Plot Synopsis

Narrated by Jason Priestley, MUMMIES ALIVE reveals the extraordinary stories behind the world's most enigmatic mummies. By investigating their incredible preserved remains and bringing them to back to life through cutting-edge CGI, their stories and the secrets of past civilizations come to light. Each of the six one-hour episodes focuses on one mummy including: a legendary cowboy gunslinger of the American Wild West; two Iron Age bog bodies unearthed from the peat fields of Ireland; a 3,000-year-old Egyptian pharaoh; a 5,300-year-old mummy, known as Otzi the Iceman who was discovered frozen on a mountain glacier in the Italian Alps; the Inca Maiden, a 14-year-old girl found on top of a 22,000-foot volcano in South America; and Hero of Herculaneum, one of 300 mummified skeletons were found buried in ash from the volcanic destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, who was armed to the teeth and carrying a huge cache of gold and silver.
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On Sunday, July 12, 2015 at 9pm ET/PT, Smithsonian premiered the season finale of MUMMIES ALIVE. The season ender, "Hero of Herculaneum," chronicles how the eruption of Mount Vesuvius wreaked havoc on the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum 2,000 years ago, burying them in ash. But there's a forgotten chapter to this tragedy, involving a mass grave of 300 men, women, and children, unearthed in a Herculaneum boathouse in 1982. Found among the corpses: the mummified remains of a man, separated from the others, armed to the teeth and carrying a cache of gold and silver. Was he a hero or a villain? Scientists look for clues in the ancient city and on the body itself.