Original subtitles

Welcome to Egypt.

Behind us is the Valley of the Kings,

burial place of the most famous pharaoh of them all -

Tutankhamun.

He lay undisturbed, right here under these sands,

for more than 3,000 years.

Until they discovered his treasure-filled tomb in 1922.

We're following the story of Tutankhamun's life, death

and discovery thousands of years later.

We're bringing you new insights, including a cutting-edge 3D scan

revealing fresh perspectives on Tut's burial.

WOMAN: Tutankhamun's burial was very much rushed.

Someone wanted him to be buried very quickly.

In this episode, we pick up our stories

as Tutankhamun falls dangerously ill.

And three millennia later,

as archaeologist Howard Carter makes astonishing discoveries

in the first room in the tomb.

Here's what's coming up.

I investigate the latest thinking on how Tutankhamun died.

And we've got special access

to some of his most personal and spectacular possessions,

hidden away from the public.

Well, here it is. The legendary golden chariot of King Tutankhamun.

I head into restricted areas

to unravel the riddle of Tutankhamun's unusually small tomb.

It's all rock hewn. There's no decoration in here.

While I ride off to reveal how Tut-mania,

the craze of King Tut, gripped the world.

150? That's OK. No problem.

Oh, right, what about 100? (LAUGHS)

So join us as we tell the story

of the death and the discovery of Tutankhamun.

26th November 1922.

Three weeks into their excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb,

Howard Carter and his sponsor, Lord Carnarvon,

had cleared the rubble from this narrow corridor

to reveal a sealed doorway.

They had broken down this final door that led to Tutankhamun's tomb

and what they found inside was astonishing.

This... It's so exciting!

This chamber was filled with the most unimaginable treasures.

Look at this photograph here.

It looked like they'd been left here just days before,

rather than having sat for thousands of years, untouched.

Carter said it looked like the props room of an opera company.

There were golden couches,

chariots

and wooden chests crammed with food and clothing -

all Tutankhamun would need to enjoy his afterlife.

But everything was oddly jumbled together

and there was another thing that puzzled Carter.

The chamber was a lot smaller than many of those found in the Valley of the Kings,

including one very close by.

Check this out, that's Tutankhamun's tomb just down there.

Right on top of it, almost,

is the tomb of the mighty Ramesses VI,

which is on a whole different scale.

Just compare the tiny, undecorated chamber of Tut's tomb

to this!

Much more in keeping

with the splendour expected of a pharaoh's final resting place.

It just goes on and on and on, ever deeper into the earth.

The walls absolutely covered

with the most beautiful hieroglyphs and colours.

The entrance corridor here is an incredible 58 metres long.

Tut's, on the other hand, is just eight.

It's enormous!

Tutankhamun's tomb could fit just in this entrance corridor

many times over.

If they built Tutankhamun a bungalow,

Ramesses VI got a mansion.

Tut's tomb was so small,

at first Carter thought he'd only found a storage chamber.

But the items he discovered confirmed it was a burial,

and they give an extraordinary insight

into the last days of Tut's life.

As we found out last time,

medical researchers put Tutankhamun's corpse through the CT scanner

and that revealed several medical conditions

that might have affected his everyday life.

But they also ran DNA tests, which show that he appeared

to have suffered during his life

from at least two different types of malaria.

Now, there are some objects in the tomb with Tutankhamun

that suggest that he might have been suffering from malaria

in the days just before he died.

Raksha's gone to check out the evidence.

I've come to the Grand Egyptian Museum

where items from Tut's tomb are being painstakingly conserved.

These aren't on public display

but I've been given access to see them.

And they are incredible.

Wow!

Amongst the hoard...

there's drawer upon drawer filled with 3,000-year-old food.

Are those nuts? MAN: Yes.

Wow.

Oh, what are these? Pomegranates? Yes.

Wow. Perfectly formed pomegranate.

Every box is a surprise. Yes.

(LAUGHS)

So that's onions. Onion.

OK.

While some of these foods were to sustain Tut in the afterlife...

I can actually still smell those. Mm.

..we now know many were also used as medicines.

Oh, juniper berries. And here, some fruits.

Juniper berries. Look at those! (LAUGHS) Look at those!

Wow!

Do you know what these were used for?

Help him with pain.

Well, that would make sense because he had bone necrosis

and he was probably in a lot of pain with his foot.

I know what those are just by looking at them.

What is this? Coriander seeds.

Yes.

Coriander seeds were used to treat fevers.

Unusually, a massive eight baskets full were found in the tomb.

It's like as though I just bought them from the shop.

(CHUCKLES) They are so perfectly preserved!

While the DNA analysis can't tell us when in his life Tut had malaria,

experts believe this afterlife pharmacy in his tomb

indicates he may well have been suffering from the disease

when he died.

In the last few weeks of Tutankhamun's life,

we believe that he was suffering from malaria.

But what was going on in our modern story?

As we know, Carter and Carnarvon had entered that first chamber

filled with incredible treasures

and now they announced their discovery to the world.

On 29th November 1922,

three days after unsealing the tomb,

dignitaries and the press were invited inside.

And this event sparked a frenzy.

Almost overnight, it became the biggest news story in the world.

It not only completely changed Carter and Carnarvon's life,

it changed Egypt itself.

I headed to Cairo to see how the craze of Tutankhamun

captured the imagination of the world.

This is how we imagine Egypt.

Romantic camel rides across the empty desert,

the great Pyramids rising up from the desolate sands.

These days, of course, it is rather more like this.

(NEEDLE SCRATCH)

Up to 10 million tourists now come here every year.

And it was largely the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb

which set off this tourist boom in the first place.

In the years before,

Egyptian tourism had been on a much smaller scale.

It was a niche pursuit.

Thank goodness for that! I help you.

Welcome back. Thank you very much.

Welcome back to terra firma. Thank you very much.

Very good, thank you. Wonderful. Thank you, sir.

Great ride.

Some of these visitors were also the first archaeologists,

although, to give them that title

perhaps gives them an honour they didn't deserve.

They were treasure hunters more than tourists,

specifically employed to search out precious artefacts

and then sell them on to the highest bidders.

Here, at the Pyramid of Khafre just outside Cairo,

an Italian ex-circus strong man called Belzoni

was the first modern visitor to find a way inside.

This is... This is hard work

and it would have been hard for Belzoni.

But on the other hand, he thought it would pay off

because he was hoping that he would find lots of treasure here

which would make him a lot of money.

But, of course, he didn't,

because this tomb, like almost every other ancient Egyptian tomb,

had been robbed in antiquity.

But Belzoni did leave his mark.

Here we go.

"Discovered by G Belzoni, 2 March 1818."

Quite a graffiti, that.

Thankfully, most other Victorian tourists

were a little more respectful.

By early 1922, Egypt was a fairly familiar destination

for the rich and adventurous

but, on 29th November, when Carter announced

the discovery of Tutankhamun's treasure-filled tomb,

interest in Egypt just took off.

Tut-mania gripped the world.

And it's still going strong.

Hello.

You've got plenty with Tutankhamun, haven't you?

MAN: Which one? I want one of the man with the mask.

This is his toy, we make it by handmade.

It's not gold though, is it? No, no, no, no.

So how much does this cost? 300 Egyptian pound.

300? Yes.

Would you give it to me for 150?

It's OK, no problem.

150? It's OK, no problem.

Oh, right, what about 100? (LAUGHS)

OK, 150.

Well, I think I will have that then. OK.

Tut-mania didn't just inspire people to come to Egypt,

it was the first global media craze.

King Tut, as he became known, and all things ancient Egyptian

seeped into every aspect of 1920s culture.

A dance tune was called Old King Tut and it was a hit.

(OLD-STYLE DANCE MUSIC PLAYS)

Tut-mania affected Hollywood,

romantic novels,

fashion,

and even a brand of Californian lemons.

Tutankhamun's treasures gave beauty and glamour to a grey world

exhausted by the First World War.

# Old King Tut, 'neath moonlit skies so warm... #

Tourists flocked to the tomb.

They sat on the wall chatting, reading,

even knitting,

waiting for something to happen.

All much to the annoyance of Carter.

# In Old King Tut... #

Society gentlemen would present their calling cards to Carter,

demanding access to Tut's tomb.

The grumpy archaeologist would often tear the card

and throw it in the sand at their feet.

I'm rather warming to Howard Carter.

# King Tutty's day. #

Almost a century later,

Tutankhamun still draws tourists to the Valley of the Kings.

Not much knitting going on nowadays, sadly.

Just lots and lots of selfies.

Tut's tomb is the star attraction,

despite being so abnormally small and plain.

But why was it so tiny compared to other royal tombs?

The cavernous tombs like this one

belonging to other pharaohs from around Tutankhamun's time

show the enormous effort,

the preparation and planning that went in to a pharaoh's burial.

Pharaohs began building their tombs the moment they took the throne.

When Tut died at just 19, he'd been ruler for only 10 years.

Which could account for his cramped burial place.

To find out what was required to build a tomb fit for a pharaoh,

Raksha has visited a village

where the tomb builders themselves once lived.

Just over the hill from the Valley of the Kings

lies the ancient village of Deir el-Medina.

Last time, we discovered it was home to the builders of Tut's tomb.

The houses that the tomb builders lived in

are here, down in the valley,

but the tombs that they built for themselves

litter the mountainside.

And Manon Lefevre is letting me in

on the secrets of their construction.

I really want to know how hard it is to build a tomb.

So how did they do it?

Ah, we have to use different material

that depends on the stone.

Here we have limestone. Mm-hm.

So we have to use at first this.

Oh, a flint axe.

Iron tools weren't used in Tut's Egypt.

Flint was the hardest material they had,

so it was used for tomb excavation.

The flint is quite good, actually.

OK, so that works. Mm-hm.

Teams of up to 40 men worked together

to hack out the royal tombs.

Yes, yes, come on.

Oh, look at that!

I don't think I've done a bad job there, Manon. (LAUGHS)

Once the carving was complete, the decorating began.

And Manon has a treat for me.

A tomb builder's tomb.

Wow!

Complete with astonishing paintings.

Wow, it's unbelievable. Yeah.

Every place I go to, it looks different. Yeah.

I can't believe this is a tomb builder's tomb.

Yeah. It's beautifully decorated.

What I really want to know is

how did they then create this decoration and this painting?

All worker has his places to work.

So one people here, one worker here, one here.

And all the worker has his job.

One man work for the sketch,

one then for the colour,

one man for the yellow, one man painting red, blue.

And at the end they draw with black painting.

Oh, right, so then they do all these wonderful details.

And the black outline separately. Yeah.

It must've taken the artists months to decorate this tiny tomb.

It's OK? Yep. Oh! (LAUGHS)

Wow.

The mind boggles how long it would've taken

to paint the great royal tombs.

Which makes me wonder if Tut's 10-year reign

just wasn't long enough to build him a suitable tomb.

To see if it was possible, Dan and I have special permission

to visit the resting place of Tut's great-grandfather,

a tomb closed to the public.

Well, here we are, this is KV43,

the tomb of Thutmose IV,

and I'm really interested in seeing the comparisons

between Tutankhamun's tomb and this tomb and what the size is.

Well, yeah, because it's...

It's tempting to think they're gonna be very similar, isn't it?

Because they were only 65 years apart, they ruled for the same amount of time,

so the comparison will be fascinating.

This tomb was excavated by none other than Howard Carter

19 years before he unearthed Tut's tomb.

We're hoping it can shed some light

on whether there is any link between a short reign and a small plain tomb.

Look at this corridor running down.

I just love the precision. I know. Then what is this room here?

This is... Ooh, hello, there's some painting on this one.

Oh. Oh, look at this!

That's extraordinary.

I love the painting here and then this quilt of stars above us

and, funnily enough, not much decoration on that side.

I wonder if it was unfinished. Yeah, it is unfinished.

'Cause you can kind of see...

Can you see how it's rough there? Then it smooths out.

So they've actually plastered this upper bit

and they've started doing the decorations.

And the thing I really love, which is really sweet,

can you see that somebody has started practising the star pattern?

This motif that is running all the way through.

Is it reasonable, therefore, to speculate

that the 9, 10 years he was on the throne

was long enough to dig a massive great hole

in the side of the mountain -

this is a big tomb -

but not enough time to do all the, you know, the interior design on it?

They haven't completed the zhuzhing.

They haven't zhuzhed it up. Is that an archaeological term?

It is now. (LAUGHS) Shall we go? Let's go.

As we head deeper...

Alright, watch your head, Raksha, on this. Don't hurt yourself.

..it's clear that the tomb builders simply ran out of time

to decorate this space.

Isn't it interesting? No plaster, no hieroglyphs, no artwork at all.

It hasn't been zhuzhed, as you say. No zhuzh. It is all rock hewn.

There's no decoration here.

But it keeps on going down.

So, a short reign COULD be the reason for an undecorated tomb.

Wait for it. Here we go, this is it.

Whoa! Look at that!

Oh, my goodness, but how interesting, it's completely plain.

So the burial chamber is actually... It's completely unfinished.

It's unfinished. Absolutely unfinished.

But it is enormous,

proving 10 years WAS enough time to build a full-sized pharaoh's tomb.

So if Tut's tiny tomb wasn't the result of his short reign,

maybe it was because he died at only 19.

Perhaps his death was so sudden, it took everyone by surprise.

We've been investigating what may have killed Tutankhamun.

Last time I looked at those CT scans, they seemed to show that

Tutankhamun might have had an inherited disease.

A bone wasting disease and possibly a clubbed foot.

Although debilitating, these were not fatal.

Evidence from foods in his tomb

suggest he may well have had malaria when he died.

Could this have caused his death?

Today I'm turning back to modern science

to see if we can identify just what killed him.

I'm re-examining Tut's CT scans with Professor Frank Ruhli.

This 3D body allows us to peel back the layers from skin to skeleton.

So what does this incredible virtual autopsy

tell us about how Tutankhamun might have died?

It tells us quite a lot,

despite the fact that he's not well preserved,

that he shows a lot of damage.

All over the body you see a lot of cracks and fractures

and lesions all over.

We can focus on one particular area, which is the left knee region,

which may give us some indication about his potential cause of death.

So we are talking about this area here.

The left knee region.

Here, with the right one you see there is a difference.

It looks smashed if you compare with the normal one

on the right-hand side.

You clearly see that you actually have a fracture line

going inside of the bone,

which is not present on the right-hand side.

So, it would have been a big, dramatic wound?

It's a major blow.

It's definitely life-threatening.

The femur -

the largest bone in the human body - is completely snapped.

What kind of force is required to break that bone like that?

It definitely needs a major blow or impact

like if you fall down from the first, second floor somewhere

or from a tree or something similar to that.

Nowadays, injuries like this are often suffered in car crashes.

So if one of us had this wound today,

this would be skin broken, lots of bleeding, bones showing.

I mean, you'd have to be hospitalised immediately.

You can have massive acute bleeding

and you can eventually have an infection,

especially if the skin is broken and pathogens,

bacteria, can go inside of the bone.

Before modern medicine,

this catastrophic injury would almost certainly have been fatal.

Would his life have been measured in hours, minutes or days

after that wound occurred?

This is something which probably would have killed him

within a week or so.

But just how did he break his leg?

I went in search of answers.

Experts believe one way a young king could suffer such a terrible injury

was in battle.

But was Egypt even at war during the short reign of Tutankhamun?

To find out, I'm heading to the tomb built for the head of Tut's army,

General Horemheb.

Horemheb was one of two exceptionally powerful men,

who seemed to pretty much govern Egypt

during the childhood years of King Tutankhamun.

This was a tomb complex built for Horemheb.

28 metres below the ground is a tomb chamber.

These buildings above the ground were a kind of temple complex.

People could come here, they could remember Horemheb

and they could make offerings to his spirit.

Crucially, the walls are covered with carvings

depicting events from the reign of Tutankhamun.

Dr Colleen Darnell is helping me look for evidence of warfare.

Hey, Colleen. How are you doing? Hello.

These are beautiful, aren't they? Wow. So what are we looking at here?

We have Horemheb being awarded the gold of valour

by the Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

And he's decorating his most successful general for success

and valour in battle.

Exactly.

You have the golden necklaces that represent his victory.

And Tutankhamun, unfortunately, is only preserved here,

but we can see his feet right there and those of his wife, Ankhesenamun.

These are Tutankhamun's feet? Those ARE Tutankhamun's feet.

I'll take that. I think that's very exciting.

That's better than nothing.

For Tut to decorate Horemheb for valour,

there must have been battles.

But who were they fighting?

We have many, many captives from some of his military campaigns.

So these are all prisoners of war? They are!

So here we have the Nubian populations to the south of Egypt.

Here we have what we call Asiatics -

people beyond Egypt's north-eastern border,

and here Libyans, who would have lived to the west of Egypt.

So Horemheb has done the Grand Slam,

he's taken out the people from the south, the north and east,

and also the Libyans to the west.

Yes.

These carvings reveal that during Tutankhamun's reign,

Egypt was campaigning against all its neighbours.

How much do we know about the military history of Tutankhamun's reign?

I mean, do we know about any specific battles?

We know at least one -

a battle at the very strategically significant city in western Syria,

known as Kadesh.

And that major battle seems to have happened

about the time of Tutankhamun's death.

So Tutankhamun could have been present,

sustained a wound that lead to his death?

It's certainly a possibility.

So Tutankhamun was not only fighting wars,

but the battle at Kadesh coincided with his death.

But one thing we are not able to be certain about,

still no hard evidence

for Tutankhamun leading his troops on the front line,

we still don't know what his role was as a pharaoh.

Tantalising to think he could have been at that battle at Kadesh,

he could have sustained a leg injury which cost him his life.

But I wonder whether the objects found in his tomb

will give me a little bit more evidence.

So my next stop is the Egyptian Museum,

where the most famous of all the treasures found in Tut's tomb

are on display.

Every year, thousands of people crowd this museum,

drawn by the gold and the jewels

and all the precious metals from all the objects in Tutankhamun's tomb.

But let me tell you,

for the true connoisseurs of history,

the most important single object in this museum

is not covered in gold or jewels.

No, it's an old wooden box.

And here it is.

Not only is it astonishingly beautiful,

intricately painted on every inch of its surface,

it's also a miracle of preservation -

a wooden box surviving from over 3,000 years ago -

but also it is packed with wonderful detail,

allowing us to build a picture

of what life was like in Tutankhamun's Egypt.

Particularly how he either lived or wanted us to see him.

On either side, you've got battle scenes.

Tutankhamun presenting himself as the great warrior King

leading his troops into battle.

He is about to release an arrow into the mass of the enemy,

sowing confusion,

trampling the enemy beneath the hooves of his horses

and the wheels of his chariot.

Once again, it's the Nubian foe,

the Africans who lived in the south of Ancient Egypt.

On the other side, he is doing the same to the Asiatics,

the people from what is now the Middle East.

Now, Tutankhamun wouldn't be the first Egyptian pharaoh

or the first ruler - full stop -

to present themselves in military splendour,

when in fact they'd never seen a battle in their lives,

but this does raise the tantalising question

that he could have led his men into battle

where he could have been wounded

and that might have led to his death.

As with so many things in Tutankhamun's tomb,

it provides some answers but raises questions as well.

This exquisite object was just one of the hundreds

Carter found in the first chamber of Tut's tomb.

On 16 December 1922,

three weeks after that discovery,

he began the monumental task

of systematically recording the mountains of priceless artefacts.

There weren't just the treasures piled high in this chamber that Carter had to deal with,

because over here, he was very excited to make another discovery.

Down here, he noticed a ragged hole.

He grabbed hold of a portable electric light,

thrust it through,

and to his amazement discovered this second chamber.

The entrance was hidden behind a golden throne under a golden couch.

This second chamber was smaller than the first,

but completely crammed with a jumble of everyday items

to sustain Tut in his afterlife.

Inside those two rooms, there were more than 1,000 objects.

Now, previous generations of treasure hunters

would have simply cleaned the lot out in a couple of days

and flogged them all to antiquities dealers.

But Carter was a new kind of archaeologist.

He was determined that he would log and photograph

every single thing in those rooms,

and, thankfully, those original documents survive.

When I was back in the UK, I went to Oxford to have a look at them.

So this is the Griffith Institute

and it was here that Howard Carter's personal papers

were deposited after his death,

and that includes his diary

and all of his carefully hand-written notes

that he took during the excavation.

These documents will show me how Carter tackled the task

of logging all the priceless treasures he'd discovered.

The Griffith Institute is home to one of the most important

and remarkable documents in the history of archaeology.

This old, tatty ring binder,

with the squared paper used by draftsmen all over the world,

is Howard Carter's journal.

It's minutely accurate - there's no mistakes on this page at all.

You really get a sense of his single-minded hunt for perfection here,

and you can see it in his prose as well.

"Everywhere, we found an utter confusion of beds,

"chairs, boxes, alabasters, vases, statues lying upon the floor."

There is nothing as exciting for true lovers of history and archaeology

as getting close to the original objects like this journal.

And I'm just as thrilled to see how Carter

painstakingly logged every discovery.

Cat Warsi is kindly letting me delve into Carter's original records.

Wow, I don't believe it.

So each one of these is a card referring to a single object found in Tutankhamun's tomb?

Yep, all written by Carter and his team.

No way, that's amazing.

And surely that's quite a modern concept.

I can't believe there are archaeologists doing this level of professionalism detail before him?

Not in so much detail, no.

So if I just have a little flick through I'll just see...

Yep. What's that? Gold.

That's caught my eye - gold. Gold ring.

That's what we need.

"From a robe?"

It's great fun watching him speculate

through what he is writing down, questions.

Wondering what these might have been used for thousands of years before.

Thank goodness they discovered the tomb

and not some other gang of cowboys.

Yes, we are very lucky with Carter.

Every single object was numbered and photographed,

and there are some discoveries we'd know nothing about today

if it wasn't for Carter's system.

For example, my favourite - the wonderful painted box -

contained a wealth of fragile textiles.

It looks to me like many of these items would have been destroyed

the instant they were removed from this box. Yep.

So now the only record we have of the markings or the objects

are just from these notes.

Yep, certainly with things like fabrics.

Almost as soon as you breathe on it, it just sort of disintegrates.

That's why these photographs are so important.

So Tutankhamun's tomb is as famous in the archaeological community

for all these new and remarkable methods of conservation

as it is in just the general public

for all the beautiful stuff that came out?

Mm. Yes. Yeah.

Though Carter was a pioneer of modern archaeology,

his lifestyle while working on Tut's tomb was rather more traditional.

John has gone to find out more about Carter

and the life of a 1920s gentleman archaeologist.

Goodness me, I thought riding that camel was bad enough!

The things I do in the interest of authentic journalism.

Right, well, this is my first time travelling on a donkey

and I have to say, it's extremely uncomfortable.

But I'm getting into the mood

because this is how Howard Carter would travel every morning.

He would go from his house over here

two and a half miles across those hills

to the Valley of the Kings,

so this would be his daily commute.

So, on we go.

Carter's house, nicknamed Castle Carter,

was built for him by his wealthy sponsor, Lord Carnarvon.

It's an extraordinary time capsule.

Everything's pretty much as it was when Carter discovered Tut's tomb.

This is the kitchen.

Look at this, there's an old cooker.

And bits and pieces.

Ah, but this is important - an ancient fridge.

And in this climate, it may look awful

but this would be vital, absolutely vital.

There's even the dark room,

where those famous photographs of Tut's tomb were developed.

You can imagine the tension for the first photographs.

They come into the dark room and they develop them.

But have they caught the stupendous nature of their discovery?

Gosh, the tension here must have been terrific.

And then they saw the pictures

and relief, just relief,

they'd got it and the world would see what they had seen.

And this was Howard Carter's study

almost exactly as it was when he lived here.

This is the desk on which he wrote his famous journal,

and everything he needs.

He's got pots of ink, got a lamp, the radio,

gramophone, and I like this -

that's the umbrella stand.

An Englishman doesn't travel without an umbrella.

And through there on the terrace, is the lounger,

and Lord Carnarvon was photographed sitting on that

when he came to visit Howard Carter.

So...history - wonderful.

But some things essential for genteel living

just weren't to be found in 1920s Egypt.

The very rich Lord Carnarvon would regularly send Howard Carter

a hamper from Fortnum and Masons

full of all the delicacies required of an English gentleman abroad.

There would be fine wine.

There'd be potted meat.

Now, they used to make one of these with quails stuffed with foie gras,

but, sadly, they don't do that anymore.

There'd be Dundee cake, biscuits

and the all-important boiled sweets.

Out of the dig site, Carter and his team enjoyed sit-down lunches.

On special occasions, dinner was eaten in royal tombs

complete with white table cloth and waiters.

Fine wine, choice delicacies and buried treasure.

I think I would have enjoyed the life of this 1920s archaeologist.

Cheers.

It's thanks to Carter's incredible discovery in the 1920s

we are able to investigate the cause of Tutankhamun's death.

We believe that very shortly before his death,

King Tutankhamun suffered a terrible accident which shattered his leg.

Now, that might have killed him instantly, but if it didn't,

it would have been pretty clear that he was dying.

We're investigating how the young pharaoh

suffered such a violent injury.

I'm starting to believe it happened on the battlefield,

although I'm still trying to convince Raksha.

The wonderful painted box showed Tut as a warrior, but wasn't conclusive.

So we're heading back to the Grand Egyptian Museum

to see if other items found in Tut's tomb

reveal if he was killed in battle.

So here we are - kids in a candy store.

Behind the scenes in the Grand Egyptian museum

surrounded by objects from King Tut's tomb,

and I look at them and I'm kind of thinking

I know more about the man, I know what he was like in real life.

Well, I'm just going to rein you in there.

I'm going to throw in my cynical archaeology card

and just let you think about the fact

that some of these objects were for his everyday life

but a lot of them were just purely ceremonial.

Yeah, I know, that's the... that is the problem

because you think, well, actually, look at our Queen

and she's constantly surrounded by giant swords

but she's never whacked anyone with a blade, that we know about.

Not yet, no. (LAUGHS)

A vast quantity of weaponry was discovered in the tomb.

I want to see if, like the Queen's swords, they were purely ceremonial.

Hassan, can I have a look at this bow here with this beautiful carving on the end?

There were 46 bows.

Some are ornamental but others have clearly been used.

What are these ones here? These tiny ones.

That's a small bow.

From his childhood?

Yes. Wow.

So he'd have been shooting arrows

obviously from the very earliest childhood,

training himself to be a bowman.

Obviously hunting a massive pastime of kings around the world

but potentially also as training to become a battlefield leader as well.

And, of course, with bows, there are arrows.

More than 400 were found.

Some with delicate blue glass tips.

Others with ivory and metal.

Look at these ones.

God, these have got a big tip on them. Those are bronze.

There is even a very warlike shield.

Shield of Tutankhamun. Wow!

Ho! With the animal skin still on it! Yes.

You can still see the original fur.

His royal title there. Magnificent shield.

It would have announced his presence on the battlefield potentially.

At court... Who knows?

Is this evidence that he once led his armies in the field himself?

I'm tempted to think so.

Whether these items were for warfare or hunting isn't clear,

but we do know he had some very snazzy wheels to go with them.

Six chariots were found in the tomb.

Well, here it is.

The legendary golden chariot of Tutankhamun.

There were two of them found in the tomb.

They are both in here right now,

being painstakingly preserved by the team here.

And there is nothing like this

as beautiful, as intricate,

as special as this from this far back in history.

But what is so staggering about it is not just the gold,

but it's the artistry on it.

And if you look in here,

you can start seeing some of these figures

that we recognise from other sites that I've been to.

Tutankhamun's name up there is almost held up,

it's almost supported by the enslaved peoples of his empire.

There we can see the Asiatics with their shaved heads

and their big beards.

They're from further north,

up into what we now call the Middle East and Anatolia, Turkey.

And then we've also got the other great ancestral enemies

of the Egyptians, the Nubians -

people from what we now call Sudan - and they are all bound up.

Look, legs, arms, incredibly uncomfortably,

and I think this really suggests

that whether or not he was actually in the front line of battle himself,

Tutankhamun saw himself as a warrior king.

The Pharaoh's job was to maintain the empire of the Egyptians

against these external foes,

enslave them and show them who was boss.

This is undoubtedly a ceremonial chariot.

It's a bit like the way the Queen travels in the golden coach today.

It wasn't designed for the rough and tumble of hunting or the battlefield

and, in fact, we know it was very rarely used

because of very little wear and tear on the axel and the wheels.

Now, less spectacular but just as interesting

are the other chariots that were found in the tomb,

and this is one of them.

And as you can see, this is designed for everyday use.

This is street wear.

A stripped down version.

A plain wooden chariot.

There would have been leather on the floor

and leather fronting here,

which has all rotted away, just leaving the wooden frame.

And what is quite interesting

is that two of these chariots that were stored in the tomb

show signs of having been involved in an event like a collision.

Now, what if these two chariots were involved in a terrible collision

and in that collision Tutankhamun sustained his leg injury?

Like so much else in this tomb, there's lots of tantalising clues.

These artefacts suggest to me

Tutankhamun could have been an active warrior king

and suffered that leg injury on military campaign.

Raksha, on the other hand, is far from convinced.

Dan is getting a bit carried away with his action-man Tut theory,

because I think there's overwhelming evidence it couldn't be true.

The CT scan of his body suggested bone degeneration

and a clubbed foot.

I want to see if the objects in his tomb

reveal how these impacted his everyday life.

Hello. How are you?

Dr Eissa? Welcome. How are you?

There's an awful lot of walking sticks here.

Yes.

Over 130 walking sticks were found in the tomb.

Some of them are exquisitely beautiful -

just as you'd expect for a pharaoh.

For example, which golden.

(GASPS) Used in ceremony.

Look at that! Mm-hm.

Absolutely beautiful.

This one looks like as though it hasn't even been used.

It looks in perfect condition. Yes, very good condition.

You've got these individual figures on the bottom.

And the top you have some lapis lazuli there

and all this, like, gold filigree.

Very fancy.

Yes, very, very good condition.

What are these ones at the back, with the figures on them?

The same.

The same. And also very nice decoration of king.

And what is that character supposed to be?

Of a Nubian?

Yes. By the way, this is not the top.

It's not the top? This is not the top.

How...? Why is that not the top?

'Cause he used it like this.

So that would have gone on the floor.

It was as though he was crushing the Nubians down as he's walking.

Yes. Crushing the enemy, yes, you are right.

Charming character. (LAUGHS)

These ornate sticks are a normal part of a pharaoh's regalia,

a bit like a bishop's crook.

Statuettes of Tut found in the tomb show him using them.

But many of the walking sticks are much more ordinary.

Then you have these wooden ones. Yes.

That he would have used in everyday life.

Yes, yeah.

And I can see from the tip... Yes.

..that he's obviously used it quite a lot.

These are not just here for show. He actually really needed to use it.

He just used all the time. Yes.

Every day, because he had to.

Yes, you are right.

And that's got a really stubby end.

The end has almost come off, actually, hasn't it?

Yes.

The sheer number of these everyday sticks suggest to me

that Tut needed them just to get around.

The fact that he was obviously really reliant

on all of those sticks,

some of them have been worn away almost to the nub,

means that he wasn't able to stand upright just by himself,

never mind drive a chariot by himself.

I just...I just don't believe it.

So if Raksha doesn't buy into my active warrior king,

how does she think Tut could have suffered such a massive leg fracture?

So what do you think? How did he die? What are the theories?

One is that he was in a malarial fever

and he fell down the stairs.

And my absolute favourite - that he was mauled by a hippopotamus.

I kind of think about those two damaged chariots

and wonder if they were involved in the fatal collision.

You love a bit of war, don't you, Dan?

I think I love the drama, yeah.

I just like the idea there was some...

If he just fell down stairs, it's a bit boring.

It's frustrating because on the one hand we have so much evidence from the things buried with him,

but on the other, it was so long ago, we just don't know.

But we can be certain

that within a week of him sustaining that leg injury

King Tutankhamun was dead.

Bye, bye. Goodbye. Bye.

Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2020