WEBVTT - Ancient Egyptian Curses, Part 1 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:06.800 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:15.079 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:18.200 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:21.599 are kicking off our spooky content today. I guess we 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:24.280 already kind of kicked this off with Weird House Cinema, 0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:28.160 but at this point we are definitely sliding into October, 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:31.280 and if you've listened to the show before, you know 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:33.400 that this is a time for us to get into 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:37.360 a lot of horror themed content, Halloween e content, and 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:40.320 that includes episodes of Weird House Cinema, that includes short episodes, 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:42.559 and of course it includes core episodes of Stuff to 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:45.520 Blow Your Mind. So that's going to be the course 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:49.000 for the month. On the whole, there is going to 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:51.400 be our fall break week as usual, in which we'll 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:54.040 have reruns, but guess what, all of those reruns are 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:57.279 going to be Halloween content as well, so we will 0:00:57.400 --> 0:00:59.480 keep the Halloween train rolling. Oh. 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:02.160 I mean, that's more frightening than a visitor from the past. 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:04.760 There you go, There you go. That kind of ties 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:06.639 into some of what we'll be talking about here today, 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:10.960 because in today's episode, we're going to dive into the world. 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:13.959 We're going to return really to the world of ancient 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:17.600 Egyptian curses. We've touched on some of this before when 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:23.200 we frequently come back to Egyptology related content, either talking 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:26.560 about archaeological finds, the history of ancient Egypt, we're talking 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:31.039 about something in ancient Egyptian religion that's really fascinating, or 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:33.000 of course anything and sort of in the realm of 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:38.440 Egypt Domania. You know, this long lasting fascination that other 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:42.520 cultures have had with the culture and the ideas and 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:45.280 even just the look and the feel of ancient Egypt. 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:48.320 So in this episode, we're going to talk about it, 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:52.120 ancient Egyptian religious practices, ancient Egyptian magic. We're going to 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:56.080 also look at this idea of the curse in ancient 0:01:56.120 --> 0:02:00.400 egypts and with some specific examples I think, mostly related toombs. 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:04.520 We're going to talk about twentieth century myth making about 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:08.200 ancient Egyptian curses. And finally, we're going to look at 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:11.520 a case from outside of Egypt that has, I don 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:14.240 know it lines up in rather interesting ways with some 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:19.320 of the ideas that have been generated about ancient Egyptian curses. 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:23.480 Within the twentieth century. All right, and before we jump in, 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:26.880 I want to mention too that last Thursday I attended 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:29.799 an online class by egyptologist and former guest on the 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:33.720 show Colleen Darnell, titled Curse of the Pharaohs. I found 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:37.320 it super insightful and the information and sources presented in 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:40.800 that class were part of my initial research for this episode. 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:45.240 She does these classes on different egyptology topics each month. 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:48.000 I highly recommend them. You can learn more about them 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:50.440 at Colleen Darnell dot com. So I'll refer back to 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:52.680 some of her ideas and content, as well as some 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:56.799 other sources once we get into it. But let's get 0:02:56.840 --> 0:02:59.240 down to brass tacks here. Let's talk a little bit 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:00.600 about Egyptian magic. 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:04.239 Indeed, let's talk about Egyptian magic. I think this is 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:07.480 a good groundwork to lay because curses, of course, are 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:10.600 not the only kind of magic that was practiced in 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:15.440 ancient Egypt. They're a particularly savory, delicious kind of magic 0:03:15.480 --> 0:03:20.240 from a modern sensibility to understand. But yeah, I think 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:24.560 it's good to understand the general context of Egyptian magic 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:28.919 a little bit better before we narrow in on curses themselves. 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:33.200 So to better understand ancient Egyptian magic. I turned to 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:37.160 a there's a really good overview in a book by 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:41.320 Geraldine Pinch called Magic in Ancient Egypt, published by the 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:45.120 University of Texas Press nineteen ninety four. Geraldine Pinch is 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:47.920 an Egyptologist we've referred to on the show plenty of times. 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:51.920 Born nineteen fifty one. She is affiliated with the University 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:56.280 of Oxford, and I mainly want to in this section 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:02.880 talk about some distinctions and frameworks that Pinch invokes in 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:05.880 the first chapter of this book to give a way 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:09.280 of the land about how the ancient Egyptians viewed and 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:13.200 used magic. And at the beginning here it's worth noting 0:04:13.280 --> 0:04:17.880 the long and varied textual and archaeological record of magic 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:21.960 and ancient Egypt. While magical amulets and other objects go 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:26.680 back into prehistory, magical texts from ancient Egypt are found 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:29.880 from like the late third millennium BCE until about the 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:33.800 fourth century CE, So it's more than three thousand years 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:37.720 worth of texts concerning magic, many of which are written 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:41.560 records of spells themselves, like we have the primary documents 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:45.119 we have thus spells. That's pretty cool, not just people 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:50.040 talking about magic, but we have like the recipes, and 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:54.960 in this chapter, Pinch identifies sort of three main categories 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:59.440 of magic. You've got funerary magic, that's what concerns death 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:04.000 bear in the afterlife. You've got temple magic, which is 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:09.200 ritual magic performed in temples by priests or religious authorities, 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:13.440 often aimed at various forms of public welfare outcomes that 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:16.960 concerned lots of people at once. And then finally, you've 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:21.479 got personal or everyday magic, the spells and rites used 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:25.880 by individual people for help in situations that they faced personally. 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:29.840 Funerary magic is arguably the class that we know the 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:33.560 most about, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was the 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:37.600 most important. It obviously was very important, but the fact 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:39.400 that we know so much about it seems to be 0:05:39.440 --> 0:05:43.520 in large part related to what type of evidence was 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:45.920 preserved and passed on down to us. A lot of 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:50.200 our best preserved evidence from ancient Egypt comes from tombs, 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:52.560 so it's kind of natural that we just know a 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:56.800 lot about funerary and funerary practices and things having to 0:05:56.839 --> 0:06:01.000 deal with death in the afterlife. There are two Egyptian 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:05.599 words used most often to refer to magic. One of 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:10.919 these words is Heca or Hika, usually spelled in English 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:15.280 h e Ka, which is also the personal name of 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:19.279 an Egyptian god. The god Heca was usually depicted in 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:23.760 human form, but the word Heca was also used to 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:28.039 refer to not just this god in personal form, but 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:32.960 to a type of energy or force used by the 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:37.159 creator deity to create. So in the Egyptian creation myth, 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:40.800 you usually have some form of there's this primordial water, 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:45.159 this abyss of chaotic water is known as the nun 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:47.920 or noon in u n and then out of this 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:52.240 abyss comes a mound of dry land upon which creation 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:56.760 can take place. And Heca here is related to this 0:06:56.920 --> 0:07:00.960 spirit of creation that takes shape here, and this association 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:05.359 continues throughout Egyptian history with the power of magic or 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:09.600 heca often understood as a as a type of creative spark, 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:13.360 a power to make and to mold. So it's this 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:17.680 interestingly loaded concept there. In some literal sense, it did 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:21.600 refer to magical power, but you could also think of 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:23.840 it in weird ways as being similar to like the 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:26.600 idea of will or will power. You could think of 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:29.920 it in some ways as being similar to like creativity 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:35.400 or energy. Yeah, yeah, Interestingly pinchnotes that the god Heca 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:38.760 did not have any major temples devoted to him, despite 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:43.320 his important role in Egyptian mythology and religious practice. There 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:46.640 is some evidence of, like maybe some minor cultic activity 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:49.880 concerning Heca, but the god was not like the the 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:53.600 patron deity of any of the big state temples. Hekka 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:57.840 in the sense of magical power, was also a personal 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:02.200 attribute that was believed to be in some limited sense 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:07.240 by all beings, but especially by certain beings. There were 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:13.200 beings additionally endowed or especially endowed with heca. So gods 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:17.880 and supernatural entities obviously had heca. Ghosts and the dead 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:23.200 had heca. Kings had heca. People who were foreign or 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:26.960 were physically atypical in some way, such as dwarfs, were 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:31.160 sometimes said to have heca, and so Pinch says, basically, 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:36.120 anything that the ancient Egyptians regarded as strange, exotic, or 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:40.160 ancient might be thought of as possessing special measures of 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:43.959 heca beyond just what anyone else would have. And it's 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:47.040 interesting how much I think that kind of associative tradition 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:52.320 carries through even until today, that authors and storytellers, even 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:56.200 up until up in the modern era often think about 0:08:56.240 --> 0:09:00.000 magic is something that doesn't seem to emanate, especially from 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:04.160 the people that the author views as typical. There's it's 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:07.480 like people who are different in some way, or people 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:10.760 who are from another place, or who look different, or 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:13.800 who are very old, maybe ancient, or have some connection 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:17.640 to something ancient, that that's where the magic is stored. 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:22.160 Right right, Yeah, and yeah, we still kind of engage 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:24.880 in this a little bit, right, I mean when we 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:27.200 just think of like what does a magician look like, 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:30.560 or a wizard or any kind of like magic user, 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:33.600 like you want, you don't picture just the person next door. 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:36.760 You picture somebody who stands out, who has that weirdness 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:37.320 about them. 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:41.520 So that's heka. The other big Egyptian word for magic 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:47.280 pinch says is aku akhu, usually in English, sometimes translated 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:52.280 as enchantments or spells, but some sources emphasize really the 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:56.520 idea of power or effectiveness at the core of this concept, 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:59.960 the power to bring change or to cause things to happen, 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:03.800 so it might be best translated as something like effective 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:09.000 words or effective spells. This one seems to be associated 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:12.520 especially with gods and other deities with stars, which had 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:15.679 a special kind of effectiveness about them or power, and 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:21.440 really especially the honored or blessed dead. Now here's a 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:24.600 really key thing to understand about ancient Egyptian magic. Both 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:31.559 heca magic and aku are widely characterized as morally neutral 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:37.480 in themselves. They are neither inherently good nor inherently evil, 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:40.839 and in fact, they can be used for either good 0:10:41.040 --> 0:10:45.600 or evil. They are simply types of power, creative and 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:49.960 efficacious energy which can be used to heal or to harm, 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:51.640 to defend or attack. 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:54.960 Yeah, this comes back to something we've talked about in 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:57.640 the show before, of course, the importance of mat in 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:01.319 ancient Egypt. That even above of the gods to a 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:05.440 large degree, you have this idea of cosmic order and 0:11:05.559 --> 0:11:11.720 balance that is MOT. And yeah, if something unbalances things, 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:14.160 then yeah, then it's you could think of it more 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:18.640 as is evil, I guess or chaotic, But MOT is 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:20.760 like the most important principle. 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:22.840 Right, And we'll actually come back to that because magic 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:26.440 factors into the preservation of MOT in many ways. But yeah, 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:32.719 MOT is sometimes translated as justice, as order, as harmony. 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:37.360 It is the right way for things to be. Right Now, 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:41.240 after this basic discussion of terminology in this chapter, Pinch 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:45.760 gets into some different scholarly frameworks that have been used 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:50.840 by anthropologists over the years to understand what magic is, 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:53.319 and then she talks about the extent to which these 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:57.520 frameworks do and do not accurately describe the examples of 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:01.680 Heca and aku in ancient Egypt. So one idea she 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:07.559 gets into is James Fraser's distinction between magic and religion, 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:11.400 made famous in his highly influential work on the anthropology 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.840 of religion called The Golden Bough. We've talked about this 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:18.840 work many times on the show. Before You Know. Fraser 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:21.199 is a great read, but many of his ideas are 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:23.960 no longer considered like the best way to think about 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:28.720 anthropology of religion by anthropologists today. It's kind of like 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:31.160 it's still a great book to read in many ways 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:33.920 to understand its place in the history of scholarship, and 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:38.120 it's very interesting, but many of its theories have been superseded. 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:42.320 So Fraser says that a key difference between magic and 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:47.920 religion goes like this. Magic is when a human expects 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:52.199 that the right sequence of words or ritual actions will 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:59.080 compel supernatural beings to bring about a desired result automatically 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:04.559 or ineluck Blee, whereas religion is a bit more oriented 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:08.040 around the free will of the deity. Religion is when 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:12.160 a human hopes they can persuade a deity to grant 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:16.720 their prayer or request through supplication and offerings. In other words, 0:13:16.720 --> 0:13:20.480 with religion, you come to the God's temple, you might 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:23.480 make an offering, and you beg hoping that God will 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:27.120 take mercy and help you out. With magic, you enact 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:31.720 a spell designed to command or coerce a supernatural being 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:36.200 to cause something you desire to happen. So, within this framework, 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:40.960 Fraser characterized magic and religion as distinct and in some 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:45.840 ways opposite phenomena, even though they sometimes invoked the same deities. 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:50.400 He saw magicians and priests as fundamentally different and as 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:54.920 natural rivals. But as we just mentioned a minute ago, 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:58.200 anthropologists of religion have in many cases moved away from 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:01.840 Fraser's frameworks as being too simplistic, and it seems the 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:04.440 case of ancient Egyptian magic is sort of the perfect 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:08.840 example of how Fraser's categories don't exactly hold up when 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:12.079 applied to some major real world traditions. They might better 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:16.360 describe some other traditions, but this doesn't really work very well. 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:20.440 Pinch argues with Egyptian magic because she says, while you 0:14:20.480 --> 0:14:24.120 see examples both of what Fraser would call magic and 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:28.920 religion in ancient Egypt, they substantially blur together and are 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:32.880 performed in the same settings and by the same authorities. 0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:36.800 So in ancient Egypt, a lot of rituals which were 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:42.400 meant to manipulate and automatically compel action by supernatural beings 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:46.480 were performed in temples by the priesthood. The kind of 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:49.040 spells you might imagine a you know, in a difference setting, 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:51.560 like a witch performing binding a demon to do her 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:54.640 bidding or something like that. In the case of ancient Egypt, 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:57.320 you could get stuff like that in a temple, done 0:14:57.440 --> 0:15:01.520 by a sanctioned priest who was you know, considered in 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:05.480 the good graces of the king. So it would not 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:10.640 be impossible or even necessarily unusual in ancient Egypt to 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:15.360 have a pious priest practicing spells that explicitly commanded or 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:20.400 attempted to coerce action from deities by, for example, threatening 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:24.920 the deities or threatening to commit dangerous and sacrilegious acts 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:27.840 against them if they did not obey. There are actually 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:28.800 spells that do this. 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:31.800 Yeah. I'll come back to a specific example of this 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:36.000 related to a curse in a bit. Yeah, And we 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:38.800 have to remind ourselves again about mot being important overall. 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:41.720 And you can if you I mean, obviously you need 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:44.160 to know what you're doing within you know, the framework 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:46.760 of the Egyptian religion here, but you could kind of 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:51.120 like go over the god's heads by invoking MOT, which 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:54.640 is very's there's a legal sense to it, you know. 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:57.160 Like one of the things called now stresses is that 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:01.080 the ancient Egyptians loved litigation, and you see that in 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:04.600 some of their magic. You know, they are they're litigating 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:06.080 when they're casting a spell. 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:08.440 That's an interesting way of thinking about it. I think 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:19.880 we'll come back to that in a minute too. So 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:24.840 another common distinction that has historically been made between magicians 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:28.840 and priests is that while priests have a congregation over 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:32.920 whom they have a responsibility for guidance and moral instruction, 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:36.720 magicians have only clients with whom they can you know, 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:39.280 it's a much freer kind of relationship with whom they 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:44.680 can pursue an a moral transactional kind of interaction. But 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:49.160 Pinch says again this distinction doesn't really work for ancient Egypt. 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:54.160 Ancient Egyptian priests were usually not expected to be moral teachers. 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:55.840 There might have been some cases where they were, but 0:16:55.840 --> 0:16:58.480 it doesn't seem to be a general understanding of them. 0:16:59.280 --> 0:17:03.960 They were paid specialists in ritual and rituals and spells. 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:08.679 They had expertise in spells, and they could offer whatever 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:13.200 kinds of spells, defensive or offensive, were needed for the occasion, 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:17.280 much like the aforementioned understanding of a magician. And yet 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:20.359 at the same time, priests in ancient Egypt were not 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:25.560 at all considered subversive, illicit, or illegitimate. They were the 0:17:25.720 --> 0:17:30.119 temple priests, allied with kingly power, and they practiced what 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:34.639 often looks like ritual magic on behalf of the state. 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:37.040 So that's the thing again that just, you know, in 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:42.560 a modern i guess mainly Christian influenced religious culture, it's 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:45.399 hard to make that just doesn't fit with our idea 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:47.920 of like how magic works. I'm trying to imagine if 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:50.960 in the US, if like Nixon had hired a bunch 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:54.159 of witches to cook up a potion to guarantee victory 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:58.119 in Vietnam, you know, but also those witches were like 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:00.520 mainline Christian denominational preachers. 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:05.560 That's a good point. Yeah, researching this episode time and 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:10.679 time again, like compared, tried to compare anyway what I 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:15.520 was reading or listening to about the relationship between these 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:19.359 ancient Egyptians and their priests and their gods with how 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:24.960 like contemporary Christians think about their God. And yeah, it 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:27.800 often doesn't line up because depending on exactly how you're 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:30.639 framing the Christian God, you may be framing the Christian 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:33.320 God is more like a loving personal God, or on 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:35.879 the other end of the spectrum, you know, this vengeful god, 0:18:36.640 --> 0:18:38.919 the God of Alukardo that is going to you know, 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:42.240 send you to hell. But in either case, like you 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:45.560 wouldn't litigate against this god because on one hand, he's 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:48.240 your friend or your your he's like your family, he's 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:52.640 your father. You don't sue your father under most circumstances, 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:55.879 I guess. But then the other end of the spectrum, 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:59.240 you don't sue the like the all powerful entity that 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:01.920 has you like in the grip of his clause or 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:04.760 what have you. You know. So it's it's just such 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:05.640 a different framework. 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:09.400 It is so interesting to think about, well, the similarities 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:15.520 and the differences to whatever religion we're more familiar with anyway. 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:18.520 But so coming back to these these frameworks for understanding 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:22.720 magic versus religion, another framework that Pinch discusses in this 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:27.520 chapter is a framework for understanding magic coming from the 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:33.400 Polish anthropologist A. Bronislaw Malinovsky. A few points from Malinovsky here, 0:19:33.600 --> 0:19:38.040 he argued that the purpose of ritual magic is to 0:19:38.240 --> 0:19:42.240 solve problems that are beyond the limits of what a 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:45.800 society can do with technology, can do with it the 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:49.320 technology available to it. And that's one of those things 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:51.639 that there's so many there's so much stuff like this, 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:54.520 you know, anthropology of religion. You hear it. That just 0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:58.200 sounds intuitively true. Yeah, that sounds right. But Pinch argues 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:00.600 once again that when you try to lie this up 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:04.040 with what we know about ancient Egyptian magic, it doesn't 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:07.280 fit the case very well. Like we know for a 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:11.480 fact that the ancient Egyptians used magic to get desired 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:16.920 outcomes that they were practically and technologically capable of achieving 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:22.040 bi conventional means, for example, recovery from medical problems for 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:27.800 which they actually had effective practical treatments, and assuring military 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:31.680 victory over enemies that they were perfectly capable of crushing 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:35.520 in battle. So you might think of magic instead of 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:39.959 being exclusively the domain of problems we can't actually solve 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:43.720 under our own power, a kind of second line of 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:48.560 attack on problems, a parallel approach to solving problems that 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:52.760 you would often pair with a practical approach to the problem. 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:54.600 Well, you know, it's like some of the magic in 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:57.280 Dungeons and Dragons, right is it? If I remember I 0:20:57.320 --> 0:20:59.919 never play a cleric, But it's like blessing or bless 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:01.560 right y via that extra D. 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:03.920 Four increase your chance of success. 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:06.639 It's like I'm rolling at D twenty. There's a an 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:09.280 I already have a modifier in that I can totally 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:12.080 hit this. I might even score a crit But am 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:14.520 I going to say no to the D four? Of course? 0:21:14.600 --> 0:21:15.439 Now that could make all the. 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:18.320 Difference exactly right. Yeah, So maybe that's a better way 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:20.080 of thinking about it, and people will still do this 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:23.960 with forms of prayer today, prayer for prayer for success 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:27.600 in situations where out with the outcome is not guaranteed, 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:31.240 even if you do presumably have the power to achieve 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:33.280 the outcome yourself, you just don't know if you're going 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:36.679 to be able to do it. So yeah, so instead 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:40.400 of magic taking over when practical and tech technological solutions 0:21:40.440 --> 0:21:42.960 fall short, I think it was normal for ancient Egyptians 0:21:43.000 --> 0:21:47.240 to attack the same problem simultaneously with practical efforts and 0:21:47.320 --> 0:21:53.480 ritual magic. Pinch also cites both Melinofsky and another anthropologist 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:57.399 named Misha Ta Tiev, who made the point in different 0:21:57.400 --> 0:22:01.159 ways that a key distinction between really religion and magic 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:05.560 is the timing and nature of the problems they seek 0:22:05.640 --> 0:22:09.000 to address. So I think this was especially to Tiev's 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:14.680 idea that religion is calendrical, meaning pertaining to the calendar. 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:20.240 It follows a regular, seasonal or yearly pattern of rituals 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:23.879 that occur on a set schedule, and the problems it 0:22:23.920 --> 0:22:27.439 tries to solve are public problems. It is for the 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:32.040 common benefit of the community or the state. And magic, meanwhile, 0:22:32.040 --> 0:22:35.919 according to Tatiev's framework, is critical It is used to 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:42.000 solve a specific crisis that arises unexpectedly, often a personal 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:46.080 or individual matter, and Pinch argues that this one is 0:22:46.160 --> 0:22:49.000 sort of half correct when it comes to ancient Egypt. 0:22:49.680 --> 0:22:54.439 The rituals performed in ancient Egyptian temples were primarily aimed 0:22:54.600 --> 0:22:57.880 at what were thought to be public goods. They were 0:22:57.920 --> 0:23:01.720 for the benefit of the state or the society at large, 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:06.560 and this was done through regularly occurring rituals and seasonal festivals. 0:23:07.160 --> 0:23:11.919 But Pinch says the principle of responding to crisis with 0:23:12.080 --> 0:23:16.840 magic was actually woven into the very fabric of Egyptian religion. 0:23:17.359 --> 0:23:22.720 One really interesting example is that within Egyptian myth and religion, 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:29.879 some regularly occurring rituals were thought to be responses to 0:23:30.400 --> 0:23:33.800 a crisis, to an ongoing crisis. It was just like this, 0:23:34.600 --> 0:23:37.760 you know, never ceasing cosmic crisis that would occur over 0:23:37.800 --> 0:23:40.520 and over, even every single day. The example she gives 0:23:40.600 --> 0:23:43.960 is the ritual to protect the sun god Raw at 0:23:44.000 --> 0:23:48.640 sunset every night. The Egyptians believed that every night Raw 0:23:48.720 --> 0:23:52.199 had to make a perilous journey through the underworld in 0:23:52.240 --> 0:23:54.760 which it was a possibility that he could be killed 0:23:54.880 --> 0:23:58.720 during his nightly battle with the serpent of chaos Apophus. 0:23:59.240 --> 0:24:00.760 That's right, the soul or barge. 0:24:00.880 --> 0:24:06.440 Yeah, And so priests had to perform protective magic magical 0:24:06.480 --> 0:24:10.280 interventions to make sure Raw would survive his journey and 0:24:10.320 --> 0:24:13.359 the sun would rise again every morning. So it's like 0:24:15.000 --> 0:24:18.040 it has more the flavor of responding to a crisis, 0:24:18.040 --> 0:24:20.840 but it's a crisis that happens every single day and 0:24:20.920 --> 0:24:22.639 you have to keep responding to it. 0:24:23.160 --> 0:24:28.320 I think I think most contemporary listeners can can feel 0:24:28.320 --> 0:24:30.160 that it does feel like there's a crisis every day. 0:24:30.400 --> 0:24:34.600 Yeah. And then beyond that, Pinch mentions that the exact 0:24:34.680 --> 0:24:38.920 same priest who is going to be performing regular calindrical 0:24:39.080 --> 0:24:43.760 rituals at a state affiliated public temple might also be 0:24:43.880 --> 0:24:48.400 a vendor of private magic spells to solve your personal crisis, 0:24:48.440 --> 0:24:51.840 maybe for a fee. And what were these private crises 0:24:51.920 --> 0:24:55.399 that would have people seeking magical aid or protection. Well, 0:24:55.720 --> 0:24:58.000 they're probably what you would imagine. They're all kinds of things. 0:24:58.320 --> 0:25:03.320 Health issues seem to be a really big one, like illness, injury, infection, 0:25:04.280 --> 0:25:08.000 things relating to childbirth are very common reasons to seek 0:25:08.000 --> 0:25:11.399 the intervention of a priest or to try to use 0:25:11.400 --> 0:25:14.560 a magical spell, but also to just solve all kinds 0:25:14.600 --> 0:25:19.280 of personal problems, injuries committed, you know, offenses committed against 0:25:19.400 --> 0:25:24.520 you by others, just problems people would face in their lives. Also, 0:25:24.560 --> 0:25:26.840 it's worth thinking about how a lot of magic in 0:25:26.880 --> 0:25:31.240 ancient Egypt was to use a medical term preventative care. 0:25:31.840 --> 0:25:35.040 So you might, in fact, not just might, people often 0:25:35.119 --> 0:25:38.800 did do magical spells not to solve a problem that 0:25:38.840 --> 0:25:42.600