An intact tomb is like a time capsule.
Filled with spells and curses
that protect the dead.
Undisturbed for thousands of years,
we are the first people to go inside.
The past is sleeping in the darkness,
waiting to be found.
You are looking at a woman,
dated back 4,300 years ago.
Over 1,000 years older than King Tut.
Imagine if I could talk to the mummy.
And the mummy could talk to me.
I'm hunting for a pyramid lost to history.
I am not immortal.
But my name will be remembered.
Beautiful.
Saqqara, in my opinion,
is the most magical and important site in Egypt.
It has been explored by many foreign expeditions for the last two centuries.
They discovered pyramids and tombs.
The oldest pyramid.
The Step Pyramid.
And there is more to be discovered.
There is one area at Saqqara no one has ever excavated.
A patch of open desert,
Gisr el-Mudir.
Only 30% of the treasures of ancient Egypt have been uncovered.
Tombs, temples, even pyramids.
More than 70% are still hidden beneath the sand.
I have been thinking about this place for decades.
I always come out here alone.
And I ask myself the question,
"What could be under this place
that we've never touched?"
This is a place where four and a half thousand years ago,
Egypt's earliest pharaohs invented the pyramids.
The oldest is the Step Pyramid of Djoser.
All the pharaohs of the Third Dynasty that followed
built their own.
But there is one early pyramid that's never been found.
The missing Pyramid of Huni.
This is the year I will find that missing pyramid.
All the big finds in the past have always been made by foreigners.
They came. They took the objects and the glory for themselves.
It's time that Egypt takes back its history,
and that the next big find is made by Egyptians.
As the head of the expedition, I study the site very well.
Four and a half thousand years ago, at the end of the Third Dynasty,
there was a pharaoh named Huni.
He's lost to history.
All we have is his name on some of the kings lists.
And there is a head of a statue that some believe could be his.
He looks like a strong king.
Nearly all the kings of the Third Dynasty before him built pyramids at Saqqara.
Then this area is mysterious to us.
We are hoping that this area could be
the area that the new pyramid could be discovered.
Then we'll concentrate the excavation here.
We will start working in this area.
I will direct Essam
to make some test trenches that will lead us to something.
It will be good for us if we make a square here in this area
-to test this pile of the sand. -Perfect. Okay.
And we hope, if we discover his pyramid,
we'll make him famous like Tutankhamun.
He's the last king of Dynasty III,
and therefore, the location of his pyramid should be here.
For three months out of the year,
the desert is inhospitable to the living.
Once the desert lets us in,
we will have just nine months before she pushes us back out.
We have a big valley here.
But this pile of debris is only here.
Ah, right here.
We will start the excavation here, a 10x10 grid,
here on this hill.
Ahmed, you start to document your points and levels,
and bring the workers here.
Let's do it.
I am Essam Shehab.
I started my career as an archeologist under Dr. Zahi Hawass.
Let's start the work. Bring your tools, your wheelbarrows,
the baskets and come up here.
Come on, guys!
Come on, Mehanny, put all the baskets in the wheelbarrow and come up.
When starting excavations, there's an enthusiasm that drives you.
Come on, guys.
Egypt has a very long history.
To understand what we are, we have to understand what we were.
I've been very successful the last four seasons at Saqqara.
The site that I'm leading is where we found
the Tomb of Wahtye four years ago.
This season would be no different.
Hopefully, we'll make another discovery
that will drive the entire world crazy.
The tombs here are incredibly well-preserved.
But there is one corner that we have yet to excavate.
I cannot describe what it feels like to be an archeologist.
When I do excavations, I don't know what's beneath the ground.
Beautiful.
Imagine, the last person to hold this amulet lived thousands of years ago.
What was their world like? What did they believe?
The Bubasteion is one of the richest archeological sites at Saqqara.
Its history spans more than 2,500 years.
For over a year, we've been saying that the site is finished,
but every day we discover something new.
Hold on.
What is this? Is this a stone?
Okay, go on, but slowly.
Carefully.
It's a stone, yes.
-Careful. -There's a hole here.
It's a shaft, boss.
Shaft.