor records give
egyptologists a unique insight into how
this sophisticated operation
worked we were
entering the administrative words of the
people that were behind the world
construction of the of the monument like
the Pyramid of
Isel the Papi also revealed the name of
the man in
charge that name was
ankh and a stunningly lifelike image of
him survives now on display in the
Boston Museum of Fine
Arts anof was a noble the half brother
of the
Pharaoh he seems to be at that time the
vizer which is the chief of the
administration
the big bus for the building of the
Pyramid of
rufu Pierre believes merror may have had
several meetings with anof and the papy
note that mea's team was part of an
elite perhaps because their caros of
fine Tura Limestone were highly
prized mea was responsible for bringing
this Limestone of tah which is of high
quality needed to construct all the cing
outer casing in of the Pyramid of
rufu the outer casing of Tura Limestone
gave the Great Pyramid a spectacular
appearance today the monument has been
almost completely stripped of that outer
casing but 4 and a half thousand years
ago the smooth white Limestone delivered
by people like merror would have covered
the whole of the
pyramid
catching the Rays of the rejuvenating
sun in a spectacular
display we can think of the Great
Pyramid as a colossal special effect
clad in white Limestone polished smooth
but for them such special effects were
not entertainment for them they were
they were religious they were
magical the magic was a constant
reminder of the special religious
significance of the Great Pyramid
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and the dead King's fight for Egypt's
survival for people like merror it was a
privilege to be involved in the king's
Grand construction
project they actually called themselves
the elite mayor's group at one point is
called in the papayi setup zah The
Chosen
group it's estimated the people of Egypt
spent some 30 years building the Great
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Pyramid its last and most enduring
mystery is that the mummy of the god
King kufu has never been
found the granite coffin in the king's
chamber is
empty many egyptologists believe it was
cleared out by tomb robbers in ancient
times others speculate that kufu was
never buried in his tomb at
all if so where might he
be in
2017 scientists detected a mysterious
void deep inside the Great
Pyramid an advanced scanning technique
called muan tomography identified a
large cavity the size of a 747 fuselage
approximately parallel with the king's
chamber
and that void exists right through this
Granite wall at about this level of the
pyramid above the grand Gallery leading
to this
chamber many theories for this
mysterious empty space have been
suggested it's possible this void which
is like a very vague Cloud for us right
now is another chamber with Untold
Treasures or more importantly
documentation like the wal jarf papy but
most likely it's dead space that they
framed in to relieve the weight of the
pyramid on the roof of the grand Gallery
just like the relieving Chambers above
the king's
chamber further investigation May
confirm the void is another example of
the masterful engineering that's ensured
this giant Monument has stood the test
of
time but even without the pharaoh's body
the Great Pyramid continues to ensure
kuf Fu's place in
history hufu in fact has achieved his
immortality to a certain extent we might
not have his body but his name lives
forever and as each person recites it he
is once again given more empowerment in
the afterlife and his Great Pyramid does
reign
supreme through kufu Mighty building
project the people of ancient Egypt were
drawn into the creation of a magical
machine for the pharaoh's Journey
Through the
afterlife they were creating This
Magnificent Monument which also gives
you sort of religious um credit because
you're helping to build the house of
Eternity for your god
king The Amazing Discoveries of the W El
jarf papy the worker City and the
preserved boats reveal the phenomenal
planning operation that built the Great
Pyramid and unified the people of Egypt
into one of the world's first nation
states the networks that they created
and the national unity and
infrastructure National infrastructure
that they created for building these
giant pyramids that now was what where
they devoted their attention and their
energies the new evidence shows How kufu
Great Pyramid project became the
economic engine that drove the first
Great era of the ancient world's most
vibrant
civilization the Egypt of the
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Pharaohs
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a
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