Original subtitles

Narrator: Deep beneath the egyptian desert,

A team of archaeologists is preparing to open

A 2,500-year-old sarcophagus.

Man: This is surely one of the most intriguing

Burial chambers, and it contains the largest stone sarcophagus

In this complex.

Narrator: Inside may lie a mummified body.

Man: When we find an object like this,

The only thing we need to know is the person inside.

Narrator: But there are signs that the stone casket

Has been tampered with.

Man: I keep looking at the sarcophagus.

It is not even.

It is a little bit tilted.

Then comes this part right here

Where there is a mortar attached to the lid,

But not to the box of the sarcophagus.

So, it tells me one thing.

This lid has been opened at last once, and resealed right here.

But why?

This is definitely a puzzle.

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Narrator: Inside the necropolis of saqqara,

Archaeologist dr. Ramadan hussein

Updates his team on the latest findings

From one of the most important sites in egypt today.

Narrator: A newly discovered 2,500-year-old funeral home,

Where ancient egyptians, rich and poor,

Were mummified and laid to rest deep underground.

Ramadan hussein: The significance of this mummification

And burial complex lies in one fact--

That we have never found an actual building

That we can say securely,

This is where the preparation of the mummies took place.

Narrator: The team is partway through investigating

This unique site.

Their findings are transforming

Our understanding of mummification,

Both as a religious rite and a business.

Salima ikram: There were so many people being mummified

In ancient egypt that, really,

It was one of the biggest industries that you have going.

Ramadan: The people who were working inside the complex here

Were not just embalmers.

They were also business people.

Narrator: To reach the complex,

The team must descend a vertical shaft known as k24.

At the bottom of this void, carved into the bedrock,

Lies a mysterious engraving.

Ramadan: We are now 30 meters deep,

And we have this entrance that's about 2 meters wide.

But what is so important about it is this engraving on the top.

If you follow the outline from the feet to the chest,

And this rounded depression would be the head,

It looks exactly like a mummy.

Once I saw this, I realized that we're pretty much coming

Into something that is related to mummies.

Narrator: Further investigation has confirmed ramadan's hunch.

Laser scans of the site reveal an intricate network of shafts

And passageways stretching 100 feet down,

And ending in a set of burial chambers

From around 600 bc.

In one of these chambers is a large stone sarcophagus

Weighing a colossal 12 tons.

And today, the team begins the challenging task

Of investigating it.

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Ramadan: This is surely one of the most intriguing

Burial chambers in this complex.

The height of the ceiling is almost 3 meters high,

And the room is about 4 meters in length.

And it contains the largest stone sarcophagus

In this complex that is almost as high as I am right now.

And when we find an object like this,

The only thing we need to know is the person.

Narrator: Fortunately, that person left behind

An important clue.

When the chamber was first opened,

The floor around the sarcophagus

Was covered in a thick layer of sand

Containing a large number of grave goods

Connected to the rituals of mummification and burial.

Among these sacred objects

Is a set of beautifully carved stone jars.

Ramadan: What we found here are these canopic jars,

And they are containers of the organs that have been extracted

During the mummification process,

Mummified, and then stored inside these jars.

They're important for an archaeologist,

Because they're usually inscribed with the name

Of the owner of these canopic jars written here.

That reed leaf, a falcon,

A quail chick,

And a t sign,

Altogether reads "aawit."

Aawit literally means

The old one, or the wise one.

And this old man with the walking stick,

This is how egyptians used to imagine old age.

Narrator: Armed with a name,

Ramadan now has another mystery to solve,

And it surrounds aawit's sarcophagus.

Ramadan: I keep looking at the sarcophagus.

It is not even and a little bit tilted.

It's not in the correct position

Because it's not lined up with the box right here.

Then comes this part right here

Where there is a mortar attached to the lid,

But not to the box of the sarcophagus.

So, putting together that position of the lid

That is not lining up with the box,

Along with this mortar that is not meeting the edges of the box

And the lid, it tells me one thing--

That the old sealing has been broken right here.

And this lid lifted up at some point and repositioned.

And I'm sure that it happened 2,600 years ago in antiquity.

Narrator: If ramadan is right,

And aawit's sarcophagus has been opened,

Then the worry is that it might have suffered the same fate

As some other burials from the complex.

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Near the shaft leading to aawit's burial chamber

Is a small tomb known as l25.

In it are two stone sarcophagi

That archaeologist mohamed reham

Has come to inspect.

Narrator: Based on the level of damage,

There is only one explanation.

Salima: When archaeologists excavate tombs,

99%, 99.9% of the time, they have been robbed.

And they were robbed sort of serially

From the time of burial onwards.

First, because people wanted the gold and the grave goods,

And sometimes they just even wanted the beer and the wine

That was in the tomb.

So, tombs have been robbed through the ages.

Narrator: So, could the broken seal on aawit's sarcophagus

Be a clue that, like most coffins, it's been robbed?

And, if so, then by whom?

Salima: The first wave of tomb robbers tended to be the people

Who knew where the tombs were.

So, they could have been the workers

Who helped build the tombs,

Or the priests who helped bury the dead.

Narrator: To get to the bottom of this mystery,

The team will need to open up the casket and look inside.

Ramadan: It is an important moment for all of us

To discover what is inside it.

This is a big question. We're waiting for an answer.

Narrator: Outside aawit's burial chamber,

Egyptologist dr. Ramadan hussein

And his team are about to begin the epic task

Of opening his giant 12-ton sarcophagus.

Ramadan: Getting ready to lift up this 2,600-year-old lid

Is a very exciting and intense moment.

It gets even more intense when you see what's inside.

Narrator: With signs that the sarcophagus

Has been tampered with, ramadan is anxious to discover

Whether it's been plundered by grave robbers.

Since the lid alone weighs close to a full-sized elephant,

Lifting it will be no simple task.

In charge of the operation

Is project engineer dr. Ayman hamed.

Ayman hamed: Moving this sarcophagus lid

Is a big challenge, I think.

Narrator: Ayman is concerned by how ammar,

The site's experienced foreman,

Is intending to jack up the lid.

Ayman: He wants to fit the tip of the jack like that

And take it up.

In this case, everything will collapse.

What I think is safer, is slide the lid to the side,

So we will create enough space

To jack the lid safely and freely.

I hope that he will understand this point of view.

Narrator: When ayman heads down the shaft, though,

He discovers that ammar is using his own method.

Ayman: I'm furious because I don't like this way.

I don't, I don't work in this way.

They are working in the limits, and the limits never work.

Always high risk.

Let's see and pray no one gets hurt.

Ramadan: I'm listening to ayman and ammar.

The one thing that I can tell you

Is that they would never agree at the beginning.

Ammar, my foreman, he is the descendant of foremen.

He represents the collective memory of egyptian archaeology.

But I trust the two of them to find a common solution

To the big task that we have right here.

Narrator: After ayman and ammar agree on a compromise...

Narrator: Ramadan re-enters aawit's chamber

To cast his eye over a new discovery.

Ramadan: During the preparation for lifting up the lid of aawit,

We needed to clean up around it,

And were surprised to find an interesting djed-pillar amulet.

The djed-pillar is the spine of the god osiris,

And it is the symbol of eternity and resurrection.

Narrator: Amulets, like this symbol of osiris,

Lord of the underworld,

Played a crucial role in egyptian burials

By protecting the dead in the afterlife.

And they were often accompanied by another type of magical item

Designed to ward off evil spirits.

Ramadan: It is placed on top of the magical brick,

The small mud, magical brick.

And it's very interesting,

Because those were the two items that were missing

From our inventory of the grave goods of aawit.

Narrator: The richer the customer,

The more money could be made

From the provision of these objects.

Salima: Mummification was, like many other things, a business.

And even the kinds of objects you had in your tomb,

As well as your sarcophagus, canopics,

It was all down to your pocket,

And what kind of deal you made with the embalmers.

Narrator: And the supply of grave goods wasn't the only way

A well-run funeral business could generate a profit.

Carved into the side of k24, not far from the surface,

Is a chamber unlike any other in the tomb complex...

...Housing more than a dozen burials.

Salima: So, we're 9 meters from the top of the shaft,

And 21 meters from the bottom.

And this is a large room that's been cut off the shaft,

And it really acts like a mini burial chamber of its own.

This room is filled with a variety of burials,

And here, there's this lovely, beautifully cut

Limestone coffin, or sarcophagus.

And inside, there is this mummy,

Which has a beautiful cartonnage covering.

And cartonnage is basically, you know, like papier-mâché.

But what's extraordinary is that it's gilded,

And you can see the glint of the gold here shines through.

So, that's really a chic, upper class, wealthy burial.

Whereas, this poor being over here,

I don't even know if they were properly mummified at all.

They might just have been wrapped up in a shroud

And placed in here, because they are skeletonized.

So, these two people are really very different

In wealth and status,

Because there you have sort of the rolls-royce of burials,

And here is something that's more like

A little bicycle in comparison.

Narrator: While it might seem strange

To find two such contrasting burials sharing the same space,

For a funeral business, it was simply a matter of economics.

Salima: We have to remember that mummification,

For the funeral home directors, for them this was a business.

And maybe initially, this was a one per person grand burial,

And then their descendants weren't checking up.

And so, the embalmers kept saying,

"oh, we've got some space here,"

And selling increasingly economical spaces

For people to be buried in.

And so, like funeral directors today,

They had to make sure that they kept making a profit.

Narrator: And this raises an interesting new possibility.

Because if these business-savvy embalmers were prepared

To reuse a tomb, then why not aawit's sarcophagus?

Ramadan: The fact that the lid itself is a little bit tilted,

When you see such misalignment, this is very intriguing.

It's something going to make us think about the possibility

Of the reuse of this sarcophagus 2,600 years ago.

Maybe it was resold to aawit to make profit.

Narrator: To find out, ramadan must look inside.

Narrator: And with the lid finally free of its base,

That moment has now come.

Ramadan: So far, we're about 17 centimeters up.

So, we're going to use a camera to get a peek at what's inside.

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Oh, okay.

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Narrator: It's good news.

Although the sarcophagus's contents have eroded with time,

Nothing appears to be missing.

Making it a rare and important find.

Ramadan: When you deal with a lid

That has been lifted up once in antiquity,

You think possibly the burial chamber was robbed.

But I don't see that.

I'll just adjust it a little bit.

I clearly see that there is a number of wooden objects

And possibly something else.

We have what looks like a broken vessel

Placed at the feet of the mummy, here.

The inside of this sarcophagus,

Everything is in place as it was 2,600 years ago.

Narrator: Which leaves ramadan

With only one possible explanation

For aawit's open sarcophagus:

That it's been reused.

The question now, though, is for what reason?

Ramadan: The only way to find out

Is by jacking up the lid more and be able to get inside

And find out what is happening with this mummy.

Narrator: Inside aawit's burial chamber...

Narrator: ...Workers are continuing the precarious task

Of opening his giant 12-ton sarcophagus.

Narrator: By examining its contents,

Project director ramadan is hoping to discover

Why the sarcophagus has been reused,

And so get an insight into the running of this unique complex.

Ramadan: The fact that this lid has been moved at least once

In antiquity, and then put back on the box of the sarcophagus,

It says something important about the embalmers

Who ran this establishment 2,600 years ago,

That they had a business mentality.

Narrator: Ramadan believes that this same business mentality

Is why the embalmers chose to build their funeral home

Where they did.

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For over 3,000 years, the vast necropolis of saqqara

Served as the main cemetery for the ancient city of memphis.

It's sprawling mass of tombs and temples

Date back to the very earliest days of the egyptian kingdom.

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And towering high above them all,

The oldest stone pyramid in the world,

The magnificent step pyramid of king djoser.

Dating from the 27th century bc,

And built to house djoser's remains,

Along with tens of thousands of his grave goods.

Ramadan: I've never been up here.

You feel so little in front of these magnificent buildings.

This is amazing for me.

This is a spot in the landscape

That is so significant religiously.

If you had stood here 2,600 years ago,

You would smell the incense burned everywhere.

You would hear the animals, sacrificial animals.

You would see a place where the egyptians were buried

For thousands of years.

Narrator: Ramadan is convinced that the close proximity

Of his funeral complex to this and other landmarks of saqqara

Would have been a major draw for customers like aawit.

Ramadan: It's important to put in perspective

The spatial relationship between our complex

And the two great landmarks of saqqara.

From here, on top of the step pyramid,

We can glance over to see the site

Of the mummification workshop where we work,

Right behind the pyramid of king unas.

It is so close, and I do believe it would be on the minds

Of people using our mummification complex

That if you are buried there,

You would be very close to two great kings, unas and djoser.

And this is what made it prime real estate.

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Narrator: With the dig team still hard at work,

Ramadan heads back underground to check up on progress.

Narrator: Aawit's enormous 4-ton lid is being raised

Using a pair of steel jacks.

Narrator: Every step is fraught with danger,

And to make things even tougher,

The temperature in the chamber

Is an energy-sapping 95 degrees.

Ramadan: It's going on pretty well,

But you always have to be careful.

Narrator: Finally, after five hours of jacking,

The lid is high enough to give ramadan a proper look

At aawit's wooden coffin.

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Narrator: Deep beneath the pyramids of saqqara,

Inside aawit's burial chamber,

Ramadan is examining his ancient wooden coffin.

He's searching for clues that might explain

Why aawit's sarcophagus has been opened and reused.

Narrator: As he carefully brushes away

What's left of the coffin,

Aawit's 2,500-year-old skull is revealed.

Narrator: And beneath the skull, something else.

Narrator: If the sand in aawit's sarcophagus

Does hide a second coffin, then it would reinforce the notion

Of a funeral home with a keen eye for business.

Ramadan: Either there is another burial, a second burial,

Lying in the bottom of the sarcophagus.

And the other option is,

The original coffin was taken out of the sarcophagus,

And then it was reassigned to aawit.

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Narrator: The only way of knowing whether the sarcophagus

Contains two burials or one is to remove aawit's mummy.

A task that will further damage it,

Which is why digital archaeologist matthias lung

Is first making a 3d model of aawit.

Matthias lung: One of the basic challenges of archaeology

Is that we always want to know

What is below the things we are seeing now.

What is beneath it?

And to know it, we have to demolish

The sarcophagus and the mummy.

So, the best way to preserve these artifacts

Is to make a perfectly scaled 3d model.

Narrator: Matthias is using a digital imaging technique

Called photogrammetry.

(camera snapping)

It involves combining hundreds of overlapping photographs.

(camera snapping)

Matthias: So, I just move around,

And I sneak in into every single corner, into every angle,

To have a very, very detailed picture of everything.

Narrator: By modeling the various stages of the dig,

Matthias and his team are building a visual timeline

Of the project from beginning to end.

Matthias: I think 3d technology is perfectly suited

For archaeology, because you can revisit the site

As often as you want.

Narrator: Aawit's finished model

Is scrutinized by ramadan and salima.

Ramadan: So, I would like to show you

Something really interesting.

It's this... (salima gasps)

You can see the bottom of it.

Salima: Oh, my god, that's so cool!

Ramadan: This makes me so happy to look at a mummy

That is very decayed,

But he is still preserved in a digital format.

Salima: It's wonderful, because,

Especially with mummies that are so fragile.

Narrator: The 3d model depicts not only aawit's sarcophagus,

But also his mummy.

And ramadan quickly spots a fascinating detail.

(salima gasps)

Ramadan: And look at that arm position.

Salima: Wait a minute, they're both crossed.

Ramadan: Yep. Salima: Oh, that's so cool.

Narrator: To egyptologists, a mummy's arm position

Can be highly significant,

Often denoting its class or gender.

Originally, the only people allowed

The crossed arm position were the pharaohs.

So, the discovery that aawit's arms are crossed

Is unusual to say the least.

Ramadan: How often do you see this?

Salima: You do see it. It does happen.

I mean, it's only kings, really, in the new kingdom.

And then, in this time period,

The only ones I've ever seen have all belonged to priests.

So, with these crossed arms,

It's more than likely he was a priest.

Narrator: It's an intriguing theory,

And not just for what it says about aawit,

But also the owners of the site,

Because having priests for customers

Meant dealing with some of the wealthiest people

In ancient egypt.

Salima: Priests were really a cornerstone

Of ancient egyptian society.

They had power, they had wealth, and they had influence.

So, the fact that priests were buried here

Means that this was a very elite burial place.

Narrator: And aawit isn't the only wealthy priest

To be buried at the complex,

Because on the coffin of another priest,

Ramadan recently unearthed one of the most valuable

Ancient egyptian artifacts to appear in the last 100 years.

Ramadan: We have discovered something that will definitely,

The entire world will be talking about.

Narrator: While his team prepare to remove aawit's mummy,

Ramadan has come to cairo's famous egyptian museum

To be reunited with an object

That offers a fascinating insight

Into the status of priests like aawit.

An exquisite gilded silver burial mask

Belonging to another priest from the complex.

Ramadan: A very rare object.

You don't find something like this every day.

Narrator: Unlike gold,

Which could be found throughout egypt,

Most silver at the time of the pharaohs had to be imported,

Making it one of the most precious substances around.

Ramadan: Silver was, economically speaking,

Like a currency, almost double the value of gold.

Every commodity would be valued against silver.

But also the egyptians always believed

That the bones of the gods were made of silver.

Their flesh and skin were made of gold.

This is the purpose of having this silver plate

Covered with a gold foil.

It's one step toward transformation of the dead

Into a god, into a divine.

Narrator: That such a valuable item belonged to a priest

Is a measure of just how wealthy they could be,

With a status second only to that of egyptian royalty.

To learn more about the composition of the mask,

Head conservator moamen othman

Has been analyzing its metal content

By bombarding it with x-rays

And measuring the unique chemical fingerprint

Given off in return.

Ramadan: I am really curious to know the purity of the silver,

And also the purity of the gilded layer.

Ramadan: Mm-hmm. Music to my ears.

I am also interested to know the purity of the silver plate.

Ramadan: Mm-hmm.

Ramadan: 99? What?

Ramadan: Oh, my god.

Narrator: Purer even than sterling silver,

Which has a concentration of just 93%.

Ramadan: It's just shocking to me how pure the silver plate is.

Have you seen something like this?

Ramadan: I just got the briefing from dr. Moamen,

And the results are overwhelming for me,

Because the purity of the silver and the purity of the gold,

It's a certain kind of wealth that we haven't seen before.

We see it only with royals, not with commoners.

Narrator: While these results are further confirmation

That priests could be extremely wealthy,

They are also evidence of something else:

A successful funeral business offering its clients

The very best goods and services that money could buy.

Clients like aawit furnished with the largest sarcophagus

In the entire complex.

The question that needs answering now

Is whether aawit is in there alone.

Back inside the burial chamber,

The team is carefully removing aawit's crumbling mummy.

(people talking)

(people talking)

With the sarcophagus empty, ramadan can now see

Whether there is a second coffin underneath.

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Ramadan: I came down here to inspect this layer of sand

Underneath the mummy to make sure

Whether there is another burial underneath it or not.

And the only thing that we can do

Is just do a little bit of scraping in here.

And I could hear the sound of this brush

On the bottom rock of the sarcophagus.

Which means we have only one burial in here.

Narrator: And because there's only one burial,

The answer to the mystery of aawit's open sarcophagus

Is that it must have once belonged to someone else.

Salima: It looks as if maybe there was another burial there

First, and then aawit is a secondary burial.

This is certainly possible

Because the ancient egyptians often did that.

They reused tombs.

And often this was done because there was limited space.

Ramadan: A reuse of a sarcophagus,

This really speaks about the embalmers

Who were running this establishment.

They maximized the use of the space to make profit out of it.

Narrator: Having solved this first mystery,

Ramadan's final task is to go back

And re-examine aawit's grave goods

To see if any more can be learned

About this wealthy priest.

Narrator: Inside a secure storeroom,

A team of conservators is carefully boxing up

Some of aawit's many grave goods.

Ramadan: For an archaeologist to really know a person

From the archaeological records, you need the material culture,

All the objects deposited with the person around him.

Narrator: Ramadan is hoping to discover some more about aawit

By taking a closer look at his canopic jars.

Salima: Canopic jars are a crucial part

Of one's funerary equipment,

Because they are supposed to contain the internal organs.

So, one's for the lungs, one's for the liver,

One's for the intestines, and one's for the stomach.

So that when you die, or when you're resurrected,

You can be put together again.

Narrator: It's because canopic jars contain

Remnants of these organs

That the team is taking one for a ct scan,

In case it holds clues about aawit's life.

Ramadan: We're so excited.

We finally get to the point

Where we can explore what is inside.

It's a big moment.

Oh, my god.

This is heavy.

Oh, this is beautiful.

Beautiful and heavy.

This is awesome.

So, we have taken this canopic jar of aawit

On a very exciting trip today.

And we have this beautiful human-headed jar

Representing the god imsety, one of the four sons of horus,

That watched over the organs,

The mummified organs of the deceased.

And imsety was the god in charge of protecting the liver.

So, inside this vessel, we should see the liver of aawit.

Narrator: Using multiple x-rays taken from different angles,

The scanner combines them to create a 3d image.

Helping ramadan interpret the results

Is professor sahar saleem.

Ramadan: Those are the wrappings.

Narrator: After the scans confirm that the jar

Does contain aawit's liver,

Ramadan and sahar are struck by something else.

Ramadan: It shrinks, yeah.

Narrator: Just how big the liver is

For an organ that's 2,500 years old.

Ramadan: It's fascinating how large this liver is still,

Although it should have shrunk a little bit,

But it's still large.

Ramadan: This is very surprising.

This liver enlargement, do you think it's because of a disease?

What would cause that?

Narrator: Schistosomiasis is caused by parasitic worms

From polluted rivers and lakes,

Burrowing under the skin

And infecting vital organs such as the liver.

Could aawit's enlarged liver be a clue

That this is how he met his end?

Ramadan: It's, it's fascinating.

Your observation about cause of death of aawit,

That is amazing for me.

This is absolutely remarkable.

♪ ♪

Narrator: And it's by no means the only thing

The team has learned about the man called aawit.

Ramadan: When we write the story of aawit,

We have to think about his name.

Aawit means old person or wise man.

And it says something about this person

Having achieved a certain socioeconomic status.

Salima: Aawit had a very nice sarcophagus.

He had calcite canopic jars.

He had little ushabtis.

Plus, he's got these wonderful crossed arms

That is done for certain priests.

So, obviously, he was a man of substance.

Narrator: Crucially, aawit's burial is also providing

Ramadan and his team with a fascinating insight

Into the business of mummification.

Ramadan: When we first examined the sarcophagus of aawit,

We were confronted with the mystery

That is the lid was a little bit tilted.

We think now that the entire sarcophagus,

Maybe the entire burial chamber, has been reassigned or resold

To aawit to make profit out of it.

Salima: What's extraordinary is that this whole funerary complex

Is used again and again.

So, they could make sure that they kept making a profit.

Ramadan: This site is very special,

Because we don't have something like this

In the archaeological record of egypt.

It talks about the economics of mummification.

And so this is what keeps us really want to come back

Every season, every year, to work in this place.

Captioned by side door media services