Egypt - Finding the Pharaohs

in early July 1881 an incredible piece of news spreads like wildfire along the banks of the Nile the mummies of ancient Egypt's greatest pharaohs are being shipped to Cairo among them Ramses the second and say those the first the people bow to these former rulers as they take their final journey the trip turns into a triumphal procession from Luxor and Upper Egypt to Cairo after 10 days the procession led by German archaeologist Emil Brooke reaches the capital it is the final chapter of an archaeological adventure that began with a veritable tomb raid several decades ago and then became a search for the beginnings of ancient Egypt in the first half of the 19th century an expedition to Egypt is only considered a success if the Explorers bring home as many valuables as possible they use every means available even explosives a French archaeologist Auguste Mariette has discovered the entrance to a tomb in saqqara south of Cairo in 1851 he expects a wealth of finds for a whole year mahiette has tried to locate the tombs entrance now finally the moment has arrived and his efforts are to be rewarded meanwhile the tender plant of a new scientific approach to archaeology is budding in Europe almost every evening fifteen-year-old Heinrich Brooks sits in Egyptian gallery at the royal art collections of Berlin studying the mysterious hieroglyphic slabs these inscriptions in demotic a cursive form of hieroglyphs have only recently been acquired by the museum although Brooks has to look after his younger brother a meal he tirelessly copies the hieroglyphs into his notebook page after page the inscriptions and pictures cannot yet provide an answer to the question that fascinates everyone interested in ancient Egypt when was the Empire of the Pharaohs founded and by whom with this schoolboys knowledge of demotic someday help to answer these questions years later without ever having been to Egypt young Brooks is regarded as Europe's leading expert on hieroglyphs fieldwork however is still the realm of the treasure hunters Maui its methods are crude but efficient conservation is not too high on his agenda Egypt seems full of ancient relics losing an artifact or two doesn't really matter but this time in saqqara Mao Fiat is not searching for a royal tomb he is hunting for the sacred bull of APIs APUs had been honored as the god of fertility since the Old Kingdom in about 3000 BC the bull cult existed for more than 3,000 years even the rulers of the new kingdom still bore the epithet powerful bull the ancient Egyptians APIs was an earthly representative of the world's creator according to legend the Bulls were buried in a similar manner to the Pharaohs in huge coffins in the necropolis of Saqqara close to the former seat of government in Memphis when they find the first coffin it's obvious someone has been there before them now here it is at a loss there's clearly nothing here but although the sarcophagus is empty there is no evidence of the looting Mariette has so often observed in the Pharaohs tombs were the Bulls and treasures reburied somewhere else long ago for fear of grave robbers their Stehly attached to the walls if there is an explanation for the reburial of the APIs Bulls it may be engraved here Marietta studied hieroglyphs but he is unable to decipher these strange signs at least no one can deny him the scientific achievement of having rediscovered the bulls tombs but Mariette can't properly assess his fine until he has a translation of the mysterious demotic inscriptions it's a style of lettering which still challenges Egyptologists today elephantine island is 1,000 kilometres upriver near aswan here the desert stretches almost to the banks of the Nile the dry terrain of Upper Egypt clearly differs from the countryside in the northern parts of the country agriculture is a tough business here since the Fertile strip of land is so narrow but the region around today's Aswan is of mythological significance for the ancient Egyptians it was the source of their country's lifeline they called the island album the elephant perhaps because the rounded rocks reminded them of the bodies of the grey Giants but elephant teens layers of settlements dating back thousands of years and painstakingly excavated over the past four decades have kept their secrets two Egyptians who even today don't think of their country as part of Africa elephantine marked the frontiers of the black continent and as such to the ever despised Nubians in the south this is still the last Egyptian trading post where goods from the Mediterranean pass on into inner Africa for nearly 40 years the German archaeological Institute has been working together with the Swiss Institute for Egyptian architectural research studying the settlements on elephantine finds with demotic inscriptions are a daily occurrence but their interpretation is often too difficult for the archaeologists since it was impossible to construct horizontally expanding dwellings on the island the settlements were built vertically one layer on top of the other a treasure trove for modern archaeologists artifacts from more than 4,000 years in one area elephantine da da di Malaga salsa in elephantine we have the singular advantage of being certain that we are finding large amounts of written documents in context in people's homes that is an opportunity blokes almost never had back then he mainly had to rely on papyrus stocks from the Museum's or the art trade here in Egypt Heinrich Brooks finally arrives in Cairo in 1853 a specialist in the field of old scripts but a novice in Egypt the King of Prussia Frederick William the fourth has given Brooks letters of recommendation but unfortunately his financial support only amounts to $1,500 a modest endowment especially considering that the price of Egyptian antiques has enormous Lee increased the growing European interest has not escaped the shrewd Arab traders immediately after Napoleon's Egyptian expedition in 1801 the Bavarian and Prussian Kings started buying nearly everything that came out of the historical sites even the inscriptions on ancient papyrus which no one could read at the beginning of the 19th century for Brooks those papyri represent the only possibility of furthering his demonic studies famouser I'm seeing I'm seeing their bother huh enough you see any Cephas just as 150 years ago many Egyptian antiquities still leave the country via dubious channels Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo has created an entire department to fight the International art trade mafia who offers articles for sale through auction houses if you need to give it you have to follow these rules and this is the show that if you are the guardian of the monument that belong to the world it you have to be very strict and I am very strict with everyone Hawass esteem is uncovering the burial site of pharaoh Katie who ruled Egypt 4,300 years ago and is said to have been killed by his own bodyguards but even from this recently discovered site a number of artifacts have already been stolen Egypt I think never have a strategy before to stop the fifth and stop all this smuggling out of Egypt we have what really called the rape of the Nile the Nile was completely raped by many people adventurers and smugglers who came and they entered in tombs and they cut their leaves and they stopped ah they even entered inside the storage magazines and they take statues Saqqara is an example of that over our like maybe five store magazines they ducked underneath and they took many artifacts and we heared about this great fifth that some English people in Egyptians together and Americans they took and they smuggled many monuments from this place the archaeological treasures are stored in Sakura's excavation house guards make sure that only those in charge of the excavation are allowed to enter the storage rooms since it is extremely tempting for the poorly paid laborers to sell a fine to dealers tighten security measures and stricter regulations are making it more difficult for black market traders to get their hands on ancient fines but that also means that prices for artifacts will rise supply and demand is the name of the game on the Antiques black market to the highest prices are paid for gilded statues or intact coffins like this coffin of a high-ranking government official who is buried in saqqara in the year 100 EC the coffin was discovered in one of the shaft graves the necropolis which can be up to 6 meters deep over thousands of years they were used and reused as were graves in general what a few discoveries have already been made here and there are new finds in every excavation season the secretary-general of the antiquities Council is certain that Saqqara has even more to reveal and this time Egyptian archaeologists want to be in charge Saqqara was a place that many foreigners excavated her marry yet the German the Japanese and I really wanted to have an expedition by our name as Egyptian to compete with all of these people and I was succeeded really in hiring young Egyptian since I don't have time now I come sometimes she the work but this the young people here are doing a very impressive work and the discoveries that we made are really known everywhere now Egypt is reclaiming its historical roots but the groundwork was laid 150 years ago after several months mahiette has to accept that he needs the help of others to interpret the inscriptions in the sarah pale he asks hi nourish Brooks even though Brooks has never taken part in a single dig the Frenchman hardly leaves Brooks time to unpack he puts him to work right away although mahiette prefers wielding a spade to studying texts he has heard a lot about Brooks the new arrival is anxious to put his knowledge of demotic script to the test he immediately realizes that the signs in the Serra paym tell a completely different story from anything he is translated up until then they do mention the APIs Bulls but instead of finding evidence of the location of the burial objects Brooks discovers something else something much more important the first clue to the chronology of the pharaohs Empire because every bull is assigned to a specific favor by determining the bull's dates of birth and death Brooks is able to reconstruct the reign of each individual ruler and establish a line of ancestry that has evaded every scholar before him now that he has found the key to deciphering and arranging the tablets in chronological order linking each bull with his specific Pharaoh Brooks is certain he can descend the ladder of time to the very beginnings of ancient Egypt now he at once understands the significance of this discovery it is the first indisputable basis for the history and chronology of the Egyptian Empire like many scholars mahiette too had wondered which King had founded this amazing Empire and when the cornerstone was laid for a kingdom that out shown all its rivals in 1883 the estimates of scholars different by thousands of years and there was a good reason for that like the chronologies of most ancient people's the Egyptians didn't have a single fixed point from which to record time with every new ruler they began counting the years of fresh in 1864 another chronology was found the famous Abydos King list for Brooks and Mariette this was additional evidence because the list depicts 75 pharaohs with their names framed by ovals known as cartouche the earliest cartouche names Pharaoh - who ruled in 2955 BC it was Maness actually the first Pharaoh modern scholars are only gradually approaching the beginnings of ancient Egypt and today they know that Menace was not the first ruler but who ruled before him Egyptologist Gunter Dreyer is the director of the German archaeological Institute in Cairo he has been working in Egypt for over 30 years but his most recent discoveries have been the most spectacular he's a fun design from the heart on transition fastings at some mainland while mango signs were really surprised you could almost say sensational because we never expected we would find written documents and sources that could tell us something about that period in that sense oh yes there's a lot of good news we're learning something about a period the month no one really knew anything about you Gonzaga's we can now save written scripts existed much earlier than we had suspected and that expands our historical horizon this way we're able to track the development and roots of Egyptian high culture step by step in Abydos günther Daria went in search of the dynasty that scholars call zero he discovered graves that are at least 150 if not 200 years older than the first dynasty of mehness a hooked staff made of ivory was found over 5,000 years old and resembling a king's scepter perhaps it belonged to the first ruler of dynasty zero on one of the vessels that were found the sign of a scorpion is clearly visible and this is what we call the first ruler King scorpion Abydos is a milestone for Egyptology in its search for the roots of Egypt's high culture of Condesa for thanks to these discoveries we can retrace the historical development about 200 years further back into the past but what existed before the Imperial Union there was a partial Empire in Upper Egypt which gradually expanded to all the Egypt in this way we've been able to push back the dividing line between prehistory and history by about 200 years having grasped the significance of the line of ancestors now he it changes his way of working the crude excavator turns into a serious archeologist and Heinrich bootch is promoted to be as close as confident after years of digging now he has collected enough artifacts to fill a museum it opens in Cairo in 1858 the predecessor of today's world famous Egyptian Museum now yet is on good terms with the Egyptian ruler cadivi Mohammad Sayeed for the cadivi antiquities are good PR for his country he appoints mahi at the first director of the museum and raises him to the rank of Pasha thus ennoble mahiette pasha founds Egypt's first Council of Antiquities in a separate gallery mahiette reserves a place of honor for the greatest of all pharaohs ramses ii did you see his autopsy good one all but despite enormous efforts mahiette and Brooks have not yet found his coffin following its move from a suburb the Egyptian Museum is now located in the center of Cairo thousands of artifacts were lost during a flood in the old museum so Murrieta persuaded the cadivi to build impressive new galleries to house the exhibition safely forever the museum now contains one and a half million artifacts it is the world's largest collection of ancient Egyptian art with works for many different eras of Egypt's 5,000 year history the rooms on the upper floors were already overflowing at the beginning of the 20th century newly delivered pieces had to be stored in the basement often aimlessly and without any notes about the place they were found every semblance of order was lost for a long time nobody knew what exactly was locked away in the 3,000 square meters of vaults until a woman took over as director of the museum in 2004 Wafaa el Siddiq instructed her staff to make a thorough inventory I'm sure we will fill some of the gaps in the ancient Egyptian history because all the finds we have here are from archaeologists who discovered many many places in Egypt over 140 years and you can imagine what we have here in this basement and what still to be discovered here whenever new artifacts are discovered the museum's own conservation lab moves into action six archaeologists have spent months combing through these underground treasure chambers every new coffin could be a king's many objects thought to be lost have been rediscovered in the museum's own basement the director estimates that her staff will need another two years to put together a complete inventory 6,000 coffins and 2,000 pots have been identified so far despite meticulous reconstruction in some cases nobody knows where the fines come from or how they fit into over 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian history the artifacts are categorized as accurately as possible though the descriptions are sometimes not too helpful this one is simply filed as fake mask of a coffin some of the fines that were delivered here will never be found because 150 years ago the basement of the museum was a place for shady dealings back then the mummies represented a lucrative extra income for the museum staff a meal Heinrich's brother is the new conservation and he starts doing profitable deals selling mummies museums and wealthy customers in Europe and the USA have been receiving deliveries directly from the museum's basement until it becomes too much for the director mahiette has turned a blind eye for a long time after all a mil brooch is his good friends brother but enough is enough mahiette cleans house that doesn't necessarily make him more popular with the egyptian black marketeers but something had to be done as for a male Brooks his days as conservator are over but the director is willing to give him a second chance during the next two years Marquette trains Emil Brooks to become his scientific assistant it is only then that he takes him to the Valley of the Kings the head of Egyptian antiquities has expanded his scope of activities he dedicates his entire energy to the search for the elusive mummy of Ramses the second mahiette is obsessed with discovering the sarcophagus of the most powerful Pharaoh of all time Rameses tomb had already been discovered long before but it was empty yet more and more burial objects kept surfacing on the black market that allows for only one conclusion grave robbers have actually found Rameses final resting place Maui it assumes that Rameses coffin must still be somewhere in the Valley of the Kings but where mahiette cannot know that the priests of the guard King took their Pharaoh out of the Valley of the Kings thousands of years before Ramsey's eternal peace like that if so many other rulers had lasted only a few years then the robbers had come stealing the gold but leaving the coffins behind in order to save them for posterity the loyal priests around 1000 BC hid the mummies the pharaohs left the Sacred Valley of the Kings today there is no more danger of looting in the Valley of the Kings night watchman protect every chamber but now the world's most famous tombs face a new threat the scientists of the Theban mapping project were the first to notice the humidity and temperatures in the burial chambers have dramatically changed in the past few years because of the tourists for whom the gates are opened at dawn every new busload brings heat and humidity eight thousand visitors a day surged through the passageways archaeologist Kent weeks founded the Theban mapping project to save the tombs he has discovered a tomb with 120 chambers in the Valley of the Kings now he's committed to the preservation of this impressive necropolis every morning and every evening his team measures the humidity on an average day it is 20% in the morning but when the tourists leave the vaults in the evening it reaches 85% the desert climate preserved the sealed-off tombs for thousands of years now they are suddenly threatened with destruction what would happen is that the plaster on the walls would soften and begin to flake off the pigments would change the paint would begin to deteriorate and eventually the structural stability of the tomb would be affected and pillars and columns could weaken to the point that you begin to get ceiling collapse to prevent the worst the biggest holes in the intricately adorned walls were simply plastered over this was treating the symptoms many tombs were temporarily closed to the public but it isn't only the changing humidity that adversely affects the tombs we have been really very careful about the you know the moments and they never touch or taken photos but some of them they are close I mean the trying to touch or feel the you know the figures or trying to you know to taste the color if it's it's new or coming his finger and and so on Kent weeks and his team want to work on the causes weeks has established a rotation system that determines when chambers are open to the public your terms at her at the same time he is preparing for the day when none of the tombs may be accessible anymore he's working on a virtual tour of the Valley of the Kings he wants to make it accessible to everyone on the internet with interactive tours of the tombs so that the Pharaohs eternal peace can be preserved I don't think an ancient Pharaoh for a moment thought that there would be 8,000 people visiting his tomb every day for an eternity the tomb was not designed to be visited by any except the spirit of the Pharaoh and of the gods with whom he was to be associated it was meant to be a sealed environment and left untouched we are intruders in this environment and obviously no one ever planned for this no one ever thought they tourists would come in such numbers Kent weeks office is a boat within sight of the ancient temples he is developing a master plan on behalf of the Egyptian Council of Antiquities he's trying to determine the critical number of tourists which the Valley of the Kings can tolerate before it suffers further damage weeks has become a consultant excavation plans have grown into business plans any archaeologist whether he's working in Mexico or Guatemala or Paris or Istanbul or wherever has to raise funds for his project and it becomes increasingly difficult to do so because of increasing demands archeology is very labor-intensive it's very expensive increasingly so as new techniques and new technology are developed I think probably an archaeologist spends almost as much time fundraising today as he does actually working in the field archeology has created jobs for tens of thousands and upper egypt most of the residents of the green strip along the nile worked directly or indirectly for the tourist trade there is more construction near the historical sites than anywhere else archeology prepared the ground for the stampede of visitors every year tourists pour over 7 billion euros into Egypt's economy you the government understandably does everything it can to encourage the cult of Egypt's ancestors thus ramses ii has another great royal ceremony over three thousand years after his brilliant reign it's actually only the transport of a statue but it turns into a public celebration a fan mile for a pharaoh a huge truck is modified to haul the god-king away from the smog of the capital and out to one of Cairo's suburbs Ramzi still captivates the masses just as he did 150 years ago now here to spend 30 years digging and exploring in Egypt in his final years is obsessed with finding Rameses mummy he's defied the extreme climate gangs of thieves and physical assaults but is powerless against diabetes hi nourish and Emil Brooks know their mentors weakening on their last visit they bring him good news sensational news the Egyptian police have stumbled upon a hitherto undetected grave it's believed to be near Luxor outside the valley of the kings and everything the brothers have heard so far points to a royal tomb mahiette is too weak to go there himself Heinrich Brooks has to return to Berlin so it is left to his brother Emil to take care of the new find finish what I am no longer able to do mahiette tells em you'll do it for me fine Ramses a Millbrook hurries to Luxor there's no time to lose word about newly discovered royal tombs travels fast if the police really hit the jackpot according to the police report the hiding place for the tomb the so-called royal kashat is a few kilometers south of the Valley of the Kings members of the rasool' family a notorious gang of tomb raiders lead a meal to the spot is it a trap or is this inconspicuous hole really the final resting place for the greatest of all the Pharaohs generations of Razzles have lived by selling looted burial objects their knowledge of the Chamber's location is an asset which is passed from one generation to the next to the present day the descendants of the Razzles still live in corner the legendary village of tomb Raider's and they still look for royal tombs but today they do it officially in association with the German archaeological Institute indra abu el naga and necropolis just a few kilometers away from the valley of the kings the institute has been exploring the huge cemetery since 1991 one of the goals of daniel poults who heads the excavation project is to discover more about the transition period between the Middle Kingdom and the new kingdom known as the second intermediate period of Egypt around 1600 BC and the 50 gum idiots fight and suicide by studying the second intermediate we are dealing with the ear that led to the high point of ancient Egypt's prosperity in the New Kingdom as is that's why we are interested in this era because it led to the creation of a kind of state structure which is hardly seen anywhere else in the ancient world died in vitam Combahee mud from DRA abu el naga the rulers had a good view of the most important cemeteries and thebes it is the only necropolis within sight of the vast plain with the sacred sites of karnak on the other side of the Nile thus the necropolis benefited from the sacred status of Karnak mahiette was sure the DRA Abu el Naga had to be a very special Cemetery mariette had a staff as ultra stands and DeCinces estimate is e'en when hat arias was the first person to try to systemize the whole thing and he also used ancient Egyptian sources and clues to find the burial sites of Kings which is amazing and relatively modern his teasin invite nazca gong for he followed up on local information here on site in luxor and try to use ancient Egyptian sources as a map so to speak to find certain tombs muda now that is a relatively modern way of conducting archeological research and undie I can agree on so being Holtz is following in the footsteps of Mariette who searched for royal tombs here as early as 1870 without results then as now archaeologists appetites are wetted by a fine which has been exhibited in the British Museum since 1830 the gilded coffin of Pharaoh nope chip array a ruler of the second intermediate from DRA abu el naga but information about the burial chambers whereabouts was not passed on so Poltz started to look for clues that had already guided maria marietta and a fixed point of departure was a papyrus also stored at the British Museum it described fairly precisely where the king's tomb growth was located the abbot papyrus is the antique report of a Commission which investigated damages to the royal tombs in 1115 BC in that report it says that the tombs are located very close to a pyramid holes identified this place as the location where the specified pyramid once stood he also discovered that there are deep shafts underneath the pyramid the underground shafts go down as far as 10 meters but the chef's that have been investigated harbours no royal tombs the empty plundered coffin the archaeologists found belongs to a group of private tombs for a senior official in the administration the search for the pharaohs buried indra abu el naga goes on poults is driven by the hope that looters or early archaeologists at least left the scientific treasures behind felis lusty karpova niched many of the things that don't interest toon Raiders are interesting to us and vice versa we are less interested in finding pieces of jewelry or gold or any kind of precious metal we are out to find meaningful remains of funeral furnishings the greatest finds Indra Abu el Naga are probably made in secret unknown to archeologists many homes in Kuna are said to be built on undiscovered tombs with shafts several hundred meters long leading from the basements up into the hills but a new law is designed to put an end to that kind of scheme some 3,000 families are being resettled soon these homes will no longer be here and archeologists will be able to enter the basements and perhaps come back with a surprise or two provided the most important finds haven't already been stashed away somewhere on July 6th 1881 Emil Brooks is on the verge of a remarkable discovery in a shaft which could possibly lead him to the immortal Pharaoh this moment could confer immortality on Brooks himself the first meters leave no doubt the shaft is indeed a hiding place for tombs coffins are lying crisscross in a cave like room burial objects are strewn everywhere robber seem to have helped themselves over the millennia the final resting place for ancient Egypt's greatest rulers a mill Brooks finds 36 coffins in the Royal cassette including those of toot Moses the third say those the first and Ramses the second in his notes he shows he is aware of the significance of his success I am proud that I as a German have had the good fortune to accompany the ancient Pharaoh's to Cairo where they will be given a place of honor at the Museum there this sacred River has rarely carried a more noble cargo on July 14 1881 Emil Brooks sails down the Nile with his precious find for fear thieves Brooks has insisted the matter be dealt with in an absolutely confidential manner but word gets around the entire country but the great Pharaoh's are on their way to the capital the people humbly pay their respects to their former rulers even in the streets of Cairo Auguste Mariette doesn't live to witness his assistants triumph today the likeness of mahiette chiseled in stone stands guard for ramses ii in front of the egyptian museum the pharaoh's mummy has been given a place of honor his mortal remains have been rescued from oblivion but instead of lying in eternal rest he is now exposed to the eyes of the world the discovery of the mummy of Egypt's mightiest ruler is symbolic of the way a science evolves archaeologists rescue historical knowledge from tomb Raider's and the fog surrounding the beginnings of ancient Egypt begins to clear stay with h2 for more mysteries of Egypt right through this Sunday after the break one of history's great disappearing acts as Rama sees the seconds impressive metropolis goes a war lost cities of the Ancients goes in search of the vanished capital of the Pharaoh next you

Channel: Zakerias Rowland-Jones

Views: 211,796

Rating: 4.6201329 out of 5

Keywords: Egypt (Country), Pharaoh, Pharaohs, Tutankhamun (Pharaoh), Auguste, Mariette, Emil, Brugsch, Tombs, Kings, List, Abydos, Ramesses II (Pharaoh), Ancient, Documentary (TV Genre), 1881, Nile (River), Jean-François Champollion (Author), Treasures, Saqqara (Cemetery), Pyramids, Giza, Cairo, Hieroglyph (Language Writing System), Coptic Language (Human Language), Apis, Egyptian Museum (Museum)

Id: YL4EzTKC8W4

Length: 45min 43sec (2743 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 18 2013