1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:15,160 Why were the ancients so interested in the motion of the stars? 2 00:00:15,160 --> 00:00:21,400 Why was cosmology sacred to the ancients? 3 00:00:21,400 --> 00:00:27,320 Pondering the history of ancient Egypt, we typically think of the mysteries of the pyramids 4 00:00:27,320 --> 00:00:30,440 and the grandeur of the temples. 5 00:00:30,440 --> 00:00:33,760 But where does it all start? 6 00:00:33,760 --> 00:00:40,200 Do we know how long ago the ancients began tracking the stars? 7 00:00:40,200 --> 00:00:43,640 Could there be lost worlds buried beneath the sounds? 8 00:00:57,320 --> 00:01:26,680 Could there be lost worlds buried beneath the sounds? 9 00:01:26,680 --> 00:01:34,960 Cosmology is the study of the universe in its totality. 10 00:01:34,960 --> 00:01:45,240 We think of cosmology as science, whereas the Egyptians considered it sacred. 11 00:01:45,240 --> 00:01:50,280 There's one thing we know about ancient Egypt for certainty is that they observed the 12 00:01:50,280 --> 00:01:52,800 star sees. 13 00:01:52,800 --> 00:01:56,320 So we are sure when they speak of the star. 14 00:01:56,320 --> 00:02:01,080 Everything that comes out of the ancient world has to have a spiritual and metaphysical 15 00:02:01,080 --> 00:02:04,880 base. 16 00:02:04,880 --> 00:02:09,680 The ancients and the ancients, Egyptians in particular, but probably ancients civilizations 17 00:02:09,680 --> 00:02:16,920 more generally saw themselves humanity us as tied in with the bigger environment, the 18 00:02:16,920 --> 00:02:21,720 cosmos, the bigger picture of the built monuments in the land. 19 00:02:21,720 --> 00:02:34,840 If we want to decode Egyptian symbolism, we should look for clues in the ancient language 20 00:02:34,840 --> 00:02:42,480 that her key learned as a child from his elders, living along the band of peace. 21 00:02:42,480 --> 00:02:48,160 Looking at the many images left by the Egyptians, we have assumed that they were obsessed 22 00:02:48,160 --> 00:02:50,680 with death. 23 00:02:50,680 --> 00:02:55,320 Looking to the ancient, souffling, which however, we learned that they didn't even have 24 00:02:55,320 --> 00:02:57,560 a word for death. 25 00:02:57,560 --> 00:03:01,000 They called it Westine. 26 00:03:01,000 --> 00:03:03,800 We have no word to death in our culture. 27 00:03:03,800 --> 00:03:06,720 No word to death. 28 00:03:06,720 --> 00:03:15,200 And to express this operation of death, we say, Westine. 29 00:03:15,280 --> 00:03:22,240 And you know, going towards West, like the sun lies from the east and west thing. 30 00:03:22,240 --> 00:03:25,360 So there is no word to death here. 31 00:03:25,360 --> 00:03:27,360 We believe in this reaction. 32 00:03:27,360 --> 00:03:32,360 If the sun sits in West, the reaction happens in the next day, when the sun lies in the 33 00:03:32,360 --> 00:03:33,360 next day. 34 00:03:33,360 --> 00:03:38,360 So this is belief that it's just like the sun. 35 00:03:38,360 --> 00:03:44,080 The Egyptians obviously had a very different world view from ours today. 36 00:03:44,080 --> 00:03:48,160 They believed in the afterlife and the souls immortality. 37 00:03:48,160 --> 00:03:55,440 It was possible at all that they had found some sort of science of immortality, for example, 38 00:03:55,440 --> 00:04:02,560 because as crazy as my team, they seem to be very, very convinced that they knew how 39 00:04:02,560 --> 00:04:07,600 to send the king to his cosmic world. 40 00:04:07,600 --> 00:04:14,600 So stellar gods, or whom the king believed that he himself would become one stellar 41 00:04:14,600 --> 00:04:23,200 god after his death, constructed monuments and performed rituals that mimic the events 42 00:04:23,200 --> 00:04:25,000 that they saw in the sky. 43 00:04:25,000 --> 00:04:34,040 It sounds against all the talents of our scientific beliefs, but we have to see why in our 44 00:04:34,040 --> 00:04:43,040 so-called, the ancient Egyptians perceived the land as a cosmic environment. 45 00:04:43,040 --> 00:04:50,640 That it followed the activities of the sky because they believed them to be running in 46 00:04:50,640 --> 00:04:51,640 parallel. 47 00:04:51,640 --> 00:04:56,360 And they had reasons to believe that what the main reasons were the cycles of the night. 48 00:04:56,360 --> 00:05:02,640 The night was the life blood of Egypt and it performed the cycle, which followed the 49 00:05:02,640 --> 00:05:05,880 cycle of the sun and the stars. 50 00:05:05,880 --> 00:05:10,160 It's not surprisingly at all that they associated the elite opinions of the stars with 51 00:05:10,160 --> 00:05:12,160 the rebirth of the night. 52 00:05:12,160 --> 00:05:21,480 Essentially, this star religion, if you like, boiled down to one important assignment. 53 00:05:21,480 --> 00:05:29,080 That it somehow could have the king become a spiritual being and return to the cosmic 54 00:05:29,080 --> 00:05:35,880 world in a specific place with Orion and so forth. 55 00:05:35,880 --> 00:05:40,480 How they thought they were not to do it is by looking very carefully at what happened 56 00:05:40,480 --> 00:05:43,000 to the stars. 57 00:05:43,000 --> 00:05:46,360 And the stars perform an annual cycle. 58 00:05:46,360 --> 00:05:56,080 But those of Seals and Orion give us a curious cycle in that the disappear or the appear 59 00:05:56,080 --> 00:05:59,280 to disappear. 60 00:05:59,280 --> 00:06:04,400 But if you watch a star over the course of the year, you'll find that there comes a time 61 00:06:04,400 --> 00:06:09,720 where it is very low in the west at the time of sunset. 62 00:06:09,720 --> 00:06:14,920 The sunset and as it gets dark in the star appears just with your second one. 63 00:06:14,920 --> 00:06:15,920 Over the way. 64 00:06:15,920 --> 00:06:19,600 If you come the next day, you will not see the star. 65 00:06:19,600 --> 00:06:24,400 And for 70 days or so, the star has gone. 66 00:06:24,440 --> 00:06:27,640 It seems to have gone under the earth. 67 00:06:27,640 --> 00:06:33,800 But after the 70 days it appears that this time at dawn, the rising just before the 68 00:06:33,800 --> 00:06:38,480 sun which we call the heliaccharizing, whereas the ejection called the rebirth of the 69 00:06:38,480 --> 00:06:39,480 star. 70 00:06:39,480 --> 00:06:42,640 So in that mind something happened. 71 00:06:42,640 --> 00:06:49,880 In that mind the star went in the underworld, stayed in the underworld for 70 days. 72 00:06:49,880 --> 00:06:55,520 And then by magic popped up again with the reborn again in the east. 73 00:06:55,520 --> 00:07:00,320 That's the pivot axis, the pivot axis and the mimic this side. 74 00:07:00,320 --> 00:07:05,000 At the ancient site of Sakara, we find the pyramid texts. 75 00:07:05,000 --> 00:07:11,280 The oldest known religious texts in the world. 76 00:07:11,280 --> 00:07:16,160 Covering the inner walls of these small pyramids, our thousands of higher gliffs showing 77 00:07:16,160 --> 00:07:27,560 knowledge of celestial mechanics and cycles of time. 78 00:07:27,560 --> 00:07:32,960 Although we've come a long way in our understanding of higher gliffs, it is possible 79 00:07:32,960 --> 00:07:41,840 that many layers of meaning in the symbols remain hidden until now. 80 00:07:41,840 --> 00:07:47,240 When we approach higher gliffs, we do so from our own point of view. 81 00:07:47,240 --> 00:07:53,800 And we assume that the letters of our alphabet correspond with certain higher gliffs. 82 00:07:53,800 --> 00:08:00,800 There are 4,000 Egyptian higher gliffs, but only 26 letters. 83 00:08:00,800 --> 00:08:07,680 In order to crack the code, we need to open our minds to different levels of meaning. 84 00:08:07,680 --> 00:08:11,840 I think it's just familiarity with the way modern languages work. 85 00:08:11,840 --> 00:08:15,160 No one expects that a word would work differently. 86 00:08:15,160 --> 00:08:20,680 Our mindset is that a letter is the carrier of a phonetic value and that a word is the carrier 87 00:08:20,680 --> 00:08:22,320 of a concept. 88 00:08:22,320 --> 00:08:27,360 To understand the Egyptian words, you have to start from the approach that the letter 89 00:08:27,360 --> 00:08:34,360 is the carrier of the concept and the word is an extended sentence. 90 00:08:34,400 --> 00:08:39,560 There are nuances of meanings to the words that you don't get if you don't understand 91 00:08:39,560 --> 00:08:42,000 what the individual lifts me. 92 00:08:42,000 --> 00:08:48,200 For instance, there's a different word that is translated as diving duck. 93 00:08:48,200 --> 00:08:54,880 But when you read the glyphs, it really reads, cool of water, place of diving duck. 94 00:08:54,880 --> 00:09:02,440 In 1822, French scholar Jean-François Champoleon and British scientist Thomas Young 95 00:09:02,480 --> 00:09:06,720 deciphered the hieroglyphics from the Rosetta Stone. 96 00:09:06,720 --> 00:09:11,480 The Stone was created in 196 BC. 97 00:09:11,480 --> 00:09:19,720 It showed the same text in hieroglyphic, Greek and demotic Egyptian on the one tablet. 98 00:09:19,720 --> 00:09:27,000 Scholars have used Champoleon's translations as the basis for deciphering hieroglyphs. 99 00:09:27,240 --> 00:09:32,080 Champoleon have missed subtleties or even withheld some information. 100 00:09:32,080 --> 00:09:39,320 One biographical study of Champoleon said that he delayed for a very long period of time 101 00:09:39,320 --> 00:09:46,600 before producing his translation because in the words of the study, he clung stubbornly 102 00:09:46,600 --> 00:09:52,760 to the idea that an Egyptian lift might mean something more than just a phonetic value. 103 00:09:52,800 --> 00:10:01,040 Let's grant him is a computer software engineer who has interpreted a new aspect of hieroglyphics. 104 00:10:01,040 --> 00:10:06,040 His research is revolutionizing the way hieroglyphics understood. 105 00:10:06,040 --> 00:10:14,120 Basically, Egyptian hieroglyphic words work more like an acronym in English, like the phrase FYI 106 00:10:14,120 --> 00:10:20,680 or an acronym such as CIA or CBS, where anyone who reads English understands that you 107 00:10:21,560 --> 00:10:23,960 don't try to pronounce this word. 108 00:10:23,960 --> 00:10:28,440 This is not a word that you're going to read for its meaning in terms of the letters all put together. 109 00:10:28,440 --> 00:10:33,960 It's one letter at a time stands for one word at a time and you put the words together to get the meaning. 110 00:10:33,960 --> 00:10:40,680 If we think of each hieroglyphic word as an acronym rather than having a phonetic value, 111 00:10:40,680 --> 00:10:45,320 a new layer of interpretation appears. 112 00:10:45,320 --> 00:10:51,400 Reveal in symbolic terms the way the ancient Egyptians thought the universe works. 113 00:11:15,320 --> 00:11:18,200 It means that that's all traditional meanings. 114 00:11:18,200 --> 00:11:22,120 It's hard to argue that the word month doesn't say the moon makes an orbit. 115 00:11:25,000 --> 00:11:29,880 Or it's hard to argue that the word year doesn't say time of the earth's orbit around the sun. 116 00:11:30,440 --> 00:11:46,440 The ancient Egyptians were almost obsessive, keepers of records. 117 00:11:47,480 --> 00:11:50,600 And one thing that they observed most was the celestial objects. 118 00:11:52,360 --> 00:11:55,480 We'd expect them to pay attention and record. 119 00:11:56,440 --> 00:12:00,440 Now how far back that's a big question. 120 00:12:00,440 --> 00:12:05,080 Well we now have some sites that go at least six or seven thousand years before. 121 00:12:08,680 --> 00:12:13,480 There's a big electric site that has been found in the early 70s. 122 00:12:14,680 --> 00:12:16,440 But not understood that it'll lately. 123 00:12:17,480 --> 00:12:18,920 That has a strong economy. 124 00:12:19,880 --> 00:12:23,400 And strangely the Islamic environment that it has 125 00:12:24,280 --> 00:12:27,640 are precisely the ones you find in the Pymidage. 126 00:12:28,680 --> 00:12:32,520 So Orion, Syria, the Summer Sources, they're all there. 127 00:12:32,520 --> 00:12:35,720 It's no war theory. We have evidence that they did it. 128 00:12:41,480 --> 00:12:48,760 For decades, author Robert Boval has been studying the alignment of Egyptian monuments to key stars. 129 00:12:49,000 --> 00:12:52,040 The most important thing is we get there. 130 00:12:53,240 --> 00:13:12,200 He is now planning an expedition across the desert to a site called Naptoplyer. 131 00:13:13,160 --> 00:13:18,600 A hundred kilometers west of the Nile and 30 kilometers north of the Sudanese border. 132 00:13:19,880 --> 00:13:24,680 It is the location of Egypt's oldest astronomical measuring device. 133 00:13:26,920 --> 00:13:28,440 That one will date how do you know it will date? 134 00:13:29,400 --> 00:13:32,280 So it does it. Yes, it does it. 135 00:13:32,280 --> 00:13:35,640 If you say everybody is here in Western Desert, I know if you can. 136 00:13:35,640 --> 00:13:37,160 And we're going to need a GPS. 137 00:13:37,160 --> 00:13:38,440 Yeah, if you can. 138 00:13:38,440 --> 00:13:39,400 Yes, I have one. 139 00:13:39,720 --> 00:13:41,960 That makes me feel a lot happier. 140 00:13:42,920 --> 00:13:46,760 The team finds out that permits from Cairo have been delayed. 141 00:13:48,440 --> 00:13:52,680 Now we wait. You tell us we wait for the answer from Cairo. 142 00:13:53,800 --> 00:13:56,280 So in the meanwhile, that's going to see the sites. 143 00:13:56,280 --> 00:13:58,200 Let's go and see some of the Temple Zirilana. 144 00:13:58,200 --> 00:13:58,920 Okay, let's go. 145 00:13:58,920 --> 00:14:08,920 The key to decoding Egypt is in the alignments of the temples, 146 00:14:09,880 --> 00:14:15,880 which changed in different epochs to match the majestic drift of the procession of the stars. 147 00:14:16,440 --> 00:14:19,000 But now here at the Khanak Temple in Luxor. 148 00:14:20,280 --> 00:14:24,520 Now this wall we can see the ritual of the stretching of the cord. 149 00:14:25,480 --> 00:14:28,440 On the right hand side is the goddess Seshat, 150 00:14:28,440 --> 00:14:31,560 the center by priestess, the whole of the road, 151 00:14:31,560 --> 00:14:32,520 and the matat. 152 00:14:33,560 --> 00:14:35,240 On the other side is the ferro. 153 00:14:36,120 --> 00:14:39,080 There's a cord looking between them and what they're doing 154 00:14:39,080 --> 00:14:41,880 is that they're aligning the monuments to the stars. 155 00:14:44,840 --> 00:14:47,960 We know from inscriptions at the Temple of Khanak 156 00:14:47,960 --> 00:14:51,640 that they aligned monuments with the certain polar stars, 157 00:14:51,800 --> 00:14:53,160 principally the big dipah. 158 00:14:55,880 --> 00:14:58,200 They also align to the stars of Orion. 159 00:14:58,840 --> 00:15:01,160 Very similarly to what we also have at Napa. 160 00:15:01,800 --> 00:15:06,520 The Khanak Temple, the very center of Egyptian religious activity, 161 00:15:07,160 --> 00:15:10,520 is aligned to the sunrise and the winter sources. 162 00:15:10,520 --> 00:15:12,600 As we look down the axis this way, 163 00:15:13,160 --> 00:15:16,440 on the winter sources of some will rise along the axis. 164 00:15:16,920 --> 00:15:20,920 And in the summer sources it will be aligned to the sunsets. 165 00:15:21,880 --> 00:15:25,160 So as we have at the Naptoplay, 166 00:15:25,880 --> 00:15:29,080 in the circle of the Karendrake's circle, 167 00:15:29,080 --> 00:15:31,240 where there is the summer sources alignment, 168 00:15:31,240 --> 00:15:34,920 here we have another example of the similar alignment 169 00:15:34,920 --> 00:15:36,600 3,000 years later. 170 00:15:37,960 --> 00:15:40,440 On the expedition into the open desert, 171 00:15:40,440 --> 00:15:45,160 Robert Boval hopes to see for himself that these alignments exist 172 00:15:45,160 --> 00:15:47,320 in the remote region of Naptoplay. 173 00:15:47,960 --> 00:15:54,280 The team prepares by mapping a route they will access via GPS. 174 00:15:55,720 --> 00:15:59,160 Deep surrequipped with supplies for the dangerous journey. 175 00:16:09,400 --> 00:16:13,160 The team arrives at the first stop on their journey through history. 176 00:16:17,480 --> 00:16:22,520 In the heart of the El Kaga Oasis, 177 00:16:22,520 --> 00:16:27,400 lies a Christian settlement dating back to the third century AD. 178 00:16:29,480 --> 00:16:32,760 Original paint graces the ceiling of the chapel, 179 00:16:32,760 --> 00:16:35,080 telling the stories of Adam and Eve. 180 00:16:35,080 --> 00:16:38,920 What is important here is that at Naptop, 181 00:16:39,880 --> 00:16:44,760 we have a settlement that is 6000 visit at least. 182 00:16:45,720 --> 00:16:48,440 And here we have a settlement, a Roman settlement, 183 00:16:49,320 --> 00:16:51,960 which is of the first second century. 184 00:16:53,800 --> 00:16:58,280 Surely the people here were aware of some sort of origins in the desert. 185 00:16:58,920 --> 00:17:00,760 The master moved around here. 186 00:17:00,760 --> 00:17:02,440 But already 300 branches of mine. 187 00:17:02,440 --> 00:17:04,840 And this is a big word that the proposes have together to 188 00:17:04,840 --> 00:17:10,760 count children proposes people understand how to look for clues within a lost culture. 189 00:17:11,400 --> 00:17:13,400 We're looking for a lost culture, 190 00:17:13,400 --> 00:17:17,080 and it could be the origins of our civilization that's for the talking about here. 191 00:17:22,920 --> 00:17:26,120 Often the distance, the Christian settlement can be seen. 192 00:17:27,400 --> 00:17:31,320 In the valley below we can see the old riverbed of the Nile, 193 00:17:31,320 --> 00:17:34,520 which has migrated over 60 kilometers to the east. 194 00:17:35,320 --> 00:17:42,360 How many thousands of years would it take to wind back the geological time clock 195 00:17:42,360 --> 00:17:44,360 to when the Nile flowed here? 196 00:17:45,560 --> 00:17:47,080 The night we know there was here. 197 00:17:48,360 --> 00:17:49,240 We probably do not. 198 00:17:50,280 --> 00:17:51,400 Do those what this is? 199 00:17:51,400 --> 00:17:53,800 Or, I'm sure the ideas of these people, 200 00:17:53,800 --> 00:17:55,800 the beliefs, the way they look at the stars, 201 00:17:55,800 --> 00:17:57,640 the way they look at the sun, the way they buried people, 202 00:17:58,520 --> 00:18:03,560 comes from here to influence the paradise ofization. 203 00:18:04,680 --> 00:18:07,800 Imagine, imagine 2000 years ago. 204 00:18:09,400 --> 00:18:10,600 The Roman garrison, 205 00:18:11,480 --> 00:18:14,280 with some two rooms walking about the places, 206 00:18:15,800 --> 00:18:16,920 the Roman ladies, 207 00:18:17,720 --> 00:18:21,000 carriages, and it's amazing to think that this was like this. 208 00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:22,840 People have been here for thousands of years. 209 00:18:23,240 --> 00:18:23,880 I mean we know that. 210 00:18:24,840 --> 00:18:27,880 But now you're going to show us caves, you're going to show us historic caves, 211 00:18:27,880 --> 00:18:31,560 where there are drawings that tell us that people are here even longer than we thought. 212 00:18:32,360 --> 00:18:34,360 Maybe 10, maybe 15,000 years ago. 213 00:18:35,240 --> 00:18:36,520 I'm not sure. 214 00:18:58,520 --> 00:19:01,480 We're going to 30, 14,000 meters high due. 215 00:19:02,440 --> 00:19:04,280 The path of the road. 216 00:19:05,400 --> 00:19:07,560 The old road as you can see, I mean it's very amazing. 217 00:19:07,560 --> 00:19:09,160 The old road actually strikes the doom. 218 00:19:09,880 --> 00:19:11,080 This is a new doom. 219 00:19:11,080 --> 00:19:14,120 It's been formed one of the last 30 years or so. 220 00:19:15,400 --> 00:19:17,080 I'm sure they have the sand moves fast. 221 00:19:18,200 --> 00:19:24,200 The team tests the geeps in the open desert by heading off to an ancient desert monastery. 222 00:19:31,880 --> 00:19:33,880 The land is a little bit more than a hundred years ago. 223 00:19:33,880 --> 00:19:35,880 The land is a little bit more than a hundred years ago. 224 00:19:35,880 --> 00:19:37,880 The land is a little bit more than a hundred years ago. 225 00:19:37,880 --> 00:19:39,880 The land is a little bit more than a hundred years ago. 226 00:19:39,880 --> 00:19:41,880 The land is a little bit more than a hundred years ago. 227 00:19:41,880 --> 00:19:43,880 The land is a little bit more than a hundred years ago. 228 00:19:43,880 --> 00:19:45,880 The land is a little bit more than a hundred years ago. 229 00:19:45,880 --> 00:19:47,880 The land is a little bit more than a hundred years ago. 230 00:19:47,880 --> 00:19:49,880 The land is a little bit more than a hundred years ago. 231 00:19:49,880 --> 00:19:51,880 The land is a little bit more than a hundred years ago. 232 00:19:51,880 --> 00:19:53,880 The land is a little bit more than a hundred years ago. 233 00:19:53,880 --> 00:19:55,880 The land is a little bit more than a hundred years ago. 234 00:19:55,880 --> 00:19:57,880 The land is a little bit more than a hundred years ago. 235 00:19:57,880 --> 00:19:59,880 The land is a little bit more than a hundred years ago. 236 00:19:59,880 --> 00:20:07,880 The land is embedded in the hard rock, indicating a vast change in geology and climate over the past several thousand years. 237 00:20:09,880 --> 00:20:11,880 It's probably petrified timber. 238 00:20:11,880 --> 00:20:15,880 They are much later periods, but you can see the shells here. 239 00:20:15,880 --> 00:20:17,880 The shells are encrusted. 240 00:20:17,880 --> 00:20:19,880 A million of years old. 241 00:20:19,880 --> 00:20:25,880 We're walking on terrain that is millions of years old. 242 00:20:30,280 --> 00:20:40,280 The western desert today is rainless, but in the past it received as much as 500 millimeters of precipitation per year. 243 00:20:41,720 --> 00:20:46,120 There were permanent lakes, large springs, and seasonal streams. 244 00:20:47,640 --> 00:20:54,440 The most recent wet period was between 130,000 and 70,000 years ago. 245 00:20:55,000 --> 00:20:59,000 Then it was Thornbrash, Savannah. 246 00:20:59,000 --> 00:21:09,000 At that time the area supported many large animals, gazelles, giraffes, buffalo, camels, and antelopes. 247 00:21:14,280 --> 00:21:19,800 After that period it was hyper-arid until 12 or 13,000 BC. 248 00:21:20,760 --> 00:21:26,760 Before 12,000 years ago the summer tropical monsoons reached southern Egypt. 249 00:21:28,360 --> 00:21:32,760 Precipitation was limited and fell mostly during the summer months. 250 00:21:34,040 --> 00:21:37,240 It was sufficient to support small animals and cattle. 251 00:21:38,280 --> 00:21:40,520 The small animals could live off the dew. 252 00:21:42,040 --> 00:21:46,040 The climate resulted in highly mobile human populations. 253 00:21:49,800 --> 00:21:57,640 There are ancient cave paintings in a remote location that may provide clues to human settlements from the distant past. 254 00:21:59,720 --> 00:22:04,040 Is this crucial evidence being protected by Egyptian authorities? 255 00:22:06,760 --> 00:22:09,480 It's total. It was priceless. 256 00:22:09,480 --> 00:22:12,280 It's priceless. Triceless, please, historic evidence. 257 00:22:12,760 --> 00:22:13,320 But here. 258 00:22:13,800 --> 00:22:15,800 Okay. 259 00:22:17,080 --> 00:22:20,120 What's this a dog or a gazelle? A man, is he the man here? 260 00:22:21,160 --> 00:22:23,400 He's waiting for an anic rose. 261 00:22:26,680 --> 00:22:27,240 It's terrible. 262 00:22:29,640 --> 00:22:30,680 It's crippled over. 263 00:22:32,200 --> 00:22:35,640 I mean the evidence that we're looking for is being destroyed by 264 00:22:36,920 --> 00:22:40,920 my responsible people who are coming here, the site is unprotected. 265 00:22:41,560 --> 00:22:44,840 The irony is that people who are responsible are preventive 266 00:22:44,840 --> 00:22:47,800 coming here and driven crazy with licenses and papers. 267 00:22:52,840 --> 00:22:54,840 Oh, there's a beautiful hatoring car. 268 00:22:55,240 --> 00:23:00,840 Look at this. This is a ratist. This is not a primitive car. 269 00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:12,760 Pre-dynastic Egyptian belief systems originated with cattle cults linked to the Nile. 270 00:23:15,160 --> 00:23:17,480 A cow was seen as the mother of the sun. 271 00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:23,320 Cattle were deified and were considered earthly representatives of the gods. 272 00:23:24,520 --> 00:23:28,280 An enduring ideology with half-aw, as the center figure. 273 00:23:28,760 --> 00:23:37,080 Images of bulls were shown with depictions of stars and this dates to before pre-dynastic Egypt. 274 00:23:39,960 --> 00:23:46,440 Cattle pastoralists were in the Sahara several thousand years before pre-dynastic Egypt. 275 00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:59,720 The earth's largest planet is a large ceremonyal center of further 600 kilometers west near the 276 00:23:59,720 --> 00:24:07,480 borders of Libya, the Sudan and Egypt. The cave of the swimmers made famous by the movie, 277 00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:15,480 the English patient, is located here. Prehistoric rock art shows people in their cattle. 278 00:24:17,320 --> 00:24:23,400 Since gulf can be here is 600 kilometers away, it seems as though cattle cults were prevalent 279 00:24:23,400 --> 00:24:29,960 throughout North Africa in ancient times. Could this be another clue that the nomadic tribes were 280 00:24:29,960 --> 00:24:34,360 connected? Could they have influenced the ancient Egyptians? 281 00:24:38,520 --> 00:24:43,320 Arriving at the monastery, we can see it has never been accessible by road. 282 00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:52,200 Once occupied by Christians, it lies upon an ancient camel trail, 40 days from its closest neighbouring site. 283 00:25:05,080 --> 00:25:11,560 It still shows evidence of having been an oasis, with a huge occasion tree that is more than 284 00:25:11,560 --> 00:25:17,640 800 years old. The team has a picnic on a carpet of yellow or cation flowers. 285 00:25:19,480 --> 00:25:25,400 This is a wonderful oasis. You can't really please be tested the cars, everything is working fine, 286 00:25:26,360 --> 00:25:34,040 the drivers are fine and it was a good idea to come and rest here. I needed the rest because 287 00:25:34,040 --> 00:25:38,040 after all this tense of waiting for the permits, everything is ready to permit already. 288 00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:45,720 But you must be told, living now, displaced, to go to the hotel and stay overnight and doing 289 00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:49,240 stuff to more up early at 3 am morning. 290 00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:57,080 Are you ready? Yes, you know, you're ready, but you don't know, it's a hard way. Hard way to arrive 291 00:25:57,400 --> 00:26:03,400 and be assembled. Let's do it. Let's do it. We'll wait a long time. Let's have a good night's table. 292 00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:22,760 The team gets an early start, armed with long awaited permits granted by the Supreme Council of Antiquities 293 00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:30,440 and the Egyptian army. They will enter the dangerous region of the western desert to the south of Elkaga Oasis. 294 00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:40,200 Well, after days of waiting and of uncertainty we'll finally on the road, we got the permit, 295 00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:47,000 we're ready to go out in the desert to to Napta. 296 00:26:52,760 --> 00:27:22,760 We're ready to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go 297 00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:52,760 in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go out in the desert to go 298 00:27:52,760 --> 00:28:14,280 after driving south for hours along an old road covered by occasional sand dunes there is nervousness in the air the team will be traveling blind in the open deserts for the last part of the journey relying solely on GPS equipment to locate the ancient site of Nabta player 299 00:28:14,280 --> 00:28:18,280 this is very good this is very good to see the computers 300 00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:22,280 I'm sure 301 00:28:27,320 --> 00:28:30,280 what clues will be uncovered at Nabta player? 302 00:28:33,880 --> 00:28:37,720 how have these influences drifted across the African continent? 303 00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:52,680 more than 3,000 kilometers further west in Marley there is a living culture with a surprisingly similar world view to that of the ancient Egyptians 304 00:28:56,040 --> 00:28:59,880 the Dogon live in Marley largely in isolation 305 00:29:00,840 --> 00:29:08,840 studies of the Dogon culture mirror the ideology of the ancient Egyptians with uncanny precision 306 00:29:10,040 --> 00:29:15,560 my realist in my Dogon studies that there were relationships between Dogon words and Egyptian words 307 00:29:15,560 --> 00:29:20,520 and I noticed that Dogon drawings turned up as glyphs in those Egyptian words 308 00:29:20,520 --> 00:29:28,120 leds crantons radical reinterpretation of Egyptian higher glyphs came directly from his studies of Dogon 309 00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:37,640 cosmological symbols their priests use cosmological drawings symbols they have used for thousands of years 310 00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:46,280 while it is impossible to ask the ancient Egyptians to explain their beliefs Dogon priests can 311 00:29:46,280 --> 00:29:51,160 explain their cosmology and how their symbols are written and pronounced 312 00:29:52,120 --> 00:29:57,720 the Dogon lay things out in such detail that it's like having the teachers copy of the manual 313 00:29:57,720 --> 00:30:02,280 or the book you know you're studying you'll put with the the answers the questions written down in the back 314 00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:06,600 go to a Dogon priest or you can go to the anthropological studies that were taken 315 00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:11,800 in relation to the Dogon priest and they flat out tell you what their symbol means and what their 316 00:30:12,760 --> 00:30:15,000 you know what what they're trying to talk about 317 00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:30,280 the general pattern I could say is that Dogon cosmology tells us how a concept should be expressed 318 00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:37,800 how the words should be pronounced what multiple levels of meaning the words should be associated 319 00:30:37,800 --> 00:30:44,440 with and what kind of a drawing it should be associated with that predicts for us what we 320 00:30:44,440 --> 00:30:49,560 ought to find in Egypt and so when I go to Egyptian studies I look at the Egyptian 321 00:30:49,640 --> 00:30:56,600 hieroglyphic dictionary or go to a book about Egyptian cosmology sure enough I find the same word 322 00:30:57,800 --> 00:31:03,560 expressing the same meanings written with the same drawing or the same drawn character and I say I've got 323 00:31:03,560 --> 00:31:13,000 a match. How is it possible that the Dogon culture in present-day Marley is connected to the ancient 324 00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:21,240 Egyptians what is the link? The Dogon seem to have come out of a class of priests who had 325 00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:26,440 very specialized knowledge and who for one reason or another were not happy with the way things 326 00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:31,880 were going in Egypt and deliberately left I would say that sounds like it's true I can't prove it's true 327 00:31:32,520 --> 00:31:36,920 but it doesn't contradict anything I know the fact that there's a match between the Dogon 328 00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:42,840 drawing and the Egyptian glyph in the context of the same word pronounced the same way with 329 00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:47,640 carrying the same meanings it's just another level of validation that I'm on the right track of 330 00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:55,480 these words are literally to correspond to each other. Using this new interpretation of hieroglyphic 331 00:31:56,120 --> 00:32:00,840 what can we learn about the ancient Egyptian view of sacred cosmology? 332 00:32:07,320 --> 00:32:17,320 I had some concerns originally though it began writing some of the books about what 333 00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:23,480 right did I have to be revealing secrets that have been kept for 3,000 years but when I realize 334 00:32:23,480 --> 00:32:29,240 that cosmology is about science it's about the creation of matter and things like that and I 335 00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:37,400 realize how close our science is right now to being caught up with what the the cosmology, 336 00:32:37,400 --> 00:32:42,440 the ancient cosmology seem to know I realize the thing is going to get any benefit out of it at all 337 00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:47,800 that it has to come out now and can't wait any longer there are only about 50 years away from 338 00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:52,360 discovering all the things that I found in the Dogon and the Egyptian cosmology. 339 00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:59,080 Is it possible the ancient Egyptian cosmology was more advanced than today's science 340 00:32:59,960 --> 00:33:06,200 I'd say there is information in the ancient cosmology that would be a benefit to the 341 00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:12,440 string theorists and to the modern cosmologists if they'd be a thing to it. I think the Dogon and 342 00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:19,640 the Egyptians explained to us how it is that a mere act of perception can cause the wave like behavior 343 00:33:19,640 --> 00:33:26,840 matter to turn into particles which scientists don't know. When you ask a Steven Hawking how many 344 00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:34,840 particles there are he says more than 200 if you ask a Dogon priest he says 266. 345 00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:43,240 Science is on the verge of understanding things that ancient civilization seem to know long ago 346 00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:49,080 how is this possible? 347 00:33:56,920 --> 00:34:09,080 The excitement builds for the real destination of the expedition the ancient site of Naphta Plyer. 348 00:34:19,640 --> 00:34:20,360 That is? 349 00:34:20,360 --> 00:34:22,360 Yeah. 350 00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:49,800 Here we have this bunch of huge megals that were dragged from Godos where I placed it in a pattern 351 00:34:49,800 --> 00:34:58,680 sort of center point of the whole area. It's essential that we do not disturb the stones 352 00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:03,720 without touch anything, just look at them. The alliance had there and we've been there for thousands 353 00:35:03,720 --> 00:35:08,760 of years, understood and we can use them to date this place. 354 00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:13,480 I'm a group of archaeologists led by Fred Wendorf called the Combine Prehistoric 355 00:35:13,480 --> 00:35:18,040 Expedition by chance found some pottery shards at Naphta Plyer. 356 00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:26,840 They thought that the megalists were just outcrops of rock and then they started 357 00:35:26,840 --> 00:35:30,600 real as well. These are setting on top of Plyer's set of materials set of them. 358 00:35:31,240 --> 00:35:36,040 We're built up during the the time and so how do they get there? 359 00:35:36,600 --> 00:35:40,920 So they had to get there from now. These were man-made objects these megalists. 360 00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:49,480 One of the possible lengths to Egypt before the ferros is that now the playa became 361 00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:58,200 climatically hyper-erid like it is today around 3,800 BC. It has not been lived at or used since. 362 00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:05,640 It has been assumed by historians that Egypt borrowed its complex society from Mesopotamia. 363 00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:14,120 However, it is now generally recognised that a process of social complexity is not diffused 364 00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:18,280 from one location to another, but rather develops locally. 365 00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:31,960 3400 BC is one of the pre-dynastic cultures building up on the Nile Valley just 100 kilometers 366 00:36:31,960 --> 00:36:37,400 east of Naphta Plyer. If that's the case then a lot of the great, 367 00:36:37,400 --> 00:36:44,440 dynastic Egyptian stuff we're all familiar with had some aspect of origin in the Naphta Plyer 368 00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:46,200 people's cultural development. 369 00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:56,200 Dr. Nicole Duac is an Egyptologist who lectures at the British Museum and at the Metropolitain Museum in New York. 370 00:36:57,160 --> 00:37:03,000 By strange coincidence she happened to be at Naphta Plyer on the same day as our team. 371 00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:10,120 From what I understand from her she also believes that this could be the source of 372 00:37:11,000 --> 00:37:18,040 Egyptian civilization. This is just amazing. I wanted to come here since the first publications came out. 373 00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:23,480 What are the other mediums in the land? The coincidence is for me, 374 00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:28,600 or astonishing. I mean last year the same people we went to Guelfkeber and the 375 00:37:28,600 --> 00:37:35,320 way-not we spent two days roaming around Carcourtal and looking at the graffiti and 376 00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:40,920 you know all the bovids and the Catlund and the people moving around with their animals and it's 377 00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:46,440 the same dates as here. These people had what today we've got a calendar. 378 00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:54,120 They used the position of the sun to mark the specific days of the year and the main 379 00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:58,440 stations of the year of course are the summer sources, the winter sources and the two 380 00:37:58,440 --> 00:38:03,240 egg-enoculars. No doubts they tracked the sun through the year and therefore they had a calendar. 381 00:38:05,080 --> 00:38:11,400 This structure may not appear significant above ground, looking beneath the surface reveals an 382 00:38:11,640 --> 00:38:15,000 anicmat. These complex structures are the most 383 00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:20,200 enigmatic and remaining aspects of map to pie. When they activated the central one, 384 00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:26,680 they'll just one underneath the surface down in the play of sediments. The play of sediments 385 00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:31,560 about 10 feet deep. They found this megalithic sculpture. Some people call it the cow stone. 386 00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:38,680 It has perhaps a vaguely resemblance to a cow, but it also seems maybe to have an astronomical 387 00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:42,840 meaning because it's in this astronomical complex and then underneath the scope of the stone 388 00:38:42,840 --> 00:38:49,080 and the bedrock underneath all the sediments that were laid down earlier. They found another sculpture. 389 00:38:49,080 --> 00:38:52,680 It's sculpted out of the living bedrock and sort of like this thinks it's sculpted out of the bedrock. 390 00:38:52,680 --> 00:38:57,800 The bedrock sculpture was carved and sediment filled it in over thousands of years. 391 00:38:58,920 --> 00:39:04,440 Then the cow stone was carved and placed there and then sediment filled it in again. 392 00:39:04,600 --> 00:39:13,400 We are looking at three sub-surface layers of sediment. This is a clue to the extreme age of 393 00:39:13,400 --> 00:39:15,400 map to play. 394 00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:28,840 What makes all this far more exciting is that they also line to stars. That's a totally different ball game here 395 00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:35,160 because a line to stars means that they track the seasons. The climatic conditions were very 396 00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:40,920 important that there was beginning among the suns and for the stars would be the signal to them. 397 00:39:41,480 --> 00:39:47,000 That the suns had started. They would start by grading here and they would arrive here 398 00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:52,200 when the water and the suns were in full and filled the legs. It was essential that they get here 399 00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:57,000 when the legs have water. It would have been a fatal mistake and they come here 400 00:39:57,400 --> 00:40:04,120 20 or 30 days before the event. From the center of complex, 38-3 series of lines 401 00:40:06,120 --> 00:40:15,000 east and a series of lines north. According to Wendorf and the checkups by 402 00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:22,680 Brophy, we've got the elements to the rising of certain stars here. 403 00:40:23,640 --> 00:40:30,920 A double alignment of blocks, 250 meters long, points to the brightest stars in the belt of a 404 00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:39,800 lion. The second line points to the rising position of Sirius. Another long line of stones 405 00:40:39,800 --> 00:40:46,920 aligns to the brightest star of the big dipper, which later Egyptians represented as a calthi or 406 00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:54,200 land. The stelle faced the circumpolar region of the heavens, which the pyramid text 407 00:40:54,760 --> 00:40:57,720 described as a place where the stars never die. 408 00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:09,800 They've got Orion's belt and seals. What's interesting is that they seem to be tracking them. 409 00:41:10,680 --> 00:41:14,440 Not just the line in two but they seem to be tracking them over the movement or the long 410 00:41:14,600 --> 00:41:19,720 period of time. So they knew the stars moved and they knew that the sun moved the same 411 00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:25,720 every year and an annual cycle. Maybe the whole Sirimony complex has something to do with 412 00:41:25,720 --> 00:41:31,960 the Gemini transition to the Age of Taurus. The constellation of Taurus is represented by a bull. 413 00:41:33,240 --> 00:41:40,040 If we are talking about the transition to the Age of Taurus, was the symbolism of cows and ancient 414 00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:44,600 connected to the nomadic cattle cults prevalent in the area. 415 00:41:45,400 --> 00:41:53,080 So as astronomy is telling us that there's a link. Now we need the tripologist to find it. 416 00:41:53,080 --> 00:41:58,600 The problem is that most of these disciplines are so entrenched in their own little world. 417 00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:04,360 It's very difficult to move people one side of the oddbar. I don't know how it is in the United States, 418 00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:10,920 but in Britain. Everyone is in his own little world and people who deal with texts 419 00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:14,600 to him talk to people who deal with sites in the same disagree. 420 00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:24,600 Did you come in? All the obvious. I think it is. So there are, there are connections for the 421 00:42:24,600 --> 00:42:29,960 she goes there and they're very very important connections because there are no other answers 422 00:42:29,960 --> 00:42:36,280 for the moment anyway. And this is as good as any. Yeah. Better.