Original subtitles

I'm Alice Roberts, and I'm on an adventure

to look at the world's oldest and greatest civilisation.

I'm going to be travelling the length and breadth of Egypt by train

to discover its ancient past.

I want to understand how the tombs, temples and pyramids came to be made,

and dig even deeper,

to understand what life was like for the ordinary people that made them.

Along the way, I'll be meeting archaeologists

who are still working to uncover the story of ancient Egypt.

I'll be looking at some familiar sites,

but also learning about brand-new discoveries.

In the first part of my journey,

I'll be looking at how Egypt was transformed

under the Greeks and Romans.

Look at this!

And this one here, as you can see...

Isn't it beautiful?

Look at those colours!

I learn about the slave soldier

who created the most beautiful fort...

So we're looking out here from the battlements, over the harbour,

and you suddenly realise what a prime position

this citadel is in.

..and I meet the archaeologist who believes she can solve

one of the biggest mysteries in the world -

finding the tomb of Cleopatra.

Welcome to the underworld.

Just incredible that it's only emerged in the last few years.

..as I travel ancient Egypt by train.

Ah, coffee!

Is this right? Coffee?

Coffee.

I think my train's coming soon.

This is good coffee.

It's thicker than the coffee I have at home,

sweeter than the coffee I have at home,

but it's just the ticket today.

It's my first time here,

and it's nice to see that train stations around the world

are more or less the same,

from coffee vendors,

to reflecting the hustle and bustle of a nation's daily life.

I have always dreamt of coming to Egypt,

especially after reading so much about it since childhood.

Until now, I've only encountered Egypt in books,

like Amelia Edwards' journey up the Nile,

and in museums,

but now I'm here, to see it for myself,

to immerse myself in the ancient history and culture of this country.

I'm going to see the Sphinx, the pyramids,

the temple at Karnak, of course,

but I'm also going off the beaten track to find new discoveries

and talk to the people who are still uncovering the secrets

of ancient Egypt.

And I'm travelling across this epic country by train.

Over 4,000 miles of railways

stretch the full length of Egypt,

mostly following the Nile.

I'm starting by travelling to Alexandria,

from the airport in Cairo,

a journey of 140 miles

towards the Mediterranean coast.

Alexandria is linked to some of the most famous names

from our history books -

Alexander the Great, Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

For a time, it was the world's biggest and most important city.

With its university, and the Great Library of Alexandria,

it was a centre of learning,

and it also had one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,

the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

The library and the lighthouse are long gone,

both lost to time.

And I'm finally here in Alexandria,

which is the perfect place to begin.

It is the gateway into Egypt,

an immense, famous port city,

founded by Alexander the Great,

bearing his name in the 4th century BCE,

and it became the capital of Egypt.

Today, it's absolutely vast.

It's home to 5.5 million people,

it's incredibly busy.

It stretches along 25 miles of the northern Egyptian coastline.

But I'm here to find out all about ancient Alexandria.

The seafront promenade, known here as the Corniche,

is where locals come to relax,

and simply to enjoy the views of their beautiful city.

What better way to take in the sights and sounds of a place

that's completely new to me

than by exploring on foot?

You get a feel for the history of Alexandria, just walking around.

There's some fantastic architecture.

You get really modern buildings

rubbing shoulders with edifices like this from a century or two ago,

and then here,

we've got the Morsi Abu al-Abbas mosque,

absolutely stunning, dating back to the 14th century.

There are two separate mosques here,

one for women...

..and a larger one, for men.

But it seems I'm allowed to at least LOOK inside the men's mosque.

Head scarf on.

Shoes off.

Shoes here. Thank you.

A stone's throw away from the seafront,

the mosque is a relatively recent addition,

being only 700 years old.

Its doors and window frames are made from teak and walnut.

The decorated ceiling contains an octagonal skylight,

called a Shokhsheikha.

This mosque is a classic example of Islamic design,

which flourished in Egypt,

after the Muslim conquest of the 7th century.

A much later addition to Alexandria is the tram.

With the roads heaving with traffic,

the tram is how many locals prefer to travel...

..especially the city's vast population of students.

There are 20 lines and 140 stops crammed into the city centre...

..and my first stop is around the corner from a special place,

called Kom el-Dikka.

Kom el-Dikka is the biggest and most spectacular

archaeological site in Alexandria.

Nice to meet you.

The director of the site is Mahmoud Abd El Rahman.

Good morning.

So this excavation has been going on since the 1960s?

From 1960 until now.

Every year? Every year.

It was found by chance in the 1960s,

when city developers planned to build new apartment blocks.

But a couple of thousand years earlier, in Roman Alexandria,

people were coming here for learning and leisure.

I'm keen to find out more about what Egyptian life was like

under the rule of the Romans,

starting with what looks like a small theatre.

This seems like quite a narrow theatre.

Yes, a small one. Yeah.

Yes. Actually, it's not a theatre.

Actually, it was odeum,

for listening for the music in the ancient time.

OK.

And all of this covered with a huge bulb,

covering the place here.

A dome? Yes, a huge dome.

Yeah. For the echo sound,

so, collecting the sound and reflecting for the people.

And over 2,000 years later,

I can experience the same acoustic effect

as the musicians of Roman Alexandria.

So, echo sound, and you can try it here.

OK.

So I'm going to stand on this spot...

..and then speak to the room.

That's extraordinary. Yes.

I can hear my voice echoing back to me.

Yes. That's so peculiar, isn't it?

My voice changes completely.

I'm... I'm hearing myself very, very differently now.

I feel like I'm in a... in a bubble.

In an echo chamber, in fact. Yes.

And then, presumably, my voice is carrying up to the highest seats

up there as well.

I'd like to give lectures in a place like this.

This would be wonderful.

I'm in Alexandria,

at a site that was earmarked for some new apartments,

but then they discovered spectacular Roman remains,

and rather than being turned into apartment blocks,

the site has become an open-air museum.

There's an odeon for live music,

and just alongside it, what Mahmud, the site director, believes

was part of the famous University of Alexandria itself.

Also, we have this university,

magnificent, 22 classrooms.

In the ancient time,

it's a place for the professor and a place for the audience.

Can you and I walk on there?

We can walk in there.

Now, if I could just transport myself back in time

by around 2,000 years...

OK. I'm going to be the professor.

I would be here? Yes, and the students coming here.

Yeah.

So here I am, Professor Alice Roberts...

Yes. ..talking...

To the students. ..to my Byzantine students.

Yes, for philosophy, maybe, or chemistry or something like this.

Lecturing them, presumably, in Greek? That was the scholarly language.

In, uh, with Late Greek.

Now we can going down, under the ground.

It's magnificent architecture.

In the ancient time,

we cannot see what's happening under the ground

for the slaves and the people.

Yeah. But it's a hypocaust system.

The Romans also brought underfloor heating to Egypt,

a system called a hypocaust,

where slaves, working beneath street level,

would stoke furnaces to heat the bath house above.

Here we are, besides the hypocaust system,

and you can see the traces of fire inside it.

Yeah.

OK, it was closed here,

and they just put the fuel inside here...

Yeah, yeah.

..and the huge fire inside, and temperature.

If you can imagine, if you're walking on the marble,

it will be warm. Yeah.

And sometimes here.

It's fantastic. Underfloor heating, isn't it?

You will feel not...

You know, it's not cold in Egypt in this time.

Alongside the odeon, university and bath house,

there were also private dwellings here.

One of these homes is known as the Villa of the Birds,

and it contains a stunning example of Roman-Egyptian style.

Now we're getting to the Villa of the Birds.

This is Roman villa,

as we can see, with the mosaic floor.

Oh, wow.

It's something well preserved.

Isn't that gorgeous?

And a unique one,

because we didn't have any Roman villa, something like this.

Yeah. Made out of pieces of marble.

But look at this!

And this one here, as you can see,

that's why we call this Villa of the Birds.

Isn't it beautiful?

Look at those colours!

I mean, they're so bright and clear.

Also, we're making some restoration every year for it.

Have you repaired those mosaics?

Are those... are any of those tesserae NEW tesserae?

No, it's an ancient one,

and we found it in this condition,

because we found a huge ash over it, over the mosaic directly,

for 50 centimetres, because of a huge fire in the ancient time,

preserving the mosaic to in this condition.

Look at those colours, I mean, and recognisable species of birds.

So that's a duck. Yes, duck.

Yes, and see the peacock?

This is a peacock. Yes.

I mean, look at the colours there. Yes.

That's absolutely gorgeous.

They're using different materials,

glass and also marble.

What's this bird here? That almost looks like a parakeet.

This is parrot, yes, this one is parrot.

Yeah. Yes.

Something else we have here,

another mosaic, showing panther.

Nowadays, the panther, it disappeared from Egypt.

So we've got this classic Roman design...

Yes. ..this mosaic...

Typical Alexandria. ..but showing... showing Egyptian...

Yes, showing the Egyptian... ..Egyptian wildlife, yeah.

A mystery that has confounded archaeologists in Egypt

is the location of Alexander the Great's tomb.

It was visited by Julius Caesar and Cleopatra,

but today its precise whereabouts remain unknown,

although Mahmoud has his theory.

And, Mahmoud, what about the tomb of Alexander the Great?

Tomb of Alexander...

Where do you think it is?

It's supposed to be in the north of this direction,

because it was in the Soma Square,

and Soma Square is lying in the north,

direct in the north of this site,

500 metres distance away.

Oh, really close to where we are.

And we can't remove the building to continue the excavation

inside the site. Yeah.

It's here somewhere.

Hidden, for somebody will come to, you know,

to discover it. Yeah, yeah.

Let's wait and see.

Alexandria's history captures that later story of ancient Egypt,

when the country was under Greek, then Roman, rule.

We see different empires, civilisations

and cultures meeting here.

This column, known as Pompey's Pillar,

though actually dedicated to the Roman Emperor Diocletian,

was erected next to an ancient Greek temple.

The Romans liked to make their mark.

This site is also the only real remaining connection

to the Great Library of Alexandria.

It contains an annex, known as the Daughter's Library,

used as an additional storage space for the vast collection of texts.

As the first day of my adventures in Egypt comes to a close,

I'm keen to find out more about the beautiful fort on the headland.

It can be seen from every part of Alexandria's coastline,

as it juts out into the Mediterranean Sea.

It was the location of the Lighthouse of Alexandria,

one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

The lighthouse stood for around a thousand years

and was thought to be the tallest building in the world.

Only a few ancient descriptions survive,

and it seems that it was rebuilt several times,

after damage from earthquakes.

But by the 14th century, it had fallen into ruins.

What stands there now is a 15th-century fortress

known as the Citadel of Qaitbay.

Qaitbay is the man who built it,

and he started life as a slave soldier known as a Mamluk.

Hello.

Salaam alaikum. Wa-alaikum-salaam.

Archaeologist Nermine Sami, who's lived in Alexandria all her life,

is going to tell me more about this magical place.

Wow. Look at that beautiful door.

And also, connection is with the first floor.

Oh, it's impressive.

This is such a beautiful place. Tell me about it.

It was named after the sultan who built it, isn't it?

Qaitbay was one of the Mamluks,

who ruled Egypt for 28 years.

So this is the Mamluks, they were slaves that were brought here?

A soldier of slave origin.

So how does he end up being sultan?

How does he make that transformation?

Yes. How he became a sultan, because he showed many of bravery

and intelligence to become a sultan. Yeah, yeah.

He was approved by all the soldiers

and he was chosen to be a sultan of Egypt.

Incredible.

Yes, it is. Yeah.

So Qaitbay comes here and builds this fortress

on what, presumably, is the site of the original lighthouse?

Actually, the lighthouse site was in a distance of 20 meters.

So pretty close. Pretty close.

Yeah.

OK, and we still see some traces of lighthouse.

Stone blocks were used in construction of internal parts

of this fortress.

So the lighthouse has gone... Gone.

..but Qaitbay spots this as being the ideal place to put this fortress.

Ideal place to protect the borders of Alexandria by the sea,

because there was a huge attack will come by the Ottomans.

So Sultan Qaitbay is worried about the Ottoman Empire.

This is part of his defences against the Ottomans.

But eventually Egypt does fall to that empire.

Yes.

He was afraid of Ottoman attacks

and he had to fortify the whole country,

not just Alexandria, but Alexandria was always the gate

to conquer Egypt.

Yeah. I mean, what do you think about Qaitbay as a man?

It's an extraordinary story.

He begins life as this slave soldier,

and ends up being a sultan.

Yes.

I think he was different,

unusual character.

He was not just a militant, or soldier man,

he was fond of foundation, and construction,

and the project of opening this country to all people to come.

So he was interested in that kind of cosmopolitan side, which you see,

I mean, you still see today in Alexandria.

Yes, we still have the same concept and the idea and the spirit

of welcoming others.

Yeah. And that goes, I mean, that goes right back to the foundation

of Alexandria, as well,

and the idea of this place is a famous, famous seat of learning,

possibly, you know, possibly the most famous seat of learning

in the ancient world, at one time.

They cared about learning and education.

I think that's what led this city to be so special

than any other cities.

Yeah.

So we're looking out here from the battlements, over the harbour,

and you suddenly realise what a prime position this citadel is in

to defend this harbour.

In that time, actually, the fortifications of Mamluks

were not enough,

because they were still using the old techniques.

But when Ottomans came, the fortress couldn't resist.

The rising power of Ottomans was very super,

comparing to the power of Mamluks.

It's so different from the southern battlements,

where we're looking over that safe harbour, lovely, calm water,

and then you look out from the northern side,

and you've got the crashing waves of the Mediterranean.

It's an image of contrast, actually,

and it makes you love the city,

and also to be afraid to be enemy to it.

Yes. Yes.

So you have to be careful.

If you are an enemy, you are not welcome.

If you are a friend, you are welcome.

Alexandria today reflects its cosmopolitan history,

and its continuing reputation as a seat of learning,

where different cultures coexist.

A beautiful and defiant city on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

At this time of the day, as the sun sets,

and you see a few fishermen out here just on the quay side,

it's easy to think yourself back to ancient Alexandria.

It's the start of a new day for my adventures in Egypt.

I'm in Alexandria,

heading to meet a woman on a mission to track down

one of Egypt's most famous names.

Along the coast, west of Alexandria,

a few stops down the line,

is an archaeological site

that has the Egyptologists divided.

I'm off to meet someone who is convinced that she is close

to finding the elusive tomb of Cleopatra.

Just 30 miles out of the city,

and I find myself in the Egyptian countryside,

where stations are little more than a concrete platform.

This is also where archaeologists have been excavating

a 2,000 acre site, called Taposiris Magna...

..that has a lighthouse,

an ancient temple,

and a more recent discovery -

a system of tunnels that go out and beneath the Mediterranean Sea.

Kathleen Martinez, a former lawyer from the Dominican Republic,

has been working here for almost 15 years.

Kathleen, this is just incredible.

It's... it's huge.

And you realised that there was much more to find,

still buried under the ground here.

Yes. I want to prove that the temple was a functioning temple

that functioned for many centuries.

And when you arrived here, what did it look like, at that point?

It was completely covered with sand.

So pretty much the level that we're standing on here,

right across the site?

So this is all your excavations? Yes.

So you've obviously done quite a bit of reconstruction here.

I can see this is all new mortar.

Yes.

So these plinths are strange,

'cause they've got little steps leading up.

So what do you think it's for? They put offering here.

Yeah. Here to the gods.

Right.

You think this is the original entrance here?

So this would have been the way that worshippers came into the temple?

Yes. Yeah.

This for the pharaohs to come into the temple,

because they have their own entrance, it's in the north.

Yeah.

In terms of the longevity of this temple,

when did it go out of use? Do you know that?

We have archaeological evidence

that this functioned until the 5th century.

So how did you prove it, then?

You presumably, as you dug, you've...

With archaeological evidence. You've got dating evidence?

Yes, dating with ceramics that we discovered,

the tombs,

uh, who are the ones who are buried in these catacombs.

Yeah.

There are people that lived in the time of Queen Cleopatra.

While other archaeologists believe Cleopatra was buried in Alexandria,

Kathleen's own research has led her to look here.

With a background as a lawyer,

she's made a case based on circumstantial evidence.

Archaeology is a science. This is obviously more than a hunch.

This is all about your very careful research.

What was it that made you think that this was a really good candidate

for Cleopatra's burial?

Because I studied Cleopatra's death

for more than five years.

Only the last days of her life. Yeah.

And then I followed her as a criminal lawyer,

and I wanted to put myself in her shoes.

What would I do in my last days

if I am the last queen of Egypt?

And the Romans want to take me to be paraded in Rome,

because the Romans hated her too much.

She had to make sure that her final resting place was somewhere

the Romans wouldn't find her?

Exactly. That's why it couldn't be Alexandria city,

it couldn't be there, because it was under the control of the Romans.

We know she committed suicide,

and she chose the place that she wanted to be buried,

and I believe that this temple reunites all the conditions.

The temple itself, the religious centre,

the architecture is magnificent. Mm, it's incredible.

And we know everything she did, it was a grandeur.

She did everything in a big scale.

Second, it was a Greek temple.

You've also found this crucial piece of evidence that says

who this temple is for, who it's dedicated to.

Yes, it was one of the greatest days of my life.

Yeah.

I was able to prove, when I saw the foundation plates,

because it already links the temple to Queen Cleopatra.

Ancient Egyptian temples have a foundation plate,

a sort of registration, marking the temple's creation.

Look here, a square.

I discovered the foundation plate.

Just here? Yes.

This nondescript-looking hole?

Yes. It was about this size.

Exactly the size of the cell phone.

So, as soon as it appeared, did you know what it was?

You realised what this object was?

Yes, it was a very exciting moment in the excavation.

Of course, we know the foundation plates.

Let me show you.

Oh, wow!

Everybody was searching for them.

And it has inscriptions in hieroglyphic.

And you could see clearly here.

So, Greek, I can read bits of,

and I can see here "basile".

That's "king". Yeah.

And then that says "Iside", so, "of Isis".

Exactly. Yeah.

This revelation was important to Kathleen,

because Cleopatra identified herself with the goddess Isis -

a strong reason, Kathleen believes,

that Cleopatra would have chosen this site for her own burial.

So everything at that moment,

it changed history.

Yeah. My heart was beating so strongly.

To whom was it dedicated? Yeah, yeah.

And then we saw "Isis".

Imagine it. I was able to prove,

because it could be dedicated to any other god.

That's amazing. So what does it say, then?

The whole translation says, "The King of Upper and Lower Egypt,

"Ptolemy, may he live forever.

"Beloved of Isis, son of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Ptolemy,

"and the ruler Berenike.

"The two beneficent gods made this sanctuary for Isis."

That's just extraordinary.

And Cleopatra, as you said,

is identifying herself with the goddess Isis.

Yes.

Inside one of the temple walls is a collection of fragments

not quite good enough to be sent to Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities.

But these remnants still mean a lot to Kathleen.

Oh, so is this your stores?

Yes. We have some architectural elements.

Yeah.

These are pieces which are not good enough.

They are not considered artefacts,

but they are very important for me,

because I can have an idea how the temple looks like.

Yeah.

How the temple was covered in marble.

That means a lot. It was very rich.

Yeah. I just love the details.

I love this little one here, with this little spiral.

This is architectural elements

that goes in the top of the columns.

It's just lovely, isn't it? I mean, it looks so fresh, that carving.

This is the head of a sphinx.

So you're able to conjure a picture of what these temples

would have looked like when they were in use?

Yes. Yeah.

So how many artefacts have you found in total during your excavations?

Right now, I have around 2,000 objects.

Are you moving your focus of attention out of the temple now

and looking more outside at the necropolis?

Yes, we're widening the search to the east.

Can I go and see what you've been doing?

Yes. Yeah?

Yes, I'm looking forward to show it.

In 2019, Kathleen's team started to dig down

to locate some tunnels that she'd identified using scanning technology.

Down below the temple, her team of Bedouin workers spent weeks

with basic tools to excavate the tunnels

that Kathleen believes may run for miles.

And now I'm going to go underground to see what she's found.

I'm at an archaeological site on the outskirts of Alexandria

with Kathleen Martinez,

who believes that Cleopatra herself

is buried somewhere here.

Kathleen has been searching for Cleopatra for 15 years,

but it's only recently that she's discovered hidden tunnels,

stretching out beyond the highway, for two kilometres,

underneath the Mediterranean Sea.

So how did you find the shaft?

Are you using ground-penetrating radar?

You know, how are you detecting where the shaft is?

Some we have discovered with GPR,

some excavating.

Yeah, yeah.

Can we go down? Yes.

Yeah?

How do you feel to go down?

There are snakes and...

Um... How deep is it?

Eight metres. Eight metres.

Not too bad.

But there are snakes down there.

There are snakes

and also some scorpions.

Yeah, OK.

Snakes and scorpions.

OK. I'm coming down.

Now, you said there were venomous snakes down here,

but I didn't bring my...

..flaming torch to get rid of them,

so I hope they've all scarpered.

Welcome to the underworld,

the world of Osiris.

Thank you!

These tunnels are just astonishing.

So when did you dig this out?

When did you and your team dig this out?

I've been digging three years,

but it's very hard to work here. Yeah.

And you can see the way it was built,

it was chiselled, and in this direction.

Yeah.

It's perfectly cut,

cut in the bedrock.

You see, it has a lot of humidity,

this part. Yeah.

Right now,

we are exactly beneath the highway.

Really?

You can feel it in vibration. Can you?

The road could so easily have destroyed this archaeology,

couldn't it? Yes.

The tunnel, it's leading me to the Mediterranean Sea.

It goes all the way out?

And there was no historical records that indicate

that the temple was bigger... Yeah.

..or it has some other structures.

Yeah, yeah.

Just incredible that it's only emerged in the last few years,

thanks to all your perseverance.

The tunnels were full of sand, which has been dug out,

but there's much more to clear before Kathleen finds out

where they eventually lead,

and what, if anything, she'll find there.

How does it feel to be amongst the latest generation

of archaeologists to be making discoveries like this in Egypt?

I think many discoveries will be made in the near future,

because a new generation of workers are thinking out of the box...

Yeah.

..and that will help to understand better our past.

So you're not afraid to challenge those old theories?

Yes, I'm not afraid at all.

As a matter of fact, I like to change all those wrong theories,

and books written, for example, about Queen Cleopatra,

and if I discover Cleopatra's tomb,

she will speak to us through her tomb...

Yeah.

..and we will have another understanding

of her as a historical character.

And I believe these tunnels are the key.

Kathleen's passion for her quest to find Cleopatra's final resting place

has to be admired.

Kathleen believes that the tunnels

may have some connection with the tomb.

I'm somewhat doubtful,

but the ongoing excavation

will either prove her correct, or not.

Many Egyptologists dismiss her mission as fantasy,

but I have a feeling that any scepticism

will do nothing more than spur Kathleen on in her quest.

Back on the train,

to a destination halfway between

Alexandria and Cairo,

the town of Tanta.

This is where I'm making a quick stop,

because I've been told about an active archaeological site

that dates back to the very beginnings of ancient Egypt...

..going back almost 5,000 years

to the time of the earliest pharaohs.

I'm intrigued.

So this is very much off the beaten track,

but I was desperate to come here.

This place is known as Tell El-Fara'een,

the Hill of the Pharaohs.

To the Greeks, it was Buto.

To the ancient Egyptians themselves,

it was Per-Wadjet - "the place of Wadjet".

Now, she's the cobra goddess of Lower Egypt.

First impressions, though,

I might have travelled a long way

just to look at a mound of earth.

This was once a vibrant city.

It was discovered in the late 19th century

by Scottish Egyptologist Flinders Petrie,

but excavation only really started in earnest in the 1960s.

It was also an important sacred site,

connected in ancient Egyptian myth

to the goddess Isis and her son, the god Horus.

There's all this evidence of your excavations around us.

Pieces of pottery. Shall I sit here? Yeah. This is what we...

I'm lucky enough to be meeting the site director,

Dr Hossam Ghoniem,

with translator Mohamed Hawash.

Oh, this is incredible.

So underneath all of this mound,

you've got incredible archaeology emerging.

So was there a temple of Horus here?

There's a temple for Horus here,

and there is another temple for Wadjet,

because Isis and Osiris' stories started here.

Oh, really?

So, and also, this place was the capital of Lower Egypt,

before they united all of Lower and Upper Egypt.

Right.

So this is a really important place...

It is. ..in ancient Egypt, then?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Very, very important place, yeah.

Hossam,

what level are we looking at here?

It's a new kingdom. Right, OK.

They're working in around 12-metre depths,

as layers of civilisation on top of each other.

Yeah. What's the most ancient?

The most ancient is Predynastic.

Yeah, and that takes us back to...

4th, uh, millennium BCE.

4th millennium BCE? 4th millennium.

So you've got...

..you've got 6,000 years of history here.

There is still a lot, a lot to see, or to discover,

'cause what they're working on is around one hectare,

and the all temples area is like 11 hectares.

Really? Yeah.

So it's like... it's a massive area.

And you're obviously still digging.

Is this part of the same vessel?

Does that go together? Yeah, it's the same one.

Yeah, it's the same one.

Oh, that's so satisfying, isn't it?

Look at that. Yeah.

With restoration, we can complete it.

And that's, what, the top of an amphora?

Yeah, yeah, of an amphora, and this is the piece.

Yeah. Like this.

Huge vessels. Yeah, yeah.

Full of what? Wine, oil?

Maybe. Yeah.

Maybe for wine.

He's very happy when he finds anything, because anything he found,

he adds knowledge to him.

It's incredible, isn't it, that, you know, we're still...

..we're still learning, you're still digging,

you're still making discoveries every year.

Thank you so much.

I'm going to go and explore now.

Thank you.

With sites as rich as this, there is still so much to unearth.

The whole history of the settlement is preserved here.

Oh, just look at that section.

You've got the... you've got the history of the site there.

You can really see all these layers, all these strata,

and we go back and back in time as we go down,

and they're packed full of pottery.

So you'll be able to date each of those,

and we're looking at going back in time, thousands of years,

until we get right back into the early Pharaonic period,

and these columns are sitting down on that level.

6,000 years of history in one place.

Hossam has told me to look carefully in this passage.

There should be some ancient writing on the walls.

This is fantastic. It just goes down and down.

We descend beneath the Roman layers,

beneath the Ptolemaic layers,

get back to the time of the Pharaohs...

..and down here...

..are some hieroglyphs.

Over here, what we've got are these rounded off rectangles.

Now, these are cartouches,

and we know, then, that that contains a name,

so you've got a set of symbols in here, which will be a name.

This one, you can see, has got a little scarab in it,

and here's a falcon.

And over here, I think, this is the double crown,

so the crown, the red and white crown of Upper and Lower Egypt,

when the two kingdoms come together.

This looks like horns,

with a sun disk in the middle,

so that's very possibly Hathor, the cow goddess.

And this is taking us back

to the early dynasties of ancient Egypt.

Three mounds of earth, taking me back 5,000 years ago.

It's given me so much to think about.

Hossam is continuing the work here that Flinders Petrie started

over 100 years ago.

Now, when Amelia Edwards died,

she left a bequest to University College London,

to set up a Chair in Egyptian archaeology,

and the first professor in that post was Flinders Petrie.

He was a pioneer of Egyptology,

and indeed modern archaeology,

but he's a deeply controversial figure for his political views

and his racist ideology.

So we've got a familiar quandary here in the history of archaeology,

and science in general -

what do we do about these people,

when we want to respect their discoveries

and their contribution to knowledge,

but at the same time, we want to

confront that troubling history of archaeology?

And perhaps it's a lesson not to put people on pedestals.

The cosmopolitan and historic city of Alexandria has given me

a great insight into the tail-end of ancient Egypt.

From finding out more about how the Romans lived at Kom el-Dikka...

..to walking in the tunnels that could lead to Cleopatra's lost tomb,

I'll be forever grateful for my time spent here.

More treasures of ancient Egypt await me,

and it's time to get back on the train.

I'm going to be heading south to Cairo, the capital city.

I'm really sad to be saying goodbye to Alexandria

and the Mediterranean Sea,

but my journey now lies to the south.

I'm also leaving behind that more recent history,

the Mamluk rulers of Egypt, the Romans and the Greeks,

and I'm going in search of the pharaohs.

I'm headed for the pyramids.

Next time, I'll find out about the British involvement

in the birth of the Egyptian railways.

Robert Stephenson, Newcastle on Tyne.

Bridge up.

The death of the most famous pharaoh of them all.

I've seen so many pictures of this,

but nothing quite prepares you for the real thing.

Absolutely beautiful.

- This would have been roofed over? - Yes.

I get amazing access to the only surviving

Ancient Wonder of the World.

I'm incredibly privileged to be going inside

the Great Pyramid of Khufu

on my own.

Surely the greatest tomb that has ever been made.

And I even squeeze in a bit of shopping.

I love that one.

That's 50.

Could it be 25?

30?

Thank you very much.

Captions by Red Bee Media (c) 2023 SBS Australia