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00:00Gateways between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
00:10The Egyptian pyramids and necropolises have withstood the test of time.
00:15For 3,000 years, these tombs have sheltered the exceptionally well-preserved bodies of the dead we know as mummies.
00:30Long after the end of the Egyptian civilization, mummies would go on to captivate mankind.
00:39Uprooted from their homeland, they were given a second life.
00:44Thanks to science and new technologies, they are now unveiling their most incredible secrets.
00:51Our Niha here was buried about 3,000 years ago, hoping the living would continue to speak his name.
00:57He sure would be ecstatic tonight.
01:02It's like a crime scene investigation.
01:04We can now imagine the crime scene that took place 3,000 years ago.
01:10Nobody knew about it.
01:14Today, more than ever, the Egyptian mummies are immortal relics of one of the greatest civilizations in antiquity.
01:27Let us embark on an immersive and unprecedented quest to discover the secrets of mummification in ancient Egypt.
01:46And a legendary people in pursuit of immortality.
01:50The best way to understand the relationship of ancient Egyptians to death is to visit the vast necropolis of Saqqara.
02:19Built on the west bank of the Nile, on the edge of the desert, the site is home to the Step Pyramid of Pharaoh Jozer.
02:33The first pyramid in the history of Egypt, which was erected around 2600 BC.
02:40In this immense sanctuary, in which all the areas of Egyptian civilization have left their own mark, death is here, there, everywhere.
02:55Mummy expert Salima Ikram is headed to the Pyramid of Unas.
02:59Much like the Pyramid of Jozer, although it was built 300 years later, it is in its own way a groundbreaking structure.
03:08This is the burial chamber for King Unas, and this is the first royal burial chamber to be decorated with texts.
03:29And there are spells to make sure that the king gets from this world to the next safely.
03:36And they just cover this whole space, repeating his name again and again and again.
03:44And here we see the name of Unas carved in a cartouche. It's very sweet with a little bunny.
03:51I think the keys for immortality for ancient Egypt and even for modern Egypt is the preservation of the name.
04:02We are Egyptians. We love to be remembered all the time. Our names are being repeated because it's believed when your name is repeated,
04:11you are still in the mind and in the memory of the people.
04:14But the real important part is here. And this again when bows down to the king. And there is where Unas would have been resting.
04:37For the ancient Egyptians, words were powerful. They were the first people to understand propaganda.
04:44Because if you say things, they become true. If they're repeated, they become even truer.
04:52So the ancient Egyptians were the first people to truly appreciate all that words can do.
04:59In Saqqara, the Pyramid of Unas, which was built in the fifth dynasty, contains the first ever instance of writings on the wall, known as pyramid texts.
05:24Initially, they were strictly reserved for royalty. But as time went by, these writings led to the introduction of funerary texts for people from all walks of life, not just for the king or the royal family.
05:39They would be written down on papyrus to keep the deceased company. These books of the dead were actually survival guides to the afterlife, a series of chapters to protect the dead from the dangers awaiting them.
05:54Over time, the process of mummification ceased to be exclusive to pharaohs. From the old kingdom on, dignitaries would be mummified, and by the end of the era, anyone who wanted a proper tomb to protect their mummy was entitled to one.
06:11At the foot of the Pyramid of Unas, a team of archaeologists is exploring a much more recent tomb. It dates back to the Sait period in the 7th century BC.
06:26At the head of this archaeological site is Isa Bohm. She oversees the various studies taking place in the tombs, such as this remarkable funerary complex.
06:40The right to inscriptions for the afterlife was extended to all, which is why the tombs of the dignitaries are covered in them.
06:53Usually there is not only a sarcophagus here in the middle, so a big one made of limestone and inside it a mummy shaped one, but also the whole tomb is shaped like a sarcophagus.
07:06So that's why it's called sarcophagus tomb.
07:15They not only put together the mummy in the embalming, they also put together the mummy in texts and the corpse again, so to make the person whole again, so it can live again in the afterlife.
07:27The texts, they are taken from a corpus that is called pyramid texts, and also they took other texts from other objects from later periods.
07:40For example, these offering lists here, there are also examples from the Middle Kingdom on coffins.
07:47So they took different sources and put them here together in this tomb.
07:51Carmen Rack and Mostafa Ismail Tolba take inventory and digitize each hieroglyph.
08:06Carmen Rack and Mostafa Ismail Tolba
08:13Basically what we're doing is rim light photos.
08:15Mustafa's job is to help light the wall from the side.
08:20This way we can create more contrast and more shadow on the hieroglyphs, which gives us more detail.
08:27So for example in the owl, we can see the beak and the eyes a lot better than with direct light from the front.
08:32As much as the ancient Egyptian was talented, we should do our best to be as their talent in recording their, what they left us as a living heritage up till now.
08:52The hieroglyphs cover every inch of the walls, and archaeologists are striving to record every detail in order to study them at a later date.
09:05Here we have what the so-called object freeze, and this is a visual representation of the offering that the deceased wishes to receive in his afterlife.
09:19As we see the colours in some parts, especially the ceiling, are especially well preserved.
09:31And we see also the brown-reddish colours, the black.
09:34And what is really interesting is that a lot of hieroglyphs, they often have a specific colour, like we see here the numbers of the offering list.
09:46They have the colour black, and usually some objects like food that are based on meat, they have more the reddish colour.
09:56Or we have often plants that are used with green colour.
10:03We have bread, beer, wine, different types of beer, different types of bread, cakes, so that the deceased, once he enters the netherworld, doesn't lack anything.
10:16So he is provided with everything he needs.
10:21These tombs were final resting places, and Egyptians were a practical people.
10:27So they planned on taking with them anything they would need.
10:30It wasn't necessarily about material things or three-dimensional objects.
10:34The concept of performative utterance was important to Egyptians, meaning that anything being said or written became a reality.
10:44These representations of clothing, weapons, furniture and food offerings were meant as a guarantee that the deceased would have all these items with them for eternity.
10:55This is often also the case with the little Ushabti figurines we have, the little tiny blue mummy-shaped figurines.
11:05They also have the task of helping the deceased have a good life in the afterlife.
11:10So they work for them, they help them get food and drink, so that they do not have to worry about dying and eventually going to the netherworld.
11:20An essential funerary item to have in ancient Egypt was the Shabti doll.
11:29In numbers, they formed small armies of servants designed to fill a person's every wish.
11:35One of the specific functions of these figurines was to conduct agricultural work or any chore demanded by the gods on behalf of the deceased.
11:44At one point, some tombs could hold up to 365 figurines, one for each day of the year and thousands for the pharaohs.
11:59In this way, the deceased could expect a worry-free afterlife.
12:03With each new discovery, Saqqara turns out to be an incredible funerary labyrinth.
12:13The documentation task awaiting the archaeologists is a tall order, as it is unprecedented in the history of archaeology.
12:22Once they will have surveyed and restored the hieroglyphic friezes, they will have to decipher them.
12:27These lists help document daily life, because in the afterlife they were trying to get a similar life again as they did here while they were alive, so it kind of mirrors what they were usually having in the daily life.
12:49It's really interesting. We learn a lot from these lists because they tell us what was important to the Egyptians and, for example, what they ate or what kind of beer or wine they would have here.
13:04They like to have the best of the best, the most luxury products.
13:09Like an open book on ancient Egypt, these offering lists reflect a need to extend the lease on life, where refinement and luxury were the key to happiness.
13:26The presence of funerary texts proves the importance attached to the deceased who were mummified.
13:31In the Ptolemaic period, another type of mummy emerged by the millions, animals.
13:40However, their mummies didn't serve the same purpose as for humans.
13:45We have counted about 8 million dogs in Saqqara being given as offerings over a period of about 400 years. That is extraordinary.
13:55All kinds of species were mummified. Pets such as cats and dogs, but also wild animals like birds or fish.
14:07In Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France, the Musée Grenet holds a unique specimen, which happens to be a mystery to all Egyptologists.
14:26The director of the museum called upon Alain Charon, a French specialist on animal mummies.
14:31Today, he will be getting acquainted with a peculiar reptile, the Nile monitor.
14:38Beautiful. Unfortunately, they unwrapped the bandage around its head.
14:43At least they found out it was a monitor, which is great.
14:46They wanted to know what was inside the mummy.
14:49It is exceptionally well-wrapped, with concentric strips across the whole bottom half.
14:54It ends with a cross section at the tip.
14:58The embalmer must have mastered his craft quite well.
15:03We have no idea how it ended at the top.
15:06A pity, since this mummy is one of a kind.
15:09It would have been interesting to know how the head was wrapped.
15:12Right, this piece is special because there is nothing else like it.
15:15Nothing else, no.
15:17We've never found another anywhere, not even in Egypt.
15:19That's why it's so wonderful.
15:20It's an Isle monitor.
15:23These animals can grow up to two metres long.
15:26This one is only one metre long.
15:28Not to mention it has small pointy teeth, which indicates that it most likely was a young specimen.
15:34It wasn't very old, considering its size and teeth.
15:38As monitors age, their teeth tend to flatten.
15:42Their front teeth.
15:44We have many animal mummies, and they are actually of different types, or fall into different categories.
15:54The most understandable for the modern person is pets.
15:58We have them because we love them, we want them to live forever with us in the afterlife.
16:01Then, the more famous type, this is in fact the sacred animal.
16:08The idea is that gods could manifest themselves on earth as their totemic animal.
16:14The reason why so many animal mummies have been unearthed is that they served primarily as intercessors before the gods.
16:21Animals were entrusted with the task of godly representation and bestowed with a small part of divinity.
16:32The fact that these animals were considered somewhat divine made them mediators between the worshippers and the gods.
16:39So, in order to send the animals to the deities, they were killed, mummified, and offered to the gods.
16:49You know, this is like you have a candle that you burn in a church.
16:51But instead of giving a statue or a stela, you actually take a live animal and it is sacrificed and turned into an eternal being.
17:02So that this goes with your prayers to the god and it is active forever and is more valuable and potent because it was a blood sacrifice.
17:15In ancient Egypt, most gods were represented in the form of animals.
17:19The god Sobek had the head of a crocodile.
17:25Horus, the head of a falcon.
17:28While Bastet was represented by a cat when she was sweet and a lioness whenever she was angry.
17:35The animal chosen to be mummified depended on which god was being worshipped.
17:42According to Egyptologists, the monitor could be associated with the god Atum, sometimes depicted as a lizard.
17:50At the museum library, Alain Charon is being showed what lies underneath the bandages.
17:58The monitor was put through a CT scan.
18:02This is great.
18:04It's surprising to see what's inside once all the layers have been peeled off.
18:08There's a stick to give us an idea of the animal's actual size.
18:11Is the tail visible at all?
18:14We were able to see it on the scan, showing the skeleton.
18:18What we saw there also came as a surprise.
18:21Because once you unveil the skeleton, everything seems quite strange.
18:25There is no backbone, no ribcage, no pelvis, no bones in the legs.
18:30In fact, at least 80% of the animal is missing, which means this wasn't such a great job after all.
18:37So what we actually see here is the end of the front legs.
18:40Yes.
18:44There's something quite interesting, you may have noticed.
18:47The animal's front legs were bent in the same position as the arms on human mummies.
18:52Right.
18:53They've been crossed.
18:54Upon its chest.
18:55Well, actually, they only left the claws.
18:56The long bones of the legs haven't been included.
18:59How peculiar.
19:00The same goes for the hind legs.
19:02There are no bones.
19:03No leg bones.
19:05The tail is right here, see?
19:07It has been bent over backwards.
19:09Can you tell?
19:10It comes up to here.
19:12It's very strange.
19:13I think it comes up to here.
19:14Right.
19:15That's it.
19:17As for that long piece of wood, we think it was meant to stiffen the mummy.
19:20Egyptians used it as a trick to cheat in a way.
19:23They didn't even pick a good stick.
19:25They did a pretty lousy job.
19:27There probably was a piece of wood lying there and they picked it up.
19:31You're right.
19:32They basically grabbed anything they could find and stuffed it in, like a pouch.
19:39As long as it was in the wild, the monitor was worthless.
19:42In the same way, all cats, dogs or crocodiles were considered worthless.
19:46The right of mummification is what made these animals worth something.
19:49Because it connected them to religion.
19:52It's what turned them into useful sacred beings.
19:55As for this monitor, we have no idea what its purpose was since it is unique.
19:59We don't know where it came from, nor if there were any others.
20:02It's a mystery.
20:05This Nile monitor is truly one of a kind.
20:08Without any clue as to its history, it is one of thousands of mummies which have been uprooted from their habitat,
20:13removed from their country and therefore deprived of context.
20:19A real conundrum for experts and museum curators worldwide.
20:25In the 19th century, the passion for Egypt spread like wildfire among European collectors.
20:30Many mummies were snatched from their eternal resting places, at the expense of immortality.
20:46Mummy trafficking started as early as antiquity, and the smuggling business reached Europe in the Renaissance.
20:51At the end of the Middle Ages, which is quite early, come to think of it, during the Renaissance, people travelled.
21:04Some went to Egypt, where they experienced a big culture shock, because they saw many things that they had never encountered before.
21:10And once it was time to go back to Europe, they liked bringing back souvenirs in their suitcases.
21:17Mummies were some of the most fascinating objects to them, which is why many were brought back by travelers,
21:24sometimes in one piece, with their sarcophagus, sometimes it was the mummy alone, and other times, only bits and pieces of a mummy.
21:32This is mostly why a number of mummies' hands and feet are still being found in people's homes today.
21:36They've been handed down from generation to generation.
21:40There was something truly fascinating about these objects, because the features of the faces and the proportions of the bodies were more or less intact.
21:49The fascination for mummies exists for the same reason there has always been a complex relationship between mankind and death,
21:56pretty much since the beginning of time.
21:59There is a lot of wondering about life somehow continuing after death or the possibility of being reborn.
22:04In the 19th century, Napoleon would lead a campaign in Egypt, the first ever scientific study carried out in the field.
22:15Napoleon's campaign in Egypt was a real game changer.
22:20From that point on, Egyptology would never be the same as knowledge about the country expanded as never before.
22:27The first half of the 19th century marked the unprecedented development of Egyptology and the birth of what we would call Egyptomania.
22:38Mummies were on the front page of newspapers all over Europe.
22:42More and more travelers were eager to bring back their own piece of Egypt.
22:45Private social gatherings known as salons were even held to unwrap the mummies.
22:55Soon enough, full-on unwrapping events were organized to strip the mummies from all that cloth and thus observe the bodies more closely.
23:04The issue as they carried out this rather brutal experiment is that it often led to irreparable damage or even to the complete destruction of these mummies.
23:17The popularity of mummies would continue to increase until 1922 when Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered Tutankhamen's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
23:29A fascinating discovery overshadowed by gloomy rumors.
23:33A powerful narrative emerged around the fact that a lot of the people who had entered the tomb had then died, either in horrible circumstances or soon after visiting Tutankhamen's tomb.
23:51I don't think there was such a thing as a mummy's curse.
23:56Carter and Carnarvon had granted the exclusivity of their discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb to the Times.
24:02Other newspapers were quite upset about it at the time, which is why they started the rumor of an alleged curse.
24:09And they said, ah, everyone died. Well, everyone did die, but sometimes 30 years afterwards.
24:15The only person who really died quite quickly was Lord Carnarvon, who had funded the excavation, and he died probably of septicemia.
24:26The real threat in tombs dating back thousands of years was never a curse from the pharaohs, but the mold that developed because of humidity.
24:34The storage of mummies for several thousand years in a stale environment could explain the development of fungi.
24:52In charge of an excavation site in Saqqara, Suzanne Beck is aware of this threat.
24:56Usually, of course, you should be careful to go inside, but usually it's dry, so there's no fungus.
25:06For the underground structures, usually they're refilled, so you do not just go inside.
25:11You have to take out layers of layers of sand.
25:17It will be open after a certain time. You do not just, you know, open something and go inside. It will take time.
25:23But if you realize it's humid inside, you should be more careful, because then fungi can develop.
25:30But it's really depending, then partially if you have an issue, you can call people to take tests and then to see.
25:36But of course, that's also why we have a lot of specific protective equipment on site,
25:40so that everybody can take on masks, can take on gloves, and so on if necessary.
25:44The curse of the mummy is one of the oldest examples of fake news in history.
25:52It gave birth to the myth of the vengeful mummy.
25:57Numerous animal mummies were unearthed to be used as fertilizer or fuel,
26:02adding to the fear of retribution from beyond the grave.
26:05Legend has it the Titanic sunk because it was transporting a mummy.
26:12And it is true, there was a mummy on board.
26:15There really was a sarcophagus on the Titanic, but we know how the events unfolded.
26:18To this day, some people who work in museums are still a little worried about the mummies.
26:33They don't feel comfortable being alone with them at night.
26:37They claim to suffer from migraines whenever they are next to the mummies.
26:42I don't think any of those beliefs will ever go away.
26:46The thing is, mummies represent a visible manifestation of death to us humans,
26:53which is why everyone is looking for an explanation they can live with,
26:57or a suitable way to wrap their heads around the whole thing.
27:05As a result of the damage caused by Egyptomania,
27:09museums are faced with a daunting challenge.
27:11rehabilitating the memory of the mummies.
27:21The Archaeology Museum of Genoa has undertaken an ambitious program.
27:28Restoring heavily damaged mummies.
27:36Egyptologist Sabina Malgora enlisted the help of Cinzia Oliva,
27:40a restoration expert.
27:44Here you have the mummy and the sarcophagus of Pascher Ienezet, who was a priest.
27:51The challenge is to repair these bodies while preserving the original embalming process,
27:57something which was not taken into consideration when this mummy was restored in the 20th century.
28:02We can clearly see that the fabric wrapped around the mummy, as well as the bandaging, are fairly recent.
28:11Meaning these materials were added much later on to secure the mummy.
28:16Unfortunately, it makes a substantial difference in our perception of this mummy,
28:22and it makes it virtually impossible for us to read it correctly.
28:26Right. It must have been quite difficult to work on this mummy,
28:31because whenever mummies were unfortunate enough to be displayed upright,
28:35they collapsed downwards.
28:36This is a situation we have also observed on several occasions in other museums.
28:48Throughout modern times, mummies have been treated as mere archaeological objects,
28:53rather than human remains.
28:54In the museum's storerooms, two mummies are in critical condition.
29:01The state of preservation of this mummy speaks for itself.
29:08It has most definitely suffered from the devastation of time.
29:12These mummies would travel on ships, then they would arrive in ports and sometimes stay there for up to a year.
29:20They were stored in crates within warehouses, where they were subjected to humidity and variations in temperature.
29:27It's important for us to remember that there are bodies under these bandages,
29:32bodies which are thousands of years old.
29:35Organic material deteriorates.
29:38Fabric is an organic material itself, which is why it inevitably decays.
29:43What I would like to do is grant these mummies eternity.
29:51To restore them in a careful and mindful way, which doesn't try to recreate things we don't see,
29:57things we can't imagine.
29:59What I want is to preserve what we have here,
30:03to be respectful of these people who lived, who dreamed, who loved, in the same way we do.
30:09I wish we could showcase them in a proper, respectful and ethical manner to the public.
30:14Today, the question is, will modern restorers be able to save the bodies of these mummies with the same expertise as ancient embalmers?
30:29The challenge for museums is to give them a new lease on life.
30:38Since the very beginning of collections, the work of collectors has enabled artifacts to be passed down from generation to generation.
30:46Ultimately, today's museums could be considered as the successors to cabinets of curiosity and former collections.
30:56They perpetuate the concept of displaying historical items as they present these human remains in a much more respectful way than before.
31:04These bodies are concrete, visible, material evidence of the past.
31:11They remind us of the spiritual dimension of the Egyptian culture and religion.
31:15While the fascination with the immortality of mummies has put some of them at risk, others remain as famous as ever.
31:28In 2021, a historic ceremony took place in Cairo.
31:33A parade of 22 pharaoh mummies as they were transported to a new museum.
31:42The footage was broadcast worldwide.
31:49Three thousand years later, thanks to the mummification of their bodies, they are still being celebrated in Egypt in the same way as heads of state.
31:57Before they were moved, these royal mummies were subjected to a historical scientific endeavor.
32:10They were all scanned.
32:12These rulers, who have left their mark on history, are about to unveil their secrets.
32:18When immortality meets new technologies, we are given the opportunity to write new pages in the history of ancient Egypt.
32:27Sahar Salim is a professor of radiology at Cairo University.
32:33As part of the program to study the 22 pharaohs, she has been able to shed light on unexpected stories.
32:40According to Sahar, the study through imaging of these pharaohs, who have shaped the history of Egypt, would allow visitors of the new museum to discover the men behind the legendary figures.
32:54She was able to uncover the beauty secrets of the embalmers, who worked on Seti I, the pharaoh, father of Ramses II, was one of the most prominent figures of the new kingdom.
33:07Seti I, when I looked at Seti I was just looking at him and say, you are not a mummy.
33:20You are the sleeping beauty.
33:22What is your secret?
33:23Why are you not like many other mummies, which like the skin is over the bone?
33:27Why is your skin so beautiful? Why is your face so beautiful? And he told me the secret.
33:40Seti I remains the most beautiful mummy there is today.
33:45Upon discovering him in 1817, archaeologists were impressed by the quality of his embalming.
33:55The tissues of his flesh and the shape of his face were perfectly preserved, as if he had died the day before.
34:02This is the 3D CT scan of the King Seti I, and look, he had fillers underneath the skin, in the same places that the plastic surgeons of nowadays, they place the fillers, which is around the nose and the mouth, here, and in the cheeks.
34:30And moreover, here in the temporal.
34:35And this is what made actually the King's face so beautiful.
34:41They placed it very skillfully underneath the skin.
34:45You cannot find an incision, you cannot find a mark.
34:49This is very skillful.
34:51And when you look at it, you will find that they placed it beneath the skin symmetrical way,
34:59with the material that is the dream for any modern plastic surgery.
35:06When I found this, this is breakthrough. This is new.
35:09This technique, the subcutaneous filling, not only in the face but also for the body, that was done before.
35:17Among the 22 scans of the mummies of kings and queens, Sahar Salim even managed to solve a 3,000 year old cold case.
35:27The last great king of ancient Egypt was Ramses III.
35:38In his lifelong quest to reestablish the greatness of Egypt from the time his ancestor Ramses II reigned, the pharaoh built magnificent monuments such as the million year old temple of Medina Tabu.
35:51Unfortunately, his enemies were everywhere, even within his own family.
36:01When Sahar first took a look at his mummy, she was surprised to find a strange piece of linen fabric wrapped around his neck.
36:08Unwrapped during the 19th century by archaeologists with little ethics, the mummy had kept this strange scarf.
36:15An utter mystery for the radiologist.
36:20What was behind all of these wrappings that nobody ever looked at it?
36:26And the CT scan actually revealed the secrets that the ancient Egyptians tried to cover and tried to hide from the eyes of the world.
36:36How the king really died, which this was a mystery because we know that there is a papyrus called the judicial papyrus.
36:48It wrote about a plot against the life of King Ramses III that took place in his palace in the Harim section by the hands of the Harim.
37:01That's why it's called Harim conspiracy.
37:05The papyrus states that one of Ramses III's concubines would have tried to kill him in order for her son to take the throne.
37:12This is the cut wound in the lower neck of the king.
37:20And now this is all covered by wrappings that are still intact.
37:26So this happened before embalming.
37:31And this kind of cut happened with a dagger, with a sharp edge and pointed edge from an attacker from behind.
37:45This is a fatal cut that he must die immediately afterwards because you cut the pipe wound, you cut the big vessels.
37:58You've got to imagine the gush of blood and the panic at that time of the palace.
38:04It's like a crime scene investigation.
38:07We can now imagine the crime scene that took place 3,000 years ago.
38:15Nobody knew about it.
38:17It was all kept in secret.
38:19The only people who knew about it was the embalmers.
38:22The study of mummies is thrilling because it allows us to unravel some of the mysteries of our history and so much more.
38:35Scanning these mummies is also a gateway to the daily life of the ancient Egyptian civilization.
38:42The northern branch of the Louvre Museum in Lens is the proud owner of a mummy which is still in its original box.
38:55It is 3,000 years old and belongs to a scribe by the name of Niha.
39:01This mummy was acquired by the Louvre in the 19th century.
39:04Unfortunately, we have no idea of the exact date because its identification number was established according to a much older numbering system.
39:13So we don't know under what circumstances it was received by the Louvre back then.
39:21The mummy is about to leave storage to undergo a CT scan.
39:28We are going to scan it because we have a lot of unanswered questions.
39:31We can't see the mummy.
39:33We have never taken it out and we don't plan to, but thanks to the CT scan we will be able to know more about it.
39:38It will provide us with anthropological information about the deceased, such as his age, at the time of his death, as well as gender confirmation.
39:46We have a thousand questions about this guy, so hopefully some of them will be answered in a few hours without even seeing the mummy.
39:52At the Lantz Hospital, Helene Guichard meets radiologist Samuel Merigeau, a French specialist in mummy scans.
40:08Meeting this mummy face-to-face makes us feel much closer to it.
40:15We are standing in front of a person, a person who lived centuries before us.
40:21So when you think about it, you can't help but picture yourself going back to the civilization, which is fascinating on so many levels, and for good reason, too.
40:34It is quite an exceptional experience indeed.
40:49Handled with great precaution, the mummy is about to be unwrapped through medical imaging.
40:55His arms are alongside his body, hands on his pubis.
41:08His head is slightly tilted.
41:10Right.
41:12We also have confirmation that it is a man inside.
41:15What we can say for sure is that he was an adult.
41:18He wasn't that young, though, because there is a bit of damage to the teeth and there are early signs of osteoarthritis in the cervical area.
41:27I would say he was a middle-aged man, around 30 or 40.
41:31Check it out. There are brain remains in the back.
41:34The ethmoid bone is broken, so they went in through there.
41:38They extracted the brain, but some of it remained in the back of the skull.
41:42They filled his mouth.
41:46You're right.
41:48See? It's full.
41:50They put in fillers just like they do in movies with pieces of cotton.
41:53Yes, exactly.
41:55This is what they did here. It looks like they stuffed his cheeks really well.
41:58Perhaps he was a trumpet player after all.
42:01Right.
42:03At the time, they tried to make the faces as full as possible and the cheeks as plump as possible.
42:08They would also put stones or seashells on the eyelids to recreate the look of living eyes.
42:19Our Niha here was buried about 3,000 years ago, hoping the living would continue to speak his name.
42:27He sure would be ecstatic tonight.
42:30He has been given his identity back in front of our very eyes.
42:34We are starting to get a better picture of him, to know him down to his deepest, most intimate traits.
42:42As far as I'm concerned, his quest for immortality has been a success.
42:47The museum has also fulfilled its mission, which is to preserve, to protect and to pass down mankind's historical legacy to future generations.
42:56Niha must be relieved. His wish has been granted.
42:59I think that the ancient Egyptians have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in their quest for immortality.
43:17Because they are not just living in the afterlife, they are living also on this world, on this planet, and their names are remembered, they are celebrated, and so their souls are also being fed by this constant mention of them.
43:34From the magic formulas engraved in the pyramids, to the scientific studies carried out on their mummies, the ancient Egyptians are reminding us of their existence thousands of years after their time on earth.
43:56To ensure they will never be forgotten, and remain immortal forever.
44:26To ensure that they can be contents when they have been with their ideas and their stories and you will never be forgotten, and they have risen to themselves but never be with by answers.
44:48My friends have Kollegen!
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