BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 5.0.18//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:https://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Secrets of the Dead Egypts Darkest Hour 05/11/2025 DTSTAMP:20250511T225537Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:272-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":noreply@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n Secrets of the Dead Egypts Darkest Hour\n\n As I have alw ays said\, the Nilotic word\, is connected. For me the idea that Kemet/Nub ia/Aksum are disconnected is untrue\, like Scotland/Ireland/England while each is separate they have been intermingled from ancient times\, they are Nilotic\, and based on Narmer it is clear that the boundary between  Kem et side Nubia  is like the historic boundary between usa side Mexico\, at one time\, most of the usa known in 2025 was Mexico. \n\n\n\n UNIFORM RE SOURCE LOCATOR\n\n https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/egypts-darkest-hour-eg ypts-darkest-hour-about-the-film/4097/\n\n\n\n VIDEO\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n \n\n\n TRANSCRIPT\n\n\n\n -High in the cliffs near Luxor lies a mysterious mass grave.\n\n-Filled with bodies.\n\nWow.\n\nWhat a nice foot.\n\n-Who were these people?\n\n-Generally\, you don't get mass graves in Ancient Eg ypt.\n\nIt's a very rare thing.\n\n-And how did they end up here?\n\n-Some thing like a mace struck him on the side of the head.\n\nThese people have died bloody fearsome deaths.\n\n[ Suspenseful music plays ] -Now\, archae ologists and scientists from around the world scour through the sands in s earch of clues to solve this mystery.\n\n-It's great.\n\nFor me\, it's gre at because it's the first time for me to get inside this pyramid.\n\nReall y exciting.\n\n-From the Great Pyramids at Giza [ Wind whipping ] to the g laciers of Mount Kilimanjaro... -The fact that the pyramid was robbed mean s the government was losing control.\n\n-...a series of political crises.. . -Setting fire to a temple\, a sacred place belonging to the king shows a direct attack against Pharaoh.\n\n-...and environmental catastrophes... - This represents a major drought.\n\n-...plunged Egypt and its people into anarchy... -If anything goes wrong with the Nile\, then it would be famine and chaos.\n\n-...and triggered a dramatic civil war which would last alm ost 150 years.\n\nWere these mysterious bodies casualties of this war?\n\n If so\, who were they fighting for?\n\n\"Egypt's Darkest Hour.\"\n\n[ Susp enseful chords striking ] ♪♪ [ Suspenseful music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -The desert cliffs of Luxor\, in Southern Egypt... -[laughing] As-salamu alaykum.\n\n-...are home to an exceptional tomb.\n\n♪♪ Dating back mor e than 4\,000 years\, long before Cleopatra\, before Tutankhamun and Ramse s\, it's a rare mass grave.\n\nFirst discovered in 1923\, it was sealed of f and very few people have entered since.\n\nBut\, today\, this unique gra ve is being opened for archaeologist Salima Ikram.\n\n-It's amazing to be able to go into this tomb.\n\nIt's a huge privilege.\n\nNo one's been allo wed to go in for a long time and I've always wanted to go in since I was a baby Egyptologist\, so this is a real treat.\n\n♪♪ -Little is known a bout this burial site and Salima wants to find out who is inside\, and why .\n\n-Door's open\, but we have to wait for the air to clear a bit.\n\nThe re's still a lot of dust and there's still a lot of dead stuff.\n\n♪♪ [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] ♪♪ -After half an hour\, it's safe for S alima to enter.\n\n-Light saber.\n\nFinally\, we can really go in and see this tomb for the first time.\n\n♪♪ Shukran.\n\nWow!\n\n-Carved out of rock by hand\, the tomb consists of 200 feet of branching tunnels that re ach back deep into the cliff.\n\n-It's like a labyrinth in here.\n\nIt kee ps on going.\n\nThere are rooms and twists and turns and tunnels.\n\nIt's fantastic!\n\n♪♪ And it's filled with bodies.\n\nWow!\n\nAnd lots of b andages.\n\n♪♪ [ Grunts ] Here's a shoulder.\n\nYou can see the scapul a\, a little bit of scapula here\, and here's a humerus.\n\nSo\, so\, it'd sorta be like this.\n\nYou can see whoever it was was taller than I am\, quite robust\, probably male.\n\n♪♪ Here\, you can see all the folds o f flesh.\n\n♪♪ And over here\, we have someone's leg.\n\n♪♪ All th ese bandages would've been wrapped around the bodies\, protecting them\, a llegedly\, for eternity.\n\n-The tunnels contain the remains of least 60 p eople.\n\n♪♪ -Just keeps on going.\n\n♪♪ Oh!\n\nWhat a nice foot.\ n\nLeft foot with his big toe intact.\n\nSmall toes have fallen off.\n\nQu ite a large foot.\n\nIt's probably male.\n\n-To add to the mystery\, all t he bodies seem to be male.\n\n-And here's its mate.\n\nThey're all intact. \n\n♪♪ -This grave is extremely unusual for Ancient Egypt.\n\n-There a re huge numbers of bodies in here and\, generally\, you don't get mass gra ves in Ancient Egypt.\n\n-Normally\, Egyptians were buried alone\, or with their family.\n\n-But it's only when you have plagues or battles\, where you might have a mass grave\, like this one.\n\nIt's a very rare thing.\n\ n-Can science provide the identities of these bodies?\n\n♪♪ French arc haeologist Audran Labrousse is an expert on this period of Egyptian histor y\, known as the Old Kingdom.\n\nTo find out who these people were\, he be gins with an ancient text.\n\nWritten by the poet Ipuwer\, it's thought to describe Egypt at the time leading up to the mass burial.\n\nAnd Ipuwer's poem suggests something terrible happened to Egyptian civilization.\n\n-S ee now\, the land is deprived of kingship.\n\nThe king has been robbed\, d eposed by beggars.\n\nEvery town says\, \"Let's expel our rulers.\"\n\nThe people of the land weep because their enemies have entered the temple and burned the images.\n\nUpper Egypt becomes a wasteland.\n\n♪♪ -Accordi ng to the text\, Egypt was in total chaos\, which could help explain the d ead in the mass grave.\n\nSome historians doubt the veracity of Ipuwer's t ext\, rejecting it as exaggeration or pure fiction.\n\nHowever\, Audran th inks there may be some truth to what the ancient poet wrote.\n\n♪♪ Tog ether with his colleague Philippe Collombert\, he's come to Saqqara\, wher e the pharaohs were buried in their pyramids\, just south of Cairo.\n\ n♪♪ Between them\, Audran and Philippe have spent more than 50 years s tudying the pyramids.\n\nToday\, they've been given permission to open a v ery special pyramid they believe contains evidence explaining why the bodi es were interred in the mass grave.\n\n-We're going now to the pyramid\, t he last pyramid\, of the Old Kingdom and we're quite excited because we'd like to open it and to see exactly what is inside.\n\n♪♪ -It will be v ery interesting to get inside the pyramid.\n\nIt has been closed for years .\n\nAnd we have the luck\, the chance\, the privilege\, to get to the sar cophagus and make a complete study of the monument.\n\n♪♪ -It's just o ver there.\n\nYou can see it in the background.\n\n♪♪ And here we are. \n\n-Yes\, the pyramid.\n\n♪♪ -So here it is and it belongs to the Pha raoh Pepi II.\n\n-The story of the bones in the tomb starts with the end o f Pepi's reign.\n\nWho was Pepi II?\n\nPepi II came to the throne around 4 \,300 years ago\, at the age of just six\, 250 years after the Great Pyram ids and the Sphinx were built.\n\nBy this time\, the pharaohs had ruled Eg ypt for about 700 years.\n\nThis great civilization extended from the Medi terranean to Aswan.\n\nAs pharaoh\, Pepi was believed to be the son of a g od and he ruled for at least 60\, some say even 90\, years\, the longest r eign in Egyptian history.\n\n♪♪ His long reign gave him plenty of time to build a magnificent pyramid.\n\nIts grandeur demonstrates the extent o f his wealth and power.\n\n-The main masonry of the pyramid is made of sma ll stones cemented with mud\, as to form a huge staircase toward the sky.\ n\nAgainst these small stones\, you had a thickness of about 5 meters of h uge limestones blocks.\n\n-And\, finally\, on top of this\, the outer laye r of the pyramid\, made of the finest\, whitest\, limestone in all of Egyp t.\n\n-This casing covered the pyramid on 50 meters high and a golden top was added.\n\nIt must have been a very impressive monument.\n\n♪♪ -The funerary complex had a temple dedicated to Pepi and included small\, sate llite pyramids for his spirit and three medium-sized pyramids where his wi ves were entombed.\n\nBut this magnificent pyramid was to be the last of t his golden era.\n\nAfter Pepi's death\, around 4\,200 years ago\, traces o f the Old Kingdom disappear into the sand.\n\nPerhaps the turmoil written about in Ipuwer's ancient poem was real.\n\n♪♪ [ Conversing in Arabic ] Audran and Philippe are entering the pyramid to find out what was happen ing in Egypt at this time.\n\n-[ Speaking in Arabic ] -Audran mudir!\n\n[ Conversing in Arabic ] -But the pyramid isn't giving up its secrets easily .\n\n-So we're in it now.\n\nWe're approaching the entrance of the Pharaoh Pepi II.\n\n[ Suspenseful chord strikes ] ♪♪ -It's taken the workers more than four days to dig down through nearly 15 feet of sand.\n\n♪♪ -We are nearly coming to the end of the work.\n\nWe still have some bit of sand to take out of the entrance and we will be in it.\n\n-Finally\, the sealed entrance to the pyramid is revealed.\n\n-So\, now\, we're ready to start.\n\nWe're gonna break the cement.\n\n♪♪ -The pyramid was last st udied in the 1930s and hardly anyone has had the privilege of entering it since.\n\n♪♪ It is an amazing opportunity for Audran and Philippe. \n\n♪♪ -It's great.\n\nFor me\, it's great because it's the first time for me to get inside this pyramid.\n\nReally exciting.\n\n♪♪ ♪♪ - The passageway descends steeply and then levels off\, continuing for about 85 feet directly into the heart of the pyramid.\n\n-Well\, now\, we're in the passage and just leading to the burial chamber.\n\n-At the very cente r\, they reach the antechamber\, which then leads to the burial chamber\, where the pharaoh was laid to rest.\n\n-[gasp] Ooh la la la.\n\nPssh!\n\nT his is really amazing\, amazing.\n\n♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I'm really amazed by the state of preservation of this pyramid\, with all these marvelous t exts all around.\n\nIt look like the painter just left yesterday and we're just coming afterwards.\n\nYou see the green color and the white surface\ ; even the line here\, the black line\, are still present.\n\n♪♪ And\, here\, we have the sarcophagus with the inscription with the name of Pepi II.\n\nThis sarcophagus is the master piece of the Old Kingdom.\n\nIt's r eally huge and magnificent\, really nicely done.\n\n-This massive stone sa rcophagus weighs 11 tons.\n\n-The sarcophagus is made of a black stone but you have to imagine that it was covered of gold.\n\nThe inscription was i n gold and inside it was a thick\, gold leaf.\n\nAnd you have also to imag ine in front of the sarcophagus\, filling the room\, all the golden furnit ure\, the vases\, everything that the king needed in his afterlife.\n\n-An d the walls of the chamber are covered in hieroglyphs of ancient Egyptian religious texts.\n\n♪♪ -All these texts are ritual texts for the rebir th of the king in the afterlife.\n\n-For Audran and Philippe\, the interio r of the pyramid reveals the state of the country during Pepi's reign and the events leading to the mass grave.\n\n-When you see the sarcophagus\, w ith all these marvelous texts all around\, that shows that\, at the beginn ing of the reign of Pepi II\, the state is still really powerful.\n\n-Egyp t is triumphant.\n\n-But Philippe and Audran have spotted signs that thing s changed.\n\nFor one\, the pyramid was looted.\n\n-As you can see\, the s arcophagus has been opened up and all that was inside has been robbed and taken out.\n\n-Including Pepi II's mummy\, which has never been found.\n\n -When the robbers arrived\, they pushed the lid of the sarcophagus\, opene d the coffin\, took the royal mummy\, throw it away.\n\nAnd\, of course\, all this gold\, it was fabulous.\n\nThey took everything out and the archa eologists found absolutely nothing in this room\, unfortunately.\n\n[ Sini ster music plays ] -Back at the entrance tunnel\, Audran is studying evide nce which shows that the pyramid must've been robbed shortly after Pepi's death.\n\nAfter Pepi was buried\, the original passage was sealed with mas sive stone blocks\, but the looters found a way around them.\n\n-Here\, we see the evidence of the pillaging of the pyramid.\n\nThe looters break th e façade.\n\n-They then dug through the limestone brickwork\, until they bypassed the stone blocks.\n\n-The looters cut the lintels and went into t he descending passage.\n\n-Farther on\, they dug a second tunnel above the main passage.\n\nIt's now been filled\, but Audran has found traces of it .\n\n-The looters arrived to this lintel.\n\nThey break it.\n\nYou can see some traces above.\n\n-Why did they dig this second tunnel?\n\n-The passa ge was blocked by three unpenetrable granite portcullis.\n\n-Today\, they are raised\, but\, at the time\, these massive\, granite blocks barred the way.\n\nThe looters had to dig through the softer limestone to get around them.\n\n[ Suspenseful music plays ] ♪♪ -They came down here\, after the third portcullis\, and then\, their passage was clear to the funerary chamber.\n\n-The efficiency of the looters' route belies when they broke i n.\n\n-It means that the looters knew perfectly the plans of the pyramid.\ n\nThey had in their crew somebody who had built the monument and it shows that this must have happened shortly after the death of Pepi II.\n\n[ Sin ister music plays ] -Looting the pyramid so soon after Pepi's death is a s ure sign the country was in turmoil.\n\n-When they took out the mummy of P epi II\, first\, of all\, it was a very big sacrilege.\n\n-Ancient Egyptia ns believed they needed their body to live again in the afterlife\, which is why mummification was so important to them.\n\n-Destroying his body mea ns that Pepi II will never be able to live again.\n\nThat's real death for the pharaoh.\n\n-Protecting the pharaoh's mummy was a critical task.\n\n- The pyramid was closed after the burial of the king and it was guarded by a lot of people around the pyramid\, so nobody could approach.\n\nThe fact that the pyramid was robbed means that the state\, the government\, was n ot controlling anything here.\n\n[ Suspenseful music climbs ] [ Suspensefu l chord strikes ] -And that's not all.\n\nNearby\, next to Pepi's father's pyramid\, Audran has found more evidence that the country was in trouble shortly after Pepi II died.\n\n-We are here in one of the storerooms of th e temple of Pepi I.\n\nAnd you can see that the stones are black\, they ar e burned\, and it shows a very violent and destructive fire.\n\nThe fire\, of course\, was deliberate.\n\n-Crucially\, Audran's team was able to dat e this fire.\n\n-We were able to date the fire by radiocarbon and it dates from the end of the Old Kingdom.\n\n[ Flames crackling ] -The date of the fire supports Audran's theory: that Pepi II's pyramid was pillaged not lo ng after his death.\n\n-Setting fire to a temple\, a sacred place\, belong ing to the king\, shows a direct attack against power\, against royalty\, against Pharaoh.\n\n-Shortly after he died\, law and order broke down to s uch an extent\, his pyramid\, and those of his family\, were robbed and de secrated.\n\n[ Flames crackling ] More evidence to suggest Ipuwer may have been telling the truth.\n\n-The king has been robbed.\n\nThe people of th e land weep because their enemies have entered the temple and burned the i mages.\n\n♪♪ -What happened?\n\nHow and why did the pharaohs lose cont rol and how did this lead to the dead in the mass grave?\n\nAll over Egypt \, archaeologists are finding signs of the growing political problems that were festering before Pepi II's death.\n\n♪♪ As Pepi's reign continue d and he grew older\, he began ceding more and more power to his provincia l governors.\n\n♪♪ 500 miles south of Saqqara\, on the banks of the Ni le\, lies the necropolis of Qubbet el-Hawa.\n\nIt's here that the governor s of Southern Egypt are buried and\, with them\, striking evidence of thei r growing influence.\n\nArchaeologist Martin Bommas -As-salamu alaykum.\n\ n-has been digging here for three years.\n\nComparing the tombs of governo rs from the start and end of Pepi's reign\, he points out signs that their authority was increasing over time.\n\n[ Suspenseful chord strikes ] -Her e we are\, right at the entrance into the Tomb of Harkhuf\, the governor o f Upper Egypt\, at roughly the time when Pepi II was a child and\, as part of his role\, he went to Nubia four times\, to bring back exotic goods\, like leopard skin\, elephant tusks\, and so on.\n\n♪♪ [ Suspenseful ch ord strikes ] ♪♪ He was sent out by the king\, obviously.\n\nThe king financed all these expeditions.\n\nWhat is really interesting is that\, al though Harkhuf was one of the most important men in the region\, really ru nning the business here\, he still had to ask Pepi II for permission to bu ild his tomb.\n\n-At the start of his reign\, Pepi II was very much in con trol of the country.\n\n-When we look into the political situation of Egyp t at this point in time\, we see that the king is still very strong.\n\n-B ut during the course of his long reign\, things changed and those changes are reflected in the style and construction of the governors' tombs.\n\nBe cause\, as grand as this grave is\, it's nothing compared to the tombs of two governors from the latter part of Pepi's life\, which are at the far e nd of the necropolis.\n\nThe first one belonged to a governor of Elephanti ne.\n\n-Look at the size of this tomb and look at the columns\, how high t hey are.\n\nThat gives us an idea about the importance of the governor of Elephantine.\n\nEighteen columns here.\n\nIt's almost like a forest of col umns.\n\n-The majesty of this tomb illustrates Pepi II's weakened authorit y\, while the regional governors were becoming increasingly important.\n\n And the adjoining tomb\, belonging to his son\, is even more elaborate.\n\ n-Now\, look at this lavish painting here\, that shows Sabni on a boat\, o n a river\, but not during this life.\n\nIt's the next life.\n\nIt's the b eyond.\n\n-The painting\, together with the sheer size of the tomb\, tells a story of wealth and influence.\n\n-If we relate what we see here to the beginning of the reign of Pepi II\, like what we've seen in the tomb of H arkhuf\, this clearly points out that\, by the end of Pepi II's reign\, wh en he was an old man\, local governors had more power.\n\n♪♪ -And this situation was replicated across Egypt.\n\nPepi II gradually relinquished more power and control to the local governors.\n\n-Suddenly\, local govern ors had too much power\, compared to the power that was decreasing in the capital.\n\n-A political crisis was brewing.\n\nThen\, at the age of 94\, Pepi II died\, and the fragile political situation finally unraveled and s o began a series of events that led to the remains in the mass grave.\n\n[ Flames crackling ] ♪♪ There are hardly any traces of Pepi II's succes sors.\n\nAudran has been searching for these kings for years.\n\nOne of hi s few sources of information provides insight into the leaders who followe d Pepi.\n\n-We are lucky enough to have the list of Abydos.\n\nIt is a lis t engraved on a temple\, giving the names of all the kings of Ancient Egyp t.\n\nAnd we have the names of five sons of Pepi II.\n\n-None of Pepi II's five sons reigned for very long.\n\n-The first successor of Pepi II was c alled Merenre II and we know\, according to the Greek historian Herodotus\ , he was murdered after a very short reign of two years.\n\n♪♪ -And hi s brothers didn't last much longer.\n\n-We know that Pepi II has a very lo ng reign\, between 60 and 90 years.\n\nSo\, his sons were very old when th ey arrived at the throne.\n\nPerhaps they just die because they were too o ld.\n\n-After his five sons\, the crisis worsened and the Abydos list show s 13 more kings in quick succession.\n\nThat's 18 kings in roughly 50 year s.\n\nThe Old Kingdom was clearly in freefall.\n\n♪♪ To this day\, arc haeologists have not been able to find any physical evidence related to th ese kings.\n\nWith the exception of one.\n\nIt might not look like it\, bu t this uninspiring pile of rubble is actually the remains of a pyramid.\n\ nIt belonged to Qakare Ibi\, the fifteenth king after Pepi II.\n\n♪♪ A nd it's tiny: less than half the height of Pepi's pyramid.\n\n♪♪ The s mall size of Ibi's pyramid illustrates how weak the royal authority had be come following Pepi II's reign.\n\nAnd\, after Ibi's\, it seems\, no pyram ids were built for about 200 years.\n\n♪♪ [ Horn toots ] [ Poignant tu ne sweeps ] What was happening in the rest of the country\, while the powe r of the pharaoh was waning?\n\n400 miles to the south lies El Mo'alla.\n\ n♪♪ Once again\, the style of a tomb signifies how the local governors responded to this succession of ephemeral kings.\n\nArchaeologist Antonio Morales explains.\n\n-This is Ankhtifi\, the owner of this tomb\, the loc al ruler of Hefat\, the third province in Upper Egypt.\n\n-Ankhtifi govern ed in the tumultuous years between Pepi II's death and the creation of the mass grave.\n\n-These inscriptions tell us a lot about social disruption\ , civil war\, conflict\, lack of order or control by the central administr ation.\n\nThere was a big gap of royal control of the country.\n\n-Most to mb walls are covered with references to the ruling king\, but not here.\n\ n-This is the only place in the whole tomb where Ankhtifi mentioned the na me of a king.\n\nThe rest of the tomb does not have a single mention to an y king\, which probably means that\, with the passing of time\, the centra l government lost control of the country and Ankhtifi felt that he was the single power in his province.\n\n-And\, on his tomb walls\, he's portraye d himself as king and ruler of his province.\n\n-He used kinds of phraseol ogy\, expressions\, and even iconography that usually was used during the Old Kingdom\, only by the kings.\n\nThis section of the inscription says \ "I am taking care of the orphan.\n\nI am giving a boat to the one who cann ot cross the Nile.\"\n\nBy doing this\, he was somehow comparing himself t o the king\, since these kinds of expressions referred to the capacity of the king to provide for his people and his country.\n\n-It seems that\, af ter Pepi's death\, rather than submitting to a rapid succession of weak ph araohs\, the local governors\, like Ankhtifi\, decided to rule for themsel ves.\n\nThe regional governors began jockeying for power and the inevitabl e consequence was civil war.\n\n-Some of the inscriptions in the tomb of A nkhtifi talk a lot about civil war.\n\nHere\, for example\, we have the ve rb \"to attack\, to fight\,\" and includes the determinative of man with a stick and he's expressing how he was going to attack the Theban province. \n\n♪♪ So\, we have a situation of social disruption\, civil war\, con flict.\n\n♪♪ [ Tranquil tune plays ] -All of this supports what the an cient poet Ipuwer's work described.\n\n-The land is deprived of kingship.\ n\n-Pepi II's heirs lost their grip on the country.\n\nEgypt split apart a nd plunged into chaos and war.\n\n[ Suspenseful music plays ] Salima think s it's possible that the bodies found in the mass grave near Luxor perishe d in the civil war.\n\n-I've got some photos of men who were inside the to mb and a lot of them had horrible trauma.\n\nYou can see\, over here\, the re's a hole here and he's probably hit by\, you know\, a rock from a sling shot.\n\nThis one's even worse\, 'cause you can really see that there've b een attacks here\, on both sides.\n\nSo\, this is quite possibly something like a mace struck him on the side of the head and blew it out and killed him rather viciously.\n\nSo\, this was not someone who died in bed.\n\nTh is was someone who died in battle.\n\nAnd some of them actually had arrows going through their bodies.\n\nSo\, here's the arrow and so he was pierce d through and he would've been lying\, bleeding\, on the battlefield\, pro bably waiting to be rescued or slowly dying and having birds pecking at hi m.\n\nThese people have died bloody fearsome deaths.\n\n[ Voices shouting ] -In addition to the brutal manner of their deaths\, there are other clue s to their identities.\n\n-They were buried with their bows and arrows.\n\ nSo\, we have those.\n\nAnd this is really the clincher.\n\n♪♪ This on e's got a wrist guard that goes all the way up and that's what archers wor e to protect themselves from the bow's recoil.\n\nSo\, these people were a rchers themselves.\n\nSo\, all the evidence points to the fact that these were soldiers who died in battle.\n\n♪♪ -But who were these soldiers f ighting for\, and why?\n\n♪♪ ♪♪ The hieroglyphs on Ankhtifi's tomb reveal a catastrophic event that might explain.\n\n-Here\, it says the wh ole southern country was dying of hunger\, so that every man was eating hi s own children.\n\n♪♪ Also\, in this section of the inscription\, it s ays\, the whole country has become like a starving locust.\n\nThat is a cl ear way for Ancient Egyptians to express that there was a dramatic famine in this section of the country.\n\n♪♪ -Already politically weakened by the rise of the governors and the succession crisis after Pepi's death\, a famine could have been the final blow that brought down the Old Kingdom. \n\n♪♪ There is mounting evidence from all over the world that planeta ry forces could have caused such a famine.\n\n♪♪ Scientists are discov ering that\, long before Pepi\, Egypt wasn't the desert it is today.\n \n♪♪ Back in Saqqara\, Audran has found something revealing on the pat hway leading to another pyramid\, that of Unas\, Pepi II's great-great-gra ndfather.\n\n-The wall of the causeway were covered with reliefs.\n\nAmong them\, one is specially interesting.\n\nWhat do we see?\n\nWe see various animals.\n\nWe see antelopes\, oryx\, gazelle\, and among them there are small bushes and we see\, for instance\, here a very small gazelle\, more or less sleeping among bushes.\n\nIn fact\, it's the representation of a s avanna.\n\n-Audran believes these carvings show that Egypt once had a very different climate than it does today.\n\n-It means that\, at the time of the Old Kingdom\, the pyramids were not surrounded by a desert.\n\nThey we re surrounded by a savanna\, very close to what we found now in Kenya.\n\n The necropolis was not a place of death.\n\nIt was a place of life.\n\n-Bu t are these decorations enough to prove these animals lived nearby and tha t the climate was so different?\n\nOr are these carvings simply fanciful i llustrations of animals seen while on expedition?\n\nThere should be scien tific evidence\, if Egypt's environment was radically different in the pas t.\n\nThat evidence comes from a very unlikely source: crocodiles.\n\n ♪♪ To find out more\, Salima has come here\, to Kom Ombo Temple\, wher e Ancient Egyptians worshipped the god Sobek\, who had the head of a croco dile.\n\nShe's here to examine an altogether different type of mummy.\n\n- One of the most important gods in Ancient Egypt was the crocodile god Sobe k and\, as a result\, priests actually raised crocodiles\, so you have pla ces where you have hatcheries for the eggs and then they also would have n urseries for the baby crocodiles and sometimes these were killed deliberat ely\, with their heads being bashed in so that they could then be mummifie d and be given to Sobek as an offering.\n\n♪♪ The ones that were recog nized by the priests as having the divine spirit in them were allowed to g row to their full length\, 5\, 6 meters\, and\, during the lifetime of tha t animal\, he would be fed and revered and looked after and spoilt rotten\ , in general.\n\nSome of them\, according to the Greek writers\, had earri ngs of gold and bracelets made of gold put on them\, so someone had to be very brave to go and do this to the god.\n\n♪♪ -And\, after their deat h\, the crocodiles were carefully mummified.\n\n♪♪ Surprisingly\, thes e sacred crocs can provide details on Ancient Egypt's climate.\n\nIn 2003\ , zoologists studied crocodiles living in isolated pools in Mauretania and Chad.\n\nThese West African crocs are smaller and more docile than the mo re familiar Nile crocodiles found in East Africa today.\n\nAnd DNA analysi s has revealed these smaller animals are\, in fact\, a separate species\, called Crocodylus suchus.\n\nThe DNA analysis also revealed they're the ex act same species as the sacred Ancient Egyptian crocodiles.\n\n-Recently\, we've been doing DNA on mummified crocodiles and the results have been tr uly spectacular because we did a huge crocodile from Kom Ombo and it turne d out to be Cr ocodylus suchus\, which is a desert crocodile.\n\nIn a way\ , it makes sense that these nicer\, kinder\, gentler ones were allowed to grow and sort of co-habit with humans and be the benign version of the cro codile god.\n\n-How did the pharaohs' sacred crocodiles end up on the othe r side of the African continent and what does that mean for Ancient Egypt' s climate?\n\n-So we know that we have mummified suchus in Egypt and we kn ow that we have living suchus\, quite a few of them\, in fact\, in the des erts of Mauritania\, as well as in Chad.\n\nSo here we've got these popula tions that are quite far apart\, but they're the same animal.\n\nSo what w as going on here?\n\nWe started to look for fossils\, to see if we could f ind any other evidence that could link these different populations of croc odiles together.\n\nAnd\, throughout the Sahara\, we've\, in fact\, found lots of fossils of crocodiles\, in Libya\, Niger\, in Mali\, throughout Al geria\, and also in Morocco.\n\nSo that means that\, in ancient times\, al l of the space must've been connected by a series of waterways\, for the c rocodiles to move to and fro\, and it wasn't always the desert that it is today.\n\n♪♪ -5\,000 years ago\, the Sahara Desert was actually a sava nna\, crisscrossed by a network of interconnected waterways\, which allowe d crocodiles to move freely throughout North Africa.\n\nThe carvings on Un as's causeway reflected reality.\n\n[ Birds chirping ] When the pyramids w ere built\, they were surrounded by savanna.\n\n[ Insects chirping ] But\, when did Egypt dry out and become a desert and could this have played a p art in the demise of the Old Kingdom and led to the mass grave?\n\n♪♪ Elephantine\, in the middle of the Nile\, between Qubbet el-Hawa and Aswan \, can shed some light.\n\n♪♪ The ruins here show what was happening t o Egypt's climate.\n\n♪♪ Archaeologist Miroslav Barta describes the ch anges.\n\n♪♪ -This is a fortress dating back to 3\,000 BC.\n\nAt the t ime\, the island of Elephantine consisted of two separated islands: the ea stern one and then the western island.\n\n♪♪ The fortress is located i n here\, on the eastern island.\n\n-The fortress was built on the highest ground\, 315 feet above sea level.\n\n-The reason was that the Nile flood at the beginning of the Old Kingdom was very high.\n\n♪♪ -But the buil dings surrounding the fortress show that the level of the Nile began to fa ll.\n\nAnd\, as the water level fell\, the city expanded over the rest of the eastern island\, which had been partially submerged.\n\nAnd there are even ruins from the lowest part of the island\, where the Nile once flowed \, that date from after Pepi II.\n\n♪♪ -Now\, we stand in the middle o f the original depression that was separating the eastern and western isla nd of Elephantine.\n\nAnd\, as we can see here\, the ancient Egyptians wer e able to use up the original depression to construct their houses over it .\n\n-After Pepi II's death\, the level of the Nile had dropped so signifi cantly that the two islands merged into one and the city expanded onto wha t had previously been the marshes in between.\n\nHere is evidence that Egy pt's climate was gradually changing and becoming drier during the Old King dom.\n\n[ Triumphant music plays ] But things would get worse\, much worse .\n\n[ Foreboding music plays ] [ Wind blowing ] The key to understanding the collapse of the Old Kingdom\, and the reasons for the mass grave\, lie s almost 2\,000 miles away\, in the glaciers of Mount Kilimanjaro.\n\nIn 2 000\, an expedition of American glaciologists\, led by Professor Lonnie Th ompson\, discovered proof of a global climate catastrophe.\n\n♪♪ An ic e cap is built of layers and layers of snow gradually piling up that are t hen compressed into ice.\n\nBy extracting cores from the ice\, Lonnie is a ble to look back in time.\n\nThe ice captures a record of what was in the air at the time it was laid down.\n\nStudying this ice back in the lab\, L onnie can reconstruct the past climate.\n\nThese precious cores are preser ved in Lonnie's freezer at Ohio State University.\n\n-We have over 7\,000 meters of ice cores collected from around the world.\n\nWe have\, on this particular rack\, those cores which we recovered from Kilimanjaro in 2000. \n\nIt dates back 11\,700 years and\, in that record\, about the depth of 33 meters\, we would find the time that corresponds to the Old Kingdom in Egypt\, so we'll take this out and examine it on the light table.\n\n-This piece of ice holds a unique record of the climate around the time the Old Kingdom fell apart.\n\n-This is what's left after all the measurements ha ve been made on the core\, so.\n\nAnd this record starts about 5\,000 year s before present\, so we're coming forward in time and you see this very d istinct band.\n\n♪♪ And it was really amazing\, in the field\, when th is thing showed up\, yeah.\n\nThere's a lot of excitement because you know you have something.\n\nIt's gonna take you a while to figure out.\n\nNo\, it's very exciting.\n\n-This ominous\, dark layer is the result of the dr amatic climate change that led to the collapse of the Old Kingdom.\n\n-Thi s black line that you see here in the core is a layer of dust\, windblown dust\, that accumulated on the ice field.\n\nThis is the largest dust even t we've found in an ice core\, so it's very\, very highly concentrated.\n\ nIt would suggest that there was a massive drought throughout this region. \n\n-And Lonnie has found more physical signs of this drought\, on the oth er side of the world.\n\n-In the same time period\, we have found a simila r layer in the Huascarán ice cores in the Andes\, in Peru.\n\nWe also see it over in the Himalayas\, which suggests that there was a major drought throughout the tropics.\n\n♪♪ -Crucially\, he was able to date this dr ought.\n\n[ Music intensifies ] -Based on our Kilimanjaro timescale\, we e stimate the event occurs around 4\,200 years ago\, the time of the collaps e of the Old Kingdom.\n\n♪♪ -Could this massive global drought have be en what brought the Old Kingdom to its knees and led to the death of the s oldiers in the mass grave?\n\n[ Suspenseful music climbs ] [ Suspenseful c hords striking ] [ Foreboding music plays ] Over the course of the Old Kin gdom\, Egypt was gradually turning from savannah into desert.\n\nAgricultu re was entirely dependent on the annual flooding of the Nile.\n\nEach summ er\, the rains falling on the highlands of Ethiopia flow into the Nile\, c ausing it to overflow its banks\, flooding the fields and depositing rich soil which fertilizes the crops.\n\n[ Suspenseful music plays ] If Lonnie is right\, this climate spike would have had a disastrous impact on the Ni le floods and the people of the Old Kingdom.\n\n[ Wind blowing ] Back in E gypt\, geologist- turned-archaeologist Professor Fekri Hassan has been loo king for proof that this global calamity did\, indeed\, hit the land of th e pharaohs.\n\n-There were indications that there are problems in other pa rts of the world at that time\, caused by climate change.\n\nIt was tempti ng to think that this might be the case in Egypt as well.\n\n-But\, in Egy pt\, there is no ice.\n\nHe's had to find another way of seeing into the p ast: mud.\n\nHe takes cores from the bottom of Lake Qarun\, just south of Cairo.\n\nThe lake is fed by the Nile\, which deposits layers of sediment on the bottom\, and\, just like ice\, these layers hold a record of the pa st climate.\n\nBack in the lab in Cairo\, Fekri has analyzed the cores.\n\ n-These were the cores we got.\n\nIt consisted of a sequence from the bott om of the lake that spans 10\,000 years.\n\nThese are the oldest ones\, th at were before the rise of civilization\, where the lake was quite deep an d\, as we move to this way\, this part it the Old Kingdom.\n\nThis is the whole history of the Nile floodplain over the last 10\,000 years.\n\nIt's never been available before.\n\n-The core reveals that\, during the Old Ki ngdom\, the lake was much larger and deeper than today... ♪♪ ...its de pth fluctuating around 200 feet.\n\n-This part of the core here is the par t that represents the Old Kingdom.\n\nWhat is amazing in this part is this break\, where we had the presence of a thick layer of gypsum\, the whitis h material.\n\nThis is a mineral\, which forms under shallow water conditi ons and evaporative conditions.\n\nMixed with the gypsum\, we have the dep osits of the iron oxide\, the reddish material.\n\nIron oxide usually form under very shallow water conditions\, where oxygen is present\, either ve ry\, very shallow water or almost no water.\n\nThat would mean that the la ke was almost dry\; if not bone-dry\, just extremely shallow pools.\n\n[ E thereal vocals join ] -The layer of gypsum and iron ore shows that this de ep\, freshwater lake dried up\, leaving behind just a few ephemeral pools of water.\n\n-You know\, maybe 60\, 70 meters of water disappeared.\n\ n♪♪ From the different radio carbon age determinations of the core\, w e were able to determine that this layer here represents time around 4\,20 0 years ago\, which correlates to the end of the Old Kingdom.\n\n♪♪ -F ekri's discovery confirms that the global drought seen in the ice cores al so hit Egypt hard\, just at the time the Old Kingdom collapsed.\n\n-We wer e able to find the smoking gun.\n\nThis is the hard evidence for this even t\, this catastrophic event.\n\nThe thickness of this layer and the fact t hat the very deep lake had to dry up\, it would indicate that we are deali ng with no less than 20 years of reduced Nile floods.\n\n-This disastrous drought was the knockout punch which pushed Egypt into chaos.\n\n-I think climate change leading to a reduction of Nile floods is the cause of the c ollapse of the Old Kingdom.\n\nEgypt depends on the Nile.\n\nIf anything g oes wrong with the Nile\, then it would be famine and chaos.\n\nIf the Nil e is low for 20 years or even more\, it means that agriculture production would stop.\n\n-Ankhtifi\, the local governor\, was right: the whole of Eg ypt would've been like a starving locust.\n\n-That means that the king doe s not have enough revenues\, not even for his own household\, not to menti on for the viziers and the managers and people engaged in the governments\ , so\, the whole civilization comes to a stop.\n\n[ Suspenseful music clim bs ] It's a great lesson about how abrupt climate change can be and how ci vilizations\, no matter how mighty they are\, can really suffer from event s like that.\n\n[ Outro plays ] -This terrible climate crisis\, combined w ith the underlying political problems\, created the perfect storm\, which destroyed the Old Kingdom and ultimately set the stage for the mass grave. \n\nIn the face of famine and economic crisis\, Pepi II's politically weak successors lost control of the country.\n\nEgypt fractured into city-stat es.\n\nBut the turmoil and violence would last far longer than the drought itself.\n\n[ Swords clinking ] Even as the 20-year drought ended and the Nile level rose\, Egypt remained divided and vulnerable.\n\nAs prosperity gradually returned\, it wasn't long before the regional governors\, like A nkhtifi\, developed ambitions to conquer the whole country.\n\nThe consequ ence was war for 130 years.\n\n[ Shouting\, swords clinking ] The soldiers in the mass grave likely died\, not in the initial chaos caused by the fa mine\, [ Poignant tune plays ] but right at the end of the protracted civi l war that followed.\n\nRoughly 40 years after the drought ended\, the rul ers of Thebes\, modern-day Luxor\, took control of the South and the locat ion of the mass grave near Luxor suggests the soldiers were Thebans.\n\nMe anwhile\, another family of local rulers\, from a town called Heracleopoli s\, had taken control of the North.\n\n[ Sinister music plays ] Egypt was split in two and both sides wanted control of the entire country.\n\nIn 20 40 BC\, the Thebans captured most of the North and they reached Heracleopo lis itself.\n\nThey were led by a king named Mentuhotep II.\n\nHe was a gr eat general.\n\nHis name even means \"Montu the god of war is satisfied\,\ " and he finally conquered Heracleopolis\, [ Shouting\, swords clinking ] in a bloody siege.\n\n[ Suspenseful music climbs ] [ Cheering\, swords cli nking ] [ Wind whistles ] Salima believes it's possible that these soldier s\, now more than 4\,000 years old\, took part in this final battle.\n\n-A mongst these bodies\, there was a lot of linen and some of the linen had m arks on it.\n\nAnd these are actually associated with the temple of Mentuh otep II.\n\nThis\, together with the fact that the temple is right there\, underneath his tomb\, means that the soldiers were fighting for Mentuhote p II.\n\n[ Sinister music plays ] -And that's not all.\n\nClose analysis o f the injuries provides more details about what caused them.\n\n-Looking a t these arrows that went into the necks of these soldiers\, you can see th at the trajectory is from above and it's the same thing with all of these head wounds.\n\nIt's like someone was hitting them from above.\n\nSo\, cle arly\, it would seem that these soldiers were up against an enemy that was higher than they were\, as if they were in a fortress\, as if there were some sort of siege situation\, and that these soldiers of Mentuhotep were attacking some kind of fort and people were hitting them from above\, rain ing down arrows\, throwing rocks.\n\nAnd\, maybe\, when they came too clos e\, hitting them hard with clubs and maces.\n\n[ Suspenseful chords strike ] -It would seem these soldiers were fighting for Mentuhotep in the decid ing battle of the civil war.\n\n-All of this put together makes us think t hat these soldiers were fighting at the siege of Heracleopolis.\n\n-After the battle was won\, Mentuhotep II declared himself king of the entire cou ntry\, reunifying Egypt at last\, and he is believed to have had the soldi ers buried above his own mortuary temple as a sign of honor.\n\n-It's a hu ge honor for anyone to be buried that close to the king\, so\, clearly\, h e valued them and he\, himself\, must have paid for the funeral\, with all of these temple linens being used.\n\nSo\, obviously\, he valued their wo rk and their loyalty and their bravery and kept them near him so that they would be united for eternity.\n\n[ Suspenseful chords striking ] [ Suspen seful music climbs\, chords striking ]\n\n\n\n\n\n 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