Egypt's Lost Cities

Ancient Egypt, with its pyramids, its mummies and its Pharaohs.

No other civilisation has such a powerful grip on our imagination.

But, even after 200 years of digging, some archaeologists believe

they have found just 1% of this once-great empire.

Beneath Egyptian sands lie lost cities, forgotten tombs,

even buried pyramids.

But now one archaeologist thinks she holds the key to unlock it all,

and she is turning to the heavens for help.

She is using satellites that can see beneath the surface of the Earth.

This 21st-century technology can help identify a lost city,

not in decades, but in moments.

Lo and behold, the map of a whole city.

She's also on the trail of possible palaces and pyramids,

towns and villages, to create the most unique map of Ancient Egypt

ever seen.

'I'm Dallas Campbell, a broadcaster with a passion for science

'and technology.

'This is my chance to join this revolution in archaeology.'

So, that IS a pyramid.

And I'm Liz Bonnin, a scientist and conservationist.

Together, we'll help map a lost civilisation

guided by the world's greatest Egyptologists.

I could never have imagined this is what your technology would reveal.

We will recreate Ancient Egypt in all its magnificence.

It's an epic adventure that will take us from the distant past...

This long-lost city isn't quite as lost as it used to be.

..through a turbulent present...

..to a fascinating future.

We had no idea of the extent of all of this.

MUSIC: "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynryd

Our journey starts not in Egypt, but in America's Deep South,

in Birmingham, Alabama.

It's here that archaeologist Dr Sarah Parcak

runs her NASA-sponsored laboratory.

Sarah is a pioneer in the new science of space archaeology,

part of a new generation of Indiana Joneses who combine

technology with trowels.

Satellites orbiting 700 kilometres above the Earth are equipped

with high-resolution cameras

developed by the military for spying.

Cameras so powerful they can pinpoint objects less than a metre

in diameter on the Earth's surface.

But that's just the first step.

This is just an optical photograph, zoomed in a little bit?

This is the equivalent of an aerial photograph, but taken from space.

Right, what we're going to do,

we're going to journey north to a very large, well-known,

Ancient Egyptian capital city called Tanis.

Everyone knows it because of Indiana Jones.

What we have here is a well-excavated part of the site,

with very large temples

and ongoing excavations by a French team.

-This southern part has not been excavated.

-Not a whole lot going on.

-Except for that square there. What is that?

-That's a temple.

What's amazing is, when you visit this part of Tanis on the ground,

there's nothing there.

Sarah knows this sandy wasteland well from her many visits to Egypt,

and there's simply nothing to see.

But the desert is about to give up its secrets.

What we've done is we've taken the higher-resolution space photographs

and I've combined it with state-of-the-art,

infrared technology.

And lo and behold, the map of a whole city.

-Holy...

-Cow!

-Cow.

-Look at that.

-Are they all little houses?

-They're all buildings.

'It could be the ghostly image of what was once

'the capital of Ancient Egypt, a street map from the distant past.'

It was very densely occupied.

You can almost see hints of city streets.

-Yes.

-God!

-Elite housing...

You get almost like a complete architectural plan of the city.

What is it about the near infrared that makes these buildings

and streets visible, all the structure that we can suddenly see?

They built their houses out of mud brick,

and this mud brick is much denser than the soil that surrounds it.

I'd always assumed infrared only detected heat,

but it can also help identify different materials.

This allows Sarah to reveal buildings lying below the surface.

The whole of Egypt has suddenly opened up.

-It's a whole new era.

-You can see everything from your lab.

'Sarah is not only looking for lost cities,

'she is also on the trail of buried temples, labyrinths,

'harems and the most prized monument of them all, the pyramid.'

Let's move down to...Saqqara.

And what we have here in front of us are some Dynasty XIII pyramids.

This one belongs to a Pharaoh called Khendjer.

This is an unfinished pyramid.

And what I want you to do is have a look.

What else do you see?

There's a kind of shape here, almost like a square, as well.

-Shall we have a closer look?

-Yes, go on.

So, that IS a pyramid.

This is a pyramid that was found quite recently

using space archaeology.

No-one had any idea there was a pyramid there until they used this?

It was spotted from space and you can see it there.

-When you walk around there on the ground...

-Nothing at all.

You can't see anything.

The structure was initially spotted by Robert Schiestl,

a German archaeologist.

Then you think to yourself,

"Well, could there potentially be others out there?"

It's incredible.

I could never have imagined this is what your technology would reveal.

Sarah's ambition is not just to uncover lost, iconic buildings,

but also to create the most complete map of Ancient Egypt ever seen.

She's convinced that 99% of this fascinating civilisation

still remains buried beneath the sands.

While her team here in Alabama hunt for more sites using the satellite data...

..it's time for us to head to Egypt,

to discover if what Sarah is seeing from space is actually there.

Cairo, the chaotic and spellbinding capital of modern Egypt.

This is the starting point of our expedition.

-We're meeting our guide, Ramy Romany.

-Hello, how are you doing?

-Great to see you.

-Hello, I'm Liz. Very nice to meet you, Ramy.

So, Ramy, are you actually from Cairo, is this your town?

Yes, I was born and I lived and I got raised here in Cairo.

I love it here.

It's a crazy city, there's hustle and bustle, but it's beautiful.

-How many people live in Cairo?

-How many people live in Cairo?

-Yeah.

20 million live in Cairo.

One street has five million Egyptians living in it.

We're crossing the River Nile.

It has always been the lifeblood of this country.

Today, 95% of Egypt's population live on this narrow,

fertile strip of land.

Beyond is nothing but empty desert.

It was on these banks the world's greatest ancient civilisation

flourished for more than 3,000 years.

'And if you're near the Nile, the past is never far away.'

I can see a pyramid!

-Where? Oh, my gosh.

-Not just one, three of them are right there.

I'm getting shivers down my spine just seeing those things.

Why do the pyramids do that to us?

Because they're the most iconic structures in the entire world.

Which one's the great one?

-The biggest...

-No, they're both equal size, look!

-That's perspective.

The one on the right-hand side is the Great Pyramid of Giza.

But the Great Pyramid isn't our destination quite yet.

We're heading south-west to a less well-known,

but equally intriguing, spot.

It's called Saqqara, one of the places Sarah told us about

back in Alabama.

It stands on the western edge of the Nile Valley.

It's here that Sarah's mobile lab is being set up.

We want to test out her space-age technology on the ground

for the first time.

For the Ancient Egyptians, this desert edge was the place

where order was replaced by chaos, where the fertility that

sprang from the Nile met the scorching death of the desert.

The lab is close to the pyramid field Sarah showed us in America.

Satellite imagery has already revealed one potential pyramid.

Now Sarah wants to show us something else that's caught her eye.

Here we are. Actually, we are exactly right here.

A few hundred yards to the south is the exact area that intrigues Sarah.

On the surface, there's little to be seen.

This is the image you saw in Birmingham.

Here we have the unfinished pyramid.

-Right.

-Yes.

And this is the pyramid that we looked at.

But when I was processing this image, something else came up.

And I started looking over here and we can see visually maybe a hint.

-Of a corner there.

-Very, very hard to see visually.

'But when Sarah puts in the infrared filter,

'the faint outline of something buried

'beneath the desert begins to emerge.'

-See that?

-Oh, wow.

-Yes. Oh, my gosh.

What you're seeing here is the foundation of a pyramid.

It's 52 by 52 metres,

which is the standard size of pyramids from Dynasty XIII.

52 metres is 100 cubits.

The cubit was the standard unit of length in Ancient Egypt,

the distance from elbow to fingertip.

But there's more.

You can actually see running sort of south, south-west,

what I think could potentially be a causeway.

This could be the route along which building stone was transported

to the pyramid.

We're talking about a pyramid that no-one's ever even thought about?

I have to ask, if there's a whole pyramid that no-one knows about,

could there be stuff in it?

-This is something we don't know.

-So, what's the next step?

-Are you looking to try and get this excavated?

-I would love to excavate.

To excavate a pyramid is the dream of most archaeologists.

'Getting permission to dig isn't going to be easy.

'Here, all the ancient sites are rightly protected, but for Sarah,

'it's the only way she can prove her technology actually works.'

To get a better understanding of what we're looking for,

I'm heading north to Giza...

..the location of the most iconic pyramid of all.

I'm meeting Dr Zahi Hawass, the Minister of Antiquities.

He has the power to decide whether the possible pyramids

discovered at Saqqara can be excavated.

His passion is the Great Pyramid.

It is still the largest

and most accurately built stone monument on Earth.

But to appreciate the true genius of a pyramid, you have to go inside.

When they dug this entrance and entered inside,

they found many late-period mummified bodies

and things like this.

'The Great Pyramid is the only survivor of

'the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

'It was the final resting place of the Pharaoh Khufu.'

This is a tight fit.

'800 years later,

'the pyramid builders at Saqqara must have learned

'many lessons from this masterpiece.'

Constructed using two million blocks,

the Great Pyramid weighs five million tonnes.

It rises at a constant angle of 51 degrees

to reach the height of a 35-storey building.

All built in less than 15 years, using soft copper tools

and a simple plumb line.

Inside is a complex network of passageways

linking the entrance to the burial chamber deep within.

-God! Look at this!

-Amazing.

-Where are we? This is extraordinary.

The Grand Gallery. The most fascinating structure on Earth.

The function of the 8.5-metre high ceiling remains a mystery

to this day.

The pyramid is one of the most explored monuments in human history,

but it kept a secret for 4,500 years.

In the roof of the Grand Gallery is a passageway that,

until 170 years ago, led nowhere.

Only blasting with gunpowder revealed five more cramped chambers

stacked one on top of the other.

The topmost has a triangular ceiling designed to take

the load of the thousands of tonnes of limestone above.

Few people are allowed here these days.

HE BREATHES HEAVILY

OK?

Ah.

Argh!

HE GASPS

Argh.

LABOURED BREATHING

-Are you here?

-Yeah.

Now, I need to tell you some important things here.

-Come by my left side here.

-Yeah.

You know, this is the top, fifth chamber.

-This is the last one.

-The very top?

This room has been found by English.

This is the story of the people...

The people who, in the last three centuries,

used to come to explore the pyramid and write their names

and year and things like that.

Now I'm going to take you to this big surprise here. Follow me.

'The graffiti in this chamber isn't all the work of intrepid explorers.'

Mr Dallas, look at this.

This letter in hieroglyphic means "gang".

And look, this means followers.

And this is the cartouche of Khufu.

The name of the gang who built the pyramid were called

the Followers Gang of Khufu.

So, this graffiti is 4,500 years old?

It's 4,500 years ago, left by the workmen who built the pyramid.

I can't imagine another room on Earth that has

such historical significance.

Not just historical significance, such scientific significance.

The science, you've got this vaulted ceiling,

which as an engineering project means so much.

It's supporting the weight of the pyramid.

It's extraordinary that they had that technology 4,500 years ago.

With history, the history of the pyramid itself, which we know,

but within this room you have these fantastic stories,

of people who have been here before.

It is amazing, it's special. This is off the scale.

The Giza pyramids now stand at the edge of

the sprawling Cairo metropolis.

4,500 years ago,

this place was very different from the isolated monuments we see today.

The Sphinx stood as a silent sentinel

guarding a massive complex of buildings.

Each pyramid was connected to the Nile by a causeway.

At either end were temples built to honour the dead king

on his journey to the afterlife.

The pyramids of Saqqara would have followed this plan.

The landscape would have looked completely different, too.

It was then a lush, fertile savanna.

When all this was completed around 2,500 BC,

Egypt was experiencing the first golden age in its long history.

It began when the first dynasty of Egyptian kings created

an entirely new society, around 3,000 BC.

They turned mummification into an art, invented hieroglyphics,

and within 500 years had built the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Nearly 800 years later, in the 13th Dynasty,

there was a new enthusiasm for pyramid building.

The potential pyramids discovered by satellite archaeology

at Saqqara appear to be from this period.

'But I have a question.

'If the pyramids do exist, who might they have belonged to?

'I head into Cairo with Ramy, who thinks he might have an answer.'

'Ramy's first piece of evidence is an ancient document.'

The only list of things we have that dates back to the 13th Dynasty

was written on a papyrus.

We have a replica of it right here.

'The original document was pieced together from 160 fragments.

'It names 60 kings from the 13th Dynasty, many without known tombs.'

I love this list, it has the names of the king

and how long everyone reigned.

'It's a long list.

'But Ramy has a contender for the king who might have built

'one of our potential pyramids.'

-My favourite one.

-Why?

-Because he ruled for nearly 23 years.

It's King Merneferre Ay.

-Merneferre Ay.

-Yeah, let's just call him Ay.

-Ay.

I'm getting a sense of how compelling Egyptology is,

and how, the minute you start getting a tiny little piece of the puzzle,

-you need to find out more. It's an endless search, isn't it?

-Yes.

In fact, the burial places of 200 Pharaohs, including King Ay,

are still to be found.

It's likely many were buried in pyramids.

So the possibility that satellite archaeology has found two more

is of huge importance.

The only way for Sarah to know for certain what she has found

will be to excavate,

but the Egyptian authorities have very strict rules.

In order to verify what's on the ground,

we have to get permission to get out there and to dig and to survey.

I really hope to be able to do it.

It was really frustrating because I got turned down.

And to know that the satellite technology

has suggested where we think a pyramid might be,

and then to not get permission, it's so frustrating.

Back in Cairo, Ramy has brought me

to the famous Egyptian Museum to show me another piece of the jigsaw.

King Ay was the longest-reigning Pharaoh of the 13th Dynasty,

but is there any evidence

that his lost burial place was actually a pyramid?

In a corner of this treasure trove,

Ramy knows of something that could link King Ay to Sarah's research.

It's the top of a pyramid, known as a pyramidion.

-This one has the name of a king on it.

-OK.

So the first bit here on the left, it's not that obvious here.

Let me look at it there. Not that obvious here. Here we go.

-Can you make it out?

-King Ay.

Could Ay's pyramidion have capped one of the pyramids we're hunting?

If so, then using a few simple calculations will show us

the scale of the structure.

There are also two more cap stones that were

found in the 13th Dynasty pyramid field.

That angle would be...

'We're now able to work out the size of all of our potential

'pyramids on the site.'

-49?

-Yes.

Back in the lab, it is Sarah's first opportunity to turn

all of this data into a 3D reconstruction.

Can we start to use the evidence that you saw in the museum

and actually start to see how large

these pyramids may have been if they were completed?

-Sure.

-Let's have a look.

Had all these pyramids been completed,

this is what this plateau may have looked like.

Like the pyramids at Giza, these later, more modest structures,

barely 40 metres high, would have had temples, causeways and harbours.

The potential pyramids would most likely have been dressed in

the same white limestone as the Great Pyramid,

but the temples would have been much more ornate.

In the Middle Kingdom, the emphasis was on detail rather than size.

But without excavation we can't be certain about anything.

Now all that might be about to change.

THEY SPEAK IN ARABIC

"To Dr Sarah." Right.

Here is the moment of truth.

"Dear Dr Sarah Parcak,

"it has been confirmed that Dr Hawass has decided to excavate..."

Wow! "..to the southeast of the unfinished pyramid." My goodness.

'Finally, permission has been given to excavate the possible pyramids.

'It's the first step in building up a completely new picture of this area.'

-Wow!

-For real?

-That's so great, that's amazing, well done.

It is going to really help us understand what we're seeing.

November 2010. Dr Hawass and his team begin a full-scale excavation.

It's the first time Sarah's satellite archaeology has led

to such a massive undertaking.

Dr Hawass has been won over by the potential of the images.

To look at the map in a photograph taken by satellite,

and you see things buried underneath

and to start excavating that, it's wonderful.

It will be some weeks before we can return to see what

the excavation will reveal.

This is just the beginning of Sarah's ambitious plans.

She wants to map the entire country from space.

With her team in Alabama, she has already completed the first step,

a survey of the giant burial ground of Saqqara.

And it has revealed an astonishing number of possible sites.

Both myself and my lab have found thousands

and thousands of new tombs.

We have found up to 17 structures that seem highly suggestive to be

new pyramids, both royal as well as queens' or princes' pyramids.

This is already a significant achievement.

Now for the rest of Egypt.

Next stop, Tanis, the lost city that looked

so exciting on the satellite images back in Alabama.

Tanis was an important capital city for 1,600 years.

It was abandoned around 600 AD.

It is the iconic lost city featured in Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

When excavated in the late 1930s, it produced a wealth of treasures

that rival even Tutankhamun's.

But with the outbreak of the Second World War Tanis was forgotten again.

Sarah is meeting Dr Philippe Brissaud.

Bonjour, Philippe, ca va?

He's worked here for 20 years and knows every inch of this site.

Sarah's satellite image shows there could be a huge complex

of mud-brick buildings here.

Philippe has been digging a test trench for a week to see

if she is right.

It's now time for the result.

Will his findings match the street plans Sarah saw from space?

Look at this!

Wow!

We are in the middle of the building you have seen from the sky.

For Sarah, it's a big moment, the first time that excavation has

proved her satellite archaeology works.

It's really exciting for me as an archaeologist

because what we have here is very detailed mud-brick work

and you get a sense of that from space.

It's something that validates the satellite work.

It is a major step forward.

It's significant because it provides real, hands-on, tangible evidence

that there was a large settlement here,

but also demonstrates the fact that space archaeology, remote sensing, is a really useful tool

for archaeologists to be much more focused and systematic in their work.

Satellite archaeology has revealed a street map of the city,

potentially four times bigger than ever imagined.

Without these images, it would have taken years to uncover.

If Sarah continues like this,

the scale of Ancient Egypt will have to be entirely revised.

Now we are going to explore even further back in time,

to the period before Pharaohs and pyramids.

Can satellite archaeology add to our knowledge of how Egypt's

great civilisation began?

To find out, we leave the fertile Nile Valley behind.

This is it, the beginning of the Sahara,

the largest desert in the world,

the hottest place on Earth,

and we're going to be here for the next five days,

hopefully uncovering some of its secrets from the past.

We're heading west, deep into the heart of the Sahara.

Nothing but sand for the next 5,000 kilometres.

Temperatures here reach 50 degrees.

We pull up 700 kilometres southwest of Cairo.

But what has drawn Sarah here does not lie buried beneath the sand.

It can be found on the surface.

What we can see from the satellite imagery... Let's zoom in a little.

On this visual image you can't really see anything,

just a harsh desert landscape.

Very much so, yeah.

But when we start to process things, and zoom in a little bit,

what do you see?

Gosh, I don't have your expert eyes.

But I see little circles,

recessions in the ground in beautiful, perfect circles.

It doesn't look natural. It doesn't look...

-Gosh, what are they?

-They're hut circles.

-Hut circles.

-These are places where people many thousands of years ago lived.

That's incredible.

Are these tiny dots all that

remains of the dwellings of the ancestors of the Pharaohs?

Where exactly are these compared to where we are now?

They are somewhere over there.

Spotting these hut circles from space is one thing,

finding them on the ground is a lot harder.

I haven't tested this particular type of imagery this far out in the desert before.

I'm pretty confident about things in the Nile Valley and Delta,

but out here, who knows if it will work or if it won't?

Sarah's satellite archaeology is good at identifying mud brick

buried just beneath the surface,

but what about stone circles in a vast wilderness of sand?

Sat nav will help narrow down the location,

but then it's down to us to spot them.

I don't mean to be funny, but we have been walking for quite a while.

Are you sure you know where we're going?

Well, this is the thing you can never be sure of.

Things are looking more promising.

Very promising. And look at where we are right now.

-Er, where might that be?

-OK, look, you see...

Do you see these large circles?

'Sarah may be able to see something, but I'll need some convincing.'

From above, you really get a sense of the circles,

from here it is very difficult to make them all out, isn't it?

But is there any other evidence that people once lived here?

Look at this. Look here. Look, look.

These are tools. Or evidence of work tools. Look at this.

Look at this piece.

It's a beautiful piece.

It takes an incredible craftsman to know the right angle,

the right pressure, and they strike the stone to get a perfect flake.

They work a stone down so you get perfect edges.

'The remains of prehistoric human activity are all around us.'

-What's that, Sarah?

-It's ostrich eggshell.

-They would have used these ostrich eggshells as vessels for carrying water.

-You're kidding!

No, and there's a bunch of it all over the place.

-Is this another piece here?

-Yep.

Everything suggests that this desert wasteland was once

a very fertile place.

In fact, for thousands of years, communities

thrived in the Sahara, settling close to food sources

and water that was then here in abundance.

Satellites can quickly map hundreds of square kilometres that

would have taken years using conventional archaeology.

Now we can get a far better picture of how many people lived here

in prehistoric times.

After a long day, we head off to join Dallas and the others at the camp.

Are people generally quite sceptical of new technology when it comes along?

Is there an old guard who tend to pooh-pooh it a bit?

It has been a struggle, just because the technology is so new.

And when you show people facts and figures about sites you're finding or show them

things you're seeing, people roll their eyes and say, "Here comes

"yet another gee-whiz technology that aims to solve everything."

Well, the proof is in the pictures. These people can focus on this site much faster.

We've spoken to archaeologists here who are looking at your work, thinking this is revolutionary.

The following day, Ramy wants to show me how

the Stone Age people had ambitions beyond being just hunter-gatherers.

-What are you showing me? Oh, my gosh!

-Can you see that?

Those are hand prints, hand marks that might have

dated back to 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 years BC.

We don't even know when.

'These prints were made by blowing paint over human hands.

'Were these people the ancestors of the Pharaohs

'and this their first attempt to make their mark on history?'

To think that a human being actually put their hand right there

on that stone, it's so special.

8,000 years ago, even before Moses.

Rock art like this has been found all over the Sahara.

These figures are from the famous Cave of the Swimmers

on Egypt's distant southwest border.

But there's a mystery.

These prehistoric tribes were no different to many other groups

all across Africa.

So why did these small desert communities become

such a powerful civilisation?

Professor Salima Ikram has an answer.

In 4,000 BC, there seems to have been a change in the climate.

The whole rain cycle changed

and therefore people started moving away from the Sahara and into

more dependable water sources,

and here in Egypt that would have been the Nile Valley.

As the people from the deserts converged into the Nile Valley, you can see them

taking their ideas, their belief systems there

and then those being gradually transformed into what we have and what we know as Pharaonic Egypt.

It appears that 6,000 years ago a climate catastrophe forced

these early Egyptians to head to the Nile.

They were not to know it at the time, but it was to prove a paradise.

The great river was the ideal environment to forge these small

hunter-gatherer groups into a great civilisation based on agriculture.

They enjoyed the perfect combination of the sun, a constant

supply of water, and rich soil fertilised by the annual flood.

Still to this day, the land can grow as many as

six crops in a single year.

6,000 years ago, such abundance created a society

so prosperous it could devote vast resources to life and to death.

The Valley of the Kings is the burial ground of the Pharaohs

of the New Kingdom.

It is the era of Ramesses the Great,

when Ancient Egypt reached the height of its power and wealth.

This valley is a tantalising reminder

that so much of Ancient Egypt's riches

could still remain hidden in the desert.

It was here, in 1922, that Ancient Egypt made headlines around

the world with the discovery by Howard Carter of Tutankhamun's tomb.

I am with archaeologist John Romer, who has worked here for 40 years.

We're retracing Carter's footsteps.

-This was completely filled with rubble.

-I can imagine.

When they got to here, there was a great wall of plaster with

royal seals stamped all over it.

They take a bit of the plaster out and there's a brick wall behind.

Pull out one of the bricks, thinking there's going to be this damage.

There's an amazing moment because what happens is

all the hot air goes whoosh out of the tomb,

and there's this amazing smell, like spice.

Until you've smelt it, you cannot describe it.

But he held a candle up

and when he pushed it through the hole, what's he seeing?

He's seeing three huge gold couches along that wall.

A whole... Piles and piles, golden thrones, boxes full of jewellery,

all in front of him.

Famously, Carter said, "I looked upon wonderful things."

Let's go in here. There are the chariots, just over there.

This is beautiful.

But, in a way, I am a little bit surprised at the size of it

and the simplicity of it.

It is tiny. This is a private tomb.

All this gold, they wanted to get the king in the ground -

some say he was murdered, who knows?

They say they wanted to bury him very quickly,

so they bunged him into a private tomb with all this stuff.

So why did Tutankhamun, who didn't rule for that long,

have the most amazing golden

coffin and all these riches buried with him?

The clues are like this.

A lot of the stuff in this tomb wasn't originally made for it.

Much of this treasure actually belonged to

Tutankhamun's immediate family.

His father, Akhenaten, had founded a new religion,

the first to worship a single god.

But when Tutankhamun became king he abandoned this new religion

and its capital, and he took many of its treasures to his grave.

So what do you think the chances are

of finding another undiscovered, unlooted tomb?

Very high. Egypt is one enormous cemetery.

Where would you go? What is the first place you would look at?

I'd choose Thebes, the mountains of Thebes around here.

And Abydos.

For 3,000 years,

the site of Abydos was the place of pilgrimage for millions.

This is its most important place of worship, the Great Temple of Seti I.

Pilgrims came here believing that Abydos was the burial place

of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead.

This area is the most sacred place in all of Ancient Egypt.

The burial place of the very first Egyptian kings, 5,000 years ago.

What has drawn us to Abydos is the prospect of finding something

that every Egyptologist secretly dreams about,

an undiscovered, intact royal tomb.

Probably not on the scale of Tutankhamun,

but you never know unless you look.

Sarah has set up camp on the edge of Abydos' royal graveyard.

It overlooks the valley in the eastern desert cliffs,

known throughout Ancient Egypt

as the gateway to the afterlife.

Sarah is hoping her satellite imagery will reveal what

over 100 years of traditional archaeology has failed to uncover,

one of the missing tombs of the very first kings.

'I'm meeting archaeologist Dr Gunter Dreyer,

'who has been working here for 30 years.

'He wants to show me his current dig.'

This is the earliest royal burial ground of Egypt.

Right.

The earliest rulers of Egypt, pre-dynastic ones, and the rulers

of the First and Second Dynasty are buried here, about 3,000 BC.

We are in the very heart of the beginning of Egyptian culture here.

That is a lot of pottery.

These sherds are fragments of late-period offerings.

The Ancient Egyptians came here by the millions

and left offering vessels here.

We roughly estimate it altogether may be about 10 million pots.

Gunter is investigating the First Dynasty tomb of King Djer.

It was originally excavated in the late 19th century.

How would it work?

Take me through the layout of this.

Yeah. Well, there is a huge chamber with brick lining

and in the middle of that chamber there was a large wooden shrine,

supported by these protruding walls, cell walls.

They also form little storerooms for equipment.

Djer's tomb was once covered by a mound of earth.

It was a forerunner of the pyramids.

Back in her lab, Sarah thinks she is on to something

in an unexplored area close to the burial ground.

What grabbed me when I was looking at this imagery

is an area down here.

-Oh, OK.

-Can you see the depression?

-Yes.

An almost imperceptible dip on the surface,

it might just be the sign of a collapsed tomb.

But there's a problem.

Anything that would be here would be buried three, four,

five metres underneath the sand,

and the high-resolution technology that I have cannot see that far.

-Not ready for that?

-Not yet.

Sarah thinks she has an explanation for the shallow

depression on the surface, if a royal tomb lurks beneath.

You're going to get the sand infilling and you're going to get

a slight shallow depression if there is something there,

that tends to be a suggestion, based on topography.

That is what we're seeing, we're seeing depression and,

potentially, mud brick under the surface.

So let's just be clear here, we're talking the possibility of discovering

an undiscovered, intact royal tomb?

This is big, this is major-league.

The image is hinting at something, but is Sarah's analysis correct?

The potential tomb is too deep to be picked up on her satellite cameras,

but Gunter agrees to dig a test trench.

It takes Sarah one step closer to every archaeologist's dream.

There is the five-year-old inside me that saw Indiana Jones

for the first time and just dreamt about finding a lost tomb.

It's the Holy Grail for archaeology.

So, it would be amazing.

What does Gunter think, I haven't really asked that?

What is his... He's looked at the images. Based on that,

without having fully explored yet, what is his gut reaction?

-I mean, he's given it a one in a thousand shot.

-I like those odds!

Are those odds good enough to warrant the manpower and the expense

and everything else?

You think about great archaeologists like Howard Carter.

He dug for years and years and was, in many ways,

a failure at what he did until he found Tutankhamun.

All we can do now is wait.

Three days later, Gunter has a result.

-You all right?

-This is the moment of truth.

It's been a while since I have been this excited

at the possibility of finding something like this.

I've never before had the opportunity to search for

a royal tomb at Abydos.

What we did is outline

the area in question, as indicated on the satellite photograph,

and then we dug two trenches.

One south-north, and another one east-west.

What came out is mainly clean Egyptian sand.

-Right.

-All this is solid deposits of sand.

No indication of any pit one would expect for royalty.

Despite the setback, Gunter feels the technology is of value.

The method works.

It tells us where there are anomalies,

-and we have to find out what is the reason for that anomaly.

-Yeah.

The image suggested there was something there,

but Sarah's hunch that it was a royal tomb was a step too far.

You always hope, that's part of archaeology.

We're, um...

I think you have to be an incredible optimist to be in this field.

But, gosh, it would have been nice to find something.

Even though this time the site was beyond the reach of Sarah's cameras,

she is not disheartened for long.

Using her technology where it is proven to be most effective

she has completed the next stage of her map,

the whole of Upper Egypt.

In Upper Egypt alone,

I've been able to find over 1,200 new ancient sites.

-Flippin' heck! 1,200?!

-Of settlement, yes.

That's mind-blowing!

1,200 potential discoveries.

Many could be ancient towns

and villages that will fill in the gaps of the Egyptian landscape.

And she is only halfway through creating her map.

And now she is taking on an exciting new challenge.

She wants to bring back to life three of Ancient Egypt's

most mysterious buildings.

Each has a story to tell about an important period in Egypt's history.

All, until now, have remained an enigma.

A harem palace, lost in the desert.

A mythical labyrinth, revered by the Egyptians and the Ancient Greeks.

And a mysterious lost temple that was once at the centre

of Egyptian religion.

First, the temple built more than 4,000 years ago in the Old Kingdom.

It was dedicated to the worship of the sun,

then Ancient Egypt's most important religious cult.

According to ancient texts, many Fifth Dynasty pyramids

of the Old Kingdom were built with a nearby sun temple.

But, so far, only two have ever been discovered.

They are close to the rarely visited pyramids at Abusir.

The location of the other sun temples has confounded

generations of Egyptologists.

Sarah has invited archaeologist Dr Vassil Dobrev to examine

an area he suspects may harbour a hidden temple.

We see the pyramids that we see right outside our tent.

So, if we were to look for missing sun temples, where would be the most logical place to put them?

It is quite legitimate to think the missing temples, solar temples,

could be somewhere here.

Once Sarah puts in the infrared filter,

Vassil begins to see something.

Look at this thing here.

It is very clear. So clear.

It's like a wall, there's something in the middle. A big square.

It's very big. It looks like we've spotted something completely new.

-It looks to be about 40...

-By 40 metres, perfect square.

There is nothing to be seen on the ground,

but it is possible there's something buried beneath the sand.

To understand just how extraordinary these sun temples were,

Vassil is taking me to look at what remains of one of the survivors.

Wow, look at this. So, is this the front door?

Now, we're entering from the east side to the solar temple,

from the Fifth Dynasty, and here is exactly the main entrance.

It is a big corridor, closed, we don't see the sun yet.

And suddenly you come out here in the courtyard and...

You have the sun, shocking you.

Once, this temple was bustling with people making offerings

and priests performing ceremonies.

Look at this, this is the floor. Let's climb up.

This is what they would be walking on?

My goodness.

Were they walking, or were they on their knees?

It is written in the walls just behind there that you have to

be on your knees.

It is exactly like the pilgrimage.

That pilgrimage culminated in offerings for the sun god Ra,

delivered to the central altar.

This is the original from 4,500 years ago.

Here we shall come with the main offering.

And there we shall put it, here.

In the middle, we see this round circle. This is Ra.

The temple dedicated to Ra

was a religious focus and an important source of wealth.

The offerings were redistributed

to the thousands of people who lived and worked here.

I mean, bringing offering is paying taxes.

Well, we are today, we pay all taxes, so that's how it works.

What I've really understood is the fact that the sun is

so central to the entire Egyptian world view.

Right here, it's utterly manifest in such a simple form,

looking at that offering table, you can see it,

the sun right in the middle.

It's the centre of everything, the bringer of life, the creator.

Rising above the altar was the dominant structure of the temple,

the obelisk, focusing attention on the sun's rays.

This was Old Kingdom architecture at its best, simple and striking.

At present, there are no plans to excavate the new site,

but it could be one of the most important finds Sarah has made.

It's incredibly exciting.

There are so many things to find and excavate all over Egypt and this

is just an example of showing how the technology can work,

but also showing that there is a lot of work left to be done, and this is for the future.

The sun temple was an extraordinary example of Old Kingdom architecture,

but Egyptian buildings were changing.

The next building Sarah is hunting

will reveal just how big that change was.

It's from the Middle Kingdom

and is quite literally the stuff of mythology.

It could be the original labyrinth,

a huge maze, pre-dating the Greek versions by centuries.

Hawara is home to a mud-brick pyramid from the 12th Dynasty.

Ramy has brought me

to what appears to be an unlikely place to find a celebrated building.

We're going to be talking about this wonderful...

No, Liz, we'll be talking about something far greater.

This is believed to be the most amazing site of Ancient Egypt.

Nothing is left of it, but it was the most amazing structure ever.

Don't keep looking, it's not there any more. That's the myth, we're looking for it.

They look like molehills!

The site was originally a temple to worship

the Pharaoh Amenhotep III, buried in the pyramid at its side.

The Greek historian Herodotus came here in 450 BC,

1,300 years after it was originally built.

He thought that this was the most impressive building he had ever seen.

"I visited this place and found it to surpass description.

"The pyramids likewise surpass description,

"the labyrinth surpasses the pyramids."

Now, nothing remains, but could this building have been

as remarkable as Herodotus described?

It's time to see what Sarah has discovered.

Here we have the pyramid.

Here we have the overall site of Hawara.

So...

Good grief!

And so, for the first time, using this technology, we can get

a fairly accurate picture of the layout

of the...certainly the enclosure wall, of the temple.

Compared to the size of the pyramid, which is big, it's ginormous.

The satellite image also suggests just how built-up

the surrounding area was.

We can get a really good sense of the overall layout

of the structures that would have been associated.

We can actually see city streets, plans of houses,

structures - you have this very large city.

It really would have been like a rabbit warren of structures

surrounding the temple.

Court after court after court after court.

If you didn't know where you were going, you probably could get lost.

-Hence the labyrinth.

-Hence the labyrinth.

We know how vast the temple once was, but what do we know of its design?

Ramy wants to show me a recent find.

Just two years ago they brought these sandstone slabs

out of the canal.

That's what we found on it.

-My God, that is beautiful!

-Look at that.

That is the name of the king.

Amenhotep III. Let me show you more stuff.

This is another piece of sandstone that came out,

and it has the image of the king.

That is a proper depiction of King Amenhotep III.

The detail is stupendous, isn't it? It's perfect.

-Look at that, still preserved.

-And there is still colour.

Can you see that green? It is so beautiful, look at that.

This building was one of Ancient Egypt's most impressive.

By the time Herodotus came here, over 1,000 years after it was built,

the labyrinth was already a major tourist attraction.

Inside the temple, visitors would have walked through

a maze of corridors and rooms,

serving cults to the dead Pharaoh and to sacred crocodiles.

And it was surrounded by a builders' town, priests' quarters

and administrative buildings.

This lost wonder, one of the great mysteries of the Middle Kingdom,

can be brought back to life.

The labyrinth shows how architecture was growing in complexity.

Egypt was soon to expand and build a great empire,

reaching its height in the New Kingdom.

Sarah next wants to explore a building that epitomises

this wealth and power.

It's a harem, but it's hidden far from the beaten track,

in a district known as the Fayoum.

For many years, this site was a military base

and much of it was destroyed.

Now archaeologists are attempting to preserve it

and Sarah is hoping that satellite archaeology can help.

'I'm exploring this dusty desert edge with Dr Peter Lacovara,

'an expert on royal architecture.

'This is where the palace once stood.'

Here, I'll show you one example of what came from here.

That's Tut's grandmother.

So...

And she lives here. She was a tough customer.

The mouth is downturned. She means business. She's no shrinking violet.

She was very important.

Tutankhamun probably spent his childhood here because this wasn't just any palace.

It was a particular kind of palace called a harem palace,

and it was a palace where the royal women lived.

But also where royal children were raised,

so Tutankhamun did probably spend part of his childhood here.

I've got to say, this place looks so incredibly remote.

Was it still considered remote back in the day when the palaces were here?

Yes, I think one of the reasons they picked

this rather isolated place was

to keep the royal women restrained,

because you wanted to limit access to them.

The king wanted to be sure that their children were his children.

-Really?

-Because they were, of course, the royal heirs.

Sarah wants to show us

what this remote harem palace was really like.

Zoom in a little bit more.

There we go.

The whole area is pock-marked by modern military bunkers.

Nevertheless, the satellite imagery suggests that the wall

that surrounded the palace and some of its internal features

have survived.

But Sarah's image has revealed much more than the palace.

These outlines of potential buildings have been hidden by the desert sands

for 3,500 years.

It's an enclosed workmen's village with little houses and streets

and an entry way here.

Perhaps maybe a little shrine.

They often are in the workmen's villages.

Workmen for the building of what?

For the building of the palace, then also making all the sculpture,

and the furniture, and things like that.

It's fabulous. Unbelievable.

To see it in that detail, this would take you years, decades to excavate,

to get that kind of picture you are getting.

I mean, you wouldn't know that this needed to be protected without this.

This is a tool to help us identify and protect these areas.

The palace was deliberately isolated,

but recent work has shown it wasn't quite as isolated as first thought.

Once, a branch of the Nile flowed close by.

You can almost picture it in your head, not only the palace,

but the settlement, the villas, the docks of the river,

it must have been stunning.

It's a whole new colony.

There wasn't just a harem,

but also a village for the workers who built it.

There were waterfront villas for its administrators.

This was a thriving community, serving the royal wives living

within the palace walls.

As a result of Sarah's work,

the whole of this site should now be preserved.

All of this new information can be added to Sarah's map.

Throughout the district of the Fayoum, as well as the harem,

Sarah has located another 150 potential structures and settlements.

The new map of Ancient Egypt is beginning to take shape.

There's one more area left to explore,

from the Fayoum to the Mediterranean Sea, once known as Lower Egypt.

Sarah wants to find what was Egypt's capital for nearly 400 years.

The lost city of Itjtawy.

It's as important to the Egyptians as Camelot

and King Arthur are to the British.

There's no doubt it was a real place,

but many archaeologists believe it's vanished for ever under

metres of silt on the Nile flood plain.

This will push Sarah's technology to its limits.

Historical sources place the lost capital city close to

the modern settlement of Lisht, some 70 kilometres south of Cairo.

We've been joined by geo-archaeologist Dr Judith Bunbury,

and her colleague Dr Bettina Bader.

Sarah has identified a potential area close to Lisht.

Scholars know that somewhere in this area is the city of Itjtawy.

It's definitely here? There are no doubts about that?

It will be located somewhere in the vicinity of Lisht.

You are pointing at agricultural land, which is a little bit worrying.

Usually when we're looking at sites, we're looking at desert,

which makes it easier to use your technology.

If you are talking about settlements on agricultural land, that's a problem.

This is something scholars have said, we're never going to find it

because it's too deeply buried underneath agricultural fields.

Because the lost city is buried far beneath the surface,

the infrared camera can't help,

so Sarah will have to use a different technique.

Back in Alabama, her team place the satellite image over a 3D map.

Now the landscape looks completely different.

It shows the area is raised, it looks like an ancient river bank,

but the Nile is currently eight kilometres east of here.

This fits in with Judith's work tracking

where the branches of the Nile might have flowed 3,500 years ago.

We can see some interesting field boundaries that make it look like

a river has migrated that way in this area.

We think we've got a former channel of the Nile somewhere down here.

We've got quite a deep channel.

A dip in the topography along this area.

A raised river bank on the edge of a branch of the Nile -

it could be the ideal location for a lost capital city.

It's completely covered over,

so the question is how deeply is the archaeological material buried?

And can we then use coring to get at what lies underneath?

What's coring?

It takes place in sort of a 10cm circular tube.

-Like a big apple corer.

-Yeah.

And you just go down and see what comes out?

A team from Cairo University begins drilling into the mud

to obtain core samples.

In such a large area, though, coring is a bit of a lottery.

A few centimetres in the wrong direction might miss the telltale

piece of pottery or the treasure that's remained

undisturbed for centuries.

After 3,500 years of annual flooding, the evidence will be deeply buried.

Already the corer has dug down five metres.

Hi, Bettina, hi, Judith. How are you doing?

Oh, we are having fun.

Have you found anything of note?

I've got a very nervous Sarah here! She's gone all quiet and silent.

We've found lots of mud and it's absolutely packed with pottery.

It's not so obvious, but you can see there,

but we've picked loads of this out already.

This is six metres down. We must be a fair way back.

A general ballpark figure is a metre per thousand years,

so we'd be thinking we were several thousand years back.

-Look at that!

-Oh, well done. Is it a rim?

LAUGHTER

-It belongs in a museum!

-Did you find a rim?

It's not rim, no, unfortunately not.

It's very satisfying doing this.

-Straight back to kindergarten.

-Exactly.

It will take time to date all of this pottery

and sift through the mud to make sure we don't miss anything.

Will we find more than just the rubbish from an old village?

Is there any evidence of the lost capital city?

'The following day, Sarah and I are back.

'Have they been able to find anything?'

They've certainly dug up a huge amount of pottery.

It's from the right date, it's definitely Middle Kingdom,

but it could still be from a small village.

Is there anything in your boxes that sort of suggests this is

a lost city, rather than any old settlement?

We are starting to find things like carnelian chips,

which straightaway raises the status.

-That is very interesting.

-Why is that interesting?

We call it a semi-precious stone,

but it was much prized for making amulets and decorative inlays.

So this is evidence that this has been worked

and people are using this material to make jewellery?

Exactly.

Then we have got this beautiful piece of agate.

Oh, wow, look at that. This is incredibly unusual.

That's quite rare.

To find this in a core is extraordinary.

And this is the jewel in the crown.

The jewel in the crown.

Never before found in a core in Egypt.

-We have got a piece of amethyst for you.

-Oh, my goodness. Wow.

-That is beautiful.

-That is pretty rare in Egypt altogether.

Even in jewellery, amethyst is quite rare.

That's amazing. We are dealing with incredibly high status.

These are high rollers.

That's incredible. To find something like this in a core.

-So, this is Egyptian bling?

-Yes.

This is an important find.

Only royalty and priests wore semi-precious stones

like this necklace unearthed 100 years ago,

made of both carnelian and amethyst.

These discoveries suggest a major city was once here.

Happy?

I have to admit, I wasn't expecting this.

A core rich with pottery and then to find amethyst and agate

and worked carnelian in the same core. This is very exciting.

-You hit the jackpot.

-I feel like I've hit the jackpot.

For a long time, Egyptologists have said the city is too far buried

and we'll never get to it, and yet, to find something like this,

we're on to something big here.

For Sarah, it's the realisation of her dream.

I guess it was a Howard Carter moment for me.

It felt like the satellite imagery was the torch

and I got to peer inside.

And with the coring work,

you know, we saw wonderful things,

we saw the pottery and the beautiful semi-precious stones

that showed us that this long-lost city

isn't quite as lost as it used to be.

Satellite archaeology has found the likely site of

the lost capital city of Itjtawy.

It lay on the banks of a now extinct branch of the Nile.

The jewellery worn by its royalty

and priests was amongst the finest in the land.

The Camelot of Ancient Egypt may finally have been found.

But Sarah isn't stopping there.

She's now completed the map of Lower Egypt.

From Itjtawy to the Nile delta, she has found 1,250 possible new sites.

It promises to be an archaeological treasure trove,

potentially full of undiscovered towns.

The implications are immense.

It suggests a population far larger than previously imagined.

Our final task remains to see what Dr Hawass has

discovered at the Saqqara pyramid field.

We're heading back to Saqqara,

the location where Sarah thinks there may still be undiscovered

pyramids left to find, and, of course, the big question for us is,

will the clues suggested by her satellite imagery

actually reveal anything?

The last time we were here,

that exploratory excavation work was just about to start

and scheduled to go on for several months.

And then, of course, something quite dramatic happened.

Egypt, that had been in the iron grip of a dictatorship

for decades, rose up.

The Arab Spring came to Cairo.

CHANTING

Of course, attention initially focused on the human cost

of the unfolding drama, but the revolution succeeded in

just a few weeks, and the President resigned from office.

Then, thoughts turned to the antiquities.

There were reports of looting at some of Egypt's most important sites.

In January, all excavations across Egypt, including Saqqara,

stopped, and no-one knows when they will start up again.

All we know is it will take quite some time.

So, it's safe to say we're back here with a sense of trepidation,

because we know the excavations couldn't be completed

but we don't know if they found anything in the short time that they

were digging, or if anywhere on this precious site has been damaged.

As we enter the archaeological site at Saqqara,

we come across something completely unexpected.

Thousands of newly constructed tombs,

a modern graveyard on an industrial scale,

built so recently it hasn't yet shown up on Sarah's images.

It wasn't here before, it's absolutely massive in size.

I'm very shaken right now,

I was in complete shock when we came over the hill.

They've built these hundreds, hundreds of graves.

They're not occupied right now.

You can see them building in the background and you can

also see across this landscape

just how much additional land they are preparing.

This is a major threat to Egypt's past.

This site may now be guarded again, but how extensive is the damage?

Sarah's obtained some recent satellite images of

other important sites across Egypt.

If we zoom in, in particular, to this area at Abusir,

this is November 2009, it looks like an almost completely untouched area.

Well, here comes the tough part for me,

professionally as well as personally.

I had heard all of these rumours about all of the looting

at the sites.

-Whoa!

-Do you see all of the holes?

-Gosh, that's ridiculous!

This is post-revolution, people just steaming in and digging?

There are hundreds of holes.

I can't get over the number of holes. That's ridiculous.

-And you see that up there? You see the bulldozer?

-Oh, my gosh.

Did you ever think you would use the technology for this?

I guess it's an unfortunate advantage in using this imagery,

knowing exactly where the looting pits are.

It allows us to not only quantify the amount of looting but to be able

to pick out exactly what might have been taken

so at least we can alert the authorities.

'I meet up with Professor Salima Ikram.

'She was a witness to the revolution,

'and to the destruction that followed.'

Which site are you most concerned about?

What was worst hit was the area around Cairo, which is Saqqara, Dahshur, Giza and Abusir.

The police vanished. What happened was you get two kind of looters

coming into archaeological sites.

Some people came from the villages because they were never allowed in,

but the other, much more dangerous one,

is done by people who know, and there were groups

of people who are antiquities thieves

or are in touch with collectors who deal with Egyptian antiquities.

The area in Saqqara where satellite archaeology has identified

two potential pyramids hasn't been looted.

But Dr Hawass and his team had barely started to excavate

before the revolution meant their work had to stop.

-Good morning, how are you?

-Good to see you again.

A lot has happened since I last saw you,

-since we were climbing in the pyramids.

-Yes.

When we were last here, you'd started digging the tombs over there

and obviously political events got in the way.

Did you find things that excited you?

-Obviously, we...

-I have.

I'm going to take you now to show you very exciting things

that we discovered.

First, we check out one of the possible pyramids.

In the short time they had to dig, it looks like they found something.

We began to discover this wall, and this wall is

a part of the enclosure wall of the pyramid,

surrounding this pyramid.

You can see it is an archaeological structure from

the satellite images only.

It's too soon to say whose pyramid this might have been,

but this wasn't the only thing Dr Hawass uncovered.

In another area of the site,

he found the curved walls of a temple.

Have you ever seen something...?

No, never in any Old Kingdom or Middle Kingdom pyramid we saw

structure like this.

This could be later one of the most important archaeological sites

in Egypt, because it needs excavation for the coming 50 years.

Elsewhere, the beginnings of a chapel

from the 11th Dynasty were revealed.

-HE GASPS

-Wow!

Look at that!

'And evidence that indicates this site was of major significance

'as far back as the Old Kingdom.'

We make this trench.

Soon, when we start our excavation again in this area,

we will discover a unique tomb.

'Even for an experienced hand like Dr Hawass,

'satellite archaeology has changed everything.'

We have to thank this new technology, the satellite images,

because I was not interested in this site at all.

And I found out only through the photographs that this site is

very important.

It's the vindication of Sarah's work.

What we have right here is just the tantalising beginnings,

the hints of a pyramid complex,

and that's exactly what was spotted from space.

With minimal excavation, if you can find a beautiful limestone block,

then I cannot even begin to imagine

what they are going to find over the next few years.

Beneath the undulating surface of the desert,

where so little appeared to exist,

there could be a huge complex of pyramids from the 13th Dynasty.

We had no idea of the extent of all of this.

We're talking pyramids, tombs that have been found,

the possibility of temples, layer upon layer of history

right here, waiting to be discovered,

and these are the gaps that are going to be filled in

to tell a much more complete story of Egypt,

and that's what's amazing.

Sarah has now completed the monumental task of creating

a new map of Ancient Egypt.

We're witnessing a new era in this fantastic country's history,

and the challenge now is to preserve all of the sites and their treasures

for future generations, and what is very clear is that the potential

of space archaeology for conserving the distant past is enormous,

not only here in Egypt but for ancient civilisations

all over the world.

Sarah may have found thousands of new tombs

and 3,100 possible new settlements.

Some of the new sites appear to be tiny villages,

others important capitals.

It's perhaps the most extensive audit of Ancient Egypt ever achieved.

It'll not only begin to fill the gaps in the map,

but also in our understanding of this remarkable civilisation.

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