Lost Treasures of Egypt (2019) s02e05 Episode Script

1
NARRATOR: Egypt, the richest
source of archaeological
treasures on the planet.
MAN: Oh, wow!
Look at that.
NARRATOR: Hidden beneath
this desert landscape lie the
secrets of this ancient civilization.
(speaking native language)
ALEJANDRO (off-screen): I have
never seen something like this.
NARRATOR: Now, for a full
season of excavations,
our cameras have been given
unprecedented access to follow
teams on the front line of archaeology.
MYRIAM: This is the
most critical moment.
(shouting)
NARRATOR: Revealing
buried treasures.
SALIMA: Oh!
AHMED: We were lucky today.
NOZOMU: Wow! Lots of mummies.
KATHLEEN: The
smell is horrible!
NARRATOR: And making
discoveries that could rewrite
ancient history.
JOHN: We've never had
the proof until now.
COLLEEN: This is
where it all started.
ALEJANDRO: My goodness,
I never expected this.
(applause)
NARRATOR: This time Anna goes
in search of one of Egypt's
most enigmatic queens, Nefertiti.
ANNA: If she wasn't buried
here, where was she buried?
(shouting)
NARRATOR: Mohamed searches
for the lost wife of a noble.
MOHAMED: If we are
lucky we will have her.
NARRATOR: An ancient cemetery
reveals a startling find.
SAYED: You see something
like this before ever?
FATHI: No.
NARRATOR: And John and
Maria uncover the secrets of
Nefertiti's great Empire.
MARIA: Wow, this is beautiful.
NARRATOR: Egypt, land
of the mighty pharaohs,
buried in monumental tombs
with dazzling treasures.
But among these great Kings
and Queens, some are missing,
including one of the most
iconic of all, Nefertiti.
How did one of the most
powerful women in the ancient
world vanish from history?
In the heart of Egypt lies
the ancient site of Amarna.
Here, archaeologist Dr. Anna
Stevens has spent nearly two
decades unearthing the secrets
of a ruined city and its
captivating Queen.
ANNA: We've left the riverside
city of ancient Amarna behind,
and we're traveling
through the low desert,
heading out to the cliffs
that border ancient Amarna.
NARRATOR: Anna heads for the
royal tomb of Nefertiti's
husband, pharaoh Akhenaten.
The king's burial chamber is
badly damaged by flooding,
but it is another chamber that
Anna has come to investigate.
ANNA: It's so prominent that
you'd have to think it belongs
to a suitably prominent member
of the Amarna royal family.
NARRATOR: She searches
for any sign of Nefertiti's whereabouts.
The walls of a royal tomb
should be covered in elaborate carvings,
but here are
only rough chisel marks on bare rock.
ANNA (off-screen): It's
completely unfinished;
it's not suitable for
the burial of a queen.
NARRATOR: The tomb is
half-built and abandoned.
ANNA (off-screen): It hasn't
taken a royal burial.
If she wasn't buried here,
the question is, of course,
where was she buried?
NARRATOR: These ruins were
once a vast city from which
Nefertiti and Akhenaten ruled
over their great empire.
Nestling on the East bank of the Nile,
Nefertiti's capital city
covered over 3,000 acres and
was home to up to 50,000 people.
What is now barren landscape
was once one of the greatest
cities in the ancient world,
and from these palaces and
temples, the royal couple
ruled over all of Egypt.
She doesn't appear to be buried here.
But does this place hold clues
to the fate of the missing Queen?
Nefertiti is famous today because of this
iconic bust of her.
She has one of the most
well-known faces in all
of ancient Egypt.
ANNA (off-screen): This is about the
spot that the bust was actually found.
We're in the house and the
workshop of a sculptor who was
probably called Thutmose.
ANNA (off-screen): This is where
the Nefertiti bust was originally created.
It's one version of
Nefertiti's official portrait.
She may herself have
signed off on this image.
ANNA (off-screen): But really we have
no idea what she'd look like in real life.
NARRATOR: Nefertiti's early
life is also still a mystery.
Her father was probably
Ay, vizier to Pharaoh Amenhotep the third,
so she would have
been brought up in a Royal palace.
By the age of just 15, she
married Amenhotep's second
son, the new pharaoh Akhenaten,
and bore him six daughters.
As his queen, Nefertiti became
the most powerful woman in
all of Egypt.
Yet Nefertiti's ultimate
fate remains a mystery that
occupies archaeologists all over Egypt.
200 miles south along the Nile, at Luxor,
lies the necropolis of Asasif,
a vast cemetery where
Egypt's rich and powerful
were buried around the time of Nefertiti.
Site director Fathi Yaseen and
his team are about to excavate
a hidden burial shaft.
FATHI: It's too early to say
exactly the date for this site
NARRATOR: Fathi runs one of
the busiest archaeological
digs in Egypt, with up
to 100 workers shifting sand every day.
Sayed Mohamed is one of his most
experienced archaeologists.
SAYED: Our site
is a very big site
Asasif, we call it the most important site
Maybe there's something here
Like treasure!
NARRATOR: This ancient
cemetery is full of artifacts.
SAYED: All this debris
is from the ancient time
All we found, look, is this pottery
It's ancient pottery
NARRATOR: Most of the finds
are from the same era
as Nefertiti.
(speaking native language)
NARRATOR: Ancient objects
of ceramic and stone
are common here.
But this seems to be made of wood.
FATHI: Maybe it's a statue
a wooden statue
but it is not clear
It is human face
NARRATOR: A wooden face
looks up from the sand.
The mystery object could
be a wooden mask or statue.
They must try to free it from the ground.
SAYED: It's ropes, ropes
FATHI: Wow!
NARRATOR: The rope
seems to wrap around it.
FATHI: What do
you think, is it original?
FATHI: Wow!
SAYED: Oh.
SAYED: This is the first time we
see something like this, ropes
SAYED (off-screen): Yeah.
FATHI: What do you think?
HANAN: Coffin
FATHI: Coffin?
We hope
NARRATOR: Coffin
finds are rare,
particularly ones dating back
to the time of Nefertiti.
But whatever it is in the
ground, its quite large.
FATHI: Here you can see
it's a coffin, not a statue
SAYED: We are lucky today
NARRATOR: This is
no ordinary burial.
Only one in 20 people
could afford a coffin
in ancient Egypt.
FATHI: You can see here,
there is another rope
It's very exciting.
NARRATOR: The rope, made
from twisted palm leaves,
is tied around the feet.
(clapping)
SAYED: We are the first
people to see this something
I'm very happy
NARRATOR: For Sayed, the
ropes can only mean one thing.
SAYED: You've got the
ropes to close something
of course there is something inside
mummy, or someone
NARRATOR: If the coffin
does have a mummy in it,
it could date back to Nefertiti's time.
100 miles south, at Gebel El-Silsila.
JOHN: Everybody here?
NARRATOR: It's 7 AM.
Husband and wife team Maria
Nilsen and John Ward set
course for the ancient
sandstone pits that pharaohs
quarried for their great
monuments, statues, temples,
and palaces.
MARIA: Good morning, John!
JOHN: Good morning.
It's early in the morning, I
haven't had enough coffee yet.
NARRATOR: Akhenaten and
Nefertiti opened several
quarries here.
JOHN: Gebel El-Silsila's
golden sandstone was revered
and required by all the pharaohs.
NARRATOR: John and Maria hope
to discover important clues
about what Akhenaten and
Nefertiti were building
at the time.
The size of the gallery shows
the scale of excavation.
JOHN: People don't realize
the sheer magnitude.
This one pillar alone
is monumentally huge,
and this supports the roof above me.
NARRATOR: Before they can
investigate the clues here,
they must clear the thick layer of sand.
JOHN: Jenna.
MARIA: It's always a good
start when our workers
describe it as heaven!
JOHN: So, clean, clean, clean,
clean, clean, clean, clean,
clean, clean, down on the floor.
Clean, clean, clean, clean,
clean, onto the floor.
MARIA (off-screen):
It's gonna be dirty.
NARRATOR: As they
clear the floor,
John makes a surprising discovery.
JOHN: Hey!
Guess what I got?
MARIA: You've got
to be kidding me!
JOHN (off-screen):
You ready for this?
MARIA (off-screen): Yeah.
NARRATOR: Beneath the
sand on the quarry floor,
John thinks he's found a
clue to how ancient Egyptians
quarried stone here.
JOHN: What would they
have used to get such straight lines?
MARIA (off-screen): You haven't?
JOHN (off-screen): Both hands.
A plumb bob.
Amazing!
MARIA: That's our first. That's.
JOHN (off-screen):
Our first plumb bob.
You just think, that's been
laying there since Akhenaten
closed the quarry!
NARRATOR: This plumb bob is
a worker's tool dropped over
3,000 years ago.
JOHN: That would
have had the cord on,
and they would have been able
to get the straight line.
This is our first one at
Silsila, and it is beautiful!
NARRATOR: Nearby, Maria wants
to analyze an inscription
she's found carved on the rock.
Her keen eye has spotted
faint traces of ancient ink.
MARIA (off-screen): You've got
lines of text here and here.
NARRATOR: She thinks she can
decode the markings to link
the quarry directly back to Akhenaten,
but here he uses a different name.
MARIA: It is the
time of Amenhotep IV,
before he turned into Akhenaten.
NARRATOR: Amenhotep the
fourth was his original name.
But it is more than just a change of name.
Early in his reign, he
created a new identity,
transforming himself into Akhenaten.
He also imposed a change
of religion upon Egypt.
For more than a millennium the
Ancient Egyptians worshipped a
pantheon of gods and goddesses.
Their ruler was Amun-Ra, whom
Egypt's ruling priests revered
as the King of the Gods.
Pharaoh Amenhotep outlawed
worship of Amun-Ra and closed
down his temples.
Across Egypt, he erased the
old gods and replaced them
with a single deity, the Sun God, Aten.
The only human figures left,
bathing in the Sun God's rays,
were Amenhotep, now
transformed into Akhenaten and
his queen, Nefertiti.
On the faded inscription in the quarry,
Maria spots another detail.
MARIA (off-screen): You've
got the Sun disc here.
NARRATOR: The Sun, the
god of the new religion,
alongside Akhenaten's earlier name.
MARIA: Clearly an early
sign of the Aten worship.
We can't find anything
similar to this anywhere
else in Egypt.
It's the earliest one that we have.
We haven't published it
yet, it's on its way.
NARRATOR: This discovery dates
the quarry to the early reign
of Akhenaten and Nefertiti,
but it doesn't solve the
mystery of why they were
quarrying so much stone.
What were they making?
400 miles north at
Saqqara, husband and wife
archaeologists Mohamed Megahed
and Hana Vymazalova are back
for another season of excavation.
(speaking native language)
NARRATOR: Last year, they made
an astonishing rare discovery,
a tomb dating back over 4,000 years,
in pristine condition.
MOHAMED (off-screen): The
day we enter the tomb,
it was unforgettable day for all of us.
NARRATOR: It belongs
to a man called Khuwy,
a high official of Pharaoh
Djedkhare who lived
1,000 years before Nefertiti.
Khuwy may even be a member
of the royal family.
It's a spectacular find,
but there's a mystery.
MOHAMED: Usually, ancient
Egyptians were buried with
their wives in their tombs.
MOHAMED (off-screen): In our
case, we have only Khuwy.
NARRATOR: Khuwy's wife should
be buried with her husband,
but she isn't.
She is missing, just like Nefertiti,
and Mohamed wants to find her.
MOHAMED: It means we
will be looking for perhaps similar tomb,
maybe much bigger tomb,
the same quality of reliefs
for his wife.
NARRATOR: Her tomb
should be as magnificent
as Khuwy's itself.
MOHAMED: Why people love
Egypt and love ancient Egypt?
Because it's full of secrets and magic.
For example, Queen Nefertiti,
her tomb was never found.
NARRATOR: Family members from
this time are generally buried
close together, so Khuwy's
wife must be nearby.
MOHAMED (off-screen): We still
need to go a little bit deeper in the west
side to make sure that there
is no other entrance for a
corridor, or we have to look
around for another shaft
in the mastaba.
NARRATOR: A mastaba is a
massive flat-topped structure
that ancient Egyptians built over tombs.
Digging deeper, Mohamed finds
a possible clue to another
entrance, the pure white rock
finish of the mastaba changes
to a different kind of rock.
MOHAMED: This is
the white, nice,
limestone and in the bottom
it's completely local
limestone, exactly like
the entrance of Khuwy.
NARRATOR: Local limestone
surrounds the entrance
to Khuwy's tomb.
The same stone here could mark
another entrance to his
wife's burial chamber.
MOHAMED (off-screen): So the plan
for today is to clear it all, go deeper,
reach the floor.
We hope to find something, and
you never know what the sands
of Egypt might hide.
NARRATOR: Could the team be on
the brink of another major discovery?
NARRATOR: Mohamed found
Khuwy's tomb last year.
It dates to a time called the Old Kingdom,
1,000 years before Nefertiti.
The tomb of Khuwy's missing
wife could be every bit as
spectacular as her husband's.
MOHAMED (off-screen): This is one
of the most important and interesting
tomb in Old Kingdom.
NARRATOR: The scenes help
Khuwy on his journey
to the afterlife.
An offering wall gives
instructions for 95 different
offering rituals, jars
of beer, bread, meat.
MOHAMED: There is no
mention for the wife because
everything underground here is for Khuwy.
NARRATOR: She is not
with him on the walls,
but she is family.
Her tomb shouldn't be far away.
Outside, Mohamed's own wife, Hana,
is also helping in the
search for Khuwy's wife.
HANA (off-screen): We hope that
we might find Khuwy's wife.
At the moment we are in
the area which is directly
opposite to the entrance to the tomb.
NARRATOR: They
must dig carefully,
as the sand is full of ancient fragments.
Each one could be a vital clue.
These are not just
bones, it looks like a complete skeleton.
Has Hana discovered Khuwy's wife?
At Gebel El-Silsila John and
Maria are on a mission to find
the purpose of the quarry.
The stone could reveal
important clues about
Akhenaten and Nefertiti's
building projects,
and the ambition of their reign.
MARIA (off-screen):
Wow! This is beautiful.
Look at the block work.
You can see perfect talatat blocks.
NARRATOR: As workers
clear the area,
they reveal evidence of a
building innovation that
Akhenaten and Nefertiti pioneered.
MARIA (off-screen): Here
we got a small block,
they divided it into two and
at the end of that you'll have
two perfect talatat blocks.
JOHN: They're ready to come
through here aren't they?
MARIA: Yeah, exactly.
NARRATOR: These small
blocks, called talatat,
could be quarried quicker
and built with faster.
JOHN (off-screen): This is from
the period of Akhenaten where
everything's changed.
We've gone from massive one
ton block down to the small,
minuscule talatat, which
is famous for Akhenaten.
It only weighed 60 kilograms.
You could carry it on your shoulder.
NARRATOR: John and Maria have
solved the mystery of what
Akhenaten and Nefertiti quarried here.
It was talatat, key to
an ambitious plan and an
important clue that they began
a huge construction program,
including the building of
their new capital, Amarna.
Using the newly-invented talatat blocks,
the city rose from the
desert in record time.
Akhenaten built a lavish
palace for himself and
Nefertiti in the center
and two vast temples.
Thousands gathered here to
worship the sun god Aten as
the sun moved east to west.
Spread around the outside were
hundreds of stone tables for
lavish offerings to their God.
This monumental complex gave
Akhenaten and Nefertiti total
control over religion in Egypt.
But the city's most famous
resident, Queen Nefertiti,
is missing.
Could the city itself
hold clues to her fate?
At Amarna, Anna heads beyond
the city limits to investigate
a cemetery for Amana's elite.
Tombs, richly decorated with
pictures of the king and
queen, might still reveal vital evidence.
The royal couple seem to
be in a land of paradise.
They ride their chariots.
They hand out gifts to
their adoring crowds,
and make lavish offerings
to the Sun god, the Aten.
ANNA: What's really lovely
here is that you can see that
one of the Aten rays extends to Akhenaten,
the symbol of life, the Ankh.
So the Aten is providing
the king with life.
NARRATOR: So, did the
couple live out their lives
in this utopia?
The idyllic scenes also
bear marks of violence.
ANNA: The faces of the king
and queen seem to have been
deliberately hacked out.
ANNA (off-screen): It's actually
being done to obliterate their image.
NARRATOR: Nefertiti and
Akhenaten's great religious
revolution has been destroyed.
NARRATOR: Anna finds more
evidence that Akhenaten and
Nefertiti's revolution ends
with a backlash against them.
ANNA: There were deliberate
attempts to forget
Akhenaten's reign.
He was essentially erased
from Egyptian history.
NARRATOR: Nefertiti's fate
during this time of trouble
is a mystery.
Akhenaten and Nefertiti
ruled for 17 years.
But when the pharaoh died,
the unpopular religion that he
imposed on Egypt crumbled.
People of Egypt returned to
the old traditional gods that
Akhenaten had banned.
The enemies of the Aten
religion set out to destroy
every memory of the king and queen.
Their revenge on Akhenaten
was to attempt to rub him
out of history.
But what happened to Nefertiti?
ANNA: This is still
part of the tomb.
It's completely unfinished,
presumably because the city
was abandoned.
The king had died.
Everyone had to uproot, leave the city.
Akhenaten's vision ultimately failed.
NARRATOR: In the heat of this
crisis, where was the queen?
ANNA: One of the
big questions is,
What happened to Nefertiti?
ANNA (off-screen): If she
was still living after Akhenaten's death,
she can't have stayed on
at Amarna very much longer.
Where did she go?
What happened to Nefertiti?
NARRATOR: In Luxor,
Egyptologist Chris Naunton is
also on the trail of the missing queen.
He has come to the ancient city of Thebes,
where Nefertiti was born,
to the tomb of a priest.
CHRIS: This is normally closed
to the public so he's having
to take the seal off and then
we'll be able to go inside.
NARRATOR: In the tomb, he
wants to find clues to what
might have happened to Nefertiti following
Akhenaten's death.
In his final years, did
the king replace her with
a new queen?
Or did she remain his great royal wife,
but flee into hiding after he died?
Was Nefertiti assassinated
following Akhenaten's death,
or did she continue as queen?
The tomb belongs to a
priest called Pa-iri,
who lived in the time of Nefertiti.
CHRIS (off-screen): This
is Pa-iri himself, with his wife standing
behind him.
It's really lovely, this.
NARRATOR: But something else
catches Chris's eye,
ancient graffiti.
CHRIS (off-screen): It's
highly significant.
It begins with a year date, year three,
and then "The king of
upper and lower Egypt,"
and that king is named as
Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten.
NARRATOR: So, just
who was this ruler?
CHRIS: And this king is
little-known, shadowy figure.
I think Ankhkheperure
Neferneferuaten is none other
than Nefertiti.
NARRATOR: This would be
a sensational turnaround.
Could Nefertiti have survived
the death of Akhenaten,
actually to succeed him
herself as Pharaoh Nefertiti?
It's a theory but, if Chris is correct,
the search for Nefertiti is no
longer the search for a queen.
It's the search for a pharaoh.
At Saqqara, husband and wife
archaeologists, Mohamed,
and Hana, are searching for
the missing wife of Khuwy.
She should be buried with her
husband in his magnificent
tomb, but she isn't.
They believe that she must be nearby,
and Hana has found human remains.
HANA: The skeleton is very
nicely preserved even though
many of the bones are fragmented.
NARRATOR: The teeth show
that this is a mature adult.
HANA: You can see the
upper part of the teeth is
quite worn down.
The skeleton itself shows that
the health of this individual
was not very good.
NARRATOR: Could this ancient
skeleton be the missing
wife of Khuwy?
HANA: The pit is hewn in
a little bit dark sand,
and it was filled with
very pure yellow sand,
which was added there into the
pit together with the burial.
NARRATOR: For Hana, all the
signs are of a poor burial.
HANA: We are learning a lot
about the people of the past:
the way they lived, how they suffered.
It's a little bit like
looking into a very old album
of your family.
NARRATOR: It is
not Khuwy's wife,
but families are normally
buried close together.
She should be buried nearby.
Just yards away, Mohamed
continues the search for
another tomb entrance.
MOHAMED (off-screen): We have
to continue digging down into the floor
and keep looking for our
lady, Khuwy's wife and,
if we're lucky, we will have her.
NARRATOR: In Luxor, at Asasif,
Fathi and Sayed have found a
wooden coffin in the cemetery
of the rich and powerful from
the era of Nefertiti.
They are anxious to free it
from the grip of the sand.
SAYED: It's good.
NARRATOR: Sayed digs a little
deeper to see underneath it.
SAYED: You see?
The lid
the base.
NARRATOR: A complete ancient
coffin is a major find.
SAYED: This means we hope we
found a complete mummy inside
FATHI: It's very exciting
NARRATOR: But they have a
lot of work before they
can get it out.
SAYED: Hey doctor, I think we found
another something very important.
FATHI: Yeah? Wow!
NARRATOR: There seems to
be something buried
with the coffin.
SAYED: From the first look I
think some sort of pottery
offering, something for offering.
SAYED (off-screen): Yeah.
FATHI: It looks complete,
but we will see
SAYED: Yeah.
NARRATOR: Sayed thinks the
vase may have contained
offerings for the afterlife.
But something else
catches Fathi's attention.
(speaking native language)
EZZ: I think it's bread
FATHI (off-screen): Wow.
SAYED: You are sure?
EZZ: Yeah, I'm quite sure
SAYED: You see something
like this before ever?
FATHI: No.
SAYED: First time
NARRATOR: This
appears to be bread,
untouched for 3,500 years.
FATHI: If it is bread, it will be
something that is very special here
NARRATOR: The objects around
the ancient coffin appear to
be offerings, carefully placed
as supplies for the deceased.
SAYED: Now we can see the pottery
found beside the hands, same position
The dish with bread to eat
and another jar maybe for water
to eat and drink
NARRATOR: It offers rare,
hard evidence of the lives and
beliefs of Ancient Egyptians,
about death and the afterlife.
SAYED: Complete.
FATHI: Wow.
SAYED: There's some decoration
FATHI: What we
have here if you look
one, two, three, four
maybe more inside
SAYED (off-screen): Maybe more
inside, maybe more inside.
NARRATOR: The pot
also comes out.
If they can date it,
they can date the burial,
and begin to piece together
who might be in the coffin.
FATHI: This could be the beginning
or during the time of the 18th Dynasty
NARRATOR: The 18th dynasty
was when Egypt was at its very
peak, with the line of
powerful pharaohs that
included Akhenaten and
Nefertiti themselves.
After two hours of careful work,
they finally clear away all the debris.
FATHI: This is the
end of the coffin
100% complete coffin now
in good condition.
NARRATOR: But the fragile
ancient wood could
disintegrate now it is
exposed to the elements.
Fathi doesn't want to risk
leaving it out any longer,
so he must move it quickly.
In Saqqara, outside the
magnificent tomb of Khuwy that
Mohamed found last year, the
team searches for a missing
person, Khuwy's wife.
Her tomb should be equally spectacular.
Following clues in the limestone,
they have shifted several tons
of sand searching for another
tomb entrance.
Now there are huge
limestone blocks in the way.
Mohamed thinks that these
came from the mastaba,
the stone structure above the tomb.
Again, its pure white.
(shouting)
MOHAMED (off-screen): White
limestone are very precious,
because in ancient Egypt the
quarry belonged to the king.
The king himself had to give
permission to any individual,
any official, to cut stones from there.
NARRATOR: It's a vital clue.
Only the pharaoh's innermost
circle would be allowed to use
such a precious rock.
With the limestone blocks out of the way,
they soon reach the bedrock
and can go no further.
MOHAMED: We had no clue
for the other entrance
of the wife.
This can tell us she might be
buried in a different mastaba,
separate mastaba, near to him.
NARRATOR: Khuwy's
wife isn't here,
but Mohamed is undeterred.
He believes that she must be nearby.
MOHAMED: All the white
limestone he used in his tomb,
he was mummified, the colors
he used in the underground's
architecture of his tomb.
NARRATOR: The evidence
implies that Khuwy is royal.
MOHAMED (off-screen): Perhaps,
also his wife was a member of
the royal family.
If she's not buried with him in the tomb,
it means she decided to
made a tomb for herself.
This can tell us so much about her status.
NARRATOR: Khuwy's wife must be
important enough to build her
own mastaba tomb, which should
be as glorious as Khuwy's.
The hunt for Khuwy's wife just got bigger.
MOHAMED: We only found 30
or 40% of ancient Egyptian
monuments, and this might be
true because the sand of Egypt
still hides so many secrets.
NARRATOR: Mohamed's search for
the missing wife continues.
In Luxor, at Asasif.
(speaking native language)
NARRATOR: The team
urgently needs to move the
newly-discovered coffin
to a safe storeroom.
(speaking native language)
NARRATOR: But it is a dangerous
moment for the priceless artifact,
as the ancient wood could
disintegrate under the strain.
It's a big responsibility for Fathi.
FATHI: To be sure
there's no damage
we will fix it with very
soft rope like this
NARRATOR: The fragile
coffin is on the move,
but the last part of
the journey is the most precarious.
It's a steep and narrow descent.
(speaking native language)
FATHI: Go down
I'm watching your steps
Step down
(applause)
SAYED: We are succeed, good
(speaking native language)
NARRATOR: The coffin
is still in one piece.
FATHI: Now I can take
deep breaths like this, and
everything is perfect now
I can sleep well too this night
because I didn't sleep
well since we found it
NARRATOR: With the coffin
now safely in the field lab,
specialist conservator Ahmed
Gad must inspect the wood
for any weakness.
AHMED: We should
remove everything
and check everything is okay
and after this we can start to open.
NARRATOR: The coffin appears
to be in good enough condition
to be opened, but there's
another problem for Fathi.
FATHI: We try to
not damage anything
but unfortunately with this rope
it is very difficult to dismantle it
NARRATOR: The 3,500 year
old ropes must come off,
but the ancient fibers are stiff.
If the alcohol solution
doesn't soften them,
they may have to cut them.
FATHI: If it breaks
I'll be a little bit sad
FATHI (off-screen): Wow!
AHMED (off-screen): Wow, wow!
FATHI: Very good.
NARRATOR: The knot undone,
they begin the slow task of
removing plaster that sticks
the fragile lid to the coffin.
Fathi gets his first glimpse inside.
FATHI: It's very exciting,
very good indication
you know why?
Because we have, sure now we have mummy
NARRATOR: He can see
the mummy inside,
but he can only watch on anxiously.
FATHI: Take your time,
but hurry up
NARRATOR: The wedges
slowly push the lid up.
The 3,500 year old wood could
disintegrate at any moment.
FATHI: Wow.
NARRATOR: Masks protect
against any ancient diseases.
(speaking native language)
OK.
OK, OK.
FATHI: The linen
is still in good condition
NARRATOR: For the first
time, they lay eyes on what's
clearly a human form wrapped
in plain linen that was woven
30 centuries ago.
FATHI: It is very good day today
we succeeded to open coffin since
more than 3,000 years ago
That makes us so happy
and we can say also we are
so proud about our work
It's a very special moment
NARRATOR: The team prepares
the mummy for the next stage
of research, where x-rays will
reveal more of its secrets,
its age, gender, cause of death.
This rare find is full of
clues and vital evidence that
will help Fathi and other
archaeologists understand how
people were buried during
the time of Nefertiti.
In Luxor.
The idea that Nefertiti
became pharaoh is now widely
accepted, but it radically
alters the hunt for the
missing queen.
Chris thinks that it can
only lead to one conclusion.
He has come to the famous
Valley of the Kings
to investigate.
CHRIS: If Nefertiti
did become pharaoh,
and if she also made the
move back here to Thebes from
Amarna, then there's only
really one place here where we
could expect her to, to have been buried,
and that's right in this place,
in the Valley of the Kings.
NARRATOR: If she lies here
in the Valley of the Kings,
could other tombs hold clues
to help Chris find her?
CHRIS: The tomb
just goes on and on.
NARRATOR: Passages and
chambers extend over 600 feet,
deep into the rock.
CHRIS: The tombs in the
Valley of the Kings are all
different, but they're monumental,
very large grand spaces,
with long corridors,
multiple chambers leading off them.
If Nefertiti had a tomb in
the Valley of the Kings,
you've got to think that it
would have been like this one.
NARRATOR: If this tomb is a
guide to how Nefertiti's tomb
might be, how could it
have escaped detection for all this time?
Where could Nefertiti be hiding?
In search of answers, Chris
heads for the most famous tomb
in the Valley of the
Kings, King Tutankhamun's.
He was the first pharaoh
known to be buried here after
Nefertiti's reign.
CHRIS (off-screen): This
tomb is a real oddity.
When you think about how
famous Tutankhamun is,
the tomb itself just somehow doesn't fit.
It's really small by
comparison with the other
tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
There's something just
not quite right here.
NARRATOR: There are many
things about Tutankhamun's
tomb that don't add up.
The entrance to the tomb turns right,
when for a male pharaoh it
should be a turn to the left.
Tutankhamun's nested coffins have
double cobras and vulture headdresses,
normally only associated
with female coffins.
And the most famous icon
in Egyptian archaeology,
the magnificent golden
death mask of Tutankhamun,
reveals earring holes.
And, while Tut's name is
engraved on the shoulder,
hidden beneath it are faint
traces of the cartouche
of Ankhkheperure
Neferneferuaten or Nefertiti.
Could Tutankhamun have been
buried with Nefertiti's death
mask in a small side chamber
of a hidden bigger tomb
meant for her?
Chris continues to investigate.
CHRIS (off-screen): There's
another side chamber called the treasury.
Some of the items in here,
although they apparently
depict the king, had
very feminine features.
It's possible that, actually,
some of Tutankhamun's objects
and maybe even this tomb
were originally prepared for
someone else, maybe even Nefertiti.
NARRATOR: But why
would Tutankhamun be
in Nefertiti's tomb?
When Akhenaten died, his
cult of the sun God Aten was
overthrown and the old Gods,
led by Amun, were restored.
Nefertiti may have ruled
then as the Pharaoh,
until Akhenaten's son,
nine year-old Tutankhaten,
ascended the throne and
changed his name to honor
Amun, becoming Tutankhamun.
CHRIS (off-screen): We know
that Tutankhamun died at a very
young age, he was perhaps 18
years old, and so perhaps he
died unexpectedly and, if
so, then perhaps his tomb was
prepared in a hurry.
NARRATOR: It's possible that
Tutunkhamun's officials used a
tomb prepared for his
stepmother, Nefertiti.
CHRIS: That might help us
to explain why, perhaps,
a relatively small tomb was
so crammed full of such a
hotch-potch of items.
Everything had to be done
far more quickly that the
authorities were expecting.
NARRATOR: And it could finally
explain where Nefertiti
herself is buried.
CHRIS: Is it possible
that she's even
still here somewhere?
NARRATOR: The tomb of
Tutankhamun is the greatest
archaeological discovery of all time.
Its greatest prize its treasure.
But could there be a
greater lost treasure hidden beside it?
The search for one of Egypt's
most famous queens could be
about to end here in
the Valley of the Kings.
Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.