NARRATOR: Egypt, Valley of the Queens.
January 26, 1909.
13 years before the discovery of King Tut's tomb, artist
and playwright Joseph Lindon Smith
and Egyptologist Arthur Weigel perform a theater
piece for Howard Carter's team.
The play tells the story of a curse that
was placed on the pharaoh Akhenaten
by the priests of Amun, who he had defied.
According to the curse, Akhenaten
would not be able to travel to the other world,
but would be doomed to walk the earth as a ghost.
Now, some very interesting circumstances
unfortunately took place when they
went through with this play.
This storm comes up out of nowhere,
blinds one of the actresses.
One of the playwriter's wives is befuddled
with this unknown sickness.
Really raises a lot of questions as to disperse around Akhenaten
actually being real.
Right in front of me is the sarcophagus of the king.
Now, there's a lot of debate about the middle coffin.
It has different facial features than the rest,
and it also seems like the cartouche where
the name of the king would be was replaced
with King Tut's name instead.
Now under further analysis, they were
able to read the name on the cartouche
underneath King Tut's name.
And that read Ankhkheprure.
Ankhkheprure was not King Tut.
NARRATOR: Why was a sarcophagus that was made for Ankhkheprure
used to hold the mummy of King Tut?
His death at 19 was definitely a problem for the tomb makers.
It ended up being a rush job.
He got the smallest tomb in the valley.
NARRATOR: But who is Ankhkheprure?
Every ruler in ancient Egypt was given a throne name that was
different from his birth name.
The throne name of Ankhkheprure is believed
to have belonged to a very important and mysterious
member of King Tut's family.
Ankhkheprure could have been the throne name of Prince
Thutmose, who was allegedly Akhenaten's brother
and was supposed to rule before or after Akhenaten,
but never got to.
NARRATOR: There are numerous theories regarding Akhenaten's
mysterious brother, Thutmose.
But the most profound comes from an unexpected source--
Sigmund Freud.
Who in addition to being the founder of psychoanalysis,
was also a scholar of Judaism and ancient Egypt.
Sigmund Freud, the famous psychoanalyst, in 1939 first
suggested the monotheism began with Akhenaten.
And he thought that someone in Akhenaten's court, perhaps
his brother, Thutmose, could in fact be the historical Moses.
NARRATOR: Could Sigmund Freud's audacious conclusion be true?
That Akhenaten's biological brother was, in fact,
the Hebrew leader Moses?
According to Freud, the events depicted
in the Bible surrounding Moses' birth, exile,
and most importantly, his introduction of monotheism
perfectly coincide with the historical record of Thutmose.
The name Thutmose means son of the god Thoth.
If you take away the Tut element in his name,
it simply means son of.
Mose means the son of.
Now the name Moses is very similar to Mose,
and it just so happens that the story of Moses in the Bible
is set at exactly the same time that Thutmose
disappears from history.
And we are told in the Bible that Moses
grows up as the brother of the prince apparent to the throne.
In other words, the historical Thutmose
could be the biblical Moses.