Intrusive Burial Found Inside Egyptian Noble’s Tomb! | Expedition Unknown

let’s start here because in here he lists all of his titles this is his resume yes absolutely okay at a tomb near Luxor dated from Egypt’s chaotic first intermediate period Dr inz Torres is helping me understand how the ancient Old Kingdom descended into a Dark Age okay who is he so he tells us that he is a dignitary sure um a governor okay a royal seal Bearer and that’s important and he also tells us he is the uh Regional ruler and a bit of a bragger he is and in fact next to his titles he tells us that he is the beginning of men and the end of men and that no one like him was ever born nor will he be I say that though sometimes that’s on my business card actually is that inappropriate I not have that on there it’s incredible to think that we go from this like iron grip on power that the pharaohs seem to have in the Old Kingdom to people building these like lavish tombs fors it’s a huge shift absolutely but the decline in the pharaoh’s absolute Authority is only part of the story the walls of Ani’s tomb reveal another reason the Old Kingdom fell apart so when we get to this column uh we see ani telling us a little bit about uh possible historical events he’s highlighting a period of Crisis he tells us that the entirety of Upper Egypt was dying of hunger and every man was eating his child and and probably saying that metaphorically like they have no food absolutely references to this famine appear in multiple tombs from this period in addition scientists have conducted sediment tests showing that around 2200 vce at the time of the collapse of the Old Kingdom certain lands around the Nile were bone dry the start of a decades long drought add to that governor like atifi with Growing Power and a need to feed people in their own region and things get dangerous so this kind of feels like a powder kick because now you’ve got power in the hands of lots of different people you’ve got a scarcity of food you’ve got a drought and these Regional rulers are controlling resources yes absolutely those are typically historically the conditions for war yes and in fact elsewhere in this tomb Ani tells us how he’s been at war against enemy coalitions of different regions and it shows that there was fights for power within Egypt among these Regional leaders right the tombs we’ve explored in Sakara those belonging to yarat Hui and henu show the road to Ani’s time a time when the Pharaoh is no longer in control of his kingdom and a kingdom in dire need of food water and security for its people to see how those puzzle pieces fit into the tombs we’re continuing to explore I head from Luxor back to Sakara for one last trip to our dig site to excavate the final layers of this mystery I descend down into the impressively painted tomb that belonged to hu a mayor in the time of the Pharaoh Marin ra the excavations have progressed further down so that the finer archaeological work can continue okay I’m alive I’m alive okay so some real progress here this is not what I expected to see here blocking half the tomb here we have this mud brick wall and have any of the tombs here had this no in this side it’s a very rare feature here it’s not Comon to find something like this is this feature part of the original tomb do we think or is it later I think it’s later but not much later so still in Antiquity someone added this shortly after the tomb yes so does that mean this tomb has been reused maybe all right the mystery continues more digging yes for this kind of excavation in tight Dusty spaces we need to use respirator masks to protect our lungs so this is kind of a tedious part of the process we’re literally going to scrape sand from the back of the Vault toward the front and just take it down like an inch at a time oh Jos got something yes hold on he’s got something here something painted yes it’s an offering an offering yes it’s a goose it’s a goose yes look at the wing and this is the neck kind of offering it’s a kind of offering so this would have been small carved Limestone statue carved into the shape of a goose yes and left as an offering yes wow and you can you can imagine he try to imitate the yellow color with the skin of the the goats right and so this is the neck and the head of the goose bent backwards uhuh this offering bring for right so this is matching with the original tomb right okay start again remember when you were a kid and you used to play in the sand at the beach it’s just like that except there might be a a human corpse under here it’s a lot of sand I can almost sit up which is an improve right and then I find something that makes me sit up here here here here is that wood or a bone bone piece of bone piece of bone yes long bone yeah long bone okay human remains here looks like we’ve got another long bone here another long bone here so we’ve got a burial up against this wall here this is a is that a foot foot got part of the foot here it looks like both feet both feet oh my word oh man look at this so we’ve got a body that’s laid out this way along the edge of the Tomb so this is definitely an intrusive burial yeah yes intrusive burials were a common practice in ancient Egypt people would break into tombs discard the original resident and reuse the space for their loved ones by surrounding them with offerings and spells even from someone else’s tomb the belief was that this might have ensured a journey to the afterlife we’ve got somebody that was laid here in the Tomb after the owner and no sign of a coffin yeah yes this skeleton looks like it’s going kind of down angle so it may be that the rest of him is laid out right under here we can see traces of linen on the leg bone so this this is a mummy obviously in a really really bad state of preservation he was mummified and placed here but definitely after the owner of our tomb this is one of the ribs uhhuh huh got a whole body here except for a head where’s his head oh hold on we have a skull in the burial shaft of a sixth Dynasty Egyptian Noble named henu we’ve discovered an Uninvited Guest an intrusive burial laid to rest after the tomb’s owner top of the skull here coming into view look at his mouth look at the preservation no is coming into view here this body shows the mummification techniques that were the norm for the Old Kingdom so this really is an Old Kingdom mummy here we have a lifelike appearance but it’s almost molded on you can see the way his lips are the way his nose is preserved we don’t see any of those resins any of those Advanced Techniques we would see later so very much like the mummy of nefer that we saw there’s something just overwhelming about digging down through this sand and just coming literally coming face to face with with a person it’s meeting someone from the past so we’ll dig this out a bit more and then photograph it yeah yes the remains are quickly and carefully removed so we can continue digging down toward hu’s burial layer [Music] oh hold on got some wood here could this be from the coffin from the original coffin of hu you think so yes we are now we are in the layer down the burial right so we’re at the burial layer now so his burial is definitely Disturbed then yes yes you see that man who came after hu his Bor man he just the put his body above the sand right so if we have a wooden coffin we must find something around his mommy but we have nothing so the The Mummy we found earlier the later Mummy he came in here and what destroyed this coffin yes we think of these tombs as such sacred places as the ancient Egyptians clearly had such respect for the afterlife for their religion for their gods yet they were willing to come in and desecrate a tomb like this for themselves this is the end of the Old Kingdom in a nutshell Traditions thrown aside as chaos reain but you can imagine if this man was desperate right he’s desperate he comes here destroys the original burial to make an afterlife for himself yes the great hu yes he was the mayor he was the sole friend of the king he was this powerful guy in the palace and it all comes to this