Ancient Egypt 3: The Bent Pyramid of Dahshur - Cairo, Egypt

Well, hello. I am Rami Romani, your iFIC guide. And we are in my hometown, Cairo, Egypt. In the next 30 minutes, I'll be taking you to one of my favorite sites in Egypt, Dahshur. And it's one of my favorite sites because it is off the beaten path. It has pyramids like many other sites in Egypt, but very few tourists come here. Even though it's one of the most important sites in ancient Egypt. By the end of the 30 minutes, I'll show you why ancient Egypt's biggest mistake was the reason for its biggest success. All right, let's go. So, right next to me is the Red Pyramid. And the Red Pyramid belongs to a king named Sinephro. And Sinephro is the father of Khufu. Khufu is the owner of the most famous Great Pyramid of Giza. This guy was his dad. And that Red Pyramid was actually the first perfect pyramid ever. And he doesn't get too much credit for it. So, before the Great Pyramid of Giza, this one existed. This one was the result of a lot of trial and error and a lot of work. And it resulted in that Red Pyramid. And it became the perfect pyramid. And that's how the Great Pyramid existed. They engineered the whole thing. Put all the architecture together because of his father, Sinephro. And nowadays, no one gives him credit. Sinephro didn't just do the Red Pyramid like that. He didn't come up with a Red Pyramid idea. And he built the perfect pyramid straight away. There was a problem. Right when Sinephro wanted to build his own pyramid, he decided to make a pyramid that is as long as possibly can be. He wanted it to be so high it can touch the sky. It could touch the heaven. So he decided to start a pyramid with an angle that is so wide. So it could go all the way up. And then 50% through his structure, cracks started showing. And he realized that his pyramid was not going to be durable enough. So he decided to change the angle. And all of a sudden, he switched the angle of the pyramid and closed it down. And that's why it looks like the most awkward pyramid ever. It's right there, the Bent Pyramid. When they did that, the pyramid ends up with a wide angle. And then there's cracks. It goes to a tighter angle, and it ends up looking like that. We call it the Ancient Egypt's Extreme Oops. But that extreme oops moment, that big mistake, was the reason why we have the pyramids we have today. And that Bent Pyramid over there is actually the first smooth pyramid ever. Before that, there were different structures that looked like pyramids, but none of them were smooth on the outside. And Senefero was the only king who built himself two pyramids. Two pyramids so he could choose his favorite one. And guess where we found his body? Nowhere. So after building himself two pyramids, and just in case you don't know, the pyramids are there as tombs. The king would build a pyramid for himself so he can have it as his house of eternity, which literally is the meaning of the word tomb in Ancient Egypt. The house of eternity. He would build it for himself, and he would put his mummy in it. And his mummy is a part of that plan. The eternal plan that will live forever and survive. And that pyramid becomes his house. Senefero built himself two of these because he didn't like his first one too much. And then we never found his body. Also, we never found a lot of king's bodies in those pyramids. That's why there's a lot of mysteries around them. But between those two pyramids, that's how the whole revolution of pyramids actually started. Now, this area here, the shore, wasn't just for Senefero and his family, the third dynasty, 4,600 years ago, which started Ancient Egypt as we know it. If you look further ahead, over there, you will see a structure that looks messy. It is actually a collapsed pyramid. All the way right there. That's a collapsed pyramid that dates back to a thousand years after the Bent Pyramid was built and after the Red Pyramid was built. It was built during the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. And that pyramid was built with mud brick, which collapsed, obviously, fell apart. They didn't have all the prosperity and economics to actually build a massive pyramid that would survive forever like those. So it fell apart. That made the shore a site where there are very few tourists. So it became very virgin. Yet it has multiple pyramids, multiple tombs, hence multiple treasure. So if you look all around me, there's desert and nothing but desert. It's desert to the horizon. You can't see anything else. Underneath this desert is more Ancient Egyptian treasure than you can imagine. Based on multiple studies, 90%, 90% of Ancient Egypt is under the sand. This is the sand. Any day there could be an excavation and they can find something else under this massive sand that would solve another mystery. But not only excavators and scientists end up finding things under the sand. I'll tell you a story. About six or seven years ago, I was here in the shore. And at the time, the Egyptian revolution in 2011 had already happened. And Dahshur was an empty place. Very few tourists came. Very few policemen would care about this place. And then I was here looking around the area, driving my four-wheel drive vehicle in the desert. And all of a sudden, I see movement in the horizon, in the desert. And I'm like, who's that? There's no one here. I know no one is here right now. There's no tourists, no one. We get closer with the car. And that movement of those people, they hear us. And they run up from the hole they've dug. Seven or eight men in traditional dress. It's called galabeya. They come up from the hole they were in with big... They had their big pots of what they intended to fill something with. And they ran straight out. We tried to chase them and miss them. But they were the modern age tomb raiders. It's a very common... Unfortunately, of course. Very common exercise in all countries that have ancient civilizations. And it's punished with the highest, highest punishment. One year ago, the new punishment for tomb raiding in Egypt now is death by hanging. Sorry to make this dark. Now, while you enjoy this beautiful view of the desert, I'm gonna take a sip of water. You should take a sip too. Now, the pyramid wasn't everything. The pyramid is just a part of a bigger complex. The pyramid is the end of that complex. Every pyramid has its own funerary temple and valley temple and a causeway. So the idea is that the dead king would arrive on his boat on the Nile, land at the valley temple. And that dead king would be dragged all the way on a causeway that extends, reaches all the way to the bottom of the pyramid. And at the bottom of the pyramid, there's a funerary temple. Well, they do the final funerary processions on that body. And then they take him inside the pyramid. Now, if you look around, you can barely see any of that. But right over there, there are heaps of little excavated sand piles. That is the newly excavated funerary temple of this pyramid. They just found it recently. So if you come back with me, let's say, what, two years from now, there might be a whole temple right here that we're actually walking on top right now. The timeline of Dahshur matters a lot. Ancient Egypt started with the pyramid builders. Ancient Egypt was split into three different kingdoms. The Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom. All the pyramid builders that we know of are in the Old Kingdom. King Sinephro, who built the Red Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid, is the beginning of the Third Dynasty. The Third Dynasty is the dynasty that has all the great pyramids of Egypt that we know of. Third Dynasty means the third family that rules Egypt since Egypt became Ancient Egypt. Sinephro was the father of Khufu, as I said, and then Khufu's son made his own pyramid next to his, and Menkaura, who's their son, made their next pyramid next to them. But Sinephro wasn't even the first one that invents a pyramid. And when he started with that Bent Pyramid, which everyone thinks is that big mistake that then was the reason for the success of Egypt, there is a mystery. There's a mystery in the books, and no one understands why. Even though this pyramid does look like it is a mistake, and that's how they learned that Red Pyramid, because that Red Pyramid ends up being the same angle that they chose to finish up the Bent Pyramid. So if you look at the Bent Pyramid, it starts with a wide angle, and then it closes down when they found the cracks. And that second angle of that pyramid is the same angle they decided to start that Red Pyramid with. That's why this looks like a perfect pyramid. Now, the perfect pyramid was not this angle that he started it with, and was not that angle that he ended up with. The perfect pyramid later became his son's pyramid, because it was an angle between both. A pyramid that can be high enough and still strong and sound. Now, there are a lot of stories about that Bent Pyramid, and a lot of theories that, no, it wasn't a mistake. Ancient Egyptians do not make mistakes. That this was on purpose built that way, and it looks like that for a reason. Now, it goes without saying that when you're in the desert, you should drink more often than usual. Especially the windy desert. We're walking through a wind tunnel right now, and that makes every part of your face, your lips, everything gets so dry. And that's why people dehydrate in the desert so quickly. Obviously, we are in the winter right now, and even though we are in the desert, I have a jacket on, because it can be cold in the desert. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but it is cold in the desert, yet it dries your mouth so much. So I'm going to take another sip of water while you move ahead in front of me and enjoy that desert for yourself. I grew up in Egypt. I was born in Egypt. I grew up in Egypt. I lived all my life in Egypt. And this place is one of the places that I came to in my childhood all the time. I used to come here with my father. My father is a documentary filmmaker, and I used to come here with my father all the time because it is the perfect place to film documentaries in. It has a pyramid. It doesn't have tourists, and it has a lot of sand. Now, you can tell this sand is really cool, but look right in front of me, all this flat surface of sand. You can tell that not only humans were walking here. There's a very famous animal that looks exactly like this. The camel. There's a bunch of camel hoofs all around. You can see them everywhere. The police guards in this area use camels instead of cars because obviously camels work in the desert. They're not the nicest animals, and you should know that. All the rumors you hear about camels are true. They spit. They bite. I have been bitten multiple times as a kid, and I hate to say that, but I don't love camels. They do a great job walking through the desert with no water, but they're not my type of animal. And then all of a sudden, you could see a little green plant that shows up in the middle of the desert that takes just a little bit of rain that comes every year and survives right in front of me, right in front of that mountain. You could see the Bent Pyramid peeking. And if you lean down enough, you can only see the top part of that Bent Pyramid, which is the angle that the king decided to go with after the mistake. And it's the same angle as the Red Pyramid. So technically, that top part looks exactly the same like the Red Pyramid behind us. But look at that. Just take a moment. Look back at this pyramid. It is just glorious. It's just absolutely wonderful. And you have to imagine that 4,600 years ago, those pyramids were covered in a pure white limestone, pure white limestone. And on a sunny day like this, they would shine miles and miles away. Anyone coming from any foreign land, any Egyptian that lives anywhere in the desert here at the time would walk around and can see that shiny pyramid staring right at him. It must have been glorious. One other thing, while you're walking in the desert and looking at the pyramid and thinking that it's going to be a five-minute walk, it's never the case. The pyramids are massive. The deserts are wide. And it looks like it's going to be a five or a ten-minute walk. But that pyramid over there, by the time I touch it, we're one hour away. And you have to understand that when you see a plastic bag flying in the middle of the desert, it's probably a tourist's plastic bag. Bad news. But when you look at one of those pyramids, when you look at that bench pyramid and you can see how tiny all these little bricks are building that pyramid together, every one of those bricks are somewhere between five and seven tons. Every one of those bricks are as big as a normal-sized apartment in New York, which is tiny. But every one of those bricks was dragged, quarried, and dragged into place, some of which were brought on a boat in the Nile to finally land here and create this perfect pyramid. And yes, it is still a mystery. Every pyramid out there, how they built it and why they built it, there's so many theories out there. But exactly how they managed to achieve that massive structure 4,600 years ago is absolutely mind-blowing and unbelievable. And that's why there are so many theories about technologies that have been lost that we don't know of today, because I can make a bet with you right now. If today anyone decided that they have the resources and they want to replicate one of those pyramids, they're going to end up with a terrible job like in Las Vegas. That's the best we can do. No one is able to replicate that pyramid today with all the technology we have and with all the manpower we have. Now think, 4,600 years ago, the population is low. People lived and worked here to create this one pyramid. And there has been a massive debate whether everyone that created this pyramid was a slave to the king or a person that works and gets paid. We have evidence. We have a papyrus that was found a couple of years ago that shows that there was protests by the workmen that worked at the pyramids area because they weren't paid on time, which means they were getting paid. They were not slaves. But one other very important point is that in today's Egypt, people are very religious. There are two main religions, Muslims and Christians. Both consider themselves slaves to the god. And the king of ancient Egypt was their god. And for them to build a pyramid for their god, his house of eternity, is their duty as devoted religious, ancient Egyptian religion, whatever they belong to at the time. It's their duty. That's how they guaranteed they will have space for themselves in heaven. They just have to participate in building this pyramid. The closer we get to that bench pyramid, the more you could see how very awkward it looks. It looks like some sort of a rocket. But right in front of us is that edge. If you look at that edge, that's exactly when everything changed. When the architect was in trouble, he was probably sentenced to death at the time. Cracks started showing in the structure as they went up. Think how high up they wanted this pyramid to be. With this wide angle, they would have gone double that size. Literally 50% through the structure. Cracks stopped them. And they made a very clever choice. A choice that then becomes the reason why ancient Egypt had the greatest pyramids in the world. To tighten that angle and make it shorter than they initially wanted it to be. Right on top of this hill, you will see exactly what I'm talking about. Go ahead of me. Look right at it. You see how it bends on the sides? That is the bench pyramid. Now, the closer we get to the bench pyramid, the more you could see also the casing. Because both pyramids are built of limestone. But the limestone they're built of, the core limestone they're built of, was not as pure. It's just the most local quarry there is. And now the casing. If you look at that bench pyramid, you can see the white casing still there. Most of it is still there. It's one of the few pyramids that still have that casing. But this casing was a finer... I gotta save my hat. But this casing was from a finer limestone quarry that was much further away. The white of that limestone was fine, bright, and clear. And that's why they chose it to become the case on all these pyramids. Wow. I must have been... I must have been here thousands times. But I just can't help looking at that pyramid and thinking of the day that architect made that mistake. What a beautiful structure. Look at that. There has been rumors that the top of that pyramid, and many others, was in gold. So the whole pyramid would glow in white. And right at the top, there'd be a golden top. Must have looked glorious at the time. Because it looks glorious now without the gold. But this is it. Right in front of me is ancient Egypt. Most famous mistake and might be their biggest mistake that then led them to achieve and build the Great Pyramid of Giza. Their greatest success. And one last sip of water for me. And remember to grab yours too. Well, this is it. Thank you so much for joining me on my wild desert hike in the middle of the shore with Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid. This has been lovely. I hope you enjoyed it just as much as I did. And piece of advice, you should stick around. There's a wild adventure coming along all over Egypt. We're going into tombs and into more deserts. We're going to see temples and it's going to be delightful. Stick around.