Ancient Egypt’s Lost Secrets: Tutankhamun, Pyramids & Ramses | MEGA Episode | National Geographic

JOHN: The one thing you've learnt, which they never teach you in University, is how to do archaeology with your toes.

I can feel a lot of silt, Nile silt, that's very, very fine sand.

NARRATOR: On the banks of the Nile, archaeologists are investigating a temple that they think Tutankhamun restored.

JOHN: I'm hitting a very thick layer of stone.

NARRATOR: Evidence of the boy king's reign may lie at the bottom of this mysterious pit.

JOHN: This is going to be hard work.

NARRATOR: The tomb of Tutankhamen in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.

When Tutankhamun's burial chamber was first discovered, at its heart, lay an unimaginable treasure: The mummy of the boy king, who died tragically young.

He remains one of the most mysterious and famous of all the pharaohs.

JOHN: Let's go, let's do it.

NARRATOR: Now, across Egypt teams of archaeologists investigate the unsolved secrets of Tutankhamun.

Where did he get so much gold?

How did he control his kingdom?

And could experts have missed anything when they first entered his tomb?

Egyptologist Aliaa Ismail, just 30 years old, runs an Egyptian team digitally scanning and preserving data in the Valley of the Kings.

The team had previously scanned and stored every inch of Tutankhamun's tomb.

Now, Aliaa is heading back on a mission of her own.

Did the young pharaoh leave more secrets yet to be found?

The pioneering archaeologist Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922.

ALIAA: It was the biggest and still is the biggest discovery in ancient Egyptian antiquities.

For Egyptologists, this was like a marking point in time, finding a huge treasure with all the golden masks, the coffins.

NARRATOR: Howard Carter kept a detailed diary.

ALIAA: It seems the Carter was on the brink of giving up and then suddenly the treasure opens up.

Looking at his diary, "It soon became obvious that we were but on the threshold of the discovery, the site that met us was beyond anything one could conceive."

NARRATOR: Carter discovered the tomb, with Tutankhamun's sarcophagus and mummy, and rooms piled high with treasures.

ALIAA: The tomb, it's so neat now but when Carter came in here this place was cluttered with objects.

In here, you would have had the shrines of Tutankhamun, and then the sarcophagus and then the coffins within.

And within the coffins, the final layer would be the mummy itself.

NARRATOR: But Carter's journal holds a surprising revelation.

He may not have been the first to enter the chamber after all.

Clearing the rubble from the tomb, Carter discovered that someone had cut a hole in the slab, sealing the entrance.

Inside, more signs of a break-in.

Some of Tutankhamun's treasures had been knocked over, damaged or strewn across the floor.

The robbers must have been in a rush, because they dropped precious items, such as gold rings wrapped in a scarf.

Luckily for Carter, they didn't take the most valuable treasure: the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun and his famous death mask.

ALIAA: Carter must have been in true awe seeing this mask just out there, just the biggest find of the century.

NARRATOR: Shortly after the first robbery, the tomb was looted again.

It was re-sealed and preserved, leaving a chaotic mess inside for Carter 3,000 years later.

He searched the tomb, but he didn't have the modern day scanning equipment Aliaa uses.

ALIAA: The technology could actually bring about things that no one thought once could have ever existed.

NARRATOR: Can Aliaa's hi-tech scanning reveal the secrets of Tutankhamun that the robbers and Carter missed?

At Gebel El-Silsila...

JOHN: Alright guys...

(speaking in native language) MARIA: Let's go and find the lost temple.

(speaking in Arabic).

(Marina groans).

NARRATOR: Director of the Swedish Archaeological mission Maria Nilsson...

MARIA: Come on.

JOHN: Messa.

NARRATOR: Her husband, archaeologist John Ward, and their dog, Carter...

MARIA: Come on.

NARRATOR: Are arriving on the banks of the Nile with their team.

JOHN: Let's go, let's do it.

NARRATOR: They're investigating a riverside temple that could have been restored by Tutankhamun.

JOHN: Come on guys.

NARRATOR: Most of what archaeologists know about the boy king comes from his tomb.

But 100 years since its discovery, experts are exploring beyond the Valley of the Kings to find out more about Tutankhamun's short life and reign.

MARIA: When Tutankhamun came to power, it was all about restoring what his father had neglected.

So, he had a task of restoring all the grand monuments across Egypt.

JOHN: We going that way?

NARRATOR: Maria and John think they may have found one of these restoration projects.

Gebel El-Silsila was home to a vast quarry and workforce during Tutankhamun's time.

MARIA: We know that we got his quarries here so there's a lot of activity here on site from the reign of Tutankhamen.

NARRATOR: Maria and John have discovered the worker's village at Gebel El-Silsila, and the foundations of a temple right next to the Nile.

JOHN: This is the rear of temple.

We've still got the grid lines which show us where the actual walls used to be.

And these would have stood in this, literally right where we're standing right now.

We've got the pronouse here and we would have had a pylon gate at the front facing the west.

NARRATOR: If this temple was restored by Tutankhamun, why did he restore it, and which gods were worshiped here?

Finding new evidence could help unravel the story of his reign.

Maria and John are focusing their work on a mysterious purpose-built pit within the temple complex.

JOHN: This was an entire mound with a tree growing out the middle of it.

And the hunch was that there was something beneath here because the tree had to have a water source.

Once we cleared all that area, we started to find the dressed slabs that went around, and now we have the pit.

We just don't know what the function of it is.

NARRATOR: The only way to find out is for John to get in and have a look.

JOHN: So is the water going down, Ahmed?

NARRATOR: But first they have to pump the water out.

JOHN: The problem is that as soon as we pump all the water out it just seeps back in again and every time it seeps back in again it brings all the clay and the mud with it and puts it in the center, and the problem is that these boys are trying to work in a muddy slurry and it's pretty disgusting down there.

NARRATOR: But as workers pump water from the pit, Maria gets an urgent call from the other side of the temple.

MARIA: I think Ibrahim has something again.

(speaking in Arabic) He's done it again.

NARRATOR: In Abbad...

THOMAS: Hey Marcus.

NARRATOR: Director of the French archaeology mission, Thomas Faucher, and American Archaeologist Jennifer Gates-Foster.

JENNIFER: Are you ready?

NARRATOR: are also investigating one of Tutankhamun's secrets: The source of his gold.

There are no gold mines along the Nile, where Tutankhamun and most ancient Egyptians lived.

So Thomas and Jennifer are venturing far from Tutankhamun's tomb deep into the Eastern desert.

They hope a site here can reveal how he got his gold.

JENNIFER: Without question it was a critical resource for filling the Egyptian states coffers.

What does it take to have a solid gold death mask?

What does it take to have a throne covered completely in gold foil.

Well, it takes generations of exploration in a rough environment, to find that gold, to process it and then to eventually have it end up in Tut's tombs.

NARRATOR: When priests laid Tutankhamun to rest, they covered his face with a death mask made of more than 20 pounds of pure gold.

Then, they enclosed his mummy in three exquisite golden coffins sealing them inside a stone sarcophagus, surrounded by four shrines covered in beaten gold.

The priests crammed the adjoining chambers with hundreds of gold and gilt treasures.

In total, Tutankhamun was buried with more than 264 pounds of gold.

How did the boy king amass so much?

In Egypt's Eastern desert, there are vast gold deposits.

Thomas has been investigating here since 2011.

He's discovered evidence of ancient gold miners working out here.

But they're hundreds of miles from Tutankhamun's capital, and in the middle of one of the most-deadly landscapes in the world.

How did his ancient miners get his gold from way out here?

THOMAS: You need like a week by donkey or camel to cross the eastern desert.

You'll just die because you won't have any, any water or food supplies.

NARRATOR: Last year, Thomas and Jennifer excavated an ancient fortress, a vital safe haven in this vast wilderness.

JENNIFER: It probably had a little, out flair sort of flint, yeah, kind of a flint.

NARRATOR: They've uncovered remarkable evidence that the site dates to the Greek era of Egyptian history, 1,000 years after Tutankhamun.

JENNIFER: Well this, this season we have had an extraordinary amount of material.

This is a really lovely little, probably, a perfume vessel.

NARRATOR: But they suspect the site could be far older.

The team needs to go deeper beneath the fortress to know if Tutankhamun's workers were here, and if he got his gold from the Eastern Desert.

THOMAS: We found more shards like down the level and as you see we're underneath the level of the fortress so if we can find the ceramics dating from the time of Tutankhamun that would be great.

NARRATOR: But their work here is under threat.

Large areas of Abbad have been bulldozed in the past year for agricultural use.

THOMAS: All the, all these traces here and all the parts here have been like completely, completely destroyed.

NARRATOR: But another, more dangerous threat comes from modern day looters.

They target sites in a futile search for gold.

The longer Thomas and Jennifer excavate here, the more unwanted attention they attract.

THOMAS: And you'll see the, the cars coming and going all day long.

People think that because it's an ancient site, they will find gold like they could find gold in the, in Karnak or in Luxor in these old temples.

NARRATOR: They're in a race to find out if Tutankhamun got his gold from the Eastern Desert before looters and farmers destroy the evidence.

THOMAS: We're just like running from one site to the other like trying to save as much data as possible before, before it's all gone.

NARRATOR: At Silsila...

MARIA: You are amazing.

NARRATOR: Maria and John's long-term colleague Ibrahim Awadallah Mohammed Jad has found a clue beneath the ruins of the temple complex.

JOHN: Oh wow.

MARIA: Here, we have the crocodile who's described as Sobek, Lord of Henney, Lord of the ancient Silsila.

JOHN: And I'm holding it in my hand.

MARIA: Yeah. JOHN: Wow.

MARIA: It's amazing. It is fragmentary.

We're missing the head.

It confirms everything that we've been trying to understand the last years.

NARRATOR: Statuettes like this one would have been brought to the temple by worshippers as an offering to the crocodile god Sobek.

JOHN: Isn't it beautiful? MARIA: It is.

JOHN: Isn't it beautiful? MARIA: It's our first.

This is as close as you get to the ancient people without actually going back in time.

JOHN: And made from Silsila Stone.

MARIA: And made from local stone.

JOHN: Oh it's fantastic, that is fantastic.

NARRATOR: The statuette of the God Sobek can help Maria and John understand the purpose of the temple, and why Tutankhamun may have restored it.

Sobek appears as a crocodile, a dangerous predator here.

MARIA: We've now got high water, but during the low season, when the water is down, on the other side and all the way up here, it would just be infested with crocodiles.

NARRATOR: Crocodiles were a constant, deadly threat for anyone who worked near the Nile.

The ancient Egyptians worshipped the crocodile god, Sobek.

He was the mythical creator of the Nile and made the land fertile.

The pharaohs built temples on the Nile to Sobek, where he was believed to preserve the life-giving waters, and to protect the people from its dangers.

Priests even kept live crocodiles at their temples to worship as incarnations of Sobek.

It would make sense for Tutankhamun to restore a temple to Sobek here.

JOHN: Tutankhamen's quarries here in Silsila required a massive workforce, and to keep them safe and protected, Tutankhamen would have used this temple.

He would have used his association with the God Sobek to empower himself to show that he was the great protector and that he could look after them in such a harsh environment.

NARRATOR: Could the pit beside the temple have been used to keep crocodiles?

JOHN: We know from other sites they kept crocodiles as part of the state religion.

I think what we have here is actually a crocodile pit where they would have kept them literally in here and fed them from where I'm standing now.

The priests would have just literally thrown the food down to them.

NARRATOR: The team has finished pumping the water, and it's time to see if they can find any evidence for this extraordinary theory.

JOHN: He's lifting the stone out on his shoulder.

NARRATOR: But its dangerous work to clear the stones from the depths of the pit.

MAN: Ali, Mohammed.

JOHN: We're about to do the gang pull of a stone slab.

(speaking in Arabic).

NARRATOR: Abbad is located in an 85,000 square mile wilderness, between Tutankhamun's palaces along the Nile, and gold mines in the east.

Jennifer is on the hunt for clues that Tutankhamun's gold workers used this safe haven.

It would unlock one of Tutankhamun's secrets, and be evidence he got the gold for his glittering shrine from mines in the Eastern desert.

JENNIFER: It takes a lot of people's lives dedicated to this space, out here, working, dying, trying to survive to find that gold and then to eventually have it end up in Tut's tombs.

THOMAS: OK!

NARRATOR: The clues, artifacts dating to Tutankhamun's era could lie beneath the ruins of this ancient fortress.

3D scans of the site show the scale of the task.

The fortress of Abbad covers an area of 8,000-square feet with 18 rooms.

It's like looking for a needle underneath a giant haystack.

(speaking in Arabic).

NARRATOR: But as the team works their way through the rooms two feet below the fortress, they uncover something.

THOMAS: You can see on this shard of pottery that there is a bit of writing text about three letters, and these letters is demotic and demotic is the writing of the ancient Egyptian.

It's really a unique piece of evidence.

NARRATOR: The ancient Egyptians wrote on broken pottery.

THOMAS: Because papyri was so expensive, usually they didn't use it in the desert except for very official letters.

So, it's easy to pick up a pottery shard and to write on it.

They were like taking it and putting in the rubbish bin.

So, it's really thrilling to find this text.

NARRATOR: The pottery is still not old enough to be from Tutankhamun's time, but it's clear progress...

A sign the team is on the right track.

If they keep on digging, they might reach pottery or other remnants of Tutankhamun's era and evidence his gold workers came through the fortress of Abbad with gold for his tomb.

NARRATOR: At Gebel El-Silsila, Maria and John have been working and living with their two children, Freja and Jonathan, on a boat on the Nile.

For ten years, they've split their time between Sweden and Egypt to complete their work and feed their passion for discovering more about this ancient civilization.

MARIA: Four, two, one.

Yeah.

MARIA: Ready to jump in?

JOHN: I am indeed. It's been so hot today.

MARIA: What a place for the kids to jump in and cool off.

JOHN: You haven't, you haven't lived unless you've swum in the Nile and the kids will have that for the rest of their lives...

MARIA: That's true.

JOHN: And thankfully there's no crocodiles.

MARIA: Come on then.

NARRATOR: They can relax at the end of a hot day but there's little time left to complete their work this season, and they have a busy few days ahead.

They're investigating a temple that they believe was restored by Tutankhamun and a deep pit that could have held crocodiles, worshiped as incarnations of the God Sobek.

JOHN: Well done, Hussain.

NARRATOR: It's filled up with a thick layer of mud, and a huge stone is blocking their progress.

(speaking in Arabic).

JOHN: The ladder could snap in half, the rope could snap.

Watch your toe, watch your toes.

NARRATOR: They need to get it out.

JOHN: They could drop the stone on their feet.

I mean there's a multitude of problems that could go wrong here.

No, that's not going to work boys, that's not going to work, it's going to tip, it's going to tip it.

NARRATOR: But it's not going to be easy.

JOHN: Watch your toes, watch your toes.

MARIA: Well done guys!

NARRATOR: Now that the slab has been removed, they can see that exploring the pit is going to be harder than they thought.

JOHN: They all thought the "heba," this clay substance, was just the floor, and that was it.

NARRATOR: There's a thick layer of mud at the bottom of the pit.

JOHN: Ahmed is now able to put his palm throng all the way down, showing that there is actually much, much more, over a meter and a half more to go, after they've gone through this clay substance.

NARRATOR: John decides it's time for him to get down in the pit himself to search through the mud for evidence that dates back to Tutankhamun's reign.

JOHN: Oh.

NARRATOR: In the Valley of The Kings Aliaa is on a mission to discover the unsolved secrets of Tutankhamun that Howard Carter may have missed.

To investigate further, Aliaa has come to Stoppelaere House, where she heads up a scanning team that uses the latest technology to study tombs in the Valley of the Kings.

ALIAA: This is our 3D scanning center.

This is where we process all the data that we have scanned.

I have been scanning for the last 6 years of my life and this is so exciting.

It's like you're peeling back the layers.

NARRATOR: Aliaa thinks the previous scans of Tutankhamun's tomb may have revealed something extraordinary...

Something Howard Carter would never have found.

ALIAA: Looking at the color image, you can't really see much.

Very beautiful, but once we remove the layer of color and just look at the 3D, the greyscale, it's very obvious that there's no carving, it was just plaster and paint.

When you look deeper, you see sort of a shadow in here all the way to here.

Almost inclined to believe that this is a sort of passageway or doorway.

It was with these scans, that scholars were able to review and reveal something might be lying just behind the north wall.

NARRATOR: The lines aren't visible to the naked eye, but this tantalizing evidence that there might be a lost chamber hidden in Tutankhamun's tomb, has sparked years of exploration and controversy.

ALIAA: It sort of gives us hope that there's a tomb just sealed off in half and somebody else, another occupant.

You know there's possibility.

NARRATOR: A lost chamber could rewrite history.

But what or who could be behind a secret door?

NARRATOR: At Gebel El El-Silsila, John Ward descends into a foul-smelling pit.

JOHN: Oh.

NARRATOR: He's looking for evidence that this was a ceremonial pit used during the reign of Tutankhamun.

A pit that he thinks was used to keep crocodiles.

But the bottom is covered in a thick layer of mud.

JOHN: The thing that we've learned, which they never teach you in university, is how to do archaeology with your toes.

And I'm being serious because of course you can't see, so you use your fingers.

And what I can feel is I can feel a lot of silt.

As I'm going deeper, I can feel very small stone, it's sandstone fragments.

I'm going deeper now, ooh, I'm going very deep now.

NARRATOR: But toes can only get you so far.

JOHN: Oh, that's lovely, oh man.

MARIA: What you got?

JOHN: No, it's salt.

Salt stone.

The silt and the mud goes much deeper than we anticipated, but I'm hitting a very thick layer of stone fragments, and I can't get past that.

NARRATOR: But time is running out for John and the team.

Tomorrow is the last day of their excavation here.

JOHN: This is going to take a lot more work than we first envisaged.

MARIA: Can you see anything John?

JOHN: There's nothing to see, it's all blind archaeology.

I can feel beneath this mud brick mixture there's a stone layer, and that's where we're trying to get to.

Come to Egypt they said, work in the sand they said.

They didn't say thing about water and mud.

MARIA: Coming up to the end of the day.

JOHN: Yep, I know.

NARRATOR: With time running out, one of the workers locates something hidden beneath the muddy water.

MAN: Look, touch here.

NARRATOR: Could it be proof this pit and temple complex were used during the reign of Tutankhamun?

In Luxor...

Aliaa has returned to the tomb of Tutankhamun to investigate evidence for a lost chamber behind the North Wall.

3D scans uncovered what some believe are outlines of a doorway.

Does Tutankhamun's tomb have more secrets to reveal?

ALIAA: Some Egyptologists think that there is a whole tomb behind this scene.

The outline or shadow falls within this area.

It is exciting as Egyptologists to think that there may be a whole huge treasure, lying just there behind this wall, waiting to be discovered.

NARRATOR: Outside, Aliaa looks for clues to where a hidden tomb could lie.

ALIAA: Here, there is the tomb of Tutankhamen just beneath this mound, and if there is another tomb that comes right out of it, it's going to be right there.

NARRATOR: The presence of another hidden tomb here is a controversial theory, and it's difficult to prove.

Archaeological excavation in the Valley of the Kings is a danger to the priceless tombs below.

But there's another way to look under the surface.

ALIAA: Not long ago, a team was allowed to come and do some ground penetrating radar over here.

Their radar was to show if there was a potential in the theory that there may be another tomb lying down beneath Tutankhamun.

NARRATOR: Ground penetrating radar allows archaeologists to search for voids through rock and behind the walls of tombs.

The area around Tutankhamun's tomb has been scanned multiple times before, with conflicting results.

But recent work by Egyptian archaeologist Mamdouh Eldamaty poses a new and captivating possibility.

In his radar scan, he detected a 32-foot-long space right next to Tutankhamun's tomb.

If this is connected to the room that may lie hidden behind the burial chamber, this could be an undiscovered section of the tomb.

These rooms would mostly likely be untouched and filled with ancient treasures, and possibly another burial.

Did Tutankhamun share his tomb with someone else?

ALIAA: The results of the radar were incredible.

Now, it's so exciting to think that there is another discovery yet to be made.

We're all waiting to see what this secret is going to reveal.

NARRATOR: If Tutankhamun's tomb contains a hidden burial chamber, the question is who could be buried there?

NARRATOR: Thomas and Jennifer are investigating one of Tutankhamun's secrets.

They're excavating under a ruined fortress for evidence he got his gold from the inhospitable Eastern desert.

Did his miners shelter here?

The team has just found something: Stone blocks that offer a tantalizing glimpse of a settlement from Tutankhamun's time.

JENNIFER: So, these are architectural blocks.

They carry some Hieroglyphic inscription very faintly visible here which would indicate that they were carved and set up in some sort of building which dates to the reign of Tutankhamen.

It's exciting because that gives us a sort of ballpark for the time when this site was busy and active and important during the 18th Dynasty.

NARRATOR: Jennifer's team must now move the precious blocks off site for further analysis.

As they dig deeper into the layers below the fortress, they uncover more clues that this site was in use in Tutankhamun's time.

JENNIFER: It is beautiful.

This is a really distinctive, very different from any of the Ptolemaic material, the Greek style pottery that we find in most of the rooms of the fort, that is really common.

This kind of pottery, which belongs to the new kingdom, is not wheel-made.

It's handmade, and you can tell that by looking at the interior of the pot, which has a surface which is very irregular, and that it's been smoothed with a smooth stone, most likely.

NARRATOR: It's not just one or two pieces of Tutankhamun-era pottery.

Jennifer's team is revealing that the layers of earth beneath the fortress are packed full of it.

JENNIFER: We have new kingdom material under the floors of rooms, 20, 19, 26, 18 and 17.

But to have the fort now documented on top of deposits that indicate some kind of occupation in the new kingdom and that's really exciting.

NARRATOR: The discovery is proof the site may have been used in Tutankhamun's time by his gold workers.

But the team has found another remarkable clue concealed in the fortress: Cutting into the bedrock 60 feet below the surface is a well.

It's a vital source of water that explains why the safe haven, and Tutankhamun's gold workers, were here.

THOMAS: The well was built, at the time of Tutankhamun by the evidence we have now.

It was, I guess, more precious than even than gold for people that, that they can have water to go inside the inside the desert.

NARRATOR: The evidence here and at other sites reveals how Tutankhamun got his gold from the remote Eastern desert.

Miners had to trek vast distances from the Nile Valley, across the hot, dry desert, to reach the gold mines.

Ancient engineers dug wells along the route, for precious drinking water.

Each well was a day's walk from the last, creating a network of vital rest stops.

This allowed them to survive the brutal journey across the desert, to mine gold in the East, and bring it back to their pharaoh.

Thomas and Jennifer have revealed one of Tutankhamun's secrets.

Sites like this were a critical part of the infrastructure that allowed him to amass the gold for one of the most elaborate burials in history.

JENNIFER: The gold in Tut's mask, all that gold in his tomb that's coming from the Eastern desert.

So, sites like this that looked really modest are actually the mechanism that allowed New Kingdom gold to be mined.

NARRATOR: At Gebel El-Silsila...

John's colleague, Ibrahim, has found something in the filthy mud in their search for evidence that this ceremonial pit was also used during the reign of Tutankhamun.

JOHN: Hang on a minute, that's actually painted.

See the paint?

IBRAHIM: Yeah. I can see. Goes all the way down here.

JOHN: That's a doorjamb!

So, it's the actual doorjamb from a doorway, above us, which is now come into here, beneath all the mud brick.

You actually found part of the doorway to the temple.

What else, what else, you said there was two.

IBRAHIM: Yeah. Yeah, that's here.

JOHN: You got it?

IBRAHIM: Yeah.

JOHN: No, I'm looking at it the wrong way.

It doesn't go lengthways.

It goes that way. It goes up.

This isn't the door.

IBRAHIM: So, what is it? JOHN: It's a window!

IBRAHIM: A window? JOHN: Fantastic.

It's the first window here, it's the first window in Silsila.

A three and a half thousand-year-old window.

NARRATOR: Blocks from an ancient window could have come from the temple next to the pit.

JOHN: Down here would have been the crocodiles and they would have been thrashing around in the water, feeding all the time and above us.

There would be no sunlight.

This would have been covered.

And in here, you've got the crocodiles.

Up there, you've got the temple, the priest throwing the food down.

This is history.

It is absolutely phenomenal.

Maria!

MARIA: What have you got?

NARRATOR: The discoveries in the pit give Maria and John an idea of what this temple might have looked like in its prime.

JOHN: Ok, fresh from the pit of Sobek.

MARIA: Architectural details I can see.

JOHN: I think it was a southern window that stood there.

I mean we've definitely, 100%, got a kind of temple function going on here.

We've got the Sobek statue.

A pit that held live crocodiles.

NARRATOR: The evidence is coming together.

JOHN: So, it's plausible to think that this could have been part of King Tut's Tutankhamen's restoration project.

MARIA: Everything that we found this season supports that and even more.

Our temple once stood glorious, overlooking the Nile with crocodiles natural to, to this site.

What a sight to have.

JOHN: It would have been amazing.

NARRATOR: The ceremonial pit and temple ruins Maria and John have excavated point to why Tutankhamun may have restored this temple, and why it was dedicated to Sobek.

JOHN: Not only was he showing the people that he cared for them, but also at the same time by restoring the temple to its former glory, he was able to show them he had the power.

He was able to say, I am here, I am king.

Even though he was a weak and feeble boy, he still had the power of a living God.

NARRATOR: Tutankhamun died young, but still projected the power of a great pharaoh.

NARRATOR: In the Valley of the Kings, Aliaa is at the tomb of Tutankhamun to hunt for clues to what, or who, could be inside a mysterious secret chamber that might be next to the tomb.

ALIAA: This would be the doorway, and then this would be the outline of the second chamber.

NARRATOR: Some think that the hidden chamber could contain the body of another royal.

But if so, who?

Once again, Tutankhamun's tomb itself holds clues.

Other tombs of pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings share a feature: You enter a corridor and turn left.

But as you enter Tutankhamun's tomb, you turn right.

Some Egyptologists argue turning right is typically a feature of a queen's tomb, not a king's tomb like Tutankhamun's.

Could a hidden chamber here contain the body of a queen?

Perhaps Tutankhamun's only known wife, Ankhesenamun.

Aliaa spots something on the wall that could identify another possible candidate.

ALIAA: So here we are having images of Tutankhamun at the opening of the mouth scene, being welcomed by the gods into the afterlife.

These are normal images to have in a royal tomb.

But what was not normal, and some Egyptologists think, is that this figure over there was not Tutankhamen, but rather a representation of Nefertiti.

NARRATOR: Around 1350 BC, Nefertiti, about 15 years old, became queen of Egypt.

Together with her husband, the Pharaoh Akhenaten, they created a new religious cult, worshipping the sun god Aten.

When her husband died, some think Nefertiti continued to rule as pharaoh until her stepson, Tutankhamun, ascended to the throne.

Despite her being one of the most famous queens of Egypt, Nefertiti's final resting place has never been found.

ALIAA: This is Nefertiti compared to the image right here, the Osiris image of Tutankhamun.

Looking closely at the image, we can see, like, there is the lip line going down and this line, actually, it's the same line of other statues and forms of Nefertiti.

NARRATOR: To some experts, this suggests an older picture of Nefertiti was modified to look like Tutankhamun.

If so, it's a clue Tutankhamun's tomb was originally part of Nefertiti's.

If there's a hidden burial chamber behind the North wall it could be hers.

But why would her tomb be repurposed for Tutankhamun?

Aliaa thinks clues could lie in the mummified body of the King that remains in the tomb.

ALIAA: The mummy of Tutankhamen was scanned, and the scans showed that he died at a very young age.

He was ill most of his life and his sudden death was not prepared for and so there was no tomb for him ready at the time.

So, he had to use someone else's tomb.

Maybe that was just the tomb of Nefertiti.

NARRATOR: It's a controversial and disputed theory, but if true, it could lead to the greatest discovery since Howard Carter found this tomb in 1922.

ALIAA: If we are right now standing in the tomb of Nefertiti that has been used for Tutankhamun, that will be the world's biggest discovery in Egyptology.

That is going to be the most exciting find this century has witnessed.

NARRATOR: Within his tomb and across Egypt, archaeologists are searching for the secrets of Tutankhamun to piece together all of his story.

In life, this pharaoh was young and frail, and drew on the gods, like Sobek, to rule his people, becoming their all-powerful protector.

JOHN: Oh, it is beautiful.

NARRATOR: He sent his men deep into the desert for gold to fill his tomb with treasure...

A tomb that may still hide a chamber missed by explorers and ancient robbers.

But with the use of modern-day technologies, perhaps experts will one day unearth all of Tutankhamun's lost secrets.

NARRATOR: Deep inside a collapsed pyramid, a team of archaeologists is on a dangerous quest.

MOHAMED: Be careful.

NARRATOR: To uncover the unexplored burial chamber of one of Egypt's great pharaohs.

MOHAMED: We are now entering a really dangerous area.

NARRATOR: It's a once in a lifetime opportunity.

MOHAMED: Yes.

Wow.

This comes from the sarcophagus.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Across Egypt, more than 100 pyramids rise from the desert floor.

They span an incredible era of over 1000 years.

Three stand out.

The Pyramids at Giza.

Iconic symbols of the ancient world.

Over three generations, king Khufu, his son Khafre, and grandson Menkaure, built three of the most well-known monuments in human history, all grouped together on the Giza plateau.

They were surrounded by a complex of ceremonial temples.

Khufu's pyramid was the tallest manmade structure in the world for over 3800 years.

Pharaohs continued to build pyramids.

But in all of ancient Egypt's 3000-year history, they never built one this big ever again.

(chatter) Now, archaeologists are scouring the intriguing pyramids that followed.

To investigate the legacy of the famous Giza pyramids and reveal why these iconic mega structures, and Egypt, were never the same again.

MEGAHED: I always say we are like, we are like detectives.

This is our investigation site and we come here to collect information.

NARRATOR: Seven miles south of Giza in Abusir, 14 pyramids break the desert skyline.

Among them, the pyramid of a pharaoh called Sahure.

It's the investigation site of Egyptian archaeologist, Mohamed Ismail Khaled.

MOHAMED: I'm coming originally from Middle Egypt and we have a lot of monuments around us and that's why I became archaeologist.

NARRATOR: Sahure built his pyramid only 30 years after the last of the great pyramids at Giza.

Yet it's vastly different.

Sahure's pyramid was 150 feet tall.

A third of the height of the Great Pyramid.

Around it was a complex of ceremonial temples.

During previous seasons in the ruins here, Mohamed and other archaeologists, NARRATOR: Have recovered nearly 1000 square feet of reliefs that portray Sahure's life and achievements.

MOHAMED: Wow.

If you begin like to clean little bit the dust, it's really amazing to see how the artisan was really carving every single detail.

NARRATOR: This season, Mohamed is back to excavate the inside of Sahure's pyramid.

MOHAMED: I am very really keen to know more and more about his burial place.

NARRATOR: Archaeologists in the 19th and 20th centuries explored the burial chambers of pyramids across Egypt.

But Mohamed believes they missed one: Sahure's.

When archaeologists first explored this pyramid over 100 years ago, they found the central core collapsed and filled with debris.

They identified a single room, which they believed was the burial chamber, but they never found Sahure's sarcophagus or mummy.

Now, Mohamed has discovered a second room just beyond it, hidden under the debris of the pyramid collapse.

MOHAMED: The area is up to eight meters, goes to the west.

And this is enough for holding the burial chamber.

NARRATOR: He thinks this could be Sahure's long lost resting place.

MOHAMED: My dream is just to discover the burial chamber and to uncover every single centimeter inside.

And to see the sarcophagus of the king.

NARRATOR: Mohamed believes that deep below Sahure's pyramid, a corridor led to a series of rooms.

What explorers thought was the pharaoh's burial chamber, he now thinks was just the antechamber.

And that Sahure's real burial chamber is undiscovered and could still contain the sarcophagus of the pharaoh.

If Mohamed is right, and this is Sahure's burial chamber, it would be a huge discovery and could help unravel what happened to pyramid building after Giza.

MOHAMED: Any piece of information about what was inside here will add a lot of information about the history of the pyramid.

NARRATOR: But this mission won't be easy.

Working inside a collapsed 4500-year-old pyramid is incredibly dangerous.

MOHAMED: You could see how the situation of the of the ceiling is right now.

NARRATOR: Three 10-ton stone beams stacked on top of each other once formed the roof.

MOHAMED: The worst thing for us that we are trying to stop is just the falling of this big large beam.

NARRATOR: When the structure collapsed, some of the beams came crashing down.

Others are still held in place by the mound of debris.

MOHAMED: You see how large it is?

You see that some of them are already destroyed.

It has cracks, you know.

So, if any movement around this area, then the crack will be larger.

Some blocks will fall down, and we do not know the consequences after that.

NARRATOR: To safely explore the mystery room, Mohamed's team first had to install a temporary wall to support the unstable ceiling and hold the 26 feet of debris in place.

MOHAMED: Okay, so let's go.

NARRATOR: They slowly work their way from top to bottom, removing the supportive wall in layers and clearing the rubble behind it.

MOHAMED: My heart is beating very hard because I'm just.

This is the moment that I was waiting for a long time.

Be careful.

MOHAMED: We have to be careful and working according to our plan.

Otherwise, it will be very dangerous.

NARRATOR: After nearly three hours of painstaking work, the team makes a first discovery in the rubble.

MOHAMED: So we got a bone.

Ahh!

It's the lower jaw, you know, of a human being.

NARRATOR: The curious jawbone is an intriguing find and could be a clue the undiscovered burial chamber of pharaoh Sahure, lies ahead.

Just south of Abusir in Saqqara.

NARRATOR: Egyptian archaeologist Mohamed Megahed is also investigating the intriguing pyramids that followed the iconic megastructures of Giza.

MEGAHED: I'm Egyptian, so it's a very, it's very easy to be an Egyptologist because you are.

Your whole life your your childhood around pyramids, tombs.

So maybe one of the things that comes to your mind, to study your 'grandparents' and study your heritage.

NARRATOR: Mohamed is excavating the pyramid complex of pharaoh Djedkare, who ruled 100 years after the last of the Giza pyramids was built, and 60 years after Sahure.

Just like Sahure's pyramid, Djedkare's is smaller than the giants of Giza.

Last season, Mohamed excavated here and discovered the lost tomb of Djedkare's wife, Queen Setibhor.

MEGAHED: For the first time, we have the daylight inside the burial chamber of the queen.

NARRATOR: He has returned this season to excavate another mysterious tomb just beside the pyramid.

The tomb's proximity to Djedkare's pyramid suggests it could belong to one of the pharaoh's top officials.

It could help Mohamed understand why this pyramid is so different in scale to those at Giza.

MEGAHED: From those people you gain so much information about his rule, about his reign and the society at the time.

NARRATOR: The tomb has a rectangular shape and is made from stone, a structure known as a mastaba.

First, the team must dig around its sides to try and find a way in.

NARRATOR: Soon they spot something in the sand.

MEGAHED: This is a later burial and it's made or the person is buried in two amphoras.

NARRATOR: Amphoras, large ceramic storage jars, have distinctive shapes.

Mohamed can use them to date this burial to around 500 BCE, nearly 2000 years after the mastaba was built.

And it's not the only later burial here.

The team is now finding small tombs all around the structure.

It's clear people wanted to be buried close to the mastaba tomb, evidence of the owner's importance.

MEGAHED: Usually from later times, people who will come and would like to be buried besides important people.

Well-known people.

NARRATOR: In 2019, just next to the mystery tomb, Mohamed discovered another mastaba.

It was lavish, made from white limestone, typically reserved for royalty.

And in its beautifully painted burial chamber, Mohamed discovered a mummy.

He identified it as one of Djedkare's senior officials, a man named Khuwy.

The mastaba Mohamed is excavating now, is in worse condition.

Large parts of its roof are missing, but the later burials around it suggest it could belong to another of Djedkare's highest ranking officials.

These officials' growing wealth could help explain the diminished scale of Djedkare's pyramid.

But the search for an entrance to the tomb has run into a problem.

MEGAHED: We are blocked and being slowed by those casing blocks which were falling from this mastaba here.

NARRATOR: Some of the huge stones of the mastaba's limestone casing have collapsed on one side.

They need to move them one by one to see if an entrance could lie below.

MEGAHED: This one of the difficult work we have.

The stones are very heavy.

The corridor is very narrow.

NARRATOR: The stones weigh up to half a ton.

Shifting them is a dangerous task.

MEGAHED: Any small mistake can hurt the workers.

NARRATOR: At the pyramid field of Abusir, Czech archaeologist Ladislav Bares and his team are excavating a strange tomb.

LADISLAV: For us, archaeology is not only a profession, but it's a way of life.

I always said that I am half Czech, half Egyptian.

NARRATOR: The tomb could reveal clues to how the pyramids and Egyptian burial practice evolved after the construction of the iconic pyramids of Giza.

LADISLAV: When the weather is really good, we can see about ten pyramids from here.

So, it really is a heart of the pyramid fields, this place here.

NARRATOR: The tomb consists of an enormous sand filled square, the mouth of a gigantic rock cut burial shaft dropping down into the desert floor.

LADISLAV: The main shaft is about 40 meters square.

That is 14 by 14.

And at the bottom, there should be the burial chamber.

NARRATOR: That's over 2000 square feet, about half the size of a basketball court.

Ladislav wants to find out when this massive shaft tomb was built and who was buried here.

The challenge is getting to the bottom of the massive burial shaft.

LADISLAV: At present we are at a depth of about two meters, but it might be about 20, 25 meters deep.

So, we have to remove about 2000 cubic meters of sand.

NARRATOR: That's enough sand to fill 100 dumper trucks.

Excavating it all, could take the team of 50 four months of backbreaking work, eating up their entire excavation season.

But they think they have found a shortcut.

They have uncovered two smaller shafts just to the side of the tomb.

Ladislav hopes one of them will lead straight to the burial chamber.

NARRATOR: Czech archaeologist Jiri Janak is overseeing the excavation here.

JIRI: The approximate layout of the tomb should be like this.

So, we are in a small entrance shaft to the south of the main burial shaft.

On the bottom of the burial shaft is the burial chamber.

And those two are connected together here by a corridor.

NARRATOR: It's a shaft system the team has seen before, in the step pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, Egypt's first ever pyramid, built 100 years before the Great Pyramid at Giza.

LADISLAV: It was one of the amazing deeds of the ancient Egyptians.

NARRATOR: Deep below Djoser's revolutionary pyramid lies a hidden network of tunnels.

At the centre, an enormous square vertical shaft that drops over 90 feet into the ground to the pharaoh's burial chamber, seen as a gateway into the underworld.

Branching off it, horizontal corridors, some filled with treasures for the pharaoh's afterlife, one to access his chamber.

Djoser's revolutionary pyramid was a blueprint for all pyramids and launched the Pyramid Age.

Its colossal burial shaft was just one staggering feature of ancient Egyptian engineering.

The enormous square at the center of Jiri and Ladislav's mystery tomb, suggests the owner copied this incredible design.

JIRI: The layout and the structure were somehow inspired by the layout of the Djoser pyramid complex.

NARRATOR: So they think, the builder may have copied the horizontal corridor leading to the burial chamber, and that this access corridor might be at the bottom of this second smaller shaft.

It's only six and a half by eight feet wide.

There's a lot less sand to remove.

It would massively reduce the excavation time, but it's a gamble.

Every minute spent digging to reach the short cut corridor beneath means less time excavating the main burial shaft.

JIRI: So that's why we are desperate to find the corridor.

NARRATOR: A short distance away, inside the pyramid of pharaoh Sahure, Mohamed inspects the just discovered jawbone.

MOHAMED: It's strong bones and, and also the jaw itself.

It's big.

NARRATOR: He's on a mission to reveal the secrets of this pyramid, built soon after the giant pyramids of Giza and find its long-lost pharaoh, Sahure.

The mass of rubble from a collapsed ceiling and walls, might hide Sahure's burial chamber with his sarcophagus and mummy.

As Mohamed inspects the jaw, he spots crucial evidence.

MOHAMED: This is not a mummified body.

NARRATOR: All the ancient Egyptian pharaohs were mummified to preserve their bodies for the afterlife.

But there are no traces of mummification on this jaw.

MOHAMED: This is not the pharaoh.

This is, I think, this is one of the tomb raiders.

NARRATOR: The pharaoh's pyramids were filled with treasures, hidden in secret rooms.

Tomb raiders on the hunt for these treasures, broke into every pyramid ever built.

The jawbone could be evidence they broke into Sahure's pyramid, too.

It suggests that with no plan of the layout, they didn't know which wall might be hiding the loot.

They may have cut through a wall supporting the roof which collapsed and killed them.

If the pyramid collapsed above the robbers' heads and sealed the entrance for everyone else, there could still be treasure inside.

MOHAMED: It's very, very interesting and very exciting.

NARRATOR: The team continues to carefully remove the remains of the collapsed walls and ceiling, when suddenly the work comes to a halt.

MOHAMED: We are afraid that these two blocks would a little bit move down.

NARRATOR: Two massive stone blocks are looming on top of the debris.

MOHAMED: But as you see, it's already hanging there.

NARRATOR: Before the team can continue excavating, they must secure the blocks.

If they move, the blocks could trigger an avalanche and even worse, take down one of the ten-ton ceiling beams precariously hanging above the room.

MOHAMED: We could really get trapped inside the pyramid.

NARRATOR: In Saqqara, At the mystery mastaba tomb, next to pharaoh Djedkare's pyramid, Mohamed and his team have made great progress moving the large stones.

MEGAHED: We managed to move the, to lift the block and they are putting it down and then try to fix it.

NARRATOR: They are searching for an entrance to get inside and investigate this tomb.

Mohamed hopes it could belong to one of Djedkare's royal officials and help explain why pyramids became smaller so soon after the Great Pyramids of Giza.

MEGAHED: Every time we found a new tomb, every time we found a new information, it gave us another piece of or complete another piece of the picture about the role of the king, about how the state looked like at that time.

NARRATOR: So far, they haven't found anything below the stone blocks here.

But on the other side of the mastaba, there's been a breakthrough.

In the destroyed ruins, they have discovered evidence of what would have been the entrance.

MEGAHED: We managed to clear a part of the entrance room.

This is the entrance room, actually, the first room in the tomb.

NARRATOR: Mohamed hopes to find the name and titles of the tomb owner in the ruins of this entrance room.

MEGAHED: It's nice feeling when you feel that it's you are very near to finding name or very near to find who was buried here.

It's really exciting.

It's really exciting.

NARRATOR: But the reliefs and inscriptions that used to adorn the walls here, now lie broken on the floor.

The team must painstakingly put all the fragments back together in the search for the tomb owner's name or titles.

NARRATOR: Mohamed's fellow archaeologist Hana Vymazalova carefully examines the reliefs on the wall fragments.

HANA: So here, the small remains of the hieroglyphic sign shows us that this nice figure of a male carrying lotus flowers was a funerary priest.

So, this was one of the people who kept coming and bringing offerings so that the deceased could live on in the next world.

NARRATOR: The reliefs contain offering scenes, a wonderful insight into how ancient Egyptians imagined they might attain an afterlife.

But so far, no clues to the identity of the tomb owner.

Until suddenly...

HANA: Mohamed. Look what we found.

Look.

MEGAHED: Whoa!

NARRATOR: In Abusir, inside pharaoh Sahure's collapsed pyramid, Mohamed's team are racing to stabilize the two large stone blocks, dangerously looming on top of the debris.

MOHAMED: We need to stabilize them completely, not to move really one inch.

NARRATOR: The team is on the hunt for a burial chamber and a long-lost pharaoh below the debris here.

If they find him, it would shine a light on the little-known pyramids built after Giza.

But if these two blocks move, they could trigger an avalanche, bringing the team's quest to a premature end.

MOHAMED: These two blocks are the most dangerous issue in this room.

NARRATOR: So to seal the blocks in place, the team applies a special mix of mortar made from gypsum and clear sand.

MOHAMED: We was throwing the mortars very hard in order to get into the cracks.

NARRATOR: After three buckets of mortar, Mohamed is confident there is no imminent risk and the hunt for the chamber can continue.

(clapping) NARRATOR: Three feet deeper into the debris, a sharp-eyed worker spots a telltale sign.

MOHAMED: Okay.

So, we found a small piece with a very smooth surface.

NARRATOR: Mohamed immediately recognizes this polished stone.

MOHAMED: It's part of the of the wall of the burial chamber.

The ancient Egyptians, when they they did make the burial chamber, they polished all the walls of the, of the inside walls.

And that's why we have this smooth surface.

NARRATOR: It's a great discovery that proves Mohamed's hunch was right.

MOHAMED: We now are going inside the burial chamber.

NARRATOR: This room was once Sahure's last resting place.

Mohamed is on the right track to finally find the long-lost pharaoh.

And soon the team makes another intriguing discovery.

MOHAMED: It's very interesting now because we, we have found original floor here.

NARRATOR: Even through the thick layer of dust from the debris, Mohamed can clearly see the neatly polished floor of the pharaoh's burial chamber.

MOHAMED: It's really a great moment for me and for the whole team.

We are standing in an unexplored area.

NARRATOR: Mohamed inspects the 4500-year-old ground.

MOHAMED: The original floor is intact and it's in a good condition.

NARRATOR: The floor is still preserved.

A promising sign.

MOHAMED: That means we could find still, as our structure still may be in situ, or we could at least find the sarcophagus.

NARRATOR: Carefully, they continue to excavate until one of the workers finds a smooth black stone: basalt.

MOHAMED: Yes. Wow.

This comes from the sarcophagus.

NARRATOR: In Abusir, at the strange shaft tomb amongst the pyramids, Ladislav's team is racing to find a hidden horizontal corridor, a shortcut to the burial chamber.

LADISLAV: We very much hope that this is the easier way how to get to the burial chamber.

NARRATOR: Ladislav wants to find out when this shaft was built and who was buried here.

Answers could help him understand how the pyramids and burial rites evolved after the iconic pyramids of Giza.

The tomb shaft system seems modeled on Djoser's pyramid, Egypt's first pyramid, close by.

There, a horizontal corridor leads to the burial chamber at 28 meters, about 90 feet, below ground level.

The team hope they don't have to dig that deep to find a shortcut corridor at this tomb.

JIRI: Actually, we put our bets on.

So, my, my guess is 17 and a half.

Someone says 18.

Some colleagues say 20 and some even 22 meters below ground.

But you never know with ancient Egyptians.

NARRATOR: Until evidence of a corridor appears, it all remains a gamble that could cost the team valuable excavation time in the main burial shaft.

JIRI: So that's, that's the exciting part and most stressful part.

NARRATOR: The workers have been digging for five days.

Now, Jiri and Ladislav check how deep they have reached.

JIRI: Can we have the tape measure, please?

(speaking Czech) LADISLAV: Still? JIRI: Okay.

LADISLAV: 15 and a half.

NARRATOR: They have dug over 15 meters, 50 feet, but they could have another 20 feet or even more to go.

JIRI: I hope that with any any stroke, we can find a hole here that goes to the north with a corridor.

NARRATOR: With the season ending in just eight weeks, the team can't afford to search for the shortcut corridor much longer and delay the excavation of the main burial shaft.

So, they have to find it fast.

In Saqqara, next to the pyramid of pharaoh Djedkare.

HANA: It's a part of the lintel that was above the entrance to the tomb.

NARRATOR: Mohamed and Hana examine the relief fragments from the entrance of the mastaba tomb.

MEGAHED: Actually, it fits together even.

HANA: Yes, yes.

It's a nice piece that comes here.

NARRATOR: They want to identify the owner of the tomb.

He could be a high ranking official in the reign of Djedkare.

The growing wealth of the bureaucratic elite could help explain why the pyramids of this era were not as grand as those at Giza.

HANA: It's really amazing, because here we finally have the titles.

MEGAHED: So it is a lector priest.

HANA: Mm hmm.

MEGAHED: Count or...

HANA: He was a noble.

MEGAHED: It was a noble, uh.

HANA: A lector priest who could read the spells, or he knew the spells for the funerary cult.

So, he was a very educated and high positioned person.

MEGAHED: True, true.

Wow.

NARRATOR: Hana and Mohamed recognize these titles.

They were typically reserved for only the King's family and closest confidants.

MEGAHED: Those titles can tell us he was working very, very closely with the king.

Might be a vizier, which we can compare it nowadays to a prime minister.

NARRATOR: In ancient Egypt, the Vizier was the most important person after the pharaoh.

He was in the Kings inner circle of most trusted advisers and was often a member of the royal family.

The Vizier appointed and supervised other government officials and was the most senior judge.

Djedkare's Vizier would have been in charge of building the Pharaoh's pyramid.

He would have been rewarded with a tomb close by and the hope of sharing eternity with his king.

MEGAHED: It's so satisfying for us because it means we are adding to those people who were working with Djedkare.

We are adding to our information about his reign.

NARRATOR: And soon the team makes another discovery.

MEGAHED: We can see the entrance to another room.

NARRATOR: In the pyramid field of Abusir, at the strange shaft tomb, 30 workers dig to reach a shortcut corridor to the burial chamber modeled on Djoser's Pyramid tomb nearby.

The archaeologists want to find out who was buried in this mystery tomb and when it was built.

JIRI: Slowly down please, slowly.

NARRATOR: Jiri and Ladislav check the depth again.

JIRI: Thank you.

NARRATOR: In Djoser's Pyramid, the short cut corridor and burial chamber are 28 meters, about 90 feet deep.

JIRI: So what's the number?

It's 18 meters 40.

JIRI: 18 meters 40, okay.

Okay.

NARRATOR: Jiri hoped the corridor would be at most 17 and a half meters deep, but at over 18 meters, 60 feet, there's still no sign of it.

JIRI: We are getting a little bit anxious.

Nervous.

When will this horizontal corridor appear?

NARRATOR: With every foot, Jiri is getting more and more worried their gamble might not be paying off.

While the excavation continues, Ladislav heads to the dig headquarters where pottery specialist, Kveta Smolarikova is also on the hunt for the owner of this strange tomb.

LADISLAV: Good afternoon Kveta.

NARRATOR: Kveta is examining a collection of 370 ceramic jars the team previously discovered at the site.

The residue inside them suggests they were used during the mummification of the tomb owner.

It's one of the largest collections of mummification equipment ever discovered in Egypt.

KVETA: We know, so far, that he should have been a very powerful man.

NARRATOR: On some of the jars, Kveta has now also discovered a name.

KVETA: We know his name, which is Wahibra-mery-Neith.

NARRATOR: She is convinced Wahibra-mery-Neith is the tomb owner.

The ancient Egyptians believed the name of the deceased had to be written in their tomb, so their soul could recognize their body and reunite in the afterlife.

LADISLAV: To have his name is great, excellent find.

NARRATOR: And the shape of an intact jar gives Kveta a clue to when he was buried here.

KVETA: Very nice. Very nice jar.

Which was typical for the Saite period.

NARRATOR: During the Saite period, Egypt was ruled by a dynasty of pharaohs from the ancient Egyptian city of Sais.

They reigned between 664 to 525 BCE, long after Djoser's Pyramid launched the Pyramid Age.

LADISLAV: The ancient pyramids are about 2000 years old during this time in the first millennium BCE.

NARRATOR: Yet, Wahibra-mery-Neith seems to be buried here amidst the old pyramids, in a tomb shaft that replicates Djoser's pyramid, Egypt's first pyramid.

LADISLAV: In the time when these shaft tombs have been built, Egypt was in danger from the east.

NARRATOR: During the Saite period, Egypt was at war with its neighbors.

Egyptians looked to their ancestors for help and flocked to Saqqara to pray at ancient sites like Pharaoh Djoser's famed first pyramid.

Inspired by Djoser's burial chamber, the wealthy elites built their burial tombs deep into the ground nearby.

But their homage to Djoser did not save them.

The Persians invaded in 525 BCE.

The Saite dynasty crumbled, and the last native pharaoh of Egypt lost his throne.

LADISLAV: People took inspiration in the great past of their ancestors.

But very soon after the time of building this tomb, Egypt has been conquered by Persia.

NARRATOR: Back at the excavation, the team has dug over 75 feet down and finally reached the bottom of the shaft.

But there's no sign of the shortcut corridor.

JIRI: It should be somewhere here.

But it's actually not...

Not appearing.

NARRATOR: The team's gamble has failed.

There is no shortcut to the burial chamber.

The small access shaft is a mysterious dead end.

They now have no choice but to excavate the 70,000 cubic feet of sand in the massive central shaft.

It's the only way to reach the burial chamber.

And the depths of the small shaft suggest the chamber lies at over 75 feet below ground.

Cutting this wide and deep into the hard bedrock was a gargantuan task.

The Saites invested heavily to hark back to the golden pyramid age.

LADISLAV: Even 2000 years after the first pyramid in Egypt had been built, the pyramids were still most important for the people as part of their iconic past.

NARRATOR: These iconic structures have never lost their allure.

LADISLAV: And I am sure the legacy of the pyramids will live on not only in Egypt, but everywhere in the world.

NARRATOR: At Abusir, inside the Pyramid of Sahure...

MOHAMED: Give me the brush.

NARRATOR: Mohamed examines the black basalt fragment his workers have just recovered from the Pharaoh's burial chamber.

MOHAMED: All the pyramids inside is built of limestone.

And the only thing that made and built of basalt is the sarcophagus.

So, this comes from the sarcophagus.

NARRATOR: It's an incredible discovery.

A piece of Sahure's sarcophagus.

It could mean the sarcophagus was smashed and remains under the rubble.

MOHAMED: I cannot expect my feeling now.

My eyes is shining and I'm really like, my, my my heart is beating very hard.

NARRATOR: Now, the team needs to clear all the burial chamber, but they will first have to work out what to do with the two large blocks they temporarily secured with mortar.

MOHAMED: We need to find a proper solution in order to avoid that those large blocks will fall down.

NARRATOR: The blocks will need to come out.

But first, the team will have to build supporting walls to bear the weight around them.

It will delay the excavation, but allow Mohamed to achieve his goal.

MOHAMED: Then we can go deeply inside the burial chamber to see the sarcophagus at the end.

NARRATOR: So far, the mission has been a great success.

MOHAMED: I'm very proud of my team.

They were able to take this initiative and they have, they have done something extraordinary.

NARRATOR: The team has found the unexplored burial chamber of one of Egypt's great pharaohs, Sahure.

MOHAMED: It's really the best moment of my career when you really find something that no one did it before you.

And you will be the first.

You are the first.

NARRATOR: The fragment of basalt rock Mohamed has found, is likely part of Sahure's stone sarcophagus.

It is evidence his final resting place lies ahead at the end of a once beautiful white burial chamber.

Sahure was buried deep inside a pyramid, just like the three Giza pharaohs that came before him.

His pyramid was smaller, but surrounded by a complex of temples covered in reliefs proclaiming his achievements.

Here, worshippers kept his name and memory alive, so according to their beliefs, he could live forever.

Sahure's stunning complex marked a change in belief.

Pharaohs reimagined pyramids.

Elaborate decoration and inscription became more important than size.

It was a revolutionary new take on pyramid building.

MOHAMED: It's a unique pyramid complex and I wish that we will find the sarcophagus then to know more and more about this great man.

NARRATOR: In Saqqara, Mohamed and his team have painstakingly removed the sand from the mastaba tomb next to pharaoh Djedkare's Pyramid complex.

MEGAHED: In this area we found until now four storerooms.

Two are partly clear now and I believe behind these walls are another two.

NARRATOR: They have just discovered evidence of four large storerooms or magazines.

MEGAHED: Magazines are very important for us because it shows the wealth of the owner of the tomb.

In those magazines, all the equipment for the offering were kept and stored.

NARRATOR: In the time of Djoser and the Giza pyramids, Egyptians believed only the pharaoh could resurrect and live forever.

Now, around 100 years later, his high officials expected and planned for an afterlife too.

They covered their tombs in beautiful paintings and filled storerooms with everything they would want in their next life.

And their ambitions were getting grander and grander.

MEGAHED: I think the owner of this mastaba was very wealthy to build the magazines in the size.

NARRATOR: It is evidence of a shift in wealth and power in the years after the Giza pyramids, that also explains why pyramids became smaller.

At Giza, pharaohs built great pyramids in the hope of eternal resurrection.

When later pharaohs expanded Egypt's borders, they had to rely on a growing army of officials to govern distant regions.

These high officials used their new wealth and power to build rich mastaba tombs in the royal necropolis.

The pharaoh's power decreased.

And so too, the size of their pyramids.

MEGAHED: The number of those officials were getting bigger and bigger and at the end, it result in the collapse of the state because they were much more powerful than the king himself.

NARRATOR: With the collapse of the Egyptian state, the Golden Pyramid Age came to an end.

It's been a great season for Mohamed and the team.

MEGAHED: This is an amazing discovery.

This tomb can tell us so much about the reign of Djedkare about the king and the pyramid.

NARRATOR: Archaeologists continue to unravel the secrets of Egypt's lost pyramids.

Their investigations uncover how the pharaohs had to innovate when a growing elite diminished their power to build big.

They conceived a new way to achieve eternity, where the size of their tomb didn't matter as much as worship and keeping their name and memory alive.

Pyramid building continued for nearly 1000 years after its high point at Giza.

Even long after the last pyramid was built, generations of ancient Egyptians copied the fascinating tombs of their ancestors, that still capture our imagination to this day.

(music) NARRATOR: At the bottom of a narrow shaft.

Lies a mysterious and unexplored ancient tomb.

OLA: This is full of skeletons.

NARRATOR: Half buried in the deep sand, lies incredible evidence linked to Egypt's greatest pharaoh, Ramses the Second.

OLA: That's very nice. What is this?

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Oh, wow.

NARRATOR: Throughout Egyptian history, no other pharaoh had a greater impact on the ancient civilization than Ramses the Second.

He came to power in 1279 BCE, 44 years after Tutankhamun, and ruled for almost 70 years.

Known as Ramses the Great, he transformed Egypt over the course of his reign.

He expanded the country's borders and built colossal monuments like Abu Simbel and the Ramasseum mortuary temple.

Ramses was so revered that nine further pharaohs took his name.

Today, archaeologists across Egypt are attempting to unlock the secrets of this iconic leader's reign.

(speaking foreign language) How he maintained complete power over Egypt throughout his long life and how he made sure his fame endured long after his death.

At Saqqara, in front of Egypt's oldest pyramid, the step pyramid of Djoser, Egyptian archaeologist Ola El Aguizy is excavating a necropolis filled with the tombs of Ramses' generals.

These powerful figures played a key role in Ramses' extraordinary reign.

Ola searches for evidence that could shed light on how he kept them loyal.

OLA: Every year, it's getting more and more exciting.

NARRATOR: Ola fell in love with Egyptology 50 years ago.

And she has been exploring the burials at this site for nearly two decades.

OLA: The area proves to be very important, very interesting.

It leads to lots of new information about the people during the Ramesside period.

NARRATOR: Ola's team scours the Necropolis for signs of unexplored buried tombs.

She's found some strange holes cut into an ancient mud brick wall.

OLA: I noticed there were openings here that the workers, when they go down and come up, they put their feet.

So that means that this is a shaft.

NARRATOR: Ola believes these holes form part of ancient steps that workers used to climb in and out of a shaft during construction of the tombs here.

OLA: We have a piece of stone here, a fragment.

So it is really built especially for a shaft.

NARRATOR: A shaft could lead to an undiscovered tomb.

Her team start to excavate.

OLA: It's very, very exciting because we don't know exactly what we'll find.

We hope to find a sarcophagus, we hope to find a statue, maybe.

NARRATOR: Last season's finds show this site is full of ancient treasures from the reign of Ramses.

OLA: Ohhh, ohhh! Beautiful.

NARRATOR: And Ola thinks there are more beneath her feet.

OLA: It's not very deep yet, but we are sure that it is a shaft.

NARRATOR: The shaft is not the only discovery to emerge from the sand.

NARRATOR: Demotic script came into use around 600 years after Ramses reign.

Its discovery here could mean this shaft wasn't built during the time of Ramses, like the others in the Necropolis.

OLA: This one, this finding is a proof of a later burial.

NARRATOR: It could be a major setback in Ola's hunt for tombs from the time of Ramses the Great.

In the ancient city of Abydos, Egyptian archaeologist Sameh Iskander leads a team excavating at the first temple ever built by Ramses the Second.

This season, Sameh plans to dig in the areas surrounding the temple to uncover what it can reveal about Ramses' long lasting influence over the country.

SAMEH: We've been working here for the past 15 years and I feel so lucky to be in charge of this project.

NARRATOR: Abydos was one of the Ancient Egyptians' most sacred sites.

They believed Osiris, god of the afterlife, was buried here.

SAMEH: It was the hope of every Egyptian to come here at least once in lifetime for prayers.

NARRATOR: Sameh originally trained as a civil engineer, but as a child he always dreamt of excavating in Egypt.

SAMEH: I did not forget my dream.

I went to New York University, I studied archaeology, Egyptology, my dream.

And then my dream is coming true here.

NARRATOR: During an earlier season, Sameh unearthed Ramses' temple palace to the south of the main temple he built here. SAMEH: We were shocked.

We really did not expect this here.

NARRATOR: Like other pharaohs before him, Ramses the Second, built a temple here dedicated to the god Osiris.

In a courtyard, he placed 26 statues in honor of the deity.

On the south side, he built the temple palace, where he prepared for his duties as a spiritual leader and kept provisions for the temple in 10 store rooms.

Surrounding the complex, he built a 25 foot tall wall with an imposing granite gate.

But the temple and its palace only occupied half of the enclosed space.

Sameh's goal is to excavate the remainder of the temple complex.

SAMEH: Every day is a special day.

Every day there's something new.

Every day there's a new theory.

And every day, a lot of questions.

NARRATOR: Sameh and his team dig deep trenches on the hunt for lost buildings.

Clearing away the layers of sand covering an ancient walkway, they make a surprising discovery.

SAMEH: All of a sudden, we find here there's a cut in the floor.

You can see the cut all around.

Somebody cut in here and built an enclosure wall.

And inside there is a vaulted structure that's built starts from here from this enclosure wall here, all the way there.

NARRATOR: The vaulted structure appears to be the roof of a building that's buried deep beneath the sand.

Sameh wants to find out if the structure was built during or after Ramses' reign.

SAMEH: We're going to start to excavate now to see if this is still intact, this wasn't disturbed.

NARRATOR: To uncover what this structure is doing here and what it might reveal about Egypt's greatest pharaoh and his enduring influence over the country, Sameh needs to unearth a way in.

SAMEH: For us it's very exciting.

NARRATOR: At Deir El-Medina, in an Acropolis high up in the hillside, French Egyptologist Cedric Larcher leads a team investigating several high status tombs.

Cedric has studied Ancient Egyptian civilization for 19 years and now lives and works in Egypt.

This season, Cedric is focusing on the necropolis's most impressive tomb.

It belongs to Ramses' architect Neferhotep.

Cedric wants to investigate Neferhotep's partially excavated tomb to see what it can reveal about Ramses' reign and the pharaoh's enduring appeal to the Ancient Egyptians.

Next to it, a rare depiction of Ramses reveals Neferhotep's strong personal connection to the pharaoh.

The tomb reveals Neferhotep's work for Ramses in amazing detail.

During Ramses' reign, Neferhotep was an architect and foreman in charge of a team tasked with building the tombs of the Valley of the Kings.

He oversaw their work, their materials and supplies.

And lived with them in the nearby workers' village.

He succeeded his father and grandfather in building tombs and monuments for the pharaoh.

But Neferhotep had no direct descendant to follow in his footsteps.

When he died, he was buried in his ornate tomb at the highest point in the necropolis.

In the tombs' courtyard, Cedric's team has uncovered the openings to two intriguing vertical shafts filled with debris.

The team gets to work removing debris from the first shaft.

Cedric hopes it will lead to a burial chamber.

In the Valley of the Kings, Aliaa Ismail is hunting for clues that could shed light on the dynasty of Ramses the Great.

ALIAA: Being here in the Valley of the King, it's one of the most beautiful feelings you'd ever have.

NARRATOR: Aliaa has worked in the valley since 2016.

She leads a team, digitally recording the tomb of Ramses' father Seti the First.

Ramses wasn't the first king of his dynasty.

His father's lavish tomb shows he was born into a powerful and wealthy family.

Aliaa wants to know how he built on this inheritance.

ALIAA: I want to know how Ramses the Great has ensured such an incredible dynasty.

NARRATOR: First, Aliaa explores the tomb Ramses built for his sons.

It might hold clues that reveal how the Pharaoh crafted his dynasty.

ALIAA: Wow.

I've never been to this tomb before.

It's really exciting to be here.

NARRATOR: At the end of the furthest corridor, a stunning rock-cut statue is evidence that Ramses built this tomb.

ALIAA: Wow. This is an Osiris statue.

He has the crook and the flail on his arm.

It's very beautiful, very intricate.

It would have been painted, there are traces of paint on it.

NARRATOR: The Osiris statue once bore the face of Ramses the Great.

All depictions of gods were made to look like the reigning pharaoh.

The statue helped guide the deceased into the afterlife.

It stands at the heart of a highly unusual tomb.

With over 120 near identical chambers stretching 150 feet across and more than 270 feet deep into the rock, it's the largest in the Valley of the Kings.

Aliaa wants to know why Ramses built such an enormous tomb.

ALIAA: There are a total of 16 pillars in here.

This is the biggest pillar chamber in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

This is a very long corridor and there are rooms on each side of the wall.

There's so much debris in them.

NARRATOR: To uncover why Ramses made his sons' tomb so big, Aliaa needs to head deeper into the maze of dark corridors.

In Abydos at Ramses' temple complex, Sameh and his team excavate the mysterious structure they have just discovered and search for an entrance.

SAMEH: You can see the marks of the hands of those masons that built it and it runs this way.

We don't know how long it's going to go further west.

Hopefully still intact.

Hopefully it wasn't disturbed.

NARRATOR: Sameh wants to know whether it can help reveal more about Ramses' hold over Ancient Egypt.

Clearing away the sandy debris, they begin to discover fragments of pottery.

SAMEH: What we have inside here is plaster.

Plaster was used in building the structure of the temple.

NARRATOR: One fragment in particular catches Sameh's expert eye.

SAMEH: We just came across this piece, which is interesting.

It's a piece of pottery.

And inside the remains of burnt incense.

NARRATOR: Burning incense was common practice during cult rituals.

In Ancient Egypt, cults were formed to worship a chosen god or goddess.

Cults were a popular and everyday part of Egyptian life.

SAMEH: The fact that we found this piece here gives us a clue that there's some cult activity down here.

NARRATOR: If the team can find further evidence of cult activity, it could reveal how the temple was used.

Crucially, the discovery helped Sameh to date the structure.

NARRATOR: Ptolemy, the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ended with Cleopatra, became Pharaoh almost a thousand years after Ramses the Second.

The pottery is a significant discovery.

It reveals that someone a millennium later burrowed beneath this walkway to build their structure as close to Ramses' Temple as possible.

Sameh hopes to find out why.

After hours of digging, the team uncovers an opening at the end of the mysterious building.

SAMEH: Now we're coming finally to the door.

This is the entrance.

We opened this for the first time after 2000 years. Oh, wow.

NARRATOR: In the Valley of the Kings, Aliaa wants to understand why Ramses built such a huge tomb for his sons and what that reveals about how he crafted his powerful dynasty.

ALIAA: Oh, there's stairs here.

Where do they lead to?

NARRATOR: Along the dark corridors, faint remnants of ancient carvings adorn the walls, but they are badly eroded.

ALIAA: You can see that the salt crystals all over the place.

And you can see this is definitely water damage.

It appears that a flash flood could have taken place here.

NARRATOR: The carved scenes could contain vital information about the tomb, but the erosion makes them almost impossible to decipher.

ALIAA: This bumpiness is all due to the water damage.

NARRATOR: Aliaa finds a surviving section.

ALIAA: From what we can see here, there's a large figure and it is followed by a smaller figure.

This is for sure Ramses' and right next to him here would be his child.

NARRATOR: This tomb isn't just for a few of Ramses sons.

It's for a great number of them.

The tomb contains dozens of rooms.

Many are burial chambers for sons of the King.

During his life, Ramses had over a hundred children, more than any other Egyptian king.

He had an unusually high number of wives and consorts, over 200 in total.

Some he married to seal foreign alliances, others to produce sons.

He fathered 52 and secured a healthy male bloodline to succeed him on the throne.

He built the vast tomb in the Valley of the Kings to bury them together so they could be close to their father in the afterlife.

ALIAA: Ramses the Second was always planning to have a big family, and that's why he built such a huge tomb.

This seems to be his goal.

NARRATOR: Having a tomb in the Valley of the Kings was a huge honor.

By building his son's tomb here, Ramses hoped to give them a long and prosperous afterlife.

He looked after them in this life, too.

On the wall, Aliaa can make out the role of one son.

ALIAA: The kind of dress that this character is wearing seems like priests robes.

So this would have been maybe the son of Ramses as one of the high priests.

This was a title that would have made him an important individual in the royal court.

NARRATOR: Ramses gave his many sons important positions across the country to ensure their loyalty.

These are the actions of an astute father and leader.

Next, Aliaa wants to find out how Ramses used his loyal sons to further his reign and build his powerful dynasty.

At the Saqqara necropolis, Ola's team has dug down 23 feet inside the new shaft, but they are yet to reach the bottom.

OLA: Good morning.

(speaking foreign language) NARRATOR: Ola still hopes the shaft will lead to one of Ramses' military general's tombs and shed light on how he kept them loyal.

OLA: We begin to find bones.

It seems that we are on the verge of reaching the opening of the tomb.

We are going to find something interesting. That's sure.

NARRATOR: Bones are a promising indication that a burial chamber is nearby.

OLA: Yes.

And this is another.

This is an amulet.

They put it on the mummy for protection.

There is a burial.

(laughs) (foreign dialogue) NARRATOR: Digging further, the team reveals an opening to a chamber.

OLA: What we just found, it's an opening to the East.

NARRATOR: Workers clear the entrance and lash together two wooden ladders for Ola to descend into the shaft and investigate.

OLA: I hope it is safe.

NARRATOR: Whilst the team installs the ladder, Ola takes a moment to prepare herself for the long descent into the unknown.

OLA: This is the adrenaline that gives me the power to do that.

If it wasn't for adrenaline, I would have been.

I would have refused to go down.

NARRATOR: The narrow shaft now descends a total of 26 feet.

A fall here could be fatal.

OLA: This is the first time I go to this shaft.

Terribly (Laughs), terribly excited.

Oh!

NARRATOR: At Deir El-Medina, Cedric's team excavates a shaft in the courtyard of the tomb of Ramses' architect: Neferhotep.

NARRATOR: Cedric wants to find out what lies at the bottom of it.

NARRATOR: Cedric hopes the shaft could reveal more about Egypt's devotion to the great pharaoh.

But there's a problem.

The shaft's walls could collapse at any second.

NARRATOR: After hours of careful excavation, they reach a layer with some promising signs.

NARRATOR: Cedric spots some intriguing clues scattered around the base of the shaft.

NARRATOR: Fragments of linen and bones are evidence that mummies could be buried close by.

NARRATOR: The draught suggests they might have found the entrance to a chamber.

NARRATOR: The team needs to clear enough space for Cedric to get in and explore.

It takes two more days of excavation.

They discover what could be the entrance to a burial chamber, but it's blocked by big boulders.

The boulders are too heavy to remove by bucket.

After careful deliberation, the team decides to try lifting the boulders out with a heavy duty pulley rigged to a large wooden frame.

(speaking foreign language) Eventually they push the pulley into position.

Workers carefully secure rope around the largest boulder and begin to hoist it out of the shaft.

If it falls, it could kill them.

(inaudible) Let's go Well.

NARRATOR: More boulders still block his way in.

They are deep inside the entrance, so the team can't use the rope and pulley to lift them.

Cedric needs yet another plan.

NARRATOR: In Abydos, Sameh and his team race to excavate the mysterious building buried beneath the walkway at Ramses Temple.

Sameh wants to know why someone a millennium after Ramses' reign, chose to build a structure in this location and what that can reveal about Ramses' influence over Ancient Egypt long after his death.

SAMEH: We have reached the... of the entrance, it's partially open.

NARRATOR: But the team faces a new challenge.

SAMEH: We have to go down very, very carefully.

Otherwise, we can disturb that wall that might actually collapse somehow.

Or who knows?

NARRATOR: Workers carefully remove the ancient mud bricks blocking the entrance.

SAMEH: I hope we can find something to tell us.

What is the mindset of this period?

A thousand years after Ramses.

NARRATOR: This vaulted structure isn't the only curious discovery made by Sameh's team.

Elsewhere on the dig site, workers have uncovered a shocking scene.

SAMEH: We came across this storage area and we found this extremely unusual find.

It's filled with these bones, mostly skulls of rams.

We counted more than 1200 ram heads.

Some of them are wrapped in fabric.

NARRATOR: But it isn't all gruesome skulls.

SAMEH: We came across this beautiful bell with its clapper and in excellent condition.

And we have here four heads of animals that represents the gods.

This was hanging from the neck of the ram and making that sound.

It's extremely, extremely unusual to find and we're very happy with this to find it.

NARRATOR: Sameh thinks these carcasses are evidence of a specific cult.

SAMEH: It gives us an idea that this is a cult of the ram.

NARRATOR: Ancient Egyptians saw rams as sacred symbols of fertility and as representations of their gods.

Ram worship was prominent in southern Egypt where they mummified rams and gave them ritual burials.

The cult of the ram eventually spread right across Egypt, including Abydos.

This huge collection could be evidence that cult practitioners collected ram skulls from hundreds of previous rituals and placed them all here in a grisly mass grave.

SAMEH: I have a feeling that this is a single event, that they were all collected at some point and at a certain time in history.

They decided that this huge amount of rams heads belonged to the revered domain of Ramses the Second.

NARRATOR: Sameh believes the skulls were placed here because of the temple's connection to Ramses.

Now Sameh wants to know if the vaulted structure also contains evidence of this cult.

At the dig site, the team has safely removed enough debris to reveal the entire entrance.

Sameh can finally enter the mysterious structure for the first time.

SAMEH: It's so dark in here.

NARRATOR: In Saqqara, Ola descends a narrow, unstable 26 foot Deep shaft to explore the new tomb.

OLA: Finally. Quite an adventure.

NARRATOR: Ola wants to investigate whether this tomb dates from Ramses' reign, and if it can help reveal more about how the king kept his generals loyal.

OLA: Ooh! Wow.

NARRATOR: The tomb contains pottery, once full of food and drink for the deceased.

OLA: Quite different than what I expected, but interesting.

NARRATOR: Ola discovers several niches carved into the tomb walls.

OLA: We have lots of burials in every niche, in every one of them.

This is full of skeletons.

What is this?

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

These are the ribs here.

You have a wooden piece which proved that there was a wooden sarcophagus.

NARRATOR: These desecrated remains are evidence that robbers broke into the tomb looking for treasures buried with the mummies.

They took the precious objects but left behind other grave goods.

OLA: That's very nice.

(speaking foreign language) This is part of a plate.

And that's another one.

Would you like a soup?

NARRATOR: Ola recognizes the style of pottery and can use it to date these burials.

OLA: It might be dated to the later period, the 26th dynasty or so.

NARRATOR: The 26th dynasty began almost 600 years after Ramses' reign.

This could explain the pottery shard with Demotic text Ola discovered near the top of the shaft.

It's beginning to look like this tomb doesn't have anything to do with Ramses at all.

OLA: All this needs studying.

NARRATOR: But then Ola spots something promising hidden amongst the buried jars.

OLA: That's interesting.

This is the beard of the sarcophagus.

That means that the person is an important one.

Usually it's a symbol of high rank.

One of the people who were around Ramses.

That's interesting.

NARRATOR: The carved wooden beard indicates a burial of someone of high status, possibly from the time of Ramses.

The tomb could have been built during Ramses reign after all, and the artefacts from the 26th dynasty were placed there centuries later.

OLA: It's the time when they reused the area for burials.

NARRATOR: It was common for Ancient Egyptians to reuse tombs centuries after they were first built.

This makes it a challenge for Egyptologists to accurately date them.

The discovery of another tomb that could date from Ramses' era is so tantalizing that Ola wants to dig deeper.

OLA: You know what we're going to do now?

We're going to take out the sand, which is in the niches and take all the things that we found out and sift the sand.

NARRATOR: There's still a mammoth amount of work to do to uncover the full story of this tomb.

OLA: (Laughing) What an adventure. Woo.

NARRATOR: But so far it suggests that Ramses rewarded his generals with the hope of eternal life.

The promise of a lavish burial here in sacred Saqqara, in the shadow of Egypt's first pyramid, secured their loyalty and helped Ramses maintain his dynasty.

In Abydos, Sameh prepares to enter the 2000 year old structure for the first time.

SAMEH: It is really dark and it's very difficult to really understand what's inside.

We're going to get some light so that we can go inside.

NARRATOR: Sameh hopes the structure, which was built a thousand years after Ramses' death, will provide more evidence that a cult was active here next to his temple.

And reveal more about the enduring strength of the Pharaoh's influence over Ancient Egypt.

SAMEH: It's large.

It's really surprising that the ceiling is plastered with mud in a very careful way because of the effort of plastering it here.

It's kind of unusual.

NARRATOR: Sameh searches for any inscriptions that might indicate the structure's purpose, but the walls are bare.

Studying the structure's alignment, he believes the biggest clue to the importance of this building lies in its position.

SAMEH: This structure was built right along the northern wall of the temple itself, a very revered space.

So they came during the Ptolemaic period and built this obviously for some cultic activity.

NARRATOR: Sameh thinks this structure was likely never used.

Its position right next to Ramses' Temple suggests the cult was worshipping Ramses himself.

Even though the structure dates to long after Ramses' death.

SAMEH: Usually cults of other pharaohs last for two or three centuries.

This is a thousand years.

NARRATOR: The buried structure, the pottery and the rams' heads are all evidence of the strength of Ramses' enduring appeal.

Sameh believes it shows the Pharaoh was being worshipped a millennium after his death, centuries longer than other pharaohs.

SAMEH: It says a lot about how important this pharaoh was in the mindset of Egyptians.

NARRATOR: At Deir El-Medina.

Cedric's team are into their second day trying to enter what appears to be a chamber.

It's located at the bottom of a shaft beside the tomb of Ramses' architect Neferhotep.

But inside the chamber's entrance, several unstable boulders still block their passage.

NARRATOR: The roof of the entrance tunnel blocks the team from lifting the boulders with a pulley.

Instead, they use a makeshift ramp to slide them out of the way.

The entrance is finally clear and the smell is promising.

NARRATOR: Entering a new tomb containing mummies can be dangerous.

The ancient bodies can carry mold that is harmful to humans.

Cedric hopes the tomb will reveal more about the strength of Ramses' influence over the ancient Egyptians.

Cedric: Whoa. Okay. Wow.

NARRATOR: It is a burial chamber.

The end of the room is piled high with ancient remains.

NARRATOR: A gruesome torso provides Cedric with a clue that helps him to date some of the mummies.

NARRATOR: Cedric believes these later Egyptians may have chosen to be buried beneath Neferhotep's tomb because he was Ramses' architect.

NARRATOR: A burial here meant they too hoped to share in Ramses' eternal glory, evidence of the enduring strength of Ramses' godlike appeal.

Cedric: So exciting to be here.

NARRATOR: The burial chamber and these bodies are a remarkable discovery, but one that leaves Cedric and his team with a mountain of work ahead of them.

NARRATOR: On the Nile's East bank, Aliaa has come to investigate the vast Luxor Temple.

Ramses' richly rewarded his sons in death with a lavish tomb.

Now Aliaa wants to find out how they helped him build his powerful dynasty while they were still alive.

ALIAA: Just standing here in front of those huge columns.

You feel so small in comparison to this huge culture.

NARRATOR: Large parts of the temple were built by Ramses and he made sure everyone knew it.

ALIAA: Whenever you see the cartouches of Ramses the Great, they're always great.

Great in size, great in scale.

And you can recognize them right away because Ramses' cartouches can be seen from really far away.

Other peoples can't.

NARRATOR: Hidden behind a row of columns, a remarkable relief depicts 17 of Ramses' children.

ALIAA: Here, the second child depicted is called Ramses and the fourth one is called Khaemweset.

And here we are looking at Merenptah.

It's quite unusual to have his children here in the temple on the wall, but doing so, he is putting them out there and showing the whole of Egypt who his children are.

NARRATOR: Ramses didn't just publicly praise his children.

He gave them powerful jobs throughout his kingdom.

Ramses gave some of his sons high ranking positions in the Army to fight alongside him in his military campaigns.

Together, they mounted attacks north of Egypt against the enemy, Hittites, laying siege to several of their fortified cities.

He appointed other sons as high priests to lead cults and secure his religious and political authority.

Ramses kept his sons close to him throughout his life to ensure control over Egypt and establish his powerful dynasty.

After a 66 year long reign, Ramses died, leaving the throne to his eldest living son, Merenptah.

Ramses ensured his dynasty would survive by conceiving more than a hundred children and placing many of them in key positions.

ALIAA: He has taught those children to follow into his footsteps, to do everything the way he envisioned.

I think that Ramses conceived as many children as possible to make it impossible for someone to take the throne from the Ramessides.

NARRATOR: The King's ingenious plan paid off.

After a powerful and long lasting reign, his bloodline remained on the throne for a further three generations.

Ancient Egyptians may have worshipped him as a god a millennium after his death.

And even to this day, we remember Ramses the Second as Egypt's greatest pharaoh.