Lost Treasures of Egypt (2019) s03e05 Episode Script

1
♪
NARRATOR: Archaeologists
are about to open a coffin,
sealed for more than 2,000 years.
BASEM: It’s very risky
there is a big crack on top of the coffin.
NARRATOR: Inside
could be a rare,
undisturbed mummy.
BASEM: Are you ready to open?
Ready? With the utmost care.
TEAM: Oh!
NARRATOR: The
Valley of the Kings.
Eternal home to the Pharaohs
of Ancient Egypt’s golden age.
In these mountains
archaeologists have made some
of history’s most
extraordinary discoveries.
The bodies of Royals
dating back 3,000 years.
The corpses of these
kings represent the peak of
the art of mummification,
preparing a dead body with oils and
linen wrapping to avoid decay.
But the evolution of this sacred custom is
still shrouded in mystery.
Why, and how, did Egyptians
start preserving their bodies?
And what happened to
mummification when after
more than 2,000 years
Ancient Egypt was conquered?
Today, archaeologists across
Egypt search for mummies from
the civilization’s earliest days,
and from its final reckoning,
to shed light on mummification’s rise,
and fall.
Texas-born Archaeologist
Meredith Brand encountered
her first mummy in
London’s British museum,
aged just seven.
Ever since, she’s been desperate
to unlock the secrets they contain.
MEREDITH: You can
hear the silence,
the wind and feel that
this was a sacred place.
NARRATOR: Meredith has
come to the Pharaohs’ tombs,
because she believes the secrets of the
origins of mummification
can be found here.
MEREDITH: This site holds vital
clues to the mummification process,
both in terms of technology but also
in terms of the ritual and the
reasons why Ancient Egyptians
wanted so badly to preserve their bodies.
NARRATOR: More than 60 tombs
have been uncovered in the Valley.
Most are decorated floor to
ceiling with elaborate imagery.
MEREDITH: Oh the carvings,
the painting is so fresh and vivid.
NARRATOR: These artworks
were designed to help carry
the owner’s mummy safely to the afterlife.
Meredith searches for evidence
of the Ancient Egyptians’
obsession with mummification.
MEREDITH: Oh this is
the scene I’ve come for!
Okay so,
what I can see here
is this jackal-headed god,
Anubis and he’s enacting mummification,
which was his sacred role.
NARRATOR: The image represents
the very first mummification,
performed by gods.
The embalming of Osiris.
According to legend Osiris was one of
the first gods to walk the earth.
But in a feud, he was
murdered by his brother, Seth,
who scattered his body parts across Egypt.
Osiris’ wife searched the
length and breadth of the Nile
to recover his broken corpse.
With Anubis’ help, she
reassembled Osiris and
wrapped him in strips of linen,
resurrecting him for a second life
as ruler of the Underworld.
From then on, powerful
Egyptians had their bodies
wrapped and embalmed.
So that just like Osiris,
they could live again in the afterlife.
MEREDITH (off-screen): This scene
reveals the ultimate goal of the king,
which was a perfect mummy
so that he could successfully
be reborn in the afterlife.
NARRATOR: The image depicts the
myth of the origins of mummification,
but it dates to the New Kingdom,
more than 1,000 years
after wealthy Egyptians began
preserving their corpses.
To find out exactly how the
earliest Egyptians mummified
their dead, archaeologists
need to find one of the rarest
of archaeological treasures.
A mummy from the Old Kingdom.
In Saqqara,
World-renowned mummy expert,
Salima Ikram, has been
called out to an extraordinary find
in one of Egypt’s oldest cemeteries.
Born in Pakistan, she
fell in love with Egypt on
a family visit, aged nine.
She’s spent a career poring
over its dried-out corpses,
and not just humans.
She’s examined the mummies
of dogs, cats, even a lion.
In a tomb dating back
more than 4,000 years,
archaeologist Mohamed Megahed
has uncovered a single human mummy.
If it belongs to the
tomb’s original owner,
it would be one of the
oldest mummies Salima,
or anyone, has ever seen.
SALIMA (off-screen): If we actually
do have an Old Kingdom mummy,
then it will be terribly exciting.
I’ve worked on one or two others,
and they are so rare,
but most of the time,
burial chambers and entire
sites have been re-used long
after the Old Kingdom so I hope
Mohamed is not in for a disappointment.
NARRATOR: For four years,
Mohamed has led investigations
into this mysterious tomb.
MOHAMED: Salima,
thank you for coming today.
NARRATOR: What he has unearthed
has stunned the world of Egyptology.
Under the sand and rubble,
Mohamed discovered a corridor
leading to an antechamber,
painted in stunning
detail and vibrant colors.
Hieroglyphs reveal this is the
tomb of a man called Khuwy,
a relation of the royal family
who lived over 4,000 years ago.
In the burial chamber
nearby there were four jars
to hold mummified organs.
A smashed, empty sarcophagus.
And strewn all over
the floor, the fragments,
of a mummy.
It could be one of the oldest
Egyptian mummies ever found.
But is it the bones of Khuwy,
or an imposter?
Last year, Mohamed’s team
found more mummies buried just
outside the tomb’s walls,
from a much later era.
If the mummy in the burial chamber is from
the same time, it can’t be Khuwy.
Salima is here to examine the mummy,
to try to establish a positive ID.
SALIMA: It’s rather a lovely
and huge and beautifully
organized magazine,
mashallah.
NARRATOR: If it does
turn out to be Khuwy,
the corpse could answer one of
Egyptologists’ oldest questions.
Just how early in their
history did Egyptians perfect
the mysterious art of mummification?
Near the oasis city of Faiyum.
Egyptian Archaeologist
Basem Gehad has set up camp
on the desolate site of the
ancient town of Philadelphia,
to investigate mummification at the end
of the Egyptian empire.
As a child, drawn to Egypt’s
archaeological secrets,
Basem begged his father
every weekend to take him to
the Pyramids or to
Cairo’s Egyptian Museum.
These days he gets to live on
his own archaeological site,
for months at a time.
BASEM: These are
our sleeping tents
this is our kitchen, small
kitchen here, with a chef.
Hello chef!
NARRATOR: Some 2,000 years
after the age of the Pyramids,
the time of the
Egyptian Kings came to an end.
Ancient Egypt was invaded by Greece.
The Greeks had no tradition
of preserving their dead.
Basem wants to know
how the conquest changed
the practice of mummification.
BASEM: As you can see, there
is no evidence of anything
on the surface, it’s only
sand and desert, that’s it.
NARRATOR: Today, he’s on the
hunt for something incredibly rare:
an intact Greek grave.
Now, a new photograph from
a satellite has given him a
fresh hint of where to dig.
BASEM: So the shaded area
that we could see in the satellite
images is an elevated area
could be an area of interest
for the excavation, so let’s go.
NARRATOR: Basem’s team
strips away the thin layer of
windblown sand from the mound,
immediately beneath he
finds a promising clue.
BASEM: If it’s looted,
there is no compact sand.
In this area the sand is very compact
we have to remove it very
carefully and we will see.
NARRATOR: Within minutes,
Basem’s workers reveal the
outlines of six separate
burials cut into the rock.
It’s a fantastic discovery,
but are these graves undisturbed?
BASEM: We are very
curious to see what’s inside.
It could tell a
lot of stories, wonderful stories about
how the Greeks and Egyptians
lived together in one space.
NARRATOR: The workers
clean away loose sand from
each burial in search
of an untouched grave.
(speaking in native language)
BASEM: It seems that
they found something here.
It seems that my team
here found a vaulted tomb
and it’s sealed, and we
know it’s sealed because
the guy who sealed it 2,000 years ago
left his fingerprints
as a seal impression.
NARRATOR: The unbroken
mud seal plastered over
the tomb roof proves no-one
ever robbed this grave.
Beneath the brickwork should be a coffin,
and its occupant should
reveal how the inhabitants of
a Greek town in Egypt buried their dead.
BASEM: Maybe we could find a
wooden coffin, if we are lucky
maybe we could find a pottery coffin
maybe we could find a mummy
or a skeleton, we will see.
NARRATOR: The sealed tomb
could contain an Egyptian,
or a rare Ancient Greek body.
In their homeland,
Ancient Greeks didn’t mummify their dead,
but could their
practices have changed when
they settled among Egyptians?
To get inside the tomb,
Basem must destroy the seal
and dismantle the mud-brick roof.
BASEM: It seems that
it was very tightly closed
so we are removing very
carefully brick by brick
the blocking, in order to
see what could be inside.
NARRATOR: The structure
itself proves the tomb dates
to the era of Greek rule.
The team now has to remove
just a few bricks before
they can see inside.
BASEM: We know very well that
the larger you go, the older you go
so we could say from the mud brick size
that we are at the second century.
BASEM: Surprise!
(clapping)
NARRATOR: The team breaks
through the roof of the tomb,
and catch their first
glimpse of its contents.
BASEM: Oh
BASEM: It’s phenomenal!
I’m so excited.
NARRATOR: It’s an
undisturbed coffin,
an incredible find, and
exactly what Basem hoped for.
The painted wooden casket
has a peaked roof,
not the rounded top
of Egyptian sarcophagi.
Greeks lived side by side
with Egyptians in Philadelphia,
and this is almost
certainly a rare Greek burial.
The question is, was
the occupant buried in
the Greek tradition,
or Egyptian?
BASEM: Until we open it
we just don’t know if
there's a mummy inside
or just a simple skeleton,
we just want to wait.
NARRATOR: To find out, Basem
needs to extract the coffin,
without crushing it.
In the desert of Gebelein,
just south of Luxor,
Meredith searches for evidence
of Egypt’s earliest death rites.
She believes the myths that
drove Egyptians to mummify
their own bodies had
roots much earlier than
Ancient Egyptian civilization.
Prehistoric rock art depicting
wildlife suggests this area
was once a sacred place.
In the 19th century,
archaeologists identified
it as a burial ground.
MEREDITH: This is a
desolate dry landscape,
nothing much to see on the surface.
But underneath these rocks and
sand there would have
been prehistoric tombs.
NARRATOR: In 1896, an Egyptologist
from the British Museum received
a tip-off of a momentous discovery.
Buried under a thin
layer of desert debris,
local farmers had found a mummified body,
preserved in astonishing detail.
On the upper arm tattoos of
horned animals were still visible,
and from the head
sprouted tufts of red hair,
earning this mummy its original nickname,
"Ginger."
There was a puncture wound
to the left shoulder blade,
and a fractured rib beneath.
Forensic analysis has
revealed the body is male and
over 5,000 years old,
but how is this body
so perfectly preserved?
For Meredith, the evidence suggests the
man’s mummification was not planned.
Instead, it was an accident of nature.
MEREDITH: In this photo I
can see there’s no bandages or
anything that would
have preserved this mummy.
So it would seem that this was
not an intentional mummification.
He was preserved by the sand.
There was no ritual or
magic or anything involved,
just the drying power of nature.
NARRATOR: Hundreds of years
before the first Pharaoh,
this man lived around the fertile
flood plains along the river Nile.
But around his 20th birthday,
he was brutally stabbed in the back,
and left for dead.
He was buried in a shallow grave,
with simple clay grave goods.
And covered with sand.
But the desert sun and hot dry
sand quickly evaporated all
the water from his body.
Stopping it from decomposing,
freezing him in time until his
discovery 5,400 years later.
Archaeologists have found
no papyri that explain the
historical origins of mummification,
but Meredith believes the
practice could have evolved
from accidents of nature.
MEREDITH: Natural mummies like
the Gebelein man would have
inspired Ancient Egyptians
that if they could use
technology to harness the power of nature,
their bodies too could
last forever into eternity.
MEREDITH (off-screen): It’s a
truly spectacular discovery.
It tells us where mummification started.
NARRATOR: In Aswan.
Across the river from the city,
a team of Egyptian archaeologists scours a
remote hilltop necropolis.
They hope its long-lost tombs
will hold evidence of how
ordinary Ancient Egyptians
prepared their dead for the afterlife.
The few tombs that have been
found suggest the people of
Aswan used this burial
ground some 2,000 years ago,
as Egyptian civilization was in decline.
Born in the town beside the Nile,
Archaeologist Sayed Elrawy has
walked these outcrops since childhood.
High up and inaccessible,
it is an ideal location for a cemetery.
SAYED: The tombs were built
on hills to save them from robbers.
I think there are some
nobles and some workers here.
NARRATOR: Today, he
is investigating the
unmistakable outline
of a buried stairwell.
He believes this one
will lead to answers to how
the less wealthy treated their dead.
SAYED: I think we have a lot
of mummies inside the tomb.
I’m a very lucky archaeologist.
NARRATOR: The only
way to test his luck,
is to dig.
NARRATOR: In the Old Kingdom
Necropolis at Saqqara,
Salima has been called to
examine a mummy found in a
noble’s lavish tomb.
She hopes an X-Ray will
help establish if it’s
the original tomb owner.
If it is, it could be one of the oldest
intentionally mummified bodies ever found.
SALIMA: Where is Khuwy kept?
MOHAMED: Here is Mr.Khuwy.
SALIMA: Hello Mr. Khuwy!
MOHAMED: We will take it down.
SALIMA: Okay, so
what we’ll do is,
we'll do the X-Ray of Khuwy right here.
MOHAMED: Okay.
SALIMA: We have electricity,
and then we’ll do the
developing in the other room.
MOHAMED: Perfect.
SALIMA: So
easy-peasy inshallah.
MOHAMED: Inshallah. Okay.
(laughs)
NARRATOR: Salima’s permit
to scan the mummy is
only valid for one day.
She’s turned to a trusted piece of kit,
an archaeologist’s field X-Ray.
SALIMA (off-screen): Our X-Ray
machine dates to I think the ‘80s.
I know longer than some
of us have been alive.
But it’s tiny it’s
easy to move around, um,
the bad thing is though
because it’s not digital,
you have to do your photography and then
your developing and then you
find out if it was a disaster
or a success.
NARRATOR: Before ‘Khuwy’
goes under the scanner,
Salima will conduct a visual inspection.
SALIMA: The moment of truth.
NARRATOR: It’s the first
time she’s met the mummy.
SALIMA: Ah.
NARRATOR: Only fragments
of the body remain.
SALIMA: So there is no head.
ZAINAB: Yeah.
SALIMA: But we have the ribs.
And we have pelvis.
I think he was quite fat.
You know it’s a good solid thigh.
NARRATOR: Thousands of years
spent in the tomb of Khuwy,
the Old Kingdom noble, have
not been kind to this mummy.
SALIMA: Ah, it looks like a
I think its rodents have eaten this.
ZAINAB: Yeah, yeah.
NARRATOR: If this
is Khuwy’s body,
there’s not much of him left.
But for mummy expert Salima,
there is enough to
tell how it was preserved.
That could give her a
rough idea of its age.
SALIMA: Right, smells
like a nicer quality mummy.
This in particular seems to be
very impregnated with resins.
I mean look at that.
It’s extremely high quality.
NARRATOR: Ancient embalmers bathed
bodies in expensive resins from tree sap,
preserving the flesh before
they wrapped the corpse.
SALIMA: Look at all of
this textile it’s beautiful.
This is really very fine quality linen.
Oh wow.
NARRATOR: The mummy seems
to have been wrapped in the
highest-grade of bandages.
This matches the detailed picture of
Khuwy’s lavish lifestyle
depicted in his tomb.
Khuwy was a high-ranking official,
a member of the Pharaoh’s
Royal Court during the Pyramid Age,
near the beginning
of Egyptian civilization.
Scenes painted in his tomb
show that he could afford the
luxuries of fine food, in vast quantities.
And jars found in the tomb,
made to hold the mummified
organs of the deceased.
Are more evidence of a high-status burial.
A man like this could
certainly afford to have
his body embalmed in resin and
wrapped in the finest linen.
But for Salima, the quality of
the linen rings alarm bells.
SALIMA: It’s extraordinary.
The only time I’ve
so much of this kind of good quality linen
has been in the 21st dynasty.
NARRATOR: The 21st dynasty of
Egyptian Pharaohs reigned more
than 1,000 years after Khuwy lived.
Wrapped in the most delicate linen and
drenched in expensive resin,
if this is Khuwy,
then the art of mummification
was far more advanced in the
Pyramid Age than experts believed.
SALIMA: Oh, good, Mohamed,
you are here at last.
MOHAMED: So what do you think?
SALIMA: I think
it’s a beautiful mummy.
MOHAMED: So do
we have any other
human remains
from the Old Kingdom mummified like this?
SALIMA: No.
It could change entirely the
history of mummification if it
happens to be Old Kingdom.
NARRATOR: If this is Khuwy,
Salima will have to re-write
her own textbooks on
Egypt’s oldest mummies.
As yet, she’s not convinced,
she will need to see more evidence.
On the cliffs above Aswan,
Sayed and his team are into
their second day excavating a fresh tomb.
They hope it will reveal how
ordinary Ancient Egyptians
prepared bodies for the
afterlife as their civilization faded.
They’ve shifted several tons
of sand to expose the stairs.
In the heat of the early afternoon,
the work is punishing.
SAYED: We have no
shelter from the sun.
We need to work quickly
to excavate the tombs here.
WORKER: Sayed.
SAYED: I think
they've found a door.
NARRATOR: If the
tomb contains bodies,
they could hold clues to how
ordinary Ancient Egyptians
preserved their dead.
SAYED: Can I have some light?
Oh my God!
NARRATOR: Sayed’s
team has made an extraordinary discovery.
A rare tomb packed full of mummies.
SAYED: There’s no air in here.
NARRATOR: The remains of a
stone sarcophagus suggest the
bodies piled around it are not
the tomb’s original occupants.
So who are they?
Team foreman, Abdul,
prepares a mummy for initial inspection.
SAYED: The mummy
is very delicate.
You can see the mummy is a man.
NARRATOR: Abdul
delicately brushes to expose
the ragged remains of
the mummy’s bandages.
SAYED: You can see the
mummification is cheap mummification.
You can see he is not noble.
He is a poor man.
NARRATOR: The mummy’s
condition suggests he was not
wealthy enough to afford a
high-quality mummification.
The other bodies buried with
him are also badly preserved.
There’s not enough space
for Sayed to examine how
this mummy was embalmed.
So he decides to extract the body.
A mummy this
poorly preserved could fall apart with
the slightest shock.
In the Necropolis of Ancient Philadelphia,
near Faiyum.
Basem’s search has finally
produced an intact grave:
of an Ancient Greek.
Egypt’s conquerors did
not practice mummification
in their homeland, but what
did they do here in Egypt?
To find out he
needs to release the 2000-year-old coffin.
BASEM: So we’re
removing now, brick by brick
it’s a very sensitive operation.
NARRATOR: With the top
layer of bricks removed,
Basem is able to inspect
the full length of the tomb.
Elaborate decorations on the
casket confirm his suspicions.
BASEM: I’m 100% sure
that this is a Greek coffin
but we have to take it as fast as possible
because we can’t just
leave it exposed to the sun.
So we are going to lift
it up from the grave.
NARRATOR: The team has no
idea how degraded the roof of
the coffin might be.
Any mistake could be catastrophic.
BASEM: It is really stressful.
Any single mud brick
that could fall on this wooden coffin
will destroy it, so we need to be sure.
NARRATOR: The crew systematically
removes just enough bricks
to open a gap wide enough for
the coffin to pass through.
BASEM: It's
really tight inside
so we are trying to enlarge
the space in order to lift it up
and it’s really delicate,
it’s really sensitive.
NARRATOR: Basem doesn’t
want to destroy any more of
the precious tomb
structure than necessary.
But the coffin has to come out.
(speaking in native language)
(clapping)
Released from the tomb, the
intricately painted coffin and
its occupant are in more
danger than they ever have
been in the last 2000 years.
BASEM: So now I need to take
this coffin in the shade immediately
because it’s very
delicate and very sensitive
we have to move it to
the car and to the tent.
We’re gonna move it.
Let’s go boys, all together.
NARRATOR: Whether it
holds a mummy or a skeleton,
this coffin could reveal how the Greeks,
who seized control of Egypt,
buried their dead.
On the hilltop above Aswan.
Sayed’s mummy has completed its journey to
the safety of the analysis tent.
It’s clear this mummy’s
afterlife has been traumatic.
SAYED: The mummy has
a hole, it’s from a robbery.
NARRATOR: Embalmers placed
carved stones in the wrapping
of wealthier mummies
as magical protection.
But it’s unlikely the poor
could afford that luxury.
SAYED: Maybe the
robbers left empty-handed.
NARRATOR: The secrets of how
this man’s body was mummified
are hidden within the bandages.
But Sayed can’t unwrap
him for fear the mummy
will crumble into dust.
The team needs to find
more lower-class mummies
to figure out how
Ancient Egyptians preserved the poor.
Across the site, Sayed’s colleague,
archaeologist Hala Hussein,
has spent weeks
uncovering a different tomb.
She has also found mummies.
Or at least, bits of them.
NARRATOR: Hala’s tomb
contains the remains of some 20 mummies,
but they’re in terrible condition.
Evidence of wasps’ nests
suggest insects may have
played a role in the damage.
But in the destruction
lies an opportunity.
The mummies’ bodies are exposed,
allowing Hala to see beneath the bandages,
and search for more clues to
how ordinary Ancient Egyptians
tried to preserve their dead.
HALA: I don’t think
it’s rich people or nobles
because the mummification
doesn’t tell us that.
I think it’s poor people.
NARRATOR: The Necropolis
contains almost 300 tombs.
Each could have been the
eternal home for dozens of
ordinary Ancient Egyptians.
Now, archaeologists can
begin to sketch a picture of
their possible history.
Each tomb was originally
cut for a single mummy,
furnished with a sandstone coffin.
Their relatives added bodies
to the tomb when they died,
until the family died out or moved away.
Hundreds of years later,
poorer Egyptians re-used
the forgotten tombs,
filling them up with
badly mummified corpses.
Before the tombs were looted,
and the exposed mummies destroyed.
Most of the mummies in Hala’s
tomb are too degraded to tell
much about the way they were mummified.
But one body offers a grisly clue.
In a niche in the wall,
Hala finds the broken mummy of a baby.
HALA: Here, we have remains
just part of a child’s body
it has a stick inside the body.
NARRATOR: The stick
was inserted in the body to hold the head.
It suggests the body
was already decomposed
when it was embalmed.
Not only were the poor mummified badly,
they were mummified too late.
The bits of them that survive
suggest the afterlives of
these ordinary Ancient Egyptians
have been far from peaceful.
Destroyed by insects,
and desecrated by robbers,
any meagre valuables
ripped from their wrappings.
But for Sayed at least,
these mummies are helping piece together
the mysterious fates of the ordinary dead,
at the end of Egyptian civilization.
SAYED: Even though the
tomb is built on the top of the hill
the robbers still found them.
But for me as an archaeologist,
the mummy is the treasure.
NARRATOR: In Saqqara,
Salima’s team prepares
the mummy found in the
Old Kingdom tomb of Khuwy for X-Ray.
They hope to learn more about the body.
To confirm it
could actually be the 4400-year-old noble,
and one of the oldest
Egyptian mummies ever found.
But Mohamed has more
evidence to bring to the case.
High-class mummies had
their organs removed to stop them rotting.
These were placed alongside the
mummy in vessels called Canopic Jars.
Mohamed found four of
these right next to the mummy.
SALIMA: Oh!
MOHAMED: See?
SALIMA: They are beautiful!
MOHAMED: They are very nice.
SALIMA: And it
was sealed nicely.
MOHAMED: It was sealed,
all of them were sealed.
SALIMA: Oh!
Oh, look at that.
MOHAMED: Yes.
SALIMA: Oh I say
MOHAMED: We know for sure
this is Old Kingdom, Salima.
SALIMA: The jars
are Old Kingdom.
MOHAMED: The jars
are Old Kingdom.
SALIMA: Absolutely I
agree 100% Old Kingdom.
MOHAMED: Yes.
SALIMA: 100%.
MOHAMED: Yes.
SALIMA: Jars Old Kingdom.
Oh you’re kidding me.
Okay, trade.
(gasps)
Oh
That is nice!
You’ve got lots of bits of, um,
cloth which is impregnated
with resins or oils or whatever
this black material is, black goo.
Oh how nice!
NARRATOR: If the resin in jars
matches the resin on the mummy,
it means they both
date to the Old Kingdom.
The mummy’s exceptionally fine
linen dressing could overturn
decades of thinking and
prove mummification techniques
4,000 years ago were much more
advanced than first thought.
But the cutting-edge
chemical test that would prove
it will take months.
An X-Ray could take them a
step closer to confirmation
that it is the Old Kingdom noble, Khuwy.
SALIMA: We want it
to be Khuwy so much.
Imagine finding
someone from the Old Kingdom
in their own tomb!
I mean that’s fantastic.
NARRATOR: If Salima can
establish the mummy’s sex and
social status, it could
help prove its identity.
SALIMA: One.
NARRATOR: She sends a pulse of
X-Rays through the mummified remains,
onto a photographic plate.
SALIMA: Yep, finished!
Celebrate, wahoo!
NARRATOR: But with time
running out on the permit,
Salima’s analysis depends on
whether her images come out.
SALIMA: Now for the hard part.
NARRATOR: As evening
approaches in Saqqara
Salima hopes the X-Rays she’s
taken might help flesh out a
clearer picture of the
mummy from Khuwy’s tomb,
and confirm it is male.
To develop the images,
she must delicately bathe
the slides in a succession of chemicals.
SALIMA: It’s really quite
fabulous because you’re
sitting there with this blank sheet,
and then suddenly
something appears by magic.
Don’t open yet.
NARRATOR: She can’t allow the
film to be exposed to anything
but dim red light.
SALIMA: I hope
that’s not too light.
NARRATOR: The slides
must be dipped for exactly
the right time in each chemical bath.
Any misjudgment, and the whole
exercise has been a waste.
SALIMA: It’s an adventure each
time but it’s a one-shot deal, generally,
and then there is
the absolute terror that you
won’t get anything and it’ll
just be a blank sheet of film,
which is horrifying.
NARRATOR: Only when the last
exposure has been fixed can
Salima begin to assess her work.
SALIMA: Zainab?
I think you could put on the light.
This one looks totally blank.
Oh no!
It’s the vertebrae thank God!
What a relief, oh my God!
(laughing)
I thought we’d messed up
quite terribly, oh God.
NARRATOR: Hanging
the plates up to dry,
Salima and Mohamed can
finally see under the skin of
the mummy they hope is Khuwy.
SALIMA: Look at that!
NARRATOR: Their first job is to
confirm the mummy is the right sex.
SALIMA: Yeah.
ZEINAB: And we
are sure he is male?
SALIMA: Yep, he’s a he.
He is he!
ZEINAB: He’s a he.
MAN: He is he.
SALIMA: He is he!
NARRATOR: A scan of his fragmentary
spine provides more evidence.
Growths on the vertebrae
suggest the mummy’s frame
carried a lot of weight,
a sure sign of nobility in
the ancient world.
SALIMA: He was
fat as well as big.
So he was a tall man and a
Mashallah, it really
fits with a nice burial.
MOHAMED: For me it looks
like Old Kingdom bones.
(laughter)
NARRATOR: The X-Rays
aren’t conclusive,
but a well-mummified,
well-fed man in the same
archaeological layer
as Old Kingdom jars is too much to ignore.
This really could be Khuwy.
If so, experts will be
forced to re-think how
advanced mummification was
in Egypt’s most ancient era.
SALIMA (off-screen): It was the only
mummy that was found in this tomb.
It should belong to the tomb owner.
Of course, the style of
mummification is something
we haven’t seen for
the Old Kingdom before,
but there’s always a first time.
This is uh
(whistles)
Pretty cool!
MOHAMED: We found
a very high-class tomb
and inside this high-class tomb
we found a very high-class
mummification body.
I think they match together.
I think if it’s really Khuwy
this is a breakthrough in
the Ancient Egyptian history.
NARRATOR: The story of the
rise of the mummy may need
to be re-written.
Outside Faiyum, at the
Necropolis of Ancient Philadelphia
Basem has gathered his most
experienced team members
in the analysis tent.
The body in this coffin could
tell Basem what happened to
mummification when the
Greeks conquered Egypt.
BASEM: What we are going to
do is just clean it with soft brushes
and then we will try to lift
up the cover of the coffin.
The point is, it’s very risky.
There is a big crack on top of the coffin
so hopefully we can do it
in a good way, inshallah.
NARRATOR: The team removes the
dust from the coffin edges.
It means their fingers
are less likely to slip as
they lever off the lid.
BASEM: Are you ready to open?
Ready? With the utmost care.
(gasping)
MAN: Wow!
BASEM: It’s my first time
to see something like this.
I don’t remember ever seeing
it in one of the museums.
It’s amazing.
I’m just speechless.
(laughing)
NARRATOR: Inside the
coffin is a small skeleton,
in a basic wrapping, but also, a statue.
The artwork shows a
goddess in Greek terracotta,
but the practice of placing
a figurine in the coffin
is purely Egyptian.
BASEM: It is an influence
between the Egyptian mindset
and the Greek myth and mindset.
So here we can see how
both ethnic groups influenced each other.
NARRATOR: Anthropologist
Abdullah examines the body.
ABDULLAH: We have a
female skull, one female skull
skin, with hair.
NARRATOR: The skeleton
is a young girl and
she bears clear evidence of mummification.
BASEM: And then we
have also the wrapping
and what is interesting for us is that
the coffin from outside is Greek
but then they started
to learn from Egyptians
how to do wrapping
and start mummification.
I’ve never seen something like this before
never seen something like this before.
NARRATOR: The remnants of hair
and skin on the mummy show
that 100 years after
Greeks had conquered Egypt,
they had begun to change their
own sacred burial practices,
and adopt Egyptian ones,
including mummification.
BASEM: Within these
burials and mummies
there is a lot of emotions,
there is a lot of feelings.
Beloved people, beloved families.
You can hear their voice,
you can see their faces.
From this site
you can understand how
strong this culture was.
Ancient Egyptians invented and pioneered
embalming and mummification
and the Greeks adopted the same tradition.
NARRATOR: With every new
body archaeologists unearth,
the story of the mummies
of Egypt becomes clearer.
Inspired by corpses preserved
by chance in the desert sand,
embalmers in the age of the
Pyramids refined techniques
to freeze the body in time.
For 3,000 years the
practice evolved and spread,
from the Pharaohs down
to ordinary Egyptians.
The myth and magic of the
mummy was potent enough to
enchant even the invading Greeks.
All were intent on resurrection,
and the glories of the afterlife.