Ancient Egypt’s Blue Stone Enigma 🔍 Precision Box Mystery of Abusir | Mastaba of Ptahshepses

It's the same blue sandstone material that we discovered inside of the Pyramid of Ussur Coffin. You'll see there's also some unusual staining on this interior limestone piece. In today's expedition we return to the beautiful and enigmatic Abusir pyramid complex located on the western desert plateau with the Giza pyramids to the north and Saqqara to the south. Abusir, dubbed as the resting place of Osiris, served as one of the main elite cemeteries for the ancient Egyptian capital city of Memphis. The three major pyramids are Sahuray, Neferkaray, and Nayusiray which conventionally date to the fifth dynasty old kingdom. In part one of our return we had a rare opportunity to explore a monument considered to be the largest and architecturally unique non-royal tomb of the old kingdom belonging to one of the most outstanding members of the royal courtyard, Ptahshepsis. We investigated the blue sandstone plate of unknown origin and purpose. For the first time we entered the mastaba through the lotus column doorway and witnessed ancient funerary cult and biographical scenes of Ptahshepsis. We located and examined conduit systems and basins that were documented in early excavations and we studied the mysterious nubbed granite container that is lined with limestone with remarkable precision. Interior white limestone and one of the main things I wanted to point out here if you want to help support our research and expeditions grab some merch from the new archeo alchemy store. Rock the classic logo in your favorite color combination with some beautiful alchemical prints. There are hats, mugs, hoodies, shorts, tanks, and tapestries. More designs are in the works so stay tuned and if you want to be the lifeblood of my channel please become a member for early access exclusive updates and content. Thank you all so much now back to our adventure. On our way to investigate the temple of Ptahshepsis. Around in through this little area here and I want to show you a very unusual piece of stone. So check this out here. So this is a chunk of red quartzite and we're going to see this same red quartzite material when we get over to the pyramid of Nayusere and this is unusual you can pass that around we'll just leave this here though yeah so that's that's malachite or green copper oxide verdigris and it's unusual that it's covering all sides of this chunk of red quartzite. It's been potentially discussed that this collection bowl at the pyramid of Nayusere was coated in copper at the pyramids of Abu Ghraib which if you look that direction up in the distance those calisite bowls that look like they have the gear around them and we have found lumps of copper inside the cracks of those so that would be a pretty cool discovery we found remnants but this is a chunk of red quartzite and the copper is all around the outside if it was originally a copper coating you would only expect it to be on one face and the actual finished face of the piece so it's a little unusual that there's copper covering the outside of all the edges of that specimen but pretty cool and whenever you're done we'll just sit that down. It is currently raining and I will remember yeah yeah it's awesome and I will remember where that is for next time okay so first thing we're going to take a look at here so this is also a very unusual structure and feature of this site so we're standing on ground level you can see here that there's a shaft leading to the subterranean level and there would have also been another level above us so there was a three level structure that was here originally take a look at this look at that which is one of my favorite unusual artifacts from this is the subterranean floors of the structure you can see some fragments of basalt of this structure that descending shaft that leads down from over here actually terminates down here into this subterranean portion please stay away from the edge but just so you can see it okay so first look at this black piece right here that's black basalt but then I would call your attention everybody come around this way and take a look at this thing take a look at this piece and you can see on the sides here the finishing of this piece of stone so this is actually blue sandstone this is not black basalt but it's a different type of geology different type of chemical composition it looks they've taken uh samples of this has taken an analysis we also see some of the saw blade marks you can see the quality of this stone so you can you can see it here here you can see them here there's tool marks so this part was being finished and there was probably a lip here that came off that was cracked so this is again blue sandstone not black basalt this is a bit of an out-of-place artifact because it does not necessarily fit with the materials or the construction capabilities that we see with the rest of the structure over here it's very very unusual the only other place that we found blue sandstone is inside of the pyramid of usurk off in saqqara where the container is now completely blown into tiny little fragments it's completely destroyed tiny little piece of this thing all over the inner chamber and it's the same type of material please these marks on the side here have a bunch of little yeah there's like striations oh yeah yeah yeah we'll see we'll see a whole bunch of tool marks when we get to the pyramid of naius right but i just wanted to show you this artifact because it is a little bit unusual we don't know where this was intended to go or what it was a part of originally but i think you would agree that this is not necessarily the same as this right and it's definitely not the same as that piece of black so there's something very unusual and special about this piece of stone how did it end up here what was it originally a part of two correct yeah so it's it's one of those unusual artifacts that we don't have a fantastic explanation for because again is this in its original place probably not where did they find it and why did they move it over here very good question because that's a heavy piece of stone so you're also sitting on what is called a hotel or an altar so if this was the original place it certainly would have been a sacred ceremonial component of this temple structure with the hotel and altar right there my remarkable colleagues at the asidda project had an expedition to abu seir in 2017 to study the architectural and engineering features of the site as well as the skills of the ancient egyptian artists and scribes who left valuable information in stone the asidda project performed an analysis of this stone and the result was a fine-grained blue sandstone of unknown origin and purpose the analog of this material was used as a container lid found in the headless pyramid in saqqara and it is also found within the pyramid of usurka in saqqara you can watch rare footage from inside the forbidden pyramid of usurka from our 2023 private access research expedition in episode 19 as far as we know we were the first people to enter and obtain video documentation inside the pyramid of usurka since 2010 when our asidda project team had their expedition the mysterious blue stone that's found on top of the great pyramid is also believed to be blue sandstone this is a completely anomalous artifact it's not basalt it's actually blue sandstone it's the same blue sandstone material that we discovered inside of the pyramid of usurka and it's incredibly anomalous right there's no other components that are made of this thing clearly it's a finished fragment you could see saw blade cuts in here these are from the saw blade these striations here but it has this beautiful blue green color again i would love to just kind of scrub this thing but you can see this blue green vein here really really beautiful piece of stone so the question is um and really nice inclusions here so what was this thing originally what was the intention of this we don't know it's just a very unusual piece of stone and we're actually going to get to see and i'll show you the reason why it's not an original artifact but i'll show you exactly where that is and why it's not what anyone would imply it to be in the lost ancient high technology community because the acoustic properties of the stone it's made from quarrying it's not it has that stone because there's big cavities that have been carved in the bottom of it but we'll talk about that when we get there very unusual piece of stone blue sandstone with copper inclusions copper mineral inclusions coming 1960 the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology began its large-scale archaeological works on the territory of Abusir during a series of excavations from 1960 to 1974 the entire ancient structure known to us as the largest and most complex non-royal tomb of the old kingdom was completely unearthed and the parts that were sticking out exposed to the elements are the eroded parts and you'll see that when we go into the temple this is a layout of the Mstava Potash Shepsis done by Werner during the Czechoslovakian excavations here basins and fragments of a conduit system are recorded our objective for today's expedition is to locate and examine these basins and conduit pieces the Mstava was built in three phases the initial phase in yellow where the container is housed the second phase in green when the chapel was added and the third phase in blue when the pillared hall magazines boat room and column entrance was added this is a 3d layout of the Mstava done by Keith Hamilton to help orange you as we explore he has noted in red the only surviving in-situ ceiling piece you can see our restoration of the facade or exterior of the temple what's the point of the so those are either pyrus or lotus right they have two different symbolic adornments on the top of these things the entrance leads into a room with lotus columns built in the second enlargement phase of the and was originally to serve as an entrance to the Mstava but was closed off in the third phase enlargement the walls of this room are decorated with scenes of a funerary cult and biographical information of Potash Shepsis a narrow corridor decorated with images Potash Shepsis leads to the chapel with fragments of statues that once were standing in the three niches okay so again this is the temple or Mstava of Potash Shepsis and I'll show you some very interesting and unusual features of this temple this is my first time I've been in here three times on three different tours this is my first time coming through the main entrance so if you would I wouldn't touch anything in here do you have a flashlight yeah I should have it and I found one thing that we were looking for already is this another hotel here so these are what I would say are extended naos so naos or naos is a term of a basically a container for a statue housing so we'll see some of these in the Egyptian museum you can see down here at the bottom that there are hinges so there would have been a door that closed over this and there was most likely a statue or an offering of some sort that was housed in these little areas because you can see the door hinges here now your estimation is the paintings correct yes yes and as we walk outside we're going to move to the more ancient megalithic part of the structure again please don't touch anything don't touch the walls you oh please don't touch because there is some really well-preserved hieroglyphs original painting and these are naos so the priest or whoever would walk up these stairs would open the door prayer offering whatever god was in that mouse okay so now here's where things get even more interesting the chapel leads into the 20 limestone pillared courtyard which was built in the third phase enlargement of the mastaba these columns bear life-size pictures of patash shepsis and are arranged in such a way to lead a visitor to the large altar in the center then to the original mastaba's entrance and ultimately to the container room in the scheme on the right the arrows are showing the directions of the silhouettes on the columns so look right here yes yeah just get some footage of that and see if you can find the other one we've been looking for these basins this information on the conduit system and basins in the mastaba patash shepsis is provided in keith hamilton's layman's guide to the mastaba patash shepsis it stated that the exact row of the channels is uncertain due to damage and as well as the large basin which was connected to the drainage system a further small basin was discovered in the floor of the northern ambulatory this was a shallow and circular impression additionally a badly weathered altar was found just north of the niche opening 15 its original location is unknown let's see if we can find these all right we have located the small basin got a couple of things about and i think over there it's on the left there may actually be there should be another one around there somewhere so this is something that we were looking for here which is this channel and the circular depressions right here so we're very very intent on looking for all of these channels which there was either a pipe or a piece of metal or some sort of fluid was running through this thing there was most likely a copper basin or some sort of reservoir here that was originally housed in this piece and there's supposed to be a central basin okay i wouldn't say water i would say that it was definitely a chemical solution of some sort even if it was just an herbal tincture or distilled you know mixture of different herbs and flowers or whatever not necessarily for consumption but again this is emblematic right exactly but this would have been a channel or a pipe that was in here that flowed into a little metal basin that was housed in this area so it's a small but important component of the ritual that was being performed at this site so now we'll take a look at these limestone pillars and so we were talking about the sand at these sites and that all of this was buried in sand and they found it up to the height of the columns and that is why you see the erosion at the top of the pillars because everything below i noticed this wet dirt that appears to be draining into this depression here this may be an undocumented basin it's found in the northeastern corner of the mastaba of the pillared corridor okay here we have a different perspective of the depression in the northeastern corner of the mastaba and on the eastern wall between these two columns it was recorded that there was a conduit piece but now this architrave is placed upon the area and it makes it difficult to determine if the conduit piece still remains here's a schematic of the area it was believed that the conduit ran under this column here's a view of that architrave looking north and it appears that there may be an edge to a piece of masonry here on this architrave you see the hieroglyphs for patashypsis and also for stargate was buried in sand everything above was exposed to the elements for thousands and thousands of years that has led to the deterioration and erosion of the top of the pillars there's a number of different hypotheses for the erosion that occurred at this structure and there was also according to the original archaeological reports a basin here in the center of the structure so they had two basins here for whatever sort of ritual was being performed inside here's a basin here all right here's some evidence of liquid being directed to a depression this is definitely a basin but it's not clearly reported on the initial schematic this is the area in the schematic that we're investigating now all right this is a different perspective looking down into the cut in the masonry that's to the left of the niche 15 and you can see it's quite muddy i also noticed the circular cut in this piece of masonry here and i suspect it to be the badly weathered altar that was noted in fieldesplan it's noted that during excavations a badly weathered altar was found just north of the its original location is unknown but in fieldesplan he has it placed just south of the basin so i suspect it to be this piece here these are magazines yes okay another interesting feature found in the mastaba are these holes that are found in the pavement as well as on the walls there's about a dozen of these could there be door pivots if so why are some of them plugged with stone they still remain a mystery unfortunately during this expedition i was unable to thoroughly investigate this area it was recorded that there was a piece of conduit that ran underneath the wall here's a still image that i captured perhaps it's this piece of masonry here hopefully we'll have another chance to look at this area more closely and this is a different perspective looking at the western wall and you can see this depression here i suspect this is the area some sort of liquid we don't know what it was or what this particular area was for i would say most likely that this is part of the ritual for the temple so that when somebody was coming in to the holy of holies the center of the temple they would have to do libations here some sort of purification ritual something of that nature before you crossed into the threshold of the temple itself to have evidence of any sort of acoustic properties but they say that these are acoustic therapeutic hospital rooms of some sort that this is like a sound healing temple i don't see any evidence of sure so you can see these were closed right so there was a door that closed these little alcoves we don't know again what the original function of this part of the temple is but they were closed off areas and again this would have been a full structure the function of this area of the temple subject to some debate and you can see another huge drill here most likely a door closure that closed off this entire area so you had to go through multiple layers of doors to access this portion of the structure it's super anomalous i don't know what the function of this would have been we find this also on the outside of the temple so when we walk around the outside i'll show you another series of stones that have this dual circular cutout that have been filled back in with stone is that an original patch or a later patch it's difficult to say i would say that this mortar here because these are mortared into place is compatible with the mortar that we see in the rest of the joints so i tend to think that this is original so a why was it cored out in the first place why are there corresponding ones here and here but we don't well if there was more of the floor it's possible that we might find more of their bunch of bunch of them there yeah so for example over here but these for example you see this door hinge over here so this is most likely part of either infrastructure that was inside like a and behind me is the temple of patashepsut so this is the temple of the top one of the gods of ancient egypt and if you follow me around in this direction let's all kind of keep together i want to show you something of the utmost importance so you can lay your head back over the wall ah very good how'd you get in here and if you look down the one in front of us is exterior red granite interior white limestone and one of the main things i wanted to point out here if you look at the terminals on each end one of them is completely rounded the other one if you look here in this top left corner is squared off so one of them is kind of oval egg-shaped the other one has been squared off and they're adjacent to each other so top right over here is rounded off bottom left down here is rounded off and then you can see the one that's been squared off on the other two adjacent edges and there's a shaft over here so the shaft leaning down into this area is over here so you can see the opening into this shaft is down here yeah we're good we're good out here okay and he's got an easier way to get out over here but to get some get some pictures again this is a conductive layer a dielectric layer and then there's no telling what was on the inside so that is speculative interpretation of what these things truly were and so here there was actually a vaulted housing over here you can see these large beams here there was originally an a-framed ceiling over this chamber here so these large beams here were originally part of the you can the angle of the a-frame ceiling that originally came up in the center of this piece here this underground chamber here again my initial impression you fill this thing with water whatever was going on in here that's subject to your own interpretation but again whenever i see these shafts and underground systems i immediately get the impression that they were filled with water possibly salt water um so very very interesting here you can see the layout of the initial mastaba and the primary chamber this is the descending passage in this 3d rendering you can see the position of the containers as they were found by the excavators and also you can visualize the a-frame this is a view from inside the primary chamber looking north and you can better see the terminals or lifting bosses this is up for interpretation again looking north you have a better view of inside one of the containers and you can see the precision of the inlay which is limestone with the outer shell of red granite what is the purpose of this inlay and why was there a need for such a precise fit for a quote-unquote sarcophagus and now enjoy some footage from our japan 2024 expedition in which we investigated the connections between japan the uk and egypt today we're here at the osaka prefecture museum and behind me are containers that were found within kofun resembling what we see in egypt it's remarkable take a look on both sides so there's a lot of restoration again restoration huge block here this has all been broken up it looks like this piece was maybe glued or cemented back together at some point you see pieces of modern cement and modern glue in here so this whole thing was reassembled broken back up multiple stages these are the original bosses we talked about the lifting bosses to lift this lid jeffrey yes this one also has a lining just on the inside yeah you were able to stick that in there awesome yeah so this one also has that limestone lining on the inside you'll see there's also some usual staining on this interior limestone piece the brown stuff yeah the brown stuff so really really spectacular in situ artifact so a question is so this one is clearly in its original house right it's it's lodged in between these two pieces and it's intended to be in this spot this one is a little anomalous it doesn't appear to be where it's supposed to be in the original excavation photos it was actually over on this wall but generally speaking they don't just put things in the middle of you know there's usually a not as in place as this one so who moved it in here how did they get it in here not sliding down that shaft so it has to be lowered so generally speaking this is a good time to talk about this when it comes to the container okay the containers were always installed in the chamber during the construction process the containers were never brought into the structure for example in the king's chamber the sarcophagus inside the king's chamber they didn't bring that into the structure it was installed when the chamber was still open at the top and the chamber was being erected because again these things go up level by level so when they're installing the floor inside the king's chamber the container is put in then and then the rest of the pyramid and the rest of the structure goes up they were never moved in and out they were installed as a essential component during the actual construction process so this you're saying this had to be here had to be in here not maybe not this exact spot right right it may have meant to go over here it may have been in this housing over here we don't know again being put up against this one doesn't seem to me like where it was supposed to go so it may have been moved at some point not 100 sure especially since it's not even flush against the other one correct it would be unusual for these things to be sloppy sloppy um so not not necessarily in its original place i do think this one is in the original housing here really really exceptional stonework it's just empty back there yeah this is for what lifting perfect so if i check the position now this one look where the lifting are yeah i don't think that this is the current position because it's too tight so you would have still been able so let's say that there were ropes here yeah but you can still get enough clearance so slippery that even if you put a rope yeah with a heavy it's possible but if you look here on the underside the underside is flat it's rounded on the top but flat on the bottom these have been broken off and typically what they would do with these things is after it was installed for example in the serapium we saw that after these were installed they cut them off yeah also what you see here this would have been flat and you would have never been able to see those so there's a lot of evidence of kind of unfinished construction the explanation for that generally speaking is that the person died everything was installed and they had to finish up so that they could bury the person so a lot of structures were left unfinished for example the menkaura pyramid on the giza plateau the reason that that's unfinished is because menkaura died they had to put his body in there they never ended up finishing the eastern temple and i'll show you the eastern temple is mostly unfinished as is the outside of the pyramid was never completely finished so then they moved on to the next yes but what you also see is pieces of wood and on youtube there are videos where they move these giant lids but just small pieces of wood left underneath those things yeah yeah and this is modern wood yeah you know they lifted this thing up so the modern excavations were able to use these same lifting bosses to lift this thing up so jeffrey you're certain this wasn't like this last time you were here this part no that's this lid being raised i don't i don't remember it being raised it's been many years since i've actually been down in here it was like 2017 or 2020 that i was down in here the last time but i don't remember it being up it may have been yes but your knowledge and imagination yes these stones if they're like then you have stone finish stone uh-huh yeah change you know so this part in between them is is restoration right so this is part of the ceiling yeah but exactly yeah it would have been up like this yeah and yeah and then i'm asking stone gap stone what would change in acoustic it's hard to say because we don't know what was originally in there right but okay stone there may have been in it's most likely given what we see with the rest of the structures in terms of the design there were probably this same type of a-frame the whole way across there wasn't a gap the only reason there's a gap now is because the entire piece has been removed so this entire thing would have been an a-frame ceiling going across there wouldn't have been spaces in between the blocks and we're sure that the dynastic egyptians did this stonework yeah again we saw in the museum yesterday it's not something pre-dynastic that was adopted by the it's entirely possible um again my hypothesis for this entire complex as with all of the pyramid sites is that it's it's pre-dynastic but because of the water needed so for example no burials were found in here there's no hieroglyphic inscriptions on the outside of this thing for dynastic era burials they were very intentional about writing hieroglyphs on stuff you confuse me now it's dynastic i don't even go there yeah i'm thinking all the time pre-dynastic me too yeah well so another thing when we go to the pyramid of sahuray when we see the inscriptions because sahuray does have inscriptions all over that temple and in my opinion the hieroglyphs are compatible with the construction itself so we talked about that at the museum yesterday when sometimes inscriptions are added to earlier stuff by later pharaohs and and later in the dynastic period they would change the inscriptions that's that's pretty normal in regular but i think it the pyramid of sahuray those those the quality of the hieroglyphs are okay what's written unbelievable sahuray sahuray the cartouche of sahuray we talked at length about the cartouches yesterday right so the cartouche is the name it's the signature so the signature of sahuray is all over that temple but i will leave that to your own interpretation in terms of what you think and we talked about yesterday with that empty basin that's my favorite subject at the museum there might be an alternative interpretation to what those cartouches are supposed to be saying all right so let's head back up which is the tough part right getting down is easy going back up is more difficult and then so again in terms of conventional timeline we have step pyramid third dynasty djoser then we have red pyramid then we have giza plateau kufu kafra menkaura fourth dynasty then we have the pyramids of abu seir niusere neferkare and sahuray fifth dynasty then we have wenis and usurkaf back in saqqara end of the fifth dynasty or everything by five thousand before christ that's the conventional timeline of the construction and again i think it's important to understand that in terms of the evolution of pyramid building how because in my opinion there's a very clear progression in the sophistication of the engineering in the pyramid design so we're going to see some very sophisticated stonework mixtures of different type of stone the execution of this is spectacular this is actually comparable or better to what we see on the giza plateau because this came a little bit later so i think it's important to understand that timeline so that we can understand the evolution of how these things happen cool awesome that we got a chance to come down here okay so i i'll go first um and if you don't have pants on there's really no good way to get back up unless you crawl yes yep oh my gosh can i a little bit more a little bit okay in part two we investigated the eastern temple complex of niusere with the objective to locate a third conduit impossible basin that was recorded by board chart in this early excavation see if you can go over there and look for that thing okay the other one it should be in this area somewhere so i'm on the hunt for a piece of conduit in a collection basin next to one of the inlet for the conduit system made of quartzite we'll see where it terminates later on we also explored the eastern temple complex of the pyramid of neferkare for the first time today we're here at the eastern the pyramid neferkare i'm here at the red quartzite collection basin on the causeway to the pyramid of niusere so we were just talking about how that collection bowl may have originally had a copper inlay like a metal bowl on the inside of it that does look like a copper oxide so this is a very unique fragment here if you want to help support our research and expeditions grab some merch from the new archaeo alchemy store rock the classic logo and your favorite color combination with some beautiful alchemical prints there are hats mugs hoodies shorts tanks and tapestries more designs are in the works so stay tuned and if you want to be the lifeblood of my channel please become a member for early access exclusive updates and thank you all so much