Original subtitles

Narrator: In the barren desert of northern egypt

In an ancient royal cemetery.

Naunton: Oh goodness me.

Narrator: An astonishing discovery has been made.

Naunton: It's quite a moment to be here,

It's quite a weird feeling!

Narrator: Egyptian archeologists have uncovered

A burial chamber that once sat beneath a pyramid.

And it's still sealed with a 10-ton capstone.

Naunton: This is a sort of once in a lifetime opportunity.

Whatever's inside might still be intact.

That's what you dream about as an egyptologist.

Narrator: The chamber is about to be opened

Naunton: This block is definitely moving now.

Narrator: To reveal its secrets for the first time

In almost 4,000 years.

Naunton: That's not what I was expecting.

Narrator: What is inside?

And who was buried here?

Naunton: Whatever is inside the burial chamber

Has the potential to tell us huge amounts.

Narrator: Solving the mystery

Is a team of the world's leading egyptologists.

El shazly: I think of egyptian history

Or any history as a big puzzle.

Narrator: They will hunt for parallels

In the nearby black pyramid.

Lehner: This is not very secure.

Narrator: Never before filmed,

What does it reveal about our pyramid?

Lehner: We come onto something really beautiful.

Narrator: And what secrets will this startling

New discovery reveal about one of egypt's

Most mysterious ages?

Dahshur, 15 miles south of cairo,

It's one of egypt's most mysterious royal graveyards.

Today only a handful of pyramids survive.

But the remains of many more

Lie hidden beneath the desert sands.

Egyptologist dr. Chris naunton has spent his career

Hunting for these lost tombs.

He has come to dahshur where egyptian archeologists

Have made a thrilling discovery.

Naunton: This is a pretty exciting moment.

We're in this amazing kind of lunar landscape.

This is the bent pyramid, just slightly closer to us,

And what's known as the red pyramid behind it.

But we're going to a much less well-known part of the site,

Where something very intriguing, to say the least,

Has been uncovered just very recently.

Narrator: This crater was the site of a large quarry

Until workers stumbled upon blocks

Of finely cut limestone buried deep in the sand.

Egypt's ministry of antiquities began to excavate,

Revealing an ancient monument.

Naunton: We had no suspicion at all that there was anything here

Up until this point.

And yet just in the last few weeks and months

An entire archeological site, stone built,

Has suddenly emerged out of the ground.

There are some very large blocks of limestone.

There are some mud brick overlying this.

There's a strong possibility,

Straight away I think we can say,

That this is a pyramid.

Narrator: It may not look much like a pyramid now,

But this is just its base.

A mud brick structure once stood on top,

Encased in brilliant white limestone.

Naunton: This is the casing stone for the pyramid.

Narrator: Over millennia the valuable limestone

Was scavenged, leaving the mud brick core to erode.

Naunton: In actual fact it was always the subterranean elements

Of these monuments that are the interesting parts.

Narrator: The mud brick construction,

With a burial chamber hidden in the rock beneath,

Was a new way of building pyramids

Adopted in the middle kingdom.

500 years after the construction of the great pyramid,

It stretched from around 2030 to 1650 bc,

Before the reign of the new kingdom boy king, tutankhamen.

Naunton: Oh, goodness me, ha.

I'm going to have to get down and have a closer look

At this, I think.

Narrator: Excavations have revealed a passage

That once led from the entrance to deep under the pyramid.

Naunton: We've got these very large blocks of limestone,

Which are very finely cut and dressed.

They're also beautifully angled to create this incline,

Which allows access from the outside

Down into these lower parts of the tomb

Via this quite beautiful staircase.

It's really difficult not to imagine those priests

And the other people involved in those rituals

Leaving the monument exactly this way.

Going out towards the surface, sealing the tomb

And for this passageway then never to have been

Entered ever again.

So, the tomb continues.

Narrator: The stairs lead to an underground complex,

The heart of the pyramid.

Naunton: It's a little bit difficult to say straight away.

Just looking at these stones exactly,

Exactly where we are at this point.

But it's difficult not to think

That we're heading towards this massive chunk of granite.

These are covering a cavity underneath

And that is where you might expect there to be a burial.

Narrator: These huge blocks are protecting

The only access to the chamber,

And any mummy and treasure that may be hidden inside.

And unlike any other pyramid found so far,

It still appears to be sealed.

Naunton: There's no obvious point of entry for any robbers.

There's no sign of the robbers have tried

To bash a hole through the side.

And of course, part of the reason for choosing

Very large blocks of a very heavy stone

Like granite or like quartzite

Was that they'd be impossible to move.

Who knows, whatever is inside might still be intact.

And that would be sensational.

This is a sort of a once in a lifetime opportunity.

It doesn't happen that you get to a site like this

And you get to uncover something which potentially

Has been untouched for what would be about 4,000 years.

Narrator: Egypt's ministry of antiquity

Has granted permission to raise the capstone

To reveal what lies within.

The operation is led by the director-general of dahshur,

Archeologist adel okasha.

For adel and his team, it's a unique find.

Okasha: We discovered more than 100 pyramids in egypt.

I think there is not any pyramid have intact burial chamber.

It's exciting. Naunton: Very exciting.

Okasha: Yeah, very exciting.

Narrator: By the time this tomb was built,

The egyptians had been burying their dead in pyramids

For over a thousand years.

Naunton: The egyptians knew by this point that

They had a devil of job

Trying to protect their royal burials.

The whole point of this was to make this impregnable.

Narrator: Weighing some 10 tons,

The capstone is heavier than they thought.

So they reinforce the crane.

Naunton: One of the things that's really fascinating about

Seeing this, is essentially a lot of guys,

A lot of rope and then some sleds.

It's not very different from the way the egyptians

Would have done this 4,000 years ago.

People have this idea that egyptian funerary monuments,

It's all very quiet, it's all very sacred.

It wasn't like that.

It wasn't like that.

When they were building monuments, it was like this.

Narrator: Finally, the stone begins to move.

The team are moments away from seeing inside.

Naunton: A bit of an indiana jones moment this.

To watch the director of the site

With his head underneath this massive block,

Which is just hanging off these chains.

We've got so little evidence of intact burials of any kind,

Particularly not of royal individuals,

Particularly not from this period.

I mean, just to read the name,

If it's there, just to read the name

Of whoever it was who was buried in here

Would be beyond exciting.

I think it would make me feel as though I was, kind of,

Close to a pharaoh, if you like.

That's, that's what you dream about as an egyptologist.

Narrator: The newly discovered pyramid

Is about to reveal its secrets.

In dahshur, northern egypt,

Archeologists open a pyramid's sealed burial chamber.

Finally, after three days of effort,

The tomb gives up its secrets

For the first in almost 4,000 years.

But what's inside is a shock.

Naunton: Oh goodness me!

Narrator: Its contents are in disarray.

Naunton: There's a decorated wooden box inside there,

And its position suggests that it's not exactly

Where you would expect it to have been.

There's a niche at the back.

Perhaps it's fallen down, perhaps it's been disturbed.

There's also a lot of debris on the ground

So it's going to be a while I think

Before we can untangle what's going on.

Narrator: The archeologists hoped

To be unveiling treasure.

But now there's a mystery to solve.

Naunton: It seems the burial chamber was completely intact,

There was no way that anybody could have got in

And everything should be still in place.

And it's not, it's disturbed and there are things missing.

Narrator: It's becoming clear they've stumbled upon

An ancient crime scene.

Someone got here first and robbed the burial chamber.

But could there still be a body?

Archeologist adel okasha begins a forensic investigation.

Naunton: Whatever is inside the burial chamber

Has the potential to tell us huge amounts.

Narrator: First, they shore up the 10-ton capstone

And protect themselves against any ancient bacteria

That may be inside the tomb.

Carefully sifting through the debris on the floor

They find their first clue.

Naunton: Looks a coffin lid.

Anthropoid coffin, human form.

Narrator: Anthropoid coffins resemble the shape

And face of their occupant.

They were first adopted during the middle kingdom.

But this coffin lid is badly damaged.

Naunton: It looks like there's lots of pieces coming out.

It may well be possible to re-assemble more of it.

Narrator: They don't see any signs of a mummy,

But there are bones, so someone was buried here.

Naunton: This is a long way away from an intact

Preserved human body.

But most pyramids belong to pharaohs,

So your first assumption would be it belongs to a king.

Narrator: Most intriguing is the largest item.

A decorated wooden box.

Naunton: The box looks like a canopic box.

Narrator: Once it would have held four jars,

Each containing the mummified lungs,

Stomach, intestines, and liver.

These are all missing.

But on the side of the box,

Traces of hieroglyphs may be the archeologist's best shot

At solving the mystery.

Naunton: If they can be read at all,

There's a good chance we might find

The name of the owner.

I mean this would be crucial.

Potentially this is the key to understanding

Who was buried here.

Okasha: Very exciting.

First impression, it's from a member of the royal family.

I think we need more study to be sure exactly

Who is inside this pyramid.

Narrator: With the artifacts removed,

It's clear there are no passageways or tunnels

Into the burial chamber.

The only way in is by lifting the capstone.

And there's no evidence it's been moved

Since the tomb was sealed.

Naunton: There are two questions here

That we need to start trying to answer.

One is who was buried here?

Who was this pyramid built for?

And then secondly, how is it that an apparently

Completely sealed, unbreeched burial chamber

Comes to have been disturbed?

Narrator: The investigation begins in cairo

At the only wonder of the ancient world

Still standing today.

The great pyramid of giza,

Built some 500 years before the newly discovered pyramid

And over twice the size.

Lehner: The scale of the job is just astounding to me.

Narrator: Renowned egyptologist dr. Mark lehner

Is investigating its construction.

What can it tell us about the newly discovered pyramid

And how it was disturbed?

Lehner: The new pyramid comes at the tail end

Of a great tradition of pyramid building,

And the great pyramid of khufu is the absolute pinnacle

And it was unsurpassed.

They never achieved this magnificence and perfection

In any pyramid that followed.

Narrator: Like the newly discovered pyramid,

It too was once cased in brilliant white limestone.

Rather than a mud brick core,

It's built from over two million blocks of stone.

But like every other pyramid found,

The tomb raiders got here first.

Lehner: The ironic thing about a pyramid is

It secures the royal burial within,

And yet it's advertises that the royal burial is right here.

So, why build pyramids at all?

Well we think that at this time in egypt's history

The kings were becoming gods.

They were truly merging their identity with that of the sun.

Now you see this pyramid with all the casing stripped.

It looks rather dark and you see

The stepped stone of the core.

But when it was cased with polished white limestone

The sunlight must have been truly blinding

Off the pyramid all during the day.

And so, in effect burying the king within the pyramid

With its highly reflective surface,

They are burying the king in sunlight itself.

Narrator: The ancient egyptians believed the pharaoh

Had to be laid to rest with his treasures of gold

To take to the afterlife.

His body was preserved with salt, embalmed in oils,

Covered with jewels, and bound in linen.

Now the challenge was protecting all these riches.

Lehner: They somehow had to secure the body of the king

In the darkest, deepest, dankest place

That they could create.

Narrator: While the newly discovered pyramid

Had its burial chamber underground,

In the great pyramid it is high in its structure,

Reached by an ascending passage known as the grand gallery.

Lehner: The grand gallery is one of the most amazing

Architectural marvels in the entire ancient world.

It's eight meters tall with corbelled walls

That bring the sides of the chamber

Into the same width above as this passage down below.

Narrator: It ends in a tunnel.

Like the newly discovered pyramid,

It was once sealed with a stone.

Lehner: The king's chamber, the heart of the pyramid,

Presumably where they buried khufu.

Nobody was meant to come in here.

This was never meant to be seen once the pyramid was sealed.

But the only object we have from khufu's burial

Is this granite sarcophagus.

Narrator: The first records of khufu's burial chamber

Being opened are from over a thousand years ago.

Just like our pyramid, the mummy and treasure were missing.

Lehner: It happens more than once

That we come into a royal tomb,

Newly discovered, it seems perfectly sealed,

We open it and it's not what we expect.

Narrator: At the great pyramid there were no clues

As to what happened to the treasure.

But at the newly discovered pyramid,

The thieves left a whole host of artifacts

For the team to analyze.

Just outside the entrance, a new clue emerges.

An alabaster stone, engraved with hieroglyphs.

Could it provide evidence as to who was buried here?

Professor aidan dodson, an expert in ancient texts,

Is examining the stone.

Dodson: It contains fairly awfully written chunk

Of some standard funerary inscriptions

And these inscriptions include the cartouches,

Which are these ovals in which

An egyptian pharaoh's names are written in.

And so, you've got a group of three signs at the top there,

Which read amen.

Two signs which together read y.

And then at the bottom you have two signs there

Which together read qemau.

King ameny qemau.

The problem is that we already have

The pyramid of ameny qemau

Which was found back in the 1950s,

About a mile away from this pyramid.

So, the big question is what on earth is this doing here?

Narrator: There is one possible answer.

To fool tomb raiders,

Sometimes pharaohs built decoy pyramids.

Lehner: It's almost like in a motorcade.

You don't want people to know

In which car the ruler is riding.

So, they built different pyramids like a shell game.

You don't really want people to know

Where the king is actually buried.

Narrator: But in the newly discovered pyramid,

There were bones.

So, someone was buried here.

Shards of wood found on the tomb floor

Are about to reveal their identity.

And change the course of the investigation.

In cairo, egyptologist dr. Yasmin el shazly

Is investigating the mystery of a newly discovered pyramid.

El shazly: I think of egyptian history or any history

As a big puzzle, and the puzzle will never be complete,

But we keep finding pieces

And these pieces add to the whole picture.

Narrator: Fragments of a wood found in the burial chamber

Have been pieced together.

They form a coffin lid with a beautifully carved face.

El shazly: Coffins normally had features that were similar

To the owner, but idealized.

Because that's what they would look like for eternity.

Why would you, why would I want to look ugly for eternity?

Narrator: The restoration has revealed

Something astonishing.

This isn't a king.

It is in fact a mystery woman.

El shazly: She's wearing the hathor wig

That was very popular during the middle kingdom,

And was only worn by women.

But why she was buried in that pyramid is a mystery.

Narrator: The answer may lie with another object

Found in her grave.

A chest, decorated with hieroglyphs.

Could they reveal the mystery woman's name?

El shazly: What's extremely important about this chest

Is that we know that it belonged to a princess,

Because here it says ,

Daughter of the king,

And then it would be followed by the name.

Narrator: So the pyramid belonged to a princess.

But who is she?

El shazly: The name is the most damaged area,

Which is very frustrating.

The ancient egyptians believed that the worst thing

You could possibly do to anyone was erase their name.

If we managed to find her name

And say it again then she would achieve immortality.

Narrator: It's not just her name that's a mystery.

Discovering a princess in a pyramid is highly unusual.

Dodson: This kind of pyramid design is specific to a king.

It's not what you'd expect a junior member

Of the royal family to be in.

Normally a princess would simply have a shaft tomb

With a chamber at the bottom of it.

Which makes the whole thing a real mystery.

Narrator: To understand more about the princess,

The team must investigate the age she lived in,

Egypt's middle kingdom.

These models from the time give us a window into her world.

Stretching from 2030 to 1650 bc,

It's known as egypt's classical age.

It produced the first historical novel

Called "the story of sinuhe."

And new techniques of working with gold

To create the finest jewelry of the ancient world.

Locked in cairo museum are the treasures

Of another middle kingdom princess.

El shazly: We have here the crown of

Princess khnumet from dahshur.

It's made out of gold and inlaid with semi-precious stones

And here at the front you have a branch

With very, very intricate leaves and flowers.

This necklace is very delicate

And very intricately decorated.

This for example is the symbol of life, the ankh,

And this one, this is a very famous amulet as well,

It's the eye of horus, that helps protect the wearer.

The newly discovered tomb probably contained material

Very similar to this; a lot of gold.

Which is probably why it would have been robbed

A long time ago.

Narrator: This jewelry survived,

Because princess khnumet was buried in a hidden tomb.

But our mystery princess was buried

In her own personal pyramid,

Which suggests she could have been of great importance.

Dodson: There is a parallel when a princess was buried

In her own pyramid and this was a princess who seems

To have been marked out to be a potential heir

To the throne, but died prematurely.

Narrator: Could our princess have been lined up

To be a pharaoh?

If she had become ruler, her name would have been listed

In one of the most important documents for egyptologists,

The turin canon.

Dodson: It is a chronicle of ancient egyptian kings

From the days of the gods

All the way through to the 1300 bc.

However, it's all a bit knocked around,

An awful lot of it's missing unfortunately.

But fortunately, this is the period

We are talking about here.

Narrator: Aidan can find no records

Of a female pharaoh in this section.

But an inscription at the pyramid tells us

Her father is pharaoh ameny qemau.

Dodson: Ameny qemau is in this chunk here,

Which means in our terms

Somewhere in the first half of the 18th century bc.

Narrator: This means that ameny qemau,

And therefore our mystery princess,

Lived towards the end of the middle kingdom,

When the prosperous age was coming to an end.

Famine and hunger were rife.

Naunton: We are getting towards a very difficult time for egypt.

There were a series of low niles, crop failures,

And that has tended in egyptian history

To bring about turmoil of other kinds.

In these circumstances you can imagine people

Taking what opportunities they could.

When you have burials with precious objects,

Precious metals, tomb robbery would become,

Perhaps, very appealing to some people.

Narrator: Even torture and execution

Wasn't enough deterrent.

So the newly discovered pyramid

Was built with the tightest security of the age.

But how did thieves crack it?

In dahshur, northern egypt,

Dr. Chris naunton is investigating

How thieves breached

The security of a newly discovered pyramid.

Naunton: Err oh, this is a bit of a surprise,

But very intriguing.

I'm just going to go in here.

Narrator: He's examining two trenches

On either side of the burial chamber.

Naunton: Every archeologist's friend,

A mobile phone with a torch on it.

You might think that this would be

An obvious entry point for a potential robber

Because this leads directly to the burial chamber.

But if anyone did and try and get in this way

They didn't get anywhere because there's very solid wall

Of granite right in front of me.

My guess is that these may

Have been to do with lowering the large granite stones in.

These were lowered into place by this sand hydraulics.

Narrator: Sand hydraulics was the ultimate

Ancient locking device.

First, they pushed the 10-ton stone onto wooden props,

Which sat in stone chimneys filled with sand.

To seal the tomb, they removed plugs at the bottom.

Naunton: Which has the effect of lowering

The final stone into place,

Perfectly in position in such a way

As for it to be impossible for it to be raised up again.

So, there is no way that any robber

Would have taken the lid off as it where,

Taken what they wanted and then put it back in place

Nicely as if to say nothing to see here.

So how can it be that the burial came to be violated?

Narrator: The answer could lie just a mile away,

At the black pyramid.

Its construction resembles that of the princess's pyramid,

So may hold clues to how it was looted.

Once it was clad with limestone,

But that's long gone, leaving its mud-brick core to erode.

Lehner: Although today the pyramid is this

Standing black tower

Surrounded by a slump of disintegrated mud brick,

The substructure, the interior, is truly amazing.

Narrator: Underground lies the most complex

Labyrinth of the age.

But in the troubled late middle kingdom

Even this was robbed.

How the thieves got in will help solve the mystery

Of the newly discovered pyramid.

Lehner: So dr. Ayman-- dr. Ayman: Hello, doctor.

Lehner: We meet again. Dr. Ayman: Nice to meet you.

How you are again? Lehner: How's it looking?

Narrator: Dr. Mark lehner has special permission

To explore it.

Lehner: So dr. Ayman, it's okay to go in?

Dr. Ayman: Yes please, but take care of the humidity,

And if you feel tired, just take a rest.

Lehner: Take a rest, all right, thank you,

Thank you so much.

Dr. Ayman: I'll be waiting for you here.

Lehner: I will be back, I hope.

Thank you.

Narrator: This is the first time cameras

Have ever been allowed inside.

Straight away it's clear that the stone staircase

And limestone passages

Echo those at newly discovered princess's pyramid.

But what other clues to our mystery lie within?

Lehner: So I have to tell you it's the first time

I've been down here in 36 years.

It's so humid.

The humidity and the warmth here is astounding.

Narrator: The labyrinth was built for the pharaoh

Amenemhet iii and his queens in the 19th century bc.

Lehner: Well, we have a number of choices.

There's a king's section.

And there's a queen's section.

So, I'm going to try and figure out

What is the right turn to get into the king's section.

Narrator: King amenemhet's wing is situated

To the north of pyramid,

A bewildering system of passageways and dead ends.

Lehner: He wants to make it complicated

To confuse any would-be robbers

And to set them off false trails.

To take them to dead ends.

To snare them in deep shafts.

They are trying any number of ways

To secure the king's royal burial.

Narrator: But the complexity of the underground labyrinth

Came at a price.

Lehner: Everywhere you can see the signs of structural failure.

You can see where stones are literally buckling out.

You are looking at cracks developing

As you're working, ,

Like these down the ceiling.

It must have truly terrified the workers.

The burial chamber of the king,

I think is our next left turn.

Maybe, maybe, if I'm right.

So back here, entirely encased in fine white limestone,

This beautiful granite sarcophagus.

Here amenemhet would have been buried.

At the northern end of the sarcophagus, his two eyes.

When he was laid out as a mummy,

His two eyes could look out towards the east,

The direction of the rising sun forever.

Narrator: To the west of the pyramid

Are the burial chambers of amenemhet's two queens,

With their treasures hidden separately

In the most remote part of the labyrinth.

Lehner: This passage is all clay,

It's all what they call tafl.

This is not very secure.

All this wood, the back layer of wood is ancient.

It's cedar from lebanon to ensure it doesn't collapse.

Narrator: When the pyramid was first explored

In the 1970s, the passages were filled

With massive blocks of stone.

This prevented the corridors from collapsing

And once created an impenetrable barrier

To the queen's most precious possessions.

Lehner: At the end of this narrow corridor we come on,

We come onto something really beautiful.

Tucked away in another nicely cased chamber,

Cased again with beautiful limestone,

A polished alabaster box.

Narrator: Like the mystery princess's pyramid,

The canopic chest is the only treasure that remains.

Hers was made out of wood.

This one for a queen is made from the finest alabaster.

Lehner: So beautiful the alabaster, lustrous.

That when you put a light in, it shines through.

Narrator: The complex maze, empty tombs

And passages blocked with stones

Should have made this pyramid impenetrable.

Yet, it was broken into.

So why didn't the security measures stop thieves

Getting to the royal gold?

Lehner: One of the reasons it didn't,

It looks like the pyramids were robbed

Very soon after they were closed.

And therefore, would have been by those

Who actually knew the mechanisms;

The ways underneath and into the pyramid.

And so it's a saying that its guard is its thief.

Narrator: Will this final clue help solve the mystery

Of how the newly discovered pyramid was raided?

Could this be an inside job?

A team of archeologists have been investigating

The theft of treasure from a newly discovered pyramid.

Dr. Chris naunton is piecing together

All the evidence to solve the ancient mystery.

How was the pyramid's sealed burial chamber robbed?

Naunton: There was no way into that burial chamber.

There's no evidence of any point of entry,

So there's evidence that robbers got in.

But the blocking stone was lifted and inside was disturbed

And there were things were missing.

Narrator: There was no mummy but there were bones.

So, someone was buried here.

And, there were clues to the owner's identity.

Naunton: Parts of a coffin of a woman wearing a hathor wig.

We have a canopic chest, series of inscriptions,

Enough to say we have the daughter of a king,

And a fragment of text was recovered

That gave us the name of the pharaoh ameny qemau.

Narrator: The princess lived 3,700 years ago,

A period of turmoil and unrest.

Having explored every way in which her grave

Could have been robbed,

Chris is left with just a single theory.

Naunton: There is one possibility,

Which is that actually the robbery occurred

Before that final blocking stone came down.

So we can perhaps imagine

That the mummy of our princess is ready,

High ranking priests would be involved,

The rituals are performed

And them the final act would be

To inter the mummy itself inside the tomb.

If there was a robbery at this point,

It was performed with the knowledge, at least,

Of some of those people who were involved in the ceremony.

Narrator: In these troubled times,

Even the most upstanding and reverent priest

Could be turned to crime.

Naunton: I almost don't want to think about that

Because it just seems like too much

Of a crime against the right way of doing things

For the egyptians.

But we are left with no other explanation.

Narrator: They took her treasures,

Smashed open her coffin,

And even defiled her mummy

To get at the precious jewelry on her body,

Before sealing the tomb for eternity.

Naunton: The final great irony here

Is that the system of sand hydraulics,

Which was intended to prevent robbers from getting in,

Would also have prevented the burial from being inspected.

This was the perfect crime.

And we only, thousands of years later,

Come upon this crime scene and it's only at this point

Anybody realizes oh goodness, the tomb has been robbed.

Narrator: The ancient egyptians buried pharaohs

In pyramids for over a thousand years.

But the princess's tomb was one of the very last

Royal pyramids to be built.

As the turmoil of the middle kingdom ended

And the new kingdom began,

This great tradition drew to a close.

From now on, pharaohs would be buried

400 miles south of cairo in the hidden valley of the kings.

Lehner: You didn't have this tradition of every king

Building a massive pyramid.

Instead, the mountain of thebes itself

Was the pyramid for the new kingdom royal tombs.

All of which penetrated the bedrock at the base

Of a kind of natural pyramid called merit segar,

The lover of silence.

Narrator: Although most of these tombs

Were also ransacked,

In 1922 the burial chamber

Of the pharaoh tutankhamen was discovered,

Laden with treasures of gold.

At last the tomb raiders had been thwarted.

In dahshur, the pyramids were left to crumble.

And the mystery princess's name was lost.

For the ancient egyptians

This was the worst thing that could happen.

El shazly: If your name is gone and nobody remembers it

And it's never said again, and it's erased from monuments,

It's like you've never existed.

Narrator: The team are trying one more time

To read the name on her canopic chest.

Okasha: Here, nyet, the goddess nyet.

Narrator: Using the latest imaging techniques,

Adel okasha deciphers the badly damaged hieroglyphs

To reveal her name for the first time in almost 4,000 years.

Okasha: This is the python ,

That means the daughter of the king, the princess.

And the name ,

Hatshepsut.

Narrator: This is a revelation.

There are no records of this

Newly discovered princess hatshepsut.

Yet she was important enough

To have been buried in her own pyramid.

El shazly: When I'm looking at her I'm imagining

The woman who was buried in this coffin,

And it's amazing.

Narrator: Now we can say her name.

Princess hatshepsut has finally achieved immortality.