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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so we have a

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Speaker 1: vault episode for you. This is going to be Ancient

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Speaker 1: Egyptian Curses Part 1. It originally published 9-30-2025. What's it about?

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Speaker 1: You're just going to have to dive in and find

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Speaker 1: out and maybe suffer the consequences.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: And we are kicking off our spooky content today. I

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Speaker 1: guess we already kind of kicked this off with Weird

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Speaker 1: House Cinema, but at this point we are definitely sliding

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Speaker 1: into October. And if you've listened to the show before,

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Speaker 1: you know that this is a time for us to

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Speaker 1: get into a lot of horror-themed content, Halloween-y content. And

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Speaker 1: that includes episodes of Weird Al Cinema. That includes short episodes.

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Speaker 1: And of course, it includes core episodes of Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind. So that's going to be the course

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Speaker 1: for the month on the whole. There is going to

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Speaker 1: be our fall break week, as usual, in which we'll

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Speaker 1: have reruns. But guess what? All of those reruns are

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Speaker 1: going to be Halloween content as well. So we will

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Speaker 1: keep the Halloween train rolling.

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Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, what's more frightening than a visitor from

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Speaker 2: the past?

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Speaker 1: There you go. There you go. That kind of ties

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Speaker 1: into some of what we'll be talking about here today.

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Speaker 1: Because in today's episode, we're going to dive into the world,

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Speaker 1: we're going to return really to the world of ancient

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Speaker 1: Egyptian curses. We've touched on some of this before. We

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Speaker 1: frequently come back to Egyptology-related content, either talking about archaeological

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Speaker 1: finds and the history of ancient Egypt, or talking about

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Speaker 1: something in ancient Egyptian religion that's really fascinating, or of

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Speaker 1: course anything that's sort of in the realm of Egyptomania,

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Speaker 1: you know, this... long-lasting fascination that other cultures have had

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Speaker 1: with the culture and the ideas and even just the

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Speaker 1: look and the feel of ancient Egypt. So in this episode,

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about ancient Egyptian religious practices, ancient

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Speaker 1: Egyptian magic. We're going to also look at this idea

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Speaker 1: of the curse in ancient Egypt and with some specific examples,

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Speaker 1: I think mostly related to tombs. We're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about 20th century myth-making traditions about ancient Egyptian curses. And finally,

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Speaker 1: we're going to look at a case from outside of

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Speaker 1: Egypt that has, I don't know, it lines up in

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Speaker 1: rather interesting ways with some of the ideas that have

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Speaker 1: been generated about ancient Egyptian curses within the 20th century.

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Speaker 1: All right. And before we jump in, I want to mention, too,

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Speaker 1: that last Thursday, I attended an online class by Egyptologist

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Speaker 1: and former guest on the show, Colleen Darnell, titled Curse

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Speaker 1: of the Pharaohs. I found it super insightful, and the

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Speaker 1: information and sources presented in that class were part of

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Speaker 1: my initial research for this episode. She does these classes

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Speaker 1: on different Egyptology topics each month. I highly recommend them.

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Speaker 1: You can learn more about them at ColleenDarnell.com. So I'll

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Speaker 1: refer back to some of her ideas and content, as

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Speaker 1: well as some other sources, once we get into it.

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Speaker 1: But let's get down to brass tacks here. Let's talk

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Speaker 1: a little bit about Egyptian magic.

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Speaker 2: Indeed, let's talk about Egyptian magic. I think this is

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Speaker 2: a good groundwork to lay because curses, of course, are

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Speaker 2: not the only kind of magic that was practiced in

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Speaker 2: ancient Egypt. They're a particularly savory, delicious kind of magic

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Speaker 2: from a modern sensibility to understand. But yeah, I think

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Speaker 2: it's good to understand the general context of Egyptian magic

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Speaker 2: a little bit better before we narrow in on curses themselves.

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Speaker 2: So To better understand ancient Egyptian magic, I turned to a,

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Speaker 2: there's a really good overview in a book by Geraldine

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Speaker 2: Pinch called Magic in Ancient Egypt, published by the University

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Speaker 2: of Texas Press, 1994. Geraldine Pinch is an Egyptologist we've

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Speaker 2: referred to on the show plenty of times, born 1951.

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Speaker 2: She is affiliated with the University of Oxford. And I

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Speaker 2: mainly want to, in this section, talk about some distinctions

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Speaker 2: and frameworks that Pinch invokes in the first chapter of

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Speaker 2: this book to give a lay of the land about

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Speaker 2: how the ancient Egyptians viewed and used magic. And at

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Speaker 2: the beginning here, it's worth noting the long and varied

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Speaker 2: textual and archaeological record of magic in ancient Egypt. While

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Speaker 2: magical amulets and other objects go back into prehistory, Magical

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Speaker 2: texts from ancient Egypt are found from the late 3rd

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Speaker 2: millennium BCE until about the 4th century CE. So that's

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Speaker 2: more than 3,000 years worth of texts concerning magic, many

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Speaker 2: of which are written records of spells themselves. We have

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Speaker 2: the primary documents. We have the spells. That's pretty cool.

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Speaker 2: Not just people talking about magic, but we have the recipes.

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Speaker 2: And in this chapter, Pinch identifies... sort of three main

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Speaker 2: categories of magic. You've got funerary magic. That's what concerns death, burial,

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Speaker 2: and the afterlife. You've got temple magic, which is ritual

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Speaker 2: magic performed in temples by priests or religious authorities, often

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Speaker 2: aimed at various forms of public welfare, outcomes that concerned

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Speaker 2: lots of people at once. And then finally, you've got

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Speaker 2: personal or everyday magic, the spells and rites used by

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Speaker 2: individual people for help in situations that they faced personally.

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Speaker 2: Funerary magic is arguably the class that we know the

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Speaker 2: most about, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was the

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Speaker 2: most important. It obviously was very important, but the fact

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Speaker 2: that we know so much about it seems to be

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Speaker 2: in large part related to what type of evidence was

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Speaker 2: preserved and passed on down to us. A lot of

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Speaker 2: our best preserved evidence is from ancient Egypt comes from tombs.

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Speaker 2: So it's kind of natural that we just know a

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Speaker 2: lot about funerary practices and things having to deal with

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Speaker 2: death in the afterlife. There are two Egyptian words used

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Speaker 2: most often to refer to magic. One of these words

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Speaker 2: is Heka or Heka, usually spelled in English H-E-K-A, which

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Speaker 2: is also the personal name of an Egyptian god. The

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Speaker 2: god Heka was usually depicted in human form, but the

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Speaker 2: word Heka was also used to refer to not just

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Speaker 2: this god in personal form, but to a type of

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Speaker 2: energy or force used by the creator deity to create.

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Speaker 2: So in the Egyptian creation myth, you usually have some

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Speaker 2: form of, there's this primordial water, this abyss of chaotic

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Speaker 2: waters known as the Nun or Nun in U.N., And

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Speaker 2: then out of this abyss comes a mound of dry

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Speaker 2: land upon which creation can take place. And Heka here

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Speaker 2: is related to this spirit of creation that takes shape here.

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Speaker 2: And this association continues throughout Egyptian history with the power

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Speaker 2: of magic, or Heka, often understood as a type of

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Speaker 2: creative spark, a power to make and to mold. So

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Speaker 2: it's this interestingly loaded concept. In some literal sense, it

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Speaker 2: did refer to magical power, but you could also think

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Speaker 2: of it in weird ways as being similar to the

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Speaker 2: idea of will or willpower. You could think of it

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Speaker 2: in some ways as being similar to creativity or energy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Interestingly, Pinch notes that the god Heka did not have

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Speaker 2: any major temples devoted to him, despite his important role

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Speaker 2: in Egyptian mythology and religious practice. There is some evidence

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Speaker 2: of maybe some minor cultic activity concerning Hekka, but the

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Speaker 2: god was not the patron deity of any of the

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Speaker 2: big state temples. Hekka, in the sense of magical power,

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Speaker 2: was also a personal attribute that was believed to be

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Speaker 2: held in some limited sense by all beings, but especially

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Speaker 2: by certain beings. There were beings additionally endowed or especially

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Speaker 2: endowed with Hekka So gods and supernatural entities obviously had Hekka.

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Speaker 2: Ghosts and the dead had Hekka. Kings had Hekka. People

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Speaker 2: who were foreign or were physically atypical in some way,

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Speaker 2: such as dwarfs, were sometimes said to have Hekka. And

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Speaker 2: so Pinch says basically anything that the ancient Egyptians regarded

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Speaker 2: as strange, exotic, or ancient... might be thought of as

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Speaker 2: possessing special measures of Heka beyond just what anyone else

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Speaker 2: would have. And it's interesting how much I think that

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Speaker 2: kind of associative tradition carries through even until today, that

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Speaker 2: authors and storytellers, even up in the modern era, often

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Speaker 2: think about magic as something that doesn't seem to emanate

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Speaker 2: especially from the people that the author views as typical.

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Speaker 2: There's like, It's like people who are different in some

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Speaker 2: way or people who are from another place or who

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Speaker 2: look different or who are very old, maybe ancient, or

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Speaker 2: have some connection to something ancient. That's where the magic

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Speaker 2: is stored.

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Speaker 1: Right, right. Yeah. And yeah, we still kind of engage

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Speaker 1: in this a little bit, right? I mean, when we

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Speaker 1: just think of like, what does a magician look like

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Speaker 1: or a wizard or or any kind of magic user.

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Speaker 1: You don't picture just the person next door. You picture

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Speaker 1: somebody who stands out, who has that weirdness about them.

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Speaker 2: So that's Heka. The other big Egyptian word for magic,

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Speaker 2: Pinch says, is Aku, A-K-H-U, usually in English. Sometimes translated

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Speaker 2: as enchantments or spells, but some sources emphasize really the

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Speaker 2: idea of power or Effectiveness at the core of this

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Speaker 2: concept the power to bring change or to cause things

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Speaker 2: to happen So it might be best translated as something

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Speaker 2: like effective words or effective spells This one seems to

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Speaker 2: be associated especially with gods and other deities with stars

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Speaker 2: which had a special kind of effectiveness about them or

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Speaker 2: power and And really especially the the honored or blessed dead.

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Speaker 2: Hmm Now, here's a really key thing to understand about

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Speaker 2: ancient Egyptian magic. Both Heka magic and Aku are widely

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Speaker 2: characterized as morally neutral in themselves. They are neither inherently

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Speaker 2: good nor inherently evil. And in fact, they can be

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Speaker 2: used for either good or evil. They are simply types

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Speaker 2: of power, creative and efficacious energy. which can be used

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Speaker 2: to heal or to harm, to defend or attack.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this comes back to something we've talked about in

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Speaker 1: the show before, of course, the importance of mat in

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Speaker 1: ancient Egypt, that even above the gods, to a large degree,

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Speaker 1: you have this idea of cosmic order and balance that

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Speaker 1: is mat. And yeah, if something unbalances things, then yeah,

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Speaker 1: then you could think of it more as evil, I guess,

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Speaker 1: or chaotic. Um, but Mott is like the most important principle. Right.

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Speaker 2: And we'll actually come back to that because magic factors

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Speaker 2: into the preservation of Mott in many ways. Uh, but yeah,

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Speaker 2: Mott is sometimes translated as, as justice, as order, as, uh, harmony. It,

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Speaker 2: it is the right way for things to be. Now,

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Speaker 2: after this basic discussion of terminology, uh, in this chapter,

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Speaker 2: Pinch gets into some different scholarly frameworks that have been

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Speaker 2: used by anthropologists over the years to understand what magic is.

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Speaker 2: And then she talks about the extent to which these

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Speaker 2: frameworks do and do not accurately describe the examples of

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Speaker 2: Heka and Aku in ancient Egypt. So one idea she

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Speaker 2: gets into is James Fraser's distinction between magic and religion,

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Speaker 2: made famous in his highly influential work on the anthropology

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Speaker 2: of religion, called The Golden Bough. We've talked about this

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Speaker 2: work many times on the show before. Fraser is a

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Speaker 2: great read, but many of his ideas are no longer

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Speaker 2: considered the best way to think about anthropology of religion

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Speaker 2: by anthropologists today. It's still a great book to read

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Speaker 2: in many ways to understand its place in the history

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Speaker 2: of scholarship, and it's very interesting to but many of

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Speaker 2: its theories have been superseded. So Fraser says that a

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Speaker 2: key difference between magic and religion goes like this. Magic

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Speaker 2: is when a human expects that the right sequence of

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Speaker 2: words or ritual actions will compel supernatural beings to bring

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Speaker 2: about a desired result automatically or ineluctably, whereas religion expects

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Speaker 2: is a bit more oriented around the free will of

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Speaker 2: the deity. Religion is when a human hopes they can

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Speaker 2: persuade a deity to grant their prayer or request through

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Speaker 2: supplication and offerings. In other words, with religion, you come

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Speaker 2: to the god's temple, you might make an offering, and

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Speaker 2: you beg, hoping the god will take mercy and help

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Speaker 2: you out. With magic, you enact a spell designed to

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Speaker 2: command or coerce a supernatural being to cause something you

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Speaker 2: desire to happen. So within this framework, Fraser characterized magic

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Speaker 2: and religion as distinct and in some ways opposite phenomena,

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Speaker 2: even though they sometimes invoked the same deities. He saw

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Speaker 2: magicians and priests as fundamentally different and as natural rivals.

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Speaker 2: But as we just mentioned a minute ago, anthropologists of

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Speaker 2: religion have in many cases moved away from Fraser's frameworks

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Speaker 2: as being too simplistic and And it seems the case

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Speaker 2: of ancient Egyptian magic is sort of the perfect example

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Speaker 2: of how Fraser's categories don't exactly hold up when applied

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Speaker 2: to some major real-world traditions. They might better describe some

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Speaker 2: other traditions. But this doesn't really work very well, Pinch argues,

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Speaker 2: with Egyptian magic. Because, she says, while you see examples

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Speaker 2: both of what Fraser would call magic and religion in

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Speaker 2: ancient Egypt... they substantially blur together and are performed in

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Speaker 2: the same settings and by the same authorities. So in

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Speaker 2: ancient Egypt, a lot of rituals which were meant to

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Speaker 2: manipulate and automatically compel action by supernatural beings were performed

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Speaker 2: in temples by the priesthood. The kind of spells you

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Speaker 2: might imagine in a different setting, like a witch performing,

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Speaker 2: binding a demon to do her bidding or something like that.

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Speaker 2: In the case of ancient Egypt, you could get stuff

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Speaker 2: like that in a temple done by a sanctioned priest,

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Speaker 2: a priest who was considered in the good graces of

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Speaker 2: the king. So it would not be impossible or even

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Speaker 2: necessarily unusual in ancient Egypt to have a pious priest

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Speaker 2: practicing spells that explicitly commanded or attempted to coerce action

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Speaker 2: from deities by, for example, threatening the deities or threatening

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Speaker 2: to commit dangerous and sacrilegious acts against them If they

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Speaker 2: did not obey, there are actually spells that do this.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll come back to a specific example of this

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Speaker 1: related to a curse in a bit. Yeah, and we

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Speaker 1: have to remind ourselves again about mat being important overall.

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Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, you'd need to know what you're doing

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Speaker 1: within the framework of the Egyptian religion here, but you

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Speaker 1: could kind of like go over the gods' heads by

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Speaker 1: invoking mat. which is very, there's a legal sense to it,

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Speaker 1: you know? Like one of the things Colleen Darnell stresses

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Speaker 1: is that the ancient Egyptians loved litigation. And you see

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Speaker 1: that in some of their magic. You know, they're litigating

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Speaker 1: when they're casting the spell.

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Speaker 2: That's an interesting way of thinking about it. I think

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Speaker 2: we'll come back to that in a minute, too. So,

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Speaker 2: Another common distinction that has historically been made between magicians

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Speaker 2: and priests is that while priests have a congregation over

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Speaker 2: whom they have a responsibility for guidance and moral instruction,

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Speaker 2: magicians have only clients with whom they, you know, it's

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Speaker 2: a much freer kind of relationship with whom they can

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Speaker 2: pursue an amoral transactional kind of interaction. But Pinch says, again,

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Speaker 2: this distinction doesn't really work for ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptian

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Speaker 2: priests were usually not expected to be moral teachers. There

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Speaker 2: might have been some cases where they were, but it

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Speaker 2: doesn't seem to be a general understanding of them. They

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Speaker 2: were paid specialists in rituals and spells. They had expertise

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Speaker 2: in spells and they could offer whatever kinds of spells,

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Speaker 2: defensive or offensive, were needed for the occasion, much like

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Speaker 2: the aforementioned understanding of a magician. And yet at the

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Speaker 2: same time, priests in ancient Egypt were not at all

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Speaker 2: considered subversive, illicit, or illegitimate. They were the temple priests

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Speaker 2: allied with kingly power, and they practiced what often looks

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Speaker 2: like ritual magic on behalf of the state. So that's

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Speaker 2: the thing, again, that just, you know, in a modern,

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Speaker 2: I guess, mainly Christian-influenced religious culture, it's hard to make sense.

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Speaker 2: That just doesn't fit with our idea of, like, how

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Speaker 2: magic works. I'm trying to imagine if in the U

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Speaker 2: S if like Nixon had hired a bunch of witches

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Speaker 2: to cook up a potion to guarantee victory in Vietnam,

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Speaker 2: you know, the, but also those witches were like mainline

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Speaker 2: Christian denominational preachers.

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Speaker 1: That's a good point. Yeah. I researching this episode, I

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Speaker 1: time and time again, like compared, tried to compare anyway, uh,

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Speaker 1: what I was reading or listening to about, uh, the

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Speaker 1: relationship between these ancient Egyptians and their priests and their

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Speaker 1: gods with how contemporary Christians think about their God. And yeah,

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Speaker 1: it often doesn't line up because depending on exactly how

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Speaker 1: you're framing the Christian God, you may be framing the

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Speaker 1: Christian God as more of like a loving personal God or,

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Speaker 1: or on the other end of the spectrum, you know,

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Speaker 1: this vengeful God, uh, the God of Alucard that is

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Speaker 1: going to, uh, you know, send you to hell. Um,

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Speaker 1: But in either case, like you wouldn't litigate against this

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Speaker 1: God because on one hand, he's your friend or your

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Speaker 1: your he's like your family. He's your father. You don't

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Speaker 1: sue your father under most circumstances, I guess. But then

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Speaker 1: the other end of the spectrum, you don't sue the

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Speaker 1: like the all powerful entity that has you like in

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Speaker 1: the grip of his his claws or what have you,

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Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. So it's it's just such a different framework.

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Speaker 2: It is so interesting to think about, well, the similarities

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Speaker 2: and the differences. to whatever religion we're more familiar with. Anyway,

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Speaker 2: so coming back to these frameworks for understanding magic versus religion,

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Speaker 2: another framework that Pinch discusses in this chapter is a

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Speaker 2: framework for understanding magic coming from the Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski.

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Speaker 2: A few points from Malinowski here. He argued that the

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Speaker 2: purpose of ritual magic is to solve problems that are

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Speaker 2: beyond the limits of what a society can do with technology.

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Speaker 2: can do with it's the technology available to it. And

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Speaker 2: that's one of those things that there's so many, there's

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Speaker 2: so much stuff like this, you know, anthropology of religion,

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Speaker 2: you hear it and that just sounds intuitively true. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: that sounds right. But pinch argues once again, that when

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Speaker 2: you try to line this up with what we know

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Speaker 2: about ancient Egyptian magic, it doesn't fit the case very well.

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Speaker 2: Like we know for a fact that the ancient Egyptians

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Speaker 2: used magic to get desired outcomes. that they were practically

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Speaker 2: and technologically capable of achieving by conventional means. For example,

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Speaker 2: recovery from medical problems for which they actually had effective

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Speaker 2: practical treatments and assuring military victory over enemies that they

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Speaker 2: were perfectly capable of crushing in battle. So you might

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Speaker 2: think of magic instead of being exclusively the domain of

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Speaker 2: problems we can't actually solve under our own power. a

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Speaker 2: kind of second line of attack on problems, a parallel

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Speaker 2: approach to solving problems that you would often pair with

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Speaker 2: a practical approach to the problem.

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Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's like some of the magic in

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Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons, right? Is it, if I remember, I

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Speaker 1: never play a cleric, but it's like blessing or bless, right? Yeah.

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Speaker 1: You have that extra D4.

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Speaker 2: Increase your chance of success.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like I'm rolling a D20. There's a, and

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Speaker 1: I already have a modifier in that. I can totally

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Speaker 1: hit this. I might even score a crit. But am

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Speaker 1: I going to say no to the D4? No, of

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Speaker 1: course not. That could make all the difference.

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Speaker 2: Exactly right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So maybe that's a better way of thinking about it.

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Speaker 2: And people will still do this with forms of prayer today.

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Speaker 2: Prayer for success in situations where the outcome is not guaranteed.

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Speaker 2: Even if you do presumably have the power to achieve

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Speaker 2: the outcome yourself, you just don't know if you're going

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Speaker 2: to be able to do it. So, yeah, so instead

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Speaker 2: of magic taking over when practical and technological solutions fall short,

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Speaker 2: I think it was normal for ancient Egyptians to attack

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Speaker 2: the same problem simultaneously with practical efforts and ritual magic.

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Speaker 2: Pinch also cites both Malinowski and another anthropologist named Misha Tateev,

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Speaker 2: who made the point in different ways that a key

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Speaker 2: distinction between religion and magic is is the timing and

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Speaker 2: nature of the problems they seek to address. So I

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Speaker 2: think this was especially to Thieve's idea that religion is calendrical,

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Speaker 2: meaning pertaining to the calendar. It follows a regular seasonal

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Speaker 2: or yearly pattern of rituals that occur on a set schedule.

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Speaker 2: And the problems it tries to solve are public problems.

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Speaker 2: It is for the common benefit of the community or

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Speaker 2: the state. And magic, meanwhile, according to Tateev's framework, is critical.

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Speaker 2: It is used to solve a specific crisis that arises unexpectedly,

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Speaker 2: often a personal or individual matter. And Pinch argues that

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Speaker 2: this one is sort of half correct when it comes

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Speaker 2: to ancient Egypt. The rituals performed in ancient Egyptian temples

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Speaker 2: were primarily aimed at what were thought to be public goods.

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Speaker 2: They were for the benefit of the state. or the

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Speaker 2: society at large. And this was done through regularly occurring

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Speaker 2: rituals and seasonal festivals. But, Pinch says, the principle of

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Speaker 2: responding to crisis with magic was actually woven into the

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Speaker 2: very fabric of Egyptian religion. One really interesting example is

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Speaker 2: that within Egyptian myth and religion, some regularly occurring rituals

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Speaker 2: were were thought to be responses to a crisis, to

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Speaker 2: an ongoing crisis. It was just like this, you know,

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Speaker 2: never-ceasing cosmic crisis that would occur over and over, even

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Speaker 2: every single day. The example she gives is the ritual

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Speaker 2: to protect the sun god Ra at sunset every night.

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Speaker 2: The Egyptians believed that every night Ra had to make

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Speaker 2: a perilous journey through the underworld in which it was

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Speaker 2: a possibility that he could be killed during his nightly

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Speaker 2: battle with With the Serpent of Chaos, Apophis.

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Speaker 1: That's right, the solar barge. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And so priests had to perform protective magic, magical interventions,

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Speaker 2: to make sure Ra would survive his journey and the

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Speaker 2: sun would rise again every morning. So it's like, this is,

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Speaker 2: it has more the flavor of responding to a crisis,

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Speaker 2: but it's a crisis that happens every single day. And

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Speaker 2: you have to keep responding to it.

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Speaker 1: I think most contemporary listeners can feel that. It does

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Speaker 1: feel like there's a crisis every day. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And then beyond that, Pinch mentions that the exact same

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Speaker 2: priest who is going to be performing regular calendrical rituals

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Speaker 2: at a state-affiliated public temple might also be a vendor

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Speaker 2: of private magic spells to solve your personal crisis, maybe

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Speaker 2: for a fee. And what were these private crises that

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Speaker 2: would have people seeking magical aid or protection? Well, they're

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Speaker 2: probably what you would imagine. There are all kinds of things.

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Speaker 2: Health issues seem to be a really big one, like illness, injury, infection,

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Speaker 2: things relating to childbirth. That was very common reasons to

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Speaker 2: seek the intervention of a priest or to try to

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Speaker 2: use a magical spell. but also to just solve all

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Speaker 2: kinds of personal problems, injuries committed, you know, offenses committed

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Speaker 2: against you by others, just problems people would face in

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Speaker 2: their lives. Also, it's worth thinking about how a lot

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Speaker 2: of magic in ancient Egypt was, to use a medical term,

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Speaker 2: preventative care. So you might, in fact, not just might,

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Speaker 2: people often did do magical spells in not to solve

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Speaker 2: a problem that had already happened, but to protect against

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Speaker 2: problems that could potentially arise.

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Speaker 1: And obviously, as we've discussed in the show before, we

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Speaker 1: see examples of this from all around the world as well.

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Speaker 1: Preventative magic, magic to keep evil away, and so forth. Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Now, here's another area. There are many of these where

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Speaker 2: A person who grew up thinking about magic and religion in, say,

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Speaker 2: a primarily Christian context and thinking about magic along the

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Speaker 2: lines of witchcraft, whether witchcraft is viewed in European Christianity.

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Speaker 2: The question is, was magic seen as antisocial or harmful

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Speaker 2: or wicked in ancient Egypt the way witchcraft is viewed

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Speaker 2: in most historical Christian societies? The answer is, for the

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Speaker 2: most part, no. especially in the period before Egypt was

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Speaker 2: absorbed into the Roman Empire. Now, there are some nuances

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Speaker 2: to this because evil magic was absolutely thought to exist,

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Speaker 2: but evil magic or wicked sorcery was usually attributed to foreigners,

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Speaker 2: not other Egyptians. So there was wicked sorcery, but most

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Speaker 2: of the time, there are exceptions here, most of the time,

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Speaker 2: It was thought to be coming from somewhere else, somewhere

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Speaker 2: outside of Egypt. Again, that's the broad trend. There are

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Speaker 2: exceptions to this in some texts that maybe specify certain

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Speaker 2: punishments or prohibitions against illicit sorcery. But this just seems

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Speaker 2: to be mostly not how Egyptians viewed magic done by

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Speaker 2: other Egyptians. Usually that was not thought of like Christians

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Speaker 2: thought of witchcraft. Here's another question about magic. Did ancient

429
00:27:46,680 --> 00:27:50,639
Speaker 2: Egyptians believe their magic to be... the command of an

430
00:27:50,900 --> 00:27:54,629
Speaker 2: impersonal force in nature, as in the Christian concept of

431
00:27:54,790 --> 00:27:58,690
Speaker 2: natural magic, you're just sort of commanding about a general

432
00:27:58,970 --> 00:28:03,969
Speaker 2: disembodied power, or was it thought to be the invocation

433
00:28:04,010 --> 00:28:09,159
Speaker 2: of the powers of specific supernatural beings or entities, as

434
00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:13,200
Speaker 2: in the Christian concept of demonic magic? Again, though it

435
00:28:13,260 --> 00:28:17,780
Speaker 2: would not have the negative connotations of Christian demonic magic,

436
00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:23,200
Speaker 2: The invocation of powerful supernatural beings was the standard mechanism

437
00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:27,180
Speaker 2: described by Egyptian priests and spells. You were maybe calling

438
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:29,959
Speaker 2: somebody up from the underworld or from some other plane

439
00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:33,080
Speaker 2: to take care of a little something for you. There

440
00:28:33,119 --> 00:28:36,680
Speaker 2: were a few mechanisms of magic in Egyptian thought that

441
00:28:36,790 --> 00:28:41,570
Speaker 2: were more impersonal. One that Pinch describes as essentially working

442
00:28:41,590 --> 00:28:44,540
Speaker 2: by the principle of analogy and And this would be

443
00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:48,820
Speaker 2: based on the subtle associations between things. I'm going to

444
00:28:48,900 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 2: read from Pinch's description here to get the idea of

445
00:28:51,340 --> 00:28:55,700
Speaker 2: how this impersonal magic worked. Quote, The magician also strove

446
00:28:55,780 --> 00:28:59,040
Speaker 2: to discern the true nature of beings and objects and

447
00:28:59,060 --> 00:29:02,840
Speaker 2: the connections between them. These connections were created by shared

448
00:29:02,940 --> 00:29:06,420
Speaker 2: properties such as color or the sound of a name.

449
00:29:07,270 --> 00:29:11,230
Speaker 2: Similarities which seem irrelevant to our classification systems were considered

450
00:29:11,290 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 2: significant by the Egyptians. Once a pairing had been established,

451
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:20,090
Speaker 2: it was thought possible to transfer qualities from one component

452
00:29:20,220 --> 00:29:23,390
Speaker 2: to the other or to produce an effect on the

453
00:29:23,650 --> 00:29:27,590
Speaker 2: one by actions performed on the other. Hekka was the

454
00:29:27,670 --> 00:29:31,990
Speaker 2: force that turned these connections into a kind of power network.

455
00:29:32,970 --> 00:29:33,530
Speaker 1: Fascinating.

456
00:29:33,950 --> 00:29:35,930
Speaker 2: So you've got both kinds of magic. You've got like

457
00:29:35,970 --> 00:29:39,530
Speaker 2: natural magic based on things like this sort of associative power.

458
00:29:40,020 --> 00:29:43,440
Speaker 2: And then you've also got just calling up otherworldly entities

459
00:29:43,500 --> 00:29:46,180
Speaker 2: to do your bidding for you. Now, finally, I want

460
00:29:46,220 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 2: to elaborate one thing that Pinch gets into that I

461
00:29:49,300 --> 00:29:53,910
Speaker 2: thought was really interesting, which is further subdividing the question

462
00:29:53,950 --> 00:29:57,290
Speaker 2: of what people believed magic could do for them. I

463
00:29:57,350 --> 00:29:59,170
Speaker 2: already mentioned a minute ago that people thought it could

464
00:29:59,550 --> 00:30:03,450
Speaker 2: solve problems for them. That's the more obvious answer. You know,

465
00:30:03,490 --> 00:30:05,510
Speaker 2: it could help you achieve a goal that was either

466
00:30:05,610 --> 00:30:08,810
Speaker 2: outside of your personal power or in which success by

467
00:30:08,870 --> 00:30:12,900
Speaker 2: normal means was not guaranteed. But the less obvious and

468
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:18,340
Speaker 2: very interesting answer is that magic also helped people identify

469
00:30:18,360 --> 00:30:23,080
Speaker 2: the cause of a problem. Why did this happen to me?

470
00:30:23,260 --> 00:30:26,470
Speaker 2: Why did this bad thing occur? Why did my child

471
00:30:26,510 --> 00:30:30,200
Speaker 2: get sick? Why did my crops wither? Pinch runs through

472
00:30:30,290 --> 00:30:33,190
Speaker 2: a list of common explanations that would be given in

473
00:30:33,290 --> 00:30:37,590
Speaker 2: spells for the answers to these problems. Maybe a god

474
00:30:37,670 --> 00:30:42,090
Speaker 2: is wrathful at you. Maybe a foreign wizard has cursed

475
00:30:42,150 --> 00:30:46,010
Speaker 2: you with evil magic. Maybe a ghost or a demon

476
00:30:46,090 --> 00:30:51,190
Speaker 2: is maliciously persecuting you. And whereas in the religious context

477
00:30:51,230 --> 00:30:55,720
Speaker 2: of modern Christianity, The answers are more often things like, well,

478
00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:57,840
Speaker 2: you might get a kind of non-answer in the form of,

479
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:01,440
Speaker 2: God works in mysterious ways, we can't know why this happened,

480
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:04,700
Speaker 2: which many people do believe, but also people often report

481
00:31:04,760 --> 00:31:09,610
Speaker 2: finding unsatisfying. Or you can get answers like, you have

482
00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:13,350
Speaker 2: sinned and you are being punished. Strangely, you do still

483
00:31:13,390 --> 00:31:16,130
Speaker 2: hear this a lot, even though in multiple stories from

484
00:31:16,170 --> 00:31:18,810
Speaker 2: the Bible, Jesus explicitly rejects this reasoning.

485
00:31:18,830 --> 00:31:18,930
Speaker 1: Yeah.

486
00:31:19,510 --> 00:31:21,650
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, I guess it's like in the story

487
00:31:21,690 --> 00:31:23,510
Speaker 2: of the, you know, the man born blind in the

488
00:31:23,530 --> 00:31:26,350
Speaker 2: gospel of John, he's like, that's not how it works. Uh,

489
00:31:26,370 --> 00:31:28,810
Speaker 2: though I guess some people interpret Jesus in stories like

490
00:31:28,830 --> 00:31:31,550
Speaker 2: that to be more narrowly referring to, well, he's just

491
00:31:31,590 --> 00:31:33,970
Speaker 2: saying it's not how it works in this case. Maybe

492
00:31:34,020 --> 00:31:36,100
Speaker 2: God does punish people for sin in other cases.

493
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:38,520
Speaker 1: It's a, it's a worldview that can be very difficult

494
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:42,480
Speaker 1: to shake. Uh, even if you have a logical or even,

495
00:31:42,500 --> 00:31:45,500
Speaker 1: you know, a, a doctrine based reason or even a

496
00:31:45,540 --> 00:31:48,770
Speaker 1: scripture based reason as we're discussing to reject it. Yeah. Yeah.

497
00:31:49,180 --> 00:31:51,330
Speaker 2: Um, I mean, I want to be fair. Obviously, I

498
00:31:51,370 --> 00:31:53,790
Speaker 2: don't find that point of view highly sympathetic, but I

499
00:31:55,610 --> 00:31:57,070
Speaker 2: will at least be fair and say that I think

500
00:31:57,170 --> 00:31:59,950
Speaker 2: you could have legitimate theological reasons for saying, no, no,

501
00:31:59,990 --> 00:32:03,870
Speaker 2: people are misinterpreting those stories in the Bible. And Jesus

502
00:32:03,910 --> 00:32:07,290
Speaker 2: did just mean this guy wasn't born blind because of sin.

503
00:32:07,330 --> 00:32:10,430
Speaker 2: Maybe other people are. Anyway, sorry, that was a tangent.

504
00:32:11,190 --> 00:32:13,190
Speaker 2: But yeah, so those are the kinds of things you

505
00:32:13,210 --> 00:32:17,530
Speaker 2: would more often get in modern Christianity. Ancient Egyptian magical

506
00:32:17,570 --> 00:32:20,490
Speaker 2: texts would often be able to say in contrast to that,

507
00:32:20,510 --> 00:32:24,750
Speaker 2: they say, yes, we can absolutely identify the specific source

508
00:32:24,810 --> 00:32:28,190
Speaker 2: of your problem, but the spell or the ritual does

509
00:32:28,280 --> 00:32:32,180
Speaker 2: not assert that the misfortune is your fault. You get

510
00:32:32,220 --> 00:32:35,260
Speaker 2: an answer about the cause and you can believe that

511
00:32:35,320 --> 00:32:38,180
Speaker 2: you are in fact an innocent victim being attacked by

512
00:32:38,260 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 2: powers beyond your control. And now that you have consulted

513
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:44,080
Speaker 2: a priest with the proper magical arsenal, or now that

514
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:47,330
Speaker 2: you've got this magical papyrus in your hands, you can

515
00:32:47,730 --> 00:32:51,910
Speaker 2: put together a counterspell to identify your oppressor and heal

516
00:32:51,970 --> 00:32:56,330
Speaker 2: or protect you without assigning yourself any blame for the problem.

517
00:32:57,370 --> 00:32:59,390
Speaker 2: So that covers most of the framework that Pinch gets

518
00:32:59,430 --> 00:33:01,370
Speaker 2: into in this chapter, but I just want to emphasize

519
00:33:01,410 --> 00:33:04,190
Speaker 2: a few themes at the end to really hammer them home.

520
00:33:04,790 --> 00:33:06,990
Speaker 2: One of the main ones is To say again, in

521
00:33:07,260 --> 00:33:12,980
Speaker 2: ancient Egypt, magic and religion were not separable and rival institutions.

522
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:17,760
Speaker 2: They were fully entwined with one another, and the boundaries

523
00:33:17,820 --> 00:33:21,700
Speaker 2: between them are quite fuzzy. And the other idea is

524
00:33:21,780 --> 00:33:27,270
Speaker 2: that magic was an all-pervading force that affected even the gods.

525
00:33:27,350 --> 00:33:29,930
Speaker 2: It wasn't just us. It affected even the gods. And

526
00:33:29,970 --> 00:33:33,990
Speaker 2: in fact, the gods needed magical help of their own.

527
00:33:35,150 --> 00:33:39,000
Speaker 2: On that last point, there's one very interesting feature of

528
00:33:39,100 --> 00:33:44,820
Speaker 2: ancient Egyptian cosmology, which is that the creation story in

529
00:33:44,860 --> 00:33:48,260
Speaker 2: ancient Egyptian cosmology, the creation of the ordered world out

530
00:33:48,320 --> 00:33:53,470
Speaker 2: of the primeval waters of chaos. Some authors have talked

531
00:33:53,510 --> 00:33:56,410
Speaker 2: about how in Egyptian thinking, this was not a single

532
00:33:56,630 --> 00:34:00,070
Speaker 2: event that took place in the past at the beginning,

533
00:34:00,550 --> 00:34:02,710
Speaker 2: the way we think of the creation narrative in many

534
00:34:02,790 --> 00:34:08,450
Speaker 2: other religions. In Egyptian myth, Creation was an ongoing process

535
00:34:08,610 --> 00:34:14,279
Speaker 2: that required continual daily effort by the creator deity and

536
00:34:14,380 --> 00:34:18,779
Speaker 2: by the other gods allied with order. So humans, with

537
00:34:18,860 --> 00:34:23,080
Speaker 2: their rituals, had to perform magic invoking the power of

538
00:34:23,140 --> 00:34:27,750
Speaker 2: Heka to aid the gods and sustain the creation of

539
00:34:27,810 --> 00:34:32,120
Speaker 2: the world every day. So the ordered world was very fragile,

540
00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:35,870
Speaker 2: and if the process of creation through Heka, through magic,

541
00:34:36,330 --> 00:34:39,610
Speaker 2: was not sustained every day by these efforts of the

542
00:34:39,650 --> 00:34:44,440
Speaker 2: creator spirit, and by the efforts of the order gods

543
00:34:44,640 --> 00:34:48,540
Speaker 2: and humans, the ordered world could well collapse back into

544
00:34:48,600 --> 00:34:51,220
Speaker 2: the abyss of chaos, and the world could be unmade.

545
00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:54,569
Speaker 2: So I feel like this really provides some scope on how,

546
00:34:54,790 --> 00:34:58,110
Speaker 2: how important hecka magic was. It was incredibly important. And

547
00:34:58,130 --> 00:35:02,870
Speaker 2: the problems that addressed were so wide. So, so different,

548
00:35:02,890 --> 00:35:05,569
Speaker 2: you know, hecka magic was it's how you find out

549
00:35:05,710 --> 00:35:08,210
Speaker 2: that your cow is sick because it has been attacked

550
00:35:08,270 --> 00:35:11,589
Speaker 2: by a ghost or cursed by a foreign sorcerer. And

551
00:35:11,610 --> 00:35:15,009
Speaker 2: it is how you invoke a divine shield of protection

552
00:35:15,050 --> 00:35:18,230
Speaker 2: and healing over your cow. And it is also how

553
00:35:18,290 --> 00:35:22,190
Speaker 2: the priesthood keeps the state secure. keeps the king enthroned,

554
00:35:22,630 --> 00:35:26,020
Speaker 2: aids the sun god Ra in his battle against the serpent,

555
00:35:26,320 --> 00:35:28,959
Speaker 2: and keeps the world from sinking into a dark ocean

556
00:35:28,980 --> 00:35:29,660
Speaker 2: of nothingness.

557
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:34,940
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, this is such a fascinating topic. You know,

558
00:35:34,960 --> 00:35:37,589
Speaker 1: it reminds me of our past episode on the inundation

559
00:35:37,670 --> 00:35:40,290
Speaker 1: of the Nile and, you know, how you would have

560
00:35:40,310 --> 00:35:44,330
Speaker 1: the seasonal flooding of the Nile that's responsible for basically

561
00:35:44,370 --> 00:35:49,569
Speaker 1: sustaining life along the great Nile River. Um, And you

562
00:35:49,590 --> 00:35:52,110
Speaker 1: can also point to various examples in any given culture

563
00:35:52,150 --> 00:35:58,430
Speaker 1: where there's a definite knowledge that there are seasonal things

564
00:35:58,450 --> 00:36:00,830
Speaker 1: that have to happen in order for life to continue,

565
00:36:00,910 --> 00:36:03,990
Speaker 1: be it even as simple as the return of spring

566
00:36:04,969 --> 00:36:06,710
Speaker 1: out of the winter and so forth. But you have

567
00:36:06,730 --> 00:36:09,850
Speaker 1: this idea that the world is fragile and you're not,

568
00:36:11,250 --> 00:36:13,350
Speaker 1: in the case of the ancient Egyptians, you're not even

569
00:36:13,469 --> 00:36:17,150
Speaker 1: guaranteed tomorrow unless the prayers are there to support the

570
00:36:17,230 --> 00:36:18,570
Speaker 1: solar barge and its journey.

571
00:36:19,370 --> 00:36:32,299
Speaker 2: Well said, yeah. But anyway, so yeah, I guess that's

572
00:36:32,360 --> 00:36:36,520
Speaker 2: the basic framework about magic in ancient Egypt. And from here,

573
00:36:36,560 --> 00:36:40,860
Speaker 2: I want to briefly look to the idea of curses

574
00:36:41,020 --> 00:36:43,879
Speaker 2: in a summary way. Uh, because of course, hecka was

575
00:36:43,930 --> 00:36:47,240
Speaker 2: not only capable of healing and protecting, as we mentioned earlier,

576
00:36:47,540 --> 00:36:50,900
Speaker 2: hecka had the power to weaken, to sicken, to harm

577
00:36:50,960 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 2: and cut off and even to kill. Uh, in fact,

578
00:36:53,600 --> 00:36:55,610
Speaker 2: not just to kill, to attack you in the very,

579
00:36:55,640 --> 00:36:58,520
Speaker 2: in the afterlife, to attack your potential for the afterlife. Uh,

580
00:36:59,450 --> 00:37:01,509
Speaker 2: and this brings us to the role of curses in,

581
00:37:01,710 --> 00:37:05,209
Speaker 2: in ancient Egyptian magic. To start off, I just wanted

582
00:37:05,270 --> 00:37:08,779
Speaker 2: to mention a few basic types of curses we might

583
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:13,020
Speaker 2: think about in ancient Egypt. maybe going from the most

584
00:37:13,120 --> 00:37:17,489
Speaker 2: familiar types in our context to the least familiar. And here,

585
00:37:17,950 --> 00:37:21,469
Speaker 2: I'm going to make some generalizations. Obviously, across the thousands

586
00:37:21,489 --> 00:37:24,370
Speaker 2: of years and the millions of lives in question, there

587
00:37:24,390 --> 00:37:26,969
Speaker 2: will be some exceptions. I'm just trying to capture some

588
00:37:27,270 --> 00:37:31,069
Speaker 2: main patterns, but none of this is the case in

589
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:33,980
Speaker 2: all cases. So the first category I want to mention

590
00:37:34,060 --> 00:37:39,520
Speaker 2: is personal curses. In later magical papyri from Egypt, we

591
00:37:39,600 --> 00:37:44,000
Speaker 2: see All kinds of run-of-the-mill curses designed for regular people

592
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:48,770
Speaker 2: who want to harm rivals or enemies. Did somebody steal

593
00:37:48,830 --> 00:37:52,230
Speaker 2: from you? Did somebody speak ill against you or hurt

594
00:37:52,310 --> 00:37:55,730
Speaker 2: someone you care about? Well, you can address this. You

595
00:37:55,750 --> 00:37:58,049
Speaker 2: can consult a priest or you can open up your

596
00:37:58,070 --> 00:38:01,450
Speaker 2: magical papyrus and curse that person. You can make them

597
00:38:01,530 --> 00:38:05,390
Speaker 2: fall sick and die. You can make them tormented with

598
00:38:05,450 --> 00:38:08,819
Speaker 2: madness and pain. And I want to be clear here,

599
00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:11,180
Speaker 2: it seems that there's more evidence for this kind of

600
00:38:11,400 --> 00:38:17,360
Speaker 2: personal individual cursing against enemies from later periods of Egyptian history.

601
00:38:17,430 --> 00:38:20,049
Speaker 2: It may have become more common as time went on,

602
00:38:20,090 --> 00:38:25,310
Speaker 2: especially in the Greco-Roman period. The existence of this type

603
00:38:25,350 --> 00:38:29,310
Speaker 2: of cursing, interestingly, it might seem to be at odds

604
00:38:29,410 --> 00:38:33,049
Speaker 2: with a claim I mentioned earlier from Geraldine Pinch. the

605
00:38:33,090 --> 00:38:36,969
Speaker 2: claim that most of the time ancient Egyptians did not

606
00:38:37,110 --> 00:38:41,270
Speaker 2: view the practice of magic as evil or subversive and

607
00:38:41,330 --> 00:38:46,069
Speaker 2: more often attributed evil, dangerous magic to foreign sorcerers from

608
00:38:46,170 --> 00:38:49,670
Speaker 2: other countries. I was trying to reconcile these and I

609
00:38:49,690 --> 00:38:53,250
Speaker 2: was thinking, obviously, wouldn't the Egyptian victim of a curse

610
00:38:53,430 --> 00:38:56,730
Speaker 2: cast by another Egyptian be tempted to view that as

611
00:38:57,330 --> 00:39:01,640
Speaker 2: evil magic, as wicked sorcery? Well, they might well see

612
00:39:01,680 --> 00:39:06,100
Speaker 2: it that way. But my best understanding, based on what

613
00:39:06,120 --> 00:39:08,560
Speaker 2: I could piece together here, is that there was probably

614
00:39:08,640 --> 00:39:14,089
Speaker 2: some distinction between what were seen as legitimate curses and

615
00:39:14,360 --> 00:39:17,910
Speaker 2: illegitimate harmful magic, much in the same way that people

616
00:39:17,969 --> 00:39:21,610
Speaker 2: might think about physical violence today, where it is permissible

617
00:39:21,650 --> 00:39:26,009
Speaker 2: to use violence in self-defense or in some cultural contexts

618
00:39:26,330 --> 00:39:30,500
Speaker 2: if it's retaliatory, but not permissible if it is against

619
00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 2: a random or innocent victim.

620
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:34,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, this kind of comes back to what I was

621
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:37,660
Speaker 1: talking about earlier about litigation, like thinking of it as litigation.

622
00:39:37,700 --> 00:39:41,030
Speaker 1: Like you might seek litigation if you have been harmed.

623
00:39:41,130 --> 00:39:45,010
Speaker 1: Have you been in an accident? Call such and such number.

624
00:39:45,090 --> 00:39:48,550
Speaker 1: Get the fighting lawyer on your side. Because that lawyer,

625
00:39:48,790 --> 00:39:51,660
Speaker 1: or in this case, a priest or a magician, is

626
00:39:51,700 --> 00:39:55,919
Speaker 1: going to restore mat, is going to restore balance, right?

627
00:39:57,000 --> 00:40:02,040
Speaker 1: At the same time, to use the legal comparison, yeah,

628
00:40:02,200 --> 00:40:03,739
Speaker 1: you can very much go out there and hire a

629
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:08,880
Speaker 1: lawyer to go after somebody for illegitimate purposes, like nuisance lawsuits,

630
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:13,379
Speaker 1: and so forth. You can formulate an entire list there

631
00:40:13,420 --> 00:40:17,489
Speaker 1: in your own head. But But yeah, we often think

632
00:40:17,530 --> 00:40:19,790
Speaker 1: about like, oh, I need to lawyer up because I

633
00:40:19,830 --> 00:40:22,770
Speaker 1: have been wronged or I'm about to be wronged. I

634
00:40:22,850 --> 00:40:25,550
Speaker 1: need to counter the evil of others. Yeah.

635
00:40:25,700 --> 00:40:28,640
Speaker 2: And it's true that even the fairest and most just

636
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:32,180
Speaker 2: system is always going to be in some way subject

637
00:40:32,219 --> 00:40:35,560
Speaker 2: to abuse. So there's like, you know, or some people

638
00:40:35,600 --> 00:40:37,200
Speaker 2: are going to feel like they're getting the short end

639
00:40:37,239 --> 00:40:40,219
Speaker 2: of the stick about it. So, yeah, you can't ever

640
00:40:40,300 --> 00:40:42,650
Speaker 2: prevent that entirely from happening. But this seems to be

641
00:40:43,219 --> 00:40:46,340
Speaker 2: generally how people thought that the system worked when it

642
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:50,410
Speaker 2: was working correctly, according to them. So that's personal curses.

643
00:40:50,469 --> 00:40:52,910
Speaker 2: Like when it came to cursing, Egyptians could, you know,

644
00:40:52,950 --> 00:40:54,730
Speaker 2: you could go to a priest or you could privately

645
00:40:54,790 --> 00:40:58,510
Speaker 2: read a magical papyrus to harness the morally neutral power

646
00:40:58,550 --> 00:41:02,230
Speaker 2: of Heka to harm a legitimate enemy. And it seems

647
00:41:02,290 --> 00:41:05,319
Speaker 2: like this sort of thing was viewed basically as fair play.

648
00:41:05,469 --> 00:41:08,400
Speaker 2: But if magic was used to torment an innocent person,

649
00:41:08,969 --> 00:41:13,330
Speaker 2: that's probably attributable to chaotic wizardry performed by evil foreigners,

650
00:41:14,150 --> 00:41:16,710
Speaker 2: not somebody who would be working with a legit Egyptian

651
00:41:16,750 --> 00:41:19,850
Speaker 2: temple priest. Another kind that is going to be more

652
00:41:19,910 --> 00:41:22,940
Speaker 2: familiar to us, and this will factor in majorly in

653
00:41:22,960 --> 00:41:25,980
Speaker 2: the rest of the series, is funerary curses, one of

654
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:29,140
Speaker 2: the most famous varieties of Egyptian magic, the curse that

655
00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:34,210
Speaker 2: seals a tomb and punishes defilers or grave robbers. And

656
00:41:34,250 --> 00:41:37,719
Speaker 2: while we can later discuss ways that the reality of

657
00:41:37,980 --> 00:41:41,319
Speaker 2: this type of curse has been twisted somewhat in popular retelling,

658
00:41:41,760 --> 00:41:45,200
Speaker 2: these kinds of curses absolutely do exist. And private tombs

659
00:41:45,239 --> 00:41:50,680
Speaker 2: from Egypt are sometimes inscribed with offensive magic, calling down injury, death,

660
00:41:50,900 --> 00:41:54,360
Speaker 2: and even, I thought this was pretty wicked, the punishment

661
00:41:54,460 --> 00:41:58,060
Speaker 2: of the soul and denial of an afterlife upon anyone

662
00:41:58,100 --> 00:42:00,500
Speaker 2: who would disturb the sanctity of a tomb or steal

663
00:42:00,540 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 2: its contents.

664
00:42:02,469 --> 00:42:02,690
Speaker 1: All right.

665
00:42:02,790 --> 00:42:05,150
Speaker 2: And then after those categories, you start getting into some

666
00:42:05,190 --> 00:42:07,650
Speaker 2: types of curses that I think would be less familiar

667
00:42:07,710 --> 00:42:11,430
Speaker 2: in our modern understanding of witchcraft and magic. One of

668
00:42:11,489 --> 00:42:14,640
Speaker 2: them is political curses. This is a bit like the

669
00:42:14,680 --> 00:42:17,800
Speaker 2: idea I mentioned of Nixon getting witches to do something

670
00:42:17,840 --> 00:42:20,779
Speaker 2: so he could win in Vietnam. Like the king and

671
00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:24,259
Speaker 2: the state have enemies and the enemies must be destroyed.

672
00:42:24,860 --> 00:42:28,020
Speaker 2: These enemies could be rival kingdoms or the princes of

673
00:42:28,080 --> 00:42:32,319
Speaker 2: foreign nations or the leaders of revolts and rebellions. The

674
00:42:32,460 --> 00:42:35,860
Speaker 2: enemies of Egypt and the king would often be cursed

675
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:40,380
Speaker 2: to destruction in official temple rituals. A common way of

676
00:42:40,420 --> 00:42:45,450
Speaker 2: describing this is execration rituals, where maybe an effigy or

677
00:42:45,489 --> 00:42:48,850
Speaker 2: a clay pot on which there has been established a

678
00:42:49,090 --> 00:42:52,250
Speaker 2: symbolic link between the pot and the person in question.

679
00:42:52,650 --> 00:42:57,870
Speaker 2: These objects would be ritually smashed or otherwise destroyed. And

680
00:42:57,910 --> 00:43:01,130
Speaker 2: then finally, I think the most interesting type of curse

681
00:43:01,150 --> 00:43:05,800
Speaker 2: is religious or cosmic curses. Remember how I mentioned a

682
00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:10,140
Speaker 2: minute ago that most ancient Egyptian cosmologies held that the

683
00:43:10,180 --> 00:43:14,040
Speaker 2: gods themselves were to some extent affected by Heka magic

684
00:43:14,120 --> 00:43:17,469
Speaker 2: and that the divine forces of order needed the help

685
00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:21,870
Speaker 2: of temple-based rituals in order to prevail? That help could

686
00:43:21,910 --> 00:43:25,650
Speaker 2: well involve curses to help the gods and the divine

687
00:43:25,710 --> 00:43:30,090
Speaker 2: forces of order win victory continually over the monsters and

688
00:43:30,110 --> 00:43:34,120
Speaker 2: the spirits of chaos and Egyptian priests would perform sort

689
00:43:34,160 --> 00:43:38,379
Speaker 2: of smiting curses against the divine and cosmic enemies of order,

690
00:43:38,860 --> 00:43:42,050
Speaker 2: much like they would against the earthly enemies of the kingdom.

691
00:43:42,810 --> 00:43:45,290
Speaker 2: And of course, this is a very loose analogy, but

692
00:43:45,450 --> 00:43:50,150
Speaker 2: imagine if daily worship in a Christian church also involved

693
00:43:50,310 --> 00:43:53,960
Speaker 2: witchcraft that would invoke death curses against the devil.

694
00:43:53,980 --> 00:43:58,160
Speaker 1: Oh, well, that's an interesting topic unto itself, right? Because

695
00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:03,049
Speaker 1: you can look at various examples of... of historic individuals

696
00:44:03,489 --> 00:44:05,970
Speaker 1: kind of having their own personal war against the devil

697
00:44:06,030 --> 00:44:10,950
Speaker 1: or demons, you know, cursing them back, telling, you know, depart, evildoer,

698
00:44:11,010 --> 00:44:15,590
Speaker 1: into everlasting fire and so forth. And then also so many,

699
00:44:15,610 --> 00:44:18,680
Speaker 1: I think, of various, like, folk songs and bits of

700
00:44:18,739 --> 00:44:22,060
Speaker 1: folk art where the devil is tricked, smashed over the

701
00:44:22,080 --> 00:44:26,779
Speaker 1: head with something, you know, herded by cowboys and so forth.

702
00:44:26,820 --> 00:44:29,440
Speaker 1: There are so many different examples. Poked with a hat pin,

703
00:44:29,500 --> 00:44:30,020
Speaker 1: that sort of thing.

704
00:44:31,200 --> 00:44:33,549
Speaker 2: Oh, like in the Santa Claus movie.

705
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:34,930
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

706
00:44:35,250 --> 00:44:38,630
Speaker 2: That Santa Claus definitely invokes death curses against the devil.

707
00:44:50,230 --> 00:44:54,989
Speaker 1: All right. Well, I want to expand a little bit

708
00:44:55,230 --> 00:44:58,870
Speaker 1: on the topic of the funerary curses, because this was

709
00:44:58,890 --> 00:45:02,930
Speaker 1: this was. part of what Colleen Darnell talked about in

710
00:45:03,230 --> 00:45:08,450
Speaker 1: her presentation. And there were a couple of Egyptian words

711
00:45:08,510 --> 00:45:12,070
Speaker 1: that she focused on here. One is the word for curse,

712
00:45:12,250 --> 00:45:14,650
Speaker 1: which is usually a verb, but is also sometimes a noun,

713
00:45:14,690 --> 00:45:19,010
Speaker 1: which is suer. Not quite suer, but similar to that,

714
00:45:19,180 --> 00:45:24,760
Speaker 1: like suer. And then there's also a word shinwit. And

715
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:29,149
Speaker 1: this means incantation. but depending on the context, could also

716
00:45:29,210 --> 00:45:33,330
Speaker 1: definitely mean a curse. So just some more specific terminology

717
00:45:33,790 --> 00:45:38,790
Speaker 1: for what was invoked here. And so a lot of

718
00:45:38,830 --> 00:45:43,400
Speaker 1: her talk centered around evidence that we have for or

719
00:45:43,460 --> 00:45:49,680
Speaker 1: against the idea of ancient Egyptian curses on people entering

720
00:45:49,760 --> 00:45:52,620
Speaker 1: tombs or certainly defiling them in one way or another.

721
00:45:53,580 --> 00:45:56,700
Speaker 1: So one of the important facts that she pointed out

722
00:45:56,820 --> 00:45:59,520
Speaker 1: is that In general, the upper part of a tomb

723
00:46:00,100 --> 00:46:03,080
Speaker 1: was generally a public space for visitors with good intentions.

724
00:46:03,760 --> 00:46:07,879
Speaker 1: So family members and the like and people visiting the tomb,

725
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:10,180
Speaker 1: it might line up with certain festivals and so forth.

726
00:46:10,719 --> 00:46:13,589
Speaker 1: And so there would never be a blanket curse against

727
00:46:13,810 --> 00:46:17,589
Speaker 1: visiting a tomb space. And this is interesting because she

728
00:46:17,630 --> 00:46:21,050
Speaker 1: pointed out that sometimes graffiti in the form of writing

729
00:46:21,090 --> 00:46:24,850
Speaker 1: your name was encouraged as it was with certain temples.

730
00:46:25,730 --> 00:46:30,129
Speaker 1: votive inscriptions, where it would be the honorable thing to do,

731
00:46:30,230 --> 00:46:32,710
Speaker 1: to scratch your name on the wall. Again, in antiquity,

732
00:46:32,810 --> 00:46:33,370
Speaker 1: not today.

733
00:46:34,430 --> 00:46:36,700
Speaker 2: Oh, well, that just reminded me of something we talked

734
00:46:36,719 --> 00:46:40,940
Speaker 2: about years ago. We did some episodes on the colossi

735
00:46:40,980 --> 00:46:43,920
Speaker 2: or colossus of Mimnon. There were multiple of them, colossi.

736
00:46:44,120 --> 00:46:47,520
Speaker 2: The colossi of Mimnon, which not in our modern times,

737
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:52,279
Speaker 2: but in ancient times to us, were visited by tourists

738
00:46:52,300 --> 00:46:55,930
Speaker 2: and who wrote graffiti on them, like Romans would write

739
00:46:55,969 --> 00:46:58,950
Speaker 2: their names on these, you know, great monuments, whatever, you know,

740
00:46:58,969 --> 00:46:59,810
Speaker 2: Marcus was here.

741
00:47:00,250 --> 00:47:02,350
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I thought of that as well when

742
00:47:02,390 --> 00:47:06,850
Speaker 1: this came up. She also stresses that ancient Egyptian curses,

743
00:47:07,030 --> 00:47:10,560
Speaker 1: when they were used, they tended to have a dual formation,

744
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:15,400
Speaker 1: a dual formulation rather, a blessing on positive actions, and

745
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:18,840
Speaker 1: then a focused threat against negative actions. And again, a

746
00:47:19,020 --> 00:47:20,939
Speaker 1: lot of this comes back to the importance of Maat,

747
00:47:21,440 --> 00:47:23,239
Speaker 1: You know, you got to have both energies. You got

748
00:47:23,260 --> 00:47:27,160
Speaker 1: to have balance. And therefore, a negative action is not

749
00:47:27,180 --> 00:47:30,140
Speaker 1: just a transgression against the king or even a god,

750
00:47:30,430 --> 00:47:34,709
Speaker 1: but against cosmic balance itself. Of course, as I mentioned earlier,

751
00:47:34,750 --> 00:47:39,630
Speaker 1: she stressed that the ancient Egyptians were very legalistic and

752
00:47:39,690 --> 00:47:44,270
Speaker 1: that the cursed language typically invokes this, speaking to litigation

753
00:47:44,410 --> 00:47:47,129
Speaker 1: against the defiler of the tomb in the afterlife. Like

754
00:47:47,170 --> 00:47:50,430
Speaker 1: some of these basically read like, and if you do X, Y,

755
00:47:50,450 --> 00:47:54,670
Speaker 1: or Z, I will see you in ghost court. Yeah,

756
00:47:54,750 --> 00:47:56,569
Speaker 1: you will be judged and I will be there for

757
00:47:56,610 --> 00:47:59,819
Speaker 1: it because there is like a legal proceeding that will follow.

758
00:48:01,140 --> 00:48:03,000
Speaker 2: It's like one of those scary letters you get from

759
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:03,480
Speaker 2: a lawyer.

760
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:07,560
Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah, it's like this is the scary letter, you know,

761
00:48:07,840 --> 00:48:11,680
Speaker 1: essentially from a priest. She also pointed out that ancient

762
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:16,080
Speaker 1: Egyptian curses tend to follow the same formulation as pure

763
00:48:16,120 --> 00:48:19,359
Speaker 1: laws that were written for the living. And the idea

764
00:48:19,790 --> 00:48:23,620
Speaker 1: here too is that a real world prosecution and punishment

765
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:26,400
Speaker 1: would kind of be the first stop. And then this

766
00:48:26,420 --> 00:48:30,000
Speaker 1: would be augmented by supernatural prosecution and punishment. Kind of

767
00:48:30,020 --> 00:48:33,150
Speaker 1: coming back to that whole, the D20 plus D4 situation

768
00:48:33,170 --> 00:48:36,290
Speaker 1: we were talking about. Like, ideally, if you rob this tomb,

769
00:48:36,910 --> 00:48:38,390
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to catch you and there'll be

770
00:48:38,430 --> 00:48:42,850
Speaker 1: some sort of real world punishment. But in addition to that,

771
00:48:43,410 --> 00:48:45,980
Speaker 1: or instead of that, if we can't catch you, there

772
00:48:46,020 --> 00:48:48,080
Speaker 1: will be litigation and punishment in the afterlife.

773
00:48:48,610 --> 00:48:50,770
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, this is another example of what we

774
00:48:50,790 --> 00:48:53,410
Speaker 2: were talking about earlier, where you attack the same problem

775
00:48:53,430 --> 00:48:57,390
Speaker 2: with multiple solutions, one magical and one practical.

776
00:48:57,719 --> 00:49:01,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. One example that she pointed to, and I'll

777
00:49:01,540 --> 00:49:03,820
Speaker 1: bring up a couple here, is the Tomb of Many

778
00:49:04,280 --> 00:49:07,779
Speaker 1: from the Sixth Dynasty. And it includes this example where

779
00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:10,660
Speaker 1: the writing is basically saying, look, I paid everyone who

780
00:49:10,680 --> 00:49:15,700
Speaker 1: worked on this tomb. It was fair. But if you

781
00:49:15,739 --> 00:49:19,130
Speaker 1: damage my tomb, quote, a crocodile be against him in

782
00:49:19,150 --> 00:49:21,459
Speaker 1: the water. a snake be against him on the earth.

783
00:49:21,960 --> 00:49:25,739
Speaker 1: And essentially saying the great God, generally Osiris or a

784
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:29,200
Speaker 1: local deity will be the one to judge you. Another

785
00:49:29,300 --> 00:49:33,430
Speaker 1: example of litigation in one of these inscriptions, she pointed

786
00:49:33,469 --> 00:49:36,989
Speaker 1: to the inscription of Idu from the sixth dynasty, quote,

787
00:49:37,430 --> 00:49:39,950
Speaker 1: As for any man who will take my grave from me,

788
00:49:40,070 --> 00:49:43,950
Speaker 1: my claim will be litigated with them by the great God. Again, uh,

789
00:49:44,150 --> 00:49:48,440
Speaker 1: likely Osiris or another like local deity. So threat of

790
00:49:48,500 --> 00:49:50,480
Speaker 1: legal action, if not in this world, then at least

791
00:49:50,540 --> 00:49:52,839
Speaker 1: in the next, uh, she points out that there's no

792
00:49:52,980 --> 00:49:55,540
Speaker 1: curse against an individual or visitor to a tomb in

793
00:49:55,600 --> 00:49:58,610
Speaker 1: any of the Royal tombs that we, we know of

794
00:49:58,670 --> 00:50:01,500
Speaker 1: and have access to, uh, And that it would have

795
00:50:01,540 --> 00:50:04,759
Speaker 1: gone without saying that you shouldn't enter a burial chamber. Like,

796
00:50:04,820 --> 00:50:07,540
Speaker 1: no signage is required there, I imagine. It's sort of like,

797
00:50:08,420 --> 00:50:12,610
Speaker 1: it's just, it would be known to everyone involved. You know,

798
00:50:12,989 --> 00:50:14,870
Speaker 1: anybody who could read the text, you would know not

799
00:50:14,890 --> 00:50:17,009
Speaker 1: to go into the burial chamber. Yeah, yeah.

800
00:50:17,210 --> 00:50:19,450
Speaker 2: And I think I mentioned this earlier, but I remember

801
00:50:19,489 --> 00:50:24,200
Speaker 2: reading that the most common places where these funerary curses

802
00:50:24,260 --> 00:50:26,040
Speaker 2: are found are in private tombs.

803
00:50:26,520 --> 00:50:30,590
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. She also points to something from the Pyramid Text

804
00:50:31,350 --> 00:50:36,790
Speaker 1: that's a curse template for a deceased king, not against mortals,

805
00:50:36,930 --> 00:50:38,690
Speaker 1: but against the gods. Getting back to what we were

806
00:50:38,710 --> 00:50:41,690
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, about how magic could be used essentially

807
00:50:41,790 --> 00:50:46,220
Speaker 1: against the gods in defense of Maat. This is, I believe,

808
00:50:46,260 --> 00:50:50,500
Speaker 1: spell 485. And it essentially says, look, bulls will be

809
00:50:50,560 --> 00:50:52,980
Speaker 1: slaughtered for any god who takes this king to heaven.

810
00:50:53,460 --> 00:50:55,739
Speaker 1: But if you don't take this king to heaven, you're

811
00:50:55,780 --> 00:50:58,529
Speaker 1: not going to be honored. that's obvious to it. Uh,

812
00:50:58,950 --> 00:51:01,650
Speaker 1: and so, yeah, this apparently factors into a lot of

813
00:51:01,730 --> 00:51:04,690
Speaker 1: Egyptian magic. You know, if something violates Mott, it kind

814
00:51:04,730 --> 00:51:06,870
Speaker 1: of goes above the heads of the gods because they

815
00:51:06,910 --> 00:51:08,029
Speaker 1: are bound to Mott as well.

816
00:51:08,530 --> 00:51:11,340
Speaker 2: Feels bold, strong arming the gods like that, but, uh,

817
00:51:11,500 --> 00:51:12,299
Speaker 2: you can admire it.

818
00:51:12,300 --> 00:51:16,120
Speaker 1: Uh, she also brings up a couple of cases involving, um, uh,

819
00:51:17,640 --> 00:51:20,680
Speaker 1: grabbing someone's neck like a bird or wringing their neck

820
00:51:20,719 --> 00:51:24,700
Speaker 1: like a goose. Um, And so there's one from the

821
00:51:24,739 --> 00:51:29,520
Speaker 1: both ones from 2300 BCE from the tomb of Cantica

822
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:33,339
Speaker 1: of Saqqara. And my apologies, I may be hitting these

823
00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:38,070
Speaker 1: pronunciations wrong. But this one says, as for any person

824
00:51:38,110 --> 00:51:40,230
Speaker 1: who shall enter my tomb in a state of impurity,

825
00:51:40,730 --> 00:51:43,190
Speaker 1: not having purified themselves according to the manner of entering

826
00:51:43,230 --> 00:51:45,890
Speaker 1: a temple, I will be judged with them about it

827
00:51:46,010 --> 00:51:48,030
Speaker 1: in the West, in the court of the great God,

828
00:51:48,450 --> 00:51:51,359
Speaker 1: and I will wring his neck like a goose. So

829
00:51:51,400 --> 00:51:53,700
Speaker 1: this one, again, it's like saying, I will see you

830
00:51:53,739 --> 00:51:57,620
Speaker 1: in court. You will be judged. I will be there.

831
00:51:58,070 --> 00:52:00,490
Speaker 1: But then adding this extra bit, I will wring your

832
00:52:00,530 --> 00:52:04,649
Speaker 1: neck like a goose. And we see that again, there's

833
00:52:04,690 --> 00:52:07,850
Speaker 1: another example. She brings up 20, this is from 2200

834
00:52:07,850 --> 00:52:11,350
Speaker 1: BC from the tomb of Ninki. As for any noble,

835
00:52:11,510 --> 00:52:14,330
Speaker 1: any official, or any person who will destroy any stone

836
00:52:14,370 --> 00:52:17,130
Speaker 1: or any brick in this tomb, I will be judged

837
00:52:17,190 --> 00:52:19,810
Speaker 1: with him by the great God, I will seize his

838
00:52:19,850 --> 00:52:22,410
Speaker 1: neck like a bird. Uh, so again, I like how

839
00:52:22,450 --> 00:52:25,210
Speaker 1: this one is, seems to be translated as, I will

840
00:52:25,230 --> 00:52:27,300
Speaker 1: be judged with you by the great God, which very

841
00:52:27,340 --> 00:52:30,940
Speaker 1: much brings this idea of like, there's a court proceeding. Uh,

842
00:52:30,980 --> 00:52:33,400
Speaker 1: I'm going to bring this charge against you and let

843
00:52:33,420 --> 00:52:34,160
Speaker 1: it be decided.

844
00:52:34,560 --> 00:52:36,840
Speaker 2: And I'm going to win. That's the implication.

845
00:52:36,900 --> 00:52:37,060
Speaker 1: Yeah.

846
00:52:37,100 --> 00:52:37,219
Speaker 2: Yeah.

847
00:52:37,239 --> 00:52:39,500
Speaker 1: That seems to be the main implication of the, the

848
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:41,610
Speaker 1: ringing the neck like a goose. But this too is

849
00:52:41,670 --> 00:52:48,600
Speaker 1: also interesting because like, uh, apparently this is referring to sacrificial, um,

850
00:52:49,460 --> 00:52:52,980
Speaker 1: killing of a duck or a goose that would have

851
00:52:53,000 --> 00:52:57,700
Speaker 1: been done by a priest. So there are inscriptions, there

852
00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:03,259
Speaker 1: are images of this, of Akhenaten sacrificing a duck. You

853
00:53:03,280 --> 00:53:04,440
Speaker 1: can look this up. I believe this is in the

854
00:53:04,480 --> 00:53:08,940
Speaker 1: collection of the Met Museum from between 1353 and 1336 BCE.

855
00:53:08,960 --> 00:53:13,720
Speaker 1: And it's, you know, here's a figure wringing the neck

856
00:53:13,760 --> 00:53:19,490
Speaker 1: of a goose. So, you know, This seems to largely

857
00:53:19,910 --> 00:53:23,020
Speaker 1: refer to that. One thing that Darnell stressed is that

858
00:53:23,040 --> 00:53:25,600
Speaker 1: there were definitely some sort of real-world punishments, but we

859
00:53:25,620 --> 00:53:28,460
Speaker 1: don't necessarily know all of the details on what those were.

860
00:53:28,900 --> 00:53:32,040
Speaker 1: So I don't know. Does this possibly also refer to

861
00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:36,420
Speaker 1: some sort of real-world punishment that would be dished out

862
00:53:36,560 --> 00:53:39,660
Speaker 1: in this life? We don't know for sure. But also,

863
00:53:39,680 --> 00:53:44,160
Speaker 1: this is another potential connection here. Birds offered for sacrifice

864
00:53:44,200 --> 00:53:48,779
Speaker 1: in temples, a connection between like the magic and the

865
00:53:48,840 --> 00:53:52,690
Speaker 1: religious rituals that were being carried out in both cases

866
00:53:52,770 --> 00:53:53,350
Speaker 1: by the priests.

867
00:53:54,530 --> 00:53:58,860
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting the way, I don't know,

868
00:53:59,160 --> 00:54:02,460
Speaker 2: the different feelings that can be created by the threats

869
00:54:02,680 --> 00:54:06,219
Speaker 2: in these curses. Some of them have this more more

870
00:54:06,239 --> 00:54:11,299
Speaker 2: legalistic or more directly physically violent analogy in them, like

871
00:54:11,400 --> 00:54:13,739
Speaker 2: ring your neck like a goose or the crocodile will

872
00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:16,259
Speaker 2: get you in the water, though that may have other implications.

873
00:54:16,820 --> 00:54:19,100
Speaker 2: But at least it, to me, conjures this idea of

874
00:54:19,140 --> 00:54:21,860
Speaker 2: physical violence, attack by an animal or by another person.

875
00:54:21,880 --> 00:54:25,200
Speaker 2: And then there's a way in which, at least to me,

876
00:54:25,219 --> 00:54:30,980
Speaker 2: an even colder implication is made by these tomb curses

877
00:54:31,080 --> 00:54:35,049
Speaker 2: that threaten your existence in the afterlife, like You will

878
00:54:35,090 --> 00:54:37,870
Speaker 2: not receive an honorable burial. You will not go to

879
00:54:37,910 --> 00:54:39,690
Speaker 2: the afterlife. You will get nothing.

880
00:54:40,550 --> 00:54:42,569
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I mean, coming back to the crocodile, this

881
00:54:42,610 --> 00:54:47,040
Speaker 1: reminds me of Amit, the devourer of the dead, that

882
00:54:47,940 --> 00:54:51,340
Speaker 1: if memory serves, like his role in the judgment of

883
00:54:51,400 --> 00:54:55,860
Speaker 1: the dead is like he consumes you and brings on

884
00:54:55,940 --> 00:54:59,759
Speaker 1: annihilation if you are not worthy to pass on. So, yeah,

885
00:54:59,780 --> 00:55:04,799
Speaker 1: that's quite a threat to impose. But, you know, you

886
00:55:04,820 --> 00:55:08,160
Speaker 1: can also, you know, you can understand it. Like first saying,

887
00:55:08,440 --> 00:55:10,540
Speaker 1: you know, you will be litigated, you will be tried

888
00:55:10,580 --> 00:55:13,959
Speaker 1: in this world. In addition to or instead of that, though,

889
00:55:14,480 --> 00:55:16,839
Speaker 1: you know, watch out in the afterlife because charges will

890
00:55:16,860 --> 00:55:20,400
Speaker 1: be brought against you and you might just be annihilated altogether.

891
00:55:21,700 --> 00:55:23,950
Speaker 1: All right. Well, looking at the clock here, we're about

892
00:55:24,030 --> 00:55:26,430
Speaker 1: out of time. So what we're going to do is

893
00:55:26,450 --> 00:55:28,710
Speaker 1: we're going to break and come back with this topic

894
00:55:28,790 --> 00:55:31,450
Speaker 1: on Thursday. We have much more to discuss. We're going

895
00:55:31,469 --> 00:55:35,390
Speaker 1: to get into... the 20th century myth of the pharaoh's curse,

896
00:55:36,190 --> 00:55:38,529
Speaker 1: where that comes from, how it shakes out when you

897
00:55:38,570 --> 00:55:40,680
Speaker 1: look at it, and we'll also look to an example

898
00:55:40,700 --> 00:55:44,279
Speaker 1: outside of Egypt that aligns with some of the ideas there,

899
00:55:44,620 --> 00:55:47,360
Speaker 1: and then we'll have more to discuss about Egyptian magic

900
00:55:47,400 --> 00:55:50,460
Speaker 1: and Egyptian curses in general. In the meantime, we would

901
00:55:50,500 --> 00:55:52,440
Speaker 1: remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily

902
00:55:52,460 --> 00:55:54,760
Speaker 1: a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays

903
00:55:54,860 --> 00:55:58,069
Speaker 1: and Thursdays, short-form episodes on Wednesdays, and on Fridays we

904
00:55:58,110 --> 00:56:00,009
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a

905
00:56:00,030 --> 00:56:01,610
Speaker 1: weird film on Weird House Cinema.

906
00:56:01,950 --> 00:56:05,220
Speaker 2: Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J.

907
00:56:05,260 --> 00:56:05,740
Speaker 1: Posway.

908
00:56:06,180 --> 00:56:07,520
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909
00:56:07,580 --> 00:56:10,020
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

910
00:56:10,100 --> 00:56:12,100
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

911
00:56:12,180 --> 00:56:23,690
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912
00:56:23,750 --> 00:56:25,780
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913
00:56:26,239 --> 00:56:29,040
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914
00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:31,940
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