There's always been one part of human history
that's really captured my imagination.
I'm talking about Ancient Egypt.
Almost 100 years ago,
Howard Carter and his discovery of Tutankhamun
crowned a golden age of tomb exploration.
But, right now,
the archaeologists are back...
It's going down very deep.
..and the world of Egyptian tombs...
It's full of snake holes!
..is more exciting than ever.
Now, I'm joining them...
I've got a bone here!
..on the hunt for new tombs...
Oh, yes, there's hieroglyphics here!
..and awesome discoveries.
It's the blood of the mummy!
If there's one thing we know about the Ancient Egyptians,
it's that they did death better than anyone else.
From mighty pyramids,
to tombs cut in hillsides,
they come in all shapes and sizes,
and give us an intriguing glimpse
into their extraordinary world.
I'm heading across to Egypt...
Oh, God!
..on a tomb adventure...
CRUMBLING, HE YELLS
..which has been 4,000 years in the making.
This is just like the movies, isn't it?
Welcome to a magical land,
one that contains more treasures and mysteries
than anywhere else on Earth.
This is Egypt.
And I'm heading to a beautiful, but remote, spot
where the rocky hills on both sides of the Nile
squeeze the river to its narrowest point.
The secrets of what went on here are now finally being revealed
in some remarkable tomb discoveries
which I'm about to join.
Whatever happens,
I'm in for an adventure.
I'm meeting an archaeological double act.
For several months a year,
this place is both their home and their office.
This is really hot.
I wish you could feel heat on the telly, but, believe me, this is hot.
Maria?
John, hello. Tony!
Welcome to the site.
Thank you for letting me...
Dr Maria Nilsson is from Sweden.
Her husband, John Ward, is from Hereford.
And, together, they've been living and breathing this site since 2012.
Can you show me some tombs?
Can I show you some tombs?! Come on this way. Great.
Among the rocks and sand, just yards from the Nile,
John and Maria had been systematically revealing
a large burial ground known as a Necropolis,
quite literally, a "City Of The Dead".
Cor, you weren't kidding about a lot of tombs, were you?! Just a few!
But the first stop is their very latest discovery.
On the edge of the site,
Maria and the team are excavating a small area of sand and rock.
Why are you cutting this section back?
We're hoping to lead the way to what's behind it.
Which is...? Oh!
How interesting!
When did you discover that there was actually a slot here? Yesterday.
And that's true? You're not just saying that for the telly?
That's actually honest truth.
This was dug yesterday.
This small crack in the rock is man-made.
Some more work by the team should reveal the doorway to my first tomb.
The roof is literally here. You can feel it. Feel this.
Can you feel the chisel marks where my hand is? Yeah. Yeah.
So, no-one's been in here? No-one has got a clue what's in it?
We've got to take this doorway down at least a metre
so you can be, possibly, the first in the last 2,000,
3,500 years, to be inside that tomb.
HE GASPS
But why are so many Ancient Egyptians buried here
on this remote bank of the Nile?
You've got to imagine the landscape.
There would be men, women and children, all working in this area.
The local name for this place is Gebel el-Silsila.
It was once the engine room of Ancient Egypt.
Thousands of workers would have been here,
quarrying and sculpting the stones
that built a great civilisation.
Look at that! Look at that, John!
That's a wondrous sight!
Welcome to the galleries.
In the hills above the tombs
are the greatest quarry sites of the ancient world,
where sandstone was cut from the bedrock
to build temples, monuments and statues.
It's mercifully cooler than outside. BIRDS CHIRP
Imagine what it must have been like in here?
You've got the dust, you've got the banging, the chiselling.
And look at the height.
You've got another ten metres beneath your feet.
You've got to take all this sand out.
So, there's ten more metres of quarried stone under our feet?
All the way down. Whoa!
There are dozens of quarries like this here at Silsila
and hundreds of people would have worked in each and every one.
Somewhere, at some point,
the owner of our new tomb must have been involved.
See that niche just there? Yeah. That's one block.
They're taken systematically,
block by block, by block, by block, by block. I see.
So, they start working from the top,
and the steps also provide access as you go further down. Exactly.
They're creating a transportation route all the way down to the Nile.
Many of the workers here served under Egypt's greatest pharaoh,
Ramses II.
1,200 years before Cleopatra,
he ruled Egypt at the very peak of its powers
and pushed Egyptian building to new heights.
But every great pharaoh needed a highly skilled workforce.
What's the news?
Well, just five minutes ago,
down here, on the floor area, we found this little chap.
Oh...! Can I put him in my hand? Hang on.
That's a shabti.
And what is a shabti?
A shabti was the embodiment of a worker or a slave
that would have been buried with the dead to help them in the afterlife.
Just like the pharaohs,
Egypt's workers liked to be buried with their possessions
and ensure they would be well looked after for eternity.
He would have brought in food, he would have tended to his land,
this guy would have been buried with the owner.
But to find that owner, we're going to have to do some digging.
Right. Let's go in.
The sand itself comes away very easily.
It's just all the vegetation, isn't it?
What do you think the entrance would have looked like in its glory days,
when it was brand-new?
Basically, a slab would have slid all the way in front,
and that would have actually sealed this tomb.
The Nile was infested with crocodiles.
Oh, yeah, it never occurred to me that a crocodile
might lumber up here and eat a mummy.
Now, I'm going to move this blockwork here.
And that is quite a big block. One, two, three.
HE STRAINS
But beyond the block,
there's still a load of debris
between me and being able to explore this tomb.
It's one of those archaeological highs and lows,
I come here, we get a find,
we've got a gap which will lead into the tomb,
but then we try and open up the tomb... # Da-da! #
..it's got loads of sand inside it.
But with a bit of help from John's team... OK, guys.
..our small crack in the rock
is beginning to look like a proper entrance.
Tony, after you.
Here I go.
There really isn't very much room at all here.
I'm absolutely flat on my stomach, now. Tummy...
What are you seeing, Tony?
There's a lot of horizontal cut marks.
I can see, like, the shape of what appears to be picks in the ceiling.
Yeah, that's chisel marks.
I'm just going to crawl in a bit more.
Will you bear with me?
This is a sizeable chamber,
cut out of the solid rock,
most likely, 3,500 years ago.
But it's almost entirely filled with sand.
Just do be mindful of any critters, though.
If I saw a snake,
I'd just have to pretend I was another snake.
Whoa!
Interestingly, there is a hole in the rock,
and I can see light through.
I guess, what you're seeing is the tomb next door. I see.
Yeah, that would make sense.
But if this is going to make any more sense,
I'm going to have to get out so the expert can get in.
Because, quite frankly,
I don't think the two of us can get in there together.
OK, I see what's happening here.
It's full of snake holes!
Oh, really(!)
Actually, it's a beautiful tomb. It's a lovely chamber. Yeah.
It's been squared off. I can see the chisel marks to the ceiling.
I can see the dress marks to the wall.
What can you tell me about the extent of the tomb?
It's about 3½ to 4 metres square.
And it's a fairly classy tomb?
It's not just a load of old rubbish? Given its size,
it's definitely a worker of some kind of status within the community.
Can we do any more here now?
To be honest with you, not really.
We've got two metres of sand further beneath me to remove.
OK.
Removing this amount of sand slowly and carefully
will take several weeks to complete.
But this isn't the first rock-cut tomb John and Maria have found.
What are we looking for, John?
Whoa! Come and have a look at this!
Wow!
200 yards away is a tomb of similar size
and it shows what might be hidden... Go on, you go first.
..beneath all that sad.
I'll just take my stuff off.
Now, watch your head as you go in, OK? Yeah.
Oh! I thought I was just going to see an empty room,
but there's a couple of sarcophaguses here, aren't there?
That's it! Wow!
Now, this feels like a real tomb,
complete with stone sarcophagi
that once contained mummified bodies.
Why is there more than one sarcophagus here?
This was a family tomb. Oh...
So, we actually had 12 people in here. 12!
However, they've been looted in antiquity.
It appears the mummies had been burned
and what remained left scattered around the tomb.
Why did they burn them?
Basically, to remove the amulets.
Any gold, bronze, they burnt the mummy
so they could actually take them away.
So, it wasn't because they were scared of them? No.
It was purely just robbery.
Come on. Let's go.
So, in just one day, I've entered two tombs.
It took Indiana Jones about half a movie to see a tomb!
And around here,
they come in all shapes and sizes.
Wow, this is huge!
Coming up... You could fit a London Underground train in here.
..there's the vast tomb of an Egyptian prime minister,
I'll see what Ramses and his workers achieved...
This doesn't disappoint, does it?
..and find what happens when mummification goes wrong.
I am holding a 4,000-year-old heart.
Welcome back to the colourful world of Egypt.
I've been looking for tombs of the men and women
who once built a great civilisation.
But, now, I've come to Luxor.
More than 3,000 years ago,
this was Egypt's capital,
the seat of Ramses The Great.
So, if you want to find big tombs and temples built of stone,
Luxor is the place to come.
CAR HORN BEEPS
And there's one temple that stands above all others.
Karnak.
Built with sandstone from Silsila,
it became the biggest religious complex in the world...
..and the signs of one pharaoh's involvement are everywhere.
It's that man again.
Rameses II, Rameses The Builder.
Look at his face, there. Absolutely brilliant.
Rameses had more than 60 years on the throne
and left us with more statues and images of himself
than any other pharaoh.
He's credited with finishing Karnak's most impressive feature,
its gigantic hall of 134 pillars,
some almost 80 feet high.
This doesn't disappoint, does it?
It's absolutely sensational.
Imagine, when this whole thing had got a sandstone roof
to keep out the sun, which was supported
by all the sandstone pillars,
quarried and prepared at Gebel el-Silsila.
Mind you, I'm not here just to look at temples.
I'm on the hunt for big tombs.
Just across the river from Luxor
lies the famous Valley Of The Kings where Ramses himself was buried.
His mummy was discovered in 1881.
One of the few pharaohs whose body has survived largely intact.
But the valley next door is also chock full of big tombs.
One of which is being explored for the first time since 1921.
Oh, Antonio!
It's quite a walk to your office!
How are you doing? Nice to see you.
Antonio Morales heads an international team
working on the tomb of Ipi.
Some 700 years before the time of Ramses,
Ipi held the exotic title of Vizier To The Pharaoh.
What is a vizier? A vizier is actually like a prime minister.
He was the most powerful man in Egypt under the Pharaoh.
As prime minister,
Ipi's tomb reflects his status.
This is huge. Welcome to the tomb of Ipi.
You could put a London Underground train in here, couldn't you?
The last time archaeologists were here was nearly 100 years ago.
They spent just a few days in this tomb,
and there's plenty they didn't find.
Hello, what's going on down here?
This is a surprise!
Suddenly, it plunges away!
The tomb extends 40 metres into the mountain and 20 metres down.
Imagine if you were having to carry a mummy down here?!
It is so steep!
After the day of Ipi's funeral,
no-one was ever meant to go where we're now going -
his burial chamber.
Oh, wow!
That's fantastic!
Imagine being buried somewhere this isolated?
This giant stone sarcophagus
would once have contained Ipi's mummy.
It's so beautiful.
I love these grey colours.
Thousands of years of dust and dirt
are now carefully being removed
to reveal the decorations and hieroglyphs.
How heavy do you reckon that sarcophagus is?
This is a huge block of seven tonnes and a half.
So, the amount of work that went into bringing this here
was absolutely staggering. Yeah.
And yet, we know very little about Ipi
beyond his name and important role.
What we do know is that robbers had smashed their way
into this chamber long before the first archaeologists made it here.
He couldn't find the corpse, he couldn't find the coffin,
and, actually, we know that most of the tombs in Ancient Egypt
were stolen some weeks or months after the burial.
That's really interesting, cos I always think of tomb robbing
as having taken place in the Middle Ages or in the 17th or 18th century.
But it could easily have been
the mates of the guys who originally put this in...
Exactly. ..who came back a few weeks later... You're right.
..and nicked all the stuff.
So, Ipi's mummy may have gone missing a full 4,000 years ago.
THEY CHATTER
But while we may not have his mummy,
the story of Ipi is far from over.
In fact, there has been the most grisly of discoveries.
Towards the end of last season,
the archaeologists had a great find
in this discreet little pit where,
as it happens on most archaeological sites,
it was right next to the tent
where the archaeologists have their breakfast.
If I hold this up, then maybe you can get through
and I can show you some more about it.
Mummification is a really complex process,
particularly if you're someone like Ipi who's very grand.
Now, with a bit of luck,
the camera's going to be able to adjust to the darkness
while I show you these 56 pots
which are all the waste material from Ipi's body,
all the cloths, all the gore,
all the blood from when he was mummified.
Nothing tinged with Ipi's bodily fluids or tissues
could be thrown away.
So, stained bandages and embalming materials
were chucked in these pots
and stored just outside the tomb.
Until now.
One of the big tasks this season
is to scour through these 56 pots and, already,
they've had what is my favourite find since I've been in Egypt.
OK, so, these are some of the finds out of the big jars.
Oh, thanks. Cheers.
Now, that was the bandage that went round Ipi's mummy.
This, what looks like a white tablecloth,
was the wrapping around the mummy,
and this...! Yes, Ipi's blood!
Ipi's bloodstains. It is like a horror film, isn't it?
But the creme de la creme...
Antonio, tell us what this is.
Well, this is the heart of the Vizier Ipi.
Can I just say that again?
It's the heart of the Vizier Ipi.
How did you find that? Well, it was a surprising discovery.
It was found within one of the jars.
Can I hold it? Yeah, sure.
It is a bit creepy, touching this.
THEY CHUCKLE
It feels almost like stone, doesn't it?
It feels as though it's been carved.
Am I right in saying that
even the aorta has been packed with linen, too? Yeah.
Did they know much about the heart?
In Ancient Egyptian thought,
the heart is where is resided the intelligence.
That's why, in the process of mummification,
they don't mind, basically, removing the brain.
But his heart should never have been separated from Ipi's body.
It's a very strange case, because, usually,
what they did was remove the heart from the chest of the mummy,
mummify it, and then put it back into the chest of the mummy.
Oh, right.
It seems that a mummified heart
looks a lot like one of the salt bags used to dry out Ipi's body.
So, they saw something that looked like one of those
and chucked it away, too? Exactly.
So, they messed up? Yeah, probably.
I am holding a 4,000-year-old heart.
Coming up...
This is a funny-looking old thing, isn't it?
..I find an abandoned Egyptian treasure...
It's a sphinx!
..I'm on the trail of modern tomb robbers...
Welcome, Tony.
..and, back at Silsila, there's a mysterious discovery.
Look down there. That is scary!
Do we have any idea what it is?
Welcome back to the Nile.
I've moved to the southern city of Aswan.
On the west bank, I'm meeting the Egyptian Government's
Director Of Antiquities here in the city.
Abd el-Monem has agreed to show me
some new and unexpected tomb discoveries.
How many tombs? One, two, three?
So far, nine tombs. Nine?! Nine. Wow.
Archaeologists had no idea these tombs existed
but people living close by did.
In 2011, while violent uprisings caused chaos across to Egypt,
some locals shifted sand and smashed their way inside the tombs.
So, how did the guys move all that earth?
By using mechanical digging loaders and this was
maybe more than 25, 30 people per night.
So, a whole gang? Yes.
And they weren't doing it subtly and with care,
they were just busting open to see if there was anything gold?
Of course, because the main point for them, to steal treasures.
You can still see signs of the robbers' work.
A mechanical digger smashed the stone roof of the tomb here.
Tomb doorways have been damaged and broken.
It's possible these tombs lay undisturbed until a few years ago
and this is the first time anyone has been allowed to film them.
Welcome, Tony.
How beautifully carved this is!
Who's this guy?
The owner of the tomb, Imhotep,
the ruler of this local area.
Imhotep controlled Aswan around 1450 BC,
just a few generations before Tutankhamun and Ramses The Great.
But it's not painted. It's not finished.
That's why this tomb is very, very important and interesting.
When you see a tomb like that,
it means that it hadn't been finished yet.
Imhotep almost certainly died before work on his tomb was complete.
His builders and craftsmen stopped what they were doing
so the tomb could be occupied.
But there is one bit of painting,
and that's Imhotep's eye.
Oh, fantastic, you have good eyes, Mr Tony.
It really is quite spooky.
Suddenly, 3,500 years doesn't seem quite such a long time.
The robbers may have stolen treasures and artefacts...
It's a bit of a struggle, isn't it? Yeah.
..but they couldn't remove the beautiful artwork on the walls.
Ah!
Now, this is interesting.
Look at that colour.
The next-door tomb belonged to User...
..ruler of this area during the reign of Tutankhamen's grandfather.
Have you done anything to this painting
since you first excavated it? Nothing. Everything is as it was.
And it survive like that?
The paintings show User, his wife, and his sister-in-law.
All of whom are believed to have been buried here.
This is such a privilege. How many people have seen this?
Not more than 20 people. Including the archaeologists?
Including the archaeologists. Oh, wow!
In a few months, a team will return to examine anything not
taken by the robbers, and explore further chambers...
..which might yet contain a mummy.
What happens to the tomb?
We hope to be opening for visitors in the future. Oh, fantastic. Yes.
We'd never have found it if it hadn't been for the robbers?
Although, don't thank them too much. No, not too much!
50 miles downstream, I'm heading back to Silsila
and the extraordinary world of Maria Nilsson and John Ward.
There's one that Daddy's got.
When they're not busy with daughter Freya and baby Jonathan,
they're systematically revealing the resting places of the men
and women who built ancient Egypt.
Nice.
They've now found 70 rock-cut tombs.
What have we got here, then?
But one recent discovery is something quite different.
And they've promised me we can tackle it together.
Look down there! That is scary! Do we have any idea what it is?
No, it's unique. All of our tombs are surface tombs. This is a shaft.
Now, I do know it goes for five metres straight down.
Yeah. Because we dug that out.
But as soon as we started moving the sand, the water came.
What I don't understand is, we are in the middle of the desert.
All around us there are tombs which are absolutely dry.
Here, suddenly, we've got water like it's an oasis. What's going on?
It could be one of many, many things. It could be the Nile,
it could be just ground water,
it could be surface water from the desert irrigation filling
through the fissures, and here we have it here.
What I can tell you is the water is warm, it's salty to taste,
and it's clear. Do you think we can pump it out?
I want to get Shahad and the boys, I want to get the pumps in,
get them going and hopefully we'll be able to see at least
the bottom of the shaft. That's great. Come on, boys.
John's got two petrol-driven pumps - both with long hoses.
Let's get both these pumps going.
They should be able to suck water from the shaft
and dump it into the Nile.
How good are these pumps? Er...yeah.
That means "er...no"?
But if the pumps can pump quicker than the water is seeping in,
then we SHOULD find out
if this ancient theatre of heavy industry is about to get a new tomb.
LOUD WHIRRING
I reckon this is the intensity of sound that would have been
going on here 3,500 years ago,
beautifully recreated by a petrol pump.
Let's hope the pump holds out.
While the water level slowly drops...
..there is a chance for me
to find out a bit more about the people who worked here.
On the edge of the old quarries... Maria!
..there's a unique piece of art.
Commissioned by Ramses the Great, it proves how important
the people who worked and are now buried here were to him.
So, it's like a cartoon, and ancient type of cartoon,
that puts us in the footsteps of the ancients.
These are the masons with the mallet hitting the chisel.
You see the rectangle in the middle?
That's a sandstone block that's just been extracted from the quarry face.
You've got, on the right side, a doctor.
He's attending an injured worker, who's stretching out his leg.
I can see that leg really, really clearly, yes. Yes.
These are well-looked-after, skilled masons and craftsmen.
Why do you think it was so significant for Ramses to show this?
He wants to show that he's the great builder,
he's the greatest king of them all.
The fact that he had this many men that could be involved
in the process of extracting blocks and build all these temples.
So, would it be fair to say that these are the people whose
tombs that you have been finding?
It appears so, yes.
These skilled workers really were the engine room of Egypt.
But we are only just getting to know them.
This is a funny-looking old thing, isn't it?
Oh, I see what it is now!
There's a beard here,
then there would have been a big head on top of it.
It's a sphinx! Exactly.
But what's it doing here? It sort of...
It's not just famous for its quarries, it was a
workshop of anything that was made of sandstone.
Why didn't they finish this off and transport it?
This poor old girl, unfortunately, due to the cracking, was abandoned.
Oh, yes, I can see a big crack along there.
Oh, imagine if you had been the mason doing that.
"Oh, dear. Start again."
Nevertheless, you can't help
but have immense respect for the skilled workers of Silsila.
Good boy. BARKING
And just maybe the tomb of one or more of them
lies hidden in our mysterious shaft.
Coming up... Right, let's go down.
..John and I brave water and mud...
I think I'll need a new pair of trousers when I get out of here.
..to see if we really do have a new tomb.
Oh, Tony, this is a huge chamber.
Welcome back to Gebel el-Silsila.
Over there are the remains of ancient Egypt's biggest ever
stone quarries.
A little bit further on down there are the tombs of some
of the people who worked in those quarries 3,500 years ago.
These people built Egypt into the greatest
civilisation of the ancient world.
But on their trail are Maria Nilsson and John Ward.
This is the dream team.
They are tackling one of their most intriguing discoveries yet.
Are they going over to the canal?
A large vertical shaft which, despite being in the desert,
is full of water.
But with John's pumps just about holding out...
It's going down quick.
..he has promised that he and I can be the first to find out
if this shaft leads to a new tomb.
PUMPS STOP
Oh, that's better! Oh, what a relief.
With the water gone, we are faced with a very deep man-made pit.
It's remarkably perpendicular, isn't it?
But at the bottom, there is already what looks like an opening.
An entrance, maybe, that could lead to something else.
We're going down?
Let's make it slow, shall we? Yes.
I'll go first. I can guide you down then.
But now the pumps are off...
..the water's seeping back in.
OK. Right, let's go down.
It's just this initial bit that's so scary, isn't it?
It's almost 20 feet to get to the bottom of the pit.
And what's down there, we don't know.
I've got my diving boots on because John said he didn't want me
to wear my ordinary shoes cos, in the mud,
he doesn't want me crushing anything.
You're doing really well there, Tony. Thanks, mate.
There's still a load of water in here. And it's rising. Oh!
I think I'll need a new pair of trousers when I get out of here.
I might have anyway cos I'm so scared!
Wherever this water is coming from,
it's flowing in quickly through the mysterious opening.
Wow. That is astonishing, isn't it?
Now we are down here, it's clear this really is an entrance.
Even a doorway.
Portcullis closure - look at it. Oh, yes.
The slab would have gone all the way through. This is just like
the recess for a medieval portcullis in a castle.
That's it, exactly. It would have come straight down over here,
protected the front of the door, so that nobody could get in...
This is a proper tomb, isn't it? Exactly.
It's pretty dark, though, we'll need some lights. Yes, please.
Can we have some lights down here, please?
The lengths that the ancient Egyptians went to to plan
and build this inaccessible space are staggering.
Right. Lights. Yes. OK.
Shall we put these in there together? Yep.
Wow!
This is a huge chamber. Look at it.
See round the back? Oh, yes!
Is that a door, is that a niche? What is that?
Let's get in. I'll try and stick this light...
Is that pottery next to you?
In Egyptian tombs,
broken pottery is perhaps the most common of all finds...
It's a beer jug.
..but there's a few things here that aren't pottery.
Skeleton remains.
This is just like the movies, isn't it?
THEY CHUCKLE
Look at this.
What do you reckon would be in there?
I really don't know.
It's totally different to any of our tombs that we've found.
If that secondary chamber is another burial...
..we're not talking about just a family, we are talking about...
50, 60 people, plus?
And all their bits and pieces are mixed in beneath our knees. Yeah.
Human soup.
The idea that so many workers might have been buried down here is
pretty eerie. And someone at least must have been of real status.
This chamber has been carefully chiselled out,
and this doorway beautifully finished.
What's intriguing me is that the ceiling is vaulted.
What do you mean by vaulted?
It's got an arch to it.
But I'm not seeing any paintings, I'm not seeing any names,
I'm not seeing any writing.
What else can you see?
Are you seeing that? Yes, yes.
It's a central painted line down the entire alignment.
What do you think it's function is?
It's basically to allow the stone workers,
the guys who were actually hewing this chamber out...
To do it equally each side!
Exactly, to give them a central line from the doorway,
and that goes all the way... I mean, let's follow it,
it's going all the way to the centre of that doorway.
There seems no doubt there is another key part of this
tomb beyond this second doorway.
That's completely flooded. Do you think we could get that pumped out?
If we can get the pumps further in here,
we could probably take that water level down. JOHN SHOUTS
Can you try and get the other pump in here? Yes.
If the hose is long enough...
..we may just get to see what's beyond the door.
If anything flooded, it's warm water -
it can't be coming from the Nile,
so therefore it has to be some kind of natural reservoir under
the mountain, or it's coming from the desert, from irrigation,
just naturally filtering through.
And as the water level inside this chamber goes down...
Ooh, yeah! What is it?
..there's a discovery in the very far corner.
Looks like a handle. It's a pot, it's a big, big, big pot.
There's a huge pot here.
You want to hold the little camera for a moment? Yes.
Look at how far it goes!
This is massive, it goes right down.
I'm fairly sure we've discovered a large amphora.
I can even feel the rounded bottom of the great jar.
I'm right on the end of it, and the top is here, isn't it? Yes.
It must be at least two foot tall, mustn't it?
In all my years of finding pottery, I've never found anything like this.
It's like a huge whale.
What do you reckon it was used for?
It would have held some kind of food substance that was buried
with the dead.
What I love is that it's actually intact, that is beautiful.
But unfortunately it's lying on its side, and stuck fast in the mud.
We wouldn't be able to get it out, now? No.
Without having to really remove all of this mud and silt...
That's stuck in there.
But that alone was worth coming to Egypt.
But now there's a fresh problem.
INDISTINCT What's happened?
The pump's broken.
With one motor out of action, there is
no way we can keep the water level down inside the tomb.
This is actually going to start rising any moment.
What I want to do is get as close to that doorway as possible,
let's have a good peek in it, and then we should get back out. OK.
If I wasn't wet and muddy already...
HE GROANS
..I am now!
What do you think, Tony?
Well... It just goes on and on, doesn't it?
I mean, this is fantastic.
It is a vaulted ceiling again.
I mean, that's a good, what - four, five metres?
We don't know where the walls are. All we are seeing is ceiling.
That means this chamber could be huge.
Whatever is in front of us, this is a first for me.
Elbow-deep in silt and water, five metres underground,
in a tomb built 3,500 years ago.
This is about all we are going to be able to do, isn't it? I think so.
I think we need to get out of here
before this water really starts to rise. OK.
Entering a space like this is a real adrenaline rush.
But for this tomb, this is just the beginning.
Until a way can be found to hold back the water, we get the feeling
this place, its occupants and my pot
will hold on to their secrets.
What an amazing adventure.
We know where these people worked,
we know what their achievements were, we know where they died,
but there is still so much about them that we don't know.
So many mysteries.
From the giant tomb of a prime minister...
..to the mysterious burials
of people who built a great civilisation,
this has been a window into Egypt at the peak of its powers.
And for John and Maria,
the rest of their working lives is here, under their noses.
It's work that most archaeologists can only dream of.
4,000 years ago,
this was ancient Aswan's most-important burial ground.
It might look like any other old rocky,
sandy slope rolling down to the river, but this is much, much more.
This is a necropolis, a City of the Dead.
And today it's a hive of activity once more,
with archaeologists coming from all over the world
and making the most amazing tomb discoveries.
And one of them has said that I can join him.
Archaeologist Dr Martin Bommas has been digging in southern Egypt
for nearly 30 years.
More than anyone, he knows that beneath the sand
and rubble here, there are still many tombs to find.
This is your first day here? It is. Congratulations.
Martin's starting a new three-week dig season,
and he has brought his biggest team ever -
including archaeology students,
trainee lecturers...
..a leading pottery expert
and 22 all-important diggers.
You've got hundreds of tonnes of sand in a great arc round here.
How on Earth did you decide where you wanted to
put your energy for the next few weeks?
So, our focus for our excavation period this time is just
here in front of us, you know, the big mound of rubble.
High up this slope are some of the biggest tombs in southern Egypt.
Many were found over a century ago with the help of a young
Howard Carter, long before he found fame discovering Tutankhamen.
But there are large parts of the site that have never been touched.
So, here's the River Nile here,
which is down in that direction.
Yes. We are currently standing here. Right.
Looking up the hill which, from the Nile,
looks like a massive sand dune falling into the Nile.
So, have all these been discovered, then? Yes.
So these are the tombs that have already been excavated.
And where is your site on this map?
So this is the area we are going to work on.
Martin's team will now be working a six-day week to try
and prove that there are undiscovered tombs here.
But they've only got three weeks to do it.
After that, the temperature will get so ridiculously hot that the
whole digging season in Egypt comes to an end.
And in addition, this year, they've got me
and a camera team to contend with.
So, no pressure.
While they get started, I've been given special access to
a tomb that's already been excavated here at the City of the Dead.
But it's a heck of a climb to get there.
A necropolis is tied together by a series of causeways like this one.
This sort of ancient staircase that ascend from the river.
The dead would have been processed up here as part of their funeral.
At least, if they weren't dead at the bottom,
they would have been by the time they got to the top.
To be fair, though, climbing the causeways is well worth the effort.
Who wouldn't want to be buried up here?
For at least 500 years, the most important people in southern
Egypt were buried at this necropolis.
The Pharaoh himself gave permission for new tombs to be built.
And right now, I'm looking for one of the very grandest.
This extraordinary courtyard dominates the whole
of the side of the cliff, swinging all the way round here as well.
Imagine what this would have looked like originally,
when it was beautifully polished and sanded.
And this was just the place where people gossiped about you
after you died. The tomb itself is in here.
Wow!
Isn't this magnificent?
It's a privilege just to stand here.
This is the tomb of a guy called Sarenput II,
who was governor here a mere 3,860-odd years ago.
And look at these stone columns. All of them hewn out of the solid rock.
They haven't been painted.
This, what appears to be decoration,
is just the lines in the rock itself.
The governor Sarenput was one of Egypt's local rulers controlling
regions on behalf of the Pharaoh.
Here on the southern border,
Sarenput protected the gateway to the rest of Africa.
And now we come to a corridor,
where there's a statue of him.
He's lost his head, but apart from that, he's great.
Here's one with its head still intact.
And I think, yep, another one here.
So we've got one, two, three, four, five, six statues.
Look at the eyes on that one - staring at us across time.
So, where's Sarenput?
Well, I'm told that his mummy was never found,
it was robbed, I suppose, hundreds, even thousands of years ago
because of all the jewels that would have probably been on it.
So, as for the man himself,
all that's left now is a painting in a little cupboard.
Back outside, the team are looking for the next big tomb.
But already, Martin's discovered something else -
the sort of find that could only happen in Egypt.
There's your first mummy.
What? Look at that.
This is a mummy?
Well, that's the upper part of a mummy only. How extraordinary.
Because the pelvis is just around your back. Oh!
Look at that.
That's the pelvis. Tapping me on the shoulder. Yes!
This remarkable find, a headless mummy, simply appeared this morning
as the wind blew just enough sand away to reveal it.
Do you think that this would originally have been a stone tomb?
Yes, but perhaps the dogs pulled it out.
Is there anything that we can say about this mummified body?
So what we're looking at here is just the torso.
The legs are missing.
It's lying on its tummy. You can see the arm here.
This is his arm? Exactly, yes.
This seems to be the elbow... Just here, yes.
..leading up to the shoulder where your finger is. The shoulder.
And it must have been burnt as well because it's rather black here
but look at the mummy bindings. There's such a good quality.
Look at the quality of the linen here.
That's really nicely done indeed.
Such a wonderful quality, it's just great stuff.
Must have been a very rich person.
Am I allowed to touch it? Yes, of course.
It's quite snakelike, isn't it? Oh, right!
And although it's hard, it's not solid.
You feel as doubt you could push it in. Yeah, well, it's hollow inside.
Why's that? Because they took out the internal organs,
which were preserved separately, according to Egyptian custom.
How old do you think it is?
Well, I believe it's a Roman mummy.
I didn't know there were such things as Roman mummies.
Well, they adopted it, you know.
The Romans had a very strong presence here in Aswan.
So this mummy is about 2,000 years old. It is.
And the tombs we're looking for are about 4,500 years old,
so there's more time between our tombs and this mummy
than there is between this mummy and us. That's correct, yes.
My first mummy discovery is proof
of how much waits to be discovered here just beneath the surface.
Elsewhere around the dig,
the finds are less grisly but more likely to point to new tombs.
The sandy slopes of Martin's dig site are littered with
ancient bricks made out of mud.
That is not rock, is it?
It's clearly man-made.
But at the end of day one, the most definite find so far...
So one, two, three levels and perhaps a fourth level.
..is what's running straight up the hill.
Look, can you see how here, this is all loose sand.
Well, that's what this whole area was like at the beginning of the day
but now, since they've done all the work,
can you see how hard that is, how impacted?
All of this is a man-made surface
and what we think it is
is the pavement of a causeway that once went from here...
Whoosh! ..right the way up to there.
And at this City of the Dead,
previous causeway discoveries have led the way to big tombs.
If Martin's right, and he is digging in the right place,
then we could be about to reveal a brand-new chapter
in the story of the City of the Dead.
How cool would that be, to be the first people to uncover
and enter a great Egyptian tomb?
Which reminds me that
when Howard Carter was excavating the tomb of Tutankhamen,
he chiselled a little hole in the door of the tomb
and he peered in, and behind him was his sponsor, Lord Carnarvon,
and Carnarvon was going, "Carter, can you see anything?"
And Howard Carter said,
"Yes... Wonderful things."
Coming up, I'm on the trail of a missing pharaoh...
Oh, wow!
But among the pyramids, there's an unexpected turn.
You don't see something like this every day.
And it leads to my deepest tomb yet.
This does feel a bit Indiana Jo... Oh, yes!
I've been looking for tombs
at ancient Aswan's greatest burial ground.
This site rose to prominence over 4,000 years ago,
whilst elsewhere in Egypt, the pharaohs were busy...
building pyramids.
I've travelled over 400 miles north of as Aswan.
Oh, God!
But this is no sightseeing tour.
I thought we were going to go over the edge there.
Dr Vasko Dobrev has been working in the desert outside Cairo
for the past 30 years
and he's on the hunt for a new pyramid.
What is a pyramid? A pyramid?
The pyramid is the tomb of the king
but there is something more. In the pyramid he will resurrect.
He can go up to the sky.
Pyramid points towards the heavens,
helping a deceased pharaoh to take their place amongst the gods.
How many of these pyramids are there?
About 120. Wow!
About 120 all around Egypt.
Often we only think of
the famous pyramids of Giza,
but this site, called Saqqara,
boasts the first pyramid and a great many more.
Why Saqqara, Vasko? Why did so many pharaohs built their pyramids here?
Well, for a very simple reason.
Saqqara is exactly in front of the capital of Egypt, Memphis.
And where's Memphis now? Just behind there, behind the hill.
You see the green palm trees? Yeah.
This is Memphis from the time of the pyramids.
Pyramids here spanned six centuries of Egyptian history,
but one dynasty of pharaohs in particular chose to
build their magnificent tombs in Saqqara.
You see this small pyramid? This is Pepi II.
His father's here,
his great-grandfather is just behind, all the family's around.
Some of the pyramids are in a sorry state.
Over centuries, their beautiful outer layer of stone
has been stolen.
But the key to Vasko's thinking
is that some pyramids may never have been completed.
We're coming up the plateau.
I have to accelerate a little bit not to get stuck.
I have a feeling you really enjoy driving this thing. Yeah.
We're heading to a flat plateau top.
The site, Vasko believes, of an undiscovered pyramid.
Which pharaoh do we think we're talking about here?
So maybe we have here the Pharaoh Userkare.
And how long did he last?
That's the problem, he didn't reign for a long time,
maybe three, four years.
He could not finish a 52-metre-high pyramid in three years.
Userkare may only have had time to create his pyramid's base
and construct his burial chambers beneath it.
OK, so this is the big question.
We've got activity all over the place,
so why do you think the pyramid is right here?
First of all, we are on the good height. Yeah.
We discovered that all these pyramids that are in Saqqara,
they are on the same level,
so there was a kind of pyramid level, and here
we have his father to the north,
his son is just there, his grandson, Pepi II, is behind,
so we see from north to south,
this family is following one after the other,
and we have something else -
new technology. Geophysics.
Geophys! Electromagnetic waves.
We have something with right angles.
This is not naturally made.
We have a kind of square here, 80 by 80 metres, which is
exactly the size of the pyramid of that period.
But Vasko's most telling evidence by far
is just 50 yards from where he believes the pyramid to be.
Here we are.
Oh, wow!
You don't see something like this every day, do you?
Wow!
Look at all this.
Over the last few years, Vasko has unearthed tomb after tomb.
We have more than 60 tombs on the surface already.
And these are sizeable tombs for important Egyptians.
They must have had good reason to be here.
If you have people here, they don't come just by chance,
it's because there is somebody important just behind.
So this isn't only fantastic archaeology in its own right -
this is cast-iron evidence that people came here
because there's a king buried somewhere around here. Exactly.
And Vasko's keen to show me his latest discovery.
On the edge of his site is an unusual chessboard-like structure
dating from just after the time of our missing pharaoh.
This is huge, this area here, isn't it?
Yeah, it's an enormous structure, 12 by 12 metres,
and you have 23 shafts.
Each of these shafts should lead to a tomb.
And there's one that Vasko's started to explore.
Look at it. Oh, my goodness, yeah.
That is deep!
And there's no way Vasko's letting me leave without joining him
on a little adventure.
Right, just popping back 4,000 years.
Not more than a handful of people have ever been down this shaft.
At least, not for a few thousand years.
Just catch the handle.
Yeah, I'm holding on to the handle like crazy.
That's it.
At 15 metres, this shaft is deeper
than three double-decker buses are tall.
What are these depressions in the side of it here?
That's how the Egyptians are all going down.
They didn't use, like us, ropes.
They were going attached to the mountain itself.
Oh, no! That's extraordinary.
These little rudimentary steps? Yes, yes, with bare feet, you can do it.
That would be absolutely terrifying, wouldn't it?
When you started digging,
had you any idea that you would go down as far as you actually did?
Absolutely not. I was expecting to go not more than four, six metres.
Yeah. And what happened when you got down that far?
I was expecting to find a chamber, the funerary chamber. Yeah.
Nothing, so I had to continue seven, eight, nine, ten. Nothing. Yeah.
So I didn't know where to go.
Have we got any idea what the name was
of the man who was buried down here?
His name is Ankh-Ti, which means, "I am alive."
I hope he's not alive now.
THEY LAUGH
Welcome to the bottom of the shaft. Thank you.
OK, I'm down!
Like many of his neighbours here,
our tomb owner, Ankh-Ti, was a priest.
Let's take out the lights. Here we go.
A priest laid to rest over 4,200 years ago.
So, Tony, you can go first. OK.
This does feel a bit Indiana Jo... Oh, yes, there's hieroglyphics here!
Do you know, I thought it would just be a little empty grave.
I didn't realise it would be decorated like this.
This is beautiful.
These are the oldest paintings and hieroglyphics I've ever seen.
Was it filled with sand when you came? It was filled with sand
until here, you see the trace, you see? Just down there?
Yes, like this. Not completely filled,
and down there we found the body of the priest. Down here?
Exactly, on this place. Where I am now?
The body of Ankh-Ti was not in a good state.
At this time, over 2,000 years before Cleopatra,
mummification wasn't far advanced.
The body tissue had rotted away
and Ankh-Ti's bones are about all that survive.
They've been removed and will be studied and X-rayed in due course.
Still here, though, are the fantastic images of offerings
to sustain Ankh-Ti in the afterlife.
Here, the food offerings, the best choices of meat...
..some salads, also to drink maybe milk or even wine.
In the antiquity they had a lot of nice wine.
And you've got this big sand line again down here. Exactly the same.
Then you've got this red rectangle at the bottom.
And yes, yes, here we're coming to the most important part of the tomb,
the door. This is a door.
Because when he will resurrect, he has to go out.
He wouldn't stay here.
That's not the way he imagined his life after death.
Through this door he will go out to the light.
This beautiful art was painted over 4,000 years ago
and 15 metres underground.
Tomb decoration like this was fashionable during the reign
of Ankh-Ti's pharaoh, Pepi II,
whose name appears inside the tomb.
So perhaps Ankh-Ti's job as a priest was to service
the tomb of Pepi's grandfather, the missing pharaoh, Userkare.
I'm coming up, lads. Hold on to that rope.
But is Userkare's tomb hiding in the sand just yards away?
It's a spine-tingling thought.
And between here and there,
there's already a great many more tombs to find.
Oh, it's extraordinary to get out into the fresh air again.
You know...
Down there, what we saw was so stunning,
and up here, there must be...
the possibility of 50, 60, 100 more shafts, just like that one.
Now, if we found that down there,
imagine what people might find at some time in the future.
Sorry I'm so out of breath.
Coming up...
I thought you and I could take a little trip down the Nile.
I'm back in Aswan, where the dangers of tomb hunting become clear.
Ah!
But the hard work does finally pay off.
A tomb! Yes! Yay! We've got a tomb!
Welcome back to Egypt,
where I'm returning to Aswan's ancient City of the Dead.
Looks pretty good in the morning light, doesn't it?
Dr Martin Bommas and his team are on the hunt for new tombs.
And while I've been away, there's been some progress.
Archaeology student Dominica Chopp
is busy revealing a whole new structure.
Dominica. Oh, hello.
Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you
but this is looking really promising, isn't it? Yes, yes.
What do you think it is?
It's a tomb. A tomb! Yes!
Yay, we've got a tomb! This is what we came here to find. I know.
It's a very little tomb, or at least it looks it from here.
Oh, it's not the entrance to it. There is an entrance there.
That does look more like something you'd see in a movie
if you were looking for a tomb.
Wow, so why aren't you ploughing ahead with this straightaway?
We're very keen to. However, we have to first assess how big it is.
So with a bit of patience,
our City of the Dead is going to have a new tomb.
What's more, there appears to be more than one.
If I look behind me, I can see some little blocks here.
Yes, and right behind you. Just here, this is another one? Yes, yes.
Wow, so there's a whole load of them here.
It looks like there might be streets of them.
And do you think they would go right up the hill? Yes.
But to properly reveal even one of them,
there's a heck of a lot of sand to be shifted.
So before I get roped into any serious work...
I thought you and I could take a little trip down the Nile.
Hello, Mohammed.
Thank you very much. You're welcome.
If Martin does find a mummy,
the question, of course, is going to be whose was it
and what did they do before they ended up on the hillside?
Well, I'm told there are some clues which might answer that
just on the far end of that island.
4,000 years ago, just like today,
the vast majority of Egyptians lived very close to the Nile.
And you don't get much closer than Elephantine Island,
where are the people buried at the City of the Dead once lived.
For centuries,
the town here at Elephantine Island was the hub of southern Egypt.
It was so well protected with the Nile on all sides.
This was a street with a lot of houses along here
and houses on this side, too.
Some of these buildings have been reconstructed in recent years.
But there's one that definitely hasn't.
This is like going into the back room of a really big museum.
Oop!
And in theory, it should be the grandest building in town.
This, believe it or not, is the governor's palace,
the place where the elite of Elephantine Island lived
and when they died there'd have been a funeral procession starting here,
and then they would have gone down to the Nile, sailed all the way
around, and then been buried in their beautifully carved tombs.
But what really gets me is this wall. Look at it.
Frankly, it's rubbish, isn't it?
It's mud brick, it's dotted with little chips and bits of shell.
They appear to have spent far more money
on what happened when they were dead than when they were alive,
which I suppose does make sense in a strange kind of way.
After all, you are a long time dead.
On the other side of the river, at the City of the Dead,
the governors of Elephantine picked the very best spots for their tombs
and built grand causeways to access them from the river.
But at the top of his newly discovered causeway,
Martin hasn't found a tomb
but a mysterious stone wall.
What we have here now is perhaps the end of the causeway,
so we want to find out more by digging deeper with the trowel.
The end of the causeway should point the way to a large tomb.
But excavating anything this old on such a steep slope
is a dangerous operation.
Cannot go too far, so the whole thing doesn't crumble.
Ah!
BLEEP
The whole thing's moving!
The whole thing's moving. Yeah.
I really suggest you get out of the path of that.
Sand is coming out from behind. OK.
One of the giant blocks holding up the wall
has shifted a good six inches.
The rest of the wall hasn't budged yet.
But there's a real risk it could collapse.
We cannot go any further.
The tombs must be behind the retention wall.
We have to think very carefully whether next year or so
we will remove the wall in order to follow the causeway,
but not this year, otherwise we risk the lives of our workmen.
The hunt for tombs is rarely straightforward.
And here in particular, there are risks and dangers.
But luckily, Martin and the team
have already found at least one new tomb.
So a few days later,
I'm returning to the lower part of the causeway to check on progress.
Martin. Oh, hello, Tony. This has come on fantastically, hasn't it?
Yeah. What a lot of work you've put in. You can really see that
it is a proper road now.
Yes, exactly, it's three metres wide
and 92 metres long.
And of course, where there are causeways, there are tombs.
How's that panned out?
Well, just look behind you.
Hey! It looks very different, right? That's come on too, hasn't it?
Goodness.
That really is an entrance. Yes, it is. That's great.
So what's this bit here?
Well, we believe this is the offering niche.
Sorry, "offering niche" is not a phrase I've ever heard before.
Well, a tomb in ancient Egypt
needs to have two things in order to be operational -
a burial chamber
and a place where the living can donate offerings to the deceased.
And that's that thing here? Exactly.
Have you got any idea yet how old this tomb is?
Oh, we were so lucky, Tony.
The offering niche I was just talking about, we found
an intact pot that people left there for the deceased, untouched.
Oh, result, perfect dating evidence.
Exactly. The pot dates to 2430 BC.
We can date it rather precisely.
So that is around about 4,500 years old.
It's also the oldest tomb that we have found so far.
It's almost a little bit older than the pyramids in Giza,
so it's the pyramid age, just the beginning of it. Really, really old.
So what happens here now at the big money end?
Actually, we are looking for someone who is going to volunteer
to go down that shaft and look into the burial chamber.
So this is the same kind of age as the pyramid at Giza. It is indeed.
And I'm going in it. Yes, if you want to.
That's so cool!
Coming up... Do we have a problem?
The dangers of this steep site return...
How did it appear? Did it just slump in?
..before I'm finally allowed to peek inside the tomb.
This might be the last time you'll ever see me.
4,000 years ago, this hillside of rock and sand
overlooking the River Nile
was the most important burial ground in southern Egypt.
In the past fortnight, it's been the focus of attention once again.
Dr Bommas and his team are in the last week of their dig season.
They've already discovered a tomb
which has lain hidden for thousands of years.
It may be the only oldest tomb found so far in the City of the Dead.
And Martin has invited me to be the first person to go inside.
But, as soon as I arrive on site...
..it's clear things aren't going to plan.
THEY SPEAK THE LOCAL LANGUAGE
Martin. Hey, Tony. Do we have a problem? I don't know as yet.
There seems to be a hole, and through this hole sand trickles in.
How did it appear? Did it just slump in?
Yeah, it just slumped in. There must be some void underneath here.
There might be another tomb
or it's part of the tomb we are currently working on.
It's so difficult excavating in sand. If we were in English clay,
everything would stay where it was for 24 hours. Exactly.
Here, you dig something, five minutes later it's just gone.
Yes, it seems that there's something underneath that
sucks all the sand into one place,
which we have to assess first.
Perhaps the entire area is too weak.
Events like this show just how unpredictable and dangerous
Egyptian archaeology can be.
But while Martin decides if it's safe to enter, I'm going to see
a remarkable discovery made by the dig team...
..the beautifully preserved pot left as an offering for our tomb's owner.
It's now being examined by pottery expert Dr Eman Khalifa.
It is actually the sort of find that archaeologists dream of, isn't it?
It is. We don't come across complete pots here very easily.
It's in situ, which means that it was exactly where they left it.
What's so special about it is the way it was manufactured.
The top part is wheel thrown
and you can see the marks in the lines of the wheel
but the bottom part is made by hand
and you can see the fingers of the potter who modelled it.
Can I touch it? I've got my gloves on.
Yes, please. Thanks.
So what does that tell you about the dating of it?
It tells us that this was actually made at a certain period
when they were using two techniques.
So what is the date that you're pretty confident of?
4,430 years.
4,430 years...
That is massively old, isn't it?
Yeah.
Look at this.
Over the years I must have held up hundreds of pots towards the camera
but I don't think I've ever held one
there's been such clear dating evidence, from so long ago.
Give it back before I squeeze it too hard. Oh, please don't!
500 feet away, the mysterious landslip has stabilised.
And Martin has agreed to let me
be the first person to look inside our tomb.
I don't think Howard Carter had to cope with all this rubbish.
I'm ready, Martin. Hi, Tony.
I'll just turn everything on.
You look very prepared, so let's get inside.
You first.
It's very steep and it feels quite precarious.
There is something rather eerie
about going into a 4,000-year-old tomb. That's true.
This might be the last time you'll ever see me. Take care.
Be sure that you only do what you're really comfortable with. Sure, sure.
All right? Yeah.
Well...
The first thing that I can see
is that the ground itself at the bottom of the slope
appears to be hard rock
and the actual tomb is hacked out of that,
so that it's not mud brick or anything.
Hold on...
To my left,
there's a niche, a little recess.
Oh, that's good news. That's what we would expect.
A space like this would have stored pots,
plates and food offerings to help our owner reach the afterlife.
Is there anything left there?
No. Were you hoping it would be full of something?
It might be the case that someone's been in there
but it doesn't mean that they went any further.
All right, well, I'll go on a bit now.
Can you tell me whether you're facing a corridor right now? I am.
And does it go left or right? That's important for me to know.
It certainly doesn't go right.
It's curving round to the left,
but there's a load of sand here.
Yeah, there's definitely a tunnel to the left, but it's...
It's completely blocked off.
Perhaps the sand comes from the hole that emerged today morning.
Well, I'm no sand expert but some of it does seem quite fresh,
I must admit.
I can't really go any further than this.
Well, then don't, you know, you have to be safe, most of all. Yeah.
If it's indeed connected with the hole,
then even more sand could come down on you. Yeah.
But you see, the left turn would have led us to the burial chamber.
So the burial chamber's there but we just can't get at it right now.
Yes, I'm afraid so.
Hey! In the sand I've got a bone.
Just above it, there's some pottery.
Oh, good.
And just below it, there is not only some pottery
but I've got a bead! Yay!
I've got two beads!
Oh, that's great, Tony. I'll come and join you. OK. Just hang on.
Oh, it's nicely cool down here.
It is.
All right. Come over here.
There's the bone. Yeah, I'll show you the bone, here we go.
That's great.
Seems to be the end of a pelvis.
Yeah. And what about the beads you were promising?
OK. One...
Two...
Oh, look at that. Look at that. There we are. Wonderful.
Like little eggs, aren't they? Two round faience beads.
What does faience mean?
Faience, that's a certain kind of quartzite-made jewellery,
glazed with cover that turns blue.
The colour Egyptian blue comes from that.
And you reckon it would have been a necklace? Yes, absolutely, yes.
It must have been a necklace.
These are expensive.
And what a privilege it is
to hold something so personal to our tomb's owner.
Welcome this clearly hasn't got all the shiny pillars
and statues associated with the tomb of a governor
but there's a lot of work here, isn't there?
Well, you know, he was probably the second man in line.
He had access to a fantastic burial site
and engineers excavating out of this standing rock.
This may not be the grandest tomb of the City of the Dead,
but it might be one of the oldest.
It could mark the moment almost 4,500 years ago when this important
burial ground was established on Egypt's southern border.
Given what we've found here, what might you expect to find
when you eventually do manage to shift all that sand?
Well, we probably have two metres of work here
and then we might face a burial chamber that includes a sarcophagus,
a wooden sarcophagus, hopefully, or perhaps two sarcophagi.
We still have to solve the question of whether these beads belong to
a man or a woman, or a man AND a woman being buried here. Oh, I see.
But unfortunately, that work will have to wait
until Martin's next digging season.
Thanks.
Right, here we go. One, two, three.
Yay! Up we go. Good.
Well done. I'd like to see these in the clear light of day now.
Oh, wonderful, look at those. Oh, beautiful. Yes.
Great find. Well, thanks for all that.
We now know where the tomb chamber is.
We've got our lovely find.
To be continued.
Hopefully see you next year.
See you. See you, mate. Bye, Tony. Thanks for coming.
For me, the fascination of Egypt lies in its unending mysteries.
We're still looking for a pharaoh's missing pyramid.
We're just beginning to know the thousands who built ancient Egypt.
And tombs we've known for a century are still throwing up surprises.
It's the blood of the mummy!
But what really strikes me
is the sheer scale of what's still left to be found.
Aswan's City of the Dead certainly hasn't given up all of its tombs -
not by a long chalk,
and for archaeologists like Martin, it's a real privilege
and just plain exciting to be uncovering new tombs,
unveiling new secrets
and adding just a small chapter to the story of this incredible land.
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