Name: Egypt's Lost Wonders (Full Episode) | Drain the Oceans
Uploaded: 2024-05-01T08:55:13.000Z
Duration: 47 min 23 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

NARRATOR: The mysteries  of ancient Egypt,  and its hidden secrets.

MATTHEW: These tombs represent the technology of resurrection.

STEVEN: They created monuments that make the mind boggle.

NARRATOR: Some of their  greatest achievements,

lost beneath the sand and  water of the Nile valley...

or drain the desert, and  reveal the secrets beneath.

Using the latest  imaging technology  to pierce sea and sand

Can scientists  solve the mystery of  Alexandria's Lighthouse

and recreate one of the  ancient wonders of the World?

Why did a Pharaoh build  15 mega-forts when none of  them saw a major battle?

LAUREL: This is a forgotten age in Egyptian history

because we have lost access to these monuments.

NARRATOR: And what does  a fleet of boats, buried  six miles from the Nile,

reveal about Egypt's original  'Valley of the Kings'?

One of the greatest  civilizations on Earth.

Its people develop a  remarkable written language  using pictures and symbols.

And they build two  of the seven wonders  of the ancient world.

-The ancients determined the seven wonders because they met certain criteria.

It is the ingenuity of the design, but it had to be built

NARRATOR: The Egyptians'  second ancient wonder is the  lighthouse of Alexandria.

Known as the Pharos, it  is built on a grand scale  like the other wonders:

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon  and the Colossus of Rhodes.

Of the seven wonders, only  the pyramids now survive.

But as the waters of the  Nile Delta drain away, can  the architectural marvel

of the Pharos be brought  back to life from the seas  around Alexandria Harbor?

And recreated accurately  for the first time a sight  that once dazzled the world.

-The Pharos ranked as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world because it was

something that had never been seen before.

Some people say um the beacon could be seen 30 miles out to sea.

NARRATOR: Alexandria's  lighthouse is a technological  and architectural masterpiece.

Built in the third century  BC, it's the crowning  glory of a new capital city,

founded by the conqueror  of Ancient Egypt:  Alexander the Great.

Um you might think of the Champs Elysee in Paris or Times Square in New York.

Alexandria was all of those things and more.

Um it was the most beautiful city that the world had ever seen.

NARRATOR: Egypt's new rulers  want the Pharos to send  a big and simple message.

EMAD: They wanted to show how powerful is the city.

So you'd need a sign, a big huge banner that says welcome to Alexandria.

The Pharos was created mainly as a landmark.

NARRATOR: But once  Egypt's power has faded,

Alexandria's famous lighthouse  falls into disrepair.

The land beneath it slowly  subsides into the sea,  and in the 14th century

it finally collapses after  it's struck by an earthquake.

The Pharos is thought  to be lost here, beneath  23 feet of water,

Now a French team of  archaeologists is trying

Using the latest undersea  imaging technology, they're  scouring the seabed for clues.

Their aim is to  digitally rebuild this lost  Ancient Wonder of the World,

Leading the investigation is  architect and archaeologist  Isabelle Hairy.

She's been searching  for the truth about  Alexandria's lighthouse

ISABELLE: It's always very rewarding to work on one of

NARRATOR: Isabelle's team is  working in one of the largest

underwater archaeological  sites in the world.

They investigate some  mysterious granite blocks.

These remarkable remains  are clearly man-made.

Could they be from the  missing ancient wonder?

Isabelle's task is to  unlock the true dimensions  and design of the Pharos.

But her job is made harder by the wildly conflicting accounts

-We came across these quite extraordinary images of the lighthouse.

NARRATOR: Different  impressions from past  travelers and artists shroud

the true appearance of  the lighthouse in mystery.

-It's depicted here as the Tower of Babylon.

Here a very classical building with floors one above the other,

with doors opening into mysterious rooms.

NARRATOR: Over time,  ideas about the Pharos  grew even more fantastic.

-One of the authors was speaking about the Pharos being so tall and so

extensively high, if a stone was thrown from the top of the lighthouse it would reach land

It's not true but it is saying something about how those people saw the lighthouse.

Will the underwater granite  blocks provide answers?

To find out, Isabelle's  team uses a technique called  photogrammetry capturing

thousands of detailed images  across the enormous site.

-Do you think we can go further, we can go more on the North?

NARRATOR: After  28 weeks of diving and  with 50,000 photographs,

Isabelle has the data she  needs to finally unlock  the secrets of the Pharos.

Combining this unique  data with cutting edge  computer graphics means

that for the first time,  the waters around Alexandria  harbor can be drained away.

As the Mediterranean  begins to empty, surprising  shapes come into view.

Nearly 3,000 granite  blocks scattered across  three acres of the seabed.

These are not natural rock  formations, but clearly  the work of human hands.

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Egypt's Lost Wonders (Full Episode) | Drain the Oceans

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