The Nile: Egypt's Great River with Bettany Hughes

- Season 1

(2019)

Bettany visits the Nile's mouth, before boarding a dahabiya, a passenger boat used on the Nile, that will take her upstream. South of Cairo she explores some tunnels under a collapsed pyramid to find the earliest hieroglyphic writing.

Bettany visits a vast desert catacomb where tens of thousands of mummified animals were once left as an offering, tracks down Egypt's lost emblem the Blue Lotus flower, and finishes at the stunning Dendera temple.

Bettany visits the west bank where, for 500 years, the Egyptians buried their pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings. Then she heads south on the Nile's oldest steamship SS Sudan, which inspired Agatha Christie to write 'Death on the Nile'

Along the southern Nile, Bettany joins archaeologists at the temple of the crocodile god before heading to Aswan, where she visits a hotel that was frequented by Winston Churchill and watches the rising sun pierce the temple of Rameses. Her journey ends near the border with Sudan.