0:00 It took sixteen steps to get down to the doorway.0:04 I know because I counted them every time I carried a basket of rock and sand back up into the blinding sun.0:15 Just last week, we heard from Elias, a clerk watching men in Philadelphia sign a new country into existence.0:26 I was not watching something new.0:29 I was watching something very, very old be reborn.0:34 My name is Ahmed.0:36 And on November twenty-sixth, 1922, the air in the Valley of the Kings tasted of dust and something else… something ancient.0:49 For five long seasons, we had moved a desert, basket by basket, for the Englishman, Howard Carter.0:59 He was a hard man.1:00 Not cruel, but… focused.1:03 He saw the ghosts in the rocks, and he would not rest until he found them.1:10 We thought he was chasing shadows.1:14 We thought the valley was empty.1:17 We were wrong.1:18 The heat was a hammer.1:20 The silence was a blanket.1:23 The only sound was the soft tap… tap… tap of Mr.1:28 Carter’s chisel against the plaster of the sealed door.1:33 He worked alone at the threshold, a small man making a small hole.1:40 Behind him stood his patron, the Lord Carnarvon, and the Lord's daughter, their pale English faces flushed from the sun.1:52 And behind them, we stood.1:55 The diggers.1:56 The water boys.1:58 The men whose sweat had cleared this path.2:02 We didn’t speak.2:03 We watched.2:04 We had found the top of a staircase just weeks before, and the excitement had been a fever among us.2:15 Now… now it was something deeper.2:18 Something sacred.2:20 This was not just a rich man’s treasure hunt.2:24 This was the resting place of a pharaoh.2:28 One of OUR pharaohs.2:30 Mr.2:30 Carter worked so slowly.2:33 He was not smashing his way in.2:36 He was… asking permission.2:39 He chipped away at the top left corner of the doorway, just enough for a man to see.2:47 The dust that fell was not the dust of the valley.2:52 It was the dust of three thousand years.2:56 Finally, he stopped.2:58 The hole was made.3:00 He took a long, thin candle and lit it.3:04 The flame trembled in his hand.3:07 He pushed it through the opening.3:10 And then he leaned forward, pressing his face to the stone, and went still.3:18 The silence that followed was the loudest thing I have ever heard.3:25 It was heavier than all the rock we had moved.3:29 Lord Carnarvon couldn’t bear it.3:32 “Can you see anything?” he asked, his voice cracking in the dry air.3:39 For a moment, there was no answer.3:43 We all held our breath.3:45 Me, my cousin Mahmoud, the old man Hassan who said his grandfather had dug in this same valley… all of us.3:56 Waiting.3:56 Then, Mr.3:57 Carter pulled back from the hole.4:01 He turned his head, but not his body.4:04 He looked… stunned.4:06 Like a man who had just seen the face of God.4:11 His voice was a whisper, but it carried across the dust.4:16 “Yes,” he said.4:18 “Wonderful things.” The words did not explode.4:23 They landed.4:24 They settled in the air between us.4:27 Wonderful things.4:29 Suddenly, the heat did not matter.4:32 The thirst did not matter.4:35 A puff of air escaped the tomb, carrying a smell of gold and perfume and time itself.4:44 And through that tiny hole, I could just see it.4:49 A flicker.4:50 A glint of something that had not seen the sun since the world was new.4:57 The Englishman had found his treasure.5:00 But we… we had found our king.
