Imagine you are going to this really incredible
dinner party. OK, I am in. Right. The food is
amazing. The wine is just flowing. And the mood
is it's absolutely electric. Yeah, good vibes
all around. Exactly. You're sitting there laughing
with your friends, having a great time. And then
right in the middle of dessert, the host clinks
their glass and stands up. Uh -oh. Speech time.
Worse. The host has a servant come out. physically
pass around a hyper realistic carved wooden corpse
inside a tiny coffin. Oh wow that is yeah that's
intense. Right and the host just looks at you
and says look at this dead body. Drink up enjoy
your night because tomorrow you could look exactly
like this. Well, I mean, that definitely changes
the vibe of the evening. It is the ultimate buzzkill
by modern standards. I mean, if someone did that
today, you'd leave. Oh, absolutely. I'd be out
the door. But thousands of years ago, that was
literally just a standard Tuesday night in ancient
Egypt. Just a normal dinner party. Yeah. And
honestly, it doesn't even stop there. Imagine
a society where you need your bread dough with
your bare feet, but you meticulously shape animal
dung with your hands. It sounds completely backward
to us. It really does. Welcome to the deep dive,
everyone. I am so thrilled. you are joining us
today because we are completely tearing down.
the textbook version of history. We really are.
We're throwing it out. You know the one I'm talking
about, right? The grand sterile pictures of the
Great Pyramid of Giza, the golden mask of King
Tut, those frozen, silent statues. Yeah, the
stuff you see in every museum brochure. Exactly.
We are completely bypassing all of that monumental
propaganda today. We are stepping entirely off
the royal barge and just wading directly into
the muddy, loud and incredibly complex streets
of the everyday people. Yes. The mission today
is to completely rewire how you picture this
ancient civilization. We're going to explore
how regular people actually survived. How they
engineered their daily habits. Right. And the
incredibly bizarre but shockingly logical rules
they live by. Have you ever wondered what the
daily grind actually looked like back then? Well,
we have a literal guidebook for it. An absolutely
incredible guidebook. We are diving deep into
the historical accounts of Herodotus. The ancient
Greek writer, right? Yeah, often called the father
of history. He traveled extensively and documented
the known world. And his account of Egypt is
just an absolute anthropological goldmine. It's
so detailed. It is. What makes the material we're
using today so special is that we are actively
ignoring. the lists of kings, you know, the dynasties,
the wars. We're skipping the battles. Exactly.
Instead, we are focusing on the granular, visceral
realities of their daily rituals, their strict
social hierarchies, and the ingenious and honestly,
sometimes horrifying ways they adapted to life
along the Nile River. And to even begin to understand
these people through the eyes of Herodotus, we
really have to start with a concept that fundamentally
governed their entire society. It's fascinating.
It's like they looked at the rest of the known
world, looked at how everyone else was operating,
and collectively decided, whatever you're doing,
we're going to do the exact opposite. Herodotus
actually makes a point to explicitly state this
in the text. Oh, he calls it out directly. He
does. He observes that the Egyptians, in agreement
with their unique climate and the river, because
the Nile behaves completely differently from
all other rivers in the Mediterranean world,
they established manners and customs that were
essentially the reverse of other men in almost
all matters. So it was intentional. It appears
as a highly conscious deliberate differentiation.
They define themselves by their contrast to the
outside world. I was reading through these reversals
and they are staggering. I mean, let's start
with gender roles and the economy. Oh, this is
a big one. Yeah, in the source material, Herodotus
is absolutely baffled to report that in Egypt,
the women frequent the market and carry on trade
while the men remain at home to weave. To fully
appreciate his shock there, you really have to
put yourself in the sandals of an ancient Greek
man. Right, because their society was so different.
Exactly. In the wider ancient Mediterranean,
the public sphere, commerce, the marketplace,
you know, the agora, that was strictly almost
aggressively the domain of men. Men did the trading.
Women stayed home. Right. Women were largely
confined to the domestic sphere, and their primary
economic contribution was textile work. So seeing
women controlling the commerce and men sitting
at the looms, that was a complete inversion of
his perceived now. And it isn't just a simple
swap of job titles either. The physical mechanics
of the jobs themselves were inverted. This is
where it gets really granular. I had to read
the section on weaving like three times to make
sure I understood it. He points out that when
men sit down to weave in Egypt, the physical
act is backward. Backwards? How? Well, other
nations push the wolf upwards, but the Egyptians
push it downwards. Ah, let's unpack the mechanics
of that because it's brilliant. If you look at
a traditional ancient warp -weighted loom, the
warp threads hang vertically. OK, got it. And
the whiff, or the whift, are the horizontal threads
that you weave in and out. In most ancient cultures,
you start weaving at the top and beat those horizontal
threads upward to pack them tight. So you're
constantly pushing up. Exactly. You are working
against gravity to create a dense fabric. But
the Egyptians designed their looms to beat the
whiff downwards, utilizing gravity rather than
fighting it. Wow. So it's a completely different
ergonomic approach. It's pure efficiency. a totally
different approach to textile manufacturing.
So even their muscle memory was contrarian. And
we see this physical rebellion in how they carried
things too. Oh, the burdens? Yeah, men carried
burdens upon their heads while the women carried
them upon their shoulders. It's just fascinating
how deeply this identity of otherness was baked
into their physical movements. It was everywhere.
But they took this philosophy of inversion and
applied it to something deeply personal too,
like the categorization of bodily functions and
modesty. The Egyptian philosophy on public versus
private life is highly evolved. Herodotus notes
another physical inversion here. Women stand
to make water while men crouch down. Another
physical flip. Right, but the more profound observation
is about their spatial awareness of the body.
He writes that they ease themselves, meaning
They use the restroom indoors, hidden away in
their houses. Which makes sense to us. Yes. But
then they eat their meals outside, completely
exposed in the streets. Now see, to you and me,
eating at a sidewalk cafe and using indoor plumbing
sounds like a normal Tuesday. Perfectly normal.
But to an ancient outsider, this was incredibly
strange. Why hide one bodily necessity and flaunt
another? Great question. And Herodotus provides
their justification, which I think is just one
of the greatest quotes of ancient logic. He says
they believe, It is right to do secretly the
things that are unseemly though necessary, but
those which are not unseemly in public. The phrasing
unseemly though necessary reveals a highly sophisticated
framework for human dignity. It really does.
They recognize that biological waste is an inescapable
requirement of being alive. You cannot survive
without doing it. But they categorized it as
inherently corrupting or shameful. So keep it
inside. Therefore, it must be rigidly contained
within the private sphere. Sustenance, on the
other hand, the act of taking in food is life
-giving, communal, and carries no inherent shame.
So put it in the street. Let everyone see. Exactly.
It belongs in the light of day, in the public
square. It makes complete logical sense when
you break it down like that. But this strict
categorization of what is proper and improper,
and specifically who is responsible for what,
bleeds into their legal and family obligations.
in a way that feels incredibly tense. The laws.
Yeah. We have to talk about the laws regarding
aging parents. A massively critical issue in
the ancient world. I mean, there are no state
-sponsored nursing homes or retirement funds.
Right. No 401Ks. The family unit is literally
the only social safety net that exists. So according
to the text, sons are absolutely not compelled
to support their aging parents if they don't
want to. They could just walk away. Completely
legally free to do so. But daughters are forced
to care for them, no matter how unwilling they
might be. The law legally binds the daughter
to the burden of elder care while giving the
son a free pass. It sounds incredibly harsh.
Well, wait a minute, though. We just established
that women hold the economic power because they're
out in the markets trading. Yes. So is this law
a reflection of female empowerment because they
actually have the money, or is it just a deeply
entrenched patriarchal system forcing the burden
of caregiving exclusively onto women? That is
the exact friction we need to explore here. Let's
look at the macroeconomic reality of their society.
In this structure, the women are the ones actively
generating liquid wealth. The cash flow. Exactly.
They are the merchants, the traders, the ones
out in the public sphere making transactions
and accumulating capital. The men are at home
leaving. So the women literally hold the purse
strings. Precisely. If a society needs to ensure
that its vulnerable elderly population doesn't
starve in the streets, you don't place the legal
financial burden on the demographic that is engaged
in domestic non -liquid labor. The weavers. Right.
You place it on the demographic that is actively
generating income. While modern sensibilities
might view it purely as a punitive gender burden
within the context of their specific economic
engine, it was a pragmatic legal mechanism. That
makes total sense. The daughters had the capital,
therefore the daughters bore the liability. It
is a stark example of legal obligations trailing
directly behind economic realities. That paints
such a complex picture. It's a society engineered
entirely around practical realities, even if
those realities look completely upside down to
outsiders. So if they are this pragmatic about
economics and modesty, what does this mean for
their physical bodies? Because this strict division
of what is proper and improper naturally extends
to how they treat their health and what they
put into their mouths. The Egyptian approach
to sustenance and bodily maintenance is arguably
the most intense aspect of their culture. It
is an incredibly regimented system of input and
output. Okay, let's talk about the diet because
the preparation methods are wild. The staples
are pretty standard for the ancient world. Bread
made of a grain, Herodotus calls maize or spelt,
they call this bread, chelestis. A very heavy,
dense grain. Right. And because they don't have
vineyards in the fertile flood plains, they drink
a wine made from barley. Basically ancient beer.
Exactly. Basically they were fueling a massive
civilization on bread and thick ancient beer.
The nutritional baseline was heavily carbohydrate
dependent. But it is the mechanical preparation
of that food that introduces another one of those
striking, deliberate inversions. The kneading.
Oh my gosh, this detail completely stopped me
in my tracks. It's a shocker. The text notes
that they need dough. The exact dough they're
going to bake and eat with their bare feet. Yep.
But when they're working with mud and gathering
up animal dungs for fuel or building materials,
they need that with their hands. It defies every
single modern instinct we have regarding sanitation.
We intuitively associate our hands with cleanliness
and our feet with the dirt of the earth. Exactly.
If I go to a bakery right now and the baker is
stomping on my sourdough, I am calling the health
inspector. Of course you are. But look at it
purely as an engineering problem. Have you ever
tried to knead a massive, dense trough of spelt
dough? I mean, kneading regular bread is tiring
enough. Right. It requires immense sustained
physical force. Using the musculature of the
arms and hands is exhausting. By stepping into
the trough and using the entire weight of the
human body driven by the legs, they achieved
maximum mechanical efficiency. So it's just physics.
Exactly. Conversely, working with mud, clay,
and dung to form bricks or fuel patties requires
fine motor control. You need the dexterity of
the fingers to shape the material properly. You
can't sculpt a brick with your toes. Right. They
completely discarded the symbolic notion of clean
hands versus dirty feet in favor of pure utilitarian
physics. It's brilliant, but honestly it's gross.
And then you look at their protein. They eat
fish, but the tech says they eat it sun -dried
and raw or cured and brined. Very salty. And
they do the same with birds. Quails and ducks
eaten entirely raw after curing them in salt.
So just picture it. A diet of foot -kneaded bread,
barley beer, and raw brined waterfowl. And despite
all of that, which sounds like a recipe for a
stomach bug, Herodotus makes an incredibly bold
medical claim. He really does. He states flat
out that the Egyptians are the healthiest people
of all men next to the Libyans. The healthiest
in the known world. Yeah. And he attributes this
incredible health to two distinct factors. The
worst is environmental. Their climate and their
seasons never really change, so their bodies
aren't subjected to the shocks of shifting weather
patterns. Stability is good for the immune system.
Right. But the second factor is their health
regimen. And calling it a regimen is an understatement.
It is an aggressive, biological intervention.
You are referring to the three -day purge? Yes.
For three successive days every single month,
they actively purge themselves. The text says
they use emetics and clisters. Let's define those
terms just so we really understand the severity
of what they were doing to themselves. Please
do. An emetic is a substance ingested specifically
to induce violent vomiting. Oh, boy. And a clister
is the ancient medical term for an enema, often
administered using hollow reeds or animal bladders
to flush the lower intestines. So for three straight
days every single month, they are violently flushing
out their entire digestive tract from both ends.
Essentially, yes. They're intentionally dehydrated.
themselves, stripping their gut biome, and dealing
with intense electrolyte imbalances. Why would
the healthiest people on earth subject themselves
to this? It all comes back to their fundamental
medical philosophy. They deeply believe that
all human diseases, every ailment that corrupts
the body, are produced entirely by the food we
eat. Wait, all diseases? All of them. They viewed
the human body as a pure vessel that is constantly
forced to take in impurities just to survive.
Sustenance is necessary, but it is also the root
cause of internal corruption. So eating's literally
slowly killing you? In their minds, yes. Therefore,
the only logical countermeasure is scheduled,
total evacuation. It wasn't a punishment. It
was highly systematized internal hygiene. They
viewed their food as a slow -acting poison. that
they had to constantly flesh out. Precisely.
And this extreme systematization didn't stop
with the Purge. The entire medical profession
was organized with the same rigid logic. I read
this and immediately thought of a modern high
-end hospital. It is very similar. In ancient
Egypt, according to the source, there are no
general practitioners. The concept of a family
doctor who looks at your throat and also checks
your knee That does not exist. The art of medicine
was strictly distributed and aggressively localized.
Each physician treats only one disease and absolutely
no more. The country is just swarming with these
hyper specialized doctors. It's fascinating.
You have physicians just for the eyes, physicians
just for the head. Doctors exclusively for the
teeth, doctors for affections of the stomach,
and doctors who specialize only in what Herodotus
calls more obscure ailments. Which is a fascinating
reflection of their broader worldview. Think
about the categorizations we've already discussed.
Right, indoor versus outdoor stuff. Exactly.
They strictly compartmentalize public versus
private life. They categorize men's labor versus
women's labor, unseemly actions versus seemly
actions. It makes perfect sense that they would
compartmentalize the human body into distinct
non -overlapping jurisdictions. If a physician
spends his entire life studying nothing but the
mechanics of the stomach, his exopiece is absolute.
You're the best stomach guy in the world. Exactly.
But it also means that if you have a systemic
issue, say, a fever that affects your head and
your stomach, you might be navigating a bureaucratic
nightmare of different specialists who refuse
to cross their jurisdictional lines. Sorry, I
only do eyes. You need the head guy. Exactly
that. It is a society obsessed with putting everything
into a highly specific box. And speaking of putting
things in boxes, this brings us back to that
incredible scene we started the show with. Ah,
the dinner party. The ultimate compartmentalization.
The morbid banquet. The visual of the wooden
corpse at the dinner party. It is one of the
most striking anthropological details in the
entire text. Let's look closer at the mechanics
of this tradition. You are at a wealthy household
enjoying your meal. A man enters carrying a highly
realistic, carved and painted wooden corpse inside
a coffin. A literal mini coffin. Herodotus specifies
the size. It's about one to two cubits long,
so anywhere from 18 to 36 inches. A substantial,
heavy, detailed piece of craftsmanship. Not just
a little trinket. No. He physically carries this
miniature dead body to every single guest who
is drinking, shows it in their face and says,
when thou lookest upon this, drink and be merry,
for thou shalt be such as this when thou art
dead. It is the literal embodiment of memento
mori. Remember that you must die. But what is
crucial to understand is the psychological mechanism
at play here. To our modern sensibilities, introducing
a symbol of death into a celebration is macabre.
It induces dread. Total dread. We spend enormous
amounts of cultural energy hiding death, keeping
it in hospitals and funeral homes away from our
daily lives. Right. If someone brought a coffin
to my birthday party, I would ask them to leave.
But the Egyptians were already deeply anxious
about physical corruption. Remember the three
days of violent purging? Slushing out the poison.
Right. They were constantly terrified of the
food they were eating, destroying them from the
inside out. By bringing a pristine, artificially
perfect wooden corpse into the room, they are
domesticating their greatest fear. Oh, wow. domesticating
death. They are pulling death out of the shadows,
putting it on the table, and acknowledging it
as the undeniable destination. Instead of causing
despair, the wooden corpse acted as a psychological
release valve. So it was a relief. Yes. It was
an engine for joy. The logic is, the purge will
eventually fail. The doctors will eventually
fail. We will all end up in a box. Therefore,
the only rational response is to maximize the
pleasure of this current cup of barley wine.
It is a radical acceptance of mortality used
as an excuse to party. They compartmentalize
their existential dread. Beautifully put. But
as intense as the average Egyptian's health regimen
was, it was child's play compared to the absolute
zenith of this society's obsession with purity.
We have to examine the people at the very top
of the hierarchy. The priesthood. The priests.
The societal obsession with cleanliness created
severe, insurmountable class divides. And the
priests were the architectural peak of that pyramid
of purity. They really were. Reading the daily
requirements for an Egyptian priest made me exhausted.
It wasn't just a vocation. It was an extreme,
punishing physical state of being. It was a full
-time biological commitment. Herodotus details
the regiment. First, they shave their entire
bodies every other day. completely hairless from
head to toe every 48 hours. No hair at all. The
reason provided is so that no lice or any foul
thing can be on them when they minister to the
gods. We have to consider the physical reality
of the ancient world. Parasites, lice, fleas,
these were ubiquitous facts of life. They were
everywhere. Hair, in this context, is viewed
entirely as a biological trap for dirt and infestation.
To be pure is to be smooth, barren, and unobstructed.
That makes sense. But the sheer physical labor
of maintaining a completely hairless body with
ancient bronze or copper razors every other day
is staggering. I can't even imagine the razor
burn. And then there is the wardrobe. They are
legally forbidden from wearing anything other
than... Let's think about the thermal and caloric
impact of that lifestyle. Egypt can be incredibly
hot. But the nights, especially in the desert
margins, are cold. Really cold. Immersing oneself
in cold water four times a day, particularly
in the middle of the night, while possessing
no insulating body hair and wearing only breathable
linen, means these priests were living in a constant
state of thermal friction. They must have been
shivering constantly. Their bodies were enduring
a completely different physical reality than
the common people. This rigorous discomfort literally
separated them from the masses. But the state
made sure they were heavily compensated for this
discomfort. The source points out a major economic
perk. They don't have to spend any of their own
money, which is huge. The society flowed to them
entirely. They are provided with massive daily
deliveries of sacred bread, beef, goose and grape
wine, which, by the way, was vastly superior
to the barley beer the commoners drank. Top shelf
stuff. But even with all this luxury, their diet
is intensely restricted. They are banned from
even tasting fish. And then there is the absolute
strangest dietary prohibition in the entire text.
Oh, the bean. The beans. The prohibition against
the bean is a fascinating study in symbolic biology.
Herodotus notes that the Egyptians don't generally
sow beans in their land. But whatever beans do
happen to grow naturally, they refuse to eat
them raw and they refuse to boil them. They avoid
them. But for the priests, the hatred of the
bean goes to an extreme psychological level.
A priest cannot even endure to look upon a bean.
Just looking at it is a sin. Just laying eyes
on a legume is considered deeply offensive to
their purity. They consider it an inherently
unclean kind of pulse. What is the ancient beef
with beans? If we connect this fear to the rest
of their medical philosophy, the logic actually
reveals itself. Remember, this is a culture that
believes food is the source of all internal disease,
leading them to purge their bowels for three
days a month. Right. The food poison theory.
Beans are notoriously complex carbohydrates that
are difficult for the human digestive tract to
break down. They ferment in the gut, producing
significant amounts of gas. They cause flatulence.
Exactly. For a priesthood obsessed with absolute
internal and external control, hairless, frozen,
wrapped in fresh linen, A food item that causes
a sudden, unpredictable, audible, and odorous
bodily reaction is the ultimate symbol of biological
chaos. Oh my gosh. Flatulence is a loss of internal
control. Therefore, the bean is the physical
manifestation of corruption. To ingest it is
to invite chaos into the body. To even look at
it is to invite the concept of impurity into
the mind. The bean is the ultimate enemy of the
three -day purge. It really is. It is so logical
when you view through their twisted medical framework.
Okay, so at the absolute top of the social ladder,
we have these hairless cold -water wash, bean
-hating priests dining on state -funded beef
and wine. The peak of purity. Let's look at the
absolute bottom of the ladder. Because the contrast
is heartbreaking and structurally brutal, we
need to talk about the swine herds. The untouchables
of ancient Egypt. Herodotus describes a societal
hatred for the pig that borders on phobia. It's
intense. The pig is considered such an abominable
polluting animal that if an average Egyptian
is walking down the street and even accidentally
brushes against a pig in passing, they have to
immediately stop what they're doing, walk into
the river and submerge themselves, clothes and
all, to wash the physical taint away. Immediate
decontamination. And because the animal is so
hated, the human beings whose job it is to tend
the pigs, the swineherds, are treated as walking
contagions. The stigma transfers entirely from
the animal to the laborer. Even though these
swineherds are native Egyptians born in the same
land, they are legally banned from entering any
temple in the country. Completely locked out
of the spiritual life of the society. Furthermore,
no one from any other class will give their daughter
in marriage to a swineherd, and no one will marry
a swineherd's daughter. They are forced to marry
exclusively among themselves. They are an entirely
endogamous class. A closed loop. The society
has built an impenetrable wall around them, ensuring
that their uncleanliness can never genetically
or socially infiltrate the rest of the population.
But this creates a massive logical paradox. It
does. If the pig is so universally hated, and
if simply touching one forces you to jump into
a river with your clothes on, why do they allow
pigs to exist in the society at all? Right, why
not just get rid of them? Why not just slaughter
all the pigs, eradicate the species from the
borders, and free these native Egyptians from
this miserable existence? It is the central paradox
of a purity -based society. The text provides
a very specific answer that shows how religious
dogma traps people. Okay, what is it? The pig
is abominable, yes, but it is also the singular
non -negotiable requirement for a highly specific
cosmic ritual. Wait, really? Yes. Herodotus notes
the one exception to the hatred of the pig. They
are required to sacrifice pigs to the moon and
to Dionysos, which is the Greek equivalent he
uses for the Egyptian god Osiris, once a month,
precisely on the full moon. Only on the full
moon. Yeah. The rest of the month, the pig is
a walking biohazard. Only on the full moon. And
on that specific day, the flesh of the pig is
actually eaten by the society. Wow. It is such
a vital ritual that the poor, who cannot afford
to buy a real pig from the swine herds, will
literally shape pigs out of dough and bake them
to offer as a sacrifice, just to participate
in the spiritual mechanics of the day. So the
society fundamentally hates the pig. But they
absolutely need the pig to balance their cosmic
checkbook once a month. And that need creates
the prison for the swine herds. Because someone
has to raise them. Exactly. The society requires
the unclean animal to appease specific deities.
Therefore, the society requires a specific group
of human beings to manage and cultivate that
uncleanliness 365 days a year. That is so dark.
The swine herds bear the burden of the society's
spiritual pollution so that the priests and the
elites can remain pure. They are essential to
the spiritual survival of Egypt, yet they are
utterly despised for providing that essential
service. It is a designated containment zone
for sin. It's incredible social engineering.
You lock the swine herds in a social cage, you
extract their unclean product once a month to
satisfy the gods, and then you go back to washing
in cold water and pretending they don't exist.
Exactly. And this intense obsession with managing
the physical body, keeping it pure, dealing with
its corruption, it naturally leads us to how
they handle the ultimate failure of the physical
body. When the three -day purges fail. When the
hyper -specialized doctors fail. We must transition
to the handling of the dead. Because the moment
life ceases, the Egyptian society does not stop
managing the body. No, they don't. Instead, a
highly regulated, deeply commercial, and incredibly
complex industrial machine kicks into gear. And
it begins instantly, before the body is even
cold, with the visceral reality of mourning.
And true to form, their grieving process is a
complete inversion of their daily habits. The
moment of death triggers a very public, intensely
physical reaction that deliberately sheds all
the trappings of their normally highly ordered
civilization. Herodotus paints a terrifying cinematic
picture. When a man of regard dies, the women
of the household don't just sit in a parlor and
weep quietly. No, they take it to the streets.
They go out to the mud. They take wet earth and
plaster it thickly over their heads and even
entirely cover their faces with mud. They obscure
their identities. They leave the actual corpse
inside the house and they roam through the city
streets. They bind up their garments, physically
expose their breasts, and wander the city beating
themselves in grief. And the men do the exact
same thing on their side of the city, beating
their chests. Think about the contrast here.
This is a society that values freshly washed
linen, indoor modesty for bodily functions, and
extreme cleanliness. Right. But in the face of
death, they deliberately cover themselves in
the filth of the earth, they expose their bodies
in the public streets, and they perform physical
violence upon themselves. It is a temporary,
socially sanctioned descent into chaos. Like
a pressure release valve. Exactly. They are physically
mirroring the biological chaos that has just
overtaken their loved one. And there's another
physical reversal here. We just talk about how
men normally shave their heads and chins, and
the priests shave their entire bodies. Smooth
and pure. But during mourning, the men deliberately
let the hair on their head and chin grow long.
They allow the body's natural, unclean processes
to proceed completely unchecked as a visible
manifestation of their sorrow. It's a striking
visual marker of grief. But once this public
display of chaos concludes, the body is handed
over to the embalmers. And this is where the
text shifts from emotional chaos to cold, hard.
commercial science. Embalming in ancient Egypt
was not just a religious duty performed by solemn
clerics. It was a dedicated, inherited craft.
It was a massive industry. The text describes
it exactly like a modern sales pitch. It really
does. When a grieving family brings a body to
the embalming workshop, the craftsmen act like
salesmen. They don't just take the body, they
present the family with a literal showroom of
options. Like buying a car. Yes. They have wooden
models of corpses, intricately carved and painted
to look incredibly realistic, representing three
different tiers of service. And the family has
to decide how much money they are willing to
spend to preserve their loved one. It is the
ancient equivalent of choosing a funeral package.
There are clear, rigid price points and wildly
different chemical and mechanical methodologies
for each tier. Let's walk through these showroom
options because the details are graphic, highly
scientific, and absolutely mesmerizing. Let's
start with tier one, the most expensive option,
the premium package for the ultra wealthy. This
is the process most people associate with mummies,
involving intense surgical intervention and expensive
imported materials. Right, it starts with the
brain. They take a specialized crooked iron tool,
insert it up through the nostrils, and physically
draw the brain tissue out. Just hook it right
out. Whatever they can't hook out, they dissolve
by pouring harsh drugs up into the cranial cavity
to flesh it out. It's incredibly invasive. Then
they take a sharp Ethiopian stone, essentially
a specialized obsidian scalpel, and slice open
the side of the belly. They surgically remove
all the internal organs. To stop the rot. They
cleanse the empty abdominal cavity with palm
wine and a mixture of pounded spices. Then they
pack the belly completely full of pure pounded
myrrh, cassia, and other aromatics, though Herodotus
notes they specifically do not use frankincense
for this. Interesting distinction. Then they
sew the body back up. And it is crucial to understand
that everything you just described is merely
the surgical preparation. The actual preservation,
the process of halting biological decay comes
next. And it relies on a very specific chemical
agent. Yes, the Natron. A Natron. They cover
the surgically prepped body entirely in Natron
for exactly 70 days. The text is incredibly firm
on this point. Not one day more. Not one day
left. It's a very strict timeline. After 70 days,
they wash the corpse, wrap the entire body in
bands of fine linen, and smear the linen with
a specific gum instead of standard glue. Then
they hand this perfectly preserved fragrant package
back to the family. who places it in a wooden,
human -shaped case and stores it upright against
a wall in a sepulchral chamber. Let's discuss
the mechanics of Natron because it is the secret
engine of this entire industry. What exactly
is it? Natron is a naturally occurring mixture
of sodium carbonate decahydrate, sodium bicarbonate,
and small amounts of sodium chloride and sodium
sulfate. So it's basically super salt. Essentially,
yes. It is harvested from dried lake beds in
Egypt. When you bury a body in Natron, it does
several things simultaneously. First, it is a
hyper -efficient desiccant. It violently pulls
all the moisture out of the human tissue. It
dries it out. Right. Bacteria require water to
cause decomposition. Without water, the decay
stops. Second, it creates a highly alkaline environment,
which is deeply hostile to microbial life. So
nothing can grow? Nothing. Third, it actually
saponifies the body's fat, meaning it chemically
reacts with the lipids and turns them into a
hard soap, preventing them from going rancid.
Wait, it turns fat into soap? It does. The 70
-day timeline isn't arbitrary magic. It is the
empirically tested duration required for this
specific chemical mixture to completely dehydrate
a human mass without causing the skin to become
too brittle to wrap. It is advanced chemistry
and biology. But what if the family standing
in the showroom can't afford the exorbitant cost
of pure mer, obsidian surgery, and imported palm
wine? Then the embalmers pivot to tier two, the
middle cost option. And this methodology is radically
different. It relies entirely on chemical solvents
rather than surgical labor. Honestly, tier two
sounds like a terrifying industrial science experiment.
It really is. There's absolutely no cutting involved,
no obsidian blades. Instead, they take massive
syringes and fill them with an oil extracted
from cedar wood. Cedar oil? They inject this
heavy cedar oil directly into the belly of the
corpse via the breach, meaning through the anus,
and they physically plug it up so the oil cannot
escape. They essentially turn the abdominal cavity
into a sealed biological pressure cooker. Exactly.
An internal chemical vat. Once the oil is sealed
inside, they bury the body in the natron salt
for the appointed number of days. The same 70
days. On the final day, they remove the plug
and let the cedar oil drain out. And Herodotus
says the cedar oil possesses such incredible
chemical power that as it drains, it brings out
the entirely dissolved internal organs and bowels
along with it in a liquid state. Just liquefies
everything. Meanwhile, the nature and salt on
the outside has completely dissolved the flesh.
So what the family gets back is literally nothing
but skin and bones. Think about the efficiency
of this process. It completely eliminates the
labor intensive, highly skilled surgical extraction.
It bypasses the need for expensive aromatic spices
to mask the smell of decay. It's just injection
and weight. It relies on the cedar oil acting
as a powerful enzymatic cleaner or organic solvent,
breaking down the soft tissues internally while
the natron handles the external flesh. It is
a brutal, brilliantly engineered biological shortcut.
And finally, there is Tier 3. The least expensive
option for the poorest citizens, it's purely
utilitarian. They simply cleanse out the belly
with a strong liquid purge, cover the body in
Natron for 70 days, and hand the desiccated remains
back. The budget option. But in reading through
this highly regulated, incredibly structured
business of death, there was one societal rule,
Herodotus mentions, that completely chilled me.
You are referring to the dark protocol regarding
women of rank. Yes. It is a detail that exposes
a terrifying crack in their highly ordered society.
Herodotus writes that when the wife of a man
of rank dies or if a woman who is considered
very beautiful or highly regarded passes away,
her body is not given to the embalmers immediately.
There's a waiting period. The family legally
holds the corpse at home for three or four days
before delivering it to the workshop. And the
reason for this delay is horrifyingly practical.
It's to prevent the embalmers from sexually abusing
the corpses. It is incredibly grim. He notes
that this strict protocol was enacted after a
fellow craftsman actually turned someone in for
negrophilia. We need to examine the profound
psychological paradox this reveals about their
society. Let's unpack that. On one hand, the
embalmers are entrusted with the most sacred
metaphysically vital task in the entire empire.
Preserving the physical vessel so the soul can
survive eternity. They possess elite chemical
and surgical knowledge. But on the other hand,
the society views these exact same men as so
deeply untrustworthy, so vulnerable to the basest,
most horrific human corruption that a grieving
family must literally allow their loved one's
body to begin rotting in the sweltering Egyptian
heat for almost a week before handing her over.
By forcing that three or four day delay, the
family ensures the onset of active biological
decomposition. Right. They're weaponizing the
decay process, effectively protecting the woman's
body from violation by rendering it physically
and olfactorily unappealing to the craftsman.
It is a devastatingly grim, practical solution
to an unthinkable problem. It shows that no matter
how intensely a society legislates its markets,
categorizes its doctors, or regulates its priests'
bathing habits, it still has to build harsh,
ugly mechanisms to guard against the darkest
impulses of human nature. It grounds the entire
civilization for me. Beneath the gold masks and
the incredible science of nature and these were
real, deeply flawed human trying to manage their
society. And speaking of managing society, we
spend a lot of time talking about the elites,
the wealthy who can afford the pure myrrh of
tier one embalming, the priests who are handed
state -funded beef and wine. The upper crust.
But Egypt wasn't just temples and markets. What
about the people living on the absolute margins?
How did the poorest of the poor survive? To understand
the full scope of Egypt. We really have to look
at the fringes of their environment. The fertile
floodplains were valuable real estate, but the
margins of the river, the massive flooded swank
lands, the fens, were inhabited by people whose
daily lives were a master class in adapting to
extreme hostile geography. And the fen dwellers
had to engineer their survival using completely
different rules. Let's look at how they acquired
calories. Because they couldn't farm normally.
Right. When the river floods the fens, they can't
grow regular wheat or spelt. The ground is literally
under water. So they turn the swamp itself into
their granary. They harvest the aquatic flora,
specifically the lotus lilies that grow in immense
numbers in the water. Total environmental resource
utilization. Herodotus describes the process.
They cut the lilies, drag them out of the water,
and dry them in the harsh sun. Then they take
the center of the lotus flower, which he notes
looks a lot like a boppy head, They pound it
down into a flour and they bake it into loaves
of bread. They are literally eating flour bread.
Furthermore, they dive down and harvest the root
of the lotus, which is round about the size of
an apple and apparently tastes quite sweet, and
they don't stop at Lily's. We always think of
papyrus as the ancient equivalent of paper used
for writing scrolls. Right, the classic papyrus
scroll. But for the Fen dwellers, it was dinner.
They take the lower cubit of the papyrus plant,
rip it out of the marsh, roast it in a red -hot
oven, and eat it. When traditional agriculture
fails due to environmental constraints, human
ingenuity pivots. The roots, the stalks, the
seeds of these aquatic plants become the primary
carbohydrate engines keeping these communities
alive. They are extracting calories from weeds.
They are extracting calories from weeds and swamp
flowers, exactly. But survival isn't just about
food. You also need light in the darkness, and
you need a way to deal with the environment.
And the source details an incredible, if slightly
disgusting, solution for oil. They use Kiki oil.
Ah, the oil extracted from the castor berry.
Right. They sow these wild castor plants along
the muddy banks of the pools. They gather the
berries and either press them heavily or roast
them and boil them down to separate the oil.
A lot of effort for oil. Herodotus notes that
this Kiki oil is incredibly fat and makes for
an excellent bright burning fuel in their lamps.
But... and there's a massive catch. It gives
off an intensely disagreeable foul smell. Castor
oil has a notoriously pungent, almost nauseating
odor when burned. So their house is just reeked.
But again, look at the hierarchy of needs. If
you are living in a mud hut in a flooded swamp,
utility completely overrules comfort. If you
need to see in the dark, you learn to tolerate
the stench of the kiki oil. It's all about trade
-offs. And speaking of the miseries of the swamp.
We absolutely must talk about the bugs. Oh, mosquitoes.
Because if you live in a giant, stagnant, flooded
marshland in a hot climate, you are going to
be dealing with gnats and mosquitoes on a biblical,
mind -losing scale. Swarms of them. And the ancient
Egyptians had engineered specific life hacks
for this. The environmental engineering they
used to combat insects is genuinely brilliant.
It's one of my favorite details in the entire
text. Herodotus explains that the people who
live slightly above the fens where the ground
is a bit more solid have a structural strategy.
They literally build high towers to sleep in.
High towers for sleeping. Yes. The gnats and
mosquitoes are weak flyers. They cannot fight
the wind currents higher up in the air. So you
just build your bedroom high enough off the ground
and you sleep out of their operational altitude.
That is so smart. But the fen dwellers, the people
living right down on the muck, can't build stone
towers in a swamp. So they have a different hack.
A hack that utilizes their primary tool of economic
livelihood. They're fishing nets. Every single
fen dweller owns a casting net. which they use
to catch fish all day long in the marshes. But
at night, they bring that exact same fishing
net into their home. On multipurpose tools. They
arrange it over their bed like a makeshift canopy,
creep underneath it, and go to sleep. Now, Herodotus
specifically points out that if you try to wrap
yourself in a heavy blanket or a dense linen
sheet, the gnats are so vicious they will bite
right through the fabric. They'll find a way.
But for whatever incredible reason, they will
not even attempt to fly through the holes of
the fishing net. It is an ancient, dual -use
mosquito net. It is a phenomenal example of adaptive
technology. Let's think about the physics and
biology of what is actually happening there.
Let's unpack it. A solid linen sheet traps body
heat and carbon dioxide, the exact two biological
markers that attract mosquitoes. It also suffocates
the sleeper in the humid fen environment. So
you're hot and getting bitten. Exactly. A fishing
net is open. It allows the crucial airflow needed
to sleep in the heat. Why does it stop the bugs?
Because there are literal holes in it. The physical
barrier of the mesh creates a confusing spatial
obstacle for the insect. Furthermore, a net used
all day to catch fish in a swamp is going to
be coated in fish oils, algae, and swamp debris.
Oh, the smell. The intense olfactory deterrent
of the smelly net likely mask the human scent
markers. It is incredibly resourceful. The ultimate
Fenn life hack? Yeah. Sleep under a smelly net
and you won't get bitten. Pretty much. And they
were just as clever when it came to manipulating
the physics of their environments for transportation.
We have to look at how they navigated their boats.
Because sailing on the Nile isn't like sailing
on a lake or the open ocean. Yeah. It's very
specific. It presents a very specific set of
physical constraints. The Nile is a massive liquid
highway. but it has conflicting forces. The water
current flows steadily northward, emptying into
the Mediterranean Sea. OK, water flows north.
However, the prevailing winds in that region
generally blow southward, upriver. So if you
want to travel upstream southward, it's relatively
easy. You just raise your sails, the strong prevailing
wind catches them, and it pushes you against
the river's current. It's a breeze, literally.
But what happens when you want to go downstream?
northward. You want to travel with the current,
but the wind is blowing directly in your face.
They've got a headwind. You can't just float
because the headwind will stall you out or put
you backward. Their solution for steering and
propulsion downstream is bizarre, but scientifically
flawless. It involves two distinct pieces of
equipment, the tamarisk crate and the hold stone.
Exactly. They build these cargo boats out of
heavy acacia wood, caulking the seams with papyrus.
When they need to travel downstream against the
wind, they take a door -shaped crate made of
tamarisk wood interwoven with reed mats. They
tie this crate to a rope and throw it into the
water at the front of the boat, letting it float
on the surface. Because it is floating on the
very top of the water, The strong, fast -moving
surface current of the river hits the broad side
of this crate. Like an underwater sail. The crate
catches the water current the exact same way
a sail catches the wind, and it literally pulls
the heavy boat forward down the river. They engineered
a water sail. But if you just have a crate pulling
the front of a boat, the boat is going to spin
sideways and crash into the banks. To keep the
boat tracking perfectly straight, they employ
the second tool. The stone. They take a heavy
stone weighing about two talents, which is roughly
100 to 130 pounds board with a hole in the center.
They tie this massive stone to a rope and drop
it off the back of the boat, letting it sink
deep down into the water. So it's dragging. So
the floating crate pulls hard from the front.
The heavy stone drags deep in the back, acting
as an anchor or a rudder, and the boat stays
perfectly aligned as it sails down the river.
What you were describing is a profound empirical
understanding of fluid dynamics. From everyday
boatmen. Right. They realized. Without modern
instruments, that water in a river moves at different
velocities. The water at the surface moves fastest
because there is less friction. The water deep
down, near the riverbed, moves significantly
slower due to the friction of the earth. So they're
exploiting the speed difference. By putting the
wide crate on the fast surface water, they maximize
forward propulsion. By dropping the heavy stone
down into the slower boundary layer of water,
they create drag and tension. That tension between
the fast surface pull and the slow deep drag
keeps the rope taut and the vessel perfectly
straight. It is masterful ancient physics. It
really makes you realize how incredibly smart
these everyday laborers were. But to keep this
vast complex society functioning, to ensure the
fen dwellers are catching fish, the embalmers
are mixing natron, and the priests are staying
pure, the Egyptians couldn't just rely on individual
cleverness. No, they needed structure. They utilized
a massive, rigid state apparatus. The government
organized human capital with terrifying efficiency.
We are moving into the macroeconomic structure
of the state now. How do you govern a population
this diverse and specialized? You lock them into
categories. Herodotus lists seven distinct classes
in Egyptian society. priests, warriors, cowherds,
swineherds, shopkeepers, interpreters, and boatmen.
And we must emphasize to the listener that these
are not career paths you choose at a high school
job fair. You don't just apply to be a boatman.
This is a rigid, unforgiving caste system. The
occupations are strictly inherited. The text
notes that they practice their specific craft,
handing down the tradition directly from father
to son. You are born into your role, you marry
within your relative sphere, and you die in your
role. There is zero upward mobility. Absolute
societal lock -in. And no single class demonstrates
the immense power, the economic burden, and the
strict rules of this system better than the warrior
caste. The warriors are fascinating. The warriors
are divided into two massive groups, the Kalisirians
and the Hermitibians. And the very first rule
of being born into the warrior caste is that
you are legally forbidden from learning or practicing
any manual craft whatsoever. No side hustles
allowed. None. You cannot weave cloth, you cannot
farm wheat, you cannot build boats, you cannot
sell goods. Your only legal occupation is the
study and practice of war. Which is an astonishing
commitment by the state. If you decree that hundreds
of thousands of healthy adult men are legally
forbidden from producing any economic goods or
agricultural yield, the state assumes the absolute
burden of keeping them alive. And the state absolutely
showers them with wealth to keep them loyal.
The societal privileges these warriors receive
are immense. According to the text, every single
warrior is granted 12 yokes of land. That's a
lot of land. A yoke is defined as 100 Egyptian
cubits every way. That is a massive plot of prime
agricultural real estate. And this land is completely
free from imposts, meaning it is 100 % tax -free
land. granted to you simply for being born a
warrior. But the state doesn't just hand them
a real estate portfolio and leave them alone.
They are an active, utilized asset, specifically
designed to protect the absolute center of power.
Right. They act as the king's personal bodyguard.
Herodotus details an intense rotation system.
1 ,000 men from the Caliserians and 1 ,000 men
from the Hermitibians are selected to serve as
the king's guard for exactly one year. A one
-year tour of duty. And during that year of active
service, on top of the income from their tax
-free land, they receive staggering daily rations
directly from the state granaries. The food intake
is unbelievable. Listen to this intake. Every
single man gets five pounds of bread, two pounds
of beef, and four half pints of wine every single
day. Let's do the caloric math on that five pounds
of dense ancient grain bread and two pounds of
beef is easily pushing five to six thousand calories
a day supplemented by alcohol. It's like Michael
Phelps training diet. This is an enormous highly
specialized diet befitting men whose only societal
function is intense physical training muscle
building and combat readiness. They were likely
massive physically intimidating individuals.
But I have to ask you about the macro economic
reality of this. Let's zoom out. Herodotus mentioned
that at their peak, these two warrior groups
numbered up to 410 ,000 men. Over 400 ,000. What
does it actually do to a society to have 400
,000 prime -age men explicitly banned from contributing
to the economy via trade or craft, existing entirely
on state -granted land and consuming thousands
of pounds of state -funded beef and wine daily?
It creates the ultimate double -edged sword of
a state -funded standing army. On one hand, it
guarantees absolute internal stability and formidable
external defense. No one is invading them easily.
Right. The King has a dedicated, highly fed,
highly lethal force whose entire livelihood and
elite status depends entirely on the survival
of the state. Their loyalty is literally purchased
through extreme, exclusive privilege. They will
crush any rebellion because a rebellion threatens
their beef and their tax -free land. Right, you
aren't going to rock the boat if the boat is
feeding you five pounds of bread a day. Exactly.
But on the other hand, consider the crushing
economic burden placed on the bottom tiers of
the caste system. The people actually working.
The cow herds, the shopkeepers, the boatmen,
the fen dwellers eating lotus roots. These are
the people actually generating the wealth. They
are growing the grain, raising the cattle, and
paying the heavy taxes required to subsidize
this massive non -producing warrior caste. So
the poor are just squeezed dry. It creates an
incredible strain on the agricultural base. Furthermore,
it creates a society that is deeply structurally
resistant to change. When roles are inherited
by law and hundreds of thousands of enforcers
are heavily subsidized to maintain the status
quo, innovation is completely stifled. The society
functions exactly like a giant unchanging biological
machine. A machine where every single human gear
has exactly one job forever. Yep. And when you
step back and look at the entirety of this machine,
the tapestry of Egyptian life we've unpacked
today, it is truly mind -bending. It is a civilization
defined by profound structure, intense categorization,
and deliberate contrast to the rest of humanity.
We've walked through a world where the gender
roles in the marketplace are completely flipped,
where the weaving woof is pushed down with gravity
instead of up. The physical inversions. We've
seen a society where dense bread dough is kneaded
with the heavy force of the feet, but animal
dung is delicately shaped. with the hands. We've
watched ingenious fen dwellers thwart massive
mosquito swarms by sleeping under smelly fishing
nets, using the very tools of their trade to
alter their environment. And we've attended dinner
parties where a carved wooden corpse is paraded
around the table to remind everyone to drink
their barley wine. And we've seen how deeply
a society can compartmentalize its deepest anxieties,
from the hyper -specialized doctors who refuse
to treat anything outside their single bodily
jurisdiction, to the absolute freezing cold purity
of the hairless priests, taking four baths a
day, sharply contrasted against the marginalized
swineherds who are forced into endogamy just
to bear the burden of the society's necessary
lunar sins. It is so crucial to remember that
stepping into historical sources like this isn't
just about memorizing facts or dates for a trivia
night. No, it's so much bigger than that. It's
about radically expanding our understanding of
what human normalcy can actually look like. The
ancient Egyptians engineered their daily lives
to solve the exact same fundamental human problems
we have today. How to get food. How to handle
disease. What to do with the dead. How to care
for the elderly. but they solve them using an
entirely different set of logical rules, physics,
and chemistry. And there is one final lingering
idea drawn directly from the text that might
just be the skeleton key. Oh, the unifying theory.
It might explain the underlying logic of all
those bizarre rules. Herodotus mentions, almost
in passing, a theological concept. He writes
that the Egyptians were the very first people
to report the doctrine that the human soul is
immortal. Yes, the immortality of the soul. But
it's the mechanics of that immortality that are
staggering. He writes that they believed when
the physical body finally dies, the soul doesn't
just float to static heaven, it transmigrates.
It moves on. It enters into another creature
and it goes on a massive forced evolutionary
cycle through every single creature of the land,
the sea, and the air. And this exhausting cosmic
journey of the soul takes exactly 3 ,000 years
before it finally completes the circuit and returns
to inhabit a human body once again. A 3 ,000
year cosmic loop. So I ask you to ponder this
as we close. How might a society's deep fundamental
belief in a mandatory 3 ,000 -year cycle of the
soul be the exact hidden reason behind everything
we've discussed today? Wait, think about that.
Think about their obsessive physical cleanliness
in those violent three -day purges. Think about
the desperate, highly chemical preservation of
the physical body through the 70 days of natron
embalming. So keep the body ready. Think about
the rigid, unchanging, inherited caste systems
from the priests to the warriors. If you genuinely,
truly believed that you were just one tiny point
on a 3000 year cosmic loop and that your soul
would eventually need to find its way back to
where it started, wouldn't you build your daily
life, your physical body and your entire societal
structure to be as permanent, as rigidly categorized
and as incorruptible as possible? Well, if you're
going to be gone on a chaotic journey through
the bodies of birds and fish for 3000 years,
you want to make absolutely sure the house looks
exactly the same when you get back. Exactly.
You need a map that never changes. It makes all
the bizarre, muddy realities of their social
landscape suddenly look as clean and binary as
an x -ray. You break your arm. This is a specific
doctor for the arm. You die. There's the natron
salt, the cedar oil, and the 3 ,000 -year wait.
It all ties together perfectly. Incredible. Thank
you so much for taking this deep dive with us
today. Keep questioning what is normal. Keep
looking for the mechanics behind the history,
and we will see you next time.