Egyptologist Dr Chris Naunton explores the story of how Ancient Egypt was rediscovered, and how its incredible sites and treasures were gradually decoded. Starting with the earliest travelers who ventured inside the pyramids, Chris traces how this curiosity exploded into Egyptomania in the 18th and 19th centuries. Beginning with the French invasion under Napoleon, we discover how Egypt was explored, plundered and eventually deciphered as increasingly scientific approaches were taken. Highlights include the audacious treasure hunting by Belzoni, the painstaking decoding of hieroglyphs and Flinders Petrie's introduction of modern methodology - all leading to Howard Carter's opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Up Next in Digging up History
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Endurance: Rediscovered
It was one of the last great lost shipwrecks of history - Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance. But now, incredibly, it has been rediscovered - over a century after it sank beneath the ice in freezing Antarctic waters.
Organised by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, the expedition to locate the...
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Lost City of Gaul: Unearthing Bibracte
In the heart of the French region of Burgundy, deep in a forest, lies a hidden city that had been dormant for 2,000 years. It’s called Bibracte, the most important oppidum in all of Gaul. That is where the Aedui, a Gallic tribe allied to the Romans, once built a fortified city on top of a mountai...
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Shipwreck! Northumberland and the Gre...
History Hit's Dan Snow has been given exclusive access to the incredibly well-preserved remains of the 18th-century warship Northumberland.
Complete with cannons, muskets and coils of rope, it's a discovery that's rewriting our understanding of the evolution of the Royal Navy.
The special fil...
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