[1] "The whole idea behind the series was to be able to discover Ancient Egypt through the eyes of Howard Carter – famous for uncovering the tomb of Tutankhamun; The Great Belzoni – an amazing adventurer and explorer; and the scholar Jean-François Champollion, who was the first to decipher the Rosetta Stone and open up the meaning of hieroglyphics.

"In order to create a sense of "seeing the treasures of Ancient Egypt for the first time", Dolling and Bradshaw felt it essential to film at the actual archaeological sites referenced in the series.

""Being the first UK TV company to attempt such a project in the most amazing historical sights was very exhilarating, and to be able to return them - with additional sets and some computer imagery - to how they were during the time of the Pharaohs was incredible.

"The co-production between BBC The Learning Channel ZDF and France Televisions was initially budgeted at around £6.5m but problems filming on location in Egypt, including the weather and illness, meant the producers required another £2million.

[7] Sam Wollaston writing about episode one in The Guardian said that he "was expecting to hate this show," fearing it would be "narration interspersed with lame reconstruction," but he was pleased to discover it was, in fact, "a proper drama, with a very decent script and real actors."

"And it's a great story, too," he states, although he did not enjoy the re-enactments of the life of Tutankhamun, which he described as "olive-skinned actors with non-speaking parts and an awful lot of eye-liner, wandering around in a semi-darkness lit by flickering candles," and claims were not necessary, "but maybe that will help to sell it to America."

In the winter of 1898 Carter is at the temples of Deir el Bahri recording wall reliefs threatened by a freak storm when he is thrown from his horse and makes a discovery in the sand.

In 1905 Lord Carnarvon arrives in Luxor to convalesce after a road accident and is shown an artifact bearing the cartouche of the mysterious Tutankhamun discovered by Davis on his new dig.

Tutankhamun succeeded his heretical father as pharaoh at the age of 8 and was named in honour of Amun to symbolise his mission to restore the old gods and save the empire from turmoil.

The Carnarvons return to Egypt at the end of the war and Carter recommences his excavation but with a continued lack of results leading to doubts that any undiscovered tombs are left in the valley the funding is finally cut in 1922.

Finding themselves destitute in the streets of Cairo after work on an irrigation project falls through, they are rescued by the eccentric John Lewis Bukhardt who introduces them to British Consul Henry Salt.

Ramesses marriage to his true love Nefertari was fruitful and secured the family line and the country too was fertile thanks to the annual flooding of the Nile.

Belzoni sends the ailing Jim back to Cairo to request a bigger boat so that they can collect even more antiquities and with time running out is forced to take greater risks to get the head to the bank of the Nile.

Belzoni locates the entrance to the Great Temple but finds it blocked, and so forced to head back to Cairo he vows to return to excavate the site the following season.

Back in Luxor Belzoni, reunited with Sarah and Jim, is threatened by Drevetti but undeterred he heads deep into the western hills where he enters the Valley of the Kings.

Jean-François Champollion uses the Rosetta Stone to unlock the mysteries of the lost civilisation of Ancient Egypt which had been closed off to Europeans for centuries prior to the invasion of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798.

The stone, discovered by the French in 1799, had been created as a work of propaganda by the Greek-speaking Pharaoh Ptolemy V to establish his place in Egyptian cosmology and flashbacks are included to explain this belief system.

The young Champollion, encouraged to develop his gift for languages by his elder brother, becomes obsessed with deciphering hieroglyphs as a means to telling the age of the world and revenging France against the British who had confiscated the stone in 1801.

Their descendant King Tutankhamun had commissioned a series of stones written in Greek, common Egyptian and hieroglyphs for temples across the land to extol his virtues and underline his claim to the throne.

Champollion studies under Silvestre de Sacy in Paris but finds the professor who had himself failed decipher hieroglyphs dismissive of further attempts believing them to be symbolic rather than a true language.

Young makes a number of breakthroughs including the spelling of Ptolemy in hieroglyphs while Champollion finds work as assistant professor at the University of Grenoble.

Eccentric Egyptologist Giovanni Belzoni discovers an obelisk inscribed with the name of Cleopatra in Greek and hieroglyphs at Philae and sends it back to Young in England.

Champollion is determined to travel to Egypt to prove his theory but poor and jobless he is reduced to buying up whatever scraps of papyrus he can find and this obsession alienates his wife.

The Dendera zodiac purchased by the French King Charles X threatens to challenge the biblical chronologies of church scholars, as it is believed by some to date to before the Great Flood of 2349 BC.

Champollion dies back in France 18 months later but his legacy allows Egyptologist to comprehend the meaning behind monuments such as the Great Pyramid of Giza and to decipher papyri that lead to such discoveries as the Tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter.