"The ancient mega temple of Karnak..." "The earthly mansion of the Egyptian gods and the exclusive playground of Egypt's ruling elite." "The feat of engineering here is just astronomical." "You can see the size of it." "But just how far back does the history of this place stretch?" "And what bizarre rituals went on behind its closed doors?" "They would sing and dance for the gods because the gods were easily bored." "Today, new technologies and forensic detective work are revealing what life was like inside the ancient world's largest religious complex." "To unearth Karnak's secrets, we'll explore this mega-temple stone by stone." "We'll look inside its 30-foot-thick walls and decode its 60-foot high columns to lift the veil on life inside one of the ancient world's most secretive wonders. captions paid for by discovery communications" "the sacred Egyptian site of Karnak..." "Generation after generation of pharaohs built temples here in honor of their own rule." "The result is a sprawling city of religious structures from different eras packed together like sardines." "Karnak sits at the heart of the Egyptian empire, 300 miles south of the great pyramids." "This vast collection of religious buildings was also a seat of power for Egypt's mighty pharaohs, like today's Vatican and white house rolled into one." "What really went on behind these hallowed walls?" "Today, as engineers rebuild the shattered remains of Karnak piece by piece, this extraordinary site is finally revealing its hidden secrets." "It's a mammoth task." "The parts of the complex archaeologists have restored revealed the spectacle that greeted elite guests more than 3,000 years ago." "The elite allowed to enter Karnak were greeted by the massive hypostyle hall." "Here, foreign dignitaries were received, and mighty pharaohs rested under the shaded columns." "Behind it, the festival hall obelisks marked an exclusive gateway." "Only priests and pharaohs could pass through to the inner temples." "At the heart of this secret inner sanctum laid the most ancient known temple." "But experts suspect that this site was venerated for so long, that even older temples may lie hidden in the ruins." "Antoine Garric is the current lead on a massive restoration project, rebuilding Karnak to its former glory." "He knows that ancient structures unseen for thousands of years could lie hidden inside this field of blocks." "But to resurrect them, he first has to find the right pieces." "While hunting out the blocks for his latest reconstruction project," "Antoine has learned something astonishing about the Egyptian builders." "They were thieves." "Examining the scenes of these architectural crimes reveals some incredible surprises." "Perhaps the greatest was discovered inside the ruins of one of Karnak's enormous walls." "Within the fabric of a half-destroyed wall, archaeologists found the remains of hundreds of stolen blocks." "They're the pieces to a near-complete temple called the white chapel, the crowning glory of Senusret the first, a former pharaoh." "He covered the chapel in inscriptions, depicting his jubilee festival." "It once held the king's mighty double throne and honored the sun god." "This holy shrine was callously destroyed to build the legacy of a future pharaoh." "Nine similar towering walls were built on the Karnak site." "The pharaohs that built each one covered them with ancient scripts, boasting of their divine status like a giant billboard." "Today, Antoine and his team are reconstructing one of the walls." "They believe it was carved in honor of the boy-king Tutankhamen more than 3,000 years ago." "By completing this 30-foot-high Jigsaw puzzle," "Antoine hopes to reveal the forgotten history of king tut's reign scrubbed out by the rulers who followed him." "The complexity of the task is enormous, but Antoine has technology on his side." "Antoine uses special software to see where his photos fit into the wall reconstruction." "Once he's sure where the virtual block goes," "Antoine can haul the real thing into place." "Antoine is confident this is the next piece in king tut's monster puzzle." "Today's restorers are lucky to have modern machines to lift the two-ton blocks into place." "Three and a half thousand years ago, the Egyptians had to use much more primitive tools." "Instead of cranes, the ancient Egyptians made bricks from the mud of the Nile and stacked them into a gentle sloping ramp." "They added wooden tracks and pulled the massive stone blocks up on sleds." "They used water to lubricate the path." "The Egyptians built the ramp higher and higher to add more and more layers to the wall until it toward over 100 feet." "Once the wall was complete, the ramp was destroyed." "A huge wooden door and colorful flags were added as the final touches." "By rebuilding the ruins of Karnak's forgotten structures, experts have uncovered evidence of the strange rituals and practices of the ancient pharaohs." "But to truly understand what went on at Karnak, scientists have to look elsewhere for clues." "These grisly human remains were once important people in the working life of the temple." "Can new technology reveal who they were and what they did?" "Karnak..." "The largest religious complex in ancient Egypt with a mountain of ruins to prove it." "Historians believed this walled structure was a thriving miniature city filled with homes and workplaces." "But who was the elite's religious society that lived here, and what did they do?" "To find this hidden city, you have to travel deep inside Karnak, far beyond the obelisks and into the sacred labyrinth of antechambers reserved for the king and his spiritual entourage." "Inside these secret rooms, priests and their religious aides would host ceremonies and daily rituals." "But at the end of the working day, they would all retire to the hidden village beyond, a walled complex of hundred of mud houses, space for thousands of people to live and work, a secret society to support the temple's colossal power." "Campbell price suspects the Egyptians who worked at Karnak may have been every bit as extraordinary as the temple itself." "And today, with the help of his colleague Lidija McKnight, he has an opportunity to put his suspicions to the test." "We have 20 human mummies, several of whom come from the site of Thebes, and it's very likely that those people, including this lady here, worked at the temple of Karnak." "100 years ago, explorers unearthed these human remains very close to Karnak in what was the ancient city of Thebes." "Campbell believes the resin-coated mummy is that of a temple worker called "parenbast."" "He hopes to unravel the secrets of her daily life by studying her remains and any artifacts hidden inside her wrappings." "So this is the lid of the coffin of parenbast." "She was discovered in a sealed tomb, and down here, we can see some hieroglyphs, which are a prayer to the gods to ensure that parenbast would have a successful afterlife." "So, is there any evidence on the coffin which tells us what her role was at the temple?" "Right at the bottom, you can see her title, and that's it..." ", which means a singer, temple singer of Amun." "And this tells us for sure that she worked in Karnak." "Campbell thinks parenbast's role as a temple singer would've been very different to that of a church singer today." "We think she was part of a small number of wealthy women who would go into the inner parts of the temple where the god's statue was kept, and they would sing and dance, perhaps, for the gods," "because the ancient Egyptian gods were often easily bored, so they needed to be entertained." "Parenbast would've sung songs to the statue of Amun-Ra every day to keep the sun god happy, but at key times in the calendar, her job became even more important." "Parenbast would've spent all year looking forward to the festival of Opet." "When the Nile flooded, the pharaoh called the whole town to Karnak to worship the gods." "Inside the temple, the priests dressed the statue of the god Amun-Ra while parenbast and her colleagues sang his praises." "The statue was carried out of the temple." "Music filled the air, and the crowd showered the statue in offerings." "The parade continued for many days." "Finally, the statue was returned to the temple with the hope that the floods would come again the following year." "Campbell wants to know how old the mummies were when they died." "This could reveal clues to their social class." "Lidija shows him C.T. scans of a similar mummy she's been working on." "It suggests women like parenbast were able to reach a surprisingly old age." "So, in her spine here, you can see these little bony spurs." "They're a common indicator of osteoarthritis just by sheer wear and tear on the skeleton as people get older, which indicate that she was probably middle-aged, somewhere between 50 and 60." "An ordinary woman in ancient Egypt would expect to live to 30." "For the Karnak workers to live twice as long, they must've lived a life of pure opulence, cut off from the grim reality of life outside the high temple walls." "Campbell believes further clues to the social status of the temple singers could lie hidden inside their wrappings." "Scans of parenbast's remains show strange shapes." "Could they be valuable amulets, a sure sign of a high status burial?" "We can see there on the C.T. scan are two shapes." "Campbell wants to know what the shapes are, but the wrappings are too delicate to disturb." "Instead, he asks a colleague to isolate the strange shapes from the C.T. scans." "Then he uses sophisticated software to create a perfect facsimile of the objects in 3-d." "This model reveals details unseen for almost 3,000 years." "But as you can see, it's got a very distinctive hieroglyph on it." "It's the eye of the god Horus." "And we know in Egyptian mythology, the eye of Horus was believed to be a strong symbol of protection." "By having this symbol on your mummified body, it protected the deceased." "The discovery of the amulets and the fact that she was mummified suggests that parenbast was a highly valued member of the elite Karnak society." "She would've lived a life of luxury and adulation, just like rock stars today, a life unimaginable to those outside the walls of the temple." "Karnak's enormous halls and labyrinth of chambers created an exclusive workplace unlike anything the world had seen before." "But how and why did this temple reach such an epic scale?" "Could evidence unearthed at this ancient quarry offer clues?" "The mighty temple complex at Karnak wasn't just designed with humans in mind." "The Egyptians hoped to create earthly mansions for the gods, places the immortals would be happy to relax in when they visited the earth." "But how can you create a house worthy of a passing deity?" "Karnak's biggest temple needed an equally large roof to protect the gods from the beating mid-day sun." "Enormous beams were needed to span the vast distances between the columns and support hundreds of solid stone cross struts." "In the central aisle, even larger blocks were used to bridge the gap." "These beams were the key to creating a monumental feat of ancient engineering that plunged the massive hall into darkness fit for a resting god." "But the royal builders faced an immense challenge." "The local limestone, similar to the rock used to build the pyramids, would snap under its own weight when balanced between the columns." "The ancient Egyptians needed a much stronger material to build this vast roof." "But where to find it?" "Archaeologist Maria Nilsson believes the answer lies 100 miles south along the river Nile at a remote quarry called Silsila, famed for its super tough sandstone." "She's uncovered ancient graffiti here that seems to reference a massive ancient quarrying operation around the time Karnak was built." "We got these figures." "They are the masons." "So, they're actually chiseling out the block that comes from the mountain." "Further down, they're controlled by the overseer who's standing here with a whip, making sure that the work is being done properly." "Maria suspects the discovery of sandstone in this quarry was a turning point for the ancient Egyptians." "For the first time, they were able to build bigger, taller, wider-roofed structures worthy of the gods they were so eager to please." "We believe that, during the new kingdom," "Silsila was considered so important, and we have pharaohs who come, and they write their names, commemorating the events." "The pharaohs couldn't get enough of this new, stronger material." "It allowed them to build ever more elaborate-roofed structures." "The deeper they got into the mountain, the stronger the blocks would've been, and that's what they were all after." "But how did the Egyptian masons get these massive blocks out of the mountain and 100 miles back to Karnak?" "Maria's research partner, John ward, thinks the chance discovery of this cracked, abandoned beam offers vital clues." "Here we are in the mother of all quarries at Silsila, and we're confronted by this huge lintel, which would've been a roof lintel or some kind of architrave, but it's load-bearing." "You can see the size of it." "John investigates the rock face behind this forgotten giant." "He looks for clues to how the Egyptians worked their prized new stone." "Down in here, you would've had the ancient Egyptian quarryman chip-chip-chipping away with his mallet and his chisel." "And as we can see on the wall, we've got the chisel marks still in situ, one stroke going down, stop, another stroke going down, stop and then another stroke going down, stop." "The ancient Egyptians used bronze tools to carve out the sides of each block." "Then they hammered metal wedges underneath the huge lintels to pry the stones free." "John suspects the quarry workers then moved the beams by hand to riverboats bound for Karnak." "The feat of engineering here is just astronomical to think that this huge lintel was lifted by man onto a sledge, taken down the man-made ramp to the awaiting barges on the Nile." "John and his team are digging for evidence that the Egyptians constructed an extensive road network to help the quarrymen pull the huge roof beams out of the quarry." "We're actually defining the road, as you can see, coming all the way up to where we're standing now, and this allowed the quarry blocks to be taken down to the Nile and the awaiting rafts to Karnak temple." "Once the giant beams arrived at Karnak, the construction team faced an even greater challenge." "They needed to raise the beams 70 feet into the air." "First, the Egyptians built the columns layer by layer, placing rough blocks in a checkerboard pattern across the hall." "Then they filled the entire area with dirt and then dragged another layer of blocks into place for 20 layers." "When all the blocks were positioned, the mammoth roof beams were carefully placed on top of the solid mass of soil 70 feet high." "Finally, the dirt was removed, and the pillars were carved smooth to create the largest covered space in ancient Egypt." "Sandstone blocks allowed one pharaoh to construct a hall big enough to be worthy of the gods, but who was it?" "Who took the adulation for building the incredible hypostyle hall?" "Surprisingly, for a site covered in the names of pharaohs, the architect of the hypostyle hall is hotly debated." "Is new technology about to reveal an incredible story of stolen identity?" "Karnak..." "The religious and political powerhouse of the ancient Egyptian empire." "Many pharaohs built temples here, marking the stone with their name to proclaim their power." "But not all these boastful marks are quite what they seem." "Egyptologist Erika Feleg has spent 7 years studying the enormous hypostyle hall." "She's looking for clues to the architect of the largest temple on site." "I love a detective story." "I love figuring out what happened to this column before it ended up looking like it does today." "Incredibly, her seemingly simple task of identifying who built this massive temple has uncovered a remarkable story of high politics and royal vanity." "The hypostyle hall is a gallery of ancient artwork." "All 134 columns were once adorned with inscriptions from top to bottom." "Every inch of stone told a story in vivid color." "The markings boast of the god-like status of one man, a pharaoh whose symbol adorns the columns at every angle." "Plastered all along the main Avenue is the Mark of Ramses the second." "Ramses the second is nicknamed "the builder."" "This powerful pharaoh reportedly constructed more major buildings and statues in Egypt than any other king." "But although his Mark covers the hypostyle hall," "Erika suspects that Ramses could be taking credit for the work of one of his predecessors." "Today, she uses new technology to record the carvings and search for clues." "This is a task that previous generations of archaeologists were unable to pull off." "The columns have never been recorded in detail, and that's mostly because of their enormous size." "Traditional methods would involve using transparent plastic sheets to trace over the figures." "Because of the heat, the light, and the gravity, all that plastic sheeting would have sagged, so we would've had distortions." "Instead of tracing the images," "Erika uses photography and special software to reveal the smallest details hidden inside the carvings." "She directs photographer Owen Murray to take the images." "I am photographing these columns, trying to get as high-definition and high-fidelity an image as possible." "The major challenges that we're facing with these columns are height and consistency of light." "The marks Erika hopes to see are so faint, they can only be photographed in very precise shaded lighting." "This gives Owen only a small window to work each day." "We're dealing with the position of the sun as it moves throughout the day and trying to keep consistent with the quality of photograph, and that has been one of the bigger challenges." "Up until this point, we've haven't really been able to do that." "Owen takes hundreds of photos of the shaded column with an overhead light." "This technique helps him to capture every detail of the carved stone surface." "Erika then uses advanced 3-d modeling to stitch Owen's photographs together." "She then unrolls the curves into a single flat image." "Now she can carefully analyze the stone surface, hunting for the remains of old inscriptions scrubbed out and recarved with the name of Ramses." "There are times when we'll take a photo, and it's only after two weeks once we've processed it or play with their lighting that we realize," ""oh, we actually captured something that looks like a recarved inscription."" "If you look closely, you can see traces of what used to be the outlines of some of the hieroglyphs that were part of that initial decoration." "Erika believes these faint scratches, hidden beneath the main inscription, are the scrubbed-out remains of another pharaoh's mark." "Once Erika identifies the overwritten text, she checks it out in real life." "She uses mirrors to manipulate the daylight to help the faint carved lines stand out." "So, the two large ovals you can see contain the names of Ramses the second, and behind them, you can still see the outline traces of SETI the first." "At key points in the hall, especially along the grandest and most visible central walkway," "Ramses' name overrides that of his own father, pharaoh SETI the first." "And you can still the faint traces towards the left side of the Ramses the second." "Ramses was desperate to replace his father's name with his own, but the old pharaoh had made his son's deception almost impossible to pull off." "Ramses' father was an art connoisseur." "His carvings were elaborate with deep outlines and raised figures." "So, when SETI died and Ramses took the throne, the new pharaoh faced an uphill task to erase the memory of his predecessor." "Ramses erected scaffolding around the pillars." "He chopped the raised images off, but he still couldn't get rid of the deep outlines." "In his haste, he scraped his name on top in simple sunk-relief carvings." "Finally, he used a thin layer of plaster to conceal the faint traces of his father, which the weathering of time has only now revealed." "Ramses proclaimed his power by claiming the hypostyle hall for his own." "But surprisingly, this towering structure isn't the tallest monument on site." "That prize goes to the nearby obelisks." "How were these colossal single carvings made?" "And how did the Egyptians get them here?" "Karnak's giant obelisks are one of the greatest marvels of the ancient world." "These massive, single pieces of rock have puzzled archaeologists for years." "That's because they're carved from one of the hardest rocks on earth, granite." "How did the ancient Egyptians work this toughest of materials with only primitive tools?" "Although only two still stand today, at its prime," "Karnak boasted 13 colossal obelisks." "Six dominated the center of the temple at the festival hall." "The tallest towered 100 feet high, and all were made from super-tough granite to stop them from snapping." "The tips were painted with glimmering gold to reflect the sun's rays." "Engravings boast they were carved in just seven months, but how?" "Adel Kelany has spent his career unearthing the secrets of Egyptian stone masons." "He's convinced that the metal chisels used to build limestone pyramids and sandstone temples would've had little effect on the tough granite used to build the obelisks." "Today, he examines a half-extracted obelisk, most likely abandoned by the Egyptians when the massive block split." "Adel first examines the surface of the stone for tell-tale marks, but the dents he finds are hard to interpret." "Next, he looks in the dirt under the stone and uncovers something surprising." "The surprise discovery of charcoal suggests that fire may have played some part in the extraction of the giant blocks." "To test the theory, Adel lights a series of fires on top of a nearby outcrop." "He wants to see if heating and then quenching the hard rock makes it easier to work." "The team keeps a close eye on the temperature while checking for any signs of weakness." "The team quenches the fire with water." "Wow." "To test if the fire has made the hard rock easier to work," "Adel instructs one team to pound the heated rock." "For comparison, he gets another to pound on the untreated surface." "Both hammer for 9 minutes." "Then Adel examines the results." "The heat-treated hole is nearly 2 inches deep, seemingly 10 times quicker to work through than the untreated rock, a stunning result." "It's early days, but Adel believes fire was the key to building Karnak's granite obelisks." "But how did they transport these 450-ton monoliths to Karnak?" "Historians believe the Egyptians dug canals deep into the landscape so water from the Nile would flow towards the quarries." "The obelisk was suspended over the water." "Then a boat was weighed down with tons of stone so that when it was emptied, it would pick up the obelisk and carry it down the Nile to Karnak." "At Karnak, hundreds of construction workers then gradually dug away the earth with great precision to tilt the giant stone upright." "Lastly, they slotted the base of the obelisk into a groove and attached ropes to haul it into its final position." "The colossal journey of this 450-ton block was complete." "The great pharaohs ruled over an empire of 2 million people beneath the shadow of their massive granite needles." "The Egyptians continued to build temples on this site for a further 1,200 years, but now archaeologists are unearthing evidence that the work here came to an abrupt end." "The surprising catalyst was the emergence of a powerful new religion, one that was set to change the destiny of our planet." "The mighty temple complex at Karnak was one of the busiest construction sites in the ancient world." "For 2,000 years, generation after generation of pharaohs built ever more complex structures at the temple." "Yet 1,700 years ago, the construction stopped suddenly, and Karnak fell to ruin." "Why?" "Archaeologist Benjamin Durand is unearthing evidence that the fall was triggered by the rise of a new religion that was set to change the world." "The hieroglyphs reveal how the rule of Karnak changed over its final years, and the last name on the list seems strangely foreign." "Tiberius wasn't an Egyptian." "He was the leader of the mighty Roman empire." "Karnak had been seized by a foreign power." "Benjamin unearths evidence that Karnak's new overlords brought the temples crashing down because just 300 years after they arrived, the Romans made a momentous cultural change." "1,600 years ago, the Roman empire turned its back on paganism and converted to a new faith, Christianity." "Roman leaders ordered the immediate closure of all non-Christian sites across Egypt, including the biggest of them all, Karnak." "Benjamin's work is slowly revealing what happened next." "He suspects that he's uncovered the entrance to a family home." "Benjamin is convinced this whole area was once filled with houses." "The Romans transformed Karnak's deserted temples into a bustling Christian community." "Karnak's downfall was the final nail in the coffin for the ancient Egyptian civilization." "No more pharaohs were buried in the valley of the kings." "The sphinx was lost to the sands of the desert, and the great pyramids were swamped by the city." "The religion that built these iconic monuments was no more." "Without it, the art, temples, and politics that had defined this civilization for 3,000 years had no reason to continue, and the world would never be the same again." "Archaeologists continue piecing together the bizarre inner workings of life at Karnak," "Egypt's most mysterious religious complex." "Its walls bear the mark of 30 pharaohs, its myriad buildings a testament to their individual quests for power." "What amazing secrets could still lie buried under the towering columns and giant walls of the largest religious complex in the ancient world?"