Original subtitles

- [Narrator] Cairo.

A city of faith and ancient stone.

And at its heart a museum filled

with secrets dark and strange.

Tales of golden treasures.

Shadowy crypts.

Unexplained murder.

And the quest for eternal life.

Secrets hidden in plain sight

inside the Egyptian Museum.

(suspenseful music)

Egypt.

Here the towering monuments of the pharaohs stand silent

amid the roar of a modern city.

Cairo is the largest metropolis in Africa,

home to more than 20 million people.

But at it's center is a refuge from urban chaos.

This is the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.

The treasure chest of an ancient civilization.

And one of the most spectacular museums in the world.

Visitors flock here by the millions

to gaze into the eyes of long-dead pharaohs,

and marvel at their dazzling sarcophagi of silver and gold.

This wooden sarcophagus looks dull and plain by comparison.

You might think it was made for a commoner.

But you can't always tell a coffin by it's cover.

- This coffin, it has the cartouche of Ramesses II.

And the two cartouches are the given name

of Ramesses II and the throne name.

Ramesses II was the great pharaoh of ancient Egypt.

As a family man he married eight wives.

And he had 100 children.

As a military man he was a great man.

- [Narrator] Why would such a great man

choose a coffin made of wood?

You might suspect he was frugal or modest.

In fact, he was anything but.

Ramesses the Great built grand structures all over Egypt

on an unprecedented scale.

Here at Thebes he spared no expense on his Ramesseum,

a temple dedicated to his own greatness.

It seems strange for such an egotistical pharaoh

to be buried in a simple casket.

- This just cannot be the coffin

of a great builder like Ramesses II.

And instead of him building temples everywhere

the first thing that he will care for,

building his tomb and his coffin and his burial chamber.

And that's why I don't think

that this great king Ramesses II

could really leave to us a coffin like this.

If you go to the Valley of the Kings

and you look at his tomb,

I really believe this mystery is hidden

in the Valley of the Kings.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] In this sun-baked valley 650 kilometers

south of the Egyptian Museum,

we hope to uncover the mystery

with the help of Egyptologist Nigel Strudwick.

- The Valley of the Kings is probably the most

famous archeological site in the world.

It's probably after the Great Pyramid and the Cairo Museum

the most visited destination in the whole of Egypt.

Because it has this magic,

this wonderful atmosphere.

If you could imagine, could see an x-ray

of the whole Valley of the Kings,

it is honeycombed with passages and chambers everywhere.

Where we're gonna go now is to one of

the biggest of all of them.

It's the tomb of Ramesses II.

This tomb is probably about the biggest

or the second biggest in the valley.

Probably after that his father, Seti I,

and it goes into the rock no less than 180 meters.

- [Narrator] Historians believe that after Ramesses' death,

his mummy was placed in this underground chamber

surrounded by a treasure of gold and precious objects.

But when European archeologists

entered the tomb in 1817, it was empty.

- So we've got now to think about

why was he not found in it.

Some people say was the tomb damaged by flooding?

(thunder booming)

So it's possible that the tomb was flooded

and they may have had to move the king out,

but I somehow I don't believe it.

I'm sure in the New Kingdom they made

some sort of precaution to try and prevent these floods.

So what other possibilities we've got?

A really good possibility is tomb robbery.

- [Narrator] Not long after Ramesses death,

thieves plundered the tombs of several lesser pharaohs,

stealing treasure and desecrating crypts.

Many historians believe that the high priests of Thebes

responded by evacuating all royal mummies from the valley,

including Ramesses the Great.

To thwart tomb raiders they were moved

to a secret location.

The final resting place of the royal mummies

would remain a mystery for 3,000 years.

In the mid 19th century some archeologists

began to suspect the mummies might be hidden here,

not far from the Valley of the Kings,

in the cliffs surrounding Dayr al-Bahri.

- There's no water.

We're about 70 meters or so above the ground level here.

It's hot, it's June.

I was guessing we're in sort of 50 degrees Centigrade,

something like that.

And it's only sort of, you know,

mad people and archeologists who like

wandering around up here.

There is a lot of evidence that the ancient

Theban priests were coming up here

looking for places to bury people.

To make hidden tombs where they could hide

various important burials for eternity.

- [Narrator] Dayr al-Bahri continued to guard its secret,

until one day a local herder watched one of his goats

disappear into a hole in the ground.

He followed it down a vertical shaft

to discover much more than a wounded animal.

Word of an amazing find reached

German egyptologist Emil Brugsch.

Nigel intends to retrace his journey.

- It's absolutely a sheer funnel of rock

going down to the bottom,

and this shaft is something about 15 meters,

50 plus feet deep.

The royal mummies have always been

a fantastic fascination for me.

To get to see where they came from

is just to me, amazing.

(hammer clanging)

- [Narrator] At the bottom of the shaft is an obstacle,

but not an ancient one.

This wall was built recently

to thwart 21st century tomb robbers.

We are now only steps away

from the find that rocked the world of Egyptology.

- Now at this point, Brugsch and Kamal,

they'd already been in that entrance corridor there,

they'd already found a load of coffins lying there,

various old bits and pieces.

They turned this corner to where I am now,

and then as far as they could see down this corridor

there would have been more and more mummies.

(dramatic music)

And they were stopping and looking at the names

on the coffins and seeing royal cartouches

and all sorts of other things.

Yet they turned out to be the bodies

of the great pharaohs of Egypt.

- [Narrator] The discovery of what became known

as the Royal Cache was an international sensation.

It marked the first time Egyptologists

had discovered a royal mummy.

And here, incredibly, were 50 kings and queens.

- [Nigel] There's a small niche on the left,

just in front of me,

that contained loads of mummies

of the kings of the New Kingdom.

But particularly also the famous mummy of Ramesses II.

- [Narrator] The royal mummies were arranged haphazardly,

suggesting they were transported here in haste

to avoid drawing the attention of tomb raiders.

- Their burials consisted of their body and a coffin.

And the coffin may not even have been theirs originally.

It might have just been reused from somebody else's.

Just throw the king in it and get it in here.

It was done very, very hurriedly.

- [Narrator] There is evidence that Ramesses coffin

went on more than one hurried journey.

These inscriptions list several locations

with a final entry for the high place.

And perhaps that's why this great pharaoh was found

in a wooden coffin and not a gold sarcophagus.

His bearers required a coffin sturdy enough

to survive several moves,

yet light enough to haul up these steep cliffs

and down into this dark shaft.

And as for Ramesses' empty tomb in the Valley of the Kings,

the treasures that may have once surrounded him

have never been found.

Or perhaps we should say not yet.

Coming up next,

the secret of a mighty pharaoh's violent death.

(dramatic music)

At Cairo's Egyptian Museum, the secrets

of the pharaohs are etched in stone.

And sometimes in human flesh.

- This is the Royal Mummy Room.

This is one of the most popular rooms

in the Egyptian Museum.

It's constantly full of people

and general they try to keep a certain level of respect.

(mysterious music)

One of the great things about Egyptology

that you can walk into a room like this,

having read the great exploits or read the history books

and actually see the faces of these pharaohs.

- [Narrator] If you observe their faces closely

you may notice that one of these mummies

is not like the others.

- So many of these great pharaohs that we can look at today

are great warriors.

But none of them at all show any signs

of scratches and cuts that could be

attributed to war wounds.

- [Narrator] King Seqenenre Tao II was not so lucky.

- No one knows for sure how Seqenenre died.

But one thing that is sure is that he lived

in violent times, a period of great warfare

between Hyksos in the north and the Thebans in the south.

- [Narrator] The Hyksos were an Asiatic tribe

that swept into Egypt and settled around the Nile Delta.

Around 1560 B.C. tensions between the Hyksos

and the Egyptians erupted into war.

And King Seqenenre died violently.

- So there are no wounds whatsoever

upon the body of Seqenenre,

apart from these very obvious ones of the head.

Very clearly at the top here

you have a very long upper frontal wound

that has clearly smashed the skull.

Below that we have a further wound

caused by apparently another ax.

You can see that the center of the face here

is quite depressed.

The right eye socket has completely been destroyed.

And this appears to have been inflicted

by either a mace or perhaps the handle

of one of the axes that formed

one of the other wounds to the head.

- [Narrator] We know this king was brutally killed,

but the unresolved question is how?

With the help of combat expert Rob Mason

and some exact replicas of Hyksos weaponry,

Gary Shaw will explore three possible scenarios.

Theory number one, Seqenenre died a warriors death

fighting bravely on the battlefield with his troops.

- So in theory, Seqenenre was standing on a chariot

and the first blow came to the left hand side of his face.

(weapon thudding)

- Well, I can certainly hit him there,

but it's a very uncomfortable position.

- The actual way you're wielding the weapon,

the way that you're having to stretch

you arm. - Very difficult, yeah.

- You wouldn't think that would be the best position

to actually attack someone from.

So by this point, Seqenenre would certainly be on the floor.

He's been hit twice, he's fallen off his chariot,

he's lying on his back.

(weapons thudding)

So that certainly would have penetrated the brain.

I think it's a little overdramatic.

I can't really see this being how it happened.

The first thing you would do

if you were actually under attack

is try to defend yourself, if it was like the last moment.

There's nothing on the arms here.

In fact, there are no wounds whatsoever to the body

apart from to the head.

- [Narrator] Theory number two, Seqenenre was nowhere

near the battlefield, and was assassinated

while sleeping in his palace.

- We don't know how many assailants attacked him,

we don't know the order of blows,

so it's completely up to you

how you want to go about doing this.

Well, that would have killed him.

(weapons thudding)

- Well, I'd have to say he's thoroughly dead again.

- But it's just such a violent attack on his head.

When it's unnecessary, it just seems overkill.

You only need one person with one of these weapons.

You don't need multiple people.

You could have just smacked him with the mace,

straight over the side of the head.

- He'd be dead.

- [Gary] He would be dead immediately.

(weapons thudding)

- [Narrator] But if he wasn't assassinated,

or slain in battle,

how did Seqenenre die?

We need a third theory.

One that not only explains the multiple head wounds,

but also the lack of defensive injuries.

- So our third hypothesis is yours.

- That's right, we've created a scenario in which

the king was captured.

And so there's gonna be a spectacle.

The Hyksos commander is gonna show off.

Show his dominance in power over the Egyptians.

He's gonna do this, first of all in my opinion,

with a blow above the right eye, here.

That's great, this wound really does match

what we see on the body of Seqenenre,

it's really quite perfect.

We can imagine that this probably didn't kill him,

but it certainly would have knocked him back.

The Hyksos king certainly hadn't finished his work yet.

He was going to dispatch him to the afterlife

in front of his troops.

Okay, that's great.

So again, these two wounds now

match up with the mummy really well.

They are actually quite perfect.

These are the two wounds that were certainly inflicted

by this type of Asiatic weapon

that the Hyksos king might have used.

This is the point where I see him making

a coup de gras, the blunt blow

to the right side of the face

that destroyed the right eye and the nose.

Yet again you've done a fantastic job.

- I'd have to say it is a very effective use

of the butt of a weapon like this,

so that is perfectly plausible

to just smack him in the face with it.

- And you can see, it's very consistent

with the mummy, the right eye socket has been

completely demolished, the nose is damaged,

just as we see on the actual body

of Seqenenre. - Absolutely.

- [Narrator] Defeated in battle, forced onto his knees,

and brutally executed.

The best evidence suggests that's what happened.

And the facial wounds tell us something else.

At the moment of death, Seqenenre did not look away.

Perhaps that's why even though he lost in battle

he became known as Seqenenre the Brave.

His son, perhaps inspired by his example,

would one day vanquish the Hyksos forever.

Next, a lost city, and the secret of a pharaoh's gold.

(suspenseful music)

The Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Millions flock here to discover the secrets

of an ancient civilization.

But let's face it, some come for the gold.

The gleam of King Tut's gold sarcophagus

whispers of untold wealth and power.

Visitors to his treasure room can't get enough.

Many come here without realizing

that just down the hall is another room

they won't want to miss.

These are the treasures of a lesser known pharaoh.

King Psusennes.

His gold harbors a museum secret.

The secret of how he got it.

For while King Tut's empire was rich,

Psusennes ruled during a period of economic collapse.

So, where did his gold come from?

We hope to unearth the secret here,

amidst the ruins of Tanis, the city where Psusennes ruled.

And if the name Tanis rings a bell,

there's a reason for that.

Tanis briefly entered the popular imagination

in 1981 as the place where Indiana Jones

fights the Nazis in "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

- Nazis have discovered Tanis.

- [Maj. Eaton] Just what does that mean to you, uh, Tanis?

- Well, its-- - The city of Tanis

is one of the possible resting places of the lost ark.

- The lost ark?

- [Narrator] As it turns out, Indiana had it wrong.

No real egyptologist believes

the Ark of the Covenant is here.

And Tanis was not discovered by the Germans,

but by French archeologists who'd been

digging here since the 1860s.

Dr. Phillipe Brousseau has been team leader

of the French dig at Tanis for over 30 years.

He's hoping to make a discovery

to rival that of his predecessor, Dr. Pierre Montet.

- [Narrator] When he ventured into the darkness,

Montet encountered a web of deceit and misdirection.

- [Narrator] This discovery now resides

in the Egyptian Museum.

A dazzling coffin of the finest silver.

But when Montet opened it,

he found the remains of a lesser king.

So where was the mummy of Psusennes?

Inscriptions identified this chamber as his tomb.

But as Montet would soon discover,

there was another secret chamber.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] A treasure of gold now on display

in the Egyptian Museum.

Which brings us back to our question.

How did King Psusennes amass so much gold

during a period of economic collapse?

A clue to this riddle was discovered in a secret chamber.

- [Narrator] Psusennes' name is inscribed on the coffin.

But a portion of the stone has been scraped away.

Analysis reveals this was originally

the coffin of an earlier pharaoh,

Merneptah, son of Ramesses the Great.

- [Narrator] The name Merneptah is also visible

on items of Psusennes' gold.

Evidence that his treasure was taken

from the tombs of earlier, richer kings.

So perhaps Psusennes was not only a great pharaoh,

but the greatest tomb raider of all time.

(suspenseful music)

Today, Brousseau continues to dig in the ruins of Tanis,

patiently sifting through the sands of time.

His excavations have unearthed buried buildings

and passageways, but he has yet to find

what he's looking for.

The lost tomb of Psusennes' queen.

- [Narrator] Next, we discover that mummies

come in two varieties;

human, and not.

(suspenseful music)

In the Egyptian Museum, every mummy has a story to tell.

And when a coffin is opened and wrappings are unwound,

we marvel at the Egyptians astounding ability

to preserve human remains.

But not all mummies began their existence

as human beings.

In fact, millions of animals;

birds, dogs, baboons, and falcons

were mummified in ancient Egypt.

- Animal mummies were very common in ancient Egypt,

and they progressively over time

became increasingly more common.

It probably started out quite gently with pet mummies,

because people who loved their pets

wanted their pets with them in the afterlife.

And so you wind up saying, okay when I die,

or after I die, bury my pet with me.

And of course, the pet has to be mummified

in the same way as the person does.

And so we have these pet mummies being made,

and they were often made in

as fine a way as the human beings,

and sometimes even more care and attention

was lavished upon them.

And what's extraordinary is the amount of fur

that is still visible on them.

Because, especially with the dog,

with his tail that curls up,

it looks as if he's about to open up his eyes

and start wagging and barking.

So he is really a very lively looking creature.

And the quality of mummification is superb.

- [Narrator] The ancient Egyptians loved their pets.

So it isn't surprising that a pharaoh

might take a four-legged companion into the afterlife.

But pets represent only a small fraction

of all mummified animals.

Millions of wild creatures were mummified

for another more powerful purposes.

The valley of Saqqara is home to Egypt's oldest pyramids,

and a colossal underground animal necropolis.

Ashraf Mohedan of the Supreme Council of Antiquities

has been entrusted with the key to the sacred tombs.

- Over there, you can see the entrance of the temple.

It was built in front of baboons galleries.

But there's a new wall was built over there

to protect from robbers.

We have to seal the entrance by some seals,

and we have to build a wall like this

to be hard for robbers to break,

to go inside there.

So we are going to remove these blocks

and to break the seals to go together

to see the galleries.

And to see some skeletons, mummies of baboons.

(door creaking)

- [Narrator] This dark passageway is the beginning

of a maze of tunnels that stretches for miles

beneath the desert sand.

The crumbling corridors are lined with crypts,

and lead to countless burial chambers.

- We have here a burial of a baboon.

Baboon is a sacred animal

because he representing the god Jhoti.

We have a piece of wood here, it was for the coffin.

So the mummy was placed in the coffin

and the coffin was placed inside the sarcophagus there.

You can see the mummy it was wrapped with linen

and you can see the bones of the baboon over there.

So we found lots of skeletons here,

lots of mummies of baboons, okay.

Can you believe all these numbers of baboons

were in Egypt, of course not.

- [Narrator] Hunters traveled throughout Africa

to bring back species that represented Egyptian gods.

Animal importation and mummification

became a big business, with profits going to the priests.

Millions of creatures were slaughtered

so that pious Egyptians could make

sacred offerings to the gods.

- We are inside a sacred place.

We are inside the falcon galleries.

We have millions of pottery jars

and loads of mummies of falcons.

And each one has a mummy of a falcon like this.

The falcon was wrapped with linen,

and you see the mummy of a falcon.

But you believe it, six millions

of mummified falcons found here in this place.

- [Narrator] The numbers suggest that animal mummies

were not just for the rich.

In fact, Egyptians of all social classes

purchased animal mummies as offerings,

much as today Catholics purchase votive candles.

Believers would choose an animal corresponding

to their personal god,

and pay a priest to mummify it.

A process thought to give the animal eternal life,

and thus curry favor with the divine.

- It was very important for everybody

to make a mummy for his god.

But I cannot believe we have all these numbers

of real falcons, because it's not easy to get the falcon.

Sometimes you can see linen

and nothing inside there.

Just an empty linen there,

it's just to wrap it as the shape of a bird,

or an animal, to deceive the people, that's it.

(exotic music)

- [Narrator] In markets everywhere, including here in Egypt,

what you are sold is not always what you get.

And even when the object is holy

and the salesman is a priest, buyer beware.

- Studying mummies, I found sort of a sub-category of mummy

which is ancient fakes.

And we found those by x-rays as well as sometimes

by unwrapping mummies.

And what happens is there's a bundle

that looks absolutely beautiful,

or sometimes it's falling apart,

but inside instead of actually containing an animal,

it holds either a few feathers or a bit of fur

that has been wrapped up

and that looks like the animal it's supposed to be.

For example, falcons and raptors of all sorts

are relatively rare while ibises are more common.

So instead of having a whole raptor

you'd say, ah, I can only make one with this.

But if I divide it into several

and wrap them all up and make them look like real mummies,

or even better than real mummies, they will do.

Because a part can symbolize the whole,

or also you can say that they were just being cheap.

(exotic music)

- [Narrator] To make the real thing required

a trip to the market to purchase an expensive animal,

followed by labor intensive rituals

that might take up to 70 days.

- So it's really no wonder that corners were cut

and fakes were made.

So you could take a piece of stone

or just a random bone and wrap it up.

Put a large piece of cloth around it,

here you have your fake mummy bundle.

And then you can tie it up.

And then depending on what it was,

you could maybe even put a more elaborate exterior on it,

which is in fact quicker to make than a real mummy.

And you have got thousands and thousands

of quick, easily made mummies.

Even the Egyptian Museum, I have x-rayed

all the mummies there, and we have

a substantial percentage of fake mummies.

- [Narrator] Fake or real, the existence of millions

of animal mummies reveals the ancient Egyptian

obsession with death.

And a fervent belief that offerings to the gods

are the path to eternal life.

Coming up next, the secret power of the pyramids.

(suspenseful music)

The Egyptian Museum harbors many secrets of the pharaohs,

but one secret is too big

to be confined within these walls.

It is the secret of the pyramids.

Monuments constructed with the sweat

and toil of ancient Egyptians.

And in our time, restored by their descendants.

The great pharaohs chose these structures

as tombs for their mummified remains.

The question is, why?

To uncover this secret we must start at the beginning,

of everything.

The ancient Egyptians believed the world was created

out of a massive sea of bubbling water called Nu.

Out of this water emerged a hill,

or pyramid shaped mound called the Benben,

which rose out of the ocean to greet the sun god Ra.

Pharaohs reenacted this moment of creation

whenever they built their own pyramids.

But why did they locate their burial chambers inside?

We hope to discover a clue here,

at the pyramid of Amenemhat III

with the help of Egyptologist Ramadan Hussein.

- His pyramid in antiquities used be to called

Amenemhat is mighty, but the fact is

we know it Egyptology right now as the Black Pyramid.

And this name came from the fact that

the core of the pyramid was made entirely of mud brick.

- [Narrator] Amenemhat made the mistake of building with mud

too close to an underground spring.

When seepage caused his pyramid to tilt

something important fell from the top

into the sand below.

The pyramid's capstone,

one of the rarest artifacts in the world,

is now on display in the Egyptian Museum.

- It's made of dark gray granite

with inscriptions on the four sides.

The inscriptions here make clear connection

between the sun and the pyramidion.

And what it talks about is opening the face,

and opening the face is a metaphor

of clearing the vision of somebody.

So clearing the vision of the King

of Upper and Lower Egypt so that he may see

the lord of the horizon, being the sun god,

while he crosses heaven so that he, being the sun,

may cause that, the sun of Ra, Amenemhat appears

as a divine, as a god.

- [Narrator] This inscription once sat atop a pyramid,

which suggest the pyramid itself

plays a part in the divine transformation.

But why does a pharaoh need a pyramid to become a god?

Perhaps this crumbling pyramid can tell us,

if we see it as it looked 4,000 years ago

clad with a layer of smooth stone.

- So when this pyramid finished construction

what you would see is this triangle-shaped structure

that is cased with bright fine white limestone.

The rays of the sun falls on top of it

and reflects back to the universe.

- [Narrator] For the ancient Egyptians, the pyramid was

a kind of solar powered resurrection machine.

Riding on reflected sunbeams,

a pharaoh's spirit would rise straight up

into the celestial realm

to take his place as a god among gods.

- It is the domain of the sun god himself.

The people believed that their king

lives there as a sun god.

So what you seeing here is a mutual relationship

between the people and their king.

They're participating in creating a domain

for the next sun god, and in return

this sun god will constantly repeat creation.

And what they're gaining here

is fertility and continuity for their life.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Coming up next, why is this pharaoh

the biggest and the smallest of them all?

(suspenseful music)

The halls of the Egyptian Museum are filled

with giant statues, intended to convey

the giant stature of the pharaohs.

These were men with huge ambitions and egos to match.

None more so than King Khufu.

A man who thought big and built even bigger.

- The Great Pyramid of Khufu is the largest

pyramid in Egypt.

We have all the evidence that Khufu built this pyramid.

When the Arabs came to in Egypt in the 9th century A.D.

they said that man fear time,

and time fears pyramid.

People thought that the Great Pyramid was immortal,

it cannot be killed.

It's stay all the time to show

the power of Khufu.

- [Narrator] This pyramid reigned as the world's

tallest structure for 4,000 years.

Khufu built it to trumpet his glory.

And so it's surprising that the pharaoh

with the biggest pyramid

has the smallest statue.

- This is the only statuette of this great king.

It's about seven centimeter and a half long,

it's made of ivory, it shows the king seated

with the crown of Lower Egypt.

- [Narrator] This is the only depiction of Khufu ever found.

He appears gentle and kind.

And that's surprising, considering his reputation.

(dramatic music)

When the ancient Greeks came to Egypt

they heard stories about Khufu the tyrant,

a man who worked thousands of slaves to death

building his great monument.

Over the centuries the tyrant label stuck.

So which is true?

The stories passed the down to us

or the impression the statue conveys?

- The face and the art is not the art

of this powerful dynasty, Dynasty IV.

If you go and you look at the statue of his son, Khafre,

you see the powerful king with a powerful face.

It's not the same like this king?

I really believe with this evidence

that this statuette is actually dated to Dynasty XXVI,

which is 500 B.C.

- [Narrator] If Hawass is right, the statue was carved

2,000 years after the death of Khufu.

So while rare and ancient,

this tiny relic isn't a reliable depiction.

The search for the real Khufu continues.

And Hawass thinks he knows where to look.

He has spent years searching the interior

of Khufu's great pyramid for a hidden burial chamber.

Hawass believes such a crypt may contain

a statue of Khufu.

Or perhaps even his long lost mummy.

- This chamber contained the mystery of the pyramid.

These tunnels, this one, and this one,

could be actually the tunnels

of the mystery of Khufu.

- [Narrator] In 2002, during a live television event

broadcast around the globe,

Hawass directed his team to send robots

into these shafts.

Deep inside the pyramid's core they discovered

a concrete block affixed with two copper handles.

- The tomb, to be discovered in front of my eyes,

live in front of the whole world was amazing.

- [Narrator] Hawass has plans to open this mysterious door

using a more powerful robot

capable of prying the stone loose

to reveal what lies beyond.

- To discover anything inside the Great Pyramid, it's big.

The discovery of what is hidden behind these doors

will be big for everyone.

The public, because the public are fascinated

with the Great Pyramid, and Egyptology.

It will rewrite another page

in the history of Khufu and his pyramid.

- [Narrator] Who knows what treasures are still waiting

to be found within these walls,

and what they might reveal about the true nature of Khufu.

History's most infamous tyrant

or perhaps Egypt's greatest king.

(suspenseful music)

Every mummy, every statue, every treasure

in the Egyptian Museum conceals a mystery.

That's what draws people here.

For every secret we reveal, far more remain unspoken.

Because even a vast museum can only contain

a tiny fraction of the history

of a proud and ancient civilization.

In the land of the pharaohs

the secrets are still out there.