Sex & Scandal in Ancient Egypt

Summary

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

Episode: Sex & Scandal in Ancient Egypt
Host: Dr Kate Lister
Guest: Dr Campbell Price, Egyptologist
Date: December 5, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, sex historian Dr Kate Lister is joined by Egyptologist Dr Campbell Price to explore the complexities of sex, scandal, and societal attitudes in Ancient Egypt. The conversation delves into the biases of Victorian-era scholarship, debunks modern misconceptions, and investigates ancient Egyptian attitudes toward sexuality, sex work, gender, and scandal. Dr Price shares insights drawn from artifacts, literature, and art, offering a nuanced look at what sex, sexuality, and power really meant along the Nile.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Clouded Legacies: Victorian Egyptology and Sexuality

[05:01–11:54]

• Dr Lister and Dr Price introduce “Victorians it up” – a term for the way Victorian scholars projected their own anxieties and morals onto ancient civilizations, especially Egypt.
• Victorian Egyptologists heavily controlled access to “naughty” artifacts (e.g., wooden penises, explicit papyri), often hiding them in locked cabinets or translating lewd texts into Latin to restrict access.
  • Dr Price [09:37]: “There were definitely objects in museums in the 19th century that were in locked cabinets… Naughty things like wooden penises.”
• The British colonial mindset both admired Egyptian achievements and dismissed Egyptians as “lazy and not caring about their own history.”
• Egypt was cast in a feminized, eroticized light, while the West positioned itself as masculine and rational.

2. Artistic Evidence and Its Pitfalls

[16:06–21:45]

• Most archaeological records come from tombs of the wealthy, skewing our understanding.
  • Dr Price [18:00]: “You're not seeing a cross section of society, you're seeing the rich people, the dead people... So you have this double bias.”
• Ancient Egyptian art is highly standardized and symbolic rather than literal; what we find erotic or shocking (like prominent penises or nude forms) may have been normal or had other meanings for them.
• Victorian/modern reactions to the explicit—like museums covering up a god’s erect penis—reflect our own discomfort, not ancient views.
  • Dr Price [21:43]: “There's a big relief with a God with a stonking big penis and they've put the label over the erect penis.”

3. Shifts in Decorum: Public and Royal Sexuality

[25:19–28:20]

• Despite consistency in Egyptian art, there were changes in public displays of affection.
• Akhenaten and Nefertiti are shown kissing in temple art (unprecedented for royalty), breaking taboos about physical contact in official depictions.
  • Dr Price [26:12]: “The king is shown kissing his wife. Oh my God... The Egyptian pharaoh is never shown eating, drinking, or in physical contact with anyone.”

4. Sex Work and Harems: Myths versus Evidence

[28:21–35:34]

• No “copper bottomed evidence” of professional sex work exists from pharaonic Egypt. While literature references transactional sex, a monetary economy to support sex work as a “profession” didn’t exist.
• Harems were real but complex—far from mere centers of sensuality, they were places of industry and economic activity, especially in textile manufacture, managed by royal women.
  • Dr Price [35:23]: “The royal women... are entrepreneurs in a sense. They are managing a major textile industry.”
• Diplomatic marriages were common—pharaohs had multiple wives and many children, but daughters of Pharaoh did not marry foreign princes.

5. The Case of Hatshepsut, Scandal, and Gender Dynamics

[36:34–42:11]

• Queen Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh, held unprecedented power.
• Dr Price has focused on her close relationship with Senenmut, an unmarried and powerful official; speculation abounds about the nature of their connection.
  • Graffiti from Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple shows two people having sex—identities remain hotly debated.
    • Dr Price [39:41]: “All we can say is it's two people having sex. That's it.”
  • Victorian scholars (often male) disparaged Hatshepsut, projecting anxieties about female power and sexual autonomy.
• Modern efforts try to move past these gendered narratives, challenging the idea that power for women in ancient Egypt had to be sexualized.

6. Same-Sex Behavior, Incest, and Myth

[42:35–47:17]

• Homosexuality and incest appear in ancient Egyptian texts, but always framed within heteronormative expectations.
  • Notably, the first recorded “chat up line” in history is from an uncle to his nephew: “Nephew, how beautiful are your buttocks?” [42:56]
• Royal incest was normalized for dynastic reasons; same-sex acts are attested but often depicted as transgressive or disruptive rather than normative.
  • Mythological references (e.g., Seth attempting to dominate Horus) serve as allegories for power rather than straightforward celebrations or condemnations of same-sex relationships.

7. The Turin Erotic Papyrus and Ancient Humor

[47:45–50:40]

• The “erotic papyrus” is unique—depicts exaggerated sexual acts in a satirical and humorous context, not simply pornographic.
  • Scenes show balding men and made-up women in improbable scenarios; accompanying texts are filled with jokes.
  • May have lampooned the aristocracy or paid homage to the goddess Hathor, associated with sex and drunkenness.
  • Dr Price [49:38]: “It's not the ancient Egyptian Karma Sutra… seems to be a way of satirizing the aristocracy maybe.”
• Historical humor is hard to parse, relying on context and shared references lost to time.

8. Recap & Contemporary Relevance

[50:57–52:40]

• Dr Price would travel back to meet Hatshepsut and Senenmut to answer unresolved questions about their lives and relationship.
• Ancient Egypt’s sexual attitudes were complex and shifting, shaped by political, economic, and artistic factors—not simply “opulent” or “decadent.”
• The episode closes with Dr Price’s upcoming biography of Senenmut and an open invitation to return for future discussions.

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• Dr Lister [10:28]: “They seem to be trying to sanitize it completely… but they're also obsessed with the sexuality of these groups of people.”
• Dr Price [13:44]: “Egypt itself is seen as threatening, exotic, lazy… There’s a real historical feminization of Egypt.”
• Dr Price [28:41]: “I would struggle to say definitively this is like copper bottomed evidence of sex work.”
• Dr Lister [31:49]: “It's interesting because…sex work is the oldest form of work in the world. And it's not.”
• Dr Price [35:23]: “The royal women, the senior royal women are entrepreneurs in a sense. They are managing a major textile industry.”
• Dr Price [42:56]: “The first chat up line recorded in history is an incestuous Come on. From an uncle to his nephew. Nephew, how beautiful are your buttocks?”
• Dr Price [49:38]: “It's not the ancient Egyptian Karma Sutra… seems to be a way of satirizing the aristocracy maybe.”
• Dr Price [52:03]: “If you're a living goddess and you don't happen to have a living human husband… you could just have sex with anyone you wanted.”

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Key Timestamps

• [05:01] – Victorian views and their enduring impact
• [13:44] – The feminization of Egypt in colonial imagination
• [18:00] – Elite bias in archaeological artifacts
• [21:43] – Modern discomfort with ancient erotic art
• [25:19] – Shifts in royal sexual decorum (Akhenaten & Nefertiti)
• [28:41] – Search for evidence of sex work in Egypt
• [31:49] – Bartering and the myth of “oldest profession”
• [35:23] – The business of harems
• [39:41] – The Hatshepsut-Senenmut temple graffiti
• [42:56] – Incestuous chat-up line
• [47:45] – Turin Erotic Papyrus and historical humor
• [50:57] – Where Dr Price would travel in time
• [52:03] – Hatshepsut’s power and sexual agency

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Tone & Style

• Lively, irreverent, and incisive; Dr Lister and Dr Price blend academic insight with wit and skepticism toward both modern and historical prejudices.
• Both are conscious of the difficulties in reconstructing ancient eroticism and eager to challenge easy stereotypes.

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For Further Exploration

• Dr Campbell Price’s book: “Ancient Egypt: Brief Histories”
• Upcoming biography of Senenmut (American University in Cairo Press, 2026)
• For more, follow Dr Price on social media: @EgyptMCR

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This episode is a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the mysteries, misconceptions, and realities of sex and power in Ancient Egypt—and a sharp reminder to look past our own cultural baggage when peering into the past.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hello my lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister and you are listening to Betwixter Sheets. Hurrah. I like talking to you. I'm so glad that you've come back. But before we can go any further together, I have to tell you, I have to let you know, I have to give you the fair twos warning. And here it is. This is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects. And you should be an adult too. I'm sure you knew that. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's the reason you're actually listening. But just in case it's not now you know. Right, on with the show.

I am taking a look around the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Egypt. She lived 3,000 years ago. That is a long time ago. And wait, what is this graffiti on the wall? Well, it's got all the markings of the kind of drawing you might see scrawled on the back of a toilet door at the local pub. It looks slightly out of place in this sacred temple, but I'm sure the people who drew it knew what they were doing. Or did they? But I will leave it to the episode for the full description of what I'm looking at. But let's just say this. It does rather put Queen Hatshepsut in a different light and hints at a real scandal during her reign. The saucy bitch. And what else do we know about ancient Egyptian attitudes to sexual sexuality? How much of it is informed by the entire cast of the 1999 film the Mummy? Oh, don't tell me you didn't have an erotic reaction to that one, too. I know you did. But let's move away from fiction and try and get to grips with some facts.

Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, with me, Kate Lister. The ancient Egyptians suffer from what I like to call Victorians it up. That's not a scholarly term, but it'll do. It's no fault of theirs that our understanding of them comes through a very judgy white colonial gaze and a group of people who projected a lot of their own anxieties and morality onto them. But how did the ancient Egyptians themselves view sex and sexuality? What scandals do we know that they endured? And why are we still obsessed with eroticizing ancient Egypt? Joining me today is the fantastic Dr. Campbell Price, author and Egyptologist at the University of Liverpool. He's also curator of one of the UK's most significant Egyptology collections at the Manchester Museum. So if any can help us get to the bottom of this, it's him. Oh, and before we proceed now, very, very big thank you to the many, many people who emailed in after our Mitford Sisters episode to let us know that, yes, there is a town in Canada called Swastika and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Third Reich. And thank you to the people that let us know, there's also a town called Dildo in Newfoundland. Now, without further ado, let's crack on.

Hello, and welcome to Betwixt the sheets. It's only Dr. Campbell Price.

[D]

Dr. Kay Lester. Hi.

[B]

How are you?

[D]

I'm very well. I've. I've wanted to be on this podcast for a long time. The honor really is truly mine.

[C]

Thank you.

[B]

Oh, thank you so much. That's. That's extremely impressive because your credentials are something to behold, to be completely honest.

Egyptologist at the University of Liverpool, and you're the curator of Egyptian and Sudanese artifacts at the Museum of Manchester. I mean, wow, that's a lot. A lot of Egypt, Campbell.

[D]

It's a lot of Egypt. And you know what? I can't get enough Egypt. So that's why I've come to talk to you about more Egyptian things.

[B]

Where did it start for you?

[D]

Honestly? Honestly. I remember quite clearly, but five years old, being in a museum in Glasgow. I grew up in Glasgow. The wonderful Kelvin Grove Art Gall Galleria Museum. And I remember the smell, the smell of the museum, which was just like the aroma of antiquity, but was probably just floor polish, but it smelled to me like antiquity. So that was it. I mean, I was hooked from.

[B]

Wow. And was it the Egyptians, specifically in the museum, or did you kind of gravitate towards that once you'd got the smell of Flor polish equated with history?

[D]

Well, I think it was. The Egyptians had no other competition. There was nothing else. I wasn't into dinosaurs ever, or, you.

[B]

Know, you missed that phase.

[D]

Missed that. Skip that straight to Egypt.

[B]

Okay.

[D]

But I definitely equated the smell with the smell of the ancient Egyptian bodies, mummified bodies that were there. So there is this. Maybe we'll come back to talk about this. An equation between ancient Egypt and the body. There is something about the preserved, preternaturally preserved body that I think really speaks to a lot of kind of weird kids like me.

[B]

And I bet you've seen actual Egyptian bodies, and many of them. Do they smell like flower polish? Were you correct in your assumption? I've never been that close to one.

[D]

They have an aroma of mummification of the oils and unguents, and they still.

[B]

Smell of, like, oils all this time later.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Wow. Not an unpleasant smell if you encounter it.

[B]

But, yeah, I can't detour. I'm detouring myself already. I just want to know what Egyptian bodies smell like now. But we're here to talk about sex and sexuality. Yes, in Egypt.

[D]

Yes, we are.

[B]

What a fascinating subject this is. My PhD was in basically how Victorians wreck history.

[D]

Hello, I'm talking to my kindred.

[B]

I was looking. I was looking at medieval history in particular, and I was looking at gender and about how the victor. But it's amazing how many historians from how many different periods I talk to. And when you mention the Victorians, they all go. Victorians.

And Egyptologists do that a lot.

[D]

Yes, they have reimagined. I mean, usually it's the bearded white middle class men.

Ostensibly heterosexual men, who have written a lot of Egyptology that still in some quarters gets regurgitated. I'm sure you've encountered this in your own field. So, you know, there were definitely objects in museums in the 19th century that were in locked cabinets. You were only allowed to see if you were a male upper middle class scholar. Naughty things like wooden penises. When there were texts. Shocking, Shocking. When there were texts translated from ancient Egyptian that mentioned naughty things, incestuous liaisons, they were translated into Latin so that only Latin readers could understand them. So. So all of that, I think we still live under the shadow, especially when it comes to the body, conceptualizations of the body. Yeah, those Victorian Egyptologists have a lot to answer for.

[B]

So what kind of messages were they pushing when it came to Egyptian sexuality? Because they did it with the Romans, they did it with the Greeks, they did it with the Medi period. In one way they seem to be trying to sanitize it completely and just like write it in Latin, keep it in a locked cupboard. No one's allowed to talk about it. But then it kind of obviously escapes those confines because they're also obsessed with the sexuality of these groups of people and they really focus in on it.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, I think for Egypt, definitely the context is, you know, the colonial encounter. Britain invades Egypt in 1882 and there has been an ongoing relationship, if you can call it that, between Napoleon. Napoleon goes. Napoleon Bonaparte invades Egypt in 1798. So there's this thing about, well, we, the Europeans have to kind of pacify Egypt and show that it needs European governance. But at the same time, the ancient Egyptians are, you know, building these wonderful monuments, producing these great texts and artistic products. So we're in awe of them. So there's a tension between great admiration and dismissiveness and fear and that whole Gothic horror Trope of the vengeful mummy absolutely is rooted in this sense of.

[B]

Is that them?

[D]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what if? The ancient Egyptians bump back what if? And there's the allegory of the vagina dentate. These male archaeologists probing these dark tombs where they're not meant to go, they're uninvited. And so the ancient thought of it like that. Yep. It is a big theme.

[B]

What? Just for anyone who's listening who doesn't know what the vagina dentata is, could you give us a quick. A quick.

[D]

You might be. You might be better placed to explain. So it's the. The fear of the teeth of female genitalia doing something to the man's parts. And it appears in fiction, but it definitely isn't when you're aware of it and you reread a lot of those. Yet late 1800s stories about Egypt. The derring do of the white male Egyptologist very much comes from this place of. Yet fear of reprisal, something the ancient Egyptians, and often the ancient Egyptians, before the kind of I'm shuffling, mummified body becomes a real trope. Often ancient Egypt or ancient Egyptians are femme fatales and they are trying to seduce the male archaeologist and something nasty will happen to him.

[B]

Interesting. And there is a real feminization of Egypt culturally, isn't there? Like, it's thought of. I don't know how to explain that, but there is. Like, it's spices and it's opulent. And whether it's our conceptions of Cleopatra and the movie representation of it, there's this real contrast between this masculine Roman archaeologists and this feminine, feminized, lazy, lounging about, smelling nice, kind of in Egypt.

[D]

Exactly. You've just absolutely hit the nail on the head there, Kate. So you have. Yeah. Mark Antony and Julius Caesar are these, you know, models of male military might.

[B]

Alpha men before that was a thing.

[D]

I mean, let's not even get into Cleopatra. I mean, there's a whole tradition in Arabic scholarship about Cleopatra being a scientist and a linguist and a great politician. That doesn't depend on her being a seductress. But when the British arrive in the 1880s, they are very much consciously following this Roman model of. We are like the great generals of ancient Rome. So you're absolutely right. The Egypt itself is seen as threatening, exotic, lazy. And this is something I've looked at in my own work, trying to understand the history of Manchester museum in the 1880s and 90s. Very much. Manchester takes great pride in its work ethic. So good Northern people working hard. But then the cotton, for the cotton industry in Manchester from the 1860s is coming from Egypt. And so the Egyptians are contrasted as being lazy and not caring about their own history. And then there is this other reading where, yeah, there's not just the historical femme fatale Egypt and Egyptians are effeminate. And that is viewed in a negative way.

[B]

You see that a lot cropping up all over the place. When did scholars start to push past? I mean, I think we could argue that it's still very much with us in modern conceptions of Egypt, you know, your Hollywood films and things like that. But as scholars, when did we start to go, hang on a fucking minute here?

[D]

I think for Egyptology, it depends on who you're talking about, and we might come to some particular historical personages later, but the mid 20th century, there's a move, there's a push against that, and unsurprisingly, it's because of a more formal, widespread role of women in academia in Egypt. Egypt. Told you.

[B]

And when we're talking about sex, I suppose you've got to be particularly careful that you don't accidentally fall into these sort of pit holes that have been left before you, and that you're suddenly going, oh, they. Maybe they were all obsessed with sex, but generally, as I've describ discovered, is no one's any more obsessed with it than anyone else. They've just got different attitudes around it.

[D]

Exactly, exactly. And obviously this is the forum to really get to the nitty gritty of this. The ancient Egyptians simply present their world, and I would say their elite world, because when you're walking into a museum gallery, you're not seeing a cross section of society, you're seeing the rich people, the dead people, because most of the stuff comes from tombs, so you're not generally seeing what comes from everyday people's houses because they don't survive. So you have this double bias. It's the top of society and it's things people have taken for their afterlife or some afterlife existence. So in some sense, in ancient Egyptian religious thinking, sex and reproduction is important for regeneration and rebirth, which seems kind of weird to us. So in some sense, sex can be quite overt, but in other ways there's a sense of decorum. But I totally agree with you. I don't think it's. They're more or less interested or actively involved in sex than anyone else.

[B]

So what are the kind of sources that we use then? It's interesting that you said there that you've always got to be aware that the kind of the data is skewed. This is rich people and this is what rich people would want to take with them to the afterlife. Which kind of opens up a question of what would you like to take with you to the afterlife? If you had to pick some things and I guess it probably wouldn't be a very accurate representation of you. Would it be like your few things that you wanted to take?

[D]

No, exactly. And I think it depends on your conception of what is the afterlife going to be about.

[B]

Yeah. What is the after. What are you going to need when you get there?

[D]

What do you need to get there? Oh, yes, it's all, what do you.

[C]

Need to get there?

[B]

What are you going to need when you do get there? Oh, there's a lot of questions there. Right. We're on a side quest. Let's get, let's reorientate ourselves. Right. But what are the sources? So we've got like grave goods, tombs, what else have we got to attempt to understand what. How sex was understood back then.

[D]

So I think ancient Egypt, again, elite society, is heavy on imagery and that is what ultimately is so seductive. Ancient Egypt is so distinctive, like the visual culture. You go into a museum again and like if you know nothing about history or archaeology, you know what is Egyptian because it exists in popular culture now. Mesoamerican stuff is confusing or even classical art seems a bit not quite so clear cut. Ancient Egyptian art is very clear and it's very consistent. And so we have depictions on temple walls, tomb walls, and then we've lots of writing. So we've got laundry lists and love songs and wills. And that is a really interesting insight into the conception of marriage, the conception of status and how you would think of property rights so women can inherit and dispose of property in a way that is not attested in other parts of the ancient world.

[B]

Interesting.

[D]

So you've got to. I, I mean, I think texts are very insightful if like anything, you know how to read them. You know, I always say to students, if you read a letter from the 1920s in England, it's got its own little cadences, it's got its cultural nuances that you have to be a member of that society to fully understand. Try turning the clock back three and a half thousand years. Totally different place.

[B]

So difficult.

[D]

It is difficult. So one, one caveat I would warn against in all the beautiful statues, I mean literally sensuous, beautiful, seductive, erotic, Some of it art, none of that represents the world as it actually is. It's not photography and that sounds so obvious, but it's a pitfall, as you said, of understanding another culture.

[B]

What we see as erotic, they might not have seen it as that at all. An example of that is the many, many cocks around Pompeii. It's like, to us as a modern people, it's certainly noticeable. Whether it's shocking or not, I suppose, depends on who's viewing. But it's definitely at least out of ordinary. But we don't know what they saw when they looked. Presumably they can't have been walking around going, oh, my God, there's a penis on the floor. Because it had been doing that all day long.

[D]

It's kind of penis blindness, I suppose. If you're exposed to a lot of them, you just kind of filter out. So a good case is in Egyptian religious imagery. So, I mean, gods can be crocodiles and gods can be hippos, and gods can be the river or the stars. I mean, we're talking about a really broad conception of divinity. There is one aspect of a couple of male gods and some also not male gods, but maybe we'll get into that. That are shown as, as Egyptologists describe them, as ethyphallic with a very prominent erection. And these gods are described in ancient Egyptian as gods who flaunt their potency, which is a wonderful. We all know that person flaunts their potency. Oh, yes, we do.

[B]

Put it away.

[D]

So it seems shocking to us. And it was shocking to, you know, a Victorian upper middle class. Okay, just. Who would. There's a wonderful case in the Petrie Museum in University College London. There's a big relief with a God with a stonking big penis. And they've put the label over the erect penis.

[B]

No, they haven't.

[E]

Yes.

[B]

No.

[D]

Yes.

[B]

Oh, bless. I love that. I love that. It's kind of an effort to conceal it, but not show that we're trying to conceal it, but definitely concealing it.

[D]

It.

[B]

I'll be back with Campbell after the short break.

[E]

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So we've got to dismantle our own frame of reference is very difficult. But for your money, in having looked at the artifacts that you've looked at and trying to do the work on yourself as a modern scholar to not get too carried away with what kind of sexual culture was this, Bearing in mind that it's actually a very long period of time we're talking about as well, isn't it?

[D]

Yeah, I mean there's a strong sense when you look at ancient Egyptian artistic representation, although it seems very samey and as I said, it's very consistent. And that's what in part makes it so recognizable today, because it was produced in the same sort of way for thousands of years. There is definitely fashions and there is a changing sense of what Egyptologists call decorum. And we still say, you know, you've got some decorum about you. So there are definitely little moments. The reign of Tutankhamun's dad, around about 1350 BCE, a guy called Akhenaten. This is shocking just because the king is shown kissing his wife. Oh my God.

[B]

Why was that shocking to them?

[D]

Because you would.

[B]

Was it like with tongues? Was it like what, what we're talking.

[D]

About here, you can't say if it was with tongues or not, wasn't necessarily French kissing. But if you imagine the Egyptian pharaoh is never shown eating really or drinking, is never shown in physical contact with anyone else, apart from maybe a God who's a metaphysical idea. Anyway, so Akhenaten comes along and he outlaws almost all of the Egyptian gods. Quite a controversial character, quite a rebel in some ways, a bit of a weirdo. He says, well, to take the place of all these many images of gods, I will show myself with my wife, little known lady called Nefertiti. And so he and Queen Nefertiti are shown driving through the streets of his royal city in a chariot, having a smooch. And you've got to imagine, as you said, if something seems unusual to us, would it have seemed unusual given all the other art we've got from ancient Egypt. None of the other kings are shown doing this. Whether they did or not is another question. So in artistic depiction, you know, imagine you're the, like the artist going in to paint that temple wall and you're like, what do you want me to paint the king and the queen kissing?

[B]

Like.

[D]

I mean Charles and Camilla wouldn't do it necessarily.

[B]

Actually now I think about it, if they released like a public photograph of themselves, like, like actually kissing, like tongue like that, it would be worthy of comment. It would be, it would be like a, okay, not, not like a peck on the cheek, but like even then I think people would go, so that's a bit of a break with royal.

[D]

Protocol, a break with decorum. So there is definitely a shift in decorum. And like you said, Egypt, ancient Egypt lasts conventionally. Egyptologists would say between. About the emergence of the United States, if we can call it that. Lot's of air quotes around 3,000 BCE, then Cleopatra is 3,000 years later, 30.

[B]

BCE wild, isn't it?

[D]

And Akhenaten's around the middle. So yeah, it's a long time.

[C]

What about.

[B]

Because this is one of the most interesting things that your research has found, because we've got a whole series looking at the history of sex work and sex for sale and sex for, you know, sexual services and harems and how all of these things kind of bleed into one another. But your research has got some rather interesting things to say about that. Is there evidence of sex work in ancient Egypt?

[D]

I would struggle to say definitively this is like copper bottomed evidence of sex work. There are allusions in literature. One springs to mind a very interesting in many ways for the ancient Egyptians. Quite racy tale of this. He's based on the historical character, but he's kind of precocious and he's trying to steal knowledge from his ancestors. So he's digging around in ancient tombs. He sees this beautiful woman and he tries to pay her for sexual favors. And she says, oh, you know, I'm not a cheap strumpet, come and see me in my father's house, which is a beautiful villa, palatial villa. And she makes all this demands of this guy, eventually saying, you've got to kill your children. He then, holy shit.

[B]

Yeah, that took a hard left. Wow. Okay.

[D]

So he bumps off the children, throws the bodies to the dogs in the street and then runs into her bedroom. She shrieks and disappears. Her house, the villa, her herself disappears, poof in a puff of smoke and he's left naked, scrambling around in the dirt. So it's kind of a strange story. Yeah, the woman is called Tabubu in this character. Quite frankly, that's a great name in this tale of Setnika and waset. So this is the very end of, of the pharaonic periods for the last couple of centuries BCE into the first, maybe a couple of centuries ce. But that's an insight into maybe attitudes and like I say, a kind of morality tale of he's going around trying to steal things from tombs and then he's perhaps in some sense dissing this woman and then she gets her own back. His children aren't dead. Fortunately. It's all been a kind of strange dream. But yes, it's difficult to extrapolate from that. What did your average man or woman in the street think?

[B]

Yeah, that is, that is quite difficult, isn't it? It's interesting because like there's this expression that sex work is the oldest form of work in the world. And it's not. It's not because in order to have that you need a profession and you therefore need money and you need that exchange system. I mean, there's been bartering, you know, we've all swapped sex for, you know, some, some nice things once in a while. But like the actual of, like it being a profession, you need money, you need professions. I think the oldest profession that we know of is the medicine man or the midwife. So when you've got cultures that don't have money and that don't have jobs, essentially you're not going to get somebody that, whose job is selling sex just like any other job. But it's interesting that you'd say that there's a sort of a limited evidence for this in ancient Egypt because we interviewed Stephanie Boudin, who is the professor of Mesopotamian gender and sexuality. Fantastic scholar. And quite shockingly, she said that there's no evidence of sex work in Mesopotamia at the time. I was like, wow, mic drop. I'm not entirely sure that I would agree with that. But she's the expert. But then you're saying as well, there might be limited evidence in ancient Egypt as well.

[D]

And I think it is surprising and it is interesting what you say about Mesopotamia because ancient Egypt is fundamentally quite sexy. So people assume, you know, what is.

[B]

It about assuming it.

[D]

It's that kind of. Yeah. Liz Taylor, basing again our impressions on the art. So there's lots of, you know, flesh on display in ancient Egyptian art. So it seems surprising. We know of one community, the, the workers and their families who built the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. So this is between like 1500 and 1000 BCE and there are people living very close, cheek by jowl there. And there's a, a supercharged, super high rate of literacy because they're involved in state work. It's basically a state controlled settlement. And in that there's plentiful evidence of bed hopping and all kinds of crafts and trades. But exactly like you say, Pharaonic Egypt is not a monetary economy. You don't have coinage. So, yeah, if you want something doing.

[B]

So, I mean, I think it would be naive to say that people hadn't worked out that sex can be a fantastic thing to manipulate a situation or to get what you want. I'm sure there was bartering systems, but if there's no money, that complicates what we think of as jobs, I suppose.

[D]

Precisely.

[B]

But there is evidence of harems, which we could. You can make the argument that that's a kind of a transactional thing.

[D]

Yes. And I think this is something we can be fairly certain of because we've got lots of evidence, visual and written, albeit official visual and written evidence about.

[B]

Okay, so this Is the state's version of.

[D]

Yeah. The institution of kingship and, and being a pharaoh. So the pharaoh has multiple wives and many, many children. So Ramesses II has at least at a conservative estimate, 100 children.

[B]

Holy balls. Like Elon Musk.

[D]

This is not just to one wife, of course. And there is definitely a strong sense of the importance of diplomatic marriage. So if you want to seal an alliance. But there is a hierarchy with that. It's kind of a one way street. The pharaoh will marry any number of foreign princesses, but no daughter of pharaoh will marry a foreign prince. That would be a major. No. No.

[B]

Interesting. Okay.

[C]

Yep.

[B]

Okay. When there were queens. Pharaohs. I was gonna say Pharaoh. Ss, now that's a weird word. But like, could Cleopatra have a harem? Was this very much a male prerogative?

[D]

Now this is a great question because we don't know too much about the kind of standard setup for a full, what we would call a harem, which is all kinds of associations which can be kind of orientalizing and we're not quite sure. We have actually in Manchester Museum a big group of objects from one site called Gurob, which is a lovely area near the Fayum Lake. Nice kind of country hunting residence for the pharaoh. And that is where the royal wives and children seem to have hung out. And it's a place which was really economically viable on its own. So the royal women, the senior royal women are entrepreneurs in a sense. They are managing a major textile industry.

[B]

So already this doesn't sound like a harem. When you say, when you say the word harem and you imagine everybody lounging around by a pool, being wafted by a small boy with a palm leaf. That's not what this sounds like.

[D]

There may have been some wafting, but there is also business. There's also business happening. So people boast about the fine quality of linen from this, from this kind of textile manufacturing. And it's women who are running it. So it's royal women who are running it. So it's not that people are just lounging around. So if that's the default, okay, the king is, as in many pre modern monarchies, the king is a peripatetic monarchy. He's going around, he's having this royal progress to keep an eye on everyone. So he's periodically there, he's not living there all the time. And so if that's the default, because the Egyptian pharaoh is usually male, he's an incarnation of a male God, the God Horus. Fascinating. When you do get a Female pharaoh, one of the most successful. One of my all time favorites, Queen hatshepsut of the 15th century BCE. She is the daughter of a king, the wife of a king, the sister of a king and the stepmother aunt of a king. And at some point, girl.

[B]

Wow.

[D]

Yeah, she's well, I mean really well connected.

[B]

Unless that king was all the same person. Because I know that they do like incest.

[D]

The husband and the brother stepbrother were the same person. But he doesn't stick around long. Thutmose ii, God bless him.

[B]

Okay.

[D]

Thutmosely useless. So Hatshepsut's dad is called Thutmose the First. Her brother husband, Thutmose ii. Her stepson nephew, Thutmose iii. When the third comes to the throne, he's only probably a toddler. And as is common for women in the royal family at that time, the king is either super young or away fighting battles. So it's actually the woman, the senior royal women who are running the country. So an interesting dynamic. She does that for a bit and thinks this is fine. And then a big change comes when she says to herself, I do this quite effectively and I've got the loyalty of all these officials. I will just go one step further and say, I am the Pharaoh. I am the King of Egypt. And she says that she rules Egypt very successfully for about 20 years. You cannot tell me that, you know, she wouldn't have indulged in any of those male prerogatives. Why not? So there's a close connection between as is and there's lots of historical parallels for this between a woman in power and high male officials who may need her patronage to advance their own cause. And so she's linked with one chap who's got a heapload of titles, almost a hundred titles. Almost unheard of in ancient Egypt. He's like the. The Prime Minister is in charge of all the cattle and the granaries and all the important stuff. He's the architect, essentially. He's called Senenmut. And I have just. Kate, finished a biography of this man, Senenmut.

[B]

Oh, wow. Well done.

[D]

So he is an obsession of mine. And he is, unusually for an ancient Egyptian man, unmarried. So this has spawned many.

Must be.

[B]

He's gay.

[D]

Because he's very creative. He's very creative again.

[B]

Doing it again, isn't it?

[D]

So he must. Yeah. There's been a lot more than most people have projected onto the character of Senna.

[B]

200 years from now, people will be looking back at us going, they made everyone Gay. It's so annoying.

[D]

Yeah, maybe they were just friends.

[B]

That'll be our legacy to history. Calm down. Right, okay, so he's good at architecture and unmarried.

[D]

Yes, he is. Either he must be a homosexual or he must be Hatshepsut's lover. And there are various links between the two of them. And there is one infamous graffito in a cave overlooking Hatshepsuts.

[B]

I'm looking at it right now. Oh, you can see he doesn't look very gay. He doesn't look very gay.

[D]

So this shows all we can say is it's two people having sex. That's it.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

There is no identifying. Oh, and people have lots of ink has been spilt trying to identify who these people are.

[B]

So it's behind one. One's bent over.

[D]

Yes. And the. The bent over one is interpreted as wearing a long kind of royal headdress. I don't see it myself. And this is said, by the way.

[B]

That'S quite an interesting addition. Full bush there.

[D]

Although I visited that cave in March of this year, and the Egyptian guys who were letting us into the cave, the security guys, said they thought it was two men. So there are alternative constructions of interpretations of images like that. But it's interesting that Hatshepsut has been likened to. Oh, my gosh, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I, Guinevere. I mean, you know, just name a name because she can't just exist on her own. And it's very interesting going back to those Victorian male bearded archaeologists who were living in the UK under the reign of Victoria, were very negative about Hatshepsut. They thought she was an unscrupulous woman who'd seized power. And this Senenmut character was this kind of Machiavellian prop to her illegitimate regime. And together they schemed and used propaganda.

[B]

Okay.

[D]

Even the conception, modern political conception of propaganda, trying to project that back three and a half thousand years, it's deeply problematic. Exactly. So in answer to your question, Kate, could Hatshepsut have had any man or woman in the court she wanted? Absolutely. She was a living goddess. If she came onto you, you would not have a choice. No. So we're very fixated with putting her in certain gendered boundaries. And one of the most interesting things with Hatshepsut is in the official art, a lot of her imagery is male coded because kingship in Egypt, Veronica, Egypt, is male coded. That is not to say she went around dressed in male attire. It's simply that that is the way you present yourself on monuments. And fun fact I've got to share this to you. Tina Turner, R.I.P. believed she was Hatshepsut reincarnated.

[B]

I believe her too. Quite frankly, who knows? That makes perfect sense to me. Why does she think that? That's amazing.

[D]

I don't know what the origin of the theory was, but she had a collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts. She went to Egypt? She believed the air would kind of swirl around her when she went to Hatshepsut's temple.

[B]

Wow. Why do those guides think that we're looking at two men here? That's interesting because the one from behind there's definitely a penis, a phallus there. Why do you think that's two men?

[D]

I don't know. I mean, I think there are various traditions about what the ancient Egyptians got up to. We know. I mean, homosexual behavior is attested. In fact, the first chat up line recorded in history is an incestuous Come on. From an uncle to his nephew. Nephew, how beautiful are your buttocks?

[B]

Oh no, that's.

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

How like unpick that one from a modern lens. Oh my God.

I'll be back with Campbell after the short break.

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[B]

Just to sort of broaden out that discussion. Then, like, we know that incest was viewed very differently within this culture, but what about same sex attraction? How did they feel about that?

[D]

We were talking about sex work. I mean, just the human behavior is human behavior. And I have no doubt there was as much of a range of human behavior as there is now. Again, when we read ancient Egyptian texts through the lens still of our Victorian forebears, we have to bear in mind that they have projected their own prejudices on to the evidence. So it's difficult to get away from that. But it's fairly clear that there was a heteronormative expectation of most family life. There's a man, a woman and children. But there are definitely cases of homosexual attraction. Same sex attraction between two men. In literature and mythology, it's not, it's not without its issues. It's viewed not simply as a positive or a negative, but is something potentially different, alternative or potentially disruptive. But, you know, human behavior is human behavior.

[B]

We know it's there, don't we? It's just, it's fascinating to try and unpick how it was viewed. Because another thing that you see cropping up throughout history is that when we're talking about men having sex with other men, there is the dynamic that as long as you're the one doing the top, you're topping, then, then you are still manly and masculine, which I find fascinating because that crops up all over the place. And I was wondering if there's any evidence of that in Egypt.

[D]

Not explicit evidence, but the case I mentioned, this mythological case. So you have the kind of wicked uncle, for want of or chaotic uncle, I would say Seth, who has just killed his brother. And so as a way of demonstrating his power, his strength, his manliness, his right to govern, he attempts to rape his nephew Horus. And so there is a sense that Seth, who is known as the one great of strength, of course it would be him who's the active participant.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

So it's kind of implied there a.

[B]

Sensible basis for a system of government. I think as far as, as far as I'm concerned, it's just honestly, what a mad, I should say what a mad mythology. But when you dig into many world mythologies, they are, are, they are challenging to modern audiences. But what is something like the, the Turin Papyrus, which is often described as the, the erotic papyrus. How erotic is that actually? I mean, we're talking about like an Egyptian playboy here. Like what is that? Is that again, the Victorians Going, they had ankles. It's erotic.

[D]

Yeah. Oh God, all the ankles. So the, the papyrus you're referring to is unusual. So it's, it stands out from the vast quantity of ancient Egyptian papyrus documentation we've got because it shows a sequence of sexual interactions where you have balding men and beautiful made up women getting on in various contexts. Now here is the classic thing. You cannot read this simply as a bit of ancient Egyptian titillation because the broader context is it's kind of the world upturned in a way because there are other scenes on the same papyrus showing animals acting as humans and doing things that you wouldn't expect, albeit it's ancient Egypt and you can have animal headed gods. So it's not the ancient Egyptian Karma Sutra, it's not the ancient Egyptian playboy. It seems to be a way of satirizing the aristocracy maybe. And the interesting thing is the men with these massively distended penises. So they're, you know, comically large. The text that there is on it is seemingly humorous because they're all talking to each other about joking. They're joking, okay, it would seem to me. But again there may be some other level of understanding where the men's a little kind of Friar Tuck haircuts, may be a reference to the goddess Hathor. Now Hathor is the mistress of drunkenness and sex and music. So in some way it's kind of a tribute to her or maybe they're in some ways connected to her. So it's more is going on there than simply, yeah, pornographic bit of illicit representation.

[B]

Humour I think has got to be one of the hardest things to unpick from a historical perspective because it relies on social references, that which have gone, which have gone, which have long gone. I mean even if like you don't even have to go that far back in time and watch like old episodes of I Got news for you or something. And if you don't know what they're talking about, you don't know what the joke is, so to say. Like what did the Egyptians find funny? That must be, that must be very difficult.

[D]

It's a real tricky situation because we've, we've lost so much context and there are some things where you can pick up that there are references to maybe well known pieces of literature. So it's like they're quoting Shakespeare, their equivalent of Shakespeare. But whether that's done to show erudition, to show I'm so well read, of course I know that story, or whether it's done as A joke? I mean, is sex just universally potentially quite funny? The Turenneurotic Papyrus does seem to me personally to be a satirical work.

[B]

Okay, interesting. Well, you just love to go back in time, wouldn't you, and just find out what they think is funny. Like, tell us a joke, like, just to sort of get to the bottom of. So if you could go back and you had, like, a day in. In ancient Egypt of a point of your choosing, where would you go and what would you want to know?

[D]

Oh, I'd go and meet Hatshepsut and Senenmut and see what the hell was going on there.

Not that just, you know, one sighting would necessarily tell you, but, I mean, I've spent a lot of time in the company of Senenmut intellectually recently in writing this book, and the guy is like an ancient Egyptian Michelangelo. And you don't know.

[B]

Wow.

[D]

Is it that he. I've come to the conclusion that he. He genuinely does think Hatshepsut is divine and he is all about making her divinity clear to eternity. There's a euphemism, he's erecting lots of obelisks in her honor. But whether subtle, whether, you know, whether that would preclude someone pointed out to me, that doesn't preclude them actually having had a sexual relationship. But like I say, if. If you're a living goddess and you don't happen to have a living human husband because she, in some ways is united with various gods. Yeah, you could just have sex with anyone you wanted.

[B]

Campbell, you have been fascinating to talk to. Thank you so much for coming along to talk to us. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

[D]

Well, I am on social media EgyptMCR, and I've written a little book, Ancient Egypt Brief Histories, which I recommend. And I will have a book about this man, Senen Mut, out with American University and Cairo Press next year, 2026.

[B]

Will you come back and tell us all about that? When it's. When it's.

[D]

I will. And there's lots to say about good old Sennhevantship suit.

[B]

I love it. Thank you so much. You have been a blast.

[D]

My pleasure, Kate. Nice to talk to you.

[B]

Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Campbell for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to, like, review and follow along whatever it is you get. Your podcasts coming up, we have got an episode on the mother of all Tudors, Margaret Beaufort, and another on the royal harems of the Ottoman Empire. And if you would like us to explore a subject, or if you just wanted to say hello, or if you wanted to email us more obscenely named towns, then you can do [e-mail] this podcast was edited by Tim Arstel and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again betwixt the show sheets the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

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