Original subtitles

Egypt, land of legendary pharaohs and monuments,

whose majesty has never ceased to fascinate us.

And yet for centuries,

this extraordinary civilisation was completely forgotten,

buried beneath the sands of the desert.

But in 1798, the French general Napoleon Bonaparte

lands in Egypt with his army.

This military conquest,

accompanied by a scientific expedition

on an unprecedented scale,

ignites a powerful fascination for ancient Egypt across Europe.

Soon, explorers from every corner of the old continent

will be engaging in a crazy race to seek out hidden treasures.

Come on, come on, come on!

For Egypt has become the battleground

on which the empires of Europe will come head to head.

For France, the conquest has a dual purpose.

Not only is Egypt bursting with untold riches to explore,

but even more importantly,

it lies at the crossroads of global trade routes,

and is increasingly seen as a shortcut to India for the British.

By striking Egypt, the French are directly attacking

the commercial interests of their sworn enemies: the British.

But Bonaparte's plans don't happen as they were meant to.

First, he loses his fleet.

Then, in the summer of 1799,

he is recalled to Paris, in secret,

to stage a coup d'etat.

Abandoned by their leader, his troops are still in Egypt:

among them, the hundred scholars who have survived the first year.

They are still studying the country,

even though British forces are expected to arrive imminently.

Two years after Bonaparte's escape,

the remaining French forces have capitulated

and are forced to negotiate their return to France

with the British authorities.

General Menou, the new commander of the French army,

gives priority to getting Bonaparte's scholars home.

Over three years, they have amassed vast quantities of notes

and artefacts which they hope to bring back to France...

...if the British will let them.

We've come to seize your documents and your research.

Clearly, these negotiations

are not going to be conducted politely.

But the British are not really interested in the French research.

What they want above all is to get their hands on the antiquities

which the scholars have accumulated.

There's one artefact in particular the British are desperate to get:

the Rosetta Stone.

This unique stele has the same text written on it

in three different scripts.

Both the French and the British are convinced that this stone

could be the key to deciphering hieroglyphs,

which no-one has been able to read for more than a thousand years.

The British end up sending one of their diplomats

to Egypt to acquire the antiquities

that the French are still refusing to hand over.

His name is William Richard Hamilton.

William Richard Hamilton was a diplomat,

traveller, and later, antiquarian.

He was here in Egypt because the British asked him

to find the Rosetta Stone after their victory over the French.

So his job was to deal with the French, to negotiate,

and then eventually ship the Rosetta Stone from Alexandria to England.

In exchange for their full cooperation,

Hamilton allows the French to leave with their personal effects,

which include their scientific notes.

General Menou has hidden the Rosetta Stone

among his own personal effects, and in the face of the enemy,

he's risking everything.

Do you mind opening this for me?

Empty this and look below.

Stop.

Thank you.

The British and the French were fighting over everything,

whether it was land or whether it was intellectual...

excellence, scientific excellence,

and they were also fighting over the antiquities of Egypt.

So once the British had defeated Bonaparte

and taken all of the things that he had collected to England,

that is really what set the stage for this rivalry to continue.

In December 1801,

once the Rosetta Stone has been confiscated and sent to London,

Hamilton wants to study the treasures of ancient Egypt

like the French before him.

He travels southwards along the Nile to Philae Island,

on Egypt's southern border.

Archaeologist Meredith Brand

retraces the steps of the British diplomat for us.

William Richard Hamilton was well-educated,

he knew Greek and Roman traditions.

He was familiar with the classical world.

So he looked around this temple and interpreted this site...

through the only thing he knew.

When Hamilton came here, he saw this image of a giant,

and another image of a multi-headed figure,

and he thought, 'I know what this must be.

This must be the ancient Greek giant god,

Briareus, who famously had 50 heads and 100 arms.'

And he thought this scene depicted the death of the giant.

But he wasn't right.

In fact, this is a ritual image.

It depicts a fantastical version of the King

grabbing his enemies by the hair and smiting them.

This is classic ancient Egypt.

It shows the King controlling chaos,

controlling forces of evil, represented by the enemies,

and the King being the force of order.

So it's order defeating chaos. That's what this image is.

Even though Hamilton is struck

by these colossal bas-reliefs,

he doesn't realise he is standing before an image of a Pharaoh...

...let alone that the man he's looking at is Ptolemy XII,

father of Cleopatra.

This image also might have been confusing to Hamilton,

because this figure is so giant,

and he thought, logically, this must be a god.

In some ways, Hamilton was right.

The Pharaoh wasn't just some mortal.

He was an intermediary between the kings and the gods.

The Pharaoh was semi-divine himself.

So, in some ways, Hamilton is right:

he is looking at the gods, just not in ancient Greek mythology.

He came to the site, he thought about what he did know,

and he made his best attempt to guess.

But there's a key difference between Hamilton

and the people on Bonaparte's expedition.

Hamilton was by himself.

At these massive temples is where Denon and the French expedition

really could step into their own and make huge contributions.

They had a vast team with them. They could measure, they could record.

They could send everyone around the temple

to get as much of an accurate representation as they could.

An independent lone traveller would go to a massive temple like Philae

and not even know where to begin.

Aware that he cannot do the same work

as the team of 160 French scholars single-handedly...

...Hamilton decides to concentrate on smaller sites...

...and particularly the necropolis of El-Kab.

William Hamilton was trying to get a sense of the country.

This was still a relatively unknown land, for the British, at least.

He wanted to know about society, the economy, the politics,

the buildings, ancient buildings and modern, the natural landscape.

And it's only until he came to a place like this

that he was getting that sense of what people were

in the ancient past.

It's really fascinating to...

put yourself in the shoes of William Hamilton.

Coming into a tomb like this,

for the first time...

In some senses,

what he would be looking at would be entirely new to him,

and alien, like a window onto the past in Egypt.

You know, a country that he couldn't possibly know,

and yet, he would quickly be seeing...

scenes of people...

doing things that he would recognise.

Some moments of everyday life that Hamilton draws carefully.

So there were lots of people here in this scene,

which he could have almost read like...

like a comic strip.

Even if he couldn't read the hieroglyphic inscriptions,

he would recognise men carrying scythes,

sharp blades...

to chop this cereal crop.

Then we've got grain being perhaps trampled by cattle.

So scenes like this would be giving Hamilton,

for the first time, perhaps,

a sense of what it was like for people in ancient Egypt.

And he probably would have been very struck by the fact

that it was not very different thousands of years ago

from what he was seeing in his day.

There were lots of things that Hamilton...

could have guessed correctly...

about what was going on here, but there were still things

that he couldn't possibly know that we know now.

That comes mainly from our ability to read the hieroglyphs.

This, in fact, is the tomb of a man called Paheri,

who we know was the mayor of the local town, Nekheb.

Paheri lived in the 15th century BC.

As the mayor, it was his job

to ensure that the granaries were filled.

So these agricultural scenes show this duty being performed.

But alongside these bas-reliefs

that Hamilton can at least partially understand,

there are others that baffle him.

For me, perhaps the most joyous part of this whole tomb

is this wall here.

We can see somebody playing what's recognisably a harp,

there's somebody else with a whistle or a flute,

and the figure in between appears to be dancing.

And some of the people are lifting flowers up to their noses

as if, you know, breathing something in.

But Hamilton might have wondered, 'Is this something narcotic?'

In any case, he would certainly, I think,

have been wondering if this really could be a tomb.

This looks like a big party.

Everybody seems to be probably having a great time.

Is this what you do to mark the death of somebody?

This would have been such a contrast

to the way that we mark death in Europe.

It would have been perhaps a bit confusing for him.

Although the study of the ancient sites

deeply fascinates Hamilton,

in 1802, he is recalled by his superiors

and forced to leave Egypt.

At the same moment in France,

Napoleon Bonaparte, who has now become the First Consul,

announces the grand project that he has been planning

for his scholars who have returned from Egypt.

He decrees...

I have decided that all memoirs...

...plans, and drawings...

...relating to the Egyptian expedition

will be fully funded by the government.

His plan to create an encyclopaedia is under way.

It's a huge job, which his scholars need to finish in record time.

He's only giving them eight years

to publish a work that will make history.

The Description Of Egypt is one of the great landmarks

in French publishing.

Just look at the scale: it's a monster.

What you see here is a single volume of the twenty volumes or so

that make up the entire publication:

nine with text and ten with illustrations.

160 articles,

and 930 drawings,

describe every aspect of Egyptian life, ancient and contemporary.

It's an extraordinary work,

created to serve the glory of Napoleon.

And to make that clear, on the very first page,

the Emperor is depicted naked as Apollo the warlord.

This title page exudes Napoleonic propaganda,

and it's a delight.

In the main body, you can see the famous finds,

like the Rosetta Stone...

and the Dendera Zodiac.

But also an obelisk, an ancient column, a sphinx...

without forgetting the Ramesseum, Luxor,

Karnak and Dendera temples,

all represented in their entirety.

These monuments which have been meticulously studied in Egypt

by the scholars of Napoleon's expedition.

Back in Paris, their notes have been rigorously reviewed

by a commission of experts.

Before the 18th century,

since no-one has actually seen Egypt,

people tried to evoke it through visual cliches.

You saw a certain thing, and you immediately thought of Egypt,

so the pyramids were imagined to be very elongated and pointed,

like needles, and the sphinx sometimes had a nose.

But the Description Of Egypt

offers 930 illustrations of absolute knowledge.

From the moment it's published,

the work becomes the definitive reference book

for anyone studying Egypt.

When I look at these illustrations,

I am transported to Egypt,

and I think they have allowed thousands of people

to travel there in their imagination.

After the evacuation of the French troops

and William Hamilton's departure, the Europeans left Cairo.

But in 1803, the French send a new man to Egypt.

His name is Bernardino Drovetti.

Bernardino Drovetti was an Italian

who came to work for the French government

very shortly after the time of...

the departure of the Napoleonic expedition.

And Drovetti was there...

to maintain French interests,

and to play the role of a consul.

Drovetti's mission is to make it easier

for the French to have a presence in Egypt.

But above all, he becomes the eyes and ears of Bonaparte,

who has not abandoned his conquest of Egypt.

On the ground, Drovetti needs to do some clever manoeuvring

to get to know the local powerbrokers.

One man stands out from the rest:

a former Ottoman soldier in his thirties

named Muhammad Ali.

Muhammad Ali, was, in fact, a soldier.

He was not Egyptian. He was Albanian.

But he was born in Thessaloniki and grew up there.

His father was a trader. And then he joined the military.

And he was fighting in the Ottoman Empire.

And so he wound up...

being an extraordinary person.

Drovetti quickly realised that Muhammad Ali

was going to be a very important player.

He said of Muhammad Ali,

'He wants to make his way to the throne

without appearing to want to do so.

He's a master of public opinion,

and he only has to want for something

for his intentions to be realised.'

And in fact, the political situation in Egypt

is evolving rapidly.

For centuries, the country belonged to the Ottoman Empire

and was governed by the Mamluks:

warriors ruling in the name of the Sultan of Constantinople.

But now, the Mamluks and Ottomans

are fighting for control of Egypt.

After the defeat of Bonaparte by the British,

there was a little time of chaos,

because the Ottomans still hadn't reorganised

and gotten people in charge here.

So there was bit of a power vacuum, and people were coming and going,

but this is during this time that Muhammad Ali

starts to step in and becomes a major player on the stage.

Drovetti has made a wise assessment:

Muhammad Ali is gradually asserting himself over all his rivals,

both the Mamluks and the Ottomans.

Among the population,

Muhammad Ali increasingly eclipses the Pasha of Egypt:

the puppet ruler installed by the Ottomans.

And on the night of May 12th to May 13th 1805,

Muhammad Ali's manoeuvring finally pays off.

Some Egyptian dignitaries come to his tent and declare:

'We want to depose the Pasha.'

Muhammad Ali asks them: 'And who would you wish to replace him with?'

And the men answer: 'With you.'

And he said, 'No, no. No, I'm happy in my secondary position.'

Because also, if the Ottomans heard that he was...

jockeying for power, they would do their best to smash him.

So it was in his interest to be discreet

till he had enough proper backing,

military as well as economic, to take over the country.

But of course, the nobles insisted.

And when eventually Muhammad Ali accepted,

he did so making the Egyptian nobles think this isn't what he wanted,

when in fact, this is exactly what he had desired for years.

This event was exceptional.

For the first time, Egyptian religious figures and nobles

had appointed their viceroy.

And on 18th June 1805,

reluctantly, the Ottomans repatriated their Viceroy,

whom they had appointed Pasha in Egypt,

and gave the title to Muhammad Ali.

The Turks were very conscious that there could be an uprising in Egypt

if they didn't do what the Egyptian nobility wanted,

but they weren't happy about this.

A chronicler at the time said that these events played out one by one

by the will of God... and the calculations of Muhammad Ali.

So Muhammad Ali has now become the new Pasha of Egypt...

under Ottoman authority.

Gradually, he tightens his grip on the country

despite a certain number of local leaders

still refusing to toe the line.

As a result, Egypt remains a country riven with violence.

But the French Consul, Bernardino Drovetti,

is still keen to explore the country.

- Salaam alaikum. - Alaikum salaam.

Since his arrival, Drovetti has been buying antiquities

from local inhabitants, intending to resell them in Europe

To make his fortune,

Drovetti needs to collect the finest artefacts possible,

and that means travelling.

Drovetti has become Muhammad Ali's unofficial advisor,

and he needs his friend the Pasha to restore order

and bring peace to Egypt.

And that suits Muhammad Ali perfectly,

because it's exactly what he intends to do.

In...

...Muhammad Ali invites all his opponents

to a grand reconciliation banquet:

nearly 500 guests.

Muhammad Ali understood how Egypt had worked historically:

strong men would come, then another stronger person would take over.

So he did not want to be in the position to be deposed quickly.

And so at one point, he invited all the people

whom he thought could in fact be threats to him

to a banquet to celebrate his son's birthday.

And after they had been fed and watered,

they were basically put in a room, and he then had them all killed.

In one dinner party, Muhammad Ali got rid of all of his opponents...

...about 500 people or so.

He was both clever and ruthless,

so no-one was going to try and oppose him,

because they saw what could happen to them.

Bernardino Drovetti now has free rein

to begin his expeditions in a terrified but peaceful Egypt.

Alongside his official duties as French Consul,

he hopes to make his personal fortune from Egyptian antiquities.

The French were very clever to choose Drovetti as their consul,

because he was someone who had been

close to Muhammad Ali from the start,

before he established himself as the ruler of Egypt.

So in 1811, when the country became more settled,

and Drovetti was able to travel again,

he was able to cultivate his good relations with Muhammad Ali

to get the necessary permit, called a firman, to go and start digging.

The Egyptians watch Drovetti's excavations

with complete indifference.

To them, these ancient stones no longer mean anything.

For the Egyptians themselves, the time of the pharaohs

was the Waqt al-Jahiliyyah, the time of ignorance,

so they could use these stones, they could make houses out of them.

They could burn them for lime, because it was just lying there.

Very quickly, Drovetti realised that there was a considerable amount

beneath the surface, just a shovel's length away.

And if he was gonna be able to capitalise

on all of these great riches beneath the sands,

then he was going to need some help.

And soon, he had four agents working for him.

Drovetti had had a monopoly on gathering antiquities in Egypt,

but this wasn't going to last.

The British realised this was the sort of thing

that they ought to do as well.

The British then also appoint a new consul:

an aristocrat named Henry Salt.

His mission is to secure as many antiquities as possible

for the British Museum.

Salt, too, moves swiftly to win Muhammad Ali's favour...

to the great displeasure of Bernardino Drovetti.

Drovetti's first job, then, was to go back to Muhammad Ali

and to try and persuade him to refuse.

But Muhammad Ali, very cleverly, as you might expect from him,

realised that there was gonna be some advantage to him...

in awarding a concession to the British as well as to the French.

Then perhaps he was thinking

he would play them off against each other,

not worrying about what they would think, but always,

of course thinking about what was to his best advantage.

Eager to modernise his country,

the Pasha views Egypt's ancient heritage as a bargaining chip...

for industrial expertise and machinery from France and Britain.

He therefore chooses to work as much with the French...

as with the British.

Muhammad Ali...

decided that this was an excellent way of controlling the foreigners.

So he would set them against each other,

and be helpful to one, and then helpful to the other.

And so the French would try and give Muhammad Ali things he wanted.

The British would try and outdo the French.

And thus, Muhammad Ali, and Egypt,

actually gained a lot in terms of technical knowledge,

scientific knowledge, machinery, military training,

irrigation ideas and machinery as well,

by setting these two nations against one another

in the collection as well as everything else.

And Salt, following Drovetti, begins to assemble a collection,

dispatches his agents, to start doing digging

and gathering antiquities for the British Museum.

And so the competition develops, and there's a kind of arms race.

And this drives Egyptology forward enormously.

And in June 1815, a new figure enters the fray.

His name is Giovanni Battista Belzoni.

He's an Italian, aged 37,

and he arrives in Alexandria with his Irish wife, Sarah.

His imposing stature is highly unusual

for the early nineteenth century.

He is 2m tall and weighs no less than 130kg.

Belzoni is to me the most fascinating

and my favourite of these early explorers.

He had this life that was almost dictated by chance.

It's something like out of a novel.

You could not make up his entire career.

He was this kind of larger-than-life figure.

He initially started out doing many odd jobs,

and he eventually found his way...

to doing two things that don't actually go together.

One was circus.

He was a circus strongman, and was called 'the Samson of Patagonia',

and all these names that refer to him as an Italian strongman.

And his wife, Sarah, also might have been a very tall woman.

She was performing in the circus with him.

They must've made a striking couple, these two giants.

Yet at the same time, he trained,

and did some engineering, and worked in hydrology.

He was very interested in water, the movement of water,

and how to control it, so he was... a circus-strongman performer

that would carry 11 men on his shoulders

and yet also try to do hydraulic engineering.

And he heard that the new Pasha, Muhammad Ali, was looking for...

people to come to Egypt and bring engineering expertise.

In Alexandria, the Belzonis are quickly directed

towards a fellow Italian who can help them meet the Pasha,

Bernardino Drovetti,

because he's a close friend of Muhammad Ali's,

and he's also France's consul in Egypt.

And at first, everything goes well for Belzoni.

The couple are welcomed with open arms,

and are even offered a place to stay by Bernardino Drovetti himself.

So he came with his hydrology equipment,

with all of his engineering stuff in the palace for Muhammad Ali.

And everything goes terribly wrong.

His equipment doesn't work. The whole thing is gonna collapse.

Him and his wife Sarah came to Egypt with hopes of making it big.

And it wasn't gonna happen. Muhammad Ali said, 'No, thank you.

The system is not gonna work.'

He was stranded in Egypt with his wife, Sarah,

not a penny to their name,

no way of getting back to Europe, and he didn't know what to do.

So he really was at his wit's end.

He'd spent some time exploring bits and pieces of Egypt

and had become riveted by the monuments.

And it was just as well,

because he finally got his first break

when someone recommended him to Salt.

Because Salt was the British Consul but also a collector.

So then Henry Salt heard about Belzoni and said,

'Wow this guy's an engineer, and he's also really strong.

Let me give him a job.'

On his first assignment for the British,

Belzoni travels to the Luxor region.

In a temple on the west bank,

a magnificent bust lying on the ground

captivates every European visitor.

They've given it a name: the Young Memnon.

The statue was, in fact, originally huge.

It was over 7m tall.

And it was broken,

in antiquity, into two pieces.

All we have left now are part of the torso and the legs.

But the rest of the statue is in the British Museum,

where it's called the Young Memnon,

because when Belzoni came here and in fact,

in the early days of archaeology,

before anyone had translated hieroglyphs,

no-one knew what the real name of the temple or its owner was.

And so... they took something out of Greek mythology,

and this became the Temple of Memnon.

In reality, the temple was dedicated

to the cult of Ramses the Great,

and this is a statue of him.

The statue was made out of this very particular granite,

which is both black and red.

So the Egyptians would have chosen that because...

black and red are symbolic of Egypt:

the red land of the desert and the black land of the Nile River.

So you could see the unification of the two lands

being manifest in the body of the king.

One of the reasons for these great collections

we have in Paris and London...

is because this was a manifestation, again,

of colonial and imperial power.

In fact, it wasn't so much a showing dominion over Egypt:

it was a race between the French and the British,

because each one wanted to prove that they were better, more.

They had more art. They were better collectors.

They could do more things.

And that included bringing extraordinary pieces of statuary

back to their respective countries.

Now a fully-fledged treasure hunter...

...Belzoni has become a rival to Drovetti.

Drovetti is prepared to do anything

to get him to cut his ties with the British.

Drovetti is even keener to get Belzoni away from the British,

because after Napoleon's fall, he has lost his post as consul.

So from now on,

the hunt for antiquities is his only source of income.

- Arrivederci, Belzoni. - Arrivederci.

At the end of June 1816,

Giovanni Battista Belzoni and his wife, Sarah,

now dressed in local attire, set off for Luxor,

eager to see the famous statue of the Young Memnon.

Belzoni was motivated by many things:

curiosity, ego, glory and wealth.

So you can see that this was a very potent combination.

He was young, he was strong, he was adventurous.

This was a brave new land for him to conquer.

It's smiling at the idea to travel to England.

When Belzoni came here,

he really thought it would be quite simple

to get workers and to pull this head away.

But each area of Egypt had its own kashif,

the local mayors of towns.

And so unless the might of Muhammad Ali,

with soldiers, was there to enforce things,

they could often do what they wanted.

This is the harsh reality about this place

that Belzoni is about to discover for himself.

The Kashif kept making excuses, saying,

'Oh, it's Ramadan, people are tired.'

'Oh, it's hot.' 'Oh, this is not a good time of year.'

And Belzoni was at his wit's end,

because he didn't know quite what to do.

He suspected that maybe the French were paying the Kashif

to keep him away from the head.

But finally, despite all of these problems,

Belzoni managed to hire 80 men to help him move the head.

And so what he did was they built a sled, rollers really,

and then using ropes and teams of people,

which Belzoni has beautifully illustrated,

they managed to drag this huge 7-ton head

all the way from here...

about 3.5km to the Nile.

When Belzoni was taking the Young Memnon out,

the space was much more constrained than it is today.

There were some columns that were still standing, not complete.

And he had to knock them down

in order to get the statue out.

So it was rather a destructive extraction.

With the suffocating heat

and the obstructive behaviour of local officials,

it takes 15 days for the Young Memnon to reach the Nile.

Then Belzoni has to wait several more weeks

for a boat to transport the statue.

In the meantime, he goes off to explore the south of the country.

When Belzoni came back from his trip,

he came back to find that the French had been sniffing around this house

that he had built to protect his statue,

and he was very angry because they had also given orders to the Kashif,

and anyone who'd listen, that they should not help Belzoni.

They should not sell things to the English,

that they should just deal with the French, and so on and so forth.

So Belzoni was fuming.

And then the French actually wound up

having to go to Aswan so they left him here.

And the moment they left, he decided, like a naughty boy,

to go and sort of irritate them in his turn.

And so he went off to Karnak,

which was basically the French playground at the time,

for digging and exploring.

And so, he went there and started to dig

in the hopes that they would hear about it and be pissed off too.

We are here at the Temple of Mut,

which forms part of the great enclosure

of the Temple of Amun at Karnak.

Belzoni really begins his excavations here,

in the first courtyard of the Temple of Mut.

So he digs with a spade, and he discovers 18 statues.

Eighteen in total, six of them remarkably well conserved.

They are all statues of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet.

This is a spectacular discovery,

and Belzoni boasts about it.

In his writings, he claims he had a special instinct:

that he knew exactly where to dig,

almost as if guided by divine inspiration.

But this is absolutely not the case.

Belzoni has simply used the map created by Napoleon's scholars,

who had already discovered dozens upon dozens

of statues of Sekhmet here.

Belzoni then proposes a deal to the French.

He knows their Sekhmet statues have been seized by the British.

So playing the great gentleman,

he is prepared to give them two...

but obviously for a price.

The French are outraged.

But Belzoni refuses to listen, and Count de Forbin,

Vivant Denon's successor at the Louvre, is forced to buy them.

But to make sure the statues cannot be taken away from him later,

he decides to have his name engraved on the back of them

to make it clear that they belong to France.

With Belzoni in the game,

things started to escalate with the French.

There was so much rivalry going on...

now between the French and the British,

and it really became a huge race all throughout Egypt

as to who would get what treasure first.

Belzoni finally heads back to Cairo

with his newly acquired statues:

most importantly, the gigantic Young Memnon.

This initial success inspires him so much

that he now longs for just one thing:

to pull off another big achievement.

And the perfect opportunity...

is an untouched temple in the south of Egypt,

which is waiting specially for him...

Abu Simbel.

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