WEBVTT - Egyptian Mummies: A Cosmic, Mortuary Odyssey 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.800 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:16.240 My name is Robert Lamb. Hey, I'm Christian Sager. So 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:19.919 before we get into today's topic, which is again like 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:23.479 another one of our great October kind of monster themed one, 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:26.880 let's talk about a few upcoming things for the show. 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:31.680 We have, First of all, Periscope. If you're not familiar 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:34.680 with that, it's a live streaming video app that's connected 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:37.000 to Twitter, and we're gonna do a little experiment with 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:41.040 it starting on October twenty three, which is a Friday. Joe, 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:44.000 Robert and I are going to use Periscope to start 0:00:44.000 --> 0:00:46.400 addressing some of our listener mail. We've just been getting 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:48.800 a ton of listener mail lately and didn't really feel 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:52.000 like we could address all of it in one quarterly podcast, 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:54.520 so we thought, why don't we try this periscope thing out. 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:56.400 Some of our colleagues here at How Stuff Works are 0:00:56.480 --> 0:00:59.520 using it, and so if you want to check that out, 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:02.680 allow us on social media and you'll you know, we'll 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:05.120 be broadcasting it far and wide to let you know 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:07.640 what time it's going to be available. The other thing 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:11.840 is that because it's October and it's monster time. We 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:14.840 are bringing back our video series Monster Science, and I 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:18.360 say ours, but it's really yours. Robert. I wasn't involved 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:20.800 with the show the first two seasons that these were created, 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:24.119 and the the new episodes have been shot, and I'm 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:26.240 just I'm really looking forward to it because Monster Science 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:28.959 is one of my favorite things that's ever been done here. Yeah, 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:31.080 it's a lot of fun to put together. It's kind 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:33.560 of if you're not seeing it before anybody out there. 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:39.080 It's basically like a daytime horror host from the nineties, uh, 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:45.320 comparing fictional monsters to real world organism. Yeah, you guys 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:50.120 have episodes on everything from Cathulhu and Jason Vorhees too. 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:53.880 There's actually a Mummies episode right there, and the Mummy episode. 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:56.400 All those episodes already exist on our YouTube channel and 0:01:56.480 --> 0:01:58.760 on stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. But if 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:01.560 you're following us on face Book, tomorrow, we're going to 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:04.520 be posting it right to Facebook, so you'll be able 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:07.120 to watch it on our our Facebook page there, so 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:09.880 um so to get in touch with us on all 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:11.520 those social things, like if you want to follow us 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:14.160 on Periscope or see these videos make sure that you 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:17.320 check us out on whatever your social media channel of choices. 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:20.320 We're on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler, all those we used 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:23.120 they handle blow the mind. There's of course the Mothership's 0:02:23.120 --> 0:02:25.680 stuff to blow your mind dot com and our YouTube 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:28.679 channel as well. All right, So on that note, let 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:32.480 us dive into the world of the money, particularly the 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:37.400 Egyptian mummy. Um. There are various mummification traditions throughout the world, 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:41.280 and many of them are just so fascinating. But there's 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:44.080 more than enough to talk about with just Egyptian mommy. 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:47.239 It's an incredibly deep topic. And yeah, I think so 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:50.959 we're gonna we decided to specifically focus on the Egyptian 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:56.320 process and mythology here in today's episode. Uh. If there's 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:59.520 enough interest, let us know, uh, and we will go 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:02.120 on and do another episode on all the other variations 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:03.480 because one of the things that I found that was 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:06.800 interesting was apparently it was being done in the America's 0:03:07.320 --> 0:03:09.960 even before it was being done in Egypt. Yeah. I 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:13.440 believe one of the oldest hair samples that we have 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:19.320 comes from a Central American mummy. So yeah, yeah, um, 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:22.359 so yeah, if you want to hear about self mummifying, 0:03:23.000 --> 0:03:26.680 monks in in Asia. Let us know. Uh, that's something 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:28.520 we can discuss. Do you want to hear about bog people? 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:32.760 That can be another episode, But for this episode, there's 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:36.800 there's so much about Egyptian mummies that that we will 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:40.640 be struggling to fit enough into one episode here today. Yeah, 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:44.280 and they're really pervasive. I think when you know, in 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:47.600 Western culture, at least, when we think mummies are mummification, 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:51.560 everybody goes for the Egyptian one, mainly because, uh, it's 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:56.840 popularity in films and other media, right, like the Curse 0:03:56.880 --> 0:03:58.760 of a Mummy or or something like that. Well, even 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:01.040 in children's books. And this is something that I've really 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:04.480 come on too in the last few years. Uh with 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:07.360 the with the Sun, is that that mummies pop up 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:09.640 in books all the time. Yeah, my son has a 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:12.400 book where like a skeleton is going trick or treating 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:15.400 and it is chased by a mummy. Of course. Maurice 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:18.039 Sindac had a had a wonderful pop up book that 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:20.760 has a mummy in it. And in both of those 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:24.280 you see this, uh this trope employee that you also 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:28.240 encounter and other bits of mummy media where of course 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:30.919 you grab hold of the wrapping and you pull the 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:32.880 wrapping and then the mummy spins around like a top 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:36.200 and the Monster Squad the way to take out a mommy. 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:39.039 That's that's how they did it in a Monster Squad. Yeah, 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:40.800 one of my favorite movies when I was a kid, 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:43.479 and it's it's currently streaming on Netflix. I was able 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:46.760 to catch it again recently. But yeah, they they like 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:49.960 tie the bandage to an arrow, shoot it into a tree, 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:51.839 and the mummy is like hanging onto the back of 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:54.680 their car and slowly unravels. It turns out there was 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:57.960 nothing there except for a skull the whole time, which 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:00.680 on one level I was always disappointed with in Monster 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:04.240 Squad because the mommy is clearly cooler looking than what 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:06.279 they do with him. But I can see where the 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:10.000 trope is attractive, particularly in children's literature, because you have 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:15.440 this threatening but easily unwound creature, right, this this threat 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:19.560 that is easily dismissed but still visually impressed. Well, all right, 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:21.680 I'm gonna go out on a limb here. As a 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:26.479 horror fan, I've never found mummies to be scary or 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:28.719 to make much sense. In fact, like I always thought 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:31.280 of mummies as being like the kind of like they 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:35.560 would be the the monster that like makes friends with you, 0:05:35.680 --> 0:05:39.000 right like the way Frankenstein does in Monster Squad. I 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:42.200 just especially from when when you look at like the 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:46.160 actual process, the science behind it, and the history in 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:49.800 Egyptian culture. Where does this idea of mummies as like 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:53.160 these evil monsters that are going to kill us come from? Well, I, 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:55.839 for for my own part, I find that it makes 0:05:55.839 --> 0:05:58.760 more sense if you think about it in terms of 0:05:59.000 --> 0:06:02.279 the Egyptian mummy as a as a traveler across spot 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:06.440 time and space. Okay, so um, and we'll get into 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:10.200 more into the cosmology here shortly. But essentially, you have 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:14.080 this individual who is leaving our world through the gates 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:17.960 of death, traveling to another world and in another world 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:21.840 where uh, nothing is guaranteed. It's not just like, oh, 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:24.159 you're going to Egyptian heaven. Now you're going to an 0:06:24.200 --> 0:06:27.600 Egyptian afterlife that's rife with danger. You're gonna need supplies, 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:30.760 you're gonna need some some servants, you're gonna need you know, 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:34.960 some spells to protect you. So it's a dangerous journey, 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:40.200 not unlike say sending um colonists like frozen colonists on 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:43.680 a spaceship, generation ship, you know, across the cosmos to 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:46.680 another world. And then what it happens if you wake 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:51.279 up halfway through because some dumb museum dude has decided 0:06:51.279 --> 0:06:53.040 that he wants to put you on display. You're gonna 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:56.840 be angry, You're gonna be a little confused, and you 0:06:57.120 --> 0:06:59.160 might not be in the best physical condition. So you're 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:01.400 gonna tell some people. That's where it always seems to 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:04.719 come from, right is the idea? It seems like even 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:08.400 as we are doing it, we as Westerners, seem to 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:12.080 acknowledge that the idea of us taking these bodies and 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:16.480 these sacred objects from their sites and taking them on 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:20.680 a tour, popping them in a museum somewhere is inherently 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:24.880 wrong and that we must be punished for doing so. Yeah, 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:27.920 it is there, and I'm surely somebody has written at 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:31.360 length on this, to what extent has the Mummy. This 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:36.000 is a monster, an externalization of our own inner guilt, 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:41.120 having really just ripped pieces of this culture apart and 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:43.320 spread it across the world. Because you see, you see 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:48.040 obelisks from ancient Egypt in Paris and in London, in 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:51.280 New York, and of course museum items and museums around 0:07:51.280 --> 0:07:54.160 the world. Pilford from Egypt. Yeah, I mean there was 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:56.240 just a tour that was here like a year or 0:07:56.240 --> 0:07:59.120 two ago. I think that was like, um, you know 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:03.520 a two ring showcase of of mummies that that goes 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:05.840 from one city to another and sets up shop and 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:07.760 you know, it's there for six months and you can 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:09.480 go and see it and then it's gone, it moves 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:12.880 on to the next city. I um, I mean this 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:14.240 is something I don't know about you, but like I 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:17.160 always grew up like going on school trips to museums, 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:19.480 and the mummy was always the big thing, right, Like 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:22.680 going getting to see a mummy or like it's sarcophagus 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:25.000 or something like that was always like that was the 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:27.400 coolest part of the trip. But now as an adult, 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:29.240 I look back on it and I'm like, wow, that 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:33.200 that's like imagine if somebody like dug up my grandfather, 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:35.960 like a couple of hundred years from now and just 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:40.839 put his coffin on display for kindergarteners run past. This 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:44.080 is very strange, it is, yeah, and I certainly agree. 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:46.920 I remember looking forward to seeing the mummy at the 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:50.680 Major Museum in Nashville when when I would when school 0:08:50.679 --> 0:08:53.840 groups up there would I would go to visit. But 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:56.920 but yeah, now it just feels a little weird. Well, okay, 0:08:57.080 --> 0:09:00.439 let's let's nail this down. What exactly is the mummy? 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.240 I think we all have ideas of how it works, 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:05.200 and of course we have many of us have that 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:07.160 same experience of going to the museum and reading the 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:10.680 paragraph that's inscribed next to the actual case that but 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:13.480 I don't really think that gives you enough context. So 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:16.520 a mummy is simply a human being whose soft tissue 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:20.520 has been preserved after death. So normally, of course, decomposition 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:23.880 takes place and reduces the body to a skeleton in 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:27.120 a matter of months. Uh. And the rate of decompetition. 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:30.840 Decomposition is dependent on a number of environmental factors. It's 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:33.240 gonna if you're in a humid environment, it's gonna go 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:36.200 a lot faster. The dryer, colder environment is gonna go 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:40.480 a lot slower. And there's a sort of like procedure 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:44.240 for decomposition, right. It starts with autolysis, which is when 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:48.760 you know your organs basically the digestive enzymes inside them, 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:52.520 like your intestines, they start digesting themselves. Right, there's no 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:55.240 more food coming in, So your body starts or the 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:58.400 bacteria inside of it at least starts eating you. Yeah, 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:01.920 society just falls apart in the basically, then you have putrification, 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:04.880 the breakdown of organic matter by bacteria. This sets in 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:07.400 about three days after death and just eats everything away 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:08.959 in a matter of months. And it's going to be 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:13.280 accelerated in human environments due to rapid bacterial reproduction. Yeah, 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:15.320 and then and so again, like we talked about, environment 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:17.880 plays a big deal here. So if conditions are cold 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:20.400 enough or dry enough, these are all the things that 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:23.080 that aren't they they're so harsh to bacteria that they 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:25.480 can't survive if they don't have any oxygen, for instance. 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:28.240 That's another one. So in those cases, the body does 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:31.960 not fully decompose, and it takes thousands of years for 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:34.680 this process to slow down in it and it uh 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:38.160 desiccate in a very different way than what we're used to. 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:42.240 And that's sort of where this Egyptian mummification practice came 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:45.120 in because of the environmental factors that were available to 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:48.680 them there. Yeah, so mummification can be a matter of 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:51.960 just falling into a glacier, into a peat bog dying 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:54.640 in a desert and becoming covered with sand, or it's 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:58.600 due to funeral design, it's uh, it's due to various 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:02.000 embalming traditions that popped up throughout human history. And I 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:04.760 want to quickly mention that old hair sample that I 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:07.880 was talking about earlier, that was from a nine thousand 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:11.920 year old Chilean mummy. Wow, okay, And for a while 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:15.480 that was the like the oldest hair sample that we had. 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:20.160 But in two thousand nine, archaeologists happened upon the oldest 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:22.520 human hair has ever found at at that point, and 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:25.440 they found in a pile of fossilized hyena poop, and 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:29.200 that was between one thousand and two hundred fifty seven 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:33.280 thousand years old. So somebody was eaten by a hyena 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:38.200 presumably and and their hair bed in. So in a sense, 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:43.440 hyna poop is its own form, it's own kind of mummy. Well, okay, 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:46.600 So that is just taste of some of the things 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:48.520 we could bring you if you on an episode on 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:52.680 non Egyptian mummies. But let's focus on the cosmology of 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:57.599 the Egyptian mummies. So what is the the religious significance, 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:01.520 what's the mythos around this that that brought Egyptian culture 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:07.560 into spending so much ornate fascination on embalming they're dead. Well, 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:09.280 first of all, I do I don't want to clarify 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:13.040 that when you're talking about Egyptian cosmology, you're talking about 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:16.600 a long period of time, and of course, uh, traditions 0:12:16.600 --> 0:12:19.040 and faith evolves over time, and sometimes you have a 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:21.640 pesky pharaoh that comes along and says, hey, we're not 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:24.880 we're not polytheistic anymore, now a monotheistic and then he 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:28.600 turned that over as well. But for the most part, um, 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:32.480 we can pick out certain key elements here. Uh. You know, 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:35.160 one of the reasons that I think all of us 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:38.920 can are continually fascinated by Egyptian cosmology is that it's 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:41.920 it's so alien to us. It's so different from our 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:46.720 modern models of faith. Uh. And even in its own time, 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:49.400 it didn't really travel well, it was it was kind 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:53.920 of an alien belief system even in its day. Um. 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:56.280 This is of course where you get like the stargate 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:58.880 type thing from right, the idea that it was actually 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:02.520 aliens that brought the mythos two human culture. Yeah, it's 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:04.960 it's yeah, it's easy to and I love to to 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:08.320 consider those kind of models. But but on the other hand, 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:13.200 the non alien Uh, I guess the explanation is even stranger, 0:13:13.280 --> 0:13:15.079 you know, because you're just like, who are these people 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:17.840 that you know, how does how does the culture reach 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:20.199 this point where they have this this just really rich 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:23.920 religion that puts an extreme emphasis on the afterlife and 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:27.040 in the process introduces the notion of judgment after death. 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:29.840 So in a sense that the DNA of all these 0:13:29.880 --> 0:13:33.160 modern religions, and I say modern about like you know, thousand, 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:35.840 two thousand year old religions here are are all kind 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:39.920 of based on the same view of life after death. Yeah. 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:41.880 The thing that's fascinating about it to me is it 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:47.440 really shows the imagination of human culture going very far 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:52.560 back before technological advancements that we uh associate with like 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:59.200 modern day kind of fantasy or or I guess science fiction. Uh, 0:13:59.520 --> 0:14:02.719 weird things. But that I mean, these these people were 0:14:02.760 --> 0:14:05.400 coming up with them over three thousand, four thousand years ago. 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:11.680 It's just these fascinating stories that connected everything together, right, Yeah, alright, 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:14.439 So I'm gonna just try and roll very quickly here 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.840 through some of the basics of the ancient Egyptian journey 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.480 into the afterlife. So First of all, you don't just 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:24.040 have this singular notion of a soul. The Egyptian soul 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:27.840 cocktail basically consists of several parts of the co life force, 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:32.480 the coup, the spiritual intelligence, the second, the power, the habit, 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:35.880 the shadow, and n your name. So after you die, 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:39.680 the dog headed Anibus guides your your soul to the 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:42.920 hall of justice tended to by various gods. Your your 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:46.760 heart is weight on a scale um and uh. And 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:49.280 if you fail, you're gonna fall. Your soul is gonna fall. 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:52.120 And this monstrous crocodile headed am it is gonna eat 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:54.560 your soul. So it's kind of like their version of hell, 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:58.040 kind of like the annihilation model though whereas you're not 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:02.000 you're just you just ceased to be um. And then 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:05.520 from there, if you pass, then you enter what was 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:09.880 called second Aru, the field of rushes. And this is 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:14.080 the god just the the almost unimaginable other world of 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:18.680 Egyptian mythology. We have fifteen different regions, each one's ruled 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:22.840 by a different god. And and it's a world where 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:25.160 you you might transform into an animal, you might need 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:28.880 spells to protect you from giant snakes and giant beetles 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:31.920 and curses. You're gonna need food when you get there. 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:34.520 You're gonna need to farm when you get there. So 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:37.640 it really is kind of this model of arriving on 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:41.720 a distant world and having to colonize it. Um, yeah, 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:45.160 it is. It's it's so it's such an interesting concept 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:47.680 of the afterlife because in a lot of our circumstances, 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:52.920 we just imagine the afterlife either being utter perfection right 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:57.320 like heaven, or utter torment like hell, but not like 0:15:57.960 --> 0:15:59.880 a whole another life. You have got to have all 0:15:59.880 --> 0:16:02.440 these things and I've got to prepare for it, and 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:05.920 your whole life is essentially you building up the material 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:07.880 wealth to be able to have those things in the 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:11.840 next life. Right, Yeah, I mean it's it's a situation 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:14.640 where the afterlife is as much of not more work 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:18.040 than the real world. Right. It sounds like not to 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:23.400 demean this cosmology in any way, but it honestly sounds 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:25.840 like World of Warcraft to me, Like it sounds like 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:30.240 a video game that's really interesting, but is work. Yeah. 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:32.560 It's detailed in the Egyptian Book of the Dad, which 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:38.000 comes from B. C. E. That that you could even 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:41.240 end up landing in the in the airless region of 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:44.960 exc which is the realm of quote that August God 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:47.960 who is in his egg, which I don't think there 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:49.520 are a lot of details beyond that, but just the 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:51.840 idea that you could wind up in this region where 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:54.520 there's some sort of horrible elder thing that rules over 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:57.480 it from its a giant egg. I love crafty and 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:00.720 if there ever was one. So so so it's it's 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:02.960 kind of this idea that the Egyptian mummy is a 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:05.760 traveler through time and space and your body is in 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:10.800 kind of a suspended deathly state of suspended animation. And 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:13.480 that's because let me see if I've got this correctly, 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:16.360 Because the idea is that the cop part of your 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:20.080 soul is connected to your physical body, right, and so 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:23.440 if the physical body is destroyed, that part of your 0:17:23.440 --> 0:17:26.520 soul is destroyed as well. So that this is where 0:17:26.520 --> 0:17:30.679 this idea comes, and it probably came up alongside the 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:33.920 sort of evolution the early model of the mumification practice 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:37.120 of this idea of like preserving your body and your 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:42.160 organs as such and making sure that they're presentable and 0:17:42.320 --> 0:17:46.159 uh so that that part of your soul is also functional. Yeah, 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:48.800 and it's and it's important again to note that the 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:52.480 cosmology itself evolved over time, as did the funeral traditions, 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:54.800 and you can you can definitely see how they informed 0:17:54.840 --> 0:17:56.720 each other as well. So it's not a situation where 0:17:56.800 --> 0:18:00.280 someone a bunch of Egyptian um, you know, do person 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:01.919 and bombers was sitting around it's all right, well we 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:04.080 have this model of the afterlife to work with, how 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:07.440 do we treat the dead? No, they co evolved over 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:11.000 three thousand years. Yeah, I think that's the really important 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:12.720 thing to consider here, and that's how we're going to 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:15.040 present it to We're sort of going to be going 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:18.680 through each of the uh, the eras in terms of 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:23.320 the this modification process and how it evolved. Right, But 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:27.000 that again, consider it, it's three thousand years that this 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:29.280 went through. So think about some of the things that 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:31.760 we practiced today that we think of as like totally 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:37.520 common uh cultural traditions, right, and they're just decades old, 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:41.560 exactly decades old compared to something what were we practicing 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:44.120 three thousand years ago that we're still doing the same 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:46.760 way today, you know. So it's it's just interesting to 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:49.119 see how that evolved over their course of time and 0:18:49.119 --> 0:18:51.120 then where we are now compared to that, we look 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:53.880 at it as being so alien, but it's in fact 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:57.560 it's all of human history. Yeah. So the earliest model 0:18:57.600 --> 0:18:59.560 we can look to, and this is this is key, 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:03.199 is is the practice of just bearing your dad in 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:06.320 a pit in the hot sand. We see we see 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:08.639 this from various examples, such as their six hundred graves 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:14.480 from the pre diagnostic Upper Egyptian Badarian culture from around 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:18.680 to two four thousand BC. And this is just where 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:20.760 you just dig a pit in the hot stand, you 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:25.080 throw the body in, and you let a natural mummification tickets. Right. So, 0:19:25.160 --> 0:19:28.280 like as we're talking about earlier, this these environmental conditions 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:31.320 were perfect for the area that they were in and 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:33.840 that like you could bury a body and the internal 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:37.159 organs would be preserved. The skin would you know, crisp 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:39.720 into a kind of like a dark hardened shell. But 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:44.280 it preserved skin and hair by doing this just essentially 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:48.360 because there's there wasn't water, Uh, there's probably a little oxygen, right, 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:53.919 and it was relatively cold, I would assume, depending on 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:57.880 how deep you dig. We say hot sands, but you know, yeah, 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:02.119 presentably they're digging yeah, yeah, And and so it was 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:06.360 this phenomenon that first indicated the Egyptians. I'm assuming maybe 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:08.879 maybe an animal pulled out an old corpse one day 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:10.080 and they saw it and they went, oh my god, 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:13.399 it's still oh my god, oh my Anubis. Uh it 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:15.920 still has hair and its skin is still the same, 0:20:16.000 --> 0:20:18.359 and and then they thought, oh, well, maybe the soul 0:20:18.720 --> 0:20:20.960 is still there too. Yeah. I think you definitely have 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:22.760 to consider the fact that, like this is just that 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:25.000 they weren't thinking of this as a location as much 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:26.560 as this was just what you did with your dad, 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:29.720 and they saw what happened to a body after death. 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:34.359 And there's let's reiterate this too. There's no casket here, 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:37.440 there's not even any wrappings here. It's just a dead 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:42.520 body buried in the sand. Right, But of course that evolves, right, 0:20:43.040 --> 0:20:47.640 the cosmologies evolving. Treatment of the dead is changing, um 0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:51.280 and you see additions made to that sort of bar 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:53.440 him in the pit model. So during the pre dynastic 0:20:53.520 --> 0:21:01.880 period of between animal skin wrapping baskets and then eventually 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:05.760 short wooden coffins become the fashion. Yeah. So one of 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:08.040 the things I read about this period was that, uh, 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:11.160 sometimes they would they would give you a leather pillow 0:21:12.040 --> 0:21:14.560 other times they would put a basket over your head, 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:16.199 and these are things that were supposed to make you 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:19.920 comfortable in this afterlife. Uh. And then eventually it turned 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:23.760 into like wicker basket kind of kind of like coffins, right, 0:21:23.760 --> 0:21:26.560 like they were the idea was that it would provide 0:21:26.600 --> 0:21:29.199 comfort for their dead loved ones. Uh. And then this 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:32.040 eventually leads to coffins and then to tombs. Right yeah, 0:21:32.080 --> 0:21:33.760 it kind of you can see it beginning is just 0:21:33.840 --> 0:21:35.919 a matter of like, I hate to see Granddad just 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:37.840 down there in a pit like that. Let me put 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:39.440 him under his head, let me give him a leather 0:21:39.520 --> 0:21:42.680 pill him in something. Yeah. And then eventually, like that 0:21:42.840 --> 0:21:46.160 begins to inform ideas of well, where's Grandpa going, what's 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:49.040 the why is he so dressed up? So let's pause 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:51.160 for a second before we dive more into the mummy thing. 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:54.399 How how do how do you want to be buried? Like, 0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:58.080 like if you wanted to be really comfortable in the afterlife, right, 0:21:58.480 --> 0:22:00.359