Immortal Egypt

- Camel, get up. - Woo.

This is brilliant.

This is obviously an iconic image,

taking a camel ride by the pyramids.

Surely, it encapsulates the spirit of Egypt.

But such an image is completely misleading,

because there weren't any camels here

when the pyramids were built 4,500 years ago.

And that's the thing.

Ancient Egypt is instantly recognizable

but all too often completely misunderstood.

So, I'm going to try and change that.

Good luck!

The Great Pyramid of Giza,

the final resting place of King Khufu,

over 140 meters from bottom to top.

No wonder it still pulls in the crowds

and the occasional Egyptologist.

It's hard to really get it into words,

but we are now entering into the depths

of this iconic monument of ancient Egypt.

It's a very busy iconic monument, though.

And as we set foot on this journey upwards,

it's a brilliant metaphor for the way

that the ancient Egyptian civilization literally rose up

from the Earth to a real zenith.

So, come with me

and I'll show you something really brilliant.

Because the pyramids are really only the tip of the iceberg.

Oh!

Oh, flipping heck.

- So all this was a big city. - Overwhelming in size.

That is absolutely superb.

In this series, I am going to explore the story

of what I consider to be the world's greatest civilization,

more than 4,000 years of history that has shaped our world

and left unmistakable marks that can still be read today.

I'll be looking into every nook and cranny,

from little-known tombs...

It's staggering.

I've never ever been into a tomb quite like this before.

To the hidden corners of vast monuments.

It's like being on top of the world, isn't it?

- Yeah, we are on the top of Karnak.

So it's really no surprise

that weird and wonderful theories

about ancient Egypt crop up all the time.

But what I find so amazing

is that this most intriguing civilization

was actually created by people

not so very different from you and me.

And that's the story I want to tell.

The story full of secret treasures, dark deeds

and sometimes controversial theories.

This mask was originally made for someone else.

And for the first time, I'll be piecing it all together

from the earliest Egyptians to the last of the pharaohs.

Wow!

Look at that, look at that!

Oh, that is so beautiful.

Welcome to my story of ancient Egypt.

The big question is, how did ancient Egypt begin?

Where did the first Egyptians

and their extraordinary culture come from?

This immortal civilization

was thousands of years in the making,

so to pull it all together is a daunting task.

But bear with me, as it's utterly fascinating.

But we won't begin with massive monuments

but with some enigmatic clues you could easily miss.

This is Qurta, around 100 kilometers south of Luxor.

Unless you're an archaeologist,

you almost certainly won't have heard of it,

because there aren't any great temples

or royal tombs to admire.

But high in the cliffs,

you can see real signs of ancient life here.

Thousands of years before the pyramids,

and this is where our story begins.

Welcome to Qurta, Joann.

- Thank you so much for letting me come here.

It's incredibly exciting.

- It's the first time you're here, I suppose?

Yes.

Nothing escapes the sharp eye of Dr. Dirk Huyge,

and he's got something very special to show me.

- Not many people have been here before you

because it's a quite recent discovery.

- These carvings in the rock reveal an amazing story

about the beginnings of Egyptian life.

It's a 19,000-year-old picture gallery.

Complete with its own hippo.

Back line, very short tail, hind legs,

belly line, front legs.

And the mouth is shown.

The hippo was smiling.

But then again, a hippo is always smiling.

- But another type of animal is by far the most common here.

That's cattle.

Ah, it's not just cattle,

this is the mighty aurochs, the wild bovid, wild cattle.

And extremely powerful images that seem to be in movement.

- They are, they're charging down towards us, aren't they?

These wild aurochs were ancestors of the domestic cow.

And nearly 20,000 years ago,

beef was the main thing on the menu.

- About maybe 50% of their diet was composed of aurochs.

So they were experts and masters

in representing this animal.

It's always high on the cliff, very prominent positions

that give an excellent panorama

over what must have been in the Paleolithic,

the hunting grounds of the people.

- It's easy to picture these early hunters here

as they tracked their prey.

But the landscape would've looked very different from today.

Because back then, this was savanna grassland,

a green and fertile region.

Do we have any idea why these creatures

were engraved on these rocks here?

We can guess, Joann, but we don't know.

Maybe they wanted to influence the hunting,

maybe this is some sort of hunting magic.

It really is magical to sit here

and imagine Egypt's earliest nomadic people

passing right through this spot

and portraying on these very rocks

the animals that they saw all around them.

Human figures and boats joined the animals

as the carvings became stranger and stranger.

But these carvings are also the earliest glimpse

of the amazing things to come.

These are the first signs of what makes ancient Egypt,

well, ancient Egypt.

As for its ancient landscape,

this evolved under dramatic circumstances.

10,000 years ago, gravity tilted the entire Earth

off its axis by about half a degree,

and this had a profound effect on climate.

And as the world began to change,

Egypt would never be the same again.

Now, these early people were nomads,

seasonally mobile pastoralists

who moved around, following the summer rains.

And these rains really were the vital, life-bringing force

which created the greenery on which wild animals depended.

But of course, with climate change,

these rains began to dry up.

Okay, you can cut the rain.

The diminishing rainfall forced both animals and people

towards large lakes, which formed during the rainy season.

One such area is Nabta Playa,

100 kilometers southwest of Aswan.

And here, these nomadic hunters

began to settle into communities.

But still reliant on the annual summer rains,

they needed to predict exactly when these would return.

And so they turned to the night sky.

Welcome to the beginning of time.

Quite literally, because this is Egypt's oldest calendar.

It's around 7,000 years old.

This stone circle from Nabta Playa is the earliest evidence

of how Egyptian weather forecasters became astronomers.

They aligned its central stones to the circumpolar stars,

visible in the night sky all year round.

When the sun appeared directly overhead,

the stones cast no shadow.

The mid-summer rains were approaching.

This meant that the animals would drink,

the plants would grow

and the world would survive for another year.

So in many ways, this circle represents the solution

to the very real problem of survival.

But the Egyptians would take this a step further.

I think the really great thing

about these mini monumental markers

is that this is the earliest example

we have of the way in which the Egyptians

are aligning their monuments to various things,

to the sky, to the cardinal points.

And from now on, every tomb, every temple, every monument

will be aligned to the heavens, to the very gods themselves.

If the stars and the rain were this closely linked,

then this world and the next must be one and the same.

Now, this has been described as Egypt's earliest

sculpted stone monument and dates from around 5000 BC.

This chunk of sandstone was quarried over a mile away

from where it was eventually discovered.

This certainly suggests a kind of sense of community

where people were already working together

to achieve a desired aim.

In this case, the stone was hauled into place,

and then there are clear signs

that it has been sculpted into a specific shape.

Now, you might have to go with me on this,

but some believe that this is in fact a cow

with its large hind quarters and this sculpted head.

Now, the cow was a vital part of everyday life

for these people.

It was a source of meat, of milk and of blood,