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Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope

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Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will? What's that Mango? So you

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Speaker 1: remember our pal Sam Keene?

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Speaker 2: Of course I remember. Sammy was one of our first

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Speaker 2: science writers at Mental Floss, And it's just.

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Speaker 1: One of the best of the best, it really is.

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Speaker 1: And he went on to write all these bestsellers like

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Speaker 1: The Disappearing Spoon, The Violinist's Thumb, Caesar's Last Breath, and

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Speaker 1: he's got a new one out.

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Speaker 2: First of all, I love the names of all of

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Speaker 2: his books, like they just sound so intriguing.

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Speaker 1: So tell me what this one's about. It's called Dinner

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Speaker 1: with King Tut and it's all about how this crazy

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Speaker 1: world of rogue archaeologists are recreating the sites and sounds

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Speaker 1: and smells and tastes of lost civilizations. Like instead of

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Speaker 1: just being on a field site dusting off fragments of pottery,

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Speaker 1: he's using evidence from the shards to make delicious Egyptian

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Speaker 1: beers and breads and testing out theories about mummies by

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Speaker 1: trying to actually mummify a piece of store bought fish.

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Speaker 1: Oh really, Yeah, he did it with a piece of

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Speaker 1: grocery store red Snapper. Oh wow. But it is an

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Speaker 1: incredible book and it's so fun to read, and I

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Speaker 1: honestly can't stop telling people about it. So I thought

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Speaker 1: it'd be fun to invite him on the show and

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Speaker 1: catch up about the book in person. So let's dive in. Sam.

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Speaker 1: It is such a pleasure to have you on the show. Hi,

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Speaker 1: thanks for having me. You know, I feel like I

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Speaker 1: have known your name forever because back at Mental Flaws,

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Speaker 1: Will and I used to run that like anytime we

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Speaker 1: needed like a great science piece, it'd be like, oh,

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Speaker 1: let's see what Sam Keene is up to. I really

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Speaker 1: appreciate your voice and your writing and the topics you covered.

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Speaker 1: But then I was blown away when I think it

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Speaker 1: was your first book, The Disappearing Spoon came out right

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Speaker 1: and it immediately rose to the top of the charts,

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Speaker 1: and you've been cranking out bestsellers ever since. But I'm

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Speaker 1: really excited to talk about this new one. Dinner Wick

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Speaker 1: King tut how rogue archaeologists are recreating the sites, sound, smells,

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Speaker 1: and tastes of lost civilizations. Thank you so much for

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Speaker 1: being here.

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Speaker 3: Well, I appreciate it. Thank you.

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Speaker 1: So tell me a little bit about this because you

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Speaker 1: have in your preface this little bit about how archaeology

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Speaker 1: is fascinating in theory, but somehow when you got out

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Speaker 1: into the field, working as an archaeologist isn't as exciting

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Speaker 1: as you'd hope. Can you talk to me a little

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Speaker 1: bit about that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd always just had a bit of a gripe

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Speaker 3: with the field that I loved the big picture things

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Speaker 3: that you learned from archaeology about humankind, where we came from,

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Speaker 3: how we spread across the globe, all of these big,

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Speaker 3: rich questions about humanity. But then I would get to

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Speaker 3: actual archaeological digs where they're doing work, and it was

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Speaker 3: just a bunch of people sitting around in the dirt

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Speaker 3: brushing off little potshards with toothbrushes or dental picks or something.

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Speaker 3: It just seemed like the most tedious work imaginable. Just

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Speaker 3: day after day of that over and over, and I

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Speaker 3: just could not imagine actually doing that work. And as

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Speaker 3: a writer especially, there just wasn't much to say about

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Speaker 3: the work that they were doing. Even though the conclusions

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Speaker 3: were big and really interesting, the day by day work

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Speaker 3: was just kind of tedious. And another thing that kind

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Speaker 3: of frustrated me was that you know, they were talking

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Speaker 3: about and investigating civilizations from vastly different places, everywhere, from

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Speaker 3: the Arctic to to Peru, just all over the world.

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Speaker 3: But every dig looked exactly the same. Again, just people

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Speaker 3: sitting around in the dirt brushing things off and lattened

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Speaker 3: it and sort of subtracted the differences and made every

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Speaker 3: archaeological look the same, even though you were talking about

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Speaker 3: much different groups and cultures and civilizations. So those two

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Speaker 3: things kind of turned me off about traditional archaeology, which

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Speaker 3: is why I wrote this book, which focuses on a

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Speaker 3: different field called experimental archaeology, but they're actually doing and

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Speaker 3: creating things. It was much more interesting and sensory rich.

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Speaker 1: That's really really cool. And I feel, you know, similarly

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Speaker 1: about science, and that I'm fascinated by science. I'm fascinated

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Speaker 1: by the discoveries and the Eureka moments and all these things.

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Speaker 1: And when I was in high school, I volunteered in

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Speaker 1: a university lab where we studied moths and behavior, and

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Speaker 1: just every day was so slow and so tedious, and i'

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Speaker 1: thrilled other people who love that, but for me, it

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Speaker 1: just wasn't quick enough. The stories didn't move fast enough.

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Speaker 1: The conclusions didn't come fast enough. But tell me a

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Speaker 1: little bit about how you found this field of experiential

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Speaker 1: or experimental archaeology.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I first heard about someone who was

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Speaker 3: throwing what's called an ad laddle. So it's essentially a spear,

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Speaker 3: but instead of throwing with your hand, you have a

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Speaker 3: little kind of stick that's an extension of your arm,

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Speaker 3: and because it's longer than your arm, you get a

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Speaker 3: little more leverage, a little more pop when you throw it,

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Speaker 3: so it allows you to throw it faster and hit

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Speaker 3: something harder when you're hunting. And I saw someone who

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Speaker 3: had made an old fashioned at laddle, and they were

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Speaker 3: very common in prehistory, probably the most common hunting weapon

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Speaker 3: that people used all over the world, much more so

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Speaker 3: than just regular spears. And I'd never heard of this,

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Speaker 3: and I thought, wow, this is really cool. And I

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Speaker 3: saw someone there's a video of them throwing it, and

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Speaker 3: they were throwing it under these targets or these dummies

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Speaker 3: or something, and I just thought, wow, now that's kind

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Speaker 3: of fun archaeology. Someone doing needing something and you get

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Speaker 3: to go out there and you know, actually experience it

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Speaker 3: a little bit. And I sort of filed that away

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Speaker 3: and thought, you know, if I ever want to write

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Speaker 3: about archaeology, that could be sort of an entry to

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Speaker 3: the field for me. It was probably almost a decade

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Speaker 3: ago at this point, and once I sort of had

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Speaker 3: that on my radar, I kept coming across little stories

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Speaker 3: where even if the overall story was about a regular

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Speaker 3: archaeology dig, there might have been a little experimental component

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Speaker 3: with it, And so I just kept filing these stories away,

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Speaker 3: sort of gathering string and eventually, when it came time to,

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Speaker 3: you know, write another book, I thought, maybe I'm going

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Speaker 3: to look into this and see And once I did,

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Speaker 3: I found out there was a whole journal dedicated to this,

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Speaker 3: and there's kind of this little subculture of people who

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Speaker 3: enjoy running these types of experiments.

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Speaker 1: It's really incredible, and you talk about doing everything from

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Speaker 1: like tattooing someone, firing someone out of a cap to

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Speaker 1: making acorn bread. I mean, it really feels so joyful

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Speaker 1: and exciting. But on the other hand, it feels like

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Speaker 1: there are some incredible scientists involved with this, and also

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Speaker 1: some enthusiasts and hobbyists and almost amateurs and involved as well.

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Speaker 1: And so I'm curious, how do you figure out which

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Speaker 1: are the experiments worth indulging in.

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Speaker 3: It wasn't just archaeologists or the enthusiastic amateurs that we

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Speaker 3: talked about, but in a lot of cases, there are

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Speaker 3: also indigenous communities who have kept these traditions alive for

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Speaker 3: a long time, and they are the ones who are

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Speaker 3: turning around and teaching archaeologists about how these things work, so,

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Speaker 3: you know, disabusing them of myths they had or correcting

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Speaker 3: them when they were wrong. So one thing that was

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Speaker 3: sort of interesting and heartening was that it really was

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Speaker 3: a two way street with archaeologists talking to these communities

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Speaker 3: about things that they knew, you know, wisdom that had

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Speaker 3: been passed down in stories, poems, songs, things like that,

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Speaker 3: and them kind of using this to advance our knowledge

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Speaker 3: of what the past was like. But it's sort of

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Speaker 3: just whatever stood out to me is interesting. You get

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Speaker 3: you develop a nose for a story, and especially for

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Speaker 3: this book, I wanted to go and do things that

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Speaker 3: I thought would make good stories for the book. So

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Speaker 3: I could have gone and like tried to grind my

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Speaker 3: own grain or something like that, and that would have

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Speaker 3: been okay. I mean, that's an important thing, and I

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Speaker 3: did a little bit of that, but it just wasn't

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Speaker 3: as rich as you know, spending a day with this

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Speaker 3: guy who built this thirty foot tall catapult and spending

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Speaker 3: an afternoon hurling these giant stones around. That just made

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Speaker 3: for a much more lively experience being able to do

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Speaker 3: things like that. I also kind of wanted to throw

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Speaker 3: myself into some difficult situations, even though I knew I

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Speaker 3: was probably gonna be floundering around, in part because that's

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Speaker 3: just what people had to experience back then. Things were

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Speaker 3: not easy. Even making food or making clothing or shelter

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Speaker 3: was quite difficult back then, and me floundering around was

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Speaker 3: part of the experience. And you know, I think it

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Speaker 3: made for some more entertaining scenes, just me screwing things

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Speaker 3: up over and over. But you know, one thing I

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Speaker 3: liked about the field was that it was so sensory rich,

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Speaker 3: all of the smells and tastes and the sounds, but

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Speaker 3: a lot of it was me dealing with the emotions,

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Speaker 3: the frustrations, the joy when I finally got something right

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Speaker 3: after spending hours strewing it up over and over and again.

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Speaker 3: That's just something I don't feel like you get as

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Speaker 3: much of with traditional archaeology. Is the emotions that were

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Speaker 3: involved in trying to do things the things that we

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Speaker 3: take for granted nowadays, just making food and basic things

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Speaker 3: like that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really so fun. But the other thing that

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Speaker 1: was interesting is you do something experimental with this book.

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Speaker 1: You actually throw in fiction in between the segments of

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Speaker 1: explaining about the archaeology and when you.

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Speaker 3: Talk about why you chose to do that. Yeah, So

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Speaker 3: the book it kind of does work on two tracks.

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Speaker 3: Each chapter really immerses you in a specific time in

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Speaker 3: a specific place. So you know, ancient Egypt when they

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Speaker 3: were building the pyramids, or the Roman Empire, or the

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Speaker 3: Viking Age, or Africa seventy five thousand years ago when

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Speaker 3: modern humanity was just starting to emerge. And I really

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Speaker 3: wanted it to be immersive because that's what experimental archaeology

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Speaker 3: does really well, is it puts you in that time

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Speaker 3: in that place. But me going around and doing these

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Speaker 3: experiments could only get the reader I felt like part

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Speaker 3: way there. And one thing that fiction does that's really

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Speaker 3: nice is you're immersed in the character's mind. You're experiencing

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Speaker 3: it as they experienced it. So the premise of the book,

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Speaker 3: each chapter you live a day in the life of

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Speaker 3: that person from the time they wake up to the

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Speaker 3: time they go to bed that night, and strange, unusual

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Speaker 3: things happened to them, just like they would have to

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Speaker 3: people back then, and fiction was just a better way

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Speaker 3: to get at that experience and make it as immersive

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Speaker 3: as possible. So everything that happens to the characters could

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Speaker 3: and did happen to people back then. It's based on

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Speaker 3: archaeological research, but fiction was just a way to sort

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Speaker 3: of enrich the experience.

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Speaker 1: I just found it really compelling, these short stories interwoven

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Speaker 1: with these nonfiction bits. I've got to say, it was

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Speaker 1: a wonderful read. But were there any either fun or

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Speaker 1: wild or bizarre experiments that you tried and they just

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Speaker 1: got left on the cutting room floor.

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Speaker 3: There were a few disasters in the book, things that

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Speaker 3: just went sideways quickly anticipate maybe I should have. One

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Speaker 3: of them was and you know, it sounds a little gross,

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Speaker 3: but one material people would use to tan leather way

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Speaker 3: back when was they would use urine. They would use

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Speaker 3: it to kind of strip the fats off and to

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Speaker 3: toughen up the skin. And so I tried that with

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Speaker 3: a piece of salmon skin that I'd gotten from the store.

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Speaker 3: Tried to soak it in urine and see what would happened,

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Speaker 3: and it did not go well. Kind of mold that

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Speaker 3: in there. It was so disgusting. I quickly jettisoned that project.

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Speaker 3: Probably held on longer than I should have, but that

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Speaker 3: that did.

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Speaker 1: Not go well, I love it. So let's talk about Egypt.

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Speaker 1: So you tosses into this incredible scene where they're building

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Speaker 1: a pyramid, and the pyramid construction is almost over, and

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Speaker 1: you decide to show it to us through the eyes

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Speaker 1: of a baker. So I'm curious, like, why did you

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Speaker 1: choose a cook or a baker for the perspective on

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Speaker 1: this building of a paramid.

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Speaker 3: One thing I wanted to do was to put the

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Speaker 3: chapters in the perspective of kind of an everyday person,

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Speaker 3: someone that we can relate to, kind of an everyday person,

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Speaker 3: and a baker would have been one just a very

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Speaker 3: typical classic job in ancient Egypt, and it was a

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Speaker 3: very important job then because bread was the staple of

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Speaker 3: the Egyptian diet, and I knew that there were people

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Speaker 3: out there recreating Egyptian style breads and beers. And by

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Speaker 3: making him the main character, I knew I could sort

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Speaker 3: of get into those things and talk about some very

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Speaker 3: important things in Egyptian life. So, in addition to sort

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Speaker 3: of the fun dramatic plot things that happened, by making

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Speaker 3: him a baker, you could actually deepen your understanding of

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Speaker 3: just Egyptian culture in general.

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Speaker 1: And I love it. His life does go sideways very quickly.

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Speaker 1: But one of the things that I was curious about

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Speaker 1: is I had never picked up on the fact that

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Speaker 1: pyramids were also like the tallest monuments, that I took

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Speaker 1: another four thousand years to build something taller, is all right?

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Speaker 3: The biggest pyramid was built around the twenty seven hundred BC,

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Speaker 3: twenties undred BC something like that, and not until I

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Speaker 3: believe almost thirteen hundred eighty was there another structure in

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Speaker 3: the world that was taller than that. It was a

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Speaker 3: cathedral in England, I think. But yeah, so for roughly

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Speaker 3: four thousand years that was the pyramids. There were the

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Speaker 3: largest structures on Earth, which is unbelievable.

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Speaker 1: You know, there are these things that you kind of

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Speaker 1: take for granted, but that the scale of the achievement

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Speaker 1: at that time is stunning. And also, I think you

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Speaker 1: said something in the book like we are so much

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Speaker 1: closer to when Jesus was born than when Jesus was

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Speaker 1: to the pyramids, which which is also crazy to me,

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Speaker 1: like I hadn't even put on perspective.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, the gap of time between the pyramids being built

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Speaker 3: and you know Jesus or Juliuses or anyone around that age,

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Speaker 3: that's a longer gap of time by several centuries than

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Speaker 3: the time from Jesus or Juliuses are to us.

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Speaker 1: Now, that is just unimaginable. It's crazy, but fascinating for

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Speaker 1: a perspective. So you start with this baker and one

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Speaker 1: of the things that struck me was that there was

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Speaker 1: a village basically created around the idea of building these pyramids.

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Speaker 1: Can you talk me?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, they were really labor intensive to build these pyramids,

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Speaker 3: given how big they were, given how many blocks there were,

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Speaker 3: and the fact that you just had to move these

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Speaker 3: things up the up to the very top. Somehow. They

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Speaker 3: didn't have pulleys back then. They didn't have wheels in

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Speaker 3: Egypt at the time, and so you had a lot

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Speaker 3: of people working on moving these stones. And when you

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Speaker 3: had that many people, you need to provide things for them.

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Speaker 3: They need tools to cut the blocks, they need to eat,

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Speaker 3: you need to build homes for them. It was essentially

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Speaker 3: an entire city around these pyramids just to get them built.

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Speaker 3: It was a huge part of the Egyptian economy essentially

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Speaker 3: was getting these pyramids built, everyone working on them. So yeah,

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Speaker 3: there was a whole industry and then all the peripheral

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Speaker 3: industries to build these pyramids.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's what struck me as so interesting was

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Speaker 1: that the baker himself. I thought it was just like

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Speaker 1: a royal baker who made bread for Kufu or whichever,

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Speaker 1: a king or pharaoh. But instead the baker is actually

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Speaker 1: responsible for making all the bread for all the workers

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Speaker 1: working in this community. And that was crazy to me.

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Speaker 1: Can you talk to me a little bit about that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. So when we think of a baker nowadays, or

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Speaker 3: and probably especially back then, we'd probably think, you know,

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Speaker 3: a little mud oven or something, and you're slipping in

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Speaker 3: a loaf of bread here and there and making it.

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Speaker 3: But this was much more of an industrial process where

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Speaker 3: you had hundreds and hundreds, maybe even thousands of bread

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Speaker 3: molds out there in a field. It would look like

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Speaker 3: a giant giant egg carton with the molds that they use.

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Speaker 3: They use these kind of conical molds to put the

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Speaker 3: bread in, and if you'd gone outside the hut, it

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Speaker 3: would have just been thousands of these molds, and they

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Speaker 3: had people walking around dumping dough in them and moving

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Speaker 3: from one to the other, just kind of working, working, working.

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Speaker 3: So it wasn't really a kind of a bespoke artisanal process.

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Speaker 3: It was about timing and workflow and managing people. So

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Speaker 3: it really was kind of modern in some ways, and

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Speaker 3: that you had to take all these things into account

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Speaker 3: and as opposed to, you know, just baking something in

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Speaker 3: an oven like you might expect, it was a whole

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Speaker 3: industry involved in getting these people fed.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it felt almost like a factory. I like this

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Speaker 1: sense of producing this much food at these quantities for

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Speaker 1: this immense number of people every single day. It was

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Speaker 1: just crazy. But also, you know, from your own experiments,

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Speaker 1: you found out that this bread is delicious.

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Speaker 3: It was incredibly good. I talked to a guy out

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Speaker 3: in la named Seamus Blackley. He in a previous life

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Speaker 3: actually invented the Xbox gaming system that's sort of just

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Speaker 3: called the Frame, and then he got out of that

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Speaker 3: and he has his own company now. But one thing

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Speaker 3: he does is he bakes heirloom bread. He started with

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Speaker 3: medieval bread, and then decided he wanted to try Egyptian bread.

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Speaker 3: And then he got really really into it. He flew

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Speaker 3: over to Egypt with microbiology equipment. He swabbed dormant yeast

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Speaker 3: out of bread molds that they found from archaeological site,

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Speaker 3: so he got authentic yeast. He built a fire pit

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Speaker 3: in his backyard in Los Angeles. He sourced the type

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Speaker 3: of wood that people in ancient Egypt would have used.

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Speaker 3: He sourced heirloom grain that they would have used. He

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Speaker 3: had someone make him a mold, and authentic mold. A

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Speaker 3: potter friend made him the molds that they used, and

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Speaker 3: he just kept baking bread until he got the recipe

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Speaker 3: right and got a nice looking loaf for bread. And

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Speaker 3: so I went up there, talked to him, and got

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Speaker 3: to try some of this bread. It was bigger than

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Speaker 3: I expected, and it was shaped like you know, the

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Speaker 3: old NASA mercury space capsules that they would send astrona in,

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Speaker 3: like those blunt cones, that's what it looked like. It

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Speaker 3: was probably you know, a foot wide or so and

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Speaker 3: maybe eight or nine inches tall. And this bread was

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Speaker 3: two days old, and he warmed it up in the

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Speaker 3: company microwave for me, and even then it was amazingly good.

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Speaker 3: This was some of the best bread I've ever had

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Speaker 3: in my life. And it was very, very simple. It

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Speaker 3: was just a few ingredients. There was emmer grain, which

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Speaker 3: is the type of wheat they used. There's coriander in it,

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Speaker 3: some salt, some yeast, and some water and that was it.

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Speaker 3: And I was blown away by how delicious this bread was,

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Speaker 3: even though it wasn't quite fresh out of the mold.

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Speaker 3: I mean, if it had been fresh, I would have

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Speaker 3: been scun probably fallen over, it was that good.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you said it compared with the best breads in

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Speaker 1: like Parisian bakeries and things like that, and I was

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Speaker 1: it made my mouth waters description. I really want to

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Speaker 1: try some. But the other thing about it I was

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Speaker 1: curious about is how do they know what the ingredients

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Speaker 1: were in this bread? How do archaeologists and hobbyists figure

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Speaker 1: out what goes into this bread.

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Speaker 3: They have a lot of loaves actually from you find

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Speaker 3: them in tunbes and pyramids and things like that, and

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Speaker 3: you can analyze the starches and figure out what was

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Speaker 3: in there. So you might find a little bit of coriander,

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Speaker 3: and you can analyze the bread, the starches in there,

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Speaker 3: and they can tell you know roughly how long they

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Speaker 3: were baked, things like that. So because we have some

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Speaker 3: examples of ancient basically petrified bread, they can get that

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Speaker 3: microscopically and figure out sort of reverse engineer and figure

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Speaker 3: out what would have gone in there. Also, you know,

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Speaker 3: you're making bread. There's just not a whole lot of

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Speaker 3: ways to make bread. So you're gonna have some yeast

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Speaker 3: in there, you need some water in there, You're gonna

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Speaker 3: have to grind the flowers. So just by the nature

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Speaker 3: of bread, you're sort of constrained in how many ways

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Speaker 3: you can do it. And we have found thousands of

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Speaker 3: molds as well, so we know the basic way they

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Speaker 3: baked the bread, and based on that they can kind

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Speaker 3: of re sort of piece together how they must have

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Speaker 3: baked the bread in the first place.

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Speaker 1: That's so cool. And the other thing I really found

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Speaker 1: delightful about the bread bit was that you point out

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Speaker 1: that the bread had to be good, because if it wasn't,

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Speaker 1: all these workers would have sort of revolted. They needed

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Speaker 1: really good food to keep them happy. And you point

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Speaker 1: out that these laborers were also paid in beer as well.

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Speaker 1: About one third gallons daily, which I guess is roughly

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Speaker 1: ten pints. I never would have figured out out on

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Speaker 1: my own. But but can you talk to me a

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Speaker 1: little bit about the beer and why that was so

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Speaker 1: important to this community of Worcos.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so bread and beer were essentially the staple foods

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Speaker 3: of the Egyptian diet, and so water sources were necessarily

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Speaker 3: clean back then. The Nile was there, so plenty of

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Speaker 3: water coming in, but people were using it to clean clothes.

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Speaker 3: People were using it as literally in some cases, so

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Speaker 3: not the safe as water to drink. Whereas if you

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Speaker 3: ferment something, you know, make it into a beer, the

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Speaker 3: alcohol in there can kill some microbes, so it's safer

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Speaker 3: to drink that. And this probably was not as high

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Speaker 3: ABV as beer we would drinking nowadays. It was probably

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Speaker 3: fairly low level, maybe like you know, two to two

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Speaker 3: and a half percent something like that, but still they

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Speaker 3: were drinking in most of the day. And what I

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Speaker 3: found I thought was really interesting was that we're sort

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Speaker 3: of used to what beer tastes like, but a lot

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Speaker 3: of that taste comes from the hops, which is a

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Speaker 3: standard ingredient in most beers nowadays. But they didn't use

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Speaker 3: hops in Egypt, and so other flavors really came forward.

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Speaker 3: It tasted to me more like a sour beer or

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Speaker 3: almost like a kambucha type drink. And it made sense

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Speaker 3: when I thought about it, because on a hot day

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Speaker 3: often you want something sour kind of gets the salivation,

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Speaker 3: the juice is going in your mouth. So having this

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Speaker 3: sour beer on a hot day moving pyramid blocks around

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Speaker 3: would have made a lot of sense. And it wasn't

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Speaker 3: like the beer were used to nowadays, but it was

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Speaker 3: a pretty down good drink.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And you think about that in other times in

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Speaker 1: history too, right, like field workers drinking seasons as well,

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Speaker 1: because they needed to they needed something to drink in

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Speaker 1: these really hot conditions. But also the water wasn't clean,

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Speaker 1: and so it's something that that sort of like follows

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Speaker 1: this story along. I also had not clocked that the

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Speaker 1: sands could reach one hundred and thirty degrees fahrenheit. And

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Speaker 1: you point out that it took two hundred and thirty

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Speaker 1: one million gallons of beer to build the largest pyramids,

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Speaker 1: which it's incomprehensible. But there's this bit in the story

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Speaker 1: that you tell where the baker is also producing beer

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Speaker 1: and he brings over this cup of date beer and

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Speaker 1: the person he hands it to realizes that they're like

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Speaker 1: flies in it or something, and you would prefer it

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Speaker 1: with a straw. And I had no idea that Egyptians

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Speaker 1: were using straws.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was pretty common, not just in Egypt,

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Speaker 3: but especially other places where they would use straws to

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Speaker 3: drink beer because you would have flies landing on the top,

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Speaker 3: and especially you would have a lot of chaff in

434
00:24:19,560 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 3: the beer because they didn't have modern strainers and things

435
00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:26,800
Speaker 3: like that, so you definitely had a lot of debris

436
00:24:26,800 --> 00:24:29,800
Speaker 3: intotritis from the grains in the beer, and so a

437
00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:32,879
Speaker 3: straw you dunk it under the surface and sort of

438
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:36,760
Speaker 3: avoid taking in a big mouthful of that dry, pulpingy

439
00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:37,920
Speaker 3: chaff with your drink.

440
00:24:40,119 --> 00:24:41,680
Speaker 1: And you point out that in other parts of the

441
00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:45,680
Speaker 1: world that some of these straws have been mistaken for scepters.

442
00:24:45,720 --> 00:24:46,640
Speaker 1: They're so beautiful.

443
00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:51,479
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're really long, elaborate. They have you know, gold

444
00:24:51,520 --> 00:24:55,000
Speaker 3: and silver inlaid in them, a couple feet long. You know,

445
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:56,879
Speaker 3: if a diplomat came or something, you would give them

446
00:24:56,960 --> 00:25:00,480
Speaker 3: a very fancy straw for their beer to show the

447
00:25:00,480 --> 00:25:03,119
Speaker 3: they were so Yeah, they found straws that were so

448
00:25:03,320 --> 00:25:06,679
Speaker 3: ornate that the at the first glance archaeologist thought they

449
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:07,600
Speaker 3: were scepters.

450
00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:09,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's amazing. I love that the beer came in

451
00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:12,400
Speaker 1: hunty style and you need the straw for it. But

452
00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:15,720
Speaker 1: there's so much more to talk about. I really want

453
00:25:15,760 --> 00:25:19,840
Speaker 1: to get to mummies and the taxidermy sort of process

454
00:25:19,920 --> 00:25:22,280
Speaker 1: that you uh engaged in, but we've got to take

455
00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:40,520
Speaker 1: a quick break first. I am back with Sam Keene,

456
00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 1: author of Dinner with King Todd. How rogue archaeologists are

457
00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:48,640
Speaker 1: recreating the site, sound, smells, and tastes of lost civilizations.

458
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:52,439
Speaker 1: It is a delightful book. Now now, Sam, the part

459
00:25:52,520 --> 00:25:56,159
Speaker 1: that was both grossest and most fascinating to me was

460
00:25:56,680 --> 00:26:00,800
Speaker 1: the part about mummification, and I wanted to hear a

461
00:26:00,840 --> 00:26:05,760
Speaker 1: little bit about the story of how these two scientists

462
00:26:05,800 --> 00:26:08,880
Speaker 1: decide to play with idea of mumifying bodies. Yeah.

463
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:11,680
Speaker 3: So, one thing I was surprised to learn is that

464
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:15,680
Speaker 3: even though we have a lot of Egyptian mummies human mummies,

465
00:26:15,920 --> 00:26:18,680
Speaker 3: we really don't know a lot about the process because

466
00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:21,679
Speaker 3: they didn't write down a lot of information about it.

467
00:26:21,760 --> 00:26:24,280
Speaker 3: I don't know if it was a secret or it

468
00:26:24,320 --> 00:26:27,320
Speaker 3: was just something knowledge I got passed down orally, and

469
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:29,840
Speaker 3: so they didn't bother to write it down. But we

470
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:32,399
Speaker 3: just don't know a lot of the details about how

471
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:35,439
Speaker 3: they made mummies back then. So there were a few

472
00:26:36,280 --> 00:26:38,840
Speaker 3: people few scientists in the nineteen nineties. One was an

473
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:43,040
Speaker 3: anatomist and one was an egyptologist. They decided that the

474
00:26:43,080 --> 00:26:46,159
Speaker 3: best way to figure these mysteries out about how to

475
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:50,199
Speaker 3: mummify someone was to make an Egyptian style mummy in

476
00:26:50,359 --> 00:26:54,280
Speaker 3: modern times. So someone had donated their body to science

477
00:26:54,800 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 3: and they sort of diverted it from the medical school

478
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:02,719
Speaker 3: and they decided to mumify happened in Baltimore in the

479
00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:06,720
Speaker 3: mid nineties, and they tried to be as authentic as

480
00:27:06,760 --> 00:27:11,440
Speaker 3: possible with it. The Egyptologists actually flew over to Egypt,

481
00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 3: and they knew a few details, such as the mineral

482
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:17,879
Speaker 3: that they used to dry the body out. So he

483
00:27:17,960 --> 00:27:21,639
Speaker 3: went over there and actually dug the mineral op himself

484
00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:25,680
Speaker 3: and then had to bring it back into the United States.

485
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:28,399
Speaker 3: And he said that one of the more ticklish parts

486
00:27:28,400 --> 00:27:31,879
Speaker 3: of the whole process was smuggling this unidentified white powder

487
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:35,120
Speaker 3: back in that he had to somehow get past customs,

488
00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:38,400
Speaker 3: but he managed to do it, and they used that

489
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:43,879
Speaker 3: authentic Egyptian powdered minerals to dry the body out. He

490
00:27:43,960 --> 00:27:47,359
Speaker 3: had obsidian tools made, so stone tools made, and copper

491
00:27:47,359 --> 00:27:50,440
Speaker 3: tools made, and they essentially just went through the process

492
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:53,760
Speaker 3: of mummifying this body based on the few clues that

493
00:27:53,800 --> 00:27:56,320
Speaker 3: we had. So they made a little slit in the abdomen,

494
00:27:56,760 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 3: slid the organs out through the small slit. There, they

495
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:03,400
Speaker 3: washed the body with different wines and oils, and then

496
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:06,800
Speaker 3: they mummified it. They put the drying agent in and

497
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:09,480
Speaker 3: on the body and just try it and just solve

498
00:28:09,520 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 3: what happened.

499
00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:16,680
Speaker 1: I had this wonderful teacher in fifth grade, Thissus Leary

500
00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:21,480
Speaker 1: algebro shout out. But she did this whole segment on Egyptology,

501
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:24,640
Speaker 1: and one of the things I remember is that all

502
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:28,399
Speaker 1: the organs were thought of as important, particularly the heart,

503
00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:31,920
Speaker 1: but that the brain was considered useless, and that they

504
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:34,840
Speaker 1: went up through the nose and pulled out the brain.

505
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:38,440
Speaker 1: But in your telling, it's not as easy as just

506
00:28:38,560 --> 00:28:40,720
Speaker 1: using sort of like a hook or tool to pull

507
00:28:40,760 --> 00:28:41,080
Speaker 1: the brain.

508
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:42,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is one of the things we knew, is that,

509
00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:44,800
Speaker 3: like you said, they used a hook of some sort

510
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 3: to draw the brain out through the nose. But they

511
00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 3: tried that on this body, and it just doesn't work.

512
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:53,959
Speaker 3: If you've ever seen the live brain, it's not what

513
00:28:54,040 --> 00:28:57,280
Speaker 3: you might remember from, you know, dissecting a pig or

514
00:28:57,280 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 3: a frog or something in biology class, because those were

515
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:05,560
Speaker 3: fixed in formulas that make the brain hard and rubbery.

516
00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:08,120
Speaker 3: A real life brain is more like a pudding. It's

517
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 3: very very gooey and kind of viscous. It just doesn't

518
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:17,960
Speaker 3: have that solid shape and feel that a fixed brain does.

519
00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:20,040
Speaker 3: So when they were using the hook to try to

520
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:22,080
Speaker 3: get the brain out, I mean, you can imagine trying

521
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:24,560
Speaker 3: to get putting out with a hook. It's not going

522
00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 3: to work very So what they hit out is that

523
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 3: there was another clue that maybe they were using a

524
00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:34,280
Speaker 3: fluid of some sort. So they actually introduced water into

525
00:29:34,360 --> 00:29:39,600
Speaker 3: the brain, into the cranial cavity, and they used the

526
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 3: hook to stir it and to mix up the brain,

527
00:29:43,480 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 3: and then they turned it over and the brain actually

528
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 3: ran out this person's nose. It's quite a vehicle that

529
00:29:49,080 --> 00:29:52,440
Speaker 3: you did it. The guy I talked to, the egyptologist,

530
00:29:52,480 --> 00:29:55,640
Speaker 3: Bob Brier, said it was like a milkshake running out.

531
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:58,720
Speaker 3: Then he specified a strawberry milkshake, just to make sure

532
00:29:58,880 --> 00:30:02,160
Speaker 3: that well picture in my mind. So he was a

533
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:04,840
Speaker 3: hoo to talk. But there was just a little details

534
00:30:04,880 --> 00:30:08,400
Speaker 3: like that that they we didn't know about, and until

535
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:11,320
Speaker 3: they had done this experiment, we would not have known

536
00:30:11,360 --> 00:30:14,240
Speaker 3: these things. And it was a very controversial experiment. People

537
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:17,040
Speaker 3: were sort of upset that they had taken this body

538
00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:21,080
Speaker 3: and mummified it. But we did learn some things about

539
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:24,800
Speaker 3: how mummification works. And for Brier one of the most

540
00:30:24,880 --> 00:30:27,840
Speaker 3: exciting moments for him was he'd always had a question

541
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:31,160
Speaker 3: about you know, you see a mummy and you see

542
00:30:31,240 --> 00:30:34,120
Speaker 3: it's got sort of this leathery skin, and the skin

543
00:30:34,240 --> 00:30:37,000
Speaker 3: is retracted from the face. It's sort of shrunk, and

544
00:30:37,040 --> 00:30:40,440
Speaker 3: he wanted to know was that from the mummification process

545
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:43,400
Speaker 3: or was that because these bodies are thousands of years

546
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:46,480
Speaker 3: old and they've been sitting around in this dry environment

547
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:50,600
Speaker 3: in Egypt. And he said that even after four or

548
00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:52,959
Speaker 3: five weeks, they could look at this body that they

549
00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:56,960
Speaker 3: had mummified and it looked exactly like Ramsey's the Great

550
00:30:57,320 --> 00:31:00,280
Speaker 3: So it wasn't the thousands of years of being in

551
00:31:00,360 --> 00:31:03,320
Speaker 3: Egypt in a dry air. It was actually the mummification

552
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:06,760
Speaker 3: process that produced the iconic look of mummies that we

553
00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:09,320
Speaker 3: all know today, so little mysteries like that they were

554
00:31:09,320 --> 00:31:12,080
Speaker 3: able to solve through experiment, and we wouldn't know these

555
00:31:12,120 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 3: things without this experimental archaeology.

556
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:18,480
Speaker 1: You also talk about how they had brought all these

557
00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:22,520
Speaker 1: copper tools and these obsidian tools, and the copper tools

558
00:31:22,520 --> 00:31:25,880
Speaker 1: don't actually end up being that useful, so they dispense

559
00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:29,520
Speaker 1: with those. And the fact that like through this process

560
00:31:29,600 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 1: you can actually figure out which tools the Egyptians for

561
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 1: using is really incredible. Yeah.

562
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:36,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's exactly what he did, is he tried

563
00:31:36,760 --> 00:31:39,440
Speaker 3: the copper tools and they just weren't working very well

564
00:31:39,480 --> 00:31:41,800
Speaker 3: to open the body up or to get the organs out,

565
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 3: things like that, so they had to switch to the

566
00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:47,040
Speaker 3: stone tools, which in some way might seem a little

567
00:31:47,040 --> 00:31:51,320
Speaker 3: more primitive or archaic, but stone tools actually can form

568
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:54,720
Speaker 3: a very nice sharp edge. There was another point in

569
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:58,560
Speaker 3: the book where I talk about the obsidian especially can

570
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:03,480
Speaker 3: form an edge that's sharper than a modern surgical scalpel

571
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:06,240
Speaker 3: made of steel. I actually cut myself at one point.

572
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 3: I was working on a different project and I cut

573
00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 3: myself with some obsidian and it did not hurt at

574
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:14,520
Speaker 3: all because it was so sharp, but it was a

575
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:17,400
Speaker 3: much deeper cut than I realized, and it bled very

576
00:32:17,480 --> 00:32:20,479
Speaker 3: very quickly, So I was surprised at how bad the

577
00:32:20,520 --> 00:32:23,720
Speaker 3: wound got quickly, just because obsidian is so sharp.

578
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 1: That's really fascinating. And the other thing that was interesting

579
00:32:28,040 --> 00:32:32,880
Speaker 1: to me was the commitment to being authentic didn't just

580
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:38,600
Speaker 1: include the tools or various processes, but also keeping their

581
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:42,880
Speaker 1: office at one hundred and four degrees, which just sounds

582
00:32:42,920 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 1: miserable but incredible that they went to that length.

583
00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:48,440
Speaker 3: You know.

584
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:52,840
Speaker 1: The other part I remember from this Egyptology stuff was

585
00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 1: that people used to massage these bodies with various oils,

586
00:32:56,520 --> 00:33:00,200
Speaker 1: and I'd assumed it was just for the scent, but

587
00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:01,880
Speaker 1: it sounds like there was another purpose to that.

588
00:33:02,080 --> 00:33:04,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the oils probably did provide a cent. That

589
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:06,719
Speaker 3: was probably part of it. But one thing the oils

590
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:10,080
Speaker 3: did was it restored some flexibility and some pliability to

591
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:14,120
Speaker 3: the limbs. As the mummies were drying out, they got

592
00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:16,600
Speaker 3: very stiff. It wasn't rigor mortis. It was just the

593
00:33:16,600 --> 00:33:20,040
Speaker 3: fact that there's no water or fluid in the body anymore.

594
00:33:20,080 --> 00:33:22,120
Speaker 3: And so you know, if you're preparing the pharaoh for

595
00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 3: the afterlife, you don't want to snap his arm off

596
00:33:24,520 --> 00:33:27,360
Speaker 3: or something like that. So they would massage the oils

597
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:30,600
Speaker 3: in to restore some pliability so that they could fold

598
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:33,120
Speaker 3: the limbs together and kind of get the body in

599
00:33:33,160 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 3: the right position for the afterlife.

600
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:39,920
Speaker 1: You mentioned that this was a really controversial experiment that

601
00:33:39,960 --> 00:33:43,200
Speaker 1: these archaeologists did, and as I was reading this, I

602
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:45,959
Speaker 1: was thinking, Oh, my gosh, someone just decides to donate

603
00:33:45,960 --> 00:33:48,120
Speaker 1: their body to science and suddenly they're being mommified. Is

604
00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:51,760
Speaker 1: not really what they're intending and their defenses, well, we

605
00:33:51,760 --> 00:33:54,720
Speaker 1: were treating him like a king, you know. I thought

606
00:33:54,800 --> 00:33:58,760
Speaker 1: that was really powerful and interesting. But you actually decided

607
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:00,760
Speaker 1: to engage in your their own mummification.

608
00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:04,480
Speaker 3: H there's a Diy mummy in the book. And another

609
00:34:04,520 --> 00:34:07,720
Speaker 3: thing I didn't realize about mummification was the the Egyptians

610
00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 3: didn't just mummify humans. There were a couple of graveyards

611
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:13,919
Speaker 3: that we've uncovered in Egypt where there was something like

612
00:34:14,520 --> 00:34:18,400
Speaker 3: four million dogs that they'd mummified, or like seven million

613
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:21,040
Speaker 3: birds or something like that. I mean, they really produced

614
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:24,800
Speaker 3: these mummies on a large scale, and most of the

615
00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:27,480
Speaker 3: probably tinkering and trial and error they probably used on

616
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:31,640
Speaker 3: animals first, and they mummified them for various reasons, you know,

617
00:34:31,719 --> 00:34:34,560
Speaker 3: religious reasons in their society. So I decided, you know,

618
00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:37,279
Speaker 3: I can try to make a mummy myself. So I

619
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:41,080
Speaker 3: made a fish mummy with the common type of mummy

620
00:34:41,080 --> 00:34:42,680
Speaker 3: that they made, just because I could get a whole

621
00:34:42,680 --> 00:34:45,759
Speaker 3: fish at the store pretty easily. And it was sort

622
00:34:45,800 --> 00:34:48,360
Speaker 3: of a challenge too, in that, you know, fish is

623
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:52,759
Speaker 3: kind of a proverbiably smelly animal. It's one that is

624
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:54,360
Speaker 3: going to go bad quickly, and you're going to know

625
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:57,160
Speaker 3: it's going bad quickly. So I wanted to see, you know,

626
00:34:57,200 --> 00:35:01,640
Speaker 3: how well this mummification stuff worked. So I recreated the

627
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:05,600
Speaker 3: mineral essentially that they use to dry bodies out. It's

628
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:08,960
Speaker 3: very simple. It's essentially a mix of baking soda and

629
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:11,480
Speaker 3: table salt. So you can get it for pretty cheap,

630
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:14,960
Speaker 3: even at the grocery store. It's called natron, and there's

631
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:17,279
Speaker 3: not much to it. You just open the fish shop,

632
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:19,719
Speaker 3: you get the organs out of there, and you just

633
00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:22,640
Speaker 3: packs that mix of natron in the fish, put it

634
00:35:22,640 --> 00:35:24,879
Speaker 3: in a cast roll dish and just let it sit

635
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:29,200
Speaker 3: on my counter in a Washington DC heat during the summer,

636
00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:33,719
Speaker 3: and the fish never win the fridge and nothing went wrong.

637
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:36,520
Speaker 3: It dried the fish out beautifully, and it's still sitting

638
00:35:36,600 --> 00:35:39,120
Speaker 3: on my counter to this day. It is mummified fish.

639
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:42,359
Speaker 1: That is so crazy to be And it doesn't smell right.

640
00:35:42,520 --> 00:35:45,399
Speaker 1: You said that it has a very weak smell. There's

641
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:48,600
Speaker 1: no rock, there's nothing. You can see its eyeballs perfectly everything.

642
00:35:48,680 --> 00:35:52,040
Speaker 1: It's pretty impressive. I love that there's a red snapper

643
00:35:52,200 --> 00:35:56,600
Speaker 1: in your kitchen. I'm just sitting there mammified. One of

644
00:35:56,600 --> 00:35:59,799
Speaker 1: the other things that I hadn't sort of clocked was

645
00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:04,280
Speaker 1: this idea of votive mummies. And in the fictional story,

646
00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:08,040
Speaker 1: you know, the baker gets into this real bind. He

647
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 1: ends up going to his brother, who is both a

648
00:36:11,040 --> 00:36:14,759
Speaker 1: bit of a rogue and in the mummification business. But

649
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:17,400
Speaker 1: part of the reason he's as successful is he's creating

650
00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:19,120
Speaker 1: all these votive mummies. Can you tell me a little

651
00:36:19,160 --> 00:36:19,600
Speaker 1: bit about those.

652
00:36:19,680 --> 00:36:22,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, Voted mummies were essentially sort of like votive candles

653
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:26,799
Speaker 3: that you might see in Christian churches today. You buy one,

654
00:36:27,600 --> 00:36:30,800
Speaker 3: you burn it, and you know it answers a prayer

655
00:36:30,960 --> 00:36:33,080
Speaker 3: or you know it's accompanying, whatever the case may be.

656
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:36,440
Speaker 3: Egyptians used mummies like that, where they would buy a

657
00:36:36,560 --> 00:36:40,280
Speaker 3: mummy and they would bury it or burn it, sacrifice,

658
00:36:40,400 --> 00:36:42,680
Speaker 3: do something to it, and it was an offering to

659
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:44,480
Speaker 3: the god. So it was their way of making an

660
00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:47,440
Speaker 3: offering to the gods. This was real, This did happen.

661
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:50,560
Speaker 3: There were some mummies that were worth more than others

662
00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:54,200
Speaker 3: just because the animals were rarer. The animals had higher status,

663
00:36:54,239 --> 00:36:56,759
Speaker 3: things like that, you know, a babboon or something might

664
00:36:56,800 --> 00:36:59,920
Speaker 3: be worth more than a fish. But so these people

665
00:37:00,080 --> 00:37:03,280
Speaker 3: were making the votive mummies realized that because the mummies

666
00:37:03,280 --> 00:37:06,520
Speaker 3: were wrapped in bandages usually that people were gonna know

667
00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:09,840
Speaker 3: what was inside. So they were often making fake mummies

668
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:13,120
Speaker 3: and you can see something that looked like a baboon

669
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:16,239
Speaker 3: that might just be sticks inside, or it might have

670
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 3: bones of another animal or something like that. So it

671
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:22,799
Speaker 3: was sort of this crooked side to the business too

672
00:37:22,840 --> 00:37:26,239
Speaker 3: that I did not expect. So these little bits of

673
00:37:26,280 --> 00:37:28,479
Speaker 3: modernity would jump out. We're like, oh, they had scam

674
00:37:28,560 --> 00:37:29,960
Speaker 3: artists back then. Too interesting.

675
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, and we're going to talk about grave robbing

676
00:37:34,719 --> 00:37:37,120
Speaker 1: and how the Pyramids were actually dealt in in just

677
00:37:37,200 --> 00:37:41,640
Speaker 1: a minute. Before that, we've got to take a quick break.

678
00:37:54,760 --> 00:37:58,560
Speaker 1: We are back with Sam Keene, author of Dinner with

679
00:37:58,640 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 1: King Todd, how rogue archaeologists are recreating the site sound, smells,

680
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:07,279
Speaker 1: and tastes of lost civilizations. And one of the things

681
00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:10,880
Speaker 1: you talked about in the book which kind of struck me,

682
00:38:11,560 --> 00:38:15,279
Speaker 1: was that it wasn't just slaves who were working on

683
00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:17,440
Speaker 1: these pyramids. I've always just assumed it was people who

684
00:38:17,440 --> 00:38:22,640
Speaker 1: were enslaved and like forced labor, but you almost talk

685
00:38:22,680 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 1: about it like a conscription. Can Can you tell me

686
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:26,400
Speaker 1: a little bit about that.

687
00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:30,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there was a general idea, especially among

688
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:32,560
Speaker 3: the lay public, that the people who built the pyramids

689
00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:35,520
Speaker 3: they had been enslaved and this was forced labor that

690
00:38:35,560 --> 00:38:39,719
Speaker 3: they had to undergo to build these pyramids. But there's

691
00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:43,120
Speaker 3: some good evidence that they were not slaves. That these

692
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:48,960
Speaker 3: people were maybe not volunteering exactly, but they were citizen

693
00:38:48,960 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 3: to be top who were conscripted to make these pyramids.

694
00:38:52,239 --> 00:38:55,800
Speaker 3: So you know, maybe farmers who were in the off

695
00:38:55,840 --> 00:38:58,640
Speaker 3: season and they were sort of hauled in to help

696
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:03,280
Speaker 3: build these pyramids. Because you can see graffiti of people

697
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:06,839
Speaker 3: chiseling into the walls in hieroglyphs, it says something like

698
00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:10,280
Speaker 3: we're Cufu's gang, or we're the Vigorous Gang. Or something

699
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:14,120
Speaker 3: like that, so they sighted it. You can tell that

700
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:17,000
Speaker 3: people were proud that they were helping to build these

701
00:39:17,520 --> 00:39:21,200
Speaker 3: giant monuments, you know, the biggest buildings on Earth to

702
00:39:21,200 --> 00:39:23,840
Speaker 3: show off the glory of their culture. So there was

703
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:26,200
Speaker 3: certainly some pride in it. But there were you know,

704
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:30,160
Speaker 3: labor strikes that they record with building, maybe not the Pyramids,

705
00:39:30,160 --> 00:39:33,480
Speaker 3: but different tombs, so there was probably some unrest. It

706
00:39:33,520 --> 00:39:36,440
Speaker 3: maybe wasn't completely free. And yeah, in the book, I

707
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:40,359
Speaker 3: compared it to something like modern military conscription, which some

708
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:43,319
Speaker 3: countries have, where all eighteen to twenty year olds or

709
00:39:43,320 --> 00:39:45,200
Speaker 3: something have to do a few years in the military.

710
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:52,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you also get into how extraordinary the pyramids

711
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:55,440
Speaker 1: themselves are, right like that these are massive blocks that

712
00:39:55,520 --> 00:39:57,759
Speaker 1: crews would have needed to slot a new block into

713
00:39:57,800 --> 00:40:01,800
Speaker 1: place every five minutes day in night for two straight decades,

714
00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:05,319
Speaker 1: with intense precision that you can't even slip a knife

715
00:40:05,400 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 1: between these adjacent blocks. And I guess I hadn't realized. Obviously,

716
00:40:11,040 --> 00:40:14,839
Speaker 1: you see these things that are incredible and stunning, but

717
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:18,640
Speaker 1: I didn't realize they were moving that fast. And for

718
00:40:18,719 --> 00:40:21,400
Speaker 1: so many years people have been talking about how there

719
00:40:21,680 --> 00:40:28,840
Speaker 1: were clearly ramps that these not volunteers, but pyramid builders

720
00:40:28,840 --> 00:40:32,080
Speaker 1: were pushing these blocks up, and that theory seems to

721
00:40:32,080 --> 00:40:34,480
Speaker 1: fall apart a little bit in the book can can

722
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:37,680
Speaker 1: you walk me through how some hobbyists have actually like

723
00:40:37,840 --> 00:40:38,920
Speaker 1: changed the perspective on that.

724
00:40:39,120 --> 00:40:42,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, so much like with mummies, we don't know how

725
00:40:42,560 --> 00:40:45,200
Speaker 3: the Egyptians built the pyramids because they didn't leave a

726
00:40:45,239 --> 00:40:48,840
Speaker 3: lot of detail about it. And again we know that

727
00:40:48,880 --> 00:40:51,720
Speaker 3: they did not have wheels at the time in Egypt,

728
00:40:51,760 --> 00:40:54,759
Speaker 3: they did not have pulleys, so that limits the kind

729
00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:57,600
Speaker 3: of things that they could have used to build these

730
00:40:57,640 --> 00:41:00,880
Speaker 3: pyramids to get something, you know, these giant blocks four

731
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:04,080
Speaker 3: hundred feet in the air and the few million blocks

732
00:41:04,120 --> 00:41:06,799
Speaker 3: you need in place over a pretty short time span,

733
00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:09,839
Speaker 3: just a couple of decades. The idea had always been

734
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:14,000
Speaker 3: that they had used ramps essentially, and they had pushed

735
00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:18,000
Speaker 3: these giant blocks up the ramps, maybe on a sledge

736
00:41:18,080 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 3: or maybe on log rollers something like that. But the

737
00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:26,680
Speaker 3: experiments that archaeologists have done show that these ideas really

738
00:41:26,719 --> 00:41:30,640
Speaker 3: aren't that workable. Log rollers sound good in theory, but

739
00:41:30,680 --> 00:41:34,440
Speaker 3: they're really kind of crappy. They just don't work very well.

740
00:41:34,719 --> 00:41:37,719
Speaker 3: The logs sort of get off kilter and they go

741
00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:40,080
Speaker 3: all over the place. It's a pain to grab the

742
00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:42,040
Speaker 3: one at the back bring it around at the front.

743
00:41:42,400 --> 00:41:44,839
Speaker 3: And because these blocks are so heavy, they can often

744
00:41:44,960 --> 00:41:48,360
Speaker 3: crush the wood over time or even right away, so

745
00:41:48,400 --> 00:41:51,480
Speaker 3: that leaves you trying to slide things up a ramp.

746
00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:54,920
Speaker 3: And again, a ramp is something that looks good on paper,

747
00:41:55,480 --> 00:42:00,239
Speaker 3: but given how tall these pyramids were, the ramps have

748
00:42:00,280 --> 00:42:03,400
Speaker 3: needed to be over a mile long to get to

749
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:07,200
Speaker 3: the very top of these pyramids. The volume of material

750
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:14,000
Speaker 3: that you would need is astronomical, and not using modern materials.

751
00:42:14,080 --> 00:42:16,840
Speaker 3: You're using dirt or sand, So this ramp has to

752
00:42:16,880 --> 00:42:20,640
Speaker 3: be not only incredibly long, but incredibly wide as well,

753
00:42:20,680 --> 00:42:23,960
Speaker 3: because sand and dirt just don't form nice steep walls.

754
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:27,239
Speaker 3: So I ran an experiment on a scale model pyramid

755
00:42:27,320 --> 00:42:31,359
Speaker 3: with this enthusiastic amateur out in Mississippi, and it turned

756
00:42:31,400 --> 00:42:34,319
Speaker 3: out that the volume of the ramp we would have

757
00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:37,719
Speaker 3: needed was something like four times as much as the

758
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:41,200
Speaker 3: volume of the pyramid itself, So you'd have to essentially

759
00:42:41,200 --> 00:42:45,200
Speaker 3: build four or five pyramids in order to get one

760
00:42:45,239 --> 00:42:48,799
Speaker 3: stone pyramid erected. That's how much dirt and sand it

761
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:51,279
Speaker 3: took to build these ramps and at some point it

762
00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:55,239
Speaker 3: just becomes unworkable. So it really calls into question the

763
00:42:55,280 --> 00:42:58,560
Speaker 3: idea of whether they used ramps at all. It seems

764
00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:01,920
Speaker 3: kind of unlikely, especially for the very top of the pyramids.

765
00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:07,840
Speaker 1: I think you think about these civilizations and you know,

766
00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:10,000
Speaker 1: they're advanced in a sense, right, Like they come up

767
00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:12,919
Speaker 1: with like papyrus, they come up with like various things,

768
00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:17,520
Speaker 1: and yet they still seem so primitive that you wouldn't

769
00:43:17,520 --> 00:43:22,080
Speaker 1: imagine that there are these massive mysteries about things we

770
00:43:22,160 --> 00:43:24,640
Speaker 1: take for granted. And that's kind of what I loved

771
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:27,640
Speaker 1: about this is that like all this living archaeology like

772
00:43:27,760 --> 00:43:31,600
Speaker 1: actually does end up clarifying or poking holes in really

773
00:43:31,600 --> 00:43:35,080
Speaker 1: big theories about how the world has been constructed. Is incredible.

774
00:43:35,160 --> 00:43:37,799
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's a lot of theorizing in archaeology

775
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:41,440
Speaker 3: and sort of necessarily you know, people taking leaps and

776
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 3: trying to come up with, you know, new ideas and

777
00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 3: theories for how things work. Then there's some really ingenious

778
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:49,320
Speaker 3: theories out there. People have come up with incredible, incredible things,

779
00:43:49,360 --> 00:43:53,759
Speaker 3: but every so often the theories just don't hold up.

780
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:56,600
Speaker 3: If you talk to someone who's a professional baker or

781
00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:01,200
Speaker 3: a professional leather Tanner or something. Some of the theories that

782
00:44:01,320 --> 00:44:04,120
Speaker 3: arise in archaeology, those people who are experts say that

783
00:44:04,239 --> 00:44:06,600
Speaker 3: just doesn't make sense. And I think this is a

784
00:44:06,600 --> 00:44:10,000
Speaker 3: case where building a ramp looks good on paper, but

785
00:44:10,360 --> 00:44:12,360
Speaker 3: in practice it just doesn't work.

786
00:44:13,080 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 1: And so in your story, which is really fun, the

787
00:44:17,719 --> 00:44:23,879
Speaker 1: baker ends up in this pickle and he realizes he

788
00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:28,880
Speaker 1: needs to perform a heist the pyramid. And you go

789
00:44:28,920 --> 00:44:31,920
Speaker 1: on to talk about how actually there was a lot

790
00:44:32,040 --> 00:44:36,640
Speaker 1: stolen from the pyramids, both at the time but also later,

791
00:44:37,440 --> 00:44:40,680
Speaker 1: and how actually thievery might have been good for the economy.

792
00:44:40,480 --> 00:44:43,319
Speaker 1: Can can you tell us about some of that?

793
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:47,880
Speaker 3: Do you do see a lot of evidence of robbery,

794
00:44:48,920 --> 00:44:52,279
Speaker 3: because we know that they buried them with treasures, and

795
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:55,200
Speaker 3: the treasures just aren't there, so we know something happened

796
00:44:55,200 --> 00:44:57,799
Speaker 3: to them. There are even cases where they built these

797
00:44:57,800 --> 00:45:00,400
Speaker 3: were sort of like early versions of a peer, not

798
00:45:00,480 --> 00:45:02,920
Speaker 3: as big, and they were sort of truncated, but they

799
00:45:02,920 --> 00:45:06,799
Speaker 3: were tombs for wealthy, important people. And there have been

800
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:10,239
Speaker 3: times in modern modern day when archaeologists found one of

801
00:45:10,239 --> 00:45:12,719
Speaker 3: these things buried in sand or whatever, and they got

802
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:14,879
Speaker 3: down to the sarcophagus room and they thought, oh my god,

803
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:18,000
Speaker 3: the sarcopic is intact. This is going to be incredible.

804
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:20,440
Speaker 3: They'd pry the lid off and all they see is

805
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:24,000
Speaker 3: a hole in the bottom of the sarcophagust where an

806
00:45:24,000 --> 00:45:27,400
Speaker 3: agent robber they'd come in and taken all the treasure.

807
00:45:27,520 --> 00:45:32,200
Speaker 3: So there's been some disappointments like that. But there was

808
00:45:32,239 --> 00:45:34,880
Speaker 3: an economist who put forward an idea that this was

809
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:38,600
Speaker 3: actually good for the economy, because if you're taking you know,

810
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:41,360
Speaker 3: gold or something that's often used as a currency and

811
00:45:41,480 --> 00:45:44,239
Speaker 3: just burying it underground, that doesn't no one any good.

812
00:45:44,600 --> 00:45:47,400
Speaker 3: So you rob a tomb, you start selling it. It

813
00:45:47,440 --> 00:45:49,880
Speaker 3: starts circulating again, stimulates the economy.

814
00:45:51,239 --> 00:45:54,960
Speaker 1: Definitely not something I had considered before. I've read this book.

815
00:45:55,400 --> 00:45:57,799
Speaker 1: Now we're gonna get We're gonna let you go in

816
00:45:57,840 --> 00:46:03,080
Speaker 1: a second. But if people are excited to perform their

817
00:46:03,080 --> 00:46:07,200
Speaker 1: own living archaeology experiments, where would you have them start.

818
00:46:08,080 --> 00:46:10,799
Speaker 3: I think the Mummy is fairly easy to do. It's

819
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:13,440
Speaker 3: sort of dramatic and interesting, and you can find the

820
00:46:13,560 --> 00:46:15,080
Speaker 3: ingredients at your local grocery store.

821
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:18,319
Speaker 1: I love it well. The book is Dinner with King

822
00:46:18,400 --> 00:46:22,440
Speaker 1: tut How rogue archaeologists are recreating the site, sound, smells,

823
00:46:22,520 --> 00:46:25,680
Speaker 1: and Tastes of Lost Civilizations. I can't recommend it enough.

824
00:46:25,719 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 1: It is really, really, such a delight to read and

825
00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:32,640
Speaker 1: made me want to go to the Pyramids. So thank

826
00:46:32,680 --> 00:46:35,359
Speaker 1: you so much for being here. Sam, thanks for having me.

827
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:39,959
Speaker 1: That was so much fun.

828
00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:41,480
Speaker 2: You know, I can't believe the guy who invented the

829
00:46:41,600 --> 00:46:44,520
Speaker 2: xbox figured out how to make bread like an ancient Egyptian.

830
00:46:44,560 --> 00:46:48,440
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of super talented. And it sounds so delicious,

831
00:46:48,520 --> 00:46:50,680
Speaker 1: Like you know, Sam said, it tastes better than the

832
00:46:50,800 --> 00:46:55,280
Speaker 1: bread at Parisian bakeries, which is amazing. So the book

833
00:46:55,440 --> 00:46:59,040
Speaker 1: is Dinner with King tut how rogue archaeologists are recreating

834
00:46:59,040 --> 00:47:02,400
Speaker 1: the site, sounds, smells, and tastes of Las Civilizations. I

835
00:47:02,440 --> 00:47:04,239
Speaker 1: want to thank Sam Keenes so much for coming on

836
00:47:04,239 --> 00:47:07,520
Speaker 1: the program. Do yourself a favor. Go pick this book up.

837
00:47:07,560 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 1: It is so good. You can get it wherever you

838
00:47:09,560 --> 00:47:12,160
Speaker 1: get your books. And as for us, we'll be back

839
00:47:12,239 --> 00:47:15,440
Speaker 1: very soon with a brand new episode from Gabe, Mary Dylan,

840
00:47:15,520 --> 00:47:31,759
Speaker 1: Will and myself. Thank you so much for listening. Part

841
00:47:31,800 --> 00:47:35,440
Speaker 1: Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This

842
00:47:35,560 --> 00:47:39,839
Speaker 1: show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongaishatikler, and

843
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:44,239
Speaker 1: research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode

844
00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:47,239
Speaker 1: was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with

845
00:47:47,320 --> 00:47:50,800
Speaker 1: support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for

846
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:54,600
Speaker 1: iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media

847
00:47:54,640 --> 00:47:58,720
Speaker 1: support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey.

848
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:03,880
Speaker 1: For more podcast from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

849
00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:07,440
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.