NARRATOR: Egypt, the richest source
of archaeological treasures on the planet.
SALIMA IKRAM: Oh, that's a fabulous one!
NARRATOR: Beneath this desert landscape
lie the secrets of an ancient civilization.
MAN: Wow, you can see why the pharaohs chose this place.
NARRATOR: Now, for a full season of excavations,
our cameras have unprecedented access
to follow teams on the frontline of archaeology...
MAN: I'm driving so fast because I'm so excited!
WOMAN: It's an entrance, we can see an entrance.
NARRATOR: Revealing buried secrets...
ANTONIO MORALES: So I have just been told
that they have found something.
[laughing]
MAN: A sphinx!
NARRATOR: And making discoveries
that could rewrite ancient history.
MAN: Hey!
NARRATOR: This time, archaeologists reveal
what tomb raiders left behind.
John investigates an ancient tomb-robbing scandal.
JOHN DARNELL: Royal tombs are not robbed by random robbers.
NARRATOR: US Homeland Security
helps bring a stolen mummy back to Egypt.
SALIMA: How fabulous.
NARRATOR: And Don makes a discovery
in a long-forgotten tomb.
DON: Oh, my gosh.
It has a possibility of being truly exciting.
♪
NARRATOR: The Valley of the Kings.
65 tombs hidden in this remote gorge,
built to contain the mummies of Egypt's great pharaohs
and their treasures.
Throughout history these tombs have been raided
from within just a few weeks of being sealed,
right up to the 20th century.
But to archaeologists, what the thieves left behind
is still priceless evidence,
helping them to unlock the secrets of ancient Egypt.
MAN: Dr. Ryan.
NARRATOR: Renowned American Egyptologist Don Ryan
is kicking off his season in the Valley.
DON: I first came to Egypt as a student.
It was my priority to come and see this place.
And I had a map of the Valley of the Kings,
and I noticed amongst all thesetombs of these famous rulers
there were all these little dotswith numbers on them,
and those really intrigued me.
NARRATOR: The dots on Don's maps represented
the smaller and lesser-known tombs in the Valley.
Don made these his area of expertise.
DON: Working in various tombs around here
has so many aspects that make it special,
apart from it being the most famous archaeological site
in the world.
NARRATOR: Dig season runs from October to April
and relies on the expertise
of hundreds of skilled local workers.
DON: I know this guy from before.
He's a good guy.
This book is kind of special,
because it goes back to my veryfirst field season in Egypt.
This is 1989.
Every tomb in the Valley of the Kings
is a piece of a great puzzle.
NARRATOR: Don's missions have focused on a cluster
of small tombs at the edge of the Valley.
Nearby is the impressive burial chamber
of Pharaoh Amenhotep II.
But most of the surrounding tombs remain unidentified.
All of them were looted centuries ago,
any treasures stolen by robbers.
But in some, they left behind mummified animals
and ancient pottery.
This year, Don is excavating one of the most mysterious
tombs of them all: tomb number 49.
Who it was built for remains a mystery.
Thought to be empty,
no one has excavated it for over a century.
DON: We are the first archaeologists to go in there
and clear the material out since 1906.
I know from previous experience
having excavated a number of tombs from that period
that these early archaeologistsusually took the bigger things
or the prettier things and left everything else inside.
♪
NARRATOR: Solving the mysteries of this tomb will be tough.
The chamber is totally unmarked.
DON: At this point we don't have any indication
for whom this tomb might have been built.
We have to look for all the little clues.
NARRATOR: Don has become an expert in uncovering
the secrets of these smaller, undecorated tombs.
DON: The tombs I work with don't have any inscriptions,
one can't just go in and read the walls.
In the Valley of the Kings just having a burial chamber
is a magnificent honor.
It could have been a royal family member
or it could have been a very high official.
NARRATOR: Tomb 49 has been robbed by ancient tomb raiders,
but that doesn't mean it's empty.
DON: We'll clear this stuff outand we'll go through it,
and it'd be really nice
if we found something with a name on it.
We might find some objects from the original burial.
It has the possibility of being truly exciting.
♪
NARRATOR: The team has just three weeks
to move several tons of earth.
♪
Each bucketful must undergo a fingertip search,
with even the tiniest fragments pulled out
for further investigation.
DON: One never knows, it couldbe the last basketful of debris
that might give up the answer that we're looking for.
NARRATOR: At the entrance to the Valley
sits a complex of tombs and temples called Deir El-Bahari.
In the cliffs of this site
are where important officials were buried.
♪
ANTONIO: Shukran.
How many people do we have today?
ALI FAROUK: Total, 3-0.
ANTONIO: So we need 10 more.
NARRATOR: Professor Antonio Morales
is an Egyptologist from the University of Alcalá in Spain.
He's in charge of 30 international experts
working here on one of the biggest
archaeological projects in Egypt.
ANTONIO: We came here to excavate two or three tombs
that belonged to very prestigious,
very powerful high officials.
They provide much information about things like religion,
beliefs, ritual practices,
and about ancient Egyptian culture in general.
NARRATOR: But this year,
his government permit has come through late.
ANTONIO: This season is going to be very intensive,
because we were expecting to work for five or six weeks,
we're actually going to do it for three weeks,
which means that this is going to be double intensive.
NARRATOR: Like the tombs in the Valley of the Kings,
this site was also robbed by other ancient Egyptians.
ANTONIO: Most of the ancient Egyptian tombs were plundered
weeks or months after the funeral,
so for us it's very interestingto try to come up
with a reconstruction of what happened here.
RAOUL: So those are the contents.
NARRATOR: Last year, Antonio's team unearthed
hundreds of body parts:
mummies ripped apart by thieves looking for gold and jewels.
ANTONIO: The robbers cut the bandages
looking for as many objects as possible,
and once they were finished with that,
perhaps they burned the mummy, they throw it away,
they didn't want to have any ghost,
any visit from the afterlife.
NARRATOR: Tomb robbers believed the dead would come back
to haunt them unless they destroyed the mummy.
But for the dead themselves,
this was the worst possible fate.
They needed their mummified body to remain intact
to live on in the afterlife.
So stopping thieves was about
more than protecting your treasure,
it was also about ensuring your eternal life.
ANTONIO: Now I can go into the sarcophagus.
NARRATOR: Antonio is investigating
how the owner of this 4,000-year-old tomb
tried to prevent his mummy from being destroyed by looters.
ANTONIO: Now we are inthe deepest section of the tomb
where his coffin and corpse was deposited.
NARRATOR: The team knows this tomb
must have belonged to an important official.
There's no mummy, but the sarcophagus is covered
with intricate hieroglyphs.
Among them, the team finds the name of the owner.
DAINA: So this area we can read, this Ipi,
so the deceased is named Ipi.
What you can see here is actually all the things
the deceased needs for his afterlife.
NARRATOR: Ipi was a vizier,
a role second only to the pharaoh.
A powerful statesman,
he was buried in an ornately inscribed sarcophagus,
covered in spells to protect him in the afterlife.
To ensure his mummy stayed intact,
Ipi's tomb was designed to stop robbers.
The entrance was sealed by huge boulders.
And inside the burial chamber,
the sarcophagus was set into the floor,
then covered with stone slabs
so that the room appeared empty.
ANTONIO: When robbers came,they will see an empty chamber,
a wonderful floor, and they willthink that the chamber was empty
because it was already stolen.
NARRATOR: But even this clever design
wasn't enough to stop thieves.
Ipi's mummy and all his treasures
were stolen centuries ago.
♪
[men yelling]
Outside Ipi's tomb, there's an exciting discovery.
ANTONIO: I have been told that just in one of the sections
we started working this morning
it seems they have found some kind of a structure.
NARRATOR: Antonio's team has spotted
an opening in the rubble.
It could be an entrance to a hidden chamber,
undisturbed for thousands of years.
NARRATOR: In the Valley of the Kings,
Egyptologist Don Ryan is investigating
the mysterious tomb 49.
DON: It stops right there.
[speaking Arabic] Right there.
NARRATOR: His decision to carefully sift tons of earth
from a seemingly empty tomb is paying off.
The team has found several artifacts
that might help reveal who the tomb was built for,
including pottery, wood, and linen.
DON: These are cloth fragments,
and they tend to be well preserved.
These could be 3,000 years old,
because it's, it's dry down in the tomb
and conducive to the preservation.
It, it does tell you something,
it tells you that if these are mummy wrappings,
there was a mummy in there at one time,
and that's of course important to know.
NARRATOR: These pieces of ancient wood and pottery
are over 3,000 years old.
DON: This is probably a big chunk of coffin right here.
And this is probably part of a dowel or some piece of wood
that was used to hold bits and pieces of coffins together.
ROSE: You guys got some good stuff.
DON: Well, maybe, we'll see.
NARRATOR: Based on what he's found,
Don can begin to piece together
what was actually inside tomb 49.
A hidden staircase, chiseled out of solid limestone,
leads to a six-by-three-yard chamber.
The excavated pieces of wood
were probably from an elaborately painted coffin,
that held a tightly wrapped mummy.
Stored around the coffin were everyday items,
everything the tomb owner would need for the afterlife.
♪
It seems like tomb 49 is a conventional burial site,
but who it belongs to is still a mystery.
Suddenly, Don is called to the chamber.
NARRATOR: Among the rubble is a remarkable treasure.
DON: Oh!
NARRATOR: Exactly what Don was hoping for.
DON: Oh, my gosh.
NARRATOR: An artifact with a name on it.
DON: This is a ring made out of glass,
and possibly we have on the surface
the name of Ramses III,
one of the great warrior pharaohs of Egypt.
My team would be the first to hold this in over 3,000 years.
NARRATOR: The ring is an extraordinary
but unexpected find.
If it does belong to the pharaoh Ramses III,
it shouldn't be here.
Ramses was buried in tomb number 11, not tomb 49.
DON: How this object gotinto this tomb is the question.
♪
NARRATOR: At Deir El-Bahari,
Egyptologist Antonio Morales and his team are working
near the ransacked tomb of a pharaoh's right-hand man,
the vizier Ipi.
They've just discovered an opening.
MOHAMED: What you can see here now is rubble.
ANTONIO: After a couple of hourswe'll be able to see more.
NARRATOR: The entrance is so well hidden,
it's possible this chamber was never found by robbers.
ANTONIO: He's going to clean all this area around,
and then once we know what is around
we can take up everything to see what is behind.
But make sure you keep many people here working,
we need to do all this quickly, okay?
NARRATOR: With such a short permit,
the team must work against the clock.
ANTONIO: It seems that the structure we have found
could be larger than we expected,
so we need to clean first this area
so that they can continue excavating
to see whether we can go into this new structure underneath.
NARRATOR: Antonio hopes for good results
from this new chamber,
because last season, close to Ipi's tomb,
the team discovered something incredible:
what Antonio suspects is the largest deposit
of intact mummification equipment ever found in Egypt.
ANTONIO: We found these 56 jars
related to the mummification process of the vizier Ipi.
NARRATOR: For ancient robbers, these jars had little value.
ANTONIO: What we were not prepared for
was when we really realized
that some of the jars still kept their contents.
It really makes it a treasure for us.
NARRATOR: Despite being nearly 4,000 years old,
the contents are in incredible condition.
SALIMA: Raoul?
Coming in!
RAOUL: So this is the contents...
SALIMA: Perfect.
RAOUL: ...of one of the jars.
NARRATOR: With 56 jars to process,
Antonio has called in Salima Ikram,
professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo.
She's forensically examining all the items in the jars,
including mummified body parts.
SALIMA: Sometimes it's a bit stinky,
and then there are moments whereyou realize you're in touch
with people's bodily fluids, which is a bit awkward.
But it's fantastic because one is in touch, literally,
physically, as well as sort of emotionally,
with people who lived thousands of years ago.
NARRATOR: Salima is investigating 300 natron bags.
SALIMA: The natron is a mixtureof salt and baking soda,
and it naturally desiccates and defats,
because that's what we do
as we--[slurp]-- dehydrate the body.
NARRATOR: Ancient Egyptians practiced mummification
to preserve bodies for eternity.
First, priests removed the internal organs.
To dry out these organs, and the body,
the priests used sponges called natron bags
to soak up fluids inside the corpse.
The soul was believed to reside in the heart,
so this organ was kept inside the body.
The other organs were placed beside it.
All materials used during the process were considered sacred,
so everything was packed into jars and entombed close by.
SALIMA: So this is the one that I'm going to start with,
and it was early on in the mummification process,
because it's really hard
and it's absorbed a lot ofthe liquids, the bodily juices,
and it's been smushed down,
and you can see its different points of contact
with Ipi's body.
Ooh! Plumpy!
God, that's fat!
And this one smells a bit different from the other one.
This smells more of body andthe other one smelt more of oil.
[sniffs]
You know, if you look at anything long enough
you will kind of figure out what happens.
If forensic scientists can do it for murders now,
we can do it for deaths a long time ago,
because that's just what archaeology really is.
NARRATOR: These materials are some of the oldest
mummification deposits ever found.
SALIMA: The earlier we can go in time,
the better it is for us to try and track
how mummification changed over time.
So really, these are testaments,very physical testaments,
to what happened and how.
NARRATOR: 300 miles north in Giza...
♪
Here, in the shadow of the pyramids,
a team of investigators is in pursuit
of modern-day tomb robbers.
Shaaban Abd-Elgawad is a government minister.
He works with crime agencies around the world
to locate stolen ancient Egyptian treasures.
NARRATOR: Shaaban has already intercepted
over 1,000 stolen artifacts from the global black market.
NARRATOR: After a year-long operation,
ancient mummy parts have been seized in the United States.
NARRATOR: In the 1900s,
thieves stole thousands of newly unearthed artifacts
from the Valley of the Kings, including human remains.
NARRATOR: Could these stolen artifacts
be the mummified parts of one of Egypt's great pharaohs?
NARRATOR: Shaaban is on his way to the Egyptian Museum,
where the illegal artifacts are arriving
from the United States.
NARRATOR: Who the parts belong to is a mystery,
but mummification was usually reserved
for nobility and pharaohs.
SHAABAN: We're going to the lab.
NARRATOR: Shaaban and his team will finally see
these extraordinary relics up close.
♪
NARRATOR: Finally home in Egypt,
can forensic analysis reveal
exactly who the hands and this head belong to?
♪
In the Valley of the Kings,
Don and the local workers are starting their day
with a team ritual.
DON: One of our workers, his wife,
she started making cakes for us,so he got the nickname Abu Cake.
Yeah, take the whole thing.
Don't be shy, you know it's good.
A lot of times we start with tea and cake,
and then we get right to work.
NARRATOR: Today, Don is visiting one of the largest
and most spectacular sites in the Valley...
Tomb number 11.
After his discovery of a ring that could belong to a pharaoh,
he's hoping to verify the inscription.
DON: We're in the tomb of Ramses III,
perhaps the last great pharaoh of Egypt's Age of Empire,
and of course he's entitled to a special and beautiful tomb
in the Valley of the Kings.
So he was obviously very powerful, was a great warrior.
This magnificent, well-preserved temple
shows him just causing havoc on foreign invaders
and anyone else who gets in his way.
NARRATOR: Each pharaoh had his own name and insignia,
called a cartouche.
It was a key part of tomb decoration,
found on walls, the coffin, and precious artifacts, like rings.
DON: In front of me, we have a depiction of his names.
We have a seated figure of the goddess Ma'at.
On the right we have the sign for Usar, or powerful,
and then a sun disc up here for Ra.
This is a blown-up image of thering we encountered in tomb 49.
By looking at the hieroglyphs on the ring,
you know, it's essentially identical.
NARRATOR: Ramses III was a warrior,
famed for battling Libya and other neighbors
trying to invade Egypt.
But his wars drained the state of its wealth,
and in an argument over which son would inherit the throne,
Ramses was murdered.
Some believe his wife plotted to have him killed.
His burial and tomb were lavish.
Golden amulets and jewelry would have been placed
in every layer of his mummy wrappings.
But Ramses' tomb fell prey to raiders.
And like the tombs of many other pharaohs,
the mummies were stolen, unwrapped,
and stripped of their treasures.
DON: This tomb is just across the way from tomb 49.
I find it interesting that we, we find a ring of Ramses III
inside tomb 49.
Maybe that ring dropped off a mummy,
it could've been dropped by tomb robbers.
So we can start with an interesting idea
and then see where the evidence takes us.
NARRATOR: Don's challenge now is to find out
why a ring with Ramses III's name on it
was found in the rubble of the mysterious tomb 49.
NARRATOR: At Deir El-Bahari,
Antonio and his team have been working to uncover
a secret entrance found close to the tomb
of a pharaoh's right-hand man, a vizier called Ipi.
It could be a chamber built to hide treasures,
or even a body, from thieves.
♪
After two days of digging,
for the first time in possibly 4,000 years,
the entrance is finally clear.
MOHAMED: I will have a look now.
♪
Oh, yeah.
♪
Well, it's perfectly empty.
There's nothing in there.
Just a magnificent, rectangular, empty space.
ANTONIO: So how was that?
MOHAMED: Well, it probably had been dug for a burial,
and it, it can fit for a small coffin,
also funeral materials.
ANTONIO: Anyway.
MOHAMED: Of course this means that robbers, tomb robbers,
actually was ahead and they took whatever was there.
NARRATOR: The team removes all the rubble
to verify the chamber has been completely stripped.
ANTONIO: So we will like to find things
in the way they were constructed,
but all these robberies and plundering
somehow tell us a lot about the, the rest of the process.
NARRATOR: All they can do now is number the tomb
and map its location.
MOHAMED: Disappointment should not be a scientific thing,
it's a, you know, it's human feelings,
and of course sometimes you feel it,
but you have to live with it.
NARRATOR: On the other side of the site,
Ipi's mummification jars are proving more rewarding.
ANTONIO: Hello, Salima.
SALIMA: Hey, Antonio.
NARRATOR: One jar in particular
contains something extremely unusual.
ANTONIO: So I brought you this organ.
SALIMA: Oh!
We can see this is quite a well-preserved heart.
You can see the different chambers,
and here you can just see this very nice, reddish resin.
And this sort of red/gold coloris important,
because people used to use resinnot just because it deodorizes,
disinfects, inhibits bacteria, and smells nice--
when you're a corpse it's good to smell nice--
but also because it gives you this color,
and when you're being mummified,you're being transformed
from a human being into a divinebeing whose flesh was of gold.
NARRATOR: Found in the embalming jars,
the heart almost certainly belongs to Ipi.
SALIMA: It's sort of amazing toactually be holding Ipi's heart.
But I mean, also you think, oh,my god, what is it doing here?
Because it should be with Ipi, wherever he might be.
ANTONIO: Yeah.
NARRATOR: The ancient Egyptians believed the heart
contained the soul and was vital in the afterlife.
SALIMA: So it's amazing.
NARRATOR: To find one separated from its mummy
is extremely rare.
SALIMA: This is the only mummified heart
that I have ever seen.
ANTONIO: Perhaps the embalmers made a mistake
and thought that it was one of the natron bags.
SALIMA: Yeah.
ANTONIO: To be put into the jars, yeah.
SALIMA: I think they messed up,and we just hope that poor Ipi
is not having a problem in the hereafter,
because he's lacking this very key organ.
ANTONIO: We have been studying the vizier Ipi
from the historical point of view,
and suddenly now you see yourself
having the heart of, of this vizier.
It's kind of impossible to imagine being so close
to someone that you have been studying for so many years.
For me this is the best job ever.
The adventure of having to dealwith so many new questions
every day, so many new decisions, new findings,
exciting ideas, makes this job incredibly interesting,
much more than any other thing in the world.
♪
NARRATOR: At tomb 49,
Don's discovery of what might be a great pharaoh's ring
has caught the attention of the authorities.
DON: The director of the wider area here,
it's a very, very important position to have,
he wants to take a look at that ring
with the name of Ramses III.
NARRATOR: The chief inspector of the Valley
assesses the progress of the excavations on site.
DON: Bust out the jewelry box.
Here it is.
NARRATOR: He has the power to take over the dig at any time.
NARRATOR: Any relics found in the Valley of the Kings
belong to the government and must be verified and catalogued
according to strict rules.
[speaking Arabic]
DON: Shukran.
INSPECTOR: Congratulations.
NARRATOR: The inspector gives his seal of approval.
INSPECTOR: Okay. Thank you.
DON: You're very welcome.
Thanks for coming out.
INSPECTOR: Bye-bye.
DON: The Egyptian authorities seem to be quite excited
by, by the whole thing.
I think he was impressed.
So that's always good.
INSPECTOR: For the ring, really it is, it's amazing,
because, you know, it is the most important for us
is continuing the name of Ramses III.
♪
NARRATOR: The ring is a major discovery,
likely to end up in a museum.
But for Don the question still remains;
how did Pharaoh Ramses III's ring end up in tomb 49?
One theory is that it was accidentally dropped there
by robbers, and the ring isn't the only thing
they left behind.
DON: One of the things that makes this particular tomb
very special is that above its doorway
we have two examples of ancient graffiti.
It's written in red
in a cursive form of, of hieroglyphs.
And the graffiti talks about there being very fine linen
and linen shawls being stored in this particular tomb.
NARRATOR: The graffiti is actually a list of items
commonly used to wrap mummies, and it's signed.
DON: There's a prominent name mentioned,
a fellow named Butehamun.
NARRATOR: Could there be a link
between Butehamun's list of materials
and Ramses III's ring?
Helping to discover how they might be linked
are Professor John and Dr. Colleen Darnell.
They've studied Butehamun's letters and inscriptions
for decades.
JOHN DARNELL: Rock inscriptionsare probably about as close
as you can get to the mind of an ancient Egyptian thinking,
"What do I want people to think about me?
How do I want to present myself?"
NARRATOR: Today, they're on their way to Butehamun's house,
a temple complex called Medinet Habu.
COLLEEN DARNELL: To visit temples that I read about
when I was a 5-year-old
and to go back and be able to know what everything says
and the historical interrelationships
is just truly a dream come true.
♪
NARRATOR: It's one of the most intricately inscribed sites
of ancient Egypt.
It should reveal more about Butehamun,
a high-ranking scribe
who oversaw the Valley of the Kings.
JOHN: Where is the title that we need?
Oh, wait, there's a Ma-ha.
COLLEEN: It's great to see, Bu-tehey-amun.
So I think this is "overseer of the treasury."
JOHN: But there is no treasury as such,
there's no treasury building.
Of course he is overseeing the greatest treasures
of New Kingdom Egypt,
he's in charge of the Valley of the Kings.
NARRATOR: Letters have also survived that give more details
about Butehamun's role in the Valley.
JOHN: One of the really most important bits
of direct information
is this letter saying, "Get together a team."
COLLEEN: Mm-hmm.
JOHN: Of whom Butehamun is one,
and they're basically told
they have to carry out this commission.
And the really important part here,
it says, "Open one of the tombs,"
and that's interesting, because this is something
then apparently it's, it's like a special mission.
NARRATOR: The letters and inscriptions reveal
that 80 years after the death of Ramses III,
Butehamun was given the official role
of protecting the Valley from robbers.
In reality, he was secretly ordered to loot the tombs
of long-dead pharaohs like Ramses.
One by one, he opened them up,
taking any treasure to restore the wealth of Egypt.
He even unwrapped the pharaohs' mummified bodies,
taking the gold and jewels hidden in the bandages.
But Butehamun still respected the pharaohs,
so he rewrapped them in new linen
so they would remain intact for the afterlife.
JOHN: Royal tombs are not robbedby random robbers,
they're opened systematically by people like Butehamun.
They're basically doing something for the state
before actual robbers do it.
For decades, the real source of wealth of the state
is probably to a great extent
what Butehamun and his associates
are bringing out of the earlier royal tomb.
NARRATOR: Did Butehamun drop Ramses III's ring
while carrying out a state-sanctioned robbery
in tomb 49?
NARRATOR: In Cairo, the Egyptian authorities
are battling modern-day tomb robbers.
Stolen mummy parts intercepted
on the international black market
have been returned to the Egyptian Museum.
Thought to be from the Valley of the Kings,
could these be the mummified remains of a great pharaoh?
NARRATOR: As Egypt's foremost mummification expert,
Professor Salima Ikram has come to analyze the remains.
SALIMA: It is always exciting tomeet another ancient Egyptian,
even in bits and pieces.
How fabulous.
Oh!
Well, this is just a child's hand.
But look at those little rings.
People who were robbing mummies,
what they did was they would cut off pieces,
because it was easier to sell to tourists,
and hands were really very, very popular
because often they had rings on them.
Oh, wow!
Okay, this, this is clearly the hand of an adult,
but what's extraordinary is thatit's missing some of its digits.
But even so, there's a ring.
NARRATOR: A blue ring is clearly visible
through the mummy's wrappings.
SALIMA: Oh, wow!
NARRATOR: But could this be a pharaoh's head?
The methods used for mummification
changed over time.
Salima is hoping to find clues
that will help her date these remains.
SALIMA: Oh, look! I think you can see its hair!
Look. Right there's the hair.
So there's hair here, and hair here.
MAN: That means it's a man?
SALIMA: Yes, it's a man.
MAN: How old?
SALIMA: How old? Good question.
There, there's gold, and here.
NARRATOR: Salima has spotted small flecks of gold
all over the head, in particular around the eyes.
SALIMA: This is a Roman-period mummy because it's gilded.
NARRATOR: During Roman times,
the bodies of important individuals
were often coated with gold leaf,
but at that time the Valley of the Kings
was no longer used as a burial site.
SALIMA: So this means it's unlikely
that it's from the Valley of the Kings.
Dealers would want to make up a good story
that would hike up the price,
and so the Valley of the Kings of course is a pedigree
that most people would jump on.
NARRATOR: He may not have been a pharaoh,
but such liberal application of gold
would've been reserved for someone extremely wealthy.
SALIMA: These three pieces,
I don't think any of them are related
in terms of belonging to the same body.
But still they're mummies,
so they can teach us about mummification,
the history of robbery,
and the, you know, their own life history.
So they're really very important pieces.
NARRATOR: For Shaaban, from the Ministry of Antiquities,
it's a rare victory over the tomb robbers.
SHAABAN: It's very important for us
that we recover allthe information for the history.
This is very important that we will add some information
to the history of Egypt andthe history of the whole world.
This is an unbelievable feeling.
♪
NARRATOR: In the Valley of the Kings,
Don Ryan is assessing all the discoveries
excavated from tomb 49.
He has an incredible new story for this tomb.
DON: We're almost done.
I would describe our season as unexpected.
You have this chamber that wesifted through every bit of it,
and we, we found some interesting things.
This tomb, it was robbed like all the other ones
and at a later point put to some other use.
NARRATOR: Don's finds of the mummy wrappings
and Ramses III's ring,
combined with the graffiti outside the door,
suggest this tomb could have played a central role
in a state-sanctioned criminal plot.
In here, Butehamun unwrapped royal mummies
and stole the jewels hidden inside their bandages.
Some treasures, like Ramses III's ring,
were accidentally left behind.
DON: All these little tombs,
they're full of fascinating things,
and when you put it all together,
this place truly is amazing.
Archaeology in the Valley of the Kings is by no means over.
Just when you think it might be,it isn't.
Captioned by Side Door Media Services