Servants of the Serpent Goddess (Full Episode) | Kingdom of the Mummies

in a tube deep underground archaeologists carefully remove the lid from an a stone sarcophagus inside lie the mummified remains of an Egyptian priest hidden for the past two and a half thousand years oh my God this is beautiful closer inspection though the mummy isn't What It Seems no way and the investigation takes a surprise turn there is something quite mind-blowing forcing the team to question all that it's found so far I might belong but I would be very surprised if there is no more surprises in this conflict [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign renowned egyptologist Dr Ramadan Hussein and his team of archaeologists are Excavating a remarkable new site when I started archeology I never thought I would be discovering something on that magnitude extensive 3D scams reveal a unique ancient Egyptian funeral complex from around 600 BC where the dead were brought to be mummified and buried in an assortment of Chambers deep underground this tomb complex dates to the 26th Dynasty and that's about 700 years after Tutankhamun and about 600 years before Cleopatra and the end of Egyptian history as we knew it this time period is interesting because this is when Egypt had had a huge Renee Source in religion and burial ideas so this find is really a snapshot in time and crucial to our understanding of mummification thank you today Ramadan and his team are investigating a pair of stone sarcophagi [Music] they lie in a small chamber almost 100 feet below the surface we have two sealed sarcophagi one in what we call anthropoid sarcophagus it means it takes the human form and another one that is a rectangular sarcophagus what makes them so special is that unlike the other sarcophagi in this complex they're both inscribed with text once we discovered this writing we understood how valuable this is so we have put protective paper here this is our means of communication with the engines the inscriptions are carved on one sarcophagus and painted on the other and they provide fascinating clues about the people buried inside foreign for me it is a moment that I can read the minds of these two persons to be able to know what they wanted to convey us what they wanted to tell us the ancient Egyptians believed that remembering the name of the deceased by writing it down would lead to their immortality and the text on the caskets reveals a pair of male names China meat and he put but the text also contains another vital piece of information their jobs and interestingly they both match so far from the tax material we have collected we have two priests this is shanimi right behind me here is another priest and his name is put [Music] while this is priceless information it raises an important question why are these two priests here is it purely by chance that they share the same tomb or could they be in some way connected that is pretty much the mystery why do you have two priests right next to one another this is a question to be answered when we lift up this lid [Applause] to learn more about the two priests Ramadan must open up the sarcophagi and investigate their contents in forensic detail [Music] led by their Foreman Amar the team is starting with the rectangular sarcophagus of chanamite foreign [Music] the first task is to break open the thick layer of mortar running around the edge of the lid intended as a seal to deter grave robbers its presence can mean only one thing this sarcophagus is 2 600 years old and it hasn't been touched since China meat was buried inside it I know this is a three-man job so we'll see how successful this is going to be um it is very intense moment for me what is inside this circle let me know it seems to be working hello now the casket is part way open Ramadan uses an inspection camera to take a preliminary Peak this is unbelievable [Music] what it reveals is like nothing else from the complex ah [Music] glittering stuff a 2 600 year old mummy to toe in an elaborate beaded burial shroud amazingly still in one piece beautiful beaded net it is so elegant this is so beautiful [Music] not as pristine as you would see at the museums but this is long Nami that will carries the dust and aging of 2 600 years this is remarkably decorated Mommy this definitely stands out as one of the most remarkable sarcophants that I've ever opened I have a job to bring the enemy back to life we want his story to be told and I think I'm going to tell the story of tiny meat from now until I die I have so much to do beneath the ancient pyramids of Sakara the task of opening China meets Stone sarcophagus is well underway [Music] after glimpsing a beaded shroud lying on just mummy Project Director Ramadan is Keen to learn more about this mysterious priest I'm Lauren his team just lifted up the lid it's a difficult job it's a lot of Labor a lot of sweat come on come on before we roll it out we need to make sure that nothing will fall on this beautiful mummy so we're spreading a cloth underneath the lid we're good to go carved from solid Limestone weighs almost 2 000 pounds and the team will slide it out on steel rollers when you move film a large piece of stone like this lid you don't want this Stone to smash somebody's bones uh that's first second is not to damage and Destroy any object inside the sarcophagus so those are the two main concerns safety of the living and also the safety of the Dead okay now I think we're gonna have a full look at the mummy of China meat foreign just unbelievable [Music] it is as if actually it was made yesterday beautiful made from hundreds of glazed clay beads China meets perfectly preserved burial shroud was intended to protect him in the afterlife its quality and craftsmanship are a clear sign that China meat was a wealthy individual this is the work of an artist that was done 2 600 years ago and now we're getting a first look at it a bit for a bit the caller is coming out is so beautiful also beaded right here [Music] the head of the Mummy [Music] it's still wrapped to see his eyes and the nose and the eyebrows and even the mouth drawn on this linen bandages [Music] this is one of the most beautiful mummies I have ever seen in my life what is so amazing it's the preservation of the beaded net and the necklace after 2 600 years [Music] unbelievable [Music] but now the question that is on my mind who is this person to have deserved such an elaborate burial to shed light on why a priest like chalamid was able to afford such luxuries project consultant salima igram has come to one of the most iconic sites in all of Egypt historic city of Luxor on the banks of the River Nile among the many nearby tombs is a vast Mausoleum belonging to a priest called pariamanopet it was always in ancient Egypt good to be a priest because of course religion was of the utmost importance and also you enter into this hierarchy of the temples and the religion and so it's sort of like a Brotherhood [Music] of the many Egyptian gods or goddesses was a full-time job but for an elite few like padayamanopan it was a career that brought wealth and status one of the most striking things about pariamanopan's tomb is the fact that it is huge it's the largest non-royal tomb in all of laksa the workmanship is exquisite and it's lavishly decorated and it would originally have been painted and you can still see some of the vestiges of paint which means that he must have been one of the richest and most influential men when he died almost every wall of this enormous 22-room tomb is covered in either paintings or inscriptions and they contain important information about padayama no Pet's life including how he was able to amass such wealth priests were very important in Egyptian society and periamanope here you can see for his a priest elect a priest someone who reads but he was also a royal scribe he was known to the king he had was a courtier and he like many other priests had lots of jobs so priests weren't just religious beings they were political they were industrial some of them were even in the military they really had their fingers in all kinds of pies and so you wind up with people who have enormous wealth that they can amass from a huge number of different sources so could Chana meets elaborate burial be a clue to the sort of life he led as a priest Ramadan is hoping to find some answers in the painted text on his sarcophagus now that it's protective covering is being removed foreign tax is so valuable for every archaeologist it is that joy to be able to read the minds of the Ancients what we're reading here is if we can draw any analogy a an identification card of this person and right here for example we see the name of the deceased cha knee meat which literally means the little child of the cat the worship of the cat among Egyptians was very very common and it was notably common among a segment of the Egyptian society that is mostly Libyan immigrant so the name China meat could that be an indication that we're dealing with a Libyan Descent of some sort Heritage isn't all that's contained in the inscription so working backwards we see some of his Priestly titles here for example and we could see that he is a priest of the goddess and the Goddess Isis two of the most important goddesses in the ancient Egyptian Pantheon then we continue to see more of his Priestly titles in other words just like the priest Patia monopet China meat held more than one position [Music] we're talking about somebody who had evidently a long career as a priest this must be somebody who accumulated a certain kind of wealth so what brought such a distinguished priest here to Sakara this burial chamber has already given us a lot to think about and how if at all is China meat connected to yiput the other priest buried in the chamber [Music] [Music] inside the priest's burial chamber ramadan's team is preparing to remove chanamit's mummy from the sarcophagus so they can examine it for more clues a little bit up little bit too wide as there's a chance of damaging The Mummy the Project's digital team is first creating a perfect copy using a technique called photogrammetry [Music] so first of all I took like thousands pictures of this mummy and we can put all these pictures and in a software and then the computers figures out what we have done with all the pictures and creates out of all pictures of 3D model and it's a complete new approach understanding archaeological sites like this especially when they're on the ground the 3D map of the Tomb complex now contains China meets open sarcophagus and the real beauty of this technique is that it records each stage of the excavation allowing the team to go back and re-examine key details like The Faded text on channel meets sarcophagus where Ramadan has spotted a mysterious name we're looking now at the titles of chani meat connecting him to several gods and goddesses from ancient Egypt very prominent ones but it was so intriguing here is that he's a priest of a goddess a serpent goddess her name is newches with this circle then a rectangular below it then a bolt and at the end he serpent when I first saw the name a new chess I had trouble reading it because we don't see that name a lot sounds really very strange while this latest Discovery is an important development it now leaves Ramadan with a new set of questions who was this obscure serpent goddess and why was a priest of some of the most important deities in Egypt in her service in search of Clues project consultant salima is once more in the city of Luxor [Music] [Music] thank you we're here at Luxor Temple which is one of the most important temples in this area because it contains lists of gods and goddesses and if we're in search of a particular deity this would be the place to go among the many hieroglyphs covering the temple walls is what's brought her here a tiny but familiar looking inscription and it's right up here where you've got that Circle up there the crossing it and beneath that there's a funny hook and this lovely snake one of the very few mentions of new chayez to be found anywhere in Egypt and in fact this is the first time her name occurs ever [Music] What's significant is the inscriptions location inside a separate Chapel within the Temple dedicated to one of the most eminent of all Egyptian deities the Great Goddess moot moot was so important because she was the consort of the god Amun King of the Gods so basically she's queen of the gods and mooch is also the great mother goddess and in fact the word for mother in Egyptian is Moot and she was in charge of the fertility of the land the people the herds and a great protector of women [Music] so revered by the ancient Egyptians that they depicted her in many different ways as the mother of the Pharaoh as a powerful ruler even as a lioness and so here in this Chapel we have moot in all of her different guises and all of her different aspects and one of moot's other lesser-known geysers was the serpent-like new chayez here you see that nutrias is really just an aspect of the Goddess mood and an aspect in serpent form like you can see from her name she's not very significant it would seem and they're only a handful of mentions with this very elusive mythological figure that we have throughout Egyptian history now 600 years later at Sakara in the Tomb of China meat it's a different story because China meat is a priest of the goddess nutrias and this means suddenly newtius is an independent entity suddenly she becomes somebody [Music] fully fledged goddess in her own right and what's remarkable is that China meat wasn't alone in worshiping this new deity in a small tomb next to the priest's chamber Ramadan and his team have made an extraordinary discovery a mummy wearing a Priceless gilded silver burial mask the first found in Egypt for almost a century one of the fascinating things about this find is that the text on the coffin reveals that its owner was a priest just like China meat and that he too worshiped the serpent goddess new chayez which means that new chayez must have become a very significant goddess indeed all of a sudden our conflicts here we have two individuals they're connecting themselves to the goddess nutrias being Priests of this goddess a revolution in what we know about this goddess we're hoping for more information about her [Music] thank you in light of the discovery that chanamide was a follower of the Obscure serpent goddess yut shayez Ramadan is Keen to find out more about the other priest from chanamid's tomb today is going to be a very interesting day because our attention turns to the second sarcophagus in the burial chamber that we've been working in and now it's the time to learn more about he is hoping that a closer inspection of yikut's casket might reveal why the two priests share the same tomb [Music] the sarcophagus if you put stands out in this complex because it is the only anthropoid circumference a human form sarcophagus and he could see the fingers print of the person who applied this mortar in the process of sealing the lid deployed sarcophagi were intended to portray an ideal of Egyptian beauty and on ye puts Ramadan spots an intriguing detail interestingly they could see the face here that very triangle-shaped nose this very pointed very sharp nose and that very thin lips it is not an Egyptian official features it looks to me like possibly a foreign person and these sarcophagus is inscribed giving us the name of the person who is buried inside you put that's very interesting because it doesn't sound like an Egyptian name it does sound a foreign name particularly Libyan name something similar to what we've seen with China mid [Music] if Ramadan is right and both China meat and ye quote were of Libyan descent then could that explain why they share the same too remarkably the links don't stop there because the inscriptions on yiput's sarcophagus also reveal the gods whom he served and they include a now familiar name on the foot of ye put's casket is The Telltale symbol of a serpent [Music] same goddess Ramadan saw on chanamid sarcophagus and the coffin of the priest with the silver mask therefore strong similarities in connections between these two persons one is both of them were priests second they serve the same goddess new chess third both of them possibly libyans possibly Libyan immigrants who settled in Egypt foreign [Music] in the search for more evidence the team's next step is to look inside ye put sarcophagus [Music] we are in a very tight space then we have to move this human-sized lid right now I think they have to maneuver turn around and make sure nothing Falls inside the sarcophagus that would have damaged The Mummy [Music] there you go [Music] foreign takes a quick look inside you put sarcophagus [Music] beautiful what we have here is a mummy similar to China meets Mommy similar mummification technique for the two of them there's very interesting we see a lot of beads at the feet of this mummy looks like they were put around the mummy not really threaded and this is something that I haven't seen before [Music] so we need to look closely to the face and the body of airport foreign [Music] hello myself finally for the first time in 2600 years he puts money is fully revealed that beautifully wrapped mummy coated with this black Richmond [Music] you could see the old bandaged here the mummy wrappings right here looking closer Ramadan tries to make sense of the shape of the body Beneath The Mummy wrappings he spies something totally unexpected there is something quite mind-blowing looking at the circumference of input and the text and his name that is written right here and title being a priest of newches all speaks to me as a man but now looking at The Mummy I'm seeing something different could see a silhouette of that left arm over the chest and then another protrusion here possibly the right shoulder going all the way down along the body so what we have here is the left arm um crossed over the chest while the right arm extended along the body of possibly reaching the pelvic area this is the position that is restricted to women of high status in other words what the arm position suggests is that instead of being a priest of new chayez I put May in fact have been a priestess all these months I'm talking about ipunt as a man and all of a sudden I have a mummy with a hand and arm position that is for a woman I might belong but I would be very surprised if there is no more surprises in this complex now we need to have this question answered and the identification of the sex of this mummy confirmed by x-ray [Music] after the shock discovery that the priest ye put May in fact be a woman Ramadan is Keen to reinvestigate the sex of another of the priests from the complex the priest with the Gilded silver mask [Music] you're thinking it's male yeah but now we might have a very big surprise in terms of the sex of this mummy laughs now that the painted wooden coffin has been removed project consultant salima is able to identify a crucial Tell-Tale feature I mean certainly I can see from the brow it's quite sharp that's certainly a female trades were quite extraordinary just as revealing is the mummy's crossed arm position when you have one arm crossed over your breast and one along your side that pose is something that is only seen with female mummies and so the fact that this body has the same pose would really argue in addition to all of the physical characteristics of the skeleton that this is a woman this is a surprise the potential discovery of a second Priestess is a fascinating development having priestesses buried here is significant because it tells us what ancient Egyptian women were like in what their social status was they have the same social economic class they had the same level of wealth the same level of prestige and privilege and really it emphasizes the point that in ancient Egypt more than any other ancient culture women had many more rights and were far more equal to men than elsewhere yeah sure the priest's sex though what Ramadan needs is hard evidence [Music] so he's arranged for the mummies to be x-rayed starting with the priest chanamate it's completely decayed so I'm trying to lift the mummy one beast but I think it's very hot held together by a protective gauze it means The Fragile mummy is carefully lifted out good work we get the mommy one piece [Laughter] remains are delicate to be hoisted to the surface the team has created an x-ray lab Underground so we can make quick x-ray radiologist Professor Sahar Saleem will x-ray The Mummy in stages uh okay clear please starting with the head okay shoot wow unfortunately this doesn't look good it's disappointing news this doesn't look good at all the the skull is so crumbled Chana meets skull is too damaged to glean any information from it unfortunately I cannot tell whether this is a man or woman will go to the other Clues to determine the sex I'm counting now on the pelvis female pelvises are usually wider and rounder than males should making them a reliable indicator of sex um it was bad news unfortunately because it's totally destroyed you cannot see any recognizable part of the hip unable to tell China meets sex the team switches to ye put the priest with the male name but the female looking mummy yipput is a mummy that kept me thinking all the time the name is for a man the title is for a priest but we're still really not sure whether you put is a man or woman [Music] [Music] a hundred feet beneath the desert inside a makeshift lab radiologist Sahar Salim is getting ready to x-ray the two and a half thousand-year-old mummy of ye put the priest prayer please she's hoping the scans will confirm whether you put skeleton is male or female I'll do my best I feel responsible for making everybody happy [Music] the first thing to check is the arm position when we open the sarcophagus of your food the Ramadan was suspicious about the position of the arm now we are going to x-ray this mummy and figure out the real position of the arm [Music] okay ready shoot the first x-rays confirmed the team's initial suspicions okay good the crossing of the left arm over the chest it looks like the burial of a woman it is very clear further scans reveal other specific Clues shoot this skull is not really in a good condition but this bone beneath the the ear it is smooth and the roundness of the skull I have this feeling that this could be a woman foreign the pelvis also it is not that intact but there is a big ground cavity just towards a female also the blades of the iliac region there are more flat this is also with a woman [Music] the X-ray is telling me that you put is a woman not a man my journey in understanding what you put is like a roller coaster of understanding you go up one point and then all of a sudden you drop down this is what makes archeology so interesting and while there's no evidence to suggest that China meat was a woman what the team can be sure of is that the two priests yiput and Chana meet shared a similar status and background [Music] this chamber presented us with job with information in the form of two beautiful sarcophagi inscribed for two persons their names Alone says something about them being libyans immigrants who lived in Egypt and become completely egyptianized [Music] even more significant is the goddess these two libyans along with the Priestess and the silver mask worshiped [Music] track K24 has the largest number of mentions of the goddess nuches in one place in the entire country of Egypt I think we discovered a new cult in ancient Egypt The Cult of a goddess we didn't know much about with priests and priestesses who served her [Music] and to Ramadan a new cult suggests something more just have her own trying in the immediate vicinity of Shaft k-24 or a temple with economic revenues that allows the priesthood to amass such wealth that is reflected in the richness of their burials [Music] questions like this that are the reason why the team is still digging and if the discovery is so far or anything to go by then there will surely be more secrets to uncover the only reason to do egyptology is because you enjoy it and love it you love the ancient Egyptians you really want to find out what they were doing what they were thinking how they were functioning it is also lovely because you realize they might have lived three thousand two thousand years ago but there's very little difference between them and us [Music] that were Mission here what we're doing is looking for information and rewriting the story of every individual we discover here and we're still going to gather more of that this is for us a lifelong research project [Music]

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 385,392

Keywords: national geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, science, explore, discover, survival, nature, culture, documentary, perpetual planet nat geo, photography, full episodes, Dr. Ramadan Hussein, Worship, Dr. Hussein, Mysterious Snake Goddess, Tombs of Three Priests, Lavish Mummies, Servants of the Serpent Goddess, Kingdom of the Mummies, Worship of a Mysterious Snake Goddess, Tombs of the Pyramids

Id: 5vsp0Ky3tb4

Length: 44min 24sec (2664 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2023