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- [00:01]
Tristan Hughes
Thanks for listening to the ancients. You can get all history hit podcasts, ad free early access and bonus episodes along with hundreds of original history documentaries by subscribing. Head over to historyhit.com subscribe Ryan Reynolds.
- [00:15]
Ryan Reynolds
Here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a.
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Tristan Hughes
Thing Mint Mobile unlimited premium wireless.
- [00:29]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
30.
- [00:29]
Tristan Hughes
30 bid to get 30.
- [00:30]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Get 20. 2020.
- [00:30]
Tristan Hughes
Better to get 20.
- [00:31]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
20.
- [00:31]
Tristan Hughes
Better to get 15. 15.
- [00:32]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
15. 15.
- [00:33]
Tristan Hughes
Just 15 bucks a month.
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Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Sold.
- [00:35]
Ryan Reynolds
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Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only.
- [00:42]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [01:29]
Narrator
Out there in the deep desert among the parched red earth, something is howling, mewling, whimpering. It's dark, a cool night, so black you'd be picking your way across the dunes by starlight alone. But if you followed that horrible crying sound, eventually you would find it. An animal lying in a pool of blood. It has gleaming cat eyes, whiskers sharp as needles, fangs curved and keen as a waxing moon. But those are not what you would notice. First you would notice the red ruin of its flesh. The creature has been flayed, its skin stripped away to show the muscle and bone beneath. It will recover. The creature is a God after all. Set, the God of chaos, in the form of an animal. Some big cat. But he will never forget this mutilation. He will never again cross the God Anubis. What is Seth's crime? What has led to this punishment? He has not merely betrayed his brother, but the pharaoh God, Osiris. He has not merely killed his brother. Set has dismembered the pharaoh's body, cut it into 14 pieces and scattered them far and wide across Egypt. But gods are not so easy to destroy.
- [03:10]
Tristan Hughes
It's the entrance on History hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host and welcome to the fifth and final episode of Our Egyptian Gods. And goddesses miniseries. We've covered the origins of the Egyptian gods. We've done the sun gods like Ra, great goddesses like Isis, and the popular legend of Osiris. And now to finish off this series, we're heading to the underworld, to death in ancient Egyptian religion and the infamous jackal headed deity Anubis. There's lots of mentions of death in surviving Egyptian archaeology, whether it's the book of the dead, the weighing of the heart or the many different creatures that existed in the underworld. So naturally there's a lot to unpack. Fortunately, we have Dr. Joyce Tildesley OBE from the University of Manchester on hand to tackle this topic in this finale. Now, before our interview with Joyce, as with all of our episodes in this miniseries, we have a retelling of a myth today. It's the myth of Anubis and his mummifying of Osiris, the king of the dead.
- [04:19]
Narrator
Osiris wife, Isis has taken to the wing as a kite and gown in search for her husband's remains. With each new part she makes a stitch. With each new piece a bind. She begins to reconstruct Osiris body. However, to find the last of his limbs, the last of his organs, she must range farther and farther. She must be going for longer and longer, weathering distant storms, riding foreign winds. And all the while Osiris remains are unguarded, unprotected. Set sees his chance to stop this resurrection once and for all. He begins to warp, to bend and twist until he takes the form of a predator. A hunter with gleaming cat eyes, whiskers sharp as needles, fangs curved and keen as a waxing moon. He heads into the deep desert, following a sweet trothing scent. But Set is wrong to think he is the only creature that skulks and stalks the parts to red earth. Another has smelt that scent. Another God. His name is Anubis. A snout, a snarl curling over yellowing teeth. Anubis head is that of a black jacket. His is the bark that echoes about tombs and crypts. His is the howl in the night that sends grave robbers running. He is the protector of the dead. And so when Anubis sees Seth tearing at the remains of Osiris body, he takes two forelegs and chases him off. Set is faster. The God has taken the form of a pig cat, a sprinting creature. But every dog has its day and Anubis is relentless. Every time Set thinks he has outrun him, every time he stops to pant and gasp. The jackal is there upon him and the Chase continues. Minutes, hours, the whole night and beyond. Hepro, the God of dawn, notices the pursuit at daybreak. And Aton, the God of dusk, is still watching at sunset. Until finally, in darkness, a cool night so black you'd be picking your way across the dunes by starlight alone, Set can flee no longer. Their fight then is quick. But the truth is, Set is exhausted. His every muscle is pulled, his breath are shallow. And when Anubis jaws close around his throat, the big cat goes limp. His tail ceases to thrash. Set can only plead, them only beg. But Anubis is determined. An eye for an eye is the rule of the gods. And so there can only be one punishment for Set's crime. A mutilation. Anubis flays him alive, but not before branding his hide over and over again with burning iron. Those coarse spots, ink black, they are marks of shame on old leopards for allowing Set to take their form, for his savagery, for his barbarity. When Isis returns from her search, another of Osiris, limbs held in her talons, she finds Anoise at guard over her husband's body, a faithful hound. Together they stitch, together they bind. And when Anoise wraps Osiris body in linens, these last rites of. He does it with the utmost care, the utmost precision. His fingers do not shiver in that cool night so black. No. He has a new cloak to keep him warm. It is a leopard's hide, so fresh that blood still drips onto the sand.
- [08:50]
Tristan Hughes
Joyce, Pleasure. Great to have you back on the podcast.
- [08:54]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Thank you.
- [08:55]
Tristan Hughes
And I think we can say we've saved for the best till last because you have been a stalwart of this Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt miniseries and this last episode. Can we say that this particular God, Anubis, he is the most famous, the most well known of all Egyptian deities?
- [09:13]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Oh, that's a good question. I'm not so sure that that's true. Do you? Oh, but he has definitely got a fan base. I mean, again, he hasn't got a great deal of mythology, but he's very recognizable, isn't he? And you see pictures of him all over the place. Whenever people are about mummification, he'll be there. Or Tutankhamun, there's a statue of him in the tomb and so on. So people are familiar, I think in.
- [09:33]
Tristan Hughes
Popular media today isn't. It's like the Mummy, the movie the Mummy and all of that. The depictions of this jackal headed mythological creature and the name Anubis comes up and up over and over again.
- [09:44]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
It does, it does. It's definitely, I think, a name people will be familiar with.
- [09:47]
Tristan Hughes
And before we get into Anubis, and then we're also going to explore the whole process of mummification and the underworld in the Egyptian belief, I'd like to ask a bit about the archeology we have, because when looking at gods and goddesses and mythology, I remember you saying in an earlier episode how the bias is almost towards the dead, towards temples and rituals, that the majority of archeology we have for this surrounds the afterlife. And is that almost kind of a bit of a misconception that the Egyptians are obsessed with death?
- [10:17]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yes, I think it is. I mean, they're certainly interested in it and they certainly prepare for it, at least the ones that we can see who are the elite Egyptians, the ones who can afford tombs or really elaborate graves and mummification and grave goods. But first of all, they're not even the majority of the population. A lot of people are just buried in fairly simple pit graves in the desert, unmified, and always have been throughout the dynastic period. But what's happened to draw the other tombs to our attention is that the housing and the palaces, they're all made of mud brick, and they're all situated on the edge of the cultivated land where it's quite damp and where it's also quite desirable farming land. So they've either dissolved or they've been flattened and built over because they mud brick, it's really easy to do that. They make fertile soil. If you flatten it, they're gone. We don't really have as many. Whereas the tombs and the temples. Well, the temples are made of stone, and the tombs are cut either into the desert or built of stone again. So they've survived because they're away from the flood waters. If they're the tombs, they're also packed full of goods. And you have to remember that the early Egyptologists were looking for, I don't want to say the word treasures, but that basically is what they were doing. They were looking for objects to find. They weren't so much interested in daily life, or they were, but they also were interested in artifacts, interested them greatly. And of course, in those days, it doesn't happen these days, but they could bring artifacts back if they were from the west, and they could give them to their sponsors and so on. So it made a lot of sense for them to focus on cemeteries and the dead rather than on the living. So even if there were settlement sites around, they didn't particularly want to excavate them. It's a sort of whole combination of circumstances, better preservation and more focus. But it does. Yeah, you're right. It gives us that impression that the Egyptians themselves were obsessed with death. And I think it'd be better to say they're obsessed with life and they wanted to make sure their life would continue because they loved life. They wanted their life in Egypt to continue as much as it could do, as it had done during their actual life.
- [12:14]
Tristan Hughes
And do we have much evidence, much source material from these contexts, from archaeological work in cemeteries and so on, for the figure of Anubis himself?
- [12:24]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
We know that anubis, or better to say, jackals, I think, because sometimes they're unnamed and it's difficult to know who they are. We find jackals in association with elaborate burials from the pre dynastic period onwards. So the jackal is an important animal and we've already talked about bulls, but jackals also appear later on. It becomes associated with Anubis. But this jackal figure, who is difficult for us to name because there are several jackal gods, is there right from the very, very beginning, why? The association with cemeteries is not quite clear. It's often said that it's because dogs.
- [12:57]
Tristan Hughes
Dig things up, scavenging kind of thing.
- [12:59]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yeah, but dogs also bury things, don't they? So it could be that. And also having been to Egypt and other places, sometimes just packs of dogs will congregate on the edge of a town or a settlement. And, you know, maybe there are also packs of dogs were found in the cemeteries and they said they could be digging things up or they could be burying things. It's difficult to know.
- [13:18]
Tristan Hughes
So the characteristics of Anubis, at least in his appearance, almost like as you were talking about with Hathor in a previous episode, the characteristics of a jackal head, that actually might predate the figure of Anubis itself.
- [13:32]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yes. In Egyptian you put it much better than I did. Yes, we have definite signs that dogs or jackals are of importance during the pre dynastic time. But there's no writing then. We've no idea what's going on. We'd no idea what the ideas of the afterlife are.
- [13:46]
Tristan Hughes
So pre dynastic times, how far back are we going with that?
- [13:49]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
I would go back about a thousand years before the unification of Egypt.
- [13:55]
Tristan Hughes
And when is that?
- [13:56]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Unification of Egypt's about 3100. Oh, okay. So 4000.
- [14:00]
Tristan Hughes
Yeah, that can vary. Wow. That's referring.
- [14:02]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
I mean, it's not a lot of evidence because there isn't a lot of evidence from that period. But the little bits here and there we see the importance of the bull, the importance of the cow, dogs become important. I think the thing to remember is that we can't just start studying Egyptian tombs and art and beliefs at the beginning of the dynastic age, because it's very much a continuation. The only difference is note it's being ruled by a king and it becomes a unified land. I mean, it's a pretty big difference, I agree, but it's still the same people. So we have to assume, I think, that the same beliefs are there already and they just, they will develop further.
- [14:37]
Tristan Hughes
And so we've kind of talked about, you know, one of these main attributes of Anubis, you know, this jackal headed figure, which we'll explore more as we go on. But Joyce, who exactly was Anubis? What did the ancient Egyptians think Anubis was?
- [14:51]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Anubis starts out as being very much, I was saying control of the cemetery. I wouldn't say he was the king of the dead, because before Osiris, there isn't a land of the dead really for the dead to go to. At this point, we sort of need to slightly understand the changing funerary beliefs. We can see from the evidence that we have that in the old kingdom, the beginning of the dynastic period, the idea is that the king has a spirit strong enough to leave the tomb. So the king, and maybe people associated with him will benefit a bit from his strong spirit being buried near him. But most of the elite who were buried in tombs are not expecting to go to an afterlife. They're expecting to stay in that tomb, but they will live in that tomb forever. And that's why they take lots of graves good to the graves with them, because they don't want to be caught without food and drink and even toilets. And, you know, they take everything they can. It's very impractical because they have to take things till the end of time.
- [15:47]
Tristan Hughes
Underpants in the tomb of Tutankhamun.
- [15:49]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yes, he's later though. He see, he does. That's another interesting question because he does expect to leave and yet, yes, he's taking his clothes with him. So that's another mystery. And it makes you wonder whether he actually can't throw them away, Whether having become a king, there's something sacred about his clothes. I don't know. So we have the king at the beginning of the dynastic period and he knows that he will be able to leave the tomb if he does everything right. The elite who will be buried in what we call mastaba tombs, like rectangular tombs near the king's burial, will live to an extent after death, but won't leave the tomb. And then the ordinary people, we don't really know what they believe. They're buried in the pit graves in the cemetery, and they don't leave us any indication of what they're believing at all. Then you get to the end of the old kingdom and suddenly everything changes. Osiris comes to the fore, becomes really important and his afterlife sort of develops. And now people who have the right rituals and the right information, the right knowledge, are able to go to the land of Osiris. And so he becomes king of the dead. Now, the time when you could say that Anubis is in charge of the cemeteries is the time before Osiris stepped forwards to become king of the dead. So he's the ancient God of the cemeteries, if you like. And as Osiris comes to the fore, he becomes almost like his assistant, he becomes an undertaker.
- [17:07]
Tristan Hughes
So this is the evolution of Anubis's role as time goes on.
- [17:10]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Exactly. His role evolves. So he's still really important. And we see him in pictures mummifying people, but he's no longer in charge, is in charge, see? So he's lost some of his power there. And I've just said we can see him mummifying people. But actually we know because we have some surviving masks that people during the ceremonies of a mummification probably wore an Anubis shaped mask. When we see someone bending over a body in a picture, it's either Anubis or it's a priest or an undertaker, probably the same thing dressed as Anubis, even wearing a mask. We just don't know exactly what we're.
- [17:46]
Tristan Hughes
Looking at performing Anubis role in the mortal world almost.
- [17:49]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yes, yes.
- [17:50]
Tristan Hughes
So with Anubis, I mean, did he have an origin story that we know of? Or at least is there one version of an origin story that we know of?
- [17:57]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
With Anubis, he's got several origins quite similar. Some stories will say that he is the child born to Isis and Osiris. Others would tell us that he was the child born to Nephthys, that Osiris mistook Nephthys for his wife Isis and slept with her.
- [18:14]
Tristan Hughes
And just to make the situation a bit worse, they are both sisters.
- [18:17]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yes, Cyrus, yes, they're all brothers and sisters. Because he's married, it's a bad thing to do. So she becomes pregnant and has a baby because she's scared of what Seth, her husband, will say. She exposes the baby. Isis finds the baby and brings it up as her adoptive son. And we have stories of Anubis helping Isis when she herself helps to preserve the body of her husband, Osiris. But I have to say that the story of exposing a child, we don't get that in Egyptian tradition at all. It's very much a classical thing, which suggests that that part of his mythology is put in much, much later to the original creation story.
- [18:59]
Tristan Hughes
Because is this the catalyst, I mean, that whole story for Anubis then becoming associated rather than with anything in the overland world almost or in the skies, but instead with Osiris and in the underworld, as you say, almost as this undertaker figure?
- [19:11]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Well, I think he always has been, but it gives him a more definite role. It connects him more closely to the more, if you like, more famous gods. So he's got a role now in their story, which presumably his priests would be happy with that happen, because it boosts him up as well, being connected to them. But he really always has been connected with cemeteries and with mummification, but not. I would never call him a king of the dead. It's not quite like that.
- [19:34]
Tristan Hughes
But it's also interesting with his origin story and, you know, potentially his parents being Osiris and Nephthys, he's almost the next level down from that Ennead that we talked about right at the beginning of this miniseries. So he is still right near there at the beginning, at least in their beliefs.
- [19:48]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yes, well, he's there at the beginning of the gods are there at the beginning of the world sense. But he's not there at the beginning of Egyptian history. This is much later in it. So if you were talking about this in 3100 BCE, you probably wouldn't know that part of the story. You'd regard them as completely separate. But if you're talking about it at the end, maybe, you know, with time of Cleopatra, then, yes, you would consider them to be part of a story. But it's obviously, he's a powerful individual, a staying power, because he lusts out the entire dynastic age. And as you say, he's really well known today.
- [20:24]
Tristan Hughes
And you've already talked about how the jackal becomes closely associated with cemeteries, like digging, potentially scavenging as well. I mean, does this evolve at all into the dog and the domestic dog generally just becoming associated with the dead? In ancient Egypt, I don't think dogs.
- [20:39]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Are particularly associated with the dead, but it can be very difficult Sometimes to decide what you're looking at. If you see a picture of a dog, are you looking at Anubis? Are you looking at a dog? It's quite interesting that the Egyptians are definitely more cat people, I would say, than dog people. So we see cats.
- [20:56]
Tristan Hughes
You can be both, but okay, Egyptians.
- [20:57]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yes, you can. Yeah. You see cats being taken hunting for, which seems a bit strange to us. I mean, obviously not hunting big game, but, you know, in scenes on Tomb wolves, you can see cats there rather than dogs. But they do like their dogs.
- [21:11]
Tristan Hughes
Now, we earlier talked about this mythical origin story of Anubis and association with the likes of Osiris and Nephthys. But he also seems to play a significant role in the Osiris myth. Now, what role does he play?
- [21:24]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
In some versions of it, he plays a role that he helps Isis when she brings Osiris back to life and effectively mummifies him. So he's there again in the role of an undertaker, and he helps her and can be taken as her guide, but he's not in all versions of the story. So it's quite interesting as to which version that you're looking at. But definitely as an undertaker, he would be very much at home doing that.
- [21:49]
Tristan Hughes
And in the whole kind of process of mummification and Osiris becoming the first mummy.
- [21:53]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yes. Which again, is very interesting because Osiris becoming the first mummy, again, that story, presumably, is not what inspired mummification. Mummification was there, and it inspired the story of Osiris becoming the first mummy. It's kind of the other way around. But we don't really get that story until the point where mummification is becoming more and more popular with the elite.
- [22:16]
Tristan Hughes
Do you often, therefore, see in depictions on wall paintings, let's say, in tombs or elsewhere, depictions of Osiris, but also Anubis being depicted nearby almost, you know, kind of as the undertaker.
- [22:28]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
But aiding Osiris, he can be aiding. And, for example, he can lead the deceased to the court of judgment. So we can see the two of them together, but you don't see them, in a way, working together. They're working independently, but they are together.
- [22:41]
Tristan Hughes
They're working together in the underworld, in the passage of souls to the underworld. But they have different roles within that.
- [22:47]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Thank you. Yes.
- [22:48]
Tristan Hughes
I mean, you saw about guiding kind of people into the underworld. That almost made me think of Kharon and crossing the River Styx, the ferryman. I mean. So does Anubis also have that kind of role where he is bringing people into the underworld?
- [23:01]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Again, not always, but then it varies from time to time. Sorry, I keep saying that, but it's obviously in the old kingdom you've got people not being guided to the underworld because they're expected to stay in the tomb. In the middle kingdom it becomes open to the ordinary people. So then you have got the potential of going there. But they have things called the coffin texts which are developed from the pyramid texts which were inside some of the pyramids and they're primarily written on their own coffins, box shaped coffins we call them, but they're rectangular, they're not square and they're sort of a map and a guide to what will happen. So you can get there by yourself, but it could be that Anubis could help you, you get to the new kingdom and it's become far more complicated a way of getting there. And you're going to go for quite a grand trial when you get there. And that's more when he comes to the fore to help out with things. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and on Not Just the Tudors from History hit We do admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors from the rise of Henry VII to the death of Henry viii, from Anne Boleyn to her daughter Elizabeth, Elizabeth I. But we also do lots that's not Tudors, murderers, mistresses, pirates and witches. Clues in the title really. So follow not just the Tudors from History hit Wherever you get your podcasts. Deep in the ocean, an orca pod is on the hunt.
- [24:34]
Tristan Hughes
But these aren't your average orcas. These guys are organized marketing team.
- [24:40]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Did you get those social media posts scheduled for the seal migration? Aye aye Captain. We even have an automated notification for.
- [24:47]
Tristan Hughes
All pod managers when they go live.
- [24:49]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
They use Monday.com to keep their teamwork.
- [24:51]
Tristan Hughes
Sharp, their communication clear and their goals in sight. Monday.com or whatever you run even orcas.
- [24:58]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Go to Monday.com to dive deeper.
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Ryan Reynolds
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Tristan Hughes
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Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Better get 20, 20, 20.
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Tristan Hughes
Better get 20.
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Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
20.
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Tristan Hughes
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Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Sold.
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Ryan Reynolds
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Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
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Ryan Reynolds
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- [26:00]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Detail.
- [26:11]
Tristan Hughes
Well, we talked about Anubis and let's go on to mummification. I mean, first of all, no such thing as a silly question. I mean, Joyce, how did the ancient Egyptians, how do they mummify their dead?
- [26:21]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Well, it's an interesting question how they did it. We're quite confident that we know how they did it. Don't try this at home, anybody, but basically you take the body. They would take the body as soon as they could. Really. As soon as they show it was dead, which isn't always easy to know when people are dead or not. But as soon as they show that people would take the body, they would wash it, they would extract the brain from the head because they didn't think the brain really had much of a function, even though they knew from the medical papyri that if you got damage to the head you would start to not function correctly. So they kind of knew. But anyway, they took the brain out and threw it away.
- [26:54]
Tristan Hughes
And did they take it out through the nose, as we as sometimes said?
- [26:57]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yes, yes. That was one of the easier ways of doing it actually, to just, well, basically shove a hook up and then whisk a bit and you could encourage it to trickle down. The nose would be the easiest way of doing it. There are other ways of doing it as well, but that was probably the easiest way of doing it. And then you would remove the internal organs which would decay, which they would know because they were cooking and they live in a hot climate. It's going to be very obvious to them. And then you would dry the body out and you would also dry out the organs that you want to keep. When it had been dried out for somewhere between 40 and 70 days, you would wash it again and oil it to make it a bit more supple and pad it and bandage it. And you would also preserve some of the organs that you've taken away. The heart would be put back into the body, but the other organs would either be put in Canopic jars or packaged up as little packages separately or might be put packaged up and put back into the body because they would be needed in the afterlife. And then you bandage the whole thing up and that is your mummy. But that is just the practical side of it. There's a whole aspect of it which is the religious side of it because it's like the medical recipes that I talked about before. It wouldn't work if you just did that. We could try mummifying people and it would, yes, you'd have a preserved body, but it wouldn't be a latent human being because you need to have the prayer aspect of it as well. And this is where we find the priest taking the role of Anubis as they do the mummification. And it's a sacred ritual, it's not just a way of disposing of the bodies. So it's a long process. It's a process they don't tell us a great deal about. That's not surprising. They don't tell us about things that might be dangerous or might be bad luck or that they just don't want us to know. So it's not sinister that we don't know about it, but it's something that they don't really write about the whole process. So we're having to use a bit of imagination. But we know from the bodies we have the practicalities. As I say, it's the prayers and the whole process of it that we're less certain of.
- [28:54]
Tristan Hughes
Do we have any potential glimpses from surviving archaeology? Maybe a text or something about any details about some of these funeral rites that you've just mentioned?
- [29:04]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
We can see funerals going on on tomb walls. I should stress again, this is really later in the dynastic period. Earlier they weren't mummified and they were sort of preserved in shorter coffins. They were curled up, but when they started to mummify, they get the longer full length coffin. Because it's not so easy to mummify a curled up body. We can see funeral processions, we can see what happens at the tomb where the mummy is propped up and the priest does what we call the opening of the mouth ceremony, which will make the latent being, which is the mummy, receptive to becoming animate. Very interesting that the opening of the mass ceremony is not just for the dead body. It's also applied to statues and art. Anything that has the potential to come alive is probably not quite the right way of putting it. But to reanimate or to even host the spirit of a dead person, you can do the opening of the mouth ceremony on. It's done by a priest but that priest might also be an undertaker or a relation. They're going to the tomb. We can see the unguents from Tutankhamun are poured over elite bodies. We assume that there's a funerary meal and then the body is left in the tomb, and overnight it will start to prepare for its journey to the afterlife.
- [30:20]
Tristan Hughes
So this is the next step in the belief, in Egyptian belief, of what happens to these people after death. Is it the journey to the afterlife?
- [30:27]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
They have the belief that it is possible to achieve an afterlife, but you can only do that if your body survives. And your body has to survive in a recognizable form. So a skeleton won't count.
- [30:38]
Tristan Hughes
Oh, interesting.
- [30:39]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
And they know that this is possible because presumably they have seen in the desert that the bodies will come out of the sand, very well preserved, because the stand is hot, it's sterile, and it allows fluids to drain away from the body. So they know it's achievable. The very interesting thing, I think, to many of us is why they decide to go the route of mummification. Because they could easily or more easily bury the bodies in the desert and they would be naturally mummified. If keeping the shape of the body and the appearance of it matters, that would be much cheaper. But they don't. They replicate what they could have done naturally and develop an entire industry around it. But the aim always is to preserve this, this body so that the spirits that are released when the person dies can recognize the body and come back to it. If the body decays, then the person will die a second death and won't be able to have an afterlife. So that's what you're trying to prevent.
- [31:35]
Tristan Hughes
And on a quick tangent, I mean, economically, it's also much, much more. More expensive to do, isn't it? I mean, like materials. I remember going to the Dead Sea recently, and like bitumen from the Dead Sea seems to be an important ingredient with, with mummy wrapping and things like that. So getting the materials for the mummy wrapping and the whole process which you described earlier, it takes a long time. It must have cost a bit of money as well if you wanted to be mummified.
- [31:59]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yes, I mean, they're not necessarily using bitumen, certainly not in the New Kingdom. But yes, you're absolutely right. The bandaging alone, the amount of linen that would be needed, it's exorbitant. And if you say for a family and suddenly don't know, someone gets measles or something and everybody dies, you're providing miles and miles, literally, of bandaging. Hugely, hugely expensive. We get Egyptians being mummified in old towels and old sheets and this famous one that's mummified in an old sale because presumably at the expense of doing this. But it's not for everybody, it's for the elite, those who can afford it. But as the dynastic age goes on, more and more people are mummified. But standard of mummification, they peak and then they go slightly downhill. So by the end, by around about the time of Cleopatra, the mummies actually look quite beautiful because they're beautifully, intricately patterned. But inside the mummy, the body is not as well preserved as it would have been from an earlier mummy.
- [32:56]
Tristan Hughes
So let's say we're back some 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, and this elite figure, recently deceased, they've just been mummified and that the whole rituals, the rituals have been done. And now the people of the time, they believe that the deceased is now on their journey to the afterlife.
- [33:12]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Bits of the deceased are.
- [33:13]
Tristan Hughes
Bits of the deceased are.
- [33:14]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
The deceased released several spirits. One of them, the car has to stay near to the body. So it will be important that people make offerings to the deceased forever, if possible, because those offerings will support the car. The car needs to eat and drink and be treated kind of like a human. So it's important that that aspect isn't forgotten. So there will be offerings made, or if you can't guarantee to do offerings forever, which nobody can, because after a few generations, people aren't going to do it for their great great grandparents. They won't have known them. You can put images on the wall that magically will also help with that. And there's another spirit, the Ba, which is also flies around on the earth. But another part of the spirit will leave the tomb and will set off on this journey. And they all have to be accommodated. So all three of them have to be happy. But yet we have the spirit who will, who will leave, will use the information that's been provided, either if they're in the Middle Kingdom, on the coffin, text written on their coffin, sometimes there's a map or in the Book of the Dead, if they're in the New Kingdom that they've been buried with, which will give them very explicit details as to what's to come, where they're going, any questions that they asked, it's like a crib sheet. They have the answers. They know what's coming up. And if they prepared for it by having this information with them, they will sail through it. So if it's the new kingdom. You will turn up at the court judged by Osiris, and Newbies will be there, Thoth will be there and your heart, because I said the heart was important, will be weighed in a scale against the feather of truth or the feather of Marth to see if you're light hearted or not. And you will also tell people that you've done no wrong. And if you pass all these tests, then you will progress into the field of reeds to work for a Cyrus. But if you fail, you'll be eaten by Ammit, or there's a danger you'll be eaten by Ammit, which is a fearsome monster which like to worry but in a different configuration is part crocodile, part lion and part hippopotamus. And if you're if you're eaten by Ammit or your heart is eaten by Ammit, then there's no way back from that either. So if you are going to have an elite funeral, it's absolutely crucial that you have the right equipment to get you through this test. That's going to come. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit we do admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors, from the rise of Henry VII to the death of Henry viii, from Anne Boleyn to her daughter Elizabeth I. But we also do lots that's not Tudors, murderers, mistresses, pirates and witches. Clues in the title really. So follow not just the Tudors from History hit Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [36:14]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [37:35]
Tristan Hughes
It's fascinating that we have so many of these details surviving. So this book of the dead that you mentioned earlier, is this a key, almost a literary archaeological source for learning more about their beliefs, about the whole sailing into the after?
- [37:47]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yes, yes. It's interesting because it's not really a test, is it? Because you're taking the answers with you, so you only have to read them out. So basically, the rich will always get in. But if you're not rich, if you don't have that, you haven't got a chance. But then you've not got a mummified body either. If you're. If you're the majority of the population, you're being buried in a desert cemetery without mummification. What do you believe about the afterlife? We don't know because they can't tell us. They're illiterate. We don't have the information. So it might well be that different sectors of the community believe different afterlives. Very difficult to tell.
- [38:22]
Tristan Hughes
And one thing you also mentioned there, Joyce, was sailing. And of course, the River Nile is so important to ancient Egyptian civilization. Do you think we're seeing the importance of that river? And I remember you mentioning on a previous episode how the Egyptians almost, they couldn't believe of a civilization that didn't live with an important river, that the river is so important to the way they think that of course there's going to be a river to take them into the after.
- [38:44]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Absolutely, absolutely. It's important. But also the river seems to be connected and boats connected with funerals. Anyway, again, if we go right the way back to before Egypt becomes one land, we see pottery that's put in graves and there are pictures of boats on it. And the boats have got lots and lots of oars, and they're quite clearly very important. And there are mysterious figures, male and female, associated with the boats, who we interpret as either gods and goddesses or people performing rituals to do with the funeral. And then later on, we find boats beside the pyramids. We find people taking model boats into the tombs with them so that they can use them in the afterlife. The idea that you probably have to sail to a cemetery because you're probably living on one bank and the cemetery will be on the other bank. The cemeteries are in the west. It's become an important part of the funeral, even for people who don't actually have to technically sail.
- [39:37]
Tristan Hughes
So one side of the bank of the river Narrows almost seen as the side of life and the other the side of death. Was it?
- [39:43]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yes, yes. Again, I'm being cautious because that's possibly more how we see it than they do. And there are cemeteries on both sides, there are settlements on both sides. But ideally you would cross the river going towards the west, the land of the setting sun, and that's where you would be buried. So that is where they tend to be and settlements tend to be, but are not always on the east bank.
- [40:04]
Tristan Hughes
One other question on the Book of the Dead, I mean, can you clarify? I mean, what does the Book of the Dead look like? Are we actually thinking, did they leave them with a book or what is the Book of the Dead?
- [40:14]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
It's a scroll. It's a scroll, but it's got pictures in it, shows what's happening and it's got chapters in it, a chapter being just a short selection of spells and descriptions as to what is happening. So they do know what is going to come up.
- [40:27]
Tristan Hughes
And they are normally found in certain tombs dating to certain periods of Egyptian history.
- [40:31]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Elite. Yes, New Kingdom. First of all we have the pyramid text which you find in pyramids for the kings and some queens. And then it becomes much more democratic. So you've got coffin texts, they're written on coffins. But again for the elite it's never very democratic. And now we have people taking this information in the form of a scroll into the tomb. They could buy them, you could either have them custom done so that it's made purely for you, or you could buy an off the peg one and your name would be inserted.
- [40:57]
Tristan Hughes
But it's just fascinating seeing over hundreds of years we've already talked about the evolution of certain gods and goddesses in our chats, but also the evolution of mortuary of funerary texts.
- [41:08]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yes, well, everything evolves. And sometimes we talk about ancient Egypt as if it's one thing and people don't realize. But Tutankhamun wasn't buried under a pyramid, he was buried in a rock cut tomb because that had evolved. You know, their changes the whole time, but they're quite gradual. But there's so much of their civilization that looks consistent like their art. At first glance it looks the same from beginning to end, so you can tell it's ancient Egyptian. But when you look closely, everything is evolving the whole time. That includes funerary practices and includes mythology.
- [41:38]
Tristan Hughes
Which also leads on to the point that of course with the various dynasties that rule ancient Egypt and sometimes dynasties not from Egypt coming into Egypt over time would There have been different funeral rites that these different dynasties and different people, different elites would have performed.
- [41:52]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
I think it's an evolving situation the whole time. Slightly funny thing is that when you got Nubian kings ruling Egypt, so from the south, from the far south, they were actually far stricter in the rules that they applied to things than the Egyptians were themselves. But then they returned home for burial. So we can't talk about their burials in Egypt. But it's not always that the foreigners are doing it differently, it's that they're more adhering to the tradition. But yes, it changes the whole time. A mummification changes. So you can. An expert can tell by looking at a mummy, obviously by dating it, but also just looking at the style of the bandage and so on, how old it is. And it will also reflect to a certain extent the expectations of that person whether they expect to stay in the tomb where they expect to be able to leave.
- [42:38]
Tristan Hughes
And you were talking earlier how on this journey into the afterlife, there's the weighing of the heart and you know, you get the good ending or the really bad ending with the hippo, because.
- [42:47]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Nobody expects the bad ending. That's the thing, because we get this information from the Book of the Dead so we can see Ammit the Destroyer lurking near the scales. But you never see Amit eating anybody because of course if you've got that book, it would never happen to you because you've got the book, so you are going to pass it. But also they wouldn't write it down or draw it anyway because it'd be incredibly bad luck to take this to your tomb because it might actually happen. So we know about it, but we don't see the bad outcome because nobody expects that to happen to them.
- [43:17]
Tristan Hughes
And do these pictures, I mean, do they also give us a sense of what the ancient Egyptians believes the underworld looks like? Does it look outdoors or dark? Do we get any sense of what they thought the underworlds looks like?
- [43:29]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Well, there's a lot of discussion about that. If you look at quite a few tomb walls from the New Kingdom, you can see people doing things like working in the fields. That's not their daily life. That is the afterlife. And it looks very much like Egypt, but sort of better Egypt. You know, the sun is always shining, everyone's wearing lovely clothes and so on. Everyone seems fairly happy. But if you read about it, it seems not quite so certain that it's such a brilliant place to be. It seems to be quite a personal afterlife to everybo and that it might be sort of different for different people. But it's not a paradise. You have to work. It's not necessarily comfortable and it's not necessarily that people want to be dead. They don't necessarily look forward to it. What they do is to try and prepare to make the best of what's going to come. They definitely want to make sure that they're going to live again rather than dying forever. But they're not looking forward to a paradise experience, I would say. And even having to work in the fields for Osiris to the end of time is quite hard work. It's not something that you necessarily want to have to do.
- [44:33]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah.
- [44:33]
Tristan Hughes
Can you talk to us a bit more about this whole field of reeds idea, which is quite interesting. And also you're working alongside the king of the dead.
- [44:41]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
You are. Although he's probably just directing things, he's not actually working. Because kings don't expect to work in the field of reeds. They expect to. Well, they've got several expectations of what will happen to them, but the principal ones is either they will become one with Osiris, because if you think about it, Osiris has been king of Egypt before he died, so he is sort of them. If you see all the kings of Egypt are being part of a repeating cycle, then they are one. So they become one with Cyrus and the living king, their son, usually who's on the throne, is one with Horus, who succeeded Cyrus eventually. Or they will help the southern God re sail in his solar boat. Or they could expect to do both. You know, it's not either. Or. In Tutankhamun's tomb, for example, most of the images on the burial chamber are reflecting Osiris tradition. So you see Osiris greeting Tutankhamun and so on, and Hathor's in there helping out, but on one wall you've got monkeys who are greeting the sun, which is a solar tradition, different tradition in the same room. So, you know, he's got two expectations there. We would see them as conflicting, but he obviously didn't, or his artist didn't. There was also an expectation that a dead king could become a star, an undying star in the sky. So they've got all those expectations and they're not expecting to work. Which is really interesting because you've already mentioned that Tutankhamun took his underpants with him, which he did. But why? Because he didn't expect. He didn't expect to be trapped in his tomb. And he didn't expect after work either. He expected to Become a God. So why is he taking all that stuff with him if he didn't need it? Is he just being like belt and braces? I'll take them because just in case.
- [46:20]
Tristan Hughes
No, as my mum says, you can never have her. Enough thunder pants on your trips and all of that. So it was also interesting what you mentioned there before. We completely wrap up, Joyce, about Rey the sun God, also being involved in the underworld. Because you think Rey, okay, sun God's celestial God living above. But there's no kind of almost divide where it's just the gods in the underworld, Anubis and Osiris and then the gods above. I mean, Hathor and Rey and so on, they can go between realms. Is it?
- [46:48]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yes. Well, he is on a cycle. He's the sun. So during the day he sails across the sky, but at night he sails the other way through the underworld and emerges again at dawn. So he's constantly cycling. In some versions of mythology, he's being born from newt every day. So he has exciting nighttime adventures when he's in the underworld, he has to fight his way through. And he comes across the body of Osiris while he's down there and he defeats all the enemies who try and stop the sun rising. And he always wins because the next day the sun comes up again and he has quite a peaceful sail across the sky during the day. But at nighttime he changes boats and he gets into one and he's got a crew and Seth is with him and people support him and he has to really fight his way through the underworld every night to get to get out. Another indication that perhaps it's not as nice down there. But again, we see we've got two traditions here as well. We've got the tradition of the actual literal underworld that is underground. And we've also got the idea of it being somewhere in the west, you know, it's not. We're not even sure where it is.
- [47:48]
Tristan Hughes
Well, last thing, a bit of an apocalyptic question to end on. I mean, were there ancient Egyptian attitudes? I mean, were there any towards the end of the world? Did they have any thoughts about an apocalypse potentially on the horizon?
- [48:02]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
I think, again, I thought about this quite a bit. That's not the sort of thing they would tell you even if they thought it, because if they wrote it down, so magical are words, particularly put it in a tomb, that it might cause it to happen. But we do know that the gods can die, and obviously they know that people can die. I mean, for start, Osiris can die and even Though he's brought back to life, he's only partially brought back to life. He's not really alive. He can't join the gods. And it wasn't as it was before. We know when we talked about the eight gods of Ammopolis Magna, some of those died in the end. But there are references to what will happen at the end of all time. And what seems to be suggested for happening at the end of time is that Artem under Cyrus will survive, but they will survive in the form of snakes and they will go back into the waters of chaos. They love cyclical nature. They regard everything as cycles. So years start again. After a king dies, the year counting starts again. So maybe if that happens, those two will then somehow generate life and life will come back again. But we're not told that.
- [49:05]
Tristan Hughes
And it's interesting that it's snakes as well. Are snakes associated with the dead or just.
- [49:09]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
There's lots of snakes in the underworld and they're not. There are some like proper feature snakes, you know, who we know the names of. And they do things like this. Apophis is a really evil snake and there's Meehan, who's a good snake. But there are also lots of weird snakes with legs and two heads and so on in there as well. Sort of really odd creatures. They have a very love hate relationship with snakes because on the one hand they're dangerous and they know that they can bite you and possibly kill you. But on the other hand, we have snakes like Reninutat, who's regarded as a very good mother. So if you've got Reninutat, you know, people worship snakes as well, snake goddesses. So you know the two sides of the snake. But in the underworld, definitely there are snakes.
- [49:50]
Tristan Hughes
So you have snakes, you have snakes with legs, you have that hippo, lion, crocodile mix. I can't remember the name. What's the name?
- [49:58]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Amit.
- [49:58]
Tristan Hughes
Amit. I mean, were there many other creatures that we hear about in the underworld or do we know there are odd.
- [50:04]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Things that we don't even know what they are? I mean, we don't know the names of all these snakes that are looking odd. But yes, that's one of the things that makes us think that it's not the paradise that maybe we imagine it would be. It's just better than being dead.
- [50:17]
Tristan Hughes
Well, there you go, Joyce. This has been absolutely fantastic. You have been a superstar for us as one of our stalwarts in this ancient Egypt Gods and Goddesses miniseries. It just goes for me to say thank you so much for being such a key contributor for this series.
- [50:31]
Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Thank you.
- [50:36]
Tristan Hughes
Well, there you go. There was Professor Joyce Tyldesley Obe wrapping up our Egyptian Gods and Goddesses miniseries, talking all things Anubis, mummification and the underworld. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. My huge thanks to Joyce for being one of the great stalwarts of this series alongside Dr. Campbell Price. Such a pleasure to interview them both for multiple episodes in this miniseries. Now I must also send my thanks to everyone else involved in creating this miniseries. The scripts at the beginning of every episode for the myth retelling, they were written by Andrew Hulse. They were narrated by Mena Elbazawi, the assistant producer for this series and the man who also edited the last couple of episodes was Joseph Knight. Our lead producer who made this possible was Ann Marie Luff. And our main editor for the first three episodes who is now on holiday was Aiden Lonergan. Thank you to you all for making this series possible and so special. And also of course, thank you for listening to this episode of the Ancients. Do let us know your thoughts what you thought of this miniseries and of course what you'd like to see next on the Ancients. What special series should we do next? It's really exciting to always kind of go from one to the next to the next and do this great variety of different topics. And of course please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favor. Tell you what, we'll put a poll up with some ideas of future special miniseries that we could do and we'll see which one ranks the best. Don't forget you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe@historyhit.com subscribe as a special gift. You can also get 50% off your first three months when you use code Ancients at checkout. That's enough from me. Signing off, our special Egyptian Gods and Goddesses miniseries.
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Ryan Reynolds
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Tristan Hughes
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Dr. Joyce Tyldesley
Yeah.
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