015: These Two Things Will Forever Change How You Look at Egyptian Tombs

In this episode, Dr. Melinda Nelson-Hurst deconstructs the common myths surrounding ancient Egyptian tombs, moving beyond pop culture tropes like "mummy's curses" to reveal the dual nature of these sacred structures.

You will discover the dual nature of ancient Egyptian tombs, including the two parts that every tomb – whether small pit in the ground or giant pyramid – had.

By exploring the distinct functions of burial chambers and tomb chapels, this episode explains how the ancient Egyptians balanced the need for private, eternal rest with a desire for public remembrance and physical offerings.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:
• The Two-Part Secret: Discover why every tomb, from a simple hole in the ground to a massive pyramid, was split into two very different sections with opposite purposes.

• The Truth Behind the Curse: Learn why the infamous "Curse of Tutankhamun" was actually a 20th-century media invention and what real Egyptian "curses" actually said.

• Talking to the Dead: Explore the Appeal to the Living, a fascinating text where the tomb owner speaks directly to you from across the millennia, asking for favors in exchange for blessings in the afterlife.

• Royal vs. Non-Royal Spaces: Understand the fascinating architectural differences between the hidden chambers of the Valley of the Kings and the vibrant, decorated chapels used by wealthy non-royal Egyptians.

• The Power of Speech: Find out how the ancient Egyptians believed that simply reading a prayer out loud was just as effective for the deceased as bringing physical food and drink.

• Why Visitors Were Wanted: Hear how the ancient Egyptians actually encouraged the public to visit specific parts of their tombs rather than keeping them sealed and secret forever.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Voices of Ancient Egypt, the podcast for people who don't just want to learn about ancient Egypt, but want to understand it on a deeper, more meaningful level. I'm Melinda Nelsonhurst, an Egyptologist with a PhD in the field and years of experience teaching at the university level, working in Egypt, and training students around the world to read real ancient Egyptian texts. I've spent decades studying this civilization in a traditional academic setting, so you don't have to. And so you can access knowledge that's usually locked behind academic walls. This podcast brings ancient Egyptian history, beliefs, and language to life and shows you that learning hieroglyphs is possible no matter your age, background, or schedule. So whether you want to read hieroglyphs in museums, on social media, or on your next trip to Egypt, you'll find the tools, stories, and encouragement to make it real right here. Let's hear the voices of the ancient world together. Hello, hello, and a welcome back to the Voices of Ancient Egypt podcast. I've got a fun topic for you today. So we're going to talk a bit about tombs. And of course, you can't talk about too much about tombs without maybe getting into topics like curses. So we'll touch on that as well. So when you think of ancient Egyptian tombs, what do you think of? You might think of more somber topics, for example, like mortality, burial, or maybe even questions of ethics around excavating tombs or displaying human remains. Or perhaps you think of themes prevalent a lot in pop culture. And that kind of stuff comes to mind pretty easily a lot of times, such as curses that forbid entry into ancient tombs and threaten harm to you to enter. Or maybe you think of a museum visit or a trip to Egypt that you took where you saw tombs themselves or artifacts from tombs. But do all of these things that we tend to think about when we think about tombs reflect the actual sort of reality of ancient Egyptian tombs, why they were built, how they were used, and so forth. In this episode, we're going to unpack this in terms of the reality behind these ancient tombs, especially focusing on one particular part of tombs that you don't necessarily hear talked about a lot, outside of Egyptology circles, at least in articles and such, and delve into what it really means in terms of what this part of the tomb was for. Now, fundamentally, ancient Egyptian burials and the graves or tombs that they were in served a few purposes if we look at it from a really zoomed-out view. So of course they serve the obvious practical purpose of providing a place for the bodies of people who had passed away. But as always, in every culture, there's more than that, right? They were ways to help transport the deceased to the afterlife. They were a way for families to show off their wealth to others in the local community. And of course, burying someone helped with grieving and to some extent a sort of an emotional closure for friends and family. And these reasons are not at all dissimilar from lots of other cultures, both today and in the past. Now, for the tomb or grave as a whole, these are all true in terms of the general function. But when we view the entire structure as one unit that serves the same purpose, we're actually missing a lot when it comes to ancient Egyptian tomb. So before going any further, we need to talk about the parts of a tomb. Now, I'm not talking about getting into like the super nitty-gritty here, like every wall that's different, or offering table or full store, or these sorts of things. These are things we can talk about in another episode. But what I want to get into is the two main fundamental parts that every single ancient Egyptian tomb had. So first let's talk about the part that probably comes to mind very easily and comes to mind for pretty much everybody when they think of a tomb or a burial. And that is the actual place where the body was entombed, whether in a coffin or bare or in a pit in the ground or in a stone chamber, there's lots of different options. And in ancient Egypt, this could be, like I said, a lot of different ways that this was done. And this depends largely on your wealth as well as where in the country you live and what the general environment around you provides in terms of places for burial. So for a lot of people, the majority of people, this really encompassed a simple hole in the ground, a simple grave. And this is something that you might have other goods with it, or you might just be simply in that hole, just like we see really in a lot of modern burial practices in a lot of places, too. Because only the wealthy could afford more than this. For wealthy people, they might have more elaborate tombs, the kinds that we're used to seeing in those glossy photographs in books, on social media, and also when we visit Egypt and go on tours and such. These had a burial area also. So this is typically referred to as like a burial shaft or a burial chamber based on where exactly it's located in the tomb complex, how it was built, and so forth. So these are usually either cut into the natural bedrock in the area or cliffs in the area, or constructed with stone blocks or mud bricks as a built structure rather than say carving out into the natural rock. Now, this is where the person's body would reside, either mummified or not, because this also depends on time period and how much wealth you had and so forth. And you might also have some amount of materials buried with you, depending on what you could afford and what was important to you. So some people might have a coffin, for example, although these were very expensive. So again, most people did not have these. And some people, you might have a little bit of jewelry. It might be simple faience beads, for example, or you might have a couple of dishes made out of pottery, or if you could afford it, something fancier like stone. Or if you were more wealthy, you might have a variety of materials, fancier jewelry, models of different scenes of people making food that you might want in the afterlife, for example, which could be made out of either wood or stone. And you might also have, you know, fancier coffins, perhaps multiple coffins, perhaps a canopic chest for your organs and various other objects. But these were objects that really only the very wealthy would have. And these are certainly the things that we tend to think of most when we think of burials from ancient Egypt. And so before we move on to the second part of the tomb, I want to acknowledge that this first part, where the burial itself was placed, is the part that oftentimes can make people feel a bit uncomfortable and conflicted about things, especially when it comes to museum displays. And this is partly due to our feelings, of course, that stem from our own cultural experiences and how we understand death, burial, and the treatment of human bodies. But it can also be partly due to the understanding that this part of the tomb was considered private in ancient times too, not a place to simply sort of waltz in, um, which would be hard to do with an underground shaft or things like that. But that brings us to the second part, and this is really quite distinct from that first part that we talked about in terms of not just what you placed in it and so forth, but and its function. And therefore, really how we should view it today in modern times also really should be quite different. Because you'll find a lot of times in TV documentary treatments, or certainly in things like movies that are fictional and so forth, and even in a fair number of decent books, tombs are treated as sort of this monolithic, everything's the same kind of thing, not as something that has really distinctly different parts that were used in different ways. And the intention of how people might interact with them was very different, right? And this doesn't necessarily show up in a lot of materials that you'll encounter. So I think, but I think it's such an important distinction. It's one I talk about a lot with my students. And that is that this second part, though I gave you maybe a little bit of a spoiler earlier, still might surprise you in terms of how it was used. You see, the second fundamental part of a tomb was intended to be somewhat public, not like what you would generally hear about, you know, in sensational media. And maybe not what you think of when you see displays in museums either. I tend to think of a tomb as this very private, sacred kind of place that, you know, maybe nobody should really even be looking at or doing anything with. This is simply not the case with this part of the tomb, though. Now, that's not to say that they intended to have every Tom Dicker Harry, or perhaps I should say every Seneb Nocht and Ameny, stroll in and have a look around the tomb and poke at things, right? However, they absolutely did want visitors for this part of the tomb. So let's talk a bit about this more public part of the tomb and what did it look like? What do we call it now? What's involved with it? So, for simpler graves, those ones that we talked about that really most people were buried in, in terms of really it's a hole in the ground. The above-ground area above the grave where people could come visit typically had some kind of marker. It might just be a really simple broken piece of stone or something like that. Not unlike really our modern tombs in a lot of places, that sometimes those are above ground, sometimes they're in the ground, but they're oftentimes, you know, fairly simple affairs. And this was also the case really for a lot of ancient Egyptian burials as well. But this area that was right above the burial was intended as a place you could visit. So family, friends, priests, etc., could come and bring food offerings for the deceased or simply come to talk to their loved ones, right? And this might be to update them on things that are going on in the family. It might be to ask for help. It might be simply to feel that connection with a loved one, just like a lot of people still do today in many parts of the world. Now, for fancier tombs, this public part is typically what we today refer to as a tomb chapel. Now, this depends on the exact type of tomb. I'm talking mostly about non-royal tombs here. So basically, like everybody other than the king and maybe a couple other royal family members sometimes had this type of tomb if they were wealthy. So, depending on the terrain and the area where you lived, your tomb, if you had a fancy one like this, was built a little bit differently. So, in some areas, you could cut right into the rock cliffs. So you see this in places like Beni Hassan or around Luxor, with a lot of the tombs cut into the cliffs there. Or if you didn't have that available, you would have your tomb chapel built above ground, either out of stone or mud brick, or sometimes even more perishable materials. And you see tombs like this a lot in areas in the northern part of Egypt, like for example, around Giza and Saqqarah. Now, whether it was carved into the so-called living rock or built from blocks, for example, these parts of the tombs were where you would see the kinds of decoration that you might see in those glossy photographs that we were talking about before, and have these beautiful scenes of people and animals carrying out various activities, as well as hieroglyphic texts about everything from what's going on in those scenes to the deceased person's biography, to family relationships and offering prayers. Now, royal tombs are a bit different, but still have the same two fundamental parts. However, they might look a little bit different in terms of what the two parts are. So for royal tombs, we call this more accessible part the mortuary temple or funerary temple. You'll see both of those terms, rather than a chapel. This is really just because they're a lot bigger and look more like what you think of as a temple. So this is true of lots of different types of royal burials, whether it's a pyramid or a tomb in the Valley of the Kings. It just looks a little bit different in different places and different time periods. So with pyramids, they typically actually had two of these temples, one attached to the pyramid and then one further away, connected by a causeway. We often refer to these as the pyramid temple and the valley temple, or sometimes the Mortui Temple and the Valley Temple. People use a little bit different terminology, but the idea being these two that are connected. And then with some other types of royal tombs, I'm not going to get into every single type here, but one that you might see mentioned a lot and see photographs of a lot, of course, are the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, which originally were created to be hidden. And so, because of that, their temples are not attached to the tombs, but they're detached and actually in another part of the West Bank area around modern Luxor. So while the Valley of the Kings is really out into the high desert cliffs, like hidden in a valley there, the temples were built close to the farm fields, so closer to the river. But they still have those two distinct parts, the hidden part meant to be private, right? And then the part that was actually meant to be a functioning place where priests were working, offerings were being made, prayers were being said, people might even visit and bring things or appeal to the deceased person, whether a king in this case, or in the case of other tombs, non-royal people. Now, when it comes to the texts that show up in the accessible parts of tombs, whether royal or non-royal, although I'm going to talk a little more about non-royal in this case, a lot of them are very clearly meant to be read by visitors. So for example, in non-royal tombs, you often see what's called the offering formula, or you could call it an offering prayer, which was effective for the deceased simply by being written on the tomb walls or on objects in the tomb, such as stele or statues and things like that. And these are usually placed in the tomb chapel as well, although that can vary. But they also were effective by having people come visit the tomb and read them aloud. The ancient Egyptians believed very much in the power of speech. They, of course, really wanted people to bring actual physical offerings for them. They felt like that was also sort of an ideal and important for them. But speaking about giving them also could help them out in the afterlife. So you see this show up in the texts a lot. And these are exactly the types of texts, by the way, that we read in my program Scribal School. If you're interested in learning how to read these, stay tuned for the next time that opens, which will be pretty soon. Another type of text that shows up in these a fair amount, not quite as much as the offering formula, but a fair amount, is something that today we call the appeal to the living. And we call it that because it's actually a pretty fitting title, because this is exactly what this text does. It's written as if the tomb owner is talking to you and is appealing to you as the visitor to do things for them. So that might be, like I was talking about, bringing actual physical offerings. It might be saying the offering prayer for them, and it could be various other things as well. So one example from the tomb of Neok Pepe from Saqqara and the late Old Kingdom, for example, goes like this. Oh you who live on earth, and who shall pass by this tomb of mine, pour water and beer for me which you possess. If you have nothing, then you shall speak with your mouth and offer with your hand bread, beer, oxen, fowl, incense, and pure things. Now, in this case, it's sometimes it's a little hard to tell with the transition in the middle of the text, but what he's saying here is if you don't actually have the real thing with you that you can offer, like water and beer that he mentions at the beginning, then you should make an offering by speaking and essentially speaking the offering prayer. He summarizes this by saying that you should say this with your hand outstretched. And he says, if you have nothing, then you should speak with your mouth and say these offerings: bread, beer, oxen, fowl, incense, and pure things. And these are actually the same items that show up most in that offering formula or offering prayer I was talking about. So while he's saying it in a very short fashion here, he's essentially saying that you should say this sort of offering prayer for him that helps provide these most basic staples that they wanted, which were bread, beer, oxen, fowl, incense, and sometimes they say oils as well. And then oftentimes they sum it up as like all good and pure things. Now, in these texts, this appeal to the living, they also often include suggestions that you should do these things in order to help yourself. There's a bit of quid pro quo going on here where they say, you know, if you love life, you hate death, and you want these good things to happen, then you should say this for me. And they also sometimes will do almost like a veiled threat in a way too. They'll say, you know, don't do anything bad, basically, or, you know, I'm an effective awk, you don't want to mess with me essentially. I can do things for you or against you in the necropolis. So you could, it kind of goes both ways, but most of the time this is focused on the positive ones and why you should do these positive things for them. Now, considering everything I've just said about wanting to have people visit your tomb, these possible veiled threats and so forth, you might be wondering, but what about curses? Didn't they have curses threatening people who entered tombs? Well, yes and no. And what I mean by that is that the types of curses that we see and hear about in movies or other media that threaten death for entering a royal tomb, for example, such as the supposed curse of Tutankhamun, those do not actually exist. They're not a real thing. The curse of Tutankhamun was completely made up by newspapers and their correspondents who wanted to get a scoop to publish before the Times of London related to the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. And generally speaking, curses were actually not a thing in royal tombs. There's an exception or two from very late periods in Egyptian history, but they're also very different from this Hollywood style, you know, newspaper made-up kind of curses as well. And as a general rule, they just didn't show up in royal tombs. But some tombs do have texts that you might call curses, or perhaps a better term for this would actually be threats. But these are much more mundane than what people generally envision when they think of a curse in a tomb, right? And they are nothing like the Hollywood version of curses. So here's a typical example, also from the late Old Kingdom. This is from a tomb of Ankh Weja Ichi at Giza. And it says, quote, the scribe in the presence Itchy speaks. So in other words, he's gonna say this to you, this following part. And he says, with regard to any person who shall take stones from this tomb of mine of the necropolis, I shall be judged with them on this matter by the God. For I am an excellent Ach who knows his spells. And that's it. That's the whole threat, right? Definitely not the kind of thing you're gonna hear about in Hollywood, not threatening any like major calamities. And you'll notice there's very specific things that are talked about in these in terms of what you're not supposed to do. Did you notice he doesn't say anything about like not entering his tomb or anything, right? So there are occasional other threats that do get more violent that show up in some of these texts. So, for example, there are a couple of them that threaten to wring a person's neck like a bird, but these are much less common than these more mundane ones, which really are just about being judged when entering the afterlife, being judged by the afterlife god Osiris, and refer to sometimes this person being an excellent or effective. And ah being the part of the person that comes into being after you've died and the proper rituals have been carried out for you and you make it to the afterlife. This is a part of the person that was effective both in the afterlife and among the living as well. And so he's saying that he's he's very adept, he knows his spells, he is powerful, so he is somebody you don't want to be judged against in front of the god, essentially. Now you'll also notice that the offense here isn't entering the tomb or like something you might hear about in Hollywood, like breaking the seal of the tomb. And this rather is the concern is that you might damage the tomb either by just literally defacing it because you're being mean or something, or you want to reuse it, you're removing the name, putting your own name in, or you might be wanting to take some of the building materials from the tomb for your own use. And these are all themes you you see in these sort of whatever you want to call them, curses or threats, right? But they all have to do with damaging the tomb. So it's all about like damaging something in there or taking stone blocks or something along those lines. And that's because they fundamentally did want people to enter these spaces, right? These were not meant to be completely sealed. They want people coming and bringing them offerings, saying these prayers for them, and so forth. They simply wanted people to treat these spaces with the proper respect as sacred spaces because that's really what they were considered to be. Is sacred spaces. So I hope you've enjoyed this episode. Next week we're going to be exploring another aspect of how people interacted with sacred space and the divine, and you won't wanna miss it. So make sure you're subscribed so you won't miss that episode.