The Mummies of Rome Discovery Channel Documentary
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Imperial Rome, a century after the birth of Christ, the most powerful empire on earth
00:12is laying to rest one of its most favored sons.
00:18The body of the young nobleman is strewn with garlands and his face is uncovered.
00:25The ceremony is preparing the deceased for the afterlife.
00:32His time in this world is now over, yet he will return in most unusual circumstances
00:38almost 2,000 years later to tell us his story.
00:46He won't be alone.
00:56Ten miles south of Rome in the suburbs, workers are removing an electricity pylon.
01:04They stumble on a set of steps leading them down below ground.
01:08All work is stopped.
01:11The owner of the land, Emidio Carboni, calls in Dr. Franco Arietti, the local government
01:17archaeologist, to investigate.
01:23The first thing they see is a massive stone door.
01:33When I was face to face with this intact door, I was very excited.
01:38Normally, there's no emotional involvement, we don't get excited.
01:44We're used to it, this is our job.
01:50But I must admit that I was extremely surprised to see an intact seal, metal pieces still
01:56there.
01:59Just imagine handles that move, that still worked.
02:06It takes two days to hoist the massive door back, giving the excavators their first glimpse
02:12of a pristine tomb.
02:20The tomb is 100 square feet.
02:22It contains two stone coffins.
02:25The position of the coffins is the first clue to its occupants.
02:31It was a custom in Roman tombs for the first coffin to face the entrance.
02:41Whoever is in this coffin was the first to die.
02:48The location of the tomb provides another clue.
02:52Travelling east from the capital, it's at the crossroads of two very important roads,
02:57the Via Latina and Via Cavona.
03:02It was a Roman custom for prestigious families to be buried next to an intersection like
03:07this.
03:08It's an opportunity to flaunt the family's prestige.
03:16The mausoleums and inscriptions are a way of advertising the dead.
03:25Experts set to work on the inscriptions.
03:32On the first coffin is the inscription Carvillio Gemello.
03:37Carvillio is the term used to commemorate someone called Carvillius.
03:43The O at the end of Gemello tells us he is male.
03:51On the second coffin is the name Ibuzia Quarta.
03:57The A at the end of Ibuzia indicates that she is female.
04:07This is the story about a woman, Ibuzia, and a man, Carvillius, rich and powerful people
04:14living in the suburbs of the city.
04:17Their coffins will yield more clues about how they lived and how they died.
04:31The lid of Ibuzia's coffin is cracked.
04:34There is evidence of an attempt to repair it at the time of the burial.
04:38Still it means that the contents may be damaged.
04:48When both lids are removed, the excavators are suddenly staring at what might be a first
04:53for Rome.
04:57Both bodies are there.
05:07After almost 2,000 years, their bodies should have reverted to bone fragments and dust.
05:13It's rare to find preserved bodies in the Roman Empire.
05:20Carvillius and Ibuzia are the most well-preserved find in recent times.
05:27But it's not yet clear whether their preservation is due to natural causes or whether they were
05:33intentionally mummified.
05:40Both bodies were covered with flower garlands, which scientists carefully remove.
05:47Dry and extremely delicate, they are the first ever found intact inside a Roman tomb.
05:54Garlands came with the funeral and right through Roman life, garlands indicate the sacred.
06:02You garland the columns of a temple for the god's feast day.
06:06You put garlands around altars.
06:10Garlands have been recorded on many ancient paintings and stone carvings, but finding
06:14real ones is rare.
06:16It's just very unusual to find them so well preserved.
06:20They may have been in every sarcophagus, but we just don't know.
06:25They also offer another clue about the deaths of Carvillius and Ibuzia.
06:32Paleobotanist Professor Lorenzo Costantini hopes to establish which flowers were used,
06:38and that will tell us what time of year the funerals took place.
06:45Back at his laboratory, he extracts the pollen from the flowers.
06:49This will allow him to identify them.
06:56He comes up with some interesting results.
07:06Both coffins contained similar flowers, roses, violets, and lilies.
07:16Flowers which are in bloom in the late spring and early summer.
07:20So we know that they both died at the same time of the year.
07:26One question remains unanswered.
07:29Did they die in different years?
07:39On Ibuzia's body, scientists make another discovery.
07:45On her finger, there is a beautiful ring which contains a tiny carved bust.
07:54Ancient Roman rings are a specialty of Oxford University's Martin Hennig.
07:59He has spent the last 30 years studying them.
08:03He has come to Rome to evaluate Ibuzia's ring.
08:09Tests have already established it is gold, which tells scientists something else about Ibuzia.
08:15Only somebody of aristocratic rank was allowed to wear gold in public.
08:24The tiny gold bust fitted inside the glass makes this ring one of the finest found so
08:29far in ancient Rome.
08:32I think this must have been made in a top jewellery workshop in Rome itself, in which
08:40the emperor himself, as well as members of the aristocracy, would have been the clientele.
08:50Ibuzia's ring is the only known example of its kind.
08:54Very few goldsmiths had the knowledge to make it.
08:58The style of the gold bust dates the ring to the end of the first century.
09:05And the figure itself provides another clue about Ibuzia.
09:09If you look closely at the bust, you see first of all that it's bare-shouldered.
09:14And it looks, in very superficial glances, as though it's very masculine, very big nose.
09:20But actually it's that of an oldish woman.
09:24And it's quite touching, really, because the bare bust in front would show that she's
09:30trying to show herself as beautiful, nude, like the goddess Venus.
09:37And it's the sort of thing that perhaps a daughter might have worn, representing her
09:45mother, I think.
09:50All this sudden activity in the tomb, the electric lights and human breath causing increased
09:55changes in temperature and humidity, may cause bacterial infection and rapid deterioration
10:02of Carvillus' remains.
10:07In order to stop this, the authorities need to take drastic steps.
10:12Plans are made to transport Carvillus in his coffin to the anthropological laboratory for
10:17intensive investigation and conservation.
10:20Ibuzia's remains, which have already been removed from her coffin, will follow.
10:28The coffins are made of marble, and each weighs almost two and a half tons.
10:36Lifting them from the tomb is a dangerous and risky business.
10:49At the end of the first century AD, important Romans were cremated.
10:54Yet these two people were buried, but we don't yet know why or just how they were preserved.
11:04It's difficult to preserve a body without embalming.
11:11It helps that the tombs weren't robbed, that they were still sealed.
11:15It helps that particularly Carvillus' coffin was in such perfect state.
11:21But I don't think that you would have any hope of preserving more than the skeleton
11:28unless the body had been treated in some way.
11:31It's just, we decompose, dust to dust.
11:41Once in the lab, samples taken from the coffins bring a fresh clue for the scientists about
11:47how the bodies were preserved.
11:51Traces of myrrh are found in the coffins.
11:54Dr. Mauro Rubini, the anthropologist in charge of the mummies, is trying to find out why
12:01it is there.
12:02He calls in an expert on ancient preservation techniques, Laura Chioffi of Naples University.
12:09She knows the source of the myrrh and what it was used for.
12:18These perfume substances were certainly brought to Italy, mainly from the Middle East.
12:24Myrrh was often used as a deodorant and disinfectant.
12:29It was a substance which was often used when bodies were preserved for any length of time.
12:42It was mixed with oils and rubbed into the body to help prevent the odor of decomposition
12:47during funeral ceremonies.
12:53Rubini has also discovered a substance soaking the shrouds, colophony.
12:58Colophony is a basic element of turpentine, and turpentine is still used today for embalming
13:04and mummifying.
13:10The discovery of colophony and myrrh is the first hard evidence of an attempt to preserve
13:16the bodies.
13:19In the meantime, there are other clues to chase up on the coffins themselves.
13:28Professor Maria Grazia Granino is Rome's leading expert on ancient inscriptions.
13:35She may be able to shed light on the mysterious letters on the coffins.
13:40This would help identify the mummies and narrow down the period in which they lived.
13:48The family names inscribed on Aibuzia's coffin provide many clues about her family.
13:56Here on the first line we read her name, Aibuzia Gaephilia Quarta.
14:05That's Aibuzia Quarta, daughter of Gaius.
14:11The inscription also shows Aibuzia is the mother of Antestia Balbina.
14:18And it is her daughter's name which provides a vital clue about the family.
14:24Ancient Roman records show Antestia Balbina was connected on her father's side to an important
14:30and wealthy family called Funisulanus.
14:37Lucius Funisulanus Vetonianus reached the top of the Roman power structure.
14:43He became governor of Africa, second only to the emperor himself.
14:56Cambridge University's Keith Hopkins has come to the burial site of Lucius Funisulanus.
15:02It is just a few hundred yards from Aibuzia's tomb.
15:06This is an elite of an elite.
15:08This is well less than one percent of the population in Roman Italy.
15:12These are people of tremendous wealth.
15:18The materials used to make Aibuzia and Carvilius' coffins confirm the wealth of their owners.
15:26They are made from fine marble, costing the equivalent of $17,000 today.
15:33With a yearly income of $350, it would have taken the average Roman worker more than a
15:39lifetime to buy such a coffin.
15:47The inscriptions have more secrets to reveal about Aibuzia's life.
15:51There is another vital piece of information about our characters.
15:58In the last line, she is said to have been the pious mother of two people.
16:04As well as her daughter, Antestia Balbina, she also had a son.
16:11His name was Carvilius Gemellus.
16:17Aibuzia was buried with her son.
16:23The detective work is beginning to pay off.
16:26We now know we have found two members of the same family.
16:30But we still don't know how they lived, and there's more to learn about their status in
16:35Roman society.
16:43With the bodies safely in the labs, the scientific detective work is now in full swing.
16:52In order to be able to examine Carvilius properly, he first has to be removed from
16:57his coffin.
16:58They use liquid styrofoam, which quickly hardens to the mummy's form.
17:08Then invert it to remove him.
17:12An even more tricky task.
17:17But eventually, he's removed from his coffin.
17:30Conservators next spray his back with fungicide to prevent further deterioration of the body.
17:48Carvilius' body is better preserved than Aibuzia's, with both skin and hair visible, though his
17:54chest is split wide open.
18:01This may be because part of his body has decayed after death.
18:08Rubini has X-rayed Carvilius' body to try to find some further clues.
18:16He has discovered an injury on his leg.
18:21There is a fracture on his right femur, so he may have died of a wound inflicted during
18:31a struggle or a major battle.
18:44There is another clue to his preservation.
18:48His body was placed in the coffin on a bed of sand, and a drainage hole was cut, allowing
18:54his body fluids to drain away.
18:58The hole was also partially plugged, creating a sort of one-way valve system which prevented
19:04air from entering.
19:12Conservators are now convinced that efforts were clearly made to preserve Carvilius' and
19:17Aibuzia's bodies, but they remain unsure if the bodies were mummified or embalmed.
19:32Unlike the Egyptian method of mummification, embalming covers the body with various preservative
19:38mixtures.
19:39The internal organs are left intact.
19:47Few preserved bodies have ever been found in the Roman Empire.
19:51In 1756, a Roman-aged body was uncovered in Martre, in France.
19:59In 1970, the remains of a Roman-aged woman were found in Mangalia, in Romania.
20:07And in 1964, an eight-year-old child was found in Rome.
20:14Carvilius is now being cared for and studied at a laboratory especially prepared for him
20:18and his mother.
20:22As Carvilius has recently shown signs of further deterioration, Rubini has called in Italy's
20:27greatest embalmer, Nazareno Gabrielli.
20:33They take samples of his hair to send to the labs for testing.
20:39Samples from Aibuzia's hair have also been taken.
20:44The analysis should tell them whether Carvilius was poisoned.
20:50Meanwhile, X-rays of Carvilius' skull have been sent to a specialist in facial reconstruction.
20:59From these, precise measurements can be taken to recreate his face.
21:11Rubini turns his attention to Aibuzia.
21:13Her body has decayed extensively, perhaps due to moisture penetration through the crack
21:19in her coffin's lid.
21:21All that remains are her bones, and it looks as if her body is burned on the front but
21:27nowhere else.
21:32But her hair is still perfectly preserved and covered by a superb fine gold net.
21:42The archaeologists are perplexed.
21:44How is it that her hair is intact but her ribcage is burned?
21:49She might have died a violent death and then been laid carefully to rest by her loved ones.
21:58But so far, the scientists have found her skeleton anatomically perfect.
22:10If Aibuzia had been subjected to heat, it would have been out of alignment.
22:15I think the bracketing of Aibuzia's torso could be due to a couple of things.
22:20First, it could be some kind of mold which would have been created by the leak caused
22:27by the crack in the tomb right over the central part of her body.
22:32But another possibility, which I think is more interesting, is that during embalming,
22:38the body cavity was normally emptied, and then it was lined with hot pitch.
22:44And the hot pitch itself could have charred the bones of the ribcage and around the hips,
22:50I mean, the pelvis bones.
22:52This could be a possibility.
22:57Aibuzia's skeleton reveals other clues about her.
23:00The scientists can tell from fragments of her cranium that she was between 40 and 45
23:06years old, and her heel bones are badly worn down.
23:11So she was most likely overweight.
23:20Or she might have worn wedged heel shoes, called coturni, which placed a lot of pressure
23:25on the heels.
23:27They were very fashionable in Rome at the time, though probably not so comfortable for
23:31country life.
23:42In the grounds of the villa adjacent to the tomb, Professor Maria Grazia Granino has uncovered
23:50a new clue about Aibuzia.
23:54It's a funeral altar hidden under a hedge, and it belongs to a relative whose estate
24:00was vast.
24:03His name was Gaius Aibuzius Romanus.
24:07She can tell there is a family connection through the name Aibuzius, which was extremely
24:11rare in Rome.
24:14Aibuzia belonged to a wealthy family before she married.
24:24Granino has also found key differences in the coffins of Aibuzia and Carvilius.
24:30The style of the inscriptions is different.
24:33Carvilius's inscription is engraved with care and well designed.
24:42His mother's show signs of carelessness.
24:47The lettering is uneven and rough.
24:51It is certainly the work of two different sets of hands made at different times by different
24:57stone masons.
25:02The top line of Carvilius's coffin is inscribed T. Carvilio T. F. Ser.
25:12It tells us about his father, Aibuzia's husband.
25:17T stands for Titus, his first name.
25:22Carvilio is the family name, and T. F. means simply Titi Filio, son of Titus.
25:32It is the inclusion of Ser which gives the most information about Carvilius's station
25:37in life.
25:41Ser stands for Serja, the Roman tribe which father and son belonged to.
25:51There were 35 different tribes in Imperial Rome, and the tribe Serja was scattered across
25:57the empire, but came mainly from today's Andalusia, in the southern part of Spain.
26:05It was an important tribe, counting many senators among its numbers.
26:20Between the ages of 16 and 18, young Romans stepped into manhood.
26:27They went through a series of initiation ceremonies.
26:32Like all other Roman boys, before coming of age, Carvilius wore an object called a
26:37bulla, a gold locket containing charms to ward off evil spirits.
26:46He also wore a child's toga.
26:54During the ceremony, the young man was redressed in the toga of an adult.
27:03Like all other young men in the Roman Empire, Carvilius then shaved for the first time.
27:11His father would have taken him to the office of the official censer, where he would register
27:18to vote.
27:40He was then ready for the final step.
27:49Carvilius took his recently shaved beard to the Temple of Jupiter on the capital.
27:56Here, he ritually offered it up as a symbol of his transition into manhood.
28:11The inscription on his coffin shows that Carvilius was 18 years and 3 months old when he died.
28:22Carvilius was at an age where he would have just finished his schooling and be preparing
28:27for his career.
28:29Now, if they were members of the equestrian class, it would have been very normal for
28:33him to move from a career in the military.
28:37Sometimes back into a job in Rome itself, starting off with very minor sort of civil
28:42service jobs.
28:43And then, if he was extremely successful, he might work his way into very, very important
28:49jobs in the city of Rome.
28:56Carvilius and Aebutius' coffins have revealed some key information about who they were.
29:02But just what was it like for them?
29:05But just what was it like for them to live in Rome in the first century A.D.?
29:17Today, the city of Rome extends over 496 square miles.
29:25It has a population of 3 million people.
29:36One hundred years after the birth of Christ, the city was only 12 square miles and one
29:42million people lived here.
29:48Rome was at the height of its splendor.
29:51The capital of the greatest empire on earth was the most populous of the entire ancient
29:56world.
29:59There were 423 neighborhoods, 1,400 fountains, more than 4,000 enormous statues, as well
30:07as circuses and amphitheaters like the Colosseum.
30:13Its ethnic mix was much as you'd find in London or New York today, with Africans, Arabs
30:19and all shades of Europeans crowding the streets.
30:32The city of Rome was the birthplace of the Roman Empire.
30:38You could buy almost anything in its busy markets, but it was incredibly noisy and riddled
30:46with crime.
30:56So life was really smelly, dirty, disease-ridden, dead dogs lying in the street.
31:03And so people dying quite often, it's really high mortality, rather like a large American
31:09city probably the beginning of the 19th century, middle of the 19th century.
31:15While the masses lived and worked in overcrowded squalor, wealthy citizens like Carvillus and
31:21Ebuzia often sought refuge in the cleaner, healthier suburbs outside the city.
31:28The area where the tomb was found, called Tusculum, has been well-known since ancient
31:34times.
31:37Some 10 miles from the center of Rome, along the Via Latina, Tusculum was a residential
31:43area designed for the rich and the powerful who could afford to spend their lives away
31:48from the city.
31:51The villas were lavishly decorated inside, with under-floor heating, courtyards, and
31:57ornamental pools.
32:03Each household owned between 10 and 50 slaves.
32:08It was the custom for women like Ebuzia to become engaged as young as 12 years old.
32:17But it wasn't always the case.
32:21In the early 20th century, the population of Tusculum was growing rapidly.
32:27The population of Tusculum was growing rapidly.
32:30It was the custom for women like Ebuzia to become engaged as young as 12 years old.
32:37But once they had reached 25, they could divorce.
32:41Even during marriage, there was a great deal of liberty.
32:45The Roman upper class were notorious for the freedom of their morals, and they could take
32:51lovers, they could take husbands, they could behave with a sexual freedom, which we didn't
32:56see in Western Europe and in the United States until well into the 20th century.
33:02So, yes, they could behave almost as they wished, and many did.
33:09Ebuzia's children have different surnames, so we know she had married twice.
33:16She was then either widowed or divorced.
33:19She was certainly single when she died, as no husband is mentioned on her coffin.
33:23Single status left her in a strong position.
33:27The women then became important and powerful property owners, and they could write their
33:32own wills, create the conditions under which they held their property, or dispose of their
33:36own bodies just as they wished.
33:41The villas were surrounded by extensive grounds with olive groves, vines, and farmland.
33:48Beyond them were ornamental gardens.
33:50Beyond them were ornamental gardens, enclosed by walls, planted with a great variety of
33:55trees and flowers.
34:01Gardens were extremely important to the Roman upper classes at that time.
34:06Every villa would have had extensive formal gardens, and in those gardens it would be
34:11very typical to find roses and violets and all kinds of trees, very systematic and formal
34:18plantings.
34:21This first century BC fresco from Livia's villa outside Rome shows the passion for gardens
34:29which extended beyond this world.
34:33Romans believed in the heavenly gardens of Elysium, or Paradise, where the dead would
34:38gather to feast, dance, and enjoy divine music and sport.
34:44There were special rituals to help the dying reach these heavenly gardens.
34:51As the dying man draws his last breath, the nearest relation tries to kiss those dying
35:05lips and draw in that last breath as a sort of idea of preservation of the soul, catching
35:10the soul as it departs.
35:13Carvilius's body would have lain in the atrium of the family villa for as long as a week,
35:20while friends and relatives came to pay their respects and grieve with Ebuzia and other
35:25close members of the family.
35:32None of these funeral rituals explain why Carvilius and Ebuzia were deliberately preserved
35:39rather than cremated, which was the custom at the time.
35:49But the answers may lie in the sheer extent of the empire.
35:54By 100 AD, the Roman Empire stretched from the deserts of Egypt in the southeast to the
36:00Scottish border in the northwest.
36:02Rome was a fantastically absorbing, conquering state.
36:06Everything came into Rome.
36:08Judaism, early Christianity, Isis cults, Serapis, any belief in the whole empire came into Rome.
36:14So, if you wanted to, you could go round, you did the round of temples and you listened
36:19to what was happening.
36:23Remnants of the Egyptian influence can still be seen throughout the city.
36:27Rome had a love affair with Egypt and the love took the form of ripping off all the
36:32great art objects from Egypt and bringing them to Rome.
36:36What we're looking at is one of the giant obelisks in Rome.
36:41This one was used to mark the end of the circus where the horses and chariots, when they raced,
36:46turned round this point.
36:48200,000 Romans watched the games.
36:58Ebuzia and Carvilius lived during an age where the influence of Egypt was at its height.
37:07But we've yet to find out whether they were under the spell of Egypt or whether other
37:12religious forces were at work.
37:18At the laboratory outside Rome, scientists explore another clue.
37:22Egyptologist and hair expert Dr. Joanne Fletcher has come to examine Ebuzia's hairpiece
37:28and the gold net which holds it together.
37:31Wow, that's fantastic.
37:36That is absolutely amazing.
37:41Can you see the plat around the side, this plat that goes all the way around?
37:45That one looks like it could be a false piece going around.
37:51It's a kind of headband.
37:53So it's like the real hair of Ebuzia and yet the initial viewing, the plat around the front
38:01looks like it's an extra piece that was put on as a sort of decoration, a false hair extension.
38:09Wow, that's fantastic.
38:12I've never seen a gold cap like that.
38:14I've seen wool caps like that but never gold.
38:19That's extraordinary.
38:20It's beautiful.
38:24Fletcher notes that the hairpiece is made of a mix of materials.
38:28Gold, animal hair, human hair and even some plant fibres.
38:34The hair was red.
38:36This natural hair here has definitely been set with something.
38:42It looks like it's been styled and then set with some kind of fixing lotion like ancient hairspray or something.
38:50In tests we've done on other mummies, on the Egyptian material,
38:55it's a resinous mixture and beeswax mixed together, combed through the hair to set it
39:03and this certainly happens in the case of the mummies.
39:08So this is very, very similar, very comparable to a lot of the Egyptian examples.
39:15Only in terms of the styling techniques but in terms of the actual hairstyle itself, this is unique.
39:24I've never seen anything like it.
39:26Because this asymmetrical side knot looks very much like bodies from Northern Europe.
39:38Statues of Roman grand dames reveal a vast range of women's hairstyles,
39:45many involving the complicated braids and knots found in Ebuzia's hairpiece.
39:53But none of them have the combination of Egyptian and European influences Dr. Fletcher has discovered on Ebuzia.
40:02Fletcher next visits Professor Costantini's laboratory
40:06to examine the scanning electron microscope photos he has taken of the hairpiece.
40:14This is the golden net, this one.
40:16The hairnet is made by twining incredibly fine strips of gold
40:20round a single thread of silk about three microns thick.
40:25That's finer than a single strand of human hair, which is about five microns.
40:32How did they produce such fineness?
40:35I don't know.
40:37That is such sophisticated work.
40:39Yeah, it's really sophisticated.
40:41You see, this is the hand of one string and this is another one.
40:45It's almost like the gold's been plaited somewhere around it.
40:49Fabulous.
40:52We've got a lady of fashion, but perhaps a kind of over-gilded lily, if you like.
41:00Obviously, someone who is very, very wealthy, from the condition of the clothing,
41:05the gold net on the hair, the very, very fine hair.
41:09It's a very, very sophisticated work.
41:12It's a very, very sophisticated work.
41:15She was very, very wealthy from the condition of the clothing,
41:19the gold net on the hair, the very carefully styled hair,
41:23which must have looked quite attractive beneath this kind of golden hairnet.
41:28It must have really sparkled in the sun.
41:38Professor Constantini has found another mystery clue in Ebuzia's coffin.
41:43It contained a date pit, which is from North Africa.
41:48It's another sign of a link with Egypt,
41:50as date pits have been found in other coffins in the Middle East.
41:54They were put in as offerings to the gods.
42:00In 100 A.D., most Romans were pagan.
42:04They worshipped gods like Minerva, Jupiter, and Juno.
42:09But Egyptian cults were rapidly challenging these Roman gods.
42:17Ebuzia's coffin appears to show an Egyptian influence.
42:22Then, if you look at the columns on the front of Ebuzia's tomb,
42:26they're almost normal Roman columns,
42:29except, to me, they seem to be treated to look like date palms.
42:33Now, date palms, they're not date palms.
42:36Now, date palms are, of course, generically Egyptian or North African.
42:46Ebuzia did not ignore traditional Roman symbols.
42:52At the end of her coffin, there is a medusa head.
42:55Carvilius's coffin also contained one.
42:59Romans believed it protected the dead from evil spirits.
43:07The first results from the tissue samples taken from Carvilius have come back to the lab.
43:15Tests show that he didn't die of a major illness.
43:22So it's still a mystery what killed a healthy 18-year-old.
43:28Was it an accident? Was he murdered?
43:31Scientists will continue to sort through tests on his hair
43:34in the hope of ascertaining whether he was poisoned.
43:48Near the tomb of Ebuzia and Carvilius are pagan burial mounds.
43:53When pagans died, grieving family members often placed a coin in the deceased's mouth.
43:59The money was to pay the ferryman,
44:02who would row the newly departed soul across the river,
44:05separating Earth from the underworld.
44:14Yet neither Carvilius or Ebuzia had coins in their mouths.
44:19Another religious belief, also from the Middle East,
44:22was beginning to take root when Carvilius and Ebuzia were alive.
44:26Christianity.
44:33There are Christian catacombs no more than 200 meters from the tomb.
44:39This is where Carvilius and Ebuzia were buried.
44:43There are Christian catacombs no more than 200 yards from their tomb.
44:50Professor Hopkins is looking for any signs of a connection.
44:57We like to think of people as, are they Christian, are they pagan, are they Jewish,
45:01do they belong to the Isis cult?
45:03I'm not quite sure that people in antiquity, or not all people,
45:06thought exactly like that.
45:09So we find Christians getting buried right next to pagans,
45:13and you get the cults mixed up.
45:17At the end of the first century AD,
45:20there were very few Christians in the Roman Empire.
45:24Just 10,000 out of a total population of 60 million.
45:29Hopkins believes it's more likely that Carvilius and Ebuzia
45:33were influenced by the more popular beliefs of the time.
45:38I think if someone's mummified in the Roman world, that's pretty exceptional.
45:41It's rather like having a corpse put on ice in modern society.
45:46That tends to suggest they were into an Egyptian cult where people were mummified.
45:50Chances are that this is something to do with Isis, I think.
45:55More forensic results have come back from the laboratories.
46:01The tests on Ebuzia's hair have revealed a large quantity of casein.
46:07Casein is the main protein found in cow's milk.
46:11It appears to have formed nodules on her hair.
46:15It's the first time Egyptologist Fletcher has seen this.
46:21She believes it may link Ebuzia to the cult of Isis.
46:28Isis was the great mother goddess.
46:31Worshippers sprinkled milk during their rituals,
46:34believing it had life-giving qualities.
46:39The chemical analysis of Carvilius's hair has also proved revealing.
46:44It shows that his body contained 25 times the normal amount of arsenic.
46:52Deliberate or accidental, it was the most likely cause of his death.
46:58The reconstruction on Carvilius's face is almost complete.
47:04From the X-ray of his face, scientists are able to rebuild his lower jaw
47:09by matching where his teeth would meet.
47:17They then match up reference points from the front and profile X-rays.
47:22From this, they can recreate a 3D skull.
47:29The shape of the eyebrows is defined by the structure of the skull and Carvilius's age.
47:38And the thickness and shape of the lips are determined by measurements from the X-ray.
47:45Scientists believe Carvilius may have looked something like this.
48:00Ebuzia and Carvilius belonged to one of the most important and aristocratic families in the Roman Empire.
48:07They lived in an age when the influence of Egypt was at its peak.
48:13That their bodies survived at all is little short of a miracle.
48:19They lived in a warm Mediterranean climate,
48:22conditions which caused the rapid deterioration of the body.
48:27Carvilius and Ebuzia had the money, the influence,
48:31and the desire to make sure that their lives would not be forgotten.
48:37And almost 2,000 years later, they have been proved right.
48:45Carvilius and Ebuzia are still alive today.
48:48And almost 2,000 years later, they have been proved right.