Lost Treasures of Egypt (2019) s01e05 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, 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 god.
And making discoveries that
could rewrite ancient history.
This time, new secrets about one
of Egypt's greatest rulers
Hey-ah-ho!
The pharaoh queen, Hatsheput.
Doctor Szafranski discovers buried
treasure at her magnificent temple
The Darnells uncover
how she formed a mysterious
double identity
to seize power
'For my beloved
daughter', not son.
And John and Maria unearth a
rare and intriguing statue.
Hold, hold, hold,
hold, hold, hold, hold.
Do you realize what you've
just pulled out of the sand?
Luxor, Egypt
A landscape strewn with ancient
ruins and magnificent temples
built for the great
pharaohs of Egypt.
Cut into the surrounding mountains
lies the finest temple of them all.
Its owner was a revolutionary,
a rare female pharaoh,
called Hatsheput.
Now archaeologists are searching
for clues to reveal more about this
enigmatic pharaoh queen.
Leading the hunt is Polish
archaeologist Dr. Zbigniew Szafranski.
The landscape is dominated by
Hatsheput’s immense temple,
constructed to commemorate
her reign as a pharaoh.
Ancient builders carved the site
directly into the towering rocky cliffs.
They built it in three
separate levels,
each one a terrace connected
by ramps over 100 feet long.
At the top, 26 statues of the god of the
underworld, Osiris, stand as guardians.
This masterpiece of ancient
architecture is the key
to the secrets of the
pharaoh queen Hatsheput.
It is an exceptional building.
The temple is unique in the history
of Egyptian architecture and in the
history of the
world architecture.
Dr. Szafranski and his team have
been excavating and restoring
Hatsheput’s temple for
the past 19 seasons.
Hi, hi, hi!
They are on a mission to piece
back together the temple ruins.
120 years ago,
legendary British
egyptologist Howard Carter
was part of the team that
excavated this site.
Much of the temple was
buried and badly damaged,
and little was known
about its owner.
Today, Dr. Szafranski continues working
to restore and rebuild the temple,
to reveal the secrets of the
pharaoh queen Hatsheput.
Hatsheput was only the second
woman to ever become a pharaoh,
and the first for
nearly 300 years.
The fearless queen oversaw military
campaigns to Egypt's Southern borders,
and claimed to have visited
the battlefield herself.
She built a fleet of
ships to sail the red sea
and re-established an
international trade network,
bringing back exotic
goods and riches.
Under Hatsheput, Egypt prospered
and she built giant monuments
across the country to show
that she was in control.
Hatsheput’s temple was just one of
around ten megastructures she built
during her 22 year reign.
Across the Nile she erected vast swathes
of a giant temple complex called Karnak,
and a 98 foot obelisk,
the largest standing in Egypt today.
But the extraordinary life of this
radical woman still poses many mysteries.
Now, archaeologists are
on the hunt for new clues.
80 miles south of her temple in Gebel,
El-Silsila, lies one of Hatsheput’s quarries.
Here, on the banks
of the Nile
What do you want, mate?
John ward and Maria
Nilsson from Lund university
are getting ready to
excavate at the quarry.
These lovely eggs.
Do you want some bread?
They want to investigate
how Hatsheput used the
quarry during her reign.
In dig season, they live on this
boat with their baby son Jonathan,
daughter Freya, and dog Carter.
What are you
going to do today, Freya?
Yeah?
When you're a little bit older you
can come over and help daddy, yeah?
Archaeology and Egypt itself has
been with me since I was a kid.
I knew from the beginning.
That I'm here now is no surprise
to family and friends back home.
The very day that I
gave birth to Jonathan
we were going through what
we actually needed on site.
We never stop,
it never stops for us.
- No.
- Even on Christmas day.
Guys, come on!
We're ready?
John and Maria have spent the last
ten seasons investigating this site,
used by Hatsheput.
Hatsheput was responsible for
removing hundreds of thousands of
tons of sandstone
from this quarry alone,
let alone the other quarries
across the whole landscape.
With evidence
of over 10,000 years of
human activity across
15 square miles,
it's one of the largest
archaeological sites in Egypt.
Here, the couple is excavating
an abandoned statue.
They want to know if it
belonged to Hatsheput.
Good morning sphinx-y.
An unfinished,
ram-headed sphinx.
It's a unique find.
It is.
The sphinx is a mythical
beast modeled on a lion,
but with the head of a human.
Others were carved with the head of a
ram, and are known as criosphinxes.
They act as guardians,
protecting the entrances to
pyramids, temples,
and sacred sites.
It's thought that Hatsheput
started the greatest display
of sphinxes known
to ancient Egypt,
an Avenue of sphinxes,
enhanced over the centuries,
stretching nearly two miles
between the great temples
of Luxor and Karnak.
It's absolutely amazing, it's one of
those dreams to, to work with this
kind of monumental statue.
Let's go there.
John and Maria need to dig out
the buried sphinx to confirm
where this statue
was meant to go.
They set to work to see
what lies beneath the sand.
Guys!
120 miles from Luxor, in
Aswan, lies Qubbet El-Hawa.
This site is a densely occupied
necropolis of around 100 ancient tombs.
Some have never been opened and
hold secrets to how the necropolis
was being used during
Hatsheput’s time.
It's amazing.
Archaeologist Martina Bardonová is
part of a Spanish team preparing
to open up one of the
unexplored tombs.
When I was about 15 I read
about archaeology in Egypt,
then I completely fall in love.
Martina wants to excavate inside a
new, unopened tomb, but before
she can get to it she needs to clear
a pathway through the sand outside.
Everything is covered.
I'm thinking about which
was to take off the sand.
The basic problem here.
Strong desert winds have blown
sand in front of the tomb entrance.
But after just
an hour clearing a path,
the team makes a discovery
that could put a halt
to everything.
Aah!
A member of Martina’s team has found
parts of a body hidden in the sand.
These human
remains appear to be ancient.
It's, basically it's so fragile
when, when you touch it or when you,
when even the sand around
moves it's just falling apart.
We can put wet toilet paper
because otherwise the bones crack.
Yeah.
Martina needs to find out why
this body is outside the tomb,
and find any clues that will help
her to put a date on the burial.
As she clears away the sand, the bones
reveal something even more unusual.
It looks like a
child, it might be a child.
In the quarry
at Gebel El-Silsila,
John and Maria are excavating
what could be one of
Hatsheput’s sphinxes.
Come and get your apples and pears
now, come and get them!
This is my archaeological
field box,
it's a little bit heavy,
but this is the prototype.
A new version will come next season I
hope, which will be lighter.
At the moment we've just got a nice stony
layer on top which goes for the first two to
three centimeters, then beneath that if
I stick my little magical tool inside
and then withdraw it,
it's full of that,
which to the untrained
eye is just black powder,
actually that's iron filings from the
chisels of the quarrymen of these quarries.
The sand still today contains
a memory of all that work
that took place here
thousands of years ago.
The sand even holds clues about
what the workers had for lunch.
Fish bones.
Someone could've had a nice meal
down by the belly of the sphinx.
As work continues,
the team unearths something
remarkable from
under the sphinx.
Hold, hold, hold,
hold, hold, hold, hold!
No, no, no, no, no!
Stand there, stand there.
Hahahahaha!
Do you realize what
he's just pulled out?
A small sphinx!
Oh wow!
That is absolutely beautiful.
A small criosphinx.
There's the two haunches,
there's the head, there's the head,
there's the body,
here's the body.
What a discovery, I mean
it's fantastic, it really is.
Wow.
Isn't she beautiful?
Large sphinx statues
are seen throughout Egypt,
but a miniature on this
scale is one of a kind
Meet the child.
And must be recorded by the dig
inspector, Khaled Shawky.
Khaled is supervising the dig to report
any finds back to the Egyptian government.
This is amazing.
This is very wonderful.
Personally, I
think it's a model.
Was it the son or the child, possibly,
or the apprentice, copying the master,
the master's making
the real thing.
This is a copy, yes, I think so.
And he's making a copy.
You've got the horn here.
I see that, yes.
For that,
but this side is broken off. Yeah.
He's gone in there
and he's gone whack!
I see that.
And the whole, boom!
And that's probably
why it was discarded.
John thinks the miniature
was carved out for practice.
- Fantastic.
- Brilliant, well done.
It's an astonishing find.
Find me another one, guys.
At Hatsheput’s
temple, Dr. Szafranski is
investigating the paintings
she left on the walls.
The imagery holds clues to Hatsheput’s life,
and reveals a family power struggle with
her nephew, who was also her
stepson, Thutmose the third.
Here we see
Hatsheput and behind her
we have a figure
of Thutmose III.
We have two kings.
Images etched into these walls
reveal the story of Hatsheput’s
extraordinary rise to power.
She was the first-born
of a royal family,
but tradition dictated that only
men could become the pharaoh.
So power was granted
to her infant stepson.
But after seven years
of acting as his aid,
Hatsheput made an
unprecedented move for power;
she overtook her stepson,
and proclaimed that she
was now the king of Egypt.
We see on the walls of this
temple there are two kings,
but Hatsheput is
always number one.
Hatsheput’s power
play was revolutionary.
Now, Dr. Szafranski is
searching for new evidence
to piece together
her mysterious life.
In the ruins next to
Hatsheput’s temple,
the team has discovered a
ring of ancient mud bricks.
We're on the top of something,
now we'll go deeper
and see what is inside.
They think artifacts
could be buried here,
but after a day of digging,
progress comes to a halt.
A one-ton block of sandstone is precariously
balanced on top of the mud bricks.
If the block falls, it could destroy
any treasures buried beneath.
Dr. Szafranski's team has no
heavy-lifting equipment on site,
so they have to improvise.
Hey-ah-ho!
If they can't move the
block they won't be able
to find out what's
hidden beneath.
Hey-ah-ho!
50 miles from Hatsheput’s
temple, in El Kab,
Yale university
professor John Darnell
and his wife, egyptologist
Dr. Colleen Darnell,
are beginning their season.
They're using digital technology
to record ancient rock inscriptions
to figure out how
hieroglyphic writing began.
I want to be absolutely certain
that we have beak as it should be,
and that we have this here
crest as it should be.
Hm-mm.
The pair has spent over 20 years exploring
the deserts and temples of Egypt,
to interpret these
ancient carvings.
During dig season, they analyze
their findings for publication
here at their home.
This is about as spectacular
of an expedition house,
a dig house, as you can
have anywhere in the world.
The view of the Nile, the
mud brick architecture,
it's really a dream come true.
These are about 90 years old, linen,
it's pretty remarkable that it survived
so it's fun to play archaeology
with clothing as well.
I have a 1920s
jodhpur and suit set,
and a fun pair of
19-teens knickers.
Today, the couple
is heading across the Nile,
to investigate a mysterious
set of inscriptions.
There's just no duplicate for looking
at the inscriptions themselves
on the actual monuments within
these great architectural settings.
Their destination
is Karnak temple.
Its beautiful chapels and decorated
courtyards cover a massive site.
Here many great pharaohs,
including Hatsheput, left their Mark.
But there's a mystery:
Despite being female,
Hatsheput is often
depicted as a man.
So here we see
Hatsheput and Thutmose III
and they're wearing identical
crowns, broad collars,
starched kilts, so if you were
to approach this wall without
being able to read the hieroglyphs you
wouldn't be able to tell who is who.
Throughout the
site, Hatsheput continually
represents herself
with male features.
She's wearing a male kilt,
and even the pharaonic beard.
But hidden in
the hieroglyphic text,
Colleen finds evidence
of her real gender.
Here we have
the female indication
of her gender within the text.
'For my beloved
daughter', not son.
They know that this is a woman in the
role for which most of the iconography
and most of the
terms are masculine.
So the Egyptians are aware of this
and, and they work with it.
Evidence on
a temple wall reveals
Hatsheput wasn't
hiding her femininity,
she was proving
she was a pharaoh.
A fake beard was a way to show a
connection with the god Osiris.
Even male pharaohs wore
an artificial beard.
But other items she wore
were also reserved for men,
like the famous headdress,
the nemes, and the kilt.
But she transformed herself
with these symbols of power
to strengthen her image
across the kingdom.
Hatsheput dressed not as
a man, but as a pharaoh.
Hatsheput blurred her gender
to be considered equal,
but how equal was society
for women in ancient Egypt?
Near Hatsheput’s temple,
in a tomb site called Dra" Abu El-Naga
Take one side out of the corridor
with the human remains on the edge.
Archaeologist Suzanne Onstine,
and her team from the university of
Memphis, are investigating the roles
of women in ancient Egyptian society.
One of the things that I
really focused on in my career
was what were women doing,
what were women's lives like.
Every time I come to work here I feel really
excited because there's no better feeling or
job satisfaction really.
It's Suzanne's tenth season excavating
this tomb, but it's still packed with the
body parts of men, women,
and mummified children.
Torn apart by ancient looters, the team
must piece the human remains back together.
This is skull fragments.
Not everybody feels comfortable
working with the dead,
but this is my job in
terms of bringing light to
ancient Egypt and bringing
light to individuals.
No that one's spines.
It's a pelvis.
Right now we're organizing the human
remains, we have hundreds, thousands
and thousands of bones, and so keeping
track of them is a bit complicated.
I think, Jesus,
penises or packets?
- This is
- Probably penis.
- Hmm.
- Yeah?
This is probably penis,
this is probably packet.
Packet, okay.
Too big to be penis.
Yeah.
There's a lot of
shrinkage in the afterlife.
We found several of these mummified
pieces, some of them are packets of the,
the organs that were placed back
inside, occasionally one is a
penis that has been
detached from a body.
Even king tut lost his penis, it actually
had just sort of fallen down into the
sarcophagus nearby,
but somebody noticed it was gone one day
and there was a big situation
looking for king tut's penis.
Handling these intimate body
parts is not for the fainthearted,
but combing through the pieces,
Suzanne makes a dramatic discovery.
She was probably about 20 years
old and I'm inclined to think
nearly 100% that she died
as a result of childbirth.
At the necropolis in Aswan,
Martina is unearthing the remains of a
buried child outside the tomb entrance.
You can see quite well he's
very tiny and very fragile.
If I compare it with my four years old
niece, so she's like that, that big.
It's emotional because you
know it's, it's a child.
Child mortality
was high in ancient Egypt,
but it's rare to find them buried
and preserved at this necropolis.
Whenever you find
some it's, it's something.
The team must move the bones of the
child to get access to the tomb.
But as they clear the area,
they find something else
staring up from
beneath the sand.
Aah!
Oh my god.
Martina's team has just uncovered an
ancient face mask made of cartonnage.
The mask covers the head of an
adult mummy buried outside the tomb,
but the team must strengthen it with
resin before they can attempt to move it.
This precious cartonnage mask was meant
to help ensure a successful afterlife.
The cartonnage should help the
team reveal who these bodies are,
and when they date from.
But strong winds are on the way,
and the team must work fast.
120 miles north
And just hold it for a minute.
American archaeologist Suzanne
Onstine is piecing together the
remains of women and children.
This child right
here is really very touching.
His face is still preserved.
She's searching for clues
to their roles in society,
around the time of Hatsheput.
She's found dramatic evidence of
one individual's life, and death.
The vagina is the hole
here, still very distended,
so we know that within 24 hours of
giving birth and passing a child
that she died, because
otherwise the vagina
would've shrank back to its
original anatomical position.
So to find real evidence for something
that is sort of commonly spoken about,
that childbirth is a really dangerous
time for women in antiquity,
really kind of unique in
a very dramatic fashion.
The mortal dangers
of childbirth are clear,
but Suzanne believes women
still held positions of power.
Just looking at the,
the paintings we have evidence for them
participating in all
levels of society.
The scenes throughout really
emphasize their sort of equal stature.
But the female pharaoh Hatsheput
wanted to be more than just equal.
In the ancient quarry at Silsila,
while John continues to dig out the sphinx,
Maria is investigating the site for evidence
of Hatsheput’s mass building campaign.
Inside a temple at the quarry, the carved
relief scenes on the walls have been changed.
The reliefs that we see on the walls
now are not the original scenes.
If we start to look closer,
in fact what we can see here
are the tell-tale
signs underneath
of an original scene
that is no longer here.
We can see a ship
transporting an obelisk.
The ghost images hidden in
the wall reveal how Hatsheput
may have been shipping
obelisks from Silsila.
Hatsheput was famous
for her supersized
320 ton obelisk cut from
granite further south,
but lifting it upright would stretch
the limits of ancient engineering.
Builders dragged the obelisk up a ramp, and
then carefully dug away the earth beneath,
until the base hit the
foundations in the rock.
Finally, an army of builders used ropes
to pull this monumental obelisk upright.
It's putting it all together, I,
it's, it's, making a full circle.
We have the beautiful golden
sandstone, we've got the,
the workers actually during
the time of Hatsheput.
I personally love working with queens and
female pharaohs so for me it's wonderful.
Hatsheput may have been
shipping obelisks from Silsila,
but what was driving her to
build these colossal monuments?
At the Karnak temple,
John and Colleen Darnell think the answer
lies on Hatsheput’s
giant obelisk itself.
It's majesty
of this noble god
Who has made for her father
She addresses future generations
and literally tells us that people
who shall come generation after
generation will know why she did this.
She's doing this for deep
purposes of religious devotion.
But on the flipside when you look up at the
obelisk some of the largest hieroglyphs are
the name of Hatsheput herself, so this
is a giant statement of propaganda,
I mean there's, there's no missing
the fact that this is a projection
on a monumental scale
of pharaonic power.
Hatsheput built these monuments to
immortalize her name, not as a woman,
but as one of the greatest
pharaohs of Egypt.
Beside Hatsheput’s temple,
Dr. Szafranski and the team need to move a
one-ton sandstone block so
they can excavate underneath.
Hey-ah-ho!
Mabruk!
Mabruk, I think
we're almost there.
Hey-ah-ho!
With the block finally moved,
they can begin to dig
through the sand layers.
Underneath the temple ruins,
the team has unearthed
ancient fragments of pottery.
I think we have
the first complete pot.
Look at that.
Yeah, the whole pot.
Wonderful huh?
Isn't that nice?
We are very excited
and happy because nobody maybe
except ancient Egyptian
were seeing this before.
These small clues could help Dr. Szafranski
unravel the mysterious events
after Hatsheput’s death.
When she died around the age of 50,
her stepson, king Thutmose the third,
finally regained his power.
And higher up the cliff, Dr. Szafranski
sees evidence of his temple.
It was not possible to build a
bigger temple than the temple of
Hatsheput, but it was higher.
Hatsheput’s immense temple took
up the prime spot in the mountain
of the valley of the kings.
So Thutmose the third built his temple right
next to it, but in an elevated position.
Ancient builders constructed huge
columns on top of a raised platform.
Dr. Szafranski's team has figured out
what this temple would've looked like and
discovered its upper terrace was
11 feet higher than Hatsheput’s,
a political powerplay by Thutmose to
finally overshadow his stepmother.
It was better visible,
point number one in the valley.
He wanted this effect.
Thutmose had tried to upstage
Hatsheput, but in a twist of fate,
ancient earthquakes and landslides
have left his temple badly damaged.
It may never look as it once did,
but Dr. Szafranski and his team
are working to restore
what remains.
Today we have restored temple of
Hatsheput but after let's say five, ten
years we'll have restored
temple of Thutmose III as well.
It's only a matter of time.
In Aswan, Martina and the team
are finishing their
excavations outside the tomb.
Tired?
No, no, no.
No, no, not tired.
They've managed to move the
bones and delicate cartonnage
into the onsite lab.
From studying the decorative style,
Martina believes these burials dated to
a few hundred years before
the time of Hatsheput,
in a period called
the middle kingdom.
We know that it's
a middle kingdom date,
the cartonnage was
really well done,
it was high quality work,
and we know that they were
let's say higher status persons.
Martina thinks the child and adult
burials are a family connection
to whoever owned the tomb,
but her team must continue
to unearth the secrets of
who or what is hidden inside.
It's going to be amazing to
see finally how it looks like.
After a grueling few days,
the team heads back to the dig house.
In the quarry at Silsila
- Ahmed!
- Yes?
John ward is still
excavating what could be the
remains of one of
Hatsheput’s sphinxes.
What I've got is basically a
dressed piece of sandstone,
and I can feel a nice
right angle corner here.
What I'm hoping actually that is, is the top
part of the head here, which is missing.
One, two, three.
Hold, hold, hold, hold.
Hold, hold.
Hold! Up!
And turn him over.
Turn him over.
Shuay, shuay, shuay.
The head of the sphinx.
So now we have a complete
sphinx as far as I'm concerned.
Both Maria and I do not consider this a
job, this is life, Silsila is our life,
these guys are our family,
and it's mankind's history.
All started here.
After a long, hot dig,
John can finally show Maria the enormity
of what they've unearthed.
Oh wow.
The abandoned sphinx statue
is nearly ten feet high.
Wow!
This is just silly.
Why on earth is it still here?
It's the largest
they've seen at the quarry.
As far as I know there's
no records whatsoever of
any unfinished sphinx
that is intact like this.
It's in such good
condition, it's a mystery
why this giant statue
was abandoned.
It's possible a small fracture in the
stone could have stopped the work.
But John and Maria still want to find
out where this sphinx was destined to go.
So we need to now look at all the
sphinxes, the sphinx Avenue of Hatsheput,
Karnak's, find out where
we have one of this size.
You're looking at over five
ton there, if not more.
It really is.
Wow.
At the magnificent Karnak temple,
Hatsheput began construction of the
Avenue of the sphinxes.
Some statues have been moved,
damaged, or have even disappeared,
but hundreds still remain
across the temple site.
How do you want to tackle this?
John and Maria ward have come to
Karnak to try and find a match
for the sphinx they've
discovered back at the quarry.
Our tail goes further along the back
paw, then sweeps round.
These don't look big
enough at the front.
As well as matching the style,
the couple is looking for black specks,
called "inclusions," within
the sandstone itself.
If we can find those black inclusions,
the little black dots, then we know that
it's from, most probably
from the same quarry.
From the same quarry, hmm.
And from the same period.
I'm not seeing any.
These so far do
not show any such marks.
No, I think we need to
explore a little bit further.
There's no sign of a matching sphinx
on the Avenue outside the temple walls,
but hidden inside the temple
they find another style.
They, they are different,
Maria, they are different.
That haunch
Yeah.
Look at the belly cut.
I would agree.
And look, look at the front,
see the, the girth of the neck
I would agree.
Coming down and
that would, the paws
And, and you've
got the black inclusions.
Black inclusions.
Wow! There we have it!
Although damaged, the couple is certain
these sphinxes came from Silsila.
At Silsila they haven't
been finished, they're,
they're still in
their raw state.
They would've been
transported to here.
The evidence suggests John and
Maria's sphinx would've made a
remarkable journey, carved
out at the quarry
Shipped 100 miles down the Nile
and placed at Karnak temple.
I'm feeling very proud,
I feel like a proud father.
These are our children,
this is from Silsila.
Everything, bit by bit by bit,
has culminated in this one moment.
Bang. The sphinx.
By Hatsheput’s
temple, Dr. Szafranski and
the team continue
their excavation.
Look at that treasure,
it's filled with content.
And the pot
looks like new kingdom.
They have unearthed ancient pottery,
and food buried in the ground.
These were gifts to the gods, offerings
made when the temple was first built.
It's a very important
piece in this puzzle.
Bit by bit, each of
these small finds is helping
to unearth the secrets
of this magnificent site.
Dr. Szafranski has dedicated his life
to revealing the legacy of Hatsheput,
the incredible pharaoh queen.
Hatsheput was a leader,
a politician, and a revolutionary
the likes of which the
world had never seen.
Against all odds, Hatsheput
Rose to become a pharaoh,
and through her
magnificent temple,
she is remembered once again.
Captioned by Cotter
Captioning Services.