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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. Hey, I'm Christian Sager. So

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Speaker 1: before we get into today's topic, which is again like

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Speaker 1: another one of our great October kind of monster themed one,

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Speaker 1: let's talk about a few upcoming things for the show.

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Speaker 1: We have, First of all, Periscope. If you're not familiar

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Speaker 1: with that, it's a live streaming video app that's connected

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Speaker 1: to Twitter, and we're gonna do a little experiment with

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Speaker 1: it starting on October twenty three, which is a Friday. Joe,

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Speaker 1: Robert and I are going to use Periscope to start

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Speaker 1: addressing some of our listener mail. We've just been getting

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Speaker 1: a ton of listener mail lately and didn't really feel

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Speaker 1: like we could address all of it in one quarterly podcast,

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Speaker 1: so we thought, why don't we try this periscope thing out.

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Speaker 1: Some of our colleagues here at How Stuff Works are

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Speaker 1: using it, and so if you want to check that out,

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Speaker 1: allow us on social media and you'll you know, we'll

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Speaker 1: be broadcasting it far and wide to let you know

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Speaker 1: what time it's going to be available. The other thing

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Speaker 1: is that because it's October and it's monster time. We

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Speaker 1: are bringing back our video series Monster Science, and I

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Speaker 1: say ours, but it's really yours. Robert. I wasn't involved

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Speaker 1: with the show the first two seasons that these were created,

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Speaker 1: and the the new episodes have been shot, and I'm

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Speaker 1: just I'm really looking forward to it because Monster Science

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Speaker 1: is one of my favorite things that's ever been done here. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a lot of fun to put together. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of if you're not seeing it before anybody out there.

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Speaker 1: It's basically like a daytime horror host from the nineties, uh,

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Speaker 1: comparing fictional monsters to real world organism. Yeah, you guys

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Speaker 1: have episodes on everything from Cathulhu and Jason Vorhees too.

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Speaker 1: There's actually a Mummies episode right there, and the Mummy episode.

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Speaker 1: All those episodes already exist on our YouTube channel and

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Speaker 1: on stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. But if

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Speaker 1: you're following us on face Book, tomorrow, we're going to

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Speaker 1: be posting it right to Facebook, so you'll be able

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Speaker 1: to watch it on our our Facebook page there, so

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Speaker 1: um so to get in touch with us on all

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Speaker 1: those social things, like if you want to follow us

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Speaker 1: on Periscope or see these videos make sure that you

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Speaker 1: check us out on whatever your social media channel of choices.

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Speaker 1: We're on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler, all those we used

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Speaker 1: they handle blow the mind. There's of course the Mothership's

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Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind dot com and our YouTube

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Speaker 1: channel as well. All right, So on that note, let

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Speaker 1: us dive into the world of the money, particularly the

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Speaker 1: Egyptian mummy. Um. There are various mummification traditions throughout the world,

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Speaker 1: and many of them are just so fascinating. But there's

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Speaker 1: more than enough to talk about with just Egyptian mommy.

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Speaker 1: It's an incredibly deep topic. And yeah, I think so

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Speaker 1: we're gonna we decided to specifically focus on the Egyptian

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Speaker 1: process and mythology here in today's episode. Uh. If there's

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Speaker 1: enough interest, let us know, uh, and we will go

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Speaker 1: on and do another episode on all the other variations

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Speaker 1: because one of the things that I found that was

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Speaker 1: interesting was apparently it was being done in the America's

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Speaker 1: even before it was being done in Egypt. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: believe one of the oldest hair samples that we have

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Speaker 1: comes from a Central American mummy. So yeah, yeah, um,

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Speaker 1: so yeah, if you want to hear about self mummifying,

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Speaker 1: monks in in Asia. Let us know. Uh, that's something

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Speaker 1: we can discuss. Do you want to hear about bog people?

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Speaker 1: That can be another episode, But for this episode, there's

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Speaker 1: there's so much about Egyptian mummies that that we will

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Speaker 1: be struggling to fit enough into one episode here today. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and they're really pervasive. I think when you know, in

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Speaker 1: Western culture, at least, when we think mummies are mummification,

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Speaker 1: everybody goes for the Egyptian one, mainly because, uh, it's

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Speaker 1: popularity in films and other media, right, like the Curse

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Speaker 1: of a Mummy or or something like that. Well, even

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Speaker 1: in children's books. And this is something that I've really

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Speaker 1: come on too in the last few years. Uh with

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Speaker 1: the with the Sun, is that that mummies pop up

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Speaker 1: in books all the time. Yeah, my son has a

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Speaker 1: book where like a skeleton is going trick or treating

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Speaker 1: and it is chased by a mummy. Of course. Maurice

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Speaker 1: Sindac had a had a wonderful pop up book that

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Speaker 1: has a mummy in it. And in both of those

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Speaker 1: you see this, uh this trope employee that you also

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Speaker 1: encounter and other bits of mummy media where of course

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Speaker 1: you grab hold of the wrapping and you pull the

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Speaker 1: wrapping and then the mummy spins around like a top

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Speaker 1: and the Monster Squad the way to take out a mommy.

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Speaker 1: That's that's how they did it in a Monster Squad. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: one of my favorite movies when I was a kid,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's currently streaming on Netflix. I was able

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Speaker 1: to catch it again recently. But yeah, they they like

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Speaker 1: tie the bandage to an arrow, shoot it into a tree,

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Speaker 1: and the mummy is like hanging onto the back of

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Speaker 1: their car and slowly unravels. It turns out there was

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Speaker 1: nothing there except for a skull the whole time, which

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Speaker 1: on one level I was always disappointed with in Monster

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Speaker 1: Squad because the mommy is clearly cooler looking than what

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Speaker 1: they do with him. But I can see where the

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Speaker 1: trope is attractive, particularly in children's literature, because you have

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Speaker 1: this threatening but easily unwound creature, right, this this threat

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Speaker 1: that is easily dismissed but still visually impressed. Well, all right,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna go out on a limb here. As a

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Speaker 1: horror fan, I've never found mummies to be scary or

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Speaker 1: to make much sense. In fact, like I always thought

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Speaker 1: of mummies as being like the kind of like they

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Speaker 1: would be the the monster that like makes friends with you,

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Speaker 1: right like the way Frankenstein does in Monster Squad. I

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Speaker 1: just especially from when when you look at like the

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Speaker 1: actual process, the science behind it, and the history in

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Speaker 1: Egyptian culture. Where does this idea of mummies as like

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Speaker 1: these evil monsters that are going to kill us come from? Well, I,

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Speaker 1: for for my own part, I find that it makes

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Speaker 1: more sense if you think about it in terms of

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Speaker 1: the Egyptian mummy as a as a traveler across spot

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Speaker 1: time and space. Okay, so um, and we'll get into

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Speaker 1: more into the cosmology here shortly. But essentially, you have

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Speaker 1: this individual who is leaving our world through the gates

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Speaker 1: of death, traveling to another world and in another world

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Speaker 1: where uh, nothing is guaranteed. It's not just like, oh,

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Speaker 1: you're going to Egyptian heaven. Now you're going to an

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Speaker 1: Egyptian afterlife that's rife with danger. You're gonna need supplies,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna need some some servants, you're gonna need you know,

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Speaker 1: some spells to protect you. So it's a dangerous journey,

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Speaker 1: not unlike say sending um colonists like frozen colonists on

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Speaker 1: a spaceship, generation ship, you know, across the cosmos to

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Speaker 1: another world. And then what it happens if you wake

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Speaker 1: up halfway through because some dumb museum dude has decided

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Speaker 1: that he wants to put you on display. You're gonna

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Speaker 1: be angry, You're gonna be a little confused, and you

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Speaker 1: might not be in the best physical condition. So you're

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Speaker 1: gonna tell some people. That's where it always seems to

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Speaker 1: come from, right is the idea? It seems like even

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Speaker 1: as we are doing it, we as Westerners, seem to

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Speaker 1: acknowledge that the idea of us taking these bodies and

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Speaker 1: these sacred objects from their sites and taking them on

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Speaker 1: a tour, popping them in a museum somewhere is inherently

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Speaker 1: wrong and that we must be punished for doing so. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it is there, and I'm surely somebody has written at

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Speaker 1: length on this, to what extent has the Mummy. This

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Speaker 1: is a monster, an externalization of our own inner guilt,

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Speaker 1: having really just ripped pieces of this culture apart and

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Speaker 1: spread it across the world. Because you see, you see

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Speaker 1: obelisks from ancient Egypt in Paris and in London, in

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Speaker 1: New York, and of course museum items and museums around

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Speaker 1: the world. Pilford from Egypt. Yeah, I mean there was

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Speaker 1: just a tour that was here like a year or

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Speaker 1: two ago. I think that was like, um, you know

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Speaker 1: a two ring showcase of of mummies that that goes

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Speaker 1: from one city to another and sets up shop and

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Speaker 1: you know, it's there for six months and you can

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Speaker 1: go and see it and then it's gone, it moves

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Speaker 1: on to the next city. I um, I mean this

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Speaker 1: is something I don't know about you, but like I

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Speaker 1: always grew up like going on school trips to museums,

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Speaker 1: and the mummy was always the big thing, right, Like

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Speaker 1: going getting to see a mummy or like it's sarcophagus

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Speaker 1: or something like that was always like that was the

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Speaker 1: coolest part of the trip. But now as an adult,

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Speaker 1: I look back on it and I'm like, wow, that

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Speaker 1: that's like imagine if somebody like dug up my grandfather,

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Speaker 1: like a couple of hundred years from now and just

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Speaker 1: put his coffin on display for kindergarteners run past. This

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Speaker 1: is very strange, it is, yeah, and I certainly agree.

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Speaker 1: I remember looking forward to seeing the mummy at the

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Speaker 1: Major Museum in Nashville when when I would when school

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Speaker 1: groups up there would I would go to visit. But

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Speaker 1: but yeah, now it just feels a little weird. Well, okay,

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Speaker 1: let's let's nail this down. What exactly is the mummy?

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Speaker 1: I think we all have ideas of how it works,

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Speaker 1: and of course we have many of us have that

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Speaker 1: same experience of going to the museum and reading the

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Speaker 1: paragraph that's inscribed next to the actual case that but

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Speaker 1: I don't really think that gives you enough context. So

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Speaker 1: a mummy is simply a human being whose soft tissue

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Speaker 1: has been preserved after death. So normally, of course, decomposition

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Speaker 1: takes place and reduces the body to a skeleton in

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Speaker 1: a matter of months. Uh. And the rate of decompetition.

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Speaker 1: Decomposition is dependent on a number of environmental factors. It's

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Speaker 1: gonna if you're in a humid environment, it's gonna go

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Speaker 1: a lot faster. The dryer, colder environment is gonna go

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Speaker 1: a lot slower. And there's a sort of like procedure

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Speaker 1: for decomposition, right. It starts with autolysis, which is when

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Speaker 1: you know your organs basically the digestive enzymes inside them,

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Speaker 1: like your intestines, they start digesting themselves. Right, there's no

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Speaker 1: more food coming in, So your body starts or the

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Speaker 1: bacteria inside of it at least starts eating you. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: society just falls apart in the basically, then you have putrification,

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Speaker 1: the breakdown of organic matter by bacteria. This sets in

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Speaker 1: about three days after death and just eats everything away

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Speaker 1: in a matter of months. And it's going to be

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Speaker 1: accelerated in human environments due to rapid bacterial reproduction. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and then and so again, like we talked about, environment

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Speaker 1: plays a big deal here. So if conditions are cold

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Speaker 1: enough or dry enough, these are all the things that

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Speaker 1: that aren't they they're so harsh to bacteria that they

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Speaker 1: can't survive if they don't have any oxygen, for instance.

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Speaker 1: That's another one. So in those cases, the body does

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Speaker 1: not fully decompose, and it takes thousands of years for

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Speaker 1: this process to slow down in it and it uh

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Speaker 1: desiccate in a very different way than what we're used to.

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Speaker 1: And that's sort of where this Egyptian mummification practice came

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Speaker 1: in because of the environmental factors that were available to

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Speaker 1: them there. Yeah, so mummification can be a matter of

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Speaker 1: just falling into a glacier, into a peat bog dying

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Speaker 1: in a desert and becoming covered with sand, or it's

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Speaker 1: due to funeral design, it's uh, it's due to various

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Speaker 1: embalming traditions that popped up throughout human history. And I

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Speaker 1: want to quickly mention that old hair sample that I

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Speaker 1: was talking about earlier, that was from a nine thousand

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Speaker 1: year old Chilean mummy. Wow, okay, And for a while

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Speaker 1: that was the like the oldest hair sample that we had.

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Speaker 1: But in two thousand nine, archaeologists happened upon the oldest

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Speaker 1: human hair has ever found at at that point, and

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Speaker 1: they found in a pile of fossilized hyena poop, and

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Speaker 1: that was between one thousand and two hundred fifty seven

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Speaker 1: thousand years old. So somebody was eaten by a hyena

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Speaker 1: presumably and and their hair bed in. So in a sense,

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Speaker 1: hyna poop is its own form, it's own kind of mummy. Well, okay,

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Speaker 1: So that is just taste of some of the things

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Speaker 1: we could bring you if you on an episode on

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Speaker 1: non Egyptian mummies. But let's focus on the cosmology of

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Speaker 1: the Egyptian mummies. So what is the the religious significance,

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Speaker 1: what's the mythos around this that that brought Egyptian culture

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Speaker 1: into spending so much ornate fascination on embalming they're dead. Well,

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Speaker 1: first of all, I do I don't want to clarify

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Speaker 1: that when you're talking about Egyptian cosmology, you're talking about

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Speaker 1: a long period of time, and of course, uh, traditions

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Speaker 1: and faith evolves over time, and sometimes you have a

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Speaker 1: pesky pharaoh that comes along and says, hey, we're not

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Speaker 1: we're not polytheistic anymore, now a monotheistic and then he

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Speaker 1: turned that over as well. But for the most part, um,

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Speaker 1: we can pick out certain key elements here. Uh. You know,

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Speaker 1: one of the reasons that I think all of us

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Speaker 1: can are continually fascinated by Egyptian cosmology is that it's

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Speaker 1: it's so alien to us. It's so different from our

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Speaker 1: modern models of faith. Uh. And even in its own time,

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Speaker 1: it didn't really travel well, it was it was kind

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Speaker 1: of an alien belief system even in its day. Um.

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Speaker 1: This is of course where you get like the stargate

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Speaker 1: type thing from right, the idea that it was actually

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Speaker 1: aliens that brought the mythos two human culture. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's easy to and I love to to

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Speaker 1: consider those kind of models. But but on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: the non alien Uh, I guess the explanation is even stranger,

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Speaker 1: you know, because you're just like, who are these people

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Speaker 1: that you know, how does how does the culture reach

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Speaker 1: this point where they have this this just really rich

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Speaker 1: religion that puts an extreme emphasis on the afterlife and

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Speaker 1: in the process introduces the notion of judgment after death.

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Speaker 1: So in a sense that the DNA of all these

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Speaker 1: modern religions, and I say modern about like you know, thousand,

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Speaker 1: two thousand year old religions here are are all kind

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Speaker 1: of based on the same view of life after death. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: The thing that's fascinating about it to me is it

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Speaker 1: really shows the imagination of human culture going very far

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Speaker 1: back before technological advancements that we uh associate with like

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Speaker 1: modern day kind of fantasy or or I guess science fiction. Uh,

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Speaker 1: weird things. But that I mean, these these people were

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Speaker 1: coming up with them over three thousand, four thousand years ago.

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Speaker 1: It's just these fascinating stories that connected everything together, right, Yeah, alright,

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Speaker 1: So I'm gonna just try and roll very quickly here

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Speaker 1: through some of the basics of the ancient Egyptian journey

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Speaker 1: into the afterlife. So First of all, you don't just

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Speaker 1: have this singular notion of a soul. The Egyptian soul

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Speaker 1: cocktail basically consists of several parts of the co life force,

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Speaker 1: the coup, the spiritual intelligence, the second, the power, the habit,

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Speaker 1: the shadow, and n your name. So after you die,

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Speaker 1: the dog headed Anibus guides your your soul to the

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Speaker 1: hall of justice tended to by various gods. Your your

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Speaker 1: heart is weight on a scale um and uh. And

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Speaker 1: if you fail, you're gonna fall. Your soul is gonna fall.

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Speaker 1: And this monstrous crocodile headed am it is gonna eat

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Speaker 1: your soul. So it's kind of like their version of hell,

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Speaker 1: kind of like the annihilation model though whereas you're not

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Speaker 1: you're just you just ceased to be um. And then

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Speaker 1: from there, if you pass, then you enter what was

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Speaker 1: called second Aru, the field of rushes. And this is

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Speaker 1: the god just the the almost unimaginable other world of

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Speaker 1: Egyptian mythology. We have fifteen different regions, each one's ruled

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Speaker 1: by a different god. And and it's a world where

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Speaker 1: you you might transform into an animal, you might need

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Speaker 1: spells to protect you from giant snakes and giant beetles

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Speaker 1: and curses. You're gonna need food when you get there.

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Speaker 1: You're gonna need to farm when you get there. So

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Speaker 1: it really is kind of this model of arriving on

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Speaker 1: a distant world and having to colonize it. Um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it is. It's it's so it's such an interesting concept

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Speaker 1: of the afterlife because in a lot of our circumstances,

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Speaker 1: we just imagine the afterlife either being utter perfection right

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Speaker 1: like heaven, or utter torment like hell, but not like

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Speaker 1: a whole another life. You have got to have all

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Speaker 1: these things and I've got to prepare for it, and

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Speaker 1: your whole life is essentially you building up the material

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Speaker 1: wealth to be able to have those things in the

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Speaker 1: next life. Right, Yeah, I mean it's it's a situation

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Speaker 1: where the afterlife is as much of not more work

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Speaker 1: than the real world. Right. It sounds like not to

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Speaker 1: demean this cosmology in any way, but it honestly sounds

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Speaker 1: like World of Warcraft to me, Like it sounds like

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Speaker 1: a video game that's really interesting, but is work. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's detailed in the Egyptian Book of the Dad, which

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Speaker 1: comes from B. C. E. That that you could even

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Speaker 1: end up landing in the in the airless region of

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Speaker 1: exc which is the realm of quote that August God

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Speaker 1: who is in his egg, which I don't think there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of details beyond that, but just the

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Speaker 1: idea that you could wind up in this region where

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Speaker 1: there's some sort of horrible elder thing that rules over

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Speaker 1: it from its a giant egg. I love crafty and

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Speaker 1: if there ever was one. So so so it's it's

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Speaker 1: kind of this idea that the Egyptian mummy is a

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Speaker 1: traveler through time and space and your body is in

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Speaker 1: kind of a suspended deathly state of suspended animation. And

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Speaker 1: that's because let me see if I've got this correctly,

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Speaker 1: Because the idea is that the cop part of your

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Speaker 1: soul is connected to your physical body, right, and so

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Speaker 1: if the physical body is destroyed, that part of your

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Speaker 1: soul is destroyed as well. So that this is where

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Speaker 1: this idea comes, and it probably came up alongside the

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Speaker 1: sort of evolution the early model of the mumification practice

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Speaker 1: of this idea of like preserving your body and your

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Speaker 1: organs as such and making sure that they're presentable and

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Speaker 1: uh so that that part of your soul is also functional. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's and it's important again to note that the

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Speaker 1: cosmology itself evolved over time, as did the funeral traditions,

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Speaker 1: and you can you can definitely see how they informed

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Speaker 1: each other as well. So it's not a situation where

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Speaker 1: someone a bunch of Egyptian um, you know, do person

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Speaker 1: and bombers was sitting around it's all right, well we

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Speaker 1: have this model of the afterlife to work with, how

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Speaker 1: do we treat the dead? No, they co evolved over

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Speaker 1: three thousand years. Yeah, I think that's the really important

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Speaker 1: thing to consider here, and that's how we're going to

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Speaker 1: present it to We're sort of going to be going

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Speaker 1: through each of the uh, the eras in terms of

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Speaker 1: the this modification process and how it evolved. Right, But

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Speaker 1: that again, consider it, it's three thousand years that this

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Speaker 1: went through. So think about some of the things that

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Speaker 1: we practiced today that we think of as like totally

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Speaker 1: common uh cultural traditions, right, and they're just decades old,

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Speaker 1: exactly decades old compared to something what were we practicing

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Speaker 1: three thousand years ago that we're still doing the same

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Speaker 1: way today, you know. So it's it's just interesting to

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Speaker 1: see how that evolved over their course of time and

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Speaker 1: then where we are now compared to that, we look

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Speaker 1: at it as being so alien, but it's in fact

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Speaker 1: it's all of human history. Yeah. So the earliest model

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Speaker 1: we can look to, and this is this is key,

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Speaker 1: is is the practice of just bearing your dad in

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Speaker 1: a pit in the hot sand. We see we see

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Speaker 1: this from various examples, such as their six hundred graves

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Speaker 1: from the pre diagnostic Upper Egyptian Badarian culture from around

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Speaker 1: to two four thousand BC. And this is just where

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Speaker 1: you just dig a pit in the hot stand, you

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Speaker 1: throw the body in, and you let a natural mummification tickets. Right. So,

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Speaker 1: like as we're talking about earlier, this these environmental conditions

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Speaker 1: were perfect for the area that they were in and

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Speaker 1: that like you could bury a body and the internal

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Speaker 1: organs would be preserved. The skin would you know, crisp

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Speaker 1: into a kind of like a dark hardened shell. But

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Speaker 1: it preserved skin and hair by doing this just essentially

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Speaker 1: because there's there wasn't water, Uh, there's probably a little oxygen, right,

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Speaker 1: and it was relatively cold, I would assume, depending on

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Speaker 1: how deep you dig. We say hot sands, but you know, yeah,

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Speaker 1: presentably they're digging yeah, yeah, And and so it was

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Speaker 1: this phenomenon that first indicated the Egyptians. I'm assuming maybe

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Speaker 1: maybe an animal pulled out an old corpse one day

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Speaker 1: and they saw it and they went, oh my god,

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Speaker 1: it's still oh my god, oh my Anubis. Uh it

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Speaker 1: still has hair and its skin is still the same,

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Speaker 1: and and then they thought, oh, well, maybe the soul

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Speaker 1: is still there too. Yeah. I think you definitely have

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Speaker 1: to consider the fact that, like this is just that

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Speaker 1: they weren't thinking of this as a location as much

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Speaker 1: as this was just what you did with your dad,

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Speaker 1: and they saw what happened to a body after death.

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Speaker 1: And there's let's reiterate this too. There's no casket here,

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Speaker 1: there's not even any wrappings here. It's just a dead

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Speaker 1: body buried in the sand. Right, But of course that evolves, right,

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Speaker 1: the cosmologies evolving. Treatment of the dead is changing, um

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Speaker 1: and you see additions made to that sort of bar

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Speaker 1: him in the pit model. So during the pre dynastic

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Speaker 1: period of between animal skin wrapping baskets and then eventually

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Speaker 1: short wooden coffins become the fashion. Yeah. So one of

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Speaker 1: the things I read about this period was that, uh,

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Speaker 1: sometimes they would they would give you a leather pillow

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Speaker 1: other times they would put a basket over your head,

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Speaker 1: and these are things that were supposed to make you

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Speaker 1: comfortable in this afterlife. Uh. And then eventually it turned

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Speaker 1: into like wicker basket kind of kind of like coffins, right,

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Speaker 1: like they were the idea was that it would provide

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Speaker 1: comfort for their dead loved ones. Uh. And then this

390
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Speaker 1: eventually leads to coffins and then to tombs. Right yeah,

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Speaker 1: it kind of you can see it beginning is just

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Speaker 1: a matter of like, I hate to see Granddad just

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Speaker 1: down there in a pit like that. Let me put

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Speaker 1: him under his head, let me give him a leather

395
00:21:39,520 --> 00:21:42,680
Speaker 1: pill him in something. Yeah. And then eventually, like that

396
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Speaker 1: begins to inform ideas of well, where's Grandpa going, what's

397
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Speaker 1: the why is he so dressed up? So let's pause

398
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Speaker 1: for a second before we dive more into the mummy thing.

399
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Speaker 1: How how do how do you want to be buried? Like,

400
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Speaker 1: like if you wanted to be really comfortable in the afterlife, right,

401
00:21:58,480 --> 00:22:00,359
Speaker 1: let's let's love look at this, like what are the

402
00:22:00,440 --> 00:22:04,200
Speaker 1: things that you're gonna want? Well, um, all my pets

403
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Speaker 1: and loved ones buried beside me, and now, uh, you know,

404
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Speaker 1: I guess i'd like some good books on hand, you know. Music. Yeah,

405
00:22:11,560 --> 00:22:14,280
Speaker 1: that makes sense, and I think that was a practice.

406
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Speaker 1: Not I don't know about music because they didn't have

407
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Speaker 1: recordings back then, but certainly musical instruments it would be. Yeah.

408
00:22:19,320 --> 00:22:24,280
Speaker 1: I uh, this definitely made me like think about mortality

409
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Speaker 1: a lot. And I've never I suppose I should finally

410
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Speaker 1: get a living will nailed down with my wife or

411
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Speaker 1: something like that, but I've always just kind of wanted

412
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Speaker 1: to have a natural burial, not not the hot sands

413
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Speaker 1: or something like that, but I'd be okay with like

414
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Speaker 1: what did they call them, like environmental burials, right, Yeah,

415
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Speaker 1: I actually just did a video about these for work,

416
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Speaker 1: and I think Joe and I are talking about doing

417
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Speaker 1: a natural burial episode because because I mean, it's something

418
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Speaker 1: that's based in very old models obviously of of the

419
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Speaker 1: funeral rights, but there are new technological approaches that put

420
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Speaker 1: put some fascinating sniff. Yeah, it just seems to me, like, uh,

421
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Speaker 1: it's attractive to me, I suppose because of the significance

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Speaker 1: of like letting your body decay but also kind of

423
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Speaker 1: give back to the environment around it. But uh, I

424
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Speaker 1: don't know, I understand coffins and I understand cremation, but

425
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Speaker 1: it just doesn't feel like something that I would be

426
00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:25,000
Speaker 1: interested in. I wouldn't especially coffins. Like, man, those things

427
00:23:25,040 --> 00:23:28,159
Speaker 1: are expensive and a lot of people, like I had

428
00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:30,280
Speaker 1: a friend whose mother recently died, and he said that

429
00:23:30,320 --> 00:23:32,280
Speaker 1: it was just a racket when they went in to

430
00:23:32,359 --> 00:23:36,520
Speaker 1: go to buy the coffin. I wonder that translates all

431
00:23:36,560 --> 00:23:39,320
Speaker 1: the way back to this origin of these coffins in

432
00:23:39,359 --> 00:23:42,199
Speaker 1: Egyptian times. You know that the way they're trying to

433
00:23:42,200 --> 00:23:46,440
Speaker 1: make their dead loved ones comfortable. Uh, how does that?

434
00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:48,760
Speaker 1: You know, Like you think about like the lining in

435
00:23:48,800 --> 00:23:51,880
Speaker 1: the coffin and all these various factors that are It's

436
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:54,560
Speaker 1: like like nowadays it's like a little bed, and it's

437
00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:56,159
Speaker 1: like it's kind of based in the same idea of

438
00:23:56,200 --> 00:24:01,280
Speaker 1: like I hate to see the essentially anthropomorphized on an

439
00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:03,399
Speaker 1: inhuman thing. At this point, it's no longer a person,

440
00:24:03,440 --> 00:24:06,320
Speaker 1: but I want to treat it like it is. Yeah, absolutely, well,

441
00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:09,040
Speaker 1: I mean I understand to like the comfort that that

442
00:24:09,080 --> 00:24:10,919
Speaker 1: provides to the family in the same way that this

443
00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:13,760
Speaker 1: provided comfort as well, but it's sort of evolved into

444
00:24:13,800 --> 00:24:16,920
Speaker 1: a whole another thing. Right. Oh yeah, you could argue

445
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:21,360
Speaker 1: that it got got kind of out of control. Yeah,

446
00:24:21,359 --> 00:24:24,960
Speaker 1: an interestingly interestingly enough, when you look back to this period,

447
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:29,399
Speaker 1: this predynastic period, you also see preparation of the body

448
00:24:29,480 --> 00:24:32,560
Speaker 1: taking on a form of deem dismemberment and de fleshing.

449
00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:35,680
Speaker 1: So sometimes you see the head missing or place somewhere else,

450
00:24:36,080 --> 00:24:39,399
Speaker 1: or the remaining bones h reassembled in in order that

451
00:24:39,520 --> 00:24:42,119
Speaker 1: might not conform to their original placement. So it's not

452
00:24:42,160 --> 00:24:45,040
Speaker 1: just like a complete like one to three from bearing

453
00:24:45,080 --> 00:24:47,840
Speaker 1: the body, from mommifying the body, you see some some

454
00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:53,200
Speaker 1: different approaches taken to preparing the bones. So there was Yeah,

455
00:24:53,480 --> 00:24:55,359
Speaker 1: I had a hard time understanding how this fit in

456
00:24:55,440 --> 00:24:58,640
Speaker 1: culturally with the idea of comfort. But I can see

457
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:02,200
Speaker 1: that there are obviously like different ranches of understanding regarding

458
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:06,160
Speaker 1: I guess what we would call mortuary practice today. Uh.

459
00:25:06,359 --> 00:25:10,200
Speaker 1: And clearly the de fleshing and the beheading and all

460
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:15,480
Speaker 1: that stuff didn't win over over the cultural significance of mummification. Yeah,

461
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:18,200
Speaker 1: Like the de fleshing is like, don't it's easy to

462
00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:20,280
Speaker 1: sort of think of it and more of its morbid terms,

463
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:22,560
Speaker 1: but essentially it's talking about we're talking about a means

464
00:25:22,600 --> 00:25:24,960
Speaker 1: of preserving the body. Like they realize that the flesh

465
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:27,400
Speaker 1: is gonna rot away, so let's just get it down

466
00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:30,760
Speaker 1: to the bones and then store those away. It gets

467
00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:32,920
Speaker 1: into that area of what's important about the body, which

468
00:25:32,960 --> 00:25:36,119
Speaker 1: continues to be an important topic as you look at

469
00:25:36,200 --> 00:25:40,359
Speaker 1: mummification process. Yeah. Absolutely, because so they get to this

470
00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:43,679
Speaker 1: point where they start using these wicker wicker kind of

471
00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:48,000
Speaker 1: coffins or tomb like things. But then they realize, oh,

472
00:25:48,119 --> 00:25:51,000
Speaker 1: the bodies actually start decomposing when we do, because we're

473
00:25:51,160 --> 00:25:55,360
Speaker 1: in effect, we're we're sealing it off from the natural

474
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:59,479
Speaker 1: drying elements of the sand. So we're interfering with the

475
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:01,840
Speaker 1: thing that we really liked about bearing our dead in

476
00:26:01,840 --> 00:26:04,280
Speaker 1: the sand. How can we get that back? And so

477
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:08,160
Speaker 1: this is where Egyptian science comes in. Essentially they had

478
00:26:08,160 --> 00:26:11,240
Speaker 1: the challenge of figuring out how to replicate the sand

479
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 1: effect but making the bodies comfortable and also preserved. And

480
00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:19,720
Speaker 1: and this is because of the sort of immortality connection

481
00:26:19,760 --> 00:26:22,960
Speaker 1: between the car and the physical body. Right. So by

482
00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:25,800
Speaker 1: this point we get to the Early Dynastic Age, just

483
00:26:25,840 --> 00:26:32,000
Speaker 1: as around uh to three thousand BC. Yeah, and during

484
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 1: this time you see them taking to wrapping the bodies

485
00:26:35,040 --> 00:26:37,119
Speaker 1: in an attempt to keep out the elements and just

486
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:39,480
Speaker 1: like really wrapping them on, like multiple layers of wrapping

487
00:26:39,800 --> 00:26:43,880
Speaker 1: and also throwing in some some some charms here and there,

488
00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:46,680
Speaker 1: as you know, a magical to turn as well. The

489
00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:51,040
Speaker 1: thing is, uh, it didn't work all that well because, uh,

490
00:26:51,560 --> 00:26:54,359
Speaker 1: the rot the decomposition is coming from within. They thought

491
00:26:54,359 --> 00:26:57,200
Speaker 1: it was about keeping something out. But as we discussed,

492
00:26:57,200 --> 00:27:00,720
Speaker 1: like the very first process of decomposition is occurring with

493
00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:02,760
Speaker 1: the with the breakdown in the body. So this is

494
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:05,359
Speaker 1: essentially like the origin of this though right there taking

495
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:07,560
Speaker 1: the wrappings, are coding them in resin, and they're and

496
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:10,760
Speaker 1: they're covering the body with this. But um, one of

497
00:27:10,760 --> 00:27:12,800
Speaker 1: the things I'd like us to keep in mind here

498
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:18,320
Speaker 1: going forward from this point in Egyptian history is that

499
00:27:18,440 --> 00:27:21,040
Speaker 1: if the body was something to be preserved and to

500
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:24,960
Speaker 1: come back to imagine what these processes would be like

501
00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 1: if you came back into your body, right, So, like

502
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:34,240
Speaker 1: you're covered in the let's consider it from the fictional

503
00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:38,120
Speaker 1: twenty century mummy point of view, right, like, you come

504
00:27:38,160 --> 00:27:42,160
Speaker 1: back into this body, you're fully conscious and you're covered

505
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 1: just just beginning in this period, you're covered in wrappings

506
00:27:46,760 --> 00:27:50,199
Speaker 1: and hot resin. That's just solidified, right, So that's already

507
00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:53,680
Speaker 1: going to be uncomfortable, and it gets more uncomfortable. Yeah,

508
00:27:53,680 --> 00:27:56,479
Speaker 1: because they, like I said, they eventually realized, all right,

509
00:27:56,480 --> 00:27:59,120
Speaker 1: there's rotting going on inside the body. Decompositions have taken

510
00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:01,160
Speaker 1: place inside and my or what we do on the outside.

511
00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:04,119
Speaker 1: So they realize when we need to remove most of

512
00:28:04,160 --> 00:28:08,919
Speaker 1: the guts. So they take to the practice of making

513
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:12,080
Speaker 1: a slit in the abdomen and uh and pulling out

514
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:15,199
Speaker 1: as much of the organs in there as they can

515
00:28:15,240 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 1: get away with. And this is where they begin the

516
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:21,800
Speaker 1: tradition of those it's their canopic jars. Is that right?

517
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:26,120
Speaker 1: So you basically they're like fine pottery that you're each

518
00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:28,840
Speaker 1: of your organs is stored in next to your body.

519
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:32,359
Speaker 1: Uh and and uh, the each of the organs is

520
00:28:32,400 --> 00:28:34,480
Speaker 1: also wrapped in the same way, right like they're they're

521
00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:38,280
Speaker 1: wrapped in resin and linen. Believe. Yeah. And then eventually

522
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:41,880
Speaker 1: they're decorating the the econoptic jars more and more and

523
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:44,600
Speaker 1: uh and and they're taking additional steps to sort of

524
00:28:44,640 --> 00:28:48,360
Speaker 1: spruce up the body. Uh. They're they're starting to use

525
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:51,719
Speaker 1: masks to cover for the loss of facial structure as

526
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:56,480
Speaker 1: well as uh. Stucco plaster coatings um that they're they're

527
00:28:56,520 --> 00:28:59,360
Speaker 1: added the wrappings to reproduce the facial features of the

528
00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:02,640
Speaker 1: individual it in. This is like early plastic surgery on

529
00:29:02,680 --> 00:29:06,160
Speaker 1: a corpse, like like trying to make it appear as

530
00:29:06,240 --> 00:29:10,000
Speaker 1: lifelike as possible, even though it's it's not, and they're

531
00:29:09,800 --> 00:29:13,640
Speaker 1: they're pulling out like constituent parts of it too, that

532
00:29:13,680 --> 00:29:15,400
Speaker 1: are you know, making it kind of collapse, so they

533
00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:18,120
Speaker 1: end up stuffing things inside of it too. Interestingly enough,

534
00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:21,480
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians were some of the first practitioners of

535
00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:25,800
Speaker 1: plastic surgery, so they were actually able to implement that

536
00:29:25,920 --> 00:29:28,440
Speaker 1: on living so you could see how these two would

537
00:29:28,440 --> 00:29:32,520
Speaker 1: be connected practices. They realized that there was something you know,

538
00:29:32,600 --> 00:29:34,640
Speaker 1: you could you could fashion flash, you could fashion it

539
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:36,720
Speaker 1: after death, and you could also fashion it while alive.

540
00:29:37,040 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: And they eventually took to where they're modeling the whole

541
00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:43,000
Speaker 1: body with the plaster and using you know this this

542
00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:46,719
Speaker 1: resin circle in and the stucco overlay for you know,

543
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:51,400
Speaker 1: in the case of really well off departed individuals, you know,

544
00:29:51,400 --> 00:29:54,280
Speaker 1: a recreation of the physical form. And we're talking about

545
00:29:54,360 --> 00:29:57,600
Speaker 1: right now, this is the Fourth Dynasty era uh and

546
00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:00,360
Speaker 1: The big innovation of this is what you're talking about

547
00:30:00,360 --> 00:30:02,719
Speaker 1: with the removal of organs, but also just that they

548
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:04,920
Speaker 1: instead of just like digging in there and taking the

549
00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:08,360
Speaker 1: organs out, they made a very small abdominal incision that

550
00:30:08,520 --> 00:30:10,480
Speaker 1: allowed them to just get that stuff out of there

551
00:30:10,600 --> 00:30:13,680
Speaker 1: very quickly without damaging it. So they could prevent the

552
00:30:13,760 --> 00:30:16,600
Speaker 1: natural decay of the organs because you know, apparently these

553
00:30:16,600 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 1: things start to depending on the temperature. Obviously, if it's

554
00:30:19,800 --> 00:30:22,600
Speaker 1: hot and humid, within two to three hours, those are

555
00:30:22,600 --> 00:30:24,440
Speaker 1: going to start to decompose. So they wanted to get

556
00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 1: them out of the body as quickly as possible. Right now.

557
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 1: They always left the heart though, because the heart is

558
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 1: the exact seat of the mind. And uh, well we'll

559
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:33,560
Speaker 1: talk about them as well, but kidneys as well. They

560
00:30:33,560 --> 00:30:36,640
Speaker 1: didn't didn't really find much use for those. But so

561
00:30:36,960 --> 00:30:40,680
Speaker 1: that's fourth dynasty. Then you get fifth dynasty, they start

562
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 1: this is when they start like kind of making portrait

563
00:30:43,040 --> 00:30:45,840
Speaker 1: of version, like almost like statues out of the mummies.

564
00:30:46,760 --> 00:30:49,800
Speaker 1: Between the fifth and the sixth is when mummifications start

565
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:52,400
Speaker 1: spreading to lower class people. And we'll talk a little

566
00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:54,320
Speaker 1: bit about like there's a different practice. There was like

567
00:30:54,360 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 1: a I believe the house stuff works. Article refers to

568
00:30:57,160 --> 00:31:00,720
Speaker 1: it as like the budget model, like and how that

569
00:31:00,960 --> 00:31:03,600
Speaker 1: worked in particular. But you go all the way through

570
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 1: up until the eleventh dynasty, and then we get to

571
00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:09,360
Speaker 1: another period of improvement. Yeah, this is when they start

572
00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:13,360
Speaker 1: dehydrating the bodies using large amounts of natron, which is

573
00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:16,920
Speaker 1: a mixture of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate or chloride.

574
00:31:17,280 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 1: So it was an improvement over the an earlier method

575
00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:21,680
Speaker 1: of just using salt for drying and or of course,

576
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:25,440
Speaker 1: the the older method was just the hot stands um.

577
00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:28,080
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. It was hazardous to work with

578
00:31:28,160 --> 00:31:30,440
Speaker 1: if you're the you know, the the individual there and

579
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:32,800
Speaker 1: having to dry out the bodies because it would burn

580
00:31:32,840 --> 00:31:34,680
Speaker 1: your skin. It could cause all sorts of eye and

581
00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:38,280
Speaker 1: respiratory problems. Yeah, so if you're the embalmer and you're

582
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:40,920
Speaker 1: working with this stuff, it's pretty hazardous. Like one of

583
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:43,280
Speaker 1: the accounts I read was that natron if it got

584
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:48,040
Speaker 1: in your eye, it could cause conjunctive conjunctival edemas or

585
00:31:48,440 --> 00:31:51,720
Speaker 1: corneal destruction. I mean, it would eat your eye. Uh

586
00:31:51,760 --> 00:31:54,160
Speaker 1: So I can imagine that these embombers tried to be

587
00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:57,400
Speaker 1: pretty careful with it, but it was essentially um. The

588
00:31:57,480 --> 00:31:59,760
Speaker 1: idea from it. It was it was the sodium compounds

589
00:31:59,800 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 1: that they got from the shores of different Egyptian lakes

590
00:32:02,520 --> 00:32:05,200
Speaker 1: or sometimes like the desert west of the Nile Delta.

591
00:32:05,280 --> 00:32:07,440
Speaker 1: They were able to find this stuff and it was

592
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:12,800
Speaker 1: very salty UM, and it absorbed moisture. I almost wonder,

593
00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: I'm curious about the process, given like what we know

594
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:18,000
Speaker 1: about how salt and moisture interact now, Like it was

595
00:32:18,080 --> 00:32:22,000
Speaker 1: absorption or absorption um, but it was it was taking

596
00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:24,880
Speaker 1: the water out of here. And unlike the sands, which

597
00:32:24,880 --> 00:32:27,720
Speaker 1: would darken the skin over time, it didn't do that

598
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: as much. These um. These mummies definitely did like dark

599
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:33,600
Speaker 1: and compared to their natural hue, but not as much

600
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:35,960
Speaker 1: as as you found when you just threw the body

601
00:32:35,960 --> 00:32:39,000
Speaker 1: in hot sands. And one other thing, they actually used

602
00:32:39,120 --> 00:32:43,160
Speaker 1: natron to dissolve fats and it was used as like

603
00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 1: a cleaning material too, So you know, you can bear

604
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:48,160
Speaker 1: that to like embalming fluid that we use nowadays, and

605
00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:50,040
Speaker 1: it's not all all that different. Not that I use

606
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:52,320
Speaker 1: embalming fluid to like clean the furniture in my house,

607
00:32:52,360 --> 00:32:57,200
Speaker 1: but some people might Apparently they originally tried to make

608
00:32:57,240 --> 00:33:01,480
Speaker 1: like liquid natron mixtures and they they did like experiments

609
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:03,720
Speaker 1: on animals, and they found that it just like totally

610
00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 1: disintegrated the animals from the inside out and just made

611
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:08,560
Speaker 1: this gory mess. So they decided not to use it

612
00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:12,600
Speaker 1: that way. Speaking of which, um Anna Maria Roso, who's

613
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:16,040
Speaker 1: an excellent article on the the global history of mummification

614
00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:19,560
Speaker 1: which i'll link to on the landing page for this episode.

615
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 1: She tells us that quote by the Middle Kingdom, a

616
00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 1: turpentine like oleo resin was also injected into the anus

617
00:33:26,680 --> 00:33:29,560
Speaker 1: to dissolve the organs and to extract them. So there's

618
00:33:29,560 --> 00:33:31,680
Speaker 1: another gory detail to take in mind when you think about,

619
00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:35,640
Speaker 1: especially a reanimate mummy. Yeah, and one of the iterations

620
00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:41,360
Speaker 1: of that, uh, turpentine injected into the anus uh method.

621
00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:43,920
Speaker 1: I guess that I read was that that was a

622
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:46,400
Speaker 1: lower class thing. Later on, like that ended up being

623
00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:51,880
Speaker 1: like if you wanted the the economy model of mummification,

624
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:53,640
Speaker 1: that was kind of how it worked. But we'll get

625
00:33:53,680 --> 00:33:55,920
Speaker 1: to that in a moment. So we're up to the

626
00:33:55,960 --> 00:34:02,280
Speaker 1: twelfth century. Now, we're into the nineteen nineties, uhah, through

627
00:34:02,320 --> 00:34:05,040
Speaker 1: around seventeen two v c. Again, just thinking about the

628
00:34:05,080 --> 00:34:08,399
Speaker 1: staggering chunks of history we're dealing with. Think how much

629
00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:11,239
Speaker 1: our world has changed in um, you know, in in

630
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:13,920
Speaker 1: three or four hundred years, right, Yeah, So like when

631
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:17,040
Speaker 1: we're talking about these innovations, we're saying, like hundreds of

632
00:34:17,120 --> 00:34:20,919
Speaker 1: years went by before they started the innovations we're about

633
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:23,360
Speaker 1: to talk about in the twelfth century as twelfth dynasty.

634
00:34:23,400 --> 00:34:26,400
Speaker 1: Actually sorry, not twelfth century. Yeah. So during this period,

635
00:34:26,920 --> 00:34:29,600
Speaker 1: you're seeing the heart left in place after the internal

636
00:34:29,680 --> 00:34:31,440
Speaker 1: organs were removed. Where I touched on some of that.

637
00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:34,279
Speaker 1: The lids of the canopic jars are decorated with the

638
00:34:34,320 --> 00:34:37,680
Speaker 1: heads of gods to protect the entrails. The body cavity

639
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:41,280
Speaker 1: is disinfected and stuffed with linen. More people were buried

640
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:45,520
Speaker 1: in anthropoid coffins, so coffins that look like humans on

641
00:34:45,560 --> 00:34:49,520
Speaker 1: the outside, that sort of classic sarcophagus appearance. Fingernails are

642
00:34:49,560 --> 00:34:53,080
Speaker 1: tied on to prevent them from just falling out. Wooden

643
00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:57,200
Speaker 1: or clay models act as servants, and also you see

644
00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:01,600
Speaker 1: rock tombs gaining popularity espect among the wealthier classes. So

645
00:35:01,680 --> 00:35:05,080
Speaker 1: all those things evolved over you know, the hundreds of

646
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:11,440
Speaker 1: years between the Eleventh Dynasty and the Twelfth dynasty. It's fascinating,

647
00:35:11,560 --> 00:35:14,560
Speaker 1: you know, what how long certain things take and then

648
00:35:14,719 --> 00:35:17,360
Speaker 1: how short some things take two to be adapted. And

649
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:19,400
Speaker 1: like you're saying earlier, I guess it depends on who's

650
00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:23,719
Speaker 1: in power and what they what they kind of want, right, Yeah,

651
00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 1: So then we eventually get into the New Kingdom era,

652
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 1: this is fifteen seventy through ten seventy BC, and this

653
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:33,560
Speaker 1: is where we kind of see the peak, right, this

654
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:37,600
Speaker 1: is where we see these sort of standard ideal models

655
00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:42,279
Speaker 1: for mummification. Yeah. New Kingdom era is considered basically like

656
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:47,239
Speaker 1: the most representative of mummification practice over the three thousand years,

657
00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:50,280
Speaker 1: the Catillac of mumification exactly because these are the ones

658
00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:54,000
Speaker 1: that were the best preserved um. But again keep in mind,

659
00:35:54,040 --> 00:35:56,560
Speaker 1: like this was over three thousand years, so this is

660
00:35:56,640 --> 00:36:00,560
Speaker 1: not how necessarily the you know, the the Early Dynasty

661
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:06,359
Speaker 1: mummies would be made. But this is the standard mummification

662
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:09,239
Speaker 1: practice as we know it today from the New Kingdom era.

663
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:13,759
Speaker 1: So we think, or at least Egyptologists think that these

664
00:36:13,880 --> 00:36:16,920
Speaker 1: rituals were performed in an area that's called the Red Land,

665
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:20,839
Speaker 1: which is this desert region that wasn't particularly heavily populated,

666
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:22,799
Speaker 1: but was useful about it was that it had easy

667
00:36:22,840 --> 00:36:25,040
Speaker 1: access to the Nile River, so they could use that

668
00:36:25,440 --> 00:36:28,319
Speaker 1: for washing the bodies. Uh, and they would take the

669
00:36:28,360 --> 00:36:32,960
Speaker 1: body to uh. It was called Ibou, the place of Purification,

670
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:35,400
Speaker 1: and this is where they do the body washing. It

671
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:38,840
Speaker 1: symbolized a rebirth passing on from one world to the next.

672
00:36:39,200 --> 00:36:40,920
Speaker 1: And once they cleaned it, that's when they brought it

673
00:36:40,960 --> 00:36:43,799
Speaker 1: to the next part, which is the per Neffer, and

674
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:46,799
Speaker 1: that's called the house of beauty. You want to hit

675
00:36:46,840 --> 00:36:49,400
Speaker 1: on that one, yes, So this is where we see

676
00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 1: a major change take place in our preparation of mummies. Um.

677
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:56,320
Speaker 1: In order to extract the brain, a metal chisel or

678
00:36:56,400 --> 00:37:00,040
Speaker 1: hook is inserted or hammered up through the nostril. Of

679
00:37:00,120 --> 00:37:03,080
Speaker 1: these are dead parties, but just like and of course

680
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:04,759
Speaker 1: you have to break the bone to get it up

681
00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:08,520
Speaker 1: through there, so there's like a crack, right uh, And

682
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:12,279
Speaker 1: then essentially you drag and scoop it all out. Right. Yeah,

683
00:37:12,280 --> 00:37:14,880
Speaker 1: they like they use these long spoons. I guess that

684
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:17,960
Speaker 1: they would stick up through that cracked nostril and and

685
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:20,279
Speaker 1: just scoop the whole thing out. Essentially. The idea is

686
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:22,680
Speaker 1: that they didn't know at the time what the brain

687
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:24,640
Speaker 1: was for, so they assumed that we wouldn't need it.

688
00:37:24,760 --> 00:37:28,200
Speaker 1: It's probably something to tie to the sinuses, right exactly.

689
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:31,160
Speaker 1: Uh Well, like like you said earlier, the heart was

690
00:37:31,200 --> 00:37:33,680
Speaker 1: far more important. I have to say. This is one

691
00:37:33,719 --> 00:37:36,359
Speaker 1: of the reasons I like the Mummy segment and the

692
00:37:36,400 --> 00:37:39,520
Speaker 1: tales from the Dark Side movie because the Mummy and

693
00:37:39,560 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 1: that ultimately is not treated all that well. You know,

694
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:46,040
Speaker 1: he's not particularly powerful, but he does get the drop

695
00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:48,799
Speaker 1: on a human at one point and jab a code

696
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:52,600
Speaker 1: hanger up his nose and pull his brain. So it's

697
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:55,279
Speaker 1: one of the best mummy kills out there, that's not

698
00:37:55,360 --> 00:37:59,120
Speaker 1: just straight up strangulation. Well, I'm surprised that he didn't

699
00:37:59,120 --> 00:38:02,880
Speaker 1: also uh punch them in the kidneys, because apparently they

700
00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:06,000
Speaker 1: didn't think that the kidneys were very important either. They

701
00:38:06,560 --> 00:38:08,319
Speaker 1: you know, like we talked about, they removed all the

702
00:38:08,440 --> 00:38:12,720
Speaker 1: organs except for the kidneys because they just thought, well,

703
00:38:12,560 --> 00:38:14,680
Speaker 1: we don't exactly know what these are for, the same

704
00:38:14,719 --> 00:38:17,640
Speaker 1: as the brain, but they scooped those out. But all

705
00:38:17,680 --> 00:38:21,480
Speaker 1: these organs were washed separately, coated and resin wrapped in

706
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:25,680
Speaker 1: a linen strips. Then they're putting those canopic jars. Uh.

707
00:38:25,719 --> 00:38:29,799
Speaker 1: And the jars were almost always situated in some way

708
00:38:29,840 --> 00:38:34,719
Speaker 1: in the southeast corner of wherever the tomb was located. Um,

709
00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:38,279
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's cosmological significance to that. Yeah, and they're yeah,

710
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:40,160
Speaker 1: they're on hand, but they're also they're not right up

711
00:38:40,160 --> 00:38:42,200
Speaker 1: next to the body. And so after they do this,

712
00:38:42,239 --> 00:38:44,640
Speaker 1: they've got the you know, scoop out the brain, get

713
00:38:44,640 --> 00:38:47,320
Speaker 1: out the lower organs. Then they cut open the bodies

714
00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:51,600
Speaker 1: diaphragm and remove the lungs. They keep the heart. Why

715
00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:54,040
Speaker 1: because the heart was considered the seed of the mind

716
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:56,400
Speaker 1: at the time, which I think is really interesting because

717
00:38:56,440 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: like now in our modern culture, we think of the

718
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:01,960
Speaker 1: brain as being the seat of the mind, and we

719
00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:04,520
Speaker 1: we very much think of it as being located in

720
00:39:04,600 --> 00:39:06,600
Speaker 1: our head. Right. I wonder if there was a different

721
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:09,960
Speaker 1: kind of cultural thing of like the heart led forward,

722
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:13,560
Speaker 1: you know, lead the body forward. Uh, the posture was

723
00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 1: better and yeah, possibly uh. And they rinsed out this

724
00:39:19,239 --> 00:39:21,439
Speaker 1: empty cavity once you get all the organs out of there.

725
00:39:21,719 --> 00:39:24,520
Speaker 1: Basically they wanted to purify it, so they used palm wine.

726
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:28,000
Speaker 1: I wonder if this is because of the bacteria like

727
00:39:28,080 --> 00:39:29,880
Speaker 1: they thought the palm wine would maybe kill off the

728
00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:32,680
Speaker 1: bacteria that was in there, not that they wouldn't understand.

729
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:35,720
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's sweet smelling and it it is strong,

730
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:37,160
Speaker 1: so yeah, you can see where there might be some

731
00:39:37,200 --> 00:39:39,799
Speaker 1: inkling of that. And then after they purified that, then

732
00:39:39,840 --> 00:39:42,560
Speaker 1: they would pack it in with incense and there you go,

733
00:39:42,640 --> 00:39:44,759
Speaker 1: maybe it is the smell because they put incense in

734
00:39:44,800 --> 00:39:47,719
Speaker 1: there and other kind of packing materials and filled it

735
00:39:47,800 --> 00:39:51,080
Speaker 1: back up so that you know, had appeared like it

736
00:39:51,120 --> 00:39:53,480
Speaker 1: was naturally full again. And then you're stitching it all

737
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:56,160
Speaker 1: back together. You're closing in any incisions and just kind

738
00:39:56,160 --> 00:39:59,400
Speaker 1: of retiding the package, right. Yeah, and there's of course

739
00:39:59,600 --> 00:40:03,760
Speaker 1: the the natron comes in here too, so you cover

740
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:07,520
Speaker 1: the entire body in this thick layer of natron from

741
00:40:07,560 --> 00:40:10,000
Speaker 1: head to toe, and you let it sit for thirty

742
00:40:10,040 --> 00:40:12,799
Speaker 1: five to forty days um. And this is so that

743
00:40:12,840 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 1: the body just dries completely before it's mummified. Uh. And

744
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:18,920
Speaker 1: in fact, like you know, it took so long, and

745
00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:22,200
Speaker 1: grave robbery and and if scavenging animals were so common

746
00:40:22,600 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 1: that they actually would set guards up outside of these

747
00:40:25,600 --> 00:40:28,760
Speaker 1: embalming areas to make sure that the bodies weren't taken

748
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:31,960
Speaker 1: during this time. It's up to the family to get

749
00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:34,120
Speaker 1: all the linen for the mummifications. So they've got to

750
00:40:34,120 --> 00:40:37,479
Speaker 1: come up with something like four thousand square feet worth

751
00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:40,759
Speaker 1: of linen to bring to the embalmers. In fact, the

752
00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:44,640
Speaker 1: wealthy sometimes use materials. They were clothes that were on

753
00:40:44,760 --> 00:40:48,400
Speaker 1: sacred statues, so they would take these clothing off of

754
00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:52,600
Speaker 1: statues and use that instead for their their wealthy dead relatives.

755
00:40:52,840 --> 00:40:55,440
Speaker 1: Where Like if you were a lower class you just

756
00:40:55,520 --> 00:40:58,960
Speaker 1: got like old clothes, hand me downs or like household

757
00:40:59,040 --> 00:41:01,960
Speaker 1: linen's so I'm assuming it's just like dirty old rags

758
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:05,440
Speaker 1: from around the house. They bring those down alright, So

759
00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:08,319
Speaker 1: we're wrapping the body at this point. Bandaging takes a

760
00:41:08,360 --> 00:41:11,080
Speaker 1: week or two um, and they start with the hands

761
00:41:11,080 --> 00:41:15,279
Speaker 1: and the feet, individual fingers and toes, then limbs and

762
00:41:15,320 --> 00:41:17,960
Speaker 1: torso the head. They wrap it as a whole. The

763
00:41:18,040 --> 00:41:20,680
Speaker 1: they coated in more hot resin to glue everything back

764
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:24,360
Speaker 1: in place, right because before this, like in order to

765
00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:28,560
Speaker 1: keep everything in place, they basically plugged up every single

766
00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:31,719
Speaker 1: orifice and pour with hot resin, right, and like so

767
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:34,360
Speaker 1: just you know, it's very easy to just say hot resin,

768
00:41:34,719 --> 00:41:38,359
Speaker 1: but like my understanding, Like what resin is mainly used

769
00:41:38,360 --> 00:41:41,200
Speaker 1: for today is like sculpting, right, Like it's a material

770
00:41:41,239 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 1: that you used to make like certain kinds of statues.

771
00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:46,920
Speaker 1: So this isn't just like glue. This is like pretty

772
00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:50,560
Speaker 1: heavy duty stuff that is uh coating, sticking everything together

773
00:41:50,600 --> 00:41:53,560
Speaker 1: and plugging it all up. Yeah. Yeah, indeed, I often

774
00:41:53,600 --> 00:41:55,080
Speaker 1: think of the money at this point. It's kind of

775
00:41:55,120 --> 00:41:58,680
Speaker 1: like a like a yogurt covered raisin, you know, just

776
00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:02,160
Speaker 1: really just seiling it all and um. And then you know,

777
00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:05,880
Speaker 1: on top of that, you're adding additional decorations, right, perhaps

778
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:08,839
Speaker 1: a mask with you know, the likeness of of an

779
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:12,520
Speaker 1: Egyptian god even yeah, yeah, depending on you know, I

780
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:15,800
Speaker 1: would assume the status of the person, right. The idea

781
00:42:15,840 --> 00:42:18,240
Speaker 1: behind this was that the mask would help the person's

782
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 1: spirit find their body in the tombs, because there's so

783
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:24,600
Speaker 1: many other bodies. So you know, if you get the

784
00:42:24,719 --> 00:42:28,560
Speaker 1: jackal mask, then you're the you know, you know, like

785
00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:32,799
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a big fan of jackal god. Anubis is

786
00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:37,520
Speaker 1: the jackal okay, so uh so then you can locate

787
00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:41,719
Speaker 1: your haunted spirit, can locate your body to get back

788
00:42:41,760 --> 00:42:43,840
Speaker 1: in touch with it. Yeah, and and along those lines

789
00:42:43,840 --> 00:42:48,239
Speaker 1: through its ambulance are thrown in to aid um. Arms

790
00:42:48,239 --> 00:42:50,359
Speaker 1: were originally placed in the side, though that ends up

791
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:54,279
Speaker 1: being changed to the more you know, stereotypical crossing of

792
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 1: the arms on the body, and uh yeah, then you

793
00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:01,000
Speaker 1: essentially it's time to put that body in the coffin

794
00:43:01,040 --> 00:43:02,799
Speaker 1: and send it on its journey, right yeah. And so

795
00:43:02,840 --> 00:43:05,799
Speaker 1: they called these coffins sue ht, which I had not

796
00:43:05,880 --> 00:43:08,080
Speaker 1: heard before researching this. I always just thought of them

797
00:43:08,080 --> 00:43:11,879
Speaker 1: as sarcophagus, as the sarcophag guy, I guess. But they

798
00:43:12,239 --> 00:43:15,000
Speaker 1: they've they've used these sue head coffins then brought it

799
00:43:15,080 --> 00:43:18,200
Speaker 1: to a tomb where priests would perform this ritual called

800
00:43:18,200 --> 00:43:21,239
Speaker 1: the Ceremony of the Mouth. And the idea here was

801
00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:24,640
Speaker 1: that they were giving the five senses back to the

802
00:43:24,719 --> 00:43:27,799
Speaker 1: dead in the afterlife by touching different sacred objects to

803
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:30,120
Speaker 1: the face that was on the sue heat coffin, you know,

804
00:43:30,120 --> 00:43:32,319
Speaker 1: because it's carved in the shape of a person, and

805
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:35,160
Speaker 1: they seal everything up after that. So it's the body

806
00:43:35,200 --> 00:43:37,360
Speaker 1: is sealed up, it's putting side a coffin, it's putting

807
00:43:37,360 --> 00:43:40,600
Speaker 1: side a tomb, and and you know, you get an

808
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:44,919
Speaker 1: idea for why there's so much I guess so many

809
00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:49,400
Speaker 1: layers to this, right, because of scavenging animals or like

810
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 1: as what we're gonna talk about later, grape robbery. Yes,

811
00:43:52,200 --> 00:43:54,560
Speaker 1: so you want you want some measure of security there.

812
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:58,040
Speaker 1: Now here's the cheaper version. Okay. So if you're not

813
00:43:58,120 --> 00:44:00,520
Speaker 1: royalty and you're not upper class, this is what you get.

814
00:44:00,800 --> 00:44:04,360
Speaker 1: The embalmers inject your body with this oil mixture. It

815
00:44:04,440 --> 00:44:05,920
Speaker 1: sounds to me like the same thing that we were

816
00:44:05,920 --> 00:44:09,240
Speaker 1: talking about earlier with the resin goes inside the torso cavity.

817
00:44:09,280 --> 00:44:11,040
Speaker 1: So instead of taking all the organs out, you just

818
00:44:11,280 --> 00:44:13,560
Speaker 1: fill it up with this oil. They plug up all

819
00:44:13,560 --> 00:44:16,000
Speaker 1: the orifices and they just let this oil sitting there

820
00:44:16,040 --> 00:44:18,920
Speaker 1: for a few days, and then they this is my terminology,

821
00:44:18,960 --> 00:44:21,760
Speaker 1: they popped the corks. They let all that oil flow

822
00:44:21,840 --> 00:44:25,320
Speaker 1: out of every orifice and it carries the liquefied internal

823
00:44:25,480 --> 00:44:29,280
Speaker 1: organs with it and then the modification process. So apparently

824
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:31,560
Speaker 1: the like the expensive part was taking out the organs

825
00:44:31,560 --> 00:44:35,279
Speaker 1: and wrapping those all individually. It sounds kind of grim,

826
00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:36,520
Speaker 1: but I guess if you do it every day, you

827
00:44:36,560 --> 00:44:38,359
Speaker 1: get used to it. Like most things, right, yeah, I mean,

828
00:44:38,400 --> 00:44:42,480
Speaker 1: I like, honestly from how I understand mortuary practice works today,

829
00:44:42,719 --> 00:44:45,279
Speaker 1: it's probably not all that much more grim, you know,

830
00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:49,760
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. So after this point again

831
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:55,960
Speaker 1: it's it's reached its peak certainly by dynasty Um you

832
00:44:55,960 --> 00:44:59,760
Speaker 1: your mommified, you game this doll like appearance, and then um,

833
00:45:00,080 --> 00:45:03,400
Speaker 1: the third intermediate in a late period that's ten seventy

834
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:06,600
Speaker 1: to thirty b C. This is where we see, uh,

835
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:11,400
Speaker 1: the old ways are being abandoned and forgotten, decadent's inept embalming.

836
00:45:11,800 --> 00:45:16,080
Speaker 1: It's all leading to uh, less refined approaches. Yeah. So essentially,

837
00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:19,440
Speaker 1: you know, as the culture changed, less attention was paid

838
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:23,799
Speaker 1: to the body's condition condition, and uh, embalming just went

839
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:27,480
Speaker 1: a lot faster, and subsequently it was more inept. So

840
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:30,840
Speaker 1: by the time Greeks arrived in Egypt, and like somewhere

841
00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:35,319
Speaker 1: between seven forty two and seven thirty BC, rapid decomposition

842
00:45:35,360 --> 00:45:39,400
Speaker 1: was happening again. There were either bodies were incompletely wrapped,

843
00:45:39,440 --> 00:45:42,680
Speaker 1: so you know, it wasn't the function of the of

844
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:46,319
Speaker 1: the form wasn't being met anymore. Uh, And then the

845
00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:52,640
Speaker 1: Romans were by up until like three a d we're

846
00:45:53,080 --> 00:45:56,640
Speaker 1: still using like narrow bandages, you know, wrapping bodies in them.

847
00:45:56,640 --> 00:45:59,120
Speaker 1: But there wasn't anything as methodical as what we were

848
00:45:59,160 --> 00:46:01,719
Speaker 1: talking about in the like real you know, height of

849
00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:05,319
Speaker 1: modification in Egypt. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break,

850
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:07,520
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're gonna talk about what

851
00:46:07,680 --> 00:46:10,800
Speaker 1: happens after these bodies are sent on their cosmic journey,

852
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:24,560
Speaker 1: what happens when it's interrupted. All Right, we're back. So

853
00:46:25,480 --> 00:46:28,200
Speaker 1: here's one of the things about about mummies that, as

854
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, Uh, they're invariably dug up, moved around, studied,

855
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:37,839
Speaker 1: taking apart, taking to museums across the world, and kind

856
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:42,120
Speaker 1: of imprisoned in cultures completely alien to their own. And uh,

857
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:45,759
Speaker 1: and the thing is that the grave robbing was always

858
00:46:45,800 --> 00:46:49,160
Speaker 1: a problem, like even from in the ancient days, because

859
00:46:49,200 --> 00:46:52,040
Speaker 1: you'd have these bodies that were buried with some degree

860
00:46:52,239 --> 00:46:55,839
Speaker 1: of valuables, and they're going to be people around who

861
00:46:55,880 --> 00:46:57,560
Speaker 1: want to take advantage of that, to the point that

862
00:46:57,960 --> 00:47:02,200
Speaker 1: that often the assistants of the builders themselves who are

863
00:47:02,239 --> 00:47:05,440
Speaker 1: building these tombs are the ones that are involved in

864
00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:07,759
Speaker 1: the theft. Yeah, it's like an inside job type thing,

865
00:47:07,840 --> 00:47:10,799
Speaker 1: like they sort of either themselves were doing it or

866
00:47:10,920 --> 00:47:13,960
Speaker 1: they were informing other I guess like bandits or something.

867
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:16,480
Speaker 1: On unwhere to break in which tombs in particular held

868
00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:19,920
Speaker 1: the greatest amounts of wealth. Yeah. Rosso goes into some

869
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:22,120
Speaker 1: detail on this in her work that I mentioned earlier,

870
00:47:22,400 --> 00:47:24,879
Speaker 1: and Um as an example of this, who points out

871
00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:29,319
Speaker 1: that during the Ramesses, the the elevenths reign, forty five

872
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:32,760
Speaker 1: workmen in the royal and necropolis were arrested and portraited

873
00:47:33,120 --> 00:47:36,560
Speaker 1: and after confessing, brought to trial and thirty eight of

874
00:47:36,600 --> 00:47:40,080
Speaker 1: them were sentenced to death for grave robbing. Yeah. Um,

875
00:47:40,120 --> 00:47:42,320
Speaker 1: And there are various other accounts here. I don't know

876
00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:44,520
Speaker 1: if we want to go into too many of them,

877
00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:49,840
Speaker 1: but but basically, when we look back at at the writings, uh,

878
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:53,680
Speaker 1: there there are various rebellions that result in poor people

879
00:47:53,960 --> 00:47:58,080
Speaker 1: smashing open royal tombs. You you also see the tendency

880
00:47:58,200 --> 00:48:01,800
Speaker 1: later on for um individuals to engage in a cycle

881
00:48:01,840 --> 00:48:03,880
Speaker 1: of grave robbing. So we're in some cases you have

882
00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:06,200
Speaker 1: tombs that were looted and then used again for burial

883
00:48:06,200 --> 00:48:09,359
Speaker 1: by new people, then looted again. So again, just think

884
00:48:09,360 --> 00:48:11,680
Speaker 1: of those vast the vast period of time we're talking

885
00:48:11,680 --> 00:48:15,160
Speaker 1: about here, and all the various upheavals and ins and

886
00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:17,399
Speaker 1: outs that are gonna occur and What this I think

887
00:48:17,440 --> 00:48:21,720
Speaker 1: says to me is that there were while this idea

888
00:48:21,880 --> 00:48:25,120
Speaker 1: of making the dead comfortable and it being a sacred

889
00:48:25,160 --> 00:48:29,480
Speaker 1: practice was practiced by some, there were certainly other people

890
00:48:29,480 --> 00:48:34,160
Speaker 1: who were more interested in the material wealth of the living.

891
00:48:34,360 --> 00:48:37,160
Speaker 1: Of though, yeah, there of their current circumstances, and so

892
00:48:37,520 --> 00:48:40,440
Speaker 1: that's why you had a lot of these break ins.

893
00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:43,240
Speaker 1: But you know, this is what led to them moving

894
00:48:43,320 --> 00:48:47,120
Speaker 1: bodies to hidden places or rewrapping them, restoring damage that

895
00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:50,880
Speaker 1: was done to them. There's all kinds of of mummification

896
00:48:50,960 --> 00:48:54,279
Speaker 1: practices that came out of how prevalent the grave robbing was.

897
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:58,879
Speaker 1: And of course the worst grave robbers of all. Oh yes, well,

898
00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:01,759
Speaker 1: of course uh came from became in the form of

899
00:49:02,280 --> 00:49:05,880
Speaker 1: colonial influences. Um. Yeah. The nineteenth century especially was the

900
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:09,920
Speaker 1: time of just immense plundering by European treasure hunters, fueled

901
00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:14,120
Speaker 1: by the genuine interest in Egyptology. I mean some of

902
00:49:14,160 --> 00:49:17,480
Speaker 1: the individuals involved in this were, for instance, uh, William

903
00:49:18,040 --> 00:49:21,880
Speaker 1: Flinders Petrie, Uh really the father of modern egyptology, but

904
00:49:21,920 --> 00:49:24,840
Speaker 1: he deluded tons of artifacts. So you know, it's like

905
00:49:24,880 --> 00:49:27,719
Speaker 1: the two movements are are combined here and then back

906
00:49:27,760 --> 00:49:30,720
Speaker 1: at home in Europe, you have all of this interest

907
00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:34,360
Speaker 1: in anything Oriental. So so that's fueling the need for

908
00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:37,360
Speaker 1: this since one of the reasons you find again Egyptian

909
00:49:37,400 --> 00:49:39,680
Speaker 1: obilists in New York and lined it in Paris, and

910
00:49:39,719 --> 00:49:42,439
Speaker 1: you find all these cultural treasures to spread across inter

911
00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:47,520
Speaker 1: national museums. And at the same time you have egypt

912
00:49:47,800 --> 00:49:53,160
Speaker 1: modernizing ruler Muhammad Ali, who was actually an Ottoman Albanian

913
00:49:53,520 --> 00:49:56,759
Speaker 1: um and he created a dynasty that ruled until the

914
00:49:56,840 --> 00:49:59,920
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two revolution, and he was all too willing

915
00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:04,880
Speaker 1: to give up these various artifacts in order to ingratiate

916
00:50:05,000 --> 00:50:09,120
Speaker 1: himself to these imperial and colonial powers. Just like imagine that,

917
00:50:09,160 --> 00:50:12,560
Speaker 1: like uh uh like some we're in the middle of

918
00:50:12,520 --> 00:50:15,319
Speaker 1: a presidential psych all right. Now, let's say let's say

919
00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:19,319
Speaker 1: Donald Trump gets elected and Donald Trump says, you know what, like,

920
00:50:19,440 --> 00:50:24,319
Speaker 1: I think it's okay if all of Europe and uh,

921
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:26,879
Speaker 1: let's let's let Asia have them too. They can dig

922
00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:29,040
Speaker 1: up all of our graves, of all of our loved

923
00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:30,920
Speaker 1: ones and just take their bodies and put them in

924
00:50:31,040 --> 00:50:35,359
Speaker 1: museums or or traveling side shows you guys cool, that

925
00:50:35,680 --> 00:50:37,160
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if you're cool, that we're going to

926
00:50:37,239 --> 00:50:39,960
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, yeah, And the thing is too that

927
00:50:40,000 --> 00:50:43,279
Speaker 1: I mentioned that revolution, it wasn't ntil around. It wasn't

928
00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:46,400
Speaker 1: until around that period of the Egyptian government began to

929
00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:50,160
Speaker 1: actually restrict treasure hunters, limiting on them only to only

930
00:50:50,239 --> 00:50:53,120
Speaker 1: fifty of the artifacts that they found. And it wasn't

931
00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:56,440
Speaker 1: until the late nineteen eighties that that Egypt really cracked

932
00:50:56,440 --> 00:50:59,279
Speaker 1: down on this sort of behavior in a very meaningful way.

933
00:50:59,360 --> 00:51:01,920
Speaker 1: So I guess this is something to think about the

934
00:51:01,960 --> 00:51:04,520
Speaker 1: next time we're at the museum and we're looking at

935
00:51:04,560 --> 00:51:06,759
Speaker 1: this stuff, and there's one part of me that's like,

936
00:51:06,840 --> 00:51:09,000
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that this is here and we have

937
00:51:09,120 --> 00:51:11,840
Speaker 1: access to it and we're able to sort of see

938
00:51:12,200 --> 00:51:14,719
Speaker 1: the history here right in this location, and there's another

939
00:51:14,760 --> 00:51:18,040
Speaker 1: part of me that feels guilty about it and thinks, well,

940
00:51:18,640 --> 00:51:21,319
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the stuff should be back at home

941
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:24,520
Speaker 1: where it was initially intended to be. Um. If you

942
00:51:24,560 --> 00:51:27,120
Speaker 1: want to go see it, go to Egypt. Yeah, And

943
00:51:27,320 --> 00:51:29,960
Speaker 1: I mean it's definite. There's definitely been a movement in

944
00:51:30,320 --> 00:51:33,600
Speaker 1: over the past a few decades to see about the

945
00:51:33,640 --> 00:51:36,920
Speaker 1: return of these objects, and it's just kind of an

946
00:51:36,960 --> 00:51:39,840
Speaker 1: ongoing issue. UM. And this is where, like we were

947
00:51:39,840 --> 00:51:43,080
Speaker 1: talking about earlier that pop culture guilt comes from and

948
00:51:43,120 --> 00:51:44,880
Speaker 1: the curse of the Mummy, right, that the mummy is

949
00:51:44,920 --> 00:51:47,080
Speaker 1: going to come out and kill everybody who is responsible

950
00:51:47,120 --> 00:51:50,840
Speaker 1: for bringing its body away from its origin site. Yeah,

951
00:51:50,920 --> 00:51:53,839
Speaker 1: and and there's certainly some individuals out there who who

952
00:51:53,920 --> 00:51:56,960
Speaker 1: deserve a little wrap. And the thing is, it's one

953
00:51:57,000 --> 00:51:59,760
Speaker 1: thing to look at, you know, Egyptologists who are running

954
00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:02,920
Speaker 1: off with the with this stuff. But then from the

955
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:05,799
Speaker 1: from the twelfth century b c. Onwards, so again for

956
00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:08,640
Speaker 1: a pretty long period of time, you see a lot

957
00:52:08,719 --> 00:52:12,480
Speaker 1: of mistreatment of of mummies in the Middle East and

958
00:52:12,560 --> 00:52:16,200
Speaker 1: especially in Europe. And so this is not just people saying, oh,

959
00:52:16,200 --> 00:52:17,800
Speaker 1: this is cool, I want to study this, or I

960
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:20,400
Speaker 1: want to take this bit of art attached to it

961
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:24,040
Speaker 1: and display it somewhere. You see preserve corpses destroyed for

962
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:27,600
Speaker 1: mere sport um. You also see them used as kindling

963
00:52:27,640 --> 00:52:32,200
Speaker 1: for fire, and most shocking of all, uh and rather

964
00:52:32,400 --> 00:52:36,400
Speaker 1: morbidly entertainingly of all, uh, thousands of mummies end up

965
00:52:36,400 --> 00:52:41,040
Speaker 1: perishing in apothecaries corpse grinders for use in medicine. Right,

966
00:52:41,160 --> 00:52:43,120
Speaker 1: So I mean all of these things kind of show

967
00:52:43,120 --> 00:52:48,280
Speaker 1: you where the cultures, priorities headed, where they where they changed. Yeah. Yeah,

968
00:52:48,360 --> 00:52:51,160
Speaker 1: And the weird thing about this is that you have

969
00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:56,480
Speaker 1: uh from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries Europeans who

970
00:52:56,520 --> 00:53:01,839
Speaker 1: are engaging in medicinal cannibalism through then assumption of of

971
00:53:01,880 --> 00:53:05,680
Speaker 1: medicines derived from mummy powder. This is like we we

972
00:53:05,680 --> 00:53:08,400
Speaker 1: we just did an episode on wolf Spain. This is

973
00:53:08,440 --> 00:53:12,040
Speaker 1: like yet another like kind of classic monster from the

974
00:53:12,160 --> 00:53:16,920
Speaker 1: universal era that uh is medicinal in origin somehow. Yeah,

975
00:53:16,960 --> 00:53:21,280
Speaker 1: though ultimately as UH, as I'll explain um, completely useless.

976
00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:23,759
Speaker 1: They used they used it supposedly to treat and thinking

977
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:26,360
Speaker 1: they were treating everything from headache, headaches to a rectile

978
00:53:26,400 --> 00:53:29,839
Speaker 1: dysfunction and stomach ulcers and tumors. So they drank it

979
00:53:29,840 --> 00:53:34,080
Speaker 1: in tinctures, they mixed it into salves. Uh I I

980
00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:36,080
Speaker 1: you know, maybe they might have even used it into

981
00:53:36,120 --> 00:53:38,600
Speaker 1: positories for all I know. But but yeah, they're they're

982
00:53:38,680 --> 00:53:44,439
Speaker 1: they're in taking they're consuming this powder and it all

983
00:53:44,520 --> 00:53:49,719
Speaker 1: hinges on bitumen, the world's first petroleum product. Really, it's

984
00:53:49,719 --> 00:53:53,239
Speaker 1: a sticky, black, viscous substance. You probably know it better

985
00:53:53,320 --> 00:53:56,240
Speaker 1: is asphalt. But it was highly prized in the ancient

986
00:53:56,239 --> 00:53:59,280
Speaker 1: world and for the longest it was primarily a Mesopotamian monopoly.

987
00:53:59,840 --> 00:54:04,000
Speaker 1: The substance saw use in various endeavors, including boat calking,

988
00:54:04,320 --> 00:54:08,040
Speaker 1: art causa cosmetics, but physicians in the region eventually used

989
00:54:08,040 --> 00:54:10,719
Speaker 1: it to treat a number of ailments and um and

990
00:54:10,800 --> 00:54:13,759
Speaker 1: word of these ailments eventually spread to Europe. But how

991
00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:16,080
Speaker 1: you're gonna obtain this stuff if you don't have access

992
00:54:16,120 --> 00:54:20,520
Speaker 1: to Mesopotamian bitamin deposits? Well, word had it at the

993
00:54:20,560 --> 00:54:24,080
Speaker 1: time that the ancient Egyptians used bitumen as a preservative

994
00:54:24,120 --> 00:54:26,399
Speaker 1: in their mummies. And you're probably thinking, well, I don't

995
00:54:26,400 --> 00:54:30,719
Speaker 1: remember you guys mentioning vitamin earlier. There's a reason, um.

996
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:33,480
Speaker 1: But it ends up becoming so pervasive that even the

997
00:54:33,560 --> 00:54:37,720
Speaker 1: word mummy comes from the Persian word for wax movia

998
00:54:38,160 --> 00:54:41,800
Speaker 1: used to describe bitumin. Yet, while the Egyptians used bitumen

999
00:54:41,880 --> 00:54:48,240
Speaker 1: occasionally for from from about UH eleven hundred CE onward,

1000
00:54:48,320 --> 00:54:50,960
Speaker 1: they largely used resins in the oils in their in

1001
00:54:51,000 --> 00:54:55,040
Speaker 1: their mortuary practices. But the Europeans didn't know this. Uh

1002
00:54:55,160 --> 00:55:00,160
Speaker 1: So their movia based medicines contained equal parts magic, goal

1003
00:55:00,239 --> 00:55:03,520
Speaker 1: thinking and placebo effect. The treatments seemed to work, so

1004
00:55:03,719 --> 00:55:07,440
Speaker 1: they just continued grinding up the corpses, and when mummies

1005
00:55:07,440 --> 00:55:11,799
Speaker 1: were scarce, contemporary cadavers were actually dried and pulverized to

1006
00:55:11,880 --> 00:55:15,000
Speaker 1: produce an imitation product that you could sell off, and

1007
00:55:15,120 --> 00:55:17,120
Speaker 1: it just keeps going to practice doesn't fall away until

1008
00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:21,959
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, and actual vitamin still sees limited use

1009
00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:25,239
Speaker 1: in modern Iran as a skin treatment. But again that's

1010
00:55:25,280 --> 00:55:28,319
Speaker 1: actual bitumin and not this this ground up mummies, which

1011
00:55:28,400 --> 00:55:30,719
Speaker 1: obtained probably none of it. So, like to put it

1012
00:55:30,760 --> 00:55:33,520
Speaker 1: in perspective, you know, we're looking back on the practice

1013
00:55:33,560 --> 00:55:36,200
Speaker 1: of mummification during Egyptian times and going, oh, that's kind

1014
00:55:36,200 --> 00:55:39,239
Speaker 1: of alien and weird, and we're fascinated with it, and

1015
00:55:39,640 --> 00:55:42,319
Speaker 1: you know, human history changes over time. And yet like

1016
00:55:42,440 --> 00:55:47,920
Speaker 1: not two centuries ago, we were grinding up those bodies

1017
00:55:48,560 --> 00:55:52,879
Speaker 1: essentially so that we could digest asphalt because we thought

1018
00:55:52,880 --> 00:55:55,160
Speaker 1: that that was going to be healthy for us. Yeah,

1019
00:55:55,160 --> 00:55:59,000
Speaker 1: ground up mummies was essentially the pumpkin spice latte to day. Yeah.

1020
00:55:59,239 --> 00:56:02,520
Speaker 1: So I mean, like we're not all that much more

1021
00:56:02,560 --> 00:56:04,480
Speaker 1: advanced than we like to think we are. You know,

1022
00:56:04,520 --> 00:56:07,680
Speaker 1: I'm sure like there's gonna be things from from modern

1023
00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:10,640
Speaker 1: time today that a couple hundred years from now people

1024
00:56:10,640 --> 00:56:12,080
Speaker 1: are going to look back and be like, I can't

1025
00:56:12,080 --> 00:56:15,960
Speaker 1: believe that they thought like, uh, but like ginko or something,

1026
00:56:16,000 --> 00:56:19,839
Speaker 1: and who knows what not that I'm denigrating the use

1027
00:56:19,840 --> 00:56:22,960
Speaker 1: of ginko. I certainly have had more than one drink

1028
00:56:23,000 --> 00:56:24,439
Speaker 1: with that in it, but you know what I mean,

1029
00:56:24,480 --> 00:56:27,279
Speaker 1: like start adding it to beers I think, right, or

1030
00:56:27,400 --> 00:56:31,080
Speaker 1: or or other kind of supplements. And then eventually society goes,

1031
00:56:31,320 --> 00:56:33,000
Speaker 1: what are we doing? What were we doing? What was

1032
00:56:33,040 --> 00:56:35,640
Speaker 1: that ginko thing about? Why were we so crazy about

1033
00:56:36,080 --> 00:56:42,440
Speaker 1: about palm like kale someone mbucha? But of course, uh,

1034
00:56:42,520 --> 00:56:45,800
Speaker 1: you know, the whole eating of mummies, essentially, the medicinal

1035
00:56:45,840 --> 00:56:50,000
Speaker 1: cannibalism of mummies is one thing. Um, just just the curiosity,

1036
00:56:50,120 --> 00:56:54,120
Speaker 1: just the the exploration. Uh. And and the the rise

1037
00:56:54,160 --> 00:56:58,520
Speaker 1: of Egyptology saw you know, all sorts of early unwrappings,

1038
00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:02,160
Speaker 1: unwrapping parties, you know, up artifacts that are destroyed. And

1039
00:57:02,200 --> 00:57:04,759
Speaker 1: on top of this, there's a you know, there's a boom,

1040
00:57:04,800 --> 00:57:08,040
Speaker 1: there's a demand for artifacts. So you have, uh, you

1041
00:57:08,120 --> 00:57:10,600
Speaker 1: have local dealers in Egypt that are breaking up artifacts

1042
00:57:10,600 --> 00:57:13,840
Speaker 1: into multiple parts. They're placing a mummy from one time

1043
00:57:13,880 --> 00:57:16,760
Speaker 1: period in an unrelated casket from another and then they're

1044
00:57:16,760 --> 00:57:20,360
Speaker 1: selling that, so it becomes you're destroying the artifacts to

1045
00:57:20,440 --> 00:57:22,680
Speaker 1: learn about them, but then also the market for them

1046
00:57:22,720 --> 00:57:24,520
Speaker 1: is making it harder to study them because of the

1047
00:57:24,640 --> 00:57:27,240
Speaker 1: stuff that's mismatched. You know, this is a lot like

1048
00:57:28,120 --> 00:57:31,160
Speaker 1: palam cests. When we talked about palam sests earlier, Like

1049
00:57:31,200 --> 00:57:33,840
Speaker 1: when they first started examining those, they're pouring acid on

1050
00:57:33,880 --> 00:57:36,000
Speaker 1: it and scraping them with knives and things like that,

1051
00:57:36,080 --> 00:57:39,800
Speaker 1: and now they're using you know, technology to preserve them

1052
00:57:39,800 --> 00:57:41,960
Speaker 1: but also examine them. It sounds like that's kind of

1053
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:46,040
Speaker 1: the same history of dissecting mummies. I suppose, yeah exactly.

1054
00:57:46,080 --> 00:57:48,240
Speaker 1: I mean, you open an ancient text and you risk

1055
00:57:48,720 --> 00:57:51,240
Speaker 1: the pages disintegrating it. Same thing happens when you unwrap

1056
00:57:51,240 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 1: a mumm. You're exposing stuff to air that haven't been

1057
00:57:53,160 --> 00:57:55,640
Speaker 1: exposed in in in thousands of years, and you can

1058
00:57:55,640 --> 00:58:00,440
Speaker 1: just crumble. Fortunately, today we have a number of techniques

1059
00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:04,080
Speaker 1: that allow us to take apart the mummy without actually

1060
00:58:04,120 --> 00:58:09,000
Speaker 1: taking it apart right, various radiographic techniques that that enable

1061
00:58:09,160 --> 00:58:13,480
Speaker 1: non destructive studies of these mummified remains. Interestingly enough, the

1062
00:58:13,560 --> 00:58:16,760
Speaker 1: pioneer on some of these was uh was Flinders Petrie

1063
00:58:16,880 --> 00:58:20,880
Speaker 1: in eight who again was involved in a lot of

1064
00:58:21,440 --> 00:58:24,120
Speaker 1: some of the more destructive aspects of Egyptology at the time,

1065
00:58:24,160 --> 00:58:26,880
Speaker 1: but you know he and to his credit, he also

1066
00:58:26,920 --> 00:58:29,520
Speaker 1: helped pave the way for UH some of the tools

1067
00:58:29,560 --> 00:58:33,360
Speaker 1: we have today, such as X rays, endoscopic techniques UM,

1068
00:58:33,560 --> 00:58:36,080
Speaker 1: which I think the Egyptians would have appreciated based on

1069
00:58:36,120 --> 00:58:40,520
Speaker 1: their their interests UM as well as you know the

1070
00:58:40,640 --> 00:58:45,320
Speaker 1: use of stable isotopes, trace metals, DNA, carbon dating, uh

1071
00:58:45,400 --> 00:58:48,400
Speaker 1: CT scanning is is very interesting. So this is where

1072
00:58:48,440 --> 00:58:52,840
Speaker 1: you use X ray computed tomography. This is a computer

1073
00:58:52,960 --> 00:58:56,000
Speaker 1: combines multiple X rays from different angles and creates a

1074
00:58:56,000 --> 00:59:01,560
Speaker 1: cross section and he's sort of like a three D scanner. Yeah,

1075
00:59:01,640 --> 00:59:03,760
Speaker 1: you can you create this this three D cross section

1076
00:59:03,840 --> 00:59:07,160
Speaker 1: of the body. And this has been used to to

1077
00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:10,640
Speaker 1: make a number of different discoveries about existing and newly

1078
00:59:10,640 --> 00:59:13,520
Speaker 1: discovered mummies. But one example that I love is a

1079
00:59:13,680 --> 00:59:16,480
Speaker 1: This is a two thousand twelve study where they used

1080
00:59:16,480 --> 00:59:20,720
Speaker 1: a CT to scan a year old female money and

1081
00:59:20,760 --> 00:59:24,280
Speaker 1: they were revealed a tubular object embedded in its skull

1082
00:59:24,720 --> 00:59:29,640
Speaker 1: between the brains, left parietal bone at and the resin

1083
00:59:29,720 --> 00:59:32,680
Speaker 1: filled back of the skull. And it turned out that

1084
00:59:32,760 --> 00:59:35,480
Speaker 1: it was a tool used for the removal of the brain.

1085
00:59:35,560 --> 00:59:38,120
Speaker 1: And it wasn't an iron hook as we mentioned earlier

1086
00:59:38,120 --> 00:59:40,440
Speaker 1: and as Herodotus wrote about, but it was just a

1087
00:59:40,480 --> 00:59:44,480
Speaker 1: wooden stick. So this was this was an economics version

1088
00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:49,040
Speaker 1: of the mummification process. It just got accidentally left it there. Yeah.

1089
00:59:49,080 --> 00:59:51,640
Speaker 1: I guess they realized occasionally you're just gonna lose it

1090
00:59:51,680 --> 00:59:53,919
Speaker 1: too off there, and you could you could dig it out,

1091
00:59:53,960 --> 00:59:56,240
Speaker 1: but you might as well leave it because who's the

1092
00:59:56,280 --> 00:59:59,000
Speaker 1: mommy going to come back? And right, yeah, yeah, exactly. Well,

1093
00:59:59,320 --> 01:00:02,320
Speaker 1: you know, again thinking about the comfort of these mummies.

1094
01:00:02,360 --> 01:00:04,800
Speaker 1: You know, they wake up and they've they've got wooden

1095
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:09,680
Speaker 1: tools shoved up their nose, their brains gone. That's would

1096
01:00:09,720 --> 01:00:13,840
Speaker 1: I wager it wouldn't be all that comfortable. Hence the

1097
01:00:13,960 --> 01:00:17,760
Speaker 1: mythos of the mummies coming back angry. And you know, finally,

1098
01:00:17,960 --> 01:00:20,040
Speaker 1: one of another great thing to come out of this

1099
01:00:20,120 --> 01:00:23,800
Speaker 1: is despite all of the destruction of the artifacts, destruction

1100
01:00:23,840 --> 01:00:26,520
Speaker 1: destruction of mummies over the years, the pilfering of the

1101
01:00:26,840 --> 01:00:32,200
Speaker 1: tombs um, we continue to unearthed mummies um mummies. Uh

1102
01:00:32,280 --> 01:00:36,600
Speaker 1: that that early Egyptologists, ancient grave robbers in Victorian ghoules

1103
01:00:36,640 --> 01:00:39,160
Speaker 1: haven't had a chance to pilfer. Just one example is

1104
01:00:39,160 --> 01:00:43,440
Speaker 1: the Valley of the Golden Mummies discovered in nine see

1105
01:00:44,160 --> 01:00:46,960
Speaker 1: by an Egyptian archaeology team. They on earth two hundred

1106
01:00:47,000 --> 01:00:51,280
Speaker 1: and fifty mummies and they estimate another ten thousand. So again,

1107
01:00:51,320 --> 01:00:54,840
Speaker 1: you just have a practice of mummifying the dead for

1108
01:00:55,040 --> 01:00:58,760
Speaker 1: thousands of years, You're gonna amass a lot of specimens. Sure,

1109
01:00:58,800 --> 01:01:01,360
Speaker 1: I'm sure that there's plenty of mummies to go around

1110
01:01:01,400 --> 01:01:03,200
Speaker 1: for this kind of thing. I guess the question really

1111
01:01:03,320 --> 01:01:05,280
Speaker 1: is like whether or not we should be removing them,

1112
01:01:05,360 --> 01:01:07,560
Speaker 1: or if we're removing them, should we be removing them

1113
01:01:07,600 --> 01:01:13,200
Speaker 1: from Egypt? You know, maybe maybe they maybe preserve the

1114
01:01:13,560 --> 01:01:16,200
Speaker 1: traditions in some way, but also make them available for

1115
01:01:16,240 --> 01:01:19,400
Speaker 1: the public. Yeah, it seems like it's been it's been

1116
01:01:19,480 --> 01:01:21,360
Speaker 1: kind of enough of a stuff step for us, a

1117
01:01:21,400 --> 01:01:24,240
Speaker 1: big enough step for us to to not just pill

1118
01:01:24,280 --> 01:01:26,640
Speaker 1: for a culture's heritage. But then at what point do

1119
01:01:26,720 --> 01:01:29,600
Speaker 1: we also have to say, how do you how do

1120
01:01:29,640 --> 01:01:31,760
Speaker 1: you treat the ancient dead? Should the ancient dead be

1121
01:01:31,800 --> 01:01:35,280
Speaker 1: treated more respectfully than we're doing now? To what extent

1122
01:01:35,720 --> 01:01:40,440
Speaker 1: is that being done already? Uh? In in modern archaeological

1123
01:01:40,600 --> 01:01:44,439
Speaker 1: surveys of ancient tunes. Well, I'd be curious to hear

1124
01:01:44,640 --> 01:01:47,080
Speaker 1: from uh, you know, our listeners out there that are

1125
01:01:47,120 --> 01:01:51,120
Speaker 1: involved in UM, you know, archaeology or or other disciplines

1126
01:01:51,120 --> 01:01:53,640
Speaker 1: that are connected to this UM. You know, what are

1127
01:01:53,680 --> 01:01:56,480
Speaker 1: the modern practices or what's what's the Surely there have

1128
01:01:56,640 --> 01:01:59,520
Speaker 1: to be journal articles about the ethics on this. Uh.

1129
01:01:59,680 --> 01:02:02,320
Speaker 1: And and as that turned into some kind of a

1130
01:02:02,320 --> 01:02:06,600
Speaker 1: debate within the community, Yeah that that that could be

1131
01:02:06,640 --> 01:02:10,840
Speaker 1: an entire episode onto itself, right, Yeah, definitely. Well, UM,

1132
01:02:10,880 --> 01:02:13,320
Speaker 1: if you have, you know, information like that, or if

1133
01:02:13,320 --> 01:02:16,560
Speaker 1: there's something about Egyptian mummies that we missed today, you know,

1134
01:02:16,720 --> 01:02:19,280
Speaker 1: let us know. UM. As we said at the top,

1135
01:02:19,320 --> 01:02:21,160
Speaker 1: you can reach out to us on social media. We're

1136
01:02:21,240 --> 01:02:24,560
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler can write to us there,

1137
01:02:24,680 --> 01:02:27,560
Speaker 1: tweet at us, send us a message, all those all

1138
01:02:27,560 --> 01:02:30,320
Speaker 1: those things depending on what your medium of choices. Yeah,

1139
01:02:30,360 --> 01:02:32,120
Speaker 1: and of course stuff with all your mind. Dot com

1140
01:02:32,280 --> 01:02:34,840
Speaker 1: is the mothership that we find all the podcast, all

1141
01:02:34,880 --> 01:02:37,600
Speaker 1: the blog post, all the videos. Uh. And you know,

1142
01:02:37,640 --> 01:02:39,640
Speaker 1: we've had a number of pieces of content over the

1143
01:02:39,720 --> 01:02:43,360
Speaker 1: years related to Egyptology, different blog posts that I wrote

1144
01:02:43,400 --> 01:02:46,920
Speaker 1: about either something that's purely cosmological in nature or something

1145
01:02:47,480 --> 01:02:51,280
Speaker 1: you know tied to more the folklore or or or

1146
01:02:51,360 --> 01:02:54,720
Speaker 1: even archaeology itself, So check those out. I'll link to

1147
01:02:54,760 --> 01:02:57,080
Speaker 1: some related material on the landing page for this episode.

1148
01:02:57,160 --> 01:03:00,520
Speaker 1: Certainly are Monster Science episode. Oh yes, that'll definitely be

1149
01:03:00,560 --> 01:03:03,080
Speaker 1: in there. And again, we're going to be experimenting the

1150
01:03:03,120 --> 01:03:05,120
Speaker 1: periscope at the end of October, so you know, if

1151
01:03:05,120 --> 01:03:07,200
Speaker 1: you've got some listener mail that you want us to

1152
01:03:07,200 --> 01:03:10,440
Speaker 1: to read, uh, send it in. Potentially will be able

1153
01:03:10,480 --> 01:03:13,880
Speaker 1: to read it during one of those periscope airings or

1154
01:03:13,680 --> 01:03:16,560
Speaker 1: or or suppose the way periscope works, you could you

1155
01:03:16,560 --> 01:03:19,560
Speaker 1: could write into us right there actually like communicate with

1156
01:03:19,640 --> 01:03:22,240
Speaker 1: us while we're streaming. Yeah, it's gonna be a learning

1157
01:03:22,400 --> 01:03:24,800
Speaker 1: experience for all. And the way to reach us through

1158
01:03:24,840 --> 01:03:27,439
Speaker 1: that method is at our email address, which is blow

1159
01:03:27,480 --> 01:03:33,160
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more

1160
01:03:33,200 --> 01:03:35,480
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how

1161
01:03:35,520 --> 01:03:42,560
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com