April 29, 2024 • 29 mins
In this special episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, enjoy an assortment of six previously-published Monstrefact episodes concerning the mummy, knots, the salamander, Ikuutayuuq, the Moon Rabbit and the Hecatoncheires.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hi everyone, this is Robert Lamb. We are skipping listener
mail this week, which normally publishes in this space, in
order to build up our reserves, so keep those emails coming. Instead,
we're presenting a special Monster Fact omnibus episode for you
this week that collect six previously published entries in a
(00:29):
single episode. I know some of you prefer to listen
to these short form episodes in this format, so I'm
going to continue to try and roll these out periodically
over the course of the year, generally when I've built
up enough to fit a particular theme. But this one
is kind of a grab bag, so without further ado,
let's jump right in. First of all, we will consider
(00:52):
the Mummy in this episode. I like to discuss one
of the classic monster icons of twentieth century heart cinema,
the Undead Mummy. You've all encountered some variation on this
monster before, if not in the original six part Universal
Pictures Mummy franchised, then perhaps in nineteen eighty seven's The
(01:12):
Monster Squad or nineteen nineties Tales from the Dark Side,
the movie, which has a very memorable adaptation of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle's Lot two forty nine, which I'll touch
on again in a bit. For my own part, I
fondly remember reading a pair of kids books from the
late eighties and nineties when I was a child, by
Alita E. Young, Terror in the Tomb of Death and
(01:35):
Return to the Tomb of Death, both of which featured
undead mummies and ancient Egyptian curses. Now, to properly understand
mummy horror fiction in general, we have to recognize its
place within the larger world of Egyptomania. The term Egyptomania
is more often used to refer specifically to nineteenth century
(01:57):
European fascination with all things Egypt in the way of
Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign, but it can also generally be leveled
at different points in time when various cultures have pursued
an interest in ancient Egyptian civilization and culture. In the
excellent book Egyptomania, author Ronald H. Fritz discusses various forms
(02:17):
of Egyptomania over the ages, from the ancient Hebrews, Greeks,
and Romans to Europeans and afrocentrist movements. He also devotes
a chapter to Hollywood movies and literature. He writes that
Egyptian themed fiction in its current forms emerged during the
nineteenth century, again after Napoleon's campaign in Egypt inspired a
(02:37):
new surge in European Egyptomania, surplanting Egypt's smaller place in
the European culture of the time period, where it was
mostly relegated to its role in Shakespearean theatre, freemasonry, and
sporadic fictional treatments. Fritz writes that Egyptian themed fiction basically
falls into a number of subgenres theirs historical fiction, biblical fis,
(03:00):
mysteries and thrillers, occult fiction, and yes, there is the
Mummy fiction. But where does the idea of undead mummified
ancient Egyptians come from in all of this? Well, the
nineteen thirty two universal horror movie The Mummy might seem
like a good place to start, after all, it kicked
off a rather influential franchise, but Fritz shares that early
(03:22):
versions of the script didn't feature an undead mummy at all.
This element was only added later in subsequent rewrites. Unlike
Dracula and Frankenstein, the Mummy franchise was not rooted in
a particular work of literature, though there are clear literary
forbears nineteen thirty twos, The Mummy wasn't even the first
mummy motion picture. Consider instead that the likes of nineteen
(03:44):
eleven's The Mummy, in which a scientist revives an Egyptian
mummy with electricity and then falls in love with her
sadly lost, is just one of a flurry of silent
mummy movies from the nineteen tens. As for literary sources,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories The Ring of Thoth
(04:05):
eighteen ninety and Lot Number two forty nine in eighteen
ninety two are important to note, as is Brahm Stoker's
The Jewel of the Seven Stars from nineteen oh three.
Fritz singles out The Mummy or a Tale of the
twenty second Century by Jane C. Loudum from eighteen twenty
seven as the earliest long work concerning a reanimated mummy.
(04:28):
Other early examples of reanimated mummy stories include Theophile Gottner's
The Mummy's Foot and Edgar Allen Poe's eighteen forty five
story Some Words with a Mummy. These stories, according to
Fritz arise in general, again out of nineteenth century Egyptomania,
but also out of European and American fascination with mummies
and mummy unwrapping parties. In particular, he also writes that
(04:52):
we can't underestimate Victorian colonial guilt and misgivings about the
desecration of Egyptian tombs and artifacts as a strong motivation
for summoning so many tales in which over eager American
and European archaeologists on Earth ancient tombs, ancient curses and
invoked the wrath of the Untead. In fact, he points
(05:13):
out that initially mummy stories cast archaeologists firmly in the
role of villains, but then the needle moved in the
opposite direction quote after the discovery of Tutenkammen's tomb nineteen
twenty two. Thanks to the film industry, archaeologists were portrayed
as heroic, scholarly adventurers, while angry mummies were not avengers
(05:34):
but the revived, corporeal forms of a mindless ancient evil.
This shift is in effect an affirmation or vindication of
imperialism and colonialism. On top of all of this, there's,
of course, the influence of pre existing tales of cursed
objects and the unsettled dead, which would have found new
(05:55):
life in Egyptomania fueled creations. These very elements all would
seem to have contributed to the undead Mummy's place in
our horror fiction. All right, Next, let's consider the curious
relationship between knots and monsters. Yesterday's core episode of Stuff
(06:18):
to Blow Your Mind concerned the fabled rat King, in
which it is said the tales of rats become intertwined
and knotted, a dire omen of impending doom. But what
about elsewhere in the natural and unnatural worlds? To begin with,
folklore is rife with magical knots, is Cyrus l. Day
pointed out in Knots and Not Lore back in nineteen fifty.
(06:41):
Just as the use of knots extends back through prehistoric
human times, so too does the idea that we might
work magic with the various intricate knots that we tie.
They observe that ancient people's attempted to control the weather, biology, reproduction, death,
and various supernatural entities via the working of knots not
(07:02):
magic was sometimes maleficent and other times beneficial. It could
be an intentional magical effect, or something invoked by accident.
It might be said to work at close range, across
vast distances and across various stretches of time. After all,
what is the knot but the joining and the binding
of things, the creation of something, the creation of a
(07:24):
new complexity in the process. And of course the topic
is closely aligned with all manner of fabric arts and
even hair braids. As not so easily become the subject
of magical thinking, they inevitably touch the world of monsters.
Among the many anti vampire traditions we find the notion
that one may leave a complex array of knots out
(07:44):
for the creature, which will then occupy its time trying
to unravel them and figure them out till the sun
rises once again. There are also other related tactics that
don't involve knots at all, such as leaving out poppy
seeds that the vampire will feel compelled to count. Vitural
complexity overpowers the undead senses, it would seem, but as
(08:05):
with the fabled rat king, there are also some myths
and legends of knotted creatures. The account of Heracles and
Coccus is notable. While in some depictions Coccus is merely
presented as a fire breathing giant, or even just a
large muscular man that Heracles wrestles, other times he is
described as a sort of giant spider, except with three
fire breathing human heads atop a long neck. In order
(08:28):
to slay the monster, Heracles ties its neck in a knot.
Dragon iconography often involves knots, as does serpentine iconography, and
the knotting of tail or neck may be presented as
a means of defeating the creature or as a self
coiling behavior. In the natural world, climbing snakes have been
(08:48):
observed to use lasso locomotion to scale trees and poles
in search of prey, a configuration that indeed appears to
be a simple knot. Elsewhere, hagfish, when agitated, will twist
themselves into a traveling overhand knot to squeeze off excess slime.
All right, now, it is time to consider the salamander.
(09:12):
As mentioned in yesterday's Core episode The Nature of Diamonds,
Part One, I'd like to discuss the fantastic salamander in
today's Monster Fact Now Dungeons and Dragons players have long
noticed the startling difference between salamanders of the natural world
and salamanders as they appear in the D and D
Monster Manual, where they are described as flaming snakes and
(09:36):
snake like beings that quote slither across the sea of
ash on the elemental plane of fire. Meanwhile, real life
salamanders are quite remarkable but are decidedly not on fire.
Ancient and medieval bestieries are full of strange and often
fiery tales of the salamander. I turned to the writings
(09:56):
of Fulk historian Carol Rose in her book Monsters, Giants
and Dragons, as well as poorge Luis Borges the Book
of Imaginary Beings to piece together the different attributed features
of the mythic salamander. The creature pops up in various
works from the ancient Greco Roman world, most notably the
writings of Roman historian Plenty the Elder in seventy seven CE.
(10:19):
He describes the salamander as a monstrous lizard that poisons
anything it touches, known to live on the slopes of
volcanoes as well as within the heart of a fire
as borhes points out, Plenty highlights the creature's natural coldness
as a reason for this. It's so cold it simply
resists the fire and even extinguishes it. But Plenty also
(10:43):
writes of another creature, the pyrosta, that lives within the
copper smelting furnaces of Cyprus, and the creature, he says,
dies if they leave the flames. Borhes points out that
the later traditions would take these attributes and apply them
to the salamander. It's also worth noting, though, that as
a creature of fire, the mythic salamander was, by some standards,
(11:07):
a necessary part of classical elemental theory. If earth, water, air,
and fire are the prime building blocks of nature, then
there have to be animals of each element, and that
includes creatures of fire. As we discussed in yesterday's episode,
sixteenth century Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini claimed in his autobiography
(11:29):
to have seen a salamander in the fire as a child.
As Matt Simon discussed in a twenty fourteen article for
Wired Magazine, Fantastically Wrong, the legend of the homicidal fire
Bruce salamander. This common bit of lare likely came about
as ancient people occasionally threw damp logs on their fires,
damp logs that may have had tiny, unfortunate salamanders clinging
(11:52):
to their underside. But as Borges stressed, the notion of
a creature that lives in fire was a theologically useful
bit of lore as well. Saint Augustine, in his fifth
century CE work The City of God, used the salamander
as proof that fiery living torment in the afterlife was
not that far fetched, a notion. Bor Has notes that
(12:13):
the mythical phoenix, another mythical creature of fire, was often
cited by theologians to support the idea of a bodily resurrection.
During the Middle Ages, salamanders continued to tear it up.
In the bestiaries. Writers of the day described their abilities
to poison the fruit of trees, they entwined, to stop
up the mouths of lions, and of course, extinguish fires.
(12:36):
The creature also became associated with fibrous minerals classified today
as asbestos, which are highly fire resistant. Of course, natural
salamanders do not live in or tolerate fire any more
than the rest of the animal kingdom. In fact, they
are decidedly moist creatures. The truth of experience and experimentation
easily extinguished the fantastic idea of a literal salamander of
(13:00):
the flames, but the creature lived on in heraldry, alchemical symbolism,
and of course fantasy. For this next one, let us
consider the horror of the one who drills. In this episode,
(13:21):
I'd like to turn to the traditions of the Inuit,
specifically the Inuit of the eastern Hudson Bay region of
what is now Canada. In the Dictionary of Native American Mythology,
Sam D. Gill and Irene F. Sullivan relate the story
of a pair of killers. In other tellings, monsters who
terrorized the people. Ikutuyuk, whose name means one who drills
(13:45):
and his brother would capture people, pin them down on
their backs, and then murder them by drilling holes in
their bodies. Afterwards, they would cover a corpse with piles
of rocks like kerns or to the Inuit in nuksuk
in Nuxiok, were largely used to aid navigation, but were
sometimes used as warnings of dangerous grounds. According to the myth,
(14:07):
the brothers continued their horrible crimes until a two Nit
set out to stop them. The Tunit were a legendary
people said to live long ago, possibly connected to an
actual Paleo Eskimo culture. They were tall giants even and
possessed a fierce energy and competition. Gill and Sullivans share
that tu Nit were said to die of exhaustion from
(14:29):
fierce competitions and feats of hunting and archery, And so
one brave Tunit took it on himself to rid the
people of the Kutuyuk and his brother. He challenged Akutuyuk
to a fight, and they battled while tied together with
a rope. The Canadian Museum of History features a nineteen
sixty carving by Inuit artist Issa Kupirowala a la Usa
(14:52):
depicting the back, which you can view on their website.
In the end, the Tunit heroes succeeded in killing a
kudu Yuk, and the remaining brother fled into the wilderness.
The story of a kudu Yuk was also related by
Inuit author Jonasi Kuinurayak, who lived eighteen ninety five through
nineteen sixty four. Now you might wonder what manner of
(15:15):
drill this monstrous killer would have used. The Inuit traditionally
made use of the pump drill, an ancient hand powered
tool used in fire making as well as for drilling
small holes and objects for jewelry and the like. It's
a simple hand powered flywheel tool. The craftsperson revolves the
drill shaft by vertically working a bow or bar carrying
(15:37):
a cord attached at the center to the upper end
of the shaft. I realize this is hard to picture,
so I recommend looking up an image or video. Materially,
the pump typically involves some combination of wood, ivory, rawhide,
metal stone, sometimes jadite. According to the Pin Museum, there's
also the Inuit mouth drill. This was essentially a small
(15:58):
bow drill used for firing making, and the user would
brace the tool and provide downward pressure with the head
via a mouth or chin block. Now to be clear,
neither of these tools was a weapon. But according to
Robert Fortune in his nineteen eighty five article Lancets of
Stone Traditional Methods of surgery among the Alaska Natives, there
(16:19):
is reason to believe that dental drilling may have been
practiced to alleviate tooth pain, and that cranial drilling may
also have been practiced in some cases for either medical
or magico religious purposes, known as trepanation. This practice is
found in cultures around the world dating back to prehistoric times,
with some rare modern proponents of the procedure as well.
(16:40):
So one can imagine how the idea of murderous drillers
might have emerged in Inuit mythology and storytelling based on
everyday technology and or painful surgical procedures that had been
experienced or witnessed, though the possibility of actual isolated drill
based torture is I suppose not impossible across one reference
(17:01):
to isolated drill marks on Inuit remains a nineteen ninety
three article by Melby in Fairgrief titled a Massacre and
Possible Cannibalism in the Canadian Arctic, but the consensus would
seem to be that the evidence in question suggested a
mortuary practice, with drill holes being just one of the
classifications of cuts found to the bone. Ykudu Yuk and
(17:22):
his brother are haunting figures to consider, and yet another
fascinating aspect of Inuit culture. Ah, what is that in
the night sky? Why it's the moon? Rabbit? Let's find
out more. In celebration of the lunar New Year, I
thought today would be a great time to consider the
lunar rabbit. Now, exactly what you see in the dark
(17:45):
splotches of the full moon will depend on your individual
and or cultural priming. You may see a face, a
man with a cane or a fork, a frog or toad,
or some other animal reel or imagine. But the rabbit
has been a popular choice since time out of mind,
and why not. Indigenous rabbit or hair species exist on
(18:09):
every continent except Australia and Antarctica. The rabbit also boaths
a great deal of character, inspiring numerous and varied tales
that detail just how that rabbit made it to the Moon,
or from the Moon to the Earth in the first place.
Author Randolph S. Albright recounts several of these in his
twenty twenty book House of the Three Rabbits. According to Albright,
(18:33):
the Yoruba people of Nigeria and the Woloff people of
Senegal recount legends of a rabbit sent down from the
Moon with the secret of immortality, but the rabbit got
the message backwards or mangoled in one form or another,
and instead bestowed mortality upon human beings. Oops the moon
(18:54):
punished the rabbit by splitting its nose and forcing it
to accompany each dying mortal into the afterlife. The Siberian
moon goddess kaltez Uku sometimes takes the form of a rabbit.
The Mayan moon goddess Ixceel often carries a rabbit. The
Cree people of North America tell of a rabbit who
(19:15):
traveled up to the moon with the help of a
passing crane, and the Celtic goddess Ostra took on the
form of a hare during the full moon. In Buddhist teachings,
Albright shares the rabbit's image appears on the moon because
the rabbit offered up its own body to feed a
starving beggar who was actually Sacra, lord of Davas in disguise.
(19:38):
The Aztecs told a similar tale concerning the god Quetzalkotl.
As Victoria Dickinson explores in her book Rabbit from the
Excellent Rakotan Animals series, the Aztecs associated the rabbit with
drunkenness as well as the moon, and held that the
rabbit must first pass through fire on its way to
the lunar surface, and of course, the luner rabbit has
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an important place in many East Asian traditions, often as
a lunar zodiac animal, and Chinese traditions invoke the creature
in the myth of Chenga. We discussed various versions of
this myth in great detail in our stuffed to Bow
your Mind episode Chinese Mortality, which you can find in
our archives. But the simple version is as follows. The
(20:21):
hero Ye the archer, receives the elixir of immortality from
the Queen Mother of the West, and then, while her
reasoning varies depending on the telling. Sometimes it's to protect
the potion from theft by an enemy, Yi's wife Changa
drank it instead and was instantly transported to the moon.
In some earlier tellings, she is then transformed into a
toad who pounds the elixir of immortality there, and it's
(20:45):
of course the very toad we might see when we
gaze up at the full moon. Other times, and certainly
in later tellings, she retains her human form and is
accompanied by the jade rabbit, who pounds the elixir of
immortality instead. Thus we see the rabbit on the moon.
Dickinson writes quote to Chinese alchemists, the pale jade moon
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rabbit embodied the yin or female principle that was associated
with the moon, not only in Asia, but in the West,
where the moon is often referred to as feminine. She
also pointed out that in Japanese traditions, the rabbit doesn't
pound the elixir of immortality, but instead pounds the rice
that will be used in lunar new year mochikekes. And finally,
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let's consider the multi armed, multi headed madness of the Hekatonkis.
And the gods, givers of good things, applauded when they
heard his word, and their spirit longed for war even
more than before, and they all both male and female,
stirred up hated battle. That the Titan gods and all
(22:02):
that were born of Kronos, together with those dread mighty
ones of overwhelming strength, whom Zeus brought up to the
light from Erebus beneath the earth, one hundred arms sprang
from the shoulders of all alike, and each had fifty
heads growing upon his shoulders upon stout limbs. These then
stood against the Titans in grim strife, holding huge rocks
(22:23):
in their strong hands. These are the words of Hesiod
from his eighth century BCE text Theogony here in translation
by Evelyn White, describing the one hundred handed warriors, the
Hecatonkyries of Greek mythology. Naturally, the poet Hesiod compiled various
tellings and traditions in his poetry, and in doing so
(22:44):
solidified a number of characters, relationships, and tales concerning the
Greek pantheon of deities. So what we read here is
effectively the most popular understanding of the Hecatonkyres. They were
a very ancient race of multi headed and multi handed giants,
and they stood among the various children of the primordial
sky god Urunas. But Uruanas hated these monstrosities from the
(23:09):
first and imprisoned them, locking them away out of sight. Eventually,
Urunas's offspring, Cronos, rises against his father, overthrows him, but
seemingly keeps these earlier unsightly offspring locked away. It is
not until Zeus, the child of Cronos, rises up with
his fellow Olympian gods, rebels against the Titans. They free
(23:33):
and recruit the Hecatonkyries, as well as their kin, the Cyclopses,
into their ensuing war for control of the cosmos. This
was the Titanomachi, and Hesiod describes their role in its battles,
naming the three most prominent of the one hundred handed
warriors in surviving traditions, and amongst the foremost Cootus and Bryarias,
(23:57):
and guys insatiate for war, raised fierce, fighting three hundred
rocks one upon another. They launched from their strong hands
and overshadowed the Titans with their missiles, and buried them
beneath the wide pathed earth, and bound them in bitter chains.
When they had conquered them by their strength, for all
their great spirit, as far beneath the earth to Tartarus.
(24:22):
The Hecatonkyres, according to Hesiod, are much more than allies
of the gods. In their war against the Titans, the
Hecatonkreis strike the final blow. They chain the Titans. They
become the wardens of the Titans, and are quite ironically
imprisoned once more in the process. Now it should be
noted that in some traditions the Hecatonkyres may have fought
(24:45):
instead on the side of the Titans, and in some compilations,
such as Brewer's Dictionary, of phrase and fable. The authors
go so far as to describe individuals, specifically Bryarius as
a titan, so it gets a bit confusing at times.
And I suppose that's how I have always felt about
the hecatonqures since I was a child and read about
(25:06):
them and various books. Somewhat confused because the morphologies of
so many other Greek monsters are just so well defined.
There's so many illustrations of them, and as a child,
you can draw them, you can roughly sketch them yourself,
and it's a lot of fun. But the hecatonqures always
seem to defy logic. Their name feels more like a
(25:26):
literary concept describing a force of nature as opposed to
a codified creature, and indeed this is often how they
are interpreted. They are difficult to envision or to reproduce visually,
and certainly there are plenty of contemporary artists who have
had a lot of fun producing various, surreal and just
horrifying interpretations of the hecatonqures, but one is generally hard
(25:47):
pressed to find representations of these creatures in art history.
Now I invite correction on this front, because I would
very much love to see such images, to see like
classical illustrations, medieval illustrations and so forth of the hecatonqureis.
But my searches have generally come up well empty handed.
Perhaps we've simply lost ancient Greek depictions of these creatures.
(26:09):
I can only assume that they were too far removed
from actual human physiology to interest many sculptors. You know,
I mean, if you're interested in capturing the reality of
the human form, even in the telling of stories and
the presentation of information about deities, then this might not
be your first stop, right. Perhaps they were creatures best
(26:30):
left for depiction in the ages of surrealism and cosmic
horror to come. Indeed, outside of their role in the
struggle against the Titans, little seems to have survived about
the Hecatonqures in general, aside from some tangents concerning Bryarias. Again,
the Hecatonqures are perhaps best interpreted as embodiments of natural forces.
(26:51):
Given their hundred hands and heads, they are like armies
of men compiled into a single great entity, like a
storm or earthquake, with the power of an army. As such,
turning to the natural world of biology. Our best example
of one hundred headed entities are actually large groups working together,
such as humans or use social insects. Now, some of
(27:12):
you out there might be thinking to yourself, well, I
know what as one hundred appendages. Well, even centipedes, despite
their name which means one hundred footed, never have exactly
one hundred limbs. They may have as few as something
like twenty three leg bearing segments, or as many as
I think one hundred and ninety one, but there is
always an odd number of leg bearing segments, never the
(27:34):
even fifty segments that would produce a total of one
hundred legs. By the way, the first millipede with more
than a thousand legs wasn't discovered till twenty twenty one. Now,
despite this disappointment, scientists have fouled room to invoke the
hecatonkreis in the naming of various organisms. Specifically, the name
(27:54):
Bryarius is invoked in the scientific name for various organisms, including,
but not limited to, the Caribbean reef octopus, the hairy
sea cucumber, at least one species of seastar, the qirky
seafinger coral, a sea slug, an extinct trilabite and a
Central American moth as for their mythic namesake, the hecatoncaries. Well,
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maybe we should heed the words ohesiate once more. Perhaps
we lack for older depictions of the creature because they
are not to be approached, They are not to be
looked upon. Even Uruanas chose not to do so, And
he used to hide them all away in a secret
place of Earth so soon as each was born, and
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would not suffer them to come up into the light.
And Heaven rejoiced in his evil doing, but vast earth
groaned within. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact,
The Artifact, or Anamalius to Pendium each week on Wednesdays.
As always, you can email us at contact at stuff
(28:58):
to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hi everyone, this is Robert Lamb. We are skipping listener
mail this week, which normally publishes in this space, in
order to build up our reserves, so keep those emails coming. Instead,
we're presenting a special Monster Fact omnibus episode for you
this week that collect six previously published entries in a
(00:29):
single episode. I know some of you prefer to listen
to these short form episodes in this format, so I'm
going to continue to try and roll these out periodically
over the course of the year, generally when I've built
up enough to fit a particular theme. But this one
is kind of a grab bag, so without further ado,
let's jump right in. First of all, we will consider
(00:52):
the Mummy in this episode. I like to discuss one
of the classic monster icons of twentieth century heart cinema,
the Undead Mummy. You've all encountered some variation on this
monster before, if not in the original six part Universal
Pictures Mummy franchised, then perhaps in nineteen eighty seven's The
(01:12):
Monster Squad or nineteen nineties Tales from the Dark Side,
the movie, which has a very memorable adaptation of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle's Lot two forty nine, which I'll touch
on again in a bit. For my own part, I
fondly remember reading a pair of kids books from the
late eighties and nineties when I was a child, by
Alita E. Young, Terror in the Tomb of Death and
(01:35):
Return to the Tomb of Death, both of which featured
undead mummies and ancient Egyptian curses. Now, to properly understand
mummy horror fiction in general, we have to recognize its
place within the larger world of Egyptomania. The term Egyptomania
is more often used to refer specifically to nineteenth century
(01:57):
European fascination with all things Egypt in the way of
Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign, but it can also generally be leveled
at different points in time when various cultures have pursued
an interest in ancient Egyptian civilization and culture. In the
excellent book Egyptomania, author Ronald H. Fritz discusses various forms
(02:17):
of Egyptomania over the ages, from the ancient Hebrews, Greeks,
and Romans to Europeans and afrocentrist movements. He also devotes
a chapter to Hollywood movies and literature. He writes that
Egyptian themed fiction in its current forms emerged during the
nineteenth century, again after Napoleon's campaign in Egypt inspired a
(02:37):
new surge in European Egyptomania, surplanting Egypt's smaller place in
the European culture of the time period, where it was
mostly relegated to its role in Shakespearean theatre, freemasonry, and
sporadic fictional treatments. Fritz writes that Egyptian themed fiction basically
falls into a number of subgenres theirs historical fiction, biblical fis,
(03:00):
mysteries and thrillers, occult fiction, and yes, there is the
Mummy fiction. But where does the idea of undead mummified
ancient Egyptians come from in all of this? Well, the
nineteen thirty two universal horror movie The Mummy might seem
like a good place to start, after all, it kicked
off a rather influential franchise, but Fritz shares that early
(03:22):
versions of the script didn't feature an undead mummy at all.
This element was only added later in subsequent rewrites. Unlike
Dracula and Frankenstein, the Mummy franchise was not rooted in
a particular work of literature, though there are clear literary
forbears nineteen thirty twos, The Mummy wasn't even the first
mummy motion picture. Consider instead that the likes of nineteen
(03:44):
eleven's The Mummy, in which a scientist revives an Egyptian
mummy with electricity and then falls in love with her
sadly lost, is just one of a flurry of silent
mummy movies from the nineteen tens. As for literary sources,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories The Ring of Thoth
(04:05):
eighteen ninety and Lot Number two forty nine in eighteen
ninety two are important to note, as is Brahm Stoker's
The Jewel of the Seven Stars from nineteen oh three.
Fritz singles out The Mummy or a Tale of the
twenty second Century by Jane C. Loudum from eighteen twenty
seven as the earliest long work concerning a reanimated mummy.
(04:28):
Other early examples of reanimated mummy stories include Theophile Gottner's
The Mummy's Foot and Edgar Allen Poe's eighteen forty five
story Some Words with a Mummy. These stories, according to
Fritz arise in general, again out of nineteenth century Egyptomania,
but also out of European and American fascination with mummies
and mummy unwrapping parties. In particular, he also writes that
(04:52):
we can't underestimate Victorian colonial guilt and misgivings about the
desecration of Egyptian tombs and artifacts as a strong motivation
for summoning so many tales in which over eager American
and European archaeologists on Earth ancient tombs, ancient curses and
invoked the wrath of the Untead. In fact, he points
(05:13):
out that initially mummy stories cast archaeologists firmly in the
role of villains, but then the needle moved in the
opposite direction quote after the discovery of Tutenkammen's tomb nineteen
twenty two. Thanks to the film industry, archaeologists were portrayed
as heroic, scholarly adventurers, while angry mummies were not avengers
(05:34):
but the revived, corporeal forms of a mindless ancient evil.
This shift is in effect an affirmation or vindication of
imperialism and colonialism. On top of all of this, there's,
of course, the influence of pre existing tales of cursed
objects and the unsettled dead, which would have found new
(05:55):
life in Egyptomania fueled creations. These very elements all would
seem to have contributed to the undead Mummy's place in
our horror fiction. All right, Next, let's consider the curious
relationship between knots and monsters. Yesterday's core episode of Stuff
(06:18):
to Blow Your Mind concerned the fabled rat King, in
which it is said the tales of rats become intertwined
and knotted, a dire omen of impending doom. But what
about elsewhere in the natural and unnatural worlds? To begin with,
folklore is rife with magical knots, is Cyrus l. Day
pointed out in Knots and Not Lore back in nineteen fifty.
(06:41):
Just as the use of knots extends back through prehistoric
human times, so too does the idea that we might
work magic with the various intricate knots that we tie.
They observe that ancient people's attempted to control the weather, biology, reproduction, death,
and various supernatural entities via the working of knots not
(07:02):
magic was sometimes maleficent and other times beneficial. It could
be an intentional magical effect, or something invoked by accident.
It might be said to work at close range, across
vast distances and across various stretches of time. After all,
what is the knot but the joining and the binding
of things, the creation of something, the creation of a
(07:24):
new complexity in the process. And of course the topic
is closely aligned with all manner of fabric arts and
even hair braids. As not so easily become the subject
of magical thinking, they inevitably touch the world of monsters.
Among the many anti vampire traditions we find the notion
that one may leave a complex array of knots out
(07:44):
for the creature, which will then occupy its time trying
to unravel them and figure them out till the sun
rises once again. There are also other related tactics that
don't involve knots at all, such as leaving out poppy
seeds that the vampire will feel compelled to count. Vitural
complexity overpowers the undead senses, it would seem, but as
(08:05):
with the fabled rat king, there are also some myths
and legends of knotted creatures. The account of Heracles and
Coccus is notable. While in some depictions Coccus is merely
presented as a fire breathing giant, or even just a
large muscular man that Heracles wrestles, other times he is
described as a sort of giant spider, except with three
fire breathing human heads atop a long neck. In order
(08:28):
to slay the monster, Heracles ties its neck in a knot.
Dragon iconography often involves knots, as does serpentine iconography, and
the knotting of tail or neck may be presented as
a means of defeating the creature or as a self
coiling behavior. In the natural world, climbing snakes have been
(08:48):
observed to use lasso locomotion to scale trees and poles
in search of prey, a configuration that indeed appears to
be a simple knot. Elsewhere, hagfish, when agitated, will twist
themselves into a traveling overhand knot to squeeze off excess slime.
All right, now, it is time to consider the salamander.
(09:12):
As mentioned in yesterday's Core episode The Nature of Diamonds,
Part One, I'd like to discuss the fantastic salamander in
today's Monster Fact Now Dungeons and Dragons players have long
noticed the startling difference between salamanders of the natural world
and salamanders as they appear in the D and D
Monster Manual, where they are described as flaming snakes and
(09:36):
snake like beings that quote slither across the sea of
ash on the elemental plane of fire. Meanwhile, real life
salamanders are quite remarkable but are decidedly not on fire.
Ancient and medieval bestieries are full of strange and often
fiery tales of the salamander. I turned to the writings
(09:56):
of Fulk historian Carol Rose in her book Monsters, Giants
and Dragons, as well as poorge Luis Borges the Book
of Imaginary Beings to piece together the different attributed features
of the mythic salamander. The creature pops up in various
works from the ancient Greco Roman world, most notably the
writings of Roman historian Plenty the Elder in seventy seven CE.
(10:19):
He describes the salamander as a monstrous lizard that poisons
anything it touches, known to live on the slopes of
volcanoes as well as within the heart of a fire
as borhes points out, Plenty highlights the creature's natural coldness
as a reason for this. It's so cold it simply
resists the fire and even extinguishes it. But Plenty also
(10:43):
writes of another creature, the pyrosta, that lives within the
copper smelting furnaces of Cyprus, and the creature, he says,
dies if they leave the flames. Borhes points out that
the later traditions would take these attributes and apply them
to the salamander. It's also worth noting, though, that as
a creature of fire, the mythic salamander was, by some standards,
(11:07):
a necessary part of classical elemental theory. If earth, water, air,
and fire are the prime building blocks of nature, then
there have to be animals of each element, and that
includes creatures of fire. As we discussed in yesterday's episode,
sixteenth century Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini claimed in his autobiography
(11:29):
to have seen a salamander in the fire as a child.
As Matt Simon discussed in a twenty fourteen article for
Wired Magazine, Fantastically Wrong, the legend of the homicidal fire
Bruce salamander. This common bit of lare likely came about
as ancient people occasionally threw damp logs on their fires,
damp logs that may have had tiny, unfortunate salamanders clinging
(11:52):
to their underside. But as Borges stressed, the notion of
a creature that lives in fire was a theologically useful
bit of lore as well. Saint Augustine, in his fifth
century CE work The City of God, used the salamander
as proof that fiery living torment in the afterlife was
not that far fetched, a notion. Bor Has notes that
(12:13):
the mythical phoenix, another mythical creature of fire, was often
cited by theologians to support the idea of a bodily resurrection.
During the Middle Ages, salamanders continued to tear it up.
In the bestiaries. Writers of the day described their abilities
to poison the fruit of trees, they entwined, to stop
up the mouths of lions, and of course, extinguish fires.
(12:36):
The creature also became associated with fibrous minerals classified today
as asbestos, which are highly fire resistant. Of course, natural
salamanders do not live in or tolerate fire any more
than the rest of the animal kingdom. In fact, they
are decidedly moist creatures. The truth of experience and experimentation
easily extinguished the fantastic idea of a literal salamander of
(13:00):
the flames, but the creature lived on in heraldry, alchemical symbolism,
and of course fantasy. For this next one, let us
consider the horror of the one who drills. In this episode,
(13:21):
I'd like to turn to the traditions of the Inuit,
specifically the Inuit of the eastern Hudson Bay region of
what is now Canada. In the Dictionary of Native American Mythology,
Sam D. Gill and Irene F. Sullivan relate the story
of a pair of killers. In other tellings, monsters who
terrorized the people. Ikutuyuk, whose name means one who drills
(13:45):
and his brother would capture people, pin them down on
their backs, and then murder them by drilling holes in
their bodies. Afterwards, they would cover a corpse with piles
of rocks like kerns or to the Inuit in nuksuk
in Nuxiok, were largely used to aid navigation, but were
sometimes used as warnings of dangerous grounds. According to the myth,
(14:07):
the brothers continued their horrible crimes until a two Nit
set out to stop them. The Tunit were a legendary
people said to live long ago, possibly connected to an
actual Paleo Eskimo culture. They were tall giants even and
possessed a fierce energy and competition. Gill and Sullivans share
that tu Nit were said to die of exhaustion from
(14:29):
fierce competitions and feats of hunting and archery, And so
one brave Tunit took it on himself to rid the
people of the Kutuyuk and his brother. He challenged Akutuyuk
to a fight, and they battled while tied together with
a rope. The Canadian Museum of History features a nineteen
sixty carving by Inuit artist Issa Kupirowala a la Usa
(14:52):
depicting the back, which you can view on their website.
In the end, the Tunit heroes succeeded in killing a
kudu Yuk, and the remaining brother fled into the wilderness.
The story of a kudu Yuk was also related by
Inuit author Jonasi Kuinurayak, who lived eighteen ninety five through
nineteen sixty four. Now you might wonder what manner of
(15:15):
drill this monstrous killer would have used. The Inuit traditionally
made use of the pump drill, an ancient hand powered
tool used in fire making as well as for drilling
small holes and objects for jewelry and the like. It's
a simple hand powered flywheel tool. The craftsperson revolves the
drill shaft by vertically working a bow or bar carrying
(15:37):
a cord attached at the center to the upper end
of the shaft. I realize this is hard to picture,
so I recommend looking up an image or video. Materially,
the pump typically involves some combination of wood, ivory, rawhide,
metal stone, sometimes jadite. According to the Pin Museum, there's
also the Inuit mouth drill. This was essentially a small
(15:58):
bow drill used for firing making, and the user would
brace the tool and provide downward pressure with the head
via a mouth or chin block. Now to be clear,
neither of these tools was a weapon. But according to
Robert Fortune in his nineteen eighty five article Lancets of
Stone Traditional Methods of surgery among the Alaska Natives, there
(16:19):
is reason to believe that dental drilling may have been
practiced to alleviate tooth pain, and that cranial drilling may
also have been practiced in some cases for either medical
or magico religious purposes, known as trepanation. This practice is
found in cultures around the world dating back to prehistoric times,
with some rare modern proponents of the procedure as well.
(16:40):
So one can imagine how the idea of murderous drillers
might have emerged in Inuit mythology and storytelling based on
everyday technology and or painful surgical procedures that had been
experienced or witnessed, though the possibility of actual isolated drill
based torture is I suppose not impossible across one reference
(17:01):
to isolated drill marks on Inuit remains a nineteen ninety
three article by Melby in Fairgrief titled a Massacre and
Possible Cannibalism in the Canadian Arctic, but the consensus would
seem to be that the evidence in question suggested a
mortuary practice, with drill holes being just one of the
classifications of cuts found to the bone. Ykudu Yuk and
(17:22):
his brother are haunting figures to consider, and yet another
fascinating aspect of Inuit culture. Ah, what is that in
the night sky? Why it's the moon? Rabbit? Let's find
out more. In celebration of the lunar New Year, I
thought today would be a great time to consider the
lunar rabbit. Now, exactly what you see in the dark
(17:45):
splotches of the full moon will depend on your individual
and or cultural priming. You may see a face, a
man with a cane or a fork, a frog or toad,
or some other animal reel or imagine. But the rabbit
has been a popular choice since time out of mind,
and why not. Indigenous rabbit or hair species exist on
(18:09):
every continent except Australia and Antarctica. The rabbit also boaths
a great deal of character, inspiring numerous and varied tales
that detail just how that rabbit made it to the Moon,
or from the Moon to the Earth in the first place.
Author Randolph S. Albright recounts several of these in his
twenty twenty book House of the Three Rabbits. According to Albright,
(18:33):
the Yoruba people of Nigeria and the Woloff people of
Senegal recount legends of a rabbit sent down from the
Moon with the secret of immortality, but the rabbit got
the message backwards or mangoled in one form or another,
and instead bestowed mortality upon human beings. Oops the moon
(18:54):
punished the rabbit by splitting its nose and forcing it
to accompany each dying mortal into the afterlife. The Siberian
moon goddess kaltez Uku sometimes takes the form of a rabbit.
The Mayan moon goddess Ixceel often carries a rabbit. The
Cree people of North America tell of a rabbit who
(19:15):
traveled up to the moon with the help of a
passing crane, and the Celtic goddess Ostra took on the
form of a hare during the full moon. In Buddhist teachings,
Albright shares the rabbit's image appears on the moon because
the rabbit offered up its own body to feed a
starving beggar who was actually Sacra, lord of Davas in disguise.
(19:38):
The Aztecs told a similar tale concerning the god Quetzalkotl.
As Victoria Dickinson explores in her book Rabbit from the
Excellent Rakotan Animals series, the Aztecs associated the rabbit with
drunkenness as well as the moon, and held that the
rabbit must first pass through fire on its way to
the lunar surface, and of course, the luner rabbit has
(20:00):
an important place in many East Asian traditions, often as
a lunar zodiac animal, and Chinese traditions invoke the creature
in the myth of Chenga. We discussed various versions of
this myth in great detail in our stuffed to Bow
your Mind episode Chinese Mortality, which you can find in
our archives. But the simple version is as follows. The
(20:21):
hero Ye the archer, receives the elixir of immortality from
the Queen Mother of the West, and then, while her
reasoning varies depending on the telling. Sometimes it's to protect
the potion from theft by an enemy, Yi's wife Changa
drank it instead and was instantly transported to the moon.
In some earlier tellings, she is then transformed into a
toad who pounds the elixir of immortality there, and it's
(20:45):
of course the very toad we might see when we
gaze up at the full moon. Other times, and certainly
in later tellings, she retains her human form and is
accompanied by the jade rabbit, who pounds the elixir of
immortality instead. Thus we see the rabbit on the moon.
Dickinson writes quote to Chinese alchemists, the pale jade moon
(21:06):
rabbit embodied the yin or female principle that was associated
with the moon, not only in Asia, but in the West,
where the moon is often referred to as feminine. She
also pointed out that in Japanese traditions, the rabbit doesn't
pound the elixir of immortality, but instead pounds the rice
that will be used in lunar new year mochikekes. And finally,
(21:41):
let's consider the multi armed, multi headed madness of the Hekatonkis.
And the gods, givers of good things, applauded when they
heard his word, and their spirit longed for war even
more than before, and they all both male and female,
stirred up hated battle. That the Titan gods and all
(22:02):
that were born of Kronos, together with those dread mighty
ones of overwhelming strength, whom Zeus brought up to the
light from Erebus beneath the earth, one hundred arms sprang
from the shoulders of all alike, and each had fifty
heads growing upon his shoulders upon stout limbs. These then
stood against the Titans in grim strife, holding huge rocks
(22:23):
in their strong hands. These are the words of Hesiod
from his eighth century BCE text Theogony here in translation
by Evelyn White, describing the one hundred handed warriors, the
Hecatonkyries of Greek mythology. Naturally, the poet Hesiod compiled various
tellings and traditions in his poetry, and in doing so
(22:44):
solidified a number of characters, relationships, and tales concerning the
Greek pantheon of deities. So what we read here is
effectively the most popular understanding of the Hecatonkyres. They were
a very ancient race of multi headed and multi handed giants,
and they stood among the various children of the primordial
sky god Urunas. But Uruanas hated these monstrosities from the
(23:09):
first and imprisoned them, locking them away out of sight. Eventually,
Urunas's offspring, Cronos, rises against his father, overthrows him, but
seemingly keeps these earlier unsightly offspring locked away. It is
not until Zeus, the child of Cronos, rises up with
his fellow Olympian gods, rebels against the Titans. They free
(23:33):
and recruit the Hecatonkyries, as well as their kin, the Cyclopses,
into their ensuing war for control of the cosmos. This
was the Titanomachi, and Hesiod describes their role in its battles,
naming the three most prominent of the one hundred handed
warriors in surviving traditions, and amongst the foremost Cootus and Bryarias,
(23:57):
and guys insatiate for war, raised fierce, fighting three hundred
rocks one upon another. They launched from their strong hands
and overshadowed the Titans with their missiles, and buried them
beneath the wide pathed earth, and bound them in bitter chains.
When they had conquered them by their strength, for all
their great spirit, as far beneath the earth to Tartarus.
(24:22):
The Hecatonkyres, according to Hesiod, are much more than allies
of the gods. In their war against the Titans, the
Hecatonkreis strike the final blow. They chain the Titans. They
become the wardens of the Titans, and are quite ironically
imprisoned once more in the process. Now it should be
noted that in some traditions the Hecatonkyres may have fought
(24:45):
instead on the side of the Titans, and in some compilations,
such as Brewer's Dictionary, of phrase and fable. The authors
go so far as to describe individuals, specifically Bryarius as
a titan, so it gets a bit confusing at times.
And I suppose that's how I have always felt about
the hecatonqures since I was a child and read about
(25:06):
them and various books. Somewhat confused because the morphologies of
so many other Greek monsters are just so well defined.
There's so many illustrations of them, and as a child,
you can draw them, you can roughly sketch them yourself,
and it's a lot of fun. But the hecatonqures always
seem to defy logic. Their name feels more like a
(25:26):
literary concept describing a force of nature as opposed to
a codified creature, and indeed this is often how they
are interpreted. They are difficult to envision or to reproduce visually,
and certainly there are plenty of contemporary artists who have
had a lot of fun producing various, surreal and just
horrifying interpretations of the hecatonqures, but one is generally hard
(25:47):
pressed to find representations of these creatures in art history.
Now I invite correction on this front, because I would
very much love to see such images, to see like
classical illustrations, medieval illustrations and so forth of the hecatonqureis.
But my searches have generally come up well empty handed.
Perhaps we've simply lost ancient Greek depictions of these creatures.
(26:09):
I can only assume that they were too far removed
from actual human physiology to interest many sculptors. You know,
I mean, if you're interested in capturing the reality of
the human form, even in the telling of stories and
the presentation of information about deities, then this might not
be your first stop, right. Perhaps they were creatures best
(26:30):
left for depiction in the ages of surrealism and cosmic
horror to come. Indeed, outside of their role in the
struggle against the Titans, little seems to have survived about
the Hecatonqures in general, aside from some tangents concerning Bryarias. Again,
the Hecatonqures are perhaps best interpreted as embodiments of natural forces.
(26:51):
Given their hundred hands and heads, they are like armies
of men compiled into a single great entity, like a
storm or earthquake, with the power of an army. As such,
turning to the natural world of biology. Our best example
of one hundred headed entities are actually large groups working together,
such as humans or use social insects. Now, some of
(27:12):
you out there might be thinking to yourself, well, I
know what as one hundred appendages. Well, even centipedes, despite
their name which means one hundred footed, never have exactly
one hundred limbs. They may have as few as something
like twenty three leg bearing segments, or as many as
I think one hundred and ninety one, but there is
always an odd number of leg bearing segments, never the
(27:34):
even fifty segments that would produce a total of one
hundred legs. By the way, the first millipede with more
than a thousand legs wasn't discovered till twenty twenty one. Now,
despite this disappointment, scientists have fouled room to invoke the
hecatonkreis in the naming of various organisms. Specifically, the name
(27:54):
Bryarius is invoked in the scientific name for various organisms, including,
but not limited to, the Caribbean reef octopus, the hairy
sea cucumber, at least one species of seastar, the qirky
seafinger coral, a sea slug, an extinct trilabite and a
Central American moth as for their mythic namesake, the hecatoncaries. Well,
(28:16):
maybe we should heed the words ohesiate once more. Perhaps
we lack for older depictions of the creature because they
are not to be approached, They are not to be
looked upon. Even Uruanas chose not to do so, And
he used to hide them all away in a secret
place of Earth so soon as each was born, and
(28:37):
would not suffer them to come up into the light.
And Heaven rejoiced in his evil doing, but vast earth
groaned within. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact,
The Artifact, or Anamalius to Pendium each week on Wednesdays.
As always, you can email us at contact at stuff
(28:58):
to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
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