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00:02The Valley of the Kings, an underground maze of ancient Egyptian tombs carved out over 3,000 years ago and
00:12the final resting place of the famed boy king, Tutankhamun.
00:16When he found the tomb of the King Tutankhamun, it was fantastic.
00:20And no discovery then or since has ever had the excitement that King Tutankhamun.
00:26Today, teams are working inside Tutankhamun's tomb to unearth its mysteries.
00:33Even today, every time we turn around, we find more questions to ask.
00:38Why is the tomb of Tutankhamun so unique? And how did it stay hidden for over 3,000 years?
00:48To find out, we will venture inside the Valley of the Kings, blowing it apart.
00:56We'll explore its hidden chambers and golden coffins to reveal the secrets at the heart of this ancient wonder.
01:14By the banks of the River Nile, hidden in a labyrinth of rock, lies a monumental ancient burial site.
01:23The Valley of the Kings.
01:29Extending deep beyond giant stone entrances, dozens of subterranean tombs became the final resting place for powerful Egyptian pharaohs.
01:40The Valley of the Kings was in use as a royal burial place for about 500 years.
01:45The primary concern was that the pharaoh's body be protected, that it could survive, could endure for an eternity.
01:54Today, teams from around the world use the latest scanning and forensic technology to unearth the secrets of these subterranean
02:02chambers.
02:08Beneath this valley lie more than 60 hidden tombs carved deep into the rock.
02:14Most are similar in design.
02:17They're snaking tunnels descending towards the underworld, creating a rabbit warren of hundreds of painted chambers.
02:26Filled with hieroglyphs and paintings of the afterlife.
02:31Hidden near the center lies the tomb of the most famous pharaoh of all, King Tutankhamun.
02:40This mysterious chamber is unlike any royal tomb in the valley, and puzzles archaeologists to this day.
02:53Tutankhamun's tomb lies at the heart of the valley, surrounded by the tombs of the great pharaohs that came before
03:00and after him.
03:03Today, Tutankhamun is the most famous name of all these ancient kings.
03:07But during his lifetime, historians believe he was insignificant.
03:13He was a kid, 9, 10, 11 years old.
03:16The little known, relatively minor pharaoh.
03:21Yet Tutankhamun's tomb transformed his fate.
03:25This young boy king became one of the most powerful symbols in Egyptological history.
03:34Kent Weeks has spent 40 years studying the Valley of the Kings.
03:40Kent and teams of archaeologists are working to resolve a crucial mystery.
03:47How did Tutankhamun's tomb transform the boy king from a minor pharaoh to one of the most celebrated men in
03:54history?
03:57Kent believes the first clue lies in how the tombs in the valley are decorated.
04:03He wants to understand why the imagery in Tut's tomb is so different to those belonging to more powerful pharaohs.
04:11Royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, they all follow pretty much the same standard rules, contain the same
04:18standard scenes.
04:19But the tomb of Tutankhamun is unusual.
04:24Kent heads to a different tomb, belonging to the great king Seti II, to investigate how royal tombs are traditionally
04:32decorated.
04:33Okay, let's do the other side.
04:36Inside, he forensically records every square inch of the carvings adorning the walls.
04:42Many of these artworks show scenes from the important religious text, the Book of the Dead.
04:50Their primary objective was to ensure the safe passage of the pharaoh from this life into the next.
04:56This was a major concern to Egyptians.
04:58When a pharaoh died, can we be sure the pharaoh is going to have a safe journey into the afterlife?
05:03All of the texts, all of the scenes in these tombs are designed to serve those simple functions.
05:13In ancient Egyptian beliefs, the journey to the afterlife begins as the sun sets.
05:19The pharaoh takes the route of the sun as it passes down into the underworld.
05:26Armed with spells from the walls of the tomb, he faces many challenges, including a lake of fire and a
05:33giant serpent.
05:35Most Egyptians would then face the most rigorous test, to have their heart weighed against the feather of truth.
05:43But the pharaoh was thought to be exempt.
05:46When he reaches the end, a parade of gods welcomes him to the afterlife.
05:51He is transformed into the sun god, and the sun can rise again.
05:59With the spells and prayers on the walls of the tomb acting like a guidebook for the pharaoh,
06:05the ancient engravers couldn't make a single mistake.
06:08When you look at these relief carvings, even something as straightforward as columns of hieroglyphic text,
06:15the first thing I think that strikes a person is the care, the attention to detail.
06:19The birds are meticulously shown. You can identify species of birds from the way they're depicted.
06:25The care is important because these texts are important.
06:31Most royal tombs are just as extensively decorated, with incredible attention to detail.
06:37But surprisingly, the tomb of Tutankhamun, the most famous tomb in the valley, is far less impressive.
06:49Tutankhamun's tomb is just four small chambers, each no more than 14 feet wide.
06:56At the heart of the tomb is a sparsely decorated burial room, modestly painted and with no carvings.
07:04Hidden in the walls, mysterious niches once held sacred statues.
07:10A shabti, to come to life as the pharaoh's servant.
07:14And the jackal god of the dead, Anubis.
07:18Tutankhamun's burial chamber is filled with magical decoration.
07:21But beside it, the rest of the tomb is left bare.
07:26This simple tomb is unlike any other royal tomb in the valley.
07:34All of these things conspire to make Tutankhamun's tomb unlike any other in the Valley of the Kings.
07:39And we can't be sure why.
07:44Today, Kent has a rare opportunity to study the religious texts inside Tutankhamun's burial chamber, up close.
07:54He searches for clues that might explain why they're not as elaborate as other pharaohs.
08:00Kent works with a team carefully conserving the delicate decoration.
08:06Lori Wong has found mysterious anomalies in the way the ancient walls have been painted.
08:12If we notice here, at the very base of the wall, you can see that there's drips running down.
08:16Throughout this tomb, we have drip marks.
08:18So it suggests this very fast, fluid action in terms of the application of the painting materials.
08:25Also, what's really unusual is that in this small burial chamber, each wall has a slightly different painting technique.
08:32It's unusual because one would expect, in a small chamber, that the painting technology would be the same from wall
08:38to wall.
08:41Kent has found something else strange about the imagery in the chamber.
08:45In other tombs, long corridors were filled with column after column after column of religious texts.
08:52Here, we have just a few highly abbreviated scenes.
08:57Kent has spotted an illustration of the pharaoh's journey through the underworld.
09:01But it's been dramatically simplified.
09:04We have 12 baboons shown here, each in a rectangle, each of them representing one of the 12 hours of
09:10the night,
09:11through which the deceased pharaoh has to pass to achieve immortality.
09:17The key scenes are all there.
09:20But the artwork is nowhere near as elaborate as the carvings found in Seti's tomb.
09:25The absence of detail in the religious texts is unusual by any standard.
09:31Kent believes the drip marks and abbreviated religious decoration can only mean one thing.
09:38People were operating under a time constraint here, and that accounts for a lot of the painting, the absence of
09:44detail in the religious texts on the wall, the highly abbreviated form of the Book of the Dead.
09:50Time was of the essence.
09:52For whatever reasons, political or religious or what have you, they did want to get it done quickly.
09:58So why were the painters in such a rush?
10:03To find answers, Egyptologists believe a clue lies in the abnormal size of Tutankhamun's tomb.
10:12Cavernous chambers and long snaking tunnels are the hallmarks of almost all of the tombs in the valley.
10:18Yet the tomb of Tutankhamun is the smallest of all the kings.
10:24Why?
10:35King Tutankhamun's tomb.
10:37A magical machine designed to transport Tut into the afterlife.
10:44But it's a dwarf in a valley full of giants.
10:50Most pharaohs of Egypt had colossal tombs to match their power and wealth.
11:01One example is the grand tomb of Seti I, a polished masterpiece.
11:08Its chambers are incredibly precise, with perfectly aligned pillared halls and raised relief paintings carved onto the walls.
11:20Hidden beneath King Seti's burial chamber, a rocky corridor extends over 300 feet down into the bedrock.
11:30As deep as the Great Pyramid is high.
11:33With seventeen immaculately decorated chambers, this vast burial is six times larger than the tomb of Tutankhamun.
11:48Why is Tutankhamun's tomb so small when Seti's colossal chambers are so large?
11:56Could it be the workers didn't have enough time to build something bigger?
12:04Egyptologist Catherine Rorick believes the short life of Tutankhamun might hold the key.
12:10He was about 18 when he died, and I suspect no one expected him to die as a teenager.
12:19Catherine and a team of stonemasons have journeyed into the desert to carve a tomb into the cliffs.
12:27They want to discover whether Tutankhamun's sudden death meant there wasn't enough time to build a larger tomb.
12:35It's assumed that they start building royal tombs when the pharaoh takes the throne.
12:41We think Tutankhamun came to power when he was about nine years old, and we know he ruled for about
12:46nine years.
12:49To test the theory, the team wants to carve a tomb into the rock.
12:55They will investigate how far work can progress in a day to reveal how big a tomb could be after
13:01nine years of continuous digging.
13:04They line up the entrance, then begin to carve.
13:19The work is hard and slow.
13:24The ancient Egyptians couldn't have been much faster than this.
13:27They might have started with big stone hammers.
13:31They also, by this time of Tutankhamun, had bronze chisels.
13:43Catherine assesses the progress after a shift of work.
13:48The workmen have been working for about three hours.
13:51They've made a fair amount of progress.
13:54This is about where the corner was.
13:56You can see the red there.
13:58And in here is, what, about eight inches or so?
14:03Catherine believes that at this rate, King Tut's builders would have had more than enough time to construct a bigger
14:09tomb.
14:10Ancient Egyptian workmen probably worked on the tomb every single day because you'd work for ten days and then another
14:18crew would come in.
14:19It's not like they had a weekend when nobody did anything.
14:22So, skilled ancient Egyptian workmen attacking a wall like this could have made a great deal of progress in just
14:29a year.
14:30This progress, scaled over time, would result in something far larger than Tut's tomb in just a few years.
14:39Tutankhamun reigned for nine years.
14:40So, by rights, if they began the tomb when he was young, when he was first on the throne,
14:46he could have had a tomb the same size as any of his predecessors.
14:51He should have had a more spectacular tomb than that.
14:56If construction time isn't the answer, then why is Tut's tomb so small?
15:02It's possible they hadn't begun his tomb because he was so young.
15:06He was only nine or ten when he comes to the throne.
15:08So, why would you start a tomb for somebody that young?
15:13When the boy king died unexpectedly, the workers may have rushed to create a makeshift burial chamber.
15:25One theory is when Tutankhamun died, his tomb was just a corridor.
15:30It was then a race against the clock to finish it.
15:36The corridor was hastily extended, just 14 feet wide.
15:40It was the bare minimum to house his sarcophagus.
15:46Artists moved in to paint the resurrection instructions.
15:49One drew the rough outlines in red, another corrected them in black,
15:54and painted them with color.
15:59Workers lowered Tutankhamun's sarcophagus into position,
16:02and then sealed the tomb forever.
16:10The workers had a deadline to meet, one that could not be missed.
16:16They would have had 70 to 80 days between the time he died and the time his mummification was finished.
16:22And whatever they were doing, they had to finish what they wanted to bury him in, in that amount of
16:30time.
16:31Was the tiny tomb of Tutankhamun a postponed rush job?
16:37It's possible.
16:41But some archaeologists believe there's another explanation.
16:45Could it be that Tutankhamun's tomb was built for someone else?
17:00The Valley of the Kings.
17:04This rocky landscape was the burial place of Egyptian pharaohs for over 500 years.
17:11But entrance to this vast graveyard wasn't only reserved for kings.
17:17Non-royals, priests, even pets were buried here too, in smaller, simpler tombs.
17:25Could Tutankhamun have actually been buried in one of these so-called private tombs?
17:30And if he was, why?
17:38Today, archaeologist Donald Ryan is digging in the Valley of the Kings to find answers.
17:44He thinks that Tutankhamun's tomb looks suspiciously like the private tombs that he has recently unearthed.
17:52So far, these inauspicious tombs have revealed some striking secrets.
17:58One tomb, just a shaft and a chamber.
18:02We have 13 sets of human remains in it.
18:05Another one, we found mummies of animals, including a dog, monkeys, baboons.
18:11Every one of them is different.
18:13Every one is interesting.
18:16But Don believes there are striking similarities between the small scale of Tutankhamun's tomb and these simpler private tombs.
18:27There are several different plans for them.
18:30The simplest being a shaft that leads to a single room.
18:37There are others a little more elaborate, with rooms off to the side and stairs.
18:42Some of the larger ones might have a pillar on the inside.
18:47But Tut's tomb has one giant difference.
18:51His huge, elaborate sarcophagus.
18:59Inside the tomb stands the rare quartzite sarcophagus of Tutankhamun.
19:06Within it lies the seven-foot coffin weighing over a ton and gilded with gold leaf.
19:13But nested inside two Russian doll layers is a coffin of solid gold decorated with gems.
19:24Finally, at its core, the mummy of the Boy King.
19:29Wearing a golden death mask for recognition in the afterlife.
19:35This royal entombment protected the Boy King's body for millennia.
19:48Don explores inside an undecorated private tomb.
19:54He's never found a large stone sarcophagus in one of these tombs.
19:58The tombs of rulers have a great sarcophagus.
20:03But in these smaller tombs, the coffins can be very, very nice.
20:06But they're not in large stone boxes with heavy stone lids on them.
20:13Don is convinced that a small private tomb, just like this one,
20:17was hijacked to house the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun.
20:22The tomb itself was probably not intended for him.
20:28Inside the tomb of Tutankhamun, archaeologists find another clue.
20:35They believe that this chunk of rock, cut from one of the walls,
20:40is evidence of a string of blunders caused by conducting a royal burial in a tiny tomb.
20:49Giant gilded panels needed to be lowered into the tomb to form a shrine.
20:53But archaeologists suspect they were too big.
20:56And workers had to cut chunks out of the wall to squeeze them in.
21:01There is also evidence the sarcophagus lid cracked right down the middle.
21:06And workers had to fill the crack with gypsum plaster and paint over the damage.
21:12Then, when the wooden coffin was laid inside, it appears the lid wouldn't close,
21:17as workers had to chop off the toes to seal the mummy inside.
21:23And finally, when the tight-fitting flat-packed panels were placed around the body,
21:28they would only have left a few inches to spare for the workers to back out.
21:36Many people believe that there is another tomb that was probably being prepared for him,
21:41but it wasn't ready, it wasn't finished.
21:43But here was a tomb that could be put to use for the unexpected burial of Tutankhamun.
21:51If Tut's tomb wasn't built for him, who was it built for?
21:56It fits the profile of a high-status private individual that is someone other than the ruler.
22:03Maybe it's a queen, maybe it's a prince, princess.
22:07Someone obviously very special, but not the ruler.
22:11Whoever the intended occupant, the tomb transformed the fate of Tutankhamun.
22:18That's because something else made Tut's tomb unique.
22:22It was found in near-perfect condition.
22:26Almost every one of these tombs, with a couple of notable exceptions,
22:30was robbed in ancient times.
22:33But the tomb of Tutankhamun, it was found virtually intact.
22:39Ancient looters stripped most of these tombs bare,
22:43long before they were uncovered by archaeologists.
22:48How did Tut's tomb elude robbers?
22:50For over 3,000 years.
23:03Tutankhamun's tomb.
23:05A small and makeshift burial built for a nobleman, not a king.
23:11Yet it remained hidden for millennia.
23:15The tomb protected the body of Tutankhamun for over 3,000 years.
23:20It even managed to defend his golden treasures from the Valley of the King's biggest threat.
23:28Grave robbers.
23:31Ancient Egyptians' monuments suffered a lot from the robbery activities everywhere in Egypt.
23:40Archaeologist Essam Shihab understands the threat posed by thieves better than most.
23:46We have very few examples for the intact tombs which are found during the history of ancient Egypt.
23:53Essam has explored many tombs in the region.
23:57But the mummies he recovers are always badly damaged and their treasures stolen.
24:02The ancient Egyptians believed that they will have a life again in the afterlife.
24:06For this reason they did their best to hide their tombs and bury their treasures.
24:17The Egyptians went to great lengths to protect the tombs of their rulers.
24:21The tomb of Tutankhamun was no different.
24:25A false wall blocked off the burial chamber.
24:29And a plastered doorway sealed the tomb entrance.
24:34In front of it, 40 tons of rubble packed the corridor from floor to ceiling, creating a solid 25-foot
24:42barricade.
24:44A third doorway plugged the entrance securely shut, stamped with the Pharaoh's seal.
24:51These three solid layers of protection were then buried beneath chippings to camouflage the tomb in the barren valley landscape.
25:02Were these defenses the reason that Tutankhamun was left intact?
25:08Essam isn't so sure.
25:10Today, he's investigating other tombs from the era of Tutankhamun, in the nearby Valley of the Nobles.
25:20Most of these tombs had similar defenses to Tut's chamber, but all suffered multiple break-ins.
25:27We didn't find anything belonging to the owner of this tomb because everything has been already stolen by the rubbers.
25:35Essam wants to investigate why the layers of security failed to protect this tomb.
25:41He already knows the most common ways thieves used to break in.
25:49Throughout the valley, the necropolis police stood guard.
25:54But at night, visibility was poor and the tombs were vulnerable.
26:00Robbers often bribed the guards to tell them where to find the entrances.
26:04They could then tunnel through the rubble and break the plastered doorways to get into the tomb.
26:12Later tombs featured 50-foot-deep pits.
26:17But the robbers smashed the false walls and climbed through with ropes.
26:23They robbed all the treasures they could carry.
26:27Then set fire to the tomb, using the inferno to extract the valuable gold leaf.
26:35But at the tomb Essam is exploring, things were a little different.
26:40Here, the main entrance remained sealed.
26:43Yet thieves managed to steal all the treasures hidden inside.
26:49Essam is searching for clues as to how the robbers broke in.
26:52We have excavated and noticed a truncation cut.
26:58They cut through the floor, trying to get into the tomb before getting the treasure.
27:08Even if they couldn't find the entrance, the tomb raiders knew they could just dig down into the earth and
27:15hope to strike it rich.
27:18Essam heads inside and finds another clue.
27:22We believe that this brick was made by the first robber who tried to get the treasures from inside the
27:29tomb.
27:32Once they'd found the tomb, thieves smashed through the walls to find every piece of hidden treasure.
27:39Here.
27:40We believe that this was robbery activity here.
27:43When the robber entered a tomb, he tried by haphazard way to cut into any place for finding the treasure.
27:53It seems the grave robbers were so greedy and desperate to get inside, no defenses could hold them back.
28:06It was even common for tomb raiders to smash up mummies in the hope of finding valuable jewelry.
28:12We have found lots of the human remains.
28:16They were found as fragments.
28:19We found lots of skulls, separate skulls, and we have found lots of different parts of the body.
28:27Broken limbs, fractured skulls, and fire damage show how far looters went in their pursuit of treasure.
28:35This brick could be as a result of looting the tombs, destroying the tombs and everything inside the tomb.
28:44Whatever the ancient Egyptians did to protect their tombs, thieves would find a way in.
28:52So how did Tutankhamun manage to avoid such brutal treatment with identical defenses?
29:00If the sealed doors and hidden entrance of Tutankhamun's tomb didn't keep robbers away, what did?
29:09Now, new discoveries suggest that a terrifying force of nature may have provided the greatest defense of all.
29:24The tombs of the ancient pharaohs once held fortunes in gold.
29:29But these riches didn't last for long.
29:33Tomb raiders smashed their way into nearly every chamber in the valley, stripping them bare.
29:40With one notable exception.
29:43There are 62 tombs in the East Valley of the Kings.
29:48Tutankhamun is certainly the most famous of the bunch.
29:50It was one of the very few tombs, not just in the valley, but anywhere in Egypt, that was intact
29:56when it was found.
29:59Egyptologist Kent Weeks is on the hunt for clues as to why Tut's tomb remained intact.
30:06He spotted something interesting in photographs taken when the tomb was first discovered by archaeologist Howard Carter.
30:14Carter had worked for many years in the Valley of the Kings before becoming, I would say, almost fixated on
30:20the possibility of there being a tomb belonging to Tutankhamun, who at that time was largely unknown, even to Egyptologists.
30:33When Carter's men unearthed the tomb, they found it crammed with earthly treasure and items the king would need in
30:42the afterlife.
30:44Six dismantled chariots, his childhood throne, and provisions of food and wine.
30:52Two statues of the boy king stood guard by his burial chamber.
30:57Beyond the false wall, a massive shrine filled the room from wall to wall with the glimmer of gold.
31:06Hidden in the treasury, the king's internal organs lay mummified in a golden shrine.
31:12This trove of grave goods was left untouched for over 3,000 years.
31:18One of the few tombs in the valley to survive.
31:25Kent believes that photos of Carter's excavation hold a clue to how Tutankhamun's treasure was kept safe.
31:32This is a photograph of Carter's workmen.
31:35It was here, eventually, they would uncover the tomb of Tutankhamun.
31:38It was in an area where nobody had expected anything, but that's because so much material had obscured the entrance
31:45to what turned out to be the most exciting discovery in the Valley of the Kings.
31:50Look at the size of these boulders, the size of basketballs, some of them weighing 50, 60 kilos each.
31:57Kent believes these boulders weren't put there by the Egyptians.
32:04Today, he's looking for evidence of a natural event that may have buried Tut's tomb much deeper than its neighbors.
32:11Kent thinks a clue lies in the graffiti on this towering cliff face.
32:17We know of about 2,000 graffiti here on the hillsides in the Valley of the Kings, and they record
32:24little bits of everything.
32:25And these are brief glimpses of what life might have been like back in ancient days.
32:31Kent scours the cliff for the faint inscription.
32:36My God, it's difficult.
32:41Yeah, this is it.
32:43Just, it looks like nothing.
32:45But it is, in fact, a proper inscription.
32:49This is the record of a scribe who brought three of his sons here to observe the results of a
32:55flash flood.
32:58Kent believes that a big flood would have dragged tons of boulders along for the ride.
33:04Presumably, the waters washed off this cliff, bringing with it tons of flood debris.
33:11Sand, gravel, limestone blocks, some of which you can see down here weighing 100 kilos or more.
33:17And depositing a vast amount of water right here.
33:21An unusual enough event that he wanted to bring his children to come and see it.
33:29Kent thinks that a desert storm may have triggered a flash flood.
33:34Cascading water into the valley and over Tutankhamun's tomb.
33:41The river dumped layers of rocks and sediment over the closed entrance.
33:46When the hot Egyptian sun baked the mud, it set like concrete sealing the tomb beneath.
33:53Years later, tomb builders unwittingly covered the area with stone chippings and built work huts on top.
34:02Over 3,000 years, more earth piled over, making Tutankhamun's tomb the safest in Egypt's history.
34:15Kent is curious to discover what effect a flash flood may have had.
34:20We've been trying to figure out the flood patterns that occurred in dynastic times, where the water would go, how
34:27much of it is likely to hit in the area of Tutankhamun, burying the entrance of that tomb and concealing
34:33it.
34:34He maps the valley to figure out where water would flow.
34:38Right in the heart of the valley is KV 62, the tomb of Tutankhamun.
34:43It's located in a very central position.
34:46If there is rainfall almost anywhere, that water is going to wash down into the valley at considerable speed and
34:55bearing a lot of flood debris right into the entrance of the tomb.
35:00Buried beneath so much rubble, Tut's tomb would have been almost impossible to find.
35:06When Howard Carter came along to excavate that area, he saw the workman's huts, he saw flood debris below it,
35:14and decided initially there's probably nothing here.
35:17But he persisted in his excavations.
35:20He dug through a workman's village, through flood debris, until finally he discovered the tomb he really had been looking
35:27for all along.
35:36Tutankhamun's treasure was protected by a flood.
35:38But that stroke of luck still doesn't answer all the questions.
35:43If Egyptians knew there was a pharaoh's fortune hidden in the flood-damaged valley,
35:49why didn't the ancient thieves go looking for it, just like Carter did in the 20s?
35:55Today, new research is unraveling a sordid tale of high politics and intrigue
36:02that could have safeguarded the boy king's tomb by erasing him from history.
36:16The tomb of King Tutankhamun.
36:19A flash flood concealed an unprecedented hoard of Egyptian treasure that made Tut world famous.
36:26But a flood might not have been the only reason that the tomb laid untouched for over 3,000 years.
36:34Today, Kent Weeks is crossing the Nile to find clues for another possibility.
36:40That perhaps nobody knew the tomb existed.
36:44He believes the name, Tutankhamun, could have been deliberately scrubbed from ancient records.
36:50Nobody had been looking for the tomb of this person.
36:53His name probably didn't even register on the list of pharaohs that earlier excavators were looking for.
36:59By most criterion, Tutankhamun would be an unremarkable, unimportant, almost unknown pharaoh.
37:12Kent wants to investigate inscriptions in the vast temple complex at Luxor.
37:22Ancient Luxor was the religious and political center of the Egyptian Empire for hundreds of years.
37:28The art on the walls represents Egypt's greatest rulers.
37:33Tutankhamun's name should be everywhere, but it's not.
37:38And Kent believes Tutankhamun's father, Akhenaten, is to blame.
37:45Akhenaten's major changes were closing the temples of virtually all Egyptian deities.
37:50The temples played a very active role in the economy of Egypt.
37:54And so by closing the temples, he was in effect gutting the whole foundation of the Egyptian economic structure.
38:02So this affected almost all aspects of Egyptian society.
38:06It also presumably put a lot of people out of work.
38:09It was a traumatic time.
38:12Kent believes Akhenaten was so unpopular that his son, Tutankhamun, was tarred with the same brush and his name wiped
38:21from the temple.
38:29Kent finds evidence in a carving of a fresh-faced young pharaoh.
38:34This is the beginning of the procession.
38:36Up at the top, a representation of the king.
38:40He believes this figure can only be King Tut.
38:43But surprisingly, the hieroglyphs next to the picture read a different name.
38:50Here is his name, Tutankhamun.
38:52It's been erased and replaced by his successor.
38:55The name is now Horemheb.
38:58The carving on the right appears to be deeper than those around it.
39:02Kent sees this as evidence that the original name was chiseled out.
39:07And Horemheb's name was carved in the space.
39:11One of the first things that Horemheb did when he took over the throne from young Tutankhamun
39:16was to try to expunge from the record any evidence of this heretical period.
39:22Akhenaten and Tutankhamun were so disliked that Horemheb tried to remove all trace of them.
39:29Later rulers, including Ramses II, went after this kind of work big time, erasing the name of Akhenaten and Tutankhamun
39:37wherever he found it.
39:40Tutankhamun was scrubbed from the history books.
39:43So until Howard Carter came along, nobody thought to look for the forgotten tomb of the forgotten pharaoh.
39:51It's ironic in a way that this young boy king, who didn't have any authority,
39:56who probably was sitting at home playing with his toys, became one of the most powerful symbols of ancient Egypt.
40:03Because his tomb survived intact, Tutankhamun has risen from minor pharaoh to the most famous of them all.
40:12On tomb inscriptions from the old kingdom onward, there are often texts that say,
40:18O ye traveler, if you pass by this tomb and speak my name, I will richly reward you.
40:23Why? Because you could ensure the eternal life of an individual simply by repeating his name.
40:31And who of all the pharaohs in Egypt has his name repeated more often every day by millions of people
40:38around the world than Tutankhamun?
40:41Tutankhamun. Tutankhamun.
40:44He, above all other pharaohs, I think is guaranteed eternal life.
40:51When the boy king died, his mummy was rushed into a tomb never meant for a pharaoh.
40:57This rushed job, a flash flood, and a final act of treachery transformed a minor king from obscurity into a
41:06modern-day legend.
41:08For three thousand years, his mummy lay undisturbed inside his golden coffin,
41:15surrounded by hordes of shimmering treasures.
41:19He alone has stepped over his greatest rivals to achieve the goal of all pharaohs.
41:27Immortality.
41:27Immortality.
41:28Immortality.
41:31Immortality.
41:42Immortality.
41:44Immortality.
41:44Immortality.
41:45Immortality.
41:46Immortality.
41:47Immortality.
41:47Immortality.
41:48Immortality.
41:49Immortality.
41:50Immortality.
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