Original subtitles

[tense music]

- [Danny] Mysteries can be buried anywhere.

Under the earth,

[volcano explodes]

beneath the sea,

[airplane whooshes]

or even right under our own feet.

[coins jingle]

And when we stumble upon them,

sometimes what we find can change history.

Tonight, famous discoveries from a missing masterpiece.

- Out of nowhere, members of the media begin calling Susan,

asking where did you find it?

And most importantly, did she know what she had?

- [Danny] To an incredible national treasure.

- As the appraiser starts reading,

some familiar words start to jump out at them.

- But there's more,

because at the bottom, there's a signature.

- [Danny] To one of the most famous lost ships of all time.

- This is the holy grail of found shipwrecks.

- People have been searching for it for over 70 years.

- Join us now, because nothing stays hidden forever.

[dramatic music]

We've all done it:

borrowed a book and forgot to return it.

For one family,

this slipup leads to finding a long lost literary treasure.

[tense music]

- In 1990, Barbara Testa is going through some old boxes

and bags in her attic.

As she digs and rummages through the clutter,

she comes across some old family letters

and some of her grandmother's handwritten poems

in an old steamer trunk.

- It's a sentimental

and nostalgic trip through family history.

But then, Barbara pauses.

Tucked between the familiar stories

and memories are pages

in a handwriting she doesn't recognize.

- As she's reading the pages, they appear to be a part

of a manuscript and the words are becoming more

and more familiar.

Right is right and wrong is wrong,

and a body ain't got no business doing wrong

when he ain't ignorant and knows better.

- [Danny] Barbara's uncovered a handwritten manuscript

of Mark Twain's masterpiece,

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn".

- [Hugo] Barbara reaches out to Sotheby's

who sends an armored truck to her home to collect the book.

- Sotheby's works with the Mark Twain Papers Project

at UC Berkeley.

They compare the handwriting, style, and structure

to other authenticated Mark Twain manuscripts.

- [Danny] Sure enough, the handwriting matches perfectly,

but there's a twist.

It's only half the book; the rest is missing.

So how did this part end up in Barbara's attic,

and where's the rest?

- Barbara tells the researchers that her grandfather,

James Frazier Gluck, was the curator of a library

in Buffalo, New York, and the man was a zealous collector.

He was collecting manuscripts

from some of the world's most famous writers,

people like Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott,

and everything he collected, he donated to the library.

- Researchers discover that back in the mid-1880s,

Gluck had contacted Samuel L. Clemens,

better known as Mark Twain,

requesting the manuscript for his collection.

- Twain, who was a former resident of Buffalo, New York,

agreed to send Gluck the handwritten manuscript

of a Huckleberry Finn,

but he only finds the second half of the book,

so that's what he sends over to Gluck,

which remains in the library to this day.

- And that's where the story is thought to end.

But it turns out,

in 1887, unbeknownst to everybody,

Twain did find the first half and he sent it to Gluck.

Except for some reason, it never makes it

into the Buffalo Library's collection

to join the second half of the book.

- We do know that Gluck died suddenly in 1897

and the whereabouts of the manuscript were unknown.

It's not until Barbara's discovery

over 100 years later that the lost half is found.

- One rare book collector calls it

the greatest literary find of the 20th century.

Twain lovers are ecstatic and so are Barbara

and her sister, who plan on auctioning it off

to make a pretty penny.

- [Danny] But before the bidding even starts,

they get a notice from the Buffalo Public Library, claiming

they own the rights to Barbara's half of the manuscript.

- [Hugo] While Barbara wants to sell the book, the library wants

to keep it with the other half in their collection.

After some legal back and forth,

the two sides finally reach a deal.

- [Sami] Barbara and her sister get a finder's fee

of $1 million, and the library promises

to put Twain's complete manuscript on display

just as her grandfather intended.

So all in all,

everybody ends up getting what they want,

114 years later.

- Meanwhile, another crew isn't digging through paper;

they're pulling something far stranger from the ground.

[tense music]

- It's 1872 in Los Angeles

and major Henry Hancock has set up an operation

quarrying natural asphalt from his property.

- Large pools of the black, sticky liquid

are all over his ranch near the surface,

and there's a big demand for the substance right now.

It's needed to pave roads, tar roofs.

Los Angeles, at this time, is a growing city.

- But as workers start digging out the tar,

they come across a large bone.

Then they find another, then dozens,

then hundreds, then thousands.

- This land used to be a Spanish ranchero,

so people first assume that these are the remains of cattle

or horses that accidentally stumbled into the tar.

- Hancock wants to know just what is going on.

So he calls his geologist friend

named William Denton to come and take a look.

- Denton looks at many of the fossil bones

and starts to realize they're too large,

not shaped correctly for cattle at all.

- [Andrew] Denton also finds a very large fossilized tooth,

much bigger than any mountain lion

or other cat native to the area.

[saber-tooth cat growling]

- [Sami] After further research, he determines

that the tooth fossil comes from a saber-tooth cat

that went extinct in this area over 9,000 years ago.

- [Danny] The discovery is fascinating,

and it's just the beginning.

Over the years, more massive bones are unearthed.

Then in 1901,

a geologist named W.W. Orcutt takes over,

and he's determined to find even more.

- [Sami] He sets up a major excavation

and research operation to remove and catalog

the thousands of bones

that are still being pulled from the asphalt.

- Orcutt and his team find skeletons from thousands

of different species, all from the Pleistocene Epoch

between 10 and 40,000 years ago.

- [Andrew] These include mammoths, saber-tooth cats,

dire wolves, and other massive megafauna

that ruled the world during the Ice Age.

- [Danny] The area eventually gets named

the La Brea Tar Pits,

and it's a gold mine, one of the biggest deposits

of prehistoric bones in the world.

But how did so many end up in one spot?

- [Sami] Researchers believe

that animals were lured to the area

to drink from nearby streams,

and then would get trapped in the black sticky substance.

- [Austin] Researchers have even found

bones from entire families,

meaning they obviously got caught together

and perished in this tarry trap.

- [Danny] Exploration of the area continues for decades.

Then in 2006,

another project stirs up something brand new.

- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, next door

to the La Brea Tar Pits, decides that they want

to build an underground parking garage.

They bring in these cranes

and heavy earth movers to begin the task,

and as soon as they do, what do they find but,

you guessed it, more bones.

- Altogether, the workers uncover 16 new fossil deposits,

but by far, the most important discovery is

an 80% intact adult mammoth skeleton.

- [Andrew] This is the most complete set of mammoth remains

to come out of the tar pits

and one of the most complete adult specimens

ever found anywhere in the world.

The animal is given the affectionate name, Zed.

Researchers determined that he died around the age

of 48, nearly 37,000 years in the past,

probably from injury sustained fighting over a mate.

- [Sami] Today, you can go see Zed

at the La Brea Tar Pit Museum,

one of the most famous natural sites in Los Angeles

and one that attracts around 400,000 visitors every year.

- Antiques, old clothes, dusty heirlooms.

That's all one woman thought she'd find cleaning out

her dad's house, but what she uncovered turns out

to be worth far more than just memories.

[tense music]

- It's 2004 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,

and Susan Hendry Tureau is going through the belongings

of her late father, Basil Hendry Sr.

They're going through antiques and old clothing

and some religious artwork that he had collected.

- Susan keeps a few paintings that have sentimental value

and then assigns the rest to a pile

that she's willing to sell,

including a dark, old, gloomy painting of Jesus Christ.

- So a year passes and Susan finally gets around

to having these paintings appraised.

The appraiser isn't really blown away by any of them,

but he thinks that that one

of Jesus could maybe get $750 from the right collector.

- The piece has been heavily over painted,

maybe even multiple times.

It looks almost cartoonish.

Plus the painting's condition is deteriorating,

so Susan is eager to get rid of it

and she puts it up for auction.

- [Danny] When the painting hits the auction floor,

something happens that shocks everyone.

- The bidding starts low,

but several paddles go up, blasting past the $750 mark.

- They start going above $2,000, $3,000,

and eventually, this painting sells

for roughly $10,000.

- [Geoffrey] 10 grand isn't gonna change her life,

but it's certainly a lot more than she'd hoped

to get from cleaning out some of the old family belongings.

So Susan pockets the money

and she really doesn't think much more about it.

- [Danny] A few years later,

Susan's phone starts ringing off the hook.

- Out of nowhere, members of the media begin calling Susan,

asking her about this Jesus painting

that she sold at auction.

They asked, where did you find it? Where did it come from?

And most importantly, did she know what she had?

- [Danny To most, it looked like just another old painting.

But as the new owners embark on a skilled restoration,

a very different story comes to light.

- [Austin] As they clean it up

and remove the dark layers of paint on the surface,

a new, different image starts to be revealed.

- The group takes infrared photographs

to get a better look at this image that's peeking through.

They see what's called a pentimento,

which is basically a tracing of an earlier piece.

- [Kavitha] There's a version underneath the painting

where Jesus' thumb is straight

instead of in a curved position.

- [Danny] Based on this, the new owners believe

they've uncovered a lost work

from one of the most famous artists of all time:

Leonardo Da Vinci.

- As it's carefully restored,

the piece becomes easily recognizable

as a missing Da Vinci known as Salvador Mundi,

which translates to "The Savior of the World".

- [Danny] The revelation sparks a flurry of headlines.

How did such an important work

of art end up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana?

- [Austin] Susan believes that her father acquired the painting

from her Aunt Millie,

but no one ever mentioned

that this painting was anything overtly special.

- [Danny] With little to go on, experts dig deeper

to better connect the dots.

- Researchers tracked down records from a Sotheby's auction

in 1958 featuring the estate of James Cook, the grandson

of famous British art collector, Sir Francis Cook.

- Sure enough, there's a record

of Aunt Millie buying this painting for 45 pounds,

roughly 120 bucks.

- [Danny] Once it's fully restored,

the Salvator Mundi goes back up for auction in 2017.

[gavel bangs] - Sold.

[audience cheering]

- This time, a member of the Saudi Royal family

buys it at auction for $450 million,

making this once discarded painting

the most valuable piece of art in world history.

- [Kavitha] You'd think if you were spending

almost a half a billion dollars on a painting,

you'd wanna show it off,

but nobody's seen it since the sale.

- [Adam] The rumor is that it is in a high security vault

somewhere in Switzerland,

and with the history of the Salvator Mundi

of appearing and disappearing,

we may never see it again,

or maybe we will.

- In 2012, another revered piece of history

falls into one woman's lap.

[tense music]

- Marie Malchodi, who's a book conservation technician

at Brown University's library,

is going through a recent donation from the estate

of Solomon Drowne,

who graduated from Brown in the year 1773.

- And while going through a book that was published in 1811

called "The Modern Practice of Physics",

she finds something unusual.

A little slip of paper is tucked in the back.

- She carefully unfolds the paper

and she sees a depiction of Jesus's baptism

by John the Baptist.

But at the bottom she notices an inscription

that says "P. Revere Sculp".

- Malchodi can't believe her eyes.

She knows that "sculp" in a signature stands

for "sculpsit," which is Latin for, "he engraved it,"

and she sees the name P. Revere.

So she started thinking to herself, there's no way

that this could be the Paul Revere

from the Revolutionary War.

- Most Americans know from school that in April 1775,

Paul Revere was responsible for warning the colonists

that the British military was on their way.

- [Danny] Less well known is the fact that

before he became a celebrated patriot,

Revere made copper plate engravings

for books and magazines.

- [Adam] Arguably, his most famous engraving

was the Boston Massacre in 1770,

which was used as a key piece of propaganda

for the American Revolutionary War effort.

- But this piece is a little different.

This etching is of a religious nature.

It depicts Jesus being fully submerged in the Jordan River

by John the Baptist.

The piece is titled, "Buried With Him by Baptism".

- [Danny] For more insight, Malchodi brings the etching

to Richard Noble,

the Brown University library's rare material cataloger.

- Noble first examines the paper itself.

He holds the paper up to the light

and he sees a rib structure, which is a telltale sign

of 18th century paper.

- Then Noble moves on to his next area of focus, looking at

who Solomon Drowne actually was.

The alumnus who owned that collection of books,

it turns out that he was a contemporary of Revere's,

so the age of the books, as well

as the etching, they both line up.

- Finally, Noble discovers

that there are actually four other copies

of this etching attributed to Paul Revere.

So he calls the American Antiquarian Society

and the Worcester Art Museum

to have this copy compared to the others.

- Sure enough, they're a match.

So it's an authentic Paul Revere etching.

But there is one difference

between this one and the other copies.

This is the only one with the full plate mark visible,

making it extremely rare.

- [Danny] The exact value of this etching isn't known,

but other Revere works,

including one of the Boston Massacre,

have sold for over $400,000 at auction,

and this one is even more unique.

- Now, while this incredible engraving has been featured in

numerous exhibits, you can actually go see it today.

Whether you're a history buff for a Paul Revere enthusiast,

it's at the John Hay Library at Brown University

by appointment only.

- Imagine it's 1799, you're a young French soldier

digging near a dusty fort in Egypt,

when your shovel hits something strange,

a stone slab covered in symbols no one can read.

What it meant and who left it there

puzzles historians for decades.

[tense music]

- July 1799, Napoleon and his army

are marching across Egypt,

conquering everything in sight.

After the army takes the town of Rashid,

they begin to construct a fort, laying claim to this area.

- Under the blazing sun,

the soldiers are digging a foundation

for the fort when they strike something unexpected

in the sand, a large black stone.

- This isn't the kind of stone that you skip across a pond.

This one is almost four feet tall, two and a half feet wide,

and it weighs over 1,600 pounds.

These soldiers have no idea what they're looking at,

so they call over a superior officer.

- [Austin] This army officer is not an archeologist,

but he notices the stone is covered

in strange inscriptions.

He tells his soldiers to dig it out

and they bring it straight to Napoleon.

- [Danny] Napoleon gathers some of his best scholars to try

and figure out what it says.

- These scholars have never seen anything like this,

but what they are able to determine is

that the inscriptions look like three distinct languages.

- [John] One of these languages is ancient Greek,

which these experts can read,

and it translates to some kind of text

about an ancient pharaoh's accomplishments.

- [Andrew] The other symbols look like hieroglyphics

and demotic script, a demotic script being a kind

of ancient Egyptian language used

by ordinary people, but now lost.

So the scholars are able to identify

what it is they're looking at,

but they're not able to read it.

- [Danny] Before Napoleon's team can decipher

the mysterious writing, the British close in.

- [John] On March 21st, 1801, in the Battle of Alexandria,

the British defeat the French in Egypt.

They seize control of Rashid

and the stone right along with it.

- They ship it back to England where King George III

decides to place it at the British Museum in London.

- [Andrew] The British send copies

of the inscriptions on the stone's face to scholars

around the world, hoping someone will be able

to unlock its lost languages.

- [John] One of these copies lands on the desk

of a young French linguist named Jean-Francois Champollion.

He's a prodigy who could speak 13 languages

by the time he was 20.

- Champollion knows the Greek alphabet, so like scholars

before him, he has no trouble

reading one third of the inscriptions.

The other two are gonna take him some time.

- Based on rudimentary knowledge of hieroglyphics,

Champollion can already identify where a royal name occurs.

It's surrounded by an oval called a cartouche.

- [Danny] He compares the name

Ptolemaios in the Greek text

with a matching cartouche in the hieroglyphics.

Then comes the key realization.

- All three languages have the same message.

- [Danny] That connection helps him begin cracking the code,

not just in hieroglyphics, but in the middle script as well.

- Then he discovers that hieroglyphics

is a hybrid language.

Some symbols represent words, others depict objects,

but other symbols convey entire ideas.

- [Danny] Piece by piece, Champollion maps

phonetic sounds to the symbols, slowly unlocking a language

that's been dead for nearly 1,500 years.

- Essentially, the stone reads like a resume

of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes.

It's a chronicle of his good deeds,

everything from tax cuts to restoring peace

after a rebellion during his predecessor's reign.

- He wants everyone to know about his legacy

and he leaves a record to prove it no matter

what language you speak.

- [Danny] It's called the Rosetta Stone,

named for the town it was found in.

- The Rosetta Stone functions almost like a decoder ring.

This allows scholars to finally read and interpret

countless inscriptions, texts, and artifacts,

unlocking a wealth of knowledge about one

of the most significant civilizations in history.

For many historians, the Rosetta Stone is the best thing

to come from Napoleon's otherwise quite brutal reign.

- Our next great find takes us from the sands of Egypt

to a Greek island where a farmer

stumbles upon one of the world's most famous faces.

[tense music]

- On April 8th, 1820, a Greek farmer by the name

of Yorgos Ketrotas is looking for stones

to help build up a retaining wall on his property

on the island of Milos.

And as he's gathering together all these stones,

he notices that there's one

that seems curiously out of place.

- He gets closer, brushes some dirt away,

and he realizes he's found a smooth piece

of marble sticking up from out of the earth.

- The island of Milos is known for rich mineral deposits,

things like sulfur or obsidian, but not marble.

- As the farmer continues to look for rocks

to build his wall, he finds another piece of marble,

and another, and before you know it,

he's got a pile of marble,

and he can't believe his eyes.

- Coincidentally, a French naval officer,

named Olivier Voutier, is exploring the ruins

of an ancient theater nearby.

He notices the farmer's reaction to the strange stones

that he's finding in his field,

and so he goes over to see what Ketrotas has discovered.

- [Hugo] The two men sort through the pile of stones

and they realize that some of them

actually might fit together.

It takes a little trial and error,

but they slowly reassemble

something very surprising.

- In front of them is the torso of a beautiful naked woman,

although they're unable to find her arms.

- Voutier however, knows enough about ancient relics

to recognize something valuable when he sees it,

and so he contacts officials back in France

urging them to purchase this piece.

- The French ambassador arranges to purchase the statue,

and soon, it's on its way to Paris

where she is presented to King Louis XVIII.

- [Nicola] The king donates the statue to the Louvre,

where experts identify the statue as Aphrodite,

the Greek goddess of love,

who's also known as Venus in Roman mythology.

- [Danny] This identification

gives the statue her iconic name, the Venus de Milo.

- This masterpiece is carved from two distinct

pieces of marble, and then carefully join together.

And when it is, the Venus de Milo stands

at an imposing six feet, seven inches tall.

- Today, this statue that once lay

in pieces across a farmer's field,

is seen by about 7 million people a year.

- You expect to find the important pieces

of American history in Philadelphia, Washington DC,

or even New York.

But imagine how unexpected it is when one turns up

on a quiet farm in North Carolina.

[tense music]

- In 2022, the Wood family of Edenton, North Carolina,

decides to sell their 184 acre estate.

The property is historic, dating all the way

back to the 1700s.

So the state of North Carolina decides to buy it

and turn it into a landmark.

- The house itself is old

and it has some original period items

that the Wood family believes probably worth some money.

To prepare for the sale, the Woods bring in an appraiser

to see what they might be worth.

- As the appraiser surveys the room,

he spots a dust-covered, metal filing cabinet.

Curious, he decides to take a look inside.

Along with some old and insignificant stacks of paper,

one thing stands out.

- There's a folder that's holding

a very old, creased piece of paper,

and as the appraiser starts reading ,

some familiar words start to jump out at him.

"We the people of the United States,

in order to form a more perfect union..."

- This is, of course, the famous first line to the preamble

of the US Constitution, but there's more,

because at the bottom there's a signature: Charles Thompson.

- [Danny] While Charles Thompson is not a well-known name,

the appraiser knows his history.

- [Sami] Charles Thompson is the Secretary of Congress

during the constitutional convention

when the Constitution was written in 1787.

- The presence of his signature on the document

provides a powerful indication that this could be one

of the original copies of the US Constitution.

- [Danny] So how does a document

of such historical significance end up in a filing cabinet

on a North Carolina farm?

- Back in the 1780s,

before the Wood family had owned the property,

it was the home of the state's governor, Samuel Johnston.

- After the Constitution is ratified

by the US Congress in June of 1788,

copies of the document are sent to the governors

of the 13 original colonies.

One of those copies ends up at the estate

on Governor Johnston's desk.

- [Sami] When the governor passes away at his estate

in 1816, all of his papers and his office

is essentially turned into a store room.

- So eventually, all those documents are filed away in

that metal filing cabinet, only to be discovered

by the Wood family appraiser more than two centuries later.

Thinking that they might have something

really valuable here,

the family decides to put the item up for auction.

- The last time that an original state copy

of the Constitution went up for auction,

it sold for about $400 in 1891,

which in today's money, is about $15,000.

So not bad for an old piece of paper,

but it's definitely not a fortune.

- [Danny] Now, over a century later,

the Wood family hopes for the best

as the auction begins.

- People are participating in person, by phone, and online,

and the price quickly soars past $1 million.

- [Martin] Bids begin jumping by $500,000 increments.

It's a seven minute frenzy

as the family watches the price soar.

When the gavel finally falls, the Woods Constitution

sells for $9 million.

- An anonymous bidder ends up winning the auction,

and according to Sotheby's, pays the highest amount ever

for a book manuscript or text at auction.

- As for the Wood family, this single piece of paper

earns them $3 million more than the $6 million

that they earned on the sale of their entire property.

- Up next, a discovery on a whole different scale,

and this one wasn't tucked away in a drawer.

- So it's 1984, it's the Reagan administration,

and with renewed tension between the United States

and the Soviet Union, the US Navy is eager

to recover the wrecks of two sunken US nuclear submarines,

the USS Scorpion and the USS Thresher,

both of which sank in the 1960s.

- The officials are desperate

to find these two sunken submarines to ensure

that the Soviet Union doesn't get there first

and discover vital nuclear secrets.

- The Navy wanted to know the status

of their nuclear reactor, so they went to a man

who was one of the most lauded names

in underwater exploration, Bob Ballard.

- So in August of 1985, Ballard and his team

set off in this top secret mission to locate

and survey the wreckage of these two missing subs.

- [Danny] The team uses a deep-towed sonar coupled

with the submersibles to search the sea floor in a grid.

[sonar pinging]

- [Austin] In the search, they find the USS Thresher,

and two weeks later,

they identify the wreckage of the Scorpion.

Ballard and his team complete the expedition

12 days ahead of schedule.

They take the remaining days and they comb the ocean floor,

seeing what else they could find.

- [Adam] They continue using this incredible, sophisticated

underwater imaging,

and on September 1st, 1985,

operators in the camera room observe something unexpected.

It's a debris field on the floor of the North Atlantic.

Ballard follows the debris field for roughly 2,000, 3,000 feet,

ultimately culminating at the hull of a sunken ship.

- [Danny] While the ocean floor is filled

with thousands of shipwrecks,

Ballard recognizes this as perhaps the most famous of all.

- [Announcer] Her name, of course, the Titanic.

- [Adam] He can't believe it.

This is the holy grail of found shipwrecks.

- People have been searching for the Titanic

for over 70 years,

but Ballard and his team find the Titanic almost

as a footnote on a military mission.

- [Austin] The find makes headlines around the world,

makes a celebrity of Ballard, and reignites interest

in this so-called unsinkable ship.

- [Danny] In the years after the discovery,

one key detail was kept under wraps.

- [Austin] Only in 2008 could Ballard finally reveal

that were it not for the secret search

for the Thresher and the Scorpion,

the Titanic might never have been discovered.

- It's 1592, and a team in southern Italy are hard at work,

digging a ditch for a powerful Duke

when they unearthed something unusual

buried in the ash.

[tense music]

- A team of workers are trying

to excavate an underground tunnel system

to bring water from the Sarno River

to a town four miles away called Torre Annunziata.

- Workers encounter layer after layer

of hardened ash, compacted like cement

from previous eruptions of the nearby volcano,

Mount Vesuvius.

One day, as workers are digging,

they find pieces of what appears to be ancient frescoes

and some have inscriptions on them.

- [Sami] They stop and grab their supervisor,

and when he looks at what the workers have found,

he can't believe his eyes.

- These seem to be ancient ruins.

And upon closer examination,

the architect finds ancient walls adorned

with paintings and inscriptions.

- He petitions the Duke for permission to excavate,

but the Duke is focused on just one thing,

getting water to Torre Annunziata.

- [Danny] The site sits untouched

for the next 150 years,

until King Charles III of Spain

decides to explore it further.

- [Sami] In the mid 1700s, we're in the middle of

the Age of Enlightenment, which is a time period

where rulers were literally competing with each other

for knowledge and information.

As part of that thirst for glory, the king of Spain wants

to be the first to excavate Fontana's work site.

- [Don] The site is still buried under tons

of hardened volcanic ash

and holds little known significance,

but they call in Swiss military engineer

Carl Weber to oversee the dig anyway.

- [Danny] As they dig deeper, Weber and his team

uncover something shocking.

- Right there, on one of these ancient walls,

workers discover an inscription,

"Rei Publicae Pompeianorvm",

the Republic of Pompeians.

- Now, Weber knows without a doubt

that they've uncovered something remarkable.

- [Danny] It's the legendary lost city of Pompeii,

missing for nearly 1,500 years.

- Pompeii was perfectly preserved

by one major catastrophic event:

the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

[volcano booming]

- This is not your average volcanic eruption.

When this thing blows, experts estimate it releases

thermal energy 100,000 times more powerful

than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan

at the end of World War II.

- It erupts so suddenly

that many residents don't have time to flee.

They're preserved in the same positions,

sitting, standing, hugging,

that they were in at the time of the eruption.

- In all, most scholars think that

1,500 to 2,000 people died in the eruption,

but some estimates suggest that

as many as 16,000 people died.

- They had no chance.

Everything happened so fast, so chaotically.

Pompeii and its citizens are wiped off the map.

Simply put, its total devastation.

- [Sami] With more than a third of Pompeii still buried,

there's still plenty more to be discovered,

and it's all thanks to workers

digging a ditch in the 1500s.

- It took five years and many dead ends,

but when one of archeology's greatest discoveries is finally

made in Egypt, it happens by accident,

thanks to a young water boy.

[tense music]

- In November 1922,

12-year-old Hussein Abdel Rasoul

does what he does every day,

carries heavy jugs of water to the dig site

of famous British egyptologist, Howard Carter.

Carter's team has been digging at this site,

known as the Valley of the Kings,

on and off for years.

- As you can imagine,

digging in the Egyptian desert is a brutal undertaking.

Temperatures reach well over 100 degrees,

and all the sand reflects the heat

onto the workers at the site.

- So Carter and his team rely on water boys like Hussein

to bring jugs of water to the dig team all day, every day.

- The Egyptian sands can often be unsteady, and so Hussein

and the other water boys will often dig little trenches

in order to place these jugs

to ensure that they don't tip over.

- One day, Hussein buries a jug of water

just as he's done hundreds of times,

but on this day, something is different.

- [Don] As he digs, he hits something hard,

something that shouldn't be there.

He clears the sand off it,

and there's the shape of a step.

- Now, Hussein doesn't know where this leads,

but in all his time, he's never seen anything like this,

and so he calls Howard Carter over to take a look.

- [Hugo] When Carter sees the step, he can't believe it.

He wants to know where it leads.

He brings the rest of the team over

and they ferociously dig for the next three weeks.

Eventually, they discover a sunken staircase

ending at a heavy stone door.

- [Danny] On the door, he sees something incredible,

a seal with the markings of Tutankhamnun.

- On November 24th, Carter breaks a small hole in the door

and peers inside, then silence.

When asked if he sees anything, Carter responds in awe,

"Yes, wonderful things."

- The rest of the team heads down to join him,

and as they enter, they find four burial chambers filled

with 5,000 extraordinary treasures.

There are gold covered chariots, stunningly crafted jewelry,

and a sarcophagus inscribed

with King Tutankhamnun's cartouche.

- This discovery is a dream come true for Carter

because he's wanted this for such a long time.

It also captures the public's fascination

and it leads to what many call Tut-mania.

Effectively after this,

King Tut becomes the first world famous pharaoh.

- [Don] Archeologists spend years cataloging

and removing these fragile items all left

to honor this fallen king,

who ascended the throne when he was just nine years old

and died when he was 18.

- Perhaps the most iconic discovery of all

is a solid gold mask

that once covered the face of King Tut's mummy.

- [Don] Unfortunately, embalming agents acted like a glue

to attach the mummy to the golden coffin around it,

and experts have to dismember Tut's mummy

to remove it from the tomb.

- [Kavitha] Howard Carter goes into the history books

as the discoverer of Tut's tomb,

but Hussein Abdel Rasoul's role in this discovery

is much less known.

- [Hugo] Carter purposely leaves him out of his published report

and attributes the find to his own workman,

perhaps to save face so that the world doesn't learn

that this expert archeologist was

digging in the wrong place.

- [Don] Either way, it's fitting that the boy king's tomb

is finally discovered by a 12-year-old boy himself.

- Some of history's greatest treasures were never meant

to be found, but fate

or maybe just dumb luck had other plans.

I'm Danny Trejo, thanks for watching Mysteries Unearthed.