Original subtitles

NARRATOR: In early 2011,

as defiant crowds gather in the streets of Cairo

calling for the overthrow of the president...

..500 kilometres to the south,

a team from Basel University makes not one,

but two remarkable discoveries.

In the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, almost unnoticed,

the team stumbles on a tomb

containing the remains of more mummies

than had ever been discovered before in the valley.

WOMAN: The fact that we have so many individuals,

roughly 30 people, buried in this one tomb is absolutely unique.

And as they begin to investigate this amazing find,

they discover something even more remarkable - a new tomb.

We had now something that we were the first.

It's only the second new tomb to have been discovered

in the Valley of the Kings since Tutankhamen.

As their excavations continue,

these tombs will turn out to throw a revealing new light

on a king who many consider Egypt's greatest pharaoh -

Tutankhamen's grandfather, Amenhotep III.

Amenhotep III was really the most important Pharaoh

in all of Egypt's history.

He was the wealthiest, most powerful ruler

in the entire ancient world.

And they help to explain why some have called him

'The Pharaoh with a Thousand Wives'.

He's the love of my youth, of course!

The pharaoh Amenhotep III ruled Egypt

when it was at the pinnacle of its wealth and power,

around 1400BC.

Amenhotep spent his money lavishly.

Look at Luxor today and much of what we see -

the structures which recall the might of ancient Egypt -

was built by Amenhotep III.

Temples, palaces, hundreds of colossal statues.

He left a remarkable legacy, much of which can still be seen,

three and a half thousand years later.

His mortuary temple was the biggest temple ever built in Egypt.

Until recently, little could be seen of this great temple today -

just the colossal statues of him sitting at the entrance

that have survived everything over the millennia.

But now Amenhotep's vast temple is re-emerging from the fields.

WOMAN: Amenhotep III wanted to make the biggest, the best,

the most beautiful.

Everything, to the best of what arts and architecture and sculpture can do.

New statues and new inscriptions

all testify to the might of Amenhotep III.

Foreigners addressed him as 'The Sun',

and he called himself 'The Dazzling Sun'.

And while the reconstruction of his temple is providing new evidence

of the importance of his reign,

so too are the excavations in the Valley of the Kings.

The work in the Valley began some 10 years ago

when archaeologists from Basel were granted a concession

to explore some unidentified and apparently uninteresting tombs

in one small side valley.

As the team, led by Professor Susanne Bickel

and Dr Elina Paulin-Grothe, set out to explore these tombs,

they had no idea what they would find.

The tombs had all been discovered in the 19th century,

or even earlier, by treasure hunters, but had been dismissed as unimportant

and were never properly excavated.

Wow. This is great.

So many pots. Lovely.

But they discovered that many of the tombs were not unimportant.

That became startlingly clear

in one of the first tombs they investigated -

Tomb Kings Valley 32, or KV32.

At the time, the tomb was full of debris.

WOMAN: Many others have been in in the 19th century

but when they saw this big amount of debris

and no decoration on the walls,

I think they said, "We don't work here."

However, as the team from Basel began closer examination,

they made some astonishing finds amongst the debris -

fragments of material that revealed the tomb belonged to a queen.

Queen Tiaa, seen here with her son Tuthmosis IV.

Queen Tiaa was also grandmother to the great pharaoh Amenhotep III.

It was a very significant find.

This important discovery that very little remains of debris

could contain very informative and important material.

Yes.

It was the starting point that attracted interest

to this kind of tomb.

So if KV32 belonged to Queen Tiaa,

who did all the other supposedly 'unimportant' tombs belong to?

Was it possible that all of the tombs in the side valley

of the royal necropolis might belong to other members of this family?

The link to Amenhotep III was reinforced

when they started to find small pieces of painted wood

all around the small valley.

And visible on many of the pieces

are references to the name of just one pharaoh - Amenhotep III.

So this actually links this part of the valley

to the time of Amenhotep III.

There must have been elegant wooden boxes

that were taken out by the robbers,

probably dismantled,

and these pieces then just were left on the surface.

Here is a beautiful piece with the name of Amenhotep III -

his cartouche still very nicely visible.

Here is another piece.

It's all decorated with the names of Amenhotep III.

The team now suspect that this small valley

could be the family necropolis of the great pharaoh.

Amenhotep III is well known to Egyptologists,

but he has been overshadowed by other pharaohs in the public mind.

People remember instead his son Akhenaton,

the great heretic who abandoned all the traditional Egyptian gods,

changed the style of Egyptian art,

and began worshipping the disc of the sun called the Aten.

And of course, people remember Akhenaten's son,

and Amenhotep III's grandson, the boy king Tutankhamun.

He did little as a ruler except restore the old ways in Egypt,

but his astonishing treasure-filled tomb,

discovered virtually undisturbed in 1922,

amazed the world.

Amenhotep III, by contrast, tends to be forgotten,

although he presided over a period now seen as a golden age.

He inherited an empire that had been carved out

over 100 years before he came to the throne.

Now the empire was largely peaceful.

Amenhotep III rarely had to ride into battle himself.

Instead, he could enjoy the benefits

as the fruits of empire flowed into Egypt from his subjects.

Tributes of every kind poured in,

including vast quantities of gold from Nubia.

And with this wealth,

the town now know as Luxor at the heart of Amenhotep's empire

was transformed.

As the Basel team continue their excavations

in a side valley of the Valley of the Kings,

they suspect they're in an area used by the family of Amenhotep III.

By 2011, they're ready to investigate another long forgotten tomb, KV40.

Although first explored long ago, nothing now is visible

except a slight depression in the ground.

There are no records and they have no way of knowing what is there.

We started excavating

and quickly realised that it was a shaft tomb,

so that meant that we would go down, and deeper down.

As they dig out the shaft,

they discover that at the bottom it opens onto a corridor.

This discovery is going to need a lot more investigation.

They begin preparations for a cover over the tomb entrance

to protect it from thieves.

It needed, of course, clearing all around.

We started doing that,

and the interesting event then happened on the left side.

They cleaned the surrounding area of 40, and I was inside.

When I came out, they said, "We have here something man-made,"

and it was a straight edge.

All of a sudden appeared something that clearly looked man-made.

We didn't want to go too quickly to conclusions,

thinking, dreaming that it might be a tomb.

We just had three corners of this man-made structure.

Could this be a shaft, the entrance to a new tomb?

The timing of their new finds could not have been worse.

It's the start of the Egyptian revolution.

So, it was the 25th January,

and when we informed the authorities,

they came to see it and they said,

"If it's something and if there is some treasures,

"now it's the revolution, it's impossible that we dig more

"and find anything important."

So we had to fill up again, and make protection over it.

The police and the army, they left,

but since I have been here now 30 years,

a lot of things have happened in this time,

so I was not really worried, because why should I leave?

We had all the valley for ourselves, we had pottery to restore,

and so we stayed.

As the army and police at the gates of the Valley of the Kings

disappear into thin air,

all news of the new find is suppressed.

Any rumours of a new tomb will attract the robbers,

already descending on antiquity sites across the country.

The team suspect they might have stumbled on new tombs

of members of the Sun King's family -

but they know they are not the tomb of the pharaoh himself.

Amenhotep III's tomb was found nearby by Napoleon's expedition to Egypt

early in the 19th century.

Susanne Bickel has worked on projects linked to Amenhotep III

for much of her working life,

and now has the chance to view his tomb.

It's something she's long wanted to do.

Here it is.

She's joined by colleague, Tanja Alsheimer.

You can see all the chisel marks, all the flints. Yeah.

These flint lines.

And the corners are so straight.

Perfect.

Oh, wow. Now we're coming to the shaft.

Oh, wow! That's the first part that's decorated.

Oh, it's amazing. Look at this!

I've been hoping to see that for 25 years.

The tomb is currently being restored.

For the ancient Egyptians,

where and how you were buried was crucial

to your prospects in the afterlife.

The tomb paintings are designed to help the pharaoh

make the transition.

He's shown being welcomed by the gods.

Look. She's smiling, the goddess there.

Oh, she is. She definitely is.

And he's smiling.

Well, he's just welcomed by all the gods.

"Welcome to my world."

Despite all this preparation for the afterlife,

Amenhotep's mummy was moved out of here in antiquity

to protect it from tomb robbers.

All that's probably left from the sarcophagus in granite is the lid,

but it has his cartouche, it has his name on it.

Oh, yes.

It's incredible to be here. It's so beautiful, it's so delicate.

The whole architecture is impressive.

I'm quite moved by the fact that you can really feel

how people have prepared this tomb for Amenhotep III.

It's clearly one of the most beautiful tombs I've ever seen.

It's apparent from this tomb that Amenhotep was concerned

not just for his own afterlife, but for his family's too.

He also intended this magnificent tomb

to be used by his wife and one of his daughters -

separate chambers were built for them.

Perhaps he wanted to be surrounded in the other world

by the two generations.

That's very important also.

His concerns for his family's prospects in the afterlife

may help to explain why there were so many tombs for his family

in the Valley of the Kings.

Now the team from Basel have two more finds

they suspect are the tombs of other members of his family - but who?

It's a full year later, in January 2012,

that the team finally get clearance

to resume work in the Valley of the Kings.

Their plan - to investigate the new man-made feature.

As they start work,

they soon establish that this is indeed a shaft.

Have they really discovered a new tomb right beside KV40?

It was very exciting.

What was intriguing is that it's so close.

All the other tombs are at a distance

of some 10, 20 metres from each other,

whereas this, the shaft rims are only a metre 20 from each other.

As they dig and the shaft continues downwards,

their expectations grow.

Finally, at the bottom,

they find large blocking stones still in place.

This is, after all, a new tomb, and it's apparently undisturbed.

After some metres, we found some big stones

accumulated against the back wall.

We took one stone off and we looked in.

Full of anticipation,

the team remove one of the blocking stones

and push their camera through.

Out of the blackness looms a wooden coffin.

It appears completely undisturbed.

And there's a beautiful painted wooden stela

standing beside the coffin.

This is only the second new tomb to be found

in the Valley of the Kings since Tutankhamen,

and the first to contain a burial.

This major new find would be called KV64.

We were very happy.

Although the tomb was totally without decoration,

we knew that we had found something

that was hidden for some thousands of years.

Of course, this made the team very happy.

We had now something that we were the first.

To remove the coffin from the tomb, it has to be opened.

Inside is the small but untouched mummy.

With great difficulty, the lid of the coffin

and then the coffin itself are removed.

And both parts are taken away with the stela to be studied.

Examination of the wooden stela, or tablet,

reveals the tomb's owner was not royal -

but a noble woman called Nehmes Bastet.

And it looks as though the stela was painted by two different artists.

You can see that this part and this part here is much coarser

than this extremely delicate, high-quality painting here.

So, it might have been prepared and then commissioned

by the person who wanted to buy the piece

to have it made for Nehmes Bastet,

and then a second, much more gifted artist

prepared the very delicate parts.

This is absolutely exquisite.

Her coffin too reveals further information

about the noble woman buried in the tomb.

The hieroglyphs on the outside of the coffin explain

that Nehmes Bastet was a songstress of Amun.

Like many noble women,

she took part in ceremonies in the temple at Karnak.

The coffin, however, presents a puzzle.

The style indicates that it dates from the 22nd Dynasty,

some 400 years after Amenhotep III.

So why was this much later burial amongst the tombs

linked to Amenhotep?

The team decide to examine the mummy itself.

To assist with the examination,

a group flies in from Zurich with advanced X-ray equipment.

This machine should be able to produce images

of the person inside through the mummy's wrappings,

and even through the wood of the coffin.

We cannot take the mummy out of the coffin

because it's glued with resin,

and this is why we have to try to do the X-ray pictures through the wood.

The wood is quite thick,

but I'm sure we'll get good pictures, at least from above.

On the sides will be probably a little bit more difficult.

The X-ray machine focuses an X-ray beam through the mummy

to an electronic sensor underneath which replaces the X-ray film.

The sensor will send an instant image through to a computer.

But will they get a good image through the wood and the bandages?

It's astonishing that they can make so good pictures through the wood.

WOMAN: It's a good-quality image, actually.

I'm satisfied with the quality of the image.

The image of the mummy's head is excellent.

Next they move down the body to the hips.

They'd like to confirm that she's a woman.

So, she's a lady!

(LAUGHTER AND INDISTINCT CHATTER)

For me, it looks like a lady.

There are no parts of a male in the area of the hips.

But how old was she when she died?

An X-ray of the teeth should answer that -

and they attempt an even more difficult X-ray from the side

through two thicknesses of wood.

We didn't expect to get it through the wood as well.

WOMAN: Oh, wow. Whoa, the teeth are still there.

It looks like the lady still has the complete teeth

and even the wisdom teeth are not out yet

so she's not as old as we thought her to be, somehow.

We imagined she was an old lady, but maybe she died young.

Even I thought she's smiling. Looks... The mouth.

The image is better than they'd hoped,

and reveals that Nehmes Bastet was a woman,

probably still in her twenties.

The team hope that eventually she can be returned to her tomb.

I would prefer her to go back to the tomb.

Then I think she will rest in peace once again -

another 3,000 years.

We'll see, we'll see.

The coffin was a remarkable find,

but the team are interested in what might still be in the tomb.

Is KV64 really a much later tomb?

They want to excavate it further.

As they remove more of the debris from the tomb,

they begin to find artefacts from the time of Amenhotep III -

the 18th Dynasty.

When we emptied

the shaft completely,

we came to the floor

and we found this flowerpot, which is like a modern flowerpot.

And this was the container for the mud

which was used for the sealing of the tomb.

And we knew from this type it was the 18th Dynasty.

Underneath where Nehmes Bastet's coffin had been

there's a pile of rubble.

As they search through it,

they find even more objects from an earlier 18th Dynasty burial.

We came to the lowest levels,

and there is where we found many 18th Dynasty objects.

We had this inlay eye - very skilful inlay,

the black stone in the white one.

Another thing what is from the 18th Dynasty

is this very nice small glass vase.

Now it's restored. It was in pieces.

This is also something that not every burial has.

Glass was very, very new in this time.

What we also found, but very broken, were pieces of this canopic jar.

We found two canopic jar heads with human face,

but they are now in the magazine.

The heads are definitely two of the best examples

of these heads that go with the canopic equipment at that time.

And we date them

maybe at the very beginning of the reign of Amenhotep III.

The canopic heads seem to belong to a man,

but the ancient Egyptians often used heads of the wrong gender.

Eventually, emerging from the rubble,

they find the remains of an 18th Dynasty mummy.

We had here on the back side the remains of a mummy

which was robbed.

No coffin, nothing. Just the body.

And then they find the first clue to the name of the tomb's owner.

This small tag of wood,

which is not complete, it's only a half with the text.

Here we have the inscription. It is clear.

It says, "The daughter of the King, Satiah."

In the 22nd Dynasty, Nehmes Bastet had reused a much earlier tomb.

The original occupant appears to be a princess

from the time of Amenhotep III called Satiah.

This is a major find.

The tomb KV64, where this lady was buried,

was thoroughly looted in antiquity and left a very sad picture.

Even her mummy was unwrapped.

All the bandages that would have made a wonderful mummy

were taken away,

And what is left over actually is just her mummified, dried, body.

You can see the rest of the bandages that would have covered her arms.

Her entire body, her head would have been covered.

She had quite high-standard burial goods

if the two canopic jars with these lovely little heads belonged to her.

A tomb for her own might also be a factor

that indicates her status, her importance.

She might be this Princess Satiah.

From the entire context

we can gather that she is from the royal family.

So they've discovered a new member of Amenhotep III's family.

Is this a daughter,

or perhaps an aunt or sister of the Sun King?

None of Amenhotep III's known children or relations had the name Satiah.

It seems the team may have discovered an unknown princess.

This despite the fact that more is known about Amenhotep III's life than almost any other pharaoh.

Amenhotep III was still a child when his father died

after only 10 years on the throne.

The new young pharaoh was probably around 12 years old.

But he went on to rule Egypt for almost 40 years

in a reign of unprecedented prosperity,

and he channelled his wealth into monumental building projects.

His achievements are described in detail on a surviving stela.

Salima Ikram is an Egyptologist who is working with the Basel team.

Now, here, in a place where we're not generally allowed

and we have to squeeze through,

you can see this extraordinary stela,

which is very important

because it tells us all about Amenhotep III's building program

in the Theban area.

This is all about Amenhotep III giving things to the god Amun.

He talks about how he built in Luxor Temple for Amun,

how at Malqata, at his palace,

there was a big viewing platform dedicated to Amun,

and how in his mortuary temple

there were, again, things that were dedicated to Amun.

And he also goes on to talk about Karnak

and the Third Pylon which was extremely ornate.

And he said, "I used gold and electrum and lapis lazuli,

"and other precious stones,"

so it really must have been a dazzling sight.

The pylon Amenhotep built

at Karnak Temple in Luxor is still there,

but if it was ever covered in gold and precious stones,

they've long since disappeared.

From Karnak, he built a sphinx-lined ceremonial way

two and a half kilometres long.

And at the other end, he built a new temple

now known as Luxor Temple.

On the walls of this temple,

a series of scenes spell out his divine descent

from the god of the sun, Amun-Ra.

Amenhotep III had this big program to sort of self-deify.

He wanted to make sure that the priests of Amun didn't have too much power,

and one of the ways of doing that was to reinforce the idea that the king was god.

This room was filled with images of his divine conception and birth.

Here you have Amun and the queen having their moment,

and it's really the intertwining of hands

and the crossing over of the legs that gives you a sense

that there's some sort of physical intimacy going on.

Beneath, you have the two goddesses who are slightly tickling the feet,

so that's a sort of euphemistic way

of showing that they're having a very nice time.

And then it's the birth scene

and all the gods and goddesses then wind up greeting Amenhotep III with great joy

because Egypt will once again have a truly divine ruler.

Throughout his reign,

Amenhotep III placed increasing emphasis on solar worship,

and he brought back an ancient concept

into Egyptian temple architecture - the solar court.

In this great open court at Luxor Temple,

the sun god could be observed and worshipped

as he crossed the sky.

The sun court was very important.

We must remember that in pyramid temples,

sun courts were a very crucial part of the architecture.

So what Amenhotep III is doing is really going back

and linking himself with the earliest rulers of Egypt

and recreating himself as a manifestation of the sun,

and he did call himself 'The Dazzling Sun'.

Amenhotep's greatest building project

was on the other side of the River Nile.

It was his own funerary temple

and was the largest temple ever built in Egypt.

He called it his Mansion of a Million Years.

But it didn't survive a million years.

It lasted perhaps only 200

before it was demolished by an earthquake.

And for generations afterwards,

the remains of his temple were used as a quarry.

This can still be seen at the Temple of Khonsu,

part of the Karnak complex.

It seems that much of this temple was built using stone

from Amenhotep's ruined temple across the river.

Here we can see a lot of the original decoration

of the time of Amenhotep III.

They just took the blocks, built this pylon,

and didn't really care whether there was decoration

on these stone surfaces.

These are obviously blocks from Amenhotep III.

We have one of the priests whom we know from this time,

so there is no doubt

that we're in the period of Amenhotep III.

Now here we are on top of the pylon of the Temple of Khonsu,

which was entirely built from blocks that come from over there,

the Funerary Temple of Amenhotep III.

Until recently, the whole area where the funerary temple stood had reverted to fields.

Nothing was visible

except two colossal statues of Amenhotep III

which have survived alone at the temple entrance.

These statues were named by the ancient Greeks

the Colossi of Memnon - a name people still use today.

But they're no longer alone.

Starting some 10 years ago,

archaeologist Hourig Sourouzian and her team began

patiently digging out the statues

and any stonework that was left from the mud

and re-erecting them in the right position.

This land beside the Nile used to flood every year,

producing the fertile strip along the river

that has fed Egypt throughout its history.

And over the millennia, the remains of Amenhotep's great temple

has slowly sunk into the mud.

Now the team have drained the land

and piece by piece the temple is re-emerging.

This is part of the largest alabaster statue known.

We don't have such a gigantic alabaster statue,

not in Egypt, not in the world.

We have not found anything like this,

and now we know the reason.

Because this alabaster is a beautiful

but very problematic stone.

Alabaster is an attractive stone, but it cracks easily,

and before they dare lift this piece of the statue

they want to separate the smaller section

of Amenhotep III's hand.

What we are doing here is now we're using the air cushion system.

When we have a big chunk -

the chunk is estimated to be 280 tonnes -

we need to remove anything that wants to separate already

from the shock of its first fall in antiquity.

In their work, the team use a remarkable combination

of ancient and very modern technology.

The air cushion system that they're using is state of the art.

Everything else would have been familiar to the workers' ancestors.

As the air pressure builds and the bag inflates,

Amenhotep's hand successfully separates

from the larger piece of stone.

(AIR HISSES)

The hand alone weighs some two and a half tonnes,

but now they can lift it out of the hole it has sunk into.

(SPEAKS IN ARABIC)

The next stage is to prepare a ramp

using a series of massive wooden beams.

(MEN SHOUT IN ARABIC)

Then Amenhotep's hand is lowered onto a sled,

with rollers inserted underneath.

Now it's down to brute force.

(MEN SHOUT IN ARABIC)

This is the technique that was almost certainly used

to move the stones when these structures were built

3,000 years ago.

Two pieces of this alabaster colossus -

Amenhotep's chest and his hand - are now reunited.

And as this temple begins to take shape again,

it's possible to understand its layout

and to see just how big it was.

You're just entering this huge temple.

Imagine that from where I'm standing until the palm trees,

we're talking about 550 metres, which is half a kilometre.

And from the axis to the south and to the north,

we're talking about a 700-metres width of a temple.

So, I'll take you through

the imaginary heart of the temple, right?

This gateway to the temple,

known as the First Pylon, was massive -

even taller than the Colossi of Amenhotep.

And it was nearly 20 metres thick.

Beyond it lay the first court.

This was 70 metres across,

and probably had colonnades on each side.

At the far side was the Second Pylon.

Now we're approaching to the Second Pylon,

and now again the two Amenhotep III colossi,

in quartzite, again,

they are welcoming us to enter from the first court to the second court.

The Second Pylon was nearly as big as the first,

and led into another huge court.

And on the far side was the Third Pylon,

fronted by the largest alabaster statues known in the world.

So, now you're just stepping into the workshop

of what we are doing for the alabaster colossi.

You see the wall there behind me, the mud brick?

This is the Third Pylon,

from where we will pass into a passage to the next space.

The Third Pylon, with its alabaster statues,

was the entrance to a walkway

that led to the next court of the temple.

Now we are on our way towards the peristyle court,

and we have left the Third Pylon.

So, what was the connection between the two?

It must have been a passage - we know it's a passage.

And we have two suggestions.

The first suggestion is that it was an avenue of sphinxes.

The second suggestion is that it was somehow double columns,

and the passage through the double columns,

like in Luxor Temple.

They suspect that an avenue of sphinxes is more likely,

and it led to the peristyle court

where dozens of statues have been found.

So, now we are exactly at the centre

of the peristyle court here.

This is the location where

our team has been able to excavate completely.

While excavating, we found a lot of remains of statues

during the Amenhotep period.

You have to imagine huge columns - they were 15 metres.

And then huge colossi that are 7 metres.

A piece of beauty.

In the middle, a beautiful court, and full of Sekhmets.

We have been excavating more than 100 Sekhmets.

The statues of the goddess Sekhmet

have been moved to the magazine for safety.

No-one's sure why Sekhmet was so important to Amenhotep,

but she's the goddess of war, disease and healing,

and she was presumably providing protection to the king.

This is all our Sekhmets which we have discovered on site.

And it was not just regular excavations.

Actually, when we were planning for the drainage system

to lower the water table in the peristyle courtyard

so that we could do our proper excavations and go deeper,

this is when we hit this huge number of Sekhmets.

We were just stunned with the tonnes of Sekhmets that were coming out.

Each one has a different character.

You think they are identical

because their posture is the same, but they are not.

Each one is a piece of art. It's a magnificent piece of art.

So far, they've found dozens of these statues.

And some people speculate

there may have been one for every day of the year.

So we know definitely that there were more than 100,

then why not 365?

Maybe he would have wanted one for each day, to protect him.

They think the hundreds of Sekhmet statues

were arranged around the four walls on the outside of the peristyle court

protecting the temple.

And excavating at the site of the temple,

the team are still finding more statues of Sekhmet

and ever more statues of Amenhotep himself.

There are now more known statues of Amenhotep III

than any other pharaoh.

Over 1,000 statues of Amenhotep as king or god survive,

including the foot from a 21-metre colossus at Karnak.

This was the biggest statue ever built in Egypt.

Unfortunately, nothing remains but the base of the statue,

with Amenhotep's name...

..and his foot.

There were so many of these statues that succeeding pharaohs

often didn't bother to carve their own.

The famous giant head of Ramses II in the Ramesseum

is said to be a head of Amenhotep III taken from his mortuary temple.

It wasn't just the quantity of sculpture

during Amenhotep III's reign that was extraordinary.

The quality too was outstanding.

Some of the sculpture carved at this time

ranks amongst the finest ever produced.

Much of it is in the tombs of his officials,

who shared in the country's wealth

and were able to build lavish tomb complexes.

This is the tomb of Ramose, one of Amenhotep's leading courtiers.

And it has exquisite reliefs on its walls.

PROFESSOR IKRAM: This is one of my favourite tombs

because the carving is so exquisite and subtle.

The modelling is so fine.

You can see the faces of each individual,

and they're recognisable.

And the way that the wigs and the details of the clothing -

you can, in fact, see all the folds of the drapery

and the knots and the little bit of a fringe.

And obviously the artists and sculptors of this period

really had a firm control and command over their materials.

Really beautiful things.

Other arts and crafts also flourished,

like the wall paintings found in the tombs of that period.

During the reign of Amenhotep III,

there was this huge explosion really of the arts.

I think he was more interested in the arts

and the luxuries of life than he was in warfare certainly.

The kinds of things that you see are extraordinarily lavish -

beautiful glassware, furniture, very luxurious

with inlays of ebony and ivory and gold.

ARIELLE P KOZLOFF: Amenhotep III

insisted on the most exquisite workmanship.

He must have been extremely demanding,

must have had a very fine eye for detail.

The demand for perfection has to come from the top,

because it pervades all areas of his artistic work.

And again, he had the gold to make it all happen.

This was the sumptuous world in which Amenhotep, his family, and his court lived.

Now, in the Valley of the Kings,

two new tombs, thought to belong to members of Amenhotep's family,

have been found by the team from Basel.

The first of these tombs - the newly named KV64 -

has proved to be a major find.

It appears to belong to a previously unknown princess from that time, Satiah.

And right beside it is a much bigger tomb, KV40,

which has not yet been excavated and remains a mystery.

They've already discovered

that the shaft of the tomb leads down to a corridor.

Now they can investigate what lies beyond.

Now, when we first came in,

the shaft and the whole corridor was filled with material -

with sand and rubble - we cleared it.

We came to this big room, and it was all filled

with heavily looted burials -

bones, skulls, parts of mummies, parts of coffins.

Pottery was just smashed to about 30cm over the ground.

Altogether, there are four rooms in much the same condition -

and it is clear that looters have caused terrible damage down here.

The roof is totally black.

The place has suffered from a heavy fire.

It must have become very, very hot.

This is why the limestone is totally baked and blackened,

whereas on the floor

the temperature didn't rise very high

because the fire didn't last long,

and the material remained very fragmentary.

Covered with soot in many places, but lots of fragments.

A rough count suggests

that these had been the mummies of more than 30 adults,

as well as several children.

By any measure, this is an astonishing find.

Most tombs in the Valley of the Kings

were intended for a single pharaoh.

But over 30 people in one tomb?

This is unheard of,

and immediately presents the team with an obvious question -

who are all these people?

And are they somehow connected to the princess

they found in the adjoining tomb?

The team sets about sorting through the vast quantities of debris.

It's an enormous task,

but as they sift through the material,

they make a number of finds

which provide the first pointers to who was buried in this tomb.

One of the early discoveries is a piece of crumpled fabric.

Eventually, this is lovingly restored,

and it turns out to be a fine linen sock.

It's very nicely sewn. It's made to be worn with sandals.

It's made of linen, and it's a very rare piece.

We hardly know socks from ancient Egypt.

From the size, you can see it's very small.

It's something like a 35,

so we can imagine that it was worn by a young lady.

This sock dates these finds to the time of Amenhotep III.

It would have been worn only by the elite.

But confusingly, they also find other objects from a much later date.

This is cartonnage, a material of linen and plaster,

a bit like papier-mache, used to make funerary masks.

But this dates from the 22nd Dynasty,

four hundred years later than Amenhotep.

As with the tomb next door, this tomb has clearly been reused.

The puzzle of trying sort out who all the occupants of the tomb are

has suddenly become much more difficult.

Solving this puzzle will take several years.

As revealed in the next program,

it will involve a lot of painstaking detective work,

and make use of a range of scientific techniques.

The archaeologists will call on the help

of world-renowned physical anthropologist Frank Ruhli

to examine and X-ray the bodies.

FRANK RUHLI: It's important

to see how many people were buried in there.

I think this makes it even more fascinating.

It's a bit of a puzzle - a puzzle of human remains -

and that's something which is always very challenging,

particularly in this unique setting of the Valley of the Kings.

When I first went in KV40, I could not believe my eyes.

The remains after a heavy fire,

we know that there are members of the royal family in this tomb.

She's clearly a princess. This is her name.

This is her title.

"Royal daughter Taemwadjes."

And as they piece together the remarkable story

of who this group of people are,

one of the world's leading forensic identification laboratories

will attempt to reconstruct one of their faces.

MAN: From doing forensic casework,

we know that this process is accurate enough

to be recognisable by a friend or a family member.

For the revelation of the astonishing truth

of who was in the tomb,

see the next part of Egypt's Sun King: The Mystery Tombs.

Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2018