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00:00Beyond the pyramids, beyond all you think you know, lies an undiscovered Egypt.
00:09I kept saying to myself, my God, I can't believe it.
00:11What happened next is one of the great moments of modern archaeology.
00:15A great pharaoh welcomes his children to the underworld.
00:19It turned into the most incredible sight I'd ever seen in my life.
00:22Hidden tombs, unearthed after thousands of years.
00:25Nothing like this has ever been found before.
00:28Now, Peter Woodward guides you through an Egypt few are privileged to see.
00:33Egypt Beyond the Pyramids.
00:39500 miles south of Cairo,
00:42a stunningly beautiful temple perches on the edge of the vast desert.
00:58Within its walls lies a toppled thousand-ton image of one of Egypt's greatest kings,
01:04who left behind one of Egypt's greatest mysteries, the fate of his many children.
01:12It is a saga that some believe will end in a remote tomb in the legendary Valley of the Kings.
01:29This jumbled pile of huge stones was once a statue of Ramesses II,
01:34ruler of Egypt over 1,200 years before the Christian era.
01:38His face gazes towards the sky, and here is a shoulder.
01:43This was one of the greatest statues ever carved,
01:47and it was erected here at the Ramesseum, Ramesses' mortuary temple close to present-day Luxor.
01:54In the 5th century AD, the Coptic Christians are believed to have pulled down the statue,
02:00and over the centuries, earthquakes further destroyed the fallen pharaoh's likeness.
02:07Of course, Ramesses had the last word. His image today is anything but a colossal wreck.
02:17This statue better symbolizes the role of Ramesses II in Egypt's history.
02:22He was a king who led his armies to victory, who built the most astonishing structures all over Egypt.
02:28He ruled for 67 years.
02:31His was a reign longer than all but one pharaoh,
02:35and when he died, history would remember him as Ramesses the Great.
02:43Ramesses was in his early 20s when he succeeded his father, Seti I, in 1280 BC.
02:49Seti had been a dynamic and successful pharaoh, and saw to it that his son was well-prepared to follow him.
02:58As a child, young Ramesses accompanied his father to war.
03:02He learned first-hand the lessons of leading an army.
03:06While still a young man, he studied engineering techniques.
03:10He oversaw the stone quarries where the huge obelisks were cut to decorate Egypt's temples.
03:17The training paid off. Ramesses II's reign as pharaoh was unsurpassed in its stability and achievement.
03:24The teenager who had followed his father into battle became a determined warrior who defended Egypt from outside threats.
03:36Ramesses also learned his lessons as an engineer.
03:40He left to history some of Egypt's most monumental and beautiful structures.
03:46In a civilization of great builders, this pharaoh was certainly one of the greatest.
03:53Over 3,000 Egyptian citizens were put to work just to cut the stone for the beautiful temple he dedicated to himself, the Ramesseum.
04:04And on towering cliffs overlooking the Nubian Nile, Ramesses had carved one of history's greatest monuments to ego,
04:12the breathtaking Temple of Abu Simbel.
04:16Four colossal statues of the pharaoh himself saw 60 feet high.
04:23I think Ramesses can be included amongst the greatest historical figures of ancient Egypt.
04:29He was a talented military man who saw battle, who in fact ensured a certain stability to the kingdom of Egypt.
04:37Starting at the delta and all the way to Nubia, Egypt was covered with monuments which tell the story of his reign.
04:45Ramesses was indeed a great warrior, and his enormous building projects have awed people since the earliest tourists sailed the Nile in Greek and Roman times.
04:54During his reign, Egypt's fame and wealth grew, and his subjects experienced a bountiful and secure era.
05:01So great was Ramesses' opinion of his own accomplishments that he would take these monuments to Egypt.
05:09However, his divine status would not have impressed one notable group of visitors to his country.
05:15Judeo-Christian tradition names Ramesses II as pharaoh at the time Moses led the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.
05:23Ramesses, however, was a man of great character, a man of great wisdom, and a man of great courage.
05:30Judeo-Christian tradition names Ramesses II as pharaoh at the time Moses led the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.
05:41Of Ramesses' many impressive accomplishments, his greatest may have been his prodigious feats of fatherhood.
05:49The beautiful Nefertari was his most famous wife, but he had many other official queens, lesser wives, and concubines.
05:56With all of these women, Ramesses fathered over 100 children that we know of, including at least 50 sons.
06:07Having many wives and children was probably not unusual for a pharaoh,
06:11but what was unusual was that Ramesses proudly listed and portrayed his children on the walls of many of the buildings he constructed.
06:20He reproduced his children on the walls of the temples in long princely processions where we find both the king's sons and daughters.
06:34It's thanks to these lists that we are able to somewhat establish Ramesses' descendants.
06:42For most pharaohs of ancient Egypt, we know nothing about the members of the royal family.
06:47For Ramesses II, we know the names of many of his wives, we know the names of many of his sons, and many of his daughters, more than two dozen of each.
06:56Ramesses II was indeed a singular fellow in that no other pharaoh before or after him had ever given so much attention to his children.
07:09Despite such unusual public acknowledgement by their father, we know very little about the lives of all those children.
07:15Being an heir to Ramesses' throne was a frustrating process.
07:19He would rule for 67 years and outlive five of his successors.
07:27The first of these was Amun-Hehepeshef, who died in the 40th year of Ramesses' rule.
07:32If indeed Ramesses was the pharaoh of the Exodus, Amun-Hehepeshef would have been the firstborn son slain when God sent the seven plagues against Egypt.
07:43Though it is doubtful history will ever be able to confirm this.
07:49Of the other princes of Ramesses, we know few details.
07:52Son number four, Khemwezi, was highly regarded and may have been his father's favourite.
07:58He was an important priest and oversaw the construction of many of Ramesses' most dramatic building projects.
08:04He died in the 55th year of Ramesses' reign.
08:09Merneptah was Ramesses' 13th son and we know little about him until he was appointed general of the army in the 40th year of Ramesses' reign.
08:18He was probably the real power behind the throne for the last decade of his father's life.
08:26Even as an old king, Ramesses was tall for an Egyptian, five feet eight.
08:31In his final years, he was troubled with arthritis and curvature of the spine.
08:36And like most of his countrymen, his teeth bothered him.
08:40He was slightly built with a sharply hooked nose and large pierced ears.
08:45We might guess that he was a bit vain since even as a very old man, his hair was dyed a stunning shade of red.
08:52Until the very end, Ramesses II remained Ramesses the Great.
08:57Active, assertive and an enormous presence in the life of his nation.
09:01But even for a living god, the end in this world does finally come.
09:14In 1213 BC, Ramesses II at last died around the age of 90.
09:20Considering life expectancy in Egypt was just a little over 30, the gods may have been revealing to mortals the great nature of their king.
09:29He was succeeded by his 13th son, Manapta, who ruled for another nine years before he too died.
09:37But of the many other sons of Ramesses, we know of the tombs of just two.
09:42All the rest have vanished.
09:44They are the lost princes of Egypt.
09:49The Long Reign of Ramesses II at last came to an end in 1212 BC.
09:57It was surely a time of great sadness in Egypt.
10:00Few of Ramesses' subjects would have known any other king.
10:08For 40 days, priests performed a ritual of mourning.
10:13For 40 days, priests performed the exacting ritual of mummification on Ramesses' body.
10:19The stomach, intestines, liver and lungs were placed in special containers called canopic jars.
10:27The body was dried with a special salt, then adorned with jewelled amulets and wrapped in linen strips.
10:34At last, the mummy was placed in an elaborate coffin and began the journey to the Valley of the Kings in southern Egypt.
10:46We're standing in the tomb of Ramesses II.
10:49This magnificent chamber has only recently been excavated and has never been filmed before.
10:56This is the largest tomb in Egypt.
11:00This is the largest single room in the Valley of the Kings.
11:04The pharaoh's mummified body would have been carried into this chamber and lowered into a huge sarcophagus placed here.
11:12His internal organs in their canopic jars would be put into an alabaster chest here and lowered into this shaft.
11:22Above it was a beautiful gilded wooden shrine.
11:26The priests, having completed their last rituals, would have swept away the dust of their footprints as they backed out of the tomb,
11:34leaving the great pharaoh alone here for eternity in this beautiful space deep within the mountain.
11:56The world has seen the beautiful treasures that were discovered in the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun, who died over a hundred years before Ramesses.
12:14If this was the treasure that was buried with Tut, a minor king with little impact on Egyptian history,
12:21we can begin to imagine the magnificent objects and adornment which must have filled the tomb of Ramesses the Great.
12:31But Ramesses was not lucky in his choice of final resting place.
12:35Within 150 years, tomb robbers had found their way in and carried off what must have been a treasure beyond our dreams.
12:44From this, the tomb of the pharaoh of the pharaohs.
12:48All we have left are a few precious fragments recently discovered by the French Egyptologist Christian Leblanc.
13:00In the tomb of Ramesses II, a number of objects which belonged to the funeral decoration were found,
13:06notably vestiges of the canopic jars in which the viscera of the king had been placed.
13:12We also found vestiges of the funeral bed.
13:15At the front end were two leopard heads like these, which still show very beautiful traces of color, which look like gold.
13:28And this absolutely exceptional piece, a statuette of Ramesses as a rather young man.
13:34It was placed near the king's mummy in a tomb which must have been absolutely sumptuous, one of the most beautiful royal tombs.
13:46Robbers had invaded tombs since the earliest days of royal burials.
13:50Usually working in gangs, they sometimes bribed guards.
13:54More often, they simply broke into the tombs after political unrest or threats to national security
14:00distracted the attention of those charged with their protection.
14:06Other than these few artifacts, Ramesses' great burial treasure had vanished.
14:12But by some miracle, Ramesses' mummy was undisturbed.
14:16The priests, who saw pharaonic mummies as gods, took drastic action to protect Ramesses' remains from desecration.
14:25Along with the corpse of his father, Seti, and many other kings,
14:29Ramesses' mummy was secretly moved to an ancient, long-ignored tomb, less than a mile from the Valley of the Kings.
14:37Here, the body of one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs was left unceremoniously stacked with other royal mummies.
14:44His secret resting place was so near, yet so far, from the place which had been so lavishly crafted to hold his corpse.
14:52His own great tomb now sat abandoned and unprotected.
14:58The final indignity was that in the centuries after the pharaoh's mummy was carried out of here,
15:03the rare desert thunderstorms came in and filled this tomb with water.
15:08The magnificent paintings and carvings which once covered every surface here were devastated.
15:14Plaster fell from walls, rock carvings collapsed,
15:18and flood debris steadily filled this tomb from floor right up to the ceiling.
15:24Those who discovered this place could barely find enough space to enter it.
15:34Finally, over 3,000 years after they were hidden,
15:39the mummies in the secret cache were recovered in 1881 by German museum curator Emil Bruch.
15:46The whereabouts of Ramesses' remains were no longer a secret.
15:53But nothing was found in the hidden cache of mummies or in Ramesses' own tomb
15:58to shed light on the mystery of the great king's missing sons.
16:03How could these princes, whose existence had been so thoroughly documented, vanish from history?
16:09It would take over 100 years to find an answer.
16:13That answer suggests that Ramesses' sons may have been within walking distance of their father's tomb all along.
16:22Coming out of Ramesses' tomb into the Valley of the Kings, you can see that he had company.
16:27There are 61 other tombs here.
16:30The short walk up there is the legendary tomb of Tutankhamun.
16:34Seti I, Ramesses' father, is buried there.
16:37Manapta, his son, just around the corner.
16:40But where are the tombs of the many other sons of Ramesses?
16:46Just 30 yards away over there is tomb Kings Valley No. 5.
16:51And KV 5 may well hold the answer to that question.
16:56In 1825, the Egyptologist James Burton entered the tomb.
17:02He pronounced it unimportant.
17:04Later, this whole area was buried under tons of rubble.
17:08Tourist buses passed within feet.
17:14In 1987, American Egyptologist Kent Weekes uncovered this entrance to the tomb.
17:21When at last he entered, he made what many call the most important discovery in Egypt since Tutankhamun.
17:30For the first time in over 3,000 years, the world edged closer to at last solving the great mystery of Ramesses' lost sons.
17:40For 450 years, Egypt's pharaohs were buried in a desolate desert canyon as a safeguard against tomb robbers.
17:48It has come to be known as the Valley of the Kings.
17:54Here, 62 tombs were dug from the limestone.
18:00These tombs are believed to have been built by the Egyptians.
18:0462 tombs were dug from the limestone.
18:09These subterranean palaces were embellished with sumptuously beautiful carvings and paintings.
18:20But by the 3rd century BC, the Valley of the Kings lay silent and forgotten.
18:26In the early 18th century, an English clergyman named Richard Pocock visited the valley and drew its first map.
18:33Other European Egyptologists followed, but their mapping of the tombs remained imprecise and inaccurately plotted.
18:42In the 1970s, Dr. Kent Weekes, a leading American Egyptologist from Washington State,
18:48decided to begin the first mapping of the Valley of the Kings using survey techniques which relied on extremely accurate measurements.
18:57It would take over a decade of hard work just to accumulate all of the data.
19:03But sadly, by the late 1980s, there was little money left to print up the detailed map Weekes wanted.
19:09So he decided to use the knowledge he'd accumulated and tackle another ambitious task.
19:16So I thought what we would do is to take the little money that we had at that point
19:21and do something that I had considered doing a few years earlier.
19:24And that was to go back into the historical records,
19:27try to identify tombs that had been seen in the 19th century but for one reason or another had gone missing,
19:33and try to relocate those tombs and put them on the map of the Valley of the Kings as well.
19:39After an extensive search of historical records, one tomb stood out.
19:44It had been seen during the 19th century and given the designation KV5, standing for King's Valley No. 5.
19:53In 1825, the Englishman James Burton cut a 25-metre crawlspace into KV5.
20:00He drew a sketch plan which revealed the presence of 11 chambers.
20:04But his notes did not inspire enthusiasm or excitement from his peers.
20:11Even Howard Carter, the discoverer of Tutankhamun's tomb,
20:15used the KV5 hillside only as a dumping ground for debris from his excavations.
20:22They buried the tomb under three metres of filth.
20:25As if that weren't enough, another series of flash floods from torrential rains that hit the Valley of the Kings occasionally
20:32dumped more debris over the tomb entrance and hid it.
20:36By 1920, possibly even earlier than that, KV5 was a dim and distant memory.
20:42There was nothing to be seen.
20:46But Kent Weekes was intrigued by the drawings of the tomb that Burton had made.
20:52In his plan, it looked like no other tomb that I had ever seen before.
20:56Most of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings are long corridors cut deeply into the bedrock.
21:02This tomb, on the other hand, had, in Burton's drawing, about six chambers
21:07that went off in all directions from the entrance like tentacles of an octopus.
21:11And I thought, gosh, what a strange-looking tomb. Why don't we see if we can't locate this?
21:16Something else grabbed Weekes' interest.
21:19By 1989, some researchers were suggesting that the lost KV5 might also be the missing tomb of Ramesses' children.
21:30From Burton's notes, Kent Weekes had an idea of where in the valley to begin looking.
21:35He made a decision. He would try and find what had been lost for so long.
21:41We dug, basically, a narrow trench about three feet, a metre wide.
21:46The first thing we encountered was a cut in the bedrock that very clearly delimitated a man-made,
21:53not a natural, pit or depression in the hillside.
21:56And then we began finding traces of staircases.
22:01After months of hard work, Kent Weekes' staff had cleared the entrance pit to KV5.
22:06Now, at last, the moment had arrived to look inside.
22:11Well, in the summer of 1989, we had cleared the stairway, come down to this doorway leading into the first chamber.
22:18Now, it didn't look like this. It was completely filled, floor to ceiling, with flood debris that had washed in.
22:23What's at a level?
22:24Right to here. Right to here.
22:26Right up to the top.
22:27And it was only because of a small little channel that had been dug by James Burton in 1825 that we could see anything at all inside.
22:34Here are traces of Burton's lamp black on the ceilings where he was peering through.
22:38So you just crawled through Burton's original tiny hole?
22:41That's right. That was the only access into the tomb, and even at that point, we could not see any of the side walls.
22:47Are we talking about inches here, or what sort of size was this?
22:51Well, it was a tight fit for me, let's put it that way. A very tight fit.
22:54So you managed to crawl in, probably little guessing that you were going to be working just in this room. For how long?
23:03It took us five years to clean this chamber out.
23:05It took us five years to clean this chamber out.
23:07But even by the second year, we knew that we were on to something in KV5.
23:11Because at the top of the wall, we found a series of hieroglyphs that indicated that this tomb was the burial place of one of the sons of Ramses II, whose cartouche is here.
23:22And we have his name, Amenher Chebyshev.
23:25Now that young man was the first born son of Ramses II.
23:29So this was the first confirmation you had, that one of Ramses' sons might be buried here?
23:35Yes, exactly. And the first born son at that.
23:38But shortly thereafter, it got even better.
23:40Because on this wall, when we exposed the text at the top, we found another scene with Ramses, a god, and a son who here is not Amenher Chebyshev, but a son whom we call Ramses Jr., to avoid confusion with his father.
23:55Suddenly, we knew that we had a tomb with multiple burials.
23:58There were, at this point, at least two royal sons buried in this tomb.
24:03That was something that had never been seen before.
24:08Kent Weekes was now certain that KV5 promised to be much more than just a minor tomb, even though he still didn't know if it was bigger than the 11 chambers detailed in Burton's original sketch.
24:20But making progress in unlocking KV5's secrets was agonizingly slow.
24:27The Valley of the Kings may get, on average, one or two millimeters of rain a year, if that.
24:33But every once in a while, perhaps once every 50, 60, 70 years, a rainstorm hits this area, and it causes disaster.
24:41By the time those waters, those floodwaters and their debris reach KV5, the entrance to the valley, they can be traveling at 30, 40 miles an hour, carrying boulders the size of stoves or refrigerators.
24:54The 11 floods that hit KV5 filled it chock-a-block full with debris, sand, silt, limestone chips that, over the centuries, dried to an almost cement-like consistency.
25:07Clearing away tons of flood debris which filled the tomb proved to be enormously time-consuming.
25:16The techniques of moving dirt out of a tomb or any archaeological site in Egypt haven't changed much in the last 100 years.
25:22We still take baskets, these are made of old tires, fill them up using trowels or shovels or picks, whatever, and carry them by hand in a bucket brigade out the door of the tomb.
25:36It had taken five years just to empty two small rooms.
25:42Although Kent Weeks had uncovered the names of two of Ramesses' sons, he'd found little else.
25:48Now the much larger chamber three waited to be cleared.
25:53What Weeks would discover in this part of the tomb would justify all the years of patience and hard work.
26:02Kent Weeks crawled into the third chamber, into this tiny gap.
26:07He hoped to find something underneath this huge pile of debris, but he couldn't get to it.
26:14He realised that the weakness of these pillars and the ominous cracks in the limestone ceiling above my head meant that this whole area would have to be stabilised, work that's only just been completed.
26:25Now Burton's map shows a mysterious door against the back wall, and Kent Weeks gradually dug his way towards it until by 1995 he'd managed to find just enough space to crawl through that doorway.
26:41What happened next is one of the great moments of modern archaeology.
26:49Kent Weeks at last prepared to look beyond chamber three. He would be heading into space no one had entered since the pharaohs.
26:59We thought what we would find is another small chamber, like that in the front, chamber one, chamber two.
27:04Instead we shone our flashlight down and we saw nothing. Blackness.
27:09It meant that the chamber went on and on and on. We could not see an end wall.
27:14Later on, when we put electricity in the tomb, it turned into the most incredible sight I'd ever seen in my life.
27:21A hundred feet down the corridor, lined on either side with doorways, we find a statue of the god Osiris.
27:28So you came along here, and you must already have known that this was the most incredible find.
27:33I kept saying to myself, my god, I can't believe it. There's nothing like this anywhere in the Valley of the Kings.
27:38There are chambers here on every side.
27:40Every ten feet or so we find a doorway, some leading into small chambers, others leading into suites of rooms.
27:45Most of them are blocked up, but you can see them quite clearly where they are.
27:47No, we haven't dug these yet.
27:49That's incredible. You must have known at this moment that what you were finding here was probably one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the century.
27:56Nothing like this has ever been found before.
27:58So you got to this point here, and you saw this amazing sight.
28:03A life-size statue of what at first we thought was the god Osiris, but what we now think is a representation of King Ramses as Osiris,
28:12the deified king, welcoming his sons down this corridor and into the next life.
28:18The beautiful statue of Ramesses offered further proof that this was almost certainly a tomb for his royal sons.
28:26And with the amazing discovery of Corridor 7 and its complex of rooms, the significance of what Kent Weeks had revealed began to dawn on the world.
28:44Most of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings contain no more than eight rooms.
28:49Ramesses I, Ramesses the Great's grandfather, had just four.
28:52As did the legendary Tutankhamun.
28:54Weeks had already discovered at least 65 rooms, and more soon appeared.
29:00Nothing like it had ever been found.
29:03KV 5 seemed to move off in all directions at once.
29:10This corridor is very perplexing. It drops more steeply than any other corridor in the tomb.
29:15In fact, some of the side chambers that are cut here actually lie beneath the floor of chambers on an upper level.
29:23Now at the bottom of this steeply sloping corridor, suddenly we descend four steps and we find ourselves in another large pillared hall.
29:33In this case, one with three pillars down the center of the rectangular room.
29:37This is a good example, by the way, of the stratigraphy that we're confronted with in KV 5.
29:41Filling this chamber, like the others, chock-a-block full of flood debris, you can see the different layers.
29:47Deep inside the tomb, hundreds of feet from the entrance, flood debris continued to be a problem.
29:58This is one of the many unexcavated corridors in KV 5.
30:02This one heads south, directly towards Tutankhamun's tomb.
30:06Nobody's quite sure why. There's a blank wall at the end there, maybe another doorway.
30:12The problem is getting to it.
30:19With all its chambers and corridors, this tomb is nearly half the size of a football field.
30:25And all of it is packed with this debris.
30:28Behind it, they may find more.
30:30Pottery remains, canopic jars, maybe even mummified remains.
30:35Some of this stuff is as hard as concrete.
30:39Mechanical excavation is out of the question.
30:42All of it, tons and tons of it, has to be removed by hand.
30:50But the flood debris was only one of the obstacles which still hid the secrets of KV 5.
30:56I think this is one of the most potentially interesting parts of KV 5.
31:00But unfortunately, it's also the most dangerous.
31:03Because it lay under the roadway, which for the last 40 years has had tour buses rolling over it,
31:09the entire ceiling has collapsed.
31:11It would be a very expensive undertaking.
31:14But I'd be willing to bet you that if we were able to do this, we will find evidence here, maybe a sarcophagus,
31:19maybe other funerary equipment, that clearly proves that this, Chamber 5,
31:24was the place where one of the sons of the King was buried.
31:29Because of the flooding, carvings and paintings on the walls of KV 5 had been badly damaged.
31:35But as the chambers began to be emptied, remnants of carving made it clear that KV 5 had once been massive.
31:42Now the carving on this north wall here in Corridor 7 is absolutely spectacular.
31:46It's one of the best examples we have of relief carving in the tomb.
31:49Originally, of course, it was painted, and all we have now are the outlines.
31:52But even so, you can see the elegant workmanship in this figure of a son.
31:56Unfortunately, his name is missing.
31:58Again, being presented by his father, Ramses II.
32:01He's the son of the King.
32:03He's the son of the King.
32:05He's the son of the King.
32:07He's the son of the King.
32:08Unfortunately, his name is missing.
32:10Again, being presented by his father, Ramses II.
32:12Across a pile of offerings to the gods.
32:15In this case, Khnum and the goddess Hathor, elegantly carved in a beautiful face.
32:20But a strange thing happens in this corridor right at this point.
32:23Up to now, we've had beautiful relief carving.
32:26That stops, and instead, from here onward, the walls are roughened.
32:30It's called keying for plaster.
32:32I have no idea what the reason for this is, except one possibility.
32:35Perhaps this corridor originally stopped at this point, went no further,
32:40and then the corridor was lengthened, the tomb was enlarged,
32:43in order to provide additional burial space for additional sons of Ramses II who had pre-deceased him.
32:52As more and more damaged carvings have been revealed in the tomb,
32:56the job of reconstructing their original form has been handled by Kent's wife, Susan.
33:01She painstakingly makes detailed tracings,
33:04which are studied to recreate the missing carvings and the paint which covered them.
33:10Once the missing lines are redrawn,
33:12Susan replicates the original colours based on tiny fragments of paint found on the tomb's walls.
33:20This is the son of Ramses.
33:23He's wearing a very bright blue collar,
33:26and he's wearing a rather elaborate, priestly, sacred garment.
33:32Which is yellow with red stripes.
33:37Every day is exciting, you never know what you might see.
33:41Every time we look at the walls,
33:43even though I may have drawn the wall and stared at it for ten days,
33:47every once in a while the light changes, there's something different I see for the first time.
33:53Finally, after 3500 years,
33:56we can again look upon the glorious paintings which once enhanced this tomb.
34:02But in KV5, success is often matched by frustration.
34:07Again and again the tomb seemed to taunt the weeks,
34:11as if the great Ramses himself were withholding the answer to the mystery of his missing sons.
34:18We know that originally this tomb was magnificently decorated with brilliantly coloured painted relief,
34:24but because of the flooding, a lot of that paint and plaster has washed off.
34:27And nowhere is that more frustrating than in this scene in the second chamber.
34:32We have Ramses II, a figure of his son,
34:35and directly above the son, if we can just make out the hieroglyphs,
34:39King's son of his body, and the name is missing.
34:44We have no idea who it might be.
34:47Given the title, given the figure of the son, we were very excited about this.
34:51It could be maybe son number 6, number 7, number 8 in our list of people buried in this tomb.
34:55We were so close that we just didn't get the cigar.
35:01After 10 years of excavation, KV5, with more than 100 chambers,
35:07had already proven to be the largest and most uniquely designed tomb in the Valley of the Kings,
35:12and probably in all of Egypt.
35:16It had clearly been built by Ramses II,
35:19and little by little, evidence had begun to accumulate that indeed,
35:23he had created this tomb for his many sons.
35:28We have the names of several sons written on the walls of KV5.
35:33We have more than two dozen representations of the king,
35:37presenting various of his sons in the afterlife to the gods.
35:42We have objects, grave goods, canopic jars, found in several chambers in KV5,
35:47and on those we have the names and titles of five different sons of Ramses II.
35:54Kent Weekes would soon find evidence of a much more personal nature.
35:59In 1998, KV5 at last began to give up some of the bodies
36:04that had rested in this special tomb for so very long.
36:08Like any good mystery, what was needed to solve KV5 was a body.
36:14After nine years of searching, Kent Weekes finally found one.
36:22We had so many irons in the fire during the early years of work in KV5
36:26that it wasn't until just a couple of seasons ago
36:29that we cleared the northern half of this room, chamber 2,
36:32and much to our surprise, when we got down to floor level,
36:35we found two parallel, very nice, regular cuts
36:38that defined what obviously was a pit.
36:41Now, I think originally this may have been the burial place
36:45of whoever was buried in this tomb
36:47when it was only a two-chambered tomb in the 18th dynasty.
36:51What we found when we got to the bottom of the pit
36:54was a series of layers of bones,
36:57and beneath that, three, four, five layers of bones.
37:00And beneath that, three adult male human skulls
37:04with the neck vertebrae still attached
37:06and traces of mummified tissue and wrappings over their body.
37:10Beneath that, we found a fully articulated adult male body,
37:15a mummy, about 50 years old,
37:18lying in a position like this, directly on the ground,
37:21and I think, probably, given the position of the arms
37:26and the position of the body, it may well be that that,
37:28and maybe the other three skulls, too,
37:30are, in fact, sons of Ramses II.
37:33Why would so important a mummy be left
37:36in such a crude and unadorned pit?
37:39Kent Weeks believes the answer is very simple.
37:43When tomb robbers entered KV5,
37:46they went down deep into the tomb,
37:48into the burial chambers of his sons,
37:50grabbed the mummies and brought them up here,
37:52near the front door, where the light was good
37:54and they could see what they were doing.
37:55They ripped the bodies apart
37:57in their search for gold jewelry
37:59and pectoral necklaces and so forth,
38:01and then simply dumped the body parts on the ground.
38:03Some of them washed into this pit.
38:08This is one of the three skulls
38:11that came from the pit in chamber two,
38:13and what we're doing now is cleaning this,
38:16getting it ready to study,
38:18not by us, but by anatomists and geneticists.
38:22All of the teeth are rather heavily worn,
38:25including the front, the incisors, the canines,
38:29and all of these features,
38:31together with the sutures,
38:33the joins between the bones and the skull,
38:35suggest that this is probably an adult male.
38:39The next thing, of course, we'll want to do
38:41is to see, try to determine if we can,
38:44whether this is the skull of an individual
38:46who was related to the other bodies in the tomb.
38:49We would love to relate them to Ramses.
38:52Anybody who has seen a photograph
38:53of the mummy of Ramses,
38:55or even, in fact, a representation of him
38:57in Egyptian art,
38:59recognize the fact that he was shown
39:01with a very prominent nose,
39:03and that might be one of the anatomical features
39:05that we could look for
39:07in trying to determine relationships.
39:09Scientific analysis of skulls
39:11is only one of the many tasks
39:13that can't be done in the heat and dust
39:15of the Valley of the Kings.
39:18Some of the most demanding work
39:20in unlocking the secrets of KV5
39:21doesn't happen here in the tomb at all,
39:23but rather in an office back in Cairo.
39:31When we started work on the Theban Mapping Project
39:34back in 1979,
39:36we were operating on a real shoestring.
39:38Today, we have a full-time staff
39:40on the project of eight people now,
39:42and a part-time staff of volunteers
39:44and part-time employees
39:46who are scattered all over the world.
39:48It's a very diverse project,
39:49and one of the fun things
39:51about being an archaeologist these days
39:53is in fact trying to pull
39:55all of these disparate specialties together.
39:59Can you pull that up in section?
40:02What I'd like to do somewhere
40:04is take a look at this detailing here.
40:06The work our graphic designers
40:08and architects are doing
40:10is extremely useful.
40:12It gives you a new means
40:14of looking at the material
40:16and of doing comparative studies
40:17of that material.
40:19We want to prepare a CD-ROM
40:21of the Theban Necropolis,
40:23taking advantage of the photographs
40:25that our staff have been collecting,
40:27the architectural drawings
40:29that we have been preparing,
40:31and of course historical materials as well.
40:33We'll be able, for example,
40:35to stop at a site like Luxor Temple
40:37on the East Bank,
40:39and we'll be able to generate
40:41a series of three-dimensional drawings
40:43that show the various stages
40:45in the construction of this temple.
40:47This is something that would
40:49not only be useful to scholars,
40:51but it could be fun and exciting
40:53for grade school kids,
40:55for example, eight, nine-year-olds
40:57who are doing Egyptology in school
40:59for the first time.
41:01In spite of all his efforts,
41:03Kent Weeks is the first to admit
41:05that there is much yet to be done in KV5.
41:08The work is exacting and slow,
41:10and the task has continued to grow.
41:13So far, 150 rooms have been found,
41:15and only 7% of those have been cleared.
41:20But one thing has already been established.
41:22In 3,000 years of tomb construction
41:24in ancient Egypt,
41:26there is nothing that remotely resembles KV5
41:29in its incredible size or design.
41:34Why did Ramesses II apparently create
41:37so unusual a mausoleum for his many sons?
41:40Kent Weeks thinks he has one answer.
41:42We know that during his reign,
41:44he had himself declared to be divine.
41:47He had to assign to his children,
41:50to at least the heir apparent,
41:52many of the secular duties
41:54that he would ordinarily have performed.
41:56Now, once one of his sons,
41:58the heir apparent,
42:00was made a secular pharaoh,
42:02he was no longer simply a son
42:04who might one day inherit the throne.
42:06He was a junior king.
42:08You have to bury a junior king
42:10in a rather more elaborate way
42:12than many of his sons.
42:14Numerous other of his sons,
42:16each of whom in turn
42:18had moved into this strange junior king position,
42:21died before him,
42:23and they too came to be interred
42:25in this very strange tomb.
42:29There are still more questions than answers
42:31to be found in KV5,
42:33but the tomb has proven
42:35that our knowledge of ancient Egypt
42:37is far from complete.
42:39For Kent Weeks,
42:41the search, as always, will go on.
42:43He has wanted to be an Egyptologist
42:45since he was a boy in Washington State.
42:47Now he hopes to give something back
42:49to the work he so loves.
42:52In addition to our work in KV5
42:54over the next several years,
42:56one of the things I most want to do
42:58is help develop a master plan
43:00for the protection of the Valley of the Kings,
43:02and indeed for all of Thebes.
43:04Rising groundwater, pollution,
43:06increasing population in the adjacent villages,
43:08increasing tourism
43:10are taking their toll on all of the sites here,
43:12tombs and temples both.
43:14I can't think of anything
43:16that would make me sadder
43:18than to realize that future generations
43:20would be denied the opportunity
43:22to visit something as magical
43:24as the Valley of the Kings.
43:26It would be a real shame
43:28if little eight-year-old kids
43:30in Everett, Washington 100 years from now
43:32couldn't dream of this place like I did.
43:35Kent Weeks has been working on KV5
43:36for over 10 years.
43:38Sometimes there was no assurance
43:40that his work would reveal
43:42any more than a few empty rooms,
43:44and always the distraction
43:46of having to find funds
43:48to support all of this.
43:50But his patience and hard work
43:52have yielded what is becoming
43:54one of the most exciting finds
43:56in Egyptology.
43:58Over the next few years,
44:00KV5 will reveal more of its secrets.
44:02Why was such an immense tomb built?
44:04What's become of its contents?
44:06Just maybe,
44:08Kent Weeks will discover
44:10if other Sons of the Great Ramses
44:12still rest somewhere
44:14within these walls.
44:36electronic music plays
45:06electronic music fades out