In 1976, a French Air Force plane carried an unusual passenger into Paris: the mummified body of Ramesses II, flown in for emergency treatment against a fungal infection eating away at the tissue. This film follows that mission, the first time a pharaoh's remains left Egypt for scientific study, and the autopsy team that got closer to the Great Pharaoh than any historian ever had. The scans and physical examination turn up a severe hunchback, hardened arteries, and dental abscesses that likely caused him real agony in his final years, a far cry from the god-king image carved into temple walls. Historians and Egyptologists walk through what the findings mean for understanding Ramesses' actual health and age at death, while the film also sets his physical decline against the religious world he inhabited, including the belief that he had to battle the serpent of chaos in the underworld to protect creation. The mix of forensic detail and mythology gives a fuller picture of the man behind the monuments.