Flooded Tombs of the Nile (2021) Movie Script
(distant indistinct chatter)
DR. CREASMAN:
I start off by saying,
"Hey, who wants to go
scuba dive a pyramid in the Sahara?"
And see what the reaction is.
As an archeologist,
am I curious to open up a tomb,
and look and see what's inside?
Absolutely, I am.
But no one's done anything
quite like this.
How do you excavate tombs
in the desert underwater?
Sudan has an incredible
and long history.
For hundreds of years,
people have been focusing
on the really big,
well-preserved monuments of Egypt,
and overlooked what is today Sudan.
You have pyramids.
You have burial chambers that
are probably unexcavated.
You have dozens of kings,
dozens and dozens of queens
and princesses and princes.
To have the opportunity to go in
and excavate these things
is really incredible.
ROMEY: Aah! Oh, look at that!
Look at that, look at that!
That's gold! (laughs)
DR. CREASMAN: Every time you go diving,
you're putting yourself at risk.
We are using surface-supplied air.
It's one less thing to deal with:
having a big tank on your back
in a confined environment where
you're not entirely sure
how sturdy the walls are.
DR. CREASMAN:
Just so we're all clear on the plan.
We go down to the chute.
Hold onto the chute,
take a couple of deep breaths
and just hang out there.
Good to go?
Let's do it!
And right as I hit the water,
as the cold water starts to
infiltrate into my wetsuit,
I look up and start to
have this thought about,
"Okay, this is somebody's burial place.
"This is a place to be respected.
A place to be learned from.
A place to understand."
And it just registers.
(breathing through apparatus)
NARRATOR: This watery grave
is the 2,000 year old burial place
of a Nubian king named Nastasen.
DR. CREASMAN: Tombs give us time capsules.
Glimpses into the history
of a people and place.
NARRATOR:
Archeologist Pearce Paul Creasman
is hoping to learn more
about who Nastasen was,
and the ancient world around him,
from the secrets his pyramid still holds.
More than nine meters above the dive,
site inspector Fakhri Hassan
and underwater archeologist Kristin Romey
are positioned to receive buckets of mud
sent up from the tomb floor.
ROMEY: The goal of this season
is to really begin to excavate
the burial chamber of Nastasen.
(breathing through apparatus)
That requires moving a lot of material
out of the burial chamber to be examined.
NARRATOR: Each bucket holds
a promise to reveal new clues
about the king,
and how he was laid to rest.
ROMEY: So while we have divers
down in the tomb
and pulling up the buckets,
the sieving needs to be done topside,
because we can't allow
this material to dry out.
Just in case there's something
particularly fragile,
because it'll... it could literally
just turn to dust.
Looking for gold, and bones,
and anything that should not
be in normal sediment.
ABDALLAH:
I have water if you want.
ROMEY: Okay, I think this is good.
-ABDALLAH: Enough?
-ROMEY: But, um...
Yeah, I think this is enough.
Aah! Bingo!
Five minutes in, and we already hit gold.
It's gold foil,
so imagine like aluminum foil
that's been crinkled over time.
It's paper thin.
It's almost like tissue paper.
Tissue paper made of gold.
This is good.
ABDALLAH: Good luck.
ROMEY: Yep, good luck.
Thank you, Nastasen!
NARRATOR: To the archeologists,
the early find of gold is a good sign
they're on the right track.
Even more exciting
is what they discover next.
ROMEY: Oh! (laughs)
Hey, Fakhri!
-ABDALLAH: What?
-ROMEY: Who is this?
NARRATOR: A figurine, called a shabti,
is traditionally carved in
the buried king's likeness.
ABDALLAH: This may be, maybe... Nastasen.
Because it's the same face...
but we will see.
We will study to make a comparison.
-ROMEY: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
-We will see.
ROMEY: That's wonderful.
ABDALLAH: Yeah, that's wonderful.
ROMEY: Yeah, that's a good one.
ABDALLAH: Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah.
This is new information
that lets us understand our history more.
This site is important
because it's one of the royal
cemeteries of Kush.
This is one of the most
ancient kingdoms of Sudan.
NARRATOR:
Beginning more than 4,000 years ago,
the kingdom of Kush ruled
much of the Nubian desert,
including what's now Northern Sudan.
From 650 to 300 BC,
the Kushites buried their royalty
near Napata,
the heart of their dynasty
at its most powerful point in history.
Nuri is one of the most
important burial grounds in this region,
situated at the 4th cataract of the Nile.
DR. CREASMAN: There were more than
80 burials of kings, queens,
princes, and princesses
here at Nuri alone.
There are only about
300 or 400 pyramids total
in all of Egypt and Sudan.
And for so many of them
to be concentrated at this one place,
that is incredible.
This must have been the creme de la creme
of the culture and society at the time.
NARRATOR: Starting in 1913,
American archeologist George Reisner
excavated many Kush burial sites,
discovering the tombs
of its most prominent kings.
ROMEY: Reisner was the first archeologist
to excavate at Nuri.
He really put Nuri on a map.
NARRATOR: He and his team
moved from pyramid to pyramid,
but they began to run into a problem...
water.
When the men arrived
at what's now known
to be Nastasen's tomb,
they found it partially flooded,
and with one of the chambers collapsed.
ROMEY: Reisner, from what I understand,
sent a very reluctant worker
into this dark tomb.
And from what it seems like,
this worker kind of
ran into the burial chamber,
hastily dug a hole,
pulled out a couple shabtis
to confirm it was indeed Nastasen,
and then they got out of there.
DR. CREASMAN: They wanted to learn
whose tomb it was.
They ultimately got a couple shabtis
that had the king's name on it,
Nastasen, but other than that,
no one has been, as near as we can tell,
no one's even been in this tomb
since Nastasen was buried there.
(goat bleats)
NARRATOR: In the centuries
since Nastasen was laid to rest,
the Nile river basin has risen at Nuri.
Climate change, industrial agriculture,
and construction of dams have changed
the levels of the water,
flooding many of the tombs.
It's these waters that may
have saved the rich burials
from a common fate.
ROMEY:
Of course, the problem with pyramids
is that they're big targets.
They say, "Hey, there's a big pile of loot
buried underneath me. Come get it."
Even in ancient times,
these tombs were being
plundered left and right.
However, at Nuri it seems that
these chambers were untouched,
because the water rose.
DR. CREASMAN: It becomes
exceedingly more difficult to get to.
Being underwater makes it
off limits to most of humanity.
NARRATOR: In 2018,
Pearce Paul Creasman launched
his first expedition
to open Nastasen's tomb.
He invited underwater
archeologist Kristin Romey
to join him.
ROMEY: I've done shipwrecks,
I've been in caves,
but I think there is nothing,
nothing in the world that compares
to diving in a tomb under a pyramid
in a desert in Sudan. Nothing.
For the first time going
into a tomb and not knowing,
I really could not have
expected better conditions,
because the water level
was not extremely high.
NARRATOR: The water levels
change from year to year,
but it was immediately
apparent why the pyramid
had spooked Reisner's team.
The groundwater from the Nile had risen
into all three chambers
of Nastasen's tomb.
The smallest first chamber
was completely submerged.
The roof of the second chamber collapsed
at some point in antiquity,
creating an extra air pocket.
The third and final chamber is where
the king would have been buried,
surrounded by treasures for the afterlife.
But for Pearce Paul and Kristin,
braving the flooded chambers paid off.
ROMEY:
I think the big moment of realization
of what we actually had
in Nastasen's pyramid
was when Pearce Paul led me
to the third chamber in the back,
and we were just waving
our flashlights around,
and he pointed to this little
niche in the back wall,
and the flashlight caught on
little bits of gold in the niche,
left there for centuries
and centuries and centuries.
It was incredible.
And when I realized that
there was just like gold lying around,
that this is an untouched burial.
DR. CREASMAN: If anybody had been
in that tomb to rob it,
stands to reason they'd have taken
the gold shiny stuff off
of the shelf at eye level.
NARRATOR: The untouched treasure is a hint
that something else could be
in the burial chamber.
Something even rarer than gold.
DR. CREASMAN: In the middle of
the third chamber,
there's a large mound.
It's got stones all around it,
and it is very conveniently
about the size of a person.
It's about six feet long
and about three feet wide,
and then a pile around it.
NARRATOR: This season, a year later,
Pearce Paul is hoping to
uncover the burial,
and learn whether Nastasen
is still inside.
DR. CREASMAN: Pyramids in general,
don't often retain
their intended occupants.
It's actually exceedingly rare
to find a pyramid
with the person in it.
ROMEY:
If you're looking at, really kind of
untouched royal burials
in this part of the world,
the last really big one was about
a century ago. It was Tut.
And he was really a
relatively minor pharaoh
in the bigger scheme of things.
Tut's famous because he's
got an untouched tomb.
Nastasen, on the other hand,
there's all sorts of
major political upheaval
in the ancient world that he's part of.
Being able to excavate
the untouched royal tomb of Nastasen,
I think is going to be
an immense wealth of information.
DR. CREASMAN: Nuri is one of
the most intensive concentrations
of pyramids anywhere in the world,
across any culture and civilization.
(camel grunts)
DR. CREASMAN: In Sudan, in fact,
there are more pyramids than in Egypt,
and this is a thing that people
don't think of very often.
NARRATOR: Kush and Egypt have
a long, interwoven history,
one that is just beginning
to be more fully understood.
ROMEY: Most of what we know
in the history books
about the Kingdom of Kush,
comes from the perspective
of the Egyptians,
because the Egyptians had writing.
And the Egyptians
wrote everything down. Everything.
They pushed a
phenomenal amount of paper,
we would say in today's world.
And we are fortunate to have
a lot of those records.
But those records frame
everyone outside of Egypt
as somehow not equal to, or lesser than.
History is written by
the victors, the one percent.
And archeology tells
the story of the underdogs.
The other 99 percent.
The best way to really verify
or disqualify a historical account
is to look for the facts on the ground.
Sometimes it jives with the history books,
and sometimes it doesn't.
NARRATOR: Archeologist
Geoff Emberling has excavated
many important Kush monuments,
uncovering its past brick by brick.
DR. EMBERLING: We know that from
the very first moment that Kush
appears in history, around 2000 BC,
it was powerful.
It was so powerful that
the Egyptians at that time
built a series of fortresses
along the Nile
to protect themselves
against the military power of Kush.
NARRATOR:
From its prime position on the Nile,
the Kush empire controlled
trade routes from the south
up to Egypt, transporting ivory,
leopard skins,
precious stones, and gold.
DR. EMBERLING: They had
the connections with inner Africa
that could bring these exotic
products all the way to Egypt,
and to the wider Mediterranean world.
ROMEY: They were the go-betweens,
and they became very,
very rich and powerful
off being in that position.
NARRATOR: Egypt relied on Kushite gold
for their elaborate burials...
and fierce Kushite warriors
to supplement Egyptian armies.
Eventually the Kushites
gained so much power
the Egyptians saw them as a threat,
and invaded their neighbors to the south.
For the next 400 years,
Kush was controlled by Egypt.
In the beginning, the Egyptians imposed
their gods and temples on Kush.
ROMEY: They were taking
the elites of Kushite society
and giving them Egyptian educations.
NARRATOR: But the Kushites
eventually became
even more devout spiritual followers
than their conquerors.
Even as the Egyptian empire
began to lose strength
and withdraw in 1100 BC,
the Kushites continued
building their tombs
in the shapes of pyramids.
The jewelry found inside the burials
makes clear their
devotion to Egyptian gods.
ROMEY: We know that by
at least, at the bare minimum,
by the 8th century BC,
Kush is on the rise.
They have thrown off the shackles
of their Egyptian colonizers,
but they do retain some Egyptian elements.
NARRATOR: For the center of their kingdom,
the Kushites took over a place
full of spiritual significance
to the Egyptians.
A stunning sandstone butte
rising high above the desert landscape.
Jebel Barkal, or "sacred mountain."
From here, the Kush kings
were able to control
an increasingly extensive territory.
DR. EMBERLING: Ultimately, that rise
of power led to the Kushites
being able to conquer all of Egypt.
And that's historically just remarkable.
NARRATOR: For nearly a hundred years,
a succession of five Kushite kings
ruled all of Egypt.
From Napata, their capital,
they controlled more area than
any other Egyptian pharaohs,
stretching from modern-day
Khartoum to the Mediterranean.
One of these Kushite Kings,
a renowned warrior named Taharqa,
established Nuri as a royal cemetery.
DR. EMBERLING: In many ways,
Taharqa was the most notable
25th dynasty king.
The cemetery that he established at Nuri
became the royal burial ground for Kush
for over 300 years.
So, he became the ancestor
that the succeeding kings of Kush
wanted to connect themselves to.
NARRATOR: Kings like Nastasen,
who Pearce Paul is hoping
may still lie inside his tomb.
I would like to find
evidence of Nastasen himself.
I'm not saying I want to
come up face to face with him
in the middle of
the third chamber, um, in the dark,
but it'd be an experience.
NARRATOR: When Pearce Paul's team
begins their second season of excavation,
they find Nastasen's tomb
in an unexpected,
and unnerving condition.
ROMEY: The morning of the first dive,
I'll admit I was apprehensive.
This was a completely different situation
than it was last season.
DR. CREASMAN: We were all really surprised
about how much water was in there.
The water table was
considerably lower last year.
This year we are now working
with at least 15 feet more
vertical of water.
NARRATOR: Last season, the team
attempted to pump the water
out of the burial chambers,
but the water pressure coming from
the outside of the walls
puts the tomb at great risk of collapsing.
DR. CREASMAN: When we tried to pump,
it was just like a faucet running,
and there's a hundred different faucets
coming through the walls.
I don't think it's worth the risk.
It's more like putting a
paper bag in the ocean,
and then trying to take
the water out of the paper bag.
What do you think's gonna happen?
The rest of the water is gonna rush in
and try and...
And it will crumple the bag.
Regardless of whether or not
we were able to safely and comfortably
pump it dry and dig it, it's still a tomb.
We don't want it to be a tomb
for more than one person.
Nastasen's plenty.
SCHNEIDER:
So you're coming in as well?
ROMEY: I'm coming in as well.
Okay. So, today we're actually
gonna do excavation work.
Dave is gonna be on the outside.
-ROMEY: Okay.
-Manning hoses, air,
emergency whatever.
And I will go in first.
If we touch hands, I might squeeze once.
If you squeeze once, it means okay.
If you do multiple squeezes,
I'm gonna pull you out through that chute.
ROMEY: Even though I kind of
laid awake the night before,
kind of running through my head,
okay, you go down to this staircase.
This is the way you enter the tomb.
Then you hit chamber one, chamber two.
And I'm walking myself through it.
I knew that regardless of how many times
I was looping that through my head,
it was not gonna be what
I was going to encounter.
-You'll be standing.
-Okay. So I bring in
an empty bucket in,
and I write down the number of...
DR. CREASMAN:
The empty bucket on the next line.
ROMEY: ...The empty bucket on
the next line.
And then you figure out if it's A, B, C.
NARRATOR: By carefully keeping track
of where each of the buckets comes from,
Pearce Paul will be able to match up
any objects they find inside
to specific areas of the tomb.
My bucket came from, you know,
the northwest corner of that...
NARRATOR: Piecing together the burial,
and laying clues to where
Nastasen's remains might be.
-ROMEY: Okay.
-Does that make sense?
Understood, okay.
DR. CREASMAN:
The biggest problem is gonna be panic.
ROMEY: Of course,
that's always what it is.
You know, if something happens.
SCHNEIDER: Claustrophobia and panic
are your biggest concerns.
DR. CREASMAN: Yeah.
If you're inside and you are panicking,
-get to the air pocket.
-SCHNEIDER: Mm-hmm.
-If you're by the front door, get out.
-Yeah.
Um, but get to the air pocket,
sit and wait.
Someone will come to you
if you don't feel like
you can get out on your own.
It's not easy.
You know, when you're topside,
you're in this brilliant, you know,
Sudanese sun,
and you've got the desert stretching
as far as you could see.
And you walk down this
ceremonial staircase,
and it gets progressively
darker and colder,
and darker and colder.
And once you're down in there,
you're in another world.
And it's a little bit scary, to be blunt.
DR. CREASMAN: Okay. Kristin,
you're going to be on this line.
-ROMEY: Okay?
-DR. CREASMAN: Yeah.
Fire 'em up.
(engine whirring)
(oxygen blowing)
ROMEY: The minute that
your head goes underwater
and you start pulling yourself
through that steel chute
into the chamber,
and you kind of realize
the gravity of what's going on.
And then you realize that
the visibility's shot.
You have to kind of navigate your way
through that first chamber
to get into the air pocket
in the second chamber.
And it's just like every sense is 110%.
You are just wired and
just trying to figure out
what's gonna happen next.
(air bubbles)
ROMEY: So you're going in with 19 now?
-DR. CREASMAN: 19A.
-ROMEY: 19A, you got it.
DR. CREASMAN:
All right. See you in a few minutes.
(indistinct chatter)
ROMEY: 10:30.
NARRATOR: Kristin notes the time,
to track how long Pearce Paul
is working in the third chamber.
If he's gone more than a few minutes,
she'll have to go in and try to find him.
ROMEY: We know that the second chamber
of the burial suite beneath the pyramid
has already collapsed
at some point in history.
And so there's no reason why
other parts of that tomb can't collapse.
(breathing through apparatus)
DR. CREASMAN: When we first got
back here from last year,
the water was crystal clear.
We came in into the tomb
and came up, we thought
there was an air pocket,
the water was so clear
that we just hit our heads
and looked up and saw our bubbles
going against the roof.
What's... What's going on here?
It was phenomenal.
NARRATOR: At first,
Pearce Paul could clearly
make out familiar landmarks...
The niche that had housed flakes of gold.
Decorative blocks cut from stone,
and the burial itself,
a mound of rocks that may
still hold Nastasen's remains.
But now, the visibility
is next to nothing.
DR. CREASMAN: Because of the rockfalls,
because of the collapses,
because of the sands
that have blown into it,
as soon as you start getting
in there, you start stirring it up,
and very quickly once we start working,
it's zero visibility.
It's as if you're doing it blindfolded,
sometimes upside down,
and you're just trying to do
the best you can
to understand the situation,
and make this mental map.
ROMEY: You are trying
to find important things
solely by touch.
You cannot use your eyes,
you cannot use any other sense
but your touch and your mental memory.
(breathing through apparatus)
(breathing through apparatus)
DR. CREASMAN: Wow.
This is a shabti.
It's buried with the king.
And it's a person to help him
in the afterlife,
so he doesn't have to
deal with the drudgery
of day-to-day work.
(compressed air release)
SCHNEIDER: I like that it's painted.
DR. CREASMAN: Yeah. It's great!
Incredible condition.
(engine rumbling)
-MAN: Thank you.
-DR. CREASMAN: You're welcome.
(engine rumbling)
DR. CREASMAN: The season so far,
I'm most proud of that
we get out of the tomb every day safely.
Uh, that is number one.
Number two, I really do
think we're making progress.
I think we're learning more every day.
We're getting information
that makes this worth it.
So, there's a major gap
in our understanding
in the transition of this one kingdom,
the people of Napata.
After hundreds of years of
burying their kings here,
they just stop.
Nastasen falls at a really
important time for us.
He is the last king buried at Nuri.
Why do they stop?
Why do they then move from one
place to another, to another?
Who makes those decisions?
Because you don't bury yourself.
(people speaking indistinctly)
DR. EMBERLING: The 4th century BC in Kush
was a little bit of a turbulent time,
and we see this in
a number of different ways,
including the locations of royal burials.
A king's decision about
where to build his pyramid
probably had a lot of different
motivations behind it.
NARRATOR:
To investigate these motivations,
and what could have
caused this tumultuous time,
archeologists Geoff Emberling
and Sami Elamin
are turning their attention
from the elite to the ordinary.
Nearby the royal temple
that hosted coronations
for a long line of kings and pharaohs,
Geoff and his colleagues
are unearthing a town
that hasn't seen daylight
in thousands of years.
DR. EMBERLING:
I've always loved digging settlements.
I'm always just interested
in how everybody lived,
and not just how the kings lived.
I don't know,
I kind of don't trust those people,
those kings.
(laughs) And I would
rather be able to tell history
in a way that included
all of us and all of them.
(indistinct chatter)
NARRATOR: Geoff has been
excavating royal temples
and burials around
Jebel Barkal for 14 years.
But he'd always wondered
where the people who built the structures
and supported the elite lived.
(people speaking indistinctly)
He knew there must
have been a town nearby,
long ago buried under the sand.
DR. EMBERLING: Those are the kinds of
questions that keep me going
as an archeologist.
What is it that we don't know
that's under our feet?
NARRATOR: As building walls,
streets, and alleys emerge from the sand,
Geoff and his team can
begin to piece together
what this ancient
city would have looked like.
DR. EMBERLING: Yeah.
NARRATOR: In the shadow of Jebel Barkal,
at least 10 large buildings
would have been anchors
to different neighborhoods,
dividing the city into districts.
Homes are organized into city blocks,
an early indication of urban planning.
What happened inside the homes
may give a glimpse
into how prosperous the people
of Napata actually were.
The section of the city
Geoff is excavating
seems to have been organized
around a big building,
with smaller structures around it.
We're looking at
the outer wall of this building.
It goes down, it turns a corner,
and so the... the building is extending
off in this direction.
We're hoping to find whatever it is
that they were doing
and making in this building,
and you can't predict
what that's going to be.
But we expect that underneath
our feet goes down centuries,
if not 1,000 years.
There's a series of rooms
in between these walls.
And then, that's the outside
of the building
where the pile of sand is,
and that's where we start to find objects
that were related
to the use of the building.
That's where the,
frankly, the garbage was,
and that's what tells us
what people were doing here.
NARRATOR: One of the town garbage pits
indicates an ancient storeroom,
which would have kept food,
oils, and other essentials.
Centuries later,
the tossed away lids and labels
that sealed the jars reveal
more than meets the eye.
BRAHE: Literally we found
thousands of sealings
in the pit here,
which is very interesting.
And I will pull one out here which
was excavated this season here.
It's made of clay and it's a jar stopper.
That's on the top of the jar.
You have cloth beneath and we have this
lump of clay above
in order to close the jar.
And when you have done that, you will
take your golden ring like this one here
and you will stamp the jar stopper
with your... with your ring
in order to preserve the sealing here.
So, if you look closely through the
magnifier you will be able to see
the seal impression once in a while.
NARRATOR:
Each town official had his own ring,
with its own unique image,
a personalized seal to verify oversight
and responsibility
for the contents inside.
But we have a nice example,
one of the other sealings here.
If you look closely here, you can see
you have this elongated figure here
and we think actually it's
lion head over here.
And you can see the half ring over here
as well. That's another sealing as well.
That would be the head of
the crocodile, we think.
(speaking indistinctly)
NARRATOR: For Geoff,
the seal impressions are evidence
of a complex economic system,
that may help reconstruct
the royal power structure
at Jebel Barkal.
As the team digs deeper,
they'll reach older layers of the town,
and even more ancient clues
as to how society operated.
DR. EMBERLING: This season,
we've got down to probably
the 3rd century BC.
So, probably the next
level down is going to be
the time of Nastasen.
And it's very possible that
we might find seal impressions
with names of kings.
Maybe even names of kings
we don't know about.
So there are possible ways
that we could fill in that history.
Of course, we can't guarantee
that we'll find those,
but they're here somewhere.
NARRATOR: Soon after Nastasen's reign,
around 315 BC,
the Kushites moved their center
of political power
away from Napata.
The forces behind this shift
remain a mystery,
but the archeologists
are beginning to rule out
one major possibility.
DR. CREASMAN: You can get
indications of how prosperous
a time and place was based on
the burials of people, right?
Especially the burials of your kings.
If the most powerful and important
person in your society
is buried in a very modest way,
it would suggest that either
there is a cultural shift
of some kind toward this sort of modesty,
or that the resources weren't available.
Nastasen's tomb isn't that.
There are pretty good
indications that he had
all of the needs and equipments
and resources
that a king would have,
and that he was well-equipped
for the afterlife.
ROMEY: Good morning. How are you?
-DR. CREASMAN: Good, how are you doing?
-ROMEY: Good.
DR. CREASMAN:
We had a pretty good day yesterday.
ROMEY: Yeah? How good of a day?
Pretty good.
You want to come see?
ROMEY: Yeah, I do.
DR. CREASMAN:
We got some interesting things out.
ROMEY: Oh, wow. (chuckles) Yeah.
(people speaking indistinctly)
DR. CREASMAN: So...
-I think...
-It's still got some gold on it.
It would have been gold-leafed.
-Yep.
-It's got some more here
and once we have it cleaned,
more will come off underneath.
That's gorgeous.
DR. CREASMAN:
If this is what we think it is,
I'm only aware of one other really
prominent example of this.
So, it makes it an essential discovery.
Have you seen the Hemn
and Taharqa statuette in the Louvre?
-ROMEY: Yes.
-DR. CREASMAN: It's got Taharqa sitting,
making offerings to the bird god?
I think that's what this is.
So there should be a little statue
-of Nastasen making offerings.
-ROMEY: ...offerings.
So, we need to go find
-the pair of Nastasen.
-ROMEY: Nastasen.
Okay, that's the mission.
-Yep.
-The mission taken on here.
Wow.
NARRATOR: Over the next few days,
the team pulls an increasing amount
of evidence from the tomb,
pointing to a burial of a king
who wanted to be revered and remembered.
ROMEY: All righty, we've got another box.
-LEA KHOLMEYER: Okay.
-ROMEY: For eight, bucket is eight.
(singing in native language)
MOHAMMAD: Okay. Okay.
ROMEY: Shabti. All right.
-Yeah, and charcoal.
-Charcoal.
-Yeah.
-Okay.
NARRATOR: Bits of charcoal
could be evidence of a burnt offering
made at the time of the burial.
ROMEY: I've got more charcoal here.
-I've got a good amount of charcoal.
-MOHAMMAD: Charcoal.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!
-ROMEY: Whoa!
-Yeah!
That's the biggest
piece of gold I've seen!
-Biggest piece of gold. Yeah.
-(indistinct chatter)
(water running)
NARRATOR: Gold foil that
would have covered objects
like the statue of the falcon god.
-Beautiful.
-I win?
-No, you win.
-Yes, you do win.
-KHOLMEYER: You win.
-(laughter)
MOHAMMAD: Yep. Gold, gold.
That piece of gold.
ROMEY: Oop, more gold.
KHOLMEYER: Here I'm leaving you a gift.
-(Romey laughs)
-KHOLMEYER: It's the bag.
-Day of gold.
-Day of gold.
-Ah, there's some more right there.
-Yeah. Yeah.
Day of gold.
(indistinct chatter)
KHOLMEYER:
Oh, hey. The biggest bone I've found yet.
ROMEY: Oh, yeah.
DR. CREASMAN: As we get closer to
the central parts of the tomb,
we started to find pieces
of bone that are darkened.
And yes, this could be from
having been burned or charred,
but this can be what happens
to bones underwater.
ROMEY: See that, what,
is that leather maybe, or... ?
-DUSABLON: Here?
-ROMEY: It's in the mud.
DUSABLON: Yeah.
ROMEY: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
More leather.
Yeah, that's leather.
-KHOLMEYER: Okay, that's beautiful.
-ROMEY: Yeah.
DR. CREASMAN: We got out what we think
are some pieces of leather,
and if these are pieces of leather,
that would be consistent
with the types of burials
from this time and place,
in which they might have been
put on or wrapped in a hide mat.
If that's what this is,
then it's another good indication
that yeah, the king was, or is, here.
(indistinct chatter)
NARRATOR:
With each day of discovery at Nuri,
Pearce Paul is getting closer
to honing in on what might be
the burial, and body, of king Nastasen.
DR. CREASMAN: As of today,
the tomb looks something like this.
You've got the niche up here. The entry.
So this is the third chamber.
We have some... a very large slab.
I think this is a fall from the roof.
Now, yesterday, because
we moved a lot of the blocks
from inside the burial chamber,
things got a lot clearer.
What we have is a basically flat tabletop.
It feels like... It's so--
It's so shockingly flat.
It feels intentional.
But this piece is big enough
so that when I'm laying
on top of it with my
arms and legs spread out,
I can barely touch the corners
of all four at the same time.
So it's massive.
NARRATOR: Through his finds
and careful mapping of their locations,
Pearce Paul is able to reconstruct
what he'd be seeing in
the tomb if the water were clear,
centered around the area
where Nastasen may lie.
DR. CREASMAN: So you have a big slab
in the middle of the room.
There's one rock left here,
one piece standing up against the wall.
This fell after the burial,
because there is a shabti
stuck under the corner of it.
So the shabtis are actually
lined up along two walls.
We found a bunch of them in place here.
And then they've been
along the wall like this,
every couple of inches all the way down.
The falcon deity was over here,
and it wasn't directly on the floor.
And through out of here
we got bone fragments,
and we got what looks to be
big patches of leather.
If the king is in there,
it makes sense for him to be
in the middle of the room,
and so he should be underneath this slab.
Progress has been great.
The goal had been to... to complete
the excavation this season.
I don't think we'll make it,
in part because we're finding too much,
which is a terrible and
wonderful problem to have.
If you think of it in some ways,
archeology is kind of like
trying to figure out
an ancient crime scene, right?
Everybody's dead.
Nobody can speak for themselves.
And all you have is
the physical evidence around it.
But instead of spent shotgun shells,
you've got pottery and inscriptions,
and all these wonderful pieces of puzzle
that you really have to
patiently put together.
Gosh, look at the visibility.
I can even see bubbles
-in there on occasion.
-DR. CREASMAN: I know. So, you know...
NARRATOR: Pearce Paul and Kristin
review some of the footage
of Nastasen's tomb
to assess whether there's
a possibility he's still inside.
-...had been gilded...
-ROMEY: Mm-hmm.
...that then got squished...
NARRATOR: The rockfalls in the tomb
block them from getting a clear picture.
But it could also be a stroke of luck.
How many... How many falls
you think you got there?
At least two.
What I'm hoping is is that
the things coming down
from the ceiling, yes,
they crush some stuff,
-but they also push it out.
-...from in. Yeah.
We found some shattered
parts of bone, probably human.
-We found gold leaf, we found leather.
-ROMEY: Mm-hmm.
-DR. CREASMAN:
We found a little statuette of a deity.
ROMEY: So essentially, you're dealing with
a tomb tsunami, in some sense.
DR. CREASMAN:
Yes. It's great, because I think
the likelihood is high
that there's more there, there,
because it's protected.
-ROMEY: Mm-hmm.
-Smushed, but protected.
DR. CREASMAN:
I can imagine that this gigantic slab
has prevented anybody else
since that event occurred
from doing anything to get to
whatever is underneath it...
-Yeah.
-...which is in the center of the room,
-which is where all these burials are.
-Which is...
Yes. Which is where Nastasen
-should be if he's in there.
-DR. CREASMAN: Should be. Yeah.
ROMEY: Now we just have to figure out...
DR. CREASMAN: What's the technical
way to do it, if at all,
which is also one of the questions.
Is this a thing that we can do today,
or is it a thing that we leave
to someone else in the future?
ROMEY: For immediate gratification,
that's disappointing,
because you've got a big rock in the way.
But for our long term prospects,
it's really intriguing.
We may have Nastasen
still inside that tomb.
NARRATOR: After Nastasen's reign,
and the mysterious move from Napata,
the Kushites began a new era.
While still prosperous for centuries,
the kingdom's power would
never again extend
as far as it had when it ruled Egypt.
DR. CREASMAN: It is a really
engaging time in human history
and it's these foundations,
these things that we look back
in our own history books and say,
"Gosh, these are important
events in our world, too."
(drone whirring)
NARRATOR: For nearly 2,000 years,
temples were built and rebuilt
at the foot of Jebel Barkal.
While the mountain's center
of power didn't last forever,
its spirit endures today.
DR. EMBERLING:
These places and these kings of Kush
are still really significant
in modern Sudan,
but it's beyond just history.
It's a very rich connection
that Sudanese have to these places.
They all know about their
historical importance,
but they're also
a part of their daily lives.
ELAMIN: The people are very connected
to the mountain itself initially.
But in the recent years with the
wave of archeological discoveries,
the people have become more interested
in the history and in the antiquities,
and they now ask a lot of questions
about the antiquities and the
history and the civilization as well.
DR. EMBERLING:
One thing that archeology teaches us
as we look over the centuries is that
things really do go wrong.
Cultures do collapse,
civilizations disappear.
One of the things I take
from studying archeology and history,
is that the decisions that
we make really matter.
DR. CREASMAN:
I start off by saying,
"Hey, who wants to go
scuba dive a pyramid in the Sahara?"
And see what the reaction is.
As an archeologist,
am I curious to open up a tomb,
and look and see what's inside?
Absolutely, I am.
But no one's done anything
quite like this.
How do you excavate tombs
in the desert underwater?
Sudan has an incredible
and long history.
For hundreds of years,
people have been focusing
on the really big,
well-preserved monuments of Egypt,
and overlooked what is today Sudan.
You have pyramids.
You have burial chambers that
are probably unexcavated.
You have dozens of kings,
dozens and dozens of queens
and princesses and princes.
To have the opportunity to go in
and excavate these things
is really incredible.
ROMEY: Aah! Oh, look at that!
Look at that, look at that!
That's gold! (laughs)
DR. CREASMAN: Every time you go diving,
you're putting yourself at risk.
We are using surface-supplied air.
It's one less thing to deal with:
having a big tank on your back
in a confined environment where
you're not entirely sure
how sturdy the walls are.
DR. CREASMAN:
Just so we're all clear on the plan.
We go down to the chute.
Hold onto the chute,
take a couple of deep breaths
and just hang out there.
Good to go?
Let's do it!
And right as I hit the water,
as the cold water starts to
infiltrate into my wetsuit,
I look up and start to
have this thought about,
"Okay, this is somebody's burial place.
"This is a place to be respected.
A place to be learned from.
A place to understand."
And it just registers.
(breathing through apparatus)
NARRATOR: This watery grave
is the 2,000 year old burial place
of a Nubian king named Nastasen.
DR. CREASMAN: Tombs give us time capsules.
Glimpses into the history
of a people and place.
NARRATOR:
Archeologist Pearce Paul Creasman
is hoping to learn more
about who Nastasen was,
and the ancient world around him,
from the secrets his pyramid still holds.
More than nine meters above the dive,
site inspector Fakhri Hassan
and underwater archeologist Kristin Romey
are positioned to receive buckets of mud
sent up from the tomb floor.
ROMEY: The goal of this season
is to really begin to excavate
the burial chamber of Nastasen.
(breathing through apparatus)
That requires moving a lot of material
out of the burial chamber to be examined.
NARRATOR: Each bucket holds
a promise to reveal new clues
about the king,
and how he was laid to rest.
ROMEY: So while we have divers
down in the tomb
and pulling up the buckets,
the sieving needs to be done topside,
because we can't allow
this material to dry out.
Just in case there's something
particularly fragile,
because it'll... it could literally
just turn to dust.
Looking for gold, and bones,
and anything that should not
be in normal sediment.
ABDALLAH:
I have water if you want.
ROMEY: Okay, I think this is good.
-ABDALLAH: Enough?
-ROMEY: But, um...
Yeah, I think this is enough.
Aah! Bingo!
Five minutes in, and we already hit gold.
It's gold foil,
so imagine like aluminum foil
that's been crinkled over time.
It's paper thin.
It's almost like tissue paper.
Tissue paper made of gold.
This is good.
ABDALLAH: Good luck.
ROMEY: Yep, good luck.
Thank you, Nastasen!
NARRATOR: To the archeologists,
the early find of gold is a good sign
they're on the right track.
Even more exciting
is what they discover next.
ROMEY: Oh! (laughs)
Hey, Fakhri!
-ABDALLAH: What?
-ROMEY: Who is this?
NARRATOR: A figurine, called a shabti,
is traditionally carved in
the buried king's likeness.
ABDALLAH: This may be, maybe... Nastasen.
Because it's the same face...
but we will see.
We will study to make a comparison.
-ROMEY: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
-We will see.
ROMEY: That's wonderful.
ABDALLAH: Yeah, that's wonderful.
ROMEY: Yeah, that's a good one.
ABDALLAH: Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah.
This is new information
that lets us understand our history more.
This site is important
because it's one of the royal
cemeteries of Kush.
This is one of the most
ancient kingdoms of Sudan.
NARRATOR:
Beginning more than 4,000 years ago,
the kingdom of Kush ruled
much of the Nubian desert,
including what's now Northern Sudan.
From 650 to 300 BC,
the Kushites buried their royalty
near Napata,
the heart of their dynasty
at its most powerful point in history.
Nuri is one of the most
important burial grounds in this region,
situated at the 4th cataract of the Nile.
DR. CREASMAN: There were more than
80 burials of kings, queens,
princes, and princesses
here at Nuri alone.
There are only about
300 or 400 pyramids total
in all of Egypt and Sudan.
And for so many of them
to be concentrated at this one place,
that is incredible.
This must have been the creme de la creme
of the culture and society at the time.
NARRATOR: Starting in 1913,
American archeologist George Reisner
excavated many Kush burial sites,
discovering the tombs
of its most prominent kings.
ROMEY: Reisner was the first archeologist
to excavate at Nuri.
He really put Nuri on a map.
NARRATOR: He and his team
moved from pyramid to pyramid,
but they began to run into a problem...
water.
When the men arrived
at what's now known
to be Nastasen's tomb,
they found it partially flooded,
and with one of the chambers collapsed.
ROMEY: Reisner, from what I understand,
sent a very reluctant worker
into this dark tomb.
And from what it seems like,
this worker kind of
ran into the burial chamber,
hastily dug a hole,
pulled out a couple shabtis
to confirm it was indeed Nastasen,
and then they got out of there.
DR. CREASMAN: They wanted to learn
whose tomb it was.
They ultimately got a couple shabtis
that had the king's name on it,
Nastasen, but other than that,
no one has been, as near as we can tell,
no one's even been in this tomb
since Nastasen was buried there.
(goat bleats)
NARRATOR: In the centuries
since Nastasen was laid to rest,
the Nile river basin has risen at Nuri.
Climate change, industrial agriculture,
and construction of dams have changed
the levels of the water,
flooding many of the tombs.
It's these waters that may
have saved the rich burials
from a common fate.
ROMEY:
Of course, the problem with pyramids
is that they're big targets.
They say, "Hey, there's a big pile of loot
buried underneath me. Come get it."
Even in ancient times,
these tombs were being
plundered left and right.
However, at Nuri it seems that
these chambers were untouched,
because the water rose.
DR. CREASMAN: It becomes
exceedingly more difficult to get to.
Being underwater makes it
off limits to most of humanity.
NARRATOR: In 2018,
Pearce Paul Creasman launched
his first expedition
to open Nastasen's tomb.
He invited underwater
archeologist Kristin Romey
to join him.
ROMEY: I've done shipwrecks,
I've been in caves,
but I think there is nothing,
nothing in the world that compares
to diving in a tomb under a pyramid
in a desert in Sudan. Nothing.
For the first time going
into a tomb and not knowing,
I really could not have
expected better conditions,
because the water level
was not extremely high.
NARRATOR: The water levels
change from year to year,
but it was immediately
apparent why the pyramid
had spooked Reisner's team.
The groundwater from the Nile had risen
into all three chambers
of Nastasen's tomb.
The smallest first chamber
was completely submerged.
The roof of the second chamber collapsed
at some point in antiquity,
creating an extra air pocket.
The third and final chamber is where
the king would have been buried,
surrounded by treasures for the afterlife.
But for Pearce Paul and Kristin,
braving the flooded chambers paid off.
ROMEY:
I think the big moment of realization
of what we actually had
in Nastasen's pyramid
was when Pearce Paul led me
to the third chamber in the back,
and we were just waving
our flashlights around,
and he pointed to this little
niche in the back wall,
and the flashlight caught on
little bits of gold in the niche,
left there for centuries
and centuries and centuries.
It was incredible.
And when I realized that
there was just like gold lying around,
that this is an untouched burial.
DR. CREASMAN: If anybody had been
in that tomb to rob it,
stands to reason they'd have taken
the gold shiny stuff off
of the shelf at eye level.
NARRATOR: The untouched treasure is a hint
that something else could be
in the burial chamber.
Something even rarer than gold.
DR. CREASMAN: In the middle of
the third chamber,
there's a large mound.
It's got stones all around it,
and it is very conveniently
about the size of a person.
It's about six feet long
and about three feet wide,
and then a pile around it.
NARRATOR: This season, a year later,
Pearce Paul is hoping to
uncover the burial,
and learn whether Nastasen
is still inside.
DR. CREASMAN: Pyramids in general,
don't often retain
their intended occupants.
It's actually exceedingly rare
to find a pyramid
with the person in it.
ROMEY:
If you're looking at, really kind of
untouched royal burials
in this part of the world,
the last really big one was about
a century ago. It was Tut.
And he was really a
relatively minor pharaoh
in the bigger scheme of things.
Tut's famous because he's
got an untouched tomb.
Nastasen, on the other hand,
there's all sorts of
major political upheaval
in the ancient world that he's part of.
Being able to excavate
the untouched royal tomb of Nastasen,
I think is going to be
an immense wealth of information.
DR. CREASMAN: Nuri is one of
the most intensive concentrations
of pyramids anywhere in the world,
across any culture and civilization.
(camel grunts)
DR. CREASMAN: In Sudan, in fact,
there are more pyramids than in Egypt,
and this is a thing that people
don't think of very often.
NARRATOR: Kush and Egypt have
a long, interwoven history,
one that is just beginning
to be more fully understood.
ROMEY: Most of what we know
in the history books
about the Kingdom of Kush,
comes from the perspective
of the Egyptians,
because the Egyptians had writing.
And the Egyptians
wrote everything down. Everything.
They pushed a
phenomenal amount of paper,
we would say in today's world.
And we are fortunate to have
a lot of those records.
But those records frame
everyone outside of Egypt
as somehow not equal to, or lesser than.
History is written by
the victors, the one percent.
And archeology tells
the story of the underdogs.
The other 99 percent.
The best way to really verify
or disqualify a historical account
is to look for the facts on the ground.
Sometimes it jives with the history books,
and sometimes it doesn't.
NARRATOR: Archeologist
Geoff Emberling has excavated
many important Kush monuments,
uncovering its past brick by brick.
DR. EMBERLING: We know that from
the very first moment that Kush
appears in history, around 2000 BC,
it was powerful.
It was so powerful that
the Egyptians at that time
built a series of fortresses
along the Nile
to protect themselves
against the military power of Kush.
NARRATOR:
From its prime position on the Nile,
the Kush empire controlled
trade routes from the south
up to Egypt, transporting ivory,
leopard skins,
precious stones, and gold.
DR. EMBERLING: They had
the connections with inner Africa
that could bring these exotic
products all the way to Egypt,
and to the wider Mediterranean world.
ROMEY: They were the go-betweens,
and they became very,
very rich and powerful
off being in that position.
NARRATOR: Egypt relied on Kushite gold
for their elaborate burials...
and fierce Kushite warriors
to supplement Egyptian armies.
Eventually the Kushites
gained so much power
the Egyptians saw them as a threat,
and invaded their neighbors to the south.
For the next 400 years,
Kush was controlled by Egypt.
In the beginning, the Egyptians imposed
their gods and temples on Kush.
ROMEY: They were taking
the elites of Kushite society
and giving them Egyptian educations.
NARRATOR: But the Kushites
eventually became
even more devout spiritual followers
than their conquerors.
Even as the Egyptian empire
began to lose strength
and withdraw in 1100 BC,
the Kushites continued
building their tombs
in the shapes of pyramids.
The jewelry found inside the burials
makes clear their
devotion to Egyptian gods.
ROMEY: We know that by
at least, at the bare minimum,
by the 8th century BC,
Kush is on the rise.
They have thrown off the shackles
of their Egyptian colonizers,
but they do retain some Egyptian elements.
NARRATOR: For the center of their kingdom,
the Kushites took over a place
full of spiritual significance
to the Egyptians.
A stunning sandstone butte
rising high above the desert landscape.
Jebel Barkal, or "sacred mountain."
From here, the Kush kings
were able to control
an increasingly extensive territory.
DR. EMBERLING: Ultimately, that rise
of power led to the Kushites
being able to conquer all of Egypt.
And that's historically just remarkable.
NARRATOR: For nearly a hundred years,
a succession of five Kushite kings
ruled all of Egypt.
From Napata, their capital,
they controlled more area than
any other Egyptian pharaohs,
stretching from modern-day
Khartoum to the Mediterranean.
One of these Kushite Kings,
a renowned warrior named Taharqa,
established Nuri as a royal cemetery.
DR. EMBERLING: In many ways,
Taharqa was the most notable
25th dynasty king.
The cemetery that he established at Nuri
became the royal burial ground for Kush
for over 300 years.
So, he became the ancestor
that the succeeding kings of Kush
wanted to connect themselves to.
NARRATOR: Kings like Nastasen,
who Pearce Paul is hoping
may still lie inside his tomb.
I would like to find
evidence of Nastasen himself.
I'm not saying I want to
come up face to face with him
in the middle of
the third chamber, um, in the dark,
but it'd be an experience.
NARRATOR: When Pearce Paul's team
begins their second season of excavation,
they find Nastasen's tomb
in an unexpected,
and unnerving condition.
ROMEY: The morning of the first dive,
I'll admit I was apprehensive.
This was a completely different situation
than it was last season.
DR. CREASMAN: We were all really surprised
about how much water was in there.
The water table was
considerably lower last year.
This year we are now working
with at least 15 feet more
vertical of water.
NARRATOR: Last season, the team
attempted to pump the water
out of the burial chambers,
but the water pressure coming from
the outside of the walls
puts the tomb at great risk of collapsing.
DR. CREASMAN: When we tried to pump,
it was just like a faucet running,
and there's a hundred different faucets
coming through the walls.
I don't think it's worth the risk.
It's more like putting a
paper bag in the ocean,
and then trying to take
the water out of the paper bag.
What do you think's gonna happen?
The rest of the water is gonna rush in
and try and...
And it will crumple the bag.
Regardless of whether or not
we were able to safely and comfortably
pump it dry and dig it, it's still a tomb.
We don't want it to be a tomb
for more than one person.
Nastasen's plenty.
SCHNEIDER:
So you're coming in as well?
ROMEY: I'm coming in as well.
Okay. So, today we're actually
gonna do excavation work.
Dave is gonna be on the outside.
-ROMEY: Okay.
-Manning hoses, air,
emergency whatever.
And I will go in first.
If we touch hands, I might squeeze once.
If you squeeze once, it means okay.
If you do multiple squeezes,
I'm gonna pull you out through that chute.
ROMEY: Even though I kind of
laid awake the night before,
kind of running through my head,
okay, you go down to this staircase.
This is the way you enter the tomb.
Then you hit chamber one, chamber two.
And I'm walking myself through it.
I knew that regardless of how many times
I was looping that through my head,
it was not gonna be what
I was going to encounter.
-You'll be standing.
-Okay. So I bring in
an empty bucket in,
and I write down the number of...
DR. CREASMAN:
The empty bucket on the next line.
ROMEY: ...The empty bucket on
the next line.
And then you figure out if it's A, B, C.
NARRATOR: By carefully keeping track
of where each of the buckets comes from,
Pearce Paul will be able to match up
any objects they find inside
to specific areas of the tomb.
My bucket came from, you know,
the northwest corner of that...
NARRATOR: Piecing together the burial,
and laying clues to where
Nastasen's remains might be.
-ROMEY: Okay.
-Does that make sense?
Understood, okay.
DR. CREASMAN:
The biggest problem is gonna be panic.
ROMEY: Of course,
that's always what it is.
You know, if something happens.
SCHNEIDER: Claustrophobia and panic
are your biggest concerns.
DR. CREASMAN: Yeah.
If you're inside and you are panicking,
-get to the air pocket.
-SCHNEIDER: Mm-hmm.
-If you're by the front door, get out.
-Yeah.
Um, but get to the air pocket,
sit and wait.
Someone will come to you
if you don't feel like
you can get out on your own.
It's not easy.
You know, when you're topside,
you're in this brilliant, you know,
Sudanese sun,
and you've got the desert stretching
as far as you could see.
And you walk down this
ceremonial staircase,
and it gets progressively
darker and colder,
and darker and colder.
And once you're down in there,
you're in another world.
And it's a little bit scary, to be blunt.
DR. CREASMAN: Okay. Kristin,
you're going to be on this line.
-ROMEY: Okay?
-DR. CREASMAN: Yeah.
Fire 'em up.
(engine whirring)
(oxygen blowing)
ROMEY: The minute that
your head goes underwater
and you start pulling yourself
through that steel chute
into the chamber,
and you kind of realize
the gravity of what's going on.
And then you realize that
the visibility's shot.
You have to kind of navigate your way
through that first chamber
to get into the air pocket
in the second chamber.
And it's just like every sense is 110%.
You are just wired and
just trying to figure out
what's gonna happen next.
(air bubbles)
ROMEY: So you're going in with 19 now?
-DR. CREASMAN: 19A.
-ROMEY: 19A, you got it.
DR. CREASMAN:
All right. See you in a few minutes.
(indistinct chatter)
ROMEY: 10:30.
NARRATOR: Kristin notes the time,
to track how long Pearce Paul
is working in the third chamber.
If he's gone more than a few minutes,
she'll have to go in and try to find him.
ROMEY: We know that the second chamber
of the burial suite beneath the pyramid
has already collapsed
at some point in history.
And so there's no reason why
other parts of that tomb can't collapse.
(breathing through apparatus)
DR. CREASMAN: When we first got
back here from last year,
the water was crystal clear.
We came in into the tomb
and came up, we thought
there was an air pocket,
the water was so clear
that we just hit our heads
and looked up and saw our bubbles
going against the roof.
What's... What's going on here?
It was phenomenal.
NARRATOR: At first,
Pearce Paul could clearly
make out familiar landmarks...
The niche that had housed flakes of gold.
Decorative blocks cut from stone,
and the burial itself,
a mound of rocks that may
still hold Nastasen's remains.
But now, the visibility
is next to nothing.
DR. CREASMAN: Because of the rockfalls,
because of the collapses,
because of the sands
that have blown into it,
as soon as you start getting
in there, you start stirring it up,
and very quickly once we start working,
it's zero visibility.
It's as if you're doing it blindfolded,
sometimes upside down,
and you're just trying to do
the best you can
to understand the situation,
and make this mental map.
ROMEY: You are trying
to find important things
solely by touch.
You cannot use your eyes,
you cannot use any other sense
but your touch and your mental memory.
(breathing through apparatus)
(breathing through apparatus)
DR. CREASMAN: Wow.
This is a shabti.
It's buried with the king.
And it's a person to help him
in the afterlife,
so he doesn't have to
deal with the drudgery
of day-to-day work.
(compressed air release)
SCHNEIDER: I like that it's painted.
DR. CREASMAN: Yeah. It's great!
Incredible condition.
(engine rumbling)
-MAN: Thank you.
-DR. CREASMAN: You're welcome.
(engine rumbling)
DR. CREASMAN: The season so far,
I'm most proud of that
we get out of the tomb every day safely.
Uh, that is number one.
Number two, I really do
think we're making progress.
I think we're learning more every day.
We're getting information
that makes this worth it.
So, there's a major gap
in our understanding
in the transition of this one kingdom,
the people of Napata.
After hundreds of years of
burying their kings here,
they just stop.
Nastasen falls at a really
important time for us.
He is the last king buried at Nuri.
Why do they stop?
Why do they then move from one
place to another, to another?
Who makes those decisions?
Because you don't bury yourself.
(people speaking indistinctly)
DR. EMBERLING: The 4th century BC in Kush
was a little bit of a turbulent time,
and we see this in
a number of different ways,
including the locations of royal burials.
A king's decision about
where to build his pyramid
probably had a lot of different
motivations behind it.
NARRATOR:
To investigate these motivations,
and what could have
caused this tumultuous time,
archeologists Geoff Emberling
and Sami Elamin
are turning their attention
from the elite to the ordinary.
Nearby the royal temple
that hosted coronations
for a long line of kings and pharaohs,
Geoff and his colleagues
are unearthing a town
that hasn't seen daylight
in thousands of years.
DR. EMBERLING:
I've always loved digging settlements.
I'm always just interested
in how everybody lived,
and not just how the kings lived.
I don't know,
I kind of don't trust those people,
those kings.
(laughs) And I would
rather be able to tell history
in a way that included
all of us and all of them.
(indistinct chatter)
NARRATOR: Geoff has been
excavating royal temples
and burials around
Jebel Barkal for 14 years.
But he'd always wondered
where the people who built the structures
and supported the elite lived.
(people speaking indistinctly)
He knew there must
have been a town nearby,
long ago buried under the sand.
DR. EMBERLING: Those are the kinds of
questions that keep me going
as an archeologist.
What is it that we don't know
that's under our feet?
NARRATOR: As building walls,
streets, and alleys emerge from the sand,
Geoff and his team can
begin to piece together
what this ancient
city would have looked like.
DR. EMBERLING: Yeah.
NARRATOR: In the shadow of Jebel Barkal,
at least 10 large buildings
would have been anchors
to different neighborhoods,
dividing the city into districts.
Homes are organized into city blocks,
an early indication of urban planning.
What happened inside the homes
may give a glimpse
into how prosperous the people
of Napata actually were.
The section of the city
Geoff is excavating
seems to have been organized
around a big building,
with smaller structures around it.
We're looking at
the outer wall of this building.
It goes down, it turns a corner,
and so the... the building is extending
off in this direction.
We're hoping to find whatever it is
that they were doing
and making in this building,
and you can't predict
what that's going to be.
But we expect that underneath
our feet goes down centuries,
if not 1,000 years.
There's a series of rooms
in between these walls.
And then, that's the outside
of the building
where the pile of sand is,
and that's where we start to find objects
that were related
to the use of the building.
That's where the,
frankly, the garbage was,
and that's what tells us
what people were doing here.
NARRATOR: One of the town garbage pits
indicates an ancient storeroom,
which would have kept food,
oils, and other essentials.
Centuries later,
the tossed away lids and labels
that sealed the jars reveal
more than meets the eye.
BRAHE: Literally we found
thousands of sealings
in the pit here,
which is very interesting.
And I will pull one out here which
was excavated this season here.
It's made of clay and it's a jar stopper.
That's on the top of the jar.
You have cloth beneath and we have this
lump of clay above
in order to close the jar.
And when you have done that, you will
take your golden ring like this one here
and you will stamp the jar stopper
with your... with your ring
in order to preserve the sealing here.
So, if you look closely through the
magnifier you will be able to see
the seal impression once in a while.
NARRATOR:
Each town official had his own ring,
with its own unique image,
a personalized seal to verify oversight
and responsibility
for the contents inside.
But we have a nice example,
one of the other sealings here.
If you look closely here, you can see
you have this elongated figure here
and we think actually it's
lion head over here.
And you can see the half ring over here
as well. That's another sealing as well.
That would be the head of
the crocodile, we think.
(speaking indistinctly)
NARRATOR: For Geoff,
the seal impressions are evidence
of a complex economic system,
that may help reconstruct
the royal power structure
at Jebel Barkal.
As the team digs deeper,
they'll reach older layers of the town,
and even more ancient clues
as to how society operated.
DR. EMBERLING: This season,
we've got down to probably
the 3rd century BC.
So, probably the next
level down is going to be
the time of Nastasen.
And it's very possible that
we might find seal impressions
with names of kings.
Maybe even names of kings
we don't know about.
So there are possible ways
that we could fill in that history.
Of course, we can't guarantee
that we'll find those,
but they're here somewhere.
NARRATOR: Soon after Nastasen's reign,
around 315 BC,
the Kushites moved their center
of political power
away from Napata.
The forces behind this shift
remain a mystery,
but the archeologists
are beginning to rule out
one major possibility.
DR. CREASMAN: You can get
indications of how prosperous
a time and place was based on
the burials of people, right?
Especially the burials of your kings.
If the most powerful and important
person in your society
is buried in a very modest way,
it would suggest that either
there is a cultural shift
of some kind toward this sort of modesty,
or that the resources weren't available.
Nastasen's tomb isn't that.
There are pretty good
indications that he had
all of the needs and equipments
and resources
that a king would have,
and that he was well-equipped
for the afterlife.
ROMEY: Good morning. How are you?
-DR. CREASMAN: Good, how are you doing?
-ROMEY: Good.
DR. CREASMAN:
We had a pretty good day yesterday.
ROMEY: Yeah? How good of a day?
Pretty good.
You want to come see?
ROMEY: Yeah, I do.
DR. CREASMAN:
We got some interesting things out.
ROMEY: Oh, wow. (chuckles) Yeah.
(people speaking indistinctly)
DR. CREASMAN: So...
-I think...
-It's still got some gold on it.
It would have been gold-leafed.
-Yep.
-It's got some more here
and once we have it cleaned,
more will come off underneath.
That's gorgeous.
DR. CREASMAN:
If this is what we think it is,
I'm only aware of one other really
prominent example of this.
So, it makes it an essential discovery.
Have you seen the Hemn
and Taharqa statuette in the Louvre?
-ROMEY: Yes.
-DR. CREASMAN: It's got Taharqa sitting,
making offerings to the bird god?
I think that's what this is.
So there should be a little statue
-of Nastasen making offerings.
-ROMEY: ...offerings.
So, we need to go find
-the pair of Nastasen.
-ROMEY: Nastasen.
Okay, that's the mission.
-Yep.
-The mission taken on here.
Wow.
NARRATOR: Over the next few days,
the team pulls an increasing amount
of evidence from the tomb,
pointing to a burial of a king
who wanted to be revered and remembered.
ROMEY: All righty, we've got another box.
-LEA KHOLMEYER: Okay.
-ROMEY: For eight, bucket is eight.
(singing in native language)
MOHAMMAD: Okay. Okay.
ROMEY: Shabti. All right.
-Yeah, and charcoal.
-Charcoal.
-Yeah.
-Okay.
NARRATOR: Bits of charcoal
could be evidence of a burnt offering
made at the time of the burial.
ROMEY: I've got more charcoal here.
-I've got a good amount of charcoal.
-MOHAMMAD: Charcoal.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!
-ROMEY: Whoa!
-Yeah!
That's the biggest
piece of gold I've seen!
-Biggest piece of gold. Yeah.
-(indistinct chatter)
(water running)
NARRATOR: Gold foil that
would have covered objects
like the statue of the falcon god.
-Beautiful.
-I win?
-No, you win.
-Yes, you do win.
-KHOLMEYER: You win.
-(laughter)
MOHAMMAD: Yep. Gold, gold.
That piece of gold.
ROMEY: Oop, more gold.
KHOLMEYER: Here I'm leaving you a gift.
-(Romey laughs)
-KHOLMEYER: It's the bag.
-Day of gold.
-Day of gold.
-Ah, there's some more right there.
-Yeah. Yeah.
Day of gold.
(indistinct chatter)
KHOLMEYER:
Oh, hey. The biggest bone I've found yet.
ROMEY: Oh, yeah.
DR. CREASMAN: As we get closer to
the central parts of the tomb,
we started to find pieces
of bone that are darkened.
And yes, this could be from
having been burned or charred,
but this can be what happens
to bones underwater.
ROMEY: See that, what,
is that leather maybe, or... ?
-DUSABLON: Here?
-ROMEY: It's in the mud.
DUSABLON: Yeah.
ROMEY: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
More leather.
Yeah, that's leather.
-KHOLMEYER: Okay, that's beautiful.
-ROMEY: Yeah.
DR. CREASMAN: We got out what we think
are some pieces of leather,
and if these are pieces of leather,
that would be consistent
with the types of burials
from this time and place,
in which they might have been
put on or wrapped in a hide mat.
If that's what this is,
then it's another good indication
that yeah, the king was, or is, here.
(indistinct chatter)
NARRATOR:
With each day of discovery at Nuri,
Pearce Paul is getting closer
to honing in on what might be
the burial, and body, of king Nastasen.
DR. CREASMAN: As of today,
the tomb looks something like this.
You've got the niche up here. The entry.
So this is the third chamber.
We have some... a very large slab.
I think this is a fall from the roof.
Now, yesterday, because
we moved a lot of the blocks
from inside the burial chamber,
things got a lot clearer.
What we have is a basically flat tabletop.
It feels like... It's so--
It's so shockingly flat.
It feels intentional.
But this piece is big enough
so that when I'm laying
on top of it with my
arms and legs spread out,
I can barely touch the corners
of all four at the same time.
So it's massive.
NARRATOR: Through his finds
and careful mapping of their locations,
Pearce Paul is able to reconstruct
what he'd be seeing in
the tomb if the water were clear,
centered around the area
where Nastasen may lie.
DR. CREASMAN: So you have a big slab
in the middle of the room.
There's one rock left here,
one piece standing up against the wall.
This fell after the burial,
because there is a shabti
stuck under the corner of it.
So the shabtis are actually
lined up along two walls.
We found a bunch of them in place here.
And then they've been
along the wall like this,
every couple of inches all the way down.
The falcon deity was over here,
and it wasn't directly on the floor.
And through out of here
we got bone fragments,
and we got what looks to be
big patches of leather.
If the king is in there,
it makes sense for him to be
in the middle of the room,
and so he should be underneath this slab.
Progress has been great.
The goal had been to... to complete
the excavation this season.
I don't think we'll make it,
in part because we're finding too much,
which is a terrible and
wonderful problem to have.
If you think of it in some ways,
archeology is kind of like
trying to figure out
an ancient crime scene, right?
Everybody's dead.
Nobody can speak for themselves.
And all you have is
the physical evidence around it.
But instead of spent shotgun shells,
you've got pottery and inscriptions,
and all these wonderful pieces of puzzle
that you really have to
patiently put together.
Gosh, look at the visibility.
I can even see bubbles
-in there on occasion.
-DR. CREASMAN: I know. So, you know...
NARRATOR: Pearce Paul and Kristin
review some of the footage
of Nastasen's tomb
to assess whether there's
a possibility he's still inside.
-...had been gilded...
-ROMEY: Mm-hmm.
...that then got squished...
NARRATOR: The rockfalls in the tomb
block them from getting a clear picture.
But it could also be a stroke of luck.
How many... How many falls
you think you got there?
At least two.
What I'm hoping is is that
the things coming down
from the ceiling, yes,
they crush some stuff,
-but they also push it out.
-...from in. Yeah.
We found some shattered
parts of bone, probably human.
-We found gold leaf, we found leather.
-ROMEY: Mm-hmm.
-DR. CREASMAN:
We found a little statuette of a deity.
ROMEY: So essentially, you're dealing with
a tomb tsunami, in some sense.
DR. CREASMAN:
Yes. It's great, because I think
the likelihood is high
that there's more there, there,
because it's protected.
-ROMEY: Mm-hmm.
-Smushed, but protected.
DR. CREASMAN:
I can imagine that this gigantic slab
has prevented anybody else
since that event occurred
from doing anything to get to
whatever is underneath it...
-Yeah.
-...which is in the center of the room,
-which is where all these burials are.
-Which is...
Yes. Which is where Nastasen
-should be if he's in there.
-DR. CREASMAN: Should be. Yeah.
ROMEY: Now we just have to figure out...
DR. CREASMAN: What's the technical
way to do it, if at all,
which is also one of the questions.
Is this a thing that we can do today,
or is it a thing that we leave
to someone else in the future?
ROMEY: For immediate gratification,
that's disappointing,
because you've got a big rock in the way.
But for our long term prospects,
it's really intriguing.
We may have Nastasen
still inside that tomb.
NARRATOR: After Nastasen's reign,
and the mysterious move from Napata,
the Kushites began a new era.
While still prosperous for centuries,
the kingdom's power would
never again extend
as far as it had when it ruled Egypt.
DR. CREASMAN: It is a really
engaging time in human history
and it's these foundations,
these things that we look back
in our own history books and say,
"Gosh, these are important
events in our world, too."
(drone whirring)
NARRATOR: For nearly 2,000 years,
temples were built and rebuilt
at the foot of Jebel Barkal.
While the mountain's center
of power didn't last forever,
its spirit endures today.
DR. EMBERLING:
These places and these kings of Kush
are still really significant
in modern Sudan,
but it's beyond just history.
It's a very rich connection
that Sudanese have to these places.
They all know about their
historical importance,
but they're also
a part of their daily lives.
ELAMIN: The people are very connected
to the mountain itself initially.
But in the recent years with the
wave of archeological discoveries,
the people have become more interested
in the history and in the antiquities,
and they now ask a lot of questions
about the antiquities and the
history and the civilization as well.
DR. EMBERLING:
One thing that archeology teaches us
as we look over the centuries is that
things really do go wrong.
Cultures do collapse,
civilizations disappear.
One of the things I take
from studying archeology and history,
is that the decisions that
we make really matter.