The Curse of King Tutankhamun: Part I - Ep. 8

Before Tutankhamun became the most famous mummy in the world, he was a teenage pharaoh buried in secrecy beneath the sands of ancient Egypt. In Part 1 of this story, the Cursed...ish hosts trace the origins of the Curse of King Tut by exploring the world that created him: the religious beliefs of ancient Egypt, mummification, tomb protection, funerary rituals, and the supernatural fear of disturbing the dead. Along the way, we dig into the meaning of curses in ancient Egyptian culture, the ancient Egyptian afterlife, the weighing of the heart, protective spells, burial practices, and the history surrounding Tutankhamun himself. Before the tomb is opened and the modern legend begins, this episode lays the foundation for one of history’s most famous alleged curses surrounding a tomb that did not want to be opened.

Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com.

The hosts of Cursed...ish are not responsible for any misfortunes that may befall you while listening to this podcast. By listening to Cursed...ish, you assume all risk of bad luck, ill omens, and unexplained catastrophes.

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Transcript

Daniel 0:00

He also had sandals with the names of his enemies on the soles. So that is some petty. What? Yeah. That's a good thing.

Angela 0:06

So he can step on them for gosh, we have lost the art of being petty.

Daniel 0:24

Welcome, accursed ones, to Cursedish, where we pull apart tales people swear are cursed, one detail at a time, with equal parts curiosity and suspicion. I'm Daniel Stevens.

Angela 0:34

And I'm Angela Mattis.

Daniel 0:36

Okay, Angela, we've got a big one today, and fair warning, it's a two-parter, so why don't we just get straight into it?

Angela 0:42

Yeah, bombs away. Let's go.

Daniel 0:44

Today we are going to start talking about the curse of King Tutankhamun. Most everyone knows the general story about this, the story of King Tut as he's become known to all of us. But before Tutankhamun became the most famous mummy on earth, he was just a dead teenage king hidden in the dark and almost forgotten by history. He was buried like someone that was never meant to be found, wrapped in layers of gold, stone, wood, sealed behind spells, protected by divine symbols, amulets, rituals, and then left beneath the sands of a valley.

Angela 1:15

Um, was he gonna like unleash something? Like, how bad could it have been? This sounds like they were really just like, it's a no, it's a no. Keep him covered.

Daniel 1:25

I'm gonna get into what ancient Egyptians believed about death and the afterlife, and there's very important things that they thought needed to be maintained after someone died for them to have a peaceful and continued afterlife. So the idea of keeping yourself safely buried is very important to them.

Angela 1:44

Okay.

Daniel 1:44

He should have remained peacefully resting, but after thousands of years of that peaceful rest, that secret gave way. Oops. And what followed would become one of the most famous and eerie stories ever told about the dead. Not just the discovery of a tomb, but the suspicion that some graves do not appreciate being opened, and a worldwide obsession with curses that turned a significant archaeological discovery into one of the greatest stories of the modern age.

Angela 2:11

Oh my god.

Daniel 2:12

So before we get to all of that, before we get to the rediscovery of his tomb, let's go back a few thousand years and learn about the world Tut lived in and the life he lived. So ancient Egypt is quite a topic. I think you've probably heard people try to give perspective on it, where they say things like, you know, Cleopatra, ancient Egyptian, right? Pyramids, ancient Egyptian. But when Cleopatra was born, they were thousands of years old already. So ancient Egypt spans thousands of years of history and it's divided into large periods that are really useful to be able to talk about what happened throughout them. And there's the pre-dynastic period, which was before any true what we call like pharaohs, kings, like all of the true Egypt, but obviously there was civilization there, people were living there. But then there was the old kingdom that started around 27,000 years BCE. The next period, there's there's these periods of kingdoms. There's essentially three kingdoms, the main kingdoms of ancient Egypt, and in between are these intermediary periods that were often like periods of unrest, like kind of you know, the civilization would collapse a little and they're just yeah. So, I mean, there's these thousands of years societies, and they go through these periods of change, and then a new dynasty might come back up. And so archaeologists and Egyptologists have largely agreed upon like ways to categorize these as broad strokes. So then there was there's the old kingdom, an intermediary period, the middle kingdom, which is about started 2,000 years BCE and went for about 300 years, then there's another intermediary period, then the new kingdom, which was about 1500 years BCE, to about 1000 BCE, then a third intermediary period, another period of unrest, then became the late period. That's when like the Greeks and the Romans, and that's like Cleopatra started a little later than that. So that I mean, it goes from ancient, ancient, ancient, and that's like the old kingdom is when they were building the pyramids that we all know today. Those are all and the Sphinx, that's all old, old, old kingdom.

Angela 4:13

It is wild how ancient that is, and how I know that like they presume that the pyramids had like a gold cap and looked different, but like that like when you think about it, we can still go see the pyramids today. And there's actually, I don't want to get too far off track, but there is a really, really good book that's written called I Cleopatra, and it's written with as much historical accuracy as possible, which is very difficult. Um but it really like tells the day-to-day life. And the thing I feel like we also maybe don't understand is how opulent it all was, too. Like it was lush and opulent, and they had very, very luxurious lives.

Daniel 4:56

I mean, we'll see that the tomb, King Tot's tomb is particularly opulent. It's well preserved. So it's it's yeah, we'll get to the case.

Angela 5:04

So I think when we think about like these ancient times, it's really easy to slip into almost like thinking that they but like they were very advanced, even in those ancient days. Obviously, we don't even know how they built the pyramids.

Daniel 5:15

So Yeah, I mean, yeah, building the pyramids itself a feat, yeah, uh thousands and thousands of years ago, years ago. I can't imagine.

Angela 5:22

So don't underestimate these people, is essentially what I'm trying to say.

Daniel 5:26

And uh so so that's the general overarching, you know, thousands of years of history. Wild to think about. Our country, you know, we're in our 250th year and we're like, holy crap, that's that's a blink of an eye. That is a blink of an eye in one of the kingdoms of ancient Egypt. Not you know, it's that is nothing. So to to place King Tutankhamun a little bit, just so you have a general idea of where he fits, he was part of the 18th dynasty, which was the first dynasty of the new kingdom. So his dynasty, some ancestor of his, ended the second intermediary period, and it kind of ended when they expelled these. There were some rulers who came in from the Levant to the Middle East more, and they were called the Hyksos. Uh, an a pharaoh that was an old descendant or as part of the line of Tutankhamun expelled them and kind of reunified Egypt under this new kingdom. That was in like the 1500 years BCE. So we're talking 3,500 years ago. So even to Cleopatra, King Tut is thousand, 1500 years ago. Really? Oh, I thought that they were like, no, so it's I mean, these are insane timescales to think of. That is, and as far separate as Cleopatra was from King Tut, King Tut was that almost that far separated from the pyramids as well. So like it's just wild how they're all part of the same civilization we think of, and they follow a lot, like a lot of these religious traditions and everything are that old and come through all of these, but it's just insane to think about as a civilization lasting that long.

Angela 6:56

Especially like when you mentioned that they really tried to hide his grave, and I feel like there's probably a lot of different things that were at play with Cleopatra, but she has never been found. Like she is very well hidden. In fact, there's an archaeologist right now who thinks she maybe is about to find her.

Daniel 7:11

Mm-hmm. Well, well, the how they were burying people changed a lot, and that's why, likely, Cleopatra is not found. It's why King Tut's tomb was preserved the way it was. So it it's a lot of it is kind of circumstance almost. It's weird to think about. And a lot of it it it all boils down to their religion. So let me give you a little overview of the ancient Egyptian religion.

Angela 7:31

Okay.

Daniel 7:32

Obviously, these are all very generalized statements I'm making, and these this religion lasted for thousands of years. So at any point in time, things were changing and different beliefs went on in and about, but there were some overarching general concepts. They're absolutely a polytheistic religion. There are gods for everything. Love it. So many gods. There's gods, um, like there's just, you know, there's deities for everything. You're it's important the deities keep the world going. One, for example, one really important deity was the deity of like the flooding of the Nile, because the flooding of the Nile every year, the fact that it was regular flooding, that actually gave ancient Egypt one of its main advantages in that it could tame the flooding of the Nile, sort of, because it was so predictable generally for a river. And so, like, they loved their god who was in charge of that because they kept them as a prosperous society. So, all about like their whole religion was about maintaining the order of the world. There's this concept they have called ma'a. It's both a concept and the goddess of these things, but it's the concept of balance, truth, justice, order, rectitude. So just like all that is good in the world, the opposite of chaos. And this duality between chaos and order is like one of the central things to this to the ancient Egyptian religion. They wanted to keep the order of the world and to avoid the chaos that threatened to destroy the world.

Angela 8:52

Well, I'm jealous. I could use a little of Ma'a too.

Daniel 8:54

I know, right? I and the Pharaoh, the king, was a critical part in like his rule maintained ma'a and kept order. And also through worshiping your pharaoh, common people could become more connected to the gods and also reach afterlife. Um, their afterlife ideas were a lot of it had to do with the way they conceptualized the soul. They broke it down into a bunch of different parts essentially. And there's like some aspects like your name is super important, and we'll see this. Like names in spells, like knowing someone's name is power. And like, and you have to have like a funeral name, and if you don't have like a burial name, you don't have a name in the afterlife, which is like missing a crucial part of your soul. Also, your heart is crucial to your soul. You're they believed your shadow contained a portion of your soul because your shadow is always with you. They had concepts of your physical body being important as well as a spiritual form you would inhabit in the afterlife. But the two most important parts of your soul are what are called ka and ba. They're two kind of like forces. The ka is your like innate life force, it's what gives people life, and we all have it, and it's the thing that leaves you when you die. And this ka leaves you is your etern, it's your like essential human life force. And then the ba is your like personality or the thing that makes you you. The interplay between ba and ka. There's this thing where they all try to join together, and if you become like a complete good soul in the afterlife, you become known as an ak, aka, and that's like you've become harmonious and you've reached almost like reaching nirvana, or kind of like getting into heaven, like you've reached the point in an afterlife that you are like at peace and you're complete and you're doing what you're supposed to be doing in harmony with the Ma'at of the universe, sort of. And so the goal is to become Ak.

Angela 10:46

This is so interesting because, first of all, do we know, and this may just be a shot in the dark question that we may not even know, but were was there just one religion that everyone followed, or were there offshoots and breakages?

Daniel 11:01

It's we'll get into that a little. It's constantly changing people who are like one cult of one deity will like take over, and then that deity becomes elevated. Yeah. It it I mean, it's a constant evolution, constant evolution, and built and lots of building upon like a lot of the stuff that was buried, we'll see in King Tut's tomb, is like compendiums of old texts that they cataloged for years or for you know, for centuries and millennia, and then they eventually become like their religious text, sort of. So it yeah, it's complicated.

Angela 11:33

Well, that's interesting because for a minute I was getting jealous. I was like, wow, that sounds just incredible. Like everyone was all tapped into the same ideologies, and it's like, I mean, we see some of these very similar concepts in many religions throughout time, like there's a lot of cyclicality around religious beliefs. But honestly, um, if they were I think one of the things that is just wild to me is like you said, the uh time span and like yes, they went through dips and valleys and whatnot, but like the thousand I mean, we've been around for 250 years. That's nothing compared to these people. So it's interesting because I think we see how much religion does impact society.

Daniel 12:13

Yeah, and it sort of feels like the the old USMA might be coming on our own uh intermediary period at this point, too.

Angela 12:20

It's yeah, but like what if we are the period of in-between and like some other like what was the dynasty or the big huge like thing that's going to come back?

Daniel 12:29

These intermediary periods lasted hundreds of years. There's entire people, their whole generations live through these chaotic periods. It wasn't like a quick one. So yeah, I mean, you could be the unfortunate.

Angela 12:40

It's not that I was chosen for one of those.

Daniel 12:42

Yep. Okay, yeah. Uh yeah. Well, speaking of the things we're chosen for, let's talk about the uh Egyptian ideas of the afterlife in the underworld. They conceptualized the underworld as this area called the Duat. It was sort of this like inverse to the hours of the day. It was almost like these 12 inverse hours of the underworld, where like the sun would have to travel through back through the underworld to be reborn uh in the east, you know, travel from the west in through the underworld through there was like kind of dangerous area filled with traps and tricks and things that you need to navigate. And when a human dies, their Ka and their Ba need to be able to go to the Duat. All the things that their religion did in burying people was to help facilitate their soul, essentially, to safely make it through the trials and tests of the duat. One of the tests of the duat, for example, like the first thing you had to do when you die, you get there, and you have to face these people called the 42 Assessors of Ma'at. And they're like a bunch of deities, all from with their own names and their own geographic or mythological origin points, and they all represented a sin. And you had to recite, you had to name them all by name and then say, I did not commit the sin you represent. And the list, so there's 42 of them. So it's based like a test. And what happens if you fail?

Angela 14:01

Because I would have immediately I would have pulled my little flashcards out and fucked it up immediately.

Daniel 14:06

When you get to flashcards, a lot of these, a lot of the things they buried, like a lot of the texts and the stuff they inscribed almost seem like cheat sheets. They're like little, like it's hilarious. It's like, hey, you need to get through this trial. Here's all you need to know. It's amazing.

Angela 14:19

I have some like inverse, like ancient Egyptian lazy ass, just like me, who's like covering a cheat sheet for that babe. Like absolutely not.

Daniel 14:29

Um, also, some of these sins, they had these 42 sins. There's a list of them on Wikipedia. Some of them insane. Oh my god. Like I wanna know some of them are like falsehood, robbery, murder, stealing, normal things. And then there's like destruction of food. You're like, okay, people back then. Oh, I've destroyed some food already. There's like, there's like more, there's like lying, sullenness, crookedness. You're like, okay. And then there's like taking food. You're like, okay, food, we get it. And then there's some more, and then there's like spoiling bread. It's like, okay, we get it. Food.

Angela 14:55

Well, I mean, I'm sure that was more of the times.

Daniel 14:57

Yeah, exactly. It's it's really interesting to see what they val. I mean, stealing someone's food was mentioned multiple times. Murder's only in there once. There's also things like babbling. It's like, okay, so just I'm dead. I mean, I'm dead for sure. Yeah. Um, quarreling, arrogance, one of hoodwinking. Hoodwinking. There's also one that's stopping water flow, which is like, remember how important the river was to them. So, like blocking up the river was like a mortal sin to them.

Angela 15:25

It doesn't even sound like a one-man job, though.

Daniel 15:26

That one exactly.

Angela 15:27

That doesn't sound like a one-man job.

Daniel 15:29

Yeah. And there is one that I thought was so perfect for Cursed Ish. It's conjuration against the king. So, like, literally hexing the king was like one of the sins.

Angela 15:39

Okay, um, we need to somehow bring back the term conjuration because I've never heard of that before. And I love that.

Daniel 15:45

Great, yeah. And so, so that was one, it's just one example of the like the duot was filled with these things, like little like trials and tricks. And the the most important one, you die, you get a court date. And this is, you may have heard of this, it's the weighing of the heart ceremony. It's this idea that Osiris would oversee this. Osiris was the god of the underworld. They take the heart of the deceased person and they weigh it against the feather of Ma'at. And if you balance with the feather, that means you were like a virtuous good person, and then you essentially that's like getting into heaven, or you can then have a good afterlife and and work on becoming that ak, that like the the completed peaceful soul, essentially. But if you do not balance with the soul with the feather, if your heart is off balance with it, your afterlife just ends. You you cease. It so that is like the punishment. It's not torture. You're you're just you don't have an afterlife, I guess. So in this, in the in the ceremony, so the mether uh the Anubis, the god, is the one who actually does the the weighing and Thoth records it, but then there is another god called Amit. He waits, he or she waits there, and they're a god that's part lion, part crocodile, part hippo. And then if you have a bad heart, they eat your heart. Yeah, and like that's awesome. Very cool mythology.

Angela 17:01

Um premium thought process. Whoever came up with that, like that was what kind of drugs were they doing back in those days? Because that was not a sober thought. A crocodile, a hippopotamus, what was the third thing?

Daniel 17:14

Uh lion.

Angela 17:16

A lion, yeah. I gotta get a lion. Definitely someone was tripping. Um, but I love that it eats your heart.

Daniel 17:22

Yep.

Angela 17:23

Like it's a really full circle concept. I love that for it.

Daniel 17:27

It's very, I mean, I I like this general idea. Like, be a good person, don't sin.

Angela 17:31

You'll Yeah, but I thought we had a rigid. I'm not allowed to do any hoodwinking. Are you fucking kidding me? What's the point? No hoodwinking.

Daniel 17:39

I know. Well, it'll we'll struggle. We'll we'll make it through the duot, though. So, okay, so these the duot was kind of this test, basically, a test in the afterlife. And we you want everyone to to have a successful afterlife. So the ancient Egyptian religion had this concept of like magic as truly a real thing. Words were power, speaking words and doing rituals were inherently powerful to them and were very necessary steps to keeping this chaos at bay, keeping the order of the world going.

Angela 18:09

Well, that's interesting. Do you remember what I said in the 13 episode about Stonehenge? About how like maybe Stonehenge was built with knowledge of ancient magic systems that we've forgotten about. I know that it's obviously always been part of the ancient Egyptian lore that they had access to different kinds of magic, but it's yeah, it's weird. It's almost like, is it a secret written in plain sight that there is all this magic in the world that we just are not in a period of time that we've been able to tap into, or maybe we have and we don't realize it.

Daniel 18:41

I mean, yeah, they were all doing this for thousands of years. If it wasn't, if they didn't think it was working, why'd they keep doing it? Well, let's let's get in. So this kind of is where I got into ancient Egyptian ideas on curses. So they believed magic and words had tangible physical properties, real effects in the real world. So I looked into their concepts, what they use curses for generally. A lot of what they cursed or the curses they gave were more like protection. They were really, really focused on protecting people in the afterlife, on making sure, specifically they're kings, but even everyday people had these things, you know, done for them. They wanted to make sure they were protected through the afterlife. So a lot of the curses are things like amulets, spells, instructions, those inscriptions, kind of those little cheat cheats that I was telling you about. These and these burial rituals that cursed the bad things from coming to happen to the person you wanted to protect. Essentially, they were mostly protective. But there were some offensive curses that ancient Egyptians believed in. And one of the like the one form that these took that I saw the most is something called execration texts. And it was this idea that they would take clay pots, bowls, sometimes figurines, statues to like look like people, and they would write the names of enemies on them, and then they would rich and then they would ritualistically break or bury them. They were also, there's some stuff about maybe them doing human sacrifices here. I it was real iffy.

Angela 20:10

Okay, I was excited to talk about how petty they were, and then you went to human sacrifices, and I had I kind of stopped short.

Daniel 20:16

But like they said, like there was a place that they found, for example, they found uh some execration sh first of all, they're not called shards. If it's pottery, I learned this is the greatest little pedantic word distinction ever. They are sherds, s-h-e-r-d-s, they're sherds of clay pottery, but it's shards of glass. And I was just like, whoever felt the need, yeah, and I was like, this extra word is so unnecessary, but I'm but I'm 100% committing it to memory to be a pedant.

Angela 20:46

Okay, and then go and find yourself an opportunity to use it, which will never happen. But when you do all of that, like will all that like cumulation of you finally get to your opportunity. It's like whenever I get to say um apropos of nothing, that's like my little phrase I always try to work in. It never happens. But no one's gonna know what you're talking about when you do. Just like whenever I do say apropos of nothing, people are like, yeah, sure.

Daniel 21:09

Yeah, no one ever knows what I'm talking about. So these this idea of like cursing your enemies, putting their name on it, some pottery or a statue, breaking, burying that. I mean, they maybe just straight up killed some people. It's not, I mean, a lot is not known.

Angela 21:24

You can just always assume the worst.

Daniel 21:26

But it is clear that they had these pottery things and that there were this idea of using it as a curse. There also have been certain tombs that were cursed with like very specific language. So mostly these were done on private individuals, not royalty. But I've got a couple curses that were found. One on an the tomb of a guy of someone named Anktifi during the ninth and tenth dynasties, so pre King Tut times. It says any ruler who shall do evil or wickedness to the coffin may head. A god, not accept any goods he offers, and may his heir not inherit. So it's like he's coming after your heirs. And another tomb from the sixth dynasty, the tomb of Kentika Ikeki. Again, excuse me if I mispronunce.

Angela 22:16

I think we'll forgive you for any mispronunciation.

Daniel 22:18

But it's apparently it's inscribed saying, As for all men who shall enter this my tomb, they shall be impure. There will be judgment, an end shall be made for him. Further, I shall seize his neck like a bird. I shall cast the fear of myself into him.

Angela 22:34

Okay. Um how much space on my body would I need to get that tattooed?

Daniel 22:39

Exactly. And there is there is at least one king's tomb did have a curse very in is the pyramid of Pepi I from Sixth Dynasty.

Angela 22:51

Okay, please tell me that that's really his like full end-to-end name. Osairis, Tutankhamun, Pepi. Pepe, yeah.

Daniel 23:00

Pepe. His tomb includes something known as the pyramid texts, and within is detailed a portion called the curse hymn. And it says, He who shall give his finger against this pyramid and this god's enclosure of Pepi and of his Ka, he has given his finger against Horus's enclosure in the cool waters. Horus is a god. His case has been heard by the Aeneid. This was like a group of gods, and he has nothing. He has no house. He is one accursed. He is one who eats his own body.

Angela 23:35

He's an accursed one!

Daniel 23:37

It very clearly is like you come in my tomb, you're accursed. So there were absolutely kings with their tombs saying, Do not come in here, I will curse you if you disturb. Because they were afraid they wanted their tombs to be safe. And that's actually, we can talk about their funerary practices a little bit, like the things they were doing to ensure this safety. So on top of putting curses, they clearly had things they cared about when it came to burying. Mummification is obvious, you know, the big elephant in the room. We all know Egypt Egyptians made mummies. So, like, why did they do that? They thought the body was literally necessary for that ba to return to continuously so that it could go from the underworld and back into the person's worldly body and then like transition between the two. And that needed to be done kind of freely at will for this journey. And also, they needed to be able to give the ka sustenance. The ka supposedly needed still food and offerings, so there would often be offerings left at people's burial sites and tombs. By King Tut's time, they started making separate burial like temples away from the tomb. That's where the offerings were made. So it was all about preparing their body and preserving the body and then giving them like instructions and safety and spells to make it through the afterlife, the duo, and then also the physical objects. So including a bunch of stuff in the tomb that the pharaohs would actually need to use in life. That goes up to an including. You may have, have you ever heard of the idea of pharaohs used to like bury people alive with them?

Angela 25:06

Yes. I literally have been thinking about the mummy the whole time being just like waiting for the point where we talk about the scene that makes my skin crawl every time I think of it when they're like mummifying him alive. Although there are many other scenes in that movie that made up for it. Yeah, that's like um, so yeah, so can can we create a new memory of how mummification works? Please describe.

Daniel 25:27

This is what they used to do to mummify people. So the first they would wash the body. Great first step. Uh, much appreciated. Already dead, preferably. And the next step is a little more horrific. Then they would remove the internal organs from an incision in the chest cavity. They crucially did not remove the heart because remember, they thought the heart was like crucial to the afterlife. So they preserved your heart, but they did not remove your heart.

Angela 25:50

It needed to be potential snick snack for a hippo crocodile lion.

Daniel 25:56

Yeah, exactly. Um, so then they would dry the organs and the body with a compound called natron. It was a natural salt that they would get in like lake beds in the area. Um, so it almost seems like the universe was like, here, dry out your corpses. You can you got this salt to do it. Like it's the fact that they had that and found it is kind of amazing.

Angela 26:16

But like also, on which day was somebody like, oh, this is some nice salt. This will dry out a corpse.

Daniel 26:22

I do wonder that as well.

Angela 26:23

You know, honestly, probably there was like a fish in the in the salt fed, and like they could. That one's actually not that big of a secret.

Daniel 26:30

They said, you know what, we could make King Tut jerky with this.

Angela 26:33

Ew, don't, don't, stop.

Daniel 26:35

Okay. Okay. Uh, but also the organs, they would put those in that those cool jars, the called canopic jars. You know what I'm talking about? The and like by King Tut's time, they did have the cool ones with the animal heads.

Angela 26:47

I have made it very clear at this point that the the mummy was a very pivotal movie for me, so I am aware of these things.

Daniel 26:54

So they would they would dry out the body, then they would treat it with resins, oils, perfumes, etc. rituals, and then they would pad or stuff the body. I saw somewhere they might have used sawdust, but you know, any type of material to kick keep its shape uh and form, and then they would, you know, wrap it in linen, essentially. A bunch, and that it's amazing how they figured out how to preserve these bodies for thousands of years.

Angela 27:16

Gross, but amazing. The thing I also keep thinking about is like iteration. So you iterate based on positive or negative results. And what's interesting to me is how much iteration there was over time, and it's like, what happened that gave them any kind of results to feel the need to iterate? Like, why would they have moved the food into a different temple? What would they have? Maybe like I'm sure it's like anything where there's people who are things change and evolve over time, just that's just how everything works. But at the same time, it's a little bit like, do they know something we don't know?

Daniel 27:54

Yeah, maybe.

Angela 27:55

Also, I love how petty it all is. We need to bring back into our just general way of being cursing people more and like being poetic about it. Like, I I need to we need to revive some of that. That's the secret goal of this podcast.

Daniel 28:10

I agree. And you know, maybe we can take some ideas of how to bury ourselves with some goods. I'm gonna get buried with a whole treasure trove of stuff that I like in life. I'm bringing bringing my my computer and my my favorite things into the um and then when somebody like digs you up in 2000 years, they're gonna be like, this is depressing.

Angela 28:30

A nerd, a laptop computer. For me, it's like a bag of sour patch kids, some races peanut butter cups, and um and the ashes of my dad cat.

Daniel 28:42

Oh let me stop listing this off. This is depressing and embarrassing. Yeah, well we'll get to what they we'll get to we'll get to what King Tutankhamun himself had in his tomb. But yeah, they would bring a bunch of stuff, and then in add in addition to these actual things, there is evidence that they used to do what was called retainer sacrifices, and those were servants who were thought to be needed in the afterlife and were killed. Yeah. That only happened in the old kingdom. That that there's like not tons of evidence.

Angela 29:10

I think it's a lot more. I mean, you hear it all the time, like with um Genghis Khan as well. Like, that's a job application that I don't know who's filling that one out. That would have been a hard one to recruit for, but I so I'm assuming you weren't recruited.

Daniel 29:23

Yeah, it I mean, well, part of when I was reading is like the people who were done, they were like parts of royal life, so that was actually like an elevated status. So they were like, they were luckier people than maybe some, I mean, they weren't Well, they probably thought differently about death.

Angela 29:37

They probably felt like they had such a clear understanding of what happens in the afterlife that probably there was some sort of like you are part of this ritual, you are also there coming along for some of the positive things afterwards. So God, I hope they were right, because that would suck to die and sounds like a nightmare.

Daniel 29:54

Um but that was not being done around the time of Tutankhamun. No where there's no idea that they did that. But Tutankhamun, they ended up putting little like statues to be like their servants. Uh, but in in addition to all the the physical objects they need to do, they also inscribed, like I said, all these kind of cheat sheets, all these spells, these protective things. And that often by King Tutankhamun's time essentially had kind of been compiled into this thing called the Book of the Dead. One of the papyri, a great word, the plural of papyrus. One of these Book of the Dead papyri is like 70 feet long or something. So it's just like these insanely detailed, very, very dense documents that just evolved over like thousands of years. And they included these in the tombs as help to get them through the afterlife.

Angela 30:38

Which is interesting because I'm sure we sounds like we've got them. Sounds like we have taken them from their rightful places, but it also sounds like I'm sure they've been translated because I think there's a pretty clear understanding of those ancient languages to some extent. Yes. So how do we not have all the spooky secrets?

Daniel 30:56

We'll get into the translation next week. The ability or not to translate hieroglyphics was something that was important. Translation of these of hieroglyphics was lost for a long time until the Rosetta Stone. So there was a long period where people could not tell what these things were saying. So there's a lot of mystery to it. So we've kind of gone over the gen the general ideas of the ancient Egyptian religions, the reasons they did things for burying. There's one very specific change in the religion that happened right before King Tutankhamun that's very important. And that was a few kings before Tut was a pharaoh named Ankhana. Pretty sure this is Tutankhamun's dad. There's always gonna be a little bit of like, they're not confident 100% with the DNA ability for thousands of years old. There's like records that might be iffy, so but they believe this is his father. He uh elevated a deity named Aten. It was his local deity at like his in a in a place called Amarna. This is a city. He moved the capital to Amarna, and he elevated Aten above the other gods, essentially. It almost started to get into like monotheism. It was started to be he was like, this is the god that matters, he is the god of gods, he's the one we pray to. And he started really changing a lot about day-to-day life in in ancient Egypt at the time. And people really didn't seem to like that a lot. So he made these big changes, and so at this moment was when King Tutankhamun, as we now know him, was born, but he was actually born as Tutankhotan. So that Aten part of his name was after that god that had recently been elevated. And Ankinaten, who made those changes and was likely Tut's dad, died. And then before King Tut was able to become Pharaoh, there were two intermediary kings, one man, one woman. There's not much information about what happened, but they seem to have stuck with those religious changes.

Angela 32:49

Interesting.

Daniel 32:50

So King Tut was born in about 1341 BCE, again as Tutankhotan. At around eight or nine is when he ascended to the throne. So his dad likely died when he was very young. And then there were these two intermediary kings, and then at eight or nine or so he became a king. And his reign is very wild. His reign is absolutely was very, very most likely guided by some key adults in his life. Those two key adults being one of his advisors, I A Y A I, I'm not sure how to pronounce it, and then a general. They actually both became king after his death. So we'll get to them a little bit. But when he was very young, he married his wife, who was also likely his sister, and her name was Anksan Patin, also named after Aten, the god. Once he became king, he, likely guided by his adult uh advisors, he started these s like giant reformations. He undid all of that stuff that Ankanaten did.

Angela 33:52

Were his advisors different from the people who were the intermediaries? Like it seems like there is no way that this was not just an absolutely tumultuous time. Like, you know, based on how humans work, I don't think that's changed over many ancient years to the point where like you would see that opportunity if you were kind of a bad actor and say, oh, a little tiny child is the king. We need intermediaries. Yeah. It sounds like you would get in there and do all kinds of stuff. But this is interesting because I'm imagining that, like you said, people were pretty pissed off about this new like monotheistic kind of way of life. Sounds like the two intermediaries were more like plants from his father, and maybe there's like this warring sounds like a very interesting thing.

Daniel 34:36

Yeah. And and unfortunately, a lot of that the motivation is lost to history. I mean, there's no way to know what people really and and a lot of what we know, uh some of this is like the information comes from the person who became Pharaoh after. So it's like, you know, the the victory.

Angela 34:52

Yeah, by the victors.

Daniel 34:54

So so much of it is like, are we just is this the propaganda of the time?

Angela 34:57

And you said that King Tankamen is really only famous because we found his tomb. He wasn't famous before, or like he wouldn't have been known.

Daniel 35:07

I kind of thought that, but reading about this, his rule, I mean, it's a short rule, but a major religious change happened under him. And he he moved the capital um back to Thebes. So the key the capital went to Thebes, which is modern-day Luxor. So this is way far south of Cairo, not nowhere near the pyramids in Cairo and Giza. Um, this is you know much farther upriver on the Nile. But he moved, I mean he moved the capital, he brought back the old religion. One important thing that King Tut did, he and his wife both changed their names for from that Aten ending to the Amun ending, because Amun was another god who was a previous important god. So they wanted to say, we're going back to the old ways. So he became Tutankhamun and Anksanapatan became Anksanamun. So they changed their last name to like, yeah.

Angela 35:56

Anaksanamun.

Daniel 35:57

Exactly. Exactly.

Angela 35:59

So my sexual awakenings!

Daniel 36:03

So they they literally were like, We're changing our names. We mean business, we're going back to the old ways. And then there's this thing called the Restoration Stella, and it's sort of like this giant propaganda, it's like a PR statement almost. Like this really reads like PR statement to me before PR existed.

Angela 36:17

Which wait, hold on. Speaking of PR, I just realized I made a joke that was an inside joke between us that nobody would know anything about when I said that an axonemon was my sexual awakening. It's because I accidentally once texted my dad that all of the characters in the mummy were a sexual awakening for me, and it was embarrassing. Thank you for that. I just wanted to clarify that a little bit of Angela and Daniel lore. Oh god. Because I was texting Daniel to tell him about how all the characters in the mummy were a sexual awakening.

Daniel 36:46

And Daniel and Dad are apparently too close in their phone, yeah.

Angela 36:50

Yeah, sorry, just a little circle back real fast. Continue on with ancient Egyptian history.

Daniel 36:59

Okay, so they released this Restoration Stella, and it's basically like a big PR thing. It's Tut being like, here's everything that sucks. The gods are not listening because we've turned our backs on them. We're having like military failures. This everything sucks. And now here I come, and here are my great changes. And he like some of the things they highlight are hilariously bureaucratic. One is like, we've doubled even quadrupled temple budgets. Oh my god. And he like this reads PR team, and they had a comms person for sure, which is like he like lays out salaries for singers and entertainers in the temple and stuff. So it's like very bizarre, but it's this big thing of like, we're back at it again, Egypt.

Angela 37:38

It's like back at it again.

Daniel 37:40

Yeah, it's like it was this kind of this like reset. And so it's wild that, yes, King Tutankhamun is famous because, as we'll see, his tomb was unusually well preserved. But he also was kind of critical in like a major part of history. I always thought, like you thought, he was kind of an a no-name king, but he was young, made these major changes. Also, very tragically, in his tomb, there are two daughters of his that were either stillborn or maybe premature, both died very young. And so he is the end of his royal bloodline as well. So that and that so that is the end of his royal bloodline is his two daughter, yeah, his two daughters who did not survive. So the fact that he's the end of a royal bloodline, you know, and and the the 18th dynasty ends very soon after tight. Not immediately, but soon after T. He's near the end of that dynasty, because a new dynasty, when the bloodline comes out, there there was there was competition. But he did die at around the age of 19, so he died very young. And there's really yeah, there's no way no one really knows how he died. There were some CT scans and studies done in the early 2000s. There's evidence of malaria infection, which can obviously lead to lots of issues, including death, and he likely suffered a broken leg. The break doesn't seem to show much healing, so it's thought that he broke a leg near death, and that could have been part of what caused his death. He also could have had some sort of foot issue just generally. He may have had a club foot. There he was buried with a lot of walking sticks. Those could have been more ceremonial or fashion, but he could have needed a walking stick. He was maybe a frail person, and he was likely inbred as well.

Angela 39:24

Yeah, I was gonna say it sounds like there was some inbreeding going on there.

Daniel 39:28

Sorry, his mother and father are believed to have been full siblings, I think.

Angela 39:32

Yuck. Um, but it's like also you have thousands and thousands of years of history. It takes about a hundred years, tops, to figure out that inbreeding is not the way to go, which is like interesting to me.

Daniel 39:45

I mean, different civilizations kept trying it. I mean, the Europeans were doing it. Uh everyone was I think a lot of people, a lot of people made that same mistake. Yeah.

Angela 39:54

I may have to live in the downfall of a 250-year-old dynasty, if you want to call it that. But at least I live in a time where we are full on, like, no, no, no, no, no. That's gross. Don't do that.

Daniel 40:05

Yeah. Um there is, there was, there's a lot of reporting that maybe he had been hit in the head and murdered.

Angela 40:12

Yeah, I feel like for some reason I always thought that he had like fallen off of a chariot or something, but I might be making that up.

Daniel 40:18

Well, there was a lot of common thought that he had a head injury that was verifiable, but I I it turns out that it seems like that damage was done post-mortem, like from some sort of like while moving. Someone dropped him. I mean, yeah, and the many times that body was touched, yeah. So you know, that they don't think that he was murdered or suffered any type of I mean, that broken bone could have been from a a chariot, a giant leg bone. That those are, you know, ripe for infection. There's lots of blood supply there.

Angela 40:47

Like I know they lived in like very opulent, luxurious times, I think even far beyond what we would imagine or expect. But they also lived in very volatile times.

Daniel 40:56

They couldn't cure a giant broken leg, probably. And infections were they didn't understand.

Angela 41:00

I mean, they didn't even understand germ theory until the 1300s. Like 1300s.

Daniel 41:06

So they were And that was like basic understanding too.

Angela 41:09

Yeah.

Daniel 41:09

I mean, doctors weren't washing their hands between like delivering babies and surgery like 50 years ago.

Angela 41:15

Ew, stop making me think about these things.

Daniel 41:19

Nightmarish.

Angela 41:20

Like, oh, why wouldn't you Okay, never mind. Not going down that rat hole.

Daniel 41:24

So he died young after a short, although kind of consequential rule, I would say. I I I was surprised. I thought it was gonna be like I kind of remember the casual telling of his story is like, oh, he was it wasn't important in life. I mean, he seemed like he was an eventful, it was major changes, he undid major changes. He was venerated as a deity in life. I mean, that's pretty common, but he was very beloved. His successor was that guy, I. He married Anaxinamun, and then took and also there's sort of like accusations almost that this guy was a usurper, that he was the one like pulling the strings behind the child king, and then he be was like, oh, I guess I'll be king next too. And he married his wife. There's even what the tomb they used to bury Tut, because of his unexpected death, they hadn't finished his royal tomb. But I wound up taking that tomb. So they gave Tut a different tomb that was already there, and then I ended up using that tomb, and I'm like, okay, that seems shady.

Angela 42:22

I might have done that. Well, it probably was a little bit more like logistics, like.

Daniel 42:27

Oh, I don't know. It seems shady to me, but no, I'm just kidding.

Angela 42:30

It seems totally shady. I guarantee there was it was probably worthy of a full-on Shonda Rhymes show what was going on at those.

Daniel 42:39

Well, one crucial thing is there was this very important ceremony called the opening of the mouth ceremony that was necessary to do to help. It gave the deceased their senses back. So in the underworld they could like speak and see and hear and all that.

Angela 42:52

So I performed this ceremony on Tutankhamun, and that should Oh my god, I thought you were talking about I thought you were saying I performed this ceremony, and I was like, Well, you're fucked. You have unleashed, you are you are out, my friend.

Daniel 43:08

I don't know. His name is Awan.

Angela 43:09

I don't know if it's like, what the fuck are you doing? Stop that.

Daniel 43:14

But so and this ceremony is like it involved, like they had this little ceremonial ads, A D Z E. It's like this old tool, also one of my favorite Scrabble words, but they would like touch their eyes with it, touch their mouth with it. There's even something with like a calf's leg became involved. So it's just another ceremony, but I did this. I, the guy, did this be nervous. He's and he's inscribed on the wall of Tut's tomb doing this, and that's like a huge honor. So it's sort of there's like these mixed signals. It's like, is there propaganda or is there, you know, and there were people competing for the throne after. So there would be like mixed messages. So it's just very interesting how we have to piece this together.

Angela 43:54

But it sounds like I was like the driver of Tut and come and doing a lot of reform. form. Like it seems like she was sort of like the puppet king for I. So maybe they were Pels because it sounds like honestly, it sounds like they were probably like I feel like if I were I mean I guess I could never put myself in the shoes of those people. But it sounds like they had some major disruption with this whole monotheistic thing, hold change in where the cat like where the capital is, all that stuff. And it sounds like I was like, yeah, we're gonna back that up.

Daniel 44:26

Like Yeah, I mean I it seems like these were very popular changes. So it whatever Tut or I or who the records from the time show that it was well received.

Angela 44:35

It doesn't really seem to me like I and Tutankhamun would have been like foes. It seems like he was probably a tool for I, but still at the same point. So after all that moving and shaking and wheeling and dealing, give the man his his pair his uh nice tomb.

Daniel 44:52

That was the vibe for that. Yeah. But you know it's just again it's no one will ever really know. It'd be like so interesting to actually go back and see what actually happened with all these. So let's talk about Tut's tomb. By the new kingdom they weren't doing pyramids anymore and they were actually and like I said earlier they're doing separate mortuary temples to give the offerings. So the tombs started to just be cut directly into rock essentially in this valley. And at the time they were using this one valley it's now known as the Valley of the Kings. Tutankhamun had a tomb being made a royal tomb but since he died early they wound up using this other tomb and it's it's thought that it was likely just for some high status individual or something and they you know like you said logistics they needed a tomb they said we'll turn this into King Tutankman's tomb. So it's a little smaller than most tombs and crucially its entrance is at the ground it's it's entrance is at the ground and then you walk down steps to underground cavern like underground rooms. And so instead of being cut into the wall of a the valley or a rock wall it's on the ground. So that led to it being easily covered and that's kind of like the the little stroke of luck that because he didn't have a royal tomb a regular royal tomb he went almost forgotten about on the ground of the of the valley and then got covered by like later construction for other tombs like debris covered it and then like natural flooding. So truly like it got buried. They think there were a few grave robberies early when the tomb wasn't covered and then they like fixed it put stuff back in and then resealed it. But after those initial grave robberies it truly did become covered and then untouched for thousands of years. But in the tomb so the tomb it's a staircase going down and then it's a long entry corridor that's like 26 feet long and there's four main rooms. There's the antechamber which is 26 by 12 feet. It has a small annex on it that's 14 by eight feet and then there's the burial chamber itself which is 13 by 21 feet and the treasury connected to that which is 16 by 12 feet. Yeah you know where the best and the treasury had this shrine with a statue of Anubis the the jackal god guarding it so it's just like staring at you as you did as you dared walk towards the best treasures. I think that's would be like very disturbing.

Angela 47:03

Yeah I know it's like wild I mean I would have been so scared to have even stepped foot in that place. Yeah it is sort of when you think about it like man the hubris of some of these people who would like grave rob or go in there like I guess people just aren't scared of shit.

Daniel 47:20

Mm-hmm. Well and one of the reasons that when they eventually did unearth this is because there's the reason it was so famous and so well regarded as an amazing archaeological discovery is because of how many items were recovered. So there are 5,398 objects in total recorded in King Tutankhamun's tomb. And it's just a whole bunch of stuff like just his coffin alone it's his coffin is three it's like a gold coffin in a wooden coffin in another wooden coffin all four like insanely decorated and the mask the famous mask sarcophagi yeah well those are the coffins those then go in a giant granite or some sort of stone star sarcophagus which was like a big square cube and then there's like multiple wooden shrine boxes like enveloping out each with more carvings and decoration and like symbology and like all this crazy stuff. So it's like there's this diagram of how many shrines and sarcophagus and coffins he has and it's just like the most insane Russian nesting doll. I have the most nerdy response to this ever is that I'm just kind of like wow how did someone coordinate all that they had a really good project planner I guess like a good project manager was at work and the project manager got buried for for future use in the afterlife to manage those projects in the dual final deliverable death no post no postmortem for this project. Oh amazing worth it um so among the many things that are of note there are these things called shabtees there were 413 of them these are these little talismans or figurines that they took the place of those like the people who were buried alive.

Angela 49:01

Yeah it sounds like this was a really highly skilled person who they took on like and they were like symbolic symbolic staff not literal staff in your in your uh yeah they probably again were having some recruiting issues so they had to make some changes he also had sandals with the names of his enemies on the souls so that is some petty yeah that is some petty step on them for gosh we have lost the art of being petty yeah we need to work on that as just this is my message to humanity like we need to become shittier and it's like oh you thought you hated like hey haters gonna hate I'm taking you I'm gonna walk on your name for eternity in the afternoon into our spite as well because they were very poetic.

Daniel 49:46

I'm not telling people to go out and be shitty because that's annoying I'm saying be clever be petty also had lots of uh wine jars which I thought was great and apparently they had like they had like notes on where it was from like the kind of like sommelier notes like uh he also had an iron dagger that is now agreed to be made from a meteorite which is just kind of like cosmically badass.

Angela 50:10

Yeah like can you imagine they take all the stuff out of the tomb and there is some scientist who's like cataloging and they get it under the microscope and they're like holy shit this is a meteorite like can you imagine the that day in the office that is mind bot like that honestly is so cool. That he had an axe or a dagger made from a meteorite wild yeah I mean that is like top of my Christmas list.

Daniel 50:38

Oh yeah well I mean I already have two I don't need another one right now um but yeah so he was buried with tons and tons of stuff and archaeologists were so thrilled to see all this and the fact that it was buried and kind of forgotten about was like that crucial almost like stroke of unfortunate luck for him but luck for his historical significance that he then made it to this day.

Angela 50:59

Doesn't it make you wonder what else is out there just like sitting in for sure like a chamber somewhere well again guess Khan's whole that's never been found Cleopatra's never been found like there it's like weird to think that we just go about our business and there are like little pockets in the earth where there's just like stuff sitting there for thousands of years that would blow our little brains.

Daniel 51:21

And one one thing that I did see that was like it's almost like this little security system for his tomb. They had what was called these like magical bricks sort of they're these like certain inscribed bricks they left little niches and wall holes for them and then they made these like magical protective bricks and they put those in specific spots throughout his tomb. So he's kind of got this like little security system of spells and like well that worked out yeah I guess but I mean they clearly believed that they were putting strong magic on this place you know which is what boggles my mind like they wouldn't have just been doing that for nothing. Well and and one thing they did do after Zeus was continue to give him offerings. They felt that that was necessary to help him in his journey in the afterlife and his journey in the afterlife was part of their successful future journey in the afterlife. Like he was leading the way for them and and doing what needed they were it was helping them as well. So they they had his mortuary temple that that temple isn't nobody knows where it is. It is completely lost to history.

Angela 52:24

This sounds like an industry by the way this sounds like something we need to revive into a multi-billion dollar industry. What you were just buried six feet in the ground with a tombstone you you peasant we need to get you a few rooms you don't have you don't have an axe made out of a meteorite what's wrong with you you don't have multi-chambers filled with thousands of artifacts this is this is the business plan.

Daniel 52:50

And there's there there's kind of theories that like you know because of his untimely death that they had to use like a different temple or something but there's also theories that some of his his successors tried to erase the history of that little switch to atonism. They wanted to almost just be like oh that never happened who never heard of her yeah that does sound like a stupid little blip so they there's this idea that they kind of maybe tried to erase a little of the history of the people involved with not only the change but also the the change back. So so people maybe tried to kind of erase common from history a little bit. So they maybe got like took his temple and used it for something else. To me there's this idea that's like if the ancient Egyptians believe they needed to be able to sustain him through afterlife taking away his temple seems like the worst thing you could possibly do. You've taken away the place that people go to give him offerings and to nourish his his soul. And so to me I'm like that seems really that seems almost worse than opening his tomb. I don't know. I think if anything that is like the cosmic nastiness that might be there. But as we are King Tut is in his tomb and that is where he will lie for three thousandish years. He's gonna sit there, he's encased in layer after layer of resin, linen, wood, gold, stone, more wood, spells, all of that stuff and in the minds of ancient Egyptians he was sitting there for eternity his ba moving between the dua, trying this eternal dance to become that enlightened individual, reach his his final destination. And like all these protections all these things all the rights they did to to keep him safe in the afterlife all of that held strong for thousands of years. But then in 1922 someone on an archaeological dig riding this new wave known as Egyptology they notice something strange beneath the sand in an overlooked corner of the valley and maybe depending on who you ask they wish they wouldn't have seen it at all. But we'll talk about that next time. Yes oh my god I'm so excited so we can't we can't let's we're we're not really we're not ready to assess the curse yet but I I I hope I am feel I mean it seems like there is a history of Egyptians did believe in curses offensive and defensive and the Kingdom's tomb absolutely was filled with those types of of magic I just feel like the ancient Egyptian I feel like lore is even just a stupid word for it.

Angela 55:16

It's just so rich and interesting and cool. They're such badasses. So yeah I mean we will suspend all um determination of cursed or cursed dish until next week but I am very excited for part two.

Daniel 55:33

I kind of think where we are though we're at a place between these you know we're about to tell the rest of the story but we're at a place where there is a good basis for a curse. So I think we're in that cursed dish territory.

Angela 55:43

Yes I mean I think we'll have our full verdict next week but for now maybe cursed maybe not see you next week for part two of King Tutankhamun Cursed is an ish media production.

Daniel 56:04

It explores stories of alleged curses, historical mysteries and supernatural claims. While we do investigate the history and the evidence behind these stories ultimately you should decide for yourself what to believe. If you have questions comments or your own accursed tales to share send us a hex at uh oh at cursed dish dot com that's uh oh h all one word at cursed dish all one word dot com