Join us for a deep dive into the latest and wildest new discoveries from Ancient Egypt to get you ready for the release of DC’s new film Black Adam, only in theaters. The dead speak! Yes, scientists have recreated the voice of a 3,000 year old mummy and we’ll tell you all about it as well as how some ancient Egyptian tombs contain more than just gold, and a recent discovery as to how the pyramids were built.
Join us for a deep dive into the latest and wildest new discoveries from Ancient Egypt to get you ready for the release of DC’s new film Black Adam, only in theaters. The dead speak! Yes, scientists have recreated the voice of a 3,000 year old mummy and we’ll tell you all about it as well as how some ancient Egyptian tombs contain more than just gold, and a recent discovery as to how the pyramids were built.
The Dead Speak
Egyptian Discoveries
Pyramid Building
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-dead-speak-egyptian-discoveries-pyramid-building
[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Join us for a deep dive into the latest and wildest new discoveries from Ancient Egypt to get you ready for the release of DC’s new film Black Adam, only in theaters. Let’s talk about everything Egypt. The dead speak! Yes, scientists have recreated the voice of a 3,000 year old mummy and we’ll tell you all about it as well as how some ancient Egyptian tombs contain more than just gold, and a recent discovery as to how the pyramids were built.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Calli, my absolute FAVORITE holiday is coming up and I want to tell you a bit of a spooky Egyptian story to get us prepared for Halloween!
CALLI: I’m fine with that as long as it’s not too scary. I definitely don’t want to lay awake at night thinking about some kind of Egyptian curse that’s coming for us.
NATE: Don’t worry, it's actually super interesting! Recently scientists recreated the voice of a 3,000 year old mummy.
CALLI: Wow Nate, super cool. Who is this chatterbox? And why were they the best option for this experiment?
NATE: According to writing on his coffin, the mummy was an Egyptian priest named Nesyamun who sang and spoke to the Gods as part of his ritual duties. His coffin even had a wish written on it to “see and address the gods as he had in his working life.”
CALLI: So he was the perfect candidate for the experiment because we can assume he talked a lot during his life?
NATE: Exactly!
CALLI: And… how did they do this exactly?
NATE: It’s called a computerized tomography scanner, which is basically a machine that can make a 3D model of a dead body’s vocal tract. Mummies are incredibly well-preserved through ancient techniques and since the vocal tract is where the actual sound of our voices is formed, that’s how we’re able to somewhat accurately recreate its voice from so long ago. Unfortunately, there’s one problem: it’s completely impossible to ACCURATELY recreate a voice without a tongue. And since the tongue is mostly made up of soft tissue, it’s one of the first parts of a body to decay. But by recreating the vocal tract, we’re hearing an estimated 50% accurate recreation of somebody’s voice, which is 50% more than we knew before.
CALLI: Hm. So would you say this is almost like 3D printing somebody’s voice as a musical instrument?
NATE: It’s a little more complicated than that. You have to 3D print a model of the airway’s tissue, and THEN connect it to an artificial voice box that can provide a source of sound. They call this an electronic larynx, and even though the results are brief, they give us a clear look at what the man sounded like when he was alive.
CALLI: And what is so important about this info? Like, why try and recreate his voice in the first place?
NATE: The hope is that by understanding the vocal structures through this technology, researchers might be able to use it to help them interpret ancient languages. Nesyamun lived during an interesting point in history, as a priest under the rule of pharaoh Ramses XI and there’s a lot we still don’t know about that time period. So maybe one day, this research can help us understand the language from that era. It’s gonna take a lot more work to get there, unfortunately, because right now, this technology is only capable of recreating the sound of one word, consisting of one syllable.
CALLI: Well, that’s unfortunate. Last question: since Nesyamun was only able to say one word over the past 3,000 years, what was that one word?
NATE: Bad.
CALLI: Right, but what bad word was it?
NATE: No, he said “bad.” But it’s a little unclear because he might have also said, “Bed.”
CALLI: Okay, I can see how this is getting a little spooky. I definitely prefer the word bed over bad coming from a mummy. Do the researchers have any future plans for Nesyamun?
NATE: Well, actually, some scientists are concerned about this technology being used for voice recognition but there are reported plans to modify the software so that they can program specific words and phrases and use the mummy’s voice at museum exhibits!
CALLI: Or maybe we can use it to hear the voices of other people who’ve died?
NATE: There’s a lot of ethical considerations there so I wouldn’t hold your breath. But maybe we could use it to fire up an ancient Egyptian curse, who knows?
CALLI: I thought I made it clear I don’t want to think about that.
NATE: Too little, too late my friend.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: In 1922, the archaeologist Howard Carter cracked open King Tutankhamun’s tomb and said he saw “wonderful things,” like mountains of gold, a gold throne, and various other trinkets. It got me thinking: were all of the pyramids stashed with gold like this? Unfortunately, it turns out they weren’t… they were filled with something even BETTER.
NATE: What a tantalizing hook, Calli. What could be better than gold? Jewels? The secrets of the universe?
CALLI: Well for starters, the body of a famous queen that’s been missing for thousands of years. Egyptologists now believe that the mummified remains of Queen Nefertiti are hiding behind a hidden door inside of Tutankhamun’s tomb. The reason they believe this is because of recently unearthed hidden hieroglyphics that depict Tutankhamun being buried… that had in fact been painted over images of Tutankhamun burying Nefertiti.
NATE: Wow. Why would they be buried in the same place?
CALLI: Well, the young ruler, more popularly known as King Tut was the pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty and inherited the throne when he was eight-years-old, which is why he’s also known as the "Boy King". There’s a very popular theory in Egyptology that Nefertiti was the Boy King's mother, which would explain the shared gravesite.
NATE: But right now it’s just a theory, right?
CALLI: Right. That being said, this wouldn’t be the first time that a long-lost mummy was found hidden in the tombs. Even as recently as a couple weeks after this hypothesis was made, a monumental granite sarcophagus of the royal treasurer to King Ramses II, who was known as “Egypt’s mightiest pharaoh” was discovered. This was a huge find because of the inscriptions around his tomb, carved with emblems of the sky goddess Nut, and stories of the adviser’s closeness to King Ramses II. Unfortunately, there was one big problem with the find: his mummy was nowhere to be seen.
NATE: Whoa, weren’t the explorers pretty concerned about that?
CALLI: To be honest, not really! There was so much information just from the inscriptions on the tomb itself that the body wasn’t really needed. What they found was that this adviser used to manage Egypt’s royal treasury, along with cattle and offerings to all of Egypt’s gods. Even if he’s not a “name find” like Nefertiti, and even though his body is missing, the existence of such a hidden tomb lends to the idea that something amazing can still be found. Which leads me to the most exciting discovery in recent years in Egypt.
NATE: More exciting than Nefertiti? Is it Black Adam starring Dwayne the Rock Johnson, only in theaters October 21?
CALLI: Okay, nothing can be better than a new Rock movie, but this is close. Get this, Nate: earlier this year, an archaeological expedition was underway in Saqqara, a small but historic burial ground in Egypt. What they found were a number of artifacts inscribed with an ancient Egyptian script called Demotic, which was used primarily between the years 664 and 404 BCE. Some of those artifacts were containers, which contained something much more important than gold: halloumi. Halloumi is a cheese made from goat and sheep milk which is then curdled using rennet. It’s a great meat substitute and it’s full of protein.
NATE: So the ancient Egyptians had excellent taste?
CALLI: I told you the discovery was better than gold, Nate. This team found a vessel full of 2,500 year old cheese. It’s one of the biggest supplies of cheese found in an Egyptian dig!
NATE: I’m glad you’re so excited, Calli, but uh. How is this more exciting than a lost queen, a treasure trove at a royal adviser’s tomb, or Black Adam?
CALLI: Because unlike Nefertiti or the royal adviser’s body, the cheese was actually FOUND. And the fact that it was still essentially intact thousands of years later should be exciting for everyone that’s curious to see a food product that was made before much of recorded history. That being said, nothing is more exciting than a new Rock movie, Nate. Not even cheese.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Calli, I finally have proof that aliens didn’t build the pyramids.
CALLI: … Nate, I do want to hear what finally changed your mind, but let’s just unpack that. Did you seriously believe aliens built the pyramids?
NATE: First, it’s a widely accepted theory that there may have been some sort of highly advanced tech from out of this world that inspired humans to learn and grow, and second, aliens doesn’t sound that crazy!
CALLI: But it’s aliens, Nate. Never actually proven LIFE out there?
NATE: Occam’s Razor, Calli -
CALLI: - I don’t think that’s the correct usage of Occam’s Razor -
NATE: Does it make more sense the ancient Egyptians had a little… outside help transporting millions of stone blocks or they somehow manhandled them over land and sea? Transporting five million tons of material by foot is virtually impossible.
CALLI: Okay, hang on hang on, you said you had proof that aliens DIDN’T build the pyramids.
NATE: Indeed I do.
CALLI: Then get to it! What is it?
NATE: Right. Okay, so hugely exciting in the world of paleoecology - a new study shows that there was previously another branch of the Nile river that the builders most likely used to transport building supplies.
#CALLI: Oh wow! The Nile is in so many ways a wonder of the natural world - it’s a river that runs south to north, a river that has kept the Egyptian people alive for millennia, and now a branch that engineers used to build the pyramids? The pyramids alone are still a mystery.
NATE: Oh completely. And for quick reference: the pyramids are over four THOUSAND five hundred years old, cover 13 total acres of land, and are made of a mind blowing two and a half million limestone and granite blocks. Oh, and each block weighs two tons. And of course, since this was all happening around 2500 BC, there was no modern machinery.
CALLI: Hence the aliens theory.
NATE: HENCE moving basically 5 million tons of rock over land would have been almost impossible, even with the aid of livestock.
CALLI: So they used the river.
NATE: Yeah, so for a long time historians and engineers had a theory that the early builders used the Nile as a sort of hydraulics system. They’d cut little canals into some spots of the river, and remove a lot of sand and sediments from others so when the annual floods came, it would help lift these blocks and move them down toward the construction site.
CALLI: Human ingenuity is really incredible. Working with mother nature instead of fighting her got the job done!
NATE: Exactly. And for years historians and archaeologists suspected that this was how they built the pyramids, but they didn’t have definitive proof until now.
CALLI: I remember hearing about clues to this branch of the river - scientists analyzed the soil around the pyramids, and studied fossilized plant life that suggested higher water levels. And there were some papyrus fragments near the Red Sea that showed limestone being transported via river.
NATE: That’s exactly right. And this newly discovered, now dried up branch of the river called the Khufu branch is the missing piece of the river to confirm the theory.
CALLI: Wow. So what happened to the branch of the river?
NATE: Well, the working theory until now was that this branch was actually one of the man-made canals I mentioned, and carved through the desert.
CALLI: You said “until now.”
NATE: Until now, when researchers learned more from the organic materials they analyzed at the site. So you mentioned the fossilized plants and there was pollen. Through that analysis, scientists learned there was a particularly watery era in African history about 8,000 years ago. During that time most of the Sahara was covered in lakes and grasslands, and most of Giza was underwater.
CALLI: That’s almost impossible to imagine! The Sahara, one of the most famous deserts in the world, home to the quintessential sand dune, was underwater?
NATE: Yes! And that’s what created our little Khufu branch. But over the next few thousand years, northern Africa dried out, but the Khufu Branch retained almost 40 percent of its water… creating a perfect little river to transfer pyramid materials to Giza. Deep enough to navigate, but not high enough to pose any flooding risk. So, scientists were right about the hydraulic lift theory, just wrong about how it was made.
CALLI: And since the whole area was gradually drying out, the river branch eventually did, too.
NATE: Exactly. Water levels continued to drop, halting construction of the pyramids altogether. What’s worse, by the year 332 BC, there wasn’t enough for people to drink.
CALLI: That’s a really grim image: something that was once a source of life now containing death. Yikes.
NATE: Right. However, this discovery has huge implications for history buffs beyond solving this little mystery. For instance, it takes us a step closer to knowing HOW and WHO built the pyramids. We know who commissioned them, but even something as simple as the amount of workers building them is lost to history. With this new find, we might discover more!
CALLI: Don’t say aliens.
NATE: I wasn’t, I’m now reformed in my beliefs thanks to the Khufu branch. I was going to say, climate science. A waterway disappeared. And part of me wonders… would we have even hypothesized the disappearance of a natural waterway if we weren’t experiencing the effects of climate change right now?
CALLI: That’s a great point here. I would imagine that understanding how climate changed during ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom, for instance, could clue us in on the climate change trends today.
NATE: Well, hopefully with whatever we learn, we can prevent, say, the drying up of the Hudson river.
CALLI: Mmmm… I dunno, Nate. Maybe it’d be okay to lose the Hudson.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: If you like your ancient Egyptian protagonists with a little more to say, check out some modern mythology in DC’s new film, Black Adam, only in theaters October 21st. In the meantime, let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. The dead speak! Well, sort of. New technology has given us the ability to 3D print the vocal tracts of long-dead individuals to recreate the sounds of their voices, including a 3,000 year-old Egyptian mummy.
CALLI: Movies and TV would have us all believe that inside of every Egyptian tomb is a mountain of gold and a scary monster, but the reality is often much less attractive, though much more exciting for history buffs. Recent discoveries include the possible burying site of a long-missing queen, a treasure trove of new information in the tomb of a long-dead royal adviser, and a mountain of surprisingly intact cheese!
NATE: Scientists have long theorized that the pyramids of Giza were built with the assistance of rivers, but there was just one problem… they couldn’t find any rivers nearby! Until now, when a long dried up arm of the Nile was discovered thousands of years after it dissipated. Not only does this discovery fill in a few historical gaps for us, it’s also helping scientists research the lasting effects of climate change today!