Lost Treasures of Egypt (2019) s01e01 Episode Script

1
Egypt, the richest source of
archaeological
treasures on the planet.
Oh, that's a fabulous one.
Beneath this desert landscape lie the
secrets of this ancient civilization.
Wow, can you see why the
pharaoh's chose this place?
Now for a full season of excavations,
our cameras have been given
unprecedented access to follow teams
on the frontline of archaeology.
I'm driving so fast
because I'm so excited!
It's an entrance,
we can see an entrance!
Revealing buried secrets.
I have just been told that
they have found something.
Oh my gosh!
A sphinx!
And making discoveries that
could rewrite ancient history.
This time, new secrets of
the boy king, Tutankhamen.
Alia uses pioneering technology to reveal
startling new evidence about his tomb,
and why it remained
hidden for 3,000 years.
A lot of robberies were going
on, how was it not found?
Eissa's team discovers a long-lost
cache of king Tutankhamen's treasures.
And Alejandro discovers
extraordinary burial treasures in a
4,000 year-old tomb.
Congratulations!
The valley of
the kings, 3,500 years ago,
the great pharaohs stopped
building pyramids as their tombs.
They chose these secluded
cliffs to become their cemetery.
Today, archaeologists come from all over
the world to unlock the mysteries still
hidden in this city of the dead.
It's the first day in the valley
for Cairo born egyptologist
Aliaa Ismail and her team.
There's a real
buzz in this place.
People are coming from all over the
world, coming to the valley, it's amazing.
I'm so proud to
have such ancestry.
It's one of the most famous necropolises
in the world and I think what
is special is that
it comes out of nowhere.
Over 300 miles south of
Cairo, in the heart of Egypt,
lie the limestone cliffs
of the valley of the kings.
After 200 years of excavation,
archaeologists have located sixty-five
tombs hidden among the rocks.
But only one has ever been found
with its treasure still inside,
it belonged to the
pharaoh, Tutankhamen.
This here is
number 62, Tutankhamen.
One of those great
finds of the century.
British explorer Howard Carter
discovered Tutankhamen's
tomb in 1922.
One of his teams spotted steps
leading down through the sand.
They led to the tomb entrance,
buried beneath feet of rubble and debris.
What Carter found inside inspired
archaeologists for generations to come.
Deep inside the mountains,
amid a maze of tunnels that
bore deep through the rock,
Carter reached the tomb of Tutankhamen
hidden right in the center of the valley.
Inside, he found treasures
unlike anything ever seen before.
Over 5,000 priceless artifacts
including golden statues.
In the burial chamber the pharaoh's
mummy, wearing a golden death mask,
was placed inside a coffin made of
more than 200 pounds of solid gold.
This intact tomb made Tutankhamen
the most famous of the pharaohs.
Now Aliaa is investing
this golden pharaoh's life.
Wow.
And why his tomb
remained hidden for so long.
Aliaa's team has been scanning and
documenting the tomb for the last ten years,
and they've made a
remarkable discovery.
The idea here is to understand
what's going on when you look at
the data void of color.
The scans strip away the paint on
the walls to reveal unusual markings.
This was the main scene,
and here is the 3D of the north wall.
So, as you can see here, the silhouette
of an image and this would have
been done while
they were painting.
The images show the indented
outline of the face hidden below.
It's caused by the tip of the
paintbrush if you start painting when
the plaster is still wet.
This is why the brushes would have
made a very light impression and
this allows us to
understand it was rushed.
But why would the tomb builders
rush such an important job?
The pictures on the wall
reveal another set of clues.
Despite becoming the most
famous pharaoh of ancient Egypt,
Tutankhamen did
not have a lengthy reign.
He was only a nine-year-old
boy when he became king,
and relied on trusted advisors
to help rule his vast empire.
As Tutankhamen grew older,
he was known to portray
himself as a warrior king,
riding into battle on a chariot.
But the boy king suffered from
multiple illnesses, including malaria.
He was only nineteen-years-old
when he unexpectantly died.
Aliaa thinks the marks her scans
reveal in the plaster are evidence
of a hurried burial due to
Tutankhamen's sudden death.
The decorated part of the tomb is very
small, it's only the burial chamber.
The rest of the tomb
is not decorated.
If they had more time,
all of this was going to be decorated.
While the tomb's construction may
have been rushed, its treasures were
everything a pharaoh could desire
to take him into the afterlife.
So why did this tomb lay hidden below a
layer of rock for thousands of years when
all the other tombs in
the valley were looted?
To solve this mystery, Aliaa will turn
to new technology as she moves her
investigation out
into the valley.
300 miles north, in Giza,
in the shadow of the pyramids,
the biggest treasure haul in history
is getting a new home, a one-billion-dollar
museum and research center.
When completed, the grand Egyptian museum
will reunite all of Tutankhamen's treasures
in one place, for the
first time in 100 years.
Having all of the pieces from
the tomb of Tutankhamen together
in one place, this will be a
fantastic chance to find new facts,
new hidden things
about Tutankhamen.
After Carter removed the
treasures from tut's tomb,
they ended up
in museums around Egypt.
Now, for the first time, scientists
and egyptologists will use modern
technology to
analyze each object.
Some details reappear and give us new
information about these antiquities.
But some of tut's greatest
treasures are yet to arrive.
300 miles south in the Luxor museum,
Eissa Zidan is preparing 122 of these
priceless artifacts
for the move to Giza.
Eissa's packing list includes
one of tut's famous chariots,
intricate model boats and
a unique head of the cow goddess,
Hathor, elaborately gilded with gold.
After just four hours,
Eissa's packing suddenly comes to a halt.
One of his teams has discovered
something completely unexpected
in the storeroom.
It's an antique box that Howard Carter
used to pack and transport Tutankhamen's
treasures out of the tomb.
The box has been missing,
presumed lost, for decades,
and no one knows what
treasures it may hold.
120 miles south of the valley
of the kings, near Aswan,
a Spanish research
team from Jaen university
is hoping to follow in
Carter's footsteps and make new
discoveries that
could rewrite history.
Professor Alejandro Jimenez-Serrano
heads the largest foreign team
working in Egypt.
Today is the first
day of the dig season.
Sorry for the mess.
We are sharing the room,
three researchers of the team.
This is my, my bed,
supposedly the best one.
Sorry.
It's amazing to get up and the first thing
that you see apart from the ugly face
of your roommates is the
Qubbet El-Hawa, the hill.
Qubbet El-Hawa is one of the largest
ancient burial sites in Egypt.
So far, 100 tombs
have been discovered here.
They belong to the nobles who governed
Egypt hundreds of years before
the pharaoh's buried in
the valley of the kings.
Alejandro's mission is to hunt for
more unopened tombs and reveal more
about these early Egyptians.
It's difficult
to explain how I feel.
Not only nervous, it's exciting,
it's a mix of feelings.
It's an honor to
To come every year.
Now here comes the most
difficult part of the day,
to climb the hill.
This is the
team's tenth year digging here.
It's so nice to be here again.
There's a reason why everyone
is excited to be back.
Last year, Alejandro found the
entranced to a sealed tomb,
but his permit expired before
he could explore inside.
Today is 40 degrees,
and working underneath the sun,
today's gonna be tough.
To protect against
modern day tomb-robbers,
they put a steel security
door to block the entrance
of the vertical shaft that leads
to the sealed burial chamber.
Well it has been one-year waiting,
one-year imagining the possibilities.
I'm very excited.
In Luxor, Eissa's team packs
Tutankhamen's treasures for the move
to the grand Egyptian
museum in Giza.
But in the storeroom,
Eissa is ready to open Carter's
long-lost box to discover
what's inside.
E if the box
really does contain priceless
treasures from
Tutankhamen's tomb.
Ah.
- Fantastic.
- It's amazing.
These delicate wooden pieces
are ancient boat parts.
Storeroom records suggest they
could be missing from a model boat
Howard Carter
found in Tutankhamen's tomb.
According to
ancient Egyptian belief,
boats played a
key role after death.
So, placing model boats into tombs
was a vital part of any burial.
The vessels also came complete with crew
because it was believed the replicas
would come to life and help with
fishing and transport in the underworld.
The pharaohs used a special vessel
to sail across the sky for eternity.
Ordinary people also thought they
could reach the afterlife by boat,
rowing on the Nile
and into the next world.
You can see here
the date of the newspaper,
it's Sunday 5th
of November, 1933.
To discover
where these pieces came from,
Mohammad inspects
Carter's original inventory.
Records show that the box
was sent to Luxor in 1973
but had gone missing,
presumed lost or stolen.
Eissa thinks the rest of the boat
is safe in the new Cairo lab,
so they may finally
be able to reunite it.
To transport
the treasures to Giza,
Eissa's team must traverse 400
miles of barren desert roads
and crowded city streets before they
reach the safety of the new museum.
It will take two trucks to transport
all 122 of the artifacts to Giza.
This a very,
very big moment for the collection,
this is the final
trip of Tutankhamen.
But with such
priceless relics on board,
there's concern the convoy could
be a target for a hijacking.
We have a good
police and good army.
They will follow us during moving
from Luxor until arrive to Cairo.
With security
in place, it's time to roll.
They now face a grueling twelve-hour
journey through the desert to
reach Giza before nightfall.
Ever since Carter's discovery of
Tutankhamen's priceless golden treasures,
archaeologists have continued to
try and figure out where and how the
ancient Egyptians found
vast quantities of gold.
Fifty-miles south
of the valley of the kings,
on the edge of
the eastern desert,
French gold expert Thomas Faucher
and archaeologist John ward are
on the hunt for the origins
of Tutankhamen's gold.
So, I'm going to
What are you
waiting for, a traffic signal?
The eastern desert covers 85,000
square-miles of remote barren wilderness.
Some of the rock here contains
tiny grains of gold locked inside.
Thomas has studied ancient gold
mining techniques for seven years.
Now he wants to see if he
can find any evidence of it.
But this part of the desert
is a risky place to be.
The thing is we need to leave before
dark because it's not safe if we are
staying there because we can lose our
way, we can have an accident and
it's also at the sunset that
all the snakes are going out.
Snakes?
Yeah, vipers.
No one told me about
There are horrid vipers, yeah.
The first stop, an ancient well.
It could provide clues to the
location of mining communities during
the time of Tutankhamen.
This is the well just
right in front of us here.
It's dry.
My god, that's a long way down.
The well might be dry today,
but it was so important to
the ancient Egyptians,
they built a temple to honor it.
It's beautiful isn't it?
They actually applied a plaster gyp
ceiling and then applied the paint.
Amazing.
The text engraved on these
walls reveals clues about the
gold miners and
where they were heading.
Ancient engineers built a network of Wells
and rest stops stretching all the way
across the desert, each
a day's walk from the last,
enabling travelers and miners
to safely cross and
explore the barren desert.
The temple carvings indicate
these Wells led toward the mines.
Thomas hopes he will be able to
find some evidence of the people
behind Tutankhamen's
goldmining operations.
Now it's time
to go deeper east
Like an ancient treasure map,
they must follow the trail of
Wells further into the desert.
In Aswan, at the ancient
burial site of qubbet El-Hawa,
Alejandro is about to
open a 4,000-year-old tomb.
They're on the hunt for whatever
burial treasure may be inside.
I don't know who is more
nervous, me or my team.
I want to go now!
It's amazing.
It contains a
4,000-year-old coffin.
Workers have inserted a box covered in
acid-free paper inside the coffin to
stop it from collapsing
while they examine the tomb.
There, we have been very lucky.
It's impossible to explain
the feelings that I'm having.
The burial consisted in two coffins,
the outer coffin and the inner coffin.
Among the
debris of the outer coffin,
Alejandro spots
something extraordinary.
It is full of wooden models,
but unfortunately, the outer
coffin fall over them.
The chamber
is full of model boats,
similar to the one
in Tutankhamen's tomb.
To find this funerary boat
in a tomb is rare today.
But there's not just one,
there are four, complete with crew.
You want to laugh, you want to
shout, you want to cry.
This is the first time in
seventy-years a set of boats like
this has been found.
This discovery gives Alejandro an
extremely rare opportunity to study
such important burial goods.
But first he has to extract
them from the tomb safely.
Alejandro calls in his team
of conservation specialists,
Sara and Theresa.
Termites have
attacked the wooden boats.
Sara sprays on a liquid
adhesive to hold them together.
So, we will see if they are
capable to make a miracle.
They prepare a foam-lined cradle
to support the boat for the move
to the team's restoration lab, but the
wooden hull is stuck to the tomb floor.
It'll require surgical precision
using scalpels to free it.
From the tomb to the
restoration lab we are talking
about perhaps 40-meters.
But today's very windy which
is very, very aggressive.
The ancient
boats are extremely fragile.
Get ready.
With a drop in the wind, the team sees
the chance to remove the first boat.
♪
Perfect.
That was exciting.
One of the best
moments in my career.
We have 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8 person.
We take many weeks to clean it
and fix the pieces that were
broken some centuries ago.
While the team
gets to work on the boat,
Alejandro can finally open the
coffin to see who and what is inside.
In the middle of the desert,
the convoy carrying
Tutankhamen's priceless
treasures is two hours into its
journey when Eissa spots a problem.
A thermal blanket protecting tut's
golden chariot is coming loose.
If it flies off, it
could cause a crash.
The unscheduled stop in the
desert makes this convoy,
carrying the world's most priceless treasures,
a potential target for hijackers.
Protecting tut's chariot.
Removing the cover,
they risk the scorching desert
heat potentially damaging
the priceless treasure.
Everything is okay.
Now, Eissa needs
to get the convoy moving.
We hope to
arrive to Cairo safely.
In the valley, egyptologist
Aliaa Ismail is on a mission to
discover how Tutankhamen's tomb and
treasures remained hidden for 3,000 years.
A lot of robberies were going on
in ancient times and modern times.
But it seems that this
particular tomb was not found.
How was it not found?
The ancient engineers of
Tutankhamen's tomb had a plan.
Inside the mountain, they went to
great lengths to conceal the tomb.
The pharaoh's burial chamber
is located 26 feet underground,
and is defended
from the inside out.
Engineers constructed a wall to
block off the burial chamber.
They filled the corridor leading
to the king with tons of rubble,
before sealing a final doorway and
covering Tutankhamen's tomb with
a vast amount of boulders under earth
standard tomb protection of the day.
But when Carter discovered this tomb,
it had more material on top than
any other in the valley.
This may explain how it remained
undiscovered for over 3,000 years.
But how did this extra
rock and debris get here?
Aliaa joins German geologist
Martin Ziegler to investigate.
If you want to understand the evolution
of the valley of the kings, you
need to also understand
the evolution of the rock.
Martin thinks there could
be clues in the rocks at the
entrance to a nearby tomb.
Just at the entrance of it,
a slab is just hanging above,
a rock basically could
fall out of the cliff.
Egypt is hit with dozens
of earthquakes each year.
So, Martin's installed a seismometer
to measure any vibrations that
could trigger rock falls.
With this one
we calculate it to be
Weigh about 600 to 700 kilometers
from the valley of the kings.
What if an earthquake would
Were to happen like much closer to the
valley of the kings, how would it affect it?
A very big earthquake could
destabilize some rock portions.
So, when you look in the
In the history of recorded earthquakes,
the historic timescales, let's say the
thousands of years, we have some records
of earthquakes of that type of magnitude.
So, could rock falls caused by
earthquakes 3,000 years ago account
for the extra tons of rock that covered
the entrance to Tutankhamen's tomb?
From the geological past and the historic
point of view, they could have rock
falls or rock slides that are triggered
by earthquakes covering tombs.
But there are no cliffs directly
above Tutankhamen's tomb, so it
wouldn't have been hit
by a direct rockfall.
How did so much extra material travel
down the valley and completely cover
the entrance to the tomb?
To solve this mystery Aliaa and
Martin must take to the air.
Deep in the eastern desert, Thomas and John
are looking for evidence of the miners who
produced the gold for
Tutankhamen's treasures.
They're trying to find a route of
ancient Wells that the goldminers would
have followed as they
travelled to the mines.
It's like looking
for a needle in a haystack.
But I'm losing a few kidneys.
Seventy miles
from the last ancient well,
Thomas and John
head into the unknown.
With their g-p-s broken down,
they now risk getting completely lost.
This piece of
technology is defunct!
It is not working.
Look here, it's literally
on the right side.
So, we are now at the back end.
So, we need to turn around.
But after two days of searching,
John thinks they may have
finally found something.
What's that over there?
At the base of that
mountain there?
So, we found it!
It's a settlement.
It may look like scattered stones and
debris, but to Thomas' expert eye,
he can see the outline
of ancient buildings.
We have the huts where the people were
living and where they were working.
Yeah, we definitely have
here the evidence
- Oh Thomas
- Here
I mean people have been
working here and we see, yeah,
there are even more over there.
As they get closer,
John spots the tools the ancient
miners would have used to extract
gold from the rocks.
Oh.
Yeah, that's the grinding stone.
That's a pounder.
Yeah, that's a pounder.
Yeah, exactly.
That's what they would break
Yeah they would
The quartz with. Yeah.
It's the remains of
an ancient goldmining camp.
I mean how many people
are we talking, 20, 30?
Yeah maybe there were
like families living here.
Thomas has studied ancient
mining techniques for years.
But seeing this evidence first-hand brings
home the hardships the miners endured.
You start from a piece of quartz
like this and you want to make
product out of it.
So, you need to crush it.
And you have to imagine
how much pain it takes just
to break a
single piece of quartz,
doing that like all day long,
in the sun, pounding and pounding and
grinding and grinding
and doing that for years.
Evidence here paints a picture
of the life of desert miners.
They cut shafts stretching up to thirty-two
feet deep into the stone in search of
precious seams of quartz
rock that contained gold.
Crushing the quartz was
a massive undertaking.
Mining experts have calculated that
a team of twenty people would take
a week to process enough stone
to make just a spoonful of gold.
That's heavy.
Seriously.
Sadly, there is very little evidence
left of these ancient mines, but these
settlements provide new insight into the
communities that lived such hard lives
processing the gold.
We have all the material they were
using for sure, that they were
working here to extract and process the
gold to send it to the valley of the kings.
- We've found it.
- We've found it.
In Aswan, Alejandro's team prepares
to remove the coffin from the
tomb they've opened.
Inscriptions reveal it belongs
to a man called Shemai.
They have just struck the
lid of the coffin of Shemai.
Rebecca, you are the first person that is
looking at Shemai's face in 4000 years.
Congratulations!
The inner coffin is intact,
but extremely fragile.
Alejandro's team has reinforced it
to try and protect the mummy inside.
It's difficult to express
the feelings that I have now.
It's a special moment because I'm studying
this family, and it's almost my second family.
In the restoration lab,
the intricate beauty
of the model boats
is starting to appear.
Termites have eaten much of the
wood, but their excrement
has actually helped hold parts of the
boats together for thousands of years.
We have some parts that are still in
a very good state of conservation.
This head of the man, it is covered
with excrement of the termites,
but the wood is still visible.
Alejandro has spotted a figure
distinct from the other carvings.
We can see in the middle of the boat a
yellow face which belongs to a mummy,
which would represent Shemai.
This exceptional discovery will
help archaeologists understand
the evolution of burial
practices in ancient Egypt.
I was dreaming always to
discover something like this,
and it's a dream that came true.
Alejandro's next task is to
bring Shemai's mummy above ground
for the first time
in 4,000 years.
In the valley of the kings,
Aliaa and Martin look
for clues to explain why
Tutankhamen's tomb
remained hidden for so long.
They've got special permission from the
government to use a drone to get a unique
perspective on the position
of Tutankhamen's tomb.
There we go.
If we look down we should be over
the Tutankhamen entrance right now.
Now we can see the cliffs in the back,
and we can see the central position of
the tomb.
And above we can see debris.
Loose rock and debris cover
the cliffs behind tut's tomb.
But the drone also reveals these flood
channels, carved into the rock by heavy rains
over thousands of years and they
could be the vital missing clue.
We think that if we have flash
flooding, that material can flow down in
these kinds of channels.
Throughout history the valley
has been hit by earthquakes,
and occasional flash floods.
The flood waters push rubble
downhill toward the tombs.
Tutankhamen's tomb lies in the spot
where the channels of water converge,
and dump tons of rock.
This, combined with stone chippings from
a tomb built above, buried the entrance
deeper and kept it hidden
for over 3,000 years.
It's very exciting for me as an
egyptologist to see Tutankhamen's tomb
from up here and see how it
fits within the valley.
It is the prime location,
it is the one that was most protected.
He got the most
sheltered tomb of all.
Tutankhamen was a boy king who played
a minor role in Egypt's history,
but because his tomb remained
hidden for thousands of years,
his treasure was kept
safe from robbers and
made him
the legend we know today.
In Aswan, the team is bringing the
mummy of ancient Egyptian Shemai
to the surface for the
first time in 4,000 years.
This is the culmination of ten
years of field work for Alejandro,
and an incredible opportunity
to learn more about Shemai.
Oh 125, it's quite short.
My daughter is more of less like
this and she's eight years old.
I expected that at least he would
be around 20-years-old or something.
It has been a surprise.
I never expected that
he could be just a boy.
On his coffin it was written that
he was the person in charge of
the administration of the store.
Controlling the store, you control the
people because you decide who is going
to receive food or not.
This new evidence reveals Shemai
held a powerful position in
Egyptian society at
a very young age.
He may not have been a pharaoh,
but like the boy king Tutankhamen,
his status afforded him a tomb and burial goods
to ensure a safe passage into the afterlife.
It's taken twelve hours,
but finally Eissa and his convoy of
Tutankhamen's treasures
arrive in the city.
It's very, very, very exciting.
We wait for this moment.
Tarek Tawfik
the museum director,
is anxious to get
everything safely inside.
The first cradles have to be taken
out, in order for the Tutankhamen
pieces to start emerging.
Now I can say
I'm very, very happy.
Mission is complete, yes.
It will be like
unpacking Christmas presents.
When we get out these pieces and find out
more details about how they complement the
whole story of king Tutankhamen.
Eissa's team can finally
unpack the priceless treasures.
Scientists and egyptologists
can now begin to study and
analyze each item in
their new high-tech lab.
Top of the list are the
newly discovered boat pieces.
We'll check now in our database
which of them maybe related to any
of the boats in the storeroom.
For almost 100 years, the boat that
was buried alongside Tutankhamen
to help him travel into the
afterlife has been missing its mast.
Exactly!
It's very beautiful.
It's amazing that after all these years, we
still have new discoveries and new secrets
for this golden king,
Tutankhamen.
100 years after its discovery,
Tutankhamen's stunning
treasure is still
surprising the world.
And the valley of the kings
shows why it remains the
greatest place on earth to
hunt for the secrets of
Egypt's famous pharaohs.
Captioned by cotter
captioning services.