How Did Ancient Egyptians Prepare For Death? | Life And Death In The Valley Of The Kings | Odyssey

This channel is part of the History Hit Network. 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 Kar and his wife Merit. I'm Egyptologist Dr Joanne Fletcher and I'm exploring the world of Kar and Merit 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 Kar 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 gentlemen 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. Kar'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 forever. So with Kar and Merit 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 idealized 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 texts, 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 Kar and Merit lived at the very heart of this industry in a desert village now known as Deir el-Medina. It's close to the spectacular Valley of the Kings where Kar 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, Kar needed to plan his route carefully. This was where his investments started with a guidebook. This scroll is known as the Book of the Dead. Kar'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 roadmap 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. Oh you who open the ways, who open the roads to my soul that is with you, so that it may enter with trepidation but emerge in peace from the abode of Osiris. Let it not be rejected. 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 Kar's copy was specially commissioned. It was the deluxe version, featuring personal references and grandiose claims. Words spoken by the great chief Kar. I know the northern gate of the sky, the place where Ra navigates by wind and oar. I am in charge of the rigging in the ship of the sun god, a tireless oarsman in Ra's great ship. While plane rolls of papyrus were relatively cheap, at around a fifth of a worker's monthly salary, one inscribed with funerary text like this could cost the equivalent of six months wages at least. So many hours of work have gone into it, almost 14 meters of texts, the inks had to be prepared, the colours ground up, 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, Kar and Meritz 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 Kar built on the outskirts of their village. And although another major expense on Kar and Meritz'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 has 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 Kar had clearly spared no expense. The walls depict all the things he and Merit loved in life and hoped to enjoy in the afterlife. It is like walking into Kar and Merit'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 Kar and Merit encapsulated in this tiny little room. This chapel was the first clue in a trail that would ultimately lead archaeologists to Kar and Merit's tomb. Because after three millennia, the chapel was discovered by an Italian diplomat, Bernardino Dreveti. Appointed French consul to Egypt by Napoleon in 1803, Dreveti's main interest was amassing antiquities. I think it's safe to say that Dreveti'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. Dreveti 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 Kar and Merit's chapel. This costly painted funerary stele was a kind of memorial stone made to ensure their names would live on and its presence in Turin would eventually lead to the discovery of their tomb. It shows Kar 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 Kar and Merit 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 Kar. 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 Kar and Merit's preparations for eternal life. The main investment would be their tomb. So I'm travelling to the Valley of the Kings where Kar 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 a slot at the ceiling and then worked out outwards 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, Kar 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 Kar'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 Kar 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 did. Don't forget these tomb makers are the experts, that's why the tombs in the Deir el-Medina are amongst the best in the world. With the help of his colleagues, Kar 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 Kar 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 Kar and Merit's village. Egyptologist Ernesto Schiaparelli was director of the Egyptian Museum in Turin. He was very familiar with the stele of Kar and Merit and also knew their tomb had never been found. He could read the hieroglyphs, he knew there was an important individual called Kar, had a wife called Merit 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? Eleni Vasilika, 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 could it be? But Kar was clever, wasn't he? Kar was sly. He knew what was going to go into the tomb, so he wanted to hide it. I think Schiaparelli must have stood here, scratched his head and said, knowing where the stele was already in the museum since 1824, he must have 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. That must have been an amazing feeling, a sealed door in an Egyptian tomb, wow. It was a moment really incredible for them because all these tombs, most of these tombs, have been sacked at some point and very few intact tombs, and of course so well furnished as this one. Well, 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. Yes, it tells us so much about reality, real lives in ancient Egypt, not just gods and pharaohs. Moment. Since Schiaparelli, hardly anyone's been into the tomb, but Delaney and I have been granted special access. I think this is it. I think so. This is it? Yeah. He was a clever guy. He was a very clever guy. He was really sly. Well, that's why his tomb stayed secret for so long because it is so unexpected. Situated at the bottom of this rather deep shaft, getting down into the tomb is no easier today than it would have been in Carr's time. I don't believe it. Is that Schiaparelli was here? Yeah, more or less. Says, discovered intact by the Italian archaeological mission in 1906. And look, they've written over the ancient red ochre marks of the draftsmen sort of planning out. 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. Well, that sense of excitement Schiaparelli and his men must have felt because here there were not just one intact doorway blocked, but two. Having removed the blockage from the second brick doorway, Schiaparelli and his team found themselves in a large antechamber. It contained Carr's exquisitely crafted bed, beautifully painted pottery and floral bouquets. But there was much, much more to come. Oh, it's really exciting approaching the burial chamber. And this is where presumably, and this is where Schiaparelli rapped on the door and then turned around and said, how about the key? So he must have known that he was on to a good thing. After having seen a bed out here, he knew there was more to find. One of the men who entered the tomb with Schiaparelli was Englishman Arthur Wagle, chief inspector of antiquities for Upper Egypt. He immediately recorded the astonishing sight. I should think it is the greatest find ever made, or rather the most unique. And brimming over with points of interest. When Schiaparelli's team arrived, the chamber was crammed full of objects. But today, all that remains is a colony of bats. 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. There are two huge coffins. We have not yet seen inside, but doubtless there will be jewels. Chairs, beds, boxes, vases, several of immense value. Along this wall is the coffin of Merit. This place is full of, yes, small bats. I know, thank you. Stand behind me, I'll protect you. And then that back wall, that was Kara's sarcophagus. Which was substantially larger than hers. In ancient Egypt, children didn't always inherit their parents' belongings. And almost everything Kara and Merit 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 Kara and Merit, 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 feeling how Schiaparelli must have felt coming in here in 1906. It's a rare treat, it really is. The wealth of objects that had been discovered in the tomb testified to the great investment Kara and Merit had made. Of their hundreds of belongings, many had been designed and made at great expense, purely for use in the afterlife. This intricate statuette of Kara shows him with his palms on his starched kilt, a sign of humility before the gods. Such statues were idealised, a version 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 Kara's chest. One of the most precious purpose-made items found in the tomb is Merit'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 Kara's lifetime. Cheaper yellow ochre was often used to imitate gold, but Kara had chosen the real thing for Merit'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 Merit was buried, again covered in gold leaf. Almost certainly intended for Kara, it is only inscribed with his name. But it was used for Merit because it seems she died first. But how did Merit 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 Kara and Merit'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 Venesis and radiologist Curtis Ophir to take a look at Merit's CT scans to see what they reveal about her on the day she died. She's certainly not in the early 20s, and I would have 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 that her joints are quite well preserved indicates that 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 and possibly unexpectedly. So Merit's death left Carr 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 Merit's scans reveal something very surprising. This is a cross-section looking down into Merit'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 Merit's mummy has revealed that she was preserved differently. Instead of using dry salt, Merit 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 have 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 Merit'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 Merit'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 Merit 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 have cost Carr a small fortune. But it was worth it, if it put Merit on a fast track to the afterlife. But Carr'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 Merit 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 Merit still wears. Her mummy is still adorned in this beautiful broad collar, which we can see on the image of Merit here. Now the top five rows were made up of these rather elongated green beads. And they are actually called 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 Merit 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 Merit 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, Merit 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 Merit 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 Carr made sure Merit 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, a funerary offering of Osiris, the great god, lord of eternity, that he may make an offering of beef, birds, and everything to the soul of Merit. Some of her other possessions were also adapted for Merit'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. Carr clearly gave careful thought and spared no expense when preparing his wife for eternity. And although he'd overseen her burial, Merit 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 an ostraca. She says, Oh, husband, you should be here helping me. Settle 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 now? What are you doing? What are you? Oh, 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 are 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. 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 the 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 here, 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. This Senet board was one of the items found in Carr and Merritt's tomb, and Carr might have played this game close to their chapel, hoping to ease Merritt's path through the underworld. As there had probably been an age gap between them in life, it seems it wasn't long before Carr 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 Merritt, 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, a 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's probably led a reasonably healthy life up until close to when he died. So Carr died quite suddenly, like his wife, and like Merritt, Carr 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 show something else placed on his forehead. This is a snake's head, the head of a cobra, beautifully rendered in carnelian and 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 Carr'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 Carr, their sort of elevating Carr. 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. Carr 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 Merit'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, 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 Carr'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 what the procession would have looked like. This is the tomb of Ramos, governor of Thebes, who lived at the same time as Carr and Merritt. 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 Carr and Merritt's. You've got these beautiful painted wooden boxes carrying all the personal items of the deceased, a walking stick, just like Carr's. Then you've got the chair of the deceased, just like the one that Carr 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. 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, that their thick black eyeliner is running. And any women that wear mascara understand the problem. You start to cry, the makeup runs down your face. And the artist, 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 Ka all the way up here on ropes, the bearers would carefully raise up Ka's black and gold anthropoid coffin to place it here, looking out exactly where I'm sitting today, as if Ka was preparing to be relaunched into the next world, if you like. It had been a very dramatic, profound moment for the family, as Ka once again stood upright in front of his tomb chapel. And at this point, the son, the eldest son, Amenopet, would have stepped forward with the special adze or 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 Ka could once again hear in the next world, and all his senses restored. The ritual would also be performed on Ka'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 lotus, 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 Ka and Merit 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 the ancient Egyptian life here, the bread, accompanied by the all-important onions and garlic. And this was the standard sort of workman's packed lunch, one of these on a daily basis with the garlic here. That's your kind of ancient Egyptian packed lunch, glass of beer, and ancient Egyptian plowman's. And we do know that in the case of the onions and the garlic, and Schiaparelli and his team went into the tomb and smelt them. After three and a half thousand 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. These are Dom palm nuts, although I've never personally eaten one. They apparently taste like caramel. All this kind of food in the tomb of Carr and Merritt set out very carefully as a kind of formal banquet for the deceased, would have allowed the very souls of Carr and Merritt to have enjoyed the very essence of all this food. But Carr's Book of the Dead shows he wanted his afterlife to be fueled by drink as well as food. Now this is spell 148 in the Book of the Dead, which is basically the spell for 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 Carr'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. And 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 Carr 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 Carr and Merit'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, Carr and Merit, like all ancient Egyptians, intended to have a really good time. And 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 Carr and Merit giving us an idea of that. Here we have Carr and Merit'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. Carr was finally laid to rest in his tomb. His large black sarcophagus was already waiting for him. The belongings of Carr and Merit were set out all around them and covered in dust sheets. Then, leaving the lamp still lit, the funeral party left the burial chamber, sweeping away their footprints as they went and locking the wooden door behind them. The workmen then bricked up and plastered the two successive walls and backfilled the tunnel with rubble. But Carr's journey into the afterlife was not yet complete. No matter how much he'd spent, there was one final test that all Egyptians must pass. Although this scene dates from about a thousand years after Carr's time, it clearly depicts the crucial moment in the soul's journey to the afterlife. Now, this remarkable scene is known as the weighing of the heart. It's the ultimate judgment 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 judgment. Now, it's presided over by the goddess Mart, the goddess of truth, who's 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 Cyrus, the kind of ultimate judge of all dead souls. And 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 Mart, which she wears on her head. It represents truth, goodness, purity. If the deceased had lived a good and blameless life, their heart will be light and free of sin. However, if they'd been naughty, bad, done anything to upset the gods, then the heart will 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 lion's parts and a sort of crocodile 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 will be dying a second death, a final death. Earthly death isn't anything to be afraid of because you pass through into simply another state of existence, if you've been good. All evil souls, their hearts were fed to this creature, consumed and that was it, finished forever. But once again, there was something you could buy to help you through this final trial. And Kar'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. And when the deceased spirit was in the presence of the gods in the next world and had to account for their actions in life, had they led 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, implores the heart, keep quiet, do not give false witness against me. Basically, shut it. So it seems that Kar had purchased every form of insurance he possibly could to ensure the perfect afterlife that he and Merit had always dreamed of. From their elaborate golden coffins to their well-hidden subterranean tomb, an expensively decorated memorial chapel. And of course, the intricate Book of the Dead in which Kar describes how he wants to spend his eternity. In Kar's Book of the Dead, by far the largest section, 200 separate rows are devoted to the so-called spells of transformation, listing all the variations that Kar wanted his soul to become, all the many forms he could take in the afterlife. Now, lots of these relate to birds. His soul wanted 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. And 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 Merit in a garden in a summer house. But coming forth into the light and playing Sennet seated in the summer house, coming forth as a living soul. 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 Kar and Merit, having entered their world, I think they've really achieved a kind of immortality because three and a half thousand 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.