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00:00The Valley of the Kings, burial site to many of Egypt's greatest pharaohs.
00:06Hand carved in the rock, master craftsmen built a vast underground city of the dead,
00:12with miles of tunnels, chambers and vaults adorned in the most spectacular fashion.
00:17A worthy home for some of the world's most magnificent treasures.
00:22Some of the most famous names in ancient history are buried here.
00:26The Valley of the Kings is definitely the greatest burial site of the world.
00:31For 500 years, ancient engineers and architects created baffling, complex structures, achieving the near impossible.
00:39Now, a team of experts from around the world is using cutting-edge technology
00:44to make sense of how they managed to create this underground world.
00:49How many chambers are there? How ultimately was the tomb designed?
00:53They will unearth the ancient secrets that allowed these tomb builders to create a structure unparalleled to this day.
01:00The greatest burial site on earth.
01:03One of the most magnificent cities in the world, the royal city of Thebes.
01:24It lay on the banks of the River Nile three and a half thousand years ago.
01:28From here, pharaohs ruled across the greatest civilization of the ancient world.
01:34Thebes in its day must have been the most magnificent city in the world.
01:39While Thebes' grandeur was the most public statement of power,
01:42with pharaohs building the most magnificent temples and palaces here.
01:46Hidden from the world's eyes, across the River Nile,
01:50one of the world's most astonishing engineering projects was growing year by year.
01:57The Valley of the Kings.
02:00The most celebrated royal burial site in the world.
02:05For over 500 years, Egypt's pharaohs were buried here.
02:09Laid in magnificent treasure-filled tombs, sometimes carved in the most unreachable spots in the valley,
02:17their chambers lay undiscovered for over a thousand years.
02:22But how did the ancient builders manage to create such astonishing structures?
02:28And why did they build here?
02:34One of the leading experts on the Valley of the Kings is Egyptologist Kent Weeks.
02:39He has spent a lifetime exploring this area,
02:42and has been responsible for the greatest discoveries here in modern times.
02:47One of the exciting things about working in the Valley of the Kings
02:49is not only that it provides tombs of some of the most important rulers in any country in human history,
02:56not only that it provides gold and jewels,
02:59but that it gives us a window into an aspect of life 3,000 years ago
03:05that probably would not have been accessible to us otherwise.
03:08The pharaohs of the New Kingdom started digging tombs here around 1500 B.C.
03:14But why did they break with a thousand-year tradition of erecting royal pyramids as burial sites,
03:21and move to building in this dusty valley instead?
03:24The move was partly a practical one.
03:27Thebes was a new capital city, and with a new location, things changed quickly.
03:33First of all, the burial site had to be at Thebes
03:37because Thebes was the religious center of Egypt in the New Kingdom.
03:41It had to be dry, safe, well-protected.
03:44It is the most convenient access from the Nile.
03:48It has a fairly good quality limestone bedrock throughout it.
03:52Not a lot of fractures. It might cause structural problems in digging a tomb.
03:56There are sheer cliffs that would allow security guards to protect it with minimal staff.
04:02Despite the tombs being built underground,
04:05it's possible the pyramids were not completely left behind.
04:09Archaeologist Kent Weeks has a theory.
04:12He believes the geography of the valley explains the shift from the old traditions.
04:17Why did they stop building pyramids?
04:19The most interesting possibility is that hovering above the valley
04:23is this pyramid-shaped hillside that we in Arabic call the Gorn.
04:27Only from the Valley of the Kings does it look like a pyramid.
04:30And that may have symbolically served the purpose that man-made pyramids had served in earlier dynasties.
04:36Kent Weeks is the latest in a long line of archaeologists, scientists, and explorers to study the valley.
04:44From his operations center based on a houseboat moored on the Nile itself,
04:48he has spent almost four decades mapping the valley and trying to uncover its remaining secrets.
04:55With the help of his team, he's been plotting every inch of the site with state-of-the-art technology.
05:02Their data has helped to create a precise 3D computer model of the area.
05:07This new information has allowed archaeologists to gain a far greater understanding
05:12of how this remarkable underground city has developed and has led to many more of the valley's secrets being uncovered.
05:19Because of the computer graphics, we now have each tomb absolutely precisely recorded in three dimensions
05:25with all of its artifacts and paintings.
05:27This new way of seeing the Valley of the Kings is allowing researchers to better understand
05:33how the tomb builders managed to engineer their remarkable constructions.
05:38Two hundred years ago, when the first archaeologists started studying the area,
05:43all they could rely on was roughly drawn maps made by a few intrepid explorers
05:48and tales told by the tribes that had lived in the area for generations.
05:52It was not much to go by. They had to be persistent.
05:56But at a time when archaeology was really little more than a hobby,
06:01what kind of man would venture into this dusty wilderness?
06:05The Italian Giovanni Belzoni was one of the first and most eccentric explorers in the area.
06:10A circus strongman and hydraulics engineer, he traveled to Egypt in 1815.
06:16Some people will still dismiss Belzoni as just a plunderer and a looter.
06:21But Belzoni clearly had a great archaeological eye.
06:25He really can be seen as one of the fathers of Egyptology.
06:28Belzoni was responsible for some remarkable finds.
06:32But how did such a character succeed in finding tombs hidden for thousands of years?
06:38We now know the key was his knowledge of hydraulic systems and water flows.
06:44When he looked at the Valley of the Kings, he looked at defects in the valley structure itself.
06:51He looks at the rocks, he looks at the dry river beds, and possibly because he had learned about hydraulics, he can actually read the valley.
07:04But Belzoni's engineering experience was not initially matched by his archaeological know-how.
07:10His excavation techniques were rudimentary at best.
07:13Certainly, Belzoni used unorthodox methods.
07:16He used battering rams to ram his way into ancient tombs.
07:22But over time, he actually became more sensitive in an archaeological sense to what he was doing and the value of what he was doing.
07:29His many observations and years of work were finally rewarded.
07:36On the 16th October, 1817, I recommenced excavations in the valley and pointed out the fortunate spot which has paid me for all the trouble I took in my researches.
07:48I may call this a fortunate day, the best perhaps of my life.
07:55Belzoni had made a truly extraordinary find.
07:58A find that to this day is considered one of the most significant in the Valley of the Kings.
08:04The Valley of the Kings, one of the most remarkable burial sites on Earth.
08:16Now, a team of scientists, archaeologists and engineers are using the latest technology to make sense of how the ancient tomb builders managed to create such an incredible underground world.
08:28But the valley first started to reveal its wonders over 200 years ago, when early explorers ventured here in the hope of uncovering tombs that had been hidden for over a thousand years.
08:40Among the first explorers was an extrovert Italian, Giovanni Belzoni, a circus strongman and hydraulics engineer who traveled to Egypt in 1815.
08:52Belzoni made the first truly spectacular find in this area.
08:57One of the finest tombs ever discovered in Egypt.
09:02It was decorated with stunning wall paintings, hieroglyphs and reliefs.
09:09The burial place of one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs, King Seti the First.
09:18Seti the First proved to be one of the most powerful military leaders that Egypt had ever known.
09:23And a powerful figure who had managed to restore the economic clout of Egypt and the central bureaucracy that administered the country.
09:32His magnificent tomb reflects his power and the glory of his reign.
09:37The burial chamber, the length of the corridors make the tomb one of the largest ever found in the Valley of the Kings.
09:42It was also one of the best decorated.
09:47Belzoni was stunned by his find.
09:50The previous tombs he had uncovered were small and quite unremarkable.
09:55This was a 450 foot palace, the length of a 40 story building.
10:02If you took a regular tomb and said it was about 100 feet long, a bit like a 10 story apartment building, but built on its side.
10:09Seti's tomb was about four times the size of that.
10:12So Seti's tomb is the skyscraper to an ordinary tomb's apartment block.
10:18The tomb runs along precisely engineered corridors, stairways and chambers down to Seti's great burial room.
10:26Over a thousand feet square, it is the largest unsupported underground space in the whole valley.
10:34Even for modern archaeologists, recording the tomb's layout was an awesome undertaking.
10:40When we were mapping the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, we discovered that even with our sophisticated equipment,
10:46we often had to make thousands of measurements in a single tomb in order to capture accurately the details that the plan of the tomb exhibited.
10:55It was a very, very tough bit of architectural mapping.
11:01The tomb's design was a clear display of the pharaoh's power and grandeur.
11:06But why did the tomb builders choose such a long and complex layout?
11:11The plan of a royal tomb in the New Kingdom was basically a roadmap that showed the pharaoh how he was going to journey from this life into the next.
11:22And just as the plan of the tomb might be called the roadmap, so the decoration on the walls could be called the guidebook.
11:29The texts and the scenes on the wall show the pharaoh what he is going to encounter on the way.
11:35The Egyptians believed that spirits would ask the dead pharaoh questions at each stage of his journey to the afterlife.
11:44On the walls of the tomb, they wrote the question that he was going to be asked and the answer that he ought to give.
11:52Crib notes, if you will, that showed exactly how to proceed through each one of these barriers.
11:58Nothing that would ever happen in Egyptian society was quite as important or as bound up in sacred rules as this.
12:10Ensuring the pharaoh had the precise directions to the afterlife was a great responsibility.
12:16But who could be trusted with so vital a role?
12:20It was in 1905 that a major archaeological discovery revealed that only a small and select group of masons and artists were considered up to such a key job.
12:31One of the luckiest breaks that Egyptologists have ever had was the discovery over a century ago of Daryl Medina, the workman's village where the people responsible for carving and decorating the tombs in the Valley of the Kings live.
12:44This village held a multitude of vital written records.
12:50We have ostrica, sherds of limestone on which these people practiced the drawings that they were going to carve on tomb walls the next day,
12:59on which they wrote memos to each other, laundry lists, love letters.
13:05They tell us a great deal about how these people worked and how they lived.
13:09It was here the most specialized craftsmen in Egypt went about their daily lives.
13:15Scribes, artists, masons, architects and laborers lived side by side.
13:21These were the elite builders of the kingdom.
13:24Their skills were passed down the generations from father to son.
13:29We can trace family trees for almost the entire 500 year period.
13:34We know who was father of whom and grandfather and great grandfather.
13:38It's a very complex society and a very tightly bound society.
13:44Building a tomb like Seti's was a major endeavor.
13:47Its size and complexity required the best organization as well as the best craftsmen.
13:53The process was a lengthy one.
13:55And given the importance tombs played in securing access to the afterlife, the king himself was heavily involved.
14:02One of the first things that a pharaoh would do after having been crowned would have been to go to the valley of the kings with the high priest and select an appropriate site for the building of the tomb.
14:13Once the site was agreed, the building team was selected and assembled.
14:18Some of the ostraca that we have found in Daryl Medina outline in great detail the way in which the labor force was structured.
14:27We know for example that it worked basically in two gangs, the left gang, the right gang, the left side of the tomb, the right side of the tomb.
14:34A group of men would first go in and rough cut a tomb using nothing but flint hand axes in order to hack through the relatively soft limestone bedrock.
14:43They would be followed by two more gangs who would smooth the walls for plaster.
14:48At first, the work would have been straightforward, but the deeper they dug, the darker it got.
14:54And in the dark, it's easy to lose one sense of direction.
14:58So how did a group of men with basic tools and no mechanical equipment manage to build the equivalent of a modern skyscraper into a mountainside?
15:18Ancient Egypt, home to one of the greatest civilizations of all time.
15:25But despite their advanced culture, the Egyptians' building methods relied only on rudimentary equipment and sheer manpower.
15:34So how did the ancient tomb builders manage to build a meandering 450-foot underground tomb, carving it out of the sheer rock in the Valley of the Kings?
15:46At first, the work would have been straightforward, if not easy.
15:50But the deeper the craftsmen dug, the darker it got.
15:55Once it gets too dark, you have to have some form of lighting.
15:59And what the Egyptians used are oil lamps, little bowls of terracotta and a wick made out of linen.
16:06And to avoid having smoke, then you added a bit of salt.
16:11In the darkness of a tomb, maintaining the correct orientation was one of the greatest challenges.
16:18There are no easy reference points to keep going in the right direction.
16:22But the ancient Egyptians managed to follow their tomb plans meticulously, just by using basic tools.
16:29The Egyptians had surveying equipment, but it was extremely simple.
16:33They had a carpenter's square, they had a plumb bob, they had a piece of string to measure length, and basically that was about it.
16:41Although simple, these tools enabled the craftsmen to measure the three main angles needed to build with precision.
16:49The vertical, the horizontal, and the right angle.
16:54If you want to make a perfect right angle, you just use a set square.
16:59Two pieces of wood with a diagonal nailed across it.
17:04Gravity, which is the thing that pulls a plumb bob into a straight vertical line, is still the same as it was in Egyptian times.
17:11The horizontal plane, which is the other thing you need, you can do that by balancing something until it stays horizontal.
17:19As the builders finished carving out the tunnels and chambers in the tomb, draftsmen were brought in to sketch out the texts and scenes on the walls.
17:28Well, the first draftsmen basically made a rough design of what was to be included, indicating the hieroglyphs, the drawings, and their position.
17:35Later on, his superior would come along and in black ink would correct those figures, giving them more accurate proportions, appropriate size, ensuring that the layout was aesthetically pleasing.
17:46The finishing touches were done by the tomb artists.
17:49They completed the drawings on the walls by applying an array of brilliant paints.
17:55The colors would have been applied with brushes, which are basically reeds with the ends of them mashed.
18:02And the paints that were used were largely powdered minerals, ground up minerals, mixed with oils.
18:09The tomb of Seti I displays the work of these builders in all its glory.
18:14It was this burial site that first revealed the high quality of craftsmanship typical of this incredible endeavor.
18:21The first man to enter Seti's tomb in modern times, the extrovert Italian Giovanni Belzoni, made detailed records of his finds.
18:30This early scientific approach, also adopted by the explorers who followed, laid the groundwork to understanding the mysteries of the valley's construction and function.
18:41But despite the fact no one had touched the tombs for over a thousand years, Belzoni's attempts to find out more about the valley were constantly thwarted.
18:51Vital evidence had been destroyed before he ever set foot in the valley.
18:56The culture of plunder and desecration that followed the end of building in this area meant that most of the original treasures and artifacts had vanished,
19:03leaving little for modern archaeologists to study.
19:06Evidence of robbery was everywhere.
19:09But who were these ancient robbers?
19:12And how did they manage to penetrate the royal tombs?
19:16Who the tomb robbers were, we cannot be sure.
19:19In some instances, they were probably just local farmers.
19:22They may have been guards who had gone bad, if you will.
19:27There may have been instances where some of the workforce was involved.
19:31Tomb workers were ideally placed to turn into tomb raiders.
19:36With their insider knowledge and engineering skills, access was no problem.
19:41Tomb after tomb was plundered.
19:44Getting into the tombs was probably not a difficult thing to do.
19:48I think if you could do it, going into the Valley of the Kings, bribing the guards to look the other way or just not show up for work one day,
19:55and then go into the tomb and force your way through what were often little more than double-leaf wooden doors.
20:01But it was not just hardship or greed that pushed master builders into desecrating their own creations.
20:08Evidence suggests the drive to commit such acts had a darker source.
20:14One that no ancient Egyptian could deny, and which might have left them in fear for their lives.
20:21The Valley of the Kings, the most remarkable burial site in history.
20:35Miles of underground tunnels and chambers were carved out of the rock and adorned in the most lavish fashion.
20:41For 500 years, pharaohs were buried here together with some of the most spectacular treasures of the ancient world.
20:49But many of the tombs were desecrated by thieves, and most of the treasures vanished.
20:55But who would commit such an act?
20:57Evidence suggests that the order to plunder may have come from the highest authorities, the pharaohs themselves.
21:04We know there are letters that are passed between scribes and the authorities,
21:13talking about orders to empty the tombs of the ancestors.
21:19I always think it's like robbing the Federal Reserve.
21:23You go in, you take all the gold that you can find, you melt it, and you put it back in circulation again.
21:30It got to the point where the government could not hide the fact that it was itself involved,
21:38and so it went out and made a show of tracking down the culprits.
21:48The penalties for robbery could be severe.
21:51Punishment ranged from exile and amputation of the hands, ears, and nose to the death penalty, decapitation.
21:59But even before they were caught, would-be thieves faced serious dangers.
22:06Tomb builders knew how tempting the pharaoh's treasures were, so they put in place some safeguards.
22:13They built deadly hidden traps in the tombs themselves.
22:17A visitor coming into this tomb has to come down a long, steep passageway,
22:22and this is the first barrier that they will encounter as they come into the tomb.
22:27It's a well shaft about 10 meters or 30 feet deep.
22:31What we see now as the opening was actually blocked up and plastered and also decorated,
22:37so that as you come into this area, you see nothing but what looks like a decorated wall.
22:43No clue that there's anything beyond here.
22:49But nothing could stop the truly determined robbers.
22:52Well, we do know in fact that there are ways of getting across,
22:56and in a couple of tombs we have actually found the ropes that grave robbers used
23:01to go down one side of the pit and up the other.
23:04Their presence did not stop the robbers.
23:09Almost all the tombs were plundered.
23:12And the few that escaped being raided in ancient times often were targeted
23:16once the modern explorers arrived.
23:19Greedy western collectors flocked to the valley, fueling a new wave of desecration.
23:26Statues, murals, and mummies were taken and sold, no questions asked.
23:32They were then shipped off to private collections across the globe.
23:43Until finally, the scientific world fought back.
23:47In 1858, the Egyptian Antiquities Service was founded.
23:54Its mission, to put a stop to the looting that threatened the world's most important archaeological site.
23:59The age of plunder was slowly turning into the age of science.
24:06One man who was to discover more tombs than anyone else was Frenchman Victor Loray.
24:13Director General of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, in 1897 he left his desk in Cairo to spend two years in the valley.
24:20In that time, he discovered 16 burial sites.
24:25He was one of the first to scientifically log the dimensions of the tombs to help ensure their preservation.
24:31But how did he manage to discover so many tombs in such a short period of time?
24:36His most ingenious innovation was to borrow techniques from oil prospecting.
24:41The method employed by Loray consisted in drilling drill holes.
24:47Pretty much what you do when you go to explore an area where there is oil or whatever.
24:52He sunk these holes in the ground and pretty much every time he discovered the royal tomb.
24:57In March 1898, Loray discovered a hidden entrance at the base of a sheer cliff.
25:06The tomb contained a remarkable and unexpected find.
25:12Here, he found the first pharaoh ever to be discovered in his own sarcophagus.
25:18The pharaoh was Amenhotep II, a warrior king who ruled Egypt in the 15th century before Christ.
25:28But that was only the first groundbreaking find he made here.
25:33A thorough examination of the royal burial chamber revealed yet another surprise.
25:39One of the walls was false.
25:42Loray was on the brink of one of the most significant finds ever made in the valley.
25:50Hidden in a small bricked up annex was a cache of royal mummies.
25:55Loray was the first man to cast his eyes on these royal bodies for over 3,000 years.
26:01But why were all these pharaohs hidden in another king's tomb?
26:05The tomb lies in a very convenient location at the base of a sheer cliff where you could have guardians around it to protect it.
26:10And it may have been that reason that it was chosen by priests as a hiding place for some of the royal mummies whose tombs were being violated.
26:20Loray set about identifying these homeless pharaohs from the ancient identity tags on their bandaging.
26:26The mummies discovered by Loray were all labeled, which provide us with an actual identification of the particular royal buried inside these mummy wrappings,
26:36the year of the reburial, and who actually performed the burial.
26:42Once Loray had found the mummies, he was obviously spurred on to go and find the tombs they were originally associated with.
26:48Loray started the most productive search ever undertaken in the valley.
26:53The success of his operation has been unmatched to this day.
26:56His finds revolutionized all that was known about the Valley of the Kings.
27:09Victor Loray was the most successful explorer in the Valley of the Kings.
27:13After finding the first hidden cache of royal mummies in the tomb of Amenhotep II, he set up the most extensive tomb search in the valley.
27:23And he achieved astonishing results.
27:26I don't know what his secret was, but in a period of less than two years, he found 16 tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
27:33I think a record that has never been equaled by anyone before since.
27:36By 1899, his finds had brought the total number of royal tombs to nearly 50.
27:43For the first time, the true extent of this underground city of the dead was revealed.
27:49Countless tunnels, chambers, and vaults.
27:54Although the whole valley was honeycombed with tombs, their positioning was far from random.
28:04In the 18th Dynasty tomb, entrances were carved at the base of sheer cliffs,
28:08where every time there was a rainstorm, the entrance of the tomb would have been buried deeper and deeper and deeper under rubble, protecting it.
28:15These early tombs were specifically located in the hope that tons of debris would cover the entrances, hiding them for eternity.
28:25In the 19th Dynasty, however, they moved the entrance of the tomb away from those sheer cliffs to gently sloping hillsides.
28:33And in the 20th Dynasty, they moved them to even less dramatic geological, geographical areas.
28:38Why? Because apparently, in the latter part of the New Kingdom, they didn't really want to seal the tomb completely.
28:45The idea would have been that the priests would have come back to the tomb to say more prayers, renew the offerings, and so on.
28:53But as the ancient Egyptians discovered to their cost, following tomb plans to the letter could have unforeseen results.
29:01There were occasions, particularly as the valley became increasingly crowded, where, in digging one tomb, they ran into an earlier construction.
29:10They could stop and abandon the tomb.
29:14They could incorporate parts of the tomb they had accidentally broken into into the plan of the new tomb they were digging.
29:21Or they could patch the hole they made and make an immediate right-angle turn and head off in another direction.
29:25But building a tomb was only the first challenge faced by the master craftsman.
29:32Placing the pharaoh's sarcophagus within the burial chamber could be almost as dangerous a job.
29:38This beautiful red granite sarcophagus is maybe ten feet long, probably weighs seven, seven and a half tons.
29:44It's one of the most beautiful examples of 18th Dynasty hard stone workmanship to be found anywhere in any tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
29:51These huge caskets were usually made of granite, but the nearest granite quarry to the Valley of the Kings is over 130 miles away, near the town of Aswan.
30:10The whole moving of the big granite pieces for the sarcophagi must have been a major activity.
30:15When you have a lot of human power, it's possible to move great weights across great distances.
30:22Having got it out of the quarry, the next thing you do is put it on a boat and float it down the Nile.
30:28Once the boat arrives at the bank of the river, they probably used sledges or a lubricant to get through the marshes, up over the hills into the Valley of the Kings.
30:37The real challenge, though, was moving a block of granite several tons in weight into tombs that had been purposely designed to be inaccessible.
30:46One of the entrances was situated halfway up a sheer cliff face.
30:50Just getting it into the tomb involved lifting the granite block up or lowering it down over a hundred feet.
30:56The tomb builders had to build ramps and scaffolding to try and get it in place.
31:03They didn't have the block and tackle. They didn't have the pulley.
31:05They had ropes and brute strength. Lots of workmen. And that is the extent of their technology.
31:12One slip, the sarcophagus gets away. You can kill your workmen. Certainly you will have to replace the sarcophagus.
31:18And once inside the tomb, somehow the sarcophagus had to be lowered into the burial chamber.
31:28But how?
31:31Very likely what they did was to cut notches in the side walls of the corridors where they could put in beams, wrap a rope around it, tie it around the sarcophagus and then slowly lower it down the corridor.
31:42The ancient Egyptians were careful, skillful engineers. Somehow they managed to achieve the impossible.
31:54Victor Lore made some remarkable discoveries during his time in the Valley of the Kings.
31:59But it was another young explorer who really gave modern archaeologists an insight into the true splendor of the valley's tombs.
32:06Like Victor Lore before him, Howard Carter was determined to use the latest scientific techniques to unearth the secrets of the valley.
32:17Trained as an artist, he pioneered the use of photography to catalog his finds.
32:23But he had one obsession. He wanted to find an intact tomb, something no modern explorer had ever managed to do.
32:32The experience that Carter gained at several sites in Middle Egypt gave him a familiarity with archaeological sites that I think probably few other people could ever have equaled.
32:43Carter focused his efforts on trying to find the lost tomb of a mysterious boy king.
32:49Little was known about him when a statue and other relics bearing his name were recovered.
32:54His search lasted seven years.
32:56In November 1922, he set his men to work in an area hidden underneath the entrance to another tomb.
33:05Much to everyone's surprise, within four days of digging, the workmen unearthed a flight of steps leading down to a door stamped with a royal seal.
33:15Carter had succeeded where no one else had.
33:18He had made the greatest scientific discovery in the Valley of the Kings.
33:21One that would unlock many of the secrets the Pharaohs had buried with them.
33:27The decisive moment had arrived.
33:30With trembling hands, I made a tiny breach in the upper left-hand corner.
33:34At first, I could see nothing.
33:37But presently, my eyes grew accustomed to the light, and I was struck dumb with amazement.
33:41Carter had finally found the undisturbed tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun.
33:49Golden treasures, statues, jewelry, weapons, furniture, and religious objects made up some of the 5,000 items that the tomb contained.
33:59And among these stunning finds lay the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun himself, in his solid gold casket and priceless death mask.
34:11Now one of the most recognizable symbols of the power of the Pharaohs.
34:15It was a dramatic find, and it struck a great chord around the world.
34:21No archaeological discovery ever in the history of mankind has ever made the headlines as Tutankhamun did.
34:30It took nearly ten years for Carter to fully excavate and catalog the finds of the tomb.
34:35Carter was meticulous in taking notes, measuring, drawing, photographing what he found.
34:44The whole idea of proper archaeology is that you take notes of such comprehensiveness that a hundred years from now,
34:51someone else can come along and put the site back together the way it was when it was first found.
34:57This tomb and its perfectly preserved contents would teach science more about burial rituals in the Valley of the Kings
35:05than any other find in history.
35:08Many experts believe that this spectacular find signaled the end of major discoveries in the Valley.
35:15It would take 60 years and remarkable advances in technology to prove them wrong.
35:20Just under a century ago, explorer Howard Carter made the most remarkable discovery in the Valley of the Kings.
35:37After seven years of searching, he found the untouched tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun and his remarkable treasure.
35:44It was the first tomb to be found still containing all the original artifacts that had been placed in it at burial.
35:53These revealed enormous amounts of information about the customs and practices of the time.
35:59It would take over 60 years for any more significant finds to come along.
36:04In 1979, Egyptologist Kent Weeks set up the most ambitious and technologically advanced archaeological project ever undertaken in the Valley.
36:16Called the Theban Mapping Project, its goal was to map the whole Valley of the Kings area more precisely than ever before.
36:24What we didn't realize at the time was that we were setting a groundbreaking program.
36:31Nobody else had done mapping like this in archaeology before.
36:34Since it started, using cutting edge technology, the mapping team has logged miles of tunnels,
36:41150,000 square feet of underground chambers and over 3 million irreplaceable wall paintings, objects and ancient writings.
36:48An endeavor on an unprecedented scale.
36:54In our own work, we have used laser cameras.
36:57We've used hotter balloons, aerial and satellite photography.
37:01These are a great time saver and they also reveal information that in years past was completely ignored or lost.
37:07The laser camera, for example, allows us to go in and instead of 15 years of recording a tomb, we can go in and make accurate photographic coverage in a matter of four or five hours.
37:24Originally pioneered by the FBI for crime scene investigations, the laser camera records in three dimensions every detail of a tomb.
37:33Everything from the tomb's precise measurements down to the smallest scrap of hieroglyphic writing are fed into the team's computer map of the whole Valley.
37:43But the project became more than just a way to record past finds.
37:49We knew from a 19th century traveler's unpublished diary that there probably lay a tomb near the entrance of the Valley of the Kings.
37:57And so we asked permission to clear the hillside where we thought this tomb might be.
38:01If they could find it, this would be the first tomb found since Tutankhamun's in 1922.
38:08To help them in their quest, the team used another advance of modern technology, ground penetrating radar.
38:14This works by sending sound beams into the rock.
38:18These beams bounce back and the result is analyzed, revealing hidden underground spaces or helping to identify any structures that have been buried.
38:25But could the ground penetrating radar help the team find anything of significance?
38:31We believed that the tomb was of no interest at all, not realizing that it was going to turn out to be the biggest tomb ever found in Egypt.
38:37We decided to look at the back wall as a 16-pillared hall.
38:42We didn't expect to find anything, but low down in a pit near the floor, we found another doorway leading back into the hillside.
38:49Clearing a crawl space, we slithered in to what we thought might be another small room.
38:54Only to find ourselves in a corridor a hundred meters long leading to a statue of Ramses II with corridors off to the left and right of it of equal length.
39:06All along the walls of these corridors, doorway after doorway after doorway after doorway leading into rooms or suites of rooms or still more corridors.
39:14Nothing like this burial site had ever been discovered.
39:21Called KV-5, it was the largest tomb ever found.
39:25This discovery made headlines around the world.
39:29Most of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings are relatively small corridor tombs.
39:34Most of them have fewer than a dozen rooms.
39:36KV-5, on the other hand, goes off like the tentacles of an octopus from a central pillared hall.
39:40It covers not a few hundred square meters of floor space, but several thousand square meters of floor space.
39:47It doesn't have fewer than a dozen rooms.
39:50At the moment it has more than a hundred and thirty.
39:53But whose tomb was this?
39:56A statue depicting the pharaoh Ramses II guarding a series of chambers provides the clue.
40:03I think what happened was that it was intended to serve as a family mausoleum.
40:08A place where multiple sons of the pharaoh would be buried.
40:12Ramses II had the good fortune to live until age 90.
40:16But he had the bad fortune of outliving many of his sons.
40:22Today, after years of constant digging, KV-5 is still nowhere near being fully excavated.
40:29One of the things that I hope I can achieve before we have to call a halt to this work.
40:34One of the things I would really like to know is what is the total extent of this tomb.
40:39The remarkable construction of KV-5 reveals how the ancient tomb builders were able to achieve the near impossible.
40:46Armed with only simple tools and basic technology, ancient Egyptian architects, masons and artists created the finest burial site in the world.
40:55But with the use of technology, has the Valley of the Kings finally given up all its secrets?
41:02Or is there more to discover about its ancient craftsmen who worked here and the pharaohs they buried?
41:07I'm sure there are more things to find.
41:11Several times in the last 150 years, predecessors of mine have said, that's it.
41:16There's nothing left. The Valley of the Kings is now completely explored.
41:20We can all pack up and go home. It's over.
41:22I'm sure we're going to find more tombs.
41:25Gold and jewels, I can't guarantee. But more tombs, yes, for sure.
41:29Whatever the future holds, the Valley of the Kings will enthrall the world for centuries to come
41:35and help unearth the ancient secrets that will tell us more about one of the most remarkable civilizations of ancient times.
41:43The Valley of the Kings