The Road to the Pyramids

In the first episode, Professor Joann Fletcher goes in search of the building blocks of Egyptian civilisation and finds out what made ancient Egypt the incredible civilisation that it was.

Joann sees how people here changed, in just a few centuries, from primitive farmers to pyramid builders and finds the early evidence for Egypt's amazing gods and obsession with death and the afterlife.

On her search, Joann travels almost 20,000 years back in time to discover north Africa's earliest rock art, she discovers how the first writing was used to calculate taxes and explores one of the first stone structures on earth - Egypt's first pyramid. Joann ends her journey in the largest monument of them all - the Great Pyramid. Here, she explains how Egypt had now reached a pinnacle - the ultimate society, creating one of the wonders of the ancient world.