Original subtitles

For 5,000 years this land, Egypt, and the epic civilisation 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 setting off on the historicaljourney 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.

This is my chance to travel this fabulous land.

And experience it as the ancient Egyptians did, from the River Nile.

From pharaohs to slaves, from facts to fantasies,

I want to explore, first hand, and understand how this river

shaped one of the world's first, and greatest, civilisations.

Join me as I uncover 5,000 years of history along the River Nile.

For thousands of years this river has been the lifeblood of Egypt.

My first taste of the mighty Nile is its mouth.

I've hitched a lift on this fishing boat to check out

where the river meets the sea.

These boats are coming in from the Mediterranean.

I'm right at the very mouth of the Nile delta.

Since ancient times this has been Egypt's gateway to the world,

and it was along these waters the world connected

to a civilisation that's had enormous influence on all our lives.

For thousands of years the Nile has nourished culture,

and civilisation, and technology. But it's also been people's home.

So over the next few weeks I'm going to be leaving the land,

and living on the water.

I hope to be meeting old friends and perhaps making new ones

so I can try to understand the power, and the secrets,

and the stories of this historical dynamo.

My journey proper begins on the other side of the Nile Delta

at Cairo, where the mass of streams and canals at the Nile's end come

together to form one glorious river.

From there, I'm sailing upstream using the river like a historical

treasure map to investigate great sites and new discoveries

from ancient Egypt.

It's an adventure along Egypt's river artery,

all the way to its border with Sudan.

But to do any of this, I'm going to need more than

just a fishing boat.

Because I'm making a historical journey,

my home for the next couple of weeks is going to be a traditional boat

that for centuries has sailed up and down the river Nile.

It's this beautiful thing, a Dahabiya.

Part barge part sailboat, Dahabiyas are unique to the shallow waters

of the Nile.

My goodness, this is absolutely huge.

I wasn't expecting it to be so big.

Hello. Hi. Are you Osama? Please. Nice to meet you.

Thank you. Welcome. Thank you so much. Please. I will.

Gosh, this is so beautiful. What an amazing boat.

I've seen them in pictures, these, but I've never actually

had a chance to sail on one before.

Flat bottom boats like this have sailed up the Nile

for thousands of years.

In ancient Egypt the symbol for any kind of a journey

was a boat.

This is our captain.

Hi, nice to meet you.

Hi, I'm Bettany. Welcome. Thank you.

And this is this is your cruise. Yeah. Hi, Gentlemen.

Hi, I'm Bettany.

The ancient Egyptians were a bit wary of ocean travel,

but when it came to the Nile they were in their element.

Let me show you cabin.

Cruises on Dahabiyas like this became popular 200 years ago,

as modern day travellers fell under Egypt's spell.

Pitch-black in here, everybody.

I'll open the curtains.

Oh, my goodness.

Hello, Nile.

This is ridiculous.

What am I going to tell my husband and my kids when I get home?

They think I'm working very hard.

This is your private terrace. I've got my own little deck.

Oh, that's not bad, Osama. I do really love this river.

The river Nile is actually the father of all other rivers,

all over the world.

Yes. This is what I think about the River Nile.

Yes. Yeah, well, it just created a whole world, didn't it, the Nile?

There's no doubt. No. Amazing.

I'm not going to explore its secrets.

One thing you learned quickly in Egypt is that it's smart to avoid

the midday heat.

So, as dawn arrives the crew get ready to depart.

And as the sun appears we're on our way.

The Nile united ancient Egyptians from north to south, bank to bank.

I want to try to understand these people,

and the role this river played in all their lives.

And I'll be exploring the land that first got me hooked on history.

Whenever I go travelling I always take one of these,

so I write notes on the places I've visited.

I bring quotes from ancient authors and sometimes photos.

But for this trip I've been asked to include some photos of myself

and there's a reason for this.

I was five years old when I first saw the British Museum,

and it's amazing Tutankhamun exhibition.

That experience inspired me to write my first book.

This is My Busy Book, by Bettany.

This is my theory on why, and how, Tutankhamun died.

"Tutankhamun was a long time ago.

He must have lots of men because he was rich,

and he was very, very nice.

But one day some, spelt 'sum', mosquitoes, that were very germy,

bit him, and he died. Somebody buried the jewellery,

and made doors for the jewellery, but after some men dug it up."

Obviously, archaeologists.

And lots and lots, and lots, and lots of people went to the museum,

and on the television you can see it.

The story of Tutankhamun has captivated millions.

He's one of the reasons I became a historian.

I've been tipped off that this afternoon something rather

extraordinary is happening.

I've got an appointment

with one of the world's leading Egyptologists

at the Egyptian Museum.

I can't tell you how much this is my happy place,

because this museum is 5,000 square meters.

It's absolutely jam packed with artefacts,

and treasures and objects.

They even say there's not enough room for them all.

So they have to be stored out here in the courtyard.

This magnificent museum holds 120,000 Egyptian antiquities.

Amongst them is the world's greatest collection of royal coffins.

And this afternoon one of them is going to be opened

for a very rare glimpse of the mummy inside.

I think it's somewhere around here. I think.

Hi, Salima.

Professor Salima lkram and I share a passion for the story of Egypt.

I'm so pleased that you could come.

Salima is a world expert in mummification.

And today I'm joining her team.

Their subject is 3,400 years old.

She's called Thuya.

And she's no less than the great grandmother of Tutankhamun.

I've never actually seen her face.

No, no, because this has not been opened for ages.

Salima needs to check on Thuya's body, so her glass cabinet

is being opened.

Her coffin lid will be removed.

And for the first time in years, we'll be able to see her mummified.

In the centre of modern Cairo just yards from the River Nile

I've come to the Egyptian Museum for a rather special rendezvous.

This afternoon I'm coming face-to-face with the great grandmother

of Tutankhamun.

Oh, my goodness. My heart is actually beating faster.

Why she's special, is it's maybe one of the best preserved mummies.

Absolutely. She is one of the best preserved mummies that we have.

This is Thuya.

She was discovered two decades before her great grandson.

When we look at her face, do you think that could give us

any genetic clues as to what Tutankhamun looked like?

I think that would be quite possible especially because they've got

the same set of teeth sticking out a bit.

What's really extraordinary is that she's not born royal.

There's a lot of social mobility.

I mean, she starts off quite common. just has a priestess,

and then she's in this splendid tomb with all of this gold,

and stuff. Amazing.

Can you smell that?

It smells like resins and incense. It does.

So, look down here.

That's actually the resins that are part of the mummification

and burial ritual, and they were poured over,

and some of them are still...

you can see it must have been in a funny position

because of the way it's dribbled. Wow.

Can I just have a moment to get this millennia old smell?

That is amazing.

This is closer than anyone normally gets to Thuya.

Yeah, I think all of our conservators are ready.

It's time to see how the lady herself is faring.

OK.

Oh, my God! Look at her!

She's magnificent.

She's so tiny, and so perfect.

Look at her hair, she's got this beautiful, thick head of curly,

kind of, strawberry blonde... is that the original colour?

Well, we did... We're not 100% sure,

but when you're using natron which we use for mummification,

it's a bleach.

So it's like putting salt on your hair, when you go to the beach.

And look at her. She's got double pierced earrings.

She has.

She does have that Tutankhamun overbite.

She's even more beautiful than in her pictures.

By Thuya's time mummification had been practised

for at least 1,200 years.

That sophisticated process of preparing and preserving the body

would have taken over two months to complete.

She's a really fine example of mummification

but how can you tell that? What here tells you this is a really, really,

really good job. Well, I mean, it's a totally, beautifully

well-preserved, recognisable face.

Completely. You can see her eyebrows and cheekbones.

Sometimes the nose goes a bit funny. Yeah, she's got a little bit of

stuffing, she looks absolutely gorgeous.

The ears are so well preserved, it's not broken,

she's got her hair, the kind of wrapping,

the individual wrapping of her tootsies is so perfect.

The fact that she's wearing sandals,

and really every care was taken with her,

and from the smell you can also tell

that it was really good quality resins.

OK, look this is really cool.

OK. See. Look at her eyes. Yeah.

So what they did was, they lifted the lids up and then they put

in pieces of cloth which they put a bit of resin onto and made them

look like eyes, so that she can see things in her afterlife.

Just look at that face.

What she's seen, what she's lived through.

The world that she experienced.

My God, if she could talk, what she could tell us.

Salima will now check that the humidity of the museum

hasn't been affecting to Thuya.

But the signs are, that well into her fourth millennium,

she's doing very well indeed.

Just to be that close to her face it really makes you realise

this was a woman, like me. A woman who's had children,

who lived through a life and was now going really happily through death

to another world.

And I think you've got to remember that. We think that mummies

are something kind of grisly, and gruesome, and scary.

But, for these people, this is the beginning

of the best after-party.

And whatever happened to her, I hope that Thuya

has been enjoying herself.

The eternal afterlife, and the detailed preparations

for it, make the ancient Egyptians endlessly fascinating.

But they weren't death obsessed. They were great lovers of life too.

From the Nile's water levels, to the sun's movement

and nature around them.

They made detailed observations of the world that they lived in.

I brought something slightly bizarre with me.

This is a replica of an ancient Egyptian hedgehog.

The Ancient Egyptians loved hedgehogs.

They thought they were slightly magical because they hibernated,

and then seemed to come back to life.

They were very resilient against snake bites,

and so the hedgehog was a symbol of good luck.

And for good luck travelling the Nile ancient boats would often

carry an image of a hedgehog.

So while my friend keeps an eye on the boat, I'm disembarking

to investigate some monuments that combine

the Egyptian fascination with death, with the pioneering work of living.

It's difficult to imagine an ancient site more iconic

than the pyramids of Giza.

Just look at these incredible things.

However many times I see them, I'm never not blown away by them.

They just pound with human ambition.

The West Bank of the Nile boasts over 100 pyramids,

but none are as famous as these.

They've been astounding onlookers for 4,500 years.

And recent discoveries mean we're finally able

to appreciate them properly.

We're so used to thinking these are desert monuments, in a desert

landscape but when they were originally built it would've

been completely different around here.

For the Nile, now, is about five miles away.

But at the time it came right up close to the pyramids.

And when it flooded they would be reflected in its glittering surface.

It's one of these structures in particular I've come to see.

The Great Pyramid the eternal resting place of the Pharaoh Khufu.

Scaling almost 500 feet, its completion set new levels

for human achievement.

It was the world's tallest structure for nearly 4,000 years.

This is one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world,

and it is the only one that is still standing intact.

I'm obviously a huge fan of the ancient world,

and ancient civilisations,

and there are many amazing things across the globe,

but this is truly wonderful, isn't it?

There are 2.3 million blocks of stone here,

and each one has been perfectly sculpted so it fits right next

to its neighbour. It's incredible.

The Great Pyramid took two decades to complete.

With its original polished, white limestone casing

it would have gleamed out in the Egyptian sun.

Exactly who built it, and how, has been the subject of wild

speculation for centuries.

It's been said that this was built by aliens from outer space,

but, thank goodness, some new historical evidence has appeared

that tells us without a doubt that this pyramid was made by human hand.

And it's this remarkable thing.

This is a copy of an ancient papyrus.

Found just six years ago in a cave near the Red Sea,

it's the 4,500 year old journal of a man called Merer.

Now, Merer was no less than a project manager

for the Great Pyramid.

There is remarkable detail in here.

He's written down how they made this beautiful thing.

There's that a line that tells us that the limestone blocks that cover

the pyramid, that made it that amazing gleaming white,

were brought from 15 miles along the Nile.

Merer says it takes one day's sail for this special stone

to reach the site,

confirming the Nile's crucial role in the pyramids construction.

It's really a thrilling time to be studying the pyramids.

Professor Mark Lerner has spent his career investigating

the Giza Plateau.

So, if we'd been standing here 4,500 years ago

what would be the landscape that we'd be looking at?

You would have seen harbours, and waterways,

and Nile barges coming in from Aswan bringing granite.

You would have seen seagoing ships coming

in from Lebanon bringing timber.

You would have had an multiethnic community here,

and not just men. Men, women, families.

It was a busy bustling scene,

with fires, and bakeries, and butchers.

It's almost like a whole civilisation culture, that's growing

around the creation of the pyramid.

They conscripted people from towns and villages all throughout Egypt.

Then they come here and they are embedded and integrated

into a project that involves tens of thousands of people.

So, I'm still interested in how the Egyptians built the pyramids.

But I'm almost more interested, Bettany, in how the pyramids helped

to build Egypt-

Building the world's first skyscraper was a transformational

moment in human history.

The city of workers that settled here collaborated in a game changing

way, and with Mark's help I'm getting a privileged look

behind the scenes, to get a glimpse of their remarkable world.

So, welcome to our field lab. Thank you so much.

For the past 30 years thousands of artefacts found at Giza

have been brought here to be assessed,

and studied in the archaeologists' storeroom.

You can see it's much bigger than you would think from outside.

One of the things we find all over the site

are what we call dolerite hammer stones. Here.

Oh, yeah. I knew it was going to be heavy.

I didn't know it was going to be that heavy.

That's actually straining my arms. Yeah.

That's like a cannonball.

Well, when they started using it, it is like a cannonball.

But when they started it was probably pear shaped,

and they just use it to smash stone surfaces away,

and then they'll turn it and keep turning it,

so, in the end, they get kind of a ball shape.

In Mark's latest excavation he's found remarkable evidence

of how the people constructing the pyramid lived.

And what they ate.

We found this enormous dump,

and it was so much animal bones sheep, and goat, and cattle.

Yeah. And there was something very curious about it.

Whenever we separate out the good meat bearing bones,

we find that the ends are broken off.

Two of our Egyptian field school students said, "Oh, that's easy.

It's shorba kawareh which is Arabic for like gelatine soup,

knuckle bone soup,

and the evidence is that somebody, elites, people of higher status,

were eating the meat off the long, good meat bearing parts of the bone.

But people of lower status are eating very high fat,

high protein knuckle bone soup.

Mark's found the casseroles this soup was served in...

It's so beautiful, that.

...And even their bespoke stands.

It's almost like a Tupperware set.

So, actually, it seems like they're getting a pretty good diet.

Indeed. That casserole is interesting cause that's

just like a family size casserole. Yeah.

Are they mass-producing food as well?

They were making your standard, average kitchen bread mould,

and bread loaf. And then, if I may, over here... Mm hmm.

They were increasing it.

They were reaching for economy of scale, by making

these gigantic bread moulds. Yeah, yeah.

Have a feel. Oh, my gosh. That is quite a responsibility,

you can have it back. Thank you.

But the big picture here is that they didn't have bread factories.

They were creating the world's first bread factory.

It's all a long way from the stereotype of sweating slaves,

toiling away under the Pharaoh's whip.

Even the tiniest finds are captivating.

These are tubular beads.

We find these beads everywhere.

Look at the colour. It's such a tiny little thing.

But, I mean, who's wearing these?

And we're finding them in the workers' barracks.

Right where we find all the big heavy dolerite pounders.

So what, are you pounding stone

as you're wearing your beaded nugget? We don't know.

Finds like these speak volumes,

helping to jigsaw puzzle together a picture of life

for those at the bottom of the pile.

Upstream though, I'm about to witness the terrifying power

of the Pharaoh, as I adventure right inside a very special pyramid.

So I've said goodbye to Cairo,

and we're off, and it's 500 miles of the Nile to come.

From here to the southern city of Aswan my riverboat

will be following in the footsteps of Pharaoh's warriors and traders.

But this journey was also made by tourists of the past,

and their vessel of choice was the Dahabiya.

I'm still a bit embarrassed by the luxury of this boat,

but, actually, it is quite appropriate for how people

used to sail down the Nile.

Dahabiya gets its name from the Arabic word 'dhabab',

which means golden because these boats were supposed to be

so luxurious, and we have amazing accounts of 18th and 19th century

travellers who used them.

Let me just tell you of some things they brought on.

So one packed 100 bottles of wine, champagne, a piano for entertainment

and there was even a British family who brought their own cow,

so that they could have fresh milk every morning.

These cruises could last for months on a river famed, from ancient times

onwards, for its hidden and unexpected dangers.

Hi, boys. ls everything OK?

Oh, my gosh. There's somebody down in the Nile down here.

Two of them.

What's happening? We have a very shallow water. Yeah.

And one of the ropes has gone around the paddle. OK.

It seems that the tug boat that helps pull the Dahabiya along

has got stuck on one of the Nile's many sand banks.

It's tight rope is now wrapped around its propeller.

Tim, our cameraman, decided to go in and see if he can help.

There's loads of people just doing that classic thing when something

bad happens, they're just sort of standing around.

The Nile is such a paradise river.

So there are sand banks and cataracts.

But, isn't it interesting, that this can still happen?

You get the feeling this isn't the first time the crew have dealt

with something like this.

It's all very new to us though, especially Tim.

You know the funniest thing, Bettany? What?

Like a plonker, I left my wallet...

But with the propeller freed,

and some British cash drying in the sun,

we're on our way.

Ten miles south of Cairo

I'm heading to the fast royal burial ground of Saqqara.

But first, there's just time to share with you one of the biggest

breakthroughs ever in our understanding of Ancient Egypt.

The people who lived around the Nile Valley were some of the very first

to do an incredible thing.

They put their spoken language into something

that could be recorded, a writing,

and of course that's amazing for us historians because we get

to understand their lives, and how they lived

and what mattered to them.

Now, of course the language that they used was Egyptian

hieroglyphics which is very beautiful, but the problem

is that we lost the ability to translate it for centuries,

which is one of the reasons that the ancient Egyptians were such

a mysterious civilisation.

Then, in 1799, there was the most amazing discovery on the Nile Delta.

It was the this thing.

This is the Rosetta Stone.

In 1882 the real Rosetta Stone was snaffled by the Brits, and ended

up in the British Museum in London.

Covered in writing it's been a vital key to understanding ancient Egypt.

Because it's got two languages on it,

so Egyptian and ancient Greek,

it means it can act as a kind of code breaker.

The problem was, of course,

that people could read ancient Greek but not the Egyptian hieroglyphics.

And there was this race on between France and England to see

who could crack the code first.

And I'm sorry to say the French won,

and what they did was that they found this word, here,

which in Greek says day of birth or birthday, genethlia.

And they matched that up with this hieroglyphic here,

which says birthday too.

So at once we could start to piece together the story of the ancient

Egyptians in their own words.

This is the thing that stopped the Egyptians being a mystery.

It meant that they were people that we could really get

to know intimately.

And there's a prime example of that

at my next stop along the Nile.

They were building pyramids here at Saqqara a whole

century before Giza.

I've come to find one of Saqqara's hidden gems.

And I'm going to need some desert transport.

Hello, sir. Hello, lady.

Hi.

Nice to see you. Hello!

You and your beautiful camel.

What's his name?

Ramesses ll. Ramesses ll? So a very powerful pharaoh.

How old? Ten years.

Ten years!

Oh, you're so gorgeous, aren't you?

Oh! Hello, darling! Hello!

Oh, lovely!

Kissing me, and a little bit of camel slobber in my ear.

I've missed that feeling. Hello!

Yes. Oh! Oh!

Camel slobber on my cheek! That's beautiful.

He's very, very lovely. Thank you.

But sadly I'm not going to be going on this camel today.

Thank you. Thank you so, so much.

I'd love to say that I'm doing this Lawrence of Arabia moment,

I'm going to travel across the desert on a camel.

But the problem is, when the pyramids were first built,

there were no camels here,

we think. There's no evidence of them, there are no bones, there's no

camels in hieroglyphs.

It took another 2,000 years or so for them to come here,

but at the time of the first pyramids...

Hello, good afternoon, sir.

...what you did have was a donkey.

Hello! Lovely to meet you.

Lovely to see you.

This morning,

my authentic Bronze Age desert transport is called Whisky And Soda.

I'm not sure they had stirrups then but, you know, in the name

of security... I can do this. OK. Two, three. Oh!

Lovely. Oh, perfect.

I'm excited! Shall we go? Yalla, yalla! Yalla, yalla!

Bye, Ramesses. See you in 2,000 years! Bye!

Come on, darling. Up you go.

Oh, she's great, isn't she?

She's just a natural historian.

She wants to get there.

This empty desert landscape would once have played host

to massive funeral processions as dead pharaohs were carried to their

show-off newly designed tombs -

PYFamids.

This is the very first pyramid ever built.

It's the Step Pyramid.

So you've got a tomb laid out at the bottom, and then the pharaoh

decided to build another one on top and another one and another one

that becomes like some kind of massive wedding cake.

It's a kind of experiment, really.

It's when they're going, I'm the most powerful man on Earth.

Look at me!

I can reach up to the sky, I can reach up to the gods.

What I've come to see, though, is another first for Egypt

on the other side of the Step Pyramid.

Thank you.

Thank you, darling.

You've been beautiful.

These are the sorry ruins of the pyramid built

for the pharaoh Unas.

People are being allowed back in here for the first time in two

decades because it wasn't safe and there was restoration work done.

When it was built 4,350 years ago, this was the smallest pyramid

of its era.

But it was a game changer.

This is an extra special treat for me because this is the first time

since I've come to Egypt that I've been allowed in.

Hi, how are you? I'm very good. You're from where? London.

London, welcome. Nice to see you. Thank you.

So you've got the key to go in? Yes.

Amazing. Thank you.

The unique treasure of Unas' pyramid is found underneath it.

Amazing. Thank you. Shukran.

It's pitch-black.

This 30-metre tunnel is leading me right under the centre

of the pyramid.

Three granite slabs once blocked this passage, separating

the outside world from the burial chambers of Unas.

Oh, my goodness!

This is so beautiful!

I've seen pictures of this, but I've never been in here.

Floor to ceiling, you've got...

...the walls covered in hieroglyphs.

Look at the state of them! They're so beautifully preserved.

This was the first pyramid ever to be decorated

in carved hieroglyphic writing.

Ritual spells for the dead.

Unas was a...

...I'd say a man with quite an ego, and we can tell this here because...

...this is his name.

So here this is the name of Unas. It's in what's called a cartouche,

which is French for a bullet.

It's a kind of bullet-shaped thing.

And once you start...

You can see the name of Unas absolutely everywhere!

So it's Unas, Unas, Unas, Unas, Unas. It just goes on.

And I don't know if you can see here, there's another symbol that

keeps on appearing. It's these waves of water.

So there are two here. There's one here.

There's one here, there's one here, there's one here.

The importance of water and rivers couldn't be clearer.

One spell even claims Unas is he who has caused the land

to be underwater.

Not only did Unas tell us that he was the most powerful king,

but that he had divine powers, and what he's saying here

is that it's him who caused the Nile itself to flood. These hieroglyphs

don't always make for pleasant reading.

They show that the ancient Egyptians often blended

brilliance with brutality.

He says that he holds the hearts of his enemies in his fingers,

that he burns their houses to the ground, but there's something else,

and, actually, if you read it, it's really shocking.

It's really upsetting because it's Unas using his sex

BS a weapon.

It says that Unas copulates with his penis.

Unas is lord of his seed. Unas takes the wives of husbands

whenever he wants, whenever his heart desires.

This is not a man that I would have liked to have met in the flesh,

and it seems as though he's no longer here,

we don't have his body, but there's something that's recently

been discovered - that...

...if you look on the wall, I don't know if you can see that, there indented in...

...is the ghost of Unas.

So he's still here with us.

Unas has left a mighty legacy and, along the Nile, there are other

treasures that are still as vibrant today as they have been for

thousands of years.

The River Nile has always been the lifeblood of Egypt,

and I'm exploring the sites and the people who made

up a great civilisation along its banks.

The many sites and treasures around Cairo are behind me.

And this is my first taste of a much quieter river.

Is that OK? Are you sure?

Bakkar has been working on dahabeahs since he was 12 years old.

I've done a bit of sailing too, but never anything like this.

So I'm sort of hopelessly trying to help with the tiller.

It's quite hard,

this river. It's a difficult river to sail on.

Yes.

So how old are you?

And the rest of your family have all worked on boats, have they?

OK.

Is it your plan to become a captain? Yes.

Very good! Yes.

We are actually heading into the bank now.

Sorry, I'm really sorry!

I was pulling the wrong rope!

This is getting us in the right direction, isn't it?

Good. Argh!

2,500 years ago, Egypt was described as the gift

of the Nile.

And that's not changed.

Life just bursts out of the banks.

You can see why the ancients called Egypt the Red Land for the desert

and the Black Land for the fertile strips along the river.

This is a really lovely typical Nile scene with farm animals and palm

trees and reeds and, actually, if you start to look, you'll see

that there are people everywhere because, in Egypt, 96%

of the population live near or next to the Nile.

And that's because there's just so little waterfall here.

This river really is the source of life for Egypt.

And, actually, the water in this river, almost all of it comes from

1,500 miles south in the Ethiopian Highlands.

For thousands of years, the rainy season in the Highlands led

to Egypt's annual flood.

By late summer, the water level here could have risen eight

or nine metres...

...feeding the valley.

It was food nourished by the Nile that powered a great civilisation.

And the crew have tipped me off that right now is the time

for harvesting an ancient Egyptian crop

still being fed by the Nile's waters...

...dates.

They've been cultivating dates here for over 6,000 years,

always fed by the waters of the Nile.

The ancient Egyptians used dates for everything - for building,

for furniture, for food, for magic, for medicine,

and it was said that the date was the bread of the desert.

From Stone Age coffins made of date palm leaves...

...to dates themselves left as offerings in the Step Pyramid,

and even for Tutankhamun himself.

This fruit has been the superfood of ancient Egypt

since the very beginning.

The reason is simple -

dates can be dried, stored and carried across the desert.

In bad times as well as good, dates have kept this civilisation going.

They're a super-food in the modern sense,too -

they're full of fibre and potassium

and - it's said - can even lower blood pressure.

Morning, girls.

But if you want to taste a truly fresh date,

you've got to be here at harvest time.

Is it nice?

OK, here we go. First fresh date.

Slightly grubby.

SHE EXCLAIMS

No, not sweet.

Quite bitter, but very good.

Very nice and completely white on the inside.

Thank you. Shukraan, ladies. Shukraan.

The date harvest was always an excuse for a good time -

for weddings and family get-togethers -

and it's still the case today.

Well done. And he's learning. You're teaching him. Yeah.

Yeah. INDISTINCT

You will.

Tonight, some of the crew have invited me to join them...

This looks delicious. Have you got some?

...for a feast of traditional dishes

Is this hummus? I love this. Hummus.

We think that we invented the idea of superfoods.

I love the notion that the ancient Egyptians actually got there first.

And in a way, the date was the fuel of ancient Egyptian civilisation

and whether you were an all-powerful pharaoh or one of those workers

who laboured away to build the Giza pyramids,

you knew that you lived in a land of plenty, and we know

that on beautiful nights like this under a full moon,

men and women would get together to share and celebrate the gifts

of the Nile -

as we are tonight.

I can't eat another date, I've had so many! SHE LAUGHS

It's nice. I know - it is better for you than the biscuit.

Next time...

I'm on the trail of Cleopatra.

I'll brave the longest tomb in Egypt...

The only thing I don't like are small dark spaces.

Excuse me. Thank you.

...and I'll discover how mummification

wasn't just for humans.

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