Life, love and death in land of the pharaohs

Published on Tuesday 5 March 2013 09:14

Yorkshire historian Joann Fletcher uncovers the lives of ordinary people in Ancient Egypt in a new TV documentary. She talks to Chris Bond.

We know all about the Greeks and Romans from our school days, but when it comes to the Ancient Egyptians our knowledge tends to be a little more hazy.

Yes, we can conjure up images of Cleopatra, King Tutankhamun and the pyramids, but beyond this the land of the pharaohs has remained a mystery to most people.

It’s something that Barnsley-born historian and Egyptologist Dr Joann Fletcher hopes to change with her new two-part documentary Ancient Egypt: Life & Death In The Valley Of The Kings, which goes out on BBC Two next week. The Valley of the Kings is the burial place of some of Egypt’s most famous pharaohs, but it isn’t the lives of these kings, rather the ordinary people they ruled, that she’s interested in here.

Dr Fletcher, an honorary research fellow at York University, sheds light on the real lives of two ordinary Egyptians, a husband and wife from the tomb-builder’s town of Deir el-Medina who lived to serve their royal masters. By walking in their footsteps she provides an insight into what life was like 3,500 years ago, reimagining how people lived and the colours, sounds and smells they experienced.

She focuses on the lives of chief architect Kha and his wife, Meryt, who lived around 1400 BC. “It’s a bit of a departure for me because normally I’m studying the high and mighty, but with this I’m looking at ordinary people and specifically one married couple,” she explains.