Historian Explores The Hidden Side of Ancient Egypt They Don’t Show You

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-31

[00:00:05]The pyramids and crowds of Cairo are behind me, and I've reached a stretch of the Nile that hides some of the river's bestkept secrets.

[00:00:21]>> Hi. Hello. Hi. How are you?

[00:00:24]>> You good? Um, I get a cup of tea.

[00:00:27]We're now 100 miles into our journey upstream.

[00:00:30]>> Lovely. Thank you, Shakran. That's fantastic. Thank you so much. See you later.

[00:00:36]>> The lives of the ancient Egyptians are always intriguing.

[00:00:40]But I was first drawn here by one of Egypt's superstars.

[00:00:45]There's one character who constantly fascinates me. It's Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, whose beauty and charisma was said to have brought the most powerful men on earth to their knees. And she used this river to captivate and control the ancient world.

[00:01:07]For the next 200 miles, I'll be exploring the Nile that Cleopatra herself loved.

[00:01:15]I'll enter the hidden chambers that inspired history's most celebrated archaeologist, brave the longest tomb in Egypt, and at Dendra come face to face with Cleopatra herself.

[00:01:32]My Dahabia boat is pretty gorgeous, but it doesn't come close to the luxury and excess of Cleopatra's own Nile processions 2,000 years ago.

[00:01:45]This is an artist's impression of of one of the royal barges that sailed down the Nile. The barge was equipped with gold and ivory furnishings with embroidered sails even with gardens. What a sight it would have been. So you can just imagine Cleopatra standing on the brow of her deck, her orin hair probably dyed with local henna, blowing in the wind, oiled with perfumed oils.

[00:02:12]Queen of all she surveyed.

[00:02:17]Cleopatra came to the throne aged just 18. She was the last great pharaoh of ancient Egypt.

[00:02:26]By her reign from 51 BC, Egypt had enjoyed a 2,000-year reputation as the land of ideas, inventions, and mystery.

[00:02:40]And my first stop would have been a hot bed of activity when Cleopatra was in power.

[00:02:47]>> We've decided not to take the easy uh tarmac road, but to go off onto the local road, which is great.

[00:02:54]>> I've left the comfort of my boat and I'm heading over the flood plains of the Nile Valley and out across the desert.

[00:03:06]Oh my god, it's hot. Very hot in there.

[00:03:10]>> This is Tuna Elgabel, one of Egypt's most intriguing ancient sites.

[00:03:17]I've enlisted the help of Sed who's faithfully guarded this place since he was a boy.

[00:03:23]It looks obviously deserted now. We've driven 2 hours across the desert to get here. But in its heyday, this place would have been absolutely humming with activity. That That's right, isn't it?

[00:03:33]So, this was a big town >> before. huge town with two-story buildings and a real destination place.

[00:03:39]And actually, at the time of Cleopatra, it was at its height.

[00:03:45]>> The old town has virtually vanished today, but the curious treasures of Tuna Elabel are locked away and found deep below ground.

[00:04:00]>> So, how far down does this go?

[00:04:03]>> About 15 m. 15 m.

[00:04:05]>> 15 m.

[00:04:06]>> Gosh. So, we're going deep into the bedrock here.

[00:04:11]>> We're entering a vast catacomb.

[00:04:15]Archaeologists haven't fully explored it yet, but these passageways are thought to extend for 4 and 12 miles.

[00:04:25]What an extraordinary place. So, this is it's like um a textbook necropolis. It's like a city of the dead. Yes. Down here.

[00:04:34]But this wasn't built as a resting place for humans.

[00:04:38]It was for animals.

[00:04:40]>> Oh my goodness. So, there are bones all over the floor. So, we got to tread very, very, very carefully.

[00:04:48]>> Oh my god. And bats.

[00:04:50]>> Bats.

[00:04:50]>> Yeah.

[00:04:52]>> You could have warned me about the bats.

[00:04:54]Sorry. I just saw something moving and I wasn't sure what it was.

[00:05:01]Originally, each of the animals here would have been carefully mummified, but precious few remain today.

[00:05:11]So, what I'm about to see is quite amazing.

[00:05:16]If I can just get the gate open.

[00:05:21]Oh, that door hasn't been open for a while.

[00:05:25]I'm about to come face to face with one extraordinary creature that's rested here for around 2,300 years.

[00:05:47]This is a a slightly strange thing to see um because there are so many fragments of mummies here, but what you've got is a mummified baboon.

[00:05:57]You can see the wrappings and it's really unusual to have the skull open.

[00:06:02]It's slightly freaking me out the way its eye sockets are staring at me across 2,000 years.

[00:06:13]There were centers like this across Egypt producing mummies of every animal imaginable.

[00:06:19]From dogs and cats to crocodiles and tuna elabel specialtity, the beautiful ibis, this ancient Nile bird, like the baboon, was regarded as highly intelligent by the Egyptians.

[00:06:36]the perfect offering for Toth, their god of wisdom and invention.

[00:06:46]It does feel like a real privilege to be here um because originally only priests and the cult servants of Ibis were allowed down in the corridors of these catacombs. So you just have to try to imagine them in their heyday uh lit with tallow light uh soots on the walls and over the ceilings and in every single one of these niches a perfectly preserved mummy. And we think that around 15,000 new mummies were dedicated every year. So that means there'd have been a total of 2 million here. The reason it was so popular is that people really believed that this was a way that they could communicate with the gods.

[00:07:27]Some brand new research suggests there's a twist in this macab tail.

[00:07:34]There've actually been some x-rays done of some of the animals that were mummified. I don't know if you can see it's often quite hard to read this, but uh by looking inside, we know exactly what kind of animal was being wrapped up. Here's a dog.

[00:07:51]And this is an ibis. You can see that amazing curved beak coming down. The bird is wrapped very tightly up.

[00:08:02]But then there was a surprise with quite a few of the monies that when they did the X-ray, you can make that out. You can see actually there isn't an animal inside.

[00:08:14]Uh what there is is padding and stones and mummification wading. So, it's almost like a kind of um I can't really say fake, but a but a pretend mummy.

[00:08:25]>> Pretend or not, though, the fate of most animal mummies has sadly been the same.

[00:08:32]And responsibility for that stretches back home to Britain. When lots were discovered in the 18th and 19th centuries because they're made of organic material, they were actually shipped out of Egypt to Europe and the UK and ground down and used as fertilizer. And we've got one account of 20 tons worth of cat mummies being used as fertilizer when it was brought into Liverpool in the UK.

[00:09:05]The ancient Egyptians would have been horrified at this act of destruction.

[00:09:09]The scale of animal mummification shows how much this strange ritual mattered to them. So my next step is to better understand the mechanics of how mummies were made. And a warning, it's not for the faint-hearted.

[00:09:29]On this stretch of my Nile journey, I've caught just a glimpse of the ancient Egyptian custom of mummifying animals.

[00:09:38]In November 2018, a remarkable discovery was made. Dozens of perfectly mummified cats, all laid to rest close to the pyramids of Sakara.

[00:09:50]It's now thought 70 million animals may have been mummified in ancient Egypt.

[00:09:58]But how did the process actually work?

[00:10:01]It's something Professor Selma Ikram is actively investigating.

[00:10:06]>> Okay, Becky, roll.

[00:10:08]>> I will certainly if I can do that. All right. Thank you so much. Uh I should perhaps explain what we're doing here.

[00:10:14]Selma is an incredibly eminent uh Egyptologist and this is her lab and what she does here I'm right in saying is one of the things that you do is in investigate the mummification of animals in particular. Is that a kind of fair summary?

[00:10:27]>> Absolutely.

[00:10:29]>> Selma and Egyptology student Haley are finishing off a rather unusual experiment >> on Earth. When Haley's pet cat very sadly passed away, she was keen that Selma and herself tried to preserve her as the ancient Egyptians would have done.

[00:10:46]>> She was called Hat Shepsert.

[00:10:48]>> She's adorable.

[00:10:49]>> And she look, she's absolutely lovely.

[00:10:52]The real Egyptian cat that there's no mistaking that.

[00:10:55]>> So if if we were putting our heads into the kind of minds of the ancient Egyptians, you're doing this because the soul of the creature is in its body. So this is a way of kind of preserving the the life spirits.

[00:11:06]>> Absolutely.

[00:11:07]>> Okay. So now I'm going to give you this and you are going to >> mummification was totally mainstream for the ancient Egyptians, >> but it involves skills and techniques that have now been lost.

[00:11:22]So this experiment, I should point out, is not for the faint-hearted. I'm a great cat lover. Also a vegetarian, so tiny bit squeamish dear around this kind of thing.

[00:11:34]>> Eight weeks ago, Hatchepsit's organs were removed just as they would have been thousands of years ago before the drying out process began.

[00:11:45]This looks like a pile of sand. Um, and it's not. It's a very specialist material called Natron.

[00:11:50]>> Natron.

[00:11:51]>> Natron. Natron, which is what the ancient Egyptians used in in mummification. It's the plain main thing that they use to mummify because it desiccates and it defats. It sort of >> sucks it all out.

[00:12:04]>> Well, parts of her are very dry and other parts aren't that dry.

[00:12:08]>> Now, we put in Oh, yeah. There.

[00:12:12]>> Oh, golly. I just got this waft of dead cat.

[00:12:17]>> For the first time in my life, I'm preferring the smell of plastic laboratory glass. Mhm.

[00:12:23]>> What's What's um What's that in there?

[00:12:26]>> That's a Natron bag cuz you put it inside to suck out the wetness.

[00:12:32]>> Yeah.

[00:12:34]>> Any remaining moisture could lead to rotting over time.

[00:12:39]>> It's fair to say our skills and techniques have a way to go to match those of the ancient Egyptians.

[00:12:46]>> Now, this is some resin just like this stuff here. And it's that frankincense.

[00:12:51]>> Yes. And um smells lovely.

[00:12:54]>> And uh that's been boiling up gently with some oil. So we're going to put some into the body cavity.

[00:13:01]>> Right.

[00:13:03]>> Resins like this have antibacterial properties which could help preserve a body for thousands of years.

[00:13:11]>> It smells amazing cuz there's frankincense in there. Smells like we're in a church at Christmas time.

[00:13:16]>> Yeah. Isn't it?

[00:13:17]>> Okay. Now what we're going to do is I think we can start to wrap. Lovely.

[00:13:23]>> Each limb of the body was individually bound in linen.

[00:13:27]>> This is an awkward angle.

[00:13:29]>> Um, and I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to deal with it.

[00:13:35]>> And we use the resins also to hold it down.

[00:13:39]>> Doing this must give you huge respect for those invaluers of antiquity. They must have been astonishing people and really very clever chemists to understand what they were doing and how it affected the body and how amazingly effective really it was.

[00:14:01]>> It's a lovely if slightly curious thing.

[00:14:06]>> But as a fitting end to the day, Haley writes an epitarth in hieroglyphs.

[00:14:13]It simply reads beautiful cat Hat Shepsert.

[00:14:27]Here in Egypt, the heat can be so intense, the cooling waters of the Nile often look pretty tempting.

[00:14:38]So today, the crew and I threw caution to the winds. Woohoo! next >> and decided to go for it.

[00:14:45]>> Thank you.

[00:14:46]>> Hello, Captain D.

[00:15:04]We're now 180 miles south of Cairo and heading towards another part of the Nile Valley that very few people reach.

[00:15:17]It's a spot that first inspired the world's most famous archaeologist.

[00:15:25]You probably all know that Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutin Carmoon in 1922 and kickstarted a whole new wave of Egyptomania.

[00:15:35]But Carter actually first came here to Egypt when he was just a teenager. He was invited here to do drawings of an archaeological dig that was taking place on the hills overlooking these banks of the Nile.

[00:15:48]Carter may be known as the great tombfinder, but as a young lad growing up in rural Norfolk, he'd earn pocket money painting portraits of animals.

[00:16:01]And it was this skill that brought him here.

[00:16:08]30 years before Carter captured the world's attention with Tutin Carmoon, his love affair with Egypt began at the cemetery of Benny Hassan.

[00:16:22]You might not have heard of Beni Hassan and actually hardly anybody comes here, but that is completely crazy because this place deserves to be a household name. In many ways, this is Egypt's bestkept secret.

[00:16:38]200 f feet above the east bank of the Nile, there are dozens of tombs here cut into the cliff face so that those buried within could spend eternity overlooking the sacred river.

[00:16:54]It's really thrilling coming here today.

[00:16:56]Um, and you can only imagine what it must have felt like for Howard Carter.

[00:17:00]He was only 17. Um, and he'd been brought up in damp, rainy England. So, all of this must have felt like a kind of desert wonderland.

[00:17:12]>> Salam. Hi, morning. Hello.

[00:17:15]This is a tomb complex that belonged to a Thank you very much. Uh to a kind of highass local official who was the equivalent of a mayor.

[00:17:27]Inside is some of the most awe inspiring wall art found anywhere in Egypt.

[00:17:46]And when you come in, you can understand why the archaeologists needed an artist's help. So just look at these paintings.

[00:18:01]These are close on 4,000 years old. And those colors are completely true.

[00:18:10]The vivid paintings give us an invaluable insight into what everyday life was like.

[00:18:16]And of course, the Nile is at the heart of it all.

[00:18:21]So, you might just be able to see here there's a poor guy who's fallen into the Nile and he's being rescued by his friends. Um, this lovely chap here on his beautiful papyrus boats. He's a fisherman and he's spearing these massive fish.

[00:18:40]Here is a hippo.

[00:18:42]There were loads of hippos in the Nile 4,000 years ago. So, that's quite right that there should be a hippo here.

[00:18:50]Everywhere you look, you can see there are images of the Nile and the fish and water and people interreacting with the life on the Nile.

[00:18:59]As a teenager in 1891, Howard Carter's job was to make perfect copies of these very images to show people back home the wonderful discoveries that were being made.

[00:19:12]I've got one of the watercolors that he did here. See if I can find it. So, um, this is an African spoon bill and somewhere up here, there's birds, I think. Yeah, I think that's it, isn't it? So, this is the watercolor that Howard Carter did. I just imagine how exciting it would have been for him. He's 17 years old and he's come here. We know he's sleeping in here overnight and at dawn he gets up and gets his paint brushes out. Amazing.

[00:19:50]Carter spent one winter season here before traveling upstream to join a new team of archaeologists where he was given his first real chance to dig.

[00:20:01]I really do love this place. Um, not only does it give us the most amazingly vivid details for ancient Egyptian life, but it inspired a young Howard Carter to become an archaeologist who would go on to make one of the greatest discoveries in the story of Egyptology, which means we can all share his passion and his discoveries today.

[00:20:28]One of the thrills of Egypt for me is that new discoveries are constantly being made.

[00:20:34]And there's a really special one waiting just along the Nile from here.

[00:20:45]I'm traveling the Nile to understand how this river shaped ancient Egypt.

[00:20:52]But a slow Dahabir cruise isn't a bad way to discover modern Egypt, too.

[00:21:04]>> Well done, guys.

[00:21:07]>> So, this happens a lot. You get um kids and fishermen trying to put onto the boat so they can get a lift and they're getting told off a bit by the sailors up on top.

[00:21:19]Oh, getting told to go.

[00:21:25]>> Just over 2,000 years ago, this river was Egypt's main highway.

[00:21:31]Traveling along it, you might have seen or even spelled the sensational ruler who made this river her own.

[00:21:41]One of the stories that we hear about Cleopatra is that she used to soak the sails of her barges in perfume so that people would smell her arriving before they saw her.

[00:21:52]One of the sources of Cleopatra's fabled scent was an icon of the ancient Nile Valley.

[00:21:59]The beautiful blue lotus flower.

[00:22:04]Ancient accounts tell us that the waters of the Nile were once thick with these flowers, whose potent properties were legendary across the known world.

[00:22:14]But sadly, this symbol of ancient Egypt is now almost extinct.

[00:22:21]10 miles into the desert, though, there are rumors of a revival.

[00:22:34]Locals are always keen to help and I've hitched a lift with Ahmed and his motorbike to meet a living legend.

[00:22:43]>> Oh, thank you so much for the lift.

[00:22:47]>> Excuse me.

[00:22:49]>> Thank you, Kakan. Thanks for the list.

[00:22:51]Thank you. Take care.

[00:22:54]There are um ancient cities up and down the Nile that specialized in perfume production. And I've just been told that there's one very brave independent woman um who's trying to revive that ancient tradition by herself here out in the middle of the desert.

[00:23:14]>> Hello.

[00:23:15]>> This wonderful oasis is the passion project of Dr. Mirvat Nassa.

[00:23:20]>> Hello. You made it.

[00:23:22]>> I did make it. My gosh, properly across the desert. I didn't realize you were quite so remote, but what a little bit of paradise you.

[00:23:30]>> For six years now, Dr. Mirat has been trying to bring the magic of the blue lotus back to Egypt.

[00:23:37]>> I managed in the end to find the bulbs and I grew the bulbs and it's here we are. Why were they thought of as special flowers? One of the creation myth in ancient Egypt is that life came out of a lotus flower.

[00:23:55]It opens up by sunrise and then it closes down and disappears into the water by sunset. So the following day there is another flower coming out. So this kind of continuous cycle of renewal, of rebirth, of resurrection, I think that was what is symbolic.

[00:24:17]1300 years before Cleopatra, thousands of these petals were even found in Tutan Cammoon's tomb.

[00:24:26]But today, you've got to come a long way just to find a few.

[00:24:32]If you don't cut it, it will actually disappear into the water and will not come back again.

[00:24:38]>> The blue lotus was said to smell like the god Ra's sweat. An interesting claim I can now test for myself.

[00:24:46]>> Shukran.

[00:24:49]Amazing to be given a freshly picked blue lotus.

[00:24:54]Oh, that is truly beautiful. It's very subtle. very subtle, but you feel like you want to kind of draw it into your whole body. I wasn't expecting that.

[00:25:03]That's amazing. And the color I can see now where they say it's like having the sun in the center of a flower.

[00:25:10]But is there more to the blue lotus than just beauty and a wonderful smell?

[00:25:16]>> I think it's also had an effect on the mood. So, it made people feel happier.

[00:25:22]Recent studies have claimed that the flower has hallucinogenic properties.

[00:25:29]The ancient Egyptians also observed this and use the lotus as the original party drug.

[00:25:41]But I can tell you it also makes a rather good cup of tea.

[00:25:46]>> Oh, it's so lovely.

[00:25:49]And we know the ancient Egyptians turned the petals into a highly fragranced oil.

[00:25:55]It's tragic that this enchanting flower has almost entirely gone from Egypt. But if Dr. Murvat has anything to do with it, it might just flourish here again.

[00:26:06]When you study the ancient Egyptian world, you always hear about the popularity of perfumes. And there was one that was actually called the Egyptian. And I have to say, as a historian, I've always been really cynical. But you know what? um coming here and being on the boat for weeks, it is very drying for the hair. So, this beautiful little gift of lotus oil, um I've been putting on my hair. So, I now understand what those ancient Egyptian women went through and lotus oil is definitely the solution.

[00:26:40]We're now 300 miles upstream from Cairo and on our way to one of the most sacred sites in the whole of Egypt.

[00:26:51]I'm leaving the crew to a hearty Egyptian breakfast while I make the short journey inland to the ancient city of Abidos.

[00:27:10]This has been a place of pilgrimage since the very dawn of this civilization.

[00:27:18]5,000 years ago, when the kingdoms of upper and lower Egypt were first united the length of the Nile under one pharaoh, Abidos was the center of this new superpower.

[00:27:33]I've come to this temple to see a wonder that gives incredible insight to the Egyptian world. A chronological list of 76 pharaohs.

[00:27:46]Apart from being exquisitely beautiful and parts of the temple are like a giant history book laid out. And that's what you've got here on the wall. This this thing is called the king's list. and and what it's supposed to be is a list of all the rulers of Egypt right from the very beginning. So the very first king that we have listed here is a kind of mythical pharaoh called Nama and that's his carto.

[00:28:14]The king's list is the ancient Egyptians telling their own story.

[00:28:20]In fact, it's the sole source we have for many of the pharaohs and their families.

[00:28:25]Actually, it's interesting because not all the kings are listed here. Uh, it's really history that's been censored. So, there are some whole dynasties who are left out. Tuton Carmoon, for instance, appears nowhere on this wall. There's one particular guy that I'm interested in where he sees here. Obviously, not the most beautiful one on the wall.

[00:28:45]Gigantic gash in the middle of it. But this is Peris Seneti.

[00:28:49]And there is a particular reason why I want to get to know Senet better.

[00:28:53]because I've just been invited to go into his tomb.

[00:29:01]Though he isn't a household name, Samraet III ruled 3,900 years ago.

[00:29:07]His tomb is found on the outskirts of Abidos.

[00:29:15]>> The archaeologist who's agreed to take me there has unearthed some of the most majestic sites in Egypt.

[00:29:22]Hey. Yeah. Good to see you. Thank you so much.

[00:29:25]>> His name is Yasa Razi.

[00:29:28]>> Yeah. Amazing.

[00:29:30]>> It's very exciting.

[00:29:31]>> Very exciting.

[00:29:33]>> Oh my god. Is it Ahmed?

[00:29:34]>> Hello.

[00:29:35]>> Welcome.

[00:29:36]>> Hello.

[00:29:36]>> Welcome back. Welcome back to you.

[00:29:39]>> Me too. Thank you. Welcome back.

[00:29:41]>> We we uh were together here 5 years ago.

[00:29:44]>> Really?

[00:29:45]>> Yes. What a beautiful day. A new tomb.

[00:29:47]An old friend.

[00:29:48]>> Thank you, >> Akad. How are your family? Is it everybody well? Is it good?

[00:29:54]>> What we do? I have four uh four women and I have for 15 children.

[00:29:59]>> 15?

[00:30:00]>> Yes.

[00:30:01]>> Is it true?

[00:30:06]>> Oh, it's too early in the morning.

[00:30:10]>> We are almost arrived to the tomb.

[00:30:13]>> Okay. Seamiset's tomb is hidden under this 700 ft mountain and until recently was buried beneath 50 ft of sand.

[00:30:24]>> Think it would it would be better if you wear a boot or something?

[00:30:28]>> Yes. Yeah. No, I brought my boots. What are the conditions like inside?

[00:30:32]>> It's very hot. Totally hot inside the tomb and it's slippery in some places and totally dangerous the tomb. Yeah, >> totally dangerous.

[00:30:38]>> Totally dangerous. This tomb is closed for the public. So this is a special visit for you.

[00:30:44]>> Thank you. Well, thank you as long as you stay close.

[00:30:46]>> Thank you, Shran. A long time since anybody's been in here. Senet's astonishing burial place is entirely underground.

[00:30:55]It stretches for 800 ft, making it Egypt's longest tomb.

[00:31:02]>> As long as it's easier to get out than to get in.

[00:31:07]>> Hey, thank you, ma'am. Well done. I like the fact that um >> these tombs are built to defeat all robbers and they're still managing to defeat us today.

[00:31:18]>> Watch your step.

[00:31:19]>> I will. So do is it is it really really hot down there?

[00:31:23]>> Yeah.

[00:31:24]>> Okay.

[00:31:24]>> It's really hot inside.

[00:31:25]>> I think I might leave my scarf and if we get lost, >> they'll know there's somebody down there.

[00:31:30]>> Exactly. It's our sign.

[00:31:36]One modern staircase is all we get before the bare stone and the dark takes over.

[00:31:42]>> I'm so glad we've got this torch. Did I tell you the only thing I don't like is small, dark spaces. That's the only thing I that freaks me out.

[00:31:50]>> Is that safe?

[00:31:50]>> Yeah, it's safe. But don't >> don't pull it too hard.

[00:31:54]>> Oxygen levels start to plummet. The temperature reaches unbearable levels.

[00:31:59]And with 90% humidity, we're quickly drenched in sweat.

[00:32:04]This is where the heat starting as well.

[00:32:06]>> Starting. Yeah. But yeah, >> take care of your head.

[00:32:09]>> I will. Thank you. Think of this.

[00:32:11]>> Before Samet, pharaohs had been laid to rest beneath enormous pyramids.

[00:32:17]>> And this now we are under the the mountain.

[00:32:20]>> But this hidden tomb revolutionized the way that rulers would be buried for centuries to come.

[00:32:27]>> I mean, it's amazing, isn't it? It's so hot for us just walking down. Imagine what it would have been like for the for those workers digging it. And they're using just stone tools presumably.

[00:32:37]>> Watch you live here.

[00:32:38]>> I will.

[00:32:38]>> After the tomb builders came the tomb raiders searching for the treasures buried here with the pharaoh.

[00:32:45]>> Do you think how many how many workers do you think there would have been?

[00:32:48]>> Just hold on.

[00:32:49]>> Okay.

[00:32:49]>> Okay. Because there's a shaft here.

[00:32:51]>> But Seet had some tricks up his sleeve.

[00:32:55]>> That's a sheer drop down there, isn't it?

[00:32:58]We are above a shaft built specially to trick the robbers.

[00:33:01]>> Oh my god.

[00:33:02]>> So once the robbers arrived to this place, they found that this part is closed by a block of stone, >> right?

[00:33:10]>> Telling that there is nothing behind.

[00:33:13]>> But the robbers continued their desperate search, hacking their own passageways down through the solid rock.

[00:33:21]>> They've they've put these steps into the rocks. The robbers. Have they?

[00:33:24]>> Yeah. And after years with many dying in the attempt, they finally found Senet.

[00:33:32]600 ft from the entrance, at last we reached the heart of the hidden tomb.

[00:33:38]>> Yeah. This is the sarcophagus of Sinister the third himself.

[00:33:42]>> So this is the actual sarcophagus is >> the actual surface of the king. Yeah.

[00:33:45]And it is made of two pieces of granite.

[00:33:48]One is the lid and this one is the uh body of the sarcophagus. It's been robbed this, hasn't it?

[00:33:55]>> Yeah, being robbed and it's not in its place.

[00:34:00]>> No, >> originally they it was in the burial chamber and the robbers they uh dragged until here.

[00:34:13]The robbers had to shift aside massive granite blocks weighing up to 60 tons each to reach the treasures down here.

[00:34:22]Gold, perfumes, even a boat was buried with the almighty pharaoh. But all that remains now is his empty sarcophagus.

[00:34:31]>> So where's his body?

[00:34:34]>> Just gone.

[00:34:36]>> Like so many of Egypt's rulers, we no longer have his mummified body or any of his treasures.

[00:34:46]But we do now know that Senet was the first pharaoh to take these extraordinary measures to hide his final resting place.

[00:34:56]Listen, I owe you such a debt of gratitude for bringing me down here, even though we've nearly died.

[00:35:02]>> Almost the attempt, but um do we know that we're back?

[00:35:06]>> Yes, that's >> after you. After you. That's Thank you.

[00:35:14]It's time for me to continue south. I'm leaving Semret 1500 years behind to go in search of Egypt's last great pharaoh, the mighty Cleopatra.

[00:35:37]People have sailed this river for thousands of years.

[00:35:42]But none with more pomp and ceremony than the pharaohs.

[00:35:47]>> Hello, captain. Are we okay with this boat?

[00:35:50]>> All good. All good, madame.

[00:35:53]>> Oh, good. I trust you.

[00:35:55]>> And of all the pharaohs who sailed the Nile, the most famous was Cleopatra.

[00:36:03]>> Just four years into her reign, Cleopatra led a massive military maneuver on this river. a fleet of 400 ships with her new lover, the Roman general Julius Caesar in tow. In fact, she was probably pregnant with Caesar's child at the time. When we think of Cleopatra, we make a real mistake just to imagine her as a beautiful face. Uh this was a woman who was a philosopher and a mathematician. She spoke a huge number of languages. Cleopatra was in every way a force to be reckoned with.

[00:36:40]But in this land she once ruled, the evidence of this all powerful woman has been overshadowed by the myths that have grown up around her.

[00:36:50]The Romans, Shakespeare, and of course, Hollywood have all styled her a manipulative fam fatal.

[00:37:01]And that's why my last destination on this leg of my journey matters so much to me.

[00:37:08]Dendra is a chance to discover the real Cleopatra.

[00:37:16]This temple complex was built by Cleopatra's family. Um, and it was actually started by her greatgrandfather.

[00:37:23]It's dedicated to Hatheror, the goddess of love and beauty and motherhood.

[00:37:32]Built 2,500 years after the Great Pyramid of Giza, it's a place that boasts of Cleopatra's power and the brilliance of Egyptian ideas.

[00:37:46]The entire complex stretched over 40,000 m.

[00:37:53]And it's here on the temple's wall that you get a unique glimpse of ancient Egypt's last truly great pharaoh.

[00:38:02]We know that this is Cleopatra because she's got her name written in hieroglyphs in that carto. This is the only named portrait that we have of her.

[00:38:12]This wall is singing out a message of power. Cleopatra is a natural mother.

[00:38:19]That's her son Cesarian in front of her.

[00:38:21]Um, she's a mother goddess. She's got the horns of Hathl on her head. And she is the mother of the nation of Egypt.

[00:38:40]Once you go inside the temple she helped to build, you really begin to get a feel for the woman behind the legend.

[00:38:49]A queen more obsessed with mathematics and philosophy than seduction.

[00:38:55]On the ceiling is a scientific wonder.

[00:38:59]The story of time itself and its legacy is still felt every single day.

[00:39:09]So here you have the journey of the moon through the night and then across the central corridor over there there's the sun making the sun's journey through the day and of course this being Egypt the sun is traveling in one of those flat bottomed Nile barges.

[00:39:28]Um up there there are the stars and they've been carefully mapped to prove that there are 12 hours in every night.

[00:39:34]And then at the end um you've got the 12 months of the year represented by astrological signs very similar to the ones that we have. Um so there's what we'd call Taurus, the bull and Pisces.

[00:39:53]What the ancient Egyptians did um was to jigsaw puzzle together all this information. Uh so the movement of the sun and the moon and the life cycle of the year with the annual flooding of the Nile and their mapping of the stars and they came up with a new system of time.

[00:40:11]It was the ancient Egyptians who decided that the year should run at 365 days.

[00:40:22]When Caesar heard about this revolutionary reading of the cosmos in Egypt, he was blown away.

[00:40:31]He adopted these Egyptian insights and rolled out the Julian calendar across the Roman world.

[00:40:42]That notion stuck. So the rhythm of all of our lives in the modern world is dictated by an idea that was dreamt up here.

[00:40:56]With the rising superpower Rome as her ally and Caesar, the father of her newborn son, Cleopatra must have felt unstoppable.

[00:41:07]It's said that here at Dendra, she climbed up to the roof of the temple when the moon was full to give thanks to the gods.

[00:41:16]So, you have to imagine Cleopatra coming up here, her skin rich with frankincense and myrrh and lotus oil, crowned with those sacred horns of Hather, celebrating her success and the successful birth of her son, Cesarian. A woman physically on top of the world.

[00:41:36]And it is such a privilege to think that I'm standing here where Cleopatra once stood.

[00:41:43]But within just three years, Julius Caesar would be assassinated and Cleopatra would be mired in the politics of Rome. She died here eventually by her own hand in the land that she loved, the last great pharaoh of Egypt.