SALIMA: Oh, that's a fabulous one!

NARRATOR: Beneath this desert landscape lie the secrets of this ancient civilization.

JOHN: Wow, you can see why the pharaohs chose this place.

NARRATOR: Now, for a full season of excavations, our cameras have unprecedented

access to follow teams on the frontline of archaeology...

ASHRAF: I'm driving so fast because I'm so excited!

KATHLEEN: It's an entrance, we can see an entrance.

NARRATOR: Revealing buried secrets...

ANTONIO: I have just been told that they have found something.

DON: Oh my gosh.

(laughs).

JOHN: A sphinx!

NARRATOR: And making discoveries that could rewrite ancient history.

This time, the hunt for the lost tomb of Queen Cleopatra.

Colleen searches for clues in the hieroglyphs...

COLLEEN: Here we see Cleopatra as the goddess Isis.

NARRATOR: Alejandro scans ancient mummies in an Egyptian hospital...

NARRATOR: And Kathleen makes a startling discovery deep underground.

NARRATOR: Ancient Egypt, a kingdom of great pharaohs and a cradle of civilization.

But after 3,000 years this rule came to an end with the last pharaoh,

Queen Cleopatra.

For centuries this enigmatic woman has captured the imagination of the world,

but the location of her tomb is still a mystery.

Today archaeologists across Egypt are on the hunt for clues.

Renowned Egyptologists Colleen and John Darnell are experts in decoding hieroglyphs,

they're on their way to the Valley of the Kings.

COLLEEN: We're headed to the location of the burials of

nearly every pharaoh of the New Kingdom.

NARRATOR: The Valley is a rabbit warren of sixty-five hidden tombs.

They form one of the greatest royal cemeteries in the world,

but not all of them are finished.

JOHN: This morning we're going to the unfinished tomb of Ramses XI.

It's the last tomb begun in the Valley of the Kings, and many times unfinished things

in Egypt can actually tell you a little bit more than the completed product.

NARRATOR: Ramses XI reigned over 1,000 years before Cleopatra,

but when he died his tomb was never used.

COLLEEN: So here you could see just the initial phases of the tomb decoration,

but it's already a beautiful depiction of Ramses XI.

We know exactly who we're looking at because of his cartouches, his name rings,

in front of his face.

JOHN: Looks like they've laid out what would've been remarkable illustrations and,

and texts early in the initial part of the tomb.

NARRATOR: The tomb of Ramses XI is located in the east of the

Valley of the Kings.

Its cavernous chambers and pillared halls reveal how the pharaoh should

have been buried, but the back of the tomb is unfinished.

After 500 years of Egypt's kings and queens being buried in the Valley,

Ramses' tomb marks the end of an era.

Ramses XI abandoned the Valley of the Kings,

and no more pharaohs were buried here.

COLLEEN: This is very much the end of a legacy, this is the end of kings being buried in

the Valley of the Kings, but it's also the start of something new,

of continued royal burial that really ends with Cleopatra.

NARRATOR: Historians believe this royal burial site was abandoned because of looting,

but no one has found the cemetery for the last pharaohs of Egypt,

Cleopatra and her family line.

So where could it be?

After the Valley fell out of use eventually Egypt's

seat of power shifted north to Alexandria.

The last great dynasty of pharaohs established their capital here to exploit

trade across the Mediterranean Sea.

Archaeologist Dr. Ross Thomas from the British Museum is here exploring the ancient

capital for evidence that could lead to Cleopatra.

ROSS: The ancient city housed about half a million people during the first century BC

and it was one of the most important ancient ports

and ancient cities of the Mediterranean.

NARRATOR: The port city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great

who conquered Egypt 2,300 years ago.

It was famed for its palaces, statues, its library, and a colossal lighthouse standing

over 350 feet tall, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

During this time, Egypt was ruled by the successors of Alexander,

the Greek pharaohs called the Ptolemies,

but this family line ended when the country was eventually conquered by Rome,

leaving the last pharaoh of Egypt Queen Cleopatra.

Many archaeologists think Cleopatra will be found in a royal cemetery somewhere in

Alexandria, the capital built by her own family...

but searching here is difficult.

The ancient city was hit by a series of earthquakes and

much of it now lies beneath the waves.

ROSS: So do we have weights here?

MAN: Yes.

NARRATOR: Professor Emad Khalil from Alexandria University began exploring

the sunken city over twenty years ago, keeping an eagle eye out for Cleopatra's tomb.

EMAD: This has not been found obviously in Alexandria yet,

but as we always say beneath Alexandria there are other Alexandrias.

Okay.

NARRATOR: The evidence of Cleopatra's ancient capital is strewn across the seabed.

Shards of pottery, huge columns,

fallen obelisks, and what they believe is one

of the doorways to the famous lighthouse.

ROSS: There was scores of columns and column bases, hundreds of blocks,

really large structural blocks.

EMAD: I think we managed to see a part of an obelisk,

and part of a doorway of the lighthouse,

so it is, it's really, really something.

ROSS: Yeah.

NARRATOR: Every dive provides new data for Emad and Ross to research,

but there's no sign of Cleopatra or her family's graves.

EMAD: Well you'd assume that they'd want to be buried in their own city.

Normally what you have is a royal cemetery with all the burials

for the kings and queens.

NARRATOR: But what if Cleopatra wasn't buried in Alexandria at all?

One woman thinks everyone has been looking in the wrong place.

Thirty miles west of Alexandria in an ancient city called Taposiris Magna,

there is a little-known temple.

Here Kathleen Martinez, a qualified lawyer turned archaeologist, is on a quest.

KATHLEEN: So this is one of the exciting moments of an excavation.

NARRATOR: For the past decade she has been building a case that Queen Cleopatra is buried

beneath this temple.

KATHLEEN: I want to be an archaeologist since I was a child,

but my parents convinced me to study law, and I became a lawyer.

But all this knowledge and this information that I had as a lawyer I combine with

archaeology, and this is how I follow Cleopatra's steps to Taposiris Magna.

NARRATOR: Kathleen is from the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, but thirteen years

ago she gave up her law work and started excavating here at the temple.

KATHLEEN: We have uncovered so many important structures that prove this temple functioned

as a temple during the time of Queen Cleopatra and the Greek pharaohs.

So this could be the perfect place for Cleopatra's lost tomb.

NARRATOR: At the age of eighteen, Cleopatra became pharaoh when her father

Ptolemy the twelfth died.

She went on to rule for twenty-one years.

Faced with the threat of a Roman invasion, she formed alliances with the enemy,

first wooing Julius Caesar and bearing his child,

followed by a relationship with Mark Antony.

But in 31 BC the Roman navy, led by Octavian, attacked Egypt.

To avoid capture, legend has it that Cleopatra committed suicide with

the bite of a venomous snake.

KATHLEEN: She threatened Rome and Romans were afraid of her.

She thought she could conquer the world, even though she was a woman.

She was a warrior, and she achieved the impossible, and this is why she is my heroine

and I will try to do everything I can to find her tomb.

NARRATOR: Kathleen believes Cleopatra could be buried somewhere around the site.

This season, she has a promising lead 300 feet outside the temple walls;

a strange hollow in the ground.

KATHLEEN: We found a cut, it's a cut in the bedrock, it's a shaft,

and we are trying to find out what, where it lead us.

NARRATOR: Kathleen believes the shaft could lead to Cleopatra's lost tomb,

hidden deep underground, but trying to excavate this site is dangerous.

KATHLEEN: It's dangerous because if the bucket turned around it could hit the guys

which are down there.

NARRATOR: With the potential to break through into an underground cavity,

they're worried the floor of the shaft could suddenly collapse.

KATHLEEN: It's an entrance, we can see an entrance.

NARRATOR: It's a huge discovery.

The shaft leads to an underground tunnel.

KATHLEEN: It's so exciting.

I need to see what is in there.

It has been hidden for 2,000 years.

NARRATOR: Across Egypt, the hunt for lost tombs continues.

500 miles south of Alexandria is the ancient city of Aswan.

It's here that Spanish archaeologist Alejandro Jiménez-Serrano

leads a large mission working at the ancient necropolis

of Qubbet el-Hawa.

The site is home to one of the largest sets of intact tombs in Egypt.

Alejandro is searching for unmarked graves and lost tombs.

(speaking in native language).

This sprawling site is even older than the Valley of the Kings, and is thought to be

the burial site of many wealthy nobles.

Today he's working in one of the ancient tombs, trying to identify who was buried there.

ALEJANDRO: Unfortunately, it has no inscriptions so we don't the owner or the family

who occupy this tomb.

We can only say which period, when it was built,

because of the style.

NARRATOR: But deep inside this tomb the team has just unearthed two buried mummies.

As they clear away the sand, Alejandro makes a startling discovery;

it's the edge of a beautiful golden death mask.

ALEJANDRO: Wow!

NARRATOR: Death masks are often made of layers of linen or recycled papyrus, and then

soaked in plaster.