Ancient Egypt by Train - First Season

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

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

I'm travelling the length and breadth of Egypt by train,

following the river Nile from Alexandria to Aswan

to discover its ancient past.

I want to find out about

those who found the tombs, temples and pyramids

and dig even deeper,

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

I'll learn about the vast scale of archaeological treasures

from an age-old kingdom.

And find out there's still much more to be discovered buried in the sand,

unseen for thousands of years.

In the final part of my journey,

I track down some extraordinary hieroglyphics...

Oh, my goodness! That's a woman in childbirth.

Yes.

..21, 22...

..find evidence of overly-ambition stone masons...

Just imagine the disappointment when a massive crack appears.

..and discover how one woman

is hoping to shape the future of archaeology and tourism in Egypt...

Instead of wanting to create this Disneyland open-air museum,

tourism today should be focused on real, authentic experiences

with the people.

..as I travel Ancient Egypt by train.

I'm starting my journey today from Luxor.

As I travel along this last stretch of railway,

I have Amelia Edwards' book with me

that helped to inspire my fascination in Ancient Egypt.

I'm continuing south, upriver,

and I'll be stopping off at a whole series of sites

that are strung out like jewels along the banks of the Nile.

And I'm really looking forward to visiting some of the places

that Amelia Edwards went to more than 100 years ago,

and finding out how different they look today.

Every town along this train line

seems to have its own Ancient Egyptian temple.

They're all dedicated to different deities -

and there were a lot to choose from.

We know of at least 1,400 gods and goddesses

that were worshipped in Ancient Egypt.

They represented different aspects of nature and human concerns,

from the sun to fertility

and childbirth to crocodiles.

I'll be stopping at four stations form Esna to Aswan

to meet a variety of different deities

worshipped in the later centuries of Ancient Egypt...

..on the final leg of my Egyptian journey.

Esna is a small city, with a population of around 60,000.

Thank you.

Walking along its main shopping street,

I eventually find what I'm looking for.

When Amelia Edwards came to Esna,

she had real trouble finding this temple.

And she describes wandering through the marketplace,

asking people where it is,

and the chemist says "'urayib", which means "nearby".

And then she sees it but, as she says,

it was buried up it it's chin in the accumulated rubbish of centuries.

And she's got a painting of it too.

So, this is what it looked like.

And you can see the floor level there,

you can see the ground surface goes right up

almost to the top of the pillars, to the capitals.

And you can see those three

are the three to the left of the main entrance to the temple.

So, it's extraordinary how much work has happened since then,

how much excavation has gone on

in order to reveal the temple in all its glory.

Now that all the sand and debris has been cleared,

it reveals a dramatic difference between the ground level of today

and that when the temple was built, just over 2000 years ago.

This temple is dedicated to Khnum,

a very ancient deity linked to the Nile, fertility and creation,

and worshipped throughout Egypt.

He's represented as a man with a ram's head.

In mythology, Khnum was also a potter,

moulding human children out of clay on his potter's wheel.

The facade of the temple

combines images of Khnum and other Egyptian gods

with the new rulers of Egypt, Roman emperors.

But as you step inside,

the wonders of this place become apparent.

The walls and ceilings are covered

with stunning images and hieroglyphics.

But it's the 24 columns holding up the ceiling

which, to me, are the most beautiful,

particularly their tops, or capitals.

There are lots of different designs of capitals here

and they're all beautiful.

Some of them are flowers.

Some of them seem to be papyri.

They're all different plants.

And the colours are amazing.

So, they've just restored this side,

and then they're busy at work on that side

doing this restoration...

..very carefully removing the accumulated dust and dirt

to reveal these beautiful colours.

I've persuaded the foreman El Tayeb Khoder

to come down for a quick chat.

So, you're supervising all of the work here?

Yes.

How long has it been so far, how long has this project been running for?

Maybe four years. Four years.

They start 2018.

You started in 2018? OK.

How much longer do you think before it's all done, all restored?

One more year.

One more year? OK, so you're nearly there.

Yes, one more year.

Yeah. And how many people have you got working here?

30 up.

30 people up there? Yes.

Yeah.

It's going to look amazing. Yes, yes.

I'll have to come back when you've finished this work. Yes.

Show me what you're doing out here then, yeah.

Are these hieroglyphics?

Scene here, a main scene.

The main scene, the main scene of the temple.

In the temple, yes.

And these seem to be unusual hieroglyphics.

Yes. They're not just parts of words.

Here, when she births.

Oh, my goodness! That's a woman in childbirth?

Yes, he is inside his mother,

and he take out to the light.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's beautiful.

Really, really lovely. Yes.

I'm back at Esna station to catch the train heading south.

The next stop is Edfu,

just 30 miles down the line.

The railway slavishly follows the twists and turns of the Nile.

I'm travelling to Edfu

on my adventure through ancient Egypt.

Here, there's a temple of the falcon god Horus.

Like the temple at Esna, this one had fallen into ruin

when the Roman empire pivoted to Christianity as the state religion.

It became buried in centuries'-worth of rubble, sand and silt.

In the 19th century,

French archaeologists led the excavation

to reveal an almost intact temple from the Ptolemaic period.

I'm meeting the head of Tourism and Antiquity...

Ahmed, hello.

..Dr Ahmed Hassan.

Nice to meet you.

This looks amazing.

Presumably, when it was first excavated,

it was completely surrounded and partially covered

by mud-brick buildings like this? Yes.

And what about the structure of this temple, then?

I can see the two pylons there. What's the rest of the temple like?

Yeah, it's typical design of the Egyptian temple.

But it was considered to be the best preserved temple,

because it was most recent temple

and remained under the sand for many centuries.

Yeah, completely buried. Yes.

Yeah. That's why it was preserved.

And what we can see behind us here

are layers and layers and layers of mud-brick buildings.

So, presumably that was all around and on top of the temple as well?

Yeah, it was the original part

which represented the city of the workers in ancient Egypt

when they build the temple.

This is archaeology too. Yes.

Just because it's built of mud-brick. Yeah.

Archaeological investigation has shown that the Ptolemaic temple,

which dates to the late 3rd century BCE,

replaced an earlier temple.

It seems that the falcon god, Horus,

had been a special deity for the people of Edfu

for thousands of years.

You suggested you might have pre-historic evidence?

Yes, a lot of finds have been uncovered here.

The falcon god cult existed here from pre-history.

Yeah? Yes.

That's amazing, isn't it?

A lot of falcons have been found here and watched here,

so it was called the city of the falcon.

And what does Horus represent, then?

He was the god of the sky.

And the commercial roads had to be protected by a god.

So, protector of the trade routes through Egypt?

Yes, it was a transit point.

Edfu was on the commercial road

between Egypt and the rest of Africa.

So, the falcon god was considered the protector.

Right. I think we should get in there, don't you?

Yes, of course.

As we walk towards the temple,

two towers form its gateway, or pylon.

Looking at those pylons, it looks like they've got windows in them.

Are they original? Yes.

The pylon is considered the address of the temple,

which was built as two inclined walls

with spiral staircases

to carry the priests up to these windows

to throw gold pieces over the people