5 Fascinating Archaeological Discoveries From Ancient Egypt | BBC Timestamp

The great temple of Seti I. Pilgrims came here believing that Abydos was the burial place of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead. This area is the most sacred place in all of ancient Egypt, the burial place of the very first Egyptian kings 5,000 years ago. What's drawn us to Abydos is the prospect of finding something that every Egyptologist secretly dreams about an undiscovered intact royal tomb, probably not on the scale of Tutankhamun, but you'll never know unless you look. Sarah has set up camp on the edge of Abydos' royal graveyard. It overlooks the valley in the eastern desert cliffs known throughout ancient Egypt as the gateway to the afterlife. Sarah's hoping her satellite imagery will reveal what over 100 years of traditional archaeology has failed to uncover, one of the missing tombs of the very first kings. I'm meeting archaeologist Dr Gunter Dreyer, who's been working here for 30 years. He wants to show me his current dig. Actually, this is the earliest royal burial ground of Egypt. The earliest rulers of Egypt, pre-dynastic ones, and the rulers of the first and second dynasty are buried here, about 3,000 BC. We are in the very heart of the beginning of Egyptian culture here. Wow, that is a lot of pottery. These shirts are fragments of late-period offerings called the ancient Egyptians that came here by the millions and left offering vessels here. We roughly estimated all together maybe about 10 million pots. Gunter is investigating the first dynasty tomb of King Jer. It was originally excavated in the late 19th century. So how did it work? Can you just sort of table through the layout? Yeah, well, there's a huge chamber with brick lining, and in the middle of that chamber there was a large wooden shrine, supported by these protruding walls, cell walls, and they also form little storerooms for equipment. Jer's tomb was once covered by a mound of earth. It was a forerunner of the pyramids. The Great Pyramid is the only survivor of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was the final resting place of the pharaoh Khufu. This is a tight fit. 800 years later, the pyramid builders at Saqqara must have learnt many lessons from this masterpiece. Constructed using two million blocks, the Great Pyramid weighs five million tonnes. It rises at a constant angle of 51 degrees to reach the height of a 35-storey building. All built in less than 15 years, using soft copper tools and a simple plumb line. Inside is a complex network of passageways linking the entrance to the burial chamber deep within. Look at this. Oh, my goodness. Amazing. So where are we here? I mean, this is just extraordinary, this... The Grand Gallery. This is the Grand Gallery. The most fascinating structure on Earth. The function of the 8.5-metre high ceiling remains a mystery to this day. The pyramid is one of the most explored monuments in human history, but it kept a secret for 4,500 years. In the roof of the Grand Gallery is a passageway that until 170 years ago led nowhere. Only blasting with gunpowder revealed five more cramped chambers stacked one on top of the other. The topmost has a triangular ceiling designed to take the load of the thousands of tonnes of limestone above. Few people are allowed here these days. Are you here? Yep. Now I need to tell you some important things here. Wow. Come by my left side here. You know, this is the top fifth chamber. This is the last one. The very top. Then this room has been found by English. This is the story of...? Of the people who actually, in the last three centuries, used to come to explore the pyramid and write their names and year and things like that. Now I'm going to take you to this big surprise here. Follow me. The graffiti in this chamber isn't all the work of intrepid explorers. Mr Dallas, look at this. This letter in hieroglyphic means gang and look at Sim Su, means followers. Yeah. And this is a cartouche of Khufu. The name of the gang who built the pyramid were called the Followers Gang of Khufu. So this graffiti is 4,500-year-old graffiti? It's 4,500 years ago, left by the workmen who built the pyramid. I can't imagine another room on Earth that has such historical significance. Not just historical significance, actually, such scientific significance. The science, you've got this vaulted ceiling, which as an engineering project means so much. It's supporting the weight of the pyramids. It's extraordinary they had that technology 4,500 years ago. And then with, obviously, history, you've got the history of the pyramid itself, which we know. But within this room itself, you have these fantastic stories of the other people who've been here before. This is amazing. It's special. This is off the scale. A team from Cairo University begins drilling into the mud to obtain core samples. In such a large area, though, coring is a bit of a lottery. A few centimetres in the wrong direction might miss the telltale piece of pottery or the treasure that's remained undisturbed for centuries. And after 3,500 years of annual flooding, the evidence will be deeply buried. Already, the corer has dug down five metres. Hi, Bettina. Hi, Judith. Hello. Hi, Dallas. How are you doing? Oh, we're having fun. Have you found anything of note? I've got a very nervous Sarah Parkak here. She's gone all quiet and silent. We've found lots of mud. And it's absolutely packed with pottery. It's not so obvious. You can see there. But we've actually picked loads of this out already. This is six metres down. So, yeah, we must be a fair way back. I mean, the sort of general ballpark figure is a metre per 1,000 years, so we'd be thinking we were several thousand years back. Look at that. Oh, well done. Is it a rim? This is my heritage. It belongs in a museum. Did you find a rim? Is it a rim now? It's not a rim now, unfortunately not. It's very satisfying doing this. It's lovely, isn't it? Straight back to kindergarten. Yeah, I know, exactly. It's going to take time to date all this pottery and sift through the mud to make sure we don't miss anything. Will we find more than just the rubbish from an old village? Is there any evidence of the lost capital city? The following day, Sarah and I are back. Have they been able to find anything? They've certainly dug up a huge amount of pottery. It's from the right date. It's definitely Middle Kingdom. But it could still be from a small village. I mean, is there anything sort of, you know, in your boxes that sort of suggests this is a lost city rather than just any old settlement? Starting to find things like carnelian chips, which straightaway raises the status of what's a swamp. That is very interesting. Why is that interesting? Well, we call it a semi-precious stone, but it was much prized for making of amulets and decorative inlays. Oh, OK, so this is evidence that this has been worked and people are using this material to make jewellery, that sort of thing. Then we've got this beautiful piece of agate. Oh, wow, look at that. This is incredibly unusual. Yeah, no, that's quite rare. To find this in a core is extraordinary. And this is the jewel in the crown. The jewel in the crown. Never before found in a core in Egypt. We've got a piece of amethyst for you. Oh, my goodness. Wow. That is beautiful. Look at that. That is pretty rare in Egypt altogether. Even in jewellery, amethyst is quite rare. That's amazing. I mean, we're dealing with incredibly high status. These are high rollers. That's incredible. I mean, to find something like this in a core... Sorry. This is Egyptian bling. Yeah. Happy? Happiness? I have to admit, I wasn't expecting this. You get a core rich with pottery, and then to find amethyst and agate and worked carnelian in the same core, this is very exciting. You've hit the jackpot. I feel like I've hit the jackpot. For a long time, Egyptologists have said, well, it's, you know, the city is too far buried. We'll never get to it. And yet, to find something like this, we're on to something big here. Something big. Wow. Look at this. So is this the front door? Yes. So now we're entering from the east side to the solar temple of Nusera from the fifth dynasty. And here is exactly the main entrance. It's a corridor, a big corridor. We're coming, we're close. We don't see the sun yet. No. And suddenly you come out here in the courtyard, and you have the sun shocking you. Once, this temple was bustling with people making offerings and priests performing ceremonies. Look at this. This is the floor. Let's climb up. So this is actually what they'd be walking on. My goodness. Were they walking? Or were they on their knees? It is written in the walls just behind there and there, you have to be on your knees. It is exactly like the pilgrimage. That pilgrimage culminated in offerings for the sun god Ra delivered to the central altar. This is the original from 4,500 years ago. Here we shall come with the main offering, and there we shall put it here. In the middle you see this round circle. This is Ra. The temple dedicated to Ra was a religious focus and an important source of wealth. The offerings were redistributed to the thousands of people who lived and worked here. I mean, bringing offering is paying taxes. Well, we are today, we pay all taxes. So that's how it works. What I've really understood is the fact that the sun is so central to the entire Egyptian world view, and right here it's utterly manifest in such a simple form. Looking at that table, that offering table, you can see it, the sun right in the middle. It's the centre of everything. It's the bringer of life, it's the creator. Rising above the altar was the dominant structure of the temple, the obelisk focusing attention on the sun's rays. This was Old Kingdom architecture at its best. Simple and striking. Sarah's satellite archaeology is good at identifying mud brick buried just beneath the surface. But what about stone circles in a vast wilderness of sand? SatNav will help narrow down the location, but then it's down to us to spot them. Parakak, I don't mean to be funny, but we have been walking for quite a while. Are you sure you know where we're going? Well, this is the thing that you can never be sure of. These are looking more promising. Very promising. And look at where we are right now. Where might that be? OK, look, you see these large circles? Sarah may be able to see something, but I'll need some convincing. From above, you really get a sense of the circles. From here, it's very difficult to make them all out, isn't it? But is there any other evidence that people once lived here? Look at this, look here, look here, look, look, look. These are tools, or evidence of work tools. Look at this. Look at this piece. It's a beautiful piece. It takes an incredible craftsman to know the right angle, the right pressure, and they strike the stone, and you've got a perfect, it's like where they work a stone down so you get perfect edges. The remains of prehistoric human activity are all around us. What's that, Sarah? Wow, it's ostrich eggshell. They would have used these ostrich eggshells as vessels for carrying water. You're kidding! No, and there's a bunch of it. Whoops, it's all over the place. Is this another piece here? Yeah. Everything suggests this desert wasteland was once a very fertile place. In fact, for thousands of years, communities thrived in the Sahara, settling close to food sources and water that was then here in abundance. Satellites can quickly map hundreds of square kilometres that would have taken years using conventional archaeology. Now we can get a far better picture of how many people lived here in prehistoric times.