[narrator] In the heart of modern Cairo...
[speaking foreign language]
[narrator] ...an expert team of archaeologists
and scientists...
[radiologist speaking foreign language]
[narrator] ...is about to perform a high-resolution CT scan...
This is my oldest patient.
[narrator] ...to forensically analyze one of the oldest,
most complete mummies ever discovered in Egypt.
[radiologist] Boss!
That must be remains of the brain.
Yes?
[narrator] And bring us closer than ever to the lives
and deaths of the Ancient Egyptians
who shaped this powerful civilization.
This is a definite proof
how one person can change the course of history.
[rocks crumbling]
[narrator] For 3,000 years,
Egypt was the land of the pharaohs.
All powerful rulers...
famed for their extraordinary tombs...
and colossal monuments.
What were the origins of this great kingdom?
And who forged the mold for the iconic role of pharaoh?
Today, archaeologists are searching for evidence
of how the first pharaohs rose to power...
propelled themselves to the status of immortal gods...
and built one of the world's first and longest-lived civilizations.
♪♪
In ancient Hebenu,
once the rural hinterlands of Ancient Egypt...
are the remains of a mysterious pyramid.
[people chattering]
This season, German archaeologist
Richard Bussmann and his team will investigate the pyramid
to understand why it is here and what it can reveal
about Egypt's first pharaohs.
The pyramid has not been researched very well,
so we would like to understand better the building history.
This is, up to the present day, unknown.
[narrator] Richard believes this pyramid was inspired by Egypt's first,
Djoser's Step Pyramid in Saqqara.
This miniature copy stood 35 feet tall
and was constructed from four levels of limestone blocks.
Why did the Ancient Egyptians build it here 100 miles south
of the pyramid fields of Saqqara and Giza,
and on the opposite side of the Nile?
All the pyramids in Saqqara and Giza
are the colossal tombs of early kings.
Richard wants to investigate inside this pyramid
to see if he can find a burial chamber.
We'll leave the scaffolding and tools here for now. Come with me.
[speaking foreign language]
[narrator] His foreman, Alaa, is responsible
for ensuring it's safe to work inside the pyramid.
So, we need to make sure we enter here safely.
[Richard speaking foreign language]
[narrator] They enter via a looter's tunnel.
We have all the scaffolding here.
[narrator] But the blocks are unstable
and the whole thing could collapse easily.
Be careful when you're going down.
This is dangerous.
Come through here, boss. Slowly.
[narrator] Carefully, Richard and Alaa
make their way inside the pyramid.
Carefully.
Be careful. Watch your head.
Come, come.
Don't touch anything. Be careful, boss.
[narrator] The workers have erected a wooden scaffold
to try and stabilize the hollow core of the pyramid.
So now, we are inside the pyramid.
It's a little bit difficult here really to work,
because the more we walk around,
the more we remove of the stability of the pyramid.
[narrator] Richard has discovered some features
which are a sign that there was once an internal structure.
Here, we can see an aisle...
and the aisle seems to lead to this pit in the center.
[narrator] Richard wants to investigate the pit
to see if there's any evidence of a burial.
[Prof. Richard Bussmann] We can't work here at the moment.
We need to develop a strategy
for stabilizing the structure.
[workers singing]
[narrator] The workers build a scaffold as a platform on top of the pyramid
so they can work above the hole in the roof
and raise debris directly from the pit below,
without dislodging the loose stones.
But even clearing the pit will be risky.
We don't want to remove too much of this material
so that the stones start moving.
Once the stones start moving,
it becomes dangerous for us to work.
[narrator] To avoid a catastrophic collapse
of the pyramid...
It's dangerous here.
[narrator] ...Richard will need to find evidence
indicating whether the pit was a burial chamber
without removing all the fallen stone and debris.
♪♪
In the ancient city of Abydos...
[♪ dramatic music playing]
Egyptologist and vintage clothes enthusiast
Colleen Darnell is in search of Egypt's very first pharaoh.
She has come to the temple of Seti I,
one of Egypt's later kings and father of Ramses the Great.
Seti I left a remarkable record on the walls of his temple
which has survived for over 3,000 years.
[Dr. Colleen Darnell] Wow, this is it!
This is the Abydos King List,
a historical catalog of previous kings.
[narrator] Seti recorded the names of 76 kings
stretching back nearly 2,000 years
before his own rule.
Before the pharaohs controlled Egypt,
the Nile Valley was a very different place.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
[narrator] Long before the pyramids,
early Egyptians were nomadic people,
roaming the fertile banks of the Nile.
Over the course of centuries, they developed agriculture, trade,
and established city states ruled by tribal chiefdoms.
Two powerful realms took shape: upper and lower Egypt,
each with their own king and signature crown.
Whoever could unite the rival factions
would become king of all Egypt.
Colleen scans the list
for who this great unifier might have been.
The Egyptians were exceptionally good record keepers.
They loved to record historical events,
and they knew the number of years, months,
and even days that previous kings had ruled.
And at the very beginning,
we see a cartouche that writes "Mene,"
often called in Greek, "Menes."
By putting Mene first in the king's list,
Seti is acknowledging that Mene was the king
who unified upper and lower Egypt.
So, he gets prime position at the beginning of the list.
[narrator] Colleen is now on the trail of Mene...
to understand who he was and how he unified Egypt.
♪♪
Three hundred miles north in modern Cairo...
behind the scenes of the Egyptian Museum...
Miroslav Barta and his expert team of radiologists
are about to undertake a rare forensic operation.
[Prof. Miroslav Barta] They could just put it on this, down.
[narrator] On the 4,500-year-old mummy
of a high-ranking official called Ptah Shepses,
who served in the Royal Court of four early pharaohs.
It is by all means a big day.
I arrived, uh, this morning in order to attend this procedure,
the CT scanning of this unique mummy,
because it's been more than a year since the discovery.
[metal tools clinking]
[narrator] When Miroslav and his team first entered Ptah Shepses' tomb...
they discovered the complete mummy
still inside his stone sarcophagus.
[Miroslav] And he was sitting there.
It was as if were waiting for us to come
and saying, "Took some time, gentlemen."
So, that was my first personal encounter with this guy.
[narrator] The CT scan offers Miroslav a unique glimpse
of how the art and meaning of mummification
developed during the early years of Ancient Egypt.
It's a very important mummy, one of the first mummies
displaying very, um, elaborate way of mummification.
[machine whirring]
[narrator] With Ptah Shepses in position...
the team goes to the control room
where they will be protected from the radiation
emitted by the CT scanner.
[radiologist] Doctor, can we start?
I hope he's got, um, a load of stories to tell us.
[workers chattering]
[narrator] In ancient Hebenu...
Richard is investigating the ruins
of this mysterious pyramid
built during the reign of the early pharaohs.
This shaft is dangerous, boss.
[narrator] The team is gradually extracting sand
from the pit inside the pyramid.
[Richard] The work in the pyramid is, of course, delicate
because everyone has to know where to step
and which stones to avoid.
But the workmen are experienced,
and we have built a, uh, robust scaffolding.
[narrator] Their plan is to remove samples of sand
from different depths of the pit...
and sieve each bucket for ancient remains
that could indicate to Richard if this was a burial chamber.
How's it going here, boss?
Can we see the bottom of the pit?
Very interesting.
[narrator] Richard's method has worked.
He now has a theory.
[Richard] So, we have here three different samples
of mortar.
These are probably, um, different periods.
The yellow one very likely is from the original pyramid,
that means from the Old Kingdom.
The black and the white one,
this might be later, this might be Roman.
[narrator] The more recent mortar from the pit
is evidence that the structure isn't part of the original pyramid design.
[Richard] It's a hypothesis at the moment
that the pit was built in the Roman period
and plastered in the Roman period,
uh, inside the pharaonic monument.
[narrator] Richard thinks the Romans that lived here
over 3,000 years later might have constructed a system
inside the pyramid to store water.
It means there's no evidence that it was built as a tomb.
There are no bones, there is no burial equipment,
so very likely this is not a, um, a burial chamber.
[narrator] It's a puzzling mystery that leaves Richard
with even more questions about this place.
[Richard] If this was not a burial,
what was the function of the pyramid?
[narrator] He now needs to look beyond the pyramid
and search for clues in the earth that surrounds it.
Maybe the ground on which we stand currently,
there might be more evidence, there might be more material
that shows what was going on here.
[tool scraping]
[narrator] Just a few feet beneath the surface,
workers unearth a skull.
♪♪
In the ancient necropolis of Abydos...
Colleen is tracing back through Ancient Egypt's rulers
to find the true origins of this great civilization.
She wants to understand how the first king
unified upper and lower Egypt and became the archetype
for what it meant to be a pharaoh.
This is Umm el Qa'ab,
a place that I have always wanted to visit.
It is a royal necropolis that dates almost 2,000 years
before the Valley of the Kings.
[narrator] Long before pharaohs
constructed the great pyramid tombs of Giza
or the rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings,
this was where Egypt's earliest rulers were laid to rest.
The stones on the ground mark the outline
of one of these simple, early royal burials.
Colleen believes this is the tomb of King Narmer,
thought by most Egyptologists to be another name
for King Mene.
[Colleen] He is Mene of the king's list at Abydos.
These are sand filled, mudbrick chambers
which is where King Narmer was buried.
He chose this sacred location
because it had already been a burial place for earlier kings
before the unification period.
[narrator] One hundred miles south of Narmer's burial,
in Hierakonpolis, archaeologists discovered
an extraordinary piece of ancient art depicting King Narmer.
This is the Narmer Palette,
one of the world's oldest historical documents,
and one of the most important for the early history of Egypt.
[narrator] The Narmer Palette records the moment
that Ancient Egypt as we know it began,
and depicts how Narmer won himself the title
of its founding king.
On one side, we see King Narmer wearing the white crown of upper Egypt,
smiting an enemy-- probably one of the last kings
holding out against his authority in lower Egypt.
Then, on the other side of the palette,
Narmer is wearing the red crown of lower Egypt,
and we even see his decapitated foes
lined up in front of him.
This is a powerful, symbolic statement
of Narmer's unification of upper and lower Egypt.
[narrator] The palette is not only a testament
to Narmer's victory in uniting Egypt,
but also the template for how future pharaohs
would style themselves for the next 3,000 years.
[Colleen] This icon of the smiting pose
symbolizes his unification of upper and lower Egypt.
It is the ideal to which all future pharaohs will strive.
[narrator] Every pharaoh would follow Narmer
and seek to reinforce their rule over both lands,
and merge the two crowns as a symbol of unity.
By bringing the people of Egypt together as one kingdom,
Narmer founded a powerful country and paved the way
for one of the world's greatest civilizations.
Yet he wasn't buried in a grand tomb or pyramid like later pharaohs.
Colleen is now on the hunt for Narmer's successors
to see how they used their death and burial
to elevate themselves beyond mortal kings.
[narrator] In ancient Hebenu...
Maybe we can start with taking a measurement.
[narrator] ...Richard has expanded his investigation
to search the perimeter of the pyramid
in his hunt for clues that could tell him
what the pyramid was for, and why it was built here
in the time of the early pharaohs.
[workers chattering in foreign language]
Do you want to check this out?
[narrator] One of the workers hits something
just feet from the pyramid.
Oh!
This looks like a burial.
This is really a fantastic find.
[narrator] It's not long before the team
finds skeletal remains throughout the whole trench.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
[Richard] We have almost ten burials alone
in this, uh, square.
So, really, the people were buried one next to the other.
[narrator] The team has uncovered
part of an ancient cemetery
which seems to extend under the pyramid.
This burial was hid by the foundation blocks
when they were placed here for building the pyramid.
[narrator] It means the cemetery was already here
before the pyramid was built.
[Richard] This is the ribs here.
-[Pia Lorenz] And this is the... -[Richard] Right.
[Pia] ...where the ear would have been.
-[Richard] Mm-hmm. -So, you're kind of--
we're turning more towards facing north
-rather than west here. -Right.
These here are all facing east?
Possibly, some are a little bit like this, some a little like this.
Not all.
Uh, we are discussing, uh,
where the body was placed,
whether the head was in the north
or the head was in the south,
but not all individuals had the same body position.
[narrator] The style and depth of the graves
beneath the foundation level of the pyramid
tells Richard that these are predynastic burials,
the resting place of the people that lived here
5,000 years ago, just before Narmer
unified Egypt and became the first pharaoh.
It's a rare opportunity to learn more
about Egyptian society just before the first pharaohs.
It’s a gully.
I can see pottery.
And next to the pottery, is that a skull or pottery?
It's something beautiful.
Oh!
[narrator] As the team uncovers more of the burials,
they begin to reveal grave goods.
[Isabel Conrads] It's a bit shiny.
-[Pia] Hmm. -[Isabel exclaiming]
[narrator] Richard now wants to decode the burials
and understand what beliefs these people had about death
in an age before mummies and pharaohs.
In the center of modern Cairo,
at the Egyptian museum...
Miroslav and his team are scanning the mummy
of the high priest Ptah Shepses.
The discovery of his mummy
completes one of the most detailed portraits
of elite life in early Ancient Egypt.
Around the 1860s...
archaeologists unearthed the chapel
that sat above Ptah Shepses' tomb.
On the western wall was a limestone carving,
painted pink to look like granite.
Green hieroglyphics engraved on the stone tell the life story of Ptah Shepses,
who served four early pharaohs,
married a princess, and lived into his 70s.
[Miroslav] We will know about him more than we happen to know
about our predecessors three generations back.
I mean, this is--
this is really what makes Egyptology so fascinating.
I simply love it.
[narrator] They are starting with the head to see
what they can learn about how Ptah Shepses was mummified.
Miroslav won't have to wait long to see what secrets the mummy is keeping,
as the CT scans start to appear on the monitor.
-Boss. -[Miroslav] So that--
that must be, uh, remains of-- of the brain, yes.
Remains of the brain.
[narrator] Tomás Belsan is an expert radiologist.
He analyzes the scans in more detail.
We don't find any artificial hole into the head
to remove the brain.
So, during the mummification process
the brain simply dried out?
Isn't it unique, really, even for you to see that?
Never ever, in humans.
Mm.
This is my oldest patient.
[narrator] Miroslav and Tomás can see from the scan
that no attempt was made to remove the brain,
as it was in most other Ancient Egyptian mummies
that have been discovered.
Instead, the brain has dried out
during the 70-day mummification process
and been preserved inside the skull.
[speaking foreign language]
[narrator] For now, it remains a mystery exactly why the brain was left.
[team member] Be careful with that.
[narrator] It's a delicate operation to reposition Ptah Shepses
so they scan his chest and reveal what's inside.
[narrator] In ancient Hebenu...
Richard and his team of archaeologists have discovered a predynastic cemetery
right at the foot of the pyramid they've been investigating.
[Richard] Now, we have found 17 burials,
well-preserved, intact, un-looted, uh, tombs
uh, which really, um, is an exception.
[narrator] Now, they want to examine the grave goods
to understand what early Egyptians believed about death
long before the extravagant burials of the pharaohs.
Now, we have just found another, uh, jar
in front of this skull.
So, the situation here is similar to the other burials
that we've found here,
skull plus pottery, skull plus pottery.
Maybe this is really for food provision,
for eating and for drinking.
[narrator] These grave goods hint at an early cultural tradition,
a shared belief that the dead required sustenance
so they could live on in the afterlife.
Right beneath the foundation stone of the pyramid,
Pia and Isabel uncover a striking burial.
[Pia] In the grave at the moment, we have an upside-down bowl, we have another bowl
that has a very nicely preserved shell in it.
And yeah, actually...
hmm...
[narrator] Pia spots a feature on the bones.
I see another long bone, which is here,
and the epiphysis. So, the bone ends
of the long bones, they are not fused yet.
And if it's unfused, that means we have a child.
It's kind of, um, setting in how young this individual is.
[narrator] As they brush more sand from around the bowl,
they make a profound discovery.
[both] Oh, oh, oh!
[Pia] That looks bony.
[Isabel] Maybe that's the hand.
-[Pia] Be holding onto the bowl. -[Isabel gasps]
[Isabel] You mean literally cr-- oh!
[Pia] It looks like the-- the child
is literally holding the bowl and cradling it.
[narrator] The mother-of-pearl shell probably came from the Red Sea,
over 100 miles away to the east.
It would have been a prized object.
[Pia] They really took some care to make sure
that they are going to have a nice afterlife,
and it's really touching to see. Really.
[narrator] Although it would be more than 500 years
before the practice of mummification was developed...
these grave goods reveal the early origins of a belief in an afterlife.
After the rise of the pharaohs,
these beliefs would grow increasingly complex.
We are excavating here a predynastic cemetery,
but 1,000 years later,
uh, there are very interesting, so-called letters to the dead.
[narrator] Ancient Egyptians believed the dead lived on
in an afterlife, and could control the earthly world
from beyond the grave.
People feared that if the deceased were unhappy
in their afterlife, they could bring disease
or times of hardship to those left behind.
To appease the dead,
Egyptians wrote them letters on jars,
bowls, and plates, asking for forgiveness and protection.
And when they buried their dead,
they would leave these letters alongside offerings of food.
So, when we talk about social relationships in Ancient Egypt,
it's not only the relationships between the living,
it's also the relationship between the living and the dead.
[narrator] The beliefs that started
amongst small communities in predynastic Egypt
would expand dramatically in the first centuries
of pharaonic rule,
coming to define Ancient Egyptian society
and underpin the power of the pharaohs.
In Abydos, Colleen is uncovering how Egypt's first kings
leveraged the widespread belief in an afterlife,
to project their power and authority beyond death.
[Colleen] This is incredible!
It's the tomb of Den, and even though he ruled
only a few decades after Narmer,
the scale has completely changed in this royal tomb.
The floor was paved with pink granite all the way from Aswan.
Clearly, Den wanted to harness the power of his kingship
in order to make a statement about his authority
through monumental tomb architecture.
[narrator] The belief in an afterlife,
which had existed before the first pharaohs,
was now a central focus for the king.
Den designed his monumental tomb to ensure his legacy extended beyond death
and paved the way for evermore complex funerary architecture.
Just one mile away is a vast mudbrick structure
built around 300 years later by one of Egypt's first master architects.
I've never been here before, and it is absolutely massive.
It is the funerary enclosure of the last king
of the Second Dynasty, a man named Khasekhemwy,
literally "The Two Powers Have Appeared in Glory."
[narrator] Khasekhemwy's name
signified how he united the warring gods Horus and Set,
displaying his power both on Earth and in the realm of the gods.
He was the first pharaoh
known to have had statues of himself carved
to preserve his image into eternity.
[tools clinking]
In Abydos, he dug his tomb in the royal cemetery of his predecessors.
It was bigger than any before him,
with 58 rooms to store his possessions for the afterlife.
Whilst the separate funerary enclosure was a public space
designed for rituals and ceremonies
celebrating the king as he lived on in the afterlife.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
[Colleen] Other First and Second Dynasty kings
had constructed enclosures here,
but they were on a much smaller scale.
This is unprecedented in its size.
[narrator] Egypt's first pharaohs
had begun a tradition that elevated them far beyond mortal beings.
These funerary enclosures were temples to the kings,
where long after their death, they would be worshipped
as eternal living gods.
[Colleen] The Ancient Egyptians believed that if your name
was remembered, you lived forever.
With this monumental enclosure,
Khasekhemwy has guaranteed his immortality.
Not only is he proclaiming the religious significance
of his reign, he is setting the stage
for a revolution in monument building.
[narrator] Colleen is now on a mission
to uncover how Khasekhemwy's successor
wielded religion as a tool to consolidate power,
and used it to command and control the entire nation.
[car horn honking]
[narrator] In the heart of Cairo...
behind the scenes of the Egyptian museum...
[team member] We just need to scan the-- the pelvis.
[narrator] ...Miroslav's team is looking for signs
of preserved organs inside Ptah Shepses' chest
without having to unwrap the mummy.
[Miroslav] He traveled almost 5,000 years to get here.
So, we are doing everything we can.
There's the technology to get the best for him.
[narrator] As they scan millimeter by millimeter
through the body, the radiologists
start to build a picture of what's inside.
They think that there is a good chance to believe
that even the heart is still in place.
[narrator] But then, they spot something on the scans.
Looks like heart.
[radiologist] Heart, yes.
It's on the opposite side.
It's just a filling of linen?
You mean like resin pads?
[narrator] The team expected that, like the brain,
the heart would have been left intact.
But closer inspection reveals that the chest
is full of linen.
For Ancient Egyptians, it was essential to maintain
the physical appearance of the body.
[narrator] Miroslav believes the embalmers
filled the chest cavity with linen soaked in resin,
which would set hard and preserve the shape of the body.
This mummy is, uh-- and this is without doubt,
um, a new stage in the mummification process.
[narrator] It's possible that Ptah Shepses,
as a senior figure close to four of the early pharaohs,
was one of the first people to receive this level of mummification.
And seen together with the decorations of his tomb
suggests he was a pioneer of what today is the definition
of an Ancient Egyptian burial.
An inscribed wall in Ptah Shepses' tomb
features the first known spell to Osiris in a non-royal monument.
In the ancient myth, Osiris died fighting his brother Set,
who cut his body into pieces and threw them in the Nile.
Anubis reassembled Osiris' body
and wrapped him in bandages to bind him in human form
so he could be reborn as a god in the underworld.
Embalmers preserved Ptah Shepses in the same way,
stuffing his body with linen and resin to keep his human shape,
and wrapping him like Osiris
so he could be reborn in the underworld.
[machine whirring]
His burial marks a significant step
in the development of funerary practices,
linking the myth of Osiris with the belief in resurrection and the afterlife.
This is a definite proof how a single person,
one person can change the course of history.
And if you want someone from the Fifth Dynasty,
from Ancient Egypt, it's him.
Imagine if somebody would remember my or your name
after 4,000, 5,000 years.
It's very unlikely. He made it.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
[narrator] In Saqqara...
Colleen is tracing the path of Egypt's early pharaohs.
Like Khasekhemwy before him,
King Djoser wanted to construct a monument that had the power to immortalize him
and reflect the strength and prosperity of his kingdom.
Djoser was inspired by the architectural form
and religious significance of earlier monuments,
but he wanted to create a more permanent expression
of his kingship.
[narrator] What Djoser created was Egypt's first pyramid.
[Colleen] This is Djoser's monument to immortality,
a tomb and complex in stone meant to last forever.
This pyramid is the first monumental stone structure
anywhere in the world.
[♪ mysterious music playing]
[narrator] Djoser spared no expense
in ensuring he lived on.
[Colleen gasps] Oh, my goodness!
This-- this is stunning,
to think of these massive blocks
being transported all the way from Aswan,
and to make the sarcophagus.
The king is harnessing resources
in order to lavish that expense on his own burial.
Not only has he made a statement with the step pyramid
and its complex being constructed in stone,
but using the costliest materials
for his own sarcophagus.
[narrator] To embark on such a colossal building project,
the likes of which the world had never seen before,
was about more than just personal wealth.
Djoser is making an even bigger statement about his control,
the ability to marshal the mineral wealth of Egypt.
Compared to mudbrick constructions,
monumental stone buildings like the step pyramid
would have taken a whole new level of bureaucratic efficiency,
and the dedication of agricultural resources
to feed all the workmen
that would have done the actual moving and quarrying of the stones.
Plus, you needed more scribes to keep the records,
to keep the work going smoothly.
[narrator] The pyramid took at least 20 years to build
and would have provided a lifetime's work
for those involved in its construction.
It's testament not only to the power and wealth of the king,
but to the creation of a highly organized society
that now surrounded the pharaoh.
♪♪
In ancient Hebenu...
Richard and his team are exploring the remains
of a small pyramid
built less than a century after Djoser's pyramid tomb.
They have unearthed a cemetery beneath it,
which means there was a settlement here before the pyramid was built.
But this pyramid wasn't built as a tomb.
Its true purpose remains a mystery.
[Richard] What has not been clear at all
is the space in which the pyramid was placed.
[narrator] Richard is hoping that in the area around the pyramid,
they can find clues about what else was happening here
when the pyramid was built.
Something?
[narrator] Close to the burials,
one of the workers finds a deposit of mudbricks.
Oh yes!
Look, it's intact. It's good.
[narrator] These ancient building blocks
have been discarded here,
perhaps left over from a nearby building project.
[Richard] The pyramid itself is not built from mudbricks.
The pyramid is built from stone.
So, the mudbricks might derive from a building
that was attached to the pyramid.
[narrator] As the workers excavate the mudbricks...
Oh, what is that?
[narrator] ...they discover the whole pit
is densely packed with ancient ceramics...
that could unravel the mystery of the pyramid.
[narrator] In ancient Hebenu...
Richard's team has unearthed a rubbish pit thousands of years old.
[Richard] Oh, this is a nicer one, yeah.
[narrator] It's full of broken pottery,
dumped here around the same time
as the pyramid's construction.
[Richard speaking foreign language ]
[narrator] One of the workers has identified a piece
that reveals something about what might have happened here.
[Richard] This piece looks as if it was a piece
of overheated pottery.
So, if the temperature is too high
and there is sand inside it,
uh, the sand almost, uh, transforms
into a glass-like structure.
So, this is why you find this, um, shiny surface here.
That would mean that the pottery was actually made somewhere here.
[narrator] As the team pieces together the fragments,
they identify the pottery as beer jars.
[Richard] The idea for the beer jars
was not to make a nice beer jar,
but to produce quickly a lot of them.
And it's a type of pottery that appears,
um, in the early phase of the Ancient Egyptian state.
[narrator] It's crucial evidence for Richard
that could solve part of the mystery
behind the pyramid's construction.
And beer, was a-- a major type of ration
given by the, um, pharaonic state to the workmen.
This is where we see what happens
when a central administration appears in-- on the landscape.
They need to have a standardized ration
that they can give to the workmen.
So, what might have happened here
is workmen were provisioned with beer,
the beer was consumed,
and after the work has been completed,
the beer jars were deposited here.
[narrator] It could be that this is rubbish
left by the workers who were employed by the king
to build the pyramid.
We haven't found any royal inscription,
but we believe that one of the successors of Djoser
commissioned the work here for the, uh, pyramid.
And the pyramid very likely was a symbol
of royal representation, of royal authority
here in the provinces of Egypt.
[narrator] Djoser's step pyramid tomb was such a bold statement of royal power,
his successors may have harnessed
this distinctive architecture for another purpose.
Richard believes around 2600 BCE,
King Sneferu, first ruler of the Fourth Dynasty,
may have commissioned this small step pyramid.
It's possible that the pyramid was a symbol of royal power...
a landmark that stamped the king's ownership
and control on this settlement.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
King Sneferu and his predecessor King Huni
built a total of seven near-identical pyramids
in other small towns scattered along the Nile Valley.
[Richard] With the arrival of the Old Kingdom,
the population grew,
not least because we see the pyramid here,
it means that the site was already important
and the king chose this site to build a pyramid.
But of course, also the pyramid
might have stimulated more people to come here.
This town prospered in the Old Kingdom.
[narrator] Richard's excavations here reveal how Egypt's first pharaohs
had to innovate ways to project their authority
across the country,
to hold this fledgling kingdom together.
The first pharaohs set Egypt on a course that would all build to this.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
The age of the pyramids...
building projects that would demand the wealth
and labor of the nation...
solidify the divine image of the pharaoh,
and define this country for millennia.
Without the impressive achievements
of the first pharaohs, Ancient Egypt as we know it
would not have existed.
[narrator] From the unification of the two lands
through the rise of complex mummification rituals,
to the construction of the first pyramids,
Egypt's founding pharaohs forged the identity
of one of the world's most enduring
and iconic civilizations.
♪♪