For thousands of years, King Tut was little more than a footnote.
A minor pharaoh who died before he could leave his mark.
But today, the Boy King reigned supreme.
In pop culture, he has become virtually synonymous with ancient Egypt,
eclipsing his far more accomplished predecessors.
And that is largely thanks to the 1922 discovery
of Tut's treasure filled tomb.
While greater kings had their burials plundered right away,
Tut was so undervalued that within a few years of his death,
he was all but forgotten.
But once his tomb was found, a legend was born.
[Josh] From the moment they were first uncovered,
the treasures of King Tut have captivated the world,
overshadowing Tut himself.
But what can the riches he left behind
teach us about the Boy King?
Now on the 100th anniversary of the discovery of his tomb,
Tut's treasures are being transferred
to a state-of-the-art new museum in the shadow of the pyramids.
But before they're moved, famed Egyptologist Zahi Hawass
has gained special access to examine them at the old Cairo Museum.
For Zahi, this is a golden opportunity
to look for details other experts might have missed.
[Zahi] The burial of Tutankhamun
contained 5398 objects.
It's like a story.
It gives us a lot about the life of Tutankhamun.
[Josh] So the race is on to reexamine these precious artifacts
and uncover new clues about the life of King Tut,
along with answers to some of history's most persistent questions.
Why did he turn against the religion of his father?
Was he a mere pawn of his advisers
or a mighty king in his own right?
And most mysteriously, how did King Tut die?
To learn the truth,
Zahi will need to look at more than Tut's treasures.
He and his team will cast their net across Egypt.
Investigating spectacular temples,
lost palaces and long forgotten tombs
that hold unexpected secrets about the golden Boy King.
Finally, a full picture of the man
behind the treasure can be revealed
as we explore 100 years of myth
and unearth 3000 year old secrets from the life of Tutankhamun.
Since the discovery of his tomb by Howard Carter in November 1922,
the Boy King Tutankhamun has been a mystery that refuses to be solved.
[Sara] I think a lot of people think
they know who Tutankhamun was,
but actually his backstory is very mysterious and very, very debated.
[Josh] Most people believe Tut was the incestuous offspring
of King Akhenaten and one of his sisters.
This could explain why Tut suffered from multiple abnormalities,
including difficulty walking.
He died under mysterious circumstances
around the age of 18 or 19.
And was buried in a tiny tomb
that nevertheless contained a king's ransom in treasure.
[Sara] Here he was with a beautiful gilded golden mask
that everyone looked at and thought,
"This must have been someone really, really important."
[Josh] This golden mask is an exquisite piece of craftsmanship.
But this face may be all that people know
about the Golden Boy King.
But it is also a potent symbol for the myth we have built around King Tut.
The mask is a facade beautiful, enigmatic,
but ultimately unreadable.
[Zahi] This is the most beautiful object
ever seen in my life.
Look at the face.
The round chin,
the wide eyes.
It is shining with the sun...
as if it's telling me now
hieroglyphic "I'm the golden boy."
This is a public face
that everyone recognize.
But to know about Tutankhamen as a boy,
as a man, as a king, to know his personality,
we have to go and see other objects found in the tomb.
[Josh] These objects are important
because the contents of the tomb were found completely intact
just as they were left 3300 years ago.
Most ancient Egyptian tombs, when discovered,
are found empty or maybe with just scraps left in there.
They were robbed in ancient times.
[Josh] Tut's tomb is regarded as the only such burial to have escaped plunder.
Or did it?
An examination of the sealed doorways
found by Howard Carter tells a different story.
[Aiden] As soon as Carter looked at the sealed doorway
of the tomb, he realized it had been opened and then closed again in the past.
You can see the original sealings from the burial.
Then you can see two further sets of seal impressions
where the holes have been blocked up by the necropolis guards.
[Josh] When Howard Carter saw those seals,
he knew he had found something special.
But what exactly did they tell him?
This is what I'm looking for.
The seals that Howard Carter found
at the entrance of the tomb.
To this all he read the name Tut-Ankh-A-Mun.
Then he was sure that he found the tomb that was looking for.
Six years of research and excavation.
The tomb is completely intact.
Big day.
[Josh] Those seals also tell us
that the necropolis guards
responsible for protecting the contents of Tut's tomb
stopped it from being robbed not once, but twice.
Each time a seal was broken,
the Necropolis guards resealed the chamber to prevent looting.
Without those seals,
there would be no artifacts left to discover
and no legend of King Tut to explore.
The guards had done their job,
but now the tomb was in the hands of Howard Carter.
[Aiden] Carter then created a hole in that sealed wall,
thinking when he looked through, he'd just see a mess.
But as his eyes grew accustomed to the light,
all he could see was the glitter of gold.
And he was asked over his shoulder,
"Can you see anything?"
And he says, "Yes, I see wonderful things."
[Josh] Those wonderful things
are a window into not just the young pharaoh,
but everyday life in ancient Egypt.
That's because to the Egyptians,
the afterlife was more than just an abstract concept.
It's the reason their tombs were packed full of treasures in the first place.
[Arto] The ancient Egyptians believed that
all the things you brought in your tomb
you would have had in the afterlife.
[Aiden] And that does imply that there is a belief
that you could take it with you
that these things were there
to allow you to furnish your home in the next world
in the way you'd furnished yours in this world.
[Sara] Of course, certain items could have been just symbolic,
but there are some elements
that most likely Tutankhamun
or in general ancient Egyptian pharaoh would have chosen for themselves.
[Arto] We have things in there
that he used in life that he cherished,
and this can tell us a lot about him as a person
and how he lived.
[Josh] One item tucked away in the antechamber
sheds new light on Tut's personal life.
It has long been assumed that Tut was forced into an incestuous
and loveless marriage to his sister Ankhesenamun.
An alliance designed to save a crumbling dynasty
by keeping the royal bloodline pure.
This beautiful golden throne tells a different story.
The crowds who flocked to see it
may not even notice the intimate code
engraved into its exquisite artwork.
It's only up close with the glass removed
that the true nature of the couple's relationship is revealed.
[Zahi] I am going to tell you a love story.
This love story happened 3,000 years ago
between a young king and young queen,
Tutankhamun and his beautiful queen, Ankhesenamun.
Look the way that Ankhesenamun
touching the shoulder of the boy
was love and affection.
She is offering him oil
maybe to make his face beautiful.
This is love.
But the other important evidence is unique.
On Tutankhamun's left leg,
there is one sandal only.
Nothing in the right one.
On the right leg of the queen, there is one sandal.
This is actually a sign
that they are one person and are in love.
[Josh] The symbols of the couple's love for one another
are not the only secrets the throne hides in plain sight.
For example, most people only know Tut by one name
Tutankhamun, but that's not the name he was born with.
[Zahi] One of the most important secrets about this throne.
It proves it was made on the first year
of the reign of Tutankhamun
because the name in the cartouche Tutankhaten,
the living image of Aten.
[Josh] Tutankhaten is the name Tut had when he took the throne.
A few years later, though,
the young king changed it to Tutankhamun.
To uncover his motivation.
Egyptologist Aliaa Ismail
has traveled more than 200 miles north of Luxor
to the remote region of Amarna.
There she is searching for a key piece of evidence
from the controversial reign of Tut's father, Akhenaten.
One that might explain why the Boy King would go even further
than just changing his name to betray his father completely
and change Egypt forever.
On a temple wall in Abydos, one of the oldest cities in ancient Egypt.
There is a famous inscription called the Kings List,
commissioned by the 19th dynasty pharaoh Seti I.
It honors 76 pharaohs who ruled Egypt before him.
Going back over 1000 years.
But notably missing from the list
are two of his predecessors,
King Tut and Tut's father, Akhenaten.
Why? Why would these two pharaohs be excluded?
What could they have done to be deliberately erased from history?
The answer lies in Amarna.
Wow.
This is the boundary Stelae of Akhenaten.
He erected these stelae as a boundary for the cities
that he's erecting in his fifth year of reign.
[Josh] Akhenaten forced a move of the capital city from Thebes to here,
Amarna, a location over 200 miles away.
These inscribed stones or stelae
describe Akhenaten's reasons for choosing this area.
An upheaval which sparked widespread outrage.
Thebes, known today as Luxor,
was then the center of worship for Amun-Ra
considered the supreme God in ancient Egypt,
representing both fertility and war.
Akhenaten instead built his new city
to exclusively worship the Sun God Aten.
[Aiden] The Aten started off its existence
well before Akhenaten's time as simply
a word for the physical body of the sun.
And then what Akhenaten does is actually promotes the Aten
to being a full, fully fledged God.
And not only that,
but the only God he is prepared to worship.
[Josh] To most ancient Egyptians,
this was little short of heresy.
It also upset the established order of the God Amun-Ra,
whose priests now had to lurk in the great temples at Thebes,
waiting for Akhenaten to die.
His edict enforcing the exclusive worship of the Aten
would have a profound effect on young Tutankhaten,
who would begin his own reign earlier than anyone expected.
Akhenaten died 17 years into his tumultuous rule.
It's debated whether his wife, Queen Nefertiti, outlived him or not.
The latest known image of her
is dated to five years before his death.
Replacing them as leader of Egypt
was Akhenaten's nine year old son Tutankhamun.
Ultimately, the mummies of both royals,
as well as their capital city, disappeared from history.
But what happened to Akhenaten and Nefertiti?
Dr. Zahi Hawass has been on the hunt for their mummies for years.
In 2010, he turned his attention to three mummies from Tut's era,
the 18th dynasty found in temporary tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
Zahi speculated that the skeleton of a mummified male
from a tomb referred to as KV 55,
which had its face violently hacked off in ancient times, could be Tut's father.
To determine any genetic connection to Tutankhamun,
Zahi arranged for DNA tests to be conducted
to compare the genomes from these mummies
with that of both Tut and his grandfather, Amenhotep III.
Who is the father of King Tut.
[Josh] Here, Zahi receives the results he's been waiting for.
We show you who's the father of king Tut.
So, this DNA, which is the label in blue,
is transmitted from the father to the son.
And they're all identical, you know.
- KV55, the mummy of the... - Is the father of Tutankhamun.
[Carsten] Yes, exactly.
[Zahi] I'm very happy.
[Josh] For Zahi, the DNA test
proves that the badly preserved male mummy
was none other than Tut's father
and son of Amenhotep III,
the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaten.
But not every scholar agrees that the man found in Tomb KV55, is Akhenaten.
It's almost impossible that he can be Akhenaten
for a number of reasons.
First of all, is the age at death.
The vast majority of anatomists have examined the body,
have proclaimed him to be in his 20s.
It's far too young to be Akhenaten.
[Josh] The team working with Zahi points to other evidence.
They believe a close examination of the bones
suggests an older age.
[Ashraf] With age, the discs will lose their height
and then bones will react with formation of small speckles of bones,
what we call the osteophytes.
And it's quite apparent in the spine here
that we have many of these osteophytes.
For sure, it cannot be at 20 or 20 something age group.
[Josh] Those who dispute Zahi's findings believe
that the mummy may be an enigmatic royal called Menkaure,
who reigned briefly as a co-pharaoh
in the last years of Akhenaten's rule.
[Arto] My view, and again there are various views around
is that Menkaure was Akhenaten's brother.
He died some years prior to the end of Akhenaten's reign,
having been co-region for perhaps only a year or two.
[Josh] If Menkaure was the brother of Akhenaten,
then genetically he could be the mummy in KV55.
They would share the same DNA,
so therefore it would make a difference to the overall DNA situation.
[Josh] Others believe Menkaure was a brother not of Akhenaten,
but of Tut himself.
More evidence is needed to find out
if Tut was the only male heir.
And to find that evidence,
more scrutiny is needed at Amarna,
the capital city Akhenaten founded.
We're at the small Aten temple now,
and these Aten temples
were the reason this city was erected in the first place.
For Akhenaten to show the strong relationship
between himself and the God Aten,
there would have been a lot of depictions
of the royal family through statuary and through paintings.
[Josh] Despite the information that survived on the city's stone markers,
nothing here depicts the entirety of Akhenaten's family.
In an act of defiance against his dead father,
he not only changed his name from Tutankhaten,
stripping out the Sun God Aten's name,
he restored the worship of Amun-Ra,
an abandoned Amarna, which was later destroyed.
Though some artifacts remain, others must be sought.
[Aiden] When the whole atheist experiment came to an end.
The buildings of the Amarna were demolished
and the blocks taken across the river to Ashmolean
to be used in the foundations of structures constructed by later kings.
[Josh] It was feared that the blocks would be lost forever
until Zahi tracked one down across the Nile from Amarna
in a warehouse beside the ruins of Ashmolean.
What was written on it was a revelation.
[Zahi speaking in Ancient Egyptian]
[Josh] King son of his body, his beloved Tutankhaten.
[Aiden] The king on the Ashmolean blocks
is almost certainly going to be Akhenaten,
but he's the only male king
who appears anywhere on the blocks from Ashmolean.
[Zahi] This is very important evidence
that King Tut is a son of Akhenaten.
[Josh] It's certain that this tableau was in one of the Aten temples.
And crucially, Tut is the only son mentioned
suggesting that he was indeed
the only male heir to Akhenaten.
So, the desecration of Akhenaten's face,
as well as the dismantling of his religion
and the destruction of his capital city,
may all have been the acts of the young king
who changed his name to Tutankhamun.
There is, however, someone else
who was frequently depicted with Akhenaten,
his now much more famous wife, Nefertiti.
If Tut's father can be confirmed
as the ragged mummy found in the Valley of the Kings,
could the nearby female mummy be his great royal wife, Nefertiti?
And was Nefertiti actually Tut's mother?
You may not have heard of Akhenaten,
but you've certainly heard of his powerful wife Nefertiti.
An unfinished sculpture of the Queen
has made her the most famous face of antiquity,
the ultimate icon of ancient beauty.
The bust itself is also one of the most hotly contested artifacts in the world.
You see, Nefertiti is no longer in Egypt.
Since 1924, she's been housed in Germany,
where millions of visitors to the Berlin Museum
have bought tickets to see history's most beautiful woman.
She was taken underground during World War II for safekeeping.
And in the '70s came to represent national identities
on both sides of the Berlin Wall.
She even appeared on a postage stamp
in West Germany in 1989.
Yet, as Germany continues to claim her,
Egyptian authorities have been struggling for decades
to repatriate Nefertiti back to her homeland.
So, the battle for the Great Queen continues
with neither side appearing to let up anytime soon.
In honor of the 100th anniversary
of the discovery of King Tut's tomb,
Zahi Hawass has again gathered his DNA research team
to further investigate the 18th Dynasty mummies
found in the Valley of the Kings.
Could the mummy be the famous queen, Nefertiti?
Dr. Yahia, the work that you did is incredible,
and this is why...
[Josh] The investigation reveals
that the mummy shares the same DNA as Tut
and almost certainly was his mother.
And considering that Tut's father was married to Nefertiti,
we're left with two important questions.
Is Tut's mother, Nefertiti?
And could this be her mummy?
To understand that,
we have to dive deeper into the mummy's DNA.
The genetic signature from the mummy
indicates that along with being Tut's mother,
she is also either the sister of Tut's father or his father's first cousin.
Since historians widely hold that Nefertiti was Akhenaten's cousin.
This is an important genetic mystery to solve.
With speculation swirling,
Zahi seeks further clarity from his DNA team.
Dr. Yahya, if there is any possible circumstances
that we can think that the younger lady in KV35 could be a cousin,
not a sister of Akhenaten.
A kinship analysis getting a result with 99.99
negates the possibility of being other than the daughter of Queen Tiye.
- And I'm... - [Zahi] For sure?
- For sure. - [Zahi] Yes. Okay.
[Josh] If this analysis is correct,
it means that despite Tut's father being married to Nefertiti,
Tut himself is the incestuous offspring of his father
and his father's unnamed sister.
And depictions of Tut's father with Nefertiti and her children
do seem to support this conclusion.
Nowhere is a male child visible,
only six daughters.
In Tut's own tomb, no siblings of any kind are represented.
If you look at all the art at that time,
it seemed that he was not depicted with his sisters.
[Aiden] And in that it follows
thousands of years of Egyptian precedent.
Because, again, when you show the royal family,
you never, ever show royal princes.
[Josh] But Akhenaten clearly had no problem breaking with precedent.
He did, after all, include Tut on the Amarna block found in Ashmolean.
So why exclude Prince Tut from the paintings?
God knows. But that's the whole point.
It changes in the latter years of Akhenaten.
He'd make the decision to do something no pharaoh has ever done before,
which is to put his son on the temple wall.
[Aliaa] This leads you to think that
he might have not been a son of Nefertiti,
but from a secondary wife of Akhenaten.
And that's why he wouldn't have been depicted.
[Josh] So if Tut was not one of Nefertiti's children,
then the identity of his mother remains a mystery.
According to Zahi, since she doesn't appear in any inscriptions,
it's likely that she died early, perhaps in childbirth.
To confirm this theory,
Zahi travels across the Nile from Amarna
to the burial fields of Saqqara.
Here he enters a recently opened tomb which
has been stabilized with supports to prevent collapse.
He's searching for a unique piece of evidence
which could prove that King Tut was raised
without any mother at all.
King Tut was buried in the historic Valley of the Kings.
But this royal cemetery was only in use for a few hundred years
during Egypt's new kingdom, far older and populated
with far more mummies is the necropolis of Saqqara.
I've been there many times,
and I have to say one of my favorite sites is the Serapeum,
because, well, it's so unusual, you have to love it.
It's a crypt full of oversize coffins,
each one for a sacred bull.
High priest of the atheist cult
that worshiped the God Ptah
would scour Egypt looking for a bull
that had just the right pattern of spots on its back.
Once found, the bull was venerated.
And upon its death, buried in the Serapeum.
Over the ages, at least 70 coffins were added.
You've got to wonder what went through archeologist's minds
when they opened the stone tombs,
expecting to find a mountain of gold
instead gazing back at them was a herd of mummified steer.
The lesson here, when history gets weird,
you just have to embrace it.
Saqqara, Egypt's City of the Dead.
Zahi Hawass has come to visit a tomb
that may provide further confirmation
that Tut's mother was not Queen Nefertiti.
In fact, depictions here show Tut raised as a motherless child.
[Zahi] We are looking at a unique scene for a lady.
Her name is Mia.
She had a unique title,
The Lady of the Harem.
And she was the one who nursed the god.
And the god here means Tutankhamun.
What is in the wall to tell us?
The one who is seated on the lap of Mia is Tutankhamun
is the cartouche Neb-kheperu-re,
the throne name of Tutankhamun.
[Josh] The tomb was damaged in antiquity,
destroying half of the image.
[Zahi] But we can imagine 3,000 years ago how it looked like.
Very colorful.
This is a very unique image.
We never see a scene like this
with any king of dynasty or the new kingdom in general.
It's shows that they had no mother
and Mia became the mother and the wet nurse of the king
because she's very proud to say about herself.
I nursed the god,
and the god meant Tutankhamun.
[Josh] The opulence of this tomb shows that
Mia had an important place in Tutankhamun's heart...
and perhaps she helped shape the man he grew up to become.
[Zahi] I really believe that Tutankhamun,
we can see from the scenes of him and his queen.
Love and affection.
Maybe the man did learn love from Mia
because Mia, look at her face.
She's looking at him with love,
her right hand touching him with love.
And the Boy King grow up with love.
[Josh] So, Tut grew up with Queen Nefertiti,
not as his mother, but his stepmother.
She would share responsibility for decisions in his personal life
and one key to her own personal safety,
his marriage to one of her daughters.
[Aliaa] Tutankhamun later on marries his sister Ankhesenpaaten,
it seemed that Nefertiti was trying to line up the girls for the throne.
[Sara] You have a situation where Akhenaten and Nefertiti
were left with no male heirs,
so not having a male heir kind of puts Nefertiti
in a position where she's thinking,
"How do I make sure that we stay royal in a situation
where Akhenaten was behind this revolution,
suddenly has disappeared?"
So, it could have been from a desire
to grant her and her daughters more security,
but it could have been also the most logical
and practical step to take.
[Josh] It would appear that the Queen wished to set up a rule
that would protect her
and continue the revolution started by her husband.
But Nefertiti would not be the only influence on Young Tut.
Egyptologist Aliaa Ismail is in a remote region of the Nile
at a town called Akhmim to explore the tomb of a man
who may have directed Young Tut to betray his father's legacy.
Wow.
Finally, this tomb has been carved out in the rock in the middle of nowhere.
It would have been put up here
so that it's probably out of reach.
And for sure, the individual who owned this tomb
was very rich and of high status
because he would afford
to have a tomb carved in stone all the way up here.
It says that it belongs to Overseer of Tutors, Sennedjem.
And Overseer of Tutors was no ordinary title.
It was actually referring to him
being the highest rank of tutors
and therefore the tutor of the king.
[Josh] This is the forgotten tomb of a man called Sennedjem.
And as Aliaa is about to discover,
Sennedjem had a uniquely privileged position
which gave him access to the king.
[Aliaa] If we look close because it's a little faded out,
we can see an image of a king on a chariot.
And that king is probably Tutankhamun.
But right in front of the king's face, we can see an arc.
And that arc represents a fan.
And if there is a fan, there has to be someone
holding that fan and fanning the king.
And in that case, we're going to assume
that this person is Sennedjem.
But this is not just a dull assumption.
This is referring to the title that he actually mentions on the lintel,
which says fan bearer to the king.
And being the fan bearer of the king
means basically you were stuck to the king.
And if you were stuck to the king,
then you have the king's ear.
[Josh] This puts Sennedjem in a very influential situation.
[Aliaa] If the king is learning from you, he's looking up to you.
That means you're spoon feeding him
what you want him to feel, believe and know about Egypt.
[Josh] But would a tutor be so bold
as to manipulate the entire future of Egypt,
or was he working with other more powerful forces?
King Tut was not yet 10 when he became Pharaoh,
a shockingly young age to lead a nation.
But he's not the youngest child to ascend to a throne.
Aisin-Gioro Puyi became the last emperor of China at age two,
and Mary, Queen of Scots became a national leader
when she was just six days old.
Both rulers lived much longer lives than Tut,
but neither enjoyed the same royal send off at their deaths.
Mary was thrown into prison by her rival Elizabeth I
and was beheaded at age 44.
Puyi was replaced after four years
and lived a tumultuous life in and out of power,
ultimately dying at age 61 as a commoner in 1967.
Quick movie plug here for The Last Emperor, by the way.
1987 Bernardo Bertolucci, check it out.
You can thank me later.
Anyway, Tut's life span was much shorter,
but ultimately much more productive.
He changed a religion, restored a capital city,
and today he's known as the most famous pharaoh of all time.
King Tut took the throne under the name his father gave him,
Tutankhaten, which honored the God of the sun Aten.
But we know him as Tutankhamun,
honoring the God of war and fertility, Amun.
How quickly after his ascension,
did this change of allegiance take place?
One clue lies in the Cairo museum
with one of the most enigmatic depictions of Tut
to emerge from his tomb.
[Zahi] Beautiful face.
Look at the oval shape.
It's wonderful.
Something very elegant.
[Josh] Here, Tut is shown as a young boy,
suggesting this statue was made early in his reign.
A close look at the shape of his crown
suggests that he may have already switched allegiance
from Aten to Amun by this time.
[Zahi] Look at the hat.
It's rounded.
But also, it is a typical type
of a crown of the God Amun that we see it everywhere.
If you take the cobra out,
you will think that Tutankhamun united himself was Amun.
[Josh] So, the hat itself represents a switch
from the worship of Aten to the worship of Amun.
And a reversal of everything
that Akhenaten would have hoped his son Tut would represent.
But the hat was the least of his betrayal.
Back in Thebes, Tut also returned to the Temple of Karnak,
to the priesthood of Amun.
Here at the 10th Pylon Gate of Karnak is decisive evidence
that Tut completely rejected his father, Akhenaten and his legacy.
[Zahi] We are in Pylon number ten,
which was built by Amenhotep III
and you can see this avenue of the sphinxes
is a part of the big avenue, the sphinxes
that connecting the Temple of Karnak to the Temple of Luxor.
[Josh] For millennia, a double line of ram headed sphinxes
representing the God Amun
flanked the route all the way to the Luxor temple.
But in the time of the Aten, all that changed.
When Akhenaten came to power,
he tore down the statues representing Amun
and replaced them with images of himself
and his great royal wife, Nefertiti.
The avenue of the sphinxes became the avenue of the Aten
until Tutankhamun.
Tutankhamun came and took this head out
and put the head of Amun as ram.
[Josh] Tut replaced the head of his father
with the head of the God whom Akhenaten had rejected.
It was a complete betrayal of all that Akhenaten had stood for
and an unmistakable declaration from the new king.
[Zahi] What we see everywhere is trying to tell the people,
I'm worshiping Amun,
I'm restoring the country to be back to power.
[Josh] But why would the boy who was named for the Aten
turn his back on his father's religion so quickly
and with such finality?
The answer lies back in the crowded halls of the Cairo Museum,
where a gigantic stone tablet details the sins of Akhenaten
that a young Tut set out to write.
[Zahi] The restoration stela of Tutankhamun
is very important for us to understand
the time and the life of Tutankhamun.
This is telling us what happened to the temples.
The temples were in ruins.
The gods of Egypt left Egypt.
The country collapsed.
What he did, he began to restore the temples.
I gave statues of gold to the Temple of Amun at Karnak.
I gave the priests all the wealth that they need.
Means the country came to power again under Amun.
And Tutankhamun is declaring this to all of us.
[Josh] This decision changed the course of Egyptian history,
but most experts believe that Tut did not make it on his own.
[Aiden] It's important to recognize
that Tutankhamun probably had very little to do with any of the decisions here.
He was a child, been subject to a regency,
and therefore he would have had to go along
with what his regents were telling him to do.
This approximately ten year old child
who was in charge of one of the most powerful countries in the world
at a time when Egypt was experiencing this many difficulties
and perhaps a suggestion of one of his courtiers,
maybe Ay that may be all of this
is because of Akhenaten's religious changes.
[Josh] It seems likely that at the start of his reign,
the young King Tut was surrounded by adults
telling him what to do.
Key among them was a family member named Ay,
who proclaimed himself to be Tut's advisor.
[Zahi] Tutankhamun was a boy.
He cannot think, to worship Aten or Amun,
but his advisor Ay was the one
who took him and advised him to leave Amarna
and come to the Thebes and return the image of Amun again.
[Josh] Ay was a minor member of the royal family by marriage
and inserted himself as one of the most prominent figures in the Young King's court.
And he had a clear agenda to have Tut bring back the old religion.
Tut had another formidable adviser, Horemheb,
the commander of the king's army,
who had no royal blood.
But it was Ay who was able to exert the most influence
through his association with Tut's tutor, Sennadjem.
[Aliaa] When this tomb was erected,
Ay was the main advisor of Tutankhamun.
So, Ay surrounded Tutankhamun with people from his team.
So basically, Sennedjem
in this role as fan bearer and Overseer of Tutors
was the voice of Ay inside the king's ear.
And this is why the decision was made in that time by Ay.
And he made this propaganda to tell the Egyptians
that Amun power was back.
[Josh] Most historians believe the return to worship of Amun
happened in the first years of King Tut's reign.
But as is often the case with ancient history,
contradictions have been uncovered.
Zahi has special permission to inspect the royal symbols
unique to Tut's reign, known as crooks and flails.
You know, that is six crooks and flails
found inside the tomb of Tutankhamun.
But what's amazing, if you look at this two,
one is a small one and one is a big one.
When Tutankhamun was a child in the year one
lived in Amarna, he had this crook as a child.
Why?
Because his name is written as Tutankhaten
means the living image of Aten.
But when he grew up and he became a man,
he wanted to prove to the Egyptians, I am the power.
I am the king of upper and lower Egypt.
And he changes his name here to be Tutankhamun
means the living image of Amun.
[Arto] So, this tells us that
King Tutankhamun would have made
this significant move back to traditional religion
sometime in his early teens,
such that when he was adult sized,
he had a normal size crook and flail with the name Tutankhamun.
[Josh] Whether or not Tut changed his name right away,
he appears to have embraced the return to worship of Amun completely.
He not only restored the Temple of Karnak in Luxor,
but the majestic Luxor temple itself.
This center of the cult of Amun
on the banks of the River Nile
had been stripped of its power by Akhenaten.
But Tut embraced it
and would make his support public
during one of the most important religious festivals of the year,
the Opet Feast.
Luxor Temple and the avenue of the sphinxes,
cult center of the Egyptian god, Amun.
In November 2021,
the Egyptian authorities put on a lavish spectacle
to mark the reopening of the site.
But this was not the first time
that such a procession had marked the temple's renewal.
Similar celebrations would have occurred here
when Tut returned to Egypt to the worship of Amun.
Now, Zahi has come here to spotlight a remarkable artifact
that details one of the most important rituals
that returned with Tut's great act.
[Zahi] We are actually inside the temple Luxor
and the hall that contained the 14 pillars.
But the most important, it contains
the Opet feast of Tut-Ankh-ah.
[Josh] The Opet Frieze is a monumental wall carving
that runs the entire length of the colonnaded hall
erected in the center of Luxor by Tut's grandfather, Amenhotep III.
It depicts the Opet Feast of Amun,
a fertility festival that featured
statues of the God Amun and his family.
[Zahi] The Opet Feast is a sacred feast
for the God Amun and his wife Mut
and their son Khonsu.
To make a trip from Karnak Temple to Luxor,
this happened once a year,
and this celebration continued for about 11 days
during the reign of Tutankhamun.
[Josh] The feast marked the beginning of the flood season on the Nile,
and its return under Tut
proves that he fully embraced the worship of Amun.
[Zahi] The flood for the Egyptian
meant good things for Egypt, fertility
and therefore they're waiting every year
for that trip of Amun.
Without the Amun trip from Karnak structure,
there is no flood.
[Josh] And because it was a festival heralding floods,
the statues were transported on sacred boats.
[Zahi] The priest will hold the three boats of the gods,
Amun, Mut and Khons on their shoulders around them.
Singers, dancers, the king, the queen, all the public.
Because this is the big feast in the mind of the ancient Egyptian.
[Josh] The boats were carried in a grand procession
along the avenue of the sphinxes
on a ceremonial journey from Karnak Temple to Luxor Temple.
At the time of Tutankhamun,
they would also sail along the Nile.
This is a divine marriage between Amun and Mut.
It means in the mind of the Egyptian,
the flood will come to Egypt and means fertility to the land.
[Josh] This right of fertility
may have had personal significance
to Tutankhamun and his wife, Ankhesenamun,
who statues here watch over the entrance of the Opet colonnade.
A study of more items found in Tut's tomb sheds some light on why.
[Zahi] Tutankhamun did not have children.
And we know that two fetuses were found inside the treasure room.
They died on birth.
[Josh] This is one of the most poignant discoveries
from the tomb of Tutankhamun.
The mummified remains of two miscarried fetuses.
So, the fertility rites of the Opet festival
may have been especially important to Tut and his sister bride.
[Zahi] I really think that the reason
they're depicted here
is since Amun is giving fertility to the land,
Amun could also give them fertility.
So, we really have to put ourselves in Tutankhamun's shoes.
[Sara] Particularly as he was trying to navigate
his transition from childhood to adulthood, his marriage,
diplomacy, his health condition, everything.
It could have been easy for Tutankhamen
to listen to his advisors, to go back to the old ways.
[Arto] So, it might very well be
that as a consequence of this
that Tutankhamun embraced
the return to traditional religion so enthusiastically.
It's only human that when we're facing
really, really difficult times, then...
then we then try to find a solution to that,
even if that means embracing a new belief system.
[Josh] Tut and Ankhesenamun miscarriages
likely were caused by their incestuous ancestry.
[Arto] Intermarriage, especially long term over multiple generations,
can have extremely adverse effects
on the new generation being born.
Congenital diseases, physical disabilities,
all kinds of things you don't want.
[Josh] This also affected Tut's own health.
[Sara] He had a cleft palate
and a lot of health impairments as well,
due to the fact that his parents were related by blood.
[Josh] He also had problems with his feet
caused by an inherited syndrome called Kohler's disease.
This was discovered when Zahi and his team
conducted a CT scan of King Tut's mummy.
Now, armed with the latest technology,
Zahi examines the many myths
that swirl around Tutankhamun's physical condition.
From what we saw from the CT scan, he was not healthy.
In the sense he has some anomaly,
for example, regarding his left foot.
It is something a congenital malformation
that he was born with.
The toes are inclined inwards,
a deformity of the foot.
Because of that, he cannot walk properly
and probably used some walking canes.
[Zahi] This is why he had 130 sticks in his tomb.
One of them he said I made it by myself.
[Sara] Amongst his 130 walking canes.
Some do have evidence of use.
They are a good example of us having a sneak peek
of what he must have been like in his life.
[Josh] Like so much about Tut,
the revelation that he had disabilities has sparked intense debate.
He is depicted all over his tomb
as an active huntsmen and charioteer.
But some dismiss the art as mere propaganda.
[Aiden] One has to bear in mind that Egyptian art is very rarely original.
All the pictures we have of Tutankhamun,
whether they are actively hunting or in warfare,
all have parallels from earlier periods.
[Sara] Considering Tutankhamun had cleft foot
and he was quite frail.
I think it's quite hard to have a figure like that
participate in campaigns and in hunting episodes.
[Josh] Many of the depictions of King Tut riding into war
or on the hunt are indeed quite formulaic.
But hidden within the shrines
that surrounded his sarcophagus
was one uniquely personal item
that might completely shatter our beliefs
about the physical abilities of the Boy King.
One of the most prized treasures in ancient Egypt
was not silver or gold, but instead the humble ostrich.
Not native to the Nile, these huge birds
were often given as a tribute to Egypt
by conquered lands such as Nubia and Ethiopia.
Rare and exotic ostriches were highly coveted by the elite.
Women turned their eggs into perfume holders and jewelry.
Royal doctors ground them up for medicine.
Priests placed feathers on coffins
to help lift up mummies and speed their journey to the afterlife.
But only a pharaoh could acquire enough plumes
to create the greatest treasure of all,
a royal fan to keep him cool in the hot Egyptian weather.
In the last ten years,
CT scans of King Tut's feet
have lent credence to the theory
that the Boy King was so weak
and had such significant disabilities
that he could not ride a chariot to hunt or go to war.
But back in 1922,
as Howard Carter began dismantling the shrines
nested around the sarcophagus in King Tut's burial chamber,
he discovered a telltale item
that suggests that Tut might have been much stronger
than modern scholars give him credit for.
[Arto] There's this fascinating, very long fan,
the kind that you see in movies and things
where there's people fanning the king.
It's topped with ostrich feathers.
And at the top you have a scene
of the king hunting ostriches.
And it gets better.
There's an inscription on it
that says feathers of ostriches brought by His Majesty
when he was hunting ostriches.
So, we have here this fascinating inscription
that's telling us that Tutankhamen, in fact, hunted ostriches.
It shows him hunting.
Tools inside the tombs, shows him hunting.
Even with all what he suffered of physical problems,
he still... he loved hunting.
[Josh] In Giza, more evidence lies in the shadow of the Sphinx
at one of the most popular tourist sites in Egypt.
Near the stalls of a bazaar below the Sphinx is a pile of dried mud.
Unremarkable, except that it houses an extraordinary secret.
[Zahi] This mud brick, it's nothing to the public.
But for us it's very important
because this can make us to reconstruct history.
This is the remains of the hunting lodge of Tutankhamun.
We call it Palace because it's royal.
When this was excavated,
they found the cartouche of Tutankhamun on it
and the cartouche of Ankh-es-en-Amun.
[Josh] In truth, this palace of Tut and his queen
is a modest mud brick building
and hard to distinguish because so little of it remains.
[Zahi] I close my eyes.
We can imagine a palace for the King and the Queen.
And they depicted scenes of Tutankhamun
and the cartouches of Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun.
I think from a window he could be looking
at the pyramid of Khafre.
That palace could be beautiful,
shining in the shadow of the pyramids and the Sphinx.
I really believe that the existence of this palace
is an important evidence
that actually Tutankhamun hunted wild animals.
[Josh] It's a dramatic image.
The young pharaoh riding his chariot across the valley,
indulging in the sport of kings.
These depictions show that in ancient times,
physical limitations did not stop Tut from enjoying his life.
[Aiden] I don't think one should go into the whole thing
of being a disabled person
and all the negative sides of that,
particularly nowadays with Paralympians,
we now recognize that in no way does it mean
you're going to have a less active life
if you don't want to have a less active life?
Exactly, because Egyptians knew
that to be sick was part of being normal.
[Aiden] Tutankhamun is a teenager.
If he's been an active hunter all his life,
he's not going to not be an active hunter
for as long as he possibly can do.
[Josh] Back at the Cairo Museum,
Zahi has spotted an ornamental box
that may suggest how Tut was able to maintain his active life.
By making sure to rest.
[Zahi] This box tells us about Tutankhamun's health.
His seated shooting arrow and his queen down
also was love and affection, giving him an arrow.
To my knowledge, as an Egyptologist,
I have never seen any scene of a king
seated while hunting at all.
It confirms to me
why Tutankhamun had 130 sticks in his tomb.
It was really keen to hold the stick and walk with it.
It was very important for him that stick
because he was not healthy.
[Josh] This could even explain the existence of the hunting lodge
in the first place.
[Sara] I think it's not always
so straightforward of Tutankhamun
about how much he was physically capable of doing,
but the hunting lodge indicates that
there could have been an attempt at him
actually partaking in these activities.
He is the only king
that built hunting lodge because he needs rest.
All the kings at Al-Wadi al-Jadid, they did not do that except him
because he had some physical problems.
He needs to rest.
[Josh] The very presence of the hunting lodge
could prove that Tutankhamun went hunting
despite having problems with his mobility.
[Sara] It could be also trying really hard
to show that Tutankhamen was physically capable
of ruling Egypt through being a huntsman.
[Josh] Or perhaps his physical challenges
did not interfere with his movements
as much as has been suggested.
Zahi's bone expert, Dr. Ashraf,
believes he may have spotted something
that suggests that by the time Tut was going hunting,
he was no longer in pain.
By the time of King Tut in the new kingdom,
hunting was an activity reserved for the king and his entourage
as a way to display strength and valor.
For the elite, game reserves were set up
to chase lions from chariots or kill crocodiles in swamps.
But for this great spectacle of bravery, the Egyptian nobles,
well, there's no nice way of putting it, they cheated.
To ensure the humans prevailed
extremely unsporting measures were taken.
The animal's legs were often tied together to make them easy targets.
There's even a papyrus from the time that suggests
that dead animals were moved across the swamp by servants,
ringers to ensure a successful hunt.
On the other hand, for farmers and laborers,
wild game was expensive and hard to find,
so it was rarely on the menu.
Instead, they lived mostly off of bread, vegetables, dried fish
and the world's first known recipe, beer.
The CT scans of Tutankhamun's feet
contain an often overlooked detail,
which might explain how Tut could have been an active hunter
despite suffering from various ailments.
Dr. Ashraf shares his insight with Zahi Hawass.
[Ashraf] Okay.
Now we have here the CTs of the feet,
and you can see that the acquired disease
is this tiny little piece of bone.
Some people call it Freiburg's disease.
This happens when the blood supply is diminished to this area.
So, this piece of bone becomes dead.
Usually this is a teenage...
- [Zahi] A teenager? - Disease.
Yes, maybe 12 or 13 years, up to 19 years.
Sometimes it's great pain.
He couldn't do anything, even walking on his foot.
[Josh] This suggests that Tut would have started
to experience symptoms a few years
after he ascended to the throne
around the same time that he changed his name
and turned against the religion of his father.
[Ashraf] This is a self-limiting disease,
meaning it takes maybe one or two years
till it becomes pain free
and well, that he can walk again on this foot.
[Josh] So, if the onset of the disease was at age 12,
Tut could have been free of pain by the time he was 14,
leaving him able to hunt and run for the next five years until his death.
But what then caused his premature death at just 19 years of age?
The state of Tutankhamun's mummy
has prompted many theories about how he died.
[Aiden] First of all, they're appeared to be a patch
at the back of the skull,
which seemed consistent with him
having had a blow to the back of the head.
And there are all these theories about the fact
that he was murdered
or that he had been killed in battle.
[Aiden] The whole front of the chest of the mummy,
including the heart, was missing,
which led to various theories
that he might have died from some kind of crushing injury to the chest.
Gored by hippopotamus,
kicked by a horse, run over by chariot.
A whole range of possibilities have been put in the literature.
[Josh] But an examination of Tut's mummy by Zahi's team
offers a surprisingly simple explanation
for the mutilated condition of his remains,
one that traces back not to the time of Tut's death,
but to Howard Carter's discovery of the tomb.
When Carter opened up the burial chamber,
he discovered that the body of Tutankhamun
was encased within three magnificent golden coffins,
sealed within the sarcophagus at its center.
[Zahi] Each one was inside the other one,
and therefore he had to do the police
and take one coffin by one coffin.
These photographs that we see of Howard Carter
taking the three coffins out
show how hard work it was for him to open the burial chamber.
It was really a difficult job.
The whole process of going from opening the sarcophagus
until actually getting to the mummy
is something like two years.
Although a part of that is taken up with his dealings with the courts.
[Josh] And in 1924, halfway through the process
of removing Tut from his coffin,
the Egyptian court locked Howard Carter out of the tomb.
The trouble was that Sir Carter had always been a prickly individual
and this culminated with a major falling out with the Egyptian authorities.
It was over something quite minor,
but there was a major blow up
and he effectively decided to close the tomb
and say, "Just get on with it. I've had it."
[Josh] Carter walked out of the tomb,
leaving the coffins still hanging above the sarcophagus.
[Zahi] This was February in 1924.
And after that, he went to the States to give lectures.
I think that the Carter's rather rash flouncing away from the tomb,
played into the hands of those who were against him.
[Josh] The next year found Carter embroiled in legal suits
and countersuits with the Egyptian government to regain access.
He was not allowed back into the tomb until January of 1925,
and it wasn't until October
that he was ready to lift the lid
on Tutankhamun's final coffin.
When he opens the innermost coffin,
what he finds in front of him is a black mass,
relieved by a brilliant golden mask.
[Zahi] Now Howard Carter try to take the mask out.
He couldn't.
Because when the Egyptian buried King Tut quickly,
they put in resin,
and the resins made the mask stuck to the mummy.
[Aiden] So, it had to be fairly brutal, shall we say,
about removing it, including cutting the body in half
across the thorax and then gradually removing the body piecemeal effectively.
And he damaged the mummy to 18 pieces.
I don't think Carter had any other option.
It was either leave the mummy exactly where it was
or pull the wrappings off
and then leave the whole thing stuck in.
Or take the... take the drastic approach.
[Zahi] Now, me as an archeologist,
I imagined myself as Howard Carter and I found this mask.
Am I going to leave the mask on the mummy
or I will do what Howard Carter did?
Honestly, I will do
what Howard Carter did.
[Josh] The damage done to the mummy by Carter
led many to believe that Tutankhamun had been murdered.
But Zahi Hawass' CT scans tell the full story.
[Ashraf] They could see a loose bone inside the skull.
So, they assumed that this was the cause of his death,
murdered by a blow to the head.
And a depressed bone just get inside the skull.
- Is it true? - [Ashraf] No, on the contrary.
Because this piece of bone came
when they tried to remove the golden mask.
They broke it, and this piece of bone
just got inside the skull
because of what Carter did to the mummy.
Not before he died.
Because if this piece of bone was there
before embalming or before mummification,
it would have been stuck to the resin inside the skull.
Can we say, now we are sure
that Tutankhamun was not murdered?
Yes.
[Josh] But if that's true, why did Tutankhamun die
at such an early age?
And what could have killed the Boy King?
Over 3,000 years since his burial
and 100 years since the discovery of his tomb,
questions remain about the exact cause of King Tut's death.
Now, in their studies of Tut's mummy,
Dr. Zahi Hawass team
believes they've found the answer in a surprising location,
a compound fracture above Tut's left knee.
[Ashraf] What made this fracture peculiar
is that we noticed two things.
There was a big wound at the site of the fracture
so that when they did the mummification process,
the resin is liquid, went inside the wound
and get into the edges of the bone.
All the other fractures were induced by Howard Carter.
[Josh] The ancient wound seems to have been infected.
[Ashraf] He might have developed infection
that reached the blood.
We call it septicemia.
And septicemia might be one of the causes of his death.
[Josh] On its own, this infection might not have killed King Tut,
but it does not appear to be his only affliction.
During their studies, Zahi's team discovers the markers
for a virulent disease lurking in Tut's body.
He had malaria.
In the presence of high inbreeding
and malaria and weak health.
It might predispose him to infection that can kill him with septicemia.
[Josh] So, after all the outrageous theories,
the simple truth may be that Tutankhamun died of malaria
complicated by blood poisoning due to a leg fracture.
But what caused the fracture?
Is it possible that Tutankhamun had an accident?
Maybe he was riding a chariot.
[Ashraf] Of course. Any type of accident might be the cause. Of course.
Now it has to be a speed because of the big wound.
So, if he is riding a chariot,
this makes more sense than just falling down on the ground.
[Josh] Though impossible to prove,
Zahi would like to believe that the Young King Tut died
trying to show he could ride a chariot once again.
I really think that he was riding a chariot in the desert of Memphis.
I'm sure that he died in an accident in the Valley of Giza.
[Josh] The exact cause of Tut's death
may never truly be known,
but we do know that his court was surprised by it.
Few could have been prepared for the Young King to die
just ten years into his reign.
The small size of his tomb, seemingly not built for a king,
suggests he was placed there in haste.
But the cramped space was still packed
with more than 5,000 artifacts.
Some of the most beautiful were stored in the treasury
behind the burial chamber,
guarded by the Jackal God, Anubis.
Among them was a magnificent alabaster cabinet
containing the canopic jars
that held King Tut's internal organs.
This is considered to be one of the most beautiful objects from the tomb.
Nestled inside were four miniature coffinets,
each holding one of Tut's organs.
But hidden within them is a secret that shows
just how unprepared his people were
for Tutankhamun's untimely death.
Zahi has gained permission to open one of these fragile treasures
to study what's inside.
[Zahi] This is another beautiful object.
It is a small version of the coffins of the big ones.
Look, the vulture and the cobra,
the flail and the cloak and the beautiful inscription.
Nebkheperure, the third name of Tutankhamun.
But what's important here, look at the faces
are not faces of a boy.
They are faces of a woman.
Not really for Tutankhamun at all.
It has to be for someone else.
My proof!
If I open this,
you will see how the name Tutankhamun
was put instead of another name Kheperkheperure
which I believe could be the name of Queen Nefertiti or Neferneferuaten.
[Josh] It does appear that Tut's cartouche was placed on top of another one.
But these coffins that were clearly made for a ruler
as only pharaohs were depicted with the double crown
and crook and flail included here.
And the only known woman
who could have held that status is Nefertiti.
The identification Neferneferuaten remained a certain amount of debate.
I think the majority would argue it's Nefertiti
because Nefertiti's full name was Neferneferuaten Nefertiti.
[Josh] The Luxor temple holds another clue
that supports the theory that Nefertiti was a pharaoh.
A pair of blocks bear a very telling image.
We can see here a unique scene for Nefertiti.
She's smiting an enemy.
She's smiting an enemy in ancient Egypt
was actually the task of a kingship,
not the task of a queenship.
I do believe it strongly, based on this scene
that the Nefertiti ruled after Akhenaten
and she became a king.
[Josh] Whether or not she was Nefertiti,
the mysterious Neferneferuaten did not take her treasures with her to the afterlife.
And Nefertiti herself soon disappeared from the historical record.
Her death and burial remaining a mystery to this day.
Whoever the pharaoh was,
her Canopic jars, coffin and other ritual items
were usurped by Tutankhamun.
It also seems almost certain that the tomb
in which Tut was laid to rest was never intended to house a pharaoh.
To understand why,
Zahi is visiting a very different tomb next door.
Just a few yards away from the tomb of Tutankhamun
in the Valley of the Kings lies the tomb of Ramesses II,
one of the greatest pharaohs in all of Egyptian history.
This tomb has been under renovation for the last two years.
It's a monumental task, so to speak.
That's because the tomb was flooded in antiquity.
When we came to excavate this tomb,
we found that the flood
that entered the inside actually brought
stone rubble and sand everywhere.
All the scenes were completely damaged.
We had to take more than 700,000 square feet
of stone rubble and sand
away and make major important conservation and restoration
to the scenes that we discovered.
The restoration team have to start cleaning the wall.
They use chemical material to make the scene stable.
You have to be very careful in looking at every piece
because if you are not careful,
you can lose a part of the scene.
This is the first time, actually,
that any camera for a documentary entered inside this tomb.
[Josh] The vast size of the tomb
makes the restoration job especially challenging.
The Tomb of Ramesses II is the largest tomb
in the Valley of the Kings.
And we can see this in the burial chamber.
This is huge.
It's hundreds of times bigger than the tomb of Tutankhamun.
And it has also rooms on the sides for the furniture.
[Josh] This is the grand scale
on which an Egyptian royal tomb is meant to be built.
So why is Tut's so tiny?
Egyptologist Aliaa Ismail is inspecting the paintings on the walls
of the pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb.
[Aliaa] Tut's tomb is very tiny
because probably it was unfinished.
Why else would he be buried in such a small tomb?
[Josh] Aliaa is part of the Factum Foundation
working to record the paint work in several key tombs in the Valley of the Kings
so that replicas of them can be produced.
They use sophisticated 3-D scanning to capture the images on the walls.
3-D scanning allows you to get all the intricate details of the surface,
getting out the cracks and every little detail
that one would not be able to recognize with their own eyes.
[Josh] Aliaa's work is so detailed
that the replicas it helps create look identical to the real thing.
Like the tomb she's standing in now.
Actually, this is a facsimile.
[Josh] This isn't the real tomb of Tutankhamun.
It's a replica built next to Howard Carter's house
outside the Valley of the Kings.
The duplicate was built to reduce the foot traffic
that's wearing away the real tomb.
Tourists can visit and appreciate the art
without harming the actual tomb.
[Josh] In the process of 3-D scanning Tut's tomb for replication,
Aliaa found something unexpected.
Looking here at the head of the boy king,
and now we go to 3-D.
So we're looking at a render,
looking at the brush marks
that we see here,
we are very positive
that the plaster was still wet when the paint went on it.
That shows that it has been done in a rush.
[Josh] But to Zahi Hawass,
Tut's burial chamber tells a darker story
than mere haste, one of greed and rivalry.
No. How it can be a rush?
You have 70 days to make this mummy.
They were not rushing the mummification,
and therefore, I think 70 days were enough to make the burial of a king.
[Josh] So if it took more than two months to prepare Tut's mummy for burial,
why wasn't his tomb ready when it was time for him to be laid to rest?
Another tomb a few miles away
in the West Valley of the Kings offers insight.
Strikingly, it bears a strong similarity to the tomb
in which Tut was buried.
This is the tomb that was used for the burial of King Ay,
who came to the throne after Tutankhamun.
[Josh] Ay, although only a minor member of the royal family,
was one of Tut's primary advisors,
and his tomb is eerily similar to Tutankhamun's.
Look at the niches
that exactly isn't the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Look at the scene.
The goddess Nut in front of Ay.
She's giving him a ritual called NiNi.
It's exactly the same scene in the tomb of Tutankhamun.
And finally, in the scene of the first hour of the night
of the book called Am-Tuat.
We can distinguish 12 baboons
that represent that 12 hours of the night,
looking south six of them and other six are looking north.
This scene is an exact copy in the tomb of Tutankhamun.
I really think the conclusion is very clear.
These two tombs are similar, and this is why I do believe
100 percent, that this tomb was mainly made for Tutankhamun.
[Josh] Zahi's theory is that when Tut died unexpectedly,
the larger tomb meant for him was nowhere near ready.
And therefore, in 70 days, they need to prepare this tomb.
[Josh] The only tomb that could be ready in time
appears to have been a small burial site for a royal advisor
being constructed in the Valley of the Kings.
So whose tomb did Tut take over?
It would have to be someone with a royal connection.
The most likely candidate is Ay.
Back at Tut's tomb, Zahi explains more.
I really believe that the tomb in the West Valley of the Kings
was originally the tomb of Tutankhamun.
And this tomb was originally was the tomb of Ay.
[Josh] To fit all of Tutankhamun's treasures,
the tomb had to be enlarged,
and on the back wall of the burial chamber is a clue,
which could explain why Ay might want to do this in a hurry.
Here Ay is depicted performing a key ritual
known as the opening of the mouth,
which ushered the dead pharaoh into the afterlife.
We don't really understand
what the full mechanics were becoming a pharaoh.
So as far as we can tell, it was by doing that.
But Ay became legitimate pharaoh.
Ay wants to show to the public
that Tutankhamen gave me the privilege
to take him to the afterlife.
And therefore, with this scene,
Ay is telling the public and the king
who came to the throne after the death of Tutankhamun.
[Josh] But according to texts from the time
the heir to Tutankhamun
was actually supposed to be Ay's non-royal rival,
the General Horemheb.
So what happened?
The reason why Ay got the succession rather than Horemheb
may well-be because he was in the right place at the right time.
We know there's military issues going on at the time of Tutankhamun's death.
It might have been that Horemheb was out of the country.
So Ay, King Ay was a bit sneaky
because he knew that his position
and Horemheb's position was sort of equal.
So they were rivals for this position
of being successor to the throne.
So for him, in order to get there and do it first,
he had to rush just before Horemheb arrived
and can object to anything.
[Josh] Horemheb had no power to seize the throne from Ay.
So he waited for his turn,
which came four years later at Ay's death.
Ay may have gotten the grand tomb,
but his legacy was not well respected by his successors.
Look at this tomb
and see the destruction of the cartouche of Ay everywhere
because they hate it,
the people and the kings of the Amarna period.
By this time, Akhenaten has already been written out of history.
Ay has now become persona non grata
just leaving Tutankhamun this island in the middle of all this.
The wrath of Horemheb should have been directed only at Ay and Akhenaten.
[Josh] After all, Tutankhamun restored the worship of Amun
to the temples of Karnak and Luxor.
But at the avenue of the sphinxes,
one marking suggests that he may have rejected Tut as well.
Today, the avenue of the sphinxes
is one of the city of Luxor's most popular attractions.
It runs two miles long
and in its heyday displayed over 1,350 ram-headed sphinxes.
For centuries, though, it lay buried and forgotten.
When the gods of Egypt fell silent during the Roman occupation,
the road was swallowed by sand.
Then, over the centuries,
modern homes and concrete streets obscured it further.
Slowly, it sank below the water table,
making excavations difficult.
Today it has at last been drained and restored
and visitors can stride down the same road
that King Tut used on the day he became king.
Tucked in a corner of the avenue of the sphinxes
is a faded inscription that hints at a seismic shift
in the story of Tutankhamun.
This is the cartouche of Horemheb.
But it shows that this originally
was the cartouche of Tutankhamun.
Neb-kheperu-re.
This is the name of Tutankhamun, the throne name.
Now, Horemheb came
and he put his name
above that cartouche.
And you can see the signs of Horemheb is clear here.
[Josh] Though, Horemheb was commander of Egypt's military under Tut.
It appears that he intended to obscure Tut's name
from all of the major monuments that represented his reign.
Why?
The answer could be linked to the worship of the God Amun.
People can say that Horemheb wanted to remove the name of Tutankhamun.
I say the opposite.
I think that the two cartouches can tell us
that the two kings wanted to be united with Amun.
Horemheb's decision must have been quite difficult
because he had no royal blood.
He was simply a commoner.
He knew that he couldn't pass himself
as belonging to a royal family
because there was no royal blood there.
And so he says that he was the one who influenced Tutankhamun
to restore the old system.
Horemheb wanted to show the Egyptians,
"I am demolishing anything connected
with the Amarna kings
and I am restoring the image of Egypt.
I am the one who is returning the power of Egypt back.
I am Horemheb."
[Josh] While it may not have been his intention,
Horemheb's removal of Tut's name from monuments
contributed to his near erasure from Egyptian history
by the time of the Ramesses dynasty.
But it may also have been the reason
Tut's treasure survived the tomb raiders of antiquity.
Mother Nature and some good luck played a role as well.
A few months after the burial,
a flash flood came through the valley
and put a thick layer above the tomb.
[Josh] 200 years after Tut's death,
the tomb of Ramesses VI
was built on the slope above Tut's tomb.
Rubble from its construction slid down the hill
to further obscure Tut's burial.
Therefore, by the time you get to the time of the tomb robbers,
the whole thing, it's so deeply buried.
It's not where a tomb, I would think, to look.
[Josh] And because he was forgotten,
King Tut's treasures lay waiting for history to find them once again.
I think the very ironic thing is that
Ay and Horemheb tried so hard
to eradicate Akhenaten, Nefertiti and Tutankhamun
from ancient Egyptian history that it backfired
and they became the most well-known ancient Egyptian figures
and one of the most sensational finds of the 20th century.
[Josh] We've come a long way in the 100 years
since Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun.
We've used science to reveal the nature of his birth,
as well as the secrets of his tomb and the frailty of his body.
The years of investigation
have generated as many questions as answers
and created new assumptions about the life of the boy king.
But drawing on his unique experience,
Zahi has been able to lay some of these to rest,
searching for clues that may be hidden in plain sight.
While the drama of religious upheavals
and the splendor of gold in Tut's tomb are captivating,
the humanity of the little boy who took the throne cannot be overlooked.
When you think about the fact that Tutankhamen ascended the throne at the age of nine,
surrounded by all these different adults
who had their own agendas,
it must have been very hard,
especially as a young child
who had a lot of health impairments.
During the reign of Tutankhamun,
there was a lot happening,
most of it not good.
On a personal level, we know, for example,
Tutankhamun had two stillborn children.
Sometimes on a human level,
I think that Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun
were probably collateral damage in this whole upheaval.
It must have been really challenging to grow up in that environment,
and that could have made them latch onto each other psychologically.
[Josh] The man who made them famous, Howard Carter,
died in 1939.
On his gravestone is a quotation
from the Wishing Cup of Tutankhamun.
"May your life force ka live,
may your past live one million years,
one who loves Thebes and dwells in it...
your face see the good place."
The man loved the Thebes,
this why God rewarded him with this great discovery.
[Josh] And Zahi believes that even greater discoveries
are still out there waiting to be found.
[Zahi] I'm a very lucky archeologist.
In my career, I made major discoveries.
I'm looking right now in the Valley of the Kings
for missing tombs,
such as the tomb of Amenhotep I,
Thutmose II, Ramesses VIII, all the queens in dynasty 18.
I feel in my heart that before I end my career,
I'm going to discover an intact tomb
in the Valley of the Kings.
Perhaps Zahi is right.
And there is another tomb out there
forgotten by history and hidden by nature.
But for the moment, Tut's tomb reigns alone.
Until another unspoiled treasure is found,
Zahi's personal mission
is to solve the lingering mysteries of Tut's tomb
and to continue to investigate
the many questions still waiting to be answered
about the most famous pharaoh in history,
the enigmatic boy King Tutankhamun.