All language subtitles for Lost.Treasures.of.Egypt.S03E07.Tutankhamuns.Unsolved.Secrets.1080p.Rus.Eng

JOHN: The one thing you've learnt,

which they never teach you in University,

is how to do archaeology with your toes.

I can feel a lot of silt, Nile silt, that's very,

very fine sand.

NARRATOR: On the banks of the Nile,

archaeologists are investigating a temple that

they think Tutankhamun restored.

JOHN: I'm hitting a very thick layer of stone.

NARRATOR: Evidence of the boy king's reign may lie

at the bottom of this mysterious pit.

JOHN: This is going to be hard work.

NARRATOR: The tomb of Tutankhamen in Egypt's

Valley of the Kings.

When Tutankhamun's burial chamber was first discovered,

at its heart,

lay an unimaginable treasure:

The mummy of the boy king, who died tragically young.

He remains one of the most mysterious and famous

of all the pharaohs.

JOHN: Let's go, let's do it.

NARRATOR: Now, across Egypt teams of archaeologists

investigate the unsolved secrets of Tutankhamun.

Where did he get so much gold?

How did he control his kingdom?

And could experts have missed anything when they

first entered his tomb?

Egyptologist Aliaa Ismail,

just 30 years old,

runs an Egyptian team digitally scanning and

preserving data in the Valley of the Kings.

The team had previously scanned and stored every inch

of Tutankhamun's tomb.

Now, Aliaa is heading back on a mission of her own.

Did the young pharaoh leave more secrets yet to be found?

The pioneering archaeologist Howard Carter discovered

Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922.

ALIAA: It was the biggest and still is the biggest discovery

in ancient Egyptian antiquities.

For Egyptologists, this was like a marking point in time,

finding a huge treasure with all the golden masks,

the coffins.

NARRATOR: Howard Carter kept a detailed diary.

ALIAA: It seems the Carter was on the brink of

giving up and then suddenly the treasure opens up.

Looking at his diary,

"It soon became obvious that we were but on the

threshold of the discovery,

the site that met us was beyond anything one could conceive."

NARRATOR: Carter discovered the tomb,

with Tutankhamun's sarcophagus and mummy,

and rooms piled high with treasures.

ALIAA: The tomb, it's so neat now but when Carter

came in here this place was cluttered with objects.

In here, you would have had the shrines of Tutankhamun,

and then the sarcophagus and then the coffins within.

And within the coffins,

the final layer would be the mummy itself.

NARRATOR: But Carter's journal holds a surprising revelation.

He may not have been the first to enter the

chamber after all.

Clearing the rubble from the tomb,

Carter discovered that someone had cut a hole in the slab,

sealing the entrance.

Inside, more signs of a break-in.

Some of Tutankhamun's treasures had been knocked over,

damaged or strewn across the floor.

The robbers must have been in a rush,

because they dropped precious items,

such as gold rings wrapped in a scarf.

Luckily for Carter,

they didn't take the most valuable treasure:

the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun and his

famous death mask.

ALIAA: Carter must have been in true awe seeing this mask

just out there, just the biggest find of the century.

NARRATOR: Shortly after the first robbery,

the tomb was looted again.

It was re-sealed and preserved,

leaving a chaotic mess inside for Carter

3,000 years later.

He searched the tomb, but he didn't have the modern day

scanning equipment Aliaa uses.

ALIAA: The technology could actually bring about things

that no one thought once could have ever existed.

NARRATOR: Can Aliaa's hi-tech scanning reveal the secrets of Tutankhamun

that the robbers and Carter missed?

At Gebel El-Silsila...

JOHN: Alright guys...

MARIA: Let's go and find the lost temple.

.

NARRATOR: Director of the Swedish Archaeological mission

Maria Nilsson...

MARIA: Come on.

JOHN: Messa.

NARRATOR: Her husband, archaeologist John Ward,

and their dog, Carter...

MARIA: Come on.

NARRATOR: Are arriving on the banks of the Nile

with their team.

JOHN: Let's go, let's do it.

NARRATOR: They're investigating a riverside

temple that could have been restored by Tutankhamun.

JOHN: Come on guys.

NARRATOR: Most of what archaeologists know about the

boy king comes from his tomb.

But 100 years since its discovery,

experts are exploring beyond the Valley of the Kings

to find out more about Tutankhamun's short

life and reign.

MARIA: When Tutankhamun came to power,

it was all about restoring what his father had neglected.

So, he had a task of restoring all the grand

monuments across Egypt.

JOHN: We going that way?

NARRATOR: Maria and John think they may have found one of

these restoration projects.

Gebel El-Silsila was home to a vast quarry and workforce

during Tutankhamun's time.

MARIA: We know that we got his quarries here so there's a lot

of activity here on site from the reign of Tutankhamen.

NARRATOR: Maria and John have discovered the worker's

village at Gebel El-Silsila,

and the foundations of a temple right next to the Nile.

JOHN: This is the rear of temple.

We've still got the grid lines which show us where

the actual walls used to be.

And these would have stood in this,

literally right where we're standing right now.

We've got the pronouse here and we would have had a pylon

gate at the front facing the west.

NARRATOR: If this temple was restored by Tutankhamun,

why did he restore it,

and which gods were worshiped here?

Finding new evidence could help unravel the story

of his reign.

Maria and John are focusing their work on a mysterious

purpose-built pit within the temple complex.

JOHN: This was an entire mound with a tree growing out

the middle of it.

And the hunch was that there was something beneath

here because the tree had to have a water source.

Once we cleared all that area,

we started to find the dressed slabs that went around,

and now we have the pit.

We just don't know what the function of it is.

NARRATOR: The only way to find out is for John to get

in and have a look.

JOHN: So is the water going down, Ahmed?

NARRATOR: But first they have to pump the water out.

JOHN: The problem is that as soon as we pump all the water

out it just seeps back in again and every time it seeps

back in again it brings all the clay and the mud with it

and puts it in the center, and the problem is that these boys

are trying to work in a muddy slurry and it's pretty

disgusting down there.

NARRATOR: But as workers pump water from the pit,

Maria gets an urgent call from the other side of the temple.

MARIA: I think Ibrahim has something again.

He's done it again.

NARRATOR: In Abbad...

THOMAS: Hey Marcus.

NARRATOR: Director of the French archaeology mission,

Thomas Faucher, and American Archaeologist

Jennifer Gates-Foster.

JENNIFER: Are you ready?

NARRATOR: are also investigating one of

Tutankhamun's secrets: The source of his gold.

There are no gold mines along the Nile,

where Tutankhamun and most ancient Egyptians lived.

So Thomas and Jennifer are venturing far from

Tutankhamun's tomb deep into the Eastern desert.

They hope a site here can reveal how he got his gold.

JENNIFER: Without question it was a critical resource

for filling the Egyptian states coffers.

What does it take to have a solid gold death mask?

What does it take to have a throne covered

completely in gold foil.

Well, it takes generations of exploration in a rough environment,

to find that gold,

to process it and then to eventually have it

end up in Tut's tombs.

NARRATOR: When priests laid Tutankhamun to rest,

they covered his face with a death mask made of more than

20 pounds of pure gold.

Then, they enclosed his mummy in three exquisite

golden coffins sealing them inside a stone sarcophagus,

surrounded by four shrines covered in beaten gold.

The priests crammed the adjoining chambers with

hundreds of gold and gilt treasures.

In total, Tutankhamun was buried with more than

264 pounds of gold.

How did the boy king amass so much?

In Egypt's Eastern desert, there are vast gold deposits.

Thomas has been investigating here since 2011.

He's discovered evidence of ancient gold miners

working out here.

But they're hundreds of miles from Tutankhamun's capital,

and in the middle of one of the most-deadly landscapes

in the world.

How did his ancient miners get his gold from way out here?

THOMAS: You need like a week by donkey or camel

to cross the eastern desert.

You'll just die because you won't have any,

any water or food supplies.

NARRATOR: Last year, Thomas and Jennifer excavated an ancient fortress,

a vital safe haven in this vast wilderness.

JENNIFER: It probably had a little,

out flair sort of flint, yeah, kind of a flint.

NARRATOR: They've uncovered remarkable evidence that the

site dates to the Greek era of Egyptian history,

1,000 years after Tutankhamun.

JENNIFER: Well this, this season we have had an

extraordinary amount of material.

This is a really lovely little, probably,

a perfume vessel.

NARRATOR: But they suspect the site could be far older.

The team needs to go deeper beneath the fortress to know

if Tutankhamun's workers were here,

and if he got his gold from the Eastern Desert.

THOMAS: We found more shards like down the level and

as you see we're underneath the level of the fortress so

if we can find the ceramics dating from the

time of Tutankhamun that would be great.

NARRATOR: But their work here is under threat.

Large areas of Abbad have been bulldozed in the

past year for agricultural use.

THOMAS: All the, all these traces here and all the parts

here have been like completely,

completely destroyed.

NARRATOR: But another, more dangerous threat comes

from modern day looters.

They target sites in a futile search for gold.

The longer Thomas and Jennifer excavate here,

the more unwanted attention they attract.

THOMAS: And you'll see the,

the cars coming and going all day long.

People think that because it's an ancient site,

they will find gold like they could find gold in the,

in Karnak or in Luxor in these old temples.

NARRATOR: They're in a race to find out if Tutankhamun got

his gold from the Eastern Desert before looters and

farmers destroy the evidence.

THOMAS: We're just like running from one site to the

other like trying to save as much data as possible before,

before it's all gone.

NARRATOR: At Silsila...

MARIA: You are amazing.

NARRATOR: Maria and John's long-term colleague

Ibrahim Awadallah Mohammed Jad

has found a clue beneath the ruins of the temple complex.

JOHN: Oh wow.

MARIA: Here, we have the crocodile who's described as Sobek,

Lord of Henney, Lord of the ancient Silsila.

JOHN: And I'm holding it in my hand.

MARIA: Yeah. JOHN: Wow.

MARIA: It's amazing. It is fragmentary.

We're missing the head.

It confirms everything that we've been trying to

understand the last years.

NARRATOR: Statuettes like this one would have been brought to the temple

by worshippers as an offering to the crocodile god Sobek.

JOHN: Isn't it beautiful? MARIA: It is.

JOHN: Isn't it beautiful? MARIA: It's our first.

This is as close as you get to the ancient people without

actually going back in time.

JOHN: And made from Silsila Stone.

MARIA: And made from local stone.

JOHN: Oh it's fantastic, that is fantastic.

NARRATOR: The statuette of the God Sobek can help Maria

and John understand the purpose of the temple,

and why Tutankhamun may have restored it.

Sobek appears as a crocodile, a dangerous predator here.

MARIA: We've now got high water,

but during the low season, when the water is down,

on the other side and all the way up here,

it would just be infested with crocodiles.

NARRATOR: Crocodiles were a constant,

deadly threat for anyone who worked near the Nile.

The ancient Egyptians worshipped the

crocodile god, Sobek.

He was the mythical creator of the Nile and

made the land fertile.

The pharaohs built temples on the Nile to Sobek,

where he was believed to preserve the life-giving waters,

and to protect the people from its dangers.

Priests even kept live crocodiles at their temples

to worship as incarnations of Sobek.

It would make sense for Tutankhamun to restore a

temple to Sobek here.

JOHN: Tutankhamen's quarries here in Silsila required a

massive workforce, and to keep them safe and protected,

Tutankhamen would have used this temple.

He would have used his association with the God Sobek

to empower himself to show that he was the great

protector and that he could look after them in

such a harsh environment.

NARRATOR: Could the pit beside the temple have been

used to keep crocodiles?

JOHN: We know from other sites they kept crocodiles

as part of the state religion.

I think what we have here is actually a crocodile pit where

they would have kept them literally in here and fed them

from where I'm standing now.

The priests would have just literally thrown the

food down to them.

NARRATOR: The team has finished pumping the water,

and it's time to see if they can find any evidence

for this extraordinary theory.

JOHN: He's lifting the stone out on his shoulder.

NARRATOR: But its dangerous work to clear the stones from

the depths of the pit.

MAN: Ali, Mohammed.

JOHN: We're about to do the gang pull of a stone slab.

.

NARRATOR: Abbad is located in an 85,000 square mile wilderness,

between Tutankhamun's palaces along the Nile,

and gold mines in the east.

Jennifer is on the hunt for clues that Tutankhamun's gold workers

used this safe haven.

It would unlock one of Tutankhamun's secrets,

and be evidence he got the gold for his glittering

shrine from mines in the Eastern desert.

JENNIFER: It takes a lot of people's lives

dedicated to this space, out here, working, dying,

trying to survive to find that gold and then to

eventually have it end up in Tut's tombs.

THOMAS: OK!

NARRATOR: The clues, artifacts dating to Tutankhamun's era

could lie beneath the ruins of this ancient fortress.

3D scans of the site show the scale of the task.

The fortress of Abbad covers an area of

8,000-square feet with 18 rooms.

It's like looking for a needle underneath a giant haystack.

.

NARRATOR: But as the team works their way through the

rooms two feet below the fortress,

they uncover something.

THOMAS: You can see on this shard of pottery that there is

a bit of writing text about three letters,

and these letters is demotic and demotic is the writing of

the ancient Egyptian.

It's really a unique piece of evidence.

NARRATOR: The ancient Egyptians wrote on broken pottery.

THOMAS: Because papyri was so expensive,

usually they didn't use it in the desert except for

very official letters.

So, it's easy to pick up a pottery shard and

to write on it.

They were like taking it and putting in the rubbish bin.

So, it's really thrilling to find this text.

NARRATOR: The pottery is still not old enough to be

from Tutankhamun's time,

but it's clear progress...

A sign the team is on the right track.

If they keep on digging,

they might reach pottery or other remnants of

Tutankhamun's era and evidence his gold workers

came through the fortress of Abbad with gold for his tomb.

NARRATOR: At Gebel El-Silsila,

Maria and John have been working and living with

their two children,

Freja and Jonathan, on a boat on the Nile.

For ten years, they've split their time between Sweden and

Egypt to complete their work and feed their passion

for discovering more about this ancient civilization.

MARIA: Four, two, one.

Yeah.

MARIA: Ready to jump in?

JOHN: I am indeed. It's been so hot today.

MARIA: What a place for the kids to jump in and cool off.

JOHN: You haven't, you haven't lived unless you've swum in

the Nile and the kids will have that for the

rest of their lives...

MARIA: That's true.

JOHN: And thankfully there's no crocodiles.

MARIA: Come on then.

NARRATOR: They can relax at the end of a hot day but

there's little time left to complete their work this season,

and they have a busy few days ahead.

They're investigating a temple that they believe was

restored by Tutankhamun and a deep pit that could have held crocodiles,

worshiped as incarnations of the God Sobek.

JOHN: Well done, Hussain.

NARRATOR: It's filled up with a thick layer of mud,

and a huge stone is blocking their progress.

.

JOHN: The ladder could snap in half, the rope could snap.

Watch your toe, watch your toes.

NARRATOR: They need to get it out.

JOHN: They could drop the stone on their feet.

I mean there's a multitude of problems that

could go wrong here.

No, that's not going to work boys, that's not going to work,

it's going to tip, it's going to tip it.

NARRATOR: But it's not going to be easy.

JOHN: Watch your toes, watch your toes.

MARIA: Well done guys!

NARRATOR: Now that the slab has been removed,

they can see that exploring the pit is going to be harder

than they thought.

JOHN: They all thought the "heba," this clay substance,

was just the floor, and that was it.

NARRATOR: There's a thick layer of mud at the

bottom of the pit.

JOHN: Ahmed is now able to put his palm throng all the way down,

showing that there is actually much, much more,

over a meter and a half more to go,

after they've gone through this clay substance.

NARRATOR: John decides it's time for him to get down in

the pit himself to search through the mud for evidence

that dates back to Tutankhamun's reign.

JOHN: Oh.

NARRATOR: In the Valley of The Kings

Aliaa is on a mission to discover the unsolved secrets

of Tutankhamun that Howard Carter may have missed.

To investigate further,

Aliaa has come to Stoppelaere House,

where she heads up a scanning team that uses the latest

technology to study tombs in the Valley of the Kings.

ALIAA: This is our 3D scanning center.

This is where we process all the data that we have scanned.

I have been scanning for the last 6 years of my life

and this is so exciting.

It's like you're peeling back the layers.

NARRATOR: Aliaa thinks the previous scans of

Tutankhamun's tomb may have revealed something extraordinary...

Something Howard Carter would never have found.

ALIAA: Looking at the color image,

you can't really see much.

Very beautiful, but once we remove the layer of color

and just look at the 3D,

the greyscale, it's very obvious that there's no carving,

it was just plaster and paint.

When you look deeper, you see sort of a shadow in

here all the way to here.

Almost inclined to believe that this is a sort of

passageway or doorway.

It was with these scans,

that scholars were able to review and reveal

something might be lying just behind the north wall.

NARRATOR: The lines aren't visible to the naked eye,

but this tantalizing evidence that there might be

a lost chamber hidden in Tutankhamun's tomb,

has sparked years of exploration and controversy.

ALIAA: It sort of gives us hope that there's a tomb just

sealed off in half and somebody else,

another occupant.

You know there's possibility.

NARRATOR: A lost chamber could rewrite history.

But what or who could be behind a secret door?

NARRATOR: At Gebel El El-Silsila,

John Ward descends into a foul-smelling pit.

JOHN: Oh.

NARRATOR: He's looking for evidence that this was a

ceremonial pit used during the reign of Tutankhamun.

A pit that he thinks was used to keep crocodiles.

But the bottom is covered in a thick layer of mud.

JOHN: The thing that we've learned,

which they never teach you in university,

is how to do archaeology with your toes.

And I'm being serious because of course you can't see,

so you use your fingers.

And what I can feel is I can feel a lot of silt.

As I'm going deeper, I can feel very small stone,

it's sandstone fragments.

I'm going deeper now, ooh, I'm going very deep now.

NARRATOR: But toes can only get you so far.

JOHN: Oh, that's lovely, oh man.

MARIA: What you got?

JOHN: No, it's salt.

Salt stone.

The silt and the mud goes much deeper than we anticipated,

but I'm hitting a very thick layer of stone fragments,

and I can't get past that.

NARRATOR: But time is running out for John and the team.

Tomorrow is the last day of their excavation here.

JOHN: This is going to take a lot more work

than we first envisaged.

MARIA: Can you see anything John?

JOHN: There's nothing to see,

it's all blind archaeology.

I can feel beneath this mud brick mixture there's a stone layer,

and that's where we're trying to get to.

Come to Egypt they said, work in the sand they said.

They didn't say thing about water and mud.

MARIA: Coming up to the end of the day.

JOHN: Yep, I know.

NARRATOR: With time running out,

one of the workers locates something hidden beneath

the muddy water.

MAN: Look, touch here.

NARRATOR: Could it be proof this pit and temple complex

were used during the reign of Tutankhamun?

In Luxor...

Aliaa has returned to the tomb of Tutankhamun to

investigate evidence for a lost chamber

behind the North Wall.

3D scans uncovered what some believe are outlines

of a doorway.

Does Tutankhamun's tomb have more secrets to reveal?

ALIAA: Some Egyptologists think that there is a whole

tomb behind this scene.

The outline or shadow falls within this area.

It is exciting as Egyptologists to think that

there may be a whole huge treasure,

lying just there behind this wall,

waiting to be discovered.

NARRATOR: Outside, Aliaa looks for clues to where

a hidden tomb could lie.

ALIAA: Here, there is the tomb of Tutankhamen just beneath this mound,

and if there is another tomb that comes right out of it,

it's going to be right there.

NARRATOR: The presence of another hidden tomb here is a controversial theory,

and it's difficult to prove.

Archaeological excavation in the Valley of the Kings

is a danger to the priceless tombs below.

But there's another way to look under the surface.

ALIAA: Not long ago, a team was allowed to come and do

some ground penetrating radar over here.

Their radar was to show if there was a potential in the

theory that there may be another tomb lying down

beneath Tutankhamun.

NARRATOR: Ground penetrating radar allows archaeologists to

search for voids through rock and behind the walls of tombs.

The area around Tutankhamun's tomb has been scanned multiple times before,

with conflicting results.

But recent work by Egyptian archaeologist Mamdouh Eldamaty

poses a new and captivating possibility.

In his radar scan,

he detected a 32-foot-long space right next

to Tutankhamun's tomb.

If this is connected to the room that may lie hidden

behind the burial chamber, this could be an undiscovered

section of the tomb.

These rooms would mostly likely be untouched and filled

with ancient treasures, and possibly another burial.

Did Tutankhamun share his tomb with someone else?

ALIAA: The results of the radar were incredible.

Now, it's so exciting to think that there is another

discovery yet to be made.

We're all waiting to see what this secret is

going to reveal.

NARRATOR: If Tutankhamun's tomb contains a hidden burial chamber,

the question is who could be buried there?

NARRATOR: Thomas and Jennifer are investigating one of

Tutankhamun's secrets.

They're excavating under a ruined fortress for evidence

he got his gold from the inhospitable Eastern desert.

Did his miners shelter here?

The team has just found something:

Stone blocks that offer a tantalizing glimpse of

a settlement from Tutankhamun's time.

JENNIFER: So, these are architectural blocks.

They carry some Hieroglyphic inscription very faintly

visible here which would indicate that they were carved

and set up in some sort of building which dates to the

reign of Tutankhamen.

It's exciting because that gives us a sort of ballpark

for the time when this site was busy and active

and important during the 18th Dynasty.

NARRATOR: Jennifer's team must now move the precious blocks

off site for further analysis.

As they dig deeper into the layers below the fortress,

they uncover more clues that this site was in use

in Tutankhamun's time.

JENNIFER: It is beautiful.

This is a really distinctive,

very different from any of the Ptolemaic material,

the Greek style pottery that we find in most of

the rooms of the fort, that is really common.

This kind of pottery, which belongs to the new kingdom,

is not wheel-made.

It's handmade, and you can tell that by looking at the

interior of the pot,

which has a surface which is very irregular,

and that it's been smoothed with a smooth stone,

most likely.

NARRATOR: It's not just one or two pieces of

Tutankhamun-era pottery.

Jennifer's team is revealing that the layers of

earth beneath the fortress are packed full of it.

JENNIFER: We have new kingdom material under the floors of rooms,

20, 19, 26, 18 and 17.

But to have the fort now documented on top of deposits

that indicate some kind of occupation in the new kingdom

and that's really exciting.

NARRATOR: The discovery is proof the site may have been

used in Tutankhamun's time by his gold workers.

But the team has found another remarkable clue concealed in the fortress:

Cutting into the bedrock 60 feet below the

surface is a well.

It's a vital source of water that explains why the safe haven,

and Tutankhamun's gold workers, were here.

THOMAS: The well was built, at the time of Tutankhamun by the

evidence we have now.

It was, I guess, more precious than even than gold for people that,

that they can have water to go inside the

inside the desert.

NARRATOR: The evidence here and at other sites reveals how

Tutankhamun got his gold from the remote Eastern desert.

Miners had to trek vast distances from the Nile Valley,

across the hot, dry desert,

to reach the gold mines.

Ancient engineers dug wells along the route,

for precious drinking water.

Each well was a day's walk from the last,

creating a network of vital rest stops.

This allowed them to survive the brutal journey across the desert,

to mine gold in the East,

and bring it back to their pharaoh.

Thomas and Jennifer have revealed one of Tutankhamun's secrets.

Sites like this were a critical part of the

infrastructure that allowed him to amass the gold

for one of the most elaborate burials in history.

JENNIFER: The gold in Tut's mask,

all that gold in his tomb that's coming from the Eastern desert.

So, sites like this that looked really modest are

actually the mechanism that allowed New Kingdom gold

to be mined.

NARRATOR: At Gebel El-Silsila...

John's colleague, Ibrahim,

has found something in the filthy mud in their search

for evidence that this ceremonial pit was also used

during the reign of Tutankhamun.

JOHN: Hang on a minute, that's actually painted.

See the paint?

IBRAHIM: Yeah. I can see. Goes all the way down here.

JOHN: That's a doorjamb!

So, it's the actual doorjamb from a doorway, above us,

which is now come into here, beneath all the mud brick.

You actually found part of the doorway to the temple.

What else, what else, you said there was two.

IBRAHIM: Yeah. Yeah, that's here.

JOHN: You got it?

IBRAHIM: Yeah.

JOHN: No, I'm looking at it the wrong way.

It doesn't go lengthways.

It goes that way. It goes up.

This isn't the door.

IBRAHIM: So, what is it? JOHN: It's a window!

IBRAHIM: A window? JOHN: Fantastic.

It's the first window here,

it's the first window in Silsila.

A three and a half thousand-year-old window.

NARRATOR: Blocks from an ancient window could

have come from the temple next to the pit.

JOHN: Down here would have been the crocodiles and they

would have been thrashing around in the water,

feeding all the time and above us.

There would be no sunlight.

This would have been covered.

And in here, you've got the crocodiles.

Up there, you've got the temple,

the priest throwing the food down.

This is history.

It is absolutely phenomenal.

Maria!

MARIA: What have you got?

NARRATOR: The discoveries in the pit give Maria and John an

idea of what this temple might have looked like in its prime.

JOHN: Ok, fresh from the pit of Sobek.

MARIA: Architectural details I can see.

JOHN: I think it was a southern window

that stood there.

I mean we've definitely, 100%,

got a kind of temple function going on here.

We've got the Sobek statue.

A pit that held live crocodiles.

NARRATOR: The evidence is coming together.

JOHN: So, it's plausible to think that this

could have been part of King Tut's Tutankhamen's

restoration project.

MARIA: Everything that we found this season supports

that and even more.

Our temple once stood glorious,

overlooking the Nile with crocodiles natural to,

to this site.

What a sight to have.

JOHN: It would have been amazing.

NARRATOR: The ceremonial pit and temple ruins Maria and

John have excavated point to why Tutankhamun may

have restored this temple,

and why it was dedicated to Sobek.

JOHN: Not only was he showing the people that he cared for them,

but also at the same time by restoring the temple to its former glory,

he was able to show them he had the power.

He was able to say, I am here, I am king.

Even though he was a weak and feeble boy,

he still had the power of a living God.

NARRATOR: Tutankhamun died young,

but still projected the power of a great pharaoh.

NARRATOR: In the Valley of the Kings,

Aliaa is at the tomb of Tutankhamun to hunt for clues

to what, or who,

could be inside a mysterious secret chamber

that might be next to the tomb.

ALIAA: This would be the doorway,

and then this would be the outline of the second chamber.

NARRATOR: Some think that the hidden chamber could contain

the body of another royal.

But if so, who?

Once again, Tutankhamun's tomb itself holds clues.

Other tombs of pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings share a feature:

You enter a corridor and turn left.

But as you enter Tutankhamun's tomb,

you turn right.

Some Egyptologists argue turning right is typically

a feature of a queen's tomb,

not a king's tomb like Tutankhamun's.

Could a hidden chamber here contain the body of a queen?

Perhaps Tutankhamun's only known wife, Ankhesenamun.

Aliaa spots something on the wall that could identify

another possible candidate.

ALIAA: So here we are having images of Tutankhamun at the

opening of the mouth scene, being welcomed by the gods

into the afterlife.

These are normal images to have in a royal tomb.

But what was not normal, and some Egyptologists think,

is that this figure over there was not Tutankhamen,

but rather a representation of Nefertiti.

NARRATOR: Around 1350 BC, Nefertiti, about 15 years old,

became queen of Egypt.

Together with her husband, the Pharaoh Akhenaten,

they created a new religious cult,

worshipping the sun god Aten.

When her husband died, some think Nefertiti continued to

rule as pharaoh until her stepson, Tutankhamun,

ascended to the throne.

Despite her being one of the most famous queens of Egypt,

Nefertiti's final resting place has never been found.

ALIAA: This is Nefertiti compared to the image right here,

the Osiris image of Tutankhamun.

Looking closely at the image, we can see, like,

there is the lip line going down and this line, actually,

it's the same line of other statues and

forms of Nefertiti.

NARRATOR: To some experts, this suggests an older picture

of Nefertiti was modified to look like Tutankhamun.

If so, it's a clue Tutankhamun's tomb was

originally part of Nefertiti's.

If there's a hidden burial chamber behind the North wall

it could be hers.

But why would her tomb be repurposed for Tutankhamun?

Aliaa thinks clues could lie in the mummified body of the

King that remains in the tomb.

ALIAA: The mummy of Tutankhamen was scanned,

and the scans showed that he died at a very young age.

He was ill most of his life and his sudden death was not

prepared for and so there was no tomb for him ready

at the time.

So, he had to use someone else's tomb.

Maybe that was just the tomb of Nefertiti.

NARRATOR: It's a controversial and disputed theory,

but if true, it could lead to the greatest discovery since

Howard Carter found this tomb in 1922.

ALIAA: If we are right now standing in the tomb of

Nefertiti that has been used for Tutankhamun,

that will be the world's biggest discovery in Egyptology.

That is going to be the most exciting find this

century has witnessed.

NARRATOR: Within his tomb and across Egypt,

archaeologists are searching for the secrets of Tutankhamun

to piece together all of his story.

In life, this pharaoh was young and frail,

and drew on the gods, like Sobek, to rule his people,

becoming their all-powerful protector.

JOHN: Oh, it is beautiful.

NARRATOR: He sent his men deep into the desert

for gold to fill his tomb with treasure...

A tomb that may still hide a chamber missed by explorers

and ancient robbers.

But with the use of modern-day technologies,

perhaps experts will one day unearth all of

Tutankhamun's lost secrets.

Captioned by Cotter Media Group.