00:00
Byrne: They were built to last, and they have. They were intended to awe and amaze, and they do. For five millennia, the ancient world’s last wonder has dominated the Giza plateau – and the story is far from over.
00:10
Digging In the shadow of the pyramids, the digging goes on.
00:30
Naguib Naguib: Yes there is lots and lots still under the sand – people think we know everything about ancient Egypt. Every day we discover new things – and everyday we reconsider what we knew.
00:35
Walking around cemetery with pyramids in background. Also show Sphinx. Byrne: The pyramids of the Old Kingdom are the pride of Egypt … -- and Giza, where they stand is archaeology’s holy of holies. Where the Pharaohs and nobles pursued the great dream of their age: eternal life.
00:58
The first Australian to work here is Professor Naguib Kanawati. It’s the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship and excavation – to the vast network of tombs at the foot of the pyramids, Giza’s city of the dead.
01:13
Naguib: It’s not really studying one tomb, it’s studying a whole family, the history of one family. You have the man – his parents, his grandparents, his parents-in-law, and they are all buried in the same area. The whole idea is that the Egyptian wanted to be with his family in life and in the hereafter.
01:30
Naguib & Byrnes in tomb This particular kilt is specific to a certain period.
01:52
Byrne: To record and study that life is a painstaking task … on their tomb walls , the Egyptian nobles painted every detail of what they ate, wore, hunted and worshipped.
01:56
Naguib: We just record every line, every detail.
Byrne: Naguib and his small team trace exactly what they find … every fold of fabric, every curl of hair. A 5,000- year old account of the way it was.
02:13
Naguib Naguib: These people can tell us really how the ancient Egyptians lived. These people are the ones who managed the administration, who governed the country, and certainly among them we have the ministers, the viziers, the doctors, the architects the accountants, the – every job – they ran the country, they really governed the country 02:37
Repairs to Sphinx: Workmen washing face and chestShow top second pyramid Byrne: Though undiminished in scale - time and pollution have gnawed at the Giza monuments. Humans did far worse. The Sphinx lost its nose and beard - not to Napoleon, as often rumoured, but to a religious fanatic.
02:55
While most of the shining white limestone which coated the pyramids was carted off to build houses for the living. The keeper of the plateau, Dr Zahi Hawass, now tightly protects his site .. and all that lies beneath it.
03:10
Hawass Byrne: There is still so much to be found isn’t there – I mean you’re talking all the time about new discoveries.Hawass: You know I always say that we discovered until now 30 percent of the Egyptian monuments, there is still 70 percent underneath the ground. Byrne: So the work will never be done? Hawass: Always the sand of Egypt reveals lots of secrets.
03:25
Naguib and Hawass in office, Hawass on phone etc … chattingI would like no excavation at Giza and Saqqara for this coming period. And encourage people, scholars like Doctor Naguib Kanawati to publish what is not published.
03:49
Byrne: Dr Zahi Hawass is no run-of-the-mill archaeologist, he is the impresario of Egyptology, a star of screen and print
04:03
Hawass Hawass: Any scholar that has the capacity of obligation of Dr. Kanawati, I will encourage him and Dr. Kanawati to do more work like this.
04:12
There’s no problem for money…
04:21
No-one touches a grain of Giza sand without Dr Zahi’s say-so.
04:22
Hawass: If you have a good publication of a tomb, if anything is stolen, you’ll know right away.
Hawass: I want to protect what we have – I hope in the future that we can stop excavations in Egypt for this coming ten years and concentrate only on the publication and the conservation of what we have.
04:33
B & W stills of early digs, intercut with dissolve shots from Cairo Museum CU statue in museum
Byrne: The early urge to dig and keep digging drew archaeologists and adventurers from around the world, and of course they reaped rich rewards.
04:52
In the rush to excavate, scholarship ran a slow second. Vital records remain stored in suitcases, even today, while some of what was published, turned out to be flat wrong.
05:05
Naguib at second tomb, above ground with birds Naguib: This is the tomb of someone called Ka-em-ankh, who was the overseer of the treasure so he was a pretty important person.
05:22
Byrne: Does it matter that the old scholars got it wrong? Well, yes, because they are the source for everyone else.
05:30
Naguib in tomb with snakes and ladders game Naguib: And this is reasonably well represented by Junker. But here there are two men playing a game which is similar to our snakes and ladders. And you can see the snake quite clearly here. He represented it looking like practically a pot… It’s the spoonbill in ours…
05:37
Byrne: It’s the small details which make history. But those details must be exactly right.
06:00
Byrne: And the butterfly?Naguib: The butterfly is totally missing here in Junker’s record.
06:05
Byrne: So in a real sense is what we know about the history of ancient Egypt to date – is much of it wrong? Naguib: Almost certainly, yes. I mean if you read a book ten years old – it’s not worth reading because things are rewritten considered constantly based on new, new finds.
06:11
Hawass :I think the most important thing we get from Naguib Kanawati’s work that we’ll have the tombs that have been discovered before – the publication of these tombs is not really accurate enough because it has been published in the last century. For the last 50 years Egyptology has developed a lot and this is why I think we will gain from his work new publication of the tombs with beautiful photographs and this will be important for us even to protect the tomb from theft. If any tomb is stolen we can really know what is in the tomb because of the publication.
06:36
Naguib: We go now downstairs to the burial chamber. Watch your step as you come down.Byrne: I will, I assure you.Naguib: Just don’t fall on me. (laughs) Byrne: Is this one of the deeper ones, Naguib?Naguib: No, no this is six metres. We have other ones up to 21 metres.
07:11
Well we are now at, here is the burial chamber which is about six metres underground
07:37
Byrnes: We descend into the treasurer’s tomb, his house of eternity. Richly coloured, complete with stone sarcophagus.
07:43
Naguib :It is one of the most unusual burial chambers in its decoration. The fact that it is decorated with scenes of daily life. There is no other burial chamber like this one, it’s unique.
07:51
Torchlight on walls, CUs paintings and hieroglyphsThe hieroglyphs are a virtual shopping list for the gods, ordering food and wine for the hereafter.
08:05
Naguib: And it includes everything. All types of birds, cuts of meat, different oils, different wines, different beers, you name it. For example here we have, you know, this is wine, a different type of wine. Another wine, another wine and so on. And really they wanted everything. So, it’s almost a hundred items listed here that includes all Egyptian food. And that is a huge source of information about what they ate.
Byrne: And that is the only record we have? Naguib: The only record we have of this wall is this one.
08:45
Byrne: But this wall -- after just 50 years exposure, a complete blank. If not recorded, it would be lost forever.
08:52
Naguib: It has completely disappeared. Completely disappeared. An archaeologist who excavates but does not publish is committing almost a sinful act because he is in the best position to record it and nobody will ever be able to recreate the same atmosphere and moments that he discovered the objects at.
Byrne: These humble tombs were discovered ten years ago close to the pyramids at Giza. The site is now famous as the cemetery of the workers, the 20,000 or so ordinary Egyptians who bent their backs lifting giant stones for the pharaohs… and at the end of their earthly lives, made their own modest bid for eternity through their tombs.
09:28
Scarcely a fifth of the cemetery has been excavated so far – they’ll be digging at Giza for decades. But already, they’ve discovered enough to blow away many of the old myths.
09:56
Byrne: So the old Cecil B de Mille movies with the slaves … Hawass: Were completely wrong – Hollywood completely created this nonsense about slaves building the pyramids. No, this discovery proved to the public that the builder of the pyramids were Egyptians. They were not people come from a lost civilisation or from Atlantis or whatever, or from out of space you have everywhere, and also it shows they were not slaves. Because if they were slaves they would never have built their tombs by the pyramid and they would never prepare their tombs for eternity like the kings and queens.
10:08
Byrne: Cue – the pyramids. Though camels have outnumbered tour buses since September 11, they are Giza’s – in fact Egypt’s – main tourist attraction, an object of endless fascination. Not, however, for Naguib Kanawati.
10:44
Byrne: You have rudely described the pyramids as a pile of rocks, just a pile of rocks Naguib: Well, no, I wouldn’t say that it is just a pile of rocks. It is certainly a huge construction but personally I’m interested in life – life of people – and the pyramids did not record the life of people. Burial chambers inside the king – in the pyramid are bare – no inscriptions. In the tombs of officials you have all this wealth of information of daily life. I’m very interested in the life of people.
11:01
Byrne: But Zahi Hawass isn’t buying the argument.
11:42 I think the pyramids are not a pile of rocks. Because they are giving us the intelligence of people – they’re teaching you how – and us – how can we learn from those people? Then it’s a pile of rocks if you do not understand them – it’s a pile of rocks if you do not know how those pyramids can tell us technology – science, mystery and magic. I always tell the children that come by here – those are not rocks. If you understand what’s behind the rocks you will know that these rocks made Egypt, from the rocks architects, astronomy, art and science.
11:45
Byrne: For all the grandeur of the enterprise, this is the reality of the Egyptologist’s life - a small, cheap hotel, and long hours – inking over the tracings, reconstructing the architecture.
12:38
Working over tracing paper, architect drawing And after 5,000 years, wouldn’t you know, there’s a time pressure. The digging season is brief; the need to publish is strong. 12:56
Naguib Naguib: it is hard work, it is very hard work. Particularly the way I do it, because I spend my – this is my vacation – you know this is the time which I can really spend on the beach, and rather than that I come here. I love it, I love it more than the beach, but then that’s not the end of it. I go back home, spend sleepless nights writing it down and as soon as I finish I come back again.
13:06
Byrne: You’re an addict! Naguib: Yes, I haven’t had one summer in 25 years.Byrne: Is it, is it … Naguib: And I’m not complaining. Byrne: It’s obviously a labour of love for you.Naguib: Yep, yep, I love it and the more the better.
13:41
Naguib & Byrnes walking through columns at SaqqaraNaguib: This is the pyramids of Zoser and the funeral temple of Zoser.
13:59
Byrne: And Naguib Kanawati has more … having been granted access to another Old Kingdom site near to but even more ancient than Giza.
14:04
Naguib: Not only are they the like a bunch of pirates.
14:12
Byrne: It was here at Saqqara that the Egyptians moved away from mud brick and started their long love affair with stone.
Here, too, that they began playing around with pyramids - taking those steep angles step by step.
14:26
Naguib: The Egyptian believed in perpetual life so he recorded everything in a very durable way, on stone. We know architecture, art, food, family relationships. We even have love songs and because it’s survived so well and if it was done properly you know who is who and who married who and produced whom and became what and so …Byrnes: You make it sound as little like a very high grade soap opera. Naguib: It’s almost an unfolding novel that’s how I feel about really putting this evidence together because you know, you get to know them personally.
Naguib: So this is the tomb of someone called Idut but originally, actually it belonged to someone called Ihy who was the vizier under King Unas.
15:21
Byrne: With their tombs and mummies, it’s easy to see the Egyptians as being obsessed with death … but it was life they loved … so much, they wanted it to last, and for them to be remembered forever. As, in a sense, they are.
15:32s
For Naguib Kanawati, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime -- to study a great civilisation, in the most civilised way imaginable.Naguib: I love coffee, to have it just delivered to the door of the tomb and to drink it in front of the great pyramids -- absolute luxury.
15:59
Naguib: My fate, my luck, was to be invited to work in this magnificent cemetery and I can’t believe my good luck to be able to work in a tomb, and when I’m tired just look out and see the great pyramid in front of me …This is the general view I see every day. Well I’m not complaining. It’s the greatest view from any office and I have it permanently.
16:20
Credits:Reporter: Jennifer ByrneCamera: Ron FoleySound: Kate GrahamEditor: Garth ThomasProducer: Allan Hogan
16:53
Byrne: They were built to last, and they have. They were intended to awe and amaze, and they do. For five millennia, the ancient world’s last wonder has dominated the Giza plateau – and the story is far from over.
00:10
Digging In the shadow of the pyramids, the digging goes on.
00:30
Naguib Naguib: Yes there is lots and lots still under the sand – people think we know everything about ancient Egypt. Every day we discover new things – and everyday we reconsider what we knew.
00:35
Walking around cemetery with pyramids in background. Also show Sphinx. Byrne: The pyramids of the Old Kingdom are the pride of Egypt … -- and Giza, where they stand is archaeology’s holy of holies. Where the Pharaohs and nobles pursued the great dream of their age: eternal life.
00:58
The first Australian to work here is Professor Naguib Kanawati. It’s the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship and excavation – to the vast network of tombs at the foot of the pyramids, Giza’s city of the dead.
01:13
Naguib: It’s not really studying one tomb, it’s studying a whole family, the history of one family. You have the man – his parents, his grandparents, his parents-in-law, and they are all buried in the same area. The whole idea is that the Egyptian wanted to be with his family in life and in the hereafter.
01:30
Naguib & Byrnes in tomb This particular kilt is specific to a certain period.
01:52
Byrne: To record and study that life is a painstaking task … on their tomb walls , the Egyptian nobles painted every detail of what they ate, wore, hunted and worshipped.
01:56
Naguib: We just record every line, every detail.
Byrne: Naguib and his small team trace exactly what they find … every fold of fabric, every curl of hair. A 5,000- year old account of the way it was.
02:13
Naguib Naguib: These people can tell us really how the ancient Egyptians lived. These people are the ones who managed the administration, who governed the country, and certainly among them we have the ministers, the viziers, the doctors, the architects the accountants, the – every job – they ran the country, they really governed the country 02:37
Repairs to Sphinx: Workmen washing face and chestShow top second pyramid Byrne: Though undiminished in scale - time and pollution have gnawed at the Giza monuments. Humans did far worse. The Sphinx lost its nose and beard - not to Napoleon, as often rumoured, but to a religious fanatic.
02:55
While most of the shining white limestone which coated the pyramids was carted off to build houses for the living. The keeper of the plateau, Dr Zahi Hawass, now tightly protects his site .. and all that lies beneath it.
03:10
Hawass Byrne: There is still so much to be found isn’t there – I mean you’re talking all the time about new discoveries.Hawass: You know I always say that we discovered until now 30 percent of the Egyptian monuments, there is still 70 percent underneath the ground. Byrne: So the work will never be done? Hawass: Always the sand of Egypt reveals lots of secrets.
03:25
Naguib and Hawass in office, Hawass on phone etc … chattingI would like no excavation at Giza and Saqqara for this coming period. And encourage people, scholars like Doctor Naguib Kanawati to publish what is not published.
03:49
Byrne: Dr Zahi Hawass is no run-of-the-mill archaeologist, he is the impresario of Egyptology, a star of screen and print
04:03
Hawass Hawass: Any scholar that has the capacity of obligation of Dr. Kanawati, I will encourage him and Dr. Kanawati to do more work like this.
04:12
There’s no problem for money…
04:21
No-one touches a grain of Giza sand without Dr Zahi’s say-so.
04:22
Hawass: If you have a good publication of a tomb, if anything is stolen, you’ll know right away.
Hawass: I want to protect what we have – I hope in the future that we can stop excavations in Egypt for this coming ten years and concentrate only on the publication and the conservation of what we have.
04:33
B & W stills of early digs, intercut with dissolve shots from Cairo Museum CU statue in museum
Byrne: The early urge to dig and keep digging drew archaeologists and adventurers from around the world, and of course they reaped rich rewards.
04:52
In the rush to excavate, scholarship ran a slow second. Vital records remain stored in suitcases, even today, while some of what was published, turned out to be flat wrong.
05:05
Naguib at second tomb, above ground with birds Naguib: This is the tomb of someone called Ka-em-ankh, who was the overseer of the treasure so he was a pretty important person.
05:22
Byrne: Does it matter that the old scholars got it wrong? Well, yes, because they are the source for everyone else.
05:30
Naguib in tomb with snakes and ladders game Naguib: And this is reasonably well represented by Junker. But here there are two men playing a game which is similar to our snakes and ladders. And you can see the snake quite clearly here. He represented it looking like practically a pot… It’s the spoonbill in ours…
05:37
Byrne: It’s the small details which make history. But those details must be exactly right.
06:00
Byrne: And the butterfly?Naguib: The butterfly is totally missing here in Junker’s record.
06:05
Byrne: So in a real sense is what we know about the history of ancient Egypt to date – is much of it wrong? Naguib: Almost certainly, yes. I mean if you read a book ten years old – it’s not worth reading because things are rewritten considered constantly based on new, new finds.
06:11
Hawass :I think the most important thing we get from Naguib Kanawati’s work that we’ll have the tombs that have been discovered before – the publication of these tombs is not really accurate enough because it has been published in the last century. For the last 50 years Egyptology has developed a lot and this is why I think we will gain from his work new publication of the tombs with beautiful photographs and this will be important for us even to protect the tomb from theft. If any tomb is stolen we can really know what is in the tomb because of the publication.
06:36
Naguib: We go now downstairs to the burial chamber. Watch your step as you come down.Byrne: I will, I assure you.Naguib: Just don’t fall on me. (laughs) Byrne: Is this one of the deeper ones, Naguib?Naguib: No, no this is six metres. We have other ones up to 21 metres.
07:11
Well we are now at, here is the burial chamber which is about six metres underground
07:37
Byrnes: We descend into the treasurer’s tomb, his house of eternity. Richly coloured, complete with stone sarcophagus.
07:43
Naguib :It is one of the most unusual burial chambers in its decoration. The fact that it is decorated with scenes of daily life. There is no other burial chamber like this one, it’s unique.
07:51
Torchlight on walls, CUs paintings and hieroglyphsThe hieroglyphs are a virtual shopping list for the gods, ordering food and wine for the hereafter.
08:05
Naguib: And it includes everything. All types of birds, cuts of meat, different oils, different wines, different beers, you name it. For example here we have, you know, this is wine, a different type of wine. Another wine, another wine and so on. And really they wanted everything. So, it’s almost a hundred items listed here that includes all Egyptian food. And that is a huge source of information about what they ate.
Byrne: And that is the only record we have? Naguib: The only record we have of this wall is this one.
08:45
Byrne: But this wall -- after just 50 years exposure, a complete blank. If not recorded, it would be lost forever.
08:52
Naguib: It has completely disappeared. Completely disappeared. An archaeologist who excavates but does not publish is committing almost a sinful act because he is in the best position to record it and nobody will ever be able to recreate the same atmosphere and moments that he discovered the objects at.
Byrne: These humble tombs were discovered ten years ago close to the pyramids at Giza. The site is now famous as the cemetery of the workers, the 20,000 or so ordinary Egyptians who bent their backs lifting giant stones for the pharaohs… and at the end of their earthly lives, made their own modest bid for eternity through their tombs.
09:28
Scarcely a fifth of the cemetery has been excavated so far – they’ll be digging at Giza for decades. But already, they’ve discovered enough to blow away many of the old myths.
09:56
Byrne: So the old Cecil B de Mille movies with the slaves … Hawass: Were completely wrong – Hollywood completely created this nonsense about slaves building the pyramids. No, this discovery proved to the public that the builder of the pyramids were Egyptians. They were not people come from a lost civilisation or from Atlantis or whatever, or from out of space you have everywhere, and also it shows they were not slaves. Because if they were slaves they would never have built their tombs by the pyramid and they would never prepare their tombs for eternity like the kings and queens.
10:08
Byrne: Cue – the pyramids. Though camels have outnumbered tour buses since September 11, they are Giza’s – in fact Egypt’s – main tourist attraction, an object of endless fascination. Not, however, for Naguib Kanawati.
10:44
Byrne: You have rudely described the pyramids as a pile of rocks, just a pile of rocks Naguib: Well, no, I wouldn’t say that it is just a pile of rocks. It is certainly a huge construction but personally I’m interested in life – life of people – and the pyramids did not record the life of people. Burial chambers inside the king – in the pyramid are bare – no inscriptions. In the tombs of officials you have all this wealth of information of daily life. I’m very interested in the life of people.
11:01
Byrne: But Zahi Hawass isn’t buying the argument.
11:42 I think the pyramids are not a pile of rocks. Because they are giving us the intelligence of people – they’re teaching you how – and us – how can we learn from those people? Then it’s a pile of rocks if you do not understand them – it’s a pile of rocks if you do not know how those pyramids can tell us technology – science, mystery and magic. I always tell the children that come by here – those are not rocks. If you understand what’s behind the rocks you will know that these rocks made Egypt, from the rocks architects, astronomy, art and science.
11:45
Byrne: For all the grandeur of the enterprise, this is the reality of the Egyptologist’s life - a small, cheap hotel, and long hours – inking over the tracings, reconstructing the architecture.
12:38
Working over tracing paper, architect drawing And after 5,000 years, wouldn’t you know, there’s a time pressure. The digging season is brief; the need to publish is strong. 12:56
Naguib Naguib: it is hard work, it is very hard work. Particularly the way I do it, because I spend my – this is my vacation – you know this is the time which I can really spend on the beach, and rather than that I come here. I love it, I love it more than the beach, but then that’s not the end of it. I go back home, spend sleepless nights writing it down and as soon as I finish I come back again.
13:06
Byrne: You’re an addict! Naguib: Yes, I haven’t had one summer in 25 years.Byrne: Is it, is it … Naguib: And I’m not complaining. Byrne: It’s obviously a labour of love for you.Naguib: Yep, yep, I love it and the more the better.
13:41
Naguib & Byrnes walking through columns at SaqqaraNaguib: This is the pyramids of Zoser and the funeral temple of Zoser.
13:59
Byrne: And Naguib Kanawati has more … having been granted access to another Old Kingdom site near to but even more ancient than Giza.
14:04
Naguib: Not only are they the like a bunch of pirates.
14:12
Byrne: It was here at Saqqara that the Egyptians moved away from mud brick and started their long love affair with stone.
Here, too, that they began playing around with pyramids - taking those steep angles step by step.
14:26
Naguib: The Egyptian believed in perpetual life so he recorded everything in a very durable way, on stone. We know architecture, art, food, family relationships. We even have love songs and because it’s survived so well and if it was done properly you know who is who and who married who and produced whom and became what and so …Byrnes: You make it sound as little like a very high grade soap opera. Naguib: It’s almost an unfolding novel that’s how I feel about really putting this evidence together because you know, you get to know them personally.
Naguib: So this is the tomb of someone called Idut but originally, actually it belonged to someone called Ihy who was the vizier under King Unas.
15:21
Byrne: With their tombs and mummies, it’s easy to see the Egyptians as being obsessed with death … but it was life they loved … so much, they wanted it to last, and for them to be remembered forever. As, in a sense, they are.
15:32s
For Naguib Kanawati, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime -- to study a great civilisation, in the most civilised way imaginable.Naguib: I love coffee, to have it just delivered to the door of the tomb and to drink it in front of the great pyramids -- absolute luxury.
15:59
Naguib: My fate, my luck, was to be invited to work in this magnificent cemetery and I can’t believe my good luck to be able to work in a tomb, and when I’m tired just look out and see the great pyramid in front of me …This is the general view I see every day. Well I’m not complaining. It’s the greatest view from any office and I have it permanently.
16:20
Credits:Reporter: Jennifer ByrneCamera: Ron FoleySound: Kate GrahamEditor: Garth ThomasProducer: Allan Hogan
16:53