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00:00Less than a mile from the legendary Valley of the Kings, in a forgotten valley, archaeologists
00:12sift through desert sand.
00:16They are trying to solve the mystery of why eleven of Egypt's greatest rulers were found
00:21here altogether in an abandoned tomb far from their original burial place.
00:42The Theban Necropolis, home to the world-famous Valley of the Kings.
00:50Tribes from the New Kingdom, Egypt's Golden Age, built their lavish tombs here for close
00:56to 500 years.
00:59But the mummies of many of the era's mightiest rulers, like Seti I and Ramesses the Great,
01:08were discovered by archaeologists in a different valley, altogether in a single unmarked tomb.
01:17Archaeologists named this location the Royal Cache.
01:21Why they ended up here is a mystery.
01:25Now across Egypt, experts are uncovering new evidence about the origins of Egypt's Golden
01:32Age, and why so many of its most powerful rulers were buried together in this forgotten
01:40valley.
01:51Archaeologist José Ramón Pérez Archino is the co-director of a Spanish-Egyptian team
01:57excavating the valley beneath the Royal Cache tomb.
02:02So the idea today is Carmen and Cruz, you will continue cleaning.
02:07Antonio, Paco, Shaima, good luck.
02:11Thank you very much, let's go.
02:15José has been working in this valley for the last seven years.
02:19This is the question of an archaeologist, you find something and say, what brought you
02:23here?
02:24Why are you here?
02:25If you're not curious about that, what's the point of all this?
02:29He has long been fascinated by the mystery of the royal mummies.
02:36Archaeologists first entered the Royal Cache in 1881.
02:42They discovered a roughly hewn tunnel carved over 230 feet into the limestone rock of the
02:48mountain.
02:51Unlike most other royal tombs, it had no decoration inside, but it was crammed full of grand coffins
03:01and over 40 mummies, including 11 famous pharaohs and six queens, along with evidence that ancient
03:10Egyptians moved these mummies here from their original tombs in antiquity.
03:19Despite its famous inhabitants, there has been little excavation in the valley surrounding
03:24the Royal Cache tomb.
03:28Archaeologists thought they knew why the ancient Egyptians brought so many of their royal mummies
03:33here, to a tomb which was repurposed to hold them.
03:37The general opinion was that this was a hiding place, a secret place nobody knew about, and
03:42the bodies of the royal mummies were here deposited in order to protect them from robbers.
03:51At the end of the New Kingdom, Egypt fell into economic ruin.
03:56Tombs in the Valley of the Kings were robbed for their treasures.
04:01Most archaeologists believe that to keep them safe, the mummies were moved to this valley,
04:06as it was a secret site.
04:09But José has a radically different theory.
04:12Our first inclination is to think that the bodies were brought here because the place
04:17was important, not the other way around.
04:20José's controversial new idea is that the ancient Egyptians moved the New Kingdom royals
04:26to this location, not because it was secret, but because this apparently featureless valley
04:33was actually an important, sacred site.
04:37Now he's on the hunt for proof.
04:44This season, José and his 60-strong team will be excavating the huge drifts of windblown
04:50sand at the base of the valley cliffs, and analyzing the rocky walls that surround them.
05:00It's not an easy task.
05:02The valley is remote, and the team has to shift the sand by hand.
05:23They hope that these big stones can provide clues to human activity in the valley.
05:32In Cairo, Egyptologist Alia Ismail has come to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization.
05:50She wants to examine the mummies found in the royal cache, to see what clues they hold
05:55to the origins of the New Kingdom, and why they all ended up in one tomb.
06:02It's amazing seeing these mummies up close.
06:06They're basically my ancestors, and they have played a great role in Egypt's history.
06:12In the period just before the rise of the New Kingdom, Egypt was in chaos, fractured
06:18into territories held by rival warring dynasties.
06:24Alia wants to examine a mummy that was found in the royal cache, of a pharaoh who lived
06:29in this tumultuous time.
06:32Wow, that looks painful.
06:36This is Sekhenemreita's mummy.
06:41There is a slash going through his skull.
06:45The markings on the head are very deep, and this kind of wound you would only get from
06:51an axe.
06:53It makes it obvious that he has been to war.
06:58It's likely the head wound caused Sekhenemre's death, and it also reveals clues to who killed
07:05him.
07:06Experts have matched the wound to West Asian weaponry.
07:13While Sekhenemreitao controlled land in central Egypt, a group called the Hyksos ruled in
07:19the north.
07:21They were originally from Western Asia.
07:25The Hyksos and Sekhenemre went to war.
07:29Many archaeologists believe Sekhenemre led the offensive himself.
07:38But the war went badly, and he was captured by his enemies on the battlefield.
07:46Experts believe that his killer aimed lethal blows to Sekhenemre's face, and he died from
07:53his injuries.
07:54Looking at the mummy of Sekhenemreita, he's very different from the other royal mummies
08:03that are here, which are very pristine and well-preserved.
08:08It looks like he was on the front line of the battlefield, defending Egypt from the
08:14Hyksos.
08:15The Hyksos ruled in the north for a hundred years.
08:19Despite his bravery, Sekhenemre was unable to defeat them and reunite Egypt.
08:25But he laid the groundwork for the pharaoh who did.
08:29Alia wants to understand more about the ruler who reunited Egypt and ushered in a new era
08:35of peace and prosperity.
08:38So she decides to travel 350 miles south to search the tomb of a common soldier.
08:48In Saqqara, archaeologist Mohamed Magahed is excavating a set of intriguing new tombs.
08:59It's always very nice to drive in the morning.
09:02The air is fresh.
09:03You are still fresh.
09:04You are not tired yet.
09:07And you keep thinking about what you will do during the day.
09:11Mohamed has spent the last 15 years digging at Saqqara.
09:16Five years ago, he made a remarkable discovery.
09:20The ornate tomb of Khuy, a high-ranking official who lived around a thousand years before the
09:26rise of the New Kingdom.
09:30He believes there are also New Kingdom graves hidden nearby.
09:36He's on a mission to find them and understand who was buried here and why.
09:43We believe we have here a series of tombs.
09:46We can see that they are built in line with Khuy and perhaps they are dated from the New
09:50Kingdom.
09:53Mohamed's team begins digging at the westernmost tomb in the row.
09:58They start by clearing wind-blown sand from the entrance to the tomb.
10:04We will do number one and then we will proceed to the east.
10:08Those are like watermelon.
10:10You will never know what is inside.
10:12You will never know if it is sweet or it's not sweet.
10:14So we have to dig and we will see underneath.
10:17Perhaps we are lucky and today we'll have something interesting.
10:23I can see Old Kingdom pottery, New Kingdom pottery.
10:27So it's mixed fill.
10:28This could be a sign that the tomb was robbed.
10:34The mix of pottery makes it much harder for Mohamed to date the burial.
10:43Before long, the team is close to entering the first tomb.
10:47We are trying to be as gentle as we can with working with mud bricks, but sometimes bolting
10:52ceilings like this, they don't hold so much, then it might collapse.
10:57You could see some holes, some cracks.
11:00Emptying the tomb could cause the weakest central point of the ceiling to disintegrate.
11:07Mohamed decides to document the tomb now before the team continues excavating.
11:15When it's small areas like this, we do 3D scanning.
11:18It's much faster.
11:20It's very accurate.
11:22Archaeologist Hanna Vymazalova uses an app on her smartphone to scan the tomb.
11:30It takes hundreds of photographs, stitching them together to create a 3D model.
11:39Now I'm looking at the 3D model of the tomb.
11:45You can actually see very nicely here how it was constructed.
11:54The team has photographed the chamber just in time.
11:59Yes, as we expected, it cracked and it's still more, it will more crack here.
12:08I'm thinking even we take it by ourselves before it collapses on somebody.
12:20In the Theban necropolis, the Spanish-Egyptian excavation team is pulling more white limestone
12:28blocks out of the ground in the valley where the royal mummies were found.
12:37Ah, that's the stone I like.
12:42They store all the stones together on the dig site.
12:46Look at that, that corner.
12:48That is a corner.
12:49That is a corner.
12:50They show constructional features like corners, like angles.
12:54So they belong to a structure that was destroyed.
12:57The white limestone doesn't match the natural rock in the cliffs above.
13:03It suggests that a man-made monument may once have stood here.
13:08But Jose needs more evidence to be sure.
13:11They may have been either fragments of a statue, fragments of a shrine, but it's early days.
13:18The dig team has a long day ahead, extracting the blocks from the sandy landscape.
13:22But music lover Jose has a way of motivating the workers.
13:29Hello, good morning, everybody.
13:31Here, Radio C2 wishing you a very good day and with you a new musical choice for today.
13:39Have a good day.
13:41Every day at eight in the morning, we play some music.
13:44It's a way to cheer up the day for everybody.
13:51Dedicated to Carmen.
14:11Jose believes other evidence of structures must exist in the valley.
14:18Alongside the limestone blocks.
14:21So while the workers carry on digging, Jose turns his attention to the cliff face above them.
14:33When we started this project, the member of our team
14:36had already observed the peculiarities of the rock formation that they have behind myself.
14:43Jose has another controversial theory.
14:47He thinks the ancient Egyptians carved an enormous face into the rock of the valley walls.
14:53Like an ancient Mount Rushmore.
14:57He knows humans have a natural tendency to spot faces in objects.
15:02It's called face pareidolia.
15:04So Jose needs hard evidence to prove his theory.
15:09The face was probably hacked down because we found traces of a deliberate hacking of the wall
15:16and all the fragments fell down immediately underneath, which is what we've been exploring.
15:24As well as the large white blocks,
15:26Jose's team has found smaller fragments of rock from the cliff face scattered below.
15:32He thinks that this could be evidence that the carving was torn down in ancient times.
15:38To prove the effigy existed, and to find out more about why it might have been destroyed,
15:44Jose wants to examine the cliff in detail.
15:48But he can't do it from the ground.
15:50So today, he's taking to the air.
15:54Drawing images at the same level, close up, high definition, will help us immensely.
15:59Okay, let's go.
16:13In Saqqara,
16:18Muhammad and his team are excavating a row of tombs that he suspects dates to the New Kingdom.
16:29They found nothing inside the first tomb, but Muhammad has discovered another lead.
16:35We found something promising.
16:37To the north side of the tomb, we found another shaft, and this shaft leads to another tomb.
16:45And it seems they are leading also to another level of tombs.
16:49We have level one now, and we have level zero underneath.
16:54So most probably, each tomb we have on the top, underneath there is another tomb.
16:59So we are clearing the bottom to the bottom of the shaft.
17:03We will go inside and we'll see.
17:06Ancient Egyptians often built double-decker tombs like this, where space was scarce.
17:13Muhammad takes a first look inside.
17:20Wow, there is a nice vault here.
17:22The tomb consists of a simple eight-foot-long burial chamber.
17:27Both upper and lower tombs are built out of mud brick and have similar vaulted ceilings,
17:33indicating that they were built around the same time.
17:37I saw it only in New Kingdom and in the Sixth Dynasty,
17:40but here in this cemetery, we didn't have such a situation before.
17:44The tomb design is characteristic of New Kingdom burials at other sites.
17:48But without grave goods, it's impossible to tell exactly when they were built.
17:54This tomb is completely finished, documented,
17:56photographed, and we will backfill and continue to excavate the other tombs.
18:04Muhammad decides to start excavating the next tomb in the series
18:08to search for hard evidence that these tombs date from the New Kingdom.
18:18The team checks for debris and small finds as they go.
18:30Even a tiny piece of evidence could unlock the secrets of the site.
18:48It's a promising lead, but Muhammad needs more evidence to be sure of the tomb's date.
19:02The workers hunt for further clues nearby.
19:19Together with the amulet, the scarab dates this tomb conclusively.
19:28And because the tomb's architecture is so similar to its neighbors,
19:32Muhammad believes all the tombs date from the same period.
19:48Now that Muhammad has proved that the tombs date to the New Kingdom,
19:53he is faced with another mystery.
19:55Who was buried in these tombs?
19:57And why did they choose to be buried alongside an official who lived a thousand years earlier?
20:05His team continues excavating to see if there is anything more hidden beneath the sand.
20:19In Edfu, southern Egypt, Alia is continuing her investigation into the origins of the New Kingdom.
20:32She wants to explore a tomb at an ancient settlement called El Kab
20:36that contains clues to who united the country and led Egypt into an age of prosperity.
20:43I have studied the site so many times, but being here in person, that's totally different.
21:00I can't believe this text has survived.
21:04Wow.
21:05This must be a figure of the owner of the tomb.
21:10He's holding a staff and a scepter, and we can see a necklace around his neck.
21:19We can see that he is a soldier.
21:26The inscriptions tell the story of a man who was buried here.
21:31The inscriptions tell the story of the soldier's life and document the war with the Hyksos,
21:37the rival group who ruled in the north of Egypt, just before the rise of the New Kingdom.
21:44When the town of Avaris was besieged, I fought bravely on foot in His Majesty's presence.
21:53I brought spoil from there.
21:56I brought spoil from there.
21:58One man, three women, total four persons, and His Majesty gave them to me as slaves.
22:09The text says that the soldier helped to sack Avaris,
22:12the Hyksos capital, and drive the Hyksos from Egypt.
22:18The walls also contain a clue to the identity of the pharaoh who led this victory.
22:24Oh, here, this is a cartouche.
22:28It says Neb Bahtireh.
22:31This is the royal name for the king, the throne name of King Ahmos I.
22:42Ahmos I became pharaoh at a young age, after his father was killed by the Hyksos.
22:49Guided by his mother, he continued the assault on the north.
22:54Ahmos adopted the Hyksos' own technologies,
22:57of horse-drawn chariots and bronze weapons, to strengthen his forces.
23:04With his mighty army, Ahmos conquered the capital of the Hyksos,
23:09and after years of blood-soaked campaigns, he finally defeated the northern rulers.
23:15Ahmos united the country after around 200 years of chaos,
23:20and led Egypt into an era of peace and stability.
23:27Right above the cartouche, the lord of the two lands,
23:31and that means that Egypt was once again united.
23:36Ahmos I was the founder of the 18th dynasty,
23:40and that was the start of the new kingdom, the golden era for Egyptian pharaohs.
23:46Ahmos's victory laid the groundwork for a 500-year-long period of prosperity,
23:52that saw the reign of famous pharaohs like Ramesses the Great and Tutankhamun.
24:00Next, Arlia wants to visit another stunning tomb,
24:04to find out more about the founders of the new kingdom,
24:07and why their mummies, and the mummies of the kings that followed them,
24:11were found in the royal cache.
24:15At the Theban necropolis,
24:20Jose and a drone crew are documenting the rock face.
24:25He's looking for evidence to support his radical theory
24:28that this empty valley was once an important religious site,
24:32with a huge effigy carved into the valley walls.
24:36These images are going to be a treasure for us.
24:40The drone crew forensically photograph the cliffs.
24:44No, the angle is okay, but could you get us closer?
24:50Now, if I may point to this, you can probably see part of the chin,
24:56or one of the ears is very clear.
24:59This is the top, the headrest.
25:02Okay.
25:02And you can see the difference between the top and the front.
25:06The top is eroded by nature, but the front has been, like, hacked.
25:13You can't fly with us.
25:25Jose's colleague, Antonio Gomez Laguna, specialises in aerial archaeology.
25:31He will use the high-resolution images
25:34to help Jose search for any signs of carving on the cliff.
25:38I'm about to see the drone images.
25:40I'm really excited about this.
25:42Antonio has been working with them.
25:43I hope that we can see something we didn't know before.
25:47Hey, show me.
25:51Yes.
25:52Can you show?
25:53Excellent.
25:54Whoa.
25:55Antonio has combined the images into a detailed photo mosaic.
26:00But look at the markings.
26:02Oh my God, this is...
26:03Yes, and the...
26:04It's a game changer.
26:06Yeah.
26:07In the Feeban necropolis, Jose and Antonio inspect the photo mosaic.
26:15Hey, look at the two parallel lines.
26:18What do you think?
26:18Is this natural, or am I...
26:22Maybe not natural.
26:23You see that this looks like somebody has been hacking.
26:27Maybe.
26:27Cliffs.
26:28Yes.
26:29He thinks the photo mosaic clearly reveals the outline of a face.
26:33Clearly reveals the outline of a face carved by humans.
26:39But there are two interventions here.
26:41Interventions to make this more like a human face, and interventions to destroy it.
26:47It's impossible to tell for sure who might be depicted in the rock.
26:51But the evidence that the effigy was purposefully destroyed
26:55means that Jose thinks he knows who it might have been.
26:58If this was destroyed on purpose, there are not so many events in history
27:03that we know about general destructions of monuments.
27:06Hatshepsut is one of the names that immediately comes to mind.
27:14Hatshepsut was a female king of Egypt who ruled as regent in the new kingdom
27:20until her stepson came of age.
27:22A master of propaganda, Hatshepsut commissioned carvings of herself
27:27in male headdresses all across Egypt to assert her position as pharaoh.
27:34Hatshepsut's reign was an era of peace and prosperity,
27:38and when her stepson finally succeeded her, he had a tough act to follow.
27:44He sought to destroy his stepmother's legacy
27:47and to erase all evidence of Hatshepsut across Egypt.
27:53That makes her a very, very good candidate, but we have to be very cautious.
27:59Although Jose can't name the face carved into the rock,
28:03he is more convinced than ever that it did exist.
28:10At the base of the cliff, the team is still hard at work.
28:13Hunting for more limestone remnants of the building he thinks once stood here.
28:29The workers have found a new block that looks different to the others.
28:34They want Jose to examine it.
28:43It looks like it shows a fish.
28:49OK, well, I'm speechless.
28:53I'm really speechless.
28:58In Saqqara,
29:01Mohammed's team has found a coffin in a grave dated to the new kingdom.
29:06This is what we were looking for, a tomb with a coffin.
29:10Over the millennia, many Egyptian tombs have been robbed.
29:14So although its wood has disintegrated,
29:17an undisturbed coffin is a unique opportunity to understand who was buried here
29:22and why they chose to be buried in this place.
29:27The team searches for any human remains.
29:40We have found the skull inside the coffin.
29:48This guy was buried, his head to the north.
29:51Usually, the north is a very good orientation for ancient Egyptians.
29:55All the pyramid entrances were to the north
29:58because in the north side of the sky, there are stars.
30:01They never disappeared.
30:03Mohammed asks experienced anthropologist Zainab Hashish to examine the skull.
30:09Dr. Mohammed, what do you have today?
30:12So we have cleaned the skull in the coffin
30:15and we would like to discuss how to document it, take some notes.
30:19OK.
30:20And if you can tell some information about this individual.
30:23OK, let me have a look.
30:25Please.
30:25OK.
30:26If you look at this area, we call it gilabella.
30:30It's pronounced a little bit.
30:32So he looks like a male.
30:35Zainab needs to transport the skull back to her laboratory to analyze it further.
30:41So now we can move it and take it to the study room.
30:45Yes, please.
30:46To continue our work.
30:47To continue our documentation, yes.
30:49Yes.
30:50Moving a millennia old skull is delicate work.
31:01I was very worried.
31:03And we removed it, hopefully in one piece, and now it will go to the lab.
31:12Zainab has been working on the skull for more than a year.
31:16In the Feeban necropolis,
31:21Jose is investigating the large white limestone blocks his team found at the base of the valley walls.
31:30More.
31:30One more.
31:34It's the same kind of limestone.
31:37These are the same kind of limestone.
31:40It's the same kind of limestone.
31:44These are chisel marks, probably.
31:48They were buildings.
31:49They were buildings with decoration.
31:51And these buildings with decoration have to be brought and built by somebody up here.
31:57Because it means that there was a structure here, probably a structure of worship.
32:02The carved blocks are a breakthrough for Jose's revolutionary theory.
32:06They are a first step to proving that the ancient Egyptians
32:10did build a monumental structure in this valley.
32:14This is a big, big day.
32:16This may mean not much for them trying to die, but it's extremely important for us.
32:23This is changing the history of the whole of the Feeban necropolis.
32:31Jose's evidence is groundbreaking.
32:33It may confirm the importance of this valley as a sacred place
32:38and could help to rewrite centuries-old archaeological interpretations
32:42of one of the most significant discoveries in Egyptian history.
32:48And for Jose, it also sheds new light on an old find.
32:53When we started working, one of the big, big moments was the discovery of this graffiti.
33:01It was found by an Egyptian member of the team, a lady,
33:05who realized that there was a human head carved in the rock.
33:10Jose and his team think that the graffiti is a drawing of the valley,
33:14with a tomb, possibly the royal cache, represented by a pyramid on the left
33:19and the pyramidal peak of a natural hill to the right.
33:24It's like a nice, beautiful snap taken by an ancient Egyptian on this wall,
33:30which gave us the clue that this area was extremely important.
33:36Jose's new finds, together with the graffiti,
33:39mean that he is piecing together the full significance of this sacred valley
33:44and why the mummies of New Kingdom pharaohs may have been placed here.
33:49Jose believes that in ancient times,
33:52there was a monumental effigy carved into these sheer cliffs.
33:58The head of a queen or goddess, a hundred feet high,
34:01that looked down on the entire valley.
34:05Below it, a large niche was hewn into the rock and contained an enormous statue.
34:11Several royal tombs cut deep into the rocky cliffside.
34:18Buildings may have provided a focal point for worship.
34:23Jose thinks this was no hiding place, but a very important religious site.
34:32Jose's excavations are revealing priceless new information,
34:36but there is one thing that is missing.
34:39If the Royal Kash Valley was important,
34:42the tomb that became the final resting place for so many New Kingdom pharaohs
34:47must have been significant too.
34:50So who was the tomb's original owner?
34:59In Saqqara...
35:08Hi, Dr. Mohamed.
35:12Mohamed and Zainab are analysing the skull they uncovered in a New Kingdom tomb.
35:19They want to find out more about who this person was
35:22and why they chose to be buried next to an official who died a thousand years before them.
35:30Now I am sure about his age, between 20 to 25, according to his teeth.
35:36He lived in very good health
35:38because he didn't have any evidence of anemia on his eyes.
35:44I thought so because their tombs are also for not poor people.
35:49Really?
35:49So their tombs are for middle class or higher middle class people.
35:53Yeah, that's perfect.
35:54It's matching with his teeth and with his skull.
35:59Very nice.
35:59He has no evidence of malnutrition.
36:02It's nice that the tomb condition with the health condition can fit together.
36:07Yeah.
36:08The evidence from the skull confirms that the row of tombs belonged to wealthy individuals,
36:14perhaps even a wealthy family.
36:18Mohamed now wants to understand the significance
36:21of why these people were buried next to a much revered official
36:25who lived and died a thousand years earlier.
36:28The ancient Egyptians chose the specific locations beside important people.
36:34Ancient Egyptians remembered the legacy of other people.
36:38Ancient Egyptians believed that to live on in the afterlife,
36:42it wasn't just their body that needed to be preserved.
36:45It was their name.
36:47To make sure they were remembered,
36:49this new kingdom family chose a burial location next to the high-ranking official,
36:55Kui, so that anyone visiting this famous site would see their tomb.
37:01It's a tactic that is still working 3,000 years on.
37:06Every time we come to dig, we found a piece of this puzzle
37:09and we insert it in its right place.
37:12All together, they complete our picture about ancient Egypt.
37:15In Deir el-Medina, near Luxor, Alia is visiting one final new kingdom tomb.
37:30It's from the opposite end of the social spectrum to the mummies in the royal cache.
37:36This is the workmen's village.
37:38These workmen built the Valley of the King Tombs.
37:46As-salamu alaykum.
37:50Alia has been granted special access to this sealed tomb
37:54to explore clues in the inscriptions on its walls.
37:57Wow, what an adventure it is to get here.
38:01How deep does this tomb go?
38:05The tomb dates to when the power of the new kingdom
38:08was at its height 300 years after it began.
38:16This is Ahmose Nefertari, and we know that from her cartouche.
38:20Here it says, Ahmose Nefertari.
38:23Ahmose Nefertari was the wife of Ahmose I,
38:27the pharaoh who reunited Egypt at the beginning of the new kingdom
38:31and brought about a great renaissance of Egyptian culture.
38:34She's wearing the Atif crown and holding the amkh, eternal life, in her hand.
38:40Ahmose Nefertari is here because the tomb owner is honouring her.
38:46In this area, Ahmose Nefertari is mentioned in at least 50 private tombs.
38:54The tombs here were founded long after the death of Queen Ahmose Nefertari.
39:01And therefore, when we see her here, we see her in a different light.
39:05She is not represented as a queen, but as a queen.
39:09She is not represented as a queen, but as a deity.
39:15Following ancient Egyptian tradition, King Ahmose I married his sister,
39:20Ahmose Nefertari, who was known as king's daughter, king's sister, and king's wife.
39:27She also gained the title of God's wife,
39:31and she played an active role in religious ceremonies to ensure the fertility of Egypt.
39:37Ahmose Nefertari lived to see her son and his successor become pharaohs
39:43and became the mother of Egypt's new golden age.
39:47Even after her death, Egyptians continued to worship her
39:51as a goddess of fertility, resurrection, and rebirth.
39:56Ahmose Nefertari was a deity, the mother of the new kingdom and 18th dynasty.
40:05She was venerated because the new kingdom was not any era.
40:09The new kingdom was an era of stability.
40:11It was the time of the golden age.
40:14The prestige tied to Ahmose Nefertari's name and her role as mother of the new kingdom
40:20has been a constant in the history of Egypt.
40:23And her role as mother of the new kingdom
40:25held significance for the royals and rulers who came after her.
40:30Archaeologists disagree over where she was buried,
40:33but some believe that it was Ahmose Nefertari who was the original owner of the royal cash tomb.
40:39I think the mummies of the new kingdom pharaohs were placed in the tomb of Ahmose Nefertari
40:45because of her significance as the founder and mother of the new kingdom.
40:51That kind of significance made her tomb a very important place.
41:02At the Theban necropolis,
41:06Jose's time at the royal cash valley is coming to an end.
41:11There's just time to enjoy one last sunrise.
41:16Oh my god, this is beautiful.
41:18It's the winter solstice.
41:21This is a day which was celebrated in ancient Egypt.
41:24From this day onwards, days will be longer.
41:27Nature will return to life.
41:29Everything will go back to brilliance, to fertility.
41:36Jose believes that the solstice marks a natural phenomenon in the valley,
41:41as the sun rises directly between two peaks on the horizon.
41:45We think that the royal bodies ended up in a place where this phenomenon can be observed.
41:52It's yet more evidence that the valley was a sacred place, and a fitting end to his dig.
42:00This is a campaign which has been extremely rich in information,
42:04particularly in understanding how the different parts of the site are interrelated.
42:15Jose's investigation could rewrite the history of the royal cash.
42:21It suggests that when the ancient Egyptians moved the royal mummies
42:25at the end of the New Kingdom, they didn't hide them in a secret valley.
42:30Instead, they chose a sacred valley that was well known, with deep religious significance.
42:36And 500 years after her reign, Jose believes they chose to bury the mummies in the tomb
42:42of one of the founding figures of the New Kingdom, to honour her legacy and keep their names alive.
42:49Being able to point to something that had not been seen before, whether it is an object,
42:55whether it is a phenomenon, whether it is an explanation, is the thrill of a lifetime.