Lost Treasures of Egypt (2019) s04e04 Episode Script

1
NARRATOR: The hidden entrance
of a huge underground shaft
SALIMA: They did
a lot of cutting.
NARRATOR: That leads
almost 70 feet through rock
Must have taken a couple of months
to dig this deeply and empty it out.
NARRATOR: To a mysterious 3,000
year old tomb once filled
with beautifully preserved mummies.
Wow.
NARRATOR: And a solution to one
of Ancient Egypt's greatest mysteries.
SALIMA: The roofs gone down and
it's much warmer and very dark.
Oh wow.
NARRATOR: Ancient Egypt.
A civilization that began 5,000 years ago
and beguiles to this day.
Its great pyramids, temples, monuments
and tombs have endured for millennia.
But at human scale,
nothing has endured more than the Mummy.
The Ancient Egyptians mummified their
dead for around 3,000 years.
They began before the
time of the Great Pyramids,
and were still doing it at the very end of
Ancient Egyptian civilization.
Mummies are stunningly well-preserved,
silent witnesses to the
mysteries of Ancient Egypt.
Archaeologists are
hunting for more mummies.
To help them answer vital
questions about the fate of the
mightiest pharaohs and the
Ancient Egyptian way of life and death.
In the ancient necropolis of Philadelphia,
Egyptian archaeologist
Basem Gehad and his team,
have returned for their ninth season.
BASEM: When I was a child,
in our house, there was a small library.
There was a lot of books about different
things from Ancient Egypt.
I got fascinated by this.
But then when you get adult,
you start to think about searching for
information and clues.
NARRATOR: Basem is
investigating mummification
during the period at the
end of Egyptian civilization
that started with the
reign of Ptolemy the First.
The Ptolemaic dynasty was Greek.
Unlike native Egyptians,
Greek Egyptians did not
believe their bodies had to be
preserved to ensure eternal life.
Many experts think that as a result,
the quality of mummification declined in
the Ptolemaic period.
Last season, Basem found several
mummies in a Ptolemaic tomb here.
One in particular was
unusually well-preserved.
This site is unbelievable for me.
I can see here at the end of the room
there is one complete mummy.
NARRATOR: Basem's discovery
suggests that mummification
had not declined and that the
Greeks still practiced
the Ancient Egyptian art to
a very high standard.
Ancient Egyptians believed body
and soul separated at death.
They could reunite to live on
in the afterlife only if the
corpse was well preserved.
So priests removed internal
organs and dried them and the
body with a salt, natron,
to prevent decay.
After 40 days, they wrapped the
body in resin soaked linen
to keep moisture away and
bind everything together.
They also wrapped up the organs
and stored them in canopic jars
to be recovered in the afterlife,
but left the heart in the body
for the soul to return to.
Basem is on the hunt for more
mummies to help him prove the
Greek Egyptians didn't
radically change this process.
BASEM: We have different types of tombs
and graves here in Philadelphia,
but we are excavating one,
two and three or four.
And perhaps most of these
graves are intact, hopefully.
We hope that we could
be lucky this season.
NARRATOR: But first Basem
wants to examine the unusually
well-preserved Ptolemaic
mummy he discovered last year.
Come through this way.
NARRATOR: To find out if it was mummified
in the traditional Ancient Egyptian way.
Very good, Rasha hold that corner.
Mahmoud come towards me.
Just the mummy, leave that.
Okay perfect. Fantastic. Thank you.
From the general appearance,
for us, it looks quite
amazing in the style of the wrapping.
NARRATOR: The best way for
Basem to understand how it was
mummified is to X-ray it.
We want to check whether
or not the mummification and
embalming process was still
practiced in the same manner.
NARRATOR: Basem and his
team wait anxiously to find out
the results of the X-ray.
Some time today.
Come on.
NARRATOR: In Cairo,
mummification expert
Salima Ikram is at the
Museum of Egyptian Civilization
She is investigating the finest and most
famous mummies ever found.
The Royal Mummies.
Many of the mightiest
pharaohs of the past,
including Ramses the Great, Hatshepsut,
and the great Queen Ahmose-Nefetari,
all rest here in high tech, climate
controlled cases
to protect them for posterity.
When these mummies were unwrapped,
archaeologists discovered that
they were so well-preserved,
some still had their real hair.
It's such a pleasure to be here.
I love being with the royal mummies.
It's like being with old friends.
We've been together for so long.
And of course, these are kings.
And how often do you really
get to hang out with a king?
NARRATOR: Salima wants to
understand how these great
kings and queens have remained so well
preserved for thousands of years.
The best preserved
Egyptian mummies are those of
new kingdom royalty.
NARRATOR: Egypt's New Kingdom,
the era of Tutankhamun,
stretched for nearly 500
years from 1539 to 1075 BCE.
One mummy in particular stands out:
Seti the First.
SALIMA: This is one of the most
beautiful mummies ever made.
He looks as if he's sleeping.
I keep thinking he's
going to open his mouth
and say something to me.
NARRATOR: Seti was the
father of Ramses the Great and
one of the most influential
rulers of the New Kingdom.
He died over 3,300 years ago.
He's really the most elegant, elegant man.
His skin is perfectly preserved.
He doesn't look all sunken and wizened,
and his nose also stands proud.
The embalmers went to great
trouble and effort to give him
this wonderfully living appearance.
NARRATOR: When scientists
scanned the body of Seti,
they discovered exactly how they achieved
this lifelike look.
Analysis of the skin revealed
that embalmers painted his face
and body with a plant based resin.
They also packed bits of resin soaked
linen under the skin of his face,
making it symmetrical.
They stuffed his eye
sockets and the back of his
skull and neck.
Seti's post mortem cosmetic
treatment prepared him
perfectly for his expected afterlife.
SALIMA: The idea, of course,
for the Ancient Egyptians was
to have the body look as
lifelike as possible so that
the spirit could go into it and
animate it in the hereafter.
NARRATOR: Seti is
miraculously preserved.
But his survival and the
survival of many other royal
mummies is even more miraculous.
There are many
challenges to mummies survivals
such as insects, changes in temperature,
the flooding of tombs and,
worst of all, tomb robbers.
NARRATOR: Robbers looted almost
all Ancient Egyptian tombs.
And mummies, particularly
royal ones, were prime targets.
SALIMA: No sooner had someone
been buried that shortly
thereafter someone would
come and rob the tomb.
People would rip apart mummies
to try and get to the gold that
was hidden within and they
would even burn coffins and the
mummies inside because all that
would be left would be the gold.
NARRATOR: Yet Seti's
mummy survived,
preserved and intact for over 3,000 years.
Now Salima wants to investigate
how it avoided environmental
decay and destruction by tomb robbers.
At Deir El-Bahari on the
west bank of the Nile,
near the temple of Hatshepsut,
archaeologist Fathi Yaseen is
exploring a sprawling tomb
complex filled with thousands
of hidden underground chambers.
It was begun in Egypt's
New Kingdom and constantly
used in later times.
Its scale suggests it was
built for somebody important,
perhaps a high official.
Make sure you look through that.
NARRATOR: Last season, Fathi uncovered
several huge new chambers.
I'm waiting one month to enter, so it is a
very special moment.
NARRATOR: But nothing remained
of the tomb's original owner.
This year, he's on the hunt
for the tomb owner's mummy.
Fathi wants to find out who was
in this unexplored tomb when
they were buried here.
And what their mummy might
reveal about changes in
Egyptian belief and the
art of mummification.
We are working now in the tomb.
We hope we find the mummy.
NARRATOR: Fathi has worked as an
archaeologist here for 30 years
His love for Ancient Egypt started
when he was just a young boy.
During primary school,
I visited the temple
to see how the ancient
Egyptians built them.
All of this made me interested in
ancient Egyptian history.
Most of the time we are working directly
under the sun.
It means the heat and also with the dust.
The smell of the dust it is like perfume
for the Egyptology.
NARRATOR: The dusty,
dry environment makes it
perfect for finding
well-preserved mummies.
Great for a mummy hunter like Fathi.
His team has already excavated
a huge area buried beneath the
accumulated compacted sand
and deep into the bedrock.
Here is quite an impressive room, very big
room and carved very well
but still we are not in the burial room.
It means we are going deeper and deeper.
NARRATOR: They have
opened a new chamber,
but it's filled with tons of
debris and fragments of bone.
Look, full of debris until a few
centimeters before the ceiling.
It gives us hope that still we have a lot
of things behind this big corridor.
NARRATOR: It will need to
be cleared before Fathi can
uncover what is hidden beneath.
Maybe a burial room. So it is very
exciting moment for us.
NARRATOR: The
team begins to dig.
Straight away, they find
something extraordinary buried
beneath the debris.
FATHI: Oh, wow.
NARRATOR: In the necropolis of the
ancient city of Philadelphia,
Basem and his
team are examining the results
of the X-ray scan of the
Ptolemaic mummy he discovered.
The mummy is for an
adult male more than 50 years,
55 years.
There is a broken part on
the back side of the skull.
Most probably the brain was
taken out from this hole.
The stomach and all the
internal organs were removed
through a surgical operation.
Hands lay down in a
crossed way over the chest,
touching the two shoulders
in an Egyptian way.
We call this the Osiris position.
NARRATOR: High quality mummies
from this period are rare.
The X-ray scans provide new
evidence to support Basem's
hunch that during the Ptolemaic period,
the Greeks in Philadelphia
were more skilled at mummifying
their dead than first thought.
This is a quite amazing
example of the mummification
process during the Ptolemaic period.
It is quite complicated
and very well made.
NARRATOR: Old Kingdom priests
in the third millennium BCE,
dried the body with
salt and wrapped it in linen
to prevent decay.
But the mummy's face would shrivel.
Later in the Middle Kingdom,
a mask was placed on the mummy;
painted to look like the deceased,
so the soul might recognize its body.
In the first millennium
BCE after the New Kingdom,
mummification was even more sophisticated.
The priests inserted linen
under the skin and added false
eyes to make the dead look more lifelike.
But in the Ptolemaic period,
the mummy's appearance was less
important than an
elaborately decorated coffin.
Now Basem wants to see if his
amazing Ptolemaic mummy was
just a one off or whether
this level of sophisticated
mummification was more
common in Ptolemaic Egypt
than experts believed.
His team has been working hard,
excavating the vast
Ptolemaic graveyard here.
They have discovered
a layer of mud bricks,
usually a sign there
is a coffin underneath.
We might find in
this grave wooden coffin that
one of the people who were living during
the Ptolemaic period were buried inside.
NARRATOR: Working alongside
Basem is Mahmoud Ibrahim.
He's managed to remove a
couple of the mud bricks.
It's broken from the front.
What is it?
A wooden coffin, with a gabled roof and it
looks like it's dented from the front.
NARRATOR: It is a wooden coffin.
It's an incredible find.
But they still need to get
past the protective layer of
mud bricks that are covering it
The situation is crucial
because part of the roof of the
mud bricks were already collapsing.
So it broke one side of the coffin,
which means that we have
to do it very carefully and
slowly in order to get the
coffin out in good state
without damaging it.
NARRATOR: They have to
work with great caution.
One wrong move could further
damage the 2,000 year old
coffin and harm any mummy hidden inside.
There is a lot of risk in dealing
with such a fragile wooden coffin.
It's made of the very thin plates of wood.
It needs a proper excavation
methodology to clean up the grave.
NARRATOR: The team meticulously
and carefully remove
the layer of mud bricks.
Basem waits anxiously for a report.
Finally, Mahmoud can get
a good look at the coffin.
How is it?
Is it a catastrophe?
NARRATOR: At Deir El-Bahari
on the west bank of the Nile,
Fathi and his team are excavating a tomb,
searching for the mummy it may
contain and any evidence of
when it was buried.
They have found some pottery.
We don't know what it is exactly.
If it is a plate or offering
vessels or jar.
We don't know yet.
NARRATOR: It's a good sign
there may be a mummy here,
but they will have to clear
the sand carefully to make sure
that they remove the
jar without any damage.
Wow!
Hand cut with a rim.
Here we see the handle
is complete, with two handles
attached to the rim and to the body.
And it looks good condition, fortunately.
Wow, I'm so happy.
It is very rare to find
something complete.
Yes.
Come now.
Wow.
Oh, my God.
NARRATOR: Ancient Egyptians
believed they could take
funerary offerings like
this into an afterlife.
This jar could be an offering
for the deceased,
so we are in the right place.
We are the first to touch and
discover it since thousands of years ago.
It is the nicest thing we've found.
NARRATOR: The jar is great
evidence that the mummy Fathi
is looking for could be close,
but there is still a lot
more rubble to get through.
We are going slowly, slowly
because the debris is mixed
with bones and linen.
NARRATOR: Bones and linen are further
indications that there might be a mummy.
And there's more.
With wood like this I have to keep it,
we will see if it is part of the coffin.
But all of these are funerary objects.
NARRATOR: Fathi bags the wood,
linen and bones separately,
so they can be taken for
closer examination.
Wow!
NARRATOR: It looks like
the face of a mummy.
NARRATOR: In the
Valley of the Kings,
Salima is investigating how
Seti's mummy escaped natural
hazards and tomb robbers
for over 3,000 years.
This is the most sacred and secret spot
of Ancient Egypt because this
is where the kings of Egypt in
the New Kingdom came to be buried.
The hope was that the kings would come
and rest here for all of eternity.
NARRATOR: Seti, an important king and
father of Ramses the Great
has one of the biggest and most
ornate tombs in the Valley.
This is such a beautiful tomb.
The painting and the quality of
carving are absolutely exquisite.
It's really the most glorious
tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
NARRATOR: The tomb's ten chambers
extend deep into the bedrock.
SALIMA: You can see that we
are getting this crescendo of
scenes and texts that tell
us that we are approaching
the place where Seti was buried.
And this is Seti's burial chamber.
This is where the King's sarcophagus would
have been and his coffin.
He was supposed to rest
here for all of eternity.
NARRATOR: Seti built himself
a beautiful tomb and chose the
perfect place for his mummy.
Seti really had a spectacular burial.
And what was extra good
was because it was so deep,
the temperature remained
constant and this was excellent
for the preservation of Seti's Mummy.
NARRATOR:
Seti died in 1279 BCE.
A long and peaceful
incarceration here would
explain his mummy's survival.
But when 3,000 years later,
an Italian archaeologist
discovered the tomb,
he was in for a shock.
When Belzoni entered the tomb in 1817
and came into the burial chamber,
he found that Seti's sarcophagus had been
broken open and the mummy had vanished.
So the alabaster coffin
would have been right here,
just in front of me.
But when Belzoni found it,
it clearly shows in the
picture that it was empty.
NARRATOR: Salima wants to follow the
trail of Seti's mummy.
Incredibly, archaeologists
discovered it wasn't just
Seti's mummy that was
missing from his tomb.
Many of the pharaohs buried
in the Valley of the Kings
were also missing.
In the ancient necropolis of Philadelphia,
Basem and his team are excavating a grave,
removing mud bricks that
have been weighing heavily
on the wooden coffin
they've just discovered.
We are all excited
because you can't just find an
intact grave every day.
So for us, this is a day to celebrate.
NARRATOR: They are making progress
and beginning to see what's inside.
Basem hopes this discovery
can prove that the Greeks here
still practiced the Ancient
Egyptian art of mummification
to a very high standard.
BASEM: Now we are standing
on a wooden coffin,
which is one of the most
important things that you could
find here in the Ptolemaic cemetery.
NARRATOR: But the mud bricks
have caused some damage.
The heavy weight of the mud bricks
collapsed on the roof,
and then the roof of the
coffin took a deformed shape.
NARRATOR: Mahmoud needs
to determine if it's safe
to begin the nerve wracking
task of lifting it.
MAHMOUD: We will see if we
need to remove the other row
of the mud brick blocks.
If the coffin will be okay to lift up.
NARRATOR: But the delicate
operation is threatened by a
sudden change in the weather.
BASEM: It seems that it
might rain and if it rains,
the situation become alarming because of
the state of preservation of the wood.
The priority is to lift up this
coffin as fast as possible,
and then we move it to the study room.
NARRATOR: A heavy downpour
at this critical moment
could be catastrophic for
keeping this coffin intact.
We will lift it by hand.
Against time and against
the condition of the wood.
In a bad condition,
it will be very, very hard to lift it.
NARRATOR: Everyone on
site must act quickly.
They don't have ropes,
so they have to improvise.
Cautiously, they wrap their scarves
tightly around the coffin.
One, two. Wait, Ashour.
Wait, Ashour. Wait.
In the name of God, here we go.
In one movement.
Ease. up.
Come down, from the front.
The front. The front.
Slowly.
Thank you. That's it. Thanks.
BASEM: So excited.
It's unbelievable, we did it.
It was so difficult, so sensitive.
Thank God, we did it.
NARRATOR: But the
hard work isn't over.
The team still has to get the
coffin to the tent before they
can open it and find out
if it contains a mummy.
NARRATOR: At Deir El-Bahari,
in a tomb near the Temple of Hatshepsut,
Fathi is carefully uncovering a mummy he's
found in the rubble.
Here it is exciting moment because
we have the skull and face of the mummy
and looks in front of me
in good preservation.
NARRATOR: It's an
incredible find for Fathi.
If the rest of the mummy is intact,
he might be able to determine
who this person was and
when they died.
The mummy might also reveal
changes in Egyptian belief and
the process of mummification.
But first, Fathi and his team
must carefully free the mummy
and any artifacts nearby
from the ancient grave.
Slowly the intact torso
of the mummy emerges.
And next to the mummy, a key discovery.
FATHI: Ah.
NARRATOR: It's small and broken
but Fathi can immediately
recognize its importance.
Ancient Egyptians removed
the internal organs,
all the things inside the mummy
and put them into separate jars,
put them into four jars.
We call this four canopic jars.
This for sure is part of one of them.
NARRATOR: The canopic jar is
a crucial piece of evidence.
Their use changed
throughout Ancient Egypt,
depending on the traditions of the time.
In the Old Kingdom, Egyptians used
plain canopic jars to store the
mummies internal organs,
ready for the afterlife.
In the Middle Kingdom,
they wrote protective spells on the jars,
and carved the lids
to look like the deceased.
In the New Kingdom,
the lids featured the heads of a human,
a jackal, a baboon and a falcon
Each represented one of
the sons of the god Horus.
In later periods, embalmers
placed the mummified organs
back inside the mummy, but left
empty canopic jars in the tomb
as part of the burial ritual.
Fathi will need to find more
pieces of the canopic jar to
help him determine its state.
But it's good evidence that this mummy had
its organs removed,
a sign of a high status burial.
Fathi works his way down the mummy's
body towards the chest.
Usually we find the mummy,
both the arms above the chest.
We call it the Osiris position, like this.
But in this case we found
the arms going down under the belly.
And this is also very important.
NARRATOR: It's a rare find.
And if Fathi can determine
a date of burial,
it could signify an important
change in the mummification
process and Ancient Egyptian beliefs.
Expertly working down the torso,
Fathi discovers the mummy is male.
It has an individually wrapped penis.
And he also discovers the legs
below the knees are missing.
It's likely they were damaged
and discarded by tomb robbers
as they moved the body
searching for treasure.
During our excavation of the debris,
maybe we will find the rest of the mummy.
NARRATOR: Near Luxor, in
the Valley of the Kings,
Salima is investigating how Seti's
mummy survived for over 3,000 years.
Clues left in the tombs here,
long after Seti's death might
explain the mysterious
disappearance of his mummy
from his tomb.
Many of the royal tombs have graffiti that
tell us that a scribe called
Butehamun and some few others,
went around and were collecting the bodies
of the Kings of Egypt.
NARRATOR: Around 200
years after Seti died,
Egypt suffered an economic
crisis that led to civil unrest
For 50 years, tomb looting surged.
Robbers desecrated mummies and
stole their hidden valuables.
In response, pharaohs ordered
officials such as Butehamun to
remove treasures from the
royal tombs and keep them
for the state.
But it was crucial they kept
the royal body safe, too.
They moved the mummies
and hid them in a more secure
and secret location for these
ancient rulers to rest in eternity.
SALIMA: We know that this was
a state sponsored project and
on one level it was
basically legalized theft,
but on another,
it was also a way of
keeping the dead kings of Egypt,
the gods of Egypt,
safe and secure in a secret hidden place.
NARRATOR: The ancient
graffiti does not say which
royal mummies were
moved and where they went.
Salima wants to track
down their secret location
to find out if Seti's mummy was there.
And if it can explain its
remarkable survival from
environmental decay and tomb robbers.
NARRATOR: At Deir El-Bahari,
Fathi is excavating the area around
the mummy he has just discovered,
looking for clues that could help him date
the period of this man's burial.
Wow!
I see here wood also with colors.
Black, and red color.
This is very amazing.
This represents the most important
thing concerning the mummy.
NARRATOR: It is a fragment of a stylized
portrait of the deceased,
its color beautifully preserved
for thousands of years.
It would have been painted on
the lid of the coffin in the
hope that the man's soul
would recognize it and find
his body in the afterlife.
It gives Fathi a tantalizing glimpse of
the face of the man buried here.
We didn't find these things everyday.
NARRATOR: This stylized
portrait suggests the mummy
could date to the late period
of Egyptian history just before
the arrival of the Greeks.
Fathi now needs to move
the mummy so he can study
it in greater detail.
It is extremely delicate.
Fathi hopes to X-ray the mummy next.
That will reveal whether its
organs and brain were removed
and tell him more about how
mummification developed in the
course of Ancient Egyptian history.
But already it's a remarkable find.
A high status, late period male
For the first time since thousands of
years ago, the mummy is outside the tomb.
NARRATOR: Another discovery
to add to Fathi's record of
incredible mummy finds.
In Deir El-Bahari, Salima is
on a mission to find the hidden
resting place of the
royal mummies moved from the
Valley of the Kings.
She hopes it might reveal
the fate of Seti's mummy and
how it escaped the tomb
raiders for over 3,000 years.
SALIMA: Hatshepsut's temple
of Deir El-Bahari is over there
and beyond that is
the Valley of the Kings.
But I'm not going there.
I'm going up there.
NARRATOR: Hidden halfway up a
cliff is a concealed entrance
to a huge underground shaft.
It's really fabulous to
actually be here and to be able
to go down this
incredibly long, deep shaft.
NARRATOR: But Salima
is taking no chances.
The shaft is almost 70 feet deep.
A fall from this height could be fatal.
SALIMA: It's really
such a wide thing.
They did a lot of cutting.
Must have taken a
couple of months to dig this
deeply and empty it out.
Pretty amazing to have carved all of this.
Wow. It's fantastic.
It's really amazing.
NARRATOR: At the
base of the shaft,
a long tunnel stretches
deep into the bedrock.
SALIMA: It certainly is narrower than
the shaft coming down.
And you can feel it
getting warmer as you go in.
Gosh.
And now the roof's gone down and
it's much warmer and very dark.
NARRATOR: The sides of the shaft are
lined with niches in the rock.
Wow.
NARRATOR: These small hollows
were the final resting places
for dozens of mummies,
including some of the most
famous kings and queens of Egypt.
It's amazing to think that this is where
Egypt's greatest pharaohs used to rest.
It's unbelievable that so many
bodies would have been put into
the space and their coffins.
NARRATOR: Salima explores
further to see if this deep
underground tomb could lead her
to the spot where Seti was hidden.
SALIMA: Oh wow.
NARRATOR: In the ancient
necropolis of Philadelphia.
Basem and his team get
the newly discovered coffin
into the examination tent.
BASEM: It seems that it is not the local
wood that is found in Egypt.
This is expensive imported wood,
which gave us the impression that this
was someone who was elite.
NARRATOR: He searches
for more clues.
Looking at the coffin,
the lid in this triangular shape,
with this part, resembles the
facade of a Greek temple.
BASEM: Which indicates the
Hellenistic influence,
or maybe a Greek person.
NARRATOR: Basem
is hoping that the body will be
mummified in the Egyptian way.
To prove his hunch that Greek Egyptians
in the Ptolemaic period
still practiced the
ancient art of mummification to
a very high standard.
This is the moment
that we were waiting for.
Where shall I put it?
Here.
Go down Abdullah, slowly.
Thank you. That's it. Thanks.
NARRATOR: It's an incredible
mummy, unseen for 2,000 years.
BASEM: I can see here something
unique inside the coffin.
A floral crown over the head here.
This is basil that you can
find on the bank of the river
or the canals.
Greek word Basilicas
photon or the Royal Plant which
indicate that it was
important plant during the
Ptolemaic and Roman period.
NARRATOR: It's further
confirmation that the mummy
dates from Ptolemaic Egypt.
The team gets to work recording
the details of their find.
They need to X-ray the mummy
to determine the level of
mummification it had.
BASEM: If removing of internal
organs took place within this
embalming process as we can see it
Which means that this was a
high quality mummification.
NARRATOR: The mummy
is extremely fragile.
They will have to do the X-ray while it's
still inside the coffin.
Basem examines the scans.
BASEM: This guy survived for
more than 60 years in a period
that the range of life is
between the 30's and the 40's.
We can see he's very well-preserved.
He could have a good,
expensive kind of food.
And then also, we can't see
any kind of bone inflammation,
which means that he was
not doing hard work.
NARRATOR: The forensic
detail gives Basem an
incredible insight into
this 2,000 year old man.
BASEM: So for this case, we
have someone who lived a very
wealthy and good life and also
a good after life treatment
with this wealthy coffin.
So we are talking about elite person.
NARRATOR: A wealthy man like this
could afford the best mummification.
Basem looks for evidence
his organs were removed
and stored separately.
We can see the internal
organs were not fully removed.
NARRATOR: The discovery that
the mummifiers did not remove
the organs intensifies the
mystery of mummification in
this period for Basem.
But every new find is precious to him.
He will continue to examine this mummy and
reveal all its secrets.
All in all, the whole
information helps us in writing
new history of the
mummification process in Egypt.
NARRATOR: And he'll continue
searching for evidence that the
art of mummification was still
alive and well in the Ptolemaic
period at the end of
Egyptian civilization.
Deep in a cave in Deir El-Bahari,
above Hatshepsut's Temple,
Salima is on a mission to
find the secret resting place
of Seti the First and other royal mummies
moved from their tombs.
She hopes to reveal how Seti
survived in such good condition
and avoided tomb raiders
for over 3,000 years.
SALIMA: This is where Seti was
laid to rest for so long,
and stayed here for almost 3,000 years.
NARRATOR: A hidden location
near the tomb entrance kept
Seti safe from harm until his
discovery just over 140 years ago.
It's really quite remarkable to be in
the same space.
NARRATOR: In the
late 19th century,
archaeologists discovered
this tomb and followed it
180 feet into the mountain.
In the burial chamber they found six
coffins and over 40 coffins,
some from the New Kingdom,
lined the corridors.
Amongst them, some of
Egypt's most famous pharaohs,
including the coffin of Seti the First.
An inscription on the front
describes the mummy's move
from his tomb in the Valley of the Kings
to this secret spot.
Inside, his beautifully preserved body.
It says that he was moved twice,
to the tomb of Amenhotep the Second,
and then to the tomb of a royal woman.
And then finally to this place here.
NARRATOR: The royal
officials who moved Seti chose
this location well.
It's deep, cool and dry,
preserving his mummy.
And it's secret, keeping
it safe from tomb robbers.
It certainly is hidden and very secret.
So no wonder it was thought
to be a safe place to keep
the New Kingdom pharaohs
safe for eternity.
It certainly worked
because it preserved them
beautifully as it did.
NARRATOR: Seti's mummy
and the entire cache of
royal mummies have survived in pristine
condition for over 3,000 years,
thanks to the skill of those
who first embalmed them and
those who hacked deep into
the bedrock to build a tomb to
preserve and keep them safe.
They are the embodiment
of the most beguiling
civilization of antiquity.
Today, archaeologists continue
to hunt for more mummies,
to help them solve the
many remaining mysteries of
Ancient Egypt's fascinating
way of life, and death.
Captioned by Cotter Media Group.