Ancient Egyptian Mummy Mystery Solved - Was This the Lost Prince of Ramesses II?

The best thing I can do is give this person some sort of context and it'll tell us why the crime was committed, i.e. motive. I think the chemistry is telling us that this person is playing a very careful political and religious game. And you think there's all this political upheaval going on in ancient Egypt and it's encapsulated in a tiny sample the size of a pinhead. Just because they're 3,000 years old doesn't mean that we can't apply modern forensics and come up with good answers. I'm far from convinced that's going to be an easy job. It feels like it's doing more damage, if you see what I mean. This is a really exciting find and a brilliant result for this sort of experimental archaeology. In Bolton Museum in the north of England lies a unique mummy, partially unwrapped yet spectacularly preserved after three millennia. Her identity shrouded in mystery, her cause of death lost to history. This is a great mummy, fantastic preservation. The coffin and mummy are probably our two most popular pieces in the Egyptian gallery and you can see why. Yeah, absolutely. It's a beautiful coffin. A number of people have studied it in great detail. We know it's a very fine example of its period. We know who it was made for and what the owner was. Yeah, there's a lovely image there of the person it was made for. Obviously a lady of very high status in her fine linen robes and lovely wig. Yeah, and you can see just she's making an offering to a deity and then here on the panel of inscription you've got her name and title. She's the Lady of the House, the Chancellor of Amun-Re, King of the Gods and here's her name, Tauhenut, so we know who she was and what she did. One thing I have noticed, it does seem to be an incredibly tight fit for the person within, so I'd be a little concerned that when this was actually completely wrapped, I can't see how this person would have fitted inside this coffin. You can really see where the shoulders are brushing against the sides of the coffin. The mummy, as you say, would have been a good deal fatter when it was intact. There's definitely something suspicious here. We need to get the mummy out so we can have a good look. Dr Joanne Fletcher's mission is to take this misfit mummy, bring it to life and then find out how that life came to its end. She is one of Britain's foremost Egyptologists and a world authority on mummies. The grime of centuries could hide any number of secrets from a casual observer, but Joanne is anything but casual. Beautifully preserved earlobe, absolutely superb. And the teeth, the teeth are really quite extraordinary because although there's some chipping there, what you're actually seeing very distinctly here is an overjet of the upper set of teeth, which is a very unusual feature. The initial physical inspection is crucial. In her work, the tiniest details often provide the vital clue as to how someone lived or died. Together with her team of elite scientists, Dr Fletcher has investigated mummies on almost every continent. This is going to be a tough case for the mummy investigation team. Dr Stephen Buckley is one of the world's top archaeological chemists. He uses cutting edge techniques from the world of chemical research to identify substances in, on and around mummies. Duncan Lees is a forensic archaeologist specialising in high-tech survey techniques. His forensic expertise means he's called in to investigate modern crime scenes all over the world. Jill Scott is an Egyptologist and an expert in the preservation and conservation of mummies. Her research skills and wealth of archaeological knowledge make her perfect as the team's archive and background researcher for the investigation. The challenge is now on. The team may have the tools of modern forensics, but with little information to go on, they'll need all their investigative skills to unlock this ancient mystery. Dr Fletcher's briefing gives the team a starting point for the investigation. The coffin apparently has been studied by quite a lot of academics over the years. They know plenty about the woman it was made for. You can see it's beautiful colours. This is the lady herself. She was a priestess. So you can imagine this in its complete state. There is no way that body would have fitted originally into this coffin. It seems to fit into me. I mean, it's in there. Yeah, but you can see it here. I mean, where the body's gone into the coffin, particularly around the shoulder region, it's taken off paint down the side of the coffin where it's been squeezed in. Egyptian mummies were generally very well wrapped. We've got documented evidence of, you know, up to 250 square metres of linen wrappings being used on these individuals. The mummy's size is a clear sign that something's not right. But the team is going to need more to go on to have a chance of cracking the case. There's a distinct facial feature there of overjet. It's almost like book teeth, in which you have the upper set of teeth protruding very much over the bottom set. Now, this is potentially quite an intriguing find because we know from the evidence that's already been collected that the royals, the royal mummies, the pharaohs of the New Kingdom also shared this distinct characteristic. For the ancient Egyptians, everything connected with death was significant. If the team's going to find out who she was and how she died, they can't afford to leave any stone unturned. One tiny mark on the mummy's face could be the key to the story. I think for me it's the pockmarking on the skin, whether this is embalming to do with the mummification or whether it's something else. Or just bad skin. Well, hasn't it been suggested that the mummy of Ramses V had small pocks because he's got these pus jaws on his face? That's true, but the science wasn't particularly convincing. The next step in the investigation will be critical. The 3,000-year-old mummy is priceless and incredibly delicate. If the team put a foot wrong while they're gathering evidence, they could destroy the very clues they're looking for. Any human contact could contaminate the chemical evidence, so Stephen Buckley takes his samples first. Every substance has its unique chemical fingerprint. Stephen's analysis of embalming materials can yield clues about ancient trade routes, religious strife and even the politics of ancient Egypt. The combinations of ingredients used for embalming vary enormously over the thousands of years of Egyptian history and identifying the chemical mix in a particular case can help pinpoint a date. If Stephen can identify the individual chemicals present in these samples, the specific combinations could have a symbolic significance that will tell us about the mummy's life and death. The chemical analysis will take days, if not weeks, to process. The next move is down to Dr Fletcher. She calls in some specialist help to examine the pictograms that cover the side of the coffin. Could hieroglyphics expert Alan Fyldes reveal vital information for the team? So Alan, what do you make of these particular hieroglyphs? 21st dynasty. Yeah. You can tell by the yellow and the orange. We have Nebetpur, again, lady of the house. Chantress of Amun-Ra. So she's sung before the gods and played instruments for the gods in the temple. A very high status lady. Presumably at Karnak. Absolutely. Karnak temple. She'd be sort of a regular performer before the gods. There's an interesting story here, isn't there? Nearly every detail of the mummy's life is apparently recorded on the coffin. She was a singer, probably at one of Egypt's greatest temples, Karnak, participating in rituals with a sacred rattle called a sistrum. It's a great start for the investigation. We've certainly got plenty of clues to go on. Absolutely. All the elements are there. We've just got to put them together and try and make sense of it all. Another mystery upon us. But a lovely piece of work. The title written on the coffin, Chantress of Amun, was just as much a badge of social prominence as a job description. Chantresses would be high class women who would spend one month in three assisting at temple ceremonies. In ancient Egypt, the temples were highly restricted and jobs that provided access to them were reserved for the elite of Egyptian society. The hieroglyphs have given Joanne a wealth of information about the mummy, but shed no light on the cause of death. In search of a breakthrough, Joanne has brought in some heavyweight help. Paleopathologist Professor Don Brothwell has an international reputation that extends far beyond the world of archaeology. His investigations of everything from mass murders to Danish bog bodies have made him a world authority. With the help of a full body x-ray scan, Don will be able to see beneath the mummy's ancient skin and the wrappings that cover her lower body to identify any injuries that could relate to her cause of death. Here, the bottom of the spine is seen. And there seems to be some material inside the abdomen here, doesn't there? What exactly might be revealed later on? The upper teeth are very projected in front of the lower teeth, so you have a rather sort of prominent upper teeth in the jaw. And the wear on the teeth suggests to me that's not particularly marked. The fact that Don's dental inspection has revealed very little wear on the teeth means the mummy must have enjoyed a high status diet of soft food and been less than 30 years old at the time of her death. This young woman was struck down in the prime of her life. We have something at the back of the skull, which looks as if we have a deposit at the back, either something pushed into the skull through the nasal area, through the nose. Right, can we move on to the thigh? Not a particularly large head of the femur, which isn't a very masculine feature, but combined with the pelvic detail, I would say this is a fairly slenderly built male. This bombshell that the mummy is actually male means the team will have to rethink all their assumptions. Steve, interesting results. We've done these digital x-rays, and what we find in the skull and in the pelvis is very definite evidence that this is a male, not female. Right. There's enough information from the detail of the skull, things like the frontal sinuses and parts of the pelvis, which indicates the sex of the individual. I'm absolutely sure this is male. Right, so interesting puzzle. Don's search for the mummy's cause of death has totally transformed its identity. The fact that it's male, not female, helps explain why it doesn't fit in the coffin. But if this isn't the coffin's original occupant, all of the information from the casket's inscriptions is irrelevant. The investigation is almost back to square one. The team needs a fresh start. Egyptologist Jill Scott wants to find out if modern dental medicine can tell us anything about the mummy. So she tracks down orthodontic consultant Jay Kinderland. Well, the mummy demonstrates a combination of both prominence of the upper front teeth and also an element of what we would call mandibular retrusion. So the lower jaw is actually set back in relation to the rest of the face. The unusual combination of these two facial deformities would have made life difficult. I think the main issue would have been one of eating food. The mummy may not have been able to bite into an apple normally, or if they had sandwiches in Egyptian times, they may not have been able to bite a sandwich properly. The mummy probably would have had to chop up the food to put in separately. And what about speaking? Absolutely. I mean, there are many sounds, including plosive sounds, where you would put your lips together to make the necessary noise. Our mummy really wouldn't have been able to function in that way, and lisping would have been a real problem. A picture is emerging of an individual beset by problems. A young man with trouble eating, speaking, everyday things that we take for granted. But while his distinctive teeth were troublesome, could his condition also be a sign that he wasn't as unlucky as he's beginning to appear? A family album of ancient Egyptian pharaohs hints at a possible royal connection. And there is the supposition here that these people were all related. Though it tends to run in families, so the mummy's parents probably would have had a similar facial profile, and it would pass down from one generation to the next. We have patients referred to maybe 11, 12, 13 years of age, and often as their parents walk through the door with patients, you can see really how the children are going to turn out in later life. Right, without treatment, obviously. I mean, it is very possible that the mummy and these other individuals have come from the same genetic stock, if you like. But those features alone wouldn't really point you to the fact they were definitely related. What you really need to do is get into something like three-dimensional facial reconstruction, so you can see what the face is like in all planes of space. The dental evidence suggests the mummy could be related to royalty, but it's going to take facial reconstruction and further investigations to confirm that. A picture of the mummy is building up, but the team's no closer to discovering how he died. Joanne calls a meeting. With his textbook knowledge of ancient diseases, Professor Don Brothwell could help pin down the mummy's cause of death. What do you think about this sort of marking on the face? It's quite a suspicious-looking thing, isn't it? I mean, it does look like a rash, doesn't it? Well, that's interesting, because quite a few Egyptologists, when they see these features on mummies, have sort of raised the question, is it smallpox? Is it evidence for some sort of killer disease? Smallpox was a massive killer in the ancient world, responsible for millions of deaths worldwide. Victims of smallpox are covered with pustules that break off to leave ugly scarring, resembling the marks on the mummy's face. With no known cure, a diagnosis of smallpox was a death sentence. Until the disease was almost eradicated by vaccination in the last hundred years. Don's vast knowledge of human remains enables him to make a quick judgment. My guess is it's post-mortem. It extends on to only regions of the body. And I've seen the same kind of thing in bog bodies, for instance. And again, I think it's post-mortem. The most likely explanation for the marks on the mummy's face is drying out of the skin during the embalming process. With the killer disease eliminated as a cause of death, the team turns to in-depth analysis of the x-ray results for answers. The brain box is obviously empty, except for what looks like a deposit at the back of the head. And all those little fragments there are due to the damage when the point, or whatever metal implement it was, was driven in. I think that explains this sort of area of, is it bone? Is it loose bone? Because I was interested in cross-referencing with the sort of x-rays of Tutankhamen, the most famous ancient Egyptian of them all. But you also have what appears to be a kind of bone fragment, which for many years was regarded as a cause of death. You know, this bash on the head was King Tut murdered and all that. So I'm interested on your thoughts on that little tiny fragment there. Bone fragments in the brain cavity could be evidence of foul play. Are they signs of a blow to the head, like the one thought by many to have killed King Tutankhamen? Or are they just a by-product of the mummification process? So, Duncan, do you think to try and work out exactly what's going on on this x-ray image, we ought to undertake some form of experiment? Yeah, I think it'd be well worthwhile. As long as you don't call me in. A lot of force is going to be needed, isn't it? It is, yes. Duncan, can we just have a word about this? I'm not entirely happy with the way this is going, judging by the conversation that's been happening. Well, I think we need somebody with a fair amount of strength on this one. It's trying to recreate what we're seeing on the x-ray here. We know that the brain was removed by some sort of force up through the nose with a metal tool, and then the brain was taken out. So what we're trying to do is recreate the sort of damage that you're getting within the human skull in an experimental way. Well, let's wait and see what happens, because I'm far from convinced that's going to be an easy job for you. If the experiment can produce chips of bone in the skull, it could be a major step in the investigation. But replicating a 3,000-year-old brain removal process will be easier said than done. The removal of the brain was just one stage of mummification. For an ancient Egyptian, the preservation of their body after death was the key to eternal life. So tremendous importance was attached to every aspect of the embalming process. To prevent decay, the main internal organs, other than the heart and kidneys, were removed and stored separately. Removing the organs without damaging the rest of the body required tremendous skill on the part of the embalmers. With the experiment underway to try to explain the bone fragments inside the skull, the investigation is making headway. And at the team's state-of-the-art chemical laboratory, Stephen Buckley could be one step closer to finding the mummy's identity. After hours of careful preparation, the first results from Stephen's chemical analysis are starting to come through. GCMS is the gold standard when it comes to identifying organic chemicals. It provides a graphic fingerprint of every chemical compound within a minute sample. That can mean hundreds of substances in a sample the size of a pinhead. What GCMS allows us to do is to identify components individually from a very complex mixture. There's plenty of components in there, so hopefully some of them will be quite interesting. From what we know so far, certain substances were associated with particular, with certain deities. So there's certainly symbolism, certainly symbolism as well as the practical materials, there's no question of that. I suppose we're really looking for the more minor components that may tell us something about political identity, religious affiliations, trade routes, that sort of thing. The GCMS machine heats the tiny samples until they turn into gas. The temperature at which substances in the samples vaporise plays a key part in identifying them. Hours later, he has his first breakthrough. This is a major component in the sample, thymol. There's actually a lot of it in thyme, for example. What it certainly points out already to me is that the embalmers knew their stuff, that they were choosing materials that would have, genuinely have preservative properties, antibacterials. So thymol is quite a powerful antibacterial. Identifying 3,000-year-old plant residues would be impressive enough, but not for Stephen Buckley. He can even tell you what altitude they grew at. What we certainly have is a conifer resin. What I'm trying to look for now are markers that suggest a mountain, a mountain conifer. If conifers are exposed to higher levels of radiation, if they are at a higher altitude, then they actually give a chemical fingerprint showing that. And that can sometimes give us clues. The cocktail of expensive embalming ingredients containing a resin from a distant mountain conifer confirms the team's thoughts that the mummy must have been someone very important. It also hints at exactly who this mummy may have been, but that can only emerge after days of painstaking analysis. While Stephen's making progress on the mummy's identity on his own, Joanne's going to need some help to carry out her experiment on the cause of the mummy's skull damage. The fundamentals of metalworking haven't changed for thousands of years. Don Barker is still practicing skills that would be familiar to any ancient medical toolmaker. Egyptian embalming tools were originally made in copper, a soft metal easily bent into shape but almost as easily broken. Copper was eventually replaced by stronger metals, so they're using authentic ancient designs to make tools in both copper and iron to see if either can produce the kind of bone chips seen in the mummy. Wow, that's amazing. You can really get a feel for how they might have done it now, you know. For the whisking process to liquefy the brain for removal, Joanne has another tool made, a long thin wire that will curve around the inside of the skull. Yeah, you can see how you could feed it. Yeah. Up the nose. Yeah. And then once it's up, then it's like a handle to rotate. Absolutely. With the replica ancient Egyptian tools complete, everything is set for a hands-on practical experiment, which could determine whether these kinds of implements could have been the cause of the mummy's skull damage. Following the revelation that our mummy is male, Duncan meets facial reconstruction specialist Stephanie Davy-Jow to build a picture of what he may actually have looked like. So I have a virtual model of the skull here. OK. And what I then do is an analysis of the skull to determine sex, approximate age, as well as ethnic affiliation, if I can determine that. Right. With these parameters in place, Stephanie uses data gathered from modern populations to make an estimate of skin depth that she then applies to the model. I can add eyes. Every person has approximately the same size of eyes, but the placement inside of the eye socket or the orbital is dependent upon the individual. One thing that was interesting that I noticed when reconstructing this individual was the marked asymmetry in his orbitals. His eyes aren't even. Like the deformed jaw, the asymmetric eyes are another characteristic of some 18th and 19th Dynasty Egyptian royalty. As the pieces come together, the mummy's looks seem to become more and more extraordinary. And you'll notice, too, in profile, you can see he's got quite a receding chin coupled with the overjet, and he's got a convex nose. So he's got kind of a beaky nose and a receding chin. You're not building up a very good picture of what this guy's going to look like. I build it as I see it. Distinctive, but you can't hide from the facts. As the dental evidence suggests, the mummy was a young man with a whole host of problems. Next, I can begin to build the overlying skin surface using the information from the tissue depths in the muscles and the shape of the skull. You can begin to see what he looked like. It's incredible, isn't it? He's certainly, choose my words carefully, distinctive. He is. I don't think he'd make any modern magazine covers. With a forensically accurate picture of the mummy, the investigation gains new impetus. The team are no longer dealing with desiccated remains, but a human being whose cause of death remains unknown. Duncan and Joanne are poised to conduct the experiment that should help decide whether the mummy was killed by a blow to the head or whether the bone chips in the skull are the product of embalming. With human volunteers in short supply, the team have to compromise. In our case, we have to use a sheep's head, but in many ways, the sheep and the human, in terms of size, the size of the brain, etc., they are quite similar, aren't they? The ancient Egyptians believed the heart was the centre for thought and emotion, so they were unsentimental about removing the brain to stave off the decomposition process. But with this, the idea was that it was forced up inside the nose, broke the top of the nasal bone, and then the brain inside kind of whisked, liquefied, in effect, and then it could be drained out back down the nose. So time for a tap? Horribly easy. Just a few minutes into the experiment, the team suffer a setback. Now look, it's bending. And that's exactly what the blacksmith said would happen. If we mark how far it's gone up, that must have gone through into the cavity, and it's bent around. With the copper tool out of action, Duncan is going to have to use a more modern iron version to stand any chance of recreating the damage in the mummy's skull. It's much, much tougher and hasn't bent around the skull cavity, but has definitely gone through it. In fact, I'm probably not going to be able to take this out again now. Hence the damage to the... Now that's lovely, look at that. These are fantastic because this is exactly... I wouldn't be able to extract all of these with the hook. I don't think I could pull all of the brain out. Chunks of brain tissue are a good start, but bone fragments remain elusive. Egyptian embalmers could remove a brain by liquidising it in as little as 20 minutes. If Duncan can't produce bone chips in this time with the more destructive iron tool, the test must be considered a failure. So the 20 minutes is up, Duncan. So how's it going? Look, I can't actually quite believe I'm saying this, but it's been incredibly interesting. I mean, what I've been able to do is extract actually quite a lot of the brain tissue here using both the smaller and thinner whippier action, but also with the heavy duty tool as well. Material has been coming out, but what's interesting to me most of all is that within this material there are chips of bone, really very clear shards of bone. That's exactly what we were seeing on the x-rays of the Bolton mummy. I'll just take the skull and tip it up here and see whether we get anything coming out through the nasal cavity. I have spent a long, you know, it's a good 20 minutes and violently moving the instruments around, but what we get is a big fat zero, absolutely nothing. The brain may not have completely liquidised in 20 minutes, but the experiment is still a major boost for the investigation. The brain removal process has produced visible chips of bone. With the embalming procedure itself clearly capable of causing this damage, there's just no reason to suppose that our mummy was hit on the head. It must be ruled out of the investigation. With one cause of death eliminated, the team are making real progress. Now, some hard work in the lab is uncovering exciting developments in the quest for the mummy's identity. Remnants of cloth from the mummy's wrappings contain telltale evidence. Certainly one of the things that struck me particularly when I was looking at the actual mummy in Bolton, the very sort of fine quality of this linen, because quite a lot of mummies, Egyptian mummies certainly, are wrapped in quite often quite coarse material, often reused, recycled, even amongst sort of what you call the middle classes, I guess. But with this one, it's really fine stuff, you know, the finest quality. And it's almost as if the linen's been applied a little bit like papier-mâché. It's been applied in a thin layer and then coated in something, and then another layer of wrapping applied and another layer of coating. So I'd really be interested to see if the coating's applied on each layer, and certainly at different areas of the body, because there's plenty to sort of go on here, isn't there? There's a lot of interesting things at play, I think. Joanne's examination of the fabric confirms the team's first instincts that the mummy is someone very high class. But the results of Steve's chemical analysis promised dramatic new developments. The chemistry is actually looking quite interesting. We've got a lot of thymol, which is something that occurs in thyme, for example. What we've also got with this triterpenoid resin is pistachio. That's a very distinctive chemical fingerprint, all those ingredients put together. To some extent, it's a royal marker. So I think it suggests this was someone of note, given the amount that's being used. The pistachio shrub, prized for its sweet-smelling resin, was used almost exclusively for embalming members of Egyptian royalty during the era of the New Kingdom. Suddenly, the notion that our mummy is of royal descent has gone from an intriguing idea to a definite possibility. But Stephen has even more surprises up his sleeve. What's also interesting, curious initially, was the fact we actually have a division. So a line has been drawn through the mummy, if you like. The left side suggests sheep, possibly goat. With the right side, he's got cow or bull. One half of the mummy's upper body was covered in sheep fat, the other in cow fat. Each substance symbolically linked to rival Egyptian gods. Sheep or goat, the sacred ram of the moon represented the sort of grand traditions of the ancient Egyptians. But then he's sort of playing both sides, isn't he? If he's sort of showing evidence of the sort of bovine material, he's got this link to Hathor, the bovine goddess linked to the sun. It's an incredible discovery. By analysing tiny drops of fat taken from both sides of the body, Stephen Buckley has opened up a dramatic chapter of Egyptian history. Egypt in 1250 BC was politically divided between north and south. Hathor, the cow, was daughter of the ancient sun god Ra, a symbol of the north, favoured by priests who were loyal to the pharaoh. The god Amun, represented by a ram, was the chief deity of the powerful priests who dominated the south. I think the chemistry is telling us that this person is playing a very careful political and religious game. He wants to get the balance right. He's actually showing that he's pro-moon and pro-Ra. When you think there's all this political upheaval going on in ancient Egypt and it's encapsulated in a tiny sample the size of a pig head. If the mummy was performing this delicate political and religious balancing act in death, it narrows down the possibilities of who they were in life. So on the basis of this amazing data, are we able to sort of try and pinpoint more precisely who this person may or may not be? I think for me, from the chemistry and the mummification evidence that we have, it suggests a possible Ramesses II connection. With the shaven head, that's an interesting one because of course it's a clear mark of the priest. In isolation, the mummy's lack of hair wouldn't be significant, but combined with all the other evidence of his status, his distinctive facial features and the religious importance of his embalming materials, it's a key indicator of his identity. Then potentially we're looking at one of the royal sons of one of the pharaohs. The chemistry suggests this mummy was rich and important. A prince of the royal house, a priest and a political player in one of the most turbulent periods in Egyptian history. The incredible 66-year reign of Ramesses II was an exciting time to be alive in ancient Egypt. Led by its extravagant king, the Egyptian empire expanded dramatically before slowly tumbling into economic decline. Ramesses was responsible for building some of the most spectacular monuments in ancient Egypt, many of which survive today. The temple complexes at Karnak and the Ramesseum forever pay silent tribute to an era of great achievements and great political intrigue. The teeth, the eyes, the chemistry and the shaven head all point to one identity. Of the hundreds of children that Ramesses II fathered, many would be sent into the priesthood where they could enjoy some of the most powerful and privileged positions in Egyptian society. From within their magnificent temples, the priesthood could exert control over every aspect of Egyptian life. The team are managing to put together an extraordinary picture of who this mummy was in life, but they're no closer to knowing how he died. For an answer to this vital question, they'll need some high-tech assistance. A CAT scan, computer-assisted tomography, uses a series of x-rays to build a 3D image of the body. Hundreds of images taken from 360 degrees around the body are combined to build the picture. With this state-of-the-art imaging device, paleopathologist Don Brothwell can find traces of injury or illness in the ancient mummy that would elude a normal x-ray. What we're hoping to find here is any evidence of abnormality, so we ought really to look particularly to see whether we can find any incision. If they find an oblique embalming incision, it'll place the mummy in Egypt's 18th dynasty and everything the team has discovered would be thrown into question again. If the incision is vertical, the mummy would be tied to the 19th dynasty, the time of Ramesses II. During embalming, the organs would be removed through a single cut in the abdomen. After mummification, it would generally be tightly stitched, making the incision very thin and hard to find. The skill of the Egyptian embalmers makes it a difficult search, but eventually they find it. It's a vertical incision. The discovery of the incision puts the mummy squarely in the time of Ramesses II, but further investigation will be needed to identify how the mummy died. But obviously if we really are going to try and find the cause of death, we need to work over every image very carefully. Back in York, detailed analysis of the CT scans has uncovered a surprise hidden beneath the mummy's wrappings. Aha, this is a man. So we're coming down now into the pelvis. Can you see we're beginning to get a separate structure showing up there beyond the abdomen, and I'm fairly sure we're seeing sections of the penis there. So it's a man, all right. That looks very, very sort of dense. It looks like it's been quite well wrapped. Well, it's been well prepared for death and the next life, I suppose. For sure. But what puzzles me is I can't see any evidence of a scrotum or testicles. The embalmers have taken great care to leave the mummy well prepared for the afterlife, but their preparations have left us with a puzzle. We're dealing with a sort of section through the arm about here. Look how tight the skin is. Again, we seem to be dealing with a body with not very much tissue around the bone. It does look very high status, a member of the elite, and you'd imagine had a very, very high status diet. If there is this evidence of sort of potential emaciation, does that suggest this individual was undernourished? It could be a disease, couldn't it? Or the alternative is a cancer. So could it be that that's causing this? Cancer can cause dramatic weight loss irrespective of diet. Just like today, it was a problem for the ancient Egyptians, even for young men in the prime of life like the mummy. There's no good evidence of growths or erosions into tissue, which suggests to me that it is, you know, that you've got secondary cancers. So no tumours? No tumour evidence there at all, except for the thinness of the body. We might, of course, be dealing with a body where the actual tumorous tissue has been removed by the embalmers. Yeah, it's quite possible, given how skilled they were. Yeah, that's right. While the mummy's body shows signs of cancer, the cancerous tissue itself, like the mummy's scrotum, is mysteriously absent. Could these two absences be linked? Today, testicular cancer is relatively rare, but it can still be deadly. 3,000 years ago, it was even deadlier. The problem might be diagnosed, but it was impossible to treat. When a cancer sufferer died, the embalmers were known to remove ugly cancerous growths so that their bodies were again perfect for the afterlife. The mummies of Ramesses II and his son Manepta both had their testicles removed. Whether this is evidence of a hereditary vulnerability to cancer or simply a family mummification tradition is hard to say. But crucially, the scans have raised a real possibility for how the mummy died. At Bolton Museum, Don Brothwell joins Stephen Buckley in trying an old technique that could fill out the final branch of the mummy's family tree. Facial reconstruction has brought to life the mummies' extraordinary features, but to prove that they are a family trait, another test is needed. The facial features that determine a person's looks can be scientifically measured and compared with craniofacial measurements of family members. The proportions of the nose and chin can be just as distinctive as fingerprints. What I've seen is some interesting patterns in the royal mummies, and there's some hints of possible similarities here, so it's a question of what we can get out of that by getting accurate measurements here. Accuracy in these measurements is absolutely essential. The tiniest mistake could render the results meaningless. Upper facial height would be nice, but... That's a problem, isn't it? That's right, the lip is obscuring me and preventing us getting an accurate measurement, so I think perhaps the x-rays might provide an accurate measurement there. Craniofacial measurements can be taken from a human body or from x-rays. It's an old technique dating back to the 19th century. Nowadays it's rarely used in modern criminal investigations, where DNA has become the single most important tool in positively identifying individuals. But DNA is vulnerable to extremes of temperature and is almost certain to have been destroyed by heat, time and the substances used in embalming. For ancient artefacts like Egyptian mummies, craniofacial measurement will always stand the test of time. Back in York, the final piece of the jigsaw is almost in place. However accurate Stephen's measurements are, they mean nothing on their own. To prove scientifically that this mummy is related to Ramesses II, the statistics must be compared with data gathered from Egyptian royal mummies, including Ramesses himself. I looked at all the royal mummies that we have for the New Kingdom. The one that stands out as being most similar to ours is Ramesses II. Of these six key measurements, four of them are virtually identical. With Ramesses II? Yes, with Ramesses II. The link between these two mummies is not just statistical. The resemblance is more than skin deep. Here's the x-ray of Ramesses II. That is so similar, look at that. Yeah. Look at the nose. The degree of overjet, the angle. And the chin, that is such a distinctive chin. Yes, the jaw, the Ramesside jaw. The mummy differs significantly from Ramesses II in only two measurements. Surprisingly, these two rogue statistics actually reinforce the mummy's link to Ramesses through his father, Seti. Other than these couple of measurements here where it's Seti I, who as we know was Ramesses II's father. Yeah. So that will be expected from father to son. And then our individual. That's amazing. That's quite good, isn't it? The mystery of the mummy's identity appears to be solved at last. He's almost certainly a blood relative of one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs. What we find in the skull and in the pelvis is very definite evidence that this is a male. I mean, it is very possible that the mummy and these other individuals have come from the same genetic stock, if you like. I think the chemistry is telling us that this person is playing a very careful political and religious game. That is so similar, look at that. It could be a disease, couldn't it? Or the alternative is a cancer. After weeks of intense work, the investigation has yielded discoveries no one could have anticipated. To come to the point we have, as in a relative of Ramesses II, is quite mind-blowing. That any one of those pieces of information, if we hadn't had it, if we hadn't found it, could have taken us in a completely different direction. For me, we just let the science do the talking. Yeah. It speaks for itself. For this mummy, the science speaks volumes. Contrary to the inscriptions on the casket, this mummy is male, switched into the casket either in Egypt or during his long journey to Britain and Bolton Museum. The team's painstaking work has painted a picture of a fascinating life and suggested that the mummy could have died of cancer while still young. So basically, this person had a life of wanting absolutely nothing, which makes the manner of his death such an irony, doesn't it? As Don flagged up, it certainly appears to be some sort of wasting disease, possibly even cancer. I mean, that's a tragic irony. This rich, powerful man, who should have enjoyed a comfortable existence at the pinnacle of Egyptian society, was perhaps humbled by a condition that respects neither wealth nor power, and still haunts us today. Every time we look at the mummies, look at the bodies, it's not, you know, an object in space and time. It's not, I don't understand them because this is a statist individual. You connect on a very human way. We aren't looking at just some artefact in the museum. This is a living, breathing human being that people once loved and once cared for. They have the same fears that we did and the same felt the same pain that we do. I think that's why it's nice that we've gone some way to giving him his identity back. The idea of gaining immortality through mummification might seem strange to us, but in a very real sense, this mummy's embalmers succeeded in their task. Their careful work has ensured that his memory and his identity will endure for thousands of years beyond his death.