70-Day Race_ The Dark Truth of Tutankhamun’s Rushed Burial _ Our History

Egypt, 1323 BC. A messenger runs through the desert. He bears shocking news. The young pharaoh Tutankhamun is dead. This is the story of one of the most famous tombs in history and a high stakes race to succeed the pharaoh buried there. The ancient Egyptians took the burial of their kings very seriously. The pharaoh must be mummified, buried within an impressive sarcophagus and laid to rest with a full set of grave goods necessary for his journey to the afterlife. This was crucial if the pharaoh was to take his rightful place amongst the gods. If the pharaoh is not there seated next to those deities, he cannot make known to them our needs or make known to us their wishes. In other words, if the pharaoh hasn't ascended into heaven properly, the world as we know it comes to a grinding halt. Catastrophe may befall the kingdom. It means that tomorrow morning the sun won't rise, the moon will not wax and wane, crops will fail, life as we know it is gone, we're dead. It takes time and planning to get every stage of a pharaoh's burial right. Tradition dictates Tut must be mummified in a 70-day process after which he must be buried. Tut's mummy survives today. Salima Ikram is one of the world's leading experts on the mummy in ancient Egypt. Her close examination of x-rays of Tut reveals the first clues that all was not right in the burial of the boy pharaoh. Tutankhamen's mummy is very peculiar because I've looked at many other royal mummies of the 18th and 19th dynasty and Tutankhamen's doesn't compare in any way. It looks actually like a very bad quality mummification which is strange because all the accoutrements that he has and his grave goods are of such a high standard so why is his mummification so bad? The ancient Egyptians mummified animals as well as humans using similar techniques. Today she's mummifying a sheep to demonstrate what's so unusual about the mummy of King Tut. The first part of mummification is to remove the internal organs so for a human being, you have to imagine this is a person lying down, there's a small cut that's made on the left side of the body and it's very tiny. Now Tutankhamen was very different from any other 18th dynasty royal mummy we have found because he had a big gash going from his navel all the way to the left side so that was completely unprecedented. Large abdominal cuts became common in the 26th dynasty but Tut died over 650 years earlier. First, Ikram removes the internal organs. Okay, hold it tight. There's the liver, there it comes. It's very firmly attached and they're very slippery. Thank you. Okay, you need a lot of upper body strength to pull things out. There they come, all of those lovely internal organs filling out the way they're supposed to. Those are bits of the lungs and the heart we will leave in the body. This was imperative. The heart needed to be present in the body for the moment when the pharaoh's soul was weighed and granted everlasting life. A second surprise, in x-rays of Tut's mummy there's no sign of a heart. We don't think there is a heart in the body but of course there was so much resin filled linen packing it might be obscuring the heart so either it's missing or else it's very well disguised inside the body cavity and either way that is very unusual for an 18th dynasty royal mummy. Once removed, Tutankhamen's viscera were embalmed, wrapped and interned in these miniature gold coffins. They were stored within this canopic chest and buried with him. After evisceration comes desiccation. Ikram must clean the carcass and dry it out. Like the sheep, Tut would have been washed with water and palm wine to disinfect the body. She packs the cavity tightly with bags of natron, a naturally occurring mix of salt and baking soda. Then she covers the whole body completely. A little pillow for the sheep. The body is left to dry out for 40 days. The natron pulls all moisture and fat from the body. Here again there are clues that the mummification wasn't done correctly. His body had already started to deteriorate and it could have been that he died in a place where they couldn't immediately do this kind of operation because he didn't have natron. This leads Ikram to an interesting hypothesis. Was Tutankhamen killed in battle or did he die somewhere hunting or whatever but a long way from the Nile valley so he didn't have immediate access to trained embalmers. They might have done the best they could and rushed him back to the Nile valley. But there's another more sinister explanation for why the early mummification might have been done so incompetently. It's possible someone was desperate to get Tutankhamen safely buried and fast. As an expert on the politics of ancient Egypt, Peter Brand has studied the fallout from Tut's death. The death of Tutankhamen plunges Egypt into military and political crisis. First of all they've just lost a major battle with the Hittite empire and then the king dies. And Tut has not produced an heir. As the countdown to the 70th day begins, a high-stakes race unfolds in the Nile valley. The race to get Tut buried in time and the race to seize the throne. Three main contenders will wrestle for power. There's Tut's widow called Ankesanamun. Kingship in Egypt was a largely male affair. Female pharaohs were rare and with two preceding Tut there may have been little appetite for another. Ankesanamun has limited political options. The only way she can continue her position is if she could somehow marry the next king. The second contender is Horemheb, the commander-in-chief of the army. Brand investigates his claim to the throne at Horemheb's unused tomb at Saqqara. His most important title as far as his military career is found right here in this wonderful little group of hieroglyphs. There's this funny little sign here that basically means overseer and then there's a little figure of an Egyptian army soldier holding a bow in his hand and then there's this bird here and this little hieroglyph here that is a mouth and this spells out great overseer of the army, in other words a kind of generalissimo, a supreme military commander of the Egyptian army. And Horemheb's power and influence extends even further. He is also given some very high honorific titles. He's called here the great one of the great one and the big one of the big ones. He's called the deputy of deputies and the inspector of inspectors, all to emphasize that he's really the highest official under the king. Stone reliefs document his career like an ancient resume. But the most important inscription here lies almost unnoticed in the back of the tomb. And it's this little group of hieroglyphs here because what this tells us is that he's been appointed the heir apparent to the throne. This means that he is the official heir to Tutankhamen. But Horemheb has a problem. He's out of the country on a military campaign. This leaves the succession open for a third contender, a senior court official named I. Now he's no rank outsider, he's a chamberlain, therefore he is well connected politically. Presumably one of his tasks is to arrange for the burial of his lord Tutankhamen who's just died and he could use this to perhaps strengthen his own claims to the throne. With Horemheb away, I must move fast. If I was actually trying to become king, then it would be in his interest to bury Tut as quick as possible so that he could claim the throne himself. Because in ancient Egypt, whoever buries a pharaoh becomes their heir. Tut is on his way to everlasting peace, but he leaves behind several rival factions. This would lead Tut's widow to make a momentous decision that would spectacularly backfire and plunge Egypt into further crisis. The legendary boy king Tutankhamen is dead. The first stage of his mummification is underway. In the high-stakes battle to succeed him, his chamberlain I may now have seen an amazing opportunity to strengthen his claim to the throne. Since 1978, Kent Weeks has mapped all the known places where Tutankhamen may be buried. The story of Tut's tomb suggests I carried off a remarkable piece of political manoeuvring. Weeks remembers the first time he went down into Tut's final resting place. Going into the other tombs, which I had done before visiting Tut, had prepared me to see something grandiose. Thousands of square meters devoted to this most famous ruler of all. This is what he found. A four-roomed tomb that's small, cramped and unimpressive. You go in there and it really is very deflating. Walls undecorated, chambers barely big enough for half a dozen people to stand in. It was a real shock. Weeks was convinced such an unimpressive tomb was not built for Tut. There must be another tomb fit for a pharaoh elsewhere in the valley that Tut had planned for himself. This is the tomb we think might originally have been intended for the burial of Tutankhamen. It may have been a work in progress, but not yet ready to be occupied by him. Tut had ruled for 10 years. Tombs were usually commissioned soon after succession, so it's strange that Tutankhamen's tomb may not have been finished when he died. This is the stuff the Valley of the Kings is made of. It's limestone. Nearly all the stone in Upper Egypt is limestone. It's very soft. It's easy to carve. One could cut a tomb into this with relative ease. Ancient Egyptian graffiti reveals how it was done. It doesn't take much effort. It doesn't take a lot of time. In fact, it's been estimated that a group of, say, eight workmen could remove one cubic meter, about 30 cubic feet, of limestone bedrock every day. At this rate, larger tombs would have been cut in around 15 months. The fact Tut had not completed a tomb worthy of a pharaoh during his 10-year reign could be down to a unique set of circumstances. The end of the 18th dynasty is a traumatic time for the Egyptians, with multiple crises hitting them one after the other in quick succession. For a start, Egypt was at war. Tut also had serious problems at home. He ruled as Egypt was recovering from the revolutionary reign of his father. Known as the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaten abandoned the worship of the traditional gods and banished the priests. He established a new cult of the sun god and built a new religious capital, Amarna. This disrupts the Egyptian economy and disturbs the population. When Akhenaten died, the cult died with him. Tut had to work hard to re-establish the traditional religion. He even erected this hieroglyph stele to record what he had done. Weeks believes these distractions could account for Tut's apparently unfinished tomb. Clearly something was going on during this period. It may have been wars, it may have been the end of the Amarna period, it may have been economic collapse, it may have been the fact that King Tut seems to have died suddenly. Maybe it's a combination of these. An unfinished tomb presented Ai with a big problem. Not all Egyptologists agree about what happened next, but Weeks believes it's possible Ai decided to bury Tut in the tomb he was building for himself. Perhaps the two switched places and that may have been made necessary by the hasty burial that the sudden death of Tutankhamun required. Such a swap would have been an act of political brilliance. When Ai swaps tombs with Tut in common, this bolsters Ai's position because having a real royal tomb makes him a more legitimate pharaoh. Now there's another problem. The scale and layout are all wrong for a royal tomb. But for Weeks all the necessary elements were there, so Ai must have believed that ritually it was still an acceptable resting place for a king. At first glance King Tut's tomb doesn't look anything like the royal tombs we've come to expect, but it doesn't take much of a change to transform the tomb into a very standard 18th dynasty royal tomb model. When the tomb's four rooms are rotated 90 degrees, the entrance corridor and burial chamber now form the more traditional single axis layout of a royal tomb. And there it is, a very standard 18th dynasty tomb design. With one stroke, Ai has moved closer to becoming the next king of Egypt. Tut's widow finds herself in an impossible position. If she is to hold on to power, Ankesanamun must marry Tut's successor before the funeral. He must be there to perform the crucial opening of the mouth ceremony that reanimates the corpse ready for the afterlife. Ankesanamun now makes a desperate diplomatic gambit to secure her royal position. She writes to the king of the Hittite empire in modern-day Turkey, appealing for help. This is stranger than fiction. I mean, Tom Clancy couldn't make this stuff up. The Hittites preserved this curious chapter in their archives. Peter Brand has made a detailed study. So he basically says, my husband has died and he has no son, but they say that you, the Hittite king, have many sons. Won't you send one of them to me and he will become my husband and he will also become the king of Egypt. It's a dangerous gamble. The letter is sent at a time of foreign policy crisis because the Egyptian empire is fighting with the Hittite empire. Horemheb has the Egyptian army here at the border and the Egyptians and the Hittites are fighting over this place here in Syria called Kadesh. And a desperate act. The queen says she's afraid and you have to imagine that she's afraid she'll have to marry a non-royal, perhaps Horemheb or I, and she doesn't want this. Time is running out for Tut's widow. For her gamble to pay off, her letter must arrive before she has to bury her husband. While Ankhesanamun waits for her prince, scores of craftsmen work on the several thousand items Tut will need to be buried with for his journey to the afterlife. But I has hit another problem. Tradition dictates that Tut's coffin be placed inside a sarcophagus and I doesn't have one. 40 days have passed since Tutankhamen's death. Time is running out. In another 30 days, he will be ready for burial. It takes a long time to melt. Egyptologist Salima Ikram is mummifying a sheep to demonstrate the oddities in King Tut's mummy. Like this sheep, Tut's organs have been removed and his body has dried out. Now Ikram covers the sheep in oil. Tutankhamen would have had the best quality oils and you use the oils not just because you are doing something that is sacred, but also because it gives some flexibility back to the body. So by oiling Tutankhamen, you could position his arms in the royal pose and make sure that his arms didn't snap off. Next, Ikram seals the body with heated resins, usually frankincense and myrrh. As the body takes on a golden sheen, Pharaoh is transformed from human to divine. But once again, King Tut's mummification is unusual. The quantities of resin used are excessive. Why Tutankhamen had so much resin and oil on him is not very clear. Was it to hide a bad quality mummification? And maybe it was sort of a combination of, I am so sorry we messed up, here have some extra resin. Or it was also to say, bits are not as they should be, so let's cover it up so no one can actually see this and criticize it. Whatever the reason, the outcome was clear. His body was effectively carbonized. I just can feel the heat going through to my hands, so it's, if they were using a lot of very hot resin, it's no wonder that Tutankhamen in fact became rather roasted in appearance. The ultimate act, performed within the final 30 days, is to wrap the body in linen. At last, Ikram discovers something worthy of a Pharaoh. Even if the mummification had not been good, certainly the wrapping section was very well done to a large extent and it was lavish. The mummification of the sheep is complete. Tut's mummy will be laid to rest in a magnificent coffin of solid gold. His body is further protected by another two coffins, nesting one within the other. The three will lie within a stone sarcophagus in his second hand tomb. By 1450 BC, royal sarcophagi were elaborate and intricately carved. Tut's is quartzite and a work of beauty. But experts Marianne Eaton Krauss and Dennis Stocks have been examining it and all is not as it seems. Could such an intricate work of art have been produced within the 70-day deadline? The answer may be found here, York Minster, England, the largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe. It takes the work of 25 stonemasons and carvers to maintain this building. Today, experimental archaeologist Dennis Stocks has set one of them a challenge. When you look at it closely, it appears naïve in style, but the actual workmanship that's gone into it is absolutely superb. It's a real piece of fantastic craftsmanship. Stone carver Dave Willett has chosen to carve the face of the goddess Isis from a corner of the sarcophagus. Then he and Stocks will attempt to estimate how long it might have taken the original carvers to produce the entire box. And if you look at the subtlety of the carving, so it's around the eye and certainly on the lips, absolutely beautifully worked. Where the lips curled over at the bottom, that would take quite a bit of work to achieve that. It would, yes. Willett normally works with limestone. The challenge is how he'll cope with quartzite, one of the hardest stones on earth. First, he tries one of his modern steel chisels. That's it. Oh yes. Fairly efficient. He chipped quite a bit with that. But even so, even so. But it does wear it down pretty quick. Next, he tries a chisel made of bronze, a material used by the ancient Egyptians. It hardly touches it. But Willett won't be using either of these tools. Stocks' years of research on ancient stone working techniques suggests the Egyptians used chisels made of flint. Certainly more efficient than the bronze. That seems to be working very well. Compared to the flint, it's brilliant. So even on this very hard stone, it's quite clear that you really need a stone tool to work stone. Yes, definitely. Willett gets to work. The goddess's face is carved in relief, so once sketched out, he must remove all the background. It promises to be a laborious job. Well, I think it's so different to use a tool made of stone rather than a tool made of steel that he's going to find it quite challenging at the beginning until he gets used to it. I think he's going to have to learn to be a stonemason all over again. Back in Egypt, Marianne Eton Krauss is also investigating Tut's sarcophagus. For years, she's studied photographs, puzzled by inconsistencies in the carving of the four-winged goddesses. These figures would lead her to an amazing discovery. If we start here at the head end of the sarcophagus, we can see the incredible amount of detail that has been lavished on these figures. We see the necklace, which has been done in relief. Here, even the knot shown in the strap of the dress. Also, the navel and the way the foot has been done in the anklets. But the foot end of the box is very different. We'll see the goddess Selkit, and we will see here many of the same details, but executed only in paint. And she has no navel. Well, it's quite clear that the head end is much more finished. The foot end has only been finished in paint in a rather hurried fashion. Back at York Minster, stone carver Dave Willett is beginning to understand why some parts are more finished than others. It's taken him 50 hours simply to take out the background and shape the face in relief. But he's discovering, too, how the ancient Egyptians may have produced the sarcophagus and what they went through to do it. Using the granite pounders, I think, is how they must have taken out larger areas, because it's so much more efficient than using the flint. But it's incredibly hard work. They must have been absolutely exhausted and incredibly fit to be doing this all day. Experimental archaeologist Dennis Stocks is trying to estimate how long it might have taken to produce the whole sarcophagus. Before carving even began, his research suggests the ancient Egyptians would have first drilled out the interior of the quartzite block. I use in tubular drills of copper with a bow to turn it, a sand abrasive for the drilling out, and with three teams working eight hours a day, I think it would take about 536 days, which is equal to about 18 months. Finally, after almost four weeks of carving, Willett finishes the goddess. Hey! Wow! It stands right out at you, doesn't it? Well, it's a wonderful job. It really is. You know, I think it's amazing that you can produce such a level of detail with such a tiny piece of flint. It is quite incredible, really. When I first started, I thought, no way would flints be able to do this, but it certainly opened my eyes to what skill and craftsmanship they had in ancient Egypt. Using his work as a guide, Willett estimates it would have taken one man almost six years to carve the entire sarcophagus. But evidence suggests the box was the work of a team of craftsmen. How many men do you think could work at the same time around the sarcophagus? You could probably get about eight or ten round. Well, suppose we say about ten. That will bring it down to about eight months. So the sarcophagus could not have been carved in the 70-day deadline. Tutte would have needed to have commissioned it before he died. But Eton Krause's research has led her to think there could be another explanation. I noticed something that was very surprising to me. Namely, there were traces of earlier inscriptions. If you look very closely, you will see here is a rounded sign that was part of one of the Egyptian words for eternity. And here at the bottom, you also see the sign for T, the letter T, and here a line across the bottom. And right beside it, you will see very little bit here of a line. This was originally the register line that continued all the way up here. This suggests the inscriptions for Tutte mask earlier hieroglyphs. And the goddess's wings proved to be even more revealing. It's quite clear that the wings are later edition because there are traces of hieroglyphs here that were in columns that went also up to the top. The wings served a dual purpose for the stonemasons. They hid the original inscriptions and there was less service to re-inscribe. I would suggest it was a practical solution that this decision had been taken simply because it was a time saver. Her findings bring her to a dramatic conclusion. I am convinced that the sarcophagus was not commissioned for Tutankhamun, but that it was made for one of his predecessors. Tutankhamun already had a hand-me-down tomb. If the sarcophagus was not even his, maybe the rest of his famous treasures never belonged to him at all. The end of the 70-day mourning period is fast approaching. Soon Tutte will be buried. Ankhesenamen is still awaiting news from a suspicious Hittite king. She has pinned her hopes on the arrival of a prince to claim the throne as her consort. Finally the Hittites are convinced that the offer is genuine and they dispatch a prince to Egypt to marry the queen. But he dies mysteriously along the way and the whole thing blows up into a diplomatic fiasco. The Hittites blame the Egyptians for the prince's death. Ankhesenamen's gamble to secure a Hittite husband is a spectacular failure. The Hittite king orders a military attack on Egyptian territory in revenge. So instead of having a royal wedding and a peace treaty, you end up with a military fiasco, diplomatic fiasco, and poor Ankhesenamen still doesn't have a husband. In one move she's plunged Egypt into further crisis and what's more unwittingly decided the race for the throne. Throughout this whole crisis we believe that Horemheb is on the ground somewhere on the Egyptian-Hittite border here in Syria defending the Egyptian frontier against a Hittite counter-attack and this keeps him busy and prevents him from coming home until after the Now only Tut's chamberlain, Ai, remains. At this point it's game over for Queen Ankhesenamen. She's not going to get a husband but for Ai the game may only just be beginning. A pharaoh was never buried alone. Ai must lay Tut to rest with the possessions and religious artifacts he needs to guide him to the next world. It must be done properly. Yet research 4,000 kilometers away suggests that these preparations too were a curious affair. Here at the Griffith Institute in Oxford, England, Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves examines the original photographs of Tut's treasures as Howard Carter found them in 1922. Reeves wants to find out how many of the treasures, like the sarcophagus, have been recycled. I thought I knew the tomb of Tutankhamen but as I kept looking again and again at the detail of it I started to see it in a completely different light. Reeves examines the many pieces of jewelry found in the tomb. He discovers that Tut's name, inscribed in oval cartouches, appears to replace another and the accompanying titles are not his either. These first two hieroglyphs are the epithet Hecanepha, good ruler Hecanepha. It never seems to be an epithet which is used by Tutankhamen himself. The epithets are those of other people, of Akhenaten in fact. Akhenaten, Tut's father and infamous heretic. He abandoned the worship of the traditional gods in favor of one, crushing the power of the priests. The conclusion that one reaches is that a lot of this jewelry was made for someone else and only later inscribed at the time of Tutankhamen's burial. Reeves examines Tut's most iconic treasures. Tutankhamen's outer coffin has an odd detail. It has these extraordinary lapids added at the front in a braided effect. This unique headdress was sported by only one man. Akhenaten. And Reeves finds evidence of changed cartouches on the second coffin. But his most dramatic discovery concerns Tut's iconic death mask. Reeves is intrigued by a line of prominent solder. Of course this might be a manufacturing feature, this is how they produce these things, but I think not. Then he examines what the mask is made of. The inlays of the wig are of blue glass, but the inlays of the mask are of lapis lazuli. This suggests to me an alteration, an updating of the mask. This leads him to an astonishing conclusion. I think we can be fairly sure that this is the face of Tutankhamen. However having said that, I don't think that the mask itself was made for Tutankhamen. As he painstakingly examines and catalogues, Reeves is surprised to find a female presence in this man's tomb. Some of the statues have a definite feminine shape. And these stone stoppers, finely carved in the form of a pharaoh's head, also have a female quality to them. They sit atop miniature gold coffins holding Tut's embalmed internal organs. But was this key funerary equipment made for him? Reeves examines them for clues. He can find nothing on the outside, but the inside is revealing. Changes in the text on the inside have been done far less carefully, and the name of the original owner can still be discerned. And this person was in fact Nefertiti as co-regent of Akhenaten. Nefertiti, the iconic queen of ancient Egypt. The tomb, it turns out, contained not simply the treasures of Tutankhamen, but those of his father and possibly stepmother. If I was anxious to rush through Tut's burial, recycling meant he could do it quickly. But there were massive political reasons for this too. The story begins in 1907. Archaeologists digging in the Valley of the Kings discover tomb KV55. It appears to be a cache of royal human remains and burial equipment. Nicholas Reeves believes these royal remains were brought here from Omana around the time of Tut's death. This stuff was simply brought to the Valley of the Kings, piled up in a heap. What was needed for the burial of Tutankhamen was taken out. And what was left was re-divided out amongst the original owners. It's as if the priests not only wanted to prepare King Tut for his journey into the next life, they wanted to throw into that mix anything that reminded them of the Omana period, put it in the tomb, lock the door, and hope it never sees the light of day again. Putting all the evidence together, Reeves estimates the scale of the reuse and recycling. I wouldn't be surprised if as much as 80 percent of the core burial equipment was simply taken over from previous owners. It could even be higher. If he's right, eight out of ten treasures known as King Tut's are in fact other peoples. The Egyptian museum Cairo. Here, standing in line, are the four famous gilded shrines from the tomb. This one is the size of a large SUV. They fascinated Egyptologist Zahi Hawass for years. The shrines are the most amazing artifacts found in the tomb. They protected the mummy. The king is resting in peace. The shrines are part of the magical machinery needed to send Tut on his journey to the afterlife. But yet again, things are not as they should be. Tut's mummy inside its nest of three coffins had been placed inside his second-hand stone sarcophagus. Workmen then assembled the first of the four shrines around it. They built another three, fitting one within the other like a giant set of Russian dolls. Made up of 51 pieces, they're decorated with funerary texts and gods. Before the outer shrine, a linen cloth covers a pole frame. Their size would have been a real challenge to the workers. The cramped confines of the underground burial chamber meant when constructed, there was no more than a meter to spare on each side. And their only guidance was small hieroglyphs, clearly visible on the second shrine. The signs are in... it shows how this piece belonged to this part, and how this piece belonged to this part. Then the workmen will be able to reconstruct the shrine beautifully. Look at this, this side and this side, again, this side and this side, that shows how the workmen reconstructed that. It's a monumental task, with some pieces weighing as much as half a tonne. Then we can imagine how the workmen did all this work inside a very narrow room. That now, when I enter inside the burial chamber, I always think how those people, more than 3,000 years ago, were dedicated to do a marvellous work, because they want to be sure that the golden boy has to go with his throne to be a god. The shrines are such a snug fit, it suggests they were made to fit the dimensions of Tut's sarcophagus and burial chamber. But some of the panels feature the sun disk associated with Tut's father, Akhenaten. Back in Oxford, England, Nicholas Reeves reaches his own conclusion. As with everything else, when you start looking closely at the shrines, you discover, here again, everything is not as it should be. Some of the cartouches bearing Tut's name appear to have been changed. I think it's pretty clear that some, if not all, of the shrines of Tutankhamen were made, not for Tutankhamen, but for other beings. It's the final chapter for Ai. The throne is within his grasp, and now, in what may be his boldest act, Ai cements his palace coup. The final treasures are being brought to the Valley of the Kings to be buried with Tutankhamen. We imagine a pharaoh's burial is carried out with great care, but close scrutiny of Tut's reveals this wasn't always the case. The tomb's four rooms are stocked with almost 5,500 items, many covered or made of gold. Over 2,000 are jammed into the annex. This smallest room was robbed in antiquity, but Egyptologist Marianne Eaton Kraus is still able to identify signs of shoddy practice. I believe some items were tossed in, certainly at the very end, and this could be, of course, indicative of a certain amount of haste wanting to get it over with. Eaton Kraus studies Carter's plan of the antechamber as he found it in 1922. This room does appear to have been stocked properly and with care, but she finds evidence of a broken stool hidden amongst the burial goods that suggests wrongdoing. This stool, three legs were found here, whereas the seat of the stool and the other leg were placed over here and hidden behind these chariots. It was quite clear that this stool had been torn apart. There were heavy gold bands around the top of the legs. Those are missing. She believes the temptation to pilfer would have been great as items were passed into the tomb along a human chain. A key feature in any royal tomb are wall paintings, scenes from netherworld texts guiding the dead pharaoh on his journey to the afterlife. This was one thing that couldn't be borrowed. Egyptian art expert Betsy Bryan investigates how it was done. She looks for evidence of Ay's haste to finish the tomb. This small little tomb was a challenge to the people who were set to work here. What's unusual for a royal tomb is that all the painted figures are almost life-size. They're much larger scale than you would have expected for a tomb this tiny, and that's really a reflection of their having very little time to do this. Grander royal tombs with several painted chambers are believed to have taken several months to decorate, but not Tutte's. You could do this entire room if you put everybody to work probably in just a couple of days, and not with a lot of people. With time and space at a minimum, the artist cleverly devised a condensed version of Tutankhamen's journey from this world to the next. It's really fascinating that we start this wall and he's in this world where he starts as a mummy and all of a sudden he's walking. And by the time you get to the end of this 20-foot wall, he is in the next world and already become a god. Bryan is in no doubt about the standard of work. I would really have to say that this would rate as sort of mediocre work. It's a little on the sloppy side, to say the least. But one scene stands out to set this tomb apart from any other. In a final definitive move, one man has seized the throne. The conclusion to this story forever recorded on the wall of Tutte's second-hand tomb. Here what we have is the opening of the mouth ceremony being done by the successor of Tutankhamen, and this is totally unknown, particularly in a and clearly is being done for that successor to make a statement of claim to the throne. There can be no doubt as to the identity of the figure. The cartouche above reveals his name. It is I. I has overcome his opponents and made himself pharaoh. There's no question that this is a statement. This is a way of saying, I am the legal heir, in a way that he could make it as big and splashy as possible. At last, Tutte's tomb is finished. The boy king is triumphantly sent on his way to the afterlife. Pharaoh I, victor in the race to succeed Tutankhamen, reigned until his death four years He was buried in the tomb Tutte had most likely built for himself. Horemheb finally got the power he was due, becoming pharaoh on I's death. Perhaps in a bid to boost his own legitimacy, he systematically destroys almost every trace of I and Tutankhamen. And what of his widow, Ankesanamun? There's some evidence to suggest she married I, but she then vanishes from history. I think the whole story of the Tutankhamen succession shows that politics is the ultimate game, and people play for keeps, especially back then. Tutankhamen was not one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs. We're so familiar with him today only because his tomb survived 30 centuries virtually untouched. 21st century detective work has revealed his burial was a rushed job. Reuse and recycling became the order of the day as powerful people competed to claim his vacant throne. Their detective work into this most famous tomb has uncovered something else too, a tantalizing insight into the splendor that was ancient Egypt. If these were the treasures of an insignificant king, what would the tomb, the intact tomb, of a really important king have been like? One can only imagine.