The Latest Secrets of Hieroglyphs - BBC History

The great history of Egypt is inscribed on its monuments, temples and tombs, in the written script of the ancient Egyptians. Hieroglyphs, or sacred carvings. Hieroglyphs are perhaps the writings that have been used for the longest time in the history of the world, because they were used for well over 3,000 years. But their meaning had been lost until 1822, when a young French scholar, Jean-Francois Champollion, became the first person for over 1,000 years to decipher the ancient texts. Champollion's insights and the work of other scholars helped bring an entire civilization back to life. Today, researchers are increasingly interested in the authors of these hieroglyphs, a literate elite working for the pharaohs. Priests, scribes, painters, engravers and builders of tombs. The largest tomb discovered in the country intrigues Egyptologists. Built for an important figure in pharaonic society, it's filled with hieroglyphs. Exploring the texts inscribed on this labyrinth will help unlock the latest secrets of hieroglyphs. 700 kilometres upstream of the ancient political capital of the empire, Memphis, on the banks of the Nile, lies Thebes. Here, on the Nile's west bank, the pharaohs constructed their funerary temples, including that of Queen Hatshepsut and the tombs of numerous other dignitaries. The largest ancient tomb discovered in Egypt is also here, but it is not the tomb of a pharaoh. Archaeologists named it TT33, for Theban Tomb 33. It is a treasure trove for the decipherers of hieroglyphs. For the past 17 years, Professor Claude Tronecker has been studying TT33. With him are Sylvia Einaudi and Isabelle Réjean, Egyptologists and renowned epigraphists, where it is to copy, translate and interpret the texts. On this expedition, they have four weeks to unearth the latest treasures and safeguard the ancient texts carved into the walls. But who does this imposing and mysterious tomb belong to? Pediamenope. His name and image are everywhere. There is no doubt that this is Pediamenope's final resting place. For nearly 100 years, only the first three chambers were accessible. The rest of the tomb had been walled off to contain the bats. In December 2005, Claude Tronecker was given permission to break down the wall and enter the rest of the tomb. The decomposing bodies of millions of bats made the air unbreathable. The corridors and chambers were damaged, but when the professor looked more closely at the walls, he saw priceless treasure. Those who are born and who, this is for the brand of the future, Hermes tout. Those who will come to be. It's incredible. Or those who come to look for formulas. That is to say, us. When I saw that, I was moved to tears. I said, it's not possible. They were waiting for us. And above all, they ask us here to restore what is damaged. We have to do it. That's a direct message. Isabelle and Sylvia have been studying the tomb's walls for over ten years, seeking answers to a multitude of questions about Pediamenope. They have established that the tomb's architectural style places its construction at around 700 BCE. To further their research, the team are capturing 360-degree 3D images of the entire site. Go down, it's simple. A little bit. I started from room 4 here. We are here, room 5. And I will continue to build architecture, all the way to the last room. By photographing the walls, ceilings and floor of each room, the team can create a complete virtual tour of Pediamenope's tomb. TT33 is a maze of 22 rooms, corridors and galleries, spread across three levels more than 20 metres below the desert sands, with 2,622 square metres of decorated walls, all covered in hieroglyphs. But is it possible to decipher the damaged carvings and learn more about the owner of this tomb? We know his name, but who was he? And why is his tomb larger and more impressive than the tomb of a pharaoh? He was someone who had a great knowledge of religious texts. He is the intermediary between people who work in libraries, who elaborate rituals, who think, who catalogue papyrus, and the one who is on the ground for religious ceremonies with the crowd around. For what purpose? To appease the Egyptian people. Because they are anxious Egyptians. A statue of Pediamenope in the Cairo Museum portrays him as a scribe, a member of the literate elite, who held huge power over the rest of the population, who couldn't read or write. In the Louvre is another well-known depiction of a guardian of sacred knowledge, the seated scribe. What sets him apart from the others is the use of writing. The main job of the scribe is to keep accounts, to receive mail, in short, to administer. And the most cultivated of them cultivated beautiful letters. There is Egyptian literature in the modern sense of the term, and some had libraries. Hieroglyphs are read from right to left. To understand in what sense they are read, you just need to take a hieroglyph representing an animated sign, for example, here, a Cai compass, where you see that it looks to the left. In this case, we will read from left to right, and in columns. In another inscription, we will have the opposite. Sylvia and Isabelle's epigraphic work aims to interpret the messages that Pediamenope left for future visitors. The parts that you see in gray with these pencil strokes are completely lacunar parts that I can no longer see on the wall, despite my efforts with the torch, because there are crystals of salt that come out and have damaged the inscriptions, or there are parts of the wall that have fallen. I try to understand, already with the light, if a line that I see on the wall is really a hieroglyph or if it is not a fracture of the wall. High-definition photos will enable this work to continue back in the lab. But where did hieroglyphs come from? First appearing around 3,200 BCE, hieroglyphs were used for almost 3,500 years, until the Roman Empire took political and religious control of ancient Egypt. By 380 CE, the Roman Empire had adopted Christianity, and Emperor Theodosius issued a decree effectively dissolving all pagan worship. Egypt lost its literate elite, and with them the mastery of hieroglyphs. But in July 1799, an important discovery was made. A scientific expedition had accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte's military campaign in Egypt to study and map the history and geography of the country. In the northern port city of Rashid, whilst repairing a fort, French soldiers uncovered a stone dating from the 2nd century BCE, carved with a decree by the king, Ptolemy V, the Rosetta Stone. The text was written in three different scripts. Hieroglyphic, Egyptian Demotic, a simplified, cursive version of hieroglyphs, and Ancient Greek. Copies were sent to scholars across Europe. Before we could read hieroglyphs, looking at these monuments was a mystery, and that's why there's so much esoterica that this has generated, with people thinking that these are all symbols, that they don't have sound values. So you could look at these monuments and not really understand things until Champollion came and unlocked this key, this mystery. You can see this cartouche, which is this oval thing which held the name of the king, and here you can see, P-T-O-L-E-M-Y-S, Ptolemy. So this is the name of Ptolemy, and of course this is one of the crucial names that we have in Egyptology, not because of his importance, but because his name was on the Rosetta Stone, and this was the first name to be deciphered. But how did Champollion decipher this lost language from the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone? As a scholar of Ancient Greek, Champollion could read the name Ptolemy, Ptolemaeus in Greek, and then identify the cartouche of the same name, Ptolemy, written in hieroglyphs. This gave him seven letters, P-T-O-M-Y-S, that corresponded with the seven hieroglyphs. He did the same with the cartouche of Queen Cleopatra. He found the three letters he knew, L-O-P, from the Ptolemus cartouche, then assigned the missing letters, K-E-A-T-R-A, to the six unidentified hieroglyphs. These cartouches contained phonetic transcriptions of Greek names, but what about the names of pharaohs who ruled before Greek colonisation? Champollion was a linguistic scholar. As a teenager, he studied Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac and Aramaic. He realised that he would need to study Coptic to understand the language of the ancient Egyptians. But why Coptic? Thanks to Coptic, Champollion was able to translate a new cartouche, one in which he recognised the S. The first hieroglyphs were written in Coptic, but they were not written in Coptic. They were written in Coptic, but they were not written in Coptic. They were written in Coptic, but they were not written in Coptic. The first hieroglyph in the name appeared to be a sun, which in Coptic is pronounced Ra. He was just missing the hieroglyph in the middle. Could it be Rameses? The great pharaoh whose name had survived? Champollion took another cartouche. The first hieroglyph was an ibis, symbolising the god Thoth. So if Rameses was correct, the second sign was perhaps an M? The last sign he knew, S. So Thoth M says? Thutmose, another famous pharaoh mentioned in Greek texts. Champollion was the first scholar to understand that the writing was at once figurative, symbolic and phonetic, opening up this ancient world. 200 years later, Champollion's deciphering work continues. Pediamenope's tomb is considered a showpiece due to the importance of the texts inscribed on the walls. They constitute the main funerary texts of ancient Egypt, needed to help the deceased in the afterlife. The tomb is much more than a resting place. Pediamenope created an extraordinary and unique library. The texts tell us how the ancient Egyptians viewed the world and the great myths of their civilisation. One of the texts details how, every night, the sun god Ra fought off evil creatures who wanted to keep him a prisoner of the night. We find Pediamenope, whose title and name are indicated here. And in this solar boat, there is a whole crew who will help the sun to reach the right port until it rises at the end of the night. But why is Pediamenope in the sun god's night boat? For hours, there will be various adventures. Pediamenope takes part. He's the one who's going to pull the boat out of the sun. He's the one who's going to harpoon Apophis, the snake that threatens the boat and prevents it from moving forward. He takes a very active part in this journey and even performs a ritual dance for the sun. If, during the 12 hours of night, Pediamenope is unable to bring the sun god's boat safely home, the sun will not rise and the world will end. So, every morning, when the sun reappears, all living creatures bow down before the sun god to celebrate his victory, the victory of life over death. According to a tradition dating back to the Old Kingdom, it is usually the pharaoh in the boat kneeling before Ra. So why has Pediamenope taken the pharaoh's place? Isabelle Réjean's work provides the answer. He replaces the king as a defender of Ra to make sure that he too will rise every day with the sun. It is a way of guaranteeing eternal life in the land of the dead. But the protection of the sun god isn't enough. Pediamenope must also secure the favour of Osiris, the god of the dead. Pediamenope has not... This is the negation. He has not committed a whole list of sins, of bad deeds. He says that he has not killed anyone, that he has not robbed anyone, that he has not told lies, that he has not been corrupted, etc, etc. 42 times. Pediamenope is central to the action again, this time in the most famous part of the Book of the Dead. Having placed a feather on one side of the scale, Anubis, the god of death and master of necropolises, places the deceased's heart on the other side. To continue living in the afterlife, his heart must be as light as the feather, proof that he has committed no evil deeds. Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing, notes the result on his tablet. At his feet is Amed, the devourer of the dead, a monstrous deity who eats the hearts of those not judged pure. If evil deeds have been committed, the deceased cannot live in the afterlife. The whole scene takes place before Osiris, the president of this divine tribunal. He will decide if the deceased is pure or if he dies forever. Why does Pediamenope show such exceptional devotion to Osiris? Was he trying to win the gods' favour? Egyptologists have also found dozens of carvings of Pediamenope's name on the walls of his tomb. For him and his contemporaries, hieroglyphs had a magic power. As long as visitors to his tomb continued to utter his name, he would be assured of living in the afterlife. For the ancient Egyptians, the word was incredibly powerful. Words are magical. If you write something down, it has power. And once you say it, it gives it even more power. It ritualises the whole thing. And so it's the same way than in any magic even today, no matter where you are. If you give someone a name, they have power over you. So words have power. And one of the creation myths of the ancient Egyptians was that God would think and then he would speak and it would come into being. Hieroglyphs only acquire magic powers once they are carved in stone. Likewise, the deceased can only continue living in the afterlife if their body is embalmed and resting in its tomb. In certainly painful conditions, we know that there were several teams working on the construction of the tomb. And when the tomb was still being dug into the deepest parts, of course, there were already scribes, artists, who were starting to decorate the first rooms that had already been finished. Who were the builders and craftsmen who dug and decorated these tombs? A unique archaeological site, about a kilometre from TT33, offers some insights. It was a village for craftsmen working on the royal tombs, or a hieroglyphic school dating from about eight centuries before Pediamenope. Here we are at Deir el-Medina, which is one of the most important places in Egypt. It's the workman's village and these are the people who decorated the tombs of the kings in the Valley of the Queens. And here, this is in the west bank of Thebes, where the Valley of the Queens, which they also decorated, is there. The Valley of the Kings is just over there. And also the nobles' tombs and the temples are very close by. This village was built at the time of Moses I, so more than 3,500 years ago. It was from this village that he would leave at the beginning of each week to build and decorate the Pharaoh's tombs. At the end of the New Empire, the site was abandoned and covered with sand, which explains why the objects left here by the inhabitants were found during excavations at the beginning of the 20th century. Every year, researchers from around the world gather at the site for two months. By studying the artefacts found in the village, they hope to better understand the work of these craftsmen. These ostracas provide information about the local life, since we have reported various facts, such as the list of workers who work here, the name of their families. But we also have writing exercises on some of these objects, which show us that there was a learning of writing here on the site of Deir el-Medina. So we imagine that the schoolchildren had models, and they drew lines of the same sign until they reached the desired form or the one expected by the teacher. For the letters to each other, you would use hieratic, which is basically hieroglyphs, but a more relaxed form. So it is the same way that hieroglyphs are like capital letters, very formal, and hieratic is joined up cursive writing. Unusually, the community at Deir el-Medina was literate. It was organized according to a strict social hierarchy to spread work evenly amongst the tombs. The various crafts working in the tombs followed a meticulously planned schedule. First, a suitable limestone seam in the mountain was excavated. Cutting the rock with wooden mallets and bronze chisels was gruelling work. Polishers then smoothed the floors and walls. Next, grids were traced on the walls to provide a framework for the outline scribes, who used red ink to sketch figurative scenes and texts. Sculptors then carved the designs into the stone using wooden mallets and fine copper chisels. Finally, the carved scenes and hieroglyphs were coloured by painters. Elizabeth Bettles, a paleography expert, aims to identify the individual artists responsible for decorating this tomb, belonging to a scribe of the 19th dynasty. Everybody's handwriting is different, everybody's handwriting is unique. Today, it is known that that is the case and it would have been exactly the same over 3,000 years ago as this was. All of this learning about the man who created these hieroglyphs, who painted them, I've got to get to know him, so I've got to try and find his handwriting style through the shape of the sign, through how he created the sign, how he spelt things. And at the moment, I'm concentrating on doing individual hieroglyphs to find out what their shape is. My long-term goal is to create a kind of an interactive database to be able to show people who we can name, who we know who they married, what their children's names were, so we can learn so much about the people who were literate, who could write. The last artist left Deir el-Medina eight centuries before Pedia Menape's tomb was built, but their techniques and knowledge were passed down to those who decorated TT33. The Egyptologists are restoring the magnificent decorations, which time has broken into thousands of pieces. OK. Simone Nannucci is helping them and has discovered further information about Pedia Menape. We can see Pedia Menape's mummy in front of his tomb, and here we can see a part of Pedia Menape's title, Khericheb Kheriteb, the priest-reader. But look at the detail of the ears, the nostrils. The stele. Ah, I haven't seen it. So we have the representation of the tomb in which we are. Yes. But in a very... Ideal. Ideal, yes. He must be very happy in the afterlife. Pedia Menape, we keep saying his name. How moving. Here we have a fragment of the face of a funerary statuette, which we call an ushepti, and which belonged to Pedia Menape himself. We know this because it is part of a series that we already know. We have found other fragments. These ushepti were positioned in the hollow with the drawing itself. Whilst work continues in Pedia Menape's tomb, fragments of pottery have been found in Deir el-Medina. We have a restorer who cleans the surface, who removes dust, dirt, etc. Then we take photographs on the site directly. This photograph is sent to our laboratory so that our image processing specialist can reveal what was on the ushepti. The view is transferred to the computer. We have a digital file subjected to processing by playing with the different colours of the object, the luminosity, using different colour filters to try to make what is barely visible to the naked eye appear. Here we have a very beautiful representation of the god Ptah, an important god, as he was honoured here, not far from Deir el-Medina. Once we have managed to make this image appear, we make a drawing of it, also on a graphic tablet, to publish it. Caro is a graphic artist. His job is to manage to make visible what is not really visible to the naked eye, because a wall can be very destroyed, paintings can disappear, etc. So thanks to the work she does, to the drawing she makes, we can see more clearly what was represented on the walls. Here, remove the photo. If we zoom in on spaces, for example, we can see more clearly what is represented. The advantage of this technique is that, once we have removed the photo, we can join lines, reimagine the scenes as they should be, especially by comparing them with similar scenes in other tombs. The carved walls of temples and tombs aren't the only sources that document this ancient civilisation. 5,000 years ago, the Egyptians developed another writing medium. Using the stalks of a plant that grows along the banks of the Nile, papyrus. In the 19th century, Egyptian papyri became a collector's item. Bernardino Dravetti, the French consul in Cairo, traded in antiquities. The King of Piedmont paid him a fortune to curate a collection. The archaeological treasures in the collection included statues, objects and papyri. And in 1824, a museum was opened in Turin. When the Dravetti collection was acquired, they hoped to bring the man who had found the key to ancient Egypt to Turin. So Champollion accepts their invitation. He is not at all happy about the fact that France has not acquired the collection, but Turin has. And so he's credited with that famous saying that the road to Memphis and Thebes goes through Turin. The Turin Museum was a paradise for Champollion. He stayed for eight months studying the papyri, which he described to his brother as beyond eulogy. He made extraordinary discoveries whilst restoring the microscopic fragments brought back from Egypt. The restoration work Champollion started continues to this day. It was in these workshops that Champollion completed a work that would lay the foundations for determining the chronology of the Pharaonic dynasties. Chronology is one of the primary concern of Champollion when he arrives in Turin. Champollion is confronted with a rich collection such as he has never seen before. Among the fragmentary papyrus that Champollion was confronted with was one that was a list of royal names, the Turin Canon or the Papyrus of Kings. A list of kings starting from the time of the gods and all the way into historical times and until presumably the time of Ramses II under whom this list was compiled. It is one of the fundamental historical documents of Egyptology. Finally, in 1828, Champollion's long-held ambition was realised. He undertook an expedition to Egypt to study hieroglyphs. The party was made up of 14 scholars and scientists. They would spend 18 months exploring the Egyptian sites previously documented by the Napoleonic expedition. Champollion was transformed the moment he arrived in Egypt. He was nicknamed the Egyptian, grew a beard, carried a sword and wore Turkish clothes. He wanted to see everything and made the most methodical and meticulous records of what he saw. He returned to France with priceless treasures discovered in the tombs. Champollion's work deciphering the Turin Royal Canon, the historical timeline of the first Pharaonic empires, went as far as Ramses II. His successors completed the timeline up until the Roman period. This later work helped date the construction of TT33 at around the 7th century BCE. But which pharaoh did Pediamenope serve? Studying the tomb next to Pediamenope's, TT34, belonging to Mentuamat, the governor of Upper Egypt and mayor of Thebes in the 7th century BCE, helps answer this question. TAHARQA, one of the most famous kings of the 25th dynasty, the dynasty of the black pharaohs of the Kingdom of Kush, the Kushite kings. TAHARQA, one of the most famous kings of the 25th dynasty, the Kushite kings. TAHARQA, one of the most famous kings of the 25th dynasty, the Kushite kings. Being the king's secretary would mean Pediamenope conducted ceremonies and stood in for the pharaoh when he was away. This slipway into the Nile was constructed during Taharqa's reign, under the supervision of Pediamenope, and is described by a text in his tomb. The grandest of these celebrations was the huge annual procession, which the ancient Egyptians called the Beautiful Festival of the Valley. It began on the famous slipway into the Nile, the departure point for the sacred Bark of Amun-Ra, which would cross the river and tour the necropolises. Pediamenope built his own tomb on the route of this procession. At the Temple of Luxor, an entire wall is dedicated to a similar festival, the Beautiful Festival of Opet. Pediamenope was very key to this whole connection and this control system that the Nubian pharaohs had. So Taharqa depended on the Nubian pharaohs to control the flow of water and so Taharqa depended on Pediamenope to in fact guide him almost through the idea of Egypt's religion and the text. Egyptologists have noted that many chapels built inside the Karnak complex and dedicated to the god Osiris date from the period of the Nubian pharaohs. It's hard to assess Pediamenope's influence on the Osiris revival, but for Salima Ikram, it is clear that the architecture of the chapels was a source of inspiration for him. Ancient Egyptians were obsessed with the afterlife and Pediamenope structured and dedicated his tomb to the worship of Osiris. The first section of his tomb was undoubtedly open to all visitors, whereas the second section was reserved for pilgrim worshippers of the god Osiris. We are not ordinary visitors to the tomb, but we are pilgrims. We are going to devote ourselves to the tomb of Osiris. So we take a right. To get through here, you had to have a key. I even wondered if it wasn't a little money-minded. So we go through this famous door, we arrive in the cenotaph room. So what is a cenotaph? It is a fictitious tomb. It looks like a tomb with all the decor of the time, but there is no body in it. The third part of the tomb, or the private part, holds other surprises. To reach this part of the tomb, it is necessary to descend down through the shaft in room 12 that terrified visitors, who believed it cursed, and follow the passageway to room 19. SPEAKS FRENCH A second shaft descends into a strange room resembling a sarcophagus of the Old Kingdom. Technically, it's the last room in the tomb. Any pillagers could go no further. Beyond here, there is nothing. But this room is a decoy. You have to smash through the ceiling to discover Pediamenope's real burial chamber. It is a revelation. The astonishing decorations and texts on the walls and ceiling have been restored virtually to their original state. SPEAKS FRENCH Associating himself with the Judge of the Dead and receiving his blessing and good grace was undoubtedly the best guarantee of living eternally in the afterlife. Exploration of Pediamenope's tomb reveals an extraordinary figure. A priest, a scribe and a scholar who played a crucial role at the pharaoh's court. Despite the 2,500 years that separated them, Pediamenope and Champollion both shared an ambition to embrace an entire knowledge and an entire culture. SPEAKS FRENCH Shortly after returning from Egypt, Champollion fell ill and died on March 4, 1832, aged 41. He left behind a vast body of work. SPEAKS FRENCH Egyptologists continue to conserve Pediamenope's tomb and restore its treasure. It is clear that there is still much to learn about this remarkable civilisation.