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00:00On the Nile's west bank, in a city of the dead.
00:07It's a very rich area. Every day we have something new.
00:12Archaeologists have found a hidden tunnel.
00:17A doctor!
00:19Buried under tons of sand and rubble, a coffin could reveal clues to how war made Ramses the Great.
00:27This is big!
00:29Into an icon.
00:31Something else?
00:35Wow! You can see the face!
00:51Ramses II, the greatest pharaoh of Egypt's Golden Age.
00:57Born some 20 years after the death of Tutankhamun, he ruled Egypt for nearly seven decades.
01:05More than 3,000 years later, hundreds of his monumental structures survive,
01:11proclaiming him the everlasting warrior king who brought glory and prosperity to Egypt through battle.
01:19Today, archaeologists are peering beyond the stonework,
01:24investigating Ramses' military achievements and his impact on the generations of Egyptians that followed his reign,
01:33to understand how a king became a legend.
01:40In the sacred ancient center of Abydos.
01:45Egyptian archaeologist Samer Iskander is in his 16th year exploring one of Ramses' most iconic monuments.
01:57Working here for so many years at Ramses II Temple, I feel this affinity.
02:03I am fascinated by his accomplishments and I want to know more about him.
02:09I am obsessed by him and his reign and his legacy.
02:14Samer wants to know how this great warrior pharaoh was seen by Egyptians in the decades and centuries after his death.
02:23He's investigating the area surrounding the very first temple Ramses put his name to.
02:31Constructed using fine white limestone, Ramses' temple at Abydos covered an area half the size of a football field.
02:41The king dedicated it to Osiris, and he placed 26 sandstone statues of the god in its outer courtyard.
02:52So far, Samer's excavations have revealed that the temple was also crowded on both sides by 42 vaulted storerooms.
03:03Samer knows a temple this important wouldn't have existed in isolation, so now he's searching for clues beyond the enclosure wall.
03:15Temples or tombs don't just get built out of an abstract and empty space. There's life around it.
03:28We're trying to explore this area here to the west to see if there are any structures that are connected to the temple.
03:38Samer has 150 men shifting sand and rock across an excavation of over 10,000 square feet, hoping to find ancient buildings.
03:50Over here, we came across this structure. We really don't know yet what it is.
03:59It appears to be a complete building entirely buried by desert sand.
04:04The team's first task is to dig out the area in front of the structure.
04:13I see a piece of bone there, a couple of bones.
04:20This is a burial site for sure. We are here in a tomb.
04:26In Egypt's extreme south, Egyptologist Ato Belekdanyan has come to one of Egypt's most imposing temples to investigate the origins of Ramses II's fearsome reputation.
04:46It is spectacular here.
04:51The great temple of Abu Simbel with its four imposing colossi of Ramses the Great.
05:03Ramses built Abu Simbel not just as a statement of power, but as a warning to his enemies across Egypt's southern border.
05:13Large parts of the temple complex celebrate the king's military strength.
05:19It's incredible how much of the wall space here is dedicated to scenes of war.
05:27The reliefs record battles Ramses fought over the first half of his long reign.
05:34Ato is hunting for evidence of one of Ramses' earliest military engagements.
05:40There it is. Right there is a scene that shows where all began.
05:46Look at the headdress, the horned helmet with the spherical shape on top, the round shields, those massive swords.
05:56These are not Egyptian soldiers. In fact, they are part of a mysterious group of people known by the fantastic name of the Sea Peoples.
06:10The Sea Peoples were pirates who preyed on the rich trading ports of Egypt's fertile Nile Delta.
06:23After just two years on the throne, Ramses mustered his navy and mobilized to protect his kingdom's wealth.
06:32At their first battle, he cornered his foes and overwhelmed them with a much stronger force.
06:43The pharaoh won a resounding victory over Egypt's maritime enemies and then drafted the captive Sea Peoples into his own army.
06:53The records etched into the temple walls suggest Ramses had good reason to bolster his army with battle-hardened conscripts.
07:03Ramses' reign coincided with a time of economic turmoil in the Mediterranean.
07:09Threats to Egyptian stability were coming thick and fast.
07:12On the outside of the temple, here, I found over a dozen representations of kneeling, tied up, defeated peoples.
07:21It is clear that Ramses has been busy since he defeated the Sea Peoples early in his reign.
07:28Each bound-up captive represents a different foreign power who coveted Egypt's wealth,
07:34Each bound-up captive represents a different foreign power who coveted Egypt's wealth,
07:40looking to wrest control from the pharaoh as their own societies crumbled.
07:46Yet Ramses' inscriptions suggest victory after victory.
07:52To uncover the tactical secrets behind the king's success, Arto needs to explore deeper into the temple.
08:00On the west bank of the Nile, at Draa Abu al-Naga,
08:06Egyptian archaeologist Bahar Geba is exploring a giant ancient cemetery cut into a mountain.
08:16I'm working on this site since a long time, about 25 years.
08:21It seems that every day we have something new from a different period.
08:25Bahar wants to know how Egypt coped in the increasingly volatile Mediterranean once Ramses II's 66-year reign came to an end.
08:35Draa Abu al-Naga is the ideal place to search as it's one of the main burial sites for nobles of the Ramesside era,
08:44a roughly 200-year period during which 11 pharaohs took Ramses as their royal name.
08:50When I started doing the excavation, I was so interested to understand what's going on during the Ramesside period.
08:58I was looking for something special.
09:01This year, halfway up the mountain's slope, Bahar believes he's found a promising lead.
09:09That part from the mountain was covered completely by the debris and rubbles.
09:13When I started working on that area, I just cleaned the top of the mountain and I found the shrine.
09:22During the Ramesside period, nobles often built shrines or chapels above their burial chambers, where visitors could leave offerings.
09:33A tight passage leads down to the top of the mountain.
09:37The team will have to clear the rock to see what's inside.
09:42Such an amazing feeling when you stand in front of the door, removing the first block, and then you will see what's behind.
09:52You can't put it in words.
09:55It's a great feeling.
09:57As the team removes debris from the end of the passage, archaeologist Ahmed El-Tayeb concentrates on the entranceway itself.
10:05Mr. Bahar?
10:07Mohammed?
10:09Yes?
10:11Okay.
10:13So, we have…
10:15Did you find anything?
10:17Interesting.
10:19We have a lot of things.
10:22So, we have…
10:24Did you find anything?
10:26Interesting fragment. I think it's a part from a doorjamb, the entrance.
10:33Oh, that's beautiful.
10:35A description on it.
10:37If there is a concealed tomb nearby, a chunk of a doorway is a key piece of the puzzle.
10:44It's a great discovery, because normally when we discover the tomb, the first thing that we would like to find is the doorjamb of the tomb itself.
10:52We found the key of the tomb. Still, we need to open the doors.
10:56In the shadow of Ramses' temple in Abydos, Samer's team is nearing the floor of the pit at the entrance to what appears to be a buried mudbrick tomb.
11:15I think this is multiple burials, because we have certainly bones from a child and others from a grown-up.
11:24How many persons? It's hard to tell so far.
11:29Before he can break open the tomb's entrance, Samer must recover and record every single bone deposited outside it.
11:43This is the upper part of the skull.
11:48I think we're getting very close to the bottom of this opening.
11:52But it's neatly blocked.
11:57I don't think it was opened and re-blocked, but we'll find out.
12:02The mudbricks sealing the entrance appear undisturbed.
12:07It suggests the original tomb owner could still be safely entombed inside.
12:13With the end of the workers' shift approaching, Samer will have to wait to dismantle the wall.
12:19We need to be patient.
12:21We really don't know what's beyond this, but I can tell you right now, once we clear this, we're going to get a better idea of what's inside.
12:32At Abu Simbel, Arto is looking for evidence to explain how Ramses won his reputation as one of the most successful warriors in Egyptian history.
12:44Ramses II has defeated his seaborne enemies, and now, having incorporated them into his army, showing great military sense, he had his next challenge to face.
12:56His enemies on land.
12:59Over to the south were the Nubians.
13:02To the west, the semi-nomadic tribes of Libya.
13:05And then, to the north, his greatest enemies of all, the Hittites.
13:10The Hittites controlled much of today's Middle East during the tumultuous period of Ramses' reign.
13:17They were Egypt's main rival superpower in the Mediterranean, amassed in great numbers right on Egypt's eastern border.
13:26For Ramses, they posed an existential threat.
13:30Arto wants to see how Ramses met this challenge to Egyptian rule.
13:35Arto wants to see how Ramses met this challenge to Egyptian territory.
13:41Ah, look at this scene. This has all the clues.
13:46Clearly, archery was a very important element in Ramses' army.
13:51But so were battle axes, spears, daggers, and here's a horse, which is harnessed to the most high-tech, cutting-edge piece of military equipment, the chariot.
14:05The chariot had been introduced to Egypt as a weapon of war just a few centuries earlier.
14:12For the warrior-king and the future of Egyptian civilization, it was a game-changer.
14:21The traditional Egyptian archer could attack from distance on foot, but was relatively static and vulnerable to enemy fire.
14:30Mounting troops on chariots made them more mobile and harder to hit, while also extending their range.
14:42One soldier drove the chariot, while the archer shot arrows from a platform at the rear.
14:49Egypt's wealth meant Ramses could deploy 2,000 chariots in a single battle to bear down on the enemy with overwhelming force.
15:01Ramses II put the war chariot to tremendously effective use, and here he is aboard his chariot.
15:10He has no need for a driver. He has tied the reins around his waist.
15:15Truly, he was a master of the craft.
15:19Riding his chariot alone, with a bow drawn impossibly far behind his head, Ramses presented himself as a mighty hero who led from the front.
15:30Out on the battlefield, his lighter, more maneuverable chariots gave Ramses an edge over the cumbersome Hittite vehicles.
15:38It meant he could successfully defend Egyptian territory, but the warrior-pharaoh wanted more.
15:45To expand his borders and take the fight to the Hittites.
15:50But to defeat a rival superpower in its own backyard required more than chariots.
15:56The Hittites were no pushovers, and on their own ground, they had the advantage of thick stone defenses.
16:04They're organized, they're well-armed, and they're well-trained.
16:10The Hittites were a great army.
16:13The Hittites were a great army.
16:16The Hittites were a great army.
16:19The Hittites were a great army.
16:21The Hittites were a great army.
16:24The Hittites were a great army.
16:27They were well-trained, they're well-armed, and they're well-trained.
16:33Clearly, Ramses had a challenge ahead of them.
16:37To investigate the pharaoh's campaigns in Hittite lands, Ato needs to visit another of Ramses monuments to his military greatness.
16:45At-Dra Abu al-Naga.
16:52The rock fragments Baha's team uncovered in the shrine's entrance suggest the presence
16:58of a tomb from the centuries following Ramses' death.
17:02If he can find the crypt, its contents could help him build a picture of life and death
17:08after Ramses' reign.
17:10Normally in the door jambs during the Ramesside period should be built from sandstone.
17:16So this is very important.
17:18We are sure that now that belongs to the Ramesside period.
17:23The sandstone building material confirms the shrine is from the right time.
17:28That's a beautiful day to find something like that.
17:33At the end of the shrine's entrance passage, Baha's workers continue to haul out rubble
17:39hunting for bodies.
17:46This is big.
17:50This is the coffin.
17:51This is the box of the coffin.
17:55Oh, so I can see Osiris.
17:58Yeah, that's him.
17:59That's him standing.
18:02Can you just clean the one on the top, Ahmed, please?
18:10Still more images.
18:13It's a stunning find.
18:15A beautifully preserved wooden coffin painted with images of gods and elaborate scenes of resurrection.
18:22Its presence confirms Baha's team has uncovered a tomb within the Ramesside shrine.
18:29Now Baha wants to know who it belonged to.
18:35Something else?
18:36Yeah.
18:40Wow, you can see the face.
18:47In Abydos, the sun is rising on a new day of excavation.
18:56Samer is almost ready to open a buried structure to the west of the temple of Ramses II.
19:03He hopes it will help him understand how Egyptians felt about Ramses in the generations following the warrior pharaoh's death.
19:12I have no idea what would be inside.
19:15No idea.
19:16But I can't wait.
19:18The unknown in this type of work is so exciting because we know there was something inside at one point.
19:27But is it still there?
19:32As Samer's foreman, Ayman, prepares to work on the entrance, the morning light reveals intriguing details in the surrounding brickwork.
19:42And we can see from these lines here that the bricklayer would run his fingers here to create some kind of a rough brick for better adhesion.
19:54It's very interesting, they're curved, and I can tell for sure they came from the temple.
20:02Egyptian master builders normally only used curved bricks for rounded walls.
20:08The bricks used to build the tomb match similar fragments Samer has found while excavating and restoring Ramses' temple.
20:16They appear to have been reused from a set of domed structures attached to the monument.
20:22So during our excavations in the past two or three years, we came across the walls of these stylish magazine silos.
20:31So each of these storage magazines contained about 100 cubic meters of grain.
20:39That is a lot of grain.
20:41And perhaps that's what Ramses II needed for his army.
20:47For a pharaoh at war, grain was critical.
20:51In an economy without money, the bread and beer produced from grain both paid and fed the king's entire force.
20:59His horses alone needed 6,000 pounds of feed every day.
21:06The army of Ramses the Great was legendary.
21:10Over 100,000 soldiers, one of the largest forces ever assembled in ancient Egypt.
21:18To sustain his fighters, the king gathered thousands of tons of grain from farms in the Nile Valley.
21:27To store the grain, Ramses built vast silos at his temple complexes, making them a vital part of his military machine.
21:38The nearby structure seems to have been built at a later date, once Ramses' grain silos had fallen into disuse.
21:49Foreman Ayman is ready to break open the seal.
21:57We're going to start to take the bricks one at a time,
22:01because I have a feeling that the sand that we see on top of that collapsed vault will start to come down.
22:10So we need to do this very, very carefully.
22:13In Draa Abu El Naga, excitement is growing in the Ramesside tomb.
22:21Amazing. Very amazing.
22:24This is a burial chamber. It made us at the beginning disappointed.
22:28We just found fragments at the beginning. Now we found something very, very special.
22:33A noble's burial could yield rich information about how Egypt weathered the social upheavals
22:39that continued to bring down Mediterranean kingdoms after Ramses the Great's long reign.
22:46Beautiful.
22:48That's a beautiful burial chamber.
22:50It's a beautiful burial chamber.
22:52It's a beautiful burial chamber.
22:54It's a beautiful burial chamber.
22:56It's a beautiful burial chamber.
22:58After Ramses the Great's long reign.
23:01Beautiful.
23:03Look at the eyes.
23:04It's a place for his beer. So it's a man.
23:07It's an exceptional discovery.
23:11Doctor, I think it's a coffin. I think it's a coffin lid.
23:15Wow, now we can see that the coffin is in two pieces. We have the box and the lid.
23:22The face is part of a delicately carved and painted coffin lid.
23:27Together with the richly decorated coffin, it's evidence of a high-status burial.
23:33The fact that the two parts are lying separately shows that the tomb has been disturbed.
23:39I think somebody found this burial.
23:42He just break the lid to reach the mummy to have the amulet and necklace.
23:50When he break it, he throw the lid away.
23:53Alongside the prayers and scenes of resurrection painted on the coffin,
23:57nobles would have been buried with valuable items to assist them in the afterlife.
24:03With the coffin broken open, these are almost certainly now gone.
24:08But for Bahar, the treasure is the burial itself.
24:14The mummy should be here somewhere else.
24:17Normally they take it out, but if we are lucky, maybe it will stay there.
24:24In Abydos, Samer's foreman, Ayman, is delicately unblocking the entrance to the buried structure.
24:36Whatever is inside could have lain undisturbed for more than 3,000 years.
24:43I see sand. That's it. Only sand so far.
24:52At the other end of the structure, workers have now uncovered a hole in the roof.
25:00The vaulted roof had already collapsed at some time and the sand got inside it.
25:09Either the tomb has been robbed via the roof or the ceiling has collapsed naturally.
25:14It's going to take some time getting the sand out.
25:19Samer's workers need to exercise extreme caution operating beneath the degraded mudbrick roof.
25:27One wayward thrust of a shovel could bring down the entire structure.
25:33Patience, patience, patience. You need to take your time.
25:40Fifty miles southeast, in Luxor, Arto has come to one of Ramses' most ambitious buildings.
25:51The Ramesseum, his mortuary temple.
25:56Designed to glorify his achievements as pharaoh for eternity,
26:00it's the ideal place to explore the events Ramses wanted his descendants to remember.
26:06Look at this place.
26:11Just wow.
26:13Arto's investigating how Ramses fought his campaigns against the Hittites' fortified cities
26:20and cemented his status as Egypt's greatest warrior.
26:25You can tell that Ramses II employed his best sculptors in this place.
26:32It is truly remarkable.
26:36Arto scans the decorated walls for evidence of how the warrior king overcame the Hittites' defenses.
26:45Look at all this chaos. This is battle. This is war.
26:51And there's Ramses II dispatching his enemies under the shadow of that fortified location.
26:58I mean, look at these ramparts.
27:01You see that ladder? You don't necessarily destroy the walls, you climb over them.
27:07And right there, there's a column of hieroglyphs identifying this city.
27:12And it says, ah, it's a little bit broken off, but at the very end, it's spelling out Pur.
27:19The first bit is missing, but this can't be anything but the siege, the famous Battle of Dapur.
27:29The city of Dapur was heavily fortified and hundreds of miles inside Hittite territory.
27:36Ramses needed more than chariots for this sort of siege warfare.
27:41He had to come up with a different strategy.
27:48Approaching from one side of the city, Ramses' troops used a tall ladder.
27:55Below, more soldiers engaged the defenders, drawing fire from beneath a mantlet,
28:01a covering shield that sheltered them from projectiles.
28:06With the enemy's attention drawn to one end of their city,
28:10the king's main force struck the undefended side.
28:16With this pincer move, Ramses was victorious.
28:20He captured the city of Dapur and claimed the territory for Egypt.
28:27You can imagine the army of the king with Pharaoh himself present,
28:34his resplendent armor, his crowns, his jewelry glowing under the sunlight.
28:42Clearly, this would have been a terrifying experience.
28:46Clearly, this would have been a terrifying experience for the city's defenders.
28:53Inscriptions from Ramses' time call him the one who breaches walls
28:58and boast that he and his army captured no less than 18 towns in a single season in his eighth year as king.
29:08Ramses' temple inscriptions suggest a series of crushing victories,
29:13but in reality, his campaigns in the east were costly.
29:18Long periods of fighting deep in Hittite territory took their toll.
29:23His wars left a more complicated legacy for Egypt than his claims of glory suggest.
29:32In the Ramesside shrine at Draa Abu al-Naga,
29:37Bahar is searching the remains of an ancient crime scene
29:41for evidence of what happened in Egypt in the centuries following Ramses' death.
29:59The face may portray the owner of the coffin,
30:02but its style seems not to match the date of the tomb.
30:07Bahar believes the casket was made after the Ramesside period ended,
30:11suggesting this is not the tomb's original owner.
30:16This coffin was buried during a later, darker time.
30:33The ancient Egyptian civilization started to fall down.
30:38After Ramses' death, his successors, including nine more pharaohs called Ramses,
30:44continued to hold the unrest in the region at bay, seeking to emulate the warrior king's success.
30:51But eventually, the unrest engulfing the region caught up with them.
30:57The death of King Ramses XI marked the end of the Ramesside era.
31:03Egypt finally succumbed to the economic collapse sweeping the Mediterranean world.
31:10As rival factions fought for control in a power vacuum,
31:14Egypt split in two, and law and order collapsed across the country.
31:19The ancient tombs that used to be closely guarded were left unprotected and became vulnerable.
31:28The treasures the elites had locked away for their afterlives
31:32were now a temptation for those living in troubled times.
31:40What happened after the Ramesside period,
31:44What happened after the Ramesside period,
31:47when the economy collapsed,
31:50the people didn't find anything to eat.
31:52So the only solution that they found,
31:55to cross to the west and open all the closed tombs,
32:01and they stole everything from the tombs.
32:05Whilst the doorjamb proves the structure is Ramesside,
32:09the later coffin suggests the tomb was reused around the time of Egypt's economic collapse.
32:16Bahar believes this coffin was placed in an older Ramesside tomb to protect it,
32:21but in the chaos, no resting place was safe.
32:25From kings down to recently deceased nobility,
32:29the valuables buried with the dead became a target.
32:33For Bahar, the tomb's fate adds rich detail to a key period in Egyptian history,
32:39the disintegration of a long-established social order as Egypt's golden age broke down.
32:46The only question that remains is did the robbers leave the body intact?
32:52The work is so delicate because the condition of the coffin is perfect,
32:59so we don't like to damage anything from the coffin itself.
33:04Oh, I can see the head.
33:08The linen is still there.
33:11In a stroke of good fortune, the debris covering the coffin has saved the mummy itself.
33:19The linen is still in good condition, it means that the body inside is still in good condition.
33:25Bahar's final job is to rescue the ransacked noble's remains.
33:31So the rest of the work now, we are going to clean the whole coffin from the rubble and the debris,
33:37and clean the mummy, and then we will move the coffin from the tomb.
33:43Relax. Relax.
33:48The team will carefully transport the coffin to a laboratory
33:52where specialists will stabilize and interpret its extraordinary paintwork.
34:02But Bahar's work is on the mountain.
34:06His mission to reconstruct the centuries following the death of Ramses the Great
34:11goes on.
34:16In Abydos, Samer's team is continuing the careful work of removing sand from the fragile vaulted tomb.
34:26Somewhere hidden in the debris could be clues to how Egyptians here felt
34:31about Ramses' long warlike reign in the centuries after his death.
34:37With the tomb's floor just inches away, the excavation picks up pace.
34:43We are finding more skulls here.
34:46All the remains we have here, they seem to be coming from different periods.
34:53Like the pit outside its entrance, the tomb appears to be packed full of skeletal remains
34:59deposited at different times.
35:02So far, we came across four human skulls inside the tomb.
35:07Every five minutes, we come up with something new.
35:11As the workers make discovery after discovery,
35:14Samer brings in a specialist in working with fragile artifacts.
35:20So this is Mohamed, who is a conservator.
35:24He scans the cavity with fresh eyes.
35:27It's a coffin.
35:29This one is colored, one is a coffin.
35:34In Abydos...
35:38It's a decorated coffin.
35:41Samer's persistence in the tomb beside Ramses the Great's temple is paying off.
35:47You can see red, green, and Egyptian blue also.
35:50Yes.
35:52Although the remains are fragmentary,
35:55they could still help Samer reveal who was buried here
35:59and what Ramses meant to Egyptians in the centuries after his reign.
36:07Whoa.
36:09With the tomb now cleared to floor level,
36:12Samer can finally analyze the burials.
36:16Wow.
36:17We have this mud sarcophagus painted with these beautiful colors.
36:22This is the head.
36:24The top has already gone.
36:26And on top of it, we have the skull of a donkey,
36:31which is very, very unusual and very interesting
36:35to have a head of a donkey as an offering
36:38and it's laid directly on the sarcophagus.
36:41In ancient Egypt, donkeys were seen as animals to be respected,
36:46their ability to bear burdens enabling long-distance travel.
36:51The intricately painted casket topped with a donkey's head
36:55suggests the original tomb owner was someone with status.
36:59This person with this kind of coffin,
37:02which has elaborate decorations on the outside,
37:05must have been a person of some means,
37:08Built with bricks taken from Ramses' temple
37:11and situated just steps away from the monument,
37:14the tomb implies that even after Egypt's golden age had begun to crumble,
37:19Ramses' legend still carried weight.
37:23At least nine other people of lower status
37:26were buried haphazardly alongside the owner,
37:29either inside the tomb or at the entrance.
37:32Their states of preservation are unknown,
37:36Their states of preservation suggest some date
37:39to more than a thousand years after Ramses' death.
37:43This is a great discovery.
37:45We can get a glimpse of the mindset of the Egyptians
37:49centuries later after Ramses.
37:53A thousand years after the warrior king died,
37:56Egypt's golden age was long over.
37:59But Ramses' monuments remained popular burial grounds.
38:05His legend lived on.
38:09The name of Ramses II as a great warrior
38:13stayed in the memory of the Egyptians for many centuries after his death.
38:19Samar still has acres of ground to explore around the temple precinct.
38:25It could contain hundreds of burials,
38:28nobles and commoners alike.
38:32The warrior pharaoh seems to have commanded respect in life
38:37and for a thousand years after his death.
38:40But was it simply for his military success?
38:47In Luxor,
38:50Artaud wants to explore how Ramses sustained
38:54multiple grueling campaigns beyond his eastern frontiers
38:58and earned the admiration of the entire country for centuries to come.
39:04Ramses II had a problem.
39:07He was fighting wars abroad for months on end, besieging cities.
39:12His supply lines were stretched as far as they could go.
39:16What was the solution?
39:19A papyrus acquired by a dealer in antiquities in the 1830s
39:24could hold the secret.
39:27The text contains evidence of a huge building project Ramses commissioned
39:33as his military ventures gathered pace.
39:37I'm looking at this fascinating papyrus.
39:40Parts of it are going into incredibly vivid detail.
39:44It's actually describing this brand new gleaming capital
39:48founded by Ramses II.
39:51And right here it's also giving us its name.
39:55Pyrameses, the House of Rameses.
40:00Strategically built on an island in the Nile Delta,
40:04Pyrameses was hundreds of miles closer to Hittite territory than the former capital.
40:10What this means is Ramses II founded his capital at the very edge of Egypt,
40:16making it a perfect launching point for all of his military campaigns.
40:25With a giant temple complete with an imposing avenue of sphinxes,
40:30Pyrameses was built with an emphasis on grandeur.
40:34But Ramses' capital was no vanity project.
40:38Next to the palace, rows of stables housed nearly 500 horses,
40:44serving as headquarters for Ramses' chariot corps.
40:48The streets bristled with silos for grain, enough to feed an army.
40:54And great furnaces smelted bronze into shields and swords.
41:00This beautiful new city was really designed as an engine of war.
41:08The strategic location of this new city meant that Ramses II
41:13could penetrate further into enemy territory and stay there for longer.
41:18Ramses' monumental inscriptions were designed to promote his triumphs
41:23for posterity. He showed off his victories in vivid detail.
41:29But on the walls of Ramses' mortuary temple,
41:32Arto finds evidence that the warrior king also recognized the cost of constant war.
41:38He knew when to stop.
41:41This right here is the text of the peace treaty that Ramses II
41:46forged with the king of the Hittites.
41:49It was so important to him that he immortalized it into stone
41:53in the setting of his funerary cult for all eternity.
41:59He forged the Egyptian empire through war,
42:03but the way to maintain it, it was through peace.
42:09With his enemies subdued, either through force or treaty,
42:13Ramses secured two centuries of stability for Egypt.
42:17He earned a warrior's adulation on the battlefield,
42:20but won respect through strategic discipline.
42:25With each new discovery, archaeologists across the country
42:29shed light on the veneration Ramses the Great inspired.
42:34As kingdom after kingdom founded in the wake of social and economic upheaval
42:39across the Mediterranean, Ramses' shrewd military decisions
42:44held off the inevitable end of Egypt's golden age.
42:49And his reputation survived,
42:51his own version of history etched in monumental stone.
42:56Warrior Pharaoh, King of Kings.