The Ancients - Anubis and the Underworld

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

Tristan Hughes and his guest Dr. Joyce Tyldesley OBE are heading to the Underworld for the final installation of The Ancients exploration of the Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. They encounter the infamous jackal-headed deity Anubis, analyse Egyptian archaeology and discuss the origins of mummification, the Book of the Dead and the weighing of hearts.Presented by Tristan Hughes. Edited and produced by Joseph Knight, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Scriptwriter is Andrew Hulse. Voice Actor is Menna Elbezawy.The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off your first 3 months using code ‘ANCIENTS’. https://historyhit.com/subscriptionYou can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. Out there in the deep desert, among the parched red earth, something is howling, mewling, whimpering. It's dark, a cool night so black.

You'd be picking your way across the dunes by starlight alone. But if you followed that horrible crying sound, eventually you'd find it an animal lying in a pool of blood. It has gleaming cat eyes, whiskers sharp as needles, fangs curved and keen as a waxing moon. But those are not what you would notice first. You would notice the red ruin of its flesh. The creature has been flayed,

its skin stripped away to show the muscle and bone beneath. It will recover. The creature is a god after all. Set, the god of chaos, in the form of an animal, some big cat. But he will never forget this mutilation. He will never again cross the god Anubis. He will never again cross the god Anubis. What is Seth's crime? What has led to this punishment? He has not merely betrayed his brother, the pharaoh god Osiris. He has not merely killed his brother. Seth has dismembered the pharaoh's body, cut it into 14 pieces and scattered them far and wide across Egypt.

But gods are not so easy to destroy. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and welcome to the fifth and final episode of our Egyptian Gods and Goddesses mini-series. We've covered the origins of the Egyptian gods, we've done the sun gods like Ra, great goddesses like Isis and the popular legend of Osiris. And now, to finish off this series, we're heading to the underworld, to death in ancient Egyptian religion and the infamous jackal-headed deity Anubis. There's lots of mentions of death in surviving Egyptian archaeology, whether it's the Book of the Dead, the Weighing of the Heart or the many different creatures that existed in

the underworld, so naturally there's a lot to unpack. Fortunately we have Dr Joyce Tildesley, OBE from the University of Manchester on hand to tackle this topic in this finale. Now, before our interview with Joyce, as with all of our episodes in this miniseries, we have a retelling of a myth. Today, it's the myth of Anubis and his mummifying of Osiris, the king of the dead. the king of the dead. Osiris's wife, Isis, has taken to the wing as a kite and gone in search for her husband's remains. With each new part, she makes a stitch.

With each new piece, a bind, she begins to reconstruct Osiris's body. However, to find the last of his limbs, the last of his organs, she must range farther and farther. She must be gone for longer and longer, weathering distant storms, riding foreign winds, and all the while Osiris's remains are unguarded, unprotected. Seth sees his chance to stop this resurrection once and for all. He begins to work, to bend and twist,

until he takes the form of a predator, a hunter with gleaming cat eyes, whiskers sharp as needles, fangs curved and keen as a waxing moon. He heads into the deep desert following a sweet, rotting scent. But Seth is wrong to think he is the only creature that skulks and stalks the parts through red earth. Another has smelled that scent, another god. His name is Anubis, a snout, a snarl curling over yellowing teeth.

Anubis's head is that of a black dragon. His is the bark that echoes about tombs and crypts. His is the howl in the night that sends grave robbers running. He is the protector of the dead. And so, when Anubis sees Set tearing at the remains of Osiris's body, he takes two forelegs and chases him off. Set is faster. The god has taken the form of a big cat, a sprinting creature. But every dog has its day, and Anubis is relentless. Every time Seth thinks he has outrun him, every time he stalks to pant and gasp,

the jackal stare upon him, and the chase continues. Minutes, hours, the whole night and beyond. Khepro, the god of dawn, notices the pursuit at daybreak And Aton, the god of dusk, is still watching at sunset Until finally, in darkness, a cool night so black You'd be picking your way across the dunes by starlight alone. Seth can flee no longer. Their fight then is quick, but the truth is, Seth is exhausted. His every muscle is pulled, his breaths are shallow.

And when Anubis's jaws close around his throat, the big cat goes limp. His tail ceases to thrash. Seth can only plead them, only beg. But Anubis is determined. An eye for an eye is the rule of the gods. And so, there can only be one punishment for Seth's crime, a mutilation. So, there can only be one punishment for Set's crime, a mutilation. Anubis flays him alive, but not before branding his hide over and over again with burning iron.

Those coarse spots, ink black, they are marks of shame on all leopards for allowing Set to take their form for his savagery, for his barbarity. When Isis returns from her search, another of Osiris' limbs held in her talons, she finds Anwes at guard over her husband's body, a faithful hound. Together they stitch, together they bind, and when Anwes wraps Osiris' body in linens, These last rites of a pharaoh. He does it with the utmost care, the utmost precision. His fingers do not shiver in that cool night so black.

No, he has a new cloak to keep him warm. It is a leopard's hide, so fresh the blood still drips onto the sand. Joyce, pleasure. Great to have you back on the podcast. Thank you. And I think we can say we've saved for the best till last, because you have been a stalwart of this Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt miniseries. And this last episode, can we say that this particular god, Anubis,

he is the most famous, the most well-known of all Egyptian deities? Oh, that's a good question. I'm not so sure that that's true. But he has definitely got a fan base. I mean, again, he hasn't got a great deal of mythology, but he's very recognisable, isn't he? And you see pictures of him all over the place. Whenever people are talking about mummification, he'll be there. Or Tutankhamen, there's a statue of him in the tomb and so on.

So people are familiar. I think in popular media today, isn't it? It's like the mummy, the movie, the mummy and all of that, the depictions of this jackal-headed mythological creature and the name Anubis comes up and up over and over again. It does. It does. It's definitely, I think, a name people will be familiar with. And before we get into Anubis, and then we're also going to explore the whole process of mummification and the underworld in the Egyptian belief, I'd like to ask a bit about the archaeology we have. Because when looking at gods and goddesses and mythology I remember you saying in an earlier episode how the bias is almost towards the dead

towards temples and rituals that the majority of archaeology we have for this surrounds the afterlife and is that almost kind of a bit of a misconception that the Egyptians are obsessed with death yes I think it is I, they're certainly interested in it and they certainly prepare for it. At least the ones that we can see who are the elite Egyptians, the ones who can afford tombs or really elaborate graves

and mummification and grave goods. But first of all, they're not even the majority of the population. A lot of people are just buried in fairly simple pit graves in the desert, unmummified and always have been throughout the dynastic period., and always have been throughout the dynastic period. But what's happened to draw the other tombs to our attention is that the housing

and the palaces, they're all made of mud brick, and they're all situated on the edge of the cultivated land where it's quite damp, and where it's also quite desirable farming land. So they've either dissolved, or they've been flattened and built over because they're mud brick, it's really easy to do that. They make a fertile soil if you flatten it. They're gone. We've been flattened and built over because they're mud brick. It's really easy to do that. They make a fertile soil if you flatten it. They're gone. We don't really have as many. Whereas the tombs and the temples, well, the temples are made of stone and the tombs are cut either into the desert or built of stone again.

So they've survived because they're away from the floodwaters, if they're the tombs. They're also packed full of goods. And you have to remember that the early Egyptologists were looking for, I don't want to say the word treasures, but that basically is what they were doing. They were looking for objects to find. They weren't so much interested in daily life, or they were, but they also were interested in artifacts, interested them greatly. And of course, in those days, it doesn't happen these days, but they could bring artifacts back if they were from the west and they could give them to their sponsors and so on so it made a

lot of sense for them to focus on cemeteries and the dead rather than on the living so even if there weren't settlement sites around they didn't particularly want to excavate them it's a sort of whole combination of circumstances better preservation and more focus but it does yeah you're right. It gives us that impression that the Egyptians themselves were obsessed with death. And I think it'd be better to say they're obsessed with life. And they wanted to make sure their life would continue because they loved life. They wanted their life in Egypt to continue as much as it could do, as it had done during their actual life. And do we have much evidence, much source material

from these contexts, from archaeological work in cemeteries and so on, for the figure of Anubis himself? We know that Anubis, or better to say jackals I think, because sometimes they're unnamed and it's difficult to know who they are, we find jackals in association with elaborate burials from the pre-dynastic period onwards. So the jackal is an important animal, and we've already talked about bulls, but jackals also appear. Later on, it becomes associated with Anubis,

but this jackal figure, it's difficult for us to name because there are several jackal gods, is there right from the very, very beginning. Why the association with cemeteries is not quite clear. It's often said that it's because dogs dig things up. Scavenging kind of thing? Yeah, but dogs also bury things, don't they? So it could be that. And also having been to Egypt and other places, sometimes just packs of dogs will congregate on the edge of a town or a

settlement. And maybe there are also packs of dogs were found in the cemeteries. And they said they could be digging things up or they could be burying things. It's difficult to know. So the characteristics of Anubis, at least in his appearance, almost like as you were talking about with Hathor in a previous episode, the characteristics of a jackal head, that actually might predate the figure of Anubis himself in Egyptian beliefs. Yes, you put it much better than I did. We have definite signs that dogs or jackals are of importance during the pre-dynastic time,

but there's no writing then. We've no idea what's going on. We've no idea what the ideas of the afterlife are. So pre-dynastic times, how far back are we going with that? I would go back about a thousand years before the unification of Egypt. And when is that? Unification of Egypt is about 3,100 BCE. Oh, okay, so about 4,000. Oh, okay, so around 4000. Yeah.

Wow, that's really far back. I mean, it's not a lot of evidence because there isn't a lot of evidence from that period. But little bits here and there we see the importance of the bull,

the importance of the cow, dogs become important. I think the thing to remember is that we can't just start studying Egyptian tombs and art and beliefs at the beginning of the dynastic age

because it's very much a continuation. The only difference is now that it's being ruled by a king and it becomes a unified land. I mean, it's a pretty big difference, I agree, but it's still the same people. So we have to assume, I think, that the same beliefs are there already and they will develop further. And so we've kind of talked about one of these main attributes of Anubis, this jackal-headed figure, which we'll explore more as we go on. But Joyce, who exactly was Anubis? What did the ancient Egyptians think Anubis was? Anubis starts out as being very much, I would say, in control of the cemetery.

I wouldn't say he was the king of the dead because before Cyrus, there isn't a land of the dead really for the dead to go to. At this point, we sort of need to slightly understand the changing funerary beliefs. We can see from the evidence that we have that in the old kingdom, the beginning of the dynastic period, the idea is that the king has a spirit strong enough to leave the tomb. So the king and maybe people associated with him will benefit a bit from his strong spirit being buried near him. But most of the elite who are buried in tombs are not expecting to go to an afterlife.

They're expecting to stay in that tomb, but they will live in that tomb forever. And that's why they take lots of graves good to the graves with them, because they don't want to be caught without food and drink and even toilets and yeah they take everything they can it's very impractical because they have to take things to the end of time underpants in the tomb of tootin come in yes he's later though he does that's another interesting because he does expect to leave and yet yes he's taking his clothes with him so that's that's another mystery and it makes you wonder whether he actually can't throw them away, whether having become a king,

there's something sacred about his clothes. I don't know. So we have the king at the beginning of the dynastic period and he knows that he will be able to leave the tomb if he does everything right. The elite who will be buried in what we call mastaba tombs,

like rectangular tombs near the king's burial, will live to an extent after death but won't leave the tomb. And then the ordinary people, we don't really know what they believe. They're buried in the pit graves in the cemetery, and they don't leave us any indication of what they're believing at all. Then you get to the end of the old kingdom, and suddenly everything changes. Osiris comes to the fore, becomes really important, and his afterlife sort of develops. And now people who have the right rituals and the right information, the right knowledge, are able to go to the land of Osiris. And so he becomes king of the dead. Now, the time when

you could say that Anubis is in charge of the cemeteries is the time before Osiris stepped forward to become king of the dead. So he's the ancient god of the cemeteries, if you like. And as Osiris comes to the fore, he becomes almost like his assistant. He becomes an undertaker. So there's the evolution of Anubis' role as time goes on. Yes, exactly. His role evolves. So he's still really important. And we see him in pictures mummifying people, but he's no longer in charge. Osiris is in charge. So he's lost some of his power there. And I've just said we can see him mummifying people,

but actually we know because we have some surviving masks that people during the ceremonies of mummification probably wore an Anubis-shaped mask. When we see someone bending over a body in a picture, it's either Anubis or it's a priest or an undertaker, probably the same thing, dressed as Anubis-shaped masks. When we see someone bending over a body in a picture, it's either an anubis or it's a priest or an undertaker, probably the same thing, dressed as an anubis, even wearing a mask. We just don't know exactly what we're looking at. Performing an anubis's role in the mortal world almost, yes. So with an anubis, I mean, did he have an origin story that we know

of? Or at least is there one version of an origin story that we know of with an anubis? He's got several origins, quite similar. Some stories will say that he is the child born to Isis and Osiris. Others would tell us that he was the child born to Nephthys, that Osiris mistook Nephthys for his wife Isis and slept with her. And just to make the situation a bit worse,

they are both sisters of Osiris. Yes, they're all brothers and sisters. Because he's married, it's a bad thing to do. So she becomes pregnant and has a baby, but because she's scared of what Seth, her husband, will say, she exposes the baby. Isis finds the baby and brings it up as her adoptive son. And we have stories of Anubis helping Isis when she herself helps to preserve the body of her husband, Osiris. But I have to say that the story of exposing a child, we don't get that in Egyptian tradition at all. It's very much a classical thing, which suggests that that part of his mythology is put in much, much later to the original creation

story. Because is this the catalyst? I mean, that whole story for Anubis then becoming associated rather than with anything in the overland world almost or in the skies, but instead with Osiris and in the underworld, as you say, almost as this undertaker figure. Well, I think he always has been, but it gives him a more definite role. It connects him more closely to the more, if you like, more famous gods. So he's got a role now in their story which presumably his priests would be happy with that happen because

it boosts him up as well being connected to them but he really always has been connected with cemeteries and with mummification but not i would never call him a king of the dead it's not quite like that but it's also interesting with his origin story and you know potentially his parents being um osiris and neptis he's almost the next level down from that Enead that we talked about right at the beginning of this mini-series. So he is still right near there at the beginning, at least in their beliefs. Yes. Well, he's there at the beginning of the gods or there at the beginning of the world sense, but he's not there at the beginning of Egyptian history. This is much later in it. So if you were talking about this in 3100 BCE, you probably wouldn't know that part of the story. You'd regard them

as completely separate. But if you're talking about it at the end, maybe with the time of Cleopatra, then yes, you would consider them to be part of a story. But it's obviously, he's a powerful individual with staying power because he lasts out the entire dynastic age. And as you say, he's really well known today. And you've already talked about how the jackal becomes closely associated with cemeteries, like digging, potentially scavenging as well. I mean, does this evolve at all into the dog, the domestic dog generally just becoming associated with the dead in ancient Egypt?

I don't think dogs are particularly associated with the dead, but it can be very difficult sometimes to decide what you're looking at. If you see a picture of a dog, are you looking at Anubis? Are you looking at a dog? It's quite interesting that the Egyptians are definitely more cat people, I would say, than dog people. So we see cats. You can be both, but okay, Egyptians.

You can, yeah. You see cats being taken hunting for example which seems a bit strange to us yeah i mean obviously not hunting big game but you know in scenes on on tomb walls you can see cats there rather than dogs but they do like their dogs now we earlier talked about this mythical origin story of anubis and association with the likes of osiris and nehthys. But he also seems to play a significant role in the Osiris myth. Now, what role does he play? In some versions of it, he plays a role that he helps Isis when she brings Osiris back to life

and effectively mummifies him. So he's there again in the role of an undertaker and he helps her and can be taken as her guide. But he's not in all versions of the story. So it's quite interesting as to which version that you're looking at. But definitely as an undertaker, he would be very much at home doing that. And in the whole process of mummification and Osiris becoming the first mummy. Yes. Which again is very interesting because Osiris becoming the first mummy, again, which again is very interesting because Osiris becoming the first mummy, again that story presumably is not what inspired mummification. Mummification was there and it inspired the story of Osiris becoming the first mummy. It's kind of the other way around. But we don't really get that story until the point where mummification is becoming more and more popular with the elite.

Do you often therefore see in depictions on wall paintings, let's say in tombs or elsewhere, depictions of Osiris, but also Anubis being depicted nearby, almost, you know, kind of as the undertaker, but aiding Osiris? He can be aiding. For example, he can lead the deceased to the court of judgment. So we can see the two of them together, but you don't see them in a way working together. They working independently but they are together they're working together in the underworld in the passage of souls to the underworld but they have different roles yes thank you yes i mean you saw about guiding kind of people into the underworld that almost made me think of caron and crossing the river styx that the ferryman i mean so does Anubis also have that kind of role where he's bringing people into the underworld?

Again, not always. But then it varies from time to time. I'm sorry I keep saying that. But obviously in the Old Kingdom, you've got people not being guided to the underworld because they're expected to stay in the tomb. In the Middle Kingdom, it becomes open to the ordinary people, so then you have got the potential of going there. But they have things called the coffin texts, which are developed from the pyramid texts, which were inside some of the pyramids. And they're primarily written on their own coffins, box-shaped coffins, we call them, but they're rectangular, they're not square. And they're sort of a map and a guide to what will happen. So you can get there by yourself, but it could be that Anubis could help you.

You get to the new kingdom and it's become formal, complicated way of getting there. And you're going to go for quite a grand trial when you get there. And that's more when he comes to the fore to help out with things. well we talked about anubis and let's go on to mummification i mean first of all no such thing as a silly question i mean joyce how did the ancient egyptians how did they mummify their dead well it's an interesting question how they it? We're quite confident that we know how they did it. Don't try this at home, anybody. But basically, you take the body. They would take the body as soon as they could, really,

as soon as they're sure it was dead, which isn't always easy to know when people are dead or not. But as soon as they're sure that people are dead, take the body, they would wash it. They would extract the brain from the head because they didn't think the brain really had much of a function. Even though they knew from the medical papyri that if you got damage to the head,

you would start to not function correctly. So they kind of knew. But anyway, they took the brain out and threw it away. And did they take it out through the nose, as we sometimes said? Yes. Yes, that was one of the easier ways of doing it, actually, to just, well, basically shove a hook up and then whisk a bit. And you could encourage it to trickle down the nose would be the easiest way of doing it actually to just, well, basically shove a hook up and then whisk a bit. And you could encourage it to trickle down the nose would be the easiest way of doing it. There are other

ways of doing it as well, but that was probably the easiest way of doing it. And then you would remove the internal organs, which would decay, which they would know because they were cooking and they live in a hot climate. It's going to be very obvious to them. And then you would dry the body out and you would also dry out the organs that you want to keep when it had been dried out for somewhere between 40 and 70 days you would wash it again and oil it to make it a bit more supple and pad it and bandage it and you would also preserve some of the organs that you'd taken away the heart would be put back into the body but the other organs would either be put in canopic jars or packaged up as little packages separately, or

might be packaged up and put back into the body because they would be needed in the afterlife. And then you bandage the whole thing up and that is your mummy. But that is just the practical side of it. There's a whole aspect of it, which is the religious side of it, because it's like the medical recipes that I talked about before. It wouldn't work if you just did that. We could try mummifying people and it would, yes, you'd have a preserved body, but it wouldn't be a latent human being because you need to have the prayer aspect of it as well. And this is where we find the priest taking the role of a nubis as they do the mummification. And it's a sacred ritual. It's not just a way

of disposing of the bodies. So it's a long process. It's a process they don't tell us a great deal about. That's not surprising. They don't tell us about things that might be dangerous or might be bad luck or that they just don't want us to know. So it's not sinister that we don't know about it, but it's something that they don't really write about the whole process. So we're having to use a bit of imagination, but we know from the bodies we have the practicalities. As I say, it's the prayers and the whole process of it that we're less certain of. Do we have any potential glimpses from surviving archaeology, maybe a text or something, about any details about some of these funeral rites that you've just mentioned? We can see funerals going on on tomb walls. I should stress again, this is really later in the dynastic period. Earlier, they weren't mummified and they were sort of preserved in

shorter coffins. They were curled up. But when they started to mummify, they get the longer, the longer full-length coffin because it's not so easy to mummify a curled up body. they get the longer full-length coffin because it's not so easy to mummify a curled-up body. We can see funeral processions. We can see what happens at the tomb where the mummy is propped up and the priest does what we call the opening of the mouth ceremony, which will make the latent being, which is the mummy, receptive to becoming animate. Very interesting that the opening of the mouth ceremony is not just for the dead body. It's also applied to statues and art. Anything that has the potential to come alive is probably not quite the right way of putting it, but to reanimate or to even host the spirit of a dead

person. You can do the opening of the mass ceremony on. It's done by a priest, but that priest might also be an undertaker or a relation. They're going to the tomb. We can see the unguents from Tutankhamen are poured over elite bodies. We assume that there's a funerary meal and then the body is left in the tomb. And overnight, it will start to prepare for its journey to the afterlife. So this is the next step in the belief, in Egyptian belief of what happens to these people after death. It's the journey to the afterlife. So this is the next step in the belief, in Egyptian belief of what happens to these people after death. It's the journey to the afterlife. They have the belief that it is possible to achieve an afterlife, but you can only do that if your body survives and your body has to survive

in a recognisable form. So a skeleton won't count. Oh, interesting. And they know that this is possible because presumably they have seen in the desert that the bodies will come out of the sand very well preserved because the sand is hot, it's sterile, and it allows fluids to drain away from the body. So they know it's achievable. The very interesting thing, I think, to many of us is why they decide to go the route of mummification because they could easily, or more easily, bury the bodies in the desert and they would be of mummification because they could easily or more easily bury the bodies in the desert and they would be naturally mummified if keeping the shape of the body and the appearance of it mattered that would be much cheaper but they don't they replicate what they

could have done naturally and develop an entire industry around it but the aim always is to preserve this this body so that the spirits that are released when the person dies can recognise the body and come back to it. If the body decays, then the person will die a second death and won't be able to have an afterlife. So that's what you're trying to prevent. And on a quick tangent, I mean, economically, it's also much, much more expensive to do, isn't it? I mean, like materials, I remember going to the Dead Sea recently, more expensive to do isn't it i mean like materials i remember going to the dead sea recently and like bitumen from the dead sea seems to be an important ingredient with with mummy wrapping and things like that so getting the materials for the mummy wrapping and the whole process which you described

earlier it takes a long time it must have cost a bit of money as well if you wanted to be mummified yes i mean they're not necessarily using bitumen, certainly not in the New Kingdom. But yes, you're absolutely right. The bandaging alone, the amount of linen that would be needed, it's exorbitant. And if you say for a family and suddenly, I don't know, someone gets measles or something and everybody dies, you're providing miles and miles, literally, of bandaging, hugely, hugely expensive.

We get Egyptians being mummified in old towels and old sheets, and this famous one that's mummified in an old sail, because presumably of the expense of doing this. But it's not for everybody. It's for the elite, those who can afford it. But as the dynastic age goes on, more and more people are mummified. But standards of mummification, they peak, and then they go slightly downhill. So by the end, by around about the time of Cleopatra, the mummies actually look quite beautiful because they're beautifully intricately patterned, but inside the mummy, the body is not as well preserved as it would have been from an earlier mummy. So let's say we're back some 3,000 to 4,000 years ago and this elite figure recently deceased,

they've just been mummified and that the whole rituals the rituals have been done and now the people of the time they believe that the deceased is now on their journey to the afterlife bits of the deceased bits of the deceased are the deceased has released several spirits one of them the car has to stay near to the body. So it will be important that people make offerings to the deceased forever, if possible, because those offerings will support the car. The car needs to eat and drink and be treated kind of like a human. So it's important that that aspect isn't forgotten. So there will be offerings made, or if you can't guarantee to do offerings forever, which nobody can because after a few generations, people aren't going to do it for their great-great-grandparents,

they won't have known them. You can put images on the wall that magically will also help with that. And there's another spirit, the bar, which also flies around on the earth. But another part of the spirit will leave the tomb and will set off on this journey. And they all have to be accommodated. So all three of them have to be happy, but yet we have the spirit who will leave. We'll use the information that's been provided either if they're in the Middle Kingdom on the coffin texts written on the coffin, sometimes there's a map, or in the Book of the Dead, if they're in the New Kingdom that they've been buried with, which will give them very explicit details as to what's to come, where they're going, any questions that they're asked. It's like a crib sheet. They have the answers. They know what's coming up.

And if they're prepared for it by having this information with them, they will sail through it. So if it's the New Kingdom, you will turn up at a court judged by Osiris and Eubys will be there, Thoth will be there. And your heart, because I said the heart was important, will be weighed in a scale against the feather of truth or the feather of Mart to see if you're lighthearted or not. And you will also tell people that you've done no wrong. And if you pass all these tests, then you will progress into the field of reeds to work for Osiris. But if you fail, you will be eaten by Ammit, or there's a danger you'll be eaten by Ammit, which is a fearsome monster, which like Tawarit, but in a different configuration, is part crocodile, part lion,

and part hippopotamus. And if you're eaten by Ammit, or your heart is eaten by Ammit, then there's no way back from that either. So if you are going to have an elite funeral, it's absolutely crucial that you have the right equipment to get you through this test that's going to come. it's fascinating that we have so many of these details surviving so this book of the dead that you mentioned earlier is this a key almost a literary archaeological source for learning more about their beliefs about the whole sailing into the after yes yes it's interesting because it's not really a test, is it?

Because you're taking the answers with you, so you only have to read them out. So basically the rich will always get in. But if you're not rich, if you don't have that, you haven't got a chance. But then you've not got a mummified body either. If you're the majority of the population, you're being buried in a desert cemetery without mummification.

What do you believe about the afterlife? We don't know because they can't tell us they're illiterate. We don't have the information. So it might well be that different sectors of the community believe different afterlives. Very difficult to tell. And one thing you also mentioned there, Joyce, was sailing. And of course, the River Nile is so important to ancient Egyptian civilization. Do you think we're seeing the importance of that river and i remember you mentioning on a previous episode how

the egyptians almost they couldn't believe of a civilization that didn't live with an important river that the river is so important to the way they think that of course there's going to be a river to take them into the afterlife absolutely absolutely it's important but also the river seems to be connected and boats connected with funerals anyway. Again, if we go right the way back to before Egypt becomes well-known, we see pottery that's put in graves and there are pictures of boats on it. And the boats have got lots and lots of oars and they're quite clearly very important. And there are mysterious figures, male and female, associated with the boats who we interpret as either gods and goddesses or people performing

rituals to do the funeral. And then later on, we find boats beside the pyramids. We find people taking model boats into the tombs with them so that they can use them in the afterlife. The idea that you probably have to sail to a cemetery because you're probably living on one bank and the cemetery will be on the other bank, the cemeteries are in the west. It's become an important part of the funeral, even for people who don't actually have to technically sail. So one side of the bank of the River Nile was almost seen as the side of life and the other, the side of death, was it? Yes. Yes. Again, I'm being cautious because that's possibly more how we see it than they do.

And there are cemeteries on both sides there are settlements on both sides but ideally you would cross the river going towards the west the land of the setting sun and that's where you would be buried so that is where they tend to be and settlements tend to be but are not always on the east bank one other question on the book of the dead i mean can you clarify i mean what does the book of the dead look like are we actually thinking did they leave them with with a book or what does the Book of the Dead look like? Are we actually thinking, did they leave them with a book, or what is the Book of the Dead? It's a scroll. But it's got pictures in it, it shows what's happening, and it's got chapters in it. A chapter being just a short selection of spells and descriptions as to what

is happening. So they do know what is going to come up. And they are normally found in certain tombs dating to certain periods in Egyptian history. Yes, elite, yes, New Kingdom. First of all, we have the pyramid text, which is found in pyramids for the kings and some queens. And then it becomes much more democratic. So you've got coffin texts, they're written on coffins, but again, for the elite, it's never very democratic.

And now we have people taking this information in the form of a scroll into the tomb. They could buy them. You could either have them custom done so that it's made purely for you, or you could buy an off-the-peg one and your name would be inserted. But it's just fascinating seeing over hundreds of years, we've already talked about the evolution of certain gods and goddesses in our chats, but also the evolution of mortuary, of funerary texts. Yes. Well, everything evolves. And sometimes we talk about ancient Egypt as if it's one thing

and people don't realise, but Tutankhamen wasn't buried under a pyramid. He was buried in a rock-cut tomb because that had evolved. You know, there's changes the whole time, but they're quite gradual. But there's so much of their civilisation that looks consistent, like their art. At first glance, it looks the same from beginning to end, so you can tell it's ancient Egyptian. But when you look closely, everything is evolving the whole time. That includes funerary practice and it includes mythology.

Which also leads on to the point that, of course, with the various dynasties that rule ancient Egypt, and sometimes dynasties not from Egypt coming into Egypt, over time, would there have been different funeral rites that these different dynasties and different people, different elites would have performed? I think it's an evolving situation the whole time. Slightly funny thing is that when you've got Nubian kings ruling Egypt, from the far south, they were actually far stricter in the rules that they applied to things than the Egyptians were themselves. But then they returned home for burial. So we can't talk about their burials in Egypt. But it's not always that the foreigners are doing it differently.

It's that they're more adhering to the tradition. But yes, it changes the whole time. A mummification changes. So an expert can tell by looking at a mummy, obviously by dating it, but also just looking at the style of the bandage and so on, how old it is. And it will also reflect, to a certain extent, the expectations of that person, whether they expect to stay in the tomb, whether they expect to be able to leave. And you were talking earlier how on this journey into the afterlife,

there's the weighing of the heart and, you know, you get the good ending or the really bad ending with the hippo. Because nobody expects to have the bad ending. That's the thing, because we get this information from the book of the dead so we can see amit the destroyer lurking near the scales but you never see amit eating anybody because of course if you've got that book it would never happen to you because you've got the book so you are going to pass it but also they wouldn't write it down or draw it anyway because it'd be incredibly bad luck to take this to your tomb because it might actually happen so we about it, but we don't see the bad outcome,

because nobody expects that to happen to them. And do these pictures, I mean, do they also give us a sense of what the ancient Egyptians believed the underworld looks like? Does it look outdoors or dark? Do we get any sense of what they thought the underworld looks like? There's a lot of discussion about that. If you look at quite a few tomb walls from the New Kingdom, you can see people doing things like working in the fields. That's not their daily life. That is the afterlife. And it looks very much like Egypt, but a sort of better Egypt. The sun is always shining, everyone's wearing lovely clothes and so on. Everyone seems fairly happy.

sun is always shining, everyone's wearing lovely clothes and so on. Everyone seems fairly happy. But if you read about it, it seems not quite so certain that it's such a brilliant place to be. It seems to be quite a personal afterlife to everybody in that it might be sort of different for different people, but it's not a paradise. You have to work. It's not necessarily comfortable and it's not necessarily that people want to be dead. They don't necessarily look forward to it. What they do is to try and prepare to make the best of what's going to come. They definitely want to make sure that they're going to live again rather than dying forever. But they're not looking forward to a paradise experience, I would say. And even having to work in the fields for Osiris to the end of time is quite hard work.

It's not something that you necessarily want to have to do. Can you talk to us a bit more about this whole field of reeds idea, which is quite interesting, and also you're working alongside the king of the dead? You are, although he's probably just directing things. He's not actually working because kings don't expect to work in the field of reeds. They expect to, well, they've got several expectations of what will happen to them, but the principle ones is either they will become one with Osiris, because if you think about it, Osiris has been king of Egypt before he died, so he is sort of

them. If you see all the kings of Egypt to being part of a repeating cycle, then they are one. So they become one with Osiris. And the living king there, so unusually, who's on the throne is one with Horus, who succeeded Osiris eventually. Or they will help the sun god, Rey, sail in his solar boat. Or they could expect to do both. You know, it's not either or. In Tutankhamen's tomb, for example, most of the images on the burial chamber are reflecting Osiris tradition. So you see Osiris greeting Tutankhamen and so on, and Hathor's in there helping out. But on one wall, you've got monkeys who are greeting the sun, which is a solar tradition, different tradition

in the same room. So he's got two expectations there. We would see them as conflicting, but he obviously did not, or his artist didn't. There was also an expectation that a dead king could become a star, an undying star in the sky. So they've got all those expectations and they're not expecting to work, which is really interesting because you've already mentioned that Tutankhamen took his underpants with him, which he did. But why? Because he didn't expect to be trapped in his tomb and he didn't expect to have to work either. He expected to become a god. So why because he didn't expect he didn't expect to be trapped in his tomb and he didn't expect to have to work either he expected to become a god so why is he taking all that stuff with him if he didn't need it is he just being like belt and braces i'll take them because just in case

as my mom says you can never have enough underpants on your trips and all that so but it was also interesting what you mentioned there before we completely wrap up joyce about ray the sun god, also being involved in the underworld. Because you think, okay, sun gods, celestial gods living above, but there's no kind of almost divide where it's just the gods in the underworld, Anubis and Osiris, and then the gods above, Hathor and Rey and so on. They can go between realms, is it? Yes, well, he's on a cycle. He's the Sun. So during the day, he sails across the sky. But at night, he sails the other way through the

underworld and emerges again at dawn. So he's constantly cycling. In some versions of mythology, he's being born from Newt every day. So he has exciting nighttime adventures. When he's in the underworld, he has to fight his way through and he comes across the body of Osir adventures when he's in the underworld. He has to fight his way through and he comes across the body of Osiris while he's down there and he defeats all the enemies who try and stop the sun rising. And he always wins because the next day the sun comes up again. And he has quite a peaceful sail across the sky during the day. But at nighttime, he changes boats and he gets into one and he's got a crew and Seth is with him and people support him. And he has to really fight his way through the underworld every night to get to get out another

indication that perhaps it's not as nice down there but again we see we've got two traditions here as well we've got the tradition of the actual literal underworld which is underground and we've also got the idea of it being somewhere in the west you know it's not we're not even sure where it is well last thing a bit of an apocalyptic question to end on i mean were there ancient egyptian attitudes i mean were there any towards the end of the world did they have any thoughts about an apocalypse potentially on the horizon i think again i thought about this quite a bit that's not the sort of thing they would tell you even if they thought it because if they wrote it down so so magical are words, particularly if they put it in a tomb, that it might cause it to happen.

But we do know that the gods can die. And obviously, they know that people can die. I mean, Osiris can die. And even though he's brought back to life, he's only partially brought back to life. He's not really alive. He can't join the gods. And it wasn't as it was before. We know when we talked about the eight gods of Amopolis Magna, some of those died in the end, but there are references to what will happen at the end of all time. And what seems to be suggested for happening at the end of time is that Artem and Osiris will survive, but they will survive in the form of snakes and they will go back into the waters of chaos. they love cyclical

nature they regard everything as cycles so years start again after a king dies the year counting starts again so maybe if that happens those two will then somehow generate life and life will come back again but we're not told that and it's interesting that it's snakes as well are snakes associated with the dead or just there's lots of snakes in the underworld they're not there are some like proper feature snakes um you know who we know the names of and they do things like this apophis is a really evil snake and there's me hen who's a good snake but there are also lots of weird snakes with legs and and two heads and so on in there as well sort of really odd creatures they have a very love-hate relationship with snakes because on the one hand, they're dangerous and they know that they can bite you and possibly kill you. So on the other hand, we have snakes like Renunutut, who's regarded as a very good

mother. So if you've got Renunutut, people worship snakes as well, snake goddesses. So the two sides of the snake, but the underworld definitely there are snakes so you have snakes you have snakes with legs you have that hippo lion um crocodile mix i can't remember the name what's the name amit amit i mean were there many other creatures that we hear about in the underworld or do we not know there are odd things that we don't even know what they are women we don't know the names of all these snakes that are looking odd. But yes, that's one of the things that makes us think that it's not the paradise that maybe we imagine it would be.

It's just better than being dead. Well, there you go. Joyce, this has been absolutely fantastic. You have been a superstar for us as one of our stalwarts in this Ancient Egypt Gods and Goddesses mini-series. It just goes for me to say, thank you so much for being such a key contributor for this

series thank you well there you go there was professor joyce tildesley obe wrapping up our egyptian gods and goddesses mini-series talking all things anubis mummification and the underworld i hope you enjoyed today's episode. My huge thanks to Joyce for being one of the great stalwarts of this series alongside Dr. Campbell Price. Such a pleasure to interview them both for multiple episodes in this mini-series. Now I must also send my thanks to everyone else involved in creating this mini-series. The scripts at the beginning of every episode for the myth retelling, they were written by Andrew Hulse, they were narrated by Mena Elbezawi, the assistant producer for this series and the man who also edited the

last couple of episodes was Joseph Knight, our lead producer who made this possible was Anne-Marie Luff and our main editor for the first three episodes who is now on holiday was Aidan Lonergan. Thank you to you all for making this series possible and so special. And also of course thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Do let us know your thoughts, what you thought of this mini-series and of course what you'd like to see next on The Ancients. What special series should we do next it's really exciting to always kind of go from one to the next to the next and do this great variety of different topics and of course please follow this show on spotify or wherever you get your podcasts it really helps us and you'll be

doing us a big favor tell you what we'll put a poll up with some ideas of future special miniseries that we could do and we'll see which one ranks the best. Don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com slash subscribe. As a special gift, you can also get 50% off your first three months when you use code ANCIENTS at checkout. That's enough from me, signing off our special Egyptian gods and goddesses mini-series.