[narrator] a shocking discovery
In an ancient egyptian city.
The mutilated remains of a pharaoh.
[josef] when we saw these texts that identified
The king of upper and lower egypt, it was quite astonishing.
[narrator] it's a mystery like no other.
A tomb untouched for thousands of years.
And a royal slaying.
[salima] it was a humiliating, dramatic,
And painful way of being executed.
[narrator] but the records say this king never existed.
This is a king that we didn't know about.
There are no monuments that survive from him.
[narrator] now, investigators across the globe
Are attempting to crack a 3,600-year-old cold case.
[salima] there was a lot of warfare.
So there are a lot of suspects that one has to consider.
[narrator] revealing a forgotten egyptian warrior king
Who paid the ultimate price.
[jane] he received this huge penetrating blow
To the back of his head,
Quite a bit into his brain matter.
[narrator] his entire dynasty
Wiped from the face of history.
[kim] in the case of these kings,
We actually do have to rewrite the history books.
[josef] who was this king? Who were his enemies?
And ultimately, who did him in?
[ax thudding]
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] the relics of the past hold secrets
[rubble crashing]
[men yelling]
-Written in gold, -[water splashing]
-Stone, -[soldiers roaring]
-[arrow whooshing] -and blood.
We can unlock them.
These are the secrets of history's greatest treasures.
[dramatic music]
[suspenseful mysterious music]
Abydos, egypt.
60 miles northwest of modern-day luxor.
[dramatic music]
Nestled in the shadow of the sacred anubis mountain
Is the site of one of the oldest
And most important cities in the ancient world.
[rebecca] abydos is an extremely important religious center
In ancient egypt from the extreme earliest days
Of ancient egyptian history.
Used as a sacred space for a huge number of pharaohs
From every period of egyptian history.
So incredibly important and that importance never waned.
[ayman] abydos, was the main cult center of the country.
Exactly like the vatican for the christians.
Like mecca for the muslims
[narrator] strewn with sacred monuments
And home to the tomb of egypt's very first pharaoh,
Abydos has fascinated egyptologists
Since its discovery 150 years ago.
[josef] abydos is a huge site
That covers many square kilometers.
There's still potential for huge discoveries
To be made beneath the sands.
[sand whooshing]
[tense music]
[narrator] now this ancient city has given up
One of its most remarkable secrets.
A mysterious burial that exposes a very different abydos.
[men yelling]
From a time when egypt faced its darkest hour.
And a forgotten dynasty fought for the survival of egypt
Before being wiped from its history.
-[men chattering] -[gentle ambient music]
May 2014.
Egyptologist josef wegner and a team of archeologists
Are investigating the outer limits of the ancient city.
It's a wonderfully preserved site.
You can scrape away the sand
And you're 4,000 years in the past.
[suspenseful music]
We spent quite a few years excavating the ruins
Of a large town.
We realized that there was a huge residential complex.
[narrator] after years of excavation,
The team makes a chance discovery.
There may be a structure here,
Kind of in the middle of this square.
[narrator] the opening to a small tomb,
The contents of which
Would not only shake the archeological world,
They would ultimately rewrite the history of ancient egypt.
[josef] it's actually a solid piece of limestone.
[archaeologist] really? Are they kidding me?
It was a moment of excitement.
We realized there was this beautifully built
Entrance ramp, that ended with a limestone doorway.
[narrator] the tomb dated back over 3,500 years
To around 1650 bc.
A time in ancient egyptian history
Known as the second intermediate period.
But it was what was inside that stunned the team.
The dismembered remains of a mummy.
[dramatic music]
And exquisite wall paintings
That proclaim that person was once a king.
We were incredibly surprised to find
Decoration in this tomb.
Beautifully colored images
Of the four goddesses that protect the burial.
[gentle pensive music]
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] paintings like these have only ever been found
In elite and royal tombs.
The kind of iconography was very royal.
So suddenly joe wegner was faced
With what looked like a royal burial.
[josef] when we saw these texts that identified the king.
Lord of the two lands.
King of upper and lower egypt.
It was quite astonishing.
[narrator] incredibly, the team seems
To have stumbled upon the tomb and remains of a pharaoh.
If proven, it will be the greatest discovery
Of an egyptian king since howard carter
Unearthed tutankhamun in 1922.
The thing that gave it away was when we came down
Into the interior of the burial chamber
And could actually see his throne name
And his personal name.
It was clear at that point that it was a king.
[narrator] deciphering the faded royal cartouches
That adorned the tomb,
Allowed wegner to put a name to its inhabitant,
Woseribre senebkay.
King of egypt.
[gentle thoughtful music]
But if wegner's discovery really is a pharaoh,
There's one big problem.
Senebkay is a king that we didn't know about.
[narrator] there has never been any mention
Of a pharaoh with this name in any egyptian records.
[josef] there are no monuments that survived from him.
We have no one else in egyptian history named senebkay.
[narrator] and there are other inconsistencies.
Apart from the royal cartouches and paintings,
There's little else about senebkay's tomb
That indicates a royal status.
[josef] typical pharaoh's tombs
Are hundreds and hundreds of feet long.
Senebkay's tomb is a fairly modest structure.
And it may, in fact, be,
Officially, the smallest king's tomb ever found in egypt.
[narrator] the tomb has been looted in antiquity,
And senebkay's body ripped apart centuries ago
In the hunt for treasure.
But what was left was unusually poor quality
For a royal burial.
[josef] there's a whole range of reused material,
From the walls to the burial equipment.
Lots and lots, in fact, most of the material,
Was taken from lots of other tombs.
Not only that, his canopic chest as well
Is composed of cedarwood,
Which still bears the decoration of an earlier king.
So the carpenters that were fashioning his burial equipment
Were actually reusing wood that had been plundered.
[narrator] despite the lack of royal trappings,
Wegner remains convinced the wall paintings
Mean that senebkay was revered as a pharaoh.
[josef] when we'd see the texts, "o lord of the two lands,"
"lord of ritual," "king of upper and lower egypt."
That point we were fairly convinced that senebkay
Was a member of this group of kings
That ruled in the late second intermediate period.
[ayman] once he says it's king from the local abydos dynasty,
We expect that's gonna be a turning point in history.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] the dismembered corpse of a king.
Buried with second-hand goods.
Why was senebkay given such a meager burial?
And why is there no apparent record of his reign?
[archaeologist speaks in foreign language]
His discovery is the beginning of a worldwide investigation,
To uncover the secrets of a lost pharaoh,
And reveal an egyptian dynasty
That has been wiped from history for almost 4,000 years.
[kim] in the case of these abydos kings,
We actually do have to rewrite the history books.
They add another chapter.
-[ominous music] -[wind whistling]
[narrator] in the windswept desert of abydos, egypt,
A mystery has emerged from beneath the sand.
A tomb decorated for a pharaoh
But filled with secondhand grave goods.
And the badly damaged body of a man
Who died 3,500 years ago.
The wall paintings proclaim him a king.
But according to the history books,
This pharaoh never existed.
[josef] senebkay's tomb really was initially
A really major mystery.
After the rush of discovery,
We had a whole host of questions now to answer.
[narrator] if senebkay really was a pharaoh,
His absence from the ancient records is perplexing.
[dramatic music]
[flames whooshing]
[rebecca] the egyptians were extremely keen to record
As much as they possibly could.
One of the many documents produced
By the ancient egyptian state were kings lists.
[narrator] kings lists were celebrations
Of the great pharaohs of egypt.
[suspenseful music]
Most of these surviving lists were carved onto temple walls,
Detailing kings from over 1,200 years
Of ancient egyptian history.
What these essentially do is they list kings.
In cartouches, they have each name,
And it's meant to be done in chronological order.
Kings could look back and marvel at the long line
To which they themselves are being added.
[narrator] despite not one, but two of these carved lists,
Being found less than a mile from his tomb in abydos,
Senebkay's name wasn't recorded for posterity
Like his royal contemporaries.
Usually, you know about kings from the kings lists,
And then you go and find them.
In this instance, we had the body,
And seemingly no kings lists.
[thoughtful dramatic music]
[narrator] the forgotten reign of senebkay
Is all the more puzzling
Because, during the time when he lived and died,
Every historical record for the egyptian pharaohs
Refers to a seat of power in another ancient city.
Just 60 miles south of abydos.
[josef] the evidence for kings ruling in egypt
Primarily relates to the kings who ruled
From the southern city of thebes during this time period.
[birds cawing]
[narrator] on the western banks of the nile,
Thebes, now modern-day luxor, was egypt's capital city.
But if the official history show pharaohs ruling in thebes,
Could senebkay really have been a king?
People have speculated
That there may have been other kings.
But we didn't expect that there would be
A royal cemetery at abydos.
[gentle suspenseful music]
[narrator] 2,000 miles from the heat and dust of abydos
In copenhagen, denmark,
Egyptologist kim ryholt may have the evidence
That proves the existence of the pharaoh senebkay.
He's spent 20 years interpreting what's believed to be
The most comprehensive kings list ever found.
This is the turin kings list.
[narrator] this list, unlike many others,
Was written on papyrus, not carved into stone.
As a result, it has badly disintegrated over time.
As it is plain to see, it is horribly fragmentary.
[narrator] but ryholt believes the remaining 300 fragments
Of this ancient document are the key to solving the mystery
Of the forgotten abydos pharaoh.
Because this list was written
Just 400 years after senebkay died.
And it documents every known ruler,
Including some not recorded anywhere else.
The crucial section of this document
Is the 11th column over here,
And in particular, this cluster of fragments.
Unfortunately, it's a very, very damaged
Part of the papyrus.
But we can see there was a group of kings
That had not hitherto been recognized.
[tense music]
[narrator] according to the ancient text,
This mysterious group of unknown pharaohs
Ruled around 1650 bc,
Exactly the same time that senebkay
Would have lived and died.
What we have here below is presumably the abydos kings,
But all that is preserved in this cluster here
Are the royal titles and part of the royal names
Of two of these kings.
They preserve partially a royal name
That corresponds with the way
Senebkay's royal name is written.
We have the element woser and then something lost
And then re.
[narrator] woser re.
Elements of a name so unusual,
Nothing like it had ever been found
From this time in ancient egypt.
And for almost two decades,
Kim ryholt's theory remained just that.
[dramatic music]
Until josef wegner's shock discovery of the tomb at abydos,
Where, emblazoned on the walls is the full royal name,
Woseribre senebkay.
King of egypt.
Archeological proof of the existence
Of a forgotten abydos dynasty.
A number of colleagues were skeptical towards the idea
That there would have been a local dynasty at abydos.
[tools clattering]
But the discovery of the tomb of senebkay
Is the kind of proof that you're always hoping for.
This is part of the crown name,
The throne name of the king, woseribre.
So a new king and a lost dynasty rapidly emerged,
In the aftermath of the discovery of senebkay's tomb.
[narrator] kim ryholt's painstaking deciphering
Of the turin list is proof that senebkay was a king.
But it also provides a clue
As to why he was erased from history.
-[flames whooshing] -[men yelling]
Senebkay and his abydos dynasty ruled at a time
When egypt was fighting for its very survival.
[dramatic music]
Known as the second intermediate period,
The once-great empire was on its knees,
Embattled on every front.
[salima] the second intermediate period
Was one of the most troubled times in egyptian history,
Where the country had broken into lots of different pieces,
And there was a lot of warfare.
We see kingdoms splitting off
And establishing their own autonomous rule.
And this is the point at which unified egypt
Ceases to exist and instead becomes fragmented.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] weakened by political and economic decline,
By the 1600s bc egypt was facing threats of invasion
From the nubians in the south
And the increasingly powerful hyksos in the north.
[salima] the hyksos, were a group of people
Who came into egypt from the northeast
And basically proceeded to take over the delta region.
[men yelling]
So you have warring groups of people all over the country,
Everyone saying, "I'm king. I'm pharaoh."
[josef] much of northern egypt broke off
And ultimately, we think of the second intermediate period
As a time of these two rival kingdoms,
The hyksos in the north and the theban kingdom in the south.
[narrator] few records exist from this troubled time
Of invasion and warfare.
Now the discovery of senebkay suggests that what was left
Of ancient egypt was also internally fractured.
With not one, but two egyptian rulers
Proclaiming themselves king of all egypt.
The theban pharaoh
And just 60 miles away in abydos, senebkay.
The discovery of senebkay's tomb and body
Really changes the picture and gives us the correlation
That we need for the existence of an abydos dynasty.
[kim] often you're asked, "so does this mean
"we will have to rewrite the history books?"
And in most cases, we won't.
But in the case of these abydos kings,
We actually do have to rewrite the history books.
They add another chapter.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] pharaoh senebkay and his forgotten abydos dynasty
Existed alongside the theban pharaohs,
During one of the most turbulent periods
In egyptian history.
[flames crackling]
So who was senebkay?
Can further examination of the pharaoh's remains
Uncover the truth about this unknown ruler?
And, how he and his dynasty came to be erased from history?
[josef] who was this king? Who were his enemies?
And ultimately, who did him in?
[body thuds]
[dramatic music]
[narrator] the startling discovery
Of a long-forgotten pharaoh, senebkay,
Has revealed the existence of a breakaway dynasty.
That co-existed alongside ancient egypt's
Recognized pharaohs during one of the most violent
And volatile periods in the country's history.
[josef] senebkay's tomb I think really illustrates
Just how fractured and broken egypt was.
The fact that his tomb builders repurposed material
From earlier monuments really reflects
He wasn't a king with a lot of access to great wealth.
[narrator] senebkay's small tomb
And second-hand grave goods
Suggest he may have been a pharaoh.
But the region he ruled over was badly impoverished.
[wind whistling]
And a lack of pharaonic funds wasn't the only thing
That made him different from other pharaohs.
Because scientific analysis of his remains
Reveals this lost king
Wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty on the battlefield.
[josef] the inventory of wounds
To senebkay's body is quite stunning.
[narrator] his scarred bones reveal the abydos pharaoh
Was wounded in combat.
The injuries that senebkay suffered
Included major trauma to his skull, traumas to his knees,
His ankles, to his sacrum at the base of his spine.
Nearly all of his injuries seem consistent with warfare.
[tense music]
[narrator] forensic anthropologist dr. Jane hill
Has discovered that in his lifetime,
Senebkay survived more than a dozen devastating blows
That penetrated right down to the bone.
[jane] we found evidence of senebkay healing
From multiple wounds.
His seventh rib had already successfully healed
And he also had a healed fracture on his face.
Is an indication he was not a stranger to violence.
[ominous music]
[narrator] the skeletal scars suggest senebkay
Fought numerous brutal battles before his death.
But leading from the front was highly unusual
For egyptian royalty.
Despite evidence to the contrary.
[rebecca] portraying yourself as a warrior
Was a key part of being pharaoh.
It showed the gods and the people
That you were doing your job.
So the pharaohs would show themselves on temple walls
And in inscriptions, being a warrior.
Always at the front of their troops,
Leading them into battle,
Showing everyone how to do it, essentially.
I'm not quite sure that these are accurate.
[gentle suspenseful music]
He may have had military training.
The pharaoh was far too important
To have led his troops into battle.
-[flames whooshing] -[men yelling]
[narrator] the evidence of trauma on senebkay's remains
Suggests he stood out among the pharaohs.
Could it be that in the troubled and turbulent period
In which he lived, king senebkay had no choice
But to lead by example and fight for his kingdom?
[josef] I think in the case of senebkay,
This is quite likely a period of time
Where the kings themselves, as trained warriors,
Led their forces physically into battle.
It's really kind of a fight for survival, I think.
[salima] this was a time where kings were warrior pharaohs.
They were fighting for their lives,
For their people, for their land.
This is not just a figurehead king,
But it was someone engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
[narrator] the forensic evidence
Clearly shows the abydos pharaoh
Was no stranger to warfare.
And was skilled enough as a soldier
To survive several skirmishes.
But his remains reveal
That senebkay's determination to lead from the front,
Was also what ultimately killed him.
[jane] he suffered defensive wounds to his hands.
There's an indication that he tried to defend himself
From his attackers.
[men yelling]
So he's likely on his knees
Or in some sort of crouched position.
You know, we assume that he's surrounded.
[narrator] the marks on senebkay's battered skeleton
Paint a terrifying picture of the king's final moments.
And remarkably, 3,500 years after his death,
Forensics can now determine
Exactly how the pharaoh met his bloody fate.
[jane] senebkay suffered three major wounds to his skull.
One particular penetrating wound to the back of his head
Was likely the fatal blow.
[ax thudding]
The width of the wound indicates
That the blade that struck him
Extended quite a bit into his brain matter.
[ominous dramatic music]
[narrator] a catastrophic head wound
Brought senebkay's life to a brutal end.
[ax thudding]
And this fatal blow is further evidence
That senebkay was a pharaoh.
Because it was more than a lethal battlefield wound.
It was a ritual killing fit for a king.
[gentle mysterious music]
A clue to the motive behind it
Can be found on display in the cairo museum.
[salima] here you can see the king
Taking the enemy by the hair
And smiting him.
[ax thudding]
This image of smiting represents power,
Kingship, and victory.
So really this is the quintessential image
Of showing victory over your enemies.
And the ideal person that you would smite
Would be the other side's ruler or leader.
[narrator] smiting was glorified
Throughout the ancient world
As the way a king should dispatch his rival.
The fatal strike delivered by a club or ax.
But in the case of senebkay,
It was the pharaoh himself who received the killing blow.
Senebkay seems to fit that evidence fairly well
Because he does have this huge penetrating blow
To the back of his head.
[salima] these kinds of wounds suggest the humiliation
Of senebkay by his enemies.
This was a very public way of being executed,
So it was sending a message saying,
"we are victorious, you are now nothing."
[dramatic music]
[narrator] destroyed in an act of cruel humiliation,
Senebkay led his troops into battle
And paid the ultimate price in a death designed for royalty.
Now forensic investigation of this pharaonic warrior
Suggests that though he lived as a king, and died as a king,
[ax thudding]
Senebkay was not born to be a king.
-[people chattering] -[suspenseful music]
The discovery of forgotten pharaoh senebkay
Is unlocking the secrets of an erased egyptian dynasty.
Ruling from the sacred city of abydos,
This lost king was not like other great egyptian rulers.
A man of little wealth.
And unusually for a pharaoh, no stranger to the battlefield.
But why did this one pharaoh buck the trend
Of royal privilege and protection,
In order to fight from the front?
[suspenseful music]
Experts now suspect the answer is hiding in plain sight
On display in cairo.
[salima] these are called birth wands,
And these are magical instruments that also make noise
That are protective and are regenerative.
[narrator] birth wands, believed to have been presented
To expectant parents, were inscribed with watchful deities
And adorned with the name of their child.
For almost a century this birth wand
Was simply an ancient egyptian curiosity.
Until the discovery of senebkay's tomb.
[salima] this one is inscribed in a cartouche with sebkay,
Which we think is perhaps just a miswriting
Or an earlier writing of senebkay,
The king of the abydos dynasty.
[kim] it's notable that the inscription
Actually contains a spelling error.
And so it was not clear before the discovery
Of the tomb of senebkay
That his name was even supposed to be read senebkay.
[narrator] but if this artifact did belong
To the lost pharaoh senebkay, another mystery emerges
Because birth wands were never given to kings.
[salima] it's really strange to have this
Royal inscription on it.
It is, in fact, the only birth wand that has the name
Of a king inscribed on it in a cartouche.
So this is really unique.
[ominous music]
[narrator] egyptologists now believe
This unusual object may be the key
To explaining senekbay's willingness to go into battle.
And his rise to power.
Because where it was found provides a major clue
To the lost pharaoh's origins.
This birth wand was found in the tomb of sobekhotep
And his wife nefruptah.
Now, sobekhotep was an elite man
Because he was a commander of the royal troops.
So he had very high military position.
[gentle suspenseful music]
[narrator] the occupants of the tomb
Where the wand was found were not royalty,
But they were military elite.
Finding this birth wand in the tomb of sobekhoteb,
But inscribed for senebkay,
Means, obviously, there was a close relationship.
And one of the interpretations is that, in fact,
Sobekhotep and nefrutah were his parents.
[majestic music]
[narrator] the discovery of senebkay's birth wand
Suggests the forgotten pharaoh may not have had royal blood,
But he was a warrior born and bred.
So could senebkay have risen
To the ultimate rank of pharaoh,
Not through divine birthright,
But by proving himself worthy on the battlefield?
Generally, egyptian succession went from parent to child,
Parent to child.
But during the second intermediate period,
It is not necessarily the case.
People had to be extra special
If they were going to become rulers or commanders.
Most importantly I think for this time period,
They would have really had to be known
As great fighters and warriors.
[tense music]
[narrator] senebkay's battle-scarred body
And suspected military upbringing,
Suggests the abydos dynasty did not follow
The traditional pharaonic pattern of succession.
A leader was chosen based on merit.
Now a closer look at his skeleton may reveal the secret
Of just why senebkay was such a remarkable warrior.
[jane] the wounds to his knees were very interesting
Because it doesn't make sense for an assailant
Who's on the ground to attack those points on the body.
So we think the purpose of these particular wounds
Was to bring him down from an elevated position.
It had been proposed very early on.
Perhaps his high position was basically
In the back of a chariot.
-[dramatic music] -[horse whinnying]
[narrator] as king, senebkay may have had access to chariots.
A new form of battle transport,
First introduced to ancient egypt by their hyksos enemies,
Around the time of his reign.
But the forensic evidence doesn't match up
With this theory.
[gentle pensive music]
[jane] if you see how chariots in egypt are designed,
There's not really good access points
To these areas of the body where he was struck.
The fact that he is suffering
These wounds in his lower body,
In his joints of the lower body,
Seems to indicate they were exposed
And that people could get to them fairly easily.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] if his wounds are inconsistent
With chariot warfare,
How did senebkay sustain these unusual injuries?
Further analysis has revealed an extraordinary clue.
Unique signs of wear on senebkay's lower body,
More usually seen in modern skeletons.
[jane] the kinds of ways that we see this type of wear and tear
On the human body is for people who ride bicycles a lot,
And people who ride motorcycles a lot.
And, we're not gonna posit that the egyptians
Invented the bicycle or the motorcycle back then,
So it's very much more likely that they were riding horses.
[horse hooves thundering]
[narrator] there is only one ancient equivalent
That fits the bill.
Senebkay rode into battle on horseback.
-[horse neighing] -[sword swishing]
[horse hooves rumbling]
[jane] there have been in multiple cultures,
Studies done of what happens to the people
Who start riding horses where horses are first introduced.
There are eight different markers
And senebkay's got all of them.
-[dramatic music] -[men yelling]
[narrator] now this extraordinary discovery
Is causing egyptologists to rethink the way
Ancient egyptians engaged in battle.
If this theory is true, then we also have the first evidence
That pharaohs rode on horseback.
So it really would be a spectacular find.
[jane] if you wanna think of a horse as technology
Because it is a means of transportation
You can use at speed, to attack or run down your foes,
Then he was making full use of that technology
At the time of his death.
[ominous music]
[narrator] a military veteran, skilled in the art of war,
And an early adopter of the new,
Terrifying equine war machine.
-[sword thudding] -[men yelling]
Senebkay rose to the top, to become pharaoh in abydos.
But around 1650 bc his rule came to an abrupt
And violent end.
Our conclusion was these wounds
Were meant to basically unseat him,
So that his body could no longer hold on
To the back of the horse.
[josef] once that occurred, he was brought to the ground.
That's probably when the major ax blows
To his skull took place.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] brought down from his horse
And brutally executed,
Who finally defeated this battle-worn warrior king?
And why were both he and the entire abydos dynasty
Then erased from history?
[salima] if senebkay died in this way,
It must have been a humiliating, dramatic, and painful defeat.
[ax thudding]
[gentle mysterious music]
[narrator] the discovery of a lost egyptian dynasty
Is rewriting ancient history.
[dramatic music]
[ayman] the existence of abydos dynasty became real
After finding physical evidence,
The tomb, and the murdered king fighting for his kingdom.
[narrator] the lost king, senebkay.
A warrior whose skill on the battlefield, and on horseback,
Saw him rise from common soldier to all-powerful pharaoh.
In a time when egypt was crumbling
And conflict was a way of life.
His fatal wounds suggest a ritual killing,
Known as smiting, delivered by a rival king.
-[ominous music] -[men yelling]
But who was senebkay fighting
In the bloody battle that would be his last?
There are a lot of suspects that one has to consider
When looking at the death of senebkay.
[rebecca] he possibly could have come into contact
With the nubians to the south,
And the hyksos, who were jostling for power
Further north.
[narrator] the second intermediate period
Between 1800 and 1570 bc,
Saw egypt's once-great empire shrunken
And battling for survival.
The hyksos and the nubians
Were both fighting for control of egypt's fractured lands.
So could the king of one of these foreign enemies
Be responsible for the deadly blows
That brought senebkay's life, and reign, to a brutal end?
[dramatic music]
It's a 3,600-year-old cold case.
But investigators have discovered
A remarkable piece of forensic evidence
That could identify the killer of the abydos king.
The wounds to the front of his skull were quite severe.
We see a penetrating wound.
[josef] there's a perfect impression
In the top of his skull,
And we can see that the blade that caused that
Was 4 1/2 centimeters wide and about 1/4 cm in thickness.
[jane] from the profile
It looks as though it were a battle-ax,
That's contemporary with the second intermediate period.
[ax thuds]
[narrator] a battle-ax.
Sharp and deadly enough to slice through senebkay's skull,
Leaving a near-perfect imprint.
It's a remarkable clue.
[tense music]
And, in the penn museum in pennsylvania,
Josef wegner is searching for a blade
That matches the murder weapon.
We do have an example here of a nubian kurma short sword.
Indications of the weaponry on his bones
Probably don't really conform with this kind of weaponry.
The hyksos have very characteristic
Battle-ax forms that they used.
It has a very narrow front to the blade,
It looks more like a kind of a pick
With actually a concave end to it.
[narrator] neither of the foreign weapons are a match.
But there is another shocking possibility.
A blade that's a perfect fit for senebkay's ancient injury.
You can see it's a very slender weapon.
There's a nice rounded cutting edge on the front of it
And then a little bit of a turn in the angle.
So it would have been a lightweight weapon,
But one that you could wield with a lot of force.
[ax swishing]
[narrator] the weapon that matches
Senebkay's fatal head wound
Isn't hyksos or nubian.
It's an egyptian battle-ax.
[josef] in senebkay's cranium
We have actually the whole impression
Of the leading edge of the battle-ax,
That would have come in, right like this,
And embedded itself in his skull.
-[ax swishing] -[ax thuds]
So this is a typical egyptian battle-ax.
This is the primary weapon
That was probably used in the death of senebkay.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] the forensic evidence is clear.
Senebkay didn't fall victim to a foreign enemy.
His murderer was much closer to home.
[josef] we have a lot of examples of these battle axes
Almost identical to the type
That dealt senebkay his death blow in the theban region.
[salima] at this point egypt was in small pieces.
There was no sense of unity.
So if you're theban and you want to get rid
Of someone from abydos, you'll just go kill them.
[narrator] did senebkay meet his bloody fate
At the hands of his own theban neighbors?
If the thebans thought that they were under
Any kind of threat, I have very little doubt
That they would have struck back with force.
If they thought senebkay
And his region or his kingdom was a threat,
They would have dispatched him.
No question.
[ominous music]
[narrator] if the lost abydos pharaoh
Was killed by a theban ax,
Josef believes the manner of his death
Could be the final clue
In determining who dealt the fatal blow.
I can't imagine it would be just a common foot soldier.
The indication that he may have been held
And smote on the head with a battle-ax
Is a symbol of an enemy king.
[narrator] in a battle of dynasties,
The prime suspect in the killing of king senebkay,
May well have been the rival theban pharaoh.
[jane] if both of these men are claiming to be the true
Representative of heaven and earth for the nation of egypt,
Then that's the only way he could have been put down
By one of his enemies, as a foe of the true pharaoh.
[ax thudding]
[gentle pensive music]
[narrator] an abydos king brutally executed
As an enemy of his own nation.
His vanquished dynasty written out of history,
Until a chance discovery 3,600 years later,
In the sands of egypt's most sacred city.
[salima] it's fabulous to have found senebkay.
And knowing that the abydos kings existed,
Really shifts our understanding.
And maybe more excavations will reveal other kings
And shed more light on this complex time period.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] senebkay and his dynasty
Have finally been restored
To their rightful place in history.
But why were they erased in the first place?
[josef] egyptians like to...
They like to simplify their history.
They like to view it as a succession of dynasties,
One after another.
Senebkay and his dynasty were probably considered to be
A period of time that egypt
Didn't wanna live through again.
The kings lists are by no means complete.
In fact, a number of them are incredibly incomplete.
Kings would routinely omit names of kings
That had come before them.
Maybe they were rivals.
Maybe they were too weak.
You don't want any weaklings in there.
[narrator] both the abydos dynasty
And their king, senebkay,
Were deliberately stricken from the royal records.
Although senebkay was buried with as much pharaonic ceremony
As his struggling nation could afford,
His life and his reign were doomed to be forgotten
In a history that was written by the descendants
Of the triumphant theban pharaohs.
[salima] ultimately, the thebans managed to unite egypt,
So then we get a new kingdom
And a united egypt under one pharaoh.
[narrator] the extraordinary discoveries of josef wegner
And kim ryholt have now rewritten that history,
Shedding new light on one of ancient egypt's darkest times.
When the country was fractured
And rival pharaohs fought for power,
A warrior king rode into battle on horseback
And paid the ultimate price.
[ax thudding]