Pharaoh's Wives Egyptian Journeys with Dan Cruickshank

The great civilisation of Ancient Egypt,

with its dramatic spectacle and mystery, has always fascinated me.

I've been travelling the country to explore some of the intriguing

stories that have emerged from this historic land.

In this programme, I'm on the trail of a Pharaoh's wife who committed

a crime so terrible they tried to wipe her name from history.

This is the body of Ramses III.

He came to the throne in around 1184 BC,

about 30 years after the death of his illustrious namesake, Ramses II.

He's considered by many to be the last of the truly great Pharaohs.

He went to enormous lengths to ensure his achievements would be remembered.

Many Pharaohs left monuments in stone as witness to their greatness.

They carved their life stories on a scale never seen before.

Ramses III truly seemed worthy to follow his noble predecessors.

Generations to follow would know of his glory and power

because his temples and statues boasted huge wealth

and impressive military victories.

But thanks to a chance discovery of ancient documents, we can go behind

the propaganda of Ramses III,

to reveal a very different Pharaoh from the one he wanted the world to know.

Hidden for 3000 years, these papyri tell a story that was

never supposed to be remembered, a story of betrayal and intrigue

against a flawed Pharaoh.

It's sheer luck that this document has survived to tell the tale.

This is Medinet Habu, one of the largest and best preserved

temples of its time in Egypt.

It was built for Ramses III and it's more of a temple town really,

not just a place of the gods, but a centre

for civil administration and a place of refuge in a time of trouble.

I've come here to understand the two different sides of the life of Ramses III -

the public propaganda and the scandalous hidden story.

Within these walls a powerful drama was played out over 3,000 years ago

that completely changes how we think about this great Pharaoh.

To judge by the mighty scale of this temple, and the images on it,

you'd think that he was the most successful Pharaoh of all time.

Here he is smiting his enemies,

whipping them, almost like a fertility god, virility personified.

But towards the end of his reign,

Ramses was beleaguered, beset, few allies nearby,

civil disobedience undermined the stability of his reign.

And also, he died in strange and mysterious circumstances.

But you wouldn't know any of that from the images carved here.

Ramses ordered this enormous temple to be constructed

on the very first day of his reign.

He must have believed from the start that there would be

plenty of glorious military triumphs to carve upon these vast walls,

that he would be one of the greatest Pharaohs that ever lived.

Ah...

On the walls of the second court of the temple

there are some very gory details

celebrating the Pharaoh's military triumphs.

Up there are piles of severed hands,

each one, of course, representing a dead enemy,

and the hands are being counted by scribes.

There's a chap throwing the hands onto the pile.

There's one, two, three piles of severed hands.

And in front of me...

is a pile of severed penises.

Again, each one...representing...

an enemy who could no longer pose a threat.

This is incredible.

Below me here is a hieroglyph explaining the scenes above.

This surely is a text referring to the severed penises.

And there we see a hieroglyph

for severed enemy penis, I suppose.

How about that?

At the time of Ramses III, Egypt was surrounded by enemies.

He was fighting to save his country from invasion,

although to judge from the depictions on one of the most impressive walls,

the Pharaoh easily swept aside his foes.

The outer surface of the temple wall shows one of the most extraordinary

artistic scenes in Egyptian art.

It is probably the first,

certainly the largest, depiction of a naval battle in history.

An amazing piece of work.

In front of me here, one sees

the swirl of a chaotic naval action.

And here we see ships being boarded,

grappling hooks pulling ships over.

An amazing image of

violence, terror and fighting.

Here...

is the image of the Pharaoh, Ramses III,

in all his power and glory.

A gigantic figure, dominating the scene with his great bow,

clearly directing the actions, making it clear that he was responsible

for the Egyptian victory that was the result of this action.

Propaganda of a very high order.

But Ramses wasn't only proud of his military prowess.

He also seems to have been unusually proud of his harem of women.

All the Pharaohs had many wives

who lived in royal harems all over the country.

But Ramses clearly took particular delight in depicting himself with his women.

I'm in the temple gatehouse, and above me are

the remains of a most extraordinary room,

a prospect room, where the Pharaoh would sit

enjoying the view to the Nile over there and the canal

that once served the temple.

But he'd sit up there, with young females,

presumably females from the harem,

which is somewhere over there, I think.

We know this because the images show the Pharaoh,

sitting with a young girl, chucking her under the chin,

conversing in a casual manner.

And up there with another delightful female.

These are almost unprecedented in Egyptian art, these scenes

of a Pharaoh with his concubines.

Striking, but they have now a strange poignancy because we know that it was

women such as these, women closest to Ramses,

who were to plot his downfall, his murder.

We only know about the dark goings-on that happened here

because of that chance discovery of an extraordinary set of documents.

In the early 19th century, a bundle of papyri, dating from the reign of Ramses III,

turned up on the black market in Cairo.

Papyrus is fragile, disintegrates easily, and some pages were missing.

But enough of these legal and administrative documents survived

to suggest a remarkable tale.

The details are disputed amongst historians

because some of the text is confusing and difficult to interpret,

but piecing together the fragments, what has emerged is a story so scandalous

that the ancient Egyptians tried to wipe it from history.

In fact, they almost succeeded because this papyrus

is the only evidence that these events ever took place.

The documents tell the story of an extraordinary conspiracy against the Pharaoh

that centred around his innermost circle, his harem,

the last place he would have expected betrayal.

In Ancient Egypt, the harem was an important part of the Pharaoh's court,

with unprecedented access to the Pharaoh himself.

The harem housed the royal wives and concubines and their many children,

as well as male administrators,

treasurers and the Pharaoh's household staff.

Because the Pharaoh often married into the most aristocratic Egyptian families,

the harem could contain the sisters, mothers and daughters

of some of the most important people in Egypt.

Each Pharaoh had several harems in palaces and temples around the country,

sometimes adding up to hundreds of wives and concubines.

But he would also have a travelling harem of his favourites that went everywhere with him.

Within these various harems,

there must have been quite a bit of jockeying for position amongst the women,

hoping for favour for themselves and their offspring.

The papyrus suggests that it was in this world of domestic and political intrigue

that Ramses III demonstrated his major failing -

his inability to organise his private life.

It appears that, as his reign went on, this Pharaoh, far from continuing

the glorious traditions of his predecessors, was becoming a weak,

indecisive man, unable to control his own family, let alone his nation.

Some historians believe this failing is confirmed

in a curious detail here at Medinet Habu.

Ramses III was, it seems, a man who was unable to make decisions,

even very important decisions.

All Pharaohs had numerous wives,

but each Pharaoh would choose a great wife.

And that was done for a very simple reason.

It was the great wife who gave birth to the next Pharaoh.

Through her, the line of succession was assured and no-one would argue.

Her child was to rule after the death of the Pharaoh.

But Ramses couldn't choose between two women.

One was Isis and the other contender was Tiye - two women.

And this picture here tells the tale.

You see up there an image with Ramses to the left,

and in front of him, slightly above,

the great queen.

But she hasn't been named.

The cartouche in front of her,

which should bear her name in hieroglyphics, is blank.

This indecision was terrible.

It created chaos in the court when there should be order, and set up

a potential succession crisis.

The competition between these two royal wives, Tiye and Isis,

must have been fierce.

Tiye gave birth to a son called Pentawaret,

which means "son of the great female one".

But Isis also had a son of about the same age.

In Egypt it was by no means automatic

that the eldest son would be chosen to inherit the throne.

So, to avoid a succession crisis, Ramses absolutely had to choose

which of these two sons was to become the crown prince.

And, when he finally made his decision, Ramses did not choose Tiye's son, Pentawaret.

Instead, he chose Isis's son.

And, from the papyrus,

we know that this decision was to have potentially fatal repercussions for the Pharaoh.

Tiye was not the kind of woman to be passed over lightly.

From the documents, it appears she soon began to plot her revenge

and hatched an audacious plan to put her own son on the throne.

It appears there were two parts to Tiye's plot.

The first was to murder her husband, Ramses III.

The second, to provoke an armed uprising

to prevent Isis's son from taking his rightful place as Pharaoh.

The papyrus tells us extraordinary details

of who was involved in the plot.

For a start, Tiye recruited those closest to the Pharaoh,

the harem women.

This is an exact replica of a portion of the papyrus.

And here is Tiye's name mentioned here.

This tells us that she conspired with the head of the harem,

and with the women of the harem,

to incite rebellion against Ramses.

She must have been a pretty compelling person

because she persuaded some of the most important and trusted men of the royal household

to side with her against the Pharaoh and his rightful heir,

not only the head of the harem, but the treasurer, the butlers

and significantly, the food taster.

But the help of these powerful courtiers alone wouldn't be enough.

Tiye still had to convince key generals in the army to commit treason,

to betray their Pharaoh, and join her plot.

We know from this extraordinary document that Tiye and her allies

began writing letters to friends and family outside the harem asking them to join the conspiracy.

And, because many of the harem women came from powerful families,

they were closely related to high-ranking officials in the army and in politics.

If the women of the harem could recruit enough important friends and relatives,

then this conspiracy could be very dangerous for the Pharaoh.

But there's a curious part of this document that gives us an added insight

into the general atmosphere of superstition that

pervaded the court of Ramses III.

Ramses was a great believer in the power of magic.

In fact, most people in Ancient Egypt accepted that magic

could be used to affect the lives of the living, for good or for ill.

Although spells were thought to be the key to achieving a required result,

sometimes the magic also involved administering narcotics.

And we know from the Papyrus that Tiye and her co-conspirators

used Ramses' own spells to help them in their plan.

Ramses' own library contained many papyri

packed with detailed spells, and it's one of these spells that got stolen

by a scribe and given to the plotters to be used against Ramses himself.

It was probably a crime punishable by death even to read the spells

in the Pharaoh's private library, let alone steal one and hand it over

to the Pharaoh's enemies to give them power over him.

But this is what the papyrus says about one of the daring plotters.

He began to make magic spells for hindering and terrifying,

and to make people out of wax for enfeebling the limbs and gave them

into the hands of the head of the harem, in order to hinder the guards.

This wax figurine, a doll really, dates from after the time of Ramses

but it's much like those used during his reign.

It would have represented an individual.

The head here,

the arm of course, and the naval - there's a little sort of twist of hair,

I suppose taken from the person who would be the subject of the spell.

We don't know much about the person, other than seemingly he was a man,

genitals popping up here.

Made of wax so one could stick pins in it if one didn't like the person.

And on the back is a little recess in which there is a bit of papyrus

on which the spell is written, except it can't be read now, it's too fragile.

It would have been over a figure just like this

that the priests cast Tiye's spell, one of which was aimed at

incapacitating the guards round the temple so the plotters

could send letters out into the land to raise rebellion against Ramses.

We know that, by now,

Tiye had successfully recruited many key military leaders to her plot,

including the commander of the archers and army generals.

But the conspirators would need to choose their moment carefully

and events were beginning to play into their hands.

Ramses, now in declining health, had begun to lose popularity amongst

his subjects, because of a series of disastrous political decisions.

Civil unrest against the Pharaoh began to spread through Egypt.

One of the key events happened here in Thebes.

In the 29th year of Ramses' reign, a crisis overtook the country.

Government workers failed to receive their wages,

and this was a very serious matter

since their wages were paid in the form of food.

So what did they do? Well, they took direct action.

They waited two weeks and then went on strike,

and they marched down here to the Ramesseum to confront the scribes.

They came here because the Ramesseum wasn't just a mortuary temple,

but was also a centre of local administration,

and it's where food was stored.

This is where their wages were.

They came here to go to the warehouses over there to take their wages, to take their food.

The workers must have prowled around here, outside these warehouses,

looking for their food, demanding their wages.

The reason why the food had not been handed out was because, ironically,

Ramses was storing up the grain for a big feast to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his glorious reign.

But, in fact, his reign was becoming more and more troubled

and Tiye and her co-conspirators must have been watching with interest.

The discontent went on for months,

and if this was the state of affairs here with the government workers in Thebes,

one can only assume this was the state of affairs throughout the country,

other workers also not receiving their wages.

The country must have been tottering on the edge of insurrection,

a difficult and dangerous place, tottering on the end of chaos.

This chaos would eventually provide the ideal conditions for an uprising against the Pharaoh,

and Tiye's plan was ready to glide into action.

The details are unclear

but it seems that Tiye launched her plot during the next big festival held in Medinet Habu.

And just three weeks later, Ramses III was dead.

This extraordinary story

makes me see the whole temple complex of Medinet Habu afresh.

It's as though it were crime scene.

I'm standing on top of the first pylon.

And from up here you get a very clear feel for the geography of Medinet Habu.

Over there is the entrance gateway.

And that's where the spells, possibly drugs, must have been used to incapacitate the guards.

Behind me is the temple proper

with its courtyards

and second pylon.

During the festival, this would have been packed with courtiers and guests,

the perfect cover for Tiye's plot.

In front of me here are the ruins of the royal palace.

And, presumably, it was in one of the rooms down there

that Ramses III died.

Thanks to mummification, we can still

see the body of the Pharaoh today, over 3,000 years after his death.

Golly, to come face to face with Ramses at last.

Incredible.

What we know is that he died about a month after the harem plot,

so it seems likely that he was murdered -

that the plotters succeeded in their aims of killing the Pharaoh.

If there were a forensic investigation, this mummy

would be dissected and analysed to tell us what happened to him,

but as it stands, there's no conclusive evidence to prove the crime.

What we don't know

is how he died.

His body has never been fully examined.

The head's been X-rayed, and we know

it shows no trauma - he wasn't hit on the head, for example.

But I suppose the most likely cause of death must be poison.

The royal household would have been full of potential poisons,

used in medicine - mandrake, poppies, morphine.

All those could have been introduced into the Pharaoh's food or drink

and could have killed him.

A good clue is that the chap responsible

for the Pharaoh's food and drink was listed among the plotters.

One can't help but feel sad and poignant.

Did he die a slow and lingering death...

..at the hands of these harem women,

the plotters from the palace?

The last people he expected to turn on him.

With the Pharaoh out of the way,

it was time to follow through on the military takeover of the country

and put Tiye's son, Pentawaret, on the throne.

But there's one other papyrus that gives a crucial clue as to what

actually happened next.

This is a portion of the papyrus.

This is the title page, so to speak, of the image.

And this sheds fascinating light

on the events that took place after the death of Ramses.

It states that the Pharaoh to succeed Ramses III was Ramses IV.

Ramses IV was the son...

of Isis.

Tiye's son is not mentioned at all.

That's very serious. His name is consigned to oblivion.

He's utterly forgotten. Clearly, Tiye's rebellion failed.

We don't know why Tiye's plot failed but it was Isis's son, Ramses IV,

who rounded up the conspirators.

The legal documents tell of the trial of Tiye

and the others who'd helped her.

As well as the women from the harem, the list shows the breadth of the support she'd recruited.

It included the head treasurer, the captain of the archers,

the commander of the army, the overseer of the king's harem,

two scribes of the House Of Sacred Writings.

Presumably they were the ones who stole the crucial spells,

four butlers, and six wives of harem guards,

all accused of the plot to overthrow Ramses III.

But even during their trial, the harem women didn't give up the fight.

The document shows they actually tried to use their charms

on four of the trial judges to influence the outcome.

It reads, "The women arrived

"at the abode of the judges and there caroused with them in a drunken orgy."

But the wayward judges were caught, and had their ears and noses cut off.

As for the conspirators, they were all sentenced to death.

Most of the forms of capital punishment at the time were fairly horrible.

One involved skewering people on a spike and leaving them to die.

But, because they were aristocrats, Tiye, her son Pentawaret

and the other conspirators, were given an easier option.

They were allowed to commit suicide,

which they did, most probably with poison.

After this, all mention of Tiye and Pentawaret

was chiselled from history.

Tiye has no tomb, no statue, engraving or wall-painting.

In fact, even though she was a Pharaoh's wife,

the only mention of her name anywhere is in the trial documents.

Who would have thought, all those years ago,

that such a fragile document,

written on papyrus not stone, would survive all these years

and today tell us about these rather dark goings-on?

Without the documents, we would have absolutely no idea

that Tiye had ever existed, or of her conspiracy to murder a Pharaoh.

Next time, I'm tracing the dramatic chain of events

that brought the Ancient Egyptian civilisation to an end.