Original subtitles

(peaceful music) (birds chirping)

For 5,000 years, this land, Egypt,

and the epic civilization it gave birth to

has been shaped by one thing more than any other,

this awesome river.

The River Nile.

The Nile helped temples to rise,

pharaohs to rule, and pyramids to be built.

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

So I'm making the historical journey of a lifetime,

a 900-mile adventure along the Nile,

across the whole of Egypt.

I'll explore Egypt's greatest achievements.

It is truly wonderful, isn't it?

And find treasures hidden for thousands of years.

Oh my God.

That's a sheer drop down there.

This is my chance to travel this fabulous land.

Oh lovely!

And experience it as the Ancient Egyptians did.

From the River Nile.

From pharaohs to slaves,

from facts to fantasies, I want to explore firsthand

and to understand how this river shaped one

of the world's first and greatest civilizations.

Join me as I uncover 5,000 years of history

along the River Nile.

(dramatic music)

So far on my journey up the Nile,

I've explored many of the treasures

that helped to create Ancient Egypt.

And now as the river gets busier,

I'm coming to one incredible stretch

that reveals a huge amount

about the Egyptians' obsession with life and death.

This river gave rise to one

of the most captivating civilizations in the world

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

300 miles south of Cairo on the east bank of the Nile

is a famous city full of ancient wonders.

I love visiting Luxor and I'm certainly not alone.

This is a stretch of the river

that's welcomed everyone from Tutankhamen

to Winston Churchill, from Cleopatra to Agatha Christie.

It was travelers from the Victorian age

who helped to make Luxor super fashionable.

Here, they could swap the British winter

for 30 degree temperatures and 5,000 years of culture.

But it didn't come cheap.

The trip from Cairo to Luxor cost

an eye-watering 12,000 pounds in today's money.

But to one Victorian traveler, that was small change.

Queen Victoria's son, the Prince of Wales,

the future Edward the Seventh came to the Nile

and he so loved it he came back twice.

Now he traveled in quite some style.

He had six steamships decorated with friezes

of Antony and Cleopatra and behind them,

he had a barge carrying 4,000 bottles of claret

and 3000 bottles of champagne.

Plus what every good dahabeah needs, a donkey.

(bright music)

Donkeys were used to fetch supplies from the banks.

But it seems today that the Nile

has brought the shopping to us.

Oh hello!

Oh hi!

(man shouting)

I'm sure special price.

These very enterprising boys.

Yeah, that's beautiful.

Have hooked on to try and sell me a dress and a tablecloth.

Shall I come down?

Okay.

Hey!

English?

Oh my gosh?

English?

English, yes.

Very good!

It's a lovely towel.

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

Nefertiti, that's Nefertiti.

That's actually quite nice.

I'm gonna buy that one.

I'm gonna buy it, actually.

I'm sure my husband would love that.

He'd look very nice in it.

Show me the one for my husband again (laughs).

Wait, wait, no, no, no.

Oh my God!

Thank you!

Bravo, bravo!

That is my years of cricket practice with my brother

in the garden.

Now I think I've gotta buy it.

Money, okay!

Okay.

Oh my God.

Oh, okay.

And, here on the Nile, there's even contactless payment.

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

One, two, three.

Look, thank you.

Isn't it great?

Everybody sees as an opportunity,

and actually I think it's huge.

(bright music)

Luxor is the number one tourist destination on the Nile

with spectacular temples

and tombs scattered across either side of the river.

There's tons to see here.

So the crew are gonna moor up for a couple of days

because I want to see what these spectacular sites

can tell us about the Egyptian experience of life and death.

After difficult times in Egypt,

it's brilliant to see so many tourists flooding back

to the city here on the east bank.

(engine sputtering)

But I'm crossing straight to Luxor's famous West Bank.

It's only a short hop across the river,

but for the Ancient Egyptians,

this was a highly symbolic journey.

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

to the west bank where the sun sets

and where the Ancient Egyptians buried their secrets.

The land of the dead,

which of course ironically means

that in terms of stories and archeological discovery,

it is very much alive.

(peaceful music)

Three miles inland from the river is a place

that's very close to my heart,

the legendary Valley of the Kings.

(dramatic music)

It was the fabulous treasures hidden

beneath these barren slopes

that first sparked my interest in history

way back when I was five.

And one discovery here sits above all others.

It was made by two Brits,

archeologist Howard Carter

and wealthy aristocrat Lord Carnarvon.

Carnarvon and Carter

had actually worked together for 15 years

before they discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen.

Carnarvon was really passionate about what he did in Egypt.

I mean, he loved being here.

He learnt some Arabic,

the locals called him Lordy and he wrote

that he drank thick black Turkish coffee every morning,

but he also poured money into these excavations.

And at one point he was hiring up to 275 boys

to do the work.

So the two of them were really, really serious

about trying to find something.

And once they did, it was the discovery of the century

and captured the imagination of the world.

(dramatic music)

In the heat and dust, you really get a sense

of what it must've been like digging here 100 years ago.

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

After five years of hard work

on the 26th of November, 1922,

Carter and Carnarvon scrambled down this very passageway.

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

but it is always worth the retelling.

When Carnarvon and Carter were about

to break into the chamber,

Carter looked through a tiny hole

and describes the glint of gold everywhere.

"What can you see?" Said Carnarvon.

And Carter simply said, "Wonderful things."

(uplifting music)

Tut's tomb stunned the world

and it's been drawing crowds ever since.

I remember I went to that Tutankhamen exhibition

in 1972, it was one at the British Museum,

and that's what got me into history

so it's really lovely to see.

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

It's surprisingly small for a pharaoh

and the decoration looks a bit rushed,

even in some places a bit second rate.

You were sayin' it's so much smaller

than obviously the bigger tombs.

We've just been in Rameses the Third's.

And obviously it goes down and down and down and down

and you come into this and it's just compact.

Was it 'cause it was a rushed burial?

Exactly, yeah.

It's now believed that Tut was buried

in a tomb originally prepared for someone else.

Perhaps Tut's own tomb wasn't ready.

That would make sense

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

Worth the effort coming here? Definitely.

Definitely for me.

And the boys?

The boys, well, they're boys aren't they?

(man laughs)

Luckily for those who need a bit more convincing,

the Valley of the Kings also boasts

the most spectacular tombs in Egypt

and just a few meters away,

there is an absolute showstopper.

Tutankhamen's tomb is the most famous

in the Valley of the Kings.

But, to my mind,

his neighbor's tomb is even more intriguing.

It shows us the Ancient Egyptians

at their most brilliant and badly behaved.

Just around the corner from Tut's tomb,

'cause of course this is a whole city of the dead

so there are burials everywhere

there is a real show-stopper tomb.

And if you wanna get a sense of what a burial is like

when a pharaoh has pulled out all of the stops

then you should come here to KV9

although actually hardly anybody visits it.

KV9 stands for King's Valley number nine,

a pretty unassuming name

for an absolutely jaw-dropping site.

(dramatic music)

It's five times the size of Tut's

and instantly more impressive.

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

It stretches over 100 meters deep into the rock.

The walls are covered with images and ideas and stories

that are supposed to guarantee the successful journey

of the pharaoh through the underworld

and on into the afterlife.

Several images show that journey being made

on a flat-bottomed Nile boat.

(dramatic music)

KV9 is, for me, the high point

of over 1000 years worth of Egyptian tomb building.

The 3000-year-old decoration looks

as though it was painted yesterday.

But look a bit closer and you'll see something

that shouldn't be there.

Graffiti in Latin and Greek.

Some of it dates back at least 2000 years.

People have been coming here for centuries,

some just to visit, but others to loot.

Tombs like these were protected with curses,

may death come on wings

to he who enters the tomb of the pharaoh.

But there were some who clearly took no heed

of that warning here.

Within just 20 years, the tomb was robbed.

This massive stone sarcophagus was smashed

and the mummy inside was desecrated with an ax

and all the treasure was stolen.

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

All the tombs discovered here

in the valley so far have turned out to be robbed.

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

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

or it was an officially sanctioned robbery.

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

This was a pretty risky business though.

In Ancient Egypt,

the death penalty wasn't actually used that much,

but you could be killed for robbing a tomb.

And the manner of death was pretty horrific.

You were either impaled or burnt alive.

(dramatic music)

It wasn't just the rich who were fascinated

by both life and death.

Almost two miles across the hills

from the Valley of the Kings is a remarkable

and very different site.

Deir el-Medina, a village that was home to the workers

who built the pharaohs' tombs.

It contains extraordinary evidence that, for me,

brings these ordinary people to life.

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

So I'm now treading in the footsteps

of the Ancient Egyptians who made this punishing journey

to and from work every few days.

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

You can see that the houses are so close together.

Egyptologist Yasmin El Shazly

has spent 15 years studying this unique community.

People are normally very interested in the kings,

but I think the average Egyptian was much more interesting.

Because normally royal art and architecture

are full of propaganda.

So that's not who they really were,

but this is the real thing.

And more than just mere builders,

Deir el-Medina was home to craftsmen and women.

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

You have the best artists, the best scribes,

the best craftsman.

So it's very special.

Right, so that means that we haven't

just got a village of people,

but of articulate people

or people who are kind of used to expressing themselves.

Yeah, exactly.

And luckily for us,

they express themselves on something

that survived for three and a half thousand years

and against all the odds.

North of the temple over here was a pit

that was probably dug to be a well

but it ended up being a dump.

Inside the pit,

archeologists found thousands of ostrica.

Ostrica are chips of limestone

that the workmen used to write on.

So imagine someone going through your garbage,

how much information they would get.

Unfortunately.

About your daily life.

We found legal documents,

letters to the living and letters to the dead,

love songs, even the attendance of the workmen

and the reasons why they were absent from work.

And why were they absent?

Sometimes they're celebrating a festival

of a certain God.

And could it sometimes be not just

'cause they were celebrating,

but because they had a hangover after the celebration.

That's very possible too.

They used to drink a lot of beer.

I love the idea, people nursing sore heads here.

Going, oh, just tell them I can't come into work today.

It was too much last night.

Very true.

I've been given incredibly privileged access

to one place in the village

that's only just been opened after years of restoration.

(suspenseful music)

It belonged to a man guilty of much more

than simply skiving off work.

Oh, amazing.

This is brilliant.

This is what I was looking for.

So this is the tomb of someone called Paneb.

I think that's Paneb

and that's almost certainly his wife behind him.

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

Paneb wasn't royalty so his tomb is much smaller

than the ones in the Valley of the Kings.

But even though he wasn't famous,

we still know an amazing amount about him

thanks to evidence discovered in the village.

And the story it tells is shocking.

Paneb stops being an ordinary worker

and elevates himself somehow to become a chief workman.

Then the plot thickens,

one of the laborers accuses Paneb

of stealing building material

from a royal tomb to construct his new burial place.

Not only that,

but there are 16 other charges leveled against him.

And this is really serious stuff.

So he was accused of adultery,

of sexual abuse of the women in the village,

of falling into kind of drunken rages

so that he's incredibly violent

and even of killing someone to cover up his crimes.

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

but, for me, what's so brilliant is

that we still got these intimate details

of ordinary Egyptians' lives,

their affairs, their intrigues, the bullying,

the social climbing, and the scandal.

(suspenseful music)

It's been a long day in the desert.

I'm heading back across the river to Luxor's east bank.

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

where daytime temperatures can hit 50 degrees.

(eerie music)

So as the sun sets,

the locals come out and Luxor comes alive.

(bright music)

The Ancient Egyptians used to welcome visitors

to celebrate the joy of ka,

to love the spirit of life.

And that warm welcome is still definitely on offer.

So I was dragged in here by these kids

who said there's something gonna happen.

How brilliant to see that dancing.

And actually when we think of Ancient Egypt,

we often think of it

as something being rather stiff and staged.

But actually they loved their festivals

and their music and their dancing

and their beer drinking.

Beer was the kind of staple drink

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

So they were the original party people.

Where are we going now?

Oh, we're off.

It's tempting to burn the candle at both ends

because tomorrow I'm up super early

for one of the highlights of my journey,

Egypt's most famous temple.

With my lovely dahabeah moored up for a few days,

I'm exploring the ancient wonders surrounding

the city of Luxor.

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

(horn beeping)

But after a night on the town,

there's one stop I have to make first.

Hi, salaam, can I get a coffee?

Coffee. Coffee.

Sugar?

Sugar.

(speaking in foreign language)

Okay.

Yeah, thank you, (speaking in foreign language).

I cannot get through a day without an Egyptian coffee.

And it's actually very appropriate

that I'm drinking it here

because this is one of the first places

in recorded history where we know

that coffee was drunk in Cairo, actually.

Some people think it came from North Africa.

Some people think coffee came from Yemen,

but when it was first spotted,

goats ate the coffee beans

and they danced around in this wild way.

So that they noticed

it was probably gonna be quite a useful stimulant

but as a result, there were sections of society

that thought it was the devil's brew.

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

(speaking in foreign language) thank you.

Oh lovely.

Perfect (speaking in foreign language).

Thank you.

(engine roaring)

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

that's really lovely.

Oh my God, I love that.

First caffeine hit of the day.

That is heaven in a cup.

(horn tooting)

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

I'm traveling by roads today

but at the time of the Ancient Egyptians,

I would certainly have been getting from A to B

by traveling down one of the waterways.

Whoops, little bit of a bump in the road.

Because people used the Nile

and it's just really cool

because here you got all kinds of different vehicles

on the road from taxis to tuktuks.

(horn beeping)

And it would've been the same on the ancient waterways.

So you had little cargo ships and barges,

and then these grand royal processional boats.

(peaceful music)

In the far north of modern Luxor,

is the vast Temple of Karnak.

It's 4000 years old and still the largest religious complex

anywhere in the world.

What really strikes me always is just

how rammed with people it would've been in ancient times.

So in fact, all these tourists are completely appropriate.

We know that over 80,000 people worked here.

So it would've been a riot of color and sound and smell.

You'd have the noise of drums and cymbals

and the smell of incense and burnt meat

and priests with their shaven heads

and hairless bodies, abstaining from sex,

so they were pure, rushing around to keep the gods on side.

(dramatic music)

I'm always blown away by this place.

Everything about it is so intense

and so much larger than life.

When people come here,

they always talk about its size and scale,

and it was massive.

So the whole complex stretched

about a mile long and half a mile wide

and covered the area of about 168 football pitches.

But today I'm here to see something

that's a lot smaller but, in its own way, as impressive.

In ancient times,

Karnak Temple would've been bursting

with astronomers, mathematicians and scientists,

all buzzing with new ideas and inventions.

And one of those inventions was this humble looking bucket.

For the priests, it was really important

to perform their rituals at exactly the right time.

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

and you can use sundials to measure hours,

but what do you do at night?

Well, the ancient Egyptians came up

with this really clever idea.

So what this is is a replica of a water clock

that was found here at Karnak.

And what the priest would do is

they'd fill it up with water.

As the water dropped down one notch in the clock,

that would measure an hour

so they could tell the time exactly during the night.

The Egyptians followed a 24 hour clock,

12 hours of day and 12 hours of night.

But the nights grow shorter and longer throughout the year

and this water clock allowed for that

with different measured scales inside

for different times of the year.

So let's see if it works.

(water whooshing)

I think they'd have done it

slightly more professionally than me (laughs).

It's definitely dripping.

And I guess we have to wait an hour

to see if it can tell the time okay.

Simple but brilliant.

And from 1500 BC, these devices would have appeared

in temples up and down the Nile.

Back on the Nile, there's a Luxor treasure

from a very different age.

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

The SS Sudan.

It was built in the 1920s

and in 1933, it hosted a very special visitor.

I'm gonna see if I can get onboard somehow.

Hello?

Hi, can I come on?

Yeah but please can you come on the other side?

From the other side?

Please.

Great, thank you.

(mysterious jazzy music)

Amazing, thank you very much.

Thank you so much for letting me come on, Bettany.

He is the work manager.

So lovely, and is it okay...

As I step onboard, the SS Sudan I'm following

in the footsteps of one

of the world's best-selling writers, Agatha Christie

That's very kind.

Thank you very much.

Lovely, I've been on a hot boat.

Just show me round 'cause I've seen this from outside.

Oh great!

Yes, this is the original steam machine.

With which the boat was sailing Agatha Christie,

she was onboard.

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

It's a steam and yes.

And do people come onboard to travel here

because of Agatha Christie?

Sure, because of the oldest steamer ship on the Nile

and sure because of Agatha Christie.

Yes.

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

She was a globe-trotting history buff

who traveled the Middle East with her archeologist husband,

excavating ancient sites in Iraq and Syria.

In 1933, the couple's adventures brought them

to Egypt and to the SS Sudan.

So it's the Royal Lounge, yeah.

Yeah, so it's got that kind

of luxurious feel, hasn't it?

I just love it 'cause I can so imagine Agatha

and her husband sitting and reading and, you know,

enjoying a cocktail or four in the evening.

(bright music)

Agatha was so inspired by her time on the SS Sudan

that she wrote a book set

on a paddle steamer sailing down the Nile.

The result was one

of the best-selling murder mysteries of all time.

And what else did she call it but "Death on the Nile".

You. Me?

Yeah.

Okay, will you hold that?

Please, with pleasure.

Just give it a big tug?

Exactly, three times.

Okay, three times.

(horn toots)

Bye, thanks!

It's full steam ahead for the SS Sudan.

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

because I have one last trip to make to Luxor's West Bank.

Perched at the foot of the hills,

looking back across the Nile is an awe-inspiring monument.

This stunning temple can be busy with tourists,

but get here just after dawn

and you can have the place to yourself.

This was the crowning glory of one

of my all time heroines, the female pharaoh, Hatshepsut.

A remarkable ruler and, brilliantly,

a woman ruling in a man's world.

So here's lovely Hatshepsut.

Now the thing is, of course, at first glance,

she looks like any other male pharaoh.

She's got her king's skirts

and even a little Pharaonic beard.

But we knew this is definitely Hatshepsut

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

Isn't it fascinating that despite all her progress

and pioneering ideas and power,

this amazingly potent female pharaoh had

to be represented as a man.

(dramatic music)

In Ancient Egypt, men inherited the throne.

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

So when Hatshepsut found herself in charge,

after her husband's early death,

she realized the only way to rule Egypt was

to be better than any king.

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

This temple, for example,

was unlike anything that Egypt had ever seen before.

Its design was brief progressive and internationalist,

and this whole complex would've looked completely different.

It would've been a riot of color.

There were ponds and lines of incense trees.

It's almost as if Hatshepsut was trying

to seduce her people with her sophistication.

The temple walls tell us more about this intriguing woman.

She sent delegations out across the seas

to get incense and ivory and gold

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

And the point of all of this wasn't to prove

what the Egyptians traded in

but that Hatshepsut could make it happen.

Archeologist Dr. Spignier Shafransky has arranged

for me to see a part of the temple

that's usually off limits.

And that gives us intimate insight

to this remarkable woman's life.

That goes way beyond the official line.

Hatshepsut was volcano of ideas

in political, military and religious fields.

She was really brilliant, I may say.

So do you think she is one of the reasons

that Ancient Egyptian civilization became so great?

Yes, yes.

We know a lot about Cleopatra for example,

but in my opinion,

Hatshepsut was really more clever.

She was one of the greatest person

in history of the world at the time.

(dramatic music)

But Hatshepsut had a secret.

It seems she had a bit of a soft spot

for one of her courtiers.

He seems to be a present everywhere.

Yes, yes.

So can you show me where he is here?

Look, he's.

Yes!

This is Senenmut.

Not a member of the Royal family

and yet beautifully depicted all over

the queen of Egypt's temple.

'Cause he's just a commoner

and they don't normally get represented in a place

as sacred as this.

That says something about him. Yes. Yes.

He was a very gifted person, a very talented person.

Senenmut oversaw the temple's construction

and tutored Hatshepsut's daughter.

It's long believed

that his talents captured the queen's attention.

And perhaps even her heart.

Presumably 'cause if the niches

were always closed with doors,

so that image would've been hidden, wouldn't it?

Yes, yes.

The door of the niche was open inside.

So nobody knew about his presence inside the whole place.

By hiding him behind closed doors,

maybe Hatshepsut was trying to keep her relationship

with Senenmut under wraps.

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

can't have been easy keeping a lid

on juicy bit of gossip like this.

I've heard there's more evidence

of this scandal up in the hills, above the temple.

It's pretty perilous to access,

but archeologists think

this is where the temple builders took their breaks,

sheltering from the sun and catching up

on all the latest news.

I hope this is worth that scramble up the hill in a skirt.

Oh my gosh.

This is it.

Oh, that is amazing.

So this little scribble on the wall here is close

on three and a half thousand years old.

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

but there's something really special to notice here.

The woman has got this thick royal wig on,

so it's probably showing the queen or Hatshepsut herself.

So there are two possibilities here.

Either this is feeding off a rumor

that Senenmut and Hatshepsut were actually lovers,

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

And this comes from a time where there was a woman

who was the most powerful female on earth,

doing amazing things.

And the guys sitting here in this little cave wanted

to remember her like this.

Three and a half thousand years on,

sometimes it feels like very little has changed.

(dramatic music)

After two busy days and nights in and around Luxor,

and some well-earned shore leave for the crew.

It's time to set sail and continue my journey.

Sadly I've gotta leave Luxor

but there are lots of discoveries

and delights still to come.

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

I'm leaving the hustle and bustle of Luxor

to travel deep into Egypt's beautiful south.

It's much quieter here, but we're not entirely alone.

(people cheering)

So surreal, so random.

Wow.

Another dahabeah and flying a Union flag too.

If these are Brits,

they're continuing the grand tradition

of sailing down the Nile that started centuries ago.

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

so they have a bit of information exchange, they go...

(men shouting)

And just along the bank,

there's something else I am determined

to pay my respects to.

It's not a template or a tomb,

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

The humble donkey.

This lovely guy who was working his fields a moment ago

and he's now bringing us his donkey, I think.

Oh my gosh, we're being offered a cow as well.

Thanks, Aslam, thanks.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hello.

Hello, morning.

Nice to see you.

Hi. Good morning, hi.

Hello, oh, you're beautiful.

Is it a girl or a boy?

It's a donkey.

It's a donkey, yeah, I know it's a donkey.

Oh, he's lovely.

Lovely.

Really lovely.

Very beautiful donkey.

He might look sweet,

but he's actually as tough as old boots.

Donkeys can pull up to twice their body weight

and even in these temperatures,

they can go without water for an astonishing three days.

But apparently he loves swimming.

So we're gonna go for a little dip (screams)

in the Nile instead (laughs).

(upbeat music)

Hello lovely one.

Oh, is that nice, yeah.

So at the end of every night as you go down the Nile,

you see people bringing the donkeys and their horses in

to give them a cooling bath.

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

They definitely did this in Ancient Egypt too.

We'd got pictures of it.

And they deserved a bath.

It was donkeys that did huge amounts of hard work,

in fields and on building sites.

It's a bizarre thought.

None of the pyramids, the temples,

the tombs I've seen in my journey

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

So although this might seem slightly odd,

it is in fact completely appropriate

that we're treating this random donkey

a bit like a pharaoh

and giving him his own personal bath

in the waters of the Nile

because, after all, it was the donkey

that built the great civilization of Ancient Egypt.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, very wet shoes.

Oh my God.

My shoes are too wet.

Oh my God (laughs).

(dramatic music)

We're now 35 miles upstream of Luxor

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

because we're approaching the Esna Barrage.

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

used to control the annual floods,

and, in some cases, to generate electricity.

The Ancient Egyptians also built dams

and locks so that they could regulate the flow

of the Nile too.

So it's a kind of 20th century equivalent

of a very ancient practice.

And it makes our sailors very unhappy

because they say they get rather claustrophobic

when they go inside.

Okay?

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

That's not much wider than our boat.

But the dam is the gateway to the south.

Behind me lie the familiar sights of Ancient Egypt

and ahead lies the lesser known

and even more intriguing south

but getting there is proving a tight squeeze.

(shouting in foreign language)

It was slightly more tense

than I thought it was gonna be

because we got a lot closer to the sides

and there was a kind of frenetic rope action.

But the boys did amazingly and we are through safely

and now we are continuing our journey south.

Hello, good luck!

Next time,

I sail into the beautiful city of Aswan.

Now that is how I like my views.

I'll join the crowds and the rising sun

for some Ancient Egyptian magic.

And as my Nile journey ends,

I discover a 3000-year-old message from a pharaoh.

Amazing and it's just all appearing right

in front of our eyes.

(dramatic music)