Tutankhamun: Secrets of the Tomb (2022) Season 1 Episode 1
Tutankhamun: Secrets of the Tomb (2022) Season 1 Episode 1
In 1922, the tomb of Egyptian boy king Tutankhamun was unearthed. Soon, tales spread of a deadly jinx. Now, Ella Al-Shamahi reveals the extraordinary scientific truth behind the 'Pharaoh's Curse'.
#tutankhamun #documentary #history
❤️Ella Al-Shamahi❤️
In 1922, the tomb of Egyptian boy king Tutankhamun was unearthed. Soon, tales spread of a deadly jinx. Now, Ella Al-Shamahi reveals the extraordinary scientific truth behind the 'Pharaoh's Curse'.
#tutankhamun #documentary #history
❤️Ella Al-Shamahi❤️
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00A century ago, in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, an archaeologist broke into a royal
00:11tomb and found one of the greatest halls of treasure in history.
00:18Nothing, and I mean nothing, like the tomb of Tutankhamun had ever been found before.
00:30The burial chamber was over 3,000 years old.
00:35What lay inside were some of the most astonishing works of art ever made.
00:41The world was obsessed with the romance and the intrigue of the discovery.
00:48But within months, men who had entered the burial chamber began to die.
00:56The press began spinning tales of King Tut's curse, and a legend was unleashed.
01:06It's a great story.
01:07The world was hooked.
01:09Not just the story of the supernatural, but obsession, jealousy, and death.
01:14Soon, the mythical curse became a global phenomenon.
01:18There were people clamoring to get in.
01:21It was a bit like having vultures around.
01:24Reputable scholars said this was just nonsense, but the people ate it up.
01:30But if the curse story was nonsense, could these deaths have another explanation?
01:38The DNA material inside could live for a thousand years.
01:42Oh, this is quite emotional.
01:44I'm reopening one of the greatest cold cases in history.
01:49It could cause lung infections and could cause sepsis and death.
01:53Finally, can modern science explain the legendary curse of Tutankhamen?
02:23Every autumn, Egypt begins to buzz with excitement.
02:35Archaeologists from all over the world descend on ancient sites to hunt for treasure.
02:46It's just an absolute frenzy behind me.
02:49I was just screaming.
02:51It's like a production line of men and dust and sand.
02:56Everyone here is desperately hoping to hit the next big discovery.
03:01Because if they find the next big discovery, it puts them on the map.
03:04It makes headline news all over the world.
03:06But most of the time, of course, that's not what happens.
03:10But if it happens, it's huge.
03:21As a paleoanthropologist, I study the human stories at the heart of our ancient past.
03:28My family is from Yemen, and I'm fascinated by the history of the Middle East.
03:43Like those digging in the desert today, I've been inspired by the most extraordinary archaeological
03:49find of all time.
03:55In 1922, a team led by the British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of the teenage
04:03pharaoh Tutankhamen.
04:07The first virtually intact pharaoh's tomb ever found.
04:12It was filled with thousands of treasures.
04:21From royal chariots to the coffins of Tutankhamen himself, complete with dazzling golden death
04:30mask.
04:35Huge crowds descended on the tomb.
04:39While newspapers around the world announced the find of the century.
04:54Carter's thousands of precious discoveries were shipped down the Nile to the Museum of
05:00Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo.
05:07Today, at the very heart of the museum, is the greatest treasure of the tomb.
05:16This is the death mask of Tutankhamen.
05:20It would have rested on top of his mummy.
05:22There's a lot of bling here.
05:23Talk me through some of this.
05:24Yes, this is so much bling.
05:26This is two sheets of gold.
05:28They were hammered and put together.
05:31And then all of the precious things that Egypt had over their control are reflected in this
05:36beautiful piece.
05:37So we've got gold, which is Egypt and Nubia, and then the bands of his headdress.
05:44That's actually glass paste.
05:45Wow.
05:46Okay.
05:47Which you wouldn't think.
05:48I mean, we see glass everywhere.
05:49There's glass in front of me right now.
05:50Yeah.
05:51But glass at the time of Tutankhamen had just been invented.
05:53It was the chicest thing you could have.
05:55So in Tutankhamen's time, you would see this and think, wow, this is opulence.
06:03The death mask was designed to guide the spirit of Tutankhamen back to its resting
06:08place in his body.
06:13Any other precious stones that are worth mentioning?
06:14Yes.
06:15So we've got obsidian for his pupils and quartz for the eyes.
06:20There's turquoise, carnelian, lapis lazuli.
06:23And this reflects the power and dominion of Tutankhamen.
06:30And it's the reason why there are tons of people around us right now, because it's beyond
06:35belief.
06:36You have to see it with your own eyes.
06:43It's believed Tutankhamen may have suffered from malaria.
06:48He died around age 19, and his organs were preserved in hand-carved containers.
06:56During mummification, the embalmers would have removed his lungs, his liver, his stomach,
07:01and his intestines.
07:02And each one of those organs would be wrapped up, covered in resin, and put in these individual
07:08containers so that he could live again.
07:12The top craftsmen in the ancient world were making these pieces.
07:15Look at this face of Tutankhamen.
07:18It's carved in alabaster so delicately.
07:23To protect the treasures from tomb raiders, they had a special guard.
07:28This is the god Anubis, and he's reclining with his paws out, and he's got this watchful
07:35yet ferocious look in his eye.
07:38He's completely alert, guarding Tut's tomb.
07:41He did a really good job for 3,000 plus years.
07:46He did.
07:47Well done.
07:48Good job.
07:49But these spectacular treasures aren't the only reason the world became obsessed with
07:55Tutankhamen.
08:04Within months, word was starting to spread of a series of mysterious deaths.
08:13The victims died from things as varied as pneumonia, gunshot, or suicide.
08:21And they were all linked to the tomb.
08:27For the newspapers, these exotic deaths were a goldmine.
08:33And they started to splash stories of King Tut's curse.
08:40Now this is an article in the Daily Mirror.
08:43And in this article, the death toll just skyrockets.
08:45In fact, they just get to the point where they just start listing the names of the victims
08:50of the curse.
08:51So we have Sir Archibald Douglas Reid, Professor Le Fleur, Mr. H.G. Evelyn White, M. Benedict,
08:58Colonel Aubrey Herbert, Mr. J. Gould, Mrs. Evelyn Waddington-Green, Dr. Jonathan W.
09:05Carver.
09:07The curse was taken seriously by readers across the world.
09:13What was it about this story that so gripped the imagination?
09:20Was it just part of a fascination with an exotic East?
09:24Or was something else going on?
09:28I can't help but wonder whether something happens to archaeology in this place that's
09:38just so constantly alive and full of history.
09:42I guess I wonder whether there's an obsessive streak or even a madness to Egyptology.
09:50To understand the extraordinary curse story, I need to investigate Howard Carter, the man
09:58whose obsession led him to the tomb.
10:01Tomorrow, I'm heading down to the Valley of the Kings.
10:05I'm fascinated with how this one tomb has absolutely captured the imagination of the
10:14world for so long.
10:19Could the curse that's bewitched the world have a truth lying behind it?
10:25Something that sheds new light on the deaths blamed on Tutankhamun.
10:43I'm investigating the truth behind a dark shadow that hung over the discovery of Tutankhamun's
10:50tomb.
10:52So I'm going back to the start, to the man whose obsession led him to the tomb, Howard
11:00Carter.
11:05Egyptologist Chris Naunton has spent years studying Carter and the fascination that drew
11:10him to Egypt.
11:14As a young man, Carter first came to Egypt as an artist, making detailed copies of Egyptian
11:21paintings.
11:24These are part of a collection of watercolour paintings that Carter made.
11:30He's a teenager at this point, and they are incredibly detailed.
11:35In themselves, often, sort of little mini works of art, little mini masterpieces.
11:40He was good.
11:41He was really, really good.
11:49Carter soon became fascinated by Egyptian culture and desperate to become an archaeologist.
11:58Yet this world was dominated by the highly educated and the rich.
12:04Egyptology is largely restricted to elites, and Carter was not really part of that elite
12:11himself.
12:12He didn't have a scholarly training.
12:14He wasn't from a wealthy background.
12:18So he was something of an outsider in Egyptology.
12:22But the young man had something many of his richer fellows lacked, obsession.
12:30Through hard work and his passion for Egypt, Carter rose through the ranks of archaeology,
12:37determined to find a treasure of his own.
12:41This is a time when lots of really spectacular discoveries are being made.
12:49And it's clear that Carter wanted something like this for himself.
13:00Carter's hunt gradually focused on the Valley of the Kings.
13:05Three hundred miles south of Cairo, this ancient site was used as a burial ground for
13:11pharaohs for almost five centuries.
13:19Some archaeologists thought the valley had given up all its treasures, but Carter was
13:25obsessed with finding a spectacular prize, the tomb of the teenaged pharaoh Tutankhamun.
13:35In 1917, Carter's search began in earnest.
13:41Yet after five years, he was still looking.
13:45The people around him, I think, were losing faith in what he was doing.
13:49And he says himself in his published account, we have now dug in the valley for several
13:55seasons with extremely scanty results.
13:59And those around him were saying, you know, I think it's time to stop.
14:02But he's the one who's determined, obsessed, maybe.
14:06But if others were losing faith in Carter, there was one man who shared his obsession.
14:14George Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, was an aristocrat with a hunger for adventure.
14:22He loved horse racing, fast cars, and above all, ancient Egypt.
14:30Unlike Carter, Carnarvon came from the wealthy elite and had money to spend on digs in the
14:36desert.
14:39The two men formed a close partnership.
14:43Carnarvon financed Carter's search in the Valley of the Kings.
14:49But by 1922, Carter had found nothing.
14:54And soon, even Carnarvon's patience was wearing thin.
15:00Yet Carter convinced his financial backer to give him one last chance.
15:13In the autumn of 1922, Howard Carter set out once again to find Tutankhamun.
15:23He knew that if he failed, there would be no next time.
15:42The Valley of the Kings is one of the holiest sites in ancient Egypt.
15:48When Carter arrived in 1922, around 60 tombs had already been discovered.
15:57At first, he found nothing.
15:59But then, as Carter later described, a water boy discovered a stone step in the sand.
16:11Then, the team found an ancient staircase cut deep into the bedrock.
16:20Egyptologist Salima Ikram has spent decades studying what happened next.
16:26So Ella, this is where we're going.
16:29This is the great tomb of Tutankhamun.
16:31This doesn't really look like much.
16:33It doesn't look like this opening to one of the greatest discoveries ever made, a tomb
16:37That was so important to change the course of history.
16:49After excavating tons of rubble, Howard Carter reached a sealed doorway.
16:56The hole would have been here somewhere.
17:00This would have all been filled in, and then he took out a few stones, and then they put
17:05in light to make sure that there weren't horrible gases that would kill them all.
17:14And then in the flicker of that light, he looked in, and all he could see was the glint
17:19of gold and wooden things.
17:29But gold wasn't all the tomb contained.
17:35Carter mentions that there was hot air, and that it was the same air that the priests
17:41were breathing when they laid him to rest.
17:44When you open up the tomb for the first time, there is this little wash of air that comes
17:49out.
17:50You realize you're the only person who's inhaling the air that the priests exhaled for the last
17:56time.
17:59Though he'd dreamt of this moment for decades, it's unlikely Carter could have imagined the
18:06sheer number of treasures the tomb contained.
18:10When Carter came in, this place was chock-a-block with objects.
18:16There were beds here, and they were piled high with food offerings underneath.
18:22There were pieces of chariots, there were boxes with jewelry, so you could barely get in.
18:39So, Ella, we have special permission to come in here.
18:43This is the main event.
18:52There would have been a bunch of shrines, and then we have the sarcophagus, and inside
18:56there was a nest of coffins, and in the innermost one, you would have had the gold mask on top
19:02of the body of the king.
19:05And how do you think Howard Carter reacted when he saw the death mask?
19:13Well, I mean, can you imagine just looking at it with the flickering light and seeing
19:17this beautiful thing?
19:21And it's very moving, because behind the mask lies the king himself.
19:27So, this is Tutankhamen.
19:32Yes, this is the boy himself.
19:36It's incredible how he could see the detail, though.
19:43How do you feel about Tutankhamen?
19:46I feel actually really fond of him, because when I was little, like many of us, he was
19:52one of the reasons one fell into Egyptology, and I had a chance to spend time with his
19:57physical self.
19:58So, one gets a certain intimacy, and one feels also a bit protective, I think.
20:09Howard Carter had found the tomb of his dreams.
20:13He and his team set about obsessively cataloguing every one of its thousands of treasures.
20:20Here we can see Carter himself at work, taking notes, describing this shrine.
20:27We see a different handwriting here, and this is a card by Sir Alan Gardner, who was a specialist
20:32in the Egyptian language.
20:34So, if you can imagine that for every one of the 5,000-plus objects, each individual
20:42piece needs this much treatment.
20:46But while Carter could oversee what was happening inside the tomb, events outside it were soon
20:52moving beyond his control.
20:57There was a huge amount of excitement, and the press flocked here, and people flocked
21:03here.
21:04And, you know, anyone who was in Egypt, in fact, ditched all their plans and came to
21:11Luxor.
21:12The mouth of the tomb was knee-deep with people, and they would just wait to see what was going
21:17on.
21:19It was a bit like a garden party sometimes, with ladies sipping their tea and others doing
21:23their knitting.
21:28Tutmania soon went global.
21:31The tomb was opened just as photography, film and advertising were reshaping the world.
21:39And Tutankhamun became a modern sensation.
21:44He was used to sell lemons in California.
21:48Jewellery was designed in the King Tut style.
21:54And students even dressed up as the young pharaoh's mummy.
22:00Newspapers battled for a piece of the biggest story on the planet.
22:08You've got all of these people clamouring to get in, and then the press.
22:13So there was real media circus.
22:16They were all around it.
22:17They were encircling.
22:18It was a bit like having vultures around.
22:20How did Howard Carter and Carnarvon feel about this?
22:23How did they deal with it?
22:24Carter really wanted to get on with the work.
22:26And so I think there was also the stress of, will I do this correctly?
22:30Who knows what's going to be in there?
22:32And in the end, what he decided to do, which perhaps was not the best decision, was that
22:37they would give exclusive rights to The Times and not to the rest of the media.
22:44How unique was it to give exclusive rights to The Times?
22:48No-one had had this kind of fine before, so it was completely new for archaeology to do
22:52that, because they'd also never had such a press interest.
22:55Of course, all the rest of the media was really angry about this.
23:01One of the journalists locked out of the exclusive story was a man called Arthur Weigel.
23:08Weigel had begun as an archaeologist and had worked alongside Howard Carter.
23:15Egyptologist Bob Bianchi is an expert on the Tutankhamun curse
23:20and the role played by Arthur Weigel.
23:24Arthur Weigel is a very, very interesting person.
23:28He has credentials as an Egyptologist.
23:31He switched gears, in a sense, and became a journalist.
23:35He was working for the Daily Mail, which was a rival of the London Times,
23:41and he was not able to get the scientific information from Carter on a daily basis.
23:47Nobody was. The Times had the exclusive.
23:50And so he had to be able to tell his readers a parallel story.
23:58Weigel was outside the tomb the day Carter and Carnarvon prepared to open the sealed burial chamber.
24:06As they went down the steps, Carnarvon joked that they were going to give
24:10a musical concert in the tomb.
24:13Arthur Weigel didn't approve of the joke.
24:17And I think that what Weigel was suggesting was that Carnarvon was too happy,
24:22maybe a bit of hubris on Carnarvon's part.
24:26And Weigel allegedly said, and I quote,
24:30I said to the man standing next to me that if he, Lord Carnarvon,
24:36goes into the tomb in that spirit, he'll be dead within six weeks.
24:43That prophecy would soon haunt those involved in the discovery
24:48and make Tutankhamun's tomb notorious for far more than treasure.
25:07Deep in southern England lies Beacon Hill.
25:14It overlooks Highclere, the mansion of Lord Carnarvon.
25:19In February 1923, Carnarvon attended the opening of the burial chamber of Tutankhamun.
25:27Journalist Arthur Weigel heard Carnarvon joking as he entered.
25:33Weigel reportedly said he'd give Carnarvon six weeks to live.
25:39Just over six weeks later, Carnarvon was dead.
25:48He died in the morning of April 5th, 1923,
25:52in the Grand Continental Hotel in Cairo.
25:56The cause of death was pneumonia and blood poisoning
26:00from an infected mosquito bite.
26:08But within days, stories emerged in the press
26:12suggesting that Lord Carnarvon's death was a result of something more sinister.
26:18Newspapers buzzed with rumours that the death was caused by a curse.
26:25A punishment for disturbing the rest of the pharaoh.
26:30And the press didn't have to wait long for another story.
26:37George J Gould was a railroad millionaire
26:40from one of the wealthiest families in America.
26:44Like many of the super-rich, Gould enjoyed yachting, polo and travel.
26:51In 1923, he was in Egypt.
26:56Like dozens of wealthy tourists,
26:59he visited the most sensational site in the country.
27:03Here, along with other VIPs, he was allowed to enter
27:07and look around the tomb of Tutankhamun.
27:11He soon contracted a fever.
27:15Within a month, he was dead.
27:19It was just six weeks after the death of Lord Carnarvon.
27:26Curiously, for both men,
27:28their long list of ailments included the same lung infection.
27:33Pneumonia.
27:35Then, just a year later,
27:37an Egyptologist who had attended the tomb opening committed suicide.
27:43According to newspapers, Hugh Evelyn White left a note saying,
27:47I have succumbed to a curse.
27:53In less than two years,
27:55three of the men who had entered the tomb were dead.
27:59Fanned by journalists,
28:01the legend of Tut's curse was gaining strength.
28:06So was the curse really just the creation of the media?
28:11Or did its roots lie in something more ancient?
28:16Ella, come over here, I'll show you something.
28:19This is one of my favourite curses.
28:21If you come into my tomb and do anything terrible, like rob it,
28:25I shall have your neck broken like that of a bird.
28:29It is quite a violent curse.
28:31Well, I mean, if you're protecting your tomb,
28:33there has to be some degree of threat going on,
28:35otherwise no-one's going to pay any attention.
28:39Salima Ikram's evidence shows that 4,000 years ago,
28:43curses were used to frighten grave robbers.
28:47If you come into my tomb and you are impure and unclean,
28:51may the counsel of God smite you and they will wring your neck.
28:56And just around the corner,
28:58you can see this mongoose attacking an evildoer,
29:02eating it and biting its neck off.
29:05What is your take on curses?
29:08People do talk about the curses
29:11and there are sometimes theories of bad luck,
29:13but we also wonder, are you producing your own curse
29:16by buying into this idea and, you know, making the bad energy present?
29:25Inspired by ancient tombs and fed by the recent deaths,
29:30the curse now had a life of its own.
29:34Hungry for stories, reporters added ever more names to the list.
29:41Like Ali Kamal Fahmy Bey,
29:43an Egyptian shot dead by his wife in London.
29:49Bey had made a visit to the tomb months before
29:53and his death was blamed on the curse.
29:58Links between alleged victims and Tutankhamun were getting weaker.
30:04But the public appetite for the deathly curse was getting stronger.
30:10Why?
30:20To find out, I've come to Luxor, near the Valley of the Kings.
30:29Can Egyptologist Bob Bianchi explain why, in the 1920s,
30:34news of the curse spread as swiftly as it did?
30:38What do you think it was specifically about the discovery of Tutankhamun
30:42that captured the imagination like that, that made it so popular?
30:45On the one hand, Europe and America
30:48had just emerged from the horrific First World War.
30:52And there were many, many individuals who lost a lot of sons,
30:56boyfriends, husbands,
30:58and the discovery of a dead pharaoh, I think, evoked those kinds of memories.
31:05And it wasn't just World War I, it was also the Spanish flu.
31:09Yes. You know, the big pandemic of that century.
31:13I think that death was on everybody's mind.
31:16And here you have a dead individual that's immortalised
31:21and he's buried with all of these riches.
31:24And I think that just resonates with people's sensibilities
31:27of mourning, grievance and remembrance.
31:30The recent war wasn't the only reason death was in the air.
31:35Mysticism and the occult were growing in popularity.
31:39Above all, a movement called Spiritualism,
31:43which held seances to talk to the dead.
31:47Many of the newspapers linked the death of Carnarvon
31:52with a curse that was in the tomb.
31:56And that played into the hands of the people
32:00that were involved in the occult and Spiritualism.
32:04The most famous Spiritualist in the world
32:08was the writer Arthur Conan Doyle,
32:11better known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes.
32:16Arthur Conan Doyle attributed the death of Lord Carnarvon
32:21to what he termed the Elementals,
32:24because it was a supernatural force
32:27that was controlled by the priests
32:30who were charged with protecting the dead pharaoh.
32:34And when the tomb was violated,
32:37these priests unleashed those Elementals
32:41and wrecked their havoc on the person that intruded on the burial.
32:45And so the curse just blossomed and becomes part and parcel
32:49of the tradition that we're still living with
32:52when we talk about the tomb and its legacy.
32:55Boosted by the celebrity author,
32:58the list of alleged victims of Tut's curse grew ever longer.
33:03It soon included a British army officer assassinated in Cairo
33:09and Lord Carnarvon's half-brother,
33:12who died of blood poisoning in 1923.
33:16The press would not let go.
33:19As an advertiser of 1929,
33:22we read an article with the headline,
33:25Curse of the Pharaohs,
33:2710th Discover of the Tomb Stricken Down.
33:30A Dr Jonathan Carver was killed in an automobile accident
33:35after having visited the tomb.
33:37And this is yet another attempt by the media
33:41to continue the story that anyone going into the tomb
33:46would be subjected to the same horrible fate.
33:51The press was throwing the net ever wider.
33:55But one clue has caught my eye from the list of names.
34:02Within just six weeks, two men who had entered the tomb,
34:06Carnarvon and George J Gould,
34:09both died after suffering the same illness,
34:12the lung infection known as pneumonia.
34:18Could something in the tomb have caused both infections?
34:23And might medical science be able to find it?
34:32I've come to London...
34:36..to meet an expert on disease in ancient Egypt
34:40and pneumonia,
34:42Dr Houtan Ashrafian.
34:46In your opinion, how did Lord Carnarvon die?
34:49Lord Carnarvon had been exposing himself
34:52to many contagious agents in the environment
34:55because he'd go to dirty cities, he'd go to dirty tombs,
34:59and he was likely suffering from chronic obstructive lung disease.
35:04And so what is this?
35:06So here we have a load of the lung,
35:08and this would have been very similar to the pathology
35:11that one would have found in Lord Carnarvon in his final days.
35:15The lung has suffered heavily from infection and pneumonia,
35:19and this is where the airways are.
35:21You can see that around those airways there's lots of little sacks,
35:25and those sacks are sacks of pus and air,
35:29and the whole lung looks congested.
35:32It's not allowing people to breathe properly,
35:34it's not allowing the lung to clear itself,
35:36so people would be coughing, they'd be short of breath,
35:39and this would have led to bacteria going to the bloodstream
35:42which would have caused fevers.
35:46As photographs show,
35:48Lord Carnarvon made multiple visits to the tomb
35:52and entered the interior.
35:55The tomb can be full of many contagious agents.
35:58That could include viruses, that could include bacteria,
36:02and that could be from moulds or fungi.
36:07And entering into that tomb space,
36:10one can be exposed to all of those potential agents,
36:13and as a result, it can cause lung infections that persist
36:18and can cause sepsis and death.
36:22So deadly pathogens from the tomb
36:25might have infected Lord Carnarvon and George J Gould.
36:31Could this, not the curse,
36:33be the real link between both men's sudden demise?
36:40The next clue lies far away in Eastern Europe,
36:44where a string of mysterious deaths
36:47leads back to another opened tomb.
37:04In the 1970s, the Polish city of Krakow
37:08was rocked by a chilling scandal.
37:13Without warning, a string of archaeologists and scientists
37:17began to die.
37:21The press revealed that the men had all visited the same location.
37:27Wawel Cathedral.
37:34In the years before the Second World War,
37:37the cathedral had fallen into disrepair.
37:41By the 1970s, it was in urgent need of renovation.
37:45But that would mean disturbing the tomb
37:48of one of Poland's greatest kings,
37:51Casimir IV Jagiellon.
37:54The decision fell to Cardinal Włotyła,
37:57later to become Pope John Paul II.
38:02He gave permission to open a tomb that had lain undisturbed
38:06for almost 500 years.
38:12Adam Bujak was a young photographer
38:15and part of the team that entered the tomb
38:18and opened the king's coffin.
38:31HE SPEAKS POLISH
38:54Adam's photographs captured the moment
38:57the future pope gazed inside the tomb.
39:01HE SPEAKS POLISH
39:10I imagine that this is a very, very significant Polish tomb
39:13that hasn't been opened for 500 years.
39:15There must have been some people saying,
39:18is this bad for us to be disturbing this tomb?
39:21HE SPEAKS POLISH
39:32HE SPEAKS POLISH
39:43But religious relics weren't all the team found in the tomb.
39:49The archaeologist said that the air had a thick stench of decay.
40:01A week afterwards, the king was reburied in his tomb.
40:07TV cameras recorded a job well done.
40:14But then members of the team started to fall seriously ill.
40:22Stefan Walczak died from a bleeding disorder,
40:26Jan Merlach from an aneurysm
40:29and Alex Danczak from a cerebral hemorrhage.
40:34In all, over ten members of the original team died prematurely.
40:39Rumours began to spread of a curse,
40:43a punishment inflicted by the ancient king for disturbing his rest.
40:53But during the excavations,
40:55scientists had taken specimens for testing.
41:00The samples from the tomb were brought
41:02to the University of Agriculture in Kraków for analysis.
41:13Back then, Professor Wiesław Barabasz was a young lab assistant.
41:19He helped analyse the samples from the tomb.
41:23After collecting the samples,
41:26which were collected to Petrie plates,
41:29to Petrie limestone plates,
41:32i.e. fragments of coffins, robes, bones,
41:37some dust that remained,
41:40to Petrie limestone plates,
41:44we waited for three, four, five, six days.
41:49Nothing grew.
41:52So the professor said,
41:54we need to use a different technique.
41:59The scientists heated the samples.
42:03In one specimen, containing material from the dead king's knee bone,
42:08this awoke a fungus that had lain dormant for centuries.
42:13We found a very interesting, very characteristic fungus,
42:17Aspergillus flavus.
42:21Aspergillus flavus is a potentially deadly toxin
42:25that can attack weakened lungs.
42:29It can also cause organ failure and strokes.
42:34The scientists worked on in the lab.
42:38But then a journalist started asking questions.
42:44That journalist came here to the Jagiellonian Library
42:47to start his investigation.
42:50When was the first moment you heard about this story?
43:08The researchers had already died three times
43:12from the open grave of the king, Kazimierz IV Jagiellonczyk.
43:17I called the microbiologist, Professor Bolesław Smyk.
43:24Professor Smyk told Zwieck that in the remains of the knee bone
43:28he discovered the deadly fungus Aspergillus flavus.
43:34Zwieck thought that this, not a curse, was the cause of the deaths.
43:44And he told the world.
44:04Now Zwieck began to wonder if the same toxin
44:08could explain another tomb curse.
44:13A story that had begun nearly 50 years earlier.
44:23So he travelled to the Valley of the Kings...
44:27..to investigate the tomb of Tutankhamun.
44:36Why do you think there was a link with Tutankhamun?
44:57And that wasn't the only link to Tutankhamun.
45:03Aspergillus fungus grows well on grain.
45:07And Tutankhamun's tomb contained ample supplies of bread
45:12and raw grain as food for the afterlife.
45:18The tomb of Tutankhamun,
45:21Also, shortly before his death,
45:24Lord Carnarvon suffered from an inflammation around the nose and eyes.
45:29A potential symptom of an Aspergillus infection.
45:34So deaths blamed on the curse appear to have another explanation.
45:40Now I need more evidence.
45:44Could the deaths associated with Tutankhamun's tomb
45:47be explained by toxins?
45:53Next time, scientists go in search of lethal pathogens.
45:59You can see some fungal colonies here.
46:03And discover deadly poisons.
46:06There's a large quantity of arsenic in that.
46:08Can they piece together evidence that shatters the myth
46:13and finally solves the mystery
46:16of King Tut's curse?
46:25And Tutankhamun's secrets of the tomb continue same time next week.
46:29While starting on Saturday, we unravel riches from relics
46:32found in the tomb of Tutankhamun.
46:35While starting on Saturday, we unravel riches from relics
46:38brand new lost treasures of Rome start to hate.
46:40Scintillating new drama on the way next tonight.
46:43James Nesbitt leads a stacked cast
46:45as a devastating mystery unfolds.
46:47A brand new suspect is coming up.