Original subtitles

♪ ♪

Egypt,

the richest source of archaeological treasures on the planet.

Oh, that's a fabulous one.

Beneath this desert landscape...

lies the secrets of this ancient civilization.

Wow.

You can see why the Pharaohs chose this place.

Now, for a full season of excavations,

our cameras have been given unprecedented access

to follow teams on the front line of archeology.

I'm driving so fast because I'm so excited!

It's an entrance. We can see an entrance!

Revealing buried secrets.

I have just been told that they have found something.

Oh my gosh!

A sphinx!

And making discoveries that could rewrite ancient history.

This time, new secrets of the boy king, Tutankhamun.

Aliaa uses pioneering technology

to reveal startling new evidence about his tomb,

and why it remained hidden for 3,000 years.

A lot of robberies were going on.

How was it not found?

Eissa's team discover a long-lost cache

of King Tutankhamun's treasures.

It's the most exciting discovery in my career.

And Alejandro discovers extraordinary burial treasures

in a 4,000 year-old tomb.

Congratulations!

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

The Valley of the Kings.

3,500 years ago,

the Great Pharaohs stopped building pyramids as their tombs.

They chose these secluded cliffs to become their cemetery.

Today, archaeologists come from all over the world

to unlock the mysteries still hidden

in this City of the Dead.

It's the first day in the Valley for Cairo-born Egyptologist

Aliaa Ismail and her team.

There's a real buzz in this place.

People are coming from all over the world,

coming to the Valley, it's amazing.

I'm so proud to have such ancestry.

It's one of the most famous necropolises in the world

and I think what is special is that it comes out of nowhere.

♪ ♪

Over 300 miles south of Cairo,

in the heart of Egypt,

lie the limestone cliffs of the Valley of the Kings.

After 200 years of excavation,

archaeologists have found 65 tombs

hidden amongst the rocks.

But, only one has ever been found

with its treasure still inside.

It belonged to the Pharaoh, Tutankhamun.

This here is number 62,

Tutankhamun.

One of those great finds of the century.

♪ ♪

British explorer Howard Carter

discovered Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922.

One of his teams spotted steps leading down through the sand.

They led to the tomb entrance,

buried beneath meters of rubble and debris.

What Carter found inside

inspired archaeologists for generations to come.

Deep inside the mountains,

Amid a maze of tunnels that bore deep through the rock,

Carter reached the tomb of Tutankhamun,

hidden right in the center of the Valley.

Inside, he found treasures

unlike anything ever seen before.

Over 5,000 priceless artifacts,

including golden statues.

In the burial chamber, the Pharaoh's mummy,

wearing a golden death mask, was placed inside a coffin

made of more than 200 pounds of solid gold.

♪ ♪

This intact tomb made Tutankhamun

the most famous of the Pharaohs.

Now, Aliaa is investigating this golden Pharaoh's life...

Wow.

And why his tomb remained hidden for so long.

Aliaa's team have been scanning

and documenting the tomb for the last 10 years,

and they've made a remarkable discovery.

The idea here is to understand what's going on

when you look at the data void of color.

The scans strip away the paint

on the walls to reveal unusual markings.

This was the main scene,

and here is the 3D of the North Wall.

So, as you can see here, the silhouette of an image

and this would have been done while they were painting.

The images show the indented outline

of the face hidden below.

It's caused by the tip of the paintbrush

if you start painting when the plaster is still wet.

This is why the brushes would have made

a very light impression,

and this allows us to understand that it was rushed.

But why would the tomb builders rush such an important job?

The pictures on the wall reveal another set of clues.

♪ ♪

Despite becoming the most famous Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt,

Tutankhamun did not have a lengthy reign.

He was only a 9-year-old boy when he became King,

and relied on trusted advisors to help rule his vast empire.

As Tutankhamun grew older,

he was known to portray himself as a warrior king,

riding into battle on a chariot.

But the boy king suffered from multiple illnesses,

including malaria.

He was only 19 years old when he unexpectedly died.

Aliaa thinks the marks her scans reveal in the plaster

are evidence of a hurried burial due to Tutankhamun's sudden death.

The decorated part of the tomb is very small.

It's only the burial chamber.

The rest of the tomb is not decorated.

If they had more time, all of this was going to be decorated.

While the tomb's construction may have been rushed...

♪ ♪

its treasures were everything a Pharaoh could desire

to take him into the afterlife.

So, why did this tomb lay hidden below

a layer of rock for thousands of years

when all the other tombs in the Valley were looted?

To solve this mystery,

Aliaa will turn to new technology

as she moves her investigation out into the Valley.

♪ ♪

300 miles north, in Giza...

in the shadow of the pyramids...

the biggest treasure haul in history is getting a new home.

A one-billion-dollar museum and research center.

When completed, the Grand Egyptian Museum

will reunite all of Tutankhamun's treasures

in one place, for the first time in 100 years.

Having all of the pieces from the tomb of Tutankhamun

together in one place, this will be

a fantastic chance to find new facts,

new hidden things about Tutankhamun.

After Carter removed the treasures from Tut's tomb,

they ended up in museums around Egypt.

Now, for the first time in the museum's labs,

scientists and Egyptologists

will use modern technology to analyze each object.

Some details reappear

and give us new information

about these antiquities.

But some of Tut's greatest treasures are yet to arrive.

♪ ♪

300 miles south in the Luxor Museum,

Eissa Zidan is preparing 122 of these

priceless artifacts for the move to Giza.

I'm very, very proud to work with this kind of artifact.

We have a huge responsibility for dealing with the collection of Tutankhamun.

This is once in a lifetime to move this collection to Cairo.

Eissa's packing list includes

one of Tut's famous chariots,

intricate model boats,

and a unique head of the cow goddess, Hathor,

elaborately gilded with gold.

In my opinion this head of cow, like the mask of Tutankhamun...

is a very important piece in this collection.

After just four hours,

Eissa's packing suddenly comes to a halt.

One of his teams has discovered

something completely unexpected in the storeroom.

It's an antique box

that Howard Carter used to pack and transport

Tutankhamun's treasures out of the tomb.

I never discovered something like that before.

It's the most exciting discovery in my career.

The box has been missing, presumed lost, for decades...

and no one knows what treasures it may hold.

♪ ♪

120 miles south of the Valley of the Kings, near Aswan,

a Spanish Research Team from Jaen University

is hoping to follow in Carter's footsteps

and make new discoveries which could rewrite history.

Professor Alejandro Jimenez-Serrano

heads the largest foreign team working in Egypt.

Today is the first day of the dig season.

Sorry for the mess.

We are sharing the room, three researchers of the team.

This is my bed, supposedly the best one.

Sorry.

It's amazing to get up, and the first thing that you see,

apart from the ugly face of your roommates,

is the Qubbet el-Hawa, the hill.

♪ ♪

Qubbet el-Hawa is one of the largest ancient burial sites in Egypt.

So far, 100 tombs have been discovered here.

They belong to the nobles

who governed Egypt hundreds of years before the Pharaohs

buried in the Valley of the Kings.

Alejandro's mission

is to hunt for more unopened tombs

and reveal more about these early Egyptians.

It's difficult to explain how I feel.

It's not only nervous. It's exciting.

It's a mix of feelings.

It's an honor to come every year.

Now, it comes the most difficult part of the day.

It's to climb the hill.

♪ ♪

This is the team's 10th year digging here.

It's so nice to be here again.

There's a reason why everyone is excited to be back.

Last year, Alejandro found the entrance to a sealed tomb,

but his permit expired before he could explore inside.

Today is 40 degrees, and working underneath the sun,

today's gonna be tough.

To protect against modern day tomb-robbers...

they put a steel security door to block

the entrance of the vertical shaft

that leads to the sealed burial chamber.

Well, it has been one-year waiting,

one-year imagining the possibilities.

I'm very excited.

♪ ♪

In Luxor,

Eissa's team pack Tutankhamun's treasures for the move

to the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza.

But, in the storeroom, Eissa is ready to open

Carter's long-lost box to discover what's inside.

♪ ♪

The team gather round to see if the box

really does contain priceless treasures

from Tutankhamun's tomb.

Ah.

- Fantastic. - It's amazing.

These delicate wooden pieces

are ancient boat parts.

Thank you Mr. Mohamed Atwa for this new discovery.

Storeroom records suggest they could be missing parts of a model boat

Howard Carter found in Tutankhamun's tomb.

This is the head of one of the paddles, like that.

And the remains of the gold is still there after all these years.

♪ ♪

According to ancient Egyptian belief,

boats played a key role after death.

So, placing model boats into tombs

was a vital part of any burial.

The vessels also came complete with crew

because it was believed the replicas would come to life

and help with fishing and transport in the underworld.

The Pharaohs used a special vessel to sail across the sky for eternity.

Ordinary people also thought they could reach the afterlife by boat,

rowing on the Nile and into the next world.

You can see here the date of the newspaper.

It's Sunday, 5th of November, 1933.

Howard Carter, maybe he read this newspaper

before using it as a support in this box

To discover where these pieces came from,

Mohammad inspects Carter's original inventory.

Here's the photo taken from the tomb itself and here we can find the boat.

It's lot number 321 and with the mast itself which is here.

Records show that the box

was sent to Luxor in 1973,

but had gone missing, presumed lost or stolen.

It's a really exciting, new discovery for one of the most

important artifacts belonging to the King Tutankhamun.

Eissa thinks the rest of the boat is safe in the new Cairo lab,

so they might finally be able to reunite it.

To transport the treasures to Giza, Eissa's team must traverse

400 miles of barren desert roads

and crowded city streets

before they reach the safety of the new museum.

♪ ♪

It will take two trucks to transport

all 122 of the artifacts to Giza.

This is very, very big moment for the collection.

This is the final trip of Tutankhamun.

But, with such priceless relics on board,

there's concern the convoy could be a target for a hijacking.

We have a good police and good army.

They will follow us during moving from Luxor until arrive to Cairo.

With security in place, it's time to roll.

♪ ♪

They now face a grueling 12-hour journey through the desert

to reach Giza before nightfall.

Ever since Carter's discovery

of Tutankhamun's priceless golden treasures,

archaeologists have continued to try and work out where and how

the ancient Egyptians found vast quantities of gold.

50 miles south of the Valley of the Kings,

on the edge of the Eastern Desert,

French gold expert Thomas Faucher

and archaeologist John Ward

are on the hunt for the origins of Tutankhamun's gold.

So, I'm going to...

What are you waiting for, a traffic signal?

♪ ♪

The Eastern Desert covers 85,000 square miles of remote barren wilderness.

Some of the rock here contains tiny grains of gold locked inside.

Thomas has studied ancient gold mining techniques for seven years.

Now, he wants to see if he can find any evidence of it.

But, this part of the desert is a risky place to be.

The thing is we need to leave before dark

because it's not safe if we are staying there

because we can lose our way. We can have an accident,

and it's also at the sunset

that all the snakes are going out.

- Snakes? - Yeah, vipers.

No one told me about...

There are horrid vipers, yeah.

First stop, an ancient well.

It could provide clues to the location of mining communities

during the time of Tutankhamun.

This is the well just right in front of us here.

It's dry!

My God, that's a long way down.

The well might be dry today, but it was so important,

the ancient Egyptians built a temple to honor it.

It's beautiful isn't it?

They actually applied a plaster gyp ceiling,

and then applied the paint.

Amazing.

♪ ♪

The text engraved on these walls reveal clues

about the gold miners and where they were heading.

Ancient engineers built a network of wells and rest stops

stretching all the way across the desert,

each a day's walk from the last...

enabling travelers and miners to safely cross

and explore the barren desert.

The temple carvings indicate these wells led towards the mines.

Thomas hopes he will be able to find some evidence of the people

behind Tutankhamun's gold mining operations.

♪ ♪

Now, it's time to go deeper East...

Like an ancient treasure map,

they must follow the trail of wells further into the desert.

In Aswan,

at the ancient burial site of Qubbet el-Hawa,

Alejandro is about to open a 4,000-year-old tomb.

They're on the hunt for whatever burial treasure may be inside.

I don't know who is more nervous, me or my team.

I want to go now!

♪ ♪

After a year of waiting,

Alejandro can finally enter the tomb.

It's amazing.

It contains a 4,000-year-old coffin.

Workers have inserted a box covered in acid-free paper

inside the coffin to stop it collapsing

while they examine the tomb.

There... We have been very lucky.

It's impossible to explain the feelings that I'm having.

The burial consisted in two coffins,

the outer coffin and the inner coffin.

Among the debris of the outer coffin,

Alejandro spots something extraordinary.

♪ ♪

It is full of wooden models, but unfortunately,

the outer coffin fall over them.

The chamber is full of model boats,

similar to the one in Tutankhamun's tomb.

To find this funerary boat

in a tomb is rare today.

But there's not just one.

There's four, complete with crew.

You want to laugh. You want to shout. You want to cry.

This is the first time in 70 years

a set of boats like this have been found.

This discovery gives Alejandro an extremely rare opportunity

to study such important burial goods.

♪ ♪

But first, he has to extract them from the tomb safely.

Alejandro calls in his team of conservation specialists,

Sara and Theresa.

Sara: I have 1, 2, 3, 4 boats,

and the conservation is very bad.

Yeah, it's very difficult, and the insects eat the supports.

Termites have attacked the wooden boats.

Sara sprays on a liquid adhesive to hold them together.

So, we will see if they are capable

to make a miracle.

They prepare a foam-lined cradle to support the boat

for the move to the team's restoration lab,

but the wooden hull is stuck to the tomb floor.

It'll require surgical precision using scalpels to free it.

From the tomb to the restoration lab,

we are talking about perhaps 40 meters.

But today's very windy,

which is very, very aggressive.

The ancient boats are extremely fragile.

♪ ♪

Get ready.

With a drop in the wind,

the team sees the chance to remove the first boat.

Woman: Be careful!

Wow. That was exciting.

One of the best moments in my career.

We have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight...

8 person.

Will take many weeks

to clean it and fix the pieces

that were broken...

some centuries ago.

While the team gets to work on the boat,

Alejandro can finally open the coffin

to see who and what is inside.

♪ ♪

In the middle of the desert,

the convoy carrying Tutankhamun's priceless treasures

are two hours into their journey

when Eissa spots a problem.

I'm worried about the chariot.

A thermal blanket protecting Tut's golden chariot is coming loose.

If it flies off, it could cause a crash.

We will stop to make it safe.

The unscheduled stop in the desert makes this convoy,

carrying the world's most priceless treasures,

a potential target for hijackers.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Eissa and his team are unable to secure the loose thermal covering

protecting Tut's chariot.

Some problems happen.

Removing the cover,

they risk the scorching desert heat

potentially damaging the priceless treasure.

Everything is okay.

Now, Eissa needs to get the convoy moving.

We hope to arrive to Cairo safely.

♪ ♪

In the Valley, Egyptologist Aliaa Ismail is on a mission

to discover how Tutankhamun's tomb and treasures

remained hidden for 3,000 years.

Lot of robberies were going on

in ancient times and modern times,

but it seems that this particular tomb

was not found. How was it not found?

The ancient engineers of Tutankhamun's tomb had a plan.

Inside the mountain,

they went to great lengths to conceal the tomb.

The Pharaoh's burial chamber is located 26 feet underground...

and is defended from the inside out.

Engineers constructed a wall to block off the burial chamber.

They filled the corridor leading to the King

with tons of rubble, before sealing a final doorway

And covering Tutankhamun's tomb

with a vast amount of boulders under earth.

Standard tomb protection of the day.

♪ ♪

But when Carter discovered this tomb,

it had more material on top than any other in the Valley.

This may explain how it remained undiscovered

for over 3,000 years.

But, how did this extra rock and debris get here?

Aliaa joins German Geologist Martin Ziegler to investigate.

If you want to understand

the evolution of the Valley of the Kings,

you need to also understand the evolution of the rock.

Martin thinks there could be clues in the rocks at the entrance

of a nearby tomb.

Just at the entrance of it, a slab is just hanging above.

A rock basically could fall out of the cliff.

Egypt is hit with dozens of earthquakes each year.

So, Martin's installed a seismometer to measure any vibrations

that could trigger rockfall.

With this one, we calculate it to be away

about 600 to 700 kilometers from the Valley of the Kings.

What if an earthquake were to happen

much closer to the Valley of the Kings? How would it affect it?

A very big earthquake could destabilize some rock portions.

So, when you look in the history of recorded earthquakes,

the historic timescales, let's say the thousands of years,

we have some records of earthquakes of that type of magnitude.

♪ ♪

So, could rockfalls caused by earthquakes 3,000 years ago

account for the extra tons of rock that covered the entrance

to Tutankhamun's tomb?

From the geological past and the historic point of view,

they could have rockfalls or rock slides

that are triggered by earthquakes, covering tombs.

But there are no cliffs directly above Tutankhamun's tomb,

so it wouldn't have been hit by a direct rockfall.

How did so much extra material travel down the valley

and completely cover the entrance to the tomb?

To solve this mystery, Aliaa and Martin must take to the air.

♪ ♪

Deep in the Eastern Desert,

Thomas and John are looking for evidence of the miners

who produced the gold for Tutankhamun's treasures.

They're trying to find a route of ancient wells

that the gold miners would have followed

as they traveled to the mines.

It's like looking for a needle in a haystack.

But, I'm losing a few kidneys.

70 miles from the last ancient well,

Thomas and John head into the unknown.

With their GPS broken down,

they now risk getting completely lost.

This piece of technology is defunct.

It is not working.

Look here, it's literally on the right side.

So, we're now at the back end.

So, we need to turn around.

But after two days searching,

John thinks they may have finally found something.

What's that over there? At the base of that mountain there?

So, we found it!

♪ ♪

Okay, so it looks that we've found

a very interesting place here. It's a settlement.

It may look like scattered stones and debris,

but to Thomas' expert eye,

he can see the outline of ancient buildings.

We have the huts where the people were living and where they were working.

Yeah, we definitely have here...

- the evidence where... - Oh, Thomas!

I mean, people have been working here and we see,

yeah, there are even more over there.

As they get closer, John spots

the tools the ancient miners would have used

to extract gold from the rocks.

Oh!

Yeah, that's the grinding stone.

- That's a pounder. - Yeah, that's a pounder. Exactly.

That's what they would break...

- Yeah, they would. - The quartz with.

It's the remains of an ancient gold mining camp.

I mean, how many people are we talking, 20, 30?

Yeah, maybe there were families living here.

♪ ♪

Thomas has studied ancient mining techniques for years.

But, seeing this evidence first-hand

brings home the hardships the miners endured.

You start from a piece of quartz like this,

and you want to make product out of it.

So, you need to crush it.

You have to imagine how much pain it takes just to break

a single piece of quartz,

doing that like all day long, in the sun,

pounding and pounding and grinding and grinding and doing that for years.

♪ ♪

Evidence here paints a picture of the life of desert miners.

They cut shafts stretching up to 10 meters deep into the stone

in search of precious seams of quartz rock that contained gold.

Crushing the quartz was a massive undertaking.

Mining experts have calculated that a team of 20 people

would take a week to process enough stone to make just a spoonful of gold.

- That's heavy. - Seriously.

Sadly, there is very little evidence left of these ancient mines,

but these settlements provide new insight into the communities

that lived such hard lives processing the gold.

We have all the material they were using, for sure,

that they were working here to extract

and process the gold

to send it to the Valley of the Kings.

- We've found it. - We've found it.

♪ ♪

In Aswan, Alejandro's team prepares to remove the coffin

from the tomb they've opened.

Inscriptions reveal it belongs to a man called Shemai.

They have just struck the lid of the coffin of Shemai.

Rebecca, you are the first person that is looking

at Shemai's face in 4,000 years!

Congratulations!

The inner coffin is intact, but extremely fragile.

Alejandro's team have reinforced it

to try and protect the mummy inside.

It's difficult to express the feelings that I have now.

It's a special moment

because I'm studying this family,

and it's almost my second family.

♪ ♪

In the restoration lab,

the intricate beauty of the model boats

is starting to appear.

Termites have eaten much of the wood,

but their excrement has actually helped hold parts of the boats together

for thousands of years.

We have some parts that are still

in a very good state of conservation.

This head of the man,

it is covered with excrement of the termites,

but the wood is still visible.

Alejandro has spotted a figure distinct from the other carvings.

We can see

in the middle of the boat,

yellow face, which belongs to a mummy,

which would represent Shemai.

This exceptional discovery will help archaeologists

understand the evolution

of burial practices in ancient Egypt.

♪ ♪

I was dreaming always to discover something like this,

and it's a dream that came truth.

Alejandro's next task

is to bring Shemai's mummy above ground

for the first time in 4,000 years.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

In the Valley of the Kings,

Aliaa and Martin look for clues

to explain why Tutankhamun's tomb

remained hidden for so long.

They've got special permission from the government

to use a drone to get a unique perspective on the position of Tutankhamun's tomb.

Here we go.

If you look down,

we should be over the Tutankhamun entrance right now.

Now, we can see the cliffs in the back,

and we can see the central position of the tomb.

And above, we can see debris.

Loose rock and debris cover the cliffs behind Tut's tomb.

But the drone also reveals these flood channels,

carved into the rock by heavy rains over thousands of years,

and that could be the vital missing clue.

We think that if we have flash flooding,

that material can flow down in these kinds of channels.

♪ ♪

Throughout history, the Valley has been hit by earthquakes,

and occasional flash floods.

The flood waters push rubble downhill toward the tombs.

Tutankhamun's tomb lies in the spot

where the channels of water converge...

And dump tons of rock.

This, combined with stone chippings from a tomb built above,

buried the entrance deeper

and kept it hidden for over 3,000 years.

It's very exciting for me, as an Egyptologist,

to see Tutankhamun's tomb from up here

and see how it fits within the valley.

It is the prime location. It is the one that was most protected.

He got the most sheltered tomb of all.

Tutankhamun was a boy king

who played a minor role in Egypt's history.

But because his tomb remained hidden for thousands of years,

his treasure was kept safe from robbers

and made him the legend we know today.

♪ ♪

In Aswan, the team are bringing the mummy

of ancient Egyptian Shemai to the surface for the first time

in 4,000 years.

This is the culmination of 10 years of field work

for Alejandro,

and an incredible opportunity

to learn more about Shemai.

Oh.

125.

It's quite short.

♪ ♪

My daughter is more or less like this,

and she's 8 years old, so...

I expected that...

at least...

he would be around 20 years old or something.

It has been a surprise.

I never expected that...

he could be just a boy.

On his coffin, it was written that he was...

the person in charge of the administration of the store.

Controlling the store, you control the people

because you decide who is going to receive food or not.

This new evidence reveals Shemai

held a powerful position in Egyptian Society at a very young age.

He may not have been a Pharaoh,

but like the boy King Tutankhamun,

his status afforded him a tomb and burial goods

to ensure a safe passage into the afterlife.

♪ ♪

It's taken 12 hours, but finally,

Eissa and his convoy of Tutankhamun's treasures

arrives in the city.

Now we are in Cairo, welcomed by crowded traffic.

Very, very, very exciting.

We wait for this moment.

Tarek Tawfik, the Museum Director,

is anxious to get everything safely inside.

The first cradles have to be taken out,

in order for the Tutankhamun pieces to start emerging.

Now, I can say I'm very, very happy.

Mission is complete, yes.

It will be like unpacking Christmas presents.

When we get out these pieces

and find out more details about

how they compliment the whole story of King Tutankhamun.

♪ ♪

Eissa's team can finally unpack the priceless treasures.

Scientists and Egyptologists can now begin to study

and analyze each item in their new high-tech lab.

Top of the list is the newly discovered boat pieces.

We'll check now in our database

which of them maybe related to any of the boats in the storeroom.

For almost 100 years,

the boat that was buried alongside Tutankhamun,

to help him travel into the afterlife,

has been missing its mast.

Exactly.

♪ ♪

It is very beautiful.

It's amazing that after all these years,

we still have new discoveries

and new secrets for this...

golden King, Tutankhamun.

100 years after its discovery,

Tutankhamun's stunning treasure

is still surprising the world.

And the Valley of the Kings

shows why it remains the greatest place on Earth

to hunt for the secrets of Egypt's famous Pharaohs.

♪ ♪

Captioned by Point.360