The Untold History Of The Women Who Dominated Egypt | Egypt's Lost Queens | Odyssey

Ancient Egypt, a rich history that lasted for over 6,000 years. The lives and deaths of its leading characters still fascinate us today. We come to museums like this one to get a real sense of the grandeur of ancient Egypt. Monumental statues to monumental men. But when we start to look around at the faces here, they are just that, men. So where are all the women of ancient Egypt? Well, of course, the most famous is Cleopatra the Great. But then we have to go from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the monumental to the tiny. Because most of the images we have of the great woman are in coin form. But what about all the great women who came before Cleopatra? I want to find out who they were. If you know where to look, the story of ancient Egypt is also the story of extraordinary women who left behind an extraordinary legacy. Here she is. Arsinoe, pharaoh, the goddess. Ancient Egypt was a society in which women had more rights than anywhere else in the ancient world. And I'm going to be looking at four of my favourite women of power. Each one a trailblazer who, in different ways, paved the way for the rest. The venerated mother. Might look like a hole in the ground, but this is where it all began. The powerful leader. Look at me, I am a pharaoh. The perfect diplomat. Not only beautiful, this woman was pretty clever too. And Cleopatra's globally minded role model. She knew that knowledge really was power. Together they created a legacy, a female authority that would influence not only Cleopatra, but generations to come. These women were incredible role models to all of us, even in the modern world. And by telling their story, I'll be taking a fresh look at this great civilisation through the eyes of the other half of ancient Egypt. It's women. Watch hundreds of exclusive history documentaries with a subscription to History Hit. Our goal is to bring you award-winning documentaries that cover the events and figures that have shaped our world all in one place. Delve into the history of the ancients with History Hit's exclusive offering of documentaries. Explore with us the enchanting Temple of Karnak or take a deep dive into the fascinating prehistory of Scotland. We also aim to bring you the stories and legends that shaped our world through our award-winning podcast network. Sign up now for a free trial and Odyssey fans get 50% off their first three months. Just be sure to use the code ODYSSEY at checkout. Now to understand the women of ancient Egypt, we need to go right back to the beginning, to the Egyptians' own story of creation. A story that gave its female characters unparalleled powers and status. Powers inherited from the very gods themselves. Now the ancient Egyptians had countless versions of the creation story but most of them centred on their very distinctive environment and the life-giving waters of the wonderful River Nile. Now in essence, what these creation myths tried to suggest was that all life had started from these waters of creation from which the great sun, the source of all life, had first emerged to create the deities. The multitude of Egyptian deities, male and female, no less important and just as numerous as each other. The most famous of these was the great goddess Isis and Osiris, brother-sister gods who were also husband and wife. Now according to the ancient Egyptians, unlike most ancient cultures, it was Isis who was the active dominant partner whereas Osiris was a rather passive fellow. In fact, he was killed off early on in the story. Oh, poor Osiris. The only power in the universe strong enough to bring him back to life and resurrect him was his great sister, Isis, who brought to bear all her great magic to resurrect him from the dead. And from this pair, so began all humankind. Such stories of Isis, this powerful mythical woman, are in many ways key to understanding how women had such prominence in Egyptian life. For Isis was venerated as a divine mother figure and the first real woman I'm going in search of gained her own power and prestige as a mother. She lived in the early time of the pharaohs known as the Old Kingdom, more than four and a half thousand years ago. And her name was Hetepheres. For the ancient Egyptians, death was simply a transition to the afterlife into which the soul would need to be reborn. And to house their souls as well as their bodies, the Egyptian elite built ever more elaborate tombs. The most spectacular such tomb is the Great Pyramid of Giza, final resting place of the powerful Old Kingdom leader, Pharaoh Khufu. Everybody comes to Egypt to see these, and they are very big. They are very grand and they are very imposing. But I'm here today to see something even more interesting, just over there. I'm looking for the tomb of Khufu's mother, Queen Hetepheres. For as mother of the king, it seems that Khufu wanted her to be buried close by to ensure his rebirth into the next world. So I've come here to find the source, to find the origins of this whole entire site. And it all started here. Might look like a hole in the ground, but this is where it all began. This is the entrance to the tomb of Hetepheres. And I believe it was this mother's life-giving force that shaped this entire plateau forever. Now in Hetepheres' day, this landscape was a very special landscape. It was on the edge of the desert where the Egyptians traditionally buried their dead. In the land of the West, the land where the sun set. And yet at her time, this entire plateau had nothing on it. The rest of this necropolis unfolded as a result of her tomb being here. And it was filled with the most spectacular golden treasures because 20 meters down this steep shaft at the very bottom is the burial chamber. And Hetepheres' personal belongings covered in gold were found there in 1925. Hetepheres' tomb is the oldest intact royal burial ever found, predating the tomb of Tutankhamen by 1,300 years. And all the contents of that tiny little tomb came here to this quiet corner of Cairo Museum. This is surely the ultimate in flat-pack furniture. This is the bedroom suite, if you like, of the great queen Hetepheres. It's absolutely stunning. We've got her bed, her silver headrest, one of her gold thrones, and all manner of gold-covered boxes. And among these boxes, a unique collection of jewelry was found. These spectacular silver bangles which she would have worn up each arm. These are bespoke. And if you look very carefully, you can see they're all slightly different sizes. They start off quite large and then they get increasingly smaller towards the wrist. They would have fitted no one else. And these are kind of made to measure, just to fit her, just to fit the great queen. It's absolutely extraordinary to think that this is 4,500 years old. As King Khufu's mother, Hetepheres was the most important woman in his life. So he made sure that her tomb was filled with all the luxuries she would need in the afterlife. This fabulous gold carrying chair which was given to Queen Hetepheres by her son is a fantastic work of art. Her titles are inlaid in these fine gold hieroglyphs. Down the back of the chair, inlaid in this dark ebony wood. You can see the little figure of the bee and the plant. And right immediately below that is the vulture. And that means mother. Mother of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt. The next sign is a golden falcon. Follower of Horus. And then scroll right down through all these wonderful titles that Hetepheres held in her lifetime. Overseer of the affairs of the palace. She whose every command is carried out. Daughter of the god's body. And the last six hieroglyphs give us the name Hetepheres. The woman herself. And in the very final hieroglyph, that's the so-called determinative, which shows her enthroned. And we come face to face with the woman herself. Being the mother of the king certainly had its perks. And being carried around was one of them. For a slightly less royal ride in the desert, I've asked Fatih and Ibrahim for help. Now, this wonderful thing is a replica of Hetepheres' carrying chair. And I'm going to try it out now. It really symbolizes how precious this royal woman was. That like the goddesses, she was carried around. She was far, far too important to merely walk across the ground. So she was carried everywhere in a chair like this one. This is so good. This is really good. I wouldn't like to go very far in it though. Now, although in many ways Hetepheres was the source of everything here, she was only ever the king's mother. She may have given birth to him, guided him throughout his life, and enabled him to enter the next world. But she was only ever royal mother. Unlike my next mighty woman of power, the ultimate Egyptian pharaoh. Move forward over a thousand years to my next choice, another great royal woman destined to become one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs. Her name was Hatshepsut. And although at least 15 women are now known to have ruled Egypt as pharaoh, Hatshepsut would really make history as both a monumental builder and a royal warrior. Although Hatshepsut was of direct royal descent, becoming pharaoh wasn't so straightforward and required some skillful political maneuvering. At the death of her husband, the reigning pharaoh, her stepson and heir to the throne was too young to rule. So Hatshepsut ruled on his behalf and was eventually crowned king. But how did she hold onto her power? Staring down on visitors to Cairo Museum, her intimidating presence can still be felt. All pharaohs had to look the part, but it was especially important for a woman to project herself as the perfect leader. It's all about how you looked. If you look like a pharaoh, you were a pharaoh. You took on the attributes of a pharaoh and that's exactly what Hatshepsut's doing here. The correct crown, the tie on false beard and other parts of the regalia were all meant to emphasize to her subjects because you're looking at 95, 99% illiterate subjects. They couldn't read royal edicts. They couldn't read any sacred inscription. It was all about the visual. And that is what Hatshepsut was so brilliant at doing. This ultimate in propaganda. Look at me, I am a pharaoh. Wearing a tie on false beard was considered a divine attribute of the gods. All pharaohs had one and Hatshepsut was no exception. But she didn't confine such visually dazzling statements of power to her own appearance. I'm traveling to Hatshepsut's power base 500 kilometers south of Cairo to Thebes, modern day Luxor. For here, Hatshepsut remodeled the landscape with a whole series of monumental buildings. The most famous, her sublime funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri. Known by its ancient name, the most sacred of sacred places, the temple is one of Egypt's most spectacular buildings, the ultimate eternal monument. Now seeming to emerge from the foot of the Theban hills, Hatshepsut's temple is a brilliant piece of architecture. Its clean geometric lines contrast stunningly well against the rugged rocks behind them. It's surely one of the most beautiful temples in Egypt and the most fitting place to commemorate the life of the great female pharaoh Hatshepsut. The setting of the temple is indeed awe-inspiring. But the reasons behind its construction go far beyond the aesthetic. Now Hatshepsut built here for three specific reasons. Firstly, it lay directly across from the great temple of the state god Amun-Ra. Secondly, offerings could be left for her soul for eternity rather than disturbing the peace of her tomb. And thirdly, this place was filled with scenes personally selected by Hatshepsut illustrating and emphasizing her right to the throne. In short, this was a piece of permanent political propaganda. But Hatshepsut wasn't just a builder. She was also a military commander, twice leading campaigns herself against Egypt's enemies in Nubia. And some of the offerings discovered at Deir el-Bahri hint at Hatshepsut's military capabilities. She led her troops into battle on at least two occasions. Texts describe her as a conqueror, she who will be a conqueror, flaming against her enemies. This very special thing, it's a votive offering presentative of an axe blade, a copper alloy, and it's inscribed with Hatshepsut's names and titles. And I think in a single object, it encapsulates this female pharaoh, this woman warrior. It's a wonderful thing. Having proved her military skills, Hatshepsut turned her attention to securing the nation's peaceful prosperity. She formed economic alliances that brought wealth into her country, trading with kingdoms like Hunt to the south on the Red Sea coast. Now Hatshepsut certainly expanded Egypt's trade routes and initiated commerce on a large scale. She also reopened the very lucrative trading routes with the land of Punt down the Red Sea coast. And we can see exactly this scene behind us now. These are the Egyptians arriving in Punt. These are the Puntites coming out to meet them. And this is the place where the commerce occurred. It's a small low chest on which the Egyptians have placed all the valuable goods, the beads, the bangles, the metal weaponry, with which they're then going to trade with the Puntites for this most precious of commodities, that kind of red dome shape. That's actually a huge pile of myrrh resin. Myrrh and other resins were traditionally used in temple rituals, in mummification, and were also key ingredients in perfume production. And Hatshepsut herself is known to have used fragrant myrrh oil rubbed into her skin to, as she puts it herself, gleam like the stars before the whole land. So in the days before the modern celebrity, Hatshepsut also had her own signature fragrance. The details in such scenes certainly help piece together how Hatshepsut managed to hold onto power for over 20 years. But through one intriguing object, I can even experience a little bit of time travel. That's quite amazing. This small alabaster vessel still has its original contents after almost three and a half thousand years. And her names and titles are again inscribed on the front, but look inside, it's the actual imported resin. This is the stuff that's referred to on the walls at Deir el-Bakri, and here it is. It's amazing, it's as if we can smell the past. We can't just see it, we can't just read the words. It's contained in this very vessel. Maintaining power for more than two decades of peace and prosperity, Hatshepsut was the most successful female monarch Egypt had yet seen. And she had proved beyond doubt that an effective leader didn't have to be a man. As part of Hatshepsut's master plan for posterity, she commissioned two pairs of pink granite obelisks at Karnak Temple. At almost 30 metres high, this one is the tallest still standing anywhere in Egypt. In her own words, she tells us why she wanted to set up such striking monuments as a tribute to her father, to the one who made me, she says. And by father, she didn't mean her natural parent, but Amun, the king of the gods to whom this whole temple is dedicated. Their tops would have been capped with electrum, which is a blend of gold and silver. And the idea is they acted as a kind of esoteric lightning rod to catch the very first rays of the sun at dawn, to transmit that solar power down here into the heart of Karnak Temple, where it could then be redistributed for the good of Egypt. Karnak Temple is the place where the god Amun was worshipped. This huge religious complex was continually expanded and embellished by successive rulers. And Hatshepsut made sure that she paid tribute to the king of the gods in the grandest of styles. This is the Red Chapel of Hatshepsut. This shrine was known as the place of the heart of Amun, the state god, and lay at the very centre of his great temple, Karnak. It was kind of like a sacred garage which housed the sacred bark or boat on which the god's statue stood and would have been paraded around in procession. As we can see here on these wall scenes behind me, you can see the rows of shaven-headed priests bringing in the sacred bark on which the statue of the god is housed, hidden behind these little curtains to keep him from profane eyes. And the bark itself is being greeted by the two co-rulers, the young male pharaoh, Tuthmosis, bringing up the ceremonial ria as a kind of glorified magician's assistant. He's burning incense to welcome the god's arrival. And yet centre stage is Hatshepsut herself. Make no mistake, she's the most important figure here. She is the senior partner. She is the child of god. Through such lavish endowments, Hatshepsut was demonstrating her veneration to Amun. And assisted by the priests, the pharaoh had to personally perform the necessary religious ceremonies to maintain cosmic order. And this is where Hatshepsut herself would have stood to perform the sacred rites before the god, presenting the offerings and pouring the sacred water all around the god's statue. Of course, Hatshepsut would have used a golden vessel and we have a rusty old bucket, but it gives you kind of an idea of what would have occurred. With the sacred water channeled out and beyond the chapel, the god's protection spread throughout the entire land and beyond. For Hatshepsut wished to be eternal, like an undying star. And she certainly gained a unique place in history. The feelings aroused by the notion of a female pharaoh remained so strong that for some, Hatshepsut's being cast as a kind of wicked stepmother figure, kind of a woman who dared to masquerade as a man, dressing up with the false beard of kingship and usurping the right to the throne. For others, however, she's a huge inspiration, an amazing woman who kind of led the way for generations to come. Hatshepsut's reign had been a triumph and yet at her death, her stepson took sole power and for now, female rule was over. Leaders like Hatshepsut reveal ancient Egypt as one of the most egalitarian societies of the ancient world, where women could achieve high powered roles, own property, make business deals, earn equal pay and go to court. It may all sound reasonable now but it was highly unusual back then. I've arranged to have tea with the academic Sahar al-Mughi, who's written extensively about the legacy of these incredible ancient role models. Tell me Sahar, in terms of the female rulers of ancient Egypt, when you were growing up, was it easy to find out about them, about their legacy? Because I know there's very little in the Egyptological literature about them. They seem to have been swept very much under the academic carpet but what's the situation in Egypt? Was it different for you? I grew up not knowing about those women except in bits and pieces in boring history books at school. In the process of writing, I was like getting to know my mothers and grandmothers and that's why in my writings, those female goddesses come back to life as inspiring figures. The amount of power that I received from knowing about them through my own eyes, it was immense. It was magical. It was like, wow, this is where I come from. It must be said, female pharaohs were quite a rarity and by the 19th dynasty, a new regime of ex-military men from the north had taken power in Egypt. Men were now very much in control and the royal women had to find other tactics. Around 150 years after the death of Hatshepsut, my next woman used diplomatic skills to assert herself at the heart of Egyptian politics. Her name was Nefertari. Meaning the loveliest one of all, Nefertari was not only beautiful, she was also one of Egypt's most gifted queen consorts. As a very young woman, Nefertari had married a prince who would become one of Egypt's most famous pharaohs. Ramses II. And it's quite impossible to go anywhere in Egypt without bumping into him for he ruled longer, built bigger and certainly boasted more than almost any other pharaoh. In ancient Egypt, size is everything. And Ramses himself has accurately been described as the giant planet Jupiter, brilliant at a distance but essentially a ball of gas. And this really cuts to the heart of his policy of quantity over quality, the bigger the better. And this is wonderfully expressed by this statue here. We can see Ramses on a colossal scale while even his favourite wife Nefertari clutches at the back of his leg, not even as high as his knee. So in order to find out more about her, we have to travel beyond Egypt's traditional boundaries. So I'm going 400 kilometres south to tell a different side of this story, to the temple of Abu Simbel. As one of the most monumental examples of pharaonic might, it was built on the border with volatile Nubia and was designed to strike fear and respect into all who sailed past along the Nile toward Egypt. This is the temple of Abu Simbel, built by Ramses II during his 67-year reign. And it's typical of the man. It's massive. It's monumental. And yet it's only one of the temples at Abu Simbel. In short, it's only half the story. The story I'm really interested in is next door. Within a temple dedicated, for once, not to Ramses, but to his wife. And here she is, the great queen Nefertari, standing a colossal 33 feet tall. And if you look very carefully, you'll see she's just that little bit taller than her famous husband Ramses II because of the tall feather crown she's wearing. Built to make a statement, the temple's towering size conveyed a strategic political message that puts Nefertari at the heart of power. And so for Ramses to erect these massive statues of his wife, he's really bringing into play every force at his disposal, including the good lady wife, the little woman at home, quite literally. But out here in Nubia, in the wilds of this desert landscape, these volatile tribespeople, he needed her help. And she was a very potent force. Her colossal striking image reveals that Nefertari was the ultimate trophy wife. In the interior of her temple, Nefertari appears in a variety of scenes, performing a series of sacred rites, taking an active role next to her husband. She's got her arms raised. She's encouraging her royal husband Ramses, who's in that classic pose of an Egyptian pharaoh, smiting the enemy. Basically, this is a state execution. They cower at his feet. He holds them by the top of the head with the hair. And once they're in that position, he brings the weapon down on their head, literally bashes out their brains. And all the while, Nefertari on the sidelines is a kind of royal cheerleader, if you like. Two sides of the same coin, but of no less value than a husband. It's a very, very potent scene. There is definitely no doubt that this was a royal double act. Egyptologist and Abu Simbel director, Dr. Ahmed Saleh, has spent many years studying the images within both these temples. Is there enough information in the evidence we have to try and get an understanding of what they were like as a couple? He loves her very much. He married her before he ascended to the throne. That means he had fallen in love with Nefertari. She accompanied him like a deputy. Yet it seems that when Nefertari sailed this far south, her health was fading fast. The sad story here is Nefertari didn't see her temple. She was sick. She was staying in the boat. Maybe she can see the statues of her outside, but she didn't come inside her temple. What a shame she could only view the exterior. At least she saw her statues. This is a sad story. It is a sad story. I think this is the last time of Nefertari. This is, we are talking about the 24th year of his reign. This is the last year of Nefertari because when she go back to Cyprus, I think she died and she buried there. I'm traveling back north to get inside Nefertari's tomb, the place where I can find more evidence of the woman herself. Located in the Valley of the Queens, its scenes are so delicate that access is limited. I've just been given permission to personally unlock the tomb of Nefertari, the great royal wife of Ramses II. And I'm really excited because this is an absolute gem of a tomb. I've only ever seen it once before when I was much younger. So this is gonna be a rare treat. That is a big key. Oh my word. Oh wow. Covering 520 square meters, it's brilliant jewel-like images vividly depict her journey into the hereafter. The scenes just continue one after another, after another. There's nothing here left to chance. Nothing's thrown in simply as a little bit of pretty decoration. It's like a machine functioning to keep Nefertari's soul alive in the next world. Great attention was given to her appearance. Her eyes and eyebrows outlined in black, a subtle red color on her cheeks and lips, and the most exquisite golden jewelry adorning her. Nefertari, the loveliest of all. Her name implies incredible beauty and she really lives up to this. This name that she has. She's the ultimate high-maintenance woman. She was certainly beautiful, but one particular wall scene chose Nefertari in the company of Thoth, the god of knowledge and literacy, who was selected for a reason. We come to this wonderful scene which really ties in to what we know about Nefertari in life. Nefertari's chosen to have the weighing of the heart, the judgment of the dead, seen from the Book of the Dead, written out but illustrated in a rather unique manner because sheer hitch, here she is. She's having herself in the guise of a devotee of Thoth, the ibis-headed god of literacy and writing. And the emphasis on writing can be seen on the scribal palette which stands between Nefertari and the god Thoth. And there she's presenting herself before Thoth. She says, I am a scribe. I am a scribe. That's quite an emphatic statement. Not only beautiful, this woman was pretty clever too. As a royal wife, she would of course have had scribes to write on her behalf. But being able to read and write hieroglyphs was then regarded as the ultimate in academic achievement. And Nefertari made sure that her credentials would be clearly portrayed of austerity. Being the wife of such a domineering husband would also have required a considerable amount of gentle persuasion and soft power. Skills best shown in diplomatic correspondence exchanged with Egypt's great rivals, the Hittites of Anatolia in modern Turkey. Nefertari is known to have corresponded with her opposite number in the Hittite heartland, the great queen Pudahipa. And it's amazing that one of these very letters has actually survived. Nefertari would have composed her own letter in the Egyptian language. And then a bilingual scribe would have translated it into cuneiform and then embossed it on small clay tablets. This is the exact letter that Nefertari wrote to Pudahipa. It's obviously a replica, but it really gives a flavour of the very words of our great royal wife, Nefertari. It's full of warmth, full of sisterly felicitations. To my sister Pudahipa, great queen of the Hittites. May the sun god of Egypt and the storm god of the Hittites bring you joy. And may the sun god make the peace good forever. And at the very end is this very touching reference to the greeting gifts she's sending the Hittite queen. I've sent you a greeting gift, my sister, for your neck, a necklace of pure gold and some coloured linen to make a royal robe for your husband, the king. Sending such greeting gifts to the monarchs with whom you corresponded played a crucial role in the diplomacy of the ancient world. If we actually look at Nefertari's ear, we can see something which encapsulates this idea. Because regardless of all the gold, all Egyptian royals were dripping in gold. Everybody knew that gold was as common as dust in Egypt. You only have to pick it up, wrote the ancient correspondents. But in Nefertari's ear is a silver earring, a far more value. Not only that, it isn't even an Egyptian earring. It's a style of Greek earring because these silver pieces of jewellery were sent to Nefertari from the Aegean area. So in faraway Greece, they knew about Nefertari and these earrings were sent to her and she wore them with great pride throughout her life. So there's rather more to this jewellery and frocks business than at first meets the eye. Amidst such jewel splendour, Nefertari was finally laid to rest in the manner in which she had lived in the most spectacular tomb in the whole of Egypt. I think one of the things that strikes you most emphatically when you catch your breath and calm down and start looking at these things in a more logical rather than an emotional way, you suddenly realise that Nefertari's husband's not here. The great Ramses is nowhere present. He's on every temple throughout Egypt. He's everywhere and yet here, in his wife's last resting place, there isn't a single image of him. Now, of course, Egyptologists have postulated many theories about why the great Ramses wasn't actually portrayed in his wife's tomb. I personally prefer to think that she herself thought, well, I've lived with him for so many years and in the next world, it'd be wonderful not to have to listen to him forever. But whatever the real reason, there's no doubting the importance and influence of Nefertari as queen of one of Egypt's best known pharaohs. Yet despite Nefertari's best diplomatic efforts, Egypt's political fortunes were soon in sharp decline. Amidst rampant inflation and official corruption, a long series of ephemeral rulers proved completely incapable of defending Egypt's borders from wave after wave of foreign invaders throughout the first millennium BC. And the most successful of these were the Macedonian Ptolemies who would change Egypt's fortunes forever. 900 years after Nefertari, a new era in Egypt's history produced the first female pharaoh of the Ptolemies, Arsinoe. She capitalized on the success of the women rulers who'd gone before her. Arsinoe was able to bring together two worlds, the Egyptian and the Greek, building on a legacy inherited from the most famous Greek of them all, Alexander the Great. Everybody's heard of Alexander the Great who invaded Egypt in 332 BC and was crowned pharaoh, as shown in repeated scenes here. Alexander was then succeeded by his rumored half-brother Ptolemy, whose dynasty then went on to rule Egypt for the last three centuries BC. Ptolemy in turn was succeeded by his extraordinary daughter, Arsinoe, whose spectacular achievements were very consciously modeled on those of Uncle Alexander. Born in Egypt, the teenage Arsinoe was sent to Greece for an arranged royal marriage. Then at the death of her husband, the king, and a second disastrous marriage, she fled for her life back to Egypt. But having acquired a taste for power, Arsinoe persuaded her younger brother, the pharaoh, to marry her. He would be her route to the crown. In one move, Arsinoe became ruler of two worlds, Egypt and the Greek Mediterranean. Through her international connections, Arsinoe brought more prosperity, knowledge, and wealth into Egypt than almost any other ruler before her. The bronze figure is very interesting because you have Arsinoe almost giving the queenly wave, if you like, a very regal posture, she's striking. But look what she's carrying in her left arm. It's a cornucopia, which is a kind of Greek-pointed vessel. But within it, all the bounty, the fruits, the flowers, the wealth of Egypt. And there isn't just one cornucopia, but two. She's bringing double the amount that anyone else can possibly bring. Arsinoe spent much of this fortune in the new royal capital, Alexandria, where her opulent lifestyle was sustained by a continuous flow of exotic imports from as far afield as India and even further east. And as goods like ivory, silk, and jewels poured into the country, the rest of the population thrived too as Egypt became the greatest marketplace on earth. Maseelka. Maseelka, hello. Hello. Maseelka. How are you? I'm good, thank you. Thank you. Well, what have you done? Emerald, but not real one. Emerald? Thank you. Let's try this one. Maseelka. I'm looking for some fabric. Oh, that's beautiful. Bikem, how much? Fixed price? Okay, well, that's good. So with commerce operating on such a vast scale, Arsinoe and her brother set up a sophisticated bureaucracy to manage the staggering wealth circulating within their empire. Now, coinage, finance, plays a huge part in Arsinoe's story. She was an extraordinary woman. She had a huge personal fortune and her financial acumen was very much focused on Egypt's own finances. She and her brother husband Ptolemy created a kind of doomsday style inventory of all Egypt's assets. She created royal monopolies on absolutely everything, making sure that finance flowed directly into the royal house. And in ancient Egypt, previously barter economy, coinage played a crucial role. It became increasingly common as a means of financial transactions. Pretty much, it was the beginnings of capitalism. Under Arsinoe, Egypt was once again a land of plenty and wealth. And yet her coins had another very useful purpose as a means of circulating her agenda. This coin shows Arsinoe wearing the Greek diadem crown and a veil of a carefully styled hair pulled back into a bun. At first appearance, the epitome of a standard Greek queen. This is the perfect portrait of an elite Greek matron. Very respectable looking, very well coiffed, very well dressed. And yet, if you look really, really closely, just poking out in front of her ear, just looks like a very tasteful little earring. But it's actually a ram's horn. The ram's horns of Alexander the Great. Arsinoe is using this very, very subtle device to say, I am the successor of the great Alexander. As his successor, Arsinoe built on the legacy of Alexander, whose emblems were the ram's horns of Egypt's state god, Amun. And so by adopting this symbol herself, Arsinoe was tapping into an ancient force. This single, subtle image confirming her place as the ruler of two worlds. Almost 200 kilometers south of Luxor, a remarkable sight on an island in the middle of the Nile gives a real sense of the power at Arsinoe's disposal. Now we know that every temple in Egypt housed statues of Arsinoe as the resident goddess alongside their traditional deities. But at Philae, she was also worshipped as the equivalent of Isis herself, the mother of all gods. Philae Temple has rightly been dubbed the Pearl of the Nile. It was the cult center of the great goddess Isis. And in many ways, it was kind of an outpost, both in terms of its southerly geographical location and that this was the very last place in Egypt where the ancient gods were worshipped as late as the 6th century AD. But not only was Isis worshipped here, Arsinoe too was the resident goddess. In fact, it was through the international influence of Arsinoe that Isis goes global. Arsinoe's desire to be seen as the active goddess Isis sent a very clear message to her subjects. She had certainly played a fundamental role in shaping Egypt both at home and abroad. But Arsinoe's many achievements were only possible because of the countless generations of incredible women who'd gone before her. And it's in one specific image she paid permanent tribute to all of them. Follow me this way. Here she is, Arsinoe, the pharaoh, the goddess. She's got all her regalia on that emphasises just how much power this woman has. And it's the crown, the focus of so much recent research that can tell us so much. We can even deconstruct it to tell Arsinoe's full story. We start with this crown. This is the red crown. It represents northern Egypt and very much embodies the idea that Arsinoe ruled from the royal capital Alexandria on Egypt's northern coastline. Next of all, we have the two tall feathers. At the top and the cow's horns as worn by the great royal wife Nefertari, wife of Ramses II. And then we move on to the twisted ram's horns. Of course, various forms of ram's horns are associated with the great state god, Amun-Ra, a favourite deity of Hatshepsut. And finally, at the very heart of this very special crown, the sun disk, the great creator of all life. Takes us right back to the Pyramid Age and Heteperes, the queen mother. So by taking on this crown, Arsinoe is telling us she's taking on the accumulated powers of all these great women who were in power in Egypt from so many centuries before her. It's a wonderful thing. And with this crown later adopted by the great Cleopatra herself, these incredible women had been her guides as she extended Egypt's power across so much of the ancient world. Now I must say this journey for me has been an incredible opportunity to engage with ancient Egypt in a new and very fresh way. It's allowed me to investigate the lives of some incredible people for amazing women. These women were incredible role models to all of us, even in the modern world. They were lovers, mothers, queens, goddesses, pharaohs. They were incredibly strong. They were incredibly capable and they underpinned the whole of this fantastic ancient civilization.