Original subtitles

Ancient Egypt.

One of the most fascinating civilisations on earth.

But what was it like to be an Ancient Egyptian,

living in this incredible place?

It's OK trying to understand Ancient Egypt on a visual level,

pyramids, King Tut, mummies.

But to really get into the head of the Ancient Egyptians,

you've got to walk in their footsteps.

I'm Egyptologist, Dr Joann Fletcher,

and I've spent over 40 years obsessed with this lost world.

'While the magnificent temples and tombs of the Pharaohs can

'tell us one story, I'm interested in another.

'The story of ordinary people, the real Egyptians.'

It's such a privilege, we are amongst their family here.

This feeling of closeness, of warmth, of love.

'I'm going to uncover evidence about how they lived their lives...'

Oh, wow!

It's a glimpse into the sort of world of Ancient Egyptian

interior design.

'..and reveal what they hope for in death.'

There was no Grim Reaper,

just this beautiful goddess wanting to embrace them in her warm arms.

'There is one very special couple I want to get to know

'as I journey to their desert village home

'and examine the treasures from their tomb...'

You can only imagine his pride and joy at receiving

such a mark of royal favour.

'..as we discover what life was really like in Ancient Egypt.'

Welcome to Deir el-Medina.

Or, as the people who used to live here 3,500 years ago

used to call it, Pa-demi, which simply means, "the village."

Today, this village feels remote and inhospitable.

But 3,500 years ago,

this community lay at the heart of Ancient Egypt.

Situated on Luxor's West Bank,

it was a suburb of Egypt's great city, Thebes.

Now, this is the landscape of kings and gods, Pharaohs, and yet

these are the homes of ordinary people leading ordinary lives.

Men and women, aunts and uncles, grandparents and kids,

they all lived here in this tightly-packed community.

And by re-imagining how people lived, in the colours, the sounds

and smells we have an instant gateway,

right back 3,500 years to these ancient people who

lived here in this remote little village in the desert.

Now, in order to piece together the lives of such people

I have got an amazing set of clues.

The earthly remains of a husband and wife who once

lived in the village...

but now reside nearly 2,000 miles away,

here at the Egyptian Museum in Turin.

Meet Kha and Merit, Kha the architect, Merit his wife.

Now Kha and Merit were two of the leading lights of the village.

Kha's actual title, was the Chief of Foreman,

so he was in charge of the workforce.

Merit, her official title was Lady of the House,

which is ancient Egyptian for "housewife."

This is the only known statue of Kha,

almost certainly an idealised image

- it nonetheless suggests a proud and rather handsome man.

This death mask is one of the few representations we have of Merit,

which reveals a soft and beautiful face.

Although these mummies have never been unwrapped,

what lies beneath has been revealed by x-rays and CT scans.

We know that Kha, who stood about five foot six,

was a very striking

looking individual, with a rather prominent nose

and a great fondness for lots of black eyeliner.

But, then when we turn to his diminutive wife, Merit,

a very dainty little lady, standing about five foot two.

She also had a long, crimped wig of dark brown,

wavy hair which would have made her look really, really beautiful.

But what really brings Kha and Merit back to life is this.

The collection of objects discovered in their intact

tomb in 1906,

where they had lain undisturbed for over 3,000 years.

A leading Egyptologist from the time wrote -

This is really a unique find because of its intactness, but also

because of the wealth of material that was in the tomb.

Tables and chairs and stools and more chairs and coffers,

and coffers packed with linen

and the coffers packed with cosmetic vessels.

Shaving equipment packed into a little leather pouch

and his hip flask - everything is there.

Even the shaped breads wrapped with palm fronds to keep them fresh.

It is really incredible,

there is material there for research for another few generations.

The collection not only gives us a fascinating

insight into the burial, but also the lives Kha and Merit lived.

The finds, ranging from death masks

and coffins, to their most intimate belongings used in life.

Like this, Merit's beauty box.

This is basically the contents of Merit's dressing table,

the perfume, cosmetics, moisturisers

and all the things that the ancient Egyptians regarded as so essential.

Well used and well loved, this stunning cosmetic chest tells us

Merit was a well-to-do woman, who cared about her appearance.

This is Merit's glass, black coal eyeliner,

glass was very rare at this time,

and it's in the classic Egyptian colour combination of blue and gold.

The black eye paint that Merit herself applied everyday to

her own eyes is still inside this vessel.

It's got its wooden applicator stick in the top,

and Egyptian ladies today still use this in exactly the same way.

This stone alabaster perfume vessel has still got the original

contents running down the outside

and it's extraordinary to think that, in some cases, with the

Ancient Egyptians, it's not just a question of the visuals,

it's how to reach back in time into their world through other senses,

the sense of smell, for instance, and to be able to smell

the things that they smelt, the cinnamon, the lotus, the cedar.

Clearly, this is an expensive item, so how would a fairly

ordinary Egyptian like Merit afford such luxuries?

The answer lies in the village, and the very special

occupation of its inhabitants.

These were Egypt's tomb and temple builders.

From the foreman to the stonemason, from the draughtsman

to the carpenter, they all lived here with their wives and children.

About a mile to the north-west is where they worked.

The most famous cemetery on earth.

This is the great and majestic necropolis of the millions

of years of Pharaoh life, prosperity and health in the west of Thebes.

Or, as we know it today, the Valley of the Kings.

For nearly 500 years, men like Kha created

the tombs of some of Egypt's most famous Pharaohs.

Hatshepsut, Amenhotep III, and Tutankhamen were all buried here.

They were an elite, a kind of crack force of workmen

and architects, the very best of the Egyptian culture.

They were the craftsmen that implemented what Pharaoh wanted -

to sustain Pharaoh's soul for eternity.

They were almost magicians,

operating secretly within this stunning landscape.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As the life story of Kha and Merit begins back in the village.

Here I want to explore how they may have met and fallen in love.

They probably grew up in the village,

but how did a young couple like them go about courting?

To find out, I don't have to go very far.

As here, on the outskirts of the village, is the great pit.

It's a long abandoned attempt by the villagers to find

a groundwater source.

They dug down and down and eventually reached more than 50 metres.

They wanted to become self-sufficient in water,

but sadly for them, they never did.

And yet, what the pit did become was a community dump,

a mine of information.

When this pit and the surroundings were

excavated by archaeologists, they made some remarkable discoveries.

And this was what was found here, literally tens of thousands of these

pieces of pottery and stone, some with pictures,

many more with words -

giving us the real history of the village, because these

are their notes, their reminders,

their love songs, their laundry lists.

The very voices of this village.

Some of these voices tell us about falling in love.

WOMAN'S VOICE: "Your hand is in my hand. My body shakes with joy.

"My heart is so happy because we walk together.

"To hear your voice is like pomegranate wine."

This is a typical love poem, written on papyrus, as well as stone

or pottery fragments, they capture the feelings of young mothers.

They're so common,

it seems our village was a real hotbed of passion.

Every single one of the love poems from Ancient Egypt

come from this village, except one.

Some of the titles are really evocative,

there is Your Love, Down To The River, All Night And All Day,

and the rather suggestive, Shedding Clothes.

"I go down to the water to be with you,

"and come up again with a red fish looking splendid on my fingers.

"Oh, my warrior, my beloved. Come, look at me."

And it's nice to imagine that such beautiful lines of love played

a part in the courtship of Kha and Merit.

Today, we might seal the deal with a proposal,

engagement and marriage.

But some Ancient Egyptians seem to have taken a rather more

direct approach.

Kha may well have signalled his commitment to

Merit by bringing her his bundle.

To "bring the bundle" meant that you wanted to indicate your desire

to move in with the person who took your fancy.

The bundle is thought to have been a kind of dowry,

consisting of everything the man owned.

It's likely that presenting it to your intended was

one of the first steps of setting up home together.

However, this didn't always go to plan, as one villager recounts.

In a note the man left, he tells us this very sad story.

He lists all his worldly goods,

which, I must say, aren't that impressive,

and then he tells us he went to the woman's house.

But all her family simply threw him out, and as he says himself, "So I

"went again, with all my property in order to live with them -

"and see! She acted in exactly the same way and threw me out again!"

You can almost feel he is outraged because this woman has not

just turned him down, but all the things he could bring with him.

Presumably she was unimpressed by the size of his bundle.

We can assume Kha suffered no such indignity, as evidence from

the tomb suggests that he and Merit were a loving and monogamous couple.

The scenes on this beautiful box show Kha and Merit seated together,

to share the offerings which will sustain them in the afterlife.

But in life, too, we also have clues to their devotion.

Now, although the Ancient Egyptians didn't have a marriage

ceremony as we would understand, they simply moved in together,

they nevertheless would exchange love tokens,

quite often in the form of rings.

This ring was discovered underneath the death mask of Merit.

It's so precious that it is not yet on display here in Turin.

This is the ring that was found inside the mask,

almost as an afterthought, of Merit,

so, it was shoved in their just as she was being buried.

It spent all those thousands of years just tucked away,

hidden away, within Merit's own wrappings.

A very ad hoc thing, a very spontaneous gesture.

The image on it, looks like the cow of Hathor.

That's exactly what it is.

The Goddess Hathor is often depicted as a cow.

She was seen as the eternal mother figure, to both the living

and the dead.

In life, she aided fertility and provided protection in childbirth.

While in death she ensured safe passage into the afterlife.

This represents the love between Kha and Merit,

and in this tiny little object, it is perhaps the most important

thing from the entire tomb for me, personally.

It's wonderful.

Kha and Merit lived in a glittering age in Egyptian history.

Sustained by the annual floods of the River Nile,

the Egyptian state had existed for almost 2,000 years.

By 1400 BC, it was at the height of its power

and now ruled by the 18th royal dynasty.

Its kings are among the greatest names of Ancient Egypt.

We have a so-called boy king, Tutankhamen, the great female

Pharaoh, Hatshepsut, and the so-called bad boy, the heretic,

Akhenaten.

But, really, at the very heart of all this is Akhenaten's father,

this man, Amenhotep III.

The dazzling sun god himself, and the very personification,

at least, he thought, of ancient Egypt's greatest deity, the sun.

He's my favourite Pharaoh, because he presided over a golden age,

when Ancient Egypt really did rule the ancient world,

and this is the very Pharaoh who was Kha's boss.

Kha worked for him.

Kha's job was to ensure the Pharaoh's immortality.

He did this by helping design and build some of Egypt's most

extraordinary monuments, both tombs and temples.

This is one such project from the reign of Amhenhotep III.

The solar court in Luxor Temple.

It's a revolutionary design, as it moved away from the dark

and cloistered shrine to an open celebration of the sun.

In return, like all state employees,

Kha and Merit were given the things they needed in the village.

A home, a tomb, food, water, even servants.

This was the highly organised world of the middle classes,

women had rights, many kids an education,

and literacy was far higher in the village than elsewhere in Egypt.

In Kha and Merit's time, the village consisted of about 20 houses,

and while we do not exactly which one was their house, it was almost

certainly one of the larger ones, here at the northern end.

Perhaps even this one.

So, we go into the front room here, and this would be an area, really,

where the woman of the house hung out,

chatted, gossiped and so forth.

Kids running in and out. Up the stairs.

Around the corner into perhaps the most important room in the house.

And here, I absolutely love this.

This is built-in furniture.

It's kind of like a divan, a chaise longue if you like.

And this is where the gentlemen of the house would sit of an evening

drinking beer, having a chat.

Then back up this little step and then into this area,

which is quite a considerable size for a room like this.

Probably storage but also a bedroom

where the beds or the sleeping mats would have been placed.

So as we progress a little further into the highest part of the house,

we come into a storage area,

maybe for clothes but almost certainly for food and drink also,

because this area directly adjoins this wonderful fitted kitchen.

This is extraordinary, because we've actually got the built-in oven

at the back of the house.

We even see these when they're doing little sketches of ladies blowing into the oven

to keep the fire hot and then they can cook the bread and so forth.

And then here an Ancient Egyptian refrigerator

where you'd place pottery vessels with drink in.

You'd want a cool drink on a day like this, you can understand why.

And the only way to do this was to sink the vessels

into a pit deep in the ground.

A little temporary roof over it to keep it as chilled as possible.

So fridge, oven. They've got everything they needed.

And, of course, at either side aren't rooms of this house,

but these are the neighbours houses.

These are a terraced street, if you like,

of back-to-back houses of the sort Britain had in the Industrial Revolution.

So the neighbours were never very far away

and the concept of privacy certainly in this little corner

of Ancient Egypt was a completely unknown thing.

Life in the village was almost entirely supported by the state.

A daily procession of donkeys would carry water up from the Nile Valley

to be decanted into a central cistern.

Each household was entitled to an average of 100 litres per day

for drinking, cooking and bathing.

Les than half a mile from the village

lies another crucial remnant of this highly organised infrastructure.

Although built a little after Kha's time,

grain stores like these acted as a kind of bank.

Money didn't exist in Egypt at this time so at the end of each month,

Kha would have received his salary as a ration of wheat and barley.

Granaries like this would have held an immense amount of food.

These granaries alone would have held over 40,000 individual sacks of grain.

Chief workmen like Kha were entitled to seven and a half sacks of grain a month,

five and a half of wheat, and two of barley.

Plenty for Merit and their servants to produce the staples of Egyptian life, bread and beer.

The villagers also received fish and vegetables

and could trade their excess grain for luxuries like meat and wine.

These places would have been full of life.

People bustling here and there, scribes taking record,

making an account of all the stuff being delivered.

A constant stream of men carrying sacks, depositing them here,

people coming to collect their rations.

It's a simple system but one that endured,

fuelling Egypt's success and political stability for thousands of years.

Indeed, it was a system so important

it was represented on numerous tomb walls.

These scenes are from the tomb of the scribe Menna

contemporary with Kha himself.

Here we can see the whole process of the wheat and barley being harvested and distributed.

And here the principle food it produced, bread.

Kha and Merit had no less than 50 loaves of bread in their tomb.

Now, bread was the key ingredient in the Ancient Egyptian diet.

The Ancient Egyptians added many different things to it.

You could add dates or honey to make it sweet,

or savoury things, cumin seeds, coriander seeds,

all manner of ingredients to really vary it.

And in the tomb there's a whole range of different sizes and shapes,

including what appear to be gingerbread men,

little shapes of fruit, flowers and animals.

Although they didn't have yeast as such, the technique

of combining flour, water and salt to make bread

is virtually unchanged in 3,500 years.

I mean, this is a completely timeless scene,

this fabulous mud brick oven is typical of the ovens

we find in Ancient Egyptian settlements.

It's totally believable to imagine Merit baking bread to feed her family.

It's a completely timeless scene.

SHE SIGHS AND SPEAKS ARABIC

It's a real direct link back into their world.

The smell of this wonderful stuff, the feel of it, the way it was made.

All Egyptians would have eaten this on a daily basis.

It was the sort for stuff that you offered to the gods.

And even when the bread had gone mouldy

the Egyptians used it as a form of medicine,

which wouldn't be fully understood for thousands of years.

The medical texts actually advocate take bread in mouldy condition

and apply to the wound in question.

And although they didn't know why it worked it did work,

because mouldy bread contains,

of course, penicillin, which we in the West think we discovered.

And yet the Ancient Egyptians fully appreciated its benefits 5,000 years ago.

It's very good stuff.

While Merit's responsibilities were largely focused on life at home,

Kha's duties were dominated by working for the pharaoh.

He and his fellow tomb builders took this path from the village to their workplace,

the Valley of the Kings.

It starts here at the southern end of the village

and follows that path there. See right up over that coll?

And then we go straight up and over the top of the mountain.

Kha and his workforce would have regularly made this journey,

sometimes camping out during the working week

in small huts in the Valley.

In Kha's day there were probably about 40-60 men making this journey,

probably singing, probably carrying water pots themselves

and the day's rations maybe.

Kha must have walked this path hundreds of times,

first perhaps as a carpenter,

but eventually as the Royal Architect and Overseer.

So if we've been walking about 45 minutes in the full sun,

and it's really, really hot,

then Kha and his men coming up this path to work,

they do the walk and then they had to do the work.

Exactly.

Their regular commute took them further west into the Land of the Dead.

In fact, from up here you can see why this place

was so carefully chosen as it mirrors the Ancient Egyptian spiritual beliefs.

If you worship the sun as a god,

then two times of the day take on special significance,

sunrise in the east and sunset in the west.

Sunrise is the birth of the god, so the east is the land of the living,

sunset is the death of the god, so the west is the land of death,

So they picked this spot to make their tombs for the dead.

This one spot... Life, death.

The Nile Valley, the Valley of the Kings.

And it is that stark, isn't it? It is.

Continuing our hike, we finally reach the western branch of the Valley of the Kings.

Where time has virtually stood still.

Remnants of the tomb builders world litter the landscape.

This is a great staircase. It's superb, isn't it?

Beautifully constructed though further up.

It's absolutely perfect.

This is it, this is the start of Kha's domain.

This is actually a guard hut and one man would be on guard in here 24 hours a day.

And you can see...

..even ancient pottery has been preserved at this site.

That's 3,500 years old.

So this piece is like one of Kha's empties, his empty beer jar. There you go.

And we know this is authentic because this part of the West Valley

was only ever used for royal tombs in Kha's day. That's right, yeah.

The guards in these huts maintained a watchful eye over everything that went on in the Valley.

What it was guarding against was obviously tomb robbery for the pre-existing tombs,

but while the new king's tomb was under construction the materials

used in the construction of a tomb were also very valuable.

Metal. Copper. The copper chisels especially.

The paints, the plaster, the oils for the lamps.

This was all very valuable material.

Although deathly silent today, 3,500 years ago these walls

would have reverberated with the sound of Kha's construction teams.

There'd be the mallets hitting the chisels in the tomb,

they're be the pounding of the people making the plaster,

the mixing bowls for the paints.

And they would be the voice of the Overseer telling people off or telling to do this or that.

Building a tomb for the king was hazardous work, although not all the dangers are immediately obvious.

Apart from the normal hazards of hitting your hand with a mallet or getting cut with a chisel,

falling off scaffolding, breaking legs, falling down the tomb.

The other risk is because this is a wadi, it's a dry riverbed,

there are flash floods now and again, and all this would come crashing down.

And they would have to run.

During his lifetime, Kha worked on three royal tombs,

initially as a craftsman.

These copper chisels found in his tomb were the tools of Kha's trade.

He then rose to become Royal Architect and Overseer responsible for the design

and construction of at least two pharaoh's tombs.

It was a task on which Egypt entirely depended

since each pharaoh must be able to reach the afterlife

to ensure both their immortality and the wellbeing of their subjects.

Build it correctly and all would be well, fail and Egypt would fail with it.

So how did Kha and his men actually undertake this most onerous of tasks?

I'll follow in your footsteps. Right.

This is tomb KV25.

Thought to have been started for Amenhotep III's son Akhnaton,

it was left unfinished when Akhnaton suddenly moved his capital away from Thebes.

It's as if the workmen only downed tools yesterday.

So you can see, Jo, the unfinished wall.

It's been chiselled smooth but it hasn't been plastered.

And you can actually see the gouge marks of the chisels where they've gouged out the material.

What a treat to be able to see this kind of working surface.

As an architect Kha meticulously planned the tomb's layout

using the Ancient Egyptian unit of measurement, the cubit.

In modern terms the cubit was roughly 52.5 centimetres long.

And it is subdivided into what was called seven palms.

The palm of your hand. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

And on the end we have four fingers there.

Perfect. Perfect.

And the way this would have been used was for marking out

and measuring your way down the tomb.

In fact, you can see the dots there where they've been marking out. See?

As they came down...

It corresponds exactly! Indeed.

And it's so usable. So simple.

Very elegant. It is elegant, isn't it?

And at the end of the day's work, Kha could fold it up,

pop it back in its leather carrying case and take it home.

Just imagine Kha and his team of 30 or 40 men

toiling in this extreme heat and choking dust.

And to light their way all they had were these simple oil lamps.

I think being down here in the dark with a lamp like this

really increases the respect I have for Kha and his workforce,

that they were able to create such sublime monuments with such simple tools.

The evidence reveals Kha was highly respected in life.

This beautiful object is a golden royal cubit.

It was presented to Kha in recognition for his work

for the pharaoh Amenhotep II.

It can only be equated to a carriage clock or an engraved tankard

that you're given for good service.

And you can only imagine Kha's pride and joy at receiving such a mark of royal favour.

Had the Ancient Egyptians had a mantelpiece this would have been on it.

But I think the true value of this special cubit is the fact

it's been personalised to such a great degree.

And it actually sums up Kha in a single item.

It's the tools of his trade and yet it's been embellished.

The inscriptions on this are wonderful.

There's so many little details about Kha's career,

about the fact that he built a small shrine or temple,

not even in Thebes, further north at a site called Thermopolis,

so he was clearly active outside of Thebes.

It's pretty hard to describe how it feels to hold something like this

that Kha and probably Merit would have held quite a lot,

just to sort of marvel at it

and congratulate themselves on being so high up in Pharaoh's favour.

I love it. I absolutely love it.

With Kha's career on the rise, he and Merit also started a family.

Childbirth is a risky time in any woman's life

and certainly in Ancient Egypt.

Merit would have sought help from Hathor then pre-eminent goddess of motherhood.

All Ancient Egyptian women wanted to be like Hathor,

she's like a modern female celebrity that all women aspire to be.

She had it all and she was worshipped here.

This is the funnery temple of the great female pharaoh Hatshepsut, at Dier El-Bahari.

Situated just two miles from the village, it's located at the base

of the very cliffs in which Hathor herself was believed to reside.

But how might the goddess have touched Merit's life?

These columns are each one topped with the image of the goddess herself,

the face of a beautiful woman

but with cow's ears poking through the mass of hair to reflect

the goddesses cow-like, docile, sweet nature.

She's seen as an eternal mother figure

that can nurture all those around her who would then take care of your soul for eternity

and allow you to be reborn each morning with the rising sun.

Ordinary people like Merit could not enter the actual temples themselves.

These were sacred places reserved for the clergy and the pharaohs.

So Merit would have turned to a more domestic form of worship.

Now, this wonderful thing is an exact replica

of a bowl found in the village

and it shows the double heads of the Goddess Hathor.

I think they very much regarded this as a potent talisman.

Almost like an amulet that they could have about the house

to bring the beautiful face of Hathor into their daily lives.

So, whatever they put in it, be it food, beer, wine, even flowers,

the contents would be almost sprinkled

with a little bit of Hathor's magic.

Yet Hathor wasn't only the goddess of fertility and motherhood,

she was also the deity of sexual pleasure.

And the evidence suggests that enjoying sex

was as important then as it is now.

This is a replica of the section of the so-called Turin Erotic Papyrus.

What it shows are couples actively, very actively, having sex.

The men all appear quite rough and ready,

some have receding hairlines, stubble, pot bellies.

Each one has an enormous phallus.

As for the women, they are very beautiful, very agile,

each has got a very exquisite hairstyle

fronted by one of these fragrant lotus blossoms.

And so there's this desire to almost tap into the erotic.

These aren't, kind of, showing women as slabs of meat

simply there for male pleasure, not at all.

These are active women engaged in acts of pleasure, acts of love.

They are using sex as a, kind of, form of leisure,

of entertainment as well as doing it, portraying it.

And while Hathor might have offered sexual inspiration, her presence

was needed most during the dangerous time of pregnancy and childbirth.

Women, like Merit , would have looked to her for protection.

The outer precincts of the temple here at Deir el-Bahri

were a focus for such worship.

This faded scene is a rare representation of a pregnant woman.

In this case, the mother of the female pharaoh, Hatshepsut.

There she is as the unborn foetus

and you can just make out the gentle swelling of her mother's abdomen,

here, as the unborn Hatshepsut

resides within the safety of her mother's body.

When the archaeologists excavated all around here a century ago

they found such amazing things as baby clothes

that had been specially made with an image of Hathor,

almost like a Post-it Note to the goddess.

These would be left here in the hope that these women could conceive.

Merit had three children that we know of - two sons and one daughter.

Their images appear in Kha and Merit's tomb chapel

and on the painted boxes found in their tomb.

With infant mortality as high as 50%,

Merit would've needed all the help she could get

but the villagers didn't just turn to the gods.

This is the Kahun Papyrus, it details the prescriptions

and spells used to tackle illnesses suffered specifically by women.

"Examination of a women who is aching in her rear, her front

"and the calves of her thighs.

"You should say of it, it is discharges of the womb

"and you should treat it with one measure of carob fruit,

"one measure of incense pellets, one unit of cows milk.

"Boil, cool, mix together and drink on four consecutive mornings."

What they are trying to do is bring some sort of order,

some form of understanding, to a host of complex medical conditions.

And in the root cause of many of the problems

associated with woman's illnesses there is apparently a wandering womb

because the Egyptians thought that this part of the female anatomy

wasn't fixed in situ but would, kind of, wonder all over the body.

This bizarre condition had an equally bizarre cure.

The woman would, sort of, stand over burning incense

in the hope that this rising sweet smell of the fumes

would encourage this wandering womb down into its proper place.

And while today this may seem rather strange,

such a diagnosis and treatment may have had some positive effect.

Certainly, to the woman in labour,

to have a medical practitioner present, reading out these

medical prescriptions, would have had an almost placebo like affect

and I think that's the strength of documents like this.

Used in conjunction with all the amulets and all the magical spells

that could be brought to bear by the village midwife.

The recitation of text like this would have brought a further layer

of order to a very difficult and complex time in a woman's life.

Alongside raising her children,

Merit would have been responsible for her home.

She is likely to have been just as house-proud as you and me.

Yet, far from the monochrome beige we see today,

the world of ancient Egypt was a riot of colour.

The vestiges of this can still be seen - if you know where to look.

When we look up at the ceilings,

the areas which had been sheltered from direct sunlight,

the colours are absolutely superb.

The condition, the brightness, the vivacity.

They're, sort of, leaping out of the walls and ceilings,

right into our eyes.

And this temple, with its vibrant colour,

was created by the later Pharaoh Ramesses III.

The Egyptians were far from subtle in their use of paint.

Primary colours - red, green, blue - all these amazing,

vivid hues and the blues and greens are particularly bright.

This, of course, is more of a status marker for the king who commissioned

such a brilliant piece of work because blues and greens weren't

naturally occurring pigments and had to be manufactured at great cost.

And so this is a way for the monarch to say,

"Look at me, look at the wealth I possess."

The effort and expense involved in producing such synthetic colours

was way beyond the reach of most ordinary people.

Instead, it they used locally sourced materials,

ones that could, literally, be picked up from the desert floor.

This rock, in my hand, is kind of like a colour box

that brought Ancient Egypt to life

because on one side we have the red iron oxide,

on the other the yellow iron oxide.

And so, by splitting a rock like this

into the component yellows and reds,

you could crush these up, mix with water

and then apply to the design surface.

I think the best way to, sort of, try to reanimate these colours

is probably to use that old standby, a little bit of spit.

Always works! Rub the stone.

It's very, very vivid.

You can see the effect it has against white.

So, you have these two shades that, for the ancient Egyptians,

really did reflect blood, life, vivacity

and then the yellow of the golden sun.

I want to see how villagers, like Kha and Merit,

used colour to decorate their homes...

..and I'm in luck because here, at the southern end of the village,

a single precious clue remains.

Here it is!

Now, if I lift this cloth

I'm going to see something I've waited a long time to see

and it's, basically, an original wall scene

from an Ancient Egyptian house.

So, here goes.

Oh, wow!

It's a phenomenal piece. The colours are so fresh.

It's a glimpse into the, sort of, world

of Ancient Egyptian interior design.

It's the lower half of a female musician and she's playing a flute.

She's got gold bracelets, gold anklets,

but the most exciting thing are these two tattoos

of the household god Bes.

So evocative, so warm, so sumptuous in its lavish use of colour

and these fabulous, fabulous leaves.

Heart-shaped, draping down the sides to, sort of, inject some much-needed

vegetation, greenery, into this, sort of, desert environment.

It's an intriguing thought that here, in the very village where

the men who built and painted the royal tombs -

would they have been commissioned by one of the housewives here

to come and paint my house?

Or did the women paint these images for themselves?

It's something we'll never know

but I like to think that the lady of the house would have had

a direct input into the kind of scene

she wanted around her as she went about her daily chores

with the kids and her friends, and female relatives.

Such fragments from the past

allow us to get closer to the real Kha and Merit.

In the case of Merit, she seems to have been a loving wife

and hard-working mother.

A delicate and beautiful woman, the epitome of taste and style.

But, sadly, this is where Merit's story ends -

the evidence suggesting she died quite suddenly

to leave her beloved Kha as a grieving widower.

He even had to bury her in a coffin intended for him,

for not only is it far too large for Merit,

the inscriptions name only Kha.

Yet, Merit was immortalised in the tomb chapel she shared with Kha,

located just yards from their village.

And this is where Kha and their children would have come

to bring regular offerings and to pay their respects.

It's such a privileged glimpse into their everyday life.

We're amongst their family here

and that's what this whole tomb chapel chamber has all around it.

This feeling of family, of closeness, of warmth, of love.

What's interesting here is that Kha and Merit are shown several times...

..and yet the one constant child that's with them is their daughter,

Merit , named after her mother.

And this is Merit the mother, here,

and this is Merit the daughter, behind her.

On the other wall we have the daughter, Merit,

who's leaning forward, towards her father, Kha,

and she appears to be trying a necklace around his neck,

or perhaps anointing him with perfume.

I'd like to think that it was Merit, the daughter,

who cared for Kha in his old age.

But what happened to Kha, the proud and talented architect?

These elegant walking sticks may suggest he lived on into old age...

continuing to oversee the most important commission of his life.

So, I've come back to this remote part of the Valley of the Kings

to find the final resting place of Amenhotep III.

It was actually the third of the royal tombs that Kha worked on,

so it's so exciting to be going in here

and following in Kha's wonderful footsteps.

My enthusiasm is well founded because the tomb,

currently under restoration, has been closed for decades.

Hardly anyone gets to see this.

SHE SNIFFS

This isn't very professional, is it?

SHE SNIFFS

This is so beautiful. It, literally, has brought tears to my eyes.

It is so stunning. The colours are fantastic, it's exquisite.

It's Amenhotep III

being received into the care of the gods of the underworld.

And there's Anubis handing out the sign of life to Amenhotep.

You think, Kha and his men designing these images.

Just putting the King's vision into practice and just...

..literally, it's taken my breath away.

Look, the artist hasn't just come along with his blue paint

and the palette and boshed on the paint, somebody's taken the trouble

to apply individual curls of hair, here.

Can you see the texture? The curls, here?

That's textured hair.

And there, also, Amenhotep with Osiris,

green-faced God of vegetation, new life and resurrection.

And that's really what this tomb does.

It's a time machine, it's the place Amenhotep III's mummy

would have finally been laid to rest.

You can clearly see that no expense was spared and for good reason.

For this is where the Pharaoh, then revered as a god,

would dwell in the afterlife - his next seat of power.

Oh, and down we go, deeper and deeper into the underworld.

Wow, it really does evoke a sense of going down into the subterranean

underworld, into the blackness, into the darkness, into eternity.

This elaborate network of chambers and stairways

was designed to protect the Royal mummy

and all the glittering treasures which once surrounded it.

Now, look at this very clever trick of the architect, our boy Kha.

Look at this, can you see the way the images

were once all along this wall,

just the whole way around, images of the King and the gods

and, yet, originally, this would have been packed

with mud brick, probably.

Plastered over, the images drawn and painted over it,

so that any would-be tomb robbers would come down here, think,

"Oh, this is it, nothing much in here,"

and hopefully leave by the way they came in

because this is actually the next stage of the tomb.

So, it's, kind of, like a hidden portal.

This is the burial chamber, the most important part of the tomb

and there it is...

..the final resting place of one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs.

The man considered a god, both in life and in death.

How do you bury a god?

Well, obviously, surrounded, dripping in gold,

semi-precious stones and the most beautiful funerary items...

..all of which would have been choreographed,

planned by Kha and his colleagues.

Everybody wants to take care of the King.

Within the royal mummy dwelt the soul,

the immortal soul, of Egypt itself.

This cumulative build-up of every royal pharaoh who had gone before

resided within the mummy who once lay down there.

Oh, wow!

It's been 46 years waiting to see this tomb

and it's been well worth it.

Although we can now appreciate his consummate workmanship,

it seems Kha himself never saw the finished tomb,

for he died before his king.

But like his king, Kha's own body

was prepared for its eternal journey into the afterlife

before he too was buried.

Since this journey has given us a chance to get that little bit

closer to Kha and Merit, I think we could almost call them friends.

Their worries and concerns are not unlike our own -

hard work, family and, above all, love.

Yet, this is only the beginning of their story.

What comes next is a journey into a world very different from our own.

A world of ritual, of magic

and the unswerving belief that life really can go on for ever.

And here we have Kha's name, right down the middle

and to speak the name of the dead is to make them live again -

Kha and Merit.

So, join me next time

as we travel deep into the heart of the Egyptian afterlife.

It's an extraordinary journey

on which we uncover Kha and Merit's costly preparations for death.

All played out in a series of complex and elaborate rituals

as they attempt to achieve their place in eternity.

'At the dawn of the 20th century, a unique discovery was made.

'It redefined how we understand life and death in Ancient Egypt.'

How wonderful to have been in that team of archaeologists

who came down that day in February 1906...

..a procession of men eager to know what lay at the end

of this really atmospheric series of tunnels and chambers.

'What they'd found was an intact tomb,

'undisturbed for over 3,000 years.

'And inside were not the treasures of pharaohs

'but a unique window on the world of ordinary Egyptians...

'..the mummies and possessions of a working man called Kha

'and his wife Meryt.

'I'm Egyptologist Dr Joann Fletcher,

'and I'm exploring the world of Kha and Meryt...

'..to find out about their lives and their deaths.

'Last time, we looked at how they lived in their tiny desert village.

'We've seen where Kha worked...'

What a treat, to be able to see this kind of working surface.

'..what they ate...'

It's a direct link back into their world,

the smell of this wonderful stuff. the way it was made.

'..and how they relaxed.'

And this is where the gentleman of the house would sit of an evening,

drinking beer, having a chat.

'In many ways, their lives were quite similar to ours.

'But their relationship with death was completely different...

'..because to Ancient Egyptians,

'life was really just a dress rehearsal

'for the perfect afterlife that they were trying to reach.

'I want to travel back into this strange and mysterious world.'

This isn't a funerary building, this is a building to keep life going.

'To reach the afterlife,

'they spent fortunes on funerary equipment, buildings and rituals...'

Kha's Book of the Dead would have been incredibly costly.

'..and expected to face numerous trials along the way.'

This is the great devourer.

All evil souls, their hearts were fed to this creature, consumed,

and that was it, finished for ever.

'So with Kha and Meryt as our guides,

'we'll journey back into the world of death in Ancient Egypt.'

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'The Ancient Egyptians held a fundamental belief...

'..your death was in many ways the most important moment in your life.

'If you'd prepared for it, you would enter the perfect afterlife...

'..an idealised eternity based on life in Egypt.

'So for any Ancient Egyptian, be they farmer or pharaoh,

'the biggest investment they made was for death and the world beyond.

'And here in Ancient Thebes, death was the biggest business in town.'

Now, in this part of Egypt, death was THE major employer.

From the men who built

these wonderful funerary temples and the rock-cut tombs

to the people who embalmed the dead,

who provided all the funerary equipment they would need,

the little funerary figures,

the artists who composed the funerary text,

even the florists who put together

the huge bouquets of flowers offered to the dead in their tombs,

this was THE major industry.

'Our couple, Kha and Meryt, lived at the very heart of this industry,

'in the desert village now known as Deir el-Medina.

'It's close to the spectacular Valley of the Kings,

'where Kha designed and built tombs for the mighty pharaohs.

'And although he spent his working hours creating the tombs of kings,

'he spent much of his spare time preparing for his own death.

'But in order to be ready for the journey into the afterlife,

'Kha needed to plan his route carefully.

'This was where his investment started, with a guidebook.

'This scroll is known as the Book of the Dead.

'Kha's was found in his tomb, and this is a facsimile.'

The Book of the Dead is a collection

of funerary spells and texts and incantations,

a kind of road map of the afterlife,

and it was designed to allow the deceased,

with the help of these spells,

to navigate his or her way through into the next world.

'Its words seem mysterious and strange,

'but they had a definite purpose.'

If you were going to meet

some dangerous demons or monsters in the underworld,

you had to have powerful spells to counteract them,

to diffuse their magic

and to negotiate your way past them to achieve eternity.

'Most Books of the Dead were simply off-the-shelf versions,

'mass-produced by local artists.

'But Kha's copy was specially commissioned.

'It was the deluxe version,

'featuring personal references and grandiose claims.'

Words spoken by the great chief Kha:

'While plain rolls of papyrus were relatively cheap,

'at around a fifth of a worker's monthly salary,

'one inscribed with funerary texts like this

'could cost the equivalent of six months' wages at least.'

So many hours of work have gone into its almost 14 metres of texts.

The ink's had to be prepared, the colours ground up and mixed

and then applied so carefully and with such a lot of thought.

'It's rare to find a Book of the Dead so intact.

'Yet somehow, Kha and Meryt's had remained safe

'in their undiscovered tomb for over 3,000 years.

'The only evidence that they had existed at all was this.

'I've come to see the small chapel

'that Kha built on the outskirts of their village.

'And although another major expense on Kha and Meryt's death bill,

'it was the vital link between the living and the dead.'

It's like a little jewel box of colour.

You come in from the glare and heat of the desert and the cliffs

and you enter this little oasis of calm and quiet.

'The chapel is situated close to their house,

'because when these Ancient Egyptians died,

'they simply moved across the street.

'And as the living and the dead existed side by side,

'this was the place that families could pay their respects.'

And looking around, the colours used are sumptuous.

You've got the gold background,

and then, as the vaulted ceiling rises up,

the artist's done something very clever.

They've changed the palette

to these blues and greens of the Egyptian landscape.

The Nile is suggested, the sky is suggested.

Very cooling, refreshing

and a wonderful juxtaposition of the gold, the blues and the greens.

'Blues and greens were among the most costly colours to produce,

'so Kha had clearly spared no expense.

'The walls depict all the things he and Meryt loved in life

'and hoped to enjoy in the afterlife.'

It is like walking into Kha and Meryt's sitting room.

They're all here. They're all around us.

This isn't a funerary building, this is a building to keep life going,

kind of like a giant generator

with everything that life meant to Kha and Meryt

encapsulated in this tiny little room.

'This chapel was the first clue

'in a trail that would ultimately lead archaeologists

'to Kha and Meryt's tomb...

'because after three millennia, the chapel was discovered

'by an Italian diplomat, Bernardino Drovetti.

'Appointed French consul to Egypt by Napoleon in 1803,

'Drovetti's main interest was amassing antiquities.'

I think it's safe to say

that Drovetti's methods were very, very unscrupulous.

He used a range of agents

to basically ransack their way through Ancient Egypt.

And in doing so, he managed to acquire

a stupendous series of collections of Egyptian antiquities,

many of which he then sold on to sufficiently wealthy individuals.

'Drovetti sold his personal collection

'to the King of Sardinia, who put it here...

'in what is now the superb Egyptian museum in Turin.

One of the most important items in this collection

'was taken from Kha and Meryt's chapel.

'This costly painted funerary stele was a kind of memorial stone

'made to ensure that their names would live on,

'and its presence in Turin

'would eventually lead to the discovery of their tomb.'

It shows Kha twice, both left and right,

worshipping the archetypal gods of the dead,

Osiris and then the black jackal-headed god Anubis.

And you can see he's praying to them for a long and successful afterlife.

And then in the register below,

it's kind of like a family snapshot, if you like.

You have Kha and Meryt

seated in front of a huge table full of food, drink, flowers.

And then on the right-hand side, with the arm raised,

is their eldest son, Amenopet,

and he's kind of saying his prayers to his parents.

So in effect,

the next generation is wishing a long and happy afterlife

full of good things.

It's likely that this funerary stele was actually made

during the lifetime of Kha.

He would have almost certainly commissioned it

and would have selected which deities he wanted,

the kind of whole layout, the scenario, the colours.

And this was a typical thing for the Ancient Egyptians to do,

to commission their funerary monuments in their lifetime

so they could get things just right.

And then, of course, after death,

the images represented would magically continue to be effective

throughout eternity, so it was kind of like good insurance

for what was going to happen to them in the next world.

'The elaborate Book of the Dead, their chapel and its funerary stele

'were just the beginning of Kha and Meryt's preparations

'for eternal life.

'The main investment would be their tomb.

'So I'm travelling to the Valley of the Kings,

'where Kha supervised the building of royal tombs.

'It's the best place to find out

'how he might have organised and paid for

'the construction of his own.

I'm meeting geologist Steve Cross

'to see an unfinished tomb, a work in progress.'

The way they cut the tombs was they started with the slot of the ceiling.

And then worked outwards, right? And then excavated downwards.

'Slowly chiselling away at the bedrock, a tomb of this size

'would have taken around 40 men years to complete.

'And although a tomb like this

'was way beyond the means of most ordinary Egyptians,

'Kha had both the skills and the inspiration

'to create such a tomb for himself.'

Now, this of course is a royal tomb,

but in terms of Kha's own personal tomb,

how on earth would he have persuaded anyone on their time off

to have given him a hand excavating his tomb?

Well, what they did was they all helped each other, and it was barter.

"You do work in my tomb, I'll do work in your tomb."

Right? So Kha, being the architect,

might have designed tombs for other people

in trade-off for them coming to work on his tomb.

So he got the better part of the deal, really. Probably he did, yes!

Don't forget, these tomb makers are THE experts.

That's why the tombs in Deir el-Medina

are amongst the best in the world.

'With the help of his colleagues,

'Kha clearly invested a huge amount of time, effort and resources

'into building his tomb.

'So security was critical.

'Tomb robbing had already been a big problem for 2,000 years,

'and this explains why he did something highly unusual.

'Ordinary Egyptians who could afford a tomb

'built it directly beneath their chapel complex,

'which of course made it easier to find and rob.

'But Kha had learnt from the pharaohs.

'He decided to hide his elsewhere.

'It remained secret for over 3,000 years.

'But in 1906, another Italian began explorations

'in Kha and Meryt's village.

'Egyptologist Ernesto Schiaparelli

'was director of the Egyptian museum in Turin.

'He was very familiar with the stele of Kha and Meryt

'and also knew their tomb had never been found.'

He could read the hieroglyphs.

He knew there was an important individual called Kha,

had a wife called Meryt,

and he knew they had to be buried

somewhere in the vicinity where the stele was discovered.

'Schiaparelli was determined to find the tomb.

'But where to look?'

Look at that instrument there.

'Eleni Vassilika,

'the present-day director of the Egyptian museum in Turin,

'has accompanied me to Egypt to follow in his footsteps.'

They must have looked around and said, "The tomb is here, somewhere.

"Is it that trench there or... Where can it be?"

But Kha was clever, wasn't he? Kha was... He was sly!

He knew what was going to go into the tomb so he wanted to hide it.

I think as Schiaparelli must have stood here,

scratched his head and said -

knowing the stele was already in the museum, since 1824 -

he must've said, "Where the hell is the tomb?

"It's got to be near here,"

and looked at the landscape which most archaeologists do...

..and said, "I think we need to take that detritus away."

It was just a theory

but Schiaparelli had a huge workforce at his disposal.

He moved his 250 workmen to the foot of this rock face

close to the chapel.

They just dug for 30 days,

he says, until they discovered the perforation in the bedrock there.

And then they came to a bricked wall,

took that down and then they saw the door.

Wow, that must've been an amazing feeling. Yeah!

A sealed door in an Egyptian tomb. Wow.

It was a moment really incredible for them

because all these tombs - most of these tombs - had been sacked

at some point and very few intact tombs,

and, of course, so well furnished as this one is...

In essence, really, what Schiaparelli had found

is the most important non-royal tomb... Yes.

..probably from the whole of this period

if not the whole of Egyptian history because it tells us so much

about reality, real lives in ancient Egypt, not just gods and Pharaohs.

What a moment.

Since Schiaparelli, hardly anyone's been into the tomb.

But Eleni and I have been granted special access.

I think this is... This is it.

I think so. This is it! Yeah.

BOTH GASP

He was a clever guy! He was really sly. He was a very clever guy.

That's why his tomb stayed secret for so long

because it is so unexpected. Exactly, yes.

Situated at the bottom of this rather deep shaft, getting down into

the tomb is no easier today than it would have been in Kha's time.

ELENI GASPS

Wow! Look at this. I don't believe it.

Is that "Schiaparelli woz here?"

BOTH LAUGH Yeah, more or less!

It says, "Discovered intact by the Italian archaeological mission

"in 1906." And look.

They've written over the ancient red ochre marks... Yes, yes.

..of the draughtsmen planning out the lines. Yeah, here we go.

These are the red ochre pigment that was applied by the workers as

they were constructing the tomb to give them a sense of

the measurements and so forth and simply whereabouts to chip away.

They had to keep this as close to plan as was possible so they'd

be using their equipment to give this lovely 90-degree angle here.

It was blocked up twice.

That sense of excitement Schiaparelli and his men

must've felt because here they were,

not just one intact doorway blocked, but two. But two, yes.

Having removed the blockage from the second brick doorway,

Schiaparelli and his team found themselves in a large antechamber.

It contained Kha's exquisitely crafted bed,

beautifully painted pottery and floral bouquets.

But there was much, much more to come.

It's really exciting approaching the burial chamber

and this is where presumably... This is the door

and this is where Schiaparelli rapped on the door

and then turned around and said "How about the key?"

BOTH LAUGH

So he must've known that he was onto a good thing

after having seeing a bed out here, he knew there was more to find.

Something beyond. And this was sealed.

'One of the men who entered the tomb with Schiaparelli was Englishman

'Arthur Weigall, Chief Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt.'

'He immediately recorded the astonishing sight.'

When Schiaparelli 's team arrived,

the chamber was crammed full of objects.

'But today, all that remains is a colony of bats.'

BATS SQUEAK

The photographer took a photograph from there, looking in.

Then he stepped in right here where I'm standing right now,

he turned around and he took a photograph of everything behind.

Along this wall is the coffin of Meryt.

ELENI JUMPS It's all right.

This place is full of... Yes, I know, thank you! ..small bats.

Stand behind me, I'll protect you. OK.

And then that back wall, that was Kha's sarcophagus and coffin.

Which was substantially larger than hers. Yeah.

In ancient Egypt, children didn't always inherit

their parents' belongings.

And almost everything Kha and Meryt owned was sealed up

inside their tomb to be used in the afterlife.

So very few people have been privileged to come in here

and it makes so much more sense now, knowing all the material that

was originally in here, the belongings of Kha and Meryt,

placed so lovingly and so carefully in here and now displayed

so beautifully in the museum in Turin.

It's fantastic to be able to put all the pieces of the jigsaw together,

to really get a feel how Schiaparelli

must've felt coming in here in 1906.

It's... It's a rare treat, it really is.

The wealth of objects that had been discovered in the tomb

testify to the great investment Kha and Meryt had made.

Of their hundreds of belongings, many have been designed

and made at great expense, purely for use in the afterlife.

This intricate statuette of Kha shows him

with his palms on his starched kilt, a sign of humility before the gods.

Such statues were idealised,

a vision of how the deceased wanted to look in the afterlife.

It was also insurance providing an alternative home

for your soul in case anything happened to your mummified body.

The kilt is also inscribed with a funerary prayer

and a small garland of real flowers still hangs around Kha's chest.

One of the most precious purpose-made items found in the tomb

is Meryt's fabulous death mask.

Made with great skill and with costly materials, the eyes,

brows and decorative collar are made with coloured glass

which the Egyptians had only begun to manufacture in Kha's lifetime.

Cheaper yellow ochre was often used to imitate gold

but Kha had chosen the real thing for Meryt's mask

which is covered in precious gold leaf.

But the most costly of all, worth well over a year's wages,

was the coffin in which Meryt was buried -

again, covered in gold leaf.

Almost certainly intended for Kha, it is only inscribed with his name.

But it was used for Meryt because it seems she died first.

But how did Meryt die?

Was it the result of a long illness or was it a sudden death,

perhaps in an accident?

We've been granted special permission to examine Kha

and Meryt's mummies and their CT scans.

In order to preserve the mummies -

they cannot be unwrapped, of course -

but the scans allow us to see what lies beneath the wrappings.

I've asked pathologist Peter Vanezis

and radiologist Curtis Offiah to take a look at Meryt's CT scans

to see what they reveal about her on the day she died.

She's certainly not in the early 20s, I would've put her

more in the middle age group so 30s, possibly even 40s.

Yes, I would certainly agree with that.

There is a good indication here of lifestyle.

The fact her joints are quite well preserved indicates

she's led rather a charmed life, so to speak.

She's had a pretty lucky existence

and I would say she probably lived in the lap of luxury.

There's certainly no indication there of any chronic disease

which has affected her bones.

There's no indication that she has perhaps been lying immobile

for a long time because that would reflect

in the density of the bone structure as well

so my feeling is that she's either had a very short illness

or she's died suddenly. Mm. Possibly unexpectedly.

'So Meryt's death left Kha little time to prepare.'

'But the costly and time-consuming process of mummification

'had to begin immediately.'

Mummification was a way to preserve the body

so it could provide a home for the soul in the afterlife.

The process took around 70 days and the first step was to remove

the internal organs to prevent decomposition.

This included the brain which was usually removed down the nose.

But Meryt's scans reveal something very surprising.

This is a cross-section looking down into Meryt's skull

through the top of her head.

As you can see quite clearly, this white feature is in fact

her brain which has fallen down to the back of her head

and wasn't removed. So what? Why is this important?

Well, what it tells us

is that there were other ways to preserve the brain.

The next step was to dry out the body, which took about 40 days.

This usually involved piling dry salt on top of the corpse

to draw out all the body fluids.

But analysis of Meryt's mummy has revealed that she was

preserved differently.

Instead of using dry salt, Meryt had in fact been

submerged in a highly concentrated salt solution -

essentially, pickling her.

This allowed her organs to remain inside the body,

without causing decay.

If you look at the angle at which the brain has fallen to

the back of the skull, it appears to be on a tilt because the body,

when it was draining out, was laid at a different angle,

a slightly different angle, at a tilt to allow the fluids,

which would've initiated decomposition,

to completely leave, to exit the body.

It may have been the most up-to-date preservation technique

but it didn't come cheap.

And once Meryt's body had been dried out,

she was wrapped in layers of costly linen and an outer red shroud.

But the expense didn't stop there.

By chemically analysing minute samples of Meryt's wrapping,

we found something intriguing. Oil from the tilapia fish.

Yet this oil had no preservative power, it was purely symbolic.

And it set Meryt apart,

for there was something special about this fish.

What the tilapia does is to take its young into its mouth

in times of danger and when the danger has passed,

to then spit them out back into the water

and when the Egyptians saw this,

they saw it as a miraculous thing, as if it was a self generating fish

that could simply spit out its young in this way.

And so by association, the tilapia became connected directly

with the goddess Hathor and fertility and rebirth.

'This fish oil, which was also mixed with exotic, imported ingredients,

'would've cost Kha a small fortune.

'But it was worth it if it put Meryt on a fast-track to the afterlife.'

But Kha's efforts didn't even stop there.

As in today's most exclusive nightclubs, the Egyptians knew

that they had to look their best to gain admittance to the afterlife.

The scans reveal Meryt was all dressed up for death.

And under her wrappings she still wears

an amazing array of jewellery.

So, what today would form a treasured inheritance

went with her into the afterlife.

The most striking piece is this huge, broad collar necklace.

And to find out what it looks like,

I've come to the Petrie Museum in London.

It houses one of the most comprehensive

collections of Egyptian jewellery in the world.

Now, what we've got in front of us here

is an absolutely superb broad collar necklace.

It's the typical Egyptian necklace

that you see in the tomb scenes and in the art,

and it's basically made up of numerous little moulded amulets

that have been made in these sumptuous, jewel-like colours.

And this is exactly the same thing that Meryt still wears,

her mummy is still adorned in this beautiful broad collar,

which we can see on the image of Meryt here.

Now, the top five rows were made up of these rather elongated,

green beads, and they are actually cos lettuces.

Now, the lettuce was sacred to the fertility god, Min,

and, in wanting to be laid out in a necklace such as this,

it basically associates Meryt with this god of fertility, of new life.

You have then two more rows of what look like mini hand grenades,

and they're actually bunches of grapes, these blue,

shiny bunches of the grapes, which not only, again,

look very beautiful, but produce the wine

which was something sacred to Hathor,

the goddess of sex, of love, of new life,

the goddess who took the dead into her care.

And Meryt was effectively dressed in a collar like this,

not only to look beautiful, but to associate her

with these two deities who were so intimately involved

in new life, in rebirth, in eternal life.

As well as the broad collar,

Meryt wears two pairs of huge gold earrings,

and around her waist a belt of gold cowrie shells similar to this one.

She was laid out to appear very seductive,

and we know this from tomb scenes where dancers, musicians,

those associated with the goddess Hathor

appear almost naked at this time.

They're wearing broad collars, they're wearing huge earrings,

their hair is very beautiful, and they have these gold belts

with little cowrie shells and coloured elements

to look very alluring, very erotic,

capable of sex and of producing the next generation.

So, it can only be compared, perhaps,

to laying out a modern woman in like a negligee -

a vital, sexual being,

as capable of living in the next world as she had been in this one.

So, Meryt didn't want to spend eternity as a wise old lady

but as a youthful and attractive woman.

In the afterlife, you wanted to be the very best you could be.

And Kha made sure Meryt also had her most personal belongings

with her, all carefully prepared.

One of her most prized possessions was her magnificent wig.

It was housed in its own tall box,

to which funerary prayers had then been added.

This one on the lid reads:

Some of her other possessions were also adapted

for Meryt's journey into the afterlife.

This is her bed, which she'd used in life.

It was now repainted to freshen it up.

Another funerary inscription was added along the side.

Kha clearly gave careful thought

and spared no expense when preparing his wife for eternity.

And, although he'd overseen her burial,

Meryt probably remained very much alive to him.

It's even likely he would have continued to communicate with her.

We know the Egyptians actually wrote to their dead relatives

about all sorts of things,

from the mundane to the serious, in notes like this.

What we're looking at here

is one of the so-called Letters To The Dead,

and it's a pottery bowl, it's a piece of everyday tableware.

And the amazing thing about this is it's actually inscribed in black ink

by a woman wanting to communicate with her dead husband.

And we know for a fact that the living wrote to the dead.

They sent them letters on papyrus,

on small pieces of limestone, on ostraca.

She says, "Oh, husband, you should be here helping me.

"Settled the score with him who does what's painful to me,

"for surely I shall triumph over anyone, dead or alive,

"acting against me and our daughter."

It's that typical, you know, "Where are you? What are you doing?

"You might have died, but that's not really an excuse, is it?

"Come on, help me."

And it expresses this real belief that the dead can help the living,

that they had just passed through

into a different sphere of existence.

And this woman is maintaining the dialogue

that she would have had on Earth.

She's bending her husband's ear.

But the ancient Egyptians didn't only communicate

with their dead through writing.

They also did it through play.

THEY LAUGH

Now, we're playing the ancient Egyptian game of Senet.

It's a board game that the Egyptians absolutely loved.

It dates back to at least 3000 BC

and was played by kings and commoners alike.

It was the ancient Egyptians' version of turning on a soap opera

on TV at night, putting their feet up and enjoying themselves.

'Senet was essentially a race, a game of chance.

'It is used in the Book Of The Dead as a metaphor

'for the journey into the next world.'

We're having a bit of a stab of it there, and it is quite fun,

but I'm sure we don't get the complexities

and the nuances that were inherent in the ancient Egyptian version,

because for them it symbolised the ultimate game of chance.

To succeed at Senet meant you succeeded in life

and succeeded in the transition from this world to the next.

Hence, the living played it not only at home

but also in close proximity to the tombs.

Because, by playing this game, step by step,

they were assisting the transition of their deceased relatives through

all the perils and problems they might encounter in the underworld.

And so it kind of was a reflection of the great unknown

to play Senet - the outcome was never sure.

Would you win, or would death ultimately triumph?

You win!

THEY LAUGH

This Senet board was one of the items found in Kha and Meryt's tomb.

And Kha might have played this game close to their chapel,

hoping to ease Meryt's path through the underworld.

As there had probably been an age gap between them in life,

it seems it wasn't long before Kha died, too.

Peter and Curtis are examining the scans of his body.

In terms of an age, I would have to put him of greater years

than Meryt, and I think we're probably talking

50s onwards, I think, at least, so maybe even 60s to 70s.

The skeleton is of a very healthy - for his years - specimen.

We're not seeing any evidence of broken bones

or chronic healing of fractures in the spine.

Looking at the skeleton overall, and the fact that he has got

bones which look sturdy, he hasn't got anything

which indicates that he's had a chronic disease,

so, again, I think, like his wife, he has probably led

a reasonably healthy life up until close to when he died.

So, Kha died quite suddenly, like his wife,

And, like Meryt, Kha would have undergone

the costly mummification process.

Again, his brain remains inside his skull cavity, just like hers.

He, too, wears large hoop earrings,

and valuable jewellery around his neck.

But the scans also shows something else, placed on his forehead.

This is a snake's head, the head of a cobra,

beautifully rendered in carnelian, an orange stone,

with the two menacing eyes of the cobra and the ridges on the body.

This amulet was used to provide refreshment to the throat in the afterlife,

since it refers to the way a snake's throat swells out.

So it should really have been placed on Kha's throat,

and not on his forehead.

The only people in ancient Egypt allowed to have the cobra

at the forehead was the king and the queen.

So, I like to think that the embalmers

were paying their own little tribute to Kha.

They're sort of elevating Kha in death.

He was their leader, he was their chief, he was their overseer,

and the people in the village were maybe paying their own special tribute,

and so he was sent off into eternity

like a mini king in his own mini kingdom. I love that.

Kha was an important man in the village.

As such, the next step of his journey to the afterlife

would have been a grand affair.

His funeral would have begun with a magnificent procession

up to their chapel, just as Meryt's would have done before him.

The great procession would have wended its way up this path,

up towards the cliffs up there, where their tomb was actually situated.

Now, it's hard, here today, to try and get a sense

of the noise, the colour, the life.

That's a good word, actually, at a funeral ceremony, "the life".

The vivacity of all the ingredients that the ancient Egyptians

brought to their funeral ceremonies, because they were all there

to try and get the dead to live again.

Life, in some ways, was almost a dress rehearsal

for this very moment, when the funeral ceremony

marked the transition between this world and the next.

The dead were going to be reborn in the safety of their tombs.

So, it's essential that all the equipment they'd used in their lives

and all the equipment that was there to give them a good send-off

came with them, accompanied them into the darkness of the tomb,

where everything would work in tandem to revive

the soul of the deceased and send them off into eternity.

And, as Kha's body in its nest of coffins was carried towards his tomb,

all his worldly possessions would, of course, have accompanied him.

These wall scenes give a real sense of what the procession would have looked like.

This is the tomb of Ramos, governor of Thebes,

who lived at the same time as Kha and Meryt.

Now, this is a really colourful,

lively portrayal of a funeral procession.

You can see these sort of rows of men, of servants and bearers,

carrying all the belongings of the deceased.

You can see the bed made up with the bed linen,

the headrest which acted as a pillow, just like Kha and Meryt's.

You've got these beautiful painted wooden boxes

carrying all the personal items of the deceased.

A walking stick, just like Kha's.

Then you've got the chair of the deceased,

just like the one that Kha would have sat on that was found in his tomb.

You've got all sorts of things -

the jars of perfume, the flowers, the food and drink.

WEEPING

A funeral on this scale didn't come cheap,

and these scenes reveal yet another expense.

These are professional mourners.

They were hired to make the maximum noise possible

to give the deceased a great send-off,

because the higher the decibel level, the more important this individual was.

Their plaits are dishevelled and if you look really closely,

they're crying.

They're such professionals, they're crying so much,

forcing themselves to produce tears, their black eyeliner is running.

Any women that wear mascara understand the problem.

You start to cry, the make-up runs down your face.

The ancient artist has portrayed this so beautifully

with these dots of black coming down the women's faces.

Once the procession had reached their chapel

it was time for yet another elaborate and opulent ritual.

The Opening of the Mouth ceremony,

a 75-stage, sensory assault to reanimate

the soul of the deceased within their mummified body.

In order for this to happen,

every one of the five senses needed to be reawakened.

Having dragged the huge, black sarcophagus of Kha

all the way up here on ropes,

the bearers would carefully raise up

Kha's black and gold anthropoid coffin

and place it here looking out,

exactly where I'm sitting today,

as if Kha was preparing to be

relaunched into the next world if you like.

It would have been a very dramatic, profound moment for the family

as Kha once again stood upright

in front of his tomb chapel

and at this point the eldest son, Amenopet,

would have stepped forward with the special chisel.

He would have touched his father's mouth symbolically

like this,

to reanimate his power of speech, of breathing,

so the eyes would have been magically opened,

the ears touched

so Kha could once again hear in the next world

and all his senses restored.

The ritual would also be performed on Kha's statuette,

his insurance policy should his mummified body be destroyed.

And it was vital that the sense of smell was restored,

so incense too would be presented.

The Egyptians loved to present flowers to the dead

from the characteristic water lily, or the white and blue lotus,

which are often shown in tomb scenes being literally pressed against

the noses of the deceased, so they could inhale that fragrance.

To restore the sense of taste

delicious food offerings were presented.

And after the Opening of the Mouth ceremony had finished,

the funeral party moved on to the tomb for the final burial,

where an entire banquet was laid out.

This was for Kha and Meryt to enjoy in the afterlife.

What we see in front of us here in glorious Technicolor

is basically the food that was found in the tomb

and it's quite wonderful stuff.

You have the staple of your ancient Egyptian life,

the bread accompanied by the all-important onions and garlic.

This was the standard workman's packed lunch.

One of these on a daily basis with the garlic here,

that's an ancient Egyptian packed lunch, a glass of beer,

an ancient Egyptian ploughman's.

And we do know that in the case of the onions and garlic

when Schiaparelli and his team went into the tomb

they smelt them.

For 3,500 years they were still as pungent as the day

they'd been placed there.

No fewer than 50 loaves of bread were found in the tomb,

along with jars of roast duck, fish,

bowls of vegetables, fruit and spices.

There were grapes, dates and these amazing things.

He had several sackloads of these - doum palm nuts.

Although I've never personally eaten one

they apparently taste like caramel.

All this kind of food in the tomb of Kha and Meryt

set out very carefully as a kind of

formal banquet for the deceased

would have allowed the very souls of Kha and Meryt

to have enjoyed the very essence of all this food.

But Kha's Book of the Dead

shows he wanted his afterlife to be fuelled by drink as well as food.

This is spell 148 in the Book of the Dead,

which is basically the spell of provisioning

the soul of the deceased in the next world

with all the food and drink that they need.

As well as the desire for goose, for beef,

for wine and so forth,

the basis of Kha's wish list is the standard bread and beer

that formed the basis of the ancient Egyptian diet

for rich and poor alike

throughout the whole of ancient Egyptian culture.

In fact the word "beer" does appear rather often.

Here with the twisted symbol,

the small, black one here,

and then this wonderful determinative of the beer jar.

But it's this repetition of the word "beer",

this desire of Kha to have beer to drink for eternity -

if you like, an eternal supply of beer. Which can be no bad thing.

They wanted to enjoy an eternal banquet

but there was also work to be done.

In ancient Egypt, just about everyone was obliged to work the land.

Even death was no excuse

so you needed figurines like these,

found in Kha and Meryt's tomb.

Known as "shabti figures" they were the little helpers who would

do all the work for you in the afterlife.

They even have their own miniature farming tools.

So with all the work taken care of, Kha and Meryt,

like all ancient Egyptians,

intended to have a really good time.

This is clear to see from the scenes in their chapel.

It's OK trying to understand ancient Egypt on a visual level,

everybody does that - pyramids, King Tut, mummies.

But to really get into the heads of the ancient Egyptians

you've got to walk in their footsteps, you've got to experience

the senses they experienced and one of these, a crucial one, is sound.

What did it sound like to be in ancient Egypt?

And this is Kha and Meryt giving us an idea of that.

Here we have Kha and Meryt's band.

These are the musicians playing their music

to sort of lull them into eternity.

And it's quite a pacey number

because the lute player's legs are shown asymmetrically

to give a kind of sense of movement,

maybe dancing.

The ancient Egyptians, then as now,

loved music, loved to dance,

loved to express themselves in a joyful manner.

These musicians are from the University of Cairo.

Using images from wall scenes

and surviving ancient instruments,

they've been able to recreate ancient Egyptian music.

WIND INSTRUMENT PLAYS OVER DRUMS

Kha was finally laid to rest in his tomb.

His large black sarcophagus was already waiting for him.

The belongings of Kha and Meryt were set out all around them

and covered in dust sheets.

Then, leaving the lamps still lit,

the funeral party left the burial chamber, sweeping away

their footprints as they went

and locking the wooden door behind them.

LOCK TURNS

The workmen then bricked up and plastered the two walls

and backfilled the tunnel with rubble.

But Kha's journey into the afterlife was not yet complete.

No matter how much you'd spent, there was one final test

that all Egyptians must pass.

Although this scene dates from about 1,000 years after Kha's time,

it clearly depicts the crucial moment

in the soul's journey to the afterlife.

This remarkable scene

is known as the Weighing of the Heart.

It's the ultimate judgement of the dead.

It shows that the deceased, their soul,

has successfully negotiated all the hazards into the next world

to arrive here at the ultimate Hall of Judgement.

It's presided over by the goddess Ma'at, the goddess of truth,

who is shown here with the feather of truth,

which she wears as a kind of crown on her head.

At the far end is the goddess Iris,

the kind of ultimate judge of all dead souls.

He's here to watch over these proceedings

because we have here central to the scene

a typical Egyptian-style balance.

And here on this pan

it's the heart of the deceased individual

and it's being weighed very carefully against this.

This is the feather of Ma'at which she wears on her head.

It represents truth, goodness, purity.

If the deceased had lived a good and blameless life,

their heart would be light and free of sin.

However, if they'd been naughty, bad,

done anything to upset the gods,

then the heart would be heavy with sin.

And as such, they couldn't then pass through

into a blessed afterlife, into eternity.

And so the heart was literally taken up like a piece of meat

and thrown to this terrifying creature here.

This is the Great Devourer,

a kind of terrible composite of lions' parts

a sort of crocodile- or hippo-featured being

with the tongue out

dribbling at the thought of a fresh heart to consume.

And it's at this point

that the deceased would ultimately die.

This would be dying a second death, the final death.

Earthly death isn't anything to be afraid of

because you pass through into a subliminal state of existence,

if you've been good.

All evil souls, their hearts were fed to this creature,

consumed, and that was it, finished for ever.

But once again there was something you could buy to help you

through this final trial.

And Kha's scans show that on a chain around his neck

there is also a large amulet known as a heart scarab.

This example from the Petrie Museum

gives us a sense of what it actually looks like.

For the Egyptians the heart was the seat of all learning,

of all intelligence.

When the deceased's spirit was in the presence of the gods

in the next world and had to account for their actions in life,

had they lead a good life, they were interrogated by the gods.

Sometimes there was always the danger the heart might

suddenly speak up against its owner.

"Oh, well, they didn't lead such a blameless life after all."

And so the heavy heart scarab was a means of suppressing the heart,

keeping it quiet.

The spell invokes, employs the heart, "Keep quiet,

"do not give false witness against me."

Basically, "Shut it."

So it seems that Kha had purchased every form of insurance

he possibly could to ensure the perfect afterlife

that he and Meryt had always dreamed of.

From their elaborate golden coffins,

to their well hidden, subterranean tomb

and expensively decorated Memorial Chapel.

And, of course, the intricate Book of the Dead

in which Kha describes

how he wants to spend his eternity.

In Kha's Book of the Dead by far the largest section,

200 separate rolls,

are devoted to the so-called spells of transformation

listing all the variations that Kha wanted his soul to become,

all the many forms he could take in the afterlife.

A lot of these relate to birds,

the soul wants to rise up to join the gods

and fly through the heavens.

He wanted to be a Phoenix, he wanted to be a heron,

he wanted to be a great, golden sparrowhawk.

Yet I think for me what is most poignant

is that in addition to all these various things

that he could become at will

his heart's desire was simply to sit

with his beloved wife Meryt in a garden

in the summerhouse.

Now, for us in the modern West

it's all too easy to see these elaborate preparations for death

as completely pointless.

Death is death and that is that.

And yet, and yet.

Having met Kha and Meryt,

having entered their world,

I think they've really achieved a kind of immortality

because 3,500 years later,

we're still talking about them.

The ancient Egyptians truly believed that to speak

the name of the dead was to make them live again.

And surely they do.

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