Original subtitles

(gentle music)

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)

The pyramids and crowds of Cairo are behind me,

and I've reached a stretch of the Nile

that hides some of the river's best-kept secrets.

(knuckles rapping)

Hi. Hello.

How are you? Fine, thank you.

You good?

Do you think I could get a cup of tea?

We're now 100 miles into our journey upstream.

Lovely. Thank you, Shukran.

Fantastic. Thank you so much.

See you later.

(gentle music)

The lives of the ancient Egyptians are always intriguing.

But I was first drawn here by one of Egypt's superstars.

There's one character who constantly fascinates me.

It's Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt

whose beauty and charisma was said

to have brought the most powerful men

on earth to their knees.

And she used this river

to captivate and control the ancient world.

(dramatic music)

For the next 200 miles,

I'll be exploring the Nile that Cleopatra herself loved.

I'll enter the hidden chambers

that inspired history's most celebrated archeologist,

brave the longest tomb in Egypt,

and, at Dendera, come face-to-face with Cleopatra herself.

My dahabeah boat is pretty gorgeous,

but it doesn't come close to the luxury and excess

of Cleopatra's own Nile processions 2,000 years ago.

This is an artist's impression

of one of the royal barges that sailed down the Nile.

The barge was equipped with gold and ivory furnishings,

with embroidered sails, even with gardens.

What a sight it would have been.

So, you can just imagine Cleopatra standing

on the brow of her deck, her auburn hair,

probably dyed with local henna, blowing in the wind,

oiled with perfumed oils,

queen of all she surveyed.

(mysterious music)

Cleopatra came to the throne aged just 18.

She was the last great pharaoh of ancient Egypt.

By her reign from 51 B.C.,

Egypt had enjoyed a 2,000-year reputation

as the land of ideas, inventions, and mystery.

And my first stop would have been a hotbed of activity

when Cleopatra was in power.

We've decided not to take the easy tarmacked road,

but to go off onto the local road, which is great.

I've left the comfort of my boat,

and I'm heading over the floodplains

of the Nile Valley and out across the desert.

(bright music)

My God, it's hot.

Very hot in there.

This is Tuna el-Gebel,

one of Egypt's most intriguing ancient sites.

I've enlisted the help of Sayed,

who's faithfully guarded this place since he was a boy.

It looks obviously deserted now.

I mean, we've driven two hours

across the desert to get here.

But in its heyday,

this place would have been absolutely humming with activity.

That's right, isn't it, Sayed?

This was a big town? A big town, yes.

Huge town with two-story buildings

and a real destination place.

And, actually, at the time of Cleopatra,

it was at its height.

(dramatic music)

The old town has virtually vanished today.

But the curious treasures of Tuna el-Gebel are locked away

and found deep below ground.

(people chattering)

So, how far down does this go?

About 15 meters.

15 meters? 15 meters.

Gosh. So we're going deep into the bedrock here?

Yes.

We're entering a vast catacomb.

Archeologists haven't fully explored it yet,

but these passageways are thought to extend for 4 1/2 miles.

What an extraordinary place.

So, this is, it's like a sort of textbook necropolis.

It's like a city of the dead down here.

But this wasn't built as a resting place for humans.

It was for animals.

Oh, my goodness.

So, there are bones all over the floor,

so we've got to tread very, very, very carefully.

(bats chittering)

Oh, my God. And bats.

Yes.

(both laughing)

You could have warned me about the bats.

Sorry, I just saw something moving,

and I wasn't sure what it was.

(dramatic music)

Originally, each of the animals here

would have been carefully mummified.

But precious few remain today.

So what I'm about to see is quite amazing.

If I can just get the gate open. (laughing)

Oh, that door hasn't been opened for a while.

I'm about to come face-to-face

with one extraordinary creature

that's rested here for around 2,300 years.

(dramatic music)

This is a slightly strange thing to see,

because there are so many fragments of mummies here,

but what you've got is a mummified baboon.

You can see the wrappings,

and it's really unusual to have the skull open.

It's slightly freaking me out the way

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

(dramatic music)

There were centers like this across Egypt producing mummies

of every animal imaginable,

from dogs and cats to crocodiles.

and Tuna el-Gebel's speciality, the beautiful ibis.

This ancient Nile bird, like the baboon,

was regarded as highly intelligent by the Egyptians.

The perfect offering for Thoth,

their god of wisdom and invention.

It does feel like a real privilege to be here,

because, originally, only priests and the cult servants

of Ibis were allowed down

in the corridors of these catacombs.

So, you just have to try to imagine them in their heyday,

lit with tallow lights, soot on the walls

and over the ceilings, and in every single one

of these niches, a perfectly preserved mummy.

We think that around 15,000 new mummies

were dedicated every year,

so that means there'd have been a total of two million here.

The reason it was so popular is that people really believed

that this was a way

that they could communicate with the gods.

(dramatic music)

Some brand-new research suggests

there's a twist in this macabre tale.

There have actually been some X-rays done

of some of the animals that were mummified.

And I don't know if you can see.

It's often quite hard to read this, but by looking inside,

we know exactly what kind of animal was being wrapped up.

Here's a dog.

And this is an ibis.

You can see that amazing curved beak coming down.

The bird is wrapped very tightly up.

But then there was a surprise

with quite a few of the mummies,

that when they did the X-ray, if you can make that out,

you can see, actually, there isn't an animal inside.

What there is, is padding and stones

and mummification wadding.

So it's almost like a kind of,

I can't really say fake, but a pretend mummy.

Pretend or not, though,

the fate of most animal mummies has sadly been the same.

And responsibility for that stretches back home to Britain.

When lots were discovered in the 18th and 19th centuries,

because they're made of organic material,

they were actually shipped out of Egypt

to Europe and the U.K.

and ground down and used as fertilizer.

And we've got one account of 20 tons' worth

of cat mummies being used as fertilizer

when it was brought into Liverpool in the U.K.

(dramatic music)

The ancient Egyptians would have been horrified

at this act of destruction.

The scale of animal mummification shows

how much this strange ritual mattered to them.

So my next step is to better understand the mechanics

of how mummies were made.

And a warning, it's not for the fainthearted.

(mysterious music)

On this stretch of my Nile journey,

I've caught just a glimpse

of the ancient Egyptian custom of mummifying animals.

In November 2018, a remarkable discovery was made,

dozens of perfectly mummified cats,

all laid to rest close to the pyramids of Saqqara.

It's now thought 70 million animals

may have been mummified in ancient Egypt,

but how did the process actually work?

It's something Professor Salima Ikram

is actively investigating.

Okay, Bettany, roll.

I will. Certainly.

Got it. Thank you so much.

I should perhaps explain what we're doing here.

Salima is an incredibly eminent Egyptologist,

and this is her lab.

And what she does here, if I'm right in saying,

is, one of the things that you do is investigate

the mummification of animals in particular.

Is that a kind of fair summary?

Absolutely.

Salima and Egyptology student Haley

are finishing off a rather unusual experiment.

When Haley's pet cat very sadly passed away,

she was keen that Salima and herself try to preserve her

as the ancient Egyptians would have done.

She was called Hatshepsut.

She's adorable.

Look, she's absolutely lovely.

A real Egyptian cat, that.

There's no mistaking that. Yeah.

So, if we were putting our heads

into the kind of minds of the ancient Egyptians,

you're doing this because the soul

of the creature is in its body,

so this is a way of kind of preserving the life spirit.

Absolutely.

Okay, so, now I'm going to give you this,

and you are going to.

Mummification was totally mainstream

for the ancient Egyptians,

but it involves skills and techniques

that have now been lost, so this experiment,

I should point out, is not for the fainthearted.

I'm a great cat lover.

Also a vegetarian.

Oh.

So a tiny bit squeamish around this kind of thing.

Eight weeks ago, Hatshepsut's organs were removed,

just as they would have been thousands of years ago,

before the drying-out process began.

This looks like a pile of sand, and it's not.

It's a very specialist material called natron?

Natron. Yeah. Natron, natron.

Which is what the ancient Egyptians used in mummification.

It's the main thing that they used to mummify

because it desiccates and it defats.

It sort of (slurping) sucks it all out.

Well, parts of her are very dry,

and other parts aren't that dry.

Now we put in.

Ooh, yeah.

There we go. Oh, golly.

I just got this waft of dead cat.

For the first time in my life,

I'm preferring the smell of plastic laboratory gloves.

Mm-hmm. What's that in there?

That's a natron bag.

'Cause you put it inside to suck out the wetness.

Yeah.

Any remaining moisture could lead to rotting over time.

It's fair to say our skills and techniques have a way to go

to match those of the ancient Egyptians.

Now, this is some resin, just like this stuff here.

And is that frankincense? Yes.

Smells lovely. Mm-hmm.

And that's been boiling up gently with some oil.

So we're going to put some into the body cavity.

Right.

Resins like this had antibacterial properties

which could help preserve a body for thousands of years.

It smells amazing 'cause there's frankincense in there.

Smells like we're in a church at Christmastime, doesn't it?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, now what we're going to do is,

I think we can start to wrap.

Lovely.

(bright music)

Each limb of the body was individually bound in linen.

This is an awkward angle. Yeah.

And I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to deal with it.

And we use the resins also to hold it down.

Doing this must give you huge respect

for those embalmers, mummifiers of antiquity.

They must have been astonishing people

and really very clever chemists to understand

what they were doing and how it affected the body

and how amazingly effective, really, it was.

It's a lovely, if slightly curious, thing.

But as a fitting end to the day,

Haley writes an epitaph in hieroglyphs.

It simply reads, "Beautiful cat. Hatshepsut."

(gentle upbeat music)

Here, in Egypt, the heat can be so intense,

the cooling waters of the Nile often look pretty tempting.

So, today, the crew and I threw caution to the winds.

Whoo-hoo! Next.

And decided to go for it.

Thank you.

Hello, Captain.

Hi.

(laughs) Shall I dive in?

(people laughing)

(gentle music)

We're now 180 miles south of Cairo

and heading towards another part of the Nile Valley

that very few people reach.

It's a spot that first inspired

the world's most famous archeologist.

You probably all know that Howard Carter discovered the tomb

of Tutankhamen in 1922

and kick-started a whole new wave of Egyptomania.

But Carter actually first came here to Egypt

when he was just a teenager.

He was invited here to do drawings of an archeological dig

that was taking place on the hills

overlooking these banks of the Nile.

Carter may be known as the great tomb finder,

but as a young lad growing up in rural Norfolk,

he'd earn pocket money painting portraits of animals.

And it was this skill that brought him here.

30 years before Carter captured

the world's attention with Tutankhamen,

his love affair with Egypt began

at the cemetery of Beni Hasan.

You might not have heard of Beni Hasan,

and, actually, hardly anybody comes here,

but that is completely crazy,

because this place deserves to be a household name.

In many ways, this is Egypt's best-kept secret.

200 feet above the east bank of the Nile,

there are dozens of tombs here cut into the cliff face

so that those buried within could spend eternity

overlooking the sacred river.

It's really thrilling coming here today,

and you can only imagine

what it must have felt like for Howard Carter.

He was only 17, and he'd been brought up

in damp, rainy England,

so all of this must have felt

like a kind of desert wonderland.

Salam.

Hi. Morning.

Hello.

This is a tomb complex that belongs to a.

Thank you very much.

To a kind of high-class local official

who was sort of the equivalent of a mayor.

Inside is some

of the most awe-inspiring wall art found anywhere in Egypt.

(dramatic music)

And when you come in, you can understand

why the archeologists needed an artist's help.

So, just look at these paintings.

These are close on 4,000 years old,

and those colors are completely true.

The vivid paintings give us an invaluable insight

into what everyday life was like.

And, of course, the Nile is at the heart of it all.

So, you might just be able to see here.

There's a poor guy who's fallen into the Nile,

and he's being rescued by his friends.

This lovely chap here on his beautiful papyrus boat.

He's a fisherman, and he's spearing a massive fish.

Here is a hippo.

There were loads of hippos in the Nile 4,000 years ago,

so that's quite right that there should be a hippo here.

Everywhere you look, you can see there are images

of the Nile and fish and water and people interreacting

with the life on the Nile.

As a teenager, in 1891,

Howard Carter's job was to make perfect copies

of these very images to show people back home

the wonderful discoveries that were being made.

I've got one of the watercolors that he did here.

See if I can find it.

So, this is an African spoonbill.

And somewhere.

Up here, there's birds, I think.

Yeah, I think that's it, isn't it?

So, this is the watercolor that Howard Carter did.

I mean, just imagine

how exciting it would have been for him.

He's 17 years old, and he's come here.

We know he's sleeping in here overnight, and at dawn,

he gets up and gets his paintbrushes out.

Amazing.

(gentle music)

Carter spent one winter season here

before traveling upstream

to join a new team of archeologists,

where he was given his first real chance to dig.

I really do love this place,

and not only does it give us

the most amazingly vivid details for ancient Egyptian life,

but it inspired a young Howard Carter

to become an archeologist who would go on

to make one of the greatest discoveries

in the story of Egyptology.

which means we can all share his passion

and his discoveries today.

(gentle music)

One of the thrills of Egypt for me is

that new discoveries are constantly being made.

And there's a really special one waiting

just along the Nile from here.

(gentle music)

I'm traveling the Nile to understand

how this river shaped ancient Egypt.

But a slow dahabeah cruise isn't a bad way

to discover modern Egypt, too.

You did it.

Well done, guys.

Well done. That's good.

So, this happens a lot.

You get kids and fishermen who try to hook

onto the boat so that they can get a lift.

Think they're getting told off a bit

by the sailors up on the top.

Aw! They've been told to go.

(gentle music)

Just over 2,000 years ago,

this river was Egypt's main highway.

Traveling along it, you might have seen, or even smelled,

the sensational ruler who made this river her own.

One of the stories that we hear about Cleopatra is

that she used to soak the sails of her barges in perfume

so that people would smell her arriving before they saw her.

One of the sources of Cleopatra's fabled scent

was an icon of the ancient Nile Valley,

the beautiful blue lotus flower.

Ancient accounts tell us

that the waters of the Nile were once thick

with these flowers, whose potent properties were legendary

across the known world.

But, sadly, this symbol

of ancient Egypt is now almost extinct.

(bright music)

10 miles into the desert though,

there are rumors of a revival.

(engine puttering)

Locals are always keen to help,

and I've hitched a lift with Achmed

and his motorbike to meet a living legend.

Oh. Thank you so much for the lift.

No problem.

Oh, excuse me.

Thank you.

Shukran, thanks for the lift.

Thank you. Take care.

There were ancient cities up and down the Nile

that specialized in perfume production,

and I've just been told

that there's one very brave, independent woman

who's trying to revive that ancient tradition

by herself here, out in the middle of the desert.

(gentle music)

Hello.

This wonderful oasis is the passion project

of Dr. Mervat Nasser.

Hello. How lovely to see you.

Hello. You made it.

I did make it.

My gosh. Properly across the desert.

I didn't realize you were quite so remote,

but what a little bit of paradise you have here.

Thank you.

For six years now, Dr. Mervat has been trying

to bring the magic of the blue lotus back to Egypt.

I managed, in the end, to find the bulbs,

and I grew the bulbs, and it's, here we are.

Why were they thought of as special flowers?

One of the creation myths in ancient Egypt is

that life came out of a lotus flower.

It opens up by sunrise, and then it closes down

and disappears into the water by sunset.

So, the following day, there is another flower coming out.

So this kind of continuous cycle of renewal, of rebirth,

of resurrection, I think that was what is symbolic.

1,300 years before Cleopatra,

thousands of these petals were even found

in Tutankhamen's tomb.

But, today, you've got to come a long way

just to find a few.

If you don't cut it, it will actually disappear

into the water, and it will not come back again.

The blue lotus was said

to smell like the god Ra's sweat.

An interesting claim I can now test for myself.

Shukran. Shukran.

How amazing to be given a freshly picked blue lotus.

Oh, that is truly beautiful.

It's very subtle.

Very subtle, but you feel like you want

to kind of draw it into your whole body.

I wasn't expecting that.

That's amazing. And the color.

I can see now why they say it's like having the sun

in the center of a flower.

But is there more to the blue lotus

than just beauty and a wonderful smell?

I think it's also had an effect on the mood,

so it made people feel happier.

Recent studies have claimed

that the flower has hallucinogenic properties.

The ancient Egyptians also observed this

and used the lotus as the original party drug.

But, I can tell you, it also makes a rather good cup of tea.

Mm. Oh, it's so lovely.

And we know the ancient Egyptians turned the petals

into a highly-fragranced oil.

It's tragic that this enchanting flower

has almost entirely gone from Egypt.

But if Dr. Mervat has anything to do with it,

it might just flourish here again.

When you study the ancient Egyptian world,

you always hear about the popularity of perfumes,

and there was one that was actually called the Egyptian.

And I have to say, as a historian,

I've always been really cynical.

But do you know what?

Coming here and being on the boat

for weeks is very drying for the hair,

so this beautiful little gift of lotus oil,

I've been putting on my hair,

so I now understand

what those ancient Egyptian women went through,

and lotus oil is definitely the solution.

(upbeat music)

We're now 300 miles upstream from Cairo

and on our way to one of the most sacred sites

in the whole of Egypt.

I'm leaving the crew to a hearty Egyptian breakfast,

while I make the short journey inland

to the ancient city of Abydos.

(gentle music)

This has been a place of pilgrimage

since the very dawn of their civilization.

5,000 years ago, when the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt

were first united, the length of the Nile under one pharaoh,

Abydos was the center of this new superpower.

I've come to this temple to see a wonder

that gives incredible insight to the Egyptian world,

a chronological list of 76 pharaohs.

Apart from being exquisitely beautiful,

parts of the temple are like a giant history book laid out.

And that's what you've got here on the wall.

This thing is called the Kings List,

and what it's supposed to be is a list

of all the rulers of Egypt right from the very beginning.

So, the very first king that we have listed here

is a kind of mythical pharaoh called Narmer,

and that's his cartouche at the top.

(gentle music)

The Kings List is the ancient Egyptians

telling their own story.

In fact, it's the sole source we have

for many of the pharaohs and their families.

Actually, it's interesting,

because not all the kings are listed here.

It's really history that's been censored.

So there are some whole dynasties who are left out.

Tutankhamen, for instance, appears nowhere on this wall.

But there's one particular guy that I'm interested in.

Where is he? He's here.

Obviously not the most beautiful one on the wall.

There's a gigantic gash in the middle of it.

But this is Pharaoh Senwosret III.

And there is a particular reason

why I want to get to know Senwosret better,

because I've just been invited to go into his tomb.

Though he isn't a household name,

Senwosret III ruled 3,900 years ago.

His tomb is found on the outskirts of Abydos.

(people chattering)

The archeologist who's agreed

to take me there has unearthed

some of the most majestic sites in Egypt.

Hi.

How are you? Yeah, good.

Nice to see you. Welcome to Abydos.

Thank you so much.

His name is Yasser Razik.

Yeah, amazing.

It's very exciting.

Very exciting.

Yeah.

Oh, my God. Is it Achmed?

Hello. Welcome.

Hello! Welcome back.

How lovely to see you! Welcome back again.

Me too. Thank you.

Welcome back.

Oh, we were together here five years ago.

Really? Yes.

What a beautiful day.

A new tomb, an old friend. (laughs)

Achmed, how are your family?

Is everybody well? Is it good?

(Achmed speaking in foreign language)

15? Yes.

Is it true? (laughing)

He's joking.

Oh, it's too early in the morning.

(upbeat music)

Now we have almost arrived to the tomb.

Okay.

Senwosret's tomb is hidden under this 700-foot mountain,

and, until recently, was buried beneath 50 feet of sand.

So, it would be better if you wear a boot or something.

Yes, yeah, no. I brought my boots.

Now, what are the conditions like inside?

It's very hot, totally hot, inside the tomb,

and it's slippery in some places and totally dangerous.

Totally dangerous.

Totally dangerous.

This tomb is closed for the public,

so this is a special visit for you.

Thank you. Well, thank you.

As long as you stay close.

(laughing) Okay. Thank you. Shakrun.

A long time since anybody's been in here.

Senwosret's astonishing burial place

is entirely underground.

It stretches for 800 feet, making it Egypt's longest tomb.

(Yasser puffs)

As long as it's easier to get out than to get in.

(gentle music)

Hey! Thank you, man.

Well done.

I like the fact that these tombs were built

to defeat all robbers,

and they're still managing to defeat us today.

Watch your step. I will.

So, is it really, really hot down there?

Yeah. Okay.

It's very hot inside, yeah.

I think I might leave my scarf.

And if we get lost,

they'll know there's somebody down there.

They'll know that's yours. Exactly.

It's our sign.

One modern staircase is all we get

before the bare stone and the dark takes over.

I'm so glad we've got this torch.

Did I tell you the only thing

I don't like is small dark spaces?

That's the only thing that freaks me out.

Is that safe? Yeah, it's, but don't.

Yeah. Don't jump on it too hard.

Oxygen levels start to plummet.

The temperature reaches unbearable levels.

And with 90% humidity, we're quickly drenched in sweat.

And, oh. This is where the heat's starting.

The heat is starting now, but.

Take care of your head.

Oh, I will. Thank you. Yeah.

Look at this.

Before Senwosret, pharaohs had been laid to rest

beneath enormous pyramids.

And now we are under the mountain.

But this hidden tomb revolutionized the way

that rulers would be buried for centuries to come.

Oh, it's amazing, isn't it?

It's so hot for us, just walking down.

Imagine what it would have been like

for those workers digging it.

And they're using just stone tools, presumably.

Watch your head here.

I will.

After the tomb builders came the tomb raiders,

searching for the treasures buried here with the pharaoh.

Do you think, how many workers do you think

there would have been here?

Just hold on. Okay.

Take care because there is a shaft here.

But Senwosret had some tricks up his sleeve.

That's a sheer drop down there, isn't it?

We are above a shaft built special

to trick the robbers.

Oh, my God.

So once the robbers arrived to this place,

they found that this part is closed by a block of stone.

Right.

Telling that there is nothing behind.

But the robbers continued

their desperate search, hacking their own passageways

down through the solid rock.

They've put these steps into the rocks,

the robbers, have they?

There's a small step here. Yeah.

And after years, with many dying in the attempt,

they finally found Senwosret.

600 feet from the entrance,

at last we reached the heart of the hidden tomb.

Yeah, this is the sarcophagus

of Senwosret III himself.

Oh, so this is the actual sarcophagus, is it?

This is actual sarcophagus of the king, yeah.

And it is made of two pieces of granite.

One is the lid, and this one is body of the sarcophagus.

It's been robbed, this, hasn't it?

Yeah. Been robbed, and it's not in its place.

No.

Originally they, it was in the bigger chamber,

and the robbers, they dragged into here.

(gentle music)

The robbers had to shift aside massive granite blocks

weighing up to 60 tons each

to reach the treasures down here.

Gold, perfumes, even a boat was buried

with the almighty pharaoh,

but all that remains now is his empty sarcophagus.

So, where's his body?

Robbed. (laughs)

Just gone. Robbed, robbed.

Like so many of Egypt's rulers,

we no longer have his mummified body

or any of his treasures.

But we do now know that Senwosret was the first pharaoh

to take these extraordinary measures

to hide his final resting place.

Listen, I owe you such a debt of gratitude

for bringing me down here, even though we've nearly died.

You are the most welcome.

In the attempt, but do we know the way back?

Yes, yes.

(laughs) After you, after you.

Thank you.

(gentle music)

It's time for me to continue south.

I'm leaving Senwosret 1,500 years behind

to go in search of Egypt's last great pharaoh,

the mighty Cleopatra.

(dramatic music)

People have sailed this river for thousands of years.

But none with more pomp and ceremony than the pharaohs.

Hello, Captain.

Are we okay with this boat?

All good, all good, Madam Bettany.

Oh, good. I trust you.

And of all the pharaohs who sailed the Nile,

the most famous was Cleopatra.

Just four years into her reign,

Cleopatra led a massive military maneuver on this river,

a fleet of 400 ships with her new lover,

the Roman general Julius Caesar, in tow.

In fact, she was probably pregnant

with Caesar's child at the time.

When we think of Cleopatra, we make a real mistake

just to imagine her as a beautiful face.

This was a woman who was a philosopher and a mathematician.

She spoke a huge number of languages.

Cleopatra was in every way a force to be reckoned with.

(gentle music)

But in this land she once ruled,

the evidence of this all-powerful woman

has been overshadowed by the myths

that have grown up around her.

The Romans, Shakespeare, and, of course, Hollywood

have all styled her a manipulative femme fatale.

And that's why my last destination

on this leg of my journey matters so much to me.

Dendera is a chance to discover the real Cleopatra.

This temple complex was built by Cleopatra's family,

and it was actually started by her great-grandfather.

It's dedicated to Hathor,

the goddess of love and beauty and motherhood.

(gentle music)

Built 2,500 years after the Great Pyramid of Giza,

it's a place that boasts of Cleopatra's power

and the brilliance of Egyptian ideas.

The entire complex stretched over 40,000 square meters.

And it's here on the temple's wall

that you get a unique glimpse

of ancient Egypt's last truly great pharaoh.

We know that this is Cleopatra

because she's got her name written

in hieroglyphs in that cartouche.

This is the only named portrait that we have of her.

This wall is singing out a message of power.

Cleopatra is a natural mother.

That's her son Caesarion in front of her.

She's a mother goddess.

She's got the horns of Hathor on her head,

and she is the mother of the nation of Egypt.

(dramatic music)

Once you go inside the temple she helped to build,

you really begin to get a feel

for the woman behind the legend.

A queen more obsessed

with mathematics and philosophy than seduction.

On the ceiling is a scientific wonder.

The story of time itself.

And its legacy is still felt every single day.

So, here, you have the journey

of the moon through the night.

And then, across the central corridor over there,

there's the sun making the sun's journey through the day.

And, of course, this being Egypt,

the sun is traveling in one

of those flat-bottomed Nile barges.

And up there, there are the stars,

and they've been carefully mapped to prove

that there are 12 hours in every night.

And then, at the end, you've got the 12 months of the year,

represented by astrological signs

very similar to the ones that we have.

So, there's what we'd call Taurus the Bull

and Pisces.

What the ancient Egyptians did was to jigsaw-puzzle together

all this information, so the movement of the sun

and the moon and the life cycle of the year

with the annual flooding of the Nile

and their mapping of the stars.

And they came up with a new system of time.

It was the ancient Egyptians who decided

that the year should run at 365 days.

(gentle music)

When Caesar heard about this revolutionary reading

of the cosmos in Egypt, he was blown away.

He adopted these Egyptian insights

and rolled out the Julian calendar across the Roman world.

That notion stuck, so the rhythm of all of our lives

in the modern world is dictated

by an idea that was dreamt up here.

With the rising superpower Rome as her ally

and Caesar the father of her newborn son,

Cleopatra must have felt unstoppable.

It's said that, here at Dendera,

she climbed up to the roof of the temple

when the moon was full to give thanks to the gods.

So, you have to imagine Cleopatra coming up here,

her skin rich with frankincense and myrrh and lotus oil,

crowned with those sacred horns of Hathor,

celebrating her success

and the successful birth of her son Caesarion.

A woman physically on top of the world.

And it is such a privilege to think

that I'm standing here where Cleopatra once stood.

But within just three years,

Julius Caesar would be assassinated,

and Cleopatra would be mired in the politics of Rome.

She died here eventually by her own hand

in the land that she loved, the last great pharaoh of Egypt.

(gentle music)

Wait, wait.

No, no, no! Oh, my God!

Next time.

Now I think I've got to buy it.

My Nile journey brings me to the wonders of Luxor.

I'll come face-to-face with Tutankhamen

in the Valley of the Kings.

This is what a royal tomb really should look like.

And I'll board the steamship

that inspired Agatha Christie's "Death on the Nile."

(ship horn honking)

(dramatic music)