All language subtitles for Treasures of Ancient Egypt 2of3 The Golden Age 720p HDTV_Subtitles01.ENG

Ever since archaeologists
began digging mighty temples

out of the desert,

and discovering objects of
unheralded splendour and luxury,

ancient Egypt has obsessed

the imagination of the West.

Usually, though,
the objects of its civilisation

are seen as historical artefacts,

the exotic relics
of a mysterious lost world.

'I want to consider Egyptian art
from a slightly different
perspective,

'not that of an archaeologist or
a historian, but of an art lover.'

'Over three films, I'm telling
the story of Egyptian art

'through 30
of its greatest treasures.'

'So far, I've encountered
surprising and stunning works

'that chart the emergence
of a powerful and distinctive style

'over the first few thousand
years of Egypt's history.

'Yet the glories of the Old Kingdom
couldn't last forever.

In 2000 BC, Egypt was nothing like
the mighty civilisation of old,

with its limitless wealth,
fine paintings and great pyramids.

The country was impoverished,
it was highly militarised,

and under constant threat
of foreign invasion.

'But out of the darkness,
Egypt rose again,

'to enjoy its golden age,

'when the art of the old order
was reinvigorated

'by forceful personalities
and revolutionary styles.

'It was a time when sculpture,
painting, and architecture

'would reach new peaks
of opulence and beauty.

'I'm in the ancient city of Thebes,
modern-day Luxor,

'which rose to prominence
around 2000 BC,

'after the breakdown
of the Old Kingdom.

'The centuries that followed

'would be known as

'the Middle and New Kingdoms.

'If the Old Kingdom was the
classical age of Egyptian art,

'when a strong visual style

'prizing harmony and repetition
first emerged,

'then this would be
its Baroque period,

'an era of grandeur,
embellishment and experimentation.

'This ruined temple is where
my first treasure was discovered.'

No-one has gone in here for years.
I think more than two decades.

It's been blocked up
with these old boulders.

GATE RATTLES

Look at that!

There's a whole chamber...
corridor leading downstairs.

'From the moment tombs like this
were first sealed,

'the promise of
unimaginable treasures within

'has captivated raiders, explorers,

'and, more recently, Egyptologists.'

You had to be quite brave
to be an Egyptologist.

It's easy to succumb to the idea
of...the curse of the mummy.

I suddenly feel quite
a long way from home,

as though I'm actually
walking into...

Well, I am walking
into someone's grave.

Hopefully, it's not mine.

'The early years
of the Middle Kingdom

'were a dark and dangerous time,

'when ruling Egypt
required toughness

'and a stomach for brutality.

'Among the treasures found
around here were portraits

'of one of the most notorious
tyrants in Egyptian history.'

Compared with the blunt, archaic

and even slightly primitive
sculptures of before,

the statuary of this ruler,

with his striking
Dumbo-like jug ears,

which are flapping
at right angles to his head,

offers quite a sophisticated
revolution, really.

We know quite a lot about him.
He's called Senwosret III.

He's a Twelfth Dynasty king
who was a warrior.

He waged a long and
quite brutal, aggressive campaign

suppressing his southern
neighbours in Nubia.

He poisoned their wells, apparently
he carried off their women,

he burnt their fields of barley,

he built a series
of forts and camps

which had quite unsubtle names
like "Destroying the Nubians".

And these sculptures
are typical of his portraiture

because they depict the king
with this idealised torso.

He looks youthful,
virile, he looks trim.

But his head is something
totally different,

and that face is surprising and new,

because you find sunken cheeks,

thick-hooded eyes, and also
these noticeable downturned lips.

He looks careworn and troubled,
he's a bit world-weary,

so you find here the impression
of an all-hearing, admittedly,

autocrat, but one who is also
a bit pained by his own brutality,

and...I think that's why these
sculptures feel so contemporary.

Arguably for the first time here,

you have the glimmer
of complex psychology,

and I know it's anachronistic
to say so, but, as result,

these sculptures feel a bit
like modern portraiture.

'Like Oliver Cromwell
3,500 years later,

'Senwosret presented himself
warts and all.

'He was a tough-as-nails
leader of men

'and certainly not
to be trifled with.

'But my next treasure,
at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo,

'reveals that Senwosret enjoyed
the finer things in life, as well.

'His jewellers were capable
of exquisite artistry.

'This is a pendant
that he gave to his daughter.'

Jewellery in the Middle Kingdom
was extremely sophisticated,

and this pendant
on the end of a necklace,

known as a pectoral,
is a particularly fine example.

And it contains these pieces of
carnelian from the Eastern Desert,

turquoise from Sinai,

and lapis lazuli
from modern Afghanistan.

And all of those have been
secured within a framework of gold

that was probably mined
near the king's stronghold in Nubia.

It's a very beautiful piece,

but I find it quite chilling
as well as beautiful.

Beneath this vulture, which is
hovering there with outspread wings,

you can see the king twice,

in the guise of a sphinx,
trampling his enemies underfoot.

Particularly pathetic
are those blue enemies,

they must be Nubians, right
at the bottom, contorted in agony,

clearly crushed beneath
the heel of a tyrant.

For me, this is
a bit of a despot's bauble.

It's sinister and it's dazzling.

It's alluring and it's also toxic.

It's kind of like the jewellery
equivalent of a poisonous orchid.

'Middle Kingdom jewellery is
the finest in Egyptian history.

'Even master-craftsmen today
struggle to understand

'how it was made
using ancient technology.

'Mohamed Kalil has been
making jewellery for 50 years.

'Egyptian craftsmen carefully had to
trace and cut the intricate figures,

'meticulously slice
and then set minute precious

'and semi-precious stones...

'..and buff the whole piece
back to a sparkling finish.

'After the death of Senwosret,

'the Middle Kingdom soldiered on
for almost 200 years.

'There was a period of chaos
before Egypt re-emerged

'stronger than ever before.

'This was the New Kingdom,
the pinnacle of the golden age

'that saw its kings take up
a grand new title - pharaoh.'

The term for the palace, "pr-aa",
or literally "great house",

came to refer to its royal occupant.
"Pr-aa", "pharaoh".

It's a bit like British people
talking about the crown.

And the shift came about to solve
a particularly tricky problem

faced by the administration.

A new king had laid claim
to the throne.

But there was a fundamental issue.

Egypt's first pharaoh was a woman.

'The Egyptians didn't
really have a word for "queen".

'Royal women were given titles
like King's Great Wife.

'So, when a young woman named
Hatshepsut came to the throne,

'her somewhat confused portraiture

'revealed a little bit
of an identity crisis.'

Hatshepsut ruled Egypt
not as a queen but as a king,

and that clash between
her gender and her position

seemed to be irreconcilable.

But she appears in the guise
of the male god Osiris.

Her skin is red, and red skin
in ancient Egyptian art

was associated with tanned,
masculine skin.

And she also wears a divine beard,

hardly the most feminine
of attributes.

Now, Egypt hadn't had
a cross-dressing pharaoh before

but this has a gentle,
wide-eyed beauty.

There's something quite ambiguous
and androgynous about the face

which manages to nod both to
her rank and also to her biology.

'It wasn't just Hatshepsut's
image that received a makeover.

'Thebes was given a face-lift, too,

'transformed by her
ambitious architects

'into a glorious capital city
to showcase her public monuments.

'She rebuilt shrines and adorned
the city with soaring structures

'that once loomed like skyscrapers.'

I don't think you need to be
an ancient Egyptian

to appreciate that this gargantuan
obelisk is a pretty awesome sight.

It's a beast of rock,
weighing around 300 tonnes,

and it's monolithic, which means
it was carved from a single chunk

of granite almost 30 metres high.

This is the tallest
standing obelisk in Egypt,

and obelisks like this
came into their own

under the pharaohs
of the New Kingdom.

They were meant to represent
the first rays of the sun's light

illuminating the known world.

And the tip of this one
was sheathed in gold leaf.

People often talk about dazzling
works of art. This one really was.

Imagine looking up to the top,
in this glaring Egyptian sunlight,

and seeing that sparkling gold.

It must've actually been
quite hard to look at,

like staring into the face of a god.

And Hatshepsut clearly understood
the symbolic significance

of these soaring forms, because
there's an inscription at the base

of this one in which she talks
about "peoples of the future

"who will see my monuments
and speak of what I've done".

So, for Hatshepsut, obelisks were
kind of signposts for posterity,

pointing the way towards eternity.

'But Hatshepsut's crowning glory

'was like nothing Egypt
had ever seen before.

'The road she built
north from Karnak

'was a superhighway out of the city

'to one of the greatest
buildings ever constructed.

'My next treasure is Djeser-Djeseru,

or "Holy of Holies",

Hatshepsut's temple
at Deir el-Bahri.

This is the first time I've visited
Hatshepsut's mortuary temple,

and it makes this
really...gleaming impression.

It's ordered and clean,

set against the wild,
rugged disorder

of those Theban mountains above.
It's a wonderful contrast.

And people often say that this
anticipates classical architecture,

Greek and Roman,
that it looks quite similar,

but, to me, for the first time
that I've seen it for real,

it feels so modern.

This looks like a piece of

fascist architecture from the 1930s.

It could have been built

within the last 100 years.

'And, as you walk,
there's this brilliant visual coup,

'because the temple itself is
arranged across these terraces

'but, from a certain angle,

'particularly when you're further
back, you can't quite gauge that.

'They stack on top of each other
as though it's one big facade,

'and then, as you approach,
it unfurls and reveals itself.

'It's like an Escher drawing, moving
around in space before your eyes.

'Every aspect of the temple
boasts of her brilliance...

'from the pillared porticoes

'decorated with giant statues
of Hatshepsut,

'to the painted reliefs
that extol her exploits.

'I love this one
depicting her mission

'to the mysterious
lost land of Punt.

'But my favourite part of the temple
is tucked away to one side,

'an intimate chapel
where she was free to be herself.'

It's quite a relief to leave
behind those sun-soaked,

splendid public terraces of the
temple outside and come in here

into this quite intimate,
much more feminine space, really.

It's a chapel and it's dedicated
to the mother goddess Hathor,

who often appeared as a cow.
And you see Hathor as you come in,

her wide-eyed benign faces
on the tops of those columns,

and you find Hathor again
in the inner sanctuary

in these two really delightful

painted relief scenes
on either wall.

Here she is, this scene dominated...

the composition in thrall
to this image of Hathor,

the cow, the mother goddess.

And over here is an infant,
a baby being suckled.

Now, that is Hatshepsut.

She's claiming the gods
as her parents.

She had to present herself
to the outside world

as a bit of an iron lady,
with this sort of tough carapace,

but here,
in this sacred inner space,

she could afford to show
that she was, of course,

a woman of flesh and blood, as well,

someone with softer feelings,
softer emotions.

Someone who could fall in love.

And that's why it's quite
revealing to find in here

this little carving
of a figure, a man.

The hieroglyphs tell us his name,
and he was called Senenmut.

'Senenmut was Hatshepsut's
right-hand man,

'and he was responsible
for this extraordinary temple.

'We'll probably never know how
the pharaoh came to recognise

'the talents
of this low-born genius,

'but a sweltering cave
above the temple contains evidence

'of scurrilous rumours
doing the rounds at the time.'

This is an unfinished tomb
cut out of the rock

just above Hatshepsut's
mortuary temple,

and it was used as a kind of
common room for the workers

who actually built the temple.

They came in here to shelter
from the blazing sun,

and, as they whiled away their time,

they did doodles and made pieces
of graffiti on the walls,

many of them quite crude
and sexually explicit.

But there's one piece
somewhere around in here...

I think... Oh, maybe up here,

if I can get up. There we go.

This is the doodle
that I wanted to find.

It's two people,
and they're having sex.

The one on the left, a male figure,

and the one to the right, apparently
wearing the pharaoh's headdress.

And lots of people think
that this is a very crude cartoon

of Senenmut having sex
with Hatshepsut.

This isn't a treasure of ancient
Egypt, it's not a great work of art.

You could just say
this is a piece of misogyny,

it's having a go
at a woman in power,

but it is very instructive
and revealing,

because, even if they
weren't actually lovers,

what this is saying is that,
to ordinary people

who lived under Hatshepsut,

they felt that Senenmut
really was the one in power.

And isn't that an amazing thing?
He came from totally humble origins,

and yet he rose right to
the very top of Egyptian society.

'With Senenmut's help,

'Hatshepsut had secured
a glorious future for Egypt.

'I want to get an overview
of what she achieved.'

Hatshepsut rediscovered
the glories of ancient kingship.

Pharaohs no longer looked at all
careworn, or troubled, or haggard,

because they were divine
by their very birth.

And ancient Thebes would go on
to become this glittering centre

of ancient Egypt.

It was a kind of stage set for this
expensive drama of one-upmanship

as successive kings vied
to commission art and architecture

that was more colossal, almighty,
and opulent than ever before.

'By the 14th century BC,
Egypt had settled into peacetime

'and become a land of plenty.

'The pharaoh could afford to take
the art of monumental sculpture

'to another level.'

These two craggy figures

are some of the most famous

sights in the whole of Egypt,

with their weather-beaten faces.

They're known as
the Colossi of Memnon

and Memnon was an Ethiopian king.

But they're not of this
character Memnon at all.

In fact, each of these
quartzite colossal sculptures,

weighing over 700 tonnes,
five storeys, 60 feet high,

depicts one of the most important,
powerful pharaohs that ever lived,

a man called Amenhotep III,

who ruled over Egypt
at the pinnacle of its golden age.

'It's tempting to compare him
to Louis XIV.

'Amenhotep III was the Sun King
of the ancient world.

'He filled his deluxe palaces
with distinctive statues of himself,

'their tranquil, Zen-like features

'now grace museums
and galleries around the world.

'I've come to Berlin
to find my next treasure,

'which suggests that even tiny
objects in Amenhotep's court

'could be miniature masterpieces
in their own right.'

This charming glass vessel

is one of the masterpieces
of the New Kingdom,

and it's exactly the sort of thing
that Amenhotep would have collected.

And, looking at it,
you can understand why,

because it is really delightful.

It's like the ancestor of Nemo
and his animated fishy friends.

It was once a cosmetics vessel.

It probably contained
perfume or lotion,

and you can see that the rim
of the vessel is actually formed

by the lips of the fish,
a tilapia nilotica,

which was apparently associated
with regeneration in the afterlife.

The thing I find really striking
about this is actually that blue,

yellow, white decorative pattern,

because the artist has got this
very effective tension going on

between the naturalism,
where you can see wavy lines

creating the impression
of fish scales,

but, at the same time,
a sense of abstraction,

because the pattern's
slightly visually distorting.

You can see, as well,
these unusual hypnotic spirals

for the fish's eyes.

There's something still quite pliant
and malleable about the glass,

it has this liquid quality.

And, to be honest,

I have no idea how the person
who made this could have made this.

I'm blown away by the
craftsmanship of this piece,

especially when you consider that
the technique of blowing glass

wouldn't even be discovered
for well over a millennium

after this sweet
little fish was made.

'One expert has rediscovered
how this fish was created.

'Using an ancient technique
known as core forming,

'Mark Taylor reveals how molten
sand could be transformed into art.'

Now, the idea is that the glass
is wrapped around a core

in the shape of the inside of the
fish, minus the tail and the fins.

Can I try this? I'm desperate
to have a go at this.

OK, that's yours. Am I using
this rod? You're using that rod.

This is cool here to the touch.

Yeah, that's cold, that end.

That's it, just touch it down.
Just touch it? Yes.

Now, pull away,
and turn with your left hand.

Ooh, it's sticking there.

Pull away a little bit
with your right hand. That's it.

Just try and get
a nice even trail around.

Now, how do you stop this?
It's getting thicker and thicker.

Just turn faster with your left
hand. This is the ugliest fish!

Look at it!

It's quite...
I like this, though, it's good.

Do you want to take back over
for a bit?

Cos I think otherwise
we'll be here forever.

You make a lot of glass, Mark?
Quite a lot, yeah.

How challenging is the Amarna fish?

Erm, it is difficult,
it is difficult.

All core forming is difficult,
it takes a lot of patience.

And it takes a lot of concentration,
and you get rather hot.

I've got some thin rods
of coloured glass,

and I will heat those up
and literally wind them around.

It's like a piece of spaghetti.

I'm just using the point
of the blade

and I'm just dragging it
across the hot glass.

It makes the fish come alive,

it suddenly looks as though
you've got a fish with scales. Yeah.

How much admiration do you have,
Mark,

for these ancient Egyptian
glass-makers?

Well, to be honest,
I've a lot of admiration for them.

They're working with
a fairly simple technology,

using a material which can
only be used at red heat,

sort of, you know,
1,000 or so centigrade.

This particular glass-maker
who made this fish,

he is an experienced glass-maker,

he would've been probably
doing this all his working life.

Now, the tail is where
it all goes a bit free-range?

That's right.
It's the bit I find most difficult.

This is a tense moment,
actually, of making the fish.

There you go.

So, you just sort of bash
it? Literally, yes.

I'm just trying to squeeze it
into a basic tail shape.

'This hot little fish
will spend the night cooling down

'before being reborn.'

I have to say,
I think this is superb.

Do you feel pleased with it?
I do, yes, yes.

I think it's reasonably similar
to the original one.

Reasonably similar?
It's pretty much identical!

You could swap it in the case,
and no-one would really know.

'From skilled craftsmen
to priests and bureaucrats,

'Amenhotep required a vast
workforce to maintain his kingdom.

'As wealth trickled down during
a reign lasting almost 40 years,

'a new elite could commission
splendours of their own

'where it mattered most -
in their tombs.

'My next two treasures
offer very different visions

'of paradise in the afterlife.'

This stretch of hills here

just around the corner
from Amenhotep III's grand temple,

is where many of Egypt's

lower-ranking officials
were buried -

civil servants, bureaucrats,
administrators.

And yet, some of the most
refined tomb paintings

anywhere in ancient Egypt
were discovered...in those slopes.

'11 fabulous fragments

'from one of the most sublimely
decorated tombs of them all

'have ended up
in the British Museum.'

I'll tell you
what I find extraordinary

about the works of art
in this gallery.

We know who commissioned them,
a man called Nebamun.

But Nebamun
wasn't really that important.

In fact, he was
a middle-ranking accountant,

he was a bean counter, really,

and yet, somehow, he persuaded
one of the most important artists

who ever worked in ancient Egypt
to decorate his tomb chapel.

The man who made these
has been described

as antiquities equivalent
of Michelangelo.

In this scene, which is one
of the masterpieces of the tomb,

he is out hunting with his family,
and they're hunting birds.

You can see lots of wildlife
behind them, a whole panoply,

a chaotic mass of activity,
vegetation,

butterflies fluttering
through the air.

It's a flurry of activity and
observation of the natural world

which you see everywhere
in the tomb chapel paintings.

Like here, you've got servants
clutching these hares

with very long velvety ears.

Their fur has been
brilliantly observed.

But my favourite scene
from the whole tomb chapel

isn't actually that one, it's this.

It's a big banquet scene

and the whole piece is tinged with
an unabashed eroticism,

a sexiness which you see

particularly in this amazing scene
of servant girls dancing.

It's almost, for Egyptian art,
raucous.

You can see that they are sinuous
and supple and lithe

and bending and moving and whirling.

Getting a bit hot under the collar!

And there's one woman who's playing
this double flute and, again,

this is very rare in Egyptian art

because, rather than seeing people
in that classic profile appearance,

you have women here who appear
frontal, they're face on,

and their arms, in the
case of the flute player's left arm,

have actually been foreshortened.

It's new.

It feels completely unusual within
the context of Egyptian art.

It's a moment of sudden freedom

that transports you to this
wonderful party

which Nebamun was
hoping to host after his death.

Having studied these
paintings for years,

Richard Parkinson understands their
complexity.

What's the significance
of the marsh setting?

The marsh landscape is very much
equivalent

to the European pastoral landscape.

It's the idyllic primeval world.

It's also where you go to have fun
and sex.

It has huge symbolic significance

but, if we stress that too much,

we run the risk of saying that

when people go to the Sistine Chapel
all they see is the theology.

Compare it with
a Renaissance Madonna.

It is a religious work of art,
it does show the Madonna,

but it also displays
the artist's individual artistry

and it's exuberant,
it's meant to be enjoyed.

The butterflies -

it's very hard to imagine

he was thinking deep theological
thoughts as he painted.

You see somebody actively at work
and that reminds us,

not just of the humanity
of the ancient Egyptians as a whole,

but the humanity of this
particular craftsman.

Do you think...? He's anonymous
but we know what he's doing,

we know almost what he's thinking.

Do you think that's quite
surprising, perhaps,

for some modern viewers
when they think about Egyptian art?

Because often it feels like it's
quite monumental,

it's quite static,
it's there for eternity.

It shouldn't,
but I suspect it often does.

I think we underestimate,
always, these artists.

Not to be outdone by a lowly grain
accountant,

the mayor of Thebes had his refined
idea of paradise

carved into the limestone cliffs.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised

that the highest-ranking official
in the land could afford

top-notch art in his tomb,

but the carvings here are just
breathtaking.

They're so beautiful.

Before you get into the nitty-gritty
of who these people are,

what they represent,
what these hieroglyphs mean,

you're just transported, dazzled
by the artistry of the carving.

For example, here,
just take this little passage.

There's an array
of different marks -

very precise, very accurate -

to create all of this different
patterning of the necklace

and the various wigs

and then this contrasting
smooth flesh,

with the modelling of the face,

which has been created
out of nothing more

than just gently undulating surface
of the stones -

you get a sense of the crease
between the jaw and the neck,

and around the nose.

And this, it's amazing in stone.

He's managed to create
the impression

of translucent, diaphanous material
out of solid rock.

You can tell that these are glossy,
fashionable courtiers, really,

in all of their finery, with this
black eyebrow and black eye

which has been
drawn on top of the limestone.

And there's a debate about what's
going on there

because the tomb's unfinished

and it could be that everything
would have been painted,

but there's another theory which is
that this was the finished effect,

and I like that because it
gives it, I think, extra refinement,

it has a minimalist splendour.

The man who created this,

the sculptor or sculptors who worked
on it, they were master craftsmen.

They've created a work of art

with so much delicacy and poise

and refinement and confidence.

These are artists working
at the very top of their game.

Local artists continue to work with
this soft limestone,

inspired by the tombs around them.

Have you ever almost finished
and then made a horrible mistake?

Of course, many times.

And what do you do?

If I try to repair it,
I can repair it.

If not, we can leave the piece

and I forget that I...

it was a piece we do.

Yeah. Do you think I could have
a go at doing some carving?

You? Yes. You want to try?

Yeah, if that's all right.

It is soft, isn't it?

But doing this way
will take more than one year.

This is too timid, you mean?

I'll try a bolder one, then.

We'll just slightly narrow his arm.

How's that?

That's not bad,
it's not the best line.

Do you see any talent here?

Yes. Such a bad lie!

When Amenhotep III died,

Egypt was a superpower the likes of
which the world had never seen.

But everything was about to change.

When his son took the reins
around 1350 BC,

Egypt underwent a revolution.

For my money, Amenhotep IV is easily
the most fascinating

and controversial figure in the
whole of Egyptian history.

He was a rebel, he was described
as history's first individual

and he became known
as the heretic king.

This place - the beautiful Karnak
Temple -

represents everything that he came
to reject.

He rejected the god Amun,
to whom this temple is dedicated,

he rejected the city of Thebes,
the site of this hallowed ground,

and, above all,

he rejected the art and ideology of
centuries of Egyptian kingship.

Amenhotep IV instigated

one of the greatest revolutions
in the history of Egypt.

He swept away Egypt's religion...

..abandoned thousands
of traditional gods...

..and instead pledged allegiance

to the one and only sun disc
known as the Aten.

He even changed his name,
in deference, to Akhenaten,

meaning Effective for the Aten.

And his new religion required
dramatically different art.

This is one of the colossal
statues from Karnak of Akhenaten

and it's got to be one of the
strangest works of art

in all of the history of ancient
Egypt because, ostensibly,

he appears as a pharaoh in the
traditional guise of a king.

He's got the headdress,
he's got the crook and the flail,

he's wearing his kilt,
it's a very frontal statue.

But just look at it. It's bizarre.

Something odd is going on here.

Everything is distorted and
elongated,

it looks almost surreal,
quite grotesque.

If you look at his face,
it's been stretched,

he has a very long nose,
very, very full lips,

slightly slanting eyes
set obliquely.

And then his physique is...so
strange.

It's a sort of combination of a man
and a woman.

You have the shoulders,

but then it really thins before
swelling out to these broad hips.

And this slight - well, not slight,
not just a hint of a paunch -

he's got a belly here which is
sagging over the kilt

going down to these plump legs.
And it's bizarre.

Who is the kind of man who wants
to look like this?

Why does he want to represent
himself like this?

Was he a visionary or was
he completely insane?

You look at this and you think
this isn't just a megalomaniac

who wants to look powerful,
he looks bonkers really.

This distorted statue
isn't my treasure

because it was only the beginning of
Akhenaten's story.

Five years into his reign, he
gave up tinkering with old temples

and abandoned Thebes altogether

to build his ideal city 300 miles
down river.

Akhenaten was a man with a vision.

He was also canny enough to realise
that his grand plans

for a new state religion
dedicated to the sun disc Aten

stood little chance of flourishing

in the dynastic centre of the new
kingdom, Thebes,

because it was so strongly
associated

with another god altogether - Amun.

In other words
he needed a new royal capital.

And that's where I'm heading now.

He selected a barren strip of desert

and named his settlement Akhetaten -
modern-day Amarna.

It might not look like much today,

but this city
once stretched for 10 kilometres.

It was a purpose-built metropolis

designed to meet
Akhenaten's exacting standards.

It's staggering really to think
that this vast, stricken dust bowl

was once a busy city
inhabited by around 30,000 people.

And it was designed as a sort
of monumental sun trap.

There were these open air temples
that were filled with food offerings

in honour of the great sun disc
Aten.

Akhenaten's new religion must have
seemed,

in many ways, pretty strange
and austere,

but in his odd new world,
stark and almost bleak,

there was still ample room for all
sorts of ceremony and splendour.

For the last 100 years,

this wasteland has proved
a treasure trove.

The objects found beneath the sands

reveal the scope of Akhenaten's
grand plans.

On his orders, the art of the city
was evolving at breakneck speed

and his new style could be
seen all over town.

This is a limestone relief
from a private house in Amarna

and it contains many of
the distinctive features

of art under Akhenaten.

You've got the distorted anatomies,

protruding buttocks,

brittle, narrow ankles and wrists,

swelling bellies,

elongated bony figures.

And then there's the sun disc with
its rays ending in human hands.

But there's something else here,
something new

because the scene is a domestic
scene

in which Akhenaten and his
wife Nefertiti are relaxing,

playing with their daughters,
three of them.

You can see Akhenaten
sitting on a stool to the left

and he's holding out an earring

which forms a real focal
point of the composition

and, beneath, his eldest daughter,
the largest one,

reaches up to grab it

with a bit of a smile on her face.

It's a moment of play.

And then to the right,
Nefertiti's also lounging on a stool

and two of her daughters
are on her lap.

And it's sweet. And I love it

because so much Egyptian art was
about lasting for ever,

it was built for eternity, it was
about stability,

but here we find just
a transitory moment.

It's an impression.

There's a sense that we've wandered
into an apartment of the palace

and come upon the king and the queen
and their family

in a moment of relaxation
as if they weren't expecting us.

It's completely
unprecedented in Egyptian art.

Today, the startling finds
from Amarna

are scattered all over the world.

My next treasure now resides
in Berlin.

It is the great
masterpiece of Egyptian art.

The bust of Akhenaten's consort,
Queen Nefertiti.

So here she is -

the second most famous
face of antiquity after Tutankhamun.

This painted limestone bust of
Queen Nefertiti

wearing this enormous, blue,
flat-topped headdress

is actually a model from the
workshop of a sculptor.

We actually know his name,
he was called Thutmose.

And it's possible

that the eye for the left socket was
never even made at all

because, in Egyptian art, figures
are usually seen in profile

facing towards the right,

so it would have been redundant to
finish off that side of the head.

And compared with those
sculptures of her husband in Karnak,

which are quite grotesque, quite
distorted, it is immediately obvious

that Nefertiti is the epitome of
elegance and purity,

beauty and order and proportion.

We don't know much about Thutmose,

but we know that he was a genius
of design

because he has composed
this sculpture

using very strong,
clear geometric shapes

like that inverted pyramid of
the headdress, which rockets down

in perfect alignment with the
forehead and with the cheekbones,

right down towards the point
of her chin.

Then offsetting that, you have this
spindly different axis of the neck

which looks like it couldn't
possibly bear the weight above

and it creates this beautiful effect
of her face gently bobbing about

like, I don't know,

a poppy bloom swaying gently
in the wind on a slender stem.

Compared with Akhenaten

she's like this gentle, fragrant
gust of midsummer.

But I wonder
whether she's almost too perfect

because her skin is stretched right
across the skull

and if you have
a look down at the base of her neck,

you can see these very taut tendons

and she appears like a very powerful
woman in middle age,

but a woman who has had quite a lot
of work done,

she's had a few nips and tucks.

The only conversation
she hasn't had

is the one with her
optometrist about her left eye.

It's strange

because she is always hailed as the
vision of ancient Egyptian beauty,

but the more I look at her,

the more I see something fraught

and, if that's right,
it kind of makes sense

because, in real life,

Nefertiti was this leading player
in the great revolutionary drama

that Akhenaten was enacting upon
the national stage

and that must have
come with its own immense pressures.

So, here, she appears as if she is
desperately keeping up appearances

at the same time as suffering
from epoch-changing stress.

The more I look at this bust,

the more I wonder whether her neck
is, in fact, actually about to snap.

From the start,

there were violent palpitations
within Amarna's dark heart.

It's only now that archaeologists
are beginning to understand

why Akhenaten's one-man revolution
was doomed to fail.

Anna Stevens is excavating
the workers' tombs here.

There are a lot
of signs here of joint disease,

so people were carrying loads that
were too heavy for the skeleton.

There are a lot of healed
fractures as well.

They could be the people who were
quarrying the stone for Akhenaten,

carting the stone down to the city

and erecting his temples
and palaces.

So tell me about some of the things
that you've found in the graves,

aside from the human remains.

One of the nicest things
we find are pieces of jewellery.

I don't know
if you can make out the figure?

I can, I know him, he's called Bes.

He is my favourite Egyptian god.

I like that. This is a superb piece,
really lovely.

The detail on this piece is
extraordinary.

You can see parts of his beard.

Are they lion ears,
cat ears coming out the side?

And is that a tail or a big penis?

I think that's probably a tail.

So this was quite common?

Very common. Yes.

That's interesting because you sort
of have this vision of Amarna

as being this new religious space

where it was all about worshipping
the sun disc, but you're saying

that lots of ordinary people were
still worshipping

common gods that had been worshipped
for centuries? Absolutely.

There was a tremendously
strong current of domestic worship

that continued throughout
the Amarna period.

There's not a single representation
of the sun disc at the cemetery,

nor mention of Akhenaten on finger
rings or scarabs or anything,

this was life continuing as normal.

What does that tell us about
his power?

Or what does it tell of the interest
of the ordinary people of Amarna

in the king and in his revolution?

Without the support of the people,

there was nobody to uphold
Akhenaten's vision

when he died after less than
two decades on the throne

and his revolution came crashing
to an end.

He's gone down in history as a
madman, a megalomaniac and a tyrant

but, for me, he was a powerful
and brave reformer.

I have to admit I find the story of
Akhenaten completely thrilling.

He's such a compelling figure.

He was a visionary and a rebel
and he was also a prophet of sorts.

Just imagine what would have
happened if his new religion -

worshipping the Aten,
the sun disc - had taken hold.

Today, maybe we'd talk about Atenism

in the same breath as we mention
other great monotheistic faiths

like Judaism, Islam and
Christianity.

Ultimately his vision burned
just too brightly,

it was too fierce to connect with
ordinary people.

The starkness and austerity of that
inscrutable, omnipotent sun disc

blazing down on the people below -

that must have seemed ultimately to
the ancient Egyptians

as much a kind of death star
as a giver of life.

Shortly after Akhenaten died,

his city was abandoned by Egypt's
new ruler -

the child pharaoh Tutankhaten.

Akhenaten's son was installed on the
throne at the tender age of nine.

Unlike his father
who'd initiated a revolution,

Tutankhaten set about a programme
of restoration.

He issued a proclamation

lamenting the fact that the gods
had abandoned Egypt.

He boasted that he rebuilt
what was ruined

and drove away chaos
throughout the two lands.

His reign witnessed the rebirth
of traditional Egyptian culture

and a revival of the gods
of the old.

In fact, in deference
to the god Amun,

he even changed his name from
Tutankhaten to Tutankhamun.

When this tomb was discovered
in 1922,

the name Tutankhamun
became known the world over...

..and the art that was buried
with him

is now as recognisable as any
Western masterpiece.

It was a media sensation

as the cameras kept rolling to
capture the glamour of the find.

And nobody was disappointed.

This is quite a strange sensation

because Tutankhamun is the most
famous of all the pharaohs,

he's this towering figure in history
and yet his tomb's tiny.

He didn't get a lot of real estate
here in the Valley of the Kings.

This was the antechamber.

I've seen photographs of it,

it looked a bit like
a kind of junk shop, a flea market.

It was just full of bits,
bits and bobs,

like a very rich granny's
attic or something.

This is him.

This is genuinely him.

It's like finding the portrait
of Dorian Gray hidden in the attic.

It's a slightly ignominious tomb
anyway in here now.

I mean, the poor guy's left to
rest beneath...

in this rock-cut tomb with a sort of
CCTV camera looking at him,

a few spiders' webs.

I feel like he deserves
a sort of gentler resting place.

The treasures from
Tutankhamun's tomb

are now
in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

The quantity of the work as well as
its quality is astounding.

There can be no doubt that this was
the zenith of Egypt's golden age.

But what really fascinates me
is that

despite attempts to wipe
Akhenaten out of history,

the art of Tutankhamun reveals

that at least some of his father's
innovations would live for ever.

I think this is an exquisite
piece of craftsmanship.

It shows the king hunting
hippopotami

on top of, not a surfboard,
but a boat made of papyrus stems.

It's beautifully made.

It's carved in wood and then gilded.

It's very detailed, very precise.

It's a beautiful, naturalistic
representation as well.

There's something of the art
of his father's regime here -

a certain swelling to the belly,
a slight fleshiness to the lips.

And it's quite rare to find

a statue of a king or a queen
in the round doing something.

That's why I find this
quite exciting

from an art historical point
of view,

because so much Egyptian statuary,
particularly in stone,

is quite stiff and frontal,
quite formal.

But here, you have something light,

something that feels like he could
almost be surfing.

That he's in the moment.

My final treasure is perhaps
a little obvious

but still utterly irresistible.

I wonder, though, whether it
is possible to see a work of art

as famous as the golden mask of
Tutankhamun with fresh eyes.

The mask of Tutankhamun

isn't just the most famous
face of antiquity,

it's arguably
the most famous face of all time.

Fashioned from solid gold

and decorated with precious stones
and coloured glass,

it's become an emblem of the
exoticism, the opulence

and the quality of
ancient Egyptian art.

But for me, this mask is
dazzling in a double sense.

It's spectacular,
but it's also blinding.

And that's because
in historical terms,

Tutankhamun was a bit of
a non-entity.

He was this weakling boy king who
didn't make it out of his teens.

So his reputation as the most
famous pharaoh of them all

is the result
of the transformative power of art.

Tutankhamun conquered eternity not
because of his own exploits,

but because the master craftsmen who
worked for him

during the golden age of
ancient Egyptian art

were capable of summoning
potent images of kingship like this

that have never been surpassed.

I'm at the end of my journey through
Egypt's golden age

and I'm surprised
and moved by what I've seen.

Beneath the carapace of glitz
and sheen

is a touching and occasionally
vulnerable human spirit.

During the Middle and the
New Kingdoms,

Ancient Egyptian art reached
uncharted summits

of luxury and magnificence.

But I've discovered something else,
something a little bit less shiny -

the inner thoughts of Senwosret III,

the private spaces
of King Hatshepsut,

the intimate, informal domestic
scenes of Akhenaten.

Before I came to Egypt, I stared
into the face of Tutankhamun

and I saw a rigid mask of power.

But now I sense something a little
softer and more vulnerable as well

because, ultimately, there's an
affecting naturalism to this mask.

It isn't just the image of a king,
it's also the portrait of a boy.

Next time -
the decline of a superpower.

Egypt succumbs to economic strife
and foreign invasion...

..but its art follows daring
and exciting new directions.