King Tut: A Century of Secrets (2022) Movie Script

For thousands of years, King Tut was almost unknown.
He was a boy pharaoh who died before he could leave his mark.
But today, the boy king has become huge.
In popular culture, he's become almost synonymous with ancient Egypt.
He's surpassed ancestors who achieved far more than he did.
This is largely thanks to the 1922 discovery of Tut's treasure-filled tomb.
Meanwhile, tombs of greater kings were immediately looted.
Tut was so insignificant that he was forgotten just years after his death.
But when his tomb was found, a legend was born.
From the moment it was revealed, King Tut's treasures captivated the world.
And overshadowed Tut himself.
But what do the treasures he left behind tell us about the boy king?
Now, on the 100th anniversary of the discovery of his tomb...
Tut's treasures are being moved to a new museum in the shadow of the pyramids.
But before they go, renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass...
...was given special access to examine them at Cairo's old museum.
For Zahi, this is a golden opportunity...
...to search for details that other experts may have missed.
Tutankhamun's tomb contained 5,398 objects.
It's like a story.
This tells us a lot about Tutankhamun's life.
So began a race to re-examine these precious artifacts...
...and uncover new clues about the life of King Tut.
Answering some of history's most enduring questions.
Why did he turn against his father's religion?
Was he merely a pawn of his advisors, or a powerful king in his own right?
And most mysteriously, how did King Tut die?
To find the truth...
...Zahi will need to look beyond Tut's treasures.
He and his team will cast their net across all of Egypt.
Investigating stunning temples and lost palaces...
...and long-forgotten tombs holding unexpected secrets...
...about the golden boy king.
Finally, they will be able to reveal the full picture of the man behind the treasure.
As we uncover 100 years of myth...
...and dig up 3,000-year-old secrets from the life of Tutankhamun.
King Tut:
A Century of Secrets
Since his tomb was discovered
by Howard Carter in November 1922,
the boy king Tutankhamun
has been a mystery that refused to be solved.
- I think many people believe...
- Sarah Ahmed, University of London
that they know who Tutankhamun was.
But in reality, his history is very obscure
and a subject of great controversy.
Most people believe that Tut
was the product of incest...
between King Akhenaten and one of his sisters.
This may explain Tut's suffering
from several disorders,
including difficulty walking.
He died under mysterious circumstances
at the age of 18 or 19.
And was buried in a small tomb.
But despite that, it contained
the king's wealth and treasures.
Here is his beautiful golden mask.
A mask that everyone looked at, believing
its owner was someone very important.
This golden mask
is a piece of high craftsmanship.
But the face may be all people know
about the golden boy king.
But it is also a powerful symbol of the myth
we have built around King Tut.
The mask is a facade.
It's beautiful and mysterious,
but in the end, it cannot be read.
This is the most beautiful object I have ever seen.
Look at the face.
The rounded chin and wide eyes.
They gleam in the sun.
- As if it's telling me now in hieroglyphs...
- Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egyptologist
"I am the golden boy."
This is a general face that everyone recognizes.
But to know about Tutankhamun...
as a boy, a man, and a king...
To know his personality, we must go
and see other objects found in the tomb.
These objects are important
because the contents of the tomb
were found completely intact,
exactly as they were left 3,300 years ago.
Most ancient Egyptian tombs,
when discovered...
- Are empty.
- Dr. Arto Beliakdanian
- Or perhaps only had remains.
- University of Oxford
It was looted in ancient times.
Tutankhamun's tomb is the only tomb of its kind that survived looting.
Or did it really survive?
An examination of the sealed door found by Howard Carter tells another story.
When Carter looked at the sealed tomb door...
He realized it had been opened and resealed in the past.
You can see the original seals on the tomb.
And you can see two other sets of seals.
Where the tomb guards plugged the holes.
When Howard Carter saw these seals, he knew he had found something special.
But what exactly did these seals tell him?
That's what I'm looking for.
The seals Howard Carter found at the entrance to the tomb.
First, he read the name Tutankhamun.
So he was sure he had found the tomb he was looking for.
After six years of searching and digging.
The tomb is completely intact.
It's a big day.
These seals also tell us...
That the tomb guards responsible for protecting the contents of Tut's tomb...
Stopped its theft not once, but twice.
Each time a seal was broken...
The tomb guards resealed the burial chamber to prevent looting.
And without those seals, there would be no artifacts left to discover,
And there would be no legend of King Tut for us to uncover.
The guards did their job.
But now the tomb is in Howard Carter's hands.
Carter then made a hole in the sealed wall.
He thought that when he looked, he would only see chaos.
But as his eyes adjusted to the light, all he saw was the gleam of gold.
And they asked him from behind, "Professor Aidan Dodson."
"Do you see anything?" "University of Bristol."
And he said, "Yes, I see amazing things."
These amazing things are a window not just to the young pharaoh...
...but to daily life in ancient Egypt.
That's because the afterlife for Egyptians was more than just an abstract concept.
That's why their tombs were filled with treasure in the first place.
The ancient Egyptians believed that whatever you brought into your tomb...
...you would own in the afterlife.
This suggests a belief that you could take it with you.
That these items were there to allow you to furnish your home in the next world...
...just as it was furnished in this world.
Of course, some items could have been purely symbolic.
But there are some items that were probably...
...chosen by Tutankhamun himself, or by ancient Egyptian pharaohs.
We have objects in there that he used in his life.
Things that he valued.
And that tells us a lot about him as a person and how he lived.
One of the objects hidden in the crypt...
...sheds new light on Tut's personal life.
It has long been assumed that Tut was forced into an unloving, incestuous marriage...
...to his own sister, Ankhesenamun.
It's an alliance designed to save a collapsing dynasty...
...by keeping the royal bloodline pure.
This beautiful golden throne tells a different story.
The crowds who come to see it may not notice the intimate code...
...carved into this stunning work of art.
Only up close, and after the glass is removed...
...is the true relationship between the couple revealed.
I'm going to tell you a love story.
This love story happened 3,000 years ago...
...between a young king and a young queen.
Tutankhamun and his beautiful queen, Ankhesenamun.
Look at how Ankhesenamun touches the boy's shoulder...
...with love and affection.
She's offering him gold, perhaps to make his face beautiful.
This is love.
The other important clue is unique.
On Tutankhamun's left leg, there is only one sandal.
There's nothing on the other leg.
On the queen's right leg, there is one sandal.
This is a sign, in fact...
as one person
and that they were in love.
Symbols of the couple's love for each other...
are not the only secrets
the throne hides in plain sight.
For example, most people know Tut
by only one name.
Tutankhamun.
But that's not the name he was born with.
One of the most important secrets
of this throne
is that it proves it was made
in the first year of Tutankhamun's reign.
Because the name on the cartouche
is Tutankhaten.
The living image of Aten.
Tutankhaten is the name of Tut
when he took the throne.
But after a few years, the young king changed
the name to Tutankhamun.
To find out what drove him to do that,
Egyptologist Alia Ismail traveled
more than 321 kilometers north of Luxor.
To the remote region of Amarna.
She's searching for an important clue
from the controversial era of Akhenaten, Tut's father.
A clue that might explain the young king's move
beyond just changing his name,
to completely betraying his father
and changing Egypt forever.
On a temple wall in Abydos,
one of ancient Egypt's oldest cities,
there's a famous inscription called the King List.
It was ordered by the 19th Pharaoh
of the dynasty, Seti I.
It honors 76 pharaohs
who ruled Egypt before him,
going back over a thousand years.
But what's striking is that two of his ancestors
are missing from the list.
King Tut and his father, Akhenaten.
Why? Why would these two pharaohs be excluded?
What could they have done
to be intentionally erased from history?
The answer lies in Amarna.
Amazing!
- This is Akhenaten's boundary stele.
- Egyptologist, Factum Foundation.
He erected these stelae as boundaries for the cities
he was building.
In the fifth year of his reign,
Akhenaten ordered the capital moved from Thebes
to here, Amarna.
It's a location 321 kilometers away.
These inscribed stones, or stelae,
describe the reasons why
Akhenaten chose this region,
This caused widespread outrage.
Thebes, known today as Luxor,
was then the center of worship for Amun-Ra,
the supreme god of ancient Egypt.
He represented fertility and war.
Instead, Akhenaten built his new city
to worship the sun god Aten exclusively.
Aten had existed before Akhenaten's time.
It means 'body of the sun'.
What Akhenaten did was promote Aten
to be a full god, and the only one accepted for worship.
To most ancient Egyptians, this was virtually heresy.
It also upset the established order of Amun-Ra,
whose priests were now forced into hiding in the great temple of Thebes,
waiting for Akhenaten to die.
His order for the exclusive worship of Aten...
would have a profound effect on the young Tutankhaten,
whose reign would begin earlier than anyone expected.
Akhenaten died after 17 years of his turbulent reign.
There is debate as to whether his wife, Queen Nefertiti, outlived him.
Her last known image dates to five years before his death.
Replacing them as ruler of Egypt...
was his nine-year-old son, Tutankhamun.
Eventually, the mummies of the king and queen, and their capital, disappeared from history.
But what happened to Akhenaten and Nefertiti?
Dr. Zahi Hawass has been searching for their mummies for years.
In 2010, he focused his attention on three mummies from Tut's era,
the 18th Dynasty.
He found them in temporary tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
Zahi thought the male mummy from a tomb called KV55,
whose face had been violently struck in ancient times...
might be Tut's father.
To determine any genetic link to Tutankhamun,
Zahi arranged for DNA tests
to compare the genetic code
of these mummies with that of Tut, and his grandfather Amenhotep III,
And who was King Tut's father?
Here Zahi receives the results he'd been waiting for.
- We'll show you who King Tut's father is. - "Ancient DNA Expert"
This blue DNA is passed from father to son.
They're identical. And now...
- KV55 is the mummy of... - "Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egyptologist"
- He's Tutankhamun's father? - Yes, exactly.
I'm very happy.
For Zahi, the DNA test proves...
that the poorly preserved male mummy is Tut's father.
And the son of Amenhotep III, the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten.
But not every researcher agrees that the man found in tomb KV55...
...is Akhenaten.
It's virtually impossible that it's Akhenaten.
- For several reasons. - "Professor Aidan Dodson"
- First, the age of death. - "University of Bristol"
Most of the anatomists who examined the body...
...declared him to be in his twenties. That's far too young to be Akhenaten.
The team working with Zahi...
...believe that a precise bone analysis suggests a younger age.
With age, the discs lose their length...
- Then the bones react to the formation... - "Professor of Radiology, Cairo University"
...of small bone spurs, which is what we call osteophytes.
It's clear in the spine here that there are more than a few osteophytes.
Certainly, the owner couldn't have been in his twenties.
Those who doubt Zahi's results believe the mummy might be...
...a mysterious king named Neferkare.
Who ruled briefly as co-regent...
...in the final years of Akhenaten's reign.
My opinion, and I stress there are many opinions...
...is that Neferkare was Akhenaten's brother.
He died several years before the end of Akhenaten's reign.
And was co-king with him for perhaps one or two years.
If Neferkare was Akhenaten's brother...
...then genetically, the mummy in KV55...
...would share DNA. So the DNA situation would change.
Others believe that Menkare wasn't Akhenaten's brother, but Tut himself.
More evidence is needed to find out if Tut was the only male heir.
And to find that evidence, Amarna needs more investigation.
The capital Akhenaten founded.
- We're at the small temple of Aten now.
- "Egyptologist, founder of Factum."
And the temples of Aten.
These were the reason this city was built in the first place.
For Akhenaten to show his strong relationship with the god Aten...
There were many depictions of the royal family through statues and paintings.
Despite the information that survived on the city's stones,
nothing here depicts Akhenaten's entire family.
With conscious defiance of his dead father,
he not only changed his name from Tutankhaten, removing the sun god Aten's name,
but reinstated the worship of Amun-Ra.
He abandoned Amarna, which was later destroyed.
Although some artifacts remain, others must be searched for.
When the atheistic experiment ended, the palace buildings were destroyed.
And the stones were taken across the river to Ashmunein.
To be used in the foundations of buildings constructed by later kings.
There was a fear that the stones would be lost forever.
Until Zahi tracked one of them down the Nile from Amarna.
In a storehouse near the ruins of Ashmunein.
What was written on them was a revelation.
"The King's Son of his Body, his Beloved, Tutankhaten."
The king on the Ashmunein stones is definitely Akhenaten.
The king on the Ashmunein stones is definitely Akhenaten.
He was the only male king depicted on the Ashmunein stones.
This is crucial evidence that King Tut was the son of Akhenaten.
This tablet must have been in one of the Aten temples.
And most importantly, Tut is the only son mentioned.
Which indicates he was indeed the sole male heir of Akhenaten.
So the desecration of Akhenaten's face,
the dismantling of his religion, and the destruction of his capital,
may all have been the actions of the young king who changed his name to Tutankhamun.
But there is another person consistently depicted with Akhenaten.
His wife, Nefertiti, who is now more famous.
If we can confirm that Tut's father is the shattered mummy...
found in the Valley of the Kings...
could the female mummy near him be Queen Nefertiti?
And was Nefertiti really Tut's mother?
You may not have heard of Akhenaten,
but you've certainly heard of his powerful wife, Nefertiti.
An unfinished bust of the queen made her the most famous face from antiquity,
the ultimate icon of ancient beauty.
The bust itself is one of the world's most controversial artifacts.
Nefertiti is no longer in Egypt.
She's been stored in Germany since 1924,
where millions of visitors to Berlin's museum bought tickets to see the most beautiful woman in history.
She was moved underground during World War II for safety,
and in the 70s, she came to represent national identity on both sides of the Berlin Wall.
She even appeared on a postage stamp in West Germany in 1989.
But as Germany continued to claim ownership...
Egyptian authorities struggled for decades to bring Nefertiti home.
So the battle for the great queen continues,
and neither side looks likely to give in anytime soon.
To mark the centenary of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb,
Zahi Hawass reassembled the DNA research team
to continue investigating the mummies of the 18th Dynasty,
found in the Valley of the Kings.
Could the mummy be the famous Queen Nefertiti?
The work you've done, Dr. Yehia, is incredible, and that's why...
The investigation reveals the mummy shares the same DNA as Tut,
and is almost certainly his mother.
And since Tut's father was married to Nefertiti, we're left with two important questions:
Was Tut's mother Nefertiti?
And could this mummy be hers?
To understand that...
we need to delve deeper into the mummy's DNA.
Genetic markers from the mummy indicate that, in addition to being Tut's mother,
she was also either Tut's father's sister or his father's first cousin.
Since historians generally believe Nefertiti was a relative of Akhenaten,
this is a crucial genetic mystery to solve.
With expectations mounting, Zahi seeks clarification from the DNA team.
Dr. Yahia?
- Are there any specific circumstances...
- Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egyptologist
we can consider where the younger woman in KV55...
...might be a relative, and not a sister, of Akhenaten?
The kinship analysis came back 99.99 percent.
It rules out her not being Tutankhamun's daughter...
- Definitely?
- Definitely.
Yes, okay.
If this analysis is correct,
it means that although Tutankhamun's father was married
to Nefertiti...
...Tutankhamun himself is the product of an incestuous relationship...
...between his father and his father's unknown sister.
And depictions of Tutankhamun's father
with Nefertiti and her children...
...seem to support this conclusion.
We don't see any male children, only six daughters.
In Tutankhamun's tomb, there are no depictions of any siblings of any kind.
- If you look at the art from that period...
- Alia Ismail, Egyptologist
He doesn't seem to have been depicted with his sisters,
following thousands of years of Egyptian tradition.
Because when you depict the royal family, you never show the princes.
But Akhenaten clearly wasn't afraid to break tradition.
He eventually included Tutankhamun
on the Amarna tablet...
...found at the Ashmolean.
Why, then, was Tutankhamun excluded from the reliefs?
Nobody knows.
But this is the idea: it changed in Akhenaten's final years.
He decided to do something no pharaoh had done before.
He depicted his son on the temple wall.
This leads one to think that perhaps he wasn't Nefertiti's son,
but the son of a secondary wife of Akhenaten.
And that's why he wasn't depicted.
So if Tutankhamun wasn't one of Nefertiti's children,
then his mother's identity remains a mystery.
According to Zahi, since she doesn't appear in any inscriptions...
...she likely died at a young age, possibly in childbirth.
To confirm this theory, Zahi crosses the Nile from Amarna
to the Saqqara necropolis.
Here he enters a recently opened tomb,
which has been shored up to prevent collapse.
He's looking for a unique piece of evidence
that may prove King Tut grew up without a mother at all.
King Tut was buried in the historic Valley of the Kings,
but this royal tomb was only used for a few hundred years...
in the New Kingdom of Egypt.
Older, and with far more mummies...
It's the Saqqara necropolis.
I've visited it many times.
I have to say, one of my favorite sites
is the Serapeum.
Because it's so unusual,
you can't help but love it.
It's a catacomb full of enormous sarcophagi.
Each one for a sacred bull.
The high priest of the atheistic cult
that worshipped the god Ptah...
would roam Egypt searching for a bull
with the same spot pattern on its back.
When found, the bull would be deified.
And when it died, it would be buried in the Serapeum.
Over the centuries, at least 70 sarcophagi were added.
You have to wonder what archaeologists must have thought...
when they opened the stone sarcophagi,
expecting to find a mountain of gold...
and instead were stared at by a herd of eunuch bulls.
The lesson here is that when
history gets weird,
you just have to celebrate it.
Saqqara, Egypt's city of the dead.
Zahi Hawass came to visit a tomb
that might offer further confirmation...
that Tut's mother was not Queen Nefertiti.
In fact, the reliefs here show
Tut growing up motherless.
We're looking at a rare scene
of a lady named Maya.
She had the unique title
"Mistress of the Harem."
And she was the wet nurse to a god.
And the god here is Tutankhamun.
What is on the wall to tell us
that the one sitting in Maya's lap...
is Tutankhamun?
It's the cartouche.
Nebkheperure
Tutankhamun's throne name.
The tomb was damaged in antiquity, and half the picture was destroyed.
But we can imagine what it looked like 3,000 years ago.
It was very colorful.
This is a very unique picture.
We haven't seen a scene like this for any king of the dynasty, or the New Kingdom in general.
It shows he had no mother,
and that Maya became his mother and the king's wet nurse.
Because she is proud to call herself the wet nurse of the god.
And the god in question was Tutankhamun.
The grandeur of this tomb shows that Maya...
had an important place in Tutankhamun's heart,
and perhaps helped shape the man he grew up to be.
I truly believe that Tutankhamun...
We can see from the scenes depicting him and his queen...
love and affection.
Perhaps the man learned love from Maya.
Because Maya...
Look at her face. She's looking at him with love.
Her right hand is touching him lovingly.
And the boy king grew up with love.
So Tut grew up, and Queen Nefertiti was not his mother,
but his father's wife.
She shared responsibility for decisions in his personal life.
And one of the keys to her personal security was her marriage to one of her daughters.
Tutankhamun later married his sister, Ankhesenamun.
It seems Nefertiti was trying to prepare the girls for the throne.
- The situation is that Akhenaten and Nefertiti - - Sarah Ahmed, University of London
They had no male heir.
The lack of a male heir puts Nefertiti in a position where she's thinking...
'How do I ensure we remain kings...'
When Akhenaten, who had initiated that revolution, suddenly disappeared,
perhaps it was out of her desire to give her daughters more security.
But it was perhaps also the most logical and practical step.
It turns out the queen would establish a rule that would protect her,
And she would continue the revolution her husband started.
But Nefertiti wouldn't be the only influence on the young Tut.
Egyptologist Alia Ismail...
She's in a remote part of the Nile, in a town called Akhmim.
To discover the tomb of a man who may have guided the young Tut
to betray his father's legacy.
Amazing! Finally.
This tomb is carved into the rock in a remote place.
It was placed here to be difficult to access, most likely.
And certainly, whoever owned the tomb was very rich and high-ranking.
Because they could afford to have a tomb carved into the rock here.
It's said to be for the Overseer of Teachers, Sen-Nejem.
Overseer of Teachers wasn't an ordinary title.
It indicated he was the highest-ranking of the teachers.
And therefore, he was the king's tutor.
This is the forgotten tomb of a man called Sen-Nejem.
And as Alia will discover...
Sen-Nejem had a uniquely privileged position.
Which gave him access to the king.
If we look closely,
because the symbols are slightly erased, we can see an image of a king in a chariot.
And this king is most likely Tutankhamun.
But in front of the king's face, we can see a fan. And this fan represents a whisk.
And if there's a whisk,
there must be someone holding that whisk and fanning the king.
And in that case, we'd assume that person is Sen-Nejem.
But this isn't just a simple assumption.
This refers to the title mentioned on the door,
which says 'Fan Bearer to the King'.
And being the Fan Bearer to the King means you're close to the king.
And if you're close to the king, it means he listens to you.
This puts Sen-Nejem in a very influential position.
If the king is learning from you and looking up to you...
This means you're feeding him what you want him to feel, believe, and know about Egypt.
But would a tutor dare to manipulate the entire future of Egypt?
Or was he working with other, more powerful forces?
King Tut was not yet ten when he became Pharaoh.
A shockingly young age to lead a nation.
But he's not the youngest child ever to ascend a throne.
Aisingioro Puyi, the last Emperor of China, became emperor at age two.
And Mary, Queen of Scots, became a national leader at just six days old.
Both rulers lived far longer lives than Tut.
But neither had the royal consolation he did in death.
Mary was imprisoned by her rival, Elizabeth I,
and beheaded at 44.
Puyi was deposed four years later and lived a turbulent life in and out of power.
He eventually died a commoner in 1967, aged 66.
I highly recommend Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 film, The Last Emperor.
Watch it, and you'll thank me later.
In any case, Tut's life was shorter, but far more productive.
He changed the religion and moved the old capital.
And today, he is known as the most famous Pharaoh in history.
King Tut took the throne in the name given to him by his father,
Tutankhaten.
A name honoring the sun god, Aten.
But we know him as Tutankhamun.
The name honoring the god of war and fertility, Amun.
How quickly did this change of allegiance happen after he took the throne?
One clue lies in the Cairo Museum,
with one of Tut's most enigmatic depictions from his tomb.
A beautiful face.
Look at the oval shape.
It's stunning.
It's so elegant.
Here, Tut is shown as a young boy,
suggesting this statue was made early in his reign.
A closer look at his crown reveals he may have already switched his allegiance by then...
from Aten to Amun by this time.
Look at the cap, it's rounded.
But it's also a typical type of crown for the god Amun.
We see it everywhere.
If we remove the cobra...
You think Tutankhamun allied himself with Amun?
So the crown represents a transition
from worshipping Aten to worshipping Amun?
And everything Akhenaten hoped his son Tut
would represent was reversed?
But the crown was the least of his betrayals.
In Thebes, Tut restored the Karnak temple
to the priests of Amun.
Here at the tenth pylon
of Karnak...
There is decisive evidence that Tut completely rejected
his father Akhenaten and his legacy.
We're at pylon number 10,
built by Amenhotep V.
And you can see this avenue
of sphinxes...
Which is part of the great avenue
of sphinxes...
Which led from the Karnak temple
to Luxor temple.
For a millennium, a double line
of ram-headed sphinxes...
Represented the god Amun.
It lined the route
to Luxor temple.
But during the Amarna period, all that changed.
When Akhenaten came to power,
he destroyed the statues representing Amun,
Replacing them with images of himself
and his great queen Nefertiti.
The avenue of sphinxes became the avenue of Aten.
Until the arrival of Tutankhamun.
Tutankhamun arrived and placed the ram's head
in honour of Amun.
Tut replaced his father's head
with the head of the god his father rejected.
It was a complete betrayal
of all Akhenaten's beliefs.
And it was an unmistakable declaration
from the new king.
What we see everywhere
is his attempt to tell the people...
'I worship Amun.
I am restoring the country to power.'
But why would the boy named
after Aten turn on his father's religion...
So quickly and so decisively?
Look over there.
The answer lies in the crowded halls
of the Cairo Museum,
Where a huge stone slab details
the sins of Akhenaten,
Which the young Tut requested be written.
The Restoration Stela of Tutankhamun
is crucial for us
To understand the era and life of Tutankhamun.
This tells us what happened to the temples.
The temples were destroyed,
and the gods of Egypt left the country.
The country collapsed.
What did he do? He began restoring the temples.
Gold statues were given to the temple of Amun-Re.
The priests were given all the wealth they needed.
This meant the country regained its strength under Amun.
And Tutankhamun announced this to us all.
This decision changed the course of Egyptian history.
But most experts believe Tut didn't make it alone.
It's important to distinguish that Tutankhamun had little to do with these decisions.
He was a child under guardianship.
So he had to respond to his guardians. - Professor Aidan Dodson.
This child, about 10 years old... - Dr. Arto Belidanian.
Who was in charge of one of the most powerful countries in the world...
At a time when Egypt was suffering from so many difficulties...
And perhaps at the suggestion of one of his courtiers, possibly Ay...
Perhaps the reason for all this was Akhenaten's religious change.
It seems likely that at the beginning of his reign...
King Tut was surrounded by elders telling him what to do.
The most important of them was a family member named Ay.
He declared himself Tut's advisor.
Tutankhamun was a boy.
He couldn't think about worshipping Aten or Amun.
But his advisor Ay...
It was he who advised him to leave Amarna and come to Thebes.
And to bring back the image of Amun again.
Ay was a minor member of the royal family by marriage.
And he made himself one of the most prominent figures in the young king's court.
He had a clear agenda: to make Tut restore the old religion.
Tut had another powerful advisor, Horemheb.
The king's army commander, who was not of royal blood.
But Ay was the one with the greatest influence.
Through his relationship with Senejem, Tut's tutor.
When this temple was built, Ay was the primary advisor to Tutankhamun.
So Ay surrounded Tutankhamun with his own people.
So Senejem, in turn, as fan-bearer and supervisor of tutors...
Ay's voice was in the king's ear.
So Ay made the decision then.
And he launched a campaign telling Egyptians that the power of Amun had returned.
Most historians believe that the return to worshipping Amun...
...happened in the early years of King Tut's reign.
But as often happens in ancient history...
...contradictions have been revealed.
Zahi has special permission to examine the royal symbols of Tut's reign.
Known as the shepherd's crook and the flail.
Six shepherd's crooks and flails were found inside Tutankhamun's tomb.
But what's amazing is that if you look at these two...
...one is smaller, the other is larger.
When Tutankhamun was a child, in his first year...
...and living in Amarna...
...he had this child's shepherd's crook.
Why? Because his name was written as Tutankhaten.
Which means he is the living image of Aten.
But when he grew up and became a man...
...he wanted to prove to the Egyptians...
...that he was the power, and ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt.
And his name changed here to Tutankhamun.
Which means the living image of Amun.
So this tells us that King Tutankhamun...
...made this great transition back to the traditional religion...
...at some point in his early teens.
Because when he matured...
...he had the full-size shepherd's crook and flail...
...with the name Tutankhamun.
Whether Tut immediately changed his name or not...
...he seems to have fully celebrated the return to worshipping Amun.
Not only was the Khonsu Temple in Luxor restored...
...but the magical Luxor Temple itself was restored.
This center of the Amun cult on the Nile...
...Akhenaten had stripped it of its powers.
But Tut celebrated it...
...and made his support for it public during one of the most important religious festivals of the year.
The Opet Festival.
Luxor Temple and the Avenue of Sphinxes.
The center of the cult of the Egyptian god Amun.
In November 2021...
Egyptian authorities attended a grand ceremony for the site's reopening.
But this wasn't the first time a procession like this celebrated the temple's renewal.
Similar celebrations happened here when Tut restored Egypt to the worship of Amun.
Zahi has come here now to highlight an amazing masterpiece...
Detailing one of the most important rituals that returned because of Tut's great act.
We are inside the temple of Luxor, actually.
We are in the hall that contains the 14 columns.
But more importantly, it contains the Open Feast of Tutankhamun.
The Open Feast is a huge wall relief.
It runs the entire length of the colonnaded hall.
Built in the center of Luxor by Amenhotep III, Tut's grandfather.
It depicts the Open Feast of Amun.
A fertility festival that included statues of the god Amun and his family.
The Open Feast is a sacred feast for the god Amun.
And his wife Mut and their son Khonsu.
To make a journey from the temple of Karnak to Luxor.
- This happened once a year. - "Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egyptologist."
And this festival lasted for 11 days.
During the reign of Tutankhamun.
The feast happened at the start of the Nile flood season.
Its return, led by Tut, meant he fully celebrated the worship of Amun.
The flood for Egyptians meant good things for Egypt, fertility.
So they waited every year for that journey of Amun.
Without Amun's journey from Karnak to Luxor...
There is no flood.
And because it was a celebration of the flood...
The statues were transported on sacred boats.
The priests carried the boats of the three gods.
Amun, Mut, and Khonsu.
They carried them on their shoulders.
And around them were dancers, singers, the king, the queen, and the people.
Because this is a big feast, in the mindset of the ancient Egyptians.
The boats were carried in a large procession along the Avenue of the Sphinxes.
In a festive journey from the temple of Karnak to the temple of Luxor.
In Tutankhamun's reign,
they also sailed on the Nile.
This is a sacred marriage between Amun and Mut.
In the Egyptian mindset, it means the flood will come to Egypt.
And it means fertility for the land.
This fertility ritual
may have had personal significance...
for Tutankhamun
and his wife Ankhesenamun.
And their statues stand at the entrance
to the Hall of Columns.
Studying more of the materials found
in Tut's tomb...
sheds some light on the reason...
Tutankhamun had no children.
And we know the two fetuses found
inside the treasure room died in childbirth.
This is one of the most prominent discoveries
from Tutankhamun's tomb.
The mummified remains of two fetuses that were miscarried.
So the fertility ritual at the public ceremony
may have had special significance for Tut...
and his wife, who was his sister.
I truly believe the reason she's depicted here
is because Amun gives fertility to the land,
Amun might give fertility to them.
So we must put ourselves
in Tutankhamun's place.
Specifically, when he was trying to understand
his transition from child to man...
his marriage and diplomacy...
- his health and everything.
- "Sarah Ahmed, University of London."
It may have been easy for Tutankhamun
to respond to his advisors...
by returning to the old religion.
So perhaps the reason was
Tutankhamun's celebration...
of returning to traditional religion with enthusiasm.
It's human that when we
face very difficult times...
we try to find a solution then.
Even if it means
adopting a new religious system.
Tut and Ankhesenamun's miscarriages
were likely caused
by their being siblings.
Marrying siblings, especially
over the long term and across generations...
has very negative effects on the new generation
that is born.
Congenital diseases, physical disabilities,
and all sorts of illnesses you don't want.
This also affected Tut's health.
He had a cleft palate
and many other health problems too,
due to his parents' blood relation.
He also had problems with his feet.
It was caused by an inherited syndrome called Kohler's disease.
This was discovered when Zahi and his team...
...performed a CT scan on King Tut's mummy.
Now, armed with the latest technology...
...Zahi is examining the many myths surrounding Tutankhamun's health.
- From what we saw on the CT scan. - "Professor of Radiology, Cairo University."
- He wasn't in very good health. - Why?
He has some abnormalities, for example, in his left foot.
It has a congenital defect he was born with.
The toes tend to turn inward.
A foot deformity.
Because of this, he couldn't walk properly.
He probably used a cane to walk.
That's why he had 130 canes in his tomb.
He said he made one himself.
Among the 130 walking canes, there are indications some were used.
It's a good example for us to look at his nature in life.
Like much about Tut...
The revelation that he had disabilities caused a fierce debate.
He's depicted in his tomb as an effective hunter and chariot driver.
But some deny the art, considering it mere propaganda.
Let's remember that Egyptian art is rarely original.
All the depictions we have of Tutankhamun...
...whether of him hunting or in battle...
...there are overlaps between them all and works from earlier periods.
Since Tutankhamun was lame and very frail...
...I think it's difficult for someone like that to participate in military campaigns...
...and to participate in hunting expeditions.
Many depictions of King Tut hunting or in battle...
...are indeed very formal.
But hidden inside the temple surrounding his sarcophagus...
...is a personal and unique object...
...that might shatter what we believe about the young king's physical ability.
One of the most important treasures in ancient Egypt wasn't silver or gold...
...but the humble ostrich.
The Nile is not their natural habitat.
These huge birds were given as gifts to Egypt...
...from the lands they conquered, like Nubia in Ethiopia.
They were rare and exotic.
Ostriches were likely celebrated by the elite.
Women turned ostrich eggs into perfume holders and jewelry.
Royal physicians ground them to make medicine.
Priests placed their feathers on coffins to help lift the mummies...
...and speed their journey to the afterlife.
But only the pharaoh could get enough feathers to make the greatest treasure.
A royal fan to keep him cool in the hot Egyptian weather.
In the last 10 years...
...axial CT scans of King Tut's feet...
...have supported the theory that the boy king was too weak...
...and had major disabilities...
...to the point he couldn't ride a chariot to hunt or go to war.
But in 1922...
...as Howard Carter began to dismantle the shrines around the sarcophagus in King Tut's tomb...
...he discovered a revealing object that suggested Tut...
...may have been much stronger than modern scholars thought.
There's a very long, amazing fan...
- the kind you see in movies - Dr. Alto Bjelkedanian,
- where people wave the fan for the king - Oxford University.
It has ostrich feathers.
And at the top is a scene of the king hunting ostriches.
And it gets interesting.
There's an inscription on it that says...
"Ostrich feathers brought by His Majesty when he was hunting ostriches."
So we have an amazing inscription here telling us that Tutankhamun was hunting ostriches.
It depicts him hunting.
- The tools inside the tomb show that he hunted - Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egyptologist.
Even with all the physical problems he suffered...
...he loved to hunt.
In Giza, there's additional evidence in the shadow of the Sphinx.
At one of Egypt's most famous tourist sites,
near the small shops in the markets below the Sphinx...
There's a pile of dried mud
It doesn't look important, but it hides an amazing secret
This mud brick means nothing to the public
But to us, it's extremely important
Because this could allow us to reconstruct history
These are the remains of Tutankhamun's hunting lodge
We call it a palace because it's royal
When this was excavated, they found a cartouche with Tutankhamun's name...
...and a cartouche for Ankhesenamun
In fact, this palace belonging to Tut and his wife...
...is a modest structure of mud bricks
And it's hard to make out because not much remains
If I close my eyes, we can imagine a palace for the king and queen
And they depicted scenes of Tutankhamun
And the cartouches of Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun
I think he might have been looking out the window at Khafre's temple
Perhaps that palace was beautiful
Shining in the shadows of the pyramids and the Sphinx
I really think that the existence of this palace...
...is important evidence that Tutankhamun actually hunted wild animals
It's a dramatic image
The young pharaoh rides his chariot across the valley, playing the sport of kings
These images show that in ancient times...
...physical disabilities didn't stop Tut from enjoying his life
In the Cairo Museum, Zahi saw a decorated box...
...perhaps indicating how Tut was able to continue his active life...
...by making sure he rested
This box tells us about Tutankhamun's health
He's sitting and shooting arrows
And his queen below is also lovingly giving him an arrow
As far as I know as an Egyptologist...
...I've never seen any scene of a king sitting...
...and hunting at all
It confirmed to me...
...why Tutankhamun had 130 staffs in his tomb
He was determined to carry a staff and walk with it
That cane was very important to him because he wasn't in good health.
Perhaps this explains why there was a hunting lodge in the first place.
I think things aren't always straightforward when it comes to Tutankhamun...
...and how physically capable he was.
- But the hunting lodge suggests... - Sarah Ahmed, University of London.
...the possibility that he really tried to participate in this activity.
The presence of the hunting lodge might prove that Tutankhamun was hunting,
despite his mobility problems.
Perhaps it was a serious attempt
to show that Tutankhamun... was physically capable of ruling Egypt by being a hunter.
Or perhaps his physical disabilities didn't interfere with his movement as I suggested.
Zahi's bone expert, Dr. Ashraf...
...believes he saw something indicating that when Tut went hunting...
...the pain had subsided.
During King Tut's reign in the New Kingdom,
hunting was an activity reserved for the king and his entourage
as a way to display strength and courage.
There were reserves of wild animals for the elite...
...prepared for lion hunts from chariots
or crocodile hunts in the marshes.
But in this great display of courage, the Egyptian nobles...
There's no polite way to put it.
They cheated.
To ensure man's victory, unsportsmanlike measures were taken.
The lists of animals were usually tied together to make them easy targets.
There are papyri from that time indicating...
...that servants would transport dead animals in the marsh to ensure hunting success.
On the other hand...
...for farmers and laborers, wild animals were expensive and hard to access.
So they rarely got them.
Instead, they lived on bread, vegetables, and dried fish.
And the first known recipe in history, beer.
The axial CT scans of Tutankhamun's feet...
...contain a detail that is usually overlooked.
And perhaps it explains how Tut was able to be an effective hunter
despite suffering from many illnesses.
Dr. Ashraf shares his findings with Zahi Hawass.
Okay, so here we have... "Dr. Ashraf Selim, Professor of Radiology."
CT scans of the feet. "Cairo University."
And you can see that the acquired disease is in this small piece of bone.
Some call it Freiburg's disease.
This happens when the blood supply to this area gets reduced.
So this piece of bone dies.
Adolescents usually get this disease. Adolescents?
Yes, around 12 to 13 years old, maybe up to 19.
It sometimes causes a lot of pain.
He won't be able to do anything, not even walk on his feet.
This means Tutankhamun started feeling the symptoms
a few years after he came to the throne.
At the same time that he changed his name and turned against his father's religion.
This is a self-limiting disease.
Which means it takes a year or two to become pain-free.
And then he can walk on his feet again.
If the disease started at age 12...
Tutankhamun probably got rid of the pain when he was 14.
Making him able to run and hunt for the next five years until his death.
But what was the cause of his early death at only 19?
The condition of Tutankhamun's mummy has led to many theories about how he died.
First, there appears to be a defect in the back of the skull.
And this makes sense if he had a blow to the back of his head.
There are many theories that he was murdered or killed in battle.
The front of the mummy's chest, including the heart, is missing.
This has led to various theories about his death, from an injury that smashed his chest, perhaps.
Maybe he was attacked by a hippopotamus, or kicked by a horse.
Or perhaps hit by a chariot. "Professor Aidan Dodson."
There are various possibilities in the literature. "Bristol University."
But Zahi's team's examination of Tutankhamun's mummy
provides a simple and surprising explanation for the condition of his remains.
It's not due to the time of Tutankhamun's death,
but to Howard Carter's discovery of the tomb.
When Carter opened the tomb...
He discovered that Tutankhamun's body was encased in three stunning gold coffins,
It was locked and placed
in the center of the other coffin.
Each coffin was inside the other.
So he had to lift them
coffin after coffin.
The pictures we see of Howard Carter
taking out the three coffins...
...show how difficult it was for him
to open the burial chamber.
It was extremely difficult.
The process of opening the coffin, right down
to the mummy...
...took almost two years.
But part of that was dealing
with the body.
And in 1924, midway through the process
of moving Tut from the coffin...
...the Egyptian court banned
Carter from entering the tomb.
The problem was that Sir Carter
was always arrogant.
And this led to a big dispute
with the Egyptian authorities.
It ended simply,
but the dispute was big.
He decided to close the tomb
and told them, 'You finish it, I'm done.'
Carter left the tomb, leaving the coffins
hanging over the body.
This happened in February
of 1924.
After that, he went to the United States
to give lectures.
I think Carter's rash exit
from the tomb...
...benefited his opponents.
The following year, Carter was tied up
in legal issues with the Egyptian government
...to regain access.
He wasn't allowed back into the tomb
until January 1925.
And he wasn't ready until October
to lift the lid of Tutankhamun's last coffin.
When he opened the last coffin,
what he found before him...
...was a black mass
with an amazing golden mask.
Now, when Carter tried to remove the mask,
he couldn't.
Because when the Egyptians buried
King Tut quickly...
...they used resin, which made the mask
stick to the mummy.
So he had to be rough
in removing the mask.
He cut the body in half from the chest,
then removed the body
piece by piece.
He dismantled the mummy into 18 pieces.
I don't think Carter had
any other options.
Either he had to leave the mummy in place,
or remove the shroud and leave it,
or take drastic measures.
Now...
As an archaeologist, I imagined myself
in Howard Carter's place.
And I found this mask.
Would I leave the mask on the mummy?
Or would I do what Howard Carter did?
Honestly, I would do what Howard Carter did.
The damage Carter did
to the mummy led many to believe...
that Tutankhamun was murdered.
But the CT scans by Zahi Hawass tell the whole story.
You can see a loose bone fragment
inside the skull.
So they assumed that was the cause of death,
that he was struck on the head.
And the bone fragment entered the skull.
Is that true?
On the contrary.
Because this bone fragment entered
when they tried to remove the golden mask.
They broke it, and this bone fragment entered
the skull...
...because of what Carter did to the mummy,
not before his death.
Because if this bone fragment
was there before embalming...
...it would have been stuck in the resin
inside the skull.
Can we say we're sure
that Tutankhamun wasn't murdered?
Yes.
But if that's true...
...why did Tutankhamun die
so young?
And what could have killed
the boy king?
More than 3,000 years have passed since his burial,
and 100 years since his tomb was discovered,
and there are still questions about
the specific cause of King Tut's death.
Now, in their studies of Tut's mummy...
...Dr. Zahi Hawass's team believes
it found the answer in a surprising place.
A complex fracture above Tut's left knee.
What made this fracture strange
is that we noticed two things.
There was a large wound
at the site of the fracture.
So when they embalmed him,
the resin fluid entered the wound
and entered the bone ends.
All other fractures
were caused by Howard Carter.
It seems the old wound was infected.
Perhaps it led to blood poisoning.
We call it sepsis.
Dr. Ashraf Selim, Professor of Radiology,
And sepsis could be one of the causes of his death. Cairo University.
On its own, this infection might not have killed King Tut.
But it seems it wasn't his only illness.
During their studies, Zahi's team discovered signs of a viral disease in Tut's body.
He had malaria.
Because of the frequent inbreeding...
And because of the malaria and poor health...
It may have caused an infection that killed him through sepsis.
So after all the strange theories, the simple truth might be...
That King Tutankhamun died of malaria,
worsened by blood poisoning from a leg fracture.
But what caused the fracture?
Could Tutankhamun... Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egyptologist.
Have had an accident? Perhaps he was riding a chariot?
Of course, any accident could have caused it.
It must have been quick, because of the large wound.
So if he was riding a chariot, that makes more sense than him simply falling on the ground.
Although it's impossible to prove.
Zahi likes to think that the young King Tut...
Died trying to show he could ride a chariot again.
I really think he was riding a chariot in the desert of Memphis.
I'm sure he died in an accident in the Giza Valley.
The exact cause of Tut's death may never truly be known.
But we do know his court was surprised by his death.
Few were prepared for the young king's death, just 10 years into his reign.
The small size of his tomb, which doesn't seem to have been built for a king...
Suggests he was placed there in a hurry.
But even so, the cramped space was filled with over 5,000 artifacts.
Some of the most beautiful artifacts were stored in the treasury behind the burial chamber.
Guarded by the jackal god Anubis.
Among them was an amazing alabaster chest,
which contained the canopic jars where Tut's internal organs were placed.
This is one of the most beautiful objects in the tomb.
Inside were four miniature coffins,
each holding one of Tut's organs.
But inside them lay a hidden secret, showing how unprepared his people were...
of Tutankhamun's early death
Zahi got permission to open one of these fragile treasures to study what was inside.
These are other beautiful objects.
They are miniature versions
of the large sarcophagi.
Look.
The vulture and the cobra.
The crook and flail.
And the beautiful inscriptions.
Nebkheperure.
Tutankhamun's throne name.
But the most important thing here...
Look at the faces.
They are not the face of a boy,
but the face of a woman.
They are not Tutankhamun's
at all.
They must belong to someone else.
My evidence is that if you open this...
you will see how the name
of Tutankhamun was inscribed...
instead of another name.
Kheperkheperure, which I believe might be
Queen Nefertiti.
Or Neferneferuaten.
It seems Tut's cartouche
was placed over another one.
But it's clear that these small coffins
were made for a ruler,
because only pharaohs were depicted
with the double crown...
and the crook and flail
that are here.
And the only woman known
who could have had this status
was Nefertiti.
- Neferneferuaten remains
- Professor Aidan Dodson
- a subject of some debate
- University of Bristol
The majority argue that it was Nefertiti,
because Nefertiti's full name
was Neferneferuaten Nefertiti.
The Luxor Temple holds another clue
which supports the theory that Nefertiti
was a pharaoh.
A pair of buried tablets
inside a very significant image.
We can see a unique scene
of Nefertiti.
She is smiting an enemy.
Smiting the enemy in ancient Egypt
was actually the job of the king,
not the queen.
I strongly believe that based on this seal,
Nefertiti ruled after Akhenaten
And became a king.
Whether it was Nefertiti or not,
the mysterious Neferneferuaten didn't take
her treasures with her to the afterlife.
And Nefertiti herself soon disappeared
from the historical records.
Her death and burial remain a mystery
to this day.
Whoever that pharaoh was...
Her canopic jars, her sarcophagus,
and her other precious belongings...
...were looted by Tutankhamun.
It also seems almost certain
that the tomb in which Tut was buried...
...was not built for a pharaoh to be buried in.
To understand why, Zahi visits
a very different tomb nearby.
Just a few metres from Tutankhamun's tomb
in the Valley of the Kings...
...lies the tomb of Ramesses II,
one of the greatest pharaohs
in all of Egyptian history.
This tomb has been under restoration
for the last two years.
It's a monumental task.
That's because the tomb suffered a flood
in antiquity,
when we came to excavate this tomb,
we found that the flood that came in...
...brought debris, rocks, and sand
with it everywhere.
All the scenes were completely damaged.
We had to remove
over 700,000 square feet...
...of debris and sand.
And we had to do major conservation
and restoration work on the scenes discovered.
The restoration team has to start
by cleaning the wall.
They use chemicals
to keep the scene stable.
You have to be very careful looking
at every piece,
because if you're not careful,
you might lose part of the scene.
This is the first time any documentary camera
has ever entered this tomb.
The sheer size of the tomb
makes the restoration process difficult.
The tomb of Ramesses II is the largest tomb
in the Valley of the Kings,
and we can see that in the burial chamber.
This is a huge place.
It's hundreds of times bigger
than Tutankhamun's tomb.
And there's space on the sides for furniture.
This is the grand scale on which an Egyptian royal tomb
was supposed to be built.
So why is Tut's tomb so small?
Egyptologist Alia Ismail examines the paintings on the walls...
of Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb.
This tomb is very small because it was likely not finished.
Otherwise, why would he be buried in such a small tomb?
Alia is part of the Factum Foundation,
which is working to record the paintings in important tombs in the Valley of the Kings
so that replicas can be produced.
They use advanced 3D scanning technology
to capture the images on the walls.
3D scanning allows you to capture all the fine details of the surface.
It removes cracks
- and shows every tiny detail... - Egyptologist, Factum Foundation.
that one cannot distinguish with the naked eye.
Alia's work is so detailed that the replicas her work helps produce...
look identical to the original.
Like the tomb she is standing in now.
In fact, this is a replica.
This is not the real tomb of Tutankhamun.
It's a replica built next to Howard Carter's house outside the Valley of the Kings.
The replica was built to reduce the damage to the tomb from visitor traffic.
Tourists can visit and appreciate the art without harming the real tomb.
During the 3D scanning of Tutankhamun's tomb for the replicas,
Alia found something unexpected.
When we look here at the young king's head
and now use the 3D technology,
we are looking at the brushstrokes that we see here.
We are very sure that the plaster was still wet...
when they applied the paint to it.
This shows they did it in a hurry.
But for Zahi Hawass,
Tut's burial tells a darker story than just haste.
A story of greed and rivalry.
No, how could they have been in a hurry?
They had 70 days to make the mummy.
They weren't in a hurry with his mummification.
So I think 70 days was enough time to build a tomb for the king.
If they needed over two months to prepare Tut's mummy for burial...
...why wasn't his tomb ready when it was time to bury him?
There's another tomb several kilometers away
in the West Valley.
It's significant.
Strangely, it's very similar to the tomb
where Tut was buried.
This is the tomb that was used to bury
King Ay,
...who took the throne
after Tutankhamun.
Even though Ay was only a minor member
of the royal family...
...he was one of Tut's top advisors.
His tomb is very similar to
Tutankhamun's tomb.
Look at the carvings, exactly like
those in Tutankhamun's tomb.
Look at the scene.
The goddess Nut before Ay.
She's performing a ritual called 'Neleh'.
The exact same scene is found
in Tutankhamun's tomb.
Finally, in a scene from the first hour of the night,
...from a book called 'Am-Tuat',
we can make out 12 baboons,
...representing the 12 hours of the night.
Six of them face south,
and the other six face north.
This scene is an exact copy
of the one in Tutankhamun's tomb.
I really think the conclusion is very clear.
These two tombs are identical.
So I'm 100% sure this tomb
was originally made for Tutankhamun.
Zahi's theory is that when Tut died
unexpectedly...
...his larger tomb, built for him,
wasn't even nearly finished.
So, within 70 days,
they had to prepare this tomb.
The only tomb that could be prepared
in time...
...appears to be a small burial site for a royal advisor,
which was being built in the Valley of the Kings.
So who was the owner of the tomb
that Tut took?
It must have been someone connected to royalty.
The most likely candidate is Ay.
Zahi explains more in Tut's tomb.
I really think the tomb
in the West Valley...
...was originally Tutankhamun's tomb,
...and that this tomb is originally
Ay's tomb.
And that this tomb was originally
Ay's tomb.
To accommodate all of Tutankhamun's treasures,
the tomb had to be enlarged.
And on the back wall of the burial chamber, there is evidence
that might explain Ay's haste.
Here, Ay is depicted performing an important ritual
known as the Opening of the Mouth.
It ushers the deceased pharaoh
into the afterlife.
We don't really understand the mechanics of transformation
into a pharaoh.
As far as we know, Ay became
the legitimate pharaoh through that ritual.
Ay wanted to show the public
that Tutankhamun had favored him,
to take him into the afterlife.
So, in this scene, Ay is telling the people...
He is the king who took the throne
after Tutankhamun's death.
But according to texts from that period...
Tutankhamun's heir was supposed to be Ay's non-royal rival,
General Horemheb.
So what happened?
The reason Ay succeeded
instead of Horemheb
might be that he was in the right
place at the right time.
We know there were military problems
when Tutankhamun died.
Horemheb might have been out of the country.
King Ay was cunning,
because he knew his position
and Horemheb's position were equal.
So they were rivals for the succession
to the throne.
So to take over and beat his rival, he had to
rush before Horemheb arrived,
and before he could object to anything.
Horemheb had no authority to take the throne from Ay.
So he waited for his turn, which came
four years later, upon Ay's death.
Ay may have gotten the bigger tomb,
but his legacy was not respected by his successors.
Look at this tomb and look
at the destruction of Ay's cartouches everywhere,
because they hated
the people and kings of the Amarna temples.
By this time, Akhenaten
had been erased from history.
Ay now became an undesirable person.
What left Tutankhamun alone
amidst all this?
Horemheb's anger was supposed
to be directed only at Ay and Akhenaten.
In the end, it was Tutankhamun
who brought back the worship of Amun
to the temples of Karnak and Luxor.
But on the Avenue of the Sphinxes...
One inscription suggests that Tut might have refused too.
The Avenue of the Sphinxes today is one of Luxor's most popular tourist destinations.
It's 3 kilometers long.
At its peak, it featured over 1,350 ram-headed sphinxes.
But for centuries, it was buried and forgotten.
When Egypt's gods fell silent during the Roman occupation,
the sand swallowed the road.
Over the centuries, modern homes and asphalt roads hid it.
It slowly sank below sea level, making excavations difficult.
It was finally drained and restored today.
And visitors can walk the same path King Tut walked...
...the day he became king.
In one corner of the Avenue of the Sphinxes...
...there's a erased inscription indicating a major change in Tutankhamun's story.
This is Horemheb's cartouche.
But it shows that originally, it was Tutankhamun's cartouche.
Nebkheperure.
That's Tutankhamun's throne name.
Now, Horemheb came and put his name over this cartouche.
And you can see Horemheb's mark clearly here.
Even though Horemheb was the commander of Egypt's army under Tut,
it seems he intended to erase Tut's name from all major monuments...
...that represented his reign.
Why?
The answer might be related to the worship of the god Amun.
People might say Horemheb wanted to erase Tutankhamun's name.
I say the opposite.
I think the two cartouches tell us
that the two kings wanted to unite with Amun.
- Horemheb's choice was certainly difficult.
- Aidan Dodson, University of Bristol.
Because he wasn't of royal blood and was simply a commoner.
He knew he couldn't convince...
- Sarah Ahmed, University of London.
...that he belonged to the royal family, because he wasn't of royal blood.
So he said he was the one who influenced Tutankhamun to restore the old order.
Horemheb wanted to show the Egyptians...
...that he was destroying anything related to the Amarna kings.
And I'm restoring Egypt's image.
I will restore Egypt's power.
I am Horemheb.
Perhaps that wasn't his intention.
But Horemheb removing Tut's name from monuments...
helped erase him almost entirely from Egyptian history.
By the time the Ramesside dynasty arrived,
But perhaps Tut's treasure survived the ancient tomb robbers...
Mother Nature and good luck played a part too.
Several months after the burial, a sudden flood came to the valley
and laid a thick layer over the tomb.
200 years after Tut's death,
Ramesses VI built his tomb on the slope above Tut's.
The rubble from his construction slid down the hill, covering Tut's tomb even more.
So by the time of the tomb robbers...
it was buried deep and wouldn't be a place robbers would think to search.
And because it was forgotten...
King Tut's treasures were left waiting for history to find them again.
I think the irony is that Ay and Horemheb tried so hard...
to erase Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and Tutankhamun...
from ancient Egyptian history.
But it backfired on them,
making them some of the most famous ancient Egyptian figures
and some of the most important discoveries of the 20th century.
We've come a long way in the 100 years since Howard Carter's discovery...
of Tutankhamun's tomb.
We've used science to reveal the nature of his birth
and the fragility of his body.
Years of investigation have generated as many questions as answers,
leading to new assumptions about the boy king's life.
But based on his unique experience,
Zahi has been able to answer some questions
as he searches for clues hidden perhaps in plain sight.
While the drama of religious upheaval and Tut's golden tomb is captivating,
the humanity of the little boy who took the throne cannot be ignored.
When you consider that Tutankhamun took the throne at age 9,
Surrounded by all these different powerful men,
and each of them had his own agenda.
That must have been very difficult.
Especially for a child who suffered
from many health problems.
- During Tutankhamun's reign...
- Dr. Arto Bjelkedal.
- A lot happened.
- Oxford University.
Most of what happened wasn't good.
Personally, we know, for example,
that Tutankhamun had two stillborn children.
Sometimes, on a human level,
I think Tutankhamun
and Ankhesenamun...
suffered too much damage
in all these disturbances.
It must have been very hard
to grow up in that environment.
And perhaps that made them
cling to each other emotionally.
The man who made them famous,
Howard Carter...
died in 1939.
On his tombstone, there's an inscription
from Tutankhamun's chalice of wishes.
"The discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb.
Birth and death dates."
May your life force endure.
May you live for a million years.
He who loves Thebes and dwells in it...
will see his face. A good place.
He loved the man of Thebes, so God rewarded him
with this great discovery.
And Zahi believes there are greater discoveries
waiting for us to find.
I'm a very lucky archaeologist.
In my career,
I've made major explorations.
I'm now searching the Valley of the Kings
for lost tombs,
like the tomb of Amenhotep I,
Thutmose II, and Ramesses VIII,
and all the queens of the 18th Dynasty.
I feel in my heart that before
I finish my career...
I will discover an intact tomb
in the Valley of the Kings.
Maybe Zahi is right.
And there's another tomb
that history forgot and nature hid.
But for now,
Tutankhamun's tomb is the only one,
until another undiscovered treasure.
Zahi's personal mission is to
solve the remaining mysteries of Tutankhamun's tomb,
and to continue investigating the
many questions we await answers to
about the most famous pharaoh in history,
the mysterious boy king, Tutankhamun.