Original subtitles

(gentle 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.

(gentle majestic music)

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 setting off on 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.

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, first hand, and 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.

(water splashing)

(gentle music)

For thousands of years,

this river has been the lifeblood of Egypt.

My first taste of the mighty Nile is its mouth.

I've hitched a lift on this fishing boat

to check out where the river meets the sea.

(birds cawing)

These boats are coming in from the Mediterranean

because I'm right at the very mouth

of the Nile on the delta.

Since ancient times

this has been Egypt's gateway to the world,

and it was along these waters

the world connected to a civilization

that's had enormous influence on all our lives.

For thousands of years the Nile has nourished culture,

and civilization, and technology.

But it's also been people's home.

So over the next few weeks, I'm gonna be leaving the land

and living on the water.

I hope to be meeting old friends and perhaps making new ones

so I can try to understand the power, and the secrets,

and the stories of this historical dynamo.

(upbeat music)

My journey proper

begins on the other side of the Nile Delta at Cairo,

where the mass of streams and canals at the Nile's end

come together to form one glorious river.

From there, I'm sailing upstream

using the river like a historical treasure map

to investigate great sites

and new discoveries from ancient Egypt.

It's an adventure along Egypt's river artery,

all the way to its border with Sudan.

(children yelling) (gentle music)

But to do any of this,

I'm gonna need more than just a fishing boat.

Because I'm making a historical journey,

my home for the next couple of weeks

is gonna be a traditional boat

that for centuries has sailed up and down the River Nile.

It's this beautiful thing, a dahabeah.

Part barge part sailboat,

dahabeahs are unique to the shallow waters of the Nile.

(chuckles) My goodness, this is absolutely huge.

I wasn't expecting it to be so big. Hello.

Hi! Hi, are you Osama?

Please. Nice to meet you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Thank you so much. Please.

I will. Gosh, this is so beautiful.

What an amazing boat.

I've seen them in pictures, these,

but I've never actually had a chance to sail on one before.

Flat bottom boats like this have sailed up the Nile

for thousands of years.

In ancient Egypt,

the symbol for any kind of a journey was a boat.

This is our captain.

Hi, the captain. Hi, nice to meet you.

Hi, I'm Bettany. Welcome.

Thank you.

And this is your crew, is it?

Yeah. Hi, Gentlemen.

Hi, gentlemen. Hi, I'm Bettany.

The ancient Egyptians were a bit wary of ocean travel,

but when it came to the Nile they were in their element.

Let me show you you're cabin.

Cruises on dahabeahs like this

became popular 200 years ago,

as modern-day travelers fell under Egypt's spell.

It's pitch-black in here, everybody.

I'll open the curtains for you.

(gentle majestic music)

Oh, my goodness.

Hello, Nile. This is ridiculous.

What am I gonna tell my husband and my kids when I get home?

They think I'm working very hard.

This is your private terrace.

(chuckles) I've got my own little deck.

Oh, it's not bad, Osama.

I do really love this river.

The river Nile is actually the father of all other river,

all over the world. Yes.

This is what I think about the River Nile.

Yeah, well, it just created a whole world,

didn't it, the Nile?

There's no doubt. No. Amazing.

And I'm going to explore its secrets.

(gentle brooding music)

One thing you learned quickly in Egypt

is that it's smart to avoid the midday heat.

So, as dawn arrives the crew get ready to depart.

(dramatic music)

And as the sun appears we're on our way.

(majestic music)

The Nile united ancient Egyptians from north to south

and bank to bank.

I want to try to understand these people,

and the role this river played in all their lives.

And I'll be exploring the land

that first got me hooked on history.

Whenever I go traveling I always take one of these,

so I write notes on the places I've visited.

I bring quotes from ancient authors and sometimes photos.

But for this trip, I've been asked to include

some photos of myself and there's a reason for this.

I was five years old when I first saw the British Museum,

and it's amazing Tutankhamun exhibition.

That experience inspired me to write my first book.

This is "My Busy Book", by Bettany.

And this is my theory on why, and how, Tutankhamun died.

"Tutankhamun was a long time ago.

"He must have lots of men because he was rich,

"and he was very, very nice.

But one day some," spelled S-U-M,

"mosquitoes, that were very germy, bit him, and he died.

"Somebody buried the jewelry,

"and made doors for the jewelry,

"but after some men dug it up."

Obviously, archeologists.

"And lots and lots, and lots,

"and lots of people went to the museum,

"and on the television you can see it."

(gentle pensive music)

The story of Tutankhamun has captivated millions.

He's one of the reasons I became a historian.

I've been tipped off that this afternoon

something rather extraordinary is happening.

I've got an appointment

with one of the world's leading Egyptologists

at the Egyptian Museum.

I can't tell you how much this is my happy place,

because this museum is 5,000 square meters

and it's absolutely jam-packed with artifacts.

But even say there's not enough room for them all,

so they have to be stored out here in the courtyard.

(gentle upbeat music)

This magnificent museum holds 120,000 Egyptian antiquities.

Amongst them is the world's greatest collection

of royal coffins.

And this afternoon one of them is going to be opened

for a very rare glimpse of the mummy inside.

I think it's somewhere around here. I think.

Hi, Salima?

Hello! Hi!

Professor Salima Ikram and I

share a passion for the story of Egypt.

How lovely. I'm so pleased

that you could come.

Salima is a world expert in mummification.

And today I'm joining her team.

Their subject is 3,400 years old.

She's called Tjuyu

and she's no less than the great grandmother of Tutankhamun.

I've never actually seen her face. No, no.

'Cause this has not been opened for ages.

Salima needs to check on Tjuyu's body,

so her glass cabinet is being opened.

Her coffin lid will be removed.

And for the first time in years,

we'll be able to see her mummified.

Oh, my goodness. My heart is actually beating faster.

Why she's special inside, this is right,

and it's supposed to be one of the

best-preserved mummies. It is. Absolutely.

She is one of the best-preserved mummies that we have.

This is Tjuyu.

She was discovered two decades before her great-grandson.

When we look at her face,

do you think that could give us any genetic clues

as to what Tutankhamun looked like?

I think that would be quite possible

especially because they've got

the same set of teeth sticking out a bit.

What's really extraordinary is that she's not born royal.

There's a lot of social mobility.

I mean, she starts off quite common, just as a priestess,

and then she's in this splendid tomb

with all of this gold and stuff.

Amazing.

Can you smell that?

It smells like resins and incense.

It does.

So, look down here.

That's actually the resins

that are part of the mummification and burial ritual,

and they were poured over, and some of them are still...

You can see it must have been in a funny position

because of the way it's dribbled.

Wow.

Can I just have a moment to get this millennia-old smell?

That is amazing.

This is closer than anyone normally gets to Tjuyu.

Yeah, I think all of our conservators are ready.

(Salima speaks in foreign language)

It's time to see how the lady herself is faring.

Okay. All right.

(man speaks in foreign language)

(dramatic sweeping music)

Oh, my God!

Look at her!

She's magnificent.

She's so tiny and so perfect.

And look at her hair,

she's got this beautiful, thick head of curly,

kind of, strawberry blonde.

Is that the original color?

Well, we're not 100% sure,

but when you're using natron which we use for mummification,

it's a bleach.

So it's like putting salt on your hair

when you go to the beach.

And look at her.

She's got double pierced earrings.

She has.

She does have that Tutankhamun overbite.

She's even more beautiful than in her pictures.

By Tjuyu's time, mummification had been practiced

for at least 1,200 years.

That sophisticated process

of preparing and preserving the body

would have taken over two months to complete.

We know that she's a really fine example of mummification.

But how can you tell that?

What here tells you this is

a really, really, really good job?

Well, I mean, it's a totally, beautifully

well-preserved, recognizable face.

Completely. You can see her eyebrows and cheekbones.

Sometimes the nose goes a bit weird.

Yeah, but, she's got a little bit of stuffing,

she looks absolutely gorgeous.

The ears are so well preserved,

it's not broken, she's got her hair.

The kind of wrapping,

the individual wrapping of her tootsies is so perfect.

The fact that she's wearing sandals,

and really every care was taken with her.

And from the smell, you can also tell

that it was really good quality resins.

Okay, look this is really cool. Okay.

See? Look at her eyes. Yeah.

So what they did was,

they lifted the lids up and then they put in pieces of cloth

which they put a bit of resin onto

and made them look like eyes,

so that she can see things in her afterlife.

Just look at that face.

What she's seen, what she's lived through.

The world that she experienced.

My God, if she could talk, what she could tell us.

Salima will now check that the humidity of the museum

hasn't been affecting Tjuyu.

But the signs are, that well into her fourth millennium,

she's doing very well indeed.

Just to be that close to her face

it really makes you realize this was a woman, like me.

A woman who's had children,

who lived through a life,

and was now going really happily through death

to another world.

And I think you've gotta remember that.

That we think that mummies are something kind of grisly,

and gruesome, and scary.

But, for these people, this is the beginning

of the best after-party.

And whatever happened to her,

I hope that Tjuyu has been enjoying herself.

(gentle majestic music)

The eternal afterlife, and the detailed preparations for it,

make the ancient Egyptians endlessly fascinating.

But they weren't death-obsessed.

They were great lovers of life too.

From the Nile's water levels to the sun's movement,

and nature around them.

They made detailed observations

of the world that they lived in.

I've brought something slightly bizarre with me.

This is a replica of an ancient Egyptian hedgehog.

The ancient Egyptians loved hedgehogs.

They thought they were slightly magical

because they hibernated

and then seemed to come back to life.

They were very resilient against snake bites,

and so the hedgehog was a symbol of good luck.

And for good luck traveling the Nile

ancient boats would often carry an image of a hedgehog.

So while my friend keeps an eye on the boat,

I'm disembarking to investigate some monuments

that combine the Egyptian fascination with death,

with the pioneering work of living.

(gentle sweeping music)

It's difficult to imagine an ancient site

more iconic than the pyramids of Giza.

Just look at these incredible things.

However many times I see them,

I'm never not blown away by them.

They just pound with human ambition.

(gentle sweeping music continues)

The west bank of the Nile boasts over 100 pyramids,

but none are as famous as these.

They've been astounding onlookers for 4,500 years.

And recent discoveries

mean we're finally able to appreciate them properly.

We're so used to thinking these are desert monuments,

in a desert landscape

but when they were originally built

it would've been completely different around here.

So the Nile, now, is about five miles away.

But at the time it came right up close to the pyramids.

And when it flooded

they'd have been reflected in its glittering surface.

It's one of these structures, in particular,

I've come to see.

The Great Pyramid,

the eternal resting place of the pharaoh Khufu.

Scaling almost 500 feet,

its completion set new levels for human achievement.

It was the world's tallest structure for nearly 4,000 years.

This is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,

and it is the only one that is still standing intact.

I'm obviously a huge fan of the ancient world

and ancient civilizations,

and there are many amazing things across the globe,

but this, it is truly wonderful, isn't it?

There are 2.3 million blocks of stone here,

and each one has been perfectly sculpted

so it fits right next to its neighbor.

It's incredible.

The Great Pyramid took two decades to complete.

With its original polished, white limestone casing

it would have gleamed out in the Egyptian sun.

Exactly who built it, and how,

has been the subject of wild speculation for centuries.

It's been said that this was built

by aliens from outer space, but, thank goodness,

some new historical evidence has appeared

that tells us without a doubt

that this pyramid was made by human hand.

And it's this remarkable thing.

This is a copy of an ancient papyrus.

Found just six years ago in a cave near the Red Sea,

it's the 4,500-year-old journal of a man called Merer.

Now, Merer was no less than a project manager

for the Great Pyramid.

There is remarkable detail in here.

He's written down how they made this beautiful thing.

Down here there's a little line that tells us

that the limestone blocks that cover the pyramid,

that made it that amazing gleaming white,

were brought from 15 miles along the Nile.

Merer says it takes one day's sail

for this special stone to reach the site,

confirming the Nile's crucial role

in the pyramids' construction.

It's really a thrilling time to be studying the pyramids.

Professor Mark Lerner

has spent his career investigating the Giza Plateau.

So, if we'd been standing here 4,500 years ago

what would be the landscape that we'd be looking at?

You would have seen harbors and waterways.

And Nile barges coming in from Aswan bringing granite.

You would have seen seagoing ships

coming in from Lebanon bringing timber.

You would have had an multiethnic community here

and not just men. Men, women, families.

It was a busy bustling scene,

with fires, and bakeries, and butchers.

It's almost like a whole civilization culture,

that's growing around the creation of the pyramid.

They conscripted people

from towns and villages all throughout Egypt.

Then they come here and they are embedded and integrated

into a project that involves tens of thousands of people.

So, I'm still interested

in how the Egyptians built the pyramids.

But I'm almost more interested, Bettany,

in how the pyramids helped to build Egypt.

Building the world's first skyscraper

was a transformational moment in human history.

The city of workers that settled here

collaborated in a game-changing way,

and with Mark's help,

I'm getting a privileged look behind the scenes,

to get a glimpse of their remarkable world.

(gentle majestic music)

So, welcome to our field lab.

Wow. Thank you so much for letting me in here.

For the past 30 years, thousands of artifacts found at Giza

have been brought here to be assessed

and studied in the archeologists' storeroom.

You can see it's much bigger

than you would think from outside.

One of the things we find all over the site

are what we call dolerite hammerstones.

Here.

Oh! (Bettany laughs)

Yeah. Oh!

I knew it was gonna be heavy.

I didn't know it was gonna be that heavy.

That's actually straining my arms.

Yeah. That's like a cannonball.

That's really heavy. Well, when they started

using it, it is like a cannonball.

But when they started it was probably pear-shaped,

and they just use it to smash stone surfaces away,

and then they'll turn it, they keep turning it,

so, in the end, they get kind of a ball shape.

In Mark's latest excavation

he's found remarkable evidence

of how the people constructing the pyramid lived.

And what they ate.

We found this enormous dump,

and it was so much animal bones sheep, and goat, and cattle.

Yeah.

And there was something very curious about it.

Whenever we separate out the good meat bearing bones,

we find that the ends are broken off.

Two of our Egyptian field school students said,

"Oh, that's easy. It's shorba kaware."

Which is Arabic for like gelatine soup, knuckle bone soup,

and the evidence is that somebody, elites,

people of higher status, were eating the meat

off the long, good meat bearing parts of the bone.

But people of lower status are eating very high fat,

high protein knuckle bone soup.

Mark's found the casseroles

this soup was served in.

It's so beautiful, that.

And even their bespoke stands.

It's almost like a Tupperware set.

So, actually, it seems like they're getting

a pretty good diet.

Indeed.

That casserole is interesting

'cause that's just like a family-size casserole.

But are they mass-producing food as well?

They were making your standard,

average kitchen bread mold, and bread loaf.

And then, if I may, over here.

They were increasing it.

They were reaching for economy of scale,

by making these gigantic bread molds.

Yeah, yeah.

Take a feel.

Oh, my gosh.

That is quite a responsibility.

You can have it back. Thank you.

But the big picture here

is that they didn't have bread factories.

They were creating the world's first bread factory.

It's all a long way from the stereotype

of sweating slaves, toiling away under the pharaoh's whip.

Even the tiniest finds are captivating.

These are tubular beads.

We find these beads everywhere.

Look at the color. It's such a tiny little thing.

But, I mean, who's wearing these?

And we're finding them in the workers' barracks,

right where we find all the big heavy dolerite pounders.

So what, are you pounding stone

as you're wearing your beaded nugget?

We don't know.

(gentle pensive music)

Finds like these speak volumes,

helping to jigsaw puzzle together a picture of life

for those at the bottom of the pile.

Upstream though,

I'm about to witness the terrifying power of the pharaoh,

as I adventure right inside a very special pyramid.

(gentle sweeping music)

So I've said goodbye to Cairo, and we're off,

and it's 500 miles of the Nile to come.

From here to the southern city of Aswan

my riverboat will be following in the footsteps

of pharaohs, warriors, and traders.

But this journey was also made by tourists of the past,

and their vessel of choice was the dahabeah.

I'm still a bit embarrassed by the luxury of this boat,

but, actually, it is quite appropriate

for how people used to sail down the Nile.

Dahabeah gets its name from the Arabic word dahab

which means golden

because these boats were supposed to be so luxurious.

And we have amazing accounts

of 18th and 19th-century travelers who used them.

Let me just tell you of some things they brought on.

So one packed 100 bottles of wine, champagne,

a piano for entertainment

and there was even a British family

who brought their own cow

so that they could have fresh milk every morning.

(gentle music)

These cruises could last for months

on a river famed, from ancient times onwards,

for its hidden and unexpected dangers.

Hi, boys. Is everything okay?

Oh, my God.

There's somebody down in the Nile down here. Look.

Two of them.

What's happening, Mohammad?

We have a very shallow water.

Yeah.

And one of the ropes go around the paddle.

Okay.

It seems that the tug boat

that helps pull the dahabeah along

has got stuck on one of the Nile's many sandbanks.

Its tow rope is now wrapped around its propeller.

(water splashing)

Tim, our cameraman,

he's decided to go in and see if he can help.

(water bubbling)

(water splashing)

(gentle music)

There's loads of people just doing that classic thing

when something bad happens,

they're just sort of standing around.

The Nile is such a perilous river.

So there are sandbanks and cataracts.

But, isn't it interesting, that this can still happen?

You get the feeling this isn't the first time

the crew have dealt with something like this.

It's all very new to us though, especially Tim.

You know the funniest thing, Bettany?

What?

Like a plonker, I left my wallet.

(both laughing)

(gentle upbeat music)

But with the propeller freed,

and some British cash drying in the sun, we're on our way.

10 miles south of Cairo,

I'm heading to the fast royal burial ground of Saqqara.

But first, there's just time to share with you

one of the biggest breakthroughs ever

in our understanding of ancient Egypt.

The people who lived around the Nile valley

were some of the very first to do an incredible thing.

They put their spoken language into something

that could be recorded, a writing,

and of course, that's amazing for us historians

because we get to understand their lives, and how they lived

and what mattered to them.

Now, of course, the language that they used

was Egyptian hieroglyphics which is very beautiful,

but the problem is

that we lost the ability to translate it for centuries,

which is one of the reasons that the ancient Egyptians

were such a mysterious civilization.

Then, in 1799, there was the most amazing discovery

on the Nile Delta.

It was this thing.

This is the Rosetta Stone.

In 1882 the real Rosetta Stone was snaffled by the Brits

and ended up in the British Museum in London.

Covered in writing

it's been a vital key to understanding ancient Egypt.

Because it's got two languages on it,

so Egyptian and ancient Greek,

it means it can act as a kind of codebreaker.

The problem was, of course,

that people could read ancient Greek

but not the Egyptian hieroglyphics.

And there was this race on between France and England

to see who could crack the code first.

Sorry to say the French won.

And what they did was that they found this word, here,

which in Greek says day of birth or birthday.

"Genethlia."

And they matched that up with this hieroglyphic here,

which says birthday too.

So at once, we could start to piece together

the story of the ancient Egyptians in their own words.

This is the thing that stopped the Egyptians

being a mystery and meant that they were people

that we could really get to know intimately.

And there's a prime example of that

at my next stop along the Nile.

(mysterious upbeat music)

They were building pyramids here at Saqqara

a whole century before Giza.

I've come to find one of Saqqara's hidden gems.

And I'm gonna need some desert transport.

Hello, sir.

Hello, lady.

Hi. Hi. Nice to meet you.

Nice to see you. Hello!

You and your beautiful camel.

What's his name?

Ramesses II.

Ramesses II?

So a very powerful pharaoh.

How old? 10 years.

10 years!

Oh, you're so gorgeous, aren't you?

Oh! Hello, darling! Hello!

Oh!

Oh, lovely!

Kiss you. Kissing me,

and a little bit of camel slobber in my ear.

Yeah, of course. I've missed that feeling.

Hello!

Yes. Oh!

Oh and camel slobber on my cheek! That's beautiful.

He's very, very lovely. Thank you.

But sadly I'm not gonna be going on this camel today.

Thank you.

Thank you so, so much. You're welcome.

I'd love to say

that I'm doing this Lawrence of Arabia moment,

gonna travel across the desert on a camel.

But the problem is when the pyramids were first built,

there were no camels here, we think.

There's no evidence of them, there are no bones,

there's no camels in hieroglyphs.

It took another 2,000 years or so for them to come here,

but at the time of the first pyramids,

hello, good afternoon, sir.

what you did have was a donkey.

Hello! Hello.

Lovely to meet you. Thank you.

Lovely to see you.

This morning,

my authentic Bronze Age desert transport

is called Whisky And Soda.

I'm not sure they had stirrups then

but, you know, in the name of security I can do this.

One, two. Okay. Okay. Two, three.

Three. Oh!

Oh, oh! (laughs)

Yeah, yeah. Okay? Lovely. Oh, perfect.

I'm excited! Shall we go? (speaks in foreign language)

(man speaks in foreign language)

Bye, Ramesses.

See you in 2,000 years!

Bye!

Come on, darling. Up you go.

Oh, she's great, isn't she? (laughs)

She's just a natural historian. She wants to get there.

This empty desert landscape would once have played host

to massive funeral processions

as dead pharaohs were carried to their show-off

newly designed tombs, pyramids.

This is the very first pyramid ever built.

It's the Step Pyramid.

So you've got a tomb laid out at the bottom,

and then the pharaoh decided to build another one on top

and another one and another one,

so it becomes like some kind of massive wedding cake.

Can see it as a kind of experiment, really.

It's when they're going,

"I'm the most powerful man on Earth.

"Look at me! I can reach up to the sky.

"I can reach up to the gods."

What I've come to see, though, is another first for Egypt

on the other side of the Step Pyramid.

Thank you.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you, darling.

You've been beautiful.

(dramatic sweeping music)

These are the sorry ruins of the pyramid

built for the pharaoh Unas.

People are being allowed back in here

for the first time in two decades

because it wasn't safe and there was restoration work done.

When it was built 4,350 years ago,

this was the smallest pyramid of its era.

But it was a game-changer.

This is an extra special treat for me

because this is the first time

since I've been coming to Egypt

that I've been allowed in.

Hi, how are you?

I'm very good. You're from where?

London. London, welcome.

Nice to see you. Thank you.

So you've got the key to go in?

Yes. Amazing. Thank you.

(eerie music)

The unique treasure of Unas' pyramid is found underneath it.

Amazing. Thank you. (speaks in foreign language)

Wow! Pitch-black in here.

This 30-meter tunnel is leading me

right under the center of the pyramid.

Three granite slabs once blocked this passage,

separating the outside world

from the burial chambers of Unas.

Oh, my goodness!

This is so beautiful!

I've seen pictures of this, but I've never been in here.

Floor to ceiling,

you've got the walls covered in hieroglyphs.

Look at the state of them! They're so beautifully preserved.

This was the first pyramid ever to be decorated

in carved hieroglyphic writing.

Ritual spells for the dead.

Unas was I'd say a man with quite an ego,

and we can tell this here because this is his name.

So here this is the name of Unas.

It's in what's called a cartouche,

which is French for a bullet.

It's a kind of bullet-shaped thing.

And once you start to look (laughs)

you can see the name of Unas absolutely everywhere!

So it's Unas, Unas, Unas, Unas, Unas. It just goes on.

And I don't know if you can see here,

there's another symbol that keeps on appearing.

It's these waves of water.

So there are two here. There's one here.

There's one here, there's one here, there's one here.

The importance of water and rivers couldn't be clearer.

One spell even claims,

"Unas is he who has caused the land to be underwater."

Not only did Unas tell us

that he was the most powerful king,

but that he had divine powers, and what he's saying here

is that it's him who caused the Nile itself to flood.

These hieroglyphs don't always make for pleasant reading.

They show that the ancient Egyptians

often blended brilliance with brutality.

He says that he holds the hearts of his enemies

in his fingers, that he burns their houses to the ground.

But there's something else,

and, actually, if you read it, it's really shocking.

It's really upsetting

because it's Unas using his sex a weapon.

It says that Unas copulates with his penis.

Unas is lord of his seed.

Unas takes the wives of husbands whenever he wants,

whenever his heart desires.

This is not a man

that I would have liked to have met in the flesh,

and it seems as though he's no longer here,

we don't have his body,

but there's something that's recently been discovered.

That if you look on the wall,

don't know if you can see that,

there indented in is the ghost of Unas.

So he's still here with us.

(gentle mysterious music)

Unas has left a mighty legacy and, along the Nile,

there are other treasures that are still as vibrant today

as they have been for thousands of years.

The River Nile has always been the lifeblood of Egypt,

and I'm exploring the sites and the people

who made up a great civilization along its banks.

The many sites and treasures around Cairo are behind me.

And this is my first taste of a much quieter river.

(majestic sweeping music)

Is that okay? (speaks in foreign language)

Are you sure?

Bakkar has been working on dahabeahs

since he was 12 years old.

I've done a bit of sailing too,

but never anything like this.

So I'm sort of hopelessly trying to help with the tiller.

It's quite hard, this river.

It's a difficult river to sail on.

Yes.

So how old are you?

(Bakkar speaks in foreign language)

And the rest of your family

have all worked on boats, have they?

(Bakkar speaks in foreign language)

Okay.

Is it your plan to become a captain?

Yes.

Very good! Yes.

We are actually heading into the bank now.

Sorry, I'm really sorry!

I was pulling the wrong rope!

This is getting us in the right direction, isn't it?

Good.

Argh!

2,500 years ago,

Egypt was described as the gift of the Nile.

And that's not changed.

Life just bursts out of the banks.

You can see why the ancients called Egypt

the red land for the desert

and the black land for the fertile strips along the river.

This is a really lovely typical Nile scene

with farm animals and palm trees and reeds

and, actually, if you start to look,

you'll see that there are people everywhere

because, in Egypt, 96% of the population

live near or next to the Nile.

And that's because there's just so little waterfall here.

This river really is the source of life for Egypt.

And, actually, the water in this river,

almost all of it comes from 1,500 miles south

in the Ethiopian Highlands.

For thousands of years, the rainy season in the Highlands

led to Egypt's annual flood.

By late summer, the water level here

could have risen eight or nine meters, feeding the valley.

(upbeat music)

It was food nourished by the Nile

that powered a great civilization.

And the crew have tipped me off that right now

is the time for harvesting an ancient Egyptian crop

still being fed by the Nile's waters, dates.

They've been cultivating dates here for over 6,000 years,

always fed by the waters of the Nile.

The ancient Egyptians used dates for everything.

For building, for furniture, for food,

for magic, for medicine,

and it was said that the date was the bread of the desert.

(gentle music)

From Stone Age coffins made of date palm leaves

to dates themselves left as offerings in the Step Pyramid,

and even for Tutankhamun himself.

This fruit has been the superfood of ancient Egypt

since the very beginning.

The reason is simple,

dates can be dried, stored, and carried across the desert.

In bad times as well as good,

dates have kept this civilization going.

They're a super-food in the modern sense, too.

they're full of fiber and potassium

and, it's said, can even lower blood pressure.

Morning, girls.

But if you want to taste a truly fresh date,

you've gotta be here at harvest time.

Eat it? Is it nice?

Okay, here we go. First fresh date.

Slightly grubby.

Hoo-hoo!

No, not sweet.

Quite bitter, but very good.

Very nice and completely white on the inside.

Thank you. (speaks in foreign language) ladies.

(Bettany speaks in foreign language)

(gentle sweeping music)

The date harvest was always an excuse for a good time,

for weddings and family get-togethers,

and it's still the case today.

Well done.

And he's learning. You're teaching him.

Yeah. Be a good captain one day.

You will.

Tonight, some of the crew have invited me to join them.

This looks delicious. Have you got some?

For a feast of traditional dishes.

Is this hummus?

I love this. Yeah, hummus.

We think that we invented the idea of superfoods.

I love the notion that the ancient Egyptians

actually got there first.

And in a way, the date was the fuel

of ancient Egyptian civilization

and whether you were an all-powerful pharaoh

or one of those workers who labored away

to build the Giza pyramids,

you knew that you lived in a land of plenty,

and we know that on beautiful nights like this

under a full moon, men and women would get together

to share and celebrate the gifts of the Nile,

as we are tonight.

I can't eat another date, I've had so many! (laughs)

It's nice.

I know, it is better for you than the biscuit.

Next time, I'm on the trail of Cleopatra.

I'll brave the longest tomb in Egypt.

The only thing I don't like are small dark spaces.

Excuse me.

Thank you.

And I'll discover how mummification

wasn't just for humans.

Its eye-sockets are staring at me across 2,000 years.

(gentle majestic music)