National Geographic - Tales from the Tomb 1of4 Mystery Mummy
Transcript
00:00He's ancient Egypt's mystery man, a 3,000-year-old mummy found in a secret cache with some of
00:08Egypt's most famous pharaohs, yet he's got no name, no identity at all, and his body
00:17shows shocking signs of mistreatment, even sacrilege.
00:23Now a team of scientists turned detectives attempt to crack this mysterious case.
00:30Was he a human sacrifice, a murder victim, or a traitor sentenced to death?
00:39What are the secrets of Egypt's mystery mummy?
01:00In the Egyptian museum in Cairo, he's known simply as unknown man E. Others call him the
01:09anti-mummy.
01:13He's almost the opposite of what an Egyptian mummy should be.
01:20Instead of life eternal, it seems someone condemned him to oblivion.
01:30And from everything we know about ancient Egypt, his fate was no accident.
01:40This is amazing, unknown man E.
01:43Dr. Salima Ikram has examined countless Egyptian mummies.
01:50She's never seen one like this.
01:53This person had no name on him and also was not mummified at all, or at least not in a
01:58conventional way.
02:01He's got no identity at all.
02:04His body indicates he was less than 25 years old when he died.
02:11His teeth are very, very well preserved, which would suggest that he was young.
02:18But what most disturbs many who first look at unknown man E is his face.
02:30Other mummies look composed, confident, seemingly ready for the perilous journey to the afterlife.
02:42Unknown man E's face appears frozen at the very moment of a torturous death.
02:54For more than a century, Egyptologists have wondered who this man was and what he did
03:01to deserve such an unusual fate.
03:07The search for answers begins in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, where unknown man E was
03:12discovered more than 120 years ago.
03:171871.
03:20Shepherd Ahmed El-Razoul is tending his goats.
03:25One goat strays, Ahmed follows.
03:32And he happens upon a shaft leading deep into a cave below.
03:38He descends and is stunned by what he sees.
03:42It's a thieves' paradise, countless rare and priceless antiquities.
03:49It's the funerary cache of many pharaohs.
03:54It also contains the remains of the kings themselves.
04:00Quietly, Razoul and his brothers begin to raid the cache.
04:05They sell papyri, funerary vessels, and possibly one royal mummy on the black market.
04:12But they leave the rest of the royals behind.
04:16And they never even open one plain, unmarked coffin, the resting place of the most mysterious
04:22mummy of all.
04:27The Razouls rob the cache piece by piece for ten years before a sting operation nabs them.
04:34In exchange for leniency, one brother agrees to lead authorities to the hidden chamber.
04:42To Egyptologist Emile Bruch, it's an overwhelming discovery.
04:49More than 40 royal coffins, sealed away for 3,000 years.
04:58From their inscriptions, Bruch can tell they contain the remains of some of Egypt's most
05:02famous pharaohs.
05:06There's the warrior Thutmose III.
05:10Perhaps ancient Egypt's greatest king, Ramses II.
05:15And its last truly powerful ruler, Ramses III.
05:22These pharaohs had long been missing from their original tombs.
05:26Many Egyptologists thought they were lost forever.
05:31Yet for Bruch, that's not the end of the mystery.
05:36He also finds one coffin that stands out, not for its splendor, but for its simplicity.
05:44Not only did the Razoul brothers leave it untouched, in 3,000 years no thieves have
05:50ever disturbed it.
05:55It's the beginning of the baffling case of unknown man E.
06:00It's also the first clue to his identity.
06:04Whoever he was, he was important enough to be mummified and entombed with royals.
06:13In ancient Egypt, mummification was the highest honor, usually reserved for kings, nobles,
06:19and others of enormous wealth.
06:24For them, death is not final.
06:27It's just a brief stop on the road to eternal life.
06:31For the ancient Egyptians, this life segued into the afterlife, and in fact, the afterlife
06:36could be a better version of the life they had here.
06:41The belief springs from an ancient Egyptian myth.
06:45According to the legend, Egypt's first pharaoh, Osiris, was slain by a jealous brother.
06:54The jackal-headed god, Anubis, mummified Osiris.
06:58His spirit re-entered his body.
07:01He was reborn and went on to rule forever over the underworld.
07:09Over time, the Egyptians came to believe that once they were mummified and buried,
07:14just like Osiris, they would join the gods in the hereafter and enjoy eternal life.
07:25Unknown man E was not mummified and buried in the traditional way, and that meant he
07:31might never reach the afterlife.
07:36Today, more than a century after unknown man E was found, archaeologists are excavating
07:44his final resting place.
07:49The vast tomb, 40 feet below ground, once held some 50 coffins, most of them royal.
07:59Archaeologist Dylan Bickerstaff believes it may still hold clues to the mystery mummy's
08:04identity.
08:05This mummy would be odd enough on its own, but with all the kings and queens, it is genuinely
08:10unnerving.
08:12How did he end up, this strange-looking figure, this unnamed figure, end up in this tomb with
08:18all these royalties?
08:22Archaeologist Erhard Greif leads the excavation.
08:27Over the years, floodwaters have washed through the tomb and filled it with rubble.
08:33Yet Greif and his team have found bits and pieces of wood and linen throughout, remnants
08:39of the coffins and mummies hidden here for three millennia.
08:50The fragments might hold answers to why unknown man E was also entombed here.
08:59I often wondered if there might be some indication of who he was associated with.
09:04Yes, there must be some reason to bury him with kings.
09:12Greif thinks unknown man E was buried elsewhere with one of the royals.
09:16And both were moved here.
09:20Presumably he was somebody of importance.
09:23Maybe he was preserved with relatives.
09:26Maybe he was related to one of the great kings.
09:31Unknown man E was likely a royal, or at least someone of very high status.
09:37Yet he was buried without a name.
09:42That's the one thing that really sort of gets to everybody.
09:45If only we could name this man.
09:49It's a chilling omission.
09:53Ancient Egypt's royals had their names inscribed everywhere.
09:57On their monuments, their tombs, their coffins, sometimes even on their linen wrappings.
10:10They wanted their status to be recognized in the afterlife, so they could continue to
10:15live there as well as they had on Earth.
10:20Three thousand years later, we can still identify many of them.
10:25But not unknown man E. Neither his mummy nor his coffin bear any inscriptions.
10:34Not a single word.
10:38His anonymity could be another clue to his identity.
10:44The fact that the coffin's unnamed, his bandages are unnamed, suggests that either they didn't
10:48want him to carry a name into eternity, or that they didn't know who he was.
10:54Bickerstaff would love to know exactly where the mystery mummy was found, and which mummies
10:59were nearby.
11:02But those questions will have to wait.
11:06The men who moved unknown man E. destroyed crucial evidence.
11:12It was an archeological disaster when Bruges cleared the tomb.
11:15I mean, he cleared it in 48 hours.
11:17He didn't make any plans or any records.
11:231881, Egyptologist Emile Bruges fears news of his find will attract tomb raiders.
11:34He makes a disastrous decision.
11:37He orders workers to clear the tomb immediately and send everything to the Bulak Museum in
11:43Cairo.
11:46He makes no records of what was found where.
11:50It's a critical mistake.
11:53It wipes away important clues to unknown man E.'s identity.
11:59The nameless mummy is stowed on a shelf where he might have been forgotten, had he been
12:04unremarkable in every other way.
12:08But when museum officials decide to take a closer look, they find the strangest mummy
12:13they've ever seen.
12:21Cairo, Egypt, 1886, five years after the mystery mummy was discovered.
12:29Now Dr. Daniel Fouquet, a chemist, Mr. Mathy, and Gaston Maspero, head of Egypt's antiquities
12:38authority, are about to unwrap him.
12:44They immediately spot clues to his identity.
12:48He's cocooned in the finest linen, a sign he was well to do.
12:57This coffin, although plain and unmarked, is of expensive cedar.
13:03As they proceed, the scientists uncover even more evidence of his elite rank, including
13:09gold earrings.
13:12But it's also clear this mummy received a burial that would have horrified a royal Egyptian.
13:20His outer shroud is made of sheepskin.
13:24This is very unusual.
13:26It was considered ritually unclean by the Egyptians to be buried in a sheepskin.
13:33A few hours into their work, Dr. Fouquet peels back the mummy's last layers.
13:40The stench of decay fills the room.
13:44It's not the mild, musty odor of a typical Egyptian mummy.
13:50And there's more.
13:52Egyptians are usually dark-haired.
13:55This mummy's hair appears light, almost blonde.
14:01And the chemicals used to embalm him still coat his skin.
14:06The chemist, Mathy, takes a sample of the coating.
14:15What the unwrappers observe next truly surprises them.
14:21The mummy's arms, hands, and feet are bound.
14:26The straps were pulled so tight they left marks on his skin.
14:32Is it a sign of foul play?
14:37There's also the disturbing look on the mummy's face.
14:42The chemist, Mathy, considers it telling evidence.
14:48Never did a face relay more faithfully a scene of the most poignant and unspeakable
14:53agony.
14:56Even with tests still to complete, Mathy draws an ominous conclusion.
15:02The features, horribly convulsed, almost certainly indicate that this unhappy person had succumbed
15:09to deliberate asphyxia, very probably by being buried alive.
15:16If unknown man E was buried alive, it's a discovery of enormous significance.
15:22There must be a reason he was killed in such a fashion.
15:27He may have been a human sacrifice.
15:34Some ancient cultures did bury people alive, either as a gift for a god or even a king.
15:42The Incas of South America sacrificed children.
15:48On the peaks of the Andes Mountains, archaeologists have unearthed the 500-year-old mummies of
15:53these sacrifices.
15:56They were usually the sons and daughters of noble families.
16:02Many were not yet teenagers.
16:09The chemist led the children to the very top of the mountain.
16:16There they wrapped them in ceremonial clothing, placed them in a tomb, and left them to die.
16:27Unknown man E shows signs of a similar fate.
16:32Still many have long doubted that the ancient Egyptians practiced human sacrifice.
16:38Now evidence unearthed in an ancient Egyptian necropolis is proving them wrong.
16:46Abydos was once Egypt's most sacred burial ground.
16:55The Egyptians began entombing their dead here 5,000 years ago, 2,500 years before they built
17:03the Great Pyramid.
17:07Among the thousands of graves, archaeologists have found the tombs of the first pharaohs.
17:16Matt Adams has excavated around these tombs, and the evidence he's uncovered reveals a
17:23dark side to the early Egyptians that no one ever suspected.
17:30Each one of these graves was built inside a great pit that was dug into the desert.
17:36The graves were dug all at once, and they were filled all at once.
17:41This gray, crumbly material is actually mud plaster, and this mud plaster was laid down
17:49after these tombs were sealed over the whole area.
17:55As Adams sees it, there's only one conclusion to draw.
17:59These people did not die one by one, and were not placed in their tombs one by one as they
18:04died naturally.
18:05All of these graves were closed and sealed at exactly the same time.
18:12They did not die naturally.
18:15It was a mass execution.
18:19The king's servants, noble retainers, even members of his own family, were killed and
18:24buried so that they could accompany their master to the afterlife and continue to serve
18:30him.
18:35Archivist Gunter Dreyer has unearthed hundreds of these sacrificial victims.
18:38Another skull is coming to light, and it seems to be the skull of a very young person.
18:48You see the rib here?
18:50It's very small, so it's a child, maybe ten years about.
19:01Only one of the victims Dreyer has unearthed was young, none older than 25.
19:13Unknown man E also died before he turned 25.
19:18His body shows no marks of violence.
19:22His early examiners concluded he suffocated inside his shroud.
19:28Like unknown man E, the bodies at Abydos show no signs of violent death.
19:35But it's unlikely they were buried alive.
19:38Matt Adams believes they were killed before they were entombed.
19:42It's possible that they were either poisoned outright or that they were drugged and asphyxiated.
19:51And that's not the only difference.
19:55Unlike our mystery mummy, no one at Abydos was mummified.
19:59The Egyptians had not yet perfected the practice.
20:04And the evidence also shows that human sacrifice ended here soon after it began.
20:10The Egyptians realized that the price was too high.
20:14Some of the best and brightest were being lost, and they simply couldn't afford to continue
20:19sacrificing these people to go with the king.
20:26We don't know precisely when unknown man E died, but he was found with kings who reigned
20:32more than a thousand years after those buried at Abydos.
20:41And he was mummified, another sign he lived much later.
20:49What's more, those sacrificed at Abydos were given food and other things they'd need in
20:54the afterlife.
20:55They even had inscriptions bearing their names.
21:01Unknown man E was not so lucky.
21:09It's clear our mystery mummy was not a human sacrifice.
21:14But could he still have been buried alive?
21:19If he was mummified and entombed alive, the pain must have been excruciating.
21:27It could explain his agonized expression and his tightly bound limbs.
21:36Compare his corpse to the frozen mummies of the Inca children.
21:41They're hunched over, as if trying to keep warm.
21:46While unknown man E's face screams horror, his body shows no sign of struggle.
21:53He's dead calm.
21:56Buried alive?
21:58Probably not.
21:59There's no way he was lying there, suffocating slowly.
22:03It's not possible.
22:05He was already dead, long dead before all that.
22:10The mystery remains.
22:14The Egyptians wanted their bodies to stay as pristine as possible after death.
22:21Yet unknown man E's corpse was treated in a way a royal Egyptian would find highly disrespectful.
22:28Even sacrilegious.
22:31The oddities are not just on the surface.
22:36The deeper the experts look, the more bizarre his case becomes.
22:42The brain hasn't been removed the way it is traditionally removed.
22:45There is no evisceration, so all of his internal organs are still inside the body.
22:52It's a far cry from how Egyptians normally mummified the dead.
23:01In ancient Egypt, mummification was a secret and sacred art.
23:09The embalmers spent thousands of years perfecting their technique, and they never wrote down
23:14exactly what they did.
23:18Back at his unwrapping in 1886, the scientists are now halfway through their examination.
23:26They already know this is no ordinary mummy.
23:31The ancient embalmers never cut open unknown man E to remove his organs, something these
23:36men have never seen before.
23:40They never stuffed him with natron and herbs.
23:42Instead, they covered him head to foot with an unknown chemical.
23:46Dr. Fouquet describes its effect on the mummy's skin.
23:51This coating had mixed with the fatty matters of the body and formed a kind of soap.
23:56The examination continues and things get even stranger.
24:02It's as if the mummy starts to melt in front of their eyes.
24:07The chemical coating begins to react with the air.
24:12The paste that covered him started to thicken as it took on moisture, and one of the records
24:16made by Mathy said they all had to overcome a sense of revulsion.
24:23The chemists' tests reveal the substance is not the traditional embalming salt, natron.
24:29It's a mixture of natron and a much harsher desiccant, quicklime.
24:36The mystery mummy's embalmers had done the unthinkable.
24:39Not only had they left his organs inside, they hadn't packed him in natron for 35 days.
24:47They'd simply coated his body with lime and immediately wrapped it.
24:55It's a violation of everything the Egyptians held sacred.
25:01They believed that if your body was destroyed in this life, it could not be magically reborn
25:06in the next.
25:10And the Egyptians didn't just want their bodies to survive their deaths.
25:14They wanted all their material possessions to go with them as well.
25:20They even mummified their pets and sacred animals.
25:27Here we have the falcon catacombs.
25:30You go down these stairs and into a tunnel which leads into a bigger complex of tunnels
25:35filled with millions of mummies of different kinds of falcons.
25:40Corridor after corridor lined floor to ceiling with clay pots containing the bodies of preserved falcons.
25:48All of them at least 2,000 years old.
25:53Once mummified, the falcon's spirit would rejoin its body, then travel to the world
25:58of the gods, just like a human mummy's.
26:02The basic idea would have been the same.
26:04By mummifying these animals, they are becoming gods and divine creatures themselves.
26:12The Egyptians sent birds to the afterlife in high style.
26:18But unknown man E, it seems, did not deserve the same treatment.
26:25And he was not just mummified in a bizarre fashion.
26:28He was also denied a name.
26:34For an Egyptian, that combination would have had tragic consequences.
26:40If your name doesn't exist, and if your mummy gets brutalized, then you don't exist at all.
26:45And that means your afterlife is nothing.
26:48And for the ancient Egyptians, having an afterlife was one of the main goals of their real lives.
26:56The Egyptians would never bury a royal in such a disrespectful manner, and possibly
27:01ruin his chance of reaching the afterlife, unless they had a good reason.
27:07One theory could explain it.
27:10It could be he wasn't an Egyptian.
27:17Cairo, Egypt, 1886.
27:21The mystery mummy's unwrapping continues.
27:24The examiners note his blonde hair.
27:27They measure him and find he's almost 5'9", tall for an ancient Egyptian.
27:34Three thousand years ago, this man would certainly have stood out.
27:38He is not what we would normally consider an Egyptian to look like.
27:43There are so many unusual things about this man that you wonder if perhaps he was not
27:48an Egyptian, if he came from somewhere else.
27:52If unknown man E was not an Egyptian, he must have been a very important foreigner
27:56to be entombed with kings.
28:03A search of the ancient annals offers a possible explanation.
28:081325 BC.
28:13Tutankhamun, the boy king, has just died.
28:17Fearful of losing status, his wife writes an appeal to the king of the Hittites.
28:24My husband is dead.
28:26Send me your son and I will make him king.
28:31The Hittites were Egypt's rivals to the north.
28:35Their king can't refuse the chance to have his son rule Egypt.
28:42He sends a young prince named Zenanza to wed Tut's widow.
28:48But Zenanza never makes it.
28:51He dies soon after arriving in Egypt.
28:54It's likely he was murdered.
28:59As some see it, the discovery of unknown man E does not open a detective story.
29:05It solves one.
29:06The mystery mummy they say is Prince Zenanza.
29:12The embalmers prepared the body not for burial, but for shipment home.
29:17They never sent it.
29:21That could explain man E's shroud.
29:24The Hittites sometimes buried their dead in sheepskins.
29:29It could also explain his blonde hair and hasty mummification.
29:34Still, there are no marks of trauma on unknown man E's body.
29:40Prince Zenanza's murderers would have had to poison him, smother him, or drown him.
29:45Tricky ways to dispatch an enemy.
29:52To Salima Ikram, it just doesn't add up.
29:57This is obviously not an entire sheep we have here.
30:01And in fact, I feel that perhaps it's not a sheep at all.
30:06And the early scholars mistook a goatskin for a sheepskin.
30:15The hair is not blonde.
30:17As people have reported, it's light brown.
30:21Ikram is not convinced the mystery mummy was a foreigner.
30:27That doesn't rule out another theory, that foreigners had a hand in his fate.
30:34It could be unknown man E was an Egyptian who died and was mummified elsewhere.
30:43In 1500 BC, ancient Egypt is at the height of its power.
30:49Its dominions stretch from Syria in the north as far south as Nubia.
30:55Perhaps unknown man E is a high official who dies in one of these far-flung territories.
31:03The locals mummify him as best they can, then send him back to Egypt for the honor of burial
31:08in the Valley of the Kings.
31:14But it isn't just unknown man E's mummy that's unusual.
31:20His coffin is unmarked, as are his bandages.
31:26And there's something else missing, the power of magic.
31:32It may be the most important clue to man E's identity, possible proof that his strange
31:38burial was no accident.
31:43The Egyptians believed no one could safely navigate the dangerous journey to the next
31:48world without magic.
31:52Embalmers wrap amulets inside the mummy's bandages to ward off evil spirits.
31:59Magic spells the dead will need to navigate the underworld are inscribed all over tombs
32:04and coffins, and even on papyri that will accompany the corpse.
32:10Every dead royal also receives plenty of magical servants.
32:17These little figures in the shape of mummies are the kind of tomb equipment that unknown
32:21man E doesn't have, but every Egyptian would want to have.
32:26Egyptologist Robert Rittner suspects unknown man E was denied magic on purpose.
32:33These guarantee for you an afterlife without work and without suffering.
32:40The figures would magically come alive in the afterlife and serve the deceased for eternity.
32:47If ancient priests purposefully denied unknown man E magic servants, they may have denied
32:53him the benefit of a proper funeral as well.
32:59In a normal burial, the priest utters the spells that will reinvigorate the deceased's
33:05five senses and bring him back to life.
33:13The magic starts to work once he's sealed inside the tomb.
33:17When it's time for the king to wake up, he would rise up out of his sarcophagus and get
33:24out of his bed and then would get the first spell.
33:28The deceased faces a series of tests before he's granted an afterlife.
33:34He finds the answers to the tests on the walls around him.
33:40It's the world's first chi-chi.
33:41And then after gathering the magic from the whole room, he is powerful enough to go to
33:51this passage which goes out to the north and that's where he becomes one with the stars
33:56and one, an Ahu, one of the great gods.
34:00The deceased would surely fail his tests without the aid of magic.
34:06He wouldn't join the gods in the hereafter.
34:09He'd be consigned forever to oblivion.
34:15Unknown man E had no magic servants, no magic amulets to ward off evil, and no magic spells
34:21in his coffin to help him navigate the underworld.
34:25He was not only nameless, he was powerless.
34:30Unknown man E has a complete reversal of the Egyptian idea of what a burial should be.
34:36He is an anti-mummy.
34:40Those who buried unknown man E certainly knew the consequences.
34:45There could only be one reason to treat a dead royal with such disgrace.
34:50Our mystery mummy may have been an outcast.
34:57The scientists unwrapping man E have now been working for two days.
35:02They're close to determining what killed him.
35:10None of them believes he died a natural death.
35:14At first they suspected he was buried alive.
35:21Their examination now reveals another culprit.
35:29Dr. Fouquet has taken a sample from the mummy's stomach.
35:34The chemist tests the contents.
35:36There's no sign of food.
35:39Dr. Fouquet sees an obvious explanation.
35:43The first impression is this man having been poisoned by a convulsive substance.
35:50Unknown man E may have eaten a toxin that forced him to vomit and empty his stomach.
35:56He may have been poisoned.
36:00Death by poisoning.
36:02An anonymous and poorly equipped burial.
36:06In ancient Egypt, only a criminal would warrant such an end.
36:12But the Egyptians wouldn't keep the body of just any criminal.
36:16He must have been a special case.
36:21Once again, ancient records suggest an answer.
36:25The crime is the worst an Egyptian could commit.
36:29Regicide.
36:31The murder of the king.
36:34The criminal is the king's own son.
36:401153 B.C.
36:43The pharaoh Ramses III has ruled Egypt with an iron hand for 30 years.
36:51Now in his sixth decade, his grip is weakening.
36:57Wars to repel invaders along Egypt's borders have drained the treasury.
37:02Unrest is brewing at home.
37:06In the religious capital, Thebes, workers have gone without food rations and strikes
37:11have broken out.
37:15Within the palace, disgruntled members of Ramses' own family see an opening.
37:21They hatch a plot to assassinate him.
37:25Egyptologist Susan Redford has investigated the conspiracy.
37:29There was certainly some family disputes going on, very serious family disputes.
37:35One of his chief queens, Thea, was obviously very unhappy, discontent that her son wasn't
37:43in line for the throne.
37:47Queen Thea is just one of Ramses' wives and concubines.
37:50He has dozens.
37:53And he's chosen as his successor a son of his chief wife, Isis.
37:59Thea has other ideas.
38:01She decides to kill Ramses and install her son as pharaoh.
38:07His name is Pentaware, and his story sheds an intriguing light on the case of unknown
38:13man E.
38:16The records don't explain how Ramses dies.
38:20Some believe the plotters hid a poisonous viper in his quarters, and the king received
38:25a fatal bite.
38:28The records do describe the fate of the conspirators.
38:33Most are burned at the stake.
38:37But not Pentaware.
38:40As the son of a pharaoh, he receives a different punishment.
38:44He's allowed to commit suicide.
38:48Apparently it was left up to him as to how he would do this, so that he could do it in
38:53a way that would not mutilate his body, and he would go into the afterlife intact.
38:59The best way to accomplish this, of course, would be to use poison.
39:06The Egyptians knew of a variety of deadly toxins and just how much would kill.
39:15Egypt's great queen, Cleopatra, committed suicide by poison.
39:20As legend has it, she let a venomous cobra bite her.
39:25The Egyptians also had easy access to lotus, mandrake, and belladonna, or nightshade, all
39:36killers when taken in large doses.
39:39Dr. Benson Harrer, an expert in ancient Egyptian medicine, thinks he knows which poison Pentaware
39:46took, ricin, found in the seed of the castor bean plant.
39:52Pentaware, being interested in something that was sure, fast, and painless, would probably
40:01play it safe and grind up four or five beans.
40:05The castor bean plant is native to Egypt.
40:09Its oil, which is poison-free, is used all over the world as a laxative.
40:15But its seeds contain one of the deadliest poisons known to man.
40:20If it were purified ricin, the amount in this speck would probably be enough to kill five
40:28or six men.
40:32To make it easy to ingest, I could then add a small amount of honey or perhaps suspend
40:40it in a glass of wine or beer.
40:45The ricin would quickly invade every organ of Pentaware's body, but it would do the most
40:51damage to his lungs.
40:54His cells would stop absorbing oxygen, they would swell and release fluid.
41:00He would suffocate within hours.
41:05If unknown man E is the criminal Pentaware, why did the Egyptians preserve his body?
41:11Other conspirators were denied any chance for an afterlife.
41:15They were burned alive, their ashes scattered for others to trample on.
41:25But Pentaware, as the son of a pharaoh, had entitlements and death, no matter his crimes
41:30in life.
41:32You need to bury members of the royal family, whether you like them, whether you want them
41:36to survive into the next world or not.
41:39You don't have to bury them well, you merely have to bury them.
41:45Perhaps Pentaware was quickly mummified.
41:47No one would have wanted a vile traitor lying around for weeks.
41:52Then he was quietly buried.
41:56He was given no protective magic amulets, and most important, no name.
42:08For an Egyptian, it's a fate worse than death.
42:13We do know that Pentaware's name was removed from his father's monuments.
42:20Lacking a name, he has no existence.
42:22His power has been short-circuited.
42:25This is ensuring that he is helpless and damned forever, with no name, no personality, nothing.
42:34Yet that doesn't completely solve the case.
42:38Unknown man E was found in a tomb with some of ancient Egypt's most powerful pharaohs,
42:44including Ramses III.
42:48If he is Pentaware, he ended up just feet from the man he tried to kill.
42:56Tomb robbers may be to blame for that.
43:01At the end of Ramses III's reign, a rash of robberies decimates the Valley of the Kings.
43:08The thieves grab anything of value.
43:12Their greatest prize?
43:13The pharaoh's silver and gold.
43:16They even hack apart mummies to get at their magic amulets.
43:23The priests who preside over the valley make a radical decision.
43:28They have dozens of royal mummies moved to a secret cache.
43:34Among them are Ramses III and the mystery mummy we know today as Unknown Man E.
43:42In an irony of history, the pharaoh may have come to rest not far from his traitorous son.
43:51And there's another irony to the case of Unknown Man E.
43:55By the time archaeologists enter the cache, 3,000 years later, robbers have desecrated
44:01nearly every mummy.
44:05But not Unknown Man E.
44:11Is Unknown Man E the disloyal prince Pentaware?
44:16Most now discount one piece of evidence that transfixed early Egyptologists.
44:23Unknown E.'s agonized look, they say, is common and does not indicate a gruesome death.
44:28And we don't really know when Unknown Man E. died.
44:34Still a summary of the evidence is intriguing.
44:37Unknown Man E. was very young when he died.
44:40He was likely a royal.
44:43His body shows no signs of trauma and his stomach is empty.
44:49Possible signs he was poisoned.
44:53And for some reason, Man E. was hastily mummified, something rarely seen.
44:59He was apparently buried anonymously and without benefit of magic.
45:05The evidence that we have of what would likely happen with Pentaware makes it very likely
45:11that he is Unknown Man E.
45:14Pentaware was going into the afterworld through a very perilous journey without the protections
45:21that were granted to the royals.
45:25He was going to be a member of the royal family, but kind of an outcast member.
45:32But others are not so sure.
45:36Selima Ikram believes the case may never be solved completely.
45:41Unknown Man E. will always remain an enigma for people because he is so outside the norm
45:47and ancient Egypt to a large extent was being within the norm.
45:52Whoever he was, Unknown Man E.'s treatment would have deeply disturbed a royal Egyptian.
45:58With no name and no magic, he would have entered the underworld very insecure, with little
46:04hope of reaching the afterlife.
46:08He would have become what the Egyptians called an angry dead, a disturbed spirit.
46:17That could be why his discovery shocked the men who first examined him.
46:24And it could be why the power of his story haunts us still.