Tut's Treasures: Hidden Secrets (2018) s01e01 Episode Script

1
NARRATOR:
Tutankhamun's spectacular treasures
Now, for the first time since
they were discovered,
all 5,398 objects
are being brought together
in a new $1 billion museum.
This will be the first time many of them
have been seen for a century.
SALIMA: Look at the horse.
Look at the horse, look at the horse!
NARRATOR: Scientists have been using
the latest imaging and forensic technology
to unlock long buried mysteries
to reveal the man behind the mask.
CHRISTIAN:
So many tiny details are visible again.
DR. NAUNTON: This wasn't just a hoard
of treasure, it was a veritable arsenal.
NARRATOR:
Not of a boy king
but a warrior on a global stage.
Egypt's spectacular Tutankhamun.
He's the most famous,
most studied pharaoh in history.
But even today, Tutankhamun's treasures
still have much to reveal.
Now, the most comprehensive
forensic examination
of all Tutankhamun's
5,000 treasures is underway.
And several key objects have
captured experts' attention.
At the heart of the investigation
A mysterious dagger found
on Tutankhamun's mummified body
Priceless golden chariot decorations
painstakingly reconstructed
after resting in fragments
for three and half thousand years
And the leather remains
of a strange armored tunic.
These three treasures will tell us
much more about the real Tutankhamun.
Not as a boy, but as a warrior.
It's a new chapter in a story
that began in the Valley of the Kings,
on the afternoon of November 26th, 1922.
In the barren desert west of the Nile,
British archaeologist Howard Carter
made the greatest
archaeological discovery of all time.
The almost completely intact tomb
of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh.
Tutankhamun.
Egyptologist Dr. Chris Naunton
has been given a rare chance
to get up close to Howard Carter's
personal account
of the momentous discovery.
DR. NAUNTON:
This is Howard Carter's journal
and it's amazing for
me to see this because this,
it really is as close as you get
to the very moment
that Carter looked on this incredible
haul of objects for the very first time.
NARRATOR:
This meticulously handwritten entry
records Carter's astonishment
as he peered inside the tomb
becoming the first person
to gaze on its wonders
for three and a half thousand years.
DR. NAUNTON:
Says, "The interior of the chamber
"gradually loomed before one with it's
strange and wonderful medley
"of extraordinary and beautiful objects
heaped upon one another.
"When Lord Carnarvon said to
me 'Can you see anything?'
I replied to him,
'Yes, it is wonderful'."
NARRATOR: Tutankhamen's
treasures captivated the world.
In the months and years
following their discovery,
they were painstakingly excavated
and transferred to the Cairo Museum.
Since then, millions of visitors
have marveled at many of the items
found in Tutankhamun's tomb.
These iconic treasures paint a
picture of a pampered boy king
who died tragically young.
This is the Tutankhamun
every school child knows.
A boy too young to rule.
An emotionally and physically weak
puppet ruler.
But this image is based on the tiny
handful of Tutankhamun's treasures
on display in the Cairo museum,
that make up just a fraction
of the 5,000 objects
found in Tutankhamun's burial chamber.
The rest have been locked away
in the museum's basement
until now.
The new Grand Egyptian Museum
is now gathering together all
of Tutankhamun's treasures
with the aim of putting
the whole collection on display
for the first time
since their discovery in 1922.
The treasures in these boxes
will shed new light
on the story of Tutankhamun.
Thousands of objects
were simply packed away
when they were first unearthed
and have never been studied or analyzed.
But now, in the cutting-edge labs
and store rooms
of the Grand Egyptian Museum,
all this is about to change.
Behind this unassuming door
lies an Egyptologist's paradise.
- DR. NAUNTON: Wow.
- CURATOR: Welcome to storage 93,
especially for artifacts of Tutankhamun.
NARRATOR: Filled with priceless treasures
and dripping with gold,
in this room Tutankhamun's prized
possessions are being brought together,
to be stored and conserved
in climate-controlled conditions.
DR. NAUNTON: There's some boats.
Some staffs. There are beds.
NARRATOR: Chris Naunton is one of
a tiny handful of experts to gain entry.
DR. NAUNTON: This is a super exciting
moment to be here,
to see all of this material
being readied for exhibition
in the new museum.
It's once in a lifetime kind of chance
to see this.
NARRATOR: The last time these
treasures were together
was inside Tutankhamun's tomb.
Professor Salima Ikram
believes it's only now,
by seeing the treasures together,
that Egyptologists can begin to tell
the full story of the pharaoh's life.
SALIMA: There is so much material
in the tomb of Tutankhamun.
It's really a bit like an attic, where,
you know, people's mothers
had put all of their bits and pieces
so that they have their memories;
they have their entire life encapsulated
from babyhood onwards.
And Tutankhamun's tomb
is like opening up his attic
and being able to see
inside his past life.
NARRATOR: Seen together,
Tutankhamun's treasures
are now painting a radical new portrait.
Not the boy king as many had thought,
this is Tutankhamun, the warrior king.
DR. NAUNTON: Inside the tomb
Howard Carter found six chariots,
seven throw sticks,
four daggers, dozens of bows,
hundreds of arrows, eight shields
and a unique and sophisticated
set of armor.
So this wasn't just a hoard of treasure,
it was a veritable arsenal of weapons.
NARRATOR: But these
weren't the toys of a boy king,
it would seem they were
the weapons of a man.
SALIMA: People romantically call
Tutankhamun the boy king
and that's because he came to throne
when he was nine and a half,
but he died when he was about 19.
And by the age of 14 in ancient Egypt,
you were a man.
So really, it's more of a romantic myth
calling him the boy king
because he really was a proper,
truly grown up king.
NARRATOR: Today, this king's story
is being rewritten by the artifacts
he took to the afterlife.
And there's one treasure Tutankhamun
seems to have highly valued.
Tucked away in a corner
of the Cairo Museum
lies a small dagger with a big secret.
The latest technology has revealed
startling new information
about this weapon,
soon to be moved to the
Grand Egyptian Museum.
Information that is out of this world.
NARRATOR: The sheer scale of Tutankhamun's
treasures is breathtaking.
From golden effigies to elaborate beds,
to simple items of clothing.
But Tutankhamun was also buried with
an arsenal of weapons.
DR: NAUNTON: Just drawer, after drawer,
after drawer all containing arrows.
This entire section just
for this one kind of object.
It's amazing.
NARRATOR: In this second
millennia BC stockpile,
there's one weapon that Tutankhamun
seemed to have highly treasured.
Since its discovery,
this spectacular dagger has been
on display in the Cairo Museum.
Tucked away in a corner,
passed by as visitors flock
to Tutankhamun's big-ticket treasures.
DR. NAUNTON:
It might not be the most famous object
that was discovered in the tomb,
but I think this dagger is
one of the most interesting.
NARRATOR:
This deadly weapon contains a secret
that's been hidden in plain sight
for nearly a century.
Now the dagger has been reanalyzed
to reveal Tutankhamun as a warrior,
hungry for power,
in this world and beyond.
The dagger was found
inside Tutankhamun's coffin.
It was resting directly on his body.
DR. NAUNTON:
This was one of the most important objects
for Tutankhamun it seems.
It was found very close to the mummy
just above the king's abdomen.
NARRATOR: It's clear there
was something special
about this dagger to Tutankhamun.
And there's no doubting its beauty.
DR. NAUNTON:
Its handle is extremely finely decorated
in gold, and these bands,
which are inlaid with precious materials,
the pommel at the end
is made of rock crystal,
this sheath made of beaten gold
is decorated with this very intricate
floral pattern.
NARRATOR: But Tutankhamun's tomb
was dripping in gold and gems.
So why was this dagger buried
inside his coffin on his body?
What made it so precious?
The answer lies in the dagger's blade.
DR. NAUNTON:
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of it
actually is the blade,
which is made of iron.
NARRATOR: Iron is one of the
most common elements on Earth.
But in Tutankhamun's Egypt,
iron was rarer than gold.
DR. NAUNTON:
Three and a half thousand years ago
iron was almost non-existent in Egypt,
we don't get any archaeological evidence
for iron smelting
in this part of the world
until the 6th century BC.
NARRATOR: That's 800 years
after Tutankhamun died.
The iron in the dagger's blade
wasn't mined or smelted in Egypt.
So where did it come from?
The mystery has puzzled experts
since the dagger's discovery
nearly a century ago.
But until recently,
there was no way to know
where the iron in the blade came from,
without destroying it.
Now thanks to the use of
advanced non-destructive x-ray analysis,
curators can shed new light
on this ancient mystery.
Because there's more
than iron in this blade.
DR. NAUNTON:
This technique allows us to see
the kind of unique chemical fingerprint
of the blade of this dagger.
And crucially, it tells us the percentage
of the various different elements.
NARRATOR: Iron occurs in nature
mixed with other elements,
and this mixture is unique
to each source of the metal.
By identifying the blade's
unique chemical fingerprint,
the curators have been
able to pinpoint its origin.
DR. ELNAGGAR:
So, I just need everyone to move away
three meters please,
for health and safety.
because we're now going to run the X-ray.
NARRATOR: The machine fires high energy
x-rays into the dagger blade.
And it's the energy reflected back
that reveals the elements
contained inside.
DR. ELNAGGAR (off screen):
Okay, it's done.
So what we have now is the result
of the X-ray test,
and we can see the elements
here of the chemical composition.
And we can see now three peaks which
are of the iron and nickel and cobalt.
DR. NAUNTON:
Okay.
NARRATOR:
What the curators found
was the proportion
of nickel was unusually high.
DR. NAUNTON:
What does this tell us
about the kind of iron that
was used to make this dagger?
DR. ELNAGGAR:
I mean, this kind of chemical composition
cannot be found in the smelted iron
found in Egypt.
Or even on this planet.
NARRATOR:
There's no match on Earth
for the iron in this dagger.
DR. NAUNTON:
If this iron doesn't come from this planet
where does it come from?
DR. ELNAGGAR (off screen):
It's only coming from the meteorites.
DR. NAUNTON (off screen):
From a meteorite?
DR. ELNAGGAR:
Meteorite, yes.
NARRATOR: The iron in Tutankhamun's
dagger is extra-terrestrial.
Its journey began thousands,
perhaps millions of years ago.
From the asteroid belt
between Mars and Jupiter
250 million miles away,
a lump of rock and metal plummeted,
faster than a bullet toward Earth.
It slammed into the planet's surface,
shattering into fragments of molten iron.
Somewhere in the sands of Africa
these fragments lay for thousands,
even millions of years,
until they were found
and collected to be melted.
Forged and crafted into an object
of rare beauty and power.
The iron in this dagger has been on
an extraordinary journey.
Egyptologist, Aidan Dodson
believes Tutankhamun knew
this iron fell from the heavens.
DR. DODSON: Back 1,500 or 2,000 years
earlier than Tutankhamun,
they talk about iron from the sky
as being a somewhat miraculous material.
The iron has a power.
It's from, it's from the gods.
NARRATOR: To Tutankhamun,
the dagger must have seemed
like a gift from the gods.
Now, another hidden set of artifacts,
not seen in their original glory
for three and half thousand years,
are shedding new light
on Tutankhamun's ambition.
A unique combination of images
that display him as a powerful ruler
of not just Egypt,
but the world.
NARRATOR: Tutankhamun took
six chariots to the afterlife,
carefully dismantled and stacked
in his tomb's ante-chamber.
When Howard Carter discovered the tomb,
he found at least 1,500 tiny gold flakes
under the chariot.
He didn't have the technology to deal
with these bewildering metal fragments.
So he put them in a box in the hope
that someone in the future might.
Now, decades later,
these gold fragments have
been finally reassembled.
World-renowned gold conservator
Dr. Christian Eckmann
has been piecing the flakes together.
His work reveals a series
of stunning images
that show Tutankhamun
at the center of the world.
CHRISTIAN:
So many tiny details are visible again,
which were not visible
when they were excavated.
NARRATOR: Eckmann discovered
these gold fragments
are parts of golden panels
once used as decorations
on the harnesses and trappings
of Tutankhamun's chariots.
These bewildering,
fragile jigsaw puzzles,
have so far taken three
years to piece together.
CHRISTIAN:
So every single piece,
which we could reattach to the gold sheet
is another part of a huge puzzle.
But still there are missing pieces
and we try of course now
to fix those little things
back to its original position.
NARRATOR:
Eckmann has pieced together
at least 70 intricately embossed
gold panels,
made to decorate six
leather chariot harnesses.
And they would have made
a powerful impression
on everyone who saw them.
These images haven't been seen
since the doors were sealed
on Tutankhamun's tomb
three and a half thousand years ago.
For Egyptologist professor Salima Ikram,
interpreting them
is an incredible privilege.
SALIMA:
This material is fabulous
because it's never been on display before
even though it is from the tomb
of the most famous king, Tutankhamun.
NARRATOR: Salima has been
decoding these images,
designs that reveal
Tutankhamun's ambitions
stretched far beyond Egypt's borders.
SALIMA:
The Tutankhamun chariot leather is unusual
because it doesn't just have normal
Egyptian propaganda imagery.
At first glance you think,
"Oh, this is just sort of animals fighting
amongst themselves," but then you realize
that there's a griffin involved,
which is a near eastern animal,
some of the plants used
are very much in a Syrian tradition,
and then you have this running spiral,
which is Aegean.
So you've got this cocktail
of great empires
and great artistic traditions
coming together.
NARRATOR: These foreign designs
were deliberately chosen
to present Tutankhamun as a player
on an international stage,
and the most powerful
ruler in the ancient world.
SALIMA: This combination of styles
seems to emphasize the fact
that he wanted to show that he had
very long reaching arms of power,
as it were, and he could control
all sorts of places and people.
NARRATOR: The gold decorations
from the harnesses
suggest Tutankhamun wanted to be seen
as an international statesman.
And a chariot about to be moved
to the Grand Egyptian Museum
shows just how far he was prepared
to go in pursuit of that power.
DR. NAUNTON: So, this chariot is going
to be 3D scanned today.
And so the first thing that has to happen
of course is that this case,
which has been protecting it for decades,
is coming off right before our eyes here.
NARRATOR:
For Egyptologist Chris Naunton,
it's an amazing opportunity to examine
the chariot's lavishly decorated surfaces.
Before it's transported,
the chariot's current condition
must be rigorously analyzed.
DR. NAUNTON: So what's happening
is that this hand-held device
is being used to take a rapid succession,
a whole sequence of images which are
creating a digital model of the chariot
and this is incredibly important because
we need to understand the condition,
the shape of the chariot
in its current situation
so that it can be then be reassessed
when it goes into the new
Grand Egyptian Museum.
NARRATOR:
The detailed digital model
will ensure the chariot
remains in exactly the same condition
after its moved.
DR. NAUNTON:
One of the things that's just incredible
about being up this close
with these objects
is you get a sense
of the incredibly fine detail.
NARRATOR: Few people ever
get beyond the protective glass
to study this chariot,
so it's a rare opportunity
to see just how the young pharaoh
wanted the world to see him.
DR. NAUNTON:
What we can see here
is some of this utterly exquisite
decoration on the inside of this chariot,
it's rendered in beaten gold and it shows
a frieze of foreign captives,
enemies of Tutankhamun.
NARRATOR: But this beautiful decoration
depicts graphic brutality
that indicates Tutankhamun would stop
at nothing in the pursuit of power.
DR. NAUNTON: There's a rope, which runs
right the way along this scene,
which is binding them all,
some of them are tied by the neck,
some of them have their
hands behind their backs,
some of them have their hands tied
at their wrists and above their heads.
NARRATOR: Their detailed
features and distinctive costumes
identify the captives
as Egypt's traditional enemies
from the south and the north.
DR. NAUNTON (off screen):
He was trying to convey this idea
of being ruler over all of the foreign
people who surrounded his country.
NARRATOR: Armed with an iron dagger
from the gods
and proclaiming his power from a chariot
decorated with golden images
of his international supremacy,
Tutankhamun set out to
dominate the ancient world.
But these treasures appear to be
too beautiful for the battlefield.
So, was all this just for show?
A king playing at being a soldier?
Or was it a genuine warning
that Tutankhamun
was a serious warrior king?
Now groundbreaking new research
into a mysterious armored tunic
found inside Tutankhamun's tomb
could provide the answer.
LUCY: It was really a state-of-the-art
piece of military equipment.
NARRATOR: This is the
critical piece of the puzzle
that could prove just how far Tutankhamun
was prepared to go in pursuit of power.
And it raises the possibility
that Tutankhamun was willing to go to war.
NARRATOR:
In the state-of-the-art labs
of the Grand Egyptian Museum,
ancient leather specialist Lucy Skinner
has come to see one of Tutankhamun's
most intriguing treasures.
This unique armored vest could help prove
something extraordinary.
That Tutankhamun,
dismissed for nearly a century
as a powerless boy king,
was willing to go to war.
LUCY: Oh wow.
NARRATOR: These are the
remains of Tutankhamun's
personal armored tunic.
It would have been an impressive
and intimidating sight.
Now, three and half thousand years
after it was entombed with Tutankhamun,
and after nearly a century in storage,
it's been moved to
the Grand Egyptian Museum.
For Lucy, it's her first opportunity
to analyze the armor up close.
LUCY (off screen):
It's fantastic to see it like this.
I've been working with ancient Egyptian
leather for almost a decade,
and finally I get to see this item.
Actually that piece can you
NARRATOR: Nothing like it has ever
been found from ancient Egypt.
Lucy believes understanding
how the armor was made
will shed new light on why it was made.
And prove whether it was
made for show or for battle.
At least 2,000 leather scales
were stitched together to overlap.
Ridges prevented the scales
from being forced apart.
The result was flexible,
resilient armor.
LUCY: You can really
see clearly can't you
how the, the ridges
on each of these scales
they're overlapping each other,
if an arrow were to hit the armor,
these ridges prevent it
somehow from coming apart.
So it gives some added protection.
NARRATOR: Lucy believes
a sophisticated manufacturing technique
made the armor strong and flexible.
A practical piece of equipment
rather than a ceremonial showpiece.
And to confirm her theory,
Lucy wants to examine two
similar-sized scales in detail.
LUCY: So this technique is called
reflectance transformation imaging.
It's an imaging process
where you take a series of photographs
with different lighting angles
and then the shadows
and the highlights from each image
are amalgamated into one.
And it just highlights the details,
surface details really, really,
really clearly on the
surface of the object.
So this is really excellent,
this is great,
we can really see the
texture on the surface.
NARRATOR:
It's the first time these scales
have ever been examined
in forensic detail.
And Lucy immediately notices
a striking similarity
between the two scales.
LUCY:
Zoom in a little bit on the
- SCIENTIST: On the right?
- LUCY: Mmm.
These scales, they're almost
exactly the same, aren't they?
The same size, the same width,
the kind of,
the ridges are in
exactly the same position.
They're extremely consistent.
I mean it really suggests
that they'd found
the optimal kind of method
for making these things
and then they were reproducing
it again, again and again.
NARRATOR: To Lucy the best
explanation for the scales' similarity
is that they were made using a mold.
LUCY: The medial ridge you can really see
that it's very defined.
I mean it strongly looks like it's been
pushed with some pressure into a mold.
NARRATOR: Molding the
leather would make the scales
consistent, thick, and strong.
Lucy believes one reason to do that
would be to make Tutankhamun's
armor battle-ready.
LUCY:
The way the surface looks super compact
like this, it definitely um this would
deflect quite a large impact I think.
NARRATOR: Ingeniously designed
and meticulously manufactured,
this armor was made to withstand arrows.
Lucy believes it wasn't for show,
it was for battle.
And Tutankhamun could have
worn it on the battlefield.
LUCY: It was really a state-of-art
piece of military equipment.
It was almost like the Kevlar vest
of the ancient Egyptian world.
NARRATOR: A real warrior
facing real threat
would want such advanced armor.
But who was Tutankhamun
planning to go to war with?
Who did he feel threatened by?
And why?
NARRATOR: In the storerooms of the new
Grand Egyptian Museum,
Egyptologist Professor Salima Ikram
has found a bow belonging to Tutankhamun
that pictures his worst enemies.
SALIMA: Golly.
We've never seen this before.
CURATOR: First time to see it.
NARRATOR: Since its discovery
nearly a century ago,
this bow has been locked away in the
basement of the old Cairo Museum.
SALIMA:
This is the top of the bow,
because this has got
the enemies of the north
and that's got the enemies of the south.
The Nubians are in the south
and various Asiatics are in the north
and in the fact sometimes
the Libyans as well.
NARRATOR: Salima believes this
bow was never fired in anger,
it's too beautiful for the battlefield.
But it's a critical clue in Tutankhamun's
story, because it reveals a country,
and a pharaoh, under threat.
To the south, insurgencies in
the colony of Nubia
threatened Egypt's supply of gold
and precious goods from Africa.
To the northwest,
Libyan tribes made violent incursions
into Egyptian territory.
And in the east,
the aggressive Hittite empire
advanced through Syria
ever closer to Egypt's borders.
DR. NAUNTON:
Egypt was in turmoil.
Its allies had become enemies
and the expansionist; aggressive Hittites
were knocking on Egypt's door.
NARRATOR: This is why Tutankhamun
was buried with an arsenal of weapons.
As well as the celestial
dagger and high-tech armor,
curators at the Grand Egyptian Museum
are unpacking dozens of functional bows
hundreds of arrows
shields and throw sticks.
Together, they're painting a picture
of Tutankhamun as a warrior king
with the hardware
and the motivation to go to war.
And this is forcing Egyptologists
to look again at all
of Tutankhamun's treasures.
Even those that have been on display
in the old Cairo Museum for decades.
Could Tutankhamun's true identity
have been hidden in plain sight?
Was the warrior king
in front of us all along?
SALIMA: So this is a box
from the tomb of Tutankhamun
and it's decorated on all sides
with scenes of the king
in his chariot going off
after the enemies.
NARRATOR: And he's waging war
using the exact same weapons
that Egyptologists and scientists
are analyzing
at the Grand Egyptian Museum.
The large bow
arrows and armored tunic.
The decorated harness and chariot.
SALIMA: You have the king shown
riding his chariot,
and then he draws this massive bow
and let's fly
and all the enemies from the south
are then being hit by his arrows
and are falling down at his feet.
(men screaming)
And what's nice then is on the other side,
you have a very similar thing happening,
but this is for the northern
enemies of Egypt, so they're, you know,
they're big bearded people
from the Syria area
and they're being trampled
by the king's horses,
they're pulling them to go under
the wheels of the chariots,
um, and again Tutankhamun
is loosening his bow and off they go.
- (horses whinnying)
- (men screaming)
NARRATOR: This is Tutankhamun,
the warrior king in the thick of battle,
leading from the front.
SALIMA: You get a sense of the landscape,
and the chaos and the heat.
It's fantastic.
NARRATOR: Since its discovery
nearly a century ago,
the images on this box
have been dismissed as fantasy.
But the weapons pictured on the box
are the same as the weapons
found in Tutankhamun's tomb.
So if the weapons shown here were real,
were these events real too?
Are these violent battle scenes
closer to reality
than some have previously thought?
Did Tutankhamun lead
Egypt's armies into battle?
The answer lies outside the
Grand Egyptian Museum,
on the banks of the Nile at Thebes,
in the spectacular ruins of Luxor temple.
This was ancient Egypt's
religious capital
and every pharaoh
wanted to make their mark here
by recycling and re-carving stones
from earlier buildings.
DR. NAUNTON: We don't have a lot
of evidence for Tutankhamun's buildings,
but we do have fragments here and there
that suggest that he
might have erected temples
and if he did he would have included
battle scenes like this.
NARRATOR: Today Tutankhamun's battle
carvings are scattered across the site.
Pieces of a colossal,
seemingly impossible
three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.
Archaeologist Ray Johnson has spent
20 years painstakingly recording
and digitally reassembling Tutankhamun's
battle scenes with fascinating results.
The chillingly vivid details
include severed hands skewered on sticks
and a caged prisoner
hanging from a ship's mast.
Egyptologist Aidan Dodson
believes these carvings
are more than simply propaganda
as many have thought.
AIDAN: The nature of these reliefs
is such that they don't
appear to be stereotyped ones.
They seem to be specific.
And therefore, I think there's
a reasonable case to be made
that these blocks from Luxor
do report a particular campaign.
NARRATOR: And in this campaign,
Tutankhamun takes center stage.
AIDAN:
It seems likely that the king
had some direct involvement
physically in these campaigns.
And there's no reason to assume
that the king, if he's been shown there,
wasn't actually there.
NARRATOR:
Some Egyptologists now believe
these shattered fragments of stone
record real historical events.
And that the image of Tutankhamun as
a frail boy king has to be reassessed.
DR. NAUNTON:
He wouldn't be, in that case,
a kind of feeble diseased
guy who had trouble walking,
couldn't possibly have participated
in any sort of athletic events.
Instead we'd be looking at a kind of
a young, vigorous, athletic warrior.
NARRATOR: The celestial
dagger and decorated chariot
reveal a man hungry for power.
The arsenal of weapons and high-tech armor
suggest he was ready to fight.
And the painted box
and carved battle scenes
are powerful evidence that Tutankhamun
led his armies into battle.
Together, these treasures suggest
a different image
of the world's most famous pharaoh,
as a warrior king
who may have gone to war
and possibly never returned.
NARRATOR: In the labs of the
new Grand Egyptian Museum,
history is being re-examined
and a picture of Tutankhamun
as a warrior king has emerged.
A man hungry for power.
Protected by high-tech armor
and a magical iron dagger from the gods.
Leading from the front
in the heat of battle.
A man who died at age 19.
- (horses whinnying)
- (men screaming)
Did the young pharaoh die in battle?
Did Tutankhamun make
the ultimate sacrifice?
In the Valley of the Kings,
inside the tomb where he was laid to rest
three and a half thousand years ago,
lies the mummified body of Tutankhamun.
For 33 centuries,
oils and resins have preserved
his body and his secrets.
For the last century,
since his tomb's discovery,
debate has raged over his cause of death.
SALIMA:
There has been endless speculation
about whether he had malaria,
whether he had septicemia,
which killed him.
Whether he'd been
hit on the head.
So really a lot of ink
has been spilt on this.
NARRATOR: Instead, Salima believes the key
to discovering what killed Tutankhamun
isn't to investigate how he died,
but where.
And she thinks this x-ray of Tutankhamun's
skull contains a clue.
SALIMA: Here is his skull,
and this is a layer of resin
and this is a second layer of resin.
So the fact that there are
two different layers of resin
suggest that Tutankhamun was mummified
in a two-part sort of process,
which is very unusual.
NARRATOR: Mummification needed
to begin within days of death.
SALIMA: Immediately what you have to do
is void the body of its internal organs
and sometimes even the brain
because otherwise you get bacteria,
and you puff up and you might explode.
NARRATOR:
The two-part process may be a sign
that Tutankhamun was mummified temporarily
to prevent decomposition,
before a full mummification
could take place.
SALIMA: It is possible that
he died away from the Nile valley
and so some form of initial mummification
was carried out.
It could be because he was on
an expedition of some sort,
now it could be that he was fighting
some sort of campaign in the desert
not close to the Nile.
NARRATOR: A chest x-ray
reveals something even stranger.
SALIMA:
There's something very obvious missing,
because there's no heart.
And the Egyptians always kept
the heart in the body
because you have to keep the heart
in order to make a safe transition
between this world and the next.
The absence of the heart
might suggest that whoever
carried out the mummification
was not as skilled
as they should have been
or that Tutankhamun
needed immediate attention
somewhere far from where
the top-class embalmers were.
NARRATOR: The evidence suggests
Tutankhamun could have died far from home.
Around late 1323 BC,
Egypt's armies were 750 miles
from home in northern Syria
fighting their arch enemies, the Hittites.
If Tutankhamun was the warrior
king that the evidence suggests,
then chances are, he
could have been there too.
AIDAN: We know that Egypt was involved
in military activities in northern Syria.
Whether or not Tutankhamun
was at the head of the armies
right in the depths of Syria,
one can probably argue the idea
that he had actually was up there
in Syria with the Egyptian armies,
seems pretty persuasive.
(men screaming)
NARRATOR: It's possible
Tutankhamun fought and died
in this campaign in a distant
corner of Egypt's empire.
Cut down in the prime of
his life as a warrior king.
DR. NAUNTON: Well, perhaps Tutankhamun
died just as he was leaving his mark,
he'd begun to regain territory overseas
which had been lost
to re-establish Egypt
as the great power in the region.
And you know, who knows, if he'd lived,
perhaps he would have had
a great and glorious reign
and his dynasty would have
carried on for a long time
and history would have been
very different.
NARRATOR: As the thousands
of Tutankhamun's treasures
are reunited at the new
Grand Egyptian Museum,
many paint a picture of a young pharaoh
determined to stamp Egypt's mark
on the world.
A celestial knife, one of his most
personal and prized possessions.
Newly restored gold chariot decorations
depicting an international statesman.
And cutting-edge body armor
suggesting he was ready to go
into battle for his country.
Together they tell a story
of Tutankhamun as a warrior.
Not a boy but a man, who may have made
the ultimate sacrifice.
Captioned by Point.360