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Archaeology And Expedition
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00:06EGYPT
00:07Egypt, the richest source of archaeological treasures on the planet.
00:13Oh, whoa, look at that!
00:17Hidden beneath this desert landscape
00:21lie the secrets of this ancient civilization.
00:27I never seen something like this.
00:30Now, for a full season of excavations,
00:33our cameras have been given unprecedented access
00:36to follow teams on the front line of archaeology.
00:41This is the most critical moment.
00:45Revealing buried treasures.
00:47Oh, we're lucky today.
00:49Wow, lots of mummies.
00:52The smell is horrible.
00:54And making discoveries that could rewrite ancient history.
00:58We've never had the proof.
01:00Until now.
01:01This is where it all started.
01:05My goodness, I never expected this.
01:10This time, archaeologists hunt for evidence of the death of the pyramids.
01:15My God, these pieces are huge.
01:19Claire follows the tracks of the craftsmen tasked with building the giant monuments.
01:24You can see very clearly that this site was abandoned here.
01:27Miriam uncovers the mysteries of the pharaoh's temples.
01:32This is from tomb 22, the mummy deposit.
01:36And Alejandro comes face to face with the afterlife.
01:40It's incredible.
01:40In the long forgotten tombs of Egypt's far south.
01:45I have no words.
01:58I have no words.
02:02The mighty pyramids.
02:04The mighty pyramids of Giza.
02:05The pyramids once housed the bodies of the pharaohs.
02:10But though ancient Egyptian civilization lasted for nearly 3,000 years,
02:15its kings only built huge tombs like these for a few centuries.
02:21Egyptologists are still trying to piece together why the pharaohs stopped constructing giant pyramids.
02:29For Egyptologist Chris Norton, the majesty of the ancient structures makes the fact that Egyptians gave up building them all
02:37the more incredible.
02:40Ten miles south of the legendary pyramids of Giza is Saqqara.
02:46When we think about pyramids, we tend to think of Giza, I think, and the great pyramid of Khufu in
02:51particular.
02:51But actually, this is where it all began.
02:53Chris has come to the birthplace of pyramid building to search for clues to why Egyptians built giant pyramids for
03:01less than 500 years.
03:04Constructed a century before the iconic pyramids at Giza, Egypt's first pyramid is a 200-foot-tall mausoleum of six
03:13huge limestone platforms,
03:16carefully engineered to spread the weight of rock and prevent collapse.
03:23Deep inside is a giant shaft, 26 feet wide and 82 feet deep.
03:31At the bottom, the intended final resting place of the pharaoh Josa.
03:37Ultimately, that's what it's all about.
03:38That's where the body of the king is going to rest in eternity.
03:41And to have gone to all this trouble to create this incredible monument around the body of that person, it's
03:47pretty amazing.
03:49To house his mummy, huge chunks of granite were slid down a passage into the shaft and stacked, creating a
03:56giant sarcophagus 19 feet long and 11 feet high.
04:01My god, these pieces are huge.
04:06Wow, it's amazing.
04:10But this wasn't just a tomb designed to secure the pharaoh's physical body for eternity.
04:17Crucially for success in the afterlife, the pyramid ensured the king was remembered by the living.
04:25Completed around 2650 BC, it sparked an architectural revolution.
04:34Josa's six-tier giant wasn't just the first pyramid.
04:38It was the world's first monumental structure built in stone.
04:43Over the next century, Egypt's kings developed the concept, building monumental tombs all along the Nile's west bank, including the
04:52first geometrically true pyramid, the Red Pyramid, and a misshapen experiment, the Bent Pyramid.
05:01Then, a dynasty of pharaohs built the most iconic monuments in Egypt, the Pyramids of Giza.
05:09But just a few short centuries after the Great Pyramid of Khufu rose from the desert, a new era was
05:15on the horizon.
05:20400 miles south of the pyramids, in modern-day Aswan, is the heart of ancient Egypt's southernmost province.
05:30Professor Alejandro Jimenez Serrano has spent 11 seasons here, unearthing the burials of the region's wealthy governors.
05:39He believes they played a part in the pyramids' demise.
05:45The pyramids were symbols of power, separating the kings from the rest of society, offering them privileged access to the
05:53afterlife.
05:54But as the pharaohs erected their pyramids in the north, southern elites were becoming richer, and making their own plans
06:02for eternity, digging increasingly elaborate tombs deep into the cliffs.
06:08Today, Alejandro's excavating a new area of their ancient necropolis.
06:14Ancient Egyptian society is reflected on the cemeteries, so we can see how the life was just excavating the tombs.
06:25It's 8am, and his team has already called in a find.
06:31We will see if we are lucky with this discovery. Not every day you discover a tomb, so finger crossed.
06:41A smooth area of rock excites the crew.
06:45In this area, you can see the ancient carving, trying to make a plane that was going to be the
06:53facade of the tomb.
06:54The naturally jagged rock face has been smoothed with ancient chisels.
07:00If this is an elite tomb, it could have inscriptions which shed light on the role the governors played in
07:07the pyramid's decline.
07:09This is the typical tomb of members of the elite here in Quintalhaua.
07:16So what we are looking for is the door.
07:23400 miles down river, on the Nile's west bank, Chris has come to Giza to explore the peak of pyramid
07:32building.
07:33He wants to understand how these monuments evolved from the early pyramids at Saqqara,
07:39and to search for clues to explain why they were abandoned.
07:44These stone giants included new designs to protect the body of the pharaoh from robbers after his death.
07:53On the outside of Khufu's great pyramid, a seamless cover of gleaming limestone slabs and blocks concealed the only way
08:02into the pyramid.
08:04A narrow tunnel, 60 feet above the ground.
08:07But this passage too was sealed.
08:12Intruders would have to break through huge six foot deep granite blocks to reach a steep shaft leading to the
08:19centre of the pyramid.
08:22At the top, they would face three more massive granite slabs.
08:28Before they finally reached the tomb chamber, where the king and his riches lay buried.
08:39Alongside the great pyramid, Khufu's son, Khafre, built his own pyramid.
08:45And below it, a complex of monuments and temples designed to aid his successful resurrection.
08:53Priests would come here to make offerings in the shadow of the pyramid, ensuring the pharaoh's name was kept alive.
09:02One of these monuments, carefully positioned, is the ancient world's most enigmatic sculpture.
09:09The Great Sphinx.
09:11The Egyptians were very interested in alignments.
09:15And one of the great achievements here at the Giza Plateau is in their ability to lay out monuments like
09:21this on a vast scale.
09:23The Sphinx and the temple in front of it and the pyramid behind are actually all very carefully aligned with
09:28one another.
09:30Chris searches for evidence of when the pharaohs abandoned their monuments.
09:36Between the creature's paws, he finds a slab of a different stone, added a thousand years later.
09:44The Dream Stealer.
09:48It's called the Dream Stealer because the text describes a story in which, before he was king, Tuthmosis IV had
09:58a dream in which the Sphinx spoke to him.
10:01And the Sphinx says, I'm not in terribly good condition. I've fallen into disrepair.
10:06The hieroglyphs claim the Sphinx had been allowed to drown in the desert sands, but that Tuthmosis would be rewarded
10:15for restoring the sculpture to its former glory.
10:18If Tuthmosis IV to be could make the repairs that are necessary and clear the sand away, then in exchange
10:27the Sphinx itself will bestow the kingship upon the young prince.
10:32So, in other words, the deal is, if Tuthmosis IV does what the Sphinx wants, he'll become king.
10:39Tuthmosis believed that to become pharaoh, he had to please his glorious ancestors and make sure the ancient pharaoh's monuments
10:47were remembered and respected.
10:50When he became pharaoh, Tuthmosis did renovate the Sphinx during a period known as the New Kingdom, the pinnacle of
11:00Egyptian power in a history stretching back thousands of years.
11:05The first small settlements sprang up on the Nile around 5000 BC, farming the fertile land and eventually growing into
11:14the state of Egypt.
11:17Around 2700 BC, the old kingdom began, the time of the great pyramid builders.
11:25But in 2175 BC, their civilization came crashing down, as rule disintegrated and Egypt descended into chaos.
11:37500 years later, the new kingdom was born, the golden age of Tutankhamun, Queen Nefertiti and Ramesses the Great.
11:47But these pharaohs built no pyramids at all.
11:53By the time Tuthmosis IV had rescued the Sphinx from the sands, the pharaoh's construction of Egypt's most iconic monuments
12:01had been totally abandoned.
12:03But why?
12:0775 miles to the east of the pyramids is Ain Soukna on Egypt's Red Sea coast.
12:14French archaeologist Claire Somaglino has been digging up ancient structures here for nine years.
12:22She believes this remote outpost holds secrets that explain the pyramids' boom and bust.
12:30Many of the structures she has found date to the peak of pyramid construction.
12:38We have multiple layers of the old kingdom here from the very beginning of the use of the site during
12:45the reign of Khafre.
12:45But of all the buildings she unearths, none shows any sign of long-term occupation. Ain Soukna appears to be
12:54an encampment.
12:56There are dwellings and workshops and a cooking area and everything they need during an expedition.
13:03So they just occupy the site for two or three months.
13:07Claire searches for clues to what this camp could reveal about Egypt's Age of the Pyramid builders.
13:15Graffiti carved into a nearby rock face could provide evidence.
13:26In the cliffs above Ain Soukna, the dry environment has preserved etchings in the rock made by people who passed
13:34through.
13:34Some of the carvings date back only half a century, but others are thousands of years old.
13:43The most ancient ones preserved are these inscriptions of the king Montotep IV.
13:50And it says that in the first year of the reign of this king, he sent an expedition to retrieve
13:57copper.
13:58And just after Montotep IV, Amenimat I sent an expedition of 4,000 men this time.
14:05So huge expeditions at that time.
14:09The graffiti suggests the camp of Ain Soukna was a staging post in a supply chain.
14:15One providing a resource that the pharaohs needed more than any other for their pyramid building.
14:21The must have metal for ancient stone carving.
14:25Copper.
14:26Claire believes it came from the mines of Sinai across the Red Sea.
14:34When the pharaoh needed more copper, he sent an army of workers east across the desert.
14:42Some of them carried flat-packed boats, which were assembled at the coast, and sailed across the Red Sea.
14:51The men spent two months laboring in the mines of the Sinai, digging out hundreds of pounds of copper ore.
14:59And once they'd filled up the ships, they returned with the ore to the mainland, ready to haul back to
15:06the Nile and to the pyramids.
15:13The discoveries reveal the port of Ain Soukna was critical to building the largest structures the world had ever seen.
15:21Copper was a strategic resource for them because they used copper to make some tools, and that was very important
15:29to the construction sites for pyramids, the Sphinx, and big monuments at that time.
15:37If Claire's to find evidence here of the pyramids downfall, she needs to dig.
15:45On the west bank of the Nile, Egypt's ancient land of the dead, hieroglyphics expert Christel Alvarez is at the
15:54pyramid archaeologists consider to be the last built in the great age of pyramids.
16:00The tomb of Pharaoh Pepi II was built 400 years after the original step pyramid at Saqqara.
16:10Oh, wow. It's beautiful. And all the colors, the green color is still so vivid.
16:18She hunts for clues to why the obsession with pyramid building began to end here.
16:27Hieroglyphs cover almost every surface, including the royal sign bearing the pharaoh's name.
16:34So this is the cartoon of the king, and it says that he will live, he will not die, and
16:39it's just the same text that is repeated and repeated over and over again.
16:44The walls of Khufu's tomb in the great pyramid at Giza were left blank.
16:50But here, in Pepi's tomb, they're filled with incantations designed to help the pharaoh enter the underworld safely.
16:59What we can see from one pyramid to another is this desire to include as many texts as possible and
17:06to use all the available space to inscribe the text.
17:11As the age of the pyramids progressed, the pharaohs filled their tombs with more and more magical protection for their
17:18bodies and souls.
17:20The texts kept their faith in the power of the pyramids alive, just as their power over the kingdom of
17:27Egypt was about to collapse.
17:35Pepi II's rule was marred by droughts, famine and civil unrest.
17:44Worried about his afterlife, he covered his tomb in magical inscriptions to guarantee his spirit's security.
17:54When Pepi died without an heir, a power struggle ensued, resulting in a century of weak, short-lived kings.
18:04Lacking wealth and resources, their pyramids were tiny, compared to the mighty structures of the Great Pyramid Age.
18:15During the end of the old kingdom, we do have many kings that ruled for short periods of time, and
18:21most of them we don't have found any of their burial tombs.
18:27The pyramid, a tradition that defined a civilization, was effectively extinct.
18:34At Kobet el-Hawa, near the southern Egyptian city of Aswan, Alejandro hopes the burials of ancient Egypt's most powerful
18:44elites could help explain the death of the pyramids.
18:49If this chiseled flat rock wall is a tomb, their secrets could be just below his feet.
18:56He spots another clue that a door is nearby.
19:01We have here remains of termites.
19:05They used to eat the fresh wood of the coffins.
19:10We are following the pathway of the insects.
19:14With delicate artefacts potentially close, the team needs Alejandro's experienced hand.
19:21Here we have the entrance.
19:25Amazing.
19:29Aha!
19:31The end of the door.
19:32The end of the door.
19:42It's amazing.
19:47Yep.
19:48I have no words.
19:51Probably we are the first that see this door in more than 4,000 years.
19:56The neatly cut opening matches the style for elites in southern Egypt at the end of the pyramid age.
20:04It's a huge moment for the entire team.
20:07Mabruk! Mabruk!
20:08Shukran!
20:10The race is on to open up the doorway before the site closes for the day in just a few
20:15hours' time.
20:25It's already mid-morning on Alejandro's dig at Kobet el Hawa, and the workers' shift ends at 1 p.m.
20:33Termites may have led him to an elite burial, but to expose the doorway, the team must excavate not just
20:39the opening, but the entire area in front of the tomb.
20:43If they don't, the sand will just flow right back in.
20:52It allows Alejandro a moment to remind himself what he's looking for, evidence of powerful Egyptian nobles, whose rise spelled
21:01the end of the age of the pyramids.
21:04In the period that we are excavating, the head of the state was the king, and under him was the
21:10vizier, and below the vizier we have their provincial governors.
21:15So, these people, we might say that they were the number three in the state.
21:21Over eleven seasons working here, Alejandro has found evidence that in this era of Egyptian history, the pharaohs were losing
21:30their grip on power.
21:33While the kings got weaker, the governors of Egypt's provinces got richer.
21:39Alejandro discovers that just as Pharaoh Pepi II was building what would prove to be the last great pyramid, the
21:48tombs of the governors at Kobet el Hawa were expanding.
21:52Over the course of Pepi's reign, they increased in size five-fold.
21:58The afterlife wasn't just for pharaohs, and pyramids weren't the only kind of tomb that could get you there.
22:06This is what we hope to find in the tomb that we have just discovered.
22:11It is a false door, and it was the magic door that the dead used to receive the offerings.
22:20Egyptians believed the spirit of the deceased would reveal itself to visitors, taking offerings of food to sustain it in
22:27the afterlife.
22:29If the new tomb has a false door, it could hold a wealth of hieroglyphic information about how powerful the
22:37governors had become at the end of the pyramid age.
22:41What we are hoping to find in the new tomb is inscriptions showing us not only the name, but also
22:48his position in the society.
22:51With the site ready to close for the day at 1pm, they have excavated just far enough for one person
22:58to enter.
23:01Alejandro gives in to temptation.
23:10We have a lot of sand.
23:15And there is no trace of plundering.
23:20Looting was rife in ancient Egypt.
23:25Even the giant pyramids at Giza were ransacked and cleared of valuables.
23:32With no evidence of robbery, there's good reason for Alejandro to be optimistic about the treasures that may lie beneath
23:39the tons of sand.
23:42Archaeology is patient.
23:44It's a patient work that sometimes has lucky strikes.
23:52At Ain Sukna, on Egypt's Red Sea coast, Claire's team opens a new trench at the ancient encampment.
24:02Her colleague, archaeologist Adeline Batts, is piecing together the history of the pharaoh's copper expeditions.
24:10Adeline is drawing the stratigraphy that we have here.
24:13This is a very interesting one because you can see all the different layers of occupation of this part of
24:20the site.
24:20Can you help me?
24:22No, I can't help you. I'll see what you're doing.
24:25We have some ceramic.
24:27She notices a gap in the record.
24:31So you can see very clearly the different occupation layers because you have ashes mixed with clay and sand.
24:38And so we have these old kingdom layers here.
24:43It's very clear in the stratigraphy that this site was abandoned here.
24:48A thick layer of mud laid down over decades by winds and flooding covers the ashes of the workers' cooking
24:54fires from the age of the pyramids.
24:57The discovery shows no one came here for a century or more.
25:02It's critical evidence of the death of the pyramids, revealing that the pharaohs gave up their copper expeditions.
25:10The decline in their wealth meant they could no longer afford to build giant pyramids.
25:14As quickly as it had begun, the pyramid age was over.
25:21But the pharaoh's belief in the afterlife was stronger than ever.
25:25So how did later kings protect their bodies and secure their passage to eternity?
25:41700 years after the pharaoh Pepe II built the last great pyramid.
25:47The pharaohs of the new kingdom had re-established their supreme power in Egypt.
25:52And moved their capital south to Thebes, modern day Luxor.
26:00The pharaohs of the new kingdom.
26:01Chris crosses the Nile river here to investigate how the new kingdom rulers sought to guarantee their afterlife.
26:08These wealthy pharaohs could have afforded tombs as grand as Khufu's great pyramid.
26:15But during the chaos following the end of the old pharaoh's reign, the ancient pyramids were ransacked.
26:23Ancient texts describe the turmoil as bodies were cast out from tombs.
26:27The pharaohs and funerary goods disappeared.
26:30The pharaohs mummies were stolen or destroyed, along with their dreams of eternal life.
26:37Desperate to avoid that fate, the pioneering new kingdom pharaoh, Tothmosis I, embarked on a revolution in royal tomb building.
26:48Echoing the governors in the south, he decided to cut his tomb into the rock.
26:53His plan to protect his mummy was to hide.
27:01In a valley west of Thebes, the king picked a spot and dug a shaft over 600 feet deep into
27:09the mountain.
27:11It had subterranean chambers for the riches he'd take into the afterlife.
27:17And in a lavish tomb at the bottom of the tunnel, a sarcophagus would keep his body safe.
27:25Following his example, nearly every pharaoh for the next 500 years dug tombs into the mountain here to provide underworld
27:34palaces,
27:35creating a subterranean city of dead royals that became known as the Valley of the Kings.
27:44One of the best-preserved tombs in the valley belonged to one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs, Ramesses III.
27:54As soon as you enter this tomb, you're really struck by the sort of monumental scale,
27:59all the surfaces are decorated, hieroglyphic inscriptions everywhere, large images of the king.
28:06Really, really impressive.
28:10Just as Pepe II covered the last great pyramid with hieroglyphic spells,
28:15Ramesses hoped magical art would secure his dangerous passage to resurrection.
28:21It's a very perilous journey, it's a very hazardous journey,
28:24and he encounters all kinds of demons along his way,
28:27but with the help of the gods who accompany him throughout the tomb,
28:31he's able to make that journey successfully.
28:32The New Kingdom pharaohs believed their rock-cut tombs would protect their mummies where the pyramids had failed.
28:40But Ramesses architects left nothing to chance, designing precipitous shafts as they tunneled into the rock.
28:48This is a pretty important part of the tomb. It's a well shaft, which is a characteristic feature of tombs
28:53in the Valley of the Kings,
28:54designed to deter robbers, beautifully decorated with images of gods.
28:59Even buried hundreds of feet down in the heart of the mountain, Ramesses feared his tomb would be pillaged.
29:06Even though the tomb would have been sealed,
29:08and the idea would have been, of course, that nobody would ever come in here again,
29:13it's still incredibly beautifully decorated,
29:18for the eyes of the gods only, perhaps.
29:23There was just one problem. To live on in eternity, a king needed not just to preserve his body,
29:30he had to be remembered by the living.
29:33The pyramids had monuments and temples attached where priests celebrated the memory of the dead pharaoh.
29:40Ramesses did not want to advertise the location of his body and his riches with a pyramid,
29:45but he still needed a monument to keep his name alive.
29:51On the west bank of the Nile, near Thebes,
29:55Ramesses erected a gigantic 80-foot gate,
29:59on which he carved huge images of himself smiting his foes.
30:05Behind it, his mortuary temple, two courtyards lined with his statues,
30:11led to a series of chapels and a false door,
30:16where priests would make offerings and repeat his name.
30:22Surrounding the temple, he built mud-brick walls 30-foot thick,
30:26stretching more than half a mile,
30:29to turn his temple into a fortress of worship.
30:37Just a mile from Ramesses temple,
30:40lies another great monument to a new kingdom pharaoh.
30:45Tuthmosis III's Temple of Millions of Years.
30:49The temple has crumbled since ancient times,
30:52but Dr. Miriam Seco Alvarez is leading a project to resurrect the site.
30:58When we started the project in 2008,
31:02all this was a mountain of sun, nothing was visible.
31:07She wants to discover exactly how these new monuments were intended to secure the pharaoh's afterlife,
31:14without a pyramid.
31:16Archaeologist Manuel Abayera searches outside the walls for clues to how the temple was used.
31:25He meticulously records every find workers unearthed around the temple walls.
31:34Ah, nice. Shukran.
31:38Ancient Egyptians made offerings of food, like dates, to the memory of the pharaoh.
31:44But among the 3,500-year-old fruit, he finds more valuable objects.
31:50We have jars that had beer inside. It's one of the most important offerings in the past.
31:58We have found thousands of jars here.
32:01The beer jar offerings mean archaeologist Javier Martinez Babon can track the temple's history.
32:08Some bear the signature hieroglyphs of later pharaohs.
32:13Here, for example, we have the name of Tuthmose IV.
32:18Here we have the name of Tutankhamun.
32:21Other kings and other queens gave these offerings for the memory of the king.
32:28The jars prove that for centuries, Egypt's rulers made offerings at this temple to keep Tuthmose III's name alive,
32:37while his mummy lay safely hidden in the valley of the kings.
32:42But Miriam is discovering that Egyptians didn't just leave offerings of beer and food at the temple.
32:49With just minutes before the site closes for the day, Miriam's team unearths a burial.
32:57The site has strict time curfews, and a skeleton can't be left exposed overnight.
33:04If we find a body, we have to remove it on the same day.
33:08If we find something special, we have to remove it to be secure.
33:14The team scrambles to move the ancient skeleton before the site shuts down.
33:20In 20 minutes, we will finish. So that's why we are a little in a hurry.
33:26But I am about a sombra, apparently a sombra.
33:28With minutes to go before the gates slam shut, the skeleton is safe and ready for analysis.
33:35It could hold clues to how well the temple safeguarded the pharaoh's afterlife in the era after the death of
33:43the pyramids.
33:51The skeleton unearthed outside Tuthmosis III's temple is not the first Miriam's team has discovered.
33:58It's one of more than 125 ancient bodies they've unearthed around the site.
34:05Many from a single tomb.
34:08Why they are here is a mystery, but some are preserved in almost pristine condition.
34:15The bodies could shed light on how Tuthmosis' temple was supposed to function after his death.
34:22Miriam has made it her mission to search every ancient body for clues.
34:27Next in line is a fully wrapped mummy.
34:30She can't risk removing the linen bandages, so dental expert Dr. Roger Seiler uses x-rays to scan for information.
34:39We want to see who was this individual.
34:45If it's a male or female, we want to see the age, what they eat, as much as possible about
34:54this person.
34:59We have the head.
35:03Roger examines the skull to determine the skeleton's sex and age at death.
35:10So the individual is about 18, 20, 25 years old.
35:15The teeth are in good health, so it's a young individual.
35:19Ah, okay. But that's important for...
35:21And we know if it's male or female?
35:22The angle here could say that it's female.
35:27Maybe female.
35:29Maybe female.
35:30Maybe female, together with the form of the chain.
35:33The x-ray suggests the body is of a young woman.
35:37This is from tomb 22, from the late period, where we found the mummy deposit.
35:43Yes.
35:43The tomb she was buried in dates to a time nearly a thousand years after the temple was built.
35:49It's a hint that the temple was considered sacred long after Tuthmosis III had died.
35:56If he was still remembered, then his afterlife was secure.
36:02Now we have to go deeper to get more information.
36:06Miriam needs to discover who these people were to shed light on why they were buried here.
36:13They work through the dozens of mummies found at the site.
36:16The head is missing.
36:18Yeah.
36:19But this is a, I think it's an organ package.
36:22So they took out the inner organs, they mummified them separately, and put them back.
36:28Good mummification technique.
36:31So some of the mummies in this mummy deposit were high quality.
36:37High quality mummification.
36:39Mummification, yes.
36:41The mummies suggest that high status ancient Egyptians were burying their dead here, almost to the end of ancient Egyptian
36:49civilization.
36:51They believed this site held a power that would help propel their souls to the afterlife.
36:58The team will need to keep examining and comparing the finds.
37:02But with this analysis complete, Miriam can return the body to its eternal rest.
37:10They carefully lower the precious remains, 15 feet down the vertical shaft.
37:16This is the most critical moment, and always we are worried.
37:22Tani, tani, tani, tani, tani.
37:25The mummy is safely in the burial chamber.
37:28Well done.
37:30The team lays it to rest.
37:32We have one more individual in peace.
37:37Miriam's discoveries suggest the temple remains sacred for nearly a thousand years after Tuthmosis III's death.
37:46Preserving his memory and his eternal life, just as long as his body lay safe in the Valley of the
37:52Kings.
37:53The New Kingdom Pharaoh's afterlife plan appeared to be working.
38:00On the hillside of Kobet el Hawa, near modern day Aswan, Alejandro and his team have removed more than a
38:09thousand cubic feet of sand from the newly discovered tomb.
38:14We have been working outside and inside, and we have the possibility to have access to check if we have
38:23some remains of the original burials.
38:25If the tomb contains hieroglyphic inscriptions or grave goods, it could help him identify the owner.
38:34And uncover the burial practices of the nobles challenging the pyramid building Pharaoh's power.
38:43I can see several fragments of bones.
38:47The bones survive, but whose are they?
38:59The remains of the remains of the temple.
39:00Alejandro's discovery of human remains proves beyond doubt that he's found a new tomb at Kobet el Hawa.
39:07But what he needs is hieroglyphs to identify the tomb owner and their status.
39:13If a mummy once lay in this chamber, perhaps the valuable funerary artefacts remain in an adjacent cavity.
39:23It's incredible.
39:27We have just the same material as we found in the other chamber.
39:32The tomb's second chamber is empty.
39:35It has almost certainly been entered by thieves.
39:38But Alejandro finds that it hasn't just been robbed.
39:42Telltale tracks on the walls show it has been ravaged by an even more destructive force.
39:48We can guess that here there were coffins, there were perhaps boxes, and everything was eaten by the termites.
40:00I've never seen something like this.
40:06So wherever you look, look at that.
40:13These are termites.
40:15I hate termites.
40:20Quite disappointing.
40:24A deception.
40:27But it's part of the game.
40:30Let's go.
40:33Like the pyramids, the tombs cut into the rock here couldn't always save the owners from destruction.
40:40Their carefully laid plans to secure their afterlife were thwarted.
40:46But the rich necropolis at Kobet el-Hawa may one day reveal yet more about the part the governors of
40:52the south played in the pyramid's decline.
40:56We have been very lucky during all the seasons that we have been working in Kobet el-Hawa.
41:02We have discovered three new tombs, nine intact burial chambers.
41:08But we have discovered also that sometimes the story has not the same end.
41:16He may not have found hieroglyphic treasures this time.
41:20But next time, Alejandro could be luckier.
41:26In the Valley of the Kings, the New Kingdom pharaohs dug their tombs deep into the mountains to protect them
41:33from robbers.
41:36Chris has come to the most iconic tomb of all to find out how well they succeeded.
41:43The tomb of Tutankhamun, discovered deep beneath layers of rubble by archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922.
41:56So this is the exact spot where Carter would for the first time have made a little hole in this
42:03blocking here and been able to see through into the antechamber.
42:06So this is the moment where famously he's asked, can you see anything?
42:10And he says wonderful things.
42:12That's because he's looking into this chamber, the antechamber, which is absolutely stuffed full of objects as the whole of
42:19the tomb was.
42:21Carter had uncovered the richest collection of artifacts ever discovered from Egypt's golden age, including the pharaoh's famous mask.
42:31But for Chris, the modern mythology of the riches of Tutankhamun's tomb is not the full story.
42:38It did contain wonderful things, but the tomb was not undisturbed.
42:45Tutankhamun's funerary furniture was piled up chaotically, as if ready to be removed.
42:51The tomb was robbed perhaps just a few days after the funeral when Tutankhamun's body was introduced to the tomb
42:57for the first time.
42:59Small valuables seemed to have been taken by opportunistic looters.
43:02They had left the larger items, perhaps intending to come back.
43:07But something stopped them.
43:10We now know there was a flash flood in the valley which deposited a mass of material on top of
43:16the entranceway to the tomb.
43:18And once it dried out, it solidified to the consistency of cement.
43:21It was impenetrable and the location of the tomb was lost until Howard Carter excavated the tomb in 1922.
43:29That was the first time anybody had seen it since the late 18th dynasty.
43:35Tutankhamun's tomb wasn't the only tomb in the Valley of the Kings plundered by ancient thieves.
43:42All the tombs discovered so far were robbed of their treasures long ago.
43:48They offered no better protection than the mighty monuments they replaced.
43:54The pyramids too had been no match for determined grave robbers.
43:59And after years of drought and conflict, the pharaohs could no longer afford to build them.
44:06But the pharaohs achieved a different kind of immortality.
44:11Their astonishing pyramids remain as an iconic reminder of the greatest civilization of the ancient world.
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