Shadowing Practice: What Was Really Inside This Ancient Sealed Chamber?! - Learn English Speaking with Video

Among all the rulers of ancient Egypt, one pharaoh stands out.

What if ancient Egypt's most controversial pharaoh wasn't just a heretic, but a leader whose altered DNA,

strange physical form, and radical sky worship were caused by something out of this world?

Today we are venturing into the three mysterious tombs built for Pharaoh Akhenaten, the ruler whose family tried to erase him from history,

whose face was violently hacked off his coffin, whose skeletal remains still have experts arguing today.

Was Akhenaten suffering from a rare genetic condition, or was his bloodline connected to the cosmic deities he worshipped?

Let's find out.

The Three Tombs of the Alien Pharaoh Most Egyptian pharaohs only get one tomb.

Egypt's alien pharaoh got three tombs.

Everyone has been opened and its secrets explored.

Each one has revealed more hints about the life of the pharaoh who may have come from the stars.

Pharaoh Akhenaten was the successor of Amenhotep III.

Amenhotep was one of the most successful rulers of the new kingdom.

His son was an enormous disappointment.

Said to be weak, frail, interested in dreaming and poetry instead of ruling, Akhenaten should never have become pharaoh in the first place.

But he did, and his reign was a disaster for the Egyptian people.

When he came to the throne, the Egyptian capital was the city of Thebes.

Akhenaten thought it would be fun to make his own city, which he called the Horizon of Aten, and is now the archaeological site of Tel Al-Amarna.

Akhenaten believed his new city would make him famous forever.

He wanted to be immortalized, to have his name celebrated through the halls of history until the end of time.

His successors did everything in their power to erase his name from history, destroying his temples and abandoning his city to the desert.

They almost succeeded until modern archaeology unearthed his story,

cementing the heretic king alongside Nefertiti and Tutankhamen as part of ancient Egypt's most famous chaotic family.

Akhenaten is now famous for his alien appearance, his disturbing statues, his attempt at destroying Egyptian religion, and his failed capital city.

Of all the known pharaohs in Egyptian history, this one is by far the most controversial.

He introduced radical policies and religious reforms that changed the fabric of Egyptian society.

It was his specific policies that led to civil war and economic collapse.

He was so bad for Egypt that by the time Akhenaten died, he had already nudged the nation into a slow death spiral that his successors were powerless to stop.

In fact, he may have unwittingly doomed Egypt to be conquered by everyone and their grandmother over the following millennia.

One of the biggest changes historians point out was the artistic direction of the culture.

Sculptures, paintings, and carvings from his rule are very different from all Egyptian artwork that came before it.

The new art featured humans with really unusual proportions.

You could say it's an artistic style, but it almost feels like Akhenaten was trying to change the human race, like he wanted to evolve or mutate them.

The new art made people look downright alien, with odd proportions, features accentuated in strange ways, it was not a good look.

Naturally, these alien-like artworks have spawned many controversial theories.

Some say that Akhenaten received a vision of a different type of human race, which he wanted to bring to fruition through worship of a new god,

which I'll tell you more about in a bit.

Another theory is that Akhenaten himself was an alien, but not just him.

There is a theory that claims the original rulers of Egypt were either full-blooded aliens or the descendants of alien-human hybrids.

Akhenaten may have been the first in a long line of descendants to take his heritage seriously.

Or maybe he happened to be born with certain ancestral memories unlocked in his DNA, which made him look, act, and think more like an alien than his predecessors.

There are a ton of theories that connect Akhenaten to a mysterious antediluvian world, one in which extraterrestrials lived upon this planet and crossbred with humans.

Akhenaten's father ruled Egypt from 1388 to 1351 BC, during the 18th dynasty.

It was a time of incredible prosperity.

Never before had Egypt enjoyed such wealth and splendor.

The culture was rich, the arts were booming, and architecture was improving in leaps and bounds.

Akhenaten grew up as a boy in a world without hardship.

Egypt was peaceful, wealthy, and safe.

When his father died, his older brother Thutmose should have taken the throne.

But then he died.

So the throne fell to the poetry lover Amenhotep IV, who changed his name to Akhenaten five years into his reign.

The name change coincided with the introduction of his new and very destructive policies.

Forget about the artwork.

Akhenaten's biggest change was religion.

Ancient Egypt had enjoyed a polytheistic religion since before the unification.

Back when Egypt was separated into two feuding kingdoms.

When the Nile Valley was largely occupied by refugees from the dying Sahara and primitive villages, they still worshipped the pantheon of animalistic gods.

For thousands of years, this pantheon had served the Egyptian people just fine, and then came Akhenaten to outlaw them.

He abandoned the old gods and pledged his allegiance to the cult of Amun.

This cult focused on a new god named Aten, hence the name Akhenaten.

There was to be one god and one god only, the god of the sun.

Akhenaten ushered in an era of monotheism that lasted all of 12 miserable years.

They called him the heretic pharaoh.

It should be noted that Aten already existed in ancient Egyptian mythology.

It was the name of the great disk of the sun, considered an aspect of the god Ra.

In essence, Aten was the personification of the sun.

The symbol of the sun disk itself had already existed for thousands of years.

It was a smaller cult god, known but not really very popular.

The major deity of Akhenaten's day was Amun, whom everyone had heard about.

The cult of Amun was as huge 3,000 years ago as the Catholic Church is today.

The priests of Amun held a phenomenal amount of power inside the state, sort of like the amount of power that bishops once held throughout Europe.

They were so powerful that the priests owned more land than the pharaoh.

They had such clout with the people and the gods that they were on an almost equal standing with the royal family.

This was not a good thing for the royals.

Nobody wants to be a king and share his throne with a bunch of priests.

Many historians believe that Akhenaten's shift to a new religion didn't reflect any intrinsic alien qualities.

It was about curbing the power of the cult of Amun.

When archeologists first uncovered statues and reliefs of Pharaoh Akhenaten, his depiction defied everything known about ancient Egyptian art.

Unlike the idealized muscular physiques typical of other pharaohs, Akhenaten was rendered with striking, almost otherworldly features.

An elongated skull, a narrow face with a prominent chin, full lips, spiddly limbs, a soft belly, and exaggeratedly wide hips.

These radical proportions have led some researchers and medical experts to speculate that his unique appearance wasn't just artistic license,

but the result of a rare genetic condition.

He wasn't an alien.

He had health issues.

One leading medical hypothesis suggests that Akhenaten suffered from Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder of the connective tissue that causes long,

thin limbs, elongated fingers, and a narrow, lengthened head.

Other researchers have pointed to conditions like Freilich syndrome, which causes a distribution of body fat around the hips and the thighs,

or craniosynostosis, where the skull sutures fused prematurely, forcing the head to grow upward and backward.

However, many modern Egyptologists argue that there was nothing wrong with him at all.

When CT scans of his family members, including King Tutankhamen, revealed no evidence of Marfan syndrome,

experts increasingly concluded that his look was a deliberate artistic choice.

By breaking away from traditional Egyptian canon, Akhenaten was visually communicating his status as the supreme representative of the Aten.

He wanted to blend male and female physical traits to symbolize the sun god as the ultimate creator of all life.

Whether he actually had a rare genetic condition or was just pulling off the ultimate ancient art redesign, one thing's for sure.

Akhenaten remains among the most distinctive and alien-looking figures in ancient history.

But to truly understand the legacy of this strange pharaoh, we have to look below the sand, starting with the mysterious tombs linked to his forgotten reign.

Tomb WV-25

In 1817, adventurer Giovanni Battista Belzoni traveled to Egypt and slowly began clearing the sand out of ancient places he came across.

During his adventures, he found Tomb WV-25, in the Valley of the Kings.

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This tomb is unfinished and undecorated, suggesting it began construction as a pharaoh's grave, but then work stopped.

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When Giovanni found it, the entrance was buried and completely blocked off with debris.

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Giovanni got a battering ram and smashed through the opening and into the tomb.

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Inside, he found himself at the top of a staircase, 8 feet wide and 10 feet tall.

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At the bottom of the staircase was a modest chamber containing four mummies.

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Each one was inside their sarcophagus, lying flat on the ground.

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It was as if someone started the tomb, brought in the bodies, and then abandoned the job before anything else got done.

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In total, eight mummies and several artifacts were recovered from WV-25.

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Many years after its initial discovery, University of Minnesota's Otto Schaden led a new excavation of the tomb.

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Artifacts that were recovered pointed to a royal burial, but it wasn't exactly clear who it had been intended for, or why the eight bodies were abandoned inside of it.

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Shaden's team identified the tomb as likely having been built for Akhenaten, not from any specific objects or inscriptions, but from the date of the structure.

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The tomb appears to have been built between the reign of Amenhotep III and A.

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Amenhotep ruled before Akhenaten, and A ruled after Tutankhamen.

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Unless there was some other pharaoh not listed in the records who ruled for a few months, the tomb was probably reserved for our friend Akhenaten.

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So why wasn't he in the tomb?

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It could be that the construction was unsafe.

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Otto Schaden suggested that because of some overhanging boulders above the entrance, work had to be suspended.

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Those overhanging boulders were likely what clogged up the entrance when they inevitably collapsed.

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It's also possible the tomb construction was halted when Akhenaten suddenly moved his capital from Thebes to Amarna.

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Tomb KV55 In January of 1907, archaeologist Edward Russell Ayrton was digging in the Valley of the Kings.

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Just a few feet from the massive tomb of Ramses IX, he scraped away the debris to reveal the entrance to something remarkable.

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KV55.

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Sadly, the tomb had been looted and damaged in ancient times.

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But even after thieves had pillaged the place, it still contained enough treasure that researchers couldn't believe their eyes.

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The tomb contained a shrine, loose bits of gold decoration, statues, figures of gods, jewelry, a collar for a vulture made of solid gold,

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amulets, canopic jars, the head of a goose encased in silver, fragments of furniture, weapons, boomerangs, you name it.

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Considering how much loot was still in the tomb in 1907, those ancient thieves must have gotten away with solid bricks of gold.

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Some of the items inside the tomb were quickly connected to Pharaoh Akhenaten's other wife.

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He was also married to Nefertiti, one of the most famous women of ancient Egypt.

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Nefertiti ruled in his place upon his death and likely pulled the strings from behind her son Tutankhamen throughout his reign.

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The objects inside KV-55 did not belong to Nefertiti, they belonged to Kia, who is known in the records as the Great Beloved Wife.

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There were also items inside the tomb that belonged to Akhenaten's father, Amenhotep III and his mother, Tije.

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One of the clay seals in the tomb even belonged to Tutankhamen.

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This was an exciting discovery with a lot of big names attached.

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Archaeologists realized they may have stumbled upon the finished tomb of the heretic pharaoh.

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Lo and behold, there he was, just laying there, without a face.

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Inside KV55 was the skeleton of a badly mummified man.

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The body was found inside a coffin, a fairly underwhelming one.

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The coffin also had a representation on it of a pharaoh without a face.

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This is the most shocking piece of evidence yet.

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The fact that the image on the coffin doesn't have a face means

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that whoever was buried in that box was being punished.

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The Egyptian priest responsible for putting kings in the ground cursed this man at his death.

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The faceless image was designed to destroy Akhenaten in the afterlife by forcing him into the underworld without an identity.

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No portraits, no inscriptions, and no face.

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His tomb was full of objects belonging to his family, but nothing for him.

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It was the ultimate punishment for the heretic who attempted to erase the gods.

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KV55 was a tomb for someone who had been damned.

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But was it Akhenaten?

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That is the question that has kept Egyptologists at war for over a century.

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Because when you look closely at the evidence, the scene inside KV55 starts to look less like a single royal burial

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and more like an ancient cold case with two very different prime suspects.

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On one side of the debate, you have the scholars who say absolutely, this is Akhenaten.

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The circumstantial case is stacked heavily against him.

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As the heretic king, who tried to outlaw Egypt's traditional gods, Akhenaten was loathed by the priesthood of Amun.

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When he died, vengeful priests would have had every reason in the world to desecrate his original tomb in Amarna, drag his coffin into the Valley of the Kings,

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and then systematically hack away his face and cartouches to strip him of an afterlife.

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Major DNA studies led by Dr. Zahi Hawass in 2010 identified the KV-55 skeleton as the biological father of Tutankhamen,

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which points a direct finger at Akhenaten.

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Case closed, right?

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Not so fast.

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There's one massive problem with that theory, the bones themselves.

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Multiple forensic anthropologists who have examined the skull and the skeleton estimate

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that the man in the box died in his early 20s.

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Historical records tell us Akhenaten ruled for 17 years

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and was likely well into his 30s or maybe even up to his 60s when he passed.

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The math just doesn't add up.

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So who else could it be?

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Enter candidate number two, Smenkare.

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Smenkare is one of the most ghost-like figures in Egyptian history, a short-lived co-regent who briefly ruled alongside Akhenaten near the very end of his reign.

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He was likely Akhenaten's younger brother or eldest son, which would explain why his DNA matches King Tut's lineage so closely,

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while his age at death perfectly matches that younger skeletal profile.

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Whether KV-55 holds the heretic king himself or his mysterious heir, one thing is clear.

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Whoever was placed in that box was caught in the crossfire of a chaotic royal collapse, stripped of their identity and cast into oblivion.

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The Eternal House of Amarna

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The third and final tomb tied to the heretic pharaoh wasn't tucked away in the Valley of the Kings at all.

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It was built right in the heart of his failed capital, Akhetaten.

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Local villagers stumbled upon it by chance in 1887.

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This was meant to be Akhenaten's ultimate, everlasting resting place.

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A grand royal monument erected in the city he created specifically for his new god.

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The problem?

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His eternal house was met with absolute vengeance.

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When Akhenaten died, the traditional powers in Egypt didn't just move on.

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They launched a scorched earth campaign to erase him from memory entirely.

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His reign had been such a religious nightmare that priests

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and successors like King Tut scrubbed his name off every surface they could find.

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Statues were smashed, his face was chipped off temple walls, his shiny new capital was abandoned to the desert, and his sacred tomb was utterly wrecked.

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It wasn't just looted for gold, it was stripped down to the bare stone.

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But among the wreckage, archaeologists found glimpses of the man behind the myth.

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They uncovered a chamber likely dedicated to his mother, Queen Tia, along with another belonging to his daughter, Princess Maketatin.

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Her room holds one of the most raw emotional scenes in ancient Egyptian history.

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A wall carving showing Akhenaten and Nefertiti openly weeping over their daughter's deathbed after she passed away as a teenager.

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For all of the talk of his fanaticism, these ruins show a father grieving a devastating loss.

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In the main burial hall, researchers piece together fragments of Akhenaten's shattered red granite sarcophagus,

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his alabaster canopic chest, and a few scattered human bones.

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But those bones almost certainly don't belong to the pharaoh himself.

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Remember, the faceless mummy back in KV55 was already linked directly to Tutankhamen through DNA analysis,

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leaving most scholars convinced that Akhenaten was moved out of Amarna during the chaotic aftermath of his reign.

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And this brings us to the end of our journey with Egypt's most bizarre ruler.

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Before we move on to our next ancient Egyptian mystery, I want to hear from you.

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What's your take on Akhenaten?

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Was he just a deeply misunderstood human suffering from severe, generations-long genetic defects?

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Or could those radical features and strange religion be proof of something far more mysterious than the royal bloodline?

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Drop your thoughts in the comments below.

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Lost Technology of the Ancients At the Dendera Temple Complex in Egypt, the Temple of Hathor stands as an immortal reminder of the pharaoh's grandeur.

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Dedicated to Hathor, goddess of fertility, motherhood, and joy, it's one of the few near-perfectly preserved temples in Egypt,

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but it also has some really unusual damage that can't be attributed to ancient Egyptian weaponry.

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The stairs in the temple, made of solid granite, look like they are partially melted.

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It looks like for a brief moment, they were heated up so much that the rock turned molten and started flowing like lava.

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Now, of course, the granite steps are hard, but something does appear to have melted them many years ago.

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It could be a sign of the advanced alien technology once housed within the complex.

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This anomaly has made the site a major point of interest for ancient alien enthusiasts, so get ready for a wild ride.

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The temple was built during the Ptolemaic era between 54 BC and 68 AD,

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that was right in the middle of the collapse of ancient Egypt and the rise of Roman Egypt.

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Putting aside aliens and ancient mysteries, it is an exceptional example of Greco-Egyptian engineering.

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Hathor was more than a goddess.

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She was known as the mistress of the sky and the stars, which has led some researchers to theorize that Hathor may have been a lot more than just a goddess.

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She may have been an extraterrestrial being, explaining why she was intimately connected to the stars and the heavens.

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If an alien really did come down from the stars to live in Egypt, you would expect them to have some seriously hot technology.

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But an alien on Earth disguised as a goddess wouldn't be able to leave her gadgets lying around.

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She would have needed a safe place to store her alien stuff.

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The question ancient alien theorists ask is, what if the gods, whom the Egyptians did believe came from the heavens,

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were actual aliens who stashed their gear inside their sacred temples.

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It would make sense.

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The temples were the most important structures in the kingdom, carefully controlled buildings monitored by hordes of priests and priestesses.

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Remember, the priests of the cult of Amun had almost as much power as the pharaohs.

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What if that's because those priests were working for living aliens disguised as deities?

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There could have been an internal struggle going on between different classes of aliens competing for supremacy over the Nile Valley.

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You had the pharaohs who were aliens and the high priests who were also aliens.

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I told you, this theory was going to get pretty wild, but it's fun, right?

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Let's check out what they consider evidence because the Temple of Hathor is full of it.

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The Dendera Light

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The main thing is the massive bas-relief of something

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that looks a lot like a pair of light bulbs or some form of electric lamps.

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Known as the Dendera Light, this single bas-relief is one of Egypt's greatest mysteries.

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When you look at the image, it's hard not to see a light bulb.

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The image depicts two bubble-like shapes the same as elongated light bulbs.

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Inside each of the two bubbles is a wavy snake stretching from one side to the other.

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The base of each bubble is attached to a lotus flower, with the entire structure being supported by a pillar with horizontal rings.

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What that image represents depends on your interpretation of it.

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Some have noticed a striking resemblance between the Dendera bulbs and modern electrical components.

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One of them was Erich von Danigen, the original ancient alien enthusiast.

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He was the man who brought the Dendera light bulb to the attention of the world.

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Von Daniken popularized the idea that Egyptians had advanced technology.

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When people associate Egypt and aliens, it's in large part thanks to Daniken's writing.

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He noticed how the bubble looks an awful lot like a glass vacuum tube.

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Daniken also noticed how the snake inside the bubble

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or the tube looks an awful lot like an electrical filament or an arc light.

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The bubble is connected to a lotus flower, but the flower looks like a socket.

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It looks like the bulb is screwed into the flower, which doesn't feel natural at all.

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There's also the stem of the flower extending below the bulb and away, plugging into what mainstream scientists say is a stone pillar.

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Daniken argued the stem is actually an electrical wire and that it's plugged into a high-voltage insulator.

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What a lot of people say is

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that no one has ever figured out how the Egyptians painted bright and vibrant illustrations down in the dark tombs.

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How did they see without light?

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Your average Egyptian tomb is anywhere from 30 to 100 feet below the surface.

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It's not a vertical shaft either, with the corridors leading down into burial chambers often at a steep angle.

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There are also twists and turns in many tombs and branching chambers, so there wouldn't have been much sunlight at the bottom.

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For the Egyptians to have created the colorful artworks down in the dark, they needed light.

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There is simply no way they didn't have light.

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Archaeologists would expect them to have used torches, because what else would they have used?

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But there are no soot stains on the walls and ceilings of tombs, and that doesn't make any sense.

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If ancient Egyptians were bringing torches down into the dark, there should be evidence of soot from those torches, but there isn't.

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It's got a lot of folks wondering

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if the Egyptians had figured out another source of light using a primitive bulb connected to a giant battery.

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I'm sure you've heard of the Baghdad Battery by now, which is an ancient device built around the time of the Roman Empire.

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Discovered in Persia in 1936, it's a ceramic pot with a copper tube and an iron rod fixed together with bitumen.

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It's an ancient battery that could provide one volt of electricity.

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A standard household light bulb requires anywhere from 110 to 240 volts to operate, but much simpler setups can run on as little as 1.5 volts.

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Proponents of the ancient tech theory argue that the Egyptians could have developed a primitive light source,

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perhaps powered by a high output version of an electrochemical setup like the Baghdad Battery.

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To ancient astronaut theorists, the relief inside the Temple of Hathor is the ultimate smoking gun.

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Mainstream Egyptologists, however, see something entirely different.

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In standard Egyptian mythology, the scene represents a creation myth, a lotus flower giving birth to a snake surrounded by a protective cosmic bubble.

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Still, the idea of external intervention is a recurring theme across the ancient world.

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From the Sumerian tales of the Anunnaki to Egyptian traditions, legends often speak of sky deities bestowing knowledge upon early civilizations.

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It raises a fascinating question that alternative researchers love to point out.

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Why did Egyptian technology and megastructure engineering seem to peak early on, rather than steadily advance over time?

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Did the gods simply take their knowledge back?

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And believe it or not, that isn't even the full story of the temple.

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The Melted Steps In the western section of the temple, a set of stone stairs lead straight up to the roof,

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flanked by pristine carvings of the pharaoh, Hathor, and her priests.

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But as you look closer at the steps themselves, the story takes a bizarre turn.

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The solid stone appears to have completely melted.

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Right down to the center, the steps look warped and blended together, as if exposed to extreme, unimaginable heat.

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What could have possibly done this to solid granite?

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If you ask a mainstream scientist, you're going to get a mainstream answer.

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They say that heavy foot traffic has caused the stairs to melt from thousands of years of visitors.

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But for a lot of people, that's just not good enough.

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And it's boring.

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Ignoring the foot traffic hypothesis, the first thing that comes to mind is heat.

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Heat is the one thing that can always melt rock.

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But of course, there's an issue with the heat theory.

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Anything hot enough to melt solid granite stairs would have also damaged the bas-reliefs on the walls, but everything else remains perfectly unscathed.

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Instead, the steps appear to have been subjected to concentrated heat that only touched them.

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It looks like someone dropped a bucket of acid and it flowed down the steps.

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Ancient alien theorists believe these melted stairs are evidence that aliens were bringing nuclear material into the temple, possibly using it to power whatever machines were stored within.

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Since the stairs go to the roof, I have to assume they landed on the roof to unload the cargo.

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They were going down the stairs when a drum broke or leaked, the nuclear fuel melted the stairs, and end of story.

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Of course, if you want proof, I can't give that to you.

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Scientists haven't found evidence of nuclear energy in the ancient world here yet.

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There is no direct proof that the pyramids were used as energy converters or energy storage tanks,

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but there is evidence of ancient stone melting all over the world.

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There are over 70 ancient hill forts scattered throughout Scotland and Europe, but mostly Scotland that were melted.

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These forts feature stone walls fused into globs of glass-like material by extreme heat.

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Conspiracy theorists claim the forts were blasted by a laser or even a nuclear bomb.

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In Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, an ancient city of the Indus Valley civilization, there is more melted stone.

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Fused bricks and lumps of clay appear to mirror the damage of an atomic blast.

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Scientists found evidence of a trinitite-like substance, similar to that found after the 1945 Trinity nuclear test.

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Some have speculated that when the alien gods of the ancient world left Earth, they bombed it, melting ancient cities and causing a global flood.

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Do you believe that aliens had anything to do with ancient Egypt?

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Did gods live among the Egyptians?

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Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

✨ Aanbevolen Video

190 zinnen

Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les

Deze spreekles op niveau B2 is gebaseerd op de video “What Was Really Inside This Ancient Sealed Chamber?!”. Deze woorden komen het vaakst terug: Akhenaten, ancient, tomb, alien, Egyptian. Deze video bevat 312 zinnen en 4648 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 27:35. De spreker praat in een natuurlijk tempo van ongeveer 169 woorden per minuut, dicht bij een alledaags gesprek. Slechts 72% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden, dus de woordenschat is pittig.

Belangrijke woorden in deze video

De 15 moeilijkste woorden uit de video, met uitspraak en betekenis:

Woord	Uitspraak	Betekenis
tomb zelfstandig naamwoord	/tum/	tombe
pharaoh zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈfɛɹ(ˌ)oʊ/	farao
melt werkwoord	/mɛlt/	smelten, laten smelten
bulb zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈbʌlb/	bloembol
heretic zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈhɛɹɪtɪk/	ketter
reign zelfstandig naamwoord	/ɹeɪ̯n/	troon, bestuur
stairs zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈstɛɹz/	trap
researcher zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/	onderzoeker
bubble zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈbʌbəl/	bel
coffin zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈkɔfɪn/	doodskist, kist
ruler zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈɹulɚ/	meetlat, liniaal
granite zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈɡɹæn.ɪt/	graniet
mysterious bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/mɪˈstɪɹi.əs/	geheimzinnig, mysterieus
theorist zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈθiːəɹəst/	theoreticus
erase werkwoord	/ɪˈɹeɪs/	uitwissen, uitgummen

Phrasal verbs die je zult horen

Woord	Betekenis
figure out werkwoord	uitvogelen, er achter komen
point out werkwoord	aanwijzen, aanduiden
check out werkwoord	onderzoeken
come across werkwoord	overkomen
find out werkwoord	ontdekken, onderzoeken
go down werkwoord	afdalen
grow up werkwoord	opgroeien
pass away werkwoord	overlijden, ontslapen

Grammatica in deze video

De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:

Structuur	In de video
Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt	has been opened · has revealed · have become
Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet	were caused · has been opened · be immortalized
Betrekkelijke bijzinnen who / which + zin — extra informatie over een persoon of ding	someone who had · stars, which has · man who brought

Uitspraak om op te letten

De spreker gebruikt 27 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals wasn't, doesn't, didn't. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.

De “th”-klanken: theorist /ˈθiːəɹəst/, throne /θɹəʊ̯n/, pantheon /ˈpænθiˌɑn/, mythology /mɪˈθɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, hypothesis /haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/
De klanken “sh” en “zh”: proportion /pɹəˈpɔɹʃən/, inscription /ɪnˈskɹɪpʃən/, smash /smæʃ/
Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: mysterious /mɪˈstɪɹi.əs/, archaeologist /ˌɑɹ.kiˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒɪst/, sarcophagus /sɑɹˈkɑfəɡəs/, mythology /mɪˈθɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, hypothesis /haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/

Klanken die Nederlandstaligen lastig vinden:

Stemhebbende eindmedeklinker — /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/ niet verscherpen: bulb /ˈbʌlb/, stairs /ˈstɛɹz/, fuse /fjuːz/, primitive /ˈpɹɪmɪtɪv/, disguise /dɪsˈɡaɪz/
/æ/ — opener dan de Nederlandse “e”: granite /ˈɡɹæn.ɪt/, abandon /əˈbæn.dən/, statue /ˈstæt͡ʃu/, collapse /kəˈlæps/, afterlife /ˈæftɚˌlaɪf/
/g/ — een harde plofklank, geen Nederlandse “g”: granite /ˈɡɹæn.ɪt/, goddess /ˈɡɑdəs/, elongate /əˈlɔŋˌɡeɪt/, sarcophagus /sɑɹˈkɑfəɡəs/, fragment /ˈfɹæɡmənt/

Zo oefen je met deze video

Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
Begin op 0,75× snelheid, spreek zin voor zin na en ga terug naar normale snelheid zodra het makkelijk gaat.
Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als tomb, pharaoh, melt.

Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?

Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.

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