探索頻道 消失的法老城市02

This magnificent ancient capital was built 3000 years ago by the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses the Great, but long ago the it disappeared. When finally rediscovered by early archaeologists, it opened up a bizarre puzzle - because when Piramesse was finally found, it was in the wrong place - somewhere Ramesses the Great could not possibly have built it

And at the heart of the city (hall), Ramesses built a massive army garrison housing thousands of soldiers, charioteers and horsemen. His garrison would have had stabling of hundreds of warhorses and chariots, and it was from Pi-Ramesse that the pharaoh rolled out to his greatest battles.

Ramesses the Great never stopped adding to his capital. Year after year, new statues of the pharaoh were erected all through the city. A production line of skilled craftsmen and workers was employed throughout his reign to add and embellish new statues and monuments. As home to the king and seat of power, Pi-Ramesse must have looked as if it would last forever. But just a couple of hundred years after it was built, the entire city vanished.

For thousands of years, Pi-Ramesse was utterly lost and the fate of this great city became the stuff of legend. The quest to find it again would baffle experts and provide one of the strangest twists in the history of archaeology.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Egyptologists were puzzled. Most of the great cities of the pharaohs' had already been discovered, all except the famous Pi-Ramesse.

"It'll become almost a holy grail of Egyptologists to actually try and find this fabulous city."

Everyone knew from the ancient texts that Ramesses II didn't build his new capital near the great temples at Karnak and Luxor, the traditional seats of power of ancient Egypt. Nor did he built it at ancient Memphis near present-day Cairo where the great pyramids lay. Instead, he built it where he'd been raised, the lush Nile Delta where the river fans out into branches that flow down to the Mediterranean Sea. The texts were clear: Ramesses had built his city on the easternmost branch of the Nile in the Delta.

holy grail: often not capitalized an object or goal that is sought after for its great significance