Original subtitles

(intense music)

Three centuries after the first discoveries,

Egypt continues to fascinate us.

Every month that goes by reveals new treasures

buried under the desert sand.

This fragment of nose was found in the area

during an archeological dig, so it was stuck back on.

It hadn't gone far.

Temples, pyramids, necropolises

and ancient cities are just some

of the wonders that bear witness

to the splendor of past pharaohs and their heirs.

The Greeks used to make cakes called pyramis.

When they came to Egypt,

they found the colossal stone structures

in the shape of their cakes.

So they gave them the same name.

This ancient civilization,

which was thought to have been lost

is constantly reinventing itself

in the Egypt of the 21st century.

We are going to travel through time

and space to rediscover it.

(lively folk music)

(enchanting music)

The cult of death played a crucial role in Ancient Egypt.

With it's necropolises, pyramids, mummies and sarcophaguses,

three quarters of archeological discoveries on Egyptian soil

are directly linked to funeral rights.

The Ancient Egyptians loved life

so much that they hoped to be able to enjoy it,

even after their death.

They would mummify themselves

to make their bodies last forever.

Their burial places were built like dwellings

with the walls painted in colors associated with life,

but that was not enough.

The deceased also had to appear before Osiris,

the god of the dead who would judge their actions

and decide whether or not to grant them eternal life.

This age old notion of judgment after death

has not disappeared.

In Egypt, both Christians

and Muslims hope to be among the chosen few

when the final judgment comes.

Today, as in the past,

death is not seen as an end for believers.

(lively instrumental music)

(woman ululating)

In Luxor, the wedding season has begun.

Couples marry in the shade of this ancient Egyptian temple.

It is the start of summer

when temperatures rise to over 45 degrees centigrade.

(yelling in foreign language)

To protect themselves,

people start work very early in the morning.

(yelling in foreign language)

This is the best time of day to spread the word.

Trucks like these with their makeshift loudspeakers

are often the only link

between small neighboring rural communities.

(yelling in foreign language) has departed.

May he rest in peace through the mercy of god.

He is from the village of (speaking in foreign language).

His burial will take place at three o'clock

before afternoon prayers.

I am announcing the death of a Muslim to villagers.

I am making this announcement so that everyone

in the surrounding villages knows that this person has died.

If I don't announce it through the loudspeakers,

no one will come to his funeral

because no one would've been informed.

(yelling in foreign language)

(horn honking)

I have been doing this for 25 years,

but it is not my real job.

(yelling in foreign language)

My real job is to do the call to prayer at the mosque.

I was chosen because I have a good voice,

(speaking in foreign language) is my job.

(speaking in foreign language)

It is very important for people

to join the funeral procession and pray for the dead.

If they do, they will be rewarded by God,

but it is important for the deceased too,

as we say here, if 40 people pray for the deceased,

they will definitely go to heaven.

(yelling in foreign language)

(somber music)

Khalaf Mahmud died in the night.

In accordance with the Quranic tradition,

he will be buried the following day.

This man was held in high esteem.

His friends gather outside his house

to pay their last respects.

(speaking in foreign language)

Inside, his family is watching over his corpse.

In keeping with tradition,

it has been wrapped in a white shroud.

The adult males in the family have washed

and embalmed the body.

He is ready for his final journey to the village cemetery.

(donkey braying)

(speaking in foreign language)

If Khalaf Mahmud had lived in the age of the pharaohs,

he would have been mummified after his death.

Mummification was a much more complicated process

than embalming.

The ancient Egyptians believed

that there was life after death in their own bodies.

(lively music)

To see mummies today you have to travel to the capital.

Most of them are to be found in Cairo.

(horns honking)

Hidden away in the center of this sprawling city,

this old museum is their home.

(gentle music)

The museum's incredible collection still attracts

just as many Egyptomaniacs as ever

but the undisputed stars of the museum are the mummies.

Some are over 3,000 years old and incredibly well preserved.

The bandages have been removed to show off the bodies.

That practice dates back to the early days of Egyptology

in the 19th century.

Nowadays, out of respect for their ancient religion,

the mummies are left in their original state.

At the museum's laboratory not a day goes by

without Professor Moemen, a distinguished specialist

in the restoration of antiquities, handling the mummies.

Once they're out of their sarcophagus,

he never touches the cardboard casing.

It is the final protection before the bandages.

Here we have a mummy in a wooden case

shaped like a human body.

Thanks to the funeral mask and the x-rays

we have been able to confirm

that this is the mummy of a young woman.

She was about 22 years old when she died.

(speaking in foreign language)

On the x-rays we could also see that she had a fetus

between her legs.

So that tells us about the possible cause of death.

(speaking in foreign language)

Given her age there is a strong possibility

that she died of a miscarriage.

(eerie music)

(speaking in foreign language)

The mummy is in perfect condition

as are the drawings on the case.

Some are very rare.

Here, for example, we have the god Khnum

standing in front of the young, dead girl.

It is magnificent and very rare.

The origins of mummification are due to chance.

6,000 years ago,

Egyptians used to bury their dead in ditches in the desert.

They noticed that the sand acted

as a very good preservative.

Later, their belief in eternal life

forced them to find more effective processes

to preserve the corpse in the best state possible.

For the rich, balms, spices and bitumen were used.

Once the entrails had been removed,

corpses were soaked for 70 days in natron

which is a natural salt, which absorbs humidity.

All of these products cost an absolute fortune.

(speaking in foreign language)

This is another very rare piece.

It is the left arm of a pharaoh,

King Unas from the 5th dynasty.

It was discovered by French archeologist, Gaston Maspero,

at the end of the 19th century.

(speaking in foreign language)

Later researchers carbon dated the arm.

The results confirmed that it came

from the Old Kingdom from about 2350 BC.

(speaking in foreign language)

Diminutions under the microscope revealed the presence

of the resin and linen

used during the mummification process.

This is hard proof that mummification

was already being practiced at that time,

but the technique was not effective

until the days of the New Kingdom in the 18th

and 19th dynasties.

(upbeat music)

The techniques of mummification

in the 19th dynasty were so effective

that 3,200 years after their death,

we can still put faces to the names of the major figures

in Egyptian history.

People like Seti I and his son Ramesses II,

one of Egypt's most powerful pharaohs

who reigned for 67 years and died at over 90 years of age.

The practice of mummification carried on for centuries

and was adapted by all of Egypt's various invaders.

(speaking in foreign language)

We are working here on a very special mummy,

a mummy with a portrait from the Roman era.

These are called Fayum mummies

and they existed between the 1st and 5th centuries AD.

This one is very special.

(speaking in foreign language)

It is drawn on a red background.

There are only 20 like it in the world.

(speaking in foreign language)

The idea behind the funeral masks

covering the faces of Egyptian mummies

is that they restore the use of the senses

to the dead person.

At the end of the Old Kingdom,

the masks were a place with portraits that came straight out

of the Greco-Roman artistic tradition.

These portraits were commissioned from artists by the living

in anticipation of certain death.

(speaking in foreign language)

It is hard to know exactly

when mummification stopped.

But there were no mummies between the 5th

and 6th century AD.

That date corresponds to the rise of monotheistic religions,

which forbade this practice.

(speaking in foreign language)

(intense music)

In the region around Luxor,

Khalaf Mahmud's remains

have reached their final resting place,

the cemetery in his village.

Only the men take part in the funeral procession.

According to the prophet Muhammad,

the hyper emotionalism of women

and children would disturb the sobriety of the funeral.

In the Muslim tradition,

the burial must take place within 24 hours of death.

This is a precaution

which makes good sense of these latitudes.

The corpse must be carried over a distance

of four kilometers in temperatures of 45 degrees centigrade

in the shade.

"There is only one God,

Allah and Muhammad is his prophet!"

Chants the crowd, swelling as the procession

reaches the corpse's final resting place.

(chanting in foreign language)

If the hills overlooking

this tiny village cemetery could talk,

they would tell us how little these rituals have changed.

The Theban Hills have seen thousands

of funeral processions passed by since the days

of the Ancient Egyptians.

With over 600 tombs recorded,

you need a bit of help to find your way around.

Sameh Michel is a tour guide.

Whenever he comes to Luxor,

he finds time to visit Amun's Bookshop

that specializes in Egyptology

and is situated in the midst of the ancient ruins.

(speaking in foreign language)

I accompany groups

and I guide them through Egypt.

I try to pass my love of all things Egypt onto them.

You have to keep your knowledge up to date.

There are new discoveries every year and new theories.

This is my passion so I try to stay up to date.

To do that I need books and I need to read.

(speaking in foreign language)

Even for an avid reader

it would take several lifetimes to uncover all the secrets

hidden in the Theban Hills.

To help make sense of it, Egyptologists

have divided the necropolis into three parts.

The Valley of the Nobles,

the Valley of the Queens and the Valley of the Kings.

(gentle music)

There are images of funeral precessions on lots of graves,

but Sameh has decided to come to the Valley of the Nobles.

With its monumental staircase,

the tomb of Ramesses, a vizier, under Amenhotep III

and Akhenaten is one of the largest in the

area of the necropolis, reserved for nobles.

At the back of the tomb Sameh finds what he is looking for,

an image of a funeral procession that is 3,000 years old.

You can see the family members

walking together behind the pallbearers,

next you've got the bearers of the grave goods.

Grave goods are the treasures that are placed in the tomb

alongside the deceased.

(speaking in foreign language)

The deceased hopes to live the same life after death,

as they lived on Earth.

Only better and more carefree.

So they will need to eat and drink and entertain themselves,

but they also keep the same job as they had on Earth.

So they will need the tools necessary

for performing those functions.

(speaking in foreign language)

Here, for example, you can see a leopard skin

which was the attire of a high priest.

Ramesses was a high priest, so he needs a priest's robes.

Then there is a bed, a mattress, a headrest, and some boxes.

These eclectic grave goods

had only symbolic value.

They were purely functional.

(intense music)

When Howard Carter opened up Tutankhamun's tomb in 1921,

the world was amazed to discover the wealth

of this young pharaoh who died at the age of just 19.

Nothing had been forgotten,

even his chariot was buried with him.

In total, Carter unearthed 5,000 objects from the tomb,

estimated to be worth the equivalent of a billion dollars.

But in the great majority of cases,

the grave goods have long disappeared from the tombs

of the pharaohs, stolen by generations of grave robbers.

(rhythmic music)

And here we have the mourners.

The mourners were very interesting.

Here, you see women showing that grief, and their sorrow.

You can see black tears on their cheeks.

Their eyes were heavily made up with a coal

so when they cried the coal ran down their cheeks.

The tradition for mourners

hasn't completely disappeared from Egypt,

but Islam forbids the expression of grief

through loud wailing.

Professional mourners resisted for a long time.

But today it is only in remote villages

that the tradition persists.

(women wailing)

This scene of a funeral procession

is on the side wall of the vault.

As you can see, it is dug out of the mountainside.

This ramp leads down to the vault.

The mummy and it's grave goods were slid down the ramp

and placed in the burial chamber.

(speaking in foreign language)

Today, as in Ancient Egypt,

after the funeral procession, the corpse is laid to rest.

Khalaf Mahmud's burial is over.

(singing in foreign language)

It is time for the village imam to recite the prayer

for the dead.

The prayer reminds us that death is part of life

and that the deceased will get his due reward

on the day of the resurrection.

The congregation stands to listen to this final narration.

(singing in foreign language)

Throughout the centuries,

from the Egypt of the pharaohs

to that of Alexander the Great,

funeral rights have continued to evolve.

Islam too has undergone a transformation

over the course of history.

One city in Egypt that single-handedly

embodies this mixture of genres is Alexandria.

The city that was founded by Alexander the Great

has retained its cosmopolitan character.

Here, you see signs in many different languages,

French, Greek, Arabic, and Italian.

The city is a thriving Mediterranean port.

So it's five million inhabitants have watched people come

and go since the days of antiquity.

This melting pot of a city has always had its fans.

People like Doha,

a tour guide who specializes in Egyptology.

When I was young,

I often used to come here with my family

during the summer holidays.

We would spend our summer holidays

on the beaches of Alexandria.

The beaches have gone, sadly they are rapidly disappearing.

The sea level is rising and concrete boulders

are strewn on the beaches in an attempt

to hold back the sea.

(waves crashing)

I love Alexandria and I keep bringing tourists here.

(speaking in foreign language)

Sometimes Alexandra is not on their itinerary,

but I always try to add it.

Alexandria is steeped in history

besides the lighthouse, which has disappeared,

but it was once one of the Seven Wonders

of the ancient world.

Another archeological treasure

lies hidden in the heart of the city.

(rhythmic music)

Discovered in 1900 by accident

when the weight of a donkey caused the ground cave in,

the city's ancient catacombs revealed a whole other world.

The world of the dead.

It is accessed by a spiral staircase

and is arranged over three levels.

35 meters underground visitors find themselves

stepping back in time to the Egypt

of the 1st to the 4th century AD,

with it's cosmopolitan funeral customs.

And here we are at the bottom of a well.

It was down this shaft that the sarcophaguses

containing corpses or mummies

were lowered into the various levels of the catacombs.

And this is where the digging stopped.

The spiral staircase would've continued down here, but

in 392 AD all pagan cults were banned

and Christianity became the official religion

of the Roman Empire.

So digging was stopped because these rituals

were no longer going to be practiced.

(eerie music)

The catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa,

to use their Arabic name, are a veritable maze.

They contain over 300 Greco-Roman tombs.

The majority of which are loculi.

These burial niches are identical to those found

in the catacombs in Rome.

The tomb which best symbolizes this mixture of cults

and rites is also the first one to be built here

in the 2nd century AD.

(intense music)

Here we are in the original tomb

where the catacombs began.

That is the statue of a man.

The body is Egyptian but the head is Roman

with curly hair and everything.

(speaking in foreign language)

It shows a fusion of art and religion,

which is very typical of that era.

I'm talking about the 2nd century AD.

First, you've got these composite columns,

which are typically Greek.

And then over here, you've got this agathodaemon,

which is typically Greek,

but the double crown is Egyptian.

And above it is a circle containing a Medusa,

which is for the protection of the tomb.

According to Greek mythology Medusa has the power

to turn anyone who looks at her to stone.

Then the center is very Egyptian.

Here you can see a winged sun with a cobra

on either side of it.

And then this line of cobras,

which was very typical of the time

and also a symbol of protection.

Here, we come to the main tomb.

It was dug out of the rock, along with the lid.

The lid does not open.

The burial was performed from the back

from outside the chamber.

And here we have a carving of Anubis,

the Ancient Egyptian god of mummification,

who was the guardian of the tombs.

And he is depicted here as a legionary in a Roman style

that has nothing to do with Egyptian art.

(light music)

Today, as in the past,

once the funeral is over,

the family sits down together to eat.

The architects of the catacombs thought of everything.

This large, typically Roman room

with its U-shaped bench serves as a dining room.

The whole family would assemble here.

You have to imagine a wooden table over there

with waiters passing behind it.

Family members would lie on their left-hand side

to make room in their stomachs

so they could fill it to maximum capacity.

There would've been wine to accompany the meal.

The idea was to share one last meal

with the spirit of the deceased.

In Ancient Egypt it wasn't unheard of

for the mummy to attend this last meal

before returning to its grave.

So that it could enjoy the spectacle and the feast,

either the oldest son or a priest

would perform the ritual of opening the mummy's mouth.

It was a magic ceremony

that would allow the deceased to breathe, eat, hear,

and see in the world of the dead.

You were supposed to break the plates

you had eaten off when you left the tomb.

(speaking in foreign language)

That is an Egyptian tradition,

which was practiced in the age of the pharaohs.

The tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered thanks

to the unearthing of pieces of pottery marked with his name.

These had been used during the last meal his family ate

with him before shutting up his tomb and leaving.

(gentle music) (birds chirping)

Muslims still hold funeral banquets,

but there are certain conditions.

Three days after Khalaf Mahmud's burial,

the period of mourning is officially over.

The family can finally eat a meal in his honor.

It takes place in the cemetery.

It is a frugal and hastier (indistinct)

with just one dish served.

(intense music)

Khalaf Mahmud's body now lies in the ground.

His soul will be judged on the day of the resurrection

at the end of this world,

a last judgment that is customary of monotheistic religions.

However, in Ancient Egypt,

the deceased were judged immediately.

Once they were alone in their tomb,

they would descend into the underworld to be judged.

Their life would continue there,

provided they passed several tests first

and found a way to survive in the afterlife,

that was no mean feat.

At the small temple of Hathor in the Theban Hills,

Egyptians have inscribed instructions

on the wall for the newly deceased.

For the Ancient Egyptian's

death was just a way of passing from this world to the next

and for such a journey,

people needed a guide to tell them

about the different stages they would encounter.

This is one of those stages.

It's the weighing of the heart.

It's in chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead.

The heart is placed on one dish of the scales

and on the other dish, there is a quill pen.

It is the quill pen of Ma'at, the goddess of justice.

And the heart had to be as light as the feather.

The scales had to balance.

If the heart was as light as a feather,

that meant that the deceased had a clear conscience

and could enter the Fields of Reeds,

which was the Ancient Egyptians equivalent of paradise.

(speaking in foreign language)

The weighing process is presided over by the god Osiris.

If the heart is found to be heavier than the feather,

then it will be eaten by a beast known as the Devourer.

(speaking in foreign language)

And then the deceased really is dead.

Being dead means not being able

to continue living in the afterlife.

The deceased, depending on their means had the papyrus

placed alongside them in their grave.

It was a guide to their journey.

Having their guide with them gave them peace of mind.

It gave them the formulas

they needed to overcome all the obstacles

they were going to encounter along the way.

(lively music)

For the dead to take a survival guide

with them into the underworld

they needed a medium for those written instructions

that was easy to carry.

Over 5,000 years ago,

the Ancient Egyptians invented papyrus.

The papyrus plant was the emblem of lower Egypt.

Images of papyrus plants were often seen

on the walls of temples and tombs.

This aquatic plant grew wild in the Nile Delta.

Today, it is still grown by some farmers,

but harvesting it is not easy.

This type of farming is hard to mechanize.

The farmers harvest it by hand, their feet in the water.

For Sobhy and his son Mohammad, it's hard work.

(speaking in foreign language)

Mohammed bring the cart!

These scenes look so timeless.

In reality, the cultivation of papyrus completely

disappeared from Egypt in the Middle Ages and yet,

papyrus had been a luxury product

that Egyptians had a monopoly over

throughout the Roman Empire

until it was supplanted by parchment.

Today, and this is very recent,

it can be found in some fields again.

Papyrus is a plant

that the Ancient Egyptians grew long before us.

There was nothing much growing on this land,

just some very standard crops.

But a few years ago we decided to plant papyrus again.

In the 1970s, some Egyptian botanists

started to show an interest in this plant.

Legend has it that they re-introduced it

after bringing home some plants

they found deep in the heart of neighboring Sudan.

Once the plant had been re-introduced,

the farmers had to revive the methods

of the Ancient Egyptians to transform it

into a material you could write on.

(speaking in foreign language)

I'm just cutting up the papyrus stems,

which will be used to make the sheets of paper.

I am cutting them into different lengths

to allow us to make sheets of different sizes.

(bright music)

(stems ripping)

(speaking in foreign language)

Now I'm slicing the stems with a fishing line.

I judge everything by eye.

The slices need to be identical.

More or less the same thickness.

The thinner they are, the more beautiful the paper will be.

(speaking in foreign language)

(lively music)

(speaking in foreign language)

Once they have been moistened, the strips of papyrus

need to be aligned and carefully placed

on top of one another

so that there are no holes in the sheet.

It is a job that demands a lot of dexterity.

(speaking in foreign language)

Doing this I realized

that the technique the Ancient Egyptians

invented was incredibly sophisticated.

For me with modern methods at my disposal, it's less hard.

But for them, it must've been very complicated.

(press rattling)

No one knows the exact process

the Ancient Egyptians used to make a papyrus.

Did they use a press like Sobhy?

It's hard for archeologists to answer that question,

but Sobhy's papyrus looks identical to the papyrus

that the Ancient Egyptians place in their sarcophaguses.

Look how solid this leaf of a papyrus is.

You can fold it and unfold again, no problem.

It won't break.

It is more solid than a sheet of normal paper.

And what's more, it is light and transparent.

I sell these sheets to printers or to artists

who decorate them and sell them to tourists.

(rhythmic folk music)

Painting on papyrus takes a very special kind

of skill.

Artists who do it like Ahmed are real experts.

(speaking in foreign language)

Drawing on papyrus is harder

than drawing on traditional paper.

(speaking in foreign language)

Because you can't just rub it out and start again.

Having worked as the official artist

on a number of archeological digs,

he turned to this discipline,

which took him back to Ancient Egyptian times.

(speaking in foreign language)

I am not an archeologist,

but I can tell you about the art of the Ancient Egyptians.

They use deep colors and applied several layers of paint.

That is why their paintings are so magnificent.

(speaking in foreign language)

They used natural pigments not chemicals like we use today.

They loved bright colors

and fixed them properly to the wall.

The drawing was very precise.

I am interested in all of that,

in their line drawings, the fixing process,

and the pigment, and I try to imitate their art

as far as it is possible to do so.

Color was very important

for the Ancient Egyptians.

Their temples were completely covered with paintings,

giving them a garish aspect that they no longer have today.

The reason for this was

that the pharaoh's subjects were illiterate.

They have to be able to recognize the gods at first sight

from their colors and costumes.

Osiris was painted green, the color of spring

to show that he had overcome death.

These painted representations are not lacking in realism

as shown in the difference in the skin color

of the two sexes.

The men are brown because they lived outdoors

and the women are yellow

because they stayed shut up indoors.

The animals too are represented in a way

that is very true to reality.

They will be used by the deceased in the afterlife.

Who would want to eat a pale imitation of a Nile perch?

(crickets chirping)

(speaking in foreign language)

Applying thick paint like this

tires your hand out.

It's not easy imitating the Ancient Egyptians.

But it's fascinating work.

(speaking in foreign language)

And I derive a lot of pleasure from it.

Painters, stonecutters and sculptors

occupied an important role in Ancient Egypt.

In the Theban Hills in the Middle Kingdom,

they even had their own village, Deir el-Medina.

All the artisans lived together here,

building tombs for the pharaohs in the nearby valley.

Their own tomb reflect their craft too.

They are topped with little pyramids

imitating early royal tombs.

A symbol of Ancient Egypt,

the three pyramids of Giza were erected

during the Old Kingdom at about 2,600 BC.

Back then only the pharaoh had access to eternal life.

The pyramid was a sort of launching part

for his soul to join the stars.

But paradise gradually became accessible to everyone.

Every Egyptian could have a pyramid built

in line with their means.

At Deir el-Medina, Sennedjem,

chief artisan to Ramesses II didn't hold back

when it came to constructing a tomb for himself.

He topped his with a pyramid

and paintings worthy of royalty.

Sameh's favorite thing here is the painting of paradise

done by Sennedjem and his contemporaries.

What is so distinctive about this tomb

are these vineyards from the Book of the Dead.

This one is of what we call the Fields of A'aru

which is what Ancient Egyptians

hope to find in the afterlife.

Namely very fertile fields

where the wheat grows to heights of 3.5 meters,

and the flax is two meters tall.

It's a place of abundance.

We see them here working on the fields.

That will be one of their jobs in the afterlife.

On Earth they had to dig canals and build dikes and so on.

And in the afterlife it's exactly the same.

And so they invented a system

to spare themselves this drudgery.

These funerary statues were known

as (speaking in foreign language),

they had a magic spell cast on them to make them act

on behalf of the deceased and go to work in their place.

(speaking in foreign language)

You cannot compare heaven as we think of it

with today's mentality

to the way it was perceived 4,000 years ago.

(speaking in foreign language)

For the Ancient Egyptians, heaven was a place of transition

from life on Earth to the afterlife,

which was everlasting and carefree.

(speaking in foreign language)

(lively music)

The Egyptians believed in heaven,

but they also believed that the dead came back

to visit the living.

The ba embodies the soul of the deceased,

it is represented by a bird with a human head.

The ba is a sort of double for the deceased

that is set free after death.

Like a ghost, it leaves the tomb

and flies over the deceased's favorite places,

allowing it to participate in life outside the tomb.

Then the ba flies back into the tomb

and settles on the mummy.

(chanting in foreign language)

In modern day Egypt it is more the living

who visit the dead than visa-versa.

Egyptians often pay their respects to their dearly departed.

(speaking in foreign language)

But the resting places of the dead

are sometimes disrupted by daily life,

especially in the country's capital.

(lively music)

In Cairo the population density is 10 times higher

than in London.

The population has forced many inhabitants

out to the city cemeteries.

(water splattering)

The people of Cairo are used to this strange cohabitation.

It is not unusual for them to use a grave as a tea tray

or a washing line.

A whole way of life has developed around these tombstones.

Hassan is a glassblower

and he lives in this working class district.

No one bats an eyelid on seeing this artisan working here,

his workshop opens directly onto one of the graves.

(water splattering)

Hassan's family has lived

in the cemetery for several generations.

He is familiar with the habits of all his neighbors,

both the living and the dead.

(birds chirping)

(Hassan whispering)

(speaking in foreign language)

That's Hassan Arabesque's tomb,

and Hassan Arabesque is me.

Hassan has built his own tomb

on the family plot near to his parents' grave.

It is not unusual for Egyptians to build their tombs

while they're still alive.

Just like in the days of the pharaohs.

(speaking in foreign language)

Personally I have no problem with death.

If I look back, I have lived a good and full life.

I have restored my ancestors too,

and my children will be proud of what I have achieved.

What's more, it's handy.

My tomb is a mere stones throw from my house,

but I have to admit it's nicer here than where I live now.

(speaking in foreign language)

Obviously not everyone wants to live in a cemetery,

but if you fall on hard times

and you need somewhere for your family to live,

especially your children, at least you can always move here.

You get used to living among the dead.

(cat mewing)

(bright music)

(intense music)

In Ancient Egypt the afterlife

was not always as peaceful as it is now.

At the bottom of the Valley of Kings in the Theban Hills,

generations of grave robbers attracted

by the buried treasures came to disturb the resting places

of the dead.

But the Pharaoh Ay from the 18th dynasty

was the victim of another form of tomb raiding.

He was subjected to a campaign of damnation

because of a rather troublesome forefather,

Akhenaten, the pharaoh who was hostile to the god Amun

and a heretic in the eyes of some of the successors.

Ay paid dearly for his kinship with the accursed pharaoh,

his tomb was methodically ransacked.

You don't need to be a great detective

to see that King Ay was murdered in his tomb.

The heart has been removed from these images of him.

And don't forget that the heart is the conscience.

The penis too, preventing him from reproducing,

and the face which is his identity

so that he is no longer recognizable.

Then the hands, and so on and so forth.

And so this mutilated king no longer exists

because the Ancient Egyptians

believed in the magic power of the image.

If the image of the deceased was intact, they existed,

but if it was erased they ceased to exist.

The idea was to kill Ay even after his death.

To erase all trace of his existence.

Even in his tomb, now he will never be reunited

with his soul.

When his soul returns to his tomb,

he will no longer be there only then is he really dead.

As you can see, they have hammered out the name of the king,

which was written on this cartouche.

The Ancient Egyptians believe in the magic power

of the word, as well as of the image.

Erasing his name meant that he no longer existed.

So he was killed one more time, they hammered out the name,

but they didn't succeed in eradicating him completely.

3,000 years later, I'm still saying the name Ay,

and so he exists.

His name lives on.

And so those who tried to kill him failed.

Sameh can name this pharaoh

who died 3,000 years ago thanks the work of archeologists.

By solving the mystery of the hieroglyphs

and identifying the mummies they discovered

they have ensured eternal life for the Ancient Egyptians.

But they are not the only ones.

The whole world has contributed,

from visitors to the Egyptian Museum

to tourists in the Souk in Luxor.

Everyone is contributing to the eternal life

of the pharaoh's subjects.

And nevermind that the pharaoh who has benefited the most

from the helping hand of fate

is one of the least important pharaoh's

in the history of Egypt.

He died at the age of 19 and his power was very limited.

And yet not a minute goes by without someone,

somewhere in the world mentioning the name, Tutankhamun.

The most short-lived of the pharaoh's

will have enjoyed the most enduring posterity.

(lighthearted music)

(horns honking)

(lively folk music)