National Geographic - Tales from the Tomb 3of4 Egypts Warrior King
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00:00He was ancient Egypt's greatest warrior, a soldier who never lost a battle, a general
00:22who rivaled the great conquerors of history, a king who transformed his nation into an
00:29empire.
00:36With the help of new evidence and forensic analysis, we can finally reveal the secrets
00:41of his military genius, of the inner demons that drove him.
00:47This is the amazing story of Thutmose III, Egypt's Napoleon.
00:58Thebes, the capital of ancient Egypt.
01:07More than 3,000 years ago, it's the year 1457 B.C.
01:16Queen Hatshepsut has died after bringing peace and prosperity to the land for 20 years.
01:23But she's not just any queen, she's a queen who ruled as king.
01:30Some Egyptians mourn her passing, others rejoice, saying she exercised far too much power for
01:37a woman.
01:40Hatshepsut's peaceful rule came at a price.
01:44At her death, Egypt faces enemies at the borders, rebellious city-states, Syrians and
01:50Canaanites, all eager to test the courage of the new leader.
01:56Her stepson, Thutmose III, is now poised to take control.
02:02He'd been pharaoh for nearly 20 years, but Queen Hatshepsut had kept him under her thumb.
02:11Now, in his 20s, he can finally realize his own ambition for a bold new empire.
02:18One that's very different from his stepmother's.
02:23But Thutmose is unproven as a king and a warrior.
02:27Nobody knows if he can overcome Egypt's enemies, or if he can step out from his stepmother's
02:33shadow and seize the moment.
02:39He immediately prepares himself, and his men, for war.
02:583,500 years later, Thutmose rests in a glass case in the Cairo Museum, with a faint hint
03:06of a smile across his mummified face, the face of an uncommon warrior and empire builder.
03:13This mummy is one of the most important men on earth.
03:19This man was a warrior.
03:21The military academy today still studies what this man did.
03:27And that's why I feel when I look at him, I tremble.
03:32I tremble because of the power of this man.
03:35That he was really established the empire of Egypt.
03:46Archaeologists first unwrapped Thutmose and decoded his exploits in the late 19th century.
03:54French archaeologist Gaston Maspero examined the damage from head to toe.
04:00His head is broken off of the neck.
04:03His body and all four limbs have been detached, the feet and arms broken into fragments.
04:11Maspero knew these weren't the injuries of war.
04:15It was damage done by the usual suspects, tomb raiders.
04:28Archaeologists tore the mummy of Thutmose III out of his coffin.
04:32They stripped it and rifled it of its jewels.
04:40Not long after the find, Egyptologists dubbed Thutmose the Napoleon of Egypt.
04:47Like Napoleon, he knew how to lead fighting men and showed an unquenchable thirst for
04:52territory.
04:53And, like the French emperor, he conquered.
04:58But Napoleon suffered terrible defeats and reversals, while Thutmose never lost a single battle.
05:10Yet the grinning, ravaged mummy doesn't tell us anything about Thutmose or the passions
05:16that drove him.
05:18While he doesn't speak, maybe his tomb will.
05:22The Valley of Kings, the eternal resting place of many of Egypt's greatest pharaohs.
05:33Here Dr. Ian Shaw, expert in ancient hieroglyphics, will read the walls and tell us something
05:39about the man who built it.
06:04For me the most amazing thing about this tomb is just the sheer freshness and the immediacy
06:08of it.
06:09The tomb walls tell us that Thutmose was far more than a man of war.
06:16Thutmose III appreciated things of beauty, in a way, and who was not simply a soldier
06:22or not simply somebody who happened to be born in the right royal household.
06:27This was somebody who had the education to be able to actually transform certain aspects
06:33of his own culture.
06:41Up here I can see the king himself.
06:44The reference here is to the death of the king and his transformation, really, into
06:50a version of the sun god.
06:53The walls include magician spells that will help him reach the afterworld.
07:01Kings like Thutmose believed they were more than kings, they were gods destined for immortality.
07:10But here on earth, a young Thutmose may have been less than godlike.
07:18He was born into a world dominated by his stepmother.
07:22Hatshepsut was the chief wife of his father, the pharaoh.
07:28Thutmose's birth mother occupied a minor place in his father's harem.
07:33She didn't have royal blood, Hatshepsut did.
07:37Some speculate that even while his father, the pharaoh, was living, his stepmother seized
07:42too much power.
07:45When his father died, Thutmose became heir to the throne.
07:49But he was still a young child, so Hatshepsut governed as regent in his place.
07:56She had her own ambitions.
07:59She sent explorers to distant lands, imported oils, incense, perfumes, and gold.
08:06She commissioned great temples and monuments, and after ten years, she did the unthinkable.
08:14She crowned herself pharaoh.
08:18No queen had ever done such a thing before, especially when a rightful heir was alive.
08:25She dressed as a king, wore male clothes, and the traditional false beard of the pharaoh.
08:32She depicted herself as a man in carvings and reliefs.
08:37For the conservative nation of Egypt, her behavior was an outrage.
08:44Under her rule, Egypt avoided war for over two decades.
08:50But avoiding war was costly.
08:53Several city-states seized territories from the Egyptians along their northern border.
09:00With his stepmother exercising so much authority, Thutmose had to find another outlet for his
09:06talent.
09:08He turned to the military.
09:10He became a soldier and commander, leaving the comforts and the politics of the royal
09:15court behind.
09:19He trained as a warrior, biding his time.
09:28Then, in 1458 BC, Hatshepsut died.
09:35No one knows the cause of her death.
09:39It remains one of the unsolved mysteries of ancient Egypt.
09:46Thutmose immediately took control.
09:50He believed that his new Egypt needed more than just a pharaoh.
09:55It needed a commander-in-chief who would risk his life on the front lines and lead the charge
10:00in battle.
10:02To quell the uprising on his northern border, he advanced with some 20,000 troops into Palestine.
10:09It was the first of 17 military campaigns to assert his dominance in the region.
10:15He expanded the empire, both north into Syria and south along the Nile into Nubia.
10:25He startled his enemies with aggressive tactics, effectively using ships to transport his men,
10:31supplies and weapons quickly.
10:34His army even carried boats overland, as far as the Euphrates River.
10:43Thutmose acted like a modern commander in other ways.
10:47He used a network of spies to gather intelligence.
10:55But using ships, new transportation methods and espionage were not enough.
11:01He needed weapons, superior weapons that would crush his enemies' will to fight.
11:08And for that, he turned to the best technology of the day.
11:19Like Napoleon 33 centuries later, Thutmose III took advantage of new and better ways
11:26to defeat his enemies.
11:36What kinds of weapons did Thutmose use?
11:40Dr. Thomas Hewlett, an archaeologist at Britain's University of Durham, and Tom Richardson of
11:47the Royal Armoury are top experts in ancient weaponry.
11:51They've come to Egypt to put the pharaoh's weapons to the test.
11:56It's something very much an arms race, which for each development in different types of
12:01armour, so too comes a development in more and more effective types of weaponry.
12:07The bow and arrow was the artillery of the age.
12:11There were two basic types and Thutmose relied heavily on both of them.
12:21The common bow was made of a wooden rod, tapered at the ends and strung with twisted
12:26animal gut.
12:28It was easy to mass-produce and Thutmose gave it to large numbers of his infantry.
12:34Each archer unleashed a barrage of roughly ten bronze-tipped arrows per minute.
12:42The arrow's shower would tear flesh and shatter bone.
12:50To make bow and arrow artillery more lethal, Thutmose took advantage of a recent innovation.
12:58The composite bow was made from layers of wood, animal sinews and horn to strengthen
13:03it and give it more spring.
13:06But the bow was expensive.
13:08The army could only deploy it to its officers and charioteers.
13:15It was capable of accurately propelling an arrow 1,000 feet, nearly twice the distance
13:21of the common bow.
13:24With both bows in play, Thutmose could attack his opponents both short-range and long-range.
13:30A thousand archers, each carrying two dozen arrows and shooting them within two minutes.
13:39Twenty-four thousand lethal missiles.
13:42These enemies would have nowhere to run or hide.
13:51But every army had bows and arrows and Thutmose had to protect his men from them.
13:57The answer was armor.
13:59That meant using the Kevlar vests of their time, a technology so successful it lasted
14:05for generations.
14:09The weapons experts head to the Cairo Museum.
14:12Their mission?
14:13To see the only piece of ancient Egyptian armor that still exists, so they can make
14:18a replica and test it in the field.
14:21Wow, so there's the first one of Tutankhamen's chariots.
14:28The cross grips are actually horizontal.
14:32This armor happens to belong to one of the most famous pharaohs of all time.
14:38The boy king, Tutankhamen.
14:45It's been hidden away for years.
14:48King Tut's personal body armor, made from rawhide.
14:52Fantastic.
14:53Isn't that absolutely amazing?
14:57Well, I'm completely bowled over by this.
15:01That's one of the great moments, is coming to a place like Cairo and getting a cupboard
15:06unlocked and seeing an object that no one's seen, which takes you back into almost personal
15:11contact with someone who died three and a half thousand years ago.
15:17The only existing late Bronze Age armor which exists anywhere in the world, the scales themselves
15:24are rawhide.
15:25Yes, sure.
15:26If you take and shine a light through them, they are still translucent.
15:27Yeah, you can see the translucency in this little scale here.
15:32Armor like this protected Thutmose's foot soldiers from attack.
15:42But did it really stop an arrow in full flight?
15:50The only way to find out, put it to the test.
15:56First, our experts set up the dummy with basic rawhide armor.
16:06Tough luck for the foot soldier.
16:08The arrow easily pierces the armor and the dummy to the bone.
16:17It's reached the bone.
16:18Oh, yeah.
16:19Yeah, it's gone right into the bone.
16:21Shot right here.
16:22Yeah.
16:23The armor doesn't ever actually make the wearer impervious to all attack.
16:27What it does is it keeps soldiers on the battlefield for as long as possible.
16:33Next, the armor the officers and charioteers would have worn in battle, the heavier composite
16:39vest made of rawhide and bronze scales.
16:42What have we got?
16:43You can see it's gone.
16:44Oh, that's nice, isn't it?
16:45It's gone, right?
16:46Absolutely nil penetration.
16:47You wouldn't have noticed that.
16:50An officer wearing the rawhide and bronze would have survived.
16:55The armor is really quite flexible.
16:57There's no hard plate to stop blunt trauma.
17:00And I would imagine any shot in the rib cage, you would almost certainly have broken ribs.
17:06The rawhide and bronze armor works a lot better than plain rawhide.
17:11Now, on to the bronze armor worn only by the generals.
17:16Did it make a difference?
17:18I mean, heavy bronze armor, again, it's loud, it's noisy, it's heavy.
17:27It works like a charm.
17:29Well, that seems to work.
17:30Look at the curl on that.
17:32That's exactly what I expected.
17:33The tests show that each level of armor from rawhide to bronze gives extra protection.
17:40The Kevlar of its day, the heavy bronze armor, worked best.
17:44But there were two drawbacks.
17:46It weighed too much for hand-to-hand combat.
17:49In the desert heat, where temperatures can exceed 100 degrees,
17:54the average foot soldier couldn't use it.
17:57And it was expensive.
17:59Even the Egyptians couldn't outfit an entire army in bronze armor.
18:08As Thutmose knew, just having armor and arrows isn't enough.
18:13You have to maneuver them into the right position.
18:16To do it, Thutmose used the chariot.
18:20But firing an arrow accurately from a moving platform wouldn't be easy.
18:25Could they do it?
18:35In Thutmose's age, a revolution in warfare sweeps the Middle East.
18:41There's no way of estimating the huge change that happened
18:44as Egypt effectively launched itself into the late Bronze Age.
18:48The composite bow and the chariot,
18:50these were the weapons that completely transformed
18:53the way in which the Egyptians fought their battles.
18:58Improvements in technology created smaller, lighter, faster chariots.
19:03By using six spokes instead of four, they were stronger and easier to maneuver.
19:09In gaining speed, the new chariot sacrificed stability.
19:14Can an archer hit a target from this small, fast-moving platform?
19:19What we're going to try here is some archery from a moving chariot
19:23to see really how difficult it is.
19:25Neither of us have ever stood in one of those before.
19:30We tossed a coin, and he lost.
19:34Okay. We'll see what happens.
19:37Wooden wheels, no shock absorbers, galloping across rough terrain.
19:42It looks easy in the images.
19:44But can Tom hit the target, arrow after arrow?
19:48Attach some ropes, and hopefully this will provide a little bit better stability.
19:54In the ancient world, you'd be working with a chariot driver
19:57that you had dealt with for many years.
19:59Certainly, it would make it much easier to tell faster, slower, it's too rough.
20:03It was smooth enough.
20:05And you would instinctively know where to drive
20:07to give you the best shots at the targets.
20:12And certainly, all of that done in the heat of battle would be,
20:15you'd have to work as a seamless pair.
20:18This is incredibly rough.
20:20Okay, we'll give this another try. Let's see what happens.
20:24And this time, he hits the target again and again.
20:29If Tom can do it in one trial,
20:31imagine hundreds of trained charioteers doing it in Thutmose's army.
20:36It would be intimidating and lethal.
20:40We're talking about very large quantities, hundreds of chariots,
20:44all in large formations together,
20:46riding up, raining down arrows, these deadly bronze-tipped arrows.
20:51And the revolution that's involved with these guys
20:54is no less significant than the use of aircraft in warfare in the 20th century.
21:02Even with chariots, in Thutmose's time,
21:06most of the combat was still hand-to-hand.
21:14Thutmose needed his men to have the killing edge,
21:17so he made sure his army had their weapon of choice, the battle axe.
21:24In fact, a ferocious new kind of battle axe was coming into its own.
21:30The axe had partly evolved as a piercing weapon
21:33that you could hit people about the head and shoulders with,
21:36and that's the kind of axe we've got up here, the so-called duckbill axe.
21:40The axe had also developed as a slashing weapon on a long pole
21:44with a very long, narrow blade, the halberd axe heads.
21:53With the axes, the infantrymen could create mayhem.
22:00The long pole with the halberd-like slashing axe head on it,
22:05you're using that to attack the lower body
22:08and just slash away at the waist and the legs of your enemy.
22:12With the long duckbill axe,
22:15you'd be using that to attack the upper body and the head and so on.
22:23I imagine that this type of axe was used more in the later stages of battle
22:28when the foot soldiers were moving in to essentially capitalize
22:33on the mayhem that had been wrought by the volleys of arrows sent over.
22:37So they really needed to get in close to the opponent
22:41in order to make proper use of these weapons,
22:43because this was not something you'd throw at your opponent.
22:45You wanted to hang on to it
22:47and to be able to use it continuously through the battle.
22:52The axe was lethal, and the sight of a thousand of them would be terrifying.
22:58The appearance of the weapons would have been important to the Egyptians.
23:02If you were confronted with an army that all looked the same,
23:06phalanx on phalanx, polished bronze,
23:09anything that would catch the light advancing towards you,
23:13glittering would have been a very impressive sight.
23:19John Manring is an expert in ancient bronze weapons.
23:24The requirement with weapons like this,
23:26with close quarter-compact weapons,
23:29is confidence in the phalanx or the group.
23:33So it's a battering effect of men,
23:36where you only had men and hand weapons.
23:39No tanks. The chariots would be somewhere else.
23:42The arrows have gone, and this is just you against your enemy.
23:46But it would have been absolutely grim.
23:49Can you imagine attacking an enemy,
23:52chasing up hillsides, running down mountains?
23:55It's an absolutely grim, frightening experience at the front,
24:00chopping and hacking for all you're worth.
24:03At very close quarters, it's a short haft.
24:06You have to get close to your enemy.
24:08You're seeing, you're looking into his eyes
24:11before giving him that final chop.
24:20Same heads on each.
24:22We'll get the most force we can out of the long haft.
24:25We know the axe would have hacked through ordinary body armour,
24:28but was it strong enough to penetrate the bronze armour
24:31worn by officers and generals?
24:34Doctors Tom Hewlett and Tom Richardson
24:37set up another bronze armour dummy.
24:39This time they're going after it with a battle axe.
24:42One-handed. Remember, you've got a shield in one hand.
24:45That's true. The infantry soldiers
24:47primarily would have had a shield in one hand
24:49and the weapon in the other.
24:51So although it's very tempting to use both hands
24:54to get as much force as possible,
24:56the first shots at any rate should be one-handed.
25:05Right.
25:13Well, that's sorted that armour out then.
25:16There would be substantial blunt trauma.
25:19That would be...
25:21Even though there's no actual bleeding wounds,
25:24that would be very possibly a fatal injury.
25:30In the event an elite soldier
25:32comes up against a soldier wielding an axe,
25:35there would be some chance that he might survive.
25:38He would be very, very badly injured from the blunt trauma,
25:41but certainly there would be a better chance
25:43than if he's wearing nothing at all.
25:46The test shows the axe would have damaged
25:49even the elite officers who wore heavy bronze armour.
25:53Arrows.
25:55Armour.
25:57Chariots.
25:59Axes.
26:07In 1457 BC,
26:10Thutmose needs all the killing power he can deliver
26:14and all his cunning.
26:29Less than a year after Thutmose took control,
26:32local rulers to the north
26:34have mounted a rebellion against Egyptian rule.
26:37It's a challenge that's critical.
26:41It could disrupt a key trading route
26:44and cut off Egypt's economy.
26:47For an ambitious ruler bent on expanding his empire,
26:51there's no choice.
26:53Unlike his stepmother, Thutmose won't sacrifice power
26:56for the sake of peace.
27:00The pharaoh assembles tens of thousands of weapons,
27:03countless supplies and some 20,000 men.
27:11He moves his army from a border fortress into Gaza.
27:15From there, they march 75 miles toward Megiddo.
27:20Although it's a professional army,
27:22many of the foot soldiers are from poor families,
27:25drawn into the king's service by the promise of plunder.
27:29If they survive the battlefield,
27:31some brought back gold, cattle, horses and even women.
27:37To the troops, Thutmose adds a scribe,
27:41a royal reporter to record the battle.
27:45Like the great military leaders who will follow him,
27:48Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon,
27:51Thutmose understands the power of the written word
27:55and wants to make sure he controls it.
27:58His scribe, an army commander named Thunani,
28:02becomes the first combat reporter
28:04to capture the carnage and commit it to history.
28:07His account is published at the Temple of Karnak in the capital.
28:14Thutmose's people read it and so can Ian Shaw today.
28:18Thunani went with Thutmose III's armies
28:21and in a sense was the original war correspondent,
28:24the original embedded journalist
28:26who followed the armies through their 17 campaigns,
28:31scribbling down basic details of the movement of the army,
28:35the king's strategy and so on.
28:38Thunani's original diary is the basis for these annals.
28:43It's something much more than just a set of inscriptions on the stone.
28:47It's actually the account left by somebody
28:49who was quite possibly dodging arrows
28:52and some way behind the king's chariot.
28:57The scribe was both combat reporter and propagandist.
29:01His account described Thutmose's most famous battle,
29:05an epic conflict in a desert city called Megiddo.
29:09The city straddles a major trade route.
29:12It's a gateway to the riches of the north.
29:15Megiddo is so strategically important
29:17that it will be fought over for centuries to come.
29:21We know it today as Armageddon.
29:26Eventually they reach the stage where they realize
29:29that if they're going to make any more progress,
29:32they have to deal with Megiddo.
29:34Led by the Canaanites,
29:37the rebel forces position themselves outside the fortified city.
29:42One flank goes to the north and another to the south.
29:48The Egyptian army hasn't engaged a major enemy in over 20 years.
29:54A whole generation of Egyptian soldiers
29:56has never been tested in combat,
29:58yet Thutmose can't afford to wait.
30:01He and his army cross the desert at a blistering 15 miles a day
30:06to close the distance between his army and the rebels.
30:11At a town called Yemma near Megiddo,
30:14Thutmose holds a council with all his generals.
30:19Even though he's pharaoh, he'll lead his men into battle.
30:24In the annals we get images of Thutmose III
30:27which show us he was prepared to go against the grain
30:31and to present himself at least as someone
30:34who was not some old fuddy-duddy ruler
30:36sitting in his throne room back in Egypt,
30:38but was out there in the field making decisions.
30:43All of the inscriptions here are telling us exactly what was happening
30:46when Thutmose III was having this council with his generals.
30:50You can get quite a good sense of what's going on
30:52in the actual conversation with the generals here.
30:55I can see here the word for way or road.
30:59There we are, there's another reference to road.
31:02So I know that in this part of the inscription
31:05they're discussing the possible routes that might be taken.
31:10There are three routes to Megiddo.
31:13Long, easy, level roads around the hills.
31:17The third is shorter, a narrow, treacherous passage.
31:23But it slices directly through the hills to the battlefield.
31:28His generals advise him to take one of the easy routes.
31:33But Thutmose thinks the enemy expects him to do just that.
31:38He makes a bold decision.
31:44His scribe Thunani claimed in his account
31:47that Thutmose gave his soldier this speech.
31:51I am the beloved of the god Ra
31:53and praised by my father, the king of gods. Amen.
31:56I will take the narrow road.
31:58Those of you who are willing, follow my lead.
32:01Follow your king.
32:03And then his troops shouted in reply.
32:06We will follow you, our king, wherever you lead us.
32:14Megiddo
32:18Why does he go for that option?
32:20Probably what he thinks is that if his generals are suggesting
32:23not going through the gorge, then probably that's what
32:26the generals on the other side are expecting too.
32:29So he says, no, we'll just do the unexpected.
32:31We'll go through the gorge.
32:34The plan is risky.
32:36Thutmose will have his entire army exposed,
32:39single file in the gorge.
32:41If they're spotted, they're defenseless.
32:44Thutmose leads them through the narrow rocky pass himself by foot.
32:52Horse behind horse and man behind man,
32:55his majesty showing the way by his own footsteps.
33:04Thutmose even orders his men to carry their chariots through the gorge.
33:11Tens of thousands of armed rebels wait on the other side.
33:15Thinking they know where Thutmose will march in,
33:18they have positioned their forces near the easy level roads
33:21to the north and south, some eight miles apart.
33:27It takes the entire morning for Thutmose's army to pass through the gorge.
33:33When they come out, they're only a mile from Megiddo.
33:37They march to their positions and by evening,
33:40they've driven a wedge between the two halves of the rebel army.
33:47The next morning, the Canaanite forces are spooked by an opponent
33:52who has appeared out of nowhere.
33:56Assalamu alaykum.
33:58How are you?
34:25They're further startled by the sight of Thutmose and his golden chariot at the head of the
34:43charge.
34:44The Canaanites and the rebels soon break and run for their lives.
34:52As if terrified by spirits, they left their horse and chariots of silver and gold.
35:00We've got to remember that most of these soldiers were illiterate.
35:04They themselves haven't left us accounts of what was actually happening in the battle,
35:10so very often these reliefs are the only real evidence that we have as to what the soldiers'
35:16view of battle was.
35:19So you can see these images of the fallen soldiers just being crushed either under the
35:23wheels or the hooves of the horses and the chariots.
35:27We even see them being literally tangled up in the spokes of the chariot wheel.
35:39But the battle turns out to be just the beginning.
35:42Instead of finishing off the enemy as they retreat, Thutmose's soldiers stop and strip
35:47the rebels' dead bodies.
35:50The delay allows the Canaanites to regroup inside the fortress.
35:55Thutmose is furious, and he's forced to lay siege to the city.
36:01The Egyptians surround Megiddo, slowly strangling it.
36:10It takes seven months for the city to fall.
36:15Now its people and their possessions become plunder.
36:22There was very little sentimentality here.
36:35The idea was that you despoiled the dead and the wounded as much as possible of all the
36:41materials and the weapons that you might need as you moved on into the next stage of
36:45the campaign.
36:52The records list nearly 900 chariots, 200 suits of armor, and 2,000 horses.
36:59Many thousands of men were killed.
37:04After the battle, the Egyptians cut off the hands of the enemy dead and presented them
37:08to their king to keep tally.
37:17They paid little respect to the enemy dead, and the enemy would have done just the same
37:31to them.
37:50In this cave, Dr. Zahi Hawass reveals just what happened to a body on an ancient Egyptian
37:56battlefield centuries before Thutmose's time.
38:01You can really see the traumatic scene that happened more than 3,900 years ago.
38:07If we can close our eyes in the time of the battle, we can imagine those 60 brave soldiers.
38:16They fought to defend Egypt, and they were killed.
38:19And the king honored them and buried them here.
38:25These are the bones of ordinary Egyptian soldiers, scarred forever by combat.
38:32And walk more, because as you can see, this is the main place for the burial of the soldiers.
38:52And the linen are scattered everywhere.
38:56Mingled with their bones are the linens used to wrap them 40 centuries earlier.
39:05The bones show us the grisly work of what was then the ancient world's most advanced
39:10and deadly weapon.
39:13There is an arrow here, and there is an arrow here.
39:17Look at this man, an arrow in his arm, another arrow, another arrow, skulls.
39:25Someone lost his eyes, had an arrow in the skull, his right arm was completely lost.
39:41The bones are direct evidence.
39:45These reliefs and carvings tell us even more about the gory aftermath of metal meeting
39:51flesh and bone.
39:54Dr. Gonzalo Sanchez, a neurosurgeon and army colonel during the Vietnam War, has been studying
40:05the ancient reliefs and comparing them with modern-day medical photos.
40:12This individual, which is falling off the chariot, is hyperextended in the back of
40:18the head, backwards, bringing the shoulders forward, rotating the arms, bringing the hands
40:24down, extending the head, and extending the legs.
40:34This picture shows a patient who has had an injury that has produced the head extended,
40:40the shoulders thrown forward, the arms rotated in, and the position of the hands somewhat
40:45flexed.
40:47What seems to be crude drawings are really anatomically accurate images of ordinary soldiers
40:53suffering agonizing deaths carved more than 3,000 years ago.
40:59If you were hit in the limb, you'd probably survive, but if you were hit in a cavity,
41:05whether it was the cranial cavity, abdominal cavity, chest cavity, you'd probably die,
41:10because if you don't die from major blood vessel injury, you die from infection.
41:17The agony of death paid no attention to rank.
41:21Foot soldiers, generals, and kings faced the same risk.
41:28Take the case of this mummy, an ancient pharaoh, Secon Enri Tao II.
41:34He was king of Egypt a century before Thutmose.
41:38At the time, his nation struggled against invading armies.
41:43Sanchez examines an X-ray of his remains and reveals the forensic details of the king's
41:49death in combat.
41:54He must have been at the front of his warriors and surrounded.
42:01He tried to ward off the impact coming from the left side with his arm, still the hatchet
42:06hitting him from below on the left side, and of course, it penetrated deep enough and broke
42:12the bones of the face.
42:16Secon Enri's skull is badly damaged.
42:19It's marked by multiple strikes at close range, straight axe, broad axe, and possibly a club
42:28or mace.
42:35Unlike Secon Enri, Thutmose survived 17 military campaigns without a scratch.
42:42While we know much more about Thutmose the warrior, we know even less about what drove
42:48him to be the kind of king that he was.
42:51The answer may lie in the mystery of his stepmother's death, Queen Hatshepsut.
42:57In an ancient tomb called KV60.
43:09Unlike Napoleon 3,000 years later, Thutmose seized territory and power and held them.
43:17Thutmose forged Egypt's greatest empire, stretching almost 2,000 miles from Lebanon in the north
43:25to modern-day Sudan in the south.
43:30His Egypt was stable and powerful, a center for culture and art.
43:37Thutmose's Egypt was far different from the Egypt that his stepmother ruled, but he had
43:43to wait many years for his stepmother to hand him the throne.
43:51Some archaeologists now speculate that he orchestrated her murder and hid her body.
43:59Someone moved her body from her burial chamber.
44:02Now we may be on the verge of uncovering her.
44:07One hundred years ago, in the Valley of the Kings, archaeologists discovered two mummies
44:12in a small tomb near Hatshepsut's burial chamber.
44:18Archaeologists identified one as her royal nurse, but the other remained a mystery.
44:26Now Egyptologists Salima Ikram and Janice Cameron join Dr. Zahi Hawass to inspect the
44:33mummy.
44:38Hawass thinks it may be Queen Hatshepsut.
44:54Ladies, follow me.
45:00It's a very strange tomb.
45:02It's left unfinished.
45:08Nice.
45:10Body.
45:28They first check to see if her arms have been folded in the traditional posture of a queen.
45:34They are.
45:35Who said that she's old?
45:37She also appears to have been the right age.
45:40She's like 45.
45:42Really huge, pendulous breasts.
45:45Yeah, you can really see that.
45:52To Dr. Hawass, she looks like a queen.
45:55When I opened this box, looked at the face, I said she looks royalty.
46:02Her face is a face of a queen.
46:06But queen, I'm not sure 100%.
46:08Maybe she could be Queen Hatshepsut.
46:13But Dr. Ikram argues that Hatshepsut would not have been buried as a woman.
46:18I don't think it's Hatshepsut, because like Janice, I think that Hatshepsut, after spending
46:22her entire life showing herself as a king, would have been buried as a king as well,
46:28not as a woman.
46:29But there is some evidence.
46:30The name of Hatshepsut is written in the coffin, you know.
46:33It is?
46:34The name of Hatshepsut?
46:35Why?
46:37They decide to investigate the other artifacts stacked in the tomb.
46:44Everything appears ordinary, except for one item.
46:48It's right here.
46:49Is it?
46:50Yes!
46:51Where?
46:52Top and face piece.
46:53It says it's in the box.
46:56A death mask that they wouldn't expect to find even in a royal nurse's tomb.
47:03The mask just might have been Hatshepsut's.
47:07There's a notch here.
47:08Since she often posed as a man, it's tantalizing to find a mask with a notch for a pharaoh's
47:14false beard.
47:15This hole could be for the beard, the royal beard.
47:19It's exactly for this.
47:21The Egyptians always put this for the royal beard.
47:25It is a mask of a queen.
47:33And this could be the coffin of that mummy.
47:37It means Hatshepsut.
47:39It's fantastic.
47:45It's not enough evidence to prove that this is Hatshepsut's mummy.
47:50More testing must take place first.
47:55But this inconspicuous tomb may turn out to be the resting place for one of Egypt's
48:02most remarkable rulers.
48:09If Thutmose had ordered his stepmother's murder, dumping her body into this obscure
48:14tomb would make perfect sense.
48:17It's not an airtight case, but one thing is unmistakably clear.
48:23Near the end of his life, Thutmose finally took open and public revenge on Hatshepsut.
48:32At the temples of Deir el-Bahri and Karnak, a close inspection reveals the outline of
48:41a figure.
48:43Someone has carved it out.
48:46Other walls reveal more and more images of this same person, all deliberately erased
48:52under direct order of Thutmose's.
48:56It's Hatshepsut.
49:02MUSIC
49:15Originally, this chamber was full of images of both Hatshepsut and Thutmose III.
49:21But all the way around the chamber, here, beside Horace and Thoth,
49:26up there in the top right-hand corner,
49:28even the image up there that showed the car, the double or spirit of Hatshepsut,
49:34even that's been chiseled out.
49:36Short of actually exhuming the body of Hatshepsut and dropping it in the Nile,
49:41he couldn't have gone much further, really, in removing her from history.
49:49Egypt's ancient records show that thirty years after her death, Thutmose ordered
49:54every image of his stepmother to be destroyed.
49:57All shrines, images and statues.
50:04It seems oddly spiteful and petty for such a great pharaoh.
50:09But for ancient Egyptians, images had enormous power in this world
50:14and in the afterlife.
50:17Defacing Hatshepsut's images and statues was a crude attempt to remove her from history.
50:23But to Thutmose, it also would have denied her any chance of an eternal life.
50:30Any chance of immortality.
50:36Was it punishment for a queen who overstepped her bounds when she declared herself pharaoh?
50:43Or was it Thutmose's personal act of vengeance?
50:48Whatever the reason, it cast Thutmose,
50:51the man known as Egypt's Napoleon, as an enigma.
50:55A complex man, struggling with his own demons.
51:00Yet, under his thirty-two year rule, Thutmose expanded Egypt's empire
51:05with arrows, armor, chariots and axes.
51:10And the blood of his soldiers.
51:14He was a brilliant tactician who never lost a battle.
51:18His seventeen military campaigns would build the largest empire in the history of Egypt.