Lost Treasures of Egypt (2019) s01e03 Episode Script
Cleopatra's Lost Tomb
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, you can see why
the pharaohs chose this place.
Now, for a full season of excavations,
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 hunt for the
lost tomb of queen Cleopatra.
Colleen searches for clues
in the hieroglyphs
Here we see
Cleopatra as the goddess Isis.
Alejandro scans ancient mummies
in an Egyptian hospital
And Kathleen makes a startling
discovery deep underground.
Ancient Egypt, a kingdom of great
pharaohs and a cradle of civilization.
But after 3,000 years this rule came
to an end with the last pharaoh,
queen Cleopatra.
For centuries this enigmatic woman has
captured the imagination of the world,
but the location of her
tomb is still a mystery.
Today archaeologists across
Egypt are on the hunt for clues.
Renowned egyptologists Colleen and John
Darnell are experts in decoding hieroglyphs,
they're on their way to
the valley of the kings.
We're headed to the
location of the burials of
nearly every pharaoh
of the new kingdom.
The valley is a rabbit Warren
of sixty-five hidden tombs.
They form one of the greatest
royal cemeteries in the world,
but not all of
them are finished.
This morning we're going to the
unfinished tomb of Ramses xi.
It's the last tomb begun in the valley of
the kings, and many times unfinished things
in Egypt can actually tell you a little
bit more than the completed product.
Ramses xi reigned over 1,000
years before Cleopatra,
but when he died his
tomb was never used.
So here you could see just the
initial phases of the tomb decoration,
but it's already a beautiful
depiction of Ramses xi.
We know exactly who we're looking at
because of his cartouches, his name rings,
in front of his face.
Looks like they've laid out what would've
been remarkable illustrations and,
and texts early in the
initial part of the tomb.
The tomb of Ramses xi is
located in the east of the
valley of the kings.
Its cavernous chambers and pillared
halls reveal how the pharaoh should
have been buried,
but the back of the tomb is unfinished.
After 500 years of Egypt's kings and
queens being buried in the valley,
Ramses' tomb marks
the end of an era.
Ramses xi abandoned
the valley of the kings,
and no more pharaohs
were buried here.
This is very much the end of a legacy,
this is the end of kings being buried in
the valley of the kings,
but it's also the start of something new,
of continued royal burial
that really ends with Cleopatra.
Historians believe this royal burial
site was abandoned because of looting,
but no one has found the cemetery
for the last pharaohs of Egypt,
Cleopatra and her family line.
So where could it be?
After the valley fell out
of use eventually Egypt's
seat of power
shifted north to Alexandria.
The last great dynasty of pharaohs
established their capital here to exploit
trade across
the Mediterranean sea.
Archaeologist Dr. Ross Thomas from the
British museum is here exploring the ancient
capital for evidence that
could lead to Cleopatra.
The ancient city housed about half a
million people during the first century BC
and it was one of the most
important ancient ports
and ancient cities
of the Mediterranean.
The port city of Alexandria was
founded by Alexander the great
who conquered Egypt
2,300 years ago.
It was famed for its palaces, statues, its
library, and a colossal lighthouse standing
over 350 feet tall, one of the
seven wonders of the ancient world.
During this time, Egypt was ruled
by the successors of Alexander,
the Greek pharaohs
called the Ptolemies,
but this family line ended when the
country was eventually conquered by Rome,
leaving the last pharaoh
of Egypt queen Cleopatra.
Many archaeologists think Cleopatra will
be found in a royal cemetery somewhere in
Alexandria, the capital
built by her own family
But searching here is difficult.
The ancient city was hit by
a series of earthquakes and
much of it now
lies beneath the waves.
So do we have weights here?
Yes.
Professor Emad Khalil from
Alexandria university began exploring
the sunken city over twenty years ago, keeping
an eagle eye out for Cleopatra's tomb.
This has not been found
obviously in Alexandria yet,
but as we always say beneath
Alexandria there are other Alexandrias.
Okay.
The evidence of Cleopatra's ancient
capital is strewn across the seabed.
Shards of pottery, huge columns,
fallen obelisks,
and what they believe is one
of the doorways to
the famous lighthouse.
There was scores of columns and
column bases, hundreds of blocks,
really large structural blocks.
I think we managed
to see a part of an obelisk,
and part of a
doorway of the lighthouse,
so it is, it's really,
really something.
Yeah.
Every dive provides new data
for Emad and Ross to research,
but there's no sign of Cleopatra
or her family's graves.
Well you'd assume that they'd want
to be buried in their own city.
Normally what you have is a royal
cemetery with all the burials
for the kings and queens.
But what if Cleopatra wasn't
buried in Alexandria at all?
One woman thinks everyone has
been looking in the wrong place.
Thirty miles west of Alexandria in an
ancient city called Taposiris Magna,
there is a little-known temple.
Here Kathleen Martinez, a qualified lawyer
turned archaeologist, is on a quest.
So this is one of the exciting
moments of an excavation.
For the past decade she has been building
a case that queen Cleopatra is buried
beneath this temple.
I want to be an archaeologist
since I was a child,
but my parents convinced me to study
law, and I became a lawyer.
But all this knowledge and this information
that I had as a lawyer I combine with
archaeology, and this is how I follow
Cleopatra's steps to Taposiris Magna.
Kathleen is from the Dominican Republic
in the Caribbean, but thirteen years
ago she gave up her law work and
started excavating here at the temple.
We have uncovered so many important
structures that prove this temple functioned
as a temple during the time of queen
Cleopatra and the Greek pharaohs.
So this could be the perfect
place for Cleopatra's lost tomb.
At the age of eighteen,
Cleopatra became pharaoh when her father
Ptolemy the twelfth died.
She went on to rule
for twenty-one years.
Faced with the threat of a Roman invasion,
she formed alliances with the enemy,
first wooing Julius Caesar
and bearing his child,
followed by a
relationship with Mark Antony.
But in 31 BC the Roman Navy,
led by Octavian, attacked Egypt.
To avoid capture, legend has it that
Cleopatra committed suicide with
the bite of a venomous snake.
She threatened Rome
and Romans were afraid of her.
She thought she could conquer the
world, even though she was a woman.
She was a warrior, and she achieved the
impossible, and this is why she is my heroine
and I will try to do everything
I can to find her tomb.
Kathleen believes Cleopatra could
be buried somewhere around the site.
This season, she has a promising lead
300 feet outside the temple walls;
a strange hollow in the ground.
We found a cut, it's a cut in the
bedrock, it's a shaft,
and we are trying to find
out what, where it lead us.
Kathleen believes the shaft could
lead to Cleopatra's lost tomb,
hidden deep underground, but trying
to excavate this site is dangerous.
It's dangerous because if the bucket
turned around it could hit the guys
which are down there.
With the potential to break
through into an underground cavity,
they're worried the floor of the
shaft could suddenly collapse.
It's an entrance,
we can see an entrance.
It's a huge discovery.
The shaft leads to an
underground tunnel.
It's so exciting.
I need to see what is in there.
It has been hidden
for 2,000 years.
500 miles south of Alexandria
is the ancient city of Aswan.
It's here that Spanish archaeologist
Alejandro Jiménez-Serrano
leads a large mission working
at the ancient necropolis
of Qubbet El-Hawa.
The site is home to one of the
largest sets of intact tombs in Egypt.
Alejandro is searching for
unmarked graves and lost tombs.
This sprawling site is even older than the
valley of the kings, and is thought to be
the burial site of
many wealthy nobles.
Today he's working in one of the ancient tombs,
trying to identify who was buried there.
Unfortunately, it has no inscriptions
so we don't the owner or the family
who occupy this tomb.
We can only say which period,
when it was built,
because of the style.
But deep inside this tomb the team
has just unearthed two buried mummies.
As they clear away the sand,
Alejandro makes a startling discovery;
it's the edge of a beautiful
golden death mask.
Wow!
Death masks are often made of layers
of linen or recycled papyrus, and then
soaked in plaster.
This forms a tough material a bit
like paper mache, called cartonnage.
While still wet, the cartonnage is
molded to resemble the face of the
deceased, and then painted.
Often the name of the person was written on
the mask, along with inscriptions to help
transport the deceased
into the afterlife.
This ancient funeral practice
continued for over 2,000 years,
right up to
the time of Cleopatra.
And the quality of the cartonnage
is, is amazing, the, the colors,
and it has text and it seems that it will be
possible to read the name of the original owner.
But before Alejandro can try to
put a name to this ancient body,
his team will need
to extract the fragile mask.
They use soft paintbrushes to remove the
sand grain by grain, and then strengthen the
mask with paper coated with
resin to stop it from breaking.
It's a privilege and it's amazing
to, to have the opportunity to,
to work with untouched material.
Back at Taposiris Magna
They take such good care of me.
They are not used to women
going down the shaft.
Kathleen Martinez is descending
into a 2,000-year-old shaft.
Yes.
Going down.
She believes it could lead her to
the lost tomb of queen Cleopatra.
But there's a problem.
God! The
tunnels are full of water.
The vertical shaft descends twenty-feet
down and leads to two narrow tunnels.
We have tunnel which is
perfectly cut in the bedrock.
One it seems to lead to the north,
and the other goes to the south.
The fact that the tunnels are flooded
makes any further exploration very
difficult, but Kathleen
is determined to push on.
Okay, look.
Oh god, so creepy, look!
At the end of the
tunnel there is a door,
but it's almost completely
covered with water.
Now she can see the quality of
the stonework and how much effort
it would've taken to create
these tunnels.
Kathleen is sure they must
lead to somewhere important.
I tried to go inside but then the,
the level is deeper and I almost fall down,
so I need to pump up the water.
I have to, I have to
explore this door.
Kathleen will need to find a water
pump before she can explore the flooded
tunnels any further.
You cannot walk there, or crawl,
because of the water, it's, it's unsafe.
It will one of the greatest adventures
in the excavation now because we
need to know what is in there.
Kathleen is convinced Cleopatra's
lost tomb is hidden somewhere
around this site.
She has evidence the temple is
linked to the Egyptian goddess Isis.
Kathleen thinks this is
her biggest clue so far.
We have archaeological evidence
that the temple was maybe the most
important religious
center for Isis in the north,
and the thing we know
about queen Cleopatra is
that she was buried
in a temple of Isis.
So it could be a perfect place
for Cleopatra's lost tomb.
But who was Isis,
and how is she connected to Cleopatra?
380 miles south of Taposiris Magna
on the banks of the river Nile,
parts of this vast temple
site are dedicated to Isis,
who was a well-loved
Egyptian goddess in
Cleopatra's time.
It's here that Dr. Colleen Darnell
continues her own search for
clues to Cleopatra's life,
written in the hieroglyphs.
We're walking to the temple at
Dendera, and one of the most
significant scenes here is
a depiction of Cleopatra.
The temple was first
built 2,000-years ago and
became a major place of
worship for ordinary Egyptians.
Through the centuries,
a succession of pharaohs carved
their names and images here so
they could be worshipped,
including Cleopatra.
So the title here
is lord of the two lands,
referring to upper and
lower Egypt, Cleo-pat-Ra.
Cleopatra made a shrewd
decision; On the temple she wears
the symbolic headdress of Isis.
Here we see the famous representation
of Cleopatra as goddess Isis.
Here we have Cleopatra
and her son Caesarion.
So Cleopatra has a long wig,
the horns and sun disk, and
ostrich feathers behind that.
Cleopatra wanted to be seen
by her subjects as the earthly
incarnation of Isis.
She was making a profound connection
with one of the most popular
goddesses of the time.
Isis was famed for her powers of
healing and protection and was adored by
both Egyptians and Greeks.
By immortalizing herself as Isis on the
temple wall, Cleopatra hoped to keep the
full support and love of
her people, and it worked.
For Cleopatra to step into the
role of Isis really proclaimed her
identity as divine ruler.
At Taposiris Magna,
Kathleen thinks Cleopatra's
Isis connection could mean
she's buried somewhere
beneath the temple.
Now, the team is pumping out the water
from the flooded underground tunnels,
but it's going to take a
while before she can explore.
It's working.
Alhamdulillah.
It's a big relief
to see it working.
Imagine, today or tomorrow we,
we're going to be able to, to explore.
It's so exciting!
Kathleen believes Cleopatra could
be buried in an underground chamber,
and the tunnels
could lead her to it.
She originally found the location
of the shaft using radar technology,
but with the potential for a
huge discovery just feet away,
she has brought
in more sensitive
military-grade equipment to
look deeper into the rock.
For me the future of the excavation
is ground-penetrating radar.
It's a technology that was used for military
purposes, searching for tunnels and
searching for cavities, and this technology
is perfect for what I am looking for.
So we, we can work here,
make a profile here?
As they move the radar scanner
along, it fires radio wave pulses
into the ground.
So here we are going about,
about 15 meter depth.
The data from the scan will have
to be sent away for analysis.
It should reveal any hollow
cavities hidden underground,
and possibly even the location
of Cleopatra's burial chamber.
I always, you
know, so excited about this.
Back at the excavation site,
everything is resting on the team pumping
the water from the
underground tunnels.
In Cairo,
Kathleen is attending an
important event.
It's nice.
It, what do you think?
It's nice, oh my god!
At the Egyptian museum, hundreds of
Kathleen's finds have been chosen
to go on display
for the very first time.
They all come from her
site at Taposiris Magna,
unearthed over ten
years of excavation.
Kathleen believes each piece adds further
weight to her theory that Cleopatra
could be buried there.
We, we discover
around 200 coins.
For example, this is a
coin of queen Cleopatra.
Can you imagine that I've been searching for
queen Cleopatra and this is the first time I
was face to face with my heroine,
it was a moment so exciting in excavation.
Yes, we are going
to change this one.
This one?
I get it.
For this one, yes.
I was thinking now, when I was a
kid in the Dominican Republic and
I dream one day to
make discoveries in Egypt,
and everybody in Dominican,
my teachers, my parents,
told me this will never happen,
and now we are
presenting 350 objects.
For someone who started as
an amateur archaeologist,
Kathleen now has the eyes of
the world looking at her finds.
We had a
desire to change history.
It's one of the greatest
moments in my life.
Of course, the exhibition, it's only a
presentation of work, but the real work,
the one we're really excited about, is
to be onsite and, and continue searching.
Back at the dig site,
there's a problem with the water pump.
Mohamed, what happened?
Cut?
Mohamed cut, yeah.
It's not working now?
Can you imagine after all this
effort now there's no electricity
in the area, and only a
few hours left today and next,
and tomorrow, that's it.
Kathleen's government permit
to dig at the site only lasts
for one more day.
She's now racing against the clock
to explore the underground tunnels.
We face so many challenges,
but we don't, we, we never give up.
At the 4,000-year old
necropolis of Qubbet El-Hawa
Alejandro's team has unearthed
a very rare death mask made of a
material called cartonnage.
He hopes the mask will tell him the
name of the person buried in the tomb,
but decoding the hieroglyphs
is proving difficult.
I cannot read properly
the, the, all the signs.
It will be better to do it after
the consolidation and cleaning.
Alejandro's team has started
the painstaking process of
extracting the mask.
Their job is made even
harder because it's embedded
under the bones of its owner.
It's quite a delicate moment because
we have human remains that are
touching and we don't want
to destroy the cartonnage.
They are taking
off the cartonnage.
The ancient
mask is carefully removed,
but comes out in several parts,
held together with resin and
paper to prevent
any further damage.
It is really amazing.
And I'm simply now checking
if there was name or not.
Yes, there are more hieroglyphs.
Here is the name,
it's for the soul of Seti Hacaib a Inet.
Alejandro can now put a
name to the unknown body,
but he still doesn't know the persons
job, or role in society.
We have now to look in the,
in the publications to see
if we have any reference in the
neighborhood or in other documents,
and but it, it's amazing.
The death mask is now taken to their
on-site lab for further analysis.
The team will try to piece it back
together like a Jigsaw puzzle.
There could still be more secrets to
be revealed about this mysterious man.
In Aswan, on the other side of the
site, Alejandro has unearthed
several mummies still intact.
He's searching for clues to their
identity, which may lie hidden within
the ancient bandages,
but to keep them intact archaeologists
are no longer allowed to
open up the wrappings.
100 years ago it was common
just to cut the wrappings.
Today we are lucky to have non-invasive
techniques, and the idea is that we are
going to take to the university hospital in
Aswan where they have very good ct scans.
By scanning the bodies, Alejandro
hopes to examine how they died, and
also to see if there are any
funerary objects hidden inside.
We have the possibility that he
could have a dagger or a metal object
inside, we could confirm the age of
death, if he suffer any kind of disease.
Definitely the ct scan will
tell us a lot of information.
For clues to Cleopatra's
life and untimely death.
Deep in the tomb of pharaoh Seti I the
first, they're examining inscriptions that
could shed light on how Cleopatra
chose to commit suicide.
The tombs of the
valley of the kings were
built during a golden age
in Egyptian civilization.
Treasures and decorations
reveal the symbolism that played
a key role in
their belief system.
The tomb of pharaoh Seti the first
lies in the southeast of the valley,
it's the deepest and most
widely decorated.
Painted on its walls are images of
gods and goddesses who lay at the
heart of Egyptian society.
Forming a belief system that
continued until Cleopatra's time.
Here deep in the tomb of Seti I
we see a fantastic depiction of
the goddess Wadjet,
she's labelled here in the hieroglyphs
and she is the cobra who sits on the
brow of the king.
Wadjet was the protector of
Egypt and of its pharaohs.
She often took the form of a
snake, usually an Egyptian cobra.
Legend has it that Cleopatra killed
herself with the bite of a venomous snake
when trapped by the
invading Roman army.
This depiction is over 1,000 years
before the suicide of Cleopatra, and the
fact that she chooses this ancient symbol
of the pharaohs, the asp, the cobra,
to commit suicide,
she's taking the ultimate royal symbol,
she wants to be linked in to the
earlier, the deep, ancient past of Egypt.
Cleopatra,
through her life and death,
was obsessed with the
traditions of ancient Egypt.
At Taposiris Magna, Kathleen
believes she's getting ever closer to
finding Cleopatra's lost tomb.
As the dig season is coming to an
end, she's desperate to see if the
underground tunnels lead to
a burial chamber.
Is it working?
Her team has now been pumping
out water for two days,
but power cuts have
severely hindered progress.
Maybe we, we can, I can go down
and try to see and I will explore.
Shall we start?
Uh-huh.
I am ready.
Okay.
Bye bye.
This is the first time Kathleen has
been able to explore the tunnels.
She starts with the one
leading away from the temple.
With the way forward still
flooded Kathleen has to turn back.
She now explores
the second tunnel.
These tunnels would have
taken months or even years to
carve out by hand.
Uh! Alhamdulillah.
Hamdulillah.
Kathleen believes they must
lead somewhere important.
It was incredible.
Now we know a lot about this shaft,
unfortunately we could not see the
end of this tunnel,
there was a lot of water.
With her permit about to expire,
Kathleen's excavation must
come to an end,
but there is still a chance that
the data from the ground-penetrating
radar might reveal if the
tunnels lead to a tomb.
Now we are
waiting for the GPR results,
so I have to be
patient and, and wait.
Time mission.
He's about to transport six ancient mummies
across the city to a local hospital.
He's arranged to use their medical
scanner after hours to see what may
lie hidden inside
these ancient bodies.
For security,
a police escort joins the convoy.
To try to know something
about how they were buried,
the pathologies,
the possible diseases that they suffer,
the cause of death, gender, age.
The c-t scanner should be able
to see through the wrappings
to the bones below,
but Alejandro is still worried
about damaging the fragile remains.
Mummies are very delicate,
so you have to think that
they, they have been wrapped
more than 2,000 years ago,
so they might suffer damages.
Well, let's go.
Hello?
Inshallah.
We, yeah, yeah, yeah, we, we will arrive
in five, ten minutes maximum, okay?
Ooph.
We have to, to take this opportunity
to get as much information as possible,
so we will see.
Alejandro's night-time activities
have attracted the attention
of the local press.
I will ask to the journalists
please to leave to the specialists
to make their work.
Please, which one we
will start now, which one?
Yeah, this one.
Thank you, okay.
You're ready?
Yes.
The mummies are wrapped in cloth for
added protection inside the scanner.
It works by taking a series of
x-rays at different angles to create
a three-dimensional
image of the body.
We are just checking if
the scan was done right.
So far, very little
is known about these mummies,
like how they died,
and whether they were old or young.
Alejandro is trying to piece
together their identities,
hoping to discover any new clues
to make sense of their lives,
and ultimately, their deaths.
The first analysis of the body shows
that he was over 60 when he died.
So now I have to choose
who is going to be the next.
Okay? Let's go.
Well, now we have
something very interesting.
Interpreted that the mummy was going to
be a man, but it seems that it is a woman.
We didn't, we
didn't expect that.
As the final
body enters the scanner,
the archaeologists
spot something amazing.
Si.
We have amulets.
Together with the scarab,
a wing, winged scarab.
Sign of Horus.
Ah-ha.
The scan reveals an elaborate carved
amulet in the shape of a scarab beetle.
Funerary amulets were often used by the
elite to protect the soul of the deceased,
and the scarab beetle
symbolized rebirth.
The scarab was placed over the position
of the heart and often had spells
written on it.
These spells gave instructions to the
person's heart to help them during the
judgement of their soul.
It's the first time that I can see
them in the, in the position in,
in its position in the
body, so, exciting.
Out of the nine mummies
Alejandro's team have scanned,
this is the only one to have an
amulet still in its original position.
With such a precious find,
Alejandro can wrap up his night on a high.
Now it's 12:00 and,
hmm, I'm completely exhausted.
Thank you.
At Taposiris Magna,
Kathleen has received news about her
radar search for Cleopatra's tomb.
Today is the last day and the people
which are doing the, the radar,
they're bringing the result and
they just told me,
"we have great news for you."
So tell me what is
the good news we have?
- Possible chamber?
- Yes.
Wow. Yes. I'm going to cry.
Really, I'm trying to,
I'm so happy.
It could be anything buried there but
I feel it's, it's what I'm looking for.
Kathleen's scans reveal a thirty-foot-wide
cavity directly beneath the
entrance to the temple.
It would have taken ancient workers a monumental
effort to build, and if it's a tomb it
must be the tomb of
someone important.
This could be the perfect hiding place
for the last queen of Egypt, Cleopatra.
The tomb could hold her royal treasures,
and its discovery would be one of
the greatest finds in the
history of archaeology.
So the room is big, and this
Ten meters. - ,Ten meters long?
Wow. - Yeah.
For Kathleen, Cleopatra's lost
tomb could now be within her grasp.
I'm just really
excited and I'm touched.
This is something that is really important,
precious, something very precious they
tried to hide there.
So I think this is the
final stage of my search.
It's been an incredible season
for Kathleen and her workers,
but with her permit now expired,
she must secure the site and continue
her search for the chamber next year.
Next season I will come back.
This is the moment
that I was waiting for.
Now I know exactly
where to continue.
Captioned by Cotter
Captioning Services.
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, you can see why
the pharaohs chose this place.
Now, for a full season of excavations,
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 hunt for the
lost tomb of queen Cleopatra.
Colleen searches for clues
in the hieroglyphs
Here we see
Cleopatra as the goddess Isis.
Alejandro scans ancient mummies
in an Egyptian hospital
And Kathleen makes a startling
discovery deep underground.
Ancient Egypt, a kingdom of great
pharaohs and a cradle of civilization.
But after 3,000 years this rule came
to an end with the last pharaoh,
queen Cleopatra.
For centuries this enigmatic woman has
captured the imagination of the world,
but the location of her
tomb is still a mystery.
Today archaeologists across
Egypt are on the hunt for clues.
Renowned egyptologists Colleen and John
Darnell are experts in decoding hieroglyphs,
they're on their way to
the valley of the kings.
We're headed to the
location of the burials of
nearly every pharaoh
of the new kingdom.
The valley is a rabbit Warren
of sixty-five hidden tombs.
They form one of the greatest
royal cemeteries in the world,
but not all of
them are finished.
This morning we're going to the
unfinished tomb of Ramses xi.
It's the last tomb begun in the valley of
the kings, and many times unfinished things
in Egypt can actually tell you a little
bit more than the completed product.
Ramses xi reigned over 1,000
years before Cleopatra,
but when he died his
tomb was never used.
So here you could see just the
initial phases of the tomb decoration,
but it's already a beautiful
depiction of Ramses xi.
We know exactly who we're looking at
because of his cartouches, his name rings,
in front of his face.
Looks like they've laid out what would've
been remarkable illustrations and,
and texts early in the
initial part of the tomb.
The tomb of Ramses xi is
located in the east of the
valley of the kings.
Its cavernous chambers and pillared
halls reveal how the pharaoh should
have been buried,
but the back of the tomb is unfinished.
After 500 years of Egypt's kings and
queens being buried in the valley,
Ramses' tomb marks
the end of an era.
Ramses xi abandoned
the valley of the kings,
and no more pharaohs
were buried here.
This is very much the end of a legacy,
this is the end of kings being buried in
the valley of the kings,
but it's also the start of something new,
of continued royal burial
that really ends with Cleopatra.
Historians believe this royal burial
site was abandoned because of looting,
but no one has found the cemetery
for the last pharaohs of Egypt,
Cleopatra and her family line.
So where could it be?
After the valley fell out
of use eventually Egypt's
seat of power
shifted north to Alexandria.
The last great dynasty of pharaohs
established their capital here to exploit
trade across
the Mediterranean sea.
Archaeologist Dr. Ross Thomas from the
British museum is here exploring the ancient
capital for evidence that
could lead to Cleopatra.
The ancient city housed about half a
million people during the first century BC
and it was one of the most
important ancient ports
and ancient cities
of the Mediterranean.
The port city of Alexandria was
founded by Alexander the great
who conquered Egypt
2,300 years ago.
It was famed for its palaces, statues, its
library, and a colossal lighthouse standing
over 350 feet tall, one of the
seven wonders of the ancient world.
During this time, Egypt was ruled
by the successors of Alexander,
the Greek pharaohs
called the Ptolemies,
but this family line ended when the
country was eventually conquered by Rome,
leaving the last pharaoh
of Egypt queen Cleopatra.
Many archaeologists think Cleopatra will
be found in a royal cemetery somewhere in
Alexandria, the capital
built by her own family
But searching here is difficult.
The ancient city was hit by
a series of earthquakes and
much of it now
lies beneath the waves.
So do we have weights here?
Yes.
Professor Emad Khalil from
Alexandria university began exploring
the sunken city over twenty years ago, keeping
an eagle eye out for Cleopatra's tomb.
This has not been found
obviously in Alexandria yet,
but as we always say beneath
Alexandria there are other Alexandrias.
Okay.
The evidence of Cleopatra's ancient
capital is strewn across the seabed.
Shards of pottery, huge columns,
fallen obelisks,
and what they believe is one
of the doorways to
the famous lighthouse.
There was scores of columns and
column bases, hundreds of blocks,
really large structural blocks.
I think we managed
to see a part of an obelisk,
and part of a
doorway of the lighthouse,
so it is, it's really,
really something.
Yeah.
Every dive provides new data
for Emad and Ross to research,
but there's no sign of Cleopatra
or her family's graves.
Well you'd assume that they'd want
to be buried in their own city.
Normally what you have is a royal
cemetery with all the burials
for the kings and queens.
But what if Cleopatra wasn't
buried in Alexandria at all?
One woman thinks everyone has
been looking in the wrong place.
Thirty miles west of Alexandria in an
ancient city called Taposiris Magna,
there is a little-known temple.
Here Kathleen Martinez, a qualified lawyer
turned archaeologist, is on a quest.
So this is one of the exciting
moments of an excavation.
For the past decade she has been building
a case that queen Cleopatra is buried
beneath this temple.
I want to be an archaeologist
since I was a child,
but my parents convinced me to study
law, and I became a lawyer.
But all this knowledge and this information
that I had as a lawyer I combine with
archaeology, and this is how I follow
Cleopatra's steps to Taposiris Magna.
Kathleen is from the Dominican Republic
in the Caribbean, but thirteen years
ago she gave up her law work and
started excavating here at the temple.
We have uncovered so many important
structures that prove this temple functioned
as a temple during the time of queen
Cleopatra and the Greek pharaohs.
So this could be the perfect
place for Cleopatra's lost tomb.
At the age of eighteen,
Cleopatra became pharaoh when her father
Ptolemy the twelfth died.
She went on to rule
for twenty-one years.
Faced with the threat of a Roman invasion,
she formed alliances with the enemy,
first wooing Julius Caesar
and bearing his child,
followed by a
relationship with Mark Antony.
But in 31 BC the Roman Navy,
led by Octavian, attacked Egypt.
To avoid capture, legend has it that
Cleopatra committed suicide with
the bite of a venomous snake.
She threatened Rome
and Romans were afraid of her.
She thought she could conquer the
world, even though she was a woman.
She was a warrior, and she achieved the
impossible, and this is why she is my heroine
and I will try to do everything
I can to find her tomb.
Kathleen believes Cleopatra could
be buried somewhere around the site.
This season, she has a promising lead
300 feet outside the temple walls;
a strange hollow in the ground.
We found a cut, it's a cut in the
bedrock, it's a shaft,
and we are trying to find
out what, where it lead us.
Kathleen believes the shaft could
lead to Cleopatra's lost tomb,
hidden deep underground, but trying
to excavate this site is dangerous.
It's dangerous because if the bucket
turned around it could hit the guys
which are down there.
With the potential to break
through into an underground cavity,
they're worried the floor of the
shaft could suddenly collapse.
It's an entrance,
we can see an entrance.
It's a huge discovery.
The shaft leads to an
underground tunnel.
It's so exciting.
I need to see what is in there.
It has been hidden
for 2,000 years.
500 miles south of Alexandria
is the ancient city of Aswan.
It's here that Spanish archaeologist
Alejandro Jiménez-Serrano
leads a large mission working
at the ancient necropolis
of Qubbet El-Hawa.
The site is home to one of the
largest sets of intact tombs in Egypt.
Alejandro is searching for
unmarked graves and lost tombs.
This sprawling site is even older than the
valley of the kings, and is thought to be
the burial site of
many wealthy nobles.
Today he's working in one of the ancient tombs,
trying to identify who was buried there.
Unfortunately, it has no inscriptions
so we don't the owner or the family
who occupy this tomb.
We can only say which period,
when it was built,
because of the style.
But deep inside this tomb the team
has just unearthed two buried mummies.
As they clear away the sand,
Alejandro makes a startling discovery;
it's the edge of a beautiful
golden death mask.
Wow!
Death masks are often made of layers
of linen or recycled papyrus, and then
soaked in plaster.
This forms a tough material a bit
like paper mache, called cartonnage.
While still wet, the cartonnage is
molded to resemble the face of the
deceased, and then painted.
Often the name of the person was written on
the mask, along with inscriptions to help
transport the deceased
into the afterlife.
This ancient funeral practice
continued for over 2,000 years,
right up to
the time of Cleopatra.
And the quality of the cartonnage
is, is amazing, the, the colors,
and it has text and it seems that it will be
possible to read the name of the original owner.
But before Alejandro can try to
put a name to this ancient body,
his team will need
to extract the fragile mask.
They use soft paintbrushes to remove the
sand grain by grain, and then strengthen the
mask with paper coated with
resin to stop it from breaking.
It's a privilege and it's amazing
to, to have the opportunity to,
to work with untouched material.
Back at Taposiris Magna
They take such good care of me.
They are not used to women
going down the shaft.
Kathleen Martinez is descending
into a 2,000-year-old shaft.
Yes.
Going down.
She believes it could lead her to
the lost tomb of queen Cleopatra.
But there's a problem.
God! The
tunnels are full of water.
The vertical shaft descends twenty-feet
down and leads to two narrow tunnels.
We have tunnel which is
perfectly cut in the bedrock.
One it seems to lead to the north,
and the other goes to the south.
The fact that the tunnels are flooded
makes any further exploration very
difficult, but Kathleen
is determined to push on.
Okay, look.
Oh god, so creepy, look!
At the end of the
tunnel there is a door,
but it's almost completely
covered with water.
Now she can see the quality of
the stonework and how much effort
it would've taken to create
these tunnels.
Kathleen is sure they must
lead to somewhere important.
I tried to go inside but then the,
the level is deeper and I almost fall down,
so I need to pump up the water.
I have to, I have to
explore this door.
Kathleen will need to find a water
pump before she can explore the flooded
tunnels any further.
You cannot walk there, or crawl,
because of the water, it's, it's unsafe.
It will one of the greatest adventures
in the excavation now because we
need to know what is in there.
Kathleen is convinced Cleopatra's
lost tomb is hidden somewhere
around this site.
She has evidence the temple is
linked to the Egyptian goddess Isis.
Kathleen thinks this is
her biggest clue so far.
We have archaeological evidence
that the temple was maybe the most
important religious
center for Isis in the north,
and the thing we know
about queen Cleopatra is
that she was buried
in a temple of Isis.
So it could be a perfect place
for Cleopatra's lost tomb.
But who was Isis,
and how is she connected to Cleopatra?
380 miles south of Taposiris Magna
on the banks of the river Nile,
parts of this vast temple
site are dedicated to Isis,
who was a well-loved
Egyptian goddess in
Cleopatra's time.
It's here that Dr. Colleen Darnell
continues her own search for
clues to Cleopatra's life,
written in the hieroglyphs.
We're walking to the temple at
Dendera, and one of the most
significant scenes here is
a depiction of Cleopatra.
The temple was first
built 2,000-years ago and
became a major place of
worship for ordinary Egyptians.
Through the centuries,
a succession of pharaohs carved
their names and images here so
they could be worshipped,
including Cleopatra.
So the title here
is lord of the two lands,
referring to upper and
lower Egypt, Cleo-pat-Ra.
Cleopatra made a shrewd
decision; On the temple she wears
the symbolic headdress of Isis.
Here we see the famous representation
of Cleopatra as goddess Isis.
Here we have Cleopatra
and her son Caesarion.
So Cleopatra has a long wig,
the horns and sun disk, and
ostrich feathers behind that.
Cleopatra wanted to be seen
by her subjects as the earthly
incarnation of Isis.
She was making a profound connection
with one of the most popular
goddesses of the time.
Isis was famed for her powers of
healing and protection and was adored by
both Egyptians and Greeks.
By immortalizing herself as Isis on the
temple wall, Cleopatra hoped to keep the
full support and love of
her people, and it worked.
For Cleopatra to step into the
role of Isis really proclaimed her
identity as divine ruler.
At Taposiris Magna,
Kathleen thinks Cleopatra's
Isis connection could mean
she's buried somewhere
beneath the temple.
Now, the team is pumping out the water
from the flooded underground tunnels,
but it's going to take a
while before she can explore.
It's working.
Alhamdulillah.
It's a big relief
to see it working.
Imagine, today or tomorrow we,
we're going to be able to, to explore.
It's so exciting!
Kathleen believes Cleopatra could
be buried in an underground chamber,
and the tunnels
could lead her to it.
She originally found the location
of the shaft using radar technology,
but with the potential for a
huge discovery just feet away,
she has brought
in more sensitive
military-grade equipment to
look deeper into the rock.
For me the future of the excavation
is ground-penetrating radar.
It's a technology that was used for military
purposes, searching for tunnels and
searching for cavities, and this technology
is perfect for what I am looking for.
So we, we can work here,
make a profile here?
As they move the radar scanner
along, it fires radio wave pulses
into the ground.
So here we are going about,
about 15 meter depth.
The data from the scan will have
to be sent away for analysis.
It should reveal any hollow
cavities hidden underground,
and possibly even the location
of Cleopatra's burial chamber.
I always, you
know, so excited about this.
Back at the excavation site,
everything is resting on the team pumping
the water from the
underground tunnels.
In Cairo,
Kathleen is attending an
important event.
It's nice.
It, what do you think?
It's nice, oh my god!
At the Egyptian museum, hundreds of
Kathleen's finds have been chosen
to go on display
for the very first time.
They all come from her
site at Taposiris Magna,
unearthed over ten
years of excavation.
Kathleen believes each piece adds further
weight to her theory that Cleopatra
could be buried there.
We, we discover
around 200 coins.
For example, this is a
coin of queen Cleopatra.
Can you imagine that I've been searching for
queen Cleopatra and this is the first time I
was face to face with my heroine,
it was a moment so exciting in excavation.
Yes, we are going
to change this one.
This one?
I get it.
For this one, yes.
I was thinking now, when I was a
kid in the Dominican Republic and
I dream one day to
make discoveries in Egypt,
and everybody in Dominican,
my teachers, my parents,
told me this will never happen,
and now we are
presenting 350 objects.
For someone who started as
an amateur archaeologist,
Kathleen now has the eyes of
the world looking at her finds.
We had a
desire to change history.
It's one of the greatest
moments in my life.
Of course, the exhibition, it's only a
presentation of work, but the real work,
the one we're really excited about, is
to be onsite and, and continue searching.
Back at the dig site,
there's a problem with the water pump.
Mohamed, what happened?
Cut?
Mohamed cut, yeah.
It's not working now?
Can you imagine after all this
effort now there's no electricity
in the area, and only a
few hours left today and next,
and tomorrow, that's it.
Kathleen's government permit
to dig at the site only lasts
for one more day.
She's now racing against the clock
to explore the underground tunnels.
We face so many challenges,
but we don't, we, we never give up.
At the 4,000-year old
necropolis of Qubbet El-Hawa
Alejandro's team has unearthed
a very rare death mask made of a
material called cartonnage.
He hopes the mask will tell him the
name of the person buried in the tomb,
but decoding the hieroglyphs
is proving difficult.
I cannot read properly
the, the, all the signs.
It will be better to do it after
the consolidation and cleaning.
Alejandro's team has started
the painstaking process of
extracting the mask.
Their job is made even
harder because it's embedded
under the bones of its owner.
It's quite a delicate moment because
we have human remains that are
touching and we don't want
to destroy the cartonnage.
They are taking
off the cartonnage.
The ancient
mask is carefully removed,
but comes out in several parts,
held together with resin and
paper to prevent
any further damage.
It is really amazing.
And I'm simply now checking
if there was name or not.
Yes, there are more hieroglyphs.
Here is the name,
it's for the soul of Seti Hacaib a Inet.
Alejandro can now put a
name to the unknown body,
but he still doesn't know the persons
job, or role in society.
We have now to look in the,
in the publications to see
if we have any reference in the
neighborhood or in other documents,
and but it, it's amazing.
The death mask is now taken to their
on-site lab for further analysis.
The team will try to piece it back
together like a Jigsaw puzzle.
There could still be more secrets to
be revealed about this mysterious man.
In Aswan, on the other side of the
site, Alejandro has unearthed
several mummies still intact.
He's searching for clues to their
identity, which may lie hidden within
the ancient bandages,
but to keep them intact archaeologists
are no longer allowed to
open up the wrappings.
100 years ago it was common
just to cut the wrappings.
Today we are lucky to have non-invasive
techniques, and the idea is that we are
going to take to the university hospital in
Aswan where they have very good ct scans.
By scanning the bodies, Alejandro
hopes to examine how they died, and
also to see if there are any
funerary objects hidden inside.
We have the possibility that he
could have a dagger or a metal object
inside, we could confirm the age of
death, if he suffer any kind of disease.
Definitely the ct scan will
tell us a lot of information.
For clues to Cleopatra's
life and untimely death.
Deep in the tomb of pharaoh Seti I the
first, they're examining inscriptions that
could shed light on how Cleopatra
chose to commit suicide.
The tombs of the
valley of the kings were
built during a golden age
in Egyptian civilization.
Treasures and decorations
reveal the symbolism that played
a key role in
their belief system.
The tomb of pharaoh Seti the first
lies in the southeast of the valley,
it's the deepest and most
widely decorated.
Painted on its walls are images of
gods and goddesses who lay at the
heart of Egyptian society.
Forming a belief system that
continued until Cleopatra's time.
Here deep in the tomb of Seti I
we see a fantastic depiction of
the goddess Wadjet,
she's labelled here in the hieroglyphs
and she is the cobra who sits on the
brow of the king.
Wadjet was the protector of
Egypt and of its pharaohs.
She often took the form of a
snake, usually an Egyptian cobra.
Legend has it that Cleopatra killed
herself with the bite of a venomous snake
when trapped by the
invading Roman army.
This depiction is over 1,000 years
before the suicide of Cleopatra, and the
fact that she chooses this ancient symbol
of the pharaohs, the asp, the cobra,
to commit suicide,
she's taking the ultimate royal symbol,
she wants to be linked in to the
earlier, the deep, ancient past of Egypt.
Cleopatra,
through her life and death,
was obsessed with the
traditions of ancient Egypt.
At Taposiris Magna, Kathleen
believes she's getting ever closer to
finding Cleopatra's lost tomb.
As the dig season is coming to an
end, she's desperate to see if the
underground tunnels lead to
a burial chamber.
Is it working?
Her team has now been pumping
out water for two days,
but power cuts have
severely hindered progress.
Maybe we, we can, I can go down
and try to see and I will explore.
Shall we start?
Uh-huh.
I am ready.
Okay.
Bye bye.
This is the first time Kathleen has
been able to explore the tunnels.
She starts with the one
leading away from the temple.
With the way forward still
flooded Kathleen has to turn back.
She now explores
the second tunnel.
These tunnels would have
taken months or even years to
carve out by hand.
Uh! Alhamdulillah.
Hamdulillah.
Kathleen believes they must
lead somewhere important.
It was incredible.
Now we know a lot about this shaft,
unfortunately we could not see the
end of this tunnel,
there was a lot of water.
With her permit about to expire,
Kathleen's excavation must
come to an end,
but there is still a chance that
the data from the ground-penetrating
radar might reveal if the
tunnels lead to a tomb.
Now we are
waiting for the GPR results,
so I have to be
patient and, and wait.
Time mission.
He's about to transport six ancient mummies
across the city to a local hospital.
He's arranged to use their medical
scanner after hours to see what may
lie hidden inside
these ancient bodies.
For security,
a police escort joins the convoy.
To try to know something
about how they were buried,
the pathologies,
the possible diseases that they suffer,
the cause of death, gender, age.
The c-t scanner should be able
to see through the wrappings
to the bones below,
but Alejandro is still worried
about damaging the fragile remains.
Mummies are very delicate,
so you have to think that
they, they have been wrapped
more than 2,000 years ago,
so they might suffer damages.
Well, let's go.
Hello?
Inshallah.
We, yeah, yeah, yeah, we, we will arrive
in five, ten minutes maximum, okay?
Ooph.
We have to, to take this opportunity
to get as much information as possible,
so we will see.
Alejandro's night-time activities
have attracted the attention
of the local press.
I will ask to the journalists
please to leave to the specialists
to make their work.
Please, which one we
will start now, which one?
Yeah, this one.
Thank you, okay.
You're ready?
Yes.
The mummies are wrapped in cloth for
added protection inside the scanner.
It works by taking a series of
x-rays at different angles to create
a three-dimensional
image of the body.
We are just checking if
the scan was done right.
So far, very little
is known about these mummies,
like how they died,
and whether they were old or young.
Alejandro is trying to piece
together their identities,
hoping to discover any new clues
to make sense of their lives,
and ultimately, their deaths.
The first analysis of the body shows
that he was over 60 when he died.
So now I have to choose
who is going to be the next.
Okay? Let's go.
Well, now we have
something very interesting.
Interpreted that the mummy was going to
be a man, but it seems that it is a woman.
We didn't, we
didn't expect that.
As the final
body enters the scanner,
the archaeologists
spot something amazing.
Si.
We have amulets.
Together with the scarab,
a wing, winged scarab.
Sign of Horus.
Ah-ha.
The scan reveals an elaborate carved
amulet in the shape of a scarab beetle.
Funerary amulets were often used by the
elite to protect the soul of the deceased,
and the scarab beetle
symbolized rebirth.
The scarab was placed over the position
of the heart and often had spells
written on it.
These spells gave instructions to the
person's heart to help them during the
judgement of their soul.
It's the first time that I can see
them in the, in the position in,
in its position in the
body, so, exciting.
Out of the nine mummies
Alejandro's team have scanned,
this is the only one to have an
amulet still in its original position.
With such a precious find,
Alejandro can wrap up his night on a high.
Now it's 12:00 and,
hmm, I'm completely exhausted.
Thank you.
At Taposiris Magna,
Kathleen has received news about her
radar search for Cleopatra's tomb.
Today is the last day and the people
which are doing the, the radar,
they're bringing the result and
they just told me,
"we have great news for you."
So tell me what is
the good news we have?
- Possible chamber?
- Yes.
Wow. Yes. I'm going to cry.
Really, I'm trying to,
I'm so happy.
It could be anything buried there but
I feel it's, it's what I'm looking for.
Kathleen's scans reveal a thirty-foot-wide
cavity directly beneath the
entrance to the temple.
It would have taken ancient workers a monumental
effort to build, and if it's a tomb it
must be the tomb of
someone important.
This could be the perfect hiding place
for the last queen of Egypt, Cleopatra.
The tomb could hold her royal treasures,
and its discovery would be one of
the greatest finds in the
history of archaeology.
So the room is big, and this
Ten meters. - ,Ten meters long?
Wow. - Yeah.
For Kathleen, Cleopatra's lost
tomb could now be within her grasp.
I'm just really
excited and I'm touched.
This is something that is really important,
precious, something very precious they
tried to hide there.
So I think this is the
final stage of my search.
It's been an incredible season
for Kathleen and her workers,
but with her permit now expired,
she must secure the site and continue
her search for the chamber next year.
Next season I will come back.
This is the moment
that I was waiting for.
Now I know exactly
where to continue.
Captioned by Cotter
Captioning Services.