The Valley Of Kings: The Egyptian Golden Age | Immortal Egypt | Odyssey

[Music] hundreds of tons of stone to portray a mighty pharaoh colossal testament to egypt's golden age [Music] i think it's probably here at the feet of the colosseum and we get a real sense of who amanotup iii was in my opinion amanotip iii was ancient egypt's greatest pharaoh he presided over the the zenith of egyptian culture and civilization he is the golden age he is the epitome of everything that made ancient egypt [Music] brilliant the rise of this great civilization was powered by its extraordinary belief system [Music] where the pursuit of the perfect afterlife was everything capable of withstanding disasters and dark ages [Music] to then re-emerge as the most powerful empire in the ancient world [Music] in this episode i'm going to enter what i regard as egypt's greatest era the new [Music] a time of luxury grand designs and unparalleled splendor isn't this absolutely beautiful but like all good things it couldn't last forever [Music] egypt's powerful religion would prove to be its greatest weakness and i'll discover how the priests became so rich their power struggle with the crown destroyed the very unity of egypt it was this very conflict that would transform this golden age into one of decadence and corruption and would eventually tear egypt apart and by looking again at egypt's greatest superstars i'm going to investigate what really happened during the glittering new kingdom welcome to my story of ancient egypt [Applause] the new kingdom nearly three and a half thousand years ago and the time of amanotep iii when egypt's expression of power and belief reach new heights of enormity i've joined an international team of archaeologists for excavating just one of the vast monuments aminotepe created his funerary temple now being here you really get a sense of what it must have been like three and a half thousand years ago when this place was a building site much as it is today all these statues all around amanotep the third's image coming up in their hundreds and yet as the archaeologists today assemble all these pieces this is literally history coming out of the ground peace by peace in the pyramid age royal tombs and funerary temples were a single complex but thirteen hundred years later the two were built separately reflecting a new era of opulence epitomizing the greatest dynasty of all the 18th the time of amanotep iii for centuries pretty much the only visible remains of amino tepes funerary temple were his two colossal statues now archaeologist dr hourik cerrozian and her team are finally uncovering the full splendor of this once mighty monument you touch and it's it's it's like glass covering over 86 acres this was not a tomb like the pyramids but a huge complex the largest funerary temple ever created it's a massive it's unbelievable you have to imagine this is only the major temple the main temple you have to imagine other temples processional ways sphinx avenues magazines workshops treasures pools gardens priest house administrative houses all this was a big city in the uh in in the overwhelming this grand design was built as the place where his soul could be worshipped for eternity while his mummified body was buried in the valley of the kings nearby but during his lifetime inside the temple a permanent priesthood was employed all ruled over by the pharaoh amanotep's massive statues flanked the temple's main entrance beyond them lay a second pair and then a third [Music] amino tepes image repeated throughout the temple complex i wish one day they they find the time machine i go back can i come i'll come with you we may not have a time machine but 15 years of work have begun to reveal some of the temple's former glories normally these would have been meters up in the air but to actually engage it's so very tactile so very intimate holding hands with the pharaoh this colossus from the temple's second gateway is flanked by one of the best preserved statues of aminotepes principal consort queen tai his great royal wife here standing and by miracle having been saved by all the catastrophes which struck this temple so he's protected her for centuries really hasn't it carved to be no bigger than aminotepe's lower leg queen ty's size served to exaggerate the pharaoh's superhuman status these massive statues were more than a memorial each worshiped to guarantee the immortality of the king's soul the pharaoh as god this is my great surprise to you and uric has saved the very best till last oh oh flip tonight tall carved from the finest white alabaster oh don't know what to say over the years i've seen many of his portraits but rarely won as stunning as this look at it look at his nose yeah this is an absolutely amazing portrait sculpted face of ammunitive himself never seen anything like it with hundreds of statues like this amanotep was multiplying the image of himself as egypt's most powerful god bringing light and life to the world [Music] because whoever controlled egypt's religion controlled egypt and with it a vast amount of wealth now amanotep wore gold from top to toe and he handed it out to his courtiers as gifts but he also used it as a diplomatic weapon amenotep's clever use of egyptian gold is recorded on stone scarabs like this one they served as the pharaoh's news bulletins which he circulated around his empire with updates inscribed on their base in this case it was a new marriage of the king it effectively records his marriage to a syrian princess a princess from the land of mittani and it recounts how having sent gold to the princess's father he then sent out one of his daughters for the pharaoh to marry so a kind of mail-order bride if you like it reports that her name was killahipa and that she arrived from mitani in syria with no fewer than 317 ladies in waiting clearly impressed amanotep added the comment it's a marvel with this diplomatic marriage only one of many they were an effective way of securing peace and prosperity amenotep was able to utilize his key resource his gold to kind of get everything he wanted to maintain his status as a supreme monarch in the ancient world at that time gold brought egypt peace with its neighbours with aminotec the third's empire stretching from what is now syria as far as modern sedan within egypt itself gold had a different use and could even guarantee a fast track to the afterlife emphatically expressed by a great treasure in the museum in wigan a stunning golden face [Music] originally part of a woman's coffin her life-like features were preserved to allow her soul to recognize her in the afterlife isn't this absolutely beautiful clearly the gold suggests to us that this was someone a very special very high status very wealthy although we can never know her name she had clearly spent a fortune in preparing for her perfect afterlife covered in gold leaf she stares out at us with eyes of alabaster and black obsidian we can really see into the world into the thought patterns of the egyptians themselves because as stunning as this face is it was simply buried in a tomb literally buried in a hole in the ground not for human eyes but to be seen by the gods and the spirits of the dead with whom this woman wanted to join and that's why her skin is gold because the gods had golden skin and she wanted to be recognized by them as one of their own taken into their eternal care for the egyptians it was a special pact between themselves and the gods that made their country made their empire so very powerful so very special in the golden age this special pact shone more brightly than ever before with egypt's wealth poured into their faith in the afterlife and with increasing amounts of gold accompanying the royal mummies their tombs needed to be kept secure at all costs so a secret burial place was established for egypt's pharaohs on thebes west bank the valley of the kings [Music] it was essential that each royal mummy was buried safely in their tomb in a custom dating back to the beginning of time because each one became a royal ancestor whose cumulative souls from the very essence of egypt the royal tombs had been desecrated once before breaking egypt's spiritual link to its ancestors [Music] so to prevent this happening again the pharaohs of the new kingdom chose burial deep in this remote valley where they could lie undisturbed in rock-cut tombs and this became egypt's most sacred place such elaborate preparations for the afterlife also fueled a growing economy and just as in the pyramid age the industry of death shaped the lives of many ordinary egyptians for not only were there tombs to cut and temples to build but statues shrines coffins sarcophagi and all the paraphernalia of the afterlife and with this came all the ingenuity of sourcing everything from alabaster to granite to gold this is a copy of the world's earliest surviving geological map dating from around 1150 bc and the reign of ramses iv this map is a guide to the stone quarries and gold mines of a 15 kilometer stretch of egypt's eastern desert it's almost as detailed as a modern geological map with different colours for the different rock types so over here these large areas of black are the sedimentary rocks back here where it turns pink these are the igneous rocks like granite other little features include areas of gold mining and then throughout you have this very subtle speckling and these are the areas of gravel known to be very accurate the map was made for one specific quarrying expedition when 8 000 men were sent into a desert valley 130 kilometers from thebes to mine stone for royal monuments but what's special about this map is that it leads us to the ordinary people who were employed by the pharaoh to build the tombs in the valley of the kings [Music] it was discovered by archaeologists at the workers village of der el medina a purpose-built settlement to house the tomb builders architects artists and scribes together with their families this would have been a bustling place its streets full of children playing deliveries being made and all the colours sounds and smells of everyday life it's one of the workers who lived here who made the map now we even know the identity of the map maker the scribe i'm enact his distinctive handwriting is well known from a range of other literary works from poems to prayers maps to tomb plants and it's thanks to one particular little inscription with his name on that we even know where he lived i'm enact lived here this is the scribes house famine nakht was one of the many skilled workers that rose through the ranks of society in the generations following the reign of aminotek iii he became the head scribe of this entire village so a very very important man and yet it's a very sad tale as well because as he gets older we know that his eyesight started to fail because a prayer of his has survived in which he makes this very personal address to the local goddess meret sega who lived at the top of the mountain up there and he's imploring the goddess he's saying my eyesight is failing i see darkness by day and for a scribe for a consummate draftsman like amanat how sad that would have been [Music] here i'm enact praise to meret sega both of them symbolically portrayed without their eyes [Music] it's hard not to resist this image that as he got older and more infirmity would have gone up the steps to the flat roof with failing eyesight try to focus on the job in hand trying to mix his paints apply the the lines and the words and so forth and needing the full sun on a day like this just to get through the working day but just like his predecessors who built the pyramids ammon nakht would have felt a sense of greater purpose we can imagine him and his neighbors in dear el medina working towards a single aim creating the royal tomb the new kingdom pharaohs had created a new image for themselves elaborate building schemes requiring new towns full of workers a strong economy supporting an ever grander vision both for this world and the next but the spiritual convictions that had brought egypt to its zenith had also created a serious threat in the new kingdom much of the egyptian state centered on thebes while its west bank was mainly dedicated to its city of the dead the east bank was where most people lived and the site of egypt's main state temple karnak [Music] as karna was rapidly becoming the largest religious complex of the ancient world its influence grew exponentially and likewise the power of its priests to get a real sense of what's going on we need to go behind the scenes ah so welcome [Music] i'm being allowed through an ancient passageway once only accessible to karnak's [Music] it clergy to the top of the temple's main gateway and gives a view of karnak not many get to see just look at that you could fit notre dame and saint paul's cathedrals in here and still have acres to spare it is immense within karnak a series of chapels shrines and sacred precincts covered a total area of more than 250 [Music] acres this was egypt's religious heart for almost 2 000 years the reason why karnak is so vast is that every pharaoh pods so much of their wealth into this temple their gold and their spoils of war all filled the temple's coffers and each pharaoh also wanted to build their own halls shrines and obelisks in an attempt to outdo their predecessors and yet all to the greater glory of karnak's chief god amoon over the course of centuries a moon had risen from a local theban god to egypt's state deity and his worship was the engine that fueled the nation so every pharaoh had to keep a moon content offering him their wealth and tending to his every need and this privilege fell to karnak's high priest and was performed in the temple's inner sanctum secret ceremonies at which the only others permitted were the royals here we are in the very heart of karnak temple this is where the god lived the god himself lived inside his sacred statue the original wouldn't have been much bigger than this would have been solid gold it would have lived inside a little golden shrine sealed by a pair of small doors [Music] each morning the high priest would come in he would awaken the god's spirit he would greet him he would wash him anoint him with perfume apply his eye makeup and then dress him in various linen outfits apply the small pieces of jewelry to the god statue and then the god would proceed to enjoy his day a moon received daily meals of the finest foods roast meats bread fruit and vegetables accompanied by wine and beer clouds of incense would drive away evil forces and musicians and dancers entertained him and by keeping their most important deity content it was believed that a moon would in turn make the nile flood each year make the sun rise each morning and maintain egypt's supreme status [Music] the high priest's direct access to a moon made them the greatest beneficiaries of karnak's growing prosperity this tranquil lake is where the male and female clergy bathe twice each day and night to maintain their ritual purity before the gods known as the pure ones they set themselves apart from the rest of society with their distinctive appearance achieved through their own set of daily rituals part of this process of ritual purity involved using an array of implements on a daily basis to transform their appearance and one of the most important things they did they had to remove all body hair male and female clergy using razors like this so every day having to shave their heads and their entire bodies keep them free from lice and all these kind of things which would have inhibited their sense of cleanliness it was essential that they also had a very clean mouth because they'd be speaking the words before the god and so they use something which is quite a modern thing basically natron salt are kind of bicarbonate rather like a modern bicarbonate toothpaste which would get their teeth nice and clean scrupulous not only with dental hygiene they wore reed woven sandals and robes of pure white linen [Music] and having transformed themselves in this wonderful way they also had access to these polished metal mirrors they could then admire their transformed appearance because it was important to distance themselves from the great unwashed for the ancient priest's cleanliness really was next to godliness and they were the gods chosen people [Music] as the wealth and power of karnak's priests grew their authority over egypt began to rival that of the king priests had far-reaching influence active not only by day but also by night [Music] one of these priests was called nakht he was a priest of the hours of a moon which basically means he was an astronomer and he would sit by night on the flat temple roof which was effectively an ancient observatory and he'd be able to chart the progress of the stars and planets in the sky watch the movement of the heavens and by doing so the priests of egypt were able to work out when to celebrate specific events but of course what this meant is that khan never closed it was a 24 hour a day concern it meant the priests were always there it meant the priests were always [Music] watching fully aware of the potential threat posed by the karnak clergy amanotep iii employed his own relatives in the temple to guarantee their loyalty but such subtle means of control were about to evaporate enter a new pharaoh akhenaten sun and heir of aminotepe but unlike his father akhenaten was no diplomat his zealous ambitions would soon plunge egypt into an age of political and religious extremism [Music] early in his reign akhenaten found a swift way to stamp his authority on the priests by building a controversial new temple complex at karnak now what we're looking at here is something very very unusual it's part of a wall from karnak temple but not the traditional part of karnat temple it's a section that was built a little way beyond and it was a new revolutionary building it wasn't built like the old style car knack in huge big monolithic blocks of stone but these small easier to handle blocks which meant of course it could almost spring up overnight but most shocking of all with the images that this new temple portrayed akhenaten had begun to dismantle egypt's traditional religion and replace its many deities with a single god if you look very carefully the images are very different to what went before a moon is nowhere present the god of karnak himself isn't represented in his own temple because the god shown here is a form of the sun god called the arton and you can see the multiple rays coming down ending in human hands giving their blessings to the main figure here and it isn't the high priest of the moon farahmun's priests were no longer in control at karnak and the moon himself was now replaced by the arton sun god in fact life in egypt was turned on its head and whereas previously courtiers would bow very low before their monarch now times had changed these people have their faces in the dirt before pharaoh they're lying prostrate before him this marked the beginning of a new age [Music] it was an age when the only way to reach god was through his intermediaries twin monarchs akhenaten and his wife and co-ruler nefertiti and when the priest subjected the royal couple closed carnac sacked its priests and seized its treasury they then moved their whole court 400 kilometers down river from thebes and in less than 10 years built a brand new city known today as a mana its palaces temples and tombs were filled with images of the arton the sundisk god with a multiplicity of gods to worship now it was the sun that was celebrated each day with hymns prayers and offerings presented on a truly lavish scale [Music] but the couple's vision of utopia came at a price and when akhenaten died after a 17-year reign egypt was bankrupt his son became king of egypt and although he reigned for less than 10 years he still became the most famous pharaoh from the whole of egyptian history tutankhamen his treasure discovered by howard carter in 1922 was the most famous archaeological find of all time tootin carmen's mask is the epitome of ancient egypt so very familiar yet like so many of his treasures holding a long-standing secret i've come to oxford university's griffith institute to examine the most detailed records of his burial so in this first stack these are all carter's notes diaries journals and then right at the bottom down here we've got all harry burton's original glass negatives captured on delicate glass slides these are the original negatives taken by howard carter's photographer at every stage of the 10-year excavation so this shows the very first view they had of the mummy they reveal tootin carmen's burial in a way not usually seen for this is the linen shroud over his third innermost coffin this is as if the embalmers have just finished the family have laid their wreaths some floral tributes before the lid finally went on what a privilege to actually see this in black and white wow that's pretty profound for all his fabled wealth titan carmen was in life a fairly insignificant pharaoh but his premature death after only a decade as king offered carnax priests the perfect opportunity to obliterate all traits of akhenaten nefertiti and the amana period and these wonderful photos of his burial treasure reveal how they did it on his famous golden throne tootin carmen and his wife anka sennamoon are depicted together but all is not what it seems as recent research has discovered we look at the back of the queen's head where her wig originally was it's been slightly cut down there the same with tootin carmen's crown a new crown has been added here so it's little things like this because headgear regalia was crucial in identifying these royal individuals by altering the images the throne had been customized for toon carmen but the biggest giveaway as to whom this once belonged is in the deity that looms large above the king and queen so although a moon is also named on this throne it's the art and sundisk that does take center stage and really does cement this piece as a royal throne from the amana age so it seems that the two figures once believed to be tootin carmen and his wife were originally akhenaten and nefertiti another clue comes from the most famous artifact from ancient history the golden mask of tootin carmen or is it recent research has zoned in on one long overlooked feature and that is the decidedly pierced ears because it's been suggested that this mask was originally made for someone else the research suggests that tootin carmen wouldn't have worn earrings beyond childhood so by the age of 20 when he died he would not have been portrayed with pierced ears this mask was not made for an adult male pharaoh indeed when the gold has been compared the face is made of completely different gold to the rest evidence of soldering is clearly visible on the mask it now seems as if tootin carmen's own face was effectively grafted on to the mask of a previous ruler a previous ruler who had pierced ears for earrings a previous ruler who may well have been a woman who may well have been nefertiti [Music] [Applause] in fact it's estimated that around eighty percent of the objects found in tutankhamun's tomb originally belonged to either akhenaten or nefertiti and with all of it dumped together like this it was a kind of spiritual decluttering as far as the priests were concerned all this was tainted gold and so the burial of toot and carmen was the perfect opportunity to bury the unwanted past forever while the city of amana had been abandoned then demolished the memory of everything it represented was likewise being erased [Music] egypt's state religion was restored karnak's priests were back in business and thebes was once again the seat of sacred power and now the next dynasty of the new kingdom was in control having died without an air tootin carmen was succeeded by a line of militaristic rulers the 19th dynasty with no direct royal ancestry the new dynasty needed to reconnect with egypt's illustrious past so it reinstated traditional beliefs in a renaissance led by one of its most influential rulers seti the first his tomb in the valley of the kings is the largest pharaoh's tomb ever created here currently close to the public i've been given special permission to explore this labyrinthine treasure the tombs inviting us down further down into the underworld and it's just drawing us into the darkness it's a really really deep tumors it's 175 meters of corridors and chambers all chiseled out by hand and covered from floor to ceiling in some truly spectacular scenes whoa what an amazing chamber absolutely filled with little gold and twinkly stars but the walls of seti's tomb carry a clear message demonstrating the return of egypt's traditional deities in full force [Music] here we see him seti with the gods this is a brilliant chamber it's repeated images of the fair el setti with the gods the gods are back and he's keen to show that and so we see him here with anubis the elegant black jackal god of embalming and the dead here seti is making offerings to hathor the maternal goddess of love who takes all dead souls into her care and horus the god of kingship wearing the joint crowns of upper and lower egypt then seti makes the strongest connection with egypt's past in the portrayal of the ultimate deity in the tomb osiris god of the underworld he represents every single pharaoh that's gone before seti he represents the accumulated powers of the royal ancestors and seti is keen to show himself in the company of osiris he's tapping in to that greatness that made egypt such a strong nation [Music] every image every hieroglyph in seti's tomb harks back to the golden age of aminotept iii and continuing with this golden legacy seti's reign was a true renaissance of art and culture with the ultimate jewel in his tomb his burial chamber that is absolutely superb this is really incredible he's taking that nighttime sky motif and really really running with it this is the night sky you're seen through the eyes of the astronomer priests [Music] and this is where the royal mummy would have laying in its alabaster sarcophagus allowing seti's mummy set his soul to look up at this spectacular ceiling egypt's traditional belief system is here writ large covering every surface [Music] egypt was back seti had brought back the days of glory it's as if the amana period had never been and for the average man and woman in the street that was a wonderful thing because order had been restored chaos had been brushed away and everything was all right with their world the golden age had been restored but not just for the larger-than-life pharaohs with their glorious tombs and vast monuments but for the majority of egypt's population too this included the inhabitants of der el medina the tomb builders village near the valley of the kings at the edge of the village was a great pit the community dump inside which were discovered tens of thousands of pieces of pottery and stone covered in pictures and words written in hieratic script a kind of hieroglyphic shorthand these are the ancient egyptian equivalent of post-it notes shopping lists and text messages this is uh the kind of stuff that speaks to everyday life yeah um what's going on underneath the surface with the help of hieratic expert dr glenn godenho we can catch a glimpse of this intimate world far away from kings and gods which is your favorite amongst these ones i always go to this one this is really nice because this one's uh basically a list of stuff you take to a party what you've got is tabulated information so you've got vertical and horizontal lines and in each of those spaces you've got a name and the stuff they brought to that particular event i mean this person here the name's missing from this but this person bought the most stuff about 11 items we've got bread for example being brought along next down we've got some beer so one jug of beer as well as beer and bread it lists a veritable feast fruit 20 pieces beans one jar full fish meat and even a cake the thing i like about this is the idea of a community coming together it really does make the ancient egyptians that more real because we can relate to them we all like a good party but of course life isn't always a party and people fall on hard times this fragment begins with a story of a breakup hesi su nebef divorced the lady hell [Music] and then it goes on to record a heartwarming story of support from its anonymous author he seems to have wanted to look after this lady hell and so the text goes on and it says that the the author of this spent uh three years giving one measure of emma wheat to hell every month but it doesn't end there so she gives to the author here um a sash so a piece of clothing and she says in this line here uh to offer it at the riverbank um the river bank is where the market was right and she says that um she'd like uh one measure of um of emma wheat for it but no one wanted it so yeah the text goes on to say uh that um the author tried to offer it down at the river bank but uh he gives a customer a view it's right here one word bean which means bad yeah yeah so it wasn't even worth one measure of emma so that is sad but the author's such a good egg that um he says that he buys it off of her for well over the market value of this thing that wasn't even worth one measure in the first place anyway nice guy picture we don't know his name yeah it's a real shame it's a real shame but at least we have his words one of the many voices from der el medina which still speak to us across 3 000 years of history telling us of the highs and lows of lives familiar to us even today for most people the new kingdom had been an age of plenty but it wasn't to last the golden era of wealthy pharaohs was becoming ever more superficial [Music] seti's son ramses ii was egypt's most prolific builder spending on ever more ostentatious monuments the best known of which was his temple at abu symbol but such over-the-top building projects emptied the royal coffers as did a series of costly foreign wars so by the time of ramses iii the cracks had certainly begun to appear as inflation increased supplies in the state granaries ran low so the grain which formed the monthly wage rations of state employees like tomb builders and artisans was no longer paid when due and it sparked the first recorded labour strike in history it happened in 1155 bc when the tomb builders began to complain that their food supplies hadn't been delivered and when it happened again the following month they simply downed tools marched to the nearest temple and shouted we are hungry to make sure their grievances were heard they staged a sitting at the temple but the state's response only added insult to injury [Music] local officials could only hand round a delivery of pastries not much use to anyone the indifference of the authorities provoked many more weeks of protest their grievances only increased and soon the striking workers had taken to shouting out at passing authority figures including the mayor the workers were finally fobbed off with enough supplies to shut them up in time for the pharaoh's jubilee celebration to pass by unhindered by trouble but the striking workers had highlighted the waning power of the monarchy with the pharaoh now served by an increasingly inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy the glorious bubble of royal extravagance finally burst [Music] and the pharaoh's rivals were waiting in the wings the priests of karnak having grown powerful through the revenues given to the gods they served the writing for the royals was quite literally on the wall and you can see what i mean in this little known part of karnak temple where the high priest is making a very bold statement but only if you know how to read the now footnotes is a fascinating scene we have the pharaoh ramses ix and he's facing his high priest shown here but there's something extraordinary about this scene because for the first time the pharaoh and the priest are shown on exactly the same scale they are the same height that's why the priest is looking so pleased he has his arms raised as if in triumph because these guys are so clever they've actually got the pharaoh standing on a box so he's a fraction higher and yet in reality they're the same height this really shows that the priests are in power they're basically saying to the king we are the same size as you therefore we are as important as you are [Music] priests have become full-time politicians vying with the throne for power they destabilized the balance between church and state the relationship on which egypt's entire culture depended so great were their ambitions that by the end of the new kingdom the priests took control of the entire south and with the pharaoh ruling only the north the country was split into its two ancient halves but even worse was to come it's at medin at habbo ramses iii funerary temple that we can find out just how little interest these politician priests now had in the royal afterlife they were only concerned with their own status and their own wealth now this next disturbing part of egypt's story not only spelt disaster for its core belief in the royal afterlife it left a tortuous puzzle for egyptologists which we are still trying to piece together it's an extraordinary story that begins not in the temple but in a small house built later within the grounds because the priest's corrupt ambitions will be put into practice by the man who lived here his name was bhuta ahman and as an acropolis scribe he worked in the nearby valley of the kings this is the man himself bhuta almond with his shaven head his starch kilt his arms raised in prayer he's praying to the great god of thebes the moon himself although bhutarman's story doesn't quite live up to this image of piety because it was here that he received a letter of instruction from his boss the high priest of karnak this is a copy of that letter and its contents are mind-blowing because the high priest is telling voter armin go and perform for me a task on which you've never before embarked uncover a tomb among the ancient tombs and preserve its sealed door until i return and although this language is quite euphemistic and cryptic both the sender and recipient knew exactly what it meant and it would have a profound impact on egypt but armin had been promoted his new title was opener of the gates of the necropolis [Music] so he and his men set out for the valley of the kings taking with them tools and bundles of linen their mission nothing less than the systematic dismantling of their royal cemetery in search of gold it was an order to accumulate wealth [Music] tomb robbing itself was nothing new in ancient egypt but what's different about this looting is that it's an order from the ruler of upper egypt the high priest himself this is looting sanctioned by the state [Applause] [Music] knowing the secret location of the royal tombs bhuta almond began what was euphemistically referred to as restoration work the final taboo was about to be broken so bhuta almond and his men set to work they break open the seal of every royal tomb they move the lid of the sarcophagus take out the royal mummy in its nest of gold coffins and proceed to unwrap each one next they strip them of anything of value gold masks jewelry and amulets all taken for the temple treasury [Music] as for the mummies they're re-wrapped in fresh linen and all buried together for the cash-strapped priests these royal tombs were no longer inviable but little more than a series of dead bodies resting amidst the goals they needed to achieve their political aims so for 20 years this very tomb became one of butter almonds re-wrapping workshops where archaeologists found fragments of the gold prized from royal coffins traces of the lost treasures of numerous pharaohs [Music] and butter almonds handwriting was discovered on the re-wrapped mummy of ramses iii [Music] with no regard for the sacred even the great pharaoh aminotept iii ended up repackaged in the coughing of ramses iii covered with the ill-fitting lid of seti ii [Music] only one tomb hidden by rubble escaped the wholesale plunder [Music] yet the ultimate violation of ancient egypt's soul was now complete clearly the priest kings of karnak had got what they'd always wanted absolute power no longer interested in the royal ancestors who were simply a source of revenue to be robbed and discarded the devout had become cynical and their royal afterlife nothing more than an illusion from now on egypt's story would be written by invaders from far beyond the valley of the nile combices were sending a very clear message to the egyptians i am now in charge [Music] but egypt's secret weapon was its captivating culture wow look at that look at that oh that is oh that is so beautiful seducing its new rulers from far-flung parts of the ancient world and ancient egypt's final flowering lay in the hands of another great empire enter the macedonian superman enter alexander the great you

Channel: Odyssey

Views: 115,159

Rating: 4.75 out of 5

Keywords: ancient history, classical history, ancient civilisations, classical antiquity, history documentary, classical documentary

Id: qp8ljHFDLFc

Length: 58min 41sec (3521 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 19 2021