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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

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Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we

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Speaker 2: are kicking off our spooky content today. I guess we

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Speaker 2: already kind of kicked this off with Weird House Cinema,

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Speaker 2: but at this point we are definitely sliding into October,

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Speaker 2: and if you've listened to the show before, you know

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Speaker 2: that this is a time for us to get into

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Speaker 2: a lot of horror themed content, Halloween e content, and

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Speaker 2: that includes episodes of Weird House Cinema, that includes short episodes,

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Speaker 2: and of course it includes core episodes of Stuff to

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Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind. So that's going to be the course

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Speaker 2: for the month. On the whole, there is going to

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Speaker 2: be our fall break week as usual, in which we'll

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Speaker 2: have reruns, but guess what, all of those reruns are

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Speaker 2: going to be Halloween content as well, so we will

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Speaker 2: keep the Halloween train rolling. Oh.

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Speaker 3: I mean, that's more frightening than a visitor from the past.

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Speaker 2: There you go, There you go. That kind of ties

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Speaker 2: into some of what we'll be talking about here today,

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Speaker 2: because in today's episode, we're going to dive into the world.

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Speaker 2: We're going to return really to the world of ancient

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Speaker 2: Egyptian curses. We've touched on some of this before when

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Speaker 2: we frequently come back to Egyptology related content, either talking

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Speaker 2: about archaeological finds, the history of ancient Egypt, we're talking

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Speaker 2: about something in ancient Egyptian religion that's really fascinating, or

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Speaker 2: of course anything and sort of in the realm of

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Speaker 2: Egypt Domania. You know, this long lasting fascination that other

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Speaker 2: cultures have had with the culture and the ideas and

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Speaker 2: even just the look and the feel of ancient Egypt.

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Speaker 2: So in this episode, we're going to talk about it,

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Speaker 2: ancient Egyptian religious practices, ancient Egyptian magic. We're going to

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Speaker 2: also look at this idea of the curse in ancient

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Speaker 2: egypts and with some specific examples I think, mostly related toombs.

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Speaker 2: We're going to talk about twentieth century myth making about

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Speaker 2: ancient Egyptian curses. And finally, we're going to look at

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Speaker 2: a case from outside of Egypt that has, I don

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Speaker 2: know it lines up in rather interesting ways with some

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Speaker 2: of the ideas that have been generated about ancient Egyptian curses.

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Speaker 2: Within the twentieth century. All right, and before we jump in,

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Speaker 2: I want to mention too that last Thursday I attended

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Speaker 2: an online class by egyptologist and former guest on the

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Speaker 2: show Colleen Darnell, titled Curse of the Pharaohs. I found

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Speaker 2: it super insightful and the information and sources presented in

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Speaker 2: that class were part of my initial research for this episode.

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Speaker 2: She does these classes on different egyptology topics each month.

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Speaker 2: I highly recommend them. You can learn more about them

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Speaker 2: at Colleen Darnell dot com. So I'll refer back to

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Speaker 2: some of her ideas and content, as well as some

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Speaker 2: other sources once we get into it. But let's get

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Speaker 2: down to brass tacks here. Let's talk a little bit

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Speaker 2: about Egyptian magic.

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Speaker 3: Indeed, let's talk about Egyptian magic. I think this is

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Speaker 3: a good groundwork to lay because curses, of course, are

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Speaker 3: not the only kind of magic that was practiced in

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Speaker 3: ancient Egypt. They're a particularly savory, delicious kind of magic

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Speaker 3: from a modern sensibility to understand. But yeah, I think

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Speaker 3: it's good to understand the general context of Egyptian magic

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Speaker 3: a little bit better before we narrow in on curses themselves.

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Speaker 3: So to better understand ancient Egyptian magic. I turned to

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Speaker 3: a there's a really good overview in a book by

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Speaker 3: Geraldine Pinch called Magic in Ancient Egypt, published by the

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Speaker 3: University of Texas Press nineteen ninety four. Geraldine Pinch is

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Speaker 3: an Egyptologist we've referred to on the show plenty of times.

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Speaker 3: Born nineteen fifty one. She is affiliated with the University

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Speaker 3: of Oxford, and I mainly want to in this section

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Speaker 3: talk about some distinctions and frameworks that Pinch invokes in

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Speaker 3: the first chapter of this book to give a way

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Speaker 3: of the land about how the ancient Egyptians viewed and

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Speaker 3: used magic. And at the beginning here it's worth noting

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Speaker 3: the long and varied textual and archaeological record of magic

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Speaker 3: and ancient Egypt. While magical amulets and other objects go

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Speaker 3: back into prehistory, magical texts from ancient Egypt are found

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Speaker 3: from like the late third millennium BCE until about the

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Speaker 3: fourth century CE, So it's more than three thousand years

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Speaker 3: worth of texts concerning magic, many of which are written

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Speaker 3: records of spells themselves, like we have the primary documents

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Speaker 3: we have thus spells. That's pretty cool, not just people

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Speaker 3: talking about magic, but we have like the recipes, and

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Speaker 3: in this chapter, Pinch identifies sort of three main categories

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Speaker 3: of magic. You've got funerary magic, that's what concerns death

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Speaker 3: bear in the afterlife. You've got temple magic, which is

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Speaker 3: ritual magic performed in temples by priests or religious authorities,

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Speaker 3: often aimed at various forms of public welfare outcomes that

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Speaker 3: concerned lots of people at once. And then finally, you've

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Speaker 3: got personal or everyday magic, the spells and rites used

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Speaker 3: by individual people for help in situations that they faced personally.

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Speaker 3: Funerary magic is arguably the class that we know the

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Speaker 3: most about, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was the

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Speaker 3: most important. It obviously was very important, but the fact

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Speaker 3: that we know so much about it seems to be

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Speaker 3: in large part related to what type of evidence was

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Speaker 3: preserved and passed on down to us. A lot of

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Speaker 3: our best preserved evidence from ancient Egypt comes from tombs,

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Speaker 3: so it's kind of natural that we just know a

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Speaker 3: lot about funerary and funerary practices and things having to

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Speaker 3: deal with death in the afterlife. There are two Egyptian

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Speaker 3: words used most often to refer to magic. One of

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Speaker 3: these words is Heca or Hika, usually spelled in English

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Speaker 3: h e Ka, which is also the personal name of

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Speaker 3: an Egyptian god. The god Heca was usually depicted in

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Speaker 3: human form, but the word Heca was also used to

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Speaker 3: refer to not just this god in personal form, but

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Speaker 3: to a type of energy or force used by the

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Speaker 3: creator deity to create. So in the Egyptian creation myth,

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Speaker 3: you usually have some form of there's this primordial water,

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Speaker 3: this abyss of chaotic water is known as the nun

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Speaker 3: or noon in u n and then out of this

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Speaker 3: abyss comes a mound of dry land upon which creation

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Speaker 3: can take place. And Heca here is related to this

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Speaker 3: spirit of creation that takes shape here, and this association

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Speaker 3: continues throughout Egyptian history with the power of magic or

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Speaker 3: heca often understood as a as a type of creative spark,

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Speaker 3: a power to make and to mold. So it's this

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Speaker 3: interestingly loaded concept there. In some literal sense, it did

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Speaker 3: refer to magical power, but you could also think of

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Speaker 3: it in weird ways as being similar to like the

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Speaker 3: idea of will or will power. You could think of

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Speaker 3: it in some ways as being similar to like creativity

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Speaker 3: or energy. Yeah, yeah, Interestingly pinchnotes that the god Heca

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Speaker 3: did not have any major temples devoted to him, despite

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Speaker 3: his important role in Egyptian mythology and religious practice. There

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Speaker 3: is some evidence of, like maybe some minor cultic activity

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Speaker 3: concerning Heca, but the god was not like the the

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Speaker 3: patron deity of any of the big state temples. Hekka

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Speaker 3: in the sense of magical power, was also a personal

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Speaker 3: attribute that was believed to be in some limited sense

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Speaker 3: by all beings, but especially by certain beings. There were

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Speaker 3: beings additionally endowed or especially endowed with heca. So gods

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Speaker 3: and supernatural entities obviously had heca. Ghosts and the dead

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Speaker 3: had heca. Kings had heca. People who were foreign or

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Speaker 3: were physically atypical in some way, such as dwarfs, were

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Speaker 3: sometimes said to have heca, and so Pinch says, basically,

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Speaker 3: anything that the ancient Egyptians regarded as strange, exotic, or

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Speaker 3: ancient might be thought of as possessing special measures of

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Speaker 3: heca beyond just what anyone else would have. And it's

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Speaker 3: interesting how much I think that kind of associative tradition

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Speaker 3: carries through even until today, that authors and storytellers, even

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Speaker 3: up until up in the modern era often think about

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Speaker 3: magic is something that doesn't seem to emanate, especially from

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Speaker 3: the people that the author views as typical. There's it's

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Speaker 3: like people who are different in some way, or people

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Speaker 3: who are from another place, or who look different, or

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Speaker 3: who are very old, maybe ancient, or have some connection

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Speaker 3: to something ancient, that that's where the magic is stored.

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Speaker 2: Right right, Yeah, and yeah, we still kind of engage

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Speaker 2: in this a little bit, right, I mean when we

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Speaker 2: just think of like what does a magician look like,

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Speaker 2: or a wizard or any kind of like magic user,

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Speaker 2: like you want, you don't picture just the person next door.

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Speaker 2: You picture somebody who stands out, who has that weirdness

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Speaker 2: about them.

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Speaker 3: So that's heka. The other big Egyptian word for magic

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Speaker 3: pinch says is aku akhu, usually in English, sometimes translated

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Speaker 3: as enchantments or spells, but some sources emphasize really the

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Speaker 3: idea of power or effectiveness at the core of this concept,

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Speaker 3: the power to bring change or to cause things to happen,

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Speaker 3: so it might be best translated as something like effective

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Speaker 3: words or effective spells. This one seems to be associated

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Speaker 3: especially with gods and other deities with stars, which had

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Speaker 3: a special kind of effectiveness about them or power, and

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Speaker 3: really especially the honored or blessed dead. Now here's a

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Speaker 3: really key thing to understand about ancient Egyptian magic. Both

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Speaker 3: heca magic and aku are widely characterized as morally neutral

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Speaker 3: in themselves. They are neither inherently good nor inherently evil,

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Speaker 3: and in fact, they can be used for either good

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Speaker 3: or evil. They are simply types of power, creative and

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Speaker 3: efficacious energy which can be used to heal or to harm,

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Speaker 3: to defend or attack.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this comes back to something we've talked about in

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Speaker 2: the show before, of course, the importance of mat in

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Speaker 2: ancient Egypt. That even above of the gods to a

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Speaker 2: large degree, you have this idea of cosmic order and

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Speaker 2: balance that is MOT. And yeah, if something unbalances things,

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Speaker 2: then yeah, then it's you could think of it more

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Speaker 2: as is evil, I guess or chaotic, But MOT is

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Speaker 2: like the most important principle.

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Speaker 3: Right, And we'll actually come back to that because magic

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Speaker 3: factors into the preservation of MOT in many ways. But yeah,

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Speaker 3: MOT is sometimes translated as justice, as order, as harmony.

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Speaker 3: It is the right way for things to be. Right Now,

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Speaker 3: after this basic discussion of terminology in this chapter, Pinch

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Speaker 3: gets into some different scholarly frameworks that have been used

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Speaker 3: by anthropologists over the years to understand what magic is,

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Speaker 3: and then she talks about the extent to which these

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Speaker 3: frameworks do and do not accurately describe the examples of

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Speaker 3: Heca and aku in ancient Egypt. So one idea she

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Speaker 3: gets into is James Fraser's distinction between magic and religion,

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Speaker 3: made famous in his highly influential work on the anthropology

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Speaker 3: of religion called The Golden Bough. We've talked about this

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Speaker 3: work many times on the show. Before You Know. Fraser

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Speaker 3: is a great read, but many of his ideas are

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Speaker 3: no longer considered like the best way to think about

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Speaker 3: anthropology of religion by anthropologists today. It's kind of like

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Speaker 3: it's still a great book to read in many ways

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Speaker 3: to understand its place in the history of scholarship, and

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Speaker 3: it's very interesting, but many of its theories have been superseded.

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Speaker 3: So Fraser says that a key difference between magic and

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Speaker 3: religion goes like this. Magic is when a human expects

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Speaker 3: that the right sequence of words or ritual actions will

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Speaker 3: compel supernatural beings to bring about a desired result automatically

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Speaker 3: or ineluck Blee, whereas religion is a bit more oriented

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Speaker 3: around the free will of the deity. Religion is when

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Speaker 3: a human hopes they can persuade a deity to grant

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Speaker 3: their prayer or request through supplication and offerings. In other words,

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Speaker 3: with religion, you come to the God's temple, you might

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Speaker 3: make an offering, and you beg hoping that God will

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Speaker 3: take mercy and help you out. With magic, you enact

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Speaker 3: a spell designed to command or coerce a supernatural being

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Speaker 3: to cause something you desire to happen. So, within this framework,

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Speaker 3: Fraser characterized magic and religion as distinct and in some

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Speaker 3: ways opposite phenomena, even though they sometimes invoked the same deities.

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Speaker 3: He saw magicians and priests as fundamentally different and as

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Speaker 3: natural rivals. But as we just mentioned a minute ago,

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Speaker 3: anthropologists of religion have in many cases moved away from

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Speaker 3: Fraser's frameworks as being too simplistic, and it seems the

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Speaker 3: case of ancient Egyptian magic is sort of the perfect

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Speaker 3: example of how Fraser's categories don't exactly hold up when

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Speaker 3: applied to some major real world traditions. They might better

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Speaker 3: describe some other traditions, but this doesn't really work very well.

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Speaker 3: Pinch argues with Egyptian magic because she says, while you

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Speaker 3: see examples both of what Fraser would call magic and

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Speaker 3: religion in ancient Egypt, they substantially blur together and are

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Speaker 3: performed in the same settings and by the same authorities.

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Speaker 3: So in ancient Egypt, a lot of rituals which were

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Speaker 3: meant to manipulate and automatically compel action by supernatural beings

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Speaker 3: were performed in temples by the priesthood. The kind of

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Speaker 3: spells you might imagine a you know, in a difference setting,

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Speaker 3: like a witch performing binding a demon to do her

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Speaker 3: bidding or something like that. In the case of ancient Egypt,

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Speaker 3: you could get stuff like that in a temple, done

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Speaker 3: by a sanctioned priest who was you know, considered in

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Speaker 3: the good graces of the king. So it would not

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Speaker 3: be impossible or even necessarily unusual in ancient Egypt to

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Speaker 3: have a pious priest practicing spells that explicitly commanded or

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Speaker 3: attempted to coerce action from deities by, for example, threatening

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Speaker 3: the deities or threatening to commit dangerous and sacrilegious acts

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Speaker 3: against them if they did not obey. There are actually

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Speaker 3: spells that do this.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I'll come back to a specific example of this

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Speaker 2: related to a curse in a bit. Yeah, And we

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Speaker 2: have to remind ourselves again about mot being important overall.

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Speaker 2: And you can if you I mean, obviously you need

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Speaker 2: to know what you're doing within you know, the framework

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Speaker 2: of the Egyptian religion here, but you could kind of

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Speaker 2: like go over the god's heads by invoking MOT, which

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Speaker 2: is very's there's a legal sense to it, you know.

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Speaker 2: Like one of the things called now stresses is that

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Speaker 2: the ancient Egyptians loved litigation, and you see that in

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Speaker 2: some of their magic. You know, they are they're litigating

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Speaker 2: when they're casting a spell.

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Speaker 3: That's an interesting way of thinking about it. I think

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Speaker 3: we'll come back to that in a minute too. So

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Speaker 3: another common distinction that has historically been made between magicians

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Speaker 3: and priests is that while priests have a congregation over

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Speaker 3: whom they have a responsibility for guidance and moral instruction,

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Speaker 3: magicians have only clients with whom they can you know,

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Speaker 3: it's a much freer kind of relationship with whom they

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Speaker 3: can pursue an a moral transactional kind of interaction. But

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Speaker 3: Pinch says again this distinction doesn't really work for ancient Egypt.

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Speaker 3: Ancient Egyptian priests were usually not expected to be moral teachers.

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Speaker 3: There might have been some cases where they were, but

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Speaker 3: it doesn't seem to be a general understanding of them.

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Speaker 3: They were paid specialists in ritual and rituals and spells.

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Speaker 3: They had expertise in spells, and they could offer whatever

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Speaker 3: kinds of spells, defensive or offensive, were needed for the occasion,

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Speaker 3: much like the aforementioned understanding of a magician. And yet

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Speaker 3: at the same time, priests in ancient Egypt were not

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Speaker 3: at all considered subversive, illicit, or illegitimate. They were the

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Speaker 3: temple priests, allied with kingly power, and they practiced what

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Speaker 3: often looks like ritual magic on behalf of the state.

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Speaker 3: So that's the thing again that just, you know, in

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Speaker 3: a modern i guess mainly Christian influenced religious culture, it's

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Speaker 3: hard to make that just doesn't fit with our idea

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Speaker 3: of like how magic works. I'm trying to imagine if

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Speaker 3: in the US, if like Nixon had hired a bunch

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Speaker 3: of witches to cook up a potion to guarantee victory

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Speaker 3: in Vietnam, you know, but also those witches were like

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Speaker 3: mainline Christian denominational preachers.

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Speaker 2: That's a good point. Yeah, researching this episode time and

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Speaker 2: time again, like compared, tried to compare anyway what I

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Speaker 2: was reading or listening to about the relationship between these

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Speaker 2: ancient Egyptians and their priests and their gods with how

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Speaker 2: like contemporary Christians think about their God. And yeah, it

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Speaker 2: often doesn't line up because depending on exactly how you're

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Speaker 2: framing the Christian God, you may be framing the Christian

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Speaker 2: God is more like a loving personal God, or on

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Speaker 2: the other end of the spectrum, you know, this vengeful god,

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Speaker 2: the God of Alukardo that is going to you know,

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Speaker 2: send you to hell. But in either case, like you

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Speaker 2: wouldn't litigate against this god because on one hand, he's

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Speaker 2: your friend or your your he's like your family, he's

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Speaker 2: your father. You don't sue your father under most circumstances,

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Speaker 2: I guess. But then the other end of the spectrum,

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Speaker 2: you don't sue the like the all powerful entity that

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Speaker 2: has you like in the grip of his clause or

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Speaker 2: what have you. You know. So it's it's just such

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Speaker 2: a different framework.

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Speaker 3: It is so interesting to think about, well, the similarities

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Speaker 3: and the differences to whatever religion we're more familiar with anyway.

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Speaker 3: But so coming back to these these frameworks for understanding

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Speaker 3: magic versus religion, another framework that Pinch discusses in this

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Speaker 3: chapter is a framework for understanding magic coming from the

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Speaker 3: Polish anthropologist A. Bronislaw Malinovsky. A few points from Malinovsky here,

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Speaker 3: he argued that the purpose of ritual magic is to

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Speaker 3: solve problems that are beyond the limits of what a

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Speaker 3: society can do with technology, can do with it the

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Speaker 3: technology available to it. And that's one of those things

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Speaker 3: that there's so many there's so much stuff like this,

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Speaker 3: you know, anthropology of religion. You hear it. That just

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Speaker 3: sounds intuitively true. Yeah, that sounds right. But Pinch argues

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Speaker 3: once again that when you try to lie this up

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Speaker 3: with what we know about ancient Egyptian magic, it doesn't

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Speaker 3: fit the case very well. Like we know for a

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Speaker 3: fact that the ancient Egyptians used magic to get desired

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Speaker 3: outcomes that they were practically and technologically capable of achieving

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Speaker 3: bi conventional means, for example, recovery from medical problems for

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Speaker 3: which they actually had effective practical treatments, and assuring military

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Speaker 3: victory over enemies that they were perfectly capable of crushing

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Speaker 3: in battle. So you might think of magic instead of

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Speaker 3: being exclusively the domain of problems we can't actually solve

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Speaker 3: under our own power, a kind of second line of

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Speaker 3: attack on problems, a parallel approach to solving problems that

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Speaker 3: you would often pair with a practical approach to the problem.

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Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's like some of the magic in

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Speaker 2: Dungeons and Dragons, right is it? If I remember I

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Speaker 2: never play a cleric, But it's like blessing or bless

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Speaker 2: right y via that extra D.

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Speaker 3: Four increase your chance of success.

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Speaker 2: It's like I'm rolling at D twenty. There's a an

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Speaker 2: I already have a modifier in that I can totally

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Speaker 2: hit this. I might even score a crit But am

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Speaker 2: I going to say no to the D four? Of course?

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Speaker 2: Now that could make all the.

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Speaker 3: Difference exactly right. Yeah, So maybe that's a better way

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Speaker 3: of thinking about it, and people will still do this

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Speaker 3: with forms of prayer today, prayer for prayer for success

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Speaker 3: in situations where out with the outcome is not guaranteed,

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Speaker 3: even if you do presumably have the power to achieve

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Speaker 3: the outcome yourself, you just don't know if you're going

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Speaker 3: to be able to do it. So yeah, so instead

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Speaker 3: of magic taking over when practical and tech technological solutions

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Speaker 3: fall short, I think it was normal for ancient Egyptians

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Speaker 3: to attack the same problem simultaneously with practical efforts and

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Speaker 3: ritual magic. Pinch also cites both Melinofsky and another anthropologist

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Speaker 3: named Misha Ta Tiev, who made the point in different

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Speaker 3: ways that a key distinction between really religion and magic

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Speaker 3: is the timing and nature of the problems they seek

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Speaker 3: to address. So I think this was especially to Tiev's

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Speaker 3: idea that religion is calendrical, meaning pertaining to the calendar.

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Speaker 3: It follows a regular, seasonal or yearly pattern of rituals

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Speaker 3: that occur on a set schedule, and the problems it

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Speaker 3: tries to solve are public problems. It is for the

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Speaker 3: common benefit of the community or the state. And magic, meanwhile,

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Speaker 3: according to Tatiev's framework, is critical It is used to

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Speaker 3: solve a specific crisis that arises unexpectedly, often a personal

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Speaker 3: or individual matter, and Pinch argues that this one is

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Speaker 3: sort of half correct when it comes to ancient Egypt.

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Speaker 3: The rituals performed in ancient Egyptian temples were primarily aimed

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Speaker 3: at what were thought to be public goods. They were

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Speaker 3: for the benefit of the state or the society at large,

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Speaker 3: and this was done through regularly occurring rituals and seasonal festivals.

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Speaker 3: But Pinch says the principle of responding to crisis with

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Speaker 3: magic was actually woven into the very fabric of Egyptian religion.

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Speaker 3: One really interesting example is that within Egyptian myth and religion,

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Speaker 3: some regularly occurring rituals were thought to be responses to

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Speaker 3: a crisis, to an ongoing crisis. It was just like this,

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Speaker 3: you know, never ceasing cosmic crisis that would occur over

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Speaker 3: and over, even every single day. The example she gives

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Speaker 3: is the ritual to protect the sun god Raw at

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Speaker 3: sunset every night. The Egyptians believed that every night Raw

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Speaker 3: had to make a perilous journey through the underworld in

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Speaker 3: which it was a possibility that he could be killed

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Speaker 3: during his nightly battle with the serpent of chaos Apophus.

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Speaker 2: That's right, the soul or barge.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And so priests had to perform protective magic magical

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Speaker 3: interventions to make sure Raw would survive his journey and

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Speaker 3: the sun would rise again every morning. So it's like

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Speaker 3: it has more the flavor of responding to a crisis,

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Speaker 3: but it's a crisis that happens every single day and

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Speaker 3: you have to keep responding to it.

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Speaker 2: I think I think most contemporary listeners can can feel

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Speaker 2: that it does feel like there's a crisis every day.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. And then beyond that, Pinch mentions that the exact

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Speaker 3: same priest who is going to be performing regular calindrical

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Speaker 3: rituals at a state affiliated public temple might also be

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Speaker 3: a vendor of private magic spells to solve your personal crisis,

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Speaker 3: maybe for a fee. And what were these private crises

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Speaker 3: that would have people seeking magical aid or protection. Well,

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Speaker 3: they're probably what you would imagine. They're all kinds of things.

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Speaker 3: Health issues seem to be a really big one, like illness, injury, infection,

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Speaker 3: things relating to childbirth are very common reasons to seek

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Speaker 3: the intervention of a priest or to try to use

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Speaker 3: a magical spell, but also to just solve all kinds

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Speaker 3: of personal problems, injuries committed, you know, offenses committed against

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Speaker 3: you by others, just problems people would face in their lives. Also,

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Speaker 3: it's worth thinking about how a lot of magic in

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Speaker 3: ancient Egypt was to use a medical term preventative care.

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Speaker 3: So you might, in fact, not just might, people often

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Speaker 3: did do magical spells not to solve a problem that

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Speaker 3: had already happened, but to protect against problems that could

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Speaker 3: potentially arise.

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Speaker 2: And obviously, as we've discussed in the show before, we

404
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Speaker 2: see examples of this from all around the world as well.

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Speaker 2: Preventative magic, magic to keep evil away and so forth.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, now here's one another area. There are many

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Speaker 3: of these where a person who grew up thinking about

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Speaker 3: magic and religion and say a primarily Christian context and

409
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Speaker 3: thinking about magic along the lines of witchcraft. You know,

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Speaker 3: whether way witchcraft is viewed in European Christianity. The question

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Speaker 3: is was magic seen as anti social or harmful or

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Speaker 3: wicked in ancient Egypt, the way witchcraft is viewed in

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Speaker 3: most historical Christian societies. The answer is, for the most part, no,

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Speaker 3: especially in the period before Egypt was absorbed into the

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Speaker 3: Roman Empire. Now there are some nuances to this, because

416
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Speaker 3: evil magic was absolutely thought to exist, but evil magic

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Speaker 3: or wicked sorcery was usually attributed to foreigners, not other Egyptians.

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Speaker 3: So there was wicked sorcery, but most of the time

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Speaker 3: There are exceptions here. Most of the time it was

420
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Speaker 3: thought to be coming from somewhere else, somewhere outside of Egypt. Again,

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Speaker 3: that's the broad trend. There are exceptions to this in

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Speaker 3: some texts that maybe specify certain punishments or prohibitions against

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Speaker 3: illicit sorcery. But this just seems to be mostly not

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Speaker 3: how Egyptians viewed magic done by other Egyptians. Usually that

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Speaker 3: was not thought of like Christians thought of witchcraft. Here's

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Speaker 3: another question about magic. Did ancient Egyptians believe their magic

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Speaker 3: to be the command of an impersonal force in nature,

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Speaker 3: as in the Christian concept of natural magic, You're just

429
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Speaker 3: sort of commanding about a general, disembodied power. Or was

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Speaker 3: it thought to be the invocation of the powers of

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Speaker 3: specific supernatural beings or entities, as in the Christian concept

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Speaker 3: of demonic magic. Again, though it would not have the

433
00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:56,360
Speaker 3: negative connotations of Christian demonic magic, the invocation of powerful

434
00:27:56,400 --> 00:28:01,440
Speaker 3: supernatural beings was the standard mechanism described by Egyptian priests

435
00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:04,399
Speaker 3: and spells. You were maybe calling somebody up from the

436
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:06,960
Speaker 3: underworld or from some other plane to take care of

437
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:10,680
Speaker 3: a little something for you. There were a few mechanisms

438
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:15,439
Speaker 3: of magic and Egyptian thought that were more impersonal, one

439
00:28:15,560 --> 00:28:19,560
Speaker 3: that Pinch describes as essentially working by the principle of analogy,

440
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:24,440
Speaker 3: and this would be based on the subtle associations between things.

441
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:27,160
Speaker 3: I'm going to read from Pinch's description here to get

442
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:29,639
Speaker 3: the idea of how this impersonal magic worked.

443
00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:30,160
Speaker 2: Quote.

444
00:28:30,680 --> 00:28:33,879
Speaker 3: The magician also strove to discern the true nature of

445
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 3: beings and objects and the connections between them. These connections

446
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:41,160
Speaker 3: were created by shared properties such as color or the

447
00:28:41,360 --> 00:28:45,640
Speaker 3: sound of a name. Similarities which seem irrelevant to our

448
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:50,120
Speaker 3: classification systems, were considered significant by the Egyptians. Once a

449
00:28:50,200 --> 00:28:54,080
Speaker 3: pairing had been established, it was thought possible to transfer

450
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 3: qualities from one component to the other, or to produce

451
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:02,400
Speaker 3: an effect on the one by actions performed on the other.

452
00:29:03,080 --> 00:29:06,480
Speaker 3: Heca was the force that turned these connections into a

453
00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:08,280
Speaker 3: kind of power network.

454
00:29:08,800 --> 00:29:09,840
Speaker 2: HM. Fascinating.

455
00:29:10,160 --> 00:29:12,160
Speaker 3: So you've got both kinds of magic. You've got like

456
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:15,880
Speaker 3: natural magic based on things like this sort of associative power,

457
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:19,200
Speaker 3: and then you've also got just calling up other worldly

458
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:22,160
Speaker 3: entities to do your bidding for you. Now, finally, I

459
00:29:22,280 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 3: want to elaborate one thing that Pinch gets into that

460
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:29,760
Speaker 3: I thought was really interesting, which is further subdividing the

461
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 3: question of what people believed magic could do for them.

462
00:29:33,440 --> 00:29:35,280
Speaker 3: I already mentioned a minute ago that people thought it

463
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:38,800
Speaker 3: could solve problems for them. That's the more obvious answer.

464
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:41,400
Speaker 3: You know, it could help you achieve a goal that

465
00:29:41,480 --> 00:29:44,400
Speaker 3: was either outside of your personal power or in which

466
00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:48,280
Speaker 3: success by normal means was not guaranteed. But the less

467
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:52,600
Speaker 3: obvious and very interesting answer is that magic also helped

468
00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:58,520
Speaker 3: people identify the cause of a problem. Why did this

469
00:29:58,720 --> 00:30:01,960
Speaker 3: happen to me? Why did this bad thing occur? Why

470
00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:04,600
Speaker 3: did my child get sick? Why did my crops with

471
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 3: her pinch runs through a list of common explanations that

472
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:12,480
Speaker 3: would be given in spells for the answers to these problems.

473
00:30:13,040 --> 00:30:17,000
Speaker 3: Maybe a God is wrathful at you, Maybe a foreign

474
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:21,480
Speaker 3: wizard has cursed you with evil magic. Maybe a ghost

475
00:30:21,640 --> 00:30:26,440
Speaker 3: or a demon is maliciously persecuting you. And whereas in

476
00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:30,480
Speaker 3: the religious context of modern Christianity, the answers are more

477
00:30:30,480 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 3: often things like, well, you might get a kind of

478
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:36,080
Speaker 3: non answer in the form of God works in mysterious ways.

479
00:30:36,200 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 3: We can't know why this happened, which many people do believe,

480
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:44,200
Speaker 3: but also people often report finding unsatisfying or get you

481
00:30:44,200 --> 00:30:46,920
Speaker 3: can get answers like you have sinned and you are

482
00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:50,360
Speaker 3: being punished. Strangely, you do still hear this a lot,

483
00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:54,000
Speaker 3: even though in multiple stories from the Bible, Jesus explicitly

484
00:30:54,040 --> 00:30:57,320
Speaker 3: rejects this reasoning, Yeah, you know, I guess it's like

485
00:30:57,360 --> 00:30:59,200
Speaker 3: in the story of the you know, the Man Born

486
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:01,280
Speaker 3: Blind and the Gospel of John, he's like, that's not

487
00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:04,440
Speaker 3: how it works. Though I guess some people interpret Jesus

488
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:07,480
Speaker 3: in stories like that to be more narrowly referring to well,

489
00:31:07,520 --> 00:31:09,840
Speaker 3: he's just saying it's not how it works in this case.

490
00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:12,440
Speaker 3: Maybe God does punish people for sin in other cases.

491
00:31:12,720 --> 00:31:15,280
Speaker 2: It's a worldview that can be very difficult to shake,

492
00:31:16,120 --> 00:31:19,239
Speaker 2: even if you have a logical or even you know,

493
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:22,760
Speaker 2: a doctrine based reason or even a scripture based reason.

494
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 2: As we're disgusting to reject it.

495
00:31:24,520 --> 00:31:27,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I want to be fair. Obviously,

496
00:31:27,560 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 3: I don't find that point of view highly sympathetic, but

497
00:31:29,880 --> 00:31:33,040
Speaker 3: I will will at least be fair and say that

498
00:31:33,080 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 3: I think you could have legitimate theological reasons for saying no, no.

499
00:31:36,240 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 3: People are misinterpreting those stories in the Bible where you know,

500
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 3: and Jesus did just mean, this guy wasn't born blind

501
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 3: because of sin. Maybe other people are anyway. Sorry that

502
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:49,080
Speaker 3: was a tangent, but yeah, So those are the kinds

503
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:51,800
Speaker 3: of things you would more often get in modern Christianity.

504
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:55,640
Speaker 3: Ancient Egyptian magical texts would often be able to say

505
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 3: in contrast to that, they say, yes, we can absolutely

506
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 3: identify these specific source of your problem, but the spell

507
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:06,600
Speaker 3: or the ritual does not assert that the misfortune is

508
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:10,360
Speaker 3: your fault. You get an answer about the cause, and

509
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:12,920
Speaker 3: you can believe that you are, in fact an innocent

510
00:32:13,040 --> 00:32:17,000
Speaker 3: victim being attacked by powers beyond your control. And now

511
00:32:17,040 --> 00:32:19,880
Speaker 3: that you have consulted a priest with the proper magical arsenal,

512
00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:22,440
Speaker 3: or now that you've got this magical papyrus in your hands,

513
00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:26,800
Speaker 3: and you can put together a counterspell to identify your

514
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 3: oppressor and heal or protect you without assigning yourself any

515
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:34,600
Speaker 3: blame for the problem. So that covers most of the

516
00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:36,760
Speaker 3: framework that Pinch gets into in this chapter. But I

517
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:39,000
Speaker 3: just want to emphasize a few themes at the end

518
00:32:39,320 --> 00:32:41,959
Speaker 3: to really hammer them home. One of the main ones

519
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:45,640
Speaker 3: is to say, again, in ancient Egypt, magic and religion

520
00:32:45,840 --> 00:32:51,560
Speaker 3: were not separable and rival institutions. They were fully ed

521
00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 3: entwined with one another, and the boundaries between them are

522
00:32:54,960 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 3: quite fuzzy. And the other idea is that magic was

523
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:03,680
Speaker 3: an all pervading force that affected even the gods. It

524
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:06,640
Speaker 3: wasn't just us, affected even the gods, and in fact,

525
00:33:06,760 --> 00:33:11,640
Speaker 3: the gods needed magical help of their own. On that

526
00:33:11,760 --> 00:33:16,880
Speaker 3: last point, there's one very interesting feature of ancient Egyptian cosmology,

527
00:33:17,400 --> 00:33:22,400
Speaker 3: which is that the creation story in ancient Egyptian cosmology

528
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:25,440
Speaker 3: the creation of the ordered world out of the primeval

529
00:33:25,480 --> 00:33:30,200
Speaker 3: waters of chaos. Some authors have talked about how in

530
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:34,040
Speaker 3: Egyptian thinking, this was not a single event that took

531
00:33:34,080 --> 00:33:37,200
Speaker 3: place in the past at the beginning, the way we

532
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:40,479
Speaker 3: think of the creation narrative in many other religions. An

533
00:33:40,520 --> 00:33:46,640
Speaker 3: Egyptian myth, creation was an ongoing process that required continual

534
00:33:46,960 --> 00:33:51,240
Speaker 3: daily effort by the creator deity and by the other

535
00:33:51,320 --> 00:33:56,480
Speaker 3: gods allied with order. So humans with their rituals had

536
00:33:56,560 --> 00:34:00,960
Speaker 3: to perform magic invoking the power of Heca to aid

537
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:05,440
Speaker 3: the gods and sustain the creation of the world every day.

538
00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:09,000
Speaker 3: So the ordered world was very fragile, and if the

539
00:34:09,080 --> 00:34:13,879
Speaker 3: process of creation through Heca through magic was not sustained

540
00:34:13,960 --> 00:34:17,520
Speaker 3: every day by these efforts of the Creator spirit and

541
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:20,319
Speaker 3: by the efforts of gods and you know, the order

542
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 3: gods and humans. The ordered world could well collapse back

543
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:27,600
Speaker 3: into the abyss of chaos and the world could be unmade.

544
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 3: So I feel like this really provides some scope on

545
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:34,280
Speaker 3: how how important Heca magic was. It was incredibly important,

546
00:34:34,320 --> 00:34:39,160
Speaker 3: and the problems it addressed were so wide, so different,

547
00:34:39,280 --> 00:34:41,919
Speaker 3: you know, Heca magic was. It's how you find out

548
00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:44,520
Speaker 3: that your cow is sick because it has been attacked

549
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:47,759
Speaker 3: by a ghost or cursed by a foreign sorcerer, And

550
00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:51,160
Speaker 3: it is how you invoke a divine shield of protection

551
00:34:51,320 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 3: and healing over your cow. And it is also how

552
00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:58,440
Speaker 3: the priesthood keeps the state secure, keeps the king enthroned,

553
00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:02,240
Speaker 3: aids the Sun god and his battle against the serpent,

554
00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:05,240
Speaker 3: and keeps the world from sinking into a dark ocean

555
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:06,040
Speaker 3: of nothingness.

556
00:35:06,520 --> 00:35:10,680
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, this is uh, this is such a fascinating topic.

557
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 2: You know, it reminds me of our past episode on

558
00:35:13,160 --> 00:35:15,960
Speaker 2: the inundation of the Nile, and you know how you

559
00:35:16,400 --> 00:35:19,640
Speaker 2: have the seasonal flooding of the Nile that's responsible for

560
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:25,640
Speaker 2: basically sustaining life along the Great Nile river, and and

561
00:35:25,719 --> 00:35:28,080
Speaker 2: you can also point to various examples in any given

562
00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:32,160
Speaker 2: culture where like there's there's a definite uh, there's there's

563
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:35,000
Speaker 2: a definite knowledge that there are seasonal things that have

564
00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:37,400
Speaker 2: to happen in order for life to continue, be it,

565
00:35:37,480 --> 00:35:40,200
Speaker 2: you know, even as simple as the return of spring,

566
00:35:40,960 --> 00:35:43,000
Speaker 2: you know, out of the winter and so forth. But yeah,

567
00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:45,879
Speaker 2: this idea that that the world is fragile and you're

568
00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:49,200
Speaker 2: not in the in the case of the ancient Egyptians,

569
00:35:49,239 --> 00:35:52,160
Speaker 2: you're not even guaranteed tomorrow unless the prayers are there

570
00:35:52,200 --> 00:35:56,440
Speaker 2: to support the solar barge in its journey, well said.

571
00:35:56,320 --> 00:36:09,280
Speaker 4: Yeah, but anyway, So yeah, I guess that's the basic

572
00:36:09,360 --> 00:36:11,440
Speaker 4: framework about magic in ancient Egypt.

573
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:15,640
Speaker 3: And from here I want to briefly look to the

574
00:36:15,719 --> 00:36:19,640
Speaker 3: idea of curses in a summary way, because of course,

575
00:36:19,680 --> 00:36:22,600
Speaker 3: Heca was not only capable of healing and protecting. As

576
00:36:22,600 --> 00:36:26,200
Speaker 3: we mentioned earlier, Heca had the power to weaken, to sicken,

577
00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:29,880
Speaker 3: to harm and cut off, and even to kill. In fact,

578
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:32,759
Speaker 3: not just to kill, to attack you in the afterlife,

579
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:36,400
Speaker 3: to attack your potential for the afterlife. And this brings

580
00:36:36,480 --> 00:36:39,240
Speaker 3: us to the role of curses in ancient Egyptian magic.

581
00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:42,319
Speaker 3: To start off, I just wanted to mention a few

582
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:46,440
Speaker 3: basic types of curses we might think about in ancient Egypt,

583
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:51,239
Speaker 3: maybe going from the most familiar types in our context

584
00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:54,680
Speaker 3: to the least familiar. And here I'm going to make

585
00:36:54,719 --> 00:36:58,400
Speaker 3: some generalizations obviously across the thousands of years and the

586
00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:01,839
Speaker 3: millions of lives in questions, and there will be some exceptions.

587
00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:05,239
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to capture some main patterns. But none

588
00:37:05,320 --> 00:37:08,960
Speaker 3: of this is the case in all cases. So the

589
00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:13,319
Speaker 3: first category I want to mention is personal curses. In

590
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:17,239
Speaker 3: later magical papyri from Egypt, we see all kinds of

591
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:20,719
Speaker 3: run of the mill curses designed for regular people who

592
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:25,440
Speaker 3: want to harm rivals or enemies. Did somebody steal from you,

593
00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:29,160
Speaker 3: did somebody speak ill against you or hurt someone you

594
00:37:29,239 --> 00:37:32,600
Speaker 3: care about, Well, you can address this. You can consult

595
00:37:32,640 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 3: a priest or, you can open up your magical papyrus

596
00:37:35,680 --> 00:37:38,359
Speaker 3: and curse that person. You can make them fall sick

597
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:42,760
Speaker 3: and die, you can make them tormented with madness and pain.

598
00:37:43,840 --> 00:37:45,759
Speaker 3: And I want to be clear here, it seems that

599
00:37:45,800 --> 00:37:49,560
Speaker 3: there's more evidence for this kind of personal individual cursing

600
00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:54,160
Speaker 3: against enemies from later periods of Egyptian history. It may

601
00:37:54,239 --> 00:37:56,840
Speaker 3: have become more common as time went on, especially in

602
00:37:56,880 --> 00:38:03,680
Speaker 3: the Greco Roman period. The existence of this type of cursing. Interestingly,

603
00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:06,280
Speaker 3: it might seem to be at odds with a claim

604
00:38:06,320 --> 00:38:10,720
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier from Geraldine Pinch, the claim that most

605
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:14,360
Speaker 3: of the time ancient Egyptians did not view the practice

606
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:19,280
Speaker 3: of magic as evil or subversive, and more often attributed evil,

607
00:38:19,480 --> 00:38:24,719
Speaker 3: dangerous magic to foreign sorcerers from other countries. I was

608
00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:27,400
Speaker 3: trying to reconcile these and I was thinking, obviously, wouldn't

609
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 3: the Egyptian victim of a curse cast by another Egyptian

610
00:38:31,560 --> 00:38:37,080
Speaker 3: be tempted to view that as evil magic, as wicked sorcery. Well,

611
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:39,879
Speaker 3: they might well see it that way, But it does

612
00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:42,839
Speaker 3: seem my best understanding, based on what I could piece

613
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:46,640
Speaker 3: together here, is that there was probably some distinction between

614
00:38:47,239 --> 00:38:52,440
Speaker 3: what we're seen as legitimate curses and illegitimate, harmful magic,

615
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:55,000
Speaker 3: much in the same way that people might think about

616
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:58,840
Speaker 3: physical violence today, where it is permissible to use violence

617
00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:03,840
Speaker 3: in self defense or in some cultural contexts if it's retaliatory,

618
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:07,560
Speaker 3: but not permissible if it is against a random or

619
00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:08,880
Speaker 3: innocent victim.

620
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:10,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, this kind of comes back to what I was

621
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:13,880
Speaker 2: talking about earlier about litigation, like thinking of it as litigation,

622
00:39:14,040 --> 00:39:17,320
Speaker 2: Like you might seek litigation if you have been harmed,

623
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:20,560
Speaker 2: have you been in an accident, you know, call such

624
00:39:20,600 --> 00:39:23,600
Speaker 2: and such number, get the fighting lawyer on your side,

625
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:26,480
Speaker 2: because that lawyer or in this case, you know, a

626
00:39:26,680 --> 00:39:29,920
Speaker 2: priest or a magician is going to is going to

627
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:33,440
Speaker 2: restore mott, is going to restore balance. Right At the

628
00:39:33,480 --> 00:39:38,680
Speaker 2: same time, you use the legal comparison, Yeah, you can

629
00:39:38,800 --> 00:39:40,520
Speaker 2: very much go out there and hire a lawyer to

630
00:39:40,600 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 2: go after somebody for illegitimate purposes like nuisance lawsuits and

631
00:39:45,719 --> 00:39:49,439
Speaker 2: so forth. You know, you can formulate an entire list

632
00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:53,280
Speaker 2: there in your own head. But but yeah, we often

633
00:39:53,560 --> 00:39:55,920
Speaker 2: think about like, oh, I need to lawyer up because

634
00:39:55,960 --> 00:39:58,800
Speaker 2: I have been wronged or I'm about to be wronged.

635
00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:01,360
Speaker 2: I need to count the evil of others.

636
00:40:01,640 --> 00:40:04,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's true that even the fairest and most

637
00:40:04,800 --> 00:40:08,040
Speaker 3: just system is always going to be in some way

638
00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:11,520
Speaker 3: subject to abuse. So there's like, you know, or some

639
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:13,319
Speaker 3: people are going to feel like they're getting the short

640
00:40:13,400 --> 00:40:16,319
Speaker 3: end of the stick about it. So, yeah, you can't

641
00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:18,840
Speaker 3: ever prevent that entirely from happening. But this seems to

642
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:22,560
Speaker 3: be generally how people thought that the system worked when

643
00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:26,720
Speaker 3: it was working correctly according to them, So that's personal curses,

644
00:40:26,760 --> 00:40:29,160
Speaker 3: Like when it came to cursing Egyptians, could you know,

645
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 3: you could go to a priest or you could privately

646
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:34,760
Speaker 3: read a magical papyrus to harness the morally neutral power

647
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:38,560
Speaker 3: of heca to harm a legitimate enemy. And it seems

648
00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:41,480
Speaker 3: like this sort of thing was viewed basically as fair play.

649
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:44,680
Speaker 3: But if magic was used to torment an innocent person,

650
00:40:45,200 --> 00:40:49,600
Speaker 3: that's probably attributable to chaotic wizardry performed by evil foreigners,

651
00:40:50,280 --> 00:40:52,000
Speaker 3: you know, not somebody who would be working with a

652
00:40:52,080 --> 00:40:55,759
Speaker 3: legit Egyptian temple priest. Yeah, another kind that is going

653
00:40:55,800 --> 00:40:58,560
Speaker 3: to be more familiar to us, and this will factor

654
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:01,719
Speaker 3: in majorly in the rest of the series. His funerary curses.

655
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:04,840
Speaker 3: One of the most famous varieties of Egyptian magic, the

656
00:41:04,920 --> 00:41:09,200
Speaker 3: curse that seals a tomb and punishes defilers or grave robbers.

657
00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:13,600
Speaker 3: And while we can later discuss ways that the reality

658
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:16,480
Speaker 3: of this type of curse has been twisted somewhat in

659
00:41:16,520 --> 00:41:20,560
Speaker 3: popular retelling, these kinds of curses absolutely do exist, and

660
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:25,000
Speaker 3: private tombs from Egypt are sometimes inscribed with offensive magic

661
00:41:25,120 --> 00:41:28,480
Speaker 3: calling down injury, death, and even I thought this was

662
00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:32,360
Speaker 3: pretty wicked, that the punishment of the soul and denial

663
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:35,719
Speaker 3: of an afterlife upon anyone who would disturb the sanctity

664
00:41:35,760 --> 00:41:37,560
Speaker 3: of a tomb or steal its contents.

665
00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:39,000
Speaker 2: All right.

666
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:41,400
Speaker 3: And then after those categories you start getting into some

667
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:43,360
Speaker 3: types of curses that I think it would be less

668
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:47,560
Speaker 3: familiar in our modern understanding of witchcraft and magic. One

669
00:41:47,640 --> 00:41:50,759
Speaker 3: of them is political curses. This is a bit like

670
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:53,680
Speaker 3: the idea I mentioned of Nixon getting witches to do

671
00:41:53,760 --> 00:41:56,680
Speaker 3: something so he could win in Vietnam. Like, the king

672
00:41:56,920 --> 00:42:00,520
Speaker 3: and the state have enemies, and the enemies must be destroyed.

673
00:42:01,080 --> 00:42:04,319
Speaker 3: These enemies could be rival kingdoms, or the princes of

674
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:08,600
Speaker 3: foreign nations, or the leaders of revolts and rebellions. The

675
00:42:08,719 --> 00:42:12,160
Speaker 3: enemies of Egypt and the king would often be cursed

676
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:16,680
Speaker 3: to destruction in official temple rituals. A common way of

677
00:42:16,719 --> 00:42:21,680
Speaker 3: describing this as execration rituals, where maybe an effigy or

678
00:42:21,719 --> 00:42:25,239
Speaker 3: a clay pot on which there has been established a

679
00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:28,480
Speaker 3: symbolic link between the pot and the person in question.

680
00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:33,640
Speaker 3: These objects would be ritually smashed or otherwise destroyed. Okay,

681
00:42:34,040 --> 00:42:37,440
Speaker 3: and then finally, I think the most interesting type of curse,

682
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:42,319
Speaker 3: religious or cosmic curses. Remember how I mentioned a minute

683
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:46,840
Speaker 3: ago that most ancient Egyptian cosmologies held that the gods

684
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:50,759
Speaker 3: themselves were to some extent affected by heckamagic and that

685
00:42:51,120 --> 00:42:54,480
Speaker 3: the divine forces of order needed the help of temple

686
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:58,359
Speaker 3: based rituals in order to prevail. That help could well

687
00:42:58,400 --> 00:43:02,320
Speaker 3: involve curses to help the gods and the divine forces

688
00:43:02,360 --> 00:43:06,360
Speaker 3: of order when victory continually over the monsters and the

689
00:43:06,440 --> 00:43:11,200
Speaker 3: spirits of chaos, Egyptian priests would perform sort of smiting

690
00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:15,359
Speaker 3: curses against the divine and cosmic enemies of order, much

691
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:18,320
Speaker 3: like they would against the earthly enemies of the kingdom.

692
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:21,400
Speaker 3: And of course it's a this is a very loose analogy,

693
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:25,839
Speaker 3: but imagine if daily worship in a Christian church also

694
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:30,280
Speaker 3: involved witchcraft that would invoke death curses against the devil.

695
00:43:30,920 --> 00:43:34,440
Speaker 2: Oh, well, that's an interesting topic unto itself, right, because

696
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:38,640
Speaker 2: you can you can look at various examples of historic

697
00:43:38,680 --> 00:43:41,840
Speaker 2: individuals kind of having their own personal war against the

698
00:43:41,920 --> 00:43:46,160
Speaker 2: devil or demons, you know, cursing them back, telling you know,

699
00:43:46,239 --> 00:43:49,360
Speaker 2: depart evil doer and do everlasting fire and so forth.

700
00:43:49,800 --> 00:43:53,000
Speaker 2: And then also so many I think of various like

701
00:43:53,080 --> 00:43:56,360
Speaker 2: folk songs and bits of folk art where the devil

702
00:43:56,520 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 2: is tricked, smashed over the head with something herded by

703
00:44:01,719 --> 00:44:04,560
Speaker 2: cowboys and so forth. There is so many different examples

704
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:06,359
Speaker 2: poked with a hat pin, that sort of thing.

705
00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:09,880
Speaker 3: Oh like in the Santa Claus movie.

706
00:44:10,120 --> 00:44:11,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

707
00:44:11,520 --> 00:44:14,880
Speaker 3: That Santa Claus definitely invokes death curses against the devil.

708
00:44:26,480 --> 00:44:29,880
Speaker 2: All right, Well, yeah, I wanted to. I want to

709
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:33,480
Speaker 2: expand a little bit on the topic of the funerary

710
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:37,080
Speaker 2: curses because this was this was part of the of

711
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:41,120
Speaker 2: of what Colleen Darnell talked about in her presentation, and

712
00:44:42,360 --> 00:44:44,800
Speaker 2: she used to There were a couple of Egyptian words

713
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:48,320
Speaker 2: that she focused on here. One is the word for curse,

714
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:50,520
Speaker 2: which is usually a verb but is also sometimes a

715
00:44:50,640 --> 00:44:54,600
Speaker 2: now which is sewer, not quite sewer, but you know,

716
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:58,560
Speaker 2: similar to that like suewear. And then there's also a

717
00:44:58,600 --> 00:45:04,239
Speaker 2: word shin wit, and this means incantation, but depending on

718
00:45:04,280 --> 00:45:07,480
Speaker 2: the context, could also definitely mean a curse. So just

719
00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 2: some more specific terminology for what was invoked here. And

720
00:45:13,680 --> 00:45:16,760
Speaker 2: so a lot of her talk centered around like evidence

721
00:45:16,800 --> 00:45:22,240
Speaker 2: that we have for or against the idea of ancient

722
00:45:22,239 --> 00:45:27,799
Speaker 2: Egyptian curses on people entering tombs or certainly defiling them

723
00:45:27,800 --> 00:45:31,200
Speaker 2: in one way or another. So one of the important

724
00:45:31,880 --> 00:45:34,560
Speaker 2: facts that she pointed out is that in general, the

725
00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:37,720
Speaker 2: upper part of a tomb was generally a public space

726
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:41,520
Speaker 2: for visitors with good intentions, so family members and the like,

727
00:45:42,040 --> 00:45:45,000
Speaker 2: and people visiting the tomb. It might line up with

728
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:48,000
Speaker 2: certain festivals and so forth, and so there would never

729
00:45:48,080 --> 00:45:52,040
Speaker 2: be a blanket curse against visiting a tomb space. And

730
00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:55,719
Speaker 2: this is interesting too. She pointed out that sometimes graffiti

731
00:45:56,440 --> 00:45:59,799
Speaker 2: in the form of writing your name was encouraged, as

732
00:45:59,840 --> 00:46:04,799
Speaker 2: it was with certain temples voted inscriptions, where if you

733
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:07,040
Speaker 2: would be the honorable thing to do, just scratch your

734
00:46:07,120 --> 00:46:09,720
Speaker 2: name on the wall. Again in antiquity, not today.

735
00:46:10,640 --> 00:46:12,959
Speaker 3: Oh well, that just reminded me of something we talked

736
00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:16,359
Speaker 3: about years ago. We did some episodes on the Colossus

737
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:19,840
Speaker 3: or Colossi or Colossus of Memnon. There were multiple of them, Colossie,

738
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:23,880
Speaker 3: the Colossi of Memnon, which not in our modern times,

739
00:46:23,960 --> 00:46:28,600
Speaker 3: but in ancient times to us were visited by tourists

740
00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:32,360
Speaker 3: who wrote graffiti on them, like Romans would write their

741
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:35,000
Speaker 3: names on these, you know, great monuments whatever.

742
00:46:35,040 --> 00:46:35,200
Speaker 1: You know.

743
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:38,000
Speaker 2: Marcus was here, Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I thought of that

744
00:46:38,080 --> 00:46:41,759
Speaker 2: as well when this came up. She also stresses that

745
00:46:41,920 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 2: ancient Egyptian curses, when they were used, they tended to

746
00:46:45,480 --> 00:46:49,600
Speaker 2: have a dual formation, a dual formulation rather a blessing

747
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:54,320
Speaker 2: on positive actions and then a focused threat against negative actions.

748
00:46:54,640 --> 00:46:56,239
Speaker 2: And again a lot of this comes back to the

749
00:46:56,239 --> 00:46:59,360
Speaker 2: importance of MOTT. You know, you got to have both energies,

750
00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 2: you got to have bad balance, and therefore a negative

751
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:05,640
Speaker 2: action is not just a transgression against the king or

752
00:47:05,640 --> 00:47:10,080
Speaker 2: even a god, but against cosmic balance itself. Of course,

753
00:47:10,080 --> 00:47:13,200
Speaker 2: she as I mentioned earlier, she made the She stressed

754
00:47:13,200 --> 00:47:16,319
Speaker 2: that the ancient Egyptians were very legalistic and that the

755
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:21,040
Speaker 2: cursed language typically invokes this, speaking to litigation against the

756
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:23,680
Speaker 2: defiler of the tomb in the afterlife. Like some of

757
00:47:23,680 --> 00:47:26,640
Speaker 2: these basically read like and if you do X, Y

758
00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:31,120
Speaker 2: or Z, I will see you in ghost court. You

759
00:47:31,160 --> 00:47:33,000
Speaker 2: will be judged and I will be there for it

760
00:47:33,480 --> 00:47:36,560
Speaker 2: because there is like a legal proceeding that will follow.

761
00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:39,319
Speaker 3: It's like one of those scary letters you get from

762
00:47:39,320 --> 00:47:40,120
Speaker 3: a lawyer.

763
00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:42,680
Speaker 2: To exactly yeah, It's like this is the scary letter

764
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:47,960
Speaker 2: essentially from a priest. She also pointed out that ancient

765
00:47:47,960 --> 00:47:52,320
Speaker 2: Egyptian curses tend to follow the same formulations as pure

766
00:47:52,440 --> 00:47:55,680
Speaker 2: laws that were written for the living, and the idea

767
00:47:56,000 --> 00:47:59,880
Speaker 2: here too is that a real world prosecution and punishment

768
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:02,640
Speaker 2: would kind of be the first stop, and then this

769
00:48:02,680 --> 00:48:06,279
Speaker 2: would be augmented by supernatural prosecution and punishment, kind of

770
00:48:06,280 --> 00:48:08,560
Speaker 2: coming back to that whole the D twenty plus D

771
00:48:08,640 --> 00:48:11,680
Speaker 2: four situation we were talking about, Like, ideally, if you

772
00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:14,200
Speaker 2: rob this tomb, you know we're going to catch you

773
00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:18,000
Speaker 2: and there'll be some sort of real world punishment. But

774
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:20,759
Speaker 2: in addition to that, or instead of that, if we

775
00:48:20,800 --> 00:48:23,920
Speaker 2: can't catch you, there will be litigation and punishment in

776
00:48:23,920 --> 00:48:24,680
Speaker 2: the afterlife.

777
00:48:24,719 --> 00:48:27,040
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean, this is another example of what we

778
00:48:27,040 --> 00:48:29,640
Speaker 3: were talking about earlier, where you attack the same problem

779
00:48:29,760 --> 00:48:33,680
Speaker 3: with multiple solutions, one magical and one practical.

780
00:48:34,040 --> 00:48:37,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. One example that she pointed to and bring

781
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:40,759
Speaker 2: up a couple here is the Tomb of Many from

782
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:44,120
Speaker 2: the Sixth Dynasty, and it includes this example where the

783
00:48:44,160 --> 00:48:47,200
Speaker 2: writing is basically saying, look, I paid everyone who worked

784
00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:52,440
Speaker 2: on this tomb. It was fair, but if you damage

785
00:48:52,480 --> 00:48:55,799
Speaker 2: my tomb quote, A crocodile be against him in the water,

786
00:48:55,920 --> 00:48:58,840
Speaker 2: a snake be against him on the earth. And essentially

787
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:02,720
Speaker 2: saying the Great God, generally a cyrus or a local deity,

788
00:49:02,760 --> 00:49:06,080
Speaker 2: will be the one to judge you. Another example of

789
00:49:06,200 --> 00:49:09,960
Speaker 2: litigation in one of these inscriptions. She pointed to the

790
00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:13,960
Speaker 2: inscription of Idu from the sixth Dynasty quote as for

791
00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:16,440
Speaker 2: any man who will take my grave from me, my

792
00:49:16,640 --> 00:49:19,360
Speaker 2: claim will be litigated with them by the Great God,

793
00:49:19,719 --> 00:49:24,239
Speaker 2: again like le Osiris or another like local deity. So

794
00:49:24,400 --> 00:49:26,400
Speaker 2: threat of legal action, if not in this world, then

795
00:49:26,440 --> 00:49:28,959
Speaker 2: at least in the next. She points out that there's

796
00:49:28,960 --> 00:49:31,680
Speaker 2: no curse against an individual or visitor to a tomb

797
00:49:31,719 --> 00:49:34,839
Speaker 2: in any of the royal tombs that we know of

798
00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:38,000
Speaker 2: and have access to, and that it would have gone

799
00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:41,040
Speaker 2: without saying that you shouldn't enter a burial chamber, like

800
00:49:41,120 --> 00:49:43,719
Speaker 2: no signage is required there. I imagine it's sort of

801
00:49:43,719 --> 00:49:48,120
Speaker 2: like it's just it would be known to everyone involved.

802
00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:51,120
Speaker 2: Anybody who could read the text, you would know not

803
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:52,440
Speaker 2: to go into the burial chamber.

804
00:49:52,719 --> 00:49:55,319
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And I think I mentioned this earlier, but

805
00:49:55,320 --> 00:49:58,879
Speaker 3: I remember reading that the most common places where these

806
00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:03,360
Speaker 3: funerary curses are found or in private tombs.

807
00:50:03,920 --> 00:50:07,839
Speaker 2: She also points to something from the Pyramid text that's

808
00:50:07,880 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 2: a cursed template for a deceased king, not against mortals

809
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:15,000
Speaker 2: but against the gods. Getting back to what we were

810
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:18,000
Speaker 2: talking about earlier about how magic could be used essentially

811
00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:21,960
Speaker 2: against the gods in defense of Mot. And this is

812
00:50:22,000 --> 00:50:25,959
Speaker 2: I believe spell for eighty five, and it essentially says, look,

813
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:28,480
Speaker 2: bulls will be slaughtered for any god who takes this

814
00:50:28,560 --> 00:50:31,200
Speaker 2: king to heaven. But if you don't take this king

815
00:50:31,239 --> 00:50:33,600
Speaker 2: to heaven, you're not going to be honored. That's obvious

816
00:50:33,640 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 2: to it. And so yeah, this apparently factors into a

817
00:50:37,640 --> 00:50:40,480
Speaker 2: lot of Egyptian magic. You know, if something violates Mot,

818
00:50:40,680 --> 00:50:42,560
Speaker 2: it kind of goes above the heads of the gods

819
00:50:42,719 --> 00:50:44,359
Speaker 2: because they are bound to Mont as well.

820
00:50:44,760 --> 00:50:47,799
Speaker 3: Feels bold, strong arming the gods like that, but you

821
00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:48,600
Speaker 3: can admire it.

822
00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:54,240
Speaker 2: She also brings up a couple of cases involving grabbing

823
00:50:54,239 --> 00:50:57,120
Speaker 2: someone's neck like a bird or wringing their neck like

824
00:50:57,160 --> 00:51:02,440
Speaker 2: a goose. So there's one from ones from twenty three

825
00:51:02,520 --> 00:51:08,120
Speaker 2: hundred BCE from the tomb of Cantika of Sakkara, and

826
00:51:08,160 --> 00:51:11,480
Speaker 2: my apologies that may be hitting these pronunciations wrong, but

827
00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:15,000
Speaker 2: this one says, as for any person who shall enter

828
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:17,880
Speaker 2: my tomb in a state of impurity, not having purified

829
00:51:17,880 --> 00:51:20,440
Speaker 2: themselves according to the manner of entering a temple. I

830
00:51:20,480 --> 00:51:22,880
Speaker 2: will be judged with them about it in the west,

831
00:51:23,000 --> 00:51:25,160
Speaker 2: in the court of the Great God, and I will

832
00:51:25,160 --> 00:51:28,600
Speaker 2: wring his neck like a goose. So this one again,

833
00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:31,279
Speaker 2: it's like saying I will see you in court. You know,

834
00:51:32,440 --> 00:51:34,600
Speaker 2: you will be judged. I will be there. But then

835
00:51:34,640 --> 00:51:37,000
Speaker 2: I adding this extra bit, I will bring your neck

836
00:51:37,080 --> 00:51:41,160
Speaker 2: like a goose. And we see that again. There's another

837
00:51:41,200 --> 00:51:43,799
Speaker 2: example she brings up twenty This is from twenty two

838
00:51:43,880 --> 00:51:47,640
Speaker 2: hundred BC from the Tomb of Ninki. As for any noble,

839
00:51:47,719 --> 00:51:50,600
Speaker 2: any official, or any person who will destroy any stone

840
00:51:50,680 --> 00:51:53,480
Speaker 2: or any brick in this tomb, I will be judged

841
00:51:53,520 --> 00:51:56,120
Speaker 2: with him by the Great God. I will seize his

842
00:51:56,160 --> 00:51:58,880
Speaker 2: neck like a bird. So again I like how this

843
00:51:58,920 --> 00:52:02,000
Speaker 2: one seems to be translated as I will be judged

844
00:52:02,040 --> 00:52:04,080
Speaker 2: with you by the Great God, which very much brings

845
00:52:04,120 --> 00:52:07,480
Speaker 2: this idea of like, there's a court proceeding, I'm going

846
00:52:07,520 --> 00:52:11,000
Speaker 2: to bring this charge against you and let it be decided.

847
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:13,440
Speaker 3: And I'm going to win. The implication, yeah.

848
00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:15,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems to be the main implication of the

849
00:52:15,800 --> 00:52:17,840
Speaker 2: ringing the neck like a goose. But this too is

850
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:26,120
Speaker 2: also interesting because apparently this is referring to sacrificial killing

851
00:52:26,320 --> 00:52:29,400
Speaker 2: of a duck or a goose that would have been

852
00:52:29,440 --> 00:52:31,920
Speaker 2: done like by a priest. So there are you know,

853
00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:38,919
Speaker 2: inscriptions there images of this of Akanatin sacrificing a duck.

854
00:52:39,400 --> 00:52:40,680
Speaker 2: You can look this up. I believe this is in

855
00:52:40,680 --> 00:52:45,040
Speaker 2: the collection of the Met Museum from between thirteen fifty

856
00:52:45,040 --> 00:52:48,120
Speaker 2: three and thirteen thirty six PCE, and it's you know,

857
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:51,680
Speaker 2: here's a figure ringing the neck of a goose. So

858
00:52:53,280 --> 00:52:57,799
Speaker 2: you know, this seems to largely refer to that. One

859
00:52:57,800 --> 00:52:59,560
Speaker 2: thing that Darnell stress is that, you know, there were

860
00:52:59,600 --> 00:53:02,080
Speaker 2: definitely some sort of real world punishments, but we don't

861
00:53:02,120 --> 00:53:04,800
Speaker 2: necessarily know all of the details on what those were,

862
00:53:05,160 --> 00:53:08,319
Speaker 2: so I don't know. Does this possibly also refer to

863
00:53:08,360 --> 00:53:11,200
Speaker 2: some sort of like real world punishment that would be

864
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:15,200
Speaker 2: dished out in this life. We don't know for sure.

865
00:53:15,520 --> 00:53:17,960
Speaker 2: But also it's kind of a this is another potential

866
00:53:17,960 --> 00:53:21,800
Speaker 2: connection here birds offered for sacrifice and temples, a connection

867
00:53:21,960 --> 00:53:25,759
Speaker 2: between like the magist and the magic and the religious

868
00:53:25,840 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 2: rituals that were being carried out, you know, in both

869
00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:31,280
Speaker 2: cases by the priests. Yeah.

870
00:53:31,440 --> 00:53:35,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's interesting the way I don't know the

871
00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:39,000
Speaker 3: different feelings that can be created by the threats in

872
00:53:39,080 --> 00:53:43,759
Speaker 3: these curses. Some of them have this more legalistic or

873
00:53:43,920 --> 00:53:48,040
Speaker 3: more directly physically violent analogy in them, like wring your

874
00:53:48,080 --> 00:53:50,279
Speaker 3: neck like a goose, or the crocodile will get you

875
00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:52,680
Speaker 3: in the water, though that may have other implications that

876
00:53:52,800 --> 00:53:55,319
Speaker 3: you know, but at least to me, conjures this idea

877
00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:58,160
Speaker 3: of physical violence attacked by an animal or by another person.

878
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:01,440
Speaker 3: And then there's a way in which, at least to me,

879
00:54:02,120 --> 00:54:07,320
Speaker 3: an even colder implication is made by these tomb curses

880
00:54:07,360 --> 00:54:11,359
Speaker 3: that threaten your existence in the afterlife, like you will

881
00:54:11,360 --> 00:54:14,160
Speaker 3: not receive an honorable burial, you will not go to

882
00:54:14,200 --> 00:54:15,960
Speaker 3: the afterlife, you will get nothing.

883
00:54:16,840 --> 00:54:18,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean coming back to the crocodile. This

884
00:54:18,920 --> 00:54:22,719
Speaker 2: reminds me of the of of Omit, the devour of

885
00:54:22,760 --> 00:54:26,799
Speaker 2: the dead, that if memory serves like his role in

886
00:54:26,960 --> 00:54:30,319
Speaker 2: the judgment of the dead is like he consumes you

887
00:54:30,520 --> 00:54:34,600
Speaker 2: and brings on annihilation if you are not worthy to

888
00:54:34,640 --> 00:54:37,160
Speaker 2: pass on. So, yeah, that's quite a that's quite a

889
00:54:37,200 --> 00:54:41,680
Speaker 2: threat to impose. But you know you can you can also, yeah,

890
00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:44,680
Speaker 2: you can understand it, like first first saying you know

891
00:54:44,719 --> 00:54:46,480
Speaker 2: you will be you will be litigated. You will be

892
00:54:46,520 --> 00:54:50,239
Speaker 2: tried in this world in addition to or instead of that, though,

893
00:54:50,719 --> 00:54:53,120
Speaker 2: you know, watch out in the afterlife, because charges will

894
00:54:53,160 --> 00:54:55,160
Speaker 2: be brought against you and you may might just be

895
00:54:55,200 --> 00:54:59,680
Speaker 2: annihilated altogether. All right, Well, looking at the clock here,

896
00:54:59,719 --> 00:55:02,360
Speaker 2: we're about out of time. So what we're going to

897
00:55:02,440 --> 00:55:04,319
Speaker 2: do is we're going to break and come back with

898
00:55:04,440 --> 00:55:07,040
Speaker 2: this topic on Thursday. We have much more to discuss.

899
00:55:07,400 --> 00:55:10,640
Speaker 2: We're going to get into the twentieth century myth of

900
00:55:10,680 --> 00:55:14,400
Speaker 2: the Pharaoh's curse, where that comes from, how it shakes

901
00:55:14,400 --> 00:55:16,160
Speaker 2: out when you look at it, and we'll also look

902
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:19,600
Speaker 2: to an example outside of Egypt that aligns with some

903
00:55:19,680 --> 00:55:21,799
Speaker 2: of the ideas there, and then we'll have more to

904
00:55:21,840 --> 00:55:25,759
Speaker 2: discuss about Egyptian magic and Egyptian curses in general. In

905
00:55:25,800 --> 00:55:27,839
Speaker 2: the meantime, we would remind you that Stuff to Blow

906
00:55:27,840 --> 00:55:29,920
Speaker 2: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with

907
00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:32,759
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on

908
00:55:32,800 --> 00:55:35,680
Speaker 2: Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns

909
00:55:35,719 --> 00:55:38,040
Speaker 2: and just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

910
00:55:38,200 --> 00:55:42,040
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ posway.

911
00:55:42,360 --> 00:55:43,879
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

912
00:55:43,880 --> 00:55:46,280
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

913
00:55:46,320 --> 00:55:48,319
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

914
00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:51,160
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow

915
00:55:51,160 --> 00:55:52,160
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

916
00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 1: All Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts

917
00:56:03,239 --> 00:56:06,400
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918
00:56:06,480 --> 00:56:22,960
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