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

'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.'

'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.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd