The Rise of the Black Pharaohs (2014) - full transcript

Ancient egypt.

Land of great pyramids...

stunning artwork...

commanding pharaohs...

and powerful empires.

Egypt, above all
ancient civilizations,

has captured our fancy

with its spectacular iconography
and cultural charisma.

But even as
the ancient egyptians

proclaimed their power
to the world,

they buried a shocking secret
about their reign.



They erased from history

the story of a subordinate
kingdom from the south

that rose up...

overthrew their masters...

and ruled as pharaohs
of egypt themselves.

These conquerors
were the kushites--

a civilization of builders,
gold workers, and warriors

from what is now sudan.

The fact that kush
was able to conquer egypt,

it's really
a david and goliath story.

Yet today, kushites
have been all but forgotten.

Why?

Because of the color
of their skin.

These were
dark-skinned africans,



vilified by
the ancient egyptians

and slandered as savages
by colonial-era archaeologists.

They show them as people
tied and bound

on the bottom
of the king's shoes.

So it really was a kind
of a racial profiling.

Now,
after centuries of derision,

the incredible story
of the kushite uprising

is finally coming to light.

More enlightened archaeologists

are digging their history
from the sand...

and the sky.

How does it look?
Still intact?

It's actually
kind of scary.

Don't drag that rope!

Science is revealing
the inside story

of the black pharaohs
who brought egypt to its knees.

This program
was made possible in part

by contributions
to your pbs station

from viewers like you.

Thank you.

This is the royal kush
cemetery of el kurru

in northern sudan.

The kush answer to egypt's
valley of the kings.

Many rulers of kush
were buried here,

making it one of the few places
to learn about their lives

and how they managed
to conquer egypt.

That's what attracted
archaeologist geoff emberling.

At a pyramid called ku-1,

geoff's team is moving
50 tons of earth

to expose a royal tomb beneath.

Inside they hope to discover
the identity

of the king
who built the pyramid

and his place
in the kushite world.

We want first of all

to find out the name
of the king,

and second of all

we would hope that there would
be additional information

in material left in the pyramid

about where they fit
in history...

over 2,000 years ago.

The kushites left
few written records,

and most of their tombs and
temples have been destroyed.

Ku-1 is no exception...

before harsh weather
and stone thieves got to it,

the pyramid stood nearly
four times its current height.

This worn-down giant comes
with a checkered past.

About a hundred years ago,

american archaeologist
george reisner

excavated many kush monuments

and discovered the tombs
of its most important kings.

George reisner
was an amazing pioneer

of archaeology in kush.

He started in 1908.

He worked into the 1930s,
very difficult conditions,

and yet he managed to establish
a basic chronology,

not only of the broad
archaeological periods,

but of all the kings of kush,
he put them all into order,

and it's an order that we still
basically use today.

At el kurru,

reisner got to the bottom
of every pyramid...

except ku-1.

There, fear got
the better of him.

The ceiling of the pyramid
had collapsed,

locking its secrets inside.

Having just lost five men
in a cave-in nearby,

reisner went home.

Sometimes geoff emberling
has thought of doing the same.

When you read
reisner's notes

from his excavations
at el kurru,

at the end of the season
he took about two weeks off,

and he has a little note
that the doctor told him

he had to stop worrying so much,

and i can kind of
appreciate this now

even just excavating
one of the pyramids

because there's inherent risk.

There's no such thing
as no risk.

Of course,
without risk, there's no reward.

And as reisner discovered
at other royal burial sites...

the payoff can be staggering.

Reisner recovered troves
of gold jewelry

and stunning artifacts...

intricate masterpieces
buried with the kushite kings

to enrich them in the afterlife.

As an archaeologist,

your dreams are often
quite vivid

about what you can find
in a place.

And so obviously
these kings' burials

were once extremely rich
with gold and silver objects

and finely crafted,
beautiful expressions

of their religious sentiments

as well as their, their status
and prestige.

So we can imagine finding
all of those things.

Geoff's first big
revelation is not gold treasure,

but a giant staircase,

one fit for a king-size
funeral procession.

But it's a smaller feature
that grabs his attention.

You can see that the
staircase is really monumental.

They've dug down
through the solid rock

to a depth of over 25 feet,

and you can see
just at the bottom there

the original doorway.

And above it an irregular hole
that's almost the same height.

That irregular hole
was dug by looters.

Geoff believes
it was an inside job.

Most people
would not know

that if you dug through the rock

that there would be
an open chamber that high up.

It's over 15 feet off
the original ground surface.

But unusually in this pyramid

the inner chamber
is huge and high,

and so it was only the people
who built that

that would have known
that digging over the doorway,

they would break into the open
space of the chamber itself.

The question is:
how far in did the looters get

and what did they leave behind?

Geoff will soon find out.

Already, he's excavated
to the site of the cave-in

that had blocked reisner's path.

We're in the second room
of the, of the pyramid,

but actually we're not
in the room

because its ceiling
has entirely collapsed,

and so we're standing
in the hole

covering whatever was below.

I have a secret theory
that really what happened

is the looters burrowed in here,

and as they were digging,
the ceiling collapsed on them.

Geoff's taking precautions

to ensure he and his team don't
become the tomb's next victims.

At a makeshift workshop,

his colleague,
architect ignacio forcadell,

builds life-saving
iron supports.

In the second chamber,

which is the deepest one,

there is some problems
in the ceiling.

Rocks are falling down
from there.

And there have been
several collapses

during history.

There was one small collapse
like two weeks ago.

Once installed,
ignacio's iron arches

should prevent the roof
from falling

as geoff and the team
dig for the dead king.

If it works, they just might
succeed where reisner did not

and help right the great wrong

perpetrated by the famous
colonial archaeologist.

Throughout his time in sudan,
george reisner excavated

amid the rich local culture
of his african hosts.

He was pulling african history
from the ground...

but he was doing it at a time

when colonial delusions
of racial superiority

crippled his
scientific judgment.

Even as he was awed
by the pyramids he excavated,

he refused to believe they could
have been built by the ancestors

of the black africans
he saw all around him.

His prejudices even seem to have
clouded his eyesight.

In 1916, when he discovered
beautiful black granite statues

of the great kushite kings,

he argued they were not
real likenesses.

Instead, he proposed
that the kings--

and the builders
of all the kushite monuments--

had actually been
light-skinned foreigners.

I think it just
challenges so fundamentally

some of his personal views

about what people in the sudan
were capable of

and that he finds it
really difficult

to suddenly read the evidence.

It's such a huge challenge
that he can't get over it.

Reisner's writings
about the kushites

are a window into his warped
racial beliefs:

"its very race
appears to be a product

of its poverty
and its isolation--

a negroid-egyptian mixture fused
together on a desert river bank

too far away and too poor

to attract a stronger
and better race."

Reisner wasn't
the last, or the first,

to disparage the kushites.

Until recently, most
archaeologists thought kush--

often called nubia--

was nothing more
than a subject state

within egypt's empire...

a source for gold
in peacetime...

and slaves during war.

It was an image first cultivated
by the egyptians themselves,

who had an often volatile
relationship

with the kushites...

a relationship that dates back
to the birth of both nations.

Kerma, sudan, lies
about 170 miles down the nile

from el kurru.

At its heart is a deffufa,
which means brick monolith.

A temple for sun worship, it has
been dated to about 2500 b.c.--

around the same time egyptians

were building
their first pyramids,

and the britons, stonehenge.

According to archaeologist
salah el-din mohammed ahmed,

that makes it one of africa's
oldest surviving buildings.

The deffufa is also
one of africa's oldest examples

of manufactured brick,

indicating a sophistication
in construction

comparable to the egyptians.

Also around kerma

are some of the continent's
most ancient burials.

Taken together,
the archaeological evidence

points to a civilization
that was already well developed

in 2000 b.c.,

when its better-known neighbor--
egypt--

united into
a pharaoh-led empire.

At first the two up-and-coming
nations were peers

and forged a mutually beneficial
relationship.

It was often
a relationship based on trade.

Evidence from egyptian tombs

shows depictions of people
from the sudan bringing tribute,

as it's always characterized,
into egypt.

So items like, leopard skins,
monkeys, precious stones.

Because of
its location on the nile,

kerma grew into
a thriving trade hub

between sub-saharan africa
and egypt...

funneling ebony, ivory,
and exotic animals north.

But it was gold that fueled
the kush's rise to power.

They mined it
from the nile river valley

and sold it to egypt.

The egyptians had an insatiable
appetite for jewelry...

not to mention the gold leaf
coffins and funerary masks

made famous by king tut.

The egyptians
also documented

the kushites' skill as archers,
calling them the "bow people,"

and employing them
as mercenaries.

And egyptian instructions
on fighting

record the kushites' prowess
as wrestlers...

a tradition that still thrives
in sudan today.

What the egyptians didn't know

was that the full force
of the kushite military

would one day be turned on them.

The kushites started small,

with incursions
across the border

to expand their territory.

The egyptians responded
with anti-kushite propaganda...

and then war.

They would describe kush

as wretched kush or vile kush.

Egyptian images of kushites
from that period,

they show them as people
bound up, you know,

tied and bound on the bottom
of the king's shoes.

Kushites are depicted
in egyptian art

usually in very highly
stereotypical ways.

So we very frequently see
depictions of the pharaoh

grasping prisoners by the hair,

and executing them

by hitting them over the head
with his mace.

And this is a classic depiction
as peoples that are downtrodden

and are worthy
only really to kill.

The egyptian
representations of kush,

at least at an official level,

tended to portray them
as more tribal, more savage--

so it really was a kind of a...

almost a racial profiling.

Racial profiling
that probably made it easier

for the egyptians to justify
taking over the country.

In about 1500 b.c.,

egyptian pharaoh thutmose i
invaded kush

to eliminate the growing threat

and get direct access
to the gold he coveted.

His army plunged south

until they reached
a sacred butte

called jebel barkal,
or "pure mountain."

On its southwest face

a nearly 250-foot pinnacle
pierces the sky.

For kushites,
its unmistakably phallic shape

made it a symbol of creation
and fertility.

But according to archaeologist
tim kendall,

the egyptians saw
a more important meaning

in the mountain.

What made this mountain
so powerful and meaningful

to the ancient egyptians

was the fact that it had this
gigantic spire-like pinnacle

on its south face

that reminded them
of multiple things

that had great
religious meaning.

On the one hand it looked
like a rearing cobra.

On the other hand, it looked
like a standing king, osiris,

the mythical first king
of egypt.

The cobra is the key.

In egyptian mythology,

cobras have a powerful
connection to kingship.

Goddesses take the shape
of a cobra to protect the king.

That's why they appear
on the crowns of pharaohs...

including king tut's.

Kendall believes it was probably

a high priest
accompanying the invasion

who first saw the connection.

Like a giant religious
rorschach test,

the mountain revealed its
importance before his very eyes.

Jebel barkal was deemed
magnificent enough

to be the birthplace
of the god of gods...

amun.

It confirmed
the king's feeling

that he was the rightful ruler
of this place.

Here was the center
of the primeval god

who had given...
that had started kingship here,

and he was the heir
of this kingship,

and he had an absolute right
to rule kush.

Once anointed,

jebel barkal quickly found its
way into sacred egyptian art.

Here pharaoh ramses ii makes
an offering to the god amun.

Amun sits on a throne
inside a mountain

that can only be jebel barkal.

The pinnacle is represented
by a giant cobra

wearing the white crown
of egypt.

This artwork was discovered
inside abu simbel,

a temple ramses ii built
near the kushite border.

Ramses had visited
jebel barkal...

and tim kendall thinks

the mountain inspired
the pharaoh

to decorate abu simbel
with four statues of himself.

Abu simbel is famous

because it has four
colossal statues in front of it,

and i think that when ramses
was here,

he saw four colossal statues
on the front of the mountain.

And for a long time
people have assumed

that there were
four figures carved

in the face of the mountain.

But actually these are
just natural formations.

They never were carved.

Ramses and other pharaohs

also honored jebel barkal by
building temples in its shadow.

And the egyptians sought

to capture the mountain's
divine magic

by coming here to be crowned.

We don't know exactly
what happened in this temple.

But we think that the king came
in here during his coronation,

came into this inner chamber
with the god amun--

in an effigy, of course.

Here the two of them,
father and son,

united with the god osiris.

Osiris was the mythical
first king of egypt.

And then he went forth
from the temple,

climbed up the steps,

sat down on the throne
and became king,

and got up and stood
on the porch

and was greeted by the mob
outside as the new living god.

Over the generations
the legend of jebel barkal grew,

and the egyptian influence
on kush did, too.

Kushites embraced
egypt's religion,

worshipped amun,

and even began building pyramids
like their imperial masters.

I once wrote
that the kushites

became the first egyptophiles,

but i think it's
more complicated than that

because they were
adopting a world view

that had been long established,

and they saw themselves
fitting into it perfectly.

Well, i think you
have to look at this

from the perspective
of the imperial oppression,

so at first kush
was conquered by egypt,

but to survive,

kushites had to adapt themselves
to egyptian culture,

so really to put this in
the parlance of modern america,

they had to pass as egyptian.

For 300 years
the egyptians occupied kush

and imposed upon them
the cult of amun.

At jebel barkal a fundamentalist
fervor took root.

The mountain kindled
the religious spark

that in time
would set egypt ablaze

and turn kushites into pharaohs.

At el kurru's ku-1 tomb,
geoff emberling and his team

have pushed beyond the rock fall

that stopped george reisner
100 years ago.

They're at the very end
of their dig season,

and geoff's funds
are running low.

But suddenly they are rewarded
with an unexpected find.

We've done
a huge amount of work

to remove the soil that reisner
had already found,

and we were wondering all along

whether there was going to be
two burial chambers

or possibly a third,

and we discovered a doorway to
the inner third burial chamber.

It's extremely exciting.

You can just see the outline of
this perfectly preserved doorway

that goes into the--
what will have been

the final burial chamber
of this pyramid.

A final chamber that
could contain a treasure trove

of burial objects...

or the bones of a king.

For foreman
monsour mohammed ahmed,

the nearness of their goal
fuels one last push.

Already the team
has learned one important clue

about the king who built ku-1.

He chose its location carefully.

He's tucked in next to another,
more humble one-chambered tomb

that once contained perhaps the
greatest of all kushite kings.

On this platform once lay
the body of piankhy,

the black african king
who conquered egypt.

By 700 b.c., some 800 years
after their invasion,

egypt had withdrawn from kush.

The new kingdom empires
of tutankhamen and ramses ii

had fallen into chaos.

Warlords from libya fought
for control of the north...

while priests of amun tried
to hold the south together.

The priests feared the cult
of amun would be destroyed.

They knew their survival

depended on reuniting
the torn nation.

So they turned to the most
unlikely rescuer imaginable--

their assimilated
but much-derided former colony,

kush.

There, the young king piankhy,
a zealot for amun,

was more than ready
to heed the call.

He pledged to take on
the libyan kings,

bolstered by the belief
that amun was on his side.

Piankhy claimed,
"gods make kings.

People make kings.

But amun made me king."

His forces moved north
on the nile to thebes.

He told his army,

"string the bow,
and let loose the arrow.

Let the people of the northland
taste my fingers!"

It wasn't long before piankhy's
enemies begged for peace.

"Be merciful!"
Cried one libyan king.

"I cannot see your face
for shame;

i cannot stand
before your flame,

i tremble at your strength."

The fact that kush
was able to conquer egypt,

it's really
a david and goliath story.

Egypt has these huge cities,
huge temples,

lots and lots of people,

and kush, the settlements
are more dispersed,

so we're trying to figure out

exactly how kush was able
to amass that military power.

However unlikely
his victory,

piankhy and his successors
became egypt's 25th dynasty.

They controlled the wealth
of an area

stretching from
modern-day khartoum

to the mediterranean,

becoming rivals
of mighty assyria and greece.

Piankhy credited amun
for his success.

In an engraving
of his coronation,

amun himself
crowns the new pharaoh.

The goddess mut,
called mother of all gods,

looks on as piankhy bows
before amun.

He offers a simple gift
to the god of gods.

The ram-headed amun tells him...

"i said while you were still
in your mother's womb

that you would be
ruler of egypt."

Then amun presents piankhy with
the red crown of lower egypt

and the white crown
of upper egypt...

uniting the shattered land.

Piankhy's coronation stele

sent a powerful message
to a devout nation.

Propaganda at its best.

Piankhy ruled from
kush for about a dozen years

before handing the crown over
to his younger brother, shabaka.

Shabaka moved north to take over
the egyptian capital, memphis,

and settle unrest
in the nile delta.

He launched a renaissance
of building

on a scale not seen since
egypt's new kingdom heyday.

Shabaka, and his brother
before him,

earned reputations
as strong, merciful leaders.

They were famous for their,

for their piety
and their magnanimity.

For example, they didn't
slaughter their prisoners.

They forgave them.

They put them to work
digging canals.

These are completely
uncharacteristic features

of ancient kings.

Piankhy and shabaka's
triumphant reigns

paved the way
for pharaoh taharqa,

who battled egypt's foes
far beyond the empire's borders.

Around 700 b.c.,
he even saved jerusalem,

and king solomon's temple, from
an assault by the assyrians.

For this act, recorded
in the old testament,

hebrew historians hail taharqa
as a savior of the people.

But the assyrians would have
their revenge.

They dogged taharqa's reign
with invasions,

and ultimately rolled
his borders

all the way back to thebes.

When pharaoh taharqa died,

he wasn't buried at el kurru,
like his predecessors.

Instead he had his pyramid built
in nearby nuri.

Tim kendall thinks his reasons
for doing so were supernatural.

On the ancient egyptian
new year,

seen from jebel barkal,

the sun rises behind the top
of taharqa's pyramid.

It symbolizes new life
and resurrection.

Three and a half
months later

if you're standing on the summit
of taharqa's pyramid

looking to jebel barkal,

the sun sets
right over the pinnacle,

and the pinnacle looks
like the god osiris.

The setting sun symbolizes
the god's death.

It's exactly this time
when the nile falls,

when fertility ends.

And the god is thought to die,

so he, he is born
on new year's day,

he dies three and a half months
later when the nile falls,

he's resurrected every year,

and he's reborn millions
of times year by year.

Taharqa, says kendall,
built his pyramid here

to form a bond with jebel barkal

that would last
for all eternity.

And even during life,

taharqa tied himself
to the sacred mountain.

He commissioned
a monumental engraving

on the pinnacle of the spire.

In 1987, tim kendall was
the first to see it up close.

In the 1930s,
some british officials

studying the mountain face
with binoculars

had seen that there was some
traces of ancient workmanship

up at the top
of this rock spire

that was completely
inaccessible.

Well, i wasn't a climber,
you know.

I just had this drive

to find out what this thing was,
you know.

So i became a climber
in order to solve this mystery,

and i'm not sure
i'd do it again.

Tim made repeated
daring ascents.

But climbing the crumbling
250-foot spire--

while photographing it--
was no easy feat.

For his final report
on the summit,

he needs better photographs.

When we did
this exercise in 1987,

our results,
from today's perspective,

are fairly primitive.

Yeah, we should bring
that down, maddie.

Fortunately i connected
with two professional climbers,

and i asked them if they could
climb up and finish the job.

And that's the way
we went up in 1987.

Hazel findlay
and madeleine cope

have bagged big walls
on several continents,

but this will be their first
attempted summit in sudan.

The footing here
is really unstable...

so if you can hold on...

can we gear up?

Cool.

When we went up
in 1987 and '89,

we only had slides--
before the digital age.

Our capabilities
are so much better nowadays,

so it's great to be able
to do this again

and have good photographs.

Where there
any sort of big,

did you see quite a lot of big
cracks when you were up there?

I think there are enough;

i think you'll find enough
to get along.

But there's a stretch up there
where's there's not much.

Yeah?

Don't drag that rope
across to the right

because there's a big boulder
perched on the ledge there.

Oh, ok,
i'll pull on the other one.

Hazel picks the route,
while maddie belays from below.

I'm just going slow
because i don't have any grip.

It's actually like
kind of scary.

There's 200 feet
of fragile rock

between hazel and their prize--

an inscription left by one
of kush's most powerful kings.

Ok, just watch out
here, mads.

Spring-loaded cams
jammed into cracks

keep her roped to the wall...

but there aren't enough cracks.

It looks, ok,
it just looks

like there's no protection,
you know?

Already hazel sees signs

of massive
ancient construction...

huge holes bored
into solid sandstone.

Once, those holes
held the wooden beams

of a super-sized scaffolding.

Workers would have built
the frame from the ground up,

using a crane to hoist each beam
into place.

Like hazel, their goal
was the summit.

Now they're on
the tricky part.

It's straight up from there.

There's not much to hold on to.

I hope they know
what they're doing.

Hazel's reached the
section the climbers fear most--

30 feet of smooth limestone

with only holes left by
kushite builders to hang on to.

Oooh.

Oh, god. Oh, my god.

Finally hazel
reaches the summit.

Ok, maddie, i'm safe.

Climb when you're ready!

Congratulations,
you made it!

Now it's maddie's turn
to start up,

while hazel belays from above.

I'm definitely
carefully going

to all of these holds.

All right. I've done it.

Yeah!

When i did it there were like...

now it's time
for the real work to begin.

Rappelling down the cliff face,

hazel looks for the engraving
that few have seen up close

since the kushites created it
more than 2,600 years ago...

a bold declaration proclaiming
the triumphs of pharaoh taharqa.

Just be careful

that you're going to be stepping
onto the wall, and to your left.

A little bit farther down.

Great, now move around
to the front.

You see the inscription
up there?

Oh, yeah.

How does it look?

They're crumbling.

It looks like
the left edge of the inscription

has crumbled away.

Can you see
the little nail holes?

Yeah, i can see
the nail holes.

Yeah, i see them.

Kendall believes that
nailed on top of the engraving

were thin sheets of gold,

making a bold, shining billboard

to draw the eye
of all who passed by.

Ooh.

Hey, bravo!
Can i give you a hug?

Hell, yeah.
That was really good.

Wow, nice. Nice work.

Thank you.
Thanks a lot.

Super. Triumphant.

Yeah, it was cool
to see the engraving.

I felt really lucky
to be able to see them.

And quite honored, i supposed,
to get a chance to, like, see

a tiny part of something
that happened so long ago.

It'll be so great
to see your films

and see what we missed
the first time.

I don't even have a picture
of that, so that's great.

Oh, that's a wonderful shot.

That's new. I've never seen
that before.

We weren't sure whether
this was natural or not,

it was really deep, long.

So they were really
hauling up stones and cement.

Yeah.

Well, this will be
really great

to add to the final report...
28 years later?

28 years later.

At last
it all comes together.

What tim can read
in the damaged plaque

is taharqa's declaration
of his own divinity...

and a defiant jab
at the assyrians

who drove him from egypt.

He calls them bedouin.

"I, taharqa, the good god,

the king of upper
and lower egypt,

who lives forever...

i have destroyed
the bedouin of asia...

and i have cut down
the desert dwellers of libya."

Though taharqa was
an unrepentant warrior,

by the time he died,

he had very little of egypt
left under his control.

His successors
didn't seem to notice

and persisted in declaring

they were the pharaohs
of both nations.

In 593 b.c., fed up with their
bombastic proclamations,

egyptian pharaoh psamtik ii
led an army into kush.

Psamtik also had
an old score to settle.

Years before, a kushite pharaoh

had executed
his great-grandfather.

Psamtik's goal?

To erase the 25th dynasty
from history...

by destroying every statue
his army could find...

and chiseling kush pharaonic
names off every monument.

In the ultimate insult to kush,

soldiers even chopped
the sacred egyptian cobra

from kushite crowns.

The rewriting of history
persists to this day.

For example,
just by looking at the facade

of the cairo museum

where all the great dynasties
of egypt

are inscribed on the,
on panels, marble panels.

The only dynasty that's omitted
is the 25th.

Back at el kurru,

the discovery
of the third room--

the burial chamber--
has gotten everyone excited.

But geoff's license to excavate
has expired.

In two days
he'll be heading home.

The king's bones, jewels
and identity

could be lying mere feet away,

but the team will have to wait
until next year to dig them up.

So this is
a very exciting moment,

but it's also
a disappointing moment.

And unfortunately with the time
and the resources

that we have available to us,

we simply can't excavate this

safely and responsibly
this year.

So it's very disappointing
to get this far,

to have moved a hundred tons
of sand and dirt,

but we know that it will be here
for us next year,

and we'll return and hope
to find wonderful things.

But geoff's not going
home entirely empty-handed.

He's been invited to help out
at a nearby dig site

and to bring along
some high-tech friends.

This is zuma village, the site
of a noble burial mound

built around a thousand years
after taharqa died.

It was the twilight
of the empire.

A rival african nation

was about to wipe out
the kushites for good.

And christianity would soon
transform the region.

- Hi, geoff.
- Yeah, mahmoud.

Hello, geoff.

How are you?

Nice to see you.

I have something here
for you to see.

Come along.

At zuma, geoff's
colleague mahmoud el-tayeb

has struck archaeology gold.

Geoff,
now we are approaching

the burial chamber.

I will show you.

The layout of this
white sandstone tomb

is different from ku-1.

Here a tunnel leads back
to a shaft,

with burial chambers below.

Geoff puts one of his robots
to work.

Broken burial objects
indicate this tomb,

like all kushite tombs,
has been hit by looters.

But for the archaeologists, it's
still a treasure trove of clues.

Amazing.

Isn't that incredible?

Ok, so there is
a long-necked jar in the back.

Is that another variety
of beer jar?

Let's... we'll pan over
to the right.

It's a pot stand with a cup.

And what's that
inside the cup there?

It's a stone.

Just fallen perfectly
into the...

yes.

Into the cup. Wow.

Another oddity--
a brick wall

that looks like it could have
been built yesterday.

I'm gonna just see
if we can get a good view

of the burial itself.

At last, geoff lays
eyes on the bones of a king,

or at least a nobleman,
laid to rest in this tomb.

This is just the beginning.

It will take years of analysis

to discover his place
in sudan's history.

I really dreamed
to find something extraordinary,

and that was great, really,
to have such a find...

of burials for kings.

If i could talk to him,
i would ask him who are you

and what is the importance
of this place

in which you are buried now?

Moreover i would like to ask him

where are these red bricks
came from?

It's a find of a quality
that we dream of,

so, you know, i was really glad

that mahmoud was
sharing it with us,

and of course
i wanted it myself.

So, it provided a great model

for what we could hope to find
here at el kurru.

By the time zuma was created,

the influence of egypt
had waned,

and the kings of kush no longer
built grand pyramid tombs.

Their zenith as pharaohs
had lasted just a century...

but in that short time
these african underdogs

had toppled a giant

and seized their place

among the great empires
of the ancient world.

And now, thanks to the science
under way in sudan,

the kingdom
of the black pharaohs

is stepping out of the shadows
forever.

This program
was made possible in part

by contributions
to your pbs station

from viewers like you.

Thank you.