Original subtitles

In Egypt's western desert...

It's very difficult now to excavate because of the wind.

...archaeologists battle a swirling sandstorm...

to uncover the remains of a mysterious abandoned settlement...

We found a strange building or structure or monument.

...built by some of Egypt's most treacherous pharaohs...

Ah. Oh, wow!

It's a jaw.

Ancient Egypt...

a land ruled by mighty pharaohs for over 3,000 years.

In all that time, one dynasty more than any other

is notorious for their murderous family feuds,

the Ptolemies.

This family's lust for power

led to some of Egypt's most enduring monuments,

and the rise of a legendary metropolis,

Alexandria.

Their bitter sibling rivalries brought endless bloodshed.

And their most famous queen, Cleopatra,

would be the last person to hold the crown of ancient Egypt.

Today, archaeologists are searching for evidence

of what happened to the Ptolemies lost temples,

how they used religion to bolster their power,

and how their cut-throat feuds led to their downfall.

In the heart of Upper Egypt,

in the ancient city of Athribis...

Egyptologist Marcus Müller and his team

live just 300 yards from a unique dig site.

The ruins of a vast temple,

now lost and buried

under centuries of earth and sand.

The only part still visible is the bottom of the stone wall

that formed the once grand temple entrance

called a pylon.

This is probably the last big stone pylon in Egypt

to be excavated.

At least I don't know any other one.

The ruins here

are the lower part of two 60-foot-tall towers

that once formed a monumental temple gateway...

but the unfinished stones and lack of decoration

indicate this project was never completed.

Marcus believes the structure was built

during the 275-year reign of the Ptolemies.

It could hold clues about how this dynasty

clung onto power during their tumultuous rule.

The team has started its excavations inside one of the towers.

Right behind me is the northern tower

and in this northern tower we have chambers.

The walls of these cavernous chambers

have so far turned out to be bare,

but Marcus has one final corridor to excavate.

He's looking for any inscriptions or decorations

that might tell him more about the temple's origins.

We are now starting to excavate the corridor down there

which is the entrance corridor.

We don't know what's underneath this end.

Aye, aye, that's clear.

But as the workers excavate the sand,

they hit a fallen stone block that obstructs their way.

Now we have a large stone

awaiting to be lifted.

I think it weighs, phew, probably a ton or something.

So, we need strong men.

Marcus will have to rely on the raw strength of his men

if he is to have any chance of completing his mission.

One hundred and thirty miles south of Athribis,

on the west bank of the Nile...

sits the temple of Edfu.

This is one of the best preserved monuments

of ancient Egypt.

Constructed over the course

of nearly 200 years by successive Ptolemaic kings.

Egyptologist Meredith Brand is here to investigate

the origins of this powerful dynasty

that ruled for longer than any other family

in ancient Egypt.

This temple is amazing. It's absolutely gorgeous.

It's massive and so beautifully carved.

It's clearly built in a time of prosperity by pharaohs

who wanted to show their power and their wealth.

Carved on the walls are scenes

that depict the foundation and construction of the temple.

The king here is offering to the god

a set of plaques made out of gold and precious stones.

And these are foundation deposits.

They would be placed in the foundations

to make this a sacred space,

and it shows the wealth that the king had.

Every pharaoh since the First Dynasty

used scenes like this to show how they had divine ascent

to construct their temples,

and permission from the gods to rule.

This meant temples were a powerful political tool

for a pharaoh to assert their right to the throne

and immortalize their own name and story in stone.

High on the enclosure wall,

Meredith finds a clue about the Ptolemaic dynasty's origins

which would have made this temple critical

in their rise to power.

There's a remarkable text up here that has a god recounting

the myth of the creation of this temple.

And then there's an image of the king,

and above his name is a cartouche that says, "Ptolemy Alexander."

His name is Ptolemy and he added the second name Alexander.

He is harkening back to the great founder of a new era,

Alexander the Great.

In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great took control of Egypt,

becoming the first Greek ruler of the country.

His general, Ptolemy, became pharaoh in 305 BCE,

founding what became known as the Ptolemaic dynasty.

The family ruled Egypt for almost 300 years,

from the legendary metropolis of Alexandria,

which they built on the Mediterranean coast.

And it would be a Ptolemy who became Egypt's last pharaoh,

the iconic Cleopatra.

The Ptolemies were essentially foreign.

They were Greek Macedonian

and they were trying to rule a population in Egypt

with its own long, rich cultural history.

Edfu Temple is evidence

of how the Ptolemies openly celebrated their Greek origins,

but through Egyptian traditions.

Now Meredith wants to find out how the Ptolemies

won over the Egyptian population

and kept the throne for almost three centuries.

Three hundred and forty miles north of Edfu

is ancient Soknopaiou Nesos.

On the north shore of Lake Qarun

are the vast remains of an ancient settlement

built during the Ptolemaic dynasty,

and inhabited by Egyptians and Greek settlers.

For more than 20 years,

Paola Davoli has led teams of archaeologists

to these ruins.

This season, Paola wants to uncover what she believes to be a temple,

to find out who was using it and what gods they worshiped.

We are excavating this season

in this small building.

Unfortunately, it was dug and quite demolished

by the looters searching for treasure in the past.

So, the area was completely covered by debris

and also sand, of course.

Over the last five weeks,

Paola's 30-person team

has removed centuries of windblown sand from the rooms.

And has now reached the layers where any artifacts from the Ptolemaic era

will be hidden.

Now we are about one meter from the floor.

So, in a week I think we can reach the floor

and see what was left by the looters

and hopefully discover to which god it was dedicated.

-Eh?

The upper parts of the mud brick walls

have suffered centuries of erosion,

destroying any decoration there may have been.

But as the workers expose more of the lower walls...

Ah, Dionysus.

Athena, Zeus.

...Paola makes out some text.

You can see that it's not easy to read.

There is a name of Athena, the Greek goddess,

and also Zeus over here and then Dionysus.

It's quite interesting to have names of god and goddesses

from the Greek pantheon instead of the local pantheon.

The poor condition of the text

means it will take time to record and decipher fully.

For now, Paola and her workers continue

picking through the sand looking for more evidence.

Even the most unlikely remnants could be a vital clue.

What did you find there?

Crocodile bone.

Yes, I think it can be one of the teeth of the crocodile.

Lake Qarun was once home to a thriving population of crocodiles,

but the water's edge is two miles away,

further than a crocodile would tend to stray.

How would a tooth end up inside this temple?

In the ancient city of Athribis,

Marcus is excavating a mysterious abandoned pylon

built during the Ptolemaic era.

He hopes the entrance corridor might bear inscriptions

that could tell him more about the temple.

But first, the workers need to lift

the fallen stone block that obstructs it.

- Bravo.

That was really tough.

It was close to the limit there.

With the block now removed,

Marcus can inspect the corridor properly.

If we look at the top part,

it's so badly destroyed over there.

No remains of the original surface.

It's a disappointing result.

With the inside of the northern tower now completely excavated,

Marcus shifts his focus to the south tower.

Doctor.

Uh-huh.

Ah, look. Ah, look, look.

There are two cartouches appearing

and the titles of the king on top.

The cartouches,

hieroglyphs of the king's name encased in an oval of rope,

tell Marcus exactly who authorized this structure.

And these are the upper halves of the cartouches,

the right one already shows the name of, uh, Ptolemy.

And the left name is the throne name,

and according to the top bits,

one can see that it is, uh, Ptolemy VIII.

That's, uh, fantastic, yeah, very happy with this.

As most of the walls exposed so far

have been undecorated,

this inscription is key

in linking the temple pylon to Ptolemy VIII.

Ah, look, wonderful.

Really beautiful, and so well preserved.

So that gives hope for everything underneath.

This possibly is the biggest reward

I can imagine at the moment.

Marcus now digs deeper,

hoping the decoration continues below the sand.

Any further inscriptions could be vital to understanding

why Ptolemy VIII built this temple.

In the ancient Ptolemaic settlement of Soknopaiou Nesos,

Paola is searching for an explanation

for the crocodile tooth which the team found

in one of the rooms of the temple.

But the weather is making work difficult for the team.

Today is very windy

so we have a lot of sand in the, in the air.

And so, it's difficult, especially for the workmen,

because dealing with the sand all the time.

Paola only has a week of her season left,

so she needs to keep working against the elements

to reach the temple floor.

Otherwise, the rooms will quickly fill with sand

and next season she will have to start all over again.

In the largest room,

one of the workers finds something buried in the sand.

Here?

Ah!

Si.

It's a jaw...

of a crocodile.

Carefully.

- Wow!

This is the mouth,

so it's the right part of the, of the jaw.

And you see that the teeth are really, really big.

It cannot, it cannot be a cat.

Just beside the jaw,

Paola makes another strange discovery.

I don't know if it's the shroud or maybe bandages.

You can see that there are these

sort of burnt parts

but these are resins of the mummy.

Paola wants to know if there is any connection

between these mummy wrappings and the crocodile remains.

She takes them to Egyptologist Francesca to analyze.

This is from probably the outer layer

of the mummy wrapping.

This piece is really impregnated with the oils and resins

used during the mummification process as well.

And as you see, uh, there are many, many layers

of different textiles which are stuck together.

Probably these pieces were, uh, the closest textiles, uh,

to the mummy itself.

On these solid inner layers,

Francesca finds something incredible preserved in the resin.

Here we have the inner part of the textile

which was applied on the skin,

and here you can clearly see

the skin remains of the crocodile.

The bandages aren't the remains of mummified humans,

but mummified crocodiles.

It's evidence that the crocodiles were brought here intentionally.

Paola now needs to work out why.

At Edfu...

Meredith is exploring the Ptolemaic temple

to learn more about the rise and fall

of Egypt's last dynasty of pharaohs.

Edfu Temple is one of the most significant

architectural and cultural sites in the Ptolemaic period.

It can help us unravel the story of this family of pharaohs.

Meredith wants to understand how this Greek family

successfully took on the role of pharaoh.

She scours the enormous enclosure walls that surround the temple for clues

and finds vast decorations

that retell a central myth of Egyptian kingship.

This is an epic battle between Horus and Seth.

We have Horus here,

and he's connected with goodness, order, and stability.

And then there's Seth shown as a hippo,

a very dangerous animal,

connected to chaos and destruction.

Seth murdered Horus' father Osiris

and tried to steal the throne of Egypt.

Horus had to fight to regain his throne.

And in the end Horus was victorious,

and he regained his crown as king of Egypt.

The Ptolemies chose to celebrate

this myth on their temple

to promote the idea that order and stability

depended on power remaining in their family line,

and anything else was chaos.

These are more than just decorations.

They record a real celebration and a performance of this myth

that took place at the temple.

The sacred drama of Horus and Seth

would have been a huge event at this temple.

We have women singing and dancing, banging on drums.

Priests would have been dressed as these gods wearing masks,

and there would have been an epic battle of boats

between Horus and Seth.

Whilst the Ptolemies came from a culture

with its own long-established pantheon of gods and traditions,

they knew that adapting to Egyptian beliefs

rather than imposing their own, was key to successful rule.

What's so remarkable is that the Ptolemaic kings

took on ancient Egyptian mythology

that justifies kingship, and they embraced it fully.

Meredith now wants to see how the Ptolemies

took keeping power in the family to the extreme

and how this brought chaos and bloodshed.

In Soknopaiou Nesos...

strong winds continue to batter Paola's team

as they excavate a small Ptolemaic temple.

Amongst the rubble, the team has uncovered evidence

of multiple crocodile mummies.

Paola wants to understand

who was mummifying these crocodiles and why.

We are not, uh, yet on the floor but we are going very well,

and we found this in the inner part of this, uh, temple,

a strange structure or monument in stone.

It's very unusual.

I cannot find, uh, any other place like this,

but all around we found many pieces

of the mummies of the crocodiles,

so maybe the crocodiles were buried there.

Paola believes that the crocodile mummies

could have originally been buried inside this stone platform.

But as workers clear more sand from the top of the platform,

they discover looters have been here first.

The platform is covered by slabs

but some of them are missing,

we still don't know how many.

But this place is abandoned since 2,000 years

and so you can imagine

how many people came to find treasures.

The missing slabs mean the platform has now filled with sand,

and any small clues left in it by the looters

are now mixed with sand and debris from outside.

Paola's most eagle-eyed workers will have to pick through it carefully,

but the continuing sandstorm makes it a painful task.

It's very difficult now to excavate because of the wind.

But our workmen are very expert and they can find everything,

even in such a wind.

Just as the sandstorm threatens to close the dig...

Paola!

...one of the workers

pulls out a fragment of clay

inscribed with hieroglyphs.

Oh, wow.

In ancient Soknopaiou Nesos...

the worsening sandstorm forces work to stop.

In the shelter of the dig tent,

Paola analyzes the clay fragment,

as it may shed light on the mystery of the crocodile mummies.

We found this very small piece of an object,

very exciting for me.

It is a small seal in clay

with the stamps of, uh, some hieroglyphs.

The hieroglyphs mention the god,

and he was the lord of the island,

so probably Sobek, Lord of the Island.

Sobek was an Egyptian god in the form of a crocodile,

particularly revered in this area.

And the site of the temple is thought to have once been an island.

The clay seal is a remnant of the temple priest's daily routine.

Every morning, priests came to the temple

to worship a small statue of the god Sobek kept in a shrine.

At the end of the day, they secured the shrine,

not with a lock and key...

but with rope.

They sealed the knotted rope with clay,

stamped with the name of the temple owner.

When they returned the following morning to repeat their daily sacred duties,

they broke the seal to open the shrine.

Paola deciphers more of the text.

Beside we have the two cartouche,

the two names of the king,

and one for sure is Ptolemy.

Finally, we have a name and a name of one of the,

the king of the Ptolemaic dynasty.

So that's why it's so exciting because we already know

that this building was used during the Ptolemaic period,

but having a name is something else.

The seal proves that one of the Ptolemaic pharaohs

commissioned this temple in honor

of the Egyptian crocodile god Sobek.

It's evidence that the Greek settlers who lived here may have been encouraged

to worship local Egyptian gods.

It explains the connection of crocodiles to this site,

but what was the reason for mummifying the crocodiles

and keeping them in the temple?

In ancient Athribis...

at the ruins of a temple built by Ptolemy VIII,

Marcus' team is clearing sand from the pylon's southern tower.

Very nicely preserved.

Searching for any clues that could reveal

which god Ptolemy dedicated this temple to,

and why the pylon was abandoned.

Beneath the cartouche of the pharaoh,

more decorations emerge.

I haven't seen anything, uh, like this here,

a fully preserved figure of the king.

With the name and image of King Ptolemy VIII preserved,

Marcus hopes the stone will bear further clues

about the pharaohs influence here.

Look now, the goddess is appearing,

because he is offering this vase here

to a god on the left-hand side.

And this is a bull, a god with a bull's head.

There are several gods in the shape of a bull.

The most famous one is Apis, uh, who was revered in,

all over Egypt actually.

When Alexander the Great took control of Egypt,

he appealed to the masses by worshiping the Apis bull,

a major god associated with fertility.

His successor, Ptolemy I, promoted a cult

that fused the Apis bull with Osiris into a hybrid god named Serapis,

but he gave the deity a Greek appearance.

The Ptolemies built a temple to the new Serapis in Alexandria

to bring together their Greek and Egyptian subjects

under one roof.

As Marcus decodes the images emerging on the stone,

he realizes something extraordinary about this bull-headed god.

The name is written in the right,

one of these three columns of hieroglyphs on the top.

It's possible that his name is some, something like Heri-Kah.

I don't recognize it.

It's a totally unknown god.

So, we can actually say that we discovered a new god.

It has never happened to me before.

Yeah, that's really nice.

It's an amazing discovery.

Uncovering a new god is incredibly rare.

Whether this was a local god important to this city,

or a new god of Ptolemy VIII's own invention, is unclear.

The answers may lie deeper in the ruins.

Marcus is heading to the area behind the entrance gateway,

to learn more about the temple's purpose

and what became of it.

Meredith has traveled 35 miles south of Edfu

to the temple of Kom Ombo.

She is on the trail of the Ptolemaic pharaohs,

to uncover how the family's power bred betrayal and bloodshed.

This is a really cool temple.

It's unique for Egypt because the south side

is dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek

and the north is dedicated to the god Horus.

Most of this beautiful temple was built by the Ptolemies.

Traditional Egyptian temples were dedicated to a single god.

But Kom Ombo is split in half,

with each side dedicated to a different Egyptian deity.

It's evidence of how the Ptolemies adopted

Egyptian traditions and made them their own.

Amongst the pillars of the hyper style hall,

Meredith finds evidence of another common practice

of past Egyptian royal families...

which the Ptolemies copied and took to an extreme.

Okay, this is interesting.

Okay, so this is Ptolemy VIII,

and then over here we have Cleopatra.

But this can't be the famous Cleopatra,

because she ruled more than 100 years after Ptolemy VIII,

so this has to be a completely different Cleopatra.

Cleopatra was a popular name for noblewomen

in the mythology of the Ptolemies Greek homeland.

One of Alexander the Great's sisters was a Cleopatra,

and many of the women of the Ptolemaic dynasty

took this name as a mark of power and dynastic continuity.

So here's another one, Cleopatra.

There is two Cleopatras

in the same scene with Ptolemy VIII.

But here we have sister and ruler for this Cleopatra,

and then over here we have wife and ruler

for the second one of these Cleopatras.

The inscriptions show that Ptolemy VIII was married

to both his own sister and his stepdaughter,

and they were all ruling the country together.

This sets the scene

for an amazing amount of personal drama,

as anyone could imagine, and also political drama.

In 170 BCE,

Ptolemy VI ruled Egypt with his wife and sister

Cleopatra II and his younger brother Ptolemy VIII,

known as Potbelly.

When Ptolemy VI died, his son was next in line,

but Potbelly killed him

and married his own widowed sister,

only to later marry her daughter Cleopatra III.

The family drama turned into war

when Cleopatra II took Alexandria

and drove Potbelly and her own daughter into exile.

The sibling rivalry fractured their power and dragged Egypt

into a spiral of civil unrest and economic ruin.

The Ptolemies spent so much time

and money building temples,

fighting neighbors in different wars,

and enmeshed in their own complicated family dramas,

that by the time of 30 BC, the time of Cleopatra VII,

yes, that famous Cleopatra, the Ptolemies were in trouble.

The Ptolemies had kept power in the family for nearly 300 years,

but time and again family feuds spilled beyond the palace walls

and divided the country.

Meanwhile, other empires were rising to power

across the Mediterranean.

Meredith wants to investigate how the Ptolemaic dynasty

finally met its end.

In Soknopaiou Nesos...

Paola's team has restarted its excavation

despite the harsh winds,

as only days of the season remain.

They're searching for evidence to explain the purpose

of the crocodile mummies for the ancient inhabitants.

Paola's investigating a hollow stone platform

that she thinks might hold the answer.

There is something coming out from there.

They are brushing very slowly

so there must be something important or delicate.

Oh, wow!

It's a big piece of a crocodile again.

I think this is the,

the left part of the jaw that we already found.

Paola thinks the crocodile mummy remains

were scattered around the room by looters

who ripped them apart, hunting for treasure.

But originally they were placed inside this stone platform.

Paola believes this temple was central to a unique ritual

that celebrated the death and rebirth of the crocodile god Sobek.

Once every year, priests would mummify a crocodile...

and bring it here to be buried in the stone sarcophagus.

Through a small opening on the side,

they removed the previous year's mummy

and replaced it with the new mummy,

signifying the rebirth of the god

and renewal of the king's power.

Paola believes this temple is an example

of the Ptolemies political strategy.

By adopting the local religious traditions

and developing and popularizing new ceremonies and rituals,

they created something that Egyptians recognized,

but that the Greeks could also take part in

and make their own.

So they didn't want to be against the local religion

or the local way of life.

So, they tried to be mixed with the population.

In here we can see that the, the pantheon walls,

the local pantheon, the Egyptian pantheon,

but at the same time

these gods were combined with the Greek ones.

It's a multicultural society in the real sense.

Paola's excavations here show how the Ptolemaic pharaohs

manipulated religious traditions

to integrate the Greek settlers and Egyptians,

winning popular support and securing the dynasty's power.

But the internal feuds amongst the family

would ultimately undermine this strategy.

Two hundred miles south in ancient Athribis...

Marcus has begun his search for the temple's inner sanctuary,

looking for any clues that could tell him what happened after it was abandoned.

We're here at about 15 meters behind the pylon,

so we're inside the temple area.

Underneath us should be the temple court.

The ruins of mud brick buildings

built on top of the temple

are a sign of later use of the site.

Marcus will need to excavate them to find the temple below.

As the workers clear the sand,

they uncover something totally unexpected.

Look at that.

Beautifully preserved paintings on the mud brick walls

left by the people who came here after the Ptolemies.

At the temple of Kom Ombo,

Meredith is searching for clues that reveal

how the great Ptolemaic dynasty met its bloody end.

The columns in front of the temple look typically Egyptian,

but they were built after the fall of the last Ptolemy.

Their decorations tell the fate of the dynasty

and of pharaonic Egypt.

This cartouche says, "T-bah-re-wah,"

which is Egyptian for Tiberius.

So, this is the Roman Emperor Tiberius,

the second Roman emperor after Augustus.

In 30 BCE, Augustus, then known as Octavian,

seized Alexandria to depose Cleopatra

and her lover the Roman General Mark Antony.

With his army outnumbered,

the defeated Mark Antony took his own life

rather than surrender to Octavian.

To avoid the humiliation of losing the throne,

Cleopatra, legend says,

poisoned herself with a snake bite,

ending the Ptolemaic dynasty.

Octavian, later crowned Emperor Augustus,

became the successor to the pharaohs

and annexed Egypt as a Roman province.

Rome's power had been rising for some time

and perhaps their conquests of Egypt would have been inevitable,

but the Ptolemaic infighting,

the economic instability and public revolt,

left a situation where the Ptolemies were weak

and vulnerable when the Romans attacked.

Whilst the Romans had taken advantage

of the Ptolemy family drama,

they had also witnessed the great successes of their rule.

They knew that the only way to hold power in Egypt

was for the emperor to become a pharaoh.

Tiberius, he's dressed as an Egyptian king.

He's got a crown, the kilt, everything.

If you just saw this image,

you would think it's an ancient Egyptian.

Tiberius takes the Ptolemaic practice

of using Egyptian kingship

to rule a country with an Egyptian population.

But unlike the Ptolemies

who made Egypt their home and seat of power,

the Roman adoption of Egyptian kingship

was only skin-deep.

Tiberius and the emperors who followed him ruled from Rome.

Egypt was just another outpost of their empire.

A hundred and sixty miles north along the River Nile,

in the ancient city of Athribis,

Marcus's team has uncovered

beautifully painted plaster walls,

which reveal something astonishing about the people

who built on top of the temple.

Look at that.

It looks as if this is a, a warrior,

and, uh, he is lifting his left arm

and holding a shield,

and in the central part we see this yellowish bit

that could be part of a body armor.

The style of the armor and weapons

tells Marcus these are paintings of Roman soldiers.

Unbelievable.

That's really unbelievable.

It's the head of another warrior I think. Ha!

Underneath, so we have two rows,

as one above the other, it's really amazing.

Whoa!

And you can see the shield and the spear.

This is really fantastic.

Super, and there is an inscription

in front of the head as well.

Unbelievable.

Marcus believes these buildings

constructed right on top of the original temple,

must have been a Roman garrison.

They are names of people,

so I guess names of the warriors and where they are from.

So, from cities or villages

probably in this province here.

It's evidence that the temple

and the god it was dedicated to had been abandoned.

Under the control of the Roman Empire,

ancient Egyptian religion would disappear forever.

Marcus will have to wait until next season to uncover more about this lost temple,

but the vibrant 1,500-year-old murals

are an incredible parting gift.

I would never have expected such a wonderful painting here,

rows of warriors, look from here. Ha!

Absolutely fantastic.

It's evidence that the Roman Empire

would ultimately rely on military might to maintain power

rather than the traditions of ancient Egypt.

The age of the pharaohs was over.

Today archaeologists are uncovering the temples,

treasures and legacy

of the Ptolemaic kings and queens,

piecing together the remarkable story

of a family wrecked by brutal feuds

that weakened their power and the country,

while opening the door to the legions of Rome.

But for nearly 300 years, the Ptolemies presided

over an extraordinary period of ancient Egypt,

intertwining Greek and Egyptian culture,

building some of its best-known temples

and forging new gods.