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0:01
♪ [narrator] On the outskirts of Alexandria, once Ancient Egypt's greatest metropolis...
0:09
[speaking English] [narrator] . ..archeologists search for bodies.
0:17
[camera shutter clicks]
0:22
Any clue could shed light on how an ancient megacity... [speaking English] [narrator] ...vanished almost entirely. [speaking English]
0:34
♪[suspenseful music playing]♪
0:38
Wow! [sand whooshing]
0:46
♪[intense music playing]♪
0:52
[narrator] Alexandria, a city of legends with a history stretching back more than 2,000 years to the era of Egypt's final pharaohs.
1:04
Once Ancient Egypt's greatest metropolis, today little is known about the lives and deaths of its earliest inhabitants.
1:15
Now, archeologists are finding new ways to get under the city's skin, to discover how Alexandria was born from almost nothing and then disappeared into near oblivion.
1:32
♪ Thirty miles west of the city center, at Taposiris Magna, Dominican archaeologist Kathleen Martinez is in her 15th season of excavations, trying to unlock Alexandria's secrets. [speaking English]
1:59
[narrator] Kathleen believes you can't understand a city until you understand its people.
2:05
She thinks Taposiris Magna's ancient temple complex is a key place to find evidence of ordinary life in Alexandria.
2:15
[Dr. Kathleen Martinez speaking English]
2:35
[narrator] Chief among Kathleen's discoveries at Taposiris Magna is a huge burial ground not far from the temple walls.
2:45
She believes any bodies in these shallow graves could help her uncover the clues she's looking for.
3:02
[narrator] The cemetery contains dozens of graves, but many have been robbed or destroyed by 2,000 years of storms. This season, Kathleen has found a collection of burials that may have escaped the ravages of weather and greed.
3:23
Ah.
3:27
[narrator] Kathleen believes ordinary Alexandrians had good reason to be buried close to this temple.
3:35
Taposiris Magna wasn't just a religious site . It was a multi-purpose hub.
3:43
Positioned strategically on the coast just west of Alexandria, the temple at Taposiris Magna was a prime point of access to Mediterranean trade.
3:54
An 1,800-yard long causeway gave the temple access to the sea, providing a place for the city's pilgrims and merchants to mingle with traders. Inside, priests conducted religious ceremonies, ministering to the needs of Alexandria's dead.
4:15
But they also oversaw trade to and from the city, making Taposiris Magna a hive of activity for Alexandria's ordinary folk.
4:27
♪ Archaeologist Linda Chapon has helped Kathleen uncover more than 100 tombs in the necropolis. Her experience tells her this one could hold precious clues to how Alexandrians lived.
4:58
[narrator] Finding an intact plaster seal is a good sign. It's the first thing tomb raiders would break when robbing a grave. It suggests there may still be a body inside.
5:21
[narrator] Kathleen needs to prise open the seal, but she can't just start digging if the grave contains human remains. She needs to bring in an expert tomb excavator.
5:41
In downtown Alexandria, Egyptologist Arto Belekdanian has come to investigate the origins of this ancient megacity.
5:53
He begins at one of Alexandria's last remaining ancient sites, the Serapeum. Just look at this place! I mean, everything is truly on a magnificent scale. You can tell that this place was a very significant site.
6:16
[narrator] Dating from the 3rd century BCE, this temple is one of very few ancient structures not covered by the modern metropolis.
6:27
The temple's tallest monument is known as Pompey's Pillar. This was, in fact, a much later Roman period addition to the city of Alexandria's skyline.
6:41
But what is interesting is that rock down here.
6:46
It's very clearly some kind of reused element from something else that's been incorporated into the construction of the base. [narrator] The otherwise plain black granite block contains inscriptions that suggest it was once part of an earlier pre-Roman structure when Alexandria was capital of Egypt. [Dr. Arto Belekdanian] Look at that, there's Greek writing on it. ♪[dramatic music playing]♪ This is a dedication by, it's a little unclear,
7:23
but here it very clearly says, "Alexandrius, the Alexandrian."
7:31
So, although Alexandria was the capital of Egypt, what we have here is Greek writing, Greek dedications, it was very much also a Greek city.
7:48
[narrator] The Serapeum, with its pillared temple and colonnades, is a clue to Alexandria's heritage. The vast ancient city looks far more Greek than Egyptian.
8:01
Buildings bristling with columns are set along grid-like streets, a design pioneered by the Greeks. Near the waterfront is the Museum, a vast institution of learning. It sits alongside the city's famed library, and a classically Greek-styled amphitheater. And overlooking it all, the towering lighthouse of Alexandria is a true wonder of Greek design and engineering. ♪[curious music playing]♪ Okay, this is decidedly not Egyptian tradition.
8:41
This column capital is of the Corinthian order of... Greek tradition. ♪
8:51
[narrator] Why was Egypt's most celebrated city so steeped in the architecture of Greece, hundreds of miles away across the Mediterranean Sea?
9:03
To help answer that, Arto wants to explore how the city was founded.
9:13
In the ancient settlement of Philadelphia, 140 miles to the south,
9:19
Egyptian archaeologist Basem Gehad is exploring a necropolis.
9:26
[Dr. Basem Gehad] This site is outstanding because Philadelphia was, uh, built on fresh lands by people from Alexandria. This was proved by papyri and text from the 3rd century. The same way of building, with the same people, with the same mindset. [narrator] Unlike ancient Alexandria, Philadelphia has never been built over. Beneath the sand, its archaeology is near pristine. In this desert, Basem hopes to unearth clues to the culture of the legendary lost city.
10:06
This is the only living example that mimics, uh, ancient Alexandria. [narrator] Evidence of Alexandrian customs and traditions could be just below the surface.
10:21
The excavation has got off to a strong start. Basem's team has uncovered wall footings indicating the presence of a mudbrick structure. [indistinct chatter] Spanning an area of 35 by 40 feet, it's large.
10:40
♪[thrilling music playing]♪
10:44
But what excites Basem is not so much the building's size as its decoration.
10:51
You can feel the brush strokes of the artist.
10:57
I have never seen this before in this site, this is quite a special moment.
11:04
[narrator] The vivid-colored artwork doesn't stop at the floor . Frescos seem to cover every surface.
11:12
There was paintings all over the walls.
11:18
This is beautiful, just amazing.
11:24
[narrator] As Basem's team continues to haul away the sand, they begin to reveal the structure's architecture. A series of square platforms suggest a porch or walkway. So we can see remains of columns that give us an indication of that this building was standing high. From what I see here we can say that we have the first mausoleum to be found in Philadelphia. [narrator] Ancient Egyptian mausoleums were structures built by Egypt's wealthiest families
12:02
to allow the living to visit the dead. Across this is a huge discovery. [narrator] The person this structure was built to honor could be close by, perhaps even entombed beneath the building itself.
12:22
♪ [narrator] In Egypt's Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Arto is investigating the city's earliest days, trying to explain why the ancient buildings appear so Greek in style. The oldest known surviving reference to the site where Alexandria now stands, appears on a slab of carved stone dated to 311 BCE. [Arto] I'm here looking at an image of the Satrap Stela. This is a monumental decree bearing a fascinating text.
12:59
[narrator] The stela refers to a coastal fort at a place called Ra-Kadet. And what is basically translates into is "The place of building." In other words, the construction site.
13:15
Right there is the word that indicates "construction," that is a man building a wall, right there. [narrator] The stela was carved just 20 years after one of the most seismic events in Egyptian history, the arrival of the legendary Greek Empire builder Alexander the Great. In 332 BCE, having already taken control of much of Persia, he conquered Egypt and set about constructing a new city. ♪[dramatic music playing]♪ Legend says the philosopher Homer visited Alexander in a dream
13:56
and told him of a site where he could locate a new capital. ♪ Alexander's architect used grain to map out the city's plan, as a way of blessing the great conqueror's new venture.
14:13
As they laid their outline, birds descended to feast on the seeds, an omen Alexander took to mean his city would feed the world.
14:24
Alexander died before his capital was finished, leaving a line of Greek kings all called Ptolemy to complete the work. [waves lapping] Surrounded by water, Alexandria was easily defendable and had prime access to Mediterranean trade.
14:46
But by building a brand-new capital on the coast, the new Greek rulers had taken a gamble. It meant asking the native Egyptians to abandon 2,700 years of tradition.
15:00
[Arto] When you think about where the Ancient Egyptians lived, you instantly think the Nile Valley. And that is absolutely true. They had to be convinced that this was not only a nominal capital but a real, true capital, connected to their ancestors, to their places of worship, to their deities, to their traditions. So how did the Ptolemies pull this off?
15:33
[narrator] At Taposiris Magna,
15:37
Kathleen is preparing to break open what she believes is a rare, intact tomb of an ordinary Alexandrian.
15:46
The body inside could reveal clues to day-to-day lives in the Greek-Egyptian capital.
15:53
[speaking English]
16:05
[narrator] Any human remains inside the grave will be extremely fragile.
16:18
[narrator] Breaking the seal is a job that requires one of their most experienced burial excavators.
16:36
[camera shutter clicks]
16:40
[narrator] With the plaster removed from the three stone slabs covering the pit, Kathleen is ready to open the grave. ♪[suspenseful music playing]♪
17:00
♪ [narrator] It's the most delicate of heavy lifting jobs, one slip could lead to serious injury. ♪
17:12
♪[suspenseful music playing]♪
17:19
[indistinct chatter] [narrator] Instantly, Kathleen has cause for concern.
17:40
[narrator] Exposed to the elements for millennia, the grave appears to have suffered water damage.
17:47
Kathleen needs to find out if the body has survived, or if the evidence of Alexandrian life that it may carry has disintegrated into dust.
18:03
♪ [narrator] In Alexandria, Arto wants to explore how Egypt's Greek rulers persuaded the native Egyptians to get behind them and their new capital city.
18:18
To learn more, he's come to the city's largest archeological site, Kom El-Dikka.
18:28
Among the rows of monuments, some objects stand out.
18:35
This is the quintessential symbol of the power of the king. The head of a human being, the king himself, and the body of a regal, powerful lion. An image that is traditionally Egyptian. [narrator] The sphinx had been a symbol of Egypt ever since the age of the pyramids, 2,000 years before Alexander and the Ptolemies arrived.
19:02
The inscription here identifies the king who commissioned this beautiful work of art, King Psamtik II of the 26th Dynasty.
19:15
This object was commissioned about 300 years before Alexandria was even founded. [narrator] Many of the monuments lining the site appear to have been sculpted hundreds of years before Alexander conquered Egypt. [Arto] Now this can only mean one thing, these monuments were actually brought at some point to Alexandria, well after they were first commissioned. [narrator] Arto believes the Greek pharaohs were not simply repurposing existing statues
19:49
to speed up building work in the new capital, they were seeking to prove to the Egyptian people that they belonged. [Arto] This was a clever strategy by the Greek rulers who found themselves reigning over a land that was very foreign to them. These monuments were brought here, granting these Greek rulers legitimacy in the eyes of the indigenous Egyptian population.
20:24
[narrator] If the Ptolemies plan was to use ancient statues to prove their Egyptian credentials to the locals, it seems to have worked.
20:35
[Arto] In just 50 years Alexandria was catapulted to the forefront of the ancient world, becoming the most powerful, prosperous, culturally flourishing city the world had ever seen by that point. [narrator] Egypt had a thriving new capital where Greeks and Egyptians lived side by side, ruled by a Greek pharaoh, and surrounded by Greek culture.
21:04
Today, the glorious capital of Alexander, Ptolemy I, and Cleopatra has all but disappeared. So much of Ancient Egypt survives, the pyramids, the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, all these magnificent temples. But why is it that so little survives of Alexandria?
21:28
♪ [narrator] In ancient Philadelphia,
21:36
Basem's team has almost finished clearing the sand from the painted mausoleum.
21:43
The walls were completely painted with colors, yellow squares, frames of white, red and blue. We call it the Egyptian blue. This kind of blue is really, really expensive. [narrator] Historians believe Egyptian blue to be the very first artificial pigment.
22:04
Manufactured by hand, its presence confirms the mausoleum owner's wealth.
22:11
♪[dramatic music playing]♪ With a footprint of nearly 1400 square feet, this was a funerary house of impressive size.
22:22
Two large rooms were likely covered by a shallow vaulted roof. A columned portico surrounded the main structure, offering shade and a private entrance for visitors. ♪ Inside, lavish painted decorations covered the floors, walls, and ceilings with geometric patterns. Grand and opulent, it was a mausoleum fit for a wealthy Philadelphian, emulating the glories of Alexandria. ♪
22:58
Linked as it is to the ancient capital, Basem knows this funerary house could hold clues not just to Alexandrian architectural traditions, but also to Alexandrian mortuary practices.
23:13
The most enigmatic thing is that we didn't find yet any of the mummies inside this place. The only missing clue is finding the mummy.
23:28
The plaster mausoleum might have a substructure below it. ♪
23:38
[narrator] If Basem is to uncover any human remains, he has to find a way under the precious painted floor to see if there's a crypt below.
23:51
♪[dramatic music playing]♪ [narrator] At the temple site of Taposiris Magna, Kathleen's team of tomb excavators carefully brushes the loose sand from the shallow grave. ♪ This could be her first chance this season to study the body of an ordinary ancient Alexandrian, if there's anything left of it.
24:30
[narrator] The body appears to be in its original burial position. This confirms the tomb is undisturbed. The skeleton is very degraded, but to expert eyes, it may still yield valuable evidence.
24:58
[narrator] Alexandria's population had strong ties to Greek culture.
25:04
But in Ancient Greece, nobody mummified their dead. [indistinct chatter] This grave suggests even less wealthy Alexandrians fully embraced the local Egyptian death rites.
25:20
But the Greeks also seem to have brought their own burial practices to Alexandria.
25:46
[narrator] If Kathleen is to learn any more, she'll need to exhume what remains of the body. But 2,000 years of desert storms have taken their toll.
26:14
♪ [narrator] At Alexandria's sister settlement of Philadelphia, Basem is searching for the final piece of the grand mausoleum's puzzle. He's on the hunt for the owner's body, he thinks it could lie beneath the precious painted floor.
26:35
This morning, his team has had a lucky break. [Basem] Just when we excavate this part of the mausoleum, we just found a broken part that might have been a hole that was made by the looters. Now we can look below the painted plaster.
26:56
[narrator] This could be an entrance to the crypt Basem's been looking for.
27:02
Within minutes, archaeologist Mohammed Kamel exposes something in the sand.
27:10
[speaking native language] ♪[suspenseful music playing]♪ Mohammed and Gehad is cleaning and they have just dropped into a mummy that was placed in this grave.
27:22
This job has to be done really carefully.
27:27
[narrator] The first thing to emerge from the sand, wrapped in linen, is a face. I can see now the head of the mummy, it is placed in the grave cut below the floor level, this painted plaster. [narrator] As Mohammed clears more debris from the void below the painted floor, he's faced with a surprise. So it seems that Mohammed found two mummies, not only one. [narrator] It's more than Basem could have hoped for. But if these are the owners of the tomb,
28:02
identifying them is going to be a challenge. The mummy is not in the really good condition, however the wrapping is-- looks really nice.
28:14
[narrator] The poor state of the mummies is a concern.
28:19
And so is the condition of the plaster floor.
28:24
The mudbrick beneath is fragile, it could collapse at any moment.
28:31
We still don't know yet the information we need about these two mummies. Who are they, the age, whether they are male or female.
28:42
[narrator] If Basem is going to learn any more about the bodies, he's going to have to examine them right here, right now. ♪[dramatic music playing]♪
28:54
♪ [narrator] At the Alexandrian outpost of Taposiris Magna, the weather is hampering Kathleen's efforts to excavate the body. Beneath a protective windbreak, bone specialist Linda delicately extracts the crumbling fragments one by one.
29:17
The smallest clue could add to Kathleen's understanding of ordinary Alexandrian life. [indistinct chatter] [speaking English]
29:34
[narrator] The work is painstaking, every stroke of Linda's brush could damage the remains.
29:45
[indistinct chatter] [Linda laughs]
29:53
[narrator] As evening approaches, Linda and Kathleen can finally transfer the bagged bones to shelter for analysis. ♪[solemn music playing]♪
30:08
It's not going to be easy. ♪
30:15
Even identifying such degraded bones requires patience and an expert eye.
30:24
[speaking English]
30:44
[narrator] The bones' size suggests they belong to a fully grown individual. But the best-preserved remains offer more detail.
31:21
[narrator] Almost all Ancient Egyptians had poor teeth, worn down by the grit present in their bread. The tooth's otherwise healthy condition suggests this Alexandrian had a good diet.
31:37
Even those buried cheaply in shallow graves seem to have benefited as the booming city of Alexandria prospered.
32:15
[narrator] Kathleen's evidence suggests that the lives and deaths of ordinary Alexandrians were different from anything that came before.
32:24
Mummified like Egyptians, but buried in tombs pioneered by Greeks, these two ancient civilizations were fusing, to create a population altogether new. But Kathleen's journey to understand life in Alexandria is only just beginning.
32:44
[Kathleen speaking English]
32:56
[narrator] Today, Kathleen is one step closer to completing the picture. [group cheering and applauding]
33:08
♪[dramatic music playing]♪ [narrator] In the ancient necropolis of Philadelphia,
33:17
Basem hopes the mummies he's discovered beneath the Alexandrian-style mausoleum will reveal how wealthier Alexandrians dealt with death.
33:27
He needs to confirm who they are, but he can't extract the bodies without them falling apart. [machine motor rattling] His only option is to examine them cramped up in their crypt.
33:45
The grave that we have found in this painted structure contains two mummies. However it's so fragile, so for the safety of the mummies we have moved a portable X-ray machine.
34:03
[narrator] A well oriented X-ray will see through the mummies bandaging and give Basem clues to their age and sex. But the mummies' positions are causing problems.
34:17
[Basem] It's difficult because the, the tight space that we are working in, condition of the mummy, and also unstable electricity. Using the machine itself is a skill, but also using it in a desert is another skill.
34:35
[narrator] Basem's radiographers must slide the X-ray plate behind the mummy's head. To create an image, they need to blast the head with radiation but avoid exposing themselves to the rays. ♪[suspenseful music playing]♪ Any false move with the plate, and the mummy could simply disintegrate.
34:58
[Basem] We are almost there. [speaking native language] ♪ [narrator] In ancient Philadelphia, Basem is hunting for evidence of Alexandrian mortuary practices. In the excavations field tent he is finally able to analyze the tomb's occupants. He's looking for any clues that could confirm who they were.
35:26
The mummy was wrapped with a very thick linen wrapping, especially in the head area. So, almost 8 centimeter of textile, but we can clearly see image of what we call the mastoid process, which is this bone, it's slightly larger in the male. So we know from the X-ray that this is an adult male. He also lost one tooth which is the, uh, right canine. But the, the degree of the wear, we can estimate the age between 35 to 37 years old at death. [narrator] Life expectancy was low in Ancient Egypt.
36:07
But elite classes stood a better chance of surviving to their late 30s, and accumulating the wealth needed for an elaborate tomb built by the best Alexandrian craftsmen.
36:22
Basem's attention turns to the X-ray images of the crypt's other occupant. [Basem] The mummy that was placed on top of the second one was for sure a female.
36:37
[narrator] The grave appears to contain a couple, perhaps husband and wife.
36:44
This habit was proved in many places in this area, all around this mausoleum, and it become like a, let's say the fashion of being buried together. I would assume that this male and female was the owners of this mausoleum who built this painted structure.
37:07
[narrator] Not only has Basem unearthed Alexandrian architecture, he's found first-hand evidence of how the wealthy treated their dead in Egypt's Alexandrian age.
37:22
♪ After mummification, the body was taken to its final resting place with priests, mourners, and grave goods accompanying the coffin.
37:36
The mummy was interred beneath the mausoleum floor,
37:41
and mourners would hold vigil over the tomb. ♪ The family met regularly to honor the dead. [cutlery and bowls clinking] And shared food with the deceased above the tomb.
37:57
The mourners would smash plates at the end of the meal... [plates shattering] ...a classically Greek custom, deep in the heart of Egypt. ♪[pensive music playing]♪ For me this is special, because we have solved the mystery of this, uh, mausoleum. ♪ [narrator] Basem's painted structure is a vivid portrait of Alexandria's lost culture.
38:26
♪ [Basem] We have been gifted in this site. It's a cutting-edge information that makes everything that you could read in history comes to the reality, so you can touch it by your hand. These people were so important, they played a very big role in the history of Egypt.
38:50
[narrator] Basem's discovery proves wealthy Philadelphians adopted Alexandria's fusion of Greek and Egyptian cultures, ushering in a new era of prosperity in Egypt far beyond the capital. But the legendary city where it all began was destined to disappear.
39:12
♪[dramatic music playing]♪
39:15
In Alexandria, Arto has come to the waterfront in search of clues to explain the ancient city's downfall. -[water sloshing] -[seagulls cawing] Where the famous lighthouse of Alexandria once towered over the harbor, now stands the Citadel of Qaitbay. ♪ Now, this is an impressive structure. [narrator] The fort was built by an Islamic sultan in 1477 CE.
39:49
But Arto thinks its stonework could contain evidence of the Greek city's fate. ♪[thrilling music playing]♪ [Arto] Look at this doorway! It's very different from everything else, most of the majority of the masonry of this structure is made of limestone. But this here, this is very clearly pink granite.
40:14
[narrator] Pink granite was a popular material in the time of the pharaohs, used to decorate both buildings and monuments. For Arto, the fort's location, right where the lighthouse once stood, can only mean one thing. I believe that these blocks are actually from the site of the lighthouse of Alexandria.
40:39
[narrator] The granite doorway is one of very few ancient blocks visible in the fort. The fate of the rest of the lighthouse could be a clue to how ancient Alexandria disappeared. ♪[intriguing music playing]♪
40:57
Below the fort's walls, marine archeologists have taken the search underwater to the floor of the harbor. There, footage shows the silty seabed covered with what appears to be ancient stone.
41:13
This is just fascinating stuff. These are very clearly rectangular blocks, these are dressed, cut, stone blocks from a structure. It looks like granite too, it really does. Oh yeah it's granite, it's granite, it's granite. [narrator] The ancient granite blocks are not stacked or carefully arranged . This isn't a drowned building.
41:40
Instead, the structure seems to have suffered a cataclysmic destruction. ♪[dramatic sting]♪
41:51
According to contemporary accounts, on July the 21st, 365 CE... -[earth rumbling] -...a powerful earthquake shook Alexandria, damaging buildings all over the city.
42:05
Shortly after, the water receded leaving fish and other sea life high and dry. ♪[dramatic music playing]♪ But the sea returned in a towering wave. -[waves rushing] -[people screaming] Thousands were caught in this unstoppable flood.
42:25
The tsunami swept ships onto the roofs of buildings and reduced much of the city to rubble.
42:38
The lighthouse would have been directly in the wave's path, and so were the rest of the jewels in Alexandria's crown.
42:48
We know the area very close to the shore was in fact where the royal palaces were, where a lot of the most monumental, uh, iconic buildings of Alexandria were located.
43:04
[narrator] Over the following centuries, Alexandria suffered more disasters, leveling the Greek buildings that made the city famous.
43:15
The glorious capital constructed by Alexander the Great's successors may have been wiped off the face of Egypt.
43:24
But today, archeologists are discovering that its very existence had helped establish a new hybrid Greek-Egyptian way of life, with the living enjoying a fusion of artistic styles in their architecture, and following the traditions of both civilizations when burying their dead.
43:47
Alexander the Great didn't just found a city . His conquest gave birth to a new Egypt and its legacy survives to this day. ♪
44:07
[narrator] Less than a mile from the legendary Valley of the Kings, in a forgotten valley... Ah, that the stone I like. [narrator] ...archeologists sift through desert sand.
44:22
They are trying to solve the mystery of why 11 of Egypt's greatest rulers were found here, all together, in an abandoned tomb, far from their original burial place. -More. -[woman] One more. Okay, well, I'm speechless.
44:42
-[stones crunching] -[wind gusting]
44:46
♪♪ [narrator] The Theban Necropolis, home to the world-famous Valley of the Kings.
44:57
Pharaohs from the New Kingdom, Egypt's golden age, built their lavish tombs here for close to 500 years. But the mummies of many of the era's mightiest rulers, like Seti I and Ramesses The Great, were discovered by archeologists in a different valley, all together in a single unmarked tomb. Archeologists named this location the Royal Cache. Why they ended up here is a mystery. Now, across Egypt, experts are uncovering new evidence about the origins of Egypt's golden age.
45:42
And why so many of its most powerful rulers were buried together in this forgotten valley.
45:58
Archaeologist José-Ramón Pérez-Accino is the co-director of a Spanish-Egyptian team, excavating the valley beneath the Royal Cache Tomb.
46:10
So the idea today is Carmen and Cruz, you will continue cleaning. Antonio, Paco, Shaimaa, good luck. Thank you very much, let's go.
46:24
[narrator] José has been working in this valley for the last seven years. [José-Ramón Pérez-Accino speaking English]
46:38
[narrator] He has long been fascinated by the mystery of the royal mummies.
46:44
Archeologists first entered the Royal Cache in 1881.
46:51
They discovered a roughly hewn tunnel carved over 230 feet into the limestone rock of the mountain.
47:00
Unlike most other royal tombs, it had no decoration inside. But it was crammed full of grand coffins and over 40 mummies, including 11 famous pharaohs and six queens, along with evidence that Ancient Egyptians moved these mummies here from their original tombs in antiquity. ♪♪ Despite its famous inhabitants, there has been little excavation in the valley surrounding the Royal Cache tomb.
47:38
Archeologists thought they knew why the Ancient Egyptians brought so many of their royal mummies here, to a tomb which was repurposed to hold them.
48:02
[narrator] At the end of the New Kingdom, Egypt fell into economic ruin. Tombs in the Valley of the Kings were robbed for their treasures. Most archeologists believe that to keep them safe, the mummies were moved to this valley, as it was a secret site. But José has a radically different theory.
48:32
[narrator] José's controversial new idea is that the Ancient Egyptians moved the New Kingdom royals to this location, not because it was secret, but because this apparently featureless valley was actually an important sacred site.
48:50
Now he's on the hunt for proof.
48:56
T his season, José and his 60-strong team will be excavating the huge drifts of windblown sand at the base of the valley cliffs and analyzing the rocky walls that surround them.
49:12
It's not an easy task. The valley is remote and the team has to shift the sand by hand.
49:23
♪♪ [Pérez-Accino] They are appearing, some big stones.
49:31
Good good.
49:36
[narrator] They hope that these big stones can provide clues to human activity in the valley.
49:50
♪♪ [narrator] In Cairo...
49:56
Egyptologist Aliaa Ismail has come to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization.
50:04
She wants to examine the mummies found in the Royal Cache, to see what clues they hold to the origins of the New Kingdom, and why they all ended up in one tomb.
50:16
[Aliaa Ismail] It's amazing seeing these mummies up close. They're basically my ancestors, and they have played a great role in Egypt's history. [narrator] In the period just before the rise of the New Kingdom, Egypt was in chaos, fractured into territories held by rival warring dynasties.
50:38
Aliaa wants to examine a mummy that was found in the Royal Cache, of a pharaoh who lived in this tumultuous time.
50:47
Wow! That looks painful. This is Seqenenre Tao's mummy.
50:56
There is a slash going through his skull. The markings on the head are very deep and this kind of wound you would only get from an axe. It makes it obvious that he has been to war.
51:14
[narrator] It's likely the head wound caused Seqenenre's death and it also reveals clues to who killed him. Experts have matched the wound to West Asian weaponry.
51:29
While Seqenenre Tao controlled land in central Egypt, a group called the Hyksos ruled in the north. They were originally from western Asia.
51:41
The Hyksos and Seqenenre went to war.
51:46
Many archeologists believe Seqenenre led the offensive himself.
51:54
But the war went badly and he was captured by his enemies on the battlefield.
52:03
Experts believe that his killer aimed lethal blow to Seqenenre's face, and he died from his injuries.
52:14
[Ismail] Looking at the mummy of Seqenenre Tao, he's very different from the other royal mummies that are here, which are very pristine and well preserved. It looks like he was on the frontline of the battlefield defending Egypt from the Hyksos. [narrator] The Hyksos ruled in the north for 100 years. Despite his bravery, Seqenenre was unable to defeat them and reunite Egypt. But he laid the groundwork for the pharaoh who did. Aliaa wants to understand more
52:49
about the ruler who reunited Egypt and ushered in a new era of peace and prosperity. So she decides to travel 350 miles south to search the tomb of a common soldier.
53:06
In Saqqara ... ♪♪ Archaeologist Mohamed Megahed is excavating a set of intriguing new tombs.
53:18
It's always very nice to drive in the mornings, the air is fresh, you are still fresh, you are not tired yet. And you keep thinking about what you will do during the day.
53:30
[narrator] Mohamed has spent the last 15 years digging at Saqqara. Five years ago, he made a remarkable discovery: the ornate tomb of Khuwy, a high-ranking official who lived around a thousand years before the rise of the New Kingdom.
53:49
He believes there are also New Kingdom graves hidden nearby. He's on a mission to find them, and understand who was buried here, and why. [Mohamed Megahed] We believe we have here a series of tombs, we can see that they are built in line with Khuwy, and perhaps they are dated from the New Kingdom. [narrator] Mohamed's team begins digging at the westernmost tomb in the row.
54:18
They start by clearing windblown sand from the entrance to the tomb. [Megahed] We will do number one and then we will proceed to the east. Those are like watermelon, you know, you never know if, what is inside, you will never know if it's sweet or it's not sweet. So we have to dig, and we will see underneath, perhaps we are lucky and today we'll have something interesting. ♪♪ I can see Old Kingdom pottery, New Kingdom pottery, so it's mixed fill. This could be a sign that the tomb was robbed.
54:54
[narrator] The mix of pottery makes it much harder for Mohamed to date the burial.
55:04
Before long, the team is close to entering the first tomb. [Megahed] We are trying to be as gentle as we can with working with mudbricks, but sometimes these vaulting ceilings like this, they don't hold so much. Then it might collapse. We could see some, some holes, some cracks. [narrator] Emptying the tomb could cause the weakest central point of the ceiling to disintegrate. Mohamed decides to document the tomb now before the team continues excavating. ♪♪
55:36
[Megahed] When it's small areas like this, we do 3D scanning. It's much faster, it's, it's very accurate.
55:44
[narrator] Archaeologist Hana Vymazalová uses an app on her smartphone to scan the tomb.
55:52
It takes hundreds of photographs, stitching them together to create a 3D model.
56:02
Now I'm looking at the 3D model of the tomb.
56:07
We can actually see very nicely here how it was constructed. ♪♪
56:17
[narrator] The team has photographed the chamber just in time.
56:22
[Megahed] Yes, as we, as we expected it cracked and it's two more, two more crack here. So I'm thinking even we take it by ourselves before it, it collapse on somebody. ♪♪
56:41
♪♪ [narrator] In the Theban Necropolis...
56:47
the Spanish Egyptian excavation team is pulling more white limestone blocks out of the ground in the valley where the royal mummies were found.
57:01
Ah, that the stone I like.
57:07
[narrator] They store all the stones together on the dig site. [Pérez-Accino] But look at that, that corner, that is a corner, that is a corner. They show constructional features like corners, like angles. So they belong to a structure that was destroyed.
57:22
[narrator] The white limestone doesn't match the natural rock in the cliffs above.
57:28
It suggests that a manmade monument may once have stood here. But José needs more evidence to be sure. They may have been either fragments of a statue, fragments of a shrine, but it's early days. [narrator] The dig team has a long day ahead extracting the blocks from the sandy landscape. But music lover José has a way of motivating the workers.
57:56
Hello, good morning, everybody, here Radio C2 wishing you a very good day. And we're due a new musical choice for today, have a good day.
58:09
[♪ aria from "Carmen" playing] ♪♪ [Pérez-Accino] Every day at 8:00 in the morning, we play some music. It's a way to cheer up the day for everybody. [laughs]
58:28
[Pérez-Accino] Dedicated to Carmen. [♪ aria continues]
58:37
[narrator] José believes other evidence of structures must exist in the valley... ♪♪ ...alongside the limestone blocks. So while the workers carry on digging, José turns his attention to the cliff face above them.
58:56
[♪ aria concludes]
59:00
[Pérez-Accino] When we started this project, a member of our team had already observed the peculiarities of the rock formation that they have behind myself. [narrator] José has another controversial theory.
59:15
He thinks the Ancient Egyptians carved an enormous face into the rock of the valley walls, like an ancient Mount Rushmore. He knows humans have a natural tendency to spot faces in objects. It's called face pareidolia. So José needs hard evidence to prove his theory.
59:37
[speaking English]
59:52
[narrator] As well as the large white blocks, José's team has found smaller fragments of rock from the cliff face scattered below.
1:00:01
He thinks that this could be evidence that the carving was torn down in ancient times.
1:00:08
To prove the effigy existed, and to find out more about why it might have been destroyed, José wants to examine the cliff in detail.
1:00:18
But he can't do it from the ground. So today, he's taking to the air.
1:00:24
Drone image at the same level, close up, high definition, well help us immensely.
1:00:30
Okay, let's go.
1:00:41
♪♪ [narrator] In Saqqara...
1:00:49
Mohamed and his team are excavating a row of tombs that he suspects dates to the New Kingdom.
1:00:59
They found nothing inside the first tomb, but Mohamed has discovered another lead. We found something promising. To the northside of the tomb, we found another shaft, and this shaft lead to another, another tomb. And it seems they are leading also to another level of, of tombs. We have level one now and we have level zero underneath, so most probably each tomb we have on the top, underneath there is another tomb. So we are clearing the bottom to the bottom of the shaft,
1:01:33
we'll go inside and we'll see. [narrator] Ancient Egyptians often built double-decker tombs like this where space was scarce.
1:01:43
Mohamed takes a first look inside.
1:01:51
[Megahed] Wow, there is a nice vault here.
1:01:54
[narrator] The tomb consists of a simple eight-foot-long burial chamber. Both upper and lower tombs are built out of mudbrick, and have similar vaulted ceilings, indicating that they were built around the same time.
1:02:09
[Megahed] I saw it only in New Kingdom and in the Sixth Dynasty, but here in this cemetery, we don't have such a situation before. [narrator] The tomb design is characteristic of New Kingdom burials at other sites.
1:02:22
But without grave goods, it's impossible to tell exactly when they were built. This tomb is completely finished, documented, photographed, and we'll backfill and continue to excavate the other tombs.
1:02:38
[narrator] Mohamed decides to start excavating the next tomb in the series, to search for hard evidence that these tombs date from the New Kingdom.
1:02:55
The team checks for debris and small finds as they go.
1:03:03
Even a tiny piece of evidence could unlock the secrets of the site.
1:03:09
♪♪ We have just found this amulet, and it was part of a necklace and perhaps it was hanging on the chest of the deceased. And it shows a king from the New Kingdom and you can see he is wearing the crown and he is holding a staff in his hand.
1:03:29
[narrator] It's a promising lead, but Mohamed needs more evidence to be sure of the tomb's date. The workers hunt for further clues nearby.
1:03:43
Here is a scarab beetle, and it's a kind of amulet. Scarabs were very important for us because they bear names. This one is having the name of Amun-Ra on it and Amun-Ra was the main god of the New Kingdom. [narrator] Together with the amulet, the scarab dates this tomb conclusively. And because the tomb's architecture is so similar to its neighbors, Mohamed believes all the tombs date from the same period. It's amazing because this is what we are looking for.
1:04:12
We are looking for something to date those people, and we just found out that they are from the New Kingdom thanks to those small finds.
1:04:23
♪♪ [narrator] Now that Mohamed has proved that the tombs date to the New Kingdom, he is faced with another mystery: Who was buried in these tombs? And why did they choose to be buried alongside an official who lived a thousand years earlier?
1:04:42
His team continues excavating to see if there is anything more hidden beneath the sand.
1:04:55
♪♪
1:04:59
[narrator] In Edfu, Southern Egypt, Aliaa is continuing her investigation into the origins of the New Kingdom. She wants to explore a tomb at an ancient settlement called Elkab that contains clues to who united the country and led Egypt into an age of prosperity.
1:05:20
I have studied this site so many times, but being here in person, that's totally different.
1:05:30
♪♪
1:05:37
I can't believe this text has survived.
1:05:41
Wow!
1:05:48
This must be a figure of the owner of the tomb.
1:05:54
He's holding a staff and a scepter and we can see a necklace around his neck.
1:06:02
We can see that he is a soldier.
1:06:10
[narrator] The inscriptions tell the story of the soldier's life, and document the war with the Hyksos, the rival group who ruled in the north of Egypt just before the rise of the New Kingdom.
1:06:24
When the town of Avaris was besieged, I fought bravely on foot in His Majesty's presence. I brought spoil from there, one man, three women, total four persons. And His Majesty gave them to me as slaves. [narrator] The text says that the soldier helped to sack Avaris, the Hyksos capital, and drive the Hyksos from Egypt.
1:06:56
The walls also contain a clue to the identity of the pharaoh who led this victory. Ah here, this is a cartouche. It says nb-phtj-r. This is the royal name for the King, the throne name of King Ahmose I. ♪♪ [narrator] Ahmose I became pharaoh at a young age after his father was killed by the Hyksos. Guided by his mother, he continued the assault on the north. Ahmose adopted the Hyksos's own technologies of horse-drawn chariots and bronze weapons, to strengthen his forces.
1:07:44
With his mighty army, Ahmose conquered the capital of the Hyksos. And after years of blood-soaked campaigns , he finally defeated the northern rulers. Ahmose united the country after around 200 years of chaos, and led Egypt into an era of peace and stability.
1:08:06
Right above the cartouche, Lord of the Two Lands, and that means that Egypt was once again united. Ahmose I was the founder of the 18th Dynasty, and that was the start of the New Kingdom, the golden era for Egyptian pharaohs. [narrator] Ahmose's victory laid the groundwork for a 500-year-long period of prosperity, that saw the reign of famous pharaohs like Ramesses the Great and Tutankhamun.
1:08:40
Next, Aliaa wants to visit another stunning tomb to find out more about the founders of the New Kingdom, and why their mummies and the mummies of the kings that followed them were found in the Royal Cache. ♪♪ At the Theban Necropolis... José and a drone crew are documenting the rockface. He's looking for evidence to support his radical theory that this empty valley was once an important religious site, with a huge effigy carved into the valley walls.
1:09:18
These images are going to be a treasure for us. [narrator] The drone crew forensically photograph the cliffs. No, the angle is okay but couldn't you get us closer?
1:09:33
Now, if I may point to this, you can probably see part of a chin, one of the ears is very clear. -This is the top, the headdress. -Okay. [Pérez-Accino] And you can see the difference between the top and the front. The top is eroded by nature, but the front has been like hacked.
1:10:02
-Come fly with us, they say! -[laughter]
1:10:08
[narrator] José's colleague, Antonio Gómez Laguna, specializes in aerial archaeology. He will use the high-resolution images to help José search for any signs of carving on the cliff.
1:10:21
I'm about to see the drone images. I'm really excited about this. Antonio has been working with them, I hope that we can see something we didn't know before. Hey, show me.
1:10:36
Excellent. Whoa! [narrator] Antonio has combined the images into a detailed photomosaic. But look at the markings. -Oh, my God, this is-- -Yes, and so... -It's a game changer. -Yeah.
1:10:53
[narrator] In the Theban Necropolis, José and Antonio inspect the photomosaic.
1:11:01
Hey! Look at the two parallel lines. What do you think, is this natural or am I? [Antonio Gómnez Laguna] Maybe not natural. [Pérez-Accino] You see that this looks like somebody has been hacking. -Maybe. Yes. -Please. [narrator] He thinks the photomosaic clearly reveals the outline of a face carved by humans. [Pérez-Accino speaking]
1:11:31
[narrator] It's impossible to tell for sure who might be depicted in the rock. But the evidence that the effigy was purposefully destroyed, means that José thinks he knows who it might have been. [Pérez-Accino speaking]
1:11:57
♪♪ [narrator] Hatshepsut was a female King of Egypt who ruled as Regent in the New Kingdom, until her stepson came of age.
1:12:10
A master of propaganda, Hatshepsut commissioned carvings of herself in male headdresses all across Egypt to assert her position as pharaoh. Hatshepsut's reign was an era of peace and prosperity, and when her stepson finally succeeded her, he had a tough act to follow.
1:12:32
He sought to destroy his stepmother's legacy and erase all evidence of Hatshepsut across Egypt.
1:12:42
That makes her a very, very good candidate, but we have to be very cautious. [narrator] Although José can't name the face carved into the rock, he is more convinced than ever that it did exist.
1:13:00
At the base of the cliff the team is still hard at work
1:13:06
hunting for more limestone remnants of the building he thinks once stood here.
1:13:17
♪♪ The workers have found a new block that looks different to the others. They want José to examine it.
1:13:34
[Pérez-Accino speaking]
1:13:43
♪♪ [narrator] In Saqqara, Mohamed's team has found a coffin in a grave dated to the New Kingdom. This is what we was looking for, a tomb with a coffin. [narrator] Over the millennia, many Egyptian tombs have been robbed. So, although its wood has disintegrated, an undisturbed coffin is a unique opportunity to understand who was buried here, and why they chose to be buried in this place.
1:14:16
The team searches for any human remains.
1:14:25
♪♪ We have found the skull inside the coffin.
1:14:37
This guy was buried his head to the north. Usually the north is a very good orientation for Ancient Egyptians. All the pyramid entrances were to the north, because in the north side of the skies are stars, they never disappear.
1:14:55
[narrator] Mohamed asks experienced anthropologist Zeinab Hashesh to examine the skull. Dr. Mohamed, what do you have today? So, we have cleaned the skull and the coffin, and we would like to discuss how to document it, take some notes. [Zeinab Hashesh] Okay. And if you can tell some information about this individual. Okay. Let me have a look. -[Megahed] Please. -Okay.
1:15:22
If you look at this area we call the glabella, it's pronounced a little bit, so he looks like a male.
1:15:30
[narrator] Zeinab needs to transport the skull back to her laboratory to analyze it further. So now we can move it and take it to the study room. -Yes, please. -To continue our work. -To continue our documentation. -Yes, yes. [narrator] Moving a millennia-old skull is delicate work.
1:15:59
[Hashesh speaking native language] I was very worried, and we removed it hopefully in one piece, and now it will go to the lab. ♪♪
1:16:13
♪♪ [narrator] In the Theban Necropolis...
1:16:20
José is investigating the large white limestone blocks his team found at the base of the valley walls.
1:16:28
-More. -[woman] One more!
1:16:33
[Pérez-Accino] It's the same kind of limestone. These are chisel marks probably. They were buildings, they were buildings with decoration, and these buildings with decoration have to be brought and built by somebody up here. 'Cause it means that there was a structure here, probably a structure of worship. [narrator] The carved blocks are a breakthrough for José's revolutionary theory. They are a first step to proving that the Ancient Egyptians
1:17:03
did build a monumental structure in this valley. [Pérez-Accino] This is a big, big day. This may mean not much for the untrained eye, but it's extremely important for us. This is changing the, the history of the whole of the Theban Necropolis. [speaking native language]
1:17:24
[narrator] José's evidence is groundbreaking. It may confirm the importance of this valley as a sacred place and could help to rewrite centuries-old archeological interpretations of one of the most significant discoveries in Egyptian history. And for José, it also sheds new light on an old find. When we started working, one of the big, big moments was the discovery of this graffiti. It was found by an Egyptian member of the team, a lady,
1:17:59
who realized that there was a human head carved in the rock. [narrator] José and his team think that the graffiti is a drawing of the valley with a tomb, possibly the Royal Cache, represented by a pyramid on the left, and the pyramidal peak of a natural hill to the right. [Pérez-Accino] It's like a nice, beautiful snap taken by an Ancient Egyptian on this wall, which gave us the clue that this area was extremely important. [narrator] José's new finds, together with the graffiti,
1:18:34
mean that he is piecing together the full significance of this sacred valley, and why the mummies of New Kingdom pharaohs may have been placed here. ♪♪ José believes that in ancient times , there was a monumental effigy carved into these sheer cliffs .
1:18:55
The head of a queen or goddess 100 feet high that looked down on the entire valley.
1:19:03
Below it, a large niche was hewn into the rock and contained an enormous statue.
1:19:11
Several royal tombs cut deep into the rocky cliffside.
1:19:18
Buildings may have provided a focal point for worship.
1:19:23
José thinks this was no hiding place, but a very important religious site. ♪♪ José's excavations are revealing priceless new information. But there is one mystery still to solve. If the Royal Cache Valley was important, the tomb that became the final resting place for so many New Kingdom pharaohs must have been significant too.
1:19:52
So, who was the tomb's original owner?
1:20:00
In Saqqara ...
1:20:04
-[Megahed] Dr. Zeinab. -Hi, Dr. Mohamed. What is new? [narrator] Mohamed and Zeinab are analyzing the skull they uncovered in a New Kingdom tomb.
1:20:16
They want to find out more about who this person was, and why they chose to be buried next to an official who died a thousand years before them.
1:20:26
Oh, now I am sure about his age, between 20 to 25, according to his teeth, he live in very good health because he don't have any evidence about anemia on his eyes. I thought so because the tombs also are for not poor people. -Really? -So their tombs are for middle class or higher middle class group. Yeah, so that's perfect, it's matching with his teeth and with his skull. [Megahed] Very nice. He has, he has no evidence of malnutrition. It's nice that the tomb condition
1:21:02
with the health condition can, can fit, can fit together. [Hashesh] Yeah , yeah. [narrator] The evidence from the skull confirms that the row of tombs belonged to wealthy individuals, perhaps even a wealthy family. Mohamed now wants to understand the significance of why these people were buried next to a much-revered official who lived and died a thousand years earlier. [Megahed] The Ancient Egyptians chose the specific locations beside important people.
1:21:33
Ancient Egyptians remembered the legacy of other people. [narrator] Ancient Egyptians believed that to live on in the afterlife , it wasn't just their body that needed to be preserved, it was their name. To make sure they were remembered, this New Kingdom family chose a burial location next to the high-ranking official Khuwy, so that anyone visiting this famous site would see their tomb. It's a tactic that is still working 3,000 years on.
1:22:06
Every time we come to dig, we found a piece of this puzzle and we inserted it in, in its right place. Altogether, they complete our picture about Ancient Egypt. ♪♪
1:22:21
[narrator] In Deir el-Medina near Luxor, Aliaa is visiting one final New Kingdom tomb.
1:22:31
It's from the opposite end of the social spectrum to the mummies in the Royal Cache. This is the workmen's village. These workmen built the Valley of the King tombs.
1:22:51
[narrator] Aliaa has been granted special access to this sealed tomb to explore clues in the inscriptions on its walls.
1:22:58
Wow, what an adventure it is to get here. How deep does this tomb go?
1:23:06
[narrator] The tomb dates to when the power of the New Kingdom was it its height, 300 years after it began.
1:23:18
♪♪ This is Ahmose-Nefertari, and we know that from her cartouche, here it says Ahmose-Nefertari. [narrator] Ahmose-Nefertari was the wife of Ahmose I, the pharaoh who reunited Egypt at the beginning of the New Kingdom and brought about a great renaissance of Egyptian culture. She's wearing the Atef crown and holding the Ankh, eternal life in her hand. Ahmose-Nefertari is here because the tomb owner is honoring her. [narrator] In this area,
1:23:52
Ahmose-Nefertari is mentioned in at least 50 private tombs. The tombs here were founded long after the death of Queen Ahmose-Nefertari. And therefore, when we see her here, we see her in a different light. She is not represented as a queen but as a deity.
1:24:16
[narrator] Following Ancient Egyptian tradition, King Ahmose the first married his sister Ahmose-Nefertari , who was known as King's Daughter, King's Sister, and King's Wife.
1:24:29
She also gained the title of God's Wife, and she played an active role in religious ceremonies to ensure the fertility of Egypt.
1:24:40
Ahmose-Nefertari lived to see her son and his successor become pharaohs and became the mother of Egypt's new golden age. Even after her death, Egyptians continued to worship her as a goddess of fertility, resurrection, and rebirth.
1:25:01
♪♪ Ahmose-Nefertari was a deity, the mother of the New Kingdom and 18th Dynasty. ♪♪ She was venerated because the New Kingdom was not any era. the New Kingdom was an era of stability, it was the time of the golden age. [narrator] The prestige tied to Ahmose-Nefertari's name and her role as Mother of the New Kingdom, held significance for the royals and rulers who came after her. Archeologists disagree over where she was buried, but some believe that it was Ahmose-Nefertari
1:25:41
who was the original owner of the Royal Cache tomb. I think the mummies of the New Kingdom pharaohs were placed in the tomb of Ahmose-Nefertari, because of her significance as the founder and mother of the New Kingdom. That kind of significance made her tomb a very important place.
1:26:06
♪♪ [narrator] At the Theban Necropolis...
1:26:12
José's time with the Royal Cache Valley is coming to an end. There's just time to enjoy one last sunrise.
1:26:22
Oh, my God, this is beautiful!
1:26:25
[narrator] It's the winter solstice. This is a day which was celebrated in Ancient Egypt. From this day onwards, days will be longer, nature will return to life. Everything will go back to brilliance, to fertility.
1:26:43
[narrator] José believes that the solstice marks a natural phenomenon in the valley, as the sun rises directly between two peaks on the horizon. We think that the royal bodies ended up in a place where this phenomenon can be observed. [narrator] It's yet more evidence that the valley was a sacred place and a fitting end to his dig. [Pérez-Accino] This is a campaign which has been extremely rich in information, particularly in understanding how the different parts
1:27:17
of the site are inter-related.
1:27:21
♪♪ [narrator] José's investigation could rewrite the history of the Royal Cache. It suggests that when the Ancient Egyptians moved the royal mummies at the end of the New Kingdom, they didn't hide them in a secret valley. Instead, they chose a sacred valley that was well-known with deep religious significance. And 500 years after her reign, José believes they chose to bury the mummies in the tomb of one of the founding figures of the New Kingdom,
1:27:53
to honor her legacy and keep their names alive. Being able to point to something that had not been seen before, whether it's an object, whether it's a phenomenon, whether it's an explanation, is a thrill of a, of a lifetime. ♪♪
1:28:13
♪♪ [narrator] Hidden deep underground... [Prof. Miroslav Barta] We were able to go down this huge depth. [narrator] ...archeologists hunt for a burial chamber inside an ancient tomb.
1:28:31
[Prof. Barta] I hope we get through.
1:28:36
[bleep]
1:28:41
[narrator] It could date to one of Egypt's most enigmatic dynasties, the Sun Kings.
1:28:48
[Prof. Barta] It's extremely huge room. This is far more than I expected.
1:29:01
♪♪ [narrator] The pyramid fields of Abusir 15 miles south of Cairo.
1:29:10
These mysterious structures were built by a dynasty of pharaohs who ruled Egypt 1,000 years before Tutankhamun. Named for their devotion to the Sun God Ra, they were known as the Sun Kings.
1:29:29
Now, archeologists are uncovering new evidence about these enigmatic kings of old. How this powerful dynasty rose and transformed Egypt forever and what caused their magnificent reign to fall.
1:29:53
In Saqqara,
1:29:56
archeologist Miroslav Barta is digging in the heart of a vast necropolis.
1:30:04
This is where the Sun Kings buried many of their officials. The team has just identified the top of a new shaft. [Prof. Barta] So, what you see here
1:30:16
is quite well-preserved mud brick wall. The same we have on the north and partially also here.
1:30:26
[narrator] Miroslav hopes to uncover precious new information about how the Sun Kings governed ancient Egypt. [Prof. Barta] I would say you never know what secrets the sand of a desert may hide.
1:30:42
[narrator] He hopes that the shaft will lead him to a burial chamber...
1:30:47
but there is a serious problem.
1:30:51
You can see that the wall collapsed here. There is a secondary breach there. The wall is completely missing on the west, in the northwest corner as well. [narrator] After more than 4,000 years of harsh desert conditions, the original mud bricks lining the shaft have collapsed. [Prof. Barta] Once we get deeper by the end of the day, we will have to stop the work and reconstruct the walls. Otherwise, we can't let the workers go down. Be too dangerous.
1:31:24
[narrator] It's a gamble, but Miroslav hopes the extra work will pay off.
1:31:31
Last season, in a nearby tomb, he found a magnificent mummy that could tell him more about the officials who governed Egypt in the time of the Sun Kings.
1:31:43
[Prof. Barta] When we finally got the view of the sarcophagus, then came a moment of excitement because he was there, the mummy. Could see immediately that he was not lying on his back but sitting in the sarcophagus. A huge surprise to, um, have a mummy preserved like that, sitting there as if he were waiting for us.
1:32:10
[narrator] They found his mummified head next to his body, making it the oldest fully preserved mummy ever found.
1:32:20
Serving under the first Sun King Userkaf, the mummy was a high-ranking official called Ptahshepses.
1:32:30
Born into a respectable family, Ptahshepses grew up alongside the king's own children as part of the pharaoh's court.
1:32:39
In time, he rose through the ranks acting as Master of Craftsmen and Master of Secrets. The pharaoh himself must have held him in high regard.
1:32:52
He even married King Userkaf's daughter to become a member of the royal household.
1:33:01
Ptahshepses lived a long, loyal life,
1:33:06
helping to run Egypt on behalf of five pharaohs.
1:33:13
Miroslav plans to carry out a full analysis of Ptahshepses' mummy to try and unlock the secrets of his life.
1:33:23
But first, he wants to see if the new shaft next door contains another important burial from the era of the Sun Kings.
1:33:34
After 11 days of back-breaking work, his team has shifted over a hundred tons of sand and repaired the crumbling walls of the shaft. [Prof. Barta] As of today, I can say that we are quite ready to go down and, uh, feel relatively safe because the masonry is stable.
1:33:57
We are going to go down and have a look.
1:34:07
[narrator] At 45 feet deep, a fall down this shaft would be fatal.
1:34:16
So now you can see me for the last time today. Bye-bye. [♪ tense music playing]
1:34:36
[narrator] At Giza...
1:34:40
Egyptologist Chris Naunton wants to see for himself how the Sun Kings came to power.
1:34:47
To do that, he is exploring what happened to their predecessors, the pharaohs who built the great pyramids. [Dr. Naunton] These pyramids, they were the tallest buildings in the world for over 4,000 years. They were built by the kings who immediately preceded the Sun Kings. And obviously, they wielded huge amounts of power, controlled huge amounts of resource, but it wasn't going to last. [narrator] To uncover what led to the downfall of the pyramid builders,
1:35:20
Chris wants to search for clues at the tomb of the last great pyramid king, Menkaure. Menkaure's pyramid tends to get a little bit forgotten, and it's perhaps the least well studied of the three. But it can tell us about the way the history of the period unfolded.
1:35:42
[narrator] The pharaoh's tomb was hidden deep underground at the end of a network of sloping tunnels and antechambers. On top were thousands of massive limestone blocks, forming a stepped pyramid more than 200 feet tall. Unlike the other Giza pyramids, the bottom was clad with hard pink granite, shipped over 500 miles down the Nile from Aswan. Above that, a layer of white limestone. Complete with temples and the queen's pyramids, Menkaure's two-tone monument
1:36:21
was designed to be an imposing symbol of his absolute power.
1:36:28
But inside the pyramid, there are signs that the pharaoh's power was already waning. The thing that's most striking about this space is just how tight it is. When the level of the ceiling comes down, it's really difficult to move. If you-- if you think about the, the Great Pyramid, the entrance passageway opens out into this enormous space, and this is just so different.
1:36:54
Just not impressive somehow.
1:36:59
[narrator] And on the outside of the pyramid, there are further signs of the Giza pharaoh's demise. [Dr. Naunton] Casing stones in particular which are made of this pinkish granite represents an enormous investment on the part of the king. But what's really interesting in this case is that whilst some of the stones, like the ones here, are beautifully smoothed off so that the, the surface of the pyramid appears completely true, some of the other stones haven't been finished that way at all.
1:37:33
It's as though somehow they just didn't get to that point.
1:37:38
[narrator] The Giza dynasty had run out of money, and Menkaure's successor died without an heir.
1:37:47
Broke and without a leader, Egypt was at a crisis point. [Dr. Naunton] The king who would step in to this difficult period following the Giza pyramid builders was Userkaf, the first of the Sun Kings.
1:38:03
[narrator] Userkaf faced a huge challenge. He wasn't a direct heir to the throne. This new king needed a way of proving himself as the legitimate ruler of Egypt. But the country's economy was in some trouble, so building an enormous pyramid like this wasn't an option that was available to Userkaf. He was going to need a different way of showing that he was fit to rule.
1:38:33
[narrator] On the eastern edge of the Sun King's Abusir Necropolis...
1:38:39
archeologist Mohamed Khaled works at the pyramid of Userkaf's son, the second Sun King Sahura. [Dr. Mohamed Khaled] New morning every time comes with a lot of hopes to find more and more nice information about this great pyramid complex.
1:39:00
[narrator] For over 20 years, Mohamed has been investigating inside Sahura's collapsed pyramid. [Dr. Khaled] Be careful. [narrator] Now, he's looking for more clues outside the pyramid, to find out what this huge sacred complex looked like at the peak of Sahura's power.
1:39:23
Archeologists first excavated the site in 1907. [Dr. Khaled] We have to take quite large amount of sand. [narrator] They left large piles of spoil and debris next to their dig site. [Dr. Khaled] And they simply just dumped their excavation debris from the middle to the sides, but they never checked the sides before they dumped their excavation debris. [narrator] Mohamed hopes that previously undiscovered parts of Sahura's pyramid complex may lie hidden beneath these huge spoil heaps.
1:39:57
You could see the line. So this is the last part that they started to dump the excavation debris. So, what's behind here, it's untouched. I cannot express my feeling when you start to excavate a completely new untouched area. Uh, it's really, uh, amazing feeling.
1:40:19
[narrator] The spoil heaps are about 20 feet deep.
1:40:25
Over the next two days, the team shifts several tons of sand.
1:40:35
But Mohamed hopes the hard work is going to be worth it. So, what we see now, it's a new structure, and it was hidden under the debris.
1:40:51
[narrator] In Abusir, Chris is exploring how Userkaf established himself as the first Sun King despite not being a direct heir to the throne.
1:41:03
Userkaf didn't have enough money to build giant pyramids like the ones at Giza, so he had to find another way to project his power to his Egyptian subjects. These are the pyramids of the Sun Kings. They dominate this landscape, but they've lost almost all their casing and they've kind of collapsed a little. But Abusir is distinctive for another kind of monument associated with these pyramids.
1:41:32
[narrator] Chris investigates the remains of one of these mysterious monuments that dates from the time of Userkaf. [Dr. Naunton] It's a real jumble here. Huge stones and the Egyptians typically used these for their religious buildings. It's a bit difficult to say exactly what this was for, but it's clearly something very big, very impressive with religious significance.
1:41:59
[narrator] A clue to what this site was for comes from a unique text inscribed on the face of a piece of black basalt called the Palermo Stone. The author is unknown, but it was written during the reign of the Sun Kings. [Dr. Naunton] This is an incredibly important historical document inscribed with records of the activities all the way down to the period of the Sun Kings. The section tells us geese and bulls were sacrificed on a daily basis at a temple dedicated to the Sun God Ra
1:42:34
during the reign of Pharaoh Userkaf. And we think that this is in fact that temple of Userkaf dedicated to the Sun God.
1:42:49
[narrator] Userkaf built his temple on the west bank of the Nile, aligned with the path of the setting sun.
1:42:58
At its heart was a towering granite obelisk...
1:43:02
built to honor the Sun God Ra.
1:43:06
In the open courtyard,
1:43:09
two sandstone statues and a mud brick altar meant priests could make sacrifices in full view of the sun and Ra himself. For ancient Egyptians, Userkaf's Sun Temple was standing proof of his special connection to this all-powerful god.
1:43:32
Ra had already become important under the great pyramid builders of Giza. Userkaf's Sun Temple raised him higher still. [Dr. Naunton] There was a purpose to this. By elevating the status of the Sun God Ra, the kings were elevating their own status, and this, crucially, was a way for them to establish their right to rule.
1:43:57
[narrator] By forging a closer relationship with Ra, Userkaf helped convince his people that he was the legitimate king of Egypt.
1:44:06
And the Sun Temple would have been in use throughout the pharaoh's life as a place for offerings and worship.
1:44:15
But the excesses of the great pyramid builders at Giza had emptied the treasury. Without funds, he needed a new way to run the country.
1:44:28
At the northern end of the Sun King's Necropolis at Saqqara... [Prof. Barta, in native language] [narrator] ...Miroslav is descending into the depths of a 45-foot shaft.
1:44:41
He's searching for an important official's burial chamber.
1:44:46
[Prof. Barta] There is no space for emotions, there is no space for being nervous because you have to be pretty concentrated.
1:44:57
You have to hold yourself tight with the ladder and, uh, be very careful.
1:45:11
[narrator] An obstacle stands between Miroslav and the tomb beyond. Here we have the blocking wall that was protecting the deceased from the world of the living. Imagine the last person leaving used his fingers and plastered the wall over like this. You can still see fingerprints.
1:45:35
[narrator] There is only one way through, a hole just 24 inches wide. [Prof. Barta] This hole is not original. It was broken through by the robbers in antiquity. They removed one limestone block from here and probably two more from this part. It was just wide and high enough to let them in. And we will use the same,
1:46:01
same breaks to see what's, what's inside. [narrator] The hole implies that the tomb has been robbed, but until Miroslav sees inside, he can't be sure.
1:46:14
[Prof. Barta] I hope we get through.
1:46:29
[bleep]
1:46:41
[Prof. Barta grunting]
1:46:45
[narrator] There's nothing but windblown sand. This still isn't the burial chamber. [Prof. Barta panting]
1:46:55
[narrator] But Miroslav spots something in the far corner...
1:46:59
a doorway.
1:47:03
[Prof. Barta] It's extremely huge room. This is far more than I expected.
1:47:13
[narrator] In Abusir, at the pyramid complex of the Sun King Sahura, Mohamed is investigating a mysterious structure hidden beneath the spoil heap. [Dr. Khaled] If it's a part of the funerary temple, then it will completely change our idea about the outline of this pyramid complex.
1:47:36
[narrator] The pyramid was surrounded by a huge complex of buildings, including a funerary temple in front of it. Unlike a sun temple built to worship the Sun God Ra, a funerary temple was a place where Sahura's subjects came to honor him after his death. [Dr. Khaled speaking native language] [narrator] But it's unclear if this block is a part of the temple or a later addition.
1:48:07
Ooh!
1:48:15
There's something here, it started to appear.
1:48:21
Ah!
1:48:26
It's wonderful. [narrator] Mohamed has unearthed the lower part of a pottery vessel. [Dr. Khaled] Interesting color. [narrator] The red powder inside the pot is paint, remarkably still in place after 4,400 years. [Dr. Khaled] They made masonry marks in order to tell the workers, to give them instruction. So, if he said for example, raise the level of the structure, then he could make some sign.
1:48:55
This is an important discovery for us because this is the first time that we see such things like that.
1:49:03
Maybe it comes from the time of Sahure or maybe it was moved from another place and then it was thrown just here by luck because it was broken. And we found it also in a strange area, hidden between the two blocks. [narrator] The paint pot is a clue that the stone blocks Mohamed has uncovered could date from the time of the Sun King Sahura. But on its own, it's not enough. The team must continue digging.
1:49:39
At the northern end of Saqqara,
1:49:42
Miroslav is exploring a doorway at the bottom of a shaft that could date from the time of the Sun Kings. Let's go inside.
1:50:05
Wow! Such dimensions. It's really a huge burial chamber.
1:50:14
[narrator] Miroslav could be the first person to investigate this burial chamber for thousands of years.
1:50:22
[Prof. Barta] And here we have...
1:50:24
one small fragment of Old Kingdom pottery. [narrator] As the Sun Kings were one of the last dynasties of the Old Kingdom, this tiny fragment could mean that the burial chamber is from this period. Could originate from a beer jar, but for a beer jar, it's too thick. Probably from a bedja form. Bedja forms were used for baking bread in ancient Egypt.
1:50:53
[narrator] But Miroslav's best clue to who the tomb owner was is the grand sarcophagus in the corner of the chamber. [Prof. Barta] The highlight is this limestone chest and with the lid. We can see how they robbed the mummy in antiquity. They cut an opening over there in the corner and pull out the mummy through a small hole there.
1:51:22
[narrator] Miroslav searches for any trace of a mummy.
1:51:29
[Prof. Barta] The sarcophagus is completely empty. It's a very sad story, if you imagine that originally he was here complete, resting forever, at least that's what he hoped for. And then you have those robbers coming after him. [narrator] The damaged sarcophagus is further evidence that this tomb was ransacked in antiquity, like most wealthy burial sites in ancient Egypt. Though the body and his treasures are gone, Miroslav spots something unusual on the inside of the sarcophagus.
1:52:06
[Prof. Barta] Oh! The lid is carved from inside. [narrator] Instead of a flat slab of stone, the inside of the lid has been shaped into a perfect curve. [Prof. Barta] I've never seen such a lid before. It's an excellent mastership.
1:52:23
They actually never bothered to do it.
1:52:27
It was such an amount of work. It confirms that he was a very important person. This is incredible work. [narrator] The stunning sarcophagus shows that the tomb owner must have been a high-ranking person. But there are no other signs down here about who they were and whether they lived during the era of the Sun Kings.
1:52:53
[Prof. Barta, in native language] [narrator] Miroslav's last hope is that the team excavating the area around the top of the shaft finds a clue. [men shouting in native language]
1:53:07
[narrator] In Saqqara, Chris investigates how Sun King Userkaf, now reigning as the rightful pharaoh, went about governing a bankrupt nation.
1:53:19
He searches for clues in a new necropolis Userkaf established for his high officials.
1:53:29
[Dr. Naunton] This is a very, very beautiful tomb.
1:53:36
[narrator] Up to now, tombs like this, and the positions of power that went with them, were reserved for the royal family. But this is not a royal tomb. Chris is curious about who received this honor.
1:53:54
This tomb is dedicated not just to one tomb owner but two. They're named Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep.
1:54:05
The question is what role did they play?
1:54:10
[narrator] Chris looks for a clue to their relationship to the pharaoh in one of the reliefs. [Dr. Naunton] It looks like somebody tending to the hands of another person, and in fact their main title was the Overseer of the Manicurists of the Palace of the King. So, we can assume that they perhaps filed the nails of the pharaoh himself, and that might seem like an unusual title for an elite high official to have, but of course what's important is that it gave them close access to the king.
1:54:46
[narrator] And the manicurists were just one of the many roles that the king rewarded.
1:54:54
In the days of the Great Pyramid Kings, a pharaoh's court was kept small. Just a few members of the royal family held all the power in Egypt. But the Sun Kings started spreading their power among non-royals...
1:55:11
until the court numbered 80 or more.
1:55:17
Titles included Director of Scribes, Overseer of Craftsmen, and the Greatest of the Dentists.
1:55:26
But even the Overseer of the Duck Pond, the Inspector of the Singers, and Overseer of the King's Breakfast enjoyed the pharaoh's favor.
1:55:39
The titles may sound eccentric, but Userkaf had created a huge new class of talented professional officials. They helped him govern Egypt more effectively and were able to collect much more in tax.
1:55:55
This boosted the wealth of the nation.
1:55:58
[Dr. Naunton] With more and more titles, you got more and more officials amassing wealth and influence.
1:56:06
[narrator] But Userkaf had sown the seeds of his dynasty's downfall. [Dr. Naunton] Officials, particularly in the provinces, began to become more and more powerful, and that drew influence and authority away from the pharaoh.
1:56:23
[narrator] Soon, these officials would threaten the pharaoh's authority.
1:56:28
The Sun Kings were losing power.
1:56:37
In Saqqara, Miroslav's team is excavating near the top of the shaft for clues to the owner of the empty sarcophagus.
1:56:48
While they do that, he wants to take a closer look at the mummy he found last season in a tomb nearby. He hopes it might tell him more about the life of an official during the Sun King's era. -How are you today? -Fine. -So good to see you again -It's very hot. -[Dr. Hashesh laughs] -Yeah. [conversing in native language] [narrator] Dr. Zeinab Hashesh is an anthropologist who will help Miroslav to analyze the body. -Does it fit? -Yes. Good.
1:57:19
-Oh, hello again, Ptahshepses. -[Dr. Hashesh] Yeah.
1:57:26
-[Prof. Barta] Wow! -[Dr. Hashesh] Yeah. [Prof. Barta] And he's got a small chin. -[Dr. Hashesh] Yes-- -Like me. -Yeah [laughs] -Small one. [Dr. Hashesh] Yeah. After we analyzed the pelvis and other features in the mummy, he is over 60 years old, so he's an old man.
1:57:46
[narrator] Life expectancy in ancient Egypt was around 35 years old. So at over 60, Ptahshepses was very old indeed. [Dr. Hashesh] He's suffering from many diseases because he's an old man. So he suffered from osteoarthritis. -[Prof. Barta] Poor him. -[Dr. Hashesh] Yeah, do you have an interpretation for this, why he has osteoarthritis in his neck. Yeah, I would say, he was a scribe. So, I imagine him sitting and checking papyri all the time. So he was constantly bending his neck.
1:58:19
-Yeah, yeah, yeah. -Reading, checking, you know. -Noting, making, making texts. -Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. -And was it painful, this... -[Dr. Hashesh] Yeah. Yes, very painful. Very painful. [narrator] Zeinab discovers more when she takes a look at an x-ray. Oh, look at this, look at his ribs. It's completely, um... -[Dr. Barta] Repositioned ribs. -[Dr. Hashesh] Exactly. How did it happen? It's happened because during the robbers, they tried to get all amulets and the jewelries,
1:58:48
they disturbed the body. [narrator] Mummies were often buried with their most valuable possessions, jewelry and amulets, kept on their person. To search the body for treasure, ancient robbers had to pull the mummy out of the sarcophagus. [Dr. Hashesh] The robbers left him in sitting position. -[Prof. Barta] Uh-huh. -So this is a proof that he treated badly from the robbers during the tried to retrieve the... [Prof. Barta speaking] Yeah yeah.
1:59:17
[narrator] For the robbers to go to such lengths, Ptahshepses' mummy must have been decorated with valuables, further proof that he was important.
1:59:30
Back outside, it looks like Miroslav's team at the top of the shaft has found another structure. [men shouting in native language]
1:59:41
[narrator] At the pyramid complex of the Second Sun King Sahura, Mohamed's team is excavating more of the mysterious structure from beneath the spoil heap. So, we are now collecting every single detail that we find in order just to get a complete clear picture for us.
2:00:02
[narrator] He wants to know if the structure dates from the time of Sahura, as the paint pot suggests.
2:00:12
That's graffiti here, original one. [narrator] In the next layer down, Mohamed has spotted some hieroglyphs in the stonework. It's a very similar color. [narrator] It's an important clue. The paint from this ancient graffiti matches the powdered paint from the pot. So now we will go deep until we reach the original floor.
2:00:42
So definitely this comes from the, uh, original structure, and this structure belongs to the funerary temple. It's very significant. [narrator] Mohamed has uncovered that the foundation stones are embedded in the bedrock. This means it is a previously undiscovered part of the temple complex of Sahura. Now he wants to find out what the structure was used for.
2:01:14
In Saqqara... [men speaking native language] [narrator] ...Miroslav wants to know the identity of the owner of the empty burial chamber. [Prof. Barta] This is an amazing discovery. [narrator] His team has unearthed a new structure while excavating near the top of the shaft.
2:01:34
It's a chapel made of beautifully carved limestone that Miroslav thinks belongs to the tomb owner. He's hoping it will give him a clue to who the owner was and when he lived.
2:01:50
Now we have it live finally. The first column is praying to Anubis for a good burial, and then we have the most important title, Medjeh genooty, um, Master Sculptor.
2:02:07
This is it, this is the most important place in the tomb. This is the name of the deceased reading Kae-im-heset. We know who he was, what was his name, and what were his duties at the court.
2:02:25
[narrator] Miroslav has uncovered the burial chamber and chapel of Kaeimheset, the Royal Sculptor. [Prof. Barta] It's quite rare to have the complete evidence. [narrator] The architecture of the chapel suggests that it dates from about 100 years before the time of the Sun Kings.
2:02:48
Around 2600 BCE, high officials like Kaeimheset built simple tombs like these for themselves to achieve eternal life. At the heart of the tomb sat a false door, a magic gateway to the world of the dead.
2:03:10
By the era of the Sun Kings, tombs of high officials like Ptahshepses were larger, with more rooms to store offerings for the deceased. The decoration was far more elaborate, with beautiful reliefs depicting scenes of a prosperous life.
2:03:32
Both these men were important officials in their own eras. But the extreme luxury of Ptahshepses' tomb compared to Kaeimheset's shows how far the Sun Kings had elevated the status of non-royals.
2:03:50
Miroslav has added another piece to the picture of how the Sun Kings governed Egypt.
2:03:58
Today is a really good day for our mission, and I'm happy not only for myself but the workers, because they always like to discover something.
2:04:13
[narrator] In Abusir, at the pyramid complex of Sahura, the Second Sun King, Mohamed has excavated a foundation stone that indicates the structure he found is an original wall. Now, he wants to work out what it was used for. [speaking native language]
2:04:36
[narrator] The team begins to excavate the area nearby.
2:04:42
[Dr. Khaled] It's promising, it's promising. That's very promising. [narrator] They've found a second wall running parallel to the first. [Dr. Khaled] It's ancient, so it's untouched. They are already aligned with each other. [narrator] It looks like the walls form part of an undiscovered limestone avenue. What we will do now is continue the excavation.
2:05:08
I'm looking forward to see if this wall extends toward the pyramid. Then of course it will be very exciting news for us.
2:05:22
[narrator] At the pyramid complex of the Second Sun King Sahura, Mohamed is investigating what he hopes is a limestone avenue. [Dr. Khaled] My hunch is this could be the beginning of the side entrance to the temple. [narrator] In 1907, the excavation uncovered a central sacred causeway. It led to an entrance to the temple that could only be used by the king. That's why everybody used the side entrance.
2:05:56
[narrator] Instead of using the sacred causeway, priests relied on a second entranceway to access the funerary temple of Sahura.
2:06:07
Inside the temple, priests performed rituals in the name of Sahura's cult, a practice that continued for 200 years after his death.
2:06:18
Sahura's temple also became a place of healing. Both rich and poor traveled from across Egypt to receive carvings chipped from the causeway itself. They believed these carvings offered blessings that bestowed not only the power of the Sun King Sahura, but of the Goddess of Healing, Sekhmet.
2:06:42
For Mohamed, uncovering the priests' avenue would be a hugely significant find.
2:06:52
I'm very excited because it's still going towards the-the-the pyramid. It's a new structure that was never located or recorded before. This is an extraordinary discovery. Every day you find new evidence that's changing completely our understanding about this, this monument. [narrator] Sahura's funerary complex became the template for all his descendants who followed. So, Mohamed's discovery gives him key information about the Sun Kings Dynasty and how they were honored after death.
2:07:30
It's, it's great. It's really great.
2:07:43
[narrator] In Saqqara,
2:07:46
Chris has come to the pyramid of the final Sun King, Unas.
2:07:52
When he became pharaoh, an expanding court of officials was growing ever more powerful. Unas needed to reassert his authority, and Chris believes his pyramid might tell him how he did it. [Dr. Naunton] This pyramid might not look like much, but it is hugely significant. This pyramid would change Egypt forever.
2:08:17
[narrator] Whilst the tombs of officials were richly decorated, the walls inside the pyramids of the pharaohs were always bare. Unas broke with that tradition in an extraordinary fashion.
2:08:42
[Dr. Naunton] This is really special. The decoration inside the burial compartments here is really something.
2:08:58
The walls are completely covered, every inch of them, in hieroglyphs and enormous, lengthy inscription. Unas' real legacy.
2:09:13
No tomb had ever been decorated like this before.
2:09:20
[narrator] Unas' pyramid texts are a set of 228 spells and hymns designed to secure the pharaoh's path to the afterlife.
2:09:34
When a pharaoh died, priests would recite spells and incantations to guide the king's soul on its journey to the afterlife.
2:09:44
But Unas took things a step further. He instructed masons to carve those spells into the walls of his tomb so the pharaoh's soul could do without the priests.
2:09:59
It would be able to read the spells inscribed on the burial chamber itself.
2:10:05
With the holy words and rituals to guide it, the spirit stood the best possible chance of journeying to the afterlife to take its place among the gods.
2:10:17
By recording the resurrection spells onto the walls of his tomb for the first time, Unas was using these pyramid texts to claim absolute supremacy over both the gods and his subjects. [Dr. Naunton] Unas' great innovation was reserved for him. He was only pharaoh who had the right to have their burial chamber decorated with these texts, the key to the eternal next life.
2:10:47
[narrator] Ultimately, Unas' attempt to wrest back control failed. He died without an heir, and the throne of Egypt passed to a commoner. The era of the Sun Kings was over, but their legacy lived on. [Dr. Naunton] The pyramid texts which appear here for the first time would continue in use for another 2,000 years. More importantly, the ideas that are included in these texts, so the king's journey to the next life to join with the gods, would remain a fundamental part of Egyptians' belief
2:11:27
in the way the world works.
2:11:30
[narrator] Today, archeologists continue to uncover new evidence about how the Sun Kings changed Egypt.
2:11:39
To help them run the country, they created a new class of officials and rewarded their closes aides with beautifully decorated tombs. But once the Sun Kings began to surrender their political power to those bureaucrats, the erosion of their authority was unstoppable. While Unas' pyramid texts guaranteed his immortality, he could not produce an heir. The sun had finally set on the dynasty of the Sun Kings. ♪♪
2:12:19
[narrator] On the Nile's West Bank, in a city of the dead... [Dr. Bahaa Gaber speaking English]
2:12:29
[narrator] ...archeologists have found a hidden tunnel.
2:12:35
Doctor! [narrator] Buried under tons of sand and rubble, a coffin could reveal clues to how war made Ramses the Great... [Gaber speaking English] -Doctor! -[narrator] ...into an icon.
2:12:52
Oh!
2:12:57
♪♪
2:13:05
♪♪ [narrator] Ramses II, the greatest pharaoh of Egypt's golden age. Born some 20 years after the death of Tutankhamun, he ruled Egypt for nearly seven decades. More than 3,000 years later, hundreds of his monumental structures survive, proclaiming him the everlasting warrior king who brought glory and prosperity to Egypt through battle.
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Today, archeologists are peering beyond the stonework, investigating Ramses' military achievements and his impact on the generations of Egyptians that followed his reign to understand how a king became a legend.
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In the sacred ancient center of Abydos...
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Egyptian archaeologist Sameh Iskander is in his 16th year exploring one of Ramses' most iconic monuments.
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[Dr. Sameh Iskander] Working here for so many years at the Ramses II Temple, I feel this affinity. I am fascinated by his accomplishments, and I want to know more about him. I am obsessed by him and his reign and his legacy. [narrator] Sameh wants to know how this great warrior pharaoh was seen by Egyptians in the decades and centuries after his death.
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He's investigating the area surrounding the very first temple Ramses put his name to.
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♪♪ Constructed using fine white limestone, Ramses' temple at Abydos covered an area half the size of a football field. The king dedicated it to Osiris
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and he placed 26 sandstone statues of the god in its outer courtyard.
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So far, Sameh's excavations have revealed that the temple was also crowded on both sides by 42 vaulted storerooms. Sameh knows a temple this important wouldn't have existed in isolation, so now he's searching for clues beyond the enclosure wall.
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♪♪ [Iskander] Temples or tombs don't just get built and out of an abstract and, and empty space. There is life around it.
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We're trying to explore this area here to the west to see if there are any structures that are connected to the temple.
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[narrator] Sameh has 150 men shifting sand and rock across an excavation of over 10,000 square feet hoping to find ancient buildings.
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Over here, we came across this structure. We really don't know yet what it is. [narrator] It appears to be a complete building entirely buried by desert sand. The team's first task is to dig out the area in front of the structure.
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[speaking native language] [Iskander] I see, I see pieces of a bone there, a couple of, a couple of bones.
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This is a burial site for sure. We are here in a tomb.
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[narrator] In Egypt's extreme south...
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Egyptologist Arto Belekdanian has come to one of Egypt's most imposing temples to investigate the origins of Ramses II's fearsome reputation.
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It is spectacular here!
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The great temple of Abu Simbel with its four imposing colossi of Ramses the Great.
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[narrator] Ramses built Abu Simbel not just as a statement of power, but as a warning to his enemies across Egypt's southern border. Large parts of the temple complex celebrate the king's military strength. [Dr. Arto Belekdanian] It's incredible how much of the wall space here is dedicated to scenes of war.
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[narrator] The reliefs record battles Ramses fought over the first half of his long reign. Arto is hunting for evidence of one of Ramses' earliest military engagements. There it is, right there is a scene that shows where it all began. Look at the headdress, the horned helmet with the spherical shape on top, the round shields, those massive swords.
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These are not Egyptian soldiers, in fact they are part of a mysterious group of people known by the fantastic name of The Sea Peoples.
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♪♪ [narrator] The Sea Peoples were pirates who preyed on the rich trading ports of Egypt's fertile Nile Delta.
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After just two years on the throne, Ramses mustered his navy, and mobilized to protect his kingdom's wealth.
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At their first battle he cornered his foes and overwhelmed them with a much stronger force.
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The pharaoh won a resounding victory over Egypt's maritime enemies and then drafted the captive Sea Peoples into his own army.
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The records etched into the temple walls suggest Ramses had good reason to bolster his army with battle-hardened conscripts. Ramses' reign coincided with a time of economic turmoil in the Mediterranean. Threats to Egyptian stability were coming thick and fast.
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On the outside of the temple, here, I found over a dozen representations of kneeling, tied up, defeated peoples. It is clear that Ramses has been busy since he defeated the Sea Peoples early in his reign. [narrator] Each bound-up captive represents a different foreign power who coveted Egypt's wealth, looking to wrest control from the pharaoh as their own societies crumbled. ♪♪ Yet Ramses' inscriptions suggest victory after victory.
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To uncover the tactical secrets behind the king's success, Arto needs to explore deeper into the temple.
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♪♪ On the west bank of the Nile at Dra' Abu El-Naga...
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Egyptian Archaeologist Bahaa Gaber is exploring a giant ancient cemetery cut into a mountain.
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[Gaber speaking English]
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[narrator] Bahaa wants to know how Egypt coped in the increasingly volatile Mediterranean once Ramses II's 66-year reign came to an end. Dra' Abu-El-Naga is the ideal place to search, as it's one of the main burial sites for nobles of the Ramesside era, a roughly 200-year period during which 11 pharaohs took Ramses as their royal name.
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[narrator] This year, halfway up the mountain's slope, Bahaa believes he's found a promising lead.
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[narrator] During the Ramesside period, nobles often built shrines or chapels above their burial chambers where visitors could leave offerings.
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A tight passage leads down to the entrance to a cramped cavity filled with rubble.
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The team will have to clear the rock to see what's inside. ♪♪ [Gaber] It's such an amazing feeling when you stand in front of the door removing the first block and then you will see what's behind. You can't put it in words.
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[narrator] As the team removes debris from the end of the passage, archaeologist Ahmed El-Tayeb concentrates on the entranceway itself. Mr. Bahaa! [speaking native language] [Gaber] Yes?
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Did you find anything?
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Oh, that's beautiful.
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[narrator] If there is a concealed tomb nearby, a chunk of a doorway is a key piece of the puzzle.
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♪♪
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[narrator] In the shadow of Ramses' temple in Abydos,
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Sameh's team is nearing the floor of the pit at the entrance to what appears to be a buried mudbrick tomb. [Iskander] I think this is multiple burials because we have certainly bones from a child and others from a grownup. How many persons, it's hard to tell so far.
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[narrator] Before he can break open the tomb's entrance, Sameh must recover and record every single bone deposited outside it.
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♪♪ This is the upper part of the skull.
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I think we're getting very close to the bottom of this opening
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but it's neatly blocked.
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I don't think it was opened and re-blocked, but we'll find out. [narrator] The mudbricks sealing the entrance appear undisturbed. It suggests the original tomb owner could still be safely entombed inside.
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With the end of the workers' shift approaching, Sameh will have to wait to dismantle the wall. [Iskander] We need to be patient. We really don't know what's beyond this, but I can tell you right now, once we clear this, we're gonna get a better idea what's inside.
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[narrator] At Abu Simbel, Arto is looking for evidence to explain how Ramses won his reputation as one of the most successful warriors in Egyptian history. Ramses II has defeated his seaborne enemies, and now having incorporated them into his army, showing great military sense, he had his next challenge to face, his enemies on land. Over to the south were the Nubians, to the west the semi-nomadic tribes of Libya, and then to the north his greatest enemies of all, the Hittites.
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[narrator] The Hittites controlled much of today's Middle East during the tumultuous period of Ramses' reign. They were Egypt's main rival superpower in the Mediterranean, amassed in great numbers right on Egypt's eastern border. For Ramses, they posed an existential threat. Arto wants to see how Ramses met this challenge to Egyptian territory. Oh, look at this scene. This has all the clues. Clearly archery was a very important element in Ramses' army,
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but so were battle axes, spears, daggers. And here's a horse, which is harnessed to the most high-tech, cutting-edge piece of military equipment, the chariot. [narrator] The chariot had been introduced to Egypt as a weapon of war just a few centuries earlier. For the warrior king and the future of Egyptian civilization, it was a game-changer. ♪♪ The traditional Egyptian archer could attack from distance on foot, but was relatively static and vulnerable to enemy fire.
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Mounting troops on chariots made them more mobile and harder to hit, while also extending their range. ♪♪ One soldier drove the chariot, while the archer shot arrows from a platform at the rear.
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Egypt's wealth meant Ramses could deploy 2,000 chariots in a single battle to bear down on the enemy with overwhelming force.
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Ramses II put the war chariot to tremendously effective use. And here he is aboard his chariot. He has no need for a driver. He has tied the reins around his waist. Truly, he was a master of the craft.
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[narrator] Riding his chariot alone with a bow drawn impossibly far behind his head, Ramses presented himself as a mighty hero who led from the front.
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Out on the battlefield his lighter, more maneuverable chariots gave Ramses an edge over the cumbersome Hittite vehicles.
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It meant he could successfully defend Egyptian territory. But the warrior pharaoh wanted more, to expand his borders and take the fight to the Hittites.
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But to defeat a rival superpower in its own backyard required more than chariots.
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Look at that, something new. A fortified location sitting atop a high hill with high walls. You can see the ramparts.
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[narrator] The Hittites were no pushovers, and on their own ground they had the advantage of fixed stone defenses. They're organized, they're well-armed, and they are in control of many such fortified locations. Clearly, Ramses had a challenge ahead of him. [narrator] To investigate the pharaoh's campaigns in Hittite lands, Arto needs to visit another of Ramses' monuments to his military greatness.
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At Dra' Abu El-Naga...
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the rock fragments Bahaa's team uncovered in the shrine's entrance suggest the presence of a tomb from the centuries following Ramses' death. If he can find the crypt, its contents could help him build a picture of life and death after Ramses' reign. [Gaber speaking English]
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[narrator] The sandstone building material confirms the shrine is from the right time.
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[narrator] At the end of the shrine's entrance passage, Bahaa's workers continue to haul out rubble, hunting for bodies.
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Doctor!
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[narrator] It's a stunning find, a beautifully preserved wooden coffin painted with images of gods and elaborate scenes of resurrection. Its presence confirms Bahaa's team has uncovered a tomb within the Ramesside shrine. Now Bahaa wants to know who it belonged to. Doctor!
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[narrator] In Abydos... the sun is rising on a new day of excavation.
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Sameh is almost ready to open a buried structure to the west of the Temple of Ramses II.
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He hopes it will help him understand how Egyptians felt about Ramses in the generations following the warrior pharaoh's death.
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[Iskander] I have no idea what could be inside, no idea, but I can't wait. The unknown in this type of work is so exciting because we know there was something inside at one point but is it still there?
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[narrator] As Sameh's foreman, Ayman, prepares to work on the entrance, the morning light reveals intriguing details in the surrounding brickwork. We can see from these lines here that the bricklayer would, would run his fingers here to create some kind of a rough brick for better adhesion. Very interesting, they are curved, and I can tell for sure they came from the temple. [narrator] Egyptian master builders normally only used curved bricks for rounded walls.
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The bricks used to build the tomb match similar fragments Sameh has found while excavating and restoring Ramses' temple. They appear to have been reused from a set of domed structures attached to the monument. So during our excavations in the past two or three years, we came across the walls of these storage magazines silos.
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So each of these storage magazines contained about 100 cubic meters of grain, that is a lot of grain, and perhaps that's what Ramses II needed for his army. [narrator] For a pharaoh at war, grain was critical. In an economy without money, the bread and beer produced from grain both paid and fed the king's entire force. His horses alone needed 6,000 pounds of feed every day.
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The army of Ramses the Great was legendary, over 100,000 soldiers, one of the largest forces ever assembled in Ancient Egypt.
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To sustain his fighters, the king gathered thousands of tons of grain from farms in the Nile Valley.
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To store the grain, Ramses built vast silos at his temple complexes, making them a vital part of his military machine.
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The nearby structure seems to have been built at a later date, once Ramses' grain silos had fallen into disuse.
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[narrator] Foreman Ayman is ready to break open the seal.
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We're gonna start to take the bricks one at a time because I have a feeling that the sand that we see on top of that, uh, collapsed vault will start to come down. So, we need to do this very, very carefully.
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♪♪ [narrator] In Dra' Abu El-Naga...
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excitement is growing in the Ramesside tomb.
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[narrator] A noble's burial could yield rich information about how Egypt weathered the social upheavals that continued to bring down Mediterranean kingdoms after Ramses the Great's long reign.
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[narrator] It's an exceptional discovery.
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[Gaber speaking English]
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[narrator] The face is part of a delicately carved and painted coffin lid.
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Together with a richly decorated coffin, it's evidence of a high-status burial. The fact that the two parts are lying separately shows that the tomb has been disturbed. [Mohamed Beabesh speaking English]
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[narrator] Alongside the prayers and scenes of resurrection painted on the coffin, nobles would have been buried with valuable items to assist them in the afterlife.
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With a coffin broken open, these are almost certainly now gone. But for Bahaa, the treasure is the burial itself.
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[narrator] In Abydos...
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Sameh's foreman Ayman Mohamed is delicately unblocking the entrance to the buried structure.
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Whatever is inside could have lain undisturbed for more than 3,000 years.
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I see... sand. That's it, only sand so far. [narrator] At the other end of the structure, workers have now uncovered a hole in the roof.
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The vaulted roof had already collapsed at some time and the sand got inside it. [narrator] Either the tomb has been robbed via the roof or the ceiling has collapsed naturally. It's going to take some time getting the sand out.
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[narrator] Sameh's workers need to exercise extreme caution operating beneath the degraded mudbrick roof.
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One wayward thrust of a shovel could bring down the entire structure. Patience, patience, patience. You need to take your time. ♪♪
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[narrator] Fifty miles southeast in Luxor...
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Arto has come to one of Ramses' most ambitious buildings:
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The Ramesseum, his mortuary temple.
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Designed to glorify his achievements as pharaoh for eternity, it's the ideal place to explore the events Ramses wanted his descendants to remember. Look at this place!
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Just wow! [narrator] Arto's investigating how Ramses fought his campaigns against the Hittites' fortified cities and cemented his status as Egypt's greatest warrior. You can tell that Ramses II employed his best sculptors in this place. It is truly remarkable.
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[narrator] Arto scans the decorated walls for evidence of how the warrior king overcame the Hittites' defenses.
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Look at all this chaos. This is battle, this is war. And there's Ramses II dispatching his enemies under the shadow of that fortified location. I mean, look at these ramparts. You see that ladder? You don't necessarily destroy the walls. You climb over them. And right there, there's a column of hieroglyphs identifying this city, and it says, ah, it's a little bit broken off but at the very end it's spelling out "our." The first bit is missing but this can't be anything
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but the siege, the famous battle of Dapur. [narrator] The city of Dapur was heavily fortified, and hundreds of miles inside Hittite territory. Ramses needed more than chariots for this sort of siege warfare. He had to come up with a different strategy. ♪♪ Approaching from one side of the city, Ramses' troops used a tall ladder.
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Below, more soldiers engaged the defenders drawing fire from beneath a mantlet, a covering shield that sheltered them from projectiles.
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With the enemy's attention drawn to one end of their city, the king's main force struck the undefended side.
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With this pincer move, Ramses was victorious. He captured the city of Dapur and claimed the territory for Egypt.
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You can imagine the army of the king, with Pharaoh himself present, his resplendent armor, his crowns, his jewelry, glowing under the sunlight.
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Clearly, this would have been a terrifying experience for the city's defenders. [narrator] Inscriptions from Ramses' time call him "The one who breaches walls," and boast that he and his army captured no less than 18 towns in a single season in his eighth year as king.
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Ramses' temple inscriptions suggest a series of crushing victories, but in reality his campaigns in the east were costly. Long periods of fighting deep in Hittite territory took their toll. His wars left a more complicated legacy for Egypt than his claims of glory suggest. ♪♪
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[narrator] In the Ramesside shrine at Dra' Abu El-Naga, Bahaa is searching the remains of an ancient crime scene for evidence of what happened in Egypt in the centuries following Ramses' death. Normally the coffin should have the face of the owner of the coffin himself. So that's him! The beautiful face of that man. It's amazing! [narrator] The face may portray the owner of the coffin but its style seems not to match the date of the tomb. Bahaa believes the casket was made
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after the Ramesside period ended, suggesting this is not the tomb's original owner. This coffin was buried during a later, darker time.
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[narrator] After Ramses' death, his successors, including nine more pharaohs called Ramses, continued to hold the unrest in the region at bay, seeking to emulate the warrior king's success.
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But eventually, the unrest engulfing the region caught up with them.
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The death of King Ramses XI marked the end of the Ramesside era. Egypt finally succumbed to the economic collapse sweeping the Mediterranean world.
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As rival factions fought for control in a power vacuum, Egypt split in two, and law and order collapsed across the country.
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The ancient tombs that used to be closely guarded were left unprotected and became vulnerable.
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The treasures the elites had locked away for their afterlives were now a temptation for those living in troubled times. ♪♪
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[Gaber speaking English]
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[narrator] Whilst the door jamb proves the structure is Ramesside, the later coffin suggests the tomb was reused around the time of Egypt's economic collapse. Bahaa believes this coffin was placed in an older Ramesside tomb to protect it. But in the chaos, no resting place was safe. From kings down to recently deceased nobility, the valuables buried with the dead became a target.
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For Bahaa, the tomb's fate adds rich detail to a key period in Egyptian history: the disintegration of a long-established social order as Egypt's golden age broke down. The only question that remains is did the robbers leave the body intact?
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[narrator] In a stroke of good fortune, the debris covering the coffin has saved the mummy itself.
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[narrator] Bahaa's final job is to rescue the ransacked noble's remains.
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[narrator] The team will carefully transport the coffin to a laboratory where specialists will stabilize and interpret its extraordinary paintwork.
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[indistinct chatter] [narrator] But Bahaa's work is on the mountain. His mission to reconstruct the centuries following the death of Ramses the Great goes on.
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♪♪ [narrator] In Abydos, Sameh's team is continuing the careful work of removing sand from the fragile vaulted tomb. Somewhere hidden in the debris could be clues to how Egyptians here felt about Ramses' long warlike reign in the centuries after his death. With the tomb's floor just inches away, the excavation picks up pace. We're finding more skulls here.
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All the, the remains we have here, they seem to be coming from different periods.
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[narrator] Like the pit outside its entrance, the tomb appears to be packed full of skeletal remains deposited at different times. So far, we came across four human skulls inside the tomb. Every five minutes we come up with something new. [narrator] As the workers make discovery after discovery, Sameh brings in a specialist in working with fragile artifacts. So this is Mohamed who's a conservator. [narrator] He scans the cavity with fresh eyes.
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[narrator] In Abydos... Ah, ah, ah, ah. It's a decorated coffin. [narrator] Sameh's persistence in the tomb beside Ramses the Great's temple is paying off. -You can see red, green... -Yes. -...and Egyptian blue also. -Yes.
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[narrator] Although the remains are fragmentary, they could still help Sameh reveal who was buried here and what Ramses meant to Egyptians in the centuries after his reign.
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Whoa! [narrator] With the tomb now cleared to floor level... Okay. [narrator] ...Sameh can finally analyze the burials. Wow, we have this mud sarcophagus, painted with these beautiful colors. This is the head, the top has already gone, and on top of it
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we have the skull of a donkey which is very, very unusual, and very interesting to have a head of a donkey as an offering. And it's laid directly on the sarcophagus [narrator] In ancient Egypt, donkeys were seen as animals to be respected, their ability to bear burdens enabling long-distance travel. The intricately painted casket topped with a donkey's head suggests the original tomb owner was someone with status. This person with this kind of coffin
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which has elaborate decorations in the outside must have been a person of some means. [narrator] Built with bricks taken from Ramses' temple and situated just steps away from the monument, the tomb implies that even after Egypt's golden age had begun to crumble, Ramses' legend still carried weight.
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At least nine other people of lower status were buried haphazardly alongside the owner either inside the tomb or at the entrance. Their states of preservation suggest some date to more than a thousand years after Ramses' death. [Iskander] This is a great discovery. We can get a glimpse of the mindset of the Egyptians centuries later after Ramses.
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[narrator] A thousand years after the warrior king died, Egypt's golden age was long over. But Ramses' monuments remained popular burial grounds.
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His legend lived on.
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[Iskander] The name of Ramses II as the great warrior, stayed in the memory of the Egyptians for many centuries after his death.
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[narrator] Sameh still has acres of ground to explore around the temple precinct. It could contain hundreds of burials, nobles and commoners alike. ♪♪ The warrior pharaoh seems to have commanded respect in life and for a thousand years after his death. But was it simply for his military success? ♪♪
2:52:01
In Luxor...
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Arto wants to explore how Ramses sustained multiple grueling campaigns beyond his eastern frontiers. And earned the admiration of the entire country for centuries to come.
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Ramses II had a problem . He was fighting wars abroad for months on end, besieging cities. His supply lines were stretched as far as they could go. What was the solution?
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[narrator] A papyrus acquired by a dealer in antiquities in the 1830s could hold the secret.
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The text contains evidence of a huge building project Ramses commissioned as his military ventures gathered pace.
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I'm looking at this fascinating papyrus . Parts of it are going into incredibly vivid detail. It's actually describing this brand-new gleaming capital founded by Ramses II. And right here, it's also giving us its name, Pi-Ramses, the House of Ramses. ♪♪ [narrator] Strategically built on an island in the Nile Delta, Pi-Ramses was hundreds of miles closer to Hittite territory than the former capital. What this means is Ramses II founded his capital at the very edge of Egypt,
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making it a perfect launching point for all of his military campaigns.
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♪♪ [narrator] With a giant temple complete with an imposing avenue of sphinxes, Pi-Ramses was built with an emphasis on grandeur. But Ramses capital was no vanity project. Next to the palace, rows of stables housed nearly 500 horses, serving as headquarters for Ramses' chariot corps. The streets bristled with silos for grain, enough to feed an army. And great furnaces smelted bronze into shields and swords. This beautiful new city was really designed as an engine of war.
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The strategic location of this new city meant that Ramses II could penetrate further into enemy territory and stay there for longer. [narrator] Ramses' monumental inscriptions were designed to promote his triumphs for posterity. He showed off his victories in vivid detail. But on the walls of Ramses' mortuary temple, Arto finds evidence that the warrior king also recognized the cost of constant war. He knew when to stop. This right here is the text of the peace treaty
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that Ramses II forged with the King of the Hittites. And it was so important to him that he immortalized it into stone in the setting of his funerary cult for all eternity.
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He forged the Egypt Empire through war, but the way to maintain it, it was through peace. [narrator] With his enemies subdued either through force or treaty, Ramses secured two centuries of stability for Egypt. He earned a warrior's adulation on the battlefield but won respect through strategic discipline.
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With each new discovery, archeologists across the country shed light on the veneration Ramses the Great inspired. As kingdom after kingdom, founded in the wake of social and economic upheaval across the Mediterranean, Ramses' shrewd military decisions held off the inevitable end of Egypt's golden age.
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And his reputation survived, his own version of history etched in monumental stone: Warrior Pharaoh, King of Kings. ♪♪
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♪♪
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[narrator] In an ancient necropolis in the heart of Egypt... [workers speaking native language] [Dr. Bahaa Gaber speaking English]
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[narrator] Archeologists are hunting for tombs from the era of Tutankhamun.
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[narrator] They will be the first to set foot inside for thousands of years.
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[narrator] They're hoping to unravel the mystery of an ancient religious revolution.
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♪♪ [narrator] Tutankhamun, Egypt's most famous pharaoh.
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Known as the Boy King, he came to power when he was 9 years old and ruled until his death aged 19. But during his short life, he oversaw a transformation in how the Ancient Egyptians worshiped their gods that had far-reaching implications for the rest of Ancient Egyptian history.
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Today, archeologists across Egypt continue to hunt for clues to this spiritual upheaval. They unearth evidence of mysterious religious rituals, investigate how some gods were banished and others rose to power, and search brick by brick to understand how the Boy King's far-reaching religious reforms had their roots in the chaotic reign of his father.
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♪♪ Near Luxor at Dra' Abu el-Naga...
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Egyptian archeologist Bahaa Gaber is excavating an ancient necropolis that contains burials from the era of Tutankhamun.
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It's a very rich area. The number of the tombs, more than 2,000 tombs have been discovered until now.
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[narrator] The burials here could contain valuable information about how Tutankhamun shaped Egypt's religious customs during his reign. This season, Bahaa and his team are focusing on an area of sand near the base of the necropolis. They have a meticulous system to make sure they don't miss anything. [Dr. Gaber] When we start from the beginning, we have to divide the area into the squares. For us, this is the first square, and that's the second one and this is the third one.
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We are looking for the bedrock.
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[narrator] In each 16-by-16-foot square, the workers dig all the way down to the bedrock searching for any structures hidden in the sand.
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We've found a border of a courtyard. You can see the corners around the area. It means that this is the courtyard of a tomb.
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[narrator] It's a promising start. The New Kingdom period is the era of Tutankhamun. Now that the team has found the courtyard, they're on the lookout for signs of buried grave goods.
3:00:21
Ah.
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♪♪ [narrator] On the West Bank of the Nile, near Luxor...
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American Egyptologist Meredith Brand has come to Tutankhamun's tomb to explore which gods the Boy King revered.
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[Dr. Meredith Brand] This is so exciting. So this is the entrance to Tutankhamun's tomb.
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It's wonderful to go to the place where the greatest archeological discovery in Egypt, and probably even the world, took place.
3:01:02
[narrator] Tutankhamun's mummified body lay sealed in this tomb for over 3,000 years. Meredith has special access to examine the burial chamber's walls up close. [Dr. Brand] This is my first time getting to go into the burial chamber of Tutankhamun. This is fantastic. Oh wow! Look at that. You can see every single detail, all the individual strokes, the lines.
3:01:32
[narrator] The Ancient Egyptians honored over 2,000 deities, and the pharaohs were seen as a divine intermediary between them and the gods.
3:01:43
Over the centuries, the popularity of individual gods waxed and waned, and some gods even combined into hybrid deities. Meredith studies the painted reliefs to identify which gods Tutankhamun chose to surround himself with.
3:02:02
[Dr. Brand] Here is the god Osiris, the god of the underworld, embracing Tutankhamun. Over there is the goddess Nut.
3:02:10
This is somebody who worshiped the full pantheon of the Egyptian religion. [narrator] When first discovered, Tutankhamun's tomb was crammed with more than 5,000 lavish grave goods, many of which honored the gods. A shrine bore a statue of the jackal-headed god Anubis. His sarcophagus was decorated with images of four goddesses. And on the royal chariot, an image of the solar falcon representing the sky god Horus.
3:02:44
But one object poses a mystery.
3:02:48
Tutankhamun's golden throne was emblazoned with a strange sun disc and a different name for the Boy King, Tutankhaten.
3:03:00
The golden throne is highly decorated with imagery of the young pharaoh. Meredith wants to examine it more closely to see what clues it holds. [Dr. Brand] This is an image of the golden throne of Tutankhamun and when I look at it, I see there's something a bit unusual. I don't see any other gods, but I do see a sun disc with arms coming down holding a key to life. This is the god the Aten. [narrator] The mysterious Aten, unlike the other Egyptian gods,
3:03:34
didn't take the form of an animal or human. It was represented as a simple sun disc.
3:03:41
The throne with its alternative version of Tutankhamun's name suggests that at some point during his life, the god Aten was very important to him.
3:03:52
But in the young pharaoh's tomb, the throne is one of the few traces of this mysterious deity.
3:04:00
[Dr. Brand] In Tutankhamun's tomb, we don't have the image of Aten. It's not painted on the walls.
3:04:09
[narrator] To find out more about why the Aten wasn't featured in the tomb,
3:04:14
Meredith wants to explore the site of a cataclysmic religious upheaval.
3:04:23
♪♪ At the ancient city of Hermopolis Magna...
3:04:32
archeologists Basem Gehad and Ann-Kathrin Jeske are excavating a huge temple complex that was in use during the New Kingdom...
3:04:43
the era of Tutankhamun.
3:04:46
We are expecting that we could find more information about these temples that nowadays you can't see clearly at the site because of the destruction.
3:05:00
[narrator] The buried temple is located in the fertile ground close to the River Nile.
3:05:06
Digging here is difficult for even the most experienced archeologists. [Dr. Gehad] It's a kind of challenging site. The landscape here is completely different than any other place that I have worked, because I'm used to working in the desert. Now we are working in mud and silt, and everything is just, like, buried into these compact layers.
3:05:30
But if it's easy, it's not fun. That's what makes a very good archeologist.
3:05:38
[narrator] Among the ruins of the temple's ancient gateway, the team has already uncovered something special. [Dr. Gehad] We can see here one of these blocks which was in the core of this building, and it bears the cartouche and the name of Akhenaten. [narrator] Pharaoh Akhenaten was Tutankhamun's father.
3:06:01
Akhenaten was the second son of the Great Amenhotep III. He never expected to be king, but when his older brother died, the crown fell to him. Akhenaten married the legendary Nefertiti with whom he had six daughters. But his son Tutankhamun would be his successor.
3:06:25
This season, Basem and Ann-Kathrin hope that this site can tell them more about the religious regime during Tutankhamun's early life. Ann-Kathrin oversees excavation of a smaller secondary temple that sits in the grounds of the main Hermopolis site. [Ann-Kathrin Jeske] We excavate with seven to eight workmen in each square. Some are moving the soil. Today, I hope we manage to excavate 20 more centimeters, and I hope to find here more information about this temple.
3:07:03
[narrator] As the workers painstakingly scrape away at the compacted soil, Ann-Kathrin watches for any signs that there's a structure below.
3:07:13
[Jeske] Here it's just the soil, it looks a bit different, it's a bit more sandy, and our foundations are filled with sand, so it might be an indication that we've come closer to the foundation.
3:07:27
[narrator] It's a promising sign the team is digging in the right area.
3:07:37
[worker] A.K.
3:07:39
[narrator] One of the workers spots something buried in the soil.
3:07:45
[Jeske] Oh! It seems like we have limestone blocks. ♪♪
3:07:54
[narrator] 170 miles north of the Valley of the Kings, Meredith is exploring the ruins of the ancient city of Amarna to find out more about the mysterious god the Aten and the role it played in Tutankhamun's early life.
3:08:13
This is the best place to find out about the Aten. It was here that Tutankhamun was born and raised back when he was known as Tut-ankh-aten.
3:08:23
[narrator] The city of Amarna was built from scratch by Tutankhamun's father, Pharaoh Akhenaten. He intended it to be the new capital of Egypt.
3:08:37
Oh, this is so beautiful!
3:08:41
[narrator] Meredith examines an impressive inscribed boundary marker known as a stela. It is one of 16 that delineates the ancient city limits.
3:08:51
[Dr. Brand] This is a lovely stela and at the top, there's this sun disc Aten, and its divergent rays are coming out like arms and they're shining on the king and his family. [narrator] This stela reveals a lot about the Aten and its role during the reign of Akhenaten. This text says that the Aten is his divine father. It shows that the Aten is the only god that Akhenaten is worshipping, and it makes it clear that his wish is for all of Egypt to follow this one god. This is a remarkable text.
3:09:25
It's a huge departure from thousands of years of Egyptian history.
3:09:33
[narrator] Ancient Egyptians took religion very seriously. Many houses had their own shrine for everyday worship.
3:09:43
When Akhenaten came to power, Ancient Egyptians worshiped a pantheon of more than 2,000 gods.
3:09:51
But a few years into his reign, the pharaoh banished all the gods except one, the Sun God Aten, creating one of the world's first monotheistic religions.
3:10:06
For many Egyptians, this would have been heresy but they had no choice but to follow their pharaoh's new god.
3:10:17
[Dr. Brand] It's hard to overstate how huge of a change this was for Ancient Egyptians. The gods were in every single part of their life. So, if their baby was sick, they prayed to the gods. If they were worried about the harvest, they prayed to the gods. So what Akhenaten did was tell the Ancient Egyptians you can't practice your religion anymore the way you want to, and that must have been very hard. [narrator] The consequences of these unpopular changes
3:10:46
had far-reaching implications for the entire country. Akhenaten's reforms were not just a radical religious change, they were a huge political and economic power grab. The priesthoods and the temples held huge amounts of the country's resources and wealth, and by closing them and firing everyone that worked for them, he fundamentally changed the political and economic structure of the entire country.
3:11:17
[narrator] Akhenaten's changes even extended to how the pharaoh was depicted in reliefs.
3:11:24
He and his family appear with slim torsos, wide hips, and long spindly arms, breaking with longstanding traditions.
3:11:35
The young Tutankhamun, born Tutankhaten, grew up in this radically different world surrounded by the cult of Aten. Tutankhamun would have grown up indoctrinated in his father's religion. And his entire life was mapped out for him. He would have ruled from here in Amarna and then been buried here, but that obviously didn't happen.
3:12:01
[narrator] Next, Meredith wants to explore Akhenaten's tomb to find out why Tutankhamun later abandoned his father's new capital and its heretical religion.
3:12:13
♪♪ On the west bank of the Nile at Dra' Abu el-Naga...
3:12:22
Bahaa is inspecting an object that he hopes dates from the era of Tutankhamun. [Dr. Gaber speaking English]
3:12:39
[narrator] Ushabti figures are typically placed in the burial chamber of a tomb as part of the deceased's funerary goods.
3:12:58
[narrator] Foundations of a courtyard and an ushabti statue dating from the New Kingdom are encouraging finds. If they discover a tomb from that era, it could offer valuable insight into the area's religious customs during the time of Tutankhamun. We're still working on that courtyard. [narrator] Bahaa is hoping the courtyard leads to the entrance of a tomb.
3:13:42
It's another one, yeah?
3:13:45
So this is not just one coffin. I think that that's more than one. -[worker] This one is smaller. -[Dr. Gaber] It's a smaller? I think from the size of those coffins they were for, uh, just small children who we can say that between 1 and 3 years at least. It's something different, this is the first time that I see something like that in, uh, in our site.
3:14:10
[narrator] The team searches for any grave goods around the coffins.
3:14:16
Oh, wow, that's a ancient one. Oh, be careful, Ahmed, be careful.
3:14:27
[narrator] At Hermopolis Magna...
3:14:31
Ann-Kathrin and Basem are investigating the promising limestone blocks.
3:14:38
[Jeske] We might found here now the foundation trench of the outer wall of the temple. [narrator] They're searching for more information about Akhenaten's religious regime during Tutankhamun's early life. [Jeske] Here it's really where we can expose them, and then we start slowly removing the structural support and then we take out the stones.
3:15:03
[narrator] After chipping away the surrounding mud, it's clear that these aren't ordinary building blocks. [Jeske] It's very likely that this is a talatat block, and in this part of the temple we don't find talatat blocks very often. It's a rather rare find.
3:15:24
♪♪ [narrator] Talatat blocks are small sandstone bricks designed to a standardized size that first appeared during the reign of Akhenaten. Smaller than the traditional limestone blocks used to build temples and pyramids, they were light enough for one man to carry making construction faster and more efficient.
3:15:49
Akhenaten managed to quickly build his new capital of Amarna thanks to this revolutionary block design.
3:15:57
We know that these blocks are from the time of Akhenaten simply based on the dimensions. The same dimension was only used in his period, not before and not, uh, afterwards.
3:16:12
[narrator] The discovery of talatat blocks is a crucial find. It shows that parts of the temple were built using this Amarna period stonework. The team now needs to remove the blocks from the trench to properly inspect them for any signs of decoration.
3:16:31
[Jeske] The moment I see decoration, I'm happy because when I find something like a representation of the king or even god or some scenes, this would be really exciting.
3:16:43
[narrator] The team ties the talatat block together with string to prevent it from falling apart when they move it. [Jeske] They are going to lift it now, and you have to imagine it's not super easy because this block is about 70 kilos
3:16:59
[Dr. Gehad] Are you ready? [narrator] Finally, everything is set. Basem gives the go-ahead to lift out the block.
3:17:28
[narrator] The team rotates the block to inspect what's underneath. [Jeske] Oh! This is a nice find.
3:17:38
♪♪ [narrator] At the Dra' Abu el-Naga Necropolis...
3:17:48
Bahaa and his team are inspecting the intriguing object they found next to the series of children's coffins. [Dr. Gaber] This is a bag. You can see the handle, you can see the bag inside.
3:18:03
When he died, his parents actually took his bag and put it next to his coffin, because he was a child, he loved to have his bag, he loved to have his bag with him in his second life.
3:18:17
[narrator] The Ancient Egyptians believed that objects they were buried with would travel with them to the afterlife. This child wasn't old enough to own elaborate statues or golden treasure. Instead, they were buried with their most prized possession, a humble bag made from reeds.
3:18:38
It's beautiful. That's such an amazing excavation we found something like that.
3:18:47
[narrator] In total, the team uncovers three wooden coffins and two children's bags.
3:18:55
[Dr. Gaber] The coffins is not in good condition so we have, uh, to move them safely from here to protect them.
3:19:05
[narrator] The team transports the coffins and bags to the storage magazine to preserve them.
3:19:14
Now they can get back to searching for the Tutankhamun era tomb.
3:19:35
♪♪
3:19:39
♪♪ [narrator] In Amarna... Meredith has come to investigate the tomb of Tutankhamun's father, the Heretic King Akhenaten. She wants to find out more about what happened to Atenism after Akhenaten died.
3:19:58
This is the Royal Wadi. It's where Akhenaten built several royal tombs, and this is where Tutankhamun would have been buried.
3:20:07
[narrator] Akhenaten decreed that the city of Amarna would be the final resting place for himself and his dynasty.
3:20:16
This was to be his new Valley of the Kings.
3:20:25
[Dr. Brand] Oh, wow!
3:20:28
[narrator] The walls of Akhenaten's burial chamber have been badly damaged by floodwater, and little remains of their original decoration.
3:20:38
Meredith searches for any evidence of the pharaoh's heretical religion, Atenism.
3:20:44
[Dr. Brand] This is a sun disc, and it shows that this tomb belonged to Akhenaten. For him, the Aten was everything. His tomb must have been covered with Aten sun discs everywhere.
3:20:58
[narrator] But very few inscriptions now remain inside the tomb. And in several of them, the names of those depicted have been hacked out, making them illegible.
3:21:12
At the time of his death, Akhenaten was still a true believer in his new religion.
3:21:19
But Atenism was wildly unpopular with the Ancient Egyptians.
3:21:25
It disrupted the economy, shattered family's religious beliefs, and left the former temples and their priests in disarray.
3:21:35
Once Tutankhamun took the throne, everything changed. [Dr. Brand] This is the Restoration Stela. It was found in Karnak Temple where Tutankhamun would have placed it prominently for everyone to see. And this is an important document.
3:21:53
[narrator] The stela records the ruinous state of the former temples, and that Tutankhamun restored them so the old gods would return.
3:22:05
This stela, it makes it very clear that Tutankhamun had completely rejected the Aten and the religious revolution. It shows that he wanted to put Egypt back to the way it was and forget the entire Akhenaten, Aten, and the Amarna episode.
3:22:26
[narrator] In the wake of Tutankhamun's great declaration, workers tore down temples and sacred sites dedicated to the Aten.
3:22:37
All mention of the heretic Akhenaten was erased,
3:22:42
his statues and paintings destroyed.
3:22:46
Tutankhamun even abandoned his father's new city, Amarna, leaving it to crumble into the desert.
3:22:56
Tutankhamun would have been a young boy when his father died, so his earliest memories would have been the cult of Aten. And despite his father being a true believer, when he ascended the throne, Tutankhamun, and his advisors probably, decided that the stability of the country was more important than the religious revolutions of his father Akhenaten. [narrator] The once-powerful priests who had lost their jobs when Akhenaten banished the old gods, may have pressed the young Tutankhamun
3:23:28
to reinstate the old ways and hand back power to the priesthood. But Akhenaten had spent a lifetime establishing his monotheistic religion. To find out how the Boy King restored the old gods, Meredith wants to explore one of Ancient Egypt's greatest temples.
3:23:51
♪♪ At the ancient city of Hermopolis Magna...
3:23:58
Ann-Kathrin inspects the Tutankhamun era talatat block from the trench. [Jeske] Wow, we have here a cartouche and even fragment or residue of paint, so here is some blue paint. [narrator] The team wants to investigate what information is inscribed on the block and work out how it ended up here in Hermopolis Magna, 10 miles from Akhenaten's Amarna city. So here, I can see the outline of one cartouche, and here is the outline, it seems like a second one.
3:24:38
[narrator] A cartouche is a hieroglyph that represents the name of a pharaoh. It's a significant discovery for the team. We haven't discovered such a block in the temple before, so this is something exciting. We have here evidence of a secondary carving. This cartouche is not the cartouche of any Amarna king but Merenptah. So yeah, on this Amarna period block is now a cartouche of a much later king.
3:25:12
[narrator] This block shows that King Merenptah, who came to power decades after Akhenaten, took talatat blocks from Amarna and used them to build part of this temple.
3:25:25
He made this block his own by putting his own name on, um, Akhenaten's, um, building material. This is really an exciting finding, and this helps us a lot to understand more about how the kings of the 19th Dynasty dealt with, um, Akhenaten's heritage.
3:25:49
[narrator] Next, the team wants to study the blocks to understand how and why these later kings used Akhenaten's talatat blocks here. Now we are going to transport them to the magazine.
3:26:06
♪♪ [narrator] In Luxor...
3:26:12
Meredith has come to the ancient temple complex of Karnak. Some of the monolithic structures here pre-date Tutankhamun's reign by centuries.
3:26:25
[Dr. Brand] I've been here so many times but every time I come back, I'm blown away by the sheer scale of this place. It's enormous and so beautiful.
3:26:36
[narrator] Before Akhenaten, Karnak was the main center of worship for some of Ancient Egypt's most important gods, including Amun.
3:26:48
Meredith wants to explore how Tutankhamun, having turned his back on Atenism, restored the old gods to Karnak and the rest of Egypt.
3:26:59
[Dr. Brand] Tutankhamun would have come here to Luxor and Karnak Temple after he abandoned Amarna. It was here in Luxor that he changed his name from Tut-ankh-aten to Tut-ankh-amun.
3:27:13
[narrator] Amun, the Creator God, was one of Egypt's most popular deities, believed to have saved Egypt from foreign invaders.
3:27:23
Amun was king of the Egyptian pantheon and considered to be father to the pharaoh himself, bestowing divine authority on the pharaoh's earthly rule.
3:27:36
[Dr. Brand] Tutankhamun wanted to honor the most important god, and by putting the God's name back into his own name, he made a personal connection with that god. [narrator] After reaffirming his commitment to the old ways, the young pharaoh needed to show the rest of Egypt that his father's legacy was no more.
3:28:00
Tutankhamun began by making his mark on Karnak.
3:28:05
Outside the complex, he started work on a glorious processional avenue.
3:28:12
He took statues of sphinxes that bore Akhenaten's image and replaced their heads with those of rams representing Amun. Hundreds of sphinxes lined Tutankhamun's avenue, which stretched nearly 1,000 feet between the temples of Amun and Mut. ♪♪
3:28:40
Meredith heads to the south of Karnak Temple to inspect the monumental avenue of sphinxes herself.
3:28:49
[Dr. Brand] Ah, this is fantastic. This is a criosphinx. It's later than Tutankhamun but it shows what his sphinx would have looked like. This has the head of the ram and the body of a lion, and this is a protective god associated with Amun.
3:29:05
[narrator] Tutankhamun's criosphinx would have had a statue of the Boy King between the lion's paws, a sign Amun was protecting the pharaoh. The message is very clear from Tutankhamun, the God Amun is back, the old gods are here to stay, and the Aten is no longer the main god of Egypt. [narrator] Tutankhamun had to completely rebuild Ancient Egypt's religion. The Boy King re-established Karnak and its priests' religious statues
3:29:38
in an attempt to restore his honor among the population. It was a complete religious counter-revolution.
3:29:48
But the young pharaoh ran out of time. [Dr. Brand] Despite Tutankhamun's efforts to restore the old gods of Egypt and undo what his father did, he died when he was only a teenager and couldn't achieve everything he set out to do.
3:30:04
[narrator] Although Tutankhamun died young, the religious reforms he had begun swept across Egypt.
3:30:12
The priests regained power, state resources were diverted away from Amarna, and the old gods returned to sacred temples like Karnak.
3:30:26
♪♪ At Dra' Abu el-Naga...
3:30:37
We are very close to the entrance of the tomb. [narrator] Bahaa is unearthing a series of funerary cones. Made of clay, stamped with the tomb owner's name, they typically mark the entrance to a tomb. [Dr. Gaber] Families, when they visited the tombs they left those cones in front of the tomb or above the, the tomb itself. [narrator] He hopes the tomb could provide clues to the area's religious customs during the era of Tutankhamun. [Dr. Gaber] I can see that the wall had been cut
3:31:13
so I can see, it's a hole, this is the hole of the tomb. We must clean it layer by layer.
3:31:22
[narrator] The team races to clear sand and debris from the tomb entrance.
3:31:31
Eventually, the opening is big enough for Bahaa to squeeze inside.
3:31:38
I think we are ready to go in.
3:31:45
♪♪ [narrator] At the Dra' Abu el-Naga Necropolis...
3:31:51
Bahaa is investigating the new discovered tomb for the first time. ♪♪
3:32:03
[Dr. Gaber] When I discover something new, it's such a beautiful feeling. You are the first one who enter to the tomb.
3:32:11
You are the first one who touch it, the mummy, the vessels, the statues, it's an amazing feeling. It's not a small tomb. I can see it's a big hole and another room, and we have a room here too.
3:32:33
Some of the skulls. Wow! The linen around it.
3:32:42
[narrator] He examines details in the tomb to try to figure out the era it was constructed.
3:32:49
[Dr. Gaber] The walls so rough, that was a style of the Middle Kingdom period tombs. The people who were buried here, the nobles who lived during the Middle Kingdom period.
3:33:03
[narrator] The style of the tomb and the characteristic rough walls means Bahaa now thinks the tomb was built 500 years before the reign of Tutankhamun.
3:33:15
It's a setback for the team.
3:33:18
But the date does offer a clue to how this tomb would have been used and why it is here.
3:33:26
It was during this time that a major religious festival in honor of Amun, the god Tutankhamun restored, was founded nearby.
3:33:36
♪♪ The Festival of the Valley was a joyous celebration of the dead, where crowds gathered at Karnak every year in May.
3:33:49
A statue of Amun was carried on a ceremonial boat across the Nile, from east to west, symbolizing the journey to the Land of the Dead.
3:34:01
Worshippers piled masses of flowers onto the statue to imbue them with the god's essence.
3:34:12
Families then took these flowers to the tombs of their loved ones, feasting and drinking all through the night.
3:34:23
[Dr. Gaber] Tombs in Dra' Abu el-Naga were very important, because they are on the way of the procession of the Festival of the Valley. So the relatives of the dead people, they stopped first here.
3:34:39
[narrator] The Festival of the Valley was celebrated right up to the time of Akhenaten. But he probably banned the festival as he would have considered the occasion heresy.
3:34:52
It's a vivid example of how Akhenaten's revolution disrupted ordinary lives as well as religious practices. It would have torn apart the bond between families and their deceased loved ones.
3:35:07
When Tutankhamun came to power, restoring the old gods opened the way for his grateful people to celebrate these popular religious events once more. The Festival of the Valley returned back, and the families came again to the West Bank and they visited their relatives' tombs.
3:35:31
♪♪ [narrator] At Hermopolis Magna...
3:35:37
Basem comes to the team's magazine, where all the talatat blocks unearthed from decades of past excavations are stored. He has a hugely ambitious plan. He wants to work out how all the fragmentary images on the talatat blocks originally fitted together. There are thousands of blocks, of the talatat blocks that came originally from Amarna.
3:36:06
[narrator] These talatat blocks once formed elaborately decorated walls of palaces, temples, and monuments in Akhenaten's city of Amarna.
3:36:17
But following Tutankhamun's restoration of the old gods and the dismantling of Amarna, the stonework was reused.
3:36:26
The scenes originally inscribed on the walls were lost.
3:36:31
[Dr. Gehad] It's a big mystery. No one knows what was the original scenes that were composing the main stories on these walls.
3:36:42
[narrator] Basem hopes the scenes will reveal more about Akhenaten and the religion Tutankhamun so firmly rejected.
3:37:00
[narrator] But with around 3,000 talatat blocks discovered to date, it's like piecing together the world's largest 3D jigsaw puzzle.
3:37:11
Basem's first step is to digitally record every talatat block unearthed at the site. [Dr. Gehad] What I'm gonna do now is ask one of my team to do a proper professional photograph for this talatat block so we get an image that could be calibrated to the software.
3:37:35
[narrator] The team photographs each talatat block several times using different lighting setups to ensure they capture the tiniest of details. Basem has a hunch this block and one other belonged to a typical Amarna period royal boat scene,
3:37:53
so he uses a similar scene already pieced together from a different Amarna site as a reference.
3:38:02
[Dr. Gehad] Using the software and the images that Mahmoud took, we've managed to identify the exact location of these two blocks that relates to part of the royal boats. It's a complete boat with these, uh, long beams and signature of the royal palace.
3:38:25
[narrator] It's a great result for the team. Using this innovative process, they have managed to identify the location of two pieces from this ancient wall relief puzzle.
3:38:37
But with thousands of blocks still to document and more being unearthed each season, it's a hugely ambitious project. [Dr. Gehad] This is one small part of the story of this huge, uh, jigsaw puzzle game that we are trying to solve. Hopefully, by this initiative we would be able to compose more and more of these talatat blocks so that we would be able in the future to display them in a proper museum. And then everyone could see the daily life scenes of Amarna.
3:39:15
[narrator] The era of Akhenaten and his religious revolution remains one of the most mysterious periods of Egyptian history. [Dr. Gehad] It seems that every kind of evidence that proves, or tells, the story of Akhenaten was completely either erased or reused as foundation so it would be completely for centuries hidden, no one would see it. [narrator] But at sites like Hermopolis Magna, archeologists are slowly piecing the story back together, one block at a time.
3:39:55
Today, archeologists across Egypt are uncovering more about Tutankhamun's religious counter-revolution.
3:40:04
How he and later pharaohs tore down buildings and statues to abolish his father's heretical religion.
3:40:14
And how the restoration of the old gods would have delighted his people and restored peace and stability to Ancient Egypt. ♪♪
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