Original subtitles

Archaeologists are about to open a coffin,

sealed for more than 2,000 years.

Inside could be a rare,

undisturbed mummy.

Oh!

The Valley of the Kings.

Eternal home to the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt's golden age.

In these mountains archaeologists have made some

of history's most extraordinary discoveries.

The bodies of Royals dating back 3,000 years.

The corpses of these kings represent the peak of

the art of mummification,

preparing a dead body with oils and

linen wrapping to avoid decay.

But the evolution of this sacred custom is

still shrouded in mystery.

Why, and how, did Egyptians start preserving their bodies?

And what happened to mummification when after

more than 2,000 years Ancient Egypt was conquered?

Today, archaeologists across Egypt search for mummies from

the civilization's earliest days,

and from its final reckoning,

to shed light on mummification's rise,

and fall.

Texas-born Archaeologist Meredith Brand encountered

her first mummy in London's British museum,

aged just seven.

Ever since, she's been desperate to unlock the secrets they contain.

You can hear the silence,

the wind and feel that this was a sacred place.

Meredith has come to the Pharaohs' tombs,

because she believes the secrets of the

origins of mummification can be found here.

This site holds vital clues to the mummification process,

both in terms of technology but also

in terms of the ritual and the reasons why Ancient Egyptians

wanted so badly to preserve their bodies.

More than 60 tombs

have been uncovered in the Valley.

Most are decorated floor to ceiling with elaborate imagery.

Oh the carvings,

the painting is so fresh and vivid.

These artworks were designed to help carry

the owner's mummy safely to the afterlife.

Meredith searches for evidence of the Ancient Egyptians'

obsession with mummification.

Oh this is the scene I've come for!

Okay so,

what I can see here is this jackal-headed god,

Anubis and he's enacting mummification,

which was his sacred role.

The image represents the very first mummification,

performed by gods.

The embalming of Osiris.

According to legend Osiris was one of

the first gods to walk the earth.

But in a feud, he was murdered by his brother, Seth,

who scattered his body parts across Egypt.

Osiris' wife searched the length and breadth of the Nile

to recover his broken corpse.

With Anubis' help, she reassembled Osiris and

wrapped him in strips of linen,

resurrecting him for a second life

as ruler of the Underworld.

From then on, powerful Egyptians had their bodies

wrapped and embalmed.

So that just like Osiris,

they could live again in the afterlife.

This scene reveals the ultimate goal of the king,

which was a perfect mummy so that he could successfully

be reborn in the afterlife.

The image depicts the myth of the origins of mummification,

but it dates to the New Kingdom,

more than 1,000 years after wealthy Egyptians began

preserving their corpses.

To find out exactly how the earliest Egyptians mummified

their dead, archaeologists need to find one of the rarest

of archaeological treasures.

A mummy from the Old Kingdom.

In Saqqara.

World-renowned mummy expert, Salima Ikram, has been

called out to an extraordinary find in one of Egypt's oldest cemeteries.

Born in Pakistan, she fell in love with Egypt on

a family visit, aged nine.

She's spent a career poring over its dried-out corpses,

and not just humans.

She's examined the mummies of dogs, cats, even a lion.

In a tomb dating back more than 4,000 years,

archaeologist Mohamed Megahed

has uncovered a single human mummy.

If it belongs to the tomb's original owner,

it would be one of the oldest mummies Salima,

or anyone, has ever seen.

If we actually do have an Old Kingdom mummy,

then it will be terribly exciting.

I've worked on one or two others,

and they are so rare, but most of the time,

burial chambers and entire sites have been re-used long

after the Old Kingdom so I hope Mohamed is not in for a disappointment.

For four years, Mohamed has led investigations

into this mysterious tomb.

What he has unearthed has stunned the world of Egyptology.

Under the sand and rubble,

Mohamed discovered a corridor leading to an antechamber,

painted in stunning detail and vibrant colors.

Hieroglyphs reveal this is the tomb of a man called Khuwy,

a relation of the royal family who lived over 4,000 years ago.

In the burial chamber nearby there were four jars

to hold mummified organs.

A smashed, empty sarcophagus.

And strewn all over the floor, the fragments,

of a mummy.

It could be one of the oldest Egyptian mummies ever found.

But is it the bones of Khuwy,

or an imposter?

Last year, Mohamed's team found more mummies buried just

outside the tomb's walls, from a much later era.

If the mummy in the burial chamber is from

the same time, it can't be Khuwy.

Salima is here to examine the mummy,

to try to establish a positive ID.

It's rather a lovely and huge and beautifully

organized magazine,

mashallah.

If it does turn out to be Khuwy,

the corpse could answer one of

Egyptologists' oldest questions.

Just how early in their history did Egyptians perfect

the mysterious art of mummification?

Near the oasis city of Faiyum.

Egyptian Archaeologist Basem Gehad has set up camp

on the desolate site of the ancient town of Philadelphia,

to investigate mummification at the end

of the Egyptian empire.

As a child, drawn to Egypt's archaeological secrets,

Basem begged his father every weekend to take him to

the Pyramids or to Cairo's Egyptian Museum.

These days he gets to live on his own archaeological site,

for months at a time.

Some 2,000 years after the age of the Pyramids,

the time of the Egyptian Kings came to an end.

Ancient Egypt was invaded by Greece.

The Greeks had no tradition of preserving their dead.

Basem wants to know how the conquest changed

the practice of mummification.

Today, he's on the hunt for something incredibly rare:

an intact Greek grave.

Now, a new photograph from a satellite has given him a

fresh hint of where to dig.

Basem's team strips away the thin layer of

windblown sand from the mound,

immediately beneath he finds a promising clue.

Within minutes, Basem's workers reveal the

outlines of six separate burials cut into the rock.

It's a fantastic discovery,

but are these graves undisturbed?

The workers clean away loose sand from

each burial in search of an untouched grave.

The unbroken mud seal plastered over

the tomb roof proves no-one ever robbed this grave.

Beneath the brickwork should be a coffin,

and its occupant should reveal how the inhabitants of

a Greek town in Egypt buried their dead.

The sealed tomb could contain an Egyptian,

or a rare Ancient Greek body.

In their homeland,

Ancient Greeks didn't mummify their dead,

but could their practices have changed when

they settled among Egyptians?

To get inside the tomb, Basem must destroy the seal

and dismantle the mud-brick roof.

The structure itself proves the tomb dates

to the era of Greek rule.

The team now has to remove just a few bricks before

they can see inside.

Surprise!

The team breaks through the roof of the tomb,

and catch their first glimpse of its contents.

Oh...

It's an undisturbed coffin,

an incredible find, and exactly what Basem hoped for.

The painted wooden casket has a peaked roof,

not the rounded top of Egyptian sarcophagi.

Greeks lived side by side with Egyptians in Philadelphia,

and this is almost certainly a rare Greek burial.

The question is, was the occupant buried in

the Greek tradition,

or Egyptian?

To find out, Basem needs to extract the coffin,

without crushing it.

In the desert of Gebelein, just south of Luxor,

Meredith searches for evidence

of Egypt's earliest death rites.

She believes the myths that drove Egyptians to mummify

their own bodies had roots much earlier than

Ancient Egyptian civilization.

Prehistoric rock art depicting wildlife suggests this area

was once a sacred place.

In the 19th century, archaeologists identified

it as a burial ground.

This is a desolate dry landscape,

nothing much to see on the surface.

But underneath these rocks and

sand there would have been prehistoric tombs.

In 1896, an Egyptologist from the British Museum received

a tip-off of a momentous discovery.

Buried under a thin layer of desert debris,

local farmers had found a mummified body,

preserved in astonishing detail.

On the upper arm tattoos of horned animals were still visible,

and from the head sprouted tufts of red hair,

earning this mummy its original nickname,

“Ginger.”

There was a puncture wound to the left shoulder blade,

and a fractured rib beneath.

Forensic analysis has revealed the body is male and

over 5,000 years old,

but how is this body so perfectly preserved?

For Meredith, the evidence suggests the

man's mummification was not planned.

Instead, it was an accident of nature.

In this photo I can see there's no bandages or

anything that would have preserved this mummy.

So it would seem that this was not an intentional mummification.

He was preserved by the sand.

There was no ritual or magic or anything involved,

just the drying power of nature.

Hundreds of years before the first Pharaoh,

this man lived around the fertile flood plains along the river Nile.

But around his 20th birthday,

he was brutally stabbed in the back,

and left for dead.

He was buried in a shallow grave,

with simple clay grave goods.

And covered with sand.

But the desert sun and hot dry sand quickly evaporated all

the water from his body.

Stopping it from decomposing, freezing him in time until his

discovery 5,400 years later.

Archaeologists have found no papyri that explain the

historical origins of mummification,

but Meredith believes the practice could have evolved

from accidents of nature.

Natural mummies like the Gebelein man would have

inspired Ancient Egyptians that if they could use

technology to harness the power of nature,

their bodies too could last forever into eternity.

It's a truly spectacular discovery.

It tells us where mummification started.

In Aswan.

Across the river from the city,

a team of Egyptian archaeologists scours a

remote hilltop necropolis.

They hope its long-lost tombs will hold evidence of how

ordinary Ancient Egyptians

prepared their dead for the afterlife.

The few tombs that have been found suggest the people of

Aswan used this burial ground some 2,000 years ago,

as Egyptian civilization was in decline.

Born in the town beside the Nile,

Archaeologist Sayed Elrawy has

walked these outcrops since childhood.

High up and inaccessible,

it is an ideal location for a cemetery.

Today, he is investigating the

unmistakable outline of a buried stairwell.

He believes this one will lead to answers to how

the less wealthy treated their dead.

The only way to test his luck,

is to dig.

In the Old Kingdom Necropolis at Saqqara,

Salima has been called to examine a mummy found in a

noble's lavish tomb.

She hopes an X-Ray will help establish if it's

the original tomb owner.

If it is, it could be one of the oldest intentionally mummified bodies ever found.

Where is Khuwy kept?

Hello Mr. Khuwy!

Okay, so what we'll do is,

we'll do the X-Ray of Khuwy right here.

Okay.

We have electricity,

and then we'll do the developing in the other room.

Perfect.

So easy-peasy inshallah.

Inshallah. Okay.

Salima's permit to scan the mummy is

only valid for one day.

She's turned to a trusted piece of kit,

an archaeologist's field X-Ray.

Our X-Ray machine dates to I think the '80s.

I know longer than some of us have been alive.

But it's tiny it's easy to move around, um,

the bad thing is though because it's not digital,

you have to do your photography and then

your developing and then you find out if it was a disaster

or a success.

Before 'Khuwy' goes under the scanner,

Salima will conduct a visual inspection.

The moment of truth.

It's the first time she's met the mummy.

Ah.

Only fragments of the body remain.

So there is no head. Yeah.

But we have the ribs.

And we have pelvis.

I think he was quite fat.

You know it's a good solid thigh.

Thousands of years spent in the tomb of Khuwy,

the Old Kingdom noble, have not been kind to this mummy.

Ah, it looks like a...

I think its rodents have eaten this.

Yeah, yeah.

If this is Khuwy's body,

there's not much of him left.

But for mummy expert Salima,

there is enough to tell how it was preserved.

That could give her a rough idea of its age.

Right, smells like a nicer quality mummy.

This in particular seems to be very impregnated with resins.

I mean look at that.

It's extremely high quality.

Ancient embalmers bathed bodies in expensive resins from tree sap,

preserving the flesh before they wrapped the corpse.

Look at all of this textile it's beautiful.

This is really very fine quality linen.

Oh wow.

The mummy seems to have been wrapped in the

highest-grade of bandages.

This matches the detailed picture of

Khuwy's lavish lifestyle depicted in his tomb.

Khuwy was a high-ranking official,

a member of the Pharaoh's Royal Court during the Pyramid Age,

near the beginning of Egyptian civilization.

Scenes painted in his tomb show that he could afford the

luxuries of fine food, in vast quantities.

And jars found in the tomb,

made to hold the mummified organs of the deceased.

Are more evidence of a high-status burial.

A man like this could certainly afford to have

his body embalmed in resin and wrapped in the finest linen.

But for Salima, the quality of the linen rings alarm bells.

It's extraordinary.

The only time I've so much of this kind of good quality linen

has been in the 21st dynasty.

The 21st dynasty of Egyptian Pharaohs reigned more

than 1,000 years after Khuwy lived.

Wrapped in the most delicate linen and

drenched in expensive resin,

if this is Khuwy,

then the art of mummification was far more advanced in the

Pyramid Age than experts believed.

Oh, good, Mohamed, you are here at last.

I think it's a beautiful mummy.

No.

It could change entirely the history of mummification if it

happens to be Old Kingdom.

If this is Khuwy, Salima will have to re-write

her own textbooks on Egypt's oldest mummies.

As yet, she's not convinced,

she will need to see more evidence.

On the cliffs above Aswan, Sayed and his team are into

their second day excavating a fresh tomb.

They hope it will reveal how ordinary Ancient Egyptians

prepared bodies for the afterlife as their civilization faded.

They've shifted several tons of sand to expose the stairs.

In the heat of the early afternoon,

the work is punishing.

Sayed.

If the tomb contains bodies,

they could hold clues to how ordinary Ancient Egyptians

preserved their dead.

Sayed's team has made an extraordinary discovery.

A rare tomb packed full of mummies.

The remains of a stone sarcophagus suggest the

bodies piled around it are not the tomb's original occupants.

So who are they?

Team foreman, Abdul, prepares a mummy for initial inspection.

Abdul delicately brushes to expose

the ragged remains of the mummy's bandages.

The mummy's condition suggests he was not

wealthy enough to afford a high-quality mummification.

The other bodies buried with him are also badly preserved.

There's not enough space for Sayed to examine how

this mummy was embalmed.

So he decides to extract the body.

A mummy this poorly preserved could fall apart with

the slightest shock.

In the Necropolis of Ancient Philadelphia,

near Faiyum.

Basem's search has finally produced an intact grave:

of an Ancient Greek.

Egypt's conquerors did not practice mummification

in their homeland, but what did they do here in Egypt?

To find out he needs to release the 2000-year-old coffin.

With the top layer of bricks removed,

Basem is able to inspect the full length of the tomb.

Elaborate decorations on the casket confirm his suspicions.

The team has no idea how degraded the roof of

the coffin might be.

Any mistake could be catastrophic.

The crew systematically removes just enough bricks

to open a gap wide enough for the coffin to pass through.

Basem doesn't want to destroy any more of

the precious tomb structure than necessary.

But the coffin has to come out.

Released from the tomb, the intricately painted coffin and

its occupant are in more danger than they ever have

been in the last 2000 years.

Whether it holds a mummy or a skeleton,

this coffin could reveal how the Greeks,

who seized control of Egypt,

buried their dead.

On the hilltop above Aswan.

Sayed's mummy has completed its journey to

the safety of the analysis tent.

It's clear this mummy's afterlife has been traumatic.

Embalmers placed carved stones in the wrapping

of wealthier mummies as magical protection.

But it's unlikely the poor could afford that luxury.

The secrets of how this man's body was mummified

are hidden within the bandages.

But Sayed can't unwrap him for fear the mummy

will crumble into dust.

The team needs to find more lower-class mummies

to figure out how Ancient Egyptians preserved the poor.

Across the site, Sayed's colleague,

archaeologist Hala Hussein,

has spent weeks uncovering a different tomb.

She has also found mummies.

Or at least, bits of them.

Hala's tomb contains the remains of some 20 mummies,

but they're in terrible condition.

Evidence of wasps' nests suggest insects may have

played a role in the damage.

But in the destruction lies an opportunity.

The mummies' bodies are exposed,

allowing Hala to see beneath the bandages,

and search for more clues to how ordinary Ancient Egyptians

tried to preserve their dead.

The Necropolis contains almost 300 tombs.

Each could have been the eternal home for dozens of

ordinary Ancient Egyptians.

Now, archaeologists can begin to sketch a picture of

their possible history.

Each tomb was originally cut for a single mummy,

furnished with a sandstone coffin.

Their relatives added bodies to the tomb when they died,

until the family died out or moved away.

Hundreds of years later, poorer Egyptians re-used

the forgotten tombs,

filling them up with badly mummified corpses.

Before the tombs were looted,

and the exposed mummies destroyed.

Most of the mummies in Hala's tomb are too degraded to tell

much about the way they were mummified.

But one body offers a grisly clue.

In a niche in the wall,

Hala finds the broken mummy of a baby.

The stick was inserted in the body to hold the head.

It suggests the body was already decomposed

when it was embalmed.

Not only were the poor mummified badly,

they were mummified too late.

The bits of them that survive suggest the afterlives of

these ordinary Ancient Egyptians have been far from peaceful.

Destroyed by insects, and desecrated by robbers,

any meagre valuables ripped from their wrappings.

But for Sayed at least,

these mummies are helping piece together

the mysterious fates of the ordinary dead,

at the end of Egyptian civilization.

In Saqqara,

Salima's team prepares the mummy found in the

Old Kingdom tomb of Khuwy for X-Ray.

They hope to learn more about the body.

To confirm it could actually be the 4400-year-old noble,

and one of the oldest Egyptian mummies ever found.

But Mohamed has more evidence to bring to the case.

High-class mummies had their organs removed to stop them rotting.

These were placed alongside the mummy in vessels called Canopic Jars.

Mohamed found four of these right next to the mummy.

Oh! See?

They are beautiful!

And it was sealed nicely.

Oh!

Oh, look at that.

Yes.

Oh I say...

The jars are Old Kingdom.

Absolutely I agree 100% Old Kingdom.

Yes. 100%.

Yes. Jars Old Kingdom.

Oh you're kidding me.

Okay, trade.

Oh...

That is nice!

You've got lots of bits of, um,

cloth which is impregnated

with resins or oils or whatever this black material is, black goo.

Oh how nice!

If the resin in jars matches the resin on the mummy,

it means they both date to the Old Kingdom.

The mummy's exceptionally fine linen dressing could overturn

decades of thinking and prove mummification techniques

4,000 years ago were much more advanced than first thought.

But the cutting-edge chemical test that would prove

it will take months.

An X-Ray could take them a step closer to confirmation

that it is the Old Kingdom noble, Khuwy.

We want it to be Khuwy so much.

Imagine finding someone from the Old Kingdom

in their own tomb!

I mean that's fantastic.

If Salima can establish the mummy's sex and

social status, it could help prove its identity.

One.

She sends a pulse of X-Rays through the mummified remains,

onto a photographic plate.

Yep, finished!

Celebrate, wahoo!

But with time running out on the permit,

Salima's analysis depends on whether her images come out.

Now for the hard part.

As evening approaches in Saqqara...

Salima hopes the X-Rays she's taken might help flesh out a

clearer picture of the mummy from Khuwy's tomb,

and confirm it is male.

To develop the images, she must delicately bathe

the slides in a succession of chemicals.

It's really quite fabulous because you're

sitting there with this blank sheet,

and then suddenly something appears by magic.

Don't open yet.

She can't allow the film to be exposed to anything

but dim red light.

I hope that's not too light.

The slides must be dipped for exactly

the right time in each chemical bath.

Any misjudgment, and the whole exercise has been a waste.

It's an adventure each time but it's a one-shot deal, generally,

and then there is the absolute terror that you

won't get anything and it'll just be a blank sheet of film,

which is horrifying.

Only when the last exposure has been fixed can

Salima begin to assess her work.

Zainab?

I think you could put on the light.

This one looks totally blank.

Oh no!

It's the vertebrae thank God!

What a relief, oh my God!

I thought we'd messed up quite terribly, oh God.

Hanging the plates up to dry,

Salima and Mohamed can finally see under the skin of

the mummy they hope is Khuwy.

Look at that!

Their first job is to confirm the mummy is the right sex.

Yeah.

And we are sure he is male?

Yep, he's a he.

He is he!

He's a he. He is he.

He is he!

A scan of his fragmentary spine provides more evidence.

Growths on the vertebrae suggest the mummy's frame

carried a lot of weight, a sure sign of nobility in

the ancient world.

He was fat as well as big.

So he was a tall man and a...

Mashallah, it really fits with a nice burial.

The X-Rays aren't conclusive,

but a well-mummified, well-fed man in the same

archaeological layer as Old Kingdom jars is too much to ignore.

This really could be Khuwy.

If so, experts will be forced to re-think how

advanced mummification was in Egypt's most ancient era.

It was the only mummy that was found in this tomb.

It should belong to the tomb owner.

Of course, the style of mummification is something

we haven't seen for the Old Kingdom before,

but there's always a first time.

This is uh...

Pretty cool!

The story of the rise of the mummy may need

to be re-written.

Outside Faiyum, at the Necropolis of Ancient Philadelphia...

Basem has gathered his most experienced team members

in the analysis tent.

The body in this coffin could tell Basem what happened to

mummification when the Greeks conquered Egypt.

The team removes the dust from the coffin edges.

It means their fingers are less likely to slip as

they lever off the lid.

Wow!

Inside the coffin is a small skeleton,

in a basic wrapping, but also, a statue.

The artwork shows a goddess in Greek terracotta,

but the practice of placing a figurine in the coffin

is purely Egyptian.

Anthropologist Abdullah examines the body.

The skeleton is a young girl and

she bears clear evidence of mummification.

The remnants of hair and skin on the mummy show

that 100 years after Greeks had conquered Egypt,

they had begun to change their own sacred burial practices,

and adopt Egyptian ones, including mummification.

With every new body archaeologists unearth,

the story of the mummies of Egypt becomes clearer.

Inspired by corpses preserved by chance in the desert sand,

embalmers in the age of the Pyramids refined techniques

to freeze the body in time.

For 3,000 years the practice evolved and spread,

from the Pharaohs down to ordinary Egyptians.

The myth and magic of the mummy was potent enough to

enchant even the invading Greeks.

All were intent on resurrection,

and the glories of the afterlife.