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00:00Hidden, deep underground.
00:06We were able to go down this huge depth.
00:12Archaeologists hunt for a burial chamber inside an ancient tomb.
00:19I hope we get through.
00:29It could date to one of Egypt's most enigmatic dynasties, the Sun Kings.
00:36This extremely huge room, this is far more than I expected.
00:50The pyramid fields of Abusir, 50 miles south of Cairo.
00:57These mysterious structures were built by a dynasty of pharaohs who ruled Egypt 1,000
01:05years before Tutankhamun.
01:08Named for their devotion to the sun god Ra, they were known as the Sun Kings.
01:16Now archaeologists are uncovering new evidence about these enigmatic kings of old.
01:23How this powerful dynasty rose and transformed Egypt forever, and what caused their magnificent
01:31reign to fall.
01:39In Saqqara, archaeologist Miroslav Barta is digging in the heart of a vast necropolis.
01:51This is where the Sun Kings buried many of their officials.
01:55The team has just identified the top of a new shaft.
01:59So what you see here is quite well preserved mud brick wall.
02:06The same we have on the north, and partially also here.
02:11Miroslav hopes to uncover precious new information about how the Sun Kings governed ancient Egypt.
02:19I would say you never know what secrets the scent of desert may hide.
02:27He hopes that the shaft will lead him to a burial chamber.
02:32But there is a serious problem.
02:36You can see that the wall collapsed here.
02:39There's a secondary breach there.
02:42The wall is completely missing on the west, in the northwest corner as well.
02:48After more than 4,000 years of harsh desert conditions, the original mud bricks lining
02:54the shaft have collapsed.
02:56Once we get deeper by the end of the day, we will have to stop the work and reconstruct
03:01the walls.
03:02Otherwise, we can't let the workers go down.
03:05It would be too dangerous.
03:08It's a gamble, but Miroslav hopes the extra work will pay off.
03:15Last season, in a nearby tomb, he found a magnificent mummy that could tell him more
03:21about the officials who governed Egypt in the time of the Sun Kings.
03:26When we finally got the view of the circle figures, then came a moment of excitement
03:33because he was there.
03:35The mummy could see immediately that he was not lying on his back, but sitting in the
03:41circle figures.
03:43A huge surprise to have a mummy preserved like that, sitting there as if he were waiting
03:49for us.
03:53They found his mummified head next to his body, making it the oldest fully preserved
03:58mummy ever found.
04:02Serving under the first Sun King, Usserkav, the mummy was a high-ranking official called
04:08Tarshepsus.
04:12Born into a respectable family, Tarshepsus grew up alongside the king's own children
04:18as part of the pharaoh's court.
04:22In time, he rose through the ranks, acting as master of craftsmen and master of secrets.
04:29The pharaoh himself must have held him in high regard.
04:34He even married King Usserkav's daughter to become a member of the royal household.
04:43Tarshepsus lived a long, loyal life, helping to run Egypt on behalf of five pharaohs.
04:54Miroslav plans to carry out a full analysis of Tarshepsus's mummy to try and unlock
05:00the secrets of his life.
05:04But first, he wants to see if the new shaft next door contains another important burial
05:10from the era of the Sun Kings.
05:15After 11 days of back-breaking work, his team has shifted over 100 tons of sand and repaired
05:22the crumbling walls of the shaft.
05:25As of today, I can say that we are quite ready to go down and feel relatively safe
05:31because the masonry is stable.
05:38We are going to go down and have a look.
05:47At 45 feet deep, a fall down this shaft would be fatal.
05:56So now you can see me for the last time today.
05:59Bye-bye.
06:00At Giza, Egyptologist Chris Naunton wants to see for himself how the Sun Kings came
06:24to power.
06:26To do that, he is exploring what happened to their predecessors, the pharaohs who built
06:32the Great Pyramids.
06:34These pyramids are the tallest buildings in the world for over 4,000 years.
06:40They were built by the kings who immediately preceded the Sun Kings, and obviously they
06:46wielded huge amounts of power, controlled huge amounts of resource, but it wasn't going
06:52to last.
06:54To uncover what led to the downfall of the pyramid builders, Chris wants to search for
06:59clues at the tomb of the last Great Pyramid King, Menkaura.
07:05Menkaura's pyramid tends to get a little bit forgotten, and it's perhaps the least well-studied
07:12of the three, but it can tell us about the way the history of the period unfolded.
07:19The pharaoh's tomb was hidden deep underground.
07:24At the end of a network of sloping tunnels and antechambers.
07:29On top were thousands of massive limestone blocks, forming a stepped pyramid more than
07:36200 feet tall.
07:38Unlike the other Giza pyramids, the bottom was clad with hard pink granite, shipped over
07:44500 miles down the Nile from Aswan.
07:48Above that, a layer of white limestone.
07:53Filled with temples and the Queen's pyramids, Menkaura's two-toned monument was designed
07:59to be an imposing symbol of his absolute power.
08:05But inside the pyramid, there are signs that the pharaoh's power was already waning.
08:10The thing that's most striking about this space is just how tight it is.
08:15When the level of the ceiling comes down, it's really difficult to move.
08:18You think about the Great Pyramid, the entrance passageway opens out into this enormous space.
08:24This is just so different.
08:30Just not as impressive, somehow.
08:35And on the outside of the pyramid, there are further signs of the Giza pharaoh's demise.
08:42Casing stones in particular, which are made of this pinkish granite, represents an enormous
08:47investment on the part of the king.
08:49But what's really interesting in this case is that while some of the stones, like the
08:55ones here, are beautifully smoothed off so that the surface of the pyramid appears completely
09:02true, some of the other stones haven't been finished that way at all.
09:08It's as though somehow they just didn't get to that point.
09:13The Giza dynasty had run out of money, and Menkaure's successor died without an heir.
09:22Broke and without a leader, Egypt was at a crisis point.
09:27The king who would step in to this difficult period following the Giza pyramid builders
09:32was Ussakaf, the first of the Sun Kings.
09:38Ussakaf faced a huge challenge.
09:41He wasn't a direct heir to the throne.
09:44This new king needed a way of proving himself as the legitimate ruler of Egypt.
09:50But the country's economy was in some trouble, so building an enormous pyramid like this
09:56wasn't an option that was available to Ussakaf.
09:59He was going to need a different way of showing that he was fit to rule.
10:07On the eastern edge of the Sun King's Abusir necropolis, archaeologist Mohamed Khaled works
10:15at the pyramid of Ussakaf's son, the second Sun King, Sahura.
10:21New morning every time comes with a lot of hopes to find more and more nice information
10:27about this great pyramid complex.
10:33For over 20 years, Mohamed has been investigating inside Sahura's collapsed pyramid.
10:39Be careful!
10:41Now he's looking for more clues outside the pyramid to find out what this huge sacred
10:47complex looked like at the peak of Sahura's power.
10:57Archaeologists first excavated the site in 1907.
11:01We have to take quite a large amount of sand.
11:04They left large piles of spoil and debris next to their dig site.
11:09And they simply just dumped their excavation debris from the middle to the sides.
11:14But they never checked the sides before they dumped their excavation debris.
11:19Mohamed hopes that previously undiscovered parts of Sahura's pyramid complex may lie
11:24hidden beneath these huge spoil heaps.
11:29You could see the line.
11:31So this is the last part that they started to dump their excavation debris.
11:36So what's behind here, it's untouched.
11:40I cannot express my feeling when you start to excavate a completely new untouched area.
11:47It's really an amazing feeling.
11:51The spoil heaps are about 20 feet deep.
11:57Over the next two days, the team shifts several tons of sand.
12:07But Mohamed hopes the hard work is going to be worth it.
12:10So what we see now, it's a new structure and it was hidden under the debris.
12:21In Abu Sir, Chris is exploring how Ussakaf established himself as the first Sun King,
12:29despite not being a direct heir to the throne.
12:33Ussakaf didn't have enough money to build giant pyramids like the ones at Giza.
12:38So he had to find another way to project his power to his Egyptian subjects.
12:43These are the pyramids of the Sun Kings.
12:47They dominate this landscape, but they've lost almost all their casing and kind of collapsed a little.
12:54But Abu Sir is distinctive for another kind of monument associated with these pyramids.
13:02Chris investigates the remains of one of these mysterious monuments that dates from the time of Ussakaf.
13:08It's a real jumble here.
13:11These are huge stones and the Egyptians typically used these for their religious buildings.
13:18It's a bit difficult to say exactly what this was for,
13:21but it's clearly something very big, very impressive, with religious significance.
13:28A clue to what this site was for comes from a unique text inscribed on the face of a piece of black basalt called the Palermo Stone.
13:38The author is unknown, but it was written during the reign of the Sun Kings.
13:43This is an incredibly important historical document,
13:47inscribed with records of the activities all the way down to the period of the Sun Kings.
13:53The section tells us geese and bulls were sacrificed on a daily basis at a temple
13:59dedicated to the sun god Ra during the reign of Pharaoh Ussakaf.
14:05And we think that this is in fact that temple of Ussakaf dedicated to the sun god.
14:16Ussakaf built his temple on the west bank of the Nile, aligned with the path of the setting sun.
14:25At its heart was a towering granite obelisk built to honour the sun god Ra.
14:33In the open courtyard, two sandstone statues and a mud-brick altar
14:40meant priests could make sacrifices in full view of the sun and Ra himself.
14:46For ancient Egyptians, Ussakaf's sun temple was standing proof of his special connection to this all-powerful god.
14:56Ra had already become important under the great pyramid builders of Giza.
15:02Ussakaf's sun temple raised him higher still.
15:07There was a purpose to this.
15:09By elevating the status of the sun god Ra, the kings were elevating their own status.
15:14And this, crucially, was a way for them to establish their right to rule.
15:20By forging a closer relationship with Ra, Ussakaf helped convince his people that he was the legitimate king of Egypt.
15:29And the sun temple would have been in use throughout the pharaoh's life as a place for offerings and worship.
15:37But the excesses of the great pyramid builders of Giza had emptied the treasury.
15:43Without funds, he needed a new way to run.
15:47At the northern end of the sun king's necropolis, at Saqqara,
15:53Miroslav is descending into the depths of a 45-foot shaft.
15:59He's searching for an important official's burial chamber.
16:04There is no space for emotions, there is no space for being nervous,
16:08because you have to be pretty concentrated.
16:12You have to hold yourself tight to the ladder and be very careful.
16:25An obstacle stands between Miroslav and the tomb beyond.
16:29Here we have the blockage of the tomb.
16:32It's a huge blockage.
16:35An obstacle stands between Miroslav and the tomb beyond.
16:39Here we have the blocking wall that was protecting the deceased from the world of the living.
16:46Imagine the last person living used his fingers and plastered the wall over like this.
16:55You can still see fingerprints.
16:59There is only one way through.
17:01A hole just 24 inches wide.
17:05This hole is not original. It was broken through by the robbers in antiquity.
17:11They removed one limestone block from here and probably two more from this part.
17:17It was just wide and high enough to let them in.
17:21And we will use the same break to see what's inside.
17:27The hole implies that the tomb has been robbed.
17:31But until Miroslav sees inside, he can't be sure.
17:36I hope he gets through.
17:58There's nothing but wind-blown sand.
18:01This still isn't a burial gym.
18:08But Miroslav spots something in the far corner.
18:12A doorway.
18:16It's an extremely huge room.
18:19In Abusir, at the pyramid complex of the Sun King, Sahura,
18:24Mohammed is investigating a mysterious structure hidden beneath the spoil heap.
18:29If it's a part of the funerary temple, then it will completely be destroyed.
18:34It will be completely destroyed.
18:37It will be completely destroyed.
18:40It will be completely destroyed.
18:43It will be completely destroyed.
18:46If it's a part of the funerary temple, then it will completely change our idea
18:51about the outline of this pyramid complex.
18:57The pyramid was surrounded by a huge complex of buildings,
19:01including a funerary temple in front of it.
19:04Unlike a sun temple built to worship the sun god Ra,
19:08a funerary temple was a place where Sahura's subjects came to honor him after his death.
19:16But it's unclear if this block is a part of the temple or a later addition.
19:34There is something here. It started to appear.
19:45It's wonderful.
19:47Mohammed has unearthed the lower part of a pottery vessel.
19:51Interesting color.
19:53The red powder inside the pot is paint.
19:57Remarkably, still in place after 4,400 years.
20:02They made masonry marks in order to tell the workers to give them instruction.
20:07So if he said, for example, raise the level of the structure, then he could make some sign.
20:14This is an important discovery for us because this is the first time that we see such things like that.
20:22Maybe it comes from the time of Sahura or maybe it was moved from another place
20:27and then it was thrown just here by luck because it was broken.
20:32And we found it also in a strange area hidden between the two blocks.
20:38The paint pot is a clue that the stone blocks Mohammed has uncovered
20:43could date from the time of the Sun King Sahura.
20:46But on its own it's not enough.
20:49The team must continue digging.
20:57At the northern end of Saqqara, Miroslav is exploring a doorway at the bottom of a shaft
21:04that could date from the time of the Sun Kings.
21:07Let's go inside.
21:14Wow, such dimensions.
21:18It's really a huge burial chamber.
21:22Miroslav could be the first person to investigate this burial chamber for thousands of years.
21:30And here we have one small fragment of old clay.
21:36As the Sun Kings were one of the last dynasties of the Old Kingdom,
21:40this tiny fragment could mean that the burial chamber is from this period.
21:45It could originate from a beer jar, but for a beer jar it's too thick.
21:50Probably from a bajar form.
21:53Bajar forms were used for baking bread in ancient Egypt.
21:58But Miroslav's best clue to who the tomb owner was
22:02is the grand sarcophagus in the corner of the chamber.
22:05The highlight is this limestone chest with the lid.
22:12You can see how they robbed the mummy in antiquity.
22:17They cut the head off.
22:21Miroslav searches for any trace of a mummy.
22:29The sarcophagus is completely empty.
22:32It's a very sad story, if you imagine.
22:35It's a very sad story.
22:38It's a very sad story.
22:41It's a very sad story.
22:44It's a very sad story.
22:47It's a very sad story.
22:50If you imagine that originally he was here, complete, resting forever.
22:55At least that's what he hoped for.
22:58And then you have those robbers coming after him.
23:03The damaged sarcophagus is further evidence
23:06that this tomb was ransacked in antiquity,
23:09like most wealthy burial sites in ancient Egypt.
23:13Though the body and his treasures are gone,
23:16Miroslav spots something unusual on the inside of the sarcophagus.
23:20Cool. The lid is carved from inside.
23:24Instead of a flat slab of stone,
23:27the inside of the lid has been shaped into a perfect curve.
23:31I've never seen such a lid before.
23:34It's an excellent mastership.
23:37They actually never bothered to do it.
23:41It was such an amount of work.
23:44It confirms that he was a very important person.
23:48This is incredible work.
23:51The stunning sarcophagus shows that the tomb owner
23:54must have been a high-ranking person.
23:58But there are no other signs down here about who they were
24:02and whether they lived during the era of the Sun Kings.
24:08Miroslav's last hope is that the team excavating the area
24:12around the top of the shaft finds a clue.
24:20In Saqqara, Chris investigates how Sun King Ussukav,
24:24now reigning as the rightful pharaoh,
24:27went about governing a bankrupt nation.
24:31He searches for clues in a new necropolis
24:34Ussukav established for his high officials.
24:39This is a very, very beautiful tomb.
24:46Up to now, tombs like this and the positions of power
24:50that went with them were reserved for the royal family.
24:54But this is not a royal tomb.
24:57Chris is curious about who received this honour.
25:01This tomb is dedicated not just to one tomb owner, but two.
25:06They're named Nian Khnum and Khnum Hotep.
25:12The question is, what role did they play?
25:16Chris looks for a clue to their relationship to the pharaoh
25:20in one of the reliefs.
25:22It looks like somebody tending to the hands of the king.
25:28It looks like somebody tending to the hands of another person.
25:33And, in fact, their main title was the Overseer
25:37of the Manicurists of the Palace of the King.
25:42So we can assume that they perhaps filed the nails of Pharaoh himself,
25:46and that might seem like an unusual title for an elite high official to have,
25:51but, of course, what's important is that it gave them close access to the king.
25:57And the Manicurists were just one of the many roles that the king rewarded.
26:04In the days of the Great Pyramid Kings, a pharaoh's court was kept small.
26:10Just a few members of the royal family held all the power in Egypt.
26:15But the Sun Kings started spreading their power among non-royals,
26:21until the court numbered 80 or more.
26:26Titles included Director of Scribes, Overseer of Craftsmen,
26:31and the Greatest of the Dentists.
26:36But even the Overseer of the Duck Pond, the Inspector of the Singers,
26:41and Overseer of the King's Breakfast enjoyed the pharaoh's favor.
26:48The titles may sound eccentric,
26:50but Ussukav had created a huge new class of talented professional officials.
26:56They helped him govern Egypt more effectively,
26:59and were able to collect much more in tax.
27:03This boosted the wealth of the nation.
27:07With more and more titles, you've got more and more officials amassing wealth and influence.
27:15But Ussukav had sown the seeds of his dynasty's downfall.
27:19Officials, particularly in the provinces, began to become more and more powerful,
27:24and that drew influence and authority away from the pharaoh.
27:31Soon, these officials would threaten the pharaoh's authority.
27:36The Sun Kings were losing power.
27:45In Saqqara, Miroslav's team is excavating near the top of the shaft
27:50for clues to the owner of the empty sarcophagus.
27:55While they do that, he wants to take a closer look at the mummy he found last season in a tomb nearby.
28:03He hopes it might tell him more about the life of an official during the Sun King's era.
28:10How are you today?
28:11Fine. It's good to see you again.
28:16Dr. Zeynab Hashesh is an anthropologist who will help Miroslav to analyze the body.
28:22Does it fit?
28:23Yes.
28:24Good.
28:27Oh, hello again.
28:35Yeah.
28:37Small chin.
28:38Yes.
28:39Like me. Small one.
28:40Yeah.
28:41After we analyzed the pelvis and other features in the mummy, he is over 60 years old.
28:50So he's an old man.
28:53Life expectancy in ancient Egypt was around 35 years old.
28:58So at over 60, Tarshepsus was very old indeed.
29:03He's suffering from many diseases because he's an old man.
29:07So he suffered from osteoarthritis.
29:09For him?
29:10Yeah. Do you have an interpretation for this?
29:13Why he has osteoarthritis in his neck?
29:16Yeah, I would say he was a scribe.
29:18So I imagine him sitting and checking papyri all the time.
29:22So he was constantly bending his neck, reading, checking, you know, noting, making texts.
29:29And was it painful?
29:31Yes, very painful. Very painful.
29:35Zeynep discovers more when she takes a look at an X-ray.
29:39Oh, look at this. Look at his ribs. It's completely…
29:44Repositioned ribs.
29:45Exactly.
29:46How did this happen?
29:47It happened because during the rubbers, they tried to get all amulets and the jewelry.
29:53They disturbed the body.
29:55Mummies were often buried with their most valuable possessions, jewelry and amulets, kept on their person.
30:02To search the body for treasure, ancient robbers had to pull the mummy out of the sarcophagus.
30:09The robbers left him in sitting position.
30:12So this is a proof that he treated badly from the robbers during the…
30:18They really searched him thoroughly.
30:20Yeah, yeah.
30:21For the robbers to go to such lengths, Tarshepsus' mummy must have been decorated with valuables, further proof that he was important.
30:34Back outside, it looks like Miroslav's team at the top of the shaft has found another structure.
30:41At the pyramid complex of the second Sun King, Sahura,
30:45Mohamed's team is excavating more of the mysterious structure from beneath the spoil heap.
30:51So, we are now collecting every single detail that we find in order just to get a complete clear picture for us.
31:01He wants to know if the structure dates from the time of Sahura, as the paint pot says.
31:08That's graffiti here, original one.
31:11In the next layer down, Mohamed has spotted some hieroglyphs in the stonework.
31:16Very similar color.
31:18It's an important clue.
31:20The paint from this ancient graffiti matches the powdered paint from the pot.
31:25So now we will go deep until we reach the original floor.
31:31So, definitely this comes from the original structure.
31:35And this structure belongs to the funerary temple.
31:38It's very significant.
31:40Mohamed has uncovered that the foundation stones are embedded in the bedrock.
31:45This means that the foundation stones were used to make the foundation stones.
31:50The foundation stones were used to make the foundation stones.
31:53The foundation stones were used to make the foundation stones.
31:59This means it is a previously undiscovered part of the temple complex of Sahura.
32:05Now he wants to find out what the structure was used for.
32:15In Saqqara, Miroslav wants to know the identity of the owner of the empty burial chamber.
32:26This is an amazing discovery.
32:28His team has unearthed the new structure while excavating near the top of the shaft.
32:34It's a chapel made of beautifully carved limestone that Miroslav thinks belongs to the tomb owner.
32:42He's hoping it will give him a clue to who the owner was and when he lived.
32:49Now we have it live, finally.
32:54The first column is praying to Anubis for a good burial.
32:59And then we have the most important title, Majer Genuti, Master Sculptor.
33:07This is it. This is the most important place in the tomb.
33:12This is the name of the deceased, reading Kaj Mhesed.
33:18We know who he was, what was his name, and what were his duties at the court.
33:24Miroslav has uncovered the burial chamber and chapel of Kaj Mhesed, the royal sculptor.
33:32It's quite rare to have the complete evidence.
33:36The architecture of the chapel suggests that it dates from about 100 years before the time of the Sun Kings.
33:46Around 2600 BCE, high officials like Kaj Mhesed built simple tombs like these for themselves to achieve eternal life.
33:58At the heart of the tomb sat a false door, a magic gateway to the world of the dead.
34:08By the era of the Sun Kings, tombs of high officials like Tarshepsus were larger, with more rooms to store offerings for the deceased.
34:19The decoration was far more elaborate, with beautiful reliefs depicting scenes of a prosperous life.
34:29Both these men were important officials in their own eras.
34:35But the extreme luxury of Tarshepsus' tomb compared to Kaj Mhesed's shows how far the Sun Kings had elevated the status of non-royals.
34:47Miroslav has added another piece to the picture of how the Sun Kings governed Egypt.
34:55Today is a really good day for our mission, and I'm happy not only for myself, but the workers, because they always like to discover something.
35:09In Abusir, at the pyramid complex of Sahura, the second Sun King,
35:16Mohammed has excavated a foundation stone that indicates the structure he found is an original wall.
35:24Now he wants to work out what it was used for.
35:32The team begins to excavate the area nearby.
35:38It's promising. It's promising. It's very promising.
35:42They found a second wall running parallel to the first.
35:46It's ancient, so it's untouched. They are already aligned with each other.
35:52It looks like the walls form part of an undiscovered limestone avenue.
35:57What we will do now is continue the excavation.
36:02I'm looking forward to see if this wall extends toward the pyramid.
36:07Then, of course, it will be very exciting news for us.
36:16At the pyramid complex of the second Sun King, Sahura, Mohammed is investigating what he hopes is a limestone avenue.
36:26My hunch is this could be the beginning of the site entrance to the temple.
36:31In 1907, the excavation uncovered a central sacred causeway.
36:37It led to an entrance to the temple that could only be used by the king.
36:42That's why everybody used the site entrance.
36:46Instead of using the sacred causeway, priests relied on a second entranceway to access the funerary temple of Sahura.
36:55Inside the temple, priests performed rituals in the name of Sahura's cult, a practice that continued for 200 years after his death.
37:06Sahura's temple also became a place of healing.
37:10Both rich and poor traveled from across Egypt to receive carvings chipped from the causeway itself.
37:17They believed these carvings offered blessings that bestowed not only the power of the Sun King Sahura, but of the goddess of healing, Sekhmet.
37:30For Mohammed, uncovering the priest's avenue would be a huge challenge.
37:37I'm very excited because it's still going towards the pyramid.
37:42It's a new structure that was never located or recorded before.
37:47This is an extraordinary discovery.
37:50Every day you find new evidence that's changing completely our understanding of the history of Egypt.
37:59Every day you find new evidence that's changing completely our understanding about this monument.
38:09Sahura's funerary complex became the template for all his descendants who followed.
38:15So Mohammed's discovery gives him key information about the Sun King's dynasty and how they were honored after death.
38:23It's great. It's really great.
38:30In Saqqara, Chris has come to the pyramid of the final Sun King, Unas.
38:39When he became pharaoh, an expanding court of officials was growing ever more powerful.
38:46Unas needed to reassert his authority, and Chris believes his pyramid might tell him how he did it.
38:53This pyramid might not look like much, but it is hugely significant.
38:57This pyramid would change Egypt forever.
39:03Whilst the tombs of officials were richly decorated, the walls inside the pyramids of the pharaohs were always bare.
39:12Unas broke with that tradition in an extraordinary fashion.
39:18This is really special.
39:21The decoration inside the burial compartments here is really something.
39:28The walls are completely covered, every inch of them, in hieroglyphs.
39:34An enormous, gigantic pyramid.
39:39It's a huge pyramid.
39:41It's a huge pyramid.
39:43It's a huge pyramid.
39:45It's a huge pyramid.
39:47It's a huge pyramid.
39:49It's a huge pyramid.
39:51It's a huge pyramid.
39:53Every inch of them in hieroglyphs.
39:56An enormous, lengthy inscription.
40:00Unas' real legacy.
40:04No tomb had ever been decorated like this before.
40:11Unas' pyramid texts are a set of 228 spells and hymns,
40:17designed to secure the pharaoh's path to the afterlife.
40:23When a pharaoh died, priests would recite spells and incantations
40:28to guide the king's soul on its journey to the afterlife.
40:33But Unas took things a step further.
40:37He instructed masons to carve those spells into the walls of his tomb,
40:42so the pharaoh's soul could do without the priests.
40:48It would be able to read the spells inscribed on the burial chamber itself.
40:54With the holy words and rituals to guide it,
40:57the spirit stood the best possible chance of journeying to the afterlife,
41:02to take its place among the gods.
41:06By recording the resurrection spells onto the walls of his tomb for the first time,
41:11Unas was using these pyramid texts to claim absolute supremacy
41:16over both the gods and his subjects.
41:20Unas' great innovation was reserved for him.
41:24It was only pharaoh who had the right to have their burial chamber
41:28decorated with these texts, the key to the eternal next life.
41:34Ultimately, Unas' attempt to wrest back control failed.
41:40He died without an heir, and the throne of Egypt passed to a commoner.
41:46The era of the Sun Kings was over, but their legacy lived on.
41:52The pyramid texts which appear here for the first time
41:56would continue in use for another 2,000 years.
41:59More importantly, the ideas that are included in these texts
42:04of the king's journey to the next life, to join with the gods,
42:09would remain a fundamental part of the Egyptians' belief in the way the world works.
42:16Today, archaeologists continue to uncover new evidence
42:21about how the Sun Kings changed Egypt.
42:25To help them run the country, they created a new class of officials
42:30and rewarded their closest aides with beautifully decorated tombs.
42:36But once the Sun Kings began to surrender their political power to those bureaucrats,
42:41the erosion of their authority was unstoppable.
42:45While Unas' pyramid texts guaranteed his immortality,
42:50he could not produce an heir.
42:53The sun had finally set on the dynasty of the Sun Kings.