HISTORY CHANNEL
On the edge of the Giza Plateau, a team of archaeologists is uncovering a giant pyramid. As they excavate deep into the pyramid chambers, evidence shows this is the lost fourth pyramid of Giza.
Its construction 5,000 years ago had been a race against time. In seven short years between gaining power and his death, the ageing pharaoh Radjedef had been determined to exceed the achievements of his hated father, the great Khufu, the most powerful pharaoh Egypt ever knew.
Radjedef would stamp his supremacy in this world and the next by erecting the highest pyramid ever built, towering some 60 feet above Khufu's Great Pyramid of Giza.
Over the next five millennia Radjedef's pyramid was forgotten and almost buried beneath the encroaching desert sands on a remote edge of the plateau.
Today, the top is missing because parts of it had been removed and recycled over the millennia to build old Cairo; it was more vulnerable to man's destruction than the other three because of its more remote location.
The sand had reclaimed some of the lower parts of the pyramid as well. For these reasons, archaeologists and Egyptologists did not make the connection with the pyramids at Giza until recently.
Today, its only with positive re-identification that American and English Egyptologists, including Michel Vallogia of Geneva University, Joanne Rowlands of Oxford University, and led by the Head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr Zahi Hawass, have rediscovered the fourth and greatest of the pyramids.
The History Channel's The Lost Pyramid will have exclusive rights to the excavation itself, the final positive identification and all the scientific revelations that are being found about it. The special premieres on Sept 7 at 6pm on TrueVisions UBC 48.
By tunnelling under the fourth pyramid and using advanced technology, the experts will lay bare the structure of Radjedef's pyramid, identify its layout, and establish the individual chambers.
The team will also show how the rediscovery and attribution of Radjedef's pyramid provide the missing clues to build a blueprint of the Giza plateau. This includes the great raised causeways used to bring the stones to the pyramid sites; giant canals that would carry the 47 foot funeral boats, which would transport the pharaoh's mummy to the pyramid; and which would then be buried next to the pyramids in order to carry the pharaohs to their afterlife.
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