Egypt ️ Sacred Sites FULL EPISODE Smithsonian Channel
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00:00 Of all ancient civilizations, Egypt has left behind the greatest legacy of sacred sites.
00:08 The mighty pyramids, the majestic temples of Karnak and Luxor, and the shadowy tombs of
00:14 the Valley of the Kings are among its greatest monuments.
00:19 All of these sites evoke a powerful reality.
00:22 The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death and the afterlife.
00:27 They mummified the bodies of the dead, preparing them to face the fearsome journey into the
00:31 underworld.
00:35 On papyrus rolls and tomb walls, they recorded the spells that would help the dead survive
00:40 this journey.
00:44 This collection of prayers and incantations is known as the Book of the Dead.
00:50 But this seeming obsession with death could mask a more subtle reality.
00:56 In 2015, a researcher discovered a unique artifact at the Cairo Museum, a 4,000-year-old
01:03 leather roll.
01:05 This leather roll opens like a window for us for a new part of Egypt we didn't know.
01:11 This incredibly rare manuscript reveals the origins of the Book of the Dead.
01:16 It could change everything we thought we knew about religion in ancient Egypt.
01:31 For 3,000 years, Egypt was the most advanced civilization on the planet.
01:38 Its legacy of art and culture includes some of the world's most famous and mysterious
01:43 sacred sites.
01:45 Many of these monuments were inspired by the desire to prepare for life after death.
01:55 The ancient Egyptians essentially existed for the afterlife.
02:00 They lived in houses made of mud brick, unfired mud brick.
02:04 Even the king lived in a palace made of unfired mud brick.
02:07 But yet you look at their funerary monuments and they're all made of stone, high-quality
02:12 stone.
02:13 So when the king became king, his workmen started working on his tomb immediately.
02:19 But in 2015, a new discovery undermines centuries of Egyptology.
02:26 Hidden for 4,000 years, it reveals the secret origins of Egypt's most famous religious
02:32 text.
02:34 This document rewrites the history of the Book of the Dead.
02:39 And it reveals that Egypt's sacred sites may tell us as much about the living as they
02:44 do about the dead.
02:50 Here at Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo, stands the most famous of all these sites, the last
02:56 surviving wonder of the ancient world, the Pyramids of Giza.
03:02 The pyramids are guarded by the impassive Sphinx, known in Arabic as the Father of Terror.
03:09 It exudes this awful majesty because its face is that of a pharaoh, Khafre.
03:17 The pyramids were built for Khafre and two other pharaohs some 4,500 years ago.
03:24 To this day, they bear the names of these great kings of Egypt.
03:29 Menkaure, the smallest of the three, but still a massive structure.
03:35 Khafre, its peaks snow-capped with limestone.
03:40 And the titanic Khufu, the Great Pyramid itself.
03:46 Weighing almost 6 million tons, the Great Pyramid was one of the most gigantic buildings
03:51 ever erected.
03:53 It was originally covered with slabs of polished limestone, representing the descending rays
03:58 of the sun.
03:59 When the Egyptians began to build the pyramid, they located a square and they cut in the
04:07 solid rock.
04:09 And they made the base of the pyramid to be nine meters high of solid rock, no stones.
04:19 Using mortar made from mud and clay, an army of workers spent decades building the pyramids.
04:26 They were not slaves, but free men, skilled laborers, who used simple materials like wood
04:33 and rope in the construction process.
04:41 For the Great Pyramid alone, they assembled 2.3 million finely cut limestone blocks.
04:50 The pyramids are not just magnificent structures.
04:54 They are also tombs.
04:57 Deep within the Great Pyramid lies the King's Chamber, said to be the burial room of the
05:02 pharaoh Khufu.
05:10 From this chamber, two shafts slice through the colossal stonework like ancient skylights.
05:17 The mysterious tunnels in the pyramid.
05:20 And they call it air shafts.
05:24 They are not shafts for air.
05:28 The shafts speed the King's ritual ascent into the heavens, because the pyramids and
05:34 pharaohs were a link between the people and their gods.
05:46 To guide the dead through the afterlife, the Egyptians compiled a great collection of prayers
05:52 and spells.
05:54 They wrote them down on the floorboards of coffins, on tomb walls, and on papyrus.
06:05 Around a thousand years after the pyramids were built, Egypt entered its Golden Age,
06:11 a great era known as the New Kingdom, roughly 1600 to 1100 BC.
06:19 The awe-inspiring Temple of Karnak was constructed at this time.
06:24 It was a statement of intent by the New Kingdom pharaohs, reflecting their power and majesty.
06:31 During this time, the Egyptians refined the afterlife spells into a collection of some
06:35 200 incantations.
06:41 Many centuries later, archaeologists discovered these spells in the tombs of the New Kingdom
06:47 pharaohs, hundreds of miles south of Giza.
06:50 Today, they are known as the Book of the Dead.
06:55 The ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, the ancient title is actually the Book of Going
06:59 Forth by Day, was to provide a guide for the soul of the deceased.
07:03 So to go forth by day is to actually have your soul leave the tomb and return to the
07:09 body at night.
07:11 What is called the Book of the Dead are actually lots of spells were grouped and put mainly
07:17 on papyrus.
07:19 And this papyrus will be normally rolled and put in there with the funeral equipment of
07:24 the deceased.
07:25 It contains lots of important spells that gives the deceased magical power in the hereafter.
07:34 No two Books of the Dead were the same.
07:37 And yet they all shared the same account of a great journey through a mysterious realm,
07:43 peopled with gods and monsters.
07:53 On the west bank of the Nile, opposite the ancient city of Thebes, lies one of the most
07:58 famous sacred sites in the world, the great necropolis of the Valley of the Kings.
08:06 This place is a who's who of ancient Egyptian royalty.
08:11 During the glorious New Kingdom era, virtually every Egyptian pharaoh was buried here.
08:17 Ramses II, Seti I, and the famous Tutankhamen all had their tombs in this renowned cemetery.
08:27 Even in ancient times, it was a tourist attraction for Greeks, Romans, and others.
08:36 The warrior Pharaoh Seti I, who reigned over 1,200 years before the birth of Christ, was
08:43 one of the greatest of all Egypt's kings.
08:48 His is one of the most remarkable tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
08:55 The tomb walls are decorated with scenes from the incredible journey through the afterlife
09:00 described in the Book of the Dead.
09:03 The walls crawl with extraordinary scenes and creatures.
09:07 Snakes with swords.
09:10 Animal-headed gods.
09:12 Winged goddesses.
09:14 To modern eyes, the images seem strange and fantastical.
09:20 But for the ancient Egyptians, they were part of the afterlife, a universe that was very
09:26 real.
09:32 But before the dead could embark on this voyage into the unknown, they had to be prepared.
09:38 Their bodies had to undergo an incredible transformation and an amazing ceremony to
09:44 ensure survival in the land of the dead.
10:03 The journey began with an extraordinary transformation, a ritual thousands of years older than the
10:14 Great Pyramids themselves, mummification.
10:23 The Egyptians employed mummification to preserve the body essentially as a resting place for
10:30 the soul.
10:31 There are certain exceptions to the rule of mummification.
10:35 If you drowned in the Nile, it's actually an express way to the underworld and you are
10:41 considered to be a blessed dead.
10:45 Over thousands of years, the Egyptians perfected the fine art of preserving the dead.
10:51 To keep the body from decaying, priests carefully removed the internal organs through a slit
10:57 in the abdomen.
11:00 The deceased needed these organs for the afterlife.
11:03 They had to be protected.
11:06 These four porcelain vessels, discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamen, contain the young
11:11 pharaoh's lungs, stomach, intestines and liver.
11:16 They are called canopic jars, each one guarded by one of the four sons of Horus, the god
11:22 of kingship.
11:25 There was one organ that did not receive this special treatment.
11:30 The ancient Egyptians saw the brain as a source of putrefaction.
11:36 They did not believe that the brain was significant in the afterlife and it was actually removed
11:42 via a hook that would be inserted through the nose and essentially the brain would be
11:48 liquefied with that metal hook and then would come out through the nose.
11:54 Finally, the priests encased the mummy in a sort of paper mache made from linen or papyrus.
12:02 They molded it to fit the shape of the face and body.
12:17 After mummification, it was time for the funeral and the final ceremonies to prepare the deceased
12:24 for the hereafter.
12:32 In the Theban necropolis near Luxor, a fascinating but little-known tomb depicts an ancient Egyptian
12:39 funeral in vibrant detail.
12:43 Discovered almost a century ago, for many years this sacred site remained closed.
12:49 In November 2015, the Egyptian government opened it to the public for the first time.
12:55 Its sheer brilliance is breathtaking.
12:58 These wall paintings are over 3,000 years old and yet they are as vivid as if done yesterday.
13:06 This tomb belonged to an Egyptian priest.
13:09 These are scenes from his funeral.
13:14 It shows scenes of royal ancestor worship.
13:17 We see them on every single wall in this tomb.
13:20 They appear as statues being dragged on sledges.
13:24 We also see scenes from the funeral of professional mourning women.
13:34 All ancient Egyptian funerals culminated in an extraordinary ritual.
13:39 A magical tool was applied to the mouth and face of the mummy.
13:44 This was known as the opening of the mouth.
13:48 It restored the deceased's senses, giving them ability to see, breathe, and speak in
13:54 the afterlife.
13:59 The opening of the mouth ritual restored to the deceased all living functions.
14:04 You would eat, you would drink, you would engage in sexual activity.
14:07 Anything you enjoyed in this life, you could continue in the afterlife.
14:15 There's been some debates among Egyptologists as to whether it was enacted on the mummy
14:20 or the statue, but in reality, it doesn't really matter because if the statue had the
14:25 name of the deceased, then that was considered to be a physical manifestation of the deceased.
14:33 For many years, Egyptologists thought that the opening of the mouth was simply a symbolic
14:39 ceremony.
14:41 But new evidence shows that before it took place, another procedure was carried out directly
14:47 on the corpse of the deceased.
14:54 It was extremely physical.
14:56 Not a ceremonial touch with a magic wand, but a violent, forceful attack.
15:05 Professor Frank Ruheli is the head of the Swiss Mummy Project, which uses state-of-the-art
15:11 scientific methods to investigate ancient human mummies.
15:16 Professor Ruheli has examined around a hundred skulls from Egyptian mummies.
15:22 He has found that during mummification, the priests literally smashed open the mummy's
15:27 mouth and jaw, using tools specially designed for this gruesome purpose.
15:32 We definitely have some sort of physical damage or physical approach as part of this whole
15:38 embalming treatment for the oral cavity, so it's not only a ritual mouth opening, but
15:43 it's actually a physical mouth opening procedure.
15:47 You see different levels.
15:48 You know, here we have a bit less soft tissue.
15:51 Again, you see the lesion in the frontal lower part of the mummy, and you basically can imagine
15:56 that that must have been a forceful opening as part of the whole embalming procedure.
16:01 In some cases, we found, for example, embalming material, like the bitumen, the black sort
16:07 of material on top of the broken teeth, which is the best indicator that this is something
16:12 which actually happened during the process of embalming.
16:15 And you can clearly see on these virtual images that you can look from any side at the mummy.
16:20 You know, you can take the soft tissues away.
16:23 Here we basically just see the bone and the teeth left, which makes it easier to see the
16:27 lesions, for example.
16:29 So we clearly see the damage, the physical damage, and we see the dislocation of some
16:32 of these teeth.
16:35 The teeth were knocked out of place, evidence of a particularly forceful process.
16:43 These teeth must have been put there after the embalming, otherwise they would have been
16:48 washed away and gone into the lungs or into the stomach.
16:51 So obviously they broke some teeth.
16:53 Sometimes they gave back some teeth because they wanted to have the full body being complete.
16:59 The new evidence proves that funeral practices could be quite violent.
17:04 But for the Egyptians, this was essential so that the dead could function physically
17:09 in the afterlife, just as they did in this life.
17:13 So obviously, at least in some cases, there have been two procedures during the whole
17:18 mummification process.
17:19 First, the more physical one, where they really, with some sort of chisels, opened actually
17:24 the mouth, you know, which was sort of dried out.
17:27 And then there was obviously a second symbolic treatment later on, which was just by sort
17:32 of touching the fully wrapped mummy at the end of the whole process.
17:39 Opening the mouth was critical.
17:42 The dead needed the power of speech so they could recite the spells of the Book of the
17:47 Dead.
17:49 Only by uttering these spells aloud could they regain their powers in the afterlife.
17:55 Because they were now about to join the sun god Ray on his fantastic voyage into the underworld.
18:02 To survive it, they needed the help of the Book of the Dead.
18:08 Every year, this remarkable otherworldly journey was enacted symbolically at one of Egypt's
18:14 greatest sacred sites.
18:19 On the east bank of the Nile, near the city of Luxor, stands the majestic Temple of Karnak.
18:26 This sanctuary was dedicated to the mightiest of all Egypt's deities.
18:31 Amun-Re was an all-powerful combination of Amun, the king of the gods, and the sun god
18:39 Ray.
18:41 Karnak was built to glorify him.
18:43 Karnak is the largest temple complex in the world, a vast 200-acre sacred site, almost
18:50 double the size of the Vatican.
18:54 Work on the main complex started in the New Kingdom era under the pharaoh Thutmose I.
19:00 Later, kings greatly expanded the site, including the warrior pharaoh Seti I and his son Ramses
19:09 II.
19:11 These wall reliefs show the pharaoh smiting his enemies.
19:28 Ancient Egyptians saw Karnak as a bridge between this world and the cosmic realm, because here
19:37 man became god.
19:40 When a person died, they would become one with Osiris, the god of the underworld.
19:52 Just like Osiris, the king of the dead and the dead god, was resurrected by Isis, the
19:58 deceased wanted to become Osiris so that they could have an afterlife, could be resurrected,
20:04 could live again, to have an eternal life.
20:12 The afterlife mirrored the setting of the sun.
20:16 Every night, the sun god Ray died in the west.
20:20 During the 12 hours of the night, he undertook the journey through the underworld.
20:25 And the image what is actually is what is in the netherworld.
20:30 It is the trip of the ancient Egyptian god Ray in his boat to the afterlife.
20:40 Every year, the people of Karnak held a living reenactment of this journey, traveling along
20:46 the Nile to another superb sanctuary, the Temple of Luxor.
20:52 Near Karnak, this is the second great temple of the Nile's east bank.
20:57 It was built to celebrate the end of the sun god's journey.
21:01 Here he was reborn as the rising sun.
21:06 This symbolized the sun god's voyage through the underworld.
21:10 Everyone who died would join him on this fantastic journey.
21:23 The ancient necropolis of Saqqara near Cairo was not just a burial place for humans.
21:30 As symbols of the gods, animals offered protection to the human soul in the underworld.
21:36 And like humans, they were ritually mummified.
21:42 Near the Great Step Pyramid lies the entrance to a subterranean labyrinth, the Catacomb
21:48 of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead.
21:53 Over the last few years, an archaeological team has explored every inch of this great
21:58 catacomb, discovering the remains of some 8 million animals, mostly dogs.
22:05 But there were also jackals, foxes, falcons, cats, and mongoose.
22:11 Animal mummies were representations of the gods.
22:15 This mummified baboon represents Thaot, the god of the moon, who is present at the judgment
22:21 of the dead.
22:22 The mummified ram symbolizes Amun, the king of the gods, who protected the dead on their
22:28 travels through the underworld.
22:31 The dead needed all the protection they could get, because the realm they were about to
22:35 enter was a strange and terrifying place.
22:40 The underworld is powerfully visualized on the tomb walls of the Valley of the Kings.
22:45 Here, the dead would encounter strange creatures, the demons, who populated the 12 hours of
22:52 the night.
22:53 They shaped the destinies of the living as well as the dead.
22:58 For the Egyptians, the ability of the soul to get to the other side is just one of a
23:04 number of passages that they foresee.
23:24 The Book of the Dead, a great collection of spells and prayers, offered a way to survive
23:29 this perilous underworld.
23:35 The guardians and gates of the afterlife are depicted in terrifying detail on the tomb
23:41 walls of long-dead pharaohs.
23:47 Deep in the Valley of the Kings lies the tomb of the New Kingdom pharaoh, Ramses VI.
23:54 Its walls are adorned with stunning and atmospheric scenes.
23:57 It is represented in the tomb of Ramses VI.
24:03 It is like a papyri, a complete papyri depicted in the tomb.
24:09 And actually, it tells us about the trip of the sun god.
24:13 But now, he's not in a boat.
24:16 He's not going in a boat.
24:17 And the sun will go through darkness and we'll see all the difficulties inside.
24:26 The vision of the ancient Egyptian imagined the 12 hours of the night when the sun sets
24:35 and reborn again.
24:37 And that is really a beautiful vision of the ancient Egyptian to the afterlife.
24:44 These images and hieroglyphs describe a sinister landscape where the sun god interacts with
24:50 the inhabitants of six great underworld caves.
24:55 Among them are creatures called slaughterers who slay the unrighteous.
25:02 Egyptian demons were the supernatural guardians of the underworld.
25:06 They could be good or bad, and the dead could only hope to pass through the gates they guarded
25:12 by possessing special knowledge, the spells of the Book of the Dead.
25:24 But the living were not safe.
25:27 Demons were not confined to the afterlife.
25:31 They could also pass freely into the land of the living, where they could either help
25:36 human beings or wreak untold harm.
25:41 So we call them like certain powers, and they have huge effect which can affect our life.
25:49 It affects the dead, it affects the life, it affects the... in a good way and in a bad
25:56 way.
25:57 Ancient Egyptians believed that demons caused everyday illnesses such as headaches.
26:02 But there were magical spells to help them fight these malevolent creatures.
26:08 And when there is illness, certain illness caused by a certain demon, the spell, magical
26:13 spell will try to drive away the influence of this demon.
26:18 There was no kind of separation between magic, religion and medicine in ancient Egypt.
26:23 There were also good demons who could help humans in life-threatening situations.
26:29 The most dangerous time was childbirth.
26:32 There was a high child mortality rate, and it was considered to be a very dangerous time
26:38 for mother and for child.
26:40 And that's why you have these grotesque demons or creatures protecting the mother at childbirth
26:48 like Beth and Tawaret.
26:51 Demon magic is a powerful instance of overlap between worlds of the living and the dead.
26:57 But it is not the only one.
27:03 As the deceased continued their journey, they moved inevitably towards a critical event.
27:10 The final approach is powerfully revealed on the walls of another newly opened Egyptian
27:15 tomb.
27:16 On the west bank of the Nile, opposite Luxor, lies another sacred site.
27:27 The tomb of Roy, an Egyptian scribe who lived around 1300 BC.
27:36 The small size of the tomb is offset by the beauty and clarity of the paintings on its
27:41 walls.
27:44 The vivid scenes follow one another like an ancient comic strip.
27:50 Here, Roy and his wife have passed through one of the gates of the afterlife.
27:57 In the next scene, the god Horus leads them towards an event that would decide their fate
28:02 once and for all, a final judgment.
28:07 Before judgment, the deceased made what was known as the negative confession, listing
28:12 the many mortal sins he had not committed, such as causing hunger, inflicting pain, or
28:19 committing murder.
28:23 It's possible that some of the negative confession was used as a moral guidebook.
28:30 So as opposed to the commandments, what you shall do, shall not do, it's I have not done
28:36 murder, I have not stolen from the temple, I have not committed a sexual misdeed.
28:41 So through chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead and the negative confession, we get a
28:46 sense of the Egyptians' own code of morality.
28:51 After this extraordinary declaration came the judgment itself.
28:56 But the deceased might not have to face this test alone.
29:01 Images on some tomb walls show a husband and wife approaching it side by side.
29:06 This moment of truth would decide if they would have a happy existence or be consigned
29:11 to oblivion.
29:13 It was known as the weighing of the heart.
29:16 The weighing of the heart in the afterlife is the point where the gods determine whether
29:22 this person was a supporter of Maat, supported the proper order of the cosmos or not.
29:33 The weighing of the heart is the centerpiece of the Book of the Dead.
29:38 In this deadly ritual, the heart of the deceased is weighed against a feather, symbolizing
29:44 truth, order and justice.
29:49 Here we have an insight into the idea of the heart is also presents the will and the people
29:56 they were born with free will or created with free will.
30:01 So the heart is where it plays a very important role and the innocence and the source of evil
30:05 or source of goodness is also related to the heart.
30:09 Ancient Egyptians saw the heart as the vessel of a person's life force.
30:13 The essence of their being and a record of their time on earth.
30:17 If it was heavy with sin, the scales would drop and the heart would be devoured by Ammit,
30:22 the soul eater, a terrifying creature with the head of a crocodile, the body of a lion
30:28 and the back legs of a hippopotamus.
30:31 If your heart does not maintain equilibrium with the feather of Maat, it and of course
30:38 you by implication are tossed into the waiting gullet of a composite monster called Ammit,
30:46 whose name means she who devours.
30:50 For a heart devoured by Ammit, there was no return.
30:54 The dead would fade from memory and the sum total of their existence would cancel out.
31:03 Those who avoided this awful fate proceeded to a land known as the Field of Reeds.
31:09 Here they would experience an ideal version of the life they had led before death, eating,
31:15 drinking and even working.
31:22 The ancient Egyptians viewed the afterlife as a continuation of existence.
31:28 Once the dead had passed all the tests and creatures of the underworld, they would be
31:33 able to live on in an ideal version of their lives on earth.
31:38 The blessed dead hoped to spend eternity in paradise with Osiris, the god of the underworld.
31:46 This paradise was a group of islands covered in fields of rushes.
31:51 It lay in the east where the sun rises and it was called Ahru, the Field of Reeds.
31:57 Ahru was believed to be the soul of the Nile Delta, Egypt at its best.
32:04 It seems to be Egypt in perpetual festival.
32:08 You're constantly celebrating a festival, you're constantly at the banquet, you're always
32:12 fishing and fowling and ritual hunting.
32:16 The river level is always just right, never too high, never too low.
32:20 So it's the great things about Egypt all together forever.
32:30 But in the afterlife, there is additional work to be done, agricultural work primarily.
32:36 The Egyptians recognized very early on that for the proper functioning of society, there
32:41 has to be order, there has to be control.
32:43 And with this, of course, inevitably comes taxes and tax work.
32:48 So even in the netherworld, which the Egyptians appear to have hoped would be a good mirror
32:55 of the world they knew in Egypt, you're going to have to work and you're going to have to
33:01 pay your taxes.
33:06 To carry out this work, the dead could make use of supernatural helpers.
33:11 Ushabtis are by far the most common grave goods found in Egyptian tombs.
33:20 These small figurines were intended to act as servants for the deceased in the afterlife.
33:27 The Egyptians believe the entire cosmos is permeated by a force they call Hekka, that
33:31 we call magic.
33:33 And by harnessing that force, you can get these little Ushabti figures, these sort of
33:38 little miniature personal golems to go out and do your bidding and your work.
33:48 At the end of the 19th century, archaeologists working on the West Bank of the Nile discovered
33:54 an extraordinarily beautiful and completely intact tomb.
34:00 Untouched for thousands of years, it contains some of the most lavish paintings found in
34:05 any Egyptian sacred site.
34:09 The Field of Reeds is exquisitely depicted here.
34:14 The tomb belonged to a man named Senegem.
34:17 He and his wife, Ineferti, lived around 1280 BC, during the prosperous New Kingdom era.
34:25 The Tomb of Senegem is an amazing tomb.
34:28 For one thing, it was one of the earliest discovered in the Theban necropolis.
34:32 In the Tomb of Senegem, up to 20 individuals were buried, nine of whom in coffins with
34:39 names, and we know that they were members of Senegem's family.
34:44 Senegem had a prestigious and highly skilled profession.
34:54 Senegem was the artist responsible for two major tombs in the Valley of the Kings, the
35:00 Tomb of Seti I and Ramses II.
35:03 It was a good time to be an artist, to work on these funerary monuments.
35:15 To decorate the tomb walls, Senegem used paint made from water, gum, and ground pigments.
35:22 This was highly prestigious work.
35:25 Artists were very important in Egyptian culture.
35:28 Artists and artists worked very closely together.
35:32 Often Egyptologists would talk about artisans rather than artists because they worked in
35:36 teams and they never signed their work.
35:40 But the quality of their work speaks for itself.
35:42 They are definitely high-quality artists.
35:46 The images on the walls of Senegem's own tomb evoke his hopes of proceeding to a tranquil
35:52 afterlife existence.
35:54 An entire wall is covered with scenes from the Field of Reeds.
36:01 Surrounded by blue water, the land is rich with crops, trees, poppies, and cornflowers.
36:08 And yet there is something deeply personal and disarmingly human about these images.
36:13 The man and woman harvesting their crops are Senegem and his wife.
36:19 In another scene, the couple are worshipping Ray and Osiris, followed by a boy on a papyrus
36:25 boat, who is most likely their son.
36:29 Here, life and death remain connected, each one an echo of the other.
36:37 The door of Senegem's burial chamber is preserved at the Egyptian Museum.
36:43 It shows the artist and his wife playing Senet, an ancient board game.
36:49 They did not simply play for amusement.
36:52 Senet offered a direct spiritual connection to the world of the dead.
36:57 And through it, the dead could influence the living.
37:02 The coffin texts and the Book of the Dead refer to the Senet game as a way in which
37:09 the living and the dead can communicate.
37:16 When you play it, you go through the netherworld.
37:18 But if you play it during a festival, the souls of the dead, in whose tomb chapels you
37:24 may actually be playing, can influence the moves of the living in the game, and thereby
37:31 create a sort of synergy between the other world and this world.
37:36 The complex relationship between the living and the dead survived long after burial.
37:45 Every year at a celebration known as the Beautiful Festival of the Valley, families undertook
37:50 a joyful procession to the cemeteries of their ancestors.
37:59 They wanted to communicate with their departed relatives, because the dead had become powerful
38:05 in the afterlife.
38:08 The devotees placed bowls filled with offerings at the tombs, along with messages, letters
38:14 to their deceased relatives, asking how they were faring in the underworld.
38:24 The separation between the world of the dead and the world of the living is not as we have
38:30 here.
38:31 They were writing letters to the dead ancestors and family members who died, and asking them
38:37 for help and solution in some of their social problems, business problems.
38:42 So there was lots of interaction, good things or bad things happening, also by influence
38:47 of these forces, of the spirits of their relatives or the dead.
38:56 Ancient Egyptians believed that their ancestors could either help or harm them.
39:01 Like demons, they could play an active role on earth.
39:05 Letters of the dead indicate that, because we have a letter written by a man to his wife
39:11 from the Old Kingdom saying, "Haven't I been good to you?
39:14 Haven't I been faithful to you?
39:15 Haven't I put food in your belly and oil on your back?
39:19 Now, why are you sending this disease?
39:21 Please take it and go away."
39:24 So in some sense, that letter indicates that he thought that his wife, as now a demon,
39:31 is causing him to be ill.
39:33 For ancient Egyptians, life and death existed side by side, as part of one cosmic whole.
39:48 This worldview is very different from modern-day Christianity, Judaism or Islam.
39:54 Its origins have never been fully explained.
39:58 But a little-known artifact in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo could point to the answer.
40:05 The museum is known for its remarkable collection of coffins.
40:09 One of these, hidden away on an upper floor, is often overlooked.
40:14 It belonged to an Egyptian general called Seppi, who died around 1850 BC.
40:21 The coffin's wooden panels are illustrated with hieroglyphs and images.
40:26 They are a prototype version of the Book of the Dead, centuries before the book came into
40:31 regular use.
40:33 Painted in bright colors, these are the spells and sacred knowledge that Seppi needed to
40:39 survive the afterlife.
40:41 The coffin of Seppi in Cairo Museum used to be the best example because it has lots of
40:47 beautiful illustrations.
40:49 And we have other examples in several other museums, but they never reached this high
40:55 quality of inclusion, of iconography of living creatures.
41:00 Many of the gods and demons depicted here later featured in the Book of the Dead, such
41:05 as the god Osiris.
41:08 Surrounded by circles that symbolize fire, he holds a scepter of power in one hand and
41:13 an ankh, the symbol of life, in the other.
41:17 But these images are more than just a precursor to later concepts of the afterlife.
41:23 They are also the key to a remarkable new discovery.
41:30 In 2015, Egyptologist Wael Sherbini announced that he had unearthed a long-forgotten artifact
41:37 at the Cairo Museum.
41:39 A rolled-up leather manuscript, over eight feet long, produced over 4,000 years ago,
41:47 it is the longest and oldest Egyptian leather manuscript yet discovered.
41:52 The moment I saw the text and the script itself and things, I was, I couldn't believe that
41:56 this is, well, this is true.
42:01 Like the Book of the Dead, this extraordinary manuscript contains spells and images of supernatural
42:07 creatures.
42:08 But despite the similarities, it is not a Book of the Dead.
42:13 The rituals it describes have nothing to do with the afterlife.
42:17 They took place in the real world, in a temple, not a tomb.
42:23 Leather documents like this are astonishingly rare.
42:27 Almost none have survived because leather deteriorates rapidly when exposed to the elements.
42:32 The manuscript discovered by Dr. Sherbini only survived because somehow it was kept
42:38 in safe storage.
42:40 We never had anything in hand, simply because the weather in Egypt cannot, well, make these
42:48 things survive.
42:49 Number two, they were already in, mainly in temples or with priests or kept in archives
42:56 and these things were not in cemeteries.
43:00 The manuscript is in a highly fragile condition, broken into fragments.
43:05 It is extremely brittle and vulnerable to damage.
43:09 Because of this, it cannot yet be filmed.
43:16 The piece was in very bad condition.
43:18 This is a very unique piece.
43:22 They, scientifically, that was, it was difficult to treat because mostly we are used to papyri.
43:29 But for leather, that was very difficult.
43:34 After a painstaking analysis of the fragments, Dr. Sherbini managed to reconstruct some of
43:39 the text on paper.
43:42 What he discovered was breathtaking.
43:46 The leather manuscript was used in special temple rituals that had nothing to do with
43:51 death or the afterlife.
43:54 But many years later, these temple rituals were adapted for use in the afterlife.
44:00 They are the real world origins of the Book of the Dead.
44:04 Dr. Sherbini found proof of this on Seppi's coffin in the Cairo Museum.
44:10 The leather manuscript was produced centuries before the coffin.
44:13 But some of the spells and creatures depicted on the manuscript were exactly reproduced
44:18 on the coffin.
44:20 Here for the first time, we have color illustrations of these creatures exactly as we find in Seppi
44:29 and sometimes even some places even better.
44:32 So we have another version.
44:34 And this is, this points us to, well, it opens for us like a gate, new gate.
44:41 Originally, these spells allowed the user to access restricted areas in a temple.
44:47 But on the coffin, they are intended for the afterlife, to allow the dead to pass through
44:52 the gates of the underworld.
44:55 The Book of the Temple had evolved into the Book of the Dead.
45:00 This remarkable discovery could overthrow centuries of Egyptology.
45:04 It shows that the spells of the Book of the Dead were originally used for the living.
45:16 These living rituals still resonate in one of Egypt's best-preserved sacred sites.
45:22 A short distance north of Luxor lies the Dandara Temple Complex, dedicated to Hathor, the goddess
45:29 of women, love, and fertility.
45:34 The superb decorations on the temple ceiling show the journeys of the gods through the
45:38 heavens.
45:42 But these images also evoke the journeys and experiences that Egyptians faced in their
45:47 everyday lives.
45:51 The present structure dates from around 100 BC.
45:55 But there was an earlier sanctuary here as far back as 2600 BC, only a few centuries
46:02 before the leather manuscript was written.
46:07 The manuscript describes the kind of sacred ceremonies that would have taken place here.
46:13 This is fascinating evidence of the religion the Egyptians practiced 4,000 years ago in
46:19 their homes and in their temples.
46:22 Until now, Egyptologists knew little about this long-forgotten religion.
46:30 All this was lost and we only were left with funerary material.
46:34 But now, for the first time, we see that we have evidence.
46:41 In the temple, there were certain rooms where unlawful intrusion could cost the trespasser
46:46 his life.
46:48 The temple priests believed that the gods dwelt in these forbidden rooms and that they
46:53 were watched by supernatural guardians, such as these impassive demons armed with great
46:59 knives.
47:01 But it was not these imaginary demons who killed intruders, but the temple's own
47:06 human guards.
47:08 Sometimes they even burnt the offender's body so that his soul could not survive in
47:13 the afterlife.
47:15 In order to safely access the restricted areas, Egyptian priests needed special knowledge,
47:21 spells or secret codes.
47:24 The leather manuscript contained the information needed for this purpose.
47:30 The leather gives us assurance that we have most of the spells, which were already in
47:36 funerary context, had already an origin in rituals happening in real life.
47:43 The leather manuscript was used in temple rituals that reflected the everyday lives
47:48 of ordinary Egyptians.
47:52 The manuscript was later adapted for use in the afterlife.
47:56 This is why the journey through the afterlife involves passing through gates and interacting
48:01 with gods and demons.
48:05 And it could be why so many afterlife concepts and rituals originate in real world experiences.
48:15 Many of these rituals were rooted in the physical world, from mummification and the opening
48:20 of the mouth, to the great festivals of Opet and the valley.
48:27 So too was the belief that ancestors and demons could affect people's lives in real and
48:31 tangible ways, in everything from playing a board game to protecting mother and baby
48:37 during childbirth.
48:40 But the afterlife beliefs involved more than simple ceremony.
48:44 The Book of the Dead also embodied a moral code that was powerfully linked to life experience.
48:53 This evokes a potent sense of wrong and right, and many of the values that human beings still
48:59 hold dear in the present day.
49:05 The ancient Egyptians had a very high sense of morality.
49:07 They valued the idea of intelligence, hard work, and perseverance, and considered them
49:14 avenues to success.
49:16 When you do the right thing, when you maintain ma'at, when you keep a balance, you reproduce
49:24 what the gods do.
49:26 You separate out good and bad, right and wrong, and by doing that, you actually become a sort
49:33 of divinity yourself.
49:37 As alien as the ancient Egyptian religion may seem to the modern mind, it embodies a
49:42 basic morality that is surprisingly familiar.
49:48 Ancient Egyptians did not consider people to be dead in the way that we do today.
49:53 For them, the Book of the Dead could easily have been called the Book of the Living, because
49:59 for them, the afterlife was nothing more and nothing less than an echo of the living world,
50:07 an echo that resonates in their magnificent sacred sites, enduring monuments to life and
50:12 death in ancient Egypt.
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