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00:00Beyond the pyramids, beyond all you think you know, lies an undiscovered Egypt.
00:08It's like putting together a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.
00:11For the first time, walk where only pharaohs have walked.
00:15To the ancients, it was the sublime of the sublimes.
00:19Journey to where no television camera has been allowed, until now.
00:23It almost looks as though the artists put down their brushes and left the temple yesterday.
00:27Now, Peter Woodward reveals startling new discoveries about an ancient land, Egypt beyond the pyramids.
00:40Cairo, one of the world's great cities.
00:47Bulging with 16 million people, it straddles the Nile River, not far from the ancient capital of Memphis.
00:55For more than 5,000 years, since the days of the pharaohs, Egypt has been a land of intense faith and spirituality.
01:05In many ways, it became a crossroads for some of the world's most prominent religions.
01:14Here in Cairo, the greatest Muslim metropolis on earth, one has only to listen to be reminded.
01:20The cacophony of modern life is punctuated five times each day by the Islamic call to prayer.
01:35Cairo is filled with hundreds of mosques of all ages and sizes.
01:39The great mosque of Sultan Hassan was built in the 14th century.
01:45It is a stunning display of enormous spiritual inspiration.
01:51But Judaism and Christianity have also found strength and motivation in this city, and their temples of faith are also here.
02:02The Ben Ezra Synagogue was built in the 9th century.
02:05Legend has it that before the Nile shifted its banks, Pharaoh's daughter found the baby Moses on this spot.
02:13Cairo has numerous churches as well.
02:17Most are Coptic, a sect that was one of the earliest branches of Christianity.
02:23I visited the 4th century Hanging Church, where it's possible to sense the unbroken spiritual ties to Egypt's ancient past.
02:34If one were to find the look and sound of a church in Cairo,
02:39If one were to find the look and sound of ancient Egypt today,
02:44then it would be here, at a Coptic church.
02:47The words of these prayers and chants are the closest clues we have to the spoken language of the ancient Egyptians,
02:54and the devout faith of this service is a direct link to the deep spirituality of pharaonic Egypt.
03:02The chants, the incense, the hieroglyphs still used in the Coptic language,
03:07can be traced to an even earlier religion that began here more than 50 centuries ago.
03:14Today, Cairo's houses of worship serve as a tangible link to that time.
03:19A time when magnificent temples provided the spiritual foundation for one of humankind's first great civilizations.
03:30The power of ancient Egypt's pharaohs was rooted in a complex hierarchy of gods and goddesses.
03:38It was a religion that prized ritual and ceremony.
03:42The temple was its centerpiece, a place of wonder and mystery.
03:49Temples were points of contact between humanity and the divine,
03:53and the Egyptians basically conceived of the temple, first and foremost, as the god's dwelling place.
04:00So the basic purpose of the temple ritual was the care and feeding of the gods.
04:05The second function of the temple was to physically represent the Egyptian concept of creation.
04:18Egyptians believed that the world began as a morass of primeval night,
04:23a place of chaos and disorder.
04:26Egyptians believed that the world began as a morass of primeval night,
04:31a place of chaos and disorder.
04:35But from this morass, the gods pushed up a mound, or island of safety, which became Egypt.
04:44To symbolize this mound of creation, temples were always built with a slightly raised section in their center.
04:52The temple mound reminded Egyptians that the primeval chaos could return if the gods were not happy.
04:59For over 3,000 years, fear of chaos and longing for order were central to religious beliefs of Egyptian civilization.
05:11The line between the two was very clear to the Egyptian.
05:16The desert was chaos and the absence of life.
05:21The valley nourished by the River Nile was security.
05:26The temple was the institution that kept Egypt safe.
05:32The god assured stability. It prevented chaos.
05:37You know that in the center of that temple, the god is there watching over you,
05:44and that Pharaoh, on your behalf, is going to make the proper offerings to that god,
05:50and that the world will continue to function properly.
05:54The Nile will rise, the floods will come, food will grow.
05:58It's all a reciprocal process that continues throughout time.
06:05Temples quickly evolved to represent more than a home for the gods.
06:09They became the focus of all life in the community.
06:14When you think about the temple in ancient Egypt,
06:17you're really thinking about something that's much broader than a religious place.
06:22It's a religious and economic place.
06:24Something akin to, say, a great monastery in the Middle Ages in Europe.
06:29It owns land, it has herds.
06:32These were great economic institutions within the structure of Egypt.
06:39The first temples date from the birth of Egyptian civilization,
06:43over 4,000 years before the Christian era.
06:46These earliest holy places were probably little more than walls of reed mats or animal hides.
06:53Later temples were built of mud brick.
06:56Amazingly, some of these structures have survived.
07:00The huge mud brick temple of the early pharaoh Khazakhemwi at Abydos is over 5,000 years old.
07:08But Khazakhemwi's great walls were the exception.
07:11Most of these early temples vanished long ago,
07:14worn away by the relentless desert wind.
07:21This is a mud brick.
07:23Nile mud mixed with straw, baked in the Egyptian sum.
07:27Every early building from the pharaoh's palace to the peasant's hovel was made of this.
07:31In the right dry conditions, these can last for thousands of years,
07:35like at Khazakhemwi's temple in Abydos.
07:38But most of habitable Egypt was close to the Nile and subject to constant flooding.
07:43After a few centuries, this stuff just dissolves back into the Nile.
07:50And the Egyptians knew it.
07:52Now, that's all right for the houses of the pharaohs,
07:54After all, life is just a temporary stage.
07:56But for the tombs of the dead and the temples of the gods, they had to last.
08:02The Egyptians were about to become the world's greatest masters of a new material, stone.
08:07And with it, they created some of the greatest monuments in human history.
08:25We've seen the beginnings of temple construction in Egypt,
08:28and now we see its magnificent culmination.
08:31This is the Temple of Karnak.
08:34And after the pyramids, it is the most spectacular architectural achievement in the history of Egypt.
08:42It is the greatest temple complex ever built.
08:46It grew to cover over 60,000 square meters.
08:50A space large enough to enclose the Cathedral of Notre Dame and its grounds.
08:56Karnak Temple sits on the east bank of the Nile in what was once Thebes,
09:00the southern capital of ancient Egypt.
09:03Today, it is the city of Luxor, some 450 miles south of Cairo.
09:10A succession of pharaohs built and expanded this great temple over the course of centuries.
09:16A succession of pharaohs built and expanded this great temple over the course of two centuries,
09:22some 1,200 years before the Christian era.
09:25This great collection of gateways and column-filled halls was built to honor a single deity,
09:32Amun, the king of the gods.
09:36He is the great god, the number one god in Egypt.
09:40Because of that position as king of the gods,
09:43he receives the favor of pharaoh.
09:46And all of the great halls that exist in here, the pylons and everything, are built for him.
09:55Along with his wife, Mut, the goddess of motherhood, Amun ruled over the capital of Thebes.
10:02It was Amun, more than any other deity, who served to legitimize and continually renew the authority of the pharaohs.
10:14In the darkest, most silent recesses of Karnak, the god Amun resided in the form of a statue.
10:21Surprisingly, the statue was not a huge colossus, but a small image that could be easily carried during festivals.
10:30The lengthy walls of Karnak were made of huge sandstone blocks.
10:35The construction challenges faced by the builders were enormous.
10:39Remember, we're not talking about cranes, or even simple block and tackle to lift these enormous stones into place.
10:45Instead, the ancient Egyptians relied on dirt.
10:49Here we see the remnants of an enormous ramp, up which the stones were dragged to their place in this huge pylon, or gateway.
10:57As each course of stone was completed, the ramp was raised.
11:02When at last the wall was completed, the ramp was slowly dug away,
11:06and each course of stone was dressed with carvings and paintings on the way down.
11:14The great hyperstyle hall is the heart of Karnak.
11:19Begun by Pharaoh Amenhotep III in the 14th century BC, the hall is a forest of 130 columns,
11:26which once supported a roof over 80 feet above the temple floor.
11:31Windows in the roof emitted light, which flooded the dramatic central aisle.
11:37But the side aisles, so sunny today, then would have remained in dramatic shadow.
11:44Fifteen obelisks dedicated to the sun god Re were lifted into place throughout the temple.
11:50It took all of the engineering skill possessed by Egyptians to carve the massive shafts,
11:55drag them up dirt ramps, and carefully settle them into place.
12:00The tips of the obelisks were once capped with gold,
12:04so they might catch the first sunlight at dawn and the last at twilight.
12:08The glinting light from these shafts honoured the sun's primary importance to sustaining all life.
12:17This great collection of monumental stonework was not erected by slaves,
12:21but by free citizens, for all Egyptians were expected to be available sometime during the year
12:26to work on the pharaoh's great construction project.
12:30It was the equivalent of national service.
12:34The labour that put these temples together is the common people.
12:40They're serving their labour time. It's their week to go work in Karnak.
12:46It's probably, one, we've got to pay our taxes, two, we're working on the home of the god.
12:52This is a great service to the king and to Amun.
12:57We're ensuring the stability of life throughout eternity by building here.
13:04Although average working class Egyptians built this temple,
13:07they probably were allowed to enter only the outer courtyards during the festival.
13:11These inner halls were entered only by the most elite class of priests,
13:15for it was here that the god's spirit was most present.
13:21Each pharaoh in his turn felt called on to proclaim his devotion to Amun,
13:25and while he was at it, his own greatness.
13:29The walls and columns of the temple functioned as posters or billboards,
13:33where the king's name was inscribed.
13:36The walls and columns of the temple functioned as posters or billboards,
13:40where the king's adoration of the god could be recorded and displayed to the world.
13:47Dr William Murnane of the University of Memphis
13:50has been studying the inscriptions at Karnak Temple for over 30 years.
13:56I guess my interest in this building starts with simple curiosity.
14:00I mean, it is so well preserved,
14:02and it's silly not to know very much about what made it tick, why it was built.
14:07I'm interested in what it tells us
14:09about the religious mentality of the ancient Egyptians.
14:12The only safe way you can begin to understand
14:15what the significance of a building like this is,
14:18is to understand what they carved on its walls.
14:22Simple photography of the inscriptions is difficult.
14:25Over hundreds of years and a succession of pharaohs,
14:28carvings were placed on top of older carvings.
14:31Murnane carefully traces everything
14:33so that all the layers may then be minutely studied.
14:37For sometimes, these images are not what they first appear.
14:43One of the things that you find constantly being emphasized in the temple
14:47is this balance between the way things are and ought to be
14:51and what's actually happening in the temple.
14:54And I think you see that very nicely illustrated over here.
14:59You have this bird, which is a hieroglyph
15:02for the common people of Egypt.
15:04And notice it's seated on a basket,
15:06which is another hieroglyph, which means all.
15:09And the bird has sprouted arms.
15:11It's not because it's a genetic mutation,
15:13but because this is part of another hieroglyph.
15:16Egyptians, seeing those arms outstretched,
15:18would think of instantly the word for a door.
15:21And in case you missed the point, the star, the five-pointed star,
15:25is another Egyptian hieroglyph that basically means a door.
15:28It's a symbol of all the people adoring the king.
15:32Details like this have suggested
15:34that this was not just a symbol of humanity adoring the god king.
15:39It's also a logo for a basically illiterate society.
15:43Remember, after all, in Egypt,
15:451% or 2% of the elite knew how to read and write.
15:48So for most other people, something like this would tell them,
15:52when you see this on the column, you can stand there.
15:56A bird that's actually a crowd control sign
15:59is only one of the surprises that can be found here
16:02if you know where and how to look.
16:05The average visitor today might also be surprised
16:08that all of this drab stonework was once painted in stunning colours.
16:14The few sections of painted decoration which remain
16:18give us a tantalising glimpse of Carnac's fabulous past.
16:23Recording this stuff is really urgent because, as you can see,
16:27the wall is flaking away.
16:29These name rings that you see above me were intact
16:32when we photographed them in 1992.
16:34They're practically all gone now.
16:36So every time I get fed up with the tedium of what I'm doing,
16:40I basically come back here and I remind myself
16:43what a race with time we're in
16:45and how it's important to record this stuff before it disappears.
16:49Sadly, groundwater in Egypt has been rising
16:52since the construction of the great Aswan Dam in 1969.
16:56Like a sponge, the porous nature of these ancient stones
17:00now draws this water and the poisonous salt it carries.
17:04But other Egyptologists are continuing the struggle
17:07to unlock more secrets still held within these wondrous walls.
17:16We're in the heart of the Temple of Carnac,
17:20where the statue of the great god Amun was kept.
17:23The roof is gone now, but 3,500 years ago,
17:26this place would have been very dark and very quiet,
17:29with only the most privileged priests allowed to enter.
17:32Each morning, one of them would open the doors
17:35to the shrine of the god himself, whose statue stood just up there.
17:39Then the statue would be washed, given his morning bath,
17:42and anointed with precious oils,
17:44and then dressed in the finest clothes.
17:47Here, perhaps, flowers or oils,
17:50and on this great table, food would be laid out before the god
17:54so that he could refresh himself during the day.
17:57Of course, the god only took the essence of the food.
18:00After a suitable interval, the actual stuff was eaten by the priests.
18:05Finally, they would leave incense burning,
18:08and then the god would be allowed to enjoy his day in peace.
18:17The higher priests at Carnac were appointed by the pharaoh.
18:21Other priests were part-time laymen from important families.
18:25But there were many jobs at the temple
18:27that had little to do with its religious functions.
18:32Temples were not just the domain of royalty and priests.
18:36Hundreds of common people were acquired
18:38for the day-to-day operation of these huge religious centres.
18:42Farmers, carpenters, stonemasons, metalsmiths, potters, and many more
18:46were all employed by the temples
18:48and relied on them for their physical as well as their spiritual needs.
18:53Charles van Siclin is currently excavating the site
18:56of an ancient workshop that once served Carnac Temple.
19:02At one point in the history of Carnac Temple,
19:05this was the manufactory.
19:07This was the place where they made the statues.
19:10This was the place where they made jewellery.
19:13They processed copper.
19:15In this particular area,
19:17we've got a lot of mixed signals about what's going on.
19:20I have places where I have concentrations of dirt
19:24filled with metallic flecks, which we haven't checked out yet,
19:28that look a lot like a word we don't talk about in Egyptology.
19:32The G word, which is terrible.
19:36Gold is the G word.
19:38Archaeologists hate to find gold because it's only a problem
19:42and it never tells you anything.
19:45The age-old allure of gold has disrupted more than one dig site.
19:50For serious archaeologists,
19:52its presence only serves to distract
19:55from the search for more important discoveries.
19:58There are a whole series of basins, one on top of the other.
20:02They go down for over four feet
20:05and they were putting stuff in and letting them have sediments.
20:09The sediment would filter out and they'd put more liquid in and out.
20:13So we're trying to extract some of the gold.
20:16That's probably the best theory this week.
20:19It's a problem I haven't solved yet.
20:22But that's archaeology.
20:25All facets of Egyptian daily life were dependent on pottery.
20:30Jars, bottles, basins, bowls, pots were everywhere.
20:34It might be assumed that every piece of pottery is dug up and kept.
20:38But over 3,000 years of history make for a lot of broken pieces.
20:44Most of this area is littered with literally millions of potsherds.
20:48This is a potsherd that I usually refer to by the Arabic word zabalah,
20:54which means trash.
20:56It's part of the body of a piece of pottery,
21:00so it has no characteristics that will tell me anything about it.
21:05So we toss it.
21:09As the centuries passed, the cult of the great god Amun withered
21:14and Egyptian civilisation was overrun by other cultures.
21:18Karnak Temple was finally closed by the Romans in the 4th century.
21:26When at last Europeans saw Karnak in the 18th century,
21:30its great halls were filled with sand.
21:33Campfires blackened the beautifully painted walls.
21:37And only peasants and their donkeys looked upon the holy inscriptions
21:41once meant for gods.
21:45But as the 21st century begins, Karnak is again filled with energy and passion.
21:51Only now it is the passion of discovery and restoration.
21:57Today no one lives here at Karnak.
22:00The sands have been cleared away to reveal these,
22:03hundreds of blocks of stone.
22:06With slow and precise detective work,
22:09Francois Lachey and a French team have achieved the impossible.
22:13From these random blocks, they have managed to reassemble a whole building.
22:18They have recreated the Red Chapel of Queen Hatshepsut.
22:28Hatshepsut was one of Egypt's few female rulers.
22:32In 1487 BC, four years before the end of her reign,
22:36this dynamic queen built a small temple just outside the walls of Karnak.
22:41Made of red quartzite, it became known as the Red Chapel.
22:46It was used for only a few years.
22:50For reasons we don't fully understand,
22:53Hatshepsut's successor and stepson, Thutmose III,
22:56had the Red Chapel dismantled.
22:59By the time Egyptologists found it over 3,000 years later,
23:03the only visible remains were a few large blocks of stone.
23:09Francois Lachey was fascinated by these blocks.
23:14When I came to Karnak in 1987,
23:18I saw the blocks of the Red Chapel and I asked about it,
23:23and most of my colleagues were telling me
23:26that it was impossible to reconstruct this building
23:28because too many blocks were missing.
23:32Lachey and his team set out to do the impossible.
23:36Fortunately, some of the stones which were once the walls of the Red Chapel
23:40had been carved to tell a story.
23:43Unfortunately, most of these stones had been reused in other parts of Karnak.
23:49The challenge was to find them and put them back together.
23:54The first operation to be done for this study
23:57was to take around 2,000 pictures of the faces of these blocks.
24:08The photos of the chapel blocks became a template for Lachey to work from.
24:13It's like putting together a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.
24:16You don't have the box, so you don't have the picture,
24:19and half the pieces are missing.
24:24The Red Chapel had been designed to hold a small boat.
24:28The boat was used to transport the god Amun
24:31in the important annual festival of Opet,
24:34held each year at the onset of the flood.
24:39During the procession, the boat of Amun was carried out of Karnak
24:43and paraded in front of the common people
24:45on a day-long journey to meet the king.
24:48At this meeting, the king paid homage to the god
24:51and the god renewed the pharaoh's right to rule for another year.
24:57Scenes of this journey were depicted on numbered blocks,
25:00which had been set in the chapel wall.
25:04Once Lachey discovered some of these blocks,
25:06he had the key to understanding the order of each course of stone.
25:12If five blocks in a course were each 30 inches long,
25:15it was logical the missing block in the order would have the same dimensions.
25:22The scenes with the shrine and the scenes with the priest
25:25carrying the bark have the same length,
25:28so it was quite easy to add these lengths to the missing parts
25:33to reconstruct a part of this entire third course.
25:40When the puzzle had finally been put together on paper,
25:43it took only nine months in 1998
25:46to reconstruct the main portion of the Red Chapel.
25:50Sadly, some blocks were never recovered.
25:52The smooth plaster on these walls fills the space of those missing blocks.
25:59It will eventually be stained to match the colour of the original stones.
26:05Work still continues on the Red Chapel
26:07as some missing pieces are recreated by hand.
26:10But for the first time since the New Kingdom,
26:13we can look upon Hatshepsut's beautiful shrine
26:16and marvel at what had once been lost to us.
26:19I think it's fascinating to try and imagine
26:22the mysterious and dramatic scenes
26:24which once unfolded in this marvellous little chapel.
26:31The one day in the year when the average Egyptian
26:34could actually see the god Amun-Re was the Festival of Opet.
26:38The god would be removed from his sanctuary
26:41and brought here to the Red Chapel.
26:43Inside, on this very spot, was a small bark, or boat,
26:48which would carry the god on his journey.
26:51He was placed inside the bark
26:54and shaven-headed priests with leopard-skin robes
26:57lifted the holy bark onto their shoulders
27:01and carried it out of the Temple of Karnak
27:04towards Luxor, over a mile away,
27:08down the Avenue of the Sphinxes.
27:14Trumpets blare as the god's procession approaches.
27:18Soldiers in plumed-covered chariots line the route.
27:21Spectators sing and clap as musicians pluck lutes
27:25and beat drums and cymbals.
27:27Dancers sway to the rhythms.
27:29Acrobats spring through the air.
27:32And everywhere, the people cheer at the sight of the life-giving god.
27:44Much of Karnak Temple remains
27:47to give us a wonderful sense of what this place was like 3500 years ago.
27:52But the effects of time, wind, earthquake and even vandalism
27:57have taken their toll.
27:59We must also look to other temples
28:01to help us appreciate the mystique of Egyptian temple design
28:05and the delicate beauty of their decoration.
28:08One of the greatest of these was built
28:11while Karnak was thriving.
28:14It was created by Pharaoh Seti I, the father of Ramses the Great,
28:19to honour Osiris, the god of the underworld.
28:24I wanted to see this very special temple,
28:27so I travelled just a few hours down the Nile from Karnak
28:30to the ancient town of Abydos.
28:34It's Friday, the holy day of the Islamic week here in modern Egypt.
28:39You can hear the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer.
28:42What we have left of ancient Egypt is its religion,
28:45tombs, temples, monuments.
28:47But to the people of those times, that's what Egypt was,
28:51a living religion which directly involved the whole people,
28:54a religion which lasted with very little change for 3000 years.
28:58We've seen the glories of Karnak,
29:00but to really appreciate it and to understand the power
29:03and the impact of these New Kingdom temples,
29:06you have to come here to Abydos,
29:09this extraordinary temple built by Seti I for the god Osiris.
29:13Few tourists ever come here,
29:15and parts of this temple have never been filmed.
29:18Our guide is Matthew Adams of the University of Pennsylvania.
29:31So, Matthew, tell us about this amazing place. Where are we?
29:35Well, we're in the first hypostyle hall
29:37of the temple of Seti I at Abydos,
29:40and we've just come in from the sunlit world
29:46of the living of ancient Egypt,
29:49and we're moving slowly
29:52into the more dimly lit world of the divine.
29:58So, Seti I originated this temple. What was his purpose?
30:03Well, from at least the beginning of the Middle Kingdom,
30:07around 2000 BC,
30:09Abydos was seen as the primary cult place of the god Osiris,
30:13the ruler of the land of the dead.
30:16The Egyptians believed that he had been buried here,
30:19that his tomb was out in the desert here,
30:22and Seti wanted to associate himself with the cult of Osiris,
30:27and in building this great temple, he was able to do that.
30:38I think that this is probably
30:40the finest relief carving ever done in Egypt.
30:43It's absolutely exquisite, but take us through them.
30:46Well, here we see the pharaoh, Seti I.
30:49He's holding an incense burner.
30:51You see the flames from the burning incense coming up there.
30:55He's offering this to an image of the god Osiris
30:59attended by various other deities.
31:02You see Osiris enthroned on a raised platform here
31:08inside a shrine,
31:10which is just indicated by these thin lines
31:14that encircle the image.
31:16Where would this shrine itself have been?
31:19Well, the temple had a number of chapels
31:23dedicated to various deities.
31:25One of these was dedicated to Osiris,
31:28and this image, or the image that this represents,
31:31would have been in that chapel.
31:33Can we go and see? Sure.
31:36This is the chapel of Osiris,
31:39and we see him in various guises here,
31:43with the king making offerings of incense
31:46and libation offerings,
31:48adoring the image of the god.
31:52It really gives a sense of what the original decoration
31:57of most Egyptian temples would have been.
31:59It would have been this incredibly vibrant and alive color.
32:03It almost looks as though the artists put down their brushes
32:06and left the temple yesterday.
32:08The images here help us a great deal
32:11in understanding the nature of temple ritual,
32:14but the Seti temple here isn't only important for Egyptologists
32:18to understand God's cults and temple ritual,
32:21it also has a singular significance in Egyptian history.
32:28On the wall in this room, we actually have
32:31one of the most important historical documents from ancient Egypt.
32:34It's something that has been of immense value to Egyptologists
32:38in understanding the sequence of Egyptian history.
32:41It's a list of the names of the kings of ancient Egypt.
32:49It starts at the beginning with the name of King Menes.
32:54Here it says Meni, who was the legendary founder of ancient Egypt,
32:59and it continues all the way through most of the rulers of ancient Egypt
33:05all the way to Seti, here at the end, who built this temple.
33:11It's an amazing stretch of history, isn't it?
33:14Absolutely.
33:15This represents almost 2,000 years of Egyptian history.
33:18And it's just a list. Is that the only importance it has?
33:21What else does it tell us?
33:23Well, it tells us of the Egyptians' own awareness
33:26of the great depth of their history.
33:29Egyptology would have had a much more difficult time
33:32in putting together the overall outline of ancient Egyptian history
33:37without this document and others like it.
33:41Although Seti I is the last name on this list,
33:44he died before his temple could be fully completed.
33:48It was finished by his son, Ramesses.
33:51But history will forever know it as Seti's gift to the ages,
33:56a beautiful monument to the deep spirituality
33:59and artistic greatness of ancient Egypt.
34:04In 1570 B.C., a thousand years after the great pyramids were built,
34:10a new era in Egyptian history began.
34:13It was called the New Kingdom.
34:17The great pharaohs of this period, such as Seti I's son, Ramesses,
34:22possessed enormous power and prestige.
34:25They would expand and perfect the great pyramids
34:29We're crossing the Nile at the site of the ancient holy city of Thebes.
34:33Just down there on that bank is the town of Luxor and the temple of Karnak.
34:38But it was to this bank that the pharaohs turned
34:41to create a new kind of temple.
34:44These were not dedicated to a particular god
34:47like Amun at Karnak or Osiris at Abydos,
34:50but to a new kind of temple.
34:53They were not dedicated to a particular god
34:55like Amun at Karnak or Osiris at Abydos,
34:58but rather they were mortuary temples
35:01dedicated to the honour of a living god, the pharaoh himself.
35:11Pharaohs had always required a site where, even after death,
35:15they could receive praise and offerings.
35:19A suitable place where their memory could be worshipped on a daily basis.
35:25It was not enough for the body to remain preserved.
35:28The glorious memory of the dead king also had to be maintained,
35:33if he was to keep his proper place in eternity.
35:38Pyramids had spaces for such activities incorporated into their design.
35:43But when tomb robbers forced the pharaohs to seek smaller,
35:46more secure tombs in the Valley of the Kings,
35:49a need was created for a special memorial structure.
35:54The result was the mortuary temple,
35:56and one of the most elegant of these was built across the river from Karnak
36:00by Ramesses II.
36:02The spectacular temple he created is known as the Ramesseum.
36:06It was a fitting monument to the pharaoh known to history as Ramesses the Great.
36:13Its location, the west bank of the Nile at Thebes,
36:17was really an enormous cemetery complex covering dozens of square miles.
36:22The great mortuary temples the pharaohs built here were all very close to each other.
36:28Just down the road from the Ramesseum is Medinet Habu,
36:32the beautiful temple built by Ramesses III.
36:35And not far away from this spot sits another great testament to power and ego.
36:43We're on our way to visit the most spectacular of the mortuary temples,
36:47a temple that was built to honour one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs,
36:51a pharaoh who was not a king, but a queen.
36:57Her name was Hatshepsut,
36:59the same queen who had built the Red Chapel at Karnak.
37:02Initially she was less a queen than the wife of a king,
37:05Thutmose II to be exact,
37:08but when her husband died, the title of king passed to a boy,
37:12Hatshepsut's stepson, Thutmose III.
37:16The boy was too young to rule,
37:18and so Hatshepsut became regent to command Egypt until the young king matured.
37:23But this remarkable woman possessed great self-confidence and abundant ambition.
37:28In the second year of her stepson's reign, Hatshepsut had herself designated king.
37:38She decreed that she would now be depicted not as a woman,
37:42but as a man, complete with the traditional false beard of a pharaoh.
37:48Hatshepsut's reign was peaceful and Egypt prospered.
37:52Trading expeditions were sent to distant lands,
37:56and the queen mounted enormous building projects.
38:01None were more ambitious than her construction of a temple to memorialize herself.
38:10Nearly 1500 years before the Christian era,
38:13Queen Hatshepsut began the construction of a temple to honor her reign.
38:18She chose this spectacular site, a natural amphitheater of stone,
38:24cliffs a thousand feet high.
38:27Today it is called Deir el-Bakri, but to the ancients it was the sublime of the sublimes.
38:37Hatshepsut's architect was named Sinanmut.
38:40Some believe he was also her lover.
38:42She asked him to design a temple which would amaze the ages.
38:47He did not fail.
38:58No builder in ancient Egypt had a greater sense of theatrics than Sinanmut.
39:06Three perfectly scaled terraces rise out of the valley floor
39:10and seem to meld with the towering cliffs which surround the temple.
39:17Carefully proportioned ramps connected these tiers,
39:21statues of the queen were everywhere,
39:24and in the soft tones of the desert dawn or twilight,
39:27the temple's stones gave off a magical glow
39:30which proclaimed to eternity Hatshepsut's sanctity and greatness.
39:38But fame can be fleeting.
39:41Hatshepsut's control of this wonderful temple was to be brief.
39:46Work on this architectural masterpiece began in the 7th year of Hatshepsut's reign
39:51and continued for 15 more years.
39:54This temple was built in her honour, so her image is everywhere.
39:58Hatshepsut as pharaoh, Hatshepsut as the god Osiris.
40:02But although her temple is still here 3500 years later,
40:06most of the buildings are still there.
40:10Thutmose III became pharaoh of Egypt in 1483 B.C.
40:14He was convinced that his stepmother should never have been pharaoh.
40:18So, as his reign came to an end,
40:21Thutmose did his best to obliterate the queen's image from her own temple.
40:26But time was the greatest enemy here.
40:29Later occupants continued the defacement of carvings,
40:32and earthquakes tumbled walls and columns.
40:38By the 20th century, Hatshepsut's beautiful temple had been destroyed,
40:42and it was the last of its kind.
40:45It was the last of its kind.
40:48It was the last of its kind.
40:52By the 20th century, Hatshepsut's beautiful temple was in a sad condition.
40:57Paving stones had heaved out of line.
41:00Huge blocks from balustrades lay collapsed in jumbled piles.
41:04But in 1960, the Egyptian government funded a restoration project,
41:08working with a group of Polish Egyptologists.
41:11It's been a model of international cooperation.
41:16Critical parts of the temple, particularly the third tier,
41:20lay scattered like a huge stack of children's blocks.
41:24The first task was to analyze these blocks and, one at a time,
41:28put them back into their places.
41:31We were granted access to sections of the temple
41:34that have been closed for more than 30 years.
41:37It was a rare opportunity to see the restoration work up close.
41:42Old methods are used to recreate the missing parts.
41:46Stone is cut from the original quarries and brought here to Deir el-Bahri.
41:51Local Egyptian carvers are separated from the original artisans
41:55who worked here by thousands of years,
41:58but the care and attention to detail is identical.
42:05Each one of these stones is cut by hand, placed by hand,
42:09and I shaped to exactly fit.
42:12And then, after this one, they have to go step by step
42:16up this great ramp to the third tier.
42:19And for the first time since ancient times, it'll be complete.
42:24There's hundreds of men working here.
42:26You can imagine in ancient times
42:28thousands working side by side in the heat
42:31to complete this great monument.
42:35With funding limited, there is no modern machinery here.
42:39Instead, workers bend their backs to their heavy loads.
42:44To provide a rhythm, they cry out a work chant
42:48in praise of the Prophet Muhammad.
42:52Like their ancestors centuries ago,
42:55they pulled these great stones up the ramp using only their hands.
43:00Of course, these guys here are the greatest.
43:04I'm a great man.
43:06I'm a great man.
43:08I'm a great man.
43:10I'm a great man.
43:12I'm a great man.
43:14I'm a great man.
43:16I'm a great man.
43:18Using only their hands.
43:20Of course, these guys have got wheels.
43:23The ancient Egyptians, well, maybe they used sledges.
43:26It's still hard work.
43:36These limestone blocks are modern,
43:39but they're cut to exactly the same tolerances
43:41as the ancient stone would have been.
43:43And each block is a copy,
43:45an exact copy of what was here before.
43:50Like a piece of a giant jigsaw puzzle,
43:53a section of Hatshepsut's original temple
43:56is eased into place on its modern counterpart.
44:04Piece by piece, Deir el-Bahri is put back together.
44:08Funds for this work are difficult to obtain.
44:11It has taken over 30 years.
44:14But at last, the end is in sight.
44:24And we can again see Egypt's great queen
44:27gazing over her marvellous temple.
44:37Each year during a special festival,
44:39the god Amun-Re would be brought here,
44:41to the third tier of the temple of Hatshepsut.
44:44The statue of the god would be taken in procession
44:47across this courtyard back there
44:49into a cavern dug into the mountain.
44:52There he would rest for a few days
44:54before beginning his progress
44:56through all the temples of the West Bank.
44:58The public have never been allowed access to this place,
45:02but soon the work of restoration will be completed
45:05and visitors will at last be able to stand here
45:09on the sacred terrace
45:11and enjoy a view of the Nile once looked upon
45:15by Queen Hatshepsut herself.
45:22Like all ancient structures in Egypt,
45:25the great temples face many threats
45:28from time and the elements.
45:30Paintings continue to fade, inscriptions erode,
45:33rising groundwater threatens foundations
45:36and puts important carvings at risk.
45:42But through the work of many dedicated people,
45:45these great mansions of the spirits thankfully remain.
45:50They proclaim to history the unique relationship
45:54of Egyptians and their gods.
46:06Music
46:37Sound of wind
46:41Music