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00:02Ramses II, the most famous pharaoh of them all.
00:06The autopsy of his mummy in 1976 in Paris would reveal an unknown face of the Egyptian king,
00:14very different from the image of the great warrior for which he wanted to be remembered in history.
00:19He developed a major hunchback and his neck craned forward.
00:24But over here in his mandible, there was a big abscess and it must have been horribly painful.
00:31Being, we probably have to think of an old man just eating soups, not being able to have a good
00:39piece of meat.
00:41Did Ramses II try to stretch the limits of human life, even if it meant paying the price with terrible
00:48suffering?
00:48What tangible scientific elements can explain reaching such an old age so long ago?
00:55Was it his dreams? Was it a special diet or something else that we don't know?
01:00The lifestyle within the palace is absolutely optimal for the king to be in good health at all times.
01:09Of course, Ramses II did die, but would live once more in the afterlife of the ancient Egyptians.
01:18A terrifying underworld filled with pitfalls where he would confront the terrible serpent Apep, god of darkness and the apocalypse.
01:28Apep's task is to make sure that the sun can't rise again.
01:32He wants to return the world to its original state of inertia.
01:37He is designed to eternally stand sentinel over the baby sun so that he is then reborn in the West.
01:45Prepare yourselves to discover Ramses II behind the legend.
01:50A man who did everything in his lifetime to become immortal in the history of humankind.
01:55A man who did everything in his lifetime.
02:21September 26th, 1976, 6.30 p.m.
02:25A French Air Force plane has just landed at Le Bourget Airport in the Paris suburbs.
02:30It's coming from Egypt. It has an extremely unusual passenger on board.
02:36And the unusual thing about the passenger was he had been dead for 3,000 years.
02:41But he was still a king and one of the most famous bearers of Egypt.
02:47This wooden crate contained the mummy of the most fascinating and most documented king in the history of ancient Egypt.
02:54He who embodies the grandeur and power of the glorious civilization of the pharaohs.
03:00A civilization which reached the height of its glory during his reign.
03:05His name has gone down through the ages.
03:08Making him immortal in the memory of humankind.
03:11Ramses II.
03:12Ramses II is the definitive pharaoh.
03:16For ancient Egypt, he's like the Louis XIV, if you like.
03:20The king that we all think of.
03:23He's one of the exceptional figures to have lived on our planet.
03:27Among those who have had such a massive impact on human history,
03:32Ramses II is in the top three.
03:35It was a historical moment which would elevate the legend of Ramses even higher and bring him eternal glory.
03:43Because his mummy had come to Paris for an unprecedented and extremely important mission.
03:48Egypt has a problem.
03:50They have realized that the mummy of Ramses is falling apart.
03:56He's infected with all manner of different problems.
04:01There was fungus, a kind of mold.
04:03So basically what you have if you leave meat for too long outside your fridge.
04:08Something very similar was happening to the mummy of Ramses II.
04:12So treatment was immediately necessary.
04:15Otherwise the mummy of Ramses II would have been lost forever.
04:21If that were to happen, not only would it be a tragedy for science, but also for Ramses II himself.
04:28Because according to ancient Egyptian beliefs, the pharaoh's mummy was indispensable to his immortality.
04:34The ancient Egyptians saw death as a passage, an event between two lives.
04:40And the second one was supposed to last for eternity, forever and ever.
04:48To preserve the body of an ancient Egyptian mummy is to preserve an ancient soul
04:53and to guarantee that that person can still continue to access their afterlife.
04:59So the preservation of a mummy is quite essential.
05:03But 20th century Egypt didn't have the scientific or technical means to avoid such a disaster.
05:10So the Egyptology community sprang into action to save the precious relic of the immortal Ramses II.
05:20This is how his mummy arrived in Paris for the autopsy of the century.
05:25The mummy was sent to France because here there was a very specialized group of people who were considered to
05:33be the best in the world to stop the processes of decomposition of the mummy of Ramses II.
05:39This is a challenge of international significance in the modern day.
05:44This is not something France is going to want to get wrong.
05:48The last chance team faced the massive challenge of saving the mummy of the most famous pharaoh in history.
05:56When they finally came face to face with the dead king's body at the Museum of Mankind, it was as
06:02if time had stood still.
06:03That's a huge moment.
06:08That face is like a snapshot of this great ruler who ruled 3000 years ago.
06:17It's a moment in time.
06:17It's really pioneering work that needs to be done.
06:22A task that has never been done before.
06:25The scientists didn't know it yet.
06:27But they wouldn't be just going to try to save the great pharaoh's mummy.
06:31The autopsy would also reveal many secrets about Ramses II that were still unknown.
06:38Although Ramses lived thousands of years ago and his physical voice is lost to us,
06:43the mummy can be quite eloquent and can speak to us about what he actually experienced in life.
06:51Their scientific investigations pulled the mask away that Ramses used to hide his humanity
06:59and expose more than ever the real Ramses, the human Ramses for all to see for the first time in
07:0733 centuries.
07:10When they started examining Ramses' mummy, they discovered his size.
07:14The pharaoh was 1 meter 75, or 5 foot 9, which was very tall for the time.
07:22But that wasn't the most surprising thing.
07:25One of the things that was most striking, of course, was the age.
07:29Because from historic texts, we know that Ramses reigned for a very long time.
07:34And that he was indeed probably, you know, late 80s, 90s when he died.
07:41So it was a lovely moment where texts and archeological records matched the physical evidence of the body.
07:5090 years old, an age that's common among seniors nowadays, but exceptionally rare more than 3,200 years ago,
07:59when in ancient Egypt, life expectancy was between 40 and 50.
08:04How did he live this long, especially in a time period where modern medicine did not yet exist?
08:11How on earth is this possible? How can this be? And can the mummy answer that question?
08:19This raises another question.
08:21If Ramses was planning for divine immortality through the preservation of his mummified body,
08:27could he have stretched the limits of his earthly life to realize the absolute fantasy of actual immortality?
08:35To discover more about his incredible longevity, the scientists continued their investigation of the mummy.
08:45Was it his genes? Was it a special diet or something else that we don't know?
08:53It's impossible to prove, but Ramses II probably had a stronger than average immune system,
09:00allowing him to better resist the living conditions of his day.
09:06Although the legendary ruler was a force of nature,
09:09genes aren't a credible enough lead to understand what was behind his exceptional longevity.
09:17But he clearly had the means to lengthen his life.
09:24As a pharaoh, Ramses II had always lived in privileged living conditions,
09:30in the sumptuous royal palaces built by his predecessors across the kingdom,
09:35like those in Memphis and Thebes.
09:39But those cities were nothing compared to the magnificent capital he constructed in the Nile Delta,
09:44not far from Avaris, where he was born.
09:47A city of unparalleled size and beauty.
09:51Paramesis.
09:53This is an entirely new capital city,
09:56inhabited by maybe as many as 300,000 people at its peak.
10:01It's one of the largest cities ancient Egypt has ever seen,
10:04one of the largest cities in the ancient world.
10:05This is a city that is being described as absolutely magnificent.
10:10Huge, with beautiful buildings.
10:13Buildings that are described of having had windows of doors of lapis lazuli and turquoise.
10:20Basically, almost a kind of little paradise on earth,
10:24or really a beautiful place to live.
10:27A place, as it's said in the ancient text,
10:30that everybody left his old place for, to come to the new capital.
10:36Paramesis was without a doubt the most modern city in the kingdom of Egypt at the time of Ramses II.
10:43It had all the latest technical innovations,
10:45which provided extraordinary comfort to the Pharaoh and his family.
10:49His gigantic palace was an ancient Versailles.
10:54With luxurious gardens, fountains, private quarters, and fabulous living spaces,
11:00offering an idyllic setting to live with the utmost serenity.
11:06They also specially built the roofs so that they would face in a specific direction,
11:12so that they would funnel cool breezes into the area,
11:15so they actually had a form of air conditioning as well,
11:17so the inside of the palace would have probably been rather cool.
11:22In a country where temperatures regularly climb above 40 degrees Celsius,
11:27Ramses II's palace wasn't just ultra-modern because of its air cooling system.
11:32It was also a model in terms of hygiene,
11:36because Paramesis was equipped with running water.
11:41We need to think of fresh breezes coming through the palace with water trickling and sloshing and cool, moist air
11:50from that.
11:51The lifestyle within the palace is absolutely optimal for the king to be in good health at all times.
11:59And, of course, that's the foundation for somebody like Ramses II living a very long time.
12:05What's more, as a pharaoh, Ramses was surrounded by a host of people to take care of him.
12:12He was not only a king, but also a living god.
12:16The pharaoh was a very vigorous man.
12:18He engaged in warfare and was a very well-trained warrior.
12:23He would have also been exercising probably to maintain his body up until a certain point.
12:28He probably would have had massage.
12:29So it was a good life to be in an Egyptian palace.
12:34Optimal living conditions that certainly helped Ramses II live to the ripe old age of 90 and flirt with immortality.
12:44But is that the only explanation for such longevity?
12:49It's not just genetics. It's not just lifestyle.
12:52There's got to be something else going on in there that allows him to live for such a long time.
13:01Ramses II's palace had something else on offer.
13:04Something that would help improve the health of anyone.
13:08Food.
13:16The details of his diet aren't well documented.
13:20So it's hard to determine whether food had a favorable impact on his incredibly long life.
13:28But it's likely that his status of pharaoh gave him access to more varied and more nutritious foods than those
13:34of mere mortals.
13:38So Ramses would have been given, you know, cereals, bread, beer, wine, beef more than other kinds of meat, but
13:47he would have had sheep, goat, pig, lots of different kinds of poultry, roasted.
13:53So combined with good genes, a whole cocktail allowed him to reign for a very long time.
13:58But actually, despite the fact that, you know, he's this great figure, the mummy tells us that maybe he didn't
14:06have quite the figure that we might expect given all that.
14:13Because in Paris, the scientists made a staggering discovery that would completely alter how we saw the great ancient ruler.
14:21Something that might explain his great longevity.
14:25One of the things that they discovered was that Ramses had a lot of extra skin on the mummy.
14:31The mummification process does desiccate or dry out the body.
14:36So this frequently leaves extra skin behind.
14:39But it's more skin than what we would anticipate.
14:48So there are two possibilities to explain this excess skin.
14:53Either he was very ill right towards the end of his life and suddenly lost a great deal of weight.
15:00Or he was overweight.
15:04An overweight Ramses II.
15:07This hypothesis hit like a bomb.
15:12He's never shown in that way.
15:14As a fat, unhealthy looking man, he's always shown, of course, as a vigorous, athletic person.
15:23What did he really look like?
15:25How come no depictions of Ramses II showed this side of his physicality?
15:32Did he try to cover up his portliness?
15:35Ramses II has a role to play.
15:38We have to remember there's two things going on.
15:40Those statues are not intended to be realistic life portraits of the man, the mortal man.
15:46They are images of this ideal god type figure.
15:51It's always representing the eternal ideal, the internal concept of a person.
15:56And so especially for the pharaoh, that must always be vigorous and strong with a perfect body and a perfect
16:02face because the pharaoh is perfect.
16:05But is this ideal beauty coherent with the real body of Ramses II?
16:11Palace life has its advantages, but also its disadvantages.
16:16Like access to rich, sweet foodstuffs such as honey, which can lead to obesity.
16:22It's entirely possible that the great warrior, Pharaoh Ramses, in the later part of his life, was enjoying the joys
16:30of having a relaxed family life and was able to enjoy himself.
16:36Well, that's only natural.
16:39Except that his excess weight must have put pressure on his heart.
16:43He must have cheated death for long enough that he could make it.
16:47But there's no question as well that he was in pretty bad shape by the end, suffering from a whole
16:53host of medical issues that would have made his life very difficult at the end of his days.
17:04And as the autopsy revealed, especially his teeth.
17:08Because on that front, the findings were terrible.
17:11When they examined Ramses' mouth, they realized that Ramses must have been in pain for several decades before he died.
17:20They realized that he had extensive dental problems.
17:24Some of Ramses' teeth were worn down to the roots.
17:28He clearly suffered from tooth decay and inflammation of the gums.
17:33But that wasn't the worst of it.
17:35But over here in his mandible, there was a big abscess and it must have been horribly painful.
17:42This is the kind of ailment that doesn't come on very quickly and suddenly.
17:48So the fact that this is present in Ramses II's mummy suggests that it had been developing for a long
17:54period of time, possibly over a number of years.
17:58Little by little, a new face is drawn.
18:01That of a more human Ramses who's much closer to us.
18:05A man in old age, possibly the victim of his own longevity, who suffered terrible pain for several decades.
18:12We probably have to think of an old man just eating soups, liquid things, soft things, not being able to
18:22have a good piece of meat, a good piece of hard bread anymore.
18:26But more than anything else, very few people would have lived long enough for their teeth to have reached the
18:34kind of state that Ramses II would have done.
18:39How was the pharaoh able to live to such an old age with all of his health problems?
18:43Did he have ways of relieving his pain?
18:53Did he trust in knowledge that let him believe he could actually become immortal?
18:58It's very possible Ramses II, and indeed people around him as well, may well have wanted him to live forever.
19:06There may even have been a kind of belief that this is possible.
19:11Could that explain his phenomenal longevity?
19:15Did he benefit from state-of-the-art medicine that kept him alive despite illness and pain?
19:24Just imagine a world where probably you could do surgery, but without really good anesthetics, without disinfectants, without antibiotics.
19:35Ramses, with all of his pain, must have had a lot of doctors and dentists coming in, and somehow they
19:42could not cure him.
19:43But they were probably a combination of, you know, herb mixtures, as well as magical prayers.
19:53Because in the time of Ramses II, medicine wasn't a science.
19:58The ancient Egyptians believed that illnesses were the work of evil spirits.
20:02Only the power of the gods could cure a person.
20:07That was why so-called wizard doctors were so important.
20:13Their task was to invoke the divinities to help treat the pharaoh.
20:18And to do that, any means were appropriate.
20:22They had inscriptions, and they would pour milk or water or wine over the inscription.
20:29Then it would collect in a bowl, and it would absorb all the magic.
20:32And then when you drank it, that magic would go into your body, and you would be cured.
20:37You would be cured together with whatever medicines they gave you.
20:41And it was their knowledge as much of the right incantations, the right words,
20:47or the right objects, the right amuletic powers.
20:50That was as important as the actual treatments.
20:55Wizard doctors thus carried huge responsibility.
20:58They had to know exactly which divinity they should call on.
21:03Because the gods and goddesses were associated with certain aspects of human health,
21:08and the slightest error could be fatal.
21:10If the king was feeling better, then that would be because the magician had said the right words.
21:14If the king wasn't feeling better, that would be because the magician didn't know the right words,
21:18and maybe we should find a different magician.
21:19And even though magic and medicine seem always so intertwined in ancient Egypt,
21:27and were surely always part of each other,
21:30nevertheless also ancient Egyptians might have kind of realized the limits of magic.
21:36But no matter what they did, it seems that they could not clean out the abscess.
21:40For how long did the great Ramsay suffer from this abscess?
21:44How could he survive such pain? It's hard to say.
21:48In some ways, in that regard, he's a victim of his own success.
21:52By living as long as he did, inevitably parts of his body were going to suffer,
21:56and clearly that was the case with his teeth.
21:59And there were other things that the scientists discovered that showed that he had a lot of issues.
22:07As the doctors began to examine Ramsay's neck, they realized that there is an unusual quality about his neck.
22:15It's broken.
22:21Surprised, the scientists began to ask questions.
22:24Was Ramsay's killed by a violent blow which broke his neck?
22:28Or was the fracture made after his death?
22:31When they looked at it closely, they realized that in fact this had nothing to do with the cause of
22:37death or anything like that.
22:38An extraordinary discovery.
22:40The experts realized that the embalmers were obliged to break the pharaoh's neck because his body wouldn't fit inside his
22:47coffin.
22:49Simply because Ramsay's back was no longer straight.
22:53He developed a major hunchback and his neck craned forward so that he would have been stooped over and actually
23:03had his head tilted forward and up.
23:05This would have made it very difficult for him to swallow.
23:10He would have been hunched over and he just would not have been able to lie down properly.
23:18The question then for the scientists is, is this something that has developed in old age as a result of
23:25old age?
23:26Or rather, is this something that could have afflicted him when he was a young man?
23:32This question is at the heart of a debate between Egyptologists.
23:36For a long time, experts believed that the terrible state of Ramsay's back was due to ankylosing spondylitis,
23:43an inflammatory disease which affects the joints of the spine, stiffening them over time.
23:50But, the difficulty with that is that that is a condition that afflicts people at a much earlier point in
23:58their lives.
23:58And if this is what the king was suffering from, then we have to assume that he had suffered from
24:04this more or less all his adult life.
24:08Further analysis has shown that this cannot be the case.
24:13Ramses did indeed have a hunchback, but caused by diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis, or DISH.
24:24But it's a disease that is quite common amongst older people. It's a generative disease of the spine.
24:32So, actually, we can still keep in our minds this idea of a very vigorous and athletic young Ramses,
24:38maybe really genuinely leading his armies into battle.
24:41And it's only later in life that he comes to develop this hunchback.
24:47The price of living to a ripe old age.
24:50Because, as the autopsy revealed, the slightest movement must have been agony for the great pharaoh.
24:57There didn't seem much to be wrong with Ramses, except that he did have arthritis.
25:02So, he would have been in a lot of pain.
25:04And he also had hip dysplasia, which caused him, while he could still walk, to walk with a shuffle.
25:10And by the end, he probably had to be carried around.
25:14We had to wait more than 3,200 years to find out how Ramses II lived through the last years
25:21of his reign.
25:22Without the autopsy in Paris, we would never have gathered all this crucial information.
25:35But this raises another question for the experts.
25:38If Ramses II was so poorly late in his life, how did he cope with his Jubilee celebrations?
25:45The Jubilee is a very important festival, a very important rite of kingship.
25:50The Egyptians call it the Heb Sed.
25:54And it's celebrated after 30 years of the rule of the king.
26:00Having taken the throne at around the age of 25, Ramses II celebrated his Jubilee at 55.
26:07But incredibly, he didn't just have one of them.
26:14Few pharaohs reigned for more than 30 years.
26:17But the law had it that further Jubilees should be held every three years after the first to honor the
26:23king.
26:24So in all, Ramses II had 14 Jubilees. A record.
26:31There's a strong chance that despite the pharaoh's wavering health,
26:35all these Jubilees were held to show the people he was still capable of ruling the kingdom.
26:41Because that was the point of the royal Jubilee.
26:44And to prove his ability, the pharaoh had a number of tests to pass.
26:48The best known, racing around his palace.
26:51So pharaoh, in his full royal court garb, ran a ritual relay race,
26:59where he would run between two markers carrying different symbols of his office.
27:06So he would complete a lap and somebody would ritually give him a new thing to run with.
27:12And then he would run again and again and again and again and again as he went through all these
27:17different ritual items.
27:19If he did not falter, if he did not fall, if all was well, then he would continue to rule.
27:25That's what the gods expect. That's what the people of Egypt expect.
27:30Except that Ramses II was more than 90 at his 14th Jubilee.
27:35Was history's greatest pharaoh still capable of running and carrying heavy objects?
27:41Not to mention his hunched back, his difficulties in walking, and the scorching sun.
27:48There's just no way he could have done this. It's just not credible to think that he did.
27:54Would he have been carried around on a palanquin?
27:56Or would one of his younger sons actually have performed the ceremony for him?
28:01Or would it have been just omitted from the program altogether?
28:07There is only one conclusion. The aging Ramses was held. In that case, was he still capable of ruling Egypt?
28:19Was he thinking as clearly as before because he was in pain? And pain does cloud one's judgment.
28:26Had he become a very irritable person? I'm sure he was completely autocratic anyway.
28:31But with this pain, I can imagine him being more short-tempered, not always making good judgment.
28:38Is he still thinking to himself, I'm going to live forever? Or does there come a point where he thinks,
28:43I'm done. You know, I want to bow out.
28:49A willing man like Ramses II would not easily give up the direct control of his kingdom.
28:56But old age and illness certainly deprived him of his capabilities.
29:01One thing is sure, he wasn't overthrown or assassinated by someone wanting to take his place.
29:07That probably also tells us something about, in the end, the stability of his reign, about the people around him.
29:13They were all obviously loyal enough not to depose an aging old king, but he was left in place.
29:21Even though probably he was not really able to reign anymore.
29:25The pharaoh is not just, it's not just a practical role.
29:30It's not about leading the country in the way that a president does or a prime minister does.
29:35You can't retire. You know, you don't finish being pharaoh until the point at which you die.
29:42Thankfully, due to his numerous victories, Ramses had pacified Egypt and there were no wars in the second half of
29:48his reign.
29:50So it's easy to imagine the great ruler having more of a symbolic function during the final years of his
29:55reign.
29:58But the renowned pharaoh must surely have anticipated such a period, which is why he trained his sons and especially
30:06his successor.
30:09It does seem that his last crown prince, Mernapta, was increasingly ruling the country on his behalf during the last
30:16decade or so of his reign.
30:18But he obviously had taken over part of the daily business of the king.
30:23So the country was working, everything was functioning as before.
30:26All the king had to do was be dressed up and look like a god and he could manage to
30:31not be too stooped.
30:33But like this, he would look as he ought to.
30:38Because think of it, it is like going in front of camera.
30:41So he had all the makeup, he had all of the clothes and he had enough people to support him.
30:47So he would just sort of have to sit like this, stand up, sit down, finished.
30:52The autumn years of a natural colossus who stretched the limits of the possible in every part of his life.
31:02A unique, unparalleled pharaoh who made his mark on humankind by becoming the very embodiment of the most important civilization
31:10of antiquity.
31:13Yet you can obviously tell that he had a tenacious will to live and managed to live with all these
31:21difficulties until the bitter end.
31:23Ramses was well aware that he was not immortal, even though it might have seemed to some that he was
31:30immortal.
31:31But of course he was aware that he was a human being.
31:40One day in the year 1213 before the Common Era.
31:45A day that would mark the ancient Egyptians forever.
31:49The immortal Ramses II died around the age of 90 after a reign of just over 66 years.
31:5890 for the ancient Egyptians is like 120 for us. It's extraordinary.
32:05It means that four generations of Egyptians succeeded each other, always with the same king.
32:11For a while they must have thought he would never die.
32:15Had he developed an infection? What kind of condition was his heart in?
32:21Did he have, you know, heart disease, pain? What breathing difficulties did he have?
32:27We just have no idea. On the one hand, this was hardly surprising.
32:32And yet it was in many ways a catastrophe.
32:37With the Pharaoh dead, the balance of the kingdom was jeopardized.
32:41The world had stopped turning.
32:46He would always have been the king. There would have been nobody else.
32:50So this idea that there's now going to be a change would have been a really massive moment for the
32:57Egyptian people.
32:58Like a kind of earthquake in their lives.
33:01But if he's not here now, what's going to happen?
33:06Once Ramses died, that was the end of his life here on Earth.
33:11But it was the beginning of a new journey for him. An entirely new experience.
33:18While he had an appointed successor and his son Marenta, a new life was about to begin for Ramses II.
33:25The deceased Pharaoh had a mission to fulfill in the afterlife.
33:29So things needed to move fast.
33:37His body had to be immediately mummified in a highly coded and precise ritual.
33:44The embalmers had 70 days to prepare the body and carry out a host of rituals so that his majesty
33:52was ready for eternity.
33:56He would be completely shaved and plucked.
33:58And then the priests would make an incision through which the organs would be removed.
34:03And that includes straining the body of all the fluids and also opening up the abdominal cavity
34:09and removing different aspects of the internal organs that are the most likely to begin to rot quickly.
34:18The body was then covered with natron, a salt that darkens and dries the skin.
34:24And importantly, the embalmers had to ensure that Ramses II's bumby resembled as closely as possible the person he had
34:31been when he lived.
34:33He had a very distinctive nose. And so the nose is mostly made up of cartilage.
34:39And as a result, the nose collapsed during the process of mummification.
34:44So one of the things that the embalmers did was they actually sort of inserted various different items up his
34:51nose to build it back out,
34:53sort of like plastic surgery in order to make it so that he would look like himself again.
34:57They made efforts with the mummy to make it look as he had looked when he was young.
35:03And they made his nose proud and strong.
35:06And so he did look pretty good and he is a very good looking mummy.
35:11So for Ramses, he was going to come back at his finest.
35:16Ramses' body was then wrapped in linen bandages, several layers thick, so that the body parts remained well fixed together.
35:27Small, magical amulets were placed at various points under the bandages to help the pharaoh on his forthcoming journey.
35:35Placing amulets or other objects in certain places gave his majesty certain capabilities.
35:41For example, placing a jed, the word for pillar, represented stability, and this would allow him to become upright again
35:49in the afterlife.
35:50So after the 70 days are complete, you have the mummy which is just waiting to be reactivated.
35:58This reactivation could only be performed by the pharaoh's successor.
36:04Merempta, Ramses' second heir, began the ritual with the opening of the mouth, a magical funerary operation that returned the
36:12five senses to the deceased.
36:15Merempta would have done this dressed in the guise of a sem priest, wearing a leopard skin robe.
36:22And so Ramses' body would have been held up by other priests.
36:25And then Merempta would have, they'd been burning incense, he would make libations, he would use a special tool and
36:32sort of touch the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears.
36:35And give back the five senses to Ramses as he made a recitation.
36:40And this is designed to open up the mouth to be able to allow the souls to interact and to
36:48come forth or to go into the afterlife.
36:52The mummy was then placed in a number of coffins designed like the Russian dolls we know today.
36:59They have never been found.
37:01But when compared with the tomb furnishings of Tutankhamen, it's easy to believe that the fittings for the greatest pharaoh
37:08in history must have been extraordinary.
37:12He was accompanied by burial offerings and personal belongings to guarantee his protection in the afterlife.
37:20From this point on, Ramses II could begin to bid farewell to his earthly existence.
37:26The king would have been placed on a very special funeral barge.
37:30The coffin would have been in there and protected.
37:33And people would have come out to see the pharaoh passing down the Nile.
37:37The immortal pharaoh that has lived so long, that has reigned so long, has died.
37:43So for sure almost everybody wanted probably to see the ship and this kind of procession.
37:48So it would have been a very emotional and dramatic procession, a funerary procession that went not just across the
37:58river, but in fact all the way down into Luxor.
38:02And then that is when he would have been taken for his burial.
38:06On arrival in Luxor, formerly Thebes, a long cortege transported Ramses' coffin to its final resting place.
38:16The pharaoh could now enjoy the vast tomb he had been building since the beginning of his reign in the
38:22Valley of the Kings.
38:26The coffin was taken down into the tomb, to the burial chamber, where it was probably surrounded with a host
38:33of objects.
38:34Every item that is going to go into the tomb has got a kind of magical and symbolic significance.
38:40Each one of these things would have been treated with sort of care and ceremony.
38:46Emptied of its contents by pillagers during antiquity and destroyed by floods, the tomb has lost its grandeur.
38:54But its size, associated with the prestige of Ramses II, lets us imagine what the place where he was left
39:01to become immortal must have looked like.
39:04And imagine what he would have had, the kind of wealth, the kind of jewelry, the clothes, the chariots, the
39:11armor, the furniture, the food, the drink, everything.
39:16So Ramses' tomb must have been an incredible treasure trove.
39:22Complex burial rites were held to honor Ramses the Great and facilitate his journey to the afterlife.
39:28Only the privileged few, his son Marenta and his close circle, were present to witness this historic moment.
39:36For given his old age, the deceased pharaoh had already buried a large number of his family members.
39:42At the moment the tomb of Ramses II is sealed, he shall never be seen again by the world of
39:52men.
39:53In theory, it should have been something uninterrupted, an absolutely perfect and calm eternity.
40:03Except that when the tomb was closed for the very last time, Ramses didn't know that other adventures awaited him.
40:09His spirit now enters the underworld.
40:13The pharaoh had an appointment with the gods and his ancestors.
40:17His final destination was a paradise that resembled his palace.
40:22There, he would live for eternity.
40:25He would be immortal.
40:27But in order to get there, he has to first make a very dangerous, very perilous journey.
40:37And this is part of the reason why there's so much equipment that goes with the king.
40:44For example, two daggers which are buried with the king, very close to his body.
40:49They're kind of on his purse, on the mummy wrappings.
40:52In death too, the king had responsibilities.
40:55And without the king, nothing would work.
40:58He cannot relax like the rest of his subjects and live in the best form of his life.
41:03He is instead eternally at battle with terrifying forces.
41:10According to the Book of Caverns of Egyptian mythology, after death, the soul of the deceased must undergo a series
41:17of tests and overcome several obstacles in an underworld called the Duat.
41:24This underworld is where the sun god Ra passes during the 12 night time hours.
41:31He is supposed to rise again the next morning in the east to offer Egypt an extra day.
41:37Only this task is very difficult for the sun god.
41:43That is why Ramses II was there, to help Ra rise again, not just the next day, but every day
41:51and for eternity.
41:53To do this, the pharaoh would have to cross a dangerous ocean on a barge in the black of night.
42:01When his majesty died, he became the sun on his barge. He became the evening sun, called Atum. And Atum
42:09must travel across the dark waters of the night.
42:12The ancient Egyptians thought after you die, you are born again. And at that point, you're not born into your
42:20old body.
42:21You are back in that kind of youthful, vigorous form. So, Ramses II, at this point, maybe, is exactly as
42:26he would have been, maybe, in his twenties, leading his army into battle.
42:30So, his physical weakness at the end of his life is not important anymore. It's not relevant.
42:38And Ramses wasn't alone to make the sun rise again. He had some heavyweight allies.
42:45The most powerful army of the underworld, the gods of the Egyptian pantheon, and all the pharaohs who preceded him.
42:52His entire job is to become one with the army of the pharaohs who have come before him.
42:58He is now not just one king. He's all the kings.
43:03And he is designed to eternally stand sentinel over the baby sun so that it is then reborn in the
43:10west.
43:12Together, they progress across this primordial ocean, a path dotted with pitfalls and terrifying enemies.
43:20Enemies whose mission is not only to prevent the sun from rising at dawn, but also to destroy the Egyptian
43:27universe.
43:27They went through these terrifying caverns with decapitated enemies who are shooting fire out of their necks.
43:34They're trying to destroy the recreation of the universe because they're the enemies. They're chaos.
43:40The most fearsome enemy lurks at the seventh hour of the night.
43:44The army of immortals, protectors of the sun god Ra, must confront the snake Apep, a massive challenge that will
43:52decide the survival of the ancient Egyptian world.
43:56Apep's task is to make sure that the sun can't rise again.
44:00He wants to return the world to its original state of inertia, a place which is neither completely liquid nor
44:07solid.
44:09Where time doesn't exist, and death doesn't exist.
44:12The moment that the snake attacks the golden barge is the most critical.
44:17Of course, Ra must absolutely defend himself.
44:21He's surrounded by several gods, he's not alone.
44:24But the snake does everything to try to sink the barge.
44:27It crashes into it with its head, it drinks all the water of the Nile to leave sandbanks where the
44:32barge might run aground.
44:33And at various points in the journey, we see the sun god and those around him branching knives and ropes,
44:40knives to defeat the snake, ropes to tether the snake so that he's under their control.
44:46It's a dark world where you can see nothing except gouts of flame, of serpents that are breathing fire to
44:55try to destroy the boat.
44:56The boat itself at one point turns into a gigantic snake in order to defend the kings, and it slithers
45:04over land with all of them riding on its back.
45:08So, there's this enormous battle, and the outcome is, his majesty manages to vanquish death.
45:16And the sun god gets his energies recharged so that when he reaches the twelfth hour of the night and
45:24arises in the eastern horizon, he is quite literally reborn.
45:30Given that the sun has continued to rise these past 3,200 years, it would seem that it was mission
45:36accomplished for Ramses II.
45:42The moment the king manages to defeat Apep in the seventh hour, he enters the caverns where he's acclaimed and
45:49given new clothes.
45:51This is the last step before being reborn.
45:54And when his majesty is reborn like the sun, he rises into the sky and becomes a star.
46:01So he has crossed to the other side and is welcomed as a god among the gods.
46:06He's in his place, reigning eternally. Death is not the end.
46:10But in fact, the mission isn't accomplished. It will go on eternally.
46:16You can never defeat Apep. He changes his skin and comes back eternally at the seventh hour of the night,
46:22every night until the end of time.
46:24And so the dead king had to, on a daily basis, or rather a nightly basis, make sure that the
46:31cosmos was maintained, while his son, in life, was making sure that Egypt maintained Ma'at and survived.
46:39In many ways, Ramses II is definitely still living, absolutely. He's at war.
46:43Well, no, right now he's asleep. It's daytime. So he's sleeping right now.
46:48Give him a couple hours, he'll wake up around 10 o'clock.
46:53This is how Ramses II became immortal for the ancient Egyptians.
46:59But for this belief to continue, his mummy had to be saved, otherwise he couldn't fulfill his task in the
47:06afterlife.
47:12Having been completely x-rayed, and having revealed the secrets about the end of his life,
47:17the mummy then had to be treated with gamma rays to kill the fungi and bacteria that were destroying it.
47:24For the scientists, they have one more job when it comes to Ramses II.
47:30They have revealed a huge amount about his life, but there's still the job of making sure that the mummy
47:39can survive for another few thousand years.
47:42And so there was a very new machine that existed here in France, and they used that on Ramses, which
47:49is sort of being bombarded with gamma rays.
47:53After 12 hours of radiation with cobalt-60, the mummy came out in perfect condition.
48:00And it turns out, the fungus is gone. The composition has been stopped.
48:06That was in 1977. The mummy of Ramses II was safe and sound.
48:12The pharaoh could continue his eternal combat in the underworld against the terrible serpent Apep,
48:19and help the sun god Ra be reborn every day.
48:22The illustrious king left Paris and France and returned to his place in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization.
48:32And ever since that time, visitors to Egypt have been able to look upon the face of this incalculably important
48:43ancient personality.
48:44Thanks to this fantastic work done in Paris and in the 1970s, Ramses lives on forever.
48:52A final face-to-face which has brought us closer to the great pharaoh of Egypt.
48:59Did he attain divine immortality in the afterlife of the ancient Egyptians?
49:04Perhaps one day, we'll know.
49:07Ramses II wasn't immortal in our world, but he achieved another kind of immortality.
49:13He has gone down in history and will never not be a part of it.
49:16Every way, in our understanding of immortality and his own understanding of immortality,
49:23Ramses is in fact immortal.
49:26Due to the fact that we have so much evidence for Ramses and we have his mummy and we have
49:30so many accounts of his life,
49:32in many ways, Ramses achieved true immortality because he has become part of pop culture.
49:38He is universally known.
49:41So, Ramses is living an eternal life.
49:44His memory lives on in the monuments and inscriptions he left behind.
49:51His reign, which lasted for more than six decades, symbolizes the height of power and longevity in ancient Egypt.
50:01Ramses, meaning born of Ra, is the best word to define immortality and fame.
50:08He was the first king who fully understood what it meant to rule,
50:13who best embodied the notion of the almighty pharaoh with great victories, a huge family, territory that stretched forever,
50:24and who was finally able to beat death because he has never been forgotten.
50:31It was said that if the name of the dead could be spoken, then their memory would live.
50:37And if their name survived and their name was spoken, then their spirit would survive forever.
50:44They would never be forgotten.
50:47We are always talking about Ramses now.
50:50So, as long as we are talking about Ramses, he is kind of alive.
50:56And now we are already 3,200 years after his death.
51:00So this means he was quite successful in his quest for immortality.
51:04A unique pharaoh who did all he could in his own lifetime to make his mark on Earth.
51:10Father to a hundred children, an ingenious builder, and a king of communication.
51:16Ramses II did everything to become immortal in the history of humankind.