-All across the globe, pyramids represent the power of ancient civilisations.

That's a big sarcophagus.

I'm on a journey to explore the mysteries behind these jaw-dropping megaliths.

And you find me in the realm of the pyramid -- Egypt.

This incredible structure is the Great Pyramid of Giza, the zenith of all pyramid making, and people gazed for thousands of years in awe at its precision, the effort, at the sheer scale of it.

But this, like all pyramids, failed.

They failed in the one task they were set to achieve.

I call this episode -- Pyramids: You Had One Job.

Oh.

That's incredible.

Were exploring an arms race that raged around the pyramids.

-You've got as much innovation on the robber's side as you have on the builder's side.

-It's one of the biggest ironies of history.

-That?

In the glass case?

-Mm-hmm.

Yes.

-And as usual, speculation is rife.

-It's not what the Sphinx is.

It's what's underneath the Sphinx that has me interested.

-They just carved it into the ground.

-Exactly.

Yeah, it's completely cut from the bedrock.

-This is incredible.

This feels like a substantial build.

I have archaeologist Raksha Dave... -If somebody catches you, you're gonna die.

-Oh, wow.

This is majestic.

[ Gasps ] ...and Egyptologist Dr. Chris Naunton alongside me.

-There's a certain point in the construction, cracks start to appear.

-We'll explore the secret passageways designed to keep the dead pharaohs safe.

And we'll come face to face with the most famous Pharaoh of all.

So join me as we explore the mysteries of the pyramids.

♪♪ ♪♪ I'm starting my investigation not in some dusty, ancient tomb, but here at Khan el-Khalili, Cairo's famous, vibrant bazaar.

Boasting some of the most expensive, expertly crafted and gilded treasures, Egyptian tomb artefacts have long been sought after from the moment they were placed in the sealed chambers.

Of course, the Ancient Egyptians believed that not only did the pharaoh go into the afterlife, but things they had with them could go into the afterlife as well.

And so they'd be buried with treasures like you'd see here in the market.

But the problem is, if you're going to do that, people know about it.

And that makes it very tempting for people who want to steal those treasures.

I'm with Egyptologist Chris Naunton, whos arranged for us to go and explore the mystery of how the Ancient Egyptians began to tackle the problem that plagued the pharaohs -- tomb raiding.

So, Chris, were going to Saqqara now.

-Yes, we are.

And Saqqara is the site of the first pyramid.

-Will we also get a better sense of how to break into a pyramid?

-Yeah, so the only thing that's as old as monumental tomb construction in Egypt is tomb robbery.

-Right.

-So you've got, more or less, as much innovation on the robber's side as you have on the builder's side.

-Before pyramids were even thought of, the Ancient Egyptians used simpler structures, known as mastabas, to entomb their nobility.

These flat-roof stone buildings found here at Saqqara incorporated basic anti-theft measures.

However, they proved wholly inadequate in thwarting tomb raiders.

In response, the Ancient Egyptians devised a new solution.

Enter the pyramid.

-This is the very first pyramid.

Built by Pharaoh Djoser as his tomb.

-King Djoser ruled around 2,660 years BCE, which makes this pyramid nearly 5,000 years old.

So, they used to be buried under, like, a platform, a large, flat building.

Er, and then it was this particular Pharaoh who said, "Why don't we put another platform on top of that and another platform on top...?"

Because it does seem to be as if it is just a series of smaller and smaller platforms.

-Yes.

And, of course, eventually, you know, you're reaching up to the sky.

Hey, presto, you have a pyramid.

-Djoser's step pyramid would have not only been the final resting place of the King, but also all his worldly possessions.

And more importantly for the tomb raiders, his treasures.

Anywhere a pharaoh was laid to rest, gilded coffins and amulets of precious stones all proved too tempting for the thieves.

When embalmers began to include amulets of gold or silver within the mummy wrappings, even the King's corpse came under threat.

If you were caught tomb raiding, you could be dismembered as a punishment, losing your nose or your ears.

Or you could be impaled, you know, to death.

Nowadays, the illicit antiquities market is is the third largest black market in the world, after narcotics and guns.

And the punishment these days in Egypt for tomb raiding?

A lifetime in prison and a million-dollar fine.

But hey, at least you don't get impaled.

But despite the high risks, the allure of treasure kept drawing tomb raiders in.

So it's no wonder the Ancient Egyptians went to such lengths to fortify their pyramids.

So, I mean, it's going to be dark, presumably.

-It'll be darker than out here, yeah.

-The step pyramid owes its creation to the ingenuity of Imhotep, the Kings esteemed advisor, who is widely regarded as the first-ever architect.

Imhotep, who also served as a priest and physician, later achieved divine status among the Greeks and even found his place in Hollywood's spotlight.

Chris has managed to secure special government permission for us to explore his masterpiece via a passageway that most tourists don't ever get to see.

-Absolutely labyrinthine, and I'm not even completely confident I'm gonna I'm gonna be able to navigate... -Fabulous!

our way directly to the burial chamber.

But we'll have some fun... -Oh, good.

I love a maze.

-...on the way.

-And it doesn't take long before we encounter some of Imhotep's anti-tomb-raider devices.

Imagine doing this in the pitch darkness with just the light of a candle or two.

-If you put blind corridors, dummy chambers, the more complex you can make it, the harder it is gonna be for the robbers to get around.

-Can I pause to say how much I'm enjoying this?

How much fun this is?

-Yeah.

-just absolutely...

I know, mm, history, mm, history, I'm learning, but this is just great fun.

Oh, there's a fork.

-Yeah.

-Oh, interesting.

Dilemma for the Egyptologist.

-[ Chris laughs ] -Are we going left or right?

-I think we're going left.

-Okay.

Left it is.

Oh, my God, yeah.

This is vast!

-Steep steps.

Okay.

A-ha, okay, we've got another decision to make here.

I think we're going this way.

-I don't know about the tomb raiders, but Imhotep has certainly outfoxed me and Chris.

Are we going this way?

-We're gonna go this way and left and then, hopefully, come back round.

-[ Dara chuckles ] -This way, do you think?

-Yeah, let's go... -Let's try it.

-I have played too many first-person video games.

-[ Chris laughs ] Yeah, right.

-Believe it or not, 7,500 miles away, at roughly the same time, step pyramids were also being built, this time, by Ancient Peruvians.

The largest of these, known as Pyramid Mayor, stands nearly 30 metres tall, with a base that covers an area of roughly three football fields.

The purpose of this pyramid is hard to determine, though knotted ropes known as quipu, an early Andean method for recording numerical information, have been found here, suggesting a highly structured society, with complex mathematical understanding.

Radiocarbon dating on organic matter throughout the site has revealed it to be roughly the same age as the Great Pyramid of Giza.

♪♪ Two advanced civilisations building pyramids at sort of the same time is a coincidence that has blown the mind of some people, leading to wild speculation.

I'm going to talk to Nick Pope, who worked for 20 years on the MoDs UFO desk.

The idea that they did this repeatedly at different points around the planet at the same time, is the idea that, rather than this being just a sign that humans like to assemble, [laughing] humans like to build, that, somehow, it's proof of an outside force.

-Yes, I think the alternative belief theorists here say that these are often cultures that had no direct contact with each other.

So they theorised that there must have been a common link, either a mysterious lost civilisation, or it's extraterrestrials coming down and, of course, easily able to visit people all around the world at a time when those cultures were not in contact with each other.

And that's how they say all these structures that look remarkably similar have cropped up independently.

-While I enjoy the ideas that some of these have, and I enjoy the fun of this to a certain extent, does it not obscure a more interesting sort of human fact that, you know, at a -- even at a primitive level, we enjoy building and stacking, and pyramids are a fairly fundamental shape?

Yeah, this is what the mainstream scientists and academics say, that if you wanted to build something, this is, really, the fundamental shape that you would choose.

And then there are simply people who say, "Well, we couldn't build the pyramids now."

-It seems like it's too much of a happy coincidence, but to back it up requires a fantastic universe of invention.

Back at the step pyramid, and we've still not found the burial place of the Pharaoh.

At some point, you're going to have to be right about this.

-Yeah, no, eventually.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the nature of labyrinths, right?

-I mean... -Yeah.

It is.

Everybody knows that in the end, you get to the right place.

-You appear eventually.

-Yeah.

-Oh, wow!

This is majestic.

[ Gasps ] Oh, my God.

-Right.

-Oh, I wasn't expecting that.

-This is the burial chamber.

I'm just...

I wasn't expecting that.

That's astonishing.

I'm within the... within the pyramid.

-No, that's the level of the ground above us.

-Oh, we've come down that far?

-We've come down that far, yeah, exactly.

This is entirely cut into the bedrock.

So, this whole shaft is underground.

And what's at the top of the shaft?

That's the mass of the pyramid.

-Whoa.

-Yeah.

-That is incredible.

So, they built this hole.

-Yeah.

-They put his burial chamber within the hole.

-Yeah.

-And the entire pyramid is essentially a capstone on top of the hole.

-Yeah.

It's to provide an enormous kind of barrier between would-be robbers and the good stuff inside.

There was a circular hole in the top of the burial chamber cut into these blocks.

That's where all the burial equipment and the body of the King are introduced into the chamber.

And then that hole is sealed with this massive six-tonne block.

So it should have been impenetrable.

-And turned out to be as penetrable as anything else.

♪♪ I cannot recommend that enough, by the way.

A morning spent scrabbling around in tunnels underneath the pyramid.

It is the most fun, but also learning, mm.

Learning about why they built those labyrinths down there and why they put his burial chamber at the bottom of an incredibly deep hole and put a pyramid on top of it, all to stop the grave robbers.

But it didn't work.

But the important thing is this -- King Djoser had fired the starting gun on the greatest period of building the planet had ever seen.

After this came Giza, came a whole era of giant stone pyramids, all of which started because of this -- the step pyramid in Saqqara.

Next... What about the workers?

What about the lads who are out in the midday sun, pulling the ropes and moving the bricks and shifting the stones?

What's in it for them?

♪♪ I mean, I like it, but I feel it's not what they were aiming for.

-[ Chuckles ] Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's fair to say that this probably wasn't how the pyramid designers originally intended this pyramid to look.

But I think this is... pyramid design innovation in progress.

-Chris has brought me one hour south of Cairo to a place called Dahshur to see how the early pyramids evolved to counter the threat from tomb raiders, from step pyramids to the iconic shape we know today.

But it wasn't all plain sailing.

-There's a certain point in the construction, cracks start to appear... -Oh!

-...in the burial chamber.

Underneath, we think, you know, the huge weight of the pyramids, so rather than carrying on skywards, they decide, "We'd better cut a corner here."

-Yeah.

It should have been a super-sleek-sided pyramid with the steepest possible angle, moving beyond the function of tomb protection and aspiring for mathematical perfection.

-This was built by Pharaoh Sneferu.

He was also the builder of at least two other pyramids -- one a long way south at Meidum, the other one is also here, the Red Pyramid, just behind us.

So, in fact, this one does go wrong.

But we think that, eventually, he gets it right.

-And he gets it very right.

I mean, the Red Pyramid is -- I would say, like, it was -- It's...[smooches] chef's kiss pyramid.

It's perfect.

It's absolutely ideal.

-Absolutely.

He's really the great innovator.

And if you look at the evolution of these three pyramids, the Meidum pyramid is a stepped monument that has been kind of made into a true-sided pyramid.

-Yeah.

-The bent pyramid, had they succeeded, probably would've nailed the true pyramid design.

But he has another go, and in the case of the Red Pyramid, he does nail it.

-Things go wrong.

I mean, you know.

Bad preview, great show.

This is the -- the dodgy preview.

This is the one that didn't quite work out.

-Right.

-The Egyptian pyramids evolved in an explosion of building and design over a very short period of time.

But it wasn't like that everywhere.

Two millennia later, and 12,000 kilometres away, it was quite the opposite.

The Great Pyramid of Cholula in Mexico holds the title of being the biggest pyramid in the world.

But you wouldn't know to look at it.

It's actually four times larger and twice the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

However, it's largely subterranean structure obscures it's monumental scale.

And unlike the Egyptian pyramids, this one took 1,000 years to build and reflects the different ethnic groups that controlled it over this time.

Using adobe bricks, it became known as the Handmade Mountain, and at one time was the centrepiece of a city of 50,000 people.

Although a church now sits at its peak, Cholula was once a centre of worship for Quetzalcoatl, one of the Mayans most important gods.

♪♪ Over 2,000 years before this, in Egypt, a pyramid revolution was underway, spearheaded by a single man.

Pharaoh Sneferu, the visionary genius of Ancient Egypt, achieved his ambition of constructing the true pyramid within just 30 years.

And once the blueprint was in place, his descendants ran with the idea.

In a period of around 120 years, they cut, moved, and built with 35 million tonnes of limestone, granite, and a bit of basalt.

The achievements of the Ancient Egyptians are truly astounding, so I find it frustrating when credit for their work is attributed to aliens.

Paranormal researcher Laura Rowton takes a different view.

-I think the ancient aliens theory that a lot of people subscribe to about structures like the Great Pyramid, whilst at first glance may be laughable, I think once you start to dig a little bit deeper and think about these so-called entities in terms of a broader tapestry of belief, particularly religious belief, and how people have believed in deities of all sorts, across all time, it starts to look less silly.

If people can believe in the Christian God, then why not in extraterrestrials?

It's a similar sort of concept that we as human beings are looking outside of ourselves for enlightenment as to our purpose and origin.

-Well, let's agree to disagree.

The facts are that for thousands of years, the Great Pyramid stood as the tallest manmade structure in the world.

And the pyramids white cladding and golden capstones must have appeared magnificent, elevating the kings they were constructed for to god-like status.

It's easy to see why the Pharaoh enjoyed the idea of these grand schemes, or his architect.

But what about the workers?

What about the lads?

What about the lads who are out in the midday sun, pulling the ropes, and moving the bricks, and shifting the stones?

What's in it for them?

It's hard to imagine this is how they imagined their lives to be, especially given that history, for a long time, told us that they were doing this at the business end of a whip.

After all, in the centuries-long battle of pharaoh versus tomb raider, these workers were the army, without which the pharaoh was powerless to get safely into the afterlife.

For further insight, I have been summoned back to Giza.

Hello, Raksha.

-You took your time.

-I know, I'm so sorry.

But what a lovely place you've found to wait.

Just by the pyramids, Raksha has some extraordinary excavations to show me.

So, the people who built the pyramids, were they slaves or not?

No, they weren't, and that's a common misconception.

They weren't at all.

And I think we get this notion of slaves building the pyramids because of Hollywood.

But I can tell you, there's not a single Charlton Heston in sight here.

-In recent decades, archaeologists have uncovered a village where the 30,000 workers who built the pyramids lived.

This settlement was home to three generations of artisans and their families 4,500 years ago, and they buried their dead in tombs near the royal pyramids of Giza.

-This cemetery and the bones that are found in here kind of show us the real life of the workers that worked here and how much they were revered and looked after.

-This is incredible.

I mean, this feels like a substantial build.

-Well, it is.

-Even, like, by our standards, our modern standards, this is -- this is quite extravagant as a mausoleum, and this is just for the artisans.

-Yeah, you're right.

You know, this is basically made in the image of how the pharaohs were being buried.

-The burial chambers, yes.

-Yeah, absolutely.

And why wouldn't they?

They were the artisans of the pharaohs, why wouldn't they pimp up their graves?

I would.

-I'm still staggered by the huge explosion of pyramid-building that happened here 4,500 years ago over an astonishingly short period of time, just 120 years.

And visiting the tombs of the people whose skill, ingenuity, and hard work made that happen is quite an experience.

So, this is the ordinary lives of the workers.

What do we know about just the day-to-day of their lives?

-I think there was quite a lot of banter and camaraderie amongst them because we do find graffiti in and around Giza, and there's a famous one, a gang calling themselves the "Drunkards of Menkaure."

So they're having a good time.

-And is it in the pyramid itself?

-In the pyramid itself.

History books are about the winners and the survivors, but archaeology is about the normal people like me and you.

-All this huge communal effort to get the pharaoh safely to the afterlife.

But you can't help wondering if the building of the pyramids achieved more than the structures themselves.

I have a theory I want to try out on Chris.

Can I ask what I call the Teflon question?

-Sure.

I mean, I don't know what you mean, but... -I'll explain.

The, er -- If I think of a large national effort to do something, I think of the Space Race.

-Okay.

Yeah.

-Now, the Space Race got humans to the Moon, but it also gave us better frying pans.

-[ Laughs ] Okay, okay.

-So did this have the same effect?

Did this accelerate Egyptian science, Egyptian architecture, Egyptian art?

-We know that they're innovating constantly in terms of, you know, architecture and design.

This is something that they would then continue to do for the next 2,000 years and more.

The other thing, which is kind of admin and bureaucracy, I'm gonna have to go to the quarry man and say, "I'm gonna need how many blocks?"

You know, and somebody's got to then go, "Okay, look, so, it's 100 there, times 100, "Multiply that up by..." This has all got to be written down, right.

"Hang on.

Do we have a system of writing that's sophisticated enough?

Well, if we haven't, then we better have one, right?"

That then endures.

That sets Ancient Egypt up to be this huge, successful, high-functioning, enduring society.

♪♪ -It's reassuring to know that, despite myths, those things were not built by slaves, that, in fact, the people who built them were well fed, were well looked after, and had a sense of camaraderie with their co-workers.

But still they knew they were building a burial chamber filled filled with riches beyond their wildest imaginations.

That must have been tempting.

Next, I explore the ancient world's most iconic sculpture and ask whether it was designed to deter tomb raiders.

They just carved it into the ground?

Exactly.

Yeah, it's completely cut from the bedrock.

♪♪ ♪♪ Now, of course, clambering over the pyramids is a great deal of fun, but it does tend to make the culture look a little desolate because they're all empty, when, of course, at the same time as the pyramids were being built, there was a huge explosion in arts and crafts and sculpture.

Now, we've come to the Egyptian Museum to see some of that, but also, hopefully, to put a face to some of those pharaohs.

To make sure I know who and what I'm looking at, I've arranged to meet Egyptologist Arto Belekdanian.

Arto, thank you for bringing us into the legendary Egyptian Museum.

I'm delighted to see so many treasures here.

-Oh, this place is full to the brim.

There's just so much here that there's barely any room for more.

-Which is one of the things about the pyramids, 'cause the pyramids themselves are so bare that everything is out of the pyramids, and they're here.

-This is none other than Djoser.

-Oh, of the Step Pyramid.

-Exactly.

Hey, good memory.

-Thank you very much.

-Inside the pyramid, in the substructure, you had all kinds of things in there, pottery vessels full of things the King wanted to have in the afterlife as well.

-I mean, is it general rule that stuff that was inside was intended to... that they would bring it with them to the afterlife?

-Exactly.

-Yeah.

-In spiritual form, they would actually have access to these things.

-These tomb raiders may have desecrated sacred sites, but the guilty truth is, we might never have seen these amazing items had they not.

Oh, my God, that's incredible.

-It is.

-That's very beautiful.

-That statue over there, in my opinion, is not only one of the finest pieces of sculpture made in Egyptian culture, but in human culture, ever.

This is King Khafre, the builder of the second pyramid on the Giza Plateau.

-The one that still has some of the limestone at the very top.

-Yes.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Son of Khufu, who built the Great Pyramid.

Yeah.

The three large pyramids of Giza were built for three generations of Egyptian kings -- Khufu, his son, Khafre, and his grandson, Menkaure.

-If you just look at this statue, the way his confident features are just emanating power, the way he gazes off into the distance, almost looking into the hereafter, the idea is this is a representation of you, an anchor for your soul forever.

-Yes.

-And for obvious reasons, you'll want to show yourself in the prime of life.

-Looking your best.

Important I leave a good-looking corpse.

And for those of us who've passed that point.

You know, you know -- -You're not there yet.

-No, I still think I'd go for the statue of me at 25, rather than this, but yeah... -[ Chuckles ] -Okay, so we've seen builders of two of the pyramids, but not builders of the greatest pyramid of Giza.

So this, are we building up to something amazing here?

-Yes, we are.

-Yes.

-Absolutely amazing, but not necessarily impressive.

-How so?

-Because that statuette right there is Khufu.

That tiny thing.

-That?

-Mm-hmm.

-In the glass case?

That minuscule thing?

-Yes.

-Khufu, who built the greatest of all the pyramids...?

-It's one of the biggest ironies of history that the only confirmed three-dimensional representation of Khufu that has survived to this day is this tiny 7.2 centimeter-tall statuette.

-That is astonishing.

I'm sorry, just as a sign of how small it is, for the first time in the show... -[ Arto laughs ] -Wow.

♪♪ But Khufu wasn't the only one in the region building pyramids.

In nearby modern Iraq, the Sumerians built the Great Ziggurat of Ur just 400 years later.

But unlike the Egyptian pyramids, the ziggurat functioned as both an administrative centre and a shrine dedicated to the moon god Nanna, patron deity of the city-state of Ur.

The structure, whose base is built from 750,000 mud bricks, has undergone cycles of ruin and restoration.

Initially rebuilt in the 6th century BCE by King Nabonidus, it was then lost and later rediscovered by British archaeologist William Loftus in 1850.

Restored by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, it then suffered damage during the Gulf War of 1991.

♪♪ Back in Giza, there's another famous monument that has been reassessed in modern times -- the Sphinx.

This half man, half lion giant sculpture spent an age almost lost beneath those sands, only to be reborn in the late 18th century.

But it's very presence seems to entice speculation.

-The Sphinx is one of the most intriguing aspects of the Giza Plateau.

It's really the symbol, you know, along with a Great Pyramid, of the whole of Egypt.

Obviously, the head doesn't appear to be original.

There's lots of different theories about, you know, how it was created, but some people have suggested that water kind of created the erosion around the Sphinx area, and that wouldn't have happened until around 10,000 years ago.

One of the ideas that I kind of find intriguing is the fact that it's facing east, watching Leo rise.

At the time of the equinox, sunrise towards the east.

And when Leo was rising there, that would have been 10,500 or so years ago.

-It's just incredibly majestic.

-Yeah.

-It's brilliantly serene.

-Yeah.

-It's utterly unique as well.

-Yes, it is.

That's important.

-And yet there's loads of it missing.

-Yeah, there are parts missing.

Having said that, though, you know, it's been here for 4,500 years.

I think it's survived pretty well.

Importantly, human activity of any kind always leaves behind traces, detritus of one kind or another, typically pottery.

And the ceramic evidence, the inscriptional evidence, where we have it, the evidence of the other buildings we have, it's all confined to the period the conventional view says it should be.

-I mean, it's supposed to look like one of the pharaohs, isn't it?

-Yeah, no, exactly.

So, you can tell it's the Pharaoh from the headgear, so there's no question this is meant to be the King.

-The most iconic emblem of Ancient Egypt, the Great Sphinx has become as famous as the pyramids themselves.

But it's purpose is unknown, adding to it's mystery.

It wasn't to scare off robbers, was it?

-[ Laughs ] Well, in some sense, you know, it does look kind of like a guardian animal, but honestly, I think when you think that we know about all the elaborate engineering innovations that the Egyptians built into pyramids to deter robbers, the idea that somebody thought, "If you just put a big statue in front then the robbers are gonna be like, 'Whoa, let's definitely not rob this.'"

-[ Gasps ] "Careful now!"

-"'There's a scary statue...'" -"The big cat'll get you."

-Yeah.

The truth is, you know, this is another one of these monuments that's incredibly well scrutinised and studied about which we still don't know very much.

Here's the thing that's amazing about it, when you visit here, you hardly see it because it's really low, because it's not rock...

It's not like they are, no rocks brought in.

They just carved it into the ground.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's completely cut from the bedrock.

We think that this was being used as a quarry for building the pyramids or the temples here, but it's not impossible that actually somebody sort of notices, "Well, hang on, guys.

Whoa, stop."

-Looks a bit like a sphinx.

-"Looks a bit like a sphinx.

You know, if we just cut it here and there a little bit, we could create a giant image of the King as the sun god."

It's all speculation, but the lack of solid information about the Sphinx has given rise, yet again, to a host of colourful theories.

-It's not so much what the Sphinx is, it's quite possibly what's underneath the Sphinx that has me interested.

So, for a very long time, people have spoke about the Sphinx guarding something, acting as a gateway to something else.

Various people have suggested that there are tunnels, possibly chambers below the Sphinx, underneath the Giza Plateau.

They used ground-penetrating radar which revealed suggestions of hitherto unknown tunnels and chambers, particularly beneath the paws of the Sphinx, and it was never excavated, but they claimed that there was something there.

-It was an American clairvoyant called Cayce in the 1930s who announced that underneath the Sphinx there was a Hall of Records, a sacred library containing ancient knowledge from the survivors of Atlantis.

In 1978, an international team of archaeologists mapped the bedrock surrounding the Sphinx and detected no secret chamber.

People have looked and looked and looked.

-There's nothing there?

-There's nothing.

-I find the pyramids jaw-dropping because of the sheer scale of the building project and also the communal human will required to create them.

Can you imagine living at that time?

Standing next to them, and that mixture of pride and insignificance, marvelling at their size.

So it's particularly sad that suddenly there was a time when they were consigned to history.

These buildings are undoubtedly magnificent, but they didn't work.

And it didn't matter whether you put the burial chambers underneath the pyramid, or built them into the pyramid, or whether you built a half man, half cat to protect the pyramid, the robbers still got in.

It had to change, and it changed completely.

Next, I head to the most famous valley in Egypt and meet the one Pharaoh who managed to evade the tomb raiders for 3,000 years.

-He turned round and he said, "Inside, I see beautiful things."

♪♪ -After over 1,000 years of losing the battle between tomb raider and pyramid builder, the powers that be finally got the message.

Pyramids were out.

Instead, this remote hidden valley over 600 kilometres from Giza became the preferred spot to lay their dead pharaohs to rest.

I'm in the Valley of the Kings, and there isn't a statue or a temple or a pyramid to be seen.

I mean, there are burial chambers, but they're stashed deep underground, because after 1,000 years of having all the burial chambers looted, the elders in Egypt must have realised, "Hang on, were not really helping the pharaohs here on their final journey.

If anything, were advertising where the loot is by building a big triangle above it."

So the plan was changed to something far more stealthy.

They came here, to a valley hundreds of miles from prying eyes, and they built a secret cemetery for deceased pharaohs for their journey to the afterlife.

I'm heading into the tomb of Seti I, a Pharaoh who ruled Egypt some 3,000 years ago.

It's one of the deepest and most lavish in the Valley of the Kings.

So, did it escape the clutches of the tomb raiders?

Sadly, it did not.

Tomb raiders broke in and stole everything, even the mummy, which, in their haste, they managed to decapitate.

The mummy was, however, later recovered and hidden away again, and then finally rediscovered in 1881, reunited with it's head, and Seti's final resting place is in a museum in Cairo.

The one thing the raiders couldn't steal, however, were these incredible interiors.

♪♪ Walking through yet another empty tomb, I can't help but think that something is going on.

So, this is an ongoing pattern here, Raksha, which makes you think that all these robberies... What?

I mean, were they an inside job?

-You're bang on the money there.

It was completely an inside job.

Now, we have to remember, as with the pyramids, you had workers.

These workers in the Valley of the Kings were secret.

So this whole complex was secret, guarded day and night.

Now, when the Pharaoh died and there was a new King, they needed money, so what they would do is they would ask some of the workmen who knew exactly where the tunnels were and the tombs to go in and do the robbing for them.

So it was state-sponsored.

-So we shouldn't be as quick to judge the grave robbers as history might have been?

So, basically, they would recirculate the wealth back into the economy again.

-Exactly, they're like, "Well, he's dead now, he doesn't need all of that bling, does he?

I'm gonna have it for myself 'cause I need to go and have a war with the Persians over there."

[ Chuckles ] But there is a danger element to it because if somebody catches you and they're not in on the job, you're gonna die.

♪♪ -This looks incredible now.

Imagine how much more incredible it would have looked when it was filled to the brim with gold and jewels and chariots.

But all of that is gone.

All that is always gone.

But there's one notable exception.

A Pharaoh whose humble status might have consigned him to obscurity, yet a twist of fate has transformed him into an icon.

He's the only Pharaoh buried in the Valley of the Kings to have evaded tomb raiders until the 20th century.

The Boy King Tutankhamun.

♪♪ -He was a lesser-known pharaoh because he had such a short reign, his father was disgraced and he lived a really short life.

-Tutankhamun's name was nearly erased from historical record by the Egyptians who came after.

Over time, his short reign was all but forgotten, with another pharaoh's tomb being constructed almost directly on top of his.

This fortunate turn of events kept Tutankhamun's tomb and all its treasures undisturbed for thousands of years, making its eventual discovery the find of the 20th century.

-Everybody goes nuts for Tutankhamun.

Absolutely bonkers.

So much so, it influences the Art Deco movement.

So, the Chrysler Building itself has Egyptian motifs on it.

People are just completely taken with it, aren't they?

This boy king, all of these treasures, all of these goods, because there is nothing else in the world like it.

-British archaeologist Howard Carter gave an exclusive to The Times newspaper, leaving the rest of the press feeling pretty frustrated at not getting their scoop.

So much so, that they needed to create something else to sell their papers.

The Pharaohs Curse was born and became a worldwide press sensation.

Stories spread about a curse on anyone who dared to break into a pharaoh's tomb.

When Lord Carnarvon, who paid for the dig, died a few months later, the rumour mill went into overdrive.

And the idea of a curse still persists to this day.

-This whole tunnel, completely full of rubble, so they had to unpick their way through here.

They got to this door... and he chipped away.

He had a candle, and he peered through.

He turned round and he said... "Inside, I see beautiful things."

-The famous Tutankhamun's tomb?

-Yes.

-And markedly different to Seti's tomb.

-Isn't it smaller?

-It's much, much smaller.

-Well, the idea is, is that he died before his time.

There's no carving into the walls.

-Oh, there's no reliefs.

-There's no reliefs.

Just straight on, slapped a bit of paint on the walls, and then put him in here and shut the door.

So it's all very mysterious.

-Why the rush?

Why the hurry?

-Well, this is the eternal mystery of Tutankhamun, nobody knows.

-And because it was pretty much untouched, we got a real sense of how much riches the pharaohs were being buried with.

-Yeah, I mean, can you imagine when Howard Carter came down these stairs?

This was full of beds, chariots, clothes, baby chairs, because people didn't know, when you were reborn into the afterlife, how you would be born.

Would you be a child?

Would you need food?

So they packed everything inside.

And that's why we know about the pharaohs and their afterlife.

It's because of the items inside this tomb.

-We actually know quite a bit about this boy king.

He had a large overbite, and the fact that he was buried with lots of walking sticks suggests he may have had a limp of some kind as well.

We even know he was married to his sister and lost two babies, who have been buried here with him.

The Boy King who became Pharaoh at ten and died suspiciously at 19 lived a short and difficult life.

-Ultimately, it's just a very sad story, because in the end... his tomb did get desecrated by Howard Carter.

His coffins were prised open.

His body was unravelled.

-Do you think it's right that the body has been returned to here so the body still rests in the tomb?

Yeah, absolutely.

Don't you think that's, like, a fitting thing to happen to somebody?

To be reunited with their final resting place.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Hello, Tut.

You're the most popular, did you know that?

Oh, yeah.

That's the way history works sometimes.

You're the one everyone knows.

♪♪ We would all like to think that our final resting place will be peaceful.

But for some, it was also their route to immortality.

-Now, one could do individual fingers wrapping.

-Yeah.

-But today, were going to do a mitten.

-Oh, that's nice.

-Yeah.

-The most important thing... -Of course... -...is the head.

-Yes.

-Can you breathe?

-Yeah, I can.

-I don't wish to be responsible for your death.

-No, no, no.

-Then I'd have to mummify you properly.

-Yeah.

-That's it.

-Good.

-Okay.

-Then take you to the tomb for the final rites.

-Okay.

You're still there, aren't you?

Salima?

-[ Laughing quietly ] -Salima?

Salima?

Salima?

At the start of this episode, I made a throwaway comment about, "Oh, pyramids, you only had one job," as if the one task these buildings were designed to do was to keep out tomb raiders, something they singularly failed to do.

Yeah, the robbers won that battle.

But actually, these buildings had a whole other purpose, which is to make the pharaohs immortal.

In fact, in Egyptian society, the worst punishment of all was to have your name stricken off so that you'd never be remembered.

But thanks to these incredible, precise, huge, ridiculous buildings, the names of Menkaure, Khafre, Djoser, and Khufu will live on forever.

Well done, lads.

Good job.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪