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3,500 years ago,
a glorious era dawned in ancient Egypt called the New Kingdom.
With wealth pouring in from her conquests abroad,
Egypt's builders and craftsmen achieved perfection in stone and gold.
A line of pharaohs with memorable names ruled the land:
Tutankhamun,
Thutmoses,
Amen-Hotep,
and most illustrious of all,
Ramses the Great.
The pharaohs believed themselves to be God-Kings,
and their greatest fear was to lose their place in the afterlife.
In the quest for eternal life,
the pharaoh had to insure the preservation of both his body and his name.
The fear of being forgotten was so strong,
that the pharaohs spent much of their lives
creating memorials to themselves in stone.
The most spectacular of these monuments were at Thebes,
the heart of the New Kingdom.
A thousand years earlier,
the desire for immortality had led to the construction of the pyramids.
But these mountains of stone were vulnerable to grave robbers.
So the pharaohs of the New Kingdom
hid their tombs in the isolated Valley of the Kings,
below a pyramid-shaped hill.
The passion for building on a gigantic scale
was now directed to the creation of magnificent temples.
The pyramid shape was not abandoned,
just reduced in size
and carved on top of a tall shaft of granite:
the obelisk.
These spires of stone represented rays of light.
The pharaohs placed pairs of obelisks
at the temple gate in praise of the sun god.
Obelisks of a 100 feet
were formed from a single piece of granite,
one of the hardest stones to work.
The base of the obelisk balances on top of a pedestal stone,
supported by nothing more than its own weight.
How the ancient Egyptians
created these mighty obelisks weighing 400 tons
is a question that has mystified archaeologists for years.
Cecil B. de Mille tackled the problem in his 1959 epic, "The Ten Commandments."
"Look at that! It's got to be, though!"
Although he puts on an impressive spectacle,
it's not clear how his several-hundred-ton obelisk
bounces so obediently into position
without breaking.
To explore the reality of obelisk raising,
NOVA assembled a team with a variety of talents:
Egyptologist, Mark Lehner...
stonemason, Roger Hopkins...
ancient technology buff, Martin Isler...
and Aly el Gasab,
Egypt's foremost specialist in the moving of heavy statues.
Their plan is to test out theories
of how ancient obelisks were made
by raising one themselves.
There was a cut-away there,
and there was no sand where it should... There was no box.
It couldn't contain any sand. That obelisk went back and forth —
The team has come to Aswan,
the granite capital of Egypt.
Like the obelisk builders of old,
Roger and Mark's first task is to find a decent piece of granite —
one without cracks or fissures.
It looks like we finally found a good solid piece here, Mark.
Well, it looks like a nice piece.
Look at this down here, Mark. We've got...
a natural fissure.
On this end we've got it free
and the top looks fairly flat,
and we've got a good,
square, perpendicular, solid face of stone here.
I didn't really bother...
putting it on when we started,
it's on that point there,
and then...
yep...
The next step is to sketch in an outline of the obelisk,
and then separate it from the living rock.
At a nearby quarry,
the ancient stone cutters have left impressive evidence of how this was done.
The Unfinished Obelisk is a great block of granite
still lying on its bed in the quarry
slanted from top to bottom
and the entire obelisk had been defined by a ...
by a trench
that ran around its perimeter.
Granite is an extremely hard rock.
The copper and bronze tools used by the ancient Egyptians
were too soft to carve it,
and iron tools were not yet available.
So how did the ancient quarrymen work the granite?
This is the basic tool they used to separate the obelisks.
It's made out of a stone called dolerite
that's harder and denser even than granite.
These were found all over the obelisk site when it was first excavated,
and even today there are hundreds of them in the quarries of granite at Aswan.
They simply took this in two hands
and pounded the stone away,
hour after hour,
day after day. (Mark Lehner) We work to our right.
We pound,
we pound,
we work the granite down.
Lift!
And we turn around;
one foot in either depression
and we work to our right...
(Chanting): hela houpa, hela houpa...
With temperatures in excess of 120 degrees,
it must have been a hellish experience.
Ancient records tell us
that up to 10 per cent of the quarry workers died.
After years of soul destroying work,
this obelisk had to be abandoned,
when cracks appeared in the giant shaft,
making it impossible to separate in one piece.
Because it was a failure,
the pharaoh who commissioned this obelisk remains a total mystery.
But whatever pharaoh it was,
he was attempting to make a quantum leap in obelisks.
This Unfinished Obelisk would've weighed something around 1160 tons.
The next largest one that we know is only 440 tons.
But this pharaoh was clearly asking more of nature
than nature could deliver.
Not far from the Unfinished Obelisk,
some local stonemasons try out the ancient pounders
on the new obelisk that Roger is carving.
Hey, Roger, how's it going?
Well, welcome to the really unfinished obelisk.
We're just starting here.
Work on the trench that will define the obelisk began four hours ago,
and they have hardly made a dent.
...and see how much it really helps out.
Why don't you jump up here and take a look at it.
Roger has built a small fire
to see if he can speed up the process. Man, it's hot when you get close to it.
I've been sitting right next to this thing.
So this really, uh, does this really accelerate the work all that much?
...ah, Sa'id...
...These are pieces that you've just popped off.
Yes.
Wow, that's a ...
Remember how long it took to just pound a little square?
Yeah, that's 2 mm, that's like 2-3 hours work.
Absolutely.
We're in some pretty hard granite, because we've already gone over this once before.
(Well...) ...we're just knocking the really loose stuff off.
But Mark has another idea.
He has noticed that the surface of the Unfinished Obelisk has rows of indentations on it.
They have given him a clue
as to how the massive task of pounding was made more manageable.
You know, one thought I had is
when everybody's pounding like this, and it's so ill-defined,
it looks hopeless, it looks infinite.
At the Unfinished Obelisk you saw all those working patches,
and they must have defined them very carefully
so that each guy knew exactly what he had to do, I mean,
wouldn't it be better if you drew a line here like this,
and if that's all they had to worry about.
And, if one guy sitting here had to worry about that much.
That was his patch right there.
Don't you think they would get at it?
Nahh, I think...
You know, they know where they're going.
The work goes on with precious little to show.
(So, Roger,) how's it going?
Well, slowly, very slowly.
I can see your trench.
I see you have these nice little working patches.
So how many days is this, Roger?
Seven days of pounding here.
Where are you gonna go from here now?
You gonna pound... are you gonna be here for a couple years, uh,
putting this trench down, or are you gonna speed it up a little bit?
I hope to speed it up using more modern techniques.
It's clear that using ancient techniques,
it will take Roger months to carve even a small, nine foot obelisk.
A short cut is needed,
and the owner of an Aswan granite quarry comes to the rescue.
Mr. Hamada Rashwan generously offers to supply Roger
with a 40 foot long obelisk, weighing 40 tons.
Just half as tall as a full-size obelisk,
raising it will still be a formidable task.
Even with modern equipment,
it's been tricky to move the obelisk out of the quarry without breaking.
33 centuries earlier,
the young Ramses the Great was also supervising the production of granite monuments.
He ordered numerous obelisks and statues,
including this thousand-ton likeness of himself,
now toppled by an earthquake.
Ramses was the New Kingdom's greatest builder.
And nowhere is his larger-than-life style
better exhibited than at Abu Simbel,
where he transformed two sandstone cliffs into temples
fronted by gigantic images of himself.
Here he shows himself four times
as seated statues on a colossal scale,
merging with the gods.
The whole temple facade seems to be saying
to all who come from the south
that as you enter the Nile corridor from this point on
you're entering Egypt as a temple,
indeed, you're entering, Ramses is saying, my household,
which I rule as a God.
Only one of Ramses' obelisks is still standing in Egypt,
at the Temple of Luxor.
The pharaoh ordered his obelisks covered in deeply inscribed hieroglyphs
praising him as, "a ruler great in wrath, so every land trembles before him."
One of the great mysteries
is how the ancient Egyptians carved these symbols without hard metal tools.
First they would have to polish and smooth the granite.
You know, I think they probably could've used different stones.
You could've started off with the diorite and the real coarse sand,
and then gone to a sandstone,
which is finer,
and ended up with a limestone.
Let's wash it off and see how it looks.
Okey.
Stop.
That's getting pretty smooth, Roger.
It looks good, Roger.
By God.
One of the real vexing questions, Roger, is after you've polished it down,
how do you inscribe these hieroglyphs with such nice detail?
These are inscribed rather deeply — about almost an inch or so.
That's a good question.
The detail on these is so fine and so crisp,
even after such a long period of time.
Well, you've worked granite for many years
Yeah. I've never... ...and you've used steel tools...
Even with modern tools and,
you know, diamond wheels and all that, we would have,
you know, we would have a tough time
getting it to this kind of perfection.
My idea is,
you can begin to rough out big hieroglyphs like this with pounders.
What you see here, I've done in only one hour.
I've roughed out the hieroglyph using a larger dolerite pounder stone,
and then I've come in with smaller fragments of dolerite to tap,
to begin to tap out the nice edges and the finer detail.
One tantalizing bit of evidence -
this is the way the ancient Egyptians did it -
is a rare scene in an Egyptian tomb
where craftsmen are putting the final touches on a granite statue.
They seem to be sanding in the fine detail like the eyebrows and the eyelids
with pieces of quartzite and sandstone such as we know that they had.
They also seem to be tapping out smaller detail with hammerstones
even using stones almost like a chisel
with another stone as a kind of tapper
to tap in the very finest elements in this hard granite statue.
I'm convinced that with their skill and their rapport with the stone
and a great deal of time and patience,
that this is the way they carved the fine details
like the hieroglyphs on the obelisk.
Although Ramses the Great would have regarded the 40-ton NOVA obelisk as relatively small,
it's nevertheless beginning to get Roger and company rattled.
So, while Mr. Hamada struggles to load it on the sled,
Martin Isler decides to get in some much needed practice
with a much smaller, two-ton model. Listen,
don't do that.
It's gonna tip the sled up if you do that.
Today is the first time Martin and Aly el Gasab are on the job together,
and things are a little tense.
Put something underneath it, and then lay it down!
Tell him to put something.
... you're gonna tip the sled right up and bust the end.
Aly's first job is to teach the men how to pull the obelisk over land.
Yeah, he's going to tie it on.
I don't know exactly how he's going to do it.
He's got it in his mind.
I think we're in agreement, here.
Aly's not very happy with his greenhorn crew.
I have never seen the like of this! Martin, you look flabbergasted!
I have never seen the like of this, and I'm really quite upset
because these guys are either going to bust the obelisk or they're going to get hurt.
(Chanting in Arabic)
I don't think they've ever done this before in their lives.
Well, let's see how they do in a couple more "Hela houps".
In ancient times, the obelisk builders had a short haul over land
and then a much longer voyage to the great temple complexes down river.
It was the Nile that made Egyptian civilization possible,
as an artery that linked the entire length of the country.
And it was the Nile that made it possible
for the ancient Egyptians to quarry colossal statues and giant obelisks.
It would have been much more difficult if they had had to transport this by land.
But here at Aswan, the quarries are all located within close proximity to the Nile,
so that they could be slipped down to the river,
loaded on a barge
and transported for the difficult journey to Luxor,
where the giant temples to Amun Ra are located,
or even further, all the way to Tanis, as far as 700 miles to the North.
But first, you had to solve the very tricky problem of loading the boat.
Okay, so let's imagine that this is a 100 foot obelisk, weighing 440 tons
and this is our barge. How do we load it up, Cheryl?
Cheryl Haldane, a nautical archaeologist,
has a theory how heavy obelisks were loaded onto ancient Egyptian boats.
(If we) bring the boat in,
and pretty much packing it in place with earth.
If you're down on river level here,
you've got the water coming in underneath it.
It's going to be squishier than hell.
You know, we're talking about 400 tons
in a boat that's virtually laying in mud.
But your boat is a massive construction in its own right -
The freight barge that was built to carry the obelisks
would've carried a modern 747 loaded with forty elephants.
What I'm curious is when you have...
I don't know how many guys, 100 guys,
pulling on this 440 ton obelisk
bringing it down to the barge,
so they walk onto the barge, some of them, to pull it up there...
Where do they do from there?
Well, I think that we can imagine them going out into the river, some of them.
Man, I used to surf a lot and it's hard enough walking in to shore,
but pulling a line out there, forget it.
What about this mushiness? Is that really a problem?
Well, the reality in ancient Egypt,
every time it flooded it inundated the Nile banks with silt.
There would've been a lot muddier river bed back then than there is now.
But not after the dry season, not at the end of the dry season.
Well, what happens anyway then? You take away the... uh...
you take away the coffer dam or the packing in front.
Yeah, when the obelisk is secured down,
then the earth around it can be removed.
And...
it would be removed...
perhaps, in this way from the back towards the front.
So that when the water comes in,
the boat can begin to float.
And it would've taken a lot of people,
and they would've been working very hard, but...
(Lehner:) Well, moving earth like that. ... moving the earth was one of the ...
That's no problem for them. (Haldane:) Yes.
Here comes the water.
And now you're stuck on the sand.
Now I'm stuck on the sand, because I haven't finished excavating!
You know, you're missing a great aspect of hydraulics and navi...
you know, in navigation by... uh,
landlocking your boat and all that.
There's no mechanical advantage.
I think when you remove the dam,
if the boat had been a little lower...
No, Cheryl, you would've seen ...
in modern times do they ever load a boat in drydock?
Never.
I rest my case.
Well, Roger, we'll have to see what your method does.
Probably what they did -
they built two stone piers.
One here,
one here.
And they had a nice channel that came in between them.
These were permanent structures.
They had a nice flat — now this is —
try to imagine this as a nice, flat, even surface on which to pull the sled down.
They would've gotten it down to here
probably on rollers.
Now, I'm just gonna use two beams but they probably could've used several.
They could've slid right over...
into the middle.
Next,
your boat comes in,
and, of course, see, it's not low enough.
All you do is you add a little ballast to it, nice and evenly.
Now that Roger has to go public with his theory,
problems with the model barge begin to handicap his demonstration.
(Once we start) to take ballast off —
boy, this thing is leaking like a son of a gun.
Well, this is exactly the kind of problem you would have with an ancient Egyptian boat
because they weren't built to have loads down in the hull.
Freight boats were built to carry their weights on the deck.
The ballast would come out,
and then it would float this,
they would — of course, they would position it
and then it would float out,
without the aid of all this water.
And once you got out there,
it would probably sink,
like that.
Understanding how the ancient Egyptians transported their huge obelisks is difficult.
Their technique for building boats was unique
and is now a long-forgotten art.
No remains of an obelisk barge have been found.
The only evidence we have
was left by the pharaoh, Queen Hatshepsut.
On her magnificent mortuary temple at Deir el Bahri,
there is a picture of a boat carrying a pair of obelisks on deck...
perhaps to the great temple at Karnak.
Hatshepsut's reign was a period of great architectural and artistic flowering.
Only the third woman to rule as queen,
she also ruled as king,
often appearing in portraits with a pharaonic beard.
She co-ruled with her stepson, Thutmosis the Third,
but after she died,
he systematically hacked out all references to her,
even hiding her obelisk behind a sandstone wall
that just left the gold-plated tip exposed.
On the base of her obelisk,
an inscription proudly states
that it was built in the remarkably short time of seven months.
Back at the quarry,
the work is not up to Queen Hatshepsut's standards.
Shaping the 40-foot obelisk is taking much longer than anticipated,
even with modern tools.
This means that Roger will only have a few days to raise the obelisk.
And as yet,
there is no consensus among the experts about how to do it.
On the opposite bank of the Nile,
Martin Isler is about to test out his method on the little nine foot model.
You have to do it exactly like Martin says.
Although he has no formal training in archaeology,
Martin has developed a passion for ancient technology.
Martin and Aly have bonded nicely.
In preparation for raising the obelisk,
Martin has carved a groove on the top of the base stone.
He's convinced that this notch is an essential component of obelisk engineering.
But does every ancient pedestal stone have a groove?
To find out, Mark and Roger travel to Tanis,
a major city during the final years of the ancient Egyptian civilization.
Filled with monuments recycled from earlier dynasties,
Tanis is an obelisk graveyard.
There are 23 broken obelisks at this site.
This is another one of these Ramses obelisks,
toppled over.
This looks like a pretty good example of a turning groove to me.
It's, uh,
about a foot wide, which is 30 cm and...
but a little more than half again as deep.
Well, I don't see, I can't see how this is just a symbolic feature.
I mean, this has gotta be integral to raising an obelisk.
Somehow this was necessary to have this groove in here.
Everywhere they look,
there are turning grooves.
It seems that Martin is on to something.
(Aly's men:) Hey la hoop!
Hey la hoop!
As Aly's men lever up the obelisk,
the bottom edge remains engaged in the notch.
Without the turning groove to pivot on,
the butt of the obelisk would slide off the pedestal stone.
Martin believes that levering
was the principle technique used by the ancient Egyptians.
To support the rising obelisk,
stone and earth are packed beneath it.
I mean as you lever the obelisk up,
you only get just a little, an inch or so.
You could lever anything up.
If the lever is long enough.
But what if it was a 400 ton obelisk?
Or a 300 ton obelisk? (Isler:) Then you'd be much more careful.
But you're getting your lever underneath
and you're getting about what? A couple inches of lift with each "Haya Hopa"
gives you a few inches of lift... Whatever, but each little few inches of lift adds up.
When the obelisk reaches a 45 degree angle,
Aly calls a halt to the levering.
The rest of the work will be done by the pulling team.
The two-ton needle rises with remarkable ease,
but will it be so simple with Roger's 40-ton obelisk?
Thank yo uvery much.
Well, it was a very small piece of stone.
I've put stuff up that size by myself.
So, I did too!
I know!
But you know, what I...
you know the reservation I have,
when you're dealing with a 300 or a 400 ton...
How are you gonna space out your levers?
How many levers are you going to use?
What size levers?
I mean, are you gonna be able to...
How many men can you get in a crowded area like that?
But this is something you learn by experience, don't you?
I mean, you'll start perhaps with a two tonner,
as we did here.
Graduate to a ten tonner,
learn from that.
Go to a twenty tonner...
Despite Martin's success,
Roger doesn't want to use levers to raise his obelisk.
Back at the quarry,
he has only four days to get the obelisk up.
A lot of dirt is being moved around.
But no one seems to know exactly what Roger has in mind.
To clear the air,
Roger has been forced to build a model
to demonstrate his method to quarry owner, Mr. Hamada.
...a lot of weight to pull.
We have our...
our ramp coming up...
onto a more level area.
And as the sled comes along...
The pedestal lies at the bottom of a large pit
which will be filled with sand.
The obelisk is then dragged over the pit.
...till it reaches on this, along this ridge here,
a pivot point with the center of gravity
and it'll come down slowly...
As the sand is removed,
the butt of the obelisk should slowly descent to the pedestal stone.
At least that's the theory.
When do you start lowering the sand?
When do you start letting the sand out?
Once we get this in place.
I've calculated the center of gravity is approximately here on the obelisk.
Alright, now let it come out...
fairly slowly, fairly slowly.
Now, we're gonna see that thing tipping?
I think it is better to go more fast.
Do you think it's better to go fast? Yes, yes.
Because to not give a chance...
for the sudden force to make the obelisk go right or left.
So, a regular, very steady motion. Yes, yes.
Alright, so we're kind of ...
The people, the people in this case stay in here
and they push from this side.
Look, look, look... Right.
So you have men in there pushing... No, on this side...
Mr. Hamada is worried that the men removing sand from the bottom of the pit
may be injured by the descending obelisk.
Cause Roger has one aim:
to fix his obelisk with a good position,
with a good job. Yes, Roger can be very single-minded.
I understand, Hamada.
I have experience with this man.
I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah...
I have no value of human life.
But I ...
for me, I hope to fix the obelisk with a good position.
But number... this is number two.
Number one for me: the safety of our people.
And I think the ancient Egyptians
worked by the same method, working by the same method,
Don't you worry, Hamada. (Hamada:) because they keep their people...
I'm gonna be down in that pit.
I'm gonna be down in that pit, so it'll be safe.
Ready for it?
To put Mr. Hamada's fears to rest,
Roger has to prepare another demonstration of his method,
this time with the two-ton obelisk.
You're gonna fill this box up with clean sand?
Yeah, I gotta do a little housekeeping here.
You're gonna put the obelisk up here
and tip it over onto the sand, and then scoop the sand out these tunnels.
Right.
We're taking the sand out from behind it, so it has to fall back.
And actually, the sand that's piled up here is going to...
act as somewhat of a weight,
keeping it in place.
But then, it's gonna reach a point where we have to get in
and control its movement,
either forward or backward
or off to the side.
And as you take the sand out, the obelisk is going to flow down
and fit right down into that turning groove.
Exactly.
(Chanting in Arabic)
I think it's ridiculous.
It's...
it's...
just crazy to be ...
thinking of putting this monster
into a pit blindly,
and then expecting to find a a groove,
magically somehow, by pushing sand away from one side to the other.
I... I...
can't conceive of it happening,
and if it does... and of it...
it's still crazy! I...
It's impossible to me.
At the luck.
(Men:) in Arabic
Quais!
Alright! Very good.
Very good.
Come on.
You got that obelisk where you want it, Roger?
Yeah!
I mean, we're within...
an inch or two of dead on.
You've cocked your gun.
Right.
You're ready to shoot?
Don't get in my line of sight.
I'll try to stay out of it.
Okay!
Open!
With the mudbricks removed from the doors at the bottom of the sandpit,
there's no turning back.
They're all out.
They're all out?
Shwaya, shwaya.
Here comes the sand.
It can afford to come forward some.
We got about twenty centimeters for it to come forward.
Oh, good.
They're moving.
I think, don't you need more out of this side?
So it goes down and bends back this way.
I'm trying to get it to slide over this way.
After the promising start,
the sand,
filled with rocks and debris,
flows unevenly.
The descending obelisk is no longer on course to hit the turning groove.
We've got a problem with this channel not clearing itself.
Now, Roger, if this were a big one,
maybe a bad time to ask,
but...
(R. Hopkins: don't ask) you'd have room for men in there, right?
Huh?
If it were the full size, you'd have men inside there.
Yeah.
And they'd be volunteers, right, Roger?
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
I'm glad we're doing it.
I'd like to lay this to rest once and for all
and be done with the sand method.
Yeah, but do you think just one experiment is gonna be enough?
No, it's not enough.
But the whole concept is ridiculous.
I'm sorry, Roger... (Lehner: Ridiculous?!) ... nothing personal.
As time slips away,
Roger is just about ready to give up on the sandpit method.
A final attempt to remove sand from below the obelisk suddenly pays off.
When the dust settles,
there's a pleasant surprise for Roger.
I hate to tell you this, Mark,
but we're right over the turning groove.
You're right over the turning groove?
Right.
Roger hasn't scored a bullseye.
The obelisk is a bit off center,
but he hopes it can be lined up with the turning groove
when Aly and his men pull it upright.
Although Roger finally gets the obelisk up,
he hasn't won over any of his critics.
There's no way that they went down to that turning groove blind.
The turning groove tells the story
that the obelisk was carefully parked there,
before it was set up.
And they wouldn't have just gone down to it blind
by pouring sand out of a tunnel.
I though it was a fairly messy,
complicated operation.
I don't think that's how they erected the giant obelisks.
The next morning sees a flurry of activity at Mr. Hamada's quarry.
Unfortunately, none of it is helping Roger get the forty ton obelisk up.
Apparently, Mr. Hamada is expecting a visit from the Governor,
at which he plans to unveil his method for raising the obelisk.
The sand that is shut in undoes this rope ...
The Hamada method uses a massive block of stone as a counterweight.
..ancient Egyptian of course not use swap ...
When sand is released from below the block,
it descends,
pulling the obelisk up.
We design this method, and they come with other method, but I think this way is better.
I hope to success tomorrow...
Although Mr. Hamada's no-hands, self-raising model
appears to impress the Governor,
no one else believes that starting all over and constructing a massive counterweight
is a practical way to use the remaining two days.
Aly came to the project without any pet theories.
But he has now come up with a solution
that he believes could raise the obelisk
with just a few modifications to Roger's half-constructed sandpit.
It involves building a ramp down to the pedestal stone —
then gently lowering the obelisk on a sled restrained by three ropes.
Ensuring that the butt of the obelisk finds the turning groove is crucial.
Once the obelisk is in the groove,
it will be raised and stabilized by six teams of men
on ropes attached to the top of the shaft.
You're seeking the groove in the most...
I... I...
it's crazy!
Why can't it go down the guide walls?
If we put in Roger's guide walls... (Isler:) Guide walls or not guide walls,
it doesn't matter if you could walk it over to the groove and place it there.
There's all sorts of things that can be done.
Well, unfortunately, Martin, given our change in plan here,
given this dramatic change in plan,
and the tension of only two days left,
we have to deal with this big compartment that we've created,
which we were going to use for the sandbox,
but now we have a thirty degree ramp.
I wish you luck.
Do you think we're in for a hard time?
I think so. Yes.
The obelisk hasn't been moved
since it was positioned on the sled a couple of days ago.
The dead weight has begun to crush the rollers,
and it refuses to budge.
We're trying to make the stone move,
the obstinate, dumb stone hasn't budged an inch.
It's moving!
It's moving.
Aly has two hundred men on the ropes.
At forty tons,
this obelisk weighs less than a tenth of the biggest obelisks of ancient times.
They would require two thousand pullers or more.
In their enthusiasm to bring it to the top of the chute,
the pullers almost derail the obelisk.
Aly is not pleased.
But a quick nudge with a lever gets the obelisk back on track.
Finally, after seven hours of pulling,
the obelisk is poised at the top of the chute.
Tomorrow, it's do or die.
The next morning,
the last of the project,
there is an air of great anticipation among the pullers.
Will they be the first people in 3,000 years to raise an obelisk
using the tools of their ancient ancestors?
Well, we're right here at the pivot point,
and there's a good possibility that the obelisk could get out of control,
crash down the slipway and break into pieces.
That wouldn't be a total tragedy for us,
but can you imagine if it was Hatshepsut's obelisk.
She had spent seven months quarrying it.
Consider all the elbow grease,
blood, sweat and tears that had been spent
adorning it with hieroglyphs,
polishing it so that it reflected the sun.
If that finished obelisk, weighing 330 tons,
was now at this pivot point
and crashed down and broke into pieces,
it would be a tragedy indeed.
With the turning groove in his sights at the bottom of the chute,
Aly is ready to launch the obelisk.
The obelisk is teetering dangerously at its center of gravity.
Aly now has to get the attention of the brakemen who will control its descent.
Communication is proving difficult,
as Hasham, the man he has put in charge, is quite deaf,
and so is unaware of the urgency of the moment.
Aly, inta mabsut?
Humdelallah.
He's very, very happy,
but he's worried now,
because the obelisk is sliding as we speak.
You hear noises. There it goes.
And he wants to tend to his, to his job.
Oh, there it goes!
Now everything's in the hands of the brakemen.
Their job is to control the three ropes
that keep the obelisk from smashing into the pedestal stone.
Granite is brittle
and will break if not seated gently.
Can the brakemen control the obelisk,
or will gravity have its way?
Well, obviously it was a great relief, great celebration,
but maybe celebrating a little too soon,
because the butt end missed the turning groove,
and now we have the tremendous task of raising it up
from this angle of recline.
No, we didn't miss the turning groove.
They haven't released it off the sled yet.
Once it's released off the sled,
very easily it will come right into the turning groove.
So, you think it will slide right in there?
Yeah. (Lehner:) When they cut the side off?
Yeah.
Despite the celebration, the job ahead is enormous:
To raise the obelisk from the 32 degree angle from which it now rests,
in the few hours remaining.
Like Martin Isler,
Aly is going to use large levers as the primary method.
Things get off to a good start.
The two levers quickly raise the obelisk
from an angle of 32 degrees to close to 40 degrees.
But as the obelisk rises,
it becomes difficult to get leverage.
With time running out,
Aly orders two hundred pullers to try and speed the process.
But it doesn't seem to help.
Well, the problem Aly is having now
is he's not getting any lift out of his pull.
All the men pulling on the long ropes
are simply pulling the butt end of the obelisk down into the turning groove.
You can almost feel it grinding down in there.
The only thing that's giving Aly any lift whatsoever
are the men on the levers.
But as you can see,
the levers now, in order to get advantage, are really high.
The men can hardly reach them.
They're throwing ropes up around the end to get some kind of pull.
In the next six hours, they only manage to raise the obelisk a couple of inches.
But Aly's not ready to throw in the towel yet.
Everyone decides it's worth giving it just one more day.
The final morning finds Aly wracking his brains at the stuck obelisk.
Roger got up early too.
He's already been busy.
This is an A-frame.
It works as a lever.
You run your ropes,
your pulling ropes over the top if it,
and it helps redirect the force,
so that you're pulling up,
rather than pulling down.
Your ropes are going from the obelisk up over the A-frame
and down to increase the pull and gain some mechanical advantage.
Right.
Well, I can see your point,
but you know Aly doesn't think this is going to work at all.
Well, you know, at some point...
you gotta take over.
In theory,
the A-frame seems to be the way to go.
But the obelisk still refuses to budge.
The men on the A-frame ropes can not pull efficiently,
because the ropes are too high.
So, in order to use the A-frame as Roger suggests,
we would have to both raise and lengthen our ramp,
so that the men had a platform to stand on
and still reach the ropes,
in a long train of pullers as we have now.
Modifications will take time,
and time is a commodity that has run out.
Like any construction project,
this one has a deadline.
(Speaks in Arabic)
The men are working well.
The real problem is that we don't have time.
How many days and nights have I thought
how to raise the obelisk more quickly?
My God, my brains are splitting!
But a heavy object like this takes time.
You can't rush an obelisk.
I think this is what the ancient technology comes down to:
men like Aly
with their skill
and the enthusiasm of their men
is probably the most important secret ingredient in all ancient technology.
But, even with all their enthusiasm and skill,
our modern team cannot overcome the limitation of time.
The ancient Egyptians faced no such constraints,
as they raised obelisks for pharaohs
whose concept of time was totally different from ours.
After all,
what's the rush when you're building for eternity?
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