Original subtitles

The hidden entrance of a huge underground shaft...

They did a lot of cutting.

That leads almost 70 feet through rock...

Must have taken a couple of months to dig this

deeply and empty it out.

To a mysterious 3,000 year old tomb once filled with

beautifully preserved mummies.

Wow.

And a solution to one of Ancient Egypt's

greatest mysteries.

The roofs gone down and it's much warmer and very dark.

Oh wow.

Ancient Egypt.

A civilization that began 5,000 years ago and beguiles

to this day.

Its great pyramids, temples, monuments and tombs have

endured for millennia.

But at human scale,

nothing has endured more than the Mummy.

The Ancient Egyptians mummified their dead for

around 3,000 years.

They began before the time of the Great Pyramids and

were still doing it at the very end of

Ancient Egyptian civilization.

Mummies are stunningly well-preserved,

silent witnesses to the mysteries of Ancient Egypt.

Archaeologists are hunting for more mummies.

To help them answer vital questions about the fate of the

mightiest pharaohs and the Ancient Egyptian way

of life and death.

In the ancient necropolis of Philadelphia,

Egyptian archaeologist Basem Gehad and his team have

returned for their ninth season

When I was a child,

in our house, there was a small library.

There was a lot of books about different things

from Ancient Egypt.

I got fascinated by this.

But then when you get adult,

you start to think about searching for

information and clues.

Basem is investigating mummification

during the period at the end of Egyptian civilization

that started with the reign of Ptolemy the First.

The Ptolemaic dynasty was Greek.

Unlike native Egyptians,

Greek Egyptians did not believe their bodies had to be

preserved to ensure eternal life.

Many experts think that as a result,

the quality of mummification declined in

the Ptolemaic period.

Last season, Basem found several mummies in a

Ptolemaic tomb here.

One in particular was unusually well-preserved.

This site is unbelievable for me.

I can see here at the end of the room there is

one complete mummy.

Basem's discovery suggests that mummification had

not declined and that the Greeks still practiced the

Ancient Egyptian art to a very high standard.

Ancient Egyptians believed body and soul separated at death.

They could reunite to live on in the afterlife only if the

corpse was well preserved.

So priests removed internal organs and dried them and the

body with a salt, natron, to prevent decay.

After 40 days,

they wrapped the body in resin soaked linen to

keep moisture away and bind everything together.

They also wrapped up the organs and stored them in canopic jars

to be recovered in the afterlife,

but left the heart in the body for the soul to return to.

Basem is on the hunt for more mummies to help him prove the

Greek Egyptians didn't radically change this process.

We have different types of tombs and graves here in Philadelphia,

but we are excavating one, two and three or four.

And perhaps most of these graves are intact, hopefully.

We hope that we could be lucky this season.

But first Basem wants to examine the unusually

well-preserved Ptolemaic mummy he discovered last year.

To find out if it was mummified in the traditional

Ancient Egyptian way.

From the general appearance, for us, it looks quite

amazing in the style of the wrapping.

The best way for Basem to understand how it was

mummified is to X-ray it.

We want to check whether or not the mummification and

embalming process was still practiced in the same manner.

Basem and his team wait anxiously to find out

the results of the X-ray.

In Cairo, mummification expert

Salima Ikram is at the Museum of Egyptian Civilization

She is investigating the finest and most famous

mummies ever found.

The Royal Mummies.

Many of the mightiest pharaohs of the past,

including Ramses the Great, Hatshepsut,

and the great Queen Ahmose-Nefetari,

all rest here in high tech, climate controlled cases to

protect them for posterity.

When these mummies were unwrapped,

archaeologists discovered that they were so well-preserved,

some still had their real hair.

It's such a pleasure to be here.

I love being with the royal mummies.

It's like being with old friends.

We've been together for so long.

And of course, these are kings.

And how often do you really get to hang out with a king?

Salima wants to understand how these great

kings and queens have remained so well preserved for

thousands of years.

The best preserved Egyptian mummies are those of

new kingdom royalty.

Egypt's New Kingdom,

the era of Tutankhamun,

stretched for nearly 500 years from 1539 to 1075 BCE.

One mummy in particular stands out:

SETI the First.

This is one of the most beautiful mummies ever made.

He looks as if he's sleeping.

I keep thinking he's going to open his mouth and

say something to me.

SETI was the father of Ramses the Great and

one of the most influential rulers of the New Kingdom.

He died over 3,300 years ago.

He's really the most elegant, elegant man.

His skin is perfectly preserved.

He doesn't look all sunken and wizened,

and his nose also stands proud.

The embalmers went to great trouble and effort to give him

this wonderfully living appearance.

When scientists scanned the body of SETI,

they discovered exactly how they achieved

this lifelike look.

Analysis of the skin revealed that embalmers painted his face

and body with a plant based resin.

They also packed bits of resin soaked linen under the skin of his face,

making it symmetrical.

They stuffed his eye sockets and the back of his

skull and neck.

Seti's post mortem cosmetic treatment prepared him

perfectly for his expected afterlife.

The idea, of course, for the Ancient Egyptians was

to have the body look as lifelike as possible so that

the spirit could go into it and animate it in the hereafter.

SETI is miraculously preserved.

But his survival and the survival of many other royal

mummies is even more miraculous

There are many challenges to mummies survivals

such as insects, changes in temperature,

the flooding of tombs and, worst of all, tomb robbers.

Robbers looted almost all Ancient Egyptian tombs.

And mummies, particularly royal ones, were prime targets.

No sooner had someone been buried that shortly

thereafter someone would come and rob the tomb.

People would rip apart mummies to try and get to the gold that

was hidden within and they would even burn coffins and the

mummies inside because all that would be left would be the gold.

Yet Seti's mummy survived,

preserved and intact for over 3,000 years.

Now Salima wants to investigate how it avoided environmental

decay and destruction by tomb robbers.

At Deir El-Bahari on the west bank of the Nile,

near the temple of Hatshepsut, archaeologist Fathi Yaseen is

exploring a sprawling tomb complex filled with thousands

of hidden underground chambers.

It was begun in Egypt's New Kingdom and constantly

used in later times.

Its scale suggests it was built for somebody important,

perhaps a high official.

Last season, Fathi uncovered several huge new chambers.

But nothing remained of the tomb's original owner.

This year, he's on the hunt for the tomb owner's mummy.

Fathi wants to find out who was in this unexplored tomb when

they were buried here.

And what their mummy might reveal about changes in

Egyptian belief and the art of mummification.

Fathi has worked as an archaeologist here for 30 years

His love for Ancient Egypt started when he was just

a young boy.

The dusty, dry environment makes it

perfect for finding well-preserved mummies.

Great for a mummy hunter like Fathi.

His team has already excavated a huge area buried beneath the

accumulated compacted sand and deep into the bedrock.

They have opened a new chamber,

but it's filled with tons of debris and fragments of bone.

It will need to be cleared before Fathi can

uncover what is hidden beneath.

The team begins to dig.

Straight away, they find something extraordinary buried

beneath the debris.

Oh, wow.

In the necropolis of the ancient city of Philadelphia,

Basem and his team are examining the results

of the X-ray scan of the Ptolemaic mummy he discovered.

The mummy is for an adult male more than 50 years,

55 years.

There is a broken part on the back side of the skull.

Most probably the brain was taken out from this hole.

The stomach and all the internal organs were removed

through a surgical operation.

Hands lay down in a crossed way over the chest,

touching the two shoulders in an Egyptian way.

High quality mummies from this period are rare.

The X-ray scans provide new evidence to support Basem's

hunch that during the Ptolemaic period,

the Greeks in Philadelphia were more skilled at mummifying

their dead than first thought.

This is a quite amazing example of the mummification

process during the Ptolemaic period.

It is quite complicated and very well made.

Old Kingdom priests in the third millennium BCE,

dried the body with salt and wrapped it in linen

to prevent decay.

But the mummy's face would shrivel.

Later in the Middle Kingdom,

a mask was placed on the mummy;

painted to look like the deceased,

so the soul might recognize its body.

In the first millennium BCE after the New Kingdom,

mummification was even more sophisticated.

The priests inserted linen under the skin and added false

eyes to make the dead look more lifelike.

But in the Ptolemaic period, the mummy's appearance was less

important than an elaborately decorated coffin.

Now Basem wants to see if his amazing Ptolemaic mummy was

just a one off or whether this level of sophisticated

mummification was more common in Ptolemaic Egypt

than experts believed.

His team has been working hard,

excavating the vast Ptolemaic graveyard here.

They have discovered a layer of mud bricks,

usually a sign there is a coffin underneath.

We might find in this grave wooden coffin that

one of the people who were living during

the Ptolemaic period were buried inside.

Working alongside Basem is Mahmoud Ibrahim.

He's managed to remove a couple of the mud bricks.

It is a wooden coffin

It's an incredible find.

But they still need to get past the protective layer of

mud bricks that are covering it

The situation is crucial because part of the roof of the

mud bricks were already collapsing.

So it broke one side of the coffin,

which means that we have to do it very carefully and

slowly in order to get the coffin out in good state

without damaging it.

They have to work with great caution.

One wrong move could further damage the 2,000 year old

coffin and harm any mummy hidden inside.

There is a lot of risk in dealing with such a

fragile wooden coffin.

It's made of the very thin plates of wood.

It needs a proper excavation methodology to clean

up the grave.

The team meticulously and carefully remove

the layer of mud bricks.

Basem waits anxiously for a report.

Finally, Mahmoud can get a good look at the coffin.

At Deir El-Bahari on the west bank of the Nile,

Fathi and his team are excavating a tomb,

searching for the mummy it may contain and any evidence of

when it was buried.

They have found some pottery.

It's a good sign there may be a mummy here,

but they will have to clear the sand carefully to make sure

that they remove the jar without any damage.

Ancient Egyptians believed they could take

funerary offerings like this into an afterlife.

The jar is great evidence that the mummy Fathi

is looking for could be close,

but there is still a lot more rubble to get through.

Bones and linen are further indications that

there might be a mummy.

And there's more.

Fathi bags the wood,

linen and bones separately so they can be

taken for closer examination.

It looks like the face of a mummy.

In the Valley of the Kings,

Salima is investigating how Seti's mummy escaped natural

hazards and tomb robbers for over 3,000 years.

This is the most sacred and secret spot

of Ancient Egypt because this is where the kings of Egypt in

the New Kingdom came to be buried.

The hope was that the kings would come and rest here for

all of eternity.

SETI, an important king and father of

Ramses the Great

has one of the biggest and most ornate tombs

in the Valley.

This is such a beautiful tomb.

The painting and the quality of carving are

absolutely exquisite.

It's really the most glorious tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

The tomb's ten chambers extend deep

into the bedrock.

You can see that we are getting this crescendo of

scenes and texts that tell us that we are approaching

the place where SETI was buried.

And this is Seti's burial chamber.

This is where the King's sarcophagus would have been

and his coffin.

He was supposed to rest here for all of eternity.

SETI built himself a beautiful tomb and chose the

perfect place for his mummy.

SETI really had a spectacular burial.

And what was extra good was because it was so deep,

the temperature remained constant and this was excellent

for the preservation of Seti's Mummy.

SETI died in 1279 BCE.

A long and peaceful incarceration here would

explain his mummy's survival.

But when 3,000 years later, an Italian archaeologist

discovered the tomb, he was in for a shock.

When Belzoni entered the tomb in 1817

and came into the burial chamber,

he found that Seti's sarcophagus had been

broken open and the mummy had vanished.

So the alabaster coffin would have been right here,

just in front of me.

But when Belzoni found it,

it clearly shows in the picture that it was empty.

Salima wants to follow the trail

of Seti's mummy.

Incredibly, archaeologists discovered it wasn't just

Seti's mummy that was missing from his tomb.

Many of the pharaohs buried in the Valley of the Kings

were also missing.

In the ancient necropolis of Philadelphia,

Basem and his team are excavating a grave,

removing mud bricks that have been weighing heavily

on the wooden coffin they've just discovered.

We are all excited because you can't just find an

intact grave every day.

So for us, this is a day to celebrate.

They are making progress and beginning

to see what's inside.

Basem hopes this discovery can prove that the Greeks here

still practiced the Ancient Egyptian art of mummification

to a very high standard.

Now we are standing on a wooden coffin,

which is one of the most important things that you could

find here in the Ptolemaic cemetery.

But the mud bricks have caused some damage.

The heavy weight of the mud bricks

collapsed on the roof,

and then the roof of the coffin took a deformed shape.

Mahmoud needs to determine if it's safe

to begin the nerve wracking task of lifting it.

We will see if we need to remove the other row

of the mud brick blocks.

If the coffin will be okay to lift up.

But the delicate operation is threatened by a

sudden change in the weather.

It seems that it might rain and if it rains,

the situation become alarming because of the state of

preservation of the wood.

The priority is to lift up this coffin as fast as possible,

and then we move it to the study room.

A heavy downpour at this critical moment

could be catastrophic for keeping this coffin intact.

Everyone on site must act quickly.

They don't have ropes, so they have to improvise.

Cautiously, they wrap their scarves tightly

around the coffin.

So excited.

It's unbelievable, we did it.

It was so difficult, so sensitive.

But the hard work isn't over.

The team still has to get the coffin to the tent before they

can open it and find out if it contains a mummy.

At Deir El-Bahari,

in a tomb near the Temple of Hatshepsut,

Fathi is carefully uncovering a mummy he's

found in the rubble.

It's an incredible find for Fathi.

If the rest of the mummy is intact,

he might be able to determine who this person was and

when they died.

The mummy might also reveal changes in Egyptian belief and

the process of mummification.

But first, Fathi and his team must carefully free the mummy

and any artifacts nearby from the ancient grave.

Slowly the intact torso of the mummy emerges.

And next to the mummy, a key discovery.

Ah.

It's small and broken

but Fathi can immediately recognize its importance.

The canopic jar is a crucial piece of evidence.

Their use changed throughout Ancient Egypt,

depending on the traditions of the time.

In the Old Kingdom,

Egyptians used plain canopic jars to store the

mummies internal organs, ready for the afterlife.

In the Middle Kingdom,

they wrote protective spells on the jars and

carved the lids to look like the deceased.

In the New Kingdom,

the lids featured the heads of a human,

a jackal, a baboon and a falcon

Each represented one of the sons of the god Horus.

In later periods, embalmers placed the mummified organs

back inside the mummy, but left empty canopic jars in the tomb

as part of the burial ritual.

Fathi will need to find more pieces of the canopic jar to

help him determine its state.

But it's good evidence that this mummy had

its organs removed,

a sign of a high status burial.

Fathi works his way down the mummy's body

towards the chest.

It's a rare find.

And if Fathi can determine a date of burial,

it could signify an important change in the mummification

process and Ancient Egyptian beliefs.

Expertly working down the torso,

Fathi discovers the mummy is male.

It has an individually wrapped penis.

And he also discovers the legs below the knees are missing.

It's likely they were damaged and discarded by tomb robbers

as they moved the body searching for treasure.

Near Luxor, in the Valley of the Kings,

Salima is investigating how Seti's mummy survived for

over 3,000 years.

Clues left in the tombs here, long after Seti's death might

explain the mysterious disappearance of his mummy

from his tomb.

Many of the royal tombs have graffiti that

tell us that a scribe called Butehamun and some few others,

went around and were collecting the bodies of the

Kings of Egypt.

Around 200 years after SETI died,

Egypt suffered an economic crisis that led to civil unrest

For 50 years, tomb looting surged.

Robbers desecrated mummies and stole their hidden valuables.

In response, pharaohs ordered officials such as Butehamun to

remove treasures from the royal tombs and keep them

for the state.

But it was crucial they kept the royal body safe, too.

They moved the mummies and hid them in a more secure

and secret location for these ancient rulers to

rest in eternity.

We know that this was a state sponsored project and

on one level it was basically legalized theft,

but on another,

it was also a way of keeping the dead kings of Egypt,

the gods of Egypt,

safe and secure in a secret hidden place.

The ancient graffiti does not say which

royal mummies were moved and where they went.

Salima wants to track down their secret location

to find out if Seti's mummy was there.

And if it can explain its remarkable survival from

environmental decay and tomb robbers.

At Deir El-Bahari,

Fathi is excavating the area around the mummy

he has just discovered,

looking for clues that could help him date the period

of this man's burial.

It is a fragment of a stylized portrait of the deceased,

its color beautifully preserved for thousands of years.

It would have been painted on the lid of the coffin in the

hope that the man's soul would recognize it and find

his body in the afterlife.

It gives Fathi a tantalizing glimpse of the face of

the man buried here.

This stylized portrait suggests the mummy

could date to the late period of Egyptian history just before

the arrival of the Greeks.

Fathi now needs to move the mummy so he can study

it in greater detail.

It is extremely delicate.

Fathi hopes to X-ray the mummy next.

That will reveal whether its organs and brain were removed

and tell him more about how mummification developed in the

course of Ancient Egyptian history.

But already it's a remarkable find.

A high status, late period male

Another discovery to add to Fathi's record of

incredible mummy finds.

In Deir El-Bahari, Salima is on a mission to find the hidden

resting place of the royal mummies moved from the

Valley of the Kings.

She hopes it might reveal the fate of Seti's mummy and

how it escaped the tomb raiders for over 3,000 years.

Hatshepsut's temple of Deir El-Bahari is over there

and beyond that is the Valley of the Kings.

But I'm not going there. I'm going up there.

Hidden halfway up a cliff is a concealed entrance

to a huge underground shaft.

It's really fabulous to actually be here and to be able

to go down this incredibly long, deep shaft.

But Salima is taking no chances.

The shaft is almost 70 feet deep.

A fall from this height could be fatal.

It's really such a wide thing.

They did a lot of cutting.

Must have taken a couple of months to dig this

deeply and empty it out.

Pretty amazing to have carved all of this.

Wow. It's fantastic. It's really amazing.

At the base of the shaft,

a long tunnel stretches deep into the bedrock.

It certainly is narrower than the shaft coming down.

And you can feel it getting warmer as you go in.

Gosh.

And now the roof's gone down and it's much warmer and very dark.

The sides of the shaft are lined with niches

in the rock.

Wow.

These small hollows were the final resting places

for dozens of mummies, including some of the most

famous kings and queens of Egypt.

It's amazing to think that this is where Egypt's

greatest pharaohs used to rest.

It's unbelievable that so many bodies would have been put into

the space and their coffins.

Salima explores further to see if this deep

underground tomb could lead her to the spot where

SETI was hidden.

Oh wow.

In the ancient necropolis of Philadelphia.

Basem and his team get the newly discovered coffin

into the examination tent.

It seems that it is not the local wood that

is found in Egypt.

This is expensive imported wood,

which gave us the impression that this was

someone who was elite.

He searches for more clues.

BASEM Which indicates the Hellenistic influence,

or maybe a Greek person.

Basem is hoping that the body will be

mummified in the Egyptian way.

To prove his hunch that Greek Egyptians in the Ptolemaic period

still practiced the ancient art of mummification to

a very high standard.

This is the moment that we were waiting for.

It's an incredible mummy, unseen for 2,000 years.

I can see here something unique inside the coffin.

A floral crown over the head here.

This is basil that you can find on the bank of the river

or the canals.

Greek word Basilicas photon or the Royal Plant which

indicate that it was important plant during the

Ptolemaic and Roman period.

It's further confirmation that the mummy

dates from Ptolemaic Egypt.

The team gets to work recording the details of their find.

They need to X-ray the mummy to determine the level of

mummification it had.

If removing of internal organs took place within this

embalming process as we can see it...

Which means that this was a high quality mummification.

The mummy is extremely fragile.

They will have to do the X-ray while it's still inside the coffin.

Basem examines the scans.

This guy survived for more than 60 years in a period

that the range of life is between the 30's and the 40's.

We can see he's very well-preserved.

He could have a good, expensive kind of food.

And then also, we can't see any kind of bone inflammation,

which means that he was not doing hard work.

The forensic detail gives Basem an

incredible insight into this 2,000 year old man.

So for this case, we have someone who lived a very

wealthy and good life and also a good after life treatment

with this wealthy coffin.

So we are talking about elite person.

A wealthy man like this could afford

the best mummification.

Basem looks for evidence his organs were removed

and stored separately.

We can see the internal organs were not fully removed.

The discovery that the mummifiers did not remove

the organs intensifies the mystery of mummification in

this period for Basem.

But every new find is precious to him.

He will continue to examine this mummy and

reveal all its secrets.

All in all, the whole information helps us in writing

new history of the mummification process in Egypt.

And he'll continue searching for evidence that the

art of mummification was still alive and well in the Ptolemaic

period at the end of Egyptian civilization.

Deep in a cave in Deir El-Bahari,

above Hatshepsut's Temple,

Salima is on a mission to find the secret resting place

of SETI the First and other royal mummies

moved from their tombs.

She hopes to reveal how SETI survived in such good condition

and avoided tomb raiders for over 3,000 years.

This is where SETI was laid to rest for so long and

stayed here for almost 3,000 years.

A hidden location near the tomb entrance kept

SETI safe from harm until his discovery just over

140 years ago.

It's really quite remarkable to be in

the same space.

In the late 19th century,

archaeologists discovered this tomb and followed it

180 feet into the mountain.

In the burial chamber they found six coffins and over 40 coffins,

some from the New Kingdom, lined the corridors.

Amongst them, some of Egypt's most famous pharaohs,

including the coffin of SETI the First.

An inscription on the front describes the mummy's move

from his tomb in the Valley of the Kings

to this secret spot.

Inside, his beautifully preserved body.

It says that he was moved twice,

to the tomb of Amenhotep the Second,

and then to the tomb of a royal woman.

And then finally to this place here.

The royal officials who moved SETI chose

this location well.

It's deep, cool and dry, preserving his mummy.

And it's secret, keeping it safe from tomb robbers.

It certainly is hidden and very secret.

So no wonder it was thought to be a safe place to keep

the New Kingdom pharaohs safe for eternity.

It certainly worked because it preserved them

beautifully as it did.

Seti's mummy and the entire cache of

royal mummies have survived in pristine condition for over 3,000 years,

thanks to the skill of those who first embalmed them and

those who hacked deep into the bedrock to build a tomb to

preserve and keep them safe.

They are the embodiment of the most beguiling

civilization of antiquity.

Today, archaeologists continue to hunt for more mummies,

to help them solve the many remaining mysteries of

Ancient Egypt's fascinating way of life, and death.