Tutankhamun: Secrets of the Tomb (2022) Season 1 Episode 2
Ella Al-Shamahi dives deeper into the mystery of the 'Pharaoh's Curse'. Was King Tut's tomb lethally toxic? Or was the real curse a case of fatal obsession?
❤️Ella Al-Shamahi❤️
#tutankhamun #documentary #history
Ella Al-Shamahi dives deeper into the mystery of the 'Pharaoh's Curse'. Was King Tut's tomb lethally toxic? Or was the real curse a case of fatal obsession?
❤️Ella Al-Shamahi❤️
#tutankhamun #documentary #history
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TVTranscript
00:00A century ago, in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, an archaeologist broke into a royal
00:11tomb and found one of the greatest hauls of treasure in history.
00:18Nothing, and I mean nothing, like the tomb of Tutankhamun had ever been found before.
00:30The burial chamber was over 3,000 years old.
00:34What lay inside were some of the most astonishing works of art ever made.
00:41The world was obsessed with the romance and the intrigue of the discovery.
00:49But within months, men who had entered the burial chamber began to die.
00:56The press started spinning tales of King Tut's curse, and a legend was unleashed.
01:05It's a great story.
01:07The world was hooked.
01:09Not just the story of the supernatural, but obsession, jealousy, and death.
01:15But if the curse was nonsense, could these deaths have another explanation?
01:21The DNA material inside could live for a thousand years.
01:24Oh, this is quite emotional.
01:26Were the treasures toxic?
01:28It's a large quantity of arsenic, so that is potentially hazardous.
01:33Did the ancient remains contain a hidden killer?
01:37It can cause lung infections and can cause sepsis and death.
01:41A century on, can modern science unlock the secrets behind the most spectacular archaeological
01:48find of all time?
01:51The tomb of Tutankhamun.
02:16Egypt is a land of grandeur, of mystery, and of obsession.
02:32Every year, teams of archaeologists sift the sands with the dream of making a spectacular
02:41discovery.
02:43For one man above all, the dream came true.
02:52In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of the teenaged pharaoh
02:59Tutankhamun.
03:02It was filled with over 5,000 treasures.
03:08From the pharaoh's ritual beds to his inner coffin of solid gold, excited crowds descended
03:22on the Valley of the Kings to see the most sensational find in the world.
03:36As a paleoanthropologist, I study the human stories at the heart of our ancient past.
03:44My family's from Yemen, and I'm fascinated by the history of the Middle East.
03:51Like those still digging in the desert, I've been captivated by the most extraordinary
03:56archaeological discovery of all time.
04:02Today, millions flock to Cairo's Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, still captivated by
04:10Carter's extraordinary find.
04:12Why do you think people are so obsessed with Tutankhamun?
04:18It was huge.
04:19I mean, no one had ever seen anything like it before.
04:22You'd get these tantalizing glimpses of royal tombs that had some jewelry here, some jewelry
04:27there, a coffin or something.
04:28But this was everything together, and it was just luxury like people hadn't seen.
04:33It was gold.
04:34It was glitter.
04:35It was everything.
04:36And you can see, like, everybody with their cameras.
04:38It completely captured the imagination.
04:41We're surrounded by tons of people that are here just to see this stuff.
04:49Back in 1922, the sensational find drew the eyes of the world to Egypt.
05:00Archaeological discoveries rarely become a global sensation, and yet it was Tutmania.
05:07People went mad for the boy king, and it still exists.
05:10It's why I'm here 100 years later.
05:13Tutankhamun and his treasures remain the most famous and infamous event in the whole of
05:19archaeology.
05:23Infamous because of a string of deaths that soon followed.
05:29So far, I've learned that two men died with lung infections just months after entering
05:35the tomb, expedition funder Lord Carnarvon and millionaire George J. Gould.
05:47Soon even deaths with a vague connection to the tomb were being added to the list as the
05:53press spun a tale of King Tut's curse.
05:59News worldwide devoured the news, but for some of these men, had entering the tomb exposed
06:07them to something genuinely deadly?
06:11To find out, I need to investigate conditions on the ground a century ago for Carter and
06:17his archaeological team.
06:23And for one man in particular who played a central role in the excavation, Arthur Mace
06:32was a brilliant archaeologist based at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
06:40He specialized in the preservation of ancient artifacts, and in Tut's tomb he was faced
06:49with preserving over 5,000 of them.
06:55Mace was a contemporary of Carter's and somebody with a long history of working on archaeological
06:59excavation, somebody who would know objects very well.
07:03In Egypt, Mace quickly became Carter's right-hand man.
07:08The two men obsessively catalogued thousands of treasures, but the work was hard.
07:16This massive, extremely delicate task doesn't play out in the luxury of an air-conditioned
07:24laboratory for Carter and Mace.
07:28This is taking place in the heat of the desert in the Valley of the Kings, inside the tomb,
07:32which is very, very cramped, and you've got blazing sunshine.
07:39You've got the press, tourists, VIPs getting in your way all over the place.
07:44These were very, very difficult.
07:52With temperatures reaching 40 degrees Celsius, Mace and Carter desperately needed a cool
07:59place to work.
08:04Egyptologist Salima Ikram showed me the tomb of another pharaoh that soon had a new purpose.
08:12It's incredible.
08:15It's pretty fantastic.
08:18But it had another use at the time of Carter.
08:22Yes, this was the lab.
08:24What was the process of taking care of those artifacts?
08:28Mace was setting up this wonderful lab.
08:31He had a little bit of a chemistry set going down there with Bunsen burners and all of
08:36his chemicals.
08:37What kind of stuff were they breathing in?
08:39Well, I mean, you've got normal dust, which you can't avoid, and then anything that the
08:44objects themselves were giving off.
08:46They would have had little gas stoves to boil things up and to test things, and they didn't
08:52have any fans.
08:53He would just be sitting here with fumes and dust and whatever, and inhaling all of that.
09:04Mace excavated hundreds of Tut's treasures.
09:10But his health began to fail before he had finished the job.
09:16Less than two years after he arrived, he had to leave Egypt.
09:22Like Carnarvon and Gauld, Mace suffered from lung disease.
09:29Two years later, he was dead.
09:35The press quickly blamed Mace's death on King Tut's curse.
09:40But was there a real connection between Mace's demise and his work excavating Tut's treasures?
09:54Gyro scientists at the Egyptian Museum are investigating treasures found in ancient burial
10:00chambers.
10:03They've made a discovery that could shed light on the death of Arthur Mace.
10:10Their investigations focus on a precious substance Mace handled regularly.
10:17Orpiment.
10:20Could you just explain to me what orpiment is?
10:22Orpiment is a mineral that's found in the eastern desert in the Sinai in Egypt.
10:27It was bright and shining like the sun, and gold is the skin of the gods.
10:31And ancient Egyptians would have taken this mineral, grounded up, and made a pigment.
10:36Prized for its yellow color, orpiment was used widely in ancient Egyptian painting,
10:44including on treasures in Tut's tomb.
10:48So what exactly does orpiment contain?
10:51To find out, conservator Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim sets up a test called X-ray fluorescence.
11:03The lasers are going to shoot out X-rays from the machine.
11:07It's going to hit the pigments, and then a unique chemical signature is going to bounce
11:11back and appear on the computer screens.
11:20You can just see the peaks going right now, just up and down. This is incredible.
11:23This is amazing, yeah.
11:26What's the highest peak? What's that?
11:28It's calcium. It's a stone made of calcium carbonate.
11:32So that's not of a massive concern.
11:34Yes, but we have ES, it's arsenic.
11:37That's the next massive peak?
11:38Yes.
11:40So that's...
11:41It's a large quantity of arsenic in that.
11:44Short-term exposure, probably not going to cause you death.
11:47But long-term exposure, that is potentially hazardous.
11:51And Arthur Mace had one habit that might have made his exposure to arsenic even more dangerous.
12:00We know from the notes that Mace probably did taste test some of the materials.
12:06Like in the notes it'll say, oh, it tastes a bit salty.
12:08Why was he taste testing?
12:10That is a mystery to me. I would certainly not do it.
12:14Would you taste test?
12:15No, never.
12:17I am sympathetic to Mace.
12:19They had minimal technology at that time,
12:21and you kind of used whatever you had available.
12:23So if you wanted to know if there was salts on something,
12:25maybe you give a little taste test to figure out if there's some salts.
12:31So arsenic is one killer toxin Tut's tomb definitely contained.
12:37But if it could have killed Arthur Mace,
12:39it doesn't answer all the questions.
12:43Most of those whose deaths were blamed on the curse had little or no contact with toxic paint.
12:52So was there another invisible killer lurking inside the tomb?
13:10By 1923, a year after its discovery,
13:14the tomb of Tutankhamun was the most famous archaeological site in the world.
13:23The deaths of men linked to the tomb only boosted its notoriety.
13:30Events blamed by a sensational press on King Tut's curse.
13:36But then a new rumour began to circulate.
13:43With the tomb containing human remains,
13:46could toxic pathogens be causing the deaths?
13:52Carter rejected the theory.
13:55He thought the 3,000-year-old tomb was too ancient to be a killer.
14:00And he enlisted scientists to prove it.
14:06In 1925, Carter opened Tut's sarcophagus for the very first time.
14:13He shared swabs taken from the mummy with British microbiologists.
14:20This little report in a newspaper,
14:24of the examination of some of the bandages from the tomb,
14:28which was not undertaken by Carter himself, but by a Dr A.C. Taysen,
14:33with Carter's blessing, revealed that the bandages from Tutankhamun's mummy
14:38were found to contain no bacteria.
14:43And this short report makes it very clear that this was not the case.
14:49Carter wanted a robust scientific denial,
14:52so as to just knock it on the head, you know, just get rid of it.
14:58But science has come on a long way
15:01in the centuries since Tutankhamun was found.
15:08In the early 1900s,
15:10scientists were trying to find the cause of the death of Tutankhamun.
15:16At a dig south of Cairo,
15:18we're going to conduct similar microbial tests
15:22on a recently excavated Egyptian mummy.
15:29Can today's scientists find evidence of deadly pathogens
15:33still living on ancient remains?
15:37OK, I'll send a basket with the device.
15:41Be careful.
15:43Deep within this ancient tomb,
15:45heritage scientist Dr Abd al-Razak al-Najjar
15:48has the perfect sample to test.
15:54A mummy that's over 2,000 years old.
16:00What are you looking for on this particular mummy?
16:03My role is to investigate any microbial damage on the mummy itself,
16:08because organic materials are perfect for fungal and bacterial growth.
16:12And the mummy has a skin,
16:14and also the wrapping is made of linen, which is material as well.
16:18And also wood is made of cellulose material,
16:21which is perfect for fungal growth.
16:23So first we do a quick survey with UV
16:25to locate some spots for sampling.
16:27So we can just please switch on the light.
16:31So under the UV light,
16:33you can see some fungal.
16:35You can see some fungal colonies here.
16:38Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
16:40The tiny white spots suggest there may be ancient mould on the mummy.
16:48Is that my imagination, or is that somewhat on the nose and mouth?
16:52Yes, yeah.
16:54This is plant materials over the linen itself.
16:57Oh, this is quite emotional.
16:59That means that somebody has buried this individual with flowers.
17:02We can find ancient fungi here, which has already died,
17:06but the DNA material inside could live for thousands of years.
17:13Like Howard Carter's experiment a century ago,
17:16Abderrazak carefully takes swabs from the mummy.
17:24The samples are taken away to be cultivated.
17:28Can today's scientists find deadly pathogens Carter's team may have missed?
17:36So we started the process of the cultivation
17:39and also incubation and purification of the fungal species,
17:43and we found really very interesting results.
17:46After one week of incubation, we can see the colonies coming up,
17:50and we can see the very clear characteristic of aspergillus flowers.
17:58That's the second time I've heard the name aspergillus flavus.
18:05Earlier in my journey, I visited Poland,
18:08where ten people reportedly died after entering the tomb of an ancient king.
18:16The deaths were linked back to a toxic mould found on the king's body.
18:24Aspergillus flavus.
18:28Now, Dr. Abderrazak and Najjar have shown
18:32that the same deadly mould can be found on ancient Egyptian mummies.
18:40Could the mould have caused some of the deaths linked to King Tut's curse?
18:46I'm heading back to London...
18:51..to show surgeon and disease specialist Dr. Houtan Ashrafian.
18:57This is a plate from the body in Egypt, and clearly it's growing a fungus.
19:02This is classical aspergillus.
19:04They live on dead bodies or decayed bodies,
19:08and this is what we're looking for.
19:11This is classical aspergillus.
19:13They live on dead bodies or decaying matter,
19:16and so nearly every human environment will have them.
19:19They can cause lung infections,
19:21but we are only prone to suffering disease from them
19:24when we get either exposed to a high dose or our immune system is weakened.
19:29So from a tomb in Egypt where ancient mummies existed,
19:34the exposure of aspergillus is there,
19:37and as a result, when we look back at the characters such as Mace,
19:42Carnarvon, George J Gould,
19:44who would have been in the tomb of Tutankhamun,
19:47they would have also been exposed to aspergillus.
19:51It could cause fevers, it can cause pneumonias
19:54and can cause sepsis and death.
19:58After entering Tut's tomb, George J Gould contracted a fever,
20:03Arthur Mace, a lung infection,
20:06and Lord Carnarvon, pneumonia with inflammation of the nose and eyes.
20:12All symptoms of aspergillus flavus exposure.
20:17These men had a variety of ailments,
20:20but aspergillus poisoning fits as a cause
20:24or contributing factor to their deaths.
20:29How much was known about all of this in the 1920s?
20:33The understanding of biology and infectious disease
20:36had begun in the 1920s,
20:39but it wasn't known to archaeologists.
20:42And when Carter, Carnarvon, Mace
20:46would have entered the tomb and worked in that space,
20:49the risks they were thinking of were the different authorities
20:53and their competitors to finding that tomb
20:56rather than themselves being exposed to biology as a potential pathogen.
21:03But Howard Carter was wrong.
21:07Ancient Egyptian tomb remains do contain potentially lethal pathogens.
21:14100 years on, it's impossible to prove
21:17that Carnarvon, Gould and Mace were victims of aspergillus.
21:22Egypt in the 1920s was rife with disease.
21:27But for me, it seems a tantalising coincidence
21:31that Carnarvon contracted lung infections
21:34after entering Tutankhamun's tomb.
21:38And we may finally have a scientific explanation
21:42for King Tut's curse.
21:49For dig foreman Mahmoud, whose great-grandfather excavated Tut's tomb,
21:54the risk of opening ancient burials comes as no surprise.
22:00You wear some gloves, some mask, don't shave.
22:03Don't shave?
22:08You mean three to four days before you start working?
22:11Yeah, because they say, like my father, you know, from his father,
22:15tell me they have a shave and they have some, like, crack,
22:19you know, yeah, something inside the blood.
22:22Like a microbe or something might go into the cut.
22:25Even if it's a microbe or something, you will clean.
22:29But back in Carter's time, though, they didn't do that.
22:32No, I don't think he did this.
22:37Unaware of the risks, Carter thought the toxic tomb theory
22:41was just as fake as the mythical curse,
22:44which continued to generate sensational headlines in the press.
22:49And so Carter made a mockery of the deaths
22:52of his closest friends and colleagues.
22:56Carter laid the blame squarely on one man.
23:02Arthur Weigel.
23:05Weigel was an archaeologist and journalist working in Egypt.
23:11When the London Times was given an exclusive access deal for the tomb,
23:16Weigel found himself shut out from the biggest story of the day.
23:22Weigel was working for the Daily Mail,
23:25which was a rival of the London Times,
23:28and he was not able to get the scientific information
23:33from Carter on a daily basis,
23:35and so he had to take an opposite, quote, non-scientific tack.
23:42Weigel didn't believe in the curse,
23:45but he knew how contagious such stories could be.
23:49Weigel needed to generate readership and said,
23:53I'm going to write it anyway because the people eat it up.
24:00Carter loathed Weigel's writing
24:03and said the Tut curse was his invention.
24:07But when Weigel died in 1933,
24:10there was a final twist to his story.
24:14The Curse of Arthur Weigel.
24:16Did Mr Arthur Weigel die himself as a result of the curse?
24:22Sir Ernest A Wallace Budge, the greatest living Egyptologist,
24:26expressed the following opinion to me yesterday.
24:29It is my firm belief that Arthur Weigel died
24:32the unfortunate victim of a curse.
24:35It was not perhaps any royal curse,
24:38but one self-induced.
24:40There's no love lost between those two.
24:42Mr Weigel died in a London hospital
24:45as a result of hashish eating and addiction to other drugs.
24:51Could you imagine today publishing something like this
24:54and essentially an obituary?
24:58The drug allegation was made up.
25:01Weigel really died after suffering a terrible stroke.
25:06Weigel really died after suffering a tumour
25:09and the newspaper apologised.
25:13But Weigel's death was further proof of the grip the myth had
25:17on the public imagination.
25:21Despite the distraction of the curse story,
25:24Carter battled on for almost ten years,
25:28meticulously recording and cataloguing
25:31every single object in King Tut's tomb.
25:35Carter was tenacious.
25:37You have to admire him.
25:39He was completely consumed in his professional activity.
25:45It's estimated that there were 5,300 objects in that tomb.
25:50There was every obstacle put in Carter's way
25:54to prevent him from finishing the task
25:57of registering those tombs,
25:59and he took it upon himself to get them out,
26:02to photograph them and to conserve them.
26:06And we, 100 years after the discovery of the tomb,
26:10have to recognise how indebted we are.
26:16Thanks to Carter's dedication,
26:18the treasures of the tomb were preserved for millions to enjoy.
26:25But the more I've investigated this story,
26:28the more I've started to wonder
26:30if the true curse of Tutankhamun
26:32lies not in ancient spells or toxic remains,
26:36but a curse of obsession.
26:45That obsession was about to consume a young assistant of Carter's...
26:52..who set out to eclipse the find of the century...
26:57..with a discovery to rival even Tutankhamun.
27:12Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun ignited a global obsession
27:18to discover even greater tombs and treasures hidden beneath the sand.
27:27For one of Carter's assistants,
27:29that obsession would turn into a lifelong mission...
27:35..and a search for a prize that could rival Tutankhamun.
27:43Walter Brian Emery was a gifted Egyptologist.
27:47He was in his early 20s when he joined Carter's dig
27:51in the Valley of the Kings.
27:57Emery was a young, aspiring archaeologist at this time
28:01and a little bit like Carter.
28:03He hadn't had a scholarly training,
28:07but he was present at some of the most important stages
28:11in the process of Carter's work.
28:15Emery was there when Carter opened the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun.
28:21As a very impressionable and ambitious young archaeologist
28:26at this incredibly important moment,
28:29there's no question that Emery was inspired by Carter and his discovery.
28:34And perhaps there was a part of him as well
28:37that saw the celebrity that kind of fell on Carter and the attention.
28:42Perhaps there was a little part of him that, you know,
28:45that wanted a part of that.
28:48Emery set out to make a spectacular discovery of his own.
28:54He chose not the Valley of the Kings,
28:57but a vast necropolis south of Cairo.
29:03Saqqara.
29:06For millennia, this massive sacred space
29:09was a resting place for elite Egyptians,
29:13including royalty.
29:18Over decades, Emery obsessively searched beneath the dunes.
29:26Footage filmed in the 1960s
29:29shows how he uncovered a series of extraordinary tombs,
29:34including mummified falcons and other sacred creatures.
29:42But spectacular as these finds were,
29:45it was the tomb of another ancient Egyptian that Emery wanted most.
29:54So who was the focus of Emery's obsession?
30:02This very striking array of bronze figurines here
30:06represents a good part of the pantheon of gods and goddesses
30:11that were worshipped in ancient Egypt.
30:16And in amongst all of these,
30:18there is a figure third from left at the front here
30:21of a seated male individual with a shaven head
30:24opening out a papyrus roll,
30:26which is a pose that conveys the sense of wisdom
30:30and learning, great knowledge.
30:33And this is Imhotep.
30:36Born over 4,500 years ago,
30:40Imhotep was a spectacularly talented estatesman and architect.
30:46He wasn't a pharaoh like Tutankhamun,
30:49but after his death, he was worshipped as a god.
30:54And it was his tomb that became Emery's obsession.
30:59So the fact that he was elevated to the level of a god
31:03makes finding him even more appealing.
31:06Yeah, absolutely.
31:08You know, pharaohs are worshipped during their lifetimes,
31:11they are worshipped after their lifetimes to some extent,
31:14but in most cases, those cults eventually die away,
31:17whereas, you know, his star just keeps rising and rising,
31:20and by the time he reaches that point of being a god,
31:23he is among the most important deities in Egypt
31:27and, by extension, in the ancient world.
31:29So...
31:37Emery focused his search
31:39around one of the most spectacular sites of ancient Egypt...
31:46..the Step Pyramid of Saqqara.
31:52Egypt's first great pyramid, it was designed by Imhotep himself.
31:59Built 1,000 years ago and standing 200 feet tall,
32:03it is a monument to Imhotep's genius...
32:08..and is the final resting place of the pharaoh Djoser.
32:15Egyptologist Bob Bianchi is taking me into the heart of the pyramid.
32:22The descent takes us past chapels
32:25designed to be used by the pharaoh in the afterlife.
32:30It's just tunnel upon tunnel, isn't it, really?
32:36I think we've basically entered the set of Indiana Jones.
32:40Yes.
32:41We have no idea what's happening right or left.
32:44Yeah, exactly.
32:49At the secret heart of the pyramid,
32:52we emerge into the burial chamber of the pharaoh Djoser.
32:57That's absolutely breathtaking.
32:59This is incredible.
33:01We're looking at the sarcophagus in which Djoser was buried.
33:05It is made of individual blocks of red granite from Aswan,
33:09several hundred miles to the south.
33:11I just need to show people something.
33:15These aren't small pieces of brick.
33:18Two blocks for the whole of this.
33:22It's mad.
33:24The first thing that comes into my mind is how labour-intensive it is.
33:28Remember that they cut the shaft
33:30and then the ingenuity to be able to lower all of these,
33:34and whether they were doing it with ropes,
33:37or some people think that they might have had sand
33:40lowered on the sand and then they pulled the sand away
33:43and it kind of, like, lowered.
33:45And then you're dealing in a dark space, it's like a coal mine,
33:49and then you have to understand that how did they allude
33:52the tunnel that they're digging,
33:54and we're assuming that was done with lamps and oil.
33:58And then if you attribute this ingenuity to somebody like Imhotep,
34:04what was going through his mind?
34:06I mean, wow, it's just extraordinary.
34:14For Emery, Saqqara's step pyramid was a clue
34:19that its architect Imhotep could be buried close by.
34:30He spent decades searching for his tomb,
34:34hoping to emulate Howard Carter's achievements.
34:42There are, I think, great parallels between the two.
34:45They both had spent years excavating in their particular areas.
34:49They both had an interest in making a great headline-grabbing discovery.
34:53Carter, against the advice of his colleagues, was able to persevere
34:57and eventually was rewarded and proven to be right.
35:00Emery was perhaps thinking, you know, the same thing's happening here.
35:08Emery's obsession didn't pay off.
35:12Despite scouring Saqqara for 40 years,
35:16in 1971, he collapsed on a dig and died.
35:24Half a century on, Imhotep's tomb still lies hidden beneath the sands.
35:34But Emery's dream lives on.
35:38And the current search for Imhotep in Saqqara is just as intense.
35:53Chief Archaeological Inspector Ahmed Abdel-Haq leads the investigation.
35:58Saqqara is a dream for everybody, for any Egyptologist,
36:03to come here to learn, to train.
36:07We have here at Saqqara more than 25 international archaeological missions
36:11working every year.
36:14We found new discoveries, new tombs, new shafts, mummies, coffins.
36:20But 50% of the monuments of Saqqara are still hidden below the sands.
36:26But the search comes with risks.
36:30Sometimes, it's weak, so we must take care.
36:36Today, a team led by Czech archaeologists is searching Saqqara,
36:40to find the remains of an ancient Egyptian civilization.
36:47The next step is to find the remains of a man who died here.
36:53Today, a team led by Czech archaeologists is searching Saqqara.
37:00They're following an exciting lead.
37:03Could they have found the tomb of a major Egyptian figure?
37:08Perhaps even Imhotep himself?
37:13Saqqara, south of Cairo.
37:18Archaeologists have spent decades searching for the tomb of an ancient Egyptian
37:23once worshipped as a god.
37:28Imhotep.
37:31It's a find that could rival even Tutankhamun.
37:36And now, a team has made a discovery.
37:48A large tomb in the right location,
37:51with signs that it's the burial site of a major figure.
37:57Everybody wants to find Imhotep,
37:59because the person who will find the tomb will be immortal.
38:05The team carefully sifts the sands,
38:08hoping to find the tomb that eluded Emery and generations of others.
38:14But as they clear more of the debris,
38:17they stumble upon the remains of a man who died here.
38:23But as they clear more of the debris, they start to realise...
38:29..it's not what they're looking for.
38:37So, when they first found this tomb, it ticked a lot of boxes,
38:42to the extent that people started wondering if it might be Imhotep.
38:46So, it was in the right location, we think.
38:50I think it was a massive tomb,
38:53and slowly, one by one, it kind of starts falling apart.
39:00So, yes, it's in the right location, but it turns out it's not Imhotep.
39:08And this is it. This is Egyptology.
39:14For the first time, I felt the excitement that must have gripped
39:18the team in the Valley of the Kings a century ago.
39:23That rollercoaster that we're going through of, you know,
39:26excitement, hope, and then disappointment, and over and over again,
39:29and sometimes, you know, multiple times a day,
39:32is exactly what Howard Carter was going through for six years
39:35in his quest to find Tutankhamun,
39:37only he was incredibly lucky because he actually found him at the end.
39:43Come on.
39:48As the archaeologists work on in the desert,
39:51I'm starting to understand the double-edged impact
39:55of the discovery of Tutankhamun.
39:59One that provides inspiration, but also a weight of expectation.
40:06And hunger for an ever more spectacular find.
40:12A legacy that touches all archaeology.
40:16And it didn't spare the later life of the man
40:19who discovered Tutankhamun himself.
40:24After almost a decade excavating Tut's tomb,
40:28Howard Carter became focused on finding the burial site
40:32of an even greater figure from world history.
40:37I think this speaks to a really, really interesting
40:40and fascinating aspect of the last years of Carter's career.
40:45You know, we all know that he makes his great discovery
40:47in the Valley of the Kings.
40:49What's not so well known is that Carter apparently
40:52wasn't going to stop there.
40:54This tells us that Mr Howard Carter,
40:56who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun,
40:58is convinced that Alexander the Great is buried in Alexandria.
41:01He hopes to search for the tomb when he secures the necessary funds.
41:06Alexander the Great was an ancient Greek king
41:09who built one of the biggest empires in history.
41:16So Howard Carter has basically been behind the find of the century.
41:22And then he decides it's not enough.
41:25And actually he wants to go looking for Alexander the Great.
41:29Numerous sources suggest that Carter felt he knew
41:34where the tomb of Alexander the Great was going to be found.
41:37I guess, knowing loads of archaeologists,
41:40it's actually weird if one of them finds something really big
41:43and then goes, all right, I'm done.
41:45But you name one.
41:47You name one that has found something really significant
41:49and then gone, you know what, lads, I'm good.
41:52They don't.
41:54So perhaps in some way he's kind of a gambler.
41:57He's an archaeological gambler.
41:59And we know that part of the make-up of a gambler
42:01is that it's difficult to stop, even when you've won.
42:04So, yeah, perhaps he really did think one final throw of the dice.
42:08You know, I have done this, but actually there's more.
42:13This time Carter wasn't so lucky.
42:17He never got the chance to search for Alexander.
42:20And despite discovering Tutankhamun,
42:24as the years went by, the glory faded.
42:27And he never found the recognition he deserved.
42:31If you read everything written about him,
42:34if you read everything that Carter wrote about himself,
42:38you find out that he is a very, very isolated, lonely individual.
42:45And he was never able to bask
42:48in the spotlight of glory for what he did.
42:52He never got a royal reception.
42:54He was never invited to a red carpet event.
42:58He was always shunted aside.
43:05Howard Carter is a very, very tragic figure,
43:09a figure that maybe should be more lamented than he really is.
43:14You have this individual whose fame is all over the place today,
43:21but during his lifetime he never enjoyed it.
43:26When he died, virtually no-one attended the burial.
43:44Howard Carter died on 2nd March 1939.
43:50Newspapers recorded just five mourners at the funeral.
43:58This is a man who was famous for discovering a tomb full of treasures.
44:04But this is his final resting place.
44:07It's actually quite humble.
44:09It just reads, Howard Carter, Egyptologist,
44:12discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
44:15Actually, that fits with how he led his life.
44:21Howard Carter was not the showman.
44:24He was always an outsider.
44:26But he had all these other attributes and qualities.
44:29He was determined. He did not give up.
44:32He had an absolute obsession with detail.
44:35And it was that combination that led him back to the Valley of the Kings
44:40when everybody else had given up
44:42to discover the tomb that would completely transform archaeology.
44:57In the century since Tut's tomb was first opened,
45:01that glittering discovery has deepened our fascination
45:06and our obsession with ancient Egypt.
45:10Today, toxic mould finally offers a plausible scientific explanation
45:16for deaths once blamed on the curse of Tutankhamun.
45:23But Tut's tomb has had a far greater legacy than this dark legend.
45:31Tutankhamun's tomb is a love letter to archaeology,
45:35to exploration, to discovery and to graft.
45:40It's the thing that most of us dream of finding,
45:44but know we probably never will.
45:47But Tut's tomb, it's proof of what is possible.
45:52It exists.
45:53And therefore, it's the reason why archaeologists
45:56every single year head out into the desert.
46:00Thanks to Howard Carter's obsession,
46:03a new generation is looking for wonders for us to understand.
46:09And so on any given dig, maybe, just maybe,
46:13the next big discovery lies just beneath the sands.
46:29Explore Pompeii, a city frozen in time
46:32that yields secrets of the Roman Empire, lost treasures of Rome.
46:35Stream the series now on All4.
46:38What was the motive and why has this chilling crime still not been solved?
46:42Murder in the Alps starts next on Channel 4.