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00:00In early July 1881, an incredible piece of news spreads like wildfire along the banks
00:13of the Nile.
00:17The mummies of ancient Egypt's greatest pharaohs are being shipped to Cairo.
00:21Among them, Ramses II and Sathos I.
00:25The people bow to these former rulers as they take their final journey.
00:34The trip turns into a triumphal procession from Luxor in Upper Egypt to Cairo.
00:45After ten days, the procession led by German archaeologist Emil Bruch reaches the capital.
00:52It is the final chapter of an archaeological adventure that began with a veritable tomb
00:56raid several decades ago and then became a search for the beginnings of ancient Egypt.
01:21In the first half of the 19th century, an expedition to Egypt is only considered a
01:25success if the explorers bring home as many valuables as possible.
01:31They use every means available, even explosives.
01:39A French archaeologist, Auguste Mariette, has discovered the entrance to a tomb in Saqqara,
01:45south of Cairo, in 1851.
01:48He expects a wealth of finds.
01:55For a whole year, Mariette has tried to locate the tomb's entrance.
01:59Now, finally, the moment has arrived, and his efforts are to be rewarded.
02:05Meanwhile, the tender plant of a new scientific approach to archaeology is budding in Europe.
02:12Almost every evening, 15-year-old Heinrich Bruch sits in the Egyptian gallery at the
02:18Royal Art Collections of Berlin, studying the mysterious hieroglyphic slabs.
02:24These inscriptions in demotic, a cursive form of hieroglyphs, have only recently been acquired
02:30by the museum.
02:32Although Bruch has to look after his younger brother Emil, he tirelessly copies the hieroglyphs
02:38into his notebook, page after page.
02:43The inscriptions and pictures cannot yet provide an answer to the question that fascinates
02:47everyone interested in ancient Egypt.
02:50When was the empire of the pharaohs founded, and by whom?
02:54Would this schoolboy's knowledge of demotics someday help to answer these questions?
03:02Years later, without ever having been to Egypt, young Bruch is regarded as Europe's leading
03:08expert on hieroglyphs.
03:12Field work, however, is still the realm of the treasure hunters.
03:19Mariette's methods are crude, but efficient.
03:24Conservation is not too high on his agenda.
03:27Egypt seems full of ancient relics.
03:30Losing an artifact or two doesn't really matter.
03:41But this time, in Saqqara, Mariette is not searching for a royal tomb.
03:49He is hunting for the sacred bull of Apis.
03:56Apis had been honored as the god of fertility since the Old Kingdom in about 3000 BC.
04:02The bull cult existed for more than 3,000 years.
04:07Even the rulers of the New Kingdom still bore the epithet, powerful bull.
04:12To ancient Egyptians, Apis was an earthly representative of the world's creator.
04:21According to legend, the bulls were buried in a similar manner to the pharaohs, in huge
04:26coffins in the necropolis of Saqqara, close to the former seat of government in Memphis.
04:41When they find the first coffin, it's obvious someone has been there before them.
04:49Mariette is at a loss.
04:59There's clearly nothing here.
05:04But although the sarcophagus is empty, there is no evidence of the looting Mariette has
05:08so often observed in the pharaoh's tombs.
05:12Were the bulls and treasures reburied somewhere else, long ago, for fear of grave robbers?
05:20There's stelae attached to the walls.
05:22If there is an explanation for the reburial of the Apis bulls, it may be engraved here.
05:29Mariette has studied hieroglyphs, but he is unable to decipher these strange signs.
05:40At least no one can deny him the scientific achievement of having rediscovered the bulls'
05:44tombs.
05:45But Mariette can't properly assess his find until he has a translation of the mysterious
05:50demotic inscriptions.
05:52It's a style of lettering which still challenges Egyptologists today.
05:59Elephantine Island is 1,000 kilometers upriver near Aswan.
06:04Here, the desert stretches almost to the banks of the Nile.
06:09The dry terrain of Upper Egypt clearly differs from the countryside in the northern parts
06:14of the country.
06:21Agriculture is a tough business here, since the fertile strip of land is so narrow.
06:26But the region around today's Aswan is of mythological significance.
06:30For the ancient Egyptians, it was the source of their country's lifeline.
06:39They called the island Abu, the elephant, perhaps because the rounded rocks reminded
06:45them of the bodies of the grey giants.
06:52But Elephantine's layers of settlements, dating back thousands of years and painstakingly
06:57excavated over the past four decades, have kept their secrets.
07:11To Egyptians, who even today don't think of their country as part of Africa, Elephantine
07:16marked the frontier to the Black Continent, and as such, to the ever-despised Nubians
07:22in the south.
07:25This is still the last Egyptian trading post, where goods from the Mediterranean pass on
07:31into inner Africa.
07:33For nearly 40 years, the German Archaeological Institute has been working together with the
07:38Swiss Institute for Egyptian Architectural Research, studying the settlements on Elephantine.
07:44Excavations with demotic inscriptions are a daily occurrence, but their interpretation
07:48is often too difficult for the archaeologists.
07:51Since it was impossible to construct horizontally expanding dwellings on the island, the settlements
07:56were built vertically, one layer on top of the other.
08:02A treasure trove for modern archaeologists, artifacts from more than 4,000 years in one
08:07area.
08:08In Elephantine, we have the singular advantage of being certain that we are finding large
08:18amounts of written documents in context, in people's homes.
08:23That is an opportunity Bruch almost never had back then.
08:26He mainly had to rely on papyrus stocks from the museums or the art trade here in Egypt.
08:34Heinrich Bruch finally arrives in Cairo in 1853.
08:38A specialist in the field of old scripts, but a novice in Egypt.
08:48The King of Prussia, Frederick William IV, has given Bruch letters of recommendation,
08:54but unfortunately his financial support only amounts to $1,500, a modest endowment, especially
09:02considering that the price of Egyptian antiques has enormously increased.
09:06The growing European interest has not escaped the shrewd Arab traders.
09:12Immediately after Napoleon's Egyptian expedition in 1801, the Bavarian and Prussian kings started
09:19buying nearly everything that came out of the historical sites, even the inscriptions
09:23on ancient papyri, which no one could read at the beginning of the 19th century.
09:28For Bruch, those papyri represent the only possibility of furthering his demonic studies.
09:57Just as 150 years ago, many Egyptian antiquities still leave the country via dubious channels.
10:05The Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo has created an entire department to fight
10:11the international art trade mafia, who offers articles for sale through auction houses.
10:17If you need to excavate, you have to follow these rules.
10:21And this is to show that if you are the guardian of the monuments that belong to the world,
10:26you have to be very strict, and I am very strict with everyone.
10:31Hawass's team is uncovering the burial site of Pharaoh Teti, who ruled Egypt 4,300 years
10:39ago and is said to have been killed by his own bodyguards.
10:43But even from this recently discovered site, a number of artifacts have already been stolen.
10:50I think never have a strategy before to stop the theft and to stop all this smuggling out
10:57of Egypt.
10:58We have what really called the rape of the Nile.
11:02The Nile was completely raped by many people, adventurers and smugglers who came and they
11:09entered in tombs and they cut their leaves and they stop.
11:15They even entered inside the storage magazines and they take statues.
11:18Saqqara is an example of that.
11:21Over like maybe five store magazines, they dug underneath and they took many artifacts
11:29and we heard about this great theft that some English people and Egyptians together and
11:35Americans, they took and they smuggled many monuments from this place.
11:42The archaeological treasures are stored in Saqqara's excavation house.
11:47Excavators make sure that only those in charge of the excavation are allowed to enter the
11:51storage rooms, since it is extremely tempting for the poorly paid laborers to sell a fine
11:57to dealers.
12:09Titan security measures and stricter regulations are making it more difficult for black market
12:14traders to get their hands on ancient finds.
12:19But that also means that prices for artifacts will rise.
12:26Supply and demand is the name of the game on the antiques black market too.
12:34The highest prices are paid for gilded statues or intact coffins, like this coffin of a high
12:41ranking government official, who was buried in Saqqara in the year 100 B.C.
12:56The coffin was discovered in one of the shaft graves at the necropolis, which can be up
13:01to six meters deep.
13:03Over thousands of years they were used and reused, as were graves in general.
13:09But a few discoveries have already been made here, and there are new finds in every excavation
13:14season.
13:21The Secretary General of the Antiquities Council is certain that Saqqara has even more to reveal.
13:28And this time, Egyptian archaeologists want to be in charge.
13:33Saqqara was a place that many foreigners excavated here, Marriott, the German, the
13:39Japanese, and they really wanted to have an expedition by our name as Egyptians to compete
13:45with all of these people.
13:47And I succeeded, really, in hiring young Egyptians.
13:51Since I don't have time now, I come sometimes for the work, but the young people here are
13:56doing very impressive work, and the discoveries that we made are really known everywhere now.
14:03Egypt is reclaiming its historical roots, but the groundwork was laid 150 years ago.
14:12After several months, Marriott has to accept that he needs the help of others to interpret
14:17the inscriptions in the Serapeum.
14:20He asks Heinrich Bruksch, even though Bruksch has never taken part in a single dig.
14:29The Frenchman hardly leaves Bruksch time to unpack.
14:33He puts him to work right away.
14:37Although Marriott prefers wielding a spade to studying texts, he has heard a lot about
14:42Bruksch.
14:43The new arrival is anxious to put his knowledge of Demotic script to the test.
14:50He immediately realizes that the signs in the Serapeum tell a completely different story
14:56from anything he has translated up until then.
15:03They do mention the Apis bulls, but instead of finding evidence of the location of the
15:08burial objects, Bruksch discovers something else, something much more important.
15:14The first clue to the chronology of the pharaoh's empire.
15:21Because every bull is assigned to a specific pharaoh.
15:27By determining the bulls' dates of birth and death, Bruksch is able to reconstruct
15:32the reign of each individual ruler and establish a line of ancestry that has evaded every scholar
15:38before him.
15:45Now that he has found the key to deciphering and arranging the tablets in chronological
15:49order, linking each bull with his specific pharaoh, Bruksch is certain he can descend
15:55the ladder of time to the very beginnings of ancient Egypt.
16:02Marriott at once understands the significance of this discovery.
16:07It is the first indisputable basis for the history and chronology of the Egyptian empire.
16:16Like many scholars, Marriott, too, had wondered which king had founded this amazing empire
16:22and when the cornerstone was laid for a kingdom that outshone all its rivals.
16:27In 1883, the estimates of scholars differed by thousands of years, and there was a good
16:32reason for that.
16:35Like the chronologies of most ancient peoples, the Egyptians didn't have a single fixed point
16:40from which to record time.
16:43With every new ruler, they began counting the years afresh.
16:47In 1864, another chronology was found, the famous Abydos king list.
16:57For Bruksch and Marriott, this was additional evidence, because the list depicts 75 pharaohs
17:03with their names framed by ovals, known as cartouche.
17:13The earliest cartouche names Pharaoh Manus, who ruled in 2955 B.C.
17:24But was Manus actually the first pharaoh?
17:29Egyptian scholars are only gradually approaching the beginnings of ancient Egypt, and today
17:34they know that Manus was not the first ruler, but who ruled before him.
17:40Egyptologist Gunther Dreyer is the director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo.
17:46He has been working in Egypt for over 30 years, but his most recent discoveries have been
17:51the most spectacular.
17:59The finds were really surprising.
18:02You could almost say sensational, because we never expected we would find written documents
18:08and sources that could tell us something about that period.
18:12In that sense, there's a lot of good news.
18:16We're learning something about a period no one really knew anything about.
18:22We can now say written scripts existed much earlier than we had suspected, and that expands
18:30our historical horizon.
18:33This way, we're able to track the development and roots of Egyptian high culture, step by step.
18:42In Abydos, Gunther Dreyer went in search of the dynasty that scholars call Zero.
18:49He discovered graves that are at least 150, if not 200 years older, than the first dynasty of Manus.
19:01A hooked staff made of ivory was found, over 5,000 years old, and resembling a king's scepter.
19:09Perhaps it belonged to the first ruler of dynasty Zero.
19:13On one of the vessels that were found, the sign of a scorpion is clearly visible, and
19:19this is what we call the first ruler, King Scorpion.
19:23Abydos is a milestone for Egyptology in its search for the roots of Egypt's high culture.
19:31Thanks to these discoveries, we can retrace the historical development about 200 years
19:36further back into the past.
19:39As existed before the imperial union, there was a partial empire in Upper Egypt which
19:45gradually expanded to all of Egypt.
19:48In this way, we've been able to push back the dividing line between prehistory and history
19:54by about 200 years.
19:59Having grasped the significance of the line of ancestors, Mariette changes his way of working.
20:05The crude excavator turns into a serious archaeologist, and Heinrich Bruch is promoted
20:11to be as close as confident.
20:13After years of digging, Mariette has collected enough artifacts to fill a museum.
20:19It opens in Cairo in 1858, the predecessor of today's world-famous Egyptian museum.
20:36Mariette is on good terms with the Egyptian ruler, Khedive Mohamed Said.
20:41For the Khedive, antiquities are a good PR for his country.
20:51He appoints Mariette the first director of the museum, and raises him to the rank of
20:56Pasha.
20:57Thus ennobled, Mariette Pasha founds Egypt's first council of antiquities.
21:07In a separate gallery, Mariette reserves a place of honor for the greatest of all pharaohs,
21:13Ramses II.
21:19But despite enormous efforts, Mariette and Bruch have not yet found his coffin.
21:29Following its move from a suburb, the Egyptian museum is now located in the center of Cairo.
21:40Thousands of artifacts were lost during a flood in the old museum.
21:44So Mariette persuaded the Khedive to build impressive new galleries to house the exhibition
21:49safely forever.
22:00The museum now contains one and a half million artifacts.
22:09It is the world's largest collection of ancient Egyptian art, with works from many different
22:14eras of Egypt's 5,000 year history.
22:20The rooms on the upper floors were already overflowing at the beginning of the 20th century.
22:30Newly delivered pieces had to be stored in the basement, often aimlessly and without
22:35any notes about the place they were found.
22:38Every semblance of order was lost.
22:40For a long time, nobody knew what exactly was locked away in the 3,000 square meters
22:45of vaults.
22:49Until a woman took over as director of the museum in 2004, Wafa El-Sadiq instructed her
22:55staff to make a thorough inventory.
23:01I'm sure we will fill some of the gaps in the ancient Egyptian history because all the
23:06finds we have here are from archaeologists who discovered many, many places in Egypt
23:14over 140 years and you can imagine what we have here in this basement and what's still
23:23to be discovered here.
23:27Whenever new artifacts are discovered, the museum's own conservation lab moves into action.
23:35Ex-archaeologists have spent months combing through these underground treasure chambers.
23:42Every new coffin could be a king's.
23:45Many objects thought to be lost have been rediscovered in the museum's own basement.
23:52The director estimates that her staff will need another two years to put together a complete
23:56Inventory, 6,000 coffins and 2,000 pots have been identified so far.
24:10Despite meticulous reconstruction, in some cases nobody knows where the finds come from
24:16or how they fit into over 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian history.
24:22The artifacts are categorized as accurately as possible, though the descriptions are sometimes
24:28not too helpful.
24:33This one is simply filed as Big Mask of a Coffin.
24:43Some of the finds that were delivered here will never be found because 150 years ago,
24:49the basement of the museum was a place for shady dealings.
24:53Back then, the mummies represented a lucrative extra income for the museum's staff.
25:00Emil, Heinrich's brother, is the new conservator and he starts doing profitable deals, selling
25:09mummies.
25:13Museums and wealthy customers in Europe and the USA have been receiving deliveries directly
25:17from the museum's basement until it becomes too much for the director.
25:25Mariette has turned a blind eye for a long time.
25:28After all, Emil Bruch is his good friend's brother, but enough is enough.
25:39Mariette cleans house.
25:41That doesn't necessarily make him more popular with the Egyptian black marketeers, but something
25:46had to be done.
25:48As for Emil Bruch, his days as conservator are over, but the director is willing to give
25:52him a second chance.
25:56During the next two years, Mariette trains Emil Bruch to become his scientific assistant.
26:02It is only then that he takes him to the Valley of the Kings.
26:07The head of Egyptian antiquities has expanded his scope of activities.
26:11He dedicates his entire energy to the search for the elusive mummy of Ramses II.
26:17Mariette is obsessed with discovering the sarcophagus of the most powerful pharaoh of
26:22all time.
26:26Ramses' tomb had already been discovered long before, but it was empty.
26:31Yet more and more burial objects kept surfacing on the black market.
26:35That allows for only one conclusion.
26:38The grave robbers have actually found Ramses' final resting place.
26:44Mariette assumes that Ramses' coffin must still be somewhere in the Valley of the Kings.
26:49But where?
26:58Mariette cannot know that the priests of the god-king took their pharaoh out of the Valley
27:02of the Kings thousands of years before.
27:13Ramses' eternal peace, like that of so many other rulers, had lasted only a few years.
27:20Then the robbers had come, stealing the gold, but leaving the coffins behind.
27:32In order to save them for posterity, the loyal priests, around 1000 BC, hid the mummies.
27:40The pharaohs left the sacred Valley of the Kings.
27:52Today there is no more danger of looting in the Valley of the Kings.
27:56Secret watchmen protect every chamber.
28:06But now the world's most famous tombs face a new threat.
28:12The scientists of the Theban mapping project were the first to notice.
28:16The humidity and temperatures in the burial chambers have dramatically changed in the
28:21past few years because of the tourists for whom the gates are opened at dawn.
28:45Every new bus load brings heat and humidity.
28:488,000 visitors a day surge through the passageways.
28:59Archaeologist Kent Weeks founded the Theban mapping project to save the tombs.
29:04He has discovered a tomb with 120 chambers in the Valley of the Kings.
29:09Now he's committed to the preservation of this impressive necropolis.
29:16Every morning and every evening his team measures the humidity.
29:19On an average day it is 20% in the morning, but when the tourists leave the vaults in
29:24the evening it reaches 85%.
29:28The desert climate preserved the sealed off tombs for thousands of years.
29:32Now they are suddenly threatened with destruction.
29:36What would happen is that the plaster on the walls would soften and begin to flake off,
29:40the pigments would change, the paint would begin to deteriorate, and eventually the structural
29:45stability of the tomb would be affected, and pillars and columns could weaken to the
29:49point that you'd begin to get ceiling collapse.
29:52To prevent the worst, the biggest holes in the intricately adorned walls were simply
29:57plastered over.
29:59This was treating the symptoms.
30:01Many tombs were temporarily closed to the public.
30:10But it isn't only the changing humidity that adversely affects the tombs.
30:17We have to be really very careful about the monuments, and they never touch or take photos,
30:25but some of them they are careless, I mean, trying to touch or to feel the figures or
30:33trying to, you know, to taste the color, if it's new or it's come in his finger, and
30:41so on.
30:43Kent Weeks and his team want to work on the causes.
30:46Weeks has established a rotation system that determines when chambers are open to the public.
30:52At the same time, he is preparing for the day when none of the tombs may be accessible
31:01anymore.
31:02He is working on a virtual tour of the Valley of the Kings.
31:05He wants to make it accessible to everyone on the Internet, with interactive tours of
31:10the tombs, so that the pharaoh's eternal peace can be preserved.
31:30I don't think an ancient pharaoh for a moment thought that there would be 8,000 people visiting
31:34his tomb every day for an eternity.
31:37The tomb was not designed to be visited by any except the spirit of the pharaoh and of
31:42the gods with whom he was to be associated.
31:45It was meant to be a sealed environment and left untouched.
31:48We are intruders in this environment, and obviously no one ever planned for this.
31:54No one ever thought that tourists would come in such numbers.
32:01Kent Weeks' office is a boat.
32:03Within sight of the ancient temples, he is developing a master plan on behalf of the
32:07Egyptian Council of Antiquities.
32:11He is trying to determine the critical number of tourists which the Valley of the Kings
32:15can tolerate before it suffers further damage.
32:19Weeks has become a consultant.
32:22Excavation plans have grown into business plans.
32:24Any archaeologist, whether he's working in Mexico or Guatemala or Paris or Istanbul or
32:30wherever, has to raise funds for his project.
32:34And it becomes increasingly difficult to do so because of increasing demands.
32:39Archaeology is very labor-intensive, it's very expensive, increasingly so as new techniques
32:44and new technology are developed.
32:46I think probably an archaeologist spends almost as much time fundraising today as he does
32:51actually working in the field.
33:04Archaeology has created jobs for tens of thousands in Upper Egypt.
33:10Most of the residents of the Green Strip along the Nile work directly or indirectly for the
33:14tourist trade.
33:20There is more construction near the historical sites than anywhere else.
33:30Archaeology prepared the ground for the stampede of visitors.
33:34Every year, tourists pour over seven billion euros into Egypt's economy.
33:49The government understandably does everything it can to encourage the cult of Egypt's ancestors.
34:00Thus, Ramses II has another great royal ceremony, over 3,000 years after his brilliant reign.
34:13It's actually only the transport of a statue.
34:16But it turns into a public celebration, a fan mile for a pharaoh.
34:24A huge truck is modified to haul the god-king away from the smog of the capital and out
34:30to one of Cairo's suburbs.
34:38Ramses still captivates the masses, just as he did 150 years ago.
34:46Marietta spent 30 years digging and exploring in Egypt.
34:50In his final years, he is obsessed with finding Ramses' mummy.
34:54He has defied the extreme climate, gangs of thieves, and physical assaults.
34:59But he is powerless against diabetes.
35:04Heinrich and Emil Bruch know their mentor's weakening.
35:09On their last visit, they bring him good news, sensational news.
35:15The Egyptian police have stumbled upon a hitherto undetected grave.
35:19It's believed to be near Luxor, outside the Valley of the Kings.
35:24And everything the brothers have heard so far points to a royal tomb.
35:28Marietta's too weak to go there himself.
35:31Heinrich Bruch has to return to Berlin, so it is left to his brother Emil to take care
35:36of the new find.
35:38Finish what I am no longer able to do, Marietta tells Emil.
35:43Do it for me.
35:45Find Ramses.
35:54Emil Bruch hurries to Luxor.
35:55There is no time to lose.
35:58Word about newly discovered royal tombs travels fast.
36:02Have the police really hit the jackpot?
36:09According to the police report, the hiding place for the tomb, the so-called Royal Cachette,
36:15is a few kilometers south of the Valley of the Kings.
36:19Members of the Rasul family, a notorious gang of tomb raiders, lead Emil to the spot.
36:25Is it a trap?
36:28Or is this inconspicuous hole really the final resting place for the greatest of all the
36:33pharaohs?
36:36Generations of Rasuls have lived by selling looted burial objects.
36:43Their knowledge of the chamber's location is an asset which has passed from one generation
36:47to the next, to the present day.
36:57The descendants of the Rasuls still live in Kourna, the legendary village of tomb raiders.
37:08And they still look for royal tombs.
37:10But today, they do it officially, in association with the German Archaeological Institute in
37:16Draabu el-Naga, a necropolis just a few kilometers away from the Valley of the Kings.
37:27The institute has been exploring the huge cemetery since 1991.
37:33One of the goals of Daniel Poltz, who heads the excavation project, is to discover more
37:39about the transition period between the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom, known as the
37:45Second Intermediate Period of Egypt, around 1600 BC.
37:58By studying the Second Intermediate, we are dealing with the era that led to the high
38:02point of ancient Egypt's prosperity, the New Kingdom.
38:06That's why we are interested in this era, because it led to the creation of a kind of
38:10state structure which is hardly seen anywhere else in the ancient world.
38:15From Draabu el-Naga, the rulers had a good view of the most important cemeteries in Thebes.
38:23It is the only necropolis within sight of the vast plain with the sacred sites of Karnak
38:29on the other side of the Nile.
38:32Thus, the necropolis benefited from the sacred status of Karnak.
38:39Mariette was sure that Draabu el-Naga had to be a very special cemetery.
38:52Mariette was the first person to try to systemize the whole thing.
38:56And he also used ancient Egyptian sources and clues to find the burial sites of kings,
39:01which is amazing and relatively modern.
39:05He followed up on local information, here on site in Luxor, and tried to use ancient
39:10Egyptian sources as a map, so to speak, to find certain tombs.
39:17Now that is a relatively modern way of conducting archaeological research.
39:26Holz is following in the footsteps of Mariette, who searched for royal tombs here as early
39:31as 1870, without results.
39:34Then, as now, archaeologists' appetites are whetted by a find which has been exhibited
39:40in the British Museum since 1830.
39:43The gilded coffin of Pharaoh Nupchepere, a ruler of the Second Intermediate, from Draabu
39:49el-Naga.
39:50But information about the burial chamber's whereabouts was not passed on, so Holz started
39:55to look for clues that had already guided Mariette.
40:00Holz's point of departure was a papyrus also stored at the British Museum.
40:05It described fairly precisely where the king's tomb group was located.
40:13The Abbot Papyrus is the antique report of a commission which investigated damages to
40:17the royal tombs in 1115 BC.
40:21In that report, it says that the tombs are located very close to a pyramid.
40:30Holz identified this place as the location where the specified pyramid once stood.
40:35He also discovered that there are deep shafts underneath the pyramid.
40:43The underground shafts go down as far as 10 meters, but the shafts that have been investigated
40:48harbor no royal tombs.
40:50The empty, plundered coffin the archaeologists found belongs to a group of private tombs
40:57for a senior official in the administration.
41:04The search for the pharaohs buried in Draabu el-Naga goes on.
41:14Holz is driven by the hope that looters or early archaeologists at least left the scientific
41:20treasures behind.
41:32Many of the things that don't interest tomb raiders are interesting to us and vice versa.
41:37We are less interested in finding pieces of jewelry or gold or any kind of precious metal.
41:41We are out to find meaningful remains of funeral furnishings.
41:46The greatest finds in Draabu el-Naga are probably made in secret, unknown to archaeologists.
41:53Many homes in Kuna are said to be built on undiscovered tombs, with shafts several hundred
41:59meters long leading from the basements up into the hills.
42:06But a new law is designed to put an end to that kind of scheme.
42:10Some 3,000 families are being resettled.
42:16Some of these homes will no longer be here, and archaeologists will be able to enter the
42:21basements and perhaps come back with a surprise or two, provided the most important finds
42:27haven't already been stashed away somewhere.
42:31On July 6th, 1881, Emile Bruch is on the verge of a remarkable discovery.
42:40In a shaft which could possibly lead him to the immortal pharaoh.
42:46This moment could confer immortality on Bruch himself.
42:50The first meters leave no doubt.
42:52The shaft is indeed a hiding place for tombs.
43:02Coffins are lying crisscross in a cave-like room.
43:06Burial objects are strewn everywhere.
43:09Robbers seem to have helped themselves over the millennia.
43:15The final resting place for ancient Egypt's greatest rulers.
43:24Emile Bruch finds 36 coffins in the royal cachette, including those of Thutmose III,
43:31Sathos I, and Ramses II.
43:37In his notes, he shows he is aware of the significance of his success.
43:42I am proud that I, as a German, have had the good fortune to accompany the ancient
43:47pharaohs to Cairo, where they will be given a place of honor at the museum there.
43:53This sacred river has rarely carried a more noble cargo.
44:00On July 14th, 1881, Emile Bruch sails down the Nile with his precious find.
44:10In fear of thieves, Bruch has insisted the matter be dealt with in an absolutely confidential
44:15manner.
44:16The word gets around the entire country that the great pharaohs are on their way to the
44:21capital.
44:23The people humbly pay their respects to their former rulers, even in the streets of Cairo.
44:29Auguste Mariette doesn't live to witness his assistant's triumph.
44:38Today, the likeness of Mariette, chiseled in stone, stands guard for Ramses II in front
44:45of the Egyptian museum.
44:47The pharaoh's mummy has been given a place of honor.
44:50His mortal remains have been rescued from oblivion.
44:54But instead of lying in eternal rest, he is now exposed to the eyes of the world.
45:00The discovery of the mummy of Egypt's mightiest ruler is symbolic of the way a science evolves.
45:06Archaeologists rescue historical knowledge from tomb raiders, and the fog surrounding
45:13the beginnings of ancient Egypt begins to clear.
45:19Stay with H2 for more mysteries of Egypt right through this Sunday.
45:23After the break, one of history's great disappearing acts, as Ramses II's impressive metropolis
45:28goes AWOL.
45:30Lost Cities of the Ancients goes in search of the vanished capital of the pharaoh next.