What is it with Egypt already?

The land of pyramids and cuneiform is the focus of two documentaries this week. “The Mummy Who Would Would Be King,” airing Tuesday night, uses modern forensic science techniques to trace the ancestry of a shriveled mummy that has lain, ignored, on the shelf at a Niagara Falls museum.

The NOVA special talks to leading academics who first suspected that the cross-armed dead guy, who was later relocated to Emory University when the Nia-gara Falls museum was sold, was of royal birth and the lengths to which they went to insure the mummy’s protection.

“Egypt Untold” airs Friday night and recreates the adventure of three men who explored the Nile Valley. On successive Fridays in January, the three-part documentary tells the story of Howard Carter, Jean-Francois Champollion and Giovanni Bel-zoni. Howard opens the tomb of King Tut, and experiences something akin to the curses that befell the actual Tut. Champol-lion deciphers The Rosetta Stone, interpreting hieroglyphics and unraveling the mystery of Imhotep, the architect of Egypt’s first great pyramid.

Belzoni, a circus strongman, discovers the most amazing temple of them all – the tomb of Rameses II.

THE MUMMY WHO WOULD BE KING

Tuesday, 8 p.m., PBS

EGYPT UNTOLD

Friday, 9 p.m., Discovery Channel