Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep 760 | Digging Around History | Guests: Ann Williams and Kara Cooney

Episode Date: November 24, 2021

THE GOOD KINGS Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World Author KARA COONEY , Professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture at UCLA, also wrote When Women Ruled the World (2018) and The Woman Who Would be King (2014). She produced Out of Egypt on Discovery… From Khufu, the man who built the Great Pyramid at Giza as testament to his authoritarian reign, and Taharqa, the last true pharaoh who worked to make Egypt great again, we discover a clear lens into understanding how power was earned, controlled, and manipulated in ancient times. And in mining the past, Cooney uncovers the reason why societies have so willingly chosen a dictator over democracy, time and time again. THE STORY OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION THROUGH 100 KEY EXPEDITIONS LOST CITIES, ANCIENT TOMBS NatGeo editor and archaeologist, Ann R Williams, tells incredible stories of how explorers and archaeologists have uncovered the clues that illuminate our past – from the terracotta warriors escorting China’s first emperor into the afterlife to graves of the Scythians, the real Amazon warrior women, to new findings on the grim fate of the colonists of Jamestown. She specializes in ancient Egypt and is learning to read Egyptian hieroglyphs.   Subscribe to the YouTube Channel… Subscribe www.blazetv.com/jeffy / Promo code jeffy… Email [e-mail] www.shop.blazemedia.com Promo code Jeffy20 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get full-sized favorites and must-have minis bundled for more value. Shop before they're gone. In-store online at Sephora.com. Blaze Radio Network And now, Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher. Welcome to Chewing the Fat. I know we're headed into Thanksgiving weekend, so I wanted to just share a couple of interviews that I did. Fascinating interviews.

This one is with Caracone, The Good Kings, Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World. And just sit back and listen to Kara as she describes the reasons why societies have so willingly chosen a dictator over democracy time and time again. As she searches throughout every former king in the world, I want to be king. Caracuni. So the best-selling author, and as it says here, Dynamic Speaker, professor of Egyptian art and architecture at UCLA.

And specializing in, and one of the things that's listed in the specialization list is coffin studies. All right. So before we talk to you about your new book, The Good Kings, which I want to know if there actually is a good king. What is Coffin Studies and how do I become a professor of it? I know, is that the coolest thing ever? You put a coffin in front of me, and I can be like, 19th Dynasty, 19 and a half, 21st Dynasty. That's awesome. That is awesome.

So I grew up in Houston, Texas, where things are super socially competitive, and people would display their ability to spend through cars and hair and eyeliner and, I don't know, different things, right? And the ancient... America. With coffins. That's America. But that's Egypt, too. So they used coffins. We use cars and watches and handbags.

What's the difference? So I look at coffins from the perspective of social competition. And I also look at coffins from the perspective of collapse, social collapse, because there's a time period known as the Bronze Age collapse when the Egyptian elite all start reusing coffins. Oh. And I am also an expert of coffin reuse. Interesting. So, when they were reusing them, are we sweeping out the dust of whoever was there before us, or are we just put you on top?

No, you don't put them on top. How could you do that? No, you try to hide what you're doing. Okay. You take that old ancestor out and you put them to the side, and I bet you bring a magician and a priest to make sure that the angry dead don't rise against you. Right. And then you take that coffin out or coffin set, because these are nesting coffin sets. and you update it. Like we update our kitchens and our bathrooms. And when we update our kitchens in our bathrooms, somebody comes in and they're like, well, that's asbestos tile.

You don't want to touch that. And so you're like, fine, we'll cover over it. Right, right. And in the same way, with coffins, I see a stratigraphy. I'm like, oops, look, you can see. They went over this decoration here. And then they removed a bit of wood there. And so I look at a coffin kind of like an archaeological exhibition.

You know, we find so much. I know you have your show on Netflix out of Egypt. and your other books, when women ruled the world. I remember talking to you about that, but one of the things that we're finding almost, I don't know, probably in your world daily, but for sure yearly,

we find out new information about the past, about our Egyptian ancestors that we didn't know before, that, I mean, amazingly, science evolves, doesn't it? It's true. We test theories,

we get new information, we update it. It's extraordinary how that happens. It sure is. So your latest book, The Good Kings, Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and in the modern world. First, seriously, my first question, really, was there a good king? It's a sly title. You know it's a sly title.

It's attempting to tell you what you already know, which is that the ancient Egyptians were the best at packaging. They should have been like advertising PR guys. And they package an authoritarian leader to not only seem necessary, but to seem moral and good as the best way forward. And it was so successful that this regime lasted for 3,000 years. Yes, it had its ups and downs, and that's what I outline in more detail in the book. But it was able to remake itself again and again and again. And that is seductive to us in our sad little 250 years of America. Right.

Well, and really, I mean, I know it's a sad little 250 years, but it's a pretty productive 250 years as far as the planet goes. So. Yes, that's at the end of the book. That's the last chapter. So with the kings that you're following here in your book, is there, which one is your favorite? I mean, is there one that stands out that says, that's the guy or the good? girl is that's the guy or that's the king we'll just use the we'll use the we use the term that's the king that's the one we need to uh we need to follow there are two that i think we need to look at

more than any other and the first one is akhenaten who who created a new religious system that is fanatical and arguably monotheistic that set up his acanotan that set up his rule very well And I compare his ideology to the rise of Christian evangelical ideology here, Orthodox Judaism and Israel, Orthodox Christianity and Putin's Russia. You know, there's all kinds of ideologies the one can choose from. But the able leader that chooses an ideology that is binary, where it's black or white, you're with me or against me, is very useful for a leader. And so I talk about all of those things in the Akanaten chapter. And then there's Ramsey's the populist.

And I think that we know exactly what that means, how you drive a wedge between your elites and your people, but your elites are still participating in using the people, however you understand that, to buoy a leader and to use your own celebrity to create a new kind of kingship or a new kind of rule. I mean, we're seeing, I mean, we see that being replaced. over and over again, just that some don't do it as well as others. Some, you know, yeah, but, you know, the last president, he did it very well. Yeah, he did. He's still doing populism well, even when he's not president.

Never underestimate a good populist leader who knows how to connect to his base. Do so at your peril. Right. But one of the things that, you know, at least has changed in our minor 250 years here on the planet, is that we, you know, we hopefully have evolved from that kingship, right? I mean, we still obviously look upon kings for whatever reason as these, I don't know, these glorious beings when they really weren't. I mean, that's why we started the United States.

Yeah, I mean, here's what I'm trying to mess with, right? So you look and you say, well, we don't have a king. And I ask you, well, so you don't think you have a king? And I can say... No, I don't, Karakoti. No, we don't. I can say technically we don't have a king. But when you're looking at the patriarchal system, it is the same thing.

thing. I mean, our democracy is a pay-to-play oligarchy, and it's not majority rules, it's minority rules, and it's becoming worse. And those, those, that minority is entrenching that, that corporate-run, elite-run system such that we can have a billionaire from our country that is worth $300 billion. That's Jeff Bezos. That's, I mean, where's your king? Maybe there's not one guy, maybe but there's there is still an extraordinary unequal distribution of power and resources that is that is highly problematic so well i would disagree completely but when we built this uh democratic republic not just a democracy uh we built it with the you know with at least that thought of, you know, you could, if you say that, okay, so the, the, the, the, the, the,

hundred billionaire is the king, you know, at least I still have a shot to become a hundred billionaire, right? So, I mean, I still have a shot to be king. You know how the ancient Egyptians, they have their, their nylometers to measure the Nile and its prosperity. They have ways of connecting the heavens and the earth. They have all their temples as machines of the universe. Well, we have our ideology, and our ideology, I feel, is actually democracy. I think that USAID feels good giving money to countries when they have elections, whether they're free and fair, is up for argument. But we surround ourselves in this ideology of democracy so that we don't have to see the reality we want to live the fiction. And I think that we can see it in Egypt because

it's so strange and different, but we cannot see it in our own system. That's why I'm bringing Egypt in to shock us all and to seeing it. It's easy to see for them. But for us, we're like, no, no, we have a democracy, and they invented this, the Declaration of Independence is so beautiful. Look at our Constitution and look at how well it works. Is it working? How does it work?

And when it was created, how well did it work for black Americans who were, or indigenous Americans, whose rights were very differently understood in those daughters? documents as written in those documents. These are the kinds of things that I'm messing with, because both systems are patriarchal systems of smash and grab, hoard the resources, get as much power as you possibly can. Those systems remake themselves with different ideologies every time. For the ancient Egyptians, it was Osiris and Ma'at and Ray. For us, it's democracy in the IMF.

But what's the difference, really? And you brought up the planet, right? the rate we're going with all of this smash and grab rape the earth kind of way there is now a giant barrier in our way and that barrier is the earth the earth is like

you have reached the limit your air will soon be poisoned with so much carbon of the outside I don't know if that's true I mean the earth takes care of herself we do adjust as humans we do adjust as humans we adapt things change, right? I mean, you see that all the time.

When you, you know, when you, when you first started, you know, wiping the brush across the remains of the desert in Egypt, you had an idea of what was going on. And now, think how far that has changed. But there was an 8 billion people on the planet. There's now 8 billion people. And we're fine. There's still plenty. We're still plenty of room. Yes.

There's still plenty of room. We absolutely are. Absolutely. So this is the discussion. that we have going forward. There are people who are so enmeshed with the system that we have lived for 10,000 years as human beings that they see no problem with it because they're dug into the success of that system. And there are a majority of people who are working their three jobs and their gig economy reality

who are being exploited by that system and who live near a freeway and who don't see that the earth is as resilient as some think it is. And it's going to be an interesting way forward, and I think it's the next 100 to 200 years of human history. This is the tension that we will have. Okay. All right. I was told in my ear to be nice, so I'm going to.

Karakuni. It was really fascinating. I love the idea behind the Good Kings, and your series out of Egypt is fantastic, of course. Your latest book, The Good King's Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World. One of the big takeaways from the Good Kings is, you know, we're saying that we're following down the King Road, but, I mean, we have an opportunity to take another path, do we not? there's always the opportunity to take another path.

Human beings don't like change. Human beings only change when they have to. So if human beings can remake the path exactly as they have, even after a collapse, they will. But this is my point. I think that we're reaching a lack of steady state, a lack of diminishing returns, in which human beings will not be able to just recreate the patriarchal system again. There are too many obstacles in its way, and this is the other, and the last chapter goes into this, that we're now deciding to throw off that kingship in all kinds of ways.

And you see it happening when people decide not to get married, not to have kids, not to be binary, when the female in the party is the breadwinner. All kinds of things are topsy-turvy from the perspective of a patriarchal system. And people at the bottom of society, are making their decisions in opposition to this patriarchal reality. And then you have laws being passed in Texas where pregnancy is forced upon women whether they want it or not, and all kinds of other things that try to put things down. They could decide to go in another direction prior to that. I see if we're going to go in another direction, I think it will have to be forced upon us.

And I think that human beings are very good at short-term thinking. Long-term thinking they're not so good at. So a giant system change, which is what I think we're going through. I think everyone right and left agrees that we, we humanity, we human beings, are going through something. And if we're going to go through a giant system change, that change will work upon us more than we work that change. And it'll be an interesting thing to see what happens. It will be interesting. It will be interesting.

I'll give you that. Kara Cooney, thank you so much for joining me on Chewing the Fat Today. The book is available wherever you get your books, and I'm sure that you have a special website that they can go to to pick up the book and to find out more information about you. And that is? It's my Squarespace page. Just Google Kara K, K, K, Kuhi with the C, and you will find me.

And I'm also on Facebook, and I'm on Twitter. And I just started a podcast called After Lives with Kara Koonie. Thank you. Thank you. Then I had an opportunity to talk to Anne Williams, who wrote Lost Cities, Ancient Tumes, and it chronicles astonishing discoveries, from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Lost City of the Monkey God.

We'll definitely ask Ann about that. Lost Cities, Ancient Tumes, is the latest book from Anne R. Williams, who has been writing about the ancient world and cultural heritage preservation for many years for National Geographic. And as you start going through these books, you realize how much really has, our knowledge has changed over the last, well, it says here in your bio, a three-decade career with National Geographic. And welcome to the show. And so in those 30 years, I mean, we've learned so much and so much has changed. what right now, just out of the box, before we even get into the book,

what's the biggest thing that's changed for you in those 30 years? When you look back today and you go, wow, I can't believe I believed that then and now look at what I believe. I think one of the exciting things that has captured my attention and the attention of a lot of archaeologists is the fact that technology is really, taking archaeology into a new place. And there is a list, a short list of some of those technologies at the end of the book that I hope you're now holding.

In my grubby little hands as we speak. Sorry? In my hands as we speak. Very good. So there are all sorts of technologies like LIDAR, for instance, that are allowing archaeologists to make discoveries in a way that never could have been imagined 20, 30, 40 years ago. Just astonishing stuff. So everything from LIDAR and reading satellite images to strontium isotope analysis and, you know,

a whole bunch of other sort of high-tech stuff. But I think we are, because of all those technologies, we're entering a new, era of discovery in archaeology that is starting out to be very exciting. What's your favorite new find? Favorite new find. Yeah, your favorite new find. Because I know we're going back over some of the old finds, right? And we're finding new information about the old finds that are, you know, adding to or

changing a little bit of our perspective on what was done and what was meant. But what's the biggest new find that you're happy about? Well, I think there were two chapters in this book that are new excavations that really rewrite history in different ways. There is a pre-Columbian site in Panama, about an hour and a half drive west of Panama City. It's a site called El Cano. The lead archaeologist is a woman named Julio Mayo. she thought that she could kind of figure out through reading old texts and doing magnetometry in a certain place.

She thought that she had identified the graves of high pre-Columbian Panamanian chieftains. And she dug down 16 feet below the ground level, and she found the chieftains, and they were just blinged out, you know, covered in gold, pectoral, arm cuffs, earrings, belts with beads the size of huge olives. I mean, it was just extraordinary. Now, it's not only that discovery, it's what that discovery means. So for decades and generations, archaeologists had sort of thought that there was really nothing between the Maya in the Mexico, Honduras Guatemala area,

the Maya and their stone pyramids, and the Inca down in South America. And, you know, all of that stuff between, it was just rainforest, and there wasn't anything there, they thought, and so they didn't look. Right.

But Julia Maya was one of the people who was starting to look. And, of course, she found stuff. Sure. So I think what that says to us is, you know, as scientists, We have to remind ourselves that just because an ancient civilization had a material culture that was biodegradable does not mean that their civilization was not sophisticated. And that is what Julia has found.

And plus 16 feet down. It's not only history rewriting. It's a paradigm rewriting. Plus, you meant 16 feet down. That seems not as deep as I would have. anticipated. Well, believe me, after how many climbed up and down the stairs to the bottom of the site,

many times. 16 feet's good enough. I can tell you it's a fair, a fair depth. Right. And I get that. Okay, never mind. Now, the other thing, the other site in that category, I would say, is a site called, now I don't pronounce this very well.

It's in Yupik, which is an Alaskan language. but the site is called Nunakshu. It was a site that in the mid-1600s was attacked, and the main communal shelter where about 50 people lived burnt, and the site was abandoned. Now, what has happened is with global climate change, all of that site has been locked in permafrost since the mid-16, 100s until quite recently, and the permafrost is melting.

At the same time, the land is subsiding, and the Bering Sea is rising. This is a site right on the coast of the Bering Sea in south-western, Alaska. And there is a village nearby, still you pick people. It's called Quinawok, and they started to see during winter storms, the front thigh of this, site where their ancestors had lived, was being eroded away. And they called an archaeologist, and they partnered with the archaeologists, gave the archaeologists tons of support, and learned how to dig themselves, and everybody pitched in, and they have been bringing up the most extraordinary things out of literally the melting

permafrost or thawing permafrost. All the things, again, are all biodegradable. It's carved caribou antlers, walrus ivory. It's basketry from grasses woven from baskets, grass that was cut in the 1600s, really just extraordinary. And the archaeologists who are working on that are just absolutely top-notch. And it's rewriting what we knew about that period of time in the pre-European history of Alaska. Which is awesome. I mean, we're getting some of some new things because of the melting with the permafrost around the world,

not only in Alaska, which is fantastic. So your lost cities, the latest book, Ancient Tumes. I know that we have the legend of Troy and the Black Fair. and, you know, the lost temple. Let's talk a little bit about what's the lost temple of the monkey god? Well, this is a wonderful example of what technology is doing in the field of archaeology. So this was an expedition, and it came out of a LIDAR study. So for those people who don't know about LIDAR, you do LIDAR from an airplane.

You fly over usually a rainforest canopy with a special camera, and you take a whole bunch of photographs, and then back home. You plug that into a computer, and you use special software. And, you know, computers are endlessly patient. And what the computer does in this case is it pierce through all the spaces between all the leaves in the rainforest canopy to identify any trace of something. Right. And then kind of fills in the gaps. So you end up. And you want to talk about fun.

And you want to talk about fun. That sounds like fun. Yeah. So then you have to, you do what we call ground truiting in archaeology. Okay. You see technology, but you go, yeah, yeah, I got to see it with my own eyes. Right. That's what that expedition was about.

They were checking it out. And sure enough, there were temples, there were sculptures, there were populations, They're pottery. I mean, a whole long civilization, and we don't even know their names. But thanks to technology. Well, are we going in now? Or are we just know that it was there? And thanks to Lydar and we're just kind of leaving it alone.

Or have we gone in? Well, there was an expedition that went in. Doug Preston, who wrote the introduction to this book, was in the expedition that went in. and ground truth it. Now, what happens to that? I don't know. That is up to the Honduran government.

It is their site. It's under their purview, and they get to decide what happens to it. How much as the, you know, since we're still, you know, we're coming out of, you know, the worldwide global pandemic, how much does that hurt your business? I mean, my gosh, that's got to have been a struggle the last year, year and a half. Well, it's sort of good things and bad things. The bad thing is that it has shut down a lot of excavations. I mean, it's just not safe.

On the other hand, when you are excavating, there's always a balance that you have to strike between excavating on the one hand, which is one skill set, and rating up what you found, which is a completely different skill set. And in fact, in all honesty, I would have to say that there have been very famous archaeologists in the past who were not very good note takers. So they have excavated very famous sites and not left us a whole lot of clues about what was going on. But archaeologists have used this pandemic pause to a lot of them to get caught up and have done a lot of publishing. That is good. You know, that's what happened to me. I never would have written this book if there hadn't been this pandemic.

Right. So, I mean, that is good, right? I mean, the latest book, Lost Cities, Ancient Tumes by Ann. So what's next? All right. So we've got Lost Cities, ancient tombs, and you obviously told us, you know, you wrote this because of the pandemic, and you've been catching up on all your note-taking, along with all the other archaeologists across the globe.

So what's next for Anne Williams after 30 years of, traversing the globe and looking at sights. Are you done? You're hanging up the cleats? What are you doing? No. So, as we speak, I am working on a new book. The working title is Treasures of Egypt. I am deeply immersed in the land of the pharaohs. And yeah, that should be out next year at this time. I also this summer went to an online scribal school where I learned ancient Egyptian hieroglyph, which has helped me enormously to be, I think, a better interpreter for this new book that's coming up. That's awesome.

For instance, I saw that there was a photograph that looked kind of funky. I couldn't read the king's name. I saw it in the cartouche, you know, that oval. And then I realized that, well, I couldn't read the cartouches because the photograph was upside down. Well, that's kind of funny. actually. So, Anne, I thank you for your time. The latest book is Lost City's ancient tombs. It has been fascinating as I'm getting into it, and I'm looking forward. I hadn't made it to

the monkey god yet, and so I'm looking forward to that. Ann Williams, thank you very much for joining me on Chewing the Fat today. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Thank you for listening to Chewing the Fat today. Have a great Thanksgiving weekend. Enjoy all your family members that you can enjoy. And if there's some of the family members that you don't enjoy, give them a hug,

throw them a turkey bone, and just tell them happy Thanksgiving, get out. No, that's not what you're supposed to do. No? Okay. Well, have a happy Thanksgiving anyway. Thanks for listening to Chewing the Fat. Stream and subscribe to more Blaze Media content at the blaze.com slash podcasts. Thank you.