ARTE France

On the morning of 14 September 1822, in a room under the roof in Paris, Jean-François Champollion finally reached his goal. The decoding of a last cartouche had just provided him with the missing elements. A thousand-year-old civilisation had found the word... It was the culmination of a quest lasting almost 30 years. Crazy with joy, he rushes into the arms of the man who was his mentor over the decades: his elder brother, Jacques-Joseph. History has only remembered the younger brother, yet the deciphering of the hieroglyphs was that of a duo: two brothers who believed in their destiny, and one by one pushed back the obstacles to finally succeed, where generations of researchers had given up.

The only decorated submarine cave in the world, Cosquer Cave, is located in the Calanques National Park, 37 metres below sea level. Unknown due to its access difficulties, this incredible cave with 30,000 year-old paintings and engravings is threatened by rising waters. Following the archaeologists who analyse its masterpieces and the artists who reproduce them, the film tells its extraordinary story and investigates the people who lived on this Mediterranean coast, which is now submerged.

Narbonne. At the biggest site of archaeological digs in France, a researchteam is bringing to light the forgotten potential of the city in the Romanera. From the 1st century B.C., the then-called Narbo Martius, first Romancolony in Gaul, became the capital of an immense province, Gallia Narbonensis.The port city ended up being the centre of exchanges betweenthe colonies of the Empire and becoming the equal of its source: Rome!Starting out from an exceptional find, this film reconstructs, thanks toinfographics and the help of passionate historians and archaeologists,the extraordinary story of this ancient metropolis that shone for morethan three centuries over the Mediterranean world.

Late 2014: in Lavau (Champagne, France) a team of archaeologists located a funeral chamber with a skeleton adorned with gold jewellery and surrounded by luxury items, with magnificent Greek and Etruscan pieces. The tomb, dated as being from the 5th century BC and known as "The Prince of Lavau", is one of the most important discoveries in recent European Archaeology, which will serve in this documentary as a starting point for looking at the Celtic world and its relationship with the neighbouring towns of the Mediterranean.

In January 2011, while the Cairo region was undergoing the revolts of the Egyptian revolution, the University of Basel made two important discoveries in the south of the country, in the Valley of the Kings: a crypt containing dozens of bodies and a tomb that had been completely unknown until then. Archaeologists investigated the identity of the corpses found and finally reach an amazing conclusion. What secret will these tombs hide?

May 1798: Napoleon embarks on his eastern dream and disembarks in Egypt –the cradle of civilization– with a contingent of soldiers, sailors and intellectuals. Once the country was pacified, the so-called "savants" (scientists who accompanied the troops) were finally able to discover the archaeological wonders hidden in the country. However, while the expedition headed south, Syria's military campaign stagnated. After three years of work, the political and military events forced these pioneers of Egyptology to return to France.

The Han Dynasty ruled in China from the 3rd century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D. with a series of emperors who lived in an extremely rich, sophisticated environment. Although many of their tombs have been looted, recent finds in burial grounds point to the flourishing of this Empire, enriched by the Silk Road trade routes. The sovereigns were buried inside magnificent mausoleums among jade, gold, silk, precious jewels and, occasionally, miniature terra cotta armies.

In England, a team of scientists works on the remains of a Bronze Age village, known as Must Farm. The dwellings and the materials have been so well conserved that it has been dubbed "The British Pompeii". Inhabitants of the place, preserved thanks to it being a marshy area, extensively practised a flourishing agriculture and traded with other European peoples, demonstrating that exchanging goods was very much the norm in this prehistoric period.

It seems difficult to believe that new information about the Coliseum, one of the great architectural gems of Ancient Rome, can still discovered at this stage. And yet this documentary shows exhaustive work being carried out that gives us new knowledge about the monument that is considered to be an example of the best artistic and constructive genius of the Roman Empire. Archaeologists and historians join forces to re-investigate the architecture and the use of this media tool for imperial power. Built in the 1st century A.D. by the Emperor Vespasian to legitimise the power of the new dynasty, the Coliseum had unlimited resources to seduce the people of Rome.

The city of Petra, which was the capital of a very wealthy kingdom, that of the Nabataeans, continues to offer new discoveries. Situated within the confines of three deserts, the Arabian Desert, the Syrian Desert and the Negev Desert, it was absorbed by the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Christian Era. During this period, a series of monuments excavated from local stone was created, giving it a unique personality. It was later abandoned and remained in the hands of the Bedouins, fading into obscurity until its rediscovery in the 19th century. However, as this documentary will demonstrate, Petra is part of a much wider cultural context, thanks to which we are able to understand many of its specific features.    

The restoration work that has recently taken place on the Victory of Samothrace is the starting point for showing a varied wealth of information about the sculpture. It tells in pictures the story of its discovery, explains the context of the sanctuary in which it was found, its transfer to France, the results of the research that tells us how it was sculpted and other interesting details. It also looks at the process through which it has become a cult image and one of the emblematic items in the Louvre collections, arousing great interest among the visiting public.

This documentary describes in great detail the artistic and architectural personality of Hagia Sophia, a 6th century church that is still standing, despite its location in an area subject to frequent earth tremors and it having fallen into Muslim hands in the late 15th century. Numerous computer graphics and 3D reconstructions make it possible to see the main features of this monument.

This film is based on the famous painting by Géricault, on show at the Louvre, "The raft of the Medusa". The ship sank off the coast of Africa in the 19th century; the passengers and crew escaped in several small vessels and on a raft, which remained adrift in harsh conditions. Its rescue became a phenomenon that profoundly affected French society. The documentary recreates the event as far as reconstructing the raft and setting it afloat to find out details of life on board.

A Franco-Mongolian archaeological expedition discovered the tomb of a 2300-year old Scythian warrior on the frozen steppes of Mongolia. Combining the results of excavations and ethnoarchaeology, archaeologists question the similarities between the current populations of Kazakh nomads and the Eastern Scythians, who inhabited these same lands some 2000 years ago.

15,000 years ago, water from the thaw covered 15% of the Australian continent, cutting off territories such as New Guinea and Tasmania. This separation of territories had a significant impact on the diet, language, culture and science of the inhabitants of Tasmania. The documentary explores Australia’s ancestral past through archaeological discoveries and the oral tradition of aborigines, which is still present today.

The “Lune” was shipwrecked offshore around Toulon in November 1664, on its return from an expedition to the coast of North Africa, with a thousand men on board. Under pressure from Louis XIV, the Sun King, and his entourage, the tragedy was covered up and the boat was forgotten about. It was discovered in 1993 at a depth of 90 metres, thus making the work of archaeologists extremely difficult. But now, 20 years on, new technologies have meant the ship can finally be explored through a combination of scientific knowledge and amazing technological devices.

The discovery of an underground fortress in Siberia intrigues archaeologists. Thanks to the files kept in Moscow, the inhabitants of this place are finally identified, revealing that in the 17th century an armed alliance of nomads led a war for more than one century against the Russians who had arrived to colonise their land. But although it seemed like nothing could stop them, the clan was suddenly exterminated …

Angkor, capital of the Khmer Empire and the largest city in the world in the 13th century, was rediscovered by the French in the 19th century. They encountered an abandoned city whose fascinating ruins continue to move us today. Right now, scientists of every nationality continue trying to reveal the mystery behind the vanishing of this civilisation that dominated the region for centuries. Its water network was the key to the power of its rule, but was also its Achilles’ heel.

On the occasion of the opening of new rooms in the Louvre museum, devoted to the Eastern Mediterranean during the Roman Empire, a documentalist became enraptured by a mysterious treasure. Towards the end of the 19th century, the Parisian museum carried out research on a set of Coptic mummies and a collection of fabrics, which this documentary revives, contributing new and interesting data about the mummification processes of Egypt’s early Christians.

 

“Breaking the Maya Code” is the story of 200 years of investigation, which has allowed the hieroglyphic writing of the Mayas to be deciphered. It is an epic narration which takes us from the jungles of Guatemala through to the snows of Russia, and from ancient Maya temples through to the dusty libraries of Dresden and Madrid.

Following the discovery in 2004 of the tomb of Thracian king Seuthes III, in Bulgaria, archaeologists and historians began to decipher his legacy, finding themselves face to face with the figure of a modern king open to Hellenization, but at the same time opposed to the Macedonian yoke; a priest-king, also linked to the conservation of Orphic rites so typical of the Thracian society.

In the New Empire of Ancient Egypt, the only woman to reign, Pharaoh Hatshepsut, promoted a series of expeditions of a commercial nature to the far-off Land of Punt. In the temple of Deir el-Bahari a series of reliefs has been conserved with images of the naval expeditions. Thanks to these, a team of archaeologists has been able to build a replica of an Egyptian ship from 1500 BC. However, the real challenge appears when they try to sail the experimental ship…

The Sphinx of Giza, which represents the Pharaoh Khafre, is one of the most important monuments in ancient Egypt but there are still many unanswered questions: Who built this colossal lion with the head of a man? How? Why? Two renowned Egyptologists, Zahi Hawass and Mark Lehner, attempt to solve the enigma.