Ancient Egyptian Curses, Part 2

In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the idea of Egyptian tomb curses, how they actually factored into ancient Egyptian practices and where the myth of the Pharaoh's curse meets reality.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
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.

Speaker 4 (00:23):
Sleeve shirt today.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
It's very exciting at our house, where 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

(00:46):
see which houses in our neighborhood have already put selkins out,
skeletons and vampires and all that. 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 gonna have to close my eyes, but I want
to see it.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Have you seen the new big skeletons that are out.

Speaker 4 (01:07):
I don't know about the new big skeleton.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
So 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 out 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

(01:31):
an area that we're absolutely on the up and up with.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Wow, I don't think i've seen that. What 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. But anyway, hello listeners. Yeah,
if you're new to the show and you're not familiar
with our seasonal traditions, here's the deal. Of course, Rob

(01:57):
and I are both Halloween heads, so every October were
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.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
I mean, we talk about horror a good bit.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
It's not hard for us to.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Do throughout the rest of the year too, but we
really drill in on horror for a 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

(02:38):
were creating railway mad men. We talked about the demonology
of ancient Mesopotamia. We talked about pig monsters and a
series called The Hogs of Hell, getting into mythological monster's 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

(03:00):
an entry in our Grimoar 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 adjacent topic. And this year we've got a whole
month of stuff like that in store for you. So yeah,
if your new stick with us, of course, also if
you're old, stick with us as well.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
Absolutely, But earlier this week we got to 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 to that first. You know, there are some

(03:40):
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

(04:00):
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

(04:21):
regular public rights 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
or heca, was not thought to be inherently good or evil,
but was a morally neutral power that could be harnessed

(04:43):
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. We also talked about
a few particular curse texts, a lot of great stuff

(05:06):
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

(05:28):
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 you know, Christian witchcraft kind of framework.
These would be where people magically settled scores with enemies

(05:48):
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, to 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 you know,

(06:12):
rebels and the leaders of revolts, people the king perceived
as political traders, 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

(06:36):
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 energies that's sort of beyond our intervention,
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.

Speaker 4 (06:56):
The devil phenomenon.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
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 Apophice. And so we're back today to discuss more. Now, Rob,
let's see, we've got a couple of things we want

(07:19):
to get into today. We do want to talk us
in some more specifics about famous tomb curses or alleged
tomb curses. But before we do that, do you want
to talk about this idea of threats to the reader?

Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yes, yeah, this this You were talking a little bit
about this the other day, and of course it instantly
brought to mind things like the Ring.

Speaker 4 (07:39):
Yes, yes, I.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Watch this video in your curse. Already watched the video.
There's no way on to do it. Yes, I'm excited
to hear.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
More so, when you think about a magical text that
inflicts the 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 and rival oppressor.
Then you also have the cosmic, the religious curses we
talked about that were usually targeted at a named chaotic

(08:08):
deity again most often the serpent, apep or apophice. And
then you have these political curses that would certainly have
named enemies. In fact, sometimes the naming of enemies and
the political curses, that's like the majority of the text
we have, and that kind of makes sense with when
you imagine what the rituals were, right, like you'd write
the names on things and then destroy those things.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
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 fifty percent curse.
It would be like blessings upon you if you were here,
you know, with good intentions, but curses upon you if
you are here with bad intentions.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
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 names 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

(09:12):
was translated by the American egyptologist John A. Wilson, who
was a professor at the University of Chicago. He lived
eighteen ninety nine to nineteen seventy six. 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

(09:33):
University Press, originally published nineteen fifty eight. 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.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
So again, the.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Way these execration rituals worked is that the names of
the political enemies of Egypt and the enemies of the king,
you'd like inscribe them on a piece of pottery, and
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

(10:12):
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,
and then also make sure to get all their servants
and all their warriors, so you know, one example is
the ruler of enoch Roum and all the retainers who

(10:37):
are with him, the ruler of enoch Ahi Yamumu and
all the retainers who are with him, the ruler of
eanoch Akium and all the retainers who are with him,
the ruler of Shootou and goes on like this, and
all the retainers and all the warriors and all his
strong men who fight. And so there are many examples

(10:57):
in 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 destroy and weaken those people. But in addition, the
political execration also extends to what feels like a more
prophylactic format when it starts cursing potential internal enemies from Egypt,

(11:18):
because there are 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.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
But this seems like they've got everybody. I don't see
too many categories that were left out.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
There, but it's funny that, Yeah, you would think not,
but there's some general cleanup after this.

Speaker 4 (11:49):
They also just say.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
Every evil word, every evil speech, every evil slander, every
evil thought, every evil plot, every evil fight, every evil quarrel,
every evil plan, evil thing, all evil dreams, and all
evil slumber.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Evil dreams. Can't help those come on.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, I don't know what's going on there. But then
also there are some more texts that do name specific
traders and enemies within Egypt as well, Like there's this
one fragment that goes, AMENI shall die the tutor of
sit Bastet and the chancellor of sit hat Hoor, the
daughter of Nephru, and then just keeps naming people like that,

(12:28):
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 traders who were thought to be part of a
Harem conspiracy. So once again here we get these specific
targets of the curse. But of course, not all curses

(12:50):
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, often of
the format just generally I'm not quoting here, anyone who

(13:10):
enters this tomb with ill intent, or who steals from
or defaces this tomb will face penalties.

Speaker 4 (13:16):
You know.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
A common one is I will be judged with him, meaning,
in your paraphrase from last time, Rob, I'll see you
in ghost chord, yeah, And then often having a more
violent or specific threat as well, like I shall wring
his neck like a goose.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, which, as we discussed last time, may tie into
like the sacrificial killing of birds and temples. So again
that kind of blurring of the line that modern individuals
might think would exist between like the wizard and the priest.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah, there's one text I just found in an older
book I found on the Gutenberg project that was a
collection of translated to inscriptions. This one was from a
tomb that in this it's translated Aqueja ichi Uh, and
it says it goes as follows the scribe in the
presence Ichi speaks with regard to any person who shall

(14:12):
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 and goescort.
And then for I am an excellent ok who knows
his spells. So that's again like I've got the best
lawyers basically.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, and again I think in many cases the god
is going to be Osiris, or it could be a
regional deity.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
A lot of these tombs that do make a threat,
they invoke the power of Osiris.

Speaker 4 (14:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
But anyway, so on the subject of curses that 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. The American egyptologist Robert K. Rittner who lived

(15:03):
nineteen fifty three to twenty twenty one. The presentation is
from two thousand and three, and it is called an
eternal curse upon the reader of these lines. So, as
you can guess from the title, this is an Egyptian
curse phenomenon that feels like you'd be very at home
in a horror movie. It is a text that curses

(15:24):
the reader for the crime of reading it, or, in
Writtner'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.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
That's cold, and.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
I'm assuming this would be in like the ForWord off
set text and not like the epilog.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
Well, it's funny because I have one full text that
I could read in a minute where it happens at
the very end.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
What it's like.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
By the way, if you read this, you also are cursed.

Speaker 4 (15:56):
Oh man. Now, before I get to that, I do brieve.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
Want to mention that the existence of this type of
curse is not the main point of Writtner'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 Writtener is more
focused on a few things. One is how this sort

(16:21):
of relates to stuff we talked about in Part one. Now,
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

(16:43):
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 teess some religious texts. In basically here, which written

(17:05):
or 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 could be good or evil, helpful or harmful,
but the force by which a god or demon seizes

(17:25):
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,

(17:46):
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 in vocations of this divine compulsion.
Two for example, say that the reader of an inscription

(18:07):
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. 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.

(18:27):
Now 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.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
Oh wow, that is fascinating. I'm sure Julian Jaye's devotees
have some fun with that. One, But in general, I
just I like the idea of 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.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
But coming to the reader directed curse, one of the
most striking examples mentioned in Writtner'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 Egyptian, it comes from very late from
the Coptic Christian Egyptian period, and so it seems to

(19:18):
be basically a form of Christian in its theology. So
it is a targeted personal curse invoking divine violence from
the Christian God.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Fascinating.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
So the one I wanted to mention is a Ecoptic
Egyptian curse known as Papyrus Lechechev. I think I'm saying
that right, that this is from the fourth or fifth 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

(19:52):
text number ninety in this book, and it's called Curse
against several violent people. Meyer summarizes it by saying, 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.

(20:15):
So I'll give 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, Cukuel, You who are seated upon
your throne and with your beloved son, along with all

(20:38):
those who have been named, and the place where this
will be deposited, and the Angel of the Church, You
must strike Pretasia and Tenunte and Ebenez quickly, deservedly. You
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 Samoa and Kimora through the

(20:59):
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 Caine, 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. La loah, that is, Lord Sabba Oath.

(21:22):
You must bring your wrath upon them in a disturbing way.
You and who's in a disturbing way. You in whose
hands is every breath, who formed the world. You must
quickly overthrow the people who have committed this violence. Yeay,
Lord Saba Oath, you must bring judgment on his behalf quickly,
and then on the verso it has finally, whoever opens

(21:45):
this papyrus and reads it what is written on it
will come upon him by the order of the Lord God.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
But of note, you did not open the papyrus. You
merely read a translation. So I think, I think legally
you're in the clear here. But I am no ancient
Egyptian priest or wizard or copying priest or wizard.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
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 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

(22:28):
exactly what the underlying theology here is thought to be.

Speaker 4 (22:31):
Though it is.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
Clearly some kind of strongly Christian influenced theology, but it's
the kind of Christianity where the person thinks that they
can just say, God, I've somebody did something bad to me,
and God, I want you to go raise your arm
to them, destroy them.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, this is really fascinating. I wish i'd known about
this in high school when I was like I went
through a phase where I was super into angels and
like reading about the different angel names and all. Yeah,
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 legalistic argument,

(23:07):
because you can get us they're not directly invoking mot here,
but there's still a sense of it. There's sort of like, look,
I'm pointing to legal precedents to why you should act
in wrath against this individual or individuals, you know, So
it's it's not directly saying this is necessary for balance

(23:28):
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

(23:51):
do so in accordance with these legal presidents.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
That's a really great point. Yes, it is bringing up
case law, and in that way, it does feel like
it's very much in the egypt magical curse tradition, even
though it is not with traditional Egyptian deities but with
Christian But it still has that Egyptian format, you know,
going back thousands of years. It like the way it

(24:15):
refers to other times God has cursed people for doing
bad things. Yeah, it's like remember when you did this,
It's like that time.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
I wonder though, you know, thinking about mot again and
I would have to research deeper on this, but I
wonder if the Christian God that is that is being
invoked here, is there a sense that this deity is
at least to some degree detached from mot Is this
a move away from mot as as an essential religious

(24:44):
and cultural concept? I don't have an answer to that,
but you know, I can't help but wonder about it
as we look at this text.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
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?

(25:13):
You know, 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. Yeah,
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

(25:34):
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.

Speaker 4 (25:49):
But does that.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
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 we don't actually
know for sure, 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,

(26:15):
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.

Speaker 4 (26:33):
It's just bungling.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Security of the signal or something, you know.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah, And 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 heca of its own, and so the act of

(27:00):
writing something has magic power, and the act of reading
something has magic power. This is something written or actually
does talk about more in the in the context of
his you know, his 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

(27:21):
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.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
If that makes sense, 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 man, I was
just just the other day I was looking at it
yet another anxiety tweaking exercise that involves writing, that involves
like writing out you know, particular thoughts, particular triggers and

(27:54):
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 basically utilized the power of
human language. I mean, in talking about magic again, I've

(28:17):
heard it put before that magic is making the world
conform to language. You know, and you know, to a
certain extent, you don't have to believe in magic to
see that happen.

Speaker 4 (28:27):
I think that's an excellent point.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
Yeah, So a big idea is that cursing the reader
could be about protecting the effectiveness the efficacy of the spell.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
But another thing might.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
Just be about secrecy. And you could think about secrecy
for multiple directions.

Speaker 4 (28:42):
I mean, you might be thinking about the.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
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.

Speaker 4 (28:58):
But another way of.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
Thinking about secrecy is more about protecting. 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 mimetic 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. By placing a

(29:23):
seal on a papyrus that has the power to curse,
you are essentially practicing proper security with something that is
inherently dangerous.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
M Yeah, and I wonder too like this we're kind
of we're experienced we're talking about this as outsiders who
are like, whoa, this is a papyrus was cursed. But
I'm wondering too if this would have been just a
known fact about it, like, oh, that is a curse scroll.
You know, not to read that because if you're not
the intended user there could be harmful ramifications.

Speaker 4 (29:55):
Oh yeah, that's a really good point.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
I mean, this is something I think that often gets
lost ancient texts because they come to us as text.
You know, 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

(30:19):
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

(30:41):
or work, 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.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
Mm hmm, yeah, this is this is this is fascinating.
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 to lead it unseen. So similar, similar vibe. You know,

(31:21):
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 at a 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.

Speaker 5 (31:41):
Yeah, talk about information threat Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
All right, 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?

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Oh? Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is inevitably the place
to take this because we have this, we have to
stress this a very twentieth century conception of a pharaoh's
curse that still remains pretty pervasive in the public mindset,
and it emerges pretty much entirely in the wake of

(32:26):
the nineteen twenty two discovery of tuton Common's tomb in
the Valley of the Kings by archaeologist Howard Carter, who
lived eighteen seventy four through nineteen thirty nine and his financier,
Lord Carnivon. This was also known as George Herbert, the
fifth Earl of Carnivon. He lived eighteen sixty six through
nineteen twenty three. Of note twenty three, that's one year

(32:49):
after the discovery of the tomb. We'll come back to that.

Speaker 4 (32:52):
Oh, obviously the tomb got him.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, that's just logic's yeah, that's where it's going to refresh.
Tuton Common from roughly thirteen thirty four through thirteen twenty
five BCE. He only lived to the age of eighteen
or nineteen, though became pharaoh at age eight or nine,
so sometimes looking at his age you can think, well,

(33:16):
he wasn't that 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,
is a lengthy enough rain 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

(33:40):
end of the New Kingdom's eighteenth dynasty. 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 Tuts.
Burial repairs and restocking took place, but for one or
two possible reasons, the entrance to King Tut's tomb in

(34:03):
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, this one
is more definite. This meaning that 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 right.

Speaker 3 (34:26):
So King Tut's tomb was not completely undisturbed, but it
was less disturbed than most other tombs from ancient Egypt.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yeah, and for a considerable amount of time. Yeah so,
And this is during a time when tomb raiders are
just going to continue to plague the Valley of the Kings.
It's my understanding that the Valley of the Kings was
established as a way to better protect the tombs. But
how are you going to provide protection, you know, across millennia. Yeah,
becomes difficult. But the tomb of Tuton, common itself small

(35:00):
and less extensively decorated than other Egyptian royal tombs of
its time, likely adapted from a non royal tomb so
as to provide space for Tut in the aftermath of
his sudden death. It ends up again being remained, ends
up remaining undisturbed for thousands of years, and then during
the boom of nineteenth and twentieth century Egyptology, the Valley

(35:21):
of the Kings receives a great deal of renewed scrutiny
from Europeans, and objects related to Tut were discovered in
the area, 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

(35:43):
of the twentieth 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 the
glimpse into the daily life of many ancient Egyptians. So
it's kind of hard to overstate the important ardents of
King Tut's tomb, which at times it can almost be
counterintuitive because such a big deal was made out of it.

(36:07):
You know, it was huge news, and a big deal
continues to be made out of it. You know, the
the the materials from this discovery of still tour around
the world. You know, King Tut inspires his own brand
of Egyptomania. So but we have to remind us that
it's like, yeah, this was a huge deal and we

(36:27):
learned and are still continuing to learn so much from it.
And at the time too, it was huge. The discovery
made international news. It was you know, bona fide international sensation.
We've discussed Egypt Domania on the show before. There have
been multiple waves of egypt Domania throughout history, you know,
fascination with the look of Egyptian artifacts, the mysteries and

(36:52):
the about how these people lived and so forth. And
it goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks, Romans,
and Hebrews. But this is discovery of King Tut's tomb
kicked off. Yeah, this this kind of like new wave
that is sometimes referred to as Tutmania. I may accidentally
say Tutamania, but it is Tutmania that's as official as

(37:15):
a word like Tutmania can be. Okay, And a book
that I've referred back to before about Egypt Domania, titled
egypt Domania by Ronald H. Fritz, points out that Tutomania
didn't just or Tutmania, sorry, didn't just make one splash,
but continued to resonate. As again, these artifacts from the
tomb go on various world tours. I mean, I think

(37:37):
a lot of us can 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,
and yeah, I remember going to it, I remember becoming
interested in it buying a soundtrack of Egyptian or supposedly
ancient Egyptian music, and you know it probably it's probably

(37:57):
one of the reasons that I'm here on a podcast
dot about ancient Egypt today.

Speaker 4 (38:01):
Well.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
Yeah, as with many things in the world, 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.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Oh yes, yeah, so of course, again, Egyptomania was already
influencing our media well before the nineteen twenty two Tut
find again situating this within the nineteenth and twentieth century
Egyptomania and slash Egyptology boom. So yeah. At this point

(38:41):
we already had what was considered has been considered the
first mummy film, nineteen eleven's The Mummy, in which a
scientist revives an ancient Egyptian mummy with electricity and then
falls in love with her.

Speaker 4 (38:54):
Was it.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yeah, this is sadly a lost film, but seems to
have existed.

Speaker 4 (38:59):
I did not know.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
The first mummy film was basically Frankenstein or Bride of Frankenstein.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
Yeah, yeah, I mean clearly influenced by it, let's see.
And then we had literary works from the likes of
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He wrote an eighteen ninety story
called The Ring of Thoth and eighteen ninety two's Lot
Number two forty nine. That one, of course, was adapted
in the motion picture Tales from the Dark Side the movie.

(39:26):
I'm not sure how accurately, but it is cited as
the reference.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
The one that's the segment with Christian Slater.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
Yeah, and I think Steep, you send me in that
one as well. I need to see it again. I
remember liking it quite a bit.

Speaker 4 (39:39):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
And then also we had Bram Stoker nineteen oh three's
The Jewel of the Seven Stars, and Fritz in his
work also singles out the eighteen twenty seven Jane C.
Loudon book The Mummy That's with an exclamation point and
then a colon or A Tale of the twenty second
Century points this out as the earliest long work about
reanimated mummy. Edgar Allan Poe also wrote an eighteen forty

(40:04):
five story titled Some Words with a Mummy. I haven't
read this one either.

Speaker 4 (40:09):
What were the words?

Speaker 2 (40:11):
I mean some words, let's see. But again, nineteen twenty
two's discovery Tutmania certainly influenced everything. This is, you know,
one of the prime reasons we ended up with the
universal horror picture from nineteen thirty two, The Mummy, absolutely

(40:31):
inspired by the discovery of King Tut's tomb and an
attempt to capitalize on it. Really kind of Mummy's spoitation,
if you will.

Speaker 4 (40:39):
Yes, like this is educational.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah, And of note, we already had ancient Egyptian curse
fiction before nineteen twenty two, So one of the best
examples that's frequently cited is Lost in a Pyramid or
The Mummy's Curse by Luisa may Alcott. This was from
eighteen sixty nine. So we had these ideas already in
our fiction, in our dream making, due to fascination with

(41:06):
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, from Greek culture, from Roman Roman culture,
and from various Mesopotamian cultures.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
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

(41:40):
knowledge of what these curses were like themselves.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
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 zifeist But this
post tut idea of the curse of the Pharaoh really

(42:04):
cooks into gear during first wave Tutmania. As again Expedition finance. Here,
Lord Carnarvan dies a few months after the tombs opening
due to and we're very clear on this uninfected mosquito bite.
So essentially, Lord Carnarvan here, already in not great health,

(42:25):
apparently nicked a mosquito bite on it 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 cases,

(42:46):
in many ways of thinking, but maybe not as sudden
as invocations of a curse might make you think.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
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 infected wound or was
it not? But actually there isn't even a curse in
King Tut's tomb? Am I correct about that?

Speaker 2 (43:12):
That is correct? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Yeah, so there is no curse to even question here.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, this is a fact. There are no explicit curse
threats of immediate death in or on Tut's tomb. But
that didn't stop the media. You know, the media is
resi sensationalist about this, and we're pretty quick to declare
that he had clearly been struck dead by mysterious forces
aligned with the curse protection of the tomb. The New

(43:40):
York Times even reported this is like an actual quote
from The Times in twenty three Canarvan's death spreads theories
about vengeance? I mean, you know, that's not too terrible
a journalistic headline. They're not saying he was definitely cursed
they're saying people are talking about.

Speaker 4 (43:58):
It fair enough.

Speaker 3 (43:59):
I guess with stories like that, you know, the people
are talking about X stories.

Speaker 4 (44:03):
The question is always like, are.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
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.

Speaker 4 (44:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
I find it especially maddening these days, where this form
of article might include embedded Twitter tweets or whatever they're
called these days. It's like, yeah, are we really tapping
into the public mindset? Maybe we are, but I don't know.
Maybe I'm just an old fogy, but it seems stupid
to me. You.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
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 the what

(44:58):
is the tipping point? Like what is the critical threshold
of organic conversation? About something that it becomes worth reporting
in a news source.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yeah, but at any rate, it was more than just
the Times talking about it and in general, like mummy
curse may was spreading is covered in the j Store
Daily article Was it really a Mummy's Curse? By Alison C.
Meyer from twenty nineteen. You had just decades of writers
who were eager to attribute any death of any halfway

(45:28):
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 are like, was this the curse? Like, well,

(45:50):
it seems a few steps removed, but I guess you
could make the case for it. Another one, American financier
George J. Gould, contracted new ammonia apparently after 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

(46:11):
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 nineteen seventy, nineteen seventy, again, an

(46:32):
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 Time, Yeah,
in 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

(46:54):
a little weak. If it just causes a traffic accident
decades later, and again not a fatal one.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
And again we already said this, but there was no curse, right,
We're not saying there wasn't magic. There wasn't even a suggestion.

Speaker 4 (47:10):
Of magic, right right.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
The suggestion emerges completely from sensationalist news, and then you know,
and is tied into fiction and so forth. In two
thousand and two, 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, Okay, forty four

(47:36):
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.
You know. 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

(47:57):
of exposures, because remember some people only when in once
other people are going in and out. Work continued there
for multiple seasons. Fritz covers this in Egyptomania as well.
And yes, just this idea of the curse doesn't hold
up to any amount of scrutiny of the twenty five
sometimes I've read twenty six. You know, basically, around twenty
five people present at the opening of the tomb, twenty

(48:20):
of them were still alive more than a decade later.
Fritz rights, obviously, the curse was not operating comprehensively against
supposed desecrators of tuten Common'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

(48:41):
of an ancient mummy's curses, 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.
They're just it's just too much. People couldn't help themselves.

(49:04):
And I think it's one of the interesting things about
Egyptomania in general. It's it's a broad tint that thankfully
contains and leads to a great deal of serious Egyptology
and like serious interest in ancient Egyptian topics and also
you know, ultimately contemporary Egyptian topics. But it also includes
all manner of fiction, fantasy, superstition, pseudohistory, pseudo archaeology, conspiracy thinking,

(49:29):
new religious thought. You know, not all of that is bad,
but some of it can be, at least if it's
then if there's too much of it at any rate.
The idea of the curse of the Pharaohs continued, with

(49:50):
various ideas often brought up as to just why the
ancient Egyptian tombs killed people. Again, they didn't. But the again,
we're talking about this pervasive myth, this pervasive idea.

Speaker 3 (50:04):
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.

Speaker 4 (50:12):
Right.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
One of the most common is just, oh, there's a
cursed tablet. And again, in many of these cases, there's
no cursed tablet or thing that end. You 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 Darnel brought this up in her talk.

(50:35):
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.
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 Carnavon
had filled up on poisonous embalming fluid. First, I mean,

(51:00):
I guess it's an interesting idea, but I don't think
there's any reason to back this up.

Speaker 4 (51:06):
Wait.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
Wait, the lethal dose of poisonous embalming fluid didn't kill
the mosquito, but it did kill the man that the
mosquito bit.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
Yeah, and then how did it get it? The mosquitoes
are not gonna they're not going to feed on an
ancient mummy. And there are just too many problems. But
there's so many holes in this one. But it's so ridiculous.
I had to mention, let's see trap toxins in the tomb.
This is another idea that's often brought up. And this idea,

(51:37):
I have to admit, smacks a bit of miasthma theory,
you know, trapped bad air. But you know, there is
maybe a little more certainly more to this idea than
there is too deadly embalming fluid mosquitoes. You know, the
air inside a tomb may well be stale, could be
low oxygen in high CO two. So you could make

(51:57):
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 in their openings or with human illnesses due to
their opening. Kind of coming back to the mosquito theory,

(52:17):
Chemicals from mummification processes are sometimes brought up, but this
doesn't seem to be a strong short term concern. Let's see.
They're also 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

(52:39):
a tomb's opening. This hypothesis is 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, it gets infected.

(53:00):
But what if on top of that we also had
toxic spores. I don't know, I don't think. It doesn't
seem like it's a very strong argument for a couple
of reasons, but it does lead to a very interesting
case from outside of Egypt that does involve his actual phenomenon.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
At least as a possibility that's taken seriously. Right, 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.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
Yeah, I did not know about this one either until
I took Colleen Darnell's class and 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

(53:48):
is so again stressing that the Pharaohs curse is very
much a twentieth 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
relief said 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

(54:09):
of Egypt, this Texas to Krakau, Poland, and it concerns
the nineteen seventy three opening of the tomb of Casimir
the fourth Jagolan, and apparently opening this tomb did release
fungal spores of Aspergilius flavas, which was discovered in large
amounts in this tomb, and it may have ultimately killed

(54:31):
as many as ten conservationists that had opened and worked
in the tomb, and done so within a year's time.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
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 A. This is a variet of

(55:00):
poisonous fungal toxin or micotoxin produced by different molds and
fungal species, but especially Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus mycotoxicosis,
meaning you know, acute high fungal toxin exposure. This from
aflatoxin exposure can have a number of serious negative health effects,

(55:23):
both long term and short term. It seems most importantly
by attacking the liver, potentially causing hepatitis and greatly increasing
the risk of liver cancer. I've read that aflatoxins are
one of the most potent carcinogens known of in nature,

(55:44):
so they attack the liver and with serious enough exposure,
it's 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, and children. Though most of

(56:06):
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

(56:26):
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 nineteen sixties 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

(56:48):
that mentions this called aflatoxins history, significant milestones, recent data
on their toxicity and ways to mitigation in the journal
Toxins from twenty.

Speaker 4 (56:59):
Twenty one by p.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
Cova at All and in this overview they describe as
follows quote. In the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties,
a new, so far unknown turkey disease characterized by heavy
mortality was identified in England after the Turkey disease outbreak
of unknown nature and ideology, the Turkey so called X disease,

(57:21):
the discovery of aflatoxins began. A total of one hundred
thousand 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 has only
affected turkeys, lots of humans around the world. There have
been aflatoxin breakouts in food crops around the world and

(57:44):
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, not again, not tombs.
But of course if there were a whole lot of
aflotoxin from a strongly Aspergillus contaminated tomb, you could imagine

(58:04):
that also being a serious health risk to people who
were messing around in there.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah and again again why this fund
is widely distributed in soil across the globe 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,

(58:32):
I want to throw in Kasimir the fourth Yagalan who
was he? While he was a fifteenth century Polish king
and Lithuanian Grand Duke, an important European ruler of the day,
noted for his defeat of the Teutonic Knights during the
Thirteen Years War the fifteenth 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

(58:54):
absolutely no issued Yagalonian curse, despite some media sensationalism around
this as well, like he never said don't open my
tomb or there will 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

(59:17):
then saying, well, what about touch tom What if this
actual occurrence is the reason that people died because of
opening king's touch tomb. Again, all the problems with the
accuracy of that statement in play, they just couldn't help themselves.
So despite again, despite the fact that with King tut

(59:38):
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
touch tomb contained dangerous microbes or fungi of any sort. Furthermore,
according to Colleen Dornell, no one she knows of has

(01:00:00):
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 one hundred percent true. Yeah, but you'll
all that also happen if you don't visit an Egyptian tomb,
which doesn't mean you absolutely should, because again, it's going

(01:00:22):
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,
from in a medical sense, curse the individual. It is
technically possible with certain tombs, but not this one.

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
Right, technically possible, but doesn't even seem to be especially
common with the opening of tombs.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
Right, right, But it's an infectious idea, Yeah, MS T
three K fans, for example, especially may remember a nineteen
eighty two Mummy movie titled time Walker. It stars Ben
Murphy and its plot concerns a deadly alien fungus inside
an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus.

Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
I've never made it all the way through this film,
but I love the idea of a space mummy, So.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
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.

Speaker 6 (01:01:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
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 late as
a trap. Well, I don't think there's any serious argument
to be made for that being the case.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
But rob we discussed in the last episode how actually
a lot in a lot of ancient Egyptian thinking that
it was a common thing to attack a problem with
multiple avenues, with multiple mechanisms at once. You would have
a magical arm of attack and a practical arm of
attack right against the same issue. So if tomb robbers

(01:02:03):
were something you were worried about why not have both
a curse on the tomb, you know, magical arm of
attack and practical traps. That would make sense, wouldn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
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

(01:02:37):
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 Chin Chi Wong,
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?

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Right right and if and you know, I imagine you
could also ask questions like, Okay, if you have some
sort of traps 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 supercistitious 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

(01:03:43):
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,

(01:04:05):
these are apparently unknown. And there's actually a really good
life science article about this topic from just last month
by Owen Jaris. I found it an interesting read. The
author spoke with Reg Clark, author of Securing Eternity, Ancient
Egyptian tomb production from prehistory and the basics of this argument.

(01:04:25):
The counter argument to the idea of traps and why
we don't see them in ancient 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

(01:04:45):
someone who's going to betray him, actual ancient Egyptian tune
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 be effective, and they might just not realize, hey,
we encountered a death trap, so I guess we're on
the right track. We should keep going in this direction.

Speaker 3 (01:05:08):
That itself sort of highlights some ways that you could
have practical protections for a tomb that wouldn't be deadly
booby traps.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Yeah. Yeah, and again also, of course there are all
these practical concerns with a passive trap. They weren't great
in an Indiana Jones movie, but with 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

(01:05:40):
or just a cascade of rocky material that would work
far better than any trap you could imagine, because you
know it's just just you know, you're dealing with rock,
You're dealing with with just sheer weight and mass. Additionally,
it's possible that some pyramid passages that seem to lead
nowhere were included to confuse robbers. I think there's still

(01:06:03):
some open questions about this, and I've also read like
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 these would evolve, especially the architectural features, These
would have been the most effective against your tomb raiders.

(01:06:25):
Just putting an enormous stone block between them and what
they want to steal. That's going to work better than anything.

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
Right, So we know they definitely use the locking mechanism
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

(01:06:53):
crossbows or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
Yeah. And then on top of this, first of all,
we have to we have to think about the fact that, yeah,
the ancient Egyptians clearly thought about eternity and long term
time and 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

(01:07:16):
than imagining Indiana Jones trumping in. Right. You were dealing
with known tomb raiders, known tomb raider groups, known operations,
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

(01:07:39):
top of that and also in case those didn't work,
the supernatural curses we've been discussing.

Speaker 3 (01:07:44):
Yes, and to really hammer on something you said just
a second ago, From my understanding, the biggest concern 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 time, whom a few months after it
was sealed or within a few years.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Yeah, which was again the case with King Tut's tomb
as well, like Rob twice just in the immediate aftermath
of the burials. 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
think about them, because we are. When we think about
the ancient Egyptians, Yeah, we do get down and think

(01:08:26):
about them as like, you know, real people that lived
real lives and were in so many respects much like
we are. But on the other hand, yeah, we also
think about an ancient people like and they that have
this kind of mythic quality about everything they do, you know,
even if the thing they're doing is you know, consuming
honey honey, or trying to treat an illness or just

(01:08:48):
every little thing that occupies our lives today.

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
When we think about them, it's tempting to imagine that
they were thinking about us, but probably weren't thinking about us,
were much more likely thinking about their own contempt, themselves
and their own contemporaries.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
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 Dudent in common. But today,
I mean he is probably for most people, he is

(01:09:28):
like the pharaoh you would name. If you went out
and ask people on the street, like, name a pharaoh,
they would probably say King Tut.

Speaker 4 (01:09:35):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
Well, to bring it back to the subject of a
Writtner'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

(01:09:57):
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. Yeah, yeah, so
do something nice for an ancient Egyptian speak their name.

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
There you go. All right, We're gonna 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 Egypt, Domania, 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

(01:10:34):
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 and just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (01:10:48):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ 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 stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:11:09):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you.

Speaker 7 (01:11:16):
Listen to your favorite shows.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
M