Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We're going
Speaker 1: a little more bid today, literally quite uh. So everyone
Speaker 1: knows what a mummy looks like. You've seen him, probably
Speaker 1: in a museum. They're featured in movies, they have been
Speaker 1: popular Halloween costumes for decades, and most people know a
Speaker 1: little bit about how mummification was performed. I think most
Speaker 1: people will remember hearing about organs being removed, brains being
Speaker 1: extracted through the nose. That's usually the first thing someone
Speaker 1: will spit out if you mentioned mummification. That was the
Speaker 1: first thing I spit out when you mentioned mummifications. So
Speaker 1: my husband, that was the first thing he said, Oh,
Speaker 1: they pulled the brains out through the nose. But there
Speaker 1: are a lot of other details to the process, and
Speaker 1: that full picture of what all goes on is almost
Speaker 1: ever really taught in school, and it's certainly not talked
Speaker 1: about a lot because it gets into a lot of minutia. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that got me thinking about how did ancient Egyptians actually involved.
Speaker 1: They're dead and thanks in large part to Herodotus and
Speaker 1: Diodora siculous. We actually have some really good descriptions of
Speaker 1: what happened to the deceased um. But in this episode,
Speaker 1: just to set up expectations, we're not focusing on the
Speaker 1: tumbes and the pyramids and like how pharaohs necessarily related
Speaker 1: to rest. We're talking about just embalming and mummification of
Speaker 1: you know, the general populace of Egypt, although there there
Speaker 1: are social strata levels and financial levels to it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we also want to throw out a quick warning,
Speaker 1: so some of this, as you might guess, gets a
Speaker 1: little bit graphic. So if you are sensitive to semi
Speaker 1: gory anatomy talk, or you're listening with a younger history
Speaker 1: buff who might not, you know, necessarily be ready for
Speaker 1: this topic, you might want to either skip it or
Speaker 1: give it a quick pre screen, uh for any younger ones,
Speaker 1: just to make you're you're cool with them hearing what
Speaker 1: we have to say. I guess that's some of It's
Speaker 1: a little little graphic. We lucky if you're sensitive to it.
Speaker 1: The account written by Herodotus describes the whole pre mummification
Speaker 1: process while the household is grieving over the recently deceased person,
Speaker 1: and upon the death of a distinguished man, according to
Speaker 1: Herodotus writings, all of the women of the household would
Speaker 1: mud themselves. They would cover themselves with mud, and they
Speaker 1: would walk through town beating their bare breasts as part
Speaker 1: of the show of morning. And men would also do
Speaker 1: the same thing, also beating themselves on the chest. And
Speaker 1: there was also a girdle wearing involved. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: when this processional was over, that's when they would take
Speaker 1: the body to be mummified. If a woman had died,
Speaker 1: if she was the wife of an honorable man, or
Speaker 1: was especially beautiful or well known, her body would be
Speaker 1: held by the family for several days prior to being embalmed.
Speaker 1: And according to Herodotus, this was to protect the body
Speaker 1: from being vile related by the embombers, which was either
Speaker 1: apparently a problem or a suspected problem. Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: either very afraid of necrophilia going on or it sounds
Speaker 1: like in that writing that there is one instance of
Speaker 1: it happening, but it's still not clear whether it was
Speaker 1: a rumor or actually took place, but it was a
Speaker 1: very real fear. Uh. And then in the case of
Speaker 1: people who were found either killed by a nile, crocodile,
Speaker 1: or drowned in the river. They got a whole sort
Speaker 1: of different approach, which is that their bodies were handled
Speaker 1: in the absolutely most elaborate mantal manner. They can only
Speaker 1: be touched by priests of the nile, like not even
Speaker 1: their relatives were allowed to touch the deceased. Uh. And
Speaker 1: these corpses were handled as though they were quote more
Speaker 1: sacred than the body of a man, because they, you know,
Speaker 1: esteemed the nile so much. If the nile is how
Speaker 1: you died, you sort of got automatically a higher level. Now,
Speaker 1: when I was relaying this piece of information to my
Speaker 1: husband on the to work today, he immediately began to postulate, well,
Speaker 1: what would happen, Like, maybe somebody in your family died
Speaker 1: in a really nefarious way. Could you throw up in
Speaker 1: the nile and fake it and give them an honor
Speaker 1: of super honorable um burial as a consequence. I do
Speaker 1: not know, But in case any of our listeners had
Speaker 1: a similar question, I just wanted to mention that I
Speaker 1: have no idea that we don't know. So once the
Speaker 1: family had finished their initial grieving ritual, they would turn
Speaker 1: the body over to the embalmer, and the process of
Speaker 1: preserving the body was extremely important because Ka, which is
Speaker 1: the person's spiritual entity, would not be able to come
Speaker 1: back to a body that was decayed. Right, So, as
Speaker 1: we know, without getting too deep into the religious aspect
Speaker 1: of it, because we're focusing really on how bodies were handled. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, in Egypt, they believed that your your soul,
Speaker 1: some form of your soul, would come back to you
Speaker 1: in the afterlife. That's why they wanted to prepare everyone.
Speaker 1: And so if you if your body was handled poorly,
Speaker 1: it would be a much more difficult or unlikely process
Speaker 1: for you to have a good afterlife. It's a sort
Speaker 1: of common idea and a lot of religions that that
Speaker 1: if the body has been desecrated or destroyed in some way,
Speaker 1: that it's going to affect the afterlife of the person
Speaker 1: who died. Uh. And then once the family would take
Speaker 1: the body to um, the embalmer's much the same way
Speaker 1: that a modern mortician would go over options for various
Speaker 1: aspects of burial ceremonies with clients. The involmer would actually
Speaker 1: show the deceased family normally three specimens of their work,
Speaker 1: and they would each be at a different quality and
Speaker 1: price level, and these were described by Herodotus as the
Speaker 1: quote three classes of burial, the most expensive, the medium,
Speaker 1: and the most humble. And once the class of embalming
Speaker 1: was decided upon and all the details were worked out,
Speaker 1: then the ebolmer would set to work, so sort of
Speaker 1: like planning funeral today. Yeah. The body's first stop was
Speaker 1: the place of purification, and there the corpse would be
Speaker 1: watched with natron, which is a hydrous native sodium carbonate.
Speaker 1: And next the washed body would be taken to the
Speaker 1: quote house of beauty for actual mummification. And they're the
Speaker 1: man that was deemed the overseer of Mysteries, who is
Speaker 1: usually a follower of a Nubis, was assisted by a
Speaker 1: priest of Osiris in the actual mummification process. The Overseer
Speaker 1: of Mysteries would do this work according to the pricing
Speaker 1: structure that had been agreed upon when the family first
Speaker 1: brought the deceased in. Right. So first we're going to
Speaker 1: run down the most involved process, which was called the
Speaker 1: most perfect process. And this involves steps that are probably
Speaker 1: familiar to people to some degree, because this is really
Speaker 1: what most people talk about or they hear about snippets
Speaker 1: of in history class brains through the nose, so starting
Speaker 1: with the extraction of the brain matter through the nostrils
Speaker 1: using according to her Rodotus, was an iron hook uh,
Speaker 1: and there was iron being used in Egypt at the time,
Speaker 1: but there have also been some questions about that. Uh.
Speaker 1: The residue that the hook was unable to clear away
Speaker 1: would be rinsed out with what is referred to in
Speaker 1: several in the sources as drugs, and presumably that was
Speaker 1: something with a cleaning agent in it. That there's still
Speaker 1: some question marks about what the drugs were, something that
Speaker 1: would help remove brain matter early on in this process.
Speaker 1: There were also two men involved. You had kind of
Speaker 1: odd jobs. Yeah. I when I was doing research on this,
Speaker 1: I I am Tracy and said, I just found the
Speaker 1: two worst jobs in ancient Egypt's history. Yeah, first was
Speaker 1: not quite as bad. That was the scribe, and the
Speaker 1: scribe would mark the left side of the deceased body
Speaker 1: where the incision would be made, and then a second man,
Speaker 1: who was called the slitter, would make the cut to
Speaker 1: open the abdominal cavity. And according to the first century
Speaker 1: d cee Greek historian Diodora Siculous, who we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: The slitter would then be he would have to take
Speaker 1: off running because he would be set upon by everyone
Speaker 1: present and they would curse him and throw rocks at him.
Speaker 1: And this was actually a ritualized thing. Uh. This was
Speaker 1: all part of the natural Egyptian belief that anyone who
Speaker 1: would perform violence on a human body was horrible and
Speaker 1: should be hated. Uh. But somebody had to do it.
Speaker 1: So this was the slitter's job, sort of to be
Speaker 1: professionally hated, and not exactly the best job there was
Speaker 1: because it was like, hey, great job, now we're going
Speaker 1: to beat you. Um. We don't know for sure how
Speaker 1: much the scribe got of this treatment. We do know
Speaker 1: that the person who actually performed the cut really kind
Speaker 1: of got uh, had a rough day at the office.
Speaker 1: At this point, the embombers could start their task free
Speaker 1: of the stigma of having been the ones to wound
Speaker 1: the boy. The rest of their work was considered reparative
Speaker 1: and sacred, So the abdomen would then be emptied and
Speaker 1: thoroughly cleaned and washed, and the removed viscero would also
Speaker 1: be washed. And this washing was done via first rinsing
Speaker 1: the area or the viscera with palm wine and then
Speaker 1: rinsing it again with an infusion of pounded spices. The
Speaker 1: cavity was filled with natron, then it was sown shut
Speaker 1: and at this point the body was also placed in
Speaker 1: natron for seventy days. There's actually some scholarly debate about
Speaker 1: whether it was a shorter period, and that could stem
Speaker 1: in from a change in the type of natron that
Speaker 1: was used in earlier embalming. The natron was used in
Speaker 1: a liquid state from the Middle Kingdom on, though it
Speaker 1: seems like a solid natron salt was used and this
Speaker 1: would result in a faster desiccation of the body. Yes,
Speaker 1: so the the there The other number that you'll sometimes
Speaker 1: here is forty days, so we know it's somewhere in
Speaker 1: there um. And there are also a few factors that
Speaker 1: would change the results of the natron treatment and how
Speaker 1: long it would take, and that include the quality of
Speaker 1: the mix, uh of the natron, the condition of the
Speaker 1: body prior to embolving, as you can well imagine whether
Speaker 1: the natron had been used before, because it would sometimes
Speaker 1: be reused and it would get less and less effective
Speaker 1: with each use. You have to also consider the ratio
Speaker 1: of natron to body volume. And the climatic conditions of
Speaker 1: the area. Obviously, if it's a more human space, it's
Speaker 1: going to take longer for the body to dry out.
Speaker 1: This is basically drying the body out, getting all the
Speaker 1: water out, and that's gonna prevent bacteria and things from
Speaker 1: breaking down the tissue or at least slow it down dramatically.
Speaker 1: After this two months soak, the temporary stuffing materials would
Speaker 1: be removed and the body would be washed again, and
Speaker 1: once the abdomen was thoroughly cleaned, it was refilled with
Speaker 1: aromatic substances. Then this could include Cassia, juniper, and mirror
Speaker 1: as well as other things, and they these substances all
Speaker 1: smelled nice, but they also preserved the body and they
Speaker 1: prevented the abdominal wall from collapsing. And additional materials that
Speaker 1: could be used to fill the abdominal cavity could be resin,
Speaker 1: which also works as a disinfectant. They would use oils,
Speaker 1: hung winds and perfumes kind of fill it out and
Speaker 1: keep it as clean as possible in the afterlife and
Speaker 1: also keep it from smelling horrible. Yeah. A side note
Speaker 1: in case you've always wondered but didn't know, mirr is
Speaker 1: a gum resin that comes from a tree and it
Speaker 1: smells really sweet. Cassia is a course cinnamon bark, which
Speaker 1: of course also has a very sweet smell. And then
Speaker 1: uh they would also pour hot resin onto the body
Speaker 1: in a thin layer and that would serve as a disinfectant.
Speaker 1: So several different steps steps were being taken to prevent
Speaker 1: any sort of bacteria, any sort of moisture that could
Speaker 1: lead to um additional breakdown of the tissue preservation. From
Speaker 1: this point, the corpse could have any kind of cosmetic
Speaker 1: dressing that was going to be done, and this could
Speaker 1: include dying and styling the hair, including adding heron's extensions
Speaker 1: and applying colored pigments to the face. And then it
Speaker 1: was at this point that the corpse would be wrapped
Speaker 1: in the linen strips that we have the visual association
Speaker 1: with of what a mummy looks like, and you adhere
Speaker 1: these strips to the body. The underside was treated with
Speaker 1: gum and then specialists, basically people whose only job was
Speaker 1: working as a bandager, would perform this rapping. The digits
Speaker 1: of the hands and the feet would be wrapped individually,
Speaker 1: and then the rest of the body would be wrapped
Speaker 1: and a red linen shroud would cover the body after
Speaker 1: their wrapping was finished, and throughout each stage of this
Speaker 1: process there would be a lector priest that would read
Speaker 1: magical texts over the body, and protective amulets would be
Speaker 1: placed at various locations around the neck and limbs, sometimes
Speaker 1: around the waist and as well as tucked into the
Speaker 1: layers of wrapping as they got to the final stages.
Speaker 1: Once the corpse was fully prepared in this manner, it
Speaker 1: would go back to the family and sometime during the
Speaker 1: two plus months that the body had been with the embalmers,
Speaker 1: the family would have acquired a wooden human shaped shell
Speaker 1: that the body would go back into, and it would
Speaker 1: be put in this box and then normally UH and again,
Speaker 1: since this is the highest level UH, that box would
Speaker 1: be stored upright in like a family sepulchral chamber. So
Speaker 1: that is the most perfect process, yes, where everything is
Speaker 1: done with great care, and there are many many steps
Speaker 1: before we move on to the somewhat perhaps less perfect process.
Speaker 1: You like to take a moment and talk about our sponsor.
Speaker 1: That sounds grand, So let's get back to what the
Speaker 1: maybe families of a little more modest means might have done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the most modest means, but slightly more modin Yes, this
Speaker 1: is this is like the mid grade quality offication exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this mid range treatment of Egypt's dead was, as
Speaker 1: you might suspect, a bit less involved. They did not
Speaker 1: take as much time perform as many steps. So rather
Speaker 1: than taking the body's organs out, as was the practice
Speaker 1: and the most expensive option, instead what would happen is
Speaker 1: that embalmers would inject oil of cedar into the body
Speaker 1: through the anal opening, which would then be sealed, and
Speaker 1: this body that was now full of oil would be
Speaker 1: soaked in netron for seventy or forty days depending or
Speaker 1: somewhere in between. And after this soak was complete, they
Speaker 1: would drain the oil from the body. They would um
Speaker 1: unseal the anial opening, and then the cedar oil will
Speaker 1: have liquefied the internal organs and so everything would sort
Speaker 1: of flesh out at once. At this point, the body
Speaker 1: was really depleted down to nothing but the skin and
Speaker 1: the skeleton, and that's how it would be returned to
Speaker 1: the deceased family without any kind of additional treatment. So uh,
Speaker 1: not so much with the wrapping in the actual mummification
Speaker 1: just an embalming process that was thorough but not as involved.
Speaker 1: And then for the poor, we have an extremely basic
Speaker 1: level of it of embalming. Yeah. So they would cut
Speaker 1: open the body and remove the intestines, but it was
Speaker 1: pretty quick. It wasn't careful, it wasn't all the intestines
Speaker 1: were not washed. They still stoning the person, whomandicut I
Speaker 1: would presume because the body was still considered sacred, although
Speaker 1: I didn't find anything that separated Uh, those two instances
Speaker 1: like that specified only in the highest and most perfect
Speaker 1: level versus this. But they would flush the abdominal cavity
Speaker 1: with alcohol and they would then soak the body in
Speaker 1: natron for seventy days or less. Uh, But then that
Speaker 1: was it. So after the neatron soak and it came out,
Speaker 1: they gave it a quick rince and then it went
Speaker 1: back to the family or sometimes in the case of
Speaker 1: a popper that had no family, the embalmers would bury it.
Speaker 1: Not so much with the tomb and the beautiful everything.
Speaker 1: But what we have not talked about, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: people are going hey. In fact, I was like hey,
Speaker 1: in a moment that we cut out of this podcast
Speaker 1: earlier why didn't you mention why didn't we talk about
Speaker 1: the organs that came out of the bodies and the
Speaker 1: jars that they went into, which are another thing that
Speaker 1: probably if you've been to any kind of mummy display
Speaker 1: in a museum, you've seen a lot of uh So,
Speaker 1: the first thing that I found interesting in my research
Speaker 1: is that brains were not particularly sacred to the ancient Egyptians.
Speaker 1: Uh So, in this process, the brain was often cut
Speaker 1: into smaller pieces to facilitate the removal and pulling it
Speaker 1: out through the nasal cavity most of the time, uh
Speaker 1: and brain matter was usually discarded. It was not treated
Speaker 1: with the care of other parts of the body well.
Speaker 1: And according to the beliefs in this culture, all of
Speaker 1: your important stuff was in your heart and not your brain.
Speaker 1: That kind of makes sense. Um. In nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: the Egyptian skulls that are part of the macalister collection
Speaker 1: at Cambridge University were studied to figure out how the
Speaker 1: brain was handled in each sample, and the findings support
Speaker 1: this idea of the brain just not being regarded as important,
Speaker 1: and there had often been holes drilled into the skulls
Speaker 1: to help remove brain tissue and brain tissue often remained
Speaker 1: inside the skull, suggesting that embombers were not incredibly thorough
Speaker 1: and painstaking, at least not as much as they were
Speaker 1: with other organs. Right, And there uh isn't actually any
Speaker 1: information on how the viscera was handled after being removed
Speaker 1: from the body in the writings of Herodotus and Diodorus,
Speaker 1: who we've talked about a lot, but thankfully archaeology has
Speaker 1: kind of filled in the blanks. And this is an
Speaker 1: aspect of the process which actually evolved and changed over time.
Speaker 1: It wasn't always done the same way. So if you
Speaker 1: were waiting for the canopic jar talk, here we go.
Speaker 1: In the late period, which was from the six sixties
Speaker 1: until the three thirties, the viscera would be placed into
Speaker 1: four canopic jars. And the earlier examples of these jars
Speaker 1: are kind of plain, but later on they are very
Speaker 1: ornamental jars and they represent the sons of Horace. So
Speaker 1: jars with the human headed Mseti usually held the liver.
Speaker 1: Then there was Happy who had a bamboon head and
Speaker 1: that held the lungs. Do Amutef had the head of
Speaker 1: a jackal and held the stomach, and then the intestines
Speaker 1: were held by k base enough which had the head
Speaker 1: of a falcon, and these were normally placed in the
Speaker 1: tomb along with the body. And in the Hellenistic period
Speaker 1: roughly from the three twenties to the thirties b c e.
Speaker 1: The practice of handling the viscera shifted a little bit,
Speaker 1: and then organs were normally placed into wooden chests or
Speaker 1: sometimes set between the body's legs prior to the bandaging process,
Speaker 1: and in some mommies from this time the organs have
Speaker 1: actually been found, treated and washed and preserved and then
Speaker 1: returned to the deceased abdominal cavity. When e Ship became
Speaker 1: part of the Roman Empire and thirty one BC, mummification
Speaker 1: practices shifted again and it became common for bodies to
Speaker 1: be coated with resin to prevent decay instead of using
Speaker 1: this longer and more involved process. But during late Antiquity
Speaker 1: some bodies were simply treated with natron and then they
Speaker 1: would be dressed in their regular clothes again rather than
Speaker 1: wrapped in bandages, so they really sort of had cutbacks,
Speaker 1: kind of got a little less intricate and ceremonial as
Speaker 1: they went. It's time progressed, so not everything went into jars,
Speaker 1: obviously because you have more than four organs. Despite the
Speaker 1: clearing out of the abdomen and the trunk that we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, the heart would be left in the body
Speaker 1: and it was believed that it would be weighed in
Speaker 1: the afterlife as part of the judgment of the dead,
Speaker 1: and the kidneys were also often left, although we are
Speaker 1: a little less clear on why that is the case. Uh.
Speaker 1: In a paper on surgical procedures performed during mummifications that
Speaker 1: was written by Bob or In ronaldust Wade Uh, the
Speaker 1: pair point out that there's no real Middle Egyptian word
Speaker 1: for kidney. There are some that kind of hints at it,
Speaker 1: but no specific word, and they suggest that maybe ancient
Speaker 1: Egyptians were entirely clear on this aspect of human anatomy.
Speaker 1: It's also worth noting that when canopic jars are being
Speaker 1: used in the late period, there were, as we said,
Speaker 1: only four way more than four internal organs are in
Speaker 1: the human body, so it appears that dissection was never
Speaker 1: done in Egypt until the late Ptolemaic times, so it
Speaker 1: makes sense that they may not have had a full
Speaker 1: picture of the inner workings of a man. So even
Speaker 1: though they were going in and removing organs, they had
Speaker 1: not done sort of an exploratory correct surgical uh look
Speaker 1: at the whole human body, which makes sense since cutting
Speaker 1: into the body was a taboo, right. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: also worth noting that the incision that they were using
Speaker 1: for removing these organs was only about two and a
Speaker 1: half inches long, really just enough for one of these
Speaker 1: embalming experts to get their hand in to remove things,
Speaker 1: so they were really feeling around in the dark. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and if if you've watched an actual autopsy video or
Speaker 1: any kind of like human anatomy study video involving an
Speaker 1: actual body, or you know, if you've actually been in
Speaker 1: on one of those, it's it's not as neat and
Speaker 1: tidy in there as it is depicted when something has
Speaker 1: been like prepared for classroom use or on television or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a big mass of blade goop
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah. I mean, I think it's uh not
Speaker 1: to make light of it being a human, but it
Speaker 1: reminds me of the Halloween trick where people take you
Speaker 1: in the dark room and have you feel things in
Speaker 1: a bowl that are wet and slimy, and if you
Speaker 1: think about a lot of those kinds of things in
Speaker 1: one big bowl and you have to get around and go,
Speaker 1: that's a I think that's intestine. I mean, it would
Speaker 1: be very hard to just identify by touch, even if
Speaker 1: you were very experienced, because there's it's all moving and squishy.
Speaker 1: It's not for the most part, you're not going to find,
Speaker 1: like you know, clear edges. This is definitely Some scholars
Speaker 1: do argue that the Egyptians had so much experience with
Speaker 1: the practice of removing organs that there must have been
Speaker 1: some more meaningful aspect to the kidney issue, but we
Speaker 1: don't really know what that is yet. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: several theories. Some are very simple and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: there's usually too much fatty tissue and it would have
Speaker 1: been hard to remove other shade they didn't even know
Speaker 1: they were there. But we haven't found any cultural evidence
Speaker 1: of any import to the kidney. So we, like them,
Speaker 1: are feeling around in the dark trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what the scoop was. Suddenly I'm like cadaver study. That's
Speaker 1: the word that I was starting to find. An earlier
Speaker 1: a mummification appears to have ended for the most part
Speaker 1: around the time of the Arab conquest of Egypt in
Speaker 1: the seventh century, and by that time it's estimated that
Speaker 1: around seven thirty million people had been embalmed in ancient Egypt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're considered the first embalmers. Uh, and they really you know,
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating practice. The great depths, especially if you're
Speaker 1: looking at the most perfect practice that they used. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of really intricate steps and with such
Speaker 1: reverence for the body. Yeah, it's quite um, it's quite
Speaker 1: something to think about. Well, and like I know when
Speaker 1: I learned about this in elementary school or whatever, the
Speaker 1: focus was kind of whoo freaky, ran to the news,
Speaker 1: But really it's got a lot in common with normal
Speaker 1: funeral rituals in the West today. Like it's still about
Speaker 1: preserving the body for as long as possible and having
Speaker 1: a respectful uh form to return to the family in
Speaker 1: some way, like for a service before it's buried, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So there's they paved the way. There's
Speaker 1: more in common than woe freaky. Yeah, burial cultures in
Speaker 1: a lot of places. To me, that's sort of like
Speaker 1: the I understand that the woe freaky part is what
Speaker 1: often gets kids interested in things like this. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: super excited about it, especially when it's kind of an
Speaker 1: icky topic, and you know, teachers may need for their
Speaker 1: their own sort of sanity to build that bridge of like,
Speaker 1: look at this freaky thing, and it makes it less
Speaker 1: scary because we uh, I know, certainly in the West
Speaker 1: and of many other cultures there's still a lot of
Speaker 1: taboo about death and talking about the dead and dead
Speaker 1: bodies specifically. Uh that that's sort of I think helps
Speaker 1: if we focus on the freaky part, particularly in a
Speaker 1: learning situation, kind of makes it a little easier for everybody.
Speaker 1: And kids love gross things of course as as a trend,
Speaker 1: but it does it misses out on all of that
Speaker 1: beautiful nuance and subtlety. And I, prior to researching this,
Speaker 1: did not know about the practice of not turning over
Speaker 1: a woman's body for several days out of fear that
Speaker 1: it would be violated in some way. That was all
Speaker 1: new information for me. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: these things that we don't ever hear about. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think even including in today's episode, I've never heard
Speaker 1: anything about any kind of different treatment for a woman's organs,
Speaker 1: which are not the same as a man's organs internally,
Speaker 1: Like I've never heard any Uterus ovary like what happened
Speaker 1: with those discussed in any way? Ever? Uh, they certainly,
Speaker 1: to the best of our knowledge, did not usually end
Speaker 1: up in a jar. So there's always more stuff to learn.
Speaker 1: I know, maybe someone knows and we'll write us a letter.
Speaker 1: I'll tell us some some cool obscure thing that we
Speaker 1: haven't learned. You are an Egyptologist, you should write us
Speaker 1: for sure. Speaking of letters, I think you have some.
Speaker 1: I have to both kind of short and one made
Speaker 1: me giggle. Uh. So the first one is from our
Speaker 1: listener Stephanie, and she says, I just recently discovered the podcast,
Speaker 1: and I was super excited when I saw an episode
Speaker 1: about Sarah Edmonds. So really, this is a praise Tracy
Speaker 1: moment because that was her choice. Uh. Sarah, she as
Speaker 1: an ant on my mother's side and kind of a
Speaker 1: point of pride for our family. There is a monument
Speaker 1: to her influence Michigan erected in the ninety nineties. Thank
Speaker 1: you guys so much for doing a podcast on her.
Speaker 1: My mom and grandpa were super excited to hear about it.
Speaker 1: Awesome that's so cool. I always love when people write
Speaker 1: in and they're related to someone that we talked about, her,
Speaker 1: someone in the story that we talked about, or recently
Speaker 1: when the plane was landing and they could see us
Speaker 1: out the wind. I love those. It's you know how
Speaker 1: history stays alive day to day. And the second one
Speaker 1: is from our listener, Julia, and she says, I'm so
Speaker 1: happy I recently found your podcast. I live in New
Speaker 1: York City, and my long commute to work on the
Speaker 1: subway is now a lot more interesting as I listen
Speaker 1: to your back episodes. I hope you enjoyed this discussion
Speaker 1: of death. Julia uh. She goes on to say, since
Speaker 1: you always mentioned Pinterest at the end of the podcast,
Speaker 1: I was curious to see what you're both pinning. I
Speaker 1: plugged missed in History into the pinner search and got
Speaker 1: this message. We couldn't find any results for missed in History,
Speaker 1: but you might try holidays, corgy sneakers, or passa. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure holidays, quarky sneakers, and pasta have to do
Speaker 1: with the podcast, but perhaps I'll figure it out as
Speaker 1: I continue to listen. Thank you for the always fascinating topics.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see what you two have planned
Speaker 1: for the new year. It's funny you should say that
Speaker 1: we have actually just moved our Pinterest, so it should
Speaker 1: be much easier to find. Uh. It was a board
Speaker 1: under the main house stuff works Pinterest, and now we've
Speaker 1: moved it off to our own individual Pinterest account with
Speaker 1: lots and lots of boards of our own. So if
Speaker 1: you search for us now, we should come up and
Speaker 1: search and if you just want to go there and
Speaker 1: check it out, we are at pinterest dot com slash
Speaker 1: missed in history, so it's much easier for us to
Speaker 1: tell other people about Also, so you would like to
Speaker 1: find our Pinterest again, that is pinterest dot com slash
Speaker 1: missed in History. We're also on Twitter at missed in
Speaker 1: history and on Facebook at a new U r L
Speaker 1: which is Facebook dot com slash missed in history. Uh.
Speaker 1: And our email address that one still the same. That
Speaker 1: is History Podcast at Discovery dot com. If you would
Speaker 1: like to learn more about what we talked about today,
Speaker 1: you can go to our website and do a search
Speaker 1: for the term embalming and you will get how embalming works,
Speaker 1: which does touch on ancient Egypt in the first embalmers.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to learn almost anything else your brain
Speaker 1: can conjure, you can do that at our website as well.
Speaker 1: And that's how stuff works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, because it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com