over three thousand years ago in the land of Egypt they buried a king in this tomb he was not a great king he conquered no enemies left no laws to attest to his wisdom in fact he was only nine years old when he was crowned only 18 when he died yet on the walls of his tomb they painted his likeness and the company with the gods because they believed that he too was a God and they buried him with a king's ransom and gold and jewels and art and artifacts they believed that he would rise from the tomb each day and accompany the Sun across the heavens most of all they believed he would live forever his name was Tutankhamun King Tut [Music] this appeared on the plains of Egypt almost 5000 years ago two thousand years before Tutankhamun the Step Pyramid of the Pharaohs zoser it is the first large structure in the world to be built completely of stone it took many years to build as workmen using hand labor slowly work the stones from the quarries chipping him square then smoothing them down so they would fit one upon the other no mortar was used [Music] less than 200 years later pyramid-building had evolved into this the Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza one of the wonders of the world 2 million blocks of stone weighing about two tons each it took two hundred thousand men twenty years to build and when archaeologists finally discovered the burial chamber inside it was empty other pyramids those of Khafre and Menkaure as well as several lesser pyramids make up a massive burial ground on the plains near the ancient capital of Memphis and what of the Sphinx that strange silent mystical figure crouching in the sands near the pyramids is it to a tomb not really the Sphinx is solid rock carved from a single abutment of limestone during the reign of coffre builder the second pyramid the face is that of Khafre and he stands watch over the pyramid tools probably forever [Music] this man is doing today what Egyptians of antiquity did thousands of years ago making mud bricks dried in the Sun indeed life has changed little for the fella he nor peasant of Egypt the waters of the Nile dominate his life as ever [Music] how many generations of Philippine have carried grain here to be crushed into flour and for how many centuries has the river turned a millstone such as this grinding into flour the corn which was grown in the rich black soil left over the millennia by the receding flood waters of the river the mosaic of life is repeated over and over again generation upon generation century upon century time moves on and yet in many ways never moves at all and so it is here in the valley of the kings necropolis of Thebes burial ground the Pharaohs it's a hellish place relentlessly hot and dry home only for scorpions the temple of Amun raw at Karnak began almost 4000 years ago as a small shrine to a local god someone to whom villagers could appeal for protection for good crops for the birth of a child but then a pharaoh the 12th dynasty added to the shrine and dedicated to the king of the gods the son God Amun rah and succeeding pharaohs competed with their predecessors in erecting even larger and more beautiful additions as well as statues of themselves and by the time of the 18th dynasty 600 years later it was a magnificent complex of course and temples pylons and obelisks in its majesty and fittingly called the throne of the world the temple of Luxor a few miles upstream was connected with Karnak by a paved causeway lined on either side with sphinxes symbolic abomino of a Sun God it was built by Amenhotep the third more than three thousand years ago but ramses ii came by almost 200 years later and built a new entrance pylon telling of his victories in battle enormous statues of himself also a magnificent obelisk whose hieroglyphics give him credit for the whole thing and you wonder was it love of God or was it vanity that created these marvels of antiquity as you walk among these silent yet eloquent stones from so long ago it's not difficult to imagine them as the centerpiece of a thriving and sophisticated civilization this was Thebes capital of the Empire home of Pharaoh the god king now in the West when we think of the ancient times we think of the Roman Forum of the Coliseum or the Parthenon in Greece they are old part of our ancient world yet when these Egyptian stones are being raised there was not yet a Rome or a Greece they were a thousand or more years away allmusic's wonders there is no place with more appeal to the imagination and the Valley of the Kings 30 pharaohs were buried here on the afternoon of November 4th 1922 after eight years of disappointments Howard Carter ended his search for King Tut here in the rubble hidden beneath the tomb of Ramses the 6th workmen discovered a passageway sealed for more than 3000 years Carter refused to unseal the tomb until his patron Lord Carnarvon came from London on the 26th of November Carter led his group down 16 steps to a second sealed doorway Carter cut a hole in the door peered in and told the world I see wonderful things everywhere I see gold the King's comfort was provided for in the tomb here an elaborate Sherin gold with a Sun God spreading his wings in benediction amid meticulous inlays of ivory wood an Egyptian cloisonne and then they found the most magnificent share of all the golden throne of Tutankhamun believed to have been used at his coronation in the temple at Karnak it's Lions heads have guarded fearo's since the time of Khafre and beyond but the decoration itself is most untraditional a non rigid informal style a studied awkwardness that is really very appealing all done in gold and even rare silver with inlays of glass paste [Music] certainly this is not the Tutankhamen of majesty and power no this is the king as a child 12 perhaps 14 take away the crown and he could be any child anywhere [Music] a child's play things were buried with him in the tomb this is a game called Senate an early Egyptian version of hares and Hounds must have been a favorite this is one of four sets found in the tomb but all was not play even in the afterlife there would be times it was believed when the gods might call upon Tutankhamun to work in the fields or to gather wood or to do some other manual labor and even this was provided for small dolls called Schwab teas made in the exact likeness of Tutankhamun were placed in the tomb and when the gods called him to work one of the dolls would rise up and do the job sparing the king himself the indignity of doing manual labor there were four hundred one of the Schwab bees found in the tomb one for each day of the year and 36 to act as Foreman for groups of ten or more the organisation was superb all to ensure the king an uninterrupted eternity of ease and comfort [Music] a magnificent chalice fashioned from a single block of alabaster flanked by the God of eternity and bearing the cartouche ship to the uncommon nip cap array it bears a lovely inscription may you spend millions of years you who love Thebes sitting with your face to the north wind your eyes beholding happiness and to guard all this treasure two statues of the king painted black the color of the underworld stood guard at the walled up doorway to the burial chamber a doorway that Howard Carter would patiently take apart brick by brick and as he peered inside the first man to do so in more than 3000 years he said I saw a wall of gold Howard Carter did indeed see a wall of gold the first of four walls of gold has separated Carter from his life's goal the Royal sarcophagus of Tutankhamun it was the wall of a golden shrine a shrine had almost filled the burial chamber from wall to wall a shrine lined in gold and bearing the likenesses of the gods and inscriptions from the sacred book of the Dead and within the shrine another smaller but just as elaborate and within that one a third and within the third 1/4 shrine like a Chinese puzzle for shrines one within the other all to protect the mummy of the king and finally after months of work all the shrines were dismantled and taken away and for the first time could be seen the entire sweep of the tomb from the entrance of the antechamber to the inscribed walls of the burial chamber itself [Music] baboons represent the 12 hours of darkness the king must spend in the tomb each night and on another wall a breathing Queen oxy Naaman offers to the king the ankh the sign of life and behind him stands honorable also holding an ankh again in the tomb itself the theme is life the funeral procession is depicted on another wall and the Friends of Tutankhamun are shown all in a line pulling the ornate sled across the desert sands to the tuna and on the sled The Mummy of the king this tomb was not meant for Tutankhamun it was for his chief minister aye but the King died so young apparently his own tomb was not yet ready and so he was buried here and the walls hastily painted the sarcophagus however is that of a kid it was hewn by hand from a solid block of brown quartzite and a master sculptor applied the decorations incising the delicate hieroglyphics along the sides and down the ends on each corner the goddesses Isis snipped this knife and Selke it protect the body with their outstretched wings [Music] inside was a huge wooden coffin covered with gold and made in the form of the God I Cirrus the face however was that of Tutankhamun in his hands were the emblems of I Cirrus the crook and the flail encrusted with gold and colored glass [Music] and inside still another coffin this one too in the form of Osiris with arms crossed hands holding the crook and the flail and again the face was that of Tutankhamun it was made of wood but covered with sheet gold and inlaid with colored glass Jasper lapis lazuli and turquoise all in a feather pattern in a technique called Egyptian poison a [Music] even the bottom of the coffin under the feet was filled with hieroglyphic incantations and a goddess wings outspread in protection [Music] [Music] archaeologist Carter was puzzled by the extreme weight of the coffins it wasn't until he opened this second coffin that the puzzle was solved a third coffin inside it weighed over 400 pounds made of pure gold more than 1/8 of an inch thick like the other two coffins it too was in the form of Osiris with the features of Tutankhamun the idea being that since Osiris had risen from the dead through the magic of his wife Isis feral made to look like a Cyrus would likewise be assured of resurrection and eternal life here again the wings of the goddess necklace unfold in protection and hieroglyphics repeat the magic phrases from The Book of the Dead calling on the gods to grant life to the Dead King the coffin is over six feet long a masterpiece of the Goldsmith's art and covered completely with engravings hieroglyphics and inlay it must have taken months perhaps years to design to fashion and to execute such an exquisite work of art in fact many of the objects buried with the king could not have been built within the seventy days between his death and his burial they must have been fashioned for the tomb long before his death and they were it was the custom to begin preparations for the King's tomb as soon as the king was crowned and the massive outer coffin the beautiful second coffin and this magnificent golden coffin all were built years before waiting only for the Kings death to be put to use in ancient Egypt the business of death was a thriving business but even this coffin of solid gold is not the last surprise for Howard Carter because when he opened this coffin he was faced with the most magnificent find of all the great gold mask of Tutankhamun the mask was placed like a helmet over the shoulders and head of the Kings mummy extending well past the breasts it was a fantastic work of art and in a way it was still another claim for the King to eternal life the three coffins had been made to look like Osiris the mask presented Tutankhamun as the Sun God who is said to have a face of gold and eyebrows and eyelashes of lapis lazuli [Music] such a God would rise each day and soar across the heavens in a fiery trail thus life was assured the dead God king [Music] around the neck of the mummy was placed this collar of gold and glass it is the vulture goddess Nekhbet whose outspread wings provide magical protection and there was more to protect the king this dagger was found wrapped in the linen bands which covered the body it is made of solid gold as is the sheath the whole gathering of Golden Gods was also buried with the king and placed in the treasury segment with a head of a lioness also called the eye of raw the sun-god Gama su he who gives light with his two eyes [Music] Horus son of Osiris patron of the kings of Egypt and Penta one of the oldest gods in the Egyptian pantheon he was the chief god of Memphis the first capital of the United Egypt where he was declared to be the creator of the world four coffins containing the embalmed liver lungs stomach and intestines of the King were topped with four likenesses of a king carved in alabaster but here the King seems younger which indicates that the work was probably done early in his reign when preparations were made to craft the objects he would need in his tomb for the afterlife and holding all of this was a golden shrine still in the Cairo Museum it is crowned by a standard of Cobras holding the sun-god and guarded on all four sides by the goddesses Isis Memphis knife and cell kit an inscription defines their roles in these words these four goddesses shall be with you accompanying you driving out every evil that is in your flesh exterminating those who come against you and setting their magic spells against them but on the shrine in Cairo one goddess cel kit is missing that's because she is here in America and along with the Kings great golden mask she is the star of the show with a grace that belies her age she stands alone aloof eternally poised and serene [Music] but of all the things Tutankhamun's golden scepter tells the story best it was probably given to him at his coronation and was buried with him in the tomb and the hieroglyphic inscription reads the good god the beloved dazzling a face like the sun's disc when it shines the son of almond nib cabaret lived forever the sun's disc shines still on the face of Egypt and in the tomb in the Valley of the Kings in the gilded coffin resting in the great stone sarcophagus Tutankhamun lies at rest we all know him a little better now he was a king but he was also a child and when he died he had but one wish to ask of his gods he wanted to live forever so far yes [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music]