All language subtitles for Tutankhamun.With.Dan.Snow.S01E01.EXTENDED.1080p.HDTV.H264-CBFM

Welcome to Egypt,
land of the pharaohs.

We're in Luxor.

To tell the story of the most
famous ruler of them all.

Tutankhamun.

And what an incredible story it is.

This 19-year-old boy king was laid
to rest in his tomb in 1323 BC,

his mummified body hidden away
behind that famous golden mask.

We're counting down the final days
of Tutankhamun's life,

death and burial.

Revealing how in ancient history
the pharaoh fell ill and died

and was then sealed in a tomb
under the desert sands.

And we're also following the modern
story of archaeologist Howard Carter

when he discovered and reopened
that treasure-filled tomb.

We've got some real treats
to show you.

Rarely seen artefacts,
like the special kit used

in Tutankhamun's mummification.

Wow, look at that.

I'm holding something that's been
in somebody's dead body, then?

WOMAN: Yes.
Nice. (LAUGHS)

And some of his most
personal possessions.

Ah, the make-up.
The make-up.

The guyliner.

And we reveal the new science

shedding light on the secrets
of his burial.

So kind of spits it out and
there's this, like, perfect 3D model

of this entire tomb.

Yes.

Here's what's coming up.

This time, I use the latest
technology to investigate

what could have killed Tutankhamun.

This is the most amazing tool
I've ever seen in my life.

And get permission to go inside
the high-security vault

where his treasures are stored,
away from public view.

What a collection. Oh!

It's moving being here.

And I get a taste of the Pharaoh's
life of pampered luxury.

It's brilliant.

Mmm. Well done, Tutankhamun.

While I come face to face

with the people who may have
built his final resting place.

Wow, look at that!

And just a stone's throw away
from Tut's tomb,

I head to an excavation
never before seen on TV.

Blimey, it's absolutely huge!
It's not too shabby.

Join us as we tell the story
of Tutankhamun's final days.

Tutankhamun was one of the most
powerful men on Earth.

Like all pharaohs, he died
wanting his name to live forever.

It was his path to immortality.

But from the day Tutankhamun
was sealed into his tomb in 1323 BC

until the time he was uncovered
by Howard Carter,

the rest of the world
pretty much forgot about him.

That's over 3,000 years of anonymity.

Not quite what he had in mind.

But everything was about to change
and the teenage pharaoh

would become the most famous Egyptian
of them all.

The events that rescued Tutankhamun
from eternal obscurity took place

here in 1922 in the desert
near the modern city of Luxor.

Luxor is about four miles that way
on the other side of the Nile.

The city is on the eastern bank.

It was called Thebes
around 3,500 years ago

and it was the capital
of upper Egypt.

Very much a place of the living,
very dynamic.

But over here on the west bank of the
Nile, this was a place of the dead.

These mountains are one vast
necropolis - a city of dead people.

There are hundreds of tombs
packed into the desert rock.

At the heart of this vast burial
ground is a sacred hidden valley...

..in ancient times
only accessible along
these precarious mountain trails.

Well, there it is. (LAUGHS)
The Valley of the Kings.

For around 500 years,
between 1550 BC and 1000 BC,

this is where the kings of Egypt
were buried,

quietly hidden away
among the mountains.

By 1922, 61 royal tombs
had already been discovered here.

And while they don't look
very impressive from outside,

when you head underground
it's a very different story.

These royal tombs
are absolutely astonishing.

Massive underground palaces
that took years to build

and were dug out entirely by hand.

I'm exploring the stunning tomb
of Ramesses IV.

Nearly every inch of these walls

is covered in the most startling
murals and carvings, bright colours.

What isn't here now and what wasn't
here when it was excavated

is any treasure.

We know that ancient Egyptian royals
were buried with
their most precious possessions,

but every pharaoh's tomb
discovered before 1922

had been robbed
thousands of years earlier.

The treasures and belongings
were long gone.

The tombs of some pharaohs, though,
had never been found.

It raised the tantalising possibility

that underneath
all this sand and stone

there could be an undisturbed royal
tomb with its treasure intact.

Now, Howard Carter
was an archaeologist

who identified that one of the tombs
that seemed to be missing

belonged to a relatively obscure
pharaoh called Tutankhamun.

He had ruled for 10 years or so
during the New Kingdom

when Egypt was astonishingly rich
and powerful.

Very little was known
about Tutankhamun.

One of the few places Howard Carter
would have been able to find
any sign of him

was in Luxor Temple,
on the other side of the River Nile.

Raksha is heading there
in search of the evidence.

This is the great Colonnade Hall

and it was built
during the reign of Tutankhamun.

These vast pillars would have
supported a massive roof.

This temple was the St Paul's
Cathedral of ancient Egypt,

and Tutankhamun would have come here
to take part in religious ceremonies

but few traces
of his presence survive.

Helping me find them
is Dr Arto Belekdanian.

Hey, Arto. (LAUGHS)
Hey.

Very nice to meet you. How are you?
Very good.

You're looking very thoughtfully
at this statue here.

Yeah. As I should, because
it's a very special statue.

This is one of the only
three-dimensional figures

that bears the facial features
of Tutankhamun.

Oh, so this is extremely rare, then?
It really, really is.

We think that he came
to the throne around 8, 9 years old

and reigned for
as little as 10 years,

which means he died at 18,
19 years old,

so there aren't that many
three-dimensional sculptures
that preserve his facial features.

And who is this person
on the other side of him?

She's got her right hand
on his left shoulder.

It's all really rather sweet.

Well, that's the wife
of Tutankhamun, Ankhesenamun.

Unfortunately, as you can see,
the head's broken

but in other statues, like the one
right there, the face is preserved.

They were married early on
in his reign, which does mean

they were probably married already

by the time they were 11 years old
or so.

Gosh, that young.

And how powerful was he?

Well, Egypt was a superpower.

He would have been one of the most
powerful people in the world.

Tutankhamun's enormous empire

stretched from North Africa
up into the Middle East.

This teenager
ruled over 3 million people.

I want to know about
the man behind the mask.

I want to know about
his everyday life.

Everything was ritualised.

Everything was an event -
so, the king waking up,

an official has to come in
to witness this

and then after that
he would have had manicures done.

People would have applied
sweet-smelling perfumes on his body.

These were all ritualised events.

The tiniest events in a king's life,
even getting a haircut.

Ideally speaking, kings
were usually fully shaven,

because it was a sign of purity.

But doing that also meant that you
can actually wear fashionable wigs,

so for one occasion you'll decide
to wear your short hair wig

but then for this other occasion
you can wear your long hair wig.

It was a whole fashion thing.

So there's lots of accessorising
and grooming going on too.

Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Sounds exhausting.
It would have been. That's for sure.

I'm sailing this beautiful boat
down the Nile

with a nice little breeze
coming from the south west.

The Nile is central
to ancient Egypt -

it literally runs
like this beautiful green swathe

through the Sahara Desert -

and the Egyptian Empire
is formed around it.

John Sergeant has been off
getting a taste of what life was like

for the people
who worked on this land

and the pharaoh who ruled over them.

In the case of Tutankhamun
and the ancient Egyptians,

there was one food
that was all-important.

Grain. Wheat and barley.

They turned it into bread to eat
and beer to drink

and that formed
the basis of their diet,

whether you were a farmer
or a pharaoh.

Across much of Egypt, families
like the Kalsums still bake bread

using a method that's hardly changed
since Tut's time.

I'm going to lend them
a helping hand.

OK, how do I do the first bit?
Right?

And then what do I do?

No?
No.

I'm attempting to make sun bread,

so-called because it's left
in the warm sun to rise.

I like the movement.
It's terrific, isn't it?

Thousands of years of tradition.

You can't expect to do it
in a few minutes, can you?

Egyptian tomb paintings show bread
being made in just this way.

And like the ancient Egyptians,
I'm pricking the bread with a reed

to help it rise evenly.

Do it all the way around, yeah?

You lift.
OK, so here we go.

Look at that. I'm doing this
really rather well.

(MAKES NONCOMMITTAL SOUND)
(LAUGHS)

You don't...you don't seem
to be very convinced.

I don't think I'm convincing you.

Once it's risen, the whole family
take the bread

to be baked in a clay oven.

For ordinary Egyptians
in Tutankhamun's time,

bread, along with beer,
was their staple diet.

Money hadn't been invented,
so workers were paid in bread.

A standard day's wage was 10 loaves
along with two jugs of beer.

When my bread's ready I'm joined
by archaeologist Dr Suzanne Onstine,

who's going to sample it with me.

Nice to meet you.
Thank you very much.

I hear you made some bread
so I brought the beer.
Well, that's excellent.

She's brought beer
that's been brewed using
an ancient Egyptian method.

I baked this myself.

I'm proud of it.
Yeah. It's a lot of work.

What do you think of it?

It's a bit tough?
Yeah. It's very dense.

But I've worked on it.
I don't want you to run it down, OK?

Very good.

It is good, isn't it?
Mm-hm.

Now, is this exactly as it would
have been in ancient Egypt?

This would have been more
like the bread that elite people

would have eaten because the flour
would have had a much better quality.

OK, well, let's have the beer.
Where is the beer?

Yes.
Alright.

So, the beer, the longer it ferments,
the more alcohol it has,

which prevents any kind of bacteria,

which makes beer actually safer
than some water sources.

Alright, let's try it.
Let's.

We're going to use some straws
like ancient people would have

because there is a heavy sediment
at the bottom
that will be kind of icky.

You want me to go first?
Mm.

(LAUGHS)
Alright, then, alright. OK.

Mmm. Wow.

It's got a very alcoholic strength
but sweet as well.

But undeniably beer -
well, beer plus.

Yeah, yeah, glad you enjoy it.
Yeah, yeah.

Unlike most of his subjects,
Tutankhamun wouldn't have lived
on bread and beer alone.

Suzanne's also gathered together
some food fit for a pharaoh.

Oh, gosh, this is terrific,
isn't it?

This would be for a banquet
or would it be for ordinary life?

A meal like this would have been
an ordinary thing for King Tut.

An abundance of meats, duck,
vegetables, some grain dishes,

like lentils or barley.

We are told that they would send
to the palace several thousand
loaves every day.

Right. The palace would have been
a huge estate of people.

All of these people need to be fed,
so when we have those kind of lists

that say 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 loaves
of bread are being sent daily,

that industrial bakery
working for the king

is really feeding a lot of people,
not just the king.

How do we know about this variety?

There's a lot of information
in tomb walls,

which have tables piled high with all
the kinds of foods tumbled together

as if to suggest the abundance
of a table like this.

All this talk of food's
making me hungry.

Oh, that's very nice, thank you.

Yeah, a feast for a pharaoh.

At last I get to play Tutankhamun.

I'm sampling a luxurious honey cake.

They have been making cake like this
for thousands of years.

This is my first time.

Better be good.

Mmm, that's brilliant.

Mmm. Well done, Tutankhamun.
Excellent choice.

DAN: In the months
leading up to his death,

Tutankhamun was living a life of
luxury at the height of his powers.

But leading up to the discovery
of his tomb 3,000 years later,

Howard Carter was still
a little-known archaeologist

on what many thought
was a hopeless quest.

In the 1920s there was a feeling
amongst archaeologists

there was nothing left to find
here in the Valley of the Kings.

Carter was seen as a little bit
eccentric, bit of an outlier

for suggesting that there was another
pharaoh's tomb somewhere here.

But one person believed
in Carter's dream -

the wealthy aristocrat
Lord Carnarvon.

He had been funding the search
for Tutankhamun's tomb.

They identified a patch of ground

that sat between three well
established, very well known tombs.

There are the entrances -

there, there,
and there's one up there as well.

Now, to find out what led them
to this spot,

I paid a visit
to Lord Carnarvon's home in England.

Well, it's a classic
rainy winter's day in England,
a long way from Egypt.

I have come to a place now
that has become familiar

to millions of people
around the world,

not because of its links
to the story of Tutankhamun

but because it is the location
for Downton Abbey.

Highclere Castle.

I'm here to meet
the current Lady Carnarvon.

That's the best knocker ever.

She's allowing me
into their archives.

Has it worked? Oh.

Morning.
Hi there.

Dan. Nice to meet you.
I'm here for Lady Carnarvon.

Please come in.
Sure thing.

Wonderful.

Hi there. I'm Dan.
Very nice to see you.

Hi, Dan. Lady Carnarvon.
Very nice to meet you.

Lady Carnarvon takes me
to the archives, which is filled

with amazing documents chronicling
Carter and Carnarvon's obsession
with ancient Egypt.

So is it true that they complemented
each other's characters nicely,

because Lord Carnarvon was a bit more
easygoing, charismatic,

Howard Carter is a bit spikier?

I think Howard Carter
was quite a taciturn,

quite a tricky man, but his
passionate and intellect

was all directed towards
his pursuit of archaeology.

The 5th Earl was passionate
about Egypt but much more sociable.

Charismatic. So it worked.

He was a sort of leadership figure
and Carter could get on with
the hard graft.

Yes.

By early 1922, Carnarvon had been
bankrolling Carter's search

in the Valley of the Kings
for five years

without any sign of Tut's tomb.

But then Carter made
an intriguing discovery.

He marked it on a map.

Is this the map?
Phenomenal. This is the map.

At the top
it's the Valley of the Kings,

drawn by Howard Carter.

Carnarvon excavations.

Lord Carnarvon, Howard Carter
exposed these workman's huts in 1921

and this is the tomb
of the Great Pharaoh Ramesses VI,

which stretches all the way back,
and when this was being dug,

the workmen who were building it
lived in these huts just here.

Lord Carnarvon, Howard Carter
thought if there were any place

that had not been excavated,
it must be there.

Most believed every inch
of the Valley of the Kings
had been excavated

but the discovery of these ancient
huts proved the ground under them

hadn't been touched
for thousands of years.

Carter believed if Tut's tomb
was anywhere, it would be here.

But Carnarvon had
a cash flow problem.

Lord Carnarvon was struggling
with his stately overdraft -

which is very familiar! -

and he said to Howard Carter,
"We're going to have to stop."

Howard Carter came for a weekend
in June 1922

and persuaded Lord Carnarvon
to have one more throw of the dice.

One more gig.
(CHUCKLES)

By the 1st of November 1922,

Carter had returned to
the Valley of the Kings

and started to dig below
the ancient workers huts.

Three days later,
Carter found a step

and that meant
that he'd found a tomb.

It was a momentous discovery

because he knew this ground hadn't
been disturbed for over 3,000 years.

The step would have looked quite
like this set of steps here.

This is a tomb from further up
the Valley of the Kings

from about the same period
as Tutankhamun's,

same size and scale,
and if we go down here

we'll get a sense
of just what Carter found.

As they dug down, 16 steps
just like these were revealed.

At the bottom, Carter found
the entrance to the tomb itself

had been bricked up
and plastered over.

Now, what's very exciting for Carter
is that on that plaster

the priests had put seals
as they closed it up

and that meant it looked like
this door had not been penetrated.

Carter was extremely excited -
he immediately wrote to Carnarvon

and said, "At last I have made
a wonderful discovery in the Valley,

"a magnificent tomb
with seals intact.

"Recovered same for your arrival.
Congratulations."

Imagine getting that telegram.

Lord Carnarvon caught a ship
and headed for Egypt.

Three weeks later,
on the 25th of November 1922,

he arrived
in the Valley of the Kings.

Together, Carter and Carnarvon could
now break through the sealed doorway.

This is the modern entrance
to King Tutankhamun's tomb.

I have never been here before

so I have been looking forward
to this moment

ever since I first heard about him
as a child.

So, here we go. Very modern.

Steep steps going down and then...
Oh, yeah, look down here.

This is it. This would have been
the original entrance.

This archway here,
that was the sealed door.

They still had their doubts
but by this stage

they were sort of letting themselves
just dare to believe

that this might be
the tomb of King Tut.

So with what must have been
extraordinary excitement,

they started breaking through.

Remember that very little was known
about this mysterious pharaoh.

They hoped that what they would
discover beyond this doorway

would alter all that.

At the time even the identity
of Tut's parents wasn't certain.

But today that's all changed -

thanks to DNA tests carried out
on the royal mummies,

most held here
at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

I'm meeting Dr Ashraf Selim

to discover what's been revealed
about Tutankhamun and his family.

We examined approximately 20 mummies

and we found that some of them

are really related to
King Tutankhamun by the DNA testing.

Some of his relations
are here in the museum?

Oh, yeah, sure. I can show you.
OK, let's go.

So who have we got here?

OK, that's the Great Queen Tiye.

She is the grandmother
of King Tutankhamun.

Sorry if it's being stupid,
but is that her real hair?

Yes.

That's one of the most beautiful
mummies in the Egyptian museum.
It's astonishing.

So we've got grandmother here
with all her hair. Very good.
Yes.

Who's next?

The Great Pharaoh Akhenaten,
the father of King Tutankhamun.

In here we have bones, just bones.
Not a real mummy.

We don't know why it was that
but that's what we have in here.

And who else have we got?
Which other relatives have we got?

How exciting that you've found
all these people. It's remarkable.

And who is this one here?

This is proved by the DNA testing

to be the mother
of King Tutankhamun.

Really?

And she's not only his mother,
she was his aunt as well.

Yes. Because...

So, Akhenaten's sister?
Exactly.

No.
Oh, yeah, yeah.

This was common in these days that
brothers and sisters get married.

Really?
Yes.

That explains the short dynasties.

Oh, yes, yeah.

And the many disease,
why they died early in their age.

This incestuous relationship wasn't
the only incredible secret revealed

when Tut's DNA was tested.

What other revelation could
you glean about Tutankhamun himself?

This was an incidental discovery
that King Tut suffered from malaria.

Malaria?
Yes.

I'm interested in how he died.
Is malaria a possible cause of death?
Yes.

What he got was the malignant form,
in a sense.

This is the more aggressive type
of malaria,

and among the possible theories of
cause of death of King Tutankhamun
is malaria, yes.

So malaria is one possible
explanation for Tut's early death
at only 19,

after which he lay almost forgotten
under these desert sands

for over 3,000 years,

until the 25th of November, 1922,

when Howard Carter broke through
the sealed entrance to the tomb.

As he gets inside, what he finds
is this - a gently sloping passage

leading down
into the bowels of the earth.

It was filled right to the top with
rubble to try and deter tomb robbers.

The techniques they used to clear
this passage are still in use.

Now, today excavations in the Valley
of the Kings are very rare,

but Raksha has got special access
to one that IS happening.

RAKSHA: I'm heading down
to one of only two known tombs
here in the Valley of the Kings

that hasn't been excavated
right back to the bedrock.

The work here has never
been filmed before.

Hey!
Hey, how are you? Hi, Salima.

Professor Salima Ikram
is leading the dig.

So do you want to go in?
Yes, absolutely.

Blimey, it's absolutely huge!
Not too shabby.

Just as in Tutankhamun's tomb,

this entrance corridor
was blocked with rubble.

It must have taken a really long
time just to clear this out.

It has been taking a very long time
because of course when we came in

it was filled and people were sort of
wriggling in on their bellies

and crawling through on top of this
debris that just choked the tomb

and, you know, the thinnest people
got to go in first, of course.

Do you actually have to physically
fill the buckets

and then wander all the way up
to the top of the tomb

and then deposit the spoil
at the top there?

Yeah. Yeah, we've got a little chain,
a fireman's chain, going up.

The excavation is almost complete.

So, the last 20cm of undug dirt
in the Valley of the Kings,

at least that we know of.

And then you will finally be stood
on the same surface

that people were
almost 3,000 years ago.

Yeah, yeah. It will be
down to the bedrock. To the floor.

We will be able to see the floor
as it originally was.

We know this tomb was originally
built for the pharaoh Amenmesse,

who ruled about 120 years after Tut.

Like most other royal tombs, it was
looted thousands of years ago.

But a few items were left behind.

You can see a nice bit
of pottery coming up there.

It is, and here, see, I know
that it doesn't look like much,

but this is one of these jars that
are typical of this time period.

They've also unearthed
some major finds.

Here is something
I think you need to see.

We found a sarcophagus
and we've been putting it together.

Good grief. It's absolutely
littered with carvings.

Absolutely, yes.

Excitingly, this discovery
is one that's rewriting
the history of this tomb.

We've got a goddess
over here with wings.

There is a snake here
and then lots of text.

But the name inscribed
into this sarcophagus

isn't that of the tomb's
supposed owner, Amenmesse,

but that of his mother, Takhat.

It's now believed this tomb actually
belonged to the pharaoh's mum.

So there we are.
Gosh, that's fabulous.

Amazing artefacts like this
can still only be found

by painstakingly clearing
and searching the debris by hand.

I could almost be watching
Carter's team

digging out the entrance passage
back in 1922.

And that was when they found
something disastrous.

As Carter and his team
cleared the debris,

they made a very worrying discovery.

They could see broken boxes
lying around,

shards of pottery and alabaster.

It became clear that
the tomb had been robbed.

The objects seemed to be grave goods
dropped by thieves.

Carter was devastated.

It wasn't the undisturbed burial
he dreamed of.

Nine metres further down the passage,
they discovered another sealed door,

a bunch of rocks
with the plaster on the front,

again, with the priestly seals.

But, unfortunately,
more signs of grave robbing.

There's a hole that had been made
in the top corner of the door

and then had been resealed,
replastered over.

Robbers had sneaked in
through this hole.

It's now believed this break-in
was probably an inside job.

It's possible, extraordinarily,

that the people responsible
for robbing this tomb

were the same that actually built it.

Tomb builders were among
the tiny number of people

who knew the secret location
of the royal tombs

in the Valley of the Kings.

So, suspicion has fallen upon them.

Raksha is headed to a hidden village
the tomb builders called home,

Deir el-Medina.

This village is special 'cause
the very people who lived here

are believed to be the people
who built Tut's tomb.

Dr Dominique Lefevre's excavations
are revealing

how their lives compared to Tut's.

They spent about nine days

doing their job
in the Valley of the Kings.

And after, they have
just one day of rest here.

Gosh, that's hard work, isn't it?
Nine days?

Yes.
That's crazy.

The tomb builders were highly
skilled and valued craftsman.

They lived with their families
in large and comfortable homes.

Where are we now?

We are in the bedroom,
where everybody,

all the families, can sleep.

Oh, they're huge.

I always thought that

the tomb builders weren't
very well looked after,

but, actually,
looking at this village,

this has a very high status.

They're quite posh, actually,
aren't they?

Nice lifestyles.
Everything they need here.

But this would have paled
into insignificance

against the opulence
of Tut's palaces.

And because of the secrets
these villagers knew,

they also lived
a very isolated life.

They work in a secret place.

The Pharaohs want
to control everything.

That's why the village is
totally surrounded by a wall,

because nobody has to know
the location of the royal tomb.

It's a bit like having
an SAS of tomb builders.

Nobody knows that they're here.

They're not allowed to really
meet anybody outside.

Just regulated, I suppose.
Yes.

Would you like to meet
one of the workers?

Absolutely.
So, let's go.

The hill overlooking the village

is peppered with the tombs
of the tomb builders.

Dominique is allowing me into one

that's never been open
to the public.

Oh, gosh, look at this place!

It's absolutely beautiful.

Yes, it's amazing.

They're building
the Pharaoh's tombs.

Of course, they're gonna make
their own tombs

really beautiful as well.

This is highly skilled work.

Gosh!

Goes on forever, this.

It's closed to visitors

because, incredibly,
some tomb builders are still here.

Wow! Look at that!

Look at that. It's a proper mummy.

Yes.
Just casually there.

Oh, there is another one in there.
There's many.

There's many.
Many rooms.

Good grief!
Are these child sarcophaguses?

Yes.

So one of these tomb builders

could be a person
who dug Tutankhamun's tomb?

Yes, maybe.

They could also have been the very
people who robbed Tut's tomb...

Beautiful.

..maybe to escape
their arduous life.

It's dangerous work,

and the average age of death
is about 34 years.

So it's a hard life.
It was a hard life.

Although tomb builders
generally had short lives,

they lived longer than Tut himself.

No record survives

to tell us why the pampered
and protected Pharaoh died

at just 19.

But thanks to Carter's discovery,
we have his body,

which may give us an answer.

In recent years,
modern scientific techniques

have given us a huge amount
of new information

about the final days of Tutankhamun.

And all this is really transforming
what we know

about this powerful, privileged,
young Pharaoh.

Professor Ruhli
is part of the team

that CT-scanned Tut's mummified body.

Incredibly, we can now dissect it

using this state-of-the-art
virtual autopsy.

This is the most amazing tool
I've ever seen in my life.

It's a great tool. It allows us
to explore the whole mummy.

You can actually get rid
of some of the tissues.

You can just show the bones,
the more hard tissue,

and also you can actually
cut through the body
in different slices.

That's extraordinary.

First I want to know,
did the real Tutankhamun

actually look like
the beautiful young man

we know from his golden mask?

Let's start with
the side of the mummy.

What we see here is that
he has a sort of overbite

and also you see
his quite special shape of his head.

So, very prominent teeth? Not quite
how he's portrayed in his death mask.

This is his Instagram face
he's showing the world.

(CHUCKLES)

What can we tell about
his state of his health

in the last few days of his life?

There is one area where we should
have a close look at,

that's his feet region.

You see here that on the left feet

you have, like,
part of the toe missing

in comparison to the right one.

This might be so-called Kohler's
disease, which is a bone necrosis,

which actually may have
affected his way of walking.

He could have had some pain,
some swelling.

Some sort of infections,
maybe, related to it.

During his teenage years,

the bones in Tut's foot
would have become increasingly weak

and may even have collapsed.

And there's also evidence
of a second abnormality.

We also see that they have a bit
of a different shape.

On the right hand side
we see this one is more flat.

This one is more curved.

So you have this sort of club foot
type of thing on the left foot.

So possibly a clubbed foot.
And what...?

Again, that would be an issue
around mobility, would it?

You basically have the wrist
of your foot shown outwards

and that makes you a bit moving
in a strange way.

I think if the theory is true,

and he would have had pain
and this deformity of the left foot,

he may have been limping
and using a stick.

Uncomfortable.

These serious conditions
were probably congenital disorders

caused by his family's inbreeding.

That astonishing CT scan

suggests that towards
the end of his life,

Tutankhamun was suffering from
a number of physical impairments.

He must have spent the last
few months, days of his life,

in physical pain.

Tut's life was ending,

but three millennia later

the glories of his tomb
were about to be revealed.

At 2pm on Sunday 26 November 1922,

Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon
were the end of the entrance tunnel

that they'd excavated,
confronted with a sealed doorway,

behind which they thought
lay the tomb itself.

Carter took an iron rod

and smashed a small hole
in the top left-hand corner.

He took a candle
and looked through the hole.

It flickered
as the hot air left the tomb.

He peered in.

Lord Carnarvon beside him
asked him impatiently,

"Can you see anything?"

And Carter replied, "Yes.

"Wonderful things."

The chamber was crammed

with mysterious
and extraordinary objects.

A time capsule containing

everything a Pharaoh would need
in the afterlife,

untouched for over 3,000 years.

Ancient tomb robbers
had pilfered some small valuables...

..but everything else
had been left behind.

It was, and it still is,

the most incredible
archaeological discovery ever made.

And what's more,
it was only the beginning.

Many of those treasures
Carter glimpsed by candlelight

have been brought back together here
at the new Grand Egyptian Museum,

where they're undergoing restoration

before they go on show
to the public in 2020.

Which means Raksha and I have
a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

to get up close
to these archaeological wonders.

Right, Raksha, we're in
the holiest of holies here.

We've got labs on either side.

You must be going crazy.
What are you going to do first?

I'm champing at the bit,
but I'm an archaeologist.

I want to see the organics.

I want to see a glimpse
into everyday life,

so I'm heading in that direction.

That's crazy.

I'm going straight for the most
precious objects in the tomb.

It's all about the bling with you.
You better believe it.

I'm now in the most high secure area
of this new facility

and it's incredibly exciting

because I'm about to come
face to face

with King Tutankhamun's treasures.

They're in this room here.

It's known as the magazine,
and I cannot wait.

Right - code.

Not going to let you see this.
(KEYPAD BEEPS)

(DOOR CLICKS)
Excellent.

Here we go.

Hassan.
Hello, Dan.

Hi, there. I'm Dan.
How do you do?

What...what a collection.

In this one store room

are hundreds of objects discovered
in Tutankhamun's tomb.

I know it's a cliche

but this stuff looks like
it's almost new, lots of it.

It's astonishing the quality
of the craftsmanship

but also the nature
of its preservation.

And yet it is thousands of years old.

It's actually, it's moving
being here amongst these. Oh!

I recognise so many of these.
I've seen them in books.

I've seen them in archives.
Yes.

There's one of the sandals
of the King Tutankhamun.

These are the sort of,
the ceremonial sandals.
Yes.

And you've got other objects.
The head rest there.

Yes.

That's carved,
obviously hand-carved.

So ornate, so meticulous.
I love all that detail.

Oh, my goodness.
This is extraordinary.

The boats! I mean, I'm a sucker
for a boat, but look at those.

They are absolutely beautiful
up there.

It's not just bling in here.

There are ranks
of shelves and drawers

filled with extraordinary objects

that allow us a glimpse
into the private life of Tutankhamun.

What have we got in here?
You just don't know what you're
going to find when you open them!

That's a pad for the writing.
Wow.

And here...

..the pens and the colours.
Yeah.

Wow. What's this here?

Can we look at this box?
Yes, of course.

Is this his, uh...his cosmetics?

His wash bag?

That's what makes this collection
so extraordinary.

It's the personal items, isn't it?
Yes.

Would one of these be a razor?

So what is that?

Put inside here the colour,
black colour,

and use this stick.

Ah!
The kohl.

The make-up.
The make-up.

The guyliner.

This is the object used to apply
Tutankhamun's iconic eye make-up.

Each of these drawers,
each of these boxes,

would be a...a lifetime highlight
to discover as an archaeologist,

and there's thousands of them.

Lovely, Hassan. Thank you.

Over in the organics lab,

I'm seeing something even more
intimate than Tut's make-up.

This piece, it's linen cloth,

is underwear for the King.

What?!

Hang on. This is
King Tutankhamun's loin cloth?

Loin cloth.

That's unbelievable!

It's, like, such fine quality.

I didn't think that
I'd be seeing his pants today.

This is very personal.

Very personal.
Yeah.

We discovered about 145 piece.

145 loin clothes?
Yes. Yes.

Wow. That's excessive.
Some might say, yeah.

Conservator Manar Elkhial is working
on something just as intriguing.

Do you want me to open this end?

Uh, no. Just wait because
they are very delicate.
OK, I'll wait. I'll wait.

We have to deal with them
with very much care.

This is one of the most fragile
discoveries from the tomb.

That's absolutely unbelievable.

It's a bouquet of leaves,

which astonishingly survived
3,000 years under the desert.

You can't really see that
they're a bouquet anymore.

It just looks like a mass of leaves.

But for me,
this is absolutely stunning,

because in the UK, if we have
any organic materials,

which is very rare, it's normally
in waterlogged things.

So for me to actually see this,

it's...it's a once-in-a-lifetime
chance.

Yeah.
It's brilliant.

Yeah.

In yet another lab,

they're working on some of
the most famous treasures of all.

This is the wood laboratory,
and right here in the middle of it,

look at these extraordinary
funerary beds.

These are iconic pieces of art,

which everyone associates
with Tutankhamun's tomb,

supported by these beautifully carved

and covered in gold leaf
gods from Ancient Egypt.

And this one here

is the first thing
that Howard Carter saw

when he peered into Tutankhamun's
tomb on that fateful day.

And I think I'm almost excited
as he was at that moment.

And what's so special at the moment
is because they're being conserved,
they're all in here together.

And in just a matter of months,

these are going to be
stuck in a glass box,

inches-thick bulletproof glass,

with about a billion tourists
looking at them every day,

and yet I can get up close
and personal to them,

and there's no-one else around,
really.

What a privilege.

These incredible treasures
were found by Carter

in just the first chamber
of the tomb.

But there were yet more rooms
to discover,

including the greatest prize,

the burial chamber itself,

filled with the most wondrous
objects of all.

It was a huge privilege to get up
so close to those amazing treasures.

Raksha, you were in your element.

I was like a kid in a sweet shop.

I couldn't believe
that these were 3,000 years old.

It was like they
were made yesterday.

How about you, John?
It's fascinating.

And all that beer drinking -
wonderful.

Some might think
you're on holiday, John.

Certainly beats
working for a living.

We will be continuing our countdown

to Tutankhamun being buried
in his secret chamber,

but also to Howard Carter
rediscovering it

over 3,000 years later.

All that to look forward to. Goodbye.

Bye-bye.
Goodbye.

Captions by Red Bee Media
(c) SBS Australia 2020