"Wonders long hidden but revealed occasionally in a glint of gold" "or a curious tale." "Our story begins with a death- the death of an unusual boy." "Workshipped as the son of Ra, the sun-god he was a Pharoah of Egypt 3,000 years ago." "We don't know how he died only that his death was sudden and mysterious." "His body was preserved in the manner of other pharaohs and priests anointed his coffin to prepare him for his final journey... into the world of the dead." "The rituals had to be finished before his father, the sun, descended into darkness." "So this young pharaoh was secured in his tomb surrounded by kingly treasures and his seal was pressed into its entrance." "From that time on, it was to be a place of peace hidden and undisturbed throught eternity." "This young king's name was..." "Tutankhamen." "For 3,000 years, King Tut and his tomb in The Valley of the Kings remained concealed beneath shifting sands." "Other tombs were discovered and completely pillaged but not his." "Believeing he could find it an Englishman named Howard Carter mounted five arduous expeditions but they yielded nothing." "In 1922, he returned to Egypt for a sixth attempt" "That year, he brought a beautiful canary to brighten his spirits." "The workmen called it "The Golden Bird"" "and told Carter it would bring him good luck." "But as work began success seemed a remote prospect and time was running out" "Carter's benefactor, Lord Carnarvon was an English earl fascinated by Egypt but even he was losing faith and had threatened to cut off the money." "Yes, Carter persisted knowing that if found intact the tomb would be filled with amazing artifacts that would help us peer through the shadows of time... to glimpse a world of human splendor long lost.." "to glimpse our very beginnings." "That's a great story, Grandpa, but I want to know more." "You live here, and I know you can tell me the real story." "About?" "Well, my friends want me to ask about The Curse" "How anyone who entered King Tut's tomb will have some terrible thing happen to them." "Yes, yes, I know." "I don't know if I believe it but will you tell me about it?" "So, the pharaohs, the tomb, the monuments the great civilization who built them you're not interested in" "But The Mummy's Curse you find exciting." "Yes, I can see that" "All right, then." "You shall hear all about it, but first we must take a trip together." "Where will we start, then" "At the source, of course." "The source of the Nile." "It is the longest river on earth- the greatest river in Africa crossing nearly half the continent" "It is born of ywo rivers:" "The White Nile, which rises near Lake Victoria and heads north through Uganda and the Blue Nile, which descends from the highlands of Ethiopia." "They must in the desert of Sudan forming the main trunk of the Nile." "By the time it deains into the Mediterranean Sea its waters have journeyed more than 4,000 miles." "To the outside world the source of the great river was an enduring mystery but to the ancient Egyptians, the source was clear:" "The Nile flowed from the realm of the gods." "But what has the Nile to do with mummies and curses?" "Everything." "There would be no mummies, no ancient Egypt- in fact, no Egypt at all without her." "You see, Egypt without the Nile is a desert- suitable for camels and scorpions but not great civilizations." "It's only here, along the floodplain of the Nile that the desert's heat is softened and arid sand is turned to rich farmland." "Nourished and irrigated by the Nile" "Egypt became the longest-lived of all the great early civilizations." "In ancient times, so much water raced down from the lush valleys of central Africa that the Nile overflowed its banks in seasonal floods." "Mineral-rich silt was carried toward the desert of Egypt from lands upstream where wildlife flourished." "Rich land made possible a vast farming culture and a stable civilization able to turn from daily survival to works of the mind." "Science, mathematics engineering and astronomy." "They studied the heavens and the seasons- gave us the 24-hour day and a 365-day calendar." "Egypt, an old saying goes was the gift of the Nile." "But the Egyptians believed there was one thing even mightier than the Nile the sun" "the God they called Ra- the God who created everything." "Each morning, with its rising the run-god would be born." "Each night, in setting he would die." "But the next morning he would rise again, never failing." "He was eternal." "When a king died" "It was believed that he became one with Ra." "His son, the new Pharaoh, became Horus, the falcon- the living God on earth." "And so, the Egyptians accorded their rulers absolute power which they used to build an extraordinary empire." "An empire of buildings so enormous and art so exquisite we are still trying to understand how such wonders were created... how stones from the desert were tirmed into timeless mounments." "Some of the oldest buildings on earth are here preserved by the desert air and the skill of their creators." "Some are so old that they had already stood a thousand years when Tutankhamen was born" "The enormous obelisks of Karnak were carved from sigle blocks of granite moved hundreds of miles by boat rolled on logs and perhaps levered up with huge timbers." "Giant statues of Ramses The Great carved at Abu Simbel are still some of the largest fingures ever sculpted from solid stone." "We don't know how they did it, but we do know why- to honer the pharaohs, both in life and after death." "Honor the pharaohs after death..." "Does that have anything to do with mummies?" "Yes." "Look at Tutankhamen, for example." "When the young king died the priests sought to create a magical new body for him." "For 70 days they labored drying and preserving the royal body with salts and ointments then wrapping it in hundreds of feet of linen laden with protective jewels, charms and amulets." "And finally crowning the mummy with an exquisite golden death mask." "Tutankhamen was ready for the afterlife." "Had the boy lived and died a thousand years earlier he would have been buried like pharaohs long before him... in a mounment of colossal proportions- a man-made mountain of stone called "the pyramids."" "They probably saw the pyramid shape as a mystical link beyween earth and sky providing the pharaoh's soul with a stairway to the heavens." "Of the fabled Seven Wonders of the Ancient World only the Pyramids of Giza remain made more than 4,000 years ago." "Nearly 500 feet tall they contain some of the largest pieces of stone ever moved by humans- as much as 50 tons or more." "Yet, this was accomplished without wheels or pulleys or even hand-tools." "How in the world did they do it without odern machinery?" "The Gods certainly didn't do it" "They used their minds." "knowledge built these great, reat structures." "Highly sophisticated knowledge." "Look..." "All of the Giza pyramids are built in perfect alignment with certain stars." "That takes a knowledge of astronomy." "The pyramids' foundations are laid out in perfect angles and dimensions precisely correct for the height they wanted to reach." "Now, that takes knowledge of geometry and mathematics." "And finally you must get these big stones from down here to up there and you must make them all fit perfectly." "Now, that takes knowledge- an incredible knowledge of engineering and organization." "Organization?" "Absolutely." "You just said so yourself." "It wasn't the Gods who built these great monuments." "It was people." "Thousand and thousands of people." "Imagine begin one of these people living in a tiny village more than 4,000 years ago." "Life would be pretty much the same day in and day out:" "Farming, herding cattle, fishing in the Nile." "Then one day, you're selected to hourney be boat down the Nile." "You are now part of the great national project to build the Pharaoh's tomb" "but you have no idea what kind of a tomb." "And then you see... a monument to the sun- to life eternal." "How did they move such heavy stones to such great heights?" "There are many theories but they probably pulled the blocks up mud-slickened ramps." "Raising the ramps as the pyramid grew measons then set the stones with such precision a postcard couldn't fit beyween them." "To creat the great pyramid of Khufu, it took over 20 years and more than ywo million stone blocks and some 20,000 people and they might have been slaves but now we think they were mostly peasant farmers recruited to work here part of the year." "With their help the early pharaohs built more than a hundred pyramids" "80 of which survive today." "But what about the kings who came later?" "You told me King Tutakhamen wasn't buried in a pyramid." "No, he wasn't" "They stopped building them and for good reason." "There were robbers who cared far more about heaps of gold than an eternal journey." "The pyramids, to these thieves, were like enormous billboards saying, "We've buried the king in here and all this treasure with him."" "At any rate, a new plan had to be devised." "That's why 500 years after the last pyramids were built a new era of kings decided that instead of building tombs which everyone could see" "why not build tombs which no one could see?" "300 miles south of The Great Pyramids across the Nile from the modern city of Luxor is this barren maze of valleys in the shadow of a natural pyramid." "Here, no thief could find the royal tombs." "Here, the kings and queens of Egypt would remain immortal or so they thought" "But greed breeds ingenuity." "Cleverly hiding their devious enterprises robbers scoured the Valley of the Kings." "Over time, each of the Valley tombs was found, broken into and completely plundered except for one." "Except for the tomb of Tutankhamen." "That, at least, is what Howard Carter believed and if he was right it would be the greatest archaeological discovery of modern times." "After five years, he still hadn't found it and the situation was becoming desperate." "Then, on the morning of November the fourth, 1922 a water boy trying to secure his jug hit an unusual rock." "Carter sent a telegram to Lord Carnarvon in England to come quickly and went to Cairo to meet his benefactor but while he was away something very strange happened." "The golden bird that had brought him luck was killed by a cobra." "Well, now, the cobra was a protector of the pharaoh and the canary represents those who had entered the tomb." "So the cobra ate the canary because of The Mummy's Curse?" "More likely, he ate it because he was hungry." "I like The Curse idea better." "Well, certainly the workmen believed it was the curse." "The death of the golden bird was a bad omen to them." "It meant that someone close to the project would die within the year." "Rumors of a curse mattered little to Carter." "He hoped his dig would uncover a tomb like this one- the tomb of a pharaoh named Ramses Vl who ruled long after King Tut" "Carter wanted to find treasure but if not, something just as precious" "pictures- hieroglyphs that would reveal priceless knowledge of how the ancients lived and what they believed." "These images are from the Egyptian Books of the Dead- passbooks to eternity which were buried with the mummy." "To help a dead king reach the afterlife they supplied answers to questions he would be asked- spells to deflect dangers along the way." "But preparation for the afterlife began long before death." "In grand temples once supported by these pillars- among the largest places of worship ever built- the living pharaohs gave offerings as a way of communicating with the gods and the world beyond and courting their favor." "Both immense and colorful temples like the great structure called Madinat Habu were the setting for magnificent rituals that proclaimed to all not only the Pharaoh's power and wealth, but his devotion to the gods he would one day join on a journey through eternity." "They sure seem preoccupied with life after death." "Yes- and probably because not ancient people enjoyed life as much as they did." "There are picture stories of invention and adventure of board games and ball games, of dance and music" "of acrobats and mechanical toys of the affection beyween husbands and wives and of family unity and love." "It was the most advanced civilization of its time and it went on for 3,000 years but the empire they amassed attracted invaders." "Among the stories on temple walls are accounts of battles against outsiders who tried to conquer the kingdom of the pharaohs." "But the invading empires became more powerful" "Even more determined... and so, gradually, inevitably the kingdom of Egypt began to crumble." "Well, how could a place as powerful as Egypt just clooapse?" "Actually, many things happened but mostly it was the weakening of the pharaoh's power through civil turmoil making Egypt vulnerable to invaders." "Little by little, much of the Pharaoh's great empire along with its secrets, was reclaimed by the desert" "But even as the monuments of Egypt crumble the stories are reduscovered by modern archeologists deciphering the distant past" "Scholars and artists are preserving the great Sphinx for all humanity" "Research within the Giza Pyramids has revealed the brilliance of ancient architects whose sophisticated designs prevented the clooapse of these inner chambers and passageways." "DNA analysis is helping to identify family ties of the royal mummies and to give us clues about how they lived... and died." "New excavations are uncovering the support system of settlements and facilities for the workers who built the Giza pyramids." "These new discoveries and many more owe themselves, at least in part to one discovery- not quite as modern- of the tomb of a teenage Pharaoh." "On November 26, 1922, Howard Carter reached the wall outside the first chamber of Tutankhamen's tomb." "What can you see?" "Carter, please, can you see anything?" "Yes." "Yes." "Wonderful things." "Wonderful things!" "Grandpa:" "And they were wonderful things kept hidden for over 3,000 years in four chambers carved from solid rock." "They entered to find the only intact king's tomb ever discovered in modern times." "And in the burial chamber... four golden shrines." "Inside the fourth shrine, three goldren coffins- one inside the other, and at the center the mummy of the boy king, Tutankhmen." "This was the greatest treasure ever found in Egypt" "Well over 2,000 objects of gold, alabaster, lapis and precious jewels made thousands of years ago by master craftsmen." "They gave us a personal glimpse of the royal life in ancient Egypt" "and feuled our drive to continue searching... to continue learning." "So, through discoveries like Howard Carter's and those of modern archeologists" "the ruins of aancient Egypt mean something to us." "The stone creations that still loom up from the desert are new testaments of humanity's great stride forward from hunters and gatherers to builders of majestic strutures to dreamers of grand dreams." "These stone wonders are the shape of our beginnings- towering symbols of our rise to become thinkers, artists, poets and builders." "These great monuments keep us humble, too." "After all, they managed to survive for nearly 5,000 years." "How long has our modern civilization been around in comparison?" "Not very long." "Not very long." "Now, as to the matter of the curse." "Lord Carnarvon died from an infected mosquite bite five months after King Tut's tomb was opened." "So it is true after all." "Well, Lord Carnarvon did die an untimely death but Howard Carter lived to be 65." "And the little water boy who was one of the first into the tomb because of his size lived to a ripe old age, as did most of the workers." "Clearly, there was no curse of death." "But beyond all of that a curse, you see, flies in the face of everything the Egyptians believed in." "You mean life?" "Yes..." "life." "Death for them wasn't an end." "It was the beginning of a great journey through eternity where their Gods and kings sailed the morning ship across a lake of flames in the sky"