Egypt's Unexplained Files (2019–…): Season 1, Episode 5 - Secrets of the Tomb Raiders - full transcript
Narrator: Pyramids, temples, tombs...
These ancient wonders
promise even greater secrets
still to be found under the sands of egypt.
Now, cutting-edge science
decodes the mysterious
land of the pharaohs.
With modern technology,
we are gaining an insight
into the way the ancient egyptians lived
and the manner in which they died.
Narrator: This time,
the egyptian obsession
with death and the afterlife.
What's so special about this dagger
that it earned a place in king tut's tomb?
They found a phrase, which seemed to read,
"iron from the sky."
narrator: Will science uncover the secrets
of the embalmers craft?
They had this incredible
power to stop nature in its tracks.
Narrator: And can new
technology uncover the truth
behind egypt's animal mummies?
We have these millions
of mummified animals,
but when we come to c.T. Scan them,
many of them are not what they seem.
Narrator: Ancient clues unearthed,
long-lost evidence reexamined,
precious artifacts brought
into the light of the 21st century.
These are "egypt's unexplained files".
A metal dagger discovered
in tutankhamun's tomb...
A possession so prized by the king,
he wanted it with him for eternity.
But it shouldn't exist.
Naughton: It's made of iron,
which is a material not
known to egypt at this time.
This is still the bronze
age, not the iron age.
Narrator: Now state-of-the-art
x-ray analysis reveals
an unexpected discovery.
There are objects in there
that are literally out of this world.
The mystery here is how do these
objects come to be in this tomb?
♪
Narrator: 2015.
The priceless artifacts unearthed
from king tutankhamun's tomb
are on display at the
egyptian museum in cairo.
Among them, an unusual
dagger unlike any other
in the collection.
Cooney: The dagger
itself has a golden handle
with delicate geometric designs
and a beautiful golden sheath.
Narrator: But it's not the
design that's so special.
It's what it's made of.
It's an iron blade, fully functional.
Narrator: Ever since its discovery,
archaeologists have been puzzled
over the dagger's very existence.
Cooney: Iron seems so commonplace to us,
but for the ancient egyptians,
iron was quite a rarity.
Naughton: The iron age
doesn't arrive in egypt
for another two centuries
after the time of tutankhamun,
so it's very strange to
find such a fine object
made of iron at this time.
Narrator: A clue to the dagger's origins
surfaces in an ancient text...
A piece of hieroglyphic writing
that points to the heavens.
They found a phrase which
seemed to read "iron from the sky."
narrator: Experts are unsure
what the hieroglyphs mean.
Can modern technology
help pinpoint the source of the metal?
Scientists investigate the chemical makeup
of the blade itself.
The dagger is tested using
x-ray fluorescence spectrometry,
which is a newly developed technique.
Analysis of the results
point to a surprising source.
The equipment shows that
the composition of the iron
in the dagger is of iron,
but also nickel and cobalt
in exactly the combination
that matches the database
record for meteoric iron.
Narrator: Iron from inside a meteorite.
It's an extraordinary result.
The riddles written in the hieroglyphs,
"iron from the sky," now makes sense.
The metal that was fashioned
into the dagger's blade
came from space.
Egyptians didn't know how
to make iron for themselves.
Due to its rarity, it is
revered as a sacred metal.
Naughton: So it's easy to
imagine that they would think
of a meteorite falling as
being like a gift from god.
That would make
meteorites very highly prized,
and for that reason,
they're the kind of thing
that the king might well have
wanted to claim for himself.
This iron was likely
more valuable than gold.
And so to be buried with an iron dagger
would have linked tutankhamun
to the gods themselves.
Narrator: If the iron in the dagger
arrived in a meteorite,
where had it landed?
Investigators draw a blank.
♪
In the hunt for a new lead,
they search for any other items
in tutankhamun's treasures
which may also have celestial origins.
Their attention is drawn
to king tut's breast plate.
Naughton: Inside the sarcophagus
is an extraordinary broach
made of a kind of yellow gemstone,
which has been cut and
polished into the shape of a scarab.
This presents something of a mystery
because this is a material which
we wouldn't expect the egyptians
having access to or being
able to work in this way.
So what is it doing here in the tomb?
Narrator: The beetle-shaped broach
was initially assumed to be a gemstone.
To be sure, researchers test
the material using a technique
called oxygen isotope analysis.
They discover it's actually
a strange type of glass.
The egyptians did have the
technology to make glass,
but not with such a
clarity and translucence.
Narrator: The chemical
composition of the glass
matches a material found naturally
in one specific area of egypt...
A remote region located on the western edge
of the ancient egyptian empire.
This desert is known as the great sand sea.
Cooney: The only way
to make glass like this
is with extraordinarily high temperatures.
Narrator: Geological surveys of the site
suggest these high temperatures
could only be the
result of a meteor strike.
Naughton: When meteors
enter the earth's atmosphere,
if they're traveling at the right speed,
they explode on impact.
They create a giant fireball
of masses and masses
and masses of energy and heat.
When it hits the ground,
silica in a substance like
sand melts immediately
and forms a kind of glass, a
very particular kind of glass.
♪
Narrator: Experts calculate
that the glass in tutankhamun's broach
was made by a meteor strike
10,000 more times more
powerful than an atomic bomb,
turning a desert of
sand into a sea of glass.
A scarab made of this
glass is pretty extraordinary,
and it was obviously precious
to the ancient egyptians
who understood it as a kind of miracle...
Something that wasn't naturally occurring.
It was a very special and rare thing.
Narrator: While the scarab matches
the glass found in the desert,
experts are still unsure
that the iron in the dagger
came from this specific meteorite strike.
But one thing is certain.
When tutankhamun's tomb
was discovered back in 1922,
archaeologists had no idea
that cosmic events
millions of years earlier
had left their mark on
egypt's most famous pharaoh.
Cooney: One of the most amazing things
about the find of tutankhamun's tomb
is that there are objects in there
that are literally out of this world.
♪
Narrator: An ancient cemetery
filled with animal mummies.
Price: We have these
millions of mummified animals,
but when we come to scan them,
many of them are not what they seem.
Narrator: Now cutting-edge
scanning technology
reveals secrets hidden deep
inside the mummified remains.
Ikram: Sometimes you'll
get what you think you will,
but sometimes it's not.
We need to get to the
bottom of what's going on.
Don't ever judge a mummy by its cover.
♪
♪
Narrator: 2015.
Scientists reexamining a large hall
of ancient mummified animals
want to see what lies beneath the bandages,
but strict government rules mean
they're not allowed to unwrap the remains.
Instead, they turn to scanning technology
usually reserved for the living.
Nowadays, we can use c.T. Scans and x-rays
to look inside the mummy bundles
in great detail.
You can see exactly what's inside
without damaging the bundle itself.
Narrator: The mummified
remains were originally discovered
in the 1960s,
unearthed at the ancient
temple complex of saqqara,
15 miles from cairo...
Site of the oldest pyramid in egypt.
This was one of the biggest excavations
anywhere in the world in the 1960s.
Narrator: Digging under the site,
they made a macabre discovery.
Instead, they break into
a network of tunnels...
...Filled with millions of
pots, each of them containing
an ancient egyptian animal mummy.
This is perhaps one of the strangest finds
we have from the ancient world.
Narrator: Further excavation
revealed more and more chambers,
each filled with different
mummified animals.
So there were all these
different catacombs underground,
and each one is dedicated
to a different animal.
You have raptors in one,
you have ibis birds in another,
there are cows in a third.
Mcknight: We have a cat
catacomb, a dog catacomb.
Price: You have jackals, you have falcons.
Each individual section is
very much self contained.
Ikram: Millions of
animals in the galleries...
A vast underground zoo.
What were they all there for?
Narrator: The ancient
egyptian belief system
had many animal deities.
Could these all be votive offerings?
Ikram: Votive mummies are the same
as lighting a candle in a church
where your prayer goes up to the god.
And so a votive mummy is
the same as your prayer is taken
by this animal straight to the god.
Narrator: Each animal god
was thought to have powers
that could protect a person
from evil spirits or sickness,
or act as a guide towards
a peaceful afterlife.
Ikram: Ibis is associated
with the god thoth,
cats associated with the goddess bastet.
So really, all of these
animals were associated
with some kind of divinity.
Narrator: Saqqara's animal
mummies were thought to be
perfectly preserved whole animals,
buried as offerings to the gods.
But modern investigators have a hunch
something is not quite right.
They want to reexamine the mummies
to see exactly what lies
beneath the painted wrappings.
Now using a hospital c.T. Scanner,
the archaeologists
get their first-ever look
inside the assorted mummified animals.
They're staggered by what they find.
Sometimes you'll get
what you think you will.
It looks like a bird,
there's a bird in there.
But sometimes it's not.
Sometimes there's just a bundle of feathers
or sometimes one bone.
We expect to find that they
contain the animal itself...
A complete articulated
body. But more often than not,
we find that they contain
something entirely different...
Natural materials like
sand and soil and stones,
often with reeds and vegetation in there.
Sometimes there is no bone at all.
Price: About 1/3 contain a full skeleton
of the animal we expect,
another 1/3 contain part of the animal,
and the last 1/3 contain
nothing animal remains related.
Begs the questions, what
on earth is going on here?
Narrator: Experts look for
clues in the religious practices
that were carried out at saqqara.
Access to the temples
was controlled by priests.
Ancient sources reveal
these men were given offerings
from visiting pilgrims.
Ikram: This was a vast pilgrimage center,
and hundreds of people come
and they want to leave
an offering to the god.
So they buy, from the priests there,
a mummified cat, dog.
Narrator: Pilgrims would
buy a mummified animal
and hand it over to be buried
as part of a religious ceremony.
You give them an offering that you hope
they will pass on to the gods
and eventually bury in one of
the underground catacombs.
♪
Day: There was quite a
money making business
going on in the temples
by selling millions of animal mummies
as votive offering to
pilgrims who came each year
to sacred festivals at each of the temples.
Narrator: With such a high
demand for mummified animals,
it's likely that rogue
embalmers would cut corners.
It is possible in an industry
on this scale that some people
are using less-than-honorable
means in order
to make the articles
that they are going to sell.
Ikram: Is it that the priests
are trying to rip off people?
Is it large-scale cheating of the populous?
Narrator: But the mystery deepens.
Further investigation of
the fake mummies reveals
they wouldn't have been cheap to produce.
Price: Analysis using mass spectrometry
shows that both the
mummies with the animals
and the mummies without the animals
are made up with the
same chemical components.
So, we were able to
identify things like tree resins,
which were used as a preservative,
and bees wax, a variety of plant oils.
We found out that these are
resins that are very expensive,
that have been imported
from what is now lebanon.
Narrator: The investigation has revealed
that many of the mummy
bundles traded at saqqara
are not quite what they seem.
But for the ancient pilgrims,
this may not have mattered.
Maybe the things that we
think of as false mummies
aren't really false, and
they really have the same,
if not greater, importance
to the ancient egyptians.
They would have been equally
expensive for a pilgrim to buy,
and they contain materials
that were thought to be sacred
in the same way as an
actual example of the species.
I think these empty mummy bundles
are equally valuable.
Narrator: Modern science has revealed
that even 3,000 years ago,
there was a roaring trade in fake goods.
The saying "buyer beware"
was clearly as valid then as it is today.
♪
The discovery of an embalmers workshop
is helping archaeologists
solve an age-old mystery.
Day: Do we really know
everything about mummification?
No, we don't.
Some of it is still a mystery.
Narrator: Ancient embalmers had skills
we can't seem to match today.
Johnston: The hair is intact,
the fingernails are intact,
the eyelashes are intact.
What did the egyptian
embalmers know that we don't?
Narrator: Now scientists
are trying to identify
the precise way that bodies were
preserved so well for millennia.
Buckley: We're getting
the physical evidence
from the place where some of these mummies
were actually made.
♪
♪
Narrator: Mummified bodies have been found
perfectly preserved even
after thousands of years.
Archaeologists are still unsure
how the ancient egyptians achieved this.
Johnston: Whilst egyptologists
have always been aware
of mummies form ancient egypt,
we have nothing written down
telling us how human beings were mummified.
We have had to do it
through trial and error
down through the centuries ourselves.
Narrator: Investigators
now turn to modern science
to look for clues.
Because we have so many
ancient egyptian mummies,
then we're able to study them, scan them,
do forensic analysis
on them, and from that,
find out more about the
process of mummification.
Narrator: Mummified tissue
samples are put through
a series of biochemical analyses.
The results reveal a complex
mixture of herbs and oils.
It's found that they were
using types of plant resins...
Things like juniper, turpentine, and so on.
They would rub things like
myrrh over the body to sweeten it
and dispel some of the unpleasant smells
associated with preserving the body.
Narrator: But the chemical ingredients
of these herbs and spices alone
are not enough to stop
dead bodies decomposing.
There must be some other ingredient
that is key to perfect preservation.
Day: The egyptian embalmers
must have seemed like magic men.
They had this incredible
power to stop nature in its tracks
using methods and substances
which they kept a trade
secret from everybody.
Narrator: Investigators search
for more clues by reexamining
the complex rituals
surrounding mummification.
Day: The mummification
process of an elite egyptian
would have looked quite
shocking and quite gruesome.
One of the priests would
come forward with a very thin,
very sharp obsidian blade,
and he would make a slice
down the left-hand flank.
Narrator: Organs are removed from the body
and stored alongside in special jars.
Could these extractions
help in preservation?
Internal organs are removed, separated,
and put into four special
canopic jars protect by deities.
So the jackal-headed god
looks after the stomach,
the baboon-headed
god looks after the lungs,
the human-headed god looks after the liver,
and the auk-headed god
looks after the intestines.
Narrator: By removing the organs,
the embalmers appear to have benefited
from a very useful side effect.
It was necessary to remove the organs
to take out the moisture
that lends itself to the decay process.
The moisture in the body
is where the bacteria lived,
and they start eating the body up.
So they had some sense
that you should remove
whatever is causing that decay.
Narrator: But extracting the organs
and associated bacteria
still doesn't explain
such perfect preservation
found in mummies.
Archaeologists have to cast the net wider.
2018.
In the desert tombs of saqqara,
archaeologists make an
extraordinary discovery...
An area where mummification
actually took place.
Buckley: We're finding embalmers workshops.
We're finding ingredients there
that were clearly involved
in some sort of embalming.
So we're getting the physical
evidence from the place
where some of these
mummies were actually made.
Narrator: Inside these ancient workshops,
archaeologists find the
remains of a special mineral salt.
Chemical analysis reveals its composition.
It's sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate,
and sodium chloride,
which is a little bit like
table salt plus baking soda.
Narrator: Known as natron,
this salt is known to
quickly remove moisture
from anything it comes into contact with.
Natron is found naturally in
the valley of wadi el natrun,
50 miles from the embalmers
workshops at saqqara.
Day: But it was in the middle kingdom
about 4,000 years ago
that they discovered the
magic ingredient of natron.
Narrator: But how was natron used
during the preservation process?
It was thought that they
would pack bags of natron
inside the body cavity,
and they would cover the
entire body in a big pile of natron.
Narrator: When investigators
put this theory to the test,
they find that the dry
crystals did not prevent decay.
They decide to try something different.
A few years ago, a taxi driver
donated his body to science.
Narrator: In a controversial experiment,
scientists try to preserve
the taxi driver's body.
This time, they dissolve
the natron salts in water,
soaking the body
in super-concentrated salt solution.
We found that it is
actually possible to preserve
a human body in a bath of natron...
Natron in solution... super-salty water.
Johnston: After a period of some 40 days,
almost all of the
moisture has left the body,
leaving the body in a leather-like state,
like a leather handbag.
You need to time it very
carefully, dry the body out,
but not too much, so that
you leave the limbs flexible
and you can move the arms
into whatever position you want.
Narrator: It's the breakthrough
archaeologists are looking for.
Modern scientific analysis,
along with hands-on experimentation,
reveals that a concentrated
liquid solution of natron
was the key component above all others
for preserving a body for eternity.
Day: They dried inside the body and out
to produce a body completely preserved
that in the right dry
situation would last forever.
Buckley: 3,000 years old,
and they're still looking recognizable.
They were thinking of the long term.
They are masterpieces
of the embalmers craft.
♪
Narrator: The great pyramid of giza.
Archaeologists are still puzzled
over the ancient builders' ability
to construct such a
perfectly shaped structure.
Dash: The accuracy of the
ancients was remarkable.
It's jaw-dropping.
Harrison: The structure is almost perfect.
It's an incredible feat of engineering.
Narrator: Now for the first time,
scientists use laser-scanning technology
to accurately measure the
size and scale of the pyramid...
Previously, the pyramid had only
been measure with plumb lines
and yard sticks.
...And search for clues to
explain how they could build
such a perfectly proportioned stone tomb.
It's beyond belief.
♪
♪
Narrator: 2015.
Engineers from the giza
plateau mapping project
launch an ambitious new
survey of the great pyramid.
Glen dash leads the team.
Dash: When you're standing
there looking at the great pyramid
and seeing other people
walk up to it as well,
inevitably, they do the same thing...
They stand there and their jaw drops.
They're thinking, "who was
the guy that took that stone
and had to put it up there?"
harrison: It's the only one
of the ancient world wonders
that's still standing.
They managed to build nearly 500 feet high,
3,000 years before christ.
Narrator: Archaeologists
want to investigate
how this was possible.
What drove them to build a
tomb in the shape of a pyramid?
Clark: There are several theories
about the shape of the true pyramid.
Some think it might be a representation
of the benben stone.
Harrison: In egyptian mythology,
the benben stone represents
the first piece of land
that emerged from the
primordial waters of chaos
at the beginning of time.
This was how the universe was created.
Narrator: Researchers find
many ancient religious sites
contain a sacred mound, or benben stone,
in their design.
Early temples would have a mound in them,
which would be an icon
to the mound of creation.
Other temples would have a pyramidal stone.
Narrator: For pharaoh
khufu, the great pyramid
was built to be his eternal resting place.
It would need to be a perfect,
accurately shaped structure
to successfully launch
him into the afterlife.
The shape of the pyramid
traditionally represents
the rays of the sun,
and the slope represents the way a pharaoh
can climb up into the
sky, into the heavens,
and be amongst the gods.
Der manuelian: So you're
investing in this afterlife.
A staircase to the heavens, if you will.
Dash: The purpose of a
pyramid was to provide
for the resurrection of the king.
Fundamentally, a pyramid
is a resurrection machine.
Narrator: Archaeologists are still puzzled
as to how the egyptians
managed such perfection
in their construction.
For the giza mapping project,
glen's team used the very latest
in laser-scanning survey equipment.
Their goal is to precisely measure
the size and orientation of the pyramid.
Dash: We have marvelous instruments today
called total stations.
They combine a telescope with a laser beam.
They are fantastically precise instruments.
Narrator: The results
astound the engineers.
Dash: The south is longer
than the north by about 3 inches.
The west is longer than
the east by about 2 inches.
The accuracy of the
ancients was remarkable.
It's jaw-dropping.
Harrison: The structure is almost perfect.
It's an incredible feat of engineering.
The pyramid was built
with almost perfect accuracy.
Narrator: The great pyramid was constructed
with a margin of error of just .03%.
So how exactly did they do it?
Keep in mind that they built it all
with wood, rope, copper, and stone.
They had nothing else.
They great pyramid is built to
construction standards today.
Narrator: Continuing his survey,
glen discovers the great pyramid
holds more hidden secrets.
Dash: Most people,
including archaeologists,
when they walk up to the great pyramid,
they look up.
We walked up to the great pyramid
and decided to look down.
Narrator: Beneath their feet,
the team finds something very strange.
Dash: In the bedrock
around the great pyramid
are all these cuttings.
We mapped 3,000 of them.
Narrator: Hiding in plain sight
are the remains of a system of holes.
Glen thinks these were cut
into the ground by the builders.
Dash: There are these large holes.
They run parallel to
the sides of the pyramid.
We call them post holes.
Narrator: Glen believes
the ancient builders
slotted posts in these holes
at one significant time of the year...
On the day of the autumn equinox.
The posts would cast a precisely
oriented shadow on the ground.
These shadows could then be
used as directional reference points
to help build the pyramid.
♪
Harrison: The equinox is the only time
when the sun will create a straight shadow
running perfectly from east to west.
So if they measured during the equinox,
this is how they would have got the angles
for the pyramid so accurate.
Dash: It turns out to be the
simplest possible method.
They stuck a stick in the
ground and watched the shadow.
That was it.
Narrator: The shadow lines
not only help the builders
create a perfect pyramid shape,
they also made sure it
was correctly oriented.
It was extremely important that the temples
were properly aligned, true east to west.
The east is the land of the living,
and the west is the realm of the dead.
Narrator: The great pyramid was built
to represent life, death, and resurrection.
Its construction is testament
to the ingenuity of the ancients.
Clear evidence of their
understanding of mathematics,
engineering, and the movement of the sun.
Dash: They did it with their
wood, rope, copper, and stone,
and they found some way
to do it that was brilliant
and robust and simple.
♪
Narrator: A vast cemetery reveals evidence
of an ancient tragedy.
Bianchi: Excavations have
discovered an appalling number
of adolescent children that have died.
Narrator: A devastating event
that preyed on the young.
Zink: Their spines are completely rotten.
Their joints are almost destroyed.
Narrator: Can forensic science
reveal how and why they died?
Were they killed by a disease
that still affects us today.
♪
♪
Narrator: 2015.
Archaeologists working at
the ancient city of amarna,
on the edge of a vast desert plateau,
make a shocking discovery.
Ikram: Excavations have
shown that there are all types
of people buried there.
Not just the rich and
the elites that we knew of,
but new cemeteries have been found
filled with bodies of the poor.
Narrator: Many of the
graves contain multiple bodies.
The size of the corpses
suggest most of them died young.
This cemetery is predominantly children.
They were buried with
very, very simple things.
There's not just one person buried.
There's quite a few together.
Narrator: The question
is, what killed them?
♪
Archaeologists already know
a great deal about the lives
and deaths of the ordinary
people of ancient egypt.
Disease and infection were quite common.
General life expectancy
was much shorter than today.
Ikram: So by the age of 30,
you were an old man or an old woman.
It was a very fraught kind of existence.
♪
Narrator: Determining how these people
in this mass grave died
presents a challenge.
No records exist documenting their deaths,
so experts need to search for clues.
Studies of bodies from other burial grounds
provide valuable insights.
2012.
At the university of manchester in England,
scientists discovered a
possible cause of death.
14 ancient egyptian lungs were analyzed.
Tiny microscopic specs were discovered.
These with some particles.
They're breathing in a
significant amount of sand,
causing lung problems
or spiritual diseases.
Even the environment conspires
against the ancient egyptians.
Narrator: The study showed
inhalation of sand particles
affected egypt's rich and poor alike,
and was almost as severe
as modern day car pollution.
We are seeing changes in the lungs
where you see that sand was inhaled
and it caused inflammatory reaction.
This can go as all
kinds of lung infections.
It can compromise the whole immune system,
so this would definitely
have been a problem.
Narrator: Long-term exposure
to sand inhalation can be deadly.
But at the dig site in amarna,
the shear scale of the burials,
plus the age of the bodies,
makes archaeologists conclude
this can't be the cause of death.
♪
The investigation team analyzed the bones
from the mass grave in forensic detail.
The results suggest that
amarna's young people
were very badly treated.
The bones are really where
the history of the body lies.
We are seeing that they
used to work very hard.
Even children were being
pressed into hard labor.
They appear malnourished.
There's stunted growth.
There's evidence of scurvy, rickets.
They had a lot of bone changes
that is typical for somebody
who is working almost his whole life.
♪
Narrator: An explanation
for this appalling treatment
is sought in the history of amarna itself.
The city was built hundreds of miles
from the old capital of thebes
by the heretic pharaoh akhenaten.
The skeleton suggests
the local people were forced
to build the city, stone by stone.
Bianchi: One worked until
one was physically unable
to perform the task that was at hand.
You have a population living in that city
that are undernourished and
are dying because of poor diet.
Zink: They didn't have enough food
to compensate these heavy workloads.
So they were really under
a very... very severe stress
during their whole lifetime,
and a lot of them died in a very young age.
Narrator: Analysis of the skeletons
unearthed from the mass grave
continues to reveal more clues.
Investigators start to notice
distinctive marks on the bones.
It appears that many of the young people
were suffering from a blood-born infection,
a disease still prevalent today...
Malaria.
Some of the lesions in the bones,
some of the soft tissue tells us
that these people at
amarna suffered from malaria.
And outbreaks of this disease
wipes out entire populations.
Zink: It's highly likely
that there was an outbreak
that killed a lot of
people at the same time,
so they had to put them
together in a sort of mass grave.
♪
Narrator: It all begins to make sense.
For the overworked and
starving people of amarna,
malaria would have been a killer blow.
The risk of disease from mosquitos
and the ill treatment of the population
could also explain
why the city was abandoned
as soon as akhenaten died.
Aziz: These are the young
people that would have built the city.
The work must have been
excruciatingly painful and difficult.
And this cemetery is
predominantly children.
It's just very sad.
♪
Narrator: Tombs have
been robbed of their riches
since the first pharaohs were laid to rest.
People want the important
stuff buried in there.
We don't know what's
happened to the bodies.
Narrator: But tomb
raiders didn't have it easy.
Cooney: There is this
mythology that the great pyramids
are somehow booby-trapped.
Narrator: Now archaeologists
are reexamining the inventive ways
the ancient egyptians
tried to protect their dead.
They have got very
complex and strong defenses,
which were incredibly difficult to breach.
♪
♪
Narrator: The ruling elite
of ancient egypt believed
they would reach the afterlife
only if their mummified body
and possessions remained intact.
But how to stop thieves
from looting your tomb?
When ancient egyptians are building tombs,
they aren't necessarily
thinking in terms of booby traps,
like you see in "indiana jones".
You're not gonna be chased by a boulder.
But they do think about the
fact that tombs are raided.
Macca: They built their resting places
way down in the base
through these long chutes
and corridors and labyrinth-themed circuits
that you had to get
through to find the tombs.
Narrator: Most royal burial
chambers had been found defended
with carefully constructed
security mechanisms.
Some of the features
of tomb security include
vast, heavy, thick, hard stone portcullises
that can be dropped down.
Clark: Some of these
were shafts filled rubble,
passages blocked with lumps of solid stone,
others raising the entrances out of reach.
Narrator: Often, these security measures
were built simply to hide the door.
The idea was to prevent the tomb robbers
finding the entrance
and then getting admission
to inner sanctum of the tomb.
Narrator: Experts reexamine
one of the best examples
of afterlife security
at the great pyramids.
There is this mythology
that the great pyramids
on the giza plateau are
somehow booby-trapped,
and that when people
tried to break into them,
that there would be some sort of mechanism
that would suddenly kill them.
Narrator: The legend
is not far from the truth.
Clark: The burial chamber
itself was granite lined,
and the entrance to it blocked
with three stone portcullises.
Narrator: The physical
design of the pyramid
could also act as additional security.
Clark: The outside of the
pyramid would be covered
with a layer of polished tura limestone
to completely seal the access point,
and it would be very difficult to find.
♪
Narrator: Despite assorted
security mechanisms
put in place,
most sacred tombs were still robbed.
Pyramids and tombs have
been looted and robbed
since the very earliest days
of burying important people in
the ground with important stuff.
Clark: Those remains that we do find
have been severely
damaged by the tomb robbers,
who even set fire to the
bodies to cover their tracks.
Narrator: So how are so many
tombs robbed so regularly?
Cooney: It would be roving
bands of men who go out
in the middle of the
night with their torches,
break open a burial
chamber, opening up coffins,
taking out what they can quickly pocket,
what they can quickly bring
to the market and exchange.
Narrator: It wasn't just the
tombs of the elite classes
that were raided.
No one was safe.
If times are tough economically,
people do what they
need to do to survive...
Family members going into
their own burial chambers
and stealing from their own ancestors.
Narrator: As well as opportunist thieves.
Ancient texts reveal that tomb robbers
came from all levels of society.
Cooney: Everybody seems to
be involved in this tomb robbing
in some way, shape, or form,
even the people ruling
thebes at the time...
The high priesthood of amun.
The priesthood is systematically
going into the valley of the kings,
tomb by tomb,
and pulling out everything
that was of value.
♪
Narrator: The discovery
of an ancient papyrus,
dating from the time of ramesses xi,
gives an intriguing insight.
Senior authority figures are
noted in court proceedings,
apparently conspiring among themselves
to rob the tombs they guarded.
Cooney: There are letters
with veiled references
to "that thing that I showed you that time"
or "that place you uncovered."
"keep it sealed until I get there,"
which is the way people talk
when they're talking about
something contraband,
something they shouldn't be doing.
Narrator: Even with clever
security measures in place,
there's one group of people
who had insider knowledge
to bypass the innovative features...
The tomb builders themselves.
♪
Cooney: They knew the
location of every royal tomb.
Not only that, they knew how to get in.
Narrator: It was down to
pure luck that a burial site
was not robbed of its riches.
Today, it's incredibly rare
to find an undisturbed tomb,
and that's why our
understanding of the details
and processes of egyptian burials
and the afterlife are still
being revealed to this day.
These ancient wonders
promise even greater secrets
still to be found under the sands of egypt.
Now, cutting-edge science
decodes the mysterious
land of the pharaohs.
With modern technology,
we are gaining an insight
into the way the ancient egyptians lived
and the manner in which they died.
Narrator: This time,
the egyptian obsession
with death and the afterlife.
What's so special about this dagger
that it earned a place in king tut's tomb?
They found a phrase, which seemed to read,
"iron from the sky."
narrator: Will science uncover the secrets
of the embalmers craft?
They had this incredible
power to stop nature in its tracks.
Narrator: And can new
technology uncover the truth
behind egypt's animal mummies?
We have these millions
of mummified animals,
but when we come to c.T. Scan them,
many of them are not what they seem.
Narrator: Ancient clues unearthed,
long-lost evidence reexamined,
precious artifacts brought
into the light of the 21st century.
These are "egypt's unexplained files".
A metal dagger discovered
in tutankhamun's tomb...
A possession so prized by the king,
he wanted it with him for eternity.
But it shouldn't exist.
Naughton: It's made of iron,
which is a material not
known to egypt at this time.
This is still the bronze
age, not the iron age.
Narrator: Now state-of-the-art
x-ray analysis reveals
an unexpected discovery.
There are objects in there
that are literally out of this world.
The mystery here is how do these
objects come to be in this tomb?
♪
Narrator: 2015.
The priceless artifacts unearthed
from king tutankhamun's tomb
are on display at the
egyptian museum in cairo.
Among them, an unusual
dagger unlike any other
in the collection.
Cooney: The dagger
itself has a golden handle
with delicate geometric designs
and a beautiful golden sheath.
Narrator: But it's not the
design that's so special.
It's what it's made of.
It's an iron blade, fully functional.
Narrator: Ever since its discovery,
archaeologists have been puzzled
over the dagger's very existence.
Cooney: Iron seems so commonplace to us,
but for the ancient egyptians,
iron was quite a rarity.
Naughton: The iron age
doesn't arrive in egypt
for another two centuries
after the time of tutankhamun,
so it's very strange to
find such a fine object
made of iron at this time.
Narrator: A clue to the dagger's origins
surfaces in an ancient text...
A piece of hieroglyphic writing
that points to the heavens.
They found a phrase which
seemed to read "iron from the sky."
narrator: Experts are unsure
what the hieroglyphs mean.
Can modern technology
help pinpoint the source of the metal?
Scientists investigate the chemical makeup
of the blade itself.
The dagger is tested using
x-ray fluorescence spectrometry,
which is a newly developed technique.
Analysis of the results
point to a surprising source.
The equipment shows that
the composition of the iron
in the dagger is of iron,
but also nickel and cobalt
in exactly the combination
that matches the database
record for meteoric iron.
Narrator: Iron from inside a meteorite.
It's an extraordinary result.
The riddles written in the hieroglyphs,
"iron from the sky," now makes sense.
The metal that was fashioned
into the dagger's blade
came from space.
Egyptians didn't know how
to make iron for themselves.
Due to its rarity, it is
revered as a sacred metal.
Naughton: So it's easy to
imagine that they would think
of a meteorite falling as
being like a gift from god.
That would make
meteorites very highly prized,
and for that reason,
they're the kind of thing
that the king might well have
wanted to claim for himself.
This iron was likely
more valuable than gold.
And so to be buried with an iron dagger
would have linked tutankhamun
to the gods themselves.
Narrator: If the iron in the dagger
arrived in a meteorite,
where had it landed?
Investigators draw a blank.
♪
In the hunt for a new lead,
they search for any other items
in tutankhamun's treasures
which may also have celestial origins.
Their attention is drawn
to king tut's breast plate.
Naughton: Inside the sarcophagus
is an extraordinary broach
made of a kind of yellow gemstone,
which has been cut and
polished into the shape of a scarab.
This presents something of a mystery
because this is a material which
we wouldn't expect the egyptians
having access to or being
able to work in this way.
So what is it doing here in the tomb?
Narrator: The beetle-shaped broach
was initially assumed to be a gemstone.
To be sure, researchers test
the material using a technique
called oxygen isotope analysis.
They discover it's actually
a strange type of glass.
The egyptians did have the
technology to make glass,
but not with such a
clarity and translucence.
Narrator: The chemical
composition of the glass
matches a material found naturally
in one specific area of egypt...
A remote region located on the western edge
of the ancient egyptian empire.
This desert is known as the great sand sea.
Cooney: The only way
to make glass like this
is with extraordinarily high temperatures.
Narrator: Geological surveys of the site
suggest these high temperatures
could only be the
result of a meteor strike.
Naughton: When meteors
enter the earth's atmosphere,
if they're traveling at the right speed,
they explode on impact.
They create a giant fireball
of masses and masses
and masses of energy and heat.
When it hits the ground,
silica in a substance like
sand melts immediately
and forms a kind of glass, a
very particular kind of glass.
♪
Narrator: Experts calculate
that the glass in tutankhamun's broach
was made by a meteor strike
10,000 more times more
powerful than an atomic bomb,
turning a desert of
sand into a sea of glass.
A scarab made of this
glass is pretty extraordinary,
and it was obviously precious
to the ancient egyptians
who understood it as a kind of miracle...
Something that wasn't naturally occurring.
It was a very special and rare thing.
Narrator: While the scarab matches
the glass found in the desert,
experts are still unsure
that the iron in the dagger
came from this specific meteorite strike.
But one thing is certain.
When tutankhamun's tomb
was discovered back in 1922,
archaeologists had no idea
that cosmic events
millions of years earlier
had left their mark on
egypt's most famous pharaoh.
Cooney: One of the most amazing things
about the find of tutankhamun's tomb
is that there are objects in there
that are literally out of this world.
♪
Narrator: An ancient cemetery
filled with animal mummies.
Price: We have these
millions of mummified animals,
but when we come to scan them,
many of them are not what they seem.
Narrator: Now cutting-edge
scanning technology
reveals secrets hidden deep
inside the mummified remains.
Ikram: Sometimes you'll
get what you think you will,
but sometimes it's not.
We need to get to the
bottom of what's going on.
Don't ever judge a mummy by its cover.
♪
♪
Narrator: 2015.
Scientists reexamining a large hall
of ancient mummified animals
want to see what lies beneath the bandages,
but strict government rules mean
they're not allowed to unwrap the remains.
Instead, they turn to scanning technology
usually reserved for the living.
Nowadays, we can use c.T. Scans and x-rays
to look inside the mummy bundles
in great detail.
You can see exactly what's inside
without damaging the bundle itself.
Narrator: The mummified
remains were originally discovered
in the 1960s,
unearthed at the ancient
temple complex of saqqara,
15 miles from cairo...
Site of the oldest pyramid in egypt.
This was one of the biggest excavations
anywhere in the world in the 1960s.
Narrator: Digging under the site,
they made a macabre discovery.
Instead, they break into
a network of tunnels...
...Filled with millions of
pots, each of them containing
an ancient egyptian animal mummy.
This is perhaps one of the strangest finds
we have from the ancient world.
Narrator: Further excavation
revealed more and more chambers,
each filled with different
mummified animals.
So there were all these
different catacombs underground,
and each one is dedicated
to a different animal.
You have raptors in one,
you have ibis birds in another,
there are cows in a third.
Mcknight: We have a cat
catacomb, a dog catacomb.
Price: You have jackals, you have falcons.
Each individual section is
very much self contained.
Ikram: Millions of
animals in the galleries...
A vast underground zoo.
What were they all there for?
Narrator: The ancient
egyptian belief system
had many animal deities.
Could these all be votive offerings?
Ikram: Votive mummies are the same
as lighting a candle in a church
where your prayer goes up to the god.
And so a votive mummy is
the same as your prayer is taken
by this animal straight to the god.
Narrator: Each animal god
was thought to have powers
that could protect a person
from evil spirits or sickness,
or act as a guide towards
a peaceful afterlife.
Ikram: Ibis is associated
with the god thoth,
cats associated with the goddess bastet.
So really, all of these
animals were associated
with some kind of divinity.
Narrator: Saqqara's animal
mummies were thought to be
perfectly preserved whole animals,
buried as offerings to the gods.
But modern investigators have a hunch
something is not quite right.
They want to reexamine the mummies
to see exactly what lies
beneath the painted wrappings.
Now using a hospital c.T. Scanner,
the archaeologists
get their first-ever look
inside the assorted mummified animals.
They're staggered by what they find.
Sometimes you'll get
what you think you will.
It looks like a bird,
there's a bird in there.
But sometimes it's not.
Sometimes there's just a bundle of feathers
or sometimes one bone.
We expect to find that they
contain the animal itself...
A complete articulated
body. But more often than not,
we find that they contain
something entirely different...
Natural materials like
sand and soil and stones,
often with reeds and vegetation in there.
Sometimes there is no bone at all.
Price: About 1/3 contain a full skeleton
of the animal we expect,
another 1/3 contain part of the animal,
and the last 1/3 contain
nothing animal remains related.
Begs the questions, what
on earth is going on here?
Narrator: Experts look for
clues in the religious practices
that were carried out at saqqara.
Access to the temples
was controlled by priests.
Ancient sources reveal
these men were given offerings
from visiting pilgrims.
Ikram: This was a vast pilgrimage center,
and hundreds of people come
and they want to leave
an offering to the god.
So they buy, from the priests there,
a mummified cat, dog.
Narrator: Pilgrims would
buy a mummified animal
and hand it over to be buried
as part of a religious ceremony.
You give them an offering that you hope
they will pass on to the gods
and eventually bury in one of
the underground catacombs.
♪
Day: There was quite a
money making business
going on in the temples
by selling millions of animal mummies
as votive offering to
pilgrims who came each year
to sacred festivals at each of the temples.
Narrator: With such a high
demand for mummified animals,
it's likely that rogue
embalmers would cut corners.
It is possible in an industry
on this scale that some people
are using less-than-honorable
means in order
to make the articles
that they are going to sell.
Ikram: Is it that the priests
are trying to rip off people?
Is it large-scale cheating of the populous?
Narrator: But the mystery deepens.
Further investigation of
the fake mummies reveals
they wouldn't have been cheap to produce.
Price: Analysis using mass spectrometry
shows that both the
mummies with the animals
and the mummies without the animals
are made up with the
same chemical components.
So, we were able to
identify things like tree resins,
which were used as a preservative,
and bees wax, a variety of plant oils.
We found out that these are
resins that are very expensive,
that have been imported
from what is now lebanon.
Narrator: The investigation has revealed
that many of the mummy
bundles traded at saqqara
are not quite what they seem.
But for the ancient pilgrims,
this may not have mattered.
Maybe the things that we
think of as false mummies
aren't really false, and
they really have the same,
if not greater, importance
to the ancient egyptians.
They would have been equally
expensive for a pilgrim to buy,
and they contain materials
that were thought to be sacred
in the same way as an
actual example of the species.
I think these empty mummy bundles
are equally valuable.
Narrator: Modern science has revealed
that even 3,000 years ago,
there was a roaring trade in fake goods.
The saying "buyer beware"
was clearly as valid then as it is today.
♪
The discovery of an embalmers workshop
is helping archaeologists
solve an age-old mystery.
Day: Do we really know
everything about mummification?
No, we don't.
Some of it is still a mystery.
Narrator: Ancient embalmers had skills
we can't seem to match today.
Johnston: The hair is intact,
the fingernails are intact,
the eyelashes are intact.
What did the egyptian
embalmers know that we don't?
Narrator: Now scientists
are trying to identify
the precise way that bodies were
preserved so well for millennia.
Buckley: We're getting
the physical evidence
from the place where some of these mummies
were actually made.
♪
♪
Narrator: Mummified bodies have been found
perfectly preserved even
after thousands of years.
Archaeologists are still unsure
how the ancient egyptians achieved this.
Johnston: Whilst egyptologists
have always been aware
of mummies form ancient egypt,
we have nothing written down
telling us how human beings were mummified.
We have had to do it
through trial and error
down through the centuries ourselves.
Narrator: Investigators
now turn to modern science
to look for clues.
Because we have so many
ancient egyptian mummies,
then we're able to study them, scan them,
do forensic analysis
on them, and from that,
find out more about the
process of mummification.
Narrator: Mummified tissue
samples are put through
a series of biochemical analyses.
The results reveal a complex
mixture of herbs and oils.
It's found that they were
using types of plant resins...
Things like juniper, turpentine, and so on.
They would rub things like
myrrh over the body to sweeten it
and dispel some of the unpleasant smells
associated with preserving the body.
Narrator: But the chemical ingredients
of these herbs and spices alone
are not enough to stop
dead bodies decomposing.
There must be some other ingredient
that is key to perfect preservation.
Day: The egyptian embalmers
must have seemed like magic men.
They had this incredible
power to stop nature in its tracks
using methods and substances
which they kept a trade
secret from everybody.
Narrator: Investigators search
for more clues by reexamining
the complex rituals
surrounding mummification.
Day: The mummification
process of an elite egyptian
would have looked quite
shocking and quite gruesome.
One of the priests would
come forward with a very thin,
very sharp obsidian blade,
and he would make a slice
down the left-hand flank.
Narrator: Organs are removed from the body
and stored alongside in special jars.
Could these extractions
help in preservation?
Internal organs are removed, separated,
and put into four special
canopic jars protect by deities.
So the jackal-headed god
looks after the stomach,
the baboon-headed
god looks after the lungs,
the human-headed god looks after the liver,
and the auk-headed god
looks after the intestines.
Narrator: By removing the organs,
the embalmers appear to have benefited
from a very useful side effect.
It was necessary to remove the organs
to take out the moisture
that lends itself to the decay process.
The moisture in the body
is where the bacteria lived,
and they start eating the body up.
So they had some sense
that you should remove
whatever is causing that decay.
Narrator: But extracting the organs
and associated bacteria
still doesn't explain
such perfect preservation
found in mummies.
Archaeologists have to cast the net wider.
2018.
In the desert tombs of saqqara,
archaeologists make an
extraordinary discovery...
An area where mummification
actually took place.
Buckley: We're finding embalmers workshops.
We're finding ingredients there
that were clearly involved
in some sort of embalming.
So we're getting the physical
evidence from the place
where some of these
mummies were actually made.
Narrator: Inside these ancient workshops,
archaeologists find the
remains of a special mineral salt.
Chemical analysis reveals its composition.
It's sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate,
and sodium chloride,
which is a little bit like
table salt plus baking soda.
Narrator: Known as natron,
this salt is known to
quickly remove moisture
from anything it comes into contact with.
Natron is found naturally in
the valley of wadi el natrun,
50 miles from the embalmers
workshops at saqqara.
Day: But it was in the middle kingdom
about 4,000 years ago
that they discovered the
magic ingredient of natron.
Narrator: But how was natron used
during the preservation process?
It was thought that they
would pack bags of natron
inside the body cavity,
and they would cover the
entire body in a big pile of natron.
Narrator: When investigators
put this theory to the test,
they find that the dry
crystals did not prevent decay.
They decide to try something different.
A few years ago, a taxi driver
donated his body to science.
Narrator: In a controversial experiment,
scientists try to preserve
the taxi driver's body.
This time, they dissolve
the natron salts in water,
soaking the body
in super-concentrated salt solution.
We found that it is
actually possible to preserve
a human body in a bath of natron...
Natron in solution... super-salty water.
Johnston: After a period of some 40 days,
almost all of the
moisture has left the body,
leaving the body in a leather-like state,
like a leather handbag.
You need to time it very
carefully, dry the body out,
but not too much, so that
you leave the limbs flexible
and you can move the arms
into whatever position you want.
Narrator: It's the breakthrough
archaeologists are looking for.
Modern scientific analysis,
along with hands-on experimentation,
reveals that a concentrated
liquid solution of natron
was the key component above all others
for preserving a body for eternity.
Day: They dried inside the body and out
to produce a body completely preserved
that in the right dry
situation would last forever.
Buckley: 3,000 years old,
and they're still looking recognizable.
They were thinking of the long term.
They are masterpieces
of the embalmers craft.
♪
Narrator: The great pyramid of giza.
Archaeologists are still puzzled
over the ancient builders' ability
to construct such a
perfectly shaped structure.
Dash: The accuracy of the
ancients was remarkable.
It's jaw-dropping.
Harrison: The structure is almost perfect.
It's an incredible feat of engineering.
Narrator: Now for the first time,
scientists use laser-scanning technology
to accurately measure the
size and scale of the pyramid...
Previously, the pyramid had only
been measure with plumb lines
and yard sticks.
...And search for clues to
explain how they could build
such a perfectly proportioned stone tomb.
It's beyond belief.
♪
♪
Narrator: 2015.
Engineers from the giza
plateau mapping project
launch an ambitious new
survey of the great pyramid.
Glen dash leads the team.
Dash: When you're standing
there looking at the great pyramid
and seeing other people
walk up to it as well,
inevitably, they do the same thing...
They stand there and their jaw drops.
They're thinking, "who was
the guy that took that stone
and had to put it up there?"
harrison: It's the only one
of the ancient world wonders
that's still standing.
They managed to build nearly 500 feet high,
3,000 years before christ.
Narrator: Archaeologists
want to investigate
how this was possible.
What drove them to build a
tomb in the shape of a pyramid?
Clark: There are several theories
about the shape of the true pyramid.
Some think it might be a representation
of the benben stone.
Harrison: In egyptian mythology,
the benben stone represents
the first piece of land
that emerged from the
primordial waters of chaos
at the beginning of time.
This was how the universe was created.
Narrator: Researchers find
many ancient religious sites
contain a sacred mound, or benben stone,
in their design.
Early temples would have a mound in them,
which would be an icon
to the mound of creation.
Other temples would have a pyramidal stone.
Narrator: For pharaoh
khufu, the great pyramid
was built to be his eternal resting place.
It would need to be a perfect,
accurately shaped structure
to successfully launch
him into the afterlife.
The shape of the pyramid
traditionally represents
the rays of the sun,
and the slope represents the way a pharaoh
can climb up into the
sky, into the heavens,
and be amongst the gods.
Der manuelian: So you're
investing in this afterlife.
A staircase to the heavens, if you will.
Dash: The purpose of a
pyramid was to provide
for the resurrection of the king.
Fundamentally, a pyramid
is a resurrection machine.
Narrator: Archaeologists are still puzzled
as to how the egyptians
managed such perfection
in their construction.
For the giza mapping project,
glen's team used the very latest
in laser-scanning survey equipment.
Their goal is to precisely measure
the size and orientation of the pyramid.
Dash: We have marvelous instruments today
called total stations.
They combine a telescope with a laser beam.
They are fantastically precise instruments.
Narrator: The results
astound the engineers.
Dash: The south is longer
than the north by about 3 inches.
The west is longer than
the east by about 2 inches.
The accuracy of the
ancients was remarkable.
It's jaw-dropping.
Harrison: The structure is almost perfect.
It's an incredible feat of engineering.
The pyramid was built
with almost perfect accuracy.
Narrator: The great pyramid was constructed
with a margin of error of just .03%.
So how exactly did they do it?
Keep in mind that they built it all
with wood, rope, copper, and stone.
They had nothing else.
They great pyramid is built to
construction standards today.
Narrator: Continuing his survey,
glen discovers the great pyramid
holds more hidden secrets.
Dash: Most people,
including archaeologists,
when they walk up to the great pyramid,
they look up.
We walked up to the great pyramid
and decided to look down.
Narrator: Beneath their feet,
the team finds something very strange.
Dash: In the bedrock
around the great pyramid
are all these cuttings.
We mapped 3,000 of them.
Narrator: Hiding in plain sight
are the remains of a system of holes.
Glen thinks these were cut
into the ground by the builders.
Dash: There are these large holes.
They run parallel to
the sides of the pyramid.
We call them post holes.
Narrator: Glen believes
the ancient builders
slotted posts in these holes
at one significant time of the year...
On the day of the autumn equinox.
The posts would cast a precisely
oriented shadow on the ground.
These shadows could then be
used as directional reference points
to help build the pyramid.
♪
Harrison: The equinox is the only time
when the sun will create a straight shadow
running perfectly from east to west.
So if they measured during the equinox,
this is how they would have got the angles
for the pyramid so accurate.
Dash: It turns out to be the
simplest possible method.
They stuck a stick in the
ground and watched the shadow.
That was it.
Narrator: The shadow lines
not only help the builders
create a perfect pyramid shape,
they also made sure it
was correctly oriented.
It was extremely important that the temples
were properly aligned, true east to west.
The east is the land of the living,
and the west is the realm of the dead.
Narrator: The great pyramid was built
to represent life, death, and resurrection.
Its construction is testament
to the ingenuity of the ancients.
Clear evidence of their
understanding of mathematics,
engineering, and the movement of the sun.
Dash: They did it with their
wood, rope, copper, and stone,
and they found some way
to do it that was brilliant
and robust and simple.
♪
Narrator: A vast cemetery reveals evidence
of an ancient tragedy.
Bianchi: Excavations have
discovered an appalling number
of adolescent children that have died.
Narrator: A devastating event
that preyed on the young.
Zink: Their spines are completely rotten.
Their joints are almost destroyed.
Narrator: Can forensic science
reveal how and why they died?
Were they killed by a disease
that still affects us today.
♪
♪
Narrator: 2015.
Archaeologists working at
the ancient city of amarna,
on the edge of a vast desert plateau,
make a shocking discovery.
Ikram: Excavations have
shown that there are all types
of people buried there.
Not just the rich and
the elites that we knew of,
but new cemeteries have been found
filled with bodies of the poor.
Narrator: Many of the
graves contain multiple bodies.
The size of the corpses
suggest most of them died young.
This cemetery is predominantly children.
They were buried with
very, very simple things.
There's not just one person buried.
There's quite a few together.
Narrator: The question
is, what killed them?
♪
Archaeologists already know
a great deal about the lives
and deaths of the ordinary
people of ancient egypt.
Disease and infection were quite common.
General life expectancy
was much shorter than today.
Ikram: So by the age of 30,
you were an old man or an old woman.
It was a very fraught kind of existence.
♪
Narrator: Determining how these people
in this mass grave died
presents a challenge.
No records exist documenting their deaths,
so experts need to search for clues.
Studies of bodies from other burial grounds
provide valuable insights.
2012.
At the university of manchester in England,
scientists discovered a
possible cause of death.
14 ancient egyptian lungs were analyzed.
Tiny microscopic specs were discovered.
These with some particles.
They're breathing in a
significant amount of sand,
causing lung problems
or spiritual diseases.
Even the environment conspires
against the ancient egyptians.
Narrator: The study showed
inhalation of sand particles
affected egypt's rich and poor alike,
and was almost as severe
as modern day car pollution.
We are seeing changes in the lungs
where you see that sand was inhaled
and it caused inflammatory reaction.
This can go as all
kinds of lung infections.
It can compromise the whole immune system,
so this would definitely
have been a problem.
Narrator: Long-term exposure
to sand inhalation can be deadly.
But at the dig site in amarna,
the shear scale of the burials,
plus the age of the bodies,
makes archaeologists conclude
this can't be the cause of death.
♪
The investigation team analyzed the bones
from the mass grave in forensic detail.
The results suggest that
amarna's young people
were very badly treated.
The bones are really where
the history of the body lies.
We are seeing that they
used to work very hard.
Even children were being
pressed into hard labor.
They appear malnourished.
There's stunted growth.
There's evidence of scurvy, rickets.
They had a lot of bone changes
that is typical for somebody
who is working almost his whole life.
♪
Narrator: An explanation
for this appalling treatment
is sought in the history of amarna itself.
The city was built hundreds of miles
from the old capital of thebes
by the heretic pharaoh akhenaten.
The skeleton suggests
the local people were forced
to build the city, stone by stone.
Bianchi: One worked until
one was physically unable
to perform the task that was at hand.
You have a population living in that city
that are undernourished and
are dying because of poor diet.
Zink: They didn't have enough food
to compensate these heavy workloads.
So they were really under
a very... very severe stress
during their whole lifetime,
and a lot of them died in a very young age.
Narrator: Analysis of the skeletons
unearthed from the mass grave
continues to reveal more clues.
Investigators start to notice
distinctive marks on the bones.
It appears that many of the young people
were suffering from a blood-born infection,
a disease still prevalent today...
Malaria.
Some of the lesions in the bones,
some of the soft tissue tells us
that these people at
amarna suffered from malaria.
And outbreaks of this disease
wipes out entire populations.
Zink: It's highly likely
that there was an outbreak
that killed a lot of
people at the same time,
so they had to put them
together in a sort of mass grave.
♪
Narrator: It all begins to make sense.
For the overworked and
starving people of amarna,
malaria would have been a killer blow.
The risk of disease from mosquitos
and the ill treatment of the population
could also explain
why the city was abandoned
as soon as akhenaten died.
Aziz: These are the young
people that would have built the city.
The work must have been
excruciatingly painful and difficult.
And this cemetery is
predominantly children.
It's just very sad.
♪
Narrator: Tombs have
been robbed of their riches
since the first pharaohs were laid to rest.
People want the important
stuff buried in there.
We don't know what's
happened to the bodies.
Narrator: But tomb
raiders didn't have it easy.
Cooney: There is this
mythology that the great pyramids
are somehow booby-trapped.
Narrator: Now archaeologists
are reexamining the inventive ways
the ancient egyptians
tried to protect their dead.
They have got very
complex and strong defenses,
which were incredibly difficult to breach.
♪
♪
Narrator: The ruling elite
of ancient egypt believed
they would reach the afterlife
only if their mummified body
and possessions remained intact.
But how to stop thieves
from looting your tomb?
When ancient egyptians are building tombs,
they aren't necessarily
thinking in terms of booby traps,
like you see in "indiana jones".
You're not gonna be chased by a boulder.
But they do think about the
fact that tombs are raided.
Macca: They built their resting places
way down in the base
through these long chutes
and corridors and labyrinth-themed circuits
that you had to get
through to find the tombs.
Narrator: Most royal burial
chambers had been found defended
with carefully constructed
security mechanisms.
Some of the features
of tomb security include
vast, heavy, thick, hard stone portcullises
that can be dropped down.
Clark: Some of these
were shafts filled rubble,
passages blocked with lumps of solid stone,
others raising the entrances out of reach.
Narrator: Often, these security measures
were built simply to hide the door.
The idea was to prevent the tomb robbers
finding the entrance
and then getting admission
to inner sanctum of the tomb.
Narrator: Experts reexamine
one of the best examples
of afterlife security
at the great pyramids.
There is this mythology
that the great pyramids
on the giza plateau are
somehow booby-trapped,
and that when people
tried to break into them,
that there would be some sort of mechanism
that would suddenly kill them.
Narrator: The legend
is not far from the truth.
Clark: The burial chamber
itself was granite lined,
and the entrance to it blocked
with three stone portcullises.
Narrator: The physical
design of the pyramid
could also act as additional security.
Clark: The outside of the
pyramid would be covered
with a layer of polished tura limestone
to completely seal the access point,
and it would be very difficult to find.
♪
Narrator: Despite assorted
security mechanisms
put in place,
most sacred tombs were still robbed.
Pyramids and tombs have
been looted and robbed
since the very earliest days
of burying important people in
the ground with important stuff.
Clark: Those remains that we do find
have been severely
damaged by the tomb robbers,
who even set fire to the
bodies to cover their tracks.
Narrator: So how are so many
tombs robbed so regularly?
Cooney: It would be roving
bands of men who go out
in the middle of the
night with their torches,
break open a burial
chamber, opening up coffins,
taking out what they can quickly pocket,
what they can quickly bring
to the market and exchange.
Narrator: It wasn't just the
tombs of the elite classes
that were raided.
No one was safe.
If times are tough economically,
people do what they
need to do to survive...
Family members going into
their own burial chambers
and stealing from their own ancestors.
Narrator: As well as opportunist thieves.
Ancient texts reveal that tomb robbers
came from all levels of society.
Cooney: Everybody seems to
be involved in this tomb robbing
in some way, shape, or form,
even the people ruling
thebes at the time...
The high priesthood of amun.
The priesthood is systematically
going into the valley of the kings,
tomb by tomb,
and pulling out everything
that was of value.
♪
Narrator: The discovery
of an ancient papyrus,
dating from the time of ramesses xi,
gives an intriguing insight.
Senior authority figures are
noted in court proceedings,
apparently conspiring among themselves
to rob the tombs they guarded.
Cooney: There are letters
with veiled references
to "that thing that I showed you that time"
or "that place you uncovered."
"keep it sealed until I get there,"
which is the way people talk
when they're talking about
something contraband,
something they shouldn't be doing.
Narrator: Even with clever
security measures in place,
there's one group of people
who had insider knowledge
to bypass the innovative features...
The tomb builders themselves.
♪
Cooney: They knew the
location of every royal tomb.
Not only that, they knew how to get in.
Narrator: It was down to
pure luck that a burial site
was not robbed of its riches.
Today, it's incredibly rare
to find an undisturbed tomb,
and that's why our
understanding of the details
and processes of egyptian burials
and the afterlife are still
being revealed to this day.