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Lost Treasures of Ancient Civilizations - Season 1 Episode 1 -
The Valley of Kings
The Valley of Kings
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FunTranscript
00:00Deep in the heart of Egypt, beyond colossal, magnificent temples, lies a secret mountainous
00:16valley, hiding some of the most spectacular archaeological finds the world has ever seen.
00:23It may look like a barren desert wilderness, but three and a half thousand years ago, this
00:32was the royal cemetery of the pharaohs, the mighty rulers of ancient Egypt.
00:39It's known as the Valley of the Kings, pharaoh after pharaoh was buried here in their own
00:47grand underground tombs with hordes of priceless golden treasures, each hoping to rest in peace
00:58for eternity.
01:00But 200 years ago, the valley became a battlefield and a gold rush between adventurers, robbers
01:07and nations who raced to find the lost tombs and claim that treasure.
01:14Now I'm telling the incredible cutthroat story of the hunt for the valley's secret riches.
01:21This is one of the most gorgeous places in all of Egypt.
01:26Every wall covered in gold.
01:29Unraveling a tale with more twists and turns than a Hollywood blockbuster.
01:36With spine chilling adventures.
01:38He was scared, he was so scared.
01:42Culminating in the greatest discovery of all time, this is the Valley of the Kings.
02:03One day Cairo, downtown, the famous Egyptian museum.
02:09And pride of place is given to the most outstanding archaeological prize in all of history.
02:19The golden death mask of Tutankhamun.
02:27So here it is.
02:28It is the most famous piece of art ever made.
02:31It is the most famous and beautiful archaeological treasure ever recovered.
02:39When I'm this close, I realize it's not only a thing of extraordinary beauty, but it is such
02:43a powerful representation of the young man himself.
02:46You feel like you're in his presence.
02:51It's breathtaking.
02:55Tutankhamun was buried with 5,000 priceless treasures.
03:00A magnificent coffin, a golden throne and caskets.
03:05For over 3,000 years, all were hidden deep beneath the ground.
03:12Until 1922, when they were discovered buried in a hidden tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
03:20This was the evidence of the astonishing wealth of the Egyptian pharaohs and of the fact that
03:24there was gold buried beneath those desert sands.
03:29But this wasn't the start of some gold rush to uncover the lost treasures of Egypt.
03:34This was the culmination of a frenzied century of searching in the Valley of the Kings.
03:40Like a tale out of Indiana Jones.
03:43300 miles from Cairo, the Valley of the Kings lies across the river Nile from the ancient
03:58Egyptian capital Thebes, now modern day Luxor.
04:03Thebes was the land of the living.
04:06The valley, the land of the dead.
04:13Heading to it, even today, is an epic journey, crossing what was the Theban Mountains, finally
04:19reaching one of the most awe-inspiring and challenging landscapes imaginable.
04:26It's the strangest feeling.
04:29It's like you're heading into a barren moonscape, just driving straight into the heart of a desert
04:36mountain range.
04:37You can never guess what was up ahead.
04:41There's nowhere on earth like this place.
04:51I was trying to imagine what it was like for those first archaeologists that came here.
04:56And all they had to go on was whispers.
04:58No hint of what was underground.
05:02It must have been incredibly exciting.
05:05For the 3,000 years after the pharaohs were buried, the rubble piled up high in the valley.
05:13Most of the valley's tombs completely disappeared from view.
05:18The pharaohs and their treasures lost and buried deep.
05:23Apart from whispered legends of hidden gold, this rocky gorge appeared largely empty and forgotten.
05:31Then, just over 200 years ago, all that changed.
05:35One of history's most famous empire builders, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt.
05:48Captivated by stories of the mighty pharaohs, his forces entered the valley.
05:56Napoleon's team didn't find gold.
05:58But they did record 12 visible tombs in the valley.
06:03And their visit had a far greater impact.
06:07It quite literally put the forgotten valley on the map and began a new era.
06:13From now on, the valley would begin attracting fanatical treasure hunters.
06:19The pharaohs of ancient Egypt had hoped to lie here in peace for eternity.
06:26But now their secret was out.
06:31In 1817, a rather unusual and iron-willed treasure hunter sailed down the Nile towards the valley.
06:42He was Italian by birth, but he would become Britain's secret weapon in the battle for the
06:47Valley of the Kings.
06:50His name, Giovanni Belzoni.
06:53So, this is the great Belzoni.
07:00Not exactly the dusty, fusty archaeology scholar that you might expect, but a huge man, 6'7' tall,
07:09as you can see in this picture, powerfully built, barrel-chested, very charismatic.
07:14You do what this man told you.
07:17He trained as an engineer, then done a stint as a circus strongman.
07:22After taking advice from local Egyptians, Giovanni Belzoni began to search the valley.
07:31He was hoping that 3,000 years after the pharaohs were buried with their treasures, he'd discover
07:37an intact tomb.
07:39And incredibly, he soon found not one, but two previously undiscovered tombs.
07:48Then on the 9th of October, 1817, he discovered two more on the same day, and the next day,
07:55another, five in total.
07:59None contained treasure.
08:03But they were definitive proof that there were tombs still hidden within the valley, and
08:08one of them might just contain lost riches.
08:17In the middle of October, 1817, the British team were hunting harder than ever, Belzoni
08:24thumping the ground with a stick, hoping for the telltale, hollow sound of a void beneath
08:32the rocks.
08:34By this time, Belzoni had a few potential targets in his sights.
08:38He just had to decide which one to really go for.
08:40He had a good think about it and worked out that one of them felt a bit more substantial
08:45than the rest.
08:49Belzoni's team dug and dug with barely a break.
08:57This wasn't easy work.
08:58By lunchtime, they'd dug nearly 20-foot that gaping hole down there behind me now.
09:04It was exhausting.
09:05They must have been begging for Belzoni to give up, but he pushed on.
09:09And suddenly, something emerged.
09:12They weren't sure what it was at first.
09:15They cleared more rubble.
09:17The energy level's rising this time, until at last, they exposed a door.
09:27It's a very different experience entering this tomb today.
09:33It's solid underfoot, I can stand upright, and it's well lit.
09:37Belzoni came in here in 1817, clutching a candle, crawling across mounds of spoil and
09:44broken rock, close to the ceiling in parts, hot bats whizzing past him.
09:50As he got deeper and deeper, he could see it was wondrous.
10:00He was the first person possibly in here in three and a half thousand years.
10:05How exciting must that have been?
10:11And he was seeing glimpses, the tops of some of the gods and goddesses and pharaohs, images
10:17just emerging from the wreckage, only getting a tantalising glimpse of the full majesty of
10:23the decoration.
10:30I'm six foot six, and I can walk through here today, but the six foot seven Giovanni Belzoni
10:37faced obstacle after obstacle.
10:40Progress would have been painfully slow.
10:42Every inch he crawled through, a battle.
10:46But then his descent became even more dangerous.
10:49The steep shaft suddenly gave way to a sheer vertical drop.
10:54Belzoni talks about it in his account.
11:00He says there was a pit 30 feet deep.
11:03The upper part adorned with figures from the wall of the passage to the ceiling.
11:11By means of a long beam, we succeeded in sending a man up into the aperture, which is this
11:16bit here, and they built a kind of bridge across it.
11:23With the makeshift bridge in place, he was able to crawl precariously across the shaft
11:29to the chamber beyond.
11:32And what he found there was extraordinary.
11:38As he crept deeper, the tomb became less and less buried with rubble.
11:43Now at every turn, he encountered another beautifully decorated passageway and another spectacular chamber.
11:52He must have been completely overwhelmed.
12:03But there was more to come.
12:07As he continued through the tomb, he saw another shaft that descended even deeper into the ground.
12:18To help me appreciate the wonders that lay ahead, I'm joined by the world-renowned Egyptologist, Salima
12:25Ipcram.
12:26I want you to imagine that you are Belzoni and you've been crawling down this tomb and
12:34it's filled with dust and bats and then you've been swinging over places where there are big
12:39chasms and you've gone about 450 feet deep into this mountain.
12:43And now you have come here and you think, is it almost over?
12:47So, you open your eyes now.
12:51That is astonishing, isn't it?
12:54Every wall covered in gold, paintings on every inch.
12:59It's extraordinarily beautiful.
13:01This is one of the most gorgeous places in all of Egypt.
13:04I think it's probably the most beautiful place in the world.
13:06All of this glittering and Belzoni holding his flaming torch and seeing these walls glimmering
13:13with images of the king with the different gods.
13:19He'd at last reached the climax of the tomb.
13:24The lost burial chamber of Pharaoh Seti the first.
13:29And it was magnificent.
13:31It's incredible, it's like three stories high virtually, it's wild.
13:39It's enormous and you've got this beautifully arched roof which is sort of the Ark of Heaven.
13:47And here you've got the Egyptian constellations beautifully painted so that the king could be
13:51reborn with the sun.
13:53And then on either side you've got these goddesses guarding him and funerary texts.
13:58And right in the middle is where you would have found the king.
14:03In his sarcophagus.
14:04That's right.
14:05And in fact Belzoni was very lucky because he came here and there was a beautiful Egyptian
14:10alabaster sarcophagus.
14:11The giant decorated box in which they placed the body of the king.
14:14Yep, that would have been right there.
14:17And was the king in there?
14:20No, unfortunately he had moved on.
14:22But just finding the tomb itself was still one of the most astonishing discoveries of
14:27virtue of all time.
14:28Well this was in fact and is the deepest and most decorated and most beautiful tomb.
14:34So I think in terms of Egyptology this was pretty spectacular.
14:41In the journal he kept of his adventures in Egypt Belzoni wrote to the day on which he found
14:45this tomb, a fortunate day.
14:47One of the best days perhaps in my life and I can well believe it.
14:52And this triumph would be enough for me but for him he had even greater ambition.
14:56He wanted to share news of this discovery with Britain and the rest of the world.
15:12In 1820 Belzoni arrived back here in the UK and he put together a smash hit exhibition.
15:19It was in a building right here it's gone now so the streets completely changed.
15:24But we do have an image of what it was like and look how enticing that is.
15:28An exotic facade advertising the Egyptian treasures that lay inside.
15:34And in that building Belzoni, ever the showman, built a scale model of Seti's tomb.
15:422,000 people visited on the first day alone.
15:46He had a big success on his hands.
15:50Egypt was destination number one for the world's archaeological treasure seekers prepared
15:56to take on the brutal challenge of the valley with the passion to hunt deeper.
16:04In the 1890s, around 70 years after Belzoni's great discovery of Seti's tomb, another archaeologist
16:10arrived determined to discover lost royal tombs.
16:15His name was Victor Loray.
16:21The Egyptian government had made Loray the chief superintendent of antiquities.
16:26This job gave him total control over who could dig in the valley.
16:32The special access soon paid off.
16:42Within months of arriving, Loray found three tombs, the first to be excavated in 70 years.
16:50They were all badly robbed.
16:52Then, a month later, he found another one.
17:05Even today, approaching this tomb, which is right at the bottom of this cliff, there's
17:09a sense of foreboding, this real atmosphere here.
17:14Buried deep into this mountainside was something that would make his blood run cold.
17:24He had no idea what lay ahead of him when he stepped down into the dark mouth of the tomb.
17:32much more hidden entrance, I'd say, quite high up in the hillside as well.
17:40They didn't want everyone to see where it was.
17:42I see.
17:43As Loray descended from the shaft into a cavernous chamber, he wondered what on earth he'd uncovered.
17:56The walls were bare.
17:58Could this really be the resting place of a mighty pharaoh?
18:01It's not really finished, this one, is it?
18:07It's not very well decorated, as you can see.
18:09There's still all the dots from where they were taking out blocks.
18:13Loray pushed on, and then something remarkable happened.
18:20He stepped into another chamber, and everything changed.
18:44So suddenly we're back in the, what, painted pharaohs and goddesses?
18:48Yep.
18:49It's fantastic, because you have all of that plainness, and then suddenly, boom.
18:54And finally, at the end of this magnificently carved room, the prize Loray craved most.
19:00A sarcophagus.
19:04And so that is the original sarcophagus?
19:06Yep, this is it.
19:07Still lying here at the heart of the tomb?
19:09Intact here with its lid.
19:11Wow.
19:12It was really quite an extraordinary thing to find, because also…
19:16The body was in there?
19:17Yep, the body was in there.
19:18Brilliant.
19:21The grand coffin made Loray certain the tomb belonged to a king.
19:26He could even read the pharaoh's name, Amenhotep II.
19:30But something wasn't right.
19:34Amenhotep was not the only one buried here.
19:38In a corridor leading off to the side, Loray glimpsed a small wooden boat.
19:45And on it, a sight that shocked him to his core.
19:50The way he describes it is terrifying.
19:52The legs and arms were bound, a hole exposed in the sternum, an opening in the skull.
19:59Was this the victim of human sacrifice?
20:02Was a thief murdered by his accomplices in a bloody division of loot?
20:06You know, you're here crawling through with this one lamp lighting your way or a torch, and then having that face leap out at you.
20:14As he scoured further side chambers, he found more bodies.
20:21And as he began to examine them, he noticed something incredible.
20:26They all appeared to be royal.
20:29It was a fantastic find, and at first, Loray didn't realise how extremely important it was.
20:38But soon he figured it out because there were labels on the top and saying which king it was.
20:44So he suddenly thought, oh my God, here we have half of the royalty of Egypt.
20:49Loray had unearthed one of the Valley of the King's most significant finds so far.
20:57A secret hiding place known as a royal cache, where the mummified remains of the pharaohs and their families had been hidden far from their own tombs to keep them safe.
21:08Loray's discoveries may have been gruesome, but they showed there were still plenty of treasures to be found in the Valley of the Kings.
21:13News spread all over the world like wildfire. The problem was, it wouldn't just be archaeologists that would be lured here.
21:281901. Years after Loray had discovered it, the tomb was robbed.
21:35Its precious contents were taken, including the royal mummy.
21:40Some of the greatest finds in the Valley had been lost.
21:53Were the guards overpowered, or were they simply paid to look the other way?
21:58One thing was for certain. An investigation would have to be launched, and the treasure mummies recovered.
22:03Enter Howard Carter, an English Egyptologist who had become the most successful tomb hunter of them all.
22:13At the time, Carter was working as the local archaeological inspector.
22:20He'd always dreamt of digging inside the valley, and finding a lost royal tomb.
22:26But right now, his main mission was finding out what had happened to the royal mummies, and try and recover them.
22:34Carter had the advantage of knowing the local area, and two suspects were on his radar.
22:41The brothers, Mohammed and Ahmed Abdel Rasul.
22:44Years before, another tomb had been robbed. Shortly after, precious ancient treasures and papyri began turning up on a site.
22:50on sale here in the Luxor market.
23:03Around that time, people started noticing that the Abdul Rasul brothers were suddenly, inexplicably, extremely wealthy.
23:24In the valley, Carter had investigated the crime scene.
23:31The robbers had been careless, leaving their footprints in the sand.
23:37Carter took photos for evidence, and paid a professional tracker to hunt them down.
23:43They followed the trail, and surprise, surprise, it led straight to the house of the Abdul Rasul brothers.
23:50They broke in, and there were the mummies and the precious treasures.
23:57Carter recovered them, and in doing so, he became quite the hero.
24:08After recovering the mummies and treasures from Amenhotep's tomb,
24:12Carter could now focus on digging in the valley himself.
24:15But then, everything went wrong.
24:24Fifteen miles from Cairo, some tourists forced their way into another tomb, near the Saqqara pyramids.
24:31Carter wanted them punished.
24:36Carter wanted to throw the book at them. Rules were rules.
24:39But these tourists seemed to have friends in high places, and Carter was encouraged to let them off.
24:45He was furious, and he handed in his resignation.
24:49Without his job, Carter had no reliable income.
24:53But worse, he no longer had the permission to dig in the Valley of the Kings.
24:58But someone was about to come to Carter's rescue.
25:01Lord George Herbert Carnarvon.
25:14Lord Carnarvon sailed to Luxor, Egypt, on a mission to hunt for lost tombs and treasure.
25:20He set himself up in luxury on the banks of the River Nile.
25:26Carnarvon had money, but he now needed to find a local expert.
25:31And, after asking around, one name cropped up.
25:37Howard Carter.
25:42It didn't take much conversation for them both to realize this could be a match made in heaven.
25:49Carnarvon had power and wealth.
25:52Carter had knowledge and expertise, and they both burned with an unstoppable passion.
25:58What happened here that day was the start of the most famous archaeological partnership in history.
26:08Immediately after the meeting, Carnarvon and Carter began to work.
26:13But they had a problem.
26:15They couldn't actually dig in the valley itself, and were forced to explore the hills around it.
26:22The Egyptian Archaeological Service only issued one license to dig in the Valley of the Kings at any one time.
26:29And for the moment, the wealthy American, Theodore Davis, clutched that coveted license in his hands.
26:37And he wasn't going to let go of it any time soon.
26:40Theodore Davis was a rich, retired lawyer.
26:44Just like Carter and Carnarvon, he was obsessed with the promise of buried tombs and golden treasures.
26:49By 1913, Davis had excavated nearly 30 tombs.
26:57Now, a total of 61 tombs had been identified in the valley, more even than the ancient texts had promised.
27:05But despite his years of trying, an intact, treasure-filled tomb remained elusive.
27:11And bit by bit, Davis was losing heart.
27:14Carter and Carnarvon had been digging around the valley for five years, circling like vultures, waiting for their chance to swoop.
27:25Then came the news they'd been waiting for.
27:27Davis had grown old, and he'd lost his patience with the Valley of the Kings.
27:30He was giving up.
27:32Carter and Carnarvon immediately snapped up the permit to dig in the valley.
27:38Carter felt certain that there was another pharaoh buried in here.
27:43What's more, he believed that pharaoh's tomb was intact and still filled with its royal treasures.
27:50Carter even thought he knew the name of the pharaoh whose tomb he was looking for.
27:55A little-known ruler called Tutankhamun.
28:00Years earlier, Theodore Davis had discovered a pit full of mummification items.
28:05And on one of them, the name of a pharaoh, Tutankhamun.
28:10But no tomb had ever been discovered.
28:16Carter and Carnarvon began the hunt.
28:18For the next seven years, every year they investigated a new area.
28:28Their hunt, increasingly desperate.
28:32When his predecessor, Davis, had been digging here in the valley, he'd had the remarkable hit rate of averaging one new tomb every year.
28:39Carter was summoned back to England, to Carnarvon's home, Highclere Castle.
28:51Enough was enough.
28:53Carnarvon had decided to call it a day.
28:55Desperate, Carter pleaded for one more chance.
29:02He even offered to pay for the work himself.
29:04It wasn't a very realistic offer, but somehow it did the trick.
29:10Carnarvon was so impressed by his passion that he made a deal.
29:15He'd fund one more dig.
29:16It would be Carter and Carnarvon's final throw of the dice.
29:27In November 1922, Carter was back in Luxor.
29:32He prepared to start digging once again for Tutankhamun's tomb and its lost treasure.
29:41Then he had a brainwave.
29:42In all the time he'd been digging, he'd ignored one spot.
29:49And thinking about it, it was an obvious target.
29:53The pit that Davis had found containing the embalming objects with Tutankhamun's name on it was somewhere round here.
30:00And no one had thought about excavating over here because it was right next to the mouth of a tomb belonging to Ramesses.
30:06And the ancient Egyptian builders of that tomb had covered this area with their spoil.
30:12And no one had thought it was worthwhile checking underneath that.
30:15Until now.
30:23Carter and his team started digging once again.
30:26It was slow, back-breaking work.
30:31And then suddenly, on day three of the excavation, there was a breakthrough.
30:37A twelve-year-old boy, Hussein Rasul, was employed on site as a water carrier.
30:41On November the 4th, Hussein put one of his big flasks of water down on the ground and accidentally knocked it over.
30:53Now, rather than pooling on the rock a bit like this, it seeped into the ground, suggesting there was a void below.
31:01He immediately set his team to work.
31:05After two long days of clearing rubble, spirits had been flagging.
31:09But this discovery had been the injection of energy everyone needed.
31:14Then, in a matter of mere hours, they discovered something.
31:19I've got a copy of Carter's personal diary for that fateful day of the 4th November 1922.
31:27No regular, neat little notes here.
31:29Instead, just one sentence dashed off any old how across the page.
31:34First steps of tomb found.
31:36You can feel his excitement here.
31:37He doesn't have time to write things down.
31:39He wants to get on with the job of finding the rest of Tutankhamen's tomb.
31:44Over the next few hours, more rubble was removed.
31:47It was clear that the steps continued down.
31:50And then, suddenly, something appeared.
31:54It looked like the blocked door of a tomb.
31:57The door was still sealed.
31:59Lord Carnarvon hurried across from England.
32:03On November 24th, Carnarvon and Carter made their way to the unopened tomb.
32:09But almost instantly, as they came down the top steps to the blocked door,
32:13the sense of excitement evaporated.
32:17Something wasn't right.
32:20Looking closely at the door, which was right here,
32:24it was clear that someone had been through it.
32:26It had been tampered with.
32:28But it had then been closed and resealed.
32:31It wasn't the news he'd wanted.
32:36But Carter pressed on.
32:38Eventually, the stone blocking the doorway was cleared.
32:41Carter and Carnarvon began to edge their way down the entrance shaft.
32:45Both were prepared for the worst.
32:48But the tomb had been robbed and then resealed.
32:51The next two days must have been torturous for them.
32:54As they moved slowly down this passage, it was pitch black and full of obstacles,
33:01dust and debris that had gathered over the millennia.
33:04But much more worryingly, there were signs of broken pots and jars.
33:09Carter wrote in his diary, these were disturbing elements as they pointed towards plundering.
33:14Over the next two days, Carter and Carnarvon held their nerve,
33:31continuing their inch-by-inch advance along this corridor, clearing away the debris.
33:35At 4pm, after nine metres of digging, they found another door.
33:41It was right here.
33:43Mysteriously, again, this one showed that someone had been in,
33:47but it had been closed up, it had been resealed and even re-plastered.
33:56The team continued digging.
34:00Carter sent for more candles to work in the darkness.
34:03And carefully, they began to make a hole just big enough to see what was beyond.
34:10With Carnarvon just behind him, Carter peered into the darkness.
34:15It was some time before one could see, the hot air causing the candle to flicker.
34:21But as one's eyes became accustomed to the light,
34:25the interior of the chamber gradually loomed before one.
34:28Carter was looking through the small hole that he'd made here.
34:34He wrote that Carnarvon said to me,
34:38Can you see anything?
34:40I replied to him, Yes.
34:41It is wonderful.
34:42Years later, he put it a bit more poetically.
34:52He wrote, As my eyes grew accustomed to the light,
34:55details the room within emerged slowly from the mist.
34:58Strange animals, statues and gold.
35:01Everywhere.
35:02The glint of gold.
35:03Everywhere.
35:04The glint of gold.
35:09When Carter and Carnarvon eventually broke through into the chamber,
35:13both were overwhelmed.
35:16Egyptologist, Alia Ismail, has joined me to describe the amazing discoveries.
35:20So these are the things he saw, stacked up. What kind of things are these?
35:25So this would be like beds over here, these, and some food mummies,
35:30because they thought they needed this food in the afterlife.
35:33You can see even the chariots.
35:35Okay, so this is the room we're in right now. Isn't that amazing?
35:37Yes.
35:39But 100 years ago, as Carter looked more closely,
35:43he suddenly became gripped with a sense of foreboding.
35:47Something seemed wrong. The place was a mess.
35:51More like a ransacked storeroom than an undisturbed tomb.
35:55But then as Carter looked further, something caught his eye.
36:00Two guardian statues.
36:03He saw those statues flanking the either side of the wall.
36:07He thought, no, I mean, these statues and their placement,
36:10there might be something beyond that wall.
36:16Although the two statues were against a wall,
36:19they looked carefully placed, as if flanking the entrance to a burial chamber.
36:26Carter and Carnarvon felt confident enough to make their discovery public.
36:31They headed across the Nile into Luxor.
36:34In late November 1922, Carnarvon and Carter summoned the world's press here
36:39to the Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor to announce what they had discovered.
36:43The whole world was instantly captivated.
36:47But did Tutankhamun and his treasures still lie buried in the tomb?
36:53He believed that through here he would find the innermost sanctum,
36:58the burial chamber of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
37:01He believed that there had to come.
37:02On February 17th, 1923,
37:04Carter and his team carefully took down the wall piece by piece.
37:09What lay behind it was incredible.
37:12Not a room, but a solid wall of gold.
37:16This was surely the burial chamber.
37:18the burial chamber to prepare for the next excavation phase the dig closed down for 10 days
37:28while carter stayed in luxor lord carnarvon decided to sail down the nile for a holiday
37:34it should have been a triumphal trip after seven years of digging in the valley
37:41while he was away carnarvon was bitten by a mosquito he should have been fine but he managed
37:46to slice the top of the scab off while he was shaving here at the hotel the wound went septic carnarvon
37:53died without carnarvon's money and support the world's most exciting archaeological discovery
38:06was now in jeopardy
38:11the money and the permission were both in carnarvon's name
38:15the tomb was only half excavated and now the whole project was in jeopardy
38:23carter had little choice despite the fact she was still mourning the loss of her husband
38:30carter approached lady carnarvon if she would agree to continue the financing he could continue to
38:37excavate lady carnarvon agreed to take up the license in her name
38:49six months after carnarvon's death work began again
38:57until carter had explored that burial chamber discovered whether tutankarmen still lay there
39:02undisturbed his quest was incomplete he began investigating the golden wall
39:11what he discovered was incredible it was part of a huge box filling a room from floor to ceiling
39:19it took an army of workmen to pack and remove the gold from the tomb
39:26and finally the burial chamber of tutankarmen lay before howard carter
39:34now this is much more familiar these beautiful paintings of humans and gods
39:41it's amazing it's amazing you can see a lot of images of tutankarmen
39:46every inch of the walls covered with mysterious fabulous pictures and in the center of the room
39:54the sarcophagus itself this is what he'd been hoping praying to see for years it was a magnificent
40:01sight so you can see here the sarcophagus is flanked by four protection goddesses and you can see their wings
40:08on either side protecting him and you can see his name of course and his title so that's his signature
40:14there if you like absolutely that's his royal name that's his birth name you can see both of them
40:22with the king's name engraved across the sarcophagus carter finally had the confirmation he needed
40:28that it belonged to tutankarmen himself everybody else had been trying no one had ever found an intact
40:35royal tomb in the valley of the kings absolutely and people thought carter was a madman to go and
40:40dig there and look at him what he's found but there was just one final task before carter could celebrate
40:48fully the most important one of all lifting the lid on the sarcophagus
41:05carter was now standing next to the sarcophagus surrounded by a group of officials and archaeologists
41:15as this one and a quarter ton lid was winched off there were gasps of astonishment inside there was a golden
41:24coffin bearing the image of tutankarmen himself
41:35the first intact royal burial had surfaced from the valley of the kings after 200 years of hunting
41:43and within the spectacular beautiful coffin
41:47lay the greatest treasure the world had ever seen the golden death mask of boy king tutankarmen
41:57three thousand years after his tomb was sealed up for eternity his treasures still take your breath away
42:05the battle to discover the secrets of the valley of the kings is as fascinating and full of intrigue as the
42:16story of the ancient tombs themselves from belzoni's inspired discovery of seti's magnificent tomb
42:24to the disturbing revelations of loray's tomb of horrors
42:32and ultimately the passion determination and glory of howard carter's hunt 100 years ago
42:40today few people would claim with any certainty that this valley has given up all its secrets how could
42:47they with hundreds of years of extraordinary discoveries tombs and precious objects i think
42:54this rocky canyon in the desert will go on dazzling with its treasures
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