Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Egypt,

the richest source of archaeological treasures

on the planet.

MAN: Oh, wow. Look at that!

NARRATOR: Hidden beneath this desert landscape

lie the secrets of this ancient civilization.

MAN: I've never seen something like this.

NARRATOR: Now, for a full season of excavations,

our cameras have been given unprecedented access

to follow teams on the front line of archaeology...

WOMAN: This is the most critical moment.

[men grunting]

NARRATOR: ...revealing buried treasures...

WOMAN: Oh!

MAN: Very lucky today.

MAN: Wow, lots of mummies.

WOMAN: The smell is horrible.

NARRATOR: ...and making discoveries

that could rewrite ancient history.

MAN: We've never had the proof until now.

WOMAN: This is where it all started.

MAN: My goodness. I never expected this.

[applause]

NARRATOR: This time, archaeologists hunt

for evidence of the death of the pyramids.

MAN: My god, these pieces are huge.

NARRATOR: Claire follows the tracks of the craftsmen

tasked with building the giant monuments.

CLAIRE SOMAGLINO: You can see very clearly

that this site was abandoned here.

NARRATOR: Myriam uncovers the mysteries

of the pharaoh's temples.

MYRIAM SECO ALVAREZ: This is from Tomb 22,

the mummy deposit.

NARRATOR: And Alejandro comes face-to-face

with the afterlife...

ALEJANDRO JIMENEZ-SERRANO: It's incredible.

NARRATOR: ...in the long forgotten tombs

of Egypt's far south.

ALEJANDRO: I have no words.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The west bank of the River Nile,

home to the world's most iconic monuments--

the mighty Pyramids of Giza.

The pyramids once housed the bodies of the pharaohs.

But though ancient Egyptian civilization

lasted for nearly 3,000 years,

its kings only built huge tombs like these for a few centuries.

Egyptologists are still trying to piece together

why the pharaohs stopped constructing giant pyramids.

For Egyptologist Chris Naunton,

the majesty of the ancient structures makes the fact

that Egyptians gave up building them all the more incredible.

Ten miles south of the legendary Pyramids of Giza

is Saqqara.

CHRIS NAUNTON: When we think about pyramids,

we tend to think of Giza, I think,

and the Great Pyramid of Khufu, in particular,

but actually this is where it all began.

NARRATOR: Chris has come to the birthplace of pyramid building

to search for clues to why Egyptians built

giant pyramids for less than 500 years.

Constructed a century before the iconic pyramids at Giza,

Egypt's first pyramid is a 200-foot-tall mausoleum

of six huge limestone platforms,

carefully engineered to spread the weight of rock

and prevent collapse.

Deep inside is a giant shaft,

26 feet wide and 82 feet deep.

At the bottom, the intended final resting place

of the pharaoh Djoser.

CHRIS: Ultimately, that's what it's all about.

It's where the body of the king is going to rest in eternity.

And to have gone to all this trouble to create

this incredible monument around the body of that person

is pretty amazing.

NARRATOR: To house his mummy, huge chunks of granite

were slid down a passage into the shaft and stacked,

creating a giant sarcophagus 19 feet long and 11 feet high.

CHRIS: My god, these pieces are huge.

Wow, it's amazing.

Pfff.

NARRATOR: But this wasn't just a tomb designed

to secure the pharaoh's physical body for eternity.

Crucially, for success in the afterlife,

the pyramid ensured the king was remembered by the living.

Completed around 2650 B.C.,

it sparked an architectural revolution.

Djoser's six-tier giant wasn't just the first pyramid.

It was the world's first monumental structure

built in stone.

Over the next century, Egypt's kings developed the concept,

building monumental tombs all along the Nile's west bank,

including the first geometrically true pyramid,

the Red Pyramid,

and a misshapen experiment, the Bent Pyramid.

Then a dynasty of pharaohs

built the most iconic monuments in Egypt,

the Pyramids of Giza.

But just a few short centuries

after the Great Pyramid of Khufu rose from the desert,

a new era was on the horizon.

400 miles south of the pyramids in modern-day Aswan

is the heart of ancient Egypt's southernmost province.

Professor Alejandro Jiménez-Serrano

has spent 11 seasons here,

unearthing the burials of the region's wealthy governors.

He believes they played a part in the pyramids' demise.

The pyramids were symbols of power,

separating the kings from the rest of society,

offering them privileged access to the afterlife.

But as the pharaohs erected their pyramids in the north,

southern elites were becoming richer

and making their own plans for eternity,

digging increasingly elaborate tombs deep into the cliffs.

Today Alejandro's excavating a new area

of their ancient necropolis.

NARRATOR: It's 8:00 A.M.,

and his team has already called in a find.

ALEJANDRO: We will see if we are lucky

with this discovery.

Not every day you discover a tomb,

so finger crossed.

NARRATOR: A smooth area of rock excites the crew.

ALEJANDRO: In this area, you can see the ancient carving

trying to make a plane that was going to be

the facade of the tomb.

NARRATOR: The naturally jagged rock face

has been smoothed with ancient chisels.

If this is an elite tomb, it could have inscriptions

which shed light on the role the governors played

in the pyramids' decline.

ALEJANDRO: This is the typical tomb of members

of the elite here in Qubbet el-Hawa.

So, what we are looking for is the door.

NARRATOR: 400 miles downriver on the Nile's west bank,

Chris has come to Giza

to explore the peak of pyramid building.

He wants to understand how these monuments evolved

from the early pyramids at Saqqara

and to search for clues

to explain why they were abandoned.

These stone giants included new designs

to protect the body of the pharaoh from robbers

after his death.

On the outside of Khufu's Great Pyramid,

a seamless cover of gleaming limestone slabs and blocks

conceal the only way into the pyramid,

a narrow tunnel 60 feet above the ground.

But this passage, too, was sealed.

Intruders would have to break through

huge, six-foot-deep granite blocks

to reach a steep shaft leading to the center of the pyramid.

At the top, they would face

three more massive granite slabs

before they finally reached the tomb chamber,

where the king and his riches lay buried.

Alongside the Great Pyramid,

Khufu's son, Khafre, built his own pyramid,

and below it, a complex of monuments and temples

designed to aid his successful resurrection.

Priests would come here to make offerings

in the shadow of the pyramid,

ensuring the pharaoh's name was kept alive.

One of these monuments carefully positioned

is the ancient world's most enigmatic sculpture,

the Great Sphinx.

CHRIS: The Egyptians were very interested in alignment,

and one of the great achievements here

at Giza Plateau is in their ability

to lay out monuments like this on a vast scale.

The Sphinx and the temple in front of it

and the pyramid behind

are actually all very carefully aligned with one another.

NARRATOR: Chris searches for evidence

of when the pharaohs abandoned their monuments.

Between the creature's paws,

he finds a slab of a different stone

added 1,000 years later,

the Dream Stele.

CHRIS: It's called the Dream Stele

because the text describes a story in which,

before he was king, Thutmosis IV had a dream

in which the Sphinx spoke to him, and the Sphinx says,

"I am not in terribly good condition.

I've fallen into disrepair."

NARRATOR: The hieroglyphs claim the Sphinx

had been allowed to drown in the desert sands

but that Thutmosis would be rewarded

for restoring the sculpture to its former glory.

CHRIS: If Thutmosis IV to-be could make the repairs

that are necessary and clear the sand away,

then in exchange, the Sphinx itself

will bestow the kingship upon the young prince,

so in other words, the deal is

if Thutmosis IV does what the Sphinx wants, he'll become king.

NARRATOR: Thutmosis believed that to become pharaoh,

he had to please his glorious ancestors

and make sure the ancient pharaohs' monuments

were remembered and respected.

When he became pharaoh,

Thutmosis did renovate the Sphinx

during a period known as the New Kingdom,

the pinnacle of Egyptian power

in a history stretching back thousands of years.

The first small settlements sprang up on the Nile

around 5000 B.C., farming the fertile land

and eventually growing into the state of Egypt.

Around 2700 B.C., the Old Kingdom began,

the time of the great pyramid builders.

But in 2175 B.C.,

their civilization came crashing down

as rule disintegrated and Egypt descended into chaos.

500 years later, the New Kingdom was born--

the golden age of Tutankhamun, Queen Nefertiti,

and Ramses the Great.

But these pharaohs built no pyramids at all.

By the time Thutmosis IV

had rescued the Sphinx from the sands,

the pharaoh's construction of Egypt's most iconic monuments

had been totally abandoned.

But why?

75 miles to the east of the pyramids

is Ain Sokhna on Egypt's Red Sea coast.

French archaeologist Claire Somaglino

has been digging up ancient structures here for nine years.

She believes this remote outpost

holds secrets that explain the pyramids' boom and bust.

Many of the structures she has found

date to the peak of pyramid construction.

NARRATOR: But of all the buildings she unearths,

none shows any sign of long-term occupation.

Ain Sokhna appears to be an encampment.

NARRATOR: Claire searches for clues

to what this camp could reveal

about Egypt's age of the pyramid builders.

Graffiti carved into a nearby rock face

could provide evidence.

NARRATOR: In the cliffs above Ain Sokhna,

the dry environment has preserved etchings in the rock

made by people who passed through.

Some of the carvings date back only half a century,

but others are thousands of years old.

NARRATOR: The graffiti suggests the camp of Ain Sokhna

was a staging post in a supply chain,

one providing the resource that the pharaohs needed

more than any other for their pyramid building,

the must-have metal for ancient stone carving--

copper.

Claire believes it came from the mines of Sinai

across the Red Sea.

When the pharaoh needed more copper,

he sent an army of workers east across the desert.

Some of them carried flat packed boats,

which were assembled at the coast

and sailed across the Red Sea.

The men spent two months

laboring in the mines of the Sinai,

digging out hundreds of pounds of copper ore.

And once they'd filled up the ships,

they returned with the ore to the mainland,

ready to haul back to the Nile and to the pyramids.

The discoveries reveal the Port of Ain Sokhna

was critical to building the largest structures

the world had ever seen.

NARRATOR: If Claire's to find evidence here

of the pyramids' downfall, she needs to dig.

On the west bank of the Nile,

Egypt's ancient Land of the Dead,

hieroglyphics expert Christelle Alvarez

is at the pyramid archaeologists consider

to be the last built in the great age of pyramids.

The tomb of Pharaoh Pepi II was built 400 years

after the original step pyramid at Saqqara.

NARRATOR: She hunts for clues to why the obsession

with pyramid building began to end here.

Hieroglyphs cover almost every surface,

including the royal sign

bearing the pharaoh's name.

NARRATOR: The walls of Khufu's tomb

in the Great Pyramid at Giza were left blank.

But here in Pepi's tomb,

they're filled with incantations

designed to help the pharaoh enter the underworld safely.

NARRATOR: As the age of the pyramids progressed,

the pharaohs filled their tombs

with more and more magical protection

for their bodies and souls.

The texts kept their faith

in the power of the pyramids alive,

just as their power over the kingdom of Egypt

was about to collapse.

Pepi II's rule was marred

by droughts, famine, and civil unrest.

[arguing and shouting]

Worried about his afterlife,

he covered his tomb in magical inscriptions

to guarantee his spirit's security.

When Pepi died without an heir, a power struggle ensued,

resulting in a century of weak, short-lived kings.

Lacking wealth and resources, their pyramids were tiny

compared to the mighty structures

of the great pyramid age.

NARRATOR: The pyramid,

a tradition that defined a civilization,

was effectively extinct.

At Qubbet el-Hawa,

near the southern Egyptian city of Aswan,

Alejandro hopes the burials

of ancient Egypt's most powerful elite

could help explain the death of the pyramids.

If this chiseled flat rock wall is a tomb,

their secrets could be just below his feet.

He spots another clue that a door is nearby.

ALEJANDRO: We have here remains of termites.

They used to eat the fresh wood of the coffins.

We are following the pathway of the insects.

NARRATOR: With delicate artifacts potentially close,

the team needs Alejandro's experienced hand.

ALEJANDRO: Here we have the, the entrance.

Amazing.

Ah-ha! The end of the door.

[exhales]

It's amazing.

Yeah.

I have no words.

Probably we are the first that see this door

in more than 4,000 years.

NARRATOR: The neatly cut opening

matches the style for elites

in southern Egypt at the end of the pyramid age.

It's a huge moment for the entire team.

[speaking Arabic]

NARRATOR: The race is on to open up the doorway

before the site closes for the day in just a few hours' time.

NARRATOR: It's already mid-morning

on Alejandro's dig at Qubbet el-Hawa,

and the workers' shift ends at 1:00 P.M.

Termites may have led him to an elite burial,

but to expose the doorway,

the team must excavate not just the opening,

but the entire area in front of the tomb.

If they don't, the sand will just flow right back in.

It allows Alejandro a moment

to remind himself what he's looking for--

evidence of powerful Egyptian nobles

whose rise spelled the end of the age of the pyramids.

ALEJANDRO: In the period that we are excavating,

the head of the state was the king,

and under him was the vizier,

and below the vizier, we have the provincial governors.

So these people, we might say

that they were the number three in the state.

NARRATOR: Over 11 seasons working here,

Alejandro has found evidence

that in this era of Egyptian history,

the pharaohs were losing their grip on power.

While the kings got weaker,

the governors of Egypt's provinces got richer.

Alejandro discovers that just as Pharaoh Pepi II

was building what would prove to be the last great pyramid,

the tombs of a governor at Qubbet el-Hawa

were expanding.

Over the course of Pepi's reign,

they increased in size fivefold.

The afterlife wasn't just for pharaohs,

and pyramids weren't the only kind of tomb

that could get you there.

ALEJANDRO: This is what we hope to find

in the tomb that we have just discovered.

It is a false door, and it was the magic door

that the dead used to receive their offerings.

NARRATOR: Egyptians believed the spirit of the deceased

would reveal itself to visitors,

taking offerings of food to sustain it in the afterlife.

If the new tomb has a false door,

it could hold a wealth of hieroglyphic information

about how powerful the governors had become

at the end of the pyramid age.

ALEJANDRO: What we are hoping to find in the new tomb

is inscriptions showing us not only the name,

but also his position in the society.

NARRATOR: With the site ready to close

for the day at 1:00 P.M.,

they've excavated just far enough for one person to enter.

Alejandro gives in to temptation.

MAN: In?

ALEJANDRO: We have a lot of sand.

And there is no trace of plundering.

NARRATOR: Looting was rife in ancient Egypt.

[grunts]

Even the giant Pyramids at Giza

were ransacked and cleared of valuables.

With no evidence of robbery,

there's good reason for Alejandro to be optimistic

about the treasures that may lie beneath the tons of sand.

ALEJANDRO: Archaeology is patience.

It's patient work that sometimes has lucky strikes.

NARRATOR: At Ain Sokhna on Egypt's Red Sea coast,

Claire's team opens a new trench

at the ancient encampment.

[speaking French]

Her colleague, archaeologist Adeline Bats,

is piecing together the history

of the pharaoh's copper expeditions.

[speaking French]

NARRATOR: She notices a gap in the record.

NARRATOR: A thick layer of mud,

laid down over decades by winds and flooding,

covers the ashes of the workers' cooking fires

from the age of the pyramids.

The discovery shows no one came here

for a century or more.

It's critical evidence of the death of the pyramids,

revealing that the pharaohs gave up

their copper expeditions.

The decline in their wealth meant they could no longer

afford to build giant pyramids.

As quickly as it had begun, the pyramid age was over.

But the pharaohs' belief in the afterlife

was stronger than ever,

so how did later kings protect their bodies

and secure their passage to eternity?

NARRATOR: 700 years after the pharaoh Pepi II

built the last great pyramid,

the pharaohs of the New Kingdom

had re-established their supreme power in Egypt

and moved their capital south to Thebes, modern-day Luxor.

Chris crosses the Nile River here to investigate

how the New Kingdom rulers

sought to guarantee their afterlife.

These wealthy pharaohs could have afforded tombs

as grand as Khufu's Great Pyramid,

but during the chaos following

the end of the old pharaoh's reign,

the ancient pyramids were ransacked.

Ancient texts describe the turmoil

as bodies were cast out from tombs

and funerary goods disappeared.

The pharaohs' mummies were stolen or destroyed,

along with their dreams of eternal life.

Desperate to avoid that fate,

the pioneering New Kingdom pharaoh, Thutmosis I,

embarked on a revolution in royal tomb building.

Echoing the governors in the south,

he decided to cut his tomb into the rock.

His plan to protect his mummy was to hide.

In a valley west of Thebes,

the king picked a spot and dug a shaft

over 600 feet deep into the mountain.

It had subterranean chambers

for the riches he'd take into the afterlife.

And in a lavish tomb at the bottom of the tunnel,

a sarcophagus would keep his body safe.

Following his example,

nearly every pharaoh for the next 500 years

dug tombs into the mountain here

to provide underworld palaces,

creating a subterranean city of dead royals

that became known as the Valley of the Kings.

One of the best preserved tombs in the valley

belonged to one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs, Ramses III.

CHRIS: As soon as you enter

this tomb, you're really struck

by the sort of monumental scale.

All the surfaces are decorated.

Hieroglyphic inscriptions everywhere.

Large images of the king.

Really, really impressive.

NARRATOR: Just as Pepi II covered the last great pyramid

with hieroglyphic spells,

Ramses hoped magical art would secure

his dangerous passage to resurrection.

CHRIS: It's a very perilous journey,

it's a very hazardous journey,

and he encounters all kinds of demons along his way.

But with the help of the gods,

who accompany him throughout the tomb,

he's able to make that journey successfully.

NARRATOR: The New Kingdom pharaohs

believed their rock-cut tombs would protect their mummies

where the pyramids had failed.

But Ramses' architects left nothing to chance,

designing precipitous shafts as they tunneled into the rock.

CHRIS: This is a pretty important part of the tomb.

It's a well shaft, which is a characteristic feature

of tombs in the Valley of the Kings

designed to deter robbers,

beautifully decorated with images of gods.

NARRATOR: Even buried hundreds of feet

down in the heart of the mountain,

Ramses feared his tomb would be pillaged.

CHRIS: Even though the tomb would have been sealed

and the idea would have been, of course,

that nobody would ever, ever come in here again,

it's still incredibly beautifully decorated.

For the eyes of the gods only perhaps.

NARRATOR: There was just one problem.

To live on in eternity,

a king needed not just to preserve his body,

he had to be remembered by the living.

The pyramids had monuments and temples attached

where priests celebrated the memory of the dead pharaoh.

Ramses did not want to advertise the location

of his body and his riches with a pyramid,

but he still needed a monument to keep his name alive.

On the west bank of the Nile, near Thebes,

Ramses erected a gigantic 80-foot gate

on which he carved huge images of himself smiting his foes.

Behind it, his mortuary temple,

two courtyards lined with his statues

led to a series of chapels and a false door,

where priests would make offerings and repeat his name.

Surrounding the temple,

he built mud brick walls 30 foot thick,

stretching more than half a mile

to turn his temple into a fortress of worship.

Just a mile from Ramses' temple

lies another great monument to a New Kingdom pharaoh,

Thutmosis III's Temple of Millions of Years.

The temple has crumbled since ancient times,

but Dr. Myriam Seco Alvarez

is leading a project to resurrect the site.

MYRIAM: When we started the project in 2008,

all this was a mountain of sand.

Nothing was visible.

NARRATOR: She wants to discover exactly how these new monuments

were intended to secure the pharaoh's afterlife

without a pyramid.

Archaeologist Manuel Abelleira searches outside the walls

for clues to how the temple was used.

He meticulously records every find workers unearth

around the temple walls.

MANUEL ABELLEIRA: Nice.

[speaking Arabic]

NARRATOR: Ancient Egyptians made offerings of food,

like dates, to the memory of the pharaoh,

but among the 3,500-year-old fruit,

he finds more valuable objects.

NARRATOR: The beer jar offerings mean

archaeologist Javier Martinez-Babón

can track the temple's history.

Some bear the signature hieroglyphs of later pharaohs.

NARRATOR: The jars prove that for centuries,

Egypt's rulers made offerings at this temple

to keep Thutmosis III's name alive,

while his mummy lay safely hidden

in the Valley of the Kings.

But Myriam is discovering that Egyptians didn't just leave

offerings of beer and food at the temple.

With just minutes before the site closes for the day,

Myriam's team unearths a burial.

[speaking foreign language]

The site has strict time curfews,

and a skeleton can't be left exposed overnight.

MYRIAM: If we find a body, we have to remove in the same day.

If we find something special, we have to remove to be secure.

NARRATOR: The team scrambles to move the ancient skeleton

before the site shuts down.

MYRIAM: In 20 minutes, we will finish,

so that's why we are a little in a hurry.

[speaking Spanish]

NARRATOR: With minutes to go before the gates slam shut,

the skeleton is safe and ready for analysis.

It could hold clues to how well the temple

safeguarded the pharaohs' afterlife

in the era after the death of the pyramids.

NARRATOR: The skeleton unearthed

outside Thutmosis III's temple

is not the first Myriam's team has discovered.

It's one of more than 125 ancient bodies

they've unearthed around the site,

many from a single tomb.

Why they are here is a mystery,

but some are preserved in almost pristine condition.

The bodies could shed light on how Thutmosis' temple

was supposed to function after his death.

Myriam has made it her mission

to search every ancient body for clues.

Next in line is a fully wrapped mummy.

She can't risk removing the linen bandages,

so dental expert Dr. Roger Seiler uses x-rays

to scan for information.

MYRIAM: We want to see who was this individual,

if it's a male or female.

We want to see their age,

what they eat,

as much as possible about this person.

We have a head.

WOMAN: Mm-hmm.

NARRATOR: Roger examines the skull to determine

the skeleton's sex and age at death.

ROGER SEILER: So, the individual was about 18, 20, 25 years old.

The teeth are in good health.

So it's a young individual.

MYRIAM: Ah, okay.

ROGER: But that's important for--

MYRIAM: We know if it's male or female?

ROGER: The angle here could say that it's female.

MYRIAM: Female. Maybe female?

ROGER: Maybe female,

together with the form of the chin.

NARRATOR: The x-ray suggests the body is of a young woman.

MYRIAM: This is from Tomb 22, from the late period,

where we found the mummy deposit?

ROGER: Yes.

NARRATOR: The tomb she was buried in

dates to a time nearly 1,000 years

after the temple was built.

It's a hint that the temple was considered sacred

long after Thutmosis III had died.

If he was still remembered, then his afterlife was secure.

MYRIAM: Now we have to go deeper to get more information.

NARRATOR: Myriam needs to discover who these people were

to shed light on why they were buried here.

They work through the dozens of mummies found at the site.

ROGER: The head is missing.

But this is a, I think it's an organ package,

so they took out the inner organs,

they mummified them separately, and put them back.

Good mummification technique.

MYRIAM: So, some of the mummies in this mummy deposit

were high quality.

ROGER: High quality mummification.

MYRIAM: Mummification, yes.

NARRATOR: The mummies suggest

that high-status ancient Egyptians

were burying their dead here

almost to the end of ancient Egyptian civilization.

They believed this site held a power

that would help propel their souls to the afterlife.

The team will need to keep examining

and comparing the finds,

but with this analysis complete,

Myriam can return the body to its eternal rest.

They carefully lower the precious remains

15 feet down the vertical shaft.

MYRIAM: This is the most critical moment,

and always we are worried.

[speaking foreign language]

NARRATOR: The mummy is safely in the burial chamber.

MYRIAM: Well done.

NARRATOR: The team lays it to rest.

MYRIAM: We have one more individual in peace.

NARRATOR: Myriam's discoveries suggest the temple

remained sacred for nearly 1,000 years

after Thutmosis III's death,

preserving his memory and his eternal life

just as long as his body lay safe

in the Valley of the Kings.

The New Kingdom pharaohs' afterlife plan

appeared to be working.

On the hillside of Qubbet el-Hawa,

near modern-day Aswan,

Alejandro and his team have removed

more than 1,000 cubic feet of sand

from the newly discovered tomb.

ALEJANDRO: We have been working outside and inside,

and we have the possibility to have access

to check if we have some remains of the original burials.

NARRATOR: If the tomb contains hieroglyphic inscriptions

or grave goods, it could help him identify the owner

and uncover the burial practices of the nobles

challenging the pyramid building pharaohs' power.

ALEJANDRO: I can see several fragments of bones.

NARRATOR: The bones survive, but whose are they?

NARRATOR: Alejandro's discovery of human remains

proves beyond doubt that he's found a new tomb

at Qubbet el-Hawa.

But what he needs is hieroglyphs

to identify the tomb owner and their status.

If a mummy once lay in this chamber,

perhaps the valuable funerary artifacts

remain in an adjacent cavity.

ALEJANDRO: It's incredible.

We have just the same material

as we found in the other chamber.

NARRATOR: The tomb's second chamber is empty.

It has almost certainly been entered by thieves,

but Alejandro finds that it hasn't just been robbed.

Telltale tracks on the walls show it has been ravaged

by an even more destructive force.

ALEJANDRO: We can guess that here there were coffins.

There were perhaps boxes.

And everything was eaten by the termites.

I've never seen something like this.

[sighs]

It's wherever you look.

Look at that.

These are termites.

I hate termites.

Quite disappointing.

The deception.

But it's part of the game.

Let's go.

NARRATOR: Like the pyramids,

the tombs cut into the rock here

couldn't always save the owners from destruction.

Their carefully laid plans to secure their afterlife

were thwarted.

But the rich necropolis at Qubbet el-Hawa

may one day reveal yet more

about the path the governors of the south played

in the pyramids' decline.

ALEJANDRO: We have been very lucky

during all the seasons that we have been working

in Qubbet el-Hawa,

we have discovered three new tombs,

nine intact burial chambers,

but we have discovered also that,

that sometimes the story has not the same ending.

NARRATOR: He may not have found

hieroglyphic treasures this time,

but next time, Alejandro could be luckier.

In the Valley of the Kings, the New Kingdom pharaohs

dug their tombs deep into the mountains

to protect them from robbers.

Chris has come to the most iconic tomb of all

to find out how well they succeeded--

the tomb of Tutankhamun,

discovered deep beneath layers of rubble

by archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922.

CHRIS: So, this is the exact spot where Carter would,

for the first time, have made a little hole

in this blocking here

and been able to see through into the antechamber.

So this is the moment where famously he's asked,

"Can you see anything?" And he says, "Wonderful things."

That's because he's looking into this chamber, the antechamber,

which is absolutely stuffed full of objects,

as the whole of the tomb was.

NARRATOR: Carter had uncovered the richest collection

of artifacts ever discovered from Egypt's golden age,

including the pharaoh's famous mask.

But for Chris, the modern mythology

of the riches of Tutankhamun's tomb

is not the full story.

It did contain wonderful things,

but the tomb was not undisturbed.

Tutankhamun's funerary furniture

was piled up chaotically as if ready to be removed.

CHRIS: The tomb was robbed,

perhaps just a few days after the funeral,

when Tutankhamun's body was introduced to the tomb

for the first time.

NARRATOR: Small valuables seem to have been taken

by opportunistic looters.

They had left the larger items, perhaps intending to come back,

but something stopped them.

CHRIS: We now know there was a flash flood in the valley,

which deposited a mass of material

on top of the entranceway to the tomb,

and once it dried out,

it solidified to the consistency of cement.

It was impenetrable, and the location of the tomb was lost

until Howard Carter excavated the tomb in 1922.

That was the first time anybody had seen it

since the late 18th dynasty.

NARRATOR: Tutankhamun's tomb wasn't the only tomb

in the Valley of the Kings plundered by ancient thieves.

All the tombs discovered so far

were robbed of their treasures long ago.

They offered no better protection

than the mighty monuments they replaced.

The pyramids, too, had been no match

for determined grave robbers.

And after years of drought and conflict,

the pharaohs could no longer afford to build them.

But the pharaohs achieved

a different kind of immortality.

Their astonishing pyramids remain as an iconic reminder

of the greatest civilization of the ancient world.

Captioned by Side Door Media Services