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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.
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