All language subtitles for Black Pharaohs sunken treasures

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Narrator: The glory days of ancient Egypt
lasted for over 3,000 years.

Official YIFY movies site:
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During that time,
a love of gold consumed its pharaohs.

While its military might dominated
neighboring kingdoms.

But a proud people from the south
rose up to defeat their overlords.

-And became the Black pharaohs of Egypt.
-This is not the stable,

stately old kingdom Egypt that you
generally read about in history books.

This was a time of turmoil.

Precious little is known
about their 100-year reign, until now.

Archaeologists unearth fresh clues
from burial crypts.

-Amazing!
-Isn't that incredible?

And newly explored watery graves.

Kristin: I realized that there was just
like gold lying around... [chuckling]

...that this is an untouched burial.

The constellation of things
that are happening at this site is insane.

The discoveries shed new light
on the Nubians who used gold, gods,

and grit to conquer all of Egypt.

The Nubian Desert in northern Sudan.

In ancient times, this was the center
of a golden civilization

called the Kush empire.

These aren't hills rising from the sand.

They are the ruined tombs of Kushite kings
and queens

who once ruled over all of Egypt,
but are now almost completely forgotten.

This is the royal cemetery
called El-Kurru.

It's one of a handful of places
where scholars can dig for clues

about the mysterious culture

and the elusive history
of the Kush people.

That's what attracted archaeologist.
Geoff Emberling.

At a pyramid called "Ku-1,"
Geoff's team is moving 100 tons of earth,

hoping to expose a royal tomb beneath.

At one time, hundreds of workers toiled
to construct this monument

stone by stone in honor
of a single powerful man.

Today, no one even knows who he was.

Geoff: We want, first of all,
to find out the name of the king.

And second of all, we would hope
that there would be additional information

in material left in the pyramid
about where they fit in history

over 2,000 years ago.

Geoff doesn't have a lot to go on.

Over hundreds of years,

the Ku-1 pyramid has been worn down
by wind-blown sand,

and picked apart by looters in search
of Nubian gold.

What looks today like a pile of bricks
once stood nearly four times as high.

[indistinct chatter]

In modern times,
this particular tomb has proven

to be the toughest to crack,
even for the man

who first began excavating here.

About 100 years ago,

American archaeologist George Reisner
excavated many Kush monuments

and discovered the tombs
of its most important kings.

Geoff: George Reisner was an amazing
pioneer of archeology in Kush.

He started in 1908.
He worked into the 1930s,

had very difficult conditions,

and yet he managed to establish
a basic chronology,

not only of the broad
archaeological periods,

nut of all the kings of Kush.
He put them all into order

and it's an order that we still basically
use today.

At El-Kurru, Reisner got
to the bottom of every pyramid,

except Ku-1.

The ceiling of the pyramid had collapsed,
locking its secrets inside.

Having just lost five men
in a cave-in nearby,

Reisner decided not to tempt fate
any further, and returned home.

Sometimes, Geoff Emberling has thought
of doing the same.

Geoff: When you read Reisner's notes
from his excavations at El-Kurru,

at the end of the season,
he took about two weeks off.

And he has a little note

that the doctor told him
he had to stop worrying so much,

and I can kind of appreciate this now,

even just excavating one of the pyramids
because there's inherent risk.

There's no such thing as no risk.

Of course, without risk
there's no reward.

And as Reisner discovered
at other royal burial sites...

the payoff can be staggering.

In the other nearby temples,

Reisner recovered golden jewelry
and stunning artifacts.

Long-lost masterpieces buried
with the Kushite kings

to enrich them in the afterlife.

The Nubian craftsmanship was stunning.
Intricate and innovative,

the artistry on display was sometimes
even more impressive

than the ornaments created to the north,
in Egypt.

To find even one surviving item would
be a triumph for Geoff.

As an archaeologist,
your dreams are often quite vivid

about what you can find in a place.

And so obviously, these kings' burials
were once extremely rich

with gold and silver objects

and finely crafted beautiful expressions
of their religious sentiments

as well as their status and prestige.

So we can imagine finding all
of those things inside the burial chamber.

[indistinct chatter]

Geoff's first big revelation
is not gold treasure,

but a giant staircase,

one fit for a king-size
funeral procession.

You can see that the staircase
is really monumental.

They've dug down through the solid rock
to a depth of over 25 feet.

But at the bottom of the staircase,
an ominous sign.

You can see just at the bottom there,
the original doorway,

and above it, an irregular hole.

That irregular hole was dug by looters.

Geoff believes the tomb
must have been looted long ago,

by someone familiar with its layout.

Unusually in this pyramid,
the inner chamber is huge and high.

And so it was only the people who built
that that would have known

that digging over the doorway
they would break into the open space

of the chamber itself.

The question is,
how far in did the looters get?

And what, if anything,
did they leave behind?

Geoff is hoping he'll soon find out.

Already he's excavated to the site
of the cave-in

that had blocked Reisner's path.

We're in the second room
of the pyramid.

Its ceiling has entirely collapsed
covering whatever was below.

I have a secret theory
that the looters burrowed in here

and as they were digging
the ceiling collapsed on them.

It was just such a collapse
that foiled looters in another tomb,

keeping some of the treasure safe
for centuries

until Reisner was able to dig it up.

Geoff's taking precautions

to ensure he and his team
don't become the tomb's next victims.

He's installing a special iron scaffolding
to make sure the ceiling doesn't collapse

as the team digs deeper and deeper
into the pyramid.

If the structure holds,

they just might succeed
where Reisner did not.

As today's archaeologists dig deeper
into the past,

they are using new tools that allow them
to go into pyramids

that have been off-limits, until now.

When the royal cemetery of Nuri was built
on the banks of the Nile,

there were around 80 pyramids.

There are only about
three or four hundred pyramids total

in all of Egypt and Sudan.

And for so many of them to be concentrated
at this one place, that is incredible.

There's no site anywhere else on Earth
that had more.

Nuri has been protected by something

usually considered rare in these parts--

water.

Pearce Paul Creasman
is an underwater archaeologist.

He's one of the few people in the world

who could take on an exploration
of this site

because the inner chambers
of these pyramids are flooded.

In the time since the pyramids
were first built,

the Nile River basin has risen,
filling the burial chambers beneath.

In the last 25 years,

the water inside some of the tombs
has gone up nearly four meters.

It's a big learning curve
to understand how to do something

that no one has ever done before,

excavating tombs underwater
in the middle of this desert.

Just as Geoff is hoping
the ceiling collapse

has preserved treasure at El-Kurru,

Pearce Paul believes the water in Nuri
may have kept looters away.

Being underwater makes it
off limits to most of humanity.

To find out if his hunch is correct,

Pearce Paul has to gather just the right
combination of people to pull it off.

He has a specialized team,
including a professional diver,

and fellow underwater archaeologist
Kristin Romey.

I said of course I want to come along
and take a look at what's going on.

I mean, how often do you get to dive
in a pyramid?

You know, and how often have pyramids
really even been dove in?

Conveniently, a pyramid
is a pretty big marker

that you've got something
precious buried underneath.

The fact that these tombs
were submerged, I think,

has been a huge source of protection
for them

because we don't have people
who are equipped

to go in and loot a submerged tomb
at this point.

For his first excavation,

Pearce Paul picks a pyramid in the middle
of the burial grounds.

Pearce: At Nuri, where there are
so many wonderful standing pyramids

that are in really good shape
and look great to--

to choose from, we of course, you know,

picked one of the worst, ruddiest,
awful-looking,

you're not even sure
it's a pyramid, pyramids.

We did this in part because it's such
a big learning curve.

The tomb is believed to be

that of Nastasen,
the last king to be buried at Nuri.

Pearce Paul hopes that once inside,
he'll find proof that it's his.

Pearce: Walking down the stairwell
into the waters

right outside the pyramid tomb's entrance
is exhilarating.

You can feel your heart beat.
Your feet touch the water

and outside the pyramid,
the water is cold.

It's in the 40s. It's very cold.

And you have to tell yourself,

"I know it's going to be okay.
We're prepared for this."

And actually be prepared for it.

Take a deep breath and go.

When you come up to the surface
of the water inside the tomb

and you turn your lights off
and you stand still...

you really know you're in a tomb.

There's this heightened
state of awareness

like the minute that you kind of,
your head goes underwater,

and you start pulling yourself through
that steel chute into the chamber,

and you kind of realize the gravity
of what's going on.

You have to kind of navigate your way
through that first chamber

to get into the air pocket
in the second chamber.

And it's just like every sense
is 110 percent.

You are just wired and just trying
to figure out what's going to happen next.

This is the first time anyone
has ever entered a submerged tomb.

Occasionally you'd hear a little rock plop
in the water,

and that would kind of bring you back
to the reality of the fact

that you are several stories underground.

You know, in a stone chamber
just tethered to a rope

that's supplying you oxygen
from the surface. [chuckles]

In the pitch dark,

the team needs a way to get out fast
in case something goes wrong.

Pearce: We run a line from
down the middle of the tomb,

from the farthest point to the exit,

and we put these little flashing
blue and green lights on them.

As long as they're in the water
they'll keep blinking.

So if you have nothing else in this tomb,
you have your escape plan.

With precautions in place,

Pearce Paul and Kristin get down
to the business of exploring the tomb.

Each new discovery in Sudan provides
opportunities to help right a great wrong

the famous but flawed archaeologist
George Reisner committed

against the African people.
[folk music playing]

Throughout his time in the country,

he excavated amid the rich local culture
of his African hosts.

He was pulling African history
from the ground.

[singing in native language]

But he was doing it at a time
when racist delusions

of ethnic superiority clouded
his scientific judgment.

[indistinct chatter]

Even as he was awed
by the pyramids he excavated,

he refused to believe they could have been
built by the ancestors

of the Black Africans he saw
all around him.

Even when clear evidence of the truth
was staring him in the face.

In 1916, Reisner's team uncovered
beautiful granite statues

of the great Kushite kings

with features that strongly
resembled Black Africans.

Reisner argued they were
not accurate likenesses.

Instead, his scholarly articles asserted
that the kings,

and the builders
of all the Kushite monuments,

must have been light-skinned foreigners.

I think it just challenges
so fundamentally

some of his personal views

about what people in the Sudan
were capable of

and that he finds it really difficult
to suddenly read the evidence.

It's such a huge challenge
that he can't get over it.

Reisner wasn't the last or the first
to underestimate the Kushites.

Until recently,
most archaeologists portrayed Kush

as little more than a subject state
within Egypt's empire.

A source for gold in peacetime

and workers captured
and enslaved during war.

But a new generation of scholars
is uncovering

a more accurate and fascinating reality.

The Kushite empire was far more advanced
than anyone previously believed.

One of the key Nubian sites lies
about 270 kilometers downstream

from the burial site of El-Kurru
in the town of Kerma, Sudan.

Looming over the landscape

is an enormous and complex structure,
called a "Deffufa."

It's a Kushite temple,

built around the same time Egyptians
were creating their first pyramids,

and the Britons, Stonehenge.

According to archaeologist,
Salah El Din Mohammed Ahmed,

that makes it one
of Africa's oldest surviving buildings.

Salah El Din:
The Deffufa stands in the middle

of the ancient town of Kerma,

which is one of the most ancient towns
in Africa.

This town dates
to around 2,500 before Christ,

more than 4,000 years ago.

The Deffufa's building blocks
are not stone.

They're man-made bricks,

evidence that the Nubians knew
as much about construction

as the Egyptians did at that time.

Also around Kerma

a vast cemetery preserving
elaborate burial practices

points to a civilization that was already
well developed in 2,000 B.C.,

when its better-known neighbor, Egypt,
was uniting into a pharaoh-led empire.

At first, the two up-and-coming nations
were peers

and forged
a mutually beneficial relationship.

It was often a relationship
based on trade.

And evidence from Egyptian tombs

shows depictions of people
from the Sudan

bringing tribute,
as it's always characterized, into Egypt.

So items like leopard skins,
monkeys, precious stones.

Because of its location on the Nile,

Kerma grew into a thriving trade hub
between sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt...

funneling ebony, ivory,
and exotic animals north.

But Kush's rise to power was really fueled
by one thing...

gold.

Their Egyptian neighbors
had an insatiable appetite for jewelry,

gold leaf coffins,

and funerary masks
of the kind made famous by King Tut.

Much of that gold was mined in Kush.

Salah El Din: Kush was traditionally
known to the Egyptians

as the land of gold.

So most of the gold of the Egyptian state
came from Nubia

and mostly came from this area

and also from the eastern desert
to the east of Kerma.

The Egyptians also valued
the Kushites' skill as archers,

calling them the "bow people,"
and employing them as mercenary soldiers.

And Egyptian instructions on fighting
record the Kushites' prowess as wrestlers.

A tradition that still thrives in Sudan
today.

The military skills the Kush honed

in the service
of their Egyptian neighbors

were eventually turned
on the great empire itself.

The Kushites started small,

with incursions across the border
to expand their territory.

This angered the Egyptians.

In about 1500 B.C.,
Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose I

invaded Kush to eliminate
the growing threat

and get direct access to the gold
he coveted.

His army marched south
until they reached a sandstone butte

called "Jebel Barkal" or "Pure Mountain."

This would become one of the holiest

and most disputed sites
in the history of the world.

Jebel Barkal has long been a landmark
on the ancient highway

following the Nile River.

But this mountain was much more
than a milepost

to both Kushite and Egyptian people.

Much of Jebel Barkal's mystique comes
from an unusual natural tower,

separate from the mountain, that rises
nearly 76 meters into the sky.

For Kushites, the pillar's phallic shape

made it a symbol of creation
and fertility.

And, according
to archaeologist Tim Kendall,

the Egyptians attached several more layers
of significance to the sandstone tower.

Timothy: What made this mountain
so powerful

and meaningful to the ancient Egyptians
was the fact that it had this gigantic

spire-like pinnacle on its south face

that reminded them of multiple things
that had great religious meaning.

On the one hand,
it looked like a rearing cobra.

On the other hand,
it looked like a standing king, Osiris,

the mythical first king of Egypt.

The cobra is the key.

In Egyptian mythology, cobras have
a powerful connection to kingship.

Goddesses take the shape of a cobra
to protect the king.

That's why they appear on the crowns
of pharaohs, including King Tut's.

Tim believes it was probably
a high priest,

accompanying the invasion,
who first saw the connection.

Jebel Barkal was declared
to be the birthplace

of the god of gods, Amun.

And it provided moral justification
to Pharaoh Thutmose I

for seizing the Kush territory.

Timothy: It confirmed the King's feeling

that he was the rightful ruler
of this place.

Here was the center of the primeval god
who had given,

that had started kingship here
and he was the heir of this kingship

and he had an absolute right to rule Kush.

For the next 400 years,

Egyptian rulers honored Jebel Barkal
by building temples in its shadow.

And many sought to capture
the mountain's divine magic

by traveling the long road to Nubia

in order to be crowned
at this sacred birthplace of Amun,

the holy father of the pharaohs.

We don't know exactly what happened
in this temple,

but we think that the king came in here
during his coronation.

Came into this inner chamber
with the God Amun,

in an effigy, of course.

Here the two of them, father and son,

united with the God Osiris,
the mythical first king of Egypt.

And then he went forth from the temple,
climbed up the steps,

sat down on the throne,

and became king
and got up and stood on the porch

and was greeted by the mob outside
as the new living god.

In the beginning,
the Kushites were forced

to accept the religion of their conquerors
in order to survive.

They worshiped at the temples built
by the Egyptians.

Eventually, they surpassed
even their conquerors

in the intensity of their belief.

The Kushite royals
began building their tombs

in the shape of pyramids.

And the gold jewelry found in those tombs

testifies to their devotion
to the Egyptian gods.

Isis...

Hathor...

Amun in the shape of a ram.

All found by George Reisner
in Kushite tombs.

They were adopting a world view
that had been long established,

and they saw themselves fitting
into it perfectly.

For 300 years,
the Egyptians occupied Kush

and imposed upon them
the cults of Amun.

Jebel Barkal was the epicenter
of the fundamentalist fervor.

The mountain kindled the religious spark
that in time would set Egypt ablaze,

and turn Kushites into pharaohs.

[speaking in native language]

At El-Kurru's Ku-1 tomb,

Geoff Emberling and his
team have pushed beyond the rockfall

that stopped George Reisner
a hundred years ago.

For the Sudanese team members
like foreman Monsour Mohammed Ahmed,

this is truly sacred ground.

Monsour: [in Arabic]
These are my ancestors.

My culture and civilization come
from them. I am a part of them.

We're late.

We should have been looking and learning
from them a long time ago.

They're at the very end
of their dig season

and Geoff's funds are running low,

when suddenly they're confronted
with a find that will change everything.

Geoff: We were wondering all along
whether there was going to be

two burial chambers or possibly a third,

and we discovered a doorway
to the inner third burial chamber.

You can just see the outline

of this perfectly preserved doorway
that goes into the...

what will have been
the final burial chamber of this pyramid.

A final chamber that could contain

a treasure trove of burial objects

or the bones of a king.

But getting to it will take time,

time Geoff and his team may not have.

The tomb's location reveals
an important clue

about the unknown king who built it.

He wasn't humble
about his place in history.

He built his memorial
right next to the tomb

of one the greatest Kushite kings.

On this platform
once lay the body of Piankhi,

the Black African king
who conquered Egypt.

By 700 B.C.,
some 800 years after their invasion,

Egypt had withdrawn from Kush.

The new kingdom empires of Tutankhamun
and Ramesses II had fallen to chaos.

Warlords from Libya fought for control
of the north

while priests in Thebes tried to hold
the south together.

The priests feared their cult of Amun
would be destroyed.

They knew their survival depended
on reuniting the torn nation.

So the Egyptian priests begged for help
from a most unlikely source,

their former colony, Kush.

There the young king Piankhi
heard their call.

A devout follower of Amun,
he was eager to fight for his god.

He vowed to repel the Libyan kings,
confident that with Amun on his side,

he could not lose.

His forces moved north on the Nile
to Thebes.

He told his army, "String the bow,
and let loose the arrow.

"Let the people of the northland
taste my fingers."

-[grunting]
-[screaming]

[screaming]

It wasn't long
before Piankhi's enemies begged for peace.

"Be merciful!" cried one Libyan king.
"I cannot see your face for shame.

"I cannot stand before your flame.

I tremble at your strength."

-[screaming]
-[grunting]

The fact that Kush was able
to conquer Egypt

is really a David and Goliath story.

Egypt has these huge cities, huge temples,
lots and lots of people, and Kush,

the settlements are more dispersed.

So we're trying to figure out exactly
how Kush was able

to amass that military power.

In one of history's greatest upsets,

Kushite King Piankhi and his successors
became Egypt's 25th dynasty.

Their reign would be unlike any other
before or since.

The Kushite pharaohs
controlled more area

than any other dynasty,

stretching from modern-day Khartoum
to the Mediterranean,

becoming rivals of mighty Assyria
and Greece.

This empire, built on gold,

was now in power
because of its religious belief

and its military skill.

Political power has always been connected
with religious beliefs.

To convince the people that you have
the right to rule over them,

you have to be religious

and they use this to control everything,

the gold mines, the trade routes
and everything.

Piankhi ruled from Kush
for about a dozen years

before handing the crown over
to his younger brother Shabaka.

They both earned reputations as strong,
merciful leaders.

Timothy: They were famous for their piety
and their magnanimity.

For example, they didn't slaughter
their prisoners, they forgave them.

They put them to work digging canals.

These are completely
uncharacteristic features

of ancient kings.

Piankhi and Shabaka paved the way
for another Kushite pharaoh, Taharqa,

who battled Egypt's foes far beyond
the empire's borders.

Around 700 B.C., he even saved Jerusalem
and King Solomon's temple

from an assault by the Assyrians.

For this act, recorded
in the Old Testament,

Hebrew historians hail Taharqa
as a savior of the people.

Like the Egyptian rulers,

Taharqa tied himself
to the sacred mountain.

But he put his own stamp on the holy site,

an inscription that was once covered
by thin sheets of gold.

It's Taharqa's declaration
of his own divinity,

and a defiant jab at the Assyrians.
He calls them Bedouin.

"I, Taharqa, the good god, the king
of upper and lower Egypt,

"who lives forever,

"I have destroyed the Bedouin of Asia

"and I have cut down the desert dwellers
of Libya."

Despite Taharqa's tough talk,

by the end of his reign he had very little
of Egypt left under his control.

The Assyrians dogged Taharqa
with invasions.

And ultimately rolled his borders all
the way back to Thebes.

But Jebel Barkal stayed
under Kushite control.

And there, according to Tim Kendall,

Taharqa chose a special place to be buried
and spend eternity,

full of religious
and astrological significance.

Timothy: If you're standing on the top
of Jebel Barkal,

you can see Taharqa's pyramid
in the distance.

And on New Year’s Day,
which would be about July 31st,

the sun would appear to rise directly
over the king's tomb.

Three and a half months later,
if you're standing on the summit

of Taharqa's Pyramid looking
to Jebel Barkal...

the sun sets right over the pinnacle,

and the pinnacle looks like
the God Osiris.

The setting sun symbolizes
the god's death.

It's exactly this time
when the Nile falls, when fertility ends.

And the god is thought to die.
So he's born on New Year's Day,

he dies three and a half months later
when the Nile falls.

He's resurrected every year
and he's reborn millions of times,

year by year.

After Taharqa was buried here,
dozens of other Nubian royalty followed.

Eventually, Nuri became the largest site
for pyramids in Kush.

The constellation of things
that are happening at this site is insane.

You have pyramids.

You have burial chambers
that are probably unexcavated.

You have dozens of kings,

dozens and dozens of queens
and princesses and princes.

And we have virtually no understanding
of them, of their time,

of their place, of this monument.

One pyramid at a time,
Pearce Paul is starting

to chip away at Nuri's secrets.

Deep inside a burial chamber,

he's looking for any sign to confirm
that this is the tomb of Nastasen,

a Kushite king who defeated an invasion
from upper Egypt.

When Pearce Paul
and Kristin enter the third,

internal burial chamber,
they get the proof they need.

Pearce: I think
that is painted ostrich shell.

Oh, no. It's a fragment of a shabti!

A shabti, a figurine meant
to help the king in the afterlife,

bearing Nastasen's name.

Fortunately, the ancient Nubians
and Egyptians

liked to put their names on things

because if your name was forgotten,
it's like you didn't exist.

The team finds six shabtis
with Nastasen's name,

but that's just the beginning
of what his tomb still holds.

I think the big moment of realization

of what we actually had
in Nastasen's pyramid

was when Pearce Paul led me
to the third chamber in the back.

And we were just waving
our flashlights around,

and he pointed to this little niche
in the back wall,

and the flashlight caught on little bits
of gold in the niche

left there for centuries and centuries
and centuries. It was incredible.

And when I realized that there was just
like gold lying around... [laughs]

...that this is an untouched burial.

The gold foil in the niche
once clad figurines

that have since dissolved in the water.

But it's the water that likely ensured

that there was anything in the niche
at all.

In general, when you find a niche
in a tomb, it's empty,

someone's been there before you.

If anybody had been in that tomb
to rob it, seems stands to reason

they would have taken the gold shiny stuff
off of the shelf at eye level.

These precious specks
may just be a hint

of something else in the burial chamber,
something even rarer than gold.

Pearce: In the middle
of the third chamber,

there's a large mound,
and it's got stones all around it.

It is very conveniently
about the size of a person.

It's about six feet long
and about three feet wide,

and then a pile around it.

The sandstone mound
is likely Nastasen's sarcophagus.

But the team will have to wait
till next season to find out

if the pharaoh's mummified body
is still lying within.

To have the hope,

the possibility of something like
a tomb being intact

and the king being in it,
that is an incredible thing.

Think about what was the last big
untouched burial chamber

excavated in ancient Egypt.

It was Tut.
That was the last big untouched chamber.

Now, just multiply Tut

by how many pharaohs
you have buried at Nuri,

and the potential is staggering.

Pearce Paul is hoping
Nastasen's tomb will help solve a mystery

that has intrigued researchers
for decades.

Why was he last to be buried here?

After Nastasen,

after 400 years of burying kings at Nuri

and probably a few hundred years
of burying kings at El-Kurru previously,

things change. They move
where the kings are buried.

There's something going on there.

You don't just pick up and change
for no reason.

So maybe we can learn about this change

and about the changes that are going on
in the kingdom of Kush at this time.

It has been nearly 100 years
since King Tut's tomb was discovered.

But archaeologists keep hoping
and searching,

and in the process keep uncovering
new revelations

about these ancient cultures.

Back at El-Kurru, the discovery
of the third room,

the burial chamber,
has gotten everyone excited.

But what they ultimately find inside
is not what anyone was hoping for.

An empty tomb, unfinished and unused.

It's an indication that political feuds

may have been dividing
the Kushite royal family.

This pyramid is quite a bit later

than all the other pyramids
found here at El-Kurru

and so there's an interesting question

about how this fits
into the history of Kush.

The unused pyramid could mean
that power had shifted to another location

before the king was buried.

Finding treasure is rewarding,

but as much history can be told
by what isn't there.

Geoff: It can be discovery in the sense
of finding something spectacular.

It can be discovery in the sense
of putting together pieces of a puzzle

that help you understand another time
and another place.

Part of that puzzle
is what happens after the move

from El-Kurru and Nuri.

Geoff has been invited
to help out at a nearby dig site

from much later in the Kush empire.

And he's bringing along
some high-tech friends.

This is Zuma village,

the site of a noble burial mound
built around 1,000 years

after Pharaoh Taharqa died.

It was the twilight of the empire.

A rival African nation was about
to wipe out the Kushites for good.

And Christianity would soon transform
the region.

[horn honking]

-Hi, Geoff!
-Yeah! Mahmoud!

-Hello Geoff! [laughs]
-How are you? Nice to see you.

[both speaking Arabic]

Mahmoud: I have something here
for you to see.

-Come along.
-Okay.

At Zuma, Geoff's colleague
Mahmoud El-Tayeb

has made an important new discovery.

Geoff, now we are approaching
to the burial chamber.

-All right.
-I will show you.

The layout of this white sandstone tomb
is different from Ku-1.

Here a tunnel leads back to a shaft,
with burial chambers below.

Geoff puts one of his robots to work.

There's no gold here.

Broken burial objects indicate this tomb,
like most Kushite tombs,

has been hit by looters.

But for the archaeologists,

it's still a treasure trove of clues
about this mysterious culture.

-Amazing.
-Isn't that incredible?

Okay, so there is a long-necked jar
in the back.

Is that another variety of beer jar?

Let's, uh, we'll pan over to the right.

It's a pot stand with a cup.

And what's that inside the cup there?

Mahmoud: It's a stone.

-Just fallen perfectly into the cup.
-Yes.

Wow.

The brick and mortar wall looks
like it could have been built yesterday.

But it's as old as the tomb,

protected from the elements
for 1500 years.

I'm gonna just see if we can get
a good view of the burial itself.

At last, Geoff lays eyes
on the bones of a king...

or at least a nobleman,
laid to rest in this tomb.

This is just the beginning.

It will take years of analysis to discover
his place in Sudan's history.

I really dreamed
to find something extraordinary.

And that was great really
to have such a find.

A burial for kings.

If I could talk to him, I would ask him,
"Who are you?"

"And what is the importance of this place
in which you are buried now?"

Geoff: It's a find of a quality
that we dream of,

so, you know, I was really glad
that Mahmoud was sharing it with us.

And of course, I wanted it myself.
[laughs]

So it provided a great model for what
we could hope to find here at El-Kurru.

By the time the village of Zuma
was created,

Egypt's influence had waned.

And the kings of Kush no longer built
grand pyramid tombs.

Their zenith as pharaohs had lasted less
than a century,

but in that short time,
this small kingdom had toppled a giant.

And seized its place among the
great empires of the ancient world.

And now, thanks to the science
underway in Sudan,

the Black pharaohs' empire of gold
is stepping out of the shadows forever.