Life Ancient Egypt - Life and Death in the Valley of the Kings

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're 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 hoped 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,

the 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 kohl 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 every day

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 luxury?

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... 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, Akhenaton.

But, really, at the very heart of all this is Akhenaton'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 Amenhotep 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 col?

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 Pharaohs' 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, Akhenaton,

it was left unfinished when Akhenaton 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 Deir el-Bahri.

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 cow's 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 wander 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 effect,

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 re-animate 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 tying 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.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd