All language subtitles for Egypts Unexplained Files Part 6 Finding Nefertiti 1080p

Narrator:
Pyramids, temples, tombs.

These ancient wonders promise
even greater secrets

still to be found
beneath the sands of egypt.

Now, cutting-edge science
finally decodes

the mysterious land
of the pharaohs.

With modern technology,
we are gaining an insight

into the way
the ancient egyptians lived

and the manner
of which they died.

Narrator: This time, health
and wealth in ancient egypt.

Can the contents of a forgotten
royal artifact

reveal the killer
of an ancient queen?

Johnston: The analysis
of the material in this flask

revealed shocking results.

Narrator:
Can modern scanning technology
prove how this young woman died

and if her killer
is still a threat?

Is this something modern,
perhaps?

Trauma that occurred
that affected the bones.

Narrator:
And can 21st-century science
prove that a mummy found

in an ancient storeroom is,

in fact,
egypt's most iconic queen.

The person buried there in that
hidden burial chamber

might be nefertiti.

Narrator:
Ancient clues unearthed,
long-lost evidence re-examined,

precious artifacts brought into
the light of the 21st-century.

These are egypt's
unexplained files.

-- Captions by vitac --
www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by
discovery communications

nefertiti --

one of egypt's
most iconic queens.

But, remarkably, there is
no trace of her or her tomb.

The fate of nefertiti and
the whereabouts of her body --

all still a mystery.

Narrator: Once the most powerful
woman in the land,

nefertiti has been erased
from history.

She simply disappears
from historical record.

Narrator:
Can 21st-century science
find the queen ancient egypt

tried so hard to hide

and reveal the shocking truth
of how nefertiti died?

A facial injury indicates
that she died a grisly death.

♪

narrator:
Little is actually known

about queen nefertiti's
life and death,

but she is instantly
recognizable.

Godenho: Nefertiti's one
of the most popular

individuals from ancient egypt,

one that sticks in
the public imagination

not least because
of the famous berlin bust --

this beautiful woman --

and people want to know
more about her.

She was the principal wife
of a man named akhenaten.

Fletcher: Akhenaten is one
of the most famous pharaohs

of the 18th dynasty.

He marries the famous nefertiti.

He's the father of the
even-more-famous tutankhamun.

So, big names --

the headline acts
in ancient egyptian history.

Nefertiti enjoys very
unusual status

amongst egyptian woman
at this time.

She is considered a goddess,
and she's actually considered

more like an equal
to her husband.

Narrator:
Nefertiti and akhenaten
were a powerful couple,

but they were also hated.

Cooney: Akhenaten was a heretic.

He was remembered as somebody
who harmed egypt

with his religious beliefs.

Narrator: The king and queen
tried to change

egypt's religious tradition
and made powerful enemies.

One of the reasons we don't know
a great deal

about nefertiti and her family

is because they were
erased from history.

That erasing literally takes
the form of people

going out and chipping away
the images and names.

Narrator: To find the queen,

the first challenge is
to locate her burial place.

Some egyptologists believe
that nefertiti's missing body

is right under their noses.

There are clues that
tutankhamun famous tomb

was actually built for a queen.

Godenho:
Generally, when you look at
tutankhamun burial equipment,

one of the interesting things
that egyptologists have noticed

is that they weren't all
originally designed

for tutankhamun.

We've got evidence of names
being changed.

And also, when you look
at some of the faces

on some of the burial equipment,
like is canopic jars,

they're distinctly feminine,
which suggests that actually,

these items were intended
for somebody else

but were repurposed
for tutankhamun,

perhaps because he died
so suddenly.

The mask of tutankhamun does
look somewhat effeminate,

so it could be potentially
been intended for nefertiti.

So it's not impossible
that that was the tomb

she was really buried in,

and she may have been been
moved out

to make room for him later on.

Narrator: But moved where?

What became of nefertiti?

In 2015, a new theory arises
that she may still be

in tutankhamun's tomb
within a hidden chamber.

Scientists carry out
two separate sets of scans,

but results are inconclusive.

In order to settle the matter
once and for all in the hope

that that would be possible,
a third set of scans

was commissioned
and undertaken in 2018.

Shortly after that,

it was announced
by the ministry of antiquities

that they considered
the case to be closed

and that, indeed,
there was nothing more to find

in tutankhamun's tomb.

Narrator: Researchers keep up
the hunt for nefertiti.

If she is not
in tutankhamun's tomb,

could her body
have been moved somewhere

in the valley of the kings?

One particular mummy
may fit the bill.

For her mummy,
we might have a lead.

There's a tomb in particular,
kv35,

which is originally the tomb
of a new kingdom

pharaoh called amenhotep ii.

However, this tomb was used
to house other bodies.

Priests were taking
these bodies from their tombs

because there were robberies
in the area,

and putting them
in safe places.

And this -- kv35 --
was one of those safe places.

There is a mummy there
of a woman.

It's now been given the name
"the younger lady",

and it has been proposed
that, in fact,

this may be
the body of nefertiti.

Narrator:
The theory that the mummy known
as "the younger lady" is,

in fact, the famous queen
nefertiti is contentious.

One renowned egyptologist,
aidan dodson, is convinced,

but what can
dna analysis tell us?

Dodson:
As for "the younger lady",
the dna seemed to show

that she was the mother
of tutankhamun

and the father of tutankhamun

had been the full-blooded
brother of the lady in question.

I.E., tutankhamun
was the offspring

of a brother-sister marriage.

Narrator: This is a revelation.

They have found the mother
of tutankhamun,

but they certainly weren't
expecting she and her husband,

king akhenaten,
to be brother and sister.

Dodson decides to dig deeper
in the raw dna data.

Dodson:
And what turns out is that
if a person is the offspring

of three generations
of first-cousin marriages,

their genetic profile
will be exactly the same

as it would've been

if their parent
had been brother and sister.

You can come up with
a very creditable family tree,

which makes nefertiti
and akhenaten

first cousins following

on from three generations
of first-cousin marriages.

Narrator: So this mummy
abandoned in a storeroom

is definitely the mother
of tutankhamun,

the wife of king akhenaten,

and either his sister
or his cousin.

But is she nefertiti?

Experts disagree,
but for aidan dodson,

at least, there is no question.

On the basis of the genetics
and also what we can glean

from the textual data
from the period,

the most likely outcome is
"the younger lady" is nefertiti.

Narrator:
If this is queen nefertiti,

experts are still faced
with another mystery --

exactly how did she die?

"the younger lady's" mummy
has sustained some damage.

There's a huge hole
in her thorax

that presumably is either part

of the mummification process
or tomb robbery.

But more importantly,
the left side of her face

has a huge hole in it.

And at first, egyptologists
thought that must be

the result of damage sustained
as robbers were rooting through.

But it's also, of course,
been suggested that, in fact,

this may have happened
before the death

and that, in fact,
it was the cause of the death of

"the younger lady".

Narrator: We know nefertiti
had powerful enemies,

but could she actually
have died violently?

The detective work depends
on 21st-century

scanning technology.

Dodson: When the head
of the mummy was scanned,

the results were very disturbing
from the point of view

of how this person died,

and it became clear there were
fragments of the jaw bone

and so on inside the sinuses,
which could only have happened

if the damage had been done
while the person was alive.

One of the possibilities is that
this was the result of a blow

from an ax or a weapon.

Which indicates that she died
a grisly death.

Narrator: Nefertiti now has her
rightful place in history,

but in the end,
her power and fame

may not have been enough
to protect her from her enemies.

♪

strange marks are seen
on an egyptian mummy.

They realized that something
wasn't quite right

with these mummies.

Narrator: Archaeologists
need to rely on science

to resolve this ancient mystery.

Altaweel: Is this something
modern, perhaps?

Trauma that occurred
that affected the bones.

Narrator: Could this be the
earliest signs of a killer

we are still fighting today?

♪

♪

narrator: 2017 -- a spanish team
are working

at the qubbet el-hawa
burial site just outside aswan.

Egyptologist alejandro
jiménez-serrano

is one of the team leaders
on this unique excavation.

Jiménez-serrano:
Qubbet el-hawa was a necropolis
where the highest officials

of the southern-most province
of egypt were buried.

They constructed tombs --

in some cases,
beautifully decorated.

Narrator:
There is an air of anticipation
as several mummified remains

are taken out
for closer inspection.

The archaeologists want
to investigate

how the mummification process
evolved in different eras

for those who could afford
the very best.

Altaweel:
This is a rare opportunity
in egypt to find

mummied high-level officials
from the middle kingdom period.

Johnston:
Every mummy that we have an
opportunity of studying further

tells us something more about
that mummification process,

which was so important
to the ancient egypt egyptian

concept of the afterlife.

Colleen: In the 19th-century,
it was really popular

to unwrap mummies.

It was essentially the only way
of finding out what was inside.

Narrator:
Today, unwrapping the ancient
bodies is not best practice.

It's seen as too invasive.

Archaeologists turn instead
to modern medical technology.

Bianchi: We're no longer having
theater of the dead

in the 19th-century where you're
paying to see a mummy dissected.

So we're learning a great deal
by using the medical advances

of our medical colleagues
in order to examine mummies.

Narrator:
However, one of the most
ancient mummies found

is little more than bones --
an almost intact skeleton --

which allows the team
to get up close and investigate.

The pelvis and the short size
of the individual confirmed

that that she was a woman.

She died between 35
and 40 years old.

Narrator: Closer examination
of this female skeleton

reveals something unusual.

The analysis of the bones
shows tiny holes

were present in all the body.

Narrator: Initially, the team
is mystified.

Altaweel: Is this something
modern, perhaps?

It could be, for instance,
insects going into the bones

that's causing discoloration.

Trauma that occurred
post-burial, perhaps,

that affected the bones.

Narrator:
The team compare their scans
with modern medical records,

looking for any similarities.

They come to a chilling
conclusion.

Johnston: Based on this initial
visual impression,

the research was thought
that perhaps the mummy

suffered from cancer
of some form.

Narrator: This discovery
is extraordinarily rare.

Could ancient egyptians have
suffered widely from cancer --

the big killer
of our modern age?

Ancient medical texts
do describe what we know

as cancerous tumors,
but it is almost impossible

to find actual examples
of the disease.

Colleen:
Looking for cancer in ancient
mummies is very difficult

because you only have the
evidence normally of the bones.

Most cancer is going to appear
in soft tissues

that simply aren't preserved.

Altaweel:
You would be lucky to see the
age of 40 in the ancient world.

Most people don't develop
cancer today

until they're past
the age of 40.

Most individuals would die
at a very early age.

Narrator: In aswan, the spanish
team examining the bodies

from the qubbet
el-hawa necropolis

focus their efforts
on the female skeleton.

Cancer damage to her bones,
known as metastasis,

suggests that she lived with
the disease for at least a year.

The question was --
which type of cancer

might provoke that metastasis?

After reviewing, the pieces
of evidence conclude

all the cancer that might
provoke this kind of metastasis

was breast cancer.

We are 99% sure that
it was breast cancer.

Narrator: Not only is this the
first conclusive evidence

of breast cancer
in ancient egypt,

it's the oldest discovered
in the entire world --

4,200 years old.

Jiménez-serrano:
It was a surprise to realize
that we have in our hands

the oldest breast cancer
of the world.

What this discovery shows us
is that breast cancer

was suffered
in ancient times, also.

Narrator: This specific proof of
the existence of breast cancer

helps experts understand
how disease spreads and mutates

and how humans adapt
to fight back.

Colleen:
Cancer definitely occurred
in the ancient world.

Having that definitively
from qubbet el-hawa,

that's an important step forward

in understanding
the change of disease

in human populations
across the time.

John: If you can understand the
genetic history of the disease,

you might have a better chance

of controlling the future
development of the disease.

Jiménez-serrano:
This discovery makes us
closer to ancient egyptians.

Ancient egyptians and us,
we, unfortunately --

we are suffering
the same illness.

♪

narrator:
A simple grave is excavated
on the banks of the nile,

revealing something
completely out of the ordinary.

A woman who's buried on her side
with her knees

pulled up to her chest.

Narrator:
Is it ritual or did she actually
die in this position?

Advanced 3-d bone analysis
suggests

she may not be buried alone.

How did she die?
Did she die in childbirth?

♪

♪

narrator: November 2018 --

a joint archaeological team
from Italy and america

are excavating
by the banks of the nile

near the temple of kom ombo,
30 miles north of aswan,

when they discover the simple
grave of a young woman.

Johnston: The woman is buried in
a contracted position

with her knees
drawn up to her chest.

Godenho:
At this particular period,
people are buried in coffins,

they're stretched out,
elongated,

usually one person per coffin.

This type of arrangement
you don't see.

Narrator: Egyptologists know
the grave as part of a cemetery

that in use for 200 years
by wandering tribes.

Now they uncover tiny clues to
the story of this desert nomad.

Godenho:
The dating of the tomb's
quite difficult

because there aren't
many grave goods in there,

but the pottery suggests
that we're dealing with

the new kingdom dates,
so around about 3,500 years ago.

Carroll:
She was buried with grave
goods -- two vessels --

and within the vessels,
they contained beads,

so this could possibly
have been an indication

of what she did in life.

Johnston:
We're dealing with someone who
is perhaps herself a bead maker,

someone who is
a fairly low-ranking artisan.

Narrator:
The team need the assistance
of osteoarchaeologists --

experts in the study
of ancient bones.

It's their job to use advanced
3-d mapping technology

to examine the find
in immense detail

but without disturbing
the actual remains.

Godenho:
The fact that it's largely
skeletal remains

that are in the tomb
means that scientists have had

access directly to the bones,

and so they've been able
to suggest that the woman died

at around about 20 years old --
it seems that way.

Narrator:
The high-resolution 3-d
scanning of the grave

reveals something
extraordinary and sad --

the bones
of another tiny body -- a baby.

And the child is still
within her body.

Carroll: The bones of the baby
are quite small,

and they can be lost
quite easily.

But in this,
it was clearly evident

that the bones were there,

so really,
really quite a discovery.

This offers the chance to ask
new questions

that have remained
unanswered in the past.

Carroll:
What could this discovery
potentially tell us

about childbirth and pregnancy
in ancient egypt?

Narrator: The ancient egyptians
understood human anatomy,

but medically,
what did they know

about pregnancy and childbirth?

In copenhagen, denmark, experts
are painstakingly reassembling

a large collection
of ancient medical writings

known as the carlsberg papyrus.

This could unlock the secrets

of ancient egyptians'
knowledge of pregnancy.

Johnston: It's corpus of medical
knowledge,

and it contains some
astonishing information.

In particular, they make
a reference to pregnancy

testing in ancient egypt.

Johnston: The carlsberg papyrus
suggests that a woman

can determine if she's pregnant
or not by taking two bags --

one containing barley,
the other wheat --

and urinating into each of them.

If either bag begins to sprout,
then the woman is pregnant.

Narrator:
Astonishingly, modern research

proves that this ancient
pregnancy test is 70% accurate.

Essentially, the estrogen
in the urine --

if it's there,
if you're pregnant --

then it will make the crop grow.

Narrator: At kom ombo,
the team initially wondered

if the baby was placed
in the grave after death,

but the high-resolutions scans
provide a tragic answer.

This woman was not only pregnant
when she died,

she was actually
in the middle of giving birth.

Somewhat shockingly, we can see
that the baby is head-down

and actually would've entered
the birth canal,

just about to be born
when the mother died.

♪

narrator: What went wrong
at the birth at kom ombo?

Thousands of years later,
the incredibly detailed scans

of the grave
may provide an answer.

Godenho:
For this individual, the hips
do seem to be misaligned.

And given the mature-birth
nature of the whole scene,

this could be one of the causes
of the trauma that we see.

Carroll: Osteoarchaeologists
have examined the bones

and the skeleton,
and the scientific evidence

shows there was evidence
in the pelvis area

that it was possibly a fracture.

Now, this could've been earlier
on in life,

which essentially means that
she would never have been able

to have given birth naturally.

Narrator: Faced with the
mother's fractured pelvis,

ancient egyptians simply
would not have had

the medical skills
to intervene

when the birth
went tragically wrong.

Johnston:
The question remains, however,

regarding the position
of the mother in her grave --

she's buried in
the contracted position

with her knees
drawn up to her chest.

Is this her still
in the birthing position,

or is she being buried
in the time-honored fashion --

pre-dynastic burials,

where people were buried
fetus-like in order

to enter the afterlife.

Narrator: After 3,500 years,
the tragic truth of this woman

and her child
and the dangers of childbirth

can finally be told
with 21st-century technology.

♪

♪

ancient egypt sparkled
with gold, silver,

and precious jewels.

But amidst those treasures

was another mysterious
material called faience.

Faience was very magical
for egyptians.

Johnston: It's a glorious,
glorious material,

and it's ubiquitous in museums
throughout the world.

Narrator: Its unique blue glaze
was desired by everyone,

rich and poor.

But the secrets
of how the egyptians

created this amazing material
have remained hazy until now.

Altaweel:
Modern sciences can tell us
a lot about faience creation.

We also can begin to understand
the kind of chemicals they mix.

Can investigation
of this ancient material

finally reveal the egyptians'
advanced scientific knowledge?

♪

narrator:
For centuries, the dazzling blue
of egyptian faience

has enthralled archeologists,
art collectors, and scientists.

Astonishingly,
it's not a precious stone

or an element
like silver or gold.

It's a man-made vitreous
or glass-like material

but invented thousands
of years before glass.

Tajeddin:
Faience is a vitreous material.

It's mistakenly described as
ceramic, but it's not ceramic.

Johnston:
Faience is a spectacular glossy,
shiny,

deeply-colored egyptian medium
used for a variety of different

purposes from the creation
of shabtis

for the tomb
to furniture inlays.

Egyptians thought this material
was from the gods.

It was a material
that was not of human form.

Narrator: Blue was a revered
color in ancient egypt,

treasured by both rich and poor.

It symbolized the sky,

the universe,
creation, and fertility.

Altaweel:
The blue color in ancient egypt
was extremely important.

It is a symbol of life.

Water, of course, is blue.
The nile is blue.

It's a rare color, not very
typically seen naturally.

Johnston:
For the ancient egyptians,

almost everything
in their lives was magical.

Everything in their lives
has religious purpose.

Faience was extraordinarily
magical.

It was potent.

Tajeddin:
It's the color of the sky,
it's the color of the sea,

it's the color of the nile,

and all of the sudden,
they can handle it.

So that was, in a way, a magic.

Narrator: It's an amazing
substance, all the more so

because it was man-made.

But how did they make it?

Using modern scientific
analysis,

we can now closely examine
this famed material

in the hope
of revealing its secrets.

Altaweel:
There are a number of techniques
one can use to understand

the process of making faience
as well their provenance.

For instance, you can use
what's called

x-ray fluorescence --
xrf -- technique

that we use to look
at the mineralogy,

the composition of faience.

If you look at the profile
of faience object,

you will see the core
made of quartz particles,

and then on the surface, you see
a complete phase of pure glass.

Altaweel: Faience is not
true glass in a sense

that it's not
a completely glass object.

It is a form of glass in that
the surface itself

is vitrified
like a glass material.

Narrator: Zahed tajeddin
is an artist and archeologist

fascinated with the science
of faience.

He's been studying this
remarkable substance

right down
to its component parts.

We can go and see
the microstructure

of the actual artifacts.

The main ingredient of faience
is sand or crushed pebbles,

so silica, quartz.

Altaweel: You can take basically
more or less sand,

mix it with a few
other chemicals,

and make something that's shiny.

It's incredible.

Narrator:
So, faience was made of sand,

the most common
material in egypt.

But melting sand requires
incredibly high temperatures,

way beyond the ability
of ancient egyptians.

How did they do it?

Modern scientists know they must
have needed some kind of flux,

a compound added to the sand

which reduces the temperature
needed to melt it.

Flux used in chemistry
to reduce the melting

temperature of certain elements.

So, quartz needs about
1,800 degree

to change from solid state
into liquid state.

If you add flux to it,

it reduces that melting
temperature to 900 degrees.

Narrator: But how did
the egyptians manage

to halve the temperature
needed to melt sand?

What did they use as flux?

Either by accident or trial
and error,

about 6,000 years ago,

they discovered that a substance
they would later use

for mummification
was the perfect flux

to help melt sand --

salt, specifically,
the salt crystals they gathered

from the dry lake beds
at wadi natrun,

which gives this salt its name.

In egypt, the natural substance
natron exists

in the wadi natrun.
So it may have been something

they were experimenting
with anyways,

and they may have
come upon this idea that,

"hey, we can use this also
for faience making."

narrator:
It was one leap of genius
for the ancient egyptians

to melt sand with natron
to create faience.

It was another to realize the
potential for mass production

and make faience a luxury
that everyone could own.

Altaweel: Faience is one
of those objects

that anyone can get
a hand on it.

Faience could literally
be obtained in the markets.

You could find it on jewelry,
you could find it on tiles,

you could find it on statues.

So you begin to see faience
everywhere.

Tajeddin: You can find them
in the poorest households.

You find them in tombs,
you find them in temples.

Johnston: You've got access
to faience jewelry,

which gave them the beauty,
the glory of the jewelry

worn by the elite,
worn by the king,

but at a much
more affordable cost.

Narrator: One mystery remains --

the intense shining blue
glaze of egyptian faience.

How did they create it?

As part of his
ongoing investigation,

zahed tajeddin experiments

with different chemical
compounds and processes.

The blue color of faience
really comes from

the addition of minor amount
of copper oxide.

Narrator:
But there's a problem when
creating this magic mixture.

Tajeddin:
You end up with a paste that's
almost impossible to work with.

It's very runny,
like toothpaste.

Narrator: The ingenious
egyptians found a solution.

Using a technique called
"open-faced molding,"

the paste is exposed
to the open air,

which initiates
a chemical reaction.

Tajeddin:
You just leave it to dry,
and what happens then,

natural phenomenon,
it fluoresces.

So all the salt immigrate
to the surface,

and we have high concentrations
of this salt on the surface.

Narrator: The faience figure
is then put into a kiln

at 900 degrees overnight.

In the fire,
that high concentration of flux

on the surface of the quartz
will melt only the surface.

And that's where you find
the blue glaze on the surface.

And then you open your kiln
next day to find a dazzling,

beautiful, bright object
right in front of you.

Narrator: The mystery of faience
has been revealed

as a masterly grasp
of complex chemistry.

For me, as a sculptor,
I'm very curious about

how the egyptians
could work out all this secret.

Altaweel: Faience is much more
than the sum of its parts.

It shows us what people were
like, what they enjoyed in life,

the things they wanted
to decorate themselves with,

the connections they had
with the gods.

All these things
become evident through faience.

A little faience deity might be
the most extraordinarily

beautiful thing
that you have in your home,

has its own intrinsic
magical purpose and meaning.

Narrator:
In a miracle of science,

the ancient egyptians
created timeless beauty.

♪

a tiny vial once owned
by the pharaoh hatshepsut

has remained unopened
for thousands of years.

The stopper appeared
still to be in place.

Narrator:
But when modern science finally
investigates the contents,

it uncovers
something unexpected.

The analysis of the material
in this flask

revealed shocking results.

Narrator: What's inside
leads egyptologists

to ask an extraordinary
question.

Did hatshepsut inadvertently
kill herself

with her own cosmetics?

♪

♪

narrator:
2009 -- a tiny bottle is found
among a collection of tomb

valuables at the egyptian museum
in bonn, germany.

It is 3,500 years old.

This little flask is inscribed
with a very short,

simple hieroglyphic inscription

giving us the name
of pharaoh hatshepsut.

Hatshepsut was the great royal
wife of pharaoh thutmosis ii.

When thutmosis ii died and was
succeeded by thutmosis iii

as the new king --
he was only a boy at the time --

hatshepsut was appointed
to be his regent.

But she quickly assumed
the throne in her own right

and came to rule egypt
as a female pharaoh.

Narrator: When her husband died,
queen hatshepsut became

one of the most
powerful women to rule egypt.

However, she chose to rule
the kingdom

not as a woman but as a man.

Johnston: She presents herself
as entirely male,

so she wears
the nemes headdress,

she wears the false beard,
she wears the shendyt kilt.

Godenho: Hatshepsut had a very
successful reign,

and while she was in office,

it appeared that egypt
functioned well.

Narrator: Hatshepsut's power may
have angered her stepson,

waiting to be old enough
to take over the throne himself.

But when she died,
her name and memory

were literally chiseled out
of the historical records.

Hatshepsut's mummy
was well-hidden

by her allies for safety.

So modern egyptologists
actually found many

of her personal possessions,
including this tiny flask,

before they found
and identified her.

When experts examined
this small bottle

bearing the name of hatshepsut,

they noticed that the stopper
appeared still to be in place.

In other words, it had been
sealed and never opened

since the type
of hatshepsut's life.

Godenho:
And this has never really been
investigated for many years.

We just thought it must
be perfume

because it looks like
a perfume bottle.

Narrator: Museum staff
now want to see what,

if anything,
is inside this small flask.

But how can they do that without
damaging the priceless object?

A german team in bonn university

have conducted some analysis
on this flask

and use a ct scanner
from the radiography department.

Naunton: The scan shows that,
inside the bottle,

there was the remains
of some kind of residual liquid.

In other words, some of
the contents of the jar

from hatshepsut's lifetime
was still in there.

Narrator: If there's some way
the university team

can get a sample
of the original contents,

they believe
it might be possible

to re-create hatshepsut's
3,500-year-old scent.

Johnston:
The flask was passed on
to the ear, nose,

and throat department,
where one of the professors

inserted an endoscope
through the seal

and removed a tiny amount
of the contents.

Narrator: The results are not
what they expected.

Naunton: And they found,
to their surprise,

that this substance was composed
of nutmeg oil,

palm oil, fatty acids.

Johnston: The researchers
very quickly realized

that what they were looking at
was not,

in fact, a perfume
but some form of skin cream.

Narrator:
This discovery, that the flask
contains a soothing skin cream,

is not a coincidence.

Studies of hatshepsut's
relatives show

that inflammatory skin disease
ran in the family.

Examination of the mummies of
hatshepsut's immediate family --

thutmosis I, her father,
thutmosis ii,

her half-brother and husband --

seemed to indicate that that
particular branch of the family

suffered from some form
of congenital skin condition.

So we can suggest that
hatshepsut perhaps

was suffering from some kind
of skin condition

that was alleviated
by these oils.

Narrator:
The mummy of hatshepsut herself
was found in 1903

but was only
positively identified

more than a century
later in cairo.

The team immediately begin
an exhaustive set of scans

to determine her cause of death.

Johnston:
A ct scan of the recently-
identified mummy of hatshepsut

has shown that she was
a comparatively unhealthy woman

as she suffered from diabetes,
she suffered from arthritis.

And it seems apparent
that she died

as a result of cancer
of the bone.

Narrator:
2,000 miles away in germany,

the team analyzing
the ancient skin cream

make a chilling discovery.

Chemical analysis
and spectroscopy

reveal the presence of highly
toxic chemical compounds.

As the germans have looked
in more detail,

they found some other elements
in there as well,

in particular, hydrocarbons
derived from coal tar.

So quite abrasive elements to
have having in with skin cream.

Naunton: More worryingly,
perhaps, for the person

who had been using it,
the residue also contained

a creosote-like sort
of tarry substance

that we know can cause cancer.

Narrator: We now know hatshepsut
definitely had cancer.

Is it possible that she was
poisoning herself to death

without knowing it?

Hatshepsut would perhaps
have been unaware, though,

that while the skin condition

was perhaps being alleviated
by these oils,

the tarry substance might
actually have been doing her

far more harm
and may have led to a cancer.

Narrator: With the help
of forensic science,

the tiniest artifact
ends up revealing

one of the greatest
mysteries of ancient egypt --

the death of one of its
most famous pharaohs.

♪

near the valley of the kings,

a new and lavish burial site
is unearthed.

Is this the tomb of pharaoh,
king, or queen?

This is a privileged position

for high-ranking members
of the elite.

Who is this individual that has
been buried in such splendor?

Narrator: This may be the tomb
of a craftsman.

But what kind of skills
did he have that earned him

a place alongside the pharaohs?

Godenho: Why would a craftsman
have his tomb

in one of the most prestigious
burial grounds

in new kingdom egypt?

♪

narrator:
2017 -- dra abu el-naga,

an archeological site
on the west bank of the nile,

not far from the famous valley
of the kings.

Excavation is underway
of a newly-discovered tomb.

Godenho:
Inside of that tomb are the
mummies of a man and his wife,

and this tomb seems to date
to around about 3,500 years ago,

so we're talking
about the new kingdom.

Narrator: This was a private
burial site reserved

for the rich and powerful.

On entering further
into the tomb,

the researchers discover
various pieces of jewelry,

funerary masks,
and 150 shabtis.

Shabtis are ubiquitous
in museums throughout the world,

and they serve the purpose
of carrying out the chores

of the deceased
in the afterlife.

What this suggests, therefore,

is that the tomb owners
were relatively high-ranking.

These were members of the elite.

♪

narrator:
Archeologists scour the tomb

for clues
to its owners' identity.

Godenho: A statue was found --
a group statue --

of the man and his wife
and one of their children,

and that tells us
what this man's job was.

He was a craftsman and,
in particular,

he worked with gold.
He was a goldsmith.

Johnston:
It's comparatively unusual
to find an artisan of this sort

in such a splendid tomb.

But he's a goldsmith,
and therefore that suggests

that he has
a certain status in society.

Narrator: The craftsman name --
amememhat --

refers to the sun god amun,

and gold itself was regarded
as the divine metal of the gods.

For egyptologists, it's a sign
a goldsmith's skills

were seen as magical,
almost god-like.

Naunton:
Gold was extremely highly prized
in ancient egypt,

and the ability to work it into
the finest quality of artifacts

would have been
highly valued as well.

Godenho: Gold itself had a very
high status in egypt.

It's likened to the skin
of the gods

because gold doesn't tarnish,
it doesn't rust.

So the person who works
with that material obviously

is right up there
in the social elite.

Narrator:
The extraordinary power
and importance of gold

is summed up
in a single place --

the tomb of king tutankhamen.

When it was discovered
by howard carter in 1922,

he wrote, "I was struck
dumb with amazement.

Everywhere, the glint of gold,
wonderful things."

ogden:
You only have to look at, say,

what's found
in tutankhamen's tomb

to realize that gold played
an important part

in the sort
of funerary paraphernalia

and presumably also in worship
and honoring of the gods.

Dodson: His innermost coffin
was solid gold,

the mask on his mummy
was solid gold,

the other coffins
had thick gold fold on them,

and many, many other items

had at least some bit
of gold ornamentation on them.

Narrator:
Now modern advances in scanning
and chemical analysis

allow us to reveal the mysteries

of the egyptian
goldsmiths' craft.

Even today, their skill
and ingenuity amaze,

as well as their magical ability
to fool the eye with gilding.

Gilding is a way of making
something look like gold

when it isn't gold
the whole way through,

and one reason
is to fool people.

In the time of amememhat,
the gilding technique was to

hammer gold very, very thin,
and then glue it.

It's quite literally glue it
onto another material.

Narrator: But one secret held
by the egyptian goldsmiths

still astonishes
modern experts --

how they were able to control

and manipulate
the very color of gold.

When you dig gold out of the
ground, it's not pure gold.

It's not 100% pure gold.

It has a fair amount
of silver in it.

So the gold that comes out
of the ground can be anything

from sort of a really strong,
bright, bright gold yellow

down to sort of paler,
greeny colors

depending on the amount
of silver present.

Narrator: Modern x-ray
fluorescence scanning

can examine the minute elemental
composition of egyptian gold.

It proves that color differences

were not always down
to natural impurities

but to the pure skill
of a goldsmith like amememhat.

They almost introduced what
we would regard as impurities

on purpose
to change the color,

to get the right sort of alloys,
to get the color you wanted.

These kind of probably
craft secrets

were passed down
from father to son.

Narrator:
The egyptian goldsmiths,
like amememhat,

were not
just geniuses of their craft

but chemical alchemists, able to
manipulate their raw material

to create astonishing beauty.

Johnston: He's a craftsman,
but he's also a chemist.

He is so many different things
combined into one figure.

I think it's fair to say
that these goldsmiths were

not just expert craftsmen
but also expert technicians.

Narrator:
Amememhat the goldsmith came to
be buried alongside the pharaohs

he worked for,
a final tribute

to his unearthly,
god-like skills.