What Was Normal Life Like In Ancient Egypt? | Life And Death In The Valley Of The Kings | Odyssey

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] [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 the ancient Egypt on a visual level pyramid came to 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 [Music] while the Magnificent temples and tombs of the Pharaohs can tell is one story I'm interested in another 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 live their lives oh wow it's a glimpse into the sort of world of ancient Egyptian interior design and reveal what they hoped for in death [Music] 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 there too you can only imagine there's pride and joy at receiving such a marker Royal favor as we discover what life was really like in ancient Egypt [Music] welcome to Daryl 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 today this Village feels remote and inhospitable three and a half thousand years ago this community lay at the heart of ancient Egypt situated on luksar'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 lived 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] reside nearly 2 000 miles away here at the Egyptian Museum in Turin [Music] Mika and Merit car the architect marry his wife now Carl and Merit were two of the sort of leading Lights of the village car's actual title was the chief performance I was in charge of the workforce and Merit her official title was Lady of the house which is ancient Egyptian for housewife the only known statue of Carr 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 [Music] we know that Carr who stood about five foot six [Music] was a very striking looking individual with a rather prominent nose and a great fondness for lots of black eyeliner but then when we turned 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 Cairo Merrick back to life is this the collection of objects discovered in their intact tomb in 1906 where the headline 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 [Music] sage and burial chamber choked with chairs beds boxes vases Arthur Weigel 2PM 15th 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 tables and chairs and stools and more chairs and more coffers and the coffers packed with linen and the coffers packed with cosmetic vessels many 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 fresh [Music] it is really incredible there's there is material there for research for another few Generations [Music] The Collection not only gives us a fascinating insight into their burial but also the lives Kyra Merritt lived the fines 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 merit's 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-door 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 color 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 is an expensive item so how would a fairly ordinary Egyptian like Merit afford such luxury oh the answer lies in the village and the Very Special occupation of its inhabitants for these were Egypt's tomb and Temple builders from the foreman to the stone Mason 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] 500 you like Carr created the tombs of some of Egypt's most famous pharaohs Hatshepsut aminotep III and Tutankhamun 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 I 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 it's 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 meters 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 because 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 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 Merritt 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 he can almost feel his is outred 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 foreign 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 shell car and Merit seated together to share the offerings which will sustain them in the afterlife but in life too we also have Clues to their devotion [Music] foreign 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 he spent all those thousands of years just took to a hidden away within merit's own wrappings a very ad hoc thing wasn't it 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 Hatha 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 Carr and Merit lived in a glittering age in Egyptian history stained 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 foreign [Music] its kings are among the greatest names of ancient Egypt we have the so-called boy King Tutankhamun the great female pharaoh Hatshepsut and the so-called bad boy the heretic akinaten but really at the very heart of all this is akkenarten's Father this man Amino tep the Third 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 fairer who was Carl'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 [Music] there's one such project from the reign of amanotep III 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 Cara 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 in education and literacy was Far higher in the village than elsewhere in Egypt foreign marriage 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 sort of women of the house hung out chattered 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 Divana shares long if you like and this is where the the gentleman of the house would sits of an evening drinking beer having a chat then back up here of 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 are the sleeping mats would have been placed so as we progress a little further into the highest part of the house we come into 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 Austria 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 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 are rooms of this house but these are the neighbors houses these are a Terrace Street if you like of back-to-back houses they 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 [Music] 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 decantered into a central system [Music] which household was entitled to an average of 100 liters per day for drinking cooking and bathing 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 Carl 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 failed 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 Village has 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 Bali being harvested and distributed and here the principal food It produced bread Cara 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 savory things cumin seeds coriander seeds or manner of different ingredients to really vary it and in the tumor 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 mod brick oven is typical of the ovens we find in ancient Egyptian settlements foreign [Music] 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 foreign s 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 moldy the Egyptians used it as a form of medicine which wouldn't be fully understood for thousands of years the medical text actually Advocate take bread in moldy 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 five thousand years ago very good stuff while marriage responsibilities were largely focused on life at home car's duties were dominated by working for the pharaoh he and his fellow tomb Builders took this path from the village to their workplace Valley of the Kings it starts here at the sun end of the village then it follows that path there see right up over that hole and then we go straight up and over the top of the mountain Carr 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 we're probably about 40 to 60 men making this journey probably singing probably cutting water pots themselves and the day's rations Maybe Carr 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 walking about 45 minutes in full sun and it's really really hot then Khan is men coming up this path to work they do the walk and then they have to do all 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 thee shown 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 god so the West is the land of death so depict this spot to make the tombs for the Dead it's one spot life death the Nile Valley the Valley of the Kings [Music] and it is that Stark isn't it it is continuing our hike we finally reached the Western Branch of the Valley of the Kings where time has virtually Stood Still remnants of the tombuilders world litter the landscape this is a great staircase it's super a business beautifully constructed or further up aren't they it's absolutely perfect this is it this is the start of car's domain this is actually a guard Hut and one man would be in 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 this is like one of Carr's empties is empty beard yeah and we know this is 18th innocently because the valley this part of the valley the West Valley was only ever used for oil tombs that's right yeah foreign the guards in these Huts maintained a watchful eye over everything that went on in the valley when he was guarding against was obviously too robbery for the pre-existing tombs but while the the new king's tomb 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 the re-pounding of the people making the plaster and the mixing bowls for the for the paints and there'd 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 I'm 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 will have to run during his lifetime Carr worked on three Royal tombs initially as a Craftsman these copper chisels found in his tomb were the tools of cast 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 Karr and his men actually undertake this most onerous of tasks I'll follow in your footsteps this is Tomb KV 25. thought to have been started for amino tep the third son akkenarten it was left unfinished when akanatan suddenly moved his Capital away from Thebes it's as if the workmen only downed tools yesterday I say you can see Joe The 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 terms the equipment 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 um the way this would be used was marking out and measuring your way down the tune 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 and the end of the day's worker could fold it up pop it back in its leather carrying case and take it on just imagine car and his team of 30 or 40 men tiling 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 [Music] the evidence reveals Carr was highly respected in life foreign this beautiful object is a golden Royal cubit it was presented to Carr in recognition for his work for the Pharaoh amanotep II it can only be equated to a kind of carriage clock or an engraved tanker that you're given for good service and you can only imagine cars pride and joy at receiving such a mark of Royal favor it had the ancient Egyptians had a mantelpiece 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 small Shrine our Temple not even in Thebes further north at a site called hemopolis 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 quite 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 the car's career on the rise he and Merit also started a family childbirth is a risky time in any woman's life and certainly in ancient Egypt Merit would have sought help from hathor the preeminent goddess of motherhood all ancient Egyptian women wanted to be like her thought she's like a a modern female celebrity that all women aspire to be she had it all and she was worshiped here foreign this is the funery Temple of the great female pharaoh hat shepsut at dear El bachary 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 [Music] how might the goddess have touched merit's life his 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 massive 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 yourself for eternity and allow you to be reborn each morning with the Rising Sun 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 a 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 hatha's magic yet hassle 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 of 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 Hatha 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 dear 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 Hatshepsut 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 Hatshepsut 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 foreign had three children that we know of two sons and one daughter their images appear in Cara merit's 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 Cahoon 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 color the vestiges of this can still be seen if you know where to look foreign the areas which have been sheltered from direct sunlight the colors 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 color was created by the later Pharaoh Ramses III the Egyptians were far from subtle in their use of paint primary colors 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 colors was way beyond the reach of most Ordinary People 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 on 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 foreign the best way to sort of try and reanimate these colors is probably to use that I'll stand by a little bit of spit always works rub the stone it's very very Vivid [Music] 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] [Applause] I want to see how villagers like Carr and Merit used color 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 say 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 oh 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 gone Bears so evocative so warm so Sumptuous in its love issues of color 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 foreign such fragments from the past allow us to get closer to the real car 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 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] foreign [Music] 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 are shown 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 Kerr 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 Mary the daughter who cared for car in his old age foreign but what happened to Carr the proud and talented architect 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] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign this isn't very professional is it it literally has brought tears to my eyes it is so stunning the colors are fantastic it's Exquisite it's I'm an old tip the third being received into the care of the Gods of the underworld and there's a new Beast pounding out the sign of life to our monotep think car and his men designing these images just putting the king's Vision into practice and and just [Music] literally taking my breath away look the artist hasn't just come along with his blue paint and the palette and bushed on the paint somebody's taking the trouble to apply individual curls of hair here can you see the texture the curls here textured hair and they're also I'm a no-tech 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 I'm in our Tech the thirds 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 thank you now look at this very clever trick of the architect our boy Carr 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 break probably plastered over the images drawn and painted over it so that anyone 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 precious stones and the most beautiful funery items all of which would have been choreographed planned by car and his colleagues everybody wants to take care of the king within the Royal mummy dwelt the soul the immortal soul of Egypt itself is cumulative buildup of every Royal fairer who'd gone before resided within the mummy who once lay down there foreign [Music] 46 years waiting to see this Tom and it's it's been well worth it although we can now appreciate his consummate workmanship it seems Carr himself never saw the finished tomb for he died before his King but like his King Carr's own body was prepared for its Eternal journey into the Afterlife before he too was buried [Music] since this journey has given us a chance to get that little bit closer to Karen Merit I think we could almost call them friends [Music] there were isn't 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 here we have Carr's name right down the middle and to speak the name of the daddies tonight and live again car and Merit 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 merit'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]

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 294,483

Keywords: ancient history, classical history, ancient civilisations, classical antiquity, history documentary, classical documentary, joann fletcher documentaries, joann fletcher egypt, joann fletcher ancient egypt, ancient egypt documentary, ancient egypt, ancient egypt history, ancient egyptian, Ordinary Life, Odyssey, odyssey

Id: 1r5Z7Xzkr9E

Length: 58min 47sec (3527 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 04 2022