Original subtitles

For 5,000 years, this land, Egypt,

and the epic civilisation it gave birth to

has been shaped by one thing more than any other.

This awesome river.

The River Nile.

The Nile helped temples to rise...

...pharaohs to rule...

and pyramids to be built.

Without the Nile, there'd have been no ancient Egypt.

So I'm making the historicaljourney of a lifetime.

A 900 mile adventure along the Nile,

across the whole of Egypt.

I'll explore Egypt's greatest achievements...

It is truly wonderful, isn't it?

...and find treasures hidden for thousands of years.

Oh, my God, that's a sheer drop down there.

This is my chance to travel this fabulous land...

Oh, lovely!

...and experience it as the ancient Egyptians did,

from the River Nile.

From pharaohs to slaves,

from facts to fantasies,

I want to explore first-hand,

and to understand how this river shaped

one of the world's first and greatest civilisations.

Join me as I uncover 5,000 years of history

along the River Nile.

So far, on my journey up the Nile,

I've explored many of the treasures that helped to create ancient Egypt.

And now, as the river gets busier,

I'm coming to one incredible stretch that reveals a huge amount

about the Egyptians' obsession with life and death.

This river gave rise to

one of the most captivating civilisations in the world,

and a jewel in the crown is where I'm heading now.

Luxor.

300 miles south of Cairo,

on the east bank of the Nile is a famous city full of ancient wonders.

I love visiting Luxor,

and I'm certainly not alone.

This is a stretch of the river that's welcomed everyone

from Tutankhamen to Winston Churchill,

from Cleopatra to Agatha Christie.

It was travellers from the Victorian age

who helped to make Luxor super fashionable.

Here they could swap the British winter

for 30 degree temperatures,

and 5,000 years of culture.

But it didn't come cheap.

The trip from Cairo to Luxor cost an eye-watering £12,000

in today's money.

But to one Victorian traveller,

that was small change.

Queen Victoria's son, the Prince of Wales,

the future Edward VII came to the Nile,

and he so loved it he came back twice.

Now, he travelled in quite some style.

He had six steamships,

decorated with friezes of Anthony and Cleopatra,

and behind them, he had a barge carrying 4,000 bottles of claret,

and 3,000 bottles of champagne,

plus what every good dahabeah needs...

A donkey.

Donkeys were used to fetch supplies from the banks.

But it seems today the Nile has brought the shopping to us.

Oh, hello! Oh, hi!

You like a special price?

I'm sure special price!

These very enterprising boys...

Yeah, that's beautiful!

...have hooked on to try and sell me a dress,

and a tablecloth...

Shall I come down?

Come round this way! OK.

Hey! Hi!

Darling. English? Welcome!

0h, my gosh! English?

English, yes.

Very good!

It's a lovely towel.

I would get one, but I've already got one at home.

Nefertiti!

That's Nefertiti.

That's...actually quite nice.

I'm going to buy that one.

I'm going to buy it, actually.

I'm sure my husband would love that.

He'd look very nice in it! LAUGHTER

Show me the one for my husband again?

LAUGHTER

Wait, wait, no, no, no!

Oh, my gosh! APPLAUSE

Thank you!

That is my years of cricket practice with my brother in the garden.

Now I've... I think I've got to buy it.

Put in the bag. Four. Four. OK. Oh, my God.

Four.

Oh, OK! Four!

And here on the Nile,

there's even contactless payment.

I've got to throw the money back in a plastic bag.

One, two, three...

Thank you!

Isn't it great that everybody sees there's an opportunity?

And actually, I think it's...

huge!

SHE LAUGHS

Luxor is the number one tourist destination on the Nile,

with spectacular temples and tombs,

scattered across either side of the river.

There's tons to see here,

so the crew are going to moor up for a couple of days.

Because I want to see what these spectacular sites can tell us

about the Egyptian experience of life and death.

After difficult times in Egypt,

it's brilliant to see so many tourists

flooding back to the city here on the east bank.

But I'm crossing straight to Luxor's famous west bank.

It's only a short hop across the river,

but for the ancient Egyptians,

this was a highly symbolic journey.

I'm moving from the east bank, the land of the living,

to the west bank, where the sun sets,

and where the ancient Egyptians buried their secrets.

The land of the dead.

Which, of course, ironically means that in terms of stories

and archaeological discovery,

it is very much alive.

Three miles inland from the river

is a place that's very close to my heart.

The legendary Valley of the Kings.

It was the fabulous treasures hidden beneath these barren slopes

that first sparked my interest in history

way back when I was five.

And one discovery here sits above all others.

It was made by two Brits,

archaeologist Howard Carter,

and wealthy aristocrat Lord Carnarvon.

Carnarvon and Carter had actually worked together for 15 years

before they discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen.

Carnarvon was really passionate about what he did in Egypt.

I mean, he loved being here.

He learned some Arabic,

the locals called him Lordy,

and he wrote that he drank thick, black, Turkish coffee every morning.

But he also poured money into these excavations,

and at one point he was hiring up to 275 boys to do the work,

so the two of them were really, really serious

about trying to find something,

and once they did...

it was the discovery of the century,

and captured the imagination of the world.

In the heat and dust,

I really get a sense of what it must have been like

digging here 100 years ago,

as Carter and his team searched for a long-lost tomb.

After five years of hard work,

on 26th November, 1922,

Carter and Carnarvon scrambled down this very passageway.

It's a story that's been told a number of times,

but it is always worth the retelling.

When Carnarvon and Carter were about to break into the chamber,

Carter looked through a tiny hole,

and describes the glint of gold everywhere.

"What can you see?" said Carnarvon.

And Carter simply said...

"Wonderful things."

Tut's tomb stunned the world.

And it's been drawing crowds ever since.

\Mm-hm.l

But the truth is Tut's tomb isn't actually that remarkable.

It's surprisingly small for a pharaoh,

and the decoration looks a bit rushed,

even, in some places, a bit second-rate.

Yeah!

Yes.

Yeah!

Exactly, yeah.

It's now believed that Tut was buried

in a tomb originally prepared for someone else.

Perhaps Tut's own tomb wasn't ready.

That would make sense,

because we know he died when he was just a teenager.

Worth the effort, coming here? Definitely.

Definitely for me.

And the boys? The boys... Well...

They're boys, aren't they?

LAUGHTER

Luckily for those who need a bit more convincing,

the Valley of the Kings also boasts the most spectacular tombs in Egypt,

and, just a few metres away,

there is an absolute showstopper.

Tutankhamen's tomb is the most famous in the Valley of the Kings.

But to my mind, his neighbour's tomb is even more intriguing.

It shows us the ancient Egyptians at their most brilliant...

and badly-behaved.

Just round the corner from Tut's tomb...

Because, of course, this is a whole city of the dead,

so there are burials everywhere.

...there is a real showstopper tomb.

If you want to get a sense of what a burial was like

when a pharaoh has pulled out all of the stops,

then you should come here to KV Nine,

although actually hardly anybody visits it.

KV Nine stands for Kings Valley Number Nine,

a pretty unassuming name for an absolutely jaw-dropping site.

It's five times the size of Tut's,

and instantly more impressive.

So this is what a royal tomb really should look like.

It stretches over 100 metres deep into the rock.

The walls are covered with images and ideas and stories

that are supposed to guarantee the successful journey of the pharaoh

through the underworld, and on into the afterlife.

Several images show that journey being made

on a flat-bottomed Nile boat.

KV Nine is, for me, the high point

of over 1,000 years' worth of Egyptian tomb building.

The 3,000-year-old decoration looks as though it was painted yesterday.

But look a bit closer,

and you'll see something that shouldn't be there.

Graffiti, in Latin and Greek.

Some of it dates back at least 2,000 years.

People have been coming here for centuries.

Some just to visit...

...but others to loot.

Tombs like these were protected with curses.

"May death come on wings to he who enters the tomb of the pharaoh."

But there were some who clearly took no heed of that warning here.

Within just 20 years,

the tomb was robbed.

This massive stone sarcophagus was smashed,

and the mummy inside was desecrated with an axe,

and all the treasure was stolen.

The world's most famous cemetery is also a crime scene.

All the tombs discovered here in the Valley so far

have turned out to be robbed.

But the truth is this isn't just random looters.

Quite often, it's the men who built the tombs themselves,

or it was an officially sanctioned robbery,

so it's one pharaoh getting their own back on another.

This was a pretty risky business, though.

In ancient Egypt, the death penalty wasn't actually used that much,

but you could be killed for robbing a tomb.

And the manner of death was pretty horrific.

You were either impaled,

or burnt alive.

It wasn't just the rich who were fascinated by both life and death.

Almost two miles across the hills from the Valley of the Kings

is a remarkable, and very different site.

Deir El Medina,

a village that was home to

the workers who built the pharaohs' tombs.

It contains extraordinary evidence

that, for me, brings these ordinary people to life.

It's a 40 minute walk from the Valley of the Kings.

So I'm now treading in the footsteps of the ancient Egyptians

who made this punishing journey to and from work

every few days.

And we're now walking up the main street of the village.

You can see that the houses are so close together. Yeah!

Egyptologist Yasmin El Shazly

has spent 15 years studying this unique community.

People are normally very interested in the kings,

but I think the average Egyptian was much more interesting.

Yeah. Because, normally,

royal...art and architecture are full of propaganda,

so that's not who they really were.

But this is the real thing.

And more than just mere builders.

Deir El Medina was home to craftsmen and women.

You had a community full of, you know, talent.

You have the best artists,

the best scribes,

the best craftsmen,

so it's very special.

So it means that we haven't just got a village of people,

but of articulate people,

of people who are kind of used to expressing themselves.

Yeah, exactly.

And luckily for us, they expressed themselves

on something that survived for 3,500 years,

and against all the odds.

North of the temple over here was a pit

that was probably dug to be a well,

but it ended up being a dump.

Inside the pit,

archaeologists found thousands of ostraca.

Ostraca are chips of limestone that the workmen used to write on.

So imagine someone going through your garbage,

how much information they would get...

Unfortunately, yes!

"About your daily life.

We found legal documents,

letters to the living,

and letters to the dead,

love songs,

even the attendance of the workmen,

and the reasons why they were absent from work.

And why were they absent?

Sometimes they were celebrating a festival of a certain god.

And could it sometimes be not just because they were celebrating,

but because they have a hangover after the celebrations?

That's very possible, too.

They used to drink a lot of beer.

CHUCKLING: OK!

I love the idea of people nursing sore heads here,

going, "Oh, just tell them I can't come into work today,

"it was too much last night."

Very true!

I've been given incredibly privileged access

to one place in the village that's only just been opened,

after years of restoration.

It belonged to a man guilty of much more than simply skiving off work.

Oh, amazing.

This is brilliant, this is what I was looking for.

So this is the tomb of someone called Paneb.

I think that's Paneb,

and that's almost certainly his wife behind him.

And there's Anubis, representing the god of the underworld.

Paneb wasn't royalty,

so his tomb is much smaller than the ones in the Valley of the Kings,

but even though he wasn't famous,

we still know an amazing amount about him,

thanks to evidence discovered in the village.

And the story it tells...

is shocking.

Paneb stops being an ordinary worker,

and elevates himself somehow, to become a chief workman.

Then the plot thickens.

One of the labourers accuses Paneb

of stealing building material from a royal tomb

to construct his new burial place.

Not only that, but there are 16 other charges levelled against him,

and this is really serious stuff.

So he's accused of adultery,

of sexual abuse of the women in the village,

of falling into kind of drunken rages,

so that he's incredibly violent,

and even of killing someone to cover up his crimes.

Now, we don't know what happened in the end to Paneb,

but, for me, what's so brilliant

is that we've still got these intimate details

of ordinary Egyptians' lives.

Their affairs, their intrigues,

the bullying, the social climbing,

and the scandal.

It's been a long day in the desert.

I'm heading back across the river,

to Luxor's east bank.

This is one of the hottest and driest cities in the world,

where daytime temperatures can hit 50 degrees.

HORNS BEEPING

So, as the sun sets,

the locals come out,

and Luxor comes alive.

MIZMARS PLAY TRADITIONAL MUSIC

The ancient Egyptians used to welcome visitors

to celebrate the joy of Ka,

to love the spirit of life.

And that warm welcome is still definitely on offer.

MUSIC SLOWS

So I was dragged in here by these kids

who said there's something going to happen.

How brilliant to see that dancing,

and actually, when we think of ancient Egypt,

we often think of it as something being rather stiff and staid,

but actually they loved their festivals,

and their music and their dancing,

and their beer drinking.

Beer was the kind of staple drink,

and they had festivals of drunkenness up and down the Nile.

So they were the original party people.

Where are we going now? Oh, we're off.

It's tempting to burn the candle at both ends,

because tomorrow I'm up super early,

for one of the highlights of my journey.

Egypt's most famous temple.

With my lovely dahabeah moored up for a few clays,

I'm exploring the ancient wonders surrounding the city of Luxor.

Today I'm visiting the city's famous monument.

HORN BEEPING

But, after a night on the town,

there's one stop I have to make first.

Hi. Hi, salaam, can I get a coffee?

Coffee. Coffee. Sugar? Sugar.

Ahwah...mahut? Mazboot. Mazboot. OK.

OK, thank you, shokran.

I cannot get through a day without an Egyptian coffee,

and it's actually very appropriate that I'm drinking it here

because this is one of the first places in recorded history

where we know that coffee was drunk, and in Cairo, actually.

Some people think it came from North Africa,

some people think coffee came from Yemen,

but when it was first spotted,

goats ate the coffee beans, and they danced around in this wild way,

so they noticed it was probably going to be

quite a useful stimulant,

but as a result,

there were sections of society that thought it was the devil's brew,

but even if it is the devil's brew, bring it on.

Shokran, thank you.

Oh, lovely.

Perfect.

Shokran.

Thank you.

Oh...

Oh, I can smell, he's put cardamom in,

that's really lovely.

Uh'.!

Oh, my God, I love that.

First caffeine hit of the day.

That is heaven in a cup.

HORNS BEEPING

Now I'm ready to face the crowds at Egypt's greatest temple.

HORNS BEEPING

I'm travelling by roads today,

but at the time of the ancient Egyptians,

I would certainly have been getting from A to B

by travelling down one of the waterways... Whoops!

A little bit of a bump in the road.

...because people used the Nile.

And it's just really cool,

because here you've got all kinds of different vehicles on the road,

from taxis to tuk-tuks.

Salaam, hello, hi! HORN BEEPING

And it would have been the same on the ancient waterways,

so you had little cargo ships and barges,

and then these grand, royal processional boats.

In the far north of modern Luxor is the vast temple of Karnak.

It's 4,000 years old,

and still the largest religious complex anywhere in the world.

What really strikes me, always,

is just how rammed with people it would have been in ancient times.

So, in fact, all these tourists are completely appropriate.

We know that over 80,000 people worked here,

so it would have been a riot of colour and sound and smell.

You'd have had the noise of drums and cymbals,

and the smell of incense and burnt meat,

and priests with their shaven heads and hairless bodies,

abstaining from sex so they were pure,

rushing around to keep the gods onside.

I'm always blown away by this place.

Everything about it is so intense,

and so much larger than life.

When people come here,

they always talk about its size and scale,

and it was massive.

So the whole complex stretched about a mile long and half a mile wide,

and covered the area of about 168 football pitches.

But today,

I'm here to see something that's a lot smaller,

but, in its own way,

as impressive.

In ancient times,

Karnak Temple would have been bursting with astronomers,

mathematicians, and scientists,

all buzzing with new ideas and inventions.

And one of those inventions was

this humble-looking bucket.

For the priests,

it was really important to perform their rituals

at the exactly the right time,

and of course, during the day, you've got the sun,

and you can use sundials to measure hours,

but what do you do at night?

Well, the ancient Egyptians came up with this really clever idea.

So what this is is a replica of a water clock

that was found here at Karnak,

and what the priests would do is they'd fill it up with water.

As the water dropped down one notch in the clock,

that would measure an hour,

so they could tell the time exactly during the night.

The Egyptians followed a 24-hour clock,

12 hours of day and 12 hours of night.

But the nights grow shorter and longer throughout the year,

and this water clock allowed for that,

with different measured scales inside

for different times of the year.

So let's see if it works.

SHE LAUGHS

GIGGLING

I think they'd have done it slightly more professionally than me.

It's definitely dripping!

And I guess we have to wait an hour to see if it can tell the time OK.

Simple but brilliant.

And from 1500 BC,

these devices would have appeared in temples up and down the Nile.

Back on the Nile,

there's a Luxor treasure from a very different age.

I've just spotted this boat moored up on the bank.

SS Sudan.

It was built in the 1920s,

and in 1933, it hosted a very special visitor.

I'm going to see if I can get on board, somehow.

Hello! Hello.

Hi.

Can I... Can I come on?

Yeah, but please can you come on the other side?

From the other side? Please. Great, thank you.

Amazing, thank you very much.

Thank you so much for letting me come on. Bettany. Amir. My pleasure!

Oh, so lovely! And is it OK to come on?

As I step on board the SS Sudan, I'm following in the footsteps of

one of the world's best-selling writers.

Agatha Christie.

Oh...

That's very kind! Thank you very much. You are welcome.

Lovely! I've been on a hot boat.

But where... Just show me round because I've only ever...

I've seen this from the outside. This way.

Oh, great! Yes, this is the original steam machine. Yes.

With which the boat was sailing Agatha Christie, she was on board.

Yeah. It's not still powered by steam, is it?

It's steam, and... Yes.

And do people come on board to travel here

because of Agatha Christie?

Sure, because of this, the oldest steamer ship on the Nile,

and sure, because of Agatha Christie. Yes.

Agatha Christie isn't just a giant of the literary world,

she was a globetrotting history buff

who travelled the Middle East with her archaeologist husband,

excavating ancient sites in Iraq and Syria.

In 1933, the couple's adventures brought them to Egypt,

and to the SS Sudan.

This is the Royal Lounge.

Uh-huh. Yes.

Yes, it's got that kind of luxurious feel, hasn't it?

I just love it because I can so imagine Agatha and her husband...

Yeah. Exactly, yeah. ..sitting and reading and, you know,

enjoying a cocktail or four in the evening.

Agatha was so inspired by her time on the SS Sudan

that she wrote a book set on a paddle steamer

sailing down the Nile.

The result was one of the bestselling murder mysteries

of all time,

and what else did she call it...

but Death On The Nile.

You... Me? Yeah.

OK, will you hold that? Yes, with pleasure.

Just give it a big tug?

Exactly. Three times. OK. Three times.

FLUTING TOOTS

Bye! Thanks!

It's full steam ahead for the SS Sudan.

But for me, there's a humble water taxi waiting.

Because I have one last trip to make to Luxor's west bank.

Perched at the foot of the hills,

looking back across the Nile

is an awe-inspiring monument.

This stunning temple can be busy with tourists,

but get here just after dawn,

and you can have the place to yourself.

This was the crowning glory of one of my all-time heroines,

the female pharaoh Hatshepsut.

A remarkable ruler,

and, brilliantly,

a woman ruling in a man's world.

So, here's lovely Hatshepsut.

Now, the thing is, of course,

at first glance, she looks like any other male pharaoh,

she's got her king's skirt,

and even a little pharaonic beard.

But we know this is definitely Hatshepsut

because that's her name in that cartouche up there.

But isn't it fascinating that,

despite all her progress, and pioneering ideas, and power,

this amazingly potent female pharaoh had to be represented as a man?

In ancient Egypt,

men inherited the throne.

In fact, there wasn't even a word for queen.

So when Hatshepsut found herself in charge,

after her husband's early death,

she realised the only way to rule Egypt

was to be better than any king.

You get the sense that she wanted to outdo any man.

This temple, for example,

was unlike anything that Egypt had ever seen before.

Its design was very progressive and internationalist,

and this whole complex would have looked completely different.

It would have been a riot of colour,

there were ponds, and lines of incense trees.

It's almost as if Hatshepsut was trying to seduce her people

with her sophistication.

The temple walls tell us more about this intriguing woman.

She sent delegations out across the seas

to get incense and ivory and gold,

from places other Egyptian rulers hadn't managed to reach.

And the point of all of this

wasn't to prove what the Egyptians traded in,

but that Hatshepsut could make it happen.

Archaeologist Dr Zbigniew Szafranski has arranged for me to see

a part of the temple that's usually off-limits,

and that gives us intimate insight into this remarkable woman's life

that goes way beyond the official line.

Hatshepsut was volcano of ideas.

In political, military, and religious fields.

She was really brilliant, I may say.

So do you think she is one of the reasons

that ancient Egyptian civilisation became so great?

Yes, yes. We know a lot about Cleopatra, for example,

but in my opinion,

Hatshepsut was even more clever,

and she was one of the greatest persons in the history of the world

at the time.

But Hatshepsut had a secret.

It seems she had a bit of a soft spot

for one of her courtiers.

He seems to be present everywhere.

Yes, yes.

So can you show me where he is, here?

Look in the niche.

Oh, gosh, yes!

This is Senemut.

Not a member of the royal family,

and yet beautifully depicted all over the queen of Egypt's temple.

Because he's just a commoner,

and they don't normally get represented

in a place as sacred as this.

That says something about him. Yes, yes.

He was very gifted person, a very talented person.

Senemut oversaw the temple's construction,

and tutored Hatshepsut's daughter.

It's long believed that his talents captured the queen's attention,

and perhaps even her heart.

Presumably, because the niches were always closed with doors,

so that image would have been hidden, wouldn't it? Yes, yes.

The door of the niche was opened inside,

so nobody knew about his presence inside the holy place.

By hiding him behind closed doors,

maybe Hatshepsut was trying to keep her relationship with Senemut

under wraps.

But as the most famous woman in Egypt at the time,

it can't have been easy,

keeping a lid on a juicy bit of gossip like this.

I've heard there's more evidence of this scandal

up in the hills above the temple.

It's pretty perilous to access.

But archaeologists think

this is where the temple builders took their breaks,

sheltering from the sun, and catching up on all the latest news.

I hope this is worth that scramble up the hill!

SHE GROANS

In a skirt!

Oh, my gosh.

This is it! Oh, that is amazing.

So this little scribble on the wall here is close on 3,500 years old.

Now, obviously it shows a man having sex with a woman.

But there's something really special to notice here.

The woman has got this thick royal wig on,

so it's probably showing a queen, or Hatshepsut herself.

So there are two possibilities here.

Either this is feeding off a rumour

that Senemut and Hatshepsut were actually lovers,

or it's just a guy having sex with Hatshepsut herself,

and this comes from a time

where there was a woman who was the most powerful female on earth,

doing amazing things,

and the guys sitting here in this little cave

wanted to remember her like this.

3,500 years on, sometimes it feels like very little has changed.

After two busy clays and nights in and around Luxor...

...and some well-earned shore leave for the crew,

it's time to set sail,

and continue my journey.

Sadly, I've got to leave Luxor,

but there are lots of discoveries and delights still to come.

I'm heading for Egypt's more remote and enthralling south.

I'm leaving the hustle and bustle of Luxor

to travel deep into Egypt's beautiful south.

It's much quieter here,

but we're not entirely alone.

CHEERING

So surreal!

That's so random.

Wow.

Another dahabeah,

and flying a Union Flag, too!

But if these are Brits,

they're continuing the grand tradition of sailing down the Nile

that started centuries ago.

SHOUTING IN ARABIC

I love the fact the crew, they all know each other,

so they have a bit of information exchange...

HE SHOUTS LOUDLY

And just along the bank,

there's something else I am determined to pay my respects to.

It's not a temple or a tomb,

but I think it's the unsung hero of ancient Egypt.

The humble donkey.

BRAYING

There's a lovely guy who was working his fields a moment ago,

and he's now...

bringing us his donkey, I think.

Oh, my gosh...

We're being offered a cow as well.

Thanks, Islam, thanks.

Thank you very much. Welcome. Thank you.

Hello. Hello, morning.

Nice to see you.

How do you do? Hi!

Hello! Morning. Hi. Oh, you're beautiful!

Is it a girl or a boy?

A donkey. It's a donkey? Yeah, I know it's a donkey!

Oh, he's lovely.

Lovely, isn't it?

Really lovely. Very beautiful donkey.

He might look sweet,

but he's actually as tough as old boots.

Donkeys can pull up to twice their body weight,

and even in these temperatures,

they can go without water for an astonishing three days.

Apparently he loves swimming,

so we're going to go for a little dip... Oh!

...in the Nile...instead!

LAUGHTER

Hello, little one.

There, is that nice on your mane?

Yeah?

So, at the end of...

At the end of every night, as you go down the Nile,

you see people bringing the donkeys and their horses in

to give them a cooling bath.

It's just such a lovely sight, and totally timeless.

They definitely did this in ancient Egypt,

we've got pictures of it.

And they deserved a bath.

It was donkeys that did huge amounts of hard work

in fields, and on building sites.

It's a bizarre thought.

None of the pyramids, the temples, the tombs I've seen on my journey

would have existed if it hadn't been for these gentle beasts.

So, although this might seem slightly odd,

it is in fact completely appropriate

that we are treating this random donkey a bit like a pharaoh,

and giving him his own personal bath in the waters of the Nile

because, after all,

it was the donkey that built the great civilisation of ancient Egypt.

Thank you. Thank you.

SHE GROANS

Very wet shoes!

Oh, my God, my shoes are too wet!

Oh, my God!

LAUGHTER

We're now 35 miles upstream of Luxor,

and the captain's just told us that we've got to slow down

because we're approaching the Esna barrage.

This is one of six dams along the Nile in Egypt,

used to control the annual floods,

and in some cases to generate electricity.

The ancient Egyptians also built dams and locks,

so that they could regulate the flow of the Nile, too.

So it's a kind of 20th-century equivalent

of a very ancient practice.

And it makes our sailors very unhappy,

because they say they get rather claustrophobic when they go inside.

You OK?

All the traffic on the Nile here has to go through one lock

that's not much wider than our boat.

But the dam is the gateway to the south.

Behind me lie the familiar sights of ancient Egypt.

And ahead lies the lesser-known, and even more intriguing south.

But getting there is proving a tight squeeze.

SHOUTING IN ARABIC

It was slightly more tense than I thought it was going to be,

because we got a lot closer to the sides,

and there was a lot of kind of frenetic rope action,

but the boys did amazingly, and we are through safely,

and now we are continuing our journey south.

Hello! Good luck!

Next time...

...I sail into the beautiful city of Aswan.

Now, that is how I like my views.

L'lljoin the crowds and the rising sun for some ancient Egyptian magic.

And as my Nile journey ends,

I discover a 3,000-year-old message from a pharaoh.

Amazing.

And it's just all appearing right in front of our eyes.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media