No land on Earth possess more wonders than Egypt
wonders long hidden
but revealed occasionally in a glint of gold
or a curious tale.
Our story begins with a death
the death of an unusual boy.
Worshipped as the son of Re, the Sun god
he was a pharaoh of Egypt 3,000 years ago.
We don't know how he died,
only that his death was sudden and mysterious.
His body was preserved
in the manner of other pharaohs
and priests anointed his coffin to prepare him
for his final journey into the world of the dead.
The rituals had to be finished before his father
the Sun, descended into darkness.
So this young pharaoh was secured in his tomb
surrounded by kingly treasures
and his seal was pressed into its entrance.
From that time on it was to be a place of peace
hidden and undisturbed throughout eternity.
This young King's name was Tutankhamen.
For 3,000 years,
King Tut and his tomb in the Valley of the Kings
remained concealed beneath shifting sands.
Other tombs were discovered and completely pillaged
but not his.
Believing he could find it,
an Englishman named Howard Carter mounted
five arduous expeditions
but they yielded nothing.
In 1922, he returned to Egypt for a sixth attempt.
That year he brought a beautiful canary
to brighten his spirits.
The workmen called it
the Golden Bird and told Carter
it would bring them good luck.
But as work began success seemed a remote prospect.
And time was running out.
Carter's benefactor,
Lord Canarvon was an English earl
fascinated by Egypt
but even he was losing faith...
and had threatened to cut off the money.
Yet Carter persisted knowing that
if found intact
the tomb would be filled with amazing artifacts
that would help us peer through the shadows of time
to glimpse a world of human splendor long lost
to glimpse our very beginnings.
That's a great story Grandpa
but I want to know more.
You live here and
I know you can tell me the real story.
About?
Well, my friends want me to ask about the "curse"
how anyone who entered King Tut's tomb...
...will have some terrible things happen to them.
Yes, yes, I know.
I don't know if I believe it.
But will you tell me about it?
So the pharaohs, the tombs the monuments
the great civilization who built them
you are not interested in?
But the Mummy's curse you find...
Exciting!
Yes, I can see that.
All right then.
You shall hear all about it.
But first we must take a trip together.
Where will we start then?
At the source, of course.
The source of the Nile.
It is the longest river on Earth,
the greatest river in Africa
crossing nearly half the continent.
It is born of two rivers the White Nile
which rises near Lake Victoria
and heads north
through Uganda-and the Blue Nile
which descends from the highlands of Ethiopia.
They meet in the desert of Sudan,
forming the main trunk of the Nile.
By the time it drains into the Mediterranean Sea
its waters have journeyed more than 4,000 miles.
To the outside world
the source of the great river
was an enduring mystery.
But to the ancient Egyptians,
the source was clear:
The Nile flowed from the realm of the gods.
But what has the Nile
to do with mummies and curses?
Everything.
There would be no mummies,
no ancient Egypt-in fact,
no Egypt at all without her.
You see,
Egypt without the Nile is a desert...
suitable for camels and scorpions,
but not great civilizations.
It's only here along the flood plain of the Nile
that the desert's heat is softened...
and arid sand is turned to rich farmland.
Nourished and irrigated by the Nile,
Egypt became the longest
lived of all the great early civilizations.
In ancient times,
so much water raced down
from the lush valleys of Central Africa
that the Nile overflowed its banks in seasonal floods.
Mineral-rich silt was carried
toward the desert of Egypt from lands upstream,
where wildlife flourished.
Rich land made possible a vast farming culture
and a stable civilization able to
turn from daily survival to works of the mind:
Science, mathematics, engineering and astronomy.
They studied the heavens and the seasons
gave us the 24-hour day and the 365-day calendar.
Egypt, an old saying goes, was the gift of the Nile.
But the Egyptians believed there was one thing
even mightier than the Nile:
The sun-the God they called Re,
the God who created everything.
Each morning with its rising
the Sun God would be born.
Each night in setting he'd die.
But the next morning
he would rise again never failing.
He was eternal.
When a king died,
it was believed that he became one with Re:
His son the new pharaoh became Horus
the falcon, the living God on earth.
And so the Egyptians accorded
their rulers absolute power
which they used to build an extraordinary empire
an empire of buildings so enormous
and art so exquisite we are still trying to understand
how such wonders were created
how stones from the desert were turned
into timeless monuments.
Some of the oldest buildings on earth are here
preserved by the desert air
and the skill of their creators.
Some are so old that they had already stood
a thousand years when Tutankhamen was born.
The enormous obelisks of Karnak
were carved from single blocks of granite,
moved hundreds of miles by boat rolled on logs
and perhaps levered up with huge timbers.
Giant statues of Ramses the Great carved at Abu Simbel
are still some of the largest figures
ever sculpted from solid stone.
We don't know how they did it,
but we do know why to honor the pharaohs,
both in life and after death.
Honor the pharaohs after death?
Does that have anything to do with mummies?
Yes. Look at Tutankhamen for example.
When the young kind died,
the priests sought to create
a magical new body for him.
For 70 days they labored,
drying and preserving the royal body with salts
and ointments,
then wrapping it in hundreds of feet of linen laden
with protective jewels, charms and amulets.
And finally,
crowning the mummy with
an exquisite golden death mask.
Tutankhamen was ready for the afterlife.
Had the boy king lived
and died a thousand years earlier,
he would have been buried
like pharaohs long
before him in a monument
of colossal proportions
the man-made mountain of stone called pyramids.
They probably saw the pyramid's shape
as a mystical link between earth and sky,
providing the pharaoh's soul
with a stairway to the heavens.
Of the fabled Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
only the pyramids of Giza remain-built
more than 4,000 years ago.
Nearly 500 feet tall
they contain some of the largest pieces
of stone ever moved by
humans-as much as 50 tons or more.
Yet this was accomplished without wheels or pulleys
or even iron tools.
How in the world did they do it
without modern machinery?
The gods certainly didn't do it.
They used their minds.
Knowledge built these great great structures.
Highly sophisticated knowledge.
Look.
All of the Giza pyramids are built
in perfect alignment with certain stars.
That takes a knowledge of astronomy.
The pyramids' foundations are laid out
in perfect angles and dimensions,
precisely correct for the height
they wanted to reach.
Now that takes knowledge of geometry
and mathematics.
And finally,
you must get these big stones
from down here to up there
and you must make them all fit perfectly.
Now that takes knowledge
an incredible knowledge of
engineering and organization.
Organization?
Absolutely.
You just said so yourself.
It wasn't the gods who built
these great monuments.
It was people.
Thousands and thousands of people.
Imagine being one of these people
living in a tiny village
more than 4,000 years ago.
Life would be pretty much
the same day in and day out-farming,
herding cattle fishing in the Nile.
Then one day,
you're selected to journey
by boat down the Nile.
You're now part of
the great national project
to build the pharaoh's tomb.
But you have no idea what kind of tomb!
And then you see a monument
to the sun to life eternal.
How did they move such heavy
stones to such great heights?
There are many theories,
but they probably pulled
the blocks up mud-slickened ramps
raising the ramps as the pyramid grew.
Masons then set the stones
with such precision a postcard
couldn't fit between them.
To create the Great Pyramid of Khufu,
it took over 20 years...
more than two million stone blocks...
and some 20,000 people.
And they might have been slaves,
but now we think
they were mostly peasant farmers
recruited to work here part of the year.
With their help,
the early pharaohs built more than a hundred
pyramids-80 of which survive today.
But what about the kings who came later?
You told me King Tutankhamen
wasn't buried in a pyramid?
No, he wasn't.
They stopped building them.
And for good reason.
There were robbers who cared far
more about heaps of gold
than an eternal journey.
The pyramids, to these thieves,
were like enormous billboards saying,
"We've buried the king in here
and all his treasure with him."
At any rate, a new plan had to be devised.
That's why 500 years after
the last pyramids were built
a new era of kings decided
that instead of building tombs
which everyone could see
why not build tombs which no one could see.
Three hundred miles south of the great pyramids
across the Nile from the modern city of Luxor
is this barren maze of valleys in the shadow
of a natural pyramid.
Here no thief could find the royal tombs.
Here the kings and queens of Egypt
would remain immortal
or so they thought.
But greed breeds ingenuity.
Cleverly hiding their devious enterprises,
robbers scoured the Valley of the Kings.
Over time,
each of the valley tombs was found
broken into and completely
plundered-except for one
Except for the tomb of Tutankhamen
That at least
is what Howard Carter believed.
And, if he was right
it would be the greatest archaeological
discovery of modern times
But after five years he still hadn't found it,
and the situation was becoming desperate.
Then, on the morning of
November the 4th, 1922,
a waterboy trying to
secure his jug hit an unusual rock.
Carter sent a telegram
to Lord Canarvon in England
to come quickly and went to
Cairo to meet his benefactor.
But while he was away something
very strange happened.
The golden bird that had
brought them luck was killed by a cobra.
Well, now the cobra was
the protector of the pharaoh.
And the canary represents those
who had entered the tomb.
So the cobra ate the canary
because of the mummy's curse.
More likely he ate it
because he was hungry.
I like the curse idea better!
Well, certainly the workmen
believed it was the curse.
The death of the golden bird
was a bad omen to them.
It meant that someone close to
the project would die within the year.
Rumors of a curse mattered little to Carter.
He hoped his dig would uncover a tomb like this one
the tomb of a pharaoh named Ramses the 6th
who ruled long after King Tut.
Carter wanted to find treasure.
But if not, something just as precious.
Pictures...
hieroglyphs that would reveal priceless knowledge
of how the ancients lived and what they believed.
These images are from the Egyptian Books of the Dead,
passports to eternity which were buried with a mummy.
To help a dead king reach the afterlife,
they supplied answers to questions he would be asked
spells to deflect dangers along the way.
But preparation for the afterlife
began long before death.
In grand temples once supported
by these pillars-among
the largest places of worship ever built
the living pharaohs gave offerings
as a way of communicating
with the gods in the world beyond
and courting their favor.
Both immense and colorful,
temples like the great structure called Medinet Habut
were the settings for magnificent rituals
that proclaimed to all
not only the pharaoh's power and wealth
but his devotion to the gods
he would one day join on a journey through eternity.
They sure seemed preoccupied with life after death.
Yes,
and probably because no ancient people enjoyed life
as much as they did.
There are picture stories of invention and adventure
of board games and ball games, of dance and music...
of acrobats and mechanical toys...
of the affection between husbands and wives...
and of family unity and love.
It was the most advanced civilization of its time...
and it went on for 3,000 years.
But the empire they amassed attracted invaders.
Among the stories on temple walls
are accounts of battles against outsiders
who tried to conquer the kingdom of the pharaohs.
But, the invading empires
became more powerful even more determined
and so gradually, inevitably,
the kingdom of Egypt began to crumble.
Well, how could a place
as powerful as Egypt just collapse?
Actually, many things happened,
but mostly it was the weakening of the pharaohs' power
through civil turmoil,
making Egypt vulnerable to invaders.
Little by little
much of the pharaohs' great empire-along
with its secrets was reclaimed by the desert.
But even as the monuments of Egypt crumble,
the stories are rediscovered by modern archaeologists
deciphering the distant past.
Scholars and artists are
preserving the Great Sphinx for all humanity.
Research within the Giza pyramids has revealed
the brilliance of ancient architects
whose sophisticated designs prevented
the collapse of these inner chambers and passageways.
DNA analysis is helping to
identify family ties of the royal mummies
and to give us clues about how they lived and died.
New excavations are uncovering
the support system of settlements
and facilities for the workers
who built the Giza pyramids.
These new discoveries and many more-owe themselves
at least in part,
to one discovery not quite as modern
of the tomb of a teenage pharaoh.
On November 26, 1922,
Howard Carter reached the wall
outside the first chamber of Tutankhamen's tomb.
What can you see?
Carter, please, can you see anything?
Yes.
Wonderful things Wonderful things
And they were wonderful things...
kept hidden for over 3,000 years
in four chambers carved from solid rock.
They entered to find the only intact king's tomb
ever discovered in modern times.
And in the burial chamber, four golden shrines.
Inside the fourth shrine, three golden coffins,
one inside the other, and at the center...
the mummy of the boy king Tutankhamen.
This was the greatest treasure ever found in Egypt
well over 2,000 objects of gold alabaster
lapis and precious jewels made thousands of years ago
by master craftsmen.
They gave us a personal glimpse of a royal life
in ancient Egypt-and fueled
our drive to continue searching
to continue learning.
So through discoveries like Howard Carter's
and those of modern archaeologists,
the ruins of ancient Egypt means something to us.
The stone creations that still loom up
from the desert are mute testaments of humanity's
great stride forward from hunters and gatherers...
to builders of majestic structures,
to dreamers of grand dreams.
These stone wonders are the shape of our beginnings
towering symbols of our rise to become thinkers
artists, poets... and builders.
These great monuments keep us humble, too.
After all, they managed to survive
for nearly 5,000 years.
How long has our modern
civilization been around in comparison?
Not very long.
Now as to the matter of the-the curse:
Lord Canarvon died from an infected mosquito bite
five months after King Tut's tomb was opened.
So it is true, after all.
Well, Lord Canarvon did die an untimely death,
but Howard Carter lived to be 65
and the little waterboy
who was one of the first into
the tomb because of his size
lived to a ripe old age,
as did most of the workers.
Clearly, there was no curse of death.
But beyond all of that, a curse, you see,
flies in the face of everything the Egyptians believed in.
You mean life.
Yes, life.
Death, for them,
wasn't an end, it was the beginning of a great
journey through eternity,
where their gods and kings sailed the morning ship
across a lake of flames in the sky,
rising in new life each day with the sun.
Two thousand years after Egypt's last pharaoh died
a modern film crew has just 34 days
to bring their ancient world alive.
But putting history on film
is always a delicate business
and tackling ancient Egypt
may be the toughest filmmaking challenge of all.
Ancient Egypt began more than 5,000 years ago
and its remarkable civilization lasted 3,000 years.
The magnificent remains of Egypt's glorious past
include the pyramids... tempes
Tut's tomb and its treasures
yet the people that created
them were a mystery to us.
But today we know more than
ever about life in ancient Egypt
and director Bruce Neibaur is
celebrating our knowledge
in a larger-than-life film.
The thing that draws me to history is the fact
that we are all part of the same human experience
we're all linked together in some way.
What's happened in the past is bringing itself
to bear on what's happening in the present.
Bruce is filming the "Mysteries of Egypt,"
a giant-screen
lmax feature for National Geographic
and destination cinema.
It's a monumental undertaking
there are hundreds of extras
thousands of costumes and props
and over eight tons of
specialized equipment designed
to shoot the biggest film
stock in the world.
A standard 35mm frame is about this big
70mm is about this big,
lmax is about this big and
it's thrown up on a screen six stories high...
every detail shows up.
Authenticity is everything.
And the crew is under constant
pressure to achieve perfection.
Costume designer Jackie Crier
has been working since dawn.
Today, she must transform hundreds
of extras into pyramid
builders for a crucial scene.
Down river
archaeological advisor Zahi Hawass
waits for shooting to start
with producers Scott Swofford and Lisa Truitt.
I take full responsibility
for everything bad in the film.
If anything goes wrong I will throw Lisa
Scott and Bruce in the Nile.
Getting it right can be difficult,
because just how the Egyptians
did build the pyramids is still a mystery.
We know they devised a system
for moving mammoth chunks of limestone.
We know the system was efficient
one 5,000-pound stone could be
added to a rising mound every two minutes.
But what we don't know is how
they did it without wheels or cranes.
They simply do not show pyramid building anywhere
and so what we are left with
are surmises or inferences
that we make from the stones the size of the stones.
But you know the rules of physics haven't changed.
We have found sledges.
We have found ropes or fragments of rope.
We have found ramps of pyramids.
The evidence has an interesting tale to tell
but getting the story on film
requires some distinctly modern tricks.
Production designer Michael Buchanan
knows everything has to look just right.
I'm trying to make the plaster
look like real stones.
So it doesn't look like what it is!
The plaster stones weigh only
a fraction of the real thing,
but the actors' efforts are real.
As the camera rolls,
20-man teams haul the blocks
on sledges up increasingly steep ramps.
It's a dazzling sight...
and one not seen on the
Giza plateau in over 4,000 years.
Until now
I haven't seen any film
that is done on ancient Egypt that is accurate.
All that we see is like 30% accurate, until now.
When I saw the stones going up the hill,
it really looked like ancient Egypt.
So this is a huge pay off and to have Zahi's stamp
of approval is a big, big relief.
But more than stone was moved to build the pyramids
20,000 laborers
traveled to the isolated Giza plateau.
How they got here might surprise you.
Four thousand years ago,
the pyramids weren't surrounded by desert.
The Egyptians built harbors and canals that brought
the Nile deep into the Giza plateau.
We can imagine, back 4,600 years ago,
Cheops building his pyramid,
what he did he cut this harbor,
and the harbor was connecting with the Nile.
The harbor was used every morning
when the workmen are coming.
Everyone is holding his lunch and coming,
and coming in boats, and
they work here and building
the pyramid from the sunrise to the sunset.
Bringing that ancient harbor to life will be
one of the most difficult tasks the crew undertakes
but Bruce wants the scene on film.
All the modern tools are employed-extras across
the river are cued by walkiee-talkie...
and even the sailboat has a motor hidden from view.
Duck out, man!
Turnover! Roll it
please turning, turning, turning.
But nothing goes as planned
the wind won't cooperate
and the Nile's current forces the boat backwards.
Oh, man-collision!
What was done with ease over 4,000 years ago
may be too much to accomplish this day.
We have a panic moment here.
See what I'm wondering...
if we had some good lengths of rope that
we could throw on shore and draw that in.
It's a last ditch attempt sail the boat anywhere
near the shore and have
the extras drag it in with ropes.
Throw the damn rope.
But the nightmare continues.
The light is going, and the shot with it.
I quit... the boat looks great...
yeah all the physical elements are great...
just, you know,
we just want to get the boat to go up the river
turn around and come back.
And we finally just
we have to move on and do other things.
At least there were no casualties.
During the actual building of the pyramids,
mistakes often resulted
in serious injury and sometimes death.
Building the pyramid for sure there was many accidents
we found about 12 skeletons.
At least ten of them had accidents on their hand
two of them had accidents on their leg.
It means maybe a stone fell down on their leg.
Pyramid-building was dangerous work.
In the next scene,
the crew will film a runaway column stone.
It's only a prop, but it weighs about 400 pounds.
Actors, extras, and an
Egyptian stuntwoman must scramble
out of the column's path at the last possible moment.
There is little room for error.
While the prop gets a last minute touch-up...
the film crew shoots the stone's point of view.
She's quick! Thank God.
I've done things like this before
but not as dangerous.
Finally, both camera and column are ready to roll.
Three, two, one, go!
The shot comes off without a hitch
and the crew now turns to their biggest challenge
recreating the funeral procession
of Egypt's most famous pharaoh.
Carter, please, can you see anything?
Yes, wonderful things.
Wonderful things.
In 1922,
an obscure English archaeologist named Howard Carter
unearthed the remains of an
even more obscure pharaoh
named Tutankhamen.
Carter had discovered
what all others had
despaired of ever finding
a virtually unlooted pharaoh's tomb.
And the treasures of King Tut have never relinquished
their grip on the world's imagination.
Now director Bruce Neibaur's crew wants to bury King Tut all over again.
High above a desert valley,
the crew prepares to capture the boy king's funeral procession.
In Tut's time,
the pharaohs no longer built pyramids for their tombs-instead they hid their treasure
filled burial sites in the remote valley of the kings.
The valley can be a tricky place to shoot as the director of photography
Reed Smoot, knows all too well.
It's tough because the sun hits the horizon,
it's beautiful for about 30 seconds, and then, boom!
It's midday.
But everyone feels the pressure
and lining up extras can be the bane of any casting director's existence
Meanwhile, costume designer Jackie Crier rushes to outfit them.
I'm not always calm. I'm pretty calm.
Months of research, design and artistry have gone into the costumes.
And into the props as well.
Egypt's finest artisans have carved an exquisite replica of Tut's coffin.
Made of gold over plaster, it looks like the original.
And like the original, it's not easy to move.
How heavy is the coffin, Michael?
It's a nightmare.
Advisor Nicholas Reeves has arrived.
The author of several books on Tut,
Reeves is here to make sure the boy
king's last rites are performed according to ancient protocol.
His only reference source lies deep within the valley of the kings...
on the walls of the tomb itself.
Reeves also thinks these walls contain shocking clues
about how the young pharaoh died.
Why should he have died at 17?
There's no trace of TB or any other illness.
Nothing at all.
He was healthy when he died.
And x-rays taken of Tut's skull suggest the possibility of foul play.
Certainly x-rays of the head show damage which might
have been caused by a blow.
In fact, Reeves thinks Tut was murdered...
and that his killer attended the funeral.
But as the sun creeps up over the horizon,
the immediate concern is getting the procession underway...
and on film.
But before they can start,
another question-what sound should the funeral goers make?
Taking their cues from modern Egyptian funerals,
they decide on wailing.
And production designer Michael Buchanan demonstrates
for the bemused extras.
But there's a last minute hitch.
Reeves is bothered by the golden staffs.
There's no time for scholarly debate.
They've got to go.
Action!
Three thousand years after his death,
golden light and mournful sounds fill the valley
as the coffin of the 17-year-old boy-king once again makes
its way to a final resting place.
From an Egyptologists point of view,
what's quite striking is the colors...
the contrast of the gold against the backgrounds...
and the noise and the whole atmosphere of the thing.
I think it's captured very well.
A filmmaker's imagination brings back a lost moment in time.
At last it's time to rehearse the scene where Tut's advisor,
Ay, administers last rites...
just as recorded on the tomb paintings.
But Reeves suspects Ay had more than a ceremonial role
in the young pharaoh's death.
Ay may well have had a hand in Tutankhamen's downfall,
I suspect. He had the most to gain.
It was Ay who took over the pharaoh's throne after Tut's death,
but we may never know the truth.
With the sacred rites finished,
Tut's coffin was carried deep within a labyrinth designed to foil grave robbers
sealed in for an eternity...
which turned out to be a mere 3,000 years.
Tutankhamen in life was a minor pharaoh.
He's quickly forgotten by his successors and by the ancient Egyptians.
Now he's probably the most famous king Egypt has ever known.
I think if he's looking down on us,
he's probably quite happy.
One of my hopes for this film is that people will see it,
and they'll be stimulated enough to go to the library to
learn more about the project.
I keep looking at this stuff and these beautiful scenes we're getting,
because I do feel at times like I can really see what it was like.
Creating a sense of past is what they've pursued all
these days under the desert sun...
hoping to share the secrets of ancient Egypt.