Ultimate Treasure Countdown

Ancient egypt.

This land of the pharaohs has captured our imaginations

For thousands of years.

It's one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known,

And it's left us with some truly astonishing treasures.

I am professor bethany hughes.

I'm a historian and I spend my life travelling the world

To investigate the stories of the cultures and civilizations

Of the past and I love having the chance to share what I found with you.

Last time in my top ten treasures of egypt,

We counted down from number 10 to number five.

First, at number 10, the mummy of ramesses iii, the pharaoh murdered by assassins.

At number nine, the famous rosetta stone,

Which gave us the knowledge to decode egypt's hieroglyphs.

Number eight, the massive temple of edfu,

Built by the incestuous family of cleopatra.

And number seven, we came face to face with the great sphinx of giza.

At number six, ramesses the great's colossal temples at abu simbel,

Rescued from oblivion.

At number five, we explored the city of the dead at saqqara,

Home to millions of mummies.

And on our next stop, let's go to one of the most famous places in egypt,

An ancient city on the banks of the nile, to discover treasure number four.

Over 4000 years ago, the pharaohs raised a new capital here next to the mighty river.

It grew to become one of the biggest and most magnificent cities in the world.

Today, it's known as luxor.

As the beating heart of their capital, they built two new temples.

The temple of karnak, down there, and then connected by this amazing ceremonial avenue

That runs a mile and a half long and is lined with sphinxes, up here,

The temple of luxor.

The complex was huge.

Twice the size of st. Paul's in london.

About the same length as three football pitches laid end to end.

It was so much more than just a temple.

This was the place in luxor, um, the, kind of, capital of the capital.

The engine of the ancient egyptian world.

For centuries, this was one of egypt's most splendid temples.

But if you're imagining somewhere silent and serious, think again.

This was party central.

The really brilliant thing about this place, um, isn't just its architectural

Splendor but the fact that it would've been absolutely pulsing with life.

Um, so here you'd have had priests with their heads and their bodies shaved.

Um, all these columns, you can see some of the traces there,

They'd have been absolutely bright with a, kind of, riot of color

And then when you came out into the courtyards there were plates of electrum,

Which was a, a mixture of gold and silver that would've reflected back

The sun's rays, so it would've, kind of,

Ricocheted out as an extraordinary light show.

During festivals, luxor was the ultimate party venue.

All of life was here indulging in wild drunken blowouts.

Singers, magicians and dancers like these gorgeous back-flipping acrobats.

So, what better place than luxor for the pharaohs of egypt to boast about their potency.

For the egyptians, power and sexual power were closely linked

And three pharaohs used this temple to show off about both.

The first of these rulers was amenhotep,

Who was the original builder of this temple.

Um, and there's a rather startling clue as to

How he cemented his hold on power deep inside the complex.

To boost his claim to the throne, amenhotep claimed that his mum

Had had sex with an egyptian god and that he was the result

And he had that juicy story recorded right here on the walls.

Archaeologist mina megalla is going to reveal how the ancient egyptians showed

The pharaohs mum making love with a god.

Ahh.

Yes.

I mean, I think it's, it's quite explicit

Because some of the inscriptions tell us that she was suffused

With desire and that she cries out in delight and that her limbs stiffen

With love for the god. I mean, so it's, it's very sexy this.

The ancient egyptians were very good at, at just accepting the fact

That making love is a gorgeous thing.

The second of our pharaohs to use this temple to show off about his potency

Was the most powerful man in egyptian history.

Ramesses the great.

He was the ambitious builder pharaoh who we've met once already

At the temple of abu simbel.

Ramesses was another ruler who wasn't shy of boasting about fertility.

He claimed to have fathered at least a hundred children

And rarely missed an opportunity to erect a monument to his manliness.

He absolutely left his mark on this temple, um,

He put statues of himself everywhere and he built

This monumental gateway and set up two giant obelisks,

Although there's only one left now.

Another almost identical obelisk stood just here for more than 3000 years.

But, in 1832, it was presented as a gift by the ruler of egypt

To the king of France.

The 250 tonne, 75-foot tall pillar made its way, by sea,

All the way to paris where today it stands as the centrepiece

Of the place de la concorde in the centre of the french capital.

But the story of luxor temple doesn't end there.

A thousand years after the age of ramesses,

A third great ruler of egypt carved his story into the temple of luxor.

He was alexander the great from ancient greece.

One of the most ambitious conquerors in history.

Alexander invaded egypt in 332bc, and we're told he chose to be crowned

On this spot in the heart of this mighty temple.

So this is extraordinary.

- So, this is alexander the great. - That's right.

He's one of the most powerful men on earth

And he's being represented here as an egyptian.

Even though alexander was greek, he was determined

To portray himself as a powerful egyptian pharaoh

And he knew that luxor was a great place to do that.

And, just look, he's standing next to a rather eye-catching egyptian fertility god.

A clever marketing ploy to boost alexander's image of manly virility.

It does really tell you something about the magnetic pull of this place

That, that he's coming here, he's coming to this temple in luxor.

Yeah. This place is a treasure for us,

But it was obviously a treasure for them too.

The temple of luxor makes it into our top ten because it is such a treasure trove

Of experiences and stories and because it's cast a spell

Over the powerful for centuries.

We're now down to the final three of my top ten treasures of egypt.

We've already experienced some astonishing discoveries.

The mummy of a murdered pharaoh, the codebreaking rosetta stone,

The great sphinx of giza and the spectacular temple of abu simbel

Built by the all-powerful pharaoh, ramesses.

This time, we're leaving behind the great cities and heading into rocky mountains

Not far from luxor for treasure number three.

At first glance, this place seems rugged and remote,

But I'm tracking an old route to one of the most legendary locations in all of egypt.

These paths haven't changed for thousands of years, um, um,

They were used in the ancient times, um,

A whole host of people would've come down here.

There'd have been craftsmen and traders and builders and even pharaohs.

They came here to build something very special

Among the mountains in strict secrecy.

Where they were heading, they called the place of truth

Or the great necropolis of millions of years of the pharaohs

And it's number three on our list of top treasures.

Uh, today, we simply describe it as the valley of the kings.

From around 1600bc the mummified bodies of pharaohs were brought here

To be buried in tombs cut into the steep sides of the valley.

This might seem like a, a rather remote, random patch of desert

To bury some of the most influential and powerful people on earth

But actually this place has huge symbolic and practical significance.

Um, you can probably see that the sun's just risen over there behind me in luxor,

Which means that it sets here behind these mountains, um,

And that really mattered to the ancient egyptians

Because this was where your mortal life ended

And your journey into the afterlife began.

The valley of the kings.

They include the tombs of the most famous pharaohs in egyptian history.

Tutankhamun, the boy king, ramesses the great, builder of abu simbel and our royal

Assassination victim, ramesses iii.

But the grandest tomb of all belonged to pharaoh seti I,

And that's the one I want to show you now.

Seti was the father of our old friend ramesses ii, ramesses the great,

And he was a hugely successful pharaoh and his tomb is suitably magnificent.

For years the tomb's been closed to make it safe for visitors.

Now, I'm being given special access to this spectacular resting place

By archaeologist bahaa gaber.

Gosh you, I can already tell this is going really,

Really deep down indeed.

It's a very long tomb, it's about 138 metre.

Not surprising, since seti I was one of the most powerful men on earth.

I mean, it is incredible because everywhere you look there's a decoration,

There's painting, there's inscription,

- It's an it's a huge amount of information actually. - Yes.

- That's been given here. - That's right.

And even the columns here,

You will see they have beautiful decoration representing the king

- With the different gods and goddesses. - Yeah.

That is horus bettany: Yeah. Yeah.

- The god, the son of isis and osiris. - Yeah.

And look at the relation between the king and the god himself.

He dreamed one day that he will be alive again bettany: Yeah.

With the god osiris. - Yeah.

You know, that's why these places are so important because people talk about

The egyptians being obsessed with death and they're not,

They're obsessed with continuing their life,

Only it's happening in an afterlife.

When they decided to build a tomb,

They cut the tomb out of rock to live forever.

So, he dreamed that his second life would be here.

All the inscription, all these beautiful details, talk about food, drinks, oh wow,

He said I will live here in my paradise.

I love that.

- I love the idea that this is an underground paradise here. - Yes. Yeah.

As we enter deeper into the tomb,

There are even more marvels inside seti I burial chamber.

- Look at that. - Look at this.

- It's extraordinary down here. - Yes.

That is incredible. It's just like a riot of,

- Of colour and images, isn't it? - Yeah.

When explorer adventurers first discovered this tomb in 1817,

They were blown away by these paintings.

So fresh and vivid, they said, as if they'd been drawn yesterday.

They even found paint pots and brushes lying on the floor.

And, what's extra exciting about the valley of the kings is that there's still

More waiting to be discovered.

D'you know, we think that we found less than half of what was buried here.

We're working here on this beautiful mountain, inside the tombs,

Outside the tombs expecting every day that we'll find something.

Please ring me. - Of course.

When you do. Let me be the first to be there because it's brilliant

Because they're all these treasures that we know about bahaa: Exactly.

And these treasures that are waiting to be discovered.

Sadly, some treasures will never be found including

The priceless possessions of seti I that once crammed this tomb.