[Music] welcome to history for granite join me to explore ancient Egypt Please Subscribe and together we'll uncover Secrets From the Past written in stone the Old Kingdom pyramids of Egypt are one of the strangest topics to research in the modern day on one hand there is a great wealth of physical data that can be observed and collected on the other hand the scientific documentation is wildly inconsistent and incomplete if you're wondering why some of the oldest and most famous man-made structures remain difficult to scrutinize I don't have a good answer for you it's a question
I ask myself every single day that's not to say good work hasn't been done flenders Petrie's documentation in the late 19th century is of the highest standard and essential for many types of research but we are in the 21st century now and technology has advanced far beyond the steel tape Petri used to record much of his data pyramid measurements are useful but there is so much more we need to see evidence remains hidden in the dark it may have faded to the naked eye but there are Clues on the stones that science might reveal to
bring new insights in this video we're going to discuss some recent surveys of the pyramids and confront the problems with them I'm also going to show you a never-before seen clue in the grand Gallery proving the ancient past is Within Reach if there is a will to go looking for it when reading accounts of explorers at the pyramids centuries ago you really develop a respect for how difficult the work was to carry out these men were risking their lives to study them and enduring the harsh desert with no safety net should something go wrong while
a few of these early explorers were hunting for Fame and Fortune the best documentation comes from Men Who expected no great reward for their painstaking efforts it was scientific curiosity that drove these men for it was obvious Treasures were long gone and knowledge of the past was all that could be acquired but the pyramids are huge and the ravages of time obscure many details that could easily go unnoticed Howard Vice observes this in 1837 writing quote few Travelers have had either Leisure or opportunity to examine them minutely for the hostility of the Arabs appears to
have always been formidable and considerable labor and time were necessary to obtain Ain any satisfactory results end quote Vice was a rare example of a researcher with ample resources but most others needed to constantly improvise astronomer Charles piai Smith even designed and built his own camera for taking some of the earliest photographs of the pyramids in 1865 photographs from him and others in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are of amense importance because of the subsequent damage that has occurred since they were taken the pyramids are pitch black inside and thus photographing their Interiors
was even more of a challenge with early film photography notably the only surviving images from a century ago are from independent explorers and not institutional egyptology photographs are ideal because they reveal details people may have overlooked in their day but the precious photos are few and far between and thus written documentation Remains the primary resource for research before the mid 20th century there is however a long and unfortunate history of researchers in egyptology never formally publishing their findings whether it's procrastination Unexpected death or simply lacking an incentive to publish it's a tradition that goes back
centuries flenders Petri understood the great cost of this habit writing quote it is a golden principle to let each year see the publication of the year's work in any research but the writer places himself thus at the disadvantage of showing how his information may have been defective or his views requiring change as year after year goes on such a course however is the honest and most useful as half a loaf is better than no bread end quote egyptologist Margaret drower elaborates on this point writing quote too many excavators sit for years on their material hoping
to cross every te and elucidate every puzzle before they commit themselves to print while the memory of their fieldwork Fades costs of production rise and the world waits for the information only they can provide end quote sometimes this failure to publish means the information is lost forever this happened at jedr Pyramid which we may never truly understand because of it however before the 21st century if work was written down and never published it could sometimes be recovered at a later time Nathaniel Davidson was the first person to scientifically record the height of each course on
the Great Pyramid in 1765 and he even drew a diagram of the summit which has changed changed in the past centuries Davidson never published any of his research but his diary still exist and thus I can show his diagram of the summit this drawing has never been reproduced in any egyptology publication that's the great advantage of data recorded in Inc and film it can survive even if its creators do not distribute it and that's really all the old documentation is stacks of paper bound into books and Diaries made available at a reasonable price the modern
data is different it's private and it's made of electronic information stored in proprietary formats in computers there's no reason to believe this data Will Survive even a few decades if it's not widely distributed let alone a few centuries such as Davidson's journals buried in the special collections at Stanford University I'm speaking in particular of the data collected by laser scanning drone photogrammetry and other similar Technologies so why is this data being collected if it's not being made available for scientific research the reason is that the companies with the access and funding to carry out such
studies aren't doing it as a scientific Endeavor their purpose is to profit from selling TV documentaries social media advertising campaigns and other related business ventures in 2019 there was a six-part cable TV documentary series called pyramids solving the mystery in this series drone photogrammetry is constantly hailed as the ultimate breakthrough for studying The Monuments if you're wondering why that is I'll let egyptologist Mark laner explain in this quote from the show quote I would encourage all of you do not wait go out today and buy the photog gretry end quote subtle isn't it for all
the flak YouTube gets at least the creators here must disclose when the words they speak are bought and paid for traditional media has no such ethical constraints back to Mark layer's sales pitch I personally am an outlier in that there's nothing I'd rather do than go out today and buy the photog gretry but I can't do this because it's not for sale and it never was the business strategy of selling photogrammetry was abandoned by The Producers probably because there is no market for such a product it's the same reason that people wait in long lines
to see the Mona Lisa in person yet nobody hangs a perfectly affordable reproduction in their home the only people interested in such data are researchers like me but we can never gain access if it's left to rot on private servers and let's be very clear the data will quickly become useless and forgotten as technology evolves beyond the systems used to process and store it ironically the sales pitch from these companies capturing the imagery is that they are preserving the past anyone with a basic understanding of digital history knows that computer data ages quickly costs money
to maintain and is likely to disappear forever if it's not widely distributed in other words the message of preservation is either naive or simply marketing I'm sure producers of related TV shows would argue that the show itself is the documentation and that the experts who evaluated the data at the time give the relevant analysis but that's simply not how proper research is done a few paid for experts giving their opinions at One Moment In Time is nearly worthless if the data can't be independently evaluated in the future then it's not even approaching the scientific method
here's an example of how unreliable the results are from these TV show produced studies two documentaries made only 5 years apart used high-tech scanning equipment to measure parameters of the bent pyramid both studies were interested in determining if the bent pyramid's unique shape was the result of construction problems or if it was instead an intentional design here is the conclusion reached by the show using photogrammetry analysis quote facing the risk of collapse due to deep cracks the builders decide to be practical they take an unusual and important decision despite their idea of building a triangular
pyramid they changed their plans end quote now compare this to the conclusion reached by the show using laser scanning the laser scan data has convinced Steve that the top of the bent pyramid so long thought to be a hasty rescue mission is actually a deliberate feature the exact opposite conclusion is reached by different experts using different Technologies so who are we to believe the answer of course is neither without the ability to look at the data there is no reason to assume either production is accurate in its assessments this is frustrating because all the effort
to capture this data is wasted consequently the TV show science on the pyramids isn't science at all it's merely entertainment it's easy to laugh at shows like Ancient Aliens for being Fantastical speculations but shows with real egyptologists will make ridicul ulous assertions as well here is egyptologist Meredith brand commenting on the Red Pyramid looking around all of the stones are the same color and they look really similar except for over here on this wall there's a stone that's darker than the stones around it could there be another chamber behind it I wonder if sn's mummy
is still in the Red Pyramid ancient astronaut theorists say yes or sorry wrong show I have no problem with entertainment or even speculations with mediocre evidence to support them but these Productions claim to be preserving cultural heritage which is simply not true if nothing is shared then nothing is preserved and these Productions are just a fancier version of the street vendors you find lurking about ancient Egyption sites there is also a huge opportunity cost with for-profit infotainment organizations conducting archaeological research in recent years the world scan project was granted access to document the well shaft
of the Great pyramid a feature of the monument which has never been properly recorded they made it clear to me via email that they have no intention of publishing their data when a different organization later requested access to the well shaft Egypt's Ministry denied them on the basis that the world scan project had recently gone inside the situation is truly ridiculous I should contrast this bad behavior with the work done at real academic organizations most notably Harvard University under the direction of Peter dur manuelian his egyptology Department made a huge effort to publish many documents
and photos on their website and I encourage you to visit there's also a related virtual 3D tour inside the Great Pyramid put together by Educators and viewable for free manuelian has even made hundreds of 3D Egyptian artifact scans available on his personal sketch Fab account he does this because that's what real researchers do they publish as much as they can and make it as widely accessible as possible I can't for the life of me imagine flender Petri saying no you can't see the data yet that is the response given by these people claiming Noble motives
for their high-tech research in my videos I always try to go above and beyond to show the Visual Evidence directly it's a huge effort to hunt down rare images so everyone can see for themselves what is real and what is speculation on this channel I have tried to push the research of pyramids forward but there is so much more that can be done done counterintuitively some of the best evidence in the pyramids is rapidly disappearing in the modern day every year that goes by without scientific study reduces the chances of answering Mysteries that may be
solvable there is one mystery that is often on my mind and I know everyone will concur about its importance the grand gallery of the Great Pyramid a true Masterpiece of the Old Kingdom one of the most iconic constructions in all of ancient Egypt the Great Ros design was made to impress anyone passing through but what else might have been its function it's full of slots grooves and niches in addition to scratching and staining patterns that indicate repetitive movement something very interesting was going on in the grand Gallery but what might that be many interpretations have
been conjured but all these ideas suffer from a lack of data there isn't even a source for the layout of the stones in the grand gallery in 1990 zahi hawas republished Petrie's book the pyramids and temples of Giza in this version hawas wrote an addendum describing the work done at that time on the grand Gallery it says that the condition of all the blocks was recorded with drawings and photographs but 34 years later these documents have not been published there's lots of speculation one can make about the grand Gallery but without documentation that's all we
are left with speculation unable to examine the stones as they exist we are left with a fa simile a model a loose and generic representation of reality this is the imaginary version of the pyramid I grew up with as a child there were paintings drawings and descriptions of the grand Gallery but not the real thing the real grand Gallery was still hiding in the dark its Secrets lost to the naked eye in the summer of 1909 John and Morton Edgar took some of the earliest photographs inside the Great Pyramid some of these images preserved a
clue about what the grand Gallery was used for several pictures were taken at the entrance to the passage leading to the Queen's chamber at the gallery floor in each of these images red ochre reference lines can be seen on the lentil above the passage the two most prominent lines are easily spotted on the western side running straight and vertical these marks are found in other pyramids as well and though they have survived 4 and 1 half thousand years modern tourism is causing them to rapidly disappear the single carou of pharaoh snefru inside the bent pyramid
looked to have completely faded in a modern-day photograph and it was only uncovered 70 years ago but upon a closer firsthand inspection the carou can still be detected if one carefully examines the block where it was inscribed thanks to NXT for sharing this clip a great example of independent research this magical effect of seeing the past reemerge is what I want for all the pyramids and I will now prove that this type of close inspection is warranted the Edgar brothers photos are often found in poor quality because only the first edition of their 1910 book
was printed from the original plates unsatisfied with the copies available online I purchased an original edition of their book and scanned every image myself at the highest quality that could be accomplished this was a big leaping quality but still I wanted more amazingly Morton Edgar sold original film transparencies of his photographs which he called Lantern slides and a friend of the channel helped me obtain scans of some of those they have a higher dynamic range and resolution than can be found in the printed book it was in these Lantern slides at the bottom of the
grand gallery that I could finally confirm a suspicion about what might have been occurring inside the space the pair of red ochre lines on the western side of the lentil are clear as day but another pair closer to the center of the block can now be detected we have a pattern and it's a pattern that is found in only one place within the Great Pyramid a Palm's width between a set of parallel lines and two Palms between each pair this is very close to the arrangement of rope holes and grooves found in the port kis
antichamber at the top of the grand Gallery the lentil here is 15 cm narrower than the port colis lentil and thus the dimensions are slightly squeezed but it's a very close match now we are faced with a fascinating question why would the Builders of the Great Pyramid need a reference lines for ropes similar to the port cus at the bottom of the grand Gallery there are many intriguing possibilities and one idea is that the ropes from the port Kus were attached to a mechanism in the grand gallery that would more easily facilitate its opening and
closing in my video on the port cus I estimated 30 men could create the force necessary to pull it open in the grand Gallery but perhaps a more efficient solution was devised there was a lot of repetitive motion in the floor of the grand gallery and the port cus gives us a strong reason for such An Occurrence but what really happened in the grand Gallery I can't solve for you not yet not without real data real science and real Publications and with every year that goes by more clues are lost to the ravages of time
first they slip out of sight to the naked eye and eventually beyond the reach of high-tech investigations I get a lot of comments that we can never really know what happened at the pyramids because so much time has passed but I don't believe that to be true even these fragile ochre markings survived until the 20th century and perhaps forensic Imaging can see them where our own eyes cannot they are but one example of the rapidly disappearing evidence in the pyramids that needs to be documented and let's be very clear on this point many people and
organizations that have gathered data do not publish it out of self-interest and our history suffers for it we are left with not the pyramid as it once existed but a vague fact simile in which the truth of the past can no longer be detected while many great ideas on the pyramids can be put forth the only satisfying part is when the physical evidence can be seen that's the only way to know if you're getting closer to the truth even the smallest detail can have been consequences a thin line of plaster an anomalous cut in a
stone and even ochre reference lines long forgotten can reshape our understanding of the past it's time for egyptology to start taking the pyramids seriously again and to follow Petrie's advice and quickly publish the data so at the least we have something rather than as he says no loaf of bread at all thanks to everyone who watched this video to the end please subscribe to the channel to see more of this content give a like or comment as you see fit and above all remember to ask your friends if they take their history for granted [Music]
