NOVA

Egypt-- one of the great civilizations of antiquity.

It was here that one of the world's

first writing systems was developed

and where vast monuments in stone were built.

Then 1,000 years after the Pyramids,

another technological revolution took place:

a revolution in warfare.

The chariot arrived.

Over the next few hundred years,

the pharaohs of ancient Egypt pushed back their borders

and built a mighty empire.

Egypt's New Kingdom Empire

was the greatest empire that the world had seen.

It really was on a massive scale.

Was the chariot the Egyptians' secret weapon,

giving them a crucial lead in the arms race?

Were there innovations built into the Egyptian chariot

that gave them an edge?

If you gave this to a modern designer,

they could not do any better.

Now a team of experts will work from 3,000-year-old clues

to rebuild a replica of an Egyptian chariot

and test it in simulated battle.

Imagine 1,000 chariots.

It would be like Armageddon coming to you.

Recreating the pharaoh's chariot, we'll test the claim

that this was the weapon which built an empire.

"Building Pharaoh's Chariot," right now on NOVA.

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In about 1,550 BCE--

more than 1,000 years after the building of the Pyramids--

a new age dawned in Egypt.

This was a golden age of Egyptian power and wealth

known to historians as the New Kingdom.

Over the next 300 years,

the Egyptians built the largest empire the world had ever seen.

It's a period known for the astonishing treasure

of Tutankhamun.

A time when the Ancient Egyptians constructed

many of the mighty temples which can still be seen today,

3,500 years later.

But at the dawn of this golden age,

Egypt was a country beset by enemies.

When a new young king, the pharaoh Ahmose, came to power,

northern Egypt was occupied by a foreign people from the East

known as the Hyksos.

What happened next is recorded in a tomb

cut into a rocky hillside in a settlement called El Kab.

This tomb contains an account written by a soldier

who fought in the pharaoh's army.

Here, this man is telling the story

of his military career and his life.

These hieroglyphs tell

how the young soldier followed his pharaoh

as he drove the Hyksos out of Egypt.

The account also highlights a remarkable fact:

the Egyptians now had a new and devastating weapon:

the chariot.

in this text, he's actually describing

how he fought alongside the king's own chariot.

And we see the sign of the chariot here,

one of the earliest images we have of the chariot

in Egyptian writing.

In the years that followed,

chariots appear everywhere on tomb and temple walls.

And inscriptions alongside the chariots

relate how Ahmose and other New Kingdom pharaohs

went on to build the most powerful empire

the world had ever seen.

As they overcame Kushites, Nubians, Canaanites and others,

their empire stretched from Sudan

up into what is now Turkey.

So was the chariot the key to the Egyptians' military success?

In old Cairo, a team of experts has come together,

hoping to uncover the chariot's secrets.

Drawing on the skills of expert craftsmen,

they plan to assemble and test

what may be the first accurate working Egyptian chariot

to have been built in thousands of years.

Carriage-maker Robert Hurford,

who has built Roman and Assyrian chariots in the past,

will be in charge of construction.

It's a very complicated structure.

The wheels are very odd.

The yoke is very difficult,

first to make and secondly to make work.

Robert has teamed up with equine expert Kathy Hansen,

who thinks the harness for the horses

was a vital component of the chariot.

I've done a lot of studying,

and I think we know how they built their harness

and I think I know how they trained their horses,

so now we have an opportunity to put that to the test.

For military expert Mike Loades, this is an opportunity

to explore the chariot as a weapons system.

We know chariots were used in battle,

but we don't exactly know how.

So we need to test it, we need to drive it,

shoot the bow from it, so that's what's exciting.

This is undiscovered territory.

The team's first task is to find local craftsmen

who can help them build the chariot.

It's made of wood, so their priority is a skilled carpenter.

Abdou Mohammed is said to be one of the best in Cairo.

I've got this model that we've made...

Robert has brought with him a model

to demonstrate what he is trying to achieve.

This is quarter scale,

so you multiply everything by four

and you've got the real thing.

Many of the parts are curved,

and Robert will have to find another workshop

where the wood can be bent into shape.

But this is where most of the chariot

will be built and assembled.

And they're obviously made that way for a reason...

Abdou has never tackled anything like this before.

It's a new idea,

and he will try to prove that he is a good student.

Abdou, I look forward to working with you.

The team has only eight weeks to complete the chariot

before Mike returns to test it.

Their goal is not just to build a chariot,

but to understand what might have given the Egyptians

a military advantage.

This new war machine was not invented in Egypt.

These engravings reveal that chariots could be found

hundreds of years earlier in nearby lands.

The Egyptians, meanwhile, were fighting on foot,

using sleds to pull heavy loads,

and then, as now, relied on donkeys for personal transport.

Horses appear to have been unknown

for much of Egyptian history.

Around about 4,000 BC, we know that people were

probably domesticating horses and creating the first chariots

in places as far away as southern Russia.

And over time, that moves west

into Syria, Lebanon and up into Turkey.

And the Egyptians felt they had to get a hold of it

in order to compete on the world stage.

When Egypt first obtained the chariot,

it was probably quite basic,

with a body that could carry two people

supported on an axle with two wheels

and a central pole.

And there was a harness which allowed the chariot

to be pulled by two horses.

But however basic, for the Egyptians,

the chariot was a revolution in warfare.

And building it required ancient skills

which are hard to find today.

In a Cairo suburb, Robert and local organizer Magdy Rashidy

track down one of the few steam benders in the country.

The owner, Mohamed El Salam, and his son Walid

show Robert around their workshop

where they make chairs,

bending the wood by saturating it with steam

to make it supple.

Robert demonstrates again what he's trying to achieve

using his model, and shows them the parts which need bending.

So that's a piece and that's a piece...

Shaping the pieces won't be easy,

but Mohammed seems confident he can adapt his equipment.

He'll need to work fast to meet their schedule.

They seem enthusiastic,

anxious to get it done.

Robert based his model on published descriptions.

But to understand how the Egyptians

transformed the chariot, he'll seek advice from a man

who has been investigating them for many years.

Here from the University of Wisconsin,

engineer Bela Sandor has been studying some of the chariots

found among the treasures of Tutankhamun's tomb,

now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

They were found in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter,

who carefully reassembled and restored them.

Sandor has been looking closely at their design,

trying to work out how the Egyptians

improved their new war machine.

The first time I saw these chariots,

I just walked through like most of the tourists,

barely looking at them.

Two years later, I came back and I started realizing

that there was more to these than just primitive structure.

After years of careful analysis,

Sandor has concluded that the Egyptians

transformed a machine that was slow and cumbersome

into one that was fast and maneuverable.

His calculations have convinced him that

this is the world's first high-performance vehicle,

with high-tech wheels,

parts which function as springs,

and shock absorbers,

even a device to stop it from rolling over.

He now believes that the chariot

was the pinnacle of ancient Egyptian engineering.

If you gave this to a modern designer,

with computers and formulas, they could not do any better.

Kathy Hansen believes that the technology of the harness