Original subtitles

There's always been one part of human history

that's really captured my imagination.

I'm talking about Ancient Egypt.

Almost 100 years ago, Howard Carter and his discovery of Tutankhamun

crowned a golden age of tomb exploration.

But right now, the archaeologists are back....

MAN: It's going down very deep.

..and the world of Egyptian tombs...

MAN: It's full of snake holes!

..is more exciting than ever.

And I'm joining them...

I've got a bone here.

..on the hunt for new tombs...

Oh, yes! There's hieroglyphics here.

..and awesome discoveries.

It's the blood of the mummy!

If there's one thing we know about the Ancient Egyptians,

it's that they did death better than anyone else.

From mighty pyramids to tombs cut in hillsides,

they come in all shapes and sizes

and give us an intriguing glimpse into their extraordinary world.

I'm heading across Egypt...

Oh, God!

..on a tomb adventure...

Arrgh!

..which has been 4,000 years in the making.

This is just like the movies, isn't it? (MAN LAUGHS)

Welcome to southern Egypt. Below me is the mighty River Nile.

On the far bank is the city of Aswan.

But my focus for this program

is going to be right here under my feet.

4,000 years ago,

this was ancient Aswan's most important burial ground.

It might look like any other old rocky, sandy slope

rolling down to the river, but this is much, much more.

This is a necropolis - a city of the dead.

And today, it's a hive of activity once more,

with archaeologists coming from all over the world

and making the most amazing tomb discoveries,

and one of them has said that I can join him.

Archaeologist Dr Martin Bommas

has been digging in southern Egypt for nearly 30 years.

More than anyone, he knows that, beneath the sand and rubble here,

there are still many tombs to find.

This is your first day here? It is.

Congratulations. Yeah.

Martin's starting a new three-week dig season,

and he's brought his biggest team ever,

including archaeology students,

trainee lecturers,

a leading pottery expert...

Boys, boys, boys! ..and 22 all-important diggers.

You've got hundreds of tonnes of sand in a great arc round here.

How on Earth did you decide

where you wanted to put your energy for the next few weeks?

So, our focus for our excavation period this time

is just the hill in front of us - you know, the big mound of rubble.

High up this slope are some of the biggest tombs in southern Egypt.

Many were found over a century ago

with the help of a young Howard Carter,

long before he found fame discovering Tutankhamun.

But there are large parts of this site

that have never been touched.

So, here's the River Nile here, which is down in that direction. Yes.

We're currently standing here... Right.

..looking up the hill, which, from the Nile,

looks like a massive sand dune falling into the Nile.

So, have all these been discovered, then? Yes.

So, these are all tombs that have already been excavated.

Mm-hm. And where's your site on this map?

So, this is the area we are going to work on.

Martin's team will now be working a six-day week

to try and prove that there are undiscovered tombs here,

but they've only got three weeks to do it.

After that, the temperature will get so ridiculously hot

that the whole digging season in Egypt comes to an end.

And in addition, this year,

they've got me and a camera team to contend with,

so no pressure!

While they get started, I've been given special access

to a tomb that's already been excavated

here at the city of the dead...

..but it's a heck of a climb to get there.

Our necropolis is tied together

by a series of causeways, like this one.

They're sort of ancient staircases that ascend from the river.

The dead would have been processed up here

as part of their funeral.

At least, if they weren't dead at the bottom,

they would have been by the time they got to the top.

To be fair, though,

climbing the causeways is well worth the effort.

Who wouldn't want to be buried up here?

For at least 500 years,

the most important people in southern Egypt

were buried at this necropolis.

The pharaoh himself gave permission for new tombs to be built,

and right now, I'm looking for one of the very grandest.

This extraordinary courtyard

dominates the whole of this side of the cliff,

swinging all the way round here as well.

Imagine what this would have looked like originally,

when it was beautifully polished and sanded.

And this was just the place

where people gossiped about you after you'd died.

The tomb itself is in here.

Wow! Isn't this magnificent?

It's a privilege just to stand here.

This is the tomb of a guy called Sarenput II,

who was governor here a mere 3,860-odd years ago.

And look at these stone columns,

all of them hewn out of the solid rock.

They haven't been painted.

This, what appears to be decoration, is just the lines in the rock itself.

The governor Sarenput was one of Egypt's local rulers

controlling regions on behalf of the pharaoh.

Here on the southern border,

Sarenput protected the gateway to the rest of Africa.

And now we come to a corridor where there's a statue of him.

He's lost his head, but apart from that, he's great.

Here's one with its head still intact.

And I think, yeah, another one here.

So, we've got one, two, three, four, five, six statues.

Look at the eyes on that one, staring at us across time.

So, where's Sarenput?

Well, I'm told that his mummy was never found.

It was robbed, I suppose, hundreds, even thousands of years ago,

because of all the jewels that would probably have been on it.

So, as for the man himself, all that's left now

is a painting in a little cupboard.

Back outside, the team are looking for the next big tomb...

..but already, Martin's discovered something else -

the sort of find that could only happen in Egypt.

There's your first mummy. What? Look at that.

This is a mummy?

Well, that's the upper part of a mummy only... How extraordinary.

..because the pelvis is just around your back. Ah!

(LAUGHS) Look at that. That's the pelvis.

Tapping me on the shoulder. Yes!

This remarkable find - a headless mummy -

simply appeared this morning

as the wind blew just enough sand away to reveal it.

Do you think that this would originally have been in a stone tomb?

Yes, but perhaps the dogs pulled it out.

Is there anything that we can say about this mummified body?

So, what we're looking at here is just the torso.

The legs are missing.

It's lying on its tummy. You can see the arm here.

This is its arm? Exactly, yes.

This seems to be the elbow. Just here? Yeah.

Yes. Leading up to the shoulder where your finger is. The shoulder.

And it must have been burned as well because it's rather black here.

But look at the mummy bindings - they're such a good quality.

Look at the quality of the linen here.

That's really nicely done indeed.

Such a wonderful quality. It's just...great stuff.

Must have been a very rich person.

Am I allowed to touch it? Yes, of course.

Ooh, it's quite snake-like, isn't it? Alright. (CHUCKLES)

And although it's...it's hard, it's not solid.

You feel as though you could press it in.

Mm. Well, it's hollow inside. Why's that?

Because they took out the internal organs,

which were preserved separately, according to Egyptian custom.

How old do you think it is?

Well, I believe it's a Roman mummy.

I didn't know there were such things as Roman mummies. Well, they adopted it, you know.

The Romans had a very strong presence here in Aswan.

So, this mummy is about 2,000 years old. It is.

And the tombs we're looking for are about 4,500 years old.

So, there's more time between our tombs and this mummy

than there is between this mummy and us.

That's correct, yes.

My first mummy discovery

is proof of how much waits to be discovered here

just beneath the surface.

Elsewhere around the dig, the finds are less grisly,

but more likely to point to new tombs.

The sandy slopes of Martin's dig site

are littered with ancient bricks made out of mud.

That is not rock, is it?

It's clearly man-made.

But at the end of day one, the most definite find so far...

So, one, two, three levels, and perhaps a fourth level.

..is what's running straight up the hill.

Look. Can you see how, here, this is all loose sand?

Well, that's what this whole area was like

at the beginning of the day.

But now, since they've done all the work,

can you see how hard that is, how impacted?

All of this is a man-made surface.

And what we think it is is the pavement of a causeway

that once went from here, whoosh, right the way up to there.

And at this city of the dead,

previous causeway discoveries have lead the way to big tombs.

If Martin's right, and he is digging in the right place,

then we could be about to reveal a brand-new chapter

in the story of the city of the dead.

How cool would that be -

to be the first people to uncover and enter a great Egyptian tomb?

Which reminds me that,

when Howard Carter was excavating the tomb of Tutankhamen,

he chiselled a little hole in the door of the tomb,

and he peered in.

And behind him was his sponsor, Lord Carnarvon,

and Carnarvon was going, "Carter, can you see anything?"

And Howard Carter said, "Yes, wonderful things."

I've been looking for tombs

at ancient Aswan's greatest burial ground.

This site rose to prominence over 4,000 years ago,

whilst elsewhere in Egypt,

the pharaohs were busy building pyramids.

I've travelled over 400 miles north of Aswan...

Oh, God!

..but this is no sightseeing tour.

I thought we were going to go over the edge there!

Dr Vasko Dobrev has been working in the desert outside Cairo

for the past 30 years,

and he's on the hunt for a new pyramid.

What is a pyramid? DR DOBREV: Um, a pyramid?

The pyramid is the tomb of the king, but there is something more.

In the pyramid, he will resurrect. He can go up to the sky.

The pyramid points towards the heavens,

helping a deceased pharaoh to take their place among the gods.

How many of these pyramids are there? About 120.

Wow. About 120 all around Egypt.

Often, we only think of the famous pyramids of Giza,

but this site, called Saqqara,

boasts the first pyramid and a great many more.

Why Saqqara, Vasko? Why did so many pharaohs build their pyramids here?

Well, for a very simple reason.

Saqqara is exactly in front of the capital of Egypt - Memphis.

And where's Memphis now? Just behind there.

Behind the hill. You see the green palm trees? Yeah.

This is Memphis from the time of the pyramids.

Pyramids here span six centuries of Egyptian history,

but one dynasty of pharaohs in particular

chose to build their magnificent tombs in Saqqara.

You see the small pyramid? This is Pepi II.

His father is here.

His great-grandfather is just behind.

All the family's around.

Some of the pyramids are in a sorry state.

Over centuries, their beautiful outer layer of stone has been stolen.

But the key to Vasko's thinking

is that some pyramids may never have been completed.

We're climbing up the plateau. I have to accelerate a little bit not to get stuck, huh?

I have a feeling you really enjoy driving this vehicle.

Well, yeah!

We're heading to a flat plateau top...

..the site, Vasko believes, of an undiscovered pyramid.

Which pharaoh do we think we're talking about here?

So, maybe we have here the pharaoh Userkare.

And how long did he last? That's the problem.

He didn't reign for a long time. Maybe three, four years.

He cannot finish a 52m-high pyramid in three years.

Userkare may only have had time to create his pyramid's base

and construct his burial chambers beneath it.

OK. So, this is the big question.

We've got activity all over the place,

so why do you think the pyramid is right here?

First of all, we are on the good height. Yeah.

We discovered that all these pyramids that are in Saqqara,

they are on the same level.

So, there is a kind of pyramid level.

And here, we have his father to the north.

His son is just there. His grandson, Pepi II, is behind.

So, you see, from north to south,

this family is following one after the other.

And we have something else - new technology.

Geophysics. Geophys!

Electromagnetic waves.

We have something with right angles. This is not naturally made.

We have a kind of square here - 80m by 80m -

which is exactly the size of the pyramid of that period.

But Vasko's most telling evidence by far...

..is just 50 yards from where he believes the pyramid to be.

Here we are. (LAUGHS)

You don't see something like this every day, do you?

Wow! Look at all this!

Over the last few years,

Vasko has unearthed tomb after tomb...

We have more than 60 tombs on the surface already.

..and these are sizeable tombs for important Egyptians.

They must have had good reason to be here.

If you have people here, they don't come just by chance.

It's because there is somebody important just behind.

So, this isn't only

fantastic archaeology in its own right.

This is cast-iron evidence that people came here

because there's a king buried somewhere around here.

Exactly.

And Vasko's keen to show me his latest discovery.

On the edge of his site

is an unusual chessboard-like structure,

dating from just after the time of our missing pharaoh.

This is huge, this area here, isn't it?

Yeah, it's an enormous structure - 12m by 12m.

And you have 23 shafts.

Each of these shafts should lead to a tomb...

..and there's one that Vasko's started to explore.

Look at it. Oh, my goodness! Yeah.

(LAUGHS) That is deep!

And there's no way Vasko's letting me leave

without joining him on a little adventure.

Right, just popping back 4,000 years.

Not more than a handful of people have ever been down this shaft,

at least not for a few thousand years.

Just catch the handle.

Yeah. I'm holding on to the handle like crazy! That's it.

At 15 metres,

this shaft is deeper than three double-decker buses are tall.

What are these depressions in the side of it here?

That's how the Egyptians were going down.

They didn't use, like us, ropes.

They were going attached to the mountain itself.

Oh, no! That's extraordinary.

These little rudimentary steps? Yes, yes, yes.

With bare feet, you can do it.

That would be absolutely terrifying, wouldn't it?

When you started digging, had you any idea

that you would go down as far as you actually did?

Absolutely not.

I was expecting to go not more than four, six metres.

Yeah. And what happened when you got down that far?

Then I was expecting to find the chamber - the funerary chamber.

Yeah. Nothing. So, I had to continue.

Seven, eight, nine, 10 - nothing. Yeah.

So, I didn't know where to go.

Have we any idea what the name was of the man who was buried down here?

His name is Ankh Ti, which means 'I am alive'.

I hope he's not alive now. (BOTH LAUGH)

Welcome to the bottom of the shaft. Thank you.

OK, I'm down!

Like many of his neighbours here,

our tomb owner Ankh Ti was a priest...

Let's take out the lights. Here we go.

..a priest laid to rest over 4,200 years ago.

So, Tony, you can go first. OK.

Well, this does feel a bit Indiana Jones.

Oh, yes! There's hieroglyphics here.

Do you know, I thought it would just be an empty cave.

I didn't realise that it would be decorated like this.

This is beautiful.

These are the oldest paintings and hieroglyphics I've ever seen.

Was it filled with sand when you came?

It was filled with sand until here. You can see the trace. You see?

Just down there? Yes, like this. Not completely filled.

And down there, we found the body of the priest.

Down here? Exactly. On this place. Where I am now?

The body of Ankh Ti was not in a good state.

At this time, over 2,000 years before Cleopatra,

mummification wasn't far advanced.

The body tissue had rotted away,

and Ankh Ti's bones are about all that survive.

They've been removed

and will be studied and X-rayed in due course.

Still here, though, are the fantastic images

of offerings to sustain Ankh Ti in the afterlife.

Here, the food offerings.

The best choices of meat.

Some salads. Also, to drink, maybe milk or even wine.

In the antiquity, they had a lot of nice wine.

And you've got this big sand line again down here. Exactly. The same.

And then you've got this red rectangle at the bottom. Yes, yes.

Here, we come into the most important part

of the tomb - the door.

This is a door.

'Cause when he'll resurrect, he has to go out.

He wouldn't stay here.

That's not where he imagined his life after death.

Through this door, he will go out to the light.

This beautiful art was painted over 4,000 years ago,

and 15 metres underground.

Tomb decoration like this was fashionable

during the reign of Ankh Ti's pharaoh, Pepi II,

whose name appears inside the tomb.

So, perhaps Ankh Ti's job as a priest

was to service the tomb of Pepi's grandfather -

the missing pharaoh Userkare.

I'm coming up, lads!

Hold on to that rope!

But is Userkare's tomb hiding in the sand just yards away?

It's a spine-tingling thought.

And between here and there,

there's already a great many more tombs to find.

(PANTS) Ah! It's extraordinary to get out into the fresh air again.

You know...down there, what we saw was so stunning,

and up here, there must be -

I don't know - the possibility of 50, 60,

100 more shafts just like that one.

Now, if we found that down there,

imagine what people might find at some time in the future.

Sorry, I'm so out of breath!

Looks pretty good in the morning light, doesn't it?

Dr Martin Bommas and his team are on the hunt for new tombs...

..and while I've been away, there's been some progress.

Archaeology student Dominika Czop

is busy revealing a whole new structure.

Dominika! Ooh! Hello.

Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you.

But this is looking really promising, isn't it? Yes. Yes.

What do you think it is? It's a tomb. A tomb!

Yes. Yay! We've got a tomb. This is what we came here to find.

I know. It's a very little tomb, or at least it looks it from here.

Oh, it's not the entrance to it. There is an entrance there.

That does look more like something

you'd see in a movie if you were looking for a tomb.

Wow! So, why aren't you ploughing ahead with this straightaway?

We're very keen to. However, we have to first assess how big it is.

So, with a bit of patience,

our city of the dead is going to have a new tomb.

What's more, there appears to be more than one.

And if I look behind me, I can see some little blocks here.

Yes, and right behind you.

Just here? This is another one? Yes. Yes.

Wow. So, there's a whole load of them here.

It looks like there might be streets of them going...

And do you think they would go right up the hill? Yeah, yeah.

But to properly reveal even one of them,

there's a heck of a lot of sand to be shifted.

So, before I get roped in to any serious work,

I thought you and I could take a little trip down the Nile.

Hi, Mohammed. How are you?

Thank you very much. You're welcome.

If Martin does find a mummy,

the question, of course, is going to be whose was it,

and what did they do before they ended up on the hillside?

Well, I'm told there are some clues which might answer that

just on the far end of that island.

4,000 years ago, just like today,

the vast majority of Egyptians lived very close to the Nile.

And you don't get much closer than Elephantine Island,

where the people buried at the city of the dead once lived.

For centuries, the town here at Elephantine Island

was the hub of southern Egypt.

It was so well protected, with the Nile on all sides.

This was a street with a lot of houses along here,

and houses on this side too.

Some of these buildings have been reconstructed in recent years...

..but there's one that definitely hasn't...

This is like going into the back room of a really big museum. Ooh!

..and in theory, it should be the grandest building in town.

This, believe it or not, is the governor's palace -

the place where the elite of Elephantine Island lived.

And when they died, there'd have been a funeral procession starting here,

and then they would have gone down to the Nile,

sailed all the way round,

and then been buried in their beautifully carved tombs.

But what really gets me is this wall. Look at it.

Frankly, it's rubbish, isn't it? It's mud brick.

It's dotted with little chips and bits of shell.

They appear to have spent far more money

on what happened when they were dead than when they were alive,

which I suppose does make sense in a strange kind of way.

After all, you are a long time dead.

On the other side of the river at the city of the dead,

the governors of Elephantine picked the very best spots for their tombs

and built grand causeways to access them from the river.

But at the top of his newly discovered causeway,

Martin hasn't found a tomb...

..but a mysterious stone wall.

What we have here now is perhaps the end of the causeway,

so we want to find out more by digging deeper with the trowel.

The end of the causeway should point the way to a large tomb,

but excavating anything this old on such a steep slope

is a dangerous operation.

We cannot go too far, so the whole thing doesn't crumble.

Arrgh! MAN: (BLEEP)! The whole thing's moving!

The whole thing's moving. Yeah.

I really suggest you get out of the path of that.

Sand is coming out from behind. OK.

One of the giant blocks holding up the wall

has shifted a good six inches.

The rest of the wall hasn't budged yet,

but there's a real risk it could collapse.

We cannot go any further.

The tombs must be behind the retention wall.

We have to think very carefully whether, next year or so,

we will remove the wall in order to follow the causeway.

But not this year.

Otherwise, we risk the lives of our workmen.

The hunt for tombs is rarely straightforward,

and here in particular, there are risks and dangers.

But luckily, Martin and the team

have already found at least one new tomb.

So, a few days later,

I'm returning to the lower part of the causeway

to check on progress.

Martin! Oh, hello, Tony.

This has come on fantastically, hasn't it?

Yeah. What a lot of work you've put in.

You can really see that it is a proper road now, can't you? Yes, exactly.

It's three metres wide and 92 metres long.

And, of course,

where there are causeways, there are tombs.

How's that panned out? Well, just look behind you.

Hey-hey! It looks very different, right?

That's come on too, hasn't it?

Goodness! That really is an entrance, isn't it?

Yes, it is. That's great.

So, what's this bit here?

Well, we believe this is the offering niche.

Sorry, 'offering niche' is not a phrase I've ever heard before!

Well, a tomb in ancient Egypt needs to have two things

in order to be operational - a burial chamber

and a place where the living can donate offerings to the deceased.

And that's that thing here? Exactly.

Have you got any idea yet how old this tomb is?

Oh, we were so lucky, Tony.

The offering niche I was just talking about -

we found an intact pot

that people left there for the deceased, untouched.

Oh, result! Perfect dating evidence. Exactly. The pot dates to 2430 BC.

We can date it rather precisely.

So, that is round about 4,500 years old.

It's also the oldest tomb that we have found so far.

It's almost a little bit older

than the pyramids in Giza, so it's the pyramid age.

Oh, wow. Just the beginning of it. Really, really old.

So, what happens here now, at the big-money end?

Well, actually, we are looking for someone

who is going to volunteer to go down that shaft

and look into the burial chamber.

So, this is the same kind of age as the pyramid at Giza.

It is indeed. And I'm going in it.

Yes, if you want to! That's so cool.

4,000 years ago,

this hillside of rock and sand overlooking the River Nile

was the most important burial ground in southern Egypt.

In the past fortnight,

it's been the focus of attention once again.

Dr Bommas and his team

are in the last week of their dig season.

They've already discovered a tomb

which has lain hidden for thousands of years.

It may be the oldest tomb found so far in the city of the dead.

And Martin has invited me to be the first person to go inside.

But as soon as I arrive on site...

(SPEAKS ARABIC)

..it's clear things aren't going to plan.

(BOTH CONVERSE IN ARABIC)

Martin! Hey, Tony.

Do we have a problem? Um, I don't know as yet.

There seems to be a hole,

and through this hole, sand trickles in.

How did it appear?

Did it just slump in? Yeah, it just slumped in.

There must be some void underneath here.

There might be another tomb,

or it's part of the tomb we are currently working on.

It's so difficult - excavating in sand.

If we were in English clay,

everything would stay where it was for 24 hours.

Exactly. Here, you dig something, five minutes later, it's just gone.

Yes, it seems that there's something underneath

that sucks all the sand into one place,

which we have to assess first.

Perhaps the entire area is too weak.

Events like this show just how unpredictable and dangerous

Egyptian archaeology can be.

But while Martin decides if it's safe to enter,

I'm going to see a remarkable discovery

made by the dig team...

..the beautifully preserved pot

left as an offering for our tomb's owner.

It's now being examined by pottery expert Dr Eman Khalifa.

It is actually the sort of find that archaeologists dream of, isn't it? DR KHALIFA: It is.

We don't come across complete pots here very easily.

It's in situ, which means that it was exactly where they left it.

What's so special about it is the way it was manufactured.

The top part is wheel-thrown,

and you can see the marks and the lines of the wheel,

but the bottom part is made by hand,

and you can see the fingers of the potter who modelled it.

Can I touch it? Yes, please. I've got my gloves on. Thanks.

So, what does that tell you about the dating of it?

It tells us that this was actually made

at a certain period when they were using two techniques.

So, what is the date that you're pretty confident of?

4,430 years.

4,430 years.

That is massively old, isn't it? Yeah.

Look at this.

Over the years, I must have held up hundreds of pots towards the camera,

but I don't think I've ever held one

that has been such clear dating evidence from so long ago.

I'll give it back before I squeeze it too hard.

(LAUGHS) Oh, please don't!

500 feet away,

the mysterious landslip has stabilised,

and Martin has agreed to let me be the first person

to look inside our tomb.

I don't think Howard Carter had to cope with all this rubbish!

I'm ready, Martin!

Hi, Tony. Hi.

Just turn everything on.

You look very prepared, so let's get inside. You first.

It's...it's very steep and it feels quite precarious.

There is something rather eerie about going in to a 4,000-year-old tomb. That's true.

This may be the last time you'll ever see me. Take care.

Be sure that you only do what you're really comfortable with. Sure. Sure.

Alright? Yeah.

(GROANS)

Well, the first thing that I can see

is that the ground itself at the bottom of the slope

appears to be hard rock,

and the actual tomb is hacked out of that.

So, it's not mud brick or anything.

Hold on. Um...

To my left, there's a niche, a little recess.

Well, that's good news. That's what we would expect.

A space like this would have stored pots,

plates and food offerings to help our owner reach the afterlife.

Is there anything left there?

No. Were you hoping it would be full of something?

It might be the case that someone's been in there,

but it doesn't mean that they went any further.

Alright. Well, I'll go on a bit now.

Can you tell me whether you're facing a corridor right now? I am.

And does it go left or right?

That's important for me to know. Well, it certainly doesn't go right.

It's curving round to the left, but...there's a load of sand here.

(GROANS) Yeah, there's definitely a tunnel to the left,

but it's...it's completely blocked off.

Perhaps the sand comes from the hole that emerged today morning.

Well, I'm no sand expert, but some of it does seem quite fresh,

I must admit.

I can't really go any further than this.

Well, then don't. You know, you have to be safe. Yeah.

Because if it is indeed connected with the hole,

then even more sand would come down on you.

Yeah.

But, you see, the left turn would have led us to the burial chamber.

So, the burial chamber's there,

but we just can't get at it right now?

Yes, I'm afraid so.

Hey! In the sand, I've got a bone!

Just above it, there's some pottery.

Oh, good.

And just below it,

there is not only some pottery, but I've got a bead!

Yay! I've got two beads! Oh, that's great, Tony.

I'll come and join you. OK. Just hang on.

(GROANS)

Oh, it's nicely cool down here. It is.

Alright. Come over here.

There's the bone. Yeah, I'll show you the bone. Here we go.

Seems to be the end of a pelvis.

Now...

And what about the beads you were promising? OK, ready?

One...

..two.

Oh, look at that! Look at that.

There we are. Wonderful!

Like little eggs, aren't they? Yeah. Two round faience beads.

What does 'faience' mean?

Faience was a certain type of quartzite-made jewellery

glazed with cover that turns blue.

The colour Egyptian blue comes from that.

And you reckon it would have been a necklace?

Yes. Absolutely, yes.

It must have been a necklace. These are expensive.

And what a privilege it is

to hold something so personal to our tomb's owner.

Well, this clearly hasn't got all the shiny pillars and statues

associated with the tomb of a governor,

but there's a lot of work here, isn't there?

Well, you know, he was probably the second man in line.

He had access to a fantastic burial site,

had engineers excavating out of the standing rock.

This may not be the grandest tomb at the city of the dead,

but it might be one of the oldest.

It could mark the moment, almost 4,500 years ago,

when this important burial ground

was established on Egypt's southern border.

Given what we've found here, what might you expect to find

when you eventually do manage to shift all that sand?

Well, we probably have two metres of work here,

and then we might face a burial chamber

that includes a sarcophagus -

a wooden sarcophagus, hopefully, or perhaps two sarcophagi.

We still have to solve the question

of whether these beads belong to a man or a woman.

Or a man AND a woman being buried here. Oh, I see.

But unfortunately,

that work will have to wait until Martin's next digging season.

Thanks. Right, here we go. One, two, three, yay! Up we go.

Well done. You can see these in the clear light of day.

Ah, wonderful. Look at those.

Oh, beautiful. Yes.

Great find. Well, thanks for all that.

We now know where the tomb chamber is.

We got our lovely find.

To be continued. Hopefully see you next year.

(LAUGHS) See you. See you, mate.

Bye, Tony. Thanks for coming.

For me, the fascination of Egypt lies in its unending mysteries.

We're still looking for a pharaoh's missing pyramid...

..we're just beginning to know the thousands

who built Ancient Egypt,

and tombs we've known for a century are still throwing up surprises.

It's the blood of the mummy!

But what really strikes me

is the sheer scale of what's still left to be found.

Aswan's city of the dead certainly hasn't given up all of its tombs.

Not by a long chalk.

And for archaeologists like Martin, it's a real privilege

and just plain exciting to be uncovering new tombs,

unveiling new secrets,

and adding just a small chapter to the story of this incredible land.

Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2019