Original subtitles

Deep in the Egyptian desert...

in an Acropolis from the age of

Alexander the Great.

A mysterious burial chamber...

Amazing.

Contains hidden riches.

It's just amazing.

Gold is everywhere here.

Revealing the rise of one of the world's

greatest warrior kings.

In the 3000 years of ancient Egyptian civilization,

many Pharaohs led their armies into battle.

But one Pharaoh stands out for his

unparalleled military success.

One of the most famous names in human history:

Alexander the Great.

He ruled Egypt from 332 BCE until his death

nine years later.

He spent his entire adult life at war.

Alexander was already a successful military leader,

aged just 18.

By the age of 30, he ruled one of the largest empires

of the ancient world.

Today, archaeologists across Egypt are investigating...

Wow, it looks like Alexander.

How this brutal warrior king became revered

as a great pharaoh.

How he transformed ancient Egypt forever.

And they will try to solve one of the biggest mysteries of all,

the location of Alexander's lost tomb.

In Alexandria, a city founded by Alexander the Great,

British Egyptologist, Chris Naunton, investigates

the rise to power of one of Egypt's most famous pharaohs.

Alexander the Great really interests me,

and I kind of feel like if you want to know about

Alexander the Great, you need to be here.

You need to know Alexandria.

Alexander founded Alexandria on the coast of the

Mediterranean in 331 BCE.

It became Egypt's capital and grew into one of the

biggest cities of its time.

Wide avenues set on an urban grid plan,

connected royal palaces,

temples, theaters, and sporting arenas,

all protected by a ten-mile-long defensive wall.

A causeway from the mainland to the island of Pharos

created separate harbors

for commercial and military fleets.

Towering more than 350 feet above it all,

a majestic lighthouse,

one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Chris visits the Alexandria National Museum to see what

treasures remain from ancient Alexandria that could

reveal more about Alexander the Great's rise.

Amongst the many statues of ancient Egyptian pharaohs,

Chris finds one that looks strangely out of place.

This is really exciting for me because this was found

quite recently and very near here as well.

It's a statue in marble of Alexander the Great.

In his right hand was probably, originally part of a spear,

some other kind of weapon.

And that, of course, speaks to Alexander's great prowess

as a military leader.

But what's really striking about it is that even though

he was pharaoh of Egypt, and this was found here,

it's a very un-Egyptian statue in lots of ways.

Egyptian pharaohs were depicted clothed,

wearing items that symbolized their royalty.

They were standing or seated in formal poses, and their

statues were less lifelike than Alexander's.

It's full of movement, which is a real contrast to

the very rigid statues we're used to seeing of Egyptian kings.

And that's because this is a Greek-style statue.

The reason for that is that Alexander himself was Greek.

Born in 356 BCE, Alexander grew up in the

northern Greek kingdom of Macedonia and was tutored

by the great philosopher Aristotle.

After his father, Philip II was assassinated,

Alexander took the throne at just 20 years of age.

His military ambitions led him on huge campaigns to

conquer territory south and east of Greece.

Then, at the tender age of 24, he entered Egypt

and was made Pharaoh.

At its height, Egypt's armies could be up to 100,000 strong.

But ancient records bear no mention of a deadly battle.

So how could it be that this young Greek King

and military warrior came to be Pharaoh of Egypt?

At the ancient site of Philadelphia,

Egyptian archaeologist, Basem Gehad, is excavating

in an enormous necropolis.

The city was established shortly after Alexander

came to Egypt.

Basem has been working at Philadelphia for six years.

Last year, he investigated several unexplored tombs

and found a stunning mummy from the period

following Alexander the Great.

He wants to find out how the arrival of Alexander

transformed the lives of people in Egypt.

And he thinks the tombs of Philadelphia could

hold the answer.

Now the question is, could we still see the

impression of these people?

Could we track these people?

Could we identify how they lived?

Basem, and a core of workers live out in the

desert during their dig season.

This is the family of the dig.

We are staying here the whole two months together and there

are people from different places, hopefully from Egypt.

But we understand each other very well and we know what we

are looking for and how we could obtain a

good conclusion and result.

His team has already made an unusual find; The top

of a circular tomb that extends below ground.

This is something unique and new for us

to find something like this.

Most of the structure is rectangular, but this one is

the first one we have here in this area in a circular shape.

The structure is one of the biggest Basem has ever

excavated in this necropolis.

It could be an intact burial with a mummy and a collection

of grave goods.

The team get to work, carefully removing the

surrounding earth and taking measurements as they go.

The thick walls and the precision of the structure

suggest a lot of money was spent on this tomb.

It's amazing because it's quite a perfect circle.

The radius is always the same measurement at any point

that you measure.

The shape alone is a strong indication that Basem

is on the right track in his search for

Alexander the Great's impact on Egypt.

These kinds of tombs were invented

just after Alexander the Great came to Egypt.

We don't have any older examples, earlier than

the third century B.C.

There could be a treasure trove of information

waiting for Basem beneath the sand.

After hours of digging, the team has uncovered a way in,

and Basem climbs down to get a first glimpse.

It is just amazing.

Amazing.

At Taposiris Magna, to the west of Alexandria,

Kathleen Martinez is exploring a huge temple complex that

goes back to the era of Alexander the Great.

This season is going to be amazing.

17 years ago, Kathleen gave up a career

as a criminal lawyer in the Dominican Republic

to begin excavating here.

Since the moment I enter Taposiris Magna

the first time, I knew it was an important archaeological site

and it means everything to me.

The temple was built just 50 years after

Alexander's death.

The huge complex is the size of a city block.

Dedicated to Osiris and Isis,

the King, and Queen of the Gods.

In past years, Kathleen has scanned and crawled through

hidden spaces in every corner of the site.

This season, she is focused on a tower outside the temple

walls that was built around the same time.

Its design resembles one of the most famous structures

in ancient Alexandria.

The Greek historian, Strabo, described in detail

the lighthouse of Alexandria and we found here the same

features in miniature.

The purpose of this smaller lighthouse at

Taposiris Magna has long been a mystery.

It doesn't have all the structures that the

lighthouse used to have in Alexandria.

Then the Mediterranean Sea over there and this is in the

wrong side of the hill, and then it's surrounded by tombs.

So, what could it be?

Kathleen's team are excavating around the base of

the tower and have made a huge discovery beneath

a mound of rocks on the south side.

Right now, I'm standing just beneath

the lighthouse structure.

It looks like a cave, but after cleaning up outside

all those big blocks, we realized it was not a cave,

it was not a hole, it was a tomb.

A magnificent tomb.

Among the rubble and debris, Kathleen discovered a

large sarcophagus.

So, we discovered through excavations, pieces of

marble covering all the walls.

Once we discovered this area, we realized that maybe the

lighthouse was not a real lighthouse, but symbolic.

It was a temple tomb, and it has a replica of the

lighthouse of Alexandria on top.

This was a rich, rich tomb, but who could afford this?

Pottery finds around the tomb, indicate it was

visited long after it was first built.

We have a lot of ceramics covered in 300 years,

so we know for 300 years, something was happening here.

One possibility is that people were coming here

in an act of worship.

We believe it was a pilgrimage area and people

used to come here to visit whoever was the owner of the tomb.

And this is what we need to find out.

The person buried in this lavish tomb from

the age of Alexander was revered for centuries.

If Kathleen can find more clues around the tomb's

entrance, she could reveal who it was.

This area has 2000 years and nobody

has ever touched it.

We don't know what we will find beneath.

In Saqqara, on the outskirts of Cairo,

Chris is retracing the footsteps of Alexander the Great to try to

understand how he managed to conquer the mighty Egypt.

In the shadow of the step pyramid,

Egypt's first ever pyramid,

the catacombs at Saqqara were an important religious site,

in use, both before and after the time of Alexander.

I really love this place.

It's a very special place for the ancient Egyptians and a

very special place for, for me as an archaeologist as well.

And it's the kind of place Alexander the Great would

have been aware of, for sure.

And he might even have visited as well.

And it's huge.

One Catacomb is full of giant sarcophagi,

inscribed with the names of dozens of pharaohs.

They chart the rise and fall of Egyptian royalty

for more than 1,000 years.

One of them might shed light on Alexander's conquest.

So this here, if you can believe it, looming up

in front of me is a massive sarcophagus and

sarcophagus lid.

And what I would love to find here if I can,

is an inscription.

And I cannot see any.

This sarcophagus dates to 200 years before

Alexander the Great.

Chris searches for a name.

On top of this massive sarcophagus lid, there is a

band column of hieroglyphic signs running down the center.

Car-Anh-Bi-Chet. Something like that.

And that's really interesting because that is the closest

the Egyptians could get in their hieroglyphs to the name

we might know better as Cambyses.

And Cambyses was not Egyptian.

Cambyses was the Persian Emperor.

This isn't his tomb, but this huge sarcophagus commemorates

his rule over Egypt.

What this tells us is that he was recognized here as

king because at this point in history, Egypt had become a

part of the Persian Empire.

Before Alexander, Ancient Egypt, one of the

mightiest civilizations in history, had already been conquered.

The Persian Empire based in what is today, Iran,

took over Egypt in the sixth century BCE.

Alexander's tiny kingdom, Macedonia sat beyond the

western edge of the Persian Empire.

In 334 BCE, he led his Army east,

tearing through the Persian forces in Asia Minor

before setting his sights on Egypt.

Alexander arrived in the Egyptian capital, Memphis,

and met no resistance.

The Persian forces had already left Egypt,

and the Egyptians welcomed him as a liberator.

The Persian governor surrendered, handed over

a vast quantity of gold from the Treasury and

gave Alexander control of Egypt.

Taking control was one thing, keeping control of the

country was going to be just as difficult because these

were turbulent times for Egypt.

Successive Persian emperors had

treated the country poorly.

The Egyptians had attempted multiple rebellions in the

century before Alexander.

As another foreign ruler, Alexander needed to find

a way to win the support of the Egyptian people and

cement his power.

At Taposiris Magna, Kathleen and her team are excavating

beside the grand tomb site to discover who its revered owner

was and what it can tell them about Alexander the Great's

impact on Egypt.

We're excavating right here and we're expecting

we have sealed a meter and a half and maybe we can discover

who was the owner of this tomb.

The area they need to dig is covered by a fire pit

they think dates back to the Muslim conquest of Egypt in

the seventh century C.E..

This fire pit, which is from the Muslim occupation,

it may have nothing to do with the Greek period,

but it has to be preserved.

It's Kathleen's duty to make sure no information is

lost, regardless of what period it's from.

The team must carefully excavate and record anything

they find in these later layers before digging down

to reach the Greek period of ancient Egypt beneath.

We believe that maybe beneath the, the fire pit.

We might find something that has more information to

find out who built this temple tomb.

The team start sifting through the layers

of ancient charcoal.

Almost straight away, they make a tantalizing find:

an unusual shard of pink stone.

This is a good sign because it's a piece of statue

that has been broken and maybe other parts are here.

So, it's good, it's pink granite, and usually

important statues were made out of it.

This pink granite, a small fragment of an opulent

statue, could be a sign of bigger finds to come.

The team are still working their way down through

layers of sand, charcoal and animal bones,

when they make another discovery.

Wow.

Ancient coins.

In Philadelphia, Basem is excavating the

mysterious circular tomb from around the time of

Alexander the Great that he has just discovered.

He peers inside for the first time.

It's a catacomb.

You just open a very small window from the...

that we could look inside with a torch.

A catacomb isn't a single tomb.

It's a large underground chamber with multiple alcoves,

each one containing a body.

This incredibly rare discovery could contain an entire family.

We still have to go deeper in order to be able

to descend inside it.

Basem hopes this catacomb will help reveal

Alexander the Great's impact on Egyptian life and death.

He doesn't want to miss a single clue, so workers

carefully sift through every bucket of sand.

They shift over a ton in the next five hours.

Finally, they clear a path inside.

It looks like someone else has been

in here since the catacomb was first used.

Now, since we are finding now, remains of

textiles and very fine sand, it seems that this might have

been looted, I would say 100 years ago.

But Basem is undeterred.

Because he is on a treasure hunt of a different kind.

It's not only finding objects, but also trying to

write history by

reading information from the materials inside.

This is the main objective, finding good things,

but also finding wonderful information.

The team continues to remove the sand and debris

from the tomb.

Once it's clear, Basem calls down archaeologist,

Mahmoud Ibrahim, to begin picking through the

piled up material discarded by the looters.

The remains of as many as 20 people could be buried

in this catacomb, a potential treasure trove of information.

It isn't long before they find a decorated fragment.

This is a clue for us.

A key.

At the temple of Taposiris Magna, Kathleen's

team are digging for clues to the owner of the lavish tomb

built underneath the replica of the famous

lighthouse of Alexandria.

They are hoping to find out more about the era of

Alexander the Great, and they've discovered coins

in the remains of what they believe to be a

seventh century fire pit.

Wow. I'm so excited.

He's starting to give us information.

We were not expected to have coins here.

The coins could be a sign of something beneath.

I'm very, very, very excited.

When Kathleen takes a closer look, she makes a

surprising discovery.

This is a Roman coin.

We can see the horses.

And this powerful man leading the horses.

And the other side, is the head and it says

T-R-A-J-A-N.

Here is very clear.

Trajan...

Emperor Trajan.

Roman emperor, Trajan ruled Egypt in the

second century C.E.

Finding these coins dates the fire pit to the same period.

At the beginning we thought it was Islamic,

but we're always full of surprises here.

This means the material they're digging

through is much closer in time to the building of the temple

and the tomb, and they could be much closer to

discovering who this tomb was for.

Kathleen heads to the replica lighthouse above the tomb

as her team carefully excavates the final layers

of the fire pit.

They are hoping for Alexander-era artifacts as

they work their way down through the sand to bedrock.

In Saqqara, Chris is exploring a giant royal

catacomb in use before and after the time of Alexander the Great.

He's investigating whether it holds any clues to how

Alexander cemented his power in Egypt.

This is not an ordinary sarcophagus.

It's much, much bigger than the ones we would normally

see in a tomb.

Some of the sarcophagi here are nearly

eight feet high, well beyond what's needed for

a human body, even for a mighty pharaoh.

These three hieroglyphic signs here

at the beginning of the sequence read "Hep",

which is the name we know better as Apis.

It's the name of the Apis Bull, a God living on Earth

manifest in a real-life living bull.

This catacomb stretches over 600 feet

beneath the Saqqara Desert.

Branching off an extended network of galleries, dozens

of chambers that hold 24 gigantic granite sarcophagi,

each weighing up to 70 tons.

Inside, Egyptians placed a sacred mummified bull, Apis,

that they believed was an incarnation of

the creator God, Ptah.

Each subsequent reincarnation of Apis, over 50 bulls in total,

was buried in a vault here, in a long-established cult

that was popular throughout Egypt as far back as

the first dynasty of Egyptian kings.

When the Persians ruled Egypt,

traditions like this began to suffer.

Later Persian rulers looted Egyptian temples and

their treasuries, and drastically cut their income,

making it harder to maintain the cult.

Evidence suggests no Apis Bull was mummified

for an entire century.

When Alexander became Pharaoh, he had to decide whether he

would allow the Apis cult to continue.

So what happens when Alexander comes along?

How does that affect things?

How does that change things?

Well, in fact, one of Alexander's great strengths

was his capacity to embrace local tradition.

The hieroglyphs reveal that many of these

bulls were installed after Alexander's arrival.

He allowed the Apis Bull cult to continue, and

that makes him a very popular ruler with

the ancient Egyptians.

Ancient sources reveal that one of the first

things Alexander did on arrival in Egypt was pay his

respects to the Apis Bull.

It's all a part of his way of winning over

people and territories.

It's very canny, and that puts him in a very strong position

to rule the country as a popular leader.

While the Apis Bull tombs were important,

Egyptian pharaohs were more concerned with the

scale and grandeur of their own tomb.

Chris wants to find the still undiscovered

tomb of Alexander.

In Philadelphia, Basem is investigating the rare

rotunda catacomb.

He's searching for clues to help him understand how

Alexander the Great transformed the lives of the

people buried here.

Mahmud just found here a very important thing.

This is made out of textile and then gold sheets.

Real gold sheets.

As their excavation continues, Basem and the team

collect more signs of a wealthy family.

From luxurious amounts of fine quality mummy wrappings to

fragments of shimmering gold leaf.

Amazing.

You can see the gold is everywhere here.

It's evidence that Philadelphia was a wealthy city,

home to people rich enough to afford the

grandest of Egyptian burial practices.

People here were prospering after Alexander's arrival.

I could see amazing stuff here.

This is a kind of complete pot.

This beautiful piece of ancient pottery

is a clue to when the tomb was built.

There is a complete profile here that we could use

for dating of these tombs.

It seems that this is end of Ptolemaic, early Roman.

The Ptolemaic dynasty, the Greek pharaohs

that followed Alexander, lasted for three centuries,

meaning this tomb dates to 300 years after

Alexander came to Egypt.

And yet the people here were still building their tombs

in the style he imported.

This kind of circular structure that is on top of

this burial chamber is

copied from burial examples in Alexandria.

The catacomb and its circular superstructure are

proof the city, founded by Alexander the Great,

was seen as an example to follow.

The architect at that time wanted to simulate the

buildings that they loved at Alexandria,

here in Philadelphia.

Alexander's Greek culture had spread from

Alexandria to other parts of the country.

Philadelphia was established from scratch on

basis of the Greek style, which came to Egypt by

Alexander the Great.

Alexander's lasting impact on Egypt

is becoming clearer.

But the catacomb hasn't given up all its secrets...

yet.

Basem heads back to the tomb to

see what his team has discovered.

Two near-perfectly preserved panels of

a mummy portrait.

Rare works of funeral art not seen in Egypt

before Alexander.

These wax paint portraits preserved a person's likeness

after death, in the hope their soul could find

their body in the afterlife.

Omar found one part that was stuck to the floor,

and it fits perfectly to the, to the first part to complete

the face of the man, including the rest of his neck,

his right eye and a big portion of his face.

These rare and precious portraits allow Basem

to look into the eyes of the people that lived here some

2000 years ago.

Together, the finds here paint a picture of Philadelphia

as a city with a thriving economy.

You wouldn't have this quality of tomb unless you

have a good architect.

You wouldn't also have this kind of portrait unless you

have the high-class artist.

Which means that Philadelphia was really important,

and it was attracting people from the capital to come here

and to live here or to work here.

Philadelphia was booming, and the

Mummy portrait stands out as the perfect illustration

of how the arrival of Alexander the Great in Egypt

transformed the lives of people here.

The mix technique of painting is Greek,

preserving the face for the afterlife.

It's purely Egyptian culture.

Persian rulers had suppressed Egyptian

traditions, looting temple treasuries and

stifling practices like the Apis Bull cult.

Basem's discoveries reveal that under Alexander,

Philadelphia and Egypt flourished with the melding of

Greek and Egyptian culture.

Philadelphia was a big melting pot,

starting a new era where people from

different backgrounds, different civilization,

different culture were mixed together.

So, a multicultural place.

Chris has come to Alexandria to search

for evidence of Alexander the Great's tomb.

I've been looking for ancient tombs in Egypt for

most of my career, and the tomb of Alexander the Great

is pretty close to the top of my list.

The search for his final resting place is

difficult because Alexander moved around almost as much

in death as he did in life.

After a banquet in Babylon, far to the east of Egypt,

Alexander suddenly fell ill and died, aged just 32.

His body was on the way back to Macedonia, escorted by

an entourage when his bodyguard and lifelong friend,

Ptolemy, stopped them.

Ptolemy took Alexander's body to Egypt to bury him in the

city of Memphis instead.

Ptolemy became Pharaoh and then built a new tomb for

Alexander in Alexandria.

But its exact location remains a mystery.

It's difficult to think of a tomb that would be a

greater sensation if it was discovered than the

tomb of Alexander the Great.

There are little scraps of evidence, clues, if you like,

that could help us to get close.

We have good reasons to think that the Tomb of Alexander was

located in the royal quarter.

So that's the part of Alexandria where there

would have been the royal palaces,

all the great buildings of state,

including a monumental tomb for a great leader

like Alexander.

Digging beneath modern Alexandria is

difficult, so there is little direct evidence of exactly

where the ancient royal quarter once was.

But Chris has a clever technique that could point the way.

I have a photo here showing one of the obelisks

called Cleopatra's Needle at the time it was being moved.

Two obelisks, tall, monumental pillars are

believed to have marked the entrance of a former temple

in the ancient royal quarter.

But they were removed and taken to Britain and America in 1877,

the same year the building in the background was constructed.

The over 200 ton red granite obelisks were shipped to

London and New York,

but the building behind them might still be here.

If we can find that building, then we could be

getting close to the tomb of Alexander the Great.

Chris hits the streets of Alexandria

searching for the building in this photograph in his quest

to find the last resting place of Alexander.

Okay.

So, I think this might be the one.

So, we've got, the full windows across the center,

a little shape in the center as well.

So, if this is the spot, then more or less exactly where

I'm standing is where Cleopatra's needles were,

where the temple was built.

Now that Chris knows where he is in ancient

Alexandria, he can use an historic map of the

original city to continue his search.

The method of city planning in Alexander's time could help

Chris identify the most likely location of his tomb.

In ancient times, cities like this were

designed around a main kind of crossroads, and that's where

often the main buildings of state, the most important

buildings would have been constructed.

Chris matches the main streets of modern

Alexandria with what he thinks could be the

central crossroads of ancient Alexandria.

So this amazingly busy spot might actually correspond

to the very center of ancient Alexandria.

And if that's right, and if we are in the area of the

crossroads, then the tomb could be here somewhere.

Chris could be standing directly over the

remains of the tomb of Alexander the Great.

But it's almost impossible to set up a huge archaeological

dig in such a busy part of the modern city.

At the moment, even if we can be pretty confident

that it might be here, we can't verify it.

Whatever grand monument holds Alexander's

remains is tantalizingly out of reach.

At Taposiris Magna, Kathleen is still on the hunt for the

owner of the grand Alexander-era temple tomb.

She hurries down from outside the tower to the dig site to

see what her team has found underneath the remains

of the fire pit.

Wow.

Oh, my God.

He's so beautiful.

A perfectly preserved head of a stone statue.

We reached the bedrock and he's telling me

when they were just removing the sand with no hope,

in the very bottom, we found this head.

You never lose hope in archaeology.

Bravo!

This head's position, beneath the Roman fire pit,

indicates that it's from the period of the

temple tomb's construction.

Kathleen examines the head itself to see

what more she can learn.

Wow.

It has all these details.

It has a helmet and the hair.

Its style and all the details,

so you can see the nose and

the eyes, the ear.

The work on the hair.

But it's so beautiful.

And this is what our work is about.

It's so rewarding when we get and recover these pieces

that were lost forever.

I'm so excited.

It looks like Alexander.

If the team can identify the figure,

it might help them identify the tomb's owner.

Wow.

Look at the, the eyes.

It looks like it's alive.

We know it's Greek.

The carved helmet appears to be a Greek design.

Yes, it could be.

Is it a God? Or a Goddess?

The statue head could be that of Athena,

the Greek goddess of war.

Kathleen still needs to find out who the

owner of the tomb was.

Because of the tomb's special location next

to the temple and under the replica lighthouse,

Kathleen believes it could belong to one of

the Greek pharaohs that followed Alexander the Great.

The Ptolemy's.

We're putting all these pieces together and

there's very few, very few historical names would

stand to have a tomb like this.

Not one of the Greek pharaohs' tombs have ever been

found in Egypt.

This could be a truly momentous discovery.

The head itself needs careful conservation before it can be

assessed properly.

See you soon.

In the weeks to come, Kathleen will continue

digging for more clues.

There's a lot of new information here.

We're still searching for the owner, but it gave us

a very important clue.

Okay, let's continue working.

Alexander the Great was renowned for his military conquests,

yet his conquest of Egypt was of a

completely different kind.

Capturing the kingdom with almost no bloodshed,

he established Greek culture and religion at the top of

Egyptian society, but he also supported local traditions.

Eventually creating an inclusive Egypt that was

a hybrid of Greek and local beliefs.

This is the legacy of Alexander the Great.

An Egypt that prospered for hundreds of

years after his death.