Episode Information

Archaeologists in the central Egyptian desert have made an extraordinary find: an ancient cemetery where 1,000 people from the Pharaoh’s lost capital of Amarna are buried. Why did this great city only survive one generation before mysteriously vanishing from history? Amarna was a city built for one purpose: to serve the pharaoh. Akhenaten was one of Ancient Egypt’s most colourful kings; a revolutionary who set up his own religion, he was seen by many as a dangerous heretic. He married the legendary beauty, Nefertiti, abandoned the ancient Egyptian spiritual home of Thebes and led 40,000 people into the desert to found his new capital at Amarna. However within two decades, Egypt was on the brink of collapse, the city had been abandoned and the pharaoh’s name wiped from history. For the first time, Timewatch will tell the tale of this lost capital’s dramatic rise and fall, through the story of the pharaoh and his people who lived and died here, revealing why this city disappeared from history for more than 3,000 years. For the first time in thousands of years Timewatch will rebuild the city using cutting edge CGI. We will explore the magnificent palaces and temples of Akhenaten and also the workshops where craftsmen and sculptors toiled to create this dazzling city for their great pharaoh.