Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Was Tutankhamun Mummified Erect?

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

What happened to King Tut's 'Little Tut' during mummification? The rumour is that he took an erection to the afterlife, but what can we know after several millennia and a very rough excavation?Dr Campbell Price came into the studio to bust a few myths about the boy Pharaoh. But not to worry, for every myth busted, Campbell has another golden nugget!Campbell is Curator of Egypt & Sudan at Manchester Museum.This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.Subscribe to the new Betwixt The Sheets YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@BetwixtTheSheetsPodcastSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister, welcome back once again to Betwicks the Sheets. That's me doing jazz hands, but you can't see it because we're still on audio. Welcome back. It's fab to have you here. But because we care about you and your precious, precious feelings,

I do have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, spoken about adults to other adults, about to dutty things, an adulty way, covering a range of all subjects, and you should be an adult too. and that's just to keep your feeling safe. We call that the fair do's warning, because if you keep listening and you happen to get upset, well then tough tits because that one was on you. Fair do's, we did tell you. Right, let's crack on.

How would you like your body to be preserved for the afterlife? Would you have your hair in curlers? Would you have gel or acrylic nails? Or how about a simple, massive swinging hard on? Because that's how Faro Tutankarmoon was parceled up for eternity. And that is just the tip of it. Hello and welcome back to Betwixta Sheets, the history of sex, scandal and society with me, Kate Lister.

In 1925, three years after archaeologists uncovered Tutankarmon's tomb, a formal committee unwrapped the body and found something completely unexpected. The boy pharaoh had been mummified erect. To work out what the hell is happening here, we are joined by Dr Campbell Price, who has joined me in the studio to find out all. about King Tut's Little Tut. Are you ready? Let's do this. Well, hello. Hello. Welcome back to Patrix the Sheets. It's only Campbell Price. How are you doing?

Very well, thanks, Kate. And it is a delight to be back, honestly. It is an absolute pleasure to have you back. You are a firm guest favourite. Well, that's very kind. And for anyone who's listening and not watching, you are wearing a spectacular jumper. For you, Kate, I literally would not wear this for anyone else on any other medium. A gift from my husband. It's got a naked man on the front. It does have a naked. Is it David? It is David. My husband's called David. Oh, fabulous. Fabulous. And very fitting for what we're talking about today. Another naked man, or at least a man's body part. We're here to talk about Tutankhamun's member. Yes. Yes, that's the springboard you might say. That is.

To further discussion about Egyptology. Yes. Yes. So this was a fact that I learned relatively recently, and this is what piqued my interest. Right. Tutankhamun was mummified with an erected penis. That's the story that I've read.

That's the story that you've read. Oh, no, you're going to tell me that's not true. I think, first of all, it's worth saying Tutankarmon is one of these historical characters that just pops out of the page and the documentary. The boy Pharaoh. Wow, yeah. Boy King, Golden.

King, tragic only was 18. Yeah, yeah. So we know all of that. He ruled for about nine years. At a time, it's true of quite a lot of religious change. And this will come into the interpretation of his bodily treatment. Right. So normally, when the king or anyone rich dies, they are mummified. It takes 70 days. And the basic purpose of mummification, Kate, is not to preserve the body, but to transform the body into something perfect and superhuman, something divine. Okay, okay. So it's in that context that fairly recently the,

well, fairly recently the reports of the unwrapping were revisited. So remember, Tuton Kamen's found in 1922? Yep. A big, and it was a whole thing, right, when they found it. Yeah. It was like the advent and the media just really kind of got going. and it was a global phenomenon when they discovered that. Other than wars, it was probably the first big news story full stop was the tune coming to.

So eventually they clear stuff out, they get into the burial chamber, the team, the international team, Egyptian specialists working for a man called Howard Carter. He's the one everyone knows. So eventually Carter gets into the burial chamber, gets down to the body. and it is now well known that Carter is using very invasive methods to remove Tutankhamun from his coffin. What's he doing? Is it just smash and grab? Essentially. Oh no. Yes. Because the stuff is, so first of all, we wonder, why is the coffin so heavy?

Right. Because there are these Russian doll style coffins. Three of them, one inside the other. The innermost one is made of solid gold. That would do it. which could be pretty heavy a lot of carriage so eventually they get into this solid

gold coffin take the lid off they see the mask I mean the mask of Tutankham it's iconic isn't it incredible now beautifully displayed in the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo if you want to go and see it but in order to get that undoubted masterpiece out it's glued

fast with black goo Tutankham's whole body is covered in black goo set fast what did they do? They start by trying to use knives to prize it out

Even I know that's a shit idea Like with these things You tend to think like Oh maybe that was like What the best that they had at the time Was that the best that they had at the time? That doesn't sound like hacking at it When knives is the best they could have come up with

They used lots of very advanced for the time methods On other parts of the contents of the tomb But eventually they take it And coming outside into the sunshine to try and melt the black goo. So they're using hot knives. They then start to use solvents to try and get them out. Behave.

So when you say unwrapping a mummy, you imagine a kid at a like Halloween costume party where they've got toilet paper in them. Yeah, like the Andrix puppy. Yeah, it's not that. It is, he is atomized in order to get the bits out. And remember, again, there's a lot less bandage. There's a lot less linen bandage than you might imagine.

There's all this black goo. The body's absolutely sheathed in an armour of jewelry, of weaponry. There are weapons in there of magical, religious, ritual objects. So to get all of these out, you slowly have to pick the body apart. So his arms are broken off, his legs are broken off. He's decapitated to get the mask out Which is massive... Oh, this isn't good.

Yeah. It's a massive helmet-like thing. So when we get onto his genitals, well, he's been torn apart. So that's worth saying. That is worth saying, actually, isn't it? That they were just hacking at him. It's a sad story because the whole purpose, as I said, of mummification is to keep the body intact,

integral, eternal, immortal, impervious to change. like a god. Shielded in gold because gods have flesh of gold so they undo all of that magic. Just on site as well? Yeah. Were they supposed to do that? I can't help thinking that there must have been

somebody further up that chain just going, I'm sorry, you've done what? I mean, they did move him to a slightly roomier tomb because Toot and Cameron was buried in quite a small tomb. The so-called laboratory tomb. But again, although there's this great pretence to, and I think genuine belief in science and using scientific techniques,

the reality of it is Tutankhammer's actual mortal remains are, yeah, totally decimated. I didn't know that. All right, so we wouldn't have done that today. We would not have done that today. All right. What's the black goo? The black goo is a substance of transformation

which you would paint on, is knowing from later coffins where you have a beautiful, painted, you know, colorful, intricately decorated surface. And someone has come along

and literally put a big bucket of black goo on it. Right. To activate the magic of the hieroglyphs and the images. Okay.

And it's a wonderful contrast to what we think when we go into museums. There's a good case actually in Sheffield. You know, Sheffield just down road. Beautiful display there of a coffin of a lady who has had this black goo put on

and it's splashed all over a body and face, but you can still see the features underneath. You can see the decoration elsewhere. But a museum curator, a museum conservator just wants to clean it off. And usually in museums around the world, the cleaning has happened in Sheffield and in Berlin, I think, one of the few museums that don't clean it off. So the black goo is basically, it's been analysed. It's a mixture of plant resins of bitumen, which was, I think, the assumption when Howard Carter and others were cleaning Tutankan up that he'd been covered in bitumen. The purpose of this was not to preserve him, remember, it is to turn him into Osiris. And Osiris is a god and he can have green skin or he can have jet black skin. and so you want to make the deceased most like the god. So that's why you apply black goo.

Put the black goo on. It's like a setting spray. It's like that's the final bit. Just there we go and now I'm done. And I think that's exactly it. It is the final act in the funeral. It seems into the comments case. Yeah, yeah.

Let's get the black goo in. Yeah. That's black goo. Let's talk willies. Right. So, and I reread the published account of the autopsy. in preparation for meeting you. All right. To be able to say Toot and Camman was wrapped with his penis was wrapped, erect.

I don't think that's possible to say. Oh. Because. No. I loved that story. I loved it because it was like, because he's a teenager and it just seemed like such a teenage thing. I want, no, I want an erect one. How do you want to go into the afterlife?

No, bigger than that, please. Much bigger. And there are maybe much more recent ways of conceptualising sex and sexual prowess that we'd expect that. But no, we're talking about ancient Egypt. Yes, we are. Behave. Right. In the autopsy report by a man called Douglas Derry, there's an anatomist. And this is 1925. 1920s, yeah.

Yeah, okay. Now, I'm not a size queen, but... But Tud and Calman's penis was five centimeters long. Right. What was left of it? Amber Carter had been... Well, anyone's might look like that after several thousand years in the ground. So at that size, I don't think you can say a lot about its positioning, really.

Right. Okay. So if one imagined it was intentional, and this is an if, it could be a reference, again, to Osiris. Right. Because we have later figures. And again, because ancient Egypt is such a long time, we're talking 3,000 years. some people will say, well, in the pyramid age, they did this. And then a thousand years later in the time of Tutankham, it's a long time.

So I'm hesitant to say it, but we have figurines of Osiris from almost a thousand years after Tutankhamun that are covered in black goo, which have little erect penises. So little figurines. So there's nothing around the time of Tutankhamun that iconographically connect. It wasn't a thing at the time. It just wasn't a thing at the time. We've got no one else who's going, I want to be buried with a hard on. Yeah. If it was a thing, if that was a religious thing, we would have evidence of it.

Because enough people have rummaged and bandages and unwrapped bodies. So if he did ask that, there must have been like a load of priests going, you want what? What? So I really, I really do not think it was intentional. And the reason I mentioned the religious milieu, the setting of the time, is that Tutankham's dad did things pretty differently. He's a guy called Akhenaten. He closes all the temples. He says there's one God.

I must have freaked everyone out. It was a total... Yeah, revolution is not too strong a word. So Tutankhamen is restoring everything. Right. So if you remember... Tutankham's dad, Akanatin, believes in one sun disk,

which is kind of an iconic. It doesn't have a human form. Right. So maybe there's a real emphasis on the human body. and the divine body, but even so, the bit that remained of his penis doesn't allow us to say it was deliberately intentionally wrapped in a certain fashion. What's that got to do with his dad being the, like saying there's only one god, you can't worship all your other gods? I wonder, some Egyptologists have thought that maybe there's a reaction against the one-god theory. Oh, I see.

And we're going back to Osiris and Isis and Anubis and all of the other gods. So they're trying to make Tutankhamun look like... Right. He has a penis like the gods. Yes. And it's funny, in looking at all of Egyptian art, you do notice there is relatively little nudity. There is almost no allusion to, obvious allusion to sexual activity. So by showing some gods and some gods do get shown with erect penises,

that is a quality of divinity you would never show the pharaoh or a regular man in that way. Okay. So if what they're doing is keeping the body intact for the afterlife, what are they envisioning that you're doing on the other side? Did they think that you would go to the afterlife and have sex, for example? Do you have sex in heaven? That's an old Christian theological question. Quondry, yeah.

Yeah. So they thought you were going to become divine. You were going to become a god because mummification is transformation. God's have sex. And we know that gods have sex. So yes. But there's no sense that you're actively procreating in the afterlife. So you wouldn't be having babies.

No. Right. So it was a free-for-all in a sense with no consequences. I was going to say maybe he'd need. need an erect penis who's going to have babies and after life but this is a stretch

I'm reaching I tend to think of it as there's the idea of for both men and women that you have sexual attributes as a deceased transformed person just in the service of rebirth

so it's this idea of sexiness in the service of rebirth the potential for recreation but you're not actually you're not actually having children you're giving birth to yourself you're literally recreating yourself. So in that sense, yeah, genitalia would be important.

I'll be back with Campbell and Little Tut after this short break. Would they have wrapped the penis as part of the mummification process? Like wrapped it separate from the body? Yes. Yes, they would. There are other examples of that. Okay. So why do we think that, Tuts was erect. I think it's just like everything about Tuton Kaman. It's he had a wonky leg. He had something wrong with his wrist.

He had something wrong with his eye. Right. Okay. He wasn't a well lad, was he. By the standards of the time, he was obviously well looked after because he was the king of Egypt and he probably had the best people looking after him.

But the ancient people in general were maybe not well. If we think of it. I think a point. So, I do know. Certainly with Tutankhamen, and it's true of other ancient Egyptians, I just feel he's been clinicized and medicalized a lot. Yeah, yeah. So for example, there were found in his tomb,

which bear in mind was the only tomb found intact. So all the stuff was there pretty much. Yeah. So it's an insight into what a tomb would have contained. So you can't say how typical or not typical something is, because there's only one example of it. Yeah. So they find all these sticks.

a sign that he couldn't walk properly. He might have had disabilities. We don't know what the other king's tombs were like. They probably were full of sticks as well. Do we say they were? They might have been... Not able to walk properly. It's definitely in the autopsy that that penis was erect.

Yes, it's a speculation at the time. It's a speculation at the time. And it was five centimetres and they're claiming that it was buried outward from the body, which is, if that's true, that would be unique. Yes. But you can't think of any reason why that would be. And also, as you said, that like, they're hacking at it and his body. And like, it wouldn't have been in the best neck.

It wouldn't have been in the best neck. No. No. Oh, I loved that story. But actually, no, because the story doesn't finish there because they lost his penis, didn't they? They did. So after Carter was finished with him, he was put in a sand tray and then re-beats. buried, which is, in a way, is something, because at least there was an acknowledgement that

his body was going to be put in the outermost of those three coffins, left in his sarcophagus in his actual tomb. And I've had this debate with eight-year-olds, Kate's classes of eight-year-olds. What is better, class of eight-year-olds? Tuton-Kamon is left in the place he wanted to be buried in Luxor in the south of Egypt, in the valley of the kings. Or he is, put with all of his stuff, which has been moved to Cairo, which is hundreds of miles away, in the north of Egypt, in a museum. And presumably he was buried with the stuff because he needed... He needed his stuff? The stuff for transformation and existence as a god in the afterlife. And the eight-year-olds weren't able to decide. Was it a hung jury? It was. It was. The jury was out. But in the case of his body, as you rightly said, he's not in a great state. He's put in this, yeah, sand tray. The coffin lid is closed.

The sarcophagus lid has been removed, the stone lid, and it's replaced with glass. So remember, this is happening in the 1920s. And then in the 1960s, a team from the University of Liverpool, my alma mater, go and x-ray him for the first time. Big news. It is clear someone has said rummage. Kate, in that space, in this entry. And things are missing, like his penis. His penis is missing, missing in action.

And the front of his ribcage is gone. Oh, so there's more, not just the Willie's gone. Yeah, yeah. So it seems that Carter had left, because it was impregnated into the black goo, on his chest, there was a beaded, jewelled collar that couldn't be removed. So someone had been in.

And had it. Who had done that? I mean it was the Second World War So no one was Yeah everyone was a bit distracted People were a bit distracted Maybe the security wasn't as good as it could have been So it seems like someone had gone in and had a rummage

And what was left of the penis had been knocked off into the sandry That's good, Tutankhamun's ghost Oh gosh Right okay Oh I go back on track So the news goes out then King Tut's penis is missing? Yes.

Did they have any leads? Any suspects? I mean, I think you could imagine that if it had been deliberately taken, it was taken as a souvenir. But would you know that that's what it was, though? Because from what you're describing here, is it, that's not an item that you would look at and go, that's a penis? No, it's not in his case. But I think more broadly,

and this is a really important point, although, you know, Egypt is a majority Islamic country today some Christian people some Jewish people there is still a very profound belief in the materiality of

ancient stuff so I've you know been in Egypt and seen bits of stone in the middle of nowhere surrounded by syringes and pill bottles because people believe antiquities will amplify your medicine in the effectiveness of your medicine.

And if you go to an Egyptian temple wall, and there is a depiction of an ethophilic, erect penis god, often it's worn away from constant touching and scraping. Because there's a belief in its fertility power. I'm sure you know that from lots of different historical context. So if I were of those traditional beliefs and I were to get into a rummage

inside that gold coffin of Tutankham you'd think wow that is a pharaoh's actual schlong shlong but it wasn't taken was it because it turned up again it was discovered yeah so all of this is to say no call off the search

I love that fact it went missing and then it was found again it was just in the sand tray it was just in the sand tray and I've never looked up the research team that found the penis because in my head it's a group of women who after 40 years of a group of men going Have you seen it? Where's the penis? I don't know where it is.

Where did I put it? Just a group of women going, it's there. It's there. It was there all along. It's the last place that you looked for goodness sake. Yes. But they found it. Yes, they found it.

Right. Okay. And where is it now? It is with him, as far as I know, in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. So he's been taken out of the sarcophagus. And he's in rather a clinical looking case in another of the chambers in the tomb. And so the last time I was in Cairo, it does. does seem that the grand Egyptian museum where all of his other stuff is has a secluded room waiting for his body.

Okay. With the bodies of his two children. Yeah. Two children? Yeah, he was buried with the fetuses of his stillborn daughters. I did not know that. Yeah. How do we know that they were stillborn?

Their size, because their condition is. Okay, okay, right. And they hadn't previously, as far as I'm aware, been on display. But it is possible to view them now. So I don't know whether the Egyptian authorities are going to move the body, all of him that remains, to the museum with the stuff. Okay. So he probably wasn't buried with an erect penis.

I personally do not see the evidence. Like we said, if it was a thing, and you can imagine if the king of Egypt wanted something, or that was the top notch level of mummification, everyone would want it. Yes, suppose they would. And it is not attested. It doesn't seem to be an important thing.

And to be honest, you know, the mummification process dehydrates the body. So you get all dried out. That would be quite difficult to mummify an erect one. So it would be to manipulate the body in that way. That would be. I hadn't even thought about the logistics of that. You've not had the chance till today.

But now we are. But let's talk about penises at the time of Tukin Karmoon. anyway. Yes. Because do they appear a lot within the mythology, within their world view? Is it like the Romans were just cut crazy? They just like dicks on everything. Yes. What's that like an ancient Egypt? I was thinking about this on the train down. I think, and of course, like any kind of history, we're viewing it through our own eyes and what do we want these ancient people or these people in the past to be like to conform to our own ideas. I would say generally the ancient Egyptians were pretty phallocentric, I think they were.

The reason I would say that is one of one of several creation myths involves the creator god who comes from nothing, finds himself alone and has to masturbate the universe into existence.

So there's that. There's a really fascinating addendum to that idea. So if you think, okay, the first being is in the Egyptian way of thinking coded male and they are alone and they have to procreate the universe. It's interesting that in grammatically speaking the ancient Egyptian word for hand, Geret is grammatically feminine. And so around the time, or just before the time of Tutankhamun,

the highest, one of the highest priestly roles is held by a woman who is the God's hand. So she's literally the woman who wanks off the god No yes so I mean imagine the theological metaphysical power of each day

you are on some level recreating the creation of the universe wait so is this is this like a metaphor like I am the hand of God I spiritually masturbate or is she going in every day

and talking off the fairer What is happening here? We can never know the reality of the situation. I mean, I've, well, I'm skeptical. I'm not you're applying for that? I'm skeptical that even... So, imagining this priestess is going into the temple every day. I don't think the God's statue is life size.

Put it that way. Okay. But is she, like, is she doing this to the real Pharaoh? Well, at least initially, probably yes, because she's the king's wife, or a female relative who's married but then a few hundred years

after Tutankhaman this the god's hand or the god's wife as she's sometimes known is well as Egyptologists would describe her she's celibate so she's not married

to a human man Hang on what is this all the same person So this is we're talking over hundreds of years There's a celibate wife who's wanking off a pharaoh but also not a fairer

And what's happening We've gone We've gone off peace here Okay So it's a role which comes into the Egyptian way of thinking about 1500 BCE. Right. With you so far. So you have a female member of the royal family, the king's wife, who plays this role.

Right. In a ritual setting, God knows what that actually involves. Okay. And so generations of women are doing this, including my favourite pharaoh, hatchip suit, the female pharaoh. But that's a discussion for another time. Then around the time of Tutankham and that fashion dies off and royal women are not playing that role.

Then a few hundred years later, royal daughters, exclusively royal daughters, are installed into this temple role in the south of Egypt and they are basically the highest member of the clergy outranking even the male high priest. But they're not having sex with them before. of it? No. Right. And they are not allowed to marry. They're not allowed to marry from the practical political point of view of they're not starting a rival dynasty. Okay. And I mean,

the problem I have with the term celibate is it carries a lot of judgment. And remember, of course, a lot of Egyptology is written by upper middle class white men with beards, who were in the Victorian period quite uncomfortable with the idea of sex and about the strange things the Egyptians did. So the idea is there is an unmarried, unmarried to a human man. Right. Royal daughter. And she is responsible for the practical running of the rituals. She's got a huge staff of temple flunkies who look after not just her and the temple, but also land. So she's immensely wealthy. And she's holding that position kind of in trust for her dad, because he's

the pharaoh. But at the heart of it, it is still, she is the god's adorer, the god's hand. And it is related to the creation of the universe by masturbation. That is such a male thing to have come up with. Just imagine the pharaoh sat there every morning just going, sorry love, but it's, we've got to masturbate the universe into existence again. It's not my fault. I don't want to do this. It may literally have been. That may literally have been what happened. I knew you'd like that story I love that story I just can't imagine like you know

applying for that on putting it on your CV or yeah all right so that is a very fallocentric culture then it is yeah do we have anything in the sort of

the surviving papyruses or anything like that about things like cures for impotence or do you get a sense of how important penises are there yes yes I mean you talk about I mean there are lots of things

to do with fertility for both men and women. So that is a concern. Yeah, there was nobody wanking off the queen, was there? There's no hand of the queen to masturbate into existence. No. It's not an even playing field in that way. And also, I mean, let's be clear,

apart from real luminaries like hat-chipsuit, who's a female pharaoh, but she's interesting for lots of ways, in lots of ways. It is usually a male pharaoh and lots of wives. Yeah. There is usually the great royal wife, the senior queen who's meant to be the mother of the next king.

But, and she almost always has to be blue-blooded, she must be related to the previous royal family and therefore related to the king himself. So you get into... It's getting a bit weird, isn't it? It's all getting a bit game of thronesy. Yeah. But in general, I would say medicine focuses on...

Yeah, I guess it does focus on fertility generally. but I mean even up to today there is a focus on depictions of the penis Oh they love a cock they do I mean if you look and see in the temples in the South Egypt in Luxor Yeah that temple had something to do with this union of the god and the priestess and there's something going on So there are lots of depictions of erect penises there are ethophallic gods Oh, there are. Okay. Okay. And if you go there just as a tourist, you see, you know, a temple wall, which has lost most of its paint.

But then you see these halos of grease around the penises. And it can't just be tour guides pointing. And I have it on good authority that these places are open after hours, after dark, for rituals. which still absolutely connect to that. Yeah, very phallocentric belief in the... Yeah, the materiality of the wall. I'll be back with Campbell and Little Tut after this short break. So it's not inconceivable then that within this culture,

Tutankhamun might have thought his penis was a big deal in the afterlife. Yeah. You're not convinced. I'm not buying this, I hear. I think, yeah, because of the unfortunate handling by Hurd Carter. That's a big one, isn't it? That is going to skew any kind of anatomical thing you're going to say about Tutton Carman is going to be biased.

And they snapped it off anyway, didn't they? He snapped it off. Because if it was buried, if it was, it was. a sand pit underneath him. It wasn't in situ, was it? The poor guy was very brittle and was in bits anyway. So I think it's unwise to make any informed judgment based on remains that were so heavily contaminated, so heavily intervened with.

Okay. All right. I'm afraid. No, that's all right. You've convinced me. But this was a culture and a worldview where that kind of symbolism was very important. and it would have been important to him as a pharaoh because he did have kids but they died.

Yes. So, I mean, I think the biggest job of the king and the queen is to produce another. Yeah, I say an ear and a spare at least. I mean, at that time, and I can think of a particular ancient text around the time of Tutankhamen that is basically a sculptor saying he's probably a sculptor who's worked for Tutankhamman's dad. This is really interesting.

when all the other gods were outlawed. So God's goddess is not allowed to be depicted. There's just the sun, the disc, the sun disk in the sky. That's all we're worshipping. And then Tutankham's dad dies by whatever means. Tutankham, at the advice of his high courtiers, restores everything and says, right, we're back to the way things were. And so this sculptor has to go around and restore.

all the statues of all the gods that were destroyed. And I mean, imagine how many temples. Che, that's a big job. It would have totally messed up the whole economy by closing temples. Yeah, yeah. Whatever I think... Close for refurbishment. Yeah, and yeah, if you were making a lot of money in the temple, you would not have been happy.

No, you wouldn't. Anyway, eventually, Akanan gets bumped off, as a lot of revolutionary people do. So the sculptor goes around and he says I was intimately familiar with the images of gods I was initiated into what he calls the domain of gold which is this kind of craft trade guild where he's allowed to see and create images of gods so he talks about different goddesses

he's allowed to see different gods and he talks about the god men so men is the god of fertility or rejuvenation. He's the god of a particular part of Egypt called Coptos, and he's a very ancient god. We have got statues from the pre-Dynastic period that probably represent.

He's very old. He's very old before the pharaohs. And in fact, there are two of them now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. So they are three or four metres tall, huge, limestone statues. which have huge erect penises. Right. That were made separately and inserted into what a colleague... What you're getting that commission?

What a colleague called a cock socket. When you don't like someone, they're a cock socket. So I have a good friend who worked in the Ashmole and said she was going through the cupboards one day and found a penis massive. stone penis, which it wasn't safe to put back on display because a child could be killed. What a way to go. To explain that to the insurance company. By the massive penis.

So this idea of men as the god of fertility, as the god of, in some ways, procreation. The ancient Egyptians are not like the Greeks and the Romans, and it's the goddess of love or the god of war. There's some job sharing. Exactly. There's some job sharing. So men is associated, especially these big statues seem to be associated with a trade route. So you go from the Nile Valley all the way through the desert to the Red Sea. Yeah.

So that is something which is dangerous, arduous, you'd want the protection of men. So maybe the statues are something to do with that. But fascinatingly, at some point these massive statues, for me to tall things, fall over. And people come along when they've fallen and scrape little bits of the statue body. And if you look in the Ashmolean now, they're kind of pock-marked in this really strange way, although they've been re-erected. And it's because of this belief in men as, yeah, a guarantor of, yeah, the sap of life, the possibility of rejuvitation. So literally you would, and I think the belief persisted to today, if you go and you see a temple wall, with images of gods or you see a fallen statue of the god men,

you carve a little bit of dust from his statue and you bake it into your bread. No, you don't. And you eat it and then that adds to your whither for the man or for the woman. And it makes you more inclined or more capable of having children. So it's really a practical, very material thing. Men is also associated with lettuce, cost lettuce. They love a lettuce.

It's such a... Today, lettuce is such a humble plant. When you look at its history, it is an absolute dirt bag of a vegetable. I don't know what it is about it. Actually, no, it was explained to me by Sarah Pahak. So the lettuce I'm thinking of is like the bag of lettuce that you get down the supermarket. And she said that the Egyptian lettuces were actually quite phallic. Yes.

They were all... They were to like big, chunky things, enough to look like a dick to have got this reputation. Yes, and they have this kind of semen like sap. A sap that comes out of it. So that is maybe no surprise that when you see the god and men with his penis, very obvious, he's often got one of these letters plants behind him. So the reason I mention him is in the time of Tutankham, and this sculptor is going around, restoring all the statues of gods.

And he comes to men and he describes, and this is one of my favorite phrases in ancient Egyptian. I forget the actual sound. the ancient Egyptian would make by in English, men is described as he who flaunts his potency. I've met a few of them. Don't we all know someone who just flunts their potency? So, yeah, but bear in mind, men is one of hundreds of gods and goddesses

and most don't have. And it's a bit of a stretch to say this one god had a swinging tackle, so therefore Tutankhamun must have wanted it. God damn it, but fair enough. As a final question then, if you're going to be preserved for the afterlife, you're on your, you're the pharaoh. You get top billing. You get to say exactly how you want your body to be treated. What would you want to be preserved? Of myself? Of yourself. Yeah, like your body. Like let's just, so the discussion is like, did Toot and Carbungo, look, no, I want a really big erect penis in the afterlife. How would you like, because I think I'd want my curls preserving. I'd be quite upset if I arrived on the other side and they weren't there. And they were quite good at that, you know. Were they? Yeah, Tutankham's granny had an incredible head of hair still

And he had... Amazing, sign me up for that. Tutankham had a lock of her hair in his tomb. Oh, that's quite sweet. And I mean, I'm all for a religious ritual interpretation. You're going to tell me now that like he married her or something. No, but I think that is possibly just he loved his grandmother. Oh, he loved his granny.

And he wanted, or the people who buried him, of course the dead don't bury themselves. wanted him to have that in the afterlife, which is kind of sweet. Gosh, what would I want to be preserved? I mean, I quite like my feet. Feet, yeah. Feet.

Okay. And again, if the body is dehydrated, that's probably part that looks quite lifelike, because we don't have a lot of. Nice. Okay. You know? Yeah, yeah.

Fleshiness and the feet. All right. Okay. So feet. Keep the feet. You want the feet looking good. Yeah. Well, you.

have been amazing to talk to. Thank you so much. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? At Egypt, MCR, on the socials. Will you come back again and tell us more about ancient Egypt? I would be delighted, Kate, yes. Thank you so much. Thank you so much to Campbell for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like with you and follow along wherever it is you get your podcasts. This podcast was edited by Hannah Theodorov, produced by Sophie G, McKenna Fernandez. The engineer was Hanif Hussein. and the senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again, but Twix O'Sheets,

The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.