The Rise And Fall Of The Ancient Egyptians | Immortal Egypt | Odyssey

if you love ancient history then this is the channel for you history hit tv it's like netflix but dedicated just to ad-free history documentaries including a huge library of ancient history content from the ninth legion to boudicca to the first britain simply check out the details in the description below and make sure you use code odyssey on sign up [Music] camel get up [Laughter] this is brilliant this is obviously an iconic image taking a camel ride by the pyramids surely it encapsulates the spirit of egypt but such an image is completely misleading because there weren't any camels here when the pyramids were built four and a half thousand years ago and that's the thing ancient egypt is instantly recognizable but all too often completely misunderstood so i'm gonna try and change that good luck shakrangazil the great pyramid of giza final resting place of king khufu over 140 meters from bottom to top no wonder it still pulls in the crowds and the occasional egyptologist it's hard to really get it into words but we are now entering into the debts of this iconic monument of ancient egypt it's available it's a very busy iconic monument though it's a velcro and as we set foot on this journey upwards it's a brilliant metaphor for the way that the ancient egyptian civilization literally rose up from the earth to a real zenith so come with me and i'll show you something really brilliant because the pyramids are really only the tip of the iceberg [Music] oh oh flipping out [Music] so all this was a a big city overwhelming [Music] that is absolutely superb in this series i'm going to explore the story of what i consider to be the world's greatest civilization more than 4 000 years of history that has shaped our world and left unmistakable marks that can still be read today i'll be looking into every nook and cranny from little known tombs it's staggering i've never ever been into a tomb quite like this before to the hidden corners of vast monuments it's like being on top of the world isn't it yeah we are in the tub of karnak so it's really no surprise that weird and wonderful theories about ancient egypt crop up all the time but what i find so amazing is that this most intriguing civilization was actually created by people not so very different from you and me and that's the story i want to tell a story full of secret treasures dark deeds and sometimes controversial theories this mask was originally made for someone else and for the first time i'll be piecing it all together [Music] from the earliest egyptians to the last of the pharaohs wow look at that look at that oh that is oh that is so beautiful welcome to my story of ancient egypt [Music] the big question is how did ancient egypt begin where did the first egyptians and their extraordinary culture come from [Music] this immortal civilization was thousands of years in the making so to pull it all together is a daunting task but bear with me as it's utterly fascinating but we won't begin with massive monuments but with some enigmatic clues you could easily miss [Music] this is curta around 100 kilometers south of luxo unless you're an archaeologist you almost certainly won't have heard of it because there aren't any great temples or royal tombs to admire but high in the cliffs you can see real signs of ancient life here thousands of years before the pyramids and this is where our story begins welcome to kuta joanne thank you so much for letting me come here it's incredibly exciting it's the first time you're here i suppose nothing escapes the sharp eye of dr dirk higger and he's got something very special to show me not many people have been here before you because it's it's a quite recent discovery these carvings in the rock reveal an amazing story about the beginnings of egyptian life it's a nineteen thousand year old picture gallery [Music] complete with its own hippo back line very short tail fine legs belly line front legs and the mouth is shown you're probably smiling but then again a nipple is always smiling but another type of animal is by far the most common here that's that's cattle not just cattle there's the mighty aurochs the wild profit wild cattle and the extremely powerful images that seem to be in movement they are the charging down to orders aren't they these wild aurochs were ancestors of the domestic cow and nearly twenty thousand years ago beef was the main thing on the menu about maybe fifty percent of their diet was composed of all rocks so they were experts and masters in representing this animal [Music] it's always high on the cliff very prominent positions that give an excellent panorama over what must have been in the paleolithic the hunting grounds of the people it's easy to picture these early hunters here as they tracked their prey [Music] but the landscape would have looked very different from today because back then this was savannah grassland a green and fertile region [Music] do we have any idea why these creatures were engraved on these rocks here we can guess johann but we don't know maybe they wanted to influence the hunting maybe this is some sort of hunting magic it really is magical to sit here and imagine egypt's earliest nomadic people passing right through this spot and portraying on these very rocks the animals that they saw all around them human figures and boats joined the animals as the carvings became stranger and stranger but these carvings are also the earliest glimpse of the amazing things to come these are the first signs of what makes ancient egypt well ancient egypt as for its ancient landscape this evolved under dramatic circumstances ten thousand years ago gravity tilted the entire earth of its axis by about half a degree and this had a profound effect on climate and as the world began to change egypt would never be the same again now these early people were nomads seasonally mobile pastoralists who moved around following the summer reigns and these rains really were the vital life-bringing force which created the greenery on which wild animals depended but of course with climate change these rains began to dry up okay you can cut the rain the diminishing rainfall forced both animals and people towards large lakes which formed during the rainy season one such area is nabta playa a hundred kilometers southwest of a swamp here these nomadic hunters began to settle into communities but still reliant on the annual summer reigns they needed to predict exactly when these would return and so they turned to the night sky welcome to the beginning of time quite literally because this is egypt's oldest calendar at around 7 000 years old this stone circle from nabta playa is the earliest evidence of how egyptian weather forecasters became astronomers they aligned its central stones to the circumpolar stars visible in the night sky all year round when the sun appeared directly overhead the stones cast no shadow the mid-summer rains were approaching this meant that the animals would drink the plants would grow and the world would survive for another year so in many ways this circle represents the solution to the very real problem of survival but the egyptians would take this a step further i think the really great thing about these mini monumental markers is that this is the earliest example we have of the way in which the egyptians are aligning their monuments to various things to the sky to the cardinal points and from now on every tomb every temple every monument will be aligned to the heavens to the very gods themselves [Music] if the stars in the rain were this closely linked then this world and the next must be one and the same [Music] and this has been described as egypt's earliest sculpted stone monument and dates from around 5000 bc [Music] this chunk of sandstone was quarried over a mile away from where it was eventually discovered this certainly suggests a kind of sense of community where people were already working together to achieve a desired aim in this case the stone was hauled into place and then there are clear signs that it's been sculpted into a specific shape now you might have to go with me on this but some believe that this is in fact a cow with its large hindquarters and this sculpted head now the cow was a vital part of everyday life for these people it was a source of meat of milk and of blood key sources of protein they needed to keep them healthy and yet so important was the cow they chose to take it through into the afterlife with them to sustain them on a spiritual level and this is the very beginnings of the great cow goddess hathor hathor may have started off as a source of milk and meat but eventually she would be loved and idolized by millions of egyptians since she represented love joy beauty and motherhood and although her image develops from a lifelike animal to a female face with cow's ears this may be hathor's very earliest incarnation [Music] yet hathor is only one of a multitude of gods and goddesses the egyptians just couldn't get enough of them over the centuries emerged hundreds if not thousands of deities each with a specific purpose and appearance some came in human form some had animal heads they could be male female even androgynous it seems that there were few aspects of life that didn't have their own gods we know that in the very earliest times their gods resembled familiar things the world around them elements of nature and certainly animals and over time the animals their forms their shapes their characteristics distill down into this sort of divine figure each one worshiped for a different quality in the case of the ram they were worshiped for their pro-creative powers in the case of the cow for their nurturing motherly instincts and of course you've got rather different creatures the dangerous creatures the ones that lived on the edges of the egyptian world the lions the crocodiles the jackals [Music] but it wasn't just about finding the appropriate divinity it was about gaining power over them the goddess sekhmet was a ferocious lioness and the bringer of death to humans so the egyptians transformed her into a deity as a way of controlling her destructive powers by a worshipping segment it was believed that she could be placated and transformed into a more benign deity on so many levels the egyptians were trying to tap into nature to affect the way that nature then in turn affected them [Music] in many ways egypt's unique religion was the glue that held society together uniting the population and underpinning almost every aspect of life it's everywhere in tombs in temples in everyday life and yet there is another even more fundamental element without which ancient egypt would never have existed at all [Music] later greek historians famously observed that egypt was the gift of the nile and how right they were because as the climate continued to change the desert lakes eventually dried up leaving the egyptians with just one source of water this is an incredibly special place located in modern sudan it nonetheless forms the very source of egypt but it's the place where two great rivers meet the white nile and the blue nile which combine here to form the world's longest river flowing from the heart of africa and out into the mediterranean sea for much of the year the wide lazy white nile is the main source of water until annual rainfall in the ethiopian highlands swells the fast-flowing blue nile today the modern aswan dams hold back these floodwaters but until the 20th century huge volumes of water and fertile silt surged down river to flood the entire nile valley bringing life and fertility to the desert that is egypt [Music] this annual nile flood was the single most important event in the lives of every ancient egyptian for its life-giving waters brought the nutrients and minerals which enriched the soil all along its banks and this allowed agriculture to flourish egypt is blessed with some of the most fertile land in the world where farmers can grow everything from sweet corn and garlic to bananas sugar cane and cotton bad away it's quite intensive farming isn't it the land gives the people a lot doesn't it yes but we need to give the land also rest we grow one time and we leave it for one month then after we use the land again to grow again that's amazing that it only needs one month rest time and then it can be planted again yeah sometimes 15 days sometime one month yeah but it really does emphasize that this land of egypt has always been so rich and so giving to the people it's always given the people everything they need and it's the nile that turned this desert land into a paradise [Music] and seven thousand years ago the people who could no longer survive in an increasingly desert landscape were forced to migrate towards it as their only source of water so ancient egypt took shape as these people came together along the banks of the nile in the north settlements clustered around the delta and the fayum and in the south around the kenner bend this was the beginning of egypt's so-called two lands upper and lower egypt which developed into two distinct cultures [Music] but what they both had in common was the astonishing fertility replenished every year by the miracle of the nile [Music] el cab located to the south of the kennebend is one of upper egypt's earliest settlements [Music] and while it may lack the wow factor of the pyramids it's actually far more revealing to see traces of this amazing evolution because here we can see how a nomadic lifestyle was soon replaced by a settled social structure and although it was a slow and gradual process archaeologist elizabeth hart can identify each stage of this transformation wow you do work in an end class but it's much cooler down here it's lovely actually so down at this level we have sterile soil where nobody lived and then starting around 4200 bc are layers of silt from the nile flood followed by wind accumulated sand and then another layer of silt and then more sand and here you can see it really well a thin silt layer from the nile coming up and flooding and then the sand and over here we have a hearth feature so this tells us that humans were actually living on these and coming into the nile valley and then moving back out and we also found lots of pot shards and stone tools in these layers you know it might be a small space but you've got people's real lives unfolding within it aren't you and we have thousands of years of it here when we started people were just moving into the nile valley they were just starting to farm and by the end here we have pharaohs and a whole united egypt it's really impressive when you think about all the change that happened over this chunk of sand although we are still centuries away from the grand pharonic monuments you can still find traces of the lives these ancient people lived if you look hard enough for very little has survived except for tons of pottery yeah this one is uh yeah so it's five thousand years old five thousand years old these pots help us to identify when this early society began to produce a food surplus a pivotal transition which required robust pottery for the storage of large-scale food and drink production these bread molds from slightly later are one of the most common finds so you heat the mold then the dog gets into into it and by the heat of the mold the the bake the bread will be will be baked but this comes in massive amounts these are the beer jars ah bread and beer egyptian staples oh nice nicer beer jar this is the nuts and bolts of how egyptian chronology all came together in the early days isn't it yes the pottery is especially fundamental to understand how people were living [Music] yet in egypt living was only half the story because what really sets the ancient egyptians apart is their view of death to them death wasn't the end of life but a new beginning a transformation from the world of the living into an everlasting afterlife and such a belief would shape egypt's most mysterious practice and my favorite subject [Music] mummification although the origins of this enigmatic tradition are only now becoming clearer the burial of their dead had a strong significance from the very earliest times this is a typical burial from around 3400 bc the body is curled into the fetal position and here placed within a reconstructed pit grave surrounded by the belongings he might have had in his earthly life like pottery jewelry and a palette for preparing cosmetics everything that was important to him in life accompanied him into death and i think that's quite significant because it shows that already five and a half thousand years ago the egyptians wanted to take it all with them they clearly believed that something happened beyond death death was simply a transition into another state of existence when you continued to live and it was assumed you would need everything you'd needed in your life on earth his body was naturally mummified in the hot desert sand but its placement here may not have been accidental because even when dead the body had to be preserved in order to house the soul for eternity a skeleton simply wasn't good enough skeletons bones they are very very anonymous and yet when the soft tissue the skin the hair is all present we are ourselves and that's exactly what this individual represents being face to face with one of the very earliest egyptians gives us insight into the development of their ideas about the afterlife it started off as a practical thing burying the dead in a relatively small space bundled up and then it developed these layers of kind of like the symbolism the fetal position this idea in rebirth into the next world it's almost like the seed from which the egyptian funerary belief system evolved this is the very beginning of a process which would be repeated a million fold throughout egyptian history this is combination of the esoteric underpinned by the practical which really does sum up the egyptians in a nutshell from the very beginning the egyptians were masters of making sense of their world no matter how complex and mystifying it might seem to us and this same ability to bring order is also found in the way they structured their early society adopting levels of bureaucracy that border on the obsessive in the ancient city of abidos the site of egypt's first royal burial ground archaeologists found the origins of a system that we still have to put up with today [Music] it's most fitting that this city of death was the fine spot of the earliest means of calculating that other great certainty taxes the evidence comes from small bone and ivory labels like these which have been dated to around 3250 bc the originals are probably the size of a postage stamp and you can see that each one is engraved with images of animals of birds of plants and so forth and each one is pierced for suspension to a chest or pottery vessel which would have contained oil linen grain and it's thought that these symbols represent the regions that produce these commodities which were then brought here to abide us thought to have been sent as tax payments these tiny labels show how these early people were already capable of collecting duties from a vast geographical area some experts even believe these symbols can be vocalized by turning the simple drawings into sounds makes this the world's earliest known writing now isn't it interesting that the world's earliest writing wasn't developed to express some great outpouring of emotion or expressed grand passion it was simply a means of calculating taxes these symbols soon became a sophisticated writing system of elegant signs we call hieroglyphs which means sacred carvings and these signs represented every aspect of the egyptian world which were only translated in 1822 with the discovery of the rosetta stone [Music] and a common language was needed as goods were transported between the two lands of upper and lower egypt the people of lower egypt had also developed trade links with the rest of the ancient world but as more warlike regions began to emerge in upper egypt it soon became clear that the nile had spawned two very different and distinctive cultures and in many ways the only thing they really had in common was this great river [Music] the inevitable clash between these cultures is recorded on what many consider to be ancient egypt's founding document taking the form of a giant ceremonial cosmetic palette this is an exact copy of the original nama palette and however idealized and embellished it depicts the pivotal moment when the southern king nama defeated his northern enemy a split second after this mace comes down onto this northern enemy's head and he's executed he's killed he is no more nama himself remains the first king of a united egypt and what this means is that the whole of the country is now united under one man's rule he is setting himself up quite literally as the god king as the one central figure at the very pinnacle of the pyramid that forms egyptian society and from him everything else flows egypt is now the world's first nation state [Music] what made ancient egypt ancient egypt is all here the art forms the reforms of religion and even the world's first writing hieroglyphic script this is the name of nama the catfish no and the chisel no no my striking catfish as the first king of egypt nama is protected by the cow goddess hathor stands beside horus the falcon god of kingship and is dressed in all the same paraphernalia as every king who succeeds him he has the tie on false beard to emphasize his virility and his strength and this is matched of course by the time bull's tail it's a wonderful feature this idea you could just tie a little tail onto the back of the belt and then take into yourself the power of a bull this pallet is egypt's earliest historical document it's the blueprint of how every future pharaoh will be portrayed in the company of the gods [Music] yet perhaps most significant is numbers smiting pose this powerful image with the mace held high will be endlessly repeated throughout egypt's long history this is a horrible way to die to have your brains bludgeoned out and yet even this the egyptian artist can show in an almost ballet-like pose it's been sanitized it's been elevated to a piece of art and yet the message still gets through for the next three thousand years everyone of egypt's subsequent rulers would try and link themselves to egypt's first pharaoh to rule legitimately and successfully they had to be absorbed into the complexities of the egyptian hierarchy both in this world and the next so their names were recorded on a series of king lists a kind of royal family tree and the best preserved of these is here in the temple of seti the first to tabaidos it lists himself and 75 of his royal predecessors going right back to the very dawn of egyptian history with the very first king up there king nama and the other important detail about this is that it's essentially emphasizing that royal continuity because seti has his own young son ramses the crown prince actually reading out these names on a piece of papyrus paper so it's as if seti is saying to the gods look i'm now pharaoh and this is my son who'll succeed me to become yet another name on this remarkable list in all egypt had over 300 pharaohs organized into 30 dynasties but in the case of egypt's earliest kings being male immortal was not enough they needed to prove their divinity by exercising absolute control over their subjects and the evidence for this was found in the desolate desert surrounding the ancient city of abidos [Music] this was egypt's first royal burial ground the original version of the valley of the kings now being here you get a real sense of the importance of this place for the ancient egyptians for as the wind funnels down this valley and swirls around the sand if you listen very carefully you can hear a whispering sound a whispering once thought to be the voices of the very dead themselves and here egypt's earliest kings were laid to rest within huge subterranean burial chambers like this the location of the final resting place of egypt's third pharaoh king ger one of the largest and most complex tombs of the first dynasty and although it's been recovered in sand it clearly demonstrates the power that juror still wielded even in death jur himself was buried here in the central chamber but all around the 318 subsidiary graves of his courtiers not only that a little way beyond many others were also buried in total 587 individuals accompanied this man to the next world which is incredible enough but there is evidence of a more sinister twist the fact that this tomb was all sealed over at the same time suggests these people may have been victims of ritual sacrifice perhaps even ritual stabbing as portrayed in art of the time and certainly that power over life and death would give any king a god-like status now later kings seemed to have realized that killing all their courtiers in one go was not the best use of people who were a precious state resource after all he'll be around to make the next king's cup of tea although this cruel and short-sighted practice of ritual killing soon died out it had nonetheless demonstrated that egypt's rulers had complete control over their subjects an essential step along the route towards building the pyramids and indeed egypt itself yet the egyptian people were not slaves by this time egypt was a land of plenty where all could enjoy its bounty both in life and in death this is the later tomb of an official called eru qatar and here he is greeting us he's coming to the door of his own tomb emerging from the walls captured in all his splendor with his finery on his jeweled belt and his white linen and kilt even details down to his little sort of pencil mustache looks a little bit like clark gable to be honest the scenes in his colorful tomb depict a refined life that's a world away from egypt's earliest farmers we have iroquatar seated in front of a table of food offerings there's fruit vegetables wine and so forth the berries are coming forward with offerings to sustain his soul irukata was the royal butcher an important member of court and with royal courtiers no longer sacrifice for burial with their king they could now make their own elaborate preparations for the afterlife there are a couple of scenes up here of the household servants making the beds of iroquota and his family there stretching out the linen sheets they're bringing even a little fly whisk and the ancient egyptian pillow the headrest there so even in the afterlife hero qatar will be comfortable hiroukita's tomb is in saqqara a sprawling city of the dead for egypt's first capital memphis yet zakara wasn't just the burial site of courtiers but of kings and the site of a revolution in royal tomb building [Music] and whereas previously the dead had tended to be buried away in the desert hidden away almost here at sakara high on the desert escarpment the dead were literally placed on display up to this point the egyptians had tended to build their tombs and temples like their houses from organic materials from the mud break wood and reeds which rarely survive but in the third dynasty the great innovator king jose built his legacy in something far more permanent for he built in stone which could potentially last forever jose built this huge stone wall to surround his tomb complex although his architects and workmen still drew their inspiration from the natural world you can see that the masons are just trying to get their head around how to actually work with this stuff what forms to put it in so we have egypt's first hyper style hall of columns sure but it's taking the form of reeds bound together to make the kind of columns that would have been in joseph's palace down by the nile but this of course is a house for death this is a palace of eternity and must be built in something as solid as stone [Music] at the rear of his complex is an intriguing stone shrine where i can come face to face with king jose himself the shrine looks like it's suffering a severe case of subsidence and yet the egyptians purposefully built it on this very definite tilt it has these two holes here where modern tourists can see jose but jose can see them they can actually see beyond them because this face is true north it faces the northern stars which the egyptians called the imperishable ones and so at death jose's soul could rise up and merge with these stars so he too would be imperishable and he too would never die in order to ensure that his soul could live on jose's body needed somewhere safe to rest within a tomb truly fit for a king most burials were topped by a simple single story building called a mastaba meaning bench but jose did something radical josem really wanted to impress with his funerary monument so another step was built on top i think jose must have quite liked the effect that this gave and so built a third step fourth step a fifth step sixth step when they stood back and looked they realized they'd built egypt's first pyramid pretty impressive the step pyramid stands over 60 meters tall and still dominates the sakara landscape at the time it was the largest building on earth reinforcing jose's status as a living god in the grandest of ways it certainly secured his place in egyptian history with ancient visitors flocking here to marvel at his achievements now jose had created a true landmark but it also created egypt's first tourist attraction if you come with me i'll show you the evidence because in here we have what many tourists still leave today appreciative graffiti and this is the original handwriting of a couple of ancient visitors from around 1300 bc who were so impressed by what they saw they described jose's pyramid as if heaven were in it and they credit jose with being the inventor of stone [Music] but why did jose build this was it just an ego trip or an exercise in personal vanity or was it designed to show the world just how far egypt had come because in only a few centuries these disparate people had come together to create the world's first nation state [Music] egypt was now an unstoppable powerhouse a nation unified both politically and culturally under a single ruler whose authority was limitless yet it wasn't just the king who could achieve immortality for the man who designed and built joseph's pyramid was destined to become even more famous than the pharaoh he had served [Music] this statue base once held a full-sized figure of king jose but carved into its base is also the name of his architect and here we can see it with this reed the owl and then the little mat with a little bread loaf on which reads and here is the man himself although most likely a commoner by birth imhotep rose through the ranks to become one of egypt's most powerful officials he was made the royal chancellor the prime minister he was even made high priest of the sun god he was the ultimate local boy made good because he then gained a reputation as an academic as a great healer and he was famous the length and breadth of egypt he was ultimately worshipped as a god imhotep represents the ultimate in social mobility a kind which was certainly possible within egypt's unique society [Music] this was a society in which ideas were often taken to extremes with one and a half million people united by an absolute belief in the power of their king and in the certainty of the afterlife egypt enters its most ambitious era so far the pyramid age over 130 pyramids would be built across egypt and they represent the zenith in royal tomb building huge state-sponsored civil engineering projects that used vast resources of materials manpower and time [Music] the largest of all the great pyramid of king khufu which took over 20 years to build and in order to build something so ambitious an entire city was created specifically to house the construction workers just beyond this monumental wall it's known as the wall of the crow and it separated the silent sacred space of the dead from the busy bustling city of the pyramid builders [Music] this five-hectare site once housed workshops bakeries a tool making facility and a fish processing area for this was an integrated self-sufficient community of over 8 000 people who even had their own medical care [Music] anthropological archaeologist dr richard reading has been excavating the site since 1991. where we are now this is kind of a big workshop a big industrial park where there's lots of activity going on out here they're probably breathing granite statues maybe granite columns we find tools out here for polishing the granite we find tools out here for chipping at the granite it's very well planned we have three streets we have north street main street we're on and we have south street down there so we're walking down man you're walking down main street the pyramid workers live cheek by jowl in two-story barracks you would have walked in you would have been in a very quiet dark long narrow room this is where they would have slept there would have been a a higher bed for the overseer at each end and then everybody would have laid down probably with their head in this direction or the other direction exactly like this you would be lying here like this and this would be your your nighttime position very comfortable can i can i try out the obviously sure you want to try out the overseer's bed there solutions are grandeur is it this one or that one yeah it's that's the that's the wall you're the way right where you are oh so this is all right so if i if i sat down here yeah the overseer's bed is actually buried under a few centimeters of sand and the floor here is probably under about a half a meter of sand so this is nice yeah i'm keeping my eye on you now that's right you could see me if i got up in the night and i tried to sneak out to go someplace you would see me everything the workers needed was here on site the team have recovered data that shows that workers consumed 74 cattle and 257 sheep and goats each week this coral area could hold a weak supply of cattle before more were shipped in from egypt's grasslands you could have almost just in time delivery coming down another small herd coming down from como hisson or the delta coming down and in it's a really well-oiled machine you can see now how efficient the egyptians were obtaining their food bringing it to the right place at the right time for the right people it's brilliant it wasn't it wasn't just simply the food it was everything there was the copper to make tools there was the stone being brought in here from osmond and other areas so a lot of things were coming into here these were government workers they got everything from the government in many ways this settlement is egypt in microcosm a highly ordered social structure with job specialization and mass cooperation it's hard to believe that in a relatively short period of time egypt had been transformed from simple subsistence into a united state which could provide for everyone who worked on its behalf what we're seeing here is the final building block in egyptian culture but not just for the pyramid age for once this infrastructure was in place it would never change so whether they're building a pyramid or setting up a colossal statue the level of organization and cooperation would remain the same but this was the foundation stone of egypt [Music] the pyramids are eternal testament to just how powerful egypt had now become and in many ways they are egypt at this time dominating everything around them on a gigantic scale and towering above the giza landscape is the great pyramid [Music] it took around 20 000 people to set in place the 2.3 million blocks of limestone it remained the tallest structure anywhere in the world for 3800 years until the building of lincoln cathedral spire in 1300 a.d it's a phenomenal achievement for any civilization at any time but for me its exterior can't compare to the sense of wonder once you venture inside the roof of the grand gallery passageway is built of multiple layers of enormous limestone slabs rising over eight meters high massive massive blocks of masonry built on a god-like scale that's surely what kufu wanted i sincerely hope khufu's eternal resting place was rather less congested than it is today but it still gives a real atmosphere of the busyness that must have been here on a daily basis these guys were hauling massive massive blocks hundreds of feet up literally into the air these guys were magicians just look how brilliantly these courses have been laid these are perfect and if i any modern architect to be able to replicate this using the tools that the ancients had at their disposal [Music] wow here we are at the zenith we're at the heart of the pyramid now kinkufu's burial chamber and we've hit it at exactly the right moment because the pyramid is closed for lunch so we've got the whole place to ourselves and you really get a sense of the sanctity of this divine mausoleum the walls and roof of the burial chamber are lined entirely in granite and it was within here that the body of the great king khufu was sealed ready for his final journey into the afterlife at the heart of the pyramid in terms of its architecture but we're literally in the heart of ancient egypt i feel like i should be speaking in a whisper because the acoustics are so extraordinary it's a sterile plain stark room it's pretty much like a bank vault and when you think about it that's exactly what it is because it once contained egypt's greatest treasure the mummified body of the god king which contained the soul not only of kufu but of all the generations of pharaohs stretching way back to king nama forget the jewels forget the gold his real treasure was in here and it's the first time i've ever been in here without crowds and crowds of other people and speaking now the sound of the voice reverberating around immediately takes you back four and a half thousand years to the day of the funeral to the sacred words the priest would have chanted to revive the soul of the god king it's miraculous it's a wonderful spectacular place that affects every sense visually audibly in every sense it is it's beyond words really i think i probably better stop talking now so now all the elements that made of ancient egypt were in place a well-fed highly organized population that unswervingly followed their god king and all of whom shed this fervent belief in an afterlife life in egypt was good with its mighty pharaohs multiple gods and magnificent art it's easy to think that ancient egypt was always powerful and successful but there were also darker times conflict civil war famine and an overall feeling of catastrophe and the only way it could survive was through its own resilience and the strongest of leadership now this is sesostris iii who ruled egypt almost 4 000 years ago he's strong and he's muscular everything a pharaoh should be and yet looked his face his scowling features have been interpreted to suggest his harsh rule and his large ears his ability to hear any plots against him sisostris embodies the way egypt's monarchs ruled during its turbulent times this king controlled his enemies through a series of military fortresses and through magical curses but this is a new era in egypt's history not only ruled by military power but by fear and suspicion and egypt's darkest times threatened to destroy its entire civilization i've already explored how egypt's ancient culture began thousands of years earlier blessed by the river nile and a rich natural environment and a society united by a complex ideology [Music] but in this episode we'll see how the massive self-confidence of the pyramid age was not to last as a dark age brought this civilization to the brink of annihilation make no mistake this is the home of the dead and we're in amongst them these were times of famine civil war and anarchy kings have been reduced to something on a miniscule level but this collapse triggered one of the greatest revivals of ancient times with egypt re-emerging more powerful and wealthy than ever before welcome to my story of ancient egypt sakara where egypt's great pyramid age began but among its glories there's also evidence of a far less well-known side to egypt's story its descent into a dark age the zenith of egypt's old kingdom was the great pyramid at giza and only 200 years later king una's causeway was created it might not look much today but it's the highlight of unass pyramid complex a 750 meter long causeway which symbolically connected life and death [Music] it goes right from the nile valley all the way up onto the high desert plateau right to the foot of the pyramid of unass so it would have been used for his funeral procession but it would also have drawn up that life-giving force from the valley below up to the city of the dead here at zakara a narrow slit in the roof once allowed enough lighting but the extraordinary thing is that this causeway was designed for a sole purpose the king's funeral procession carved upon its walls are scenes revealing both sides of life the forces of order and of chaos it first portrays an idealized version of egypt a time of plenty here we can see typical scenes within an egyptian temple or funerary context scenes of the rich bounty of egypt all the fruit the vegetables the crops the meat the fish all the wealth of the natural environment of egypt which was all obviously brought to the land through the good offices of the king the bringer of all bounty the intermediary with the gods but also this causeway contained something rather more disturbing evidence that dark forces were at work further on down the causeway emerged a counterpart image the flip side of bounty an image so unusual it's now displayed in saqqara's museum and it really is one of ancient egypt's most haunting and revealing works of art here we see these dark forces at work what we have are two rows of emaciated victims of famine these poor people they're weak with hunger they're falling down they're suffering and this is basically ancient egypt coming face to face with reality because these are believed to be the bedouins who inhabited the desert fringes of egypt so it's as if this kind of idea of suffering the forces of chaos are on the periphery of egypt but they're getting ever closer to the nile valley egypt is starting to waken up to the fact that chaos isn't all that far away this is ancient egypt beginning to suffer such gritty realism had rarely been portrayed before chaos depicted as the suffering of real people this isn't happening in some esoteric realm of the gods where chaos is sort of portrayed as some sort of disparate magical force very detached from reality this is reality [Music] through such realistic images the egyptians were expressing their fears to the gods appealing to them to keep these forces of chaos at bay but instead the starving famine victims would turn out to be a chilling omen up until now egypt's prosperity had flowed from its one source of water the river nile whose annual floods enriched the soil allowing life and agriculture to flourish this natural abundance was the very bedrock on which egypt and its perpetual world order was able to thrive but this lifeblood was about to run dry [Music] evidence shows that at the end of the third millennium bc the nile flood levels fell dramatically as the very thing that brought them life began to diminish the egyptians believed that their gods had begun to abandon them and for the next century the ancient texts talk of suffering starvation and even cannibalism traditionally egyptian society had been built on the belief in the divine power of its kings without this belief the pyramid age would never have been possible but now in its time of need egypt's king seemed increasingly powerless in the face of such natural disaster and this would come to a head with a ruler who was well past his prime claimed to have lived for a hundred years he was egypt's longest lived monarch king pepe ii and this space was once a ceremonial running track the type of place where pepe would have to display his physical prowess to prove himself to his people now when any pharaoh had celebrated 30 years reign they had to perform the jubilee ceremonies and this involved running the ceremonial jubilee race four times around this circuit as king of the north four times round the circuit as king of the south it was the ultimate public display of their fitness to rule and their strength it really showed who was in charge of egypt but that's where pepe's advancing age would eventually let him down of course when pharaoh was relatively young and fit this would have been a great celebration but in the case of poor pepe then in his 90s it became all too clear that pharaoh was no living god and this really undermined the whole concept of what it was to be a pharaoh clearly as mortal as his subjects any natural disaster must have seen the fault of this less than superhuman king and this combination of a weakening pharaoh and failing harvests led to rapid decline ancient egypt now faced its first major political crisis for the power and apparent divinity of the pharaoh that had been so very important in the pyramid age had now banished everything that bound egyptian society together had begun to fall away and egypt was plunged into a dark age in this time of growing uncertainty when the egyptians had lost faith in both the monarchy and state-run religion they increasingly turned to the power of magic this is a rather unsettling thing it's an ancient egyptian mask it's almost four thousand years old and it's made of linen covered in a thin layer of plaster and then painted predominantly black with colours picked out on various features of course the egyptians are well known for making elaborate arrangements for their afterlife the death mask placed over the mummified body recreated the features of the dead to make them recognizable to the gods but this mask is different it was made to be worn by the living and we know this because of the very distinctive eye holes which you can see there and this would allow the wearer to see around them you can imagine when this was applied to the face fastened on tied on behind the head it would transform that individual into a completely different entity traces of paint on the linen reveal how it might have helped the wearer embody some form of magical being [Music] whoever wore this was going to some effort to transform their appearance to try and tap into the hidden forces of the gods and to control the world in which they lived it's as if the egyptian individual that wore this was trying to take charge of their own destiny but the mask isn't the only evidence of magic for in their dark ages the egyptians increasingly began to write out curses and spells on pots and figurines scrolled across one was the curse die henry son of intef a form of magic sufficiently small scale to be performed within their own homes one of the most graphic ways they did this was to take a piece of clay or a simple pot like this one and write upon it the thing or the person that they wanted to control they often used red ochre because red was associated with the powers of destruction so if i was doing this i'd put on it the thing i'd want to stop which are early morning calls and alarm clocks so you've got to imagine egyptians from all walks of life doing this the priest wanting to protect the pharaoh the soldier in battle against an enemy or simply a hated love rival so all sorts of egyptians could be on the receiving end of something like this and then to activate the curse they smashed the pot [Music] it was a symbolic act to annihilate the name of the enemy and therefore to control that enemy oh that does feel better not unlike voodoo such practices are found in many ancient cultures and egypt was no exception but it's far from the way we imagine the formal time-honored rituals of the temple led by the king at the head of the religious hierarchy this is an egypt that's becoming more suspicious more fearful and more aware of the threats to their world natural disasters political breakdown and foreign powers and this little wax figurine is a means to control anyone that threatens the balanced order of egyptian life welcome to the age of fear a time when every element of egypt's world view was in doubt their faith in their king in their land and even in their gods had all faltered this is one of the lowest points in egypt's long story and its effect reverberated throughout the nile valley the king traditionally based in the north was no longer the source of wealth so royal officials abandoned court and relocated back to their home towns throughout the country disunited egypt reverted back to how it had been a thousand years earlier breaking up into a series of local regions called gnomes and now a new kind of leader emerges to dominate the dark ages no longer a single king but multiple warlords [Music] and we know much about one of them because he left his detailed autobiography in his rockcut tomb at moala well away from the usual tourist sites [Music] his name was aunk tiffy now auntie fee is a small-time official who's worked his way up through the ranks to become the regional governor or no mark as it's known and in the decline in central government the power vacuum that opens up is now filled by the antifa's of this world activity's tomb is quite modest by ancient egyptian standards but its interior walls tell of his rise to power and egyptologist gary shaw is going to help me unravel auntie his story you can see the man himself man a great man carved standing there he's got a great hairstyle he does that is lovely i'm liking him already manning sofia has a great tomb as well the hieroglyphs and images that fill the walls reveal how aunk tiffy exploited the power vacuum at the end of the pyramid age reducing the king to nothing more than a footnote the only time you see the name of a king in the entire tomb is right here this tiny little cartouche it couldn't be any small look at the size of that this is nephicare and that's it is that it and they're all toned the whole tune the one mention of a king and just i think that really emphasizes just how important he thought he was alone he didn't need to mention the pharaoh he didn't need to say uh that the king told me to do this so i did this because of the king's favors he just did it himself that is extraordinary i think that cartoon alone of everything in the tomb encapsulates this whole period kings have been reduced to something on a miniscule level and the local rulers are shown on a huge scale and it's all about them isn't it ank tiffy had enhanced his own political career and wanted to ensure the gods were in no doubt as to his importance so the elaborate language once exclusive to the king was now part of anc tiffy's own boastful propaganda this warlord was an ego maniac he also says that he's a hero without equal without peer and you get that here i'm a hero without pier and pretty much almost every uh inscription in this tomb ends or includes this statement at some point inside and what did he do to kind of justify these claims he emphasizes all the good things he did for the people this was meant to be a time of drought and famine so we're told in the texts and he tried to guide them through this he was managing it by feeding everybody and doing all sorts of good things giving bread to the hungry ointment to those without ointment and sandals for those who were birth foot and wives for those without wives so it's it's basically telling us about a time of turmoil yeah but he's probably just over exaggerating because the more he exaggerates just how awful it is the more great he looks when he says well these are the nice things i did for everybody and you get this here he talks about the entire south uh dying from hunger oh look at that that that's a really graphic hieroglyph i love that the guy falling over yeah he's dead he's definitely dead and but then it gets even worse so he says that every single man is eating his children he didn't allow this to happen in his gnome of course where he lived everything was fine and at the same time he's also a fantastic warrior we're told over here now that was coming yeah absolutely yeah the these texts on this particular column talk about his abilities as a warrior in his biggest boast of all auntie the local hero almost claims the status of a god i am the beginning and the end of mankind since nobody like myself existed before nor will he exist in egypt's dark age warlords like hank tiffy had replaced the real kings of egypt and antifa's delusions of grandeur so vividly expressed inside his tomb are even more emphasized on the outside because he chose burial inside a rock shaped like a natural pyramid he wanted to be the local pharaoh and in a way he was because whoever fed and protected the people also led the people but as the power of warlords like antife grew so did the conflicts between them and over time as they either defeated their neighbours or formed alliances with them two separate dynasties of warlord kings emerged one in the north at heracleopolis where they were the red crown of lower egypt and one in the south at thebes symbolized by the white crown of upper egypt egypt was a divided kingdom of two lands and between them lay a war zone [Music] situated at its center lay egypt's most sacred site its earliest royal burial ground and still today an evocative and atmospheric place this was the resting place of egypt's first kings whose mummified bodies were buried in elaborate burial chambers beneath the desert floor a safe place for their souls or so they thought [Music] but hostilities between the two warring factions were about to plum new depths of horror with an assault so blasphemous it would change the face of egypt forever one of the most violent acts was recorded in later texts as the vile deed for the northern warlord kings fighting their southern opponents here actually desecrated these royal tombs for their troops set fire to the tombs and destroyed the royal mummies at a stroke egypt's physical link to its ancient past was severed such an act of desecration was completely unimaginable and the egyptian people were rightly appalled although the northern kings deeply regretted what their troops had done the destruction was irreversible and the origins of egypt's royal past lost forever of course the problem with such times of destruction is that there's very little left of them for us egyptologists to find but clues do remain if you know what you're looking for today what's left of the violation of this royal burial ground is surprising thousands upon thousands of broken pots although most are not part of the destruction itself they represent centuries of atonement for the loss of egypt's physical connection with its past now not long after the desecration this became a place of pilgrimage where people came with little pots like this one filled with food drink incense which they offered up to the souls of the dead kings once buried here it was believed that at death these souls of the kings had joined with the soul of osiris god of the dead and as this place became a site of pilgrimage it's as if the people of egypt were trying to make amends for the desecration of the past egypt's spiritual connection to its royal ancestors was all it had left after the northern warlords had destroyed their physical remains and the desecration soon provoked violent retaliation directly across the desert from abidos [Music] lay thebes the stronghold of the southern warlords and they would soon rise up against their northern rivals and attempt to resurrect egypt as a united land [Music] back in 2000 bc thebes was a one donkey town and yet its warlords had two distinct advantages over other leaders they lived on a bend in the nile called a kennebend a strategic control point of rich farmland and their local god was montu the god of war [Music] the warlords of thebes would reunite egypt and one in particular came to the fore his images were carved into the walls of his theban tomb complex and his name tells as much this is the theban warlord monte hotep and there's a real clue as to what was happening at this part of egyptian history because his name monte hotep means the local war god montu is content because hotep simply means content and happy so if the war god was happy with monte hotep this means that he was a very powerful military figure and this is a wonderful scene there are a lot of little clues here to tell us what's going on and if you look really closely you can see hands embracing him flanking him at his back at his front around his middle he's been embraced by the gods chief amongst whom is monster himself and there is his nose to nose with the king he's giving him the breath of life and infusing him with his own divine power it was the power of victory one that finally brought an end to egypt's first dark age monte hotep really did live up to his name as a true son of the war god because he took his armies north he conquered the north and he reunited egypt but best of all he's got the red crown on and this is the red crown of the north because monte hotep is declaring to the world i might be a southerner i might be from thebes i should be wearing the white crown but look at me now i have the red crown i am the king of the north and the king of the south and i have reunited egypt as egypt's new king he became monte hotep ii but his victory came at a high price the grim details of what his soldiers went through can be found on thebes west bank at dir el bakri it was inside one of the tombs here that the remains of monte hotep's warriors were uncovered in 1923 their bodies silent witnesses to egypt's civil war of four thousand years ago which careful analysis revealed in fascinating detail now the archaeologists found around 60 bodies in the tomb and these are the original excavation photographs all of them had been naturally preserved naturally mummified in the hot dry climate so you've still got the skin and the hair and crucially evidence of how these men had fought and died some of these bodies have been pierced by arrows this one goes right into the left side of the chest others had actually been buried with these leather wrist guards that archers use ten of the warriors had been killed with ebony tipped arrows but in others the wounds are even more brutal you can see here somebody's hit this man on the head with a real whack and you can see this very very graphic area of damage there and after these series of furious blows have been rained down on these poor guys they lay helpless on the field of battle their bodies picked up by vultures you can see here the dreadful damage it's such a profound image the bodies reveal evidence of the weapons used against them as they fought for control of egypt [Music] arrows slingshot and even rocks had been hurled at the warriors from above eventually their bodies were collected from the battlefield and carefully wrapped in linen this linen bore the insignia of the theban tomb complex belonging to their leader monte hotep but just as significant as the bodies themselves was where monte hotep chose to bury his fallen heroes today the warriors resting place is a little-known sealed tomb but four thousand years ago monte hotep honoured his dead soldiers with a burial amongst the graves of his highest officials making them part of his monument to victory the new king had created what could well be the world's first known war cemetery now i'm lucky enough to have been given special permission to see monte hotep soldiers for the first time these guys are going to be taking down the tomb wall for me allowing me to actually meet the very people who fought in egypt's civil war around 2000 bc so i am very very excited and it was the same curiosity which drove a team of american archaeologists to excavate their original mass grave in the first place [Music] [Music] now reburied in a neighbouring tomb the bodies of monte hotep's soldiers have rarely seen the light of day since their discovery over 90 years ago mere now this is really really super frustrating but in the interests of health and safety i can't go in there immediately much as i really want to because all the stale air is built up as the walls being sealed and we've really got to let this out with all the fungal spores and the bacteria and everything else that's so detrimental to health early egyptologists tended to rush straight in and risk the so-called pharaoh's curse so a little waiting is essential i can't believe we're actually going to enter this tomb now it's it's one of those rare moments you're getting a egyptological career into a tomb that's hardly ever visited the wall had to come down and who knows what we're going to find inside because i certainly have never seen this before so it's a very very special moment this literally wasn't at all what i expected nobody knew what to expect it's staggering i've never ever been into a tomb quite like this before the mask is a very good idea because there's all sorts of things floating around in the atmosphere in here not just the dust of ages and the dust of human beings and as such we have to be very very respectful it's a large rock cut too and although its walls are unfinished it's typical of those created for courtiers and officials throughout these cliffs [Music] wow it's a mummy fire body it's absolutely incredible oh that's that's quite something and if you look along the length of this very long tomb look at the floor this isn't stone these are human remains and mummy wrappings and there are chambers and corridors leading off again full of wrappings the linen of ages some of it is claimed to be the very linen that bound the bodies of monte hotep's warriors to help preserve them for eternity but at first glance it's hard to get a clear picture for this particular tomb seems to have been reused many times during egypt's long history part of a shoulder you see the way the skin's folded and dried out partial human body still with much of it soft tissue intact it hits you immediately in the face and you're confronted with what a tomb is all about make no mistake this is the home of the dead and we're in amongst them it's a very very emotive and powerful place to be but what's striking is how little is left of their bodies like many other tombs up and down the nile they've been subjected to centuries of looting and damage and amongst all these linen rappings and debris and human remains themselves are the tangible remains of these men who died so bravely in their efforts to reunify egypt for monte hotep their leader having just come out of that home a very very mixed emotions i don't really know what i was expecting to see certainly some of monte hotep's soldiers perhaps some of them were it's highly likely essentially what we're looking at are the ancient egyptians themselves these are the ancient egyptians temples tombs pyramids this wonderful culture it's all well and good studying these esoteric aspects that are distinct and marvelous and grand but when it comes down to it the things we should really be interested in are these people monte hotep's reunification of egypt marked a new beginning the dawn of what would become known as the middle kingdom [Music] and the rise of thebes [Music] monte hotep made it the new spiritual heart of egypt and it would stay that way for the next 2 000 years but whereas the war god montu had dominated the previous century of egypt's story the deity that now took center stage was hathor the goddess of love joy beauty and motherhood the goddess whose origins can be traced right back to the earliest of times and believing that hathor dwelt in the cliffs of derrell backery monte hotep chose this site not only for his war cemetery but for his own tomb complex it was monte hotep that first built here in this dramatic place where the cliffs meet the desert believed to be the home of the goddess hathor herself it was a fast track to the afterlife and for monte hotep and his men who'd lived and died by the war god montu they all now rest in the eternal embrace of hathor [Music] the first to build at der el barry was monte hotep the founder of a reunified egypt he was so influential that almost 600 years later female pharaoh hat shepsat built her own funerary temple right next door to tap into the religious and political power of her illustrious predecessor [Music] in the middle kingdom life for ordinary people was on the up food was plentiful wealth and trade flourished [Music] and farming was revitalized with new irrigation systems [Music] yet the dark age had nonetheless left its mark on the egyptian mindset as revealed in the way they prepared for the afterlife [Music] in the old kingdom tomb walls were often covered in elaborate scenes and texts replicating an idealized version of the egyptian world but in the dark ages people had seen their sacred sights ripped apart so instead of such two mart many in the middle kingdom opted for its cheaper equivalent with something much smaller and much more intimate [Music] while these may look like children's toys they were in fact made nearly 4 000 years ago to be placed inside egyptian burials now these wooden models were designed to provide the deceased with an eternal supply of food and drink in the next world and so we have all the basics here the egyptian staples of bread beer and beef so we have the bakers at this end and they're grinding the grain to make flour which will then be made into the bread loaves that are cooked in this fire and the baker is in front there the arms are quite damaged but presumably shielding his face from the heat as we know from other examples move to the middle and we have the butcher here and he's cutting the throat of this ox and that legs are bound here to keep the animal in situ while the deed is done and then we move on to the end and we have the brewer this is a fabulous fabulous example because he's pushing the mash through a sieve and the sieve's even being drawn on there on the top actually in proportion with the rest of it this individual has ordered rather more beer than either bread or beef because this section of the model is almost half its length but you can see the vats of beer carefully laid on their side it's a wonderfully evocative piece these people have been working for 4 000 years they're still at it look at them the key elements of egyptian culture were back and they looked little different from times of plenty in the previous millennium look at this busy crew grappling with the sail poles ready to launch the boat off the niles banks and this granary silo inside workers hall sacks of bali while a scribe counts the crop and of course there are also female figures in egypt women enjoyed much the same status as men unlike their sisters in many other parts of the ancient world they're also producing one of the egyptian staples but linen the cloth which was used to make pretty much every egyptian garment when you see this standing woman here she's spinning the thread with this spindle and the thread that she's busy making she'll then hand on to her two companions here the weavers and they're using this horizontal loom that's pegged to the ground to produce the bolts of cloth which will be fashioned into the wraparound dresses the kilts the loincloths as worn by pretty much every ancient egyptian man woman and child the lives depicted in these busy little scenes are the comfortable and the familiar representing the egyptian idea of security this isn't toot and karma's death mask this isn't the finest piece of art you'll ever see but that isn't the point these are real people doing real jobs this is ancient egypt up close and personal order had been restored within egypt but the fears that once tore egypt apart hadn't disappeared entirely for now they were projected outwards to the world beyond its borders so middle kingdom monarchs like stern ulcestrus iii focused on national security and wealth creation cestris is infamous for his devastating military campaign south into gold rich nubia but he also opted for a more permanent kind of control by building castles now this is a map of southern egypt and nubia which is modern-day sudan and where aswan is that was the border between the two and egypt maintained its control over nubia through a series of faults with around eight of these built by sisostris himself these middle kingdom forts were within signaling distance of one another along the southern nile down into nubia they were all part of a massive state building program designed to subjugate the local population and maintain the flow of goods and people up into egypt particularly nubian gold very few of these forts still survive these are some of the last images ever recorded of the largest at buhan it was filmed in 1962 during its excavation and after the creation of the aswan dam these massive mud brick walls disappeared forever beneath the waters of the new lake nasa buhem isn't completely lost to us because the excavation records are kept here at the egypt exploration society and they reveal an unexpected aspect of middle kingdom egypt as well as photographs they hold architectural plans of the fort drawn up during the excavations giving a real insight into the immense scale of the egyptian crackdown in nubia hi chris hi johan how are you i'm well thank you good this looks like an amazing photograph what does it actually show well this is an aerial photograph joe so what we can see here along the bottom this strip is actually the river nile and then right on the banks of the nile emerging from the sand here we see this square outline of the massive fortification of the site of buhen but once the excavators began to uncover at the full extent of what we could see this was what they came across that just looks like a medieval castle doesn't it very rarely do you think ancient egypt oh yeah castles and yet here is the evidence in front of them absolutely designed to keep the enemy out bohen shares features with the castles of europe but all constructed 3000 years earlier [Music] most astonishing of all is its sheer size there's a little scale on this map gives you an idea this is roughly 100 meters so just the nile facing wall here is well over 400 meters long if you think about the great pyramid of khufu at giza that's 200 meters along the base so we're talking about the length of two great pyramids along here the total circumference of this wall is well over a mile and the walls these outer walls are 11 meters high inside which you could fit around 20 football pitchers because as well as controlling the nubian gold supply egypt intended to rule by intimidation [Music] this is the middle kingdom's great monumental architectural statement pyramids monumental tombs were not really the kinds of buildings they needed what they very much needed were these heavily fortified fortress towns to guard the frontier of their territory when this fortress arrives in the barren empty desert landscape in the middle kingdom this would have been a massive statement something very very big powerful strong scary has suddenly arrived in the desert so anybody traveling from new beer north into egypt has to sail past this and this would have taken quite a while to sail past wouldn't it absolutely yeah imagine looking up you're in a little boat on the nile and you're looking up and up and up and up yeah and you can see all these arrow slits people training their arrows perhaps on you just you know you're being watched it's that big brother mentality isn't it exactly [Music] rising up by the nile buhen was a gleaming citadel of power but most of all it was an early warning system the eyes and ears of a nation defined by suspicion and fear but egypt's southern border wasn't the only one to be fortified the northeastern border with palestine was also secured with such defenses to monitor the large number of foreign traders regularly traveling to sell their goods in super wealthy egypt and the visit of one such group is portrayed here on a tomb wall a caravan of wealthy merchants and their families clearly not egyptian with their distinctive hairstyles and brightly coloured clothes known as the armo people they traded in such goods as the black leader vital for egypt's production of eye makeup and their distinctive pottery has been found across the nile delta where many of them settled to live and work among the egyptians but within a century some of these ammo had infiltrated high office and eventually took over egypt itself now these nomadic armored people who came in and out of egypt on a regular basis to trade are portrayed here in this wonderful tomb scene and yet the most important part of the entire scenario are three small hieroglyphs right in the middle they reveal one of the other terms the egyptians used to name the armor it's basically a crook a scepter and that's written with two symbols and that's pronounced heka it means ruler and then the third of the three symbols is kind of undulating uplands which means desert or hill country basically the egyptians use this symbol to denote a foreign land so you put these signs together ruler of foreign lands and this really is the clue to what happened next because these ammo of palestinian origin eventually became the hicks sauce the hekahasut of the hixos and they ruled egypt from the north between 1650 and 1550 bc but as tension between the foreign rulers and their egyptian subjects gradually escalated egypt entered a second dark age the hixos made an alliance with the nubians to the south and the egyptians found themselves trapped between two enemies although we know little of this difficult time some fascinating texts do survive perhaps the most compelling are the words of a royal letter sent by the hexos king south to thebes its message would prove so explosive that it galvanized the thebans to once more regain control of their land now this letter was either a colossal diplomatic faux pas or simply downright rudeness and it involved the egyptian goddess tauweret the pugnacious blade-wielding hippo tarweret may have been a protective deity but she was also a ferocious creature with features borrowed from the hippo and the crocodile animals the egyptians feared so it seems the hixo's king apophis set out deliberately to insult the thebans now the letter takes the form of a complaint in which apophis is basically complaining that the bellowing of the sacred hippos in thebes is keeping him awake at night expel the hippopotami from the lake they do not allow me to sleep day or night because their noise is in my ear now many have taken this to be a rather eccentric comment but i think it actually alludes to the powerful women of thebes it seems that apophis is actually comparing the wife of the theban leader with the feisty hippo goddess herself and soon it will be the thebans who would decide that the hexos had had their day they had to go and soon this war of words had escalated into armed conflict between the two powers but the egyptians of thebes had also gained the means to launch their attack with something developed by the hixos themselves state-of-the-art weaponry in particular a new kind of bow known today as the composite bow it would revolutionize egyptian warfare wasn't it a lovely shape a beautiful thing this may look like a bow made of solid wood similar to those the egyptians had always used but the secret of the composite bow is all down to the elements within it's composite because it's made out of different materials all joined together so there's a wooden core for the center of the bow but inside the curve on the belly of the bow is horn glued onto the wood which forms a really powerful spring so the heart the cow on will go there yeah that's right on the inside of the curve and then on the outside of the curve and even more unpromising material sinew which looks like something the cat would enjoy and that's all covered over with birch bark to protect the blue from the elements before the xos occupation the egyptians had shot arrows from bows carved from solid wood they were quite large unwieldy and only effective at fairly close range but in the composite bow animal horn added flexibility and the sinew strength it's a clever combination of ingredients isn't it making it the ultimate in ancient archery it just asks you to to do that doesn't it it does it's fabulous there's a real sense of power behind this isn't there it's a beautiful thing let me show you so this is why it's such a game changer really because it's a bow that you can use it's quite short you can use it in a chariot and yet wow that was brilliant well done the composite bow was easier to handle and shot faster arrows with much greater accuracy the egyptians had little choice but to adapt or remain an occupied nation so by copying the new military technology they were eventually able to push the hypsos out of egypt all the way back to palestine securing egypt's northern frontier once again [Music] and when the new bow was used in conjunction with the other hexos introductions the horse and chariot the three combined to express the power and supremacy of egypt's new egyptian rulers this marked the start of the new kingdom which began when the powerful theban leaders took the throne this dramatic rebirth in royal power was mirrored by the rise of thebes local god a moon based at his cult center the temple of karnak and it would be a moon who now protected egypt and its kings [Music] yet thanks to the hexos legacy these were a new kind of king and it's on this temple's walls we can clearly see the effect of the hexos occupation for as pharaoh smites his enemies this is egypt reborn a fully armed fully charged superpower whose kings shown on a monumental scale are [Music] superheroes over some 800 years since the pyramid age egypt's story had been one of upheaval collapse finally rebirth the egyptians had reclaimed their culture and entered a truly golden age [Music] hundreds of tons of stone to portray a mighty pharaoh colossal testament to egypt's golden age [Music] i think it's probably here at the feet of the colosseum and we get a real sense of who aminotept iii was in my opinion amanotip iii was ancient egypt's greatest pharaoh he presided over the zenith of egyptian culture and civilization he is the golden age he is the epitome of everything that made ancient egypt brilliant [Music] the rise of this great civilization was powered by its extraordinary belief system [Music] where the pursuit of the perfect afterlife was everything capable of withstanding disasters and dark ages [Music] to then re-emerge as the most powerful empire in the ancient world [Music] in this episode i'm going to enter what i regard as egypt's greatest era the new kingdom whoa what an amazing chamber a time of luxury grand designs and unparalleled splendor isn't this absolutely beautiful but like all good things it couldn't last forever [Music] egypt's powerful religion would prove to be its greatest weakness and i'll discover how the priests became so rich that power struggle with the crown destroyed the very unity of egypt it was this very conflict that would transform this golden age into one of decadence and corruption and would eventually tear egypt apart and by looking again at egypt's greatest superstars i'm going to investigate what really happened during the glittering new kingdom welcome to my story of ancient egypt [Applause] the new kingdom nearly three and a half thousand years ago and the time of amenotep iii when egypt's expression of power and belief reach new heights of enormity i've joined an international team of archaeologists for excavating just one of the vast monuments aminotepe created his funerary temple now being here you really get a sense of what it must have been like three and a half thousand years ago when this place was a building site much as it is today all these statues all around amanotep the third's image coming up in their hundreds and yet as the archaeologists today assemble all these pieces this is literally history coming out of the ground piece by piece in the pyramid age royal tombs and funerary temples were a single complex but 1300 years later the two were built separately reflecting a new era of opulence epitomizing the greatest dynasty of all the 18th the time of amanotep iii for centuries pretty much the only visible remains of amino tepes funerary temple were his two colossal statues now archaeologist dr hourig cerusian and her team are finally uncovering the full splendor of this once mighty monument you touch and it's it's it's like glass covering over 86 acres this was not a tomb like the pyramids but a huge complex the largest funerary temple ever created it's a massive it's unbelievable you have to imagine this is only the major temple the main temple you have to imagine other temples processional ways sphinx avenues magazines workshops treasures pools gardens priest house administrative houses all this was a big city in the in in in the overwhelming sciences this grand design was built as the place where his soul could be worshipped for eternity while his mummified body was buried in the valley of the kings nearby but during his lifetime inside the temple a permanent priesthood was employed all ruled over by the pharaoh amanotep's massive statues flanked the temple's main entrance beyond them lay a second pair and then a third [Music] amino tepes image repeated throughout the temple complex i wish one day they they find the time machine i go back can i come i'll come with you we may not have a time machine but 15 years of work have begun to reveal some of the temple's former glories normally these would have been meters up in the air but to actually engage it's so very tactile so very intimate holding hands with the pharaoh this colossus from the temple's second gateway is flanked by one of the best preserved statues of amanotep's principal consort queen tai his great royal wife here standing and by miracle having been saved by all the catastrophes which struck this temple so he's protected her for centuries really hasn't it carved to be no bigger than amanotep's lower leg queen ty's size serve to exaggerate the pharaoh's superhuman status these massive statues were more than a memorial each worshiped to guarantee the immortality of the king's soul the pharaoh as god this is my great surprise to you and uric has saved the very best till last oh oh flipping it it's amanotep's head at three meters tall carved from the finest white alabaster oh i don't know what to say over the years i've seen many of his portraits but rarely won as stunning as this look at it look at his nose yeah this is an absolutely amazing portrait sculpted face of ammunitive himself never seen anything like it with hundreds of statues like this amanotep was multiplying the image of himself as egypt's most powerful god bringing light and life to the world [Music] because whoever controlled egypt's religion controlled egypt and with it a vast amount of wealth now amanotep wore gold from top to toe and he handed it out to his courtiers as gifts but he also used it as a diplomatic weapon amenotep's clever use of egyptian gold is recorded on stone scarabs like this one they served as the pharaoh's news bulletins which he circulated around his empire with updates inscribed on their base in this case it was a new marriage of the king it effectively records his marriage to a syrian princess a princess from the land of mittani and it recounts how having sent gold to the princess's father he then sent out one of his daughters for the pharaoh to marry so a kind of mail-order bride if you like it reports that her name was killahipa and that she arrived from metani in syria with no fewer than 317 ladies in waiting clearly impressed amanotep added the comment it's a marvel [Music] with this diplomatic marriage only one of many they were an effective way of securing peace and prosperity aminotep was able to utilize his key resource his gold to kind of get everything he wanted to maintain his status as a supreme monarch in the ancient world at that time [Music] gold brought egypt peace with its neighbours with aminotec iii empire stretching from what is now syria as far as modern sedan but within egypt itself gold had a different use and could even guarantee a fast track to the afterlife emphatically expressed by a great treasure in the museum in wigan a stunning golden face [Music] originally part of a woman's coffin her lifelike features were preserved to allow her soul to recognize her in the afterlife isn't this absolutely beautiful clearly the gold suggests to us that this was someone a very special very high status very wealthy although we can never know her name she had clearly spent a fortune in preparing for her perfect afterlife covered in gold leaf she stares out at us with eyes of alabaster and black obsidian we can really see into the world into the thought patterns of the egyptians themselves because as stunning as this face is it was simply buried in a tomb literally buried in a hole in the ground not for human eyes but to be seen by the gods and the spirits of the dead with whom this woman wanted to join and that's why her skin is gold because the gods had golden skin and she wanted to be recognized by them as one of their own taken into their eternal care for the egyptians it was a special pact between themselves and the gods that made their country made their empire so very powerful so very special in the golden age this special pact shone more brightly than ever before with egypt's wealth poured into their faith in the afterlife and with increasing amounts of gold accompanying the royal mummies their tombs needed to be kept secure at all costs so a secret burial place was established for egypt's pharaohs on thebes west bank [Music] the valley of the kings [Music] it was essential that each royal mummy was buried safely in their tomb in a custom dating back to the beginning of time because each one became a royal ancestor whose cumulative souls from the very essence of egypt [Music] the royal tombs had been desecrated once before breaking egypt's spiritual link to its ancestors [Music] so to prevent this happening again the pharaohs of the new kingdom chose burial deep in this remote valley where they could lie undisturbed in rock-cut tombs this became egypt's most sacred place such elaborate preparations for the afterlife also fueled a growing economy and just as in the pyramid age the industry of death shaped the lives of many ordinary egyptians for not only were there tombs to cut and temples to build but statues shrines coffins sarcophagi and all the paraphernalia of the afterlife and with this came all the ingenuity of sourcing everything from alabaster to granite to gold this is a copy of the world's earliest surviving geological map dating from around 1150 bc and the reign of ramses iv this map is a guide to the stone quarries and gold mines of a 15 kilometer stretch of egypt's eastern desert it's almost as detailed as a modern geological map with different colours for the different rock types so over here these large areas of black are the sedimentary rocks back here where it turns pink these are the igneous rocks like granite other little features include areas of gold mining and then throughout you have this very subtle speckling and these are the areas of gravel known to be very accurate the map was made for one specific quarrying expedition when 8 000 men were sent into a desert valley 130 kilometers from thebes to mine stone for royal monuments but what's special about this map is that it leads us to the ordinary people who were employed by the pharaoh to build the tombs in the valley of the kings [Music] it was discovered by archaeologists at the workers village of dear el medina a purpose-built settlement to house the tomb builders architects artists and scribes together with their families this would have been a bustling place its streets full of children playing deliveries being made and all the colours sounds and smells of everyday life it's one of the workers who lived here who made the map now we even know the identity of the map maker the scribe i'm enact his distinctive handwriting is well known from a range of other literary works from poems to prayers maps to tomb plans and it's thanks to one particular little inscription with his name on that we even know where he lived i'm enact lived here this is the scribe's house famine knacked was one of the many skilled workers that rose through the ranks of society in the generations following the reign of aminotek iii he became the head scribe of this entire village so a very very important man and yet it's a very sad tale as well because as he gets older we know that his eyesight started to fail because a prayer of his has survived in which he makes this very personal address to the local goddess meret sega who lived at the top of the mountain up there and he's imploring the goddess he's saying my eyesight is fairly i see darkness by day and for a scribe for a consummate draftsman like i'm enact how sad that would have been [Music] here i'm enact praise to meret sega both of them symbolically portrayed without their eyes [Music] it's hard not to resist this image that as he got older and more infirmity would have gone up the steps to the flat roof with failing eyesight try to focus on the job in hand trying to mix his paints apply the the lines and the words and so forth and needing the full sun on a day like this just to get through the working day but just like his predecessors who built the pyramids ammon act would have felt a sense of greater purpose we can imagine him and his neighbors in dear el medina working towards a single aim creating the royal tomb the new kingdom pharaohs had created a new image for themselves elaborate building schemes requiring new towns full of workers and strong economy supporting an ever grander vision both for this world and the next [Music] but the spiritual convictions that had brought egypt to its zenith had also created a serious threat in the new kingdom much of the egyptian state centered on thebes while its west bank was mainly dedicated to its city of the dead the east bank was where most people lived and the site of egypt's main state temple karnak [Music] as carnage was rapidly becoming the largest religious complex of the ancient world its influence grew exponentially and likewise the power of its priests to get a real sense of what's going on we need to go behind the scenes ah sorry camera i'm being allowed through an ancient passageway once only accessible to karnak's clergy [Music] it leads to the top of the temple's main gateway and gives a view of karnak not many get to see just look at that you could fit notre dame and saint paul's cathedrals in here and still have acres to spare it is immense [Music] within karnak a series of chapels shrines and sacred precincts covered a total area of more than 250 acres [Music] this was egypt's religious heart for almost 2 000 years the reason why karnak is so vast is that every pharaoh pods so much of their wealth into this temple their gold and their spoils of war all filled the temple's coffers and each pharaoh also wanted to build their own halls shrines and obelisks in an attempt to outdo their predecessors and yet all to the greater glory of karnak's chief god amu over the course of centuries a moon had risen from a local theban god to egypt's state deity and his worship was the engine that fueled the nation so every pharaoh had to keep a moon content offering him their wealth and tending to his every need and this privilege fell to karnak's high priest and was performed in the temple's inner sanctum secret ceremonies at which the only others permitted were the royals here we are in the very heart of karnak temple this is where the god lived the god himself lived inside his sacred statue the original wouldn't have been much bigger than this would have been solid gold it would have lived inside a little golden shrine sealed by a pair of small doors [Music] each morning the high priest would come in he would awaken the god's spirit he would greet him he would wash him anoint him with perfume apply his eye makeup and then dress him in various linen outfits apply the small pieces of jewellery to the gods statue and then the god would proceed to enjoy his day a moon received daily meals of the finest foods roast meats bread fruit and vegetables accompanied by wine and beer clouds of incense would drive away evil forces and musicians and dancers entertained him and by keeping their most important deity content it was believed that a moon would in turn make the nile flood each year make the sun rise each morning and maintain egypt's supreme status [Music] the high priest's direct access to a moon made them the greatest beneficiaries of karnak's growing prosperity this tranquil lake is where the male and female clergy bathe twice each day and night to maintain their ritual purity before the gods known as the pure ones they set themselves apart from the rest of society with their distinctive appearance achieved through their own set of daily rituals part of this process of ritual purity involved using an array of implements on a daily basis to transform their appearance and one of the most important things they did they had to remove all body hair male and female clergy using razors like this so every day having to shave their heads and their entire bodies keep them free from lice and all these kind of things which would have inhibited their sense of cleanliness it was essential that they also had a very clean mouth because they'd be speaking the words before the god and so they use something which is quite a modern thing basically natron salt a kind of bicarbonate rather like a modern bicarbonate toothpaste which would get their teeth nice and clean scrupulous not only with dental hygiene they were reed woven sandals and robes of pure white linen [Music] and having transformed themselves in this wonderful way they also had access to these polished metal mirrors they could then admire their transformed appearance because it was important to distance themselves from the great unwashed for the ancient priest's cleanliness really was next to godliness and they were the gods chosen people [Music] as the wealth and power of karnak's priests grew their authority over egypt began to rival that of the king karnak's priests had far-reaching influence active not only by day but also by night [Music] one of these priests was called nakht he was a priest of the hours of a moon which basically means he was an astronomer and he would sit by night on the flat temple roof which was effectively an ancient observatory and he'd be able to chart the progress of the stars and planets in the sky watch the movement of the heavens and by doing so the priests of egypt were able to work out when to celebrate specific events but of course what this meant is that khan never closed it was a 24 hour a day concern it meant the priests were always there it meant the priests were always watching [Music] fully aware of the potential threat posed by the karnak clergy amanotep iii employed his own relatives in the temple to guarantee their loyalty but such subtle means of control were about to evaporate enter a new pharaoh akhenaten sun and heir of aminotepe [Music] but unlike his father akhenaten was no diplomat his zealous ambitions would soon plunge egypt into an age of political and religious extremism [Music] early in his reign akhenaten found a swift way to stamp his authority on the priests by building a controversial new temple complex at karnak [Music] now what we're looking at here is something very very unusual it's part of a wall from kanak temple but not the traditional part of kanak temple it's a section that was built a little way beyond and it was a new revolutionary building it wasn't built like the old style car knocking huge big monolithic blocks of stone but these small easier to handle blocks which meant of course it could almost spring up overnight but most shocking of all were the images that this new temple portrayed akhenaten had begun to dismantle egypt's traditional religion and replace its many deities with a single god if you look very carefully the images are very different to what went before a moon is nowhere present the god of karnak himself isn't represented in his own temple because the god shown here is a form of the sun god called the arton and you can see the multiple rays coming down ending in human hands giving their blessings to the main figure here and it isn't the high priest of the moon farahmun's priests were no longer in control at karnak and the moon himself was now replaced by the arton sun god in fact life in egypt was turned on its head and whereas previously courtiers would bow very low before their monarch now times had changed these people have their faces in the dirt before pharaoh they're lying prostrate before him this marked the beginning of a new age [Music] it was an age when the only way to reach god was through his intermediaries twin monarchs akhenaten and his wife and co-ruler nefertiti [Music] and when the priests objected the royal couple closed carnac sacked its priests and seized its treasury they then moved their whole court 400 kilometers down river from thebes and in less than 10 years built a brand new city [Music] known today as a mana its palaces temples and tombs were filled with images of the arton the sundisk god gone were the multiplicity of gods to worship now it was the sun that was celebrated each day with hymns prayers and offerings presented on a truly lavish scale [Music] but the couple's vision of utopia came at a price and when akanaten died after a 17-year reign egypt was bankrupt his son became king of egypt and although he reigned for less than ten years he still became the most famous pharaoh from the whole of egyptian history tootin carmen his treasure discovered by howard carter in 1922 was the most famous archaeological find of all time toot and carmen's mask is the epitome of ancient egypt so very familiar yet like so many of his treasures holding a long-standing secret i've come to oxford university's griffith institute to examine the most detailed records of his burial so in this first stack these are all carter's notes diaries journals and then right at the bottom down here we've got all harry burton's original glass negatives captured on delicate glass slides these are the original negatives taken by howard carter's photographer at every stage of the 10-year excavation so this shows the very first view they had of the mummy they reveal tootin carmen's burial in a way not usually seen for this is the linen shroud over his third innermost coffin this is as if the embalmers have just finished the family have laid their wreaths and floral tributes before the lid finally went on what a privilege to actually see this in black and white wow that's pretty profound for all his fabled wealth tootin carmen was in life a fairly insignificant pharaoh but his premature death after only a decade as king offered carnacs priests the perfect opportunity to obliterate all traits of akhenaten nefertiti and the amana period and these wonderful photos of his burial treasure reveal how they did it on his famous golden throne tootin carmen and his wife anka sennamoon are depicted together but all is not what it seems as recent research has discovered we look at the back of the queen's head where her wig originally was it's been slightly cut down there the same with tootin carmen's crown a new crown has been added here so it's little things like this because headgear regalia was crucial in identifying these royal individuals by altering the images the throne had been customized for toon carmen but the biggest giveaway as to whom this once belonged is in the deity that looms large above the king and queen so although a moon is also named on this throne it's the art and sundisk that does take center stage and really does cement this piece as a royal throne from the amana age so it seems that the two figures once believed to be tootin carmen and his wife were originally akhenaten and nefertiti another clue comes from the most famous artifact from ancient history the golden mask of tootin carmen or is it recent research has zoned in on one long overlooked feature and that is the decidedly pierced ears because it's been suggested that this mask was originally made for someone else the research suggests that tootin carmen wouldn't have worn earrings beyond childhood so by the age of 20 when he died he would not have been portrayed with pierced ears this mask was not made for an adult male pharaoh indeed when the gold has been compared the face is made of completely different gold to the rest evidence of soldering is clearly visible on the mask it now seems as if tootin carmen's own face was effectively grafted on to the mask of a previous ruler a previous ruler who had pierced ears for earrings a previous ruler who may well have been a woman who may well have been nefertiti [Music] [Applause] in fact it's estimated that around 80 percent of the objects found in tootin carmen's tomb originally belonged to either akhenaten or nefertiti and with all of it dumped together like this it was a kind of spiritual decluttering as far as the priests were concerned all this was tainted gold and so the burial of toot and carmen was the perfect opportunity to bury the unwanted past forever while the city of amana had been abandoned then demolished the memory of everything it represented was likewise being erased [Music] egypt's state religion was restored karnak's priests were back in business and thebes was once again the seat of sacred power [Music] and now the next dynasty of the new kingdom was in control having died without an heir toot and carmen was succeeded by a line of militaristic rulers the 19th dynasty with no direct royal ancestry the new dynasty needed to reconnect with egypt's illustrious past so it reinstated traditional beliefs in a renaissance led by one of its most influential rulers seti the first his tomb in the valley of the kings is the largest pharaoh's tomb ever created here currently close to the public i've been given special permission to explore this labyrinthine treasure the tombs inviting us down further down into the underworld and it's just drawing us into the darkness it's a really really deep tumors it's 174 meters of corridors and chambers all chiseled out by hand and covered from floor to ceiling in some truly spectacular scenes whoa what an amazing chamber absolutely filled with little gold and twinkly stars but the walls of seti's tomb carry a clear message demonstrating the return of egypt's traditional deities in full force [Music] here we see him seti with the gods [Music] [Applause] this is a brilliant chamber it's repeated images of the pharaoh seti with the gods the gods are back and he's keen to show that and so we see him here with anubis the elegant black jackal god of embalming and the dead here seti is making offerings to hathor the maternal goddess of love who takes all dead souls into her care and horus the god of kingship wearing the joint crowns of upper and lower egypt then seti makes the strongest connection with egypt's past in the portrayal of the ultimate deity in the tomb osiris god of the underworld he represents every single pharaoh that's gone before seti he represents the accumulated powers of the royal ancestors and seti is keen to show himself in the company of osiris he's tapping in to that greatness that made egypt such a strong nation [Music] every image every hieroglyph in seti's tomb harks back to the golden age of aminotepe iii and continuing with this golden legacy set his reign was a true renaissance of art and culture with the ultimate jewel in his tomb his burial chamber that is absolutely superb this is really incredible he's taking that nighttime sky motif and really really running with it this is the night sky are seen through the eyes of the astronomer priests [Music] and this is where the royal mummy would have laying in its alabaster sarcophagus allowing seti's mummy set his soul to look up at this spectacular ceiling [Music] egypt's traditional belief system is here writ large covering every surface [Music] egypt was back seti had brought back the days of glory it's as if the amana period had never been and for the average man and woman in the street that was a wonderful thing because order had been restored chaos had been brushed away and everything was all right with their world the golden age had been restored but not just for the larger-than-life pharaohs with their glorious tombs and vast monuments but for the majority of egypt's population too this included the inhabitants of der el medina the tomb builders village near the valley of the kings at the edge of the village was a great pit the community dump inside which were discovered tens of thousands of pieces of pottery and stone covered in pictures and words written in hieratic script a kind of hieroglyphic shorthand these are the ancient egyptian equivalent of post-it notes shopping lists and text messages this is uh the kind of stuff that speaks to everyday life yeah and what's going on underneath the surface with the help of hieratic expert dr glenn godenhoe we can catch a glimpse of this intimate world far away from kings and gods which is your favorite amongst these ones i always go to this one this is really nice because this one's uh basically a list of stuff you take to a party what you've got is tabulated information so you've got vertical and horizontal lines and in each of those spaces you've got a name and the stuff they brought to that particular event i mean this person here the name's missing from this but this person bought the most stuff about 11 items we've got bread for example being brought along next down we've got some beer so one jug of beer as well as beer and bread it lists a veritable feast fruit 20 pieces beans one jar full fish meat and even a cake the thing i like about this is the idea of a community coming together it really does make the ancient egyptians that more real because we can relate to them we all like a good party but of course life isn't always a party and people fall on hard times this fragment begins with a story of a breakup hesi su nebef divorced the lady hell [Music] and then it goes on to record a heartwarming story of support from its anonymous author he seems to have wanted to look after this lady hell and so the text goes on and it says that the the author of this spent uh three years giving one measure of emma wheat to hell every month but it doesn't end there so she gives to the author here um a sash so a piece of clothing and she says in this line here uh to offer it at the riverbank um the riverbank is where the market was right and she says that um she'd like one measure of um of emma wheat for it but no one wanted it so here the text goes on to say uh that um the author tried to offer it down at the river bank but uh he gives a customer a review it's right here one word bean which means bad yeah yeah so it wasn't even worth one measure of emma so that is sad but the author's such a good egg that um he says that he buys it off of her for well over the market value of this thing that wasn't even worth one measure in the first place anyway nice guy picture we don't know his name yeah it's a real shame it's a real shame but at least we have his words one of the many voices from der el medina which still speak to us across 3 000 years of history telling us of the highs and lows of lives familiar to us even today for most people the new kingdom had been an age of plenty but it wasn't to last the golden era of wealthy pharaohs was becoming ever more superficial [Music] seti's son ramses ii was egypt's most prolific builder over spending on ever more ostentatious monuments the best known of which was his temple at abu symbol but such over-the-top building projects emptied the royal coffers as did a series of costly foreign wars so by the time of ramses iii the cracks had certainly begun to appear as inflation increased supplies in the state granaries ran low so the grain which formed the monthly wage rations of state employees like tomb builders and artisans was no longer paid when due and it sparked the first recorded labor strike in history it happened in 1155 bc when the tomb builders began to complain that their food supplies hadn't been delivered and when it happened again the following month they simply downed tools marched to the nearest temple and shouted we are hungry to make sure their grievances were heard they staged a sitting at the temple but the state's response only added insult to injury [Music] local officials could only hand round a delivery of pastries not much use to anyone the indifference of the authorities provoked many more weeks of protest their grievances only increased and soon the striking workers had taken to shouting out of passing authority figures including the mayor the workers were finally fobbed off with enough supplies to shut them up in time for the pharaoh's jubilee celebration to pass by unhindered by trouble but the striking workers had highlighted the waning power of the monarchy with the pharaoh now served by an increasingly inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy the glorious bubble of royal extravagance finally burst [Music] and the pharaoh's rivals were waiting in the wings [Applause] priests of karnak having grown powerful through the revenues given to the gods they served the writing for the royals was quite literally on the wall and you can see what i mean in this little known part of karnak temple where the high priest is making a very bold statement but only if you know how to read the footnotes now this is a fascinating scene we have the pharaoh ramses ix and he's facing his high priest shown here but there's something extraordinary about this scene because for the first time the pharaoh and the priest are shown on exactly the same scale they are the same height that's why the priest is looking so pleased as his arms raised as if in triumph because these guys are so clever they've actually got the pharaoh standing on a box so he's a fraction higher and yet in reality they're the same height this really shows that the priests are in power they're basically saying to the king we are the same size as you therefore we are as important as you are [Music] priests have become full-time politicians vying with the throne for power they destabilized the balance between church and state the relationship on which egypt's entire culture depended so great with their ambitions that by the end of the new kingdom the priests took control of the entire south and with the pharaoh ruling only the north the country was split into its two ancient halves but even worse was to come it's at medin at habbo ramses iii funerary temple that we can find out just how little interest these politician priests now had in the royal afterlife they were only concerned with their own status and their own wealth now this next disturbing part of egypt's story not only spelt disaster for its core belief in the royal afterlife it left a tortuous puzzle for egyptologists which we are still trying to piece together it's an extraordinary story that begins not in the temple but in a small house built later within the grounds because the priests corrupt ambitions will be put into practice by the man who lived here his name was bhuta ahman and as an acropolis scribe he worked in the nearby valley of the kings this is the man himself bhuta almond with his shaven head his starch kilt his arms raised in prayer he's praying to the great god of thebes a moon himself although bhutarman's story doesn't quite live up to this image of piety because it was here that he received a letter of instruction from his boss the high priest of karnak this is a copy of that letter and its contents are mind blowing because the high priest is telling voter armon go and perform for me a task on which you've never before embarked uncover a tomb among the ancient tombs and preserve its sealed door until i return and although this language is quite euphemistic and cryptic both the sender and recipient knew exactly what it meant and it would have a profound impact on egypt but armin had been promoted his new title was opener of the gates of the necropolis [Music] so he and his men set out for the valley of the kings taking with them tools and bundles of linen their mission nothing less than the systematic dismantling of their royal cemetery in search of gold it was an order to accumulate wealth [Music] tomb robbing itself was nothing new in ancient egypt but what's different about this looting is that it's an order from the ruler of upper egypt the high priest himself this is looting sanctioned by the state [Applause] [Music] knowing the secret location of the royal tombs but almond began what was euphemistically referred to as restoration work the final taboo was about to be broken so boot almond and his men set to work they break open the seal of every royal tomb they move the lid of the sarcophagus take out the royal mummy in its nest of gold coffins and proceed to unwrap each one next they strip them of anything of value gold masks jewelry and amulets all taken for the temple treasury [Music] as for the mummies they're re-wrapped in fresh linen and all buried together for the cash-strapped priests these royal tombs were no longer inviable but little more than a series of dead bodies resting amidst the goals they needed to achieve their political aims so for twenty years this very tomb became one of butter almonds re-wrapping workshops where archaeologists found fragments of the gold prized from royal coffins traces of the lost treasures of numerous pharaohs [Music] and butter almonds handwriting was discovered on the re-wrapped mummy of ramses iii [Music] with no regard for the sacred even the great pharaoh aminotepe iii ended up repackaged in the coffin of ramses iii covered with the ill-fitting lid of seti the second only one tomb hidden by rubble escaped the wholesale plunder [Music] yet the ultimate violation of ancient egypt's soul was now complete clearly the priest kings of karnak had got what they'd always wanted absolute power no longer interested in the royal ancestors who were simply a source of revenue to be robbed and discarded the devout had become cynical and the royal afterlife nothing more than an illusion this is about as far north in egypt as it's possible to get because out there is the mediterranean to my west is libya to my east palestine and arabia while egypt itself lies down there to the south a thousand kilometers of desert cut right through the center by the mighty river nile and at its top lies this the great port city of alexandria it was ancient egypt's last and most influential capital it was a city of great power wealth and luxury the greatest in the world alexandria was also home of one of egypt's most famous pharaohs cleopatra the final ruler of a greek dynasty and the last in a long line of foreign invaders who'd each claimed egypt for themselves seduced by its legendary splendors [Music] by now the pyramids were already thousands of years old they were the beginning of a seemingly indestructible core belief that had survived chaos famine and war it's as if they've been picked clean a belief that would shine even more brightly in its fabled golden age whose temples tombs and glittering treasures had made egypt an irresistible temptation [Music] as jealous foreign rulers either weakened egypt how could it survive successive waves of foreign attack but egypt had a secret weapon a culture so strong and deep-rooted that it seduced and then absorbed all who would claim it as their own welcome to my story of ancient egypt throughout the first millennium bc egypt faced wave after wave of foreign invaders [Music] but in the face of such a strong and long-lived culture all who would try to take over egypt would themselves be taken over [Music] almost a thousand years before cleopatra egypt had entered its third intermediate period a time of political decline and vulnerability [Applause] [Music] but it's the beginning of the 22nd dynasty around 945 bc the priests are in charge of the south but in the north the vultures have started to circle waiting for their chance to swoop as a group of libyan generals seize power to rule as pharaohs of a divided land in many ways egypt's waning power had been triggered by a loss of faith when the authority of the new kingdom pharaohs had begun to crumble egypt's once pious priests had helped loot the royal tombs in the valley of the kings systematically dismantling egypt's previously unshakable belief in the afterlife [Music] with the decline in power of the new kingdom pharaohs the libyans who'd fought for the egyptians as mercenary generals gradually infiltrated egypt's power structure and eventually took power as the 22nd dynasty [Music] the first king of the twenty-second dynasty had a number of sons who helped him keep control of egypt one of whom was called nimlot and these are the bracelets of prince nimlot egypt's libyan rulers understood that looking and acting egyptian would help to keep the country under their control these beautiful bracelets are just a tiny fraction of the golden treasures created for egypt's libyan royals who on the surface at least upheld many of egypt's most sacred traditions they are portraying a very small figure of the god horus who symbolized egyptian kingship shown as a young child emerging from a lotus blossom and on either side is protected by the rearing cobras the royal urea symbol yet in some ways these images are simply window dressing lip service to ancient egyptian traditions in order to claim a greater prize for the libyans had organized nothing less than the state-sponsored plundering of egypt's royal tombs they were so transfixed by the wealth by the gold by the bling of ancient egypt they wanted it for themselves and over there several centuries rule while they appeared to look like pharaohs and to rulers pharaohs egypt never feels to have been a cohesive united kingdom they weren't egyptians at heart and that's really what mattered in many ways libyan rule was destined to fail because even if they were militarily superior their adoption of egyptian culture was at best superficial and was insufficient to unite the country in the north the squabbling libyan elite fought amongst themselves while in the south the egyptian priesthood including yet more libyan princes still clung to power the fragmented egypt was easy pickings for any would-be invader egypt needed a regime that could reconnect with its most powerful asset it's history and by 747 bc that's what happened when the kushite rulers of nubia made a direct spiritual connection with egypt's glorious past now the cushites were egypt's southern neighbours in nubia and from time immemorial they and the egyptians had kind of battled around the sort of southern border of egypt by the 8th century bc however the cushites have the upper hand they were fervent believers in egypt's traditional gods in some ways making them more egyptian than the egyptians the kingdom of cush in nubia was at the very edge of the egyptian world having been repeatedly conquered by egypt the cushites have been hugely influenced by egyptian beliefs beliefs that centered on this great sandstone mountain jebel barkle [Music] for centuries it had been regarded as the mythical mound of creation [Music] the mound from which egypt's great creator god a moon was born [Music] here is the holy mountain this is where the god lived in his primeval form dr tim kendall has spent almost 30 years working at the site being at the southern limit of the empire it was where where the nile began where fertility began and so it had to be the place where creation began so this was the they imagined this is the birthplace of the god amen and so this was the primeval karnak when the new kingdom pharaohs had arrived here in 1500 bc they built this temple and dedicated it to a moon and his wife the goddess moot and when the egyptians withdrew from nubia some 400 years later the native cushites continued to honor the sacred mountain and egypt's spiritual traditions as the kushite kings gained increasing military power they also claimed egypt for themselves so when king pile had a cushite invasion of egypt in 747 bc he didn't plunder or destroy but restored and rebuilt and founded egypt's 25th dynasty the irony is that he's conquering egypt to put everything right i suppose so it's all such a cycle of rebirth regrowth redevelopment and the cushite kings are really kind of tapping into that ancient power source and just sort of giving it back to the egyptians starting time all over again yeah and doing it right so they had that same sense of history and continuity as the egyptians they are the natural successes of the 18th dynasty kings fueled by a genuine desire to make their own mark in egypt's long story the cushites began to rebuild egypt here in their nubian heartland king pai expanded the existing temple of the moon at jebel barkel to balance the original great temple of karnak in egyptian thebes but while the kushites had absorbed the culture of egypt they still had their roots here in africa this cultural fusion is quite clearly expressed in this extraordinary representation of the egyptian goddess moot the face of the goddess moot has tribal scars and look we'll see if it shows with this light you see the three lines of her face so this is an egyptian goddess with a nubia makeover yeah she was a goddess of nubia and it was appropriate for nubians to have tribal scars so this is a very very graphic version of the way in which local nubians were making the traditional deities of egypt their own physically marking them it's as if she's been stamped as a nubian yep how incredible this is such a land of surprises that is beautiful [Music] yet this land of surprises has something else in store too gale force winds whip up the worst sandstorm in years it's a powerful reminder that the ancients would also have had to deal with such dramatic natural phenomena and certainly taste the grit in your teeth the ancients would have tackled this using spells rituals they would also have made extra offerings to specific deities most notably osiris's brother god seth the god of turbulence the god of storms the god of red-headed individuals who have seen us somewhat turbulent too can't imagine why i'm seeking shelter in this shrine cut into the mountain by pai's son to harker which is currently undergoing major restoration by an italian mission it apparently reveals graphic evidence of egypt's continuing powerful influence never been here before i have no idea what's going on in here so this will be as new to me as it is to you oh flipping egg it's a real privilege to see the time blackened walls finally giving up their secrets wow look at that look at that oh that is oh that is so beautiful they're bringing out not just the golds but the blues these two colors the bright blue of the sky and the nile and the gold this really powerful color of the sun god this is tahaka the cushite's most powerful and important pharaoh in classic egyptian style he's shown offering to the god a moon and his wife the goddess moot it's raised relief this is old school this is old school technique this is skilled and they're all overlaid in this yellow or gold and you can even see the little scales on this car select the moon's wearing every details here it's fabulous it's like christmas morning this this is just extraordinary just look for yourselves just look look at their faces look at their eyes this world truly exemplifies egypt's ancient magic as those who try to conquer it end up being seduced by it and then become a part of it it's a sincere attempt by tahaka to connect his kingship to the achievements of the pharaohs of egypt's past in particular to the rulers of the new kingdom [Music] so although history records that tahaka conquered egypt this scene reveals it's actually egypt that conquered tahaka it's as if the egyptian identity will always win out no matter what so much so that tahaka is even shown with the ram's horns of the moon identifying him as the son of egypt's god of gods these were worn by ammunition iii in luxor temple in the 18th dynasty they were later won by the great alexander to show he too was the son of a moon and here we have tahaka in all his finery and all his splendor [Applause] [Music] who knew that they were here hidden away in this special special rock we've come to the heart of jebel barkel now we've come to the heart of egyptian religion because this is the very birthplace of a moon himself and here he is just for us right now emerging from the walls very few people have ever seen this [Music] here inside the temple where only the most pious were allowed tahaka is shown in deference to egypt's most powerful god [Music] and outside on the mountain he exhibits his devotion on a truly monumental scale by embellishing the very top of its pinnacle 180 meters tall and 11 meters from the cliff face it seems completely inaccessible but tahaka pulled off an incredible technical achievement he built a crane arm and elaborate scaffolding in order to make his own permanent mark on the mountain what he did was he made a an inscription for himself commemorating his victories east and west and then underneath his men set a small statue of the king and they covered the inscription with gold today you can hardly see it but in those days it would have been the most conspicuous feature of the mountain i mean that's meant to be seen by the gods seen by the gods of course no mortal eye could read this from the ground but that wasn't the point this was a message to the gods carved on a monument built to impress completely covered in gold it reflected the sun's rays and it acted like a giant billboard as it telegraphed to harker's message for miles around and this again harked back to egypt's past when previous pharaohs had placed gilded capstones on their pyramids and obelisks to harness the potent powers of the sun just to the east of jebel berkel lies the necropolis of nuri where the cushite king's transformation into egyptian pharaohs was finally completed for the dynasty who'd invaded egypt were now copying egypt's ultimate symbol and for the first time in over a thousand years the kings who ruled egypt were buried in pyramids when the kings made their capital at memphis they were living right across the river from the great pyramids tarkov spent most of his life there and was familiar with the great pyramids and so when he died he needed a pyramid of commensurate scale and uh and this he sort of established this new type and it was followed by all of his successors the cushites eventually built more pyramids here in their nubian homeland than the egyptians had built in egypt and just as at giza tahaka's pyramid is precisely aligned to its environment for on the exact day when the nile flood begins to recede the sun sets just like this directly behind the jebel barkle pinnacle yet only on this specific day and only when viewed from the top of tahaka's pyramid that is totally impressive not just a skill a feat of engineering but but such devotion to the gods god's absurd observing nature yeah i mean it would take a huge amount of observation to get the position just right to get the day just right surrounded by these pyramids the images of a moon and moot and their monumental temples it's easy to forget that the cushites were actually a foreign power who'd taken egypt by force yet it's almost as if egypt was taunting its invaders while you may try and dominate our land our culture will ultimately dominate you and as such the cushites left a legacy of renewal and resurrection but like all egypt's conquerors the cushites moment in the sun was fleeting for their 25th dynasty lasted but a century as a far more ruthless and ambitious power now invaded [Music] in bc the fearsome assyrian army marched into egypt as ruthless expansionists they had little interest in egyptian culture they graphically demonstrated their contempt by sacking the sacred city of thebes [Music] the assyrians unlike the egyptians are interested in expanding their empire and really taking over other parts of the world and they do that by violence this very unegyptian bronze helmet was discovered in thebes it is one of the very few objects that reveal the assyrian takeover of egypt despite possessing equally powerful iconography of their own the assyrians had little time to leave their mark they simply stamped their authority upon egypt by trying to rip out its religious heart [Applause] this holy complex this really huge sacred space had never been attacked in egyptian history and so for a mob to damage the temple to damage statues perhaps to damage precious things would really have been absolute anathema to the egyptians what's really striking is it's obviously not an egyptian item but the egyptians didn't even wear helmets did they relied on their thick hair didn't they so for me it really evokes a completely alien image i mean the assyrians i mean war was their business wasn't it [Music] with their sophisticated weapons and armor the assyrians were a war machine whose unstoppable progress seemed to spell disaster for egypt yet after little more than 20 years the assyrians returned east to tackle problems at home leaving vassals in charge of egypt based at the delta city of sais these were the sayite kings shrewd egyptian politicians who first appeared to serve their assyrian masters but soon became strong enough to declare their independence egypt was now back in egyptian hands the seites instigated a spectacular renaissance in native culture at the heart of which lay egypt's most powerful symbol of national identity mummification but no longer limited to humans there was an explosion of animal mummification everything from dogs cats crocodiles ibis and even tiny shrews the ancient egyptians had always mummified their dead both human and animal and with the sayings we can almost see it as a way of the saying kings trying to declare we are egypt we are important this is what makes us special no one else in the ancient world could mummify like the egyptians and so they rolled it out a million fold with animals specifically bred for mummification and then sold as offerings at temples the saiyites had reinvigorated egypt's oldest industry death was once again big business [Music] now this might look pretty silly but around 2000 years ago here at sacara this would have been a very common sight [Music] this place would have been packed with pilgrims with priests making animal mummies and they'd be trundling the mummies across the landscape in carts like this one so we must get out of our minds this idea of egyptian priests as these pious quiet figures wafting through the landscape when by this time it was all carried out in great numbers and it was egypt's endless ability to reinterpret its core beliefs that was the key to its longevity for millennia the egyptians had believed that the pharaoh was a living god who embodied the soul of egypt when the king died their soul lived on in their mummified body which must be kept safe to guarantee the continuity of egypt so they'd always buried their rulers in the safety of pyramids or elaborate rock-cut tombs but in times of increasing unrest and foreign rule the egyptians could no longer rely on even having a pharaoh to bury and so they turned to another centuries-old practice the serapium at saqqara is a huge subterranean tomb complex in which the concepts of kingship and animal mummification were fused together for each of these giant granite sarcophagi once contained an animal believed to embody all the qualities of kingship this is the burial site of the sacred apis bull these were the bodies of mummified bulls of such importance to the egyptian mindset they extended all this effort and cost to create a suitably impressive burial site and they've done this in spades as one bull dies and is mummified and buried the other one is then worshipped in life and at death mummified and buried again and so there's a real progression the cult of the apis bull dates right back to the beginning of egyptian history and it's closely linked to the pharaoh it was believed that when the sacred bull died it became one with osiris the god of the afterlife and so became an osiris-apis or serapis for short and these sacred bulls became hugely important under the sails during times of foreign occupation when egypt was increasingly being ruled by pharaohs in absentia be it in persia or wherever else for the egyptians they needed a physical presence and the ap spell provided this presence because they could see it with their own eyes they could celebrate rituals in its company and at death it would be mummified and then buried in the manner of pharaohs going back for millennia so it was crucial to have this creature here each one successively buried in a sarcophagus just like this one we're looking at some serious devotion to this sacred creature and everything it represented for egypt in many ways the serapium is egypt writ large in which its core beliefs are taken to extremes being down here really makes you feel miniscule you realize you're now walking amongst the gods words fail me frankly because of the enormity of it all but that was the thing that was the skill of the egyptians they batter you over the head with this idea of the colossal the monumental the spectacular yet the egyptians devotion to the apis bull had left them vulnerable by embodying the power of egypt within a single living animal they had created an easy target given the apis bulls divine status harming it would have been completely unthinkable but when the persian king came by seas invaded egypt he had other plans [Music] the persian empire swept west taking all before it and then into egypt itself the persian king came by he's entered egypt in 525 bc and destroyed the saiyan dynasty much like the assyrians the persians were ruthless expansionists chiefly interested in enlarging their empire and combices seem to have trampled all over egypt's ancient traditions having taken egypt by force cambyses burnt the mummy of the previous say pharaoh before stabbing the apis bull which slowly bled to death and by doing this combines were sending a very clear message to the egyptians i am now in charge [Music] for the next 200 years the egyptians were little more than the heavily taxed servants of the persian empire and with all attempts at rebellion met with extreme retaliation egypt needed a savior an outsider who could be transformed by egypt's powerful ideology and in return could transform egypt enter the macedonian superman enter alexander the great [Music] alexander was one of the world's greatest military leaders and during his short life amassed an empire that stretched across three continents founding over 70 cities that bore his name after his initial defeat of the persian king alexander marched unopposed into egypt in 332 bc the world's most successful empire builder had arrived not only transforming egypt's future but preserving its ancient past it really is no exaggeration to say that alexander the great is one of the most remarkable people who ever lived he really was the superhero of the ancient world so you'd think that egypt would be filled with his images after all he had saved them from the hated persians and yet other than the great city of alexandria that bears his name he is remarkably hard to find within egypt's traditional temples except here in this modest little shrine at the heart of luxor temple alexander was not only a brilliant soldier but a master politician marching into egypt's ancient capital memphis amid rumours he was the son of egypt's last native pharaoh this instantly plugged him into egypt's long native history and he was crowned as a traditional pharaoh here is the great man repeatedly across the walls of this limestone shrine and yet you'd never know it was alexander simply by looking because he looks like every other egyptian pharaoh but he knew their secret that to rule egypt you had to appear to be an egyptian and he did this brilliantly to the extent that he had his name his greek name alexandros written in the egyptian tradition even in a royal cartouche and it's the only giveaway that this is alexander the great because there is his name alexandros written in typical egyptian style and there he's even wearing the red and the white dual crown of a united land and so he's encapsulating everything that it was to be an egyptian pharaoh just like the kushite king tahaka at jebel barkel alexander is shown offering incense to the king of the gods amun but simply connecting with the gods wasn't enough alexander understood that real power came from becoming a god and so he undertook a perilous journey across the libyan desert to the remote oasis shrine of siwa where he could commune with the oracle of the moon himself and it said in this legendary story that the god actually said to him you are my son and from then on something clicked in alexander's mind and he went off to conquer the rest of the ancient world truly believing he was divine and he had the full blessing and support of ammon himself the king of the gods of egypt alexander would only stay in egypt for six short months [Music] but during his time here he founded a city that would be his lasting legacy the great city of alexandria built on the mediterranean coast to create trading links with the rest of the ancient world the later historian aryan recorded that alexander had laid out the city's general plan himself but lacking chalk or other means he resorted to marking it out with grain when a flock of birds began eating the grain alexander regarded this as a bad omen yet his religious advisor quickly spun bad news into good and interpreted this as a sign that the new city would soon prosper and would one day feed the whole world a remarkably accurate prophecy for within a very few years alexandria would not only be egypt's new capital but the greatest city on earth although alexander himself would never see it yet despite his pious nature alexander was essentially a soldier in his quest to conquer the persian empire he left egypt in 331 bc never to return alive moving as far east as india he conquered an empire of 2 million square miles before dying in babylon aged only 32 but still undefeated and still the pharaoh of egypt at death alexander was mummified and his body became the focus of a power struggle some of his officers wanted him buried in his greek homeland but for others he had to return to egypt and be buried as a pharaoh thereby preserving egypt's long traditions but it obviously meant that anyone who possessed his mummified body could also claim the throne of egypt and clues to this drama can be found here in the windswept desert of sakara ten years after he'd left egypt alive alexander returned here for his body had been mummified egyptian style it became a hugely powerful talisman for whoever held the body of alexander the great held egypt while on route to greece his cortes was diverted and his mummified body brought here to egypt's ancient necropolis of saccara exactly where his tomb itself was remains a mystery although situated just meters from the seraphim is this collection of very unegyptian looking statues and it's these somewhat sandblasted statues that give us a real clue that alexander may initially have been buried somewhere close by because these are the sculpted images of some of the greatest scholars and artists of ancient greece although exactly who is who has kept academics scratching their heads for years their likely identities reveal a direct link to the world in which alexander grew up and was educated [Laughter] take homer for example his great warrior hero achilles was alexander's lifelong role model plato who had tutored aristotle who in turn had tuted alexander and pinder whose poetry had praised alexander's macedonian ancestors as for who placed these statues here the most likely candidate is alexander's general and probable half brother ptolemy for by burying alexander here close to egypt's ancient capital memphis ptolemy could legitimize his own takeover of egypt and by laying claim to alexander's body and to egypt he founded the dynasty named after himself their fabulous and outrageous ptolemies ruling egypt for the last three centuries bc the ptolemaic dynasty would be egypt's final flowering 15 male kings all named ptolemy with their female co-rulers half of whom were called cleopatra macedonian greek by descent their dynasty would bring greek style culture knowledge and fabulous wealth into egypt while at the same time immersing themselves in egypt's irresistible religion and customs they were very very sensitive to the cultural practices and the religious sensibilities of the egyptians they knew that to control this ancient land of egypt they had to tap into what made egypt powerful what made egypt special they wore the right clothes the right crowns they built the right temples they worshipped the right gods and the ptolemies relocated egypt's capital from memphis to their new super city alexandria [Music] built to alexander's original plan it was one of the most lavish construction projects on earth [Music] the historian strabo would like to comment that the city had magnificent public precincts and royal palaces that covered a fourth or even a third of the entire area the colonnaded marble streets were over 10 meters wide there were public baths a huge gymnasium and one of the greatest wonders of the ancient world the 135 meter tall faros lighthouse that guided ships safely into port and at the centre of the city alexander himself whose mummified body had been exhumed from sacara and brought here [Music] the ptolemies had built a capital unlike anything egypt had ever seen before for in alexandria a new egypt was being born the creation of alexandria and the great influx of immigrants gave it a freshness of vivacity and really kind of transformed the ancient culture whereas previously egyptian civilization had developed along the nile and in many ways was quite inward looking quite insular i think the fact that alexandria was open to so many diverse influences religiously culturally and this gave it a real air of tolerance i think i'd have felt very at home here there's a real sense of culture and learning and appreciation of life today alexandria is the largest city on the mediterranean stretching for over 20 miles along the coast as egypt's largest seaport it caters for over 80 percent of the country's imports and exports a legacy that reaches directly back to the ptolemies having improved egyptian agriculture by reclaiming new farmland through increased irrigation they supplemented the egyptian staples with new crops such as cotton and better grapes for wine production and today the markets of alexandria still buzz with some of the early city's lively cosmopolitan style i'm going to try and find the nearest equivalent to ancient egyptian delicacies and these are dates and the ancient egyptians used to make pastries and bread from them because they're very sweet too i think i might have to taste one just for quality control you understand see how authentic they are they are very nice this is incense in its raw state and of course this was burnt in temples and in funerary rights the port city of alexandria became a huge hub of international trade establishing routes with greece the middle east india and even britain and as native egyptian goods like papyrus and perfume flowed out of the country new exotic luxuries like spices silks and wines poured in the greeks loved olives and so these were imported and the egyptians started to grow them i'll definitely have some of these delicious black pepper oh we've got to get some black pepper this is one of the really really popular things certainly in tolerate times because markets had opened up certainly as far east as india and the greeks went crazy for this stuff [Music] it's certainly lively shopping in egypt never a dull moment with alexandria now at the heart of the ancient world the rest of egypt benefited too for determined to honour their adopted country's long history the ptolemies undertook a massive temple rebuilding and restoration programme indeed modern visitors can often fail to realize that many of the places they visit were either built or restored by the ptolemies esner edfu dendora comombo all of these are ptolemaic buildings that tourists and scholars admire so much and yet they really don't give sufficient credit to the people whose vision created them the most impressive of all such temples lies the farthest from alexandria deep into upper egypt close to aswan is the stunning temple of feli which in egyptian meant the end since it was located at the very southern edge of egypt much of the temple was built by ptolemy ii and his co-ruler and sister arsinoe there was a law passed by her husband ptolemy to say a statue of our sinner had to be erected in every single temple in egypt she had to become its resident goddess arsinoe was a powerful female pharaoh associated with the goddess isis a role the famous cleopatra would adopt two centuries later and under the ptolemies feli became a major center of the isis cult and here in the heart of eli temple our sinnoh's golden statue would have stood side by side with that of isis so the walls are full of images of isis and her fellow gods according to myth isis was responsible for the vital nile flood swelling the river as she wept tears of sorrow for her murdered husband osiris who she then resurrected and with its spectacular location feli still retains its hugely spiritual atmosphere i think it's that sense of continuity you really feel when you're up here you feel like you're at the center of the world i suppose for the ancient egyptians you were the center of their religious world and at this point which was the heart of ancient egyptian religion way into the christian era way into the sixth century a.d kind of messes with your head it's a very very holy place this but while feli was becoming an increasingly important center of egyptian religion its new capital alexandria had become the leading centre of knowledge for the ptolemies created some of the first scholarships attracting academics from across the world to study a wide range of subjects biology theology astronomy geometry anatomy philosophy and of course my own personal favorite history and at the center of this intellectual hot house was the famous royal library up to half a million works were once housed within to compete with the famous schools of plato and aristotle in athens and today that legacy lives on with alexandria's striking new library ptolemy's really did appreciate that knowledge was power and they wanted that power so they brought together in this one single place some of the greatest works in human history the plays of aeschylus sophocles and euripides the works of aristotle the philosopher the old testament scriptures and all the accumulated knowledge from the temples of ancient egypt all brought into this one single building the great library also contained the works of herodotus a greek historian who traveled the length of egypt over a century before the ptolemies had come to power his accounts sum up the greek fascination with egyptian society [Music] not only is the climate different from that of the rest of the world and the river unlike any other river but the people also in most of their manners and customs exactly reverse the common practice of mankind for the women attend the markets and trade while the men sit at home and do the weaving indeed the level of equality of egypt's women shocked herodotus something he vividly records when he witnessed a group of men and women traveling together by boat to the delta city of bubastis some of the women make a noise with clappers others play the oboe while the rest of the women and men sing and clap their hands [Music] some of the women shout mockery to the women of that town they are passing whilst others dance and others stand up and expose their private parts [Music] in temples the length of egypt the ptolemies ensured they were portrayed as egyptian pharaohs making them almost indistinguishable from their native egyptian predecessors yet in alexandria the blend of greek and egyptian could sometimes create a hybrid of rather strange results hi how are you namin sammy is a local historian who spent years studying this remarkable tomb complex built just after the ptolemaic period and here we come to the unique barrier me imperial chamber that's mad that is fabulous guarded by greek doric columns the entrance is covered in images of egyptian gods who would ensure safe passage into the afterlife it's it's like a tomb but it's also like a temperature of a temple but a typical egyptian style yeah yeah it's very hard protecting the entrance yeah yeah you know why cobra has chosen to be presented in the tombs because the cobra has no eyelashes it keeps her eyes open 24 hours which means it's a way to protect the tomb for 24 hours a day and night i love these snakes that's a very great looking snake but it's wearing a very little ancient egyptian crown that's crazy they literally are throwing everything they've got at this too i mean medusa horus sundisk to guarantee safety this is the best garden doorway i've seen in egypt it's got everything here and the statues they represent the inhabitants of the tomb a single wealthy family these two exhibit an odd mix of the greek and egyptian i think the bodies are ancient egyptian the stance is ancient egyptian the man's kilt is egyptian from the neck down they're egyptian but from the neck up they're european it's clear the tomb owners had done everything they could to ensure safe passage into the egyptian afterlife oh look it's the episode even if they didn't quite understand how it all worked all the features are there you've got thoth with you know presenting the oils and a new beast doing the same mummifying the dead you've even got jazz underneath kind of big jaws and feather of might the goddess of justice without her approval he will never cross the other side he didn't forget to add a greek touch in a lower part to depictions of dianosaurs dionysus was the greek god of wine and fertility clearly these tomb occupants intended to continue the lives they lived in alexandria into the beyond i want all what i enjoy in life to be with me of course especially the wine a great place to spend eternity [Music] despite its rather cartoon-like quality the apparent opulence of this tomb demonstrates the desire of the alexandrian elite to integrate into egyptian culture yet in many ways it was little more than a veneer hiding the real force that would ultimately destroy egypt for where the external invaders had largely tried and failed egypt's real nemesis would be the ptolemy's famous love of luxury and excess much of this luxury was just a facade for the royals of alexandria notorious for their love of display were like actors on a stage as one ancient commentator observed everything in egypt is simply play acting and painted scenery a comment which cuts to the heart of this melodramatic monarchy for whom image was everything because while the ruling elite were living it up in alexandria other parts of egypt were far from content by the end of the third century bc egypt was once more riven with civil war upper egypt began to rebel and it fell to ptolemy v to try and fight the fires of anarchy so not only did he portray himself as an egyptian he went even further in his support for egypt's ancient beliefs in doing so he left the world one of its most famous ancient artifacts rosetta stone it's best known as the means by which the french scholar champollion was first able to decipher egyptian hieroglyphs in 1822 and we can tell that the inscription on the stone was of huge importance because it was written out in three types of script greek demotic and hieroglyphic in a way you could almost describe it as a kind of news bulletin it's the priests of memphis issuing this decree to let as many people know exactly what the religious and the political policy was of crown and clergy and it particularly focuses on ptolemy v generous patronage the priests are praising him because he's the one that gives wealth to the temple and gives due honor and respect to the sacred animals which were such an integral part of egyptian religion the priests really are grateful to their ptolemaic pharaoh who they see as wanting to sort of tap in to the ancient egyptian culture and ancient egyptian religion much like alexander had much like the seats had and the cushites had they knew that to attain true power true control in egypt you had to do things the egyptian way yet ptolemy v philanthropy came at a price keeping the peace in egypt proved cripplingly expensive so the second half of the ptolemaic dynasty was riven by debt corruption and vicious civil war soon the expanding roman empire bore down on a divided egypt only the famous cleopatra stood in their way in the mould of great uncle alexander she believed herself divine and managed to hold the romans at bay for over 20 years but not even the great cleopatra could prevent the inevitable and so it was that in august 30 bc cleopatra's famous suicide brought an end to ancient egypt as we know it this epic culture which had lasted for three thousand years came to an end in a matter of days when on the 31st of august egypt was formally annexed by rome this was egypt's point of no return a slow painful decline of egyptian beliefs and culture until the arrival of christianity with its numerous temples abandoned built over or simply destroyed egypt's glories began to fade from memory [Music] but egypt's great story can now be traced back 20 000 years to the very origins of its magical culture which had evolved from its unique environment creating a series of sophisticated beliefs able to unite a country to build great monuments it had survived chaos and famine only to rise again in a glorious sentence of rebirth and resurrection even waves of foreign invasions were ultimately assimilated by egypt's powerful traditions and despite being eventually absorbed into the roman empire the ancient culture had continued until the arrival of christianity it as the egyptians had always believed there would be a life after death [Music] cleopatra's needle on london's embankment had lain forgotten in egypt until the 19th century but as pioneering egyptologists began a 200-year process of rediscovery ancient egypt was reborn and this time it went global [Music] and what a privilege it is for us today to be able to see such wonderful things and capture just a glimpse of this fascinating ancient culture the culture of a people at one with their environment and who captured through their timeless monuments their own unique view of the world in fact the story of egypt is far from over for its rediscovery means that it is only just beginning and it's the things that made the egyptians so very special have ensured that they're now known right across the world and they've achieved their ultimate goal to live forever

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 433,485

Keywords: ancient history, classical history, ancient civilisations, classical antiquity, history documentary, classical documentary, ancient egypt, joanna fletcher, rise of egypt, end of ancient egypt, egyptology, immortal egypt, dr joann fletcher nefertiti, ancient egypt dr joann fletcher, documentary history, full length documentaries

Id: ZU2Roq-emxw

Length: 232min 19sec (13939 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 23 2021