"Lost Treasures of Egypt" (2019–2020): Season 3, Episode 7 - Tutankhamun's Unsolved Secrets - full transcript
Archaeologists are on the trail of Tutankhamun. To piece together his story, they search his tomb and beyond for secrets missed by the first explorers.
JOHN: The one thing
you've learnt,
which they never teach
you in University,
is how to do archaeology
with your toes.
I can feel a lot of silt,
Nile silt, that's very,
very fine sand.
NARRATOR: On the
banks of the Nile,
archaeologists are
investigating a temple that
they think
Tutankhamun restored.
JOHN: I'm hitting a very
thick layer of stone.
NARRATOR: Evidence of the
boy king's reign may lie
at the bottom of
this mysterious pit.
JOHN: This is going
to be hard work.
NARRATOR: The tomb of
Tutankhamen in Egypt's
Valley of the Kings.
When Tutankhamun's burial
chamber was first discovered,
at its heart,
lay an unimaginable treasure:
The mummy of the boy king,
who died tragically young.
He remains one of the
most mysterious and famous
of all the pharaohs.
JOHN: Let's go, let's do it.
NARRATOR: Now, across Egypt
teams of archaeologists
investigate the unsolved
secrets of Tutankhamun.
Where did he get so much gold?
How did he control
his kingdom?
And could experts have
missed anything when they
first entered his tomb?
Egyptologist Aliaa Ismail,
aged just 30,
runs an Egyptian team
digitally scanning and
preserving data in the
Valley of the Kings.
The team had previously
scanned and stored every inch
of Tutankhamun's tomb.
Now, Aliaa is heading back
on a mission of her own.
Did the young pharaoh leave
more secrets yet to be found?
The pioneering archaeologist
Howard Carter discovered
Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922.
ALIAA: It was the biggest and
still is the biggest discovery
in ancient Egyptian antiquities.
For Egyptologists, this was
like a marking point in time,
finding a huge treasure
with all the golden masks,
the coffins.
NARRATOR: Howard Carter
kept a detailed diary.
ALIAA: It seemed that
Carter was on the brink of
giving up and then suddenly
the treasure opens up.
"Looking at his diary,
It soon became obvious
that we were but on the
threshold of the discovery,
the site that met us was beyond
anything one could conceive."
NARRATOR: Carter
discovered the tomb,
with Tutankhamun's
sarcophagus and mummy,
and rooms piled
high with treasures.
ALIAA: The tomb, it's so
neat now but when Carter
came in here this place
was cluttered with objects.
In here, you would have had
the shrines of Tutankhamun,
and then the sarcophagus
and then the coffins within.
And within the coffins,
the final layer would
be the mummy itself.
NARRATOR: But Carter's journal
holds a surprising revelation.
He may not have been
the first to enter the
chamber after all.
Clearing the rubble
from the tomb,
Carter discovered that someone
had cut a hole in the slab,
sealing the entrance.
Inside, more signs
of a break-in.
Some of Tutankhamun's treasures had
been knocked over,
damaged,
or strewn across the floor.
The robbers must
have been in a rush,
as they dropped
precious items,
such as gold rings
wrapped in a scarf.
Luckily for Carter,
they didn't take the
most valuable treasure:
the sarcophagus
of Tutankhamun and his
famous death mask.
ALIAA: Carter must have been
in true awe seeing this mask
just out there, just the
biggest find of the century.
NARRATOR: Shortly after
the first robbery,
the tomb was looted again.
It was re-sealed
and preserved,
leaving a chaotic
mess inside for Carter
3,000 years later.
He searched the tomb, but
he didn't have the modern day
scanning equipment Aliaa uses.
ALIAA: The technology could
actually bring about things
that no one thought once
could have ever existed.
NARRATOR: Can Aliaa's hi-tech
scanning
reveal the secrets
of Tutankhamun
the robbers
and Carter missed?
At Gebel El-Silsila...
JOHN: Alright guys...
(speaking in native language)
MARIA: Let's go and
find the lost temple.
JOHN: (speaking in Arabic).
MARIA: (groans).
NARRATOR: Director of the
Swedish Archaeological mission
Maria Nilsson...
MARIA: Come on.
JOHN: Messa.
NARRATOR: Her husband,
archaeologist John Ward,
and their dog, Carter...
MARIA: Come on.
NARRATOR: Are arriving
on the banks of the Nile
with their team.
JOHN: Let's go, let's do it.
NARRATOR: They're
investigating a riverside
temple that could have been
restored by Tutankhamun.
JOHN: Come on guys.
NARRATOR: Most of what
archaeologists know about the
boy king comes from his tomb.
But 100 years
since its discovery,
experts are exploring beyond
the Valley of the Kings
to find out more
about Tutankhamun's short
life and reign.
MARIA: When Tutankhamun
came to power,
it was all about restoring
what his father had neglected.
So he had a task of
restoring all the grand
monuments across Egypt.
JOHN: We going that way?
NARRATOR: Maria and John think
they may have found
one of these restoration projects.
Gebel El-Silsila was home to
a vast quarry and workforce
during Tutankhamun's time.
MARIA: We know that we got his
quarries here so there's a lot
of activity here on site from
the reign of Tutankhamen.
NARRATOR: Maria and John
have discovered the worker's
village at Gebel El-Silsila,
and the foundations of a
temple right next to the Nile.
JOHN: This is
the rear of temple.
We've still got the grid
lines which show us where
the actual walls used to be.
And these would
have stood in this,
literally right where
we're standing right now.
We've got the (indistinct) here,
and we would have had a pylon
gate at the front
facing the west.
NARRATOR: If this temple
was restored by Tutankhamun,
why did he restore it,
and which gods
were worshiped here?
Finding new evidence
could help unravel the story
of his reign.
Maria and John are focusing
their work on a mysterious
purpose-built pit within
the temple complex.
JOHN: This was an entire
mound with a tree growing out
the middle of it.
And the hunch was that
there was something beneath here,
because the tree
had to have a water source.
Once we cleared all that area,
we started to find the dressed
slabs that went around,
and now we have the pit.
We just don't know what
the function of it is.
NARRATOR: The only way to
find out is for John
to get in and have a look.
JOHN: So is the water
going down, Ahmed?
NARRATOR: But first they
have to pump the water out.
JOHN: That should be clear.
There's water seeping in from somewhere.
The problem is that as
soon as we pump all the water out,
it just seeps back in again,
and every time it seeps
back in again it brings all
the clay and the mud with it
and puts it in the center,
and the problem is that these boys
are trying to work in a muddy slurry,
and it's pretty disgusting
down there.
NARRATOR: But as workers
pump water from the pit,
Maria gets an urgent call from
the other side of the temple.
MARIA: Hey, there.
I think Ibrahim
has something again.
(laughs)
MAN: (speaking in Arabic)
MARIA: He's done it again.
NARRATOR: In Abbad...
THOMAS: Hey, Marcus.
NARRATOR: Director of the
French archaeology mission,
Thomas Faucher,
and American Archaeologist
Jennifer Gates-Foster...
JENNIFER: Are you ready?
NARRATOR: Are also
investigating one of
Tutankhamun's secrets:
The source of his gold.
There are no gold
mines along the Nile,
where Tutankhamun and most
ancient Egyptians lived.
So Thomas and Jennifer
are venturing far from
Tutankhamun's tomb deep
into the Eastern Desert.
They hope a site here can
reveal how he got his gold.
JENNIFER: Without question
it was a critical resource
for filling the
Egyptian states coffers.
What does it take to have
a solid gold death mask?
What does it take
to have a throne covered
completely in gold foil?
Well, it takes generations of exploration
in a rough environment
to find that gold,
to process it,
and then to eventually have it
end up in Tut's tombs.
NARRATOR: When priests
laid Tutankhamun to rest,
they covered his face with a
death mask made of more than
20 pounds of pure gold,
then enclosed
his mummy in three exquisite
golden coffins sealing them
inside a stone sarcophagus,
surrounded by four shrines
covered in beaten gold.
The priests crammed the
adjoining chambers with
hundreds of gold and gilt treasures.
In total, Tutankhamun
was buried with more than
264 pounds of gold.
How did the boy
king amass so much?
In Egypt's Eastern Desert,
there are vast gold deposits.
Thomas has been
investigating here since 2011
and has discovered evidence
of ancient gold miners
working out here.
But they're hundreds of miles
from Tutankhamun's capital
and in the middle of one
of the most-deadly landscapes
in the world.
How did his ancient miners
get his gold from way out here?
THOMAS: You need like
a week by donkey or camel
to cross the Eastern Desert.
You'll just die,
because you won't have any--
any water or food supplies.
NARRATOR: Last year, Thomas and Jennifer
excavated an ancient fortress,
a vital safe haven
in this vast wilderness.
JENNIFER: It probably had a little
out flair sort of flint,
yeah, kind of a flint...
NARRATOR: They've uncovered
remarkable evidence that the
site dates to the Greek
era of Egyptian history,
1,000 years after Tutankhamun.
JENNIFER: Well this--
this season we have had an
extraordinary amount of material.
This is a really lovely
little, probably,
a perfume vessel.
NARRATOR: But they suspect
the site could be far older.
The team needs to go deeper
beneath the fortress to know
if Tutankhamun's
workers were here
and that he got his gold
from the Eastern Desert.
THOMAS: We found more
shards like down the level,
and as you see we're underneath
the level of the fortress,
so if we can find
the ceramics dating from the
time of Tutankhamun
that would be great.
NARRATOR: But their work
here is under threat.
Large areas of Abbad have
been bulldozed in the
past year for agricultural use.
THOMAS: All the--all these
traces here and all the parts
here have been like completely,
completely destroyed.
NARRATOR: But another,
more dangerous threat comes
from modern-day treasure hunters
and looters
who target sites in a futile search
for gold.
The longer Thomas
and Jennifer excavate here,
the more unwanted
attention they attract.
THOMAS: And you'll see the--
the cars coming and going all day long.
People think that because
it's an ancient site,
they will find gold like
they could find gold in the--
in Karnak or in Luxor
or in these old temples.
NARRATOR: They're in a race
to find out if Tutankhamun got
his gold from the Eastern Desert
before looters and
farmers destroy the evidence.
THOMAS: We're just like
running from one site to the
other like trying to save as
much data as possible before--
before it's all gone.
NARRATOR: At Silsila...
MARIA: You are amazing.
NARRATOR: Maria and John's
long-term colleague
Ibrahim Awadallah
Mohammed Jad
has found a clue beneath the
ruins of the temple complex.
JOHN: Oh wow.
MARIA: Here we have a crocodile
who's described as Sobek,
Lord of Henney,
Lord of the ancient Silsila.
JOHN: And I'm holding
it in my hand.
MARIA: Yeah.
JOHN: Wow.
MARIA: It's amazing.
It is fragmentary.
We're missing the head.
It confirms everything
that we've been
trying to understand the last years.
NARRATOR: Statuettes like this one would
have been brought to the temple
by worshippers as an offering
to the crocodile god Sobek.
JOHN: Isn't it beautiful?
MARIA: It is.
JOHN: Isn't it beautiful?
MARIA: It's our first.
This is as close as you get
to the ancient people without
actually going back in time.
JOHN: And made from Silsila Stone.
MARIA: And made from local stone.
JOHN: Oh, it's fantastic;
that is fantastic.
NARRATOR: The statuette of
the God Sobek can help Maria
and John understand
the purpose of the temple,
and why Tutankhamun
may have restored it.
Sobek appears as a crocodile,
a dangerous predator here.
MARIA: We've now got high water,
but during the low season,
when the water is down,
on the other side
and all the way up here,
it would just be
infested with crocodiles.
NARRATOR: Crocodiles
were a constant,
deadly threat for anyone
who worked near the Nile.
The ancient Egyptians
worshipped the crocodile god, Sobek.
He was the mythical
creator of the Nile
and made the land fertile.
The pharaohs built temples
on the Nile to Sobek,
where he was worshipped to
preserve the life-giving waters,
and to protect the
people from its dangers.
Priests even kept live
crocodiles at their temples
to worship as incarnations of Sobek.
It would make sense
for Tutankhamun to restore
a temple to Sobek here.
JOHN: Tutankhamen's quarries
here in Silsila required
a massive workforce, and to
keep them safe and protected,
Tutankhamen would
have used this temple.
He would have used his
association with the God Sobek
to empower himself
to show that he was the great
protector and that he
could look after them in
such a harsh environment.
NARRATOR: Could the pit
beside the temple have been
used to keep crocodiles?
JOHN: We know from other
sites they kept crocodiles
as part of the state religion.
I think what we have here is
actually a crocodile pit where
they would have kept them
literally in here and fed them.
From where I'm standing now,
the priests would have just
literally thrown the food down to them.
NARRATOR: The team has
finished pumping the water,
and it's time to see if
they can find any evidence
for this extraordinary theory.
JOHN: He's lifting
the stone out on his shoulder.
NARRATOR: But it's dangerous
work to clear the stones
from the depths of the pit.
MAN: Ali, Mohammed.
JOHN: We're about to do the
gang pull of a stone slab.
MAN: (speaking in Arabic).
NARRATOR: Abbad is located in an 85,000
square mile wilderness,
between Tutankhamun's
palaces along the Nile,
and gold mines in the east.
Jennifer is on the hunt for clues
that Tutankhamun's gold workers
used this safe haven.
It would unlock one of
Tutankhamun's secrets
and be evidence he got
the gold for his glittering
shrine from mines in the Eastern Desert.
JENNIFER: It takes
a lot of people's lives
dedicated to this space
out here working, dying,
trying to survive to
find that gold and then
to eventually have
it end up in Tut's tombs.
THOMAS: Okay.
NARRATOR: The clues, artifacts
dating to Tutankhamun's era
could lie beneath the ruins
of this ancient fortress.
3-D scans of the site
show the scale of the task.
The fortress of
Abbad covers an area
of 8,000-square feet with 18 rooms.
It's like looking for a needle
underneath a giant haystack.
MAN: (speaking in Arabic).
NARRATOR: But as the team
works their way through the
rooms two feet below the fortress,
they uncover something.
THOMAS: You can see on this
shard of pottery that there is
a bit of writing text
about three letters,
and these letters is demotic
and demotic is the writing of
the ancient Egyptian.
It's really a unique
piece of evidence.
NARRATOR: The ancient Egyptians
wrote on broken pottery.
THOMAS: Because papyri
was so expensive,
usually they didn't use
it in the desert except
for very official letters.
So it's easy to pick up a pottery shard
and to write on it.
They were like taking it
and putting in the rubbish bin.
So I'd say it's really
thrilling to find this text.
NARRATOR: The pottery is
still not old enough to be
from Tutankhamun's time,
but it's clear progress...
a sign the team
are on the right track.
And if they keep on digging,
they might reach pottery
or other remnants of
Tutankhamun's era and
evidence his gold workers
came through the fortress of
Abbad with gold for his tomb.
NARRATOR: At Gebel El-Silsila,
Maria and John have
been working and living
with their two children,
Freja and Jonathan,
on a boat on the Nile.
For ten years, they have split
their time between Sweden and Egypt
to complete their work
and feed their passion
for discovering more about
this ancient civilization.
WOMAN: Four, two, one.
WOMAN AND MAN: Yeah.
MARIA: Ready to jump in?
JOHN: I am indeed.
It's been so hot today.
MARIA: What a place for the
kids to jump in and cool off.
JOHN: You haven't--you haven't
lived unless you've swam in the Nile,
and the kids will be able to have
that for the rest of their lives...
MARIA: That's true.
JOHN: And thankfully
there's no crocodiles.
MARIA: Come on then.
NARRATOR: They can relax
at the end of a hot day,
but there's little time left to complete
their work this season,
and they have
a busy few days ahead.
They are investigating
a temple that they believe
was restored by Tutankhamun
and a deep pit that could have
held crocodiles
worshipped as incarnations
of the God Sobek.
JOHN: Well done, Hussain.
NARRATOR: It's filled up
with a thick layer of mud,
and a huge stone is
blocking their progress.
JOHN: The ladder could snap
in half; the rope could snap.
Watch your toe.
Watch your toes.
NARRATOR:
They need to get it out.
JOHN: They could drop
the stone on their feet.
I mean, there's a
multitude of problems that
could go wrong here.
No, that's not going to work, boys.
That's not going to work.
It's going to tip;
it's going to tip it.
NARRATOR:
But it's not going to be easy.
JOHN: Watch your toes;
watch your toes.
MARIA: Well done, guys!
NARRATOR: Now that the
slab has been removed,
they can see that exploring
the pit is going to be harder
than they thought.
JOHN: They all thought the
"heba," this clay substance,
was just the floor,
and that was it.
NARRATOR:
There's a thick layer of mud at the
bottom of the pit.
JOHN: Ahmed is now able to put his palm
frond all the way down,
showing that there is
actually much, much more,
over a meter and a half more to go
after they've gone through
this clay substance.
NARRATOR: John decides it's
time for him to get down in
the pit himself to search
through the mud for evidence
that dates to Tutankhamun's reign.
JOHN: Oh.
NARRATOR:
In the Valley of The Kings
Aliaa is on a mission to
discover the unsolved secrets
of Tutankhamun that
Howard Carter may have missed.
To investigate further,
Aliaa has come
to Stoppelaere House,
where she heads up a scanning
team who use the latest
technology to study tombs
in the Valley of the Kings.
ALIAA: This is our
3-D scanning center.
This is where we process all
the data that we have scanned.
I have been scanning for
the last six years of my life,
and this is so exciting.
It's like you're
peeling back the layers.
NARRATOR: Aliaa thinks
the previous scans of
Tutankhamun's tomb may have revealed
something extraordinary...
Something that Howard Carter
would never have found.
ALIAA: Looking at the color image,
you can't really see much.
Very beautiful,
but once we remove the layer of color
and just look at the 3-D,
the greyscale, it's very
obvious that there's no carving,
it was just plaster and paint.
When you look deeper,
you see sort of a shadow
in here all the way to here.
Almost inclined to believe
that this is a sort of
passageway or doorway.
It was with these scans
that scholars were
able to review and reveal
something might be lying
just behind the north wall.
NARRATOR: The lines aren't
visible to the naked eye,
but this tantalizing
evidence that there might be
a lost chamber hidden
in Tutankhamun's tomb
has sparked years of
exploration and controversy.
ALIAA: It sort of gives us
hope that there's a tomb
just sealed off in half
and somebody else,
another occupant.
You know, there's possibility.
NARRATOR: A lost chamber of Tutankhamun's
tomb would rewrite history.
But what or who could
be behind a secret door?
NARRATOR:
At Gebel El El-Silsila...
JOHN: Come on.
NARRATOR: John Ward descends
into a foul-smelling pit.
JOHN: Oh.
NARRATOR: He's looking for
evidence that this was
a ceremonial pit used during
the reign of Tutankhamun,
a pit that he thinks was
used to keep crocodiles.
But the bottom is covered
in a thick layer of mud.
JOHN:
The thing that we've learned,
which they never teach
you in university,
is how to do archaeology
with your toes.
And I'm being serious,
because of course you can't see,
so you use your fingers.
And what I can feel,
I can feel a lot of silt.
As I'm going deeper,
I can feel very small stone.
It's sandstone fragments.
I'm going deeper now, ooh,
I'm going very deep now.
NARRATOR: But toes can
only get you so far.
JOHN: Oh, that's lovely;
oh, man.
MARIA: What you got?
JOHN: No, it's salt.
Salt stone.
The silt and the mud
goes much
deeper than we anticipated,
but I'm hitting a very thick
layer of stone fragments,
and I can't get past that.
NARRATOR: But time is running
out for John and the team.
Tomorrow is the last day
of their excavation here.
JOHN: This is going
to take a lot more work
than we first envisaged.
MARIA:
Can you see anything, John?
JOHN: There's nothing to see;
it's all blind archaeology.
I can feel beneath this mud brick mixture
there's a stone layer,
and that's where
we're trying to get to.
Come to Egypt they said;
work in the sand, they said.
They didn't say thing
about water and mud.
MARIA: Coming up
to the end of the day.
JOHN: Yep, I know.
NARRATOR:
With time running out,
one of the workers locates
something hidden beneath
the muddy water.
MAN: Look, touch here.
NARRATOR: Could it be proof
this pit and temple complex
was used during the
reign of Tutankhamun?
In Luxor...
Aliaa has returned to
the tomb of Tutankhamun
to investigate evidence
for a lost chamber
behind the north wall.
3-D scans uncovered what
some believe are outlines
of a doorway.
Does Tutankhamun's tomb
have more secrets to reveal?
ALIAA: Some Egyptologists
think that there is a whole
tomb behind this scene.
The outline or shadow
falls within this area.
It is exciting as
Egyptologists to think that
there may be a whole huge treasure
lying just there behind this wall
waiting to be discovered.
NARRATOR: Outside,
Aliaa looks for clues to where
a hidden tomb could lie.
ALIAA: Here, there is the tomb of
Tutankhamen just beneath this mound,
and if there is another tomb
that comes right out of it,
it's going to be right there.
NARRATOR: The presence of another hidden
tomb here is a controversial theory,
and it's difficult to prove.
Archaeological excavation
in the Valley of the Kings
is a danger to the
priceless tombs below.
But there's another way
to look under the surface.
ALIAA: Not long ago,
a team was allowed to come and do
some ground penetrating
radar over here.
Their radar was to show if
there was a potential in the
theory that there may be
another tomb lying down
beneath Tutankhamun.
NARRATOR: Ground penetrating
radar allows archaeologists to
search for voids through rock
and behind the walls of tombs.
The area around Tutankhamun's tomb
has been scanned multiple times before
with conflicting results.
But recent work by Egyptian
archaeologist Mamdouh Eldamaty
poses a new and captivating possibility.
In his radar scan,
he detected a
32-foot-long space right next
to Tutankhamun's tomb.
If this is connected to the
room that may lie hidden
behind the burial chamber,
this could be an undiscovered
section of the tomb.
These rooms would most
likely be untouched and filled
with ancient treasures
and possibly another burial.
Did Tutankhamun share his
tomb with someone else?
ALIAA: The results of the
radar were incredible.
Now it's so exciting to
think that there is another
discovery yet to be made.
We're all waiting to
see what this secret
is going to reveal.
NARRATOR: If Tutankhamun's
tomb contains a hidden burial chamber,
the question is,
who could be buried there?
NARRATOR: Thomas and Jennifer
are investigating
one of Tutankhamun's secrets
excavating under a
ruined fortress for evidence
he got his gold from the
inhospitable Eastern Desert.
Did his miners shelter here?
The team has just found something,
Stone blocks that offer
a tantalizing glimpse of
a settlement from
Tutankhamun's time.
JENNIFER: So these are
architectural blocks.
They carry some Hieroglyphic
inscription very faintly
visible here which would
indicate that they were carved
and set up in some sort of
building which dates to the
reign of Tutankhamen.
It's exciting, because that
gives us a sort of ballpark
for the time when this
site was busy and active
and important during the 18th Dynasty.
NARRATOR: Jennifer's team must
now move the precious blocks
off site for further analysis.
As they dig deeper into the
layers below the fortress,
they uncover more clues
that this site was in use
in Tutankhamun's time.
JENNIFER: It is beautiful.
This is a really distinctive,
very different from
any of the Ptolemaic material,
the Greek-style pottery
that we find in most
of the rooms of the fort
that is really common.
This kind of pottery,
which belongs to the New Kingdom,
is not wheel-made.
It's handmade, and you can
tell that by looking at the
interior of the pot,
which has a surface
which is very irregular
and that it's been smoothed
with a smooth stone most likely.
NARRATOR:
It's not just one or two pieces
of Tutankhamun-era pottery.
Jennifer's team is
revealing that the layers
of earth beneath the fortress
are packed full of it.
JENNIFER: We have New Kingdom material
under the floors of rooms 20,
19, 26, 18, and 17.
But to have the fort now
documented on top of deposits
that indicate some kind of
occupation in the New Kingdom,
and that's really exciting.
NARRATOR: The discovery is
proof the site may have been
used in Tutankhamun's
time by his gold workers.
But the team has found another
remarkable clue concealed in the fortress.
Cutting into the bedrock
60 feet below the surface is a well.
It's a vital source of water that explains
why the safe haven
and Tutankhamun's
gold workers were here.
THOMAS: The well was built at
the time of Tutankhamun by the
evidence we have now.
It was, I guess, more precious than even
than gold for people
that they can have water to go inside
the-- inside the desert.
NARRATOR: The evidence here
and at other sites reveals
how Tutankhamun got his gold
from the remote Eastern Desert.
Miners had to trek vast
distances from the Nile Valley
across the hot, dry desert,
to reach the gold mines.
Ancient engineers dug wells
along the route
for precious drinking water.
Each well was a day's
walk from the last,
creating a network of vital rest stops.
This allowed them to survive the brutal
journey across the desert
to mine gold in the east
and bring it back to their pharaoh.
Thomas and Jennifer have revealed one
of Tutankhamun's secrets.
Sites like this were
a critical part of the
infrastructure that
allowed him to amass the gold
for one of the most
elaborate burials in history.
JENNIFER: The gold in Tut's mask,
all that gold in his tomb that's coming
from the Eastern Desert.
So sites like this that
looked really modest are
actually the mechanism that allowed
New Kingdom gold to be mined.
NARRATOR:
At Gebel El-Silsila...
John's colleague, Ibrahim,
has found something in the
filthy mud in their search
for evidence that this
ceremonial pit was also used
during the reign of Tutankhamun.
JOHN: Hang on a minute;
that's actually painted.
IBRAHIM: Yes?
JOHN: See the paint?
IBRAHIM: Yeah. I can see.
Goes all the way down here.
JOHN: (laughs) That's a doorjamb.
So it's the actual doorjamb
from a doorway above us,
which is now come into here
beneath all the mud brick.
So you actually found part of
the doorway to the temple.
What else? What else? What else?
You said there was two.
IBRAHIM: Yeah.
Yeah, that's here.
JOHN: You got it?
IBRAHIM: Yeah.
JOHN: No, I'm looking
at it the wrong way.
It doesn't go lengthways.
It goes that way.
It goes up.
This isn't the door.
IBRAHIM: So what is it?
JOHN: It's a window.
IBRAHIM: A window?
JOHN: Fantastic.
IBRAHIM: Beautiful.
JOHN: It's the first window here.
It's the first window in Silsila.
A three and a half
thousand-year-old window.
NARRATOR: Blocks from
an ancient window
could have come from the
temple next to the pit.
JOHN: Down here would have
been the crocodiles,
and they would have been thrashing
around in the water
feeding all the time,
and above us
there would be no sunlight.
This would have been covered.
And in here,
you've got the crocodiles.
Up there,
you've got the temple,
the priest throwing the food down.
This is history.
It is absolutely phenomenal.
Maria!
MARIA: What have you got?
NARRATOR: The discoveries in
the pit give Maria and John an
idea of what this temple might
have looked like in its prime.
JOHN: Okay, fresh from
the pit of Sobek.
MARIA: Architectural
details I can see.
JOHN: I think it was a southern window
that stood there.
I mean, we've definitely 100%
got a kind of temple
function going on here.
We've got the Sobek statue,
a pit that held live crocodiles.
NARRATOR: The evidence
is coming together.
JOHN: So it's plausible
to think that this
could have been part of
King Tut's Tutankhamen's
restoration project.
MARIA: Everything that we
found this season supports
that and even more.
Our temple once stood glorious
overlooking the Nile
with crocodiles natural to--
to this site.
What a sight to have.
JOHN: It would
have been amazing.
NARRATOR: The ceremonial pit
and temple ruins Maria and
John have excavated point
to why Tutankhamun might
have restored this temple
and why it was
dedicated to Sobek.
JOHN: Not only was he showing the people
that he cared for them,
but also at the same time by restoring
the temple to its former glory,
he was able to show
them he had the power.
He was able to say,
"I am here; I am king."
Even though he was a
weak and feeble boy,
he still had the
power of a living God.
NARRATOR:
Tutankhamun died young
but still projected the
power of a great pharaoh.
NARRATOR:
In the Valley of the Kings,
Aliaa is at the tomb of
Tutankhamun to hunt for clues
to what, or who,
could be inside a
mysterious secret chamber
that might be next to the tomb.
ALIAA: This would
be the doorway,
and then this would be the
outline of the second chamber.
NARRATOR: Some think that the
hidden chamber could contain
the body of another royal.
But if so, who?
Once again, Tutankhamun's
tomb itself holds clues.
Other tombs of pharaohs in
the Valley of the Kings share a feature.
You enter a corridor and turn left.
But as you enter
Tutankhamun's tomb,
you turn right.
Some Egyptologists argue
turning right is typically
a feature of a queen's tomb,
not a king's tomb
like Tutankhamun's.
Could a hidden chamber here
contain the body of a queen,
Perhaps Tutankhamun's only
known wife, Ankhesenamun?
Aliaa spots something on
the wall that could identify
another possible candidate.
ALIAA: So here we are having
images of Tutankhamun at the
opening of the mouth scene,
being welcomed by the gods
into the afterlife.
These are normal images
to have in a royal tomb.
But what was not normal
and some Egyptologists think
is that this figure over
there was not Tutankhamen
but rather a representation of Nefertiti.
NARRATOR: Around 1350 BC,
Nefertiti, aged about 15,
became queen of Egypt.
Together with her husband,
the Pharaoh Akhenaten,
they created a new religious cult
worshipping the sun god Aten.
When her husband died,
some think Nefertiti continued to
rule as pharaoh until
her stepson, Tutankhamun,
ascended to the throne.
Despite her being one of the
most famous queens of Egypt,
Nefertiti's final resting
place has never been found.
ALIAA: This is Nefertiti compared to
the image right here,
the Osiris image of Tutankhamun.
Looking closely at the image,
we can see, like,
there is the lip line going down,
and this line, actually,
it's the same line of other statues
and forms of Nefertiti.
NARRATOR: To some experts,
this suggests an older picture
of Nefertiti was modified
to look like Tutankhamun.
If so, it's a clue
Tutankhamun's tomb
was originally part of Nefertiti's tomb.
If there's a hidden burial
chamber behind the north wall,
it could be hers.
But why would her tomb be
repurposed for Tutankhamun?
Aliaa thinks clues could lie
in the mummified body
of the king that remains in the tomb.
ALIAA: The mummy of
Tutankhamen was scanned,
and the scans showed that
he died at a very young age.
He was ill most of his life,
and his sudden death
was not prepared for, and so there
was no tomb
for him ready at the time.
So he had to use
someone else's tomb.
Maybe that was just
the tomb of Nefertiti.
NARRATOR: It's a controversial
and disputed theory,
but if true, it could lead to
the greatest discovery
since Howard Carter
first found this tomb in 1922.
ALIAA: If we are right now
standing in the tomb of
Nefertiti that has been
used for Tutankhamun,
that will be the world's biggest
discovery in Egyptology.
That is going to be
the most exciting find
this century has witnessed.
NARRATOR:
Within his tomb and across Egypt
archaeologists are searching
for the secrets of Tutankhamun
to piece together all his story.
In life,
this pharaoh was young and frail
but drew on the gods,
like Sobek, to rule his people,
becoming their
all-powerful protector.
JOHN: Oh, it is beautiful.
NARRATOR: He sent his
men deep into the desert
for gold to fill his
tomb with treasure...
a tomb that may still hide a
chamber missed by explorers
and ancient robbers.
But with the use of
modern-day technologies,
perhaps experts will
one day unearth all of
Tutankhamun's lost secrets.
you've learnt,
which they never teach
you in University,
is how to do archaeology
with your toes.
I can feel a lot of silt,
Nile silt, that's very,
very fine sand.
NARRATOR: On the
banks of the Nile,
archaeologists are
investigating a temple that
they think
Tutankhamun restored.
JOHN: I'm hitting a very
thick layer of stone.
NARRATOR: Evidence of the
boy king's reign may lie
at the bottom of
this mysterious pit.
JOHN: This is going
to be hard work.
NARRATOR: The tomb of
Tutankhamen in Egypt's
Valley of the Kings.
When Tutankhamun's burial
chamber was first discovered,
at its heart,
lay an unimaginable treasure:
The mummy of the boy king,
who died tragically young.
He remains one of the
most mysterious and famous
of all the pharaohs.
JOHN: Let's go, let's do it.
NARRATOR: Now, across Egypt
teams of archaeologists
investigate the unsolved
secrets of Tutankhamun.
Where did he get so much gold?
How did he control
his kingdom?
And could experts have
missed anything when they
first entered his tomb?
Egyptologist Aliaa Ismail,
aged just 30,
runs an Egyptian team
digitally scanning and
preserving data in the
Valley of the Kings.
The team had previously
scanned and stored every inch
of Tutankhamun's tomb.
Now, Aliaa is heading back
on a mission of her own.
Did the young pharaoh leave
more secrets yet to be found?
The pioneering archaeologist
Howard Carter discovered
Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922.
ALIAA: It was the biggest and
still is the biggest discovery
in ancient Egyptian antiquities.
For Egyptologists, this was
like a marking point in time,
finding a huge treasure
with all the golden masks,
the coffins.
NARRATOR: Howard Carter
kept a detailed diary.
ALIAA: It seemed that
Carter was on the brink of
giving up and then suddenly
the treasure opens up.
"Looking at his diary,
It soon became obvious
that we were but on the
threshold of the discovery,
the site that met us was beyond
anything one could conceive."
NARRATOR: Carter
discovered the tomb,
with Tutankhamun's
sarcophagus and mummy,
and rooms piled
high with treasures.
ALIAA: The tomb, it's so
neat now but when Carter
came in here this place
was cluttered with objects.
In here, you would have had
the shrines of Tutankhamun,
and then the sarcophagus
and then the coffins within.
And within the coffins,
the final layer would
be the mummy itself.
NARRATOR: But Carter's journal
holds a surprising revelation.
He may not have been
the first to enter the
chamber after all.
Clearing the rubble
from the tomb,
Carter discovered that someone
had cut a hole in the slab,
sealing the entrance.
Inside, more signs
of a break-in.
Some of Tutankhamun's treasures had
been knocked over,
damaged,
or strewn across the floor.
The robbers must
have been in a rush,
as they dropped
precious items,
such as gold rings
wrapped in a scarf.
Luckily for Carter,
they didn't take the
most valuable treasure:
the sarcophagus
of Tutankhamun and his
famous death mask.
ALIAA: Carter must have been
in true awe seeing this mask
just out there, just the
biggest find of the century.
NARRATOR: Shortly after
the first robbery,
the tomb was looted again.
It was re-sealed
and preserved,
leaving a chaotic
mess inside for Carter
3,000 years later.
He searched the tomb, but
he didn't have the modern day
scanning equipment Aliaa uses.
ALIAA: The technology could
actually bring about things
that no one thought once
could have ever existed.
NARRATOR: Can Aliaa's hi-tech
scanning
reveal the secrets
of Tutankhamun
the robbers
and Carter missed?
At Gebel El-Silsila...
JOHN: Alright guys...
(speaking in native language)
MARIA: Let's go and
find the lost temple.
JOHN: (speaking in Arabic).
MARIA: (groans).
NARRATOR: Director of the
Swedish Archaeological mission
Maria Nilsson...
MARIA: Come on.
JOHN: Messa.
NARRATOR: Her husband,
archaeologist John Ward,
and their dog, Carter...
MARIA: Come on.
NARRATOR: Are arriving
on the banks of the Nile
with their team.
JOHN: Let's go, let's do it.
NARRATOR: They're
investigating a riverside
temple that could have been
restored by Tutankhamun.
JOHN: Come on guys.
NARRATOR: Most of what
archaeologists know about the
boy king comes from his tomb.
But 100 years
since its discovery,
experts are exploring beyond
the Valley of the Kings
to find out more
about Tutankhamun's short
life and reign.
MARIA: When Tutankhamun
came to power,
it was all about restoring
what his father had neglected.
So he had a task of
restoring all the grand
monuments across Egypt.
JOHN: We going that way?
NARRATOR: Maria and John think
they may have found
one of these restoration projects.
Gebel El-Silsila was home to
a vast quarry and workforce
during Tutankhamun's time.
MARIA: We know that we got his
quarries here so there's a lot
of activity here on site from
the reign of Tutankhamen.
NARRATOR: Maria and John
have discovered the worker's
village at Gebel El-Silsila,
and the foundations of a
temple right next to the Nile.
JOHN: This is
the rear of temple.
We've still got the grid
lines which show us where
the actual walls used to be.
And these would
have stood in this,
literally right where
we're standing right now.
We've got the (indistinct) here,
and we would have had a pylon
gate at the front
facing the west.
NARRATOR: If this temple
was restored by Tutankhamun,
why did he restore it,
and which gods
were worshiped here?
Finding new evidence
could help unravel the story
of his reign.
Maria and John are focusing
their work on a mysterious
purpose-built pit within
the temple complex.
JOHN: This was an entire
mound with a tree growing out
the middle of it.
And the hunch was that
there was something beneath here,
because the tree
had to have a water source.
Once we cleared all that area,
we started to find the dressed
slabs that went around,
and now we have the pit.
We just don't know what
the function of it is.
NARRATOR: The only way to
find out is for John
to get in and have a look.
JOHN: So is the water
going down, Ahmed?
NARRATOR: But first they
have to pump the water out.
JOHN: That should be clear.
There's water seeping in from somewhere.
The problem is that as
soon as we pump all the water out,
it just seeps back in again,
and every time it seeps
back in again it brings all
the clay and the mud with it
and puts it in the center,
and the problem is that these boys
are trying to work in a muddy slurry,
and it's pretty disgusting
down there.
NARRATOR: But as workers
pump water from the pit,
Maria gets an urgent call from
the other side of the temple.
MARIA: Hey, there.
I think Ibrahim
has something again.
(laughs)
MAN: (speaking in Arabic)
MARIA: He's done it again.
NARRATOR: In Abbad...
THOMAS: Hey, Marcus.
NARRATOR: Director of the
French archaeology mission,
Thomas Faucher,
and American Archaeologist
Jennifer Gates-Foster...
JENNIFER: Are you ready?
NARRATOR: Are also
investigating one of
Tutankhamun's secrets:
The source of his gold.
There are no gold
mines along the Nile,
where Tutankhamun and most
ancient Egyptians lived.
So Thomas and Jennifer
are venturing far from
Tutankhamun's tomb deep
into the Eastern Desert.
They hope a site here can
reveal how he got his gold.
JENNIFER: Without question
it was a critical resource
for filling the
Egyptian states coffers.
What does it take to have
a solid gold death mask?
What does it take
to have a throne covered
completely in gold foil?
Well, it takes generations of exploration
in a rough environment
to find that gold,
to process it,
and then to eventually have it
end up in Tut's tombs.
NARRATOR: When priests
laid Tutankhamun to rest,
they covered his face with a
death mask made of more than
20 pounds of pure gold,
then enclosed
his mummy in three exquisite
golden coffins sealing them
inside a stone sarcophagus,
surrounded by four shrines
covered in beaten gold.
The priests crammed the
adjoining chambers with
hundreds of gold and gilt treasures.
In total, Tutankhamun
was buried with more than
264 pounds of gold.
How did the boy
king amass so much?
In Egypt's Eastern Desert,
there are vast gold deposits.
Thomas has been
investigating here since 2011
and has discovered evidence
of ancient gold miners
working out here.
But they're hundreds of miles
from Tutankhamun's capital
and in the middle of one
of the most-deadly landscapes
in the world.
How did his ancient miners
get his gold from way out here?
THOMAS: You need like
a week by donkey or camel
to cross the Eastern Desert.
You'll just die,
because you won't have any--
any water or food supplies.
NARRATOR: Last year, Thomas and Jennifer
excavated an ancient fortress,
a vital safe haven
in this vast wilderness.
JENNIFER: It probably had a little
out flair sort of flint,
yeah, kind of a flint...
NARRATOR: They've uncovered
remarkable evidence that the
site dates to the Greek
era of Egyptian history,
1,000 years after Tutankhamun.
JENNIFER: Well this--
this season we have had an
extraordinary amount of material.
This is a really lovely
little, probably,
a perfume vessel.
NARRATOR: But they suspect
the site could be far older.
The team needs to go deeper
beneath the fortress to know
if Tutankhamun's
workers were here
and that he got his gold
from the Eastern Desert.
THOMAS: We found more
shards like down the level,
and as you see we're underneath
the level of the fortress,
so if we can find
the ceramics dating from the
time of Tutankhamun
that would be great.
NARRATOR: But their work
here is under threat.
Large areas of Abbad have
been bulldozed in the
past year for agricultural use.
THOMAS: All the--all these
traces here and all the parts
here have been like completely,
completely destroyed.
NARRATOR: But another,
more dangerous threat comes
from modern-day treasure hunters
and looters
who target sites in a futile search
for gold.
The longer Thomas
and Jennifer excavate here,
the more unwanted
attention they attract.
THOMAS: And you'll see the--
the cars coming and going all day long.
People think that because
it's an ancient site,
they will find gold like
they could find gold in the--
in Karnak or in Luxor
or in these old temples.
NARRATOR: They're in a race
to find out if Tutankhamun got
his gold from the Eastern Desert
before looters and
farmers destroy the evidence.
THOMAS: We're just like
running from one site to the
other like trying to save as
much data as possible before--
before it's all gone.
NARRATOR: At Silsila...
MARIA: You are amazing.
NARRATOR: Maria and John's
long-term colleague
Ibrahim Awadallah
Mohammed Jad
has found a clue beneath the
ruins of the temple complex.
JOHN: Oh wow.
MARIA: Here we have a crocodile
who's described as Sobek,
Lord of Henney,
Lord of the ancient Silsila.
JOHN: And I'm holding
it in my hand.
MARIA: Yeah.
JOHN: Wow.
MARIA: It's amazing.
It is fragmentary.
We're missing the head.
It confirms everything
that we've been
trying to understand the last years.
NARRATOR: Statuettes like this one would
have been brought to the temple
by worshippers as an offering
to the crocodile god Sobek.
JOHN: Isn't it beautiful?
MARIA: It is.
JOHN: Isn't it beautiful?
MARIA: It's our first.
This is as close as you get
to the ancient people without
actually going back in time.
JOHN: And made from Silsila Stone.
MARIA: And made from local stone.
JOHN: Oh, it's fantastic;
that is fantastic.
NARRATOR: The statuette of
the God Sobek can help Maria
and John understand
the purpose of the temple,
and why Tutankhamun
may have restored it.
Sobek appears as a crocodile,
a dangerous predator here.
MARIA: We've now got high water,
but during the low season,
when the water is down,
on the other side
and all the way up here,
it would just be
infested with crocodiles.
NARRATOR: Crocodiles
were a constant,
deadly threat for anyone
who worked near the Nile.
The ancient Egyptians
worshipped the crocodile god, Sobek.
He was the mythical
creator of the Nile
and made the land fertile.
The pharaohs built temples
on the Nile to Sobek,
where he was worshipped to
preserve the life-giving waters,
and to protect the
people from its dangers.
Priests even kept live
crocodiles at their temples
to worship as incarnations of Sobek.
It would make sense
for Tutankhamun to restore
a temple to Sobek here.
JOHN: Tutankhamen's quarries
here in Silsila required
a massive workforce, and to
keep them safe and protected,
Tutankhamen would
have used this temple.
He would have used his
association with the God Sobek
to empower himself
to show that he was the great
protector and that he
could look after them in
such a harsh environment.
NARRATOR: Could the pit
beside the temple have been
used to keep crocodiles?
JOHN: We know from other
sites they kept crocodiles
as part of the state religion.
I think what we have here is
actually a crocodile pit where
they would have kept them
literally in here and fed them.
From where I'm standing now,
the priests would have just
literally thrown the food down to them.
NARRATOR: The team has
finished pumping the water,
and it's time to see if
they can find any evidence
for this extraordinary theory.
JOHN: He's lifting
the stone out on his shoulder.
NARRATOR: But it's dangerous
work to clear the stones
from the depths of the pit.
MAN: Ali, Mohammed.
JOHN: We're about to do the
gang pull of a stone slab.
MAN: (speaking in Arabic).
NARRATOR: Abbad is located in an 85,000
square mile wilderness,
between Tutankhamun's
palaces along the Nile,
and gold mines in the east.
Jennifer is on the hunt for clues
that Tutankhamun's gold workers
used this safe haven.
It would unlock one of
Tutankhamun's secrets
and be evidence he got
the gold for his glittering
shrine from mines in the Eastern Desert.
JENNIFER: It takes
a lot of people's lives
dedicated to this space
out here working, dying,
trying to survive to
find that gold and then
to eventually have
it end up in Tut's tombs.
THOMAS: Okay.
NARRATOR: The clues, artifacts
dating to Tutankhamun's era
could lie beneath the ruins
of this ancient fortress.
3-D scans of the site
show the scale of the task.
The fortress of
Abbad covers an area
of 8,000-square feet with 18 rooms.
It's like looking for a needle
underneath a giant haystack.
MAN: (speaking in Arabic).
NARRATOR: But as the team
works their way through the
rooms two feet below the fortress,
they uncover something.
THOMAS: You can see on this
shard of pottery that there is
a bit of writing text
about three letters,
and these letters is demotic
and demotic is the writing of
the ancient Egyptian.
It's really a unique
piece of evidence.
NARRATOR: The ancient Egyptians
wrote on broken pottery.
THOMAS: Because papyri
was so expensive,
usually they didn't use
it in the desert except
for very official letters.
So it's easy to pick up a pottery shard
and to write on it.
They were like taking it
and putting in the rubbish bin.
So I'd say it's really
thrilling to find this text.
NARRATOR: The pottery is
still not old enough to be
from Tutankhamun's time,
but it's clear progress...
a sign the team
are on the right track.
And if they keep on digging,
they might reach pottery
or other remnants of
Tutankhamun's era and
evidence his gold workers
came through the fortress of
Abbad with gold for his tomb.
NARRATOR: At Gebel El-Silsila,
Maria and John have
been working and living
with their two children,
Freja and Jonathan,
on a boat on the Nile.
For ten years, they have split
their time between Sweden and Egypt
to complete their work
and feed their passion
for discovering more about
this ancient civilization.
WOMAN: Four, two, one.
WOMAN AND MAN: Yeah.
MARIA: Ready to jump in?
JOHN: I am indeed.
It's been so hot today.
MARIA: What a place for the
kids to jump in and cool off.
JOHN: You haven't--you haven't
lived unless you've swam in the Nile,
and the kids will be able to have
that for the rest of their lives...
MARIA: That's true.
JOHN: And thankfully
there's no crocodiles.
MARIA: Come on then.
NARRATOR: They can relax
at the end of a hot day,
but there's little time left to complete
their work this season,
and they have
a busy few days ahead.
They are investigating
a temple that they believe
was restored by Tutankhamun
and a deep pit that could have
held crocodiles
worshipped as incarnations
of the God Sobek.
JOHN: Well done, Hussain.
NARRATOR: It's filled up
with a thick layer of mud,
and a huge stone is
blocking their progress.
JOHN: The ladder could snap
in half; the rope could snap.
Watch your toe.
Watch your toes.
NARRATOR:
They need to get it out.
JOHN: They could drop
the stone on their feet.
I mean, there's a
multitude of problems that
could go wrong here.
No, that's not going to work, boys.
That's not going to work.
It's going to tip;
it's going to tip it.
NARRATOR:
But it's not going to be easy.
JOHN: Watch your toes;
watch your toes.
MARIA: Well done, guys!
NARRATOR: Now that the
slab has been removed,
they can see that exploring
the pit is going to be harder
than they thought.
JOHN: They all thought the
"heba," this clay substance,
was just the floor,
and that was it.
NARRATOR:
There's a thick layer of mud at the
bottom of the pit.
JOHN: Ahmed is now able to put his palm
frond all the way down,
showing that there is
actually much, much more,
over a meter and a half more to go
after they've gone through
this clay substance.
NARRATOR: John decides it's
time for him to get down in
the pit himself to search
through the mud for evidence
that dates to Tutankhamun's reign.
JOHN: Oh.
NARRATOR:
In the Valley of The Kings
Aliaa is on a mission to
discover the unsolved secrets
of Tutankhamun that
Howard Carter may have missed.
To investigate further,
Aliaa has come
to Stoppelaere House,
where she heads up a scanning
team who use the latest
technology to study tombs
in the Valley of the Kings.
ALIAA: This is our
3-D scanning center.
This is where we process all
the data that we have scanned.
I have been scanning for
the last six years of my life,
and this is so exciting.
It's like you're
peeling back the layers.
NARRATOR: Aliaa thinks
the previous scans of
Tutankhamun's tomb may have revealed
something extraordinary...
Something that Howard Carter
would never have found.
ALIAA: Looking at the color image,
you can't really see much.
Very beautiful,
but once we remove the layer of color
and just look at the 3-D,
the greyscale, it's very
obvious that there's no carving,
it was just plaster and paint.
When you look deeper,
you see sort of a shadow
in here all the way to here.
Almost inclined to believe
that this is a sort of
passageway or doorway.
It was with these scans
that scholars were
able to review and reveal
something might be lying
just behind the north wall.
NARRATOR: The lines aren't
visible to the naked eye,
but this tantalizing
evidence that there might be
a lost chamber hidden
in Tutankhamun's tomb
has sparked years of
exploration and controversy.
ALIAA: It sort of gives us
hope that there's a tomb
just sealed off in half
and somebody else,
another occupant.
You know, there's possibility.
NARRATOR: A lost chamber of Tutankhamun's
tomb would rewrite history.
But what or who could
be behind a secret door?
NARRATOR:
At Gebel El El-Silsila...
JOHN: Come on.
NARRATOR: John Ward descends
into a foul-smelling pit.
JOHN: Oh.
NARRATOR: He's looking for
evidence that this was
a ceremonial pit used during
the reign of Tutankhamun,
a pit that he thinks was
used to keep crocodiles.
But the bottom is covered
in a thick layer of mud.
JOHN:
The thing that we've learned,
which they never teach
you in university,
is how to do archaeology
with your toes.
And I'm being serious,
because of course you can't see,
so you use your fingers.
And what I can feel,
I can feel a lot of silt.
As I'm going deeper,
I can feel very small stone.
It's sandstone fragments.
I'm going deeper now, ooh,
I'm going very deep now.
NARRATOR: But toes can
only get you so far.
JOHN: Oh, that's lovely;
oh, man.
MARIA: What you got?
JOHN: No, it's salt.
Salt stone.
The silt and the mud
goes much
deeper than we anticipated,
but I'm hitting a very thick
layer of stone fragments,
and I can't get past that.
NARRATOR: But time is running
out for John and the team.
Tomorrow is the last day
of their excavation here.
JOHN: This is going
to take a lot more work
than we first envisaged.
MARIA:
Can you see anything, John?
JOHN: There's nothing to see;
it's all blind archaeology.
I can feel beneath this mud brick mixture
there's a stone layer,
and that's where
we're trying to get to.
Come to Egypt they said;
work in the sand, they said.
They didn't say thing
about water and mud.
MARIA: Coming up
to the end of the day.
JOHN: Yep, I know.
NARRATOR:
With time running out,
one of the workers locates
something hidden beneath
the muddy water.
MAN: Look, touch here.
NARRATOR: Could it be proof
this pit and temple complex
was used during the
reign of Tutankhamun?
In Luxor...
Aliaa has returned to
the tomb of Tutankhamun
to investigate evidence
for a lost chamber
behind the north wall.
3-D scans uncovered what
some believe are outlines
of a doorway.
Does Tutankhamun's tomb
have more secrets to reveal?
ALIAA: Some Egyptologists
think that there is a whole
tomb behind this scene.
The outline or shadow
falls within this area.
It is exciting as
Egyptologists to think that
there may be a whole huge treasure
lying just there behind this wall
waiting to be discovered.
NARRATOR: Outside,
Aliaa looks for clues to where
a hidden tomb could lie.
ALIAA: Here, there is the tomb of
Tutankhamen just beneath this mound,
and if there is another tomb
that comes right out of it,
it's going to be right there.
NARRATOR: The presence of another hidden
tomb here is a controversial theory,
and it's difficult to prove.
Archaeological excavation
in the Valley of the Kings
is a danger to the
priceless tombs below.
But there's another way
to look under the surface.
ALIAA: Not long ago,
a team was allowed to come and do
some ground penetrating
radar over here.
Their radar was to show if
there was a potential in the
theory that there may be
another tomb lying down
beneath Tutankhamun.
NARRATOR: Ground penetrating
radar allows archaeologists to
search for voids through rock
and behind the walls of tombs.
The area around Tutankhamun's tomb
has been scanned multiple times before
with conflicting results.
But recent work by Egyptian
archaeologist Mamdouh Eldamaty
poses a new and captivating possibility.
In his radar scan,
he detected a
32-foot-long space right next
to Tutankhamun's tomb.
If this is connected to the
room that may lie hidden
behind the burial chamber,
this could be an undiscovered
section of the tomb.
These rooms would most
likely be untouched and filled
with ancient treasures
and possibly another burial.
Did Tutankhamun share his
tomb with someone else?
ALIAA: The results of the
radar were incredible.
Now it's so exciting to
think that there is another
discovery yet to be made.
We're all waiting to
see what this secret
is going to reveal.
NARRATOR: If Tutankhamun's
tomb contains a hidden burial chamber,
the question is,
who could be buried there?
NARRATOR: Thomas and Jennifer
are investigating
one of Tutankhamun's secrets
excavating under a
ruined fortress for evidence
he got his gold from the
inhospitable Eastern Desert.
Did his miners shelter here?
The team has just found something,
Stone blocks that offer
a tantalizing glimpse of
a settlement from
Tutankhamun's time.
JENNIFER: So these are
architectural blocks.
They carry some Hieroglyphic
inscription very faintly
visible here which would
indicate that they were carved
and set up in some sort of
building which dates to the
reign of Tutankhamen.
It's exciting, because that
gives us a sort of ballpark
for the time when this
site was busy and active
and important during the 18th Dynasty.
NARRATOR: Jennifer's team must
now move the precious blocks
off site for further analysis.
As they dig deeper into the
layers below the fortress,
they uncover more clues
that this site was in use
in Tutankhamun's time.
JENNIFER: It is beautiful.
This is a really distinctive,
very different from
any of the Ptolemaic material,
the Greek-style pottery
that we find in most
of the rooms of the fort
that is really common.
This kind of pottery,
which belongs to the New Kingdom,
is not wheel-made.
It's handmade, and you can
tell that by looking at the
interior of the pot,
which has a surface
which is very irregular
and that it's been smoothed
with a smooth stone most likely.
NARRATOR:
It's not just one or two pieces
of Tutankhamun-era pottery.
Jennifer's team is
revealing that the layers
of earth beneath the fortress
are packed full of it.
JENNIFER: We have New Kingdom material
under the floors of rooms 20,
19, 26, 18, and 17.
But to have the fort now
documented on top of deposits
that indicate some kind of
occupation in the New Kingdom,
and that's really exciting.
NARRATOR: The discovery is
proof the site may have been
used in Tutankhamun's
time by his gold workers.
But the team has found another
remarkable clue concealed in the fortress.
Cutting into the bedrock
60 feet below the surface is a well.
It's a vital source of water that explains
why the safe haven
and Tutankhamun's
gold workers were here.
THOMAS: The well was built at
the time of Tutankhamun by the
evidence we have now.
It was, I guess, more precious than even
than gold for people
that they can have water to go inside
the-- inside the desert.
NARRATOR: The evidence here
and at other sites reveals
how Tutankhamun got his gold
from the remote Eastern Desert.
Miners had to trek vast
distances from the Nile Valley
across the hot, dry desert,
to reach the gold mines.
Ancient engineers dug wells
along the route
for precious drinking water.
Each well was a day's
walk from the last,
creating a network of vital rest stops.
This allowed them to survive the brutal
journey across the desert
to mine gold in the east
and bring it back to their pharaoh.
Thomas and Jennifer have revealed one
of Tutankhamun's secrets.
Sites like this were
a critical part of the
infrastructure that
allowed him to amass the gold
for one of the most
elaborate burials in history.
JENNIFER: The gold in Tut's mask,
all that gold in his tomb that's coming
from the Eastern Desert.
So sites like this that
looked really modest are
actually the mechanism that allowed
New Kingdom gold to be mined.
NARRATOR:
At Gebel El-Silsila...
John's colleague, Ibrahim,
has found something in the
filthy mud in their search
for evidence that this
ceremonial pit was also used
during the reign of Tutankhamun.
JOHN: Hang on a minute;
that's actually painted.
IBRAHIM: Yes?
JOHN: See the paint?
IBRAHIM: Yeah. I can see.
Goes all the way down here.
JOHN: (laughs) That's a doorjamb.
So it's the actual doorjamb
from a doorway above us,
which is now come into here
beneath all the mud brick.
So you actually found part of
the doorway to the temple.
What else? What else? What else?
You said there was two.
IBRAHIM: Yeah.
Yeah, that's here.
JOHN: You got it?
IBRAHIM: Yeah.
JOHN: No, I'm looking
at it the wrong way.
It doesn't go lengthways.
It goes that way.
It goes up.
This isn't the door.
IBRAHIM: So what is it?
JOHN: It's a window.
IBRAHIM: A window?
JOHN: Fantastic.
IBRAHIM: Beautiful.
JOHN: It's the first window here.
It's the first window in Silsila.
A three and a half
thousand-year-old window.
NARRATOR: Blocks from
an ancient window
could have come from the
temple next to the pit.
JOHN: Down here would have
been the crocodiles,
and they would have been thrashing
around in the water
feeding all the time,
and above us
there would be no sunlight.
This would have been covered.
And in here,
you've got the crocodiles.
Up there,
you've got the temple,
the priest throwing the food down.
This is history.
It is absolutely phenomenal.
Maria!
MARIA: What have you got?
NARRATOR: The discoveries in
the pit give Maria and John an
idea of what this temple might
have looked like in its prime.
JOHN: Okay, fresh from
the pit of Sobek.
MARIA: Architectural
details I can see.
JOHN: I think it was a southern window
that stood there.
I mean, we've definitely 100%
got a kind of temple
function going on here.
We've got the Sobek statue,
a pit that held live crocodiles.
NARRATOR: The evidence
is coming together.
JOHN: So it's plausible
to think that this
could have been part of
King Tut's Tutankhamen's
restoration project.
MARIA: Everything that we
found this season supports
that and even more.
Our temple once stood glorious
overlooking the Nile
with crocodiles natural to--
to this site.
What a sight to have.
JOHN: It would
have been amazing.
NARRATOR: The ceremonial pit
and temple ruins Maria and
John have excavated point
to why Tutankhamun might
have restored this temple
and why it was
dedicated to Sobek.
JOHN: Not only was he showing the people
that he cared for them,
but also at the same time by restoring
the temple to its former glory,
he was able to show
them he had the power.
He was able to say,
"I am here; I am king."
Even though he was a
weak and feeble boy,
he still had the
power of a living God.
NARRATOR:
Tutankhamun died young
but still projected the
power of a great pharaoh.
NARRATOR:
In the Valley of the Kings,
Aliaa is at the tomb of
Tutankhamun to hunt for clues
to what, or who,
could be inside a
mysterious secret chamber
that might be next to the tomb.
ALIAA: This would
be the doorway,
and then this would be the
outline of the second chamber.
NARRATOR: Some think that the
hidden chamber could contain
the body of another royal.
But if so, who?
Once again, Tutankhamun's
tomb itself holds clues.
Other tombs of pharaohs in
the Valley of the Kings share a feature.
You enter a corridor and turn left.
But as you enter
Tutankhamun's tomb,
you turn right.
Some Egyptologists argue
turning right is typically
a feature of a queen's tomb,
not a king's tomb
like Tutankhamun's.
Could a hidden chamber here
contain the body of a queen,
Perhaps Tutankhamun's only
known wife, Ankhesenamun?
Aliaa spots something on
the wall that could identify
another possible candidate.
ALIAA: So here we are having
images of Tutankhamun at the
opening of the mouth scene,
being welcomed by the gods
into the afterlife.
These are normal images
to have in a royal tomb.
But what was not normal
and some Egyptologists think
is that this figure over
there was not Tutankhamen
but rather a representation of Nefertiti.
NARRATOR: Around 1350 BC,
Nefertiti, aged about 15,
became queen of Egypt.
Together with her husband,
the Pharaoh Akhenaten,
they created a new religious cult
worshipping the sun god Aten.
When her husband died,
some think Nefertiti continued to
rule as pharaoh until
her stepson, Tutankhamun,
ascended to the throne.
Despite her being one of the
most famous queens of Egypt,
Nefertiti's final resting
place has never been found.
ALIAA: This is Nefertiti compared to
the image right here,
the Osiris image of Tutankhamun.
Looking closely at the image,
we can see, like,
there is the lip line going down,
and this line, actually,
it's the same line of other statues
and forms of Nefertiti.
NARRATOR: To some experts,
this suggests an older picture
of Nefertiti was modified
to look like Tutankhamun.
If so, it's a clue
Tutankhamun's tomb
was originally part of Nefertiti's tomb.
If there's a hidden burial
chamber behind the north wall,
it could be hers.
But why would her tomb be
repurposed for Tutankhamun?
Aliaa thinks clues could lie
in the mummified body
of the king that remains in the tomb.
ALIAA: The mummy of
Tutankhamen was scanned,
and the scans showed that
he died at a very young age.
He was ill most of his life,
and his sudden death
was not prepared for, and so there
was no tomb
for him ready at the time.
So he had to use
someone else's tomb.
Maybe that was just
the tomb of Nefertiti.
NARRATOR: It's a controversial
and disputed theory,
but if true, it could lead to
the greatest discovery
since Howard Carter
first found this tomb in 1922.
ALIAA: If we are right now
standing in the tomb of
Nefertiti that has been
used for Tutankhamun,
that will be the world's biggest
discovery in Egyptology.
That is going to be
the most exciting find
this century has witnessed.
NARRATOR:
Within his tomb and across Egypt
archaeologists are searching
for the secrets of Tutankhamun
to piece together all his story.
In life,
this pharaoh was young and frail
but drew on the gods,
like Sobek, to rule his people,
becoming their
all-powerful protector.
JOHN: Oh, it is beautiful.
NARRATOR: He sent his
men deep into the desert
for gold to fill his
tomb with treasure...
a tomb that may still hide a
chamber missed by explorers
and ancient robbers.
But with the use of
modern-day technologies,
perhaps experts will
one day unearth all of
Tutankhamun's lost secrets.