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00:07Egypt. Towering monuments. Mythic tombs. And fabled pharaohs.
00:20Much of today's fascination with ancient Egypt was ignited a century ago with the discovery
00:27of King Tutankhamen's tomb. It really set off the mass global phenomenon. This is a story
00:36that had everything. It was a discovery of treasure, gold, it was beautiful precious
00:41metal. Extraordinary discoveries that fired the public imagination. The reaction was unprecedented
00:48and phenomenal. It unfolded during a time of political upheaval. As Egypt pushed for
00:57independence. Sparking a race to control Egypt's story that has repercussions that still play
01:04out today.
01:06There was this push of, we're not only reclaiming the land, we're reclaiming the heritage.
01:14Thousands of black and white photographs and reels of film survive from those transformative
01:19years. Now, advanced restoration and colourisation revive these rare images. Revealing the race
01:32for ancient Egypt like never before. These images speak to a moment in history when ancient
01:40Egypt becomes something that everybody wants a piece of.
01:56In Egypt, mortuary temples were built to honour and facilitate the worship of deceased pharaohs,
02:03to ensure the celebrated king's successful journey to the afterlife.
02:12But this is not built for a pharaoh. This is built for Saad Zerloul, who died in 1927. And like
02:24the pyramids
02:25around ten miles in that direction, this isn't just a tomb. This is a national monument.
02:38This neo-pharaonic mausoleum in the heart of Cairo was designed with ancient Egyptian symbolism
02:45befitting a revered leader.
02:49There are so many neo-pharaonic nods here. We have Horus, who was the protector of the
02:55land, the god Nehbet, who was a symbol of unity. And we also have on the doors many cobras,
03:05cobras being a symbol of sovereignty.
03:13At a time when foreign powers held sway over Egypt's heritage, Zerloul looked to reclaim it.
03:21He was Egypt's first democratically elected prime minister and a driving force in the 1919
03:28nationalist revolution. Until this point, Egypt had lived under foreign control, occupied by Britain
03:37since 1882. Zerloul led the movement to change this. In 1922, Britain granted Egypt partial independence.
03:49In Egypt today, he is regarded as a hero. Saad Zerloul was honoured with something befitting,
03:59something that echoed the grandeur of Egyptian history.
04:04It's fitting because he used and saw Egyptian heritage as a way of uniting the nation. Heritage
04:14for him was a unifying factor, essential for Egyptians to reclaim their country.
04:22Zerloul's rise to power coincided with the greatest archaeological discovery, the tomb of Tutankhamen.
04:36It was a find so incredible, it set the world alight.
04:43Saad Zerloul saw this as a clear symbol of how Egypt needed to take control of its own heritage.
04:50Zerloul's waft government achieved just that, expelling Howard Carter.
04:57With more artefacts to uncover, and Tut's body yet to be revealed, the government took over control of the site.
05:05They hoped that soon Egyptian archaeologists would be the ones making groundbreaking discoveries.
05:13Archaeologists like Salim Hassan.
05:20Salim Hassan trained at the Egyptian Museum. He'd studied in Paris, which was well established as one of the great
05:27centers for Egyptology in the world by this time.
05:29He was ambitious and there was the opportunity for him to be a pioneer in this as well.
05:36If he could establish himself as one of the leading lights in archaeology in Egypt, as an Egyptian, he'd be
05:42among the first to do that.
05:43While Egyptians like Hassan were hoping to take control of their country's past, some Western archaeologists were unhappy with the
05:52shift in power.
05:55But after less than a year in government, the ruling waft party suffered a setback.
06:01A high ranking British officer was assassinated on Cairo's streets.
06:07This led to a huge reaction from Britain, who told the waft party that they were not in control, unable
06:16to manage the situation in Egypt.
06:18The British, who were still de facto in control, asserted their power.
06:24They put the squeeze on the fledgling government.
06:31Most of the demands that were made of them was actually unrealistic and unattainable.
06:36And they felt that the moral thing was to resign because the feeling that this was just an excuse or
06:44an obstruction of them being in power.
06:46The government was replaced with a new, more compliant one.
06:53Carter was invited back.
06:56On January 25th, 1925, he wrote in his journal,
07:03The tomb of Tutankhamun, together with the keys, were handed over to me this morning by the government commission.
07:14So, at this point, the tomb is already an enormous sensation.
07:17It's probably already clear that it's the greatest archaeological discovery of all time.
07:23We also know with hindsight that, in fact, the most famous objects from the tomb are yet to be revealed.
07:31The very most famous pieces are still hidden away inside the sarcophagus, inside a nest of coffins.
07:39In early 1926, the first pictures of these now iconic artefacts, taken by photographer Harry Burton, shot around the world.
07:53The general public was eager to see the first images of the incredible golden face of King Tutankhamun.
08:03What we see here is the sarcophagus of the king after the lid had been removed.
08:09And we are looking at the outermost of altogether three coffins that were inside that sarcophagus
08:16and that protected the mummified body of the king.
08:19This coffin was made of gilded wood.
08:21And one of my favourite images is this close-up on his face, where on the forehead you can see
08:28that lovely floral wreath.
08:34Seen in black and white a hundred years ago, these images would have astonished.
08:43Today, after restoring and colourising, we get a sense of what Carter and his team would have gazed upon.
08:52A scene lost forever.
08:56It was made of cornflowers and olive leaves.
09:00And that was one of the objects, like several of the organic, the botanical objects,
09:06that of course turned into dust when they were touched.
09:08So the images we have of Harry Burton are extremely valuable because they record something that is gone today.
09:18After the lid of the outer coffin was removed, the middle coffin was revealed,
09:23which was originally covered in linen shrouds and also decorated with this very delicate floral garlands
09:32that were again made of cornflowers, also of blue lotus, of willow and olive leaves.
09:38Carter and his team would have looked upon these dark shrouds and through them glimpsed another gilded coffin.
09:50The linen and garlands were removed to reveal the full beauty of the second sarcophagus.
09:59The second lid was opened to reveal the third and final coffin.
10:05The third coffin was made of pure gold.
10:09And after its lid had been lifted, they finally had a look at what was inside.
10:14And that was the mummified body of the king and, of course, the iconic funerary mask.
10:20Made of over ten kilograms of gold and inlaid with semi-precious stones, it became symbolic of Tutankhamen.
10:34Being allowed back into the tomb to uncover this incredible artefact was a major win for Carter,
10:42whose name was now inextricably linked with the pharaoh.
10:47However, access came with a major concession.
10:52Previously, Western archaeologists had been allowed to take half of all their finds back home.
10:59Now, the entire treasure, the sarcophagi, the death mask, the chariots, the sculptures, all would remain in Egypt.
11:10Even with the new Britain-friendly government, Egyptian nationalists had secured a major victory in the race to reclaim their
11:18history.
11:20This is really a watershed moment in archaeology in Egypt.
11:24It sets a precedent according to which the antiquities service and the Egyptian authorities are going to have control over
11:31which things might be allowed to leave and might not.
11:34And there's always the possibility that they will not allow anything to leave at all.
11:38This created shockwaves in the Egyptological establishment because suddenly someone who was used to taking back some rewards, a return
11:49on the investment of museums or universities or funders, suddenly might be left with nothing.
11:56That changed the landscape.
11:58What Western archaeologists had long taken for granted was suddenly out of reach.
12:04The new rules left many dismayed.
12:08But they kept digging.
12:10The race for ancient Egypt was far from over.
12:21Fascination with ancient Egypt in the 1920s was such that even after the export rules limited what could be taken
12:29from excavations, Western archaeologists still raced to lead digs.
12:36There was still prestige, knowledge and the thrill of discovery.
12:41I think there is a shift in the race, if you like, from acquiring things and physically taking a trophy
12:49away to intellectual control of ancient Egypt.
12:54On the ground, Westerners remained in the driving seat.
13:02Unfortunately, it's not a very pretty story in terms of Egyptians being able to take over more of their own
13:08cultural heritage and direct their own excavations.
13:11Remember, the British are controlling the government and the French are controlling the antiquity service and most of these excavations
13:18are foreign led.
13:20Attempts had been made to establish an Egyptian contingent in this, but those efforts had been suppressed.
13:27Egyptians like Selim Hassan had to wait to lead their own excavation.
13:32Any dig of any worth was headed by foreigners.
13:37But being foreign led didn't mean being foreign staffed.
13:43Western Egyptologists had depended on Egyptians on excavation for centuries.
13:49They needed to be led to where all the good stuff was.
13:52They needed to be told what it was they were finding at first.
13:56And so they depended on their Egyptian colleagues.
14:01However, very rarely were their names recorded.
14:05We get the name of the European or the American excavator and what this person, this one person, maybe a
14:13couple of assistants found.
14:14But then you sort of keep reading and it's like, oh, we had 300 basket boys and we had, you
14:19know, 10 foremen.
14:21So there were hundreds of people doing this work that like three people get credit for.
14:29In the early 1920s, Harry Burton shot footage for his regular employers, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
14:39His film captured excavations around the huge temple of Hatshepsut, where Egyptian laborers were unearthing small tombs of ancient nobles
14:50nestled in the cliffs behind the main temple.
15:00I think this footage is absolutely crucial in understanding what an excavation would have looked like at the time.
15:07Until you actually see it happening sort of on screen.
15:12I don't think you really get the real gist of how difficult the work is.
15:18They're given these baskets full of dirt or rocks and they have to march down a hill or up a
15:24hill, dump it in the heap and then you see them sort of trudging back up the hill.
15:28They're very young boys.
15:30There's a shot where you watch the boy give his basket down and he's, you know, the man is piling
15:37everything in there and then he hands it back up out.
15:39And that's what they're doing all day.
15:41And even when the contribution of the Egyptians is acknowledged is referred to as only a physical contribution as in
15:48the hands rather than the heads.
15:51The role of Egyptians in excavations was largely filtered through the lens of Westerners.
15:58Through words and pictures, they determined how the work was represented, who was acknowledged and who wasn't.
16:07There are some who say nowadays in this sort of post-colonial era that archaeological photography is not neutral and
16:15it's always reflecting the prejudices or the biases of the people behind the camera.
16:20And so Western archaeologists documenting a site will come away with focusing on certain things, whether workmen are present or
16:27absent, whether they're identified or not, whether they put the Western archaeologists in a more heroic pose or position and
16:35give credit or don't give credit to other assistants on the team.
16:39Howard Carter had a handful of senior Western team members on the Tutankhamen dig, working alongside dozens of Egyptian staff.
16:50The work was meticulously documented by Burton, recording key moments like the opening of the Pharaoh's coffins, each picture carefully
17:01crafted.
17:03So if we look at this image that was taken by Burton, first of all, it's a staged photograph, perhaps
17:11designed by how the foreign archaeologists wanted the rest of the world to see archaeology or to see how excavations
17:19operate.
17:20What we are meant to see as the leading figure sitting on the chair, Howard Carter, that everyone would know
17:25his name, it encapsulates the power dynamics, how he sat on the chair while the local excavator is seen underneath
17:33him on the floor, being taught what is being discovered, basically.
17:41As these images circulated the globe, they shaped a narrative that placed certain figures at the forefront of the Tutankhamen
17:49story.
17:51A century on, colorizing these images can bring history closer, but it can also add new layers of bias to
17:59such photographs.
18:03The issue with colorization in this instance here is that we don't even know the identity of the Egyptian archaeological
18:09excavator photographed here.
18:12Howard Carter did thank four of his Egyptian foremen by name in his writings.
18:18However, which one of the four this is, is unclear.
18:23Like so often on excavations, they were not identified in the photographs.
18:29This lack of recording that existed in the past, it makes even colorization today more problematic because we have no
18:38evidence that we could refer to when we're adding color to a certain individual and thus we're making assumptions of
18:43how people looked like, which has its own biases.
18:48While many Western archaeologists leaned on local expertise, few acknowledged it.
18:57However, there were exceptions.
19:01Working across the same period as Howard Carter was American Egyptologist George Reisner, who by 1925 had accumulated over 26
19:13years of experience in Egypt and had a close bond with many Egyptians he worked with.
19:21He assembled a team of Egyptian workmen from the city in Upper Egypt called Khuft.
19:28Reisner was different in delegating many of the so-called skill positions to his Egyptian team.
19:33So after a while they were taking the photographs, they were keeping accounts, and even eventually keeping Arabic language diary
19:41books of the progress of the expedition.
19:44And he was quick to give them the credit.
19:46We find in many of his letters that he's always praising his foreman, Syed Ahmed Syed, and his children.
19:56Reisner also employed an Egyptian for the key position of principal photographer, Mohameddani Ibrahim.
20:04He had something like 17,000 photographs or so to his name, had an excellent eye for composition.
20:17I mean fantastic photograph.
20:23What the photo captures is not just the exquisite object, but it's the thrill of that moment of it being
20:31revealed, the thrill of discovery.
20:33And remember how hard it is to document these things at this time.
20:38You're out in the hot sun, you get sandstorms and wind and dust, you've got tremendously harsh lighting conditions,
20:45and you're trying to photograph the subtle relief carving sculpture on chapel walls.
20:55What is really striking about it is that this is a very beautiful raised relief carving, but I know that
21:02you won't get quite the same sense of that with the naked eye,
21:07without the lighting and without the photographic skill that he's applied in capturing this image.
21:14He's quite clearly placed lighting in such a way as to catch the reliefs and to cast shadows around them.
21:20So you get a sense of the sculpture and the skill of the Egyptian craftsman in creating figures like this.
21:32Recording these digs through Egyptian eyes opened up the possibility of a different way of seeing the excavations.
21:39So if Muhammadani is taking the photographs, do we have these same sort of Western biases?
21:45I mean, after all, he's an Egyptian, he's making these decisions.
21:48Or would you argue that he's following the orders of this Western expedition and sort of imitating what their priorities
21:54are?
21:57Certainly, his documentation was more rigorous.
22:05But how much independence Muhammadani had is unknown.
22:09While Reisner was training photographers and accountants and foremen,
22:14it was never with a view towards training these people to one day take over their own excavations.
22:19The Western archaeologists were not thinking along those lines.
22:24However, it was Muhammadani who Reisner could thank for making one of the most significant
22:29finds by the American team.
22:35In 1925, he was attempting to get a good angle for a photo of the Great Pyramid at Giza.
22:42In the process, he discovered a hidden tomb.
22:48It was on the east side of the Great Pyramid in the so-called Eastern Cemetery.
22:53And his tripod slips in the limestone bedrock.
22:57Only it wasn't limestone bedrock.
22:59It was some plaster that was covering up a kind of a hole.
23:02And he thought that was strange.
23:03And so he brought over some of the rest of the team.
23:06And that eventually revealed a shaft that went down about 30 meters or 90 feet
23:11and revealed this very simple burial chamber loaded with this incredible assemblage
23:17of unfortunately deteriorated furniture and objects, stone vessels, metal vessels,
23:23a beautiful alabaster or travertine sarcophagus.
23:29In January 1926, only weeks after Carter unveiled Tutankhamen's golden mask, Reisner and his team
23:38began excavating this new chamber.
23:42The hope was for another intact royal tomb.
23:46Something to rival the magnificence of King Tut.
23:50Reisner realized that everything is in such a fragile, disintegrated state
23:55that the only way we're going to be able to put this together
23:58and find out what this tomb is and who it belonged to
24:00is if we take our time, lie on mattresses, pick up every tiny fragment,
24:07take photographs, make thousands of sketches, take notes, give every little piece a number.
24:14And so that's what they did from 1926 through a lot of 1927.
24:20Lying on their bellies in the heat and the flies, recording everything.
24:24Colorizing these images helps show the scale of the puzzle that lay before them.
24:33This allowed them to finally discover the appropriate hieroglyphs,
24:37to realize that Queen Heta Paris was supposedly the owner of this thing.
24:41So it's a significant tomb because it's royal from the fourth dynasty.
24:45Heta Paris was the mother of King Khufu who built the Great Pyramid.
24:50So a fantastic discovery historically.
24:53It created a massive press extravaganza.
24:57There are incredible stories all over the world about this find.
25:04Heta Paris lived more than 1,200 years before Tutankhamen,
25:09a queen from the Old Kingdom.
25:15Significant discoveries from this era were rare.
25:20There was always an ongoing race to find the next significant thing.
25:27But the Tutankhamen find really spurred people on to really strive for something even more spectacular.
25:37In terms of grandiose objects and wonderful gold and stone vessels and chariots and beds and things,
25:44that's all from Tutankhamen.
25:46Reisner couldn't make the same claim for Heta Paris,
25:48but he felt that Heta Paris was historically by far the much more important discovery.
25:54For Reisner, the key to truly making his tomb remarkable lay in revealing Heta Paris' mummy.
26:00Then he could claim a fully intact royal burial.
26:05And yet he would have to wait and hope to see if it was there.
26:18After the excitement of discovering Heta Paris' tomb in Giza,
26:23Reisner's team faced the painstaking task of recording and extracting the grave goods,
26:29a process that took over a year.
26:34Everyone was waiting for the clearance of the tomb
26:37so that they could then lift the lid of the travertine sarcophagus
26:41and gaze upon the only intact royal burial of the Old Kingdom.
26:46By March 1927, the tomb was fully cleared.
26:52A group of assembled VIPs were there and they took the sort of dumbwaiter elevator down to the bottom
26:58and they had winches set to lift the lid of the sarcophagus
27:03and gaze on the mummified figure of the queen.
27:05And they did and space was gained as the lid went up slowly
27:09and they looked inside and the entire sarcophagus was empty.
27:14The disintegrated grave goods and lack of body meant that despite the importance of the find,
27:21Reisner's name and his Egyptian photographer, Muhammad Dhani, never became household names the way Carters and Burtons did.
27:31Still, both the British and American discoveries made headlines.
27:39Amid this period of high profile excavations, the French run antiquities service embarked on a major project of their own.
27:49In 1925, they began the restoration of the Sphinx, a prestigious undertaking that would be led by the French.
28:00I think in the aftermath of the attention paid to Tutankhamun, there was a general appetite for a kind of
28:10easy win,
28:11something that you could be said to have saved.
28:14And so by clearing, restoring, preserving the Sphinx, they achieved that.
28:25The work would forever change one of Egypt's greatest icons.
28:33So the great Sphinx of Giza was known since antiquity because it was never fully covered, it was never totally
28:40lost.
28:41But there was nothing stopping the sand blowing in and essentially covering the Sphinx up to its shoulders.
28:53Wind-blown sand caused serious erosion to the sculpture.
28:58It's a giant, colossal, rock-cut statue.
29:00And so there was real fear, anxiety by the mid-1920s that the head would topple off.
29:09While working on the Hetipari's excavation,
29:12Egyptian photographer Mohamedani Ibrahim captured the Sphinx mid-restoration.
29:19So what we're seeing here is an image of the Sphinx at this kind of incredibly important moment in its
29:27history, if you like.
29:28The Sphinx is so familiar to us now.
29:32The Sphinx that you see when you go to visit the site now as a tourist is the Sphinx that
29:37is the product, if you like, of exactly this work.
29:40If you'd been at the site before this, a year or so before, you would have seen a very different
29:45picture.
29:46You wouldn't have had a sense of this natural arena, you wouldn't have got a sense of the whole of
29:50the body,
29:50you wouldn't have seen these new sections being put in place.
29:54So this is the moment that everything changes for the Sphinx.
29:59And restoring the Sphinx had another purpose.
30:03Clearing the site for the benefit of another Western interloper.
30:08The tourist.
30:21Egypt was really being sold to the public in this period.
30:25The world of kind of the exotic, the Oriental, the gateway to the East.
30:32Advertising for tourism in this period was very visual, very pictorial.
30:36And we've got some absolutely fantastic graphics and images from tourism marketing that really kind of sell Egypt.
30:45All the people this is targeted at have the means both to take the time off
30:51and also to expend quite exorbitant amounts of money on getting there.
30:56Egypt was definitely seen as a luxury destination.
31:01The country had become a playground for Westerners.
31:04And they all wanted to make sure their grand journey was recorded for posterity.
31:10One of the things to have yourself photographed against in Egypt is, of course, the pyramids and Sphinx.
31:17And here we see one of the party really in that kind of quintessential, touristic, photographic pose.
31:24So just as today we would visit a destination and tick off all the must-be-photographed places for a
31:32selfie or for Instagram,
31:34we kind of see the tourists in the 1920s doing exactly the same.
31:39Here we've got the really iconic image that you need to capture when you're in Egypt.
31:45We've got the Great Pyramid and the Steppe Pyramid.
31:47But also added to this configuration, we've got an Egyptian, a native person in the foreground with a donkey.
31:55So it's signalling this is Egypt.
31:57We've got the architecture.
31:59We've got the ancient landscape.
32:01And we've got someone who is looking quintessentially non-European, is looking exotic.
32:07Contemporary Egyptians may have seemed exotic to the British tourist, but Egypt's monuments offered a world that felt more familiar.
32:16It was its ancient affiliation.
32:19And this was really attractive, I think, to Britons because it replicated some of the things in their own world.
32:26So it was hierarchical, it had a centralised state, a monarch and all this wonderful public building,
32:32which actually kind of was narcissistically reflecting back Britain's own attitudes and processes in the 19th century.
32:43Beyond parallels with empire, some Western Egyptologists sought to draw a more direct connection between ancient Egypt and the Western
32:52world,
32:54framing it as a civilisation more European than African.
33:00When Egyptologists would go in and saw the monumental remains, the pyramids especially, the large temples in southern Egypt,
33:09they didn't think that there was any way that people of colour could have known how to build that, right?
33:13It had to have been some sort of white forebear.
33:17One Egyptologist gave this theory visual expression.
33:21Her name was Winifred Brunton.
33:26She reinterpreted historical figures in ancient Egypt and then painted them how she saw them,
33:32either in her mind's eye or based on her interpretation of what ancient Egyptians would have looked like.
33:39These were tiny little watercolours on ivory panels and those images, those paintings, are incredibly popular in the 20s.
33:51And so Winifred Brunton was single-handedly responsible still for what a lot of people think the ancient Egyptians looked
34:01like.
34:02Part of the problem with what Winifred Brunton was doing is that her reinterpretation leaned very European.
34:11So she created an image, mostly not entirely, but mostly, of white European ancient Egypt,
34:19where none of the Egyptian kings and queens look anything like people who live in Egypt today.
34:26And in that sense she was claiming ancient Egypt for the West, for Europe, for America.
34:33Brunton stated she wanted to make the images as accurate as possible, using various ancient Egyptian artworks as a basis
34:42for her interpretations.
34:46We know the images on temple walls and statuary are not how people actually appeared.
34:52They are concerned with a completely different image world.
34:56They don't replicate people as they actually are.
35:04Ancient Egyptians often used colour symbolically in their art, expressing ideas rather than likeness, including skin tone.
35:15Colour gives us some indication about the order of being we're looking at.
35:20So gods can have green or blue flesh or golden flesh.
35:26Living people have a different range of colours.
35:30So this piece is the underside of a foot case.
35:35So this would be the foot end of a mummified body.
35:38And the idea was that you were trampling on your enemies.
35:41So these were sometimes stylised depictions of Egypt's national enemies, foreigners, non-Egyptian people.
35:49And they're shown with orangey or pinky skin.
35:54Using the way ancient Egyptians drew themselves on the wall to decide how ancient Egyptians look like is factually wrong.
36:04We don't know how they perceive race.
36:06We only know that they've used colour for an idealistic representation to differentiate between people.
36:12For example, they would give men a darker shade of skin tone rather than women in ancient Egypt.
36:18I think Winifred Brunton knew her audience.
36:21She knew what made them tick.
36:24So this highly subjective reimagination of ancient Egypt in colour had to be a mirror to the West.
36:32Brunton had found an eager audience in Europe.
36:36People had been swept up in the Egyptomania unleashed by Tutankhamun's tomb.
36:42A tomb that kept offering up new treasures throughout the 1920s as Carter slowly and meticulously emptied its contents.
36:51But as Carter cleared the last pieces, the world was about to shift.
37:031929. Economies go into freefall as the Great Depression hits, bringing mass unemployment and bank failures.
37:11Devastating poverty is widespread.
37:15So the Great Depression, it equally had its impact on Egyptian economy itself and it did have its impact on
37:21the excavations in the funding.
37:24The scale and scope of excavations that were happening at the time.
37:28Major digs wound down.
37:31With dwindling international funds and continued nationalist pressure, Egyptians saw a chance to finally gain a foothold in their own
37:40history.
37:41The power was shifting. The power differential was shifting between the Europeans being in control and Egyptians being in control.
37:50And I think a lot of that was maybe a diplomatic agreement of, can we just stay?
37:56Can you let us keep some peaceful control here if we very slowly let you, let you participate?
38:04Finally, the Egyptian archaeologist Salim Hassan got his chance.
38:08In 1929, with Egypt still under strong British influence, he began leading his own excavation at Giza.
38:18Over the following seasons, he uncovered a number of tombs, including the complex of Queen Khankhoas I.
38:26It's the first solely Egyptian archaeological mission to be operating, one could say, in the whole of Egypt.
38:33And that, in itself, it's a breakthrough. And that's why we tend to refer to him as the father of
38:37Egyptian archaeology, for us as Egyptians.
38:41Seven years later, in 1936, he took over work on the Sphinx.
38:47Salim Hassan made a number of very important discoveries in the area of the Sphinx, a series of temples which
38:54were previously undetected.
38:56And he and his team discovered evidence of the worship of the Sphinx.
39:01They'd revealed more about the understanding of the Sphinx as a monument and added to its appeal.
39:07But the Europeans were not ready to relinquish all control.
39:12In the same year, the French head of the Antiquities Service stepped down.
39:18Salim Hassan sought to replace him.
39:21But pressure from French and British diplomats blocked his appointment.
39:26Salim Hassan was a threat because that means that they are going to lose all power over concessions, permissions or
39:33sites, etc.
39:34Having an Egyptian taking over the Antiquities Services meant that there would be a shift in the power dynamics in
39:41the agency,
39:42in what they would be allowed and not allowed to do.
39:45While foreign powers clung to control of Egypt's archaeology,
39:49by the 1930s, the mania for all things Egyptian began to fade in Europe and America.
39:59Tutankhamun's tomb had revealed all its secrets.
40:03And the Great Depression had put a lid on the excesses of the 20s.
40:08But then in 1939, a new discovery.
40:14The Hall of Treasure from Tannis is almost unimaginably spectacular.
40:20Room after room of burials of pharaohs and their treasure.
40:25The French archaeologist Pierre Montaille and his team had been excavating the site of Tannis,
40:31an ancient city in the Nile Delta, for over a decade.
40:37For years, the site yielded little.
40:39Then, in February 1939, the breakthrough came.
40:45So, Pierre Montaille had been working there for ten years or more.
40:49And he knew the site well.
40:51He'd been planning and understood the location of a temple.
40:55So, the northern temple of the god Amun.
40:58So, that itself was archaeologically significant.
41:01But then it was in excavating down in the temple that he uncovered what quickly turned out to be a
41:08spectacular find.
41:09So, he'd found a very simple building made of reused stone, but containing the burials of a whole series of
41:18kings.
41:19Some of them violated, robbed, others of them completely intact.
41:25The first two tombs Montaille discovered were empty, robbed.
41:29But as Montaille pushed on, he got lucky.
41:33He entered into a very small chamber containing the mummified remains in a falcon-headed coffin of a king called
41:46Cheshon.
41:49Montaille kept pushing through the underground structure.
41:53In front of him were two blocked doorways.
41:56When one of those was removed, it proved to contain the burial of the pharaoh, Susenes.
42:03A very, very beautiful stone sarcophagus.
42:07The king's mummy was found within a, again, solid silver sarcophagus.
42:14Extremely beautiful.
42:16So, what Montaille found was not just one, but a whole interconnected series of royal tombs.
42:25An entire dynasty's worth of very significant people.
42:32To find objects on this scale crafted from this much silver, which was extremely precious in ancient Egypt, was unprecedented.
42:40And this is a discovery that's never been repeated.
42:43He also found an awful lot of gold as well, including a whole sequence of solid gold death masks.
42:51Some of the most fantastic treasures that ancient Egypt had ever yielded.
43:02Montaille's discovery could have rivalled even Tutankhamen's.
43:06Yet few noticed.
43:08Archaeology in Egypt was no longer on the public radar.
43:12The world had other concerns.
43:15Just five months earlier, in September 1939, Hitler had invaded Poland, plunging Europe into another war.
43:26It is a supreme irony that if we visualise a real race between, say, the British and the French, here
43:34was a chance to take the cup, take the crown from the British and from the Tutankhamen find.
43:41But the moment was simply lost to world geopolitical events.
43:47And so, Montaille never enjoyed the winning of his race anything like the way Carter did.
43:57The race for ancient Egypt.
43:58The race for ancient Egypt gave way to a new world war.
44:02The country became a battleground in the fight for North Africa.
44:07Archaeology ground to a halt.
44:11After the war, as Egypt recovered, excavations slowly resumed.
44:17Now in a fully independent country.
44:21Today, Egyptian archaeologists are the norm and helped shape the story of their own heritage.
44:29And with the recent opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, a world-class institution housing thousands of Egypt's treasures under
44:37one roof, Egypt can finally showcase its past on its own terms.
44:49Today, as in the 1920s and 1930s, Egypt's ancient past captivates the world, but casts a long shadow.
45:00The legacy of the early 20th century obsession with Egypt has very much shaped how Egypt is seen today in
45:11the public eye up till today is frozen in time and place.
45:15It's still seen through the lens of ancient Egypt.
45:18And even the way that Egypt is promoted from cultural or tourism perspective is still frozen in time and place.
45:27It's still pharaonic Egypt rather than the living Egypt today.
45:34Ancient Egypt is still a draw today, with millions visiting the tombs and temples each year.
45:42In many ways, ancient Egypt was as popular as it would ever be in the 1920s and 30s, particularly in
45:49the wake of the discovery of Tutankhamun.
45:51That was such a sensation, and I think it's difficult for us actually to appreciate just what a global sensation
45:59that was at the time.
46:01There's never been anything like it since.
46:03And yet, there are still dozens, maybe even hundreds of excavations going on every year.
46:08They're all finding new things.
46:09And so that sense of the excitement is still there.
46:15As long as secrets remain buried in the sands, the race to uncover more of Egypt's ancient past may never
46:25be truly over.
46:47And so yeah.
46:55I'd love to hear.
46:56Transcription by CastingWords