All language subtitles for The Nefertiti phenomenon _ DW Documentary (1080p_25fps_AV1-128kbit_AAC).Αγγλικά

For more than a millennium, Ancient Egypt was a lost world. All but

forgotten. The remains of this civilisation built on the banks of the

Nile lay buried beneath the desert sand. To this day,

many have yet to come to light.

But archaeologists continue to uncover more of the Egypt of the

Pharaohs, revealing a little more of its incredible history every day.

Thanks to the latest scientific technology, in physics, genetics and

computer imaging, some riddles from the past are now being solved.

One of the biggest mysteries of Ancient Egypt is the fate of Queen

Nefertiti, whose name means "the beautiful woman has come".

She was Pharaoh Akhenaten's principal wife, and — some say —

mother of one of the most famous pharaohs: Tutankhamun. Her mummy

has never conclusively been found, so the search for her has become a Holy

Grail for Egyptologists and feeds the most contradictory theories.

The moment we found out that this mummy was actually Nefertiti was

a big moment in our research.

All the samples they studied still contained DNA,

which I find surprising.

It was a very royal city, so it's certain Nefertiti lived here.

The proportions of her face are

perfect. She’s probably the perfect woman.

A team of experts follow the traces of Nefertiti to understand how and

where she died, and why this Egyptian queen has become so legendary.

Antonio Fischetti, a doctor of physics and science reporter, will conduct

research in Europe, while Egyptologist Claudine Le Tourneur d'Ison and

science writer Giles Harpoutian will travel across Egypt

in search of Nefertiti.

To find out what became of Nefertiti's mummy, we must first reconstruct the

timeline of a history spanning over 3,500 years.

The history of Ancient Egypt.

Claudine and Giles meet Egyptologist Vassil Dobrev who gives us an

overview of this incredible civilisation.

4000 to 5000 years ago, when the pyramids were built is what we call

the Old Kingdom. It was the great time, when they made the

pyramids of Khufu and Khafre the ones we all know. Around 3,500 years

ago, during the Middle Kingdom, they made pyramids with brick and

covered with stone. Then, around 2500 - 3000 years ago,

was the New Kingdom

Alexander the Great came in 332 BCE and after his rule, for three

centuries, there was Ptolemy, Cleopatra, Arsinoë, these Greek

and Macedonian pharaohs.

Nefertiti lived around 1300 BCE. Claudine and Giles will jump some

3300 years into the past, to Egypt’s New Kingdom,

to try to shed light on her fate.

We know that Nefertiti was born in Luxor, known in antiquity as Thebes.

Back then it was the Egyptian capital.

So it’s in this legendary city on the Nile that Claudine and Giles begin

their research into the mystery of the beautiful Nefertiti.

Where was she buried? Why does the location of her tomb remain unknown?

Was her mummy possibly moved?

These are the questions the experts will try to answer. This city in the

heart of Egypt, famous for its temple, whose entrance was once flanked by

two obelisks. One still remains. The

other now stands on the Place de la Concorde in Paris.

Thebes was one of the biggest pharaonic capitals. And where we find

the first traces of the future Egyptian queen: Nefertiti.

The legend of Nefertiti really began on December sixth, 1912.

On that day, in Amarna

in Middle Egypt, the bust of Queen Nefertiti was discovered. German

archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt headed the excavation of the city that

had lain buried for 33 centuries.

In the ruins of a sculptor's workshop, he discovered the magnificent and

surprisingly well-preserved bust of Queen Nefertiti. Now one the world's

most famous artifacts, it is displayed at the Neues Museum in Berlin.

The proportions of her face are perfect. She has a bit of masculinity,

especially in the chin, giving her a slightly androgynous look. And we

know this androgynous look is more seductive than absolute femininity.

Whether these traits are really true to those of the real Nefertiti

or not, over a million visitors rush to the Neues Museum every year

to admire her likeness. The bust is now the emblematic representation

of the queen around the world.

The experts now know what Nefertiti looked like. But to help them in their

search for her mummy, they need to learn more about her history.

It is vital to reconstruct her life story and

the places where she lived to unravel the

mystery of her final resting place.

Nefertiti was born in Thebes, into the high nobility that ruled Egypt for

centuries. Pharaohs weren't just political leaders, but also the

head of a religion with multiple gods represented in various ways. In

modern day Luxor, the famous Karnak Temples still bear witness to the

Egyptians’ reverence to these gods. Here the experts meet Dimitri Laboury,

an Egyptologist who specialises in Nefertiti’s era.

Karnak is a gigantic site of around 50 hectares. It's absolutely gigantic, a

paradise for archaeologists, found in the area of modern-day Luxor. It's a

sacred space that goes way beyond the site of Karnak with sanctuaries in

Luxor, Deir el-Bahari and Medinet Habu. The whole site was sacred for

the Ancient Egyptians since the founding of the city the Greeks

named Thebes -- or Waset in Egyptian

— and dates from the second millennium BCE.

It's a very royal city. The king came here often -- as did his Queen,

Nefertiti, whom he married in the fourth year of his rule.

We’re coming to the most sacrosanct part of the Karnak Temple, the

sanctuary, where every pharaoh was initiated into their role as pharaoh

and communication with the god Amun. Every pharaoh since Thutmose

III set foot here.

They all walked here, including Akhenaten

It was in Luxor where Nefertiti met future Pharaoh Akhenaten, whom she

later married. The couple worshipped in the Karnak Temple, but so far,

their mummies haven’t been found here. Nor is there any indication

as to where Nefertiti's tomb might be.

So, the experts head to the site of the

palace Nefertiti occupied near Luxor,

to search for clues that might lead them to the Queen’s mummy.

The Egyptian leaders sought calm and serenity, far from the chaos of the

Karnak Temple Complex. For years, archaeologists searched deserts and

fields for Nefertiti's residence. And, finally, they think they’ve found it:

West of Luxor, in Malkata

Hello, Professor Lacovara. Nice to meet you!

Peter Lacovara is leading an excavation on the site.

Was it a huge palace?

It was huge. It’s bigger than Buckingham Palace; it’s bigger than

the White House. It covers an area — all

the enclosures — it’s about 150 by 100

meters. So, a huge area. Very often we have the kings kind of founding these

palaces outside, near the royal city,

near the capital — say, Thebes — but nearby, like Versailles.

We know a lot about the decoration of the palace because it seems it

collapsed, perhaps during a rainstorm. And so, much of the painting on the

ceiling and the floor got preserved -- not so much on the walls.

But we know it was very decorative.

One of the reasons that we’re trying so hard to protect and preserve

Malkata is that it’s the last of these royal

cities that’s sort of in its original

landscape. If you go to other royal cities like Amarna or Deir el-Ballas,

they’re being encroached by the modern town. So, fortunately, Malkata

is a little bit off in the desert, so you

can get an idea of how it originally appeared.

Peter Lacovara's excavation gives us a pretty good idea what Nefertiti's

palace and its environment looked like.

Meanwhile, Antonio is in northern France to learn about the palace’s

interior, notably its wealth of decorative elements. This engineer

and Egyptophile has made a 3D model of it.

How exactly did you make a 3D version of this palace?

We used archaeological sources and documentation we were given.

Excavation manager Peter Lacovara provided us with the plans he

reconstructed. From that and some small decorative elements, we were

able to model the whole building in 3D.

First, we made an aerial view of the whole thing, then we set about

reconstructing the hall of columns that leads to the throne room. We

constructed this colonnade from elements found on site. The overall

blueprint of the room as well as the limestone bases of the columns.

However, the rest of the columns were wooden, so now, it's a complete

reconstruction. The wood on the trunk of the columns was painted red.

The tops, or capitals, had plant motifs and were brightly coloured.

Can you imagine Nefertiti living in this palace?

Absolutely. Nefertiti likely lived here in her youth.

So if we can assume that Nefertiti was indeed born in Thebes, might she also

have died there? Could her mummy

still be there? Where should we start looking?

In the fourth year of his rule, Nefertiti's husband Akhenaten turned

his land upside down. The king revolutionised Egypt’s traditional

religion, imposing veneration of just one god: Aten, the god of the sun

Would you say that this is the birthplace of Atenism?

Absolutely, we're here in a temple that was redecorated by Ramses II,

around a century after Akhenaten, but in all likelihood, it's here where

Atenism, or the first ideas that led to Atenism, began. It was here that

Akhenaten built a temple dedicated to his new protective deity, the sun

god who would only become the god Aten once we're on the other side of

that door, outside the temple complex.

Egyptians’ polytheistic religion — in which they worshipped many deities —

was replaced by a monotheistic one: Atenism.

In a collapsed Karnak temple, archaeologists discovered wall

fragments dedicated to Aten. These sculpted stones reveal the rising

adoration of the sun god. They also demonstrate Egypt's

prosperity during Nefertiti’s time.

A wealth derived from living near the Nile and its fertile shores.

While excavating the fortifications around the Karnak temple complex,

archaeologists discovered the foundations of a ruined and hitherto

unknown temple. It didn't even appear on official maps.

Claudine and Giles learn that much evidence linked to Akhenaten and

Nefertiti, including fragments of monumental statues, were found here.

Though nothing is left on site today. They must dig deep into the history of

these temples to find out more about Nefertiti, the queen at the heart of a

cultural and religious upheaval in Egypt.

Back to Europe. The Archéovision lab is based in Bordeaux, France. Here,

archaeologists and graphic designers combine their skills to create 3D

models of famous lost temples. This helps us understand Nefertiti's living

environment at the time and the

previously unknown rituals dictated by the new religion.

In the 1920s, archaeologists working to the east of Karnak were lucky to

find a few rare vestiges of the temples dedicated by Akhenaten

What did they find? The bases of pillars with lower sections of walls.

And, above all, stunning idols in the image of Akhenaten. They showed his

emaciated face, prominent stomach and large thighs and legs -- something

that shocked everybody. And they knew it was Akhenaten. That gave us

the first indications that the king had

indeed built to the east and that this

sector had the first temples dedicated to Aten.

Bit by bit, we began to better understand the temples built to the

east, because we started discovering the walls. Often even in the

unearthed decoration, we have Egyptian images of the temples as

they were at the time. So it's precious.

The new religion introduced by Akhenaten and Nefertiti produced

unprecedented Egyptian art. For the first time, these works presented

realistic images of the pharaohs, now considered to be

part of the sun god’s family.

When you look at representations of the Nefertiti-Akhenaten couple, you

are surprised to see the degree of intimacy throughout, these natural

gestures that you don't find anywhere else in Egyptian art.

It's true that this is one of the rare

periods where you can see a couple touching

or hugging one another. We even have Nefertiti stealing a kiss from

Akhenaten as she puts a necklace on him. And it's astonishing. What we're

seeing is the appearance of what I would call a new liturgy. The cult was

no longer about gods, but the king. The life of the king became a

permanent ritual: his movements when he got up or when he ate. It

was similar in Versailles with the Sun King, where -- as was etiquette —

every moment of the king's life was ritualised.

This cult of personality is doubtless at

the heart of the Nefertiti legend. The

queen embodied the word of the king,

who gave her a powerful position in the kingdom.

But while she had great influence in

this new society, our experts can't find

a trace of what could be her tomb at Karnak. So which event in Nefertiti's

life could provide them with a promising clue?

Surely the one that turned her fate upside down? Her husband,

Akhenaten, decided to create a new capital for Egypt, fully dedicated

to the religion of the sun god. They had to

erect a palace which would be the seat of his residence.

The king decided to build a city totally dedicated to Aten. A city

where he would be at the centre. The untouched site of Amarna was chosen

for the job. It's one of the first times in Ancient Egypt that sacred

constructions were built on virgin territory.

Going up the Nile, to the heart of the country, Akhenaten chose a vast plain

next to the desert. The Pharaoh was in the fifth year of his reign and wanted

to make his mark by building a new Egypt. It's here, in Amarna, that the

vestiges of his new capital would be rediscovered thousands of years later,

buried in the desert sand.

Amarna is exciting and original because it was a new city. All the

restoration work we can do on the city helps us to understand the

architecture. The vestiges of the floor plans that remain,

give us accurate ideas about the measurements. So we

know more or less the dimensions to work with on the ground.

Thanks to their precision, modern technologies are very important as

they allow us to recreate the past in

ever greater detail. This could give our

experts new leads in the search for Nefertiti's tomb and her mummy.

Akhenaten and Nefertiti moved into a vast residence in Amarna. It was here

that Akhenaten’s son, the future king Tutankhamun, was born.

The scenes on these remains portray the reverence for the royals. But the

reality is more complex. Clay tablets from the time reveal that Egypt’s

international relations were complicated.

Perhaps Nefertiti and Akhenaten

didn't reign as easily as they'd hoped in Amarna.

To better understand their downfall, Antonio is in Paris to meet François

Tonic, a journalist specialising in Egyptology.

The royal couple of Akhenaten and Nefertiti lived in their own world.

They didn't tread on unsacred ground. When they travelled, it was certainly

in chariots. They only set foot on the floors of palaces or temples. To say

they were loved by the people isn’t certain.

Why and how was Amarna destroyed?

And who erased all the references to the god Aten?

It’s believed that the successors of Tutankhamun — in particular, Seti I

and Ramses II — systematically destroyed all the temples. They, more

or less, systematically chiselled away

the images of Aten Akhenaten his queen and his children.

Why didn't Akhenaten’s successors stay in Amarna?

It’s thought the failure of the Akhenaten project led to the city’s

downfall and the move from Amarna back to Luxor. This happened very soon

after the death of the king and his successor, and the city wasted

away which is how almost all the temples were destroyed so quickly.

The city was made of bricks, and crude bricks at that. With the wind

and rain, all traces of life and the city vanished.

But dignitaries of the Akhenaten regime still believed in the future of

Amarna, as can be seen in the tombs they made. These marked a change in

Egyptian funerary architecture.

Egyptians had for a long time made tombs in the pyramids, and now they

built them into the rock. How were these new tombs dug?

We have a change of religion that was reflected in funerary customs and

the way kings were entombed.

We've gone from the pyramid, which is a sun-based concept to a more

underground one. With notions of the afterlife and subterranean worlds.

And the royal tombs of the New Kingdom, which are in the Valley of

the Kings, mirror these new rites and writings. The walls were engraved

with these new sacred books in which we have the deceased passing into

the underworld and all the dangers they must overcome to live again

when the sun is reborn.

To find Nefertiti's grave, the experts now know they need to look for a

tomb dug into the rock. And, in fact, at the end of the 19th century,

archaeologists found in the cliffs of a

plunging valley east of Amarna, several

openings leading to tombs. One of these was identified as having

temporarily housed Akhenaten's corpse.

At Amarna, Egyptologist Marc Gabolde spent several years mapping the royal

necropolis. He suspects that certain tombs could have housed other

members of Akhenaten's family. So could Nefertiti's mummy

be hidden here?

I wanted to try to shed light on the mystery of where the Egyptians had

planned to bury Nefertiti in this Necropolis. And my current

conclusion is that when Nefertiti died, her place in the royal tomb

had not been finished and they had probably

had to bury her a bit quicker.

Nefertiti died a few months before her husband and was

probably buried in the royal tomb. But where exactly in

the royal tomb is hard to say.

Marc Gabolde's theory is that Akhenaten and Nefertiti were buried

together in the cliffs of Amarna. But after

the fall of the city, his son -- the

new pharaoh Tutankhamun — had their mummies moved and

interred in the Valley of the Kings.

So are Nefertiti’s remains to be found in the Valley of the Kings,

along with those of her husband?

Claudine and Giles decide to pursue this hypothesis and return to Luxor.

At the famous Winter Palace, they enter the hotel which has welcomed

generations of explorers.

They all flocked to the former Egyptian

capital in the hopes of making great discoveries.

From the start of the 19th century, eminent Egyptologists rushed to Luxor

to excavate the famous Valley of the Kings. Old film footage shows the

frenetic hunt for buried treasure. Expeditions to the Valley of the Kings

multiplied, and there was a real rush to unearth the mummies.

Egypt became a major destination for researchers, and many nations

financed extremely costly excavation campaigns.

Egyptologists from all over the world worked in a race against time, to

exhume the tombs and objects that would bring new light to history.

We all talk about the Valley of the Kings. What is it exactly?

The Valley of the Kings is a wadi at least

that's what we call it, a wadi.

It's a dry valley that can flood in heavy

rain. This wadi, the Valley of the Kings,

is a very isolated valley in the mountains of Luxor. And it's where

the kings would order their tombs to be dug.

Between the Nile Valley and the desert,

hidden in a small mountain range, lies

a labyrinth of rocks and tunnels. Here more than 60 tombs have been found.

They once held the bodies of the pharaohs and some of their wives.

All these tombs have two letters, K and V, followed by a number.

What does that mean?

KV means ‘King Valley’ and the number gives us the order of

discovery of these tombs. When we talk about ‘KV 62’, it's the 62nd tomb

discovered in the Valley of the Kings.

In 1907, Egyptologist Edward Russell Ayrton found tomb KV 55. There, he

found human remains and objects proven to come from Amarna.

Undoubtedly pillaged several times,

this tomb held a sarcophagus with the name of a king: Akhenaten.

This discovery was extraordinary. The theory that the Pharaoh Akhenaten

had been moved from Amarna to the Valley of the Kings was correct. But

there was still no trace of his wife, Nefertiti.

Another tomb also caught the experts’ attention. It’s famous as it belongs

Akhenaten's son, Tutankhamun, who

died very young — between the ages of 17 and 19.

We’re here at the heart of the Valley of the Kings,

entering Tutankhamun's tomb.

Thanks to the dogged persistence of Howard Carter, this tomb was

discovered in 1922. The British archaeologist had a hunch that the

young Tutankhamun had his own tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

The search for this tomb was an adventure in itself. Carter had always

wanted to dig in the Valley of the Kings. He didn't have a contract, but

he got one. He found a sponsor. He had many excavations over many

years that weren't too fruitful, but he had an intuition. His intuition was

that the now famous King Tutankhamun -- who nobody knew

anything about before the discovery of his tomb -- had a tomb at the

centre of the valley, because some clues and some tombs that linked to

this king were discovered. Thanks to persistence, persuasion, and of course

excavation, in November 1922, they stumbled on a first step in the sand.

And that step led to Tutankhamun's tomb, the famous KV 62.

After years of fruitless searching, Carter was about to give up when he

made a sensational discovery. Under a

heap of rocks, he found a door which opened onto a long corridor.

We're here in the heart of Tutankhamun's tomb. We're in the

antechamber, and here is the room with the sarcophagus. It's the first

undamaged tomb found in the Valley of the Kings, with many other items.

This tomb was originally not intended for a king as it's much smaller, so we

imagine Tutankhamun died quite young, around 17. He was buried

quite quickly, so they used a tomb that wasn't at all royal.

Our experts continue their search for Nefertiti's tomb and mummy. If she

isn't in her husband Akhenaten's tomb, nor in a still hidden room in

Tutankhamun's tomb, might she be in her own tomb, somewhere else in the

Valley of the Kings?

In the late 19th century, a French Egyptologist discovered a tomb — now

designated as KV 35 -- that reignited debate about Nefertiti’s fate.

Frenchman Victor Loret, who was excavating in the Valley of the Kings

in 1898/1899, discovered successively the tombs of Thutmose III, and then

Amenhotep II in KV 35. In Amenhotep II's burial chamber, four annexes

were found, two of which were bricked up. By removing this wall, he

discovered a number of mummies. He noticed very quickly that they were

royal mummies. Some of these mummies have been identified.

Notably, there was Thutmose IV -- Akhenaten's grandfather — and

Amenhotep III. Some mummies haven’t been identified. For example:

an ‘Elder Lady’ with long hair; the ‘Younger Lady’, in KV 35, who had

quite a disfigured face; and a young prince. And recently, it’s been

suggested that the Younger Lady is Nefertiti.

British Egyptologist Fletcher was responsible for this spectacular, yet

unexpected development in the Nefertiti mystery. According to her

research, the Younger Lady is Nefertiti. A

series of tests was carried out on this

over 3000-year-old corpse. Has the queen finally been found?

The Younger Lady's mummy is in bad condition, with visible damage dating

from antiquity, damage from pillaging. Her chest was likely smashed to steal

amulets found within the body. Some have suggested that the mummy was

mutilated on purpose because it was

Nefertiti's. However, we have no proof of that.

The Younger Lady mummy continues to fuel Egyptologists' imaginations. It’s

now carefully preserved in Cairo's Egyptian Museum.

After gathering so much information in Egypt and Europe, Claudine and Giles

travel to Cairo to continue their search at the Egyptian Museum.

There they have an appointment with Egyptologist Vassil Dobrev.

Nefertiti had surely been mummified following a ritual

reserved for royals. They want to find out more about this tradition

We're in the Mummies Room at Cairo’s Egyptian Museum. I don't

know if it's fascinating or frightening. It makes an impression.

Why did Egyptians mummify their kings, their royal families?

In Ancient Egypt, they didn't say people died. They said their breath

left them. So to allow the breath to come back later, so the pharaoh, in

this case Ramses could live again, their bodies had to be mummified.

Therefore, the breath could return to

the body. He will revive, but of course

there are formulas, there are many things to do beforehand. Magic oils

and all of that. He'll come back to life,

so he needs a body. In our religion,

we say your soul leaves your body. They don't. They ascend into heaven

with their bodies to join their father, Ra, the creator.

So here we have Ramses the Great, according

to what is written, as these mummies were

not found in tombs, but in a hiding place. These mummies, and a whole

series of others were in hiding places. They were hidden.

Taken out of their tombs. Then the priests of the time

established it was Ramses: Ramses the Great.

To discover a mummy’s history, we need to uncover its secrets. One of the

most useful tools for this is genetic analysis.

In Bolzano, at the foot of the Italian

Alps, is a laboratory that’s transformed

the world of Egyptology.

Geneticist Albert Zink, Director of the Institute for Mummy Studies, has

analysed numerous mummies in Egypt, including the famous Younger Lady. So,

is she Nefertiti? What did the DNA reveal?

Here, for the mummy of the Younger Lady, we were able to obtain samples.

We could use a very small biopsy needle to obtain samples from the long

bones -- especially here, from this area of the upper arm,

but also the same from the leg bones. We were

able to obtain different, small bone samples,

because we intended not to damage the mummy too much. But we could

get good quality bone samples from inside of the bones. And late in the

analysis, in the lab, it turned out that

there was still DNA still preserved in the samples.

The moment we found out that this mummy was actually the mother of

King Tutankhamun was a big moment in our research. Because it took us

many months to set up everything, to do this analysis, to overcome the

inhibition problem. And then, finally, we got these very important results.

The identity of the Younger Lady is in no doubt for Albert Zink. He’s

convinced: she’s the mother of Tutankhamun. Nefertiti.

If Professor Zink's analysis is correct, the mission is complete.

However, Antonio wants another scientific opinion. So he’s heading to

the paleogenetic laboratory at the Musée de l'Homme, in Paris.

How can genetics help archaeologists and Egyptologists?

Genetics is the study of DNA. We’re very lucky as DNA is a molecule that

endures over the centuries. The problem is it does degrade. No

molecule is eternal and it degrades over time. The older a person or

sample, the harder it is to find DNA.

And there are environmental factors, too.

In the case of Egyptian mummies, like the Younger Lady, which date from

several thousand years ago, is the DNA still useable

It's an extremely hot climate. Not the ideal conditions for DNA preservation.

So if DNA is there, it’s surely cut into

minute fragments and hard to analyse.

But Albert Zink says the Younger Lady

was analysed under the best possible conditions.

The mummy of the Younger Lady was displaced from her original tomb and

the mummy was manipulated since antiquity by many different people.

On one hand, the embalmers who prepared the mummy; on the other

hand, grave robbers who get in contact with the mummy. And finally,

also the scientists and archaeologists who have studied the mummy since it

was found. So there was a lot of contact from people that left

their DNA traces on the mummy. And we had

to make sure that we don’t analyze the

contamination, the surface part of the mummy, but we went inside the

mummy. We took biopsy needles, small needles, to get a sample from

inside of the bones, to avoid having to analyze the surface of the mummy.

And in addition, we took several samples of the mummy, from different

parts of the mummy body, in order to compare the results and make sure

that, in the end, we have the authentic, ancient

DNA of the Younger Lady and not any modern contamination.

What we could show is, based on the genetic fingerprinting, that the

Younger Lady is the mother of King Tutankhamun. And we could also

identify, with the same method, that Akhenaten is the

father of Tutankhamun.

After weeks of research and thousands of kilometres of travel through Egypt

and Europe, Claudine, Giles and Antonio have followed all the known

traces and clues about Nefertiti. And they might even have found her: The

Younger Lady mummy could be Nefertiti.

Still, some Egyptologists propose other

theories and continue to look for the

remains of the legendary Queen. Over 3000 years after her death, the

beautiful Egyptian still fascinates specialists and the public alike.

Nefertiti is one of the most emblematic figures of ancient Egypt. A

great and powerful Egypt replete with architectural wonders, the cult of

pharaohs, a new religion and amazing artworks.