Original subtitles

At the bottom of a narrow shaft.

Lies a mysterious and unexplored ancient tomb.

This is full of skeletons.

Half buried in the deep sand, lies incredible evidence

linked to Egypt's greatest pharaoh, Ramses the Second.

That's very nice. What is this?

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Oh, wow.

Throughout Egyptian history,

no other pharaoh had a greater impact

on the ancient civilization than Ramses the Second.

He came to power in 1279 BCE, 44 years after Tutankhamun,

and ruled for almost 70 years.

Known as Ramses the Great, he transformed Egypt

over the course of his reign.

He expanded the country's borders and built colossal

monuments like Abu Simbel and the Ramasseum mortuary temple.

Ramses was so revered that nine further pharaohs took his name.

Today, archaeologists across Egypt are attempting

to unlock the secrets of this iconic leader's reign.

How he maintained complete power over Egypt throughout his long life

and how he made sure his fame endured long after his death.

At Saqqara, in front of Egypt's oldest pyramid, the step pyramid of Djoser,

Egyptian archaeologist Ola El Aguizy is excavating

a necropolis filled with the tombs of Ramses' generals.

These powerful figures played a key role

in Ramses' extraordinary reign.

Ola searches for evidence that could shed light on how he kept them loyal.

Every year, it's getting more and more exciting.

Ola fell in love with Egyptology 50 years ago.

And she has been exploring the burials at this site for nearly two decades.

The area proves to be very important, very interesting.

It leads to lots of new information about

the people during the Ramesside period.

Ola's team scours the Necropolis for signs of unexplored buried tombs.

She's found some strange holes cut into an ancient mud brick wall.

I noticed there were openings here that the workers,

when they go down and come up, they put their feet.

So that means that this is a shaft.

Ola believes these holes form part of ancient steps

that workers used to climb in and out of a shaft

during construction of the tombs here.

We have a piece of stone here, a fragment.

So it is really built especially for a shaft.

A shaft could lead to an undiscovered tomb.

Her team start to excavate.

It's very, very exciting because

we don't know exactly what we'll find.

We hope to find a sarcophagus, we hope to find a statue, maybe.

Last season's finds show this site is full

of ancient treasures from the reign of Ramses.

Ohhh, ohhh! Beautiful.

And Ola thinks there are more beneath her feet.

It's not very deep yet, but we are sure that it is a shaft.

The shaft is not the only discovery to emerge from the sand.

Demotic script came into use around 600 years after Ramses reign.

Its discovery here could mean this shaft

wasn't built during the time of Ramses,

like the others in the Necropolis.

This one, this finding is a proof of a later burial.

It could be a major setback in Ola's hunt for tombs

from the time of Ramses the Great.

In the ancient city of Abydos, Egyptian archaeologist

Sameh Iskander leads a team excavating

at the first temple ever built by Ramses the Second.

This season, Sameh plans to dig in the areas surrounding the temple

to uncover what it can reveal about Ramses'

long lasting influence over the country.

We've been working here for the past 15 years

and I feel so lucky to be in charge of this project.

Abydos was one of the Ancient Egyptians' most sacred sites.

They believed Osiris, god of the afterlife, was buried here.

It was the hope of every Egyptian to come here

at least once in lifetime for prayers.

Sameh originally trained as a civil engineer,

but as a child he always dreamt of excavating in Egypt.

I did not forget my dream.

I went to New York University, I studied

archaeology, Egyptology, my dream.

And then my dream is coming true here.

During an earlier season, Sameh unearthed Ramses' temple palace

to the south of the main temple he built here. We were shocked.

We really did not expect this here.

Like other pharaohs before him,

Ramses the Second, built a temple here

dedicated to the god Osiris.

In a courtyard, he placed 26 statues in honor of the deity.

On the south side, he built the temple palace,

where he prepared for his duties as a spiritual leader

and kept provisions for the temple in 10 store rooms.

Surrounding the complex, he built a 25 foot tall wall

with an imposing granite gate.

But the temple and its palace only occupied half of the enclosed space.

Sameh's goal is to excavate the remainder of the temple complex.

Every day is a special day.

Every day there's something new.

Every day there's a new theory.

And every day, a lot of questions.

Sameh and his team dig deep trenches on the hunt for lost buildings.

Clearing away the layers of sand covering an ancient walkway,

they make a surprising discovery.

All of a sudden, we find here there's a cut in the floor.

You can see the cut all around.

Somebody cut in here and built an enclosure wall.

And inside there is a vaulted structure that's built

starts from here from this enclosure wall here, all the way there.

The vaulted structure appears to be the roof

of a building that's buried deep beneath the sand.

Sameh wants to find out if the structure was built

during or after Ramses' reign.

We're going to start to excavate now to see

if this is still intact, this wasn't disturbed.

To uncover what this structure is doing here

and what it might reveal about Egypt's greatest pharaoh

and his enduring influence over the country,

Sameh needs to unearth a way in.

For us it's very exciting.

At Deir El-Medina,

in an Acropolis high up in the hillside,

French Egyptologist Cedric Larcher

leads a team investigating several high status tombs.

Cedric has studied Ancient Egyptian civilization for 19 years

and now lives and works in Egypt.

This season, Cedric is focusing on the necropolis's most impressive tomb.

It belongs to Ramses' architect Neferhotep.

Cedric wants to investigate Neferhotep's partially excavated tomb

to see what it can reveal about Ramses' reign

and the pharaoh's enduring appeal to the Ancient Egyptians.

Next to it, a rare depiction of Ramses

reveals Neferhotep's strong personal connection to the pharaoh.

The tomb reveals Neferhotep's work for Ramses in amazing detail.

During Ramses' reign, Neferhotep was an architect

and foreman in charge of a team tasked

with building the tombs of the Valley of the Kings.

He oversaw their work, their materials and supplies.

And lived with them in the nearby workers' village.

He succeeded his father and grandfather in building tombs

and monuments for the pharaoh.

But Neferhotep had no direct descendant to follow in his footsteps.

When he died, he was buried in his ornate tomb

at the highest point in the necropolis.

In the tombs' courtyard, Cedric's team has uncovered the openings

to two intriguing vertical shafts filled with debris.

The team gets to work removing debris from the first shaft.

Cedric hopes it will lead to a burial chamber.

In the Valley of the Kings, Aliaa Ismail is hunting for clues

that could shed light on the dynasty of Ramses the Great.

Being here in the Valley of the King,

it's one of the most beautiful feelings you'd ever have.

Aliaa has worked in the valley since 2016.

She leads a team, digitally recording

the tomb of Ramses' father SETI the First.

Ramses wasn't the first king of his dynasty.

His father's lavish tomb shows he was born

into a powerful and wealthy family.

Aliaa wants to know how he built on this inheritance.

I want to know how Ramses the Great

has ensured such an incredible dynasty.

First, Aliaa explores the tomb Ramses built for his sons.

It might hold clues that reveal

how the Pharaoh crafted his dynasty.

Wow.

I've never been to this tomb before.

It's really exciting to be here.

At the end of the furthest corridor, a stunning rock-cut

statue is evidence that Ramses built this tomb.

Wow. This is an Osiris statue.

He has the crook and the flail on his arm.

It's very beautiful, very intricate.

It would have been painted, there are traces of paint on it.

The Osiris statue once bore the face of Ramses the Great.

All depictions of gods were made to look like the reigning pharaoh.

The statue helped guide the deceased into the afterlife.

It stands at the heart of a highly unusual tomb.

With over 120 near identical chambers stretching 150 feet across

and more than 270 feet deep into the rock,

it's the largest in the Valley of the Kings.

Aliaa wants to know why Ramses built such an enormous tomb.

There are a total of 16 pillars in here.

This is the biggest pillar chamber in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

This is a very long corridor and there are rooms on each side of the wall.

There's so much debris in them.

To uncover why Ramses made his sons' tomb so big,

Aliaa needs to head deeper into the maze of dark corridors.

In Abydos at Ramses' temple complex,

Sameh and his team excavate the mysterious structure

they have just discovered and search for an entrance.

You can see the marks of the hands of those masons

that built it and it runs this way.

We don't know how long it's going to go further west.

Hopefully still intact.

Hopefully it wasn't disturbed.

Sameh wants to know whether it can help reveal

more about Ramses' hold over Ancient Egypt.

Clearing away the sandy debris,

they begin to discover fragments of pottery.

What we have inside here is plaster.

Plaster was used in building the structure of the temple.

One fragment in particular catches Sameh's expert eye.

We just came across this piece, which is interesting.

It's a piece of pottery.

And inside the remains of burnt incense.

Burning incense was common practice during cult rituals.

In Ancient Egypt, cults were formed to worship a chosen god or goddess.

Cults were a popular and everyday part of Egyptian life.

The fact that we found this piece here gives us a clue

that there's some cult activity down here.

If the team can find further evidence of cult activity,

it could reveal how the temple was used.

Crucially, the discovery helped Sameh to date the structure.

Ptolemy, the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty,

which ended with Cleopatra, became Pharaoh

almost a thousand years after Ramses the Second.

The pottery is a significant discovery.

It reveals that someone a millennium later burrowed beneath

this walkway to build their structure

as close to Ramses' Temple as possible.

Sameh hopes to find out why.

After hours of digging, the team uncovers an opening

at the end of the mysterious building.

Now we're coming finally to the door.

This is the entrance.

We opened this for the first time after 2000 years. Oh, wow.

In the Valley of the Kings, Aliaa wants to understand

why Ramses built such a huge tomb for his sons

and what that reveals about how he crafted his powerful dynasty.

Oh, there's stairs here.

Where do they lead to?

Along the dark corridors, faint remnants of ancient carvings

adorn the walls, but they are badly eroded.

You can see that the salt crystals all over the place.

And you can see this is definitely water damage.

It appears that a flash flood could have taken place here.

The carved scenes could contain

vital information about the tomb, but the erosion

makes them almost impossible to decipher.

This bumpiness is all due to the water damage.

Aliaa finds a surviving section.

From what we can see here, there's a large figure

and it is followed by a smaller figure.

This is for sure Ramses'

and right next to him here would be his child.

This tomb isn't just for a few of Ramses sons.

It's for a great number of them.

The tomb contains dozens of rooms.

Many are burial chambers for sons of the King.

During his life, Ramses had over a hundred children,

more than any other Egyptian king.

He had an unusually high number of wives and consorts,

over 200 in total.

Some he married to seal foreign alliances, others to produce sons.

He fathered 52 and secured a healthy male bloodline

to succeed him on the throne.

He built the vast tomb in the Valley of the Kings to bury them together

so they could be close to their father in the afterlife.

Ramses the Second was always planning to have a big family,

and that's why he built such a huge tomb.

This seems to be his goal.

Having a tomb in the Valley of the Kings was a huge honor.

By building his son's tomb here, Ramses hoped

to give them a long and prosperous afterlife.

He looked after them in this life, too.

On the wall, Aliaa can make out the role of one son.

The kind of dress that this character

is wearing seems like priests robes.

So this would have been maybe the son of Ramses

as one of the high priests.

This was a title that would have made him

an important individual in the royal court.

Ramses gave his many sons important positions

across the country to ensure their loyalty.

These are the actions of an astute father and leader.

Next, Aliaa wants to find out how Ramses used his loyal sons

to further his reign and build his powerful dynasty.

At the Saqqara necropolis,

Ola's team has dug down 23 feet inside the new shaft,

but they are yet to reach the bottom.

Good morning.

Ola still hopes the shaft will lead

to one of Ramses' military general's tombs

and shed light on how he kept them loyal.

We begin to find bones.

It seems that we are on the verge of reaching the opening of the tomb.

We are going to find something interesting. That's sure.

Bones are a promising indication that a burial chamber is nearby.

Yes.

And this is another.

This is an amulet.

They put it on the mummy for protection.

There is a burial.

Digging further, the team reveals an opening to a chamber.

What we just found, it's an opening to the East.

Workers clear the entrance and lash together two wooden ladders

for Ola to descend into the shaft and investigate.

I hope it is safe.

Whilst the team installs the ladder, Ola takes a moment

to prepare herself for the long descent into the unknown.

This is the adrenaline that gives me the power to do that.

If it wasn't for adrenaline, I would have been.

I would have refused to go down.

The narrow shaft now descends a total of 26 feet.

A fall here could be fatal.

This is the first time I go to this shaft.

Terribly, terribly excited.

Oh!

At Deir El-Medina, Cedric's team excavates a shaft

in the courtyard of the tomb of Ramses' Neferhotep.

Cedric wants to find out what lies at the bottom of it.

Cedric hopes the shaft could reveal more

about Egypt's devotion to the great pharaoh.

But there's a problem.

The shaft's walls could collapse at any second.

After hours of careful excavation,

they reach a layer with some promising signs.

Cedric spots some intriguing clues scattered

around the base of the shaft.

Fragments of linen and bones are evidence

that mummies could be buried close by.

The draught suggests they might have found

the entrance to a chamber.

The team needs to clear enough space

for Cedric to get in and explore.

It takes two more days of excavation.

They discover what could be the entrance to a burial chamber,

but it's blocked by big boulders.

The boulders are too heavy to remove by bucket.

After careful deliberation, the team decides to try lifting the boulders out

with a heavy duty pulley rigged to a large wooden frame.

Eventually they push the pulley into position.

Workers carefully secure rope around the largest boulder

and begin to hoist it out of the shaft.

If it falls, it could kill them.

Let's go

Well.

More boulders still block his way in.

They are deep inside the entrance, so the team can't use

the rope and pulley to lift them.

Cedric needs yet another plan.

In Abydos,

Sameh and his team race to excavate the mysterious building

buried beneath the walkway at Ramses Temple.

Sameh wants to know why someone a millennium after Ramses' reign,

chose to build a structure in this location and what that can reveal

about Ramses' influence over Ancient Egypt long after his death.

We have reached the... of the entrance, it's partially open.

But the team faces a new challenge.

We have to go down very, very carefully.

Otherwise, we can disturb that wall that might actually collapse somehow.

Or who knows?

Workers carefully remove the ancient mud bricks blocking the entrance.

I hope we can find something to tell us.

What is the mindset of this period?

A thousand years after Ramses.

This vaulted structure isn't the only

curious discovery made by Sameh's team.

Elsewhere on the dig site, workers have uncovered a shocking scene.

We came across this storage area

and we found this extremely unusual find.

It's filled with these bones, mostly skulls of rams.

We counted more than 1200 ram heads.

Some of them are wrapped in fabric.

But it isn't all gruesome skulls.

We came across this beautiful bell

with its clapper and in excellent condition.

And we have here four heads of animals that represents the gods.

This was hanging from the neck of the ram and making that sound.

It's extremely, extremely unusual to find

and we're very happy with this to find it.

Sameh thinks these carcasses

are evidence of a specific cult.

It gives us an idea that this is a cult of the ram.

Ancient Egyptians saw rams as sacred symbols of fertility

and as representations of their gods.

Ram worship was prominent in southern Egypt

where they mummified rams and gave them ritual burials.

The cult of the ram eventually spread right across Egypt,

including Abydos.

This huge collection could be evidence that cult practitioners

collected ram skulls from hundreds of previous rituals

and placed them all here in a grisly mass grave.

I have a feeling that this is a single event,

that they were all collected at some point

and at a certain time in history.

They decided that this huge amount of rams heads belonged

to the revered domain of Ramses the Second.

Sameh believes the skulls were placed here

because of the temple's connection to Ramses.

Now Sameh wants to know if the vaulted structure

also contains evidence of this cult.

At the dig site, the team has safely removed

enough debris to reveal the entire entrance.

Sameh can finally enter the mysterious structure for the first time.

It's so dark in here.

In Saqqara, Ola descends a narrow,

unstable 26 foot Deep shaft to explore the new tomb.

Finally. Quite an adventure.

Ola wants to investigate whether

this tomb dates from Ramses' reign,

and if it can help reveal more about

how the king kept his generals loyal.

Ooh! Wow.

The tomb contains pottery, once full of food

and drink for the deceased.

Quite different than what I expected, but interesting.

Ola discovers several niches carved into the tomb walls.

We have lots of burials in every niche, in every one of them.

This is full of skeletons.

What is this?

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

These are the ribs here.

You have a wooden piece which proved that there was a wooden sarcophagus.

These desecrated remains are evidence

that robbers broke into the tomb

looking for treasures buried with the mummies.

They took the precious objects but left behind other grave goods.

That's very nice.

This is part of a plate.

And that's another one.

Would you like a soup?

Ola recognizes the style of pottery

and can use it to date these burials.

It might be dated to the later period, the 26th dynasty or so.

The 26th dynasty began almost 600 years after Ramses' reign.

This could explain the pottery shard with Demotic

text Ola discovered near the top of the shaft.

It's beginning to look like this tomb doesn't have

anything to do with Ramses at all.

All this needs studying.

But then Ola spots something

promising hidden amongst the buried jars.

That's interesting.

This is the beard of the sarcophagus.

That means that the person is an important one.

Usually it's a symbol of high rank.

One of the people who were around Ramses.

That's interesting.

The carved wooden beard indicates a burial of someone of high status,

possibly from the time of Ramses.

The tomb could have been built during Ramses reign after all,

and the artefacts from the 26th dynasty were placed there centuries later.

It's the time when they reused the area for burials.

It was common for Ancient Egyptians to reuse tombs

centuries after they were first built.

This makes it a challenge for Egyptologists to accurately date them.

The discovery of another tomb that could date from Ramses'

era is so tantalizing that Ola wants to dig deeper.

You know what we're going to do now?

We're going to take out the sand, which is in the niches

and take all the things that we found out and sift the sand.

There's still a mammoth amount of work to do

to uncover the full story of this tomb.

What an adventure. Woo.

But so far it suggests that Ramses rewarded

his generals with the hope of eternal life.

The promise of a lavish burial here in sacred Saqqara,

in the shadow of Egypt's first pyramid,

secured their loyalty and helped Ramses maintain his dynasty.

In Abydos, Sameh prepares to enter the 2000 year old

structure for the first time.

It is really dark and it's very difficult

to really understand what's inside.

We're going to get some light so that we can go inside.

Sameh hopes the structure, which was built a thousand years

after Ramses' death, will provide more evidence

that a cult was active here next to his temple.

And reveal more about the enduring strength

of the Pharaoh's influence over Ancient Egypt.

It's large.

It's really surprising that the ceiling is plastered

with mud in a very careful way because of

the effort of plastering it here.

It's kind of unusual.

Sameh searches for any inscriptions that might indicate

the structure's purpose, but the walls are bare.

Studying the structure's alignment, he believes the biggest clue

to the importance of this building lies in its position.

This structure was built right along

the northern wall of the temple itself, a very revered space.

So they came during the Ptolemaic period

and built this obviously for some cultic activity.

Sameh thinks this structure was likely never used.

Its position right next to Ramses' Temple suggests

the cult was worshipping Ramses himself.

Even though the structure dates to long after Ramses' death.

Usually cults of other pharaohs last for two or three centuries.

This is a thousand years.

The buried structure, the pottery and the rams' heads

are all evidence of the strength of Ramses' enduring appeal.

Sameh believes it shows the Pharaoh was being

worshipped a millennium after his death,

centuries longer than other pharaohs.

It says a lot about how important

this pharaoh was in the mindset of Egyptians.

At Deir El-Medina.

Cedric's team are into their second day trying to enter

what appears to be a chamber.

It's located at the bottom of a shaft beside

the tomb of Ramses' architect Neferhotep.

But inside the chamber's entrance,

several unstable boulders still block their passage.

The roof of the entrance tunnel blocks the team

from lifting the boulders with a pulley.

Instead, they use a makeshift ramp to slide them out of the way.

The entrance is finally clear and the smell is promising.

Entering a new tomb containing mummies can be dangerous.

The ancient bodies can carry mold that is harmful to humans.

Cedric hopes the tomb will reveal more about the strength

of Ramses' influence over the ancient Egyptians.

Whoa. Okay. Wow.

It is a burial chamber.

The end of the room is piled high with ancient remains.

A gruesome torso provides Cedric with a clue

that helps him to date some of the mummies.

Cedric believes these later Egyptians

may have chosen to be buried beneath

Neferhotep's tomb because he was Ramses' architect.

A burial here meant they too hoped to share

in Ramses' eternal glory, evidence of the enduring

strength of Ramses' godlike appeal.

So exciting to be here.

The burial chamber and these bodies are a remarkable discovery,

but one that leaves Cedric and his team with a mountain of work ahead of them.

On the Nile's East bank, Aliaa has come

to investigate the vast Luxor Temple.

Ramses' richly rewarded his sons in death with a lavish tomb.

Now Aliaa wants to find out how they helped him build

his powerful dynasty while they were still alive.

Just standing here in front of those huge columns.

You feel so small in comparison to this huge culture.

Large parts of the temple were built by Ramses

and he made sure everyone knew it.

Whenever you see the car touches of Ramses the Great,

they're always great.

Great in size, great in scale.

And you can recognize them right away because

Ramses' car touches can be seen from really far away.

Other peoples can't.

Hidden behind a row of columns,

a remarkable relief depicts 17 of Ramses' children.

Here, the second child depicted is called Ramses

and the fourth one is called Khaemweset.

And here we are looking at Merenptah.

It's quite unusual to have his children here in the temple on the wall,

but doing so, he is putting them out there

and showing the whole of Egypt who his children are.

Ramses didn't just publicly praise his children.

He gave them powerful jobs throughout his kingdom.

Ramses gave some of his sons high ranking positions in the Army

to fight alongside him in his military campaigns.

Together, they mounted attacks north of Egypt against the enemy,

Hittites, laying siege to several of their fortified cities.

He appointed other sons as high priests to lead cults

and secure his religious and political authority.

Ramses kept his sons close to him throughout his life to ensure control

over Egypt and establish his powerful dynasty.

After a 66 year long reign, Ramses died, leaving the throne

to his eldest living son, Merenptah.

Ramses ensured his dynasty would survive by conceiving more than

a hundred children and placing many of them in key positions.

He has taught those children to follow into his footsteps,

to do everything the way he envisioned.

I think that Ramses conceived as many children

as possible to make it impossible for someone

to take the throne from the Ramessides.

The King's ingenious plan paid off.

After a powerful and long lasting reign, his bloodline

remained on the throne for a further three generations.

Ancient Egyptians may have worshipped him as a god

a millennium after his death.

And even to this day, we remember Ramses the Second

as Egypt's greatest pharaoh.