We are ready to go inside the tomb.
Oh, my God, wow!
In a newly opened, 3,000-year-old tomb,
archaeologists investigate the last mystery
of the boy king, Tutankhamun.
A lot of human remains
a lot of skeletons.
I need more light.
Oh, my God.
Skulls everywhere.
Wow.
It looks like it could be a mummy.
The Valley of the Kings,
an ancient desert necropolis and, in the second millennium BC,
the final resting place of the pharaohs of Egypt's new kingdom.
Here, 100 years ago,
archaeologists made one of their greatest ever discoveries.
They found the most spectacular treasures ever recovered
from one of the most alluring civilizations in human history,
the lost tomb of Tutankhamun.
Tutankhamun became Egypt's pharaoh at just nine years old.
He died only ten years later.
The boy king and the treasures buried with him
made headlines around the world.
But compared to other pharaoh's tombs,
Tutankhamun's burial chamber is small and poorly decorated.
Why is he buried in such uninspiring surroundings?
What could it reveal about his life?
Now, at sites across Egypt,
we follow teams of archaeologists and investigators,
working to unlock Tutankhamun's last mystery.
Wow. It's wow, wow, wow, wow.
Egyptologist, Aliaa Ismail,
has worked in the Valley of the Kings since 2014.
At just 30, she leads a team of fellow Egyptians
who in a world first time are digitally reconstructing the
valley's tombs, and recording them for posterity.
They're searching for clues as to how King Tutankhamun's tomb
was built that might explain the mystery of his strange burial.
This tomb is very small and you notice that once you get in.
Also, the figures, they look very different from other tombs in the valley.
They're almost like child's drawing.
Immediately I can understand that there's something wrong with this tomb.
Deep inside the valley of the kings,
tunnels burrow deep into the rock.
In the largest tomb, there are more than 100 chambers.
In the center of the valley lies the most famous tomb of all,
the tomb of Tutankhamun.
It was discovered full of treasures and with a coffin
made of over 240 pounds of solid gold.
But all this was packed into just four tiny rooms.
Archaeologists have studied the tomb for a century,
but it's still to give up all of its secrets.
There is certainly something not right about this tomb.
It's very different from other tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
To better understand the strangeness
of Tutankhamun's tomb, Aliaa compares it to a tomb
created less than 50 years after Tutankhamun's burial,
the tomb of Seti I.
Seti's tomb has ten rooms compared to Tutankhamun's four.
Most of these rooms were likely full of treasures.
They are still lined with stunningly carved and painted reliefs.
It's spectacular compared to Tutankhamun's.
Here you can see so much work,
so much effort has been put into making this tomb
what it is today.
Aliaa uses the world's most precise
- 3 - D scanner to map the walls of Seti's tomb.
She compares her results to the scans
the team have already made of Tutankhamun's tomb.
The scans allow Aliaa to analyze the tomb's carvings
and paintings and compare the level of craftsmanship at work in each.
The comparison could reveal crucial information
about Tutankhamun's last days and may explain why he ended up
in such a tiny and poorly decorated tomb.
We are trying to get all the little details that
one wouldn't see with our eyes, out into the scanners.
What lost details will Aliaa's scans reveal?
Can they explain the mystery of Tutankhamun's tomb?
In Gebel el-Silsila, Swedish archaeologist, Maria Nilsson,
and her British husband, Archaeologist John Ward,
are heading out to a dig for the first time
since the global COVID pandemic forced them off site.
It's gonna be an amazing day today.
I expect the same.
Maria and John are picking up where they left off.
They are following the lead of a 120-year-old archaeological report
that briefly mentions a now lost temple.
The report doesn't describe the temple itself,
but it does describe its location,
claiming that it once stood on the Nile's West Bank
where the quarry workers' village lies.
When they were last here, Maria and John dated the
quarry workers' village to the reign of Tutankhamun
and they suspect he built the lost temple too.
They are now searching for evidence that could back up their hunch.
To get to their dig, they must cross the Nile.
The team's effort to board their boat bright and early
didn't go quite as quickly as planned.
It's one of those usual mornings,
when we go over to Tut's Village it's always chaos
because we've gotta get everything on the boat first.
The first day is always chaos because you need to move
all the equipment.
Alright, guys.
Thank you.
On the West Bank of the Nile,
the team make the tough hike across open country,
toward the workers' village.
There's nothing easy about going up this hill.
Once there, Maria searches out Tutankhamun's inscription.
So we know that this is the name of Tutankhamun,
based on the combination of hieroglyphs that you have here.
There's lots of evidence of Tutankhamun
in this quarry workers' village.
Considering that we have Tutankhamun here,
we have it in-- in the workers' village,
we do have a hunch that the temple was also constructed by Tutankhamun.
Before they set off to search for any ruins,
John and Maria check their bearings.
From here onward, everything they excavate
is in archaeologically uncharted territory.
If Tut's village is here. Mm-hmm.
And then our wadi is in here.
So we believe that the temple is somewhere
- in this part here. - Somewhere in that area.
This is exciting.
It is indeed. We're finally here.
Finally.
The team gets to work, searching the landscape.
They scan the surface material,
hunting for evidence that the lost temple stood here.
I wanted to start from that big stone.
Yep. And I want them to sweep,
as a line, taking in that edge,
and then we work our way up, okay?
But they have to look at every single stone.
A meticulous search across the valley floor
eventually delivers a result.
Team foreman, Ahmed Mansur, brings over something special.
What you got?
Oh, ooh! Oh, yes, yeah!
Excellent work!
Yes!
In Luxor, behind the Valley of the Kings,
lies the sprawling necropolis of Asasif.
An ancient burial ground for the elite nobles
who served the pharaohs.
Egyptian archaeologist, Ezz El Noby and his team
are excavating a giant tomb with an impressive pillared entrance.
Ezz was fascinated by Ancient Egypt as a boy
and has spent his entire adult life excavating the tombs here at Asasif.
We hope it's an intact tomb.
Inshalah, we hope.
Can this huge tomb shed light on the mystery
of Tutankhamun's tomb and help reveal why it lacks
the usual majesty?
Until now, we don't know the name of the owner.
They may have a job like a scribe or a priest
or a high priest or a vizier.
Who knows?
The workers labor beneath a hot desert sun,
to haul each 10 pound bucket of sand
up and out of the 20 foot deep tomb courtyard.
But soon the team uncover a clue.
He found a little rope.
We don't know the function of the rope.
This may be part of the bandages of a mummy.
The rope looks as good as new,
but it's over two-and-a-half thousand years old.
It's a big clue that inside the tomb, there may be ancient mummies.
Ever since Tutankhamun's treasures were discovered,
unopened tombs have been a holy grail for archaeologists.
Ezz's team clears away sand to open up this tomb's entrance.
Expectations are high that there are treasures inside.
As they dig, they uncover more and more pieces of fabric and bone.
The sheer quantity of finds is a good sign.
They found some linen bandages, I think.
Yeah, we have human bones
linen, ropes.
The number of artifacts coming out of the sand
suggests that this is a very large tomb.
Debris like this is strong evidence it was raided in the past.
To drop this much material on their way out,
tomb raiders must have found a significant hoard inside.
I think we will have more than one mummy
because we have many kinds of linens...
different colors and different fabric.
The team works all morning to clear sand
from the tomb's entrance.
Finally, there's enough room for Ezz to take a peek.
Wow. I'm very excited.
I want to know what's inside.
Wow, my God, there's a very big hallway.
At Saqqara,
Egyptian archaeologist, Ola El Aguizy,
is also trying to unearth a lost tomb.
Ola is looking for new evidence to understand
how tombs were built in Egypt in the generations
that follow Tutankhamun.
That evidence might shed light on the mystery of Tutankhamun's own tomb.
Ola has been studying Egypt's tombs since the 1970s,
when she became fascinated with decoding and understanding ancient hieroglyphs.
We are expecting to find something important,
so we are waiting in suspense, yes.
Three years ago, Ola discovered an intriguing
limestone lintel here, with a name engraved into it,
Ta Mwiyah.
Her investigations reveal this figure was born into a military family.
He lived just 50 years after Tutankhamun.
What we found in this whole area are military men.
This habit of getting military buried here
has began since the time of Tutankhamun.
Ola directs her team to search for the tomb's entrance,
near where she found the lintel.
Soon, white limestone blocks emerge from beneath the sand.
Oh, I can see hieroglyphic texts here!
A wall!
Oh, my God, so nice.
To be sure this is the entrance to Ta Mwiyah's lost tomb,
Ola investigates the ancient inscriptions.
The great overseer of the stables in the temple
of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt and then the name
of the deceased, Ta Mwiyah.
The hieroglyphs confirm,
this is the entrance to Ta Mwiyah's tomb.
Now, Ola's team must excavate further.
They have to dig through several tons of sand
and hope the tomb and it's treasures are intact after 3,300 years.
Just inside the tomb's entrance,
they reveal something extraordinary.
You found something?
A beautiful painted artwork on plaster.
Wow. It's, wow, wow, wow, wow.
At Gebel el-Silsila,
near a quarry workers' village on the West Bank of the Nile,
Maria and John's search for evidence of a temple that
may have been built by Tutankhamun,
unearths a precious clue.
That is gorgeous! Oh! Isn't that beautiful?
Oh, it's a typical Amarna ware. Look at the lotus.
This pottery is so typical for what we know as the Amarna period,
so from Amenhotep III through to Tutankhamun.
The pottery shard is painted with blue lotus flowers.
A typical motif from the time of Tutankhamun.
This find confirms that the old reports
of some kind of permanent settlement here are accurate
and that this settlement dates to the era of the boy king.
It's easy to imagine that this was once part of a massive water vessel
that once stood in the courtyard
of the temple that once stood in this wadi.
And for us, that is a beautiful piece of datable material.
To find conclusive evidence that a temple once stood here,
the team starts the first of several trenches.
If they can find pieces of an ancient wall,
it will be a significant clue that a large structure once stood here.
As the workers remove the top levels of sand,
they make another discovery.
Amazing!
I love you.
Where? Where did you find it?
It's a piece of worked sandstone.
It's small, but that has now, that's just made my day.
That is from the interior of the structure,
whether that be a temple, kiosk, shrine, whatever it was.
It has plaster and then painted inscription,
relief over the top.
The team find more and more pieces of dressed stone
in the trenches and among the surface scatter.
This proves that there was something here that was more substantial.
The dressed stone is evidence
that the team could have found Tutankhamun's temple.
You know, no one's ever documented this temple
and we're the first ones to do it
and to me, that's just amazing, it's awesome.
Less than a mile from Tutankhamun's tomb
in the Valley of the Kings,
Ezz is preparing to enter a tomb he has just opened.
The discoveries awaiting Ezz inside may have lain unseen
by human eyes for nearly 3,000 years.
By the end of the first workday,
the tomb's entrance is completely clear.
We are ready to go inside the tomb.
Oh, my God. Wow!
A lot of human remains
a lot of skeletons.
I need more light.
Oh, my God.
Skulls everywhere.
There's hundreds of skulls, hundreds of human remains.
It is a very big discovery.
The biggest discovery of my career.
Today's discovery is a once in a lifetime find.
It's instantly clear that the tomb is far bigger
than the burial chamber in Tutankhamun's tomb
and doorways lead off to more rooms.
To discover who this tomb was built for,
Ezz must investigate the far end of the chamber.
To get there, the team must remove
each of the 100 plus bones littering the floor.
It's likely that these are the bones of many generations of the same family.
We have to work carefully with the bones
because they're so fragile.
With clear access, Ezz finds further passageways
leading off the main hall and a false door.
A false door is a doorframe carved into solid stone.
Those buried here believed their souls would pass through this door
and into the afterlife.
It's a very big tomb lot's of room, lot's of bones.
The false door often carries inscriptions
identifying the tomb owner,
but here there's no evidence of their identity.
No inscription for this.
I can't tell the name of the owner of the tomb.
For a moment, it looks like the tomb hall
may have revealed all of its secrets.
But, in the corner, Ezz spots a mysterious shape under the sand.
Wow!
Looks like it could be a mummy.
Ezz's team work quickly to free the mummy from millennia of dust.
I think maybe
the owner of the tomb or one of his family.
Ahmad!
Please, come.
Now, the team must move the mummy to the site's conservation area.
Ahmed Mohamed, the team's conservator,
prepares the linen to stop it from disintegrating.
Alls is well? Do you think we can take it out?
Yes, it'll come out.
Workers face a tough challenge
to maneuver the mummy out of the tomb and up a flimsy scaffold
to the top of the 20 foot deep courtyard.
The operation is fraught with danger,
for both the work crew and the mummy.
Hold on, wait, remove your hand.
Be careful, climb up the ladder. Climb up.
So up from Abu Ali's side, that's it.
Watch the pole, that's it.
Right here.
Put it down.
Praise God.
The workers deliver the mummy to the restoration team,
without it or them coming to any harm.
Analysis of the mummy will help the team uncover
this tomb's lost secrets.
Why did a servant of the pharaohs get a bigger tomb
than Tutankhamun himself?
I am very, very happy. We found tombs, we found mummies,
we found a big number of human remains
but still a lot of work ahead.
Mummification was practiced for 3,000 years
of Egyptian history on pharaohs like Tutankhamun
and their servants buried here.
They believed it preserved the body for the afterlife.
Belief in this afterlife was constant and unshakable,
except for one brief and shocking moment
in Egyptian history when the pharaohs' faith in eternal life vanished.
It was a revolution that shaped Tutankhamun's
short life.
Did it also shape his mysterious tomb?
At Gebel el-Silsila,
Maria and John have found evidence of a building on the valley floor.
Their finds suggest the structure could be a temple,
dating to the time of King Tutankhamun.
This little shard, this little fragment
is all that I have left, at this present moment,
of what was once a highly decorated temple,
situated somewhere in this wadi.
Maria and John will continue their investigation,
but another mystery here could help explain
Tutankhamun's tomb and the religious revolution
that surrounded his life.
Previous generations of pharaohs,
including Tutankhamun's father,
built on the East Bank of the Nile,
but strangely, Tutankhamun quarried and built on the West Bank.
When we look at the reasons why Tutankhamun
had his quarries on the West Bank,
we do think that it has a strong link with the priesthood,
the priesthood of God Amun
and that they wanted to see him with a fresh start.
Tutankhamun's powerful high priests
wanted a fresh start because they were fighting for their survival.
When Tutankhamun's father, Akhenaten, became pharaoh,
he led a revolution that transformed Egyptian religion.
He abandoned sacred temples
and he banned belief in the old Gods and the afterlife.
He replaced them with a single God, the Aten.
Akhenaten built a new capital, Amarna,
abandoning the traditional home of the pharaohs at Thebes.
When Akhenaten died, Tutankhamun faced a choice:
carry on his father's unpopular religious revolution
or restore the old Gods to their temples and their priests.
Tutankhamun's father, Akhenaten,
not only did he close the temples
and reduce the pantheon of Gods down to just one, the Aten,
he created a chaotic system which, unfortunately,
Tutankhamun inherited.
Tutankhamun's father,
as a self-proclaimed God on Earth,
declared that he alone could communicate with the
sun God, Aten.
Neither the high priests nor Egypt's nobles were happy.
When the boy king, Tutankhamun came to the throne,
many of his most important advisors demanded he reverse
his father's revolution.
Tutankhamun was a young pharaoh
and he would have relied heavily upon his advisors
and the court around him.
Tutankhamun agreed to return to the old ways.
He quarried and built on the opposite bank of the Nile to his father,
to make clear his opposition to his father's reforms.
I think he was able to, in his short reign,
reestablish the power of Egypt.
Tutankhamun was able to revive Egypt like a phoenix,
out of the chaos that his father had left behind.
Did Tutankhamun's counterrevolution succeed?
And can this decisive moment in Egyptian history
explain the mystery of his unimpressive tomb?
Just four miles from Luxor, in the Valley of the Kings,
Aliaa and her team - are using a 3 - D scanner to investigate
the tombs of Tutankhamun and Pharaoh Seti I.
Seti is buried in a majestic ten room tomb.
Tutankhamun's four room tomb is so small,
it hardly seems fit for a pharaoh.
At the team's HQ, Aliaa compares the scan results
to reveal hidden details in each tomb's wall decorations
and investigates if they are connected
to the religious revolution that shaped Tutankhamun's reign.
So, this is our lab, where the magic happens.
Aliaa puts the scans of each tomb
side by side and investigates.
The difference between Seti and Tut is visible.
Seti's tomb, it has so many carved details,
it's so intricately done and very special.
But however, when we go into Tut's tomb,
it's just plaster and paint.
- Her 3 - D scans reveal unique and unprecedented details.
So Aliaa can see a remarkable flaw in Tutankhamun's tomb.
When you zoom in, you can have a look at the faint
outline of the brush marks.
It's obvious that the plaster was still wet
when they started painting over it.
The brush marks point to an extraordinary theory.
It seems that somebody wanted to rush Tutankhamun's burial.
Clearly someone wanted to close the tomb doors quickly,
not even waiting for the plaster to dry before applying the paint.
The rush to finish Tutankhamun's tomb adds to the mystery
of its small size.
Who was responsible for leaving the boy king
in this underwhelming tomb?
Was it revenge for his father's revolution?
Inside King Tutankhamun's tiny tomb,
Aliaa continues her investigation.
There is certainly something not right about this tomb.
A crucial clue to the identity of the person
who buried Tutankhamun in this unworthy tomb,
rests with a puzzling portrait, painted onto the tomb walls.
Before Tutankhamun's body was taken down into his tomb,
a figure dressed in leopard skin performed a sacred ritual.
He touched a serpent-headed blade to the eyes and lips of Tutankhamun,
believing it allowed the dead pharaoh's soul
to see and breathe.
His spirit could now take part in a feast with his mourners,
sustenance for the journey that they believed Tutankhamun
would make into the afterlife.
It was a ritual traditionally performed by the heir to the throne.
Was the leopard skinned figure also responsible
for Tutankhamun's tomb?
Aliaa travels to the nearby Valley of the Monkeys
to investigate the mysterious man.
This tomb is the tomb of Ay.
This is my first time here.
Ay is the man who is depicted guiding Tutankhamun's soul
to the afterlife on the walls of Tutankhamun's tomb.
He was possibly the father of Tutankhamun's step mother, Nefertiti,
and a trusted advisor to the boy king
throughout his reign.
It's amazing how the background color is yellow,
which is the same as Tut's tomb
and the drawing style is also the same.
The same opening of the mouth scene exists in Tut.
Also, there is no carving.
The wall is just plaster and paint.
It's almost like the same person did the two tombs.
Tutankhamun died young with no heirs.
His premature death led to a power struggle
among those with a claim to become the next pharaoh.
Was Ay, and his battle to become king,
responsible for Tutankhamun's strange burial?
At Saqqara Necropolis, Ola's team of archaeologists
is searching for the tomb of a man called Ta Mwiyah.
He was an important aide to the pharaoh who ruled Egypt
fifty years after Tutankhamun's death.
Tutankhamun was intent on reversing his father's religious revolution.
Did his plan succeed?
Ola's Egyptian colleague, Tarek Tawfik,
spots a piece of intriguing evidence.
Ta Mwiyah and his wife, on limestone,
this is good news.
And I think I will have the name of the wife now.
Married F, his beloved
and then this is supposed to be her name, Tubi.
Carved reliefs of Ta Mwiyah and his wife, Tubi,
fill the tomb walls.
We have the deceased and his wife. Mm-hmm.
And they are going and being received by a God.
Uh-huh.
And it's not Osiris and it's not Ptah, so who was it?
Atum maybe?
This is significant.
Religiously significant.
The reliefs depict the couple's journey to heaven
and their eternal life in paradise.
Similar scenes adorn the walls of Tutankhamun's tomb.
Ancient Egyptians,
just 50 years after the death of Tutankhamun,
still believe that carvings like these on tomb walls,
magic the afterlife into reality.
But to which Gods are these paintings and reliefs dedicated?
Who do the Egyptians worship now,
after Tutankhamun's death?
And what does it mean for the mystery of his tomb?
Tarek and Ola continue their excavations.
They could shed light on whether Ancient Egyptians
still worshiped the sun God, Aten,
as demanded by Tutankhamun's father,
or had they returned to the older pantheon of Gods.
On site, the workers continue to search for this tomb's burial chamber.
It's always exciting.
Sometimes there is even, between the workmen,
a bit of competition, who will find first?
While conservators move the painted walls
to the store rooms for safekeeping,
Tarek spots something in the sand.
We have a pillar and I can see already,
there is a Djed pillar decorated on it.
It's an important find.
This pillar confirms the nature of Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs
in the years after the Amarna Revolution and Tutankhamun's death.
This is exciting, the deceased appearing now
as he would have been carrying the Djed pillar.
The Djed symbol represents the God Osiris,
who arose from the dead to live again as king of the afterlife.
Ancient Egyptians painted the symbol on the bottom of coffins,
and wrapped the mummy with Djed amulets
to summon Osiris and rejuvenate the soul of the deceased.
They also carved Djed symbols onto the pillars in their tombs
to follow Osiris to the afterlife.
In the time of Amarna,
they told them that there is no afterlife.
After there was a reaction, then extreme worshiping Osiris.
The team has found inscriptions to Osiris and Ptah,
Gods whose worship Tutankhamun's father had forbidden.
It's more evidence Tutankhamun had abandoned
his father's revolution.
He has restored belief in the afterlife and the power
of all Egypt's Gods.
The religious revolution, demanding the worship
of a single sun God, was over.
This was a feat that deserved a magnificent burial and a majestic tomb,
so why didn't Tutankhamun's mummy
get the tomb it deserved?
In the Valley of the Kings,
Aliaa is investigating this mystery.
Why did Ay banish Tutankhamun
to such a small and poorly decorated tomb?
Aliaa examines Ay's tomb to look for clues.
That's a baboon wall.
Both Tut and Ay opted for the same scene,
almost like the same person chose what goes in each tomb.
The uncanny similarities between the two chambers
suggests a common hand was at work on both,
but only Ay's tomb was fit for a pharaoh.
It's very similar to the tomb of Tomb of Tutankhamun.
The style, the artwork, the sarcophagus.
But it's so much bigger!
The artistic style of the two tombs suggests that
Ay may have been responsible for decorating both.
Investigators now suspect that when Tutankhamun died,
unexpectedly young, the lavish tomb he ordered
for himself was not finished.
Ay seized the moment.
He ordered Tut be buried in a smaller tomb.
It was quickly decorated and sealed before the paint
had a chance to dry.
With Tutankhamun gone,
and before any challengers could oppose him,
Ay crowned himself Pharaoh and decreed that when he died,
he would take Tutankhamun's tomb.
Ay buried Tutankhamun in the smaller tomb,
so he could have the bigger tomb for himself.
This is the tomb that was intended for Tutankhamun,
the tomb of Ay.
Ay banished Tutankhamun to an unworthy tomb
to secure his place as pharaoh.
Later pharaohs erased Tutankhamun from history,
smearing his name as the son of a heretic.
But 100 years ago, when his tomb was discovered,
Tutankhamun was reborn a superstar.
Now, experts use the clues to piece together
his true legacy.
As a boy king, dealing with the aftermath
of his father's religious revolution,
Tutankhamun navigated a royal court in turmoil,
but heeding the advice of his most trusted advisors,
he reinstated the priesthood,
he rebuilt Egypt's temples and he replaced the sun God, Aten,
with the Egyptian Gods of old.
After his father's years of misrule,
the reign of the young Pharaoh Tutankhamun
saw Egypt restored to greatness.