Pyramids Mummies and Tombs Episode 3 Pyramids Are Everywhere
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00:00They are the ancient world's greatest creation,
00:05each with its own secret.
00:09One took you to another world.
00:12Some were tombs of kings.
00:15Others were places of unspeakable horror.
00:20They are the pyramids.
00:23Come along with me.
00:25You'll be glad you did.
00:31The pyramids of Egypt, ancient time machines,
00:35designed to take the pharaoh from now to eternity.
00:40That's what Egyptian pyramids are all about,
00:43immortality, guarding the king's mummy
00:46so he could resurrect in the next world.
00:50Everybody knows the pyramids of Giza,
00:52but I want to show you King Unas' improved deluxe model
00:56and it comes with a new feature, magic.
01:03I'm taking you into the spiritual heart
01:06of King Unas' pyramid.
01:14This is the oldest significant body of text in the world
01:18and it's pure magic,
01:20all intended to protect the pharaoh's mummy.
01:24There are spells for everything.
01:26There's a spell that says King Unas' mummy
01:28won't be bitten by a scorpion.
01:30There's a spell that says the journey to the next world
01:33will go smoothly.
01:35Up there, there's even a spell that says
01:38King Unas devours the entrails of his enemies.
01:42Pretty powerful, huh?
01:45But what you have to remember
01:47is that this was even more important than life and death.
01:51This was for eternity.
01:56So 4,500 years ago,
01:58Unas and all his treasures were buried in his pyramid.
02:02But it didn't work.
02:04Even Unas' magical spells
02:06couldn't stop tomb robbers searching for gold.
02:10And the pyramids of Giza?
02:12They were robbed too.
02:14You see, pyramids were obvious targets.
02:17They said, rob me.
02:19So pharaohs stopped building pyramids.
02:22It was the end of an era.
02:28Tutankhamen's golden treasures?
02:30They weren't found in a pyramid.
02:32He, along with later pharaohs,
02:34chose to be buried in secret tombs,
02:37hidden in the remote Valley of the Kings.
02:42That's where Ramses the Great,
02:44the pharaoh of the Exodus, was laid to rest.
02:47The only face from the Bible we may ever see.
02:52When the warrior king, Thutmose III, was buried in the valley,
02:55it had been centuries since a pharaoh of Egypt
02:58had been laid to rest beneath a pyramid.
03:01Their time had passed.
03:03Egypt would never build another pyramid.
03:18And then, in remote Africa, the flame was lit again.
03:31Hundreds of miles south, up the Nile,
03:34past the raging cataracts...
03:40past terrifying colossal statues of Ramses the Great...
03:48to the land the Egyptians called Ta-Seti,
03:51the land of the bow.
03:54A land of legendary archers, of gold,
03:57the land of Nubia.
04:03It was a special time when amazing things could happen.
04:07For centuries, Egypt dominated Nubia.
04:11But this was about to change.
04:14This was a time when a black king of Nubia
04:17would lead his army north, past the cataracts,
04:21past the scornful faces of pharaoh Ramses.
04:26This must have given our Nubian king a special pleasure.
04:30Ramses had always depicted Nubians as bound captives.
04:34Now it would be their turn.
04:44It was a time when black kings with exotic names,
04:48Shabaka, Shabitko, and Taharqa,
04:51conquered mighty Egypt and ruled the Nile.
05:03These were no ordinary foreign conquerors.
05:06They knew of Egypt's greatness,
05:08its fabulous temples and tombs,
05:10its hundreds of gods.
05:12And they vowed to restore declining Egypt to her past glory.
05:16The Nubian kings rebuilt decaying temples
05:19and made offerings to Egyptian gods.
05:25The hero of our story is the great pharaoh Taharqa.
05:29Taharqa's campaign north into Egypt
05:31was the first time he had seen the pyramids.
05:34And when he returned home to Nubia,
05:36he vowed to build one of his own.
05:40After a thousand years,
05:42the flame of pyramid building was rekindled.
05:50I want to show you where it all happened,
05:53but we have to go deep into Africa,
05:55to Africa's largest country, the Sudan.
06:00A million square miles, much of it unexplored desert.
06:10It's a harsh country.
06:12The locals say when God made the Sudan, he laughed.
06:24Out here, there are more scorpions than people.
06:27Lots more.
06:40When you finally leave the desert,
06:43you ferry across the Nile.
06:45No bridges here.
06:53The locals don't seem any foreigners,
06:56and they're friendly and curious.
07:10Yes.
07:24On the way to Taharqa's pyramid,
07:26you can drive for days, never seeing another vehicle.
07:30But then, in the middle of nowhere,
07:33a place that time forgot.
07:40A desert well, a well so deep
07:43that you can see the bottom only at noon,
07:46when the sun is directly overhead.
07:58I ask one of the herdsmen,
08:00how many meters deep is the well?
08:04I ask one of the herdsmen,
08:06how many meters deep the well is?
08:09And he says, 48, about 150 feet.
08:16But this can't be right.
08:18The rope the camel pulls out of the well is twice that.
08:26Finally, we work it out.
08:28They don't measure in meters or feet.
08:31He means men.
08:33The well is 48 men deep.
08:40These people are the Bishareen,
08:42a tribe that for hundreds of years has lived in this desert.
08:46Life has hardly changed for them over the centuries.
08:53This is a place that time really has forgotten.
09:02From the well, it's still a long ride to Taharqa's pyramid.
09:14And then it appears,
09:16surrounded by those of his descendants.
09:21Today, the great king's pyramid is in ruins,
09:24but this is the spot where it all started again.
09:32This is where the first pyramid in nearly 1,000 years was built,
09:37and pyramid building would continue for centuries here in Nubia.
09:41But the Nubians would do it their way.
09:49You can see, the Nubian pyramids
09:51are much steeper than the Egyptian ones.
09:55But that's not the only difference.
09:57I want to show you how they were built.
10:01Let me introduce you to the Shadduf,
10:03the crane of ancient Egypt and Nubia.
10:06It's basically a weight on the end of a stick.
10:09They're still in use in Egypt today
10:11to raise water from the Nile.
10:14The Nubian kings used Shadduf to build their pyramids.
10:18Dr. Fritz Henkel is the dean of Nubian pyramids.
10:21For 40 years, he's been studying and reconstructing
10:24the pyramids of the kings of Nubia.
10:27Using the Shadduf, just like in ancient times,
10:30Henkel rebuilds pyramids.
10:32Henkel has figured out
10:34that when you use a Shadduf to raise your blocks,
10:37you get steep angles.
10:39And that's why the Shadduf is so important.
10:42Henkel has figured out
10:44that when you use a Shadduf to raise your blocks,
10:46you get steep angles.
10:48You can't place a block very far from where your Shadduf is.
10:52The construction device explains
10:54why these pyramids are so steep.
10:57The Nubian kings revived pyramid building,
11:00but they did it their way.
11:04Now, let me give you a Bible quiz.
11:07Who is the only pyramid builder named in the Bible?
11:11Here's your clue.
11:13He's a Nubian.
11:16Taharqa.
11:18Taharqa the pharaoh who revived pyramid building
11:21is mentioned in the Bible as a warrior.
11:25But he's not the only one in his family
11:27with a biblical connection.
11:30Let me show you something neat about Taharqa's nephew, Shabaka.
11:34It's in the British Museum.
11:36Almost everybody walks by it
11:38on the way to the more famous Egyptian treasures.
11:41But the Shabaka stone
11:43is one of the most amazing things in the museum.
11:47Can you figure out why there's a square hole in the middle?
11:51It was made into a grindstone
11:53when a farmer found it 200 years ago.
11:56But it wasn't always a grindstone.
11:59Look over here.
12:00You can see the hieroglyphs.
12:02They're worn from the grinding,
12:04but they still tell a story,
12:06a story from the Bible.
12:08Over here, this is just the introduction.
12:10It says that Shabaka, our Nubian king,
12:13found an ancient text
12:15and had it carved on this slab.
12:18But the real story starts here
12:20with the god Ptah.
12:22It says that in the beginning,
12:24Ptah said words
12:27and the world came into existence.
12:30Now, if you remember your Bible,
12:32that'll sound familiar.
12:34In the first verse of John, it says,
12:37in the beginning was the word
12:39and the word was with God.
12:41So centuries before the Christian Bible,
12:44a pious Nubian king
12:46was writing the same belief on this stone.
12:52The Nubian rulers were thinkers,
12:54interested in Egyptian religion and traditions.
12:57But when the time came to be buried,
12:59they returned to their beloved homeland, Nubia,
13:02to a sacred mountain unlike any other.
13:09In the ancient language,
13:11it was called Juwab, the pure mountain.
13:14And even today, the modern Arabic,
13:16Gebel Barkal, means the same.
13:19History has forgotten Gebel Barkal,
13:22but for both the ancient Nubians and Egyptians,
13:25this was their Mecca and Jerusalem.
13:27It was one of the ancient world's most sacred places.
13:33The temples are ruined now,
13:35but 2,000 years ago,
13:37this was as grand as any of Egypt's great temples.
13:47Gebel Barkal was home of the god Amun,
13:50the Hidden One.
13:52This is where the Nubian pharaohs
13:54would build their pyramids.
14:03Time has not been kind to Gebel Barkal,
14:06but it still has some of its magic.
14:14I wonder if these birds
14:16are just playing with a scrap of paper
14:18or if they're teaching young to hunt on the sacred mountain.
14:33Higher up, vultures,
14:35once sacred to the ancients,
14:37still circle overhead.
14:43But that's not what makes this place so sacred.
14:49To understand why the mountain was so sacred,
14:52you have to go back in time,
14:54and you have to go back in time
14:56and you have to go back in time
14:58and you have to go back in time
15:00To understand why the mountain was special,
15:03you have to look at it very closely.
15:16See that tentacle over there?
15:18That's the reason this mountain is so holy.
15:21Can you see what it looks like?
15:25If you ask any ancient Egyptian,
15:27he would have told you the same thing.
15:29A cobra.
15:31And cobras were very special.
15:37The cobra was the protector of royalty in ancient Egypt.
15:41Everyone knows the gold mask of Tutankhamen,
15:44but have you ever looked closely at what's on the forehead?
15:49The pharaohs of Egypt were depicted with a cobra on their crowns,
15:53ready to kill the king's enemies.
15:57The rearing cobra at Gebel Barkal was an omen.
16:01There's nothing like it in all of Egypt or Nubia.
16:04This was a message from the gods.
16:07Even today, the local cemetery
16:10is in the shadow of the pure mountain of the Black Kings of Nubia.
16:17But you know, there's a secret to these Nubian pyramids,
16:20a secret that would take centuries to uncover.
16:27Everyone thought the pyramids of the Nubian kings
16:30were just like Egyptian pyramids.
16:35Egyptian pyramids contained passageways, corridors, hidden chambers,
16:39all designed to protect the treasures and mummies of the kings.
16:44But excavators soon found out
16:46the Nubian pyramids were unlike any other they had ever seen before.
16:51They contained no chambers, no passages.
16:55There were no treasures or mummies.
16:58So where were the kings and queens of Nubia buried?
17:04This was just what American archaeologist George Reisner
17:07wanted to find out when he started excavating in the Sudan in 1916.
17:15Harvard archaeologist George Reisner was a real character.
17:19He was a workaholic and excavated year-round.
17:22In the summer, he worked in Egypt.
17:24Nobody excavates in Egypt in the summer.
17:27You can boil your brains in the heat.
17:29In winter, he moved to the Sudan,
17:31where he worked on the pyramids of the Nubian kings.
17:35Reisner was passionate about everything.
17:37He was a chain smoker.
17:39He smoked anything from good Cuban cigars
17:42to terrible Egyptian cigarettes.
17:45But in the evenings, he relaxed with murder mysteries.
17:48And what he used to do is, after he read a mystery,
17:51he would grade them like a student's paper.
17:53This one got an A-.
17:56This one over here, the clue of the hungry corpse,
17:59well, it wasn't so good.
18:02It only gets a B.
18:04But solving the mystery of the lost tombs of the kings of Nubia
18:08was just the kind of puzzle Reisner loved.
18:14Reisner started his quest in the shadow of Gebel Barkal,
18:17the Holy Mountain.
18:19He quickly discovered the pyramids were solid.
18:23No burials here.
18:26Reisner realized the burials wouldn't be far from the pyramids.
18:30And he was a good excavator.
18:32He found it.
18:33Rock-cut steps right in front of the pyramid.
18:41The key was realizing that the burial wasn't inside
18:45or even under the pyramid.
18:50The rock-cut steps led into a tomb like this one.
18:54Reisner had found the burials of the kings and queens
18:57of ancient Nubia all right.
18:59But let me tell you, he was in for a surprise.
19:11These are the traditional gods of ancient Egypt.
19:14So far, no surprises.
19:16And over here, it's a mummy,
19:19and it's on a traditional Egyptian funerary couch.
19:23But what you see is not what you get.
19:31This is your surprise.
19:33I know it doesn't look like much,
19:35but this is a Nubian funerary bed.
19:37You'd never see this in Egypt.
19:40You see, Egyptian kings and queens
19:43had a variety of fine stone for their sarcophagi.
19:50And inside these sarcophagi,
19:52they had beautifully carved wooden coffins,
19:55all to protect the mummy.
20:01But in Nubia, fine wood and stone were scarce,
20:05so the mummy was placed on a simple funerary bed.
20:09Once again, the kings and queens of Nubia
20:12were doing it their way.
20:17So why did the Nubian kings and queens build pyramids
20:20if they weren't going to be buried in them?
20:25The pyramids of Nubia were status symbols.
20:28They said wealth and eternity, the ultimate tombstone.
20:35The black Nubian kings
20:37were blending great Egyptian traditions
20:40with their own customs.
20:45Reisner found the burials of the Nubian kings all right,
20:48but in the end, the pharaohs themselves eluded him.
20:52Their mummies had been destroyed by tomb robbers.
20:57But let me show you as close as he ever got to a Nubian king,
21:01the skull of the pharaoh Shabitko.
21:04Now it's in the Peabody Museum at Harvard,
21:07and I just want to pay my respects.
21:10This is the skull Reisner found.
21:12He thought he had found a pharaoh, but there's a problem.
21:15Let me show you.
21:17The skull is delicate. It's what we call gracile.
21:20It's not robust like a man's skull.
21:22And if you look around the orbits here, the eyes,
21:25there's very fragile lines, very delicate.
21:28This is almost certainly the skull of a female.
21:32Reisner thought he had found a king.
21:34I don't think so.
21:36But coming from Nubia, this could well have been a queen.
21:42You see, the queens of Nubia
21:44were almost as powerful as the kings.
21:46On the walls of their chapels and temples,
21:49they're shown as powerful women, as big as the kings.
21:53You'd never see that in Egypt.
21:59Watch.
22:01I'm going to show you something you can't do in Egypt.
22:06Touch two pyramids at the same time.
22:09You see, things were different in Nubia.
22:11The queens of Nubia could have pyramids as big as their husbands,
22:15and they did.
22:20There are more pyramids in Nubia than in Egypt.
22:23They dot the desert for hundreds of miles.
22:29In Egypt, they were huge affairs,
22:33designed to protect the treasures of a king.
22:39In Nubia, they were elegant memorials,
22:42clustered together like a family, happy to be close.
22:48Halfway around the world from Nubia,
22:50another ancient kingdom was building pyramids,
22:53but for a reason so ghastly,
22:55the Nubians never would have imagined.
23:01The one thing that people know about the Aztecs of Mexico
23:04is that they practiced human sacrifice.
23:08What they don't know is just how much.
23:11One account mentions 20,000 captive warriors
23:15sacrificed in four days.
23:18Human sacrifice was an essential part of Aztec culture,
23:22and pyramids were right in the middle of it.
23:27This Aztec pyramid was a temple, a place of worship.
23:31I know that sounds fine, but it's not.
23:36You see, the Aztec gods required blood, human blood.
23:41That's why they built this pyramid.
23:43And you see the curve in this stone?
23:46The victim was stretched across it,
23:49his arms and legs held out by priests,
23:52and then his heart was ripped out of his chest
23:55while it was still beating.
23:58And our little pyramid steps are exceptionally steep
24:02so that after the heart was taken out,
24:05the body would roll all the way down to the bottom,
24:08shedding more blood for the gods.
24:12The whole fabric of Aztec society
24:14was tied to pyramid building and human sacrifice.
24:20You can see this right in the heart of Mexico City,
24:24in the middle of the market.
24:31For a warrior to gain status,
24:33he had to capture enemy warriors alive for sacrifice.
24:37The more sacrifices, the more status.
24:42And as the number of sacrifices increased,
24:46they built bigger and bigger pyramids
24:49and bigger and bigger racks
24:51to display the victim's skulls.
24:55Stone racks like this one weren't just fantasy.
24:59I want to show you something you've never seen before.
25:02This is the skull of a young man,
25:04maybe 25, 30, prime of life,
25:07possibly a warrior.
25:09But this isn't a battle wound.
25:11This is prepared. It's cut.
25:13After they sacrificed him,
25:15this was cut out so the skull could be placed on a rack
25:19just like that one.
25:21When the Aztecs wanted a bigger pyramid,
25:24they simply built over an old one,
25:26using it as the core,
25:28and covered it with the new construction.
25:31At this excavation, you can see
25:33the steps of older pyramids
25:35that were enclosed inside newer ones,
25:38just like Russian dolls, one inside the other.
25:42Every king wanted to outdo the previous one,
25:45so he had to make more sacrifices,
25:47and this required bigger and bigger pyramids.
25:53The Aztecs were trapped
25:55in a spiral of human sacrifice and pyramid building.
25:59But they weren't the only ancient Americans
26:01into human sacrifice.
26:04Centuries before the Aztecs,
26:06the Maya were sacrificing humans,
26:09but with their own special twist.
26:12Maya pyramids stretch for 1,200 miles
26:15throughout Central America,
26:17and clustered among them are ceremonial ball courts.
26:22They have everything that modern ball courts have,
26:26seats for spectators, even a skybox for the king.
26:30The world's first team sport was played on this court.
26:38I want to show you something neat about this ball court.
26:41Listen.
26:48Amazing acoustics, huh?
26:50But this court wasn't about fun and games.
26:53But this court wasn't about fun and games.
26:561,000 years ago,
26:57something far more serious took place on this court.
27:02Don't think of it as a friendly Sunday pickup game.
27:06It was a game born from the myth of the hero twins,
27:10brothers so skilled at the ball game
27:12that the lords of death summoned them
27:14to the underworld for a competition.
27:18We don't have the rule book,
27:20but the game was a combination
27:22of modern soccer and basketball.
27:25The goal was to get a ball
27:27through a stone hoop high on a wall,
27:30but you couldn't use your hands,
27:32only your feet and hips.
27:34Sometimes the game went on for days.
27:38When the Spanish first saw the Maya play,
27:41they were amazed by the ball.
27:43They had never seen rubber,
27:45and the ball seemed possessed as it bounced.
27:50In the myth, the twins defeated the gods,
27:53so life triumphed over death.
27:59For the Maya,
28:00the ball courts were entrances to the underworld.
28:04Each time the Maya played,
28:06they were reenacting the deeds of the hero twins.
28:10At the game's conclusion,
28:12the losers were sacrificed to please the gods,
28:16and their skulls displayed in skull racks.
28:20The idea of human sacrifice
28:22was central to the ancient Americas.
28:25Everybody was doing it, Maya, Aztec,
28:28and when they weren't sacrificing,
28:30they were building pyramids.
28:32The two go together.
28:34If you want to see where pyramids and sacrifice
28:37really go together,
28:38come with me to the hottest spot for pyramid research,
28:41Peru.
28:42That's where it's all happening.
28:47In South America, on Peru's northern coast,
28:51archaeologists are making amazing discoveries.
28:55More has been discovered about ancient Peru
28:58in the last 20 years than in the previous 200.
29:02Royal burials,
29:04gold,
29:05incredible ceramics,
29:07human sacrifice,
29:09and it all came from pyramids.
29:12On the cutting edge of all these discoveries
29:15is Dr. Steve Bourget.
29:17At his site in the Viru Valley,
29:19Steve and his students are turning up something new every day.
29:24You want painted walls?
29:26He's got it.
29:31Bourget has just discovered nine llamas
29:34that were sacrificed and placed under the floor
29:37of one of the rooms inside the pyramid.
29:41But Bourget's pyramid is only one of many.
29:441,500 years ago,
29:46a mysterious people called the Moche
29:48were building pyramids that rivaled Egypt's biggest.
29:55The Moche didn't have much stone,
29:57so they used mud brick to build their pyramids.
30:04It took 150 million bricks to build this baby,
30:08Peru's Pyramid of the Sun,
30:10but we really don't know what it was used for.
30:13That's because the Moche didn't have a written language.
30:16But what they did leave behind are pots,
30:19thousands of them.
30:24They're basically two kinds, and they're both weird.
30:27One kind is shaped like people,
30:30and many are bound prisoners.
30:33The other kind of Moche pot is pretty strange, too.
30:37It has painted scenes
30:38which archaeologists thought were mythological.
30:42Only recently has the real story been deciphered,
30:45and I bet you can guess what's involved.
30:54UCLA's Christopher Donnan
30:56has spent decades studying the scenes on Moche pots.
31:01His colleague, Donna McClelland,
31:03has patiently copied more than 20,000 scenes,
31:07and one theme keeps repeating itself.
31:12Human sacrifice.
31:14The scenes always end with a sinister character
31:18in a fancy headdress drinking a cup of blood.
31:23Were the gruesome scenes on the pots real events,
31:27or were they Moche myths,
31:29stories of terrible things
31:30that the gods supposedly did to each other?
31:34For years, archaeologists weren't sure.
31:37Then a pyramid revealed the answer.
31:42Skeletons of young men.
31:44But these weren't ordinary skeletons.
31:47The victims had been horribly tortured and mutilated.
31:51Hands were amputated.
31:53Legs dislocated from their sockets
31:55while the victims were still alive.
31:57And finally, the victims were killed by a blow to the head.
32:05Some of the victims suffered one final indignity.
32:10These are their bones.
32:11When a friend of mine, John Verano, looked at them,
32:14he found something shocking.
32:16I want to show it to you.
32:18It's not easy to see, but it's interesting.
32:22Look very closely over here at these vertebrae.
32:25Can you see those very fine cut marks?
32:28That's the kind of cut you get
32:30when you're taking away the flesh very carefully
32:34so that you're left with a complete skeleton.
32:37Now, why did the Moche want a complete skeleton?
32:40It wasn't for an anatomy lesson.
32:42The Moche had a bizarre ceremony
32:45where they made the skeletons dance.
32:49The Moche were playing with the skeletons of their victims.
32:53But that's not all we know about these poor captives.
32:56You'll be amazed.
33:00At Peru's Pyramid of the Moon,
33:02archaeologist Santiago Uceda has made incredible discoveries,
33:07that no one ever believed possible.
33:10He's been able to reconstruct
33:12the last moments of the victims' lives
33:15on the day of their sacrifice.
33:17It all started on the plaza in front of the pyramid.
33:21The crowds would have gathered to watch the spectacle.
33:26The captives were led through this passageway like cattle.
33:30Then they were paraded past paintings
33:32of the warriors who had conquered them.
33:36Imagine what they were thinking.
33:40As they wound their way through the pyramid
33:42past frescoes of angry gods,
33:44they were well aware of the horrors that awaited them.
33:50The captives, knowing they would be sacrificed,
33:53were brought here, to the heart of the pyramid.
33:57Then they were taken into this room.
34:01Imagine it with gleaming white walls.
34:06But then they were tortured till they bled profusely,
34:11all so the gods would be pleased.
34:14Slowly, painfully, the ceremony was nearing its conclusion.
34:20After they drained the blood from the living victims,
34:23they put it in a cup and brought it here, to this room.
34:27Then a high priest, with the cup in his hand,
34:31mounted these stairs
34:34and presented the cup to the lord of the pyramid.
34:42Finally, the bleeding, half-dead captives
34:46were taken to the sacred rock and killed.
34:52It's amazing that archaeologists found
34:54the real victims of the sacrifices.
34:57But remember that sinister character on Donen's Pots?
35:00The one with the fantastic headdress
35:02who receives the cup of blood?
35:05Could he be real too?
35:07The answer came in a phone call
35:09to leading Peruvian archaeologist, Walter Alva.
35:15It was very late, about 11 o'clock.
35:18The chief of police called me and said,
35:20Doctor, you have to come down urgently.
35:23We have something important that you must see right now.
35:26I had a bad cold, bronchitis with a fever.
35:29So I said, I can come tomorrow.
35:32Well, he was a close friend, and he said,
35:35when you are here, all your aches will go away.
35:42Looters, digging in the pyramid at Cipan,
35:45had struck gold, ear spools, necklaces,
35:49you name it, they found it.
35:55But the greatest treasure of all
35:57was still in the ground, waiting for Walter Alva.
36:02Alva began a careful, meticulous excavation,
36:05and soon he found South America's equivalent
36:08of Tutankhamen's tomb,
36:10the intact burial of the Lord of Cipan,
36:13complete with all its treasures.
36:19This is the Lord of Cipan, at least what's left of him.
36:23He looks like this because the room in which he was buried
36:25had collapsed and tons of mud bricks fell on him.
36:29But the bones still have a lot to tell us.
36:32He was middle-aged, but look over here at his vertebrae,
36:36the ones that have survived.
36:38They're in very good condition.
36:40He didn't carry any heavy loads.
36:42And the arms, they're damaged,
36:44but we can still tell they're delicate,
36:46what we call gracile.
36:48He didn't do much work.
36:50He was the Lord of Cipan.
36:52He was carried everywhere on a sedan chair.
36:54I'll even show you the chair.
36:56Then you'll see why I say he was involved in human sacrifice.
37:01This drawing appears on a moche pot.
37:04It's a traditional sacrifice scene.
37:06Look at the bottom row.
37:08You can see the naked captive.
37:11One's about to have his throat cut.
37:13His weapons and uniform are tied in a bundle to the right.
37:18But on the left is a carrying chair, and it's empty.
37:22Nothing important has been brought to the sacrifice.
37:26I think it's our Lord of Cipan.
37:29Now, look at the top row.
37:31The sinister character is receiving a cup of the victim's blood.
37:36His clothes, headdress, ornaments
37:39are just like what Alva found in the Lord of Cipan's tomb.
37:45He's the character on Donan's pots.
37:48These weren't mythical characters.
37:50They were real people involved in human sacrifice.
37:55The moche pots are snapshots of ancient rituals.
38:00I bet you've had enough of human sacrifice.
38:03Stick around, and I'll take you to a pyramid
38:05that takes you to another world.
38:14Asian pyramids are different from Egyptian or South American pyramids.
38:18The Great Temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia is so huge
38:21that at first it's hard to see that it has pyramids.
38:30It's only from the air that you can clearly see its five pyramids.
38:35No one was buried here, and no sacrifices took place.
38:39It's really a map, a sacred map.
38:42And the five pyramid towers
38:44reflect the five peaks of the mythical Mount Meru,
38:47the home of the gods.
38:54In southern India, the pyramids of Majarai Temple
38:57also echo the peaks of Mount Meru.
39:06But here, they're covered with thousands and thousands of Hindu gods.
39:13Asian pyramids have an otherworldly feeling.
39:18But let me show you the strangest of all Asian pyramids.
39:22It's in the rice fields of Java,
39:25one of Indonesia's largest islands.
39:28It's tucked away, out of the mainstream of Indonesian life.
39:33That's because it's a pyramid
39:35designed to help you escape from the world.
39:40But don't view it just as a pyramid.
39:44It's a teaching machine
39:46intended to take you somewhere you've never been.
39:52Pilgrims have been coming to see the carvings at Borobudur for 1,000 years.
39:57They would start here, on the lowest level.
40:00It's kind of like the Buddhist Ten Commandments,
40:02the do's and don'ts of life.
40:05He's getting drunk.
40:07And over there, that's the dancing girls.
40:10They're showing you the dangers of being a party animal.
40:13You see, everything's unstable.
40:16They're about to fall down.
40:18So what do you do?
40:20It's a no-brainer.
40:22Avoid these ladies.
40:24Be like this guy over here.
40:26He's a family man.
40:28There's his wife, his child.
40:30Everything's calm. Everything's peaceful.
40:33There's even a panel that tells you about what happens to you if you kill a rat.
40:37You see, for the Buddhists, even the life of a rat is sacred.
40:41So you can't kill rats.
40:44The pilgrim starts working his way up this terrace,
40:47a path that will literally take him to another world,
40:51free of all suffering and pain.
41:04In ancient times, monks would have explained each scene to our pilgrim,
41:09and there are three miles of scenes.
41:12Our pilgrim may even have had to pass a test
41:15before proceeding to the next level,
41:17and there are ten levels.
41:20You can climb to the top of Borobudur in about five minutes,
41:23but that's not what it's about.
41:25It's not the Borobudur 10k.
41:27You see, Borobudur is about enlightenment,
41:31being free of this physical world,
41:34and that takes time.
41:39Every step our pilgrim takes brings him closer to enlightenment
41:43and further from the everyday world below.
41:46As the pilgrim goes higher and higher,
41:49the scenes become more difficult to figure out.
41:53By the time our pilgrim reaches this level,
41:56his brains are probably scrambled.
41:58It may have taken him years to get this far,
42:01and now the going gets tougher.
42:03There's no more easy stories to help him.
42:06This is PhD Buddhism.
42:09He has spent years in Borobudur's dark corridors,
42:13staring at carved scenes,
42:15trying to understand their meaning,
42:17searching for enlightenment.
42:20Finally, you reach the last panel,
42:23number 1,460.
42:26And then, this building does something absolutely amazing.
42:32But I'm not going to tell you what it is.
42:34I'm just going to let you see for yourself.
42:46It shoots you to another world.
42:49No more narrow, dark, cramped corridors.
42:52No more panels to study.
42:54Just open sky, volcanoes, and the Buddha.
43:01Our pilgrims graduated.
43:03This is what they call the thunderbolt.
43:06You're hurled into enlightenment,
43:08ready to transfer to the next world.
43:15Unlike other pyramids,
43:17Borobudur wasn't a temple,
43:19and it wasn't a tomb.
43:21It was the real Stargate,
43:23the pyramid that took you to another world.
43:31But back in the real world,
43:33the black Nubian kings were having real problems.
43:36So real, they wished they could find another world.
43:40You'll see.
43:47Remember our pious Nubian kings
43:49who conquered Egypt and rekindled the flame of pyramid building?
43:52Well, they had their problems, too.
43:58Defeated by the Egyptians,
44:00they were forced to retreat south,
44:02deep into the Nubian desert.
44:05Their reign over Egypt had ended.
44:10This is the kind of desert
44:12where a plain that went down 50 years ago
44:14remains virtually untouched.
44:23My driver is Michele Bajo,
44:25an Italian who is one of the best
44:27professional desert drivers in Africa.
44:40Here, the desert is so flat
44:42that you see nothing but horizon and mirages.
44:46With no visual clues to guide him,
44:49With no visual clues to guide him,
44:52even Michele is forced to use
44:54a global positioning satellite to get us across.
44:57Without the GPS, I don't think we could make it.
45:05It's the kind of desert that isolated the Nubians,
45:08allowing them to build a new capital at Meroe.
45:16There, away from the rest of the world,
45:18they built another kingdom,
45:20complete with fields of elegant pyramids.
45:26For me, these are the most romantic pyramids on Earth.
45:30But the kings of Nubia didn't just have style.
45:34They had power.
45:36People don't realize how powerful these Nubians were.
45:40If you want to see,
45:42come with me to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.
45:46This museum has a fabulous collection.
45:49But before I show you how powerful the Nubians were,
45:52I want to show you something that has nothing to do with pyramids,
45:55nothing to do with what we're talking about,
45:57but I think it's the most incredible object
45:59ever to come out of ancient Egypt.
46:01This is it.
46:03Forget Tutankhamen's treasures.
46:05This is better.
46:07Can you see what it is?
46:09It's a loincloth, a simple wraparound garment.
46:12But what's amazing about it is it's not woven.
46:15It's cut out of a single piece of leather.
46:18Look at those little diamond cutouts.
46:21Nobody knows how that was done.
46:24But I didn't bring you here to see some old underwear.
46:27Come on with me, and now I'll show you
46:29just how powerful the Nubians were.
46:33Meet King Espelta, a Nubian.
46:36Look at that face.
46:38I take orders from that guy.
46:41But wait till you see what's in the museum's basement.
46:45Amazingly, Espelta was buried in a huge sarcophagus,
46:49which is so heavy that no floor in the museum can support it.
46:53That's why it's in the basement.
46:55This is the largest sarcophagus ever made for a king.
46:59That's how powerful he was.
47:02But even the kingdom of Nubia couldn't last forever.
47:06Eventually, the pyramid fields were abandoned
47:09and became targets for tomb robbers.
47:12That's why the pyramids don't have their tops.
47:15In 1830, an Italian adventurer named Ferlini found treasure,
47:20not in the pyramid, but in the queen's burial chamber.
47:27There were more than 100 gold rings, necklaces, bracelets
47:31that far surpassed the treasures found in any Egyptian queen's burial.
47:36Ferlini thought that the other burial chambers
47:39might contain similar treasure.
47:41So to throw others off the track, he lied
47:44and claimed he had found the treasure in a secret chamber
47:47in the top of the pyramid.
47:49Soon, other treasure hunters were decapitating every pyramid in sight.
47:57In its heyday, the kingdom of Nubia was one to be reckoned with,
48:01and its kings and queens continued to build their pyramids
48:04well into the Christian era.
48:07But even the great rulers of Nubia couldn't build forever.
48:13This is where it all ends, with this little pyramid.
48:18You see, about 300 AD, a Nubian king built the last pyramid in Africa
48:24and with it ended 3,000 years of pyramid building.
48:28On this spot, the flame went out forever.
48:35I wonder if when the last king wrote his name on this pyramid,
48:40he knew this was the end.
48:46A tradition born in the sands of Egypt had died in the Nubian desert.
48:51No more would pyramids pierce the African sky.
48:55No more would kings and queens of Nubia build pyramids.
49:05Here, in the remote Nubian desert,
49:08the sun finally set on the last African pyramid.
49:34Transcription by ESO. Translation by —