(bright cheerful music)
King Tut, I think everyone's heard of the name King Tut.
King Tutankhamen.
I guess he was a pharaoh, right?
When I was little, King Tut was very fascinating to me.
For being entombed, that's the big one.
For 3,000 years existing in obscurity,
and then all of a sudden your tomb is discovered
and you're like this celebrity.
That is awesome.
(upbeat instrumental music)
King Tut ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago,
but was his life all that interesting?
Mmm, not really.
(tape whirring)
Because during his reign, he doesn't really do very much.
(exotic instrumental music)
Then they shoved him in the ground
for 3,245 years with all his royal possessions.
No one really gets excited about a 3,000-year-old skeleton
in the desert until he's surrounded by gold.
Ooh, shiny!
And he became history's unlikeliest superstar.
(cameras snapping)
He's up there with sort of Jesus.
(angels singing)
Or Gandhi.
Okay.
It's just one of those names
that will have absolute recognition all around the world.
You could ask any person on the street,
"Tell me about Egypt."
They will know the name King Tut.
It's been 100 years since
the modern world first met King Tut.
For 3,000 years, he had a restful peace
and then he became thrown into the spotlight.
(industrious instrumental music)
Since then,
he's been the subject of more than 5,500 books.
I'll take that one.
And 860,000 news articles,
or about three every day.
Interesting.
He's also spawned
a multi-billion dollar movie franchise.
King Tut has had a huge impact on our modern culture.
His influence, whether it's fashion,
clothing, architecture,
it's just gonna continue to grow.
He's the Lost King.
Tutankhamen was forgotten.
It's a really incredible story.
Who reappeared out of nowhere
and changed the modern world.
Hey, look, It's King Tut!
They say in ancient Egypt,
that if people keep saying your name-
King Tut.
Whilst you're in the afterlife-
King Tut.
Then you will live forever.
(mummy growling)
This is the story of King Tut,
the celebrity pharaoh.
(dramatic upbeat music)
(rocket whooshing)
(radio chattering)
(dials clicking)
(fire blowing)
Ever look at an American $1 bill and wonder,
"Why in the world is there a pyramid on it?"
That's weird.
It's there because of a super celebrity influencer.
It says "In God we trust" right next to a pyramid.
(exotic instrumental music)
It's one of those things we can associate with,
not only Egyptian history,
but King Tut's discovery specifically.
As of 2020, there are 13.1 billion
$1 bills in circulation.
All stamped with a salute to ancient Egypt
because of King Tut's popularity.
It takes some serious star power
to change the face of money,
especially another country's money.
The story of how an ancient Egyptian aristocrat
put his nation's stamp on the U.S. greenbacks
starts with an English aristocrat in 1901.
(upbeat old fashioned music)
Lord Carnarvon is the fifth Earl of Carnarvon
and his house is Highclere.
Ooh!
Oh, fancy.
And you probably remember it
because it is on "Downton Abbey."
He was one of the richest men in England,
and he was just a Playboy really, earlier in life.
He owned race horses.
(horse whinnying)
He sailed around the world.
He got into all kinds of adventures.
Yeehaw!
Lord Carnarvon liked his cars too.
He liked them expensive and he liked them fast.
He enjoyed speeding.
If he wasn't speeding, his chauffeur was speeding.
And actually he was bought up in front
of the magistrates on numerous occasions.
Lord Leadfoot's first speeding ticket
was for cruising at a reckless 12 miles per hour.
Pip, pip!
And a second time a downright
death-defying 25 miles per hour.
Stop right there.
(whistle blowing)
He led this very adventurous,
risky lifestyle until in 1901,
Carnarvon was speeding in a motorcar down country lanes,
in the German countryside,
and there were a couple of cattle-drawn carts
in a blind dip in the road.
He didn't see them until the last minute, so he swerved.
(breaks squealing)
(cows lowing)
And ended up in the mud with his car on top of him.
Ouch.
He never fully recovered from that.
His health was weak.
His lungs in particular were damaged from the accident,
so he wasn't able to do a lot of
the activities that he'd been doing before.
The winters in England in particular
were very difficult for him with his weak lungs,
so he started wintering in Egypt
and he became captivated by Egyptology.
Egyptology is the study of
all things ancient Egypt.
Gods, pharaohs pyramids, hieroglyphics, the whole shebang.
It's all the rage at the time,
and the former Mr. Fast and Imperious is all in.
He sets himself the lofty goal of finding
a lost pharaoh's tomb full of treasure.
And at the time, the antiquity's service in Egypt,
they were collaborating with rich amateurs
to fund the excavations.
He had plenty of money to underwrite an excavation.
Seemed like a natural hobby for him to pick up.
(exotic instrumental music)
The civilization we call ancient Egypt
lasted for more than 3,000 years.
That's 13 times longer than
the United States has been a country.
("The Star-Spangled Banner")
Over that time, it was ruled by
a succession of 30 separate dynasties
and at least 200 pharaohs.
When any Egypt Pharaoh died, they checked out in style.
He then had pyramids and they'd create
these beautiful royal tombs full of everything.
Just beautiful golden items, treasures, jewelry.
All of those amazing details of everyday life
to help him live in the afterlife.
Later, many pharaohs were entombed
in what's now called the Valley of the Kings,
just outside modern day Luxor.
It's sort of hidden away behind the cliffs,
quite hard to get to.
And then they dug their tombs into
the bedrock with these hidden entrances.
So the idea was that that would be
much more protected against looters,
and they were more likely to be able to keep their mummies
and all of their possessions intact.
If Lord Moneybags is going
to find his treasure tomb, this is the best place to look.
Except he isn't exactly a nine to five guy,
when it comes to putting in a hard day's work.
(Lord Carnarvon yawning)
He was very much upper class
and didn't want to get his hands dirty at all.
But also he didn't really understand
the process of archeology at all.
So he needed a right-hand man.
His right-hand man to do that was Carter.
Carnarvon teams up with Howard Carter,
an archeologist who's been working
in Egypt for 15 years searching for treasure.
In particular, he's looking for
a little known Pharaoh whose tomb has never turned up.
His name is Tutankhamen.
There really wasn't a lot that people
or academics or Egyptologists knew about King Tut.
There were only a few references
to him found in some other tombs.
Carter figures Tut's tomb
is tucked away somewhere under them
there hills in the Valley of the Kings.
By the time the team starts digging here,
61 tombs in the valley have already been discovered,
numbered by archeologists from to KV1 to KV61.
But so far they've contained zero treasure.
(men sighing)
These tombs were being looted
even in ancient Egyptian times,
so there was nothing still in these tombs,
the mummies weren't still in these tombs.
Undeterred, the two men are
dead set on making KV62 their number.
Quite right.
Jolly good.
It's a little weird that white people, and Americans,
and Europeans just go around digging up other people.
What attracts so many people?
Probably the gold.
But at the same time,
I also want to know what's in that grave.
There has to be something to do with the aliens, right?
It's rediscovering past lives that
people completely forgot about.
(film reels clicking)
In the Valley of the Kings they found
very, very little for five years
and they were really being ridiculed
by others around them at the time.
(film reels clicking)
Disappointed by the lack of progress,
Carnarvon spends more and more time back in England.
He's ready to pull the plug on Egypt
and find himself another hobby.
Carter implores him to keep going for just one more season.
There's seven digging in the valley.
This really was the last throw of the dice.
He's like, "Okay, one more season."
King Tut has been missing for over 3,000 years.
His fate now hinges on an all
or nothing bet on lucky number seven.
(machinery clanking)
So it was November, 1922,
when they finally started on that last season.
And it was really Carter who kept that going.
He had this conviction that Tutankhamen
was going to be there.
(Carter humming)
It's the early morning of November 4th, 1922.
Howard Carter steps out of his mud brick house
on the banks of the Nile to begin
another day's digging in the Valley of the Kings.
History will record this as the day that Carter,
the English archeologist, finally makes his big discovery.
But the history books are wrong.
Huh?
And the real credit should go to
someone you've probably never heard of.
Huh?
A 12 year old Egyptian boy
named Hussain Abdul-Rasoul.
Oh.
He is a local water boy bringing
water to the valley for all the Egyptian team
that's working with Howard Carter excavating this area.
And he needs to dig a hole in the ground
in order to place the water jug for it to stand upright.
(upbeat whistling music)
Using his foot to dig a hole in the ground,
he discovers a cut stone ledge.
(donkeys braying)
When Carter arrived first thing that morning,
the team were very quiet.
At first, he was worried that there
had been an accident, that someone had been hurt.
And then they showed him that they had uncovered a step.
(industrious instrumental music)
Carter immediately orders the team to get digging,
revealing a second step, and then a third.
The workmen continue to dig and they,
that day, uncover more and more steps.
(slide whistle whistling)
16 steps in all leading down to a door
and they uncovered the top part of that door.
Looks as if that door is still sealed.
The archeologist knows he could
be standing on the threshold of something huge,
but there's just one problem.
But Carnarvon isn't there.
("God Save the Queen")
Carnarvon is back at home on his estate in Berkshire.
(clock ticking)
Carter can't go any further
and steal all the glory from his money man.
So he sends Carnarvon a telegram that says,
"At last, have made a wonderful discovery in the valley.
Congratulations."
The Earl immediately hightails it to Egypt. (laughing)
Sort of.
Leaving his partner stuck, waiting to make history.
(Carter angrily grumbling)
Carter has to wait about two weeks
for Carnarvon to get there.
You can't just fly from London to Egypt.
So they go back, they uncover the lower part of the door.
And now there is the name of Tutankhamen.
(dramatic instrumental music)
So they remove that door and beyond it,
eventually they come to a second door.
(slide whistle whistling)
Carter makes a small hole in the top corner of the door.
Huh, what's this?
So then he gets a candle and looks through the hole.
(angels singing)
And inside he can just see glimmers of gold
and just objects everywhere.
He's speechless.
And he's just standing there for
moments without saying anything.
And Lord Carnarvon famously tells Howard Carter,
"Oh, can you see anything?
What do you see?"
And it takes everything in Howard Carter
just to utter, "Yes, wonderful things."
(clocks ticking)
In KV62, Carter and Carnarvon have hit the jackpot.
Ah!
There are exactly 5,398
wonderful things in Tut's tomb.
So much shiny things.
Including three golden chariots,
two life-sized statues of the Pharaoh,
three golden couches, two beds,
two trumpets, and one throne.
(clapboard clapping)
King Tut's tomb really does stand as
pretty much the biggest archeological discovery of all time.
It's just all of this incredible stuff.
(plodding instrumental music)
So when the news actually finally hits the outside world,
there's this mad rush to the Valley of the Kings.
And this is the point where all
of the reporters would stand there milling around,
waiting for a piece of the action.
The whole world wants a piece of Tut
(gong crashing)
and he's arrived at the perfect time.
The timing of the discovery,
when it happened, the Telegraph was being introduced.
(film reels clicking)
(upbeat instrumental music)
The first transatlantic cables stretched over 2,500 miles,
at a depth of more than two miles.
By the 1920s, news that once took two weeks to cross
the ocean now takes just two minutes.
If it would've happened 10 years earlier,
it would not have been a global phenomenon.
If it would have happened 10 years later,
it might've been lost with all the other information.
And it was the perfect timing for
an event like this to occur.
The whole place is like a big,
massive conglomeration of paparazzi essentially.
I mean, what do you do?
Realizing he's sitting on a goldmine,
in more ways than one,
Carnarvon cuts a deal with the "Times of London."
He gives them exclusive rights to photograph
the contents of the tomb in return for £5,000,
the equivalent today of around $360,000.
All of the other newspapers are
right royally annoyed about this,
and they're trying to find other stories
and other avenues to kind of get through.
(film reels clicking)
(industrious instrumental music)
On the 22nd of December, 1922,
exactly one month after the tomb's entry,
the "New York Times" runs a Tut story
that opens an enduring can of worms.
[Newspaper Salesman] Extra, read all about it!
It includes a bit of journalistic fluff
that will go on to spawn at least
19 horror movies over the next 100 years.
It's about...
The curse.
The curse of Tutankhamen.
(ominous instrumental music)
When Lord Carnarvon gives
the "Times of London" exclusive access to the discovery,
its cross-Atlantic namesake, "The New York Times,"
becomes desperate for any story to keep
its Tut obsessed readers satisfied.
That's where you get the first ideas of a curse.
If I can't get the real story,
then I'm going to fabricate a story.
They try to sensationalize it so that
they can sell papers as well,
to kind of latch on to this huge find of Tutankhamen.
It's all about headlines, it's click bait.
It is early 1900s click bait.
The media hasn't changed much
in how they deliver stories or titles.
It's just a matter of how we get the information.
Tucked away in the "Times" reporters'
description of the tomb is the first
of many dubious Tut tales to come.
One of these stories included Howard Carter's pet canary,
(Canary chirping)
which he kept with him at his excavation house in Luxor.
The paper reports that at the same moment
Carter and Carnarvon were busting into Tut's tomb,
a real life cobra broke into castle Carter.
Is anybody home?
It was reported that soon after the tomb was opened
and Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter
had discovered tomb of King Tut,
that a cobra had come into the house
and made its way into the canary's cage
and ate the poor bird.
Ha ha!
(cobra burping)
(canary chirping)
The cobra was later discovered
still in the canary's cage, with the bird in its mouse.
According to the "New York Times," it's a sign of...
The wraith of the ancient gods.
So what they wanted to do is they
wanted a sensational story.
How can we jazz up this curse of Tutankhamen?
A cobra sits prominently on the head dress of King Tut.
We associate cobras with the pharaohs.
So people got very nervous.
The cobra incident is just the beginning.
Within weeks, one of Tut's two discoverers
will follow the canary into the great beyond.
Uh oh.
(film reels clicking)
Quickly after Carter and Carnarvon discovered the tomb,
so towards the end of that season,
something happened that just changed
the entire course of the work.
(mosquito buzzing)
Which is that Carnarvon got bitten by a mosquito.
(mosquito squelching)
And unfortunately,
one morning as he's doing his daily routine and shaving,
he cuts the mosquito bite with his razor.
Oh dear.
And it becomes infected.
He ended up with blood poisoning and eventually pneumonia.
This is before the time of antibiotics.
17 days later, Lord Carnarvon,
the career thrill seeker
and financier of the excavation, dies.
I regret nothing.
(Carnarvon puking)
It's reported that around the time that
Lord Carnarvon actually died in Cairo,
his favorite pet dog back at
Highclere Castle in Great Britain lets out
this huge howl and then falls over dead.
(dog yelping)
(exotic instrumental music)
And it was also reported in the news at the same time,
that Lord Carnarvon passed away or died.
And then there was a blackout throughout
the city of Cairo as well.
(crickets chirping)
The coincidences made for sensational stories.
[Newspaper Salesman] Get your papers.
Even though power outages in Cairo
back then were a dime a dozen
and the Earl himself was always
on the verge of switching off.
He was quite a frail man,
but this whole idea of the curse
is embroiled in his death as well.
It just, I suppose, fuels the imagination
of all the people around the world at the time.
(suspenseful instrumental music)
(record scratching)
Sure, I believe in the curse of King Tut.
Why not? (laughing)
You should not mess with a mummy
or you're going to be cursed forever.
I'm not really very superstitious,
not since I stopped playing baseball.
("Take Me Out to the Ballgame")
Curse of King Tut.
(interviewee sighing)
It's a relic from an ancient time, right?
That sounds pretty curseish.
All of a sudden,
King Tut has gone from long loss Pharaoh
to an avenging spirit looking to
kick some major archeologist ass.
Even before Canarvon's death,
there was sort of unease amongst a lot of the public.
This idea of violating this king's resting place.
They embellished storylines
and created conspiracy theories and imagined curses.
You know, once you hear curse, that catches my attention.
Even if I don't believe in it,
I want to read that article 'cause just in case.
(suspicious instrumental music)
(numbers clicking)
In 1934, Herbert Winlock,
director of New York's Met Museum,
tries to dispel the curse with an op ed article
that includes an eyeopening fact.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Of the 22 people who are present at
the opening of Tut's burial chamber,
six died over the ensuing 11 years.
But if there really is a curse, why didn't everybody die?
(suspicious instrumental music)
For all his good intentions,
Winlock's logic has a snowball's chance
in the Sahara of changing anybody's mind.
In America, we do believe in curses.
Ancient Egypt is so far removed,
they could've had magic sorcerers.
Nobody knows.
John Balderston, a New York columnist
covering the Tut discovery,
is fascinated by the curse story.
(upbeat piano music)
10 years later, he's on Sunset Boulevard,
typing out his first Hollywood screenplay.
He's been told to adapt a story about
a magician in San Francisco.
(magic whizzing)
So he moves the story to Egypt, ancient Egypt.
He changes the magician's name to Imhotep.
Imhotep.
And to spice the story up,
Balderston invents the curse of Thoth.
(creepy instrumental music)
In 1932, "The Mummy,"
starring Boris Karloff is let loose on the world.
(dramatic instrumental music)
Death, eternal punishment
for anyone who opens this casket.
(film reel clicking)
"The Mummy" certainly helped to
promote this idea of a pharaoh's curse
or the curse of a mummy that can be reanimated
and track down his enemies, if you will,
or those who disturbed his burial.
Hollywood then embellishes that.
It ties into our fear.
It takes us back to childhood,
where we look under our beds just in case.
90 years later,
"The Mummy" franchise is still going strong.
Since 1999, there has been eight new "Mummy" movies.
Together, they have grossed a total of $1.8 billion.
That's twice as much as the current
insurance value of the Tut tomb treasure trove.
(upbeat instrumental music)
(popcorn popping)
I think of that movie, "The Mummy,"
that I watched entirely too young,
and then was scared of toilet paper after.
Is King Tut a mummy now?
There's like the new versions of "The Mummy."
That guy was a grown ass adult.
Okay, all right.
What the hell happened to Brendan Fraser's career?
Where'd he go?
He was everywhere, now he's gone. (laughing)
That's the curse of King Tut.
But what about the mummy who started at all?
Who was the real pharaoh behind the bandages?
I think when people think of ancient Egyptian mummies,
they do think of this kind of strange zombiesque,
the Hammer Horror kind of association.
If you unwrap the bandages,
you'd look on the face of that person.
Writing in his diary,
Howard Carter calls November 11th, 1925,
a great day in the history of archeology,
because this is the day that
he begins to unwrap Tut's bandages.
This isn't just history.
You can unwrap the mummies
and see their facial expressions,
bringing these kings and queens of history
from thousands of years ago to life.
Tut has been wrapped up tight for 3,245 years.
And some of the ancient embalming fluids used on him
have long since passed their expiry date.
The resins and oils that have been
poured over the mummy and the coffin,
they had set hard like glue.
The mummy, with its burial mask in place,
is still lying in the coffin, stuck to the bottom.
(man grunting)
Carter begins the process of removing
the layers of linen bandages one by one.
Underneath the first layer,
he discovers a gold amulet tucked inside the bandages.
The farther he goes, the more he finds.
A gold dagger, a bracelet,
a scarab beetle, and a golden hawk.
Unwrapping of the mummy of King Tut,
they actually found 143 different amulets
and pieces of jewelry within
the wrappings of the mummy itself.
And all of these objects were meant
to serve as protection for the king
and to help him transfigure into a god in the afterlife.
Carter realizes they are also signs of affection
for the dead Pharaoh from those he left behind.
It's your family.
It's your family members.
It's the funerary practice.
It's still very much the person that you've lost,
and you grieved for, and you've loved.
(suspicious instrumental music)
Finally, it's time to pry off his mask
and reveal the real King Tutankhamen to the world.
(creepy instrumental music)
In the words of Carter, "He's beautiful."
They unwrap the mummy, looked at the body,
and they realized that Tutankhamen died when he was only 18.
He came to the throne when he was about nine years old
and he dies this kind of mysterious death.
Nobody really knows why.
It's a mystery science has yet to solve.
There are so many theories.
There's been sickle cell anemia, epilepsy, malaria.
You might've been attacked by a hippo in the Nile.
(hippo growling)
There are other theories.
That he died whilst he was hunting on a chariot.
Perhaps he died in battle.
This whole mystery around his death
is really tantalizing to lots of people.
There's another, more controversial question,
whose answer remains locked within 30,000 human genes.
There is an obsession by scholars
and researchers to try to identify
the race of King Tutankhamen.
Is Tutankhamen black?
Has he been depicted as being too white?
I would say that actually in reality,
it's somewhere in the middle.
And I think that we should just be really happy that they
are part of the African diaspora
and that these amazing people created
such fabulous cultures on the African continent.
In a way it, probably would take
something away from Tutankhamen if we did know.
I think it's precisely that mystery, that uncertainty,
that ability to tell new stories that has kept
him so much in this sort of public fascination.
But back in the early 1920s,
way before John Balderston bashed out
his first draft of "The Mummy,"
Tut is a rising star ready to go nova.
Get ready for Tut mania.
(exotic instrumental music)
I would argue that King Tut is a part of pop culture
because of the timing when King Tut was discovered.
This was an incredible moment.
(street car horns beeping)
You're just a few years past the horrors
of the first World War.
You're into the Roaring Twenties,
the age of jazz and flappers,
and everyone's looking for glamor, luxury, fun, hope,
and Tutankhamen's tomb just plays right into that.
It's beyond everyone's dreams.
And so this is exactly what everyone has been looking for.
In 1922, when the world is suddenly
seeing Tutankhamen's tomb being revealed,
it just has this huge influence on the movie business.
(instrumental trumpet music)
On average, 50 million Americans
are going to the flicks every week.
Middle-class America is thriving
and three out of four people will visit
the movie theater at least once a week.
I don't think we could afford to do that now.
The movie business is booming
and Hollywood wants to keep it that way.
So it cashes in on the coincidental crazes,
bringing the grandeur of ancient Egypt
to main street in the form of 82 new temple-like cinemas.
Suddenly all of these movie theaters have been built,
not just in the US but in the UK as well.
And they have these beautiful kind of
ancient Egyptian echoes to them.
This whole idea of ancient Egypt
and how fabulous and dazzling it is.
Tut isn't just changing
how people go to the movies.
He's changing the way we look,
thanks to two beautiful things,
hidden inside a whole lot fours.
(record scratching)
Um, to explain we need to rewind a bit.
(exotic instrumental music)
When Howard Carter gets his first glimpse
of the wonderful things inside Tut's tomb,
it's only the beginning.
He'll eventually discover there are four separate rooms.
He will break through four separate seals,
before entering the burial chamber itself.
Inside the chamber, there's a huge gilt wooden shrine.
And you see this golden shrine.
But actually it's not just one shrine.
There's four. (laughing)
(upbeat instrumental music)
Inside the inner most shrine,
Carter finds a box shaped sarcophagus, a stone coffin.
Opening this, he discovers a second coffin
in the shape of a person.
Inside that is another, and finally a fourth coffin.
When Carter opens this,
he reaches the innermost layer
and is met by the mesmerizing eyes
of the golden boy king staring back at him.
Hi there, what took you so long?
The mask, which is the most famous symbolic artifact
that we think about when we think about Tutankhamen.
It gave the divine attributes.
So protection and it enabled you to see in the underworld.
A hundred years later,
we're still captivated by his darkly lined eyes.
I'm sure if you ask anyone in the street
who is the first to wear guyliner,
they would probably say punk rockers,
goth kids, vamp kids.
But Egyptian men wore eyeliner long before all of that.
So they definitely started that trend.
Their influence on not only makeup,
but beauty practices in general,
still is in the present day.
(upbeat synthesizer music)
Back in the early days of Tut mania,
the pharaoh's eyeliner is everywhere.
Thanks in part to the very first it girl, Clara Bow.
Where she leads, millions of flappers follow.
(upbeat jazz music)
You've got things like the popularity of sequins as well,
because some of the items that were found
in Tutankhamen's tomb are decorated
with thousands of delicate beads and sequins,
like little discs of gold,
all feeding through people wanting to get a piece of
of Tutankhamen and ancient Egypt.
(film reels clicking)
I mean, Egypt influencing jewelry and design,
that's so cool.
I do like the crazy eyeliner.
That's definitely Egyptian inspired.
Thank you for the fashion choices, King Tut.
(upbeat jazz music)
Tut mania really took off in the 1920s.
People wanted Egyptian everything.
There's even a famous brand of condoms called Ramesses.
(stick vibrating)
That were made in 23 and they amass
a massive wealth in the 1930s.
It makes sense that marketing to young men
during a period of sexual liberation
would appeal to their interests in
being associated with an Egyptian god king.
I guess you can make some analogy about wrapping it up.
(crowd booing)
Sex and fashion aren't
the only things Tut's influencing.
Remember the pyramid on the dollar bill?
The federal reserve in Washington DC adds it in 1935,
cashing in on the pharaoh's soaring fame.
(Model T horns beeping)
But nowhere does Tut mania quite like New York City,
where his star power will do an end run around 1916ZL,
better known as the 1916 Zoning Resolution,
and change the Manhattan skyline forever.
(machinery clicking)
We see the obsession with King Tut
having a lot of impact on style.
Clothing, women's dresses, but especially architecturally.
American culture is often about assimilating ideas
and patterns from elsewhere.
So it doesn't surprise me that one of
our most iconic buildings is really reflecting
our interpretation of an Egyptian style.
It's the story of how Tut took Manhattan,
and it goes like this.
The year is 1929
and architect William Frederick Lamb has a dilemma.
Hmm.
He's been asked to design
a new building for the Big Apple,
one taller than any other in existence.
But there's a problem.
In the early 20th century, New York City was
a claustrophobic place because of the dense cityscape.
It blocked out fresh air and sunlight from the people below.
(dramatic instrumental music)
In response, the city enacted
the 1916 Zoning Resolution,
putting strict limits on the size of new buildings.
To get around it, Lamb goes back to the drawing board
and takes inspiration from ancient Egypt.
I've got it!
(upbeat instrumental music)
He sketches a five story base that fills the lot.
On top of that, he puts a tower, but set back.
He adds additional set backs making the tower narrower
and narrower at the 21st, 25th,
30th, 72nd, 81st and 85th floors.
(metal screeching)
It gradually recedes from a base at the top,
just like a pyramid.
This was a plan to help shed more light on Manhattan.
It's called the Empire State Building.
And at 1,454 feet,
becomes the tallest building in the world.
So tall, in fact, it will tower three times
higher than the Great Pyramid of Giza.
This was a 4,500 year Egypt design
leaving its mark on the greatest modern city in the world.
And all thanks to Tut mania.
For a guy who left such
a major mark on the Big Apple,
Tut's afterlife address is pretty low key.
It's much smaller than you
would expect for a Pharaoh's tomb,
compared to a lot of the other tombs
that have been found in the Valley of the Kings.
There are four rooms in the tomb
with dimensions that add up to a total of 908 square feet.
To give you an idea of how big that is,
compare it to your average
Manhattan one bedroom apartment at 702 square feet.
Pretty modest for a royal resting place,
especially compared to one like the Taj Mahal.
That site is 42 acres,
or the same as about 31 football fields,
or the mausoleum of the first Chin Emperor of China.
That site covers 20 square miles, or half of Disney world.
By their standards,
King Tut's tomb isn't even a broom closet.
With Carter and Carnarvon actually finding Tut's tomb,
and the fact that it was so small and so inconspicuous
it's just hard to believe that that they were so lucky.
But why is Tut's tomb so small
compared to others in the Valley of the Kings?
His reign wasn't very significant.
He only ruled for about nine years
during the New Kingdom in ancient Egypt.
Did he do very much?
And the thing is, not really.
So that was kind of us C minus sovereign,
a historical underachiever.
Try telling that to the 1970s, (laughing)
when his tiny, but intact tomb will launch Tut mania two
and make the pharaoh a bigger star than ever before.
(record scratching)
In 1973, there is a war between Israel,
Syria, and Egypt called the Yom Kippur War.
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And then Nixon intervenes.
(phone ringing)
And supports the Israelis.
And because of this,
there's a real backlash with the Arab states.
They don't take this too lightly
and decide not to supply the US with oil.
(funky instrumental music)
The conflict sends oil prices skyrocketing
from $3 a barrel to $12,
and causes long lines at the pump across the nation.
So Nixon's got a bit of trouble on his hands.
He really has to make amends.
Nixon comes up with a plan
to flip the script with the Arab states.
Presidents always find unique ways to
find commonality with other countries.
So he used the one thing he probably thought
as a common ground to establish some relationship
with the Middle East and with Egypt in particular.
King Tut.
So Nixon travels to Egypt in 1974,
asking if these treasures could come
for this touring exhibition,
because it was just seen that it would
be an expression of goodwill,
of people getting excited about Egypt,
a collaboration between the two countries.
It's also planned to beat
the competition with simple numbers.
An exhibition of Tut's treasures has recently completed
a three city tour around the Soviet Union.
(man speaking foreign language)
(instrumental Russian music)
To outdo his Cold War rivals,
(phone ringing)
Nixon persuades the Egyptians to
put three more cities on the US itinerary.
That's right.
And on top of the 50 items
that were sent behind the Iron Curtain,
Nixon wheels and deals an extra five for the US.
To be on the safe side, he has the whole kit and caboodle
transported to America in secret on a warship.
(air horn sounding)
When the King Tut artifacts
and treasures come to the United States,
and they do this three-year tour throughout the country,
they were insured for over a billion dollars in their value.
That's a staggering number.
And especially for the time at the 1970s.
50 Years after the first wave of Tut mania,
the old pharaoh is about to sweep
the world off its feet once again.
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(tape rewinding)
(upbeat synthesizer music)
In 1976, this huge tour of Tutankhamen treasures
just happens in the US
and it's like 1922 all over again.
Everybody goes nuts about it.
Tut mania is back, bigger than ever.
And the proof is in the numbers.
(money crinkling)
Hey, get your tickets!
In Washington DC,
the lineups circle three whole blocks.
Tickets here!
In Chicago, ticket holders face a seven hour wait.
In Los Angeles, scalpers are selling $2 tickets for $35.
Get your tickets!
That's a markup of more than 1,500%.
By the time the exhibition closes,
after visits to Seattle and New York,
more than 8 million people will have come see Tut.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Nixon bringing a mummy on tour as a political statement,
wouldn't have been my first move.
I don't think there were many political tools
that Nixon didn't use.
I guess that kind of explains the curse.
We know Nixon didn't didn't finish well,
as far as his job was concerned.
I would've just gone for the good old ninth grade
vote for me and I'll give you a cupcake sort of thing.
Isn't that all American politics?
Isn't that the entire Senate just like dry,
desiccated and mummified old husks of humans?
That's the US Senate.
Yeah, no, not that weird.
Tut's smash hit tour of the seventies,
culminates with a TV triumph.
The high moment for King Tut would have
to be when Steve Martin made a song about him on "SNL."
That's how you know you made it,
when you're parodied or there's satire
about you on "Saturday Night Live."
(funky instrumental music)
The 1970s won't be the last time
Tut finds himself caught up in politics.
(tape rewinding)
In 2011, he'll be called off the bench
to help rally his people against an oppressive regime.
The Arab Spring, which took place in 2011
and the Egyptian Revolution helped
to promote the emergence of street artists.
The streets of Cairo became a canvas, if you will,
for all these different artworks,
by all these different artists.
(crowd chattering)
One known only by his alias, Kaiser,
paints a familiar image of protest.
(spray paint spraying)
The Argentinian revolutionary, Che Guevara.
He's wearing his trademark beret,
only this time he's also sporting
King Tut's ceremonial beard.
(exotic instrumental music)
I visited Egypt not that long after the Revolution
and there was a lot of graffiti that was around,
and one of the images that you would
see as graffiti was the mask of Tutankhamen.
(camera snapping)
Street, artist Marwan Shahin
follows Kaiser's lead and paints an image of
the fictional anarchist V,
from the "V for Vendetta" comic series,
wearing his trademark Guy Fawkes mask,
along with the headdress of the teenage pharaoh.
(camera snapping)
The mask of King Tutankhamen is actually fused together
with the Guy Fawkes mask from the UK.
And so by using this icon, like the Guy Fawkes Mask,
which represents, the people fighting against
their government and fusing that with
the iconic funerary gold mask of King Tutankhamen,
the artists were speaking directly to the revolutionaries
to hold fast to their ancestral roots
and to fight against this oppressive regime
that was currently ruling Egypt.
(camera snapping)
The image quickly becomes
a revolutionary signature piece,
emblazoned on walls as a monochrome stencil,
painted mural or pop art poster.
You've got a people rising up,
wanting to assert their independence and their freedom,
and they're looking back to this image
of Tutankhamen to represent them in that.
(machinery whirring)
King Tut being used as a political symbol.
I mean, if he has a problem with it,
he can't say anything now.
Being a mummy, you know?
I'd rather King Tut than Bieber.
(goofy cartoon music)
After 18 days of protest,
the Egyptian regime is toppled.
Game over.
And Tut, he's still just as popular as ever.
The irony is someone like King Tut
would be adamantly against and oppressing a revolution,
but using his image makes perfect sense,
because that is the one image that everyone in Egypt
can get behind and obviously understands.
(tape rewinding)
(dramatic instrumental music)
The great pharaohs of ancient Egypt
went to epic lengths for a shot at eternal life,
but all their best laid plans were spoiled by looters.
By drifting into obscurity for more than 3000 years,
young and insignificant Tutankhamen may
be the only one who truly succeeded.
Because his tomb is so small, and it's so iconic,
and also quite weird,
we are continuing to say his name in history.
The numbers just give us a handle
on such an incredible find,
more than 5,000 objects that came out of that tomb.
More than 100 objects just found on the mummy itself.
The millions of people who have visited the exhibits.
It just gives you a sense of the scale
and the importance of the entire phenomenon.
You do not have to rule the longest
and you do not have to be the best at what you do.
You just have to be the most famous.
Everyone will always know that name.
I promise you I could step into
a classroom 50 years from now,
if I could say name an Egyptian king,
they will know King Tut.
(upbeat instrumental music)
When I say King Tut, you say?
What?
If I had to go to the afterlife,
I would totally bring my dog if he was already dead.
Yeah, king at the age of nine.
I would have started wars with Rome by my 10th birthday.
I'm not killing my dog to bring him.
I remember Tut mania from when
I was a kid in the seventies.
And they were all, I think, using a lot of cocaine.
I guess my husband, if you have to.
I want flamingos and polar bears in my court.
That's because I can, and I'm nine years old.
Oh, "Walk Like an Egyptian," The Bangles.
Yeah, that was a good one too.
♪ Walk like an Egyptian ♪
Oh god. (laughing)
Terrible.
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