 Cairo is probably more important to ancient history than we have yet to discover. The city is constructed on ancient ruins of which are mostly unknown because the masonry was used to construct the city. The fabled Lost Fourth Pyramid was torn down for the purposes of building Cairo, and the sheer number of times that its residents have come across tombs and lost treasures is enough to at least suggest that Cairo is another city built upon the ruins of the gods. Think about it, the Giza Plateau is right there, then there is Cairo, but the city is modern and is not known to always have been there. So what was there? What is there? More importantly, is Cairo's purpose built on top of something of historical importance? Is the city a giant canopy? Wait, do you hear this? To begin to understand, we must first try to understand a little bit about the history of Cairo. The Old Kingdom of Egypt is also known as the Age of the Pyramids, or Age of the Pyramid Builders. It is a time that is mostly forgotten and surviving only in the form of the megastructures we see today. The historical records of this period are scarce and so-called historians regard the history of the area as literally written in stone, and largely architectural in that it is through the monuments and their inscriptions that scholars have been able to construct a history out of their short-sighted biased educational process which, as we know, is flawed to the point of a fruit that has rotted. The pyramids themselves relay scant information on their builders, but the mortuary temples built nearby and the later Stila, which accompanied them, provided kings' names and other important information from the dynastic period. It is therefore through the dynastic period of Egypt that we have to reinterpret the earlier kingdom, just as the dynastic Egyptians themselves had to interpret the kingdom they inherited or found as it were. Inscriptions in stone found elsewhere from the time record various events and the dates of which they occurred. Finally, the tomb of the last king of the fifth dynasty, Unus, provides the first pyramid text which shed light on the religious beliefs of the time. Religious beliefs are thought to have emerged based on actual events of the before time. This is a time that the gods walked among us and is what we may refer to as myth, but there are the oral stories that were inscribed during the re-emergence of Egypt. So what was Cairo? It wasn't a barren wasteland, it was something, right? It may be notable to tell you that Cairo is named after planet Mars. Cairo literally means conqueror and when it was founded, Mars was rising, the conquering star. There is also a suggestion that King Tut's wound was inflicted not from a carriage, but from crash landing at Cairo in a spaceship of sorts on his way back from a trade agreement with Mars. We know that sounds absolutely insane guys, we don't need to be told. The origins of present day Cairo trace back to the Egyptian capital of Memphis which is believed to have been founded in the early 4th millennium BC, near the head of the Nile Delta, south of the present city. Memphis spread to the north along the east bank of the Nile and its location has commanded political power ever since. It was there that the Romans constructed their city called Babylon, Muslim Arabs who emerged there from the Arabian Peninsula in 641, later called the site Al-Fastat. When a distant branch of Muslims known as the Fatmid conquered Egypt in 969, they established their headquarters in the city and called it Al-Kahari, Cairo. In the 12th century Christian crusaders attacked Cairo, but they were defeated by a Muslim army from Syria led by Saladin who founded the Ayyubid dynasty in the city. The Mamluk established their capital in the 13th century and the city became renowned throughout Africa, Asia and Europe before it declined after the mid 14th century, however when bubonic plague struck the city it decimated its population. The Ottomans conquered Cairo in 1517 and ruled there until 1798 when the area was captured during an expedition led by Napoleon of France. Ottoman rule was restored in 1801 but by the middle of the 19th century Egypt's foreign debt and the weakness of the Ottoman Empire invited greater European influence in Cairo. The viceroy Ishmael Pasha who ruled from 1863 to 1879 built many European style structures in the city and used the occasion of the opening of the Suez Canal northeast of Cairo in 1869 to showcase the city for the European powers, however much of the development that took place during this period was funded by foreign loans which led to an increase in the national debt and left Cairo vulnerable to control by Great Britain. The British effectively ruled Egypt from Cairo from the late 19th century through the period after World War I when the foreign presence in Cairo began to diminish. Though the pyramids at Giza, Sakara and Dasher are located just outside of Cairo these vast monuments were not temples of modern Cairo, they are the ruins of a much more ancient and advanced culture that had vanished before the modern era began around 5000 years ago. They were already there. Modern Cairo today you may be surprised to learn is the center of a multi-billion pound smuggling operation. The antiques and artifacts that are being smuggled are coming from Cairo itself. Every few days or so there are more ancient artifacts found underneath the modern city. This is why we suggest that it is built upon the ruins of a much older city that has vanished into the abyss. It's all hushed up but every now and again we see signs of this black trade. When authorities seized a diplomatic pouch at the port in Naples they weren't expecting to unearth a plot more suited to an Indiana Jones movie. The pouch which was discovered in March last year hid an eclectic assortment of Egyptian antiques colorful pharonic mummy mask nearly 200 small artifacts and more than 20,000 coins. The loot had been stolen from Egypt and it was clear that powerful and connected individuals were involved. Smuggling of antiques is a trade nearly as old as the artifacts themselves but for Egypt the trade has escalated since the Arab Spring and social media made it easier to access hidden treasures. The crisis is so bad it can be seen from space. Satellite imagery of archaeology sites before and after they were looted show massive craters in the ground where artifacts have been stolen. And there is big money involved. The US based antiquities coalition has established that since 2015 30 billion dollars US worth of Egyptian antiquities has been illegally smuggled abroad. Even with all the constant looting and smuggling the vast amount of artifacts under Cairo and the surrounding area is still only 10% excavated. For thousands of years we have tore and prodded these things yet there is still 90% hidden under the sand. What does that tell you? We are mostly aware that Cairo is one of the power cities of the modern world. It is a tourist hotspot and thrives from the lure of the surrounding wonders but Cairo is also a very special city in the fact that it stands alone as the city that may hold more secrets to our ancient past than anywhere else in the world. Think about this, Cairo is surrounded with the most ancient structures on this earth from a time we are obsessed with because we are pretty much still in the dark as to what it was. Items of historical interest that have been found in the modern city continue to defy logical understanding. The city is built upon a ruined ancient site that was swallowed by the desert over tens of thousands of years. So is it any wonder that the great lecturer and author Robert Beval is quoted as saying that in the dead of night and all night long when the city is quiet enough, Cairo is filled with the sound of the residents digging in their basements for ancient artifacts. It is a strong statement and a shocking one to think that in Cairo's city all day and night every day of the year there is constant digging and looting of these ancient things taking place. The result of this is a billion dollar global trade that has been going on for, well God knows how long. If these things are worth billions yearly then over the past 100 years alone we are looking at a figure in value that is hard to even consider an existence of. If we were to tell you that the black trade has generated a number in excess of quadrillions of dollars you are hard pushed to even imagine such money even exists. This of course has been the fuel of the super city a constant disregard for history has seen Cairo flourish. It was once the colonial powers who benefited from these riches and it makes you wonder that if they are still finding things daily even after thousands of years of theft how big was the ancient empire and are we grossly misunderstanding the sheer size of the ancient civilization whom produce these things on a biblical scale. The city is a contrast of ancient and new east and west. The pyramids of Giza near Memphis stand at the southwestern edge of the metropolis and an obelisk in the northeast marks the site of Heliopolis where Plato once studied and is credited to have learned of Atlantis at this location. Between these extremes are other architectural monuments dating from Roman, Arab and Turkish times. The city of Cairo has been a constant place of interest as long as our history will stretch and you would be forgiven for suggesting that this is the center of the world. The Great Pyramid is located at the exact intersection of the longest line of latitude and the longest line of longitude, coincidence we think not. Some 5,000 years ago Memphis today lying mainly in ruins was a thriving metropolis. According to a commonly accepted tradition Memphis was founded about 2925 BC by King Minis who supposedly united the two prehistoric kingdoms of upper and lower Egypt giving us the dynastic period of Egypt. This unification was important. The original name of the city was the White Walls and the term may have referred originally to the King's palace which would have been built of whitewashed brick. In addition to crediting King Minis with the unification of Egypt by war and administrative measures, a tradition appearing in the term Papyrus and the history of Herodotus credits him with diverting the course of the Nile in lower Egypt and founding Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt during the Old Kingdom on the reclaimed land. The emergence of the Great Kingdom clearly left its mark on history but we need to remember that they were not the first. There was a break between civilizations in the region possibly as much as thousands of years between the cataclysmic event roughly 12,500 years ago and the reemergence 5,000 years ago. The bit in the middle was possibly a dormant period where the great monuments and pylons were just sitting there awaiting the survivors to rediscover them. And that is what the dynastic period of Egypt was, a rediscovery, a reinterpretation and a rewriting of history. This is becoming more clear to us every day. Incredibly it is as if we are only now beginning to awaken to these truths. The possibility doesn't lie in the question of the dynastic abjection, it is in the watering down to fit history into these times. The force fitting of the timeline, the squeezing of every single piece of pottery and brick into a period where it is known that not only did they not have the tools and equipment available for such undertakings, they also lacked the envisioning of such projects and even crude replications are embarrassingly far short of the workmanship of the great monuments. That alone is enough to question everything. It's unknown if we will ever know what took place on this earth before the ancient cataclysm, but it's clear they were advanced, almost beyond belief. The looting of course is rife. You can go online and pluck stories left, right and center of the scale this is on. In fact it's off the charts and vastly unknown. Nearly 30 ancient Egyptian artifacts that narrowly survived the Arab Spring uprising in Cairo in 2011 have gone on display in Cairo. The exhibition entitled Destruction and Restoration includes 11 items that have been stolen from the Egyptian Museum. 18 other artifacts have also been restored after being damaged or destroyed by looters. They include three priceless statues from the era of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. One golden statue depicts him spearfishing from a boat on the Nile while other treasures are from the era of Pharaoh Akhenaten. 54 artifacts went missing from the museum when looters broke in during the first days of the January 11 uprising that toppled presidential Hassani Mumbarak. A mummy that had its head torn off during the looting has now been fixed, with experts using methods from the time to reattach it. 25 of the pieces have since been recovered, though several are still unaccounted for. Mohammed Ibrahim, State Minister for Antiquities has insisted that none of the missing artifacts have been taken out of Egypt and that authorities were still searching for them, but these are only a few known items that were documented. There are countless undocumented treasures all over the world, and still 90% of these things are still to be discovered hence the constant digging of the basements and desert at night. It is sad guys, but there is still so much left to discover and we can't change the past. There is so much to consider about Cairo, the obvious being the Giza Plateau and connecting Saqqara and Acropolis. There were possibly canals that linked the entire area that have since been swallowed by the sands of time. You can let us know below what you are thinking guys, and as always, thank you for watching.