Building Khufus Pyramid - Lost Secrets of the Pyramid - Episode 2 - Full Documentary

Egypt's Great Pyramid, the tallest structure on Earth for thousands of years. It all started with the quest to make a gigantic pyramid that was perfect. Nothing on this scale had ever been attempted before. The Great Pyramid wasn't just a building. It is where the king would have lived eternally. For 4,500 years, how this supersized burial chamber was built has been an enigma. It's the infrastructure behind construction of the pyramids that, for me, is fascinating. But could archaeologists now finally solve the mystery thanks to amazing new discoveries? From a pyramid worker's journal lost for thousands of years... This is a very new way to see the building of this pyramid. ..to a mysteriously entombed boat being excavated right now at the pyramid's base. This is the number one project, not only in Egypt but all over the world. Will these ancient clues and a pioneering new experiment... There is some water, you know? ..help bring the incredible secrets of the Egyptians back to life... It's stuck somehow. ..and reveal what it was really like for the people who lived and died creating the greatest monument the world had ever seen. The Giza Plateau, home to a series of giant ancient tombs. The oldest is the Great Pyramid. It's the sole survivor of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was built for the powerful pharaoh Khufu, who demanded the grandest tomb of all time to transport him to the afterlife. The big mystery is how the ancient Egyptians could build such an incredible structure in this unforgiving desert. And what was it like for the thousands of workers who achieved the impossible? Could a breathtaking new discovery finally reveal the answers? The journal of an ancient sailor called Mera. Archaeologists want to decode his text to use it in an incredible experiment. How did he get thousands of giant stones from a distant quarry right up to the pyramid site using manpower alone? So far, they've cut the rock and built a boat. But can they get this massive block across the Nile and haul it to the pyramid? On the banks of the river, archaeologist Mohamed Abdel Maguid and his team are working on how best to get the stone on board. Mera would be worried of the loading of the boat itself. But he would have skilled men who would calculate where to put the stones and how to do it. But Mohamed's already hit a big problem. His team designed the cargo boat to carry an average-sized pyramid block of 2.5 tonnes. This one weighs a whole tonne more. The team has a tough call to make. The boat could sink under the extra weight. But Mohamed decides to take the risk. Archaeologist Claire Somaglino is joining them for this crucial moment. Me too. When they will put it on the boat... We'll know. We'll know. The ancient Egyptians were very aware that loading was everything. Their heavy cargo had to be placed evenly across the vessel to prevent it capsizing. If Mohamed doesn't get it right, his boat could turn over. The overweight block is finally loaded. All seems to be well. But suddenly the team spots a big problem. The top part of the hull isn't waterproof. But the heavy rock is forcing it underwater. The experiment is heading towards disaster. Mohamed and his team need to find a solution fast. But what? It's clear that carrying such heavy stones by water would have been a difficult and dangerous process for the ancient Egyptians. So why was Khufu determined to push his workforce to the absolute limit to build such a massive structure? At an ancient cemetery, Egyptologist Salima Ikram is investigating where Khufu would have got the idea for a giant pyramid-shaped tomb from. And why it was so important. It's an amazing place because here you have tombs of high officials laid out like city blocks. So you can walk through the streets and have the tombs, which served as houses for eternity for these ancient Egyptian elites. Tombs like this are known as mastabas and cover underground burial chambers. For about 300 years, mastabas were the basic standard for tombs. But we see a change in about 2700 BC. The king was going to be buried in a large mastaba and then they decided to enlarge it. And so they stacked a smaller one on top until they wound up with several steps. The Egyptians had created the first ever pyramid, the Step Pyramid of Saqqara. One of the theories is that the pyramid represents the mound of creation, the first mound of earth upon which sat the sun god, and that's where creation happened. And so this is, of course, about creation and recreation in the afterworld. And so it is where the king would have lived eternally. This new symbolically shaped tomb was an immortality machine and Khufu wanted the biggest and best. The Great Pyramid took the idea to the limit. It was the ultimate status symbol. But it wasn't just the exterior that was an engineering challenge on a truly massive scale. This pyramid is one of the most extraordinary structures, not just because of the whole volume and size, but because of its internal structure, which is incredibly complicated. The pyramid had such a complex interior because it was, in fact, a giant vault. If the pharaoh's body was damaged or destroyed, he would perish in the afterlife. Khufu hoped the overbearing scale of the pyramid would scare off robbers. But inside, he took further precautions. To keep his body safe in the king's chamber, ancient engineers created an elaborate blocking mechanism at the entrance. A series of three heavy stone slabs that were dropped into position by ropes. Then they slid granite blocks through the grand gallery and plugged the passageway. Finally, they blocked the main entrance and hid it beneath a seamless layer of casing stones. The Great Pyramid wasn't just a building, it wasn't just a tomb. It was really much more complicated because it has a culmination of a lot of thought, processes, engineering, but also religious thought that helped the state get enough people together, organise them, pay for them, in order to create something as magnificent as that. Back at the Nile, Muhammad is discovering what the ancient Egyptians were up against, trying to make Khufu's giant dream a reality. Just one single pyramid block on his vessel is causing leaks and making it sink. It continues to take water inside. With this amount of water, the stability will be affected. The water is adding even more weight to the already overloaded boat. Muhammad decides they have to stop and make the rock smaller. The weight is much more than it can take the boat for the stability. It is about 3.6 tonnes. It's better to take out one tonne and leave to 2.6. Muhammad's gamble hasn't paid off. The team needs to start again. It's more difficult for us now because we don't know exactly the techniques and we don't do that every day for sure, so we don't have the experience they had. Archaeologists think Mera's boat must have been incredibly well made, as it could carry up to 70 tonnes of stone at a time. Sometimes I hope to dream how they would do because it's not easy to go back again, so a dream would be easier. Instead, the only way for Muhammad to uncover Mera's methods is to use trial and error. But he still has no idea if his boat will cope, even with a smaller stone. The experiment is revealing that Khufu not only needed a vast workforce, but a highly experienced one that knew the answers. So he had to keep his workers healthy and motivated. But how did he do this in a blistering desert, near the Great Pyramid? Archaeologist Mark Lehner is trying to discover how well labourers were looked after by locating where they lived. You can see a concentration of disintegrated pottery. There's been so much wind, things are starting to be exposed. The style of these artefacts tells Mark that they date to the time of pyramid building at Giza. We've documented hundreds of thousands of pieces of pottery, maybe more than a million, actually. And, you know, it's kind of like a car aficionado. All he needs is just the fender, and he knows it was a 57 Chevy. He doesn't need the whole car. Vast amounts of pottery are evidence that this area was once a large settlement. But is this where pyramid workers lived? Are we on the spot where Mera and his men stayed overnight? We put a grid over the whole place in order to map it, and then we can decide where to excavate down to the floor level to the houses and places where they lived and spent the night. Mark's plotted out the foundations of several buildings here, and he's found one that he thinks is a style appropriate for a team leader like Mera. So what we did is to bury the original under a protective layer of sand, and then on top of that, exactly in the same place, using the same material for the bricks, we built a replica extruded to a certain height to get some idea how the different spaces were used. Mark can see that Mera could have lived in relative luxury. And here you come into the main living room. Now, opening off this same central room, you also have, in effect, his bedroom. This is a rather substantial sleeping platform, as we call them, and so it's just about the right length, you know, see, for an official of moderate height, like myself, to stretch out. But houses like this were too grand for the workers that Mera commanded. So Mark wants to uncover where labourers would have stayed. Around each of these house compounds, I expected to find smaller houses of the dependents. Well, we found some of that, but in the centre of the site, we found something very different. Mark's unearthed the outline of a building that is 35 metres long. It is the perfect size to sleep 40 people, the number of workers that Mera is likely to have had in his team. The thick walls, supported arches and a flat roof, laid side by side, these barrack blocks were an efficient way of housing a huge workforce. This structure was used just after Khufu's time. But he also ensured labourers were well cared for by building a vast, modern town just like this. This would have been occupation of a density unseen anywhere else in Egypt, in any village or town site of that time. But providing adequate accommodation on this scale was only part of Khufu's problem. The huge workforce was labouring hard and needed to eat. So how did Khufu feed thousands of hungry people in this scorching desert? At a laboratory near the pyramid, archaeologist Claire Mallison is searching for clues in objects and garbage left behind by pyramid workers thousands of years ago. There could be up to 50 items in each box, tiny little bits of detritus of everyday life. Can she find out what Khufu's workers might have eaten? These are samples of ash from within one of the houses of the town. And the plants are preserved when they're charred and we can identify what plant it is just by the shape. Wheat is the most important crop for making bread. To feed just the individuals staying in the barracks area would need over 200 loaves of bread a day. You needed around 200 people grinding the grain to provide the flour for those bakeries and around 400 different farmers producing grain to supply the town for a year. Khufu probably gave his thousands of workers freshly baked bread on a daily basis. This would mean production on a massive scale at the pyramid. And Claire has found evidence at the workers' town. We've got various different sizes of bread moulds. The mould itself weighs about 7 kilos. So imagine this full of bread as well. It was pretty hefty. And we have hundreds of these, hundreds and thousands and tons of fragments of them. All the clues suggest builders like Mehra and his men would not have been poorly cared for. Good living conditions were vital to the success of the Great Pyramid. But another way Khufu managed to control and retain his vast workforce was to divide them into clear groups, each with its own separate identity and purpose. 250 kilometres away in Wadi al-Jarf, where Mehra's incredible journal was unearthed, archaeologist Pierre Tallet is decoding the astonishing document. This papyrus is the only first-hand account of the building of the Great Pyramid ever found. Pierre is using it to search for details about how Khufu structured his vast workforce. And he's found new evidence about the team Mehra controlled. This Inspector Mehra is the chief of a small group of about 40 persons. It is only a section of a big team. But the organisation of work that we can see here is exactly the same as for building of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. Pierre has figured out that the man in charge of the entire operation during Mehra's time was called Ankaf, the half-brother of the pharaoh himself. Ankaf divided Khufu's giant workforce into files of 40 men. Mehra was the leader of just one of these files. Four files formed a gang of 160 elite labourers. And it took many of these gangs to make up a huge workforce, estimated to be at least 2,000 strong at the pyramid itself. Each team working at the site had specific roles in construction or transportation. There is a very precise division of the work. I think everything is perfectly planned and everything is perfectly calculated for the pyramid building. Pierre has uncovered another incredible find at Wadi al-Jarf that reveals how each file of men was given their own clear identity and sense of purpose. The clue is painted on pottery that belonged to Mehra and his men. Most of this pottery was inscribed with formula giving the name of the team that were supposed to use them. The pot reveals that Mehra's file was called the followers of the boat named after the snake on its figurehead. Those fragments are naming the team of Mehra and we can even imagine that Mehra himself could have handled the job. Pierre's crew is uncovering team names on objects found across this site. They've discovered the names of six separate files so far. By giving each file a clear identity, Khufu may have fostered a sense of pride and competition amongst teams of elite workers. And Pierre thinks he's found yet more evidence that shows how naming teams was invaluable to pyramid building because it held workers like Mehra accountable for their jobs. You have the general shape of the lion here. You can see the face of the lion and the inscription naming the team. Pierre has discovered that large stones unearthed here at Wadi al-Jarf are marked with the name of the file responsible for moving them. A team that is taking responsibility, a block will have its name written on the block with red ink. All the big blocks that you can see here were inscribed with control marks so it's a way to control the work of the team. The same kind of control marks that you have in the Pyramid of Giza. Organising the workforce into named teams allowed overseers to keep tight control and ensure the pyramid would be completed on time. Back on the banks of the Nile, Mohammed Abdel Maguid is trying to recreate the specific tasks that Mehra and his file were assigned. He needs to load a 2.5 tonne rock onto his reconstruction boat. The team tried a larger block, but it nearly sunk the vessel. So now they're taking a tonne off it to see if the boat will cope. This is the only block they have. So if stonemason Fatih damages it, the experiment will be over. It is about 2.6 tonnes now. And we will put it again on the sledge on the boat to see the stability of the boat again. The team needs to watch for leaking water, the sign that the block is still too heavy. We don't have this amount of water that was there for the first time. It's looking good. The boat is taking the strain. But before the team casts off, there's one last addition Claire wants to make. We know that in the time of Mehra, sometimes boats have a figure of a crow. So we have a bit of fun in putting figures of cobras to make this boat much more like an Antwerp boat of Mehra. Mohammed's vessel is finally ready to set off. But how long would Mehra's journey have taken? And how would his men have controlled the boat? In Wadi al-Jarf, Pierre is looking for answers about Mehra's journey between stone quarries at Tura and the pyramid at Giza. The logs are giving a precise idea of the time which is needed to go from Tura to the area of Giza. What we can think by looking at the wool logs that we have, that it takes... They are able to travel about 20km a day. This is a good pace for a boat with such a heavy load. So how did they do it? Mehra explains that the chosen quarry was upstream from the pyramid. So when his boat was carrying rock, the team could row with the Nile's current to give them speed. When they had offloaded their heavy cargo, they could then look to the winds to help propel the lighter vessel against the current back to the quarry. According to the papyrus, this strategy meant Mehra managed to transport 200 blocks every month. But if there were no winds, Mehra and his team had to rely on manpower alone. Sometimes something which is not expected appears, and this is probably the point where the papyri are most interesting. One day there is no wind, so they are obliged to hold the boats themselves. So it doesn't work necessarily the way they want. At the river Nile, the team is ready to cast off. They're going to attempt to transport the rock straight across the Nile to see what it reveals about how Mehra would have controlled his vessel. It seems difficult for them to row. The rookie team is immediately struggling to keep the boat stable as they attempt to manoeuvre it. We have a problem from some wave. Port side is lower in the water than the starboard. The boat's rocking has caused the heavy limestone block to slip. The block has shifted a little bit to the port side. That's why we have this tilting in the boat. This is not the best situation. If the stone slips further, the boat could capsize. The crew needs to get control of the vessel fast. They soon realise that fighting the Nile's flow is making their situation worse. So like the ancient Egyptians, they decide to row with the current. The crew use rudders at the rear of the boat and oars at the side to propel and steer the vessel gradually towards the far shore. The rowers are having fun on the boat. It's a new experience for them. They're doing well, I think. Four and a half thousand years after Mera sailed pyramid blocks across the Nile, Mohamed's team has successfully recreated part of the journey. They've realised that the ancient Egyptians avoided fighting the Nile when possible. Instead, they harnessed its powerful current to help deliver their heavy loads with incredible efficiency. I think Mera would be proud with the accomplishment of his work. He was doing something for the king, which is very important for them at this time. What do you think? Obviously sailing was a difficult work. This job is not easy. We have to admit it. Mohamed's part of the experiment is now complete. But the most difficult stage of the block's journey is still to come, when another team will haul the stone from the port to the pyramid face using manpower alone. Getting enough rock to the pyramid site was only one of the massive problems Khufu faced. His army of workers needed thousands of tools to complete the job. So where did they source enough raw material? In the former pyramid supply hub of Wadi al-Jarf, Pierre Tallet is looking for answers. The workers have just found a tool which seems to be very well preserved inside one of the galleries. I've not seen it myself, and it's just coming out of the sands. It has really the shape of a blade. It seems like a dagger, in fact, a small kind of a dagger. It's a little bit broken. I don't think it's complete. The blade is complete, but the other part is broken. It's not very expected to find this kind of copper knife, in fact, in this area right now. Copper is not so frequent because it's very precious. Builders needed copper chisels so they could cut and shape pyramid stones efficiently and neatly. But the ancient Egyptians had a problem. Mines within easy access of the monument couldn't produce the huge quantities needed. So workers had to look further afield for the raw copper. And Pierre thinks he knows how the builders solved this problem. We were going to the seaside of this place of the Suez Gulf, in the Red Sea, and we made an incredible discovery there. Six kilometres from Pierre's main excavation, he's unearthed something incredible. The ruins of a lost ancient jetty. This structure is one of the secrets that finally reveals how the Egyptians managed their huge build. These blocks are part of this jetty. It has been very well done because it actually was strong enough to last at least four million from the time of the construction. It's also possible to distinguish the underwater part of the jetty if you are looking closely to the sea. Pierre's team has mapped out the jetty at low tide and discovered that it stretches 200 metres out to sea in an L shape. At the bottom of the harbour itself we also find about 25 anchors that were left. So we have the most ancient artificial harbour ever found in the world. This harbour was built to be big enough to protect a large fleet of cargo boats that would sail across the Red Sea. The bigger mines for copper that Egyptians could use at that time were in Sinai. This harbour was probably exclusively to get copper for the tools for making the pyramid itself. Merer's papyrus reveals more. Decoding the hieroglyphs shows that copper imports were just the tip of the iceberg. Building the pyramid was such big business that a vast transport network was needed to funnel commodities towards the monument. The pyramid project was a truly international affair that would change Egypt forever. Food for the workers was farmed in the Nile Delta. Wood for shipbuilding came from Lebanon, 600 kilometres to the north. Limestone for the pyramid's casing came from Tura. And granite for its internal chambers from Aswan, far to the south. We have here an idea of the importance of the state at that time, organising very, very carefully all the raw material for the workers. All the country was working for the project of the building of this great pyramid of Khufu. But it wasn't just Khufu and his pyramid that would benefit from this massive new infrastructure. This huge construction project was transforming the nation. It opened up the country like never before. In Giza, archaeologist Claire Mallison is investigating how. People talk about how the pyramid was physically constructed. It's the infrastructure behind how that was done that, for me, is much more fascinating. Because it's hundreds of people from all over, from all over Egypt, from away from Egypt, from other countries as well, that in some way or another were involved in the construction of the pyramid. And it wasn't just people coming into the country, but many luxury goods, like olive oil. We've got several shared, several examples of combed ware on the site, which is the pottery from the Levant, so around modern Lebanon. And they were possibly used for transporting oil. There's one theory that the comb marks are to stop the... when you're holding it, to stop it slipping. Life was changing for Egyptians. And perhaps nowhere more so than at the busy harbour at the pyramid, where many goods like this were shipped. And archaeologist Mark Lehner is investigating where Mera docked with his shipment of pyramid blocks. It was a teeming, bustling, busy port. Through this water transport infrastructure came the cedar from Lebanon, the copper from Sinai, the gypsum from the Fayoum, people from all over Egypt. So where in this thriving port did workers like Mera offload limestone blocks? The most forgiving place offered by the Giza Plateau to Mera and his men for offloading their stone and getting it up to the Khufu Pyramid would have been the area now just out in front of the Sphinx. There's a natural ramping up. In fact, the modern road from the Sphinx to the Khufu Pyramid follows that very incline. Mark has identified the route. But how did pyramid builders haul heavy stone half a kilometre uphill with manpower alone? Archaeologist Adel Kalani wants to solve this mystery by recreating the journey. Now the workmen are preparing for putting the stone on the sledge. You need a strong wood. It's made from acacia wood and acacia is really strong and used in ancient times quite a lot because it's available everywhere in the Nile Valley and it can carry a lot of heavy stone. They make sure that the rope will be strong enough and tight enough with the sledge. You can see it's really very strong and the rope is really very, very large. They have to be very careful with the step because the stone is really very heavy. Adel's team clears away any rocks on the path that could get trapped under the sledge. He's assembled 40 labourers to drag the block up the slope. Now the workmen are ready for, you know, starting the final step. It's really very heavy. It's very heavy. It's stuck somehow. This is the result after you're trying to, you know, pulling very heavy stone with, you know, a rope like this. The ropes aren't strong enough to pull the sledge up the slope, across rough sand. So Adel's team has to make sure that the sledge is strong enough So what secret did the ancient Egyptians have? Evidence may lie in something Mera wrote 4,500 years ago. In Wadi al-Jarf, Pierre Tallet is investigating. Here we have the word Secha, which means to haul, hauling. And here you have the name stone, which reappears here. Hauling stones. In this point of the text is that this poor Mera has to do something which is not really his job. He is told by the Albers of the king to haul stones before to be allowed to get back to his job in Tora. Pierre is searching other areas of the site for clues that will reveal how Mera and his team dragged their stones. He's found something astonishing at caves known as galleries. What is really exceptional in this place of Wadi al-Jarf is that we are finding things that are not really known elsewhere in Egypt. And so you have here this wooden railway that was used to push this block. And it's quite exceptional that the wooden beams that were used here are still preserved. It gives a general idea of the techniques that were used by the Egyptians at that time to work. This incredible discovery gives the clearest evidence ever found that Egyptians transported pyramid stones over land using tracks. So back in Giza, Adel Kalani and his team have decided to lay down wooden rails too. It would be very interesting to test it and try it. It's very difficult to believe it until you test it. Adel decides to use rollers between the wooden rails and sledge. We have evidence about using rollers, actually. They found some of these kind of rollers in rural quarries. It's going very fast, actually, after we changed our techniques for transporting the block. You can listen for the sound of the workmen, actually. It shows that they are very happy and working very, very fast for transporting these blocks. It's completely confirmed about the sort of techniques that's used in ancient Egyptian time. Adel's experiment has revealed that rails and rollers could have been one of the Egyptians' secrets to building this incredible structure. But getting the block to the pyramid isn't the end of the challenge. The next job relies more on precision than brute strength. Adel needs to shape the block and give it the same slope as the Great Pyramid — 51.8 degrees. The ancient Egyptians are very clever with mathematics, including the angles that they used for these kind of large buildings. Ancient engineers figured out they only needed to take two measurements — a horizontal distance of 11 units and a vertical distance of 14 units. Joining them up gives an angle of 51.8 degrees. Ancient builders had to cut these outer casing stones very carefully. One mistake and the block is ruined. If it is broken, that would disappoint Murray and his team. Carrying and transporting the blocks, that would take a lot of time for him. But if you just do it the wrong way in the last step, that's completely killing your blocks and this will be useless. While Adel works carefully to shape the casing stone, at a cemetery on the other side of the pyramid, Mark Lehner is trying to work out how the ancient Egyptians got these giant stones into position on the towering pyramid face. Here we have a ramp that must have been connected with building this mastaba tomb. And it's made out of the most common stuff that must have been all over the place. Limestone debris from cutting stone. So a ramp like this may have worked just fine for moving stones up to the top of the mastaba. But can you imagine a straight-on ramp for moving stones to the top of the Great Pyramid of Khufu? A straight-on ramp would work well for the first third of the pyramid's height. This section would take two thirds of all the stones used in the entire structure. But after that, a straight-on ramp would become too long. Instead, some archaeologists think that workers piled up material around the pyramid's sides. And on top, they constructed a spiral ramp, allowing workers to haul building blocks and casing stones to the pinnacle, 140 metres up. These casing blocks decreased in size as you got to the top. The ones at the bottom of the Khufu pyramid weighed 15 to 17 tonnes. But the casing at the top gets so small, it's almost a one-man block. Almost blocks that one man could carry. Back at the base of the pyramid, Adel Kalani is finding that shaping each of the blocks must have been a gruelling and demanding process. Just like in ancient times, the final job is giving the casing stone its immaculate appearance. The main tools for doing the polishing, sand and sandstone. They just need to move the stone like this with the sand. First, you need to blow the sand away and see the surface, how it looks like. And you can see, actually, it's really very smoothy. These bright white stones were the final chapter in the story of building the Great Pyramid. When the pyramid was finished, it looked very different to today. Its 68,000 casing stones were fitted so tightly together, the seams were barely visible. Khufu's builders had created the tallest, heaviest structure on Earth. But to achieve this, the ancient Egyptians had to create much more than just a pyramid. They had engineered a vast artificial port to bring in goods and a sophisticated city for their organised workforce. The landscape was transformed for good and so was society. This created a whole new operating system for ancient Egypt and it all started with the quest to make a gigantic pyramid that was perfect. And the secret of how the ancient Egyptians achieved the perfect pyramid is still being uncovered through the incredible discovery at Wadi al-Jarf, where Pierre has decoded Mehra's lost papyrus to reveal many of Khufu's building techniques. This Inspector Mehra was completely forgotten, but he is coming back to life through the papyri that we are able to decipher. We have found plenty of fascinating things here and I hope to be able to work here many more years. Pierre's work is giving archaeologists like Mark Lehner an unprecedented insight into life 4,500 years ago. I've so often wanted just a moment facing the pyramids to see it as it was in its heyday, when they were being built. And Mehra's papyri have kind of given the next best thing. By joining the dots between pyramid, port and workers' town, archaeologists are exposing the real achievement of the ancient Egyptians. Once they had put all these systems and all this infrastructure in place, there was no going back. They became more important than the pyramid itself. And set Egyptian civilization off on a course for the next two or three millennia.