Giving Birth And Love Poetry Written By Village Women In Ancient Egypt | Our History

[Music] foreign the amber cliffs of thebes the desert the fringe the capital of ancient egypt a pitiless place where the men who made the king's tombs were born worked all their lives and died our villagers were here over 3 000 years ago and they're still here in this preserving desert where little changes a landscape filled with fragments of ancient life [Music] the ancient egyptians use these cliffs like a scribbling pad they wrote all over them they recorded everything on them from coronations to people's deaths and births all sorts of things here it's a very faint inscription now it's gone down gold with age like the whole cliff written with the very practiced hand of a master scribe a man called ammon nakt who worked on the royal tomb and he tells us that he brought three of his sons out here with him younger sons they were because he had older ones that were by now already grown up and enact himself would have been 45 50ish a senior man at the village indulgently taking the youngest of his large family on a big treat what did they come here for they came to the desert for the most extraordinary thing they came here to see a waterfall this is another waterfall and this one's right at the head of the valley of the kings right above the royal tombs it's funny you don't think it raining much here in the desert do you in fact it doesn't much you only get a few spots a year here but when it does rain in the desert sometimes you get these terrifying electrical storms and then a flood occurs because the rain comes down in buckets hits the driest sand and runs across the surface and of course it could come down off the sahara anywhere in down as the nile valley sometimes of course it can even come down into the valley of the kings and you get this incredible mass of stones and sand just roaring through here happens in a minute by the way one minute is sun shining here next minute the sky's dark pink lightning and boulders are smashing through the valley something the tomb workers were very very aware of and one terrifying night it was just as well they kept watch because it seems that none of them were hurt when the water came right down here smashing through here gouging these cliffs tearing the bottom off that cliff probably knocking over part of the rock there and filling it right up until you get to this level here you see down there some 40 foot lower that was the old floor of the valley the new floor of the valley where the trembling surprise workmen must have come and stood was just here and this is where they left their names and scratched little pictures of the gods the great gods who caused these terrible events they built their new settlement high above the royal valley on a little ridge well out the way of any floods it was much more lavish than anything they'd ever had before and it had some most extraordinary features in it this village has no kitchens in it no cellars no ladders no charcoal from cooking has ever been found here in fact it's only little places for sitting and sleeping all the cooking was sent out from the village by the wives down below and you know we've still got some of the orders the men sent home things that say please send some more beans for my two brothers that have just turned up and i suppose the women would trot out the path with bowls of steaming food for the men that lived up here it's very odd you know the relationship between men and women in our village women came in several titles it was for example a mistress of the household who was pretty posh and ran a lot of servants then there were other wives more sort of common law wives i suppose you might call them who went out to work they are called citizens by egyptologists they got good divorce settlements often their marriages broke up after five or six years but they would argue it out and write down a written agreement between the parties and people parted friends and often men and women both circulated around different households in the village but you know the real crux of the relationship between men and women in this village is really the emotional one and in that they seem to show an advance on most other communities really up until the last 100 years or so the clue to all this is the love poetry because in the love poetry you can see you can see an inequality of emotion between men and women both sexes fall in love both sexes have strong sexual emotions which are considered right and proper and beautiful and they're expressed in the language of the religion in fact a lover will compare the beloved in the same way that a man will address his god he will say you have hair of lapis lazuli you are perfume goes through me and she will reply in exactly the same strong language i think the love poetry indeed is some of the most beautiful things that our village has given the world because that's where most of it was written [Music] the wild goose soars and swoops it alights on the net many birds swarm about i have work to do i am held fast by my love alone my heart meets your heart beloved of men who rules my heart o happiness of this hour let the hour go on forever since i have lained with you you raised up my heart be it sad or gay do not leave me my lover is on yonder side the river is between our bodies the waters are mighty at flood time a crocodile waits in the shallows i enter the water and brave the waves the crocodile seems like a mouse to me [Music] i found my lover on his bed my heart was overjoyed each said i shall not leave you my hand is in your hand you and i shall wander in all the places fair none of scribe and nack's daughters would have worked upon the royal tombs but within the tradition of hearth and home village women enjoyed a high status as is shown in several ancient medical papyri egyptian doctors were really interested in women's disorders they had more remedies for example for say curing the pain of childbirth or menstrual disorders and they did for digging arrowheads out of people or curing knife wounds in fact i think that is if you just look at that alone it's a very interesting reflection of the care and status of women in egyptian society and nowhere is this more true than in the ceremonial that surrounded the act of childbirth and for that the maternity bed was moved into the front room the public room of the house where people normally came together in the evening to sit and talk it was just taken over for the whole right that surrounded childbirth first of all the walls were painted out not a bad idea and on them were painted figures of the gods that you associate with childbirth that's taowares with the great round stomach she's a hippopotamus god a little black dwarf called bess who runs around banging a tambourine and for some reason was a great favorite of pregnant women and then the ancestor shrine which is in every one of these front rooms was also adapted see normally this being the shrine there were little figures of the gods standing along the back wall and these were pushed back two columns of bricks rejected there now the ancient name really for childbirth is on the bricks that's their name for the event of childbirth and that's where the woman sat squatting actually in the most modern position it's come right back into fashion i suppose in the last few years and that is where the village lady gave birth to their children right in the public area of the village but in fact they did have some privacy because this was decorated for the event they put two wooden columns off and garland it all with lotuses and green plants and flowers which people in the desert love so much of course what a sensible arrangement it was not only were they using the most modern techniques that we used today they were also taking the woman out of the normal environment of the house away from whatever dirt was around and putting her in a different and enclosed place and then she sat for 30 days after child birth many of these practical household rituals have continued at thebes to this day our ancient village held a family whose job was exactly the same as this man's the mysterious profession of catching snakes and scorpions with a mixture of skill and magic and in the time of the ancient village this man would have also been a doctor treating everything from snake bites to ulcers if you look at the medical remedies of course then the modern doctors really put their noses out because they don't actually believe that if you mix up tortoise brains and peppermint oil rub it on your right shoulder it's going to help an ulcer but in fact it might just and i tell you how because it shows a system of caring in the village it shows a way of looking and sympathizing with people if for instance you look at a papyrus on eyes you'll find it on eye diseases you'll find it has something like 20 or 30 different diagnosis very very careful anybody looking that careful in the eye and cleaning it carefully worrying about the patient seems to me is part way to a cure ultimately our village was controlled from the other side of the river scriber managt had to walk down from the desert and cross these fields to the river and catch a ferry to see his boss and at the landing then as now was a market [Music] and still today many of its goods will be well known to the ancient scribe [Music] but today some things are long gone such as the slaves and the brightly painted coffins that the villagers made especially for this market which would be swapped for food and clothes and other luxuries that the state did not supply on the river these fishermen could well be those of amanak's village netting the tomb makers evening meal hard-working men who had known the scribe well and would serve his village faithfully for generation after generation as the head man of the village now almost as the patriarch of the village scribe and knack would have been the one who came across this river many times a week on business for the community that is collecting the food sending back tools picking up the pigments for the paint for using the royal tomb this 3000 years ago was an amazing sight because they weren't just these tourist boats there they were the grain barks of ammon the god owned 40 or 50 of them and they went up and down the river bringing in the grain from the fields to the great temples there are also more exotic vessels that have come across the great green which is what the ancient egyptians called the mediterranean that have been opium boats from the mycenaean ports cedar wood coming in from the lebanon juniper perrys from biblos all sorts of rare and exotic things [Music] and at the heart of the great city the vast temple of kharnak today millions are drawn from all over the world to see what the ancient people made but they come to a strange and puzzling place buildings speak in strange tongues in an architectural language that few can understand [Music] i wonder how many tourists go away overall by the stones yet puzzled by the central mystery in the place what does it all mean where do these doors and colonnades and pillars and pylons and shrines and dark rooms lead filled with people the place still seems empty veiled son of jacob explained the [Music] this is the building's heart a small empty room but it provides no clue but there is an intelligence at work here now the important thing to remember about karnak temple is that it isn't a church there's no altar no congregation is the secret house of a god basically this is its geometry it's a great long path that goes from the front door to the innermost recesses of the temple and from that the first architects when they planned the temple out drew two guidelines same distance apart on each side of the main axis and every building that went on that axis of that temple every time they built a bit more bigger and bigger and bigger was guided by those lines that they'd already put down right at the foundation of the temple the distance apart of these lines is controlled by a series that we modernly call the fibonacci series it's not really so difficult it just means every number in it is the sum of the two previous numbers so it goes one two three three and two five five and three six seven eight etcetera etcetera so that these measurements which go in qubits which is the ancient egyptian measurements about half a half a meter or something goes one cubit two cubits three five and i even so on now that's a wonderful scheme and it means you can go on building the building in harmony forever and ever however it does mean that in the last stages of the building you're getting very very big sizes indeed so this is why the first pylon is absolutely vast so it follows then that behind the great first pylon is the biggest and newest courtyard in the temple of karnak behind that on the main axis through the gateway over there is the hyperstar hall [Music] so here we are the most extraordinary one of the bravest ancient monuments in the world and the biggest hall of pillars ever made 134 of them and it's brave in a way because these pillars are not set in straight lines like those in greek temples they're made like a clump of trees and in fact that's what it's meant to be it's meant to be a huge papyrus swamp and these great piles of stone are meant to represent papyrus stems swaying gently in the wind the egyptians used their wonderful hall for many different things kings viziers and the high priests used to hold trials and commissions in here naman nakht the village scribe used to bring the copper chisels here for re-sharpening in the temple workshops the most important single function of this hall was as a processional way for the gods [Music] so [Music] i'm moving now through the darkest most mysterious part of the temple the walls are coming in the ceiling is coming up the floor is coming down we're coming to the apex of the triangle with the house of the god and all around our god in other little shrines the small and mysterious shrines of the gods of egypt unfortunately when you go to the middle of karnak to the heart of the great temple the god's gone and the house where he stood well it's ruined you can't really tell what went on once upon a time only the king of egypt and his closest delegates came in here and they attended on the figure of ammon stood here on this stone it's really difficult to see it today but there are other temples in egypt where you can get some idea of what a god's house looked like and nowhere better than here the best preserved temple in all egypt the temple of horus at edfu so that then standing over there in the gloom is the very house of the god magnificently cut from one piece of granite burnish like silver standing in a sandstone room and in that one over there behind two wooden doors once stood the god horus these houses you see were like the first hut ever made on the first mound that ever appeared in the waters of chaos at the beginning of creation and in this hut stood horus the god in a papyrus swamp and you can still see the papyrus swamp inside for horus it was who stood in a swamp and the swamp was at the dawn of creation horus was the first bird standing on the first piece of land here in the heart of this temple every egyptian temple had a lake of creation and on every egyptian temple's lake each morning there were certain acts that simulated the creation of the world one of these was to do with our friend here who laid the egg which held yes it did didn't it had the egg which held two things held the atmosphere which separated the earth from the sky and it held a goose which quacked made the first sound go and crack and make the first sound so we're going to simulate one of these marvelous events it hasn't been done for 3000 years we're going to launch him onto the lake of creation just as they did in karnak the priest did incarnate 3000 years ago come on mate here we are then we go go on go on cackle come on that's it go on down the hole come on come on [Music] nowadays some of our village's most intimate possessions are encased in the great museums of the world this little room in turin probably has more recorded egyptian history in it than any other room in the world these you see are unrolled rolls of papyrus on which the scribes have written hear court records of a royal trial this the oldest map in the world but this papyrus is the one we've come to see it's a bit of a tatty relic but the world in it is magic look at this little head it's an animal playing a double flute it's the pied piper of hamlin underneath is a bird climbing a ladder that's a barmy thing for a bird to do this bird can't fly all the animals in this papyrus are actually doing strange and insane things this is a modern copy because as you can see the original is a bit tatty but you can actually work out what's going on here and what you see is this absolutely insane world a donkey a donkey a bad animal being a priest all sorts of weird wonderful things in it now this may look like a comedy but it's no joke this basically unstable topsy-turvy world and there is another sort of drawing upon this strange papyrus they showed 12 couples 12 couples of the villagers making love it's an erotic papyrus it's the only one that survived extraordinary document think about it what it shows you in this one long thin strip you can divide it down the middle one half is stressless tenderful loving centerfold if you like no time in it at all the other side all these mad crazy animals doing weird things it's it's a villager's subconscious you can say you're actually looking right into somebody's mind i can tell you more about that inside of their mind too i can tell you that about five percent of the villagers dreams were concerned with making love how do i know such a thing well we actually have a book of dreams from the village gives you a list of four or five hundred dreams and gives you interpretations so you can say for example that if you dream you're eating crocodile flesh you're going to become a tax inspector if you dream you making love to your wife in public bad bad bad anxiety dream that is so a lot of anxiety in the dreams by the way can you imagine 15 of them are about loss of face fear that your words your wouldn't be understood in a village so you've got to think of our villager lying in bed bang as his awful dream he wakes up he's oh my god there's a terrible interpretation in the papyrus what can i do well the papyrus actually tells you what you can do what you do is you get up you go down to the cellar and you eat a lot of bread and drink a lot of beer and you have a prayer oh god i says don't let it happen to me and right through the village's most secret thoughts and during their most private acts there was a single god who looked deep into their hearts the village oracle was an especially sacred statue of the king amenhotep the first man who had founded the village and probably who laid in the first tomb the villagers ever made his shrine was the most revered set high amongst the other temples of the village it was from there that the statue was sometime carried by the villagers little processions like the great statue of ammon riot carnac it took him for instance to the valley of the kings there he would be carried over the mountains with all the workmen laughing and singing in front of the statue when they got to the valley they'd put the god down have a good drink and eat the special cakes they made good time was had by all and they brought the god back at night it was like a little outing for him but probably the most important function of the god was a sort of a safety valve for the village problems because people used to ask the god questions sometimes for example he'd be taken down the village high street and their people will come out of their houses and ask the god who has taken my mat or will my boy get promotion or how long will my father live and the god would answer them and it was on one of these occasions that a sculptor came out of the house and asked the god to find his stolen clothes so the village magician was sent for he walked along in front of the procession as they passed each house he shouted out the name of its owner the house of caja the house of sinegame the house of nefer then slowly as the procession moved down this part of the high street ground to a halt here right in front of scribe and knack's house must have been a terrifying moment for him after all there was this god accusingly standing outside his front door and he rushed out he addressed the god directly he said these clothes of which you speak did my daughter really take them the god said that she had so you can imagine the rather crestfallen scribe went back inside saw his daughter and together sorted out the clothes and gave them back to the man and accused them now we don't actually know whether these clothes were in some sort of a dispute or whether his daughter was a thief that's as far as the story goes but how you may ask did the god actually manage to say yes or no to anything how did the stone statue move well what really happened was that as the bearers moved with the god his power came into their shoulders so as they marched down the highest street in this particular part the statue pressed down on them so hard they couldn't move when ammon knacked asked his question the answer was indicated by the god nodding backwards and forwards that's how the god delivered his verdict such strange things still happen at look so which is a part of ancient thebes built on it indeed take that mosque over there mosque of abu hajjaj that's built in amongst the columns of the luxor temple as many egyptologists would like to know what it says on the text that are buried in the walls of the mosque so they must have been pretty delighted when in about 1935 king farouk donated the mosque on which i'm standing to hold the remains of the great saint who was buried in the mosque and a strange thing happened when the engineers turned up to move the saint the old man who'd come from baghdad to convert all of luxor to islam they found that when they approached his tomb to lift his body and bring it to his new mosque but they froze they couldn't move it's exactly the same thing that happened when the pool bearers carrying the oracle went past almond mac's house they froze too it's exactly the same situation and as the oracle pointed the finger at amanac's daughter so the old saints still lies in his tomb the egyptologists are still wondering what's buried underneath it when the knack first became a scribe to work in the royal tombs the artists were in the doldrums you get the feeling when you look at their work because this is a war was done about that time but they were really knocking it out the life had gone out of the work and that really is the severest test of egyptian art does the guy look like he's alive does the eye look like it might see you does the arm look like it might move well i think if you look at this arm very quickly you'll see that this angle there is so badly drawn it just doesn't articulate properly it doesn't look as if it could ever swing that's because the first process in this work was badly done these walls you see were left white and then the master draftsman came in and drew the lines that the sculptors would then engrave on the wall the ancient egyptians described it they said outline draftsman then graven by chiseled chisels and then coloured and that's what you've got here but look the outline draftsman is really not too worried about the king as a living man he's just earning his bread shuffling quickly round the face miserable little lips that you can hardly see a snake that's wobbling around on a little thin stick and isn't really alive an ugly clunking wig all this contrives to turn it into a rubber stamp for us i think ammunact himself was a painter and he designed and painted coffins all his life even after he became scribe and you can see his impact in the tombs in the 20 years he worked here in fact together with his sons one of whom became the master colour artist he really oversaw a renaissance in the royal terms so that this poor and miserable lifeless figure blossomed into the wonderful paintings of the later kings [Music] this is probably the only tomb in the valley of the kings we can actually see the master draftsman working on a wall it's my favorite tomb in the valley actually it's probably one of the greatest tombs of egyptian island it's still a bit secret not many people know about this tomb or it's wonderful drawings it's a tomb of this man that bashed up here prince montu hair copper chef man who's in charge of the royal chariotry but it's the artists that are more interesting than the prince here really let's just look at one line so that's how you really get to see the quality of these painters look at this arm here it runs down that's a long and then in another color it starts up there again now the artist before he made that line because that line takes a second a second and a half there's thought that this wonderful costume that the prince is wearing is just going to pull slightly on the king's arm so the skin is moved down slightly that's really thinking about it before you make the move you think i want this quality and i want that quality and you have the skill in your arm to be able to do it in one single stroke that's amazing actually it's not just the quality of thought and action because these guys actually had to make their own paints and brushes there weren't no tubes about in those days so all these lovely colors here were ground up on pallets probably several days before they actually came to work in the two they did this old test and it still works for paint today you know you get a little dab of the paint and you put it between two fingernails and you rub your fingernails together and you feel the grit there it's not ground enough and you have to grind it for another four or five hours when it is ground finely enough and you've left it then you have to let it stand in the water for a couple of days because if you don't when you start drawing these vast long lines here the little brushes that you use just filter the water from the pigment and you're left with a line of water so this is not just incredible skill you're looking at it's also great sophistication and knowledge of your craft and what an amazing sophistication it is too these lions run for feet after feet after feet in one stroke that means that the man actually has control in his arm and his arm muscles almost like a dancer and that's what this brush is doing really just sort of dancing through the air look at this line down the front of the face here very quick very sharp he knows exactly where he's going and he's got the control from the end of his brush to his arm like a samurai warrior you know i mean you can just do it that's really amazing brush work and he's thinking all the time see these wigs made of wool so to get a nice edge to describe their texture the artist has mixed a bit more water with his paint he's run it loosely down the edge and that really has all the textures on the person that described the sharp gold necklace the little tassel that wrinkles on it that holds it the tassels of the robe it's all carefully described carefully worked out with great thought so that's the attention this lucky prince got by his artists here you can see him in a succession of scenes he's worshiping gods the prince worshipping one god after another down the wall and you know in the end the most amazing thing about this tomb is that you can date it so accurately that this prince is stuck like a flying amber because these scenes have been going on for thousands of years they're timeless but this prince with all his nice new clothes and his great wigs and his special jewelry he comes from 1140 bc exactly by montu here koppeshev's time some 20 kings have been entombed in the royal valley must have been the greatest treasure chest of the ancient world the fort knox of its day imagine the incredible wealth gold and precious stones all quarried from the mountains of egypt re-buried in these cliffs gold the very skin of the gods and there were plenty of fiebins and foreigners brave enough to try to rob the dead kings and not to collect their treasure either but to smash it up and smelt it down ranged against the thieves was a police force before the modern road was cut the entrance to the royal valley looked like this a small stairway leading to a narrow cleft in a rock face and around the closed valley a ring of little watchtowers looked down upon the royal tombs the valley was so quiet that any sound a footfall the chisels blow would rise like the whisperings in a cathedral dome [Music] the royal tomb stood open to view shut off from the world only by thin cedar doors but in fact much more guarded these ancient kings than these snakes spitting their magic venom at ancient thieves for the police regularly inspected the door seals would have quickly detected a break-in so the robbers had to find other ways into the royal tombs either made their own tunnels or came in through other doors through old tombs long since empty it was in the very last chamber the old tomb that the robbers found what they had come for it was this a pile of chippings and at the back of the pile of chippings some plaster and some stone rudely stuffed into a hole and this hole they knew led down into a royal tomb beneath them that's where they broke through then the men all tumbled down their rope jumped onto the floor of the royal tomb and then of course it was just a short scramble through here down to the doors of the royal burial chamber all that stood between them and the king laying in his burial chamber was a thin cedarwood door which stood here with small seals which they broke through the door open and the probably frightened men by now tumbled down these steps into the royal burial chamber in the center of the king and around him all the goods of his court i suppose they quickly stripped those but the real nut the real pearl of the whole piece was the mummy of the king himself laying inside his sarcophagus so they pushed the lid off it smashed as it hit the floor and i'm standing on the bits [Music] it took the royal body out tore into the mummy band just stripped all the jewelry from him ripped off the royal heart scarab took the bracelets from his wrists and all the gold leaves that were down his body threw that to one side discarded took his coffins which was still covered in gold and took them from the tomb to spoil at their leisure [Music] [Music] thieving was now widespread throughout the ancient cemeteries of egypt most of the gangs included a boatman who would ferry the thieves away from the plunder graves sometimes landing them upon an island where they would set fire to their loot and distribute the melted drops of gold amongst themselves fortunately old scribe ammonic had not lived to see the plunder of the royal tombs but his son scribe hashiri had and he was very worried for some of the robbers were tomb makers members of his own family who lived in the village and although thebes was a large city it was a tight-knit community gossip spread through it like wildfire it was very difficult to keep secrets in an effort to forestall the arrest of the villagers harshuri hit upon a cunning scheme he would pass off the villagers crime upon other gangs of tomb robbers so he made an official report to the mayor of thebes telling that the royal tombs had been robbed forcing him to investigate a grand committee was convened and crossed the river traveling all around the myriad royal cemeteries examining the seals upon the tombs doors in a two-day inspection the two makers held their breath then the news spread through the temples and into the village they were in the clear they must have sighed with relief but then it was that they made their fatal mistake not knowing scribe harsheri's plan they all piled into ferryboats and crossed the river to confront the mayor the man who they thought had been their accuser in a great victory celebration so the villagers poured down here to the temple of karnak down this very path in a great happy mob actually it's really a political expression because they were celebrating the uncomfortable defeat of their accuser the mayor they're out to find his house now for a celebration in front of it well the mayor's house has long gone to dusk but certainly was in a few feet of where i'm walking at the moment what we do have and perhaps there's even more remarkable is the record of the exact conversation the past between him and the angry villagers well they got to the house and there was one hell of a row the mayor came to the door and met them and said you have rejoiced at me over the very door of my house what do you mean by it i'm the prince of reports of the king by now the villagers were in full flight and they said all the kings together with their royal wives and their royal mothers and the royal children who rest in the great and noble necropolis as the valley of the kings are protected and insured forever and ever and now the mayor was very angry because he knew they had been robbing the tombs and he said then your deeds belie your words and at that moment really they'd sealed their own fate because the mayor was going to get them [Music] the first thing he did was to isolate the village despite all scribe harshuri's frantic efforts the donkey trains that brought their food was stopped and the villagers depended upon the state for their food slowly began to starve a bdi was fixed on the villages and their movements were restricted the thieves loot still in the village houses could not now be moved or hidden [Music] and then disaster struck they had a house to house search of the village and they found a lot of gold and silver and as usual they didn't actually arrest the bosses of course but the deputy foreman and three members of each gang and then they brought them in their loot here across the river then prison them in a temple and that is what i'm looking for yeah that's what we've come to see here's the king here's his name is his hands and here a bit bashed up there's a goddess and a hat she wears a feather now this feather is a feather when you die and are called up for judgment goes on one half of a pair of scales just like the scales on the old bailey right and on the other side goes your heart and if the feather weighs more than your heart the crocodile eats you up and that of course is why the men came here because this is her temple it's the temple of justice the temple of mart and this is where they imprison the old villagers can you imagine poor old scribe harsheri came across the river and sat probably on this very stone and looked through the grill there was a door there you see and he looked through the grill and he thinks despite all his efforts they've got them they've got a lot of members of his family really they've got his younger brother and his three sons got an uncle and his three sons the scribe's helpless he can do nothing and that evening he goes away and then for 24 days those guys are questioned and they are questioned and lists are made and lists and their arms are twisted because this is not a court of law really they're not actually deciding whether these guys are guilty or innocent what they're doing is trying to get the loot back so that's why they're making these lists all the time and really in the end the terrible agony they're going through because it is agony it's pretty badly pretty bad torture the end only comes when they've got that money back well what did you do in 1107 bc when you won the pools because that's about what these guys have done they've ripped off a jackpot really when you think that the foreman had made about 50 years salary and the other robbers wouldn't have made about 25 years that's a lot of money together so the lists that they made the confessions are absolutely fascinating like a cross-section of their life really so what did they do with all their loot well they came from a poor village so with some of it they bought food but after all food was still relatively inexpensive so lots of other things they could get they went out and bought themselves new linen clothes lovely sandals they brought good strong beer meat cooking oil all sorts of wonderful things and from all the women that are on the records without apparently performing any function you imagine a good deal of why women and song went on as well but those days were over now the eight men were taken back across the river but they never went back to their village probably in the end they were tied to wooden stakes in the desert and simply left to die and even after this the villagers were not led off the hook the vizier saw to it that they had no rations for another three weeks and they starved then one day he turned up again in thebes brought the whole village here to the valley of the queens he's going to teach him a lesson of first hand brought them to this tomb here the very tomb that the eight men robbed there's its door of course the tomb door looked nice and shut it's nice white ceilings down the front absolutely untouched unrobbed it's so seemed because of course if you remember the eight men had got in the back of the tomb to rob it so the vizier had the door took down and to nobody's surprise of course the inside was smashed to fragments sarcophagus was in pieces the coffins were smashed up and everything the villagers must have looked very shame-faced indeed and the vizier turned on them and said don't do that again and he let them have their rations because they've been starving now for a long time but the village's humiliation did not stop there although the vizier had restored their rations the donkey trains did not come to the village bringing their food and still starving the villagers walked down from their village past the great state temples and across the green fields to the viziers state barge was moored at the riverbank and there they pleaded with him and then and only then he finally relented and gave them bread from his own food stores and ordered them back to work [Music] immediately and in the paintings the village art is made at this time in the king's tomb something of the nightmare of those months remains the royal underworld seems haunted by specters of the villagers own sufferings [Music] do you

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Id: NvF4r3e8hsI

Length: 50min 4sec (3004 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 17 2020