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00:00The Sphinx. Half man, half beast.
00:04This gigantic statue has stood for millennia.
00:07The most mysterious icon on the planet.
00:10What is it? Who built it? And why?
00:14And the most important question of all,
00:16can science finally unearth the lost identity of the Sphinx?
00:30The pharaohs of ancient Egypt created some of the most astonishing monuments of all time.
00:56They built vast pyramids, constructed some of the largest temples in antiquity,
01:03and were laid to rest in lavishly decorated tombs.
01:08But the most famous of all their creations remains an enigma, the Sphinx.
01:16Today it stands beside the greatest pyramids ever built,
01:19and together they make the Giza Plateau the most famous site in Egypt.
01:24At 60 feet high and 240 feet long,
01:28even today the Sphinx remains the largest single stone statue in the world.
01:33It is also the most mysterious.
01:38With the head of a pharaoh and the body of a lion,
01:40the statue has been a source of ferocious debate for centuries.
01:44The Greeks renamed it.
01:47Others defaced it.
01:49Emperors knelt before it.
01:51Treasure hunters raided it.
01:54Soldiers even fired at it.
01:56But the Sphinx lived on.
01:58Year after year,
02:00tourists and scholars alike have stood before it and asked themselves one question.
02:04Why is it there?
02:06Egyptologist Dr. Vassil Dobrev wants to use science to find the answers that have eluded us for thousands of years.
02:17With a team of experts, he's set out to rewrite history.
02:22With a geologist, he'll investigate the origins of the Sphinx.
02:25This entire place owes its existence to these fossils,
02:29fairly insignificant creatures that were floating around the sea at about this time of 40 million years ago.
02:36With an expert in ancient tools,
02:38he sets out to discover the technologies used to carve it.
02:41The tools that the ancient Egyptians invented and developed are the forerunners, in many respects, of our own.
02:51And a sculptor shows Dr. Dobrev the skills that shaped an ordinary piece of rock into the world's most iconic statues.
02:58Ever so sophisticated.
03:00It's one of the best bits of transitional form-making that I've seen.
03:06It's like a resurrection of the Sphinx, you know.
03:14Dr. Dobrev has spent 20 years trying to uncover the truth about the Sphinx.
03:19He moved to Cairo, and the quest became his life's work.
03:23As so many have before him, he became obsessed.
03:28I got fascinated by this combination of an animal body and a human face.
03:36In order to fully understand the Sphinx, Dr. Dobrev has immersed himself in the world that created it.
03:42Four and a half thousand years ago, in a period of Egyptian history known as the Old Kingdom,
03:47a pharaoh ordered the construction of the Sphinx.
03:51His craftsmen set to work on the Giza Plateau outside today's Cairo.
03:56They created a statue which would become the strangest icon on Earth.
04:00But who was that pharaoh?
04:03His statue has survived.
04:05But Dr. Vassal Dobrev believes that the truth about his identity has not.
04:10He wasn't convinced by any of the accepted archeological explanations as to who created it, or whose face it represents.
04:23It's incredible. The most important image of Egypt, the Sphinx, and we just cannot say who it was with certainty.
04:33And then I said to myself, there is something to do here. It's an open door.
04:38To find the truth behind the Sphinx, Dr. Dobrev has had to pick his way across a historical minefield, the Giza Plateau outside Cairo.
04:49Here lie the tombs of the pharaohs and their families.
04:53Archaeologists have labeled and numbered every one of them, making this one of the most complicated archeological sites on Earth.
04:59And in the middle of all this sits the Sphinx.
05:05Until now, the biggest mystery of all.
05:12But now, Dr. Dobrev has pieced together the clues that he believes could lead him to the Sphinx's creator, a great pharaoh that history has forgotten.
05:21Has he discovered the story behind the creation of the most powerful icon in the ancient world?
05:29Such a powerful image that every time you look at the Sphinx, you see new things.
05:34His research so far has taken him on a journey through the past.
05:38Unpeeling the layers of myth, he's finding the story behind this famous enigma.
05:44An identity lost. A mystery to unravel. The great Sphinx unmasked.
05:49The Sphinx's face has been badly damaged.
05:58The face actually didn't look at all as it was at the beginning, because it is heavily destroyed.
06:06The nose is missing, the eyes are touched, the mouth is destroyed, the ears are half destroyed.
06:12To figure out how it once looked, Dr. Dobrev must peel back the layers of history that have defaced the monument.
06:25Several times in the Sphinx lifetime it became neglected, all but buried in the desert sands.
06:30Then in 332 BC the Greeks arrived in Egypt and the real damage began.
06:39They were the first to coin the term Sphinx, and inspired by the great statue they created their own mythical beast.
06:47An evil female creature which over the years became confused with the Egyptian original.
06:51This was to prove disastrous. By the 14th century the Sphinx was considered to be such an evil image that an Arab Sheikh set out to deface it.
07:02Luckily he only succeeded in breaking away its nose.
07:05Later on, treasure hunters inflicted more damage.
07:12When you cannot destroy an image, you start to fear it.
07:14So that's why they have called him Abu al-Hol, Father the Terror.
07:19And from that moment, legends start to surround the Sphinx.
07:24The Sphinx's face suffered further in the 19th century, when British soldiers used it for target practice.
07:30As well as being badly defaced, it has also been heavily restored.
07:37Generation after generation has added to and remodeled the Sphinx.
07:43One of these later additions may prove to be Dr. Dobrev's first clue.
07:48A giant stone tablet, known as the Dream Stella.
07:54Written a thousand years after the Sphinx was completed,
07:57it tells the story of a young prince who went hunting on the Giza Plateau.
08:02By then, the whole area was deserted.
08:05The power in Egypt had long since moved elsewhere.
08:09The once glorious Sphinx had been left to the ravages of the desert,
08:13and had become buried up to its neck in sand.
08:18To shelter from the midday sun, Prince Thutmose lay down beneath the stone giant.
08:22He fell asleep and had a dream.
08:28In his dream, the statue spoke to him, telling him that if he cleared the sand away from his paws,
08:36the young prince would become king.
08:38Prince Thutmose did as the Sphinx requested.
08:41It's clear that the Dream Stella is a piece of propaganda, written by Thutmose after he had already gained power.
08:52Perhaps he had hoped to forever associate himself with the Great Sphinx.
08:56The text starts with a date. It mentions the first year of the reign of Thutmose IV.
09:06So, for us, the message is clear. This is pure propaganda.
09:10He is already a king, and then describes the story.
09:15Although this tale is fiction, buried within the text is a clue.
09:18A part of the inscription mentions another pharaoh. His name was Khafre.
09:26Many Egyptologists believe that it was he who built the Sphinx in his own image.
09:31Indeed, the name Khafre became synonymous with the sculpture.
09:36This idea was untouchable.
09:38You could never say, but do you think the Sphinx is somebody else?
09:42You cannot discuss it. It has to be Khafre.
09:45Part of the reasoning was that Khafre's pyramid stands imposingly behind it.
09:54In addition, two of his temples, one dedicated to the Sphinx, stand in front of it.
10:00It's not surprising that most Egyptologists still believe Khafre created the statue.
10:07But when Dr. Dobrev studied the layout of Khafre's monuments,
10:10he saw what he believed was proof that they were actually built around the Sphinx.
10:17I have noticed very quickly that Khafre avoided the Sphinx with his causeway.
10:23It is quite clear when he built his monument, the Sphinx was already here.
10:27This was enough to doubt that Khafre built the Sphinx.
10:30But Dr. Dobrev also doubted that it even represented Khafre.
10:35If it had to represent Khafre, we have a problem.
10:39Because on all the statues of Khafre, he is represented with a beard.
10:45So why should his biggest statue be without a beard?
10:49It doesn't fit.
10:51So it is a main argument to say that this could not be Khafre.
10:56When people try to put the face of Khafre next to the Sphinx's faces, it doesn't work.
11:01I mean, it just doesn't fit. The characteristics are different.
11:06Khafre, the pharaoh historians believed made the Sphinx,
11:10had already been eliminated from Dr. Dobrev's investigation.
11:13He had overturned accepted thinking.
11:16And he would discover that a new solution had been staring him in the face all along.
11:21But to find it, he would have to think like an ancient Egyptian.
11:25And once he did, his investigation would suddenly turn history on its head.
11:32First, he tried to imagine how the Sphinx would have looked during the old kingdom.
11:37Today, when we visit the Sphinx, we approach it from the east, coming from Cairo.
11:42So, when we visit the Sphinx, we see it face on.
11:46And behind, naturally, comes the pyramid of Khafre.
11:50So they seem belonging one to the other.
11:52But I tried to imagine how it would have been at the time of the pharaohs.
12:00Did they approach from here?
12:02And most probably, they were coming from the south, over there.
12:07The ancient Giza Plateau looked very different from how it does today.
12:11Here, there was once a vast network of waterways.
12:14Just 100 yards below the Sphinx stood a harbor connected to canals.
12:18They were created to transport stone during the construction of the Great Pyramid, the first built on the plateau.
12:25One of the canals went to the capital, later called Memphis, which lay to the south.
12:30And it was from this direction that the pharaohs of the old kingdom would have approached Giza.
12:34When we approach the Sphinx from the south, we don't see it face up.
12:41We see it in profile.
12:44And the pyramid behind it is not anymore the pyramid of Khafre, but it is the pyramid of Khufu.
12:51Khufu is one of the best known pharaohs, famous for building the Great Pyramid, the largest stone structure of all time.
12:58And seeing the Sphinx in profile made Dr. Dobrev think differently.
13:04Now, he sets out to investigate whether the Sphinx could belong to Khufu as well.
13:09The ancient Egyptians saw their whole world in profile.
13:14Their hieroglyphics and even their portraits were all twisted into side view.
13:17Here we have a panel from the third dynasty of Old Kingdom.
13:25The artist sculpts the face in profile while his shoulders are in frontal view.
13:33And we also see the feet are depicted in profile view.
13:39In profile, the Sphinx seems connected with Khufu's Great Pyramid, but does it bear his face?
13:45This is the only known statue of Khufu, a tiny figurine, a small reminder of the pharaoh who built the biggest pyramid of all time.
13:55Despite the difference of scale, at first glance there do seem to be similarities.
14:01Many archaeological clues as to the original face of the Sphinx have been found, including part of a beard.
14:08If the Sphinx once had a beard, this would be a serious problem for Dr. Dobrev's theory.
14:12He believes Khufu was never depicted with one.
14:16Fragments of the beard survive in the Cairo Museum.
14:20Dr. Dobrev has fitted these pieces together, and he doubts they're from the original Sphinx.
14:24This is what we call the divine beard, with the characteristic zig-zag pattern.
14:31These are just a few fragments of a huge beard found at the site of the Sphinx.
14:36But the question is, did the Sphinx always have a beard, or was it added later?
14:41If the Sphinx's beard had been carved in one piece from the same rock as its face, the beard would have damaged the chin when it broke away.
14:52There is no evidence of such a break.
14:55All Sphinxes that did once have beards show signs of a rough fracture.
14:59This is a Sphinx with a beard original, because the beard was cut together with the chin out of the same stone.
15:10So when you cut it off, you see the traces.
15:13In the great Sphinx of Giza, if there was a beard from the original tattoo, you would have seen the traces of the beard.
15:20Dr. Dobrev believes this is proof that the Sphinx's beard was a later addition.
15:26And his investigation has not unearthed a single beard from the time of the Sphinx to match the pattern.
15:33He's only been able to match this zig-zag design to beards from a later period, the New Kingdom, a thousand years after the Sphinx was built.
15:42But this is where his investigation finds new evidence.
15:46Until now, the small statue was the only commonly acknowledged representation of Khufu.
15:53But through extensive research, Dr. Dobrev discovered that other depictions of Khufu have never been closely studied.
16:00They are yet more evidence to support his argument.
16:04Out of the seven, eight images known of the face of Khufu, not a single one has a beard.
16:10And the Sphinx doesn't have a beard.
16:12So there are great chances that it represents Khufu.
16:17Dr. Dobrev's last clue that points to Khufu is the Nemes, the striped headdress with a distinctive pattern.
16:25The Nemes of the Sphinx is pleated.
16:28It has two small pleats and one large, repeated one after the other.
16:33But this type of Nemes was used for at least one statue of Khufu.
16:36After more than two decades of painstaking research, Dr. Dobrev is now certain that the Sphinx represents the pharaoh Khufu.
16:46The profile view, the facial features, the lack of a beard and the markings on the Nemes have all convinced him.
16:51But his investigation is about to take another twist.
16:57I'm proposing, well this is actually I think it's the first time it has been proposed, that the Sphinx has been built after the death of Khufu by his son, Jedefre.
17:16That succeeded him immediately.
17:22Dr. Dobrev believes that Jedefre inherited a broken nation.
17:26His solution was to build the Sphinx, whose unrelenting gaze would help to restore control and royal power after the reign of his father.
17:35Because Khufu's funeral had marked the end of an era.
17:44A powerful and ruthless pharaoh, we know that Khufu constructed the largest pyramid of all time.
17:50A wonder of the ancient world.
17:52For Jedefre, this was a hard act to follow.
17:55Not made any easier by his father's reputation.
17:59The Great Pyramid took over 20 years of back-breaking labor to complete.
18:03And this followed the exhausting building projects of Khufu's own father.
18:09After more than half a century of building, the morale of the country may have been at an all-time low.
18:15Finishing the pyramid of Khufu was the hardest job that the Egyptians have ever done.
18:21We can imagine that at the end, there could have been quite a lot of people that didn't like the king anymore.
18:27Despite these problems, Jedefre went on to become a visionary pharaoh.
18:31If Dr. Dobrev's hypothesis is correct, Jedefre's influence transformed the Giza Plateau.
18:39But the story of his remarkable reign has been overlooked.
18:44Until now.
18:45It was believed that under the dark cloud of a family rift, Jedefre moved away from Giza, turning his back upon his family.
18:57But now, Dr. Vassal Dobrev's investigation overturns this theory.
19:02I have pieced together some evidence that shows clearly that the presence of Jedefre in Giza was quite important.
19:11And this evidence was known, but unfortunately, not really interpreted.
19:17Jedefre's legacy was lost when respected archaeologist George Reisner published his masterwork on the Giza Plateau.
19:27He made unsubstantiated claims about the life of Jedefre that masqueraded as facts.
19:33Dobrev's investigation is about to set the record straight.
19:37George Reisner was an American archaeologist who excavated the Giza Plateau and his archaeological methods became a standard.
19:48And when he arrived to the reign of Jedefre, he in fact created a story around the reign of Jedefre.
19:57Reisner wrote that Jedefre came from a Libyan branch of the family and wasn't the true heir.
20:04He believed that title belonged to an older brother, Qawab.
20:08Reisner thought that Jedefre had tried to murder Qawab in order to take the throne.
20:14We have absolutely no evidence to support this, but it was written in a very famous book.
20:20And slowly, slowly, it became the rule.
20:23Jedefre the bad one, Qawab the poor one.
20:29Dr Dobrev's investigation has challenged the history books.
20:33Now he's searching for evidence of Jedefre's reign and what the forgotten pharaoh really did.
20:41He finds a visionary builder.
20:44One of his extraordinary structures is high up at Abu Rawash, six miles from Giza.
20:50The choice of this site ensured his monument stood even higher than his father's pyramid.
20:56But unlike Khufus, the building of this structure didn't break the back of the country.
21:01Abu Rawash, one of Egypt's highest natural sites.
21:06Almost at the same level as the top of the Great Pyramid.
21:11Many archaeologists think that this was a pyramid.
21:15But Dr Dobrev is the first to suggest that Jedefre, whose name means son of the sun god,
21:19actually built a solar temple here.
21:22Because of the location, the top of the monument would have been closer to the sun than almost anywhere else in Egypt.
21:29Inside, the design was inventive.
21:32For the first time, the structure didn't require hauling heavy stones uphill.
21:35This monument here in Abu Rawash has been cut in the mountain, an enormous ramp going down.
21:48Instead of hauling up these heavy granite stones, Jedefre brought the stones down.
21:53Jedefre's sloping ramp was so effective that later pharaohs adopted the design for their pyramids.
22:00After Khufus pyramid, all the monuments, all the pyramids will have their chambers under, in the rock.
22:09And far from abandoning Giza, Jedefre then returned there to build the greatest of all his monuments.
22:17The Sphinx.
22:20Although we don't know who first thought of carving the Sphinx.
22:24If Jedefre was the man who actually built it, then he transformed the Giza plateau.
22:28This time, no stones would need to be quarried, no ramps constructed, no gangs to pull sledges.
22:38Instead, the raw stone was right there.
22:41One single piece of limestone growing out of the bedrock would be transformed into the giant statue.
22:49The site had already been heavily quarried.
22:52Khufu had taken stones to build the Great Pyramid, and left a large piece of rock standing tall in a flat basin.
23:03For Jedefre, this was an opportunity to create something exceptional.
23:10This was the first big statue.
23:13We are in a period of big things.
23:15They just have built the biggest pyramid, and they built the biggest statue.
23:18The two biggest monuments of Egypt are there, one next to the other.
23:23But Dr. Dobrev believes the Sphinx wasn't just a monument for the Pharaoh.
23:27What makes it so exceptional is that the Sphinx had a political task to perform.
23:36He thinks Jedefre had a grand plan for the statue.
23:41Never in the history of sculpture has a single statue had to achieve so much.
23:46The Egyptians believed that they lived on forever after death.
23:53But achieving eternal life was only possible if support for the deceased remained strong on earth.
23:59Jedefre was all too aware that his father had become less respected toward the end of his life.
24:06Even during Khufu's reign, his mother's tomb had been raided.
24:10This desecration was the worst thing that could happen.
24:15It had made a mockery of everything they believed in.
24:19If there is no respect, there is chaos. Everything will collapse.
24:23This is the main idea of ancient Egypt, the life after death.
24:26Jedefre may have believed that the future of ancient Egyptian civilization lay in his hands.
24:35He had to ensure that his father's power was reinstated at Giza to safeguard his eternal life.
24:40Creating such an important, such an enormous image of Khufu, the god, the dead king, will improve his image and also will improve the image of the new king.
24:57So, I think that this could be an explanation why the Sphinx was built.
25:06Jedefre needed to create an image that would instill respect and awe into all who saw it.
25:12An image that was not only grand, but supremely powerful.
25:16Its impact remains unsurpassed to this day.
25:29I'm not a scientist. I could stay here all day, actually. Just do it.
25:35I mean, it's wonderful.
25:39Saying it's lovely would be so inadequate.
25:41I mean, in fact, most words are inadequate for it.
25:44I mean, all one can do is feast your eyes on it.
25:47To try to better understand the skills needed to create the statue,
25:51Vassal Dobrev has given Professor Williams a square meter block of the same limestone as was used to carve the Sphinx's face.
25:59It looks soft and chalky.
26:02And it looks...it's amazing.
26:05So, let's try just to see what...what it's like.
26:13Just take a...oh, yes.
26:16That's really soft. Beautiful.
26:20Oh, yes.
26:22Have that done by tea time.
26:25Like the ancient Egyptian craftsman, Professor Williams has to mark the outline to figure out which sections of stone to cut away.
26:32In carving, you have to think in reverse. You have to take away all the stuff that's not there.
26:44The nose has to be left, a piece of stone left for the forehead, a piece of stone left for the chin.
26:49It's like emptying a bath of water around an object.
26:53As the water goes out, it leaves the prominent bits up.
26:56Before he started carving, he made a small model, a maquette, to work from.
27:02I find it very useful to have a maquette, which you can simply put some basic measurements on and knock off the bits of stone that you know you don't want.
27:11I don't know whether the Egyptians would have done something similar. It's likely they may have done, particularly working on a scale like this.
27:18No sculpture of this scale had ever been attempted before.
27:23And unlike other statues, where stone was specially chosen, here the masons had to use what was in front of them.
27:30There was no room for error.
27:35This would be a daunting challenge even today.
27:37But in the Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, the stonemasons didn't even have iron tools.
27:44So how did they do it?
27:48To find out, Dr. Dobrev asks Dennis Stocks, an expert in Ancient Egyptian tools.
27:54The sophistication of the technology is surprising.
27:59These are copper chisels that would have been used to cut out the Great Sphinx.
28:06This one is a thicker chisel, but it still has a sharp edge to it, which would remain like that even after a lot of work cutting out the stone.
28:17This one, which although it's slimmer and narrower at the point, it's as hard as rolled steel, and it has a very sharp edge.
28:25The copper chisels were continually resharpened in a production line.
28:32This kept the stonemasons constantly supplied.
28:37Copper tools were simply hammered on each edge until they were sharp.
28:42The ancient Egyptians were experienced organizers.
28:48Although the Sphinx was the largest stone statue ever made,
28:52it required far fewer workers than the pyramids.
29:04Well, one could imagine the state itself being a huge machine, which controlled workers at every level.
29:13Starting off with Pharaoh himself, and then passing his instructions down to the Grand Vizier,
29:18then to other viziers below, who then instructed four, and then incorporated draft workers.
29:25There were people having to shovel all the debris, all the shards of limestone that were showering down onto the site.
29:32Then the scaffolding had to be put in position.
29:35People using cord in order to lash those together.
29:38Having roughed it out, the master draftman now can see places that now need more refinement.
29:44We've got in here, and the soft piece of stone that I was beginning to test out yesterday is about four inches here.
30:00And beyond that four inches we've got really good limestone, but it's hard, it's harder.
30:04So my notion that I would be finished in no time at all has gone out of the window.
30:11It does show that this supposed soft limestone is in fact good quality, outdoor type of sculpture stone.
30:21There is a possibility, if one isn't careful, that the soft stone comes away from the hard stone,
30:25that there will be some sort of shelling happening at the join of the soft to the hard.
30:31So we've got to be careful with that. We don't want to lose bits of the face.
30:35The alternating bands of soft and hard rock needed constant attention.
30:40As the stonemasons worked down, the quality of the limestone deteriorated.
30:45And as they began to carve the hindquarters, they encountered a fissure, a huge crack in the rock.
30:50Dr. Dobrev investigates this with geologist Colin Reeder.
30:59The main fissure runs right along the floor of the enclosure and through the paws and the rear part of the body of the Sphinx.
31:07People have suggested that it was the presence of this fissure cutting through the limestone that affected the proportions of the Sphinx.
31:14The workmen never knew if there were weaknesses hidden in the rock.
31:18Tragedy could strike at any moment.
31:26And this might explain why the Sphinx is so elongated.
31:30Perhaps the ancient masons carved on past the problem in order to get back to Good Rock and complete the rear of the Sphinx.
31:37We, Egyptologists, we don't look for legendary ideas. We base our knowledge on facts. And the facts are here.
31:46For thousands of years, the Sphinx has remained an enigma. But Dr. Vassal Dobrev's investigation has revealed that its creation was central to the reign of the forgotten Pharaoh Gedefri.
31:59The Sphinx would be a display of his power as the son of the most revered deity, the sun god Ra.
32:05From the beginning of his reign, Gedefri searched for stability. Because what does his name mean? Gedefri means I am the son of Ra.
32:20And this is extremely strong. From an ideological point of view, the idea was set up. Now we need to show, to act. And maybe the first act of this theoretical idea was building the Sphinx.
32:38As the first pharaoh to call himself the son of the god Ra, the Sphinx was Gedefri's ultimate symbol of power. It represented his father Khufu as a god. The lion symbolized the sun.
32:53The fusion of these ideas in the Sphinx would ensure Khufu's success in the afterlife. And by association, Gedefri's in this world.
33:08Gedefri also planned to assist his father in his journey to the afterlife. To do this, he came up with another extraordinary invention.
33:19He ordered the construction of two enormous boats, discovered in the last century on the Giza Plateau.
33:27Dr. Dobrev believes they are unique in Egyptian history because they were never assembled. Their parts were laid out like a giant kit.
33:34Gedefri had two deep pits dug beside his father's Great Pyramid. And the boats were lowered into them.
33:41The fact that Gedefri built these boat pits and put the boat in pieces shows that he wanted to help his father, his dead father, in the afterlife.
33:57All the parts were laid out to be assembled in the heavens. Khufu would be able to sail on the Celestial Nile with Ra, the sun god.
34:11After 4500 years, the components have survived. One of the boats is in perfect condition and has been assembled.
34:18After Gedefri buried the boat parts, the pits were covered. Then the Great Pyramid's enclosure wall was completed, concealing the hidden pits.
34:28The boats were so well disguised that they weren't found until 1955.
34:32Archaeologists discovered them beneath 42 stone blocks, each weighing 20 tons.
34:42They were covered in writing, which Dr. Dobrev has studied.
34:45We have on the stones that covered the boat pits, dates and the names of Gedefri.
34:58And one of the dates is speaking about the 11th year of the reign of Gedefri.
35:04And most people overlooked this evidence.
35:06Even today, they're referred to as Khufu's boats, with little mention of their maker.
35:12So while the boats would transport Khufu to the afterlife, the Sphinx would protect his reputation on Earth.
35:18Gedefri had secured eternity for his father.
35:21But it was risky to attempt to create an entirely new image on this scale.
35:26So next, Dr. Dobrev wants to investigate whether Sphinxes had been made before.
35:30We cannot trace when the idea of a Sphinx started.
35:34But what we know is that during the reign of Gedefri, Sphinxes existed.
35:39Gedefri had a liking for sculpture, and the royal workshops were kept busy during his reign.
35:46Up until Gedefri, Old Kingdom sculpture had been built on a small scale.
35:51They were designed for royal tombs, often only displayed in special rooms.
35:55Statues were usually seated.
35:57Artists paid little attention to their backs, since they were set against the wall.
36:02Dr. Dobrev discovers that Gedefri was fascinated by stone.
36:07He's found the quarry where the pharaoh would collect the rare diorite rock, prized for its golden glow.
36:14And this leads Dr. Dobrev to a bust of Gedefri, made from this stone, which he believes could be a prototype Sphinx.
36:21At the back, where it's broken, he believes that there is evidence that it was once attached to an animal body.
36:30And another Sphinx has been discovered, this time female, possibly of Gedefri's wife.
36:36Professor Glyn Williams believes the techniques reached their zenith with the carving of the Great Sphinx itself.
36:48There are beautiful transitions in the actual carving of the Sphinx's head between one form, the way it runs into another, is absolutely beautiful.
37:00It's ever so sophisticated.
37:03It's one of the best bits of transitional form making that I've seen.
37:08Gedefri's craftsmen might have carved Sphinx's on a small scale.
37:22But a sculpture of this size presented a whole new set of problems.
37:29Just the logistics of that size.
37:34Dealing with scaffolding, a lot of people working, which would have slowed down the process, where you have to make sure that the symmetry really worked.
37:47And the form here on this side is exactly the same movement and swelling as the form on that side.
37:55Everything works in accordance.
37:56And then you've got the very accurate and big decorative stripes, which would have taken some cutting on a large scale.
38:05And then, of course, it was colored.
38:08Today, we see the Sphinx in plain stone.
38:12But in ancient Egypt, all statues were painted.
38:20To our eyes, it may have looked almost gaudy.
38:22The face was red, definitely.
38:26The Nemez was painted with colors, and the body must have been painted.
38:32I can imagine that actually this could look like quite a kitschy image, but our harmony was not the same like the Egyptian harmony.
38:40The Sphinx might have had dark green or olive green eyes.
38:46The whole face was a reddish brown, and the Nemez had blue and gold stripes.
38:53This striking image would become a landmark in ancient Egyptian history.
38:57The Sphinx brought such strong and powerful ideas that stayed for eternity, and Gedefre gave together a new face.
39:12When Gedefre became Pharaoh, he faced an enormous challenge.
39:18He knew that he'd inherited a weak and disillusioned country from his father.
39:23But his innovative reign would lay the foundations of the future.
39:26When Gedefre died, his pyramid and temple were left unfinished.
39:35But his hidden boat pits survived, and his great Sphinx ensured that his family would prosper at Giza for generations.
39:45His half-brother, Khafre, succeeded him as Pharaoh.
39:55Khafre stayed at Giza and built his pyramid behind the Sphinx.
40:04And not only he did this, but he increased.
40:08He added a temple.
40:10He added elements to make it more powerful.
40:13And royal power was so strong here that Khafre's son, too, built his pyramid on the plateau,
40:20completing the unmistakable trio of pyramids we recognize as Giza.
40:25Dr. Dobrev believes his investigation has proved that it was Gedefre, the Pharaoh thought to have turned his back on Giza,
40:33who made all this possible, and who made the most extraordinary monument of all.
40:37Only time will tell if Gedefre, the architect of so many ideas, will ever receive recognition for his masterwork.
40:4620 years ago, Dr. Vassal Dobrev set out to examine the Sphinx.
40:57By scrutinizing every detail, he discovered that the statue's history wasn't what people thought.
41:02He has cast aside all accepted theories and studied a pharaoh that history has overlooked.
41:10He has discovered that this unknown visionary was an ambitious architect who not only designed an incredible temple,
41:18but even found a way to protect his own father in the afterlife.
41:21Only as the pieces came together did Dr. Dobrev realize the scope of his findings.
41:30When you take the evidence and piece it all together, it appears that Gedefre, far from being insignificant king,
41:37he appears to be a mastermind of the Giza plateau.
41:40As more archaeological finds come to light, perhaps one day Dr. Dobrev's research will allow Gedefre to regain his true place in history,
41:51and be remembered as the pharaoh who created the greatest statue on earth, the guardian of the Giza plateau, the Sphinx.