When I heard the news of this year's big show at the National Geographic Museum, which is on the first floor of headquarters, I couldn't wait to see it.
It was going to focus on the world's most famous pharaoh, King Tut, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of his tomb.
And I was going to get a guided tour with National Geographic archaeologist in residence, Fred Hebert.
Oh my God, it's like a secret tomb door.
The exhibit is dark and mysterious kind of like a maze with walls of hieroglyphics all around As we move through there are glimpses of some of the tomb's treasures and photographs of its discovery We can hear voices whispering the spells the Egyptian priests used to protect the king's journey to the afterlife Spell 151B from the Book of the Dead When Egyptologists see this inscription, they know that they're dealing with a mortal who's going to become immortal.
It gives me goosebumps just looking at that.
I'm Amy Briggs, executive editor of National Geographic History magazine.
And you're listening to Overheard, a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have at Nat Geo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world.
this week it's been 100 years since howard carter first appeared into tootin commons tomb so we're doing a deep dive into the life death and afterlife of the boy king all that's coming up after the break but first adventure is never far away with a free one month trial to nat geo digital for starters there's full access to our stories online with new stories published every day plus every nat geo issue ever published is in our digital archive there's a whole lot more for subscribers and you can check it all out for free at natgeo .com slash explore more.
To get to know Tut a little better, I sat down with Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist, to ask her a few questions about Tut's mummification in the ancient Egyptian afterlife.
Could you please, for the audience, say your name and what you do?
My name is Salima Ikram, and I am a distinguished university professor at the American University in Cairo.
And so basically I teach, but I also excavate, and I also work in museums. So I want to talk a little bit now about probably the most famous pharaoh in the world, King Tut.
Let's start with some basics.
Who was he? Well, Tutankhamen was, until 1922, almost an unknown king.
But in ancient Egypt, he was a very important ruler because he was a transition king.
Basically, his father, Akhenaten, had changed the religion of Egypt, changed the capital, and changed the power and political structure so that he had much more power.
He was even more divine on earth than his predecessors, and he closed down several temples.
This did not go down well with the general populace or the priests of the chief god, Amun -Rei.
So when Tutankhamen came to the throne, he actually restored the order, what was regarded as the proper order that had been going on for almost 2 ,000 years.
So he was really a significant pharaoh because he restored Egypt, he gave the gods back everything.
And so for the ancient Egyptians, he must have had during his reign, quite a great prominence.
So, he's a transitional pharaoh, he dies.
How does his tomb go undiscovered for so long?
Well, sadly, he was succeeded by I very briefly and then his military commander, Horamheb.
Now, Horamheb did not have any blood relationship to any royalty.
And so, he was probably quite insecure about his position.
So he set about getting rid of any interim people.
So Horm have just crossed out Tutankhamun's name, and so Tutankhamun, by being erased, sort of passed into obscurity very quickly.
Plus he had a tiny tomb, and then subsequently other tombs were cut nearby, and their debris just completely covered this tomb and buried it.
So Tutankhamun just sort of vanished from the annals of history.
This is why, of course, it's the only virtually intact royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings that we have. So, of course, it's going to be the most famous pharaoh right then and there, especially when you look at what was inside that tomb.
So why were Egyptians mummified in the first place?
Well, the Egyptians believed that when you died, you could be resurrected and that your soul needed a vessel and that would be your body, ideally.
and so they preserved the body so that your soul could animate it and you could enjoy the afterlife just as you enjoyed this one Was the purpose different for say the pharaohs or the queens or same thing?
Basically resurrection I mean the pharaohs had a dual afterlife poor things because on one level the pharaoh was a human being so they had a human happy pharaoh afterlife but on another level the pharaoh was also a god So that aspect of the Pharaoh poor thing didn't get much rest because they fused with the sun god and helped him fight forces of darkness, chaos and evil every night in order so the sun would be reborn the next day.
So I want to talk a little bit about mummification in general.
The thing is that mummification evolved over 3000 years.
So let me give you this high end, fantastic, fabulous kind of new kingdom mummification.
First thing you do is you remove the brain.
You stick a pointy, sharp, pointy stick through the left nostril and break through the ethmoid and prod about so your brain gets a bit mushy.
And then you can use something with a little hook on it.
And then using the hook, get rid of the brain.
Always make me worried about sneezing.
Your brain come out your nose.
After that, you pour in a bunch of resin that's melted.
it and sometimes the resin can be mixed with beeswax or oils or other things.
And then the next thing that you do is you go down to the left side of the body and you make a cut and you stick your hopefully small hand in and start removing the internal organs.
So, the intestines, the liver, the stomach and you break through the diaphragm and you pull out the lungs as well.
And then you you really desiccate it properly using natron and natron is a naturally occurring substance it's basically a combination of salt and baking soda that's supposed to go on for about 40 days and then after that what happens is they have to slightly make you a bit more flexible to position you and wrap you so that nothing falls off so the next 30 days are spent re -anointing the body positioning it, wrapping it in linen bandages and placing amulets in key positions.
So what's unusual about Tazmami?
So Tutankhamen was, first of all, the amount of this black resin substance that was used over him.
People used to call it bitumen.
But technically, if you have not done your analyses of these embalming materials, It is safest and probably most scientific to call this black material black goo.
So he's got a lot of black goo.
Yeah, he had all this black goo all over him.
Also, his embalming cut was in a very different place.
It went from his belly button out to the left side as opposed to vertically or diagonally on the left side.
So that was weird. When I was looking at his mummification, it occurred to me that maybe he had been mummified so that he was showing himself as the reborn god Osiris, because the king during his lifetime is the god Horus.
Upon his death, he morphs into the god Osiris, god of the dead, and Osiris is shown because he is rebirth, resurrection, and fertility with a dark color because this blackness is the same word for Egypt as Kemet, means the black land, because of the black fertile soil that the Nile flood deposited.
And so this was in a way showing himself as Osiris, and he's also wearing the headdress that we associate with Osiris.
And on one of the walls of his tomb, he is shown very much as Osiris, which you don't see generally.
That's mummy, you know, with his broken leg or a club foot.
Do you think he was a weakling?
I mean, he's often portrayed and you get look at these restorations, reconstructions of him being like that.
But I don't necessarily think that's so because as I, you know, still we need more of the evidence from the CT scans that will allow us to interpret this more clearly.
But even sometimes with a clubfoot, you can manage to walk relatively well.
And certainly none of his sticks and none of his shoes show any evidence of uneven wear.
That was quite interesting.
And also, we do have images of him being in battle.
Now, of course, that's a trope.
That's what a king does.
But he also had weapons in his tomb from when he was a child and when he was an adult.
And also, weirdly, a suit of leather armor.
Now, the parade armor, you know, fine.
But this was real usable stuff.
You wouldn't really have that in a tomb unless you might have used it or worn it, not just for parade purposes.
purposes so i think there is a sufficient body of evidence to say that he was active even if he had some sort of thing wrong with him um it doesn't mean that you're confined to a chair so it sounds like too from the mummy itself we're not able to determine how he died that that's a subject of debate yes oh there are so many theories about how he died what's your favorite um oh i don't I'll just list them, shall I?
Okay. Chariot accident, being kicked by a horse, being bitten by a hippo, murdered, not quite sure how.
Maybe the malaria was worse than we thought.
And I'm sure I'm missing a couple.
The hippo one is intriguing.
Anything is possible.
So what do you think King Tut's legacy means for modern Egypt?
Tutankhamen is probably the best pharaoh Egypt ever had.
He is the only pharaoh who has looked after that country, not just during his reign, but since he was rediscovered in 1922, because he has brought good press, tourists, and all of the good things associated to Egypt.
And also he has inspired the world, clothes, furniture styles, dance styles, cosmetics, music, all things that have been Egyptianized thanks to Tutankhamen.
So he is really the gift that keeps on giving so that people learn about ancient Egypt and therefore want to know more about it and modern Egypt.
And we kind of have to thank Horemheb for that, too.
just you know don't say his name that often he doesn't get that much credit hey there do you ever wonder what would happen if cinderella started her own rock band or if medusa realized just how cool her hair was well there's a webby award -winning show called girl tales that takes classic stories and puts a unique twist on them giving girls the chance to save the day use their intelligence and bravery and show that they can be the heroes of their own stories if you are ready for an adventure find girl tales wherever you get your podcasts there are a lot of perks to working at national geographic
among them free tickets to the museum two adults perfect this season's exhibit is about king tut's tomb and his his journey into the afterlife.
Here to guide me through this exhibit is archeologist in residence, Fred Hebert.
Why don't we get started?
Okay, great. Did you close the door behind you, Amy?
Yes, I will close the door behind me.
Bye. All right, we're locked in now.
Yeah, we're locked in, click.
Okay, so we're coming in to the first gallery and we're looking at a black and white picture of the outside of Tet's tomb.
so this is really a celebration of the centennial of the discovery of tootin commons tomb was discovered by an englishman named howard carter and didn't some archaeologists think that he didn't exist like wasn't there debate about whether he's even real there were very few documents about him for two reasons he died when he was 19 so he didn't really have a lot of track record, but also his family name was still sort of on the blacklist. And literally we had one or two mentions of Tutankhamen in the record and that was it.
So this is sort of a wild goose chase then for Howard Carter.
I mean, he's really rolling the dice.
He spent a lot of money.
He spent a lot of his bankrollers money and uh by 1922 they hadn't found anything and his his funder was really tired said like no more forget it he was gonna cut him off he was gonna cut him off and our character said like we just have this one place i really really really really want to go in 1922.
so the he finds the first step.
So is that a picture of it on the wall right there?
There's a black and white picture.
There is the entrance of the tomb.
Stairs leading down to an ominous dark entrance.
An ominous. And if you can imagine after all those years he wrote a telegram back to England and said to his funder, please come right away we found a tomb.
By the end of November 1922 he had cleared down the steps to a doorway away and he peered in through that door and that's when he started to see the glint of gold that's one of the most famous phrases in the whole history of archaeology what do you see wonderful things it looks like there's pieces of a chariot i can make out a bust i think of Tutankhamen kind of like tucked away underneath some of the wreckage chests there are so many things in here that we've never seen before because this is the first time we've seen pretty much an intact royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings so we're coming
up on one of our things of it I'm really really excited about it the recreation of the burial chamber so when we're looking at the the recreation of the shrine here.
It's huge. It's taller than me.
It's taller than Fred.
This is about the size of the space.
This is a smaller scale, but here are the ritual ores that were laid out.
So we've got the ores, and then the exhibit recreates on the walls the paintings that are on the inside.
So it's depicting that party, and in the middle scene, you see the Opening of the Mouth ceremony where the new Pharaoh the high priest is opening Todd's mouth at the mummy's mouth to give him air to give him voice so cool it's all depicted right here my favorite objects believe it or not are not the gold objects right not the beautifully inscribed on I like the things like the brooms I like the underwear there's this one little tablet that was made out of unbaked clay that was placed right in front of the Anubis.
We can go take a look at that.
An Anubis is a statue of a jackal.
And this statue stared at the burial chamber.
And it was staring at the tomb for 3 ,200 years.
He's staring at me right now.
Yeah. He's staring at you.
In between its paws, and it's hardly ever mentioned, or described, or photographed, was this little modest clay tablet that said, And by the way, nobody should touch this secret chamber.
And if you do, the fire of sands will burn you up.
And that, Amy, it's just a verse from the Book of the Dead.
That was interpreted by the journalists as the curse on the tomb.
That's the origin of that.
Of that little clay tablet.
Little clay tablet.
Now, there's one more story I want to tell you.
and we can talk about it here on the other part, you'll notice that there is a little panel in the second part of the exhibition that says one fact.
I think a lot of people kind of miss it.
Let's see, we've got six steps.
Right. Six steps to mummification, and then what's number one?
Removing the organs.
And here, in sort of like a footnote, it says, oh, by the way, Tote was buried without his heart.
Yeah, the sentence says, the heart was essential for the final judgment but for unknown reasons Tutte's heart was removed all right so Fred where's the heart do you think when we get together with 400 Egyptologists on a regular basis that we talk about anything else so what's up with time what happened to his heart we don't know the heart is essential for going to the afterlife and you also have to realize realized that there are a lot of differences in the mummification of Tutankhamun because he was involved in this time of change, going back to the old order.
So the priests were probably like, anxious, right, you know?
How do we get Tut to the afterlife?
So the theory is that the priests were doing a little bit extra to earn the God's favor again.
Totally extra, totally.
They were just sort of like you know, our biggest challenge is to get Tut to the afterlife.
life no nothing nothing will be spared we'll put more resin on him than anybody has ever seen before we'll put more stuff in his tomb than anybody has had we'll have more depictions of him as osiris you know we need to get him to eternity otherwise our world as we know it will come to an end so the heart might be somewhere else sacred it's not like they were mummifying it and like whoops lost the heart like they were probably very deliberate they were deliberate But there are some other theories.
I mean, literally, we don't have any idea.
When I was out in California with the Egyptologist, I got sat down by a guy who said, I know exactly what happened.
I'm a medical doctor.
He said he was gored by a hippopotamus.
And it's like, what?
We can't test that one.
There's no hippo autopsy.
There's nothing really to do with that, right?
This has been amazing, Fred.
Thank you so, so much. What's not to love?
And then we exit through the gift shop.
One of the many things that makes King Tut unique is the sheer quantity of stuff that was found in his tomb.
One of our graphics editors for the magazine, Patricia Healy, counted and found that there are more than 5 ,000 total artifacts there.
This gave me an idea for a game.
After my museum tour with Brad, I invited producer Brian Gutierrez to get behind the mic so I could quiz him on his King Tut knowledge In a segment I call Tutankhamen Sense.
Is that too much? So I figure before we actually play the game, I want to talk to you just a little bit about the episode so that we're both.
OK. We're both like in the tut zone.
Yes. Where are we with the episode?
How's it coming? Good.
We've got two interviews.
You did a tour of the museum with Fred.
And we had Salima right where I'm sitting just a few days ago.
And she told you everything she knows about King Tut.
Both Salima and Fred are just so unbelievably, like, human and normal when you sit down with them.
You're like, I don't think many people know King Tut's mommy was covered in goo.
But, like, there's something sort of, like, charming and cool about, A, learning that fact and being like, wow, that was weird. But also that, like, there's still stuff they don't know.
Like, they don't know what the goo is, hence calling it goo.
Yeah. And it's more compelling and interesting, I think, when you call it black goo than if you call it, you know, ancient resin.
goo. I know exactly what that is and it stays put.
Everyone has seen goo before.
Exactly. But not this goo.
No, this is ancient Egyptian goo.
It's very, very specific.
It's King Tut's ancient Egyptian goo.
Yeah. All right. So you ready to start?
Let's play a game. Let's play a game.
All right. I'm going to give you a category.
Okay. And you have to guess how many of there were of that thing in the tomb.
Yeah. You get three tries at each one.
If you get it right, you get a point.
If you don't, I get a point.
What do I do if I win?
I don't know. We haven't figured out the prize yet okay well what do you want do you want i've always wanted a king tut mouse pad i will buy you a you will be okay that's what you're gonna if brian if you win you get a king tut mouse pad if i win i guess i get a king tut mouse pad all right all right we're playing for the pad we're playing for the pad so the ancient egyptian belief was that the king was going on a journey through the afterlife right and it was the responsibility of the living to to pack his tomb like a giant suitcase with everything he might need.
Not just golden goodies and jewels and things, but think like practical stuff.
Clothes, toiletries, food, furniture.
There are even like bouquets of flowers in Tut's tomb that are preserved.
Okay, how many underwear were found in Tut's tomb?
What does Egyptian underwear look like?
Ancient Egyptian underwear.
Ancient Egyptian underwear doesn't look like modern underwear.
So we're not thinking about like...
Some hanes. Yeah, hanes, no boxers or briefs.
They're loincloths.
I will say maybe he needed a month of underwear.
I'll say 30. Higher.
Two months, 60 pairs of underwear.
Higher. Wow. Okay. Well, I'll add another 30.
I'll say 90. The correct answer is 130 loincloths, aka underpants.
Wow. So Tut was ready for any occasion, it seems. Okay.
So next category is food.
Food. Oh, okay. There's food in there.
Yes. Yes. Even the dead have to eat in the afterlife.
Okay. And Tut's tomb was packed with a feast fit for a pharaoh.
There was meat, there were grains, there were fruits, there was garlic, and there was even cake.
So in all, how many containers of food were there?
These are like Tupperwares?
It's the ancient Egyptian version of Tupperware.
Hmm. Well, okay. So if he needs underwear to last him for 130 days, I'm guessing that's how long he's got until he can refresh on stuff.
And you need three meals a day.
So I will say 390 foods.
Lower. 200? Wow. Right on the nose.
There are almost 200 containers, baskets, vessels, boxes.
48 of them are chicken -shaped, or Or duck -shaped.
They're probably duck -shaped.
When I saw them, they looked like chicken.
And those contained dried meat.
So these are some of the first things that Howard Carter sees when he looks into the tomb.
Okay, last not least, Tutankhamen also has a wine cellar going on in his tomb.
How many jars of wine did King Tut have?
Okay, so I feel like I've been underestimating a lot of these things.
So I'm going to guess a big number.
I'm going to say 150.
Lower. 72. Lower. how about 30 wow on the nose there were 30 giant jars of wine plus wine cups to drink it in so yeah cup was up for a dinner party he had food he had clean clothes right and he had wine so at the end of our game yeah the score is amy one brian two congratulations brian you are the winner hooray thank you thank you thank you studio audience and you'll be the winner of a king tit mouse pack I'm a human polygraph I'm actually not listening to the questions at all I'm just paying careful attention to your pulse and the color of your face and whether I'm touching my nose or not are you
looking down to the left?
that's where my laptop is so I'm usually looking down to my left I can tell you're lying to me right now alright, I think we're good Okay.
Woo! If you like what you hear and want to support more content like this, please rate and review us in your podcast app.
And consider a National Geographic subscription.
That's the best way to support Overheard. Go to natgeo .com slash exploremore to subscribe.
Next week, we'll have an episode from our sister show, Greeking Out, about King Tut's father Akhenaten, the pharaoh who overhauled the religion of Egypt.
And if you want to learn more about Tut, take a look at our website where you can read our feature story on the 100th anniversary of his discovery and see Patricia Healy's graphic of the 5 ,000 plus items found in the tomb.
And if you happen to be in the Washington, D .C.
area, you might want to take a look at our museum exhibit for yourself.
That's all in your show notes right there in your podcast app.
This week's Overheard episode is produced by senior producer Brian Gutierrez.
Our other senior producer is Jacob Pinter.
Our producers are Kyrie Douglas and Alana Strauss.
Our senior editor is Eli Chen.
Our manager of audio is Carla Wills.
Our executive producer of audio is Dabar Artelon.
Our photo editor is Julie Howe.
Our copy editors are Caroline Braun, Cindy Laettner, Amy Kolczak, and Jennifer Villaga.
Ted Wood sound designed this episode.
Anstale Su composed our theme music.
This podcast is a production of National Geographic Partners.
Michael Tribble is the Vice President of Integrated Storytelling.
Nathan Lump is National Geographic's Editor -in -Chief, and I'm your host, Amy Briggs.
Thanks for listening, and see you next time.
