Hello and welcome to homeschool history.
I'm Greg Jenner, the historian behind TV's horrible histories and host of the BBC Radio 4 podcast, You're Dead To Me.
I'm here to deliver a snappy history lesson to entertain and educate the whole family.
Who says that homeschooling can't be fun?
Today we are traveling back over 3000 years to ancient Egypt to learn about religion, magic, gods, and not -so -yummy mummies.
And when we say Ancient Egypt, we're talking about a civilization that lasted over 3 ,000 years, which is massive, so today we'll just cover the era known as the New Kingdom, which lasted from 1 ,550 BCE to 1 ,070 BCE.
We'll start with the ancient gods, because they were super important.
In the New Kingdom, Egyptians believed in many different gods, which were grouped into families.
For example, Amun the king of the gods, was married to Mut the vulture goddess and they had a son, Khonsu, who was the moon god.
And Egyptians also thought two gods could join together and become a new mega powerful fusion god kind of like in Power Rangers or the Crystal Gems from Steven Universe.
Amun joined up with Ra, the sun god, to become Amun -Ra the big boss god.
Speaking of bosses, during the New Kingdom Egypt was ruled by a Pharoah, these were usually powerful men like the mighty Rameses II or the teenager Tutankhamun.
But there was also Hatshepsut, the most successful woman pharoah to ever rule with full power And that power was huge.
Whatever they said was the law.
And power sometimes went to their heads a bit.
Pharaohs didn't just say they were all -powerful kings, they said they were also partly gods.
Yup, even though they obviously had a human dad, they would claim their real dad was the boss god Amun -Ra, who'd smelled so amazing that he charmed their mums into having a magical pharaoh baby.
Come on. You smell nice.
Thank you. Pharos took this idea of being Godly pretty seriously.
In his official artworks, Ramesses II, known as Ramesses the Great, was even shown worshipping himself!
That's even worse than liking your own selfies!
But, Pharos were only part -time gods, so let's get back to the main ones.
Hekka was the god of magic and medicine and Martz was the god of truth and justice.
There was also Happy with Blue Skin who was in charge of making the River Nile flood every year.
Now that might sound scary but it helped the crops grow so happy the flood god was flooded with praise.
Even the River Nile itself was seen as a god.
Some historians think it was considered lucky to drown in the Nile or get eaten by a Nile crocodile because then people got a free funeral and became a mini god themselves.
No way I'm being eaten.
Yikes! And we find chomping crocodiles scary, but Egyptians of the New Kingdom liked having scary gods on their side, to fight off evil spirits.
If you're combating dark powers, you don't want an adorable hamster defending you, do you?
The goddess Tuarete had a very important job protecting mums and newborn babies.
Cute. But she was also pretty terrifying, because Tuarete was part hippo, part crocodile and part lion.
to gain her protection ancient egyptians used hippo tusks to make magical amulets and wands although personally i would want my amulet to protect me from the angry hippo that i'd stolen the task from.
uh -oh hippo run away run away.
as well as amulets ancient egyptians also believed writing could be magical.
whereas we use an alphabet to write ancient priests wrote using pictures known as hieroglyphs and sometimes they would carve statues which they then inscribed with healing spells.
they would then pour holy water over a statue so it was infused with the spells like a magic tea bag and then people would drink the water as a magic potion.
and if people weren't thirsty they could also write the spells directly on their tongue but don't try this at home all you'll get is a mouthful of ink and a poorly tummy.
ancient egyptians thought they saw gods and magic everywhere in daily life but what happened when people stopped living.
Egyptians believed that when they died they would be judged by the god Osiris, god of the underworld, who would weigh their heart against a feather.
Now if the heart was heavier than the feather, their soul was gobbled up by a goddess called Amit, another crocodile lion hippo mashup.
a crocolio hip? a crocolippo?
a hillio croc? Nah, i can't figure it out.
Human hearts weigh a lot more than feathers but don't worry, Osiris's feather was magic and if a person was good in their life they would be ok.
Phew! Some ancient Egyptians were buried with their own book of the dead which was like a cross between a passport to the afterlife and a map but these books were very pricey so only very rich Egyptians could afford them.
If people were on a budget they could buy a ready made book of the dead and just get a scribe to fill in their name in the blank spaces but plenty of poor people were buried with no books of the dead at all.
The ancient Egyptian underworld must have been full of people asking for directions.
I'm lost! But in ancient Egyptian religion, being rich did not guarantee you access to the afterlife.
One story tells of a boy called Saïq Azireh who traveled between the worlds of the living and the dead and who saw two funerals, one for a rich man being buried with loads of fancy afterlife kit and one for a poor man being buried with nothing.
Bad news for the poor fella, right?
Mmm. No! plot twist, the rich guy's heart was too heavy because he had been a bad man, so Osiris took all of his fancy stuff and gave it to the poor guy who'd lived a good life and the rich guy was punished by having his eye socket used as a doorstop for all eternity.
Ouch i think i'd prefer to get eaten by the croco -lipo.
If a dead person passed all of these tests they didn't just enter the afterlife they also became one with the god Osiris, but a few centuries after the kingdom period, the rules were changed and only men got to be with Osiris.
Women instead became part of Hathor, the goddess of partying, who looked like a cow.
Which, I mean, let's be honest, sounds way better.
I mean, what does a party cow listen to?
Presumably Moooooh -sic.
No, sorry, bad joke.
Also it was believed that the living could talk to the dead.
if the living wanted a favor from the gods they could write letters to a dead relative and ask them to put in a good word with ra.
i mean sounds a lot better than getting a door slammed in your eye socket doesn't it.
of course we know about this stuff thanks to archaeologists discovering ancient egyptian tombs with their amazing treasures and writings on the wall.
but these amazing finds are a bit misleading because they mostly belonged to rich people.
many millions of egyptians were not buried this way.
For example, only rich Egyptians could afford coffins.
Wood was so expensive in Egypt, where trees rarely grew, that some people would rent a coffin to pretend to be posh, but then their body would be chucked out to make room for the next person.
So the ancient Egyptian coffins you might see in museums don't represent what happened for most ordinary people.
Oh, and that brings us on to mummies.
The god of mummification was the jackal -headed Anubis who was often shown taking dead people by the hand to guide them in the afterlife, I guess he was a guide dog, sort of, good to know in the afterlife, particularly if you couldn't afford a book of the dead.
I'm still lost... mummification involved treating the body with a special substance called natron which would dry it out and stop it rotting and the priests also removed the internal organs, out would come the stomach, the liver, the lungs and the intestines, these body parts were put under the protection of gang of special gods called the four sons of Horus and Horus was an important falcon -headed god.
He looked like a bird. Sometimes these organs were put inside special containers called canopic jars which would then be buried alongside the body.
So I guess people still had their organs, they just didn't have them inside them.
The brain was also yanked out but through the nose and it wasn't popped in a jar, it was just chucked away like a snotty hanky.
Ancient Egyptians obviously didn't need a brain to be an eternal party cow.
However just like those expensive afterlife passports and those fancy wooden coffins mummification seems to be mostly just for rich people.
Yet ancient Egyptians thought that poor people could get to the afterlife, so that raises a big old question.
If people didn't need to be mummified to get to join Osiris and Hathor, the party cow, then what was mummification for?
we used to think it was about preserving the body.
but some expert egyptologists have changed their mind.
they now think mummification was less about preparing the dead to meet Osiris and more about telling the surviving family members that their loved one had been transformed into a god.
in ancient art Osiris was shown with tar black skin so mummies would be treated with nice smelling oils and resins and then covered in a thick tar to make them look more like Osiris.
In fact the word mummy comes from the Persian word for tar.
The bodies were wrapped in clean white bandages to make them look more like carved statues of the gods, because stone of course is a sort of creamy colour.
Some mummies were also put inside golden sarcophagi coffins because gods were sometimes said to shine like gold and their face masks were painted not to look like them but to look like idealized gods.
It was the ultimate Instagram filter.
So if modern Egyptologists are correct, a wrapped up mummy wasn't meant to be preserved, it was meant to be transformed.
Nice! Speaking of wrapping things up, it's time now for the quiz.
We have 5 questions, are you ready?
Okay, here we go! Question 1.
The word mummy comes from the Persian word for what black sticky substance?
2. Tuareth was a scary goddess who protected mums and babies and she was a mashup of which three dangerous animals.
3. How did Ancient Egyptians believe the god Osiris judged people after their death?
4. What special book was like a passport and a map of the afterlife?
5. five, how was the brain removed during mummification?
Okay now it's time for the answers.
The answer to question one, the Persian word for Mummy means tar.
The answer to question two, Tuarit was a goddess made up of crocodile, lion and hippobits.
Scary! The answer to question three, Osiris would weigh the person's heart against a feather to see if it was lighter.
the answer to question four the passport to the afterlife was the book of the dead and the answer to question five the brain was removed through the nose gross.
How did you do, if you didn't get all five that's okay why not listen to a different episode from series 1 or 2 on BBC sounds.
Tune in next time for some more homeschool history and make sure to subscribe to the podcast on BBC sounds so you never miss an episode.
Thank you for listening, take care and goodbye.
Home School History was a production by the The script was by Gabby, Hutchison Crouch, Hannah Mackenzie, Emma Neguse and me.
The producer was Abi Patterson, and the historical advisor was Dr. Campbell Price from the Manchester Museum.
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