Original subtitles

In the heart of a sacred necropolis...

We're gonna have to remove this very slowly.

...archaeologists discover a unique tomb,

inside a sarcophagus that has been sealed

for over 2,000 years.

This is very important for us.

Be careful. Be careful, be careful.

They are trying to uncover clues

about how the Ancient Egyptians

used spells and magic

to protect both the body and soul.

The mummy has part of the face with gold leaf

and has gold leaf here, on the neck.

Really this is amazing.

The tomb of Tutankhamun,

the final resting place of Egypt's most famous pharaoh.

The discovery of this treasure trove

captivated the globe.

And the mysterious death of some of those

who opened Tutankhamun's tomb

sparked rumors of a dangerous magic,

the curse of the mummy.

What lay behind this story?

Today, archaeologists hunt for clues

to how the Ancient Egyptians used curses and spells

to protect the dead and their tombs.

Investigating why this magic was so important in Ancient Egypt...

and whether it had any hand in the fate of those

who opened the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Two hundred and thirty miles north of Luxor,

at the vast necropolis of Oxyrhynchus,

Spanish archaeologists and Egyptologists

Esther Pons Mellado and Maite Mascort Roca

are excavating a complex series of tombs.

Look how much stuff they have found here.

Esther and Maite have worked together for over two decades.

Yes, it's very, very fun

because we have very, very good relation.

They hope to uncover evidence

of the many ways this community sought to protect their dead,

both physical and mystical.

For this they need to find well-preserved tombs,

but underground here, conditions are damp and humid

causing mummies and artifacts to deteriorate.

Despite this, Esther and Maite

have had some astonishing success.

Shall we have a look at the place where we excavated last year?

Yes.

Last season,

the duo made one of the most incredible discoveries

ever found at Oxyrhynchus.

This is amazing.

A richly decorated mummy.

Wow, beautiful.

Stunningly wrapped

in beautifully preserved colored material

known as cartonnage.

Very good.

Very, very good.

The cartonnage showed evidence of how the Ancient Egyptians

believed in the magic of a protective god.

On the abdomen was the winged goddess Nut.

For them it's very important to be protected

with the gods and with the goddess.

It's very important in the afterlife.

This year, they want to uncover more of these tombs

that might reveal how the people here protected the deceased,

and help guide their souls to the afterlife.

The team has discovered a shaft

which they hope leads to a burial chamber.

They are digging out the earth from the shaft

because we need to show the entrance.

It's taken Esther's team 12 hours

to reach a depth of seven and a half feet

but there's still no sign of a tomb.

Finally, a stone lintel emerges from the sand,

an indication that this could be a doorway.

We want to find some drawings,

a picture, a decoration on the wall

and inscriptions, and why not objects?

Of course, mummies and perhaps some sarcophagi.

The key moment will be

when we open the door

and to see what happened inside.

In the Valley of the Kings...

Egyptologist Arto Belekdanian is investigating the truth

behind the popular idea of the curse of the mummy.

By the early 20th century,

Western explorers had unearthed 62 tombs

of pharaohs and noble families in this valley.

However, there was still one king in particular

that Howard Carter and his sponsor Lord Carnarvon

suspected was buried here in the Valley of the Kings,

but whose tomb remained yet undiscovered.

They were searching for the Boy King,

Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

When Carter and his colleagues

finally unearthed an entrance in November 1922,

there was an immediate sense that they weren't alone.

In utter darkness, humid air,

Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon stood here

in front of this doorway.

Carter writes in his diary,

"I widened the breech,

the hot air escaping caused the candle to flicker."

You have to imagine them in this setting

almost witnessing the tomb breathing,

exhaling for the first time in 3,000 years.

When they finally entered the burial chamber,

they made one of the most

spectacular archaeological discoveries of all time.

But just weeks later, Carnarvon died suddenly in Cairo.

The world's press went wild with speculation,

that Carnarvon had fallen victim to the pharaoh's curse.

Arto searches the tomb walls

to see if there is any reference to a curse.

Everyone who comes in here,

they're awestruck by these beautiful paintings.

But what they miss is hiding in plain sight.

Carved into the walls are niches

that held sacred bricks

covered with powerful protective spells.

The northern niche held a shabti,

a bodyguard to wrestle attackers.

In the west, a figure of Anubis,

Guardian of the Dead and their bodies.

In the south, a djed pillar,

a powerful talisman to aid rebirth into the afterlife.

And in the east, a figure of Osiris,

the all-powerful lord of the underworld.

Together, they were intended to repel Tutankhamun's enemies

from all directions

as his soul journeyed through the underworld.

The focus is to protect the king

against supernatural, malevolent forces

that would disturb the king in his slumber

and his journey to the afterlife.

While Tutankhamun

was clearly well protected by magic and spells,

there are no mentions of a curse

on the walls of the tomb,

so where did this idea come from?

Arto thinks clues may be hidden in other tombs

here in the Valley of the Kings.

In the heart of the Oxyrhynchus Necropolis...

Esther and Maite's team has dug down 11 feet

to reach the base of the shaft.

Now the workers go up

and now Maite and I

go down to see what happened.

Let's see, Maite.

They can now look in

through the entrance of the newly opened tomb.

Wow!

Very beautiful.

It's fantastic.

Through the gap, they catch a glimpse

of a remarkable inner chamber unseen for over 2,000 years.

It's incredible, the picture on this wall, the decoration.

Esther needs to get into the tomb.

Only then will she see the full extent

of the decoration and treasures inside,

and learn more about what magic has been invoked here.

Really, this is amazing.

It is the first time that we have found this kind of decoration.

At Deir el-Bahari on the west bank of the Nile,

stands the vast Theban Necropolis,

dominated by the huge temple of Queen Hatshepsut.

Polish Egyptologist Patryk Chudzik

first began working at this site 12 years ago.

And this season, he's tracking down

the lost burial place of another important Egyptian queen.

I'm looking for the tomb of Queen Meritamun,

the wife and sister of Pharaoh Amenhotep I

from the early 18th dynasty.

Just like Tutankhamun, Queen Meritamun's tomb

was discovered in the early 20th century

by a contemporary of Howard Carter

called Herbert Winlock.

Acting on a hunch in early 1929,

Winlock and his team started digging through the hillside

next to Hatshepsut's temple.

After six weeks of toil, they found it.

Tucked away beneath the temple.

Although the riches had been robbed in antiquity,

Winlock found a vast cedarwood coffin

over 10 feet long.

Inside it, a second coffin,

half the size of the first and almost as lavish.

And inside that,

the mummy of the Queen herself.

Despite the stories at this time of a mummy's curse,

Winlock survived unscathed.

But without modern GPS technology,

the tomb's location was lost under debris falling from the cliffs.

Now, Patryk is hoping to find it once again

to see what Winlock may have missed

and add to the story of this magnificent temple complex.

I'm privileged to uncover the history from the ancient times,

but also to uncover the steps

taken by the early archaeologists.

We will try to find out where the tomb is located

and we will try to reexplore it once again.

Patryk has studied the records of Winlock's dig,

and he's found a clue to help him get started,

a photograph from the time identifying the excavation site.

So looking at the middle portico

and the edge of the northern colonnade,

I think that the roughly, the tomb should be located

just to the north of the arch of the bedrock.

I have a rough location

so now I'm gonna ask the workers to start to dig there,

hoping that soon we will find the mouth of the shaft.

In the Valley of the Kings...

Arto has found no evidence of a curse

written anywhere in Tutankhamun's tomb.

So he's come to one of the most magnificent burial sites in the valley,

the tomb of Ramesses VI.

Its lavish decorations hold clues to how the Ancient Egyptians

believed magic could protect the body and soul after death.

The Ancient Egyptians believed

that upon death,

the soul and the body would part ways

but they would rejoin each other at nighttime.

And the tomb, well, it was as a home for the body.

So all this decoration here,

it is not intended for human visitors

but, in fact, for the soul of the deceased king.

Among the many inscriptions

left here to be read by the pharaoh's soul

are further hints as to what he was protecting himself from.

This is from the Book of Caverns

and this is in fact a depiction of what one might call hell.

This was a guide, a map,

that the soul of the deceased king would use to reach the afterlife,

overcoming the dangers along the way

and the enemies of the gods as well.

Ancient Egyptians imagined the underworld

as a series of caves where brutal deities

were waiting to punish the wicked.

A goddess called the Slaughterer would have the damned dismembered

and boiled in huge cauldrons.

For those who strayed from the path,

death and destruction waited at every turn,

like torrents of water that would drown the sinful.

But for the righteous,

cavern deities could offer light and food,

guiding them through this hellish landscape,

inching every closer to eternal life.

But looking after the soul alone wasn't enough.

In order to be reborn into the afterlife for all eternity,

the soul needed an intact body to return to.

So it was vital the deceased physical form

was kept safe too.

This is the king's sarcophagus.

Its role was to contain and protect the body

of the deceased king.

If anything were to happen to the burial chamber,

the sarcophagus, or the body within,

well, this would disrupt the entire cycle

of death and rebirth of the soul,

resulting in a second and final death.

The Ancient Egyptians believed magic and spells

were essential to get through the underworld

and into the afterlife.

Next, Arto wants to investigate the role magic played

in protecting the body of the deceased

from intruders.

At the Oxyrhynchus Necropolis,

it's the day Esther and Maite have been waiting for.

Finally, after three days

shifting tons of sand, rocks, and debris,

they have access to the tomb.

They hope it will tell them more about how the Ancient Egyptians believed

magic, spells, and curses

protected the body and guided the soul,

so they could reunite in the afterlife.

Let's go.

Esther is the first to enter for over 2,000 years.

Oh!

I think it's really amazing.

This tomb is a very good construction.

Esther first ventures

into one of the two smaller side chambers.

This ceiling, vaulted ceiling is complete.

There are three rooms and this hall.

The floor is of stones.

These rooms are plain and undecorated.

Wow, here many, many mummies.

Quite unlike the main funerary chamber

which lies ahead.

It's amazing, really.

I can't say what I feel in this moment.

Just over the river from Luxor, at Deir el-Bahari,

Patryk is searching for the lost tomb

of Queen Meritamun,

discovered in the 1920s,

a few years after Carter found the tomb of Tutankhamun.

We are clearing the debris

until we will reach the level of the bedrock.

Then following the bedrock,

we'll try to find the edges of the shaft.

That's gonna be the sign that finally we've found the tomb.

It's hardly surprising Patryk's team is having difficulty

locating the ancient queen's burial chamber.

It was never meant to be found.

Ahmose-Meritamun lived around 1500 BCE,

the great wife and sister of Pharaoh Amenhotep I.

The pair amassed great wealth

and wanted to take it with them to their graves.

It's thought that to keep their riches safe from looters,

Amenhotep built his tomb not in a pyramid

but in a secluded secret valley.

And Meritamun was buried in an unmarked crypt,

dug deep into the rocks just outside of Thebes

in the hope she would never be disturbed.

Although the Ancient Egyptians believed magic and spells

would protect a tomb,

they knew that physically hiding it would help.

Patryk's team must sift through all this rubble,

searching for any sign they might be getting close.

I see that we are about 30 centimeters

beneath the mouth of the shaft on the western edge,

and it is still filled with modern rubbish.

So I didn't expect that they will go so deep.

The workers have been digging for eight days

and have shifted many tons of rock.

We reached the level

of something really strange,

something which looks like a sealed shaft

made of rocks mixed with cement,

so it seems to be something like a protection of the shaft

which might be beneath of it.

Sometimes after finishing their excavations,

archaeologists like Winlock and Carter

would carefully seal the mouth of a tomb,

ensuring that anything they'd stored inside

would remain protected.

It's more exciting because if it was left by Winlock,

it can mean that something important was left

by him inside the tomb.

But before he can uncover what secrets are hiding underneath,

Patryk must clean and document the slab.

The question is what is beneath the seal?

In Oxyrhynchus...

Esther is finally able to explore

the newly discovered, elaborately decorated tomb.

It's really amazing to see these decorations

with inscriptions, with the images

of gods, goddesses.

We can see Anubis in front, with the deceased.

From the entrance, Esther had only seen one image.

This is the owner.

The name is "Unnefer."

Beneath Anubis, Guardian of the Dead,

is the holder of the tomb,

their face covered in gold leaf.

It seems to be the burial chamber

of a wealthy family.

It's the first time that you have this ceiling

totally decorated with this color, blue color

with the gods and the goddess.

And the condition of the decoration is very good.

The painted figure is the mystical sky goddess Nut,

who the Ancient Egyptians believed

would magically protect the deceased.

This is the same goddess they found on the cartonnage

in a neighboring tomb last year.

It is unique, this funeral chamber.

We are very, very happy, really.

And beneath the decorated walls,

another essential source of evidence

for the archaeologists.

We have a four sarcophagi of stones.

One is open, but the other three are closed.

And this is very important for us because

it will be the first time

that we open after more or less 2,400 years.

Lying on top of the four sarcophagi

are six more mummies,

four adults and two children.

The tomb has been reused on a mass scale

some time after the initial burial.

And the hot, humid conditions have deteriorated these bodies.

The humidity is very, very high.

It is more than 90 percent.

It is very difficult to work here.

The atmosphere also forces Esther to leave.

But this is one of the most incredible finds of her career.

We are very excited and we think it will be

amazing and very emotional to see

the deceased inside the sarcophagus.

On the west bank of the Nile

in the ancient necropolis at Deir el-Bahari...

Patryk is searching for the tomb of Queen Meritamun.

This mysterious burial was uncovered in the years

after the curse of Tutankhamun frenzy.

But then it was lost to the sands of time.

We reach a very strange level

of a few limestone slabs

covered with a thin layer of cement.

And then we have a few mud bricks

and something which looks like a hidden pipe in the ground.

His team clears the red mud bricks

to expose the bigger slabs beneath.

It's not easy to remove them.

They were fitted perfectly here.

So, sand, sand beneath.

One second, because it seems that we reached the level of the bedrock,

so this is not the tomb of Meritamun.

Patryk sees his discovery go from the magical to the mundane.

The pipe and the floor

and the sand beneath

was the foundation of something like a bathroom.

This is just a bathroom.

Oh, gosh.

This is part of a modern structure

built in the years after Winlock's original excavation.

Meritamun's tomb may not be protected by spells,

but the team is still no closer to finding it.

Patryk's only choice is to go back to Winlock's photograph

and start again.

So many things has been changed here around,

and it is hard to,

to find a precise location of the gentlemen

who stood next to the shaft in the time of Winlock.

He gets one of his team to recreate

the position of the man in the picture.

So the guy's standing

much farther to the west.

So it might be the place.

Patryk's team immediately starts digging

in the new location.

We still have a hope that in the next days

we'll be able to find the shaft.

It must be somewhere here.

In Luxor...

Arto is investigating how the Ancient Egyptians

used spells to guide and protect their souls

on the treacherous journey through the underworld.

Now, he wants to investigate how magic was used

to deter people from entering a tomb

and interfering with the body of the deceased.

These gigantic statues known as the Colossi of Memnon

represent King Amenhotep III,

the probable grandfather of Tutankhamun himself.

The vast temple that once stood here

was built for Amenhotep III

by the Overseer of the King's Works.

Outside his tomb was this stele,

a limestone block.

It is inscribed with potent words,

cursing would-be intruders.

"The sea will engulf their bodies,

"the water of the Nile

"will not be poured for them as a libation.

"Their sons will not inherit their places,

"they will be condemned to the knife

"on the day of massacre.

"Their bodies will decay

"because they will suffer from hunger

"and have no food,

and their bodies will perish."

This threat was the worst curse

that could be cast against an Ancient Egyptian.

The soul needs the body as a home for it,

so if the body is destroyed, as the curse here threatens,

well, that means no afterlife.

The threat of magic against any disturbance of the dead

was intended as a powerful deterrent.

Spells and curses weren't only reserved for tombs.

They were an important part of everyday life, too.

Ancient Egyptians believed magical objects like the stone of Horus

could be used to heal the sick and protect the living.

And magic could also have a darker purpose.

It could be invoked to destroy a person's afterlife.

By writing spells and the names of their enemies

on clay objects, now imbued with dark magic,

Ancient Egyptians would violently destroy these objects.

And then bury them in the dirt

so the name of the cursed would be forgotten,

dooming their soul for all eternity.

In the minds of the Ancient Egyptians,

magically potent words

had effective purpose,

actually, real-life consequences.

When Egyptologists discovered evidence

that the Ancient Egyptians used spells and curses,

it caught the imagination of the public.

This reached a peak with the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb.

You can imagine why the journalists

in the 1920s were so excited

about the potential idea that maybe Lord Carnarvon

was killed by a curse of Tutankhamun.

Lord Carnarvon died just months after opening the tomb.

So, what did kill him?

And was his death in any way linked

to the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb?

Just outside the Hatshepsut Temple terminus

at Deir el-Bahari,

after an extra month of digging,

Patryk has finally uncovered

what he thinks is the passageway

that leads to the lost tomb of Queen Ahmose-Meritamun.

It was not easy because we had to remove tons of rock rubble,

but we didn't give up.

When Winlock first entered this tomb in 1929,

it was an astonishing discovery.

Today, nearly 100 years later,

Patryk is following in his footsteps.

Right below the northern colonnade of Hatshepsut's temple,

the tomb of Meritamun extends only 55 feet into the hillside.

The descending passage leads directly to an antechamber,

and finally, the queen's crypt,

just a few paces from the entrance.

Child's play for any robber to reach.

But this tomb has a classic Ancient Egyptian feature.

A shaft dug deep down into the rock,

blocking the only path to Meritamun's burial chamber.

The Ancient Egyptian architects,

they tried to do everything to protect the body.

It had to remain intact forever.

The shaft posed a formidable obstacle

for intruders trying to get to the burial chamber beyond.

But it was also an ingenious feat of engineering,

designed to trap floodwater

and prevent it from reaching the queen's coffin.

Years ago, the heavy rains

were coming to Egypt every year,

so they decided to, to quarry out this well here,

to collect old water,

to not let the water to go inside.

The Ancient Egyptians took no chances

in keeping the physical body safe from harm.

As well as spells and magic to protect the deceased,

they carefully engineered their tombs to give the soul

the best chance of recognizing the body

and reuniting in the afterlife.

And these protections are still working.

Patryk will have to wait until next season

to finally enter the burial chamber of Queen Meritamun.

We'll have to build a construction inside

to get an access to the burial crypt.

It's gonna be not easy, and it will take a lot of time.

Deep underground in the Oxyrhynchus Necropolis,

Esther continues her investigation into this complex burial site.

She wants to uncover how the occupants of this tomb

believed magic and spells would protect both their bodies

and their souls after death.

There are these small circles of gold leaf.

Esther and anthropologist Francesca

are meticulously collecting fragments of gold leaf

before they open the lid.

It's delicate work now

and after in the laboratory also.

This gold leaf was once part of a mummy's cartonnage,

an elaborate painted funerary wrapping.

The gold is very expensive, and this tells us that

the people that were buried here

are important people in the community.

The gold was more than just an indicator of wealth.

It held symbolic and magical significance too.

For the Ancient Egyptians, gold's natural properties,

its resistance to corrosion and incorruptible luster,

were linked to immortality and the divine.

And they believed it also possessed magical properties.

When used on funerary masks,

it would ensure the deceased's safe passage

to the afterlife.

It is difficult to take out the earth that is on the lid

because the humidity is very, very high.

The hot, sticky conditions in the tomb

make progress slow.

And Esther is anxious to get on

with removing the limestone cover.

The mummies found here so far

have been badly affected by the humidity.

This is not what the Ancient Egyptians wanted.

They believed the soul needed to be able to recognize the body,

so they could magically reunite in the afterlife.

Esther hopes this sarcophagus will contain a mummy

in a better state of preservation.

We know that first we must do other things

not to open very quickly.

We must do the things little by little.

But we are waiting.

We are waiting to open.

Finally, the team can begin.

Ibrahim? Do you want to start?

But the stakes are high.

As they open the first sarcophagus,

the fragile limestone lid could crumble in their hands,

destroying the mummy below.

We're gonna have to remove this very slowly.

Esther's team carefully inches

the brittle slab across onto the neighboring sarcophagus.

Be careful, be careful, its all in one piece.

Let's not break it now.

Be careful, be careful,

be careful, be careful. No!

Deep in the Oxyrhynchus Necropolis...

finally these archaeologists reveal the secrets of this sarcophagus.

Well, it's difficult to say what I feel in this moment.

The mummy has part of the face with gold leaf

and has gold leaf here on the neck

and on the arm, the chest

and the area of the feet also.

The condition is very bad because the mummification perhaps was not good

and then the humidity damaged this arm.

But it's very interesting, of course,

very, very interesting.

The presence of gold

indicates this was likely a very wealthy person.

And despite the poor condition of the mummy,

Esther and Maite can still gain a wealth of information.

The gold leaf on the face of the tomb owner

matches the gold leaf on the face of the mummy.

It's possible this was intended

to help the soul find the body,

even though it had deteriorated.

I think this is very good for us

because we can study how in the past they

mummify the individuals in this period.

This tomb dates to more than a thousand years after Tutankhamun.

Ancient Egyptian beliefs were clearly still important

to the people buried here.

They did everything they could, including using spells and magic,

to get to the afterlife.

I think it's more than amazing.

In the first moment, I cry

because I am very emotional.

This tomb is unique, really,

not only because there are four sarcophagi with mummies

but the most important are the decorations of the wall.

Inscriptions in relation with the funerary rites

and all this, and then many, many gods.

And this isn't the end for Esther and Maite.

They're hoping this amazing discovery will reveal more secrets

about the beliefs held by the people here.

We need more time to study all this.

We need a lot of work. More than now.

In Luxor...

Arto is back at the Boy King's tomb

investigating the truth behind the curse of Tutankhamun.

While few people really believe that a curse killed Lord Carnarvon,

for years there was another theory

that something in the tomb could have led to his death.

Its roots lie in a story spookily similar to this one.

In Poland in 1973,

a team of scientists opened the tomb of a Polish king.

Four of the team died over the following two years.

Was this a creepy coincidence

or could it be connected to the fate of Carnarvon?

Could both the Polish scientists

and the team entering the tomb of Tutankhamun

have indeed released something deadly?

The theory went that they may have disturbed not a curse...

but a fungus, aspergillus,

which produces hardy spores that can survive for centuries.

When the spores enter the lungs,

they can reactivate and colonize the tissue,

releasing toxins that can cause cancer or pneumonia.

There's a theory that the Polish scientists

were killed by this deadly fungus.

So could this murderous mushroom

have also sealed the fate of Lord Carnarvon?

The aspergillus fungus often grows on cereal crops

both in the fields and in storage.

The Ancient Egyptians believed that the body, the soul,

still needed nutrition for the afterlife.

Well, that's exactly what they found down here.

Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon found a feast!

Roast gazelle, honey, wine,

and hundreds of baskets

holding grain and wheat.

It's possible that some of the grains

buried here in Tutankhamun's tomb

were colonized by aspergillus fungus

when the tomb was sealed.

Lord Carnarvon, upon entering the tomb,

may have succumbed to an invisible killer

sealed in the tomb for millennia.

However, the accepted explanation

is that Carnarvon died from blood poisoning,

the result of an infected mosquito bite.

And only six of the 26 people who were present for the tomb opening

had died within a decade.

Although the curse of the mummy was a 1920s media frenzy of fake news,

it's clear Ancient Egyptians

from all levels of society used spells, magic, and curses

in their everyday lives.

They played a central role in their understanding of the afterlife,

to safely guide the soul and protect the body

so they could be reunited for eternity.