All language subtitles for Ancient.Egypt.by.Train.with.Alice.Roberts.S01E04.The.Temples.1080p.HDTV.H264-DARKFLiX[eztv.re]_track4_[eng]

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

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

SHE SPEAKS ARABIC

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 ambitious
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
from 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
it was "garib" which means nearby.

And then she sees it but,
as she says,

it was buried up to its 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 2,000 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, yes.

How long has it been so far,

how long has this project been
running for?

Maybe four year,
four year 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. Yeah.
OK, so you're nearly there, yeah.

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.

Show me what you're doing out
here then.

Are these hieroglyphics, are they?

Seen here, a main scene.

The main scene, the main scene
of the temple. In the temple, yes.

These seem to be unusual
hieroglyphics. Yes.

They're not just parts of words.

Here, when she birth.

Oh, my goodness,
that's a woman in childbirth?

Yes, beside his mother

and he take out to the light.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's beautiful.

They do good work.
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.

...Doctor 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.
Yes.

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
the 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 built the temple.

This is archaeology too.
Yes.

Yeah, just because it's built
of mud brick. Yeah.

Archaeological investigation has
shown that the Ptolemaic temple,

which dates to the late
third 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. Yeah.

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

during the main celebration
of the temple.

Yeah. Are people bringing tithes,
taxes to the temple?

Yes, but the taxes were paid in
the form of offerings. OK.

Offerings for the god

and at the same time taxes for
the state of Egypt. All together?

Yeah, that's why the main doors
of the temple

were open just one time a year.
Oh, really?

When you have the main celebration
of the god.

Passing through the pylon gateway
we enter the first courtyard.

Surrounded on three sides
by 32 columns,

with floral capitals
like those at Esna.

The first courtyard,
it was an open court to permit

the visitors to cut the neck
of the animals inside the temple.

That's why it was left open,

to dry the blood of the animals.

So, sacrifices are taking place?
Yes, the sacrifices.

We have to consider that all
the columns here were coloured.

Yes. The effect of the sun and the
sand has cancelled completely.

So, it's completely gone,

the traces of paint
have completely gone.

The next part of the temple
is protected by Horus himself.

And we have a massive statue
of Horus.

Ah, he's lovely. I like him.

Here's a hypostyle hall,
which special rank of people...

And another 12 columns in here.
Yes, 12 columns.

Once again, this temple includes
a roofed hypostyle hall,

the preserve of
the higher echelons of society,

with important rooms
leading off it.

And here we have a small chamber
called the house of the life,

which was the library of
the temple.

Oh, really? The house of the life
that give us the impression

how important the book in ancient
Egypt was. Oh, that's amazing,

isn't it?
The house of life is the library.

At that time
it was full of papyrus,

which was very important

because a lot of them had
the structure of the temple.

So, when it was excavated
there were papyri in there?

We lost it completely.
Oh.

So much information,
but there's a lot on the walls.

Some of these images, though,
have been attacked.

We've got this defacing
of the pagan gods.

Is this Christians coming
and doing that? Yes.

And look, every single character
here has been attacked.

It's damaged here.
Yeah, they damaged here.

And all the way up.
Yes.

The damage is thought to have been
deliberately carried out

under the orders of Roman rulers
in the fourth century

who banned non-Christian worship.

The real heart of
the temple here, aren't we?

Lastly, we enter the sanctuary,

the most sacred space in
the temple.

So, right in the inner
sanctuary now.

Yes, the hall of Horus,

the most important place
in all the temple.

And the first place built in the
temple dedicated to the god himself.

This is a replica of the wooden
barque or boat of the god.

The original is kept in
the Louvre Museum in Paris

and it would have been used
to carry a statue of the god Horus.

Imagine that this boat was carried
up on the shoulders of the priests

once a year to go outside to show
the people, this is your god,

this is the one to who you addressed
your sacrifices.

The image of the god statue,

it was about maximum one metre high.

Yeah, so it fits in there.
Of gold.

This is what it would have been
carried out in

but actually it was in that shrine.
Yes.

You can imagine that the only person

who had permission to get inside

this place was the king.

And he, when he was not here,

he had to appoint the high priest
to perform the rituals every day

on behalf of him.

You can imagine that he asked
the god

and heard the answer
and had to tell the people,

this is the answer of the god.

Yeah, he's the one who's meant
to be the conduit. Yeah.

Between the people and the god.

Back at Edfu station,

and the contrast with the temple
of Horus couldn't be greater.

But it's great just
to watch local life.

My next stop,
just over an hour away,

will be at a town of a similar size
to Edfu

with a population of 60,000

and another incredible temple.

I'm here to see
the Temple of Kom Ombo,

which once again dates to
the Ptolemaic period

in the second century BCE.

And again, this would have replaced
an even more ancient temple.

I'm meeting the director of Aswan's
antiquities, Abdel Saeed.

Abdel.
Hello.

Hello. Assalamu alaikum.
Nice to meet you.

Salam. Wa alaikum assalam.
When did you learn Arabic?

Ah, last week!
Last week, just last week!

Is it your first time to Egypt,
yeah?

It's my first time in Egypt

and I'm having an absolutely
wonderful time.

This temple is one I'm particularly
looking forward to, though.

That's why I came here, to show you
so interesting scenes here,

inside Kom Ombo Temple here.

Kom Ombo, like so many other
temples, was rebuilt

during the time when Egypt was ruled
by the descendants

of Alexander the Great's general,
Ptolemy.

I'd like to tell you something
really very, very interesting.

Why did Greeks and Romans
reconstruct those temples?

When they came,
they found ancient Egyptian temples,

but they were damaged, destroyed.

Why did they reconstruct them?

They wanted to control Egyptians
through the religious feeling.

Of course, yeah. Because religious
feeling was and is still very strong

with Egyptians. So, when they
reconstructed those temples

they could control Egyptians.
Right, OK. Yes, yeah. Yeah.

The god worshipped
at the temple of Edfu

took the relatively benign form
of a falcon,

but here at Kom Ombo
the temple was dedicated

to a much more dangerous presence -
the Nile crocodile.

The crocodile god Sobek
had been worshipped in Egypt

for more than 2,000 years when
the Greeks arrived on the scene.

So, what was Sobek about, then?

I mean, he's obviously
a crocodile, so he's fierce.

What were his other attributes?

If you look in detail about the
language itself, it's Sebeki Sobek,

that was the name of the crocodile,
the worshipped one.

It means the one who causes
the woman to be pregnant.

Sobek connected with the fertility
plus the frightened or the fear.

Yeah, oh, it's a real kind of dual
personality there, isn't it?

Yes, exactly, exactly.

That's why it was worshipped as
the local god here in Kom Ombo

because of this big island
which is facing Kom Ombo Temple

on the river Nile here.

It was said that it was full
of crocodiles,

which forbid Egyptians to cross
the island of the Nile easily,

so they worship him at the beginning
because they were afraid of him.

It's almost as though by worshipping
him you can capture that danger

and you can turn it around.

To avoid his danger, yeah,

I agree with this opinion really.

To avoid his dangers,
they worshipped him.

So, if he's a god of fertility,
is that human fertility,

is it about having offspring,

but is it also about agriculture,
is it about the Nile?

Both of them, because you know that
the river Nile represented

the main source of life
for Egyptians.

It was, and it is still. So
everything, they wanted to connect

between the human beings
and the Nile.

But in fact, Sobek wasn't the only
god worshipped at Kom Ombo.

This temple is highly unusual

as it's split right down the middle
with one side for Sobek

and the other dedicated
to the god Osiris.

And it has not one
but two hypostyle halls.

And if we go through here,
what's here?

We're going deeper into the temple.
Yes.

The amount of hieroglyphics
is overwhelming,

especially when you realise they
can be read in multiple directions.

Covered with hieroglyphics.
Yes, everywhere.

But Abdel can decipher this writing.

During the old kingdom
they used letters,

signs with a picture at the end.

We call it demonstrative,
to explain the word. Yeah.

Because hieroglyphic was written
from right to left,

from left to right,
from top to bottom.

How can I figure out
the direction from right to left

or from left to right?

Just look at the faces of the signs.
Oh!

The faces are looking to the right,
so I have to start from the right.

But here the faces are looking
to the left,

so I have to start from left
to right. Oh, that's clever.

What Abdel's about to show me
reveals an incredible link

between the ancient Egyptians
and us today.

What have we got here then?

Calendar for the first time,
or a part of the calendar.

Oh, really?
Yes.

OK, take me through it then,
what are we looking at?

During the reign of the King Djoser,
2600 BC,

an astronomer noticed a star
appeared in the sky

when the flood of the river Nile
reached Memphis, the old capital.

Then that star disappeared.

Then reappeared again during
the flood of the river Nile again,

so they calculated
the period between appearance

and reappearance again
for that star.

They found it a full year.

They divided that period
into three different seasons.

The first season called
the Nile flood, Akhet.

Could you repeat, Akhet?
Akhet.

The second season represented
the growing of the plants, planting,

called Peret.
Peret.

The third season represents
the harvest of the plants,

cutting of the plants, called Shemu.

Shemu.
So, Akhet, Peret, Shemu.

Every season had four months,

every month had three weeks,

every week had ten days.

Please, so far, could you calculate
how many days per year so far?

It's about the same then, isn't it,
360?

360. Not yet - 360.
What about the extra five days?

You're going to have
to add them on sometime.

Ancient Egyptians considered
the most famous festivals

of the most famous gods
and the goddess Osiris, Isis,

Set, Nephthys and Horus.

So far what happens during
the festivals?

What happens?
Everybody's very happy,

everybody's staying up late,
everybody's sometimes drunk.

So, they didn't calculate happiness
days in the age of the man.

Everybody should be far
from extra five days

when he calculated his age.

We still live on this calendar
in our farming for Egyptian farmers,

called the Coptic calendar.
Yeah. Yeah.

In the calendar the annual cycle is
symbolically linked to the gods.

Again - Akhet, Peret, Shemu.

Flood, planting, harvest.

Represented as Sekhmet, yeah.
Lion head. Yeah.

And here she's being the seasons.
Yes, exactly.

You never see something like that
except here. Yeah.

And what else did you
want to show me, Abdel?

I'd like to show you something

that will be a very big surprise
for you.

Abdel knows I originally
trained as a doctor.

For the first time and the last time
just here in Kom Ombo,

a very nice representation
of medical instruments.

Here in the middle, we've got all
these medical instruments.

I can see knives or scalpels,

some kind of shears
and some forceps up there.

That's extraordinary, isn't it?
I mean, you know,

it shows you very vividly that
people were performing surgery.

Exactly, you can imagine.

Egyptians were very intelligent,

and they were very advanced about
medicine since the old kingdom.

Towards the left-hand side
you can see something else,

our famous goddess lists.

She is sitting in
the position of birth. Ah.

Up of her we can see the goddess
Meskhenet, the goddess of birth

who taught Isis how she could give
birth to children.

Yeah, yeah. Healing and childbirth.

It's interesting, isn't it?
This medical technology,

this very kind of hands-on
medical technology,

is represented here in a temple,

that it has this religious aspect
to it. Of course, yes.

Because the temple was not used
just for religious.

No, it was a hospital, it was
a school, it was a library. Yeah.

The temple now has its own
Crocodile Museum

containing remarkable artefacts
relating to the worship of Sobek.

This is a great image
of Sobek on this stele.

Here he is seated in
the centre in this register

with these people bringing him piles
of offerings,

presumably saying to him,
"Look, here's all this food,

"you don't need to eat us."

Ancient Egyptians had a love-hate
relationship with Sobek

as they did with crocodiles
themselves.

These are ferocious creatures that
they're sharing their world with,

they're there in the Nile
and they're extremely dangerous.

But if you can get Sobek
on your side

then maybe then he becomes
a protective god

and he can save you from
the dangers lurking in the water.

It wasn't enough just
to carve sculptures of crocodiles -

the bodies of these reptiles
were preserved

just like those of the pharaohs
by mummification.

Part of the worship of Sobek

also involved breeding
and raising crocodiles

and they were viewed as living
incarnations of the god Sobek,

and they were very well
looked after,

some of them even had their
claws painted.

And when the died they
were mummified

and this tends to happen
in the later periods,

so the end of the first millennium
BCE, right into the Roman period.

And you can see the care taken
in mummifying these crocodiles.

The layers of bandages.

And then these mummified crocodiles
are themselves offerings

to the god Sobek.

I like the way that they've got
bone plaques

with painted eyes on them as well.

These huge mummies of crocodiles

remind us of the reverence
that ancient Egyptians had

for these animals
and for the crocodile god, Sobek.

And I think some
of that is about trying to tame,

to manage that ferocious element
that existed within the river Nile.

But also, Sobek was completely bound
up with the inundation as well,

with the flood of the Nile,

which was life-giving,
absolutely essential.

And it's interesting of course
that Egypt is so different now.

With the building of the Aswan Dam,
the Nile no longer floods,

the landscape is very,
very different

to what the ancient Egyptians
experienced.

And we don't really
have any crocodiles now

below the level of the dam,
north of the dam.

But they were already being hunted
to extinction

in the centuries before that.

So, here are some crocodile's eggs

and these again were brought
as votive offerings to Sobek.

And they have another
layer of symbolism as well

in that crocodiles lay great
clutches of eggs,

very large numbers of eggs
in one nest.

And the mother will make her nest

above the level of the Nile flood,

so there's a bit of magic here

that crocodiles knew how high

the inundation was going
to reach each year.

As the day ebbs away

I'm close to my final destination
on this epic journey.

I'm approaching Aswan,
30 miles from Kom Ombo,

around 500 miles from Cairo

and 700 from my starting point
in Alexandria.

I'm now on the approach to Aswan

but I've seen bits of Aswan
all over the place

because the pink granite from here
ended up in temples and tombs

all over ancient Egypt.

And this is it,
my final station stop,

but it's not quite
the end of my Egyptian adventure.

In the morning I'll be visiting
a quarry

that provided the stone
for monuments.

I'll meet a progressive
Egyptian archaeologist

and I'll be taking a boat to
an island to see Philae Temple.

It's so beautiful down here on
the banks of the Nile

and looking over to the other side I
can see some archaeology over there,

I can see some really ancient walls,

features rising up onto
the hillside.

You also get that really
strong impression

of ancient Egypt existing right
alongside the modern.

There's some more tourists just
crossing the river here.

Egypt is so geared up for tourism,

it's so important to its economy.

If we think back to Amelia Edwards
in the 19th century

this is where tourism
was really starting.

And she studied ancient Egypt,

we can definitely call her
an Egyptologist,

but she was also very much
a tourist.

And I'm just another one
of these pilgrims.

It's really interesting
to look around here

and just reflect on how different
this landscape is

from Alexandria, from the delta.

Everything's different,
the vegetation's different.

You're looking down at the Nile

but you're straight up into desert -
this is very much a desert country.

And this southern half of Egypt was
sometimes united with the north

but sometimes existed as
a kingdom in its own right.

This is ancient Nubia.

There's no doubt that during my
ravels through Egypt

I've encountered a lot of stone -
tons of the stuff in fact.

It's the fabric of ancient Egypt.

Some of that stone was local to
the place it ended up in.

But if the ancient Egyptians wanted
to make something special,

like a burial chamber or
a sarcophagus for a pharaoh,

they would use
the very best granite.

And that came from Aswan.

I'm here in one of
the ancient northern quarries

of Aswan where this stone
came from.

Round this quarry,
you've got all of the evidence

of the quarrying at work.

You can see how they were chiselling
into the stone

and putting wooden wedges in
to break blocks off.

But we've also got some drawings
as well.

So, up here you can see some birds,
maybe ostriches.

I think they look
a bit more like flamingos.

And if I was working here
in this hot quarry -

I mean, this is so hot
in Aswan today,

it's about 40 degrees -

then you'd probably rather be
sitting somewhere next to water

looking at a flock of flamingos.

And there's a man, I think,
and possibly a boat.

Now that might relate to the way
that stone is leaving this quarry,

it is being taken out of the quarry
and loaded onto boats,

probably onto a canal
and then out onto the Nile itself

and from there all over Egypt.

11,12, 13...

The ancient Egyptians
were master builders.

The pyramids stand as testament
to their engineering know-how.

They were clearly ambitious,
but it didn't always go to plan.

.24, 25, 26, 27, 28...

Here in the quarry is evidence
of ancient Egyptians reaching

for the stars and being thwarted
by earthbound geology.

They'd carved out an enormous
obelisk and then it cracked.

42.

42 metres long.

This piece of stone is enormous.

It's four metres across,
it's 42 metres long.

If it had been lifted out
of the quarry

it would have weighed well over
a thousand tons

and just imagine the disappointment

when you've done all this work

and you've carved out
the whole shape of it

and you're getting ready
to go underneath and lift it up,

and a massive crack appears,
and all of that work was in vain.

This almost looks like
a natural gully

but of course this was all carved
out by hand.

They must have been
so annoyed, mustn't they?

You can see these natural cracks.

I suspect many more have appeared
since it was quarried,

since it was formed.

And elsewhere in the quarry you can
see how these natural cracks

and fissures are used to help
split out usable chunks of stone.

But of course, what you want here
is this whole thing

to stay completely intact
and to be lifted out as one piece.

But I mean if this had been lifted
out of the quarry

this would have been the biggest
obelisk in all of Egypt.

Visiting this quarry certainly
puts into perspective

all the architectural wonders
I've seen on my trip.

It's really interesting
to have seen this -

this stone everywhere
and to have seen it finished,

beautifully smooth, carved with
car touches and hieroglyphics.

But then to come back to here
and see where it all comes from

and see that whole process
and imagine the hundreds

and thousands of people that were
engaged in building

all of those tombs
and all of those temples.

I've been wowed by
the splendour of ancient Egypt,

but I've certainly felt that we've
left people behind.

We've been so focused on pharaohs,

did we think about
the rest of society?

Towards the end of my journey,
I'm really keen to meet

an Egyptian archaeologist
who has some radical ideas

about how we should look
at the past.

Monica.
Hello.

Morning.
Morning.

Lovely to meet you.
Lovely to meet you.

Shall we get on our...
Yes, let's do that.

There's a lot to discuss,

but I'm also keen
to learn about Philae temple,

which will be my final destination.

Monica, tell me about Philae.

When was it built
and who was worshipped there?

Philae was built in
the late period.

It was very small
at the 30th dynasty,

but then it grew
with the Ptolemaic kings,

because Isis was worshipped
in that temple.

And then later old Roman emperors
such as Augustus

and Hadrian added to
the temple of Isis there

and it was continued even
to be in service

up until the Christian period.

I think the Christians
were very scared

because Isis was this very
strong woman. Yeah.

What do you think it was about
the cult of Isis

that made her so popular?

I mean, Isis was very popular

because she was
the goddess of motherhood,

she was the goddess of love.

She was also the goddess
of medicine.

I think what I find
fascinating about Philae

is that it had an a bat on

and an a bat on in Greek architecture
was this place

where sick people would go to heal.

So, this magical place,

and of course Isis was the goddess
of magic.

I mean I think that's a really
interesting time,

that you have these deities
persisting through time.

But this period when they seem
to quite abruptly disappear,

and I wonder what was actually
happening at that time.

I don't think they disappear.

It becomes part of
the hidden culture

that's not written
but it's practised.

Still practised today?

Yes, I've seen many women going to
temples early morning with a friend

because this is how she would
conceive a child in her mind.

Yeah. It's interesting to think
about how this ancient archaeology

sits within modern Egypt because
it is all around us... Yes.

...and there are all these...

And it's within us,
not just around us. It's within us.

People practise it in their daily
life without necessarily

writing an article about it in
a peer-reviewed journal. Yeah, yeah.

We only study the ancient past from
the perspective of the treasures,

not from the perspective of
the people, of the culture,

of the humans. Knowledge is more
valuable than gold.

It's not about the gold,
it's not about the mummies,

it's not about the secrets.

It's, I think, about the regular
life of an ancient Egyptian.

There's a really practical
element to this as well,

which is that there's a completely
intertwined relationship

between archaeology
and tourism here in Egypt.

So, I mean, how does that
effect archaeology

and how can it work well,
do you think?

I think instead of wanting
to create this Disneyland,

open-air museum, tourism today
should be focused on real,

authentic experiences with the
people who live on a very ancient

land and how they
interpret the past. Yeah.

And I think tourism as it was
in the '80s and the '90s

with these big buses flocking
into archaeological sites

is bad for the archaeology and it's
bad for the tourist experience.

I think the practice
without involving the communities

is replicating the 19th and 20th
century colonialist attitude

towards archaeology.

And without having the people
have a say

in how they want their sites
excavated, conserved and managed

and including them in the long term
development plans for these sites,

I think Egypt is like how Gramsci
specifies in his quote

that the past is finished
but the future is not here yet.

So, I think the past is finished

and the future of doing things
the way they should be done

is not here yet.
Yeah, so it's still evolving. Yes.

It's still changing, we're not there
yet. Yes, we're not there yet.

So, you'd like to see more community
engagement. Yes, definitely.

With the local communities
around archaeological digs.

Yes, with the social
history documented.

Community's important
for understanding the past

because we do not study
the past in a glass box.

We study a living past.

The site is left for
the local community.

If we are to safeguard these
sites into the future

it must be done through
the local community.

Thank you again.
You're welcome.

Bye-bye.
Bye.

As I drop Monica off,
I have plenty to think about

before I reach Philae Temple.

The River Nile has been the one
constant throughout my adventure,

throughout Egyptian history.

It provided the way for granite
to be transported

all the way up to Alexandria.

The height of the Nile flood would
determine the success of the harvest

and the legitimacy of the king.

Ancient Egypt and modern Egypt
depends on the Nile.

But when Amelia Edwards came here
in 1873 to visit Philae Temple,

she would have gone
somewhere different.

In 1902, the first Aswan Dam
was built to control the floods.

In the lake that it created,
the Temple of Philae was submerged.

And then, in 1971, an ambitious plan
was put into action

to move the temple
to a nearby island.

The temple was surrounded
by shuttering

so river water could be pumped out.

And the entire temple was dismantled

and moved to the new location.

Every block was numbered
and carefully recorded,

over 50,000 individual pieces
were moved to higher ground,

some weighing as much as 25 tons.

Amelia travelled to the original
temple by boat,

as she wrote in her book.

"As the boat glides nearer
between glistening boulders

"those sculptured towers rise higher
against the sky.

"They show no sign of ruin or age.

"All looks solid, stately, perfect.

"One forgets for the moment
that anything is changed.”

It's astonishing to think that this
temple has been entirely dismantled

and rebuilt here.

If you didn't know before you came,
you wouldn't think twice.

The temple itself is devoted to the
story of the brother and sister gods

Isis and Osiris -

brother and sister
who were also married.

The temple today is home
to a family of cats.

Inside the Holy of Holies here

there's a lot of destruction,
a lot of iconoclasm -

that's part of the story
of the temple.

But you can still decode
the mythology.

You can still see all these elements
of the Isis myth,

Isis and Osiris.

And Isis as a mother
of Horus as well.

And of course, that idea of divine
motherhood doesn't go away.

CAT PURRS

Philae Temple is beautiful
to look at,

difficult to understand,

and not in its original location.

It's like an allegory
of ancient Egypt itself.

I'm ending my journey here
at Philae Temple,

a monument that Amelia Edwards saw
on her journey up the Nile

at the end of the 19th century,

although now it's in
a different place.

It was moved when the dams were
created, and the waters rose.

The Nile has changed

and Egyptian archaeology itself
has changed

and it will keep on changing.

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