Lost Cities of the Ancients

This episode looks at the legendary lost city of Piramesse. This magnificent ancient capital was built 3,000 years ago by the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses the Great, but long ago the whole city disappeared. When it was rediscovered by early archaeologists, it opened up a bizarre puzzle - when Piramesse was finally found it was in the wrong place, somewhere Ramesses the Great could not possibly have built it. Recreating the stories of both the early archaeologists and the ancient Egyptians, the film enters a lost world, recounting the strange tale of the quest for Piramesse and following the intriguing detective work of modern archaeologists Manfred Bietak and Edgar Pusch as they solve the baffling mystery of how this great lost city could vanish, only to reappear thousands of years later in the wrong place.

In the Lambeyeque valley in Northern Peru lies a strange lost world – the forgotten ruins of 250 mysterious pyramids, including some of the biggest on the planet, colossal structures made out of mud bricks. Long ago, the Lambeyeque people were haunted by a terrible fear and believed that building pyramids was essential to their survival. Their obsession reached its height at a city called Tucume, an eerie place of 26 pyramids standing side-by-side, the last pyramids this civilization created before they vanished forever. What was the fear that drove these people to build so many pyramids, what were they for, and why did the whole civilization suddenly vanish? This film captures the moments when archaeologists at the site uncovered a mass of bodies of human sacrifice victims, following a trail of clues into the dark story of Tucume. It recreates the strange rituals of the people of the valley, revealing a civilisation whose obsession to build pyramids eventually turned to horror, until Tucume finally vanished in a bloody frenzy of human sacrifice.

It was one of the greatest vanishing acts in history. More than 3000 years ago a mysterious and ruthless civilization rose from nothing, created a brutal and unstoppable army, and built an Empire that rivalled Egypt and Babylon. And yet, just as it was at the height of its powers, this great empire suddenly vanished from history. This is the story of the formidable Hittites, a civilization bent on world domination. Their long lost capital, Hattusha, which disappeared thousands of years ago, has now been rediscovered and archaeologists have unearthed here one of the most astonishing and ingenious cities of the ancient world – with rings of impenetrable walls, secret tunnels, temples and palaces – and even a vast pyramid-like structure, facing Egypt. And buried in this lost city is one of the greatest libraries of the ancient world. All the secrets of this mysterious empire were written in two codes – one a unique form of hieroglyphs. Using these deciphered texts, this film recreates the lost world of the Hittites, telling the story of what happened to them, and what caused an empire built to last forever to vanish so completely from history.