Tutankhamun in Colour [BBC Documentary, 2020]

[Music] there has never been a discovery like it not before nor since we were to witness a spectacle such as no other man [Music] [Music] on the 26th of november 1922 after five long years scouring egypt's legendary valley of the kings british egyptologist howard carter and his aristocratic backer lord carnavan broke into the tomb of tutankhamun the wonders they discovered captivated the world a coffin made of solid gold [Music] and the famous gold mask [Music] were just two of over 5 000 precious objects wouldn't it be wonderful to know what it felt like when the discovery was first made for the archaeologists the spectators and for people around the world the discovery was captured using amateur films and early newsreel for the cinema along with thousands of high quality black and white photographs but these images can seem to consign the story to history and make it difficult to capture the intensity of this extraordinary event i want to relive the discovery just as people did at the time and now using cutting-edge colorization technology we can witness these events for the first time in a century almost as they were in color that's amazing the fact that they're carrying the chair i hadn't even really made that out in the black and white footage at all by transforming old images i'm going to rediscover these stunning objects just as they were found and an incredible detail 33 centuries have passed since human people [Music] in color um [Music] my name is elizabeth frood i'm associate professor of egyptology here at oxford university i'm also director of the griffith institute a place dedicated to the study of egypt and the ancient near east [Music] back in 2015 my work was put on hold by a catastrophic illness sepsis often called blood poisoning i lost my legs below the knee part of my nose and much of the function of my hands thanks to incredible support i've returned to work and now i'm ready to embark on the exciting journey to bring the search for tutankhamun's tomb back to life [Music] one of my institute's greatest treasures is the remarkable archive of the man who discovered the tomb howard carter we have his personal diaries maps plans of the tomb and hundreds of photographs all carefully preserved by dedicated archivists like cat woolsey we've got copies of these two our records start with carter as a young man they're really um striking photographs i mean here he just looks he looks so young but you still get that sense of kind of intensity that you can see in this photograph here at just 17 when this picture was taken howard carter was preparing to follow his father into a career as an artist then through family friends he landed an amazing job in egypt copying the paintings and reliefs of its ancient monuments [Music] even his earliest work was exceptionally careful and accurate he was clearly entranced by his subject this one is probably one of party's most accomplished watercolours that we have here in the archives it's absolutely stunning carter's copies capture everything from the rich colours to the loss of paint from the ancient surfaces remarkable recording of colour you just get all the shading of the of the falcons wings and all the detail of the the spread of the wing here the work of artists like howard carter in egypt is often overlooked nowadays but at the time it was absolutely crucial recording of details that are often lost to us now and it brings color and the richness of that color to a world of archaeological recording that was very black and white in terms of photography and sketches and plans so it really is an extraordinary record carter's stunning artwork made the wonders of egypt accessible preserving them in paint and paper and i want to do something similar to transform the black and white archive into colour bringing the discovery of the tomb to life and recapturing those scenes from a hundred years ago [Music] paris-based art director samuel francois steinerger and his international team are specialists in colorization so how do you begin the process of converting old black and white photographs into historically accurate colored images when you work as a historian you are asking questions about the big picture whereas we are going to focus more on the history of details like objects how people are dressed we are spending a lot of time to do extensive researches to find the answers to these questions that make us recreate the colors of such scenes as a test we're going to start with the young carter in order to recreate each image accurately sam's team will have to decide on the authentic colors for every single object so i guess all that i can say at this point is that i'm really really excited to see what you can do and i'm really curious to see how much it changes my feelings and my knowledge of these of these photographs so how did howard carter go from artist to the man who made the world's most famous archaeological discovery his rapid ascent began in 1892 when he was given the opportunity to work for this man leading british egyptologist flinders petri petri earned the nickname father of pots for the way he meticulously recorded ancient objects no matter how ordinary he taught carter to read the history of an ancient site from the minute detail of its archaeology from his season with petrie carter really learnt how to record objects also the need to draw and photograph things all of which really although nowadays is are obvious things until petrie came along they weren't the sort of thing necessarily anybody would always have thought of unlike many of his contemporaries petri also highly valued his egyptian workers on whom he depended completely what we're seeing here which we don't see in any other museum that has ancient egyptian collections is the photograph of the workmen who actually made the discovery so they are equally acknowledged petri was the only foreign archaeologist who would assign the name of the egyptian workman who made the discovery on the tomb plan that is discovered [Music] carter was inspired and wrote petrie's training during those months transformed me it became my great desire to be an excavator to me the calling had an extraordinary attraction [Music] working here in the ruins of the ancient city of amana on the nile petri introduced carter to the world of tutankhamun over three thousand years ago amana was home to an infamous pharaoh akhenaten his principal queen nefertiti and their six daughters they rejected most of egypt's gods and embraced just one the artem or sun disk akhenaten also had a son this tomb relief shows him on the right the young tutankhamun with maya his nurse or tutor soon after the death of akhenaten tutankhamun became king and a figurehead for egypt's return to traditional religion over three millennia later carter may have worked where tutankhamun once lived and here in the ashmolean museum we have a fragment from a floor from a building that they both might have walked through or near the scene of wild geese taking flight was painted in the freestyle so characteristic of the art of akhenaten's time but the budding archaeologist had no idea that one day he would find something of tutankhamun's that was even more spectacular back at sam's studio in paris colorization of the first photograph is complete [Music] wow [Music] he really does look like he could stand up at any moment and step out of the frame and shake my hand i did not imagine myself having such a strong kind of emotional reaction to this but it's really incredible thank you so much it really means something to me and to my team [Music] colorizing still images is one thing but how about black and white film [Music] how do you do the colorization work with moving images well working on very damaged footage with grain with scratches frame rate is not the right one so we need to work on that as well and then we can only start putting color sam's first task is to convert all of the footage to the correct speed before cleaning up the scratches and dirt it's really remarkable to see this photograph of howard carter in colour i can't wait to enter the extraordinary world he stepped into in brilliant color but now through the much more complicated process of colorizing moving images of colorizing film carter built industriously on everything he had learned from petry [Music] and by the early 1900s he was one of the most accomplished archaeologists working in egypt [Music] this was a regular sight riding his horse around the temples and tombs of luxor but carter's problem was his prickly character and he often found it difficult to hold down a job then in 1909 he met a man who would transform his life paving the way for the most famous archaeological discovery of all time you might recognize this place it's high clear castle also very well known from the hit television series downton abbey and it's the family seat of the carnavans in the early 1900s it was home to george edward stanhope molyneux herbert fifth earl of carnarvon carnavan was a fellow egypt obsessive and a keen amateur archaeologist and photographer he quite often put his camera on a timer and then ran around and sat in it so sometimes his eyes are still closed so this was in the second in the basement of highclere the current earl and countess of kanavan keep an exhibition of some of his work photographers canarvan had the wealth to fund his own excavations but he needed an expert so he hired howard carter wow oh man i'm gonna have to come back and have a look this is actually how the castle's first christmas present sir lord carnarvon oh it's one of his paintings he did six watercolors and he gave them to looking after christmas in 1909. so i thought frame then put them on wall they're wonderful quite fun isn't it [Music] he was not an easy man howard carter but he discovered in lord carnavan a man who was equally passionate about egyptian works of art about the country about the wildlife the experience of being in egypt so they found they had a lot in common and they were both very dedicated the two of them seem to have actually have clicked they seem to have worked together extremely well and while carnarvon was still was around i think he managed to sort of moderate carter the exhibition includes some of their early discoveries together but what the pair dreamt of finding was something never seen before an intact royal tomb and they knew exactly where they wanted to look for one here in the valley of the kings part of a dried-up watercourse near luxor between 3600 and 3200 years ago this was the burial place of the pharaohs hidden in the rock are magnificent tombs this one the tomb of seti the first stretches nearly the length of saint paul's cathedral [Music] from the names of kings recorded for example on temple walls egyptologists knew which tombs ought to be in the valley but not all of them had been found however a few objects belonging to tutankhamun had been unearthed there and this convinced carter that his tomb was somewhere in the valley [Music] as he slowly brings carter's egypt to life sam has finished colorizing our first film sequence it shows some european tourists visiting egypt in the 1920s [Music] the original film was cleaned and converted into digital files then sharpened up film grain and damage removed from each shot [Music] meanwhile the colour of the clothes and buildings is researched then each object is carefully coloured and the colours animated to follow the objects [Music] wow that's amazing i mean just just looking at that there's all these details that popped out at me that i hadn't even seen in the black and white [Music] the texture of the temple wall the light on people's clothing and their faces i can almost feel the egyptian heat just looking at it after our conversation about the technical aspects of the process i expected myself to be looking for that you know and kind of paying attention to oh how did you do that but i didn't i was just you just get completely absorbed by all the details that you can see and all the new things that that emerge from the footage [Music] in 1914 carnarvon finally decided to back carter's hunch and obtained the permit or concession to excavate in the valley of the kings but almost as soon as canavan won the concession war broke out this put an immediate stop to most archaeology egypt was forced to become a british protectorate and troops from the far reaches of the empire arrived to prepare for a fateful attack on gallipoli in what is now turkey [Music] these are anzac forces from australia and new zealand this has a really strong personal resonance for me as my great-great-uncle was among them he was roaming around the pyramids just like these guys i've even found a photo i think that's him harry northcroft squinting in the sun he and many of his comrades would soon be killed at gallipoli [Music] the war changed everything [Music] including the egypt that carter knew a third of egyptian men were forced to supply provisions for the british army fuelling a seething resentment a resentment that would eventually cause real trouble for carter and canarvan but for now they remained focused on the valley of the kings and the search for tutankhamun it was a task that required the rigorous archaeological approach carter had learned from petrie this is carter's actual map of the valley of the kings that he used to organize his his excavation work there season by season it's laid out on a grid and the plan was to work through every square and excavate down to bedrock each sector is around 30 metres wide removing all the stones and debris one sector at a time was a massive undertaking but by 1917 there was a large archaeological workforce in egypt this is really on an industrial scale i mean these photographs show dozens and dozens of workers and and some of them are children loading rubble onto these railway carts and then the carts were put on this narrow railway to take the rubble away you could see the clouds of dust coming up and it's just such an extraordinary operation so much labour involved [Music] [Applause] since the time of petri egyptian archaeological teams had become increasingly well organized each one of them knows exactly what they are meant to do there are some who would sieve some who take the sand in the baskets move away others who would move the rocks away we would usually see the boys taking the sand away and it's usually the men digging and most of these workmen were actually farmers and that meant they were very qualified not only of knowing of understanding the landscape and the soil and the land but also in their digging techniques the methods of archaeologists today are certainly more refined but they still use the systematic approach carter deployed but systematic or not by 1922 after five back-breaking seasons there was still little sign of tutankhamun's too and following the worst war in history even lord kanavan was beginning to feel the pinch income tax in england in 1914 was six percent in 1918 it was 60 percent in june 1922 lord carnavan was reviewing his overdraft and he had said to howard carter i i can't continue to finance these concessions in egypt it was the ultimate frustration for carter there were just two of his sectors left to excavate and finish the job he pleaded for one last season i wonder what howard carter said to lorcan alvin i mean i think he really did love egypt he loved spending the winters out there and i think it was probably quite easy to persuade him to have one more final season their final season began on the 1st of november 1922 clearing the last two sectors of carter's grid would be a delicate job he would have to dig around a popular tourist attraction the tomb of ramses vi and he had to excavate and clear the remains of ancient huts left by the builders of ramsay's tomb but it was worth it a discovery came almost immediately on the 4th of november although it was carter who was unquestionably the driving force behind the operation it wasn't him who actually discovered the tomb it was one of his egyptian team to keep the workforce going demanded a steady supply of water delivered by boys on donkeys the clay water containers had round bottoms so the water boys had to make small pits to stand them in as one boy hussein abdul rasool did this he hit a hard surface below and reported his discovery immediately a team started carefully removing rocks to reveal a flight of steps descending deep into the bedrock at the foot of the steps was a blocked entranceway carter was convinced he had finally found what he'd been searching for he ordered his men to refill the hole and dispatch the telegram to lord carnavan and lord carnavan opened it and it was a telegram for howard carter saying at last have made wonderful discovery in valley a magnificent tomb with seals intact recovered same for your arrival congratulations i mean i'm not sure he knew exactly what it would lead to and they'd had so many false starts once canarvan arrived with his daughter lady evelyn the workers dug out all of the rubble to reveal a blocked doorway carter took a quick snap this is the photograph that carter took of the doorway it's covered in seal impressions now seen in colour as carter saw it for the first time in a century on this photograph of the fragment here you can actually read the seals this was taken once carter had broken down the doorway the oval shape tells us it's a royal name the scarab beetle in the middle reads kepper the three strokes make it plural reading kepperoo the basket reads neb and the sundisk rey giving the name neb kapparooray this is the throne name of tutankhamun so it was reading this that carter realised what he had discovered that he had discovered the tomb of tutankhamun it was an incredibly exciting find but there was also something very worrying for carter looking again at this photograph you can see that the left side looks a little different like it's been broken and re-plastered carter knew what he was dealing with somebody else had entered the tomb and then the tomb doorway had been repaired and resealed who were they and what had they taken it's possible that the robbers were connected to those who built the royal tombs and would have known its location and perhaps contents when carter's team broke the wall down they met only a passageway packed with even more rubble once the rubble had been cleared from this passageway carter reached a door here and took an iron rod and drilled through that door to create a small hole that he could look through carter wrote with trembling hands i inserted the candle and peered in at first i could see nothing the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle to flicker it's really hard to imagine how carter must have felt as he as he made the first break in the door knowing that there could well be absolutely nothing there it all might have been robbed out thousands of years ago then carter writes presently details of the room emerged slowly from the mist strange animals statues and gold everywhere the glint of gold i was struck down with amazement and when lord carnavan inquired anxiously can you see anything it was all i could do to get out the words yes it is wonderful thanks to colorization we can now get an extraordinarily clear impression of what carter carnavan and lady evelyn saw that day to the left were four dismantled gilded chariots inlaid with brightly coloured glass they were in disarray caused by the tomb robbers on the wall in front of them three gilded ritual beds one is in the form of the mother goddess tarwaret with the head of a hippopotamus tarwarit protects the sleeper the dead king and assists in his rebirth in the next world another bears the head of a cow the goddess may hit wear it underneath there is a pile of ancient wooden lunchboxes containing offerings of meat and poultry to sustain the king in the afterlife everywhere there were signs of the intruders [Music] and to the right a pair of life-size wooden statues with golden headdresses [Music] the black color of the skin is associated with fertility after the black soil of the nile it was extraordinary all of them to look through and see what they saw these extraordinary strange animals the gold glinting everywhere in the sense that somebody had last stepped inside there 3000 years earlier if you've been working in egyptian archaeology for your entire adult life and you've seen what you'd normally expect to find suddenly finding something which you never dreamt would be possible to find must have just blown his mind [Music] these stunning now iconic black and white images of the tomb's treasures were captured by the renowned archaeological photographer harry burton a few days after the tomb was first entered over the course of the 10-year long excavation burton took over 2 000 photographs on large glass negatives they may have been taken a century ago but thanks to the size of these plates their clarity and resolution is far beyond that of any camera available on the high street today by adding color we can dive deep into the context and detail of every object i can almost feel the texture of these egyptian alabaster unduent vessels and colorization highlights easily overlooked items such as the bust of the king peeking out from behind a chariot but whilst these were incredible finds there was still no sign of tutankhamun himself even so news of carter's amazing discovery gripped the world the discovery of the tomb comes at the perfect moment the world has been involved in a massive global conflict and then hot on the heels of that conflict we have a global pandemic which kills more than 50 million people and then suddenly there is good news from the ancient world it's exciting it's engaging it's thrilling and everyone can get on board with it but lord canava now faced a concerted assault by reporters hungry for details how do you deal with it you simply cannot manage you know the press from america from england from from south africa from australia from japan so he ended up choosing the times which he felt was the was a sensible choice cannava negotiated an exclusive and very lucrative deal with the times which meant that all the rest of the presny particularly the local press felt they were being hard done by they were being shortchanged [Music] carter though was more concerned with figuring out how to tackle such a massive task this exhibition for instance has just a fraction of the tomb's treasures and is spread over five galleries the treasures are wonderful but instead of being presented with care as they are here many of them were in a total jumble it wasn't what carter had expected [Music] he'd found something really spectacular but what was it because this isn't what you'd expect to find at this point in a royal tomb you'd normally expected a further corridor more chambers and things the objects here was designed for a tomb far far larger so initially he was wondering is this some kind of dumping ground for objects [Music] why wasn't tutankhamun's tomb anything like this later one of seti's and most importantly where was the body close inspection revealed a discolored area made from mud plaster stamped with more seals was there another chamber beyond desperate as he was to break through carter insisted that first each item in the ante chamber must be individually analyzed carter knew it would take a long time to clear the tomb there were literally thousands of objects and each one had to be photographed catalogued conserved and carefully [Music] packed he gathered a team of experts to work with the objects and one by one for the first time in over 3000 years they emerged into the dazzling sunlight a few short clips of work around the tomb survive which really come to life when colorized this is the moment that a child's chair made from ebony inlaid with ivory and gold appears under armed escort [Music] that's amazing the fact that they're carrying the chair it's just i hadn't even really made that out in the black and white footage at all [Music] then emerges a golden chariot its wheels [Music] and body the nearby tomb of seti ii was commandeered for use as a laboratory archaeologist arthur mace and chemist alfred lucas worked hard to give the objects necessary intensive care the change in atmosphere from the hermetically sealed tomb to the desert air led to some objects cracking and needing to be stabilized using paraffin wax [Music] once they were conserved the objects were carefully packed and loaded onto railway trucks it took 50 men to push the trucks by hand [Music] and because there were only a few pieces of track they had to keep hauling them in a relay to the front of the train a journey of five and a half miles took 15 hours in the baking sun until they reached the [Music] nile the journey would take nearly two days [Music] but what was interesting is how the journey of all the crates or the objects was followed by i would say a procession on the sides any of the egyptians who would see like the barge in the nile there were ladies who were mourning the death of the king as if he had a second funeral [Music] there's no question that this was an amazing find a unique one for egyptology but a century ago it was to have a global impact like no discovery before or since there is an aura of glamour about tutankhamen he is almost like a film star but one of the other important aspects of the tomb artifacts is the fact that so many of them are personal personal to the king himself which allowed people to feel that they understood this ancient king rather better than just a figure of might and majesty we have the idea that he's also real human being [Music] he even became part of popular culture and inspired this fabulous jazz number old king tut three thousand years ago in history we know egypt blossomed as a tourist destination for rich europeans as their home movies which sam has now colorized reveal after a pleasant trip across the mediterranean they could stop off in cairo and take in the sights [Music] perhaps even clamber right to the top of the pyramid of coofu [Music] sat upon his knee then sail up the nile to luxor where they could visit the temples a thousand girls would dance and other sites such as the towering colossi of memnon but the climax would be a bumpy ride to the valley of the kings and after a picnic on the way to see the newly discovered tomb of tutankhamen and if they were lucky they'd get a glimpse of something emerging from the tomb perhaps the sight of howard carter himself [Music] by the 16th of february 1923 the day had finally come having cleared the anti-chamber of all its precious objects howard carter and lord carnavan broke through the sealed entrance to reveal what lay beyond as the dust cleared a dazzling screen of gold and blue emerged on the other side part of a shrine in a small room with vividly painted walls just as they had dreamed they had found the king's burial chamber carter made his way around the shrine and discovered a gilded doorway but its seal had already been broken had the tomb robbers removed tutankhamun's body with baited breath he peered inside to discover a second door but this one was still sealed carter recounted the experience in an early bbc recording but when we came to a golden shrine the doors closed and sealed we realized that we were in the presence of the dead king breaking the seal revealed yet another shrine and another in all there were four shrines each within the next [Music] [Music] the four nested trines almost entirely filled the small burial chamber removing them would be like taking a model ship out of a bottle and there was even more peering out of a side room was the jackal deity anubis a god of mummification and the afterlife anubis was wrapped in a linen shirt inked with a name that could be that of akhenaten tutankhamun's father carter called this room the treasury anubis guarded model boats evoking travel in this world and in the next and beautifully decorated boxes [Music] opening a chest made from ebony and ivory they discovered an exquisite bejewelled pendant necklace in recognition of his contribution to the discovery it was modeled by one of carter's team so we've got here haseen abdurazul the famous waterboy of the discovery of king tutankhamun wearing the pictorial pendant of the king himself and the pendant is quite heavy this can explain the way he his face looks a bit strained and he looks a bit tense so maybe because of the heavy weight of the pendant it's a precious moment that we can now witness in colour for the first time in a century it's really remarkable just the way that the light is catching the surface of some of the of the elements so you get a real sense of it as a kind of living object [Music] it's just amazing how the scarab beetles made of lapis lazuli pop out along with the sheen of the solar disks in gold and deep red carnelian [Music] it's remarkable absolutely remarkable at every turn new discoveries were being made that amazed a waiting world and they hadn't even got to the mummy yet and then disaster struck the death of carnarvon was a tragedy for the whole process he was bitten by a mosquito on the face and what he should have done was simply not shaved for a few days while it's healed i think the stress and the pressure he had no rest everybody was criticizing everything he did all the reasons he did it in a sense that definitely compromised his health which was not the strongest anyway he cut himself shaving and he in the sense he was so tired and forgetful he forgot to put some iodine on it and you know it did in the end lead to his death his cut became infected he developed sepsis or blood poisoning and died for a hungry press starved of information this was irresistible the curse almost certainly comes from the exclusive deal with the times of london because we have journalists standing about outside the tomb with nothing to report and two of those journalists would appear to have developed this idea between them and the curse is death will come on swift wings for he who disturbs the tomb of the king the curse of tutankhamun was totally made up partly to sell newspapers [Music] but for carter there may as well have been a curse without kanavan he was on his own and he lacked kanavan's social confidence how on earth would he manage all the politics by himself [Music] howard carter for a month more or less went into complete mourning unable to do anything and he was not and never really had been best suited to the role of a diplomat that was lord general nor did he know all the egyptians and the ministers of state who look an oven did know so that's where there was a bit of difference carter tried to concentrate on the technically challenging job of recovering the king's coffin first he had to completely dismantle the entrance wall to the burial chamber then carefully remove the gilded roof of each shrine and finally the surrounding gilded screens [Music] at last the sarcophagus stood on its own in the burial chamber but what lay inside [Music] over a ton and a quarter was raised from its bed light shone into the sarcophagus but how disappointing the contents were completely covered by linen shrouds but as the last shroud was rolled back a gasp of wonderment escaped our lips so gorgeous was the sight that met our eyes a golden effigy of the young king of magnificent workmanship build the whole of the interior [Music] this was but the lid of a series of three coffins nested one within the other enclosing the mortal remains of the young king two dank ammo [Music] laid on that golden outer lid was a tiny wreath of flowers as it pleased us to think the lost farewell offering of the widowed girl queen to her husband among all that regal splendor there was nothing so beautiful as those few carter now prepared for the climax of the excavation the opening of the coffin itself but he was finding himself under increasing pressure from a surprising quarter ever since the tomb's discovery the great and the good had been desperate to see it the head of the egyptian antiquities department a frenchman called pierre laco here with the distinctive whitebeard frequently led tours of the tomb for government officials so we got here one of the official visits to the the site of the discovery tutankhamun it also takes the shape of a massive egyptian party you would see like the tent that is built in it this is a very egyptian way you would have it either for a funerary or for a wedding for this new nationalist government tutankhamun was a much needed symbol of independent egyptian power but for the irascible carter this interference was intolerable without the diplomatic skills of canarvan to back him he fell out with lekoue and the authorities and it was now that the story took an extraordinary turn in february 1924 on the verge of his greatest triumph work on the tomb was suspended across the country there was little sympathy for this british archaeologist political rallies were held in celebration of the tomb being returned to egyptians [Music] it took a year of diplomacy and a change of government before carter and his team were eventually invited back so at last in october 1925 they began to open tutankhamun's coffin as the lid was removed another shroud was exposed carter carefully peeled it back to reveal a second coffin this was hoisted out of the first it was even more magnificent decorated with iridescent blue green and red glass inlay and inside that a third coffin but it was covered with a thick black perfumed resinous material using a mixture of hammering chemical solvents and heat carter's team gradually cleaned it no one could believe their eyes it was made of solid gold but there was still more removing the lid took eight men and revealed the most incredible sight tutankhamun's mummy covered in jewels and crowned with an exquisite rendering of the king's face perfectly crafted in solid gold glass and precious stones this is that golden mask but here in context as as carter would have seen it and what colorization does is it brings out the detail of the necklaces all of the the brilliant colors of the of the jewelry start to pop out and we really get a full sense of of how carter would have seen titan coming for the first time the image shot around the world but nowhere was its impact greater than in egypt itself this was a very highly emotional moment in egypt the discovery was used as the assertion of the egyptian identity and the proof of us being the descendants of the ancient egyptians which means that we're not supposed to be ruled by any foreigners this meant that tutankhamun had to stay in egypt and it were for the egyptians bartus carter struggled to remove the mask from the mummy its beard became detached seemingly highlighting his boyish looks and here we have an explanation of why his tomb was so small tutankhamun's remains were not those of old king tut at all but of a teenager he died age 19 before his official tomb had been finished the jumble tomb that carter discovered was a rush job for the untimely death of a young man this was an especially poignant discovery for the time a lot of young men died in foreign countries during the war a lot of parents unable to fully grieve and the death of tutankhamen millennia ago allows them to make a strange connection there allows them to be able to heal in some respects grave gives some measure of respect for the many young men who had no graves a century later the power of tutankhamun seems undiminished what fuels our fascination what makes this the most famous archaeological discovery of all time of course it is these incredible objects but it's more than that it's the powerful stories of two men howard carter and tutankhamun and restoring the astonishing images of the moments that connect them has made me feel closer than ever to those extraordinary stories [Music] a spectacular and resilient cultural identity art of persia samira ahmed continues her exquisite series here on monday at nine next tonight we stay in egypt and by the power of technology peer back through time to see an ancient invisible city cairo you

Channel: NikitaMEO

Views: 368,733

Rating: 4.8388805 out of 5

Keywords: tutankhamun, tutankhamen, ancient egypt, egypt, documentary, howard carter, elizabeth frood, Heba Abd el Gawad, aidan dodson, john j johnson, lord carnarvon

Id: ZvDIRZ_xb1s

Length: 59min 10sec (3550 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Bluefunkt]

Great documentary, thanks! Really brought the excavation to life.