Tut's Treasures: Hidden Secrets (2018) s01e03 Episode Script

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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, one-billion dollar 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.
ECKMANN: So many tiny
details are visible again.
NARRATOR: Now some of Tutankhamun's
most personal items
suggest a pharaoh
who was wracked by illness.
And mysterious remains
buried alongside him
expose the dark secrets
of his royal family tree.
DR. ASHRAFIAN:
He had a child with his own sister.
NARRATOR:
Together, they suggest Tutankhamun
and his family were destined to die out.
What was left behind
are the magnificent treasures
of a spectacular legacy.
Tutankhamun was the last pharaoh
of his royal family line.
He died at age 19, leaving no heirs.
And within decades,
Tutankhamun's dynasty collapsed
and disappeared from history.
Ancient Egyptian records
ceased to even mention the boy king.
Tutankhamun, his father, and his successor
were erased from official history.
But experts have questioned
how the most famous king of ancient Egypt
and his whole family could have
disappeared without a trace.
Now, the most comprehensive
forensic examinations
of Tutankhamun's treasures
are helping unravel the mystery.
And it's the most personal items,
many never seen before,
that have shed remarkable new light
on Tutankhamun's short, troubled life.
Custom made shoes,
unlike any others from ancient Egypt.
A hoard of walking sticks
hidden for decades in the basement
of the Cairo Museum.
And the most unexpected
and unsettling discovery
in the pharaoh's tomb
two tiny human mummies
that were buried with him.
The evidence produced by these finds
reveal a life wracked with pain
and tragic personal loss,
a complex and disturbing family tree,
and political battles that sentenced
the young pharaoh
to 3,000 years of oblivion.
Gathered from museums across Egypt,
all of Tutankhamun's items
are now on their way
be reunited at the new
Grand Egyptian Museum
for the first time since Howard Carter
opened the young pharaoh's tomb in 1922.
More than 5,000 objects were discovered,
but only a few have been on display
until now.
Egyptologist Chris Naunton
is one of the first people to
witness some of the objects
that have been hidden in the vaults
of the old Cairo Museum
for nearly a century.
DR. NAUNTON:
A lot of these things are going to be seen
for the first time here
in the Grand Egyptian Museum.
But before they go on display here,
they are all being all looked at,
assessed for their state of conservation
and where work is required,
that work is happening here.
NARRATOR: For scientists,
it's a once in a lifetime opportunity
to analyze all the objects up close
before the new museum opens to the public.
Among the thousands of artifacts,
there was one discovery
that disturbed Carter more than any other.
He recorded it in his journals,
now kept at the Griffith Institute
in Oxford, England.
DR. NAUNTON:
This section of the published report
deals with perhaps
the most poignant objects
that Carter came across in the tomb.
Inside the treasury,
he found the evidence that Tutankhamun
had not been buried alone.
NARRATOR: Piled among gilded shrines
and treasure chests,
in a plain and undecorated box,
lay two miniature sarcophagi.
Inside these coffins were
two tiny mummified skeletons.
DR. NAUNTON:
It's quite clear
that this had quite an effect
on Carter himself
and that's evident
from what he wrote about them.
He says, "These pathetic remains
give much food for thought.
"With little doubt, they were
the offspring of Tutankhamun,
although there is nothing
to tell us emphatically."
NARRATOR:
To Carter,
they were a mystery neither
he nor technology could answer
at the time.
Now, Egyptologists are using
forensic science and DNA analysis
to reveal the true story
of the child mummies.
Among them is Manar el Khial,
a conservator at the new
Grand Egyptian Museum.
It's the first time she's seen
the tiny coffins
the mummies were buried in.
MANAR EL KHIAL: Among many other things
have been discovered in his tomb,
these are particularly interesting
because they look very beautiful
and well preserved.
It's also the first time for me
to see coffins for baby mummies.
NARRATOR: But the skeletons of the babies
found in these coffins
weren't fully developed.
They were two premature stillborn girls.
But who were they?
And why were they buried
in Tutankhamun's tomb?
It took 21st century DNA technology
to provide an answer
to this 3,000-year-old-mystery.
Thousands of miles away
from Egypt's sand and dust
in the mountains of Bolzano, Italy,
at the Eurac Institute for Mummy Studies,
biological anthropologist
Albert Zink spent a decade
perfecting scientific tools
to study ancient remains.
His research included the first ever
DNA study of 11 mummies
of Tutankhamun's royal dynasty,
found in the Valley of the Kings tombs.
And it was the two stillborn babies
that were the most intriguing.
DR. ZINK:
It was a big mystery,
and nobody really knew
whether these two children were his own,
or whether they were put in
as a kind of offering for his afterlife.
NARRATOR: Dr. Zink set out
to recreate Tutankhamun's genetic map
and determine his relationship
to these mummies.
But it was a task with
some serious challenges.
DR. ZINK: It's a quite complicated
and complex process,
because the DNA, the genetic information
in a human body,
it degrades after somebody dies.
And it degrades quite quickly.
It depends for sure on the temperature,
on the humidity, on the environment.
NARRATOR: Zink finally managed
to extract enough precious DNA
from these stillborn fetuses to compare it
with the DNA of Tutankhamun.
The results suggested
these babies could have been
the future of Tutankhamun's dynasty.
DR. ZINK:
The few markers we had,
they showed some similarity to the markers
in King Tutankhamun,
so it's still likely that
they are related to him;
that these two fetuses
are his own children.
NARRATOR:
Zink's results suggest that Tutankhamun,
the most powerful man in Egypt,
could have been a grieving father.
But now for the conservators
of the Grand Egyptian Museum,
another tragedy is unfolding.
The babies could soon be lost forever.
It's now believed
that having lost his only two children,
Tutankhamun was buried
with their mummified remains in his tomb,
to be reunited with them in the afterlife.
After Howard Carter
discovered them in 1922,
he stored the fetuses in a local hospital,
where they remained hidden in a drawer
for almost 100 years.
But atmospheric conditions
have taken their toll
on these tiny bodies.
Now, the two stillborn baby girls
are in an extremely fragile state.
MANAR:
It's too bad. It's too bad.
Their condition is poor.
And they may have been
invaded by insects.
NARRATOR:
After so long hidden away,
they need urgent help.
Otherwise they could turn to dust.
MANAR: It is very important
to preserve all our cultural heritage,
but for these fetuses,
it is very important to preserve them
because they consist of organic materials.
The organic materials are very sensitive
to environmental changes.
And they can be invaded
by living organisms
that can eat these organic materials
and finish them all.
NARRATOR:
The challenge for the conservators
is to stop the decay before it's too late.
MANAR: Their condition
is getting worse every day.
This is really bad.
It's very, very sad for me.
NARRATOR: For the director
of the Grand Egyptian Museum,
Tarek Tawfik,
the next stage will be crucial.
DR. TAWFIK: We need now
to see how we will deal with this decay,
how can we can move
these very fragile fetuses
in order not to lose any of
the archaeological substance.
So, it's a very sensitive operation.
NARRATOR: Tutankhamun
suffered the private tragedy
of losing two children
before they were born.
But it wasn't the
pharaoh's only misfortune.
NARRATOR: At the new Grand
Egyptian Museum outside Cairo,
the health of Tutankhamun
more than 3,000 years ago
is taking center stage.
SALIMA:
Oh nice!
279? Perfect.
NARRATOR:
Egyptologists Salima Ikram
and Andre Veldmeijer are now
in the fortified storerooms
to examine some of Tutankhamun's
130 walking sticks
found in the tomb.
Many of these haven't
been seen for a century.
SALIMA: This one is more fancy.
This is a bit more gold.
NARRATOR: These everyday
belongings of Tutankhamun
give a rare glimpse into
how he actually lived.
SALIMA:
They really are one sort of little window
into understanding what this man
was all about.
NARRATOR: Salima and Andre
are looking for signs of wear
to better understand if and how
these sticks were used.
SALIMA:
Because these sticks have been conserved,
it's sometimes a bit difficult to tell
exactly how they have been used,
because, sort of traces of sweat
or person's oils have been obscured
by the conservation process
that Carter used.
NARRATOR: Despite some lost clues,
there's still evidence of wear and tear
that could suggest
the young king used the sticks.
A lot.
SALIMA (off screen): On the base,
you can often see on the tip
whether things were used or not.
And maybe some of these tips
have been replaced
even during the course
of Tutankhamun's life.
Sometimes the tips of these
ones have sort of worn off,
but you can see the variety of ends used,
and maybe some of the ends
also tell us about the function.
So maybe some were designed
for "in the palace,"
and some were designed for
"in the temple,"
and others were designed for
walking through sand,
which would in fact require
a far more sturdy stick,
because you depend upon it more,
even if you are completely able bodied.
NARRATOR:
With signs of wear,
could these sticks be evidence
that Tutankhamun was an infirm king?
Other items from the tomb
seem to hint at a king
who was not as mobile
as a healthy teenager should be.
An inlayed storage box from
Tutankhamun's treasure trove,
one of the finest examples
of ancient craftsmanship,
suggests he did need extra support.
DR. NAUNTON: It's an image of Tutankhamun
himself with his wife Ankhesanamun
crouching at his feet,
and the king is drawing back an arrow.
But he is doing it
from a seated position.
And it somehow doesn't
feel quite right.
And there is another very,
very beautiful image
of the king and his wife
on the lid of this box as well,
and the king is shown leaning
on a kind of walking stick.
This is not the portrayal of a vigorous,
athletic, young pharaoh.
It's the portrayal of somebody
who's perhaps a little more vulnerable
and weaker than that, somehow.
NARRATOR:
This walking stick
could be one of those
now undergoing examination
at the Grand Egyptian Museum.
So what condition could have caused
the young king to walk with a stick?
More items recently restored
could hold a clue.
Andre has been working for
the last seven years
on sandals belonging to Tutankhamun.
ANDRE VELDMEIJER:
This is the big surprise, then?
MAN (off screen):
Yes, you can see it now.
ANDRE:
Wow. That is an amazing piece of work.
NARRATOR:
These sandals have been rescued
from almost complete disintegration.
ANDRE:
And the gold bosses.
Neat piece of work.
NARRATOR: More than 80 pairs
of shoes were discovered
in Tutankhamun's tomb,
from childhood sandals
to grown man's shoes.
It's one of the world's biggest
collections of ancient footwear.
But over 3,000 years of humidity
has taken its toll.
It melted the leather,
and the gold decorations
fell apart on the majority of the sandals.
The shoes have been
painstakingly pieced back together,
and the design reveals
some unusual features.
ANDRE: Tutankhamun had three pairs
of open shoes in his tomb.
And they are special mainly
for the fact that they have
additional ways of keeping them
close to the foot,
that they would fit very nicely.
It has a strap between
the first and the second toe,
and in addition to that,
a strap going over the foot,
as if the shoe wasn't
really fitting on the foot.
NARRATOR: They're unlike anything
Andre has ever seen from ancient Egypt.
Normally, just like modern flip flops,
traditional Egyptian sandals had one strap
between the first and second toe.
ANDRE:
But apparently here it didn't work,
so they needed something extra,
to let someone, the owner,
the king of course,
be able to walk properly.
NARRATOR:
Andre believes that without the straps,
the shoe may have
fallen off Tutankhamun's foot.
But why did he need
specially adapted shoes?
What was wrong with the young king's feet?
A clue to this puzzle lies in the remains
of Tutankhamun himself,
in the desert sands more than
400 miles south of Cairo.
He was buried in the Valley of the Kings,
near the ancient capital of Thebes,
now modern-day Luxor.
Carved into the desert rock,
it's the final resting place
of many great Egyptian pharaohs.
The mummy of Tutankhamun
lies where Carter
first discovered it a century ago,
in a small and unassuming tomb.
And the body displays
a number of unusual features.
DR. NAUNTON: Tutankhamun has been
subjected to numerous
anatomical investigations over the years.
He's been photographed,
he's been x-rayed, CT scanned.
And all of these things
have shown us anomalies
which you wouldn't expect to see
in the body of a fit 19-year-old.
And his feet are of
particular interest to us here.
The left foot is rotated inwards,
and the second toe is missing a bone,
which suggests that he might have been
suffering from some sort of
inherited genetic illness.
And if we are right
in interpreting it this way,
then he was suffering from
what we know as club foot.
Tutankhamun was probably
in quite a lot of pain,
more or less constantly,
and he would have had difficulty walking
and it would have been
obvious to everybody looking at him
that he was suffering.
NARRATOR:
A picture is emerging of a royal family
beset by painful misfortune.
NARRATOR: Egyptologist Chris Naunton
believes there may be a link
between Tutankhamen's crippled feet
and the fact that his stillborn children
were buried alongside him.
If true, what might other treasures
from the tomb reveal about the king?
Tutankhamun's throne is one of the
many items about to be moved
to the new Grand Egyptian Museum.
Covered in pure gold
and inlaid with semi-precious stones,
the intricate centerpiece of this throne
portrays the affection between
the young king and his wife Ankhesenamun.
DR. NAUNTON: The decoration on this throne
is really all about the royal couple.
We can see it in this touchingly beautiful
scene at the back here.
Tutankhamun is reclining in a kind of
very relaxed pose;
one hand on the back of his chair,
and Ankhesanamun is leaning in
and placing a hand on his shoulder.
It is a really very kind of natural,
very beautiful scene.
NARRATOR: But this touching family
portrait is not quite what it seems.
DR. NAUNTON: Something that's quite
interesting to remember, I think,
about the royal couple is that
although we can't be
absolutely sure about this,
they were almost certainly related,
probably at least half-brother
and half-sister,
if not full brother and sister.
NARRATOR: If they were related,
as Chris Naunton believes,
then this throne depicts
a disturbing picture
of an incestuous relationship
between Tutankhamun and his sister,
the mother of his premature children.
But there's little evidence of
Tutankhamun's own parentage.
DR. NAUNTON: And this is odd not only
because of the quantity
of evidence we have for him,
but because this is something
that you would expect
a king in ancient Egypt to tell us about.
And not only the royals,
but non-royal individuals
in ancient Egypt as well
were keen to tell us,
"I am the son of, I am the daughter of,
the sister of, the brother of."
We don't have that information
for Tutankhamun.
NARRATOR: It seems Tutankhamun
may have deliberately
chosen to keep the identity
of his parents a secret,
and his family tree has
puzzled Egyptologists
for over 90 years.
Now, scientists are working to uncover
this 3,000-year-old secret.
And the more they discover,
the darker the story gets.
In Italy, anthropologist Albert Zink
has spent years using DNA analysis
to shed more light on the life
of Tutankhamun and his ancestors.
DR. ZINK: Thanks to the study of the mummy
of the person himself,
we learned a lot about Tutankhamun
about his real life.
So sometimes when we are
doing all this analysis with the mummies,
taking out the samples,
we also think about,
What are these mummies?
Who were these mummies?
What lives they lived?
How was their life?
How did they think?
How did they feel?
NARRATOR:
Using the latest technology,
Dr. Zink has produced
an unprecedented DNA profile
of the members of
Tutankhamun's royal family,
also known as the 18th Dynasty.
In 2010, Zink gained access to 11 mummies
stored in museums across Egypt,
believed to be a part of
Tutankhamun's royal family.
The mummies were originally
discovered in several tombs
in the Valley of the Kings.
And all dated to the
same time as Tutankhamun.
Zink then took a sample of
Tutankhamun's DNA,
and compared it to that of the 11 mummies,
searching for unique
genetic codes inside the DNA,
known as "markers."
DR. ZINK: When we determine the
genetic fingerprint of a person
we are looking at certain genetic regions,
and we are looking at markers
and see how many times
a certain sequence is repeated.
NARRATOR: The genetic markers
of two of the mummies
appeared to be directly related
to Tutankhamun.
One belonged to his predecessor,
the despised pharaoh Akhenaten.
And the other was from an
unknown woman in another tomb.
For Albert Zink, it's evidence
that he had finally found
Tutankhamun's parents.
But it's not the only thing
that Zink discovered.
Further results revealed the shocking
reality of the royal family tree.
DR. ZINK: When we compare the genetic
fingerprint of the parents,
we see that they are closely related.
And by confirming this analysis
by looking at the genetic fingerprint
of their parents,
we could figure out that
they are also brother and sister.
NARRATOR:
Like his own prematurely born children,
Tutankhamun was also the product
of an incestuous marriage.
It's a grim revelation,
but in ancient Egypt,
inter-family marriages were the norm,
rather than the exception.
The royals believed they
were descended from the gods,
and marrying commoners
would dilute their divine blood.
So they kept everything in the family.
Unknown to them,
this incestuous family planning tradition
would lead the dynasty to its death.
NARRATOR: A less than perfect picture
of Tutankhamun's royal family has emerged.
The crumbling remains of
his stillborn daughters
at the Grand Egyptian Museum,
along with evidence of his deformities,
suggest personal tragedy and pain.
But could they be linked to Tutankhamun's
incestuous family line?
Hutan Ashrafian, a surgeon at
the Imperial College London,
has studied the ramifications
of incestuous relationships
through generations.
His work shows the detrimental
effects of inbreeding.
DR. ASHRAFIAN:
This is a normal family tree.
There are eight great grandparents,
four grandparents, two parents,
and one individual
at the base of that tree.
There's a branching pattern
which means that the good
genes are persisting
in each generation to that individual
at the base at of that branching pattern.
Let's look at
Tutankhamun's family tree.
Here, rather than there being
a branching pattern,
there is an abnormal ladder shape,
or what we call pedigree collapse.
Here brothers are marrying
sisters to have offspring,
and this means the weaker genes
are being transmitted to each generation
that will eventually cause disease.
NARRATOR: It seems that
Tutankhamun's family tree
was poisoned by generations of incest,
resulting in more dramatic
and debilitating effects
with each generation.
Dr. Ashrafian thinks some
of those genetic abnormalities
from this inbreeding can be seen
in the statues
of Tutankhamun's father, Akhenaten.
They reveal a body unlike that
of any previous pharaohs.
DR. ASHRAFIAN: What we see when we start
looking at it is,
initially at his face,
it's very long and drawn out.
If we go to his body,
overall image is that of
a rather slender man
with a feminine distribution of fat.
Now this is not normal
in the period of ancient Egypt
because typically,
the god Kings were very masculinized
and were demonstrated to be very strong.
And in Akhenaten here we see
someone that is less so.
NARRATOR: It's likely that
Tutankhamun's deformities
were a result of
generations of inbreeding.
But it was his unborn children
who paid the ultimate price for the
royal family's incestuous tradition.
DR. ASHRAFIAN:
Another consequence of inbreeding
is that of miscarriages and stillbirths.
Now, we know from Tutankhamun's own tomb
that there were two stillborn fetuses
and these probably were the result
of his offspring with his sister
causing these early deaths in his line.
NARRATOR: Some experts now suspect
that this genetic inheritance
could have played a part
in Tutankhamun's early death.
In the Grand Egyptian Museum,
some of the most spectacular
items might hold the answer.
Six chariots were found
in Tutankhamun's tomb.
For director of the museum,
Dr. Tarek Tawfik,
it's obvious these chariots
were not just gifts for the afterlife.
DR. TAWFIK: So, the king would
have been standing inside his chariot
with the scenes of
captives and of enemies on his chariot.
NARRATOR:
But the chariot wasn't just for show.
New research reveals it was a highly
functional piece of military equipment.
For the first time since
Howard Carter discovered them,
these chariots have been taken apart
and examined by a joint team
of Japanese and Egyptian experts.
Modern x-rays and 3D imaging technology
have revealed flexible joints
made using complex leather wrappings,
an ancient suspension system,
hugely advanced for its time.
But why did an
almost certainly disabled king
need this supercar of the ancient world?
The answer lies in this barren desert,
Tutankhamun's childhood home,
when Tutankhamun's father
Akhenaten was Egypt's ruler.
Akhenaten rejected centuries
of ancient Egyptian religious belief.
He established a new cult
and moved the capital
from Thebes to Amarna,
250 miles away.
Archaeologist Anna Stevens
has spent 19 years
investigating Akhanaten's bizarre decision
to build a city in the middle of nowhere.
Today all that remains of the city
are shattered stones
of its temples and palaces.
Among them, Anna discovered
a burial ground.
But it wasn't an ordinary cemetery.
ANNA STEVENS: So, when we first started
to excavate here,
gradually we began to realize
that there was something unusual going on.
So one by one we kept
encountering burials
that had more than one person in them.
Often two or three people,
but in one case, up to five people.
NARRATOR:
Even more surprising
was the age of the people
buried in these graves.
ANNA:
Most of the people buried here
were between 6 years of age
and 25 years of age.
And what we think is that
we've stumbled upon a cemetery
that was used by laborers
who had to build the new city
for Akhenaten.
NARRATOR: Anna believes
Tutankhamun's father's new city
was built by children.
And they died in enormous numbers.
ANNA:
What's really striking about this cemetery
is that despite the young age,
the skeletons are still showing up
signs of very heavy labor loads,
poor nutritional conditions.
It looks as though they're effectively
being worked to death.
NARRATOR: Akhenaten wanted to
build his new capital city at any cost,
and evidence suggests a whole generation
paid for it with their lives.
For Egypt, its consequences
were catastrophic.
Engrossed in his vanity building project,
Akhenaten appears to have abandoned
international politics.
By the time he died, Egypt was in turmoil.
This was the Egypt nine-year-old
Tutankhamun inherited.
A fractured country
on the brink of collapse.
The young king needed to put Egypt
back on the map
as an international power.
And the fastest,
most effective way to do that
was war.
NARRATOR:
Tutankhamun had to lead his people
and his army
through the treacherous times
that followed his father's rule.
A state-of-the-art chariot
would have given him the heroic status
and respect he so badly needed.
But with Tutankhamun's disability,
could he even ride a chariot?
To find out,
podiatrist Ron McCulloch is creating
a 3D model
of how Tutankhamun might have walked.
DR. MCCULLOUGH (off screen):
Comfortable?
MAN:
It's comfortable now, yes.
NARRATOR:
Special bandages
restrict the movement
and replicate the position
of Tutankhamun's feet.
DR. MCCULLOCH:
So we know that Tutankhamun
had a number of foot deformities
and ankle deformities.
And this included the club foot
on the left side and a very flat foot,
or a flatter foot on the right side.
NARRATOR:
Motion sensors capture the movements,
allowing Ron to analyze them
using special software.
It's immediately obvious that
these deformities
would have put an enormous strain
on the young pharaoh's feet.
RON (off screen): So, we've just done
a detailed analysis of movement patterns.
Both of the body
and also of the foot,
so we have a good idea now
how Tutankhamun may have walked.
The reality is that this
was a, you know, a boy,
19 years old, who had
very significant deformities
that profoundly affected
the way that he walked.
NARRATOR:
Tutankhamun's deformities
would have also
made it hard for him to stand.
DR. MCCULLOCH:
We also looked at postural sway.
Postural sway represents how much we move
when trying to stand still.
We all wobble a bit, but a certain amount
of movement is normal.
So in the case of Tutankhamun's
investigation,
the movement patterns were in fact
three times greater
than they should have been.
And this would have been
very challenging for him.
For example, when standing at ceremonies
or when using or being in a chariot.
NARRATOR: These balance issues
would have made it very difficult
for the young Tutankhamun
to ride and control a chariot.
With evidence of Tutankhamun
leading his country
through treacherous times
despite his disability,
a possible scenario of his death
is emerging.
An x-ray of Tutankhamun's mummy
holds the most convincing evidence yet
as to what caused his premature death.
DR. NAUNTON:
The mummy of Tutankhamun in fact exhibits
a number of abnormalities.
We can see, perhaps,
some of those from this x-ray here.
On the left-hand side, a huge chunk
of the ribcage is completely missing.
And on the same side of the body,
a chunk of the pelvis,
the upper pelvis, is missing as well.
NARRATOR: And injuries of this type
are characteristic
to a particular kind of trauma.
DR. NAUNTON:
It is a blunt trauma,
which seems to have affected a large part
of the left-hand side of his body,
perhaps crushed his rib cage
and the soft tissue underneath as well.
Now, in modern times, if you were
looking for the kind of accident
that might cause injuries like this,
you'd probably be thinking
of something like a car crash.
NARRATOR: In the ancient world,
the closest thing to a car was a chariot.
(horse whinnies)
(man screams)
Tutankhamun, his body wracked
by pain and instability,
was eager to be the king
his country needed.
But did he push himself too far?
Could this be how he died?
In a chariot accident,
leading his armies to re-establish
Egypt's dominance in the region?
DR. NAUNTON: If Tutankhamun
had been struck by a chariot
running at full speed,
it's inconceivable that the injuries
wouldn't have been fatal.
It would have crushed his rib cage.
It would have crushed the soft
tissue underneath,
and organs like the heart
wouldn't have been salvageable
for mummification.
We will never know perhaps
how Tutankhamun died.
But in any case, Tutankhamun's
early death, however it happened,
was a great change,
a great turning point in history.
NARRATOR:
When Tutankhamun died,
so did his royal line, the 18th Dynasty.
His unborn daughters
were the last remnants of a family
that had ruled Egypt for almost 250 years.
The toxic legacy of his father
would ultimately lead to Tutankhamun
being forgotten
for 3,000 years.
The forensic investigation
of Tutankhamun's treasures
has revealed his royal family
was steeped in incest,
and cursed by disease and deformity.
Toxic genetic inheritance
likely killed Tutankhamun's two daughters.
At the Grand Egyptian Museum,
the fragile remains of the two babies
are about to be painstakingly preserved.
Oxygen causes rapid deterioration,
so the museum team uses
chemical elements
to create an oxygen-free environment.
MANAR: We are going to keep
them in a micro-environment.
In this micro-environment,
we are going to put some
elements that going to absorb oxygen
and eliminate it from the
surrounding of the fetuses.
NARRATOR:
Saved from further disintegration,
these fetuses are powerful reminders
of the human side of King Tutankhamun.
DR. TAWFIK:
Looking at these fetuses,
we see a dramatic part
of the life of Tutankhamun.
The wish to have children,
most probably the wish to have an heir,
which was never given to Tutankhamun.
NARRATOR:
Preserving the fetuses might allow
future technological advances
to reveal further hidden secrets
about Tutankhamun.
DR. NAUNTON: The fetuses are among
the most fascinating
of all the objects found in the tomb,
and they speak to Tutankhamun's
hopes and desires for the future.
They tell us two things in fact
that he would have wanted
to have children,
but also that he wasn't
successful in that,
and that would have
wider implications for Egypt as well.
As Carter himself says,
"Had one of those babies lived,
there might never have been a Ramses."
And so not only was this
a personal tragedy for Tutankhamun,
it would also change the course
of Egyptian history.
NARRATOR:
Tutankhamun's hopes for Egypt's future
stopped with his two stillborn children.
His untimely death, without heirs,
created a power vacuum
and plunged Egypt into turmoil.
Hidden away in the Valley of the Kings
in the tomb of
the golden pharaoh himself,
lies evidence of the power struggle
that followed.
Tutankhamun's tomb is decorated
with scenes
depicting the journey
from the world of the living
to the world of the dead.
One image is particularly telling.
DR. NAUNTON: This is one of the
most interesting aspects
of the decoration of the tomb, I think.
The figure on the left in the white
is Tutankhamun.
He is identified by the
inscription above him,
but he's in the guise of Osiris,
as a god, so he's passed
from life into afterlife at this point.
So he's dead and in fact he's in
kind of mummy form at this point.
The figure to the right
is performing a ceremony, a ritual,
which we know is the opening
of the mouth for breathing,
on the mummy of Tutankhamun.
NARRATOR: Here, the ritual normally
performed by the next of kin
or a high priest,
is performed by Ay,
a senior official
in Tutankhamun's court.
He wasn't even from the royal family.
He was a commoner.
DR. NAUNTON: The reanimation
of a body in this way
is a really important part
of the survival
of the individual from
life into the afterlife.
So to have Ay in this position,
as the person performing
this crucial ritual
shows that he is the anointed successor
of Tutankhamun.
NARRATOR:
To seal his claim to the throne,
Ay married Tutankhamun's widow,
Ankhesenamun, and became
the next pharaoh of Egypt.
Many now believe Ay wanted
the young pharaoh to be forgotten.
He crammed the dead king
and his belongings
into a small, insignificant tomb,
and took Tutankhamun's
grand tomb for himself.
But it was only the first of
many injustices
Tutankhamun suffered after his death.
The memories of destruction
caused to Egypt
by Tutankhamun's father
Akhenaten were still raw.
Tutankhamun had to pay for
the sins of his father.
More than 2,000 miles from
Luxor in the British Museum,
Egyptologist Aidan Dodson
has come to see the final evidence
of this campaign of condemnation.
AIDAN DODSON:
This here is a king list
drawn up during the reign of Ramses II
and it represents an official listing
of the kings of Egypt
from unification down to his time.
NARRATOR:
Found in a temple close to Luxor,
the list of 76 kings of Egypt
was created almost 100 years
after Tutankhamun's death.
But it's what's missing
on this list that is the most intriguing.
DR. DODSON:
The cartouche on the right
with the seated woman
in the middle of it is Amenhotep III,
the father of Akhenaten, and
grandfather of Tutankhamun.
On the left is Horemhab.
Tutankhamun should be on that line
between those two cartouches there.
He's not there.
It's not only Tutankhamun
who's missing
Theres also Akhenaten and Ay,
Tutankhamun's predecessor and successor.
And it's no coincidence
those are people
who've been edited out.
Because by the time we get to
the reign of Ramses II,
the whole group of kings were non-people.
As far as Egyptian history was concerned,
it all never happened.
NARRATOR: The genetic curse
on Tutankhamun's family
meant he died tragically young,
and unable to produce an heir.
And his royal line ended with him.
Within a century of Tutankhamun's death,
his very existence
was erased from history
until 3,000 years later,
when Howard Carter broke open
the doors of his hidden tomb,
exposing the treasures that have
captivated the world ever since.
Now with all 5,398 objects
from the tomb
reunited at the
new Grand Egyptian Museum,
Tutankhamun is being
resurrected through modern science.
And forensic investigations are revealing
the final secrets
hidden among his treasures.
SALIMA: All of these objects
that will be on display
will flesh out Tutankhamun.
You know, this skeleton
of this boy will turn into
the full figure of the king and the man.
NARRATOR: A fresh chapter
in Tutankhamun's story is unfolding.
It appears he was much
more than just "the boy king"
of popular belief.
He was a father, a husband,
and a dynamic leader with
remarkable ambitions
brutally cut short by the toxic
bloodline of his own family.
Captioned by Point.360