Next, please!
Um, hi?
Name? Oh. Um, Queen Nearit.
Oh!
Sorry, I didn't realise we were amongst royalty.
Oi, Osiris! Check this out.
We've got a queen. Ah!
You might know him as Lord of the Underworld
and Judge of the Dead.
Where am I?
You're dead, darl.
And you've been mummified, which is great news for you.
It is? Yeah!
Look at you, all in one piece.
Oh, well, except for your brain and your lungs
and, well, all your organs, really.
They're over there in a jar.
Oh! What do I do now?
Well, you can start by filling out this papyrus work,
and then we're going to have to weigh your heart
against this Feather of Ma'at.
But as long as that checks out, you're good to go!
(CHUCKLES) OK.
This is Queen Nearit.
Well, it's Amelia playing Queen Nearit.
We don't have vision of the real Queen Nearit
because she died about 4,200 years ago.
But now we know a lot more about her because of this discovery.
It's a funerary temple near the Queen's pyramid
containing a bunch of treasures and ancient artefacts.
In 2010, we found a pyramid of a queen,
but we never know the name of that queen.
Only yesterday, we found a thimble for the pyramid
and we found the name of the queen - her name was Nearit.
She was the third wife of King Teti,
the first pharaoh of Egypt's 6th Dynasty,
who ruled from 2323 BC
to 2291 BC,
which means she was a big deal in life and in death.
You see, ancient Egyptians believed that,
when you died, you took a lot of your wealth with you.
They built elaborate monuments for their dead royals
and stuffed them with treasure.
They also went to a lot of effort
to preserve their bodies through mummification.
That's when people known as
embalmers do a bunch of things
to try and preserve their body,
like removing any organs
and placing them in jars,
including the brain,
which was pulled out with a hook
straight up the nose,
then covering the body
in a special salt called natron
for about 40 days
until everything was nice and dry,
and then stuffing the body
with spices, rags and plants,
before wrapping it in linen bandages
and placing it in a beautifully decorated coffin.
If it was done well, it meant bodies could remain intact
for thousands of years,
and it's one of the reasons why we now know so much about
ancient Egyptians and their way of life, or death.
And they didn't just mummify people.
They also mummified their pets.
Meanwhile, here in Queen Nearit's funerary temple,
there were also statues and figures,
ancient games, masks and other artefacts,
and a four-metre papyrus scroll
containing a chapter from the Book of the Dead,
which is a book of spells that direct the deceased
through the underworld in ancient Egypt.
Archaeologists also found 22 other burial sites
containing 54 colourfully decorated coffins,
complete with mummies,
and they reckon they've only scratched the surface of this area.
So, who knows what other interesting ancient Egyptians we'll get to meet?
Um, is there any chance I could get my belongings back?
Oh, and maybe my organs?
Oh, yeah, of course.
They just have to be cleared by our customs department first.
You know, formalities and whatnot.
Um, customs?