0:00:04 > 0:00:09Of all the wonders of Ancient Egypt, Ramesses the Great's capital,
0:00:09 > 0:00:13the City of Piramesse, was one of the most spectacular.
0:00:15 > 0:00:19The pharaoh lavished a fortune on building his capital.
0:00:19 > 0:00:25But long ago, the whole city and all its treasures vanished...
0:00:25 > 0:00:27off the face of the earth.
0:00:29 > 0:00:33The lost city of Piramesse became the stuff of legend.
0:00:33 > 0:00:38Until, 3,000 years later, its rediscovery opened up
0:00:38 > 0:00:42one of the most bizarre puzzles in the history of archaeology.
0:00:44 > 0:00:47Because when Piramesse reappeared,
0:00:47 > 0:00:50it was in the wrong place.
0:00:52 > 0:00:55A place where Ramesses the Great could never have built it.
0:00:57 > 0:01:01A place that didn't even exist at the time Ramesses was alive.
0:01:05 > 0:01:10This is the strange story of how an entire city could vanish,
0:01:10 > 0:01:16only to reappear thousands of years later in the wrong place.
0:01:47 > 0:01:513,000 years ago, Egypt was ruled by a master builder,
0:01:51 > 0:01:58a pharaoh determined to leave a permanent mark on history.
0:01:58 > 0:02:05Ramesses II was born a commoner, but became one of the greatest kings of the Ancient World.
0:02:05 > 0:02:10He ruled Egypt for over 60 years and fathered 100 children.
0:02:11 > 0:02:14Across his empire he built temples and monuments.
0:02:14 > 0:02:18But his masterpiece, the place closest to his heart,
0:02:18 > 0:02:21was the city he named after himself...
0:02:23 > 0:02:25..Piramesse.
0:02:28 > 0:02:33A vast citadel of white and azure, Piramesse was filled with monuments
0:02:33 > 0:02:36designed to inspire awe in all who entered.
0:02:40 > 0:02:44The city was one of Ramesses' most ambitious creations,
0:02:44 > 0:02:49built on the Nile as a gateway between Ancient Egypt and the sea.
0:02:54 > 0:02:57This was a thriving port, a hub of the Ancient World.
0:02:57 > 0:03:03Up to 300,000 people lived here. The very rich and the very poor.
0:03:03 > 0:03:07Nobility, craftsmen and slaves.
0:03:07 > 0:03:10Merchants came from far and wide to trade here.
0:03:18 > 0:03:23At the heart of the city, Ramesses built a massive army garrison,
0:03:23 > 0:03:28housing thousands of soldiers, charioteers and horsemen.
0:03:29 > 0:03:36His garrison would have had stabling for hundreds of war horses and chariots and it was from Piramesse
0:03:36 > 0:03:40that the pharaoh rode out to his greatest battles.
0:03:47 > 0:03:51Ramesses the Great never stopped adding to his capital.
0:03:51 > 0:03:57Year after year, new statues of the pharaoh were erected all through the city.
0:03:57 > 0:04:01A production line of skilled craftsmen and workers was employed
0:04:01 > 0:04:06throughout his reign to add and embellish new statues and monuments.
0:04:07 > 0:04:13As home to the king and the seat of power, Piramesse must have looked as if it would last for ever.
0:04:15 > 0:04:19But, just a couple of hundred years after it was built...
0:04:21 > 0:04:24..the entire city vanished.
0:04:35 > 0:04:40For thousands of years, Piramesse was utterly lost
0:04:40 > 0:04:44and the fate of this great city became the stuff of legend.
0:04:47 > 0:04:51The quest to find it again would baffle experts
0:04:51 > 0:04:56and provide one of the strangest twists in the history of archaeology.
0:05:11 > 0:05:14By the beginning of the 20th century,
0:05:14 > 0:05:18Egyptologists were puzzled.
0:05:18 > 0:05:22Most of the great cities of the pharaohs had already been discovered.
0:05:23 > 0:05:26All except the famous Piramesse.
0:05:30 > 0:05:33It would become almost a holy grail of Egyptologists
0:05:33 > 0:05:36to actually try and find this fabulous city.
0:05:40 > 0:05:46Everyone knew from the ancient texts that Ramesses II didn't build his new capital
0:05:46 > 0:05:53near the great temples at Karnak and Luxor, the traditional seats of power of Ancient Egypt.
0:05:53 > 0:05:59Nor did he build it ancient Memphis, near present day Cairo where the great pyramids lay.
0:06:01 > 0:06:04Instead, he built it where he'd been raised.
0:06:04 > 0:06:12The lush Nile Delta, where the river fans out into branches that flow down to the Mediterranean Sea.
0:06:12 > 0:06:13The texts were clear.
0:06:13 > 0:06:20Ramesses had built his city on the eastern most branch of the Nile in the Delta.
0:06:20 > 0:06:25You might think this would make the search for Piramesse easy.
0:06:25 > 0:06:26But you'd be wrong.
0:06:28 > 0:06:32One of the big problems with finding Piramesse was the problem
0:06:32 > 0:06:36that the eastern branch of the Nile, which we know it lay on, had gone.
0:06:39 > 0:06:44Over time, the branches of the Nile in the Delta often change course,
0:06:44 > 0:06:49so it's impossible to know where the easternmost branch was in Ramesses' time.
0:06:49 > 0:06:55This ancient branch of the Nile has silted up and disappeared long ago.
0:06:55 > 0:06:58Without this knowledge, finding the lost city
0:06:58 > 0:07:01would mean scouring the whole eastern side of the Nile Delta.
0:07:04 > 0:07:07The absence of this single most important clue
0:07:07 > 0:07:11was a crucial obstacle to finding Ramesses' capital.
0:07:11 > 0:07:15Luckily, archaeologists knew exactly what remains to look for,
0:07:15 > 0:07:20because ancient texts had given a detailed description of Piramesse.
0:07:22 > 0:07:27First thing we knew about Piramesse was that it was a military garrison.
0:07:29 > 0:07:36It was the place from which King Ramesses II launched his campaigns into Syria Palestine.
0:07:39 > 0:07:43Therefore, the presence of soldiers, chariotry...
0:07:46 > 0:07:53..would clearly have to be something which any candidate for the site of Piramesse would have to have.
0:07:56 > 0:08:02One would certainly expect in Piramesse to have a lot of statues
0:08:02 > 0:08:05and other monuments of Ramesses II.
0:08:10 > 0:08:13Ramesses had a production line of workers in quarries,
0:08:13 > 0:08:18churning out statues of himself, carved out of the living rock.
0:08:18 > 0:08:25Piramesse was filled with hundreds of images of the pharaoh, some as big as 28 metres high.
0:08:32 > 0:08:38Next, Ramesses II's personal mark, his cartouche,
0:08:38 > 0:08:41would have been carved into the city's great monuments.
0:08:54 > 0:08:59Each cartouche was like a brand, placed on objects as a stamp of ownership.
0:09:07 > 0:09:12Looking at the cartouche here of Ramesses, this little seated figure
0:09:12 > 0:09:18with a hawk's head and a sun disc on its head, is the Sun God Ra.
0:09:22 > 0:09:28We then go down to this sign here which reads "mes"
0:09:28 > 0:09:32and the following two signs read "su".
0:09:32 > 0:09:34So we have "Ra-mes-su".
0:09:37 > 0:09:41This is "mery" or "beloved".
0:09:41 > 0:09:44And then the sign in the top left hand corner of the cartouche
0:09:44 > 0:09:48which is the great God Amun, the King of the Gods.
0:09:50 > 0:09:55So we have the whole thing reading "Ra-mes-su-mery Amun".
0:09:55 > 0:09:58Or, "Ramesses, beloved of Amun".
0:10:06 > 0:10:10Piramesse we know had major temples.
0:10:10 > 0:10:13Particularly dedicated to the god Amun.
0:10:15 > 0:10:20Any site which is claimed to be Piramesse must have evidence for temples.
0:10:25 > 0:10:29And finally, there'd be the home of the pharaoh himself.
0:10:31 > 0:10:35We know very little about the palaces of the pharaohs,
0:10:35 > 0:10:40but you'd expect them to be very large with great open courtyards.
0:10:40 > 0:10:43The floors would have been of painted plaster, the walls as well.
0:10:43 > 0:10:47So that's the sort of thing one would expect to find in Ramesses' palace.
0:10:51 > 0:10:54So once you'd found a site you believed was Piramesse,
0:10:54 > 0:11:00you'd have to find the remains of these key markers to prove you'd really found the legendary city.
0:11:02 > 0:11:07And they'd all have to be conclusively dated to the time of Ramesses II.
0:11:09 > 0:11:14Find all of these and you've found the lost city of Piramesse.
0:11:25 > 0:11:32The story of how Ramesses' lost capital was finally discovered began back in the 1920s,
0:11:32 > 0:11:36when archaeologists were scouring Egypt's desert landscapes,
0:11:36 > 0:11:39looking for the lost treasures of the pharaohs.
0:11:43 > 0:11:47Somewhere out there lay Piramesse, still waiting to be found.
0:11:53 > 0:11:57At the time, few wanted to take on the challenge of searching the vast
0:11:57 > 0:12:02and remote far eastern Delta, in search of Ramesses' lost city.
0:12:02 > 0:12:07But if anyone wanted to find Piramesse, this was where they had to go.
0:12:09 > 0:12:12And one man was prepared to take on that challenge.
0:12:18 > 0:12:21Pierre Montet was one of France's leading Egyptologists.
0:12:21 > 0:12:24He assembled a team to embark on an expedition
0:12:24 > 0:12:28that he hoped would secure his name in the history books.
0:12:30 > 0:12:34He'd heard of a strange ancient site deep in the Nile Delta
0:12:34 > 0:12:39that had gone largely unexplored and he thought it might be significant.
0:12:42 > 0:12:46It was just possible that this site could be a lost treasure.
0:12:53 > 0:12:58Montet's destination was Tanis, in the north-eastern corner of the Nile Delta.
0:13:05 > 0:13:09Tanis was a very remote site at the end of a very long track
0:13:09 > 0:13:13set in a landscape that looks like the surface of the moon.
0:13:24 > 0:13:31When Montet eventually reached the remains, his hopes were high of finding a spectacular lost world.
0:13:58 > 0:14:01What do you think, sir?
0:14:01 > 0:14:04Looks promising.
0:14:11 > 0:14:15Tanis went beyond Montet's wildest dreams.
0:14:23 > 0:14:26Though the ancient Nile had long since gone,
0:14:26 > 0:14:32everything else about the site fitted the clues for Ramesses' lost city, Piramesse.
0:14:47 > 0:14:52Everywhere he looked he found half buried monuments of Ramesses the Great.
0:15:03 > 0:15:05"Ra-mes-su mery Amun."
0:15:05 > 0:15:08"The one born of Ra, beloved of Amun."
0:15:08 > 0:15:13We've been here five minutes, I've already seen his cartouche in what, three separate places?
0:15:13 > 0:15:16Incredible.
0:15:16 > 0:15:21This was one of the vital clues needed to confirm whether this truly was Piramesse.
0:15:27 > 0:15:31Montet's initial trip to Tanis left him in no doubt
0:15:31 > 0:15:35that Ramesses II's lost city lay buried beneath his feet.
0:15:37 > 0:15:40Better send word to Cairo.
0:15:40 > 0:15:42We've got an awful lot of work ahead of us.
0:15:48 > 0:15:55But this site would become famous for reasons far stranger than Montet could ever have imagined.
0:16:04 > 0:16:09The remains at Tanis secured Montet's name in the world of Egyptology.
0:16:09 > 0:16:14Within a few years, he'd established a full-time excavation site
0:16:14 > 0:16:17and, under his leadership, the work became an obsession.
0:16:24 > 0:16:31He published journals and identified the remains of a massive temple dedicated to the god Amun.
0:16:42 > 0:16:47As Montet's work progressed, his fame and reputation spread across the world.
0:16:54 > 0:17:00The more his teams excavated, the more statues and obelisks of Ramesses they unearthed.
0:17:00 > 0:17:05All the evidence went to confirm that this had to be the lost city of Piramesse.
0:17:05 > 0:17:08Another one.
0:17:08 > 0:17:1040 found already.
0:17:19 > 0:17:27In Piramesse we know that Ramesses constantly erected new statues of himself throughout his long reign.
0:17:27 > 0:17:32There was a workforce employed across his city to build and decorate his image.
0:17:34 > 0:17:39Eventually, there were over 100 statues of the pharaoh throughout Piramesse.
0:17:40 > 0:17:46So it was no wonder Montet dug up so many beautifully preserved specimens.
0:17:46 > 0:17:49Many of these statues were colossal.
0:17:49 > 0:17:53Some weighed over 1,000 tons.
0:17:53 > 0:17:56Carved from granite, they were built to last.
0:18:02 > 0:18:09As Montet uncovered more and more monuments, it all confirmed to him that Tanis was Piramesse...
0:18:13 > 0:18:19..allowing him to imagine what this great city must once have looked like.
0:18:19 > 0:18:23Pierre Montet was probably the great French excavator of his generation,
0:18:23 > 0:18:27and was very keen on producing the big picture.
0:18:31 > 0:18:35But there's something not quite right at Tanis.
0:18:36 > 0:18:38It's true.
0:18:38 > 0:18:42There really is something not quite right at Tanis.
0:18:42 > 0:18:46Something about the stones and statues that doesn't add up.
0:18:49 > 0:18:54Something that Montet refused to acknowledge.
0:18:54 > 0:18:57Here you are.
0:18:57 > 0:18:59Pity he's not all with us.
0:19:01 > 0:19:04Well, we've found plenty of others that are.
0:19:04 > 0:19:09Look, over thousands of years there's bound to be some displacement to be expected.
0:19:09 > 0:19:13- But the rest of him will turn up somewhere.- Hm...
0:19:13 > 0:19:16You don't agree?
0:19:16 > 0:19:22Well, some displacement is to be expected, of course. But...
0:19:24 > 0:19:26It's just that the more we excavate,
0:19:26 > 0:19:31the more we find structures with pieces missing or that don't fit together at all.
0:19:31 > 0:19:35It's just seems a little...odd.
0:19:39 > 0:19:45It was not unusual for parts of 3,000-year-old statues to break off and go missing.
0:19:47 > 0:19:52It was just that at Tanis, everything seemed slightly out of place.
0:19:52 > 0:19:58With nothing quite as it should be, it was turning into a very peculiar dig site.
0:20:00 > 0:20:04And then, other strange anomalies began turning up.
0:20:04 > 0:20:10Puzzling finds from other places, suggesting Piramesse might lie elsewhere.
0:20:10 > 0:20:12Show me.
0:20:12 > 0:20:16He says it was dug up about 30 kilometres from here.
0:20:18 > 0:20:20He claims it's from Piramesse.
0:20:26 > 0:20:31Well, the cartouche is certainly that of Ramesses II,
0:20:31 > 0:20:38but, er, can anyone seriously compare a wall tile with what we have here?
0:20:38 > 0:20:41If it's proof of Piramesse he's after, he's standing in it.
0:20:43 > 0:20:46It's written in almost every stone around us.
0:20:46 > 0:20:52We have a temple of Amun the size of Karnak, more obelisks than any other site in Egypt.
0:20:52 > 0:20:55We've only just scratched the surface.
0:20:55 > 0:20:57THEY LAUGH
0:20:57 > 0:21:00Now, come on, back to work. That's enough. Back to work.
0:21:11 > 0:21:21Montet spent the rest of his career convinced he had found at Tanis the great lost capital of Piramesse.
0:21:21 > 0:21:23And the truth is, he had.
0:21:25 > 0:21:31These ARE the ancient monuments and buildings of Ramesses' magnificent city.
0:21:31 > 0:21:34But there was a bizarre twist to his discovery.
0:21:38 > 0:21:42Because this is NOT where Ramesses built them.
0:21:43 > 0:21:48Montet had unwittingly stumbled upon a baffling mystery,
0:21:48 > 0:21:52one that would take science another 60 years to unravel.
0:22:10 > 0:22:14Pierre Montet died in 1966.
0:22:14 > 0:22:18That same year, an Austrian archaeologist, Manfred Bietak,
0:22:18 > 0:22:25set off on a journey of investigation that would turn Montet's discoveries on their head.
0:22:30 > 0:22:37In doing so, he would finally solve the strange puzzle surrounding Ramesses the Great's vanished city.
0:22:44 > 0:22:51What Bietak discovered is so strange that it appears to defy the laws of logic.
0:22:52 > 0:22:56These are the monuments of Piramesse.
0:22:56 > 0:23:00However, they are found in the wrong place.
0:23:05 > 0:23:09What's more, he has absolute proof of it.
0:23:35 > 0:23:41Manfred Bietak was interested in the role played by the Nile in ancient times,
0:23:41 > 0:23:45when he stumbled upon the strange truth about Piramesse.
0:23:46 > 0:23:50He was trying to trace the lost riverbeds and waterways of the Nile
0:23:50 > 0:23:55in order to map out what the Delta would have looked like at the time of the pharaohs.
0:23:59 > 0:24:03Today there are only two branches of the Nile in the Delta.
0:24:03 > 0:24:10But we know that in the past the river branches have switched course many times.
0:24:10 > 0:24:14Through history, the Nile would have had different branches all across
0:24:14 > 0:24:18the Delta - branches that have long ago dried up and disappeared.
0:24:22 > 0:24:28The reason for this is that each branch of the Nile in the Delta carries so much silt from upstream
0:24:28 > 0:24:34that its riverbed keeps building up until the water can no longer flow through it.
0:24:34 > 0:24:40At that moment, the river branch will switch course, finding a new route down to the sea
0:24:40 > 0:24:45and carving out a new path, sometimes far away from the old riverbed.
0:24:49 > 0:24:56The only way to trace these ancient waterways is to study a contour map.
0:24:56 > 0:25:01All lost rivers leave tell-tale signs in the contour lines on maps,
0:25:01 > 0:25:06signs that an expert can trace to find the ancient path of the old dried-up river.
0:25:09 > 0:25:15By studying contour lines, Bietak finally came up with a single map
0:25:15 > 0:25:21charting every ancient silted up branch and waterway of the Nile through the eastern Delta.
0:25:21 > 0:25:29There were many lost channels and each had been active at some time in the past 5,000 years.
0:25:29 > 0:25:32On this reconstruction map,
0:25:32 > 0:25:37with the help of the study of the contours of the Delta landscape,
0:25:37 > 0:25:43I was able to reconstruct the variety of Nile branches in antiquity.
0:25:46 > 0:25:53This one map held the truth about Piramesse, because it would reveal where the city should lie.
0:25:53 > 0:25:58The ancient texts said it lay on the Delta's easternmost branch.
0:25:59 > 0:26:03So all Bietak had to do was to work out which was
0:26:03 > 0:26:08the easternmost branch of the Nile at the time of Ramesses the Great.
0:26:08 > 0:26:13To do that, he had to date all the ancient branches.
0:26:13 > 0:26:15And he did that with pottery.
0:26:25 > 0:26:28In Egypt, cities and settlements were built
0:26:28 > 0:26:35along active branches of the Nile, which supplied them with drinking water, sanitation and transport.
0:26:35 > 0:26:39Like all ancient settlements, Piramesse's busy streets and markets
0:26:39 > 0:26:43would have left behind tons of rubbish - above all, pottery.
0:26:45 > 0:26:49That pottery can be dated and so tell you the date of the city itself.
0:26:56 > 0:26:58By dating the pottery of all the settlements
0:26:58 > 0:27:02along the ancient lost branches of the Nile, that will tell you
0:27:02 > 0:27:10when each settlement was inhabited and therefore when that particular branch of the Nile was active.
0:27:19 > 0:27:24Every kind of pottery or ceramic has a unique signature that dates it in time.
0:27:24 > 0:27:29The type of clay, the way it was made, the techniques of firing
0:27:29 > 0:27:34and glazing can all be pinpointed to specific periods.
0:27:34 > 0:27:39Our days it is possible to date within
0:27:39 > 0:27:45approximately 30-50 years accurately by ceramic alone.
0:27:46 > 0:27:51So, by combining his map of ancient waterways with his knowledge of dating pottery,
0:27:51 > 0:27:58Bietak was able to pinpoint where and when the Nile flowed through the Delta at each moment in history.
0:28:00 > 0:28:04What's more, the amounts of pottery along the old riverbeds
0:28:04 > 0:28:07would tell him where the biggest ancient settlements were.
0:28:10 > 0:28:16Just as Montet would have predicted, Bietak found that one of these branches of the Nile,
0:28:16 > 0:28:20known as the Tanitic branch, ran directly past Tanis,
0:28:20 > 0:28:23where Montet had found Piramesse.
0:28:25 > 0:28:29The problem came when Bietak dated the settlements along this branch.
0:28:37 > 0:28:39Here is Tanis,
0:28:40 > 0:28:44and this is the course of the Tanitic branch of the Nile,
0:28:44 > 0:28:48with numerous sites along its banks,
0:28:48 > 0:28:53but no site dates from the time of Ramesses II.
0:28:53 > 0:28:56Which means this branch of the Nile
0:28:56 > 0:29:00didn't even exist at the time of Ramesses the Great.
0:29:00 > 0:29:04This eliminates the Tanitic branch
0:29:04 > 0:29:07of being active in the time of Ramesses II.
0:29:07 > 0:29:13Also it rules out that Tanis had been Piramesse.
0:29:13 > 0:29:18What Bietak had discovered was extraordinary.
0:29:18 > 0:29:23There was no pottery at Tanis from the time of Ramesses the Great.
0:29:23 > 0:29:28All of it dates from at least 200 years after his death.
0:29:35 > 0:29:39This meant that despite all of Pierre Montet's genuine finds...
0:29:41 > 0:29:46..the Great Pharaoh couldn't possibly have built his capital city here.
0:29:50 > 0:29:53Tanis contained lots of ancient pottery,
0:29:53 > 0:29:58and Montet assumed that, like the statues and obelisks at the site,
0:29:58 > 0:30:01it also came from the time of Ramesses II.
0:30:03 > 0:30:06So he had never painstakingly dated it all.
0:30:07 > 0:30:13If he had, he would have discovered the bizarre truth about Tanis -
0:30:15 > 0:30:20that there was no city here at the time of Ramesses the Great.
0:30:22 > 0:30:29Not a single pottery shard has been collected from the time of Ramesses II or before,
0:30:29 > 0:30:34but everything is post Ramesses II and this is a very important point.
0:30:35 > 0:30:38And yet, the monuments, statues and buildings here are,
0:30:38 > 0:30:44without doubt, those of Piramesse, built by Ramesses the Great.
0:30:46 > 0:30:48It was a bizarre paradox.
0:30:48 > 0:30:54How can a magnificent city turn up in a place where it could never have been built?
0:30:54 > 0:30:57And where on earth should it have been in the first place?
0:31:09 > 0:31:11Bietak was intrigued.
0:31:11 > 0:31:15He felt compelled to solve the puzzle left by Montet
0:31:15 > 0:31:18and find the real site of Piramesse.
0:31:18 > 0:31:23And, thanks to his map, he had the means of finding it.
0:31:23 > 0:31:27By using pottery to date the lost eastern channels of the Nile,
0:31:27 > 0:31:30one immediately stood out -
0:31:30 > 0:31:32the ancient Pelusiac branch,
0:31:32 > 0:31:37stretching over 180 kilometres in length.
0:31:37 > 0:31:39Along the course of this ancient branch,
0:31:39 > 0:31:44pottery had been discovered dating from the time of Ramesses the Great,
0:31:44 > 0:31:51which meant that it had to be the active, most eastern branch of the Nile at the time of Ramesses.
0:31:52 > 0:31:58So Piramesse must lie somewhere along this lost Pelusiac branch.
0:32:00 > 0:32:06At this point, Bietak teamed up with German archaeologist Edgar Pusch to find the city.
0:32:06 > 0:32:09Here, we have Tanis,
0:32:09 > 0:32:13which we know is not Piramesse.
0:32:13 > 0:32:15And then over here,
0:32:15 > 0:32:18we have the Pelusiac Nile branch,
0:32:18 > 0:32:22running something like this.
0:32:25 > 0:32:33And along it we do have evidence of settlement remains of Ramesses II and his followers -
0:32:33 > 0:32:37but here, at Qantir,
0:32:37 > 0:32:45we have an incredible concentration of settlement remains of Ramesses II.
0:32:48 > 0:32:53There had been clues suggesting Qantir was the site of Piramesse,
0:32:53 > 0:32:55going back to the time of Montet.
0:32:55 > 0:32:59Yeah, he says it was dug up about 30 kilometres from here.
0:32:59 > 0:33:01He claims it's from Piramesse.
0:33:06 > 0:33:08This is Qantir -
0:33:08 > 0:33:1130 kilometres south of Tanis.
0:33:13 > 0:33:18Could this be the site of the lost city of Piramesse?
0:33:21 > 0:33:25When Pusch first arrived, there was nothing to see at Qantir.
0:33:28 > 0:33:32No statues, no obelisks, no temples -
0:33:32 > 0:33:38nothing to suggest this could once have been home to the ancient world's great lost capital.
0:33:40 > 0:33:45When I came first to this area and to the site, I was shocked.
0:33:45 > 0:33:47Nothing was to be seen at the surface,
0:33:47 > 0:33:52no clue where to dig and where to excavate.
0:33:52 > 0:33:57The region around Qantir is one of the most fertile in Egypt
0:33:57 > 0:33:59and has been so intensively cultivated,
0:33:59 > 0:34:04all evidence of ancient worlds on the surface has been obliterated.
0:34:04 > 0:34:08It's the archaeological equivalent of a scorched earth.
0:34:11 > 0:34:19When we started to work in this area, every colleague told us, "You won't find a thing.
0:34:19 > 0:34:21"Everything is destroyed, nothing is there."
0:34:21 > 0:34:26And yet, somewhere here, amongst these fields,
0:34:26 > 0:34:31so Pusch and Bietak proposed, lurked the Holy Grail of Egyptology -
0:34:35 > 0:34:40Ramesses II's spectacular lost city of Piramesse.
0:34:49 > 0:34:51And so they began to excavate.
0:34:54 > 0:34:58They were after any clue, however small, that might prove them right.
0:35:01 > 0:35:07Miraculously, just three days into the dig and only ten centimetres below the surface,
0:35:07 > 0:35:11Pusch's team found some tantalising evidence.
0:35:29 > 0:35:35These odd carved objects would ultimately turn out to be the first crucial piece of evidence
0:35:35 > 0:35:42suggesting that Qantir, this unprepossessing place, might just be everything they were hoping for.
0:35:42 > 0:35:47But, at the time, no-one had a clue what they were.
0:35:47 > 0:35:51We didn't have the slightest idea of what they could be,
0:35:51 > 0:35:55so they were called something like "broken fragment of a vase",
0:35:55 > 0:36:02"broken fragment of a dagger handle" or something like this.
0:36:03 > 0:36:08They kept digging and finding more and more of these mysterious objects.
0:36:08 > 0:36:11And then they found something rather wonderful.
0:36:18 > 0:36:24Now, this is a real surprising find - a complete set of horse bits.
0:36:24 > 0:36:30Made from bronze, locally produced - the only one ever found in Egypt.
0:36:30 > 0:36:34It is in such a condition that it looks like it was made yesterday.
0:36:41 > 0:36:46When they unearthed the floor of the buildings within which the objects had been found,
0:36:46 > 0:36:49they discovered another surprise.
0:36:57 > 0:37:05We found a special set of stones consisting of a tethering stone up front here,
0:37:05 > 0:37:09then an opening in the ground surrounded by limestone.
0:37:09 > 0:37:15Now, the size of all this is in such a way that a horse of that time, a male horse,
0:37:15 > 0:37:18would be tethered to those two stones,
0:37:18 > 0:37:23that it would be urinating directly into these openings,
0:37:23 > 0:37:29giving us the possibility to say that we do have horse toilets.
0:37:29 > 0:37:34And a little archaeological experiment shows this and proves this.
0:37:34 > 0:37:39We took mules, which have about the same size as the horses in ancient times,
0:37:39 > 0:37:47and one of these mules did us the favour of urinating directly into the openings.
0:37:50 > 0:37:52Six rows of ten rooms each
0:37:52 > 0:37:56and in each room several positions to tether horses.
0:37:56 > 0:38:02It meant the complex must once have been home to at least 460 horses.
0:38:08 > 0:38:13Stabling on such a large scale could only mean some kind of military complex.
0:38:16 > 0:38:20Horses were the mainstay of a pharaoh's army
0:38:20 > 0:38:23and the site certainly dated to the time of Ramesses the Great.
0:38:27 > 0:38:30But stables were not unique to Piramesse.
0:38:36 > 0:38:41It was the continued discovery of hundreds more of the mystery objects,
0:38:41 > 0:38:47some of them completely intact, that finally proved the most significant.
0:38:47 > 0:38:52Only by chance we found out what these objects were.
0:38:52 > 0:38:54I was going through the Cairo Museum
0:38:54 > 0:38:59and I suddenly saw that there are knobs like this
0:38:59 > 0:39:06immediately connected with the yoke of the state chariots of Tutankhamen.
0:39:13 > 0:39:17Thousands of these stone knobs would have held together
0:39:17 > 0:39:20the harnesses of Ramesses the Great's many war chariots.
0:39:26 > 0:39:32When combined with the number of horses stabled here, this could only amount to one thing.
0:39:37 > 0:39:41As ancient texts spoke of Piramesse as having a large chariot garrison,
0:39:41 > 0:39:44it was exactly the size of complex you'd expect to find
0:39:44 > 0:39:49at the lost site of Ramesses II's capital city.
0:40:02 > 0:40:08But it had taken Pusch and Bietak years of excavation just to unearth the garrison.
0:40:08 > 0:40:11At this rate of digging, it would take hundreds of years
0:40:11 > 0:40:15to prove if they had truly found the site of Piramesse.
0:40:19 > 0:40:24And so they turned instead to a new technology that, without lifting a stone,
0:40:24 > 0:40:29would conclusively unlock the secrets of what lay beneath the fields of Qantir.
0:40:33 > 0:40:36But when it arrived, the electromagnetic scanner
0:40:36 > 0:40:40was hardly the piece of cutting edge technology they'd expected.
0:40:42 > 0:40:47Nobody believed ever that it would work.
0:40:47 > 0:40:54Just the same, we said, "OK, you took the trouble of coming here, now let's set up the device."
0:41:00 > 0:41:06The walls and foundations of ancient settlements all leave tell-tale traces in the ground.
0:41:08 > 0:41:14The electromagnetic scanner can penetrate the ground to read those traces.
0:41:16 > 0:41:20If the foundations of Piramesse were beneath these fields,
0:41:20 > 0:41:25the scanner would reveal traces of the roads, walls and buildings
0:41:25 > 0:41:27hidden there without the need to dig.
0:41:33 > 0:41:39At first, no-one thought for a moment that anything of any interest would be revealed in the scans.
0:41:42 > 0:41:43But they were wrong.
0:41:46 > 0:41:49There it was.
0:41:49 > 0:41:52Absolutely incredible. None of us believed it.
0:41:52 > 0:41:55There was the layout of a building.
0:41:58 > 0:42:02We were literally crying and I can...
0:42:02 > 0:42:06I must admit it, I'm still close to crying remembering these things.
0:42:06 > 0:42:10Laid out before him were the outlines of a building
0:42:10 > 0:42:14hidden just a few centimetres beneath the ground.
0:42:14 > 0:42:17We could see the wall is going like this.
0:42:17 > 0:42:21And there it is destroyed and so and so and so.
0:42:21 > 0:42:27We said, "OK, immediately back out to the field. Continue the magnetic measurements, this is it.
0:42:27 > 0:42:30"It really works."
0:42:41 > 0:42:48Since that first day, they have scanned an area of two square kilometres around Qantir,
0:42:48 > 0:42:51the largest study of its kind in the world.
0:42:57 > 0:43:04Exposed, for the first time in thousands of years, beneath the fields of Qantir...
0:43:06 > 0:43:12..are the foundations of the vast ancient city of Piramesse.
0:43:26 > 0:43:31The most wonderful part of all this huge area
0:43:31 > 0:43:37is a building in the middle of our scan, one huge structure,
0:43:37 > 0:43:42covering more than 41,000 square metres,
0:43:42 > 0:43:49the centre of which is a building which shows a sequence of rooms,
0:43:49 > 0:43:55all of them with symmetrically arranged columns.
0:43:55 > 0:44:00The function of this building is most probably a temple.
0:44:03 > 0:44:07Temples were central to life in Ancient Egypt.
0:44:07 > 0:44:10Their huge columned halls and cavernous interiors
0:44:10 > 0:44:16deliberately designed to inspire awe as much as to intimidate.
0:44:26 > 0:44:30This is the western part of our scan.
0:44:30 > 0:44:36A villa area with long stretching, straight running streets
0:44:36 > 0:44:40branching off at right angles.
0:44:40 > 0:44:46The estates themselves surrounded by white lines, which are the surrounding walls.
0:44:47 > 0:44:54The southern edge of this settlement and villa area is denoted by a black line
0:44:54 > 0:44:59and giving the shoreline of the Pelusiac Nile branch.
0:44:59 > 0:45:02Laid out along avenues in a distinctive grid,
0:45:02 > 0:45:05these were the homes of the wealthy.
0:45:05 > 0:45:10It's in this area of the site that large inscribed door lintels
0:45:10 > 0:45:14have been found bearing the names of Egyptian generals and royalty
0:45:14 > 0:45:17and looking out across the banks of the Nile.
0:45:21 > 0:45:28The eastern part of our scan shows a much denser building area,
0:45:28 > 0:45:32also divided by streets,
0:45:32 > 0:45:37but they are neither straight nor on a clear grid.
0:45:37 > 0:45:41This area of very small houses
0:45:41 > 0:45:48might be an area where not only socially lower-ranking people were once living,
0:45:48 > 0:45:53but also workshops might have been in operation.
0:45:55 > 0:46:00This other sizeable neighbourhood with its haphazard, tightly-packed layout
0:46:00 > 0:46:05has all the characteristics of a more workaday part of the city, both residential and trade.
0:46:08 > 0:46:14In contrast to the villa district, people here lived cheek by jowl along packed, twisting streets.
0:46:14 > 0:46:22So you have a clear distinction between the west and the east.
0:46:24 > 0:46:30With the layout and style of architecture forming a strong sense of the scale of Piramesse,
0:46:30 > 0:46:33one structure, perhaps the most breathtaking of all,
0:46:33 > 0:46:37is out of the reach of even the most high-tech scanning equipment.
0:46:43 > 0:46:48The modern day town of Qantir is a jumbled collection of ramshackle buildings,
0:46:48 > 0:46:50typical of a delta town today.
0:46:52 > 0:46:55Judging by its central position on the scan,
0:46:55 > 0:47:01it is almost certainly sitting slap-bang on the top of Ramesses II's palace.
0:47:05 > 0:47:07According to accounts of the time,
0:47:07 > 0:47:10Ramesses the Great's palace was vast,
0:47:10 > 0:47:16the heart of the city, adorned with monuments celebrating his rule and longevity.
0:47:16 > 0:47:19The outside walls would have dazzled,
0:47:19 > 0:47:23painted white and decorated with glazed tiles.
0:47:27 > 0:47:30As incredible as the scan of Piramesse is,
0:47:30 > 0:47:35all it provides us with is the footprint of the city's once impressive architecture.
0:47:40 > 0:47:43But we can get a glimpse of what it must once have looked like
0:47:43 > 0:47:47from other sites where Ramesses the Great's influence was felt.
0:47:49 > 0:47:54The vast majority of the temples of Ramesses II's time are now lost.
0:47:54 > 0:48:00However, when one looks at the great pylon he erected at Luxor temple...
0:48:08 > 0:48:11..when you look at his constructions at Karnak...
0:48:20 > 0:48:24..and also the slightly later temple at Medinet Habu...
0:48:32 > 0:48:35..one gets a flavour of what the buildings that once
0:48:35 > 0:48:39dominated the city of Piramesse may have looked like.
0:48:42 > 0:48:46With such a large expanse of the city laid bare,
0:48:46 > 0:48:49the scan had one more secret to reveal.
0:48:50 > 0:48:54These bare areas showed where lakes, canals and waterways
0:48:54 > 0:48:58ran through Piramesse, fed by the Nile.
0:49:00 > 0:49:03This final piece of the jigsaw completed the picture
0:49:03 > 0:49:07and showed just how unique Piramesse truly was.
0:49:09 > 0:49:12It contained huge temples...
0:49:14 > 0:49:17..palatial riverside villas of the wealthy...
0:49:19 > 0:49:24..winding cramped streets of less well-heeled neighbourhoods
0:49:24 > 0:49:28and the site of the palace of the pharaoh himself.
0:49:36 > 0:49:41But it was Ramesses the Great's choice of location within the Nile Delta
0:49:41 > 0:49:43that made the city so unique.
0:49:48 > 0:49:51With canals fed by the waters of the Nile,
0:49:51 > 0:49:53Piramesse was quite simply...
0:49:55 > 0:49:57..the Venice of its day.
0:50:04 > 0:50:09But if Bietak and Pusch had indeed found Piramesse at Qantir,
0:50:09 > 0:50:12what was it that Montet had discovered at Tanis?
0:50:15 > 0:50:19Once you've recognised that Piramesse is indeed at Qantir,
0:50:19 > 0:50:22you start wondering, "Well, what on earth is Tanis then?"
0:50:24 > 0:50:31There are buildings there which really any detached observer know must come from Piramesse.
0:50:31 > 0:50:33So what are they doing there?
0:50:33 > 0:50:35Is it a hoax?
0:50:35 > 0:50:37Have aliens dropped them there?
0:50:39 > 0:50:46Piramesse had been found, but it seemed to be in two places at once.
0:50:46 > 0:50:52The buildings were in Tanis, but the foundations are beneath Qantir.
0:50:52 > 0:50:54How could this have happened?
0:50:57 > 0:50:59The answer is intriguing.
0:51:07 > 0:51:13Ramesses the Great had chosen to locate his capital on the ancient Pelusiac branch of the Nile
0:51:13 > 0:51:16and the river was its lifeblood.
0:51:19 > 0:51:25But the city was also at the mercy of the river and one day it would spell doom to Piramesse.
0:51:29 > 0:51:34That moment came around 150 years after the death of Ramesses II.
0:51:40 > 0:51:44The Pelusiac branch of the Nile silted up.
0:51:46 > 0:51:51It dwindled away until the river finally switched course altogether,
0:51:51 > 0:51:55leaving the Venice of its day without water.
0:52:01 > 0:52:07What happened was that the Pelusiac branch of the Nile,
0:52:07 > 0:52:13which passed Piramesse here, was blocked in its lower reaches.
0:52:15 > 0:52:22The Pelusiac branch of the Nile lost its waters to the Tanitic branch of the Nile,
0:52:22 > 0:52:28which became the main artery of the Nile traffic.
0:52:28 > 0:52:31For Piramesse, this spelt disaster.
0:52:34 > 0:52:40Now isolated from the world, it looked as though this magnificent city would have to be abandoned.
0:52:44 > 0:52:48But instead, after the death of Ramesses the Great,
0:52:48 > 0:52:51his successors decided to do something extraordinary.
0:53:00 > 0:53:05The clue to what the ancient Egyptians did to Piramesse 3,000 years ago
0:53:05 > 0:53:10lies hidden in the middle of an unassuming field in modern day Qantir.
0:53:25 > 0:53:29Here are the feet of one of the many colossal statutes
0:53:29 > 0:53:33that Ramesses the Great built at Piramesse.
0:53:33 > 0:53:38The rest of the statue is somewhere else.
0:53:38 > 0:53:40Pity he's not all with us.
0:53:40 > 0:53:44There's bound to be some displacement to be expected,
0:53:44 > 0:53:47but the rest of him will turn up somewhere.
0:53:47 > 0:53:52The feet of some statues at Tanis had been left behind at Qantir
0:53:52 > 0:53:55when the ancient Egyptians did something incredible.
0:53:58 > 0:54:01They moved their city.
0:54:04 > 0:54:09And they moved it to where the new branch of the Nile now flowed.
0:54:12 > 0:54:16Piramesse was abandoned
0:54:16 > 0:54:21and a new town, new residence
0:54:21 > 0:54:28was built up along the Tanitic branch of the Nile. This was Tanis.
0:54:37 > 0:54:43It was at last possible to solve the mystery at the heart of the story of Piramesse -
0:54:43 > 0:54:47how it ended up being in two places at once.
0:54:49 > 0:54:52About 150 years after Ramesses' death,
0:54:52 > 0:54:55when the river around Piramesse silted up,
0:54:55 > 0:54:58the city ceased to function.
0:54:58 > 0:55:01Unwilling to abandon this splendid place,
0:55:01 > 0:55:07the ancient Egyptians decided to move the entire city to where the Nile had moved to.
0:55:15 > 0:55:20Slowly Piramesse was disassembled block by block, statue by statue.
0:55:23 > 0:55:25It was a monumental feat,
0:55:25 > 0:55:30undertaken to keep alive one of the greatest cities ever created.
0:55:37 > 0:55:41The largest statues weighed up to 1,000 tons.
0:55:49 > 0:55:53Moving any single piece would have taken a workforce of hundreds,
0:55:53 > 0:55:58using sleds to transport the pieces through the city.
0:56:03 > 0:56:05Monuments, like statues and obelisks,
0:56:05 > 0:56:08would have been taken down and transported whole.
0:56:13 > 0:56:17Temples and other buildings, a single piece at a time.
0:56:37 > 0:56:40With no surviving accounts of the actual event,
0:56:40 > 0:56:44we can only wonder at how long such a move would have taken...
0:56:46 > 0:56:49..and how many lives may have been lost in the effort.
0:56:56 > 0:57:00But, like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle,
0:57:00 > 0:57:04the monuments of Ramesses II's great city were reassembled
0:57:04 > 0:57:07on the banks of the new easternmost branch of the Nile.
0:57:15 > 0:57:17Piramesse dies
0:57:17 > 0:57:21and the new north-eastern capital of Egypt, Tanis,
0:57:21 > 0:57:26rises using the stones taken from Piramesse.
0:57:33 > 0:57:38Built with the very statues, temples and obelisks of Piramesse,
0:57:41 > 0:57:46Tanis became the seat of power and home to a new dynasty of pharaohs.
0:57:48 > 0:57:53Until, like all great cities and civilisations,
0:57:53 > 0:57:57Tanis too one day crumbled and faded into history.
0:57:59 > 0:58:03When it was discovered 3,000 years later,
0:58:03 > 0:58:07it started a mystery that archaeologists have only just solved.
0:58:23 > 0:58:26Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd 2006
0:58:26 > 0:58:29E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk