ANCIENT EGYPT: LIFE AND DEATH IN THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS

A Two-part series for BBC2 produced by Lion Television in association with Medialab. Distributed by All3 Media.

The Valley of the Kings is the burial place of the greatest Pharaohs of Egypt's Golden Age, the New Kingdom. But for Egyptologist, Dr Joann Fletcher it isn't the lives and deaths of these great Kings that drew her to the study of Ancient Egypt - but people like you and me. Meet Kha and Meryt. Through Jo’s eyes, this tomb builder and his wife will guide us into the world of Egypt's ordinary people.

Ep1: LIFE

Joanne uses a wealth of first hand information found in the village, as well as numerous objects used by the couple during their lifetime. These allow her to piece together the lives of Kha and Meryt in extraordinary detail, showing us how similar these were to our own in so many ways.

Ep2: DEATH

In part two Jo reveals why the afterlife was more important than life for so many Egyptians. She'll show us how Kha and Meryt, like many of their contemporaries, spent huge resources and many years preparing for theirs as Jo follows the couple from their death and burial into their afterlives. She’ll start inside their tomb – the only intact tomb found at Deir el-Medina - where the couple’s property was preserved under dust sheets for their use in the afterlife. Inside she reveals how the objects and symbolism here and in closely neighbouring tombs was carefully designed to give the inhabitants a successful afterlife and why this was so important.