Speaker 1: In the desert. I saw a creature naked bestial who's
Speaker 1: squatting upon the ground, held his heart in his hands,
Speaker 1: and eight of it. I said, is it good, friend?
Speaker 1: It is bitter, bitter, he answered, But I like it
Speaker 1: because it is bitter and because it is my heart.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that,
Speaker 1: of course is the poem in the Desert by Stephen
Speaker 1: crane Um, a poem that that i've I've I've long
Speaker 1: found nice and creepy and thought provoking. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of it depends on which word in the last
Speaker 1: sentence you emphasized. Does he like it because it is
Speaker 1: my heart or because it is my heart? M h Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are several ways to to to to the piece
Speaker 1: of apart there. But it's also the perfect poem for
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day. Today's Valentine's Day. I don't know if anyone
Speaker 1: has ever taken in the Desert and transformed it into
Speaker 1: a Valentine, but I think that's a fabulous idea. Depending
Speaker 1: on who you're giving it to you want to make
Speaker 1: sure that they're gonna understand the cleverness of this. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's just the right length. You know. You could
Speaker 1: put you know, half of it on the front, half
Speaker 1: of it inside. You could you could draw the bestial
Speaker 1: creature they're consuming its own heart. Uh. Somebody has to
Speaker 1: have done this before. I'm sure someone will send links
Speaker 1: to this effect to us. You could put it on
Speaker 1: those little heart shaped candies that look like they're like
Speaker 1: made a chalk basically. Oh yeah, that would be clever,
Speaker 1: as I mean, it has to have been done. It's
Speaker 1: such a great idea. Does anybody eat those? By the way,
Speaker 1: that somebody like the taste of chalk enough that they
Speaker 1: would consume that. I remember eating them that I was
Speaker 1: a child. Um, you know, and maybe and I don't
Speaker 1: know if they're bitter that would but they are shaped
Speaker 1: like hearts. Yeah, at a time when you ate a
Speaker 1: lot of candy, it made sense to at least try
Speaker 1: a few of them. But I think then you realize
Speaker 1: there were better candies to eat, easier candies to eat.
Speaker 1: That's such a childhood mentality. It's like, well it's not good,
Speaker 1: but it is candy, So I guess I have to
Speaker 1: eat it. I should at least at least try it.
Speaker 1: It's it's just polite. Yeah, so yes, It's Valentine's Day
Speaker 1: at time when we tend to think about the over
Speaker 1: commercialization of love and especially romantic love, as well as
Speaker 1: the symbolism of the human heart. Um, you know, I
Speaker 1: think this is a topic we've we've touched on before
Speaker 1: on the show. You know. We when it comes to
Speaker 1: the heart, we know that this is the the center
Speaker 1: of our circulatory system. We know it pumps our blood,
Speaker 1: but it's also seen as the symbolic or metaphoric seed
Speaker 1: of love and passion. And given all these complex ways
Speaker 1: of thinking about the heart, we also tend to feel
Speaker 1: a certain kind of way about the topic of heart
Speaker 1: removal when it comes up, be it something that comes
Speaker 1: up in the biological you know, the medical world, or
Speaker 1: if it comes up in random horror movies, or just
Speaker 1: as a turn of phrase. Is this how you landed
Speaker 1: on on heart removal? For for the topic this week?
Speaker 1: Where you watching a movie where a heart gets ripped out?
Speaker 1: I don't think I was specifically when I started thinking
Speaker 1: about this, but we have watched several movies on Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema our Friday weird movie episodes that I like particularly,
Speaker 1: I think, um, some seventies films we've watched, such as
Speaker 1: The Lorealized Grasp, Horror Rizes from the Tomb, Return of
Speaker 1: the Blind Dead. I think all three of those features
Speaker 1: scene in which somebody's heart is cut out and it's
Speaker 1: eaten by say a monster or or or an occultist
Speaker 1: night that sort of thing. Am I remembering? Wrong? Is
Speaker 1: the whole point of Lorealized Grasp that the monster eats
Speaker 1: people's hearts? Yes? She does. Yeah, well, I mean there
Speaker 1: are other aspects of the film, but it clearly in
Speaker 1: terms of what is the the gory point of the
Speaker 1: film that seemed to be one of its main fascinations. Well,
Speaker 1: she eats people's hearts and she falls in love with that.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Spanish German, Elvis Peter Fonda kind of guy.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, anyway, yes, yeah, go back to those
Speaker 1: episodes if you want more of that. Uh. Well, when
Speaker 1: it comes to to heart ripping, of course, there are
Speaker 1: some more famous examples have probably come to everyone's mind.
Speaker 1: There's fighting game Mortal Kombat. I think everybody had that
Speaker 1: was around in the nineties. Um, and and then in
Speaker 1: decades after, but especially in the nineties, you have that
Speaker 1: that very pixelized version of that that heart rip in mind.
Speaker 1: And then of course there's four film Indiana Jones and
Speaker 1: the Temple of Doom, which features a rather famous heart
Speaker 1: ripped scene that despite the film being set in India,
Speaker 1: this actual heart rip and all the things that the
Speaker 1: batties are up to a really take worry elements from
Speaker 1: at least a couple of non Indian cultures. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: And so some of the cultures we're going to discuss
Speaker 1: in this episode and kind of make a patchwork villain
Speaker 1: um religion here for Indiana Jones to go up against.
Speaker 1: And I think they also incorporate more than a little
Speaker 1: bit of fictional satanic ritual like it, it's very unbelievable
Speaker 1: culture that Indiana Jones is supposedly encountering in that movie,
Speaker 1: to say the least. Yeah, now, other heart rips of
Speaker 1: of note, correct me if I'm wrong, But doesn't Jason
Speaker 1: Vorhees ripped out of heart at least once. Uh, Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't recall. Probably yeah, well I do know. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's one of the worst movies in the whole series.
Speaker 1: Ends up like the bunch of people, A bunch of
Speaker 1: like troops come in and blow up Jason, and then
Speaker 1: somebody eats Jason's heart and turns into Jason. It's brilliant. Okay,
Speaker 1: I was really I had I haven't. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've actually seen leprekn six ak LEPrecon Back to the
Speaker 1: Hood from two thousand and three. This is the last
Speaker 1: one to star Warwick Davis. But that has a heart
Speaker 1: rip in it. Like the heart rip scene I guess
Speaker 1: in a film is usually pretty easy to do because
Speaker 1: you just it's mostly sound effect and then the visual
Speaker 1: of somebody holding a bloody, um palpating heart. Oftentimes that's
Speaker 1: dumb by just having the person squeeze like kind of
Speaker 1: reever heart create the sound effect if you desire. Other
Speaker 1: examples come to mind the horror movie Valentine's Day. Um,
Speaker 1: I've forgotten about this, but the Prophecy films have a
Speaker 1: lot of this, with angels ripping each other's hearts out. Um.
Speaker 1: Dumb and Dumber has a heart rip scene that I
Speaker 1: had forgotten about. I can't remember. Is that supposed to
Speaker 1: be a dream sequence or is that supposed to really
Speaker 1: happen or does it matter? In dumb and dumber. It
Speaker 1: is a dream sequence. Okay, okay, h then there's a rambo,
Speaker 1: Last Blood and Last of the Mohicans. Actually seen very
Speaker 1: few of these movies. Oh well, we might. We might
Speaker 1: have to come back to the Prophecy films, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. Some of those you could probably miss um,
Speaker 1: especially maybe lepri kon six. But but yeah, there it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a staple of horror um. Oftentimes, if
Speaker 1: you have any kind of like supernatural being, you know,
Speaker 1: you have some sort of really lightning quick heart rip.
Speaker 1: There's a great example of this on the HBO series
Speaker 1: True Blood, which I guess over overall looking back on
Speaker 1: it kind of a mixed bag. But the excellent character
Speaker 1: actor Dennis O'Hare does have this wonderful character, the vampire
Speaker 1: King of Mississippi. His name is Russell Eddington. Is a
Speaker 1: real highlight of the show. While he's on the show,
Speaker 1: and there's a scene where I forget exactly what ticks
Speaker 1: him off, but vampires are supposed to be secret in
Speaker 1: the in the series, and he just gets mad and
Speaker 1: instantly like speeds to um like a live news broadcast
Speaker 1: and rips the broadcasters hard out through his back along
Speaker 1: with a piece of his spine, and that stands out
Speaker 1: of and in my mind is one of the finest
Speaker 1: moments of that series. The main thing that comes to
Speaker 1: my mind is that the manual heart removal is the
Speaker 1: primary move of an unarmed Terminator in the Terminator films.
Speaker 1: Oh did he rip some hearts out? That's what That's
Speaker 1: what Arnold Schwarzenegger does in the first movie when he
Speaker 1: comes out to the punk. Yeah, he like, get Bill
Speaker 1: Paxxton or somebody or the guy Bill Paxiston's hanging out with.
Speaker 1: It's been so long since I saw the first Terminator.
Speaker 1: I really need to go back in and watch it.
Speaker 1: I don't know why that's the move they chose. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's scary in the movie. I don't know if that
Speaker 1: really speaks of robotic efficiency. It's like taking the batteries
Speaker 1: out right, all right. Well, with that out of the way,
Speaker 1: we're gonna begin to move into what we were ultimately
Speaker 1: really talking about in this pair of episodes this week,
Speaker 1: and that is um heart removals and and how they
Speaker 1: factored into uh different views, different supernatural understandings of the
Speaker 1: human body and the cosmos. We're not gonna we're probably
Speaker 1: not gonna go super in depth into heart symbolism and metaphors,
Speaker 1: and in terms of trying to be um, you know,
Speaker 1: to completely cover the topic because it is a broad topic.
Speaker 1: You have, like any given culture has some sort of
Speaker 1: idea about what the heart is, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of overlap. But then there are some distinct ideas mixed
Speaker 1: in there as well, and we'll touch on some of these.
Speaker 1: I think a good place to start would be, of course,
Speaker 1: with the Egyptian heart. Now there was we had a
Speaker 1: past episode of the show this was there was an
Speaker 1: interview that I did with author Bill Shutt, who wrote
Speaker 1: a book called Pump. It's quite good. It gets into
Speaker 1: animal hearts and various um in the history of understanding
Speaker 1: the human heart, Medical history of the heart. Wonderful read.
Speaker 1: And in that book he he does bring up that, yes,
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians knew the heart is ab or eb
Speaker 1: or hati uh. It was treated with a great deal
Speaker 1: of reverence, as this was the organ said to contain
Speaker 1: a record of the individual's good and bad deeds. And
Speaker 1: I think a number any of if you've consumed any
Speaker 1: amount of Egyptology over the years, you're probably familiar with
Speaker 1: the basic scenario that is often related here, that after
Speaker 1: you have died, it is this heart that will be
Speaker 1: weighed against a feather of Matt, the Goddess of truth,
Speaker 1: to see if you can indeed pass on into the
Speaker 1: realms beyond our life here on earth, or if you're
Speaker 1: going to be consumed by this ferocious beast of annihilation
Speaker 1: and thus no longer exist. I think it's a crocodile
Speaker 1: type or crocodile issue beast, isn't it. Yes, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It is a crocodile esque I'm blanking on the name
Speaker 1: of the entity off the top of my head. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, you basically have the this uh, the split
Speaker 1: road between annihilation and continued existence. But you can only
Speaker 1: continue to exist if your heart matches up against this
Speaker 1: feather of Matt, the Goddess of truth. Now, as Geraldine
Speaker 1: Pinch mentions in her book Egyptian Mythology, yeah, the ancient
Speaker 1: Egyptians view the heart is the organ of thought and feeling,
Speaker 1: and it was the seat of consciousness itself, and the
Speaker 1: goddess here was is often seen as this ostrich, feather
Speaker 1: adorned goddess of truth and goodness, So thus her feather
Speaker 1: would match the weight of your heart if you had
Speaker 1: truth in your heart, if you had not at in
Speaker 1: your heart uh at all. So that's the basic scenario
Speaker 1: there now, Shut sites historian Roger K. French, who rationalized
Speaker 1: that the basic idea and the Egyptian model here is
Speaker 1: that life is warm. The heart is warm, the heart moves,
Speaker 1: and with its movements we we breathe, and our vessels
Speaker 1: carry blood to the rest of our body. Shut also
Speaker 1: points out that the teen fifty five b c. Book
Speaker 1: of the Heart may reveal some level of understanding regarding
Speaker 1: heart attacks and aneurysms among the ancient Egyptians, but historians
Speaker 1: are not all in agreement onto what degree we could
Speaker 1: interpret it this way. Now, given the importance of the
Speaker 1: heart in all of this, especially the continuation of the
Speaker 1: soul and ancient Egyptian belief, uh, this probably reminds a
Speaker 1: lot of people out there of another fact about the
Speaker 1: mummified remains of an individual, about what happens to various
Speaker 1: internal organs. Several of these internal organs are are often
Speaker 1: uh placed inside of a canopic jar, including the heart. Yes,
Speaker 1: and so that brings me to how I wanted to
Speaker 1: look at a specific example of a mummy to examine
Speaker 1: treatment of the heart in a case where it was
Speaker 1: well documented. So obviously, Egyptian embalming, mummification, and burial practices
Speaker 1: varied by time and place, and ancient Egyptian civilization spans
Speaker 1: have really long time, thousands of years, So the example
Speaker 1: I'm about to talk about is not characteristic of everything
Speaker 1: in age in Egypt. But I thought it was interesting
Speaker 1: to look at one example in particular, especially because it
Speaker 1: contradicts a generalization that many people have made over the
Speaker 1: years about Egyptian mummification, one that I definitely remember learning
Speaker 1: when I was younger, And the generalization is this that
Speaker 1: during mummification, the brain is always removed. Of course you
Speaker 1: get the famous grotesque image of the hook going through
Speaker 1: the face holes to remove the brain, and that the heart,
Speaker 1: being the seat of the soul, as you just explained,
Speaker 1: was left in place in the body. So maybe the
Speaker 1: other organs were removed, but the heart was left in
Speaker 1: the chest. And by the way, if if memory serves,
Speaker 1: I think I'm remembering from a past episode on mummies,
Speaker 1: the brain. We have to to remember the brain. I
Speaker 1: believe it has often thought to have gone rancid first,
Speaker 1: to rot it first, and therefore we have to factor
Speaker 1: that into all of this as well, along with these
Speaker 1: understandings for the ancient Egyptians about what organs we're doing now.
Speaker 1: The specific mummy I was reading about that that contradicted
Speaker 1: this generalization was featured in a in a paper based
Speaker 1: especially around some ct scan research that was published in
Speaker 1: in the journal the academic journal the Yearbook of Mummy Studies.
Speaker 1: It's a funny name. It makes you imagine the mummies
Speaker 1: are like writing, you know, stay cool, have a great summer,
Speaker 1: or they're like going through drawing hearts around all the
Speaker 1: mummies they have a crush on like this mummy is
Speaker 1: so cute anyway, I uh so, I was reading about
Speaker 1: this paper in a concurrent article in Live Science by
Speaker 1: Owen jaris called Ancient Egyptian mummy found with brain no heart.
Speaker 1: So this mummy is the body of a woman who
Speaker 1: lived about seventeen hundred years ago according to radio carbon dating,
Speaker 1: placing her under the period of Roman control of Egypt,
Speaker 1: and she died somewhere between the ages of thirty and fifty,
Speaker 1: and her body shows sign of severe dental health issues
Speaker 1: and tooth loss, which apparently is quite common for ancient
Speaker 1: Egyptian bodies from this period. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: because they were getting lots of sugar or what. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the explanation is, but a lot of
Speaker 1: dental problems, and the religious and cultural context would be
Speaker 1: this was a person who still adhered to a version
Speaker 1: of traditional Egyptian religion, or the variant of it that
Speaker 1: was popular at this time, at a time when Christianity
Speaker 1: was actually spreading through the region and becoming more and
Speaker 1: more dominant. Now, in contradiction to the brain removed, heart
Speaker 1: left in place generalization I heard when I was growing up,
Speaker 1: this mummy is exactly the opposite. Analysis of CT scans
Speaker 1: by the researchers found that the embalmers in this case uh,
Speaker 1: they worked by making an incision in the paraneum, and
Speaker 1: then through here they removed the intestines, the stomach, the liver,
Speaker 1: and the heart. Heart came out too. So after all
Speaker 1: these organs were removed, they lined the incision that they
Speaker 1: had made with resin and linen cloth, and then they
Speaker 1: placed a couple of plaques on this woman's body, on
Speaker 1: the skin, over the stomach and over the stern um,
Speaker 1: and to read from Jaris's summary quote, something that may
Speaker 1: have been intended to ritually heal the damage the embalmers
Speaker 1: had done and act as a replacement of sorts for
Speaker 1: her removed heart. And this would not be the only example,
Speaker 1: uh in ancient Egyptian involving practices where the heart was
Speaker 1: taken out and something else was put in there, seemingly
Speaker 1: in its place or to replace it. I'll mention another
Speaker 1: couple of examples of that in a minute. But after this,
Speaker 1: her body was treated with um spices and with lichen covering.
Speaker 1: Uh I think her head and her her upper body,
Speaker 1: and she was wrapped and buried somewhere near lux Or.
Speaker 1: At the time of this article, by the way, the
Speaker 1: mummy was in the collection of the Red Path Museum
Speaker 1: at McGill University in Montreal. But anyway, this raises an
Speaker 1: interesting question. If the heart was so important in Egyptian religion,
Speaker 1: that so important that for a long time people assumed
Speaker 1: it was always left in place when body bodies were mummified,
Speaker 1: what was happening in the cases where it actually was removed,
Speaker 1: and how common was that um Well, to quote a
Speaker 1: professor named Andrew Wade from McMaster University, who's the author
Speaker 1: of another uh piece I'm gonna look at in a minute,
Speaker 1: Wade says, quote, we don't really know what's happening to
Speaker 1: the hearts that are removed, so it's assumed that, as
Speaker 1: you alluded to a minute ago, robed, they were usually
Speaker 1: when they were mooved, they were put into canopic jars,
Speaker 1: which we know we're used to hold internal organs removed
Speaker 1: from other mummies, but that's not always known for sure.
Speaker 1: So sometimes we just don't know what happened to the heart.
Speaker 1: And there's still the question of why why did they
Speaker 1: do this? Well, we don't know, but the authors of
Speaker 1: the ct study speculate that perhaps the two plaques on
Speaker 1: her abdomen and her stern um were meant as a
Speaker 1: kind of healing or a replacement for the wounds inflicted
Speaker 1: by the embalming process itself, Like, Okay, we had to
Speaker 1: cut a hole in your body in order to process
Speaker 1: your body for burial, so here's a plaster healing symbol
Speaker 1: to counteract that incision. And then perhaps the plaque on
Speaker 1: the stern um was somehow a replacement for the missing heart.
Speaker 1: But again we don't know for sure, and we don't
Speaker 1: know why the heart was removed, But I came across
Speaker 1: another piece that has some some interesting thoughts about this.
Speaker 1: So for a more general look at the treatment of
Speaker 1: the heart in Egyptian mummification, I was looking at. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't think this is a paper in an academic journal.
Speaker 1: I think this is a fact sheet from a presentation
Speaker 1: at an academic conference that was put together by a
Speaker 1: couple of experts, by Andrew D. Wade and Andrew J. Nelson.
Speaker 1: I know that one of the two authors here, Wade,
Speaker 1: was the one who was quoted in that article we
Speaker 1: were just talking about. So the authors of of this
Speaker 1: presentation here say that many generalizations made these days about
Speaker 1: the treatment of the heart in Egyptian momification are based
Speaker 1: not on modern empirical research, but rather on accounts given
Speaker 1: by classical authors. So if we are going to use
Speaker 1: literary evidence, evidence from ancient texts for what these funeral
Speaker 1: practices were, uh, you know, it would be really good
Speaker 1: to have a lot of direct Egyptian accounts, And we
Speaker 1: have some Egyptian accounts about beliefs about funeral practices and
Speaker 1: and the afterlife. But instead a lot of the literary
Speaker 1: evidence we use is mostly in Greek and Roman texts
Speaker 1: from authors like Herodotus and Plutarch. And in fact, they
Speaker 1: say the only author specifically mentioning the heart as opposed
Speaker 1: to making more general statements about what is done with
Speaker 1: the organs during UH momification is the Ptolemaic period Greek
Speaker 1: historian Diodorus Siculus, who writes as follows quote, when they
Speaker 1: have gathered to treat the body after it has been
Speaker 1: split open, one of them thrusts his hand through the
Speaker 1: opening in the corpse into the trunk and extracts everything
Speaker 1: but the kidneys and the heart, and another one cleanses
Speaker 1: each of the viscera, washing them in palm wine and spices.
Speaker 1: So based on this, we've got Diodorus here saying that
Speaker 1: the heart is always left in place. But of course,
Speaker 1: remember he was Ptolemaic period, and this is one author.
Speaker 1: And this presentation I looked at was designed to compare
Speaker 1: those literary accounts of heart treatment UH to evidence again
Speaker 1: from CT scans or from mummies that have actually been
Speaker 1: empirically taken apart and described in the scientific literature. So
Speaker 1: we like looked to see what was left in them.
Speaker 1: And they say there are three basic patterns of of
Speaker 1: heart treatment in mummies. One is retention, the heart stays
Speaker 1: in the chest even if other organs are removed. Number
Speaker 1: two is removal, the heart is taken out of the body.
Speaker 1: And number three is replacement, where the heart is removed moved,
Speaker 1: and something symbolic is left in its place, generally something
Speaker 1: called a heart scare ub which is a type of amulet.
Speaker 1: So how do the empirical finding stack up the author's
Speaker 1: right quote, The heart was noted as intact in only
Speaker 1: twenty one of eighty individuals where this organ's disposition was recorded,
Speaker 1: and barely more than a quarter of the individuals, And
Speaker 1: this sample was the heart retained in situ, and only
Speaker 1: one case was the heart possibly sewn back into place,
Speaker 1: and in one other case was a heart scare of
Speaker 1: a present presumably to replace the removed heart. And so
Speaker 1: rob you can see I have included a chart from
Speaker 1: their presentation below where you can look at the trends
Speaker 1: where these are not percentages, but these are absolute numbers
Speaker 1: of examples from these different periods, and you can see
Speaker 1: that heart retention predominates in the small number of samples
Speaker 1: of mummies we have from the Middle and New Kingdoms.
Speaker 1: But then as time goes on, heart retention is outnumbered
Speaker 1: by heart removals and the third intermediate period, the Late period,
Speaker 1: and the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. So, in the words
Speaker 1: of the authors, quote, mummies were increasingly absent their hearts
Speaker 1: from the New Kingdom onward. As time goes on, more
Speaker 1: and more of the mummies we find have their hearts removed.
Speaker 1: And so the authors conclude, quote, the stereotype of universal
Speaker 1: heart retention or replacement on accidental removal is far from
Speaker 1: the truth. The heart was uncommonly retained in situ and
Speaker 1: rarely returned or replaced by a heart scare up. The
Speaker 1: hypothesis constructed from the stereotyped account by Diodorus is therefore
Speaker 1: falsified by these data. Interesting interesting, also worth just driving
Speaker 1: home though that this is all separate, of course, from
Speaker 1: the purely sort of mythological situation in which the heart
Speaker 1: is weighed. That's taking place in another realm, that is
Speaker 1: not taking place in the physical world. This is a
Speaker 1: study about what happened to the body, is not necessarily
Speaker 1: about what the people in question believed about what was
Speaker 1: happening in the afterlife, right, And though of it's also
Speaker 1: worth driving home that also with belief especially when we're
Speaker 1: talking about ancient Egypt. Again, like you said, we're talking
Speaker 1: about a very um long period of time in which
Speaker 1: practices change, but also beliefs also change. So it's hard
Speaker 1: to just you can't just sum everything up and like
Speaker 1: say a pamphlet about like here's what the ancient Egyptians
Speaker 1: believed or did, because you're covering such a broad period
Speaker 1: of time. Correct, And this is the point the authors
Speaker 1: here are making. Uh They they used this as evidence
Speaker 1: that the classical descriptions of English Egyptian mummification by like
Speaker 1: Greek and Latin authors should only be used, as they say,
Speaker 1: at best, quote a possible snapshot of mummification performed by
Speaker 1: one particular workshop unquote, and not like an adequate description
Speaker 1: of universal practices or even of the most common practices
Speaker 1: across time and space. Uh So, But I still had
Speaker 1: the question about, like why, though, is there any clue
Speaker 1: as to why this difference that in some cases the
Speaker 1: heart is retained, in other cases the heart is removed,
Speaker 1: And are there any trends in like whose hearts were
Speaker 1: removed and whose were left in place? The authors do
Speaker 1: offer a bit of speculation here. They say that you know. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: in the mummies available to us, there seems to be
Speaker 1: a somewhat of a correlation with access to mummification by
Speaker 1: different classes. So in the New Kingdom there essentially was
Speaker 1: a process of democratization of mummification. Previously, mummification had been
Speaker 1: an incredibly exclusive right which was only available to you know,
Speaker 1: the top top elites. But then they say, quote as
Speaker 1: time progressed, the nobles gained increasing access to mummification and
Speaker 1: retained their hearts. With the democratization of ummification, however, the
Speaker 1: commoners being mummified, we're not receiving the same treatment, possibly
Speaker 1: to ensure that the elite maintained a more favorable afterlife
Speaker 1: than their subjects. That went in a different direction than
Speaker 1: I was expecting. I thought it would just maybe be like, well,
Speaker 1: this is this is a premium service for premium customers.
Speaker 1: We can't offer the same level of mumification services for
Speaker 1: a lesser price. But it seems like it also could
Speaker 1: be ensuring the status quo in the afterlife. It could
Speaker 1: be because I mean so I don't know how it
Speaker 1: would necessarily be cheaper to remove the heart than not
Speaker 1: remove the heart, you know, like it just in terms
Speaker 1: of the actual cost in the like labor to the embalmers.
Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, it could be a deliberate choice to
Speaker 1: sort of create an artificial, uh tiered system for quality
Speaker 1: of mummification and make sure, well, there's a really special
Speaker 1: kind of mummification where your heart stays in and that's
Speaker 1: only available to the elites. But we don't know that
Speaker 1: for sure. I want to be very clear, we don't
Speaker 1: know the reasoning. But that is an interesting, plausible scenario
Speaker 1: that it's like it was in order to create a
Speaker 1: kind of elite or premium tiered type of mummification at
Speaker 1: a time when more people were getting mummification at all. Fascinating,
Speaker 1: But we don't know for sure, and so I think
Speaker 1: this remains a really interesting question I would love to
Speaker 1: like know more of someone could have more evidence to
Speaker 1: shed direct light on on why this this difference emerged
Speaker 1: than now. Another scenario of heart removal that that's rather
Speaker 1: rather different in many respects, but one that probably instantly
Speaker 1: comes to many people's minds that I want to discuss
Speaker 1: is the ritual removal of human hearts by the Mayans
Speaker 1: and the Aztecs, but especially for research purposes. Here, the
Speaker 1: Mayans so the ancient minds are known to have performed
Speaker 1: human sacrifices involving the removal of the heart, though not
Speaker 1: in the postmortem sense. Um, the removal of the heart
Speaker 1: essentially via ritualistic sacrifice, ritualistic execution. You could think of
Speaker 1: it as vivisection or um or just or or even
Speaker 1: death by heart removal, I imagine. One article I was
Speaker 1: reading on the topic was Procedures in Human Heart Extraction
Speaker 1: and Ritual Meaning by Tessler and Zuccina, published in Latin
Speaker 1: American Antiquity in two thousand and six. And as you
Speaker 1: can tell by the title, this is a paper that
Speaker 1: deals predominantly with the procedures. How were they carrying this out? Um,
Speaker 1: not so much the you know, the the wise. We'll
Speaker 1: get into some of the wise, but essentially these were
Speaker 1: religious practices. Um. But I was not aware that there was.
Speaker 1: There's been so much sort of, so much discussion and
Speaker 1: attempts to understand exactly how the heart was removed. So
Speaker 1: they looked at skeletal remains a suspected heart removal human
Speaker 1: sacrifice cases and contended that the sacrificers would carry these
Speaker 1: procedures out. By quote, a trans diaphragmatic and I looked,
Speaker 1: I had to look that up. Webster says, use the
Speaker 1: hard g on trans diaphragmatic um. So I'm going with
Speaker 1: with with what Webster saying. In this case, the definition
Speaker 1: being occurring passing or performed through the diaphragm. You mean
Speaker 1: the diaphrag um, Yes, the diap um. And so this
Speaker 1: would yeah opening immediately below the rib cage, and this
Speaker 1: would help ensure rapid removal of the heart. And this
Speaker 1: is where they get into their going up against some
Speaker 1: some previous theories about how they carried this out. In particular,
Speaker 1: there was an eight to ten minute procedure estimate by
Speaker 1: Robestic and Hales in four These authors had argued that
Speaker 1: the sacrifice or would have cut through the thorax from
Speaker 1: side to side, collapsing the lung in the process us
Speaker 1: and this would make the victim unconscious within three to
Speaker 1: four minutes and allow the rest of the surgery to
Speaker 1: proceed without struggle. And they do kind of frame it
Speaker 1: as kind of a surgery vivisection, with heart removal occurring
Speaker 1: while the heart was still palpitating, which seemed to be
Speaker 1: the desired effect. To pull the heart out while the
Speaker 1: heart seems to still have life in it. Another analysis
Speaker 1: from Gonzalez Torres argued as well for a below the
Speaker 1: ribs approach, but stressed that the exact style may have
Speaker 1: varied from region to regions. So again we get into
Speaker 1: a similar situation with mummification. Just because one um mummification
Speaker 1: lab was doing it one way doesn't mean they were
Speaker 1: doing it the same way at another lab at another time.
Speaker 1: And likewise, the way hearts were removed via blood ritual
Speaker 1: blood sacrifice in one instance, it might be different in another. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, different styles for different sacrifices, or some sort
Speaker 1: of evolution of style Tesla and chacina. Meanwhile, right quote,
Speaker 1: it must be underlined in this context that ritual heart
Speaker 1: removal entailed a violent vivisection of a struggling victim, and
Speaker 1: was therefore quicker and fundamentally distinctive from the cautious procedures
Speaker 1: implied in a quote unquote surgical operation as visualized by
Speaker 1: Rubasacon Hales. Now, the sacrificial victims in these situations were
Speaker 1: typically enslaved people, sometimes children or prisoners of war who
Speaker 1: were and and I'm reading that they were often either
Speaker 1: painted blue first or pelted with arrows, and once the
Speaker 1: heart was removed, its blood was generally used to smear
Speaker 1: or anoint some sort of divine icon or some sort
Speaker 1: of structure, that sort of thing. Now, as sacrifices, these
Speaker 1: would have had a religious significance. Is the significance of
Speaker 1: the act better understood than than maybe the significance of
Speaker 1: the removal or non removal of the heart in the
Speaker 1: Egyptian example, I believe so based on the work I
Speaker 1: was looking at. There's a paper here by Tesla and
Speaker 1: Oliver in Open Caskets and Broken Hearts. Great great title
Speaker 1: from a edition of Current Anthropology, and the authors here
Speaker 1: are right that the quote partitioning and the liberation of
Speaker 1: vitalizing matter, namely the heart and blood, fed specific sacred
Speaker 1: forces during divine cult and mythic reenactment. They also provide
Speaker 1: a note on Aztec sacrifices quote. As for the Aztecs,
Speaker 1: we conclude that different trunk opening procedures were practiced as
Speaker 1: part of ritual sequences that in each case enabled access
Speaker 1: to the cosmics sacred mountain with its vivifying essences. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, hearts and blood were essentially food for
Speaker 1: gods of the Sun and gods of the earth deities
Speaker 1: who in turn sacrificed or more intern or you could say,
Speaker 1: originally sacrificed something to create the universe. And the sacrifices
Speaker 1: here were acts of all the the actual blood ritual sacrifices,
Speaker 1: not the mythological sacrifices, were acts of quote, obligation, reciprocation,
Speaker 1: and re enactment. So there are several different things going
Speaker 1: on there, Like there's a sort of a mythic understanding
Speaker 1: of what the heart and the blood is. There's this
Speaker 1: re enactment of things that occurred in sacred time, the
Speaker 1: idea that there is some sort of of blood ritual
Speaker 1: and sacrifice that occurred with mythological beings, and the thing
Speaker 1: that is taking place in the sacrifice is important insofar
Speaker 1: as it is re enacting this mythic incident. And there's
Speaker 1: this also, you know, basically like what we we sort
Speaker 1: of generalize about sacrifice. Something is offered up so that
Speaker 1: something else may be offered down to us as humans.
Speaker 1: They also mentioned in this article that while the under
Speaker 1: the rib technique does seem more common, and I believe
Speaker 1: this is a slightly later work, there are three distinct
Speaker 1: tactics that were used. There's cutting directly under the ribs,
Speaker 1: there's making an incision between two ribs, and then there's
Speaker 1: horizontally severing the stern um in order to access the heart.
Speaker 1: But again it seems like going under the ribs was
Speaker 1: the most common technique mm hmm. Now additionally, and just
Speaker 1: sort of like trying to, you know, get into the whole,
Speaker 1: like what what did ancient people and in this case,
Speaker 1: what did the Mayans who are engaging in heart removal sacrifice?
Speaker 1: What did they think of the heart? What other ideas
Speaker 1: were we're going on regarding the center of our circulatory system.
Speaker 1: On this I found an interest discussion of ideas concerning
Speaker 1: the human body among the Satal people, because at all
Speaker 1: people are a Mayan people in southern Mexico. UM. So
Speaker 1: in this particular work, it is the ethno Physiology of
Speaker 1: the Satal Maya of the Highland Chapests by Cameron Littleton Adams.
Speaker 1: This was a Doctor's of Philosophy dissertation from the University
Speaker 1: of Georgia. So I'm not going to get into everything
Speaker 1: that's discussed here. And again this is not the Mayan
Speaker 1: people of old, but contempt arre Mayan people's um but
Speaker 1: there are these interesting ideas in their thinking about the
Speaker 1: connection of the heart to cognition. Uh, not thinking with
Speaker 1: the heart instead of the brain, but sort of thinking
Speaker 1: with it. So I found that kind of interesting because
Speaker 1: there are some other instances we'll get into as well.
Speaker 1: And in addition to the Egyptian model, where uh, this
Speaker 1: seems like maybe a modern twist on on these older
Speaker 1: ideas of the heart being the center of thought, in
Speaker 1: the center of being. Uh So, maybe it's a situation
Speaker 1: where like in the modern world, you know that the
Speaker 1: brain is the center of cognition, but there's still the
Speaker 1: symbolic and metaphorical importance of the heart as being something
Speaker 1: vital to who we are and having some sort of
Speaker 1: emotional connection which I think we can all relate to that,
Speaker 1: especially on Valentine's Day, like we're so on Valentine's Day,
Speaker 1: were so steeped in this idea that, yeah, the heart
Speaker 1: is not just a thing that pumps blood. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: And there is to some degree some accurate re seeing
Speaker 1: wisdom in that way of thinking, because of course, well,
Speaker 1: I think it is quite clear that the brain is
Speaker 1: the necessary organ for cognition, Like you couldn't have thinking
Speaker 1: without the brain, that the rest of the body influences
Speaker 1: the thinking that happens in the brain, and the brain
Speaker 1: is not like a thing floating apart from the body. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Adams has this wonderful little line in here. I want
Speaker 1: to read. Um. I found this very fascinating quote. Further,
Speaker 1: health is referred to by the semantic pair walking and working,
Speaker 1: and the heart is conceived of as a homunculous, an
Speaker 1: internal being that makes commands that must be obeyed. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth or
Speaker 1: or visualizations in anyone else's worldview, so I don't think
Speaker 1: this is supposed to literally be a homunculus or this
Speaker 1: idea that like the heart, that in each of us
Speaker 1: there's like a squat, little like tough, little um like
Speaker 1: red flesh being that lives in the center of our
Speaker 1: chest and sort of um, you know, puppet masters the
Speaker 1: rest of us. It's more like an idea of like
Speaker 1: what's going on in the heart versus what's going on
Speaker 1: on the outside. It's this It is more metaphorical, but
Speaker 1: I think it's still an intriguing idea. Well, and I
Speaker 1: could be misunderstanding, but I kind of read that as
Speaker 1: it sounds like it's suggesting the heart as a something
Speaker 1: that is separate from the conscious mind but has desires
Speaker 1: of its own that must be obeyed. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's fair as well, though it is it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to not just picture like literal homunculous in
Speaker 1: the heart. But I know that's not what the what
Speaker 1: the the author is going for here, But it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting to think about all this. Like when we think
Speaker 1: about heart and brain, we think, okay, brain is thought,
Speaker 1: heart is his certain story system. But of course if
Speaker 1: we we know that the two need each other like
Speaker 1: they can, the brain cannot live independent of some sort
Speaker 1: of heart, uh that is doing the job of the heart,
Speaker 1: be that a transplanted heart or an artificial heart like
Speaker 1: that is a role that has to be filled for
Speaker 1: the brain to do its thing as well. And that
Speaker 1: feedback from an input from the rest of the body
Speaker 1: affects how the brain works. That that for in an
Speaker 1: incredibly mundane ways that you're familiar with, such as like
Speaker 1: you think different when you're hungry, like when you're getting
Speaker 1: feedback from your digestive system or something, or from your
Speaker 1: blood sugar, that's going to affect the way you feel
Speaker 1: and the way you think. But it's also in much
Speaker 1: subtler and stranger ways as well, that there's a relationship
Speaker 1: between what's happening and say, your gut microbiome and the
Speaker 1: way your brain works, and on and on. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then of course there's the very simple observation that, hey,
Speaker 1: when I am very excited, when I'm agitated, my heart
Speaker 1: is beating faster, and when I'm very calm, my heart
Speaker 1: is beating very slowly, and realizing that, yeah, they're they're
Speaker 1: all these very observable connections between the way that we uh,
Speaker 1: you know, what's going on in our mind and our
Speaker 1: being and what's going on seemingly in the center of
Speaker 1: our chest. All right, well, I think maybe we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to call this episode there for part one, but
Speaker 1: we will be back in part two to discuss more
Speaker 1: heart removal traditions and thoughts about heart removal from the
Speaker 1: point of view of other cultures. In in Norse traditions,
Speaker 1: in uh, in medieval Christianity, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: boiling some crusaders. Uh, It's it's gonna be fun. Yes,
Speaker 1: there will be more human sacrifice, there will be more
Speaker 1: heart removal. Uh and and much more. So be sure
Speaker 1: to check back in on Thursday as we continue our
Speaker 1: our special Valentine's Day celebration of the removed heart. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you would like to listen to other
Speaker 1: episodes Stuff to Blow Your Mind, well you will find
Speaker 1: them all in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
Speaker 1: We have our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On
Speaker 1: Monday's we do a listener mail episode. On Wednesdays the
Speaker 1: normal schedule as we do a short form monster effect
Speaker 1: or Artifact episode, and on Fridays we set aside most
Speaker 1: serious concerns to do an episode of Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: That's where really most of the heart ripping takes place
Speaker 1: on this show, huge thanks to our audio producer J J. Pauseway.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind's production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: this is the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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