Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs

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Egypt...

Ancient land of all and wonder,

who's people whisper from the desert sands.

For the Egyptians life was eternal.

They search the globe for ingredients to

proserve their bodies and their immortality.

With knowledge came from centuries of practice,

a priests created the finest mummies,

the world has ever known.

And now they were on a critical journey.

To return to Egypt, with the ingredients

for the mummification of the pharaoh.

Ramses the Great was being prepared for

the next stage of his life,

when his mummy would ressurect in paradise.

But how they were mummified?

Where they were hidden, and whether

may they still give life today?

These are the secrets of the pharaohs.

There is a handful of mummies, whose names

was written on the bandages and coffins.

These mummies are people, who did not

decomposed, when they died,

because their flesh was preserved by secret methods.

And according to the writing,

these mummies are three of the most

powerful pharaohs, that ever lived.

Ramses the Great, his father and his son.

Ruled by pharaohs like Ramses,

Egypt Empire dominated

the Near East for 3000 years.

And in all that time Egypt's gods and

government barely changed.

The Egyptians attributed this to the will

of the the gods. "Divine order".

Ramses shared his life with queen Nefertari.

Like all Egyptians, they loved life

and wanted to live beyond death.

They thought dying was just

a gateway to the next world.

And if they would not not been born on earth,

their lives would continue in paradise.

So they prayed, that their honesty and

offerings would ensure order on earth and beyond.

Th Egyptian universe was controlled by the goddess Ma'at,

who govern the world and the heavens.

Even Ra, the mightiest son god

obeyed the laws of Ma'at.

If Ma'at's order was ever broken,

the sun would not rise.

The Moon would no follow.

The egyptians mummies would never rise again.

They called the soul for the essence

of each person his Ba.

After death your Ba faced your final judgement.

Your heart was placed on the scales of judgement,

and wait against the feather of truth.

If you done evel, your heavy heart would tip the scales,

and the Devourer would of innihilate u.

But if you have allways been truthful and rightchous,

your heart would be feather light.

Your soul would fly to paradise

to reenter your body.

Your mummy would come to life in the next world.

A world, in which every momment

was like a beautiful day.

But the preparation of a mummy for

this journey remains a secret.

The Egyptians recorded their

tales of war and death...

Their myths and legends...

Everything, except how they mummified their dead.

Strangely, no complete records have been found,

so when the last priest in ancient Egypt died,

he took the secret to his grave.

Many aspects of mummification remain lost,

until Egyptologist, Dr. Bob Brier

patiently gathered the surviving clues.

I was looking at tomb paintings, ancient writings,

temple carvings,

anything, that might show the ingredients

used for embalming.

Queen Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahri

describes an egyptian expedition to east Africa.

The egyptians were getting ingredients for the

mummification from allover the known world.

The first mummies were natural, dried by

a bariel in hot desert sands.

But when the egyptians started

to use tombs in pyramids,

the bodies was no longer in contact with the sand,

so they had to preserve the body artificially.

And the art of mummification was born.

To dry the body, embalmers covered it

for 35 days with Natron,

a naturally occurring blend

of salt and baking soda.

Ancient embalmers used seven sacred oils.

some extracted from rare trees,

they carried home from distant lands.

Hatshepsut's temple shows mounts of

frankincense and myrrh they brought back.

These were key ingredients in mummification.

Over time the egyptians noticed,

that beeswax, pine resin and golden honey

were particularly good at preserving mummies.

These natural antiseptics were described by the

Greek historian Herodotus in his book.

Priests sliced the skin with flint knives.

Removed internal organs like the liver and left the heart,

which they believed to be the source

of consciousness in place.

The jackal headed Anubis guarded the mummy.

His tempt allowed desert breezes to dry the body.

His priests adorned the dead with gold

and perfumed them with frankincense and myrrh.

With the ceremony of the opening of the mouth,

the mummy would breath and speak in the next life.

The priests chanted powerful spells

as the mummy was wrapped.

And with the decoration of innocents, that

the person did not sin in this world,

he and his mummy would be reborn in the next.

We knew about the religious rituals, but there

were still gaps in the mummification procedure,

that i could only fill in

by creating a modern mummy.

So i teamed up with a colleague anatomist Ron Wade

and used the body donated to science.

We performed the first human mummification in the

Egyptian style since the time of the pharaohs.

For 20 years scientists have tried to extract

usable DNA from egyptian mummies without success.

More than a decade later, if we can get DNA

from any part of our modern mummy,

it will tell us where to look at ancient mummmies.

I'm not an DNA expert, but working with

Dr. Angelique Corthals, a specialist in this field,

we took the samples of skin, muscle

and bone from a modern mummy.

What makes it so difficult to extract DNA from mummy?

Is it the passage of time, the 3000 years?

Or is it the combination of time and

chemical effects of mummification?

DNA is the blueprint of all life.

Sand and air are lifeless, because

they contain no DNA.

DNA is the magic ingredient.

For where is DNA, there is life.

This instruction manual is written

in a 4-letter code.

You rearrange this 4-code letters, and you get

endless possibilities to make a living organism.

So a beetle and a bee, a bird and a man have the

same components in every cell.

Just rearranged, and in different links.

DNA changes slightly with every generation

and these changes are recorded.

So by comparing their DNA, we can tell how close

plants and animals, including people, are related.

DNA can even tell us, what diseases

ancient mummies suffered.

Some diseases, like malaria are caused by

parasites invading the body.

Some of these parasites have left traces

of their DNA in the mummies.

Many ancient egyptians died from malaria,

just as millions of people will this year.

Like all life, diseases like malaria

evolve over time to survive.

Because malaria parasites reproduce very fast,

their DNA evolves quickly.

Thousands of generations of malaria have lived,

since the pharaohs ruled.

I want to compare an ancient malaria with

its modern descendant. Ancient DNA with modern DNA.

The differences may point towards a cure,

and millions of lives could be saved in the future.

These tests will give us the answer.

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