Starting her epic rail journey through the ancient Egyptian world in Alexandria, Professor Alice Roberts delves deep underground as she searches for the true Cleopatra. She then discovers how the Romans and the Greeks reacted to the treasures of Ancient Egypt. And on a visit to the site of the Lighthouse of Alexandria she learns how a slave became a sultan and built his own fairytale castle.

Professor Alice Roberts arrives in Cairo by train with a book she first read as a youth: A Thousand Miles Up the Nile by Victorian Egyptologist Amelia Edwards. Alice follows Edwards' footsteps to the Great Pyramids. In the Great Museum she is besotted by Tutankhamun, in Saqqara she learns how and why the Pyramids came about, and she even finds time for a spot of shopping in a Cairo souk.

Having seen the treasures of Tutankhamun in a Cairo Museum, Professor Alice Roberts rides the rails to Luxor to see his spectacular tomb and mummified body in the Valley of the Kings. She then takes a walk along the awe-inspiring Avenue of the Sphinxes and catches up with an old friend who's using satellite technology to find hundreds of previously undiscovered burial sites.

Professor Alice Roberts ends her epic Egyptian train adventure travelling from Luxor to Aswan, observing the many ancient monuments along the route. In Aswan, she sees quarries that provided the granite for the country's vast collection of Ancient Egyptian monuments. She then takes a boat to see the extraordinary Philae Temple, rebuilt in the 1970s due to flooding caused by the Aswan dam.