PYRAMIDS
The Untested List
- 01The smell in a pyramid south of Cairo. Visitors say it burns the throat. Nobody, as far as we could find, has ever measured it.OPEN
- 02Written in as the films are made.
- 03
Documentaries in English
Between Sources
Measured. Told. Disputed. You judge.
Films about the questions that sit in the gaps between what was measured and what was only told. We follow one link at a time, back to the source.
Through the door: Vienna Dioscorides, Cod. med. gr. 1 (c. AD 512), the Konion (hemlock) page. Public domain.
Scroll to Step throughThe method
Who told it? How do we know? Let’s go and look.
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A story first. Every film opens on a scene, told plainly.
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A real old voice reads its own words. Herodotus, Plato, Galen, the old surveyors. A paraphrase is never passed off as a quote.
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Then the evidence, with a label on every claim. What was measured, what was only told, what is disputed, and what nobody has checked yet.
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Two readings, each at full strength. Where serious people disagree, we give both sides their best case. We do not hand you a verdict. You judge.
“Listen then, Socrates, to a tale which, though passing strange, is yet wholly true, as Solon, the wisest of the Seven, once upon a time declared.”
Pull one thread: the Atlantis story
Here is the method on a real case from our ATLANTIS series. Start with the page. Then keep asking the same question until the trail runs out.
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The page
Plato tells the story in two dialogues, the Timaeus and the Critias. The Critias stops in the middle of a sentence, as the king of the gods is about to speak:
“…and when he had assembled them, he spake thus:”
Critias 121c, tr. R. G. Bury (1929)
MEASUREDthe wording, checked on the page -
Critias, “somewhere about ten”
In the dialogue, Critias says he heard the story as a boy, on a festival day.
TOLD -
His grandfather, Critias the elder, “close upon ninety”
The old man told it to the boy. He had it from Dropides.
TOLD -
Solon, lawgiver of Athens
Solon, Critias says, was a relative and very dear friend of Dropides. Solon is a real man. So far, every link is Plato’s own report.
TOLD -
A priest at Sais, in the Nile Delta
Solon heard it from an Egyptian priest, who said the temples kept the writing.
TOLD -
The Egyptian record?
In what we could find, no Egyptian text that tells this story has ever been found. Not a papyrus. Not an inscription. Nothing that names the island, the war, or Solon’s priests.
OPENhas anyone looked? The trail ends here, for now.
Link 1 of 6
Labels
Every claim on screen wears a label.
Five plain words, always the same. One label per claim; where two fit, the stricter one wins. The frame of each label tells you its meaning before you read it.
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For example, in PHARMAKONOpium alkaloids in a sealed juglet.
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For example, in PYRAMIDSHerodotus’ hundred thousand men.
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For example, in PHARMAKONWas Marcus Aurelius addicted?
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For example, in PHARMAKONMedea’s dragon chariot.
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For example, in PYRAMIDSThe source of the smell.
Some series add THEORY (an explanation, always with its author and year) and RUMOUR (hearsay with no checkable source). Pictures made with AI carry AI ILLUSTRATION. Sources are listed under every film.
The lists
Some answers aren’t missing. Nobody has looked yet.
Each time a film meets something nobody has measured or searched, one line goes onto the series’ list, with the cheapest way to check it. The last episode reads the whole list.
ATLANTIS
The Unsearched
- 01An Egyptian text that tells the story: a papyrus, an inscription, the priests’ names. In what we could find, none has ever been found.OPEN
- 02Written in as the films are made.
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Coming up
Premieres and new films
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Every film ends with a question for you. The best answers come in the comments. For anything else, write to us.