All language subtitles for Treasures of Ancient Egypt 1of3 The Birth of Art 720p HDTV_Subtitles01.ENG

I'm in Dorset, seeking a little bit
of Egypt in the English countryside.

SHEEP BLEAT

It seems unlikely,
but this is where I had my

first taste of the magical
and exotic world of Ancient Egypt.

I remember first coming here to
Kingston Lacy with my family

when I was a child,
and I was fascinated

- like millions of others -
by what I found.

This pink granite obelisk is well
over 2,000 years old,

and today it's spotted with lichen
and moss

as a result of the damp
English climate.

But it once stood in front
of the sun-baked Temple of Isis

on the island of
Philae in southern Egypt,

where in 1815 it caught the eye of

the owner of Kingston Lacy,
William Bankes.

He was a traveller,
he was an amateur archaeologist,

an aesthete and a connoisseur,
and he spent years endeavouring to

bring this obelisk from Egypt
to his Dorset lawn.

As well as the obelisk, Bankes
amassed the

largest private collection of
Egyptian art in Britain.

Most of the Egyptian antiquities
that Bankes collected

are on display here in the billiards
room, but I suspect that most people

would consider these objects more as
curious artefacts than works of art.

And it's true that the ancient
Egyptians didn't have

a word for "art", but they didn't
have a word for religion either,

and they are among the most
religious peoples in history.

This enormous tome is the first
volume of

The Description of Egypt, which
began to appear in 1809.

And it is beautiful!

It's filled with hand-coloured
illustrations and maps,

and these crisp, really immaculate
engravings that record

the monuments of Ancient Egypt.

You can readily understand why
William Bankes became so besotted

as he sat in this very library
and leafed through these pages.

I want to follow in the footsteps of
Bankes and his contemporaries

and explore
Ancient Egypt for myself.

In this series, over three
programmes

I'll travel the length of
the country...

..in search of 30 treasures that

tell the bewitching story of
Egyptian art.

But above all, I want to
look at the treasures of Egypt,

not through the eyes of an
archaeologist,

but through the eyes
of an art lover.

My adventure begins
deep in the Sahara, where I'm

searching for the very earliest
Egyptian art.

The origins of the
indomitable style

that would define this
greatest of ancient civilisations.

So I've driven right out into the
Western Desert,

which is this
exhilarating landscape

and it's part of the Sahara which
basically stretches on

unbroken to the Atlantic, thousands
of miles away,

and this must be easily the most
remote place

I have ever come to see
a work of art.

In fact, right here.

We've made it. Excellent.

'My guide is artist
and archaeologist John O'Carroll.'

Well, this is our first site, John,

and you were saying in the car
that this is known as the Gallery.

The Gallery, it's a
superb piece of Neolithic rock art.

It's a procession of four women -
three of them pregnant -

leading about six giraffes.
A wonderful piece of art.

And when does it date from? It dates
from, I would say 6-7000BC,

it was a culture called
the Bashendi Culture.

So what can this tell us
about the society that produced it?

It's their stamp,
and we're looking at a window

to the
mind of these Bashendi people,

which is quite marvellous. And in
this piece you get a wonderful sense

of movement, a processional way, with
the women, with the giraffes.

The giraffe was a highly effective
totem as a rain god.

It was tall, it was touching the sky,

so to harness that type of animal
was to harness nature in a sense.

I might try and scramble up to have
a look at this giraffe,

if you think I'm not going to
kill myself.

I guess the first thing that strikes
me coming up here

is the simplicity
but effectiveness of just using

incision in the rock to catch the
sunlight. That creates the outline.

The way it's been conveyed is in
quite, almost geometric, abstract,
rectilinear fashion

- these
are straight lines, right angles.

This is quite a Mondrian...
Yes! ..a Mondrian prehistoric piece.

And elsewhere this dotted,
stippled effect,

as though trying to imitate the skin
or the hide of the giraffe.

It's a very good device for that,
simple but effective.

'What's revealing is how the art
and beliefs of the

'early Egyptians were so entwined
with animals and the natural world.'

Now, John is taking me
up a pyramid-shaped hill to show me

his favourite petroglyphs.

Phew!

Aha!

There we are.

And here we are at what
we call the Altar.

What an extraordinary setting.

So this is the altar stone.

It's at an angle, and has four
lovely Bashendi ladies on it,

dancing for us.
ALASTAIR LAUGHS

With highly-decorated costume.

So we've got several different
women, so here's clearly one,

and here are another two, facing
each other, or next to each other.

Facing each other with a head,
breasts and torso.

What about thinking of classic
later Egyptian reliefs,

tomb paintings, where you see
people, they look very different,

but in a sense the structure,

the way of representing them,
is similar.

You have this - frontal,
the torso,

but then the lower half in profile,

as though perhaps
walking in one direction.

I believe there is some connection,
there is a connection.

These early people brought their
artistic...developments with them,

and artistic sense,
and sense of stylisation.

So here, in a sense, we really
have the origins of

Ancient Egyptian art, in this quite
windy, but sacred spot.

Windy, sacred, but I do believe,
I think you're correct.

Before we embark on the story
of Egyptian art,

I'm going to map out the journey
ahead of us in the sand.

I'll begin...

with prehistory - 7000BC.

The era of the petroglyphs.

Now I'm going to walk
the history out

so that every step will be 100
years.

5000BC.

Then finally, 4000BC. This is
known as the Naqada Period...

'When painted pottery sowed the
seeds for an artistic style.'

Around about 1,000 years later,
we have the beginnings of

Ancient Egypt proper, as we know it.
The First Dynasty comes to power.

And 500 years after that,
2500 BC around about,

we arrive at...

the Old Kingdom.

'The age of the great pharaohs who
built the pyramids at Giza.'

500 years that kingdom
lasts, give or take,

and then the emergence
of the Middle Kingdom.

'A period of tough-as-nails leaders
and no-nonsense art.'

Lasts for another
500 years or so.

And then the New Kingdom emerges,
around about 1500 BC.

'The great golden age of
Egyptian culture.'

That lasts for another few
hundred years...

..until the final millennium,
the so-called Late Period.

'Egypt declines,
but its art flourishes'

And then in 332 BC,
Alexander the Great invades.

Known as the Ptolemaic Dynasties,
they continue for about 300 years...

until 30 BC,
when Egypt is invaded by Rome.

And that's the end of the
Ancient Egyptian world.

So when you look
back down you get a sense

- first of all of the great
scope of what we are talking about -

but secondly, that Ancient Egypt
dominates for thousands of years.

Ssh. Ssh.

The first great turning point
in this sprawling history came when

the early Egyptians were confronted
with a natural disaster.

Around about 6000BC,
back in the Neolithic Period,

the Western Desert was
a completely different place.

It was much more lush and verdant.
HE CLICKS HIS TONGUE

It was more like an African savanna,

sprinkled with a few
donkeys, lots of rhinoceroses,

buffaloes, gazelles, giraffes.

And there were reliable summer
rains that fed lakes

that were more
than seven metres deep.

Over time, though, all of the rains
disappeared and the climate

changed catastrophically.
The wet grasslands dried up.

Eventually,
the people who lived here

- the semi-nomadic cattle herders -
were forced by these

tough and arid conditions to leave
altogether and head off

in search of much more fertile
plains

and a sustainable source of water.

They found it hundreds of
miles to the east.

The River Nile.

"Egypt is the gift of the Nile."

That's what the Greek writer
Herodotus said, and it was

a really elegant way of expressing
a simple but essential truth,

which is that the civilisation
of Ancient Egypt simply would never

have flourished - or even existed -
if it wasn't for this

vast, broad body of water,

which the Egyptians called Iteru,
or "The River".

But the Nile also had a special,
quite magical,

almost miraculous quality.

Every year, in late summer,

flood waters roared
down from the First Cataract, here,

and inundated the valley
on either side, covering the land

with this thick black silt, very
fertile, which aided agriculture.

So for the Ancient Egyptians,
the Nile meant fertility,

it meant prosperity, but also
symbolically,

it meant rebirth and it meant life.

And the Nile came to dominate
and really shape the way that they

thought about and also
saw the world around them.

So fittingly, my second treasure is
a celebration of the Nile.

The Naqada Pots were discovered
in graves near the river bank...

..filled with food and drink to
sustain the dead in the afterlife.

They were decorated with images that
would come to dominate Egyptian art.

I've come to see a collection
excavated by

"The Father of Pots"
- Egyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie.

It's quite startling to
think that these pots, some of them,

are 6,000 years old.

The majority of it is red,
representing the barren soil

of the desert, but the black stands
in for the Nile,

for the irrigated fertile earth
after the flood waters have receded.

And then as time goes by, you see
- from an aesthetic point of view -

artistic development,
as people come in,

change the forms of the pots,

add these handles and include these
designs.

Some of them, like these spirals,
geometric designs,

but occasionally you found pots
like these, decorated with animals.

You can see flamingos, you can
see gazelles,

and these triangular shapes
a bit like pyramids,

like those natural forms that
I found in the desert.

But above all, the biggest motif
you found

on these Naqada Pots
was the boat.

The boat had symbolic importance
because it helped take

the deceased from this life
into the realm of the afterlife.

So what you find in these late
Naqada Pots are the beginnings,

if you like, of Egyptian art proper.

You find a delight in the natural
world, a recognition of the

primal, central importance of the
river for this culture,

and also a complex system of
religious belief

in which the
afterlife would predominate.

The pots were handcrafted with clay

harvested from the banks
of the Nile.

And the pigments used to paint them
were collected from the landscape.

John O'Carroll knows where to find
these pigments.

Some almost greys as well,
which are quite lovely.

It's really vivid when you break it
up... It's quite vivid, yeah, it's
quite beautiful.

Ochres were the earliest pigment
that mankind used,

so it's in a way a sacred material.

So is it just
yellow we're looking for?

Well, there are wonderful,
sort of, red oxides.

We're spoilt for choice.
It's glorious, yeah.

This is a lovely red.

Oh, there we go. Look at that!

Also known in Northern European
culture as

"The Sacred Blood of the Goddess".

John prepares the pigment.

Then you add gum arabic and you have

a wonderful red, almost oxblood
pigment,

which you will use to paint the pot.

We've got a typical Naqada scene
here, it's a boat, a sickle boat.

It's all beautifully decorative.

And in all of the Naqada ware,

this lovely, joyous fluidity of line
and repetition

occurs again and again, giving the
pots life.

We know that scale is important
in Egyptian art

- the bigger the person, the bigger
deal they are,

so clearly the woman has more
status. Perhaps a goddess then.

Often there's a man
depicted next to her.

The man is always
shown in a smaller size.

Sometimes he does have an erect
penis, which I will put in here.

There we are, just do
a little one there.

Do you think I might have a go?
I think you should.

What about these creatures above?
Flamingos. Ah.

That's not bad.
Very flamingo-like, yes.

Where do you feel that the pots
stand in that history?

How important are they?

I think they're very good, they're
joyous, bringing together nature

and man in a fluid, harmonious
way before it becomes formalised.

And very important and pivotal
to the art of Ancient Egypt,

and indeed the world.

'My first foray into the world of
Egyptian art has taught me how,

'from the earliest times, artists
developed

'a simple but powerful visual
style.'

It's so clear to me now that
the Ancient Egyptians before the

Dynastic Era were in tune with the
natural world,

and their imagination was dominated
by these opposites,

if you like, between life and
death,

our world and the next, the
world of mortals, the world of gods.

In fact, when you look at this
stuff, you see all these motifs

and themes which I'm sure form
the matrix for later Egyptian art.

And in a sense, it set
the scene for my next treasure,

because we're on the way to the
first nation state

in the world - a unified Egypt, the
famous Dynastic Era of the pharaohs.

Thanks to the
abundant gifts of the Nile,

by 3000 BC clusters of villages had
grown into thriving kingdoms.

The annual flood brought trade and
prosperity,

and half-a-million people
lived alongside the river.

My third treasure was discovered
in the Nile Valley,

close to an ancient fort in Nekhen -
"The City of the Falcon".

Now, I think you'll find this quite
surprising, but this

rather uninspiring plot of scrubland
yielded one of the most important

artistic and historical discoveries
ever in 1897,

when a couple of British
archaeologists
- Messrs Quibbel and Green -

were scrabbling around in the dirt
here

excavating the ruins of the
local temple.

Now, to the untrained eye
it doesn't look like anything much,

I mean, today there's an old
bottle, there's a flip-flop...

And back at the end of the 19th
century, Quibbel and Green

weren't having much luck
either. They found a mud brick wall,

an earth mound faced with stone...

nothing, UNTIL they started
digging over here...

..and dug deep into
a thick layer of clay.

And as they dug, they started to
discover

what appeared to be treasures,

things that looked like ritual
objects,

and one in particular caught their
eye,

and that piece - discovered in
this very spot -

proved to be nothing
less than the foundation stone

of Ancient Egyptian civilisation.

CAR HORNS HONK

To see it,
I head north to the capital, Cairo.

My treasure now
resides in the Egyptian Museum.

It's a potent memorial to the
father of Egypt, King Narmer.

People often talk about artists
ripping up the rule book.

Well, this is the rule
book of Ancient Egyptian art.

It's called the Narmer Palette,
and it dates from around 3000BC.

A palette was
used for grinding paint,

but this is a ceremonial,
ritual version, and it commemorates

probably a series of victories after
which the state of Egypt

- Upper and Lower Egypt -
was unified into one.

And it shows a king
smiting his foe.

But the reason I find this
so interesting, the reason that

Egyptologists get very excited about
this, is because it contains

in one piece a number of different
elements and styles and approaches

to representing the world that were
essential to Egyptian art,

and would
be used time and time again

for 3,000 years until the days of
the Romans.

The space has been organised into
these different bands, or registers.

There's the presentation of the
human figure, which is typically,

as we think of it,
Ancient Egyptian.

It's a composite view -
you see a torso front-on,

you see the legs to one side,
the profile of the face

and yet a single eye facing you
frontal as well.

There's the use of scale to
indicate importance,

so the king is far and away the
biggest person on the palette,

which means that he's the boss.

And there's an interest
in the natural world that you would

see again and again in Egyptian art.

There's the god, a falcon, Horus.

Up above you've got a protective
cow goddess called Bat,

and on the
other side you see the king again

in the form of a bull
attacking a fortified town.

All of these things became essential
components of Egyptian art.

The system that was created here
would last for thousands of years.

It's like a tablet incised with the
commandments of Egyptian art.

In the centuries after King Narmer
laid down the rules

of Egyptian art, the country
he unified

went from strength to strength,

and the Ancient Egypt
we know today began to take shape.

Perhaps no visual form says Ancient
Egypt quite as memorably

and immediately as the pyramid,
and here at Saqqara

there's a whole cluster of pyramids
that still dominate the skyline

and communicate the thrilling
power of the kings that built them.

But the earliest pyramid of all
was this one here,

the Step Pyramid at Saqqara,
which was built to mark the tomb

and funerary enclosure of Djoser,
the first king of the Third Dynasty.

And in doing so he ushered in the
Pyramid Age,

when three royal brothers

produced my next three very
distinctive treasures.

These three treasures herald
the coming of age of Egyptian art.

The first was discovered to the
south of Saqqara,

at the ancient
site of Meidum.

The father of the three brothers is
thought to be Sneferu,

the first pharaoh
of the Old Kingdom.

Sneferu completed this imposing
pyramid, but my next treasure

was found in his son's more modest
mud mastaba tomb nearby.

In 1871, the great French
archaeologist Auguste Mariette

was excavating here, and when his
team of Egyptian workers

opened up this tomb beneath me

and shone their lanterns
into the darkness,

they suddenly saw four eyes staring
back at them,

and they fled in terror because

they had just come face-to-face with
their Ancient Egyptian ancestors,

who appeared to be alive more than
4,000 years

after they were buried here.

The extraordinary work of art
they finally dared to dig out

is now in the Egyptian Museum.

Well, here he is, the king's son,
Prince Rahotep,

with his Freddie Mercury tache,
alongside his beloved wife Nofret,

whose name means
"The Beautiful One".

And I think both sculptures embody
a number of attributes

of Old Kingdom art.
This is art that feels simple,

it's self-possessed, and it's
stable, it's fit for eternity.

And I've seen both of these
sculptures

many times in reproduction,

but I've never quite understood
their power until seeing them

for real, because the reproductions
don't show you properly the eyes.

Because the eyes are spectacular,
they're made of rock crystal.

And when you see them from the side,
there's a translucence to them,

they have a jelly-like quality,
and a shimmering, sparkling feel.

'The skill in recreating
the lenses of the eye

'so authentically is breathtaking.

'It's said the eyes
are windows to the soul,

'and these ones certainly animate
these statues.'

And I quite like the way you have
little flickers of individuation.

So if you have a look at the brow
of Rahotep,

you can just make out
the furrows.

It looks like he's ever
so slightly anxious,

and I know this is just projecting
onto them, but I like to think that

he's not really the most important
person in this relationship,

he's a little bit anxious because
his wife, she seems like the boss.

She's the one who wears the
trousers.

I reckon Nofret was quite
high-maintenance.

'It's almost as if the souls
of Rahotep and Nofret will live

'for ever in their statues,
just as the Egyptians intended.'

Art from the Old Kingdom inspired
one of Egypt's

most celebrated artists,

Adam Haneen, to become a sculptor.

What do you think
makes the art that was

produced in the Old Kingdom
so special?

The Old Kingdom is very,
very important

and I feel it's the most important
period, because it's the period

when they discovered
the Egyptian style.

People prefer usually artists'
first work, first years,

because this is the years
of discovery.

After this, he gets the technique,
he gets the style, and there is

a kind of repetition, exactly as
what happened in the Egyptian art.

How much of an influence
has Ancient Egyptian art

been on your own work?

Discovering. Discovering is
something very important

and very strong.

The changing of form
from natural form to stylised,

and when you see this, is something
very great,

something alive,
something active,

so it is very impressive,
more than other periods for me.

BIRDSONG

My fifth treasure is a painting,
and it too was born of the

Ancient Egyptians'
quest for immortality via art.

The artists set out to create
a vision of an

agricultural paradise, offering
peace and plenty in the afterlife.

My treasure was discovered at
Meidum,

in the tomb of the wife of
Rahotep's brother, Nefermaat.

It's startling to think that this
was painted

4,500 years ago,
because it's such a delightful scene

that really appeals to a modern
sensibility.

In some ways it doesn't
feel that Ancient Egyptian,

because
you sense that the artist who

did it had a degree of freedom, they
were licensed to really use their

eyes and observe the natural world,
and they have relished doing that.

You have a sense of harmony
and balance.

Three are facing that way, then
another three are facing the
opposite way.

But repetition's never absolute.
For instance, here,

the tail
feathers are on different levels

to ensure that there isn't monotony.

The plumage has been picked out with
such care and detail.

There are all sorts of different
types of marks

- sometimes speckles,
sometimes diagonal lines,

curving lines for different
types of feather.

And the whole way through you
sense that the artist is

looking, looking, looking,

and that's the secret of its success
as a painting.

And it's tempting to just think
of this almost as a modern work,

a genre piece, a scene from nature,
but of course,

for the ancient Egyptians,

this was part of something
much bigger, which actually

- when you realise the context -

transforms the meaning of what you
are looking at.

The geese were one part of a much
larger painting

which survives only in fragments.

Artist Leo Stevenson is piecing
them together

to recreate this missing
masterpiece.

So what I've done is, I've got
a lot of photographs of the bits

that survive, and these are outlined
in black on my drawing here.

And they're scattered in museums
around the world?

Yeah, scattered to the four winds.

There's bits of them all over
the place.

So here's a reproduction
of the geese.

They go right along the bottom
of the picture,

everything else above has been lost
essentially.

The bits in between done in red
are my interpolation

of what I think is missing.
I mean, this piece is this.

Oh, yes, so there's the arm,
and you can see the flesh colour,

the dark, sort of, tanned skin.

Tantalising little fragments,

and here we see
one of the captured geese.

So this is a great fragment, this.

It's got a lot of clues as to
what is going on.

But of course, you can actually use
this fragment as

quite a clever way of reconstructing
what this would've looked like,

because Egyptian art often employs
symmetry in that fashion,
doesn't it?

That's right, that's what I'm going
to try and do in this painting.

Great, OK.

I can see that you've made a start
at sort of doing the outlines.

Yes, what they would have done here
is outlined the

basic design in a very thin red
paint. So you're ready to

carry on with the outlining, are
you, with that? Yeah.

I'll just continue this.

What's it like to work with this?

It's actually really nice.
It's so simple, so direct.

'Leo's recreation makes us
reconsider old prejudices about the

'supposedly primitive,
two-dimensional style

'of the Egyptians.'

Do you feel that Egyptian art is
as good as art from later periods?

Uh, yeah.
Do you really believe that?

The quality is not to do with
technique,

quality is to do with intention.

The best... I don't believe
you think that. I do!

The best Egyptian art
is very powerful,

and it has a certainty to it - this
is the way things had to be,

this is the way things
will always be.

Do you think that we slightly write
it off? Yes, we do.

It becomes invisible
because it's alien-looking,

it's so repetitive, it's so stylised
people have stopped looking at it.

So it's easy, I think, for modern
people to be slightly dismissive

of this because it might seem
repetitive, slightly stifling,

not particularly free, but, in fact,

it's something else, it's
hugely strong.

It's very powerful.
It makes for some magical images.

Now we return to the tale
of our three Old Kingdom brothers,

the sons of Sneferu.

The third was determined not to be
outdone by his siblings,

and left an artistic
legacy like none other.

I'll give you a clue -
his name was Khufu,

and very close to here he created
one of the

most awe-inspiring works of art in
history.

It's something that's fascinated
the world ever since,

and it still throws up as
many questions as it does answers.

I'd hoped to approach this treasure
riding across the desert

like Lawrence of Arabia.

If we're lucky, I think we're going
to get quite a good glimpse

of it down the end of this
road,

and no series about the treasures of
Ancient Egypt

would be complete
without it, not least

because it is the only surviving
wonder of the Ancient World.

CAMEL BRAYS

'I knew a camel would
come into it somewhere.'

Whoa! Ugh!
That is, erm, slightly scary.

I'm glad I'm up.

I am, of course,
talking about the Great Pyramid,

and I don't really want to bombard
you with statistics,

but in the case of the Pyramid,
they are quite impressive.

It was 481-feet high, it was built
with

up to 2.3 million blocks of
stone,

each one weighs an average of one
tonne, and there are estimates

that if it was built over two
decades, a block of stone was

placed down every two minutes
throughout

a ten-hour working day,
every single day.

And it was the tallest building
in the world for 44 centuries,

until the construction
of the Eiffel Tower in 1889.

BRAYING CONTINUES

The Great Pyramid was built
around the same time as Stonehenge

- considered a prehistoric miracle
back in Britain.

But as soon as I explore the inner
workings of the Pyramid,

it becomes clear there's no contest.

It's an eerie and also quite
transformative experience

coming into the Pyramid,
because to begin with you go

through this squeezed passage...

..a bit like walking
upwards through a giant birth canal

or something, before being
reborn in another realm altogether.

You hit this space, which
feels like a modernist cathedral.

I could be on an escalator in
some sci-fi city.

Certainly I'm heading up
towards the hereafter,

up towards the King's Chamber.

I find it impossible to think that
minutes ago I was standing

outside in the desert sun, and now,
all of a sudden, I'm in this

echoing space which is at the centre
of the Great Pyramid,

which is frankly quite exciting, but
more than that

this is the epicentre
of the Old Kingdom.

And we don't know all that
much about Khufu,

the man for whom this was built.

But I think of this not
just as a monument to one man.

This is an expression
of a civilisation that was

so sophisticated, confident.

What an emanation of power...

..from thousands of years ago,

and this space feels
so contemporary.

The pyramids feel as old
as mountains.

It's hard to fathom how
they were ever built.

The hackneyed answer is that Khufu
was an evil tyrant who

exploited thousands of slaves to
construct his vainglorious tomb.

But the recent discovery
of the graves of the workers who

built the pyramids debunks
this myth.

This discovery could be
the most important discovery

of the 20th century,
because it's telling us

for the first time
about the builders of the pyramids.

You know things about kings and
queens, tombs of the officials,

but you never discover anything about
the workmen who built the pyramids.

When you started digging, what did
you discover here?

It's really amazing.

They built their tombs from what was
left over

from building the pyramids.

Every workman will save
a piece of granite or limestone

to build his tomb.

Underneath each tomb there is
a skeleton,

and in the hand of the skeleton you
will have a

pottery vessel for beer, because he
has to drink beer in the afterlife.

Then actually, here also you have
areas for making bread.

So they were looked after?
They ate meat every day.

They were not slaves
then, as we might think?

If they were slaves, they would never
be buried beside the pyramids.

This can't be a place for slaves,

this is an organised community
of people living, eating, drinking.

'There's one question
I really want to put to Zahi.'

Is it possible to consider
the pyramid not so much

as a work of monumental
architecture, but as a work of art?

It is a work of art.

Building the pyramid itself,
the design of the interior

of the pyramid, the statues in the
tombs, the statues of the kings -

it is a combination of arts to help
the king to be a god,

and that's really for the quest of
immortality.

Art in Ancient Egypt was not for
the sake of art,

but art in Ancient
Egypt was for the sake of religion.

Whether it's a work of art
or of religious faith,

the Great Pyramid is a pretty
hard act to follow.

But Khufu's son, Khafra, had a go.

Khafra built this enormous causeway
that connected his pyramid

with his Valley Temple down here,
and near it is this

monumental guardian to the entire
site at Giza.

It's the Great Sphinx.

It was probably carved
with his own features,

and the American writer Mark Twain
said,

"The Sphinx is grand
in its loneliness,

"it is imposing
in its magnitude,

"it is impressive in the mystery
that hangs over its story",

all of which is true.

Beautifully written,
a wonderful, evocative description

of our obsession with
Ancient Egypt, but I still think

that the Great Sphinx is a little
bit obvious to be my next treasure.

In fact, my seventh treasure was
found

in Khafra's magnificent
Valley Temple.

These indentations on the alabaster
floor provide a clue.

There are 23 in all,

and each one was designed to take
a statue of the King...

..which marked an astonishing leap
forward in the art of sculpture.

Well, this is one of those
23 seated statues of Khafra,

and it's one of the masterpieces
not only of the Old Kingdom,

but also of Egyptian art as a whole.

It is the quintessential
expression of kingship.

He looks like he has such innate
authority and command.

And it's sculpted out of a stone
called diorite,

a very hard, dark stone,
and the sculptor has managed to

polish it up so that you've got
the grain of the stone,

almost like mottled tiger stripes,
very beautiful to look at,

and in the case of his torso and his
face, appears soft and smooth.

With great care and deliberation

they've created that sense of
musculature.

But my favourite
detail of all is up here.

The falcon, the god Horus.

And he raises his wings in a
protective gesture

around the King's head.

It's as if they're fused,
one's merging into the other,

and the message here is that the
King, Khafra, is divine.

Modern sculptor Nathan Doss is
amazed that his ancestors

were capable of carving some of the
hardest stones known to man.

The idea that Ancient Egyptian
artists were

driven by their religious beliefs
explains a lot to me.

We've seen how animals like Horus
were thought to have divine powers.

This meant that artists
excelled at portraying animals

in a range of different materials,

including alabaster and
faience pottery.

When we think of Egyptian treasure,
we tend to think of gold,

it was the precious metal associated
with the pharaohs and the gods,

but no golden statues of the royals
survive from the Old Kingdom,

and only one deity, and this is it,
it is Horus, the falcon.

Horus being one of the oldest and
most important of all the gods,

and appropriately enough
this was discovered in Nekhen,

which means the City Of The Falcon.

It is clearly an exquisite piece
of metal work, beautifully made,

but I particularly love the eyes,
the obsidian eyes,

which almost appear to be
swivelling, scoping for prey,

looking around, it gives the head of
this bird a real alertness,

but also has an imperious quality,

so it's as if the artist who made
it,

who's up there with the finest gold
workers of all time,

has been closely observing nature,

but also trying to
create something numinous, godlike,

something that you could worship,
and to think that this is one really

rare piece of gold that survived
from the Old Kingdom,

everything else was stolen, melted
down, recycled,

it's a sublime piece.

Imagine everything else that there
once was which has now been lost,

it's enough to make you weep.

It may seem bizarre to us

that a bird could mean so much to
the Egyptians,

but from the earliest times animals
played a starring role

in art and religion.

The Egyptians used animals to
communicate with the gods

because they felt that the animals
were at an intermediate stage

of evolution as it were.

So you have humans
slightly on a lower level perhaps,

who are called Cattle Of The Gods
and then you have actual animals

who speak the secret language and
know what the gods are going to do

because the animals are very good at
knowing what nature is going to do.

So for example, when the baboon
stands up in the morning

and raises its arms and shrieks,
it helps the sun to rise.

Crocodiles know where to lay
the eggs before the inundation,

so if you want to predict the flood,

look and see where the
crocodiles are building their nests.

Cats, dedicated to the goddess
Bastet, and the cat was sort of

self-indulgent and beautiful
and Bastet is the goddess of

self-indulgence, beauty and love.

And if you look at these statues you
can see that

animals are carved with great
diligence.

These gorgeous
pieces are well-observed,

they are beautifully made
and they are astonishingly lifelike.

Egyptian artists were
brilliant at animals,

but when it came to humans, their
work was more rigid and stylised.

But Egyptian society was changing.

During the Fifth Dynasty,
around about 2450 BC,

a full-time professional
bureaucracy developed

made up of hundreds of civil
servants and priests.

These men,
who started out as commoners,

were social climbers and they had
a profound impact on

the course of Egyptian art.

One of the best examples of this
was discovered at Sicara.

For the first time we can meet
one of the pharaoh's subjects -

and it feels like coming
face-to-face with a living,

breathing person
from the ancient world.

This is a marvellous sculpture
of a priest called Ka-aper,

a rather self-important man.

And there's a lovely
story about its discovery

because the Egyptian workmen who
uncovered it felt that he was a

dead-ringer for their local boss,
their mayor,

and as a result this sculpture has
had a nickname ever since of

Sheik Al Beled,
meaning village headman.

It's been sculpted from sycamore,

the whole thing was covered in a
thin layer of plaster and painted.

What I find startling about this
statue is that it's

so full of vigour and animation,
there's a real gesture here

towards a realistic style
in the promise of his man-boobs,

in that great paunch, even
in the podgy lower legs and ankles.

He's quite pleased with himself.

Here is a man who feels like he is
striding towards us

across 4,500 years of history,

perhaps not in the prime of life,
but in the pride of middle age.

It wasn't just bureaucrats
and priests

who were scaling the social ladder.

Men like Ka-aper had serious
competition from hairdressers.

The right hairdo was vital

because it was a social signifier
about status, age and gender.

And of course, being Egypt...

Oh, yeah, sorry, I've got to keep my
head in one place.

But being Egypt, there was
a hierarchy of hairstyles,

and good hairdressers
were like artists,

their skills were much sought after,
a bit like couture designers today.

Elite men, they kept their hair very
short, or shaven,

and relied on a decent wig to make
the right impression.

Pharaohs had shoulder length wigs

which were arranged in curls
and braids.

The sons of the elite,

they had round wigs or just
opted for the shaven look.

Servants and musicians were
completely shaved as well.

This obsession with hair in ancient
Egypt meant that

the hairdresser was quite a star.

Suitably coiffured, I'm heading
for my tenth and final treasure.

It's one of the most beautiful tombs
in all of Egypt.

And, you may have guessed,

it belonged to a very
important hairdresser called Ty.

We've witnessed the conventions
of art being laid down,

now we can see them
being brought together in one place.

The main event is through here.

This is an offering hall.

There's a sense here of a whole
world,

it's a real glimpse into the Old
Kingdom.

And it's really wonderful
because Egyptians loved order,

they loved repetition,
but it was never absolute.

So here's a little example,
here are some agricultural workers,

they're driving some donkeys,

and the donkeys' heads seem to be
exactly the same, again and again

and again, but there's a little
donkey head leaning down,

just to break up what would
otherwise potentially be

a tedious line.

There's a lot of vigour
and energy and hubbub.

There are all sorts of activity,
people building boats,

there are agricultural workers,
there are sculptors,

there are metalworkers, there's
a melee of activity on behalf of Ty.

And on the southern wall here you
have these slits

and if you look through...
you meet Ty himself, the statue.

And I think
my favourite bit is over here.

This wall is dominated by one
brilliant scene

in which Ty is on a boat with a
number of attendants

and they're out for a day's hunting,
but they're not hunting fish,

even though you can see loads
of fish in the waters beneath,

they are hunting hippos,

and one poor hippo over here has
been harpooned.

Hunting hippos is quite a dangerous
thing to do, so our hairdresser Ty

is standing well back just
overseeing things, it's a good view.

I love that sense of almost
abstract pattern,

because you have these strong
verticals of the background,

you have these dramatic zigzags
which represent the water beneath,

and then within that,
you have all sorts of variation.

Here, there's a fish which is
actually being pulled out of

the water crossing one register into
the next.

There's room for a slight
insouciance,

there's room for variety,
and it's very pleasing to the eye.

And in here you can see
the hippos almost floating,

tumbling around in the water,
there's a sense of motion,

there's actually a real
sense of energy,

it's a totally delightful scene,
this, completely absorbing.

I've reached the end of the first
leg of my journey through

Egyptian art
and for me it's been a revelation.

I've been travelling around Egypt
for several weeks now

and over that time I've really had
to confront a prejudice

that I didn't know I even
had about ancient Egyptian art,

I assumed that it was a little bit
monotonous and samey and unchanging,

but what I've discovered is
something very different.

There is a lot of this
kind of stuff, real life,

you find daily scenes in the tombs,

you find observation of the natural
world, which is utterly charming.

So I have found a great deal
more experimentation,

a great deal more innovation
than I thought was there.

So this idea that Egyptian art
didn't change

over thousands of years is just not
true,

it really couldn't be further from
the truth.

Next time, the Golden Age.

Art reaches new heights of splendour
and ambition

as one man ushers in one of the most
dramatic revolutions in

the history of art.