Original subtitles

In one of Egypt's most sacred burial grounds...

Oy-oy.

Archeologists discover

a doorway to a tomb buried beneath the sand.

They are hunting for evidence

of Egypt's last queen, Cleopatra.

In Ancient Egypt,

one name has passed into legend,

immortalized in plays, books, and Hollywood film:

Cleopatra.

But the real Cleopatra is an enigma.

And even during her own lifetime,

she was shrouded in myth.

Today, archeologists

across Egypt are searching through the rare clues

left behind in temples and tombs,

to discover the reach of Cleopatra's power.

And reveal how much of her legend was propaganda,

created by her political rivals,

in a quest to uncover the real queen behind the myth.

In the Saqqara Necropolis,

Japanese archaeologist Nozomu Kawai

is investigating a mysterious tomb

that dates to the time of Cleopatra.

In 2019, he made an intriguing discovery:

the entrance

to a many-chambered underground tomb or catacomb.

One brave team member crawled into the narrow space

and glimpsed mummies and a statue of a goddess.

But the dangerous cracks in the walls of the tomb

forced Nozomu to abandon his excavation.

Four years later, Nozomu is back to finish the job.

And he's hoping to find evidence

of Cleopatra's mythology within her own lifetime,

at this ancient and sacred burial site.

But getting inside the tomb won't be easy.

On the eastern edge of the necropolis,

a vaulted mud brick corridor with stairs

leads down into the rock itself.

Inside, a tunnel plunges into the cliff,

the front half filled with wind-blow sand.

Further back, at least three burial chambers branch off it.

Nozomu hopes they contain clues to who was buried here.

But after 2,000 years, the rock is dangerously weakened.

The slightest disturbance could bring the roof crashing down,

trapping its secrets inside forever.

Nozomu has enlisted the help

of Spanish architect Ignacio Forcadell

to strengthen the tomb

without damaging the delicate remains inside.

Ignacio constructs

a multilayered web of metal beams in sections.

This should hold the fragile ceiling up,

but they need to be careful where they place the supports.

The team carefully welds the sections together.

At the back of the tomb,

there have been some serious rockfalls.

It's not for the faint-hearted.

Finally, they install adjustable legs that can extend

and move as the team clear the sand from inside.

It has taken two long months,

but finally the tomb is safe.

At the very back of the chamber,

Cleopatra's subjects lie undisturbed

since Nozomu's discovery in 2019.

He calls in mummy expert Salima Ikram

to make sense of the jumble of remains.

Hmm. This is amazing!

At the Dendera Temple Complex,

Egyptologist Meredith Brand

is in search of the beginning of the Cleopatra legend.

She's looking for one of the only images

of the famous queen from before she came to power.

She starts at the imposing Temple of Hathor.

It's absolutely stunning. I think

this is the most beautiful temple in all of Egypt.

It's, it's just remarkable.

It was built by Cleopatra's father,

Ptolemy Auletes.

This temple represents the moment in time

power passes to Cleopatra.

This is where her legend begins.

Unlike many pharaohs,

there are very few surviving images

from Cleopatra's lifetime.

But Meredith is looking for one,

hidden in a concealed chamber in the heart of the temple.

There's this secret chamber and no one has access to this.

It's so rare to get inside. I've never been in.

Oh wow!

Every inch of the narrow secret chamber

is covered in hieroglyphs and pictures.

I bet people haven't been in here for years.

And it smells, it smells like, like bats,

like, like bat droppings. It's quite pungent.

And what's this here, okay.

This is the figure of a woman

and above that are hieroglyphs that say the ruler of two lands.

The image bears no name,

but there's good reason to think this might be Cleopatra.

We know that Cleopatra's father built this temple,

and he built it in around 54 BC.

And at that time there were only two royal women alive.

So this could very well be an image of Cleopatra

from the time of her father Ptolemy Auletes.

This is Cleopatra yet to be Cleopatra.

This is her beginnings.

Cleopatra VII became Queen of Egypt at the age of 18

and ruled alongside her 10-year-old brother.

After a brief reign,

Cleopatra was ousted and forced to flee to Syria.

But she formed an alliance

with the Roman General Julius Caesar.

And together, they crushed her brother's army.

Reinstated on the throne,

Cleopatra ruled over Egypt for another 17 years

and became the legendary queen we know today.

This image was probably commissioned

by Cleopatra's father when she was young.

Temple imagery was an important way for pharaohs

and their families to project their power

and connect with the gods.

If this is Cleopatra, she already has an affinity,

a connection to the Goddess Isis.

There's the crown of Isis.

The religious symbolism

associated with the teenage Cleopatra

would continue to be an important part

of her identity in later life.

So much has been written about Cleopatra

covering her legendary beauty,

her ruthless politics, and even her drinking habits.

I wanna find out if any of these are true.

I wanna find out the woman behind the myth.

In Aswan,

at the Nobles Necropolis of Aga Kahn,

Abdelmonem Said is hunting for undiscovered tombs

from the time of Cleopatra.

Abdelmonem started his career here 30 years ago,

but his love of Egyptology is as strong as ever.

He's found a promising new tomb

that he hopes can date to Cleopatra's reign.

Aswan is 500 miles

from Cleopatra's capital in Alexandria.

So if the tomb does date from her era,

Abdelmonem hopes it can provide clues

as to how Cleopatra kept control of her vast lands.

The first clue to the tomb's date

is that is hewn out of the rock with no built features.

This was common for Cleopatra's era here in Aswan,

when space was at a premium after a population boom.

Abdelmonem and his team

have to clear the entrance of sand and debris

before they can enter the tomb.

In the 100-degree heat, it's punishing work.

Finally, he can get a good look inside.

In the temple complex at Dendera,

Meredith Brand is investigating

one of the most persistent legends

about Cleopatra, her striking appearance.

One of the mysteries of Cleopatra is her beauty.

Certainly to Hollywood she was a gorgeous woman,

one of the most exquisite that ever lived.

But what did Cleopatra really look like?

Her body has never been found.

There are detailed descriptions of her,

but they come from Egypt's biggest political rival, Rome.

One Roman historian described her on the day

she first met Julius Caesar.

I have an account from the Roman poet Lucan

and he describes her beauty in a very specific way.

"And in her baleful beauty, Cleopatra was lavishly painted."

Lucan describes Cleopatra as excessively made up,

completely painted.

For the Romans,

wearing this much makeup was deeply uncivilized.

Women were supposed to be demure and restrained.

They had a message they wanted to say about Cleopatra

and they wanted to let everybody know

that the way she presented herself,

the way she conducted business, the way she conducted politics,

was unacceptable for a woman.

In Ancient Rome,

women were banned from holding political office.

They wanted to discredit the very idea

of a female ruler,

and justify why they had to conquer Egypt for themselves.

But was there a kernel of truth

in the Roman propaganda of Cleopatra

as a dangerous painted beauty?

A nearby inscription holds an important clue.

Ah, this is a great scene.

It shows a bunch of offering bearers in a line

carrying offerings to the gods.

And this one here, he's carrying these little balls in a bowl

and above it is the hieroglyphy indicating

that this is eye paint.

It was so important that the Ancient Egyptians

inscribed eye paint offerings

on the walls of the temple, it was this vital.

In Egypt, eye makeup

was a symbol that connected its people

directly to a founding myth of their religion,

the legend of the Eye of Horus.

In an epic battle for the fate of Egypt,

Seth, God of Chaos,

ripped out the eye of Horus, God of the Sky.

But the divine mediator, Thoth,

stepped in and magically restored Horus's damaged eye.

The Eye of Horus

was one of the most important symbols in Egyptian culture.

Wearing it was believed to offer protection and healing.

Cleopatra's dark, painted eyes

symbolized the Eye of Horus,

bestowing the god's protection

and connecting her to their power.

So this Eye of Horus, something Cleopatra would have looked at

and would have understood, that eye makeup

was the way that you make yourself like Horus,

it's the way you make yourself divine.

This was the standard for Ancient Egyptian beauty,

for the humans, and for the gods.

Cleopatra, like many pharaohs before her,

presented as heavily made-up to her Egyptian subjects.

But in Cleopatra's case,

the propaganda served a second purpose,

because she wasn't actually Egyptian.

She came from a long line of Greek Macedonian rulers.

Greek and Roman women did not dress

like Ancient Egyptian women.

They didn't wear the complete full face of makeup.

So to Romans, to see Cleopatra, a Greek Macedonian woman

dressed in full Ancient Egyptian style

with the eye paint

would have been quite shocking.

Cleopatra's physical appearance

was central to her queenly power of Egypt.

She wore makeup to reinforce her position

as an Egyptian pharaoh,

even as she faced Roman disproval.

We look at Cleopatra and we ask the question, was she beautiful?

Instead the question should be,

how did she use all of the gifts she had

to rule Egypt as best she could?

In Saqqara,

mummy expert Salima is trying to make sense

of the dozens of coffins and skeletons in the catacomb.

This catacomb is fabulous.

She starts at the rear,

an area that the sand drifts from outside haven't reached.

She wants to understand more about the people

this tomb was originally built for.

You've got this Greek façade.

And you've got the name of the deceased over here.

And there's some Greek text up above

which is very, very eroded.

In the time of Cleopatra, you get this cocktail

of Ancient Egyptian and Greek traditions.

Each original burial in this catacomb

was sealed into a side chamber,

and then marked with the name of the deceased in Greek.

Cleopatra installed elite nobles

in positions of power across Egypt.

This could be one of their tombs.

But it's not just the original family

that were laid to rest here.

There's a nice quite big chamber

which has got a large coffin in it.

What's interesting is they shoved in the coffin,

the deceased is in there.

And then later on, after it had been sealed up,

they opened it and they put in another body.

You've got the really super important person below,

and someone who is of lesser importance

is on top of this lovely coffin.

Is there someone under you?

There are two mummies.

There's one mummy like this with the head here,

and the other one with the head here.

So it was quite a crowded coffin.

This catacomb was crammed full of bodies.

By the time of Cleopatra's reign,

Egypt's most prestigious

burial plots were regularly re-used.

And the fact that this tomb was so popular

indicates the people who built it

have some influence or power.

If you think that the person who's buried is important

and powerful

then maybe their magic,

their protection both in this world

and the next, would be something that could be extended

to both you and your family.

While Salima is looking at the mummies,

Nozomu starts an investigation into an anomaly

by the tomb's entrance.

He hopes the layer of plaster

is covering an entrance to an undisturbed burial chamber.

In Aswan, Abdulmonem is inspecting a tomb

that he hopes dates to the time of Cleopatra.

He decides it's safe for the team

to start work inside.

The pottery sherd

bears a typically Greek design.

Because Cleopatra came from a long line of Greek pharaohs,

it's compelling evidence that the tomb dates to her dynasty.

But the team needs more evidence

to connect the tomb to Cleopatra.

Ancient Egyptian tomb builders

used plaster as a base for inscriptions.

There are no inscriptions on the plaster,

a sign the tomb owner died

before the structure was finished.

It's a setback for the team.

They continue digging hoping for more clues.

In Saqqara, Archaeologist Nozomu Kawai

is working on the sealed entrance

inside a catacomb dating from the time of Cleopatra.

He's hoping the entrance leads

to an undisturbed part of the catacomb,

but there's a problem.

If Nozomu breaks the seal,

he could collapse an entire section

of the crumbling catacomb.

It's a setback,

but then he spots a small hole in the plaster.

He decides to feed an endoscope camera into the void behind.

They've found an undisturbed burial.

For now, Nozomu can go no further.

But he wants to find out if this family,

buried in one of the most sacred sites in Egypt,

embraced the ideas and mythology of Cleopatra.

So he brings in the rest of the team to excavate the debris

that has built up in the catacomb's central tunnel.

They check every inch of the sand

they remove for precious artifacts.

In Aswan, Abdelmonem Said

is looking for definitive proof

that the tomb he has discovered dates to the time of Cleopatra.

He inspects a promising find

from beneath the sands of the tomb floor.

A distinct decorative pattern

runs across the sandstone.

The Temple of Kom Ombo

lies only 30 miles north of Aswan.

It was built during the Ptolemaic era,

including in the reign of Cleopatra VII.

Finding the same style of column

in the tomb here

could mean it dates to the same time.

With Abdelmonem more sure of the tomb's date,

now he's on the hunt for clues to how much influence

Cleopatra had here in the south.

The team has shifted hundreds of buckets of sand.

They are nearing the level of the tomb's original floor.

Abdelmonem carries on digging

to see if there's any more beneath the sand.

Wow!

It's a second piece of offering table.

Offering tables were very common

in Ancient Egyptian funerary culture.

Families used them to leave gifts of food

and drink for the dead.

But the table in this tomb

is different to the typically Egyptian ones.

Cleopatra excelled at promoting

a hybrid Greek-Egyptian culture.

Abdelmonem's finds suggest that her subjects

even embraced these hybrid ideas here at Aswan,

500 miles from her capital.

And her influence stretched from Alexandria in the north

to the southern reaches of Ancient Egypt.

In Saqqara, Nozomu and his team

have continued to excavate

the sand from the tomb's entrance,

and they've made some astonishing discoveries.

They are analyzing the artifacts

in their pop-up conservation tent.

The star find is a set of five small statues.

The Goddess Isis-Aphrodite

was a hybrid Greek-Egyptian deity,

promoted and embraced by Cleopatra herself.

A fusion of the Egyptian mother goddess

and the Greek goddess of beauty,

Isis-Aphrodite was the deity

of love, fertility, and rebirth.

Cleopatra would dress like her at public events,

to elevate herself from queen to immortal goddess.

During Cleopatra's reign,

temples to Isis sprang up across Egypt,

cementing her importance,

and by association Cleopatra's own power.

Isis had such a profound influence on Cleopatra

that some say she took her own life

in a temple dedicated to the goddess.

Egyptian sculpture is usually very stylized,

but the statues from Nozomu's tomb are different.

The statues suggest

that Cleopatra's subjects buried at Saqqara

embraced this melting pot of cultures,

and aligned themselves with the legend she promoted.

Following the success

of the excavation inside the catacomb,

Nozomu begins a new investigation,

just outside the entrance, looking for more clues.

In Luxor, Meredith is exploring

the mega temple complex at Karnak.

She is here to investigate

one of the most disparaging Roman myths

attached to Cleopatra,

that she led an extravagant party lifestyle.

Horus writes that Cleopatra's mind is crazed

with Meriotic wine.

And another writes that her tongue

is submerged by incessant wine.

This emphasis on Cleopatra and her drinking habits

would have hit hard for a Roman audience,

because to Romans, women weren't supposed to drink

and certainly they weren't supposed to be drunk in public.

To find out more about the role

of alcohol in Ancient Egypt,

Meredith investigates a lesser-known part

of the Karnak complex,

the Temple of Mut.

On the shores of a sacred crescent-shaped lake in Karnak,

the precinct of Mut covered an area the size

of over 15 football fields.

Pillared porches around 65 feet long

led to the towering pylon entrances.

Within, was an enclosed inner sanctum

and two wide-open courtyards,

lined with hundreds of dark granite statues

of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet.

This temple was a major ritual center

for over a thousand years

but it was once the focus for a religious celebration

that seemed far from holy.

It says here that this is from the porch,

the, Wa Inta, the Porch of Drunkenness.

This column would have been placed

in an area of the Mut Temple

for the celebration of the Festival of Drunkenness.

The Festival of Drunkenness

celebrated a famous Egyptian myth

about the near-destruction of mankind.

The myth tells of Sekhmet,

Goddess of Chaos and War, who went on a killing spree

after mankind conspired against her father, the Sun God Ra.

Ra took pity on man

and flooded the land with beer, dyed red to look like blood.

Sekhmet drank it all and passed out.

So Ancient Egyptians celebrated

their triumph over death at Sekhmet's temple at Karnak,

recreating her stupor in a Festival of Drunkenness.

At the temple's Porch of Drunkenness,

revelers drank until they were sick or passed out,

only to be woken by sacred drums

to complete the ritual experience.

This festival would have been lively,

there would have been musicians, dancers, singers,

people chanting the sacred songs of the goddess.

They wanted to get so drunk that they would see the goddess,

and that takes quite a lot of alcohol.

The Porch of Drunkenness

at this temple is ancient,

pre-dating Cleopatra's reign by over a thousand years.

But she may have continued

the tradition of sacred drinking.

And associating herself with a powerful goddess

of war and healing had obvious appeal.

Cleopatra knew that part of being a king

meant to be the intermediary between the gods and the people,

so it's really likely that Cleopatra would have been part

of a Festival of Drunkenness at a temple in Egypt.

Although the Romans viewed Cleopatra's drinking

as excessive and vulgar,

maintaining a lively religious tradition

would have boosted her popularity in Egypt,

and promoted her reign

as a time of pleasure and prosperity.

This would have been so exciting to be a part of,

not only could you completely party

but you could also form

an important spiritual connection,

and that would have been probably very appealing

for a lot of people.

In Saqqara,

Nozomu's team inspects a mysterious discovery

right next to the entrance of the catacomb.

The wall could be part

of a previously undiscovered structure.

Ah!

Ah-ha.

If this structure is another tomb,

it would be a major discovery.

Yeah.

The team makes quick work

of the loose rubble and sand.

Nozomu uses his endoscope to get a better look.

Yeah.

It's a small rock-cut tomb

with at least one complete burial.

The race is now on to recover any precious artifacts inside.

At the Dendera Temple Complex,

Meredith is investigating one of the most malicious stories

ever told about Cleopatra,

that she was a master manipulator.

Meredith wants to find out more

about where this idea came from.

One of the few images of Cleopatra

from the height of her reign

is carved into the wall of the temple.

Cleopatra was smart in how she depicted herself.

So here in Dendera,

she's showing herself as an Egyptian goddess,

as an Egyptian queen, as an Egyptian ruler,

but that's not the only way she showed herself.

A coin minted during her reign

shows a very different side to Cleopatra.

Here she's shown completely Greco-Roman.

She has a melon hairstyle with a diadem,

she has a very Roman nose,

and she's almost seen as a bit masculine.

There's a good reason why Cleopatra

manipulated her image like this.

She didn't just need to persuade

her own Egyptian subjects

that she was their true queen.

She also needed to face down the threat of invasion

from the ancient world's biggest super power, Rome.

These coins would have been distributed around Egypt.

They would have shown Cleopatra's other side,

her ability to speak Greek, her ability to speak Latin,

her ability to connect with the Greco-Roman world.

At first, Cleopatra kept Rome close,

by forming an alliance with Julius Caesar.

But when Caesar was assassinated in 44 BCE,

Cleopatra needed another way to protect her homeland.

Three men now ruled the Roman Empire,

one of whom was General Mark Antony.

When Caesar died, everything changed.

Cleopatra needed to impress a new Roman ruler,

General Mark Antony.

There are lots of stories

about how Cleopatra seduced Mark Antony

but one is particularly revealing.

Mark Antony had a reputation for throwing lavish banquets.

Cleopatra wagered that she could outdo him.

For her first course, she served a large

but everyday meal.

Mark Antony scoffed at its cheapness.

He was certain he had won the bet.

But then Cleopatra set down a goblet of vinegar

and dropped her enormous pearl earring into it,

worth many millions of dollars in today's money.

The pearl dissolved in the vinegar,

making it the most expensive cocktail in the world.

With it, Cleopatra won

and sent the General an important message.

She's showing Mark Antony that all of this grandeur

is something that she has and she controls.

If he wants political power, he needs Cleopatra,

not the other way around.

Cleopatra formed a lasting alliance

with Mark Antony that kept Rome at bay.

And while some legends say she manipulated him

into a dangerous love affair,

it's more likely she was a shrewd political operator

who offered him a mutually beneficial union.

Cleopatra was a master of politics.

She was a master of culture and image.

She could do something that no other ruler could,

she could pull on different cultures, different costumes,

to say so many things and express ideas.

And she did that really effectively.

In Saqqara,

Nozomu is carefully inspecting the newly discovered

rock-cut tomb with Salima.

I'm looking forward to seeing inside.

They are looking for clues to date the burial.

Oh, Nozomu, you didn't say that it had grave goods!

Yeah!

That's so amazing, and so the termites

have eaten away the entire coffin.

So, yeah.

The outline of the termite nest

suggests that the coffin was small and square,

with the occupant crouched inside.

This crouched burial is a far older funerary ritual

than those of the nearby catacomb.

But they need more evidence to date the tomb for sure.

Yeah, so, no it's definitely a stone vessel.

But it looks like there's beautiful limestone platters.

The platter is alabaster

and dates the burial

to the very beginning of the age of the pharaohs,

3,000 years before Cleopatra.

It's one of the oldest

surviving tombs ever discovered in Saqqara

and it could shed light on why the catacomb is next door.

Cleopatra disguised her Greek origins

behind a very Egyptian mask.

And the wealthy occupants of this large catacomb

could have been following her lead,

by building their final resting place

beside their most Ancient Egyptian ancestors.

Today, archeologists across Egypt

are uncovering new revelations about its last enigmatic queen,

Cleopatra.

They are revealing that her power

stretched to the farthest reaches of her kingdom,

and that her subjects embraced the mythology she created.

In return she used her wealth, power,

and keen political mind to protect her people,

leaving behind a legend

that has endured for over 2,000 years.