Lost Treasures of Egypt (2019) s01e02 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 pharaohs chose this place.
Now for a full
season of excavation,
our cameras have
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, the pyramids
reveal startling new secrets.
Ashraf makes an incredible
discovery in a 4,500 year-old tomb.
I feel there is
something down there.
Something is waiting for us.
Iwona is on the
hunt for human remains.
This is a lovely left
foot, so we've got a pair.
And John unlocks the secrets of
the oldest known tomb in
the valley of the kings.
I'm truly in the final
resting place of a pharaoh.
Rising out of the Egyptian
desert stand some of the most
magnificent monuments
in human history
The Giza pyramids.
Constructed from around
five million stone blocks,
and standing up
to 480-feet tall,
these are where the pharaohs
of ancient Egypt entombed
their mummified bodies
and priceless treasures.
Each giant pyramid is a grand
tomb and place of worship
built to ensure the
memory of the pharaohs
Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure
would never be forgotten.
Stop here Hamid and we wanna
get our drone on the pyramid.
In charge of
this ancient site is
director of the Giza
pyramids, Ashraf Mohie.
You see this is my office.
I work as an egyptologist
more than 20 years.
I envy myself to be working here,
you know, near by the pyramid.
Ashraf has recently made a
remarkable discovery in the shadow of
the Menkaure pyramid, the last to
be built by the pharaohs in Giza.
He's taking to the skies to
survey his excavation site.
So, I can see the pyramid
from the top over here.
Can we get closer to the temple?
Next to the entrance
of Menkaure's pyramid,
are the remains of a grand
temple and cluster of tombs.
It has been surrounded
by tombs for high officials.
Everybody, you know wanted to have the
honor to have his tomb nearby Menkaure.
Ashraf is
excavating one of these tombs.
Its location was first documented
by the American archaeologist
George Reisner over
a century ago.
Reisner, he started to work here in
1907, but he didn't go inside.
He didn't find the entrance.
He just dig for few
days, that's it.
So, we continued the work,
we found the entrance.
We are working now in the shafts,
we started with the first one over there,
we got the edges and the workers,
they are working down there.
Reisner did
not excavate this tomb.
Ashraf and his team will be the first
archaeologists to enter it in over 4,500 years.
We're going to work down step by step
to see if there is something in the
sands or not there.
I'm so honored to be here
between the pyramids.
It's my life time dream to dig.
It's going to be something very
important for every egyptologist
at the pyramids area.
Menkaure ruled Egypt for over two decades
and like his father and grandfather,
he built a pyramid as
his final resting place.
His stands at the center of
a grand cemetery where only
those closest to
him could be buried.
So, the tomb Ashraf has unearthed
must be for someone important.
It appears to be a flat-roofed
structure called a mastaba.
On top, two shaft openings suggest it
could hide more than one burial chamber.
But any bodies won't be
found inside the mastaba,
they'll be deep beneath it
In solid bedrock.
I want to go deeper and see what
it is going to be inside the shaft.
We will see at the bottom if there is
a chamber and a sarcophagus down there.
Menkaure would be the last pharaoh
to build a pyramid at Giza.
4000 years ago, they
were suddenly abandoned.
The answer to why the pharaohs
deserted the pyramids may lie
300 miles south, in the
valley of the kings.
Hidden within these remote cliffs is the
final resting place of some of Egypt's
greatest and most
famous pharaohs.
- Mr. Mahmood?
- Hi, yes.
Yes, everything.
Here, British archaeologist John ward,
is investigating why the pharaohs
stopped building pyramids and decided
to be buried in this secret location.
We're on the way to one of the
oldest tombs here in the valley,
its where it all began.
You lead the way.
Dangerous and unstable,
tomb k-v-20 is closed to the public
and has not been
excavated since 1904.
There we go sir.
Despite the risks,
John has been granted special permission
to investigate inside
Open sesame as they say!
And will attempt to navigate the
dark and crumbling corridors to reach
the burial chamber, hidden
over 320 feet below ground.
Beneath our feet lies an intricate
Warren of engineering masterpieces,
where tunnels, chambers and pits are
all designed to create a space in which
pharaohs can
achieve immortality.
The valley of the kings is
a remote limestone gorge
And in a secluded corner is one of the
first tombs to be carved into the valley.
Built for the powerful pharaoh
Thutmose the first, 3,500 years ago,
ancient engineers chiseled
a long and narrow corridor
that plunges over 320
feet underground
To a secret burial chamber.
Here, the body of the pharaoh was
placed in a giant sarcophagus,
so that hidden from sight,
the king with his treasures
could hope to rest in
peace for eternity.
One of the things Mahmood that
I'm feeling as we're walking down,
you really get that sense that you're
climbing down into the underworld!
Building a tomb could take years
and required a village of workers.
Look at that. Okay.
It must have been
awful down here.
To have carried up all of this
chiseled flaky limestone and the dust.
I mean we're just walking here
and I'm breathing the dust in.
It must have been hell!
John has been descending into
the darkness for over 45 minutes,
but he still hasn't reached
the burial chamber.
Wow! This shaft
just continues.
Above ground, a team of over 170
workers is excavating an area
known as the valley
of the nobles.
It contains the tombs of
ancient Egypt's social elite,
important enough to be
buried close to the pharaohs.
So, I will lead you up
the excavation site right now.
Egyptologist Andrea Loprieno-Gnirs
from Basel university,
has been investigating
this site for 16 years.
We really feel very privileged to
have the opportunity to work here.
We want to learn more about who used
this tomb, who entered the tomb,
who maybe planned the tomb, who used them
for burials and who used them for living,
over the long-time span.
This season, Andrea
and her team are clearing
tons of earth and
rubble from the tombs.
In one tomb called t-t-95 they've
made an exciting discovery.
It's quite a huge coffin
chamber cut into the bedrock.
Among the material that was
still left by the tomb robbers,
we came upon painted
pottery vessels
that bear the name and
the title of hunai.
Inscriptions on the pottery suggest a
noble woman called hunai was buried here.
But who was she and what was
her connection to the pharaohs?
To answer this, the team is
searching for hunai's remains.
But she's not the only one here.
This tomb was re-used
by others to Bury their dead
and contains hundreds
of body parts.
Robbers ripped the bodies apart
in search of gold and amulets
wrapped in the mummies.
Finding hunai will take
a forensic investigation.
One ear preserved,
there's no jaw just a fragment.
In charge of analyzing these human
remains, is British bio-archaeologist,
Iwona Kozieradzka-Ogunmakin.
I've worked in
Egypt 13 years I think,
so I've got substantial experience
with this kind of material.
This is a lovely left foot.
When I'm sometimes asked what I do,
I'm kind of hesitant to say because
there's usually two
types of reaction I get.
One is urghhh, and the
other is oh really!
I suppose it's
not for everybody.
Finding hunai's remains is like
looking for a needle in a haystack.
There you go,
that's the left arm.
We estimate the minimum number of
individuals to be just over 80.
That's quite a big number really when you
think about an adult individual having
206 bones and imagine the
skeleton is dispersed.
Every site has different challenges
and this one is definitely challenging.
So, we've got torsos with no
arms or no legs, or heads.
300 miles
north, at the pyramids
This is the last of the sands
that's coming out from the shaft.
Ashraf and his team have been
digging for two days to locate
the burial chamber in
this unexcavated tomb.
It should be
there is something here.
Finally, the workers reach the
bottom of one of the shafts.
We are so close
to the burial chamber.
4,500 year-old burial chamber,
but something is wrong
I can hear, you know,
the sound of the rock.
The axe is hitting the rock.
This is not a good sign.
It means the shaft
is unfinished!
Ashraf thinks they
have found a false shaft,
deliberately made by
the tomb builders to
fool thieves trying to
find the burial chamber.
And it's an anti-theft technique he's
seen before, in Menkaure's pyramid.
Menkaure constructed the pyramid
to protect his body and treasures,
but the giant pyramid
also attracted thieves.
Inside, engineers tried to
protect the burial chamber
with a series of
heavy stone slabs
But these barriers of solid rock
weren't enough to keep out tomb robbers
and the pharaoh's body
and treasures were looted.
Like the place we are standing here
now, this is the place,
you know where they had the
blocks, to seal this passage.
We found many small fragments of the
blocks because it was broken to pieces.
Some blocks about 3
tons or 4 tons there.
With these huge stone walls
destroyed, the robbers could finally
enter the pharaoh's
burial chamber.
Nothing remains of Menkaure's
mummy or his treasures.
Ashraf believes the threat of
tomb robbers was the reason the
pharaohs stopped building
these giant pyramids.
To keep their
bodies hidden from looters,
the great pharaohs chose
this secluded location.
The valley of the kings.
How much further Mahmood?
- We are close!
- We're close?
John ward is in one of the first
tombs to be built in the valley and is
descending over 320 feet below ground
into the sacred burial chamber.
We're coming towards
the end of this tomb!
The final steps.
Wow!
I'm in the belly of the final
resting place of a pharaoh.
I can't even begin to imagine what it must
have been like to be digging this out.
Truly an amazing feat.
Although crudely completed,
k-v-20 was a successful experiment,
and in this chamber,
archaeologists found two stone coffins,
one inscribed with the name of the
pharaoh, Thutmose the first.
The other, for the
pharaoh Hatshepsut,
his daughter and one of Egypt's
most powerful female rulers.
For the next 500 years,
the pharaohs built their
tombs deep underground.
So far, 65 have been found but experts
suspect there could be at least
two great pharaoh's tombs
yet to be discovered.
With their tomb entrances hidden from
sight, the pharaohs believed their
mummified bodies and treasures would
be protected from grave robbers.
They had solved one problem, but they
still needed to find a way to be worshipped
and for their legacy to be
remembered for eternity.
Whereas the pyramid
contains everything, the burial,
the place of worship, here
that's all separated.
Here we have the tomb,
the last resting place of a pharaoh,
but he still requires that
place to be worshipped.
The pharaohs wanted
to be remembered forever,
but with their bodies
hidden in the valley,
their followers would need
somewhere to worship.
John wants to investigate how they ensured
their legacy would never be forgotten.
In the valley of the nobles,
Andrea and her team are on
the hunt for clues that can
shed light on the life of a
noble woman called hunai.
They've found pictures on a tomb wall
which suggest she shared an unusual
bond with the pharaoh
Amenhotep the second.
It's really an
unusual you will not
find another tomb showing this very
personal relationship with the king.
In this case you can really recognize
that she is giving him her breast.
The wall paintings reveal hunai
was a royal wet-nurse who breastfed
the future pharaoh
when he was a child,
and this intimate
relationship explains
why hunai was buried so close
to the valley of the kings.
This was originally
the burial place of hunai,
and this is also where we
found more individuals.
In search of hunai's remains,
Iwona is sifting through
thousands of bones
found in her tomb.
That's super-orbital ridges,
that are usually pronounced in males,
looking at the sutures,
cranial sutures, and the teeth,
this person was
definitely over 35.
The wall inscriptions also
reveal hunai had a grown-up son,
who was a high official.
So, Iwona believes hunai was a
middle-aged woman when she died.
You can see some depressions
here, could be menopause.
This person seemed to have
quite a pronounced nose.
I've got confident one female,
question Mark female so that's two,
and the other four are most
likely male individuals.
To find out if either of the
female skulls belongs to hunai,
Iwona needs to look for signs of
a gruesome mummification process
only performed on
the wealthy elite.
The lady we're looking for definitely
had her brains pulled out in pieces!
In Giza, Ashraf and his team have been
working hard to clear the second shaft
of the unexcavated tomb at the
foot of the Menkaure pyramid
And their
hard work has paid off.
He says that there is a small
hole and no light in there,
so we need a torch to
see what's over there.
So, I'm going to send Mohamed
to tell us what will be there.
The workers think they have found an
entrance to a burial chamber carved in the
bedrock and egyptologist Mohammad Ahmed
will be the first to venture inside.
Wow! Phew!
Can you see if there
is a coffin or sarcophagus?
This is the opening which
leads to the burial chamber.
I'm very excited!
Sealed with rocks and hidden at
the bottom of the 30 foot shaft,
this burial chamber could
contain the 4,500 year-old
remains of the tomb
owner and their treasure.
Mr. Ashraf?
I see darkness.
Can you see through the hole?
Okay.
You think I'm going to
wait after you found a hole?
You are kidding me!
Now I will get inside.
Okay.
All done. Wow.
This slab, it was blocking the
doorway to this burial chamber.
When I see the sloping
gravels and stones,
I feel that someone
gets inside before me.
The tomb has been
looted by grave robbers,
but Mohamed finds bones
that have been left behind.
This bone is from the chest.
This is from the pelvis,
and I think this big
long bone is the thigh.
The treasures
may have been taken,
but these ancient bones
inside a burial chamber
by the pyramid are an
incredible discovery,
and the remains will be collected
and analyzed by the team.
Mohamed, why you didn't get out to
tell me and show me the footage.
Okay sir!
You have to get out now!
So, it has been looted.
A few bones only
and remains of wood.
Yes.
I'm a little
bit disappointed because
I was expecting to find
a coffin with a mummy.
But I'm still happy because
we have the discovery.
The fragments of bone found in this
burial chamber won't be enough for
Ashraf to identify who
was buried in the tomb,
but he's convinced
there is another
burial chamber here, so
excavations will continue.
I feel there is
something down there,
so I hope that something
waiting for us.
Just a mile from the valley of
the kings on Luxor's west bank,
stands the vast mortuary
temple, Medinet Habu.
So here it is, Medinet Habu.
They call it the mortuary temple,
the house of millions of years.
To safeguard them from robbers,
the pharaohs kept their tombs hidden,
but they also needed to be
worshipped and remembered.
They chose this temple
to honor their legacy.
Whereas today we would go to
the graveyard or the cemetery,
we'd lay a flower
at our gravestone,
this is a gravestone.
This is the legacy of pharaoh
Ramses, Amenhotep III, Hatshepsut,
they've all put their Mark here.
The pharaohs built mortuary temples
like Medinet Habu as vast palaces
dedicated to preserving
their memory for eternity.
Each temple had a loyal staff of
priests devoted to maintaining a cult
that would continue
worshipping the king forever.
The pharaohs had their royal names written
as special symbols called cartouches,
carved all over the temples.
Their names were important because these
ancient pharaohs believed that to achieve
immortality their names
must be spoken for eternity.
We have this whole development from
pharaoh being buried in the pyramid,
to being buried over there
in the valley of the kings,
and this, his mortuary temple
and they are immortalized here.
But for some pharaohs,
simply having their name inscribed
on a palace wall was not enough.
On the banks of the river Nile,
stands the vast Luxor temple.
Here, an elite team of engineers is
working to restore a giant statue
dedicated to one of
Egypt's greatest pharaohs.
Mahmood Farouk
has a daunting challenge.
He needs to rebuild the giant statue of
Rameses II that stands over 30-feet tall.
It was destroyed
by an earthquake.
Now it's time to put the
king back where he belongs.
Mahmood and his team are using
modern steel girders to hold the
pieces of statue together, and they
must line up perfectly with the legs,
standing at the
entrance to the temple.
One wrong move could send
the 3000-year-old statue
crashing into the temple wall.
Moving the
heavy statue into place
is an intricate challenge
for the team.
The metal girders fixed to the body
and legs must fit perfectly together.
It might look finished,
but Mahmood needs to check
the alignment of
the statue's eyes.
According to Egyptian custom, they must look
straight ahead to reflect the king's power.
The measurements show the
eyes are pointing down.
The team will have
to start again.
In the valley of the nobles,
Iwona is continuing her
forensic analysis of human
remains to identify hunai.
She's looking for evidence
of a rare burial practice.
The traditional way of mummifying the
body would be to remove the brain.
The tool would have been
inserted through a nostril,
and then the ethmoid
bone would be broken
through to get access
to the brain cavity.
Only high-status individuals
underwent this mummification ritual.
So as a nurse to the pharaoh,
it would have been performed on hunai.
So here we have a complete skull,
and it's quite interesting.
The person lost all their
upper teeth except one!
I think there is a
small opening here,
this skull seems to be
Seems to be fitting
the description so far.
The small hole is strong evidence
that the brain was scraped out,
but to prove her theory, Iwona
will use digital technology
to take a closer look inside.
At the pyramids, Ashraf has
received some exciting news.
You know I just got
a phone call from Mohamed,
he's telling me he
has found a shaft!
The team has found
a third shaft above the tomb,
which could lead to
another burial chamber.
The site is
getting more exciting.
We are getting more excited to see, to know
more information about the situations here.
To help speed up the dig,
the team has built a pulley system.
It's a little
bit windy, but still good.
This is good weather
for workers to work!
But suddenly
Ashraf's team is in trouble.
The heavy metal frame has
collapsed into the shaft,
and the workers inside
are not responding.
It wasn't stable enough,
but thanks to god everything was okay now.
So, we are using
this rope ladder now.
So, you see the
workers are okay.
The workers have
escaped relatively unharmed.
Ashraf can press ahead
with his excavations.
We are so close.
On the righthand side, I believe this
is the opening of the burial chamber.
But a giant rock
slab is blocking their way.
They are going to drop some ropes to
tie this stone and take it out of there.
Ashraf has opened the entrance
to the burial chamber,
now he's ready to find out
who, or what, is inside.
Gineer Mahmoud
is trying to position
the 65-ton statue of
Ramses the second at the
entrance to the temple.
But his first
attempt has failed.
His team has just a few hours
to cut and reshape the girders.
They must ensure the
statue's eyes point
straight ahead to the
horizon, a symbol of power.
Only then will they have restored
this great pharaoh's legacy.
Slowly and carefully,
they winch it into position
I hope this
Success, yeah.
This time,
everything lines up perfectly.
The statue of Ramses II now stands
exactly as it did 3000 years ago,
restoring his legacy as one of the
greatest pharaohs to rule Egypt.
Across the Nile, Iwona and her team
have turned to digital technology
in their hunt for the
royal nurse hunai.
We actually have the X-ray of that
particular skull that we think could
potentially belong to hunai.
Her being a woman of high social
status, we would expect her body
to have been prepared
accordingly for the burial.
Ancient Egyptians believed the
brain had no value in the afterlife,
so they pulled it out in pieces
through the nose, during mummification.
And we can't see any brain residue
inside the skull, the brain was removed.
The X-ray
confirms Iwona's theory.
All the evidence suggests
this is the skull of hunai.
It's a huge discovery
for the team.
Hello, so may
I present a female,
an older female!
Her brain was removed.
If we are looking the best candidate
for hunai, this would be this skull!
This is really amazing
results, that's exciting news!
3000-years after her death,
hunai's memory has now been restored.
It was her unique role as a royal
nurse that earned her a tomb
next to the valley of the king,
so that she could join the pharaohs
for eternity in the afterlife.
We were able to uncover a great
royal nurse of Amenhotep II
when he was a prince.
So, I think we are very lucky.
I'm very happy about this.
At the pyramids,
Ashraf's team is preparing
to enter the newly-discovered
4,500 year-old burial chamber.
I'm so excited that we
found the bottom of the shaft,
but I'm a big guy and the
shaft down there is so small,
that's why I'm sending my
colleagues to go down there.
I'm talking about
33 feet, its deep.
And to have your people
down there, it's not easy.
But these people have the
passion to find something new.
It is an adventure to be an
egyptologist, to find something new.
Ashraf has brought in specialists
to investigate the chamber.
Senior archaeologist
Wael Fathi and
anthropologist, Sara saber.
I'm so excited to tell
you what you're going to see.
We make sure that
everything is okay first,
and after this we'll let
Sara get down there.
Good. Sara your turn.
She's getting down now.
You're doing a good job Sara,
it's one of your adventures.
I think they are ready to go
inside the burial chamber.
This is strange here.
You see, its bones
here, everywhere.
Once again, grave robbers have
ransacked the burial chamber.
This is the remains of a skull.
But this time they
left more evidence behind.
This is the sacrum.
It is very important to know
sometimes the age or the sex.
We must collect all the bones.
Wow!
What is it?
It's a sealing stamp.
It's an astonishing find.
These stamps were used
to seal offering jars
left with the owner of the
tomb during their burial.
It's rare to have
survived over 4000 years.
This person to stamp his name or her
name or his title, something like that.
So, this is a big discovery.
This is the first day for Sara here you
know, and we found such a discovery.
It's a great day.
This discovery could hold vital
information about who was buried
so close to Menkaure's
pyramid, and why.
We found from the skull,
this part is the mastoid process
Yes.
This is very, very small.
Also, we found this section of
the vertebrae, it's very spongy.
This refers to a woman,
maybe plus 50 years old.
The bones reveal
the tomb belongs to a woman.
We have another evidence.
But can the inscriptions
on the seal provide a name?
Amazing, you can see the two arms
up, this is ca!
It means Kawu
- Shepset Kawu yeah.
- Shepset Kawu.
So, this is for Shepset Kawu.
You brought good luck for us!
You know because I was happy
and satisfied with bones,
with a skeleton but you came
And bring you more.
And you brought luck for
us, and we found the stamp!
What a big day for our mission.
Robbers didn't care about bones.
So, thanks to the god because they
didn't care about them, we found them.
We found the bones and we found the
stamps that tell us about the lady,
the owner of the
tomb, Shepset Kawu!
To have her tomb nearby Menkaure it
means she was a very important lady.
For us as egyptologists
to find an inscription,
like a name for an unknown
tomb is a great discovery.
What the grave robbers left behind
has helped Ashraf and his team
restore the name and
memory of Shepset Kawu,
and now, like the pharaohs who
built the giant pyramids,
the vast mortuary temples,
and the hidden tombs in
the valley of the kings,
her memory will live on.
Captioned by Cotter
Captioning Services.