The Ordinary Life Of Ancient Egyptians | Life And Death In The Valley Of The Kings | All Out History

[Music] ancient egypt one of the most fascinating civilizations on earth [Music] but what was it like to be an ancient egyptian living in this incredible place it's okay trying to understand ancient egypt on a visual level pyramids king tut mummies but to really get into the heads of the ancient egyptians you've got to walk in their footsteps i'm egyptologist dr joanne fletcher and i've spent over 40 years obsessed with this lost world while the magnificent temples and tombs of the pharaohs can tell us one story i'm interested in another the story of ordinary people the real egyptians it's such a privilege we're amongst their family here this feeling of closeness of warmth of love i'm going to uncover evidence about how they lived their lives wow it's a glimpse into the sort of world of ancient egyptian interior design and reveal what they hoped for in death there was no grim reaper just this beautiful goddess wanting to embrace them in her warm arms [Music] and there is one very special couple i want to get to know as i journey to their desert village home and examine the treasures from their tomb you can only imagine there's pride and joy at receiving such a mark of royal favor as we discover what life was really like in ancient egypt [Music] welcome to darrell medina or as the people who used to live here three and a half thousand years ago used to call it pardemi which simply means the village [Music] today this village feels remote and inhospitable but three and a half thousand years ago this community lay at the heart of ancient egypt situated on luxor's west bank it was a suburb of egypt's great city thebes now this is the landscape of kings and gods pharaohs and yet these are the homes of ordinary people living ordinary lives men and women aunts and uncles grandparents and kids they all lived here in this tightly packed community and by reimagining how people live in the colors the sounds the smells we have an instant gateway right back three and a half thousand years to these ancient people who lived here in this remote little village in the desert [Music] now in order to piece together the lives of such people i've got an amazing set of clues the earthly remains of a husband and wife who once lived in the village [Music] but now reside nearly 2 000 miles away here at the egyptian museum in turin [Music] me car and merit car the architect merit his wife now car and merit were two of the sort of leading lights of the village car's actual title was the chief of foreman so he was in charge of the workforce and merit her official title was lady of the house which is ancient egyptian for housewife this is the only known statue of car almost certainly an idealized image it nonetheless suggests a proud and rather handsome man and this death mask is one of the few representations we have of merit which reveals a soft and very beautiful face and although these mummies have never been unwrapped what lies beneath has been revealed by x-rays and ct scans we know that carr who stood about five foot six was a very striking looking individual with a rather prominent nose and a great fondness for lots of black eyeliner but then when we turn to his diminutive little wife merit a very dainty little lady standing about five foot two she also had a long crimped wig of dark brown wavy hair which would have made her look really really beautiful [Music] but what really brings car and merit back to life is this [Music] the collection of objects discovered in their intact tomb in 1906 where they had lain undisturbed for over 3 000 years [Music] a leading egyptologist from the time wrote i should think it is the greatest find ever made or rather the most unique absolutely intact and full of antiquities the passage and burial chamber are choked with chairs beds boxes vases arthur weigel 2 pm 15 february 1906 this is really a unique find because of its intactness but also because of the wealth of material that was in the tomb [Music] tables and chairs and stools and more chairs and more coffers and the coffers packed with linen and the coffers packed with cosmetic vessels and his shaving equipment packed into a little leather pouch and his hip flask and everything is there even the shaped breads wrapped with palm fronds to keep them [Music] fresh it is really incredible there is there is material there for research for another few generations the collection not only gives us a fascinating insight into their burial but also the lives kara merit lived the finds ranging from death masks and coffins to their most intimate belongings used in life like this merits beauty box this is basically the contents of uh merits dressing table the perfume cosmetics moisturizers and all the things that the ancient egyptians regarded as so essential well-used and well-loved this stunning cosmetic chest tells us merit was a well-to-do woman who cared about her appearance this is merit's glass black coal eyeliner glass was very rare at this time and it's in the classic egyptian colour combination of blue and gold and the black eye paint that merit herself applied every day to her own eyes is still inside this vessel it's got its wooden applicator stick in the top an egyptian light is today still use this in exactly the same way this stone alabaster perfume vessel still got the original contents running down the outside and it's extraordinary to think that in some cases with the ancient egyptians it's not just a question of the visuals it's it's how to reach back in time into their world through other senses the sense of smell for instance and to be able to smell the things they smell the cinnamon the lotus the cedar clearly this is an expensive item so how would a fairly ordinary egyptian like merit afford such luxury [Music] the answer lies in the village and the very special occupation of its inhabitants these were egypt's tomb and temple builders from the foreman to the stonemason from the draftsman to the carpenter and they all lived here with their wives and children and about a mile to the northwest is where they worked the most famous cemetery on earth this is the great and majestic necropolis of the millions of years of pharaoh life prosperity and health in the west of thebes or as we know it today the valley of the kings [Music] for nearly 500 years men like carr created the tombs of some of egypt's most famous pharaohs hatshepsut aminotep iii and toot and carmen were all buried here they were an elite a kind of crack force of workmen and architects the very best of the egyptian culture they were the craftsmen that implemented what pharaoh wanted to sustain pharaoh's soul for eternity they were almost magicians operating secretly within this stunning landscape but i'm getting ahead of myself as the life story of cara merit begins back in the village here i want to explore how they may have met and fallen in love they probably grew up in the village but how did a young couple like them go about courting to find out i don't have to go very far as here on the outskirts of the village is the great pit it's a long abandoned attempt by the villagers to find a groundwater source they dug down and down and eventually reached more than 50 metres they wanted to become self-sufficient in water but sadly for them they never did and yet what the pit did become was a community dump it became a mine of information as when this pit and its surroundings were excavated by archaeologists they made some remarkable discoveries and this is what was found here literally tens of thousands of these pieces of pottery and stone some with pictures many more with words giving us the real history of the village because these are their notes their reminders their love songs their laundry lists the very voices of this village and some of these voices tell us about falling in love your hand is in my hand my body shakes with joy my heart is so happy because we walk together to hear your voice is like pomegranate wine this is a typical love poem written on papyrus as well as stone or pottery fragments they capture the feelings of young lovers they're so common it seems our village was a real hotbed of passion every single one of the love poems from ancient egypt come from this village except one some of the titles are really evocative there's your love down to the river all night and all day and the rather suggestive shedding clothes i go down to the water to be with you and come up again with a red fish looking splendid on my fingers oh my warrior my beloved come look at me and it's nice to imagine that such beautiful lines of love played a part in the courtship of karen merit today we might seal the deal with a proposal engagement and marriage but some ancient egyptians seem to have taken a rather more direct approach carr may well have signaled his commitment to merit by bringing her his bundle to bring the bundle meant you wanted to indicate your desire to move in with the person who took your fancy the bundle is thought to have been a kind of dowry consisting of everything the man owned it's likely that presenting it to your intended was one of the first steps to setting up home together however this didn't always go to plan as one villager recounts in a note the man left he tells us this very sad story he lists all his worldly goods which i must say aren't that impressive then he tells us he went to the woman's house but all her family simply threw him out and as he says himself so i went again with all my property in order to live with them and see she acted in exactly the same way and threw me out again you can almost feel his outrage because this woman has not just turned him down but all the things he could bring with him presumably she was unimpressed by the size of his bundle we can assume carr suffered no such indignity as evidence from the tomb suggests that he and merit were a loving and monogamous couple [Music] the scenes on this beautiful box show car and merit seated together to share the offerings which will sustain them in the afterlife [Music] but in life too we also have clues to their devotion [Music] now although the ancient egyptians didn't have a marriage ceremony as we would understand it they simply moved in together they nevertheless would exchange love tokens quite often in the form of rings [Music] this ring was discovered underneath the death mask of merit it's so precious it's not yet on display here in turin this is the ring that was found inside the mask almost as an afterthought of merit so it was shoved in there just as she was being buried it spent all those thousands of years just tucked away hidden away within merit's own wrappings a very ad hoc thing wasn't it a very spontaneous gesture almost and the image on it is it it looks like the the cow of hathor that's exactly what it is the goddess hathor was often depicted as a cow she was seen as the eternal mother figure to both the living and the dead in life she aided fertility and provided protection in childbirth while in death she ensured safe passage into the afterlife this represents the love between car merit and in this tiny little object in some ways it's perhaps the most important thing from the the entire tomb for me personally it's wonderful car and merit lived in a glittering age in egyptian history sustained by the annual floods of the river nile the egyptian state had existed for almost 2 000 years [Music] by 1400 bc it was at the height of its power and now ruled by the 18th royal dynasty [Music] its kings are among the greatest names of ancient egypt we have the so-called boy king tutankhamen the great female pharaoh hatshepsut and the so-called bad boy the heretic akhenaten but really at the very heart of all this is akhenaten's father this man amanotep iii the dazzling sun god himself and the very personification at least he thought of ancient egypt's greatest deity the sun he's my favorite pharaoh because he presided over a golden age when ancient egypt really did rule the ancient world and this is the very pharaoh who was carr's boss carr worked for him carr's job was to ensure the pharaoh's immortality he did this by helping design and build some of egypt's most extraordinary monuments both tombs and temples this is one such project from the reign of aminotepe the third the solar court in luxor temple it's a revolutionary design as it moved away from the dark and cloistered shrine to an open celebration of the sun in return like all state employees car and merit were given the things they needed in the village a home a tomb food water even servants this was the highly organized world of the middle classes women had rights many kids and education and literacy was far higher in the village than elsewhere in egypt in cara merits time the village consisted of about 20 houses and while we don't know exactly which one was their house it was almost certainly one of the larger ones here at the northern end perhaps even this one so we're going to the front room here and this would be an area really where the women of the house hung out chatted gossiped and so forth kids running in and out up the stairs around the corner into the perhaps most important room in the house and here i absolutely love this this is built-in furniture it's kind of like a divan a shares long if you like and this is where the the gentleman of the house would uh sit of an evening drinking beer having a chat then back up here up this little step and then into this area which is quite a considerable size for a room like this and probably storage but also a bedroom where the beds or the sleeping mats would have been placed so as we progress a little further into the highest part of the house we're coming to a storage area maybe for clothes but almost certainly for food and drink also because this area directly adjoins this wonderful fitted kitchen and this is extraordinary because we've actually got the built-in oven at the back of the house we even see these on the ostrich when they're doing little sketches of ladies blowing into the oven to keep the the fire hot and then they can cook the bread and so forth and then here ancient egyptian refrigerator where you'd place pottery vessels with drinking you'd want a cool drink on a day like this you can understand why and the only way to do this was to sink the vessels into a pit deeper in the ground little tiny temporary roof over it to keep it as chilled as possible so fridge oven they've got everything they needed and of course at either side aren't rooms of this house but these are the neighbors houses these are a terraced street if you like of back-to-back houses the saw britain had in the industrial revolution so the neighbors were never very far away and the concept of privacy certainly in this little corner of ancient egypt was a completely unknown thing life in the village was almost entirely supported by the state a daily procession of donkeys would carry water up from the nile valley to be decanted into a central system [Music] each household was entitled to an average of 100 liters per day for drinking cooking and bathing [Music] less than half a mile from the village lies another crucial remnant of this highly organized infrastructure although built a little after cast time grain stores like these acted as a kind of bank money didn't exist in egypt at this time so at the end of each month carr would have received his salary as a ration of wheat and barley granaries like this would have held an immense amount of food these granaries alone would have held over 40 000 individual sacks of grain chief workmen like carr were entitled to seven and a half sacks of grain a month five and a half of emma wheat and two of barley plenty for merit and their servants to produce the staples of egyptian life bread and beer the villagers also received fish and vegetables and could trade their excess grain for luxuries like meat and wine these places would have been full of life people bustling here and there scribes taking record making an account of all the stuff being delivered a constant stream of men carrying sacks depositing them here people coming to collect their rations it's a simple system but one that endured fueling egypt's success and political stability for thousands of years indeed it was a system so important it was represented on numerous tomb walls these scenes are from the tomb of the scribe mena contemporary with carr himself here we can see the whole process of the wheat and barley being harvested and distributed and here the principal food it produced bread merit had no less than 50 loaves of bread in there too [Music] now bread was the key ingredient in the ancient egyptian diet the ancient egyptians added many different things to it you could add dates or honey to make it sweet or savoury things cumin seeds coriander seeds all manner of different ingredients to really vary it and in the tomb there's a whole range of different sizes and shapes including what appear to be gingerbread men little shapes of fruit flowers and animals although they didn't have yeast as such the technique of combining flour water and salt to make bread is virtually unchanged in three and a half thousand years i mean this is a completely timeless scene this fabulous mud brick oven is typical of the ovens we find in ancient egyptian settlements [Music] it's totally believable to imagine merit baking bread to feed her family it's a completely timeless scene [Music] it's a real direct link back into their world the smell of this wonderful stuff the feel of it the way it was made [Music] all egyptians would have eaten this on a daily basis it was the sort of stuff that you offered to the gods and even when the bread had gone mouldy the egyptians used it as a form of medicine which wouldn't be fully understood for thousands of years the medical techs actually advocate take bread in mouldy condition and apply to the wound in question and although they didn't know why it worked it did work because moldy bread contains of course penicillin which we in the west think we discovered and yet the ancient egyptians fully appreciated its benefits 5000 years ago it's very good stuff while merits responsibilities were largely focused on life at home carr's duties were dominated by working for the pharaoh [Music] he and his fellow tomb builders took this path from the village to their workplace the valley of the kings it starts here at the southern end of the village and then it follows that path there see right up over that call and then we go straight up and over the top of the mountain car and his workforce would have regularly made this journey sometimes camping out during the working week in small huts in the valley [Music] in cars day probably about 40 to 60 men making this journey probably singing probably carrying water pots themselves and the day's rations maybe car must have walked this path hundreds of times first perhaps as a carpenter but eventually as the royal architect and overseer so if we've been working about 45 minutes in full sun and it's really really hot then carney's men coming up this path to work they do the walk and then they have to do the work exactly [Music] their regular commute took them further west into the land of the dead in fact from up here you can see why this place was so carefully chosen as it mirrors the ancient egyptian spiritual beliefs if you worship the son as a god then two times of the day take on special significance sunrise in the east and sunset in the west sunrise is the birth of the god so the east is the land of the living sunset is the death of the gods so the west is the land of death so if you pick this spot to make the tombs for the dead this one spot life death the nile valley the valley of the kings and it is that stark isn't it continuing our hike we finally reach the western branch of the valley of the kings where time has virtually stood still remnants of the tomb builders world litter the landscape this is a great staircase it's super business beautifully constructed though further up open it's absolutely perfect this is it this is the start of cars domain this is actually a guard hut and one man would be on garden here 24 hours a day and you can see even ancient pottery has been preserved at this site that's three and a half thousand years old so this piece is like one of cars empties is empty beer jar and we know this is 18th inner city don't we because the valley this part of the valley the west valley was only ever used for oil tombs that's right yeah [Music] the guards in these huts maintained a watchful eye over everything that went on in the valley what he was guarding against was obviously tomb robbery for the pre-existing tombs but while the the new was under construction the materials used in the construction of the tomb were also very valuable metal copper the copper chisels especially the paints the plaster the oils for the lamps this was all very valuable material although deathly silent today three and a half thousand years ago these walls would have reverberated with the sound of cars construction teams to be the mallets hitting the chisels in the tomb with the pounding of the people making the plaster and the mixing bowls for the for the paints either be the voice of the overseer telling people off or telling people to do this to do that building a tomb for the king was hazardous work although not all the dangers are immediately obvious apart from the normal hazards of hitting your hand with a mallet or getting cut with a chisel falling off scaffolding breaking legs falling down the tomb the other risk is because this is a wadi it's a dry riverbed there are flash floods now and again and all this would come crashing down and they would have to run during his lifetime carr worked on three royal tombs initially as a craftsman [Music] these copper chisels found in his tomb were the tools of cars trade he then rose to become royal architect and the overseer responsible for the design and construction of at least two pharaoh's tombs it was a task on which egypt entirely depended since each pharaoh must be able to reach the afterlife to ensure both their immortality and the well-being of their subjects build it correctly and all would be well fail and egypt would fail with it so how did carr and his men actually undertake this most onerous of tasks i'll follow in your footsteps this is tombk25 thought to have been started for amano the third son at canarton it was left unfinished when akhenaten suddenly moved his capital away from thebes it's as if the workmen only downed tools yesterday nice so you can see joe yeah unfinished wall it's been chiseled smooth but it hasn't been plastered and you can actually see the gouge marks of the chisels where they've counted out the material what a treat to be able to see this kind of working surface as an architect carr meticulously planned the tombs layout using the ancient egyptian unit of measurement the cubit in modern thames the cuba was roughly 52 and a half centimeters long and it's subdivided into what was called seven palms the palm of your hand one two three four five six seven and on the end we have four fingers there perfect perfect and the way this would be used was marking out and measuring the way down the turn in fact you can see the dots there where they've been marking out you see as they came down it corresponds exactly indeed and it's so usable that it is elegant isn't it at the end of the day's work i could fold it up pop it back in its leather carrying case and take it just imagine car and his team of 30 or 40 men toiling in this extreme heat and choking dust and to light their way all they had were these simple oil lamps i think being down here in the dark with a lamp like this really increases the respect i have for car and his workforce that they were able to create such sublime monuments with such simple tools the evidence reveals carr was highly respected in life this beautiful object is a golden royal cubit it was presented to carr in recognition for his work for the pharaoh aminotepe ii it can only be equated to a kind of carriage clock or an engraved tankard that you're given for good service and you can only imagine cars pride and joy at receiving such a mark of royal favor and had the ancient egyptians had a mantlepiece this would have been on it but i think the true value of this special qubit is the fact it's been personalized to such a great degree and it actually sums up car in a single item it's the tools of his trade and yet it's been embellished the inscriptions on this are wonderful so many little details about carl's career about the fact he built a a small shrine or temple not even in thebes further north at a site called hermopolis so he was clearly active outside of thebes it's pretty hard to describe how it feels to hold something like this that car and probably merit would have held great a lot just to sort of marvel at it and and congratulate themselves on on being so high up in pharaoh's favor i love it i absolutely love it [Music] with carr's career on the rise he and merit also started a family [Music] childbirth is a risky time in any woman's life and certainly in ancient egypt merit would have sought help from hathor the pre-eminent goddess of motherhood all ancient egyptian women wanted to be like hathor she's like a modern female celebrity that all women aspire to be she had it all and she was worshiped here this is the funerary temple of the great female pharaoh hat shep sut at der el bakri situated just two miles from the village it's located at the base of the very cliffs in which hathor herself was believed to reside but how might the goddess have touched merit's life these columns are each one topped with the image of the goddess herself the face of a beautiful woman but with cow's ears poking through the mass of hair to reflect the goddesses cow-like docile sweet nature she's seen as an eternal mother figure that can nurture all those around her who would then take care of your soul for eternity and allow you to be reborn each morning with the rising sun [Music] ordinary people like merit could not enter the actual temples themselves these were sacred places reserved for the clergy and the pharaohs so merit would have turned to a more domestic form of worship now this wonderful thing is an exact replica of a bowl found in the village and it shows the double heads of the goddess hathor i think they very much regarded this as a potent talisman almost like an amulet that they could have about the house to bring beautiful face of hathor into their daily life so whatever they put in it be it food beer wine even flowers the contents would be almost sprinkled with a little bit of hathor's magic yet hassel wasn't only the goddess of fertility and motherhood she was also the deity of sexual pleasure and the evidence suggests that enjoying sex was as important then as it is now this is a replica of a section of the so-called turin erotic papyrus what it shows are couples actively very actively having sex the men all appear quite rough and ready some have receding hairline stubble pot bellies each one has an enormous phallus as for the women they're very beautiful very agile each has got a very exquisite hairstyle fronted by one of these fragrant lotus blossoms and so there's this desire to almost tap into the erotic these aren't kind of showing women as slabs of meat simply there for male pleasure not at all these are active women engaged in acts of pleasure acts of love they're using sex as a kind of form of leisure of entertainment as well as doing it portraying it and while hathor might have offered sexual inspiration her presence was needed most during the dangerous time of pregnancy and childbirth women like merit would have looked to her for protection the outer precincts of the temple here at der el bakri were a focus for such worship this faded scene is a rare representation of a pregnant woman in this case the mother of the female pharaoh hat shepsoot there she is as the unborn fetus and you can just make out the gentle swelling of her mother's abdomen here as the unborn hot shepherd resides within the safety of her mother's body when the archaeologists excavated all around here a century ago they found such amazing things as baby clothes that have been specially made with an image of hathor almost like a post-it note to the goddess these will be left here in the hope that these women could conceive [Music] merit had three children that we know of two sons and one daughter their images appear in kara merits tomb chapel and on the painted boxes found in their tomb with infant mortality as high as 50 percent merit would have needed all the help she could get but the villagers didn't just turn to the gods [Music] this is the cajon papyrus it details the prescriptions and spells used to tackle illnesses suffered specifically by women examination of a woman who is aching in her rear her front and the calves of her thighs you should say of it it is discharges of the womb and you should treat it with one measure of carob fruit one measure of incense pellets one unit of cow's milk boil cool mix together and drink on four consecutive mornings what they're trying to do is bring some sort of order some form of understanding to a host of complex medical conditions and in the root cause of of many of the problems associated with women's illnesses is apparently a wandering womb because the egyptians thought that this part of the female anatomy wasn't fixed in situ but would kind of wander all over the body this bizarre condition had an equally bizarre cure the woman would sort of stand over burning incense in the hope that the rising sweet smell of the fumes would encourage this wandering womb down into its proper place and while today this may seem rather strange such a diagnosis and treatment may have had some positive effect certainly to the woman in labor to have a medical practitioner present reading out these medical prescriptions would have had an almost placebo-like effect and i think that's the strength of documents like this used in conjunction with all the amulets and all the magical spells that could be brought to bear by the village midwife the recitation of texts like this would have brought a further layer of order to a very difficult and complex time in a woman's life alongside raising her children merit would have been responsible for her home she's likely to have been just as house proud as you and me yet far from the monochrome beige we see today the world of ancient egypt was a riot of colour [Music] the vestiges of this can still be seen if you know where to look [Music] when we look up at the ceilings the areas which have been sheltered from direct sunlight the colours are absolutely superb the condition the brightness the vivacity the sort of leaping out of the walls and ceilings right into our eyes and this temple with its vibrant colour was created by the later pharaoh ramses iii the egyptians were far from subtle in their use of paint primary colours red green blue all these amazing vivid hues and the blues and greens are particularly bright this of course is more of a status marker for the king who commissioned such a brilliant piece of work because blues and greens weren't naturally occurring pigments and had to be manufactured at great cost and so this is a way for the monarch to say look at me look at the wealth i possess [Music] [Applause] [Music] the effort and expense involved in producing such synthetic colours was way beyond the reach of most ordinary people [Music] instead they used locally sourced materials ones that could literally be picked up from the desert floor this rock in my hand is kind of like a color box that brought ancient egypt to life because on one side we have the red iron oxide and the other the yellow iron oxide and so by splitting a rock like this into the component yellows and reds you could crush these up mix with water and then apply to the desired surface [Music] i think the best way to sort of try and reanimate these colors is probably to use that old standby a little bit of spit always works from the stone it's very very vivid [Music] you can see the effect it has against white so you have these two shades that for the ancient egyptians really did reflect blood life vivacity and then the yellow of the golden sun [Music] i want to see how villagers like carr and merit used colour to decorate their homes and i'm in luck as here at the southern end of the village a single precious clue remains here it is now if i lift this cloth i'm going to see something i've waited a long time to see and it's basically an original wall scene from an ancient egyptian house so here goes wow it's a phenomenal piece the colors are so fresh it's a glimpse into the sort of world of ancient egyptian interior design it's the lower half of a female musician and she's playing a flute she's got gold bracelets gold anklets but the most exciting thing are these two tattoos of the household god bez so evocative so warm so sumptuous in its lavish use of colour and these fabulous fabulous leaves heart-shaped draping down the sides to sort of inject some much-needed vegetation greenery into this sort of desert environment it's an intriguing thought that here in the very village where the men who built and painted the royal tombs would they have been commissioned by one of the housewives here to come and paint my house or did the women paint these images for themselves it's something we'll never know but i like to think that the lady of the house would have had a direct input into the kind of scene she wanted around her she went about her daily chores with the kids and her friends and female relatives such fragments from the past allow us to get closer to the real car and merit in the case of merit she seems to have been a loving wife and hard-working mother a delicate and beautiful woman the epitome of taste and style but sadly this is where merit's story ends the evidence suggesting she died quite suddenly to leave her beloved car as a grieving widower [Music] he even had to bury her in a coffin intended for him for not only is it far too large for merit the inscriptions name only car [Music] yet merit was immortalized in the tomb chapel she shared with carr located just yards from their village and this is where carr and their children would have come to bring regular offerings and to pay their respects [Music] [Music] it's such a privileged glimpse into their everyday life we're amongst their family here and that's what this whole tomb chapel chamber has all around it this this feeling of family of closeness of warmth of love [Music] what's interesting here is that karen merritt has shown it several times and yet the one constant child that's with them is their daughter merit named after her mother and this is merit the mother here and this is mary the daughter behind her on the other wall we have the daughter merit who's leaning forward towards her father car and she appears to be tying a necklace around his neck or perhaps anointing him with perfume i'd like to think that it was merit the daughter who cared for car in his old age but what happened to carr the proud and talented architect [Music] these elegant walking sticks may suggest he lived on into old age continuing to oversee the most important commission of his life so i've come back to this remote part of the valley of the kings to find the final resting place of amanotep iii it was actually the third of the royal tombs that carr worked on so it's so exciting to be going in here and following in carr's wonderful footsteps [Music] my enthusiasm is well founded because the tomb currently under restoration has been closed for decades hardly anyone gets to see this [Music] [Music] this isn't very professional is it so beautiful it literally has brought tears to my eyes it is so stunning the colours are fantastic it's exquisite it's amanotep the third being received into the care of the gods of the underworld and there's a new best handing out the sign of life to amenortep i think car and his men designing these images just putting the king's vision into practice and and just [Music] literally it's taking my breath away look the artist doesn't just come along with his blue paint and the palette and brushed on the paint somebody's taking the trouble to apply individual curls of hair here can you see the texture the curls here that's textured hair and they're also amino otep with osiris green-faced god of vegetation new life and resurrection and that's really what this tomb does it's a time machine it's it's the place where amino the third mummy would have finally been led to rest you can clearly see that no expense was spared and for good reason for this is where the pharaoh then revered as a god would dwell in the afterlife his next seat of power oh and down we go deeper and deeper into the underworld wow it really does evoke this sense of going down into the subterranean underworld into the blackness into the darkness into eternity this elaborate network of chambers and stairways was designed to protect the royal mummy and all the glittering treasures which once surrounded it now look at this very clever trick of the architect our boy car look at this can you see the way the images were once all along this wall just the whole way around images of the king and the gods and yet originally this would have been packed with mud brick probably plastered over the images drawn and painted over it so that any would be tomb rubbers would come down here think oh this is it nothing much in here and hopefully leave by the way they came in because this is actually the next stage of the tomb so it's kind of like a hidden portal this is the burial chamber the most important part of the tomb and there it is the final resting place of one of egypt's greatest pharaohs a man considered a god both in life and in death how do you bury a god well obviously surrounded dripping in gold semi-precious stones and the most beautiful funerary items all of which would have been choreographed planned by carr and his colleagues everybody wants to take care of the king within the royal mummy dwelt the soul the immortal soul of egypt itself this cumulative buildup of every royal pharaoh who'd gone before resided within the mummy who once lay down there [Music] oh wow it's been 46 years waiting to see this two minutes it's been well worth it although we can now appreciate his consumer workmanship it seems carr himself never saw the finnish tomb for he died before his king [Music] but like his king car's own body was prepared for its eternal journey into the afterlife before he too was buried since this journey has given us a chance to get that little bit closer to cara and merit i think we could almost call them friends their worries and concerns are not unlike our own hard work family and above all love yet this is only the beginning of their story what comes next is a journey into a world very different from our own a world of ritual of magic and the unswerving belief that life really can go on forever and here we have carr's name right down the middle and to speak the name of the dead is to make them live again car and merit [Music] so join me next time as we travel deep into the heart of the egyptian afterlife it's an extraordinary journey on which we uncover cara merrick's costly preparations for death all played out in a series of complex and elaborate rituals as they attempt to achieve their place in eternity [Music] at the dawn of the 20th century a unique discovery was made it redefined how we understand life and death in ancient egypt how wonderful to have been in that team of archaeologists who came down that day in february 1906 a procession of men eager to know what lay at the end of this really atmospheric series of tunnels and chambers what they'd found was an intact tomb undisturbed for over 3 000 years and inside were not the treasures of pharaohs but a unique window on the world of ordinary egyptians the mummies and possessions of a working man called carr and his wife merit [Music] i'm egyptologist dr joanne fletcher and i'm exploring the world of car and merit to find out about their lives and their deaths last time we looked at how they lived in their tiny desert village [Music] we've seen where carr worked what a treat to be able to see this kind of working surface what they ate it's direct link back into their world the smell of this wonderful stuff the way it was made and how they relaxed and this is where the gentleman of the house would sit of an evening drinking beer having a chat in many ways their lives were quite similar to ours [Music] but their relationship with death was completely different because to ancient egyptians life was really just a dress rehearsal for the perfect afterlife that they were trying to reach i want to travel back into this strange and mysterious world [Music] this isn't a funerary building this is a building to keep life going to reach the afterlife they spent fortunes on funerary equipment buildings and rituals carr's book of the dead would have been incredibly costly and expected to face numerous trials along the way this is the great devourer all evil souls their hearts were fed to this creature consumed and that was it finished forever [Music] so with carr and merit as our guides we'll journey back into the world of death in ancient egypt [Music] the ancient egyptians held a fundamental belief your death was in many ways the most important moment in your life if you'd prepared for it you would enter the perfect afterlife an idealized eternity based on life in egypt so for any ancient egyptian be they farmer or pharaoh the biggest investment they made was for death and the world beyond and here in ancient thebes death was the biggest business in town [Music] now in this part of egypt death was the major employer from the men who built these wonderful funerary temples and the rock-cut tombs to the people who embalmed the dead who provided all the funerary equipment they would need the little funerary figures the artists who composed the funerary text even the florists who put together the huge bouquets of flowers offered to the dead in their tombs this was the major industry our couple kara merit lived at the very heart of this industry in a desert village now known as der el medina close to the spectacular valley of the kings where carr designed and built tombs for the mighty pharaohs and although he spent his working hours creating the tombs of kings he spent much of his spare time preparing for his own death but in order to be ready for the journey into the afterlife carr needed to plan his route carefully this was where his investment started with a guidebook this scroll is known as the book of the dead cars was found in his tomb and this is a facsimile the book of the dead is a collection of funerary spells and texts and incantations a kind of road map of the afterlife and it was designed to allow the deceased with the help of these spells to navigate his or her way through into the next world its words seem mysterious and strange but they had a definite purpose oh you who opened the ways who opened the roads to my soul that is with you so that it may enter with trepidation but emerge in peace from the abode of osiris let it not be rejected if you're going to meet some dangerous demons or monsters in the underworld you had to have powerful spells to counteract them to defuse their magic and to negotiate your way past them to achieve eternity most books of the dead were simply off-the-shelf versions mass-produced by local artists but car's copy was specially commissioned it was the deluxe version featuring personal references and grandiose claims words spoken by the great chief carr i know the northern gate of the sky the place where ra navigates by wind and all i am in charge of the rigging in the ship of the sun god a tireless oarsman in ra's great ship [Music] while plane rolls of papyrus were relatively cheap at around a fifth of a worker's monthly salary one inscribed with funerary texts like this could cost the equivalent of six months wages at least [Music] so many hours of work have gone into it's almost 14 metres of texts the inks had to be prepared the colours ground up mixed and then applied so carefully and with such a lot of thought it's rare to find a book of the dead so intact yet somehow kara merits had remained safe in their undiscovered tomb for over 3000 years the only evidence that they had existed at all was this i've come to see the small chapel that car built on the outskirts of their village and although another major expense on kara merits death bill it was the vital link between the living and the dead [Music] it's like a little jewel box of colour you come in from the glare and heat of the desert and the cliffs and you enter this little oasis of calm and quiet the chapel is situated close to their house because when these ancient egyptians died they simply moved across the street and as the living and the dead existed side by side this was the place that families could pay their respects and looking around the colours used a sumptuous you've got the gold background and then as the vaulted ceiling rises up the artist has done something very clever they've changed the palette to these blues and greens of the egyptian landscape the nihilists suggested the sky is suggested very cooling refreshing and a wonderful juxtaposition of the gold the blues and the greens blues and greens were among the most costly colours to produce so carr had clearly spared no expense the walls depict all the things he and merit loved in life and hoped to enjoy in the afterlife it is like walking into karen mary's sitting room they're all here they're all around us this isn't a funerary building this is a building to keep life going kind of like a giant generator with everything that life meant to cara merit encapsulated in this tiny little room this chapel was the first clue in a trail that would ultimately lead archaeologists to car a merit tomb [Music] because after three millennia the chapel was discovered by an italian diplomat bernardino dravetti appointed french consul to egypt by napoleon in 1803 dravetti's main interest was amassing antiquities i think it's safe to say that dravetti's methods were very very unscrupulous he used a range of agents to basically ransack their way through ancient egypt and in doing so he managed to acquire a stupendous series of collections of egyptian antiquities many of which he then sold on um to sufficiently wealthy individuals dravetti sold his personal collection to the king of sardinia who put it here in what is now the superb egyptian museum in turin one of the most important items in this collection was taken from carr and merit chapel this costly painted funerary steeler was a kind of memorial stone made to ensure their names would live on and its presence in turin would eventually lead to the discovery of their tomb [Music] it shows carr twice both left and right worshipping the the archetypal gods of the dead osiris and then the black jackal-headed god anubis and you can see he's praying to them for a long and successful afterlife and then in the register below it's kind of like a family snapshot if you like you have cara merit seated in front of a huge table full of food drink flowers and then on the right hand side with the arm raised is their eldest son i'm a no pet and he's kind of saying his prayers to his parents so in effect the next generation is wishing a long and happy afterlife full of good things it's likely that this funerary stealer was actually made during the lifetime of car he would have almost certainly commissioned it and would have selected which deities he wanted the kind of whole layout the scenario the colours and this was a typical thing for the ancient egyptians to do to commission their funerary monuments in their lifetime so they could get things just right and then of course after death um the images represented would magically continue to be effective throughout eternity so it was kind of like good insurance for what was going to happen to them in the next world the elaborate book of the dead their chapel and its funerary stealer were just the beginning of cara merits preparations for eternal life the main investment would be their tomb so i'm traveling to the valley of the kings where cars supervise the building of royal tombs it's the best place to find out how he might have organized and paid for the construction of his own i'm meeting geologist steve cross to see an unfinished tomb a work in progress the way they cut the tombs was they started with a slot at the ceiling and then worked out outwards right and then excavated downwards slowly chiseling away at the bedrock a tomb of this size would have taken around 40 men years to complete and although a tomb like this was way beyond the means of most ordinary egyptians carr had both the skills and the inspiration to create such a tomb for himself now this of course is a royal tome but in terms of carr's own personal tomb how on earth would he have persuaded anyone on their time off to have given him a hand excavating his tomb yeah well what they did was they all helped each other and it was barter you do work in my tomb out of work in your tomb right so carr being the architect might have designed teams for other people in trade-off for them coming to work on his team so he got the better part of the deal really probably he did don't forget these two makers are the experts that's why the tombs in the derral medina are amongst the best in the world [Music] with the help of his colleagues carr clearly invested a huge amount of time effort and resources into building his tomb so security was critical tomb robbing had already been a big problem for 2 000 years and this explains why he did something highly unusual ordinary egyptians who could afford a tomb built it directly beneath their chapel complex which of course made it easier to find and rob but carr had learnt from the pharaohs he decided to hide his elsewhere it remained secret for over three thousand years [Music] but in 1906 another italian began explorations in cairo merits village egyptologist ernesto was director of the egyptian museum in turin [Music] he was very familiar with the steeler of kara merit and also knew their tomb had never been found he could read the hieroglyphs he knew there was an important individual called carr had a wife called merit and he knew they had to be buried somewhere in the vicinity where the steeler was discovered scaparelli was determined to find the tomb but where to look [Music] that instrument elainey basilica the present-day director of the egyptian museum in turin has accompanied me to egypt to follow in his footsteps they must have looked around and said the tomb is here somewhere is it is it that trench there or where could it be but car was clever wasn't he was sly he knew what was going to go into the tomb so he wanted to to hide it i think escaparelli must have stood here scratched his head and said knowing where the steeler was already in the museum in since 1824 he must have said where the hell is the tomb it's got to be near here and it looked at the landscape which most archaeologists do and said i think we need to take that that that detritus away [Music] it was just a theory but scaparelli had a huge workforce at his disposal he moved his 250 workmen to the foot of this rock face close to the chapel they just dug for 30 days he says until they discovered the um the perforation in the in the bedrock there and then they came to a bricked wall took that down and then they saw the door wow that must have been an amazing feeling yeah a sealed dog in an egyptian too wow it was a moment really incredible for them because all these tombs most of these tombs have been sacked at some point and uh very few in tattoos and of course so well furnished as this one is well in in essence really what scaparelli had found is the most important non-royal tomb yes probably from the whole of this period if not the whole of egyptian history yes it tells us so much about reality real lives in ancient egypt not just gods and pharaohs what a moment since scaparelli hardly anyone's been into the tomb but delaney and i have been granted special access i think this is this is it i think itself this is it yeah he was a clever guy he was really sly well that's why his tomb stayed secret for so long because it is so unexpected yes situated at the bottom of this rather deep shaft getting down into the tomb is no easier today than it would have been in cars time wow look at this i don't believe it is that scaparrelli was here more or less says discovered intact by the italian archaeological mission in 1906. oh and look they've written over the ancient red the red orca marks yes of the dressmen sort of planning out the lines yeah there we go these are the red oak pigment that was applied by the workers as they were constructing the tomb to give them a sense of the measurements and so forth and simply whereabouts to chip away they had to keep this as close to plan as was possible so they'd be using their equipment to give this lovely 90 degree angle here [Music] it was blocked up twice well that sense of excitement scaparelli and his men must have felt because here they were not just one intact doorway blocked but two yes having removed the blockage from the second brick doorway scaparelli and his team found themselves in a large anti-chamber it contained cars exquisitely crafted bed beautifully painted pottery and floral bouquets but there was much much more to come oh it's really exciting approaching the burial chamber and this is where presumably and this is where schiaparelli wrapped on the door and and then turned around and said how about the key [Laughter] so he must have known that he was on to a good thing after having seen a bed out here he knew there was there was more sun one of the men who entered the tomb with scaparelli was englishman arthur weigel chief inspector of antiquities for upper egypt he immediately recorded the astonishing sight i should think it is the greatest find ever made or rather the most unique and brimming over with points of interest when schiaparelli's team arrived the chamber was crammed full of objects but today all that remains is a colony of bats the photographer took a photograph from there looking in then he stepped in right here where i'm standing right now he turned around and he took a photograph of everything behind there are two huge coffins we have not yet seen inside but doubtless there will be jewels chairs beds boxes vases several of immense value along this wall is the coffin of merit [Music] you sorry this place is full of yes small bats i know thank you stand behind me i'll protect and then that back wall that was cars sarcophagus which was substantially larger than hers [Music] in ancient egypt children didn't always inherit their parents belongings and almost everything cara merit owned was sealed up inside their tomb to be used in the afterlife so very few people have been privileged to come in here and it makes so much more sense now knowing all the material that was originally in here the belongings of cara merit placed so lovingly and so carefully in here and now displayed so beautifully in the museum in turin it's fantastic to be able to put all the pieces of the jigsaw together to really get a feeling how schiaparelli must have felt coming in here in 1906 it's it's a rare treat it really is the wealth of objects that had been discovered in the tomb testified to the great investment cara merit had made their hundreds of belongings many had been designed and made at great expense purely for use in the afterlife this intricate statuette of car shows him with his palms on his starched kilt a sign of humility before the gods such statues were idealized a version of how the deceased wanted to look in the afterlife it was also insurance providing an alternative home for your soul in case anything happened to your mummified body the kilt is also inscribed with a funerary prayer and a small garland of real flowers still hangs around cars chest one of the most precious purpose-made items found in the tomb is merit's fabulous death mask made with great skill and with costly materials the eyes brows and decorative color are made with coloured glass which the egyptians had only begun to manufacture in carr's lifetime cheaper yellow ochre was often used to imitate gold but carr had chosen the real thing for merit's mask which is covered in precious scold leaf [Music] but the most costly of all worth well over a year's wages was the coffin in which merit was buried again covered in gold leaf almost certainly intended for carr it is only inscribed with his name but it was used for merit because it seems she died first [Music] but how did merit die was it the result of a long illness or was it a sudden death perhaps in an accident we've been granted special permission to examine car and merits mummies and their ct scans in order to preserve the mummies they cannot be unwrapped of course but the scans allow us to see what lies beneath the wrappings i've asked pathologist peter venesis and radiologist curtis sophia to take a look at merit's ct scans to see what they reveal about her on the day she died she's certainly not in the early 20s and i would have put her more in the middle age group so 30s possibly even 40s yes i would certainly agree with that um there is a good indication here of lifestyle the fact that her joints are quite well preserved indicates that she's led rather charmed life so to speak she's had a pretty lucky existence and i would say she probably lived in the lap of luxury there's certainly no indication there of any chronic disease which has affected her bones there's no indication that she has perhaps been lying immobile for a long time because that would reflect in the density of the bone structure as well so my feeling is that she's either had a very short illness or she's died suddenly and possibly unexpectedly [Music] so merit's death left carr little time to prepare but the costly and time-consuming process of mummification had to begin immediately mummification was a way to preserve the body so it could provide a home for the soul in the afterlife the process took around 70 days and the first step was to remove the internal organs to prevent decomposition [Music] this included the brain which was usually removed down the nose [Music] but merit scans reveal something very surprising [Music] this is a cross section looking down into merit's skull through the top of her head as you can see quite clearly this white feature is in fact her brain which has fallen down to the back of her head and wasn't removed so what why is this important well what it tells us is that there were other ways to preserve the brain the next step was to dry out the body which took about 40 days this usually involved piling dry salt on top of the corpse to draw out all the body fluids but analysis of merits mummy has revealed that she was preserved differently instead of using dry salt merit had in fact been submerged in a highly concentrated salt solution essentially pickling her this allowed her organs to remain inside the body without causing decay if you look at the angle at which the brain has fallen to the back of the skull it appears to be on a tilt because the body when it was draining out was laid at a different angle a slightly different angle at a tilt to allow the fluids which would have initiated decomposition to completely leave to exit the body it may have been the most up-to-date preservation technique but it didn't come cheap and once merritt's body had been dried out she was wrapped in layers of costly linen and an outer red shroud but the expense didn't stop there by chemically analyzing minute samples of merits wrapping we found something intriguing oil from the tilapia fish yet this oil had no preservative power it was purely symbolic and it set merit apart for there was something special about this fish what the tilapia does is to take its young into its mouth in times of danger and when the danger has passed to then spit them out back into the water and when the egyptians saw this they saw it as a miraculous thing as if it was a self-generating fish that could simply spit out its young in this way and so by association the tilapia became connected directly with the goddess hathor and fertility and rebirth this fish oil which was also mixed with exotic imported ingredients would have cost carr a small fortune but it was worth it if it put merit on a fast track to the afterlife but carr's efforts didn't even stop there as in today's most exclusive nightclubs the egyptians knew that they had to look their best to gain admittance to the afterlife the scans reveal merit was all dressed up for death and under her wrappings she still wears an amazing array of jewelry so what today would form a treasured inheritance went with her into the afterlife the most striking piece is this huge broad collar necklace and to find out what it looks like i've come to the petri museum in london it houses one of the most comprehensive collections of egyptian jewellery in the world now what we've got in front of us here is an absolutely superb broad collar necklace it's the typical egyptian necklace that you see in the tomb scenes and in the art and it's basically made up of numerous little moulded amulets that have been made in these sumptuous jewel-like colours and this is exactly the same thing that merit still wears her mummy is still adorned in this beautiful broad collar which we can see on the image of merit here now the top five rows were made up of these rather elongated green beads and they are actually cos lettuces now the lettuce was sacred to the fertility god men and in wanting to be laid out in a necklace such as this it basically associates merit with this god of fertility of new life you have then two more rows of what look like mini hand grenades and they're actually bunches of grapes these blue shiny bunchers of the grapes which not only again look very beautiful but produce the wine which was something sacred to hathor the goddess of sex of love of new life uh the goddess who took the dead into her cab and merit was effectively dressed in a collar like this not only to look beautiful but to associate her with these two deities who were so intimately involved in new life in rebirth in eternal life as well as the broadcast merit wears two pairs of huge gold earrings and around her waist a belt of gold cowrie shells similar to this one she was laid out to appear very seductive and we know this from tomb scenes where dancers musicians those associated with the goddess hathor appear almost naked at this time they're wearing broad colours they're wearing huge earrings their hair is very beautiful and they have these gold belts with little cowry shells and coloured elements to look very alluring very erotic capable of sex and of producing the next generation so it can only be compared perhaps to laying out a modern woman in like a negligee a vital sexual being as capable of living in the next world as she had been in this one so merit didn't want to spend eternity as a wise old lady but as a youthful and attractive woman in the afterlife you wanted to be the very best you could be and carr made sure merit also had her most personal belongings with her all carefully prepared one of her most prized possessions was her magnificent wig it was housed in its own tall box to which funerary prayers had then been added this one on the lid reads a funerary offering of osiris the great god lord of eternity that he may make an offering of beef birds and everything to the soul of merit some of her other possessions were also adapted for merit's journey into the afterlife this is her bed which she'd used in life it was now repainted to freshen it up another funerary inscription was added along the side carr clearly gave careful thought and spared no expense when preparing his wife for eternity and although he had overseen her burial merit probably remained very much alive to him it's even likely he would have continued to communicate with her [Music] we know the egyptians actually wrote to their dead relatives about all sorts of things from the mundane to the serious in notes like this [Music] what we're looking at here is one of the so-called letters to the dead and it's a a pottery bowl it's a piece of everyday tableware and the amazing thing about this is it's actually inscribed in black ink um by a woman wanting to communicate with her dead husband and we know for a fact that the living wrote to the dead they sent them letters on papyrus on small pieces of limestone on an ostrich she says oh husband you should be here helping me settle the scar with him or does what's painful to me for surely i shall triumph over anyone dead or alive acting against me and our daughter it's that typical you know where are you now what are you doing what oh you might have died but that's not really an excuse is it come on help me and it expresses this real belief that the dead can help the living that they had just passed through into a different sphere of existence and this woman is is maintaining the dialogue that she would have had on earth she's bending her husband's ear but the ancient egyptians didn't only communicate with their dead through writing they also did it through play [Laughter] now we're playing the ancient egyptian game of senet it's a board game that the egyptians absolutely loved it dates back to at least 3000 bc and was played by kings and commoners alike it was the ancient egyptians version of turning on a soap opera on tv at night putting the feet up and enjoying themselves senate was essentially a race a game of chance it is used in the book of the dead as a metaphor for the journey into the next world we're having a bit of a stab of it here and it is quite fun but i'm sure we don't get the complexities and the nuances that were inherent in the ancient egyptian version because for them it symbolized the ultimate game of chance to succeed at senate men he succeeded in life and succeeded in the transition from this world to the next hence the living played it not only at home but also in close proximity to the tombs because by playing this game step by step they were assisting the transition of their deceased relatives through all the perils and problems they might encounter in the underworld and so it kind of was a reflection of the great unknown to play senate the outcome was never sure would you win or death ultimately triumph you win this senate board was one of the items found in caramel's tomb [Music] and carr might have played this game close to their chapel hoping to ease merit's path through the underworld as there had probably been an age gap between them in life it seems it wasn't long before carr died too peter and curtis are examining the scans of his body in terms of of an age i would have to put him of greater years than than merit and i think we're probably talking 50s onwards i think at least so maybe even 60s to 70s the skeleton is of a very healthy for his years a specimen we're not seeing any evidence of broken bones or chronic healing of fractures in the spine looking at the uh the skeleton overall and the fact that he has got bones which look sturdy he hasn't got anything which indicates that he's had a chronic disease so again i think like his wife he's probably led a reasonably healthy life up until close to when he died so car died quite suddenly like his wife and like merit carr would have undergone the costly mummification process again his brain remains inside his skull cavity just like hers he too wears large hoop earrings and valuable jewelry around his neck but the scans also show something else placed on his forehead this is a snake's head the head of a cobra beautifully rendered in carnelian an orange stone with the two menacing eyes of the cobra and the ridges on the body this amulet was used to provide refreshment to the throat in the afterlife since it refers to the way a snake's throat swells out so it should really have been placed on cars throat and not on his forehead the only people in ancient egypt allowed to have the cobra at the forehead was the king and the queen so i like to think that the embalmers were paying their own little tribute to carr their sort of elevating car in death he was their leader he was their chief he was their overseer and the people in the village were maybe paying their own special tribute and so he was sent off into eternity like a mini king in his own mini kingdom i love that [Music] carr was an important man in the village as such the next step of his journey to the afterlife would have been a grand affair his funeral would have begun with a magnificent procession up to their chapel just as merits would have done before him the great procession would have wended its way up this path up towards the cliffs up there where their tomb was actually situated now it's hard here today to try and get a sense of the noise the colour the life that's a good word actually at a funeral ceremony the life the vivacity of all the ingredients that the ancient egyptians brought to their funeral ceremonies because they were all there to try and get get the dead to live again life in some ways was almost a dress rehearsal for this very moment when the funeral ceremony marked the transition between this world and the next the dead were going to be reborn in the safety of their tombs [Music] so it's essential all the equipment they'd used in their lives and all the equipment that was there to give them a good send-off came with them accompanied them into the darkness of the tomb where everything would work in tandem to revive the soul of the deceased and send them off into eternity and his car's body in its nest of coffins was carried towards his tomb all his worldly possessions would of course have accompanied him [Music] these wall scenes give a real sense what the procession would have looked like this is the tomb of ramos governor of thebes who lived at the same time as kara merit now this is a really colourful lively portrayal of a funeral procession you can see these sort of rows of men of servants and bearers carrying all the belongings of the deceased you can see the bed made up with the bed linen the head rest which acted as a pillow just like cara merits you've got these beautiful painted wooden boxes carrying all the personal items of the deceased a walking stick just like cars then you've got the chair of the deceased just like the one that car would have sat on that's that was found in his tomb you've got all sorts of things the jars of perfume the flowers the food and drink a funeral on this scale didn't come cheap and these scenes reveal yet another expense these are professional mourners they were hired to make the maximum noise possible to give the deceased a great send-off because the higher the decibel level the more important this individual was their plaques are disheveled and if you look really closely they're crying they're such professionals they're crying so much forcing themselves to produce tears that their thick black eyeliner is running and any women that wear mascara understand the problem you start to cry the makeup runs down your face and the the artist the ancient artist has portrayed this so beautifully with these sort of dots of black coming down the women's faces [Music] once the procession had reached their chapel it was time for yet another elaborate and opulent ritual the opening of the mouth ceremony a 75-stage sensory assault to reanimate the soul of the deceased within their mummified body in order for this to happen every one of the five senses needed to be reawakened having dragged the huge black sarcophagus of car all the way up here on ropes the bearers would carefully raise up cars black and gold anthropoid coughing to place it here looking out exactly where i'm sitting today as if carr was preparing to be relaunched into the next world if you like [Music] would have been a very dramatic profound moment for the family as carr once again stood upright in front of his tomb chapel and at this point the son the eldest son amenopet would have stepped forward with the special adds or chisel he would have touched his father's mouth symbolically like this to reanimate his power of speech of breathing so the eyes would have been magically opened the ears touched so car could once again hear in the next world and all his senses restored the ritual would also be performed on car's statuette his insurance policy should his mummified body be destroyed and it was vital that the sense of smell was restored so incense too will be presented the egyptians love to present flowers to the dead from the characteristic water lily or the lotus the white and blue lotus which are often shown in tomb scenes being literally pressed against the noses of the deceased so they could inhale that fragrance to restore the sense of taste delicious food offerings were presented and after the opening of the mouth ceremony had finished the funeral party moved on to the tomb for the final burial where an entire banquet was laid out this was for carr and merit to enjoy in the afterlife [Music] what we see in front of us here in glorious technicolor is basically the food that was found in the tomb and it's quite wonderful stuff you have the staple of the ancient egyptian life here the bread accompanied by the all-important onions and garlic and this was the standard sort of workman's pack lunch one of these on a daily basis with the garlic here that's the kind of ancient egyptian packed lunch glass of beer and ancient egyptian plowmans and we do know that in the case of the onions and the garlic and scaparelli and his team went into the tomb and smelled them after three and a half thousand years they were still as pungent as the day they'd been placed there no fewer than 50 loaves of bread were found in the tomb along with jars of roast duck fish bowls of vegetables fruit and spices there were grapes dates and these amazing things he had several sat loads of these these are dom palm nuts although i've never personally eaten one they apparently taste like caramel all this kind of food in the tomb of cairo merit set out very carefully as a kind of formal banquet for the deceased would have allowed the very souls of carr and merit to have enjoyed the very essence of all this food but carr's book of the dead shows he wanted his afterlife to be fueled by drink as well as food now this is spell 148 in the book of the dead which is basically the spell for provisioning the soul of the deceased in the next world with all the food and drink that they need as well as the desire for goose for beef for wine and so forth the basis of carr's wish list is the standard bread and beer that form the the basis of the ancient egyptian diet for rich and poor alike throughout the whole of ancient egyptian culture and in fact the word beer does appear rather often here with the twisted uh symbol the small black one here and then this wonderful determinative of the beer jar but it's this repetition of the word beer this desire of car to have beer to drink for eternity if you like an eternal supply of beer which can be no bad thing [Music] they wanted to enjoy an eternal banquet but there was also work to be done [Music] in ancient egypt just about everyone was obliged to work the land even death was no excuse so you needed figurines like these found in cara merits tomb known as shabti figures they were the little helpers who will do all the work for you in the afterlife they even have their own miniature farming tools so with all the work taken care of cara merit like all ancient egyptians intended to have a really good time and this is clear to see from the scenes in their chapel it's okay trying to understand ancient egypt on a visual level everybody does that pyramids king tut mummies but to really get into the heads of the ancient egyptians you've got to walk in their footsteps you've got to experience the senses they experienced and one of these a crucial one is sound what did it sound like to be an ancient egypt and this is kara merit giving us an idea of that [Music] here we have cara merits band these are the musicians playing their music to sort of lull them into eternity and it's quite a pacey number because the loop players legs are shown asymmetrically to give a kind of sense of movement maybe dancing [Music] the ancient egyptians then as now loved music love to dance love to express themselves in a joyful manner [Music] these musicians are from the university of cairo using images from wall scenes and surviving ancient instruments they've been able to recreate ancient egyptian music [Music] car was finally laid to rest in his tomb his large black sarcophagus was already waiting for him the belongings of cara merit were set out all around them and covered in dust sheets [Music] then leaving the lamp still lit the funeral party left the burial chamber sweeping away their footprints as they went and locking the wooden door behind them [Music] the workmen then bricked up and plastered the two successive walls and backfilled the tunnel with rubble but carr's journey into the afterlife was not yet complete no matter how much you'd spent there was one final test that all egyptians must pass although this scene dates from about a thousand years after carr's time it clearly depicts the crucial moment in the soul's journey to the afterlife now this remarkable scene is known as the weighing of the heart it's the ultimate judgment of the dead it shows that the deceased their soul has successfully negotiated all the hazards into the next world to arrive here at the ultimate hall of judgment now it's presided over by the goddess mart the goddess of truth who's shown here with the feather of truth which she wears as a kind of crown on her head at the far end is the goddess cyrus the kind of ultimate judge of all dead souls and he's here to watch over these proceedings because we have here central to the scene a typical egyptian style balance and here on this pan it's the heart of the deceased individual and it's being weighed very carefully against this this is the feather of mart which she wears on the head it represents truth goodness purity if the deceased had lived a good and blameless life their heart will be light and free of sin however if they'd been naughty bad done anything to upset the gods then the heart will be heavy with sin and as such they couldn't then pass through into a blessed afterlife into eternity and so the heart was literally taken up like a piece of meat and thrown to this terrifying creature here this is the great devourer a kind of terrible composite of lions parts and a sort of crocodile hippo featured being with the tongue out dribbling at the thought of a fresh heart to consume and it's at this point that the deceased would ultimately die this would be dying a second death a final death earthly death isn't anything to be afraid of because you pass through into it simply another state of existence if you've been good all evil souls their hearts were fed to this creature consumed and that was it finished forever but once again there was something you could buy to help you through this final trial and car scans show that on a chain around his neck there is also a large amulet known as a heart scarab [Music] this example from the petri museum gives us a sense of what it actually looks like for the egyptians the heart was the seat of all learning of all intelligence and when the deceased spirit was in the presence of the gods in the next world and had to account for their actions in life had they led a good life they were interrogated by the gods sometimes there was always the danger the heart might suddenly speak up against its owner oh well they didn't lead such a blameless life after all and so the heavy heart scarab was a means of suppressing the heart keeping it quiet um the spell invokes implores the heart keep quiet do not give false witness against me basically shut it [Music] so it seems that carr had purchased every form of insurance he possibly could to ensure the perfect afterlife that he and merit had always dreamed of from their elaborate golden coffins to their well-hidden subterranean tomb an expensively decorated memorial chapel [Music] and of course the intricate book of the dead in which carr describes how he wants to spend his eternity in carr's book of the dead by far the largest section 200 separate rows are devoted to the so-called spells of transformation listing all the variations that carl wanted his soul to become although the many forms he could take in the afterlife now a lot of these relate to birds his soul wanted to rise up to join the gods and fly through the heavens he wanted to be a phoenix he wanted to be a heron he wanted to be a great golden sparrow hawk and yeah i think for me what is most poignant is that in addition to all these various things that he could become at will his heart's desire was simply to sit with his beloved wife merit in a garden in a summer house the coming forth into the light and playing senate seated in the summer house coming forth as a living soul [Music] now for us in the modern west it's all too easy to see these elaborate preparations for death as completely pointless death is death and that is that and yet and yet having met kara merit having entered their world i think they've really achieved a kind of immortality because three and a half thousand years later we're still talking about them the ancient egyptians truly believed that to speak the name of the dead was to make them live again and surely they do [Music]

Channel: All Out History - Premium History Documentaries

Views: 741,774

Keywords: All Out History, AlloutHistory, Allouthistory, allouthistory, AllOutHistory

Id: ejKNwaVIrT0

Length: 116min 52sec (7012 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 01 2022