From the Vault: Ancient Egyptian Curses, Part 2

0:06Speaker 1:Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and today we have Ancient Egyptian Curses Part 2. It originally published 10-2-2025. Go in, take your chances, finish it up. We'll meet you on the other side.

0:23Speaker 2:Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

0:33Speaker 1:Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb.

0:36Speaker 2:And I am Joe McCormick. And finally, that first October chill is in the air. Rob, I don't know if you can see on the chat here, I am wearing a long-sleeve shirt today. It's very exciting at our house. We love the month of October, of course, and my daughter especially is just thrilled that it's actually October. I don't know if we've talked about this yet, but she is obsessed with Halloween decorations. So she, like, You know, the biggest thing she wants to do right now is go out and see which houses in our neighborhood have already put Selkens out, skeletons and vampires and all that.

1:12Speaker 2:And there's this wonderful, like, attraction repulsion to certain Halloween decorations. Like, there's a scary vampire that she wants to see, but then she's like, I'm going to have to close my eyes, but I want to see it.

1:24Speaker 1:Have you seen the new big skeletons that are out?

1:27Speaker 2:I don't know about the new big skeletons.

1:29Speaker 1:Because we had the big skeletons that just look like, you know, a giant skeleton standing in a yard. But this season, there are new ones where it looks like an even bigger skeleton is climbing out of the ground of somebody's front yard. These are popping up throughout our neighborhood, and they're pretty great. Like, you can make a big case for a lot of things in the world being in decline, but not front yard skeletons. This is an area that we're absolutely on the up and up with. Wow.

1:56Speaker 2:I don't think I've seen that. We've seen partially buried skeletons. It's almost a joke thing where people have like a skull and then some skeleton hands and feet. But it's like the body is underground, like it's sort of, I don't know, half buried.

2:08Speaker 1:Yeah.

2:09Speaker 2:But anyway, hello, listeners.

2:11Speaker 1:Yeah.

2:12Speaker 2:If you're new to the show and you're not familiar with our seasonal traditions, here's the deal. Of course, Rob and I are both Halloween heads. So every October, all month long, we indulge our monster obsessed brains. And we devote all of our core episodes to spooky stuff, witchy stuff. And we also make sure that all of our Friday Weird House cinema selections are in the horror genre. I mean, we talk about horror a good bit.

2:36Speaker 1:It's not hard for us to do.

2:37Speaker 2:Throughout the rest of the year, too. But we really drill in on horror or Weird House in October. So, yeah, if you are new to our October season offerings. Last year, our core episodes in October were about what we did a series on haunted locomotives and railroad madness. There was a period where people were convinced that trains were creating railway madmen. We talked about the demonology of ancient Mesopotamia. We talked about pig monsters in a series called The Hogs of Hell, getting into mythological monstrous pigs. And then also the paleontology record of what kind of pig-like animals that would actually horrify you did exist in reality at one point. And then finally, we did an entry in our Grimoire of Horror series where we each pick a horror short story to discuss and relate it usually back to some kind of science or science-adjacent topic. And this year, we've got a whole month of stuff like that in store for you. So, yeah, if you're new, stick with us.

3:36Speaker 2:Of course, also, if you're old, stick with us as well.

3:40Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.

3:41Speaker 2:But earlier this week, we got a jump on things. Before October had technically begun, we got a head start on things with part one of the series that we're continuing today on ancient Egyptian curses. So if you haven't heard that first episode, I would recommend going back and listening first. to that first. You know, there are some series where it makes more sense to listen out of order, but the last time we really did kind of lay the groundwork for today. But for a brief refresher, we talked about the general context of magic in ancient Egypt with some main points being, first of all, that to the ancient Egyptians, there was not a clear distinction between magic and religion like we see in some other religious and cultural settings. In ancient Egypt, The use of magic spells and temple-based religion were fully interwoven and practiced by the same priests and authorities. And in fact, magic power and magic spells were a fundamental part of the regular public rites performed in Egyptian temples. So magic was sort of part of everything, and even the gods needed it. Also, we talked about how the Egyptian concept of magical power,

4:54Speaker 2:or hekkah, was not thought to be inherently good or evil, but was a morally neutral power that could be harnessed to do all kinds of things, to protect or to harm, to heal or to destroy. And we talked about the sometimes almost litigious or legal framing in which many ancient Egyptians seemed to think about magic. Magic could be a way of initiating supernatural legal proceedings.

5:21Speaker 1:Yeah.

5:22Speaker 2:We also talked about a few particular curse texts, a lot of great stuff about, you know, if you do something bad in this tomb, going to wring your neck like a goose, all that stuff. And we also talked in general about kind of the main categories of curses that you find in ancient Egypt. Of course, ancient Egypt spans thousands of years and many millions of lives. So it's actually a quite varied historical period to talk about. You can't capture everything just in a little overview. But the main trends we talked about were, first of all, personal curses. These would be the more common kind of curses you would think about if you're thinking in a Christian witchcraft kind of framework. These would be where people magically settled scores with enemies and with people who they believed had wronged them or were oppressing them. There were quite famously funerary curses, usually leveled against anyone who would loot, disturb, or defile a tomb. There were political curses performed as these execration rituals to bind, weaken, and destroy enemies of the king and of the state. So this could include

6:33Speaker 2:rebels and the leaders of revolts, people the king perceived as political traitors, princes of enemy nations, and so forth. I'll talk about an example of this in just a bit. But you might write their name on a clay vessel or otherwise somehow symbolically link them to an effigy and then destroy that effigy. to magically curse the person or the parties. And then finally, you would have these religious or cosmic curses. This is very interesting because, I don't know, in the more modern religious context, we often think about what happens with supernatural entities. That's sort of beyond our intervention.

7:08Speaker 2:You know, we're subject to them. They're not subject to us. But this, in fact, like we talked about last time, was kind of like a curse the devil phenomenon. Like in the Egyptian context, Cosmic curses were designed to sustain the balance of order in the world and to magically help the gods of order defeat the bad gods, you know, the forces of chaos like the serpent, Apep, or Apophis. And so we're back today to discuss more. Now, Rob, let's see, we've got a couple of things we want to get into today. We do want to talk in some more specifics about famous tomb curses or alleged tomb curses.

7:47Speaker 2:But before we do that, do you want to talk about this idea of threats to the reader?

7:52Speaker 1:Yes. You were talking a little bit about this the other day, and of course it instantly brought to mind things like the ring. Yes. It's like, watch this video and you're cursed. Or you watch the video. There's no way to undo it. Yes. I'm excited to hear more.

8:06Speaker 2:So when you think about a magical text that inflicts a curse, you usually think about a named or specified target, right? For example, these personal curses. That would often be directed toward a specific person, enemy, rival, oppressor. Then you also have the cosmic, the religious curses we talked about that were usually targeted at a named chaotic deity. Again, most often the serpent Apep or Apophis. And then you have these political curses that would certainly have named enemies. In fact, sometimes the naming of enemies in the political curses, that's like the majority of the text we have. And that kind of makes sense when you imagine what the rituals were, right?

8:46Speaker 2:Like you'd write the names on things and then destroy those things.

8:50Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And also to come back to something we talked about with tomb facilities in particular, there was often a duality to the statement. It would only be like 50% curse. It would be like blessings upon you if you were here, you know, with good intentions, but curses upon you if you were here with bad intentions.

9:09Speaker 2:I want to get back to that in a minute because there are interesting parallel dualities also. But coming back to the idea of political curses just briefly, because I am thinking about these named versus unnamed targets of curses. I found one pretty extensive translation of a particular political curse and execration liturgy. from the Middle Kingdom, and this was translated by the American Egyptologist John A. Wilson, who was a professor at the University of Chicago. He lived 1899 to 1976. So these texts originally come from materials that were held by the Berlin Museum. The translation appears in a book called The Ancient Near East, an anthology of texts and pictures edited by Pritchard, Princeton University Press, originally published in 1958. So the text collection is called The Execration of Asiatic Princes. And in this case, that would refer to the rulers east of Egypt, primarily rulers and peoples in the Levant. So again, the way these execration rituals worked is that the names of the political enemies of Egypt and the enemies of the king were You'd like inscribe them on a piece of pottery and

10:20Speaker 2:then the pottery would be smashed. And then there were other ways of destroying effigies too, but that seems to be the main thing we're talking about here. Smashing of these clay vessels. Because the names had magical connections to their owners, this smashing along with the ritual language was thought to weaken and harm these enemy leaders. And so the fragments name the rulers, but they don't just name the rulers. They're like, here's the ruler. Here's where they're from.

10:46Speaker 2:And then also make sure to get all their servants and all their warriors. So, you know, one example is the ruler of Enoch, Erum, and all the retainers who are with him. The ruler of Enoch, Ahiyamimu, and all the retainers who are with him. The ruler of Enoch, Akirum, and all the retainers who are with him. The ruler of Shutu, and it goes on like this, and all the retainers and all the warriors and all his strong men who fight. Um, and so, uh, there are many examples in this, this text in the book here that are just naming princes, all their retainers, all the people who would serve them. And then of course they would smash that to, to destroy and weaken those people. But, uh, in addition, the political execration also extends to what feels like a more prophylactic format when it starts cursing potential internal enemies from Egypt, uh, because there are, uh, Fragments that specify all men, all people, all folk, all males, all eunuchs, all women, all officials who may rebel, who may plot, who may fight, who may talk of fighting, who may talk of rebelling. And every rebel who talks of rebelling in this entire land.

11:59Speaker 1:But this seems like they've got everybody. I don't see too many categories that were left out there.

12:05Speaker 2:But it's funny that, yeah, you would think not, but there's some general cleanup after this. They also just say every evil word, every evil speech, every evil slander, every evil thought, every evil plot, every evil fight, every evil quarrel, every evil plan, every evil thing, all evil dreams and all evil slumber.

12:23Speaker 1:Evil dreams. I can't help those. Come on.

12:27Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know what's going on there. But then also there are some more texts that do name specific traitors and enemies within Egypt as well. Like there's this one fragment that goes, and then just keeps naming people like that, often like the tutors of women within the royal family. There's a footnote that says we don't know exactly what this is about, but it seems like it could be attacking traitors who were thought to be part of a harem conspiracy. So once again, here we get the specific targets of the curse. But of course, not all curses that appear in Egyptian texts are targeted at named enemies. Some are more like a general security system that apply to whom it may concern. And a big example here that we've already talked about is tomb curses.

13:26Speaker 2:Often of the format, just generally, I'm not quoting here, anyone who enters this tomb with ill intent or who steals from or defaces this tomb will face penalties. A common one is, I will be judged with him, meaning, in your paraphrase from last time, Rob, I'll see you in ghost court. Yeah. And then often having a more violent or specific threat as well, like I shall wring his neck like a goose.

13:53Speaker 1:Yeah, which, as we discussed last time, may tie into like the sacrificial killing birds in temples. So, again, that kind of blurring of the line that modern individuals might think would exist between like the wizard and the priest.

14:11Speaker 2:There's one text I just found in an older book I found on the Gutenberg Project that was a collection of translated tomb inscriptions. This one was from a tomb that, in this it's translated Ankweja Ichi. And it says, it goes as follows. The scribe in the presence, Ichi, speaks. With regard to any person who shall take stones from this tomb of mine, of the necropolis, I shall be judged with them on this matter by the God. Okay, there you go. We see you in ghost court. And then for I am an excellent ox who knows his spells.

14:46Speaker 2:So that's again, like I've got the best lawyers basically.

14:49Speaker 1:Yeah. And again, I think in many cases, the God is going to be Osiris or it could be a regional deity.

14:55Speaker 2:A lot of these tombs that do make a threat, they invoke the power of Osiris.

14:59Speaker 1:Yeah.

15:01Speaker 2:But anyway, so on the subject of curses that function less like a targeted attack and more like a general purpose security system and have this to whom it may concern energy, I wanted to talk about an interesting curse format that I first came across in an academic conference presentation by the American Egyptologist Robert K. Rittner, who lived 1953 to 2021. The presentation is from 2003, and it is called an eternal curse upon the reader of these lines.

15:34Speaker 2:So as you can guess from the title, this is an Egyptian curse phenomenon that feels like it'd be very at home in a horror movie. It is a text that curses the reader for the crime of reading it. Or in Rittner's words, quote, an invocation for divine wrath directed not against its primary victims who are later damned by name, but against the accidental discoverer. That's cold.

16:01Speaker 1:And I'm assuming this would be in like the foreword of said text and not like the epilogue.

16:07Speaker 2:Well, it's funny because I have one full text that I could read in a minute where it happens at the very end. What? It's like, by the way, if you read this, you also are cursed.

16:17Speaker 1:Oh, man.

16:18Speaker 2:Now, before I get to that, I do briefly want to mention that the existence of this type of curse is. is not the main point of Rittner's presentation, which itself is pretty interesting, though a lot of it is like linguistic stuff that was over my head. But it is an interesting thing to read. So Rittner is more focused on a few things. One is how, this sort of relates to stuff we talked about in part one, how the distinction between divine and demonic power in ancient Egyptian religious thought is not all that distinct. And the categories often overlap with the same deities or entities often being invoked as protectors and healers or as supernatural knife bearers and slaughtering demons. A major part of the presentation is this linguistic argument that again was over my head, but it was focused on the definition of a particular Egyptian word, which appears in a lot of legal, medical and magical texts, some religious texts. Basically here, which Rittner argues should be understood as a kind of divine compulsion. This word he's arguing means a kind of seizing by a god or divine power and compelling action in a way. And this

17:38Speaker 2:could be good or evil, helpful or harmful, but the force by which a god or demon seizes a human and forces them to act one way or another... This term often appears in what we think of as tomb curses. So again, for example, the compulsion of Osiris be on him who reads these words, his life will be shortened. That sounds like standard curse stuff. You know, you are compulsion, you're seized by compulsion of a God and here's your punishment. But it is not only used with the meaning that the intruder will be, you know, seized by supernatural compulsion to prevent them from harming the tomb. There are also positive invocations of this divine compulsion to, for example, say that the reader of an inscription or the person entering a tomb will be compelled by divine force to do something to honor the dead, like make an offering of water or to do something else on the tomb owner's behalf.

18:41Speaker 2:So I found that pretty interesting. You would have these tomb inscriptions that say like, okay, Osiris has seized you. You know, the God compels you now. Um, it could be like, get out of here or you will be killed. It could also be, you will make an offering to the, you know, the soul of the person buried here.

18:57Speaker 1:Oh, wow. That is fascinating. Uh, I'm sure, uh, Julian Jane's, uh, devotees have some fun with that one. Uh, but, uh, But in general, I just I like the idea that it's like it's the positive side of that. It's like Osiris compels you here. You need to do the right thing in here.

19:15Speaker 2:But coming to the reader directed curse, one of the most striking examples mentioned in Rittner's introduction, I think, is actually doubly striking, not only because it has this dynamic where it curses the reader for reading, but because though it is ancient Egyptians. It comes from very late, from the Coptic Christian Egyptian period. And so it seems to be basically a form of Christian in its theology. So it is a targeted personal curse invoking divine violence from the Christian God. Fascinating. So the one I wanted to mention is a Coptic Egyptian curse known as Papyrus Lichachev.

19:57Speaker 2:I think I'm saying that right. This is from the 4th or 5th century. I went and dug up the full text as translated by a scholar named Marvin Meyer from a book called Ancient Christian Magic. Coptic texts of ritual power. This is text number 90 in this book, and it's called Curse Against Several Violent People. Meyer summarizes it by saying, quote, in this papyrus, a victim similarly calls upon God in the language of the courtroom to bring judgment against several people who have committed an act of violence. The closing lines pronounce a curse upon anyone who opens and reads the papyrus. So I'll give you a few selections from the text. Lord my God, to whom I look, who is seated upon the chariot of the cherubim, with the seraphim round about you, who is mounted upon the four creatures, Michael, Gabriel the archangel, cherubim and seraphim, Rabuel, Suruel, Kukuel, you who are seated upon your throne and with your beloved son, along with all those who have been named, and the place where this will be deposited, and the angel of the church, you must strike Protasia and Tenunte and Ebenei, quickly, deservedly. You

21:10Speaker 2:must hinder them as they have hindered him. You must bring upon them the anger of your wrath and your raised arm. As you cursed Samora and Kimora through the anger of your wrath, you must curse the one who has committed this act of violence. You must bring the vengeance of Enoch against them, as the blood of Abel called out to Cain his brother. The blood of this miserable man will call out, until you bring judgment on his behalf against those who have committed this act of violence against him. Elohe, Elohe, that is, Lord Sabaoth, you must bring your wrath upon them in a disturbing way.

21:46Speaker 2:You in whose hands is every breath who formed the world, you must quickly overthrow the people who have committed this violence. Yea, Lord Sabaoth, you must bring judgment on his behalf quickly. And then in the verso, it has finally, whoever opens this papyrus and reads it, what is written on it will come upon him by the order of the Lord God. What?

22:15Speaker 1:Of note, you did not open the papyrus. You merely read a translation. So I think legally you're in the clear here, but I am no ancient Egyptian priest or wizard or Coptic priest or wizard.

22:27Speaker 2:I mean, so interesting. I wish I knew more about the exact flavor of early Christianity that this is working from. I don't know actually for sure, but this sounds to me like it could be Gnostic influenced. I don't want to say that I know that because I didn't have time to look into that, but I would love to go back and dig into that and figure out exactly what the underlying theology here is thought to be, though it is clearly some kind of strongly Christian influenced theology.

22:56Speaker 2:But it's the kind of Christianity where the person thinks that they can just say, God, somebody did something bad to me, and God, I want you to go raise your arm to them, destroy them.

23:07Speaker 1:Yeah, this is really fascinating. I wish I'd known about this in high school when I went through a phase where I was super into angels and reading about the different angel names and all, because this is loaded with that kind of thing. And then it's interesting to think about this in terms of stuff we've already talked about as sort of a A legalistic argument because you can get us. They're not directly invoking Mott here, but there's a there's still a sense of it. They're sort of like, look, I'm I'm pointing to legal precedents to why you should act in rap against this individual or individuals, you know.

23:45Speaker 1:So it's it's not directly saying this is necessary for balance and it goes beyond you, but it's pointing at legal precedents. And it is also kind of interesting to think about it in terms of how this is just like buttering up a terrestrial ruler, you know, a powerful king and saying, hey, you're pretty great. Look at all your power. A powerful ruler like yourself should definitely act in this case and do so in accordance with these legal precedents.

24:14Speaker 2:That's a really great point. Yes. It is bringing up case law and that way it does feel like it's very much in the Egyptian magical curse tradition, even though it is not with traditional Egyptian deities, but with Christian. Yeah. Um, but it still has that, that Egyptian format, you know, going back thousands of years. Um, it, it, it like, uh, the way it refers to other times, God has cursed people for doing bad things.

24:39Speaker 1:Yeah.

24:40Speaker 2:It's like, remember when you did this, it's like that time.

24:43Speaker 1:I wonder, though, thinking about Maat again, and I would have to research deeper on this, but I wonder if the Christian God that is being invoked here, is there a sense that this deity is at least to some degree detached from Maat? Is this a move away from Maat as an essential religious and cultural concept? I don't have an answer to that, but I can't help but wonder about it as we look at this text.

25:13Speaker 2:So obviously this particular text is different from a lot of the things we've been talking about for numerous reasons, one of the big ones being that it's in this Christian context. But you could look at these earlier texts as well and ask the general question, why curse the reader for reading? What is the point of doing that? The reader is not the person you're mad at when you're writing out this curse, so why just include a line that's like, By the way, if you read this, everything I said applies to you as well. In the tomb, cursing the reader kind of makes sense because it's not so much about the reading. I mean, what's really being protected is the tomb. It's just logical that if you're reading this in this place, you're probably doing something I don't want you to, or you might be ready about to do something I don't want you to. So therefore, it stands to reason that if you're reading this, a threat should be applied to you. But does that really make sense with, you know, magical papyri, a spell written on papyrus? Like, why would you put a curse on just a text? I think we don't actually know for sure,

26:22Speaker 2:but there are some ideas. So I think one idea is it may serve to protect the effectiveness of the curse, perhaps by protecting the curse's ritual purity. You know, so like, the curse is something that is between the person issuing the curse and the deity that's being invoked. And if you're just getting other random parties involved, you know, random people coming in and reading this who aren't supposed to be, they might kind of be interrupting that relationship, just bungling.

26:55Speaker 1:Yeah, the purity of the signal or something, you know?

26:58Speaker 2:Yeah, or also preventing the bungling interference from readers who don't know what they're doing and might be using the power of the curse in some way for themselves, because a common strain of thought in ancient Egypt is that words themselves have magic power. Writing kind of has a hecka of its own. And so the act of writing something has magic power, and the act of reading something has magic power. This is something Rittner actually does talk about more in the context of his writing. the compulsion, which can work either way, which can compel you to do things. I think his idea is that the act of reading turns on the divine compulsion feature. It can activate the magic power of the words therein. And so both writing and reading sort of like turn the machine on, if that makes sense.

27:53Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think it more than makes sense. I think most of us can relate to it on some level or another, just in terms of daily reading and writing. But And I was just just the other day I was looking at yet another anxiety tweaking exercise that involves writing, that involves like writing out particular thoughts, particular triggers and so forth. And, you know, in doing so, gaining distance from them, sort of being able to manipulate their power. And there are any number of examples like that inside and outside of therapy that can that basically utilize the power of human language. I mean, talking about magic again, I've heard it put before that magic is making the world conform to language, you know? And to a certain extent, you don't have to believe in magic to see that happen.

28:47Speaker 2:I think that's an excellent point, yeah. So a big idea is that cursing the reader could be about protecting the effectiveness, the efficacy of the spell, But another thing might just be about secrecy. And you can think about secrecy from multiple directions. I mean, you might be thinking about the personal privacy concerns or the secrecy of the person invoking the curse. Maybe in some kind of papyri, you wouldn't really want your neighbors to know exactly what you're doing. I don't know. That's a possibility, I think.

29:18Speaker 2:But another way of thinking about secrecy is more about It's sort of like locking up the weapons. You know, there's a secrecy element because a curse, the language of a curse is a memetic weapon. It's like information that can be used to harm just in the way you were talking about. The words have magical power. to harm uh by placing a seal on a papyrus that has the power to curse you are essentially practicing proper security with something that is inherently dangerous.

29:54Speaker 1:Yeah and i wonder too like this and we're talking about this as outsiders who are like, whoa, this papyrus was cursed. But I'm wondering, too, if this would have been just a known fact about it. Like, oh, that is a cursed scroll. You know not to read that because if you're not the intended user, there could be harmful ramifications.

30:16Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, this is something I think that often gets lost about ancient texts because they come to us as text. We read a translation of a text in a book, and so it's just the information component, the text taken out of its context. But the context is a physical surrounding, the substrate that it's printed on, what it looks like, what kind of object it was, where it was, and things like that, that all also contain information, just in the way you think about anything that's written in your world you know, a street sign has a different way you understand it than a page in a book. And a page in a book can mean something very different if it's like an instruction manual versus a novel or, you know, and so, so many things that are not stated within the text itself inform how we understand a text. And a lot of times that is just totally lost when you, you know, when it's taken out of its original cultural context and just presented as a translation in a book.

31:19Speaker 1:Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, this is fascinating. It reminds me, many years ago, I was inadvertently sent an email through work. And then after I received it, someone reached out and was like, hey, you weren't supposed to get that. There's an attachment in that email. Don't open it. Just delete it unseen. So similar vibe. They didn't threaten to curse me, but I was like, all right, all right. I'm sure I don't really want to look it up. you know, a spreadsheet of numbers I don't understand. So I'm perfectly fine, perfectly happy to do that. And then I guess in another sense, we receive emails all the time that we know are cursed, that have cursed attachments, and we have to dismiss them out of hand.

32:01Speaker 2:Yeah. Talk about information threat.

32:03Speaker 1:Yeah. All right.

32:14Speaker 2:Well, that's all I've got for now on reader curses. But Rob, I know you wanted to talk about the so-called curse of the pharaohs. What have you got on that?

32:22Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is inevitably the place to take this because we have this, we have to stress this, a very 20th century conception of a pharaoh's curse that still remains pretty pervasive in the public mindset. And it emerges of, pretty much entirely in the wake of the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in the Valley of the Kings by archaeologist Howard Carter, who lived 1874 through 1939, and his financier, Lord Carnarvon. This was also known as George Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon. He lived 1866 through 1923, of note 23, that's one year after the discovery of of the tomb, we'll come back to that.

33:13Speaker 2:Oh, obviously the tomb got him. That's just logic.

33:16Speaker 1:Yeah, that's where it's going. So to refresh, Tutankhamen reigned from roughly 1334 through 1325 BCE. He only lived to the age of 18 or 19, though became pharaoh at age eight or nine. So sometimes looking at his age, you can think, well, he must have been a very short reign, couldn't have done much. But, you know, when you consider that he became pharaoh at age eight or nine, you know, it's a lengthy enough reign to do a lot of things. Still, there does seem to be the indication that his death, you know, he died very young and it was to some degree unexpected. So this would have been towards the end of the New Kingdom's 18th dynasty.

34:03Speaker 1:And one thing to remember about King Tut's tomb is that it did not lay completely undisturbed for the entirety of its history. It was robbed twice within just a few years of Tut's burial. Repairs and restocking took place. But for one or two possible reasons, the entrance to King Tut's tomb in the Valley of the Kings became obscured, possibly due to silty deposits brought on by flooding. Not everyone agrees on this count. And due to subsequent tomb construction.

34:35Speaker 1:This one is more definite. This means mounds of debris, workmen's huts being built in the Valley of the Kings to facilitate other tomb facilities, and it just becomes lost.

34:46Speaker 2:Right. So King Tut's tomb was not completely undisturbed, but it was less disturbed than most other tombs from ancient Egypt.

34:56Speaker 1:Yeah. And for a considerable amount of time.

34:58Speaker 2:Yeah.

35:00Speaker 1:And this is during a time when tomb raiders are just going to continue to plague the Valley of the Kings, um, it's my understanding that like the Valley of the Kings was established as a way to better protect the tombs, but how are you going to provide protection, uh, you know, across millennia? Uh, yeah, it becomes difficult. Um, but the tomb of Tutankhamun in itself, smaller and less extensively decorated than other Egyptian Royal tombs of its time, uh, likely adapted from a non-Royal tomb. So as to provide space for Tut in the aftermath of his sudden death, uh, It ends up, again, being remained, it ends up remaining undisturbed for thousands of years. And then during the boom of 19th and 20th century Egyptology, the Valley of the Kings receives a great deal of renewed scrutiny from Europeans and objects related to Tut were discovered in the area.

35:50Speaker 1:And this eventually led to the rediscovery of the tomb itself, the contents of which exceeded all expectations. It took multiple seasons to remove all the materials inside. And it is largely considered the most important archaeological find of the 20th century. It's the only nearly intact royal burial site ever found in ancient Egypt. And it provided both a time capsule of the new kingdom and a glimpse into the daily life of many ancient Egyptians. So it's kind of hard to overstate the importance of King Tut's tomb, which at times it can almost be counterintuitive because such a big deal was made out of it. You know, it was huge news. And a big deal continues to be made out of it. You know, the materials from this discovery still tour around the world. You know, King Tut inspires his own brand of Egyptomania. So, but we have to remind ourselves, like, yeah, this was a huge deal. And we learned and are still continuing to learn so much from it. And at the time, too, it was huge.

36:53Speaker 1:The discovery made international news. It was a bona fide international sensation. We've discussed Egyptomania on the show before. There have been multiple waves of Egyptomania throughout history. Fascination with the look of Egyptian artifacts, the mysteries about how these people lived and so forth. And it goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews. But the discovery of King Tut's tomb kicked off this kind of like new wave that is sometimes referred to as tutmania. I may accidentally say tutamania, but it is tutmania.

37:33Speaker 1:That's as official as a word like tutmania can be. Okay. And a book that I've referred back to before about Egyptomania, titled Egyptomania by Ronald H. Fritz, points out that tutamania didn't just, or tutmania, sorry, didn't just make one splash, but continued to resonate with as again, these artifacts from the tomb go on various world tours. I mean, I think a lot of us can think to examples in our own life where, oh, the King Tut artifacts came to a large city that your family could drive to.

38:06Speaker 1:And yeah, I remember going to it. I remember becoming interested in it, buying a soundtrack of Egyptian or supposedly ancient Egyptian music. And it's probably one of the reasons that I'm here on a podcast talking about ancient Egypt today.

38:22Speaker 2:Well, yeah, as with many things in the world, uh, how to put this, we should not hold it against King Tut or any of his associated artifacts that much of the reaction or reception of him was cringe. Like makes King Tut himself and the artifacts no less interesting.

38:41Speaker 1:Oh yes.

38:42Speaker 2:Yeah.

38:43Speaker 1:So, uh, Of course, again, Egyptomania was already influencing our media well before the 1922 Tut find. Again, situating this within the 19th and 20th century Egyptomania slash Egyptology boom. So, yeah, at this point, we already had what was considered has been considered the first mummy film, 1911's The Mummy, in which a scientist revives an ancient Egyptian mummy with electricity and then falls in love with her.

39:14Speaker 2:What?

39:15Speaker 1:Yeah, this is sadly a lost film, but seems to have existed.

39:19Speaker 2:I did not know the first mummy film was basically Frankenstein or Bride of Frankenstein.

39:25Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I mean, clearly influenced by it. uh let's see and then we had literary works from the likes of sir arthur conan doyle uh he wrote an 1890 story called the ring of thoth and 1892's lot number 249 that one of course was adapted In the motion picture, Tales from the Dark Side, the movie. I'm not sure how accurately, but it is cited as the reference.

39:51Speaker 2:The one, that's the segment with Christian Slater.

39:53Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think Steve Buscemi's in that one as well. I need to see it again. I remember liking it quite a bit. Oh, yeah. And then also we had Bram Stoker, 1903's The Jewel of the Seven Stars. And Fritz in his work also singles out the 1827 Jane C. Loudon book, The Mummy, that's with an exclamation point and then a colon, or a tale of the 22nd century, points this out as the earliest long work about a reanimated mummy. Edgar Allan Poe also wrote an 1845 story titled Some Words with a Mummy. I haven't read this one either.

40:29Speaker 2:What were the words?

40:31Speaker 1:I mean, some words.

40:34Speaker 2:Let's see.

40:37Speaker 1:But again, 1922's discovery, Tut Mania certainly influenced everything. This is one of the prime reasons we ended up with the universal horror picture from 1932, The Mummy, absolutely inspired by the discovery of King Tut's tomb and an attempt to capitalize on it. Really kind of mummy-sploitation, if you will. Yes.

41:02Speaker 2:Like, this is educational.

41:03Speaker 1:Yeah. And of note, we already had ancient Egyptian curse fiction before 1922. So one of the best examples that's frequently cited is Lost in a Pyramid or The Mummy's Curse by Louisa May Alcott. This was from 1869. So we had these ideas already in our fiction, in our dream making, due to fascination with actual and interpreted tomb curses from ancient Egypt. as well as from other cultures. And we've talked about these in the show as well, like from Greek culture, from Roman culture, and from various Mesopotamian cultures.

41:38Speaker 2:Right. So I think, Rob, would you agree that while ancient Egyptian tomb curses absolutely were a real phenomenon, and there are plenty of examples of this, a lot of what people think about tomb curses comes from the fiction that is only loosely inspired by them, not by the you know, knowledge of what these curses were like themselves.

42:03Speaker 1:Right, right. As well as urban legends. According to Fritz, two tales of cursed mummies were popular bits of Victorian and Edwardian urban legend. Again, tying into, in this case, tying into general fascination with occultism and spiritualism that were also just a part of the public zeitgeist. But this post-Tut idea of the curse of the pharaoh really cooks into gear during first wave Tut mania, as, again, expedition financier Lord Carnarvon dies a few months after the tomb's opening due to, and we're very clear on this, an infected mosquito bite. So essentially, Lord Carnarvon here, already in not great health, apparently nicked a mosquito bite while shaving, and this bite-slash-wound became infected He refused to rest, to care for himself properly, and subsequently died. According to Fritz, this also occurred after some ups and downs in the following weeks. So not, I mean, sudden in many ways of thinking, but maybe not as sudden as invocations of a curse might make you think.

43:14Speaker 2:Now, I know a lot of people might be thinking the next place this discussion would go would be, was it really the curse in King Tut's tomb that got him? You know, did that influence the the the infected wound or was it not? But actually, there isn't even a curse in King Tut's tomb. Am I correct about that?

43:33Speaker 1:That that is correct. Yeah.

43:34Speaker 2:Yeah. So there is no curse to even question here.

43:38Speaker 1:Yeah, there this is a fact. There are no explicit curse threats of immediate death in or on Tut's tomb whatsoever. But that didn't stop the media. The media is rather sensationalist about this. And we're pretty quick to declare that that he had clearly been struck dead by mysterious forces aligned with the curse protection of the tomb. The New York Times even reported this is like an actual quote from the Times in 23. Carnarvon's death spreads theories about vengeance.

44:11Speaker 1:I mean, you know, that's not. too terrible a journalistic headline. They're not saying he was definitely cursed. They're saying people were talking about it.

44:19Speaker 2:Fair enough. I guess with stories like that, you know, the people are talking about X stories. The question is always like, are people really talking about this enough that it's worth reporting on? Or is it like this is just something that would be interesting to talk about? And a few people are saying it. So let's just let's just talk about it.

44:37Speaker 1:Yeah, I find it especially maddening these days where this form of article might include embedded Twitter tweets or whatever they're called these days. Yeah. Are we really tapping into the public mindset? Maybe we are, but I don't know. Maybe I'm just an old fogey, but it seems stupid to me.

44:57Speaker 2:I mean, for any ridiculous or horrible idea, you can find people saying it. So it's the fact that people are saying something worth reporting. I mean, I'm not saying it's never worth reporting. If a whole lot of people are saying something, I guess it's worth reporting on the phenomenon of a rumor because that is news. But I don't know. I guess I don't know. Like, what the what is the tipping point? Like, what is the critical threshold of organic conversation about something that it becomes worth reporting in a news source?

45:26Speaker 1:Yeah. But at any rate, it was more than just the Times talking about it. And in general, like mummy curse mania was spreading. It's covered in the JSTOR Daily article, Was It Really a Mummy's Curse? by Alison C. Meyer from 2019. You had just decades of writers who were eager to attribute any death of any halfway connected individual to the supposed curse. So just a few examples of this. Sir Bruce Ingham, not even part of the team that opened the tomb, but he accepted a mummy's hand paperweight from Howard Carter, and then his house burned down. So people were like, was this the curse? Like, well, it seems a few steps removed, but I guess you could make the case for it. Another one, American financier George J.

46:18Speaker 1:Gould contracted pneumonia apparently after visiting the tomb. Was this the curse as well? I mean, a lot of things are going to happen to you after you visit any given place. You know, again, this just gets into magical thinking and all and ideas of bad luck and bad omens. You did that one thing that may or may not have any sort of moral weight to it. And then later on, you wonder if these two things are connected. Yeah. Oh, and then this one's really good. In 1970, 1970, again, an alleged expedition member. So I'm not even sure this was someone that was proven to have actually been there, was injured in a traffic accident. And the London Times.

47:03Speaker 2:48 years later, is that right?

47:04Speaker 1:Yeah. The London Times apparently was not too shy to suggest that maybe it's a curse. If so, I would say that curse had been read too much and was a little weak. if it just causes a traffic accident decades later, and again, not a fatal one.

47:21Speaker 2:And again, we already said this, but there was no curse. We're not even saying there wasn't magic. There wasn't even an, a suggestion of magic.

47:32Speaker 1:Right. The suggestion emerges completely from sensationalist news. And then, you know, and then it's tied into fiction and so forth. Um, in, In 2002, epidemiologist Mark R. Nelson published The Mummy's Curse, historical cohort study in the British Medical Journal. And this is worth looking up. He does a great job breaking it all down. He points out, OK, 44 Westerners were present at the opening of the tomb. Twenty five of them, you could say, were exposed. So I guess actually entered the tomb as part of the work. And based on this information, he broke it down. I'll get into some of the ways it's broken down here. he found that there was no evidence of any kind of a direct curse and that there was no effect on survival time for any exposure or numbers of exposures. Because remember, some people only went in once. Other people were going in and out. Work continued there for multiple seasons. Fritz covers this in Egyptomania as well and And yes, this idea of the curse doesn't hold up to any amount of scrutiny.

48:34Speaker 1:Of the 25, sometimes I've read 26, you know, basically around 25 people present at the opening of the tomb, 20 of them were still alive more than a decade later. Fritz writes, obviously the curse was not operating comprehensively against supposed desecrators of Tutankhamen's tomb. And of the six who had died, most had died of old age. But clearly the idea was just simply too enticing. The idea of an ancient mummy's curse, as multiple writers have pointed out, they just have too many cool factors here. The idea of ancient curses, again, even though there's not one in this particular case, but just the general idea of them, just a sensational and legitimately important archaeological find, mummies, distant lands.

49:19Speaker 1:It's just too much. People couldn't help themselves. And I think it's one of the interesting things about Egyptomania in general. It's a broad tent that thankfully contains and leads to a great deal of serious Egyptology and serious interest in in ancient Egyptian topics and also in ultimately contemporary Egyptian topics. But it also includes all manner of fiction, fantasy, superstition, pseudo-history, pseudo-archaeology, conspiracy thinking, new religious thought. You know, not all of that is bad, but some of it can be, at least if there's too much of it. At any rate, the idea of the curse of the pharaohs continued with various ideas often brought up as to just why the ancient Egyptian tombs killed people. Again, they didn't, but again, we're talking about this pervasive myth, this pervasive idea.

50:24Speaker 2:Right. We're talking about explanations that were offered for a phenomenon that was actually not anything other than what you would expect from chance.

50:32Speaker 1:Right. One of the most common is just, oh, there's a curse tablet. Right. And again, in many of these cases, there's no cursed tablet or thing. They end up having some sort of story about a particular item being cursed, even though there's nothing archaeological or even like subjectively threatening about it. Colleen Darnell brought this up in her talk. You know, there are certain Egyptian items that there's like a legacy of superstition about them, but they're not even like threatening looking or anything. It's just they're pretty common.

51:06Speaker 1:But Once you get this idea attached to them, it's hard to shake. Oh, here's one. This was a Daily Mail consideration. What if the mosquito that bit Lord Carnarvon had filled up on poisonous embalming fluid first? I mean, I guess it's an interesting idea, but I don't think there's any reason to back this up.

51:27Speaker 2:Wait, wait. The lethal dose of poisonous embalming fluid didn't kill the mosquito, but it did kill the man that the mosquito bit?

51:36Speaker 1:Yeah. And then how did it get it? The mosquitoes, uh, are not gonna, uh, they're not gonna feed on an ancient mummy. Uh, and, uh, there are just too many problems with this. So many holes in this one, but it's so ridiculous. I had to mention, um, let's see, uh, trap toxins in the tomb. Um, this is another idea that's often brought up and this, this idea, I have to admit, smacks a bit of miasma theory, you know, trapped bad air, um, But, you know, there is maybe a little more, certainly more to this idea than there is to deadly embalming fluid mosquitoes. You know, the air inside a tomb may well be stale, could be low oxygen and high CO2. So you could make a case with some tombs for methane and hydrogen sulfide. But in general, these are just hypotheticals and there's no proof that anything like this has been connected with actual tombs and their openings or with human illnesses due to their opening. Kind of coming back to the mosquito theory, chemicals from mummification processes are sometimes brought up, but this doesn't seem to be a strong short-term concern. Let's see, there are also

52:47Speaker 1:highly speculative ideas concerning radon gas in certain tombs. But one of the more interesting ones is the idea, okay, how about toxic mold? Essentially, toxic fungal spores released in a tomb's opening. This hypothesis, if true, just leaning into it for a moment, the idea is that, okay, maybe this exasperated the case of Lord Carnarvon that just, you know, like, okay, he was already sick. You know, he's going to end up with this cut on his face that gets infected.

53:20Speaker 1:But what if on top of that, we also had toxic spores? I don't know. I don't think it's, I don't, it doesn't seem like it's a very strong argument for a but it does lead to a very interesting case from outside of Egypt that does involve this actual phenomenon.

53:37Speaker 2:At least as a possibility that's taken seriously.

53:40Speaker 1:Right, right.

53:42Speaker 2:So, well, let's talk about that example, because I didn't know about this before you mentioned it to me, and this one is really interesting.

53:48Speaker 1:Yeah, I did not know about this one either until I took Colleen Darnell's class on the Curse of the Pharaohs. She brought it up, and yeah, I was instantly fascinated. Again, Colleen Darnell, the Egyptologist, Go visit her website. She does these classes online all the time. They're very cost effective and they're a lot of fun. But yeah, this is so, again, stressing that the Pharaoh's curse is very much a 20th century myth, but a persistent one stirred on by fiction and sensationalism. But this one idea that we've touched on, that opening a tomb could in effect release a death curse in the form of a deadly pathogen, is not entirely crazy because we have one case where it may have happened. So this takes us outside of Egypt. This takes us to Krakow, Poland, and it concerns the 1973 opening of the tomb of Casimir IV Jagiellon. And apparently opening this tomb did release fungal spores of Aspergillus flavus, which was discovered in large amounts in this tomb. And it may have ultimately killed as many as 10 conservationists that had opened and worked in the tomb and done so within a year's time.

54:59Speaker 2:Yeah. So from what I understand, the many people who did work on this opened tomb did soon die afterwards. And there were many spores of Aspergillus, this Aspergillus species found there. And specifically, the culprit was thought to be what are called aflatoxins. This is a variety of poisonous fungal toxin or mycotoxin. produced by different molds and fungal species, but especially Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. Mycotoxicosis, meaning acute high fungal toxin exposure, this from aflatoxin exposure, can have a number of serious negative health effects, both long-term and short-term.

55:46Speaker 2:It seems most importantly by attacking the liver, potentially causing hepatitis and greatly increasing risk of liver cancer. I read that aflatoxins are one of the most potent carcinogens known of in nature. So they attack the liver, and with serious enough exposure, aflatoxins can cause acute death, cause acute organ failure, especially with the liver and death. And more moderate rates of exposure have potentially been linked to all kinds of other problems, including growth stunting in children. Though most of the concern about aflatoxin exposure comes not from opening tombs, but from exposure through contaminated food crops. So like contaminated nuts or grains or other food crops that are stored in like warm, humid conditions can develop aflatoxin contamination through a bunch of aspergillus in them. And this can be really, really bad to eat. In fact, aflatoxins, I believe were first discovered in the 1960s. And this was linked to this famous case of the so-called Turkey X disease among not the country Turkey, but the animal turkeys in England, where I was looking at a study that mentions this called aflatoxins history, significant milestones, recent data

57:15Speaker 2:on their toxicity and ways to mitigation. in the journal Toxins from 2021 by Pikova et al. And in this overview, they describe as follows, quote, In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new, so far unknown, turkey disease characterized by heavy mortality was identified in England. After the turkey disease outbreak of unknown nature and etiology, the turkey so-called X disease, the discovery of aflatoxins began. A total of 100,000 turkeys died of so-called turkey X disease after being fed with contaminated Brazilian ground nut meal on a poultry farm in London. Though, of course, it hasn't only affected turkeys, lots of humans around the world. There have been aflatoxin breakouts in food crops around the world, and many people have died as well. So this is like a serious, very potent toxin. But usually the risk is improperly stored food or contaminated food, again, not tombs. But of course, if there were a whole lot of aflatoxin from a strongly aspergillus-contaminated tomb, you could imagine that also being a serious health risk to people who were messing around in there.

58:30Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And again, this fungus is widely distributed in soil across the globe and sometimes colonizes important agricultural crops, but is not something that's like only found in tombs. And in fact, this is like, this is the case of this occurring. I don't believe this to be a widespread phenomenon. Oh, a little background though. I want to throw in Casimir IV Jaglan. Who was he? Well, he was a 15th century Polish King and Lithuanian Grand Duke, an important European ruler of the day noted for his defeat of the Teutonic Knights during the 13 years war of the 15th century. None of, this business with his tomb reflects on anything good or bad about his life or rule. And to be clear, there was absolutely no issued Jagiellonian curse, despite some media sensationalism around this as well.

59:22Speaker 1:Like he never said, don't open my tomb or there'll be a fungus or anything like that. this just is the way it panned out. But it certainly didn't stop various folks from absorbing this information and then saying, well, what about Tut's tomb? What if this actual occurrence is the reason that people died because of opening King's Tut's tomb? Again, all the problems with the accuracy of that statement in play, they just couldn't help themselves. So, Again, despite the fact that with King Tut, we're dealing really with only a single death with other very well-known factors in place. And we know that no one else associated with the opening of this tomb died of any mysterious causes. There's also no evidence that Tut's tomb contained dangerous microbes or fungi of any sort. Furthermore, according to Colleen Dornell, no one she knows of has ever become ill from entering an Egyptian tomb. Yes, you can catch pneumonia later. You can catch all number of things later. And you will eventually die after visiting an Egyptian tomb. That's 100% true. But that'll also happen if you don't visit an Egyptian tomb,

1:00:40Speaker 1:which doesn't mean you absolutely should, because again, it's going to happen either way. But I guess what I'm trying to say is, yeah, this idea of there being some sort of a biological agent in the tomb, that does, in a medical sense, curse the individual. It is technically possible with certain tombs, but not this one.

1:00:58Speaker 2:Right. Technically possible, but doesn't even seem to be especially common with the opening of tombs.

1:01:06Speaker 1:Right, right. But it's an infectious idea. Yeah. MST3K fans, for example, especially may remember a 1982 mummy movie titled Time Walker. It stars Ben Murphy, and its plot concerns a deadly alien fungus inside an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus.

1:01:24Speaker 2:I've never made it all the way through this film, but I love the idea of a space mummy.

1:01:28Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't seen it in a while, but I remember the ending is very memorable. I forget all the beats on the way there, but the ending is a lot of fun. Now, another question in all of this may come to mind, and that is, well, what about traps? I mean, on one level, you could say, what if there was some sort of a biological agent and it was laid as a trap? Well, I don't think there's any serious argument to be made for that being the case.

1:02:02Speaker 2:But, Rob, we discussed in the last episode how actually a lot of... In a lot of ancient Egyptian thinking, it was a common thing to attack a problem with multiple mechanisms at once. You would have a magical arm of attack and a practical arm of attack against the same issue. So if tomb robbers were something you were worried about, why not have both a curse on the tomb, magical arm of attack, and practical traps? That would make sense, wouldn't it?

1:02:34Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's a reasonable question to ask on one level, given that, I mean, we look at the pyramids, we look at these, the great works of the ancient Egyptians. We know they were capable of amazing things by contemporary standards or certainly their own standards, the standards of their time. On top of that, you know, we've all seen a little Indiana Jones. We've seen at least fictional examples of this sort of thing going on. And, you know, here on the show, we've discussed the possibility of tomb traps within the context of the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first sovereign emperor of China. So if that's even in the discussion for that, I believe, as yet unopened tomb. Well, what about Egyptian tombs?

1:03:19Speaker 2:I mean, even in that case, my memory is. We were like, are there any booby trap tombs like in Indiana Jones? And that was the example where there's like the best case that there might be booby traps. But even in that case, it's only a possibility. And also, if there ever were such traps, they're probably not still working.

1:03:39Speaker 1:Right, right. And if I and, you know, I imagine you could also ask questions like, OK, if you have some sort of trap set up, how much of that is like a legitimate real world trap? How much of it is indeed magical thinking, like having a stone? or some sort of superstitious or religious practice, like having a stone warrior within your tomb, or like having various goods for the afterlife, perhaps having some sort of a crossbow set up to kill someone who enters, that could as well be as much a curse as it is a practical consideration. But to be clear, with Egyptian tombs, traps of this nature, you know, pure Indiana Jones traps like trap doors and spike pits and darts that shoot out of the walls, crossbows. These are apparently unknown. And there's actually a really good life science article about this topic from just last month by Owen Jarrus. I found it an interesting read. The author spoke with Reg Clark, author of Securing Eternity, Ancient Egyptian Tomb Protection from Prehistory. And the basics of this, the counter argument to the idea of traps and why we don't see them in ancient

1:04:50Speaker 1:Egyptian tombs, it comes down to three factors. So first of all, just about any booby trap you can think of would only have limited success against tomb raiders. Because while Indiana Jones works alone or with just one individual, a love interest, or someone who's going to betray him, actual ancient Egyptian tomb raiders worked in large groups. So if you had a death trap in place, yeah, you might kill a few of them, but the rest are going to keep going, work around the trap, or the trap's no longer going to be effective. And they might just realize, hey, we encountered a death trap, so I guess we're on the right track. We should keep going in this direction.

1:05:28Speaker 2:That itself sort of highlights some ways that you could have practical protections for a tomb that wouldn't be deadly booby traps.

1:05:38Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And then again, also, of course, there are all these practical concerns with a passive trap. They work great in an Indiana Jones movie, but would they work in reality? And when it comes down to it, it seems like architectural features were just far more effective ways of keeping out tomb raiders. So passages sealed with huge sliding blocks or just, uh, or just a cascade of rocky material, um, that would work far better than any trap you could imagine because, uh, you know, it's just, just, you know, you're dealing with rock, you're dealing with, with just sheer weight and mass. Uh, additionally, it's possible that some pyramid passages that seem to lead nowhere were included to confuse tomb robbers. I think there's still some open questions about this, uh, And I've also read the possibility of trying to convince the tomb raider or the would-be tomb raider that the tomb has already been robbed is another possible strategy that was employed. And these would have all, especially the architectural features, these would have been the most effective against your tomb raiders. Just putting an enormous stone

1:06:47Speaker 1:block between them and what they want to steal, that's going to work better than anything. Right.

1:06:52Speaker 2:So we know they definitely used the locking mechanisms, seal the entrance or try to hide the entrance. They may also have used various forms of confusion against tomb robbers, like maybe a false chamber or a false passage or something that's more up for debate. What we have no evidence of is like, yeah, spikes that shoot out or crossbows or anything like that.

1:07:15Speaker 1:Yeah. And then on top of this, first of all, we have to think about the fact that, yeah, the ancient Egyptians clearly thought about eternity and long-term time in the same way that humans today do as well. But they also were very concerned with the actual threats of the day. And therefore, it was a little different than imagining Indiana Jones tromping in, right? You were dealing with known tomb raiders, known tomb raider groups, known operations that And therefore, you had, first of all, the potential for just human guards to be involved, human patrols. And you had the dual powers of, first of all, real world laws with brutal punishments for Tomb Raiders. And then on top of that, and also in case those didn't work, the supernatural curses we've been discussing.

1:08:05Speaker 2:Yes. And to really hammer on something you said just a second ago, from my understanding, the biggest concern about about grave robbers in ancient Egypt wasn't about the distant future. It was about, you were concerned about people who would come rob your tomb a few months after it was sealed or within a few years.

1:08:24Speaker 1:Yeah, which was, again, the case with King Tut's tomb as well, like robbed twice just in the immediate aftermath of the burial. So yeah, this is more what they seem to be concerned about. But it is almost, we almost have, it almost feels counterintuitive at times when we We think about them because we are when we think about the ancient Egyptians. Yeah, we do get down and think about them as like real people that lived real lives. And we're in so many respects, much like we are.

1:08:54Speaker 1:But on the other hand, yeah, we also think about an ancient people that have this kind of mythic quality about everything they do, even if the thing they're doing is consuming honey or trying to treat an illness or just every little thing that occupies our lives today.

1:09:12Speaker 2:When we think about them, it's tempting to imagine that they were thinking about us, but they probably weren't thinking about us. They were much more likely thinking about themselves and their own contemporaries.

1:09:25Speaker 1:Yeah. Though one point that Colleen Darnell made was that, you know, King Tut would probably be pleased to know that we are still talking about him, still thinking about him today. You know, I mean, talk about you know, long-term name value or at least a resurgence. You know, I guess there was a long period of time where people were maybe not talking about Tutankhamen. But today, I mean, he is probably, for most people, he is like the pharaoh you would name if you went out and asked people on the street, like, name a pharaoh, they would probably say King Tut.

1:09:56Speaker 2:Oh, well, to bring it back to the subject of Rittner's divine compulsion, One of the things that a tomb would sometimes say, you know, the power of a deity or supernatural being will seize you and compel you to do is to speak the name, speak the name of the person buried here, because that was thought to have a power of its own. It's something that some people, I think a lot of people buried in ancient Egypt wanted people to do. They wanted people after they had died to continue to speak their name. That was like a blessing you could bestow upon them.

1:10:26Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.

1:10:28Speaker 2:So do something nice for an ancient Egyptian. Speak their name.

1:10:31Speaker 1:There you go. All right. We're going to go ahead and close this out. But we'd love to hear from everyone out there. We'd love to hear from folks who have engaged in Egyptomania and Egyptology to varying degrees. If you've visited any of the sites that we have referenced in these episodes, we would, of course, love to hear your experiences and gain your knowledge right in. We would love to hear from you. Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays, we do a short-form episode, and on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

1:11:09Speaker 2:Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J. Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello... you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.

1:11:32Speaker 1:For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app.

1:11:35Speaker 2:Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

1:11:52Speaker 1:Thank you.