Camp Gagnon - King Tut’s Tomb HID A Pharaoh Nobody Cared About

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

Who was King Tut, and why is his discovery so important? Dr. Joseph Manning is a renowned professor of history at Yale University, and today we explore the life and legacy of one of history's most interesting figures. In this deep dive, we explore the timeline of Egyptian history, King Tut’s family and reign, the discovery of King Tut’s tomb, and other fascinating historical topics regarding King Tut... WELCOME TO CAMP! 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsors: Odoo, Morgan & Morgan, and BluechewTry Odoo with a 14-day free trial at: http://Odoo.com/CAMP👕🧢 GET YOUR CAMP DRIP HERE: http://camp-rd.com🏕️ Get Today In History Email Here (Free): https://camp.beehiiv.com/🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.comTimestamps:0:00 Egypt's Advanced Horse Chariots3:52 The Timeline of Egypt History6:37 The Surrounding World During This Era13:58 King Tut Chariot Crash18:43 King Tut’s Family + Amun-Ra26:30 The Royal Tomb + Akhenaten’s 6 Daughters32:21 Tut Takes Over + Amarna Period37:02 Hatshepsut The Female Pharaoh40:40 King Tut’s Reign42:02 Becoming Heir In The Ancient World + Ramses III Murdered47:38 The Discovery of King Tut’s Tomb54:13 Ptolemaic Dynasty1:00:52 Robbery of Tut’s Tomb1:03:16 The Curse of King Tomb1:06:14 Grave Robbers Selling Antiquities 1:11:56 The Struggles of Living In The Ancient World

Today we are diving into one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time, the tomb of King Tut. Today we're going to unpack who King Tut really was, why his burial site shocked the world, and how this teenage pharaoh became a global obsession. This isn't just an episode about gold and mummies or whatever. It is about power, legacy, and what ancient Egypt can teach us about the world today. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. Dr. Manning, how are you? I'm well. How are you, Mark? I'm doing excellent. Great to be here again. Yeah, thank you again for coming on out all the way to Brooklyn.

Brooklyn, New York City. Yes. I always need an excuse to come. It's great to be here. Absolutely. Now, really quick, you've obviously been on the program before, and I'm sure the people will remember you. But would you mind just explaining your expertise and why you are the person that needs to

be talking about King Tut and King Ramsey's the second? Okay. I have two graduate degrees in Egyptology back in the day from the University of Chicago. So that's the Egyptian component. I specialize in later Egyptian history these days, Greco-Roman Egypt, the Ptolemy's and the Romans when Egypt's a province. And I've expanded into doing much more global history now around climate and things. So I've evolved a bit. But the core of my training goes back to ancient Egypt.

Yeah. Now, King Tut is obviously, it's ironic, which we'll discover, is one of the most well-known. Pharaohs, kings, and Egyptian history. Ramsey's the second, I would say is also up there, maybe if you're a little bit more in the know. And I think examining these two guys kind of in juxtaposition with each other would be really interesting.

Yeah. So can you just explain maybe King's Hut sort of where he falls in kind of the lineage of Egyptian history and how he sort of came to power and why he matters? Okay. So we're in the world of what Egypt tells is called the New Kingdom. Okay.

The age of empire, driven by Egyptian expansion with the hot new technology of the world, ultimately coming from Central Asia, the horse and the chariot. All the accoutreement involved horse training, the bit, the stirrup, and so on, which spreads with Central Asia in all directions. In the second millennium BC, it's a really important technological change. Foreigners, outsiders come into Egypt and govern it for a while, and they bring with them the horse and the chariot, essentially. The Egyptians tweak the technology considerably, and it's amazing.

And if your listeners and viewers want to pursue this in detail, it's an incredibly cool article by an automotive engineer who analyzed the Egyptian chariot as if it were a modern car. Interesting. It's really cool. And the engineering behind it is actually extraordinary. Only a king could build these chariote. It's the exotic materials, the exotic woods, the kind of glues they're using.

They improved the axle of the wheel. They improved the strength of the wheel. It could turn sharper. They really improved it in addition to the bit for a horse and so on. So the Egyptians took this outside technology. They improved it, and they created an empire from the Sudan all the way to northern Syria for a long period of time because they could actually move, effectively. quickly over long distances with these horses and chariots.

So it's pretty spectacular, and it's the high-tech of the second millennium BC. It doesn't get higher tech than that. And it's really exotic stuff. And the engineering, and you can go to, I think it's somewhere in Germany, you can go see modern Egyptian chariots being built. Wow. And, you know, they had suspensions on the wheels. Remarkable. Can we get an image of one of these Egyptian chariots?

That's fascinating. And so this is New Kingdom. This is New Kingdom. And it's a good time to be in Egypt. Well, yeah. There's a reason why, speaking of King Tut, that he has several chariots disassembled but buried with him in his tomb. Interesting.

So this was the status symbol. This is like having, I don't know what the equivalent is a Bugatti in your tomb. And I would get buried with a Bugatti. I would too. Yeah. These are amazing rocket ship kind of cars. And so, again, just for the timeline so everyone can be up to speed, you have the new kingdom, and that is preceded by the Middle Kingdom.

That's right. And then proceeded by the old kingdom. That's right. Very good. We did the Egyptian history last time. I'd never forget. And there are these intermediate periods, which, again, Egyptologists are really crummy at naming periods. But there are these intermediate periods.

And this period between the Middle Kingdom and the new kingdom used to be kind of, not much happened. And it's a bunch of foreigners running around. And we don't have good Egyptian kings. So we can kind of ignore it. Now there's been a lot of work on this second intermediate period. And these pauses of central control are really important historically, because this is when this was when Egypt reinvents itself and hence major differences between Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom. And one of the things that happened in the second intermediate period, these outside people, the Hixos, the Egyptians call them, come in, they rule Egypt, but they bring with them this technology, which the Egyptians then adapt, tweak.

Who are these people? Are they Persian or something? No, I mean, so the Egyptian name for them is Heka Kasut, which means something like rulers or lords of the hill countries. They'd been in Egypt forever, long time. There's even Middle Kingdom pictures of these guys as kind of traders coming in from the eastern desert doing business, basically, with exotic textiles and their donkeys in tow. There's some really famous tomb scenes of these people. So they've been around Egypt a long time. There are probably different ethnic groups who are not settled, not ethnically Egyptian, from the eastern desert, from the Sinai in points even further northeast of that into the Near East.

Got it. They'd probably been in Egypt forever, especially in places like the Delta. Got, makes sense. And then New Kingdom timeline-wise, like what year is that roughly? Yeah, and okay, your viewers don't hold me to the date. I'm not good at days. but it's something like 1550 BC or so to 1069. That's a pretty hard date at the very end of the New Kingdom.

So it's a 500-year period, three different ruling dynesies from different parts of Egypt that are in this great imperial phase of Egyptian history, which is remarkable. Dude, you pretty much nailed that. 1550. Is it? To 1070. But I think 1069 is. It's a better number, right?

Exactly. It's way funnier. You know what I mean? Yeah. Easy to remember. Yeah, exactly. I'll never forget it. Okay. See, this is my graduate training going back several decades. All this worry about, oh, shit, the dates. Pardon my friend.

No, your professor is going to be very, very impressive. Yeah. Whoever that was. I mean, that's, okay, so this makes sense. And then, like, I guess globally, just to put it in context, because that always helps me to kind of, like, visualize. So, like, this is happening at this moment in Egypt. What's happening in Europe?

Is there like, are there like, you know, Rome is not really founded in the way that we understand it? No. No. So this is the brown. This is middle Bronze Age, middle to late Bronze Age. So things are booming in the Eastern Mediterranean. It's the Mycenaean Palace period in southern Greece, for example, in places like Crete. So the Eastern Mediterranean is kind of booming in this Bronze Age culture there, the world of Homer, essentially.

Turkey as well. in northern Europe or Western Europe, I don't know. It's almost not quite Neolithic, but there are peoples, but there, you know, are there, there are civilizations of a kind, but not quite yet. The first millennium BC sophisticated cultures that rise up in places. But the Greek have a little moment. They're having a huge moment, actually. The Greek, the Greek culture, it looks a lot like the Near East and Asia. These are all big palace kinds of economies. Economies are organized. around these bigger, the big man kind of palace units, just like in the Near East. So there's a whole Eastern Mediterranean sort of culture that looks similar from place to place, different languages, different traditions, but more or less organized similarly.

And Egypt's a big player, Egypt and the Hittite Empire in central modern day Turkey are the big rivals. These two big land empires. And Egypt in this period is the game, really. There's a city-states in the Near East that Egypt's related to. There's diplomatic correspondence going on. The first diplomatic correspondence,

the first treaties we have in the world history are in this period from the Near East, even correspondence between city-state rulers and Egyptian kings like Akhton. The Amarna tablets, as were called, a corpus of diplomatic correspondence. Really? Really interesting.

And the first collection of diplomatic letters we have in world history. And this is a new kingdom. This is a new kingdom. Wow, that's fascinating. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I got to tell you a story. Imagine you're sitting in your house.

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And thank you so much to the good folks over at Morgan and Morgan for sponsoring this program and making this show possible with this paid advertisement. Well, let's get back to the show. So there's a lot of interesting things going on. And what is this diplomacy? They're saying like, hey, we will promise not to attack you guys, be promised not to attack us. Is that simple? Yeah, there's some diplomatic accord because in a world, I mean, this is the whole

pre-modern world until, you know, the peace of Westphalia in 1648 or whatever, that there's no hegemon. There's no organization on top of independent states saying, okay, you guys, cool it. Let's come to an agreement. There's nothing like that in the ancient world, certainly. So it's brute force defining territory and boundaries and trade deal. So these letters, interestingly, the kings always call each other brother. Hey, brother, as in familial relations, and they're exchanging women in marriages, that kind of thing, and trade goods, sending gifts.

I see. They're conceived as gifts. It's actually trade, but they're conceptually, these are gifts between equals, between rulers. And so there's a lot of accord, not always reality, of course, but there's all these efforts. Same with the Hittites and the Egyptians who are duking it out in these major wars in the middle. middle of the bronze age. Interesting. Okay.

So this is a, it's a bigger world than it was before. Yeah. It's more, it's more international in a sense. There's a lot of trade going further distances in this world. There's technological change. Bronze is sort of the key, higher, highest tech. Let's say the main metal that already implies a lot of distance cover. because it's not just copper anymore, but you need tin.

And tin is much rarer. So this is one of the questions archaeologists now we're really into is, where does the tin come from? They're looking for mines. And there's some in the Central Mediterranean, but there's a big debate because it's a huge tin mine in Cornwall in England that's known. And there's a theory that, oh, the tin's coming from the Cornwall mines. And if that's the case, there's already a connection between the Eastern Mediterranean,

these big states and southern England. Right. There's a massive trade network. Yeah, maybe. I think it's more central Mediterranean sourced, but this is what science will solve this. We can isotopically isolate the minds and the type of tin. But this is one of the cutting-edge topics right now

is where does the tin come from? And that sort of basic question drives a lot of other things in terms of our understanding of how this world is connected and what matters. In order to make bronze, you need copper and tin. Yeah. I see. And so if you can figure out where the tin comes from, you can sort of trace these sort of like, you know, logistical supply chains.

Yeah. Like how global is this world? It's determined by the resources you need. Right. Which makes cherries kind of interesting because we know where the chariots are coming from and the horses. It comes from Central Asia originally early in the second millennium. You see that already implies a lot of movement and connectivity. There's already connectivity.

from India and Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC, which is now really well documented. So we're in a wider, a wider, more interesting world already. This Bronze Age world is getting more and more connected. They're figuring out how states, how these kings are relating to each other. They're figuring out treaties and correspondence back and forth. All the while there's major wars. And the new kingdom in Egypt is dominating the Near East.

So lots of niceties, but don't mess with us. And these kings are getting their legitimacy now, all of them, from fighting war. That is what kings do. Now, you know my theory about all this. This is more like, these are more like mafia states. These are more like brutal people with a lot of young men with pointy sticks behind them who are just taking turf. Right. And trying to defend that turf.

Because if you don't have like a national code of conduct, like you have no federalized like, you know, system of like how countries are supposed to behave. It truly is just might as right. And because might is right, there's no reason why you shouldn't get more land, get more rivers, get more mines. Like if you are a king that's not creating more conquest for your nation state, what did you do? Yeah. And so I can see that that would probably lead to a lot of bloodshed and a lot of conflict.

And hard to shut it down. Because once you get an army rolling in one direction, can't just turn it off. Right. Yeah. They're getting stuff. Right. They're getting, that's how they're getting paid often, is the loot. This is what Kings are saying, okay, okay, guys, go that direction and take what you can.

That's hard to shut down. It's hard to control that. Right. And once the campaign goes out, like you said, there's no way to draw them back in. Yeah, it's tough. It's tough. It is kind of a machine. It is kind of just kind of a feedback.

Because they get out five, six days. You could potentially send a guy on horseback, but, you know, he'd have to try. try to really move to catch up. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, can we pull up this chariot again? Because I would love to see if you know any of these specific ones or if you can kind of

point out anything on these chariots that you think is interesting. I mean, they, some of these tuts chariots we're looking at and all my glasses on. It's hilarious that they look so Egyptian. Like, they really had a style. They had a brand. That's good. Yeah. The Egyptian brand is strong.

You know what I mean? I totally agree. Because I know nothing about this, but if you showed me this and like a Roman chariot, I'd be like, I can tell which one is Egyptian. Okay. Yeah. No, the craftsmanship. I mean, a lot of these things, I mean, the ones with gold and fancy art, these are for display.

Mm-hmm. And we know we haven't talked, we maybe talked last time about Amarna and Akhtan, but there we know they built an entire kind of arena, a sort of a stadium for the sole purpose of the king and queen on their chariot going around and saying hello to people. It's just sort of like performing kingship. Yeah. A meet and greet on their horse and chariot. You know, so these are display pieces. I don't think I'd want this in battle with me. But fun fact, by the way, you can date chariot wheels by the number of spokes.

Oh, really? I always tell students this. So if you see four spokes on a wheel, Dynasty 18. How's that for being a nerd? I mean, that's pretty solid. Dynasty 19 and 20, six spokes. Really? Yeah.

Oh, interesting. So I imagine as time went on, they were like, hey, we need to reinforce the wheels. We need bolster up the strength of the wheel or, you know, they're, but they're, you know, they're understanding dynamics and so on to some extent, I guess. Oh, fascinating. But if you look at art, you can, you can right away now go to, you know, a New Kingdom art scene, four spokes or six spokes? Oh, it must be Dynasty 18 relief.

And if someone's trying to sell you a painting of a six spoke thing saying it's 18th Dynasty, you're like, oh, yeah, fraudulent. This is a copy. Okay. Right? And now you owe with 10% of them. Yeah, commission on that. Yeah.

That's fascinating. And so these were buried with King Tut. Yeah, King Tut had several in his tomb. I mean, there is a theory. How did he die? He's poisoned. He's bumped off, which is not unusual in royal families, of course. He had some kind of accident.

He was murdered. It looks like he had a broken or fractured cheekbone from whatever reason. And, you know, one of the theories that's been floated that I sort of like, even though it's made up mostly, is that he fell off his chariot at one point. Oh, wow. I kind of like that. Chair injury. Yeah. Maybe.

Fast and furious. He killed himself. He was drag racing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. His parents said, don't take that out at night. And he went and fell off. I mean, right? Yeah.

That's what 18-year-olds do. Yeah, well. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like that holds some credibility. I sort of, I like this theory. Yeah. And it's not, you know, a palace murder. It sounds better than he completely screwed up.

And he had some bump, you know, thrown from the chariot. Easy to do. These things, they look great and stuff. I think you can tell a lot about a historian based off which theory they like more. You know what I mean? If you're the historian that's like, I like the romance and the drama and the gossip. It's like, oh, you're a theater kid. You know what I mean?

But if you're a historian, it's like, no, this guy was going 120 down the highway. he was off like six beers or whatever they were drinking and then crashes chariot yeah yeah he's in a ditch yeah yeah you know it it does sort of make some sense right um but this is the high prestige um thing um these kings and their armies um deriving a lot of power a lot of legitimacy which is important um because the kingship is performative in this world it's not like well i'm the king now so everyone has to obey me that's not the real world of kingship you actually have to go out in perform. I would not want to be a king in this world. Much better like a middle level priest. I think that's probably where I would fit. Because the kings have that much pressure.

Yeah, you've got to perform. Plus, first of all, you have a target on your back if you're a king in the palace with multiple wives, which was standard. So multiple heirs. Already sets up a dynamic. Secession problems immediately. Major, major. And then you're having foreign wives. too because that's part of the political arrangements. And then you get international implications of who's who and the family and so on and so on. So to be a king of this world is really rough. And to be King Tut to go back to our hero here, he's on the throne technically when he's something like eight. Right.

Eight or nine. How did that work? Yeah. So how do these child emperors, like what can you tell me about King Tut's family and sort of his line of succession? Well, so his father was certainly Akhna in Amarna. He was probably, his mother was probably a secondary wife, not Nefertiti, as far as we know. So right father, different mother. So he's sort of in line, but it turns out to be the only male that was legitimate, so close enough.

So he's on the throne And what happens to Agnon again? He, well, he dies. But was there any type of circumstance? He has like a long rain? Not particularly long. Longer than taught. I forget the number of years

were assigned to him, but it's, you know, a couple decades anyway, something like that. A significant rain, you know? Yeah, it was a significant rain. Yeah. Are we looking at updates? This is new. I like this.

Yes. This is better to me looking at my iPhone all the time. Oh, what is that? One of those dates. Let me see. Okay, so, all right, you got like 17 years during the 18th dynasty. There we go.

And he's best known to modern scholars for the new religion he created that's centered on the Aten. Yeah. So, you know, here's another, you know, let's get to the real world. I wanted to talk about religion just for a second because we talked before the show about religion. One of the things that happens with these empires is the creation, the elevation, of universal gods. So Egypt has lots of gods, different parts of Egypt.

From the 18th Dynasty, this is a Phoeban ruling family, originally, whose god was Amman. Local god in Phoebs, modern day Luxor, he gets elevated, he gets joined to the old sun god Ray

becomes Ammon Ray, Amon Ray king of the gods. That's the big one. I've heard of this. I've heard they say Amin Ra. Amin Ra. Amin Ra, king of the gods. This is the new kingdom.

the god of conquest. We are conquering those guys over there in the Near East every year in the name of Amun Re, King of the Gods. And we're bringing all the loot we can and dedicating it to the God in his temple.

This temple becomes enormous and incredibly wealthy, incredibly wealthy and influential with centuries of war loot. And you know, it's pretty fierce if we believe this stories and believe the artwork in in this temple when you come back victoriously from a military campaign you're also bringing off the cutoff hands of the foreign soldiers and cut off penises

damn and offering to the god Amon re king of the gods and they're piled up they're depicted piled up in front of the temple that's a little suspect it may be a bit overdramatic what's going on with Amin Rod you get the you get the point I mean yeah I'm and we got to we got to I had to check his hard drive. Amman Ra is like, hey, brings back some dongs for me. Yeah, like lots of like piled up to. Whoa, all right. What's our God up to? But this is the... No disrespect to Amman Ra' as follows.

Right. But, I mean, this is imperial conquest, and Asia's not the only place where you have this creation of the big gods, big universal gods. And of course, there's a lot of poetry that if Amin Re king of the gods is the only god that matters, He's the God of the universe. So we get to conquer everywhere, and the Egyptian texts say this, everywhere the sun is shining on earth, that is Amman Ray's land. That is universal empire. Yeah.

It's like Lion King. And that's, yeah. Yeah. That's the claim. Wow. For all these kings. So that's going to emboldened a conquest, right? Like that will, like if you are a military leader, a warlord, like that will get the people going.

You say, hey, everything's ours. Our God said so. Yep. Yeah, I see. And it feeds back into the temple, i.e. the priesthoods, being really rich and powerful. And this is the story of Aknautin, just to close that loop, if I can, is Aknautin says, he's not a religious reformer, and the Aten is not a new god either. The Atten is the sun disk, but he sort of elevates it into his personal important deity, in a sense going back to the old kingdom and the solar religion. because these priesthoods of Amun Reh have way too much power.

So I'm going to reconfigure the society. It's about me, the king. It's not about you guys, their wealthy priests who are sitting all this loot. It's about me and my family and the sun god, which is actually, conceptually, it's his father, Ammanhotep the third. It's really a little bit strange. But it's a political move, cloaked in religious ideology and symbolism and movement of the capital

into this literally in the middle of nowhere place, Amarna, the horizon of the Aten that's called in Egyptian. There's nothing there before or since as occupied for 17 years. It's great if you're an archaeologist because it's one of the only cities that's ever been excavated full. Wow.

Because there's nothing on top of it. Sitting in the desert was occupied for 17 years and never again. Wow. So that's a really cool place. Yeah, psychologically, you know. But so religious reformer, I would say not so much as he's using religion and theology to justify what he's doing to re-center the state in the person of the king.

I can see that being an issue, right? Like, if you are the emperor and everyone's like, hey, we love the emperor, but there is a God above you. And so there's someone that is checking your power. And if the priests are the ones that are able to dialogue with God, you know, you're all of a sudden that is an affront to your authority. So you have to somehow usurp that. You can either kill all the priests, which then could cause revolution or something.

Or you can just say, actually, the priest got a little bit wrong. There is a God and I am he. Yeah. Interesting. Like I feel like you see this in Rome also, right? Like with the emperors of Rome, you go from like, you know, sort of like this monarchy to like a republic. And then these elected people now are like, I am God himself. Like I forget, I think Julie Caesar, like,

before his death was like kind of the shift there. Yeah, that's going on in the late Roman Republic. You know, it goes on with Alexander the Great, too, by the way, and his father, Philip II, that, well, we're kind of like, we're pretty close to divinity. It's not a big crevasse to leap over to say, actually, we are. Right. Actually, we are divine. And you start showing art of you, you know, as depictions of you that are resembling the gods of the time. You can imagine, like, you know, a president that his official portrait is him with, like, a halo.

or like a crown of thorns. You'd be like, oh, you're starting to echo some religious ideals to try to compare so people can conflate you with divine. Yeah. Oh, I see. So when he creates a 10, this is his attempt of basically pulling the power back from these high priests into his family. That'd be my historical read of things.

I think that's the consensus these days. There's a lot of debates. But bottom line, I think that's what he's doing. It's an old religion. It's not a new religion. And it's actually goes back to early old kingdom. Well, that's the one you have to take, right? If everyone is described.

But hey, that's when kings were kings. And they're building these huge pyramids. And that's when kings were really good after all. They were the only authority. Make you do great again. And the state. It is kind of making it too great. Yeah, exactly.

Let's go back to the old pyramid days a thousand years before, which is what it is. Right. Amazing. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because you own a small business or maybe you work for a small business and I am about to make your life. so much easier. Let's say hypothetically, you own a little furniture business, right, and you're struggling to keep track of the raw materials, the production schedule,

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See if you like it. If it's not for you, you don't need it, all right? But Odo is going to make your life so much easier, everything you need all in one place, save time, make more money. Now let's get back to the show. So they're kind of reinventing. things. That's that's Aknotin. Now, he dies. You can imagine the blowback. Not a popular, not a popular person. He has six daughters. And one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life was when I was

living in Egypt as a graduate student years ago, I went exploring with a Dutch colleague in all through Egypt. And we went out to Amarna and met with an antiquities guy in the local town. You know, we need a to get to the royal tomb because it's like 20 kilometers or something out in the eastern desert. It's quite a journey. Amazing. But we got it and we got to see the royal tomb at where Acknaut and Nefertiti theoretically were buried. There's a famous scene in there of the funeral of one of their daughters. And they were beloved daughters and a lot of affection shown between Aknaut and Nefertiti and their daughters, which is unusual for Egyptian royal scenes. And the whole art of the period also is naturalistic and expressive, almost baroque.

The whole culture has changed momentarily. It's really interesting. Do we have an image of that? I would love to see what that looks like. The funeral scene is beautiful. The art is beautiful. It's a bit weird. It's very stylized, kind of on purpose,

but it's trying to knock out the artistic canons, too. Like, everything goes away. Like, we're doing new things in this. It doesn't last. But there's an effort to reshape artistic styles and religious practice. It's about the sun and open air temples. It's open for everybody.

There are these interesting conceptions that he developed, which is why people think it's revolutionary, and he's leading toward monotheism. That's a bit of a stretch. But the hymns to the a ton that were in the tombs at Amarna have been compared to Old Testament hymns, by the way, really interesting things. So if we have time, we can talk about why that might be.

but yeah, is that from the royal tomb? Relief of Nefertiti kissing her daughter. Oh, okay, that's, yeah. I mean, this is not done in Egyptian. This is not decorum. Right. You know, Egyptian art, royal families are like really stiff. Mm-hmm.

You know, not people you'd like to have a beer with on a Friday night. I can imagine. You know, not very warm and friendly. The Amarna art of the royal family is informal. There's mom and dad with their kids on the lap. I mean, it's like not heard of. Interesting. So he's really trying to reshape

what the royal family's about and how it's portrayed. And for us, now, this is nice. This is family affection. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. We get that. We don't necessarily get later, when we talk about Rang's the second,

these big monumental statues of this guy. You know, what? But that everyone understands. It's just a family, but daughters. Right. Right. Daughters. Was the death of this daughter?

Was it sudden or tragic? Yeah, it looks like it. Died young. There is in this period of Egypt and elsewhere, and probably related to all the international trade that's happening, some form of plague. We're understanding that better and better now through paleogenomics, the science that really can nail down pathogens and things. That's really interesting.

So there are things circulating. And of course, with military movement and trade, you get the downside, which is the wider spread of pathogens. Right. So we're speculating on why this young girl died, but maybe it was a disease. I see. I mean, such a deviation in art to kind of, I don't know, like bring up this like super emotional kind of poetic scene. it would make sense to me that it was in some way tragic or like in some way, you know,

like it seemed like it burdened the king in some capacity. It must have because in the royal tomb, the funeral's depicted, which is also weird. It's unusual. So this was serious. And you saw this? Yeah. Wow, that's cool.

And it's published. We wanted to go out there. That part of Egypt's not a tourist area. So very rarely would tourists go there. and the tourist route doesn't go through Middle Egypt these days. Unfortunately, because it's the most glorious part of Egypt in my view. I mean, could you go there as a tourist? You could.

You have to be pretty adventurous. I mean, there are no hotels. Right. But if you don't, I'd tell you, yes, go. And, you know, you have to be careful. And you'd be required, I think, still to have a military escort if you're going outside of the big tourist zones. So you might need permission these days, but I think it's worth it.

I think it could do it. It's definitely something to have on your list of things you've seen because it's not a standard thing to see. And this tomb is well published, but to see the real thing is pretty extraordinary, and it is emotional. And the emotions of Amarna art is part of the appeal. And maybe that's part of the conception of kingship

that Agnotton was trying to push. Right. But he's more personal. And the Aten is the sun. It's the sun disk. It's open to everybody. It's... It's the creative force.

It turns out the sun, of course, is the creative force. Right. On our planet. So they weren't wrong about that. Right. Actually. Kind of remarkable. Yeah.

No, they were kind of right on. Actually, sun's pretty important indeed. Anyway, so this is this amazing period, the Amonter period. Agnotton and six daughters. Magnetton dies. Okay, succession problem. Mm-hmm. As usual.

Tut is a son from another wife in the harem standard for Newkin, Farrells, to have many wives. And he's it. But, man. And he has advisors around him who are actually doing the ruling. You can imagine how that might go. Yeah, of course. I'm not great. I imagine Nefertiti's kind of pissed.

Not great. Yeah. Well, pretty vulnerable too. Mm-hmm. Right. Now instantly unimportant. Right. Doesn't matter.

No male error. Sorry. Totally vulnerable. Even though that's Agnotton's fault. Right. As we know, like I'm pretty sure like gender is decided through like the sperm, right? Yeah. So I mean, that's what I've heard.

I don't know if that's the case. I've heard that was like King Henry. The like like the woman is always X and then the sperm is either X or Y. Oh, I see. I see what you're saying, but why no male heir. Yeah, exactly. It's his fault. And now Nefertis is just out of the picture.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, quite literally. Because he had all these ex-perms. It doesn't end well. The very powerful priesthoods throughout the country who were not part of the game anymore, removed in a sense from the political picture of Egypt. The king is in the middle of nowhere, literally, governing. But not a military campaign as before in the, in the, the New Kingdom Dynasty 18 before, Tutmosis III, the Napoleon of ancient Egypt, great military

conqueror. So there were people before that created this empire out on conquest in the Near East and in Nubia in modern Sudan. But Aknoughton is writing poetry in the middle of nowhere, kind of, and reconceptualizing kingship and society in some ways, to whatever extent we don't know. But it looks like he's in that direction. or wants to go in that direction. It doesn't work.

He's trying to reform the state. If we have time, we can talk about, there's a lot going on with this thing about the Axial Age. Carl Jesper is this German philosopher who creates this period in between 800 and 300 or 200 BC when everything changes. Many places, you have philosophers in Greece. You have the Chinese learned men like Confucius. You have the Old Testament process.

It's a lot of societies are reformed in this first millennium BC. Egypt doesn't reform in Yaspers' theory. It just stays the same. But actually, you could argue that the reforms of Agnotton was anticipating later things a few hundred years later, that there were these reforms between religion and society, the rulers all over the place. Hmm. But later. Anyway, for whatever reason, these reforms don't go very far.

We could, and then we have taught. That's the context of he's eight years old, massive reforms attempted, a lot of unhappy people with a lot of power now. Total vulnerability. No one around him, really. Courtiers who are running the show on his behalf. We're moving back to Memphis, the traditional capital or down to Thebes, where the family's friend. Those are the two kind of centers in this world politically and religiously. But we're not staying in this god-awful cockatting place in the middle of nowhere.

And so, Tut had a, I mean, pretty hard, I would say. Now, you're asking why he matters. I mean, he matters really because he comes at the end of this Amarna period, which is interesting. in a lot of ways. And then the tomb. Does he do his kingship in Amarna? No. So he goes to Memphis.

Yeah, I think he's probably there. He's also in Thebes. You know, there are two kind of political centers, which is how Egypt always works. In a country, you can imagine this 500 miles long and 20 miles wide. Right. Which is what Egypt is. It's kind of hard. It's not easy to govern from a single place in the north.

You need a couple of places to coordinate. And that's in the New Kingdom, this becomes Memphis, the ancient capital, and then Phoebes, where the 18th dynasty ruling family comes from. Right. That's kind of hometown. So what does life even look like for an eight-year-old emperor? Like, I imagine it's just all like family and courtiers that are kind of just doing everything. And then at a certain point, you have to like try to get control back once you're of age. I guess that's the calculus.

how that works is the difference between a really clever king, a long-lived king, like Ramsey II will talk about, or even Hatship suit, also an 18th Dynasty ruler as a woman, which is incredible, wearing male costume all the time because Egyptian kingship is male. Oh, wow. It's a macho male world with a lot of animal totems. And the one title, Hatshepsut, who's the aunt of Tudmosis III, who eventually he takes over and goes on these big military conquest. That's how you grab power in this world. But Hatshepsut sort of does the same thing.

She must have been extraordinary. How old is she? She pulls off, I think in her 30s. But she is kind of regent for Tud Moses III, but actually claims. the throne at a certain point and all the titles. Extraordinary move. This is a woman and takes all the titles of kingship except one, which is very ancient, the one that we translate strong bull,

because that's one of the epithets of a good king that goes way back into the pre-denastic period, that the bull is symbolic of kingship, really powerful and strong, etc. She doesn't take that title for gender reasons. Because as a woman, would it be too difficult to convince the people, like, oh, I am all the facets of a king, including the strong bull. Including strong bull. People say, mm-I see. No. And so what are some of the other ones? Like, as far as kingly delineation, you have to be strong like a bull. Yeah, I mean, king of upper and

lower Egypt, there are these sort of, there are five standard titles, descendant of the god, Ra, the sun god, you know, the standard royal epithets that are very ancient. They go back all, I think, to pre-Dynastic. So she can justify those. Yeah. But that one is sort of pull that off. Innerdly masculine. And she's wearing even a false beard of kingship.

No way. Yeah, she's depicted that way. So she's extraordinary. She must have been an extraordinary. Toughly. And really smart to outmaneuver a lot of men probably who thought this was a really bad idea. And eventually she gets removed by two, most of the things. third once she's old enough and so on. The other thing about this world, because it's horse and

chariot and empire, is it is a military world. Right. It is a world of soldiers, the whole new kingdom. And it's tough to be a boy king in that world. He wants to try driving chariots around. He's probably learning how to be a king. He's probably learning Egyptian traditions, story, literature, stories. I don't know if we learned how to read and write or not. Probably most kings were not literate, but we don't know much. I don't think about that, but maybe a little bit. Temple rituals, you know, but learning how to be a king, what all the rituals were in the temples. The kings were supposed to visit every now and again. There's a lot probably to know. And just being out and about displaying that you're the man, even if you're a boy. Interesting. That's probably a lot

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And let's get back to the show. And what do we know about his reign? It's only about 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. Not a lot. I think there's an effort to restore military conquest and restore the empire, which looked like it had fallen.

on a bit of hard time. It slid a little bit because there wasn't continuous military campaigns. The Amarna letters I talked about, this diplomatic correspondence found at Amarna, found at Agnat's capital, really interesting because he's corresponding with all the rulers diplomatically, politically, but they're not on military campaigns sort of enforcing Egyptian empire there so much. That gets restored. They go back to that. And post-tut, whether he's murdered, gets sick, or falls off the chariot, the end of the dynasty are all unrelated military guys. Really? The last couple.

And is that because he was a boy that gets in? So does he have children? Is there any sort of clear discussion? No, yeah. No, not yet for whatever reason. So then it would go to like his advisors or like generals? Well, yeah, yeah, I mean, in a world of military power, the guys with military power easily can be the boss unless you're the king at the head of your army. Someone else will.

And is there, like, historically or traditionally in the new kingdom, is there a secession pattern for if there are no male heirs? Does it go to, like, was it basically like, oh, we have either a military leader or it goes to, like, an uncle? Or is this, like, a coup d'etat where the military comes in and basically sets up their own government? I think very often what happens. Here's a problem of kingship, kind of broadly. Even see it in the modern world. You know, it should be a really nice family, and it should be fathered or son in the ancient world, for sure.

Different modern monarchies. But in the ancient world, it's father to son. But that works about a generation until the wheels start falling off that cart. And then in a world of multiple marriages and multiple heirs. And then, yeah, the oldest son, in theory, is the legitimate successor,

but so often that doesn't work. And so often there are, I mean, there's more than one example of kings getting bumped off. Including at the end of the new kingdom with Ramsey's the third, you know, an heir of Ramsey's the second, who gets murdered in the harem of all places.

Wow. And we have stories about that. We have magical texts, to talk about people in the harem related to the king and women who are making magical texts to guarantee the successful assassination. But nobody believed that Ramsey's the Third in 1069 was actually murdered until when we have his mummy,

which is one of the cool things about New Kingdom Farrells. We have most of the bodies. Wow. And Ramsey III has all this bandages around the neck and no one removed the bandages before. But they did cat scans not so long ago, and they removed the bandages, slit ear to ear.

Turns out he was murdered. Whoa. Yeah, I mean, it's the grimmest, I'm not sure you want to pull that one up. It's the grimest mummy that exists. Wow. And he was actually murdered and in the harem in Phoebes

of the palace section of his funeral. complex, which was palace plus funeral temple built to perpetuate his memory, but he wasn't quite ready. He had lived a long time, and there's reasons why the new kingdom's in decline, the so-called Bronze Age collapse, a lot going on. But it looks like there was an inside job with an air involved. It's ready. Can you see the bandages there? Those are not, I think, yeah. but if you remove those bandages around his neck, you can see that they stitched up the, they stitched up the throat.

You can see the stitching up before he was mummied. There he is. Whoa. Yeah. It's bizarre how clear his face is. Well, yeah. I mean, the weird thing about New Kingdom Farrells

is we actually have them. We know what they look like. We know what they look like. Yeah, it's bizarre. Yeah, indeed. Damn. So he gets killed in his harem? Yeah.

Do we know who did it? Or a festival. Yeah, well, we do. Yeah, there's a whole story. That'll take, that's another show maybe. We can get to that. We can get to that. So as far as King Tut goes.

Yeah, let's wrap up Tut. My understanding, no pun intended, my understanding is that Tut is known because of how insignificant he was. Is that a misnomer? Well, he's known because of the tomb goods that were found by accident because he's buried in a hole in the, literally a hole in the ground. So it turns out living long if you're a king is really important because if you're a key ops of the old kingdom

or if you're Ramsey's the second, you have really long rains, you get a really nice tomb. Now, once you're king, day two of your rule is get your tomb started to be built. And you're doing that while you're alive. Oh, yeah, got to. Got to.

It took years and years. If you look at the Valley of the Kings and the size of these tombs cut into living rock. Oh, my God, no, it's years and years of labor. Right. And also, interestingly, there's not a tomb there that's finished. There's always a little bit unfinished. And the theory is, well, if the tomb is really finished, then it's ready for its owner.

It's occupier, and it's like a curse. Right. Because you're still alive. So you can never finish the tomb. And then when you die, okay, burial and stuff, but no need to finish up that corner of the room. because he's already buried. So if you look at, if you go to the Valley of the Kings, you can see there's a little bits of these tombs that are still.

But no, you need, you need a long reign to make sure that you're perpetuated forever in your tomb and in your funerary temple. These kings of the New Kingdom are building these massive temples in Western Thebes in front of the Valley of the Kings with priesthoods to perpetuate their memory forever. And then the burial site is separate back in the Valley of the Kings.

It's protected, it's guarded. And in theory, no one can rob those tombs. But. But they're robbed like day two of burial every single time. And Tuts' tomb was actually robbed twice, it looks like. Oh, really? Yeah, there's evidence. There's definitely evidence of being broken into, but they caught him or something,

and stuff still survives for whatever reason. So we got lucky. So that one was probably about to be robbed. So where was Tutt's tomb discovered and who discovered it and under what circumstances? So this is Howard Carter, the British archaeologist's life's work, is he wanted to find this tomb, and it was found. I forget the tomb is right out in front of, but it's in the Valley of the Kings. But it's like almost a hole in the ground next to a main tomb. So it was obviously Doug prepared really quickly.

It may have been like a storeroom originally, something like that. So they had something excavated, but it's really tiny compared to the New Kingdom tombs of the other pharaohs. it really is small and tiny and not so great. I wonder if that would indicate that his death was sort of surprising and sudden and, you know, like, they expect, you know, you're an eight-year-old kid. We'll start working on your tomb in a couple months, and you'll rain for 40 years and we'll have your tomb finished. Yeah. And then he's 18. His reign's cut short.

Yeah. And like, all right, we'll put him in this thing that we have. Yeah, we got to go somewhere. You've got to put him somewhere. And they jam all this stuff in the tomb. So Howard Carter, years and years, supported by Lord Carnarvon, famously, you know, and actually stumbles on this, finds a staircase and then a stair and then two stairs and then all of a sudden the door sealed up. You know, well, this is something. And that's a pretty remarkable.

Could you actually look at the seal of Tutsum? I remember seeing an images of this and it's remarkable. I imagine it's like difficult to really fathom the feeling he must have had because he was. searching for this specifically. Yeah. This is like the 20s. Yeah. And so he's searching things in 20s. You found, I think it was discovered in 1922 formally. So he was searching it, searching for it for a long time before. And he wanted this one specifically. And he's searching around and he's trying to figure out exactly where it is. And then you find a staircase and you start digging upstairs. Yeah. And then you see this

thing. Yeah. And you must be like, holy shit. Yeah. And the amazing thing is, is okay, we got a, we got a telegraph Lord Carnarvon in England get him over here and have this big ceremony for the opening and that took a while. Right. Can you imagine sitting around sipping tea for a length of time and not opening it? It's Christmas Eve for like four months.

My God. I mean, it's terrible. Amazing. That's amazing. It's quite a story. The fact that it's sealed would indicate that no one's ever been in there. Right. Yeah, but there's other ways in to the rock.

Other entry points. I see. Yeah. So he goes in there and finds the sarcophagus. Yeah, finds all this stuff. It's just like somebody's garage, just all sorts of stuff. Gold shimmering in the light and, you know, in the not candlelight, a torch light or so. Yeah.

What a scene, dude. I mean, that gives me goosebumps. It is so cool. Yeah, it is, it is what everyone wants as an archaeologist, that sort of moment. Truly. You know, yeah. So that was a, that's a good one. Now, we can talk about the significance of the Tutte stuff,

but that's why Tut is famous, not really famous for a reign. The Boy King, that's got some romance to it, I guess. Post-Amarna period, the restoration that he's involved with and speculating about what was it like as a nine-year-old kid in the grip of courtiers and, you know, trying to stay a lot. Right.

Without much family around him who cared about the, who cared about him as a boy. You know, there's like none of that. And so his tomb, is there anything significant that we know today that's like sort of like, you know, common discourse about Egyptology? We're like, oh, that's from Tut's tomb. Or is there anything else that was discovered there

that's, you know, that changed archaeology? Yeah, I mean, I think this gets too much attention and it can just be controversial about it because then, well, that's easy. That's ancient Egypt, is the stuff of royal tombs. We had more royal tombs. What would we have? We just have more gold stuff.

Mm-hmm. You know, now the technology, I mean, the chariots are interesting. The gold mass, there are three of them. These are remarkable pieces of art. The craftsmanship is extraordinary. Create an image of those? You go to the Egyptian Museum. Now, the new one, you know, when you can see these things on display,

I think they'll be in the new museum out in, out in Giza. but extremely well polished and two sheets of gold that are beaten on the inside to form the likeness of Tutt. And it's a really close likeness of him, extremely accurate. Even the broken cheek is apparently reflected like a couple centimeters off, one from the other, and that's reflected in the mask. So the craftsmanship is extraordinary. It tells us something about taste and culture and the,

the level of craftsmanship, remember the tweaking of the chariots, you know, I mean, this ultimately comes out of carpentry, right, building the charity, sort of carpenters doing it, but then exotic materials and figuring out a new axle and stronger wheels, et cetera. Interesting. Yeah, I guess this is an important thing to sort of define because being able to see the death masks, like these, you know, gold plates. And also the sarcophagus, itself and the fact that we can tell that they're so close gives a lot of confidence that anytime we see other depictions or art, that it did actually look like the person it was depicting. You know, it wasn't like, oh, this is a generous portrayal. Like, no, this is pretty

much what the dude look like. Yeah. And so even if you don't have the sarcophagus or some other issue, like the statues and sculptures, you can kind of trust, you know, based off of the craftsmanship, like, oh, this is, this is representative. Yeah, there's a likeness. But, you know, tells us a lot about the level of technology and craftsmanship in this empire imperial period. When Egypt is casting a really big shadow across Northeast Africa into the Mediterranean and into the Near East, that this culture, gold in particular, this was the height of ancient Egypt and its influence in the eastern Mediterranean for a long period of time. so much so that these military

the military conquerors not taught because he didn't have didn't live long enough but his predecessors and those who followed him like Ramsey's the second that's kind of the legacy and as we talked about last time I think the Ptolemies a thousand years later

when they take Egyptian throne names they're all New Kingdom Pharaoh's names which is really it's a thousand years earlier it's the last time Egypt was an empire. The Ptolemy's are controlling the Eastern Mediterranean, post-Alexander the Great. And they're taking on these New Kingdom

Ferianic royal names on purpose because that's how they see themselves within Egyptian history is. We're just like the old pharaohs, but this is an empire. And the last time Egypt was an empire was this great new kingdom. And that's what we're trying to go for.

Interesting. So how culture works is, it's interesting in Egypt. The Nakhna is, in a way, going back to Old Kingdom religion to kind of reinvent things. And the Talmuds are going back a thousand years earlier to the new kingdom

to kind of reinvent what it is to be a king in this world. We're just like these New Kingdom military conqueror kings. Okay, we're Macedonian. We're descendants of Alexander. Okay, we're outsiders. But no, we're not. Doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter because look, look at our Egyptian throne names and how we're depicted in the Egyptian temples a thousand years after this period. Yeah, I guess it does say something about like the human desire for nostalgia. right like it's something we see now in modern politics where you know people will echo like oh like you know Reagan did this during his campaign right like oh like let's bring it back to the

America that we all once new and love yeah and right I think this probably happens across the world dictatorships republics democracies what have you where there's always sort of a longing for what was and what we lost and the way we used to be and it's interesting that even you know 2,500 years ago this is the same exact thing that you have Egyptian kings being like, let's be like the kings back in the day. And that there is even a collective memory that people of that time would be like, oh, yeah, I do remember my grandma telling me something about the kings in her time. And that that would actually resonate or mean something is so interesting.

Yeah, the cultural memory is a really interesting phenomenon. And, of course, the people that with the cultural memory and the record are the priests in the temples, because they did keep records. Right. How did somebody inform Ptolemy the First or Alexander the Great about anything? Well, we have records. This is, you know, we're going to create these names for you because these are these. Somebody knew.

Somebody had the knowledge that was transmitted from generation to generation. That's one of the important functions of temples. Right. This transmission of knowledge. Interesting. So, and these institutions, they work Egypt as a pharyonic state from the old kingdom all the way to the Ptolemies. The Romans cared a lot less. about it. The Ptolems cared a good deal about how kingship works.

Is that because they were trying to govern a foreign people? Yeah, partly, mainly even. How do you govern this very ancient land with lots of traditions? Well, what are those traditions? Right. How do they work? All right, let's make an accommodation. We're the guys with the pointy sticks. Your priesthoods, you're the guys with the culture and the tradition and the ceremony, and part of that ceremony is legitimizing kingship. You scratch my back, we'll scratch your back. That's the accommodation of priesthoods and temples and kings in Egypt,

which is why Aknotton said, you know what? New tradition, new rules. Right. Because he's trying to break that, the power. But over 3,000 years or so, it's a pretty powerful thing. The Ptolemy's, the other trolle. was to have a huge army to say, we're taking over everything. We don't give a shit about how you guys work.

That's more of the Roman style. Right, exactly. It's like, hey, you guys are Roman now. You know what I mean? Whatever you were before, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Right? You're all Roman and get on with it.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. The Ptolemy's, as Alexander, was more sensitive to culture. But it's a smart way to rule because it's less expensive. Right. So how does it work? What do you need?

we're the same I guess I wonder if that's like the difference between like an economic conquest versus an ideological conquest right like if you are trying to bring these people into your empire because you believe that you are more cultured more civilized the correct faith whatever that background then you have to get on board because our goal is to win over like your soul in a way whereas if the goal is extraction of resources and trade routes and other type of

economic means, then do whatever you want. Like, I don't really care who you worship or what you care about as long as you guys give us the gold and the mines and all the stuff. Well, yeah. Yeah. It's not that different than a corporate takeover. I mean, imagine somebody taking over Apple, computer, and just saying, you know what, that Apple icon, we get rid of all that.

We're getting rid of all the corporate tradition. We're doing it our way now because we have the money. Right. Would you do that? Or it would say, no, Apple, it's good, kind of. We're owning it. But we want to keep the good part of this going and the brand and... Well, if you were a true ideologue, right?

Like, let's say you were like a proper, like Marxist or something. You were like, well, you know, like private property's wrong. So we should like disband Apple. Like you can imagine if there was an ideologue that came into Apple, like it would fundamentally look different. Or if there was like someone who was ideologically like an ascetic Christian who was like, you know, dispossess all the things you own and change the Apple to a cross or something because Christ is ultimately what's most important. And you can see with the corporate metaphor, like, oh, yeah, that would change it. Whereas if you have an economic alignment, then it's like, yeah, just keep it going. Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. Change rules. It's true in universities, too, by the way, if the dean says, new rules tomorrow about these things. Guess what faculty are going to do? Like, no, no, no, no, we're going to resist all those new rules. Right. So if you change rules anywhere, you're going to get resistance automatically.

And what you want to do if you're taking over places, let's keep mostly things in place is, let's keep mostly things in place. So we're going to tweak a couple of things here to make it favorable for us. We might change the administrative language. We might add a little bit of a taxman over here. Yeah. But let's keep going what sort of works in that society. Yeah, top-down political shifts have to be done very, very cleverly to sort of... Different game, right?

Yeah. Where if it's bottom-up revolution, then it's like, you know, the people ultimately just want change. But if it's top-down, you need to do the right type of change. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, it's hard. So with Tut, is there anything else that needs to get buttoned up on his story? As far as, like, his fame, it makes sense, right?

From a historical perspective, he has this sort of like Marna period that is significant. He has a sort of inconsequential reign, so his tomb is quite small. He dies young, and as a result, it doesn't get raided as much. And from that, we know much more about him. Yeah, and we got lucky that the tomb is intact. It may be just, bottom line, might be just luck, because it looks like it was, there were people in there. It looks like it was ransacked a little bit. Stuff broken up.

Is it an ancient ransacking? Is it possible to tell what kind of ransacking happened? Oh, good question. I don't know. The evidence, if I remember, things get smashed up. And I think there's a hole in a wall or something. Now, it could be 18th century robbery or something. Right.

They get caught. We know in the late 19th century, there's a whole family. There's an interesting movies about this family in Thebes in the 19th century who were making. a shit ton of money by robbing tombs and western thieves. Wow. And they knew a lot of the royal mummies were, that had been reburied as this royal mummy cash,

and they had access to these things. They wouldn't tell anyone where they were, because this is family wealth for generations that are making. So it could be later. I can't remember if there's ancient evidence for it, in fact. Interesting. Yeah, I guess if you see like modern drills or things like that. Yeah.

Post-industrialized drills, you could kind of frame more or less where the, the break-in happened. I think so. And I can't remember sure how we know. Anyway, the tomb mostly survives with the tomb goods intact.

And there's the romance, a boy king. I also think there's a romance with, you said, Howard Carter. Yes. I think that that, I think, plays a massive role. And correct me if I'm wrong,

but like, in my mind, I can remember his discovery, right? It is sort of like... You weren't alive in 1920. I look great. You look good, man. Yeah. I appreciate that.

Damn. But, like, I remember reading, like, Ripley's Believe it or not. And it's like, oh, like, we discovered this tomb, you know? And it's like, oh, wow. And I think that I think the British Crown probably promoted that a lot. Like, look at what we're doing in Egypt and, you know, we're preserving Egyptian history. And I wonder if that story got kind of like propagandized a little to kind of like. Yeah.

And then also it was a significant discovery in the modern age. Yeah. But I think also made it explode. No, indeed. Were there other discoveries of that caliber in this? the 1900s? In Egypt, there's a lot of things, but nothing like that. Nothing like that.

The other thing, of course, it's part of that story, which is a British newspaper story, is the curse of the tomb. Oh, I don't know. And everyone dies and Carter dies from a septic mosquito bite or an insect bite. He's dead. But everyone associated with the tomb. Now, that's not totally true. But there were some mysterious deaths.

Oh, it's this curse of this tomb. that was all generated by London newspapers to sell newspapers. Oh, I love this. That's the other part of the story. Give me the curse of the tomb. I like that you have to couch this. This is how much Dr. Manon thinks I'm a psycho. He's like, this is not true, by the way.

Curses are a host. The Egyptians didn't curse tombs. Usually the opposite. We have prayers in tombs. Hey, anyone who visits this tomb, please say a prayer for me, and I'll bless you. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, we have that sort of thing. I wonder if the robber.

But if you break into this tomb, you will be cursed. and their whole family will be dead within a week. Right. No. Okay. Oh, we got a whole, I mean, it's on, you got a nice website. It seems true to me. The curse?

Yeah, I mean, look how nice this website. There he is, yeah. All right, till 1922, he's in Thebes. He's going down. I mean, look at these pictures. Yeah, yeah, it means well photographed. Wow. And it is beautiful.

It is beautiful stuff. All right. Hold on. Shortly after on earth in King Tutte, how do you pronounce the name, Carnarvran? Lord Carnarvin. Carnarvin. He was found dead, a mosquito bite in his face that had become infected leading to blood poisoning, not the only death. Right.

His half-brother also died from blood poisoning. Sir Archibald Douglas Reed died from a mysterious illness. George J. Gould died from fever following his visit, among many others. Objects from the tomb were given his gifts to Carter's friend, Sir Bruce Ingram, whose house burned down not long. after, after being rebuilt, the house then flooded. I mean, that's pretty spooky. Sounds like a curse, dude. That sounds like it cursed, dude.

Well, I mean, there were plenty of other people, including James Henry Brested, the founder of American Neutatat, at Chicago, who was part of this. And what happened him? He lived till 1935. He did a deal with the fair. So he probably, yeah, he probably knew some magic spell. That's what I'm saying. It sounds very faustian for me. I think he cut a deal and said, hey, sell out these guys flood this dude's house.

And also, I'll be honest, this just sounds like Amin Ra getting his get back. You know what I mean? Like that sounds like, that sounds like justice. It's like, okay, you're going to come over here and take all of our stuff, put it in a British museum. How about we get some mosquitoes on your ass? You know what I mean? No, it's still in Egypt.

Oh, that one is? Yeah, caught still in Egypt by and large. Oh, wow. Some things went missing, which, you know, Carter may have slipped a few things in his back pocket. I would just love to know. I mean, I truly, if there's any, like, all it, or like some wealthy, I don't know,

Emeraldi prince or something that has like a statue or just like some type of, some type of artifact. I would just love to see it. And I won't tell anyone and I won't, I won't flag UNESCO or whoever goes, looks into this stuff. Okay.

I just want to see. I mean, would you not want to see? Like, have you ever seen an item outside of a private collection that technically they shouldn't have? You don't have to say who or what? Yeah. Have I seen? stolen art in private, private collection?

Right. Yes. What did you see? And you don't have to say specifics if you don't, if you're, if you don't like it. Oh, various, um, sculpture. Interesting. For example, stuff that was, is rifled. I mean, antiquities, the antiquities market's pretty shady until recently.

Right. I mean, I remember hearing stories and like, you know, I'd like the story of this family and Thebes or like, you know, early 1900s. You'd have people just kind of like the side of the road was like hawk and wares that like, like, were either fraudulent or that they got from a place nearby or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And, of course, the antiquities laws weren't around until not so long ago. So a lot of stuff was legitimately, we would say it's illegitimately taken from Egypt by

tourism or by dealers selling stuff. It wasn't technically illegal. Right. Now, looking back, we say, well, you know, that was probably bad. And now, of course, there's nationalism pretty fierce involved in Egypt and elsewhere, that this is part of the national tradition. and everything from ancient Egypt, she'll go back to Egypt.

Right. And now we get into these debates about who owns antiquity and all these things currently. Right. Is it illegal if I find a shirt on the side of the road to sell it on eBay? Everyone would be like, no, not at all.

And do it? But if you were in Egypt and picked up something and then left the country with it and sold it, that would be illegal. Right. Don't do that. I will never. No, no, no.

I mean, a sick Egypt and soccer jersey. Then I would really worry about you. Like, whatever happened to Mark. No, I'm calling you. You're my first call. Like, you know these guys, right? You went out to Marna and get me out of here. Exactly.

But it's an interesting thing where, like, just time creates the crime. You know what? Yes, exactly. That's a good way of putting it. If you find a shirt that's a vintage shirt from the 80s, like, everyone would be like, yeah, you can sell that. You found it. But if you find, you know, an old sword that's in a tomb somewhere, it's like, well, that's, and we know it, obviously, there's a difference. But I wonder if, you know, prior to antiquity's law, I was like, yeah, you know, if you find some old shit, you can just sell it if you want.

Yeah. There was no one thought about that back a hundred years ago. Right. It didn't exist. I was in Asia, I got, I bought this stuff. Of course it's. I wonder from places like this where there's so much ancient history. If prior to, you know, the 20th century, people just didn't see it as valuable.

I mean, maybe this is, maybe I'm being blasphemous here. But I just wonder, like, if you're living in a place where it's like, yeah, everything is old. I live 20 blocks from the most magnificent wonder of the world. You know what I mean? These pyramids of Giza, like I'm finding stuff. if my kid was in the backyard and found like a little piece of like of a gold flank of something. And we put in a jar and yeah, you just find old stuff because we're living in the bread basket of human civilization. Yeah.

That I wonder if the prevailing idea is just like, yeah, this is just stuff that was here. Well, this is how Egyptians make money. And I think it's technically, correct me if I'm wrong somebody out there, but I think it's technically not illegal to buy stuff in Egypt. It's illegal to export it. Ah. So you can buy and sell stuff and all you want. Interesting. You just can't export it though.

Right. Which is kind of, I mean, it's an interesting law. It kind of makes sense. It's like, hey, this is of our people for our people. You know what I mean? Your descendants had a role in, you know, these funery reliefs. It's part of national identity, but it's also for archaeologists, they want to know provenance. They want to know, well, what's the context of where did this come from?

Right. And if you, the art market gets rid of the archaeology. Right. There's no provenance. There's no careful excavation, recording, exact location. of something. Right, the condition that it was in. Yeah, no, then the entire archaeological context is gone

and it can't be recovered very often. And so we've lost a lot of important information because even of the earlier antiquities markets. Interesting. It's just nothing to do about it. But that's why it's so protected now for national identity and property reasons, but also, So if there's a market, it creates a market, which creates people looting because you can get money from the looting and sell it to a dealer.

So it leads to more looting. Right. Cocaine, I agree. Like all of these black markets function the same. Right. It's a market. There's a consumption. There's going to be more creation.

That's it creates more consumption. Right. It creates a flywheel. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's such an interesting little like just a, just an interesting part of the world where there's so much history.

Yeah. And it's so tangible to the people. Yeah. It's just remarkable. Go to Egypt. If you've not been to Egypt, it's, it's an amazing. The people are amazing. It's an amazing place visually, extremely kind, generous people by and large.

It's a wonderful mix of cultures now. Right. You know, Islam for sure, or Christianity, a minority, but a very interesting. Christian tradition. Yeah, I think Coptic Christians. The Coptic Christianity is really interesting. Yeah. It's an interesting language because it's an ancient Egyptian language, so it preserves.

Oh, that was a question I was going to ask you when it comes to these harems. Ah, yeah. What happens if you marry like a Hittite princess and you guys don't speak the same language? Yeah. Does that happen? Yeah, I think they're not speaking. I think they're not actually having conversations. That sounds nice.

Kind of an ideal marriage. They're not, you know, how was your day? But like, like, what is the nature of the harem? Is it like, okay, I got a third wife in order to have more heirs, which is what I need, because women can only have one kid in like a year and a half window? It's even more fundamental than that. It's even sort of human biology in a sense. This also related to empire, that military conquest is about getting women.

There is an argument. about that. This is driving ancient empires. It is partly not only conquest of land, but conquest of other peoples, including women. To introduce new women into a society or just for the generals to have more sexual exploits? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Kind of. Yeah. So I'm not sure it's a strategy as much as it is, hey, I'm the conqueror. So with that, I get stuff. Dudes are so dumb. Well, right? Like, Again, that's another show. I know. But it's just like, like, for example, if Bush came on TV and it was like, we're going

into Iraq for women. Like, I think I could almost grab my head around that more because I'd be like, dude, I like women. You know what I mean? Like, I get it. Like, the whole oil thing, you're just like, oh, my God. Like, it's just like, you're going there for oil. Like this is, you're going there for regime change.

Yeah. Back in the day, they used to do war the right way. You know what I mean? They're like, hey, we just want ladies. Yeah. We're going after women. The men end up with, you know, hands cut off and out piled up in front of the God. But this is

the nature of ancient states. I mean, it is brutal. It is so archaic. Like, it's just like truly monkey brain. It is brutal. And as against, oh, look at Tuts' gold mask. The art is so beautiful then, and these temples

are glorious. There's this romantic image of Egypt in other places in antiquity. The real world though is not a place I don't think you'd want to time travel back into and live along. It's It is a brutal world by and large. And the soldiers are the lucky ones.

You could be a farmer and just, you know, exploited usually in living year to year. And with famine at your door kind of a lot, at least the threat of it. And plague. And, yeah, and disease. And in a world, the whole pre-modern world, life expectancy, did we talk about that? Life expectancy at birth in the ancient world, something like 25 years? But is that the average? Yeah.

Okay. So there's a lot of child mortality, I met. Huge child mortality. If you make it the two, you might live longer than that. But this is the sort of average life expectancy at birth. You know, so there's no medicine. There's, you know, it's, would you want, would you want to be an illiterate farmer, which is 95% of the population of ancient Egypt?

You know, no. Of course, everyone who's reincarnated thinks they're going to. to be King Tut or Ramses, not a farmer. Yeah, of course. Somewhere. But it sounds like even from you, you're like, you don't even want to be King Tut. No. You know what I mean?

I would not want to be a ruler. I think a mid-level priest. That's probably out of the way, you know, reading some books, weekends off. It's basically what you do now. Good access to coffee. It's pretty much the professor of lifestyle. You're like, I've read some books. I'm doing what I'm born to do.

Yeah. Drinking coffee? Yeah. Dude, you're the high priest of academia. I love this. Well, Dr. Mani, this is wonderful. Thank you so much for chatting me about King Tut. Pleasure.

Yeah, this is great. And let's do another episode on King Ramsey's. I'm ready. Let's do it. Okay. If you've made it to the end of this episode, you are clearly someone who understands that beneath every historical event lies a deeper truth waiting to be uncovered. You're the type of person who knows that real history is more fascinating than any fiction.

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