[narrator] canopus, a sacred city beloved by cleopatra,
Lost for over 1,000 years.
[prof. Salima ikram] when cleopatra would have gone
Down this canal,
People lining the banks, musicians, priests praying.
[narrator] it was a city, gleaming with treasures
And rich in wonders.
[franck goddio] the great temple. Beautiful statue.
Gold everywhere. Everywhere.
[narrator] famous for its holy rituals.
[dr. Rebecca bradshaw] pilgrims from across the known world
Would come to receive healing from the gods.
[narrator] and infamous for its earthly pleasures.
[dr. Bob bianchi] anything you ever desired or wanted
Could be found in the city of canopus.
[narrator] but it was doomed to destruction.
[rebecca] the whole city was right on the edge of the land,
Extremely vulnerable, very exposed.
[narrator] now, thanks to a unique,
Cutting-edge excavation,
Cleopatra's lost city of canopus has been found.
An ancient egyptian atlantis submerged beneath the waves.
[franck] the discovery is far bigger
Than we dream we will ever find.
It is the single most important archeological discovery
Of this, the 21st century.
[narrator] the relics of the past hold secrets.
[dramatic music]
[men yelling]
Written in gold,
Stone,
And blood.
We can unlock them.
These are the secrets of history's greatest treasures.
[suspenseful mysterious music]
Ancient egypt, an empire that produced
Some of the world's greatest treasures.
For centuries scholars have marveled at its wonders
And puzzled at its complex religions and rituals.
But there are still secrets to be uncovered.
Including one of egypt's greatest mysteries,
The lost city of canopus.
[rebecca] canopus was actually a really very famous city,
Situated right on the mediterranean coast
Of the egyptian delta,
And one that really captured the imagination
Of ancient writers.
It was known for being
An incredibly important religious center.
This was a cosmopolitan, lively, busy, bustling city,
That would have had people coming in from outside
To go to the temples and maybe also to partake
In the annual festivals.
[narrator] egypt's pharaohs were regular visitors,
Including the legendary cleopatra.
But despite the city's fame,
Canopus has been lost for over 1,000 years.
[rebecca] let's say, for example, if venice vanished,
That's the kind of level that we're talking about here.
[salima] people have been speculating as to where it was
And how to find it?
But it is surprisingly difficult to find a lost city.
[narrator] now, a team led
By renowned maritime archeologist franck goddio,
Is scouring the seafloor
In search of this ancient egyptian sunken city.
I thought that if canopus has not been found on land,
It was for the very good reasons that it was not on land,
And most probably under the sea.
[narrator] and what they find is bigger
And more spectacular than they could ever have dreamt.
[eric] something tiny would have thrilled us.
But instead, we found something much more amazing.
-[water bubbling] -[gentle thoughtful music]
[narrator] the late 1990s.
Franck goddio and his team are searching
For canopus in egypt's nile delta.
Goddio has pinpointed a site in abukir bay,
16 miles northeast of alexandria,
Based on a handful of cryptic references in ancient texts.
[franck] it was the exact distance between alexandria
And the city of canopus, as written in many documents.
[man speaks in foreign language]
[narrator] using cutting-edge
Geophysical scanning technology,
It takes a team of 50 leading experts and archeologists
Two years to scour the bay's 200 square miles.
But identifying a possible site is just the start.
Then they're faced with the challenge
Of an archeological investigation under
20 feet of seawater.
[eric] archeology's difficult.
Archeology underwater is 10 times harder.
The visibility for the divers is very poor.
And you can't see anything except the immediate area
That you're working in.
[narrator] but finally, in 1999,
Goddio's team make a discovery
That will unearth the great lost city of canopus
And rewrite the history of ancient egypt.
[eric] so we start and we dig down through the sand
And we start finding, "oh my gosh,
"it's a portion of a sphinx."
There's a haunch, there's a paw, there's a tail.
We know that we're on the trail,
We know that there's something nearby.
But we don't know, you know, what it is,
We don't have a feeling that this is the spot, not yet.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] close to the sphinx,
Goddio and his team make a monumental discovery.
We found the remain of a beautiful,
Large foundation wall.
[narrator] it becomes clear this was once a building,
Of truly colossal proportions.
[franck] it was three-meter thick, and it started to extend
And extend as we were excavating it.
30 meter, 50 meter, 80 meter,
100 meter, 103 meter long.
Beautifully built.
[eric] it's the size of a football field
With these immense foundation walls.
And you realize that if the walls
That had sat on top of this foundation were still intact,
They would come out of the surface of the sea
At sea level today.
[narrator] the structure's size and quality mean
It could only have been one thing.
A temple.
[suspenseful music]
And this temple is so enormous it must have sat
At the heart of a large, and seemingly, holy city.
[eric] sometimes the visibility improves
And you stand up and you look up
And you really get the sense of the grandeur of the city,
Of the size of the temple,
And of the importance and the impact
It must have had on the people visiting it
Thousands of years ago.
[narrator] but is it canopus,
The city goddio and the team set out to find?
[tense music]
The answer lies just a few feet from the vast temple,
With a discovery of equally colossal proportions.
[franck] we found a huge colossus head, made in marble.
It must correspond to a statue
Which was four, five-meter high.
[narrator] a statue of that size
Must have represented the temple's main god.
[franck] little by little, when we uncover that statue
From the sand covering him,
It was obvious that we were in front
Of the main god of that city, the god serapis.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] it was the breakthrough goddio and his team
Had been searching for.
Because the egyptian god serapis
Was intimately linked with the city of canopus.
Ancient egyptian cities
Were known for one thing or another.
They would have a specialty, let's say.
At canopus, this was an extremely famous temple
That was called the serapeum.
[narrator] this temple was dedicated to the god serapis
And described by the first-century
Greek scholar strabo in his account of the city.
[rebecca] strabo writes, "it contains the temple of serapis,
Held in great veneration,
And celebrated for the cure of diseases."
So what strabo is referring to here
Is a temple that was extremely important,
Extremely well known at that time,
Where people would come to receive healing powers
From the gods.
[narrator] to goddio and the team,
Finding the colossal head of serapis,
Next to a huge temple,
In a city at the exact same distance
From alexandria mentioned in ancient accounts,
Could mean only one thing.
We found canopus.
[gentle pensive music]
It was exciting and all the team was extremely happy.
[eric] we had no idea the amount of detail
And the amount of artifacts that we would find.
[rebecca] it's certainly not every day
That you find an entire city
And a city that has been sunk no less.
[salim] it's really exciting, to have this city
That you've heard about or read about,
Become real before your very eyes.
[narrator] as the excavation spreads out
Across the seafloor,
A dazzling treasure trove emerges from the sand.
Statues, buildings, jewelry,
And religious artifacts spanning at least 2,500 years.
These paint a picture of a city steeped in religion.
And reveal what was, until now,
One of ancient egypt's most secret rituals.
A ceremony witnessed by the most iconic queen
In egyptian history, cleopatra.
[dramatic mysterious music]
One mile off egypt's mediterranean coast,
Archeologists have discovered
The lost ancient city of canopus.
[eric] to find a legendary missing city.
It's something beyond the wildest imagination.
But we did.
[narrator] over three decades,
Underwater archeologist franck goddio
And a team of experts and archeological divers,
Have uncovered a spectacular treasure trove of finds
In this ancient egyptian sunken city.
Coins, gold coins, everywhere, everywhere.
Statue from different period.
Red granite statues, marble statues, head of pharaohs.
And, a lot of ceramic, intact ceramic.
[narrator] the city dates back
To at least the sixth century bc.
But the discovery of a spectacular statue
Reveals canopus
Flourished during the reign of one particular dynasty.
Notorious in the history of ancient egypt,
The family of cleopatra,
Egypt's last pharaoh and most celebrated queen.
[franck] we found a fantastic statue.
[gentle thoughtful music]
The impression we had when we found that statue underwater,
Was unbelievable.
It's one of the most beautiful statues
Ever made in the world.
[bob] the statue is hands down,
The most aesthetically accomplished,
The most spectacular,
Beautiful masterpiece I've ever seen.
[narrator] to egyptologist
And art historian dr. Bob bianchi
This statue is more than simply beautiful.
Its exquisite craftsmanship reveals the people
Who propelled the city to new heights
Of splendor and wealth.
And they did it by blending the culture
Of two great civilizations.
[bob] we have a completely new statue type!
Something new and novel,
That no one had ever thought of creating before.
It is created in black granite,
Which is a quintessential egyptian hard stone.
But the treatment of the body, the treatment of the drapery,
And how the body reacts to the drapery,
Those are details that are decidedly greek.
[narrator] the statue's new style heralds the
Arrival of a new power in egypt in 305 bc.
The family of cleopatra, the ptolemies.
[salima] the ptolemies were originally
From northern greece.
They took over egypt after the death of alexander the great.
And they've ruled egypt for about 300 years,
With the last ptolemy, being perhaps the most famous,
The great cleopatra.
[narrator] the ptolemies cemented their power
By blending their own beliefs, culture, and gods
With those of their egyptian subjects.
[salima] they wanted to maintain hold of such a rich
And strategically important country.
And so there was a lot of propaganda,
A lot of tactful maneuvering with religion.
[narrator] this statue of a ptolemy queen
Was part of this propaganda campaign.
It's evidence of the ptolemies' supreme skill
In rebranding themselves.
And of their close personal connection
With the city of canopus.
[bob] the fact that we have such a beautiful statue
Simply gives us visual proof
Of the importance of the city of canopus.
In the dynasty of the ptolemies,
Beauty, sculptural achievement,
And political-religious importance blend together.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] with the city just 16 miles
From their capital alexandria, egyptologists are convinced
The ptolemy pharaohs themselves would have visited canopus.
Pharaohs that included cleopatra.
[franck] we have found very close to the temple,
Many coins from cleopatra, with her profile.
[narrator] 2,000 years ago, this city would have welcomed
The ancient world's most celebrated queen.
She would have gazed at its statues.
Visited its temples.
But what drew cleopatra here?
What made the city so important?
Egyptologists believe a clue lies in an inscription
Written in 238 bc during the reign of cleopatra's ancestor
Ptolemy iii, "the canopus decree."
[rebecca] we know from this decree
That canopus was seen as extremely important.
It says that it was the first and foremost
Temple in the country and the one that was the most precious
To pharaoh and his family.
[narrator] the decree describes
A grand religious procession.
Along a custom-built ceremonial waterway,
Leading directly to the great temple in canopus.
[tense pensive music]
[rebecca] it says that canopus was linked by a canal
To a neighboring town and that this was extremely important
As a processional way.
[narrator] incredibly, goddio has now found
The very same canal mentioned in the decree.
And it's full of archeological evidence
That suggests a religious or ritual purpose.
All along the channel we found ritual instruments.
A kind of bronze ladle.
Sometimes we were finding
A lead model of a processional barge.
And also we found statuettes of the god osiris.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] it seemed the statuettes depicting osiris
Had been thrown into the canal.
But during conservation, it becomes clear
These were undamaged, and in some cases, brand new.
People hadn't discarded them in the canal,
They'd placed them there deliberately,
As ritual offerings.
-[dramatic music] -[flame whooshing]
But what ritual were they celebrating?
The answer plunges egyptologists deep into a world
Of ancient myth and obscure magic.
And reveals the secret ceremony
That drew cleopatra and her dynasty,
To this extraordinary, enigmatic city.
[dramatic music continues]
[suspenseful music]
Beneath the waves of the mediterranean sea,
Excavations are revealing the fabled
Ancient egyptian city of canopus,
That flourished under the royal dynasty of cleopatra.
A canal, packed with offerings,
Suggests she and her ancestors
May have been drawn to the city
By some kind of religious ritual.
But what mystical rites did cleopatra witness here?
The answer comes with one of the most
Extraordinarily preserved discoveries
From the underwater site.
The remains of a 2,500-year-old wooden boat,
Found in the canal leading directly
To the city's great temple.
[franck] we found a very special shipwreck
That attracted our interest from the very beginning,
Like a magnet.
[narrator] this boat is strikingly similar
To those depicted on the walls of egypt's temples and tombs.
A ceremonial barge which the ancient egyptians
Believed transported the dead to the afterlife.
But the material the canopus barge was made of
Leads franck goddio to suspect
It wasn't intended for a mortal.
It belonged to a god,
Inextricably linked with the city, osiris.
[franck] we were intrigued by the wood
That ship has been built in.
It was sycamore wood.
For the egyptian, everything made of wood
Referring to the god osiris is made in sycamore wood.
[narrator] egyptologists suspect the barge,
Along with the offerings scattered around it,
Are physical evidence of one of ancient egypt's most sacred,
And secret, ceremonies.
A series of rituals, re-enactments, and processions,
That cleopatra herself would undoubtedly have witnessed.
Known as the mysteries of osiris.
[dramatic rhythmic music]
[rebecca] the mysteries of osiris was one of the biggest,
If not the biggest event in the ancient egyptian calendar
And was intimately tied up with canopus.
[narrator] osiris was the lord of the underworld,
The king of the dead,
And the original ancient egyptian mummy.
[salima] one of the key themes about osiris and his myth
Is the promise of resurrection,
Which was an integral part of egyptian belief.
Osiris is shown to us as a mummiform figure,
He's got these bandages and then a shroud over him.
[narrator] according to ancient egyptian legend,
The god osiris was murdered and dismembered by his brother.
His sister and wife, the goddess isis,
Reassembled and rebuilt his body.
[ominous music]
She wrapped it in bandages
And molded new body parts from clay
In order to bring osiris back to life.
So osiris is the first mummy,
And therefore mummification became a part
Of ancient egyptian religion.
Osiris was crucial for the ancient egyptians
Because he helped guarantee their afterlife.
And also, because he ensured, to a large extent,
The fertility of the soil and the rebirth of egypt itself.
[narrator] it was believed the worship of osiris,
And in particular, the mysteries of osiris
Was essential for the survival
Of the pharaoh and the nation.
[birds chirping]
[salima] for the ancient egyptians,
Religion was part of their daily life.
It's something you don't even think about.
So religion and rituals were very key to their existence.
[suspenseful mysterious music]
[narrator] but ancient inscriptions provide few details
Of this most secret of festivals.
[salima] we have very limited information
About the osirian mysteries.
There are occasional texts, we have bits and pieces,
But you never really know if you're getting
The original truth
Or just something that someone had told someone else.
[narrator] the one recurring detail is the procession
Of an effigy of the god osiris.
[rebecca] what we read from the ancient texts
Is that a barge carrying his cult statue
Would have come from a neighboring town to canopus.
[narrator] and now, after centuries of speculation,
Franck goddio has found physical proof
Of this spectacular ceremony.
The sacred barge,
The ceremonial canal,
And the ritual offerings.
What makes franck goddio's discovery
At canopus so spectacular,
Is we now know what the boat looked like.
He also found small votive boats that were deposited,
We had no idea that they existed.
And more significantly, he found the canal.
So we now know the means and the route,
And that discovery opens up a whole new window for us.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] through these incredible discoveries,
It's possible to picture this most spectacular
And important of religious festivals,
That promised eternal life for the pharaoh,
And their nation.
[franck] cleopatra came, for sure,
Many time for different reason in canopus,
But, of course, to celebrate the mysteries of osiris there.
It was her duty,
To celebrate the mysteries of osiris every year.
[salima] when cleopatra went to celebrate
The osirian mysteries,
She would have gone down this canal to canopus.
Incense burning and billowing out, people lining the banks,
Musicians, priests praying, holding these osiris figurines,
All believing in osiris, hailing this god.
[crowd cheering]
So it was a very, very festive occasion.
And the modern analogy I make are festivals that we have
On great holidays, mardi gras, rose bowl, thanksgiving day.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] the mysteries of osiris,
With its public festivities and secret ceremonies,
Is what drew cleopatra and the ptolemy dynasty to canopus.
But cleopatra's earthly life
Would soon be cut brutally short.
[dramatic music continues]
And once again, the evidence comes from the seafloor.
[franck] we found inside it a beautiful statue,
Nearly intact.
Beautifully preserved.
[narrator] this bust introduces a new power to canopus.
One that would conquer egypt in 30 bc.
And send cleopatra to her death.
[suspenseful music]
These sunken ruins are the remains
Of one of egypt's most sacred cities.
Canopus, beloved by generations of pharaohs,
Including cleopatra.
A 25-year excavation has revealed the great temple
She would have visited,
As well as the sacred rituals she witnessed there.
But cleopatra's love affair with the city
Was about to be cut cruelly short.
In 30 bc the romans invaded egypt.
Faced with imprisonment, humiliation, and perhaps death,
-[blade swooshing] -[blood spatters]
Cleopatra took her own life...
And left the city's fate hanging in the balance.
[suspenseful music]
The romans, when they took over egypt you would think,
"oh, they're taken over, they hate cleopatra,
"they're going to destroy everything."
[narrator] instead a large 2,000-year-old bust
Reveals the romans didn't destroy canopus.
They celebrated and embellished the city,
Even adding their own hybrid egyptian and roman gods.
This is a representation
Of the nile river personified,
Named nilus.
The way the drapery is carved, the way the hair is carved,
The treatment of the beard, the treatment of the anatomy.
All of these details suggest the date
In the roman imperial period
After the death of cleopatra the great.
[narrator] egypt's last pharaoh was dead.
But canopus was very much alive.
[gentle pensive music]
Under the romans the sacred city flourished,
Attracting the rich and famous from across the empire.
Even the roman emperor hadrian
Was mesmerized by the city's charms.
[rebecca] we know that hadrian was particularly
Enchanted by canopus
Because in his villa, the villa hadriana,
In a place called tivoli, outside rome,
He does seem to have made some sort of replica.
[narrator] hadrian's tribute to the sacred city
Was also known as canopus
And featured a scaled-down version of its ceremonial canal.
Lined with crocodiles and statues of egyptian gods.
He was very much inspired by canopus,
To the extent that he wanted to bring it home to rome.
[narrator] by the first century ad,
The egyptian city of canopus
Was one of the most fashionable places on earth.
Pilgrims flocked to it in search of holiness, healing,
-And hedonism. -[dice rattling]
[people chattering]
[bob] the roman historian strabo,
Writing shortly after the death of cleopatra,
Describes how citizens of alexandria
Would board pleasure yachts, and they would sail to canopus.
And onboard, they would eat, drink, and be merry.
And when they got to canopus, it was party city!
[majestic dramatic music]
[narrator] not surprisingly,
Many visitors had more than religion on their minds.
[bob] canopus, has a very, very salacious reputation
Among the romans.
The roman poet martial describes canopus
In the following terms:
"canopus is the place where you find
The most beautiful women in the world.
"and they're willing to oblige."
He goes on to say that anything you ever desired
Or wanted could be found in the city of canopus.
So, canopus is this place of sensuous physical delights.
[narrator] the city seduced the romans.
Goddio's excavations reveal they vastly extended canopus,
Building villas, baths, and temples.
[franck] the city became even more important
During the roman time than during the ptolemaic time.
[narrator] from the age of the ancient pharaohs
In the sixth century bc,
Through the ptolemies and cleopatra, to the romans,
Despite seismic political and cultural changes,
Canopus had flourished for at least 1,000 years.
But nothing lasts forever.
[ominous music]
As the divers continue to explore the sunken city,
They begin to notice something strange.
[franck] all sculptures have been broken.
The head, cut.
The hand, cut.
The body sliced into pieces.
That temple has been obviously ransacked.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] a sacred city that had survived for millennia.
A temple that had stood for centuries,
Attracting everyone who was anyone
From across the ancient world.
Wiped from history in a single, savage action.
Something had turned the romans' love for canopus to hate.
And clues to that something lie scattered in the ruins.
[salima] egypt had gods that were egyptian gods, greek gods,
Roman gods, gods from the near east,
Persia, all sorts of divinities, all mixed together,
And you would pray to different ones for different things.
[narrator] but in the fourth century ad,
The roman empire embraced a new official religion,
Christianity.
And the city's rulers would tolerate only one god.
For over 3,000 years, egypt had been open and accepting
To all kind of faith.
And suddenly you have this,
It is us and nothing else, going on.
[narrator] in 391 ad,
Emperor theodosius ordered the destruction
Of all pagan monuments across egypt,
Unleashing an orgy of violence in the sacred city.
-[mob yelling] -[flames whooshing]
[rebecca] the quite amazing thing is that we actually know
How canopus was destroyed.
There's a greek writer writing in the fourth century ad
Called eunapius, who actually writes about it.
"they demolished the temple of serapis,
And made war against the temple offerings.
Only the floor of the temple of serapis they did not take,
Simply because of the weight of the stones,
Which were not easy to move from that place."
Now, this is quite extraordinary
Because we know from the archeological investigations
That the foundation stones were still in place.
So this is really quite a sensational moment
Where text meets archeology and they fit perfectly.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] christianity destroyed
Cleopatra's sacred city
And then resurrected it.
Excavations reveal a vast monastery, shrines, and churches
Were built on top of the ruined city,
Using rubble from the great temple itself.
[rebecca] what this suggests was that the christians
Still appreciated this as a holy place.
What we see then is the religion changing
From ancient egyptian to christian,
But that the sacred nature of the space remains intact.
[narrator] over a millennia, canopus had been shaped
By four of the ancient world's great civilizations:
The ancient egyptians, greeks, romans, and christians.
[salima] one of the things that's wonderful about canopus
Is that you can see the layers of its flourishing,
Its destruction, its resurrection.
[solemn music]
[narrator] now, as a christian city,
Canopus continued to thrive for another 400 years.
But it was living on borrowed time.
Modern geological research reveals the city was doomed
To disappear beneath the waves
Because this corner of egypt sits at the junction of four
Of the great tectonic plates
That make up the earth's surface.
[salima] because of canopus' location,
It was susceptible to natural disasters.
[narrator] over the centuries,
The city was blighted by earthquakes,
Tsunamis, and floods, but its appeal remained undiminished.
[salima] whether you are in ancient egypt or in california,
People sometimes live in places
Where they know it's dangerous and are sort of,
"let's keep our fingers crossed and our eyes closed
And it might not happen to us."
[narrator] now, one extraordinary discovery
Could reveal how the people of canopus
Tried to protect this most precious
And vulnerable of cities.
[dramatic music]
Using a supernatural weapon.
It was the atomic bomb of egypt.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] franck goddio's 25-year mission
Has revealed the complex history of egypt's greatest
And most sacred lost city, canopus.
For at least 1,000 years,
The low-lying city teetered on the water's edge,
Blighted by earthquakes, floods, and rising seawater.
The whole city of canopus was extremely vulnerable,
Very exposed, and in a really precarious situation.
[narrator] yet despite the dangers, egyptians, greeks,
Romans, and christians were irresistibly drawn to canopus.
Why did they risk the wrath of nature
To build their most sacred monuments here?
[water bubbling]
[tense music]
Now, one of goddio's most breathtaking discoveries
Reveals they may have believed the city
Was protected by a divine magical talisman.
We were finding some broken statue.
And all the sudden,
We found a big fragment
Of black granite.
I thought such a flat surface, it's strange.
[eric] everybody gathered around it
And were checking it out.
But even with that buzz,
We had no idea how important it would actually be.
[narrator] the slab's surface
Is covered with hundreds of inscriptions.
It's only when one of the team's experts deciphers them
That the stone's true importance becomes clear.
She look at me and say, "but this is a joke.
I cannot believe what I see."
[narrator] it was a piece of one of ancient egypt's
Most enigmatic monuments, a naos,
A shattered 2,500-year-old shrine.
[tense pensive music]
Over the years, several pieces had been found
Close to where goddio would eventually discover canopus.
Together, these suggested the naos
Was a complex astronomical manual.
[bob] the naos would have been used
By learned priest astronomers
In order to understand the workings of the universe.
It would be like going to a planetarium today
To try to understand how the planets move
And how the stars move.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] the naos is an ancient egyptian calendar.
It calculates the length of the year
Based on the movement of 36 stars
That appear in the night sky
One after the other at regular 10-day intervals.
The astronomical event is interesting
Because if you multiply the 36 stars
Times their 10-day interval, you end up with 360.
[narrator] to this, the naos adds five days
For the creation of the world.
[narrator] this 2,500-year-old slab of granite
Was one of the world's first accurate 365-day calendars.
But during goddio's excavation,
He discovered a total of four new pieces.
And they reveal the naos is even more important
Than experts imagined.
Because, like an ancient egyptian version
Of the book of genesis,
It describes how the world itself was formed.
[franck] that monument is one of the most
Important monuments of egypt.
It refers back to the beginning of time.
This text is the text of the creation of the world,
According to the egyptians.
[bob] this particular naos contained the cult statue
Of the god of atmosphere,
Who in the very, very beginning was responsible
For raising up the sky and placing all the stars in it.
So it explains the origin of what we would call
Our solar system.
[narrator] but as well as describing how egypt was born,
The naos was created to ensure the country would never die.
[franck] for each period of 10 days,
There is astrological curse
Saying what will happen to the enemy of egypt,
If ever they tried to harm egypt during that period.
And they are terrible curses.
[narrator] the naos threatened egypt's enemies
With a terrifying litany of painful fates.
Plagues, blood clots, paralysis, and death.
[franck] this monument was the ultimate weapon
Protecting egypt.
It was the atomic bomb of egypt.
[ominous music]
[narrator] but in the eighth century ad,
This ultimate weapon failed.
A catastrophic natural disaster
Plunged the city below the waves.
It toppled the christian monastery's
Mighty granite columns,
Forcing its citizens and visitors to flee,
Dropping their possessions on the monastery floor.
[franck] the fact that we can discover
All those pieces of jewelry
And gold coins, is a proof that that monastery
Has disappeared in a fraction of a second.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] 13 centuries later,
The shattered ruins of the city's monastery
Capture the violence of this moment.
[franck] across from the monastery, we found a fault
Which had cut the monastery into two pieces.
[explosion blasts]
[narrator] goddio believes this massive chasm
Can only have been caused by a violent earthquake,
That shook the ground until it turned to liquid.
[bob] if you look at the size of the architectural remains,
That franck has recovered from the seabed,
It had to have been a major, major earthquake,
To topple such enormous stone monuments.
[ominous music]
[narrator] the holy city's final moments
Would have been a vision of hell.
[earth rumbling]
As the shaken, sodden ground liquefied,
The monastery's mighty columns toppled,
And its walls cracked in two.
[explosion blasts]
It was a complete, sudden, unexpected, cataclysmic end
To this bustling, brilliant city.
[serene thoughtful music]
[narrator] now, 13 centuries later,
Thanks to the dedication of goddio and his team,
Canopus has resurfaced
To reveal a spectacular city populated by saints
And sinners.
Pharaohs and emperors
That witnessed obscure rites and illicit pleasures,
Great wonders and terrible disasters.
[rubble crashing]
If you think about the broad arc of history,
This one site has withstood so much.
The egyptians, the ptolemies, the romans, the christians.
And I think that's really quite special.
[salima] there you have a real ancient city
That you can imagine what it's like
To walk down the streets.
You know which temple is here, what temple is there.
And that makes you so close to the past.
It's fantastic. It's a really amazing discovery.
[upbeat dramatic music]
[franck] the discovery is far bigger and far more interesting
Than we ever could dream we will ever find.
[bob] if you look at the years
That franck goddio has been excavating,
With the persistence, with the scientific tools,
That tenacity, and the knowledge of the ancient texts,
All combine, to make this remarkable discovery,
Which really ranks as one of the most amazing discoveries
Of the 21st century.