The Dark Side of Ancient Egypt

Summary

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal — Episode Summary: "The Dark Side of Ancient Egypt"

Release Date: May 15, 2025
Hosts: Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling
Guest: Dr. Campbell Price, Egyptologist

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Introduction to the Dark Side of Ancient Egypt

In this episode of After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal, hosts Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling delve into the lesser-known, grim aspects of Ancient Egyptian civilization. Joined by returning guest Dr. Campbell Price, an esteemed Egyptologist from the University of Liverpool and curator at the Manchester Museum, the conversation dismantles the utopian image often associated with Ancient Egypt, uncovering the societal flaws, brutal punishments, and harsh realities faced by its people.

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Understanding the Timeframe of Ancient Egypt

Timestamp: 07:22

Dr. Campbell Price begins by addressing a common misconception about the vast timeline of Ancient Egypt. He explains that Ancient Egyptian history spans approximately 3,000 years, from 3000 BCE to the death of Cleopatra in 30 BCE. This extensive period encompasses significant eras such as the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age, overlapping with civilizations like the Greeks and Romans.

Notable Quote:
"Ancient Egypt exists as a 3,000-year-slice of history, from 3000 BCE to 30 BCE, which is three millennia. The pyramids are relatively near the beginning of this span." — Dr. Campbell Price [07:22]

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Perceptions vs. Reality of Ancient Egyptian Society

Timestamp: 10:34

Maddy Pelling challenges the romanticized view of Ancient Egypt as a peaceful and aesthetically driven society. She raises the question of whether Ancient Egypt was as serene as commonly portrayed or if it harbored significant violence and societal issues.

Notable Quote:
“My perception is that this was quite a peaceful era... I don't necessarily think of it as being especially violent. Am I right to think that or have I made a horrible assumption?” — Maddy Pelling [10:58]

Dr. Price concurs, emphasizing the polarized perceptions of Ancient Egypt. While some view it as a utopia teeming with wealth and civilization, others perceive it through the lens of tyranny and oppression, influenced by historical texts and modern interpretations.

Notable Quote:
"Ancient Egypt tends to exist as a utopia in people's minds... but then there is another angle, the opposite extreme, where Pharaohs are seen as tyrannical figures and Egyptians as slave drivers." — Dr. Campbell Price [12:01]

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Crime and Punishment in Ancient Egypt

Timestamp: 13:08

The discussion transitions to the judicial system of Ancient Egypt. Anthony Delaney posits that crime and punishment were integral to maintaining societal order, much like modern systems.

Notable Quote:
"The criminal justice system essentially is king and court, and then punishment will be met accordingly." — Anthony Delaney [13:08]

Dr. Price elaborates on this by citing literary works like "The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant," which illustrates social inequalities and the lack of a formal court system. Instead, justice was often administered locally by important individuals.

Notable Quote:
"It's about social inequality and where someone is going to get redress for an injustice... it's probably a local important person who metes out the punishment." — Dr. Campbell Price [14:50]

For more severe crimes, such as regicide, punishments were brutal and total eradication of the offender's name and memory was common. Dr. Price references the assassination of Ramses III, where culprits were executed brutally and their names were altered to damn their legacy.

Notable Quote:
"The guilty party's names are changed. So you might be called Mary Ray... changed to Masjid Ray, Ray hates him." — Dr. Campbell Price [18:19]

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Warfare and Treatment of Non-Egyptians

Timestamp: 19:04

Maddy Pelling probes into how Ancient Egypt treated non-Egyptians, especially in the context of warfare and empire-building.

Notable Quote:
"If you are not Egyptian, you are not Good." — Dr. Campbell Price [19:35]

Dr. Price explains that Ancient Egypt did not have modern borders, and non-Egyptians were often subjected to harsh treatment, especially prisoners of war. Fortresses in Nubia serve as evidence of military dominance and the subjugation of local populations.

Notable Quote:
"These are probably people working under duress, under conscription or compulsion." — Dr. Campbell Price [21:23]

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Magic and Magical Practices

Timestamp: 31:00

The conversation shifts to the role of magic in Ancient Egyptian society. Dr. Price explains that magic, particularly black magic, was pervasive and intertwined with daily life and state affairs. Sympathetic magic, such as destroying figurines to curse individuals or groups, was a common practice.

Notable Quote:
"It's a magical thing where you enact what we call execration, where you do something bad to the figurine, you smash it, you break it, you burn it, you bury it, and that will affect the punishment or the repulsion on the group." — Dr. Campbell Price [34:27]

This belief system extended to warfare, where magical acts were believed to have tangible effects on enemies, reinforcing the power dynamics between Egyptians and other groups.

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The Construction of the Pyramids: Reality Behind the Myths

Timestamp: 39:38

One of the focal points of the episode is the construction of the pyramids. Anthony Delaney confronts the common myth that pyramids were built by slaves or even aliens, highlighting the human cost behind these monumental structures.

Notable Quote:
"The reality, as your introduction suggested, must have been not great. It's not easy to build a pyramid." — Dr. Campbell Price [41:07]

Dr. Price discusses recent discoveries, such as the papyrus record of Merer, a foreman responsible for moving blocks, which provides evidence of the organized labor and logistical efforts involved. Contrary to the notion of overworked slaves, there is evidence suggesting that pyramid builders were compensated in kind with food, shelter, and medical care, fostering a sense of pride and communal achievement.

Notable Quote:
"They were paid in kind. So paid with rations. You're given shelter, you're given food... there's a sense of pride, like, 'I helped build this incredible monument.'" — Dr. Campbell Price [42:55]

However, Dr. Price acknowledges the hardships faced by workers, including extreme labor conditions and the potential for brutal treatment, as inferred from wall scenes depicting laborers in distress.

Notable Quote:
"Common mortals in the tomb scenes of the elite are all shown bending at the waist. I kind of wonder, is that maybe because they have literally been cowed by the work?" — Dr. Campbell Price [44:27]

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Conclusion: Unraveling the Complexities of Ancient Egypt

Timestamp: 47:02

As the episode wraps up, Anthony Delaney reflects on the evolving interpretations within Egyptology. The dynamic nature of archaeological discoveries means that our understanding of Ancient Egypt is continually refined, often challenging long-held beliefs.

Notable Quote:
"Egyptologists are constantly unraveling some of this data... it's so enduring as a subject area where it keeps evolving." — Anthony Delaney [47:46]

Dr. Price expresses satisfaction in deciphering the "codes" left behind by the ancient civilization, finding fulfillment in uncovering the nuanced and often harsh realities that existed beneath the surface of Egypt’s grand monuments.

Notable Quote:
"To feel like you are communicating or get some point that the ancient Egyptians were trying to make to us, that is so, so rewarding." — Dr. Campbell Price [48:58]

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Final Thoughts

This episode of After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal provides a compelling exploration into the darker facets of Ancient Egypt. Through insightful dialogue and expert analysis, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the complexities and contradictions within one of history's most fascinating civilizations. From brutal punishments and harsh labor conditions to the pervasive influence of magic, the episode challenges the simplistic, idealized narratives often associated with Ancient Egypt, offering a more balanced perspective rooted in historical evidence.

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Transcript

[Anthony Delaney]

Hi, we're your hosts Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling. And if you would like After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal ad free and get early access.

[Maddy Pelling]

Sign up to History Hit with a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week.

[Anthony Delaney]

Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.

[Tony]

G' Day America It's Tony and Ryan from the Tony and Ryan Podcast from Down Under.

[Ryan]

Today we want to talk to you about Boost Mobile, the newest 5G network in the country.

[Tony]

These guys are no longer the prepaid wireless company you might remember. They've invested billions into building their own 5G towers across America, transforming the carrier into America's fourth major network alongside the other big dogs.

[Ryan]

Yep, they're challenging the competitors by working harder and slightly smarter like this amazing new network. They've literally built the Boost Mobile network.

[Tony]

Together with their roaming partners covers 99% of the US population but 5G speeds not available in all areas.

[Ryan]

Yep, they have blazing fast Internet and plans for all the latest devices. Visit your nearest Boost Mobile store or find them online@boost mobile.com My husband and.

[Paige]

I recently realized that neither of us were getting the sleep we deserved. So we sat down and talked about our ideal beds for him. So soft as feathers for me, firm as a plank. This would be a huge issue if it weren't for the Sleep Number Smart Bed. Thankfully, with our new Sleep Number Smart Bed, we can each dial in our desired Sleep number settings to our ideal comfort and finally get the sleep we deserve. Plus, the Climate series feature makes sure our bed stays nice and cool through the warm summer months. Why choose a Sleep Number Smart Bed? So you can choose your ideal comfort on either side. And now it's the Sleep Number Everything Smart Bed Sale. Every Smart Bed and base are on sale during our Memorial Day event. Up to 50% off limited time. Exclusively at a Sleep Number store near you. See store or sleepnumber.com for details.

[Freddie]

This is Paige, the co host of Giggly Squad. I use Uber Eats for everything and I feel like people forget that you can truly order anything, especially living in New York City. It's why I love it. You can get Chinese food at any time of night, but it's not just for food. I I order from CVS all the time. I'm always ordering from the grocery store. If a friend stops over, I have to order champagne. I also have this thing that whenever I travel, if I'm ever in a hotel room, I never feel like I'm missing something because I'll just Uber Eats it. The amount of times I've had to Uber eats hair items like hairspray, deodorant, you name it, I've ordered it. On Uber Eats, you can get grocery alcohol everyday essentials in addition to restaurants and food you love. So in other words, get almost any anything with Uber Eats. Order now for alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.

[Anthony Delaney]

Hello there. Now, before we dive into today's episode about the dark side of ancient Egypt, my producer Freddie has sent me a message to say I need to give you a warning that this episode contains some gory details and sexual references. I'm going to be honest, I can't for the life of me remember why there are sexual references in in an episode about the dark side of ancient Egypt. But Freddie says there are and I trust him. So you are now warned. Warning now in place. Let's get on with the show.

[Maddy Pelling]

He was a farmer once. His mind wanders, remembering the feeling of warm soil between his fingers, the scent of fresh grain after the harvest. The memory is pierced by shouting, heaving, groaning. Now his hands are blistered and cracked. They smell of crushed limestone and blood. At night, under the thin cover of stars, in a makeshift encampment, he lies beside other conscripts, farmers who are forced to trade seasons of planting for seasons of pain during the long days. A misstep here means a crushed limb or a crushed man. No one stops. There's no time. Khufu's vision, the Great Pyramid, must rise. The priests say Khufu is divine, that building the pyramid is a sacred duty. To question it is to question the will of the gods. But he wonders, if the gods are watching. Why do they allow this suffering? He's witnessed a friend be crushed to death beneath a block that slipped from the sled. The overseer didn't stop. The sun kept beating down. The pyramid continued to rise. Some nights he thinks of running. But his family is back home. If he flees, they will suffer. So he stays. He hauls the ropes. He bleeds into the stone, knowing the cost he might have to pay, whilst the unlucky get crushed beneath the monument they'll never live to see completed. Their bones will forever be a part of the foundation. This is not just a tomb for a king. It's a graveyard for those that built it.

[Campbell Price]

Sam.

[Anthony Delaney]

Well, there you go. That's just a small taste of the grim histories that we'll be exploring today. And probably one you weren't too familiar with. I didn't know some of this. And to help us, of course, is a returning guest, After Dark, and that is Egyptologist Dr. Campbell Price. And Campbell last came on After Dark to talk to us about the untimely deaths and supposed curse that followed the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb after it was sealed shut some 3,000 years ago. Now Campbell is an Egyptologist at University of Liverpool and curator of Egypt and Sudan at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, and of course has one of the UK's most significant Egyptology collections. After that lengthy introduction, Campbell, you are very welcome back to After Dark.

[Danny]

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be back on After Dark.

[Anthony Delaney]

We have an upfront question which actually comes via my nephew Danny, who is obsessed, as I was saying to you before we started recording, shout out to Danny. There's Danny getting all his shout outs on After D. What time are we talking about here? So he sent me a voice note the other day saying, when we're talking about Ancient Egypt, what else is happening in the world? And it's a good question, actually, because you hear Ancient Egypt and you're like, well, actually, what is the time period? How does it relate to Stone Ages and Bronze Ages and all that kind of thing? So enlighten Danny and enlighten all of us. Come.

[Danny]

Well, Danny, hello. This is a really good question. We get it a lot at Manchester Museum and in the galleries at Manchester Museum, the Egyptian Sudan Gallery, we try and suggest it with dates above the cases, but it's always an issue. When you're talking about the past, when are you talking about. If you talk about the Georgians, who do you mean? If you talk about the ancient Egyptians, you're talking about 3,000 years of history. So we talk about ancient Egypt between 3,000 BCE, that's 5,000 years ago, and Cleopatra popping her clogs 30 BCE. So that's three millennia, 3,000 years. The pyramids are at relatively near the beginning of this span and they're probably earlier than Stonehenge. So you're talking about what archaeologists in Europe might call the Stone Age into the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and then along come the Romans around the time Jesus is around. So basically you're talking about 3,000 years before then, but trying, and maybe we'll come back to this point, trying to say what the ancient Egyptians believed is tough. What did one of our ancestors believe 3,000 years ago? Probably very different to what we believe today.

[Maddy Pelling]

It's such a huge amount of time to get your head around and to even begin to think about how those beliefs might have changed, how those people might have changed how they perceived themselves, the world around them, all of that. And we're going to unpack some of that. But first of all, I want to ask a very academic question, Campbell, which is I have seen a popular Internet meme that says that Cleopatra is closer to the iPhone than she is to the pyramids. Is that true?

[Danny]

Absolutely true. I've used that in my book briefly, Ancient Egypt, available on all good book stores. Yeah. Cleopatra lives closer in time to us today. So we're in 2025. She died in 30 BCE than the pyramids. So the great pyramids are the 2000 600s.

[Paige]

Yeah.

[Danny]

So, yeah, she looks closer to us.

[Maddy Pelling]

I need a moment to say it.

[Danny]

Does take, because it makes your brain do these kind of strange gymnastics. That's a long time since Cleopatra. So if you were Cleopatra and we know she visited the pyramids, she knew perfectly well what the pyramids were. Indeed, she, and this is the scary thing, probably knew more about the pyramids than we do.

[Maddy Pelling]

Oh, I've got.

[Anthony Delaney]

You know what's weird as well, that when we're talking about, oh, well, we're Georgian historians or whatever, and you know, obviously we're generalists as well, but that was our Ph.D. whatever. Then when people are Egyptologists, they are expected to cover 3,000 years. We have like 100, 150 year thingy. So that's kind of daunting as an Egyptologist, surely.

[Maddy Pelling]

So you get that when you say to someone, oh, I'm a historian in the broadest sense, and people say, what happened on 25th November 1942? And you think that's not how being a historian works. Do people do that to you, Campbell.

[Danny]

For the entire 3,000 year period, really a problem. But as you say, even characterizing what people thought, what people thought about Brexit in the uk, try finding people that have exactly the same opinion. And we lived through that, asking in Ancient Egyptian what they thought about the building of the Great Pyramid. Yeah, yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

Well, let's think a little bit then about that. The distance between the people themselves and how we perceive them now, how we understand that big period and some of the assumptions that we've maybe layered onto that and simplified, shall we say? I think, you know, when we think of ancient Egypt, obviously there's the mummified people, there are the pyramids. We have quite a set sort of stock image in our minds.

[Danny]

Absolutely.

[Maddy Pelling]

And I would say the general perception certainly My perception is that this was quite a peaceful era. It's a very sort of aesthetic one. It's all about building things, it's about creating things. I don't necessarily think of it as being especially violent. Am I right to think that or have I made a horrible assumption?

[Danny]

This is a great point to discuss. And as you both know, you know, any point in history can be polarizing. Some people think it was great back when. Other people think it was terrible back then, back in them olden days. So I think the problem with Egypt, ancient Egypt as an idea in people's heads is that it tends generally to exist as a utopia. Luxury, colorful, glamorous, sunny, wealthy, wealthy, civilized.

[Anthony Delaney]

Civilized.

[Danny]

But then there is another angle, the opposite extreme. You have maybe influenced by scripture, the idea of the Egyptians are as slave drivers for the wrong type of people. It's true.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah.

[Danny]

You know, there's tyranny. The pharaoh is a tyrannical figure. And indeed in Arabic writing in the middle Ages onwards, you know, you talk about pharaoh and that's not a compliment. You're talking about a tyrant. I think generally this is partly the fault of museums and books and TV shows and exhibitions.

[Maddy Pelling]

It's all your fault, Campbell.

[Danny]

Yeah, I'll take it, I'll take it personally, but I'm trying to unpack it myself. So I'm really glad I have the chance to talk about it here. We would rather have a simplified Ancient Egypt was like this. The ancient Egyptians believed this. They had these ideals and the darker side is ignored.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, I mean we're going to look at some of those darker facets today. Okay. And the first one I want to start with is crime and punishment, because my perception, and tell me if I'm wrong here, but my perception is that the criminal justice system essentially is king and court, and then punishment will be met accordingly, depending on what's happening there. How true is that? And what does crime and punishment look like during this entire 3,000 year period?

[Danny]

To hear he is what was happening. Yeah, great point. So one problem we have generally, and we should acknowledge it, is in reconstructing ancient Egypt over the last 200 years, the length of time Egyptology has been happening. And you find this with other parts of history. We impose or layer over our perceptions of the world onto people in the past. So you see a successful civilized state like the Egyptians of the new kingdom, so 1200 BCE and you think, well, that must have been like the British Empire, because this is what the first interpreters, who were a lot of them British knew. So how else could you produce these massive monuments? Oh, there must have been colonies and they must have had viceroys and the King must have operated as the head of a bureaucracy. You're quite right. I think in practical terms, government, that we would call government, was the king and the court, which was tiny, the elite, was 1%, 2% of people in Egypt. And the reality of crime and punishment, we know because throughout that 3,000 year period, we have lots of evidence. Admittedly it's spaced out, but we've got lots of evidence. And that evidence relates to face, to face, individual social situations. So you do something wrong. There's a great piece of literature, kind of popular literature, known in English as the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant. And it's about a peasant who comes a cropper because his donkey eats some of the crops of a rich man.

[Anthony Delaney]

How dare he?

[Danny]

And this sets up this whole. It's about social inequality and where is someone going to get redress for an injustice? Well, it's not like a law court as we would understand it. It's probably a local important person who, yeah, metes out the punishment or the reward or does justice.

[Maddy Pelling]

And there were more violent punishments as well, weren't there, for more serious crimes? I mean, justice for the donkey. But, you know, there were, if you, if you committed maybe a brutal crime, a violent crime, maybe a sexual crime, that met with more severe punishment, didn't it?

[Danny]

Yes. I mean, it's funny because it's true of lots of aspects of life, things which were, to us, very interesting to an ancient Egyptian, we're par for the course. So that's just life, you know, someone does something bad, something bad is done to them and it's not recorded anywhere. But there are lights shone on certain parts of society. Sure. Where it concerns what we would call the state. So remember the king, the court killing the king. We have evidence of that.

[Maddy Pelling]

Regicide, presumably punishment for that.

[Danny]

Yeah, the highest, of course, punishment. And so we have an extraordinary series of documents that talk about their transcripts basically, of the trial of these people who have been caught responsible for the assassination of King Ramesses III. So we're talking about the 12th century, 1100s BCE. And this is a list of the court people very close to the king. Spoiler. It was one of his lesser wives who wanted her son to become the next king and bump the crown prince.

[Maddy Pelling]

I too would kill my husband if I was the lesser wife.

[Danny]

Well, if you have a perception, you are the lesser wife. I'm sure there's lots of psychologising we could do. But the culprits seem ultimately to be tried by the next king, the legitimate king, Ramses iv, son of Ramses iii. And in these court documents, there's a whole thing about black magic. We'll maybe come back to that. And the punishment is of course, death. Because you've attempted and in fact succeeded in killing a God. For a long time, it was not known if Ramesses III had actually died in this harem conspiracy, it's called, this assassination attempt. But his body has been examined and his throat seems to have been cut. Enough of the flesh is preserved to show that if you're doing well, you're allowed to commit suicide. That is merciful. If you have been executed in some fashion, probably by being put in a wooden stake until you die and then your body is burned. So not only have you died an excruciating death, you have no chance of an afterlife because you need a body for the afterlife.

[Maddy Pelling]

You've been utterly eviscerated.

[Danny]

You've been literally eviscerated, and not in a good way, in the standard elite way. After death, if someone dies a natural death, then maybe evisceration helps in the transformation of the body. Oh, yeah. But that's a separate thing. But in these court documents, and this is really creepy, really dark, the guilty party's names are changed. So not even your name will survive. So you might be called Mary Ray. So Ray, the sun God loves him, loves you. Change to Masjid Ray, Ray hates him.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, wow.

[Danny]

And that's just total, complete obliteration.

[Anthony Delaney]

Wow, that's so powerful.

[Danny]

It is powerful. In a society which placed for the elite, a great emphasis on writing. To have your name inverted like that is really nasty.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. So I mean, if this is what the ancient Egyptians are doing to their own people and the people under their rule, what are they doing to their enemies? If we're thinking about warfare in this period, obviously, you know, you made the comparison to the British Empire, presumably Egypt at various points expands its borders. It is presumably coming into conflict with other people. How does it treat them?

[Danny]

Oh, so first of all, I would say there are no borders. Really. The ancient Egyptians don't think quite in terms of borders.

[Maddy Pelling]

And that's fascinating.

[Danny]

Yeah. So the concept, our modern concept of borders on a map is non existent. There are frontiers and various kings talk about these frontiers. But that means if you have no borders, Ancient Egypt never really tries to expand because Egypt itself is perfect. The gods favor the land of Egypt. Anywhere else is basically to be pitied or despised.

[Anthony Delaney]

But isn't part of the concept of Egypt in their mindset. Okay.

[Danny]

They have the concept of Egypt as a land mass, but ask someone to draw a line, I think would be impossible because the borders are fuzzy. But they don't like non Egyptians. Basically, on a state level, the ideology is if you are not Egyptian, you are not Good.

[Maddy Pelling]

Follow up question to that. Then how are you identified as Egyptian? Because if Egypt is a state of mind to a certain extent and an idea that you can buy into, or who is allowed to be Egyptian and who is not.

[Danny]

Well, so even though on a state level, some of the earliest images of royal iconography that clearly show a king, a pharaoh, show him beating up foreign people, they are bound, they are subdued. He's bashing them over the head, doing some smiting, Very British, doing some smiting. This is what maybe the certain British colonial agents recognized in themselves. It says nothing, of course, about ancient ideas of empire anyway. Yes. So the state level ideology is if you're not Egyptian, if you're not living the Egyptian life, and of course Egypt itself, then as now is a very diverse place between Alexandria and Aswan, north and south. If you're not living in an Egyptian way, the state says you can be beaten up. But in practical terms, people move, people migrate, people change their identities. So we have evidence, written evidence, which is the best source for this, of non Egyptians, people from the south of Egypt, what is now modern Sudan or the Levant, for example, coming in and living in Egyptian society and being called the Syrian man or the Cushite, the Nubian woman.

[Maddy Pelling]

And that was tolerated.

[Danny]

And this was. Yeah, then they're merchants, they're living normal.

[Maddy Pelling]

Lives next to people, although they are.

[Danny]

Othered, but they are othered in some settings. And it's interesting, it does seem, and maybe it's not surprising given how popular Egyptian, ancient Egyptian imagery is today, that the way of depicting yourself as an elite Egyptian is taken on by non Egyptian elites who move to Egypt. They don't want to show themselves as Libyan or Nubian, they want to show themselves as Egyptian.

[Maddy Pelling]

They want to assimilate.

[Danny]

Yeah, so that's the wealthy people, of course. But then, as you said on the battlefield, someone who's not Egyptian is not to be pitied. There is fairly good evidence, again from foreign names of lists of workers on, for example, the temple of Queen Hatshepsut. Fabulous building, you know, 1400s BCE. We know Hatshepsut's father, Thutmose I, is a major warrior king. He's going out beating up foreigners and he's bringing prisoners of war. So you bring your prisoners of war and you say we've got a temple needs building and there's a list for maybe the attendants on that day who's building today. And the list lists these non Egyptian names. So from that you can extrapolate. Actually, these are probably people working under duress, under conscription or compulsion.

[Tony]

G' Day America. It's Tony and Ryan from the Tony and Ryan Podcast from Down Under.

[Ryan]

Today we want to talk to you about Boost Mobile, the newest 5G network in the country.

[Tony]

These guys are no longer the prepaid wireless company you might remember. They've invested billions into building their own 5G towers across America, transforming the carrier into America's fourth major network alongside the other big dogs.

[Ryan]

Yep, they're challenging the competitors by working harder and smarter, like this amazing new network they've literally built.

[Tony]

The Boost Mobile network together with their roaming partners covers 99% of the US population, but 5G speeds not available in all areas.

[Ryan]

Yep, they have a blazing fast Internet and plans for all the latest devices. Visit your nearest Boost Mobile store or find them [e-mail] My husband and I.

[Paige]

Recently realized that neither of us were getting the sleep we deserved. So we sat down and talked about our ideal beds. For him, soft as feathers for me, firm as a plank. This would be a huge issue if it weren't for the Sleep Number Smart Bed. Thankfully, with our new Sleep Number Smart Bed, we can each dial in our desired Sleep Number settings to our ideal comfort and finally get the sleep we deserve. Plus, the Climate Series feature makes sure our bed stays nice and cool through the warm summer months. Why choose a Sleep Number Smart Bed? So you can choose your ideal comfort on either side. And now it's the Sleep Number Everything Smart Bed Sale. Every Smart Bed and Base are on sale during our Memorial Day event. Up to 50% off limited time. Exclusively at a Sleep Number store near you. See store or sleepnumber.com for details.

[Freddie]

This is Paige, the co host of Giggly Squad. I use Uber Eats for everything and I feel like people forget that you can truly order anything, especially living in New York City. It's why I love it. You can get Chinese food at any time of night, but it's not just for food. I order from CVS all the time. I'm always ordering from the grocery store. If a friend stops over, I have to order champagne. I also have this thing that whenever I travel, if I'm ever in a hotel room, I never feel like I'm missing something because I'll just Uber Eats it. The amount of times I've had to Uber eats hair items like hairspray, deodorant, you name it, I've ordered it. On Uber Eats, you can get grocery alcohol everyday essentials in addition to restaurants and food you love. So in other words, get almost anything with Uber Eats. Order now for alcohol. You must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.

[Campbell Price]

Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can set up chores, automate allowance and keep an eye on your kids spending with real time notifications. Kids learn to earn, save and spend wisely. And parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place. Sign up for Greenlight [e-mail] podcast.

[Anthony Delaney]

Now. We love an image here on After Dark and in this vein, and in terms of some of the punishment that is being inflicted on some of these people, and particularly potentially in a war setting, I have a picture here of what says above. It is severed penises being piled up as war trophies at Ramses III's Tale Temple. Campbell, talk to me about this please.

[Danny]

So how are you going to estimate your body count? Penises? Yes. So there's evidence of this from a few centuries prior to that image. So ramses III again, 1100s BCE. Of course, Ramses III himself becomes a cropper. So on the battlefield we know a soldier in kind of hand to hand combat in order to get a reward, has to. Or one of the methods of getting a reward is to take a hand.

[Maddy Pelling]

Okay.

[Danny]

And there is the pretty real implication. You're on the battlefield, you kill someone and you cut off the right hand and you present it to the troop commander and say hey, so gruesome.

[Maddy Pelling]

But like puts it in the cupboard. Like what is he then doing with all these hands?

[Danny]

Well, the really scary thing is not so long ago this idea of the hands and as I'll come on to, the penises were just a fiction. They're just a visual way of showing how many people were killed on the battlefield and accounting for the number until we found a pile of severed hands near a royal palace in the north of Egypt in the Delta. So they seem genuinely to have.

[Anthony Delaney]

How recent was that find?

[Danny]

Last 20 odd years, right?

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, last couple of decades.

[Maddy Pelling]

So I can understand taking the hand because it's on the one hand. Evidence. Evidence that you have defeated someone that you've killed them. Presumably it's symbolic as well.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Maddy Pelling]

That they will not be able to fight. And in terms of thinking about an afterlife as well and the desecration of a body, I can see where this is going. But talk to me about the escalation of hands to penises. Not a sentence I thought I'd be saying on a public podcast.

[Danny]

So one interpretation, Egyptological interpretation, is it's, as you've just alluded to, it's about stopping any kind of regeneration in the afterlife. Not only are you killed on the battlefield, which is pretty terrible, but you have no chance of an afterlife. Your body probably won't be buried, but to add insult to injury, your right hand is taken away and your penis is taken away because it's men fighting on the battlefield. And so this may be an allusion to the primeval creation act, where the creator God masturbates the world into existence. So if you have no right hand and no penis, it's also. It's just a way of checking, I guess, people don't count up too many people. So you can only have one penis, and hence the emphasis on the right hand. So you're not counting two hands.

[Anthony Delaney]

I will say this. There is no way. I thought this is what I'd be discussing when I came to work today.

[Maddy Pelling]

No, no, it's just.

[Danny]

Well, there you go.

[Anthony Delaney]

That's the gift that ancient Egypt keeps giving.

[Danny]

So the image you're seeing is this kind of accountancy scene in the temple of Ramesses iii.

[Maddy Pelling]

These are not the records I sent to my accountant.

[Danny]

So you have hands. Right hands. You have penises. And, I mean, even if someone hadn't already died on the battlefield.

[Maddy Pelling]

Oh, no.

[Danny]

Right hand and genitals are probably gonna. You're gonna bleed out. There's also.

[Maddy Pelling]

That'll do it.

[Danny]

Yeah. Not great. But then there are also, on that same wall, which I of last month, there are what seem to be tongues. Now, the idea that. Yeah, you then have. No, again, that could be an allusion to creation, where there's another version of the creation myth where the creator God speaks things into existence.

[Maddy Pelling]

And you've kind of alluded already, Campbell, to the. The importance of language, particularly writing, but language in the Egyptian culture and speaking things into power. Names have huge importance. And sort of abusing someone's name or changing someone's name can have this real impact on them. I suppose when all the hands were found, there may very well have been penises with them. But of course, there'd be no evidence of that today.

[Danny]

I literally thought that same thing on the train down Madiah thought, well, actually, let's think of it this. Yeah, it just would survive.

[Maddy Pelling]

Of course, it's the thing you should be thinking about on the train. Talk to me about magic. You mentioned dark magic, possible sorcery in ancient Egypt. We've got these very physical punishments going on, these physical rituals and practices on the battlefield, off the battlefield. Where does magic and magical thinking come into this?

[Danny]

Well, as you've just said, because those things we've just talked about have a physical representation on state temple walls. We know a bit about them. I suspect what we would call black magic was quite widespread. It just doesn't leave a material trace. So an example of this in, again, literature, we've got quite a lot of surviving folk tales basically from ancient Egypt. There are allusions to magicians creating forms of people and animals from wax. And so if you create, for example, a wax crocodile, a crocodile could be commanded to snatch someone from the riverbank. Or if you create a wax image of someone and do something bad to the image, something bad correspondingly will happen through sympathetic magic. A basic way of thinking about it. And I'm sure it's more complicated through sympathetic magic, something bad will happen to the person. So this relates back to what evidence we have from Egyptian fortresses, especially to the south of Egypt, into Nubia, big, big fortresses between maybe 1800-1900-1800-1700 BCE, where the Egyptian military state, if we can call it that, is trying to control traffic on the Nile, further south in Africa into what is now Sudan. And there are lots of soldiers stationed there. So there's not just an imperial presence. Of course, these have been interpreted as, oh, colonial bastions. And of course it's the Egyptian colonial state. I sense rather that there's a feeling of anxiety and fear from the local population. So you need not only to have a big set of walls and weapons and soldiers, you need to use magic against. Especially in the case of, to the south of Egypt, the land of Nubia, Nubian magicians appear in literature. So the Nubian people are particularly associated maybe with this threat to the Egyptians. So again, objects which you could liken to voodoo dolls. I make that advisedly, but, you know, with all the cultural context that should be borne in mind, you have images of forms, people that have, on the really elaborate versions, text written on them with the names of all the groups that you're afraid of or you want to control and including dead people. So there are the bad dead people that you don't want to do something to you living people. So you enact what we call in Egyptology, execration, where you do something bad to the figurine, you smash it, you break it, you burn it, you bury it, and that will affect the punishment or the repulsion on the group. Again, this was thought to be a purely, a magical thing that maybe just happened in object form until a decapitated body was found next to one of these deposits in one of the fortresses. So you could imagine a high pressure situation in a fortress where you catch one of the local people and you think, okay, we're going to make an example of them and you decapitate them and then you bury the head upside down as a magical form of supporting what you've done with objects, with real people.

[Maddy Pelling]

I don't know about you, Anthony, but when we started this conversation, we were talking at the beginning about the perceptions that we have of ancient Egypt. And for me it's very material based. It's these tactile objects that survive and we have incredible survivals of human bodies, of buildings, of, of that. But actually it's this ephemeral element that's coming in now, and you're talking Campbell, but the sort of effect that they believed in, that if you did something somewhere, it would manifest somewhere else. And whether that's naming someone, whether it's writing something on an object that is going to have an effect on a living thing or indeed a dead thing somewhere else.

[Danny]

Yes. Yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

That one act somewhere implicates a different person in a different place or a different time or different realm. I'm curious about. I suppose in your work studying this time period, is it difficult and frustrating to bridge that gap? I suppose, because how do you access the ephemeral and the non tangible? Because, you know, you've mentioned so many incredible discoveries where you come across something in the archaeological record that suggests some kind of magic. But how, how do you fine tune those assessments? Is that an issue in this field?

[Danny]

Absolutely, because we've got so little in general. I mean, loads of amazing stuff, as you just said, has survived. But think about, you know, human occupation for three millennia. That produces a lot of stuff and we only have a fraction of what was originally produced and used. The main frustration is so little has survived as an archaeological subject. But then the other frustration is some of our predecessors maybe have read that evidence in a certain way. So for example, oh, the ancient Egyptians were suspicious. Great builders, but they were suspicious and they worshipped animal headed gods. And of course it's all nonsense. And we have to fight against this default, patronizing attitude which a lot of our predecessors and maybe some of our contemporary historians still have. This, to me, is a totally logical way of dealing with the world. You have a problem, someone, you can name them, you can figure them in some way, you can connect their identity with an object and you can do something and that affects the person. That's just a social response to life. To me. It's not a sign of oh, eye roll. The ancient Egyptians are actually disappointingly, quite superstitious. I mean, people do it all around the world.

[Paige]

My husband and I recently realized that neither of us were getting the sleep we deserved. So we sat down and talked about our ideal beds. For him, soft as feathers. For me, firm as a plank. This would be a huge issue if it weren't for the Sleep Number Smart Bed. Thankfully, with our new Sleep Number Smart Bed, we can each dial in our desired Sleep Number settings to our ideal comfort and finally get the sleep we deserve. Plus, the Climate Series feature makes sure our bed stays nice and cool through the warm summer months. Why choose a Sleep Number Smart Bed? So you can choose your ideal comfort on either side. And now it's the Sleep Number Everything Smart Bed Sale Every Smart Bed and base are on sale during our Memorial Day event. Up to 50% off limited time. Exclusively at a Sleep Number store near you. See store or sleepnumber.com for details.

[Freddie]

This is Paige, the co host of Giggly Squad. I use Uber Eats for everything and I feel like people forget that you can truly order anything, especially living in New York City. It's why I love it. You can get Chinese food at any time of night, but it's not just for food. I order from CVS all the time. I'm always ordering from the grocery store. If a friend stops over, I have to order champagne. I also have this thing that whenever I travel, if I'm ever in a hotel room, I never feel like I'm missing something because I'll just Uber eats it. The amount of times I've had to uber eats hair items like hairspray, deodorant, you name it, I've ordered it. On Ubereats, you can get grocery alcohol everyday essentials in addition to restaurants and food you love. So in other words, get almost anything with Ubereats. Order now for alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.

[Anthony Delaney]

So before we let you go Campbell, I want to talk to you about probably the most one of the Most iconic parts of ancient Egypt and that is the pyramids. Now we have this perception, these kind of glorious structures and this marvel or even you'll hear some people called aliens have built these structures. It's so unbelievable. But actually there is quite a grim reality to the way these structures come about, isn't that right?

[Danny]

Yes. So again, it's polarized. You get the people who say it was aliens. And I mean, just in the news in the last month, this story about. Supposed to.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, I think I saw something going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Danny]

The second pyramid of Giza, a total clap trap, but especially on social media, on TikTok Instagram, that just went wild and you get your Graham Hancock cranks talking about that. So there's that extreme of the precision of the pyramids is preternaturally superhuman. Then there's the other, again, influenced by scripture idea. The Egyptian pharaoh was a tyrant and of course the Egyptians were slave drivers. So the reality is, as you already alluded to in the introduction, that Egyptian people were paid farmers because the majority of people were farmers to do things when they were not busy. So when the river rose every year in the inundation, the flood for two or three months, that meant that you could more easily float blocks from a quarry on the opposite side of the river to the site of the pyramid. And again, 20 years ago, you could have spoken to an Egyptologist who said, well, we'll never find the diary of a pyramid builder. We did a papyrus on the Red Sea coast, has an account logbook of this is how we moved the blocks. Oh, and the guy was called Merar, who's in charge of this. So amazing discoveries.

[Anthony Delaney]

I didn't even know that existed.

[Maddy Pelling]

And that's so amazing to think this is contemporary with Stonehenge. Right. And of course, how they move those stones is endless debate around that and where they came from and how they got to the. The solitary plain, etc. And the fact that we can point to this in ancient Egypt and say this is what they were doing.

[Danny]

So there were people and again, there is no social background really to them. So there's not the information a historian might want. But so you've got to nuance this idea of everyone was happy and joyful and were really happy to be part of this project, in a sense. From the evidence we have, it seems that the great success of the pyramids was not just the building the pyramid, but to gather people apparently from all over Egypt to work on a national project. There'd be an ongoing crew of people no doubt working in the pyramids year round, but there would be an increase in concentration at the time of the flood, which incidentally is when it's hottest. So the majority of work was done in the Egyptian summer, which is not great anyway. So I could imagine, you know, being a farmer from the south of Egypt, going, working for three months, being put up, being fed, having access to medical care, going back home with a feeling of pride, being like, wow, I helped work and I saw these incredible things and wow, you know, the north of Egypt is totally different.

[Anthony Delaney]

All of that being paid. Do we know or we don't know.

[Danny]

Paid in kind. So paid with rations. Sure, it was a non monetary economy, but you're given shelter, you're given food. But even though we have some lovely suggestive bits of evidence, like graffiti on some of the blocks in the pyramids which have the names of the gangs that were responsible for the block dragging. So you have names like the Friends of Khufu.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, there's like nicknames.

[Danny]

Or the Drunkards of Menkaure. I love that.

[Maddy Pelling]

I want to be in that team.

[Danny]

It sounds like quite a bit you.

[Anthony Delaney]

Want to build a pyramid with a hangover. That sounds like the worst.

[Danny]

Oh yeah, not good, but. So there's this idea that it was great, but the reality, as your introduction suggested, must have been not great. It is not easy to build a pyramid. So we don't have any direct evidence of this from the site of Giza, really. The cemetery that's sometimes said to be the cemetery of the workers probably relates to people who were servicing the cult of the pharaoh after his death. So after the pyramid was finished. So it's difficult to say what the work people were like. They probably went back home after their shift or if they died at the time they were sent back home. However, we have some again, quite sinister evidence from the site of Amarna. So this is the town in Middle Egypt where, where Tutankhamun grew up and at that time the king, at the time Tutankhamun's father probably Akhenaten, says, right, we need a new completely from scratch city. We don't have time to drag big blocks, we need to use small blocks enough that one person can carry. Now this is something that really shows us that it's better to have a team of people drag a big block than to have individual people carry a single block.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Yes, because we have the people's bodies and they are young and their backs have literally been broken from the effort of carrying the box and a kind of a Sinister aspect of this is in the wall scenes, you see common mortals in the tomb scenes of the elite are all shown bending at the waist. I kind of wonder, is that maybe because they have literally been cowed by the work of doing whatever they've had to do to make this amazing city appear in 20 years? So, no, we don't have evidence directly from Giza, from the sites of the great pyramids, but I don't think it would have been a party.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, no, far from us.

[Maddy Pelling]

Would have been better if it was aliens, I think. Better for people.

[Anthony Delaney]

Would it?

[Danny]

The ancient Egyptians. Yeah, very clever people. But it's neither, you know, hell on Earth nor in utopia. Yeah, it's somewhere in between, because that's human society.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Some people get more power and they use that power in different ways.

[Maddy Pelling]

As a final question, then, just thinking about the sacrifice that these people made in building the pyramids and the damage that was done to them, and thinking about the wider conversation that we've had and this idea of effect and sort of magical thinking, what is in it for these people building these huge monuments? What do they believe that is allowing them to wake up every day and do that and be broken in that way?

[Danny]

I mean, again, it comes back to this. To what extent are we using colonial imagery and putting that back on to the ancient Egyptians? So evidence which could be interpreted as corvette labor, where, you know, you get a work gang together, did that exist? To what extent did that exist? Egyptologists are still not quite sure. But even if it didn't exist, even if some hard conscription didn't exist and people were willingly doing it, what are they getting for it, other than a sense of pride, as I maybe alluded to before, I suspect if it were me, and if you were successfully going back home to your family and saying, guess what I've been up to? There must have been not just a sense of pride, just human pride, and, wow, I did this thing and I've seen more of the world. There may have been a thought of, I have materially contributed to a monument which is conventionally interpreted as the tomb of the King. Whether it actually is the tomb of.

[Maddy Pelling]

The King, it's some kind of future episode.

[Danny]

Perhaps it's some kind of incredible religious royal structure. Whether the king was buried there or not, whether it was a tomb or not doesn't matter. The fact that you physically touched and helped put those blocks in place. Going from all the other evidence we know from Pharaonic Egypt, where materials, association, physical proximity to gods is important for centuries, for millennia, after the Great Pyramid state pyramid were built, people were jostling to get buried in the shadow of those monuments. You're not telling me if you had actively had a hand in building them, some metaphysical benefit came to you. I'm sure that was the case.

[Anthony Delaney]

I suppose one of the things that's really struck me about this conversation which has been so enlightening in a way, is the extent to which Egyptologists are constantly unraveling some of this data that is. And changing the interpretation of that data that's coming through. And I think that makes it such. It almost, almost to an extent explains why it's so enduring as a subject area where it going. We think it's this 20 years later, actually. Oh no, we think it might be this now. And it's. And it's, it's. And it is that thing that feeds back into what you were talking earlier, Maddie, about like codes. Because in a way they have left us so many codes and we think we understand and then we go, oh no, I'm not quite sure I did understand that correctly. Let's rephrase that and look at the code again. So it's. That's potentially one of the reasons, along with loads of other things that it's so enduring and it is such an enduring subject.

[Danny]

There are definitely people, and maybe this is the subject of another episode, who I like to say they're playing a game with monuments and signs and codes. And one of the things that I think Egyptologists find most satisfying is feeling like you work out the code, the game.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And sure, there's a fraction of things preserved and we look at things still generally with a very modern Western view. But even amongst all that misunderstanding and lack of evidence, to feel like you are communicating or get some point that the ancient Egyptians were trying to make to us, that is so, so rewarding. Yeah. Great. Great to be an Egyptologist.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

I think that's the perfect place to end. I know I might retrain now.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah. Although I couldn't take the heath.

[Maddy Pelling]

You'd be terrible.

[Danny]

Yeah, it's a bit hard.

[Anthony Delaney]

I'll have to.

[Maddy Pelling]

I would enjoy it. I couldn't go and work anywhere cold. I couldn't be a historian of any cold place. If you enjoyed this episode, you can leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts. If you're watching on YouTube, then please like and subscribe. Spread the word. It helps people to discover our show. And if you want to get in touch to talk about this episode or any other, you can email us at.

[Danny]

After [e-mail] location the lab Quinton only has 24 hours to sell his car. Is that even possible?

[Maddy Pelling]

He goes to Carvana.com what is this, a movie trailer?

[Danny]

He ignores the doubters, enters his license plate. Wow, that's a great offer. The car is sold, but will Carvana pick it up in time?

[Maddy Pelling]

They'll literally pick it up tomorrow morning. Done with the dramatics.

[Danny]

Car selling in record time.

[Freddie]

Save your time. Go to Carvana.com and sell your car today.

[Paige]

Pick up these may apply My husband and I recently realized that neither of us were getting the sleep we deserved. So we sat down and talked about our ideal beds. For him, soft as feathers. For me, firm as a plank. This would be a huge issue if it weren't for the Sleep Number Smart Bed. Thankfully, with our new Sleep Number Smart Bed, we can each dial in our desired Sleep Number settings to our ideal comfort and finally get the sleep we deserve. Plus, the Climate Series feature makes sure our bed stays nice and cool through the warm summer months. Why choose a Sleep Number Smart Bed? So you can choose your ideal comfort on either side. And now it's the Sleep Number Everything Smart Bed Sale Every Smart Bed and base are on sale during our Memorial Day event. Up to 50% off limited time. Exclusively at a Sleep Number store near you. C store or sleepnumber.com for details.