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00:00Egypt, land of the pharaohs, of pyramids and of mysterious colossal statues and vast ancient temples that are still unrivalled by anything that man has built since.
00:14Look, quite honestly, this stuff isn't what interests me. I mean, these are just the funeral arrangements for some crazed megalomaniac who lived 3,000 years before they thought of cryogenic freezers.
00:30Turn the camera over there. Look, over there. Instead of looking at how the rich and powerful died, let's look at how the ordinary people lived 3,000 years ago.
00:44I get the impression that there's a lot going on in modern Egypt that would have been familiar to the ancient Egyptians,
01:12who lived 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. Well, this is my first visit to Egypt, and to show me around, I'm lucky enough to have a most untypical Egyptologist, Dr Joanne Fletcher.
01:24And she tells me that one significant similarity between today and the times of the pharaohs is the spirit of cooperation.
01:32Wherever you look in modern Egypt, whether it's in rural communities such as this or in urban environments, you see a great sense of teamwork.
01:41I mean, if a job has to be done, then quite often there are a large group of people doing it.
01:47Well, these people are doing it for free. They're just coming out.
01:49Yeah, neighbours help each other. If you have a house to build, your neighbours will help you.
01:53And when your neighbour's building their house, you help them.
01:56But surely this doesn't go for the building of the pyramids, for example.
02:00Oh, absolutely, yeah. The pyramid actually embodies this ethos, very much so. It was very much a team effort.
02:12From every corner of the land came teeming multitudes of workers and then slaves and generations of slaves to wrest the rock from the unyielding earth,
02:22while armies of wretched humanity suffered and died to hold their colossal burden across the desert.
02:28Some archaeologists are convinced that the men who built the pyramids were not slaves, but free men working in some sort of cooperative effort.
02:36So it may be that the image of ancient Egypt conjured up by Hollywood is based on a profound misunderstanding of how the ancient world worked.
02:47I mean, for goodness sake, they even went on strike in ancient Egypt.
02:50One lot of workers held a sit-in because they ran out of make-up. But we'll come back to that.
03:09This is Saqqara, to the south of modern Cairo.
03:12It may look like just a lot of desert, but it's actually an immense burial site of pyramids and tombs.
03:20You sometimes get the impression that the ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death.
03:28But this is actually just because of a quirk of fate.
03:31You see, only 5% of the land of Egypt is fertile, and they didn't want to waste that in the old days on graveyards.
03:39So they got in the habit of burying their dead out here in the desert.
03:43And it was the sand and the heat that preserved these tombs, almost as long as any other human artifact.
03:51But the ancient Egyptians weren't obsessed by death. If anything, they were obsessed by life.
03:57And so much so that they even recorded everyday speech.
04:01And that's what I'm going to find out now.
04:03Ah, what people were talking about at work 4,500 years ago.
04:08I'm told that in here is buried a top civil servant, a chap by the name of T.
04:24Actually, his nickname was T the Rich, and he owned vast estates.
04:30Well, on the walls in here, he had inscribed snatches of the conversations that he'd have heard as he walked around those estates.
04:39Melkit, hurry up! The herdsman's coming!
05:00Hey, herdsman! Watch out for the crocodile. It lies in the water and comes unseen.
05:09Don't make so much noise.
05:17Oh, come on! Pay up! It's cheap!
05:21Come and help me before he hits me!
05:25Do we have to spend the whole day carrying barley?
05:29It can't help feeling that T must have had some affection for his workers, at least enough to want to take their chatter with him into the next world.
05:41I wonder how many modern works managers want to do that.
05:45But did T and people like him care enough about his workers to treat them well in this world?
05:53All of us know that anyone carrying load or pulling load or pushing load may cause this very bad effect on the backboard, especially the backboard.
06:07Dr. Azza Mohamed Sariel-Din of the Human Genetics Department, National Research Centre, Cairo, explained to me that the workers who built the pyramids had a pretty hard life.
06:21Dr. Azza Mohamed Sariel- It is the lower part of the backbone of the vertebrae of one of the workers. His age was 35 years age.
06:29Dr. Azza Mohamed Sariel- And you can see this, of course, it is not smooth as you see this bone.
06:37Dr. Azza Mohamed Sariel- If we see this vertebra, we will find that it is tapered anteriorly.
06:43Dr. Azza Mohamed Sariel- And this is not normal. This is also because of the compression of the load.
06:49Dr. Azza Mohamed Sariel- That means that they're carrying heavy weights.
06:52Dr. Azza Mohamed Sariel- Carrying heavy weights, yes.
06:53Dr. Azza Mohamed Sariel- So there was plenty of backache in the...
06:56Dr. Azza Mohamed Sariel- Yes, of course.
06:58Dr. Azza Mohamed Sariel- Yes, of course, of course.
06:59Dr. Azza Mohamed Sariel- But however hard the work was, medical treatment was given to the privileged and unprivileged on an equal basis.
07:06Dr. Azza Mohamed Sariel- Here we have two bones of the upper arm.
07:11arm. This is from the high officials. This is the part of the healing.
07:16So I'm holding the upper arm? No, this forearm?
07:19Yes, this part. Yes, this part.
07:21High official, what would he have been?
07:23It was of a male. His age was about 35 to 40 years age.
07:28But somehow at some point he broke his arm.
07:30Yes. And this is the same for another one, but from the workers.
07:36And you can see the alignment here may be better than this,
07:40which means that they are treated in the same way.
07:43They use splints to fix the fracture for some time until it healed.
07:50Yes, and the workers' splint must be done a better job than that.
07:54Yes.
07:56But what was it like to be an ordinary Egyptian living 3,000, 4,000 years ago?
08:02How can we get any idea of daily life so long ago?
08:07Well, here in Luxor, almost 500 miles from Cairo, Joanne is taking me to the tomb of a craftsman called Senagem.
08:14Watch your head, Terry. It's quite low down.
08:17Wow.
08:20This is someone I wanted to show you, Terry. This is Senagem, a workman.
08:24Okay, looks like a farm worker, is he?
08:26Well, actually, what it shows is Senagem, the worker, followed by his wife, Neferty, and they're showing themselves during the afterlife.
08:35This is a scene of the afterlife, and this is how they imagined it, an eternal round of ploughing, reaping, and sowing in the fields of the blessed.
08:44They have now achieved paradise.
08:46He's reaping the corn here, and it's very high, it looks like the corn. It's as tall as he is.
08:50Well, that was how they viewed the afterlife. Corn would grow to at least six feet high, there'd be no pests in the field, no insect pests or anything, it would be bliss.
08:59So this man, he was just a farmer, a farm worker, was he?
09:02Well, he was actually an artisan, a craftsman, a painter of immense skill that worked in the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
09:11So he'd be doing things like, what, painting the mum, the coffins and things like that?
09:14Yeah, and also painting the scenes in the royal tombs.
09:17Oh, wow, yeah.
09:18Isn't it a great view?
09:21See all the village.
09:22So this is Senagem's village?
09:24Yeah, Senagem would have lived here, in the bottom right-hand corner, actually, that's his house.
09:29Well, this is the village of Deir el-Medina, and these remains are the homes of the workmen that actually built and decorated the tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
09:38So what kind of workmen are these?
09:40Well, they're very highly skilled individuals, a professional class of artisans, painters, scribes.
09:47So here we are, Terry, this is the actual front door of Senagem.
09:50Oh, my gosh.
09:51Isn't it amazing?
09:52So what would it have looked like?
09:53Well, it would have been wood, painted red, and the outside walls sort of plastered and painted white.
10:00So it would have been a very smart front door.
10:02Would it have had a number on it or anything, saying Senagem?
10:04Probably his name, yes.
10:05Yeah?
10:06The postman would know it, I guess.
10:07Jimmy's in.
10:08Hello.
10:09Is anybody there?
10:10I don't think he's there.
10:11No, I think he's somewhere else.
10:12I don't know where.
10:13But this is the front reception room.
10:16Right.
10:17You're sure this room isn't the forerunner of that dreaded thing, the front room that no
10:23one uses?
10:24Oh, yeah.
10:25This is the front parlour.
10:26Always kept immaculate, I think.
10:27Oh, now this feels like a more lived-in sort of room.
10:28It certainly is.
10:29I don't know why.
10:30Maybe because it's square.
10:31Well, this is a stone plinth on which the sort of central column holding the house would
10:35have been.
10:36Not a coffee devil.
10:37No, I mean, an attractive idea.
10:40And then here we have a feature that you can see in almost every Egyptian home, certainly
10:44in the rural areas, another mud brick kind of bench shape on which people would have been
10:50cushions.
10:51The Egyptians were big on feather-filled cushions for comfort, you know.
10:54Sort of wanted to be comfortable when you were reclining.
10:57And here the family would sit and chat, gossip, play games perhaps, yeah.
11:01And would it be decorated on the walls?
11:03Oh, certainly, yeah.
11:04We know that the walls would originally have been plastered over.
11:07Some of the houses retained some of the colour kind of ochres and reds.
11:11And they really went in for fairly bright colours, the similar colours that we saw in
11:15the tomb earlier.
11:16And what are the other rooms then?
11:17Well, we go through here into some storage area, basically.
11:21And the pit you can see is one of the areas in which they would have stored food.
11:25There's a similar structure on the other side of the wall.
11:28Yeah.
11:29And you could have placed the large sort of terracotta pots in there to keep various things
11:35cool.
11:36There are the fragments of a terracotta pot.
11:37Yeah.
11:38Very thick would have kept the contents cool, no doubt the water storage areas.
11:41Yeah.
11:42And these, again, can be...
11:43Would it be filled in the pit, do you think?
11:45I mean, would you have the...
11:46I mean, how do you keep those pots upright?
11:48Probably it would have had a sandy base and then the pots could have been stood in that,
11:53or maybe in some form of container.
11:55But again, with this enclosed, it would have kept the contents shaded and cool at all times.
12:00Yeah.
12:01So that's the cool cellar.
12:02That's the sort of refrigerator.
12:04Yeah.
12:05So is that going up to the upper storey?
12:06Yeah.
12:07They would have gone right up to the roof.
12:08The bedrooms, or...?
12:09Well, they did actually sleep on the roof, as they do today in parts of modern Egypt.
12:14The stairs are 4,000 years old, aren't they?
12:17It's incredible, isn't it?
12:18They're still functioning.
12:19The sleeping arrangements would have been rather ad hoc, because some people would have slept
12:23on the benches or on mats on the floor, and then in summer, certainly, they would have slept
12:27on the roof.
12:28Looking down from a balloon, it seems not that much has changed.
12:40People today still sleep on the rooftops under the stars, just as they did in ancient Egypt.
12:45Oh, there's... there's Cenogen.
12:47Joanne is a great enthusiast for the Egyptian way of life, past and present.
13:05In fact, she's been adopted by an Egyptian family, the Shebas, and she's taken me round
13:10to their new home.
13:12I'm wondering if it'll give me any idea of how Cenogen lived.
13:17Uh...
13:18Uh-huh.
13:19After you.
13:20Oh, no.
13:21So, this is the best room that nobody uses ever.
13:23Yeah, this is the front parlour, just for visitors, and special guests.
13:27Isabel Care?
13:28Hi.
13:29Hey, everyone.
13:30Hi.
13:31This is the family.
13:32Wonderful family.
13:33And, I mean, these... the furniture is basically the kind of furniture...
13:36not very different from the furniture they've had.
13:38Absolutely.
13:39I mean, totally comparable.
13:40I mean, these kind of low benches, either in wood or in mud brick, and then kind of padded
13:45out with cushions.
13:46Oh!
13:47I mean, the Egyptians have always liked, sort of, comfort, and these plump cushions...
13:51Yes.
13:52...have been found in... in veronic tombs.
13:54So, you might sleep up here, huh?
13:56You could sleep up there, yeah.
13:57Yeah.
13:58Oh, and it's beautiful.
13:59Oh, the... the wind is blowing in my face.
14:01There's a central column.
14:03Yeah.
14:04Exactly as it was, um, holding up the roof.
14:07If you look at the roof structure, we'll get a good idea of how the roofs originally were
14:11at Deer El Medina, um, with the... the palm fronds, um, going one way, and then the wooden
14:17beams the other way.
14:19And half the... half this room covered over, and half it opened to the sky.
14:22Yeah.
14:23Because, of course, it never rains.
14:24Yeah.
14:25There's inner rooms that we can see here.
14:27Yeah.
14:28Again, very, very simply furnished, and the two bedrooms leading off.
14:32Yeah.
14:33Matt's on the floor.
14:34Um, a few of them, uh, have... have beds.
14:37But, by and large, the family tend to sleep on the floor on these, uh, low benches.
14:41Yes.
14:42The artists, craftsmen, stoneworkers, and carpenters who decorated the tombs of the
15:00pharaohs included images from their own everyday life in their work.
15:05Tomb workers, like Senagem, built their own tombs and decorated them in their spare time.
15:29Funny sort of hobby, but still.
15:31But these do-it-yourself tombs have left us with wonderful images of everyday life
15:36in the ancient world.
15:37Woodworking.
15:38Yeah, woodworking too.
15:39Can you see the guy using the sword to sword through that, that plank?
15:42Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:43Yeah, and there's a guy with an axe next to him.
15:46He's not standing too close.
15:47Yeah.
15:48And all these guys are making wooden furniture.
15:50Yeah.
15:51There's some guys making bed legs at the top, making chairs.
15:53Oh, yeah.
15:54And then this wonderful creation here.
15:56Oh, look.
15:57It's a Welsh dresser.
15:59But this scaffolding is fantastic.
16:01It really is.
16:02There's a little smile there.
16:03Yeah.
16:04Yeah.
16:05This guy's holding onto the side of the scaffolding while he's reaching up,
16:08possibly with the stone pounder, which were used to sort of even away the surface.
16:13So this is the brickworks there.
16:15They're breaking up the mud there, and then the guy above is actually fashioning it into
16:20mud bricks with the little wooden mud brick maker.
16:23It's on bellows.
16:24Oh, he's pumping.
16:25He's pulling the fire.
16:26He's holding string to bring them up again.
16:28Yeah.
16:29And they're getting the temperature of the fire, and then they're smelting metal.
16:32They've got a couple of guys with bellows.
16:34The craftsmen and engineers who worked for the pharaohs could expect quite a few perks
16:41and benefits.
16:42In fact, one works manager here in dear old Medina actually recorded the reasons why some
16:49of his workmen had taken time off.
16:51Um, one had been ill, fair enough.
16:54Another had been sacrificing to the god.
16:57Not sure whether he'd get away with that nowadays.
16:59Another one had been having a row with his wife.
17:02Another was building his house.
17:04And another one had been bitten by a scorpion.
17:07Oh, and one fellow had taken time off to brew some beer.
17:11And what's more, to drink it.
17:13So it wasn't all bad working for the pharaohs.
17:16At a street market in Cairo, Joanne tells me more about her favourite subject of mine.
17:22Beer.
17:23Beer was drunk by everyone.
17:24Men, women, children.
17:25It was a bit thick, a bit soupy, so they had to use straws in there.
17:28It was a bit thick.
17:29I mean, how do you mean?
17:30Well, they made it with barley and bread and all kinds of things.
17:33And it was, it kind of had a bit of a sediment.
17:36A bit, you know, it's a bit...
17:38I mean, but more than like real beer has now in England.
17:41I mean, our real beer has sediment.
17:43A good beer should have a sediment.
17:44Yeah, but this was just like vegetable soup.
17:46I mean, there were things floating in it, for God's sake.
17:48So they had to sieve it or use a kind of special sieve straw.
17:52And the wealthy drank wine, of course.
17:54I mean, for instance, Tutankhamun, we know from his tune goods, he preferred white wine.
17:59Fairly dry white wine.
18:01So Tutankhamun liked white wine.
18:03Absolutely.
18:04The ancient Egyptians loved their wine and beer.
18:11But there was another liquid that was even more important.
18:16Ooh.
18:17Egypt is unlike
18:46any other country. Its people and its history are unique. And that uniqueness is based on this
18:53river. Egypt was, and Egypt is, the river Nile. But oddly enough, the thing that the ancient
19:00Egyptians particularly liked about the Nile was that it was prone to flooding. The first proper
19:07guidebook description of Egypt was written by the Greek Herodotus. When the Nile inundates the land,
19:14all of Egypt becomes a sea, and only the towns remain above water, like islands. At such times,
19:22shipping no longer follows the stream, but goes straight across the country. For example,
19:28sailing right alongside the pyramids.
19:32The reason why the flooding of the Nile was so important is that it brought silt down from
19:37Ethiopia and Uganda. This rich mud made all the difference between the fertile land and the
19:44barren desert. In fact, the ancient Egyptians were so fond of this mud, they actually named
19:48their country after it. They called it Kemet, or Black Land. And the land that wasn't touched by
19:54the annual flood, they called the Red Land, or Deshret, from which we get our English word
19:59desert. This reliance on what most people would regard as an act of disaster gave the ancient
20:04Egyptians a special sense of values that, in some ways, is the inverse of our own. For example,
20:10property was valued according to how liable it was to flooding, whether it always flooded,
20:15sometimes flooded, or never flooded. And black became the symbol of life, and white the symbol
20:22of death mourning. It s a fair bet that Senagem and his wife felt themselves a part of this natural
20:31cycle of fertility. Survival may have been hard work, but it wasn t exactly a struggle. The gods
20:40themselves had designed the world to be kind to them at the beginning of time. And when life is good,
20:47and when the gods have been so generous, why change things?
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21:25But can we get any closer to Senagem? What was it like to be in his shoes, or at least in his clothes?
21:33Well, it just so happens that Jo has got a pattern book that could help us, haven't you, Jo?
21:39Yeah, and we need to take it to the cloth shop first.
21:43CHOIR SINGS
21:46Well, it was put together by a textile expert who's been examining for many years the actual
21:51clothing of the ancient Egyptians, how they were made and constructed.
21:54CHOIR SINGS
21:57Hello. Hello. Could we see some material? Munchenshofer pinnock? So what are we looking for, Jo?
22:09I'm looking for something, fine white linen, creamy white linen, that would have made something like this, a kind of large over shirt, almost.
22:22CHOIR SINGS
22:23Now, did they wear the lighter cloth? Was that because they could have lots of different garments like this, whereas the poorer you were, you'd have only one garment or something, a heavy one that would last?
22:33Very much so. I mean, the line cloths of the workers were generally coarse of linen and, you know, a couple of changes of line cloth, and that was really it for the vast majority.
22:40CHOIR SINGS
22:45Very good. Breathe in.
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22:48We need to make this, this ancient Egyptian garment, which is very, very simple. It's just a single piece of cloth. It has to fit Terry.
22:55CHOIR SINGS
22:56What would I be wearing? Anything underneath?
23:06CHOIR SINGS
23:07Funny you should mention that, Terry. I've got an ancient Egyptian pattern for loin cloths.
23:11CHOIR SINGS
23:12A loin cloth?
23:13Ancient underpants.
23:14I don't have to be fitted for that, do I?
23:15No.
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23:23Did you see the, er, the ancient Egyptian loin cloths, right?
23:26Oh, yes, there it is.
23:27CHOIR SINGS
23:28Well, that's, erm...
23:29CHOIR SINGS
23:30There were some fantastic examples found at the workman's village as well.
23:32CHOIR SINGS
23:33Those are just, like, you know, two of them...
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23:35It's sort of split crotch, is it? I don't know.
23:36CHOIR SINGS
23:37No, it was down the middle.
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23:39Oh, yeah, sure.
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24:08While my tailor gets busy with my new outfit,
24:18Joanne and I head back to the village of Gerna,
24:20just outside the Valley of the Kings,
24:22to investigate another vital element of daily life in ancient Egypt.
24:30Senegin has had a hard morning.
24:32He's been painting inside the pharaoh's tomb in 100-degree heat,
24:36but now it's lunchtime.
24:37So, what would he eat?
24:39Of course, this was a staple of an ancient Egyptian diet as well,
24:43the beer and the bread.
24:44This is a typical ancient Egyptian meal.
24:47Their entire culture was based on the two ingredients we see on the table now.
24:51I mean, it's absolutely laden with calories.
24:53It really will pile the pounds on.
24:54It looks a bit like a parata. It's quite greasy.
24:57It is.
24:57But the beauty of it is, I mean, it is so high calorie.
25:00It would give an amazing amount of energy, which is good, isn't it?
25:04Oh, I didn't taste that parata.
25:06But it's lighter.
25:07And it's just, oh, I mean, you don't need to eat anything else than this.
25:12It's just delicious.
25:13Well, this is the kind of stuff that the pyramids were basically built on.
25:16And recent excavations at Giza, at the Pyramid Builders Village,
25:20have found the huge bakeries which supplied the needs of the Pyramid Builders.
25:23These are the foundations for the Pyramid Builders.
25:25Absolutely. I mean, the loaves that were made in kind of almost terracotta plant pots
25:29were such high calorie dense loaves that they would have given all the energy necessary to build a pyramid.
25:35I mean, when people here, sort of people, modern people think about the Indian Egyptians living on bread and beer,
25:41they think, oh, poor things.
25:42But, of course, they're thinking about sliced bread in the supermarket.
25:45Processing.
25:45Soup at a supermarket.
25:46Yeah.
25:47I mean, it's a different thing.
25:48It's a totally, there's taste of so many different kinds.
25:53Today, in parts of rural Egypt, each lady has her own little oven outside the house.
25:59And they all make their own particular shapes, sometimes with these kind of lumps, three lumps on the side,
26:06and sometimes with, like, little marks of decoration.
26:09And there's great rivalry amongst them sometimes as to who makes the best bread.
26:15I'm sure I've seen these in hieroglyphs.
26:17Oh, you have.
26:18I've seen this shape.
26:19You have. You've seen them on tomb and temple walls as offerings.
26:22I mean, these things have been going for thousands of years.
26:24I guess the onion and everything would have been chopped up and made into a salad with these things.
26:30Yeah, and quite possibly made into a sandwich.
26:31A piece of bread, you scatter the onions on anything else, roll it up,
26:35quite possibly stick it in your back pocket and take it off to work for later in the day.
26:40So after the salad, of course, what would we have then?
26:43After the salad, well, if you were a quite wealthy Egyptian
26:47or you'd been lucky that day hunting down by the river,
26:51wildfowl, ducks and geese.
26:54Oh, look at that.
27:06Oh, absolutely fantastic.
27:08They wouldn't have had duck.
27:08They would have had duck.
27:09And they like to cook it.
27:11They like to have crispy roast duck basted in honey.
27:15And you even see the textures in tomb scenes.
27:17You can see the skin of the duck, the way it's kind of been plucked.
27:20That is something the ancient artists went to great lengths to show,
27:23that the meat had been prepared.
27:26And apart from roast duck, the Egyptians often prepared their meat and salted it
27:31and then hung it up to dry.
27:33The butcher shop's empty, but can you see the hooks that are hanging from the ceiling?
27:37Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
27:38A lot of tomb scenes and temple scenes show butchery
27:42and sort of the places where animals were slaughtered
27:45and the way that meat was dried up.
27:47And quite often fish was dried up to hang there to dry.
27:51Sort of ancient kippers, if you like.
27:52They were really big on things like that.
27:54The dried fish was quite urban.
27:55Oh, yeah, definitely.
27:56Oh my goodness.
27:57Thank you, you know.
27:57Thank you again.
27:57Yeah.
28:01Thank you again.
28:02Thank you again.
28:08Thank you again.
28:11Congratulations.
28:20Thank you again.
28:243,000 to 4,000 years ago, ordinary Egyptians lived lives as full and rich as they do today.
28:33They also had experts and technicians just as skilled as today's.
28:38In fact, the ancient engineers could have taught today's a trick or two.
28:44In the mid-20th century, the Egyptian government decided to build a dam to control the flooding of the Nile.
28:51The dam promised to bring all sorts of advantages to the modern world.
28:56The snag was that it would create a huge lake exactly where one of the greatest monuments of the ancient world stood.
29:03The great temple built by the pharaoh Ramesses II in the 13th century BC at Abu Simbel.
29:11So, in the 1960s, the United Nations organised the rescue of the temple by chopping it up into bits and moving it to the top of the cliff.
29:20However, deep inside the temple sits a row of gods.
29:25At the original site, the temple had been carefully aligned so that twice each year, on February the 23rd and October the 23rd,
29:32the rays from the rising sun bathed the statues of three of the gods in light.
29:38The modern engineers tried to reproduce this effect, but they got it wrong.
29:43The ancient engineers knew what they were doing.
29:45Life in Egypt enjoys a quite extraordinary continuity with the past, but that doesn't mean there haven't been huge changes.
29:56There have.
29:57In the year 391 AD, the Roman Emperor Theodosius issued a decree banning all pagan temples throughout the empire.
30:05Well, for the Egyptians, this was a disaster.
30:08For their temples weren't just places of worship.
30:11They were schools, they were universities, they were libraries, they were medical centres, they were law courts.
30:16They were the centre of civic life.
30:19Closing them down spelt the official end of the old ways and the end of the written language.
30:25And a few centuries later, the coming of another religion, Islam, spelt the end of the spoken language.
30:31However, the language of ancient Egypt was still being spoken, and it still is.
30:42For 1600 years, despite frequent official repression, the Coptic church and priests like Father Isaac Ramsey have kept alive the Coptic language.
31:10Coptic is a derivative of the ancient Egyptian language.
31:18So you're actually speaking the language that was spoken by the pharaohs?
31:23Yes.
31:24Of course, it may be that the way Coptic is being spoken here bears as little resemblance to the way it was spoken in the ancient world as modern English does to Anglo-Saxon.
31:46But nevertheless, the Christian Coptic church was keeping this dead language alive, in the same way that the Roman Catholic church was keeping Latin alive.
31:56And the world's earliest recorded script was still being spoken.
32:01And it was this realisation that was crucial to cracking the meaning of the hieroglyphs.
32:05So, here we are, listening to the language of the pharaohs and able to read their scripts.
32:11What words of wisdom, what secrets and mysteries are they handing down to us through the millennia?
32:19On this day, the following clothes were given to the laundry men.
32:24Ten kilts, eight loincloths, and five sanitary towels.
32:29Actually, the word hieroglyph is a bit of a misnomer.
32:38You see, when the ancient Greeks first came across these mystical writings on the Egyptians' tombs and temples,
32:45they naturally assumed they were full of mystical significance.
32:48So they called them hieroglyphs or sacred carvings.
32:53But, in fact, a lot of them were far from mystical, and they weren't all just carved on temple walls.
32:58The Egyptians invented the first paper.
33:02They used the inside of the reed known as the papyrus, and that's where we get the name paper from.
33:08And this was what they used for official documents and for archiving.
33:12But for everyday notes and messages, there was a much cheaper version at hand or rather at foot.
33:18They had bits of broken pottery or shards of limestone.
33:23And this is what they scribbled their messages on.
33:25But for this, they developed a kind of shorthand version of the hieroglyph, which is known as hieratic.
33:31There's somebody writing something down here, it looks like.
33:33Reading out.
33:33He's reading out from a papyrus with the text, the ritual text on.
33:38Reading out over the ritual implements, which were used at the funeral,
33:42and standing on this small black, almost like a coffee table.
33:45The papyrus is painted white, isn't it?
33:46Yeah, yeah, to just kind of give the kind of idea of pristine, shiny new whiteness.
33:52It's a new piece of papyrus.
33:55Papyrus grew in abundance alongside the Nile,
33:57and someone worked out that by cutting it up, rolling it out and soaking it,
34:01interleaving it and then pressing it,
34:04you could produce something you could write on.
34:06The invention of writing in ancient Egypt was, of course, a boon for the accountants and managers
34:19and scribes, but it also made possible the world's first literature.
34:26One of Senegem's neighbours built up a small library of novellas, mythical stories,
34:32and even love songs.
34:35The woman I love is on the other side.
34:39There is the river between our bodies.
34:41The river is high.
34:43It is the time of flood.
34:46And there is a crocodile lurking in the shallows.
34:50I step in.
34:51I breathe the wave.
34:54Mr. Crocodile, you are just a mouse,
34:58and I can walk on water.
34:59It is the power of love.
35:09Another literary genre which the ancient Egyptians seem to have instigated
35:12is the autobiography.
35:15Of course, theirs tended to be written in stone.
35:18Here, for example, a man named Achmos tells how he worked his way up from nothing
35:22to become a fully paid-up member of the Nouveau-Riche.
35:26I grew up in the town of Neheb.
35:28My father was a soldier of the king.
35:32I took service as a soldier in his stead on the ship the Wild Bull in the time of Ammosis,
35:38when I was young and had not taken a wife.
35:41And I carried off a man as a living captive.
35:44I went down into the water, for he was captured on the city side,
35:48and crossed the water carrying him.
35:50When it was reported to the royal herald, I was rewarded with gold once more.
35:55I am grown infirm.
36:00I have reached old age.
36:02I rest in the tomb which I made myself,
36:05that I may let you know the favours which have come to me.
36:09I have been awarded gold seven times in the presence of the entire land,
36:16and male and female slaves in like manner,
36:19and I have been vested with very many fields.
36:23The name of a valiant man resides in that which he has done.
36:31Well, all very well for the valiant man.
36:36But what about the valiant woman?
36:39Well, I was surprised to learn that in ancient Egypt,
36:42women were legally on an equal footing with men.
36:46What's more, they could marry, they could get divorced,
36:49they could buy and sell property,
36:51and they were entitled to receive the same wages as men,
36:54something the modern world is still struggling to achieve.
37:15One text even warns men against bloakish behaviour
37:19as a cause of domestic rouse.
37:21Do not control your wife in her house
37:26when you know she is efficient.
37:28Don't say to her, where is it, get it,
37:30when she has put it in the right place.
37:32Let your eye observe in silence,
37:35then you recognise her skill.
37:37If a man desists from strife at home,
37:40it will never start.
37:43In ancient Egypt, a balance between the sexes
37:47was all part of the balance of life in general.
37:51Here in Luxor, it's hot.
37:56Often over 40 degrees centigrade,
37:58100 degrees Fahrenheit.
38:00No wonder the ancient Egyptians needed the odd shower.
38:03This is what an ancient Egyptian shower would have looked like.
38:06Of course, it's a bit of a classy one
38:07because it belonged to Ramesses III.
38:10It's extraordinary to think that the pharaoh Ramesses III
38:13actually stood on this spot
38:14and took a shower.
38:16And what would happen is his servants would stand on the walls
38:18and pour water at me.
38:20Thank you, servant.
38:21Then he would.
38:22And after the shower,
38:24he'd dry himself on one of these.
38:27A nice fluffy towel.
38:29These things haven't changed in 3,000 years.
38:31I suppose it's a bit like us human beings, really.
38:36As the centuries roll by,
38:38we don't become cleverer or more moral
38:41or get bigger brains.
38:44I suppose it's quite comforting to think that, really,
38:46we're all just like fluffy towels, really.
38:49Ah!
38:50I hope he's finished it.
38:52Does he have a bit of care of a meal?
38:54Freshly laundered,
38:55I return to my tailor
38:56to collect my brand-new ancient Egyptian outfit.
39:00There it goes.
39:02Awesome.
39:03Good, Ben.
39:04Well, do you want to try it on?
39:06I feel like we look a bit silly if we...
39:08Yeah.
39:09If it didn't fit.
39:10This is changing in here, isn't it?
39:11Oh, yeah, why not?
39:12Yeah, well, that's OK.
39:13APPLAUSE
39:14Oh, beautiful.
39:30I just keep my tummy in with that.
39:31Yeah.
39:33That should be fine.
39:35It's nice to fit in a bit more
39:37with the local population.
39:40It's in it, blending.
39:41So that's going around there like that.
39:46Ah, just the job.
39:47Yeah.
39:48I can't quite get around to doing it up there.
39:50But I think that'll be fine.
39:52Oh, sugar.
39:53It feels so.
39:55Very good.
39:57I always wear socks in Egypt.
39:59It's the cool...
40:01And a good woollen sock
40:03is very necessary for the midday sun.
40:06Well, I'm not exactly inside Cenogem's skin,
40:12but at least I'm in his clothes.
40:14The one thing that Cenogem
40:15would not be seen in public without
40:17is make-up.
40:19You see, make-up was an essential tool
40:22for the ordinary person 4,000 years ago.
40:24And again, there was equality amongst the sexes.
40:27Men wore make-up as well as women.
40:32This brings me back to the strike of workers
40:34as I mentioned earlier.
40:36It happened one day in 1170 BC.
40:40Some workers on a tomb in the Valley of the Kings
40:42went on strike because they ran out of make-up.
40:46They claimed they wanted more moisturising oil
40:48and clothes and vegetables and fish.
40:52The local bureaucrats tried to persuade them
40:54to go back to work, but no dice.
40:56And the workers held a peaceful sit-in
40:58here in this temple.
41:00Eventually, they were offered a month's worth of supplies,
41:04but that still wasn't good enough,
41:05and they stuck the sit-in out
41:07until they were offered two months
41:09of make-up and food.
41:11So now, why did the men put the stuff on their eyes?
41:20Well, it can be compared to kind of like
41:22American footballers who wear the black stripes
41:25under the eyes to sort of reduce the glare of the sun
41:28from the pitch.
41:29It's exactly the same in ancient Egypt.
41:31I mean, you know how warm it is here, how hot,
41:33and the sun blazing down on the desert, on the rocks.
41:36So for those outside undertaking manual labour,
41:40they would have needed something
41:41to very much reduce the glare of the sun.
41:44So it's kind of like ancient Egyptian sunglasses, really.
41:47So on my face, as a worker,
41:49I would have some moisturising oil.
41:52Lots of moisturiser, yeah.
41:53All over your skin, possibly perfumed,
41:56and then the eyes made up.
41:58Yeah.
41:58It's very weird, isn't it,
41:59all these manual labours going off to work
42:02with their sandwiches and their make-up box.
42:04Absolutely.
42:05But there is a picture of somebody doing it full,
42:07somebody while he's on the job, isn't there?
42:09Yeah, in the tomb of the workman Ippi.
42:11There's a scene of Ippi's colleagues hard at work,
42:14and then there's a guy going round
42:15actually applying this stuff to them
42:16as they're actually in the process of working.
42:25Listen, I mean, I would have been bald, I mean...
42:28Well, the ancients used to shave the hair off
42:30or crop it very short to prevent head lice,
42:33which were very common when it was, you know,
42:34in hot, dry weather.
42:46But the wealthy certainly would have worn a wig,
42:49and so if we flatten your hair down now
42:51using a kind of gel...
42:53I mean, in the ancient times,
42:55they used a mixture of resin or wax or fat.
42:58In fact, some of the ancient recipes say hedgehog fat
43:02was used to cure baldness.
43:03Really?
43:03And, of course, they used to dye the hair and their wigs with henna.
43:25Oh, right, yes.
43:26In some of the excavations we've done,
43:28we found henna was used as a hair dye
43:29as early as 3,400 B.C.
43:32But to dye the wigs, not the hair?
43:34They dyed both.
43:35Oh, that's lovely.
43:38I hate to say this, Jay,
43:40but were wigs regarded as particularly attractive?
43:43Oh, yeah, they weren't just items of status,
43:45but they were seen as very, very attractive.
43:48And there's one brilliant story
43:50where a man makes a very improper suggestion to a woman
43:53and said, put your wig on and let her spend an hour in bed.
43:56I mean, this was the height of impropriety.
43:59A bit more like it.
44:01How did they put the perfume on in the old days?
44:04Well, it literally dows it all over themselves.
44:07They'd rub it into their skin.
44:07Oh, I think I'd dows it, yes, I think.
44:11Is that more phonic?
44:12Very much.
44:14Oh, you smell beautiful.
44:16Is it all right?
44:18Well, I know, I feel like I died on the tone.
44:21A lot of shirking going on here.
44:52Back to work, please.
44:55The protection offered by eye makeup
44:57was not simply practical.
44:59It was also mystical.
45:02You see, the eye, or to be precise, the eye of Horus,
45:05possessed for the ancient Egyptians
45:07magical powers of protection against evil.
45:10You still see it today.
45:12But, of course, the ancient Egyptians
45:28also took practical steps to protect themselves as well.
45:33Drugs and herbal medicines were on sale in every marketplace.
45:36In fact, the ancient Egyptians invented toothpaste,
45:40the first cough drops, breath fresheners,
45:42chewing gum, and deodorants.
45:46But even the eye of Horus
45:47couldn't protect the ancients
45:49from the ever-present spectre of death.
45:51And children were especially vulnerable.
45:54Come on out, visitor from the darkness,
45:58who crawls along with its nose and face
46:01on the back of its head.
46:04Have you come to kiss this child?
46:05I will not let you.
46:08Have you come to do it harm?
46:11I will not let you.
46:13I have made a potion to protect it from you.
46:16Out of garlic, which is bad for you.
46:20From honey, which is sweet for the living
46:22and bitter for the dead.
46:24Death in ancient Egypt was as much a business as it is today.
46:30And, of course, there was money to be made out of it.
46:32These women, for example, were professional mourners.
46:35And here they're training up their young apprentices
46:37to weep and wail and tear their hair.
46:41Archaeologists have also revealed sharp practice
46:44in the ancient Egyptian undertaking business.
46:48Mummies have been found stuffed with twigs and grass,
46:52even an old broom handle.
46:54But, in any case, the ancients weren't all as confident
46:58in the afterlife as we may like to imagine.
47:01A blind harpist from 4,000 years ago warns us,
47:04Party while you can. Don't let up.
47:07Look, no man can ever take his goods with him.
47:12See, no one who goes ever comes back.
47:19Well, the great rulers have passed away.
47:22Their tombs have been robbed or rediscovered.
47:25Their mummies unwrapped and their broom handles removed.
47:28The all-powerful pharaohs have been made public property.
47:32But perhaps the real immortality is to be found among ordinary men and women,
47:42living lives that have changed very little since the days of the pharaohs.
47:47Perhaps the hidden history of ancient Egypt has been here all along,
47:52under our noses.
47:55For the ancient Egyptians living here in Thebes,
48:20it was a small world, from the Nile to those mountains over there.
48:25And beyond was the desert, the other world, the dwelling of the dead.
48:31It wasn't that they were obsessed with death,
48:33it was just that death was their next-door neighbour,
48:36and they'd learned to live with it.
48:37Here's a favourite message from the living to the dead.
48:43May you spend millions of years, you lover of Thebes,
48:47with your face to the north wind and your eyes beholding happiness.
48:56And the dead also have a message for the living.
48:59Here's an ancient Egyptian's advice to us today.
49:04Be merry all your life.
49:06Toil no more than is required,
49:08nor cut short the time allotted to pleasure.
49:11Don't waste time on daily cares beyond providing for your household.
49:15And when wealth has come, follow your heart.
49:18Wealth does no good if you're glum.
49:22When they thought about the afterworld,
49:24they saw it as very much like this one.
49:26Because, you see, for the ancient Egyptians,
49:29heaven was Egypt,
49:31and hell was to be anywhere else.
49:34I wonder how many people living today in Los Angeles or London
49:38could say the same.
49:39MUSIC PLAYS
49:41SILENT AND SANTA
49:54AGAIN
49:55UNDERLAND
49:55YOU
49:56CELLS
49:57Transcription by CastingWords
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