All language subtitles for The UnXplained s03e02 Mysterious Mummies.eng

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William shatner:
A pharaoh's tomb

with a deadly curse.

A dictator

who gets younger with time.

And life-sized dolls

made from human remains.

For thousands of years,

people around the world
have practiced mummification

in the belief that one day...

...The dead will rise again.

Today we consider such views
to be preposterous.

Irrational. Unbelievable.

But what if we're wrong?

What if the ancient art
of mummification

could somehow, someday...

Bring back the dead?

Well...

That is what
we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

a young boy working for
a british excavation team

led by archaeologist
howard carter

is riding his donkey home
one night,

when suddenly
the animal's hoof slips

into a hole below the sand.

Carter and his team
later excavate the site

and discover
a mysterious chamber

hidden deep beneath
the shifting sands.

Peering inside,
they lay their eyes

upon one of the most incredible

archaeological finds in history.

A massive treasure trove

of gold and ebony artifacts,

all laid out
before another chamber

guarded by two imposing statues

and sealed shut

with an intricate combination
of rope knots and clay.

The long-lost tomb

of king tutankhamen.

It was absolutely
a magnificent discovery,

made headline news
all over the world,

and really sort of captured
public imagination

at-at just the right time.

Unlike most of the other tombs
that had been discovered

of the ancient
egyptian pharaohs,

king tut's tomb was untouched.

It had not been plundered,
it had not been destroyed,

and so there was a tremendous
wealth of archaeological data

as well as just
a stunning display of artifacts.

Shatner:
After spending nearly three months cataloguing

the more than 5,000 relics

found within
the tomb's antechamber...

...On February 16, 1923,

at just after
2:00 in the afternoon,

members of the press gathered
to watch howard carter

finally break the seal

protecting king tut's
burial chamber,

which had lain undisturbed

for more than 3,000 years.

Nicholas brown: Carter started
excavation of the burial chamber

within tutankhamen's tomb

and he found the intact
burial of tutankhamen,

which was contained,
essentially,

within nine protective layers.

The sarcophagus
is very elaborate.

It's got gold, it's inlaid
with precious stones,

and there's
several layers of it

before you get down
to the central layer,

which is, of course, the mummy

of king tutankhamen himself.

Brown:
Once carter began unwrapping the mummy of tutankhamen

and removed
the funerary death mask

and made his way through

the different mummy bandages
and the bundle itself,

he was able to see
the face of tutankhamen,

which hadn't been seen
by any living person

for nearly 3,500 years.

So in a way, the opening
of the tomb of tutankhamen

is a kind of a resurrection.

Shatner:
The discovery of king tut's mummy

launched
an international media frenzy,

making headlines in every major
newspaper around the world.

But howard carter and his team

had barely begun enjoying
their success

when several strange things

started happening to them.

That evening howard carter
is having his dinner

and hears a commotion
in the next room.

Goes in, and his pet canary

is being attacked

inside its cage by a king cobra.

Now, the king cobra
is a symbol for the pharaoh.

And a canary, the symbolism.

The canary is the first to go.

The canary is
the weakest and a warning.

After that, lord carnarvon,

the financier
of the whole expedition,

was there on site.

And then, while they're
inventorying the treasures,

he gets a mosquito bite.

A few days later, accidentally
nicks the bump with his razor.

The bump gets infected.

It leads to blood poisoning,

and he dies of it.

A prominent british radiologist
came out to the site

to x-ray king tut,

and shortly after
handling the mummy,

he catches a mysterious disease

that cannot be diagnosed,
cannot be treated,

and it kills him.

Shatner:
All told, the deaths of no fewer

than seven members
of howard carter's expedition

took place shortly after
the reopening

of tutankhamen's burial chamber.

While it was certainly possible

their untimely deaths were
nothing more than coincidences,

many believed that
by disturbing king tut's mummy,

the archaeologists
had somehow triggered

a deadly curse.

To the ancient egyptians,

death was not the end.

But in order to guarantee
yourself eternal life,

you actually had
to preserve your earthly body

for the spirit to be able
to function properly.

The idea of a mummy curse

is to keep those people
out of the tombs.

The egyptians said

if you bothered these mummies,

you would have a problem.

And people who have discovered
those tombs

actually ended up
dying weird ways.

If that's not a curse,
what would be?

The ancient egyptians prepared
the body for mummification by

removing the internal organs.

They would remove the brain
through the nose

with a metal hook

and clean out all of the organs

and put them in jars,
except for the heart,

because for them the heart
was the key to the afterlife.

And then, at that point,

they'd wrap the body in linen,

and then they'd put them
in sarcophagi

that looked like human beings

and they were made
to resemble the deceased.

The egyptians thought
the soul had multiple parts.

Upon death,
certain parts of the soul

went down into the earth,

certain parts
went up into the sky,

and then other parts remained
with the actual body.

If you want that person
perpetuated for eternity,

you need to maintain

all aspects of the soul
together.

That can happen
if the body is preserved.

Thompson:
The idea was that at some point

you will face the gods

and those who are unworthy

would be obliterated
for all time.

So these tombs
were meant to be there

until the day of judgment.

You were not supposed
to open these.

Shatern:
Is it possible that the ancient egyptians

were able to preserve

the soul of king tut
within his mummified remains,

effectively keeping his spirit
alive for thousands of years?

And if so, could the pharaoh's
spirit have unleashed a curse

upon the men
responsible for disturbing

his sacred burial chamber?
Perhaps.

But there are some researchers

who claim that even before
king tut's tomb was disturbed,

there was already
a pharaoh's curse in place.

A curse that was associated
not with king tut

but with his father, akhenaten.

Young:
Akhenaten was controversial

because he used his
considerable power as pharaoh

to change the religious system.

Ancient egypt had
always been polytheistic,

many gods,

and then there is a new pharaoh
with a new idea.

Akhenaten announces
there will be one god,

they will be
a monotheistic people.

Aten, the sun god,

would be the one divinity

they all worshipped.

The sun disc.

It shook the empire
in really terrible ways.

Brown:
Part of this religious revolution

included purposely erasing

the names of older gods,

closing down their temples,

erasing their names
from monuments,

and trying to obliterate
these other deities

that the egyptians
used to worship.

Shatner:
Before the reign of akhenaten,

the most sacred deity
of the ancient egyptians

was known as amun-ra,

the chief of all egyptian gods.

According to legend,
amun-ra was angered

by akhenaten's acts of heresy

and took vengeance
upon the pharaoh.

For his offense, akhenaten was
cursed by amun-ra,

a curse unique
to religious views in egypt.

He would be cursed
after death to wander endlessly.

His soul would never be reunited
with his body,

which was the point of
all those funerary practices.

He would be disconnected
and dislodged forever.

Shatner:
If akhenaten's soul was doomed

to never reach the afterlife,

was king tut's body mummified

and placed within a sealed
burial chamber

so that he could escape
the fate of his father?

And is that why breaking the
seals on the tomb of king tut

brought a curse upon
howard carter and his team?

If the ancient egyptians were
right about the power

of mummification,
then it might be possible.

But the egyptians weren't
the only ancient civilization

that believed mummies held
the secret of eternal life.

Some were so convinced
of the power of mummification,

they didn't even bother
to wait...

Until death.

Shatner:
Every three years, the villagers

in this mountainous region

gather to celebrate
with members of their families.

But what's odd about this party
is that the guests of honor

are all dead.

Thompson:
We look at these corpses and say that's a dead person.

They look at that same corpse

and say, "no, no,
that spirit's still there."

and if the spirit's
still there, well, then that's

the person, that--
the person is still there.

Shatner:
While the idea of having a get-together

with your dead relatives
might sound unnerving,

the truth is
ritual preservation and

personification
of the dead is actually

very common around the world.

When we think of mummies,
we often go

directly to ancient egypt.

But we find mummies
in other cultures

around the world
in various forms.

So we find this sort of very
elaborate mummification

preparals in the aztec empire

and the incan empire.

And in asia,
there is an interesting

history of mummification.

Shatner:
But of all the forms of mummification

that have been practiced,

the one that is perhaps
the most extraordinary

and the most unsettling

involves turning people
into mummies

while they're still alive.

Just outside
the tsuruoka city limits,

sits churen-ji temple.

Surrounded by 200-year-old
cherry blossom trees,

churen-ji
is similar to many other

rural temples
throughout the region,

with one notable exception.

The monk who presides here

has been seated
in meditative prayer

for almost 200 years.

Jeremiah:
Among the mummified monks

of yamagata, japan, sunada tetsu
is perhaps the most famous.

And his body is currently
located at churen temple,

in northern yamagata prefecture.

Sunada tetsu is
an 18th-century buddhist monk,

who wasn't
a religious person at all.

He didn't plan on
entering religion.

However, he ended up
killing two samurai.

And at the time,

19th-century japan,
if you kill two samurai

and you're a commoner,
you're gonna be killed.

But local temples were
exempt from that law.

So he joined churen temple,

and over time became a believer

and one of the most holy people

in japan, traveling throughout

the japanese countryside,
repairing bridges,

doing anything he could
to help people.

Shatner:
Sunada tetsu

was so dedicated
to serving the japanese people

that the onetime outlaw
earned a reputation

as a miracle worker.

But as old age
began approaching,

sunada tetsu realized
there was only one way

for him to continue his good
works well into the future.

The ancient art
of self-mummification,

known as sokushinbutsu.

In this particular tradition

of, uh, buddhism
that we find in japan,

there's this practice
of sokushinbutsu,

which is basically
a mummification practice

the practitioner undertakes
when they're still alive.

People who engaged in the
process of self-mummification,

they wanted
to preserve the flesh

because they thought
there was a divine merit

that could be of use
of people who are still alive.

Shatner:
In order for a monk's soul to shed his body

in the proper manner, the
practitioners of sokushinbutsu

were required to undergo
a very specific process.

A process which,

as one can imagine,

isn't exactly pleasant.

Jeremiah:
The process of self-mummification

is to gradually decrease
the amount of food

you're ingesting, and in place,

start ingesting things that
are preservative in nature.

And in the case of
the self-mummified monks,

they were pine bark,

pine resin...

And urushi tea.

Urushi tea, which comes
from the lacquer tree,

is considered
to be extremely toxic,

but it also lacquers the body
from inside out, and it removes

moisture at the same time
from the organs

and presents some kind
of embalming faculties.

When the monks have completed
their pre-mummification diet,

they would be placed
into a box made of pinewood

and buried underground

with a little bell.

Once the bell stopped ringing,

the other monks would know
that the self-mummifying

practitioner had, uh,
deceased inside the box.

Shatner:
According to historical accounts,

sunada tetsu spent 3,000 days,

which is more than eight years,

starving himself in preparation
for his living burial.

After his body was
eventually unearthed,

it showed no decay whatsoever,

signifying that his spirit
was indeed pure.

But as morbid
as sunada tetsu's tale may be,

he was not the first to attempt

the extreme ritual
of sokushinbutsu.

Nor the last.

The founder of esoteric
buddhism in japan

was believed to have,
uh, studied in china,

and, uh, learned about
this practice there.

And subsequently
brought it to japan,

upon which some japanese monks,
the most intrepid amongst them,

would have picked it up
and applied it.

But the self-mummification
practice

was outlawed in the 19th century

because it was
rarely successful.

Shatner:
Today, the mummies of only 24 monks who underwent

the ritual of sokushinbutsu
remain known,

although historians estimate
that hundreds

underwent the journey
before it was declared illegal.

But why would so many willingly
attempt what was essentially

a slow and agonizing suicide?

As it turns out,
there was a very good reason.

They wanted to become
what are referred to as...

"living buddhas."

jeremiah:
They actually wanted to cause their own death

so they could be
in meditative posture

so they could direct their soul

where they wanted it
to go afterwards.

That's why they're considered
living buddha.

These mummies
are still alive because

they are in between
the realm of life and death

and perhaps they can
influence the two of them.

Shatner:
Could dying by self-mummification

actually be the secret
to living forever?

Gauging by the number
of visitors who come

to seek his blessing every year,

it would appear sunada tetsu
certainly has achieved

a form of eternal life.

Just like another mummy who
was also put on display.

One who achieved immortality

not by ending his own life,

but someone else's.

Shatner:
The st. Louis world's fair opens to packed crowds.

Over the course
of the next six months,

more than 19 million people
stroll down

a mile-long midway
lined with exhibitions

showcasing the world's
most advanced science,

technology, art...

And one rather
bizarre attraction:

The alleged mummy
of john wilkes booth,

the man who assassinated
president abraham lincoln.

Nate orlowek: Encountering
a mummy that is being

claimed to be john wilkes booth,

the man who killed
who I think most people think

was our greatest president,
would be pretty mind-boggling.

Young:
So it was a high point of many people's lives to see

the mummy of the dark figure
of american history,

john wilkes booth.

To see some part of that story,

even the horrific part of it,

is still an expression of grief

and attachment
to abraham lincoln.

Shatner:
For nearly three decades, the mummy of john wilkes booth,

america's most infamous
assassin,

drew eager crowds
around the world.

Which was extraordinary,

because according
to the united states government,

the body of john wilkes booth

had been buried in
a baltimore cemetery

since 1865.

According to most
historical accounts,

after john wilkes booth shot

president lincoln during
a performance at ford's theatre

in washington, d.C.
On April 14, 1865...

(gunshot)

...Booth fled on horseback
to virginia,

eluding union soldiers
that were stationed

at the city exits by
vice president andrew johnson

with orders to kill anyone
attempting to leave.

Booth was eventually cornered
inside a barn

just south of
port royal, virginia,

where-- after he
refused to surrender--

union troops shot and killed him
on April 26, 1865.

Orlowek:
The barn was set on fire.

The traditional version is that
the body was identified

and eventually the government
released the body

to the booth family.

Shatner:
After receiving the body,

booth's family supposedly
buried him in the family plot

at a baltimore cemetery.

But if that's the case,

how did his preserved remains
end up

as a traveling
sideshow attraction?

According to some researchers,
it was all due

to a chance encounter involving
a man named finis l. Bates

that occurred 12 years
after booth's supposed death

in 1865.

Mark ebner:
Bates was this lawyer slash carney barker,

slash showman.

He was living in a town called
granbury, texas,

and befriended a guy named
john st. Helen.

Orlowek:
One night, st. Helen became very ill

and called bates to his bedside.

And he gasped out to bates
that in fact,

he was really john wilkes booth.

Bates, of course, thought
the man was hallucinating,

because everybody had been told
that john wilkes booth

had been killed
12 years earlier.

Booth slash st. Helens,

he recovers from this illness
and he skips town.

Years later, in enid, oklahoma,

there is a guy, david george.

George had enough of this world
and he killed himself.

And there was no next of kin,

but he did leave word,

"please call finis l. Bates,"
and that they did.

Shatner:
As the story goes,

when finis l. Bates arrived
in enid, oklahoma

and viewed the dead body
of david george,

he made two startling
observations.

The first was that
david george's appearance

closely matched that
of john st. Helen's,

the man who had claimed
to be john wilkes booth.

And the second was
that george's body

had been strangely preserved.

Young:
The undertaker,

having no money for a burial,

puts arsenic in the veins
to preserve the body,

mummified the body,

and then puts it
in a store window as a gag

holding a newspaper.

So they get ahold of bates,

who puts two and two together,

realizes it's the man who
claimed to be john wilkes booth,

takes possession of this mummy,

he goes into
the sideshow business

and for a small price,

you could see the mummy
of john wilkes booth.

Shatner:
If finis l. Bates's story is true,

and john wilkes booth
lived under

at least two other identities
before dying

in enid, oklahoma in 1903,

the question is:
How did booth escape the barn

where he was supposedly killed
by union troops?

Orlowek:
In 1919, the granddaughter of one of the soldiers

who was at the barn

gave a sworn affidavit

saying that man was not
john wilkes booth

who was killed in the barn.

That man had red hair
and ruddy features.

John wilkes booth had black hair

and smooth features.

Ebner:
If revisionist history

is to be believed,
john wilkes booth

was given a password to freedom

and this was done
by the original conspirator

in abraham lincoln's death,

supposedly...

Vice president andrew johnson.

Young:
John st. Helen is apparently

on his deathbed and he made
kind of a deathbed confession.

He tells the whole story

of how it was plotted
not by himself,

but by the vice president,
andrew johnson,

who was, of course,
the beneficiary,

became president
because of the death.

Shatner:
Is it possible john wilkes booth

lived as john st. Helen

before dying
as david george in 1903,

only to be reborn
as a mummified curiosity?

While this may seem
like a far-fetched notion,

according to researchers,
we may never know

what really happened,

because authorities
are preventing anyone

from finding out the truth.

In the 1990s,
the booth family was

convinced that john wilkes booth
really got away

and they agreed to authorize
the excavation of the body.

There are all sorts of tests
that would compare it

with dna from anyone
of john wilkes booth's

immediate family members.

Unfortunately,
the cemetery fought it

and the booth family
was denied permission.

Shatner:
Now you might be thinking,

if officials at the cemetery
are preventing booth's grave

from being exhumed,

why not simply do a dna test
on his supposed mummy?

Not surprisingly, researchers
agree that a dna test

would solve the mystery,

if only they knew where
to find the mummy.

Orlowek:
So unfortunately, it's uncertain where it is.

So unless we can either
find the mummy

or dig up the body
in the booth plot,

this will forever be a mystery.

Does john wilkes booth
really lie buried

in a baltimore cemetery?

Or did he somehow escape death
at the hands of union soldiers

and his mummified remains
are out there somewhere,

collecting dust
in someone's attic?

Either way, it seems that
mummies do, in a sense,

keep the memory
of the dead alive.

But there are some mummies
whose place in history

is preserved,
not just in our minds,

but right before our eyes.

Shatner:
Near the center of this ancient city

rise the soaring twin spires
of the cologne cathedral.

Every day,
more than 20,000 people

flock through its arched doors

to visit one of catholicism's
most important sites,

the tomb of the three kings.

Those who pray
at this ancient shrine

believe that they
will be divinely favored,

because it contains the bones
of the three biblical wise men

who visited jesus shortly
after his birth,

and whom the catholic church
considers to be saints.

Jeremiah: After death,
a lot of the so-called

saints in catholic christianity,

their body parts
were distributed.

And the reason for that was

there was this idea
that they were a source

of divine power

that could affect people,
that could affect miracles.

Shatner:
For the faithful, being in the presence

of even a tiny portion
of a holy figure's body

is a powerful reminder
of god's promise

of eternal life in heaven.

So imagine how they must feel
when in the presence

of not merely the body parts
of a saint,

but the entire body of one,

like in the case of the remains
of st. Bernadette of lourdes,

which lie perfectly preserved
in a chapel in France,

more than a century
after her death.

St. Bernadette
was born in France in 1844,

and she saw an apparition
of the virgin mary 18 times.

And it started when she was 14.

The spring that st. Bernadette
saw the virgin mary in

is now a point of healing
for many people,

and many people go to lourdes
just to obtain the water.

Jeremiah:
St. Bernadette ended up dying

in 1879 of tuberculosis

and the church decided

that her claim that she visited
with the virgin mary

in lourdes, France
was trustworthy

and decided to make her a saint.

And as such, they had to remove
her body from the current tomb,

identify it,
and then relocate it

closer to the church.

And when they were doing that,

they found out that she was in
a perfect state of preservation.

She looked as though
she was still alive.

Shatner:
To this day, st. Bernadette

appears as youthful in death
as she did in life.

Could it be possible that
st. Bernadette's lack of decay

is actually the result
of divine intervention?

An incorruptible saint

symbolizes that god has blessed
that particular saintly person

so that their body that so many
people have loved in life

is still recognizable and
becomes a focus for devotion.

Shatner:
Despite the symbolic miracle

such incorruptible bodies
represent

for the faithful,
according to many researchers,

there's nothing miraculous
about them.

Jeremiah: A lot of
the so-called incorruptibles

were blatantly mummified.

St. Bernadette
was enclosed in two

hermetically sealed caskets.

Once exposed to air,
she started to decay,

so they covered her face
and hands with wax.

Shatner:
To the millions of faithful who visit the small chapel

where st. Bernadette's body
now lies,

her uncanny appearance remains
proof of the power of faith.

Unlike another
incorruptible mummy

which many consider
to be evidence

of a much different power,

the power of the state.

More than one million mourners
stand for hours

in below-freezing temperatures

to pay their final respects
to vladimir lenin,

the bolshevik leader who ushered
in the communist revolution.

Alexei yurchak:
When lenin died in 1924,

he was associated in the minds
of millions of people--

not everyone, but the majority--

with a radical transformation
of human history.

Lenin and, uh,
especially his family,

wanted him to be buried,

but stalin decided
to create a symbolism

of an utopia that was created.

So the idea
was to keep him preserved

for future generations.

Shatner:
According to reports, soviet scientists devised

an entirely new method
for creating lenin's mummy,

one intended to preserve
his body for eternity,

as though he were
frozen in time.

It had to be the exact
likeness of lenin.

It also had to feel like lenin.

The so-called presence
had to be there.

Shatner:
Almost 100 years later,

lenin's mummy still remains
on display in his mausoleum

near red square in moscow,

and it appears as though
his body hasn't decayed

in the slightest.

Every few months, they give him
a recharge, you know,

they hydrate him a little bit.

They put fake eyelashes on him.

As the art of mummification
advances, so, too, does lenin.

He's looking better every year.

Stonehill:
For many people,

it was more than just a mere
body that was being preserved,

it was the spirit of the era.

And stalin was gone,

khrushchev was gone,
but lenin was always there.

Is it really possible
for a dead body

to remain perfectly preserved,

untouched by decay,
ageless for all eternity?

In any case, the very
public fate of some corpses

reminds us that, regardless
of what arrangements we make,

the fate of our remains
is no longer ours to control.

There's even a chance
we could end up becoming

unwitting participants
in someone's bizarre attempt

to bring us back to life.

Shatner:
Police investigating a series of grave desecrations

trace them back to the home
of local history professor

anatoly moskvin, where they make
a gruesome discovery.

A collection of eerie,
life-sized dolls

that upon closer examination
turn out to be

the mummified remains
of young girls.

Moskvin was
a very intelligent person

who had phenomenal memory,
who could speak 13 languages.

His colleagues said
he was mild-mannered,

kind and loved cemeteries
and anything related to death.

He was commissioned,
at some point,

to research, uh, cemeteries

in a very large area
of nizhny novgorod,

when he started digging up
the graves of young girls.

Ebner:
His poor parents,

they thought he was
a little craftsman

sewing together
these little dolls.

They honestly had no idea

what was going on behind the
closed door of this guy's room.

Hickey:
He spent some serious time

in mummification
of these corpses.

To preserve them,
he used fragrances

to make them smell better.

He clothed them.

He inserted things inside them
so they wouldn't shrink.

And he took
very good care of them.

Shatner:
All in all, moskvin collected the bodies

of 29 young girls,

earning him the nickname
"lord of the mummies."

but when authorities
asked moskvin

why he assembled
his ghoulish collection,

his motive was more disturbing
than they ever imagined.

Moskvin was a firm believer
that he actually was able

to speak to the dead
and that the dead

were able to speak back.

Picknett:
He claimed that he only ever dug them up

when they'd given him permission
to do so, in some spiritual way.

And some of them were crying
out, he said, to be rescued.

Ebner:
So at one point, he said to himself,

"well, it's cold out here
in these cemeteries.

"why don't I take
these kids home

and they can keep me company
in the comfort of my own home?"

he actually treated them like
they were living human beings.

Uh, he would have parties
for them.

He had birthday parties.

He watched television with them.

He talked to them.

He interacted with them
like they were alive.

And to anybody else,
that would be crazy, but to him,

it made perfect sense.

(bell tolls)

so moskvin has indicated

if he's ever released
from prison,

he's going to go back to
those specific corpses

and dig them up again,
because he truly believes

that these girls
can be brought back to life.

Shatner:
Anatoly moskvin's belief

that he can bring dead people
back to life

certainly seems
like a misguided fantasy.

But on the other hand, who knows
what might happen in the future?

What if scientific breakthroughs
actually make it possible

for us to resurrect dead bodies
that have been preserved?

So, you don't believe
in miracles,

uh, but what you can,
uh, hope for

is a scientific breakthrough,
a scientific miracle.

Like, the idea of cryogenics.

You can freeze yourself
and maybe someday

science will be able
to get you back alive.

Picknett:
A lot of people have had the idea

that one day advanced science
can reanimate them.

But that presupposes
many things.

It presupposes that there
isn't an afterlife

that you don't
automatically go to.

Or they could bring you back,
but you could have lost

everything that made you you.

So it's the idea
of-of preserving the body

for reanimation through science.

It still gets us right back
to that elemental question

that so many people have:

If there is a soul,
if there is an afterlife,

what is the relationship
between that soul

and the physical body?

If the body is still
somehow connected to the soul,

maybe someday science
will be able to save all of us.

Shatner:
Could new technology offer us the ability

to revive our bodies
after we die?

It's a fascinating notion.

One that raises an even more
profound question:

If science can bring
a recently mummified body

back from the dead,

might there also be a way
for modern technology

to bring ancient mummies
back to life as well?

Shatner:
Scientists publish the results of an extraordinary study.

By ct-scanning the mummy
of an ancient egyptian priest

known as nesyamun,
and using this information

to recreate his vocal tract
using a 3d printer,

the scientists were able
to engineer an approximation

of the dead priest's voice

which hadn't been heard
for 3,000 years.

(low groaning)

michio kaku:
"hear dead people speak."

that was the headline.

Because it was such
an interesting concept,

using modern technology
to understand

what the person
may have sounded like.

(low groaning)

as a priest of amun,
nesyamun was responsible

for guiding the mummy
from the realm of the living

into the realm of the dead.

(low groaning)

and the very fact that his voice
seems to echo

through the centuries
perhaps is proof

of the egyptian belief

that the soul remains
connected to the body

for eternity
through the afterlife.

Shatner:
Thus far, the team working to restore nesyamun's voice

has only managed
to reproduce a single sound.

(low groaning)

in time, it is believed
they may be able

to make him speak words,
or even entire sentences.

And if some researchers
are correct,

scientists may even
soon be able to recreate

his entire body.

Steavu:
We could technically

extract dna from a mummy
and then clone it,

and reanimate
the deceased person.

So we could grow
king tut once more.

Shatner:
Regrow king tut?

While the possibility of
reviving 3,000-year-old mummies

may in fact be within our reach,

there are those who believe
that just because we can

doesn't necessarily mean
we should.

The ancient egyptians,
it was really important for them

to have a peaceful, uh, burial
and existence.

So they might perceive
these scientific investigations

to try to clone a mummy or try
to recreate a mummy's voice

as perhaps invasive, uh,

to their actual
religious afterlife beliefs.

Jeremiah:
We have two major mysteries in life,

and one is the nature of
life itself, the other is death.

And mummified bodies serve kind
of as a conduit between the two.

And the truth is maybe they
still are influencing reality.

So, uh, what do you think?

Would you like to try getting
yourself mummified

after you die, and then
be brought back to life?

It's a tantalizing concept.

But then again,
maybe we should heed

the lesson of king tut's tomb,
and remember

that it might be better
to let mummies rest in peace,

leaving the question of whether
they will ever rise again

to remain,
at least for now... Unexplained.

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