Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time for
Speaker 2: a vault episode. This originally aired February fourteenth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: and it's called Because It Is My Heart Part one.
Speaker 2: This is the first part of a series we did
Speaker 2: about heart removal and heart burial and such concepts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's that time of year, you know, it's
Speaker 1: Valentine's it's a pon us. So get in there and
Speaker 1: enjoy this heart related content.
Speaker 2: Let's jump right in.
Speaker 1: In the Desert, I saw a creature, naked bestial who's
Speaker 1: squatting upon the ground, held his heart in his hands
Speaker 1: and ate of it. I said, is it good? Friend?
Speaker 1: It is bitter, bitter, he answered, But I like it
Speaker 1: because it is bitter and because it is my heart.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that, of
Speaker 1: course is the poem in the Desert by Stephen Crane,
Speaker 1: a poem that I've long found nice and creepy and
Speaker 1: thought provoking.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of it depends on which word
Speaker 2: in the last sentence you emphasize. Does he like it
Speaker 2: because it is my heart or because it is my heart?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are several ways to piece it apart there.
Speaker 1: But it's also the perfect poem for Valentine's Day. Today
Speaker 1: is Valentine's Day. I don't know if anyone has ever
Speaker 1: taken in the desert and transformed it into a Valentine,
Speaker 1: but I think that's a fabulous idea. Depending on who
Speaker 1: you're giving it to, you want to make sure that
Speaker 1: they're going to understand the cleverness of this. But it's
Speaker 1: just the right length. You know. You could put you know,
Speaker 1: half of it on the front, half of it inside.
Speaker 1: You could draw the best youal creature there consuming its
Speaker 1: own heart. Somebody has to have done this before. I'm
Speaker 1: sure someone will send links to this effect to us.
Speaker 2: You could put it on those little heart shaped candies
Speaker 2: that look like they're like made of chalk.
Speaker 1: Basically, Oh yeah, that would be clever. I mean, it
Speaker 1: has to have been done. It's such a great idea.
Speaker 2: Does anybody eat those? By the way, that does somebody
Speaker 2: like the taste of chalk enough that they would consume that.
Speaker 1: I remember eating them when I was a child, you know,
Speaker 1: and maybe and I don't know if they're bitter, that
Speaker 1: would but they are shaped like hearts. Yeah, at a
Speaker 1: time when you ate a lot of candy, it made
Speaker 1: sense to at least try a few of them. But
Speaker 1: I think then you realize there were better candies to eat,
Speaker 1: easier candies to eat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's such a childhood mentality. It's like, well, it's
Speaker 2: not good, but it is candy, so I guess I
Speaker 2: have to eat it.
Speaker 1: I should at least at least try it. It's just polite. Yeah. So, yes,
Speaker 1: it's Valentine's Day, a time when we tend to think
Speaker 1: about the over commercialization of love, and especially romantic love,
Speaker 1: as well as the symbolism of the human heart. You know,
Speaker 1: I think this is a topic we've touched on before
Speaker 1: on the show. You know, when it comes to the heart,
Speaker 1: we know that this is the center of our circulatory system.
Speaker 1: We know it pumps our blood, but it's also seen
Speaker 1: as the symbolic or metaphoric seed of love and passion.
Speaker 1: And given all these complex ways of thinking about the heart,
Speaker 1: we also tend to feel a certain kind of way
Speaker 1: about the topic of heart removal. When it comes up,
Speaker 1: be it something that comes up in the biological you know,
Speaker 1: the medical world, or if it comes up in random
Speaker 1: horror movies, or just as a turn of phrase.
Speaker 2: Is this how you landed on heart removal for the
Speaker 2: topic this week? Where you watching a movie where a
Speaker 2: heart gets ripped out?
Speaker 1: I don't think I was specifically when I started thinking
Speaker 1: about this, but we have watched several movies on Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema, our Friday Weird movie episodes that like. Particularly,
Speaker 1: I think some seventies films we've watched, such as The
Speaker 1: Loreleized Grasp, horr Rises from the Tomb, Return of the
Speaker 1: Blind Dead, I think all three of those feature a
Speaker 1: scene in which somebody's heart is cut out and it's
Speaker 1: eaten by say a monster or occultest night that sort
Speaker 1: of thing.
Speaker 2: Wait, am I remembering wrong? Is the whole point of
Speaker 2: Lorealized Grasp that the monster eats people's hearts?
Speaker 1: Yes? Yeah, she does. Yeah. Well, I mean there are
Speaker 1: the aspects of the film, but it clearly in terms
Speaker 1: of what is the gory point of the film that
Speaker 1: seemed to be one of its main fascinations.
Speaker 2: Well, she eats people's hearts since she falls in love
Speaker 2: with that. I don't know, Spanish German, Elvis Peter Fonda
Speaker 2: kind of guy.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, yes, anyway, yes, yeah, go back to those
Speaker 1: episodes if you want more of that. When it comes
Speaker 1: to heart ripping, of course, there are some more famous
Speaker 1: examples that probably come to everyone's mind. There's the nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two fighting gay Mortal Kombat. I think everybody that
Speaker 1: was around in the nineties and in decades after, but
Speaker 1: especially in the nineties, you have that very pixelized version
Speaker 1: of that heart rip in mind. And then, of course
Speaker 1: there's the nineteen eighty four film Indiana Jones and the
Speaker 1: Temple of Doom, which features a rather famous heart rip
Speaker 1: scene that despite the film being set in India, this
Speaker 1: actual heart rip and all the things that the baddies
Speaker 1: are up to are really take gory elements from at
Speaker 1: least a couple of non Indian cultures, and some of
Speaker 1: the cultures we're going to discuss in this episode and
Speaker 1: kind of make a patchwork villain religion here for Indiana
Speaker 1: Jones to go up against. And I think they also
Speaker 1: incorporate more than a little bit of fictional satanic ritual,
Speaker 1: like it's a very humbly able culture that Indiana Jones
Speaker 1: is supposedly encountering in that movie, to say the least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now other heart rips of note correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: but doesn't Jason Vorhees ripped out of heart at least once.
Speaker 2: Oh I don't recall. Probably yeah, well.
Speaker 1: I do know.
Speaker 2: That's one of the worst movies in the whole series.
Speaker 2: Ends up like The Bunch of People, A bunch of
Speaker 2: like troops come in and blow up Jason, and then
Speaker 2: somebody eats Jason's heart and turns into Jason.
Speaker 1: It's brilliant, Okay, I I had, I haven't. I don't
Speaker 1: think i'd actually seen Leprechaun six aka Leprechaun Back to
Speaker 1: the Hood from two thousand and three. This is the
Speaker 1: last one to star Warwick Davis, but that has a
Speaker 1: heart rip in it. Like the heart rip scene I
Speaker 1: guess in a film is usually pretty easy to do
Speaker 1: because you just it's mostly sound effect and then the
Speaker 1: visual of somebody holding a bloody, palpitating heart. Oftentimes that's
Speaker 1: done by having the person squeeze like kind of a
Speaker 1: rubber heart create the sound effective you desire. Other examples
Speaker 1: come to mind the horror movie Valentine's Day. I'd forgotten
Speaker 1: about this, but the Prophecy films have a lot of this,
Speaker 1: with angels ripping each other's hearts out. Dumb and Dumber
Speaker 1: has a heart rip scene that I'd forgotten about. I
Speaker 1: can't remember if is that supposed to be a dream
Speaker 1: sequence or is that supposed to really happen or does
Speaker 1: it matter? In Dumb and Dumber it is a dream sequence, Okay, Okay.
Speaker 1: Then there's a Rambo, Last Blood and Last of the Mohicans.
Speaker 2: I've actually seen very few of these movies.
Speaker 1: Oh well, we might have to come back to the
Speaker 1: Prophecy films. Oh but I don't know. Some of those
Speaker 1: you could probably miss, especially maybe Leprechaun six. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a staple of horror. Oftentimes, if
Speaker 1: you have any kind of like supernatural being, you know,
Speaker 1: you have some sort of really lightning quick heart rip.
Speaker 1: There's a great example of this on the HBO series
Speaker 1: True Blood, which I guess overall looking back on it
Speaker 1: kind of a mixed bag. But the excellent character actor
Speaker 1: Dennis O'Hare does have this wonderful character, the vampire King
Speaker 1: of Mississippi. His name is Russell Eddington. He's a real
Speaker 1: highlight of the show. While he's on the show, and
Speaker 1: there's a scene where I forget exactly what ticks him off,
Speaker 1: but vampires are supposed to be secret in the series,
Speaker 1: and he just gets mad and instantly like speeds to
Speaker 1: like a live news broadcast and rips the broadcasters heart
Speaker 1: out through his back, along with the piece of his spine,
Speaker 1: and that stands out in my mind is one of
Speaker 1: the finest moments of that series.
Speaker 2: The main thing that comes to my mind is that
Speaker 2: the manual heart removal is the primary move of an
Speaker 2: unarmed Terminator in the Terminator films.
Speaker 1: Oh did he rip some hearts out?
Speaker 2: That's what Yeh's what Arnold Schwarzenegger does in the first
Speaker 2: movie when he comes out to the punks. Yeah, he
Speaker 2: like Bill Paxton or somebody or the guy Bill Paxton's
Speaker 2: hanging out with.
Speaker 1: It's been so long since I saw the first Terminator.
Speaker 1: I really need to go back in and watch it.
Speaker 2: I don't know why that's the move they chose. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's scary in the movie. I don't know if that
Speaker 2: really speaks of robotic efficiency.
Speaker 1: It's like taking the batteries out right, yeah, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: with that out of the way, we're gonna begin to
Speaker 1: move into what we're ultimately really talking about in this
Speaker 1: pair of episodes this week, and that is heart removals
Speaker 1: and how they factored into different views, different supernatural understandings
Speaker 1: of the human body and the cosmos. We're not gonna
Speaker 1: we're probably not gonna go super in depth into heart
Speaker 1: symbolism and metaphors in terms of trying to be, you know,
Speaker 1: to completely cover the topic, because it is a broad topic.
Speaker 1: You have, like any given culture has some sort of
Speaker 1: idea about what the heart is, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of overlap, but then there are some distinct ideas mixed
Speaker 1: in there as well, and we'll touch on some of these.
Speaker 1: I think a good place to start would be, of course,
Speaker 1: with the Egyptian heart. Now, there was we had a
Speaker 1: past episode of the show this was there was an
Speaker 1: interview that I did with author Bill Shutt, who wrote
Speaker 1: a book called Pump. It's quite good. It gets into
Speaker 1: animal hearts and various in the history of understanding the
Speaker 1: human heart, Medical History of the Heart. Wonderful read. And
Speaker 1: in that book he does bring up that, yes, the
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptians knew the heart is ab or ib or HATI.
Speaker 1: It was treated with a great deal of reverence, as
Speaker 1: this was the organ said to contain a record of
Speaker 1: the individual's good and bad deeds. And I think a
Speaker 1: number of any if you've consumed any amount of Egyptology
Speaker 1: over the years, you're probably familiar with the basic scenario
Speaker 1: that is often related here that after you have died,
Speaker 1: it is this heart that will be weighed against a
Speaker 1: feather of maat the Goddess of Truth, to see if
Speaker 1: you can indeed pass on into the realms beyond our
Speaker 1: life here on earth, will or if you're going to
Speaker 1: be consumed by this ferocious beast of annihilation and thus
Speaker 1: no longer exist.
Speaker 2: I think it's a crocodile type or crocodile ish beast,
Speaker 2: isn't it.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it is a crocodile asque I'm blanking on
Speaker 1: the name of the entity off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: But yeah, you basically have the split road between annihilation
Speaker 1: and continued existence. But you can only continue to exist
Speaker 1: if your heart matches up against this feather of maat
Speaker 1: the Goddess of Truth. Now, as Geraldine Pinch mentions in
Speaker 1: her book, Egyptian mythology. Yeah, the ancient Egyptian's view, the
Speaker 1: heart is the organ of thought and feeling, and it
Speaker 1: was the seat of consciousness itself, and Maat the goddess
Speaker 1: here is often seen as this ostridge feather adorned goddess
Speaker 1: of truth and goodness. So thus her feather would match
Speaker 1: the weight of your heart if you had truth in
Speaker 1: your heart, if you had not at in your heart
Speaker 1: at all. So that's the basic scenario there now. Shut
Speaker 1: cites historian Roger K. French, who rationalized that the basic
Speaker 1: idea in the Egyptian model here is that life is warm.
Speaker 1: The heart is warm, the heart moves, and with its
Speaker 1: movements we breathe, and our vessels carry blood to the
Speaker 1: rest of our body. Shut also points out that the
Speaker 1: fifteen fifty five BCE Book of the Heart may reveal
Speaker 1: some level of understanding regarding heart attacks and aneurysms among
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians, but historians are not all in agreement
Speaker 1: onto what degree we could interpret it this way. Now,
Speaker 1: given the importance of the heart in all of this,
Speaker 1: especially the continuation of the soul and Egyptian belief, this
Speaker 1: probably reminds a lot of people out there of another
Speaker 1: fact about the mummified remains of an individual, about what
Speaker 1: happens to various internal organs. Several of these internal organs
Speaker 1: are often placed inside of a canomic jar, including the heart.
Speaker 2: Yes, And so that brings me to how I wanted
Speaker 2: to look at a specific example of a mummy to
Speaker 2: examine treatment of the heart in a case where it
Speaker 2: was well documented. So obviously, Egyptian embalming, mummification, and burial
Speaker 2: practices varied by time and place, and ancient Egyptian civilization
Speaker 2: spans a really long time, thousands of years. So the
Speaker 2: example I'm about to talk about is not characteristic of
Speaker 2: everything in ancient Egypt. But I thought it was interesting
Speaker 2: to look at one example in particular, especially because it
Speaker 2: contradicts a generalization that many people have made over the
Speaker 2: years about Egyptian mummification, one that I definitely remember learning
Speaker 2: when I was younger. And the generalization is this that
Speaker 2: during mummification the brain is always removed. Of course, you
Speaker 2: get the famous grotesque image of the hook going through
Speaker 2: the face holes to remove the brain, and that the heart,
Speaker 2: being the seat of the soul, as you just explained,
Speaker 2: was left in place in the body. So maybe the
Speaker 2: other organs were removed, but the heart was left in
Speaker 2: the chest.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if memory serves, I think I'm
Speaker 1: remembering from a past episode on mummies. The brain. We
Speaker 1: have to remember the brain, I believe, is often thought
Speaker 1: to have gone rancid first, to rot it first, and
Speaker 1: therefore we have to factor that into all this as well,
Speaker 1: along with these understandings for the ancient Egyptians about what
Speaker 1: organs were doing.
Speaker 2: Now, the specific mummy I was reading about that contradicted
Speaker 2: this generalization was featured in a paper based especially around
Speaker 2: some ct scan research that was published in twenty fourteen
Speaker 2: in the journal the academic journal The Yearbook of Mummy Studies.
Speaker 2: It's a funny name. Makes you imagine the mummies are
Speaker 2: like writing, you know, stay cool, have a great summer,
Speaker 2: or they're like going through drawing hearts around all the
Speaker 2: mummies they have a crush on like this mummy's so
Speaker 2: cute anyway. So I was reading about this paper in
Speaker 2: a concurrent article in Live Science by Owen juris called
Speaker 2: ancient Egyptian mummy found with brain no heart. So this
Speaker 2: mummy is the body of a woman who lived about
Speaker 2: seventeen hundred years ago according to radiocarbon dating, placing her
Speaker 2: under the period of Roman control of Egypt. And she
Speaker 2: died somewhere between the ages of thirty and fifty, and
Speaker 2: her body shows signs of severe dental health issues and
Speaker 2: tooth loss, which apparently is quite common for ancient Egyptian
Speaker 2: bodies from this period. I don't know if that's because
Speaker 2: they were getting lots of sugar or what. I don't
Speaker 2: know what the explanation is, but a lot of dental problems.
Speaker 2: In the religious and cultural context would be This was
Speaker 2: a person who still adhered to a version of tradition
Speaker 2: Egyptian religion, or the variant of it that was popular
Speaker 2: at this time, at a time when Christianity was actually
Speaker 2: spreading through the region and becoming more and more dominant. Now,
Speaker 2: in contradiction to the brain removed, heart left in place
Speaker 2: generalization I heard when I was growing up, this mummy
Speaker 2: is exactly the opposite. Analysis of CT scans by the
Speaker 2: researchers found that the embalmers in this case they worked
Speaker 2: by making an incision in the perineum and then through
Speaker 2: here they removed the intestines, the stomach, the liver, and
Speaker 2: the heart. Heart came out too. So after all these
Speaker 2: organs were removed, they lined the incision that they had
Speaker 2: made with resin and linen cloth, and then they placed
Speaker 2: a couple of plaques on this woman's body, on the skin,
Speaker 2: over the stomach and over the sternum, and to read
Speaker 2: from Jeres's summary quote, something that may have been intended
Speaker 2: to ritually heal the damage the embalmers had done and
Speaker 2: act as a replacement of sorts for removed heart. And
Speaker 2: this would not be the only example in ancient Egyptian
Speaker 2: emvolving practices where the heart was taken out and something
Speaker 2: else was put in there, seemingly in its place or
Speaker 2: to replace it. I'll mention another couple of examples of
Speaker 2: that in a minute. But after this, her body was
Speaker 2: treated with spices and with lichen covering I think her
Speaker 2: head and her upper body, and she was wrapped and
Speaker 2: buried somewhere near Luxor. At the time of this article,
Speaker 2: by the way, the mummy was in the collection of
Speaker 2: the Red Path Museum at McGill University in Montreal. But anyway,
Speaker 2: this raises an interesting question if the heart was so
Speaker 2: important in Egyptian religion, that so important that for a
Speaker 2: long time, people assumed it was always left in place
Speaker 2: when bodies were mummified. What was happening in the cases
Speaker 2: where it actually was removed and how common was that? Well,
Speaker 2: to quote a profane named Andrew Wade from Master University
Speaker 2: who's the author of another piece I'm going to look
Speaker 2: at in a minute, Wade says, quote, we don't really
Speaker 2: know what's happening to the hearts that are removed. So
Speaker 2: it's assumed that, as you alluded to a minute ago, robed,
Speaker 2: they were usually when they were removed, they were put
Speaker 2: into canopic jars, which we know we're used to hold
Speaker 2: internal organs removed from other mummies, but that's not always
Speaker 2: known for sure. So sometimes we just don't know what
Speaker 2: happened to the heart. And there's still the question of
Speaker 2: why why did they do this? Well, we don't know,
Speaker 2: but the authors of the ct study speculate that perhaps
Speaker 2: the two plaques on her abdomen and her sternum were
Speaker 2: meant as a kind of healing or a replacement for
Speaker 2: the wounds inflicted by the embalming process itself. Like, okay,
Speaker 2: we had to cut a hole in your body in
Speaker 2: order to process your body for burial, So here's a
Speaker 2: plaster healing symbol to counteract that incision. And then perhaps
Speaker 2: the plaque on the sternum was somehow a replacement for
Speaker 2: the missing heart, But again we don't know for sure,
Speaker 2: and we don't know why the heart was removed. But
Speaker 2: I came across another piece that has some interesting thoughts
Speaker 2: about this. So for a more general look at the
Speaker 2: treatment of the heart in Egyptian mummification, I was looking at.
Speaker 2: I don't think this is a paper in an academic journal.
Speaker 2: I think this is a fact sheet from a presentation
Speaker 2: at an academic conference that was put together by a
Speaker 2: couple of experts, by Andrew D. Wade and Andrew J. Nelson.
Speaker 2: I know that one of the two authors here, Wade,
Speaker 2: was the one who was quoted in that article we
Speaker 2: were just talking about. So the authors of this presentation
Speaker 2: here say that many generalizations made these days about the
Speaker 2: treatment of the heart in Egyptian mummification are based not
Speaker 2: on modern empirical research, but rather on accounts given by
Speaker 2: classical authors. So if we are going to use literary evidence,
Speaker 2: evidence from ancient texts for what these funeral practices were,
Speaker 2: you know, it would be really good to have a
Speaker 2: lot of direct Egyptian accounts, and we have some Egyptian
Speaker 2: accounts about beliefs about funeral practices and the afterlife, but
Speaker 2: instead a lot of the literary evidence we use is
Speaker 2: mostly in Greek and Roman texts from authors like Herodotus
Speaker 2: and Plutarch, And in fact, they say, the only author
Speaker 2: specifically mentioning the heart as opposed to making more general
Speaker 2: statements about what is done with the organs during mummification
Speaker 2: is the Ptolemaic period Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, who writes
Speaker 2: as follows quote, when they have gathered to treat the
Speaker 2: body after it has been slit open, one of them
Speaker 2: thrusts his hand through the opening in the corpse into
Speaker 2: the trunk and extracts everything but the kidneys and the heart,
Speaker 2: and another one cleanses each of the viscera, washing them
Speaker 2: in palm wine and spices. So based on this we've
Speaker 2: got Diodorus here saying that the heart is always left
Speaker 2: in place. But of course, remember he was Ptolemaic period,
Speaker 2: and this is one author. And this presentation I looked
Speaker 2: at was designed to compare those literary accounts of heart
Speaker 2: treatment to evidence again from CT scans or from mummies
Speaker 2: that have actually been empirically taken apart and described in
Speaker 2: the scientific literature. So we looked to see what was
Speaker 2: left in them. And they say there are three basic
Speaker 2: patterns of heart treatment and mummies. One is retention, so
Speaker 2: the heart stays in the chest even if other organs
Speaker 2: are removed. Number two is removal, the heart is taken
Speaker 2: out of the body. And number three is replacement, where
Speaker 2: the heart is removed and something symbolic is left in
Speaker 2: its place, generally something called a heart scaub, which is
Speaker 2: a type of amulet. So how do the empirical finding
Speaker 2: stack up the author's write quote the heart was noted
Speaker 2: as intact in only twenty one of eighty individuals, where
Speaker 2: this organ's disposition was recorded in barely more than a
Speaker 2: quarter of the individuals, and this sample was the heart
Speaker 2: retained in situ. In only one case was the heart
Speaker 2: possibly sewn back into place, and in one other case
Speaker 2: was a heart scare of a present presumably to replace
Speaker 2: the removed heart. And so rob you can see I've
Speaker 2: included a chart from their presentation below where you can
Speaker 2: look at the trends where these are not percentages, but
Speaker 2: these are absolute numbers. Of examples from these different periods,
Speaker 2: and you can see that heart retention predominates in the
Speaker 2: small number of samples of mummies we have from the
Speaker 2: Middle and New Kingdoms. But then as time goes on,
Speaker 2: heart retention is outnumbered by heart removals in the Third
Speaker 2: Intermediate Period, the Late Period, and the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. So,
Speaker 2: in the words of the authors quote, mummies were increasingly
Speaker 2: absent their hearts from the New Kingdom onward. As time
Speaker 2: goes on, more and more of the mummies we find
Speaker 2: have their hearts removed, and so the authors conclude to quote,
Speaker 2: the stereotype of universal heart retention or replacement on accidental
Speaker 2: removal is far from the truth. The heart was uncommonly
Speaker 2: retained in situ and rarely returned or replaced by a
Speaker 2: heart scare up. The hypothesis constructed from the stereotyped account
Speaker 2: by Diodorus is therefore falsified by these data.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Interesting, yeah, Now also worth just driving home though,
Speaker 1: that this is all separate, of course, from the purely
Speaker 1: sort of mythological situation in which the heart is weighed
Speaker 1: that's taking place in another realm, that is not taking
Speaker 1: place in the physical world.
Speaker 2: Right, this is a study about what happened to the bodies,
Speaker 2: not necessarily about what the people in question believed about
Speaker 2: what was happening in the afterlife.
Speaker 1: Right, And though of it's also worth driving home that
Speaker 1: also with belief, especially when we're talking about ancient Egypt. Again,
Speaker 1: like you said, we're talking about a very long period
Speaker 1: of time in which practices change, but also beliefs also change.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to just you can't just sum everything
Speaker 1: up and like say a pamphlet about like here's what
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians believed or did, because you're covering such
Speaker 1: a broad period of time.
Speaker 2: Correct, And this is the point the authors here are making.
Speaker 2: They use this as evidence that the classical descriptions of
Speaker 2: Egyptian mummification by like Greek and Latin authors should only
Speaker 2: be used, as they say, at best quote a possible
Speaker 2: snapshot of mummification performed by one particular workshop unquote, and
Speaker 2: not like an adequate description of universal practices or even
Speaker 2: of the most common practices across time and space. So
Speaker 2: but I still had the question about like why, though,
Speaker 2: is there any clue as to why this difference that
Speaker 2: in some cases the heart is retained in other cases
Speaker 2: the heart is removed, and are there any trends in
Speaker 2: like whose hearts were removed and whose were left in place.
Speaker 2: The authors do offer a bit of speculation here that,
Speaker 2: you know, interestingly and the mummies available to us, there
Speaker 2: seems to be a somewhat of a correlation with access
Speaker 2: to mummification by different classes. So in the New Kingdom
Speaker 2: there essentially was a process of democratization of mummification. Previously,
Speaker 2: mummification had been an incredibly exclusive right which was only
Speaker 2: available to you know, the top top elites. But then
Speaker 2: they say quote as time progressed, the nobles gained increasing
Speaker 2: access to mummification and retained their hearts. With the democratization
Speaker 2: of mummification, however, the commoners being mummified were not receiving
Speaker 2: the same treatment, possibly to ensure that the elite maintained
Speaker 2: a more favorable afterlife than their subjects.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that went in a different direction than I
Speaker 1: was expecting. I thought it would just maybe be like, well,
Speaker 1: this is this is a premium service for premium customers.
Speaker 1: We can't offer the same level of mummification services for
Speaker 1: a lesser price. But it seems like it also could
Speaker 1: be ensuring the status quo in the afterlife.
Speaker 2: It could be because I mean, so I don't know
Speaker 2: how it would necessarily be cheaper to remove the heart
Speaker 2: than not remove the heart, you know, like it just
Speaker 2: in terms of the actual cost in the like labor
Speaker 2: to the embalmers. So yeah, it could be a deliberate
Speaker 2: choice to sort of create an artificial tiered system for
Speaker 2: quality of mummification and make sure, well, there's a really
Speaker 2: special kind of mummification where your heart stays in and
Speaker 2: that's only available to the elites. But we don't know
Speaker 2: that for sure. I want to be very clear, we
Speaker 2: don't know the reasoning. But that is an interesting, plausible
Speaker 2: scenario that it's like it was in order to create
Speaker 2: a kind of elite or premium tiered type of mummification
Speaker 2: at a time when more people were getting mummification at all. Fascinating,
Speaker 2: But we don't know for sure, and so I think
Speaker 2: this remains a really tristing question I would love to
Speaker 2: know more of someone can have more evidence to shed
Speaker 2: direct light on why this difference emerged.
Speaker 1: Now, another scenario of heart removal that's rather different in
Speaker 1: many respects, but one that probably instantly comes to many
Speaker 1: people's minds that I want to discuss is the ritual
Speaker 1: removal of human hearts by the Mayans and the Aztecs,
Speaker 1: but especially for research purposes here the Mayans, so the
Speaker 1: ancient Mayans are known to have performed human sacrifices involving
Speaker 1: the removal of the heart, though not in the post
Speaker 1: mortem sense, the removal of the heart essentially via ritualistic sacrifice,
Speaker 1: ritualistic execution. You could think of it as vivisection or
Speaker 1: just or even death by heart removal, I imagine. One
Speaker 1: article I was reading on the topic was Procedures in
Speaker 1: Human Heart Extraction and Ritual Meaning by Tesler and Chuchina,
Speaker 1: published in Latin American Antiquity in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: And as you can tell by the title, this is
Speaker 1: a paper that deals predominantly with the procedures. How were
Speaker 1: they carrying this out? Not so much, you know, the whys.
Speaker 1: We'll get into some of the whys. But essentially these
Speaker 1: were religious practices. But I was not aware that there
Speaker 1: was There's been so much, so much discussion and attempts
Speaker 1: to understand exactly how the heart was removed. So they
Speaker 1: looked at skeletal remains, a suspected heart removal human sacrifice cases,
Speaker 1: and contended that the sacrificers would carry these procedures out
Speaker 1: by quote a trans diaphragmatic And I had to look
Speaker 1: that up. Webster says, use the hard G on trans diaphragmatic.
Speaker 1: So I'm going with what Webster's saying in this case,
Speaker 1: the definition being occurring, passing, or performed through the diaphragm.
Speaker 1: You mean the diaphragum, Yes, the diaphragm. And so this
Speaker 1: would yeah opening immediately below the rib cage, and this
Speaker 1: would help ensure rapid removal of the heart. And this
Speaker 1: is where they get into their going up against some
Speaker 1: previous theories about how they carried this out. In particular,
Speaker 1: there was an eight to ten minute procedure estimate by
Speaker 1: Robesik and Hales in nineteen eighty four. These authors had
Speaker 1: argued that the sacrificer would have cut through the thorax
Speaker 1: from side to side, collapsing the lung in the process.
Speaker 1: This would make the victim unconscious within three to four
Speaker 1: minutes and allow the rest of the surgery to proceed
Speaker 1: without struggle. And they do kind of frame it as
Speaker 1: kind of a surgery the section with heart removal occurring
Speaker 1: while the heart was still palpitating, which seemed to be
Speaker 1: the desired effect to pull the heart out while the
Speaker 1: heart seems to still have life in it. Another analysis
Speaker 1: from Gonzales Torres argued as well for a below the
Speaker 1: ribs approach, but stressed that the exact style may have
Speaker 1: varied from region to region. So again we get into
Speaker 1: a similar situation with mummification. Just because one mummification lab
Speaker 1: was doing it one way doesn't mean they were doing
Speaker 1: it the same way at another lab at another time.
Speaker 1: And likewise, the way hearts were removed via blood ritual
Speaker 1: blood sacrifice in one instance, it might be different in another,
Speaker 1: you know, different styles for different sacrificers, or some sort
Speaker 1: of evolution of style Tesla and Chacina. Meanwhile, right quote.
Speaker 1: It must be underlined in this context that ritual heart
Speaker 1: removal entailed a violent vivisection of a struggling victim, and
Speaker 1: was therefore quicker and fundamentally distinctive from the cautious procedures
Speaker 1: implied in a quote unquote surgical operation as visualized by
Speaker 1: Rubiesack and Hales. Now, the sacrificial victims in these situations
Speaker 1: were typically enslaved people, sometimes children or prisoners of war
Speaker 1: who were I'm reading that they were often either painted
Speaker 1: blue first or pelted with arrows, and once the heart
Speaker 1: was removed, its blood was generally used to smear or
Speaker 1: anoint some sort of divine icon or some sort of structure,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Now, as sacrifices, these would have had a religious significance.
Speaker 2: Is the significance of the act better understood than maybe
Speaker 2: the significance of the removal or non removal of the
Speaker 2: heart in the Egyptian example?
Speaker 1: I believe so, based on the work I was looking at.
Speaker 1: There's a paper here by Tesler and Oliver in Open
Speaker 1: Caskets and Broken Hearts, great title from a twenty twenty
Speaker 1: edition of Current Anthropology, and the authors here are right
Speaker 1: that the quote partitioning and the liberation of vitalizing matter,
Speaker 1: namely the heart and blood, fed specific sacred forces during
Speaker 1: divine cult and mythic reenactment. They also provide a note
Speaker 1: on Aztec sacrifices quote. As for the Aztecs, we conclude
Speaker 1: that different trunk opening procedures were practiced as part of
Speaker 1: ritual sequences that in each case enabled access to the
Speaker 1: cosmic sacred mountain with its vivifying essences. So in other words,
Speaker 1: hearts and blood were essentially food for gods of the
Speaker 1: sun and gods of the earth, deities who in turn
Speaker 1: sacrificed or were in turn, or you could say, originally
Speaker 1: sacrificed something to create the universe. And the sacrifices here
Speaker 1: were acts of the actual blood ritual sacrifices, not the
Speaker 1: mythological sacrifices, were acts of quote, obligation, reciprocation, and reenactment.
Speaker 1: So there are several different things going on there, Like
Speaker 1: there's a sort of a mythic understanding of what the
Speaker 1: heart and the blood is. There's this reenactment of things
Speaker 1: that occurred in sacred time, the idea that there was
Speaker 1: some sort of blood ritual and sacrifice that occurred with
Speaker 1: mythological beings, and the thing that is taking place in
Speaker 1: the sacrifice is important insofar as it is re enacting
Speaker 1: this mythic incident. And there's this also, you know, basically,
Speaker 1: like what we sort of generalize about sacrifice, something is
Speaker 1: offered up so that something else may be offered down
Speaker 1: to us as humans. They also mentioned in this article
Speaker 1: that while the under the rib technique does seem more common,
Speaker 1: and I believe This is a slightly later work. There
Speaker 1: are three distinct tactics that were used. There's cutting directly
Speaker 1: under the ribs, there's making an incision between two ribs,
Speaker 1: and then there's horizontally severing the sternum in order to
Speaker 1: access the heart. But again it seems like going under
Speaker 1: the ribs was the most common technique. Now additionally and
Speaker 1: just sort of like trying to get into the whole,
Speaker 1: like what did ancient people or in this case, what
Speaker 1: did the Mayans who are engaging in heart removal sacrifice?
Speaker 1: What did they think of the heart? What other ideas
Speaker 1: we're going on regarding the center of our circulatory system.
Speaker 1: On this I found an interesting discussion of ideas concerning
Speaker 1: the human body among the Satal people. The Adal people
Speaker 1: are a Mayan people in southern Mexico. So in this
Speaker 1: particular work, it is the Ethnophysiology of the Satal Maya
Speaker 1: of the Highland Chapists by Cameron Lyttleton Adams. This was
Speaker 1: a Doctor's of Philosophy dissertation from the University of Georgia.
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to get into everything that's discussed here,
Speaker 1: and again this is not the Mayan people of old,
Speaker 1: but contemporary Mayan peoples, but there are these interesting ideas
Speaker 1: in their thinking about the connection of the heart to cognition,
Speaker 1: not thinking with the heart instead of the brain, but
Speaker 1: sort of thinking with it. So I found that kind
Speaker 1: of interesting because there are some other instances we'll get
Speaker 1: into as well, in addition to the Egyptian model, where
Speaker 1: this seems like maybe a modern twist on these older
Speaker 1: ideas of the heart being the center of thought, the
Speaker 1: center of being. So maybe it's a situation where like
Speaker 1: in the modern world, you know that the brain is
Speaker 1: the center of cognition, but there's still the symbolic and
Speaker 1: metaphorical importance of the heart as being something vital to
Speaker 1: who we are and having some sort of emotional connection
Speaker 1: which I think we can all relate to that, especially
Speaker 1: on Valentine's to Day. We're so on Valentine's Day, we're
Speaker 1: so steeped in this idea that, yeah, the heart is
Speaker 1: not just a thing that pumps blood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there is to some degree some accuracy and
Speaker 2: wisdom in that way of thinking. Because, of course, while
Speaker 2: I think it is quite clear that the brain is
Speaker 2: the necessary organ for cognition, like you couldn't have thinking
Speaker 2: without the brain, that the rest of the body influences
Speaker 2: the thinking that happens in the brain, and the brain
Speaker 2: is not like a thing floating apart from the body.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, Adams has this wonderful little line in here
Speaker 1: I want to read. I found this very fascinating quote. Further,
Speaker 1: health is referred to by the semantic pair walking and working,
Speaker 1: and the heart is conceived of as a homunculous, an
Speaker 1: internal being that makes commands that must be obeyed. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth or
Speaker 1: visualizations in anyone else's worldview, so I don't think this
Speaker 1: is supposed to literally be a homunculus or this idea
Speaker 1: that like the heart, that in each of us there's
Speaker 1: like a squat, little like tough, little like red flesh
Speaker 1: being that lives in the center of our chest and
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, puppet masters the rest of us.
Speaker 1: It's more like an idea of like what's going on
Speaker 1: in the heart versus what's going on on the outside.
Speaker 1: It's this is more metaphorical, but I think it's still
Speaker 1: an intriguing idea. Well, and I could.
Speaker 2: Be misunderstanding, but I kind of read that as it
Speaker 2: sounds like it's suggesting the heart as a something that
Speaker 2: is separate from the conscious mind but has desires of
Speaker 2: its own that must be obeyed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's fair as well, though it
Speaker 1: is it's hard for me to not just picture like
Speaker 1: literal homunculus in the heart, but I know that's not
Speaker 1: what the author is going for here. But it's interesting
Speaker 1: to think about all this. Like when we think about
Speaker 1: heart and brain, we think, okay, brain is thought, heart
Speaker 1: is his certain story system. But of course if we
Speaker 1: know that the two need each other, like the brain
Speaker 1: cannot live independent of some sort of heart that is
Speaker 1: doing the job of the heart, be that a transplanted
Speaker 1: heart or an artificial heart, like that is a role
Speaker 1: that has to be filled for the brain to do
Speaker 1: its thing as well.
Speaker 2: And that feedback from and input from the rest of
Speaker 2: the body affects how the brain works. The r for
Speaker 2: in incredibly mundane ways that you're familiar with, such as
Speaker 2: like you think different when you're hungry, like when you're
Speaker 2: getting feedback from your digestive system or something, or from
Speaker 2: your blood sugar. That's going to affect the way you
Speaker 2: feel and the way you think. But it also in
Speaker 2: much subtler and stranger ways as well, that there's a
Speaker 2: relationship between what's happening and say, your gut microbiome and
Speaker 2: the way your brain works, and on and on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And then of course there's the very simple
Speaker 1: observation that, hey, when I am very excited, when I'm agitated,
Speaker 1: my heart is beating faster, and when I'm very calm,
Speaker 1: my heart is beating very slowly, and realizing that, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are all these very observable connections between the way
Speaker 1: that we you know, what's going on in our mind
Speaker 1: and our being and what's going on seemingly in the
Speaker 1: center of our chest.
Speaker 2: All right, well, I think maybe we're going to have
Speaker 2: to call this episode there for part one, but we
Speaker 2: will be back in part two to discuss more heart
Speaker 2: removal traditions and thoughts about heart removal from the point
Speaker 2: of view of other cultures. In Norse traditions, in medieval Christianity,
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about boiling some crusaders. It's going
Speaker 2: to be fun.
Speaker 1: Yes, there will be more human sacrifice, there will be
Speaker 1: more heart removed, and much more. So. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check back in on Thursday as we continue our special
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day celebration of the removed Heart. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you would like to listen to other episodes Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, well you will find them all
Speaker 1: in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. We
Speaker 1: have our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays
Speaker 1: we do a listener mail episode. On Wednesdays the normal schedules,
Speaker 1: we do a short form Monster Factor or Artifact episode,
Speaker 1: and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 1: do an episode of Weird House Cinema. That's where really
Speaker 1: most of the heart ripping takes place on this show.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
Speaker 2: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 2: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 2: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: dot com.
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