Finding The Lost Tomb of Alexander the Great (Full Episode) | National Geographic

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Archaeologist Pepi Papakosta is on a mission to find Alexander the Great’s lost tomb. Excavating in ...

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NARRATOR: Alexandria, Egypt. A sprawling metropolis home to five million people, and one archaeologist on the quest of a lifetime. .

. Pepi Papakosta is hunting for the lost tomb of Alexander the Great. PEPI: Finding the tomb of Alexander is the dream of every archaeologist, it's the holy grail.

NARRATOR: Alexander led an army 12,000 miles, conquered the known world and became a living god. Pepi is combining ancient manuscripts and modern technology to identify the exact location of his lost city. She's unearthing stunning clues: Greek treasures.

. . PEPI: She's beautiful.

NARRATOR: Hidden tunnels. . .

And even a magnificent marble statue thought to be of Alexander himself. Each find leads her closer to the ultimate prize in archaeology. FRED: Pepi might just be the closest archaeologist yet to uncovering the lost tomb of Alexander the Great.

PEPI: If my theory is correct, I think there is a big possibility to find the tomb of Alexander. FRED: I'm heading to the city of Alexandria founded by Alexander himself, almost 2300 years ago. NARRATOR: Over the last 20 years, National Geographic archaeologist Fred Hiebert has been involved in archaeological discoveries across the world.

FRED: Pepi Papakosta is doing some very innovative excavations. She's finding lots of artifacts from the time of Alexander the Great. It's pretty exciting.

NARRATOR: Pepi has already discovered a treasure that caught the world's attention. PEPI: It was the last day of the excavation. I was about to give up.

They showed me a small white marble in the side wall of the trench. NARRATOR: Over 20 feet below the surface, her team finds gleaming Greek marble in the muddy soil. (celebrating).

PEPI: There was a possibility to only be a small part of the marble. But the knee appeared, the leg, the second leg, then the body. It was something unbelievable.

And then I saw a face very familiar to me. I saw the face of Alexander the Great. It was an amazing moment.

Maybe the most important moment of my life. I brought him into light again, after 2300 years. NARRATOR: Pepi's discovery of the statue creates a buzz around the world, drawing the president of Greece to visit her dig site.

PEPI: All Greeks are interested about Alexander, all Greeks admire him, even today he's alive in the soul of the Greeks. Alexander was the reason to become an archaeologist, Alexander is the reason I am here, it's something I cannot control, it comes out of my soul. NARRATOR: Alexander the Great is considered one of the finest military leaders of all time.

He became a king aged just 20, after his father Phillip II of Macedon was brutally murdered. In 12 years, he marched his army 12,000 miles, creating a vast empire, that spread from Egypt to modern day Pakistan. In 332BC Alexander invaded Egypt, becoming Pharaoh and a living god.

But at the age of just 32 he died under mysterious circumstances in Babylon. FRED: After he died he was mummified, buried in Memphis, then when the capital moved to the new capital of Alexandria they dug Alexander up, and they created a new tomb for him, right in the center of ancient Alexandria. Then around 350AD, the history of Alexandria starts to go silent.

There's earthquakes, tsunamis, riots in the street, there are no more descriptions of this beautiful royal city, Alexander's tomb goes missing. NARRATOR: There have been more than 140 recognized searches for the tomb of Alexander. Archaeologist Howard Carter; Heinrich Schliemann, the man who discovered the ancient city of Troy; and even Napoleon Bonaparte have all been seduced by its mystery.

PEPI: There are ancient references about more or less where he was buried. NARRATOR: Pepi is studying the Greek and Roman ancient sources for clues to the location of Alexander's final burial place in Egypt. But all were written a few hundred years after his death.

PEPI: We have to rely on these sources. This is the only thing we have. Strabo the Greek geographer who visited Alexandria the first century BC, mentioned clearly that the tomb of Alexander is here in the city he founded.

And also he describes that Alexander was buried in the enclosure of the royal quarter. NARRATOR: The ancient city with a royal quarter that Strabo mentions has long since vanished under modern day Alexandria. To find Alexander's tomb, Pepi must first find his lost city.

Alexandria is Egypt's premier Mediterranean city at the edge of the Nile delta. Today it covers over 100 square miles, about five times the size of Manhattan. Concealed beneath its streets, is the ancient Greek city Alexander founded.

PEPI: It was a great city, founded by a great personality. But Alexandria is difficult place to excavate. NARRATOR: Pepi is digging in a public park, the size of 17 football fields, one of the few places not covered by the dense, urban sprawl.

PEPI: Shallalat Gardens is a huge area. It's about 1 million square feet. No one before explored Shallalat properly.

NARRATOR: Since finding the statue, her team has removed around 20,000 tons of earth, almost twice the weight of the Eiffel Tower. PEPI: Just be careful eh! NARRATOR: Each layer Pepi excavates, holds a sealed record of the city's history.

She's digging down over 30 feet. Through modern. .

. Byzantine. .

. and Roman layers. .

. in her hunt for the Greek level, from the time of Alexander. Pepi is looking for fragments of Greek influence, clues to help her locate the original ancient city.

PEPI: Be careful now. Nice. It's a pot shard.

But you can see the design, the color, the black glaze. Be careful, maybe we find the rest. Try, this way, this side.

Oh! Very good. Ohhh, amazing.

It's a female figure. She has wings and gold in the wings. She must be a goddess.

I believe it's not from Alexandria, maybe it is imported from Greece because it is a high level and very early. She's beautiful, even 2300 years older. But she's beautiful.

NARRATOR: To help Pepi in her search for the ancient city, Archaeologist Fred Hiebert arrives on site. PEPI: How nice to see you, thank you for coming. FRED: It's great to be here.

NARRATOR: He brings years of international dig experience. FRED: It's just amazing, it's a massive, massive excavation. PEPI: Yes.

It's very difficult just to be honest because of the huge quantity of debris and also the problem of water we have here. We have to pump continuously in order to be able to excavate. Let's go to have a look.

WORKER: Papakosta! We have stuff! PEPI: Oh good, Mabruk.

I'm coming. You see it's a handle, an amphora handle. Can you clean it?

NARRATOR: Amphoras were large clay vessels with handles containing wine. PEPI: These amphoras they used to come imported from Rhodes and Greek Islands bringing wine to Alexandria. FRED: It would have been at least a meter tall right?

PEPI: Yes. FRED: That's a lot of wine. PEPI: Good quality of wine!

For sure Alexandrian's were very cheerful, very happy people, they used to drink a lot of wine. NARRATOR: Each amphora handle is stamped with the makers name & date of production. PEPI: You see the Greek letters on it.

FRED: Fantastic. PEPI: We find Greek names in the land of Egypt. It's like a message in a bottle.

FRED: Looks like you've dug right down to the very foundation of the city. . .

the very streets that Alexander had walked in. NARRATOR: Below this layer is soil and bedrock, on which the original city was built. Alexander is said to have marked the outlines of the first buildings himself.

PEPI: Here it was built the first Alexandria we know. FRED: The city that was decreed by Alexander the Great himself. PEPI: Exactly.

NARRATOR: Pepi has identified his city. Now, she can focus her search for the Royal Quarter. But the ancient city does not give up its secrets easily.

WORKER: Mahmood! PEPI: It's a matter of minutes to have a destruction here. .

. NARRATOR: Alexandria, Egypt. Archaeologist Pepi Papakosta and her team are digging deep underground, beneath the water table.

Pumps are running 24/7 to manage the constant up-flow of water out of the ground. WORKER: Mahmood! PEPI: The pipe broke.

Tell Sochi to call Mahmood. He's there and. .

. It's a matter of minutes to have a destruction here you know. NARRATOR: The silt laden water clogs the pumps and pipes, building up the pressure.

Each time they fail, within two hours, the site is flooded with nearly 10 feet of water, delaying her dig by weeks. PEPI: I'm so exhausted of this problem. NARRATOR: Pepi has uncovered traces of Alexander's lost city.

But until the flooding is under control, her hunt for the Royal Quarter is on hold. FRED: We know about the Royal Quarter of Alexandria from the writings of Greek geographer Strabo. It had palaces, it had a library, a museum, it also had the royal burial quarter called the Sema.

So, our expectations are to find a beautiful and massive road system and a crossroads right in the center would be the epicenter of the city. It would have been the area of the Royal Quarter. That Royal Quarter has never been found.

PEPI: The quantity of water is unbelievable. When the pumps stop, we have a kind of a lake here. I always think that water should be a nice thing.

It's a blessing in our life. In my life it's a disaster. But now, we've managed to decrease the water table.

We pump the water 24 hours per day with 16 pumps, eight wells. Look, it's one of them, we have many. I've defeated the Nile maybe.

NARRATOR: With the water under control, her team can continue excavating. PEPI: We are uncovering black stones. Even a small piece of a black stone is very important for the archaeology of Alexandria.

Because we all know that black stones is the material that the Roman streets were made of. Fantastic, it's fantastic beautiful stones. The part we've uncovered is about 25 meters.

Can you imagine how many people have walked on this? How many chariots, how many horses. .

. Everything happened in this street. We have to understand what is the relation between this road with the rest of our discoveries.

NARRATOR: Roman roads were often rebuilt on top of earlier Greek streets. Pepi returns to one of her key historical guides, a plan of the ancient city. PEPI: This map was made by Egyptian astronomer Mahmood Bey el Falaki in 1866.

At that time the streets and a lot of buildings, ancient buildings were obvious. NARRATOR: The map shows Alexandria had two main streets. The Canopic way, nearly 100 feet across, running east-west, transected by another main street R1 running north-south.

PEPI: This is a satellite map of modern Alexandria. And we are exactly here. These are the Shallalat Gardens.

We made a transparency version of the map of Mahmood Bey. NARRATOR: The maps are lined up, using the coastline as a guide. PEPI: When we line the old map with a modern one, the result for me is fantastic!

We see clearly that the cross roads, of the two broad streets, of ancient Alexandria are very close to the area we are excavating. NARRATOR: From interpreting Strabo's writings, she knows the Royal Quarter, containing the tomb of Alexander, was to the North of the central crossroads. Pepi now has proof the crossroads are within a few feet of the Shallalat Gardens.

PEPI: I believe that the road we uncovered, is the first parallel road to the main Canopic street. NARRATOR: Pepi's road 'L2' runs through the north side of the Shallalat Gardens. FRED: Pepi's road is a game changer in the study of Alexandria.

Because Pepi has actually found one of the main roads described by Strabo. That puts the whole description of classical Alexandria in a frame of reference, where we can now say we are sitting in the Royal Quarters of Alexandria. NARRATOR: Pepi has excavated deeper in this part of Alexandria than anyone.

She has revealed Alexander's ancient city. Now, she has rediscovered the royal quarter. She believes, hidden within it lies the tomb of Alexander the Great.

And that's not all. . .

After Alexander died, his empire was split between his trusted generals. Ptolemy became the ruler and Pharaoh of Egypt. Ptolemy's dynasty lasted 275 years and more than 10 generations.

Each ruler buried themselves around Alexander in a vast cemetery within the Royal Quarter. They wanted to be close to a god for eternity. FRED: Inside of Strabo's royal precinct is a literal valley of the kings.

Not a single Ptolemaic King has been found yet. PEPI: The tomb of Alexander is the holy grail of archaeology. It's the dream of all the archaeologists of the world.

NARRATOR: In her hunt for the tomb of Alexander, archaeologist Pepi Papakosta has made a discovery, greater than she could have ever imagined. She has rediscovered the Royal Quarter of ancient Alexandria, within which lies the Royal Cemetery. Classical sources tell us that Alexander is buried here, surrounded by the last Pharaohs of Egypt.

PEPI: I'm very happy because I believe that there are a lot of possibilities that we are in the right site. NARRATOR: Pepi has exclusive permission to excavate anywhere across the million square feet of the Shallalat Gardens. It's an enormous undertaking.

PEPI: An archaeologist needs a lifetime to dig at Shallalat gardens. We need the support of technology. National Geographic is going to support us and help us to use new technology.

NARRATOR: A cutting-edge geophysical method called Electrical Resistivity Tomography will produce a detailed picture of what lies beneath the Shallalat Gardens. The findings will help guide where to dig next. Cables are laid across the gardens and the method passes electricity deep into the ground.

By taking hundreds of readings, the relative solidity of the earth below is plotted onto digital maps. Looser areas of sand or soil contrast with dense areas like solid stone, the outlined remains of a building, or even a tomb. PEPI: In the end we can have an idea if it is big, if it is small, how deep it is.

NARRATOR: The survey will take the specialist team 10 days to complete. FRED: Lucan's Pharsalia is the only detailed description of Alexander's tomb that survives from the ancient world, a visit by Julius Caesar. "In eager haste he went down into the grotto, hewn out for a tomb.

There lies the mad son of Phillip of Pella, Alexander. " So his tomb was likely to have a subterranean chamber to maintain a cool and constant temperature all year. MARIA: We're now entering the great tomb of Kom el Shoqafa.

FRED: It really is incredible here. . .

NARRATOR: With the Royal Quarter identified, Fred wants to find out what Alexander's tomb and those of the Pharaohs buried around him might look like. MARIA: Can you imagine what it was like when they carried their dead down here? FRED: It's at least 60 feet down.

I can't imagine trying to bring a body down here. NARRATOR: Archaeologist Maria Nilsson is showing Fred the tombs of the Greek citizens who lived in ancient Alexandria. It's a subterranean city of the dead.

MARIA: It reminds very much of a Greek temple doesn't it. FRED: It really does. MARIA: It's typical for Alexandria.

These rock cut tombs. So here you have some great examples of how Egyptian art meets the newcomers. Here on the frieze you've got the winged sun disc which is traditional for Egyptian art.

But if we enter a little bit closer, here you can clearly see the Greek elements. FRED: Yes the Medusa, incredible. MARIA: So let's now enter into the main sanctuary itself.

FRED: Wow. MARIA: And we've got a unique scene. FRED: Well it looks like a traditional mummification scene, MARIA: Indeed.

FRED: Yes. MARIA: What we have here is the depiction of Osiris, which is a representation of the dead himself, of course. You've got Anubis who is performing the mummification, and to just support the entire mummification process you've got the canopic jars underneath.

FRED: Ah, where they would put the kidneys and the liver and, yes. NARRATOR: The writing of historian Quintus Curtius Rufus tells us that Alexander the Great was mummified like the Egyptian Pharaohs before him. FRED: It's not Alexander the Great's tomb, but surely his tomb must share some connections with this type of tomb, subterranean, carved, with a number of different styles.

MARIA: Something like it, yes. I'm certain that he will have included elements of the Egyptian culture too. We know from the sources that there was a main chamber in which Alexander was placed in a sarcophagus.

FRED: This is the legacy putting Egyptian and Greek art together, this is the legacy of Alexander the Great. MARIA: It is! NARRATOR: Like the catacombs here, an elaborate underground labyrinth, with passageways and tunnels, would have formed part of Alexander's tomb complex.

Back at the Shallalat Gardens, Pepi's team has discovered something hidden in the subsurface. PEPI: We just found this construction and we realized there is a tunnel inside. It is interesting to have a look.

Oooh, it's manmade, oh very interesting, I would like to be inside, but I forgot my bathing suit. Oh my god. New adventures in this excavation.

We have to go inside but it's very difficult. We will ask for volunteers I think. We don't know how long it is, how deep it is, so it's better to have some precautions.

Ramadan if you feel afraid, you come out ok? Be careful please. OK, inshala.

Maybe it leads to something else, something interesting. We'll see. NARRATOR: There is only a shallow pocket of air for her team to breathe.

Hundreds of tons of earth lie above the passage that could collapse at any moment. PEPI: Everything OK? PEPI: You have to speak to us, to talk to us.

Everything OK? I wish it could lead to a secret door, to a chamber. It's very long.

It stops or it goes on? NARRATOR: After 25 feet, there is major problem. The tunnel has collapsed.

PEPI: There is a lot of debris. NARRATOR: It's blocked with a pile of rubble, covered in mysterious scorch marks. There are also fragments of burnt rope.

It looks like this passageway has been sealed for hundreds of years. PEPI: It's not safe to excavate it more due to the tons of soil, the street, and also a huge modern building. NARRATOR: After 12 years of work on the site, it's a frustrating setback for Pepi.

PEPI: Very difficult day. But I'm not ready to say that there is nothing here or something big. I'm optimist, we keep going.

I cannot stop I have to go on. FRED: Alexander wasn't born with the title 'Great', but he had a strong lineage. He was the son of a powerful King, Philip II of Macedon.

Philip was buried in a town called Vergina, with incredible finds. This is one of the most amazing archaeological finds of the 1970s. His skeleton was found in an opulent golden coffin.

There were wreaths made out of solid gold. Simply masterpieces of art. If these stunning items were found in his father's tomb, what might Alexander's own burial hold.

NARRATOR: The Greek geophysical team deliver Pepi the final results of the survey in the Shallalat Gardens. PEPI: The report shows about 14 anomalies, that means archeological targets. Out of the 14 points that the geophysical survey suggested.

I decided to start from the biggest one. We call it E3B. NARRATOR: The largest of the 14 anomalies E3B is 800 feet from Pepi's current site.

Before assigning a dig team, some preliminary exploration is needed. PEPI: The next step would be drillings in order to be sure that the suggested points were correct. FRED: This is the National Geographic Borescope.

We are going to put it down into one of the boreholes here so we will have a chance to look down inside at what Pepi is finding. It's a very fine high resolution camera, on a long fiber optic. It's actually developed to inspect 747 airplane engines and our engineers have adapted it for archaeological investigation.

It has this incredible robotic end here that can look in every direction. Oh boy! We'll start looking around.

PEPI: Okay. Err, can you go up and go to the side. Here, there are white signs, of limestone, but I'm not sure if it is a construction or small random stones.

NARRATOR: Limestone is not naturally found here. Prized for its aesthetic quality by the Greeks, it came from mines around 30 miles outside the city. They may be seeing fragments of the original building stones of Alexandria.

FRED: We can look around and have a pretty good idea that there is stones down there, but it's not enough is it. PEPI: No of course we have to excavate! FRED: Absolutely.

PEPI: But for sure, we know that we have to dig here. NARRATOR: While work at her main dig site continues, Pepi splits her team and begins to excavate the large anomaly, E3B. FRED: This is actually a culmination of Pepi's obsession here in Alexandria, she started nearly 23 years ago and here we are in the royal quarter of the city of Alexandria, 2300 years ago, she knows that, she has x marks the spot, with a Roman road right in her other excavations.

We know she's going to find something, we don't know what it is. NARRATOR: Pepi Papakosta is hunting for the lost tomb of Alexander the Great. She's identified the site of his ancient city and confirmed the Royal Quarter within it.

A team works at the main site, while 800 feet to the east, a second team digs down to reach the largest anomaly, E3B. They are already finding intriguing clues. PEPI: Ah bravo!

Good see, it's a plaster but there is color! FRED: Ah, let's see. Beautiful!

PEPI: Blue, red. FRED: Yes, great, great. PEPI: This is the type of the Macedonian tomb's decoration, you know that.

NARRATOR: Plaster with this intense blue color, is thought to be the world's first artificial pigment, created by a calcium, copper, silicate mix. The same pigment is used to decorate Alexander's father's tomb. PEPI: It is interesting because we find a lot of small things, of course.

WORKER: Papakosta! PEPI: Yes? Oh.

Give it to me. Ibrahim can you bring water. FRED: More marble!

PEPI: This is white marble. FRED: This is real marble. PEPI: Greek white marble.

FRED: Well it's really unusual to see this here in Egypt, especially, in the delta of the Nile. There's no stone and there's especially no Aegean marble like this. PEPI: It's very rare to find a Greek marble, white marble in Alexandria.

It's just a good sign. Just an encouraging sign. FRED: It's a great, great sign.

NARRATOR: Even with a large team of workers, removing around 400 tons of soil, sand and mud will take weeks. Fred travels back to the US while work continues. It's the end of the dig season and unseasonal tropical thunderstorms are drenching the site.

PEPI: It is the beginning of December so the weather is getting worse now. Most of the time this is a problem for us because it can create a danger. Soil can collapse, workers can slip on the soil, so it is not easy to work under the rain.

But we wait for the rain to stop, and we continue. NARRATOR: Once the rain clears, the team realize the E3B excavation site is under four feet of water. PEPI: The work was very difficult this time because we had to fight with water above and water below.

We went very deep. The soil is very fragile and I was afraid that it could collapse. And also the water level, that is always a problem.

NARRATOR: A powerful pump is lowered into the flooded dig. PEPI: This anomaly could be many things, it could be a building, it could be a monument, it could be even a tomb. I feel excited but also very nervous.

Maybe it will be something great, maybe it will be nothing. NARRATOR: Fred is back in Egypt and heading to the E3B dig site. Pepi and her team are inches away from uncovering the large anomaly, 25 feet below the modern-day surface.

PEPI: Welcome back. FRED: Pepi, it's great to see you. PEPI: Nice to see you.

FRED: Oh my goodness, look at this. PEPI: Hard work this time. FRED: Wow, Pepi that's so huge.

PEPI: Yeah. FRED: How deep are you now? PEPI: 23 feet, 25 feet, yes.

FRED: Pepi it's an enormous amount of work. PEPI: The most difficult issue is the water level, as all the time, FRED: As always, yeah. PEPI: As always.

FRED: That's going to be very exciting to see what's underneath there. Shall we go take a look? PEPI: Yes of course.

FRED: Great. Look at this, finally we can see the bottom of this incredible trench. ♪ ♪ PEPI: Look.

Sandstone. FRED: Yeah. PEPI: Which is the natural bedrock of Alexandria.

FRED: So that's the natural bedrock of Alexandria? PEPI: Exactly. But there is a human activity here!

FRED: This is a constructed layer, right Pepi? PEPI: It is exactly, it is a constructed. NARRATOR: The large anomaly picked up by the electrical survey, is not the underground tunnel or chamber that Pepi hoped to find.

FRED: What do you think it is Pepi? PEPI: According to my opinion this should be a kind of a defensive ditch for the Islamic walls of east Alexandria. FRED: Incredible, incredible.

So the city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great, has changed and changed through the centuries. And here, it's clear 1000 years later they dug a giant moat to go around another wall of the city. NARRATOR: In this section of the Shallalat gardens, the Greek-Ptolemaic layer is missing.

It appears that this part of the Royal Quarter was totally destroyed as later inhabitants re-modelled the city. PEPI: I hoped of course that it was something different. A construction or another material.

FRED: Do you still believe that the tomb of Alexander the Great is here? PEPI: The only logical place to be buried at that time was in this area. NARRATOR: Dig site E3B has not yielded Alexander the Great's tomb, as Pepi had hoped.

But 800 feet to the west, her second team has continued excavating the original site. And 30 feet below the modern-day city, she discovers the most extraordinary find of all. PEPI: So you see these big stones?

FRED: Wow. They're massive! PEPI: Yes.

We took out two of them, something very difficult, and we realized that under there is nothing more, it's the bedrock of Alexandria. So let me show you how big this foundation is. It's a huge, all this line.

FRED: It keeps going and going and going, do you have any idea, thought, how much further it's going to go? PEPI: We are about 200 feet, more or less, without arriving to the end. FRED: Of a single building.

PEPI: Yes, and it goes on. FRED: Clearly these are very large foundation stones for what would have been a very large building. What do you think it was?

PEPI: Yes, this is a good question. In the Royal Quarter there were the most important public buildings of Alexandria. So I'm sure that this building should be one of these famous buildings of the past.

NARRATOR: The vast foundation serves as a guide to recreate what this giant Greek building may have looked like. Constructed in ice white marble and limestone, this would have been one of many temples, palaces and tombs filling the Royal Quarter of Alexandria. Alexander's city became one of the most breathtaking sights of the ancient world.

FRED: The search for the tomb of Alexander the Great is particularly special, it's a great mystery. But it's also great working with a scholar who really is persistent, who really follows the story and doesn't take no for an answer. And she's made incredible discoveries.

Ptolemaic foundation walls that nobody has ever seen before. She's correlated that with a Roman road system that was described in the 1860s and then sort of lost to history. She's excavated deeper in Alexandria than just about anybody.

NARRATOR: Pepi's statue, now fully restored, has pride of place in the Alexandria National Museum. PEPI: This statue changed my life. I never could imagine that I could find a statue of Alexander.

I'm very proud. I've uncovered his city, I've confirmed the Royal Quarter and now I'm going to continue my search. NARRATOR: Pepi has another 13 anomalies to dig up, scattered throughout the Shallalat Gardens.

FRED: If there's anything I've learned from Pepi it's you have to keep trying, you have to keep going. Has she found it yet? Not yet, but I don't think there is anybody who has gotten closer.

PEPI: It's an amazing feeling for an archaeologist, this is a gift. So I don't have the right now to stop. I have to continue.

Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.