The evolutionary biologist takes a train journey across the world's oldest and greatest civilisation, starting at the very end of the Ancient Egyptian empire in Alexandria, before heading south to Cairo, Luxor and Aswan. Alice goes deep underground in search of Cleopatra, 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 fairy-tale caste