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Egypt - a land of wonder and mystery

that's too often misunderstood.

Over the years, the culture
of ancient Egypt has

hardened into a set of visual
cliches - the pyramids,

the great Sphinx, hieroglyphics,
the golden mask of Tutankhamen,

people in profile,
mummies and pharaohs

and strange animal-headed gods.

But there is a reason why these
things are so familiar.

People say the history of art
began in ancient Greece.

But it didn't - it started here

in the two lands of Upper
and Lower Egypt.

In this series, I've been tracking
down 30 treasures that deserve to be

celebrated not just as antiquities,

but also as genuine masterpieces
of art.

The Egyptians
didn't have a word for art

but don't let that put you off

because the craftsmen who worked
for the Pharaohs and their noblemen

fashioned a sophisticated visual
culture that endured in triumph

for thousands upon thousands
of years.

In this final episode,
I'll be seeking ten treasures

that reflect Egypt's transition
during its last millennium

from an all-powerful civilisation to
a lackey state of the Roman Empire.

The story begins
when Egypt was a super-power

ruled over by the mighty
Pharaoh Ramesses II.

You can see from these colossal
awesome statues that this was

a nation projecting
an aura of invincibility.

But in the centuries after Ramesses
II's death, Egypt first teetered

and then tumbled into this terminal
decline.

A curious thing, though,

is that Egyptian art
didn't suffer nearly so much.

The conventional view is that as
Egypt declined, so did its art.

But far from being a static frieze
of gods and pharaohs,

the final phase of Egyptian art

explodes with unruly vigour
and touching humanity.

With the foreign invaders
who conquered Egypt came new styles

that enriched the country's
glorious artistic tradition.

I'm starting my treasure hunt
in Egypt's deep south,

and travelling back to a time
known as the New Kingdom,

when the land of the pharaohs
was at the height of its powers.

Ramesses II, or Ramesses
the Great, ruled for 67 years

in the 13th century before Christ

and he's known
as the great builder Pharaoh.

His name is incised
on more monuments

than that of any other
Pharaoh in ancient Egyptian history

and he constructed several temples

here in lower Nubia including these
two behind me which were cut out of

the sandstone cliffs bordering
the Nile at Abu Simbel

and the one to the left, the Great
Temple, was once known as

the "Temple of Ramesses
beloved of the god Amun"

and it's the quintessential
expression

of how pharaohs of the late New
Kingdom chose to portray themselves.

This magnificent temple
is my first treasure.

Standing beneath these four seated
colossi is actually quite

intimidating because you're placed
directly in the position of the

enemies of Ramesses II about to be
trampled underfoot,

so this is truly art
for an autocrat.

It bludgeons you, as the viewer,
into submission.

It's art that tries in a weird way
to actually beat you up.

You realise that for
Ramesses II, size did matter.

Stupendous scale was everything.

From an artistic point of view,

size isn't automatically successful.

In this case, you could say
it is slightly crude,

even a little bit awkward.

You sense that the craftsmen
who created these colossi

didn't make allowances for looking
up at them from this angle,

where you can see these thick
tree-trunk legs like grain silos.

Really, you're staring straight up

at Ramesses II's bulging eyes
and into his nostrils.

It's not very flattering.

But it completely and effectively
conveys the information about

who's the boss here - the overlord
warrior king, Ramesses II.

As you walk up to the main
entrance to the temple, you're

flanked on either side by these
sunk relief carvings depicting

the enemies of Ramesses II.

Here you have a row of Nubians -
they're bound and tethered,

they're kneeling in humiliation.

They're about to be crushed

beneath the clod-hopping
feet of the Pharaoh above.

The Pharaohs understood
the power of propaganda,

but Ramesses II was the master.

This temple contains a potent
example of the dark art.

This entire north wall of the inner
hall of the temple is devoted

to one of the defining events

of the early years of Ramesses II's
reign - it is the Battle of Qadesh.

It is one of the most famous
battles of antiquity

and it records the campaign
Ramesses waged against the Hittites

as he tried to take the fortified
town of Qadesh.

You see here this panoply
of activity, a whirl, a frenzy of

all these different people, animals,
chariots, and over here you've

got the enemy who are, well, I mean
they're being completely destroyed.

But immediately the eye is
drawn to the larger figures

and surprise, surprise, the largest
figures of all are those

of the king, carved in this deep
sunk relief fashion so that it could

never be obliterated by future
Pharaohs - quite a clever trick.

He didn't capture Qadesh
but you'd never know it

if you looked at this wall.

For me it's a bit like the Trajan's
Column of Ancient Egyptian art.

One of the big themes of this temple
is domination -

time and time again, we see
Ramesses II in the guise

of a very effective warlord.

Here he adopts the classic Pharaoh
pose - victorious, striding,

smiting his enemies with a mace.

And you can see, for instance,
this thick tangle of bodies

of people effectively cowering,
about to be slaughtered at his feet.

As you leave behind the pillared
entrance hall,

you head towards the much darker
inner sanctum of the temple,

where you encounter this
moment of pure theatre.

At the back you've got these four
figures, hewn out of the rock.

They represent some of the chief
ancient gods of Egypt,

and Ramesses himself, the king,
suddenly identifying himself

with the most venerable
gods of Egypt's religion.

This is his moment of apotheosis,
he's now on a par with the gods.

And you kind of get the sense

that his megalomania really knew
no bounds.

This type of art leaves me
with mixed feelings,

a bit of a moral dilemma.

This is quite a salutary
lesson for any would-be tyrants -

you can see the colossal head
and crown of this sculpture here

has landed with a great
thump in front of the temple.

That's the crown, here's the head
of Ramesses, with his headdress,

a giant ear, that's his brow,

there's another ear around
the corner.

And in some ways, for me,
it's a reminder that Abu Simbel

is almost repellent.

It's a bit of a blunt
display of omnipotence

and vainglorious chest thumping

and it's decorated with all
manner of propaganda

so you don't
come here looking for refinement.

That said, these colossal sculptures
are viscerally thrilling

they really are impressive -

it's impossible not to succumb

to the shock and awe of this place.

The temples at Abu Simbel
were just two of the many

self-aggrandizing monuments that
Ramesses built across Egypt.

His capital, Thebes, is filled
with vast statues that

embody his overblown self-belief.

Looking at all this grandeur,
it's easy to assume that Egyptians

were obsessed with scale,
but that wasn't always the case.

Now this...

is called a shabti -
it's a mini mummy,

a funerary figurine
that was once placed in a tomb.

The shabtis were mass produced,
you could say they were the first

mass-produced works of art in
history and often, like this one,

they appear just a little bit
rudimentary, quite rough and ready,

but they played an essential role
in Egyptian religious beliefs -

people genuinely believed
that shabtis

were imbued with magical powers.

And it's the shabtis
that are my second treasure.

Shabtis were servants
in the afterlife who would help

the owner of the tomb
with daily chores.

So these are all made
out of faience...

Out of faience, which is
this glassy ceramic material.

Here you have the normal servants,
and then the overseers.

They have like these kind of skirts.
They are the organisers.

So let's see some here. I will give
you an example of one of them,

which is quite nice,
from the late dynasty,

so I would say 2,400 years old.

The colour is just beautiful,

the way it changes.

Yes, they mastered the use
of these chemicals and minerals.

And the material is essentially clay
stuffed into a mould like this...

No clay whatsoever. It's pure sand.

Is it? It's just the desert.

Just the desert - crushed sand
with the addition of some alkali

that acts as a flux to melt the
sand and form this glassy layer.

I love the fact that the material

is so simple and just comes
from the world of Ancient Egypt.

Absolutely, it's magical.

The name of faience in ancient
Egypt is "tjehenet",

which means the dazzling,
the sparkling.

And the idea was to replicate
semi-precious stones.

They wanted turquoise lapis lazuli,
all the way from Afghanistan,

so it was more expensive than gold.

And then all of a sudden
by this kind of magical alchemy

they could turn the sand,
which is available everywhere,

into this magical precious material.

Here we have a hedgehog,
who is a baby hedgehog,

and what is the fascinating
thing about that,

this is like a rattle,
so if you shake it.

So inside there are little balls
of clay,

to entertain a little child.

That is the sweetest thing
I have ever seen.

But does that mean
that this was made

to go in the tomb of a baby?

it was associated with a little
child, a favourite toy,

or something like that.

Actually, that is quite
an affecting thing, isn't it? Yes.

To look at that little face,
I think that is really beautiful.

Do you think that ancient Egyptians
considered them as works of art?

Or did they just have a practical,
religious function?

Both - look at this example,
this is from a late dynasty.

Look at the details here,
this is a work of art.

It makes you realise why people
could believe in gods

and the afterlife, because
if something so magical

could happen turning sand into that,

then why couldn't people
live for ever?

In a way they lived.

You know, this is
4,000-year-old objects,

and they impress us in the same way

that they impressed the Egyptian
at the time.

Zahed is also an artist who creates
his own shabtis with a modern twist

using the same ingenious recipe
as the ancient Egyptians.

So what goes in our mixture
is 90% silica,

which comes from the sand,

and then we add the crushed
fine natron salt...

That's my flux,

and what we found out
from the chemistry,

they add a bit of limestone,
crushed limestone.

OK, this is like the arts
Great British Bake Off.

Here we are, normally is
the colour blue,

comes from the copper oxide,
pure copper oxide.

Should I put this in?
Absolutely, yep, go ahead.

So we'll give it a good mix to start

and then add some water to make
it into a paste.

OK, mix this all in.
We mix it all in.

You need to mix it a bit more.

OK, I can see you
itching to do some mixing.

You need to get the water
everywhere.

That's quite good. It's all come
together in a big ball.

This is as good as it gets.

Pushing, pushing
into all the details.

'The secret ingredient is natron
salt - a kind of baking soda

'that rises to the surface

'and lowers the temperature

'at which the sand melts
and becomes glass.'

Hey, here he is.
Here we are.

Our little alien.

'The next stage is to leave
the little alien

'standing for a day to allow a
magical chemical reaction to occur.'

When we get it out and start drying,

you see all the salt
growing on the surface.

How odd. It's like it's rusted.

The longer you leave it,
the more flow of air,

the more florescence, and you have
more salt and more salt...

The salt is the natron -
that fuses with the sand.

It fuses with the sand.

And melts at a lower temperature and
turns into glass. Turns into glass.

So this one has been drying
for how long?

That's been one day.
That's 24 hours of drying.

24 hours of drying.
And he becomes furry.

And that's ready to be fired.

Can I put him in?
Yes, go ahead. He will stand.

It's completely white,
but when you put it in the kiln...

Because the property of the glass,

that white salty layer,

will show the colour blue.
It's an optical thing.

How long does it take to do that?
About 6 hours. 900, you just start.

Shall I do it?

'Six hours later, Zahed's new-born
figurine is ready

'to join his army of free
modern-day shabtis.'

So it is a piece of magical
transformation, then?

Yes, from sand to
semi-precious stone.

Shabtis were servants
in the afterlife,

but my next treasure was made
by workers in this life.

And to find it, I'm off to a village
near the Valley of the Kings...

if my donkey, Pops, has the energy.

Just over the hill in the desert
on the west bank of Thebes

is the village of Deir El Medina,

which was home to the artists
and craftsmen who created

the temples
and tombs for Ramesses II.

It's a bit like the ancient Egyptian
equivalent of those great

19th century model villages
for workers,

Bourneville or Port Sunlight.

But to the Egyptians this was no
ordinary village.

It was a sort of gated community, an
exclusive place actually filled with

stonemasons, draughtsmen, sculptors,
and they had a very important task.

They had to ensure the safe passage
to the afterlife of the kings

who ruled over Egypt.

Now I'd quite like to go and see it,
Pops, shall we give it a go?

Not far to go now, come on,
don't give up at this point.

What's great about this place
is that we know

the names of the artists as well
as where they lived.

They even have tombs, cut out of the
rock, some capped by small pyramids.

It's a bit like a toy town Egypt -
a relief from some

of the overpowering places
I've visited so far.

Deir el Medina is a very special
place because it gives us real

insight, a rare glimpse into the
working practices and daily lives of

artists, but it also lets us see how
they decorated their own tombs,

in other words, what they painted

when they were left to their own
devices.

I'm hoping to see a departure
from the sometimes stifling

conventions of official painting
as I head down into the tomb

of a stonemason called Pashedu.

This is where the burial chamber
proper begins, and you can tell

because you are greeted by these
two jackal-headed gods, Anubis,

on either side guarding the tomb,

against a very colourful background.

And you come through,
into the chamber proper...

and...

you've got all the usual gods,
Osiris, Hathor,

there's an ankh sign, hieroglyphics,

but the thing
that really strikes me

is this bright yellow which links
the entire painting of this tomb.

It's a very lively colour. It's
the antithesis of death, I guess,

it's sunlight.

This feels like a quite late spring,

early summer vision
of the afterlife.

It's like coming across a nugget
of gold buried deep within the rock.

And you can see the way,
even with these hieroglyphics,

that they've been painted

in quite a seemingly spontaneous
rapid, brushy feel

and that gives the whole space an
atmosphere, I think, of informality,

intimacy which aids the scene
in a sense

because you have Pashedu's family.

You can see his father
there with his snow-white hair.

It's actually quite
a down-to-earth tomb.

It's been painted
by a friend for a friend

and the fact that they have left
things slightly spontaneous

gives it a freedom like the
backgrounds here behind Anubis -

they are really wonderful.

You can see the speed
with which this has been painted.

And it's not someone who can't paint
a geometric zigzag to kind of help

create this pattern, it's someone
who likes that slightly deliberately

artless effect and thinks that it
really adds something and it does.

It's got that winning charm,
the same kind of charm you might

find in, say,
a homespun patchwork quilt.

It's a rare and special thing to see
the art of the workers.

In other tombs at Deir El-Medina,

the paintings are just as fresh
and vibrant,

but they don't break free from the
age-old rules of Egyptian art.

My next treasure does just that

and it was also found
in the workers' village.

Life in Deir El-Medina
wasn't all that easy.

It was difficult simply transporting
water up into the settlement

so the villagers decided to
construct an enormous well.

After they'd dug down for round
about 50 metres, though,

they had to admit to defeat

but their bad luck
was our good fortune

because they started using this
great pit as a rubbish dump

and the scraps and odds and ends
that were discovered

down there during the 20th century

transformed our understanding
of ancient Egyptian art.

What the ancients threw away
turned out to be

manna for Egyptologists who
discovered thousands of ostraca,

like these replicas.

An ostracon is either a pottery
shard or a limestone flint

which has been used to write down
letters, lists, or also sketches.

So these are a bit like the e-mails
of the day. Oh, definitely.

Tell me who this bloke is,
because he looks like you could

meet him down your local boozer
sinking a few pints of beer.

This one is a caricature
of a stonemason, actually.

So you see the toughness
of his daily routine

and he's very muscle man because
actually his work is very tough.

This presumably is a chisel
and a kind of hammer...

And a hammer, exactly,
his tools for his daily work.

So what does that tell us?

Well, it appears that actually
the ancient Egyptians,

the draughtsmen here,
they were able as well to deal with

the daily realistic images
as well as,

I would say, more idealistic images,

like what we are most used to see
on temples and inside the tombs.

Obviously this isn't entirely real,

because still the conventions
of Egyptian art apply.

Of course. Are there any moments
within ostraca

where you feel that the artist

actually instinctively breaks free
of some of those rules?

Definitely - you have that on this
particular ostracon here.

This is a really nice
example of what

we call a tipsy-turvy...

Topsy-turvy.
Topsy-turvy world, sorry...

because the usual iconography

of that is that you see the king
in his chariot

riding a glorious horse,

but instead of that you
have a mouse riding just a donkey,

so it's like a mockery, or a very
high sense of humour of the scribe.

These discarded fragments give us

a glimpse into the inner
thoughts of the artists.

Witty, irreverent, free -

they offer a welcome contrast

to the straitlaced formality
of Egyptian art.

And in the Cairo museum, there
are even more exquisite examples.

There's a wonderful dog here,

and there's tremendous observation
that's gone into that small drawing.

And you really feel close
here to the artist's hand.

And this is a really great cabinet.

You see a whole variety here.

This is typical of a big theme
of the ostraca.

You have a cat on its hind legs
driving a flock of geese.

In the ordinary world, in our world,
cats chase geese and eat them

but here it has been
flipped on its head

and the cat has adopted the human
role as the protector of the geese.

It's a paradox.

And then here,
down here right at the bottom,

appallingly displayed, is one of
the most beautiful ostraca of all.

You can see this female musician,

with very slender elegant limbs,

the ringlets of her wig coming down
and then this quite transparent,

quite revealing, clinging dress
and she's playing a lute.

And she's fully frontal which is
quite rare in Egyptian art -

mostly people are shown in profile.

And the immediate thing you think
is that it looks very modern,

it feels like it could have
been a sketch

done by Modigliani in Paris at the
beginning of the 20th century.

CAR HORNS HOOT

Things are very volatile here

and one of the ways
that that manifests itself

is that all around the place
I've seen lots of examples

of really quite exciting street art,
graffiti on the walls.

I can't help thinking that the
ostraca are the sort of ancient

equivalent of graffiti but this is
really fascinating because

contemporary street artists,
like this one,

have in turn been influenced
and inspired

by the art of ancient Egypt.

I meet the artist who painted this
graffiti, Alaa Awad.

Do you remember when you were a boy

and you first saw
Ancient Egyptian art?

Do you remember how you felt?

So, I wonder whether at all you have
been inspired

by the ancient Egyptian ostraca?

One of Alaa's works
I saw in Cairo shows a pharaoh,

like Ramesses II,
smiting Egypt's enemies.

It sounds to me
you are very proud of Egypt's past.

One thing that Egypt's past
does tell us

is that triumph in war
comes at a price.

Ramesses III's campaigns
against his enemies

led to economic disaster at home.

The artists' village
at Deir El-Medina

became the focal
point of the looming crisis.

It all started when the workers' pay
and rations were late.

Now as a result,
they organised the first recorded

strike in history -
they staged sit-ins,

they marched on royal temples,
and they held demonstrations.

They were protesting,
"we're hungry, we're thirsty,

"there's no more oil, there's no
more fish, no more vegetables."

One worker even threatened
to attack a royal tomb,

which would have been total
sacrilege.

In the end, some say that
Ramesses III had his throat slit

by members of his harem
in about 1155 BC.

It marked the beginning of a long,
slow decline for Egypt.

I've been thinking about this final
millennium

of ancient Egyptian history

and it's often written off as a
period of political fragmentation,

social turmoil, of decline - it was
a chaotic time of power struggles

and invasions that ultimately
brought about

the downfall of the Pharaohs.

The economy was faltering,
the gifts of the Nile seemed to have

withered and dried up, and Egypt
appeared to be in constant peril.

The curious thing, as far
as art history is concerned,

is that all of this conflict
and confusion sometimes galvanised

and reinvigorated Egyptian culture.

Many of the foreign strongmen
who invaded Egypt

and came to dominate the country
wanted to present

themselves as more Egyptian
than the Egyptians,

none more so than their neighbours
up the Nile,

the Nubians or the Kushites,

who I saw being trampled
underfoot beneath Ramesses II.

In a remarkable reversal of fortune,
the Kushites -

an African people
from what is today Sudan -

seized Egypt in around 750 BC.

Not surprisingly, my next treasure
is a piece of Nubian art...

and at the Cairo museum,
the director, Mohammed Ali,

is initiating me in the wonders

of a little-known
cultural renaissance.

Yes, he does! Don't you
think it's a distinctive face?

Which parts of it are Egyptian,

and which parts of it are more
Nubian?

What shall I say?

I can't. I'm finding it hard.

Which one do you like the most,
if you had to choose one?

Can you choose one?

I think it is very beautiful.

I believe you.

I must admit I feel
a bit punch-drunk after

Mohammed Ali's performance.

But he does have a point.

While the black pharaohs harked
back to the Egyptian past,

they reinvigorated
the art of the portrait

and created a fascinating hybrid.

This alabaster statue of a Kushite
princess called Amenirdis

is imperious yet sexy, though I'm
not quite sure about her big ears.

The Kushites were
proud of their African origins

and didn't hide them.

This pink granite bust
of the Pharaoh Shabako

is inspired by the art
of the Middle Kingdom,

but his facial features
are undeniably Nubian.

And of all these Kushite
works in the Cairo museum,

the one I most admire
is the face of Mentuemhat.

He looks wise, yet tough,
thick-skinned yet astute.

He has the aura of a man who
actually lived

and was capable of ruling a great
city like Thebes.

It's a fascinating fusion of two
different artistic styles.

And this sphinx with the face
of the Nubian pharaoh Taharqo

proves to me that Egyptian art

really benefited from a bit of
foreign DNA.

Kushite rule over Egypt
lasted about a century.

But Egypt was easy prey

and faced repeated
invasions from other enemies.

The Egyptians returned
to their ancient gods for succour.

This spawned a bizarre cult -
the worship of animal mummies.

One of its main centres
was Tuna al-Gebel.

I'm heading deep under the desert
sands into 2,500-year-old

catacombs that were held
sacred by the ancient Egyptians.

I have visited catacombs in the past
and they are always so spooky

because you feel
immediately that you've

stepped into the realm of the dead,
these subterranean chambers.

But this one,
this is a catacomb with a difference

because it was a cemetery
for millions, quite literally,

of mummified animals who were
placed in these niches.

The animal mummies were votive
offerings

given as gifts to the gods to bring
health, good luck and protection.

It's like shopping for a loaf
of bread in a bakery.

This looks like a nice chunky
baguette.

If you have a look,
this is one of the animals.

This is actually a mummified bird.

It's a sacred ibis
and you can just about make out

the head of the bird curled in on
itself, swaddled all around with

the mummy wrappings and then left,
placed in this niche for eternity.

I'd better put it back
and see what else I can find.

In the 4th century BC, these animal
cults became immensely popular.

It was a huge business
for the priests.

They actually bred baboons
and ibises

just so the pilgrims who came here
could buy them.

This is much,
much smarter in here -

you can see these more carefully
cut blocks, I suppose of limestone.

And then these shrines, steps,
leading up to - oh look,

leading up to a baboon.

That is a mummified baboon.

And this is a sort of chapel,
a shrine to the God Thoth,

and this would have been
an offering to the god.

I don't know
if I'm supposed to go over here.

Let's see if we can find a baboon.

And here is the god.

He is squatting - you can see
a very thick muzzle

and snout,
a sun disk on top of his head.

Original paintwork,
a red for his skin this almost

like a sort of feathery cloak
that he has around his shoulders.

And then look at the eyes.
It looks like mother-of-pearl,

and it's a reminder that this isn't
just a piece of art,

it's an article of belief.

Mummification was most certainly
an art form for the ancient

Egyptians. I am sure that there were
very many different ateliers,

vying with each other for being
known

for the best embalming in Thebes
or Memphis, or wherever.

And the late period is very
peculiar in the way that the ancient

Egyptians archaised.

They went back to the past

to think of a great
time of their civilisation.

This was just after
they had been invaded by the Nubians

and had kicked them out,
had kicked out the Syrians as well,

and so this was a moment of great
national pride and a re-crafting

of national identity,

and so by doing this they went back
to traditions

that they knew had been common
in earlier periods of Egyptian

culture, and so this sort of made
them grand again in their eyes.

The ancient Egyptians mummified
all types of animals

because they believed the gods could
come down in animal form.

And animals are neither human,
nor quite divine

because they live on this earth,
so they are this intermediary group,

and they can speak to the gods.

For example, in the morning the
baboons would turn to the sun,

raise up their hands and cry out,

and that would help the sun rise,
according to the Egyptians.

And so the baboons became associated
with the sun god Ra.

So there were very few animals

that weren't mummified in religious
rituals.

It's debatable whether
they are works of art.

though this menagerie of the dead
reminds me of Damien Hirst.

As well as mummies, the obsession
with animals

produced refined sculptures

like this delightful cat
that was discovered at Saqqara.

But my next treasure is no
pussy cat.

It's arguably the weirdest
masterpiece of all Egyptian art.

Allow me to introduce you to a very
distinctive deity called Tawaret.

She's hardly the sexiest
of Egyptian Goddesses.

In fact, she looks quite terrifying.

She's a composite of several
different beasts.

She has a head of a hippopotamus

along with a hippo's
swollen body.

She has the paws of a lion,
and then some human

attributes as well,
including those pendulous breasts.

The thing about Tawaret is that,
although she looks terrifying,

she was actually a protective
goddess,

who protected
women during childbirth.

And she's been sculpted from a very
hard stone called greywacke, and

the sculptor's done a tremendous job
because he's managed to manipulate

tough material into plump, soft, Mrs
Blobby-like forms - she's swollen,

almost pneumatic, there's a sense
of pressure from within ballooning

outwards, which is a really
effective trick to have pulled off.

You have to look beyond
that slightly grisly,

scary visage and see the inner
beauty within and once you do,

I think you'll
quite like Tawaret as well.

One of the big turning
points in Egypt's long history

came in 332 BC with another
invasion -

this time by one of the most famous
names from antiquity,

Alexander the Great.

The Greek hero swept into Egypt
and was greeted by the people

as a liberator from the Persians
who had been ruling the country.

Alexander - seen here in
Luxor Temple - did the politic thing

and paid tribute to
the Egyptian gods.

And his arrival had an immediate and
surprising impact on Egyptian art.

To witness it, I return
to Tuna El-Gebel to visit

the tomb of a priest
called Petosiris.

This tomb is very rare
and it's fascinating

because of the decoration
in this inner porch.

You have these scenes of daily life,
everyday scenes

which, in itself, is quite
a traditional Egyptian subject.

So it's reviving this old Egyptian
tradition, and yet the style

of the scenes doesn't really look
Egyptian at all, it looks Greek.

So if you have a look down here,
here are some labourers.

They're harvesting grapes,
they're about to make wine,

and yet it could be
a sort of Bacchic scene,

these could be followers of
Dionysus, surrounded by very lush,

scrolling vines, there's a
sense of energy, a greater movement

and an attempt at naturalism,
which is a sort of Greek trait.

You can see this go that the
artist has had at trying to show

the drapery as it folds over
the human form

and here there's a naked man,
who's plucking grapes,

but that torso is very different

to the kinds of torsos
you normally find

in Egyptian art, often quite
rigid, blank, little schematised.

Here, there's an attempt to actually
show the musculature.

You can see, over on the other wall,
more of these scenes.

So for instance,
up here they're collecting grain.

There's a sense
of something quite new,

a glimmer of a whole
different style

that's trying to be
grafted onto the Egyptian canon

with its registers and bands, with
its baselines and profiled feet.

And in many ways it's a little
bit awkward,

it's a little bit misshapen.

I'm not convinced that this
is great art,

but it is fascinating art and the
reason is Petosiris has commissioned

an artist or a designer, who
may have been Egyptian, but he was

undoubtedly influenced by Greek art
and he's trying to demonstrate that

in the way that he's representing
this wall, these scenes.

And the reason Petosiris did that is

because he lived at a very important
crossroads in history.

All of a sudden, Alexander the Great
had swept in and conquered Egypt

and no one was quite sure
what way the wind was blowing.

It's possible that the Greeks,
the Macedonians,

wouldn't have lasted and that one
day the Egyptians would come back

into power but for now Greek
culture was very much in vogue

and this is what Petosiris
wanted to broadcast.

I guess it's no surprise that
the politically astute Petosiris

wanted to imitate
the art of his new overlords,

but what about the Greeks
themselves?

They were no strangers to beauty.

Perhaps they'd fall for the
charms of Egyptian art?

Alexander the Great is a little
bit of a glamorous enigma to me

because obviously he's
the peerless warrior king

but he was dead at 32,
and you could argue that he

destroyed as much
as he created,

most infamously when he sacked
the magnificent city of Persepolis

in 330 BC.

But he was a man of culture, he had
great artists in his entourage,

he had people like Lysippus
and Apelles.

And he lived at the beginning of
this new phase in classical art,

the so-called Hellenistic style,

this great thunderous,
tumultuous,

almost Baroque type of art

that couldn't be more different
from that ordered

and sometimes quite restrained
tradition of Egyptian art.

So I'm really intrigued to find
out what happened

when those two styles came together.

Did they clash or did they fuse,
and ultimately, which one won out?

After the death of Alexander,
one of his generals,

Ptolemy, became Pharaoh.

He was the first of a dynasty
of 15 Ptolemies who ruled

Egypt for the next 300 years.

They based themselves in Lower
Egypt, in the north of the country.

Before he left Egypt to
carry on conquering the known world,

Alexander had a vision of a vast
metropolis built here

on the coast of
the Mediterranean Sea, and the city

that he founded here still
bears his name today, Alexandria.

Alexandria was
the powerbase of Ptolemaic Egypt

and one of the great
cities of antiquity.

Undoubtedly, the most spectacular
sight at Alexandria once towered for

hundreds of feet into the sky, just
over there on the Island of Pharos.

And it was a great lighthouse,
topped with this mighty beacon

that was visible from miles
and miles out to sea.

It was once one of the seven
wonders of the ancient world.

It must have been a colossal
statement

of Ptolemaic power
over Egypt.

The lighthouse was constructed
out of these whopping great blocks

of red granite, each one
weighing about 75 tonnes.

And it was destroyed by successive
earthquakes in later centuries

and most of it's now underwater.

When marine archaeologists excavated

the ruins of the lighthouse
recently,

they discovered ancient works of art
languishing on the seabed.

One of the colossal statues
that they dredged up from the base

of the lighthouse is just over there
and it's a curious hybrid really

because it presents Ptolemy II in
the traditional guise of a pharaoh.

You can see the pillar
supporting his back.

He's got the double crown of upper
and lower Egypt,

he's wearing a pharaoh's kilt,
he's got that very stiff,

non-naturalistic torso fully frontal
with arms clenched at either side.

But there is a glimmer of a new
style creeping into the statue.

If you look at the face,
which admittedly is quite eroded

because it's been
immersed in the sea, you can

make out these locks of hair,

flickering from beneath the
headdress - they're very Greek,

very Alexander the Great.

In one sense, it's a brilliant
metaphor for what happened to Egypt

in the next few centuries
because it's a Greek head

on an Egyptian body, just
as you had this Greek Macedonian

elite ruling the Egyptian people,
but from an art historical

point of view, it's perhaps slightly
less successful,

because the two styles,
Greek and Egyptian, jar,

they butt up against each other.

To find my treasure, I am going
to have to leave Egypt briefly.

I return to the
Egyptian Museum in Berlin,

home to the world-famous
bust of Nefertiti.

This time, I'm here to see a less
well-known work of art.

I defy anyone looking at this head
to deny that it is a

masterpiece of world sculpture.

Now it's a portrait of a middle-
aged bald man, probably a priest,

and it's made from this highly
polished hard stone called

greywacke, and it's slightly
smaller than I had expected,

it's less than life-sized, but it is
still this ball of concentrated

expression and energy, there's such
a palpable sense of character here.

He has this fierce gaze,
like a political bruiser, and those

heavy lips that feel like he is
about to argue or remonstrate.

At any
minute he's about to speak to us,

so that it feels like portraiture

in a modern sense, in the sense
that we would understand today.

You've got all of these Egyptian
traits like the supporting

back pillar, his outlined eyes,
the smooth bald head.

But you have something else as well,

the influence of art from the
Mediterranean elsewhere in that

sense of realism - the crows-feet,
the wrinkles, the furrows, and

most important for me, the way that
this skin is soft and supple, yet

stretched tight across all of these
different dithers of his cranium.

That is a brilliant
piece of sculpture.

And in that sense, he is this
wonderful amalgamation of two

different traditions that usually
didn't really go very well together.

So if you still have questions
about the lifelessness, supposedly,

of ancient Egyptian art,
just ask our chap here,

because I suspect he'd give you
an answer that would be curt,

but which you would find
pretty persuasive.

The Green Head is a genuine
masterpiece,

but it didn't herald a new dawn
for Egyptian art.

And I've got a theory that what
we call Egyptomania,

that fascination with the magical
and mysterious world of the pharaohs

actually began long ago in antiquity
itself, long before Napoleon,

English lords, or Hitler became
obsessed by Egyptian treasures.

The foreign conquerors who ruled
Egypt were equally inspired

and seduced by the past of this
great country.

Under the Ptolemies,
Egyptian culture

returned to its archaic roots again.

Instead of mimicking
the classical style of Athens,

they gave Egypt beautiful
temples where the Pharaohs of old

would have felt quite at home.

My next treasure is
one of the greatest of these -

the temple of Horus at Edfu.

Built by the Greeks but dedicated
to one of Egypt's oldest

and most revered gods -
Horus the falcon.

It's fascinating to see how
the Ptolemies embraced Egypt's

well-established visual language
with new vigour.

They needed the powerful Egyptian
priests on their side,

so what better than to give them
a temple like this?

This is probably the best preserved
temple in Egypt

and it
provides this wonderful impression

of the grandeur of the temples

that was experienced by the ancient
Egyptians themselves, because every

surface is covered with decoration.
You can see these sumptuous

sunk relief carvings and actually,
in places, traces of pigment.

All of this would have been
a polychrome display,

visually magnificent.

And there's a detail about this
colonnaded court that

I particularly like, which is

that each of the capitals
on the columns is different.

And the craftsmen have relished
the decoration of those capitals.

They are individual as a snowflake,
they are beautiful.

And over here,
there's a surviving colossal,

black granite statue of the falcon
god Horus,

wearing the double
crown of Ancient Egypt,

upper and lower Egypt combined.

And it fuses divinity and kingship.
It's a very powerful piece.

It's a very beautiful piece,
sleek.

I bet Brancusi would have
loved something like this.

If you have a
look at his expression,

he looks slightly grumpy, I think!

Perhaps he's sad that
he's rooted to the spot,

and can't take off
and soar above the temple.

Oh look! There's Horus,
look, look, look!

As in all Egyptian temples,
the centrepiece is the sanctuary,

the holy of holies.

It contains a replica
of Horus's sacred boat.

But if you look over here,
right at the back,

you've got possibly the most
revealing artefact in the temple,

because this thing is the oldest
part of the temple,

and it doesn't date
from the Ptolemaic period at all.

It must have been the shrine
of the temple that was on this site,

before the current temple was built.

And it's highly instructive that the
Ptolemies have decided to keep it

because this is
a statement of intent on their part.

They're saying that we want to feel
continuous with Egypt's past.

This way?

This is a piece of luck really,
I've bumped into Mohammed,

the chief inspector of the temple
and he's offered to take me this

special route, which looks like it
involves, well, actually clambering

up the side of the wall
of the temple,

to get a proper view
from the top,

but it's quite special because
people don't normally see this.

Keep on going?

It's a little bit hairy there.

What a fantastic vista.

This is a great vantage point to get
a sense of the plan,

the layout of the temple.

You can see this mass of the pylon,
the colonnaded court.

I mean, it's a spectacular temple,

but I'll tell you what I find quite
curious about it is that this

was built over a period
of around 180 years

during the reigns of the
Ptolemies, who were Greek Macedonian

and I was expecting to see some
evidence of that Hellenistic culture

in the architecture and the
decoration but you can't find it.

Everything here is
traditionally on the nose Egyptian.

And I guess what it suggests
is that the Ptolemies didn't feel

so powerful that they could impose
wholesale

their foreign culture on Egypt.

Instead they had to embellish
and lavish money

and funds to create enormous temple
complexes just like this one,

essentially to keep the Egyptian
priests sweet.

In the end, it wasn't the Egyptian
priests that the Ptolemies had

to worry about, but a new superpower
in the Mediterranean - Rome.

The Egypt of the Pharaohs
was about to

complete its epic 3,000-year
journey.

Its end came in Alexandria and it
couldn't have been more dramatic.

The scenario pitted the
Ancient World's most famous woman,

Cleopatra, against Octavian,
the future Augustus,

first emperor of Rome.

The trouble with Cleopatra
is that despite her legend,

she remains elusive.

In popular culture, she appears
as this ravishing temptress,

so by rights
we should be ending the series with

a beautiful image of Egypt's
most famous queen.

But the trouble is, not many
contemporary likenesses of her have

survived, and of those that have,
one of the most reliable is this.

It's an image on a coin, and
as you can see, she was no beauty.

This is not how Elizabeth Taylor
appears playing the role.

She's got a hooked nose,
this very pointy chin,

she looks really like a wicked
stepmother in a fairy-tale.

Legend has it,

after defeat by Octavian, Cleopatra
committed suicide in her

mausoleum which is thought to lie
beneath the waves in the harbour.

I leave Alexandria behind in
the quest for my final treasure

and head to a town called Dendera

where Cleopatra built a temple

dedicated
to the mother goddess Hathor.

It's one of ancient Egypt's last
great temples and it's very special.

The interior is a stunning
multi-coloured visual feast,

the like of which I've not seen
anywhere else in Egypt.

It's a very vivid space,
with bright blues, some of the reds

and ochres still apparent.

It's been recently cleaned. You can

see there's the dark film of filth
on one side and it's left

this visual spectacle of what this
temple must have been like.

Cleopatra features in a massive
relief on the back wall

of the temple with her
son by Julius Caesar, Caesarion.

In artistic terms,
it's nothing new.

I'm here to meet someone else,
a character who would have an

important role to play in
Christian art in the future.

I'm here to meet the
forefather of the Devil.

One of the innovations of temple
design under the Ptolemies

was this building.

It's known as the Mammisi,
or birth house, and it's a smaller

temple, usually placed at right
angles to the big building,

and it celebrates rituals associated
with the birth

of the child God Horus,

and his relationship with
the mother goddess, Isis or Hathor.

But my favourite part of
the birth house is this guy,

who's one of the most
curious of Egyptian gods.

He's my favourite member
of the Egyptian religious pantheon.

He's a dwarf god. He's known as Bes.

Once you've started to see him,
then in sites like this,

he suddenly seems to appear
everywhere.

You see, here he is again, this is
Bes, and yep, you can see he's

got all of his classic attributes
here. He's really ridiculously

ugly, he's got this bushy beard,
he's fat, he's squat, he's

often standing there with his great
tongue lolling out of his head,

you often see his penis, and unlike
most of the gods in Egyptian art,

he is face on, he's full frontal.

There is something unashamed
about Bes.

And the reason I like him

is because he's got this real
whiff of anarchy and mischief.

He's so ugly that he's a prototype
for devils and medieval gargoyles.

But in ancient Egypt he was actually
a sort of protector god.

He was on the side of the people.

He warded off evil spirits
during childbirth.

He was a god associated
with music and dancing and sex

and drinking, all of
the good things, and I think of him

as like the grit in the pearl
of Egyptian art.

I return to Britain
and to Kingston Lacy,

the home of a 19th-century
adventurer called William Bankes,

where I had my first
taste of Ancient Egypt.

Now I've been to many of the places
that Bankes explored,

I feel very different about the art
of that great civilisation.

A powerful Mesopotamian king

once said that gold in ancient
Egypt was as plentiful as dirt,

and he was right.

During three spectacular millennia,
ancient Egyptian art reached

uncharted summits of luxury
and magnificence and colossal scale.

But during my travels I've
discovered something a little

less shiny and bombastic,
like the vigorous dwarf god Bes,

friend alike to expectant mothers
and beer-swilling carousers,

or those homely visions of paradise

in the workers' tombs,
humble shabti figurines,

scraps of pottery decorated
with delightfully rapid sketches

that are thrilled about the texture
of a bird's wing

or the fur of a dog.

And I used to think that
I had something of a handle on what

ancient Egyptian art was all about,
but now I realise

that to really understand
it would take several lifetimes.

It could be intimate,
as well as intimidating,

it was down to earth,
as much as it was divine.

And why not? Because the ancient
Egyptians held fervent,

profound beliefs
about the afterlife, so of course,

they understood that there could be
more than one route to eternity.