Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And finally, that first October
Speaker 3: chill is in the air. Rob I don't know if
Speaker 3: you can see on the chat here, I am wearing
Speaker 3: a long.
Speaker 4: Sleeve shirt today.
Speaker 3: It's very exciting at our house, where we love the
Speaker 3: month of October, of course, and my daughter especially is
Speaker 3: just thrilled that it's actually October. I don't know if
Speaker 3: we've talked about this yet, but she is obsessed with
Speaker 3: Halloween decorations. So she like, you know, the biggest thing
Speaker 3: she wants to do right now is go out and
Speaker 3: see which houses in our neighborhood have already put selkins out,
Speaker 3: skeletons and vampires and all that. And there's this wonderful
Speaker 3: like attraction repulsion to certain Halloween decorations, Like there's a
Speaker 3: scary vampire that she wants to see. But then she's like,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to close my eyes, but I want
Speaker 3: to see it.
Speaker 2: Have you seen the new big skeletons that are out.
Speaker 4: I don't know about the new big skeleton.
Speaker 2: So we had the big skeletons that just look like,
Speaker 2: you know, a giant skeleton standing in a yard. But
Speaker 2: this season there are new ones where it looks like
Speaker 2: an even bigger skeleton is climbing out of the ground
Speaker 2: of somebody's front yard. These are popping out throughout our
Speaker 2: neighborhood and they're pretty great. Like, you can make a
Speaker 2: big case for a lot of things in the world
Speaker 2: being in decline, but not front yard skeletons. This is
Speaker 2: an area that we're absolutely on the up and up with.
Speaker 3: Wow, I don't think i've seen that. What we've seen
Speaker 3: partially buried skeletons. It's almost a joke thing where people
Speaker 3: have like a skull and then some skeleton hands and feet,
Speaker 3: but it's like the body is underground, like it's sort of,
Speaker 3: I don't know, half buried. But anyway, hello listeners. Yeah,
Speaker 3: if you're new to the show and you're not familiar
Speaker 3: with our seasonal traditions, here's the deal. Of course, Rob
Speaker 3: and I are both Halloween heads, so every October were
Speaker 3: all month long we indulge our monster obsessed brains, and
Speaker 3: we devote all of our core episodes to spooky stuff,
Speaker 3: witchy stuff, and we also make sure that all of
Speaker 3: our Friday Weird House cinema selections are in the horror genre.
Speaker 4: I mean, we talk about horror a good bit.
Speaker 2: It's not hard for us to.
Speaker 3: Do throughout the rest of the year too, but we
Speaker 3: really drill in on horror for a Weird House in October.
Speaker 3: So yeah, if you are new to our October season offerings.
Speaker 3: Last year, our core episodes in October were about what
Speaker 3: we did, a series on haunted locomotives and railroad madness.
Speaker 3: There was a period where people were convinced that trains
Speaker 3: were creating railway mad men. We talked about the demonology
Speaker 3: of ancient Mesopotamia. We talked about pig monsters and a
Speaker 3: series called The Hogs of Hell, getting into mythological monster's pigs,
Speaker 3: and then also the paleontology record of what kind of
Speaker 3: pig like animals that would actually horrify you did exist
Speaker 3: in reality at one point. And then finally we did
Speaker 3: an entry in our Grimoar of Horror series where we
Speaker 3: each pick a horror short story to discuss and relate
Speaker 3: it usually back to some kind of science or science
Speaker 3: adjacent adjacent topic. And this year we've got a whole
Speaker 3: month of stuff like that in store for you. So yeah,
Speaker 3: if your new stick with us, of course, also if
Speaker 3: you're old, stick with us as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, But earlier this week we got to jump on
Speaker 3: things before October had technically begun. We got a head
Speaker 3: start on things with part one of the series that
Speaker 3: we're continuing today on Ancient Egyptian Curses. So if you
Speaker 3: haven't heard that first episode, I would recommend going back
Speaker 3: and listening to that first. You know, there are some
Speaker 3: series where it makes more sense to listen out of order.
Speaker 3: But the last time we really did kind of lay
Speaker 3: the groundwork for today, but for a brief refresher, we
Speaker 3: talked about the general context of magic in ancient Egypt,
Speaker 3: with some main points being first of all, that to
Speaker 3: the ancient Egyptians, there was not a clear distinction between
Speaker 3: magic and religion like we see in some other religious
Speaker 3: and cultural settings. In ancient Egypt, the use of magic
Speaker 3: spells and temple based religion were fully interwoven and practiced
Speaker 3: by the same priests and authorities, and in fact, magic
Speaker 3: power and magic spells were a fundamental part of the
Speaker 3: regular public rights performed in Egyptian temples, So magic was
Speaker 3: sort of part of everything, and even the gods needed it. Also,
Speaker 3: we talked about how the Egyptian concept of magical power
Speaker 3: or heca, was not thought to be inherently good or evil,
Speaker 3: but was a morally neutral power that could be harnessed
Speaker 3: to do all kinds of things, to protect or to harm,
Speaker 3: to heal, or to destroy. And we talked about the
Speaker 3: sometimes almost litigious or legal framing in which many ancient
Speaker 3: Egyptians seemed to think about magic. Magic could be a
Speaker 3: way of initiating supernatural legal proceedings. We also talked about
Speaker 3: a few particular curse texts, a lot of great stuff
Speaker 3: about you know, if you do something bad in this tomb,
Speaker 3: going to wring your neck like a goose, all that stuff,
Speaker 3: And we also talked in general about kind of the
Speaker 3: main categories of curses that you find in ancient Egypt.
Speaker 3: Of course, ancient Egypt spans thousands of years and many
Speaker 3: millions of lives, so it's actually a quite varied historical
Speaker 3: period to talk about. You can't capture everything just in
Speaker 3: a little overview, But the main trends we talked about were,
Speaker 3: first of all, personal curses. These would be the more
Speaker 3: common kind of curses you would think about if you're
Speaker 3: thinking in a you know, Christian witchcraft kind of framework.
Speaker 3: These would be where people magically settled scores with enemies
Speaker 3: and with people who they believed had wronged them or
Speaker 3: were oppressing them. There were quite famously funerary curses, usually
Speaker 3: leveled against anyone who would loot, to disturb or defile
Speaker 3: a tomb. There were political curses performed as these execration
Speaker 3: rituals to bind, weaken, and destroy enemies of the king
Speaker 3: and of the state. So this could include you know,
Speaker 3: rebels and the leaders of revolts, people the king perceived
Speaker 3: as political traders, princes of enemy nations, and so forth.
Speaker 3: I'll talk about an example of this in just a bit,
Speaker 3: but you might write their name on a clay vessel
Speaker 3: or otherwise somehow symbolically link them to an effigy and
Speaker 3: then destroy that effigy to magically curse the person or
Speaker 3: the parties. And then finally you would have these religious
Speaker 3: or cosmic curses. This is very interesting because I don't know,
Speaker 3: in the more modern religious context, we often think about
Speaker 3: what happens with supernatural energies that's sort of beyond our intervention,
Speaker 3: you know, we're subject to them, they're not subject to us.
Speaker 3: But this, in fact, like we talked about last time,
Speaker 3: was kind of like a curse.
Speaker 4: The devil phenomenon.
Speaker 3: Like in the Egyptian context, cosmic curses were designed to
Speaker 3: sustain the balance of order in the world and to
Speaker 3: magically help the gods of order defeat the bad gods,
Speaker 3: you know, the forces of chaos, like the serpent, apep
Speaker 3: or Apophice. And so we're back today to discuss more. Now, Rob,
Speaker 3: let's see, we've got a couple of things we want
Speaker 3: to get into today. We do want to talk us
Speaker 3: in some more specifics about famous tomb curses or alleged
Speaker 3: tomb curses. But before we do that, do you want
Speaker 3: to talk about this idea of threats to the reader?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, this this You were talking a little bit
Speaker 2: about this the other day, and of course it instantly
Speaker 2: brought to mind things like the Ring.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I.
Speaker 2: Watch this video in your curse. Already watched the video.
Speaker 2: There's no way on to do it. Yes, I'm excited
Speaker 2: to hear.
Speaker 3: More so, when you think about a magical text that
Speaker 3: inflicts the curse, you usually think about a named or
Speaker 3: specified target, right, For example, these personal curses that would
Speaker 3: often be directed toward a specific person and rival oppressor.
Speaker 3: Then you also have the cosmic, the religious curses we
Speaker 3: talked about that were usually targeted at a named chaotic
Speaker 3: deity again most often the serpent, apep or apophice. And
Speaker 3: then you have these political curses that would certainly have
Speaker 3: named enemies. In fact, sometimes the naming of enemies and
Speaker 3: the political curses, that's like the majority of the text
Speaker 3: we have, and that kind of makes sense with when
Speaker 3: you imagine what the rituals were, right, like you'd write
Speaker 3: the names on things and then destroy those things.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And also to come back to something we talked about
Speaker 2: with tomb facilities in particular, there was often a duality
Speaker 2: to the statement. It would only be like fifty percent curse.
Speaker 2: It would be like blessings upon you if you were here,
Speaker 2: you know, with good intentions, but curses upon you if
Speaker 2: you are here with bad intentions.
Speaker 3: I want to get back to that in a minute,
Speaker 3: because there are interesting parallel dualities also, But coming back
Speaker 3: to the idea of political curses just briefly, because I
Speaker 3: am thinking about these names versus unnamed targets of curses.
Speaker 3: I found one pretty extensive translation of a particular political
Speaker 3: curse and execration liturgy from the Middle Kingdom, and this
Speaker 3: was translated by the American egyptologist John A. Wilson, who
Speaker 3: was a professor at the University of Chicago. He lived
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety nine to nineteen seventy six. So these texts
Speaker 3: originally come from materials that were held by the Berlin Museum.
Speaker 3: The translation appears in a book called the Ancient Near East,
Speaker 3: an Anthology of Texts and Pictures, edited by Pritchard Princeton
Speaker 3: University Press, originally published nineteen fifty eight. So the text
Speaker 3: collection is called the Execration of Asiatic Princes, and in
Speaker 3: this case that would refer to the rulers east of Egypt,
Speaker 3: primarily rulers and peoples in the levant.
Speaker 4: So again, the.
Speaker 3: Way these execration rituals worked is that the names of
Speaker 3: the political enemies of Egypt and the enemies of the king,
Speaker 3: you'd like inscribe them on a piece of pottery, and
Speaker 3: then the pottery would be smashed, And then there were
Speaker 3: other ways of destroying effigies too, but that seems to
Speaker 3: be the main thing we're talking about here, smashing of
Speaker 3: these clay vessels, because the names had magical connections to
Speaker 3: their owners. This smashing, along with the ritual language, was
Speaker 3: thought to weaken and harm these enemy leaders. And so
Speaker 3: the fragments name the rulers. But they don't just name
Speaker 3: the rulers. They're like, here's the ruler, here's where they're from,
Speaker 3: and then also make sure to get all their servants
Speaker 3: and all their warriors, so you know, one example is
Speaker 3: the ruler of enoch Roum and all the retainers who
Speaker 3: are with him, the ruler of enoch Ahi Yamumu and
Speaker 3: all the retainers who are with him, the ruler of
Speaker 3: eanoch Akium and all the retainers who are with him,
Speaker 3: the ruler of Shootou and goes on like this, and
Speaker 3: all the retainers and all the warriors and all his
Speaker 3: strong men who fight. And so there are many examples
Speaker 3: in this text in the book here that are just
Speaker 3: naming princes, all their retainers, all the people who would
Speaker 3: serve them, and then of course they would smash that
Speaker 3: to destroy and weaken those people. But in addition, the
Speaker 3: political execration also extends to what feels like a more
Speaker 3: prophylactic format when it starts cursing potential internal enemies from Egypt,
Speaker 3: because there are fragments that specify all men, all people,
Speaker 3: all folk, all males, all eunuchs, all women, all officials,
Speaker 3: who may rebel, who may plot, who may fight, who
Speaker 3: may talk of fighting, who may talk of rebelling, and
Speaker 3: every rebel who talks of rebelling in this entire land.
Speaker 2: But this seems like they've got everybody. I don't see
Speaker 2: too many categories that were left out.
Speaker 3: There, but it's funny that, Yeah, you would think not,
Speaker 3: but there's some general cleanup after this.
Speaker 4: They also just say.
Speaker 3: Every evil word, every evil speech, every evil slander, every
Speaker 3: evil thought, every evil plot, every evil fight, every evil quarrel,
Speaker 3: every evil plan, evil thing, all evil dreams, and all
Speaker 3: evil slumber.
Speaker 2: Evil dreams. Can't help those come on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know what's going on there. But then
Speaker 3: also there are some more texts that do name specific
Speaker 3: traders and enemies within Egypt as well, Like there's this
Speaker 3: one fragment that goes, AMENI shall die the tutor of
Speaker 3: sit Bastet and the chancellor of sit hat Hoor, the
Speaker 3: daughter of Nephru, and then just keeps naming people like that,
Speaker 3: often like the tutors of women within the royal family.
Speaker 3: There's a footnote that says, we don't know exactly what
Speaker 3: this is about, but it seems like it could be
Speaker 3: attacking traders who were thought to be part of a
Speaker 3: Harem conspiracy. So once again here we get these specific
Speaker 3: targets of the curse. But of course, not all curses
Speaker 3: that appear in Egyptian texts are targeted at named enemies.
Speaker 3: Some are more like a general security system that apply
Speaker 3: to whom it may concern. And a big example here
Speaker 3: that we've already talked about is tomb curses, often of
Speaker 3: the format just generally I'm not quoting here, anyone who
Speaker 3: enters this tomb with ill intent, or who steals from
Speaker 3: or defaces this tomb will face penalties.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: A common one is I will be judged with him, meaning,
Speaker 3: in your paraphrase from last time, Rob, I'll see you
Speaker 3: in ghost chord, yeah, And then often having a more
Speaker 3: violent or specific threat as well, like I shall wring
Speaker 3: his neck like a goose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which, as we discussed last time, may tie into
Speaker 2: like the sacrificial killing of birds and temples. So again
Speaker 2: that kind of blurring of the line that modern individuals
Speaker 2: might think would exist between like the wizard and the priest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's one text I just found in an older
Speaker 3: book I found on the Gutenberg project that was a
Speaker 3: collection of translated to inscriptions. This one was from a
Speaker 3: tomb that in this it's translated Aqueja ichi Uh, and
Speaker 3: it says it goes as follows the scribe in the
Speaker 3: presence Ichi speaks with regard to any person who shall
Speaker 3: take stones from this tomb of mine of the necropolis,
Speaker 3: I shall be judged with them on this matter by
Speaker 3: the God. Okay, there you go, we see you and goescort.
Speaker 3: And then for I am an excellent ok who knows
Speaker 3: his spells. So that's again like I've got the best
Speaker 3: lawyers basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again I think in many cases the god
Speaker 2: is going to be Osiris, or it could be a
Speaker 2: regional deity.
Speaker 3: A lot of these tombs that do make a threat,
Speaker 3: they invoke the power of Osiris.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so on the subject of curses that that
Speaker 3: function less like a targeted attack and more like a
Speaker 3: general purpose security system, and have this to whom it
Speaker 3: may concern energy, I wanted to talk about an interesting
Speaker 3: curse format that I first came across in an academic
Speaker 3: conference presentation. The American egyptologist Robert K. Rittner who lived
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty three to twenty twenty one. The presentation is
Speaker 3: from two thousand and three, and it is called an
Speaker 3: eternal curse upon the reader of these lines. So, as
Speaker 3: you can guess from the title, this is an Egyptian
Speaker 3: curse phenomenon that feels like you'd be very at home
Speaker 3: in a horror movie. It is a text that curses
Speaker 3: the reader for the crime of reading it, or, in
Speaker 3: Writtner's words quote an invocation for divine wrath directed not
Speaker 3: against its primary victims, who are later damned by name,
Speaker 3: but against the accidental discoverer.
Speaker 4: That's cold, and.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming this would be in like the ForWord off
Speaker 2: set text and not like the epilog.
Speaker 3: Well, it's funny because I have one full text that
Speaker 3: I could read in a minute where it happens at
Speaker 3: the very end.
Speaker 2: What it's like.
Speaker 3: By the way, if you read this, you also are cursed.
Speaker 4: Oh man. Now, before I get to that, I do brieve.
Speaker 3: Want to mention that the existence of this type of
Speaker 3: curse is not the main point of Writtner's presentation, which
Speaker 3: itself is pretty interesting, though a lot of it is
Speaker 3: like linguistic stuff that was over my head, but it
Speaker 3: is an interesting thing to read, so Writtener is more
Speaker 3: focused on a few things. One is how this sort
Speaker 3: of relates to stuff we talked about in Part one. Now,
Speaker 3: the distinction between divine and demonic power in ancient Egyptian
Speaker 3: religious thought is not all that distinct, and the categories
Speaker 3: often overlap, with the same deities or entities often being
Speaker 3: invoked as protectors and healers or as supernatural knife bearers
Speaker 3: and slaughtering demons. A major part of the presentation is
Speaker 3: this linguistic argument that again was over my head, but
Speaker 3: it was focused on the definition of a particular Egyptian
Speaker 3: word which appears in a lot of legal, medical, and
Speaker 3: magical teess some religious texts. In basically here, which written
Speaker 3: or argues should be understood as a kind of divine compulsion.
Speaker 3: This word, he's arguing, means a kind of seizing by
Speaker 3: a god or divine power and compelling action in a way.
Speaker 3: And this could be good or evil, helpful or harmful,
Speaker 3: but the force by which a god or demon seizes
Speaker 3: a human and forces them to act one way or another.
Speaker 3: This term often appears in what we think of as
Speaker 3: tomb curses. So again, for example, the compulsion of Osiris
Speaker 3: be on him who reads these words, his life will
Speaker 3: be shortened. That sounds like standard curse stuff. You know
Speaker 3: you are compulsion. You're seized by compulsion of a god,
Speaker 3: and here's your punishment. But it is not only used
Speaker 3: with the meaning that the intruder will be you know,
Speaker 3: seized by supernatural compulsion to prevent them from harming the tomb.
Speaker 3: There are also positive in vocations of this divine compulsion.
Speaker 3: Two for example, say that the reader of an inscription
Speaker 3: or the person entering a tomb will be compelled by
Speaker 3: divine force to do something to honor the dead, like
Speaker 3: make an offering of water, or to do something else
Speaker 3: on the tomb owner's behalf. So I found that pretty interesting.
Speaker 3: You would have these tomb inscriptions that say like, okay,
Speaker 3: Osiris has seized you. You know, the god compels you.
Speaker 3: Now it could be like get out of here, or
Speaker 3: you will be killed. It could also be you will
Speaker 3: make an offering to the you know, the soul of
Speaker 3: the person buried here.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that is fascinating. I'm sure Julian Jaye's devotees
Speaker 2: have some fun with that. One, But in general, I
Speaker 2: just I like the idea of that. It's like, it's
Speaker 2: the positive side of that. It's like Osiris compels you here,
Speaker 2: you need to do the right thing in here.
Speaker 3: But coming to the reader directed curse, one of the
Speaker 3: most striking examples mentioned in Writtner's introduction, I think is
Speaker 3: actually doubly striking, not only because it has this dynamic
Speaker 3: where it curses the reader for reading, but because though
Speaker 3: it is ancient Egyptian, it comes from very late from
Speaker 3: the Coptic Christian Egyptian period, and so it seems to
Speaker 3: be basically a form of Christian in its theology. So
Speaker 3: it is a targeted personal curse invoking divine violence from
Speaker 3: the Christian God.
Speaker 2: Fascinating.
Speaker 3: So the one I wanted to mention is a Ecoptic
Speaker 3: Egyptian curse known as Papyrus Lechechev. I think I'm saying
Speaker 3: that right, that this is from the fourth or fifth century.
Speaker 3: I went and dug up the full text, as translated
Speaker 3: by a scholar named Marvin Meyer, from a book called
Speaker 3: Ancient Christian Magic Coptic Texts of Ritual Power. This is
Speaker 3: text number ninety in this book, and it's called Curse
Speaker 3: against several violent people. Meyer summarizes it by saying, in
Speaker 3: this papyrus, a victim similarly calls upon God in the
Speaker 3: language of the courtroom, to bring judgment against several people
Speaker 3: who have committed an act of violence. The closing lines
Speaker 3: pronounce a curse upon anyone who opens and reads the papyrus.
Speaker 3: So I'll give a few selections from the text, Lord,
Speaker 3: my God, to whom I look, who is seated upon
Speaker 3: the chariot of the Cherubim, with the Seraphim round about you,
Speaker 3: who is mounted upon the four creatures Michael, Gabriel, the Archangel, Cherubim,
Speaker 3: and Seraphim, Rabuel, Suruel, Cukuel, You who are seated upon
Speaker 3: your throne and with your beloved son, along with all
Speaker 3: those who have been named, and the place where this
Speaker 3: will be deposited, and the Angel of the Church, You
Speaker 3: must strike Pretasia and Tenunte and Ebenez quickly, deservedly. You
Speaker 3: must hinder them as they have hindered him. You must
Speaker 3: bring upon them the anger of your wrath and your
Speaker 3: raised arm. As you cursed Samoa and Kimora through the
Speaker 3: anger of your wrath. You must curse the one who
Speaker 3: has committed this act of violence. You must bring the
Speaker 3: vengeance of Enoch against them, as the blood of Abel
Speaker 3: called out to Caine, his brother, the blood of this
Speaker 3: miserable man will call out until you bring judgment on
Speaker 3: his behalf against those who have committed this act of
Speaker 3: violence against him. La loah, that is, Lord Sabba Oath.
Speaker 3: You must bring your wrath upon them in a disturbing way.
Speaker 3: You and who's in a disturbing way. You in whose
Speaker 3: hands is every breath, who formed the world. You must
Speaker 3: quickly overthrow the people who have committed this violence. Yeay,
Speaker 3: Lord Saba Oath, you must bring judgment on his behalf quickly,
Speaker 3: and then on the verso it has finally, whoever opens
Speaker 3: this papyrus and reads it what is written on it
Speaker 3: will come upon him by the order of the Lord God.
Speaker 2: But of note, you did not open the papyrus. You
Speaker 2: merely read a translation. So I think, I think legally
Speaker 2: you're in the clear here. But I am no ancient
Speaker 2: Egyptian priest or wizard or copying priest or wizard.
Speaker 3: I mean so interesting, I wish I knew more about
Speaker 3: the exact flavor of early Christianity that this is working from.
Speaker 3: I don't know, actually, for sure, but this sounds to
Speaker 3: me like it it could be Gnostic influenced. I don't
Speaker 3: want to say that I know that because I didn't
Speaker 3: have time to look into that, but I would love
Speaker 3: to go back and dig into that and figure out
Speaker 3: exactly what the underlying theology here is thought to be.
Speaker 4: Though it is.
Speaker 3: Clearly some kind of strongly Christian influenced theology, but it's
Speaker 3: the kind of Christianity where the person thinks that they
Speaker 3: can just say, God, I've somebody did something bad to me,
Speaker 3: and God, I want you to go raise your arm
Speaker 3: to them, destroy them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is really fascinating. I wish i'd known about
Speaker 2: this in high school when I was like I went
Speaker 2: through a phase where I was super into angels and
Speaker 2: like reading about the different angel names and all. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because this is loaded with that kind of thing. And
Speaker 2: then it's interesting to think about this in terms of
Speaker 2: stuff we've already talked about as sort of a legalistic argument,
Speaker 2: because you can get us they're not directly invoking mot here,
Speaker 2: but there's still a sense of it. There's sort of like, look,
Speaker 2: I'm pointing to legal precedents to why you should act
Speaker 2: in wrath against this individual or individuals, you know, So
Speaker 2: it's it's not directly saying this is necessary for balance
Speaker 2: and it goes beyond you, but it's pointing at legal precedents.
Speaker 2: And it is also kind of interesting to think about
Speaker 2: it in terms of how this is just like buttering
Speaker 2: up a terrestrial ruler, you know, a powerful king and saying, hey,
Speaker 2: you're pretty great. Look at all your power. A powerful
Speaker 2: ruler like yourself should definitely act in this case and
Speaker 2: do so in accordance with these legal presidents.
Speaker 3: That's a really great point. Yes, it is bringing up
Speaker 3: case law, and in that way, it does feel like
Speaker 3: it's very much in the egypt magical curse tradition, even
Speaker 3: though it is not with traditional Egyptian deities but with
Speaker 3: Christian But it still has that Egyptian format, you know,
Speaker 3: going back thousands of years. It like the way it
Speaker 3: refers to other times God has cursed people for doing
Speaker 3: bad things. Yeah, it's like remember when you did this,
Speaker 3: It's like that time.
Speaker 2: I wonder though, you know, thinking about mot again and
Speaker 2: I would have to research deeper on this, but I
Speaker 2: wonder if the Christian God that is that is being
Speaker 2: invoked here, is there a sense that this deity is
Speaker 2: at least to some degree detached from mot Is this
Speaker 2: a move away from mot as as an essential religious
Speaker 2: and cultural concept? I don't have an answer to that,
Speaker 2: but you know, I can't help but wonder about it
Speaker 2: as we look at this text.
Speaker 3: So obviously, this particular text is different from a lot
Speaker 3: of the things we've been talking about for numerous reasons,
Speaker 3: one of the big ones being that it's in this
Speaker 3: Christian context. But you could look at these earlier texts
Speaker 3: as well and ask the general question, why curse the
Speaker 3: reader for reading? What is the point of doing that?
Speaker 3: You know, the reader is not the person you're mad
Speaker 3: at when you're writing out this curse, So why just
Speaker 3: include a line that's like, by the way, if you
Speaker 3: read this, everything I said applies to you as well. Yeah,
Speaker 3: in the tomb, cursing the reader kind of makes sense
Speaker 3: because it's not so much about the reading. I mean,
Speaker 3: what's really being protected is the tomb. It's just logical
Speaker 3: that if you're reading this in this place, you're probably
Speaker 3: doing something I don't want you to, or you might
Speaker 3: be ready about to do something I don't want you to.
Speaker 3: So therefore it stands to reason that if you're reading
Speaker 3: this a threat should be applied to you.
Speaker 4: But does that.
Speaker 3: Really make sense with you know, magical papyri, a spell
Speaker 3: written on papyrus, Like, why would you put a curse
Speaker 3: on just a text? I think we we don't actually
Speaker 3: know for sure, but there are some ideas. So I
Speaker 3: think one idea is it may serve to protect the
Speaker 3: effectiveness of the curse, perhaps by protecting the curse's ritual purity,
Speaker 3: you know, so, like the curse is something that is
Speaker 3: between the person issuing the curse and the deity that's
Speaker 3: being invoked. And if you're just getting other random parties involved,
Speaker 3: you know, random people coming in and reading this who
Speaker 3: aren't supposed to be, they might kind of be interrupting
Speaker 3: that relationship.
Speaker 4: It's just bungling.
Speaker 2: Security of the signal or something, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And or also preventing the bungling interference from readers
Speaker 3: who don't know what they're doing and might be using
Speaker 3: the power of the curse in some way for themselves,
Speaker 3: because a common strain of thought in ancient Egypt is
Speaker 3: that words themselves have magic power. Writing kind of has
Speaker 3: a heca of its own, and so the act of
Speaker 3: writing something has magic power, and the act of reading
Speaker 3: something has magic power. This is something written or actually
Speaker 3: does talk about more in the in the context of
Speaker 3: his you know, his the compulsion which can work either way,
Speaker 3: which can compel you to do things. I think his
Speaker 3: idea is that the act of reading turns on the
Speaker 3: divine compulsion feature. It can activate the magic power of
Speaker 3: the words therein, and so both writing and reading sort
Speaker 3: of like turn the machine on.
Speaker 2: If that makes sense, Yeah, I mean I think it
Speaker 2: more than makes sense. I think most of us can
Speaker 2: relate to it on some level or another, just in
Speaker 2: terms of daily reading and writing. But man, I was
Speaker 2: just just the other day I was looking at it
Speaker 2: yet another anxiety tweaking exercise that involves writing, that involves
Speaker 2: like writing out you know, particular thoughts, particular triggers and
Speaker 2: so forth, and you know, in doing so, gaining distance
Speaker 2: from them, sort of being able to manipulate their power.
Speaker 2: And there are any number of examples like that inside
Speaker 2: and outside of therapy that basically utilized the power of
Speaker 2: human language. I mean, in talking about magic again, I've
Speaker 2: heard it put before that magic is making the world
Speaker 2: conform to language. You know, and you know, to a
Speaker 2: certain extent, you don't have to believe in magic to
Speaker 2: see that happen.
Speaker 4: I think that's an excellent point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So a big idea is that cursing the reader
Speaker 3: could be about protecting the effectiveness the efficacy of the spell.
Speaker 4: But another thing might.
Speaker 3: Just be about secrecy. And you could think about secrecy
Speaker 3: for multiple directions.
Speaker 4: I mean, you might be thinking about the.
Speaker 3: Personal privacy concerns or the secrecy of the person invoking
Speaker 3: the curse. Maybe in some kind of papyri, you wouldn't
Speaker 3: really want your neighbors to know exactly what you're doing.
Speaker 3: I don't know that's a possibility, I think.
Speaker 4: But another way of.
Speaker 3: Thinking about secrecy is more about protecting. It's sort of
Speaker 3: like locking up the weapons. You know, there's a secrecy
Speaker 3: element because a curse, the language of a curse is
Speaker 3: a mimetic weapon. It's like information that can be used
Speaker 3: to harm, just in the way you were talking about
Speaker 3: the words have magical power to harm. By placing a
Speaker 3: seal on a papyrus that has the power to curse,
Speaker 3: you are essentially practicing proper security with something that is
Speaker 3: inherently dangerous.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, and I wonder too like this we're kind
Speaker 2: of we're experienced we're talking about this as outsiders who
Speaker 2: are like, whoa, this is a papyrus was cursed. But
Speaker 2: I'm wondering too if this would have been just a
Speaker 2: known fact about it, like, oh, that is a curse scroll.
Speaker 2: You know, not to read that because if you're not
Speaker 2: the intended user there could be harmful ramifications.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's a really good point.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is something I think that often gets
Speaker 3: lost ancient texts because they come to us as text.
Speaker 3: You know, we read a translation of a text in
Speaker 3: a book, and so it's just the information component the
Speaker 3: text taken out of its context. But the context is
Speaker 3: a physical surrounding the substrate that it's printed on, what
Speaker 3: it looks like, what kind of object it was, where
Speaker 3: it was, and things like that that all also contain information,
Speaker 3: just in the way you think about anything that's written
Speaker 3: in your world. You know, a street sign has a
Speaker 3: different way you understand it than a page in a book,
Speaker 3: and a page in a book can mean something very
Speaker 3: different if it's like an instruction manual versus a novel
Speaker 3: or work, you know, and so so many things that
Speaker 3: are not stated within the text itself inform how we
Speaker 3: understand a text and a lot of times that is
Speaker 3: just totally lost when you you know, when it's taken
Speaker 3: out of its original cultural context and just presented as
Speaker 3: a translation in a book.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, this is this is this is fascinating.
Speaker 2: Reminds me many years ago, I was inadvertently sent an
Speaker 2: email through work, and then after I received it, someone
Speaker 2: reached out and was like, hey, you weren't supposed to
Speaker 2: get that. There's an attachment in that email. Don't open it,
Speaker 2: just to lead it unseen. So similar, similar vibe. You know,
Speaker 2: they didn't threaten to curse me. But I was like,
Speaker 2: all right, all right, I'm sure I don't really want
Speaker 2: to look at a you know, a spreadsheet of numbers
Speaker 2: I don't understand. So I'm perfectly fine, perfectly happy to
Speaker 2: do that. And then I guess in another sense, we
Speaker 2: receive emails all the time that we know are cursed,
Speaker 2: that have cursed attachments, and we have to dismiss them
Speaker 2: out of hand.
Speaker 5: Yeah, talk about information threat Yeah.
Speaker 3: All right, Well that's all I've got for now on
Speaker 3: reader curses. But Rob, I know you wanted to talk
Speaker 3: about the so called curse of the Pharaohs. What have
Speaker 3: you got on that?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is inevitably the place
Speaker 2: to take this because we have this, we have to
Speaker 2: stress this a very twentieth century conception of a pharaoh's
Speaker 2: curse that still remains pretty pervasive in the public mindset,
Speaker 2: and it emerges pretty much entirely in the wake of
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenty two discovery of tuton Common's tomb in
Speaker 2: the Valley of the Kings by archaeologist Howard Carter, who
Speaker 2: lived eighteen seventy four through nineteen thirty nine and his financier,
Speaker 2: Lord Carnivon. This was also known as George Herbert, the
Speaker 2: fifth Earl of Carnivon. He lived eighteen sixty six through
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three. Of note twenty three, that's one year
Speaker 2: after the discovery of the tomb. We'll come back to that.
Speaker 4: Oh, obviously the tomb got him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's just logic's yeah, that's where it's going to refresh.
Speaker 2: Tuton Common from roughly thirteen thirty four through thirteen twenty
Speaker 2: five BCE. He only lived to the age of eighteen
Speaker 2: or nineteen, though became pharaoh at age eight or nine,
Speaker 2: so sometimes looking at his age you can think, well,
Speaker 2: he wasn't that must have been a very short reign,
Speaker 2: couldn't have done much. But you know, when you consider
Speaker 2: that he became pharaoh at age eight or nine, you know,
Speaker 2: is a lengthy enough rain to do a lot of things. Still,
Speaker 2: there does seem to be the indication that his death,
Speaker 2: you know, he died very young, and it was to
Speaker 2: some degree unexpected. So this would have been towards the
Speaker 2: end of the New Kingdom's eighteenth dynasty. And one thing
Speaker 2: to remember about King Tut's tomb is that it did
Speaker 2: not lay completely undisturbed for the entirety of its history.
Speaker 2: It was robbed twice within just a few years of Tuts.
Speaker 2: Burial repairs and restocking took place, but for one or
Speaker 2: two possible reasons, the entrance to King Tut's tomb in
Speaker 2: the Valley of the Kings became obscured, possibly due to
Speaker 2: silty deposits brought on by flooding. Not everyone agrees on
Speaker 2: this count, and due to subsequent tomb construction, this one
Speaker 2: is more definite. This meaning that means mounds of debris
Speaker 2: workmen's huts being built in the Valley of the Kings
Speaker 2: to facilitate other tomb facilities, and it just becomes lost right.
Speaker 3: So King Tut's tomb was not completely undisturbed, but it
Speaker 3: was less disturbed than most other tombs from ancient Egypt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and for a considerable amount of time. Yeah so,
Speaker 2: And this is during a time when tomb raiders are
Speaker 2: just going to continue to plague the Valley of the Kings.
Speaker 2: It's my understanding that the Valley of the Kings was
Speaker 2: established as a way to better protect the tombs. But
Speaker 2: how are you going to provide protection, you know, across millennia. Yeah,
Speaker 2: becomes difficult. But the tomb of Tuton, common itself small
Speaker 2: and less extensively decorated than other Egyptian royal tombs of
Speaker 2: its time, likely adapted from a non royal tomb so
Speaker 2: as to provide space for Tut in the aftermath of
Speaker 2: his sudden death. It ends up again being remained, ends
Speaker 2: up remaining undisturbed for thousands of years, and then during
Speaker 2: the boom of nineteenth and twentieth century Egyptology, the Valley
Speaker 2: of the Kings receives a great deal of renewed scrutiny
Speaker 2: from Europeans, and objects related to Tut were discovered in
Speaker 2: the area, and this eventually led to the rediscovery of
Speaker 2: the tomb itself, the contents of which exceeded all expectations.
Speaker 2: It took multiple seasons to remove all the materials inside,
Speaker 2: and it is largely considered the most important archaeological find
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century. It's the only nearly intact royal
Speaker 2: burial site ever found in ancient Egypt, and it provided
Speaker 2: both a time capsule of the new kingdom and the
Speaker 2: glimpse into the daily life of many ancient Egyptians. So
Speaker 2: it's kind of hard to overstate the important ardents of
Speaker 2: King Tut's tomb, which at times it can almost be
Speaker 2: counterintuitive because such a big deal was made out of it.
Speaker 2: You know, it was huge news, and a big deal
Speaker 2: continues to be made out of it. You know, the
Speaker 2: the the materials from this discovery of still tour around
Speaker 2: the world. You know, King Tut inspires his own brand
Speaker 2: of Egyptomania. So but we have to remind us that
Speaker 2: it's like, yeah, this was a huge deal and we
Speaker 2: learned and are still continuing to learn so much from it.
Speaker 2: And at the time too, it was huge. The discovery
Speaker 2: made international news. It was you know, bona fide international sensation.
Speaker 2: We've discussed Egypt Domania on the show before. There have
Speaker 2: been multiple waves of egypt Domania throughout history, you know,
Speaker 2: fascination with the look of Egyptian artifacts, the mysteries and
Speaker 2: the about how these people lived and so forth. And
Speaker 2: it goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks, Romans,
Speaker 2: and Hebrews. But this is discovery of King Tut's tomb
Speaker 2: kicked off. Yeah, this this kind of like new wave
Speaker 2: that is sometimes referred to as Tutmania. I may accidentally
Speaker 2: say Tutamania, but it is Tutmania that's as official as
Speaker 2: a word like Tutmania can be. Okay, And a book
Speaker 2: that I've referred back to before about Egypt Domania, titled
Speaker 2: egypt Domania by Ronald H. Fritz, points out that Tutomania
Speaker 2: didn't just or Tutmania, sorry, didn't just make one splash,
Speaker 2: but continued to resonate. As again, these artifacts from the
Speaker 2: tomb go on various world tours. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: a lot of us can can think to examples in
Speaker 2: our own life where oh, the King tut artifacts came
Speaker 2: to a large city that your family could drive to,
Speaker 2: and yeah, I remember going to it, I remember becoming
Speaker 2: interested in it buying a soundtrack of Egyptian or supposedly
Speaker 2: ancient Egyptian music, and you know it probably it's probably
Speaker 2: one of the reasons that I'm here on a podcast
Speaker 2: dot about ancient Egypt today.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as with many things in the world, how to
Speaker 3: put this, we should not hold it against King Tut
Speaker 3: or any of his associated artifacts. That much of the
Speaker 3: reaction or reception of him was cringe like makes King
Speaker 3: Tut himself and the artifacts no less interesting.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yeah, so of course, again, Egyptomania was already
Speaker 2: influencing our media well before the nineteen twenty two Tut
Speaker 2: find again situating this within the nineteenth and twentieth century
Speaker 2: Egyptomania and slash Egyptology boom. So yeah. At this point
Speaker 2: we already had what was considered has been considered the
Speaker 2: first mummy film, nineteen eleven's The Mummy, in which a
Speaker 2: scientist revives an ancient Egyptian mummy with electricity and then
Speaker 2: falls in love with her.
Speaker 4: Was it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is sadly a lost film, but seems to
Speaker 2: have existed.
Speaker 4: I did not know.
Speaker 3: The first mummy film was basically Frankenstein or Bride of Frankenstein.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean clearly influenced by it, let's see.
Speaker 2: And then we had literary works from the likes of
Speaker 2: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He wrote an eighteen ninety story
Speaker 2: called The Ring of Thoth and eighteen ninety two's Lot
Speaker 2: Number two forty nine. That one, of course, was adapted
Speaker 2: in the motion picture Tales from the Dark Side the movie.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how accurately, but it is cited as
Speaker 2: the reference.
Speaker 3: The one that's the segment with Christian Slater.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think Steep, you send me in that
Speaker 2: one as well. I need to see it again. I
Speaker 2: remember liking it quite a bit.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And then also we had Bram Stoker nineteen oh three's
Speaker 2: The Jewel of the Seven Stars, and Fritz in his
Speaker 2: work also singles out the eighteen twenty seven Jane C.
Speaker 2: Loudon book The Mummy That's with an exclamation point and
Speaker 2: then a colon or A Tale of the twenty second
Speaker 2: Century points this out as the earliest long work about
Speaker 2: reanimated mummy. Edgar Allan Poe also wrote an eighteen forty
Speaker 2: five story titled Some Words with a Mummy. I haven't
Speaker 2: read this one either.
Speaker 4: What were the words?
Speaker 2: I mean some words, let's see. But again, nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: two's discovery Tutmania certainly influenced everything. This is, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the prime reasons we ended up with the
Speaker 2: universal horror picture from nineteen thirty two, The Mummy, absolutely
Speaker 2: inspired by the discovery of King Tut's tomb and an
Speaker 2: attempt to capitalize on it. Really kind of Mummy's spoitation,
Speaker 2: if you will.
Speaker 4: Yes, like this is educational.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And of note, we already had ancient Egyptian curse
Speaker 2: fiction before nineteen twenty two, So one of the best
Speaker 2: examples that's frequently cited is Lost in a Pyramid or
Speaker 2: The Mummy's Curse by Luisa may Alcott. This was from
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty nine. So we had these ideas already in
Speaker 2: our fiction, in our dream making, due to fascination with
Speaker 2: actual and interpreted tomb curses from ancient Egypt as well
Speaker 2: as from other cultures. And we've talked about these in
Speaker 2: the show as well, from Greek culture, from Roman Roman culture,
Speaker 2: and from various Mesopotamian cultures.
Speaker 3: Right, So I think Rob, would you agree that while
Speaker 3: ancient Egyptian tomb curses absolutely were a real phenomenon and
Speaker 3: there are plenty of examples of this. A lot of
Speaker 3: what people think about tomb curses comes from the fiction
Speaker 3: that is only loosely inspired by them, not by the
Speaker 3: knowledge of what these curses were like themselves.
Speaker 2: Right right, as well as urban legends. According to Fritz,
Speaker 2: two tales of cursed mummies were popular bits of Victorian
Speaker 2: and Edwardian urban legend, again tying into in this case
Speaker 2: tying into general fascination with occultism and spiritualism that were
Speaker 2: also just a part of the public zifeist But this
Speaker 2: post tut idea of the curse of the Pharaoh really
Speaker 2: cooks into gear during first wave Tutmania. As again Expedition finance. Here,
Speaker 2: Lord Carnarvan dies a few months after the tombs opening
Speaker 2: due to and we're very clear on this uninfected mosquito bite.
Speaker 2: So essentially, Lord Carnarvan here, already in not great health,
Speaker 2: apparently nicked a mosquito bite on it while shaving, and
Speaker 2: this bite slash wound became infected. He refused to rest
Speaker 2: to care for himself properly, and subsequently died. According to Fritz,
Speaker 2: this also occurred after some ups and downs in the
Speaker 2: following weeks, so not. I mean sudden in many cases,
Speaker 2: in many ways of thinking, but maybe not as sudden
Speaker 2: as invocations of a curse might make you think.
Speaker 3: Now, I know a lot of people might be thinking.
Speaker 3: The next place this discussion would go would be, was
Speaker 3: it really the curse in King Tut's tomb that got him?
Speaker 3: You know, did that influence the infected wound or was
Speaker 3: it not? But actually there isn't even a curse in
Speaker 3: King Tut's tomb? Am I correct about that?
Speaker 2: That is correct? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there is no curse to even question here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a fact. There are no explicit curse
Speaker 2: threats of immediate death in or on Tut's tomb. But
Speaker 2: that didn't stop the media. You know, the media is
Speaker 2: resi sensationalist about this, and we're pretty quick to declare
Speaker 2: that he had clearly been struck dead by mysterious forces
Speaker 2: aligned with the curse protection of the tomb. The New
Speaker 2: York Times even reported this is like an actual quote
Speaker 2: from The Times in twenty three Canarvan's death spreads theories
Speaker 2: about vengeance? I mean, you know, that's not too terrible
Speaker 2: a journalistic headline. They're not saying he was definitely cursed
Speaker 2: they're saying people are talking about.
Speaker 4: It fair enough.
Speaker 3: I guess with stories like that, you know, the people
Speaker 3: are talking about X stories.
Speaker 4: The question is always like, are.
Speaker 3: People really talking about this enough that it's worth reporting on?
Speaker 3: Or is it like this is just something that would
Speaker 3: be interesting to talk about and a few people are
Speaker 3: saying it, so let's just let's just talk about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I find it especially maddening these days, where this form
Speaker 2: of article might include embedded Twitter tweets or whatever they're
Speaker 2: called these days. It's like, yeah, are we really tapping
Speaker 2: into the public mindset? Maybe we are, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm just an old fogy, but it seems stupid
Speaker 2: to me. You.
Speaker 3: I mean, for any ridiculous or horrible idea, you can
Speaker 3: find people saying it. So it's the fact that people
Speaker 3: are saying something worth reporting. I mean, I'm not saying
Speaker 3: it's never worth reporting. If a whole lot of people
Speaker 3: are saying something, I guess it's worth reporting on the
Speaker 3: phenomenon of a rumor because that is news. But I
Speaker 3: don't know, I guess I don't know, Like the what
Speaker 3: is the tipping point? Like what is the critical threshold
Speaker 3: of organic conversation? About something that it becomes worth reporting
Speaker 3: in a news source.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but at any rate, it was more than just
Speaker 2: the Times talking about it and in general, like mummy
Speaker 2: curse may was spreading is covered in the j Store
Speaker 2: Daily article Was it really a Mummy's Curse? By Alison C.
Speaker 2: Meyer from twenty nineteen. You had just decades of writers
Speaker 2: who were eager to attribute any death of any halfway
Speaker 2: connected individual to the supposed curse. So just a few
Speaker 2: examples of this. Sir Bruce Ingham not even part of
Speaker 2: the team that opened the tomb, but he accepted a
Speaker 2: mummy's hand paperweight from Howard Carter and then his house
Speaker 2: burned down. So people are like, was this the curse? Like, well,
Speaker 2: it seems a few steps removed, but I guess you
Speaker 2: could make the case for it. Another one, American financier
Speaker 2: George J. Gould, contracted new ammonia apparently after after visiting
Speaker 2: the tomb. Was this the curse as well? I mean
Speaker 2: a lot of things are going to happen to you
Speaker 2: after you visit any given place. You know. Again, this
Speaker 2: just gets into magical thinking and all and ideas of
Speaker 2: bad luck and bad omens. You did that one thing
Speaker 2: that may or may not have any sort of moral
Speaker 2: weight to it. And then later on you wonder if
Speaker 2: these two things are connected. Yeah, oh, and then this
Speaker 2: one's really good. In nineteen seventy, nineteen seventy, again, an
Speaker 2: alleged expedition member, so I'm not even sure this was
Speaker 2: someone that was proven to have actually been there, was
Speaker 2: injured in a traffic accident, and the London Time, Yeah,
Speaker 2: in the London Times apparently was not too shy to
Speaker 2: suggest that maybe it's a curse. If so, I would
Speaker 2: say that curse had been read too much and was
Speaker 2: a little weak. If it just causes a traffic accident
Speaker 2: decades later, and again not a fatal one.
Speaker 3: And again we already said this, but there was no curse, right,
Speaker 3: We're not saying there wasn't magic. There wasn't even a suggestion.
Speaker 4: Of magic, right right.
Speaker 2: The suggestion emerges completely from sensationalist news, and then you know,
Speaker 2: and is tied into fiction and so forth. In two
Speaker 2: thousand and two, epidemiologist Mark R. Nelson published The Mummy's
Speaker 2: Curse Historical Cohort Study in the British Medical Journal, And
Speaker 2: this is worth looking up. He does a great job
Speaker 2: breaking it all down. He points out, Okay, forty four
Speaker 2: Westerners were present at the opening of the tomb. Twenty
Speaker 2: five of them you could say were exposed. So I
Speaker 2: guess actually entered the tomb as part of the work,
Speaker 2: and based on this information he broke it down. I'll
Speaker 2: get into some of the ways it's broken down here.
Speaker 2: You know. He found that there was no evidence of
Speaker 2: any kind of a direct curse, and that there was
Speaker 2: no effect on survival time for any exposure or numbers
Speaker 2: of exposures, because remember some people only when in once
Speaker 2: other people are going in and out. Work continued there
Speaker 2: for multiple seasons. Fritz covers this in Egyptomania as well.
Speaker 2: And yes, just this idea of the curse doesn't hold
Speaker 2: up to any amount of scrutiny of the twenty five
Speaker 2: sometimes I've read twenty six. You know, basically, around twenty
Speaker 2: five people present at the opening of the tomb, twenty
Speaker 2: of them were still alive more than a decade later.
Speaker 2: Fritz rights, obviously, the curse was not operating comprehensively against
Speaker 2: supposed desecrators of tuten Common's tomb, and of the six
Speaker 2: who had died, most had died of old age. But
Speaker 2: clearly the idea was just simply too enticing, the idea
Speaker 2: of an ancient mummy's curses, as multiple writers have pointed out,
Speaker 2: they just have too many cool factors here, the idea
Speaker 2: of ancient curses again, even though there's not one in
Speaker 2: this particular case, but just the general idea of them,
Speaker 2: just a sensational and legitimately important archaeological find mummies distant lands.
Speaker 2: They're just it's just too much. People couldn't help themselves.
Speaker 2: And I think it's one of the interesting things about
Speaker 2: Egyptomania in general. It's it's a broad tint that thankfully
Speaker 2: contains and leads to a great deal of serious Egyptology
Speaker 2: and like serious interest in ancient Egyptian topics and also
Speaker 2: you know, ultimately contemporary Egyptian topics. But it also includes
Speaker 2: all manner of fiction, fantasy, superstition, pseudohistory, pseudo archaeology, conspiracy thinking,
Speaker 2: new religious thought. You know, not all of that is bad,
Speaker 2: but some of it can be, at least if it's
Speaker 2: then if there's too much of it at any rate.
Speaker 2: The idea of the curse of the Pharaohs continued, with
Speaker 2: various ideas often brought up as to just why the
Speaker 2: ancient Egyptian tombs killed people. Again, they didn't. But the again,
Speaker 2: we're talking about this pervasive myth, this pervasive idea.
Speaker 3: Right, We're talking about explanations that were offered for a
Speaker 3: phenomenon that was actually not anything other than what you
Speaker 3: would expect from chance.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: One of the most common is just, oh, there's a
Speaker 2: cursed tablet. And again, in many of these cases, there's
Speaker 2: no cursed tablet or thing that end. You end up
Speaker 2: having some sort of story about a particular item being cursed,
Speaker 2: even though there's nothing archaeological or even like subjectively threatening
Speaker 2: about it. Colleen Darnel brought this up in her talk.
Speaker 2: You know, there are certain Egyptian items that there's like
Speaker 2: a legacy of superstition about them, but they're not even
Speaker 2: like threatening looking or anything. It's just they're pretty common.
Speaker 2: But once you get this idea attached to them, it's
Speaker 2: hard to shake. Oh, here's one. This was a Daily
Speaker 2: Mail consideration. What if the mosquito that bit Lord Carnavon
Speaker 2: had filled up on poisonous embalming fluid. First, I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess it's an interesting idea, but I don't think
Speaker 2: there's any reason to back this up.
Speaker 4: Wait.
Speaker 3: Wait, the lethal dose of poisonous embalming fluid didn't kill
Speaker 3: the mosquito, but it did kill the man that the
Speaker 3: mosquito bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then how did it get it? The mosquitoes
Speaker 2: are not gonna they're not going to feed on an
Speaker 2: ancient mummy. And there are just too many problems. But
Speaker 2: there's so many holes in this one. But it's so ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I had to mention, let's see trap toxins in the tomb.
Speaker 2: This is another idea that's often brought up. And this idea,
Speaker 2: I have to admit, smacks a bit of miasthma theory,
Speaker 2: you know, trapped bad air. But you know, there is
Speaker 2: maybe a little more certainly more to this idea than
Speaker 2: there is too deadly embalming fluid mosquitoes. You know, the
Speaker 2: air inside a tomb may well be stale, could be
Speaker 2: low oxygen in high CO two. So you could make
Speaker 2: a case with some tombs for methane and hydrogen sulfide.
Speaker 2: But in general, these are just hypotheticals and there's no
Speaker 2: proof that anything like this has been connected with actual
Speaker 2: tombs in their openings or with human illnesses due to
Speaker 2: their opening. Kind of coming back to the mosquito theory,
Speaker 2: Chemicals from mummification processes are sometimes brought up, but this
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to be a strong short term concern. Let's see.
Speaker 2: They're also highly speculative ideas concerning radon gas in certain tombs.
Speaker 2: But one of the more interesting ones is the idea, Okay,
Speaker 2: how about toxic mold essentially toxic fungal spores released in
Speaker 2: a tomb's opening. This hypothesis is true. Just leaning into
Speaker 2: it for a moment. The idea is that, okay, maybe
Speaker 2: this exasperated the case of Lord Carnarvon, that just you know, like, okay,
Speaker 2: he was already sick. You know, he's going to end
Speaker 2: up with this cut on his face, it gets infected.
Speaker 2: But what if on top of that we also had
Speaker 2: toxic spores. I don't know, I don't think. It doesn't
Speaker 2: seem like it's a very strong argument for a couple
Speaker 2: of reasons, but it does lead to a very interesting
Speaker 2: case from outside of Egypt that does involve his actual phenomenon.
Speaker 3: At least as a possibility that's taken seriously. Right, So well,
Speaker 3: let's talk about that example. Because I didn't know about
Speaker 3: this before you mentioned it to me, and this one
Speaker 3: is really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did not know about this one either until
Speaker 2: I took Colleen Darnell's class and the Curse of the Pharaohs.
Speaker 2: She brought it up, and Yeah, I was instantly fascinated.
Speaker 2: Again Colleen Darnell, the Egyptologist. Go visit her website. She
Speaker 2: does these classes online all the time. They're very cost
Speaker 2: effective and they're a lot of fun. But yeah, this
Speaker 2: is so again stressing that the Pharaohs curse is very
Speaker 2: much a twentieth century myth, but a persistent one stirred
Speaker 2: on by fiction and sensationalism. But this one idea that
Speaker 2: we've touched on that opening a tomb could in effect
Speaker 2: relief said death curse in the form of a deadly
Speaker 2: pathogen is not entirely crazy, because we have one case
Speaker 2: where it may have happened. So this takes us outside
Speaker 2: of Egypt, this Texas to Krakau, Poland, and it concerns
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventy three opening of the tomb of Casimir
Speaker 2: the fourth Jagolan, and apparently opening this tomb did release
Speaker 2: fungal spores of Aspergilius flavas, which was discovered in large
Speaker 2: amounts in this tomb, and it may have ultimately killed
Speaker 2: as many as ten conservationists that had opened and worked
Speaker 2: in the tomb, and done so within a year's time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So from what I understand, the many people who
Speaker 3: did work on this opened tomb did soon die afterwards,
Speaker 3: and there were many spores of Aspergillus. This Aspergillus species
Speaker 3: found there, and specifically the culprit was thought to be
Speaker 3: what are called aflatoxins A. This is a variet of
Speaker 3: poisonous fungal toxin or micotoxin produced by different molds and
Speaker 3: fungal species, but especially Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus mycotoxicosis,
Speaker 3: meaning you know, acute high fungal toxin exposure. This from
Speaker 3: aflatoxin exposure can have a number of serious negative health effects,
Speaker 3: both long term and short term. It seems most importantly
Speaker 3: by attacking the liver, potentially causing hepatitis and greatly increasing
Speaker 3: the risk of liver cancer. I've read that aflatoxins are
Speaker 3: one of the most potent carcinogens known of in nature,
Speaker 3: so they attack the liver and with serious enough exposure,
Speaker 3: it's aflatoxins can cause acute death, cause acute organ failure,
Speaker 3: especially with the liver and death and more moderate rates
Speaker 3: of exposure have potentially been linked to all kinds of
Speaker 3: other problems, including growth, stunting, and children. Though most of
Speaker 3: the concern about aflatoxin exposure comes not from opening tombs,
Speaker 3: but from exposure through contaminated food crops. So like contaminated
Speaker 3: nuts or grains or other food crops that are stored
Speaker 3: in like warm humid conditions can develop aflatoxin contamination through
Speaker 3: a bunch of Aspergillus in them, and this can be
Speaker 3: really really bad to eat. In fact, aflatoxins I believe
Speaker 3: were first discovered in the nineteen sixties and this was
Speaker 3: linked to this famous case of the so called turkey
Speaker 3: X disease among not the country turkey, but the animal
Speaker 3: turkeys in England where I was looking at. A study
Speaker 3: that mentions this called aflatoxins history, significant milestones, recent data
Speaker 3: on their toxicity and ways to mitigation in the journal
Speaker 3: Toxins from twenty.
Speaker 4: Twenty one by p.
Speaker 3: Cova at All and in this overview they describe as
Speaker 3: follows quote. In the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties,
Speaker 3: a new, so far unknown turkey disease characterized by heavy
Speaker 3: mortality was identified in England after the Turkey disease outbreak
Speaker 3: of unknown nature and ideology, the Turkey so called X disease,
Speaker 3: the discovery of aflatoxins began. A total of one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand turkeys died of so called Turkey X disease after
Speaker 3: being fed with contaminated Brazilian ground nut meal on a
Speaker 3: poultry farm in London. Though of course it has only
Speaker 3: affected turkeys, lots of humans around the world. There have
Speaker 3: been aflatoxin breakouts in food crops around the world and
Speaker 3: many people have died as well. So this is like
Speaker 3: a serious, very potent toxin, but usually the risk is
Speaker 3: improperly stored food or contaminated food, not again, not tombs.
Speaker 3: But of course if there were a whole lot of
Speaker 3: aflotoxin from a strongly Aspergillus contaminated tomb, you could imagine
Speaker 3: that also being a serious health risk to people who
Speaker 3: were messing around in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah and again again why this fund
Speaker 2: is widely distributed in soil across the globe sometimes colonizes
Speaker 2: important agricultural crops, but is not something that's like only
Speaker 2: found in tombs. And in fact this is like this
Speaker 2: is the case of this occurring. I don't believe this
Speaker 2: to be a widespread phenomenon. Oh a little background though,
Speaker 2: I want to throw in Kasimir the fourth Yagalan who
Speaker 2: was he? While he was a fifteenth century Polish king
Speaker 2: and Lithuanian Grand Duke, an important European ruler of the day,
Speaker 2: noted for his defeat of the Teutonic Knights during the
Speaker 2: Thirteen Years War the fifteenth century. None of this business
Speaker 2: with his tomb reflects on anything good or bad about
Speaker 2: his life or rule. And to be clear, there was
Speaker 2: absolutely no issued Yagalonian curse, despite some media sensationalism around
Speaker 2: this as well, like he never said don't open my
Speaker 2: tomb or there will be a fungus or anything like that.
Speaker 2: This just is the way it panned out. But it
Speaker 2: certainly didn't stop various folks from absorbing this information and
Speaker 2: then saying, well, what about touch tom What if this
Speaker 2: actual occurrence is the reason that people died because of
Speaker 2: opening king's touch tomb. Again, all the problems with the
Speaker 2: accuracy of that statement in play, they just couldn't help themselves.
Speaker 2: So despite again, despite the fact that with King tut
Speaker 2: we're dealing really with only a single death with other
Speaker 2: very well known factors in place, and we know that
Speaker 2: no one else associated with the opening of this tomb
Speaker 2: died of any mysterious causes. There's also no evidence that
Speaker 2: touch tomb contained dangerous microbes or fungi of any sort. Furthermore,
Speaker 2: according to Colleen Dornell, no one she knows of has
Speaker 2: ever become ill from entering an Egyptian tomb. Yes, you
Speaker 2: can catch pneumonia later, you can catch all number of
Speaker 2: things later, and you will eventually die after visiting an
Speaker 2: Egyptian tomb. That's one hundred percent true. Yeah, but you'll
Speaker 2: all that also happen if you don't visit an Egyptian tomb,
Speaker 2: which doesn't mean you absolutely should, because again, it's going
Speaker 2: to happen either way. But I guess what I'm trying
Speaker 2: to say is, Yeah, this idea of there being some
Speaker 2: sort of a biological agent in the tomb that does,
Speaker 2: from in a medical sense, curse the individual. It is
Speaker 2: technically possible with certain tombs, but not this one.
Speaker 3: Right, technically possible, but doesn't even seem to be especially
Speaker 3: common with the opening of tombs.
Speaker 2: Right, right, But it's an infectious idea, Yeah, MS T
Speaker 2: three K fans, for example, especially may remember a nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two Mummy movie titled time Walker. It stars Ben
Speaker 2: Murphy and its plot concerns a deadly alien fungus inside
Speaker 2: an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus.
Speaker 3: I've never made it all the way through this film,
Speaker 3: but I love the idea of a space mummy, So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't seen it in a while, but I
Speaker 2: remember the ending is very memorable. I forget all the
Speaker 2: beats on the way there, but the ending is a
Speaker 2: lot of fun.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, another question in all of this may come to mind,
Speaker 2: and that is, well, what about traps? I mean, on
Speaker 2: one level, you could say, what if there was some
Speaker 2: sort of a biological agent and it was late as
Speaker 2: a trap. Well, I don't think there's any serious argument
Speaker 2: to be made for that being the case.
Speaker 3: But rob we discussed in the last episode how actually
Speaker 3: a lot in a lot of ancient Egyptian thinking that
Speaker 3: it was a common thing to attack a problem with
Speaker 3: multiple avenues, with multiple mechanisms at once. You would have
Speaker 3: a magical arm of attack and a practical arm of
Speaker 3: attack right against the same issue. So if tomb robbers
Speaker 3: were something you were worried about why not have both
Speaker 3: a curse on the tomb, you know, magical arm of
Speaker 3: attack and practical traps. That would make sense, wouldn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's a reasonable question to ask on
Speaker 2: one level, given that, I mean, we look at the pyramids,
Speaker 2: we look at these the great works of the ancient Egyptians.
Speaker 2: We know they were capable of amazing things by contemporary standards,
Speaker 2: or certainly their own standards, the standards of their time.
Speaker 2: On top of that, you know, we've all seen a
Speaker 2: little Indiana Jones. We've seen at least fictional examples of
Speaker 2: this sort of thing going on. And you know, here
Speaker 2: on the show, we've discussed the possibility of tomb traps
Speaker 2: within the context of the tomb of Chin Chi Wong,
Speaker 2: the first sovereign emperor of China. So if that's even
Speaker 2: in the discussion for that I believe as yet unopened tomb, well,
Speaker 2: what about Egyptian tombs?
Speaker 3: I mean, even in that case, my memory is we
Speaker 3: were like, are there any booby trap tombs? Like in
Speaker 3: Indiana Jones? And that was the example where there's like
Speaker 3: the best case that there might be booby traps, But
Speaker 3: even in that case, it's only a possibility. And also,
Speaker 3: if there ever were such traps, they're probably not still working.
Speaker 2: Right right and if and you know, I imagine you
Speaker 2: could also ask questions like, Okay, if you have some
Speaker 2: sort of traps set up, how much of that is
Speaker 2: like a legitimate real world trap, how much of it
Speaker 2: is indeed magical thinking, like having a stone or some
Speaker 2: sort of supercistitious or religious practice, like having a stone
Speaker 2: warrior within your tomb, or like having various goods for
Speaker 2: the afterlife, perhaps having some sort of a crossbow set
Speaker 2: up to kill someone who enters. That could as well
Speaker 2: be as much a curse as it is a practical consideration.
Speaker 2: But to be clear, with Egyptian tombs, traps of this nature,
Speaker 2: you know, pure Indiana Jones traps like trap doors and
Speaker 2: spike pits and darts that shoot out of the walls crossbows,
Speaker 2: these are apparently unknown. And there's actually a really good
Speaker 2: life science article about this topic from just last month
Speaker 2: by Owen Jaris. I found it an interesting read. The
Speaker 2: author spoke with Reg Clark, author of Securing Eternity, Ancient
Speaker 2: Egyptian tomb production from prehistory and the basics of this argument.
Speaker 2: The counter argument to the idea of traps and why
Speaker 2: we don't see them in ancient Egyptian tombs. It comes
Speaker 2: down to three factors. So, first of all, just about
Speaker 2: any booby trap you can think of would only have
Speaker 2: limited success against tomb raiders because while Indiana Jones works
Speaker 2: alone or with just one individual a love interest or
Speaker 2: someone who's going to betray him, actual ancient Egyptian tune
Speaker 2: raiders worked in large groups. So if you had a
Speaker 2: death trap in place, yeah, you might kill a few
Speaker 2: of them, but the rest are going to keep going
Speaker 2: work around the trap, or the trap's no longer going
Speaker 2: to be be effective, and they might just not realize, hey,
Speaker 2: we encountered a death trap, so I guess we're on
Speaker 2: the right track. We should keep going in this direction.
Speaker 3: That itself sort of highlights some ways that you could
Speaker 3: have practical protections for a tomb that wouldn't be deadly
Speaker 3: booby traps.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and again also, of course there are all
Speaker 2: these practical concerns with a passive trap. They weren't great
Speaker 2: in an Indiana Jones movie, but with they work in reality,
Speaker 2: and when it comes down to it, it seems like
Speaker 2: architectural features were just far more effective ways of keeping
Speaker 2: out tomb raiders. So passages sealed with huge sliding blocks
Speaker 2: or just a cascade of rocky material that would work
Speaker 2: far better than any trap you could imagine, because you
Speaker 2: know it's just just you know, you're dealing with rock,
Speaker 2: You're dealing with with just sheer weight and mass. Additionally,
Speaker 2: it's possible that some pyramid passages that seem to lead
Speaker 2: nowhere were included to confuse robbers. I think there's still
Speaker 2: some open questions about this, and I've also read like
Speaker 2: the possibility of trying to convince the tomb raider or
Speaker 2: the would be tomb raider that the tomb has already
Speaker 2: been robbed is another possible strategy that was employed. And
Speaker 2: these would these would evolve, especially the architectural features, These
Speaker 2: would have been the most effective against your tomb raiders.
Speaker 2: Just putting an enormous stone block between them and what
Speaker 2: they want to steal. That's going to work better than anything.
Speaker 3: Right, So we know they definitely use the locking mechanism
Speaker 3: seal the entrance or try to hide the entrance. They
Speaker 3: may also have used various forms of confusion against tomb robbers,
Speaker 3: like maybe a false chamber or a false passage or
Speaker 3: something that's more up for debate. What we have no
Speaker 3: evidence of is like, yeah, spikes that shoot out or
Speaker 3: crossbows or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then on top of this, first of all,
Speaker 2: we have to we have to think about the fact that, yeah,
Speaker 2: the ancient Egyptians clearly thought about eternity and long term
Speaker 2: time and the same way that humans today do as well.
Speaker 2: But they also were very concerned with the actual threats
Speaker 2: of the day, and therefore it was a little different
Speaker 2: than imagining Indiana Jones trumping in. Right. You were dealing
Speaker 2: with known tomb raiders, known tomb raider groups, known operations,
Speaker 2: and therefore you had first of all, the potential for
Speaker 2: just human guards to be involved human patrols, and you
Speaker 2: had the dual powers of first of all, real world
Speaker 2: laws with brutal punishments for tomb raiders, and then on
Speaker 2: top of that and also in case those didn't work,
Speaker 2: the supernatural curses we've been discussing.
Speaker 3: Yes, and to really hammer on something you said just
Speaker 3: a second ago, From my understanding, the biggest concern about
Speaker 3: grave robbers in ancient Egypt wasn't about the distant future.
Speaker 3: It was about you were concerned about people who would
Speaker 3: come rob your time, whom a few months after it
Speaker 3: was sealed or within a few years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which was again the case with King Tut's tomb
Speaker 2: as well, like Rob twice just in the immediate aftermath
Speaker 2: of the burials. So yeah, this is more what they
Speaker 2: seem to be concerned about. But it is almost we
Speaker 2: almost have. It almost feels counterintuitive at times when we
Speaker 2: think about them, because we are. When we think about
Speaker 2: the ancient Egyptians, Yeah, we do get down and think
Speaker 2: about them as like, you know, real people that lived
Speaker 2: real lives and were in so many respects much like
Speaker 2: we are. But on the other hand, yeah, we also
Speaker 2: think about an ancient people like and they that have
Speaker 2: this kind of mythic quality about everything they do, you know,
Speaker 2: even if the thing they're doing is you know, consuming
Speaker 2: honey honey, or trying to treat an illness or just
Speaker 2: every little thing that occupies our lives today.
Speaker 3: When we think about them, it's tempting to imagine that
Speaker 3: they were thinking about us, but probably weren't thinking about us,
Speaker 3: were much more likely thinking about their own contempt, themselves
Speaker 3: and their own contemporaries.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Though, one point that Colleen Darnell made was that
Speaker 2: you know, King Tut would probably be pleased to know
Speaker 2: that we are still talking about him, still thinking about
Speaker 2: him today, you know, I mean talk about you know,
Speaker 2: long term name value or at least a resurgence. You know,
Speaker 2: I guess there was a long period of time where
Speaker 2: people were maybe not talking about Dudent in common. But today,
Speaker 2: I mean he is probably for most people, he is
Speaker 2: like the pharaoh you would name. If you went out
Speaker 2: and ask people on the street, like, name a pharaoh,
Speaker 2: they would probably say King Tut.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: Well, to bring it back to the subject of a
Speaker 3: Writtner's divine compulsion, one of the things that a tomb
Speaker 3: would sometimes say, you know, the power of a deity
Speaker 3: or supernatural being will seize you and compel you to
Speaker 3: do is to speak the name. Speak the name of
Speaker 3: the person buried here, because that was thought to have
Speaker 3: a power of its own. It's something that some people,
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people buried in ancient Egypt
Speaker 3: wanted people to do. They wanted people after they had
Speaker 3: died to continue to speak their name. That was like
Speaker 3: a blessing you could bestow upon them. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 3: do something nice for an ancient Egyptian speak their name.
Speaker 2: There you go. All right, We're gonna go ahead and
Speaker 2: close this out, but we'd love to hear from everyone
Speaker 2: out there. We'd love to hear from folks who have
Speaker 2: engaged in Egypt, Domania, and Egyptology to varying degrees. If
Speaker 2: you've visited any of the sites that we have referenced
Speaker 2: in these episodes, we would of course love to hear
Speaker 2: your experiences and gain your knowledge right in. We would
Speaker 2: love to hear from you. Just a reminder that Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
Speaker 2: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we
Speaker 2: do a short form episode, and on Fridays we set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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