Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs Page #2

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Perhaps the DNA held in mummies like Ramses,

will help to cure the people today.

To advance our research, Dr Corthals has traveled

to Egypt to see the latest mummy in the diggings.

She's visiting Dr. Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's

antiquities on his excavations at Saqqara.

In early times, only the pharaohs bodies were made

in to mummies and buried in their pyramids.

Later more people were mummified.

First are the royals, then the nobles,

and by the time of Cleopatra, the middle class to.

So during Egypt's history, literally

millions of mummies were made.

For scholars like Dr. Hawass, these mummies

are window to ancient Egypt's past.

Many of these mummies still lie beneath the ground,

awaiting the call to paradise.

Ramses believed, his body would

come to life in paradise.

He knew, he also lived as long

as people would remembered him.

As long as they said his name.

So he built monuments for himself,

and to his beloved Nefertari.

The gods demanded, that the pharaoh

keep Egypt safe and rich.

So on the bank of a river Nile,

at Egypt's southern border,

Ramses constructed Abu Simbel,

a warning to barbarians beyond.

Ma'at, divine order was maintained for centuries.

As i was looking for clues to mummification,

i became involved in the lives of the pharaohs.

You visit their tombs and temples, translate their

encryptions, you cant help about wondering about these people.

Im viewing Ramses as a person, but you have to

remember, Ramses was viewed by the Egyptians as a God.

Responsible for divine order in the universe.

What kind of king was Ramses?

What kind of man?

Ramses was the pharaoh of the exodus.

This may be the only face from the Bible,

we will ever see.

When i first looked at his mummy, i remember

about thinking about all those things Ramses did.

Ramses personally led his troops into great battles.

3000 years ago he signed the oldest known peace treaty.

Ramses built more temples up and down the Nile,

than any other pharaoh.

Sure it took 20 years to carve Abu Simbel

out of the mountain, but Ramses rules Egypt for 67 years.

He had plenty of time to build.

For the 1000 miles throughout Egypt, Ramses

built temples to please the gods.

And ensure, that the divine order prevailed.

He intended to be remembered.

Because the ancient egyptians believed,

that the memory of a good man lives forever.

But a council Ramses's deeds were lost to history,

because no one could read the ancient egyptian text,

the hieroglyphs on his temple walls.

And than in the 19th century, scholars

finally cracked the code to hieroglyphs.

A massive inscribed tablet,

the Rosetta stone held the key.

The buildings and the powder scrolls came alive.

Only a few dozen people could read the hieroglyphs.

And one of the finnest translators

was an american Charles Wilbour.

With the unlocking of the secret code,

a passion for Egypt, egyptomania was born.

And ever more adventurers on Egypt shores

to search the sands for hidden tombs.

But when adventurers entered the pharaohs tombs,

there was a mystery.

They found paintings of the pharaohs,

their gods and their mummies everywhere.

Anubis - god of mummification,

protected them after death.

Painted food and drink fed the mummies.

The night sky kept watch over the sleeping pharaohs.

Work on the tombs continued, until

the pharaohs were buried,

Then craftsmen stopped,

what theire were doing, and left.

But tho these tombs were made for kings,

not a single pharaoh's body remained.

Where were the royal mummies?

No one knew.

Tombs have been robbed for thousands of years.

In ancient Egypt, workers build

the tombs in the good times,

and robbed them in the bad.

After the great reign of Ramses,

there have been many hard years,

so the royal tombs were raided.

But in the eighteen hundreds, tourists would pay

more for antique souvenirs, then it would for gold.

Master thieves trusted Egypt's rare rainstorms,

to reveal hidden tombs.

When water quickly disapears into the ground,

it could be emptying in to a tomb below.

Ahmed and Mohammed Rassoul were experts

in this dangerous profession.

And now they've made a discovery,

that would change history.

People of all sords, locals and

foreigners, rich and poor alike,

were trading in goods from mummies tombs.

Like other codebreakers, Charles Wilbour knew,

no pharaoh's mummy had ever been found,

but at some unusual artifacts had recently

appeared for sale in Egypt.

These objects bore the names of kings.

The Rassouls could not read the hieroglyphs

on what they found, but Wilbour could.

What he was being shown, was

freshly stripped from a mummy.

And the cartouche the oval in circling the name,

meant that these were the wrappings of a king.

He asked the brothers, to take him to the tomb.

The gleaming new house told him, that

brothers were coming to some money recently.

There were only two ways to earn a living here.

Farming and tomb robbing. And sudden wealth didn't

come from farming.

It was a beautiful tomb.

But not Royal.

Wilbour had to leave Egypt soon.

He pressed the brothers,

to tell him the tombs' true location.

They were the suspects already.

And police judgement would be rough,

if they didnt cooperate.

In desperation he offered "bakshish",

a bribe for the truth.

Wilbour went to investigate

the valley of the kings himself.

In early Egypt pharaohs built

their tombs in pyramids.

But the gold in the pyramids was a magnet for thieves

who plunder them soon after they were built.

So the pharaohs moved their tombs hundreds of

miles south down the Nil to this hidden valley.

Eventually this tomb was robbed.

Inscriptions at the entrances told Wilbour,

which tombs have been brief

holding places for the royal mummies.

But the trail went cold.

And why has relics from different

kings and queens spending centuries,

appeared on the market suddenly at the same time?

All he knew for certain, was that

what he bought on the market,

had wrapped the mummy of the pharaoh

for three thousand years.

Until now.

Wilbour wanted to save a pharaoh's tomb.

He tried to persuade the brothers,

to tell him where it was. One last time.

Wilbour had to leave. And Egypt's

heritage lay in the balance.

The brothers had left him no option.

Emil Brugsch was a top antiquary's

official at the time.

And another codebreaker.

This was the pharaoh's tomb.

But it was unlike any tomb ever seen before.

Dozens of mummies, all royal.

The Pharaoh Tuthmosis I.

And his successor, Tuthmosis II.

Husband to Hatshepsut,

Greatest Queen ever to rule.

Builder of Deir el-Bahri,

and the finest obelisks in Egypt.

His son, Tuthmosis III., Great warrior King.

Builder of an empire, and the temple of Amun.

Ramses III.,

who's legacy stands at Karnak and beyond.

Seti I.

Brilliant general, who commissioned exquisite

temples at Abydos and Thebes.

And his tomb in the valley of the kings.

And the father of this man

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