Original subtitles

Buried at the back of an Ancient Egyptian tomb...

lies a mysterious sealed sarcophagus.

No one has seen inside

for over 2,000 years.

They're hoping to find a pristine mummy,

perfectly preserved for the afterlife.

Egypt.

Home of the mighty pyramids,

and the most famous tombs in the world.

These iconic structures and the mummies they contain

had a single purpose:

to help Ancient Egyptians overcome death

and achieve eternal life.

Today, archeologists across Egypt

are searching for new tombs and mummies

to understand the extraordinary lengths Egyptians went to,

to achieve life after death.

They decode the ancient rituals thought to grant immortality,

investigate how Egypt's wealthy elites

buried their dead,

and search for clues to what happened to these beliefs

as Ancient Egyptian civilization came to an end.

At the ancient settlement of Philadelphia...

Egyptian archaeologist Basem Gehad

is excavating a vast necropolis buried beneath the sand.

This is the cemetery of ancient Philadelphia

that extend all over this huge space

that was occupied for more than six centuries.

Philadelphia was once a bustling metropolis

during the era of Queen Cleopatra,

Ancient Egypt's last dynasty.

Basem has spent over eight years

sifting through the desert sand

to reveal its hidden secrets.

This site is outstanding

because it's completely packed

with thousands of tombs and graves.

During previous seasons,

Basem has found mummies and high-quality coffins

in shallow graves on the valley floor.

Oh, oh!

This season, he wants to investigate

a mysterious shaft high up in the hills above the city.

He's hoping to find an unopened tomb with mummies

that sheds light onto life after death

at the end of Ancient Egyptian civilization.

I've been studying and excavating graves and tombs

down in this flattened area,

but here up in the mountains,

they might have hidden lots of things,

lots of secrets, and that's what we want to reveal.

High up in the rugged hills

far from the valley floor,

the ancient citizens of Philadelphia

built a series of mysterious graves.

They laboriously carved holes into the solid limestone,

some of them shallow, others up to 40 feet deep.

Here, they buried their dead,

around 500 in total, entombing them in rocks.

For nearly 1,500 years,

no one had any idea that these graves existed.

What can these tombs reveal about the owners' beliefs

in the afterlife?

To uncover what lies at the bottom of the shaft,

Basem's team must piece together several ladders

to form one long enough to reach the bottom.

We are doing the proper preparation

for the rope and ladder

so that everyone will be safe maneuvering

and working around this shaft.

It looks like this shaft is really deep,

almost like 14 meters down.

No one would like to fall in this shaft,

I mean, this would be the la...

the final ticket to the afterlife.

Next, they must raise the mammoth ladder

and carefully lower it into the long, dark shaft.

With the ladder in place,

Basem prepares to make the descent into the unknown.

The moment you start to prepare yourself

to get inside the burial shafts, you get really nervous

because you have all the good thoughts

but also some bad thoughts.

The shaft is over 40 feet deep.

A fall here could be fatal.

It's really deep.

On the west bank of the Nile near Luxor...

American Egyptologist and vintage clothes enthusiast

Colleen Darnell

has come to the world-famous Valley of the Kings.

Behind each of these doors lies a rock-cut tomb

that can often go hundreds of feet into the bedrock.

Colleen wants to decode inscriptions

inside these tombs

to learn more about what the Ancient Egyptians believed

happened to them after death.

She begins at the tomb of one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs,

SETI I.

This is one of the most incredible tombs

in the Valley of the Kings.

The decoration is sumptuous.

The tomb stretches over 450 feet deep

into the hillside.

Almost every wall is covered with inscriptions.

The scenes in hieroglyphs

on the walls of this and other tombs

provide the most valuable sources for understanding

the Ancient Egyptian beliefs of the afterlife.

One wall in particular

draws Colleen's attention.

The hieroglyphs tell us that this is the ritual

for the opening of the mouth.

The opening of the mouth ceremony

was a crucial step

before the king's mummy was ceremonially

placed in its coffin and sealed in the tomb.

As the scenes continue,

offerings are made to the deceased king.

At the conclusion, not only is the mouth of the king opened

but also his eyes.

The purpose of this entire set of processes

is that so that the king after death

can live again in the afterlife.

The Ancient Egyptians believed

that when a person died, elements of their soul

became separated from their physical body.

But the spirits still needed that body in the afterlife,

so mummification made sure that the earthly remains

stayed intact and recognizable.

A priest wearing a mask

depicting the god Anubis performed rituals,

to symbolically open the deceased's eyes,

ears, and mouth.

So that when body and spirit were reunited,

the deceased was able to see, hear, and speak

in their eternal afterlife.

The Ancient Egyptians

believed that death was not the end.

With the proper preparations,

it was merely the beginning

of an immortal journey of the soul through the afterlife.

So what did the Ancient Egyptians believe

their ultimate destination was after death?

To find out, Colleen wants to investigate

another remarkable tomb

in the hidden village of Deir el-Medina.

At the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus,

100 miles south of Cairo...

a Spanish archeological team

led by Esta Pons Mellado and Maite Mascort Roca

is excavating a vast necropolis.

Esther and Maite

work for different Spanish institutions,

but every year they join forces for a dig season in Egypt.

They have worked together at this site for over 20 years.

Oxyrhynchus was a rich burial site

used by wealthy Ancient Egyptians

from the era following Tutankhamun

to the age of Alexander the Great, and beyond.

This season, Esther and Maite

plan to excavate a new section of the necropolis.

They're looking for mummies that tell them

how Egypt's wealthy elite prepared their dead.

The team gets to work

removing layers of windblown sand and debris

from the new unexplored area of the site.

The shaft marks the presence

of an unexplored tomb.

The tomb appears to be a large 11-foot-deep hole

cut into the rocky ground.

Sand and debris still cover the tomb's floor.

The workers quickly clear

the loose sand from the tomb.

Esther heads down to investigate.

The tomb is bare

but a pile of rocky debris

appears to be blocking a void at the back.

Esther begins to document the void,

but quickly spots an issue.

Esther needs to have the rocky ceiling inspected

before it's safe to continue working

in this part of the tomb.

Only then can she find out what lies hidden behind the debris.

High in the mountains near ancient Philadelphia...

Basem is descending a narrow 44-foot-deep shaft

to explore a new tomb.

What we are looking at now is the core of the mountains.

He's hoping to find a burial chamber

with grave goods and mummies

that date from the end of Ancient Egyptian civilization.

At the bottom, Basem can finally explore.

I'm really excited to investigate

what could be inside this room.

This is a Ptolemaic period oil lamp.

It was placed in this small niche during the funeral

and placing of the mummy and the coffins in this room.

It's really unique because finding this material in context

is something really rare.

The oil lamp is a clue that the tomb

dates from the very end of Ancient Egyptian civilization.

It means someone must be buried here.

Imagine yourself placing one of your family members,

his coffin

and his mummy inside this room.

It must have been really dark.

This is really something special.

Two thousand years ago,

the Ancient Egyptians only had ropes

to haul themselves and the mummy

in and out of the tomb.

It would have been difficult and very dangerous.

At the other end of the chamber,

Basem can explore no further.

This looks nearly five meters long,

so it's a really big room.

This is an enormous amount of work that has to be done

to take out all of this sand from here.

Basem's team gets to work

removing debris from the tomb.

It's slow going.

Just like the Ancient Egyptians,

they can only remove the sand one bucket at a time.

The workers spot something buried beneath the sand.

It seems that we dropped into a place

where there's sort of pottery assemblage.

We need to clean all of this debris

and then we start taking it out.

We need to get this pottery as complete as we can see it now.

At the Oxyrhynchus Necropolis...

the ceiling in Esther's tomb has been inspected for safety.

And they have been given the all-clear

to continue excavation work.

Esther is searching for mummies that tell her

how Egypt's wealthy elite prepared their dead.

Under the debris pile at the back of the tomb,

the team has made an astonishing discovery.

The skeletons of three adults and one child

are covered in fragments of painted funerary wrappings.

Being buried without a coffin or sarcophagus

indicates that this was a poor, low-status burial.

And that's not all.

Beneath the skeletons,

Esther can make out two stone sarcophagi.

Crucially, their lids are still sealed.

Sarcophagi like these

were only used by the wealthiest Egyptian elites.

It's an incredibly rare and valuable discovery.

To find out what secrets lie

inside the sealed sarcophagi,

Esther's team must first document

and carefully remove the mummies on top.

But on the surface, the weather takes a turn for the worse.

A sandstorm could blow sand into the open tomb

and jeopardize the team's delicate work.

Near Luxor,

Colleen is traveling to the remains

of the ancient village and necropolis of Deir el-Medina.

She wants to understand what the Ancient Egyptians

hoped awaited them in the afterlife.

This remote village

was home to the skilled craftsmen

who built the pharaohs' tombs in the Valley of the Kings.

Colleen heads to the tomb of one of the stonemasons.

Despite its relatively small size,

it's elaborately decorated.

This is a beautiful scene showing an idealized,

agricultural landscape

from plowing and sowing

to the abundance of plant life along the Nile.

This text tells us the name of this agricultural paradise.

It's the Field of Reeds.

The Field of Reeds is one of the ways in which the Egyptians

could imagine the pleasurable aspects of the afterlife.

The Field of Reeds

is an eternal green land of plenty,

a perfect version of earthly life.

Like the Nile Delta, it is a fertile haven

where crops will always grow, and magical laborers

harvest and till the land for the deceased souls.

Here, the immortal souls can live

an everlasting life of luxury,

hunting and fishing for leisure.

But this idyllic paradise

wasn't furnished with any home comforts,

something the Ancient Egyptians had to remedy themselves.

Today this tomb is empty, but when it was first discovered

it was intact, crammed full of objects

that had been untouched for thousands of years.

The tomb was discovered in 1886.

The original excavators kept meticulous records

of everything they uncovered.

There are dozens of items in the list.

A lot of them were intended for the burial,

specifically made to be placed in the tomb.

Some of my favorite are the tools

the tomb owner used in life, his sandals and walking sticks,

items that he wanted to have with him in the afterlife.

The Ancient Egyptians believed

that any earthly possessions they put inside their tomb

would travel with them to the afterlife.

Beneath the temple-like tomb exterior,

the vaulted burial chamber was richly decorated with murals

depicting the deceased's life.

The tomb owner's coffin was one of many

including members of his family,

all stacked on top of one another.

The rest of the tomb was packed with furniture,

including a special funerary bed, chair, and six stools.

The floor was littered with ceramics and boxes

containing cosmetics.

It was the family's earthly possessions,

all crammed into the space of a removal van,

ready to take with them and use in the afterlife.

But Colleen spots another scene

that suggests a luxurious eternity in the afterlife

surrounded by your favorite things wasn't guaranteed.

This scene shows knife-wielding gods

that guard the portals to the underworld.

For the Ancient Egyptians, even if your mummy

was perfectly prepared,

there were still challenges before you reached

the celestial realm.

To understand what dangers

awaited the deceased on their journey to the afterlife,

Colleen wants to travel to one of Ancient Egypt's

most unusual structures.

In Philadelphia...

Basem's team has nearly finished

clearing several tons of sand from the tomb.

And they've made a major discovery.

What we have here is two amazing pottery coffins.

The pottery coffins could provide Basem

with valuable evidence of burial practices and beliefs

at the end of Ancient Egyptian civilization.

The team's working to understand and investigate

what was inside this coffin.

We have plenty of sand and soil

that we need to work really carefully.

We already started to find some skeleton remains

like this sternum bone.

To understand more

about the coffins and their owners,

Basem plans to remove one from the tomb

and take it to his lab for analysis.

But moving a fragile 2,000-year-old pottery coffin

will be an immense challenge.

I'm really amazed how they have managed to get the coffin

and the mummy down to this room.

I'm also willing to test the reverse of this process,

taking one of the coffins up to the surface.

The team below carefully removes

the remaining soil and bones from the coffin.

Up top, Basem gets ready to oversee the lift.

The plan is that we will prepare a...

almost the same size wooden box that was reinforced with beams,

and then using the rope we will take it

from the burial chamber up to the surface.

There's a lot of tension in this job to get it done properly.

We don't want to lose the, the coffin.

In the tomb below,

the team carefully secures the fragile coffin

in the padded box.

Up on the surface, Basem and the workers

prepare the winch.

We have to go back to the old school

using the rope to take it up,

the same way that the Ancient Egyptians used ropes

to descend in this burial chamber.

It's a reverse process of what was going on 2,000 years ago.

Finally, everything is set.

Basem gives the go-ahead to begin the lift.

In Abydos...

Colleen wants to investigate what challenges

the Ancient Egyptians had to overcome

to reach the afterlife.

Abydos was important for Ancient Egyptian kings

because it was the location of the burials

of the first kings of Egypt,

and it was very significant for their beliefs in the afterlife.

Colleen explores an unusual structure

called The Assyrian.

I've been studying this monument for years

but it's the first time I've been inside.

It's absolutely amazing!

Like SETI I's tomb in the Valley of the Kings,

the passageways are decorated with elaborate scenes

etched into the walls.

This is the God Osiris

represented dozens of times on the walls,

and here is his important title "Heka Duat,"

Lord of the Underworlds.

Osiris was one of Egypt's founding gods

and lord of a dark underworld realm called The Duat.

In a passageway nearby,

Colleen inspects a series of reliefs

that paint a picture of Osiris' underworld realm.

They describe the Sun God Ra's nightly journey

through Osiris' underworld

and his passage through 12 gates.

The same journey the soul of the deceased

had to make to reach the afterlife.

This is the text that we know

as the Book of Gates.

There are 12 massive portals or gates

through which the Sun God must pass

and they represent the 12 hours of the nightly journey.

To reach the afterlife,

a person's soul had to follow the Sun God

and make a long and difficult journey

through the lands of the underworld.

They had to cross a lake of fire

that was patrolled by four fearsome baboons

who could only be appeased by reciting the correct spell.

And they needed to confront a giant serpent

who represented Apep, the God of Darkness and Chaos.

At the end of their journey,

they had to face the greatest challenge of all,

the Lord of the Underworld, Osiris himself.

The journey through the underworld

was a perilous one for Ancient Egyptian souls.

The deceased's soul was aided and guided

by the Sun God Ra on its dangerous journey.

But if they made it through the underworld,

even Ra couldn't help them with the final reckoning.

In order to enjoy a blessed afterlife,

the deceased first had to pass the Judgement Hall.

To learn more about what final test

awaited the deceased's soul,

Colleen needs to decode some ominous hieroglyphs.

At the Necropolis of Ancient Philadelphia...

Basem and his team slowly lift

the fragile 2,000-year-old coffin from the tomb below.

The coffin could contain valuable evidence of beliefs

and rituals at the end of Ancient Egyptian civilization.

The shaft is less than 10 feet wide

and the walls are fragile.

A slip with the box here could cause the walls to collapse,

trapping the workers below.

Finally, we did it. Reborn of the coffin.

The team prepares to take the coffin

back to base camp.

It's been very stressful doing this job.

Finally, we can call it a day

and we are ready now to take it to the dig house

so that we can study.

Basem will now clean the coffin

and analyze the bones

to try and unlock their secrets.

In Abydos,

Colleen is exploring

the long, dark passageway beneath the Assyrian.

She searches the walls for clues to the final test

a person's soul must pass

before they can spend an eternity in the afterlife.

This is a representation

of the judgment hall of Osiris.

What awaited the soul of the deceased.

And one of the key elements of this scene is a set of scales.

Here the scale pans are empty, but if this were

at the judgment of an individual person,

one pan would have the Feather of Truth,

and the other pan would have the heart of the deceased,

weighing whether or not a person had lived a moral life.

By weighing the preserved heart,

Osiris would determine how a person lived their life.

A pure heart

that had lived a virtuous life would be light,

and balance with the Feather of Truth.

For an Ancient Egyptian,

this was the ticket to eternal life,

with the Sun God Ra himself leading them into paradise.

But if the heart was heavy,

weighed down by guilt or wrongdoing,

Amit the Devourer would eat it,

condemning the soul to live in hell.

The Ancient Egyptians feared that

if the soul did not pass Osiris' test,

they would be damned forever.

Here we have the people who have died a second death.

They have been set on fire

and are condemned to spend eternity upside down.

Failing Osiris' final judgment

was a fate the Ancient Egyptians

feared more than anything else.

But if they passed, a tranquil life of luxury

in the Field of Reeds awaited.

What determined whether or not the Egyptians enjoyed

an eternal paradise,

was the morality and the decisions

that they made during their earthly lives.

At Oxyrhynchus...

The sandstorm has passed

and the sun beats down on the workers once again.

In the tomb,

the anthropologists have removed the skeletons.

Esther and Maite are thoroughly documenting

the outside of the sarcophagus before they open it.

They hope the sarcophagus

will contain a wealthy Ancient Egyptian elite's mummy.

But before the team opens the lid,

they need to put on protective masks.

Sealed ancient burials like this

can contain dangerously harmful bacteria and mold.

Now, Esther and Maite can finally open the sarcophagus

and reveal any secrets hidden inside.

Esther spots a problem with the lid.

No. No, no.

Fearing the lid could crumble

onto whatever lies inside the sarcophagus,

Esther and Maite decide to call for specialist help.

Bernard confirms that they can't risk

taking out the sarcophagus lid in one go,

so they carefully remove it piece by piece instead.

At the Oxyrhynchus Necropolis...

the team carefully removes the final pieces

of the fragile sarcophagus lid.

It's a stunning find:

an intact and richly decorated high-status mummy.

The mummy is covered

in an elaborately painted funerary wrapping

called a cartonnage.

Its colors are still vivid after more than 2,000 years

sealed away inside the sarcophagus.

The mummy's opulent cartonnage

indicates that this Ancient Egyptian

was part of the wealthy elite.

The exquisite decoration offers a valuable insight

into how wealthy Ancient Egyptians

prepared for their afterlife.

The cartonnage was mostly made

from linen or papyrus, covered in plaster.

It was molded to the shape of the mummy beneath.

The mask was specially painted to resemble the deceased,

with gold skin and blue hair symbolizing divine status.

They decorated the broad collar with a winged sun

representing power and godliness.

And on the abdomen was the winged goddess Nut,

who protected the deceased.

Mimicking many elements of a royal burial,

a cartonnage gave wealthy Egyptians

the best chance of reaching the divine afterlife.

This wealthy individual could have afforded

a rich and comfortable life,

and they used their wealth

to ensure their death was comfortable too.

At Basem's base camp in Philadelphia...

the team is analyzing the pottery coffin,

grave goods, and the skeleton found inside the tomb.

Basem hopes they offer clues to Ancient Egyptian beliefs

at the end of the civilization.

Now we know that he's a male

from the investigation of the skull

and also the pelvis.

Looking through the teeth here it's clear

that he has a very condition teeth,

meaning that he was fed very well.

The teeth indicate this was a wealthy individual

who could afford a substantial diet,

a theory supported by the size of the man's coffin.

This is one of the largest examples of the pottery coffin

that we have ever found in this cemetery,

so this gigantic coffin was made specifically for this guy.

The collection of the material,

including the human remains, coffin,

and everything fits very well with the early Ptolemaic Period.

These people might have been those who witnessed

the early days of Philadelphia.

Basem believes the coffin, grave goods,

and partially mummified remains

date from near the end of Ancient Egyptian civilization.

But the tomb's deep shaft cut into the bedrock,

and evidence of mummification, are much older burial practices

that were popular for thousands of years.

People were keen on having the same kind of rituals,

and were following the same tradition

of the Pharaonic Period during the early Ptolemaic Period.

The Ptolemaic Period

was ruled by a dynasty of Greek pharaohs.

But Basem finds no evidence of Greek influence

amongst the objects from the tomb.

So one of the interesting finds that we have found

is this pot with the coin inside.

Placing this coin into the coffin is really important.

Placing a coin with the deceased

was originally an Egyptian burial custom.

But the practice went on

to become a popular Greek tradition.

It's like the ticket for the afterlife.

Basem's finds reveal

that even at the end of Ancient Egyptian civilization,

belief in an afterlife was fundamental.

And how your body was treated and the tomb you were buried in

were critical to achieving immortality.

This belief was so strong

that it even influenced later civilizations.

They don't consider death as the end of anything.

They consider death as a gate for another life.

Today, archeologists are uncovering new information

about the elaborate rituals and vast resources

Ancient Egyptians devoted to achieving life after death.

The wealthiest filled their tombs with offerings

and covered their bodies in lavish cartonnages,

so the gods would help them on their way.

And at the end of a 3,000-year-long civilization,

an obsession with living for eternity

was still one of their most fundamental beliefs.

In some ways, they succeeded.

Their elaborate tombs and mummified remains

are one reason their stories are still told today.