Original subtitles

The Valley of the Kings.

An ancient burial ground for Egypt's greatest pharaohs...

It never gets old. It's truly a really special place.

..and the most famous archaeological site in the world.

Let's go.

Now, for the first time in over a hundred years,

an elite team of archaeologists

will excavate the tomb

of one of the most powerful kings to have ever lived,

Ramses III.

The story of Ramses III is sensational.

Even the tiniest clues about Ramses III's tomb

would be an incredible find.

With unprecedented access,

the team will dig for three months to unearth clues...

I'm very excited.

..and find lost treasures...

This definitely belongs together.

..unravelling a 3,000-year-old murder mystery...

This is a mortal wound.

..that exposes one of the most treacherous conspiracies

of the ancient world.

The idea that the pharaoh was assassinated is extraordinary.

In the burial chamber of Ramses III...

..new evidence will be revealed...

..and 3,000-year-old secrets discovered.

Only in ancient Egypt

can you actually do this sort of thing.

The Valley of the Kings is a place of promise...

..of excitement.

It is silent.

It is mysterious.

It's like you're in another world.

The Valley of the Kings lies in the very heart of Egypt,

hundreds of kilometres south from the Great Pyramids of Giza.

3,500 years ago, the pharaohs stopped building giant pyramids

to transport their mummies into the afterlife.

Instead, they moved to the valley...

..to build incredible underground tombs.

The tombs are absolutely stunning,

and they served as this

kind of resurrection machine

to help the king enter the afterlife.

In their tombs, the king's mummies were buried in nested coffins

with everything they would need in the netherworld.

Food, furniture, clothing,

little magical artefacts that are supposed to help you,

and lots and lots of gold.

The wealth of ancient Egyptian kings

was the stuff of legend.

It's the reason that archaeologists have scoured

this unique and exclusive location for centuries,

and its secrets continue to be revealed.

It's an extremely challenging place,

but the idea that

archaeology of the Valley of the Kings is finished

is not correct.

Now an elite team of archaeologists are beginning an excavation

they hope will change history.

In charge of the mission is Dr Anke Weber.

For more than ten years,

I always imagined what could be below my feet.

This is the history of humankind.

It's an honour to become part of this.

Anke has negotiated exclusive access

to dig for three months

in one of the most prestigious tombs in the valley.

Beneath the valley floor lie over 60 tombs

cut into the rocky landscape.

In the centre, the final resting place

of the legendary boy pharaoh Tutankhamun.

But just 30 metres away is the site of Anke's mission -

Tomb KV11.

Inside, decorated corridors plunge deep into the rock,

leading to a secret dig site piled high with debris.

This is the unexcavated burial chamber of King Ramses III.

Ramses III is one of the towering figures

from ancient Egyptian history.

He defended Egypt at a crucial, pivotal time

of not just Egyptian history

but in fact the entire Mediterranean world.

Ramses III is considered Egypt's last great warrior king.

Hieroglyphics reveal he ruled for 31 years,

building vast temples and battling marauding armies

that threatened to destroy Egypt's empire.

Incredibly, Ramses' mummy exists today,

kept in a museum in Cairo.

He was found almost 150 years ago, almost a kilometre from his tomb,

high in the mountains above the Valley of the Kings.

It was really one of the most earth-shattering finds.

You get to actually look at Ramses III -

not just a statue, but at him.

The story of Ramses III is sensational.

Any sort of information, no matter how little,

we can glean from all of this, that would be very exciting.

Now, for the very first time,

Anke's elite archaeological team

will fully excavate inside the great king's tomb.

Its entrance has already been beautifully restored,

filled with hieroglyphic text

designed to transport the king into the afterlife.

But deeper down lies the tomb's secret...

..an ancient scene of destruction, off limits for over a century

and never fully excavated before.

Ramses' burial chamber.

It's absolutely incredible to be inside his burial chamber

where Ramses III and the sarcophagus once rested,

to revive him for the afterlife.

Anke's mission is to clear away the debris,

to unearth the tomb's lost artefacts...

..and finally unravel the mysteries

of this great pharaoh's life and death.

This is our task now, bringing back the magic of the burial chamber.

The more we reveal and uncover from the sand,

the more we will know about the person himself

and find something that was last seen by our ancestors.

First, the team must haul out the surface debris

and search for any ancient artefacts that lie beneath.

Today we are very excited.

This is the day we were waiting for.

I hope that we are lucky.

The team works quickly,

but excavating here is not without risk.

Massive chunks of rock have tumbled six metres from the ceiling above,

leaving the tomb incredibly fragile.

Anke believes it's a result of violent flash floods

around 100 years ago.

We are looking to get more information about

the flooding events, but the area is very unstable.

To avoid further damage,

the workers must wrestle the huge boulders by hand.

As they clear away the debris, something begins to appear.

It seems as if this would be a piece of metal.

That's actually... it's very unusual to find metal,

so we will try our best to get it out in one piece

in order to see what it actually was.

But as the team clears away the sand, there's a surprise.

This is not metal.

It's a piece of wood

going into this direction,

and what we have here are

parts of the spine

of a living being.

So for now, it looks as if it is

covered with linen a little bit.

So this would tell us

that some kind of mummification took place.

A piece of mummified human spine

is an intriguing clue,

and a mystery,

because Anke believes it shouldn't be here in tomb KV11 at all.

The mystery is actually

why do we have any kind of remains inside KV11?

We would never expect it here,

because we know that the mummy of Ramses III

is not placed in KV11 any more.

Who does this mummified spine belong to?

And why is somebody else buried inside Ramses' tomb?

Clues could lie less than three kilometres away

at Ramses' temple.

Egyptologist Meredith Brand investigates the site

to decode the mysteries of the king's reign.

It's one of the most famous monuments in Egypt -

Medinet Habu.

I love Medinet Habu temple.

It's really stunning, because it's so complete.

Inside there's amazing colours. It's so well preserved.

This is one of my favourite temples from ancient Egypt.

This temple was built for Ramses III

so that people could give him offerings

and celebrate him during his life and after his death.

So what was celebrated about Ramses III's reign?

On almost every facade is a scene of terror -

spilt blood...

..severed hands...

..and captured victims

glorify the battles of the pharaoh.

Looking at these walls, it's clear that Ramses III

wanted to show himself fighting enemies, smiting everyone.

This temple says, "I'm Ramses III and I'm a warrior king."

So who was Ramses fighting against

On the side of the temple,

Meredith finds a fierce conflict at sea.

It's quite faint, but I can make out this massive image of Ramses III

shooting a bow and arrow at this melee of a battle.

We have ships and soldiers,

and everyone's falling over into the water.

It's pure fighting and chaos.

The chaos reveals a group of marauding tribes

known as the Sea Peoples.

And they aren't the only adversaries threatening the borders of Egypt.

There's battles of him fighting the Nubians.

There's two separate battles fighting the Libyans.

Ramses III was enmeshed in warfare.

Ramses' temple records his astonishing victories

over the enemies of the Egyptian Empire.

Ramses III was not a warrior pharaoh necessarily by choice.

This was thrust upon him.

He truly, truly lived at one of the most difficult times

in which a king could reign,

and the fact that he managed to make out of it what he did

is a true testament to how great a king he was.

Ramses was a celebrated and successful warrior king.

So how did he die?

And why are the mummified remains of someone else buried inside his tomb?

130 metres deep into the bedrock of the Valley of the Kings,

Anke Weber and her team...

..delicately free the ancient spine

from the floor of Ramses III's burial chamber.

Around her, even more human remains are beginning to emerge,

including what looks like a mummified limb.

We found here a large part of a mummy, very clearly.

We can see the layers of linen

that were soaked with resin

in order to preserve this body for eternity.

So for now, we can't tell exactly which part of the mummy this is.

However, it's very exciting,

because it's somehow, like, coming closer to all these people

who once were part of the history of KV11.

Ramses III's mummy is no longer inside his tomb.

It's preserved in a museum.

So who do these body parts belong to,

and why are they here?

Anke spots a new clue nearby.

What we have here are parts of an ancient Egyptian coffin.

There are remains of plaster on top of the surface.

We can see these dowels inside dowel holes.

An expensive plaster-covered coffin

suggests the mummies were once members of the elite.

Anke believes they were probably buried here

hundreds of years after Ramses' death,

when Egypt was weak and fractured.

They won't be able to precisely date the burials until a lab analysis,

but Anke has a theory on why they were here.

Everybody wants to be something special,

everybody wants to become part of the history of something.

So it is most likely that the people,

high-ranking officials, decided,

"Oh, yeah, why not be buried inside the tomb of

"one of Egypt's most interesting and greatest pharaohs of all time?"

Ancient elites chose to be buried in the valley's magnificent tombs

to pay homage to the kings that came before them.

And Ramses III was one of the greatest kings of them all.

So what was it that killed him?

Meredith Brand has come to

the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation

to investigate.

It's such a unique and special aspect

of ancient Egyptian culture that they preserve the dead,

and that now for us, we can look into the face of

some of the greatest kings and queens of ancient Egypt.

The pharaoh queen Hatshepsut...

..Ramses ...

..and none other than Ramses III himself.

It's so remarkable to stand here

and see this very important and very powerful king.

This mummy is beautifully preserved.

You can see his facial features, even his teeth and his hair.

The ancient Egyptians mummified the dead to preserve their bodies.

They believed it would allow their body and soul

to reunite in the afterlife.

And they strived for perfection.

A mummy like Ramses III was done with such care and attention.

The embalmers would have removed his internal organs,

washed him with oils and perfumes...

..packed his body with salt...

..and then wrapped his entire body up in linens.

If something was wrong, the embalmers could fix it

so that when the deceased got to the afterlife,

not only would their body be there, but it would be more perfect.

On the surface, Ramses' mummy looks completely intact...

..but X-ray scans reveal a different and shocking story.

Beneath the bandages,

six healing amulets are packed around Ramses' foot

that conceal a missing toe, cut off with a heavy blade.

On Ramses' neck...

..embalming resin fills a deep gash...

..that splits the throat right down to the bone.

The cut on Ramses III's neck...

This severed the trachea and the oesophagus

and even nicked the bone in his vertebrae.

This is a mortal wound.

This kind of gash makes it clear

that his death wasn't some kind of accident or a result of old age.

He met a violent end,

and all the evidence points to murder.

The idea that the pharaoh was assassinated,

and by something as violent as that,

is extraordinary.

It is an extraordinary and terrifying thought.

It would have been almost unthinkable in ancient Egypt

to try to assassinate the Pharaoh.

Can you imagine how difficult

kind of an undertaking

that would be? First of all,

it's not a one-man job.

You need allies in this sort of thing.

You also need a motive.

Why are you killing the king?

Surely you must have a really good reason

to actually undertake something so incredibly risky.

Who killed Ramses III?

And why did they want him dead?

Deep inside Ramses' burial chamber...

..Anke and the team search for clues.

But the surface of the tomb is a chaotic, jumbled mess of finds,

making this mystery difficult to unravel.

We have pieces of pottery that belong to a larger vessel.

All these finds are mixed.

Both ancient robbers and colonial-era explorers

have rummaged through the debris, like a crime scene

that has been revisited for centuries.

We know that this area is disturbed.

It's always puzzling for us to say what actually happened.

But step by step, we will investigate

what happened here in KV11.

But hidden within the debris, Anke spots something

that may have belonged to Ramses III himself.

We have here the lower part of a wooden ushabti.

It's rather destroyed.

However, you can still see here

this is the beginning of the lower part of the feet.

It could be over 3,000 years old.

Across the chamber, the team finds the missing head.

This definitely belongs together.

They must have been disconnected somehow.

That's amazing.

Ushabtis are ancient figurines, often around a foot tall,

that were buried with the deceased.

A king like Ramses would have had hundreds.

They acted as servants,

inscribed with magic spells...

..so that if the dead was made to work in the afterlife...

..the ushabti will say "here I am"

and do the work for him.

The team analyses the statue pieces,

searching for inscriptions that could reveal a name.

We have the hope that they belonged to the pharaoh Ramses III.

But hard evidence of its original owner has been lost,

eroded away from the ushabti's delicate surface.

The team will need to keep searching the mass of dried-out mud and rubble

covering the chamber's floor.

Any scrap of ancient material could reveal brand new details

about the death and burial of one of Egypt's greatest kings.

At the monumental temple of Medinet Habu,

built to honour Pharaoh Ramses III...

..Egyptologist Meredith Brand

investigates the king's brutal murder.

She wants to establish a motive for his royal assassination...

..and believes the sheer number of battle scenes on his temple walls

reveal a deeper story than just Ramses' military prowess.

These scenes show Ramses III

as this victorious ruler who was indestructible.

In some ways it is true, but there was a larger issue.

Ramses III was surrounded by war,

and this war took a toll on Egypt and its economy.

Ramses' never-ending battles

begin to drain the resources of the country,

and inflation spirals out of control.

Strikes, civil unrest

and even famine strangle the heart of Egypt.

Was Ramses killed because of the crumbling economy,

or were there other motives at play?

Nobody ever blamed the pharaoh for anything.

He was theoretically perfect, a divine ruler.

What we do know is

that he had a number of wives and a large number of children,

and we don't think

that he designated an heir during his lifetime.

In ancient Egypt, the firstborn son would normally inherit the throne,

but with no designated heir, the stage is set for a coup.

Let's say you do have a motive. OK -

How do you do it? How do you find the allies?

How do you know where people's loyalties stand?

So you have to sort of start, you know...

checking the pulse, as it were.

See who might have grievances, perhaps.

Once you have that in place,

you need an entire network of people,

but also, they need to be close to the person of the king.

Meredith investigates a copy of an ancient papyrus

originally discovered near the site.

This is an image of an amazing papyrus

from the time of Ramses III.

It tells us about a conspiracy to kill the king.

It reveals the proceedings of a murder trial.

It's shocking, the number of people involved in this conspiracy.

It has everyone in the palace.

It has people involved with food,

it has security, army, and it has women of the harem,

including Queen Tiye, the wife of Ramses III.

This is a courtroom drama playing out in front of our eyes

that tells us when and how Ramses III was killed.

One of Ramses' secondary wives, Queen Tiye,

leads the conspiracy to place her son,

a younger, more minor prince, on the throne.

Some believe that after a great festival at Medinet Habu,

Ramses is steered into the apparent safety of his harem.

Here, the attackers pounce...

..and slice off Ramses' toe in the struggle

before dealing the mortal wound.

Here's the critical thing.

The assassination attempt - that plot certainly succeeded.

We know Ramses III died as a result.

But ultimately, the coup was not successful.

Over 30 perpetrators were caught, tried, and sentenced.

The punishments outlined in this papyrus are quite severe.

Some people had their nose and ears cut off,

but those actually in the centre of the conspiracy, they were executed.

And Ramses' treacherous younger son never made it to the throne.

He was examined. The judges found him guilty.

They left him where he was and he killed himself.

Ramses' murder was a shocking family feud,

but his death makes Ramses even more important.

A vast funeral procession leads his mummy

into the Valley of the Kings...

..on a new journey...

..to become a god.

How cool is it that we can talk about

so much detail around this historical event

that took place around 3,000 years ago?

Only in ancient Egypt

can you actually do this sort of thing.

Inside Ramses' tomb,

Anke and the team want to investigate

what happened after the king's death.

How did his tomb transform Ramses into an immortal god?

Oh.

Hidden below the debris, they have unearthed incredibly

fragile pieces of 3000-year-old tomb decoration.

So beautiful.

What we've found here is a piece of the wall decoration.

And it's the foot of this god here in the middle,

and he's standing right on top of a snake.

It's very amazing and very touching,

because it's the first time that we have such a complete piece.

It's a very lucky find. Very happy about it.

The snake is a crucial clue

that connects with the decoration in the rest of the tomb.

This is so impressive.

The paintings tell the story of an elaborate mythological journey

Ramses must go on to achieve eternal life.

As night falls, Ramses follows the path of the sun god

as he voyages through

the dangerous waters of the netherworld.

To prove he is righteous,

he must navigate the flames of a lake of fire...

..and appease Apophis, the chaos serpent,

who threatens to plunge the world into darkness.

If he succeeds,

the Pharaoh rises as the sun god Ra,

bringing order and safety to the universe.

The king in ancient Egypt served an important cosmological role.

He was during his lifetime

and after his death, the embodiment of the sun god.

The tomb itself, it was really a machine to make you go

from this world to the next, to ensure the king's safety,

to ensure that day followed night,

and the entire cosmos would continue to exist.

In the burial chamber,

the team carefully glues the fragile, painted plasterwork.

It's so delicate they must lift it out with

a stabilising block of sand below.

Thank God, we have it.

Ah, I'm quite relieved, actually.

Uh, yeah, that's a very, very special object.

But hiding among the rubble is something even more tantalising.

More than 3,000 years after its construction...

..the crumbling burial chamber of

Pharaoh Ramses III could still hold secrets.

A month into her mission, deep beneath the Egyptian desert...

..Dr Anke Weber and her team unearth a mysterious stone.

Clues concealed beneath the debris could help unravel

how the king was buried after his brutal assassination.

This is amazing. We have found here a piece of rose granite.

I didn't expect that here.

So we are going to lift this object out now...very carefully.

Rose granite is an expensive, high-quality stone,

far more precious than the surrounding limestone of the chamber.

Inside the Valley of the Kings,

it would have been brought in from over 100 kilometres away

to create one thing - the pharaoh's sarcophagus.

- Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. - SHE CHUCKLES

Let's dry-clean it. Um, make all your notes.

I want pictures from before the cleaning and after the cleaning,

and, uh, we will see.

That's amazing!

The team keeps digging

and reveals even more of the precious granite pieces.

We have a very clear corner here.

I'm quite speechless.

There are many possibilities what this can actually be.

But it is most probably part of a foot.

But, um, one thing is clear. It is amazing.

If this is the foot of Ramses III's sarcophagus,

it's a huge discovery.

These pieces would be an incredibly rare clue

about how the king was buried.

But something doesn't add up...

..because a sarcophagus belonging to Ramses III already exists.

In Paris at the Musee du Louvre...

..Egyptologist Christophe Barbotin

explores the museum's collection of ancient burial equipment.

Deep in the crypt lies one of the most prized ancient objects

in the museum's entire collection...

..a giant rose granite sarcophagus beautifully inscribed

on every surface with hieroglyphic evidence.

Removed from Tomb KV11 around 200 years ago,

the complete sarcophagus is an 18-tonne behemoth,

topped with a colossal matching lid...

..itself now stored in a museum in England.

Both parts are covered

with religious texts bearing the name of the king.

And the top is carved with Ramses as Osiris...

..the god of death.

Christophe examines the granite,

searching for evidence of damage.

The body of the sarcophagus shows barely a chip of damage.

The chunk of broken granite Anke has found in KV11

can't possibly have come from this...

..but the lid is a different story.

It still bears the scars of some ancient heist.

Ramses' sarcophagus is now housed thousands of miles

from his tomb in England and France...

..and there are pieces missing from them.

Is it possible that they never left the burial chamber?

Has Anke's team found one of them buried in the ancient rubble?

Anke inspects a digital model of the lid for clues.

She finds the granite at the bottom around the pharaoh's feet is missing

and has been reconstructed for display.

This is the exciting thing - the feet are missing.

It is most likely that this object here

is a part of this sarcophagus lid.

Anke has a missing piece of

Ramses III's 3000-year-old sarcophagus lid.

That's so incredible,

and it would be my dream to virtually reunite these pieces.

If they can unearth more pieces...

..the team might decode the most critical part

of Ramses' burial chamber.

The sarcophagus is the focal point of the burial,

containing the king's instructions for navigating the afterlife.

The king didn't make it to the afterlife,

the sun might not rise.

The world might end.

It was so important to have a sarcophagus to protect his body,

so his afterlife maintained the cosmic balance of ancient Egypt.

So the stakes were pretty high.

Inside Ramses III's tomb,

the granite pieces keep coming,

and now, crucially, with inscriptions.

We keep finding pieces of rose granite,

actually, almost daily.

We can see that here on top,

the surface is sculpted with a snake.

And here on the sides,

we have hieroglyphs that tell us more about the deceased person

and that he was actually here.

He's called a god.

Named as a god,

it is almost certain to belong to Ramses' sarcophagus...

..and the pieces even fit together.

- Oh, wow. - Oh, wow. That works very well.

- It fits exactly. - It's perfect.

It's absolutely amazing.

But something is strange.

Great. Can you check this piece, please?

These newest pieces of granite don't match

with any part of the lid that is already known.

For Anke, it can only mean one thing.

I guess that we have something that is even more exciting.

So it might be that we have here one or even two other lids

that probably belonged to Ramses III.

It would mean that Ramses didn't just have one sarcophagus...

..but two or even three nested inside each other.

Why would the ancient Egyptians

build such a difficult and complicated construction?

Outside in the Valley of the Kings, Anke investigates.

She explores a nearby tomb.

Its long corridors extend deep into the rock...

..and open to reveal the burial chamber

of one of Ramses' predecessors,

a king named Merenptah.

His tombs actually worked like a template.

It's basically a clue of how the tomb of Ramses III once looked like.

In the centre of the burial chamber,

assembled from granite fragments, is a gigantic box.

Four metres long and over two metres high,

it's the largest sarcophagus in the Valley of the Kings.

Next to it, Anke finds a seven-tonne granite lid...

..covered in beautiful religious carvings.

The pieces are part of a set of four colossal stone sarcophagi

that all once nested inside each other.

It's unbelievable that they were able to lift these tons and tons

of massive material inside the burial chamber.

And Anke has a theory

why the ancient Egyptians went to such lengths.

It was of religious significance to protect the deceased pharaoh.

So nesting and nesting and nesting until you come

to the centrepiece wrapped in his royal linen for the mummy.

Protecting the mummy of the Pharaoh was critical,

but very few kings in history

had nested sarcophagi this large and elaborate.

Was this how Ramses III's mummy was buried too?

Oh, it would be spectacular if maybe, just maybe,

Ramses III was in fact buried in more than one sarcophagus.

It's such a rare find.

These tombs have been robbed in antiquity.

So to find extra evidence,

anything that lets us piece together

how these incredible figures from history were buried,

we'd all be all the richer for it.

More than 3,000 years after his death at the hands of his own family...

..Ramses III's tomb is still giving up secrets.

But Anke's campaign deep beneath the pharaoh's sacred valley

is far from complete.

If we imagine what we have here, this hill in front of us,

there must be more below.

Next time...

..Anke and the team dive down into the limestone rubble...

..in search of clues left on the chamber's original floor.

Could a surprise discovery implicate a legendary archaeologist

in the theft of another pharaoh's riches?

This is the first hard proof

that objects had been taken out of the tomb of Tutankhamun.

What can ancient graffiti reveal about why Ramses' body was snatched?

Everyone thought that these mummies had been lost.

- SHE LAUGHS - Oh, this is incredible. Wow.

The mummies were here for a reason.

And can Anke be the first archaeologist to uncover

original grave goods from the Valley of the Kings

in more than a century?

The sign "heka" means ruler. It's amazing.

With weeks of digging still to come,

the full story of Egypt's last great pharaoh

could be just below the surface.

We never know what we will find.

Still, there are mysteries to solve.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media