All language subtitles for Egypts Sun King The Mystery Tombs Part 2 1080p EN SUB

DALLAS CAMPBELL:
In 2011, as angry crowds gathered

in the streets of Cairo
during the Egyptian Revolution,

in the Valley of the Kings
to the south,

a team from Basel University
made two discoveries

which were to prove momentous.

When the team was allowed
to continue digging at their site,

they realised they had discovered
the first tomb containing a mummy

in the Valley of the Kings
since the discovery of Tutankhamun.

The tomb owner was a princess

from the time
of the great Pharaoh Amenhotep III.

Here we have the inscription.

It is clear, it says,
"The daughter of the King Satja."

And right next door was another tomb,

looted and badly damaged,

but with the remains
of several dozen mummies.

Here too was evidence
that dated the tomb

to the time of Amenhotep III.

It's a very rare piece.

We hardly know socks
from ancient Egypt.

So who were all these people?

And might they be related

to the newly-discovered princess
right next door?

The shaft rims are only 1.20 metres
from each other

so the two tombs must be
in a kind of relation.

I don't think this just happened,

that they dig this one
beside the other one.

This was probably planned.

Both the new tombs
in the Valley of the Kings

appear linked to
the Pharaoh Amenhotep III,

a king many consider to have been
Egypt's greatest ever pharaoh.

Amenhotep III was grandfather
to Tutankhamun,

and though few have heard of him,
he ruled for some 40 years,

when ancient Egypt was at the peak
of its wealth and power,

around 1400 BC.

Amenhotep III was really
the most important pharaoh

in all of Egypt's history.

He was the wealthiest,
most powerful ruler

in the entire ancient world.

With the gold which flowed in
from his empire

he built many of the monuments
which can still be seen today.

Foreigners addressed him
as "The Sun",

and he called himself
"The Dazzling Sun".

Now the team from Basel
have identified two tombs

apparently linked to his family -
KV64 and KV40.

In one, a princess.

In the other,
a tangled mass of looted mummy parts.

The fact that we have
so many individuals,

roughly 30 people,
buried in this one tomb

is absolutely unique.

And it is, of course,
one of our aims

to get closer to this puzzle

of how these people were related
and who really they were.

The monumental task of sorting out
who these people are is complicated

by the fact that they are also
finding fragments of cartonnage.

This is a material
a bit like papier mache

used for burial masks
in the 22nd Dynasty,

four hundred years
after Amenhotep III.

The tomb was clearly reused
at a later date.

Their detective work to identify
the people inside

begins with the pottery.

The floors of the tomb are littered

with broken and charred
pottery fragments.

The team sets themselves the task

of reassembling every one
of these pots.

It's a labour of love.

I look for the colour
and the shape of the pot,

and I go round and I collect
all what's the same,

what's the same thickness,
the same shape, the same colour...

They realise the pots are all
from the period of Amenhotep III

so would have been buried
with the original owners of the tomb.

And some of the pots
are inscribed with names -

the names of the person
they were buried with.

SUSANNE BICKEL:
Some of the sherds revealed
the identity of individuals.

It says "royal daughter".

Royal daughter,
we're dealing with a princess.

And then comes her name,
this one is called Nefer-u-nebu.

Assembling these pots is like the
hardest of all 3-D jigsaw puzzles.

And deciphering the names inscribed
on the pots is almost as difficult.

We've found this little piece
adjoining with this piece.

Now, it completes the title
of princess, of royal daughter.

Because we here have traces
that very nicely fit

with the signs for king -
king's daughter.

And then we have the beginning
of a name in black.

She was called Henut-tau,
"mistress of all countries".

Gradually, they're able
to build up a picture

of at least some of the people
who are in the tomb.

They were all unknown until now.

This is an interesting piece.

We have the title,
again royal daughter Khaitem-tapet,

"the one who appears in the sky".

Wonderful name.

We found a good dozen princesses
whom we did not know at all before.

There is another group of women,
I think it's this example,

just inscribed with her name,
no title.

Interesting, and this lady, Tatjuia,
she has five jars,

and there are several ladies
we have just their name.

It would be interesting to know why
they found their way into this tomb.

And a third, although smaller group,

which was quite a surprise.

This is an interesting example.

And what's very intriguing
is this sign

because it indicates that this name,

and probably also the lady
who wears it,

are foreign, not Egyptian.

Every foreign name has this sign.

We don't know exactly
what she's called here,

but we can probably relate her
to another jar where...

..her name is indicated.

And what is interesting,
there was another foreign woman,

the Nubian woman.

It's the Nubian woman
of this lady, Tabascha,

with the foreign name.

So our speculations,
of course, are -

Who were these foreign women?

How did they come into an ensemble
of palace women,

of royal daughters, of princesses?

It takes several seasons
to assemble all the pots,

but when they've finished they have
more than 30 named individuals

from the time of Amenhotep III.

At least 27 are female,
and just four are male.

One thing is clear
from the writing on the pots -

they were not written
by the same scribes at the same time.

They were not all buried
following some event like a plague,

they were buried
over an extended period.

These ladies were buried in stages
over several years.

This is our hypothesis now.

In the search for more information
about the women in the tomb,

the archaeologists seek the help
of an X-ray team from Zurich.

The team is led by world-renowned
physical anthropologist

Professor Frank Ruhli.

They start by building a frame
to make it easier

to move their heavy X-ray machine
into position over the mummies.

I think it's a great find,
it's a very important excavation.

We have a lot of questions
to answer.

We don't know
who these individuals were,

how old they were, you know,

whether they were related or not
to each other.

It's important to see, you know,

how many people were buried
in there.

I think this makes it
even more fascinating.

It's a bit of a puzzle -
a puzzle of human remains -

and that's something
which is always very challenging,

particularly in this unique setting
of the Valley of the Kings.

They hope that by examining
and taking X-rays

of the mummy parts in the tomb,

they'll be able to build up a picture
of the people who were buried here.

We are very optimistic.
It looks good.

We have everything here.

Now the machine needs to get started

and then I think
we can get things done.

It's a great feeling.

They should be able to discover
just how many people altogether

were in this tomb.

And they also hope to learn
how many of them were women.

I think it's something beautiful
that we have here,

that we can work with the mummies.

I enjoy it very much.

You don't get every day
the possibility

to work in such an environment,

to see such beautiful things.

Some parts are so complete
and so nice,

nicely mummified,
it's really an exciting job.

I always think it's touching,
seriously,

to have a mummified head
or body part in your hand

and think about the individual.

They also need to find out,
if they can,

how many of the bodies might be
later burials from the 22nd Dynasty.

And how many are women
from the time of Amenhotep.

Could this be Tabascha?

Or perhaps Khaitem-tapet,
"the one who appears in the sky"?

They plan to take these X-rays
back to Switzerland and analyse them

to find out as much as they can
about these individuals -

their age, and sex,
any family connections,

and also the diseases
they may have been suffering from.

On this particular screen,
we see a lateral view of a skull.

We see the teeth
which are still there

which can give us
quite a lot of information

about the health status
of this individual.

So overall it gives you
a quick assessment of the person.

Very likely a female individual.

Their first assessment is that
there are at least 60 mummies here,

and most are female.

But what might be the link
between all the women in the tomb?

The archaeologists make a number
of other finds

which confirm that many
of the burials

are connected to Amenhotep III.

This ring, for example,
shows the name of Amenhotep III

and it was quite small,

maybe from a child
or from a younger person.

Here's, for example,
a lid of a vessel

showing the name of Amenhotep III.

And some wooden tags they find
name more of the occupants.

They probably belonged
to wooden boxes or chests

and were attached to them by cords

which were ripped off
by the robbers.

Here we have one female,
title 'sat-nesut', princess.

Her name is Sat Hathor,
daughter of the Goddess Hathor.

Here's a princess, 'sat-nesut',

and this time it's not written with
ink but it's incised in the wood.

The inscriptions on the wooden tags

name several more previously unknown
daughters of the king.

And one of the tags identifies
a woman

with a completely different title.

So here we have a wooden label
of one person with two names.

Her official name is Tuiay

and her unofficial name,
written on the back of the label,

is Anu-Nebet-Neher.

Anu - "mistress of eternity".

And she was 'khekeret nesut',

"royal ornament"
or "ornament of the king".

We're still trying to find out
which position

this was in the hierarchy
of the royal entourage.

So in the time of Amenhotep III

dozens of women were all buried
together,

some daughters of the king,
some non-royal women,

and some who were foreigners.

And at least one so-called
"ornament of the king".

Why would they all have shared
a single tomb?

Trying to make sense of this
means understanding

why Amenhotep III has been described
as the pharaoh with a thousand wives.

Shortly before he became pharaoh,
possibly when he was still a boy,

he was married to a girl called Tiye.

Tiye married Amenhotep III
when they were both very young

and so she was there throughout
his long reign,

and indeed afterwards.

She was one of the most powerful
women in Egypt

because he and she ruled
side by side,

really almost as equals,

and you can see this
in the statuary.

Because as you can see here,

Tiye is the same size
as Amenhotep III

which is very unusual
for a royal wife.

So there must have been
something very special

about their relationship.

Throughout his 40-year reign,
Tiye remained at his side as a wife,

companion and trusted adviser.

Amenhotep was devoted to Tiye,

but this did not prevent him
from taking other wives.

Amenhotep III chose a very novel way

of showing important events
in his career.

This scarab was made to celebrate
the wedding with Gilukhepa,

who in fact came from
the Kingdom of Mittani.

On this scarab he writes how he,
and Queen Tiye,

welcomed Gilukhepa
when she came from Mittani.

And she didn't come alone.

She brought with her 317 women,

all of whom wound up being part
of the court of Amenhotep III.

Many Egyptologists refer
to the women in a Pharaoh's court

as his harem.

And Amenhotep III appears
to have used his gold

to fill his harem
with beautiful women,

including numerous other consorts.

In a remarkable series of finds
at the end of the 19th century,

an archive of nearly 400 clay tablets
was discovered in Egypt at Amarna.

The tablets are written in cuneiform,

and reveal the extensive network
of communication

which existed between states,

and what was on Amenhotep's mind.

These clay tablets are an amazing
source of information

about Amenhotep III's reign.

The Amarna letters are
diplomatic correspondence.

And these letters talk about
his diplomatic tactics,

and basically that meant
marrying well.

So he married the daughters
of a lot of the princes

from Babylon, from Mittani,
all throughout,

and these letters, in fact,
talk about him, saying,

"I would like one of your daughters
as my wife," and someone saying,

"Well, I believe that in Egypt
gold is like dust,

"so if you send me
some of your gold dust,

"you can certainly have
my daughter."

So, ultimately,
Amenhotep III wound up

with at least six foreign wives
and all of their dependents

in his harem.

So really he maintained peace
in the region,

not by warfare, but by very clever
manipulation and marriage.

From Milkilu of Gazru,
Amenhotep asks not for a wife,

but for 40 beautiful women,

and sends 40 pieces of silver
for each one.

"In view of the price,"
he instructs Milkilu,

"they had better be beautiful
without blemish."

If a man has great taste,
he has great taste.

And if he's very demanding
for beautiful things,

he's going to be very demanding
for beautiful women.

Amenhotep III chose the most
beautiful women for his harem.

Why not?

He's the richest,
most powerful man in the world.

SALIMA IKRAM: Many of them
would have been foreigners,

and there would also
have been Egyptians,

but they were not all there
as concubines,

because a harem palace was really

for female family members
and their children.

So there were a lot of dependents

which might not have all had
a sexual role to play.

But certainly there were
lots of women there.

So, is that the answer?

Was it some of these women
from the harem,

perhaps his favourites,

who were buried
in the newly-discovered tombs

in the Valley of the Kings?

SUSANNE BICKEL: We have in KV40

a mixed population
who was buried there,

presumably related
to these diplomatic marriages

Amenhotep III made.

So they probably lived
within the palace,

perhaps with their own servants.

In some way,
they must have composed a community,

and were buried here.

The women's titles seem
to support this idea.

Several royal daughters from the tomb
were said to belong to an institution

that has been little understood.

The text indicates the institution
to which this lady belonged -

the House of the Royal Children.

FARIED ADROM:
Here we have 'sat nesut', princess,

and she was a member
of the House of the Royal Children.

She was called Sachmet,

and then she belonged to this group

from the
House of the Royal Children.

No one's quite sure what
House of the Royal Children means.

But some experts
on the Egyptian harem

think that Royal Children might have
other meanings.

Marine Yoyotte has made a study
of the Egyptian harem.

We have here two different scenes

where you can see the king each time

with one different young lady.

In one scene the pharaoh is seen
with a young girl

with her arms entwined.

In another,
he's tickling a girl under the chin.

Both girls are described
as "royal children".

So it's quite intimate scenes.

It's not something
that you can usually see

and they are involving women
called the royal children,

and in fact it seems
that they were not all

really king's daughters or
if they have a more intimate link.

SALIMA IKRAM: The term "daughters
of the king" is a tricky one.

It could mean people he was close to
physically in a variety of ways,

by blood, by intimacy,

but we are really not very sure
about that.

One of the women in KV40 had
a different title -

"ornament of the king".

In the tomb of Menna,
one of Amenhotep's nobles,

there is a clue
to what this might mean.

Two of Menna's daughters
are described

as ornaments of the king.

They're shown
with elaborate headdresses

which indicate they're part
of the royal court.

In the inscription
regarding these two ladies

this one is royal ornament,

so this title is the same as one
of the women discovered in KV40,

and here they have in addition
to the title -

"beloved from the King of Egypt."

So this is really interesting.

ARIELLE KOZLOFF: Royal ornament
can just be a pretty girl

who was the daughter of a courtier
who's chosen.

It's a tremendous honour to be
chosen as a royal ornament,

and then joined the pharaoh's fleet
of beautiful women,

because he wants the best stock
to breed the next generation.

The women of the king's harem
would have lived in special areas

of the royal palace.

Almost nothing remains
of ancient Egyptian palaces,

except here at Malqata,
outside Luxor.

This was one of Amenhotep III's huge
construction projects in the area.

Marine Yoyotte is being shown
around the palace

by the joint leader
of the excavation, Peter Lacovara.

Like all palaces,
this was built of mud brick,

not stone, as used in temples,
which is why so little remains.

It's a huge construction.

It's bigger than Buckingham Palace,
bigger than the White House.

It's quite something.

The floor plan is clear,

and they've found enough
of the decoration

to know how luxurious
it would have been.

So here's the main hall and it would
have had column emplacements.

You can see the column bases here.

16 columns and they would
have held up a ceiling

and everything was painted,
so floor, walls, ceiling.

It would have been incredibly
brightly painted.

You can imagine the shock from going
from the barren plain brown desert

to this riot of colour.

We'd have a row of flying vultures
across the top,

and then it would come down a bit

and so you'd have little
clearstory windows,

and then the side aisles
with geometric patterns.

Very elaborate kind
of textile patterns, chequerboards,

and running spirals and all kinds
of very elaborate painting.

The walls would have had
figural scenes.

They're not so well preserved,
so we're not quite sure

what they looked like.

Perhaps, kind of, banqueting scenes.

And then beautiful floor painting
with flying ducks.

You'd have a marsh,
so you'd have flying ducks here

and probably a pool here.

And then probably down the centre

would have been a row
of bound prisoners

so the king would ritually stomp
on them

as he goes to his throne
off in the distance.

It would have been very luxurious,
so a riot of colour everywhere.

And not so much furniture.

We find probably just thrones
and beds and things like that,

but very lavish.

Quite imposing as these are
supposed to be for visitors.

There is a section of the palace

which is thought to have been used
by the harem -

a series of smaller rooms
off the main hall.

The harem suites are
off to the sides.

So both this side and that side.

In all, there are eight
of these harem suites.

There's the little vestibule
out here with two columns.

They probably all had a little
bathing installation in the corner.

So it was sandstone
and then they plastered it

and it would be a big
rectangular basin,

probably for people
to wash their feet or whatever

before they get presented
to the royal woman

who would have sat on a throne here.

In the centre of the room along
the back wall is the throne platform

so there's a little
raised dais there

which would have been painted

and then a flight of stairs
going up to it.

This was used for what?

Each of the important royal women
whoever they were,

king's daughters, wives,

would have had their own
little reception suite,

and then they would
receive visitors.

Probably the foreign wives
would receive envoys

from their respective countries.

Whole sections of the ceiling's
paintings have survived.

The ceilings had paintings
of songbirds and butterflies

and things like that.

We're still not sure
about the wall decoration

because some of it is figural.

What happened when the palace
was destroyed, it kind of pancaked,

so we have a lot
of the ceiling decoration left

and a lot of the floor decoration,

but because the walls fell
and were exposed,

not so much of the wall decoration.

Some of the furniture
has survived too.

This chair belonged
to Amenhotep's daughter, Sitamun,

who was also one of his wives,

and was preserved in the tomb
of her grandparents.

And then in the back are
smaller rooms

maybe for storage or dressing...

The palace was luxurious.

This was arguably the best life
a woman could have in ancient Egypt

with the finest of everything.

This was the luxury enjoyed
by the women of the harem.

But not all the women would have been
the pharaoh's consorts.

SALIMA IKRAM: That is where,
of course, your princesses,

your daughters, your wives,

your aunts,
your third cousins twice removed,

who are your dependents and female,
would be living.

So if you are a daughter of a king,
you would be in the harem

but it doesn't necessarily have
anything to do with sex.

It's just where you happen to live.

But in many ways the sensuality
we associate with the word harem

does seem appropriate.

The Turkish harem,
it's still the closest institution

from what we had in ancient Egypt.

Inside the harem, we are supposing
that most of the foreign wives

coming form the diplomatic weddings
were inside it,

and obviously some concubines.

ARIELLE KOZLOFF: The women were
there to entertain the pharaoh,

but I think the primary purpose was

to produce the next generation,

and the generation after that,

to keep repopulating Egypt, and
he needed a lot of women to do that.

But, these women,
they were cultivated themselves.

Some of them were daughters
of courtiers,

and they were well-raised
and well-educated,

and they memorised poetry,
and they knew how to sing,

and they knew
how to play instruments,

and what's a pharaoh going to do
when he wants some relaxation.

He's not going to the movies.

He doesn't have an iPad to play.

He doesn't have cable television.

So he's going
into the women's quarters,

and they're singing,
and they're playing music for him,

and they're dancing.

It was the great arts centre
of the antiquity.

But he was the only one
who could enjoy it.

So there is a close association
between the harem

and the playing
of musical instruments.

And in the tombs
in the Valley of the Kings,

archaeologists have found
another intriguing clue.

In KV64 and KV40,
we found fragments of green leather

which might have belonged to harps.

Those harps were made of wood

and leather was attached to it
for decoration.

You see harps like this
in the tombs of the 18th Dynasty

being played
by young female musicians,

holding the harps on their shoulder
or in front of them.

And this might have been
one of those objects,

and fitting quite well
in the archaeological context

of those princesses here.

So these favoured women
from Amenhotep III's harem

seem to have been buried in
these tombs with their instruments.

KV40 is an archaeological first,

a collection of princesses,
noble women, and attendants,

who would otherwise
have remained unknown.

They were buried here
because they were one group

within the entourage of the king.

Looking on their title,
and their names,

and their institutional information,
they belonged to the royal harem,

the group of the
House of the Royal Children.

They give us
a completely new group of people

which have been totally unknown
so far,

and this is always very exciting

because here we have a new field
which opens to us,

a new research field.

Those people are unknown so far,

and here they come to light
for the first time.

And it's not only Amenhotep III's
harem which is coming to light.

Nearby,
his greatest building project of all,

his own funerary temple,
is re-emerging from the fields.

Fronted by the so-called
Colossi of Memnon,

this was the largest temple
ever built in Egypt.

Amenhotep called it
his "mansion of a million years".

But some 200 years later
it was demolished by an earthquake.

Starting some 10 years ago,

archaeologist Hourig Sourouzian
and her team

began patiently digging out
the statues and stonework

from the mud and re-erecting them
in the right position.

As with many of the statues,

at the moment this newest one
is just a foot.

The foot needs to be
carefully aligned

with all the other statues
of the pharaoh

just as it was originally.

Salaam...

(APPLAUSE)

(LAUGHTER)

Now it's in a good position,
it's correct.

We have all the feet
in the same line.

This is the line
of the Peristyle Court.

And we go to the next piece now.

The Peristyle Court, surrounded
by statues of Amenhotep III,

is gradually taking shape again.

The statue bases record
Amenhotep's extensive trade

and diplomatic contacts.

His vassal states,

but also places
way beyond the empire,

places which may also have provided
consorts for the pharaoh.

This supports the evidence
of the Amarna letters

that Egypt was at the hub
of a remarkable Bronze Age network,

with Amenhotep at the centre.

NAIRY HAMPIKIAN:
So once past this Peristyle Court,

we have to imagine that we are going
into the sacred of the sacred areas.

Hippostyle Hall,
and then the Sun Court,

and eventually to the sanctuary

where the gods are -
like all other temples.

These are the areas
they are now excavating.

And they're still finding
more statues.

But over the last few years,

their most remarkable achievement

is to be found off the main axis
of the temple.

Where we're standing now
is 350 metres away

from the original axis.

And I think this vastness
you can imagine by just looking

how far we are
from the Memnon Colossi.

They realised that in the fields
just here,

there were more pieces of two
large statues of Amenhotep III.

There were a lot of big chunks
of pieces

and very small quartzite pieces and
they were lying in the fields there.

But they couldn't erect the statues
on the farmer's land.

So they asked for permission
to move them.

In 2013, we got the permission

and we got all the parts
out from the fields,

actually to the land owned
by the Antiquities.

Piece by piece,
the fragments were all erected

one after the other,
and here you go,

we have a new landscape
on the Theban mountains.

I think this is again another
resurrection of Amenhotep III.

A part of his own temple is
living again.

Amenhotep's III's temple
of a million years

moves ever closer to being rebuilt.

Back in the Valley of the Kings,

their focus is on what appear
to be Amenhotep's thousand wives -

or at least some of them.

Frank Ruhli and the team
now turn their attention

to the single princess
who had been found in KV64.

What was the relationship
between the women in KV40

and the royal woman
in the tomb next door?

As these tombs are so close,

we can assume
that there was a relationship,

that she was an important lady,

somehow connected to at least part

of the individuals buried in KV40,

who kind of sought
to be close to her.

So it must have been like a mother
or somebody more...

..older person than this,

because in 40 I think
they are more younger.

Ruhli's team want to confirm
that the 18th Dynasty mummy

found in KV64 was indeed a woman,

and how old she was
at the time of her death.

There are some smaller bones missing
but it looks quite complete

and I think we can end up
with a few nice analyses.

As they X-ray the skull,

their first impression is
it probably does belong to a woman.

They hope that by studying
the jaw and teeth

they can get an idea of her age.

(SPEAKS IN GERMAN)

She appears to be an adult over 25.

And in general,
her joints appear healthy,

consistent with a younger woman.

But there's an inconsistency.

The degeneration in her spine
suggests she's middle aged.

In ancient Egypt that means
in her 30s or 40s.

To confirm this is after all
the mummy of a woman

they want finally to X-ray
her pelvis.

It's most likely a female body,

and we can clearly see
that the body has

some pathologic changes,
so it's not a very young individual

but it's certainly
a grown-up person.

Probably would be somewhere
in their 30s, 40s,

but that's really a wild guess
for the moment

and we have to do
a more proper analysis.

The suggestion that this princess
from KV64

is a woman in her 30s or 40s

is consistent with the team's theory

that she was a senior member
of the harem.

And together with all the women
in the adjacent tomb, KV40,

she's likely to have lived in
the harem palace at nearby Malqata.

Even Queen Tiye is known
to have lived there -

at least part of the time.

There were probably similar palaces
all over Egypt.

Amenhotep III travelled a lot
around the country

moving from palace to palace.

Here at Malqata,
he had an enormous harbour built.

It was called Birket Habu.

So these are the mounds
of the Birket Habu harbour,

so we're on one of the outer mounds,

and there's a row
of inner mounds there.

A massive amount of earth was moved
when the harbour was dug out,

still visible as two long series
of mounds.

Thousands, millions,
of baskets of earth were dredged out

of the harbour and tipped in
to make these mounds.

So, an incredible feat.

The amount of earth taken
to create the harbour, they say,

is equal to the volume
of three great pyramids.

In order to see the full extent
of this harbour,

you have to climb the far ridge.

I knew the scale from the papers
and everything,

but it's really different
when you're able to see it.

We have to imagine
the ancient landscape,

and that here you had only water.

We know from the texts
that the king was travelling a lot,

and of course
he was not travelling alone.

He was coming with the queen,

but also some of his favourite
people from the harem.

The king and his retinue was coming,

and then he was able to go
to the palace of Malqata.

When Amenhotep had been pharaoh
for 30 years,

he chose the palace at Malqata
to stage a huge festival.

The festival, called the Heb Sed,
was intended to rejuvenate the king.

Images of these festivities can still
be found in the tombs from that time.

This is the tomb of Kheruef,
Tiye's high steward,

who was permitted to depict both
Amenhotep and the Queen in his tomb.

Here you can see the cartouche
of Queen Tiye,

and you can see Amenhotep III

and Queen Tiye represented
just near.

In Kheruef's tomb are depictions
of some of the great events

of the festival,
like the raising of the pillar.

This pillar is said to represent
the backbone of the god Osiris.

And raising it represents
the rejuvenation of the king.

The festival lasted many months
with dancing and other activities.

The reliefs here show a number
of different dances,

and people clapping,
and playing instruments.

They're also engaged in sports
like wrestling,

boxing

and stick fighting.

As well as the King and Queen Tiye,

there are numerous princesses
in attendance.

You can see a series
of younger women.

They are depicted in the text

as "children of the great ones".

We don't know exactly what it means,

but it can be, of course,
children of the foreign rulers.

Their hair is styled in ways
that identify them as foreigners,

and they're generally taken to be
the daughters of foreign kings.

These were his foreign wives,
now helping to rejuvenate the king.

Could these princesses be amongst
those buried in KV40

in the Valley of the Kings?

Frank Ruhli has reached
some conclusions

about those who were buried here.

There were even more women
than they had thought.

We have done the whole sexing,
ageing,

the minimum number of individuals,
so we matched different body parts.

We are probably talking about 90,
up to 100 individuals.

So it's really amazing to
see that we have such a large crowd

in this small room.

We have a majority of adults

but we have about two dozens
of younger individuals as well.

Then we looked at obviously
the two sexes.

We have a majority of individuals
are females.

So most are indeed women.

But it's time to work out
how many might have been buried

at a later period, and were not part
of Amenhotep's harem.

We try to see the whole way of
mummification, different sub-groups,

and see whether we can actually then
sort of group them

and have an idea
about different periods.

They hope the methods
of mummification

will help them identify those
that reused the tomb later.

Ruhli has asked Salima Ikram to help.

She's an expert in mummification

and can help sort out
the 18th Dynasty mummies,

those from the time of Amenhotep III,

from the later ones
of the 21st or 22nd Dynasty.

They quickly establish that there are
different types of mummification.

We basically see two different types
of mummification here.

It's a very nice case where
you can see that under the skin

there was some stuffing,
this brownish material,

which was all over.

It's a massive amount
of stuffing material,

which probably could point towards
a later mummification period,

like the 21st, 22nd Dynasty.

Whereas in this case you have
a different situation.

You clearly see that there is not
stuffing underneath of the skin,

and you clearly see that there is
the regular tissue down here,

but we have bandages being pushed
into the thoracic cavity.

They think these differences
in mummification can be linked

to the date when the individuals
were mummified.

18th Dynasty, more likely.
Yes.

And this is more likely
21st Dynasty.

But it's really nice to find this
in this tomb

where we're having a very clear
differentiation

between the different groups.

They hope to analyse
all of the mummies in this way.

Most of what they examine seems to be
type one mummification -

18th Dynasty.

You can see in the very bottom
of the head

there's a lot of stuffing inside
of the throat cavity.

This is still type one.
Yes.

There seems to be something
with type one.

It is very interesting

because having looked
at some of these mummies

we can tell that there were in fact
probably two burial events,

because they fall
basically into two groups.

It seems quite possible that we're
looking at an 18th Dynasty group,

and a 22nd or 21st Dynasty group
with it.

But I think there are probably
many more

of the 18th Dynasty, type one group,

than there are of the 21st Dynasty,
type two group.

A lot of the preserved heads seem
to belong to the 18th Dynasty.

I think if they're found
in the Valley of the Kings,

and they're of the 18th Dynasty,

then clearly it speaks of a close
relationship with the pharaoh.

So, most of the many bodies here
are from the time of Amenhotep III

and probably from his harem.

And Frank Ruhli has made
a surprising discovery

which suggests many of the people
in this tomb

really did have a family link.

An example
which I wanted to show you,

we are here in the elbow region,

there is a small lesion here,
a small hole,

which is called
the supratrochlear foramen,

which is an epigenetic trait,
a variant,

but it's an indication
of probably kinship among people

if it's in a frequency
which is much higher

than what you would normally expect
which is here the case.

We have quite a lot of these cases.

It's a sign towards some sort
of familial relationship

because it's higher than
what you would expect normally.

So some of these women may well
be relatives of the pharaoh.

Others might be wives,

or some of Amenhotep's many
women without blemish.

But they believe that the majority
of these heads

are women from the harem.

And they would like to reconstruct
the face of one of them.

By taking a series of photographs,

it's possible to build up
in a computer

a full three dimensional model
of the head.

From this, here at the
Centre for Human Identification

in Dundee, they're attempting
a reconstruction of her face.

The first task is to combine
the image of the mummy

with an X-ray so they can see
the bone structure underneath.

The Zurich team have said they think
this is a girl of about 15.

Here they want to build up her face
by restoring her features.

For the mouth they need
to fill out her lips

which are still visible on the mummy.

The nose is more of a problem.

There is a shape based method
of estimating the shape of the nose.

I can see the nasal aperture,

you can see the bone's uncovered
on the mummy

because the tissue's gone,

so we can say the nose is going
to be approximately here.

Now adding the facial muscles will
define the shape of the face.

It's weeks of work, but gradually
the face of this young woman emerges.

Now they're ready to start
adding skin texture.

And the make up, wigs and jewellery

that no young woman of the time
would want to be seen without.

Is this really what she looked like?

From doing forensic case work
we know that this process

is accurate enough
to be recognisable

by a friend or a family member.

This, I expect,
would be recognisable

as this individual
by people who knew her.

I feel like I met somebody.

Is she a daughter of the king?

One of the named princesses?

Mistress of all countries, perhaps?

Or the one who appears in the sky?

Or is she just one of those

very many women without blemish?

For now, there's no way to be sure.

Finding the tombs of so many
of the women closest to Amenhotep III

has been a revelation.

We had good results, I think.
We have the names.

This time we have really
a lot of names.

It was my passion
to do this project.

It has been a good time
and we have seen a lot.

This project certainly rates
very high in my life, in my career,

because it's something very special,

to find a new tomb
in the King's Valley,

to find so much new information
as in KV40.

Also remarkable is
the astonishing re-emergence

of Amenhotep III's mortuary temple.

Our dream is to reconstruct
all the statuary,

trying to explain how this court
was decorated.

I think this will be our target now,

to finish the Peristyle Court

and maybe leave the rest for
other generations to continue.

Through these projects,
some small part of the splendour

that was the court of Amenhotep III
is being rediscovered.

It has been exciting.
I hope it will go on.

There are still other tombs waiting.

And as this work continues,

a pharaoh who was once
the dazzling sun,

but has since been forgotten
by many,

may once again become better known.

Captions by Red Bee Media
(c) SBS Australia 2018