Pod Insights After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal Most Famous Murder In Ancient Egypt About this episode Millenia ago, a plot was hatched within the highest echelons of Egyptian society which ended with royal blood being spilt. This assassination, known as the Harem Conspiracy, and the following trial would fascinate historians for the next three thousand years... Who was behind the plot? How close did they come to seizing the throne? And what can archaeology tell us about Egyptian society as a whole?
Our guest today is Dr. Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum and honorary research fellow at University of Liverpool. He’s our go-to Ancient Egypt expert and the author of his newest book ‘Brief Histories: Ancient Egypt.’
Edited by Hannah Feodorov. Produced by Tom Delargy. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick.
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Transcript 10,626 words · 6 speakers
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0:54 Speaker 01 Over 3,000 years ago, in the heart of ancient Egypt, a pharaoh was murdered. Not on the battlefield, not by a foreign enemy, but from within his own household. A conspiracy involving royal wives, trusted officials, even members of his inner court. And for centuries, no one could prove whether the assassination had actually succeeded. Until now. Today, we are joined by Dr Campbell Price to unravel one of ancient Egypt's most chilling mysteries: the Harem Conspiracy. Who was behind the plot? How close did they come to seizing the throne? And what can archaeology teach us about the trials that followed?
1:39 Speaker 01 This is the assassination of Ramses III. Welcome to After Dark.
2:10 Speaker 01 Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony. As you know, Maddie has been rewilding the meadows of Great Britain and she will be back soon, but we will leave her to her task as we continue with stories and histories from the darker side of the past. And in this episode, we will be discussing one of the most famous murders in ancient Egypt, the assassination of Ramses III. And who better once more to help us than Dr Campbell Price, who is an Egyptologist, as you well know, because we've had Campbell on quite a bit on After Dark, he's one of our favourites. He is also the curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum and honorary research fellow at University of Liverpool. And he
2:51 Speaker 01 is our go to Egypt expert. As you know, his newest book is Brief Histories: Ancient Egypt, and he also has a children's book out with Greg Jenner. And there is a new book in the works, Campbell, coming early next year, I believe, and I'm very, very excited about that. And we'll have you back on then. How is it going before we get into today's? Are you despairing yet? Or are you all right?
3:14 Speaker 02 I'm despairing constantly. You know what the writing process is like. It's a constant internal battle. But coming on podcasts like this really are great for clearing and clarifying your thinking.
3:25 Speaker 01 I know. I find it really useful, you know, if I'm stuck in the writing process, which I am myself in the middle, although nowhere near as close to finishing as you are. But you're writing, you're writing, you're writing, you're in the world, you're in the world, you're in the world. And then you have to go out into the real world and meet people. And it's actually, it's good to have that to do where you're like, okay. And I know you're in the museum anyway, so you have that all the time. But you know, for me, it's a bit of a godsend sometimes. Right. Let's get on to this assassination, the most famous murder in ancient Egypt, my producers tell me.
3:54 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
3:55 Speaker 01 Who was Ramses the Third? And why? It's a name unfamiliar with. Well, is it a name unfamiliar with actually? Because he's the third. So which of the Ramses am I familiar with? But actually, why does he linger with us today? If indeed he does.
4:11 Speaker 02 Well, Anthony, we've got 11 Ramses's to choose from.
4:16 Speaker 01 11?
4:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:18 Speaker 01 Right, okay.
4:19 Speaker 02 So if people have heard the name, they'll probably be thinking of Ramses the Second, Ramses the Great.
4:25 Speaker 01 I see.
4:26 Speaker 02 And that's important because Ramses the Great lives in the previous century to our Ramses. And Ramses the Third is something of a fanboy for Ramses the Second. And a lot of Ramses the Third's monumental work, some of his battles, many of his children's names and his architectural choices are directly related to the great Ramses. So I think we've got to see him as someone trying to get back to this, these glory days of Thracianic history, when things are already definitely on the slide. And that's what makes Ramses the Third actually much more intriguing than Ramses the Second.
5:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, this is a very different time. We're going to talk about some of those things that are starting to unravel. We are in and around 1155 BCE for this particular history, so over 3,000 years ago now. But just before we get into the nitty gritty of this episode, Ramses, Ramses. We were having a brief discussion before we started. It's a pronunciation quabble rather than it being different people.
5:33 Speaker 02 Yes.
5:34 Speaker 01 Or is it?
5:35 Speaker 02 It's a pronunciation thing and we can't know for sure. The Ramses, well, best known Ramses, the great Ramses the Second, actually changes his own name. Partway through his reign.
5:47 Speaker 01 Right.
5:47 Speaker 02 So he goes from Ramesses to Ramesses. And then Ramesses is the one that sticks. So that's why I'm saying Ramesses.
5:57 Speaker 01 Right.
5:57 Speaker 02 Not Ramses.
5:58 Speaker 01 It's very, um, the artist formerly known as Prince of it to do it, although less of a departure, I suppose. Right, let's get onto this assassination. And before we do, I want to talk about Egypt at this particular time. You mentioned already Campbell that we are dealing with maybe not the glorious empire that we might be a little bit more familiar with. We have some difficulties and tensions around this time, 1155 BCE.
6:22 Speaker 02 Yes. Um, geopolitically, this is, uh, an interesting time in the, in the Bronze Age. Different powers and balances of power are shifting in the Mediterranean and the Eastern Mediterranean. Uh, there are groups like the sea peoples on the go. So this is a group of island based people like the Pelaset. They're moving around the Eastern Mediterranean and the Egyptians perceive them as a threat.
6:51 Speaker 01 Okay.
6:53 Speaker 02 Um, so there's the geopolitical stuff. Then there is Egypt's internal dynastic history, best to acknowledge that first. So Ramses the second rules for the earlier part of the 1200s BCE. And he rules for 66 years. So he's an old man when he eventually, uh, shuffles off, uh, the mortal coil and becomes a full god. And he's managed to outlive no fewer than 12 of his sons.
7:23 Speaker 01 Ye.
7:25 Speaker 02 So that creates a kind of a situation where the 13th son eventually inherits the throne and just power structures are shaken a bit. So.
7:42 Speaker 02 There are a series of not very good kings, to put it simply. After Ramses the Second, he is Dynasty 19 and there's a change of dynasty. So there's a new family comes in, new bloodline, this kind of arriviste guy called Sethnacht, who says, I'm the king now, and it's his son who is Ramses the Third. So we've got to understand Ramses the Third as a bit of a new kid on the block, thinking, right, I need to prove myself. His dad doesn't live very long, Sethnacht isn't around for very long. So he goes to the blueprint rulebook of kingship, which is, in recent memory, Ramses the Second. And that's something to bear in mind.
8:27 Speaker 02 People will remember Ramses the Second. He's in living memory. So, I don't know, I don't want to force the analogy, but Ramses the Second is kind of an Elizabeth the Second character who rules so long, people associate the whole idea of monarchy with that person. It's difficult, no matter how good you are, to come on maybe later in life after that. So basically that sets the tone for the next few decades and Ramses the Third opens his show, starts his reign in this milieu.
9:03 Speaker 01 And of course, it's not, like you said there, it's not the same dynasty. So to push that analogy further, apologies, because I know you don't want to stick to it too much, but you know, at least with Elizabeth the Second, her son inherits the throne. And yes, okay, that does happen with Ramses the Second, but by the time we get to Ramses the Third, we're into a new dynasty, which prompts another tangent question. Brace yourselves, we'll get back on to the topic in just a second. How many dynasties were there?
9:31 Speaker 02 But your tangent questions are always very good.
9:34 Speaker 01 Not always.
9:35 Speaker 02 So that was something I was thinking would be a good illustration. So I'm glad you've reminded me. So Ramses the Third is Dynasty 20, and we have 30 dynasties, plus the Ptolemies, right?
9:48 Speaker 01 Right.
9:49 Speaker 02 So we're kind of two thirds the way through in terms of time and in terms of the numbering of the dynasties. Another point which I think we're going to come back to, which is really the crux of the action, of the bloody action, is that in ancient Egypt, I don't think there wasn't, well, there was a designated. Heer like a crown prince. It's not, this guy is the Prince of Wales and we just acknowledge him. No, no. And I think, well, maybe it was actually in the more recent years of the British Royal Family, that people died, like fairly senior members of the Royal Family, the children died. So there were shifts. It wasn't necessarily the eldest son that got the throne.
10:33 Speaker 02 So I think that creates this level of uncertainty, which that uncertainty really fires the situation that leads to the demise of Ramses III.
10:43 Speaker 01 This particular time, yeah, okay. I mean, yeah, you don't need to go back too far in British monarchical history. If you think about the 17th century, we have people who are commoners, assuming the position of a king in all but name, but we also have different not firstborn children taking the throne. I'm thinking about William and Mary particularly there and ousting, you know. So, so, well, Mary was firstborn, but she wasn't firstborn. So anyway, look, I'm just saying, you don't actually have to go back that far, even in the British monarchical tradition, to find that this is a strategic position as well as an inherited one. And it's actually only now that it's, it's, it's way less strategic.
11:24 Speaker 01 Okay, so I have here a little, a little passage that was written when Ramses III was crowned. And it says, that four doves were, quote, dispatched to the four corners of the horizon to confirm that the living Horus, Ramses III, is still in possession of his throne, that the order of Mott prevails in the cosmos and society. So this is quite grand.
11:52 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, typical for an ancient Egyptian. That, I mean, that quotation is maybe from a slightly older translation, but basically the idea is when the king comes to the throne, he, he is the king immediately. I don't think the ancient Egyptians really went in for what we would call a coronation.
12:11 Speaker 01 I see.
12:12 Speaker 02 In Westminster Abbey kind of style, but I mean, you saw with the fairly recent coronation of Charles III, there is very, very, very ancient symbolism.
12:26 Speaker 02 Embedded in that kind of ritual and you see it there in that quotation. There is something about the king being announced and proclaimed and claiming his right in the four cardinal directions. So there are scenes in temples where you see the king looking like he's doing baseball. And it's basically to hit a, whatever you do in baseball, hit a
12:50 Speaker 01 Sure, that home run.
12:51 Speaker 02 And the four cardinal directions. Not a baseball aficionado.
12:57 Speaker 01 Unlike me, of course.
13:00 Speaker 02 But this idea of, the ancient Egyptians are very keen on this. Cardinal directions represent totality. So the four directions, north, east, south, west. This states your claim. So the state level jargon, the kind of discourse, who knows what people were talking about in the farmer's fields. But at the state level, on the temples of the king, you get these very bombastic statements. Whether or not the king was really so great, whether he was battling or actually performing these rituals is kind of by the by.
13:36 Speaker 01 Right, okay, I see. Now, although he is no Ramses the second. He's not so bad. I know we're in decline here. Ramses the third, I mean.
13:50 Speaker 02 No, and I think for some Egyptologists, he is Egypt's last hero. He's the last of the great kings of the new kingdom. So this bracketing of time where we've got Hatshepsut, we've got Tutmos the third, the so-called Napoleon of ancient Egypt, we've got Tutankhamun, we've got Akhenaten, we've got Ramses the second.
14:11 Speaker 01 God, there's a lot of big names there.
14:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's a lot in a short, relatively short period. So in a way.
14:20 Speaker 02 There was, Egypt was such a powerful, you know, entity that it was difficult to keep that level of dominance up. And I think Ramses III did okay. And interestingly, thinking architecturally, so Ramses the second built this magnificent temple, his mansion of millions of years. So this is sometimes referred to in the literature as a mortuary temple, a funerary temple. It's nothing to do with mortuary rituals or death, really, or funerals. It is to do with the king existing as a god. So this is the key thing. The king is a god. After death, he will be fully socialized amongst the gods. And so you need
15:02 Speaker 02 a building in which to celebrate this. So Ramses the second makes this massive mansion of millions of years. Ramses the third comes along and thinks, right, we're going to have a carbon copy of this, pretty much. And so Ramses the third's temple is one of the best preserved temples in all of Egypt. Because of chance, there was a massive Coptic Christian community lived there, and they plonked their houses around the ancient walls. So inadvertently, although they hated the pagans, they saved Ramses temple. So Ramses the third's temple. So when you want to get a sense of what might a temple have been like in really ancient Egypt,
15:45 Speaker 02 Ramses the third's one in the West Bank of Luxor is your best bet.
15:49 Speaker 01 Is the place you go, you know, and this is terrible. I've never been to Egypt. I should.
15:53 Speaker 02 I was about to ask you that before.
15:55 Speaker 01 No, I've never been. I should.
15:56 Speaker 02 You should go.
15:57 Speaker 01 Yeah. And this is one of the problems with hosting this podcast. Do people come on? And I'm just like, I need to go now to Sub-Saharan Africa and explore that civilization. And I'm just like, where am I going to get the time to do all of this and the money, not to mention, but yes.
16:09 Speaker 02 You could write on the plane. It's useful.
16:13 Speaker 01 It's more the money than actually probably realistically of all the traveling I want to do.
16:17 Speaker 02 One of the things of Ramses the third's, which we might come on to, you know, he's got a fair bit of statuary. You can now see that shown to great advantage in the Grand Egyptian Museum. So this only opened fully last November.
16:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:33 Speaker 02 So in terms of, you know, if you're a fan of museums. I know a lot of people who have been saying, I'm going to go to Egypt, I'm gonna go to Egypt, I'm gonna go to Egypt. And they've been waiting till the Grand Museum is open. So it's open now. So there's no excuse.
16:45 Speaker 01 Come here, tell me this again, tangent. How much does it cost to go to Egypt nowadays?
16:50 Speaker 02 Oh.
16:50 Speaker 01 Like a flight, not accommodation, we can sort that ourselves.
16:53 Speaker 02 Well, with the current political situation, I'm not sure. You can get a flight from Manchester, you used to be able to, for £350.
17:01 Speaker 01 Okay, return.
17:02 Speaker 02 Yeah. So it's not absolutely extortionate. And when you're in Egypt, it's fairly easy with some, some, some good advice to, to live cheaply. And Egypt is a wonderful place. So if you've not been, consider going, now is your time.
17:19 Speaker 01 Little did you, now probably isn't your time, actually. Well, no, well, yes.
17:23 Speaker 02 When the jet fuel runs out.
17:24 Speaker 01 Yes. You didn't realise you were going to come on here to sell Egypt to people, did you?
17:29 Speaker 02 No, I'm sure the Egyptian tourism industry will be.
17:31 Speaker 01 They'll be getting in touch with you very shortly.
17:33 Speaker 02 Thank you. The least I can do.
17:34 Speaker 01 Now, we have this idea that he is not all that bad, that he has some grand ideas about building this temple that you mentioned.
17:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:44 Speaker 01 That some people are going, you know what, then things aren't going great with this in term. But there are some people who are like, we need to get rid of this guy.
17:51 Speaker 02 Yes.
17:52 Speaker 01 So there is some rumbling.
17:54 Speaker 02 Yes.
17:54 Speaker 01 And is this not just because of the economic struggles that are in this particular pharaonic era, but in, in general, that over a few generations? But is there anything particular that he's doing that people don't like, that they're turning on him specifically at this time?
18:08 Speaker 02 Um, it's, it's difficult to see him doing anything that other kings aren't doing.
18:16 Speaker 02 He seems to kind of, as I say, stick by the rulebook set by Ramses the second. But one thing we do know is we have a really, well, unique insight into everyday socio economic reality in the workers' town that services the building of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. So if you imagine, you've got the king in the palace and he's probably moving around quite a bit, as is traditional in, in other monarchies of more recent times. So he's doing his progress. There's not much actual evidence for how he lives his life. But the people who are building the royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings are stuck in one little village,
19:01 Speaker 02 which one sits abandoned eventually, not that long after the death of Ramses the third. All that stuff is left and all their notes and all their tombs and their chapels and their houses are preserved. So that is a really valuable insight into what is happening then. So we have an unusual insight into labour relations. This was the PhD subject of my PhD supervisor, so it's something I've heard a lot about. So you have the gang who work for the king, or not directly for the king, for the vizier, who is the top guy, the prime minister, if you like. And it is the vizier's responsibility to organise
19:45 Speaker 02 the people and to make sure the people are paid. Because they are living not in a lush, arable environment, they're living on the edge of the desert in order to build the tomb, which is in the desert edge. So they are in a totally artificial and supplied, state supplied environment. So if you don't have enough bread, you can't go and buy some bread, you've got to have bread and water brought to you. And so we know through this very detailed documentation from the town, it's called Deir el-Madinah in modern Arabic, the village, the village next to the Valley of the Kings. We know that things get so
20:28 Speaker 02 bad that rations, the supply of rations breaks down. And there is the first recorded strike in human history.
20:37 Speaker 01 Oh, I didn't know this.
20:39 Speaker 02 Is in the reign of Ramses the Third. So think about how important that is to modern political history.
20:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:46 Speaker 02 And social history and, you know, of this country. The first time people say, hang on, and they say no to power, we're not doing it, we're putting our tools down. And they go and they protest. And the vizier says, okay, right, I'll get you some stuff and carry on. Is it so embarrassing that the king's tomb, it's not just they're building a motorway.
21:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:05 Speaker 02 They are building the tomb of a god. And if you stop building the tomb, you're compromising the full deification of the king.
21:13 Speaker 01 You're questioning that authority, you're questioning that positioning socially, in terms of belief systems.
21:19 Speaker 02 It's a big deal.
21:20 Speaker 01 It starts to become bricks and mortar. Well, I mean, not bricks and mortar, but it starts to become a piece of a thing rather than a belief system. If it's just a human construction then, so the divine goes out of it almost.
21:31 Speaker 02 Indeed. So you can go and visit the tomb of Ramses III at the Valley of the Kings now. It's been known since the very early days of Egyptology, what we might call Egyptology. So, you know, the 1700s. So it's been exposed for a long time. That's a big thing. So it would take a lot of effort to build. So you can just imagine walking through it at some point. The sculptors and the masons downed their tools and said, nope, not doing it. So that's a very brave thing to do.
22:02 Speaker 01 Radical, yeah.
22:02 Speaker 02 Imagine.
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23:34 Speaker 01 So we have that unrest at one part of the social scale. And then I have this idea, which I don't know the ins and outs totally of, but the idea of the conspiracy of the harem or the harem conspiracy.
23:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:51 Speaker 01 So that sounds interesting in itself. Again, I don't know the details, but I just wanted the impression that it gives me. It sounds like this is going to be very female led, that it's going to be, again, and we'll talk about this and you'll correct all the things I'm getting wrong, but it also sounds that it somehow is quite domestic in a way because we're talking about harem in terms of wives and houses and homes and family units. What exactly is it?
24:21 Speaker 02 Well, you're right. This is probably the defining moment of Ramses III's life is his ultimate leaving of it. So the word harem is problematic in Egyptology because as so often, the terminology we use is not based necessarily on the terms the ancient Egyptians might have used. And it's got this rather unintended and unfortunate association with Ottoman Turkish culture where women are locked away. And I don't think the ancient Egyptian court, let's call it that, the court was quite like that. We have other evidence for slightly earlier than Ramses III of women in the north of Egypt
25:05 Speaker 02 in a very good agricultural area, the Fayum, basically managing a major textile business.
25:12 Speaker 02 So it flips any idea of these women are sealed away and they're not allowed to talk to anyone and they're attended by eunuchs. Actually, they're running a pretty, pretty impressive, if not industrial, certainly, production centre. Anyway, so, so it's more complicated than the women of the, the harem are being locked away. But you're right, there's a domestic situation develops, which related to something we said before, you know, there is usually a designated heir. But as you said, you know, there's an element
25:52 Speaker 02 of strategy over inheritance. So if you've got, so imagine you're an advanced, a year, imagine you're a king of advancing years, and you've got several living children, sons, and you think, well, the oldest one is not that great. Or the, the one by the most royal mother, that's probably how we should think of it.
26:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:21 Speaker 02 Is not the best. Someone else who I think could do this better. You must make your favourites known, or you make your, your, you know, choices or, or proclivities known. That creates resentment for the mother of the intended heir, or the, the one who's overlooked to be the next king. Because if you are the queen mother, for want of a better term, that is great status.
26:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:51 Speaker 02 You know, you want to be the
26:52 Speaker 01 And it's your function as well. And, and in a society that we're talking about in previous episodes, that, that values usefulness.
26:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:59 Speaker 01 Then for the queen to, or mother, but queen in this instance, to produce the heir is, is very useful. That, that she has, she has fulfilled a big function in that society.
27:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:12 Speaker 01 And then that's been taken away from her.
27:13 Speaker 02 Yeah. And there is something always on the fringes of any discussion like this. There is some religious metaphysical consideration where
27:24 Speaker 02 I am going to make this analogy. Yes, I'm going to do it. So later, there is the selection of the sacred Apis bull. So this is a manifestation of the god Ptaa.
27:34 Speaker 01 Okay.
27:34 Speaker 02 Who's in the North Egypt at Memphis. And kind of like the Dalai Lama, there's only one living at any one time. And the bull is a god incarnate and is worshipped and is asked questions and just lives a life of luxury. The bull's mother is also worshipped because she has literally.
27:54 Speaker 01 I see.
27:54 Speaker 02 Sired this young bull. So there is something almost when a king becomes king, his mother, if she wasn't already, becomes by association of divine.
28:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:11 Speaker 02 Nature.
28:12 Speaker 01 Yep, yep.
28:12 Speaker 02 So you could see that there would be a motivating factor here. So Ramses III lives quite a long life. He is coming up to a very important point in his reign, year 30, which is traditionally the time you celebrate a Ched Said. And Ched Said is a kind of festival of renewal. We might say jubilee, but it's not like.
28:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:38 Speaker 02 You know, barges on the Thames and street parties. Although there may, there may have been street parties for the elite.
28:46 Speaker 02 So there seems to be a lot of organizing happening at this time. And this is when some people, and I say people, not just royal ladies, but people in the court decide this might be the time to bump off Ramses III and put in place our candidate for the next king.
29:09 Speaker 01 Oh, so it wasn't even a case that Ramses III was going, Jim's my eldest son, but I don't love him very, he's a little, he's a little, he needs a bit of help. But also we have Mark over here and I prefer him. So I, I was of the assumption that that's what was going on, but no, this is.
29:24 Speaker 02 This is like.
29:25 Speaker 01 The court deciding, we know who our candidate is.
29:29 Speaker 02 Yes, I think it's more as you suggest. So there is an air apparent. Who does become the next king? Spoiler. Ramses the fourth. Surprise, surprise. But there is another candidate who may, for whatever reasons lost to history, may have been more popular.
29:48 Speaker 01 Okay.
29:49 Speaker 02 And so there is a move in the palace, and by palace, we can almost pinpoint this. When I'm talking about this history, you've got to imagine, as probably quite easy for a historian, these kinds of things must have happened a lot. We only get an insight into some of them where there's documentation. Usually in ancient Egypt, there is no documentation. There's a handful of other people where it looks like an assassination. It becomes quite common in the Ptolemaic period where the Ptolemies are just backstabbing, bloodthirsty people.
30:26 Speaker 01 People are kind of more aware of that, right?
30:29 Speaker 02 Because there are historians recording it.
30:31 Speaker 01 Yes.
30:31 Speaker 02 There's not a tradition of that usually. What we have for Ramses the third, and it is an absolutely astonishing survival of a historical document. There is a list of perpetrators in this Harem conspiracy, although let's drop the word Herum. This attempt on the king's life. For modern antiquities dealers, it was such a big piece of papyrus, they cut it into different bits and sold it to different people. But now we can, we know, we know, based on the handwriting and the context and the contents, we know that it's one document. And this is, it's not really court proceedings. We do occasionally get court proceedings a bit later in Egyptian history.
31:14 Speaker 02 But this is a list of the culprits and what happens to them.
31:20 Speaker 01 Okay, well, let's start with some of those culprits. I have, I have two main people here that we will, we will unpack in a little bit more detail.
31:32 Speaker 01 Wait, is she a culprit? So Tyae, am I saying that correct?
31:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, we don't know for sure. I would say T.
31:38 Speaker 01 T, okay, so it's T I Y E and she's the queen of Egypt. A secondary wife to Ramses III. Wait, queen of Egypt? Is she the queen of Egypt?
31:48 Speaker 02 No, not really. So the queen, there's no word for queen, is king's great wife. So there tends to be only one great king's wife at any one time. And she is the the the top wife, so she would be called the queen. So this is not the queen, it's a secondary wife.
32:06 Speaker 01 Right, right. So she is a secondary wife. What does it mean to be a secondary wife? Well, what I'm presuming you're still quite loaded, you still have a bit of influence. You probably have your own court that's around you. What are the limitations there?
32:18 Speaker 02 Oh, that's a good question. I think you don't get the public recognition on monuments.
32:26 Speaker 01 Right, so you don't have that potential divinity if you're providing the heir or whatever, okay?
32:31 Speaker 02 Yes, unless the first great royal wife, great king's wife dies and then you get a promotion. That happens in the reign of Ramses the second because he lives so long.
32:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:42 Speaker 02 There are several great royal wives. So the average expectation would be, yeah, you live a life of luxury, no doubt. And you have perhaps children with the king, but those children, well, those children just hang around. I mean, this is the problem with royal children that are not in the direct, direct line of succession.
33:03 Speaker 01 They have a job, yes.
33:05 Speaker 02 Modern equus of this issue in the UK, you you then have to kind of keep yourself to yourself. But if you're ambitious, I think you are well connected enough, as seems the case with this conspiracy, to make things happen. And this is what T does. She takes matters into her own hands. And based on that documentation that we have, she seems to be the ringleader of what can only be described as a coup.
33:36 Speaker 01 Yes, I think that's the word, right? That's what we're looking at here. It's a coup. Now, I love this idea that T is a political figure and that she is working those ties, whatever they might be, however, whatever courtly machinations that she's going on with, that she is positioning herself and she's using these networks to to.
34:00 Speaker 01 Position her son, who is not supposed to be the heir.
34:04 Speaker 02 No.
34:04 Speaker 01 Because she's a secondary wife. So tell us a little bit, who is he? And tell us a little bit about him.
34:09 Speaker 02 So this guy, Pentawerit, is the son of T. And he is in this courtly milieu. He, well, we don't know really what age he is. He's not a toddler. He's not a child. He's probably, you know, a teenager or on the cusp of adulthood in ancient Egypt.
34:31 Speaker 01 Okay.
34:32 Speaker 02 A viable alternative.
34:33 Speaker 01 I see.
34:34 Speaker 02 Because remember, we're into year 30 of King Ramses III. So Ramses III has been on the throne.
34:41 Speaker 01 He's been around.
34:42 Speaker 02 He's been around. So he must be quite old.
34:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:46 Speaker 02 So quite legitimately, this, this son could be in his twenties. So T wants to position him over his half brother, who is ultimately Ramses IV to be the next king. And so she, yeah, enlists the help of other people at court. And this is where this document is very useful because we have a whole list of the people that were involved.
35:12 Speaker 01 Oh, go on. Who does she get? Because this is, this is no small matter. This could, as soon as she starts mumbling this or whispering this, that could be the end for her. But, but to a certain extent, for a while at least, okay, we know that Ramses, Ramses IV becomes Ramses IV. So this is going to ultimately fail in its desire. But who does she, who does she get on board at this point?
35:36 Speaker 02 So there are the, the people closest to the king. That's what you want to do if you're going to try and assassinate a king.
35:42 Speaker 01 She gets the people closest to the king. So they, they clearly don't like the heir for whatever reason.
35:47 Speaker 02 Yes, there must be some motivation here. That's, that's also a good point. And there must be a lot of politicking going on that we will never know about. So the people closest to the king are those who are, you know, regularly in royal service, for want of a better term, the butlers. The people who are literally. Giving him a drink.
36:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:08 Speaker 02 Are the ones who are most effective to, you know, bump him off. So there are a number of high officials who must have direct contact to the king. You must be very important to be in that position. You know, it's not an ordinary foot soldier or a scribe. But as you say, if, if you're Queen T and you speak to the wrong person and they report you to someone else, you're for the high jump, I suspect. So the, the plot clearly develops quite quickly because a large number of people are implicated. So there are dozens of people.
36:45 Speaker 01 Dozens.
36:45 Speaker 02 So she must get, I mean, just back projecting from what we know happens.
36:51 Speaker 02 She must get, she must be quite charismatic.
36:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm imagining so, yeah.
36:55 Speaker 02 And, and the one she's the pinto where it who she's trying to maneuver into position, he must be viable. But yeah, it doesn't work out in the end.
37:05 Speaker 01 No.
37:07 Speaker 01 But we do get a very dramatic assassination in a very dramatic setting. So you had mentioned, you've already, you've teased us with the idea that there is a 30th anniversary jubilation, jubilee slash not jubilee.
37:22 Speaker 02 Yes.
37:22 Speaker 01 Occurring there, Hebsad.
37:24 Speaker 02 Yes, Hebsad, yeah.
37:25 Speaker 01 And this is, this is going, this is part of the celebrations are going on. So we're celebrating 30 years of, well, some people are celebrating 30 years of Ramses the third.
37:37 Speaker 01 But this is where the assassination attempt or the coup, as you've been calling it, it rings very coup like to me. This is where this is supposed to be enacted.
37:48 Speaker 02 There seems to be planning around the time of the jubilee, not jubilee, the Hebsad.
37:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
37:53 Speaker 02 Because it seems he lives into past year 31.
37:57 Speaker 01 Okay.
37:58 Speaker 02 So, so there's something has happened, perhaps an attempt has happened. Who, who knows? But the first attempts don't seem to be physical. They seem to be using black magic.
38:10 Speaker 01 Right.
38:11 Speaker 02 So there are magicians involved who take, you know, this is known from other contexts where you take an image of someone you want to do harm to and you do things to the image and you hope that that's gonna have an effect on the living person. Remember, we're talking about the king of Egypt, who is the ultimate conduit between humanity and the gods. So maybe metaphysically, he has got protection that the conspirators hadn't thought of. So ultimately, up until fairly recently, last 15 years, it was assumed that Ramses III
38:49 Speaker 02 had survived the attempt and the documentation related to people who were caught trying to kill him. But as I say, with ancient Egypt, in some cases, quite astonishingly, we've got, you know, the tombs of the people. We've got these accounts, detailed documents about what happened. In Liverpool World Museum, there is a belt, one of the most beautiful pieces of ancient embroidery with Ramses III's name on it. So we've got his clothing.
39:20 Speaker 01 Oh, it's from the time.
39:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's like merch. No, no, it's not merch. It must be from his time. And we have his body. So not only do we have the stories, the documents, the monuments, the history, we have the people, the protagonists themselves, those that were allowed and were treated to the full ritual of mortification. So Ramses III's body was examined. Previously, it was assumed he had not died of violent death. But this maybe sounds a note of caution about the reliability of some of these examinations, that it was only recently that CT scans, which themselves
40:01 Speaker 02 can be, you know, not entirely reliable, the CT scan data showed he'd had his throat cut beyond reasonable doubt. And lots of biomedical people have looked at it and it does seem to be clear, he was.
40:19 Speaker 02 You know, given the, given the chop in the, in the bloodiest way. So he also had one of his toes chopped off.
40:26 Speaker 01 Right. I mean, you could survive that now.
40:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think.
40:29 Speaker 01 Not the throat thing.
40:30 Speaker 02 But having your throat cut, yeah, you're not, you're not coming back from that. So what then happens? I mean, the, the, the plot must be discovered pretty soon because immediately Ramesses the fourth seems to take the throne. And it is him who says, it is he who says, right, all of you people, I've suspected you. You're now going to be tried for these crimes. And you can imagine killing a god king, regicide in ancient Egypt. It's a pretty serious matter. It's not a minor misdemeanor. So in this transcription, not of, not of the court proceedings, I say, but as I say, it's
41:14 Speaker 02 a list of the people, the dozens of people.
41:18 Speaker 02 If you were lucky, you got to take your own life.
41:23 Speaker 01 Yes, I've seen this in, in other, it's, it's, it's a punishment that's almost gifted to you in a way to, to, to punish yourself in many ways. But I just want to go back to one thing, Campbell, which I think is so utterly fascinating. And I think it's, it's when historians come together on these things. And they work on vastly different time periods. It can, it can be so enlightening because what is striking me as, as
41:55 Speaker 01 just mind boggling for me, it works on the, you know, 17th, 18th century, 19th century. Is that we would know, right? We would, we would have all of these things. But it's fascinating that it took a CT scan to definitely say that this person. I mean, I'm sure there was theories. I'm sure that, that people thought maybe, but then there was also theories that he survived.
42:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
42:16 Speaker 01 And so like, the, the fact that something so seismic can happen, but that the documentation doesn't always draw it together in a really
42:26 Speaker 02 Yes, yeah.
42:27 Speaker 01 You know, conclusive way that is satisfying for modern, a modern consumption, audience driven thing where we like beginning, middle and end. That presents possibilities, yes, but of course frustrations. But then, you know, it's why we hear so many times in the media about different discoveries linked to ancient Egypt, because there's still so much unknown that there's still so much one can find. It's very rare that you're like, well, we found something brand new about the civil war. No, because they were writing it down at the time. We know exactly what, you know, I'm talking about the 17th century civil war in England. So, so what we know is that there was a conspiracy and we're going to get to the document that tells, and you've already hinted at it, that tells us about the conspiracy. We weren't for a long time sure that there was even a murder.
43:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, you would just think he died a natural death and the next king came along if you hadn't had the document.
43:18 Speaker 01 So let's talk about that document then, because that's going to be quite a, it sounds like a very exciting document if you are an Egyptologist or any kind of historian.
43:28 Speaker 02 Yes.
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44:52 Speaker 01 It's not a court proceeding per se.
44:54 Speaker 02 No.
44:54 Speaker 01 But tell us what it does show about this particular event.
44:58 Speaker 02 So it lists the people involved in the conspiracy. So you have the royal wife, T., you have these high court, not high court, court officials who are of high status. You have the butlers, this whole band of butlers involved. But then, and this is the really creepy bit about it that I love. They are punished, these people are punished, of course. So killing a king is dreadful, of course. And the king's son, because let's remember, Ramses the fourth is the son, the biological son of Ramses the third. So someone's killed your dad.
45:42 Speaker 01 You might want to look into that.
45:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, you're not happy with the people and you are now the pharaoh. So you're going to do something terrible to them. So some people decorously are allowed to take their own lives. The chief culprits, it's not made absolutely clear what happens to them, something terrible. But then there is a lower rung of kind of accomplices that have their, and this was not uncommon, I think, for fairly serious crimes. They were sentenced to having their nose and ears cut off. So not only is that not great for your health, but it's also a visible marker of you have done something really bad.
46:26 Speaker 01 But they were left alive.
46:27 Speaker 02 But they were left alive. So you're then literally marked for life as having done something really terrible. So that's bad. But then the really creepy detail is in those, in the document that lists the people, it talks about people. And sometimes it deprives them of their names, which is really, had really a kind of.
46:55 Speaker 02 Kicking the culprit when they're down. And in some cases, the names have been changed. So there was a guy whose name meant Ra, the sun god, sun god Ra, Ra loves him. His name was changed to Ra hates him. It's not the kind of name someone would ever have. And it's just, I find that just really quite chilling. Your whole identity, not just your body, because you wouldn't be allowed to be buried conventionally, but your name and essentially part of your soul is damned because you've done such a terrible thing, you can't be allowed to exist. And intriguing part of all this, you might wonder what happened to Pinter Waret, this lad.
47:39 Speaker 01 Yes, a potential other pharaoh.
47:43 Speaker 02 So again, pinch of salt here because it's difficult to say for sure because of the process of mummification, changing the body so much. But we have Ramses the third's body.
47:55 Speaker 01 Sure.
47:56 Speaker 02 And we have in the same cache of royal bodies found at the end of the 19th century, an unidentified man wrapped in a ritually unclean goat skin.
48:10 Speaker 01 Ooh.
48:12 Speaker 02 Who it seems genetically is related to Ramses the third. So he's been given a burial, but not given a burial, not a proper burial.
48:22 Speaker 01 Not done the whole ritual.
48:24 Speaker 02 And again, there's this really creepy sense of, okay, we're going to do something with him. You would expect for really, you know, capital crimes, and we have other evidence for this. Not only are you executed in a terrible way, for example, by being put on a spike and allowed to just die, your body is burned. So the whole concept of cremation is totally anathema to ancient Egyptian. You need your body to become a sark, a divine ancestor being. So if you're burned, that's terrible. But in a way, there's this sense of humiliation that this man, if indeed it is Pinter Waret, is wrapped in this way. He doesn't seem to have been treated in the way you might expect a prince of the blood
49:09 Speaker 02 should be treated. So that's kind of creepy. Another weird, maybe not so weird, but fitting.
49:17 Speaker 02 Echo of this story is that when the body of Ramses the Third was found and was unwrapped, let's be clear, these people are being unwrapped, the bandages are being taken off them by inquisitive people in the 19th century. When Ramses the Third is exposed, a writer in the 1920s, someone I'm quite interested in, a South African painter called Winifred Brunton, is making sketches and watercolour portraits of the people while they were alive. So she's making the mummified dead set for their portrait. She's imagining what they must have looked like when they were alive, which is a very subjective business. And they all look quite chocolate boxy, like Caucasian Europeans.
50:02 Speaker 01 AI of its day, kind of, AI reconstruction thing of its day.
50:06 Speaker 02 Yes, which is of great interest to me of late. But Winifred Brunton says in a very popular book, Kings and Queens of Ancient Egypt, she says, there's a look of real rage and hate
50:24 Speaker 01 in this particular.
50:25 Speaker 02 In this particular guy. Not, well, she did, they would have known about the Harem Conspiracy, so called, at that time, but they didn't know about the body, the examination of the body. And so in her very popular book, she has her watercolour miniature painting reproduced, and then she has the pretty gruesome face of the mummified body. And there is good evidence, I've found, that suggests that the producers at Universal Films in 1930, for the 1932 film, used that as the model of the Boris Karloff, the ultimate vengeful mummified body. And they
51:06 Speaker 02 used that as the model. And so it's not just knowing that there is this mummified ancient Egyptian, it's because someone has said, God, what a look of vengeance and hate and disappointment. She says, he looks, he's got a look of disappointment.
51:22 Speaker 01 Wow.
51:22 Speaker 02 So that just gives me a bit of a shiver. And it clearly, in some ways, helped.
51:31 Speaker 02 Make the, the, the, the image of that moving mummified body popular.
51:39 Speaker 01 Right. Well, I've got an image.
51:40 Speaker 02 Ah, you've got an image. Would you like to see what that looks like?
51:44 Speaker 01 Oh, okay. What am I looking at here now? Right. So is this right? Listeners at home, this is not a visual medium, so I should describe what I'm looking at and be less shocked. I have two images actually, as I scrolled down. One is of an image of a pharaoh. Yeah.
52:06 Speaker 01 I don't know if it's Ramses. I'm presuming it's one of the Ramses. Whether it's three or four, I don't know. Looks quite young, so I'm imagining maybe four. He's wrong. He's wrong.
52:16 Speaker 02 Difficult to say.
52:16 Speaker 01 Okay, we don't know.
52:17 Speaker 02 Age in anyone, but.
52:18 Speaker 01 Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:19 Speaker 02 You're right with Kate. Yeah, sure. As a hero.
52:22 Speaker 01 Okay. So we've got that and seems to be holding a receptacle and looking directly at it. Is it on fire? Is there smoke coming out of it? I'm aware that the last time we spoke about a receptacle, there was a heart in it. So I'm just bearing that in mind. So that's, that's the top image. And then we have this,
52:44 Speaker 01 what would be stereotypically referred to as a mummified body who has been unwrapped. Yes.
52:50 Speaker 02 Partly, yeah.
52:51 Speaker 01 Partly. Oh, yes. I see the hands and yeah, okay. And the face is, is this who you were talking about? This, this kind of vengeful, disappointed looking face. Hmm. Right. So, so this, so this we think is
53:09 Speaker 01 the bottom images Ramses the third.
53:11 Speaker 02 Yes.
53:12 Speaker 01 We think. Who's, do we know the top? Is it also Ramses the third?
53:17 Speaker 02 Yes.
53:17 Speaker 01 Okay.
53:18 Speaker 02 So this is image and reality in a way. So that's what the Egyptians wanted you to see on the top.
53:25 Speaker 01 And then this is what we're left with.
53:27 Speaker 02 And that is actually the body. How do we know it's Ramses the third? Well, he had been reburied, his tomb had been robbed.
53:35 Speaker 02 A couple of centuries, well, maybe less than a couple of centuries after his death. And he was moved and was put in a kind of shoddy secondary use of a coffin. Originally, his coffin must have been probably gilded wood or solid gold. And on the outside of that
53:53 Speaker 02 secondhand coffin is a text that says, this is the body of Ramses the third. That pretty reliable historical document. But as you said, he's not entirely unwrapped. So you see his hands are kind of padded like he's wearing gloves or mittens. And there is a, there's a shroud or a kind of scarf at his neck. And that was used in the Boris Karloff 1932 Mummy film.
54:19 Speaker 01 Okay.
54:20 Speaker 02 But it, it really is, yeah, not a pleasant image.
54:26 Speaker 01 No, no, it's not. But you know what is striking me even beyond that. And again, it relates to unpleasantness in many ways. I'm looking at the contrast of, as you said, what they wanted us to know.
54:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:38 Speaker 01 And what we have. And, you know, often I'll decry the Victorians quite lightheartedly on this podcast. But sometimes it's warranted because actually what we end, it's so tricky, isn't it? Because here we are, if that was on display somewhere, I would probably go and see it because out of curiosity, I certainly would have had in the 19th century. There's no point in trying to layer over modern sensibility with that.
55:02 Speaker 02 Yes.
55:02 Speaker 01 In the 19th century, we would have all have been there because this is what we would have been curious about. But it does, we, we still try to honor the wishes of the dead, don't we? And we still try to uphold some of that respect and, and, and, and give them what they wished for. And really it just strikes me that they have, and we have, I suppose, robbed that from these particular individuals. And I know there is an awful lot of conversation around the display of, of bodies and, and remains and
55:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:39 Speaker 01 From, from ancient Egypt. But that's a very striking example right there where it's, I don't know. It, I suppose in, in one sense, there's two lessons from it, right? On one side, you're going, at the end of the day, these people are people in terms of how we relate to them. And, and, you know, ashes to ashes and all that kind of thing. And then on the flip side, it's, but it's not how they were viewed in their own day. And it's not how they saw themselves. It's not how the people around them saw them. And we've literally.
56:08 Speaker 01 Truly unraveled that dignity that they
56:11 Speaker 02 The secrecy.
56:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
56:12 Speaker 02 That they were afforded. Was meant to be afforded them, absolutely.
56:15 Speaker 01 It's tricky, isn't it?
56:16 Speaker 02 You're right. And I think that's, that's a point worth making. You know, it's like, I always say, like a kid at a birthday, like you give them something wrapped up and you've got to unwrap it because there's something inside that I want to see. So you can actually see Ramses the Third's body in Cairo in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in a very quiet gallery. You can't take your phone out, you're not really meant to speak. So it's a certain ambience, but you can see
56:47 Speaker 01 It as it is.
56:48 Speaker 02 Him as he is in that photo. But equally, you know, the whole process of trying the assailants and these conspirators was to try and punish them for doing something bad to him. And for, you know, compromising his dignity and killing him. So the idea seems fairly clear in pharaonic texts and imagery that the, the, the body of the deceased, the sach, is meant to be radiant and bound and gold covered mask and not exposed in that way. So there's, it's difficult to get around that at that period, the mummified dead were meant to be put in a coffin and buried underground and not disturbed, for want of a better term.
57:33 Speaker 02 So by ancient Egyptian belief, the, the king or whoever is deceased lives through the other image. So it's nice to juxtapose them because he's got his name there. He's shown as ageless. It's not that he's young or old, he's just ageless, he's God. And that's how he was believed to exist. But also, we have this extraordinary case. And in this case in particular, where you have the leg, the historical legacy, this uncanny survival of the body. And then the historical document that describes the people who bumped him off. So it kind of triangulates to making a really intriguing story,
58:15 Speaker 02 which I think is more intriguing than Ramses the Second, because you get something of the kind of motivations of the people.
58:22 Speaker 01 Something is, you talked about the desecration of his body in his own time through murder, which I think is actually really useful for us to think with, which led me to think about, I'm always fascinated by this idea in more early modern and modern times about disbelief. When there is just this widespread thing of going, this is what people believed in, be that witchcraft, be that, you know, again, I'm talking about the 17th century, say. I know your answer is going to be, we don't know and that there is no evidence. But I'm just, I'm just curious as to the idea of disbelief in these societies. There's, there's nothing, is there? There's nothing to point us towards people going,
59:06 Speaker 01 oh my God, look, they're doing, they're doing the socking again.
59:09 Speaker 02 Well, do you know, there, there are some sources that talk about, that have a skeptical
59:18 Speaker 02 tone to them. So you do get texts that say, well, lemon carpe diem, live for the moment because, you know, no one's coming back from there, beyond. So there is a certain note of,
59:34 Speaker 02 yeah, gosh, all of this, it always reminds me of the Terry Pratchett book, Pyramids, where it's all of this investment in the, the afterlife of the king, pyramids of dead kings, which might drain the economy. And who knows, maybe part of the reason Ramses III presided over a kind of weakened state was because so much wealth went into the Valley of the Kings.
59:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
59:58 Speaker 02 You know, there could be a corollary there, there could be a connection. So I think there was skepticism, but you cannot imagine, of course, there wasn't modern scientific knowledge where people would say, aha, you're just talking rubbish. I know the truth. There must have been, yeah, some.
1:00:20 Speaker 02 Healthy social skepticism that might have thought.
1:00:23 Speaker 01 Dissent or.
1:00:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, dissent.
1:00:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, social dissent, you know, not, not.
1:00:27 Speaker 02 I'm not going along with.
1:00:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:00:30 Speaker 02 With this.
1:00:31 Speaker 01 But I'm also not unsettling the whole societal balance that has been created at the same time. It's.
1:00:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, witness the, witness the strike. Because would you strike against a living God if you really believed he was a living God?
1:00:44 Speaker 01 See, this is, yeah, this is, yeah, yeah, yeah. What, what, what is the, we're told they believe that in real terms. But what does their belief, what, what do the real terms of that belief mean?
1:00:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:00:56 Speaker 01 How does that manifest itself? Like, I mean, you know, there's been a lot of talk recently in, in the media about the divine right of kings, which doesn't exist in, in England, although people still think that it does to a great extent. But that, that's not how we, we are told that the king rules now, or even if he does rule technically. But even in the time periods, even the 17th century, let's say, there are people who are just like, oh, what are you talking about? It's just a man on a chair, like, you know.
1:01:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:01:28 Speaker 01 But, but this is far more of a, of a modern or just pre-modern mindset that we're coming into here. We can't compare those two things. I'm just, but I'm just always, you know, again, if you, if you talk about Salem and this, this belief system that people are caught up in, again, 17th century, I know, and apologies for drawing these comparisons. But there was always people, despite the big swell of belief and push, going, what are you doing?
1:01:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:01:51 Speaker 01 And it's just, I'm fascinated by that because I think those voices, they'll always really be, they're often missing from the record, even in the 17th century or 18th century. But I just think that they would be such an interesting counter to some of the things that we, we take as absolute.
1:02:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I think it is very important to nuance these big monumental beliefs, especially with Egypt. Just on the train down, Anthony, I was reading a book by the great Egyptian author, Nobel laureate Nagib Mahfouz. It's called Adrift in the Nile, and there's a line in it, he says, it, it doesn't surprise him that ancient Egyptians believed the king was a god, but it seems far fetched that the king himself would believe he was a god. So there's, there is a healthy skepticism, I know, amongst my current Egyptian friends.
1:02:38 Speaker 02 About big concepts. So you've got to allow people in the past the same leeway or the the freedom to be a little bit outside the the standard strictures of.
1:02:50 Speaker 01 That there's variation somewhere.
1:02:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, there is. There is variation. And I wonder with the death of Ramses the third, whether, I don't know, because it seems like there were attempts made through magic.
1:03:04 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:03:06 Speaker 02 And if you didn't get a successful outcome, whatever side of the debate you were on, you might wonder, am I doing something wrong? Are the gods genuinely protecting him and keeping him alive? Or once you'd bumped him off, he can't be that divine because I've just killed him.
1:03:20 Speaker 01 Yeah. And it is that thing as well going, I we're going to have to finish this episode at some point, Campbell. But there is, there is that idea of going, okay, step one, appeal to the gods because he is one. And then step two, I'll just do it myself.
1:03:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, there must have been that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:03:34 Speaker 01 It's, it's, it's an interesting climb down. I was ready to go there. Okay, listen, one, one question, which is off topic entirely. Let's leave poor Ramses to himself. If there was, I love these hypotheticals. I don't know why I'm asking you, but I'm just genuinely curious. If there was an artifact or a document or or something that you understand and that your colleagues understand to be missing or destroyed or gone, that you're like, if we just had that one thing, that one piece of material culture, that one document, whatever it might be, that could fill in a gap in the archive that you just cannot get to grips with, what would, what would you want to bring back?
1:04:12 Speaker 02 Oh, that's a tough, tough, tough question. I mean, related to, I won't say something about everyday life and the life of the common man, right? Because that's, we need more information on that. But equally, there are so many intriguing characters, you would love the same level of detail as that conspiracy pyrrhus.
1:04:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:04:37 Speaker 02 For, I don't know what happened to Hatshepsut, for example, my favorite pharaoh.
1:04:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:04:42 Speaker 02 Or, I don't know, like other people that lived at what seems to be a historical critically moment, maybe it wasn't historically critical. But the the discovery of those papyri, albeit chopped into pieces, shows that. There are documents, there are, there is essentially the diary of a pyramid builder.
1:05:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:05:05 Speaker 02 No one. So these things are out there, whether they await discovery under the sand or they're in museums and just haven't been identified.
1:05:13 Speaker 01 That's the thing.
1:05:14 Speaker 02 That intrigues me most. I think that's still possible, but something that was of comparable
1:05:22 Speaker 02 intriguing detail to Euramesses III papyrus.
1:05:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, I'd just be on the hunt. I think if I was an Egyptologist, I was like, I can't rest. I'm gonna have to find some of these things. Look, I'm gonna stop holding you ransom to my random foibles of information. Thank you so much for taking us through that. It's just, it is really thrilling to find something that almost step by step, as much as you can in ancient Egypt, takes you through. And this is why historians love primary source material, because it takes you back in time.
1:05:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
1:05:56 Speaker 01 Like that, if you are sitting in front of that document, which I never have, of course, but like for the people who have, that's gonna transport you. That's time travel as close as we can get. It is, it just really brings these things, it makes us feel something about these things. And I think that's what really appeals to people about history. Right, I'm gonna stop rabbiting on. Thank you so much for listening to us. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I think there were so many fascinating and intriguing questions and thoughts that have come from that. If you have any other ideas for episodes that relate to ancient Egypt, or in fact, anything else, you can let us know on [email protected] . That's [email protected] . You can find me at Anthony Delaney History on Instagram. Campbell, where can they find you?
1:06:36 Speaker 02 At Egypt MCR.
1:06:38 Speaker 01 There you go. Find us both, follow us along, and you'll get more lovely history pieces there from either the 17th century for me at the moment, or Campbell, just Veronic Egypt. And until next time, as ever, happy listening.
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