Un archéologue français fait une découverte exceptionnelle en Égypte

A few kilometers from the pyramids A French archaeologist is about to make an exceptional discovery These workers have just uncovered brick walls that mark a vertical well currently completely filled with sand Under our feet it can go down 4 5 6 I don't know how many meters So for now I've only been able to imagine And when they see what it is they will say there it is there is something or there isn't This Bulgarian-born Frenchman is named Vassil Dobref It has been 15 years since he has been exploring the desert Looking for tombs of ancient Egypt But discoveries like today's are rare the archaeologist counts them one hand because this well is particularly spectacular He descends 10 meters into the heart of the desert Suddenly in the back a cavity appears This is what Vassil had hoped for The entrance to a tomb sealed since antiquity For now I don't see much There is a room carved into the mountain A chocolate Ah Ah that's Oh yes wow Everything is decorated Ah it's beautiful isn't it Is Abdo a chieftain Is everything down there Ah that's it's beautiful Vassil has just cleared the entrance to a funeral vault whose ceiling had partially collapsed According to their style These motifs were painted more than 2 000 years before Christ Now one can only dream there Is this a big moment for you Oh yes yes because it's the first time that on this site you can find a room decorated downstairs The colors are almost intact after more than four millennia under the sand You need the sand Leave it Well here we are happy aren't we Here we are happy Come on guys come But to discover the contents of the tomb We will have to wait We are going to close it with blocks so that thieves cannot get down Go break the blocks that are inside There we have temporarily secured it It's frustrating but Vassil has no other choice than to seal the tomb for the night His name as well as that of Abdou the Egyptian inspector in charge of the search They are inscribed on the wall that blocks access to the discovery Here it is It's a kind of signature of When the thieves are going to tell me Oh I'm scared yes it's Abdou it's the day I can't touch him because he's already seen it If he sees my name it's over he'll leave Vassil is one of the few archaeologists to have continued his work even at the worst moment of the Egyptian Revolution Saqqara is the very very large cemetery of the Egyptian capital If we can compare it to France to Paris It's like losing the chair The capital of the Pharaohs Memphis was located here at the site of this vast palm grove Today almost nothing remains As for Saqqara undoubtedly the most sacred site in the country's history it was just across overlooking On a desert strip where the first pyramids of Egypt were built Vassil has been working here for over 20 years and is today one of the best experts on its secrets It is a protected place exceptional elevated That is why the kings chose this place to be buried If one thinks of Egyptian pharaonic this is the place closest to the Sun The Sun is their god the creator god So if we want to get closer to the Sun that's where we need to go Vassil chose to install his excavation at the top of a hill the highest point of the entire Saqqara site A construction site where today the remains of tombs built more than 4000 years ago are emerging from the desert e structures that the ancient Egyptians called the houses of eternity This morning Vassil is clearing the tomb he has just discovered about ten meters below the surface of the desert Under his command about fifty workers are working around the funeral well But no one is allowed to enter the tomb before the archaeologist You must make as few vibrations as possible because inside there is a roof under which there is a lot of sand So it must not break Here is the structure of the tomb that Vassil uncovered A vertical well 10 meters deep The passage leads to the vault made of decorated limestone blocks Inside the archaeologist hopes to discover a sarcophagus and perhaps a mummy and funerary objects But before that we will have to empty the tomb which is completely filled with debris It is impossible to know for now what is still underneath Soon the top of the walls appears Despite the sand the colors remain intact and the first inscriptions quickly provide valuable information Here we begin to have a formula it is the offering formula It is the king who offers an offering For the god Anubis who is the god of mummification And it is only at the end of this line It is possible that we will have the name and titles of the character who is of interest here Here other offerings appear These are the pots and jars in which oils were kept Without these oils one does not revive That is clear In Egyptian civilization what is depicted on the walls has magical power These beef legs for example They allow the deceased to eat in the afterlife When you eat meat you become strong Therefore we would like to be strong in the next life Even to this day people say it in Arabic When you see someone strong you don't say they are very strong They say he eats meat Vassil thinks these paintings are about 4 200 years old They are nevertheless in remarkable condition One can even see the painter's mistakes in them The archaeologist can now slip to the bottom of the tomb He will try to identify the hieroglyphs They indicate the name and position of the person buried here Now we go through the registration Priest and reader Scribe magician I think his name is Sabi Yes his name is Sabi What does that mean Roughly my protection something like that This character has just recited in the story Because his name has just been spoken That's exactly what he was looking for For them this was it the resurrection life after death Imagine the importance of that Will someone ever say our name After 6 000 years of our era When we are today 4 000 years after it is 6 000 So no one will ever speak my name nor your name nor that of the President of the Republic It will not even be known While we just mentioned the name of a simple priest who was buried here And therefore he on the other hand exists The debris has accumulated on what remains of the ceiling It must be removed to prevent collapse In the rubble a surprise awaits the archaeologist Objects appear A small painted stone lid and an even more exceptional find I think it's a statuette It is a wooden figurine It is rather rare objects like this Because for it to have been preserved for thousands of years We need a good well-sealed place Otherwise the wood will rot But what is she doing there She shouldn't be there she should be downstairs Because there she is on the ceiling She is on the ceiling Someone took it threw it behind like that onto the ceiling That's we need to put it back right The tomb was therefore looted in ancient times But luckily the thieves left behind several objects It is a small limestone bridge A very simple piece whose value is nevertheless counted in thousands of euros All these objects were meant to help the deceased live again after death These are imitation vases That is they just have a fictitious function But they represent 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 jars There it's much smaller but let's imagine they are jars with beer with liquids with oils with things like that As for the statue it undoubtedly represents the owner of the tomb But the upper body did not hold Unfortunately she is completely rotten We can't move her If you move it it will crumble to dust You see the head no longer exists The lower body is perfect but the head no longer exists It doesn't matter if the statuette isn't whole we must save what can still be saved Ali the restorer from the mission It is called to preserve this small piece of wood carved more than 4 000 years ago It is a product based on cellulose It is for wood to reinforce the wood Either it has rotted over time because it was in the sand and didn't preserve well Either the thieves who came through here exactly maybe beheaded her they took out her eyes Because they didn't want to be recognized They were afraid when they want something That the tomb's owner the one who will rise sees it and denounces it he denounces it to the eyes In this way this thief who also hopes to be resurrected one day hopes to pass off as a good person someone very respectable Like that our Sabi will tell him The statue even though very damaged is an indication of the objects that were in the tomb at the time of burial For the archaeologist it is therefore a very valuable testimony Last step Vassil and his workers empty the rest of the tomb They still hope to find the remains of the priest Sabi perhaps some remains of his mummy or his sarcophagus But unfortunately nothing escaped the looter So the situation is clear it has been internally violated The skull is found under the stone smashed Look at the state he's in Is this for entering Yes it's mainly for Sabi Here is what remains of him Although the tomb had been robbed the discoveries of today are exceptional This fully painted tomb will join Vassil 's collection on the Saqqara plateau The other treasures he has discovered are located a few meters from the excavation beneath the surface of the desert a closed and very secure location Fifteen years ago when he started digging Vassil had the luck of a beginner We are here with the first grave we discovered in 2001 And were lucky enough to immediately come across an intact facade A facade dating back to the Old Kingdom the golden age of ancient Egypt and will lead him to other tombs just next to it All belong to priests Characters who have spent their lives in service to the Pharaoh Vassil who reads hieroglyphs like a comic book He managed to get into the intimacy of these characters So here we have a priest an Egyptian priest He was serving a Pharaoh And there it is we are in front of his tomb in front of the facade of his tomb so that's his door Here his door you enter and indeed the tomb is behind His name is Pépian which means the king Pepi is alive It's a bit like today if I want to be in a good position if I want to be a good French government official I will call him President Hollande and living That's exactly it That would make me look good And him that's exactly it Next to him is his wife the beloved of course He loves his wife so she is called the beloved Yes but we have a small problem because between the two there is another woman And she is the one who makes the heart alive This is the heart This is the one that makes the heart alive It's a whole program So I suppose of course it's just a hypothesis that she might be his mistress So the one who makes her heart alive of course is a younger one her wife that's everyone's dream And this dream he has in his earthly life he wants to transpose it He wants it to continue in the other world These reliefs that decorate the tomb's facade are invaluable They are among the oldest and the most beautiful works discovered on the Saqqara site At the back there is the well And that's where the tomb is down there A nine-meter deep well and a limestone crypt without any decoration which was empty at the time of its discovery This tomb was looted during antiquity All these tombs are protected by a metal ceiling and by secure traps to deter thieves Pillage is today Vassil's greatest fear The objects that the archaeologist has just discovered will all be secured Vassil and Abdou must first inventory them accurately The market value of all these items amounts to tens of thousands of euros They will soon be safe in the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities warehouses They photograph it like that so it is protected The object has an identity Exactly he has an identity but also he is already known Once the object is numbered it must not disappear Because it is salty it exists The Saqqara desert is therefore full of treasures but also of robbers who are willing to do anything to get them Around the excavation site Abdou noticed many signs of their passage Look at this hole If you look around you you will find them everywhere The looters come and dig holes everywhere They probe and then move from one place to another You see they have also dug there In some places it seems that the looters even used bulldozers Look at this Enormous craters have appeared on the hillside Here in ancient times they dug funeral chambers into the mountain The tuna poachers have arrived They have broken the rock until they discovered these cavities Afterwards they followed the corridors to the tombs They took everything that was inside Do you see all the sand they removed According to Abdou the looters who dug these holes would be none other than some residents of the neighboring village Located below in the palm grove Abdou cites the uncontrolled expansion of the local cemetery as proof which has suddenly invaded the desert right in the middle of the archaeological site oward the pyramids What you see here all these white brick walls are tombs that were built by some local residents after the Revolution When it was chaos and there was no police anymore Are these not real graves For the most part these are not real tombs They build a room a ceiling a door And when they are inside you can't tell what they are doing These are clandestine excavations invisible from the outside In the cemetery's alleys there are even very recent traces of the grave robbers' passage Like here where they have tested the soil with a machine The common people have lost their heads because of the Antiquities They say that a small figurine they can put in their pocke Bring them millions At least today in Egypt that's what everyone thinks The French archaeologist Vassil Dobref launches a new phase of his excavation campaign For 15 years Vassil has focused on a small area a 50-meter site which he explores methodically If he has settled here it's not by chance This is Père Lachaise Is this Père Lachaise Exactly it's the main cemetery like Père Lachaise in Paris spanning 3 000 years This cemetery is a real goldmine for archaeologists Vassil has just discovered an impressive tomb the largest ever found here This 12-meter structure is the foundation of a mastaba A large brick tomb that housed a multitude of burial wells Each of them could potentially lead to an underground vault and new treasures But on the surface the archaeologist also discovered several skeletons that were buried on the mastaba more than 1 000 years after its construction On a skeleton here but it can easily be placed on another skeleton One day I remember I found five skeletons one on top of the other The study of skeletons is Diane's affair The site's anthropologist Today exceptionally she came to work with her son Victor Two and a half years and already a vocation as an archaeologist He's beautiful He's beautiful my skeleton Yes Do you find him not bad He has eyes He has eyes Yes He has eyes the skeleton Did you explain to him what you were doing and what you found I gave him the words He knows they are bones the bones it's called a skeleton Uh For now he doesn't know that it's What's under his skin is what we find after He might still be a bit too young to conceptualize the The fact that once you're dead that's what remains And here is the man in charge of conducting the mission's surveys He is called Olivier and he is Victor's father He is outdoors Most children are in daycare all day at this stage He is with his parents outside in the desert on an archaeological site Not every child can participate in this kind of adventure What is that Where is the trowel There Thank you A little further on the workers called Vassil because their tools just hit a large limestone block that doesn't belong there It is the lid of a stone sarcophagus It is still sealed It is still closed because we have the key you see There that's the cover here There that's the stator that seals and at the bottom that will be the tank A still-sealed sarcophagus On the site excitement is rising because inside there may still be a mummy The opening of a sarcophagus is always a powerful moment for an archaeologist Come on now let's open it No it's not a real mummy It's just a wrapped It's not a mummy but it's very interesting First he's an immature between 15 and 18 years old How do you know that When the third molars have not yet emerged plus the epiphyses that are not yet fused to the long bones All of this shows that he's still a young teenager Unlike a mummy the body hasn't been embalmed to preserve it but simply wrapped in strips This is already a sign of a particularly well-prepared burial To study the skeleton and understand the cause of death Diane will remove them It was lime probably in several layers There is really a large quantity of strips that are wrapped around the body No object in this tomb but for Vassil each discovery teaches him a little more about the way the Egyptians viewed death One very important thing in ancient Egypt they did not say that he was dead They said his breath had become tangled It exited the body They need a body So that the breath could return to the body To preserve it it had to be mummified This obsession with life after death was that of the entire Egyptian society starting with the Pharaoh who had an extraordinary tomb The neighboring pyramid which belongs to King Djoser is almost 5 000 years old It is the oldest stone monument in human history The restoration was interrupted during the Revolution five years ago Today exceptionally Vassil and Diane were allowed to climb to the top thanks to this scaffold left in place at the end of the work From here you can admire the entire history of the Old Empire Giza is magnificent To the north the Giza plateau and the famous pyramids of Khufu Khafre and Menkaure To the south the two pyramids of Pharaoh Sneferu the father of Khufu And all around a multitude of other well-preserved structures It's really magnificent This is the first time I've climbed to the top of a pyramid It's still quite rare And not just any one after that It's magnificent It's a good start Here it began We climbed from 10 meters to 60 meters There were at 105 meters but still two large pyramids There they were at 147 meters It's a bit like a competition between them That is to say the idea was to still reach the sun The higher you are the closer you are to the sun There it's much closer to the sun than down there Today there are approximately 120 pyramids in Egypt A magnificent playground for archaeologists End of the workday it is in Vassil's car that the whole family returns to Cairo Diane and Olivier arrived in Egypt at the end of 2010 just before the Revolution Despite the turmoil they chose to stay o fully live their passion for ancient Egypt We'll put it there Go on Vasco goodbye see you tomorrow Good evening Vasco Today they are settled in a residential neighborhood to the south of Cairo A comfortable 200 square meter apartment Far from the hustle of the city center The Cairo has now over 16 million inhabitants An impressive megalopolis In which Victor nevertheless feels right at home Are you waiting for me even so He was born in Cairo in a small clinic Yes he is at home Here in the neighborhood for now I've never had any problems walking in the street with him Generally people are very kind Above all when there's a small one Here it is Hello It should be said that Victor is beginning to become known in the neighborhood So Victor what are we buying Look Do you want strawberries Victor Are you taking the strawberries Thank you The merchants have become attached to this little Frenchman they see regularly Laughter Are you okay They are doing everything to make him happy Don't you want some You don't want some No I don't want some That's good Excellence Go on excellence Say goodbye Bye-bye He is a father He is a mother No that's not it LaughterCoulot If Diane is comfortable in her neighborhood She hesitates however to leave her apartment since the Revolution There are places we won't go that's for sure There are places we used to go and won't go anymore for now For example The Islamic Quarter of Cairo Perhaps it's not dangerous at all it's possible but we prefer not to go there The downtown area Tahrir Square all of that you can never be safe from encountering a demonstration even though they are more regulated There were quite a few problems around Tahrir Square Anyway for Victor for me in the neighborhood it's okay it's okay Despite the sometimes unstable situation in Egypt Diane does not plan to return to France for the time being The next day at the base of what is undoubtedly the most mysterious of Egypt's pyramids the tomb of Sneferu The father of Khufu 105 meters high Strictly closed to the public it is very rare to be able to enter it Even for an Egyptologist Vassil was only able to explore it four times since the beginning of his career For him all the other pyramids They have only copied the principles that were invented here 4 700 years ago This is the corridor that leads down into the heart of the pyramid towards the first chamber There it's 70 meters And you have to lean a lot because it' s barely a meter by a meter practically So somewhere when returning to the Faron's tomb one must bend We will use the notch To access the heart of the pyramid you must overcome many obstacles There are always bats by the thousands Vassil progresses through a series of increasingly narrow galleries Oops Oh no it's hitting the bats right Here it goes straight up A complex architecture No one has ever really understood the logic What's it for I don't know It goes up and comes down I don't know where There may still be another room to find After half an hour of exploration Vassil finally reaches what was once the funerary chamber of the Faron A mysterious room car unlike other Egyptian pyramids it was completely empty when it was discovered There was a principle that there was a sarcophagus but there isn't one No sarcophagus has ever been found for this nephrite The pyramids functioned as resurrection machines The king was reborn in his tomb Then it rose toward the sky through this long corridor always directed northward It is undoubtedly there in antiquity that the robbers slipped in to seize the pharaoh's valuable objects This rule for pyramids is also their weakness The thieves later became perfectly aware that to enter a pyramid You have to go to the middle of the northern face and look for the corridor that goes down into the pyramid That's why the following kings changed They started putting fake corridors corridors to the east south and west to fool the thieves Despite their ingenuity the Pharaohs rarely succeeded in protecting their treasures from thieves Only Ankamon has succeeded in it At the Saqqara site Vassil has brought in the big equipment to advance his excavation project This crane will allow the rate to triple The archaeologist is eager to empty this exceptionally large well e most promising of the tomb he has just discovered In Saqqara where excavation methods are entirely manual the arrival of a crane is an event And the workers are more motivated than ever At this rate the bottom is quickly reached about 15 meters below the surface Plus a question of scale to go down that low Vassil has no choice He must board that small capsule And he is not very reassured In the end the workers stopped at the entrance of a funeral chamber And the first brushstrokes are promising because it seems intact Here it is this is the start of the excavation for the chamber the mountain's vault And it has been completely sealed You can clearly see the black lining the black mud that was used to seal the chamber behind And there it shows that no one has entered the room since it was closed It's exceptional It may have happened in a life What Vassil hopes is that the tomb is closed Since the burial more than 4 000 years ago Inside therefore could be the sarcophagus and precious objects that accompanied the deceased in the afterlife But on the left side the sealing of the tomb appears to have been started Something there doesn't seem right There's still a small gap a gap And the bricks aren't in place I wonder has anyone not come down from there like that in ancient times leaving this behind Vassil thinks a thief might have slipped through this small opening But would he have taken everything To get to the bottom of it you need to clear the opening And in the rubble First surprise Oh there's This is getting interesting A small alabaster vase Oh my If it's like that inside my God The work was still magnificent there It's very very pretty very delicate very well made It shows a certain quality and the importance of the character inside Men or women we don't know yet But it's a good sign It's a good sign The market value of this small vase exceeds ten thousand euros From this moment on with objects of such small size and such great value we must proceed with caution The sand removed from the well is sifted to let nothing through The team finally reaches the level of the burial chamber And so it begins here The room starts here with the inscription So the room is completely decorated and filled with sand Do you see Yes Oh wow That's much better than the other one And there it is Another discovery Yes very similar Yes that's right yes it's much better It's much better work I can't see his name It's a bit far Oh it's much more beautiful It's much more beautiful And it's empty there At the edge of the tomb a new discovery A very valuable object It is a small tablet Yes it's the tablet were expecting Do you see the small pots we saw Maybe she was lying on it The tablet is engraved and it gives the name of the deceased Yes so it's Yes that's very interesting At the top there is a small line that reads from right to left which tells us the owner Narti Ankh a force of life It is a small vase Maybe for the oils Unfortunately it's empty I would like some if there were still a few drops of oil to put on it To feel but good Inside the tomb Vassil and Abdou discover ceramics They were supposed to contain beer oil and grains so the deceased could eat after his resurrection Here's another one All of this has been in place since ancient times He put on the plaster plug There you can clearly see the jar That's exactly the one you see here There is a traffic jam here that isn't visible on the map It looks like this shape That one is a bit longer But it's light maybe oil-based Mixed with the sand Vassil also finds tiny objects that most of us would pay no attention to This one however has magical power This is what is called the mouth-opening knife The instrument used to open the mouth of the deceased The one who has died so that the breath of life may return His breath enters the mummy so that he may revive A new surprise It is a golden leaf Very very beautiful It's a magnificent work A remnant of jewelry probably left with the deceased at the time of burial such as this necklace Displayed on the walls of the tomb It is still the proof that in the tomb there were golden objects of great value Vassil's mission is funded by France but all these discoveries belong to Egypt and will remain in the country Some will certainly be displayed in the museums of Cairo A great success even though the archaeologist can't help bu To continue dreaming of one day discovering an intact tomb For us it is very important if one day we find a tomb with violet That would be the absolute best That's the maximum we can hope for But well if it can happen it's not necessary Final precaution before leaving the excavation Vassil had the well sealed with custom-fitted armored doors To prevent thieves from plundering his treasures Here it closes well