October 3, 2026 • 56 mins
In this classic 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. (originally published 9/30/2025)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so we have a
vault episode for you. This is going to be Ancient
Egyptian Curses Part 1. It originally published 9-30-2025. What's it about?
You're just going to have to dive in and find
out and maybe suffer the consequences.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
And I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And we are kicking off our spooky content today. I
guess we already kind of kicked this off with Weird
House Cinema, but at this point we are definitely sliding
into October. And if you've listened to the show before,
you know that this is a time for us to
get into a lot of horror-themed content, Halloween-y content. And
that includes episodes of Weird Al Cinema. That includes short episodes.
(01:04):
And of course, it includes core episodes of Stuff to
Blow Your Mind. So that's going to be the course
for the month on the whole. There is going to
be our fall break week, as usual, in which we'll
have reruns. But guess what? All of those reruns are
going to be Halloween content as well. So we will
keep the Halloween train rolling.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Oh, I mean, what's more frightening than a visitor from
the past?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
There you go. There you go. That kind of ties
into some of what we'll be talking about here today.
Because in today's episode, we're going to dive into the world,
we're going to return really to the world of ancient
Egyptian curses. We've touched on some of this before. We
frequently come back to Egyptology-related content, either talking about archaeological
(01:47):
finds and the history of ancient Egypt, or talking about
something in ancient Egyptian religion that's really fascinating, or of
course anything that's sort of in the realm of Egyptomania,
you know, this... long-lasting fascination that other cultures have had
with the culture and the ideas and even just the
look and the feel of ancient Egypt. So in this episode,
(02:11):
we're going to talk about ancient Egyptian religious practices, ancient
Egyptian magic. We're going to also look at this idea
of the curse in ancient Egypt and with some specific examples,
I think mostly related to tombs. We're going to talk
about 20th century myth-making traditions about ancient Egyptian curses. And finally,
we're going to look at a case from outside of
(02:33):
Egypt that has, I don't know, it lines up in
rather interesting ways with some of the ideas that have
been generated about ancient Egyptian curses within the 20th century.
All right. And before we jump in, I want to mention, too,
that last Thursday, I attended an online class by Egyptologist
and former guest on the show, Colleen Darnell, titled Curse
(02:55):
of the Pharaohs. I found it super insightful, and the
information and sources presented in that class were part of
my initial research for this episode. She does these classes
on different Egyptology topics each month. I highly recommend them.
You can learn more about them at ColleenDarnell.com. So I'll
refer back to some of her ideas and content, as
(03:16):
well as some other sources, once we get into it.
But let's get down to brass tacks here. Let's talk
a little bit about Egyptian magic.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Indeed, let's talk about Egyptian magic. I think this is
a good groundwork to lay because curses, of course, are
not the only kind of magic that was practiced in
ancient Egypt. They're a particularly savory, delicious kind of magic
from a modern sensibility to understand. But yeah, I think
it's good to understand the general context of Egyptian magic
(03:48):
a little bit better before we narrow in on curses themselves.
So To better understand ancient Egyptian magic, I turned to a,
there's a really good overview in a book by Geraldine
Pinch called Magic in Ancient Egypt, published by the University
of Texas Press, 1994. Geraldine Pinch is an Egyptologist we've
(04:10):
referred to on the show plenty of times, born 1951.
She is affiliated with the University of Oxford. And I
mainly want to, in this section, talk about some distinctions
and frameworks that Pinch invokes in the first chapter of
this book to give a lay of the land about
(04:30):
how the ancient Egyptians viewed and used magic. And at
the beginning here, it's worth noting the long and varied
textual and archaeological record of magic in ancient Egypt. While
magical amulets and other objects go back into prehistory, Magical
texts from ancient Egypt are found from the late 3rd
(04:51):
millennium BCE until about the 4th century CE. So that's
more than 3,000 years worth of texts concerning magic, many
of which are written records of spells themselves. We have
the primary documents. We have the spells. That's pretty cool.
Not just people talking about magic, but we have the recipes.
(05:13):
And in this chapter, Pinch identifies... sort of three main
categories of magic. You've got funerary magic. That's what concerns death, burial,
and the afterlife. You've got temple magic, which is ritual
magic performed in temples by priests or religious authorities, often
aimed at various forms of public welfare, outcomes that concerned
(05:37):
lots of people at once. And then finally, you've got
personal or everyday magic, the spells and rites used by
individual people for help in situations that they faced personally.
Funerary magic is arguably the class that we know the
most about, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was the
most important. It obviously was very important, but the fact
(06:01):
that we know so much about it seems to be
in large part related to what type of evidence was
preserved and passed on down to us. A lot of
our best preserved evidence is from ancient Egypt comes from tombs.
So it's kind of natural that we just know a
lot about funerary practices and things having to deal with
death in the afterlife. There are two Egyptian words used
(06:26):
most often to refer to magic. One of these words
is Heka or Heka, usually spelled in English H-E-K-A, which
is also the personal name of an Egyptian god. The
god Heka was usually depicted in human form, but the
word Heka was also used to refer to not just
(06:49):
this god in personal form, but to a type of
energy or force used by the creator deity to create.
So in the Egyptian creation myth, you usually have some
form of, there's this primordial water, this abyss of chaotic
waters known as the Nun or Nun in U.N., And
(07:10):
then out of this abyss comes a mound of dry
land upon which creation can take place. And Heka here
is related to this spirit of creation that takes shape here.
And this association continues throughout Egyptian history with the power
of magic, or Heka, often understood as a type of
(07:32):
creative spark, a power to make and to mold. So
it's this interestingly loaded concept. In some literal sense, it
did refer to magical power, but you could also think
of it in weird ways as being similar to the
idea of will or willpower. You could think of it
in some ways as being similar to creativity or energy.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Interestingly, Pinch notes that the god Heka did not have
any major temples devoted to him, despite his important role
in Egyptian mythology and religious practice. There is some evidence
of maybe some minor cultic activity concerning Hekka, but the
god was not the patron deity of any of the
big state temples. Hekka, in the sense of magical power,
(08:19):
was also a personal attribute that was believed to be
held in some limited sense by all beings, but especially
by certain beings. There were beings additionally endowed or especially
endowed with Hekka So gods and supernatural entities obviously had Hekka.
(08:40):
Ghosts and the dead had Hekka. Kings had Hekka. People
who were foreign or were physically atypical in some way,
such as dwarfs, were sometimes said to have Hekka. And
so Pinch says basically anything that the ancient Egyptians regarded
as strange, exotic, or ancient... might be thought of as
(09:02):
possessing special measures of Heka beyond just what anyone else
would have. And it's interesting how much I think that
kind of associative tradition carries through even until today, that
authors and storytellers, even up in the modern era, often
think about magic as something that doesn't seem to emanate
(09:22):
especially from the people that the author views as typical.
There's like, It's like people who are different in some
way or people who are from another place or who
look different or who are very old, maybe ancient, or
have some connection to something ancient. That's where the magic
is stored.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Right, right. Yeah. And yeah, we still kind of engage
in this a little bit, right? I mean, when we
just think of like, what does a magician look like
or a wizard or or any kind of magic user.
You don't picture just the person next door. You picture
somebody who stands out, who has that weirdness about them.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
So that's Heka. The other big Egyptian word for magic,
Pinch says, is Aku, A-K-H-U, usually in English. Sometimes translated
as enchantments or spells, but some sources emphasize really the
idea of power or Effectiveness at the core of this
concept the power to bring change or to cause things
(10:23):
to happen So it might be best translated as something
like effective words or effective spells This one seems to
be associated especially with gods and other deities with stars
which had a special kind of effectiveness about them or
power and And really especially the the honored or blessed dead.
(10:43):
Hmm Now, here's a really key thing to understand about
ancient Egyptian magic. Both Heka magic and Aku are widely
characterized as morally neutral in themselves. They are neither inherently
good nor inherently evil. And in fact, they can be
used for either good or evil. They are simply types
(11:07):
of power, creative and efficacious energy. which can be used
to heal or to harm, to defend or attack.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah, this comes back to something we've talked about in
the show before, of course, the importance of mat in
ancient Egypt, that even above the gods, to a large degree,
you have this idea of cosmic order and balance that
is mat. And yeah, if something unbalances things, then yeah,
(11:36):
then you could think of it more as evil, I guess,
or chaotic. Um, but Mott is like the most important principle. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And we'll actually come back to that because magic factors
into the preservation of Mott in many ways. Uh, but yeah,
Mott is sometimes translated as, as justice, as order, as, uh, harmony. It,
it is the right way for things to be. Now,
after this basic discussion of terminology, uh, in this chapter,
(12:04):
Pinch gets into some different scholarly frameworks that have been
used by anthropologists over the years to understand what magic is.
And then she talks about the extent to which these
frameworks do and do not accurately describe the examples of
Heka and Aku in ancient Egypt. So one idea she
(12:25):
gets into is James Fraser's distinction between magic and religion,
made famous in his highly influential work on the anthropology
of religion, called The Golden Bough. We've talked about this
work many times on the show before. Fraser is a
great read, but many of his ideas are no longer
(12:45):
considered the best way to think about anthropology of religion
by anthropologists today. It's still a great book to read
in many ways to understand its place in the history
of scholarship, and it's very interesting to but many of
its theories have been superseded. So Fraser says that a
key difference between magic and religion goes like this. Magic
(13:09):
is when a human expects that the right sequence of
words or ritual actions will compel supernatural beings to bring
about a desired result automatically or ineluctably, whereas religion expects
is a bit more oriented around the free will of
(13:30):
the deity. Religion is when a human hopes they can
persuade a deity to grant their prayer or request through
supplication and offerings. In other words, with religion, you come
to the god's temple, you might make an offering, and
you beg, hoping the god will take mercy and help
you out. With magic, you enact a spell designed to
(13:52):
command or coerce a supernatural being to cause something you
desire to happen. So within this framework, Fraser characterized magic
and religion as distinct and in some ways opposite phenomena,
even though they sometimes invoked the same deities. He saw
magicians and priests as fundamentally different and as natural rivals.
(14:16):
But as we just mentioned a minute ago, anthropologists of
religion have in many cases moved away from Fraser's frameworks
as being too simplistic and And it seems the case
of ancient Egyptian magic is sort of the perfect example
of how Fraser's categories don't exactly hold up when applied
to some major real-world traditions. They might better describe some
other traditions. But this doesn't really work very well, Pinch argues,
(14:40):
with Egyptian magic. Because, she says, while you see examples
both of what Fraser would call magic and religion in
ancient Egypt... they substantially blur together and are performed in
the same settings and by the same authorities. So in
ancient Egypt, a lot of rituals which were meant to
(15:01):
manipulate and automatically compel action by supernatural beings were performed
in temples by the priesthood. The kind of spells you
might imagine in a different setting, like a witch performing,
binding a demon to do her bidding or something like that.
In the case of ancient Egypt, you could get stuff
like that in a temple done by a sanctioned priest,
(15:23):
a priest who was considered in the good graces of
the king. So it would not be impossible or even
necessarily unusual in ancient Egypt to have a pious priest
practicing spells that explicitly commanded or attempted to coerce action
from deities by, for example, threatening the deities or threatening
(15:45):
to commit dangerous and sacrilegious acts against them If they
did not obey, there are actually spells that do this.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, I'll come back to a specific example of this
related to a curse in a bit. Yeah, and we
have to remind ourselves again about mat being important overall.
I mean, obviously, you'd need to know what you're doing
within the framework of the Egyptian religion here, but you
could kind of like go over the gods' heads by
invoking mat. which is very, there's a legal sense to it,
(16:18):
you know? Like one of the things Colleen Darnell stresses
is that the ancient Egyptians loved litigation. And you see
that in some of their magic. You know, they're litigating
when they're casting the spell.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
That's an interesting way of thinking about it. I think
we'll come back to that in a minute, too. So,
Another common distinction that has historically been made between magicians
and priests is that while priests have a congregation over
(16:52):
whom they have a responsibility for guidance and moral instruction,
magicians have only clients with whom they, you know, it's
a much freer kind of relationship with whom they can
pursue an amoral transactional kind of interaction. But Pinch says, again,
this distinction doesn't really work for ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptian
(17:14):
priests were usually not expected to be moral teachers. There
might have been some cases where they were, but it
doesn't seem to be a general understanding of them. They
were paid specialists in rituals and spells. They had expertise
in spells and they could offer whatever kinds of spells,
defensive or offensive, were needed for the occasion, much like
(17:38):
the aforementioned understanding of a magician. And yet at the
same time, priests in ancient Egypt were not at all
considered subversive, illicit, or illegitimate. They were the temple priests
allied with kingly power, and they practiced what often looks
like ritual magic on behalf of the state. So that's
(17:59):
the thing, again, that just, you know, in a modern,
I guess, mainly Christian-influenced religious culture, it's hard to make sense.
That just doesn't fit with our idea of, like, how
magic works. I'm trying to imagine if in the U
S if like Nixon had hired a bunch of witches
to cook up a potion to guarantee victory in Vietnam,
you know, the, but also those witches were like mainline
(18:22):
Christian denominational preachers.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
That's a good point. Yeah. I researching this episode, I
time and time again, like compared, tried to compare anyway, uh,
what I was reading or listening to about, uh, the
relationship between these ancient Egyptians and their priests and their
gods with how contemporary Christians think about their God. And yeah,
(18:48):
it often doesn't line up because depending on exactly how
you're framing the Christian God, you may be framing the
Christian God as more of like a loving personal God or,
or on the other end of the spectrum, you know,
this vengeful God, uh, the God of Alucard that is
going to, uh, you know, send you to hell. Um,
But in either case, like you wouldn't litigate against this
God because on one hand, he's your friend or your
(19:10):
your he's like your family. He's your father. You don't
sue your father under most circumstances, I guess. But then
the other end of the spectrum, you don't sue the
like the all powerful entity that has you like in
the grip of his his claws or what have you,
you know. Yeah. So it's it's just such a different framework.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
It is so interesting to think about, well, the similarities
and the differences. to whatever religion we're more familiar with. Anyway,
so coming back to these frameworks for understanding magic versus religion,
another framework that Pinch discusses in this chapter is a
framework for understanding magic coming from the Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski.
(19:54):
A few points from Malinowski here. He argued that the
purpose of ritual magic is to solve problems that are
beyond the limits of what a society can do with technology.
can do with it's the technology available to it. And
that's one of those things that there's so many, there's
(20:14):
so much stuff like this, you know, anthropology of religion,
you hear it and that just sounds intuitively true. Yeah,
that sounds right. But pinch argues once again, that when
you try to line this up with what we know
about ancient Egyptian magic, it doesn't fit the case very well.
Like we know for a fact that the ancient Egyptians
used magic to get desired outcomes. that they were practically
(20:38):
and technologically capable of achieving by conventional means. For example,
recovery from medical problems for which they actually had effective
practical treatments and assuring military victory over enemies that they
were perfectly capable of crushing in battle. So you might
think of magic instead of being exclusively the domain of
(21:01):
problems we can't actually solve under our own power. a
kind of second line of attack on problems, a parallel
approach to solving problems that you would often pair with
a practical approach to the problem.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Well, you know, it's like some of the magic in
Dungeons and Dragons, right? Is it, if I remember, I
never play a cleric, but it's like blessing or bless, right? Yeah.
You have that extra D4.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Increase your chance of success.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah, it's like I'm rolling a D20. There's a, and
I already have a modifier in that. I can totally
hit this. I might even score a crit. But am
I going to say no to the D4? No, of
course not. That could make all the difference.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Exactly right.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
So maybe that's a better way of thinking about it.
And people will still do this with forms of prayer today.
Prayer for success in situations where the outcome is not guaranteed.
Even if you do presumably have the power to achieve
the outcome yourself, you just don't know if you're going
to be able to do it. So, yeah, so instead
of magic taking over when practical and technological solutions fall short,
(22:04):
I think it was normal for ancient Egyptians to attack
the same problem simultaneously with practical efforts and ritual magic.
Pinch also cites both Malinowski and another anthropologist named Misha Tateev,
who made the point in different ways that a key
distinction between religion and magic is is the timing and
(22:27):
nature of the problems they seek to address. So I
think this was especially to Thieve's idea that religion is calendrical,
meaning pertaining to the calendar. It follows a regular seasonal
or yearly pattern of rituals that occur on a set schedule.
And the problems it tries to solve are public problems.
(22:50):
It is for the common benefit of the community or
the state. And magic, meanwhile, according to Tateev's framework, is critical.
It is used to solve a specific crisis that arises unexpectedly,
often a personal or individual matter. And Pinch argues that
this one is sort of half correct when it comes
(23:11):
to ancient Egypt. The rituals performed in ancient Egyptian temples
were primarily aimed at what were thought to be public goods.
They were for the benefit of the state. or the
society at large. And this was done through regularly occurring
rituals and seasonal festivals. But, Pinch says, the principle of
(23:33):
responding to crisis with magic was actually woven into the
very fabric of Egyptian religion. One really interesting example is
that within Egyptian myth and religion, some regularly occurring rituals
were were thought to be responses to a crisis, to
(23:54):
an ongoing crisis. It was just like this, you know,
never-ceasing cosmic crisis that would occur over and over, even
every single day. The example she gives is the ritual
to protect the sun god Ra at sunset every night.
The Egyptians believed that every night Ra had to make
a perilous journey through the underworld in which it was
(24:16):
a possibility that he could be killed during his nightly
battle with With the Serpent of Chaos, Apophis.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
That's right, the solar barge. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
And so priests had to perform protective magic, magical interventions,
to make sure Ra would survive his journey and the
sun would rise again every morning. So it's like, this is,
it has more the flavor of responding to a crisis,
but it's a crisis that happens every single day. And
you have to keep responding to it.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
I think most contemporary listeners can feel that. It does
feel like there's a crisis every day. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
And then beyond that, Pinch mentions that the exact same
priest who is going to be performing regular calendrical rituals
at a state-affiliated public temple might also be a vendor
of private magic spells to solve your personal crisis, maybe
for a fee. And what were these private crises that
(25:16):
would have people seeking magical aid or protection? Well, they're
probably what you would imagine. There are all kinds of things.
Health issues seem to be a really big one, like illness, injury, infection,
things relating to childbirth. That was very common reasons to
seek the intervention of a priest or to try to
use a magical spell. but also to just solve all
(25:38):
kinds of personal problems, injuries committed, you know, offenses committed
against you by others, just problems people would face in
their lives. Also, it's worth thinking about how a lot
of magic in ancient Egypt was, to use a medical term,
preventative care. So you might, in fact, not just might,
(25:58):
people often did do magical spells in not to solve
a problem that had already happened, but to protect against
problems that could potentially arise.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
And obviously, as we've discussed in the show before, we
see examples of this from all around the world as well.
Preventative magic, magic to keep evil away, and so forth. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Now, here's another area. There are many of these where
A person who grew up thinking about magic and religion in, say,
a primarily Christian context and thinking about magic along the
lines of witchcraft, whether witchcraft is viewed in European Christianity.
The question is, was magic seen as antisocial or harmful
(26:43):
or wicked in ancient Egypt the way witchcraft is viewed
in most historical Christian societies? The answer is, for the
most part, no. especially in the period before Egypt was
absorbed into the Roman Empire. Now, there are some nuances
to this because evil magic was absolutely thought to exist,
(27:06):
but evil magic or wicked sorcery was usually attributed to foreigners,
not other Egyptians. So there was wicked sorcery, but most
of the time, there are exceptions here, most of the time,
It was thought to be coming from somewhere else, somewhere
outside of Egypt. Again, that's the broad trend. There are
(27:27):
exceptions to this in some texts that maybe specify certain
punishments or prohibitions against illicit sorcery. But this just seems
to be mostly not how Egyptians viewed magic done by
other Egyptians. Usually that was not thought of like Christians
thought of witchcraft. Here's another question about magic. Did ancient
Egyptians believe their magic to be... the command of an
(27:50):
impersonal force in nature, as in the Christian concept of
natural magic, you're just sort of commanding about a general
disembodied power, or was it thought to be the invocation
of the powers of specific supernatural beings or entities, as
in the Christian concept of demonic magic? Again, though it
(28:13):
would not have the negative connotations of Christian demonic magic,
The invocation of powerful supernatural beings was the standard mechanism
described by Egyptian priests and spells. You were maybe calling
somebody up from the underworld or from some other plane
to take care of a little something for you. There
were a few mechanisms of magic in Egyptian thought that
(28:36):
were more impersonal. One that Pinch describes as essentially working
by the principle of analogy and And this would be
based on the subtle associations between things. I'm going to
read from Pinch's description here to get the idea of
how this impersonal magic worked. Quote, The magician also strove
to discern the true nature of beings and objects and
(28:59):
the connections between them. These connections were created by shared
properties such as color or the sound of a name.
Similarities which seem irrelevant to our classification systems were considered
significant by the Egyptians. Once a pairing had been established,
it was thought possible to transfer qualities from one component
(29:20):
to the other or to produce an effect on the
one by actions performed on the other. Hekka was the
force that turned these connections into a kind of power network.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Fascinating.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
So you've got both kinds of magic. You've got like
natural magic based on things like this sort of associative power.
And then you've also got just calling up otherworldly entities
to do your bidding for you. Now, finally, I want
to elaborate one thing that Pinch gets into that I
thought was really interesting, which is further subdividing the question
of what people believed magic could do for them. I
(29:57):
already mentioned a minute ago that people thought it could
solve problems for them. That's the more obvious answer. You know,
it could help you achieve a goal that was either
outside of your personal power or in which success by
normal means was not guaranteed. But the less obvious and
very interesting answer is that magic also helped people identify
(30:18):
the cause of a problem. Why did this happen to me?
Why did this bad thing occur? Why did my child
get sick? Why did my crops wither? Pinch runs through
a list of common explanations that would be given in
spells for the answers to these problems. Maybe a god
is wrathful at you. Maybe a foreign wizard has cursed
(30:42):
you with evil magic. Maybe a ghost or a demon
is maliciously persecuting you. And whereas in the religious context
of modern Christianity, The answers are more often things like, well,
you might get a kind of non-answer in the form of,
God works in mysterious ways, we can't know why this happened,
which many people do believe, but also people often report
(31:04):
finding unsatisfying. Or you can get answers like, you have
sinned and you are being punished. Strangely, you do still
hear this a lot, even though in multiple stories from
the Bible, Jesus explicitly rejects this reasoning.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yeah. You know, I guess it's like in the story
of the, you know, the man born blind in the
gospel of John, he's like, that's not how it works. Uh,
though I guess some people interpret Jesus in stories like
that to be more narrowly referring to, well, he's just
saying it's not how it works in this case. Maybe
God does punish people for sin in other cases.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
It's a, it's a worldview that can be very difficult
to shake. Uh, even if you have a logical or even,
you know, a, a doctrine based reason or even a
scripture based reason as we're discussing to reject it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Um, I mean, I want to be fair. Obviously, I
don't find that point of view highly sympathetic, but I
will at least be fair and say that I think
you could have legitimate theological reasons for saying, no, no,
people are misinterpreting those stories in the Bible. And Jesus
did just mean this guy wasn't born blind because of sin.
Maybe other people are. Anyway, sorry, that was a tangent.
(32:11):
But yeah, so those are the kinds of things you
would more often get in modern Christianity. Ancient Egyptian magical
texts would often be able to say in contrast to that,
they say, yes, we can absolutely identify the specific source
of your problem, but the spell or the ritual does
not assert that the misfortune is your fault. You get
(32:32):
an answer about the cause and you can believe that
you are in fact an innocent victim being attacked by
powers beyond your control. And now that you have consulted
a priest with the proper magical arsenal, or now that
you've got this magical papyrus in your hands, you can
put together a counterspell to identify your oppressor and heal
or protect you without assigning yourself any blame for the problem.
(32:57):
So that covers most of the framework that Pinch gets
into in this chapter, but I just want to emphasize
a few themes at the end to really hammer them home.
One of the main ones is To say again, in
ancient Egypt, magic and religion were not separable and rival institutions.
They were fully entwined with one another, and the boundaries
(33:17):
between them are quite fuzzy. And the other idea is
that magic was an all-pervading force that affected even the gods.
It wasn't just us. It affected even the gods. And
in fact, the gods needed magical help of their own.
On that last point, there's one very interesting feature of
(33:39):
ancient Egyptian cosmology, which is that the creation story in
ancient Egyptian cosmology, the creation of the ordered world out
of the primeval waters of chaos. Some authors have talked
about how in Egyptian thinking, this was not a single
event that took place in the past at the beginning,
(34:00):
the way we think of the creation narrative in many
other religions. In Egyptian myth, Creation was an ongoing process
that required continual daily effort by the creator deity and
by the other gods allied with order. So humans, with
their rituals, had to perform magic invoking the power of
(34:23):
Heka to aid the gods and sustain the creation of
the world every day. So the ordered world was very fragile,
and if the process of creation through Heka, through magic,
was not sustained every day by these efforts of the
creator spirit, and by the efforts of the order gods
(34:44):
and humans, the ordered world could well collapse back into
the abyss of chaos, and the world could be unmade.
So I feel like this really provides some scope on how,
how important hecka magic was. It was incredibly important. And
the problems that addressed were so wide. So, so different,
you know, hecka magic was it's how you find out
(35:05):
that your cow is sick because it has been attacked
by a ghost or cursed by a foreign sorcerer. And
it is how you invoke a divine shield of protection
and healing over your cow. And it is also how
the priesthood keeps the state secure. keeps the king enthroned,
aids the sun god Ra in his battle against the serpent,
(35:26):
and keeps the world from sinking into a dark ocean
of nothingness.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Absolutely. Yeah, this is such a fascinating topic. You know,
it reminds me of our past episode on the inundation
of the Nile and, you know, how you would have
the seasonal flooding of the Nile that's responsible for basically
sustaining life along the great Nile River. Um, And you
can also point to various examples in any given culture
(35:52):
where there's a definite knowledge that there are seasonal things
that have to happen in order for life to continue,
be it even as simple as the return of spring
out of the winter and so forth. But you have
this idea that the world is fragile and you're not,
in the case of the ancient Egyptians, you're not even
(36:13):
guaranteed tomorrow unless the prayers are there to support the
solar barge and its journey.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Well said, yeah. But anyway, so yeah, I guess that's
the basic framework about magic in ancient Egypt. And from here,
I want to briefly look to the idea of curses
(36:41):
in a summary way. Uh, because of course, hecka was
not only capable of healing and protecting, as we mentioned earlier,
hecka had the power to weaken, to sicken, to harm
and cut off and even to kill. Uh, in fact,
not just to kill, to attack you in the very,
in the afterlife, to attack your potential for the afterlife. Uh,
and this brings us to the role of curses in,
(37:01):
in ancient Egyptian magic. To start off, I just wanted
to mention a few basic types of curses we might
think about in ancient Egypt. maybe going from the most
familiar types in our context to the least familiar. And here,
I'm going to make some generalizations. Obviously, across the thousands
of years and the millions of lives in question, there
(37:24):
will be some exceptions. I'm just trying to capture some
main patterns, but none of this is the case in
all cases. So the first category I want to mention
is personal curses. In later magical papyri from Egypt, we
see All kinds of run-of-the-mill curses designed for regular people
who want to harm rivals or enemies. Did somebody steal
(37:48):
from you? Did somebody speak ill against you or hurt
someone you care about? Well, you can address this. You
can consult a priest or you can open up your
magical papyrus and curse that person. You can make them
fall sick and die. You can make them tormented with
madness and pain. And I want to be clear here,
(38:08):
it seems that there's more evidence for this kind of
personal individual cursing against enemies from later periods of Egyptian history.
It may have become more common as time went on,
especially in the Greco-Roman period. The existence of this type
of cursing, interestingly, it might seem to be at odds
(38:29):
with a claim I mentioned earlier from Geraldine Pinch. the
claim that most of the time ancient Egyptians did not
view the practice of magic as evil or subversive and
more often attributed evil, dangerous magic to foreign sorcerers from
other countries. I was trying to reconcile these and I
(38:49):
was thinking, obviously, wouldn't the Egyptian victim of a curse
cast by another Egyptian be tempted to view that as
evil magic, as wicked sorcery? Well, they might well see
it that way. But my best understanding, based on what
I could piece together here, is that there was probably
some distinction between what were seen as legitimate curses and
(39:14):
illegitimate harmful magic, much in the same way that people
might think about physical violence today, where it is permissible
to use violence in self-defense or in some cultural contexts
if it's retaliatory, but not permissible if it is against
a random or innocent victim.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Yeah, this kind of comes back to what I was
talking about earlier about litigation, like thinking of it as litigation.
Like you might seek litigation if you have been harmed.
Have you been in an accident? Call such and such number.
Get the fighting lawyer on your side. Because that lawyer,
or in this case, a priest or a magician, is
going to restore mat, is going to restore balance, right?
(39:57):
At the same time, to use the legal comparison, yeah,
you can very much go out there and hire a
lawyer to go after somebody for illegitimate purposes, like nuisance lawsuits,
and so forth. You can formulate an entire list there
in your own head. But But yeah, we often think
(40:17):
about like, oh, I need to lawyer up because I
have been wronged or I'm about to be wronged. I
need to counter the evil of others. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
And it's true that even the fairest and most just
system is always going to be in some way subject
to abuse. So there's like, you know, or some people
are going to feel like they're getting the short end
of the stick about it. So, yeah, you can't ever
prevent that entirely from happening. But this seems to be
generally how people thought that the system worked when it
(40:46):
was working correctly, according to them. So that's personal curses.
Like when it came to cursing, Egyptians could, you know,
you could go to a priest or you could privately
read a magical papyrus to harness the morally neutral power
of Heka to harm a legitimate enemy. And it seems
like this sort of thing was viewed basically as fair play.
But if magic was used to torment an innocent person,
(41:08):
that's probably attributable to chaotic wizardry performed by evil foreigners,
not somebody who would be working with a legit Egyptian
temple priest. Another kind that is going to be more
familiar to us, and this will factor in majorly in
the rest of the series, is funerary curses, one of
the most famous varieties of Egyptian magic, the curse that
(41:29):
seals a tomb and punishes defilers or grave robbers. And
while we can later discuss ways that the reality of
this type of curse has been twisted somewhat in popular retelling,
these kinds of curses absolutely do exist. And private tombs
from Egypt are sometimes inscribed with offensive magic, calling down injury, death,
(41:50):
and even, I thought this was pretty wicked, the punishment
of the soul and denial of an afterlife upon anyone
who would disturb the sanctity of a tomb or steal
its contents.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
All right.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
And then after those categories, you start getting into some
types of curses that I think would be less familiar
in our modern understanding of witchcraft and magic. One of
them is political curses. This is a bit like the
idea I mentioned of Nixon getting witches to do something
so he could win in Vietnam. Like the king and
the state have enemies and the enemies must be destroyed.
(42:24):
These enemies could be rival kingdoms or the princes of
foreign nations or the leaders of revolts and rebellions. The
enemies of Egypt and the king would often be cursed
to destruction in official temple rituals. A common way of
describing this is execration rituals, where maybe an effigy or
(42:45):
a clay pot on which there has been established a
symbolic link between the pot and the person in question.
These objects would be ritually smashed or otherwise destroyed. And
then finally, I think the most interesting type of curse
is religious or cosmic curses. Remember how I mentioned a
(43:05):
minute ago that most ancient Egyptian cosmologies held that the
gods themselves were to some extent affected by Heka magic
and that the divine forces of order needed the help
of temple-based rituals in order to prevail? That help could
well involve curses to help the gods and the divine
forces of order win victory continually over the monsters and
(43:30):
the spirits of chaos and Egyptian priests would perform sort
of smiting curses against the divine and cosmic enemies of order,
much like they would against the earthly enemies of the kingdom.
And of course, this is a very loose analogy, but
imagine if daily worship in a Christian church also involved
(43:50):
witchcraft that would invoke death curses against the devil.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Oh, well, that's an interesting topic unto itself, right? Because
you can look at various examples of... of historic individuals
kind of having their own personal war against the devil
or demons, you know, cursing them back, telling, you know, depart, evildoer,
into everlasting fire and so forth. And then also so many,
(44:15):
I think, of various, like, folk songs and bits of
folk art where the devil is tricked, smashed over the
head with something, you know, herded by cowboys and so forth.
There are so many different examples. Poked with a hat pin,
that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Oh, like in the Santa Claus movie.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
That Santa Claus definitely invokes death curses against the devil.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
All right. Well, I want to expand a little bit
on the topic of the funerary curses, because this was
this was. part of what Colleen Darnell talked about in
her presentation. And there were a couple of Egyptian words
that she focused on here. One is the word for curse,
(45:12):
which is usually a verb, but is also sometimes a noun,
which is suer. Not quite suer, but similar to that,
like suer. And then there's also a word shinwit. And
this means incantation. but depending on the context, could also
definitely mean a curse. So just some more specific terminology
(45:33):
for what was invoked here. And so a lot of
her talk centered around evidence that we have for or
against the idea of ancient Egyptian curses on people entering
tombs or certainly defiling them in one way or another.
So one of the important facts that she pointed out
(45:56):
is that In general, the upper part of a tomb
was generally a public space for visitors with good intentions.
So family members and the like and people visiting the tomb,
it might line up with certain festivals and so forth.
And so there would never be a blanket curse against
visiting a tomb space. And this is interesting because she
(46:17):
pointed out that sometimes graffiti in the form of writing
your name was encouraged as it was with certain temples.
votive inscriptions, where it would be the honorable thing to do,
to scratch your name on the wall. Again, in antiquity,
not today.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Oh, well, that just reminded me of something we talked
about years ago. We did some episodes on the colossi
or colossus of Mimnon. There were multiple of them, colossi.
The colossi of Mimnon, which not in our modern times,
but in ancient times to us, were visited by tourists
and who wrote graffiti on them, like Romans would write
(46:55):
their names on these, you know, great monuments, whatever, you know,
Marcus was here.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I thought of that as well when
this came up. She also stresses that ancient Egyptian curses,
when they were used, they tended to have a dual formation,
a dual formulation rather, a blessing on positive actions, and
then a focused threat against negative actions. And again, a
lot of this comes back to the importance of Maat,
(47:21):
You know, you got to have both energies. You got
to have balance. And therefore, a negative action is not
just a transgression against the king or even a god,
but against cosmic balance itself. Of course, as I mentioned earlier,
she stressed that the ancient Egyptians were very legalistic and
that the cursed language typically invokes this, speaking to litigation
(47:44):
against the defiler of the tomb in the afterlife. Like
some of these basically read like, and if you do X, Y,
or Z, I will see you in ghost court. Yeah,
you will be judged and I will be there for
it because there is like a legal proceeding that will follow.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
It's like one of those scary letters you get from
a lawyer.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Exactly. Yeah, it's like this is the scary letter, you know,
essentially from a priest. She also pointed out that ancient
Egyptian curses tend to follow the same formulation as pure
laws that were written for the living. And the idea
here too is that a real world prosecution and punishment
(48:24):
would kind of be the first stop. And then this
would be augmented by supernatural prosecution and punishment. Kind of
coming back to that whole, the D20 plus D4 situation
we were talking about. Like, ideally, if you rob this tomb,
you know, we're going to catch you and there'll be
some sort of real world punishment. But in addition to that,
or instead of that, if we can't catch you, there
(48:46):
will be litigation and punishment in the afterlife.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Oh, I mean, this is another example of what we
were talking about earlier, where you attack the same problem
with multiple solutions, one magical and one practical.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yeah, yeah. One example that she pointed to, and I'll
bring up a couple here, is the Tomb of Many
from the Sixth Dynasty. And it includes this example where
the writing is basically saying, look, I paid everyone who
worked on this tomb. It was fair. But if you
damage my tomb, quote, a crocodile be against him in
(49:19):
the water. a snake be against him on the earth.
And essentially saying the great God, generally Osiris or a
local deity will be the one to judge you. Another
example of litigation in one of these inscriptions, she pointed
to the inscription of Idu from the sixth dynasty, quote,
As for any man who will take my grave from me,
(49:40):
my claim will be litigated with them by the great God. Again, uh,
likely Osiris or another like local deity. So threat of
legal action, if not in this world, then at least
in the next, uh, she points out that there's no
curse against an individual or visitor to a tomb in
any of the Royal tombs that we, we know of
and have access to, uh, And that it would have
(50:01):
gone without saying that you shouldn't enter a burial chamber. Like,
no signage is required there, I imagine. It's sort of like,
it's just, it would be known to everyone involved. You know,
anybody who could read the text, you would know not
to go into the burial chamber. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
And I think I mentioned this earlier, but I remember
reading that the most common places where these funerary curses
are found are in private tombs.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Mm-hmm. She also points to something from the Pyramid Text
that's a curse template for a deceased king, not against mortals,
but against the gods. Getting back to what we were
talking about earlier, about how magic could be used essentially
against the gods in defense of Maat. This is, I believe,
spell 485. And it essentially says, look, bulls will be
(50:50):
slaughtered for any god who takes this king to heaven.
But if you don't take this king to heaven, you're
not going to be honored. that's obvious to it. Uh,
and so, yeah, this apparently factors into a lot of
Egyptian magic. You know, if something violates Mott, it kind
of goes above the heads of the gods because they
are bound to Mott as well.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
Feels bold, strong arming the gods like that, but, uh,
you can admire it.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
Uh, she also brings up a couple of cases involving, um, uh,
grabbing someone's neck like a bird or wringing their neck
like a goose. Um, And so there's one from the
both ones from 2300 BCE from the tomb of Cantica
of Saqqara. And my apologies, I may be hitting these
(51:33):
pronunciations wrong. But this one says, as for any person
who shall enter my tomb in a state of impurity,
not having purified themselves according to the manner of entering
a temple, I will be judged with them about it
in the West, in the court of the great God,
and I will wring his neck like a goose. So
this one, again, it's like saying, I will see you
(51:53):
in court. You will be judged. I will be there.
But then adding this extra bit, I will wring your
neck like a goose. And we see that again, there's
another example. She brings up 20, this is from 2200
BC from the tomb of Ninki. As for any noble,
any official, or any person who will destroy any stone
(52:14):
or any brick in this tomb, I will be judged
with him by the great God, I will seize his
neck like a bird. Uh, so again, I like how
this one is, seems to be translated as, I will
be judged with you by the great God, which very
much brings this idea of like, there's a court proceeding. Uh,
I'm going to bring this charge against you and let
it be decided.
Speaker 2 (52:34):
And I'm going to win. That's the implication.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:37):
That seems to be the main implication of the, the
ringing the neck like a goose. But this too is
also interesting because like, uh, apparently this is referring to sacrificial, um,
killing of a duck or a goose that would have
been done by a priest. So there are inscriptions, there
(52:57):
are images of this, of Akhenaten sacrificing a duck. You
can look this up. I believe this is in the
collection of the Met Museum from between 1353 and 1336 BCE.
And it's, you know, here's a figure wringing the neck
of a goose. So, you know, This seems to largely
(53:19):
refer to that. One thing that Darnell stressed is that
there were definitely some sort of real-world punishments, but we
don't necessarily know all of the details on what those were.
So I don't know. Does this possibly also refer to
some sort of real-world punishment that would be dished out
in this life? We don't know for sure. But also,
this is another potential connection here. Birds offered for sacrifice
(53:44):
in temples, a connection between like the magic and the
religious rituals that were being carried out in both cases
by the priests.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting the way, I don't know,
the different feelings that can be created by the threats
in these curses. Some of them have this more more
legalistic or more directly physically violent analogy in them, like
ring your neck like a goose or the crocodile will
get you in the water, though that may have other implications.
(54:16):
But at least it, to me, conjures this idea of
physical violence, attack by an animal or by another person.
And then there's a way in which, at least to me,
an even colder implication is made by these tomb curses
that threaten your existence in the afterlife, like You will
not receive an honorable burial. You will not go to
(54:37):
the afterlife. You will get nothing.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, coming back to the crocodile, this
reminds me of Amit, the devourer of the dead, that
if memory serves, like his role in the judgment of
the dead is like he consumes you and brings on
annihilation if you are not worthy to pass on. So, yeah,
that's quite a threat to impose. But, you know, you
(55:04):
can also, you know, you can understand it. Like first saying,
you know, you will be litigated, you will be tried
in this world. In addition to or instead of that, though,
you know, watch out in the afterlife because charges will
be brought against you and you might just be annihilated altogether.
All right. Well, looking at the clock here, we're about
out of time. So what we're going to do is
(55:26):
we're going to break and come back with this topic
on Thursday. We have much more to discuss. We're going
to get into... the 20th century myth of the pharaoh's curse,
where that comes from, how it shakes out when you
look at it, and we'll also look to an example
outside of Egypt that aligns with some of the ideas there,
and then we'll have more to discuss about Egyptian magic
(55:47):
and Egyptian curses in general. In the meantime, we would
remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, short-form episodes on Wednesdays, and on Fridays we
set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a
weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2 (56:01):
Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J.
Speaker 1 (56:05):
Posway.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (56:26):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so we have a
vault episode for you. This is going to be Ancient
Egyptian Curses Part 1. It originally published 9-30-2025. What's it about?
You're just going to have to dive in and find
out and maybe suffer the consequences.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
And I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And we are kicking off our spooky content today. I
guess we already kind of kicked this off with Weird
House Cinema, but at this point we are definitely sliding
into October. And if you've listened to the show before,
you know that this is a time for us to
get into a lot of horror-themed content, Halloween-y content. And
that includes episodes of Weird Al Cinema. That includes short episodes.
(01:04):
And of course, it includes core episodes of Stuff to
Blow Your Mind. So that's going to be the course
for the month on the whole. There is going to
be our fall break week, as usual, in which we'll
have reruns. But guess what? All of those reruns are
going to be Halloween content as well. So we will
keep the Halloween train rolling.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Oh, I mean, what's more frightening than a visitor from
the past?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
There you go. There you go. That kind of ties
into some of what we'll be talking about here today.
Because in today's episode, we're going to dive into the world,
we're going to return really to the world of ancient
Egyptian curses. We've touched on some of this before. We
frequently come back to Egyptology-related content, either talking about archaeological
(01:47):
finds and the history of ancient Egypt, or talking about
something in ancient Egyptian religion that's really fascinating, or of
course anything that's sort of in the realm of Egyptomania,
you know, this... long-lasting fascination that other cultures have had
with the culture and the ideas and even just the
look and the feel of ancient Egypt. So in this episode,
(02:11):
we're going to talk about ancient Egyptian religious practices, ancient
Egyptian magic. We're going to also look at this idea
of the curse in ancient Egypt and with some specific examples,
I think mostly related to tombs. We're going to talk
about 20th century myth-making traditions about ancient Egyptian curses. And finally,
we're going to look at a case from outside of
(02:33):
Egypt that has, I don't know, it lines up in
rather interesting ways with some of the ideas that have
been generated about ancient Egyptian curses within the 20th century.
All right. And before we jump in, I want to mention, too,
that last Thursday, I attended an online class by Egyptologist
and former guest on the show, Colleen Darnell, titled Curse
(02:55):
of the Pharaohs. I found it super insightful, and the
information and sources presented in that class were part of
my initial research for this episode. She does these classes
on different Egyptology topics each month. I highly recommend them.
You can learn more about them at ColleenDarnell.com. So I'll
refer back to some of her ideas and content, as
(03:16):
well as some other sources, once we get into it.
But let's get down to brass tacks here. Let's talk
a little bit about Egyptian magic.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Indeed, let's talk about Egyptian magic. I think this is
a good groundwork to lay because curses, of course, are
not the only kind of magic that was practiced in
ancient Egypt. They're a particularly savory, delicious kind of magic
from a modern sensibility to understand. But yeah, I think
it's good to understand the general context of Egyptian magic
(03:48):
a little bit better before we narrow in on curses themselves.
So To better understand ancient Egyptian magic, I turned to a,
there's a really good overview in a book by Geraldine
Pinch called Magic in Ancient Egypt, published by the University
of Texas Press, 1994. Geraldine Pinch is an Egyptologist we've
(04:10):
referred to on the show plenty of times, born 1951.
She is affiliated with the University of Oxford. And I
mainly want to, in this section, talk about some distinctions
and frameworks that Pinch invokes in the first chapter of
this book to give a lay of the land about
(04:30):
how the ancient Egyptians viewed and used magic. And at
the beginning here, it's worth noting the long and varied
textual and archaeological record of magic in ancient Egypt. While
magical amulets and other objects go back into prehistory, Magical
texts from ancient Egypt are found from the late 3rd
(04:51):
millennium BCE until about the 4th century CE. So that's
more than 3,000 years worth of texts concerning magic, many
of which are written records of spells themselves. We have
the primary documents. We have the spells. That's pretty cool.
Not just people talking about magic, but we have the recipes.
(05:13):
And in this chapter, Pinch identifies... sort of three main
categories of magic. You've got funerary magic. That's what concerns death, burial,
and the afterlife. You've got temple magic, which is ritual
magic performed in temples by priests or religious authorities, often
aimed at various forms of public welfare, outcomes that concerned
(05:37):
lots of people at once. And then finally, you've got
personal or everyday magic, the spells and rites used by
individual people for help in situations that they faced personally.
Funerary magic is arguably the class that we know the
most about, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was the
most important. It obviously was very important, but the fact
(06:01):
that we know so much about it seems to be
in large part related to what type of evidence was
preserved and passed on down to us. A lot of
our best preserved evidence is from ancient Egypt comes from tombs.
So it's kind of natural that we just know a
lot about funerary practices and things having to deal with
death in the afterlife. There are two Egyptian words used
(06:26):
most often to refer to magic. One of these words
is Heka or Heka, usually spelled in English H-E-K-A, which
is also the personal name of an Egyptian god. The
god Heka was usually depicted in human form, but the
word Heka was also used to refer to not just
(06:49):
this god in personal form, but to a type of
energy or force used by the creator deity to create.
So in the Egyptian creation myth, you usually have some
form of, there's this primordial water, this abyss of chaotic
waters known as the Nun or Nun in U.N., And
(07:10):
then out of this abyss comes a mound of dry
land upon which creation can take place. And Heka here
is related to this spirit of creation that takes shape here.
And this association continues throughout Egyptian history with the power
of magic, or Heka, often understood as a type of
(07:32):
creative spark, a power to make and to mold. So
it's this interestingly loaded concept. In some literal sense, it
did refer to magical power, but you could also think
of it in weird ways as being similar to the
idea of will or willpower. You could think of it
in some ways as being similar to creativity or energy.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Interestingly, Pinch notes that the god Heka did not have
any major temples devoted to him, despite his important role
in Egyptian mythology and religious practice. There is some evidence
of maybe some minor cultic activity concerning Hekka, but the
god was not the patron deity of any of the
big state temples. Hekka, in the sense of magical power,
(08:19):
was also a personal attribute that was believed to be
held in some limited sense by all beings, but especially
by certain beings. There were beings additionally endowed or especially
endowed with Hekka So gods and supernatural entities obviously had Hekka.
(08:40):
Ghosts and the dead had Hekka. Kings had Hekka. People
who were foreign or were physically atypical in some way,
such as dwarfs, were sometimes said to have Hekka. And
so Pinch says basically anything that the ancient Egyptians regarded
as strange, exotic, or ancient... might be thought of as
(09:02):
possessing special measures of Heka beyond just what anyone else
would have. And it's interesting how much I think that
kind of associative tradition carries through even until today, that
authors and storytellers, even up in the modern era, often
think about magic as something that doesn't seem to emanate
(09:22):
especially from the people that the author views as typical.
There's like, It's like people who are different in some
way or people who are from another place or who
look different or who are very old, maybe ancient, or
have some connection to something ancient. That's where the magic
is stored.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Right, right. Yeah. And yeah, we still kind of engage
in this a little bit, right? I mean, when we
just think of like, what does a magician look like
or a wizard or or any kind of magic user.
You don't picture just the person next door. You picture
somebody who stands out, who has that weirdness about them.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
So that's Heka. The other big Egyptian word for magic,
Pinch says, is Aku, A-K-H-U, usually in English. Sometimes translated
as enchantments or spells, but some sources emphasize really the
idea of power or Effectiveness at the core of this
concept the power to bring change or to cause things
(10:23):
to happen So it might be best translated as something
like effective words or effective spells This one seems to
be associated especially with gods and other deities with stars
which had a special kind of effectiveness about them or
power and And really especially the the honored or blessed dead.
(10:43):
Hmm Now, here's a really key thing to understand about
ancient Egyptian magic. Both Heka magic and Aku are widely
characterized as morally neutral in themselves. They are neither inherently
good nor inherently evil. And in fact, they can be
used for either good or evil. They are simply types
(11:07):
of power, creative and efficacious energy. which can be used
to heal or to harm, to defend or attack.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah, this comes back to something we've talked about in
the show before, of course, the importance of mat in
ancient Egypt, that even above the gods, to a large degree,
you have this idea of cosmic order and balance that
is mat. And yeah, if something unbalances things, then yeah,
(11:36):
then you could think of it more as evil, I guess,
or chaotic. Um, but Mott is like the most important principle. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And we'll actually come back to that because magic factors
into the preservation of Mott in many ways. Uh, but yeah,
Mott is sometimes translated as, as justice, as order, as, uh, harmony. It,
it is the right way for things to be. Now,
after this basic discussion of terminology, uh, in this chapter,
(12:04):
Pinch gets into some different scholarly frameworks that have been
used by anthropologists over the years to understand what magic is.
And then she talks about the extent to which these
frameworks do and do not accurately describe the examples of
Heka and Aku in ancient Egypt. So one idea she
(12:25):
gets into is James Fraser's distinction between magic and religion,
made famous in his highly influential work on the anthropology
of religion, called The Golden Bough. We've talked about this
work many times on the show before. Fraser is a
great read, but many of his ideas are no longer
(12:45):
considered the best way to think about anthropology of religion
by anthropologists today. It's still a great book to read
in many ways to understand its place in the history
of scholarship, and it's very interesting to but many of
its theories have been superseded. So Fraser says that a
key difference between magic and religion goes like this. Magic
(13:09):
is when a human expects that the right sequence of
words or ritual actions will compel supernatural beings to bring
about a desired result automatically or ineluctably, whereas religion expects
is a bit more oriented around the free will of
(13:30):
the deity. Religion is when a human hopes they can
persuade a deity to grant their prayer or request through
supplication and offerings. In other words, with religion, you come
to the god's temple, you might make an offering, and
you beg, hoping the god will take mercy and help
you out. With magic, you enact a spell designed to
(13:52):
command or coerce a supernatural being to cause something you
desire to happen. So within this framework, Fraser characterized magic
and religion as distinct and in some ways opposite phenomena,
even though they sometimes invoked the same deities. He saw
magicians and priests as fundamentally different and as natural rivals.
(14:16):
But as we just mentioned a minute ago, anthropologists of
religion have in many cases moved away from Fraser's frameworks
as being too simplistic and And it seems the case
of ancient Egyptian magic is sort of the perfect example
of how Fraser's categories don't exactly hold up when applied
to some major real-world traditions. They might better describe some
other traditions. But this doesn't really work very well, Pinch argues,
(14:40):
with Egyptian magic. Because, she says, while you see examples
both of what Fraser would call magic and religion in
ancient Egypt... they substantially blur together and are performed in
the same settings and by the same authorities. So in
ancient Egypt, a lot of rituals which were meant to
(15:01):
manipulate and automatically compel action by supernatural beings were performed
in temples by the priesthood. The kind of spells you
might imagine in a different setting, like a witch performing,
binding a demon to do her bidding or something like that.
In the case of ancient Egypt, you could get stuff
like that in a temple done by a sanctioned priest,
(15:23):
a priest who was considered in the good graces of
the king. So it would not be impossible or even
necessarily unusual in ancient Egypt to have a pious priest
practicing spells that explicitly commanded or attempted to coerce action
from deities by, for example, threatening the deities or threatening
(15:45):
to commit dangerous and sacrilegious acts against them If they
did not obey, there are actually spells that do this.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, I'll come back to a specific example of this
related to a curse in a bit. Yeah, and we
have to remind ourselves again about mat being important overall.
I mean, obviously, you'd need to know what you're doing
within the framework of the Egyptian religion here, but you
could kind of like go over the gods' heads by
invoking mat. which is very, there's a legal sense to it,
(16:18):
you know? Like one of the things Colleen Darnell stresses
is that the ancient Egyptians loved litigation. And you see
that in some of their magic. You know, they're litigating
when they're casting the spell.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
That's an interesting way of thinking about it. I think
we'll come back to that in a minute, too. So,
Another common distinction that has historically been made between magicians
and priests is that while priests have a congregation over
(16:52):
whom they have a responsibility for guidance and moral instruction,
magicians have only clients with whom they, you know, it's
a much freer kind of relationship with whom they can
pursue an amoral transactional kind of interaction. But Pinch says, again,
this distinction doesn't really work for ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptian
(17:14):
priests were usually not expected to be moral teachers. There
might have been some cases where they were, but it
doesn't seem to be a general understanding of them. They
were paid specialists in rituals and spells. They had expertise
in spells and they could offer whatever kinds of spells,
defensive or offensive, were needed for the occasion, much like
(17:38):
the aforementioned understanding of a magician. And yet at the
same time, priests in ancient Egypt were not at all
considered subversive, illicit, or illegitimate. They were the temple priests
allied with kingly power, and they practiced what often looks
like ritual magic on behalf of the state. So that's
(17:59):
the thing, again, that just, you know, in a modern,
I guess, mainly Christian-influenced religious culture, it's hard to make sense.
That just doesn't fit with our idea of, like, how
magic works. I'm trying to imagine if in the U
S if like Nixon had hired a bunch of witches
to cook up a potion to guarantee victory in Vietnam,
you know, the, but also those witches were like mainline
(18:22):
Christian denominational preachers.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
That's a good point. Yeah. I researching this episode, I
time and time again, like compared, tried to compare anyway, uh,
what I was reading or listening to about, uh, the
relationship between these ancient Egyptians and their priests and their
gods with how contemporary Christians think about their God. And yeah,
(18:48):
it often doesn't line up because depending on exactly how
you're framing the Christian God, you may be framing the
Christian God as more of like a loving personal God or,
or on the other end of the spectrum, you know,
this vengeful God, uh, the God of Alucard that is
going to, uh, you know, send you to hell. Um,
But in either case, like you wouldn't litigate against this
God because on one hand, he's your friend or your
(19:10):
your he's like your family. He's your father. You don't
sue your father under most circumstances, I guess. But then
the other end of the spectrum, you don't sue the
like the all powerful entity that has you like in
the grip of his his claws or what have you,
you know. Yeah. So it's it's just such a different framework.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
It is so interesting to think about, well, the similarities
and the differences. to whatever religion we're more familiar with. Anyway,
so coming back to these frameworks for understanding magic versus religion,
another framework that Pinch discusses in this chapter is a
framework for understanding magic coming from the Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski.
(19:54):
A few points from Malinowski here. He argued that the
purpose of ritual magic is to solve problems that are
beyond the limits of what a society can do with technology.
can do with it's the technology available to it. And
that's one of those things that there's so many, there's
(20:14):
so much stuff like this, you know, anthropology of religion,
you hear it and that just sounds intuitively true. Yeah,
that sounds right. But pinch argues once again, that when
you try to line this up with what we know
about ancient Egyptian magic, it doesn't fit the case very well.
Like we know for a fact that the ancient Egyptians
used magic to get desired outcomes. that they were practically
(20:38):
and technologically capable of achieving by conventional means. For example,
recovery from medical problems for which they actually had effective
practical treatments and assuring military victory over enemies that they
were perfectly capable of crushing in battle. So you might
think of magic instead of being exclusively the domain of
(21:01):
problems we can't actually solve under our own power. a
kind of second line of attack on problems, a parallel
approach to solving problems that you would often pair with
a practical approach to the problem.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Well, you know, it's like some of the magic in
Dungeons and Dragons, right? Is it, if I remember, I
never play a cleric, but it's like blessing or bless, right? Yeah.
You have that extra D4.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Increase your chance of success.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah, it's like I'm rolling a D20. There's a, and
I already have a modifier in that. I can totally
hit this. I might even score a crit. But am
I going to say no to the D4? No, of
course not. That could make all the difference.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Exactly right.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
So maybe that's a better way of thinking about it.
And people will still do this with forms of prayer today.
Prayer for success in situations where the outcome is not guaranteed.
Even if you do presumably have the power to achieve
the outcome yourself, you just don't know if you're going
to be able to do it. So, yeah, so instead
of magic taking over when practical and technological solutions fall short,
(22:04):
I think it was normal for ancient Egyptians to attack
the same problem simultaneously with practical efforts and ritual magic.
Pinch also cites both Malinowski and another anthropologist named Misha Tateev,
who made the point in different ways that a key
distinction between religion and magic is is the timing and
(22:27):
nature of the problems they seek to address. So I
think this was especially to Thieve's idea that religion is calendrical,
meaning pertaining to the calendar. It follows a regular seasonal
or yearly pattern of rituals that occur on a set schedule.
And the problems it tries to solve are public problems.
(22:50):
It is for the common benefit of the community or
the state. And magic, meanwhile, according to Tateev's framework, is critical.
It is used to solve a specific crisis that arises unexpectedly,
often a personal or individual matter. And Pinch argues that
this one is sort of half correct when it comes
(23:11):
to ancient Egypt. The rituals performed in ancient Egyptian temples
were primarily aimed at what were thought to be public goods.
They were for the benefit of the state. or the
society at large. And this was done through regularly occurring
rituals and seasonal festivals. But, Pinch says, the principle of
(23:33):
responding to crisis with magic was actually woven into the
very fabric of Egyptian religion. One really interesting example is
that within Egyptian myth and religion, some regularly occurring rituals
were were thought to be responses to a crisis, to
(23:54):
an ongoing crisis. It was just like this, you know,
never-ceasing cosmic crisis that would occur over and over, even
every single day. The example she gives is the ritual
to protect the sun god Ra at sunset every night.
The Egyptians believed that every night Ra had to make
a perilous journey through the underworld in which it was
(24:16):
a possibility that he could be killed during his nightly
battle with With the Serpent of Chaos, Apophis.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
That's right, the solar barge. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
And so priests had to perform protective magic, magical interventions,
to make sure Ra would survive his journey and the
sun would rise again every morning. So it's like, this is,
it has more the flavor of responding to a crisis,
but it's a crisis that happens every single day. And
you have to keep responding to it.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
I think most contemporary listeners can feel that. It does
feel like there's a crisis every day. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
And then beyond that, Pinch mentions that the exact same
priest who is going to be performing regular calendrical rituals
at a state-affiliated public temple might also be a vendor
of private magic spells to solve your personal crisis, maybe
for a fee. And what were these private crises that
(25:16):
would have people seeking magical aid or protection? Well, they're
probably what you would imagine. There are all kinds of things.
Health issues seem to be a really big one, like illness, injury, infection,
things relating to childbirth. That was very common reasons to
seek the intervention of a priest or to try to
use a magical spell. but also to just solve all
(25:38):
kinds of personal problems, injuries committed, you know, offenses committed
against you by others, just problems people would face in
their lives. Also, it's worth thinking about how a lot
of magic in ancient Egypt was, to use a medical term,
preventative care. So you might, in fact, not just might,
(25:58):
people often did do magical spells in not to solve
a problem that had already happened, but to protect against
problems that could potentially arise.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
And obviously, as we've discussed in the show before, we
see examples of this from all around the world as well.
Preventative magic, magic to keep evil away, and so forth. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Now, here's another area. There are many of these where
A person who grew up thinking about magic and religion in, say,
a primarily Christian context and thinking about magic along the
lines of witchcraft, whether witchcraft is viewed in European Christianity.
The question is, was magic seen as antisocial or harmful
(26:43):
or wicked in ancient Egypt the way witchcraft is viewed
in most historical Christian societies? The answer is, for the
most part, no. especially in the period before Egypt was
absorbed into the Roman Empire. Now, there are some nuances
to this because evil magic was absolutely thought to exist,
(27:06):
but evil magic or wicked sorcery was usually attributed to foreigners,
not other Egyptians. So there was wicked sorcery, but most
of the time, there are exceptions here, most of the time,
It was thought to be coming from somewhere else, somewhere
outside of Egypt. Again, that's the broad trend. There are
(27:27):
exceptions to this in some texts that maybe specify certain
punishments or prohibitions against illicit sorcery. But this just seems
to be mostly not how Egyptians viewed magic done by
other Egyptians. Usually that was not thought of like Christians
thought of witchcraft. Here's another question about magic. Did ancient
Egyptians believe their magic to be... the command of an
(27:50):
impersonal force in nature, as in the Christian concept of
natural magic, you're just sort of commanding about a general
disembodied power, or was it thought to be the invocation
of the powers of specific supernatural beings or entities, as
in the Christian concept of demonic magic? Again, though it
(28:13):
would not have the negative connotations of Christian demonic magic,
The invocation of powerful supernatural beings was the standard mechanism
described by Egyptian priests and spells. You were maybe calling
somebody up from the underworld or from some other plane
to take care of a little something for you. There
were a few mechanisms of magic in Egyptian thought that
(28:36):
were more impersonal. One that Pinch describes as essentially working
by the principle of analogy and And this would be
based on the subtle associations between things. I'm going to
read from Pinch's description here to get the idea of
how this impersonal magic worked. Quote, The magician also strove
to discern the true nature of beings and objects and
(28:59):
the connections between them. These connections were created by shared
properties such as color or the sound of a name.
Similarities which seem irrelevant to our classification systems were considered
significant by the Egyptians. Once a pairing had been established,
it was thought possible to transfer qualities from one component
(29:20):
to the other or to produce an effect on the
one by actions performed on the other. Hekka was the
force that turned these connections into a kind of power network.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Fascinating.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
So you've got both kinds of magic. You've got like
natural magic based on things like this sort of associative power.
And then you've also got just calling up otherworldly entities
to do your bidding for you. Now, finally, I want
to elaborate one thing that Pinch gets into that I
thought was really interesting, which is further subdividing the question
of what people believed magic could do for them. I
(29:57):
already mentioned a minute ago that people thought it could
solve problems for them. That's the more obvious answer. You know,
it could help you achieve a goal that was either
outside of your personal power or in which success by
normal means was not guaranteed. But the less obvious and
very interesting answer is that magic also helped people identify
(30:18):
the cause of a problem. Why did this happen to me?
Why did this bad thing occur? Why did my child
get sick? Why did my crops wither? Pinch runs through
a list of common explanations that would be given in
spells for the answers to these problems. Maybe a god
is wrathful at you. Maybe a foreign wizard has cursed
(30:42):
you with evil magic. Maybe a ghost or a demon
is maliciously persecuting you. And whereas in the religious context
of modern Christianity, The answers are more often things like, well,
you might get a kind of non-answer in the form of,
God works in mysterious ways, we can't know why this happened,
which many people do believe, but also people often report
(31:04):
finding unsatisfying. Or you can get answers like, you have
sinned and you are being punished. Strangely, you do still
hear this a lot, even though in multiple stories from
the Bible, Jesus explicitly rejects this reasoning.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yeah. You know, I guess it's like in the story
of the, you know, the man born blind in the
gospel of John, he's like, that's not how it works. Uh,
though I guess some people interpret Jesus in stories like
that to be more narrowly referring to, well, he's just
saying it's not how it works in this case. Maybe
God does punish people for sin in other cases.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
It's a, it's a worldview that can be very difficult
to shake. Uh, even if you have a logical or even,
you know, a, a doctrine based reason or even a
scripture based reason as we're discussing to reject it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Um, I mean, I want to be fair. Obviously, I
don't find that point of view highly sympathetic, but I
will at least be fair and say that I think
you could have legitimate theological reasons for saying, no, no,
people are misinterpreting those stories in the Bible. And Jesus
did just mean this guy wasn't born blind because of sin.
Maybe other people are. Anyway, sorry, that was a tangent.
(32:11):
But yeah, so those are the kinds of things you
would more often get in modern Christianity. Ancient Egyptian magical
texts would often be able to say in contrast to that,
they say, yes, we can absolutely identify the specific source
of your problem, but the spell or the ritual does
not assert that the misfortune is your fault. You get
(32:32):
an answer about the cause and you can believe that
you are in fact an innocent victim being attacked by
powers beyond your control. And now that you have consulted
a priest with the proper magical arsenal, or now that
you've got this magical papyrus in your hands, you can
put together a counterspell to identify your oppressor and heal
or protect you without assigning yourself any blame for the problem.
(32:57):
So that covers most of the framework that Pinch gets
into in this chapter, but I just want to emphasize
a few themes at the end to really hammer them home.
One of the main ones is To say again, in
ancient Egypt, magic and religion were not separable and rival institutions.
They were fully entwined with one another, and the boundaries
(33:17):
between them are quite fuzzy. And the other idea is
that magic was an all-pervading force that affected even the gods.
It wasn't just us. It affected even the gods. And
in fact, the gods needed magical help of their own.
On that last point, there's one very interesting feature of
(33:39):
ancient Egyptian cosmology, which is that the creation story in
ancient Egyptian cosmology, the creation of the ordered world out
of the primeval waters of chaos. Some authors have talked
about how in Egyptian thinking, this was not a single
event that took place in the past at the beginning,
(34:00):
the way we think of the creation narrative in many
other religions. In Egyptian myth, Creation was an ongoing process
that required continual daily effort by the creator deity and
by the other gods allied with order. So humans, with
their rituals, had to perform magic invoking the power of
(34:23):
Heka to aid the gods and sustain the creation of
the world every day. So the ordered world was very fragile,
and if the process of creation through Heka, through magic,
was not sustained every day by these efforts of the
creator spirit, and by the efforts of the order gods
(34:44):
and humans, the ordered world could well collapse back into
the abyss of chaos, and the world could be unmade.
So I feel like this really provides some scope on how,
how important hecka magic was. It was incredibly important. And
the problems that addressed were so wide. So, so different,
you know, hecka magic was it's how you find out
(35:05):
that your cow is sick because it has been attacked
by a ghost or cursed by a foreign sorcerer. And
it is how you invoke a divine shield of protection
and healing over your cow. And it is also how
the priesthood keeps the state secure. keeps the king enthroned,
aids the sun god Ra in his battle against the serpent,
(35:26):
and keeps the world from sinking into a dark ocean
of nothingness.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Absolutely. Yeah, this is such a fascinating topic. You know,
it reminds me of our past episode on the inundation
of the Nile and, you know, how you would have
the seasonal flooding of the Nile that's responsible for basically
sustaining life along the great Nile River. Um, And you
can also point to various examples in any given culture
(35:52):
where there's a definite knowledge that there are seasonal things
that have to happen in order for life to continue,
be it even as simple as the return of spring
out of the winter and so forth. But you have
this idea that the world is fragile and you're not,
in the case of the ancient Egyptians, you're not even
(36:13):
guaranteed tomorrow unless the prayers are there to support the
solar barge and its journey.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Well said, yeah. But anyway, so yeah, I guess that's
the basic framework about magic in ancient Egypt. And from here,
I want to briefly look to the idea of curses
(36:41):
in a summary way. Uh, because of course, hecka was
not only capable of healing and protecting, as we mentioned earlier,
hecka had the power to weaken, to sicken, to harm
and cut off and even to kill. Uh, in fact,
not just to kill, to attack you in the very,
in the afterlife, to attack your potential for the afterlife. Uh,
and this brings us to the role of curses in,
(37:01):
in ancient Egyptian magic. To start off, I just wanted
to mention a few basic types of curses we might
think about in ancient Egypt. maybe going from the most
familiar types in our context to the least familiar. And here,
I'm going to make some generalizations. Obviously, across the thousands
of years and the millions of lives in question, there
(37:24):
will be some exceptions. I'm just trying to capture some
main patterns, but none of this is the case in
all cases. So the first category I want to mention
is personal curses. In later magical papyri from Egypt, we
see All kinds of run-of-the-mill curses designed for regular people
who want to harm rivals or enemies. Did somebody steal
(37:48):
from you? Did somebody speak ill against you or hurt
someone you care about? Well, you can address this. You
can consult a priest or you can open up your
magical papyrus and curse that person. You can make them
fall sick and die. You can make them tormented with
madness and pain. And I want to be clear here,
(38:08):
it seems that there's more evidence for this kind of
personal individual cursing against enemies from later periods of Egyptian history.
It may have become more common as time went on,
especially in the Greco-Roman period. The existence of this type
of cursing, interestingly, it might seem to be at odds
(38:29):
with a claim I mentioned earlier from Geraldine Pinch. the
claim that most of the time ancient Egyptians did not
view the practice of magic as evil or subversive and
more often attributed evil, dangerous magic to foreign sorcerers from
other countries. I was trying to reconcile these and I
(38:49):
was thinking, obviously, wouldn't the Egyptian victim of a curse
cast by another Egyptian be tempted to view that as
evil magic, as wicked sorcery? Well, they might well see
it that way. But my best understanding, based on what
I could piece together here, is that there was probably
some distinction between what were seen as legitimate curses and
(39:14):
illegitimate harmful magic, much in the same way that people
might think about physical violence today, where it is permissible
to use violence in self-defense or in some cultural contexts
if it's retaliatory, but not permissible if it is against
a random or innocent victim.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Yeah, this kind of comes back to what I was
talking about earlier about litigation, like thinking of it as litigation.
Like you might seek litigation if you have been harmed.
Have you been in an accident? Call such and such number.
Get the fighting lawyer on your side. Because that lawyer,
or in this case, a priest or a magician, is
going to restore mat, is going to restore balance, right?
(39:57):
At the same time, to use the legal comparison, yeah,
you can very much go out there and hire a
lawyer to go after somebody for illegitimate purposes, like nuisance lawsuits,
and so forth. You can formulate an entire list there
in your own head. But But yeah, we often think
(40:17):
about like, oh, I need to lawyer up because I
have been wronged or I'm about to be wronged. I
need to counter the evil of others. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
And it's true that even the fairest and most just
system is always going to be in some way subject
to abuse. So there's like, you know, or some people
are going to feel like they're getting the short end
of the stick about it. So, yeah, you can't ever
prevent that entirely from happening. But this seems to be
generally how people thought that the system worked when it
(40:46):
was working correctly, according to them. So that's personal curses.
Like when it came to cursing, Egyptians could, you know,
you could go to a priest or you could privately
read a magical papyrus to harness the morally neutral power
of Heka to harm a legitimate enemy. And it seems
like this sort of thing was viewed basically as fair play.
But if magic was used to torment an innocent person,
(41:08):
that's probably attributable to chaotic wizardry performed by evil foreigners,
not somebody who would be working with a legit Egyptian
temple priest. Another kind that is going to be more
familiar to us, and this will factor in majorly in
the rest of the series, is funerary curses, one of
the most famous varieties of Egyptian magic, the curse that
(41:29):
seals a tomb and punishes defilers or grave robbers. And
while we can later discuss ways that the reality of
this type of curse has been twisted somewhat in popular retelling,
these kinds of curses absolutely do exist. And private tombs
from Egypt are sometimes inscribed with offensive magic, calling down injury, death,
(41:50):
and even, I thought this was pretty wicked, the punishment
of the soul and denial of an afterlife upon anyone
who would disturb the sanctity of a tomb or steal
its contents.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
All right.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
And then after those categories, you start getting into some
types of curses that I think would be less familiar
in our modern understanding of witchcraft and magic. One of
them is political curses. This is a bit like the
idea I mentioned of Nixon getting witches to do something
so he could win in Vietnam. Like the king and
the state have enemies and the enemies must be destroyed.
(42:24):
These enemies could be rival kingdoms or the princes of
foreign nations or the leaders of revolts and rebellions. The
enemies of Egypt and the king would often be cursed
to destruction in official temple rituals. A common way of
describing this is execration rituals, where maybe an effigy or
(42:45):
a clay pot on which there has been established a
symbolic link between the pot and the person in question.
These objects would be ritually smashed or otherwise destroyed. And
then finally, I think the most interesting type of curse
is religious or cosmic curses. Remember how I mentioned a
(43:05):
minute ago that most ancient Egyptian cosmologies held that the
gods themselves were to some extent affected by Heka magic
and that the divine forces of order needed the help
of temple-based rituals in order to prevail? That help could
well involve curses to help the gods and the divine
forces of order win victory continually over the monsters and
(43:30):
the spirits of chaos and Egyptian priests would perform sort
of smiting curses against the divine and cosmic enemies of order,
much like they would against the earthly enemies of the kingdom.
And of course, this is a very loose analogy, but
imagine if daily worship in a Christian church also involved
(43:50):
witchcraft that would invoke death curses against the devil.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Oh, well, that's an interesting topic unto itself, right? Because
you can look at various examples of... of historic individuals
kind of having their own personal war against the devil
or demons, you know, cursing them back, telling, you know, depart, evildoer,
into everlasting fire and so forth. And then also so many,
(44:15):
I think, of various, like, folk songs and bits of
folk art where the devil is tricked, smashed over the
head with something, you know, herded by cowboys and so forth.
There are so many different examples. Poked with a hat pin,
that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Oh, like in the Santa Claus movie.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
That Santa Claus definitely invokes death curses against the devil.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
All right. Well, I want to expand a little bit
on the topic of the funerary curses, because this was
this was. part of what Colleen Darnell talked about in
her presentation. And there were a couple of Egyptian words
that she focused on here. One is the word for curse,
(45:12):
which is usually a verb, but is also sometimes a noun,
which is suer. Not quite suer, but similar to that,
like suer. And then there's also a word shinwit. And
this means incantation. but depending on the context, could also
definitely mean a curse. So just some more specific terminology
(45:33):
for what was invoked here. And so a lot of
her talk centered around evidence that we have for or
against the idea of ancient Egyptian curses on people entering
tombs or certainly defiling them in one way or another.
So one of the important facts that she pointed out
(45:56):
is that In general, the upper part of a tomb
was generally a public space for visitors with good intentions.
So family members and the like and people visiting the tomb,
it might line up with certain festivals and so forth.
And so there would never be a blanket curse against
visiting a tomb space. And this is interesting because she
(46:17):
pointed out that sometimes graffiti in the form of writing
your name was encouraged as it was with certain temples.
votive inscriptions, where it would be the honorable thing to do,
to scratch your name on the wall. Again, in antiquity,
not today.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Oh, well, that just reminded me of something we talked
about years ago. We did some episodes on the colossi
or colossus of Mimnon. There were multiple of them, colossi.
The colossi of Mimnon, which not in our modern times,
but in ancient times to us, were visited by tourists
and who wrote graffiti on them, like Romans would write
(46:55):
their names on these, you know, great monuments, whatever, you know,
Marcus was here.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I thought of that as well when
this came up. She also stresses that ancient Egyptian curses,
when they were used, they tended to have a dual formation,
a dual formulation rather, a blessing on positive actions, and
then a focused threat against negative actions. And again, a
lot of this comes back to the importance of Maat,
(47:21):
You know, you got to have both energies. You got
to have balance. And therefore, a negative action is not
just a transgression against the king or even a god,
but against cosmic balance itself. Of course, as I mentioned earlier,
she stressed that the ancient Egyptians were very legalistic and
that the cursed language typically invokes this, speaking to litigation
(47:44):
against the defiler of the tomb in the afterlife. Like
some of these basically read like, and if you do X, Y,
or Z, I will see you in ghost court. Yeah,
you will be judged and I will be there for
it because there is like a legal proceeding that will follow.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
It's like one of those scary letters you get from
a lawyer.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Exactly. Yeah, it's like this is the scary letter, you know,
essentially from a priest. She also pointed out that ancient
Egyptian curses tend to follow the same formulation as pure
laws that were written for the living. And the idea
here too is that a real world prosecution and punishment
(48:24):
would kind of be the first stop. And then this
would be augmented by supernatural prosecution and punishment. Kind of
coming back to that whole, the D20 plus D4 situation
we were talking about. Like, ideally, if you rob this tomb,
you know, we're going to catch you and there'll be
some sort of real world punishment. But in addition to that,
or instead of that, if we can't catch you, there
(48:46):
will be litigation and punishment in the afterlife.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Oh, I mean, this is another example of what we
were talking about earlier, where you attack the same problem
with multiple solutions, one magical and one practical.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yeah, yeah. One example that she pointed to, and I'll
bring up a couple here, is the Tomb of Many
from the Sixth Dynasty. And it includes this example where
the writing is basically saying, look, I paid everyone who
worked on this tomb. It was fair. But if you
damage my tomb, quote, a crocodile be against him in
(49:19):
the water. a snake be against him on the earth.
And essentially saying the great God, generally Osiris or a
local deity will be the one to judge you. Another
example of litigation in one of these inscriptions, she pointed
to the inscription of Idu from the sixth dynasty, quote,
As for any man who will take my grave from me,
(49:40):
my claim will be litigated with them by the great God. Again, uh,
likely Osiris or another like local deity. So threat of
legal action, if not in this world, then at least
in the next, uh, she points out that there's no
curse against an individual or visitor to a tomb in
any of the Royal tombs that we, we know of
and have access to, uh, And that it would have
(50:01):
gone without saying that you shouldn't enter a burial chamber. Like,
no signage is required there, I imagine. It's sort of like,
it's just, it would be known to everyone involved. You know,
anybody who could read the text, you would know not
to go into the burial chamber. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
And I think I mentioned this earlier, but I remember
reading that the most common places where these funerary curses
are found are in private tombs.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Mm-hmm. She also points to something from the Pyramid Text
that's a curse template for a deceased king, not against mortals,
but against the gods. Getting back to what we were
talking about earlier, about how magic could be used essentially
against the gods in defense of Maat. This is, I believe,
spell 485. And it essentially says, look, bulls will be
(50:50):
slaughtered for any god who takes this king to heaven.
But if you don't take this king to heaven, you're
not going to be honored. that's obvious to it. Uh,
and so, yeah, this apparently factors into a lot of
Egyptian magic. You know, if something violates Mott, it kind
of goes above the heads of the gods because they
are bound to Mott as well.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
Feels bold, strong arming the gods like that, but, uh,
you can admire it.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
Uh, she also brings up a couple of cases involving, um, uh,
grabbing someone's neck like a bird or wringing their neck
like a goose. Um, And so there's one from the
both ones from 2300 BCE from the tomb of Cantica
of Saqqara. And my apologies, I may be hitting these
(51:33):
pronunciations wrong. But this one says, as for any person
who shall enter my tomb in a state of impurity,
not having purified themselves according to the manner of entering
a temple, I will be judged with them about it
in the West, in the court of the great God,
and I will wring his neck like a goose. So
this one, again, it's like saying, I will see you
(51:53):
in court. You will be judged. I will be there.
But then adding this extra bit, I will wring your
neck like a goose. And we see that again, there's
another example. She brings up 20, this is from 2200
BC from the tomb of Ninki. As for any noble,
any official, or any person who will destroy any stone
(52:14):
or any brick in this tomb, I will be judged
with him by the great God, I will seize his
neck like a bird. Uh, so again, I like how
this one is, seems to be translated as, I will
be judged with you by the great God, which very
much brings this idea of like, there's a court proceeding. Uh,
I'm going to bring this charge against you and let
it be decided.
Speaker 2 (52:34):
And I'm going to win. That's the implication.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:37):
That seems to be the main implication of the, the
ringing the neck like a goose. But this too is
also interesting because like, uh, apparently this is referring to sacrificial, um,
killing of a duck or a goose that would have
been done by a priest. So there are inscriptions, there
(52:57):
are images of this, of Akhenaten sacrificing a duck. You
can look this up. I believe this is in the
collection of the Met Museum from between 1353 and 1336 BCE.
And it's, you know, here's a figure wringing the neck
of a goose. So, you know, This seems to largely
(53:19):
refer to that. One thing that Darnell stressed is that
there were definitely some sort of real-world punishments, but we
don't necessarily know all of the details on what those were.
So I don't know. Does this possibly also refer to
some sort of real-world punishment that would be dished out
in this life? We don't know for sure. But also,
this is another potential connection here. Birds offered for sacrifice
(53:44):
in temples, a connection between like the magic and the
religious rituals that were being carried out in both cases
by the priests.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting the way, I don't know,
the different feelings that can be created by the threats
in these curses. Some of them have this more more
legalistic or more directly physically violent analogy in them, like
ring your neck like a goose or the crocodile will
get you in the water, though that may have other implications.
(54:16):
But at least it, to me, conjures this idea of
physical violence, attack by an animal or by another person.
And then there's a way in which, at least to me,
an even colder implication is made by these tomb curses
that threaten your existence in the afterlife, like You will
not receive an honorable burial. You will not go to
(54:37):
the afterlife. You will get nothing.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, coming back to the crocodile, this
reminds me of Amit, the devourer of the dead, that
if memory serves, like his role in the judgment of
the dead is like he consumes you and brings on
annihilation if you are not worthy to pass on. So, yeah,
that's quite a threat to impose. But, you know, you
(55:04):
can also, you know, you can understand it. Like first saying,
you know, you will be litigated, you will be tried
in this world. In addition to or instead of that, though,
you know, watch out in the afterlife because charges will
be brought against you and you might just be annihilated altogether.
All right. Well, looking at the clock here, we're about
out of time. So what we're going to do is
(55:26):
we're going to break and come back with this topic
on Thursday. We have much more to discuss. We're going
to get into... the 20th century myth of the pharaoh's curse,
where that comes from, how it shakes out when you
look at it, and we'll also look to an example
outside of Egypt that aligns with some of the ideas there,
and then we'll have more to discuss about Egyptian magic
(55:47):
and Egyptian curses in general. In the meantime, we would
remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, short-form episodes on Wednesdays, and on Fridays we
set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a
weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2 (56:01):
Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J.
Speaker 1 (56:05):
Posway.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (56:26):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.