For 5000 years, Egypt has been shaped by one thing more than any other: the River Nile. For historian Bettany Hughes, this is the journey of a lifetim…
Bettany visits Egypt's gateway to the world, the Nile's mouth, before boarding her fabulous 'dahabiya' and meeting the crew that will guide her upriver the entire length of Egypt. Sailing south of Cairo, there's time for Bettany to learn a few ropes onboard before she braves the underground tunnels of a collapsed pyramid, where the earliest known hieroglyphic writing can be found.
A hundred miles south of Cairo, Bettany starts on a stretch of Nile that few visitors ever get to see. Once Egypt's main highway, this was where Cleopatra herself used to travel and be seen by her people. Further upriver, Bettany tracks down Egypt's lost emblem, the blue lotus flower, and visits the beautiful tombs where Tutankhamen's discoverer Howard Carter first got hooked on Egypt.
Traffic on the Nile is building, signaling Bettany's arrival into Luxor. The crew takes a well-earned break whilst Bettany heads to the west bank to see where generations of skilled royal tomb-builders lived. Bettany also takes in the modern night life and the giant Karnak Temple before returning to the river in time to cross paths with the oldest steam ship on the Nile.
Bettany reaches the Egyptian Nile's southernmost parts. Once a dangerous crocodile haven, now this stretch of the Nile is just startlingly beautiful. Bettany joins archaeologists at the temple of the crocodile god, as they uncover and extract a giant stone message board from the temple foundations that reveals images and hieroglyphics made over a thousand years ago.
