Did you know that Cleopatra was born closer to man landing on the moon than she was to the
construction of the Pyramids of Giza? It’s true. Cleopatra, Queen of the Ptolemaic
Kingdom of Egypt, ruled from 51 to 30 BC, the last to do so. Stretching ahead of her across 2000
years of history was the first Pizza Hut opening its doors in 1958, the Twin Towers falling in
2001, and Steve Jobs unveiling the iPhone in 2007. In fact, Cleopatra was nearer in history to
sitting down to write her homework on ChatGPT than she was to the first bricks being
laid at the base of the Pyramids of Giza, and it’s not even close. It won’t be until around
the year 2,500 that this fact stops being true, so you can continue to tell all your friends
about it for the rest of your lifetime, and your children’s, grandchildren’s, and so on. We like to consider Cleopatra’s life as being
well and truly ancient history, but to her, the Egyptian Empire that she ruled over would
have been even more ancient than that. So much information has been lost to the sands of
time. We have to piece together the lives of peasants in our own country from just a few
centuries ago using artifacts and theories. All of the details of ancient life - the daily
routines, culture, habits, slang, jokes, wars, romances, technologies, the boredom of
day-to-day life - have been worn away by time. What would life have actually looked like
for an Ancient Egyptian? What monumental events have the history books failed to
remember? What surprising technologies that we assume are modern were
actually invented millennia ago? And what horrors lurk in the shadows
that perhaps everyone has chosen to forget? What demons are buried
in the tombs of ancient pharaohs? Let’s take a look at the hieroglyphs on the
walls and see what we find. Starting off with a question so ridiculous that it couldn’t possibly
be true. Did the Ancient Egyptians invent flight? To uncover this mystery, let’s go to
one of the oldest cities in all of Egypt. The modern English name is Abydos,
which was borrowed from a Greek renaming, but the Ancient Egyptians would have called
it Abedju. It can be found about 7 miles to the West of the Nile near the modern Egyptian
towns of El Araba Al Madfuna and El Balyana. Abedju is an enormously significant site for
Egyptologists as it is home to a whole host of incredibly well-preserved buildings including
the tombs of a number of early pharaohs. One of the most famous of these tombs is the tomb of
Seti I. He was the second pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty and ruled for 11-15 years before dying
in 1279 BC. He was a warrior king. The empire that he inherited had lost a lot of its territory
on all sides as Egypt ruled over the Canaanites, and Syrians had been put under pressure by
losses to the Hittite armies. The hieroglyphs along the walls of the tomb of Seti I tell us
the stories of his victories in battle as he clawed the lost land back over the course of his
reign, but that’s not what we’re here to look for. In one corner of the tomb, high up on
the wall, is a set of hieroglyphs that caught the attention of archaeologist Dr
Ruth Hover. At first glance, you wouldn’t separate them from any of the other countless
icons carved into and painted onto the walls, but when you stop to really look at them,
you can’t help but recognize what they are. A boat, streamlined and curved like a
modern-day yacht, a rounded submarine, what could be a glider plane,
and most infamous of all, a helicopter. With what looks like a
blade on top, cockpit, tail, and rear fin, it is hard to see it as anything other
than a carving of a modern-day helicopter. But first, we want to thank the
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Now, back to the video. It is hard to see it as anything other
than a carving of a modern-day helicopter. What is perhaps most strange
about these carvings is that they are all side by side. Tucked
away in the corner of the tomb, they seem just like a kind of hidden message.
None of the images at first glance match up to any known Egyptian hieroglyphics. So what
could they mean? How have they ended up there? Before we get to that question, there’s
another even more fascinating discovery to talk about. In 1898, the supposed golden era for
Egyptologists, which led to much of Egypt's tombs being cracked open and the contents shipped
to foreign museums across the Western world, one extraordinary discovery went almost completely
unnoticed. In Saqqara, archaeologists discovered the tomb of Pa-di-Imen. In this tomb were
all of the usual exciting finds – mummies, hieroglyphs, coins, paintings, and so on - but
one little wooden toy sat unnoticed on the side. It was a little wooden bird made from the
wood of a poplar tree. Carved and sanded down, it had one long curved piece of wood resting
on top as its unfurled wings in a glide, and a long tail which ended in a rather
strange tip. You see, if this was just a regular toy carving of a bird, the flattened end
of the tail would be horizontal, just like every bird in the natural world. But it wasn’t.
The tip of the tail was vertical: a rudder. A modern observer would recognize the shape of the
Saqqara Bird instantly: an airplane. Specifically, the Saqqara Bird matches up closely with
the shape of a modern-day prop plane, like a Cirrus SR20, for example. So
why wasn’t it noticed at the time? This was 1898, five years before the Wright
Brothers achieved man’s supposed first flight. They wouldn’t have seen it as anything other than
an artistic rendition of a bird’s tail. For years, the Saqqara Bird lived in a quiet corner of
a display in the Museum of Cairo until 1969, when a historian happened across
it and was stopped in his tracks. Dr. Khalil Messiha was a Professor of Anatomy
for the Artists at Helwan University in Egypt. Not only that, but he was also a member of both
the Royal Aeromodellers Club and the Egyptian Aeronautical Club. The bird was quite unlike any
of the others in the exhibition. Most of the other birds had feet and carved feathers, intricately
painted patterns, and lifelike proportions. The Saqqara Bird had none of those things. Its form
was all it had. The form of a small toy plane. There was only one thing for it, he had
to test out if it could fly. Except… Well, it’s an artifact from an ancient civilization
sitting in a display case in one of the world’s most prestigious museums. You can’t just unlock
the cabinet and start throwing the artifacts around. But Dr Messiha was undeterred. Instead,
he went away and recruited his brother, a flight engineer, to build his own replica of the bird,
scaling it up to be larger than the original. Very quickly, it became apparent that there was a
problem. While the bird did have a rudder to help it fly in a straight line, it was lacking another
crucial component of modern-day plane tails: a horizontal stabilizer. It was all well and
good having the vertical fin, but without a horizontal one, the glider would tip forward or
backwards in the air and plunge to the ground. But Dr Messiha had an answer for that, too. Upon
close inspection of the original Saqqara Bird, he could see that there was damage
to the tail. A part was missing in the exact spot that a horizontal
stabilizer would be. In his view, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that
there had once been such a part on the rear of the bird that had been broken off at some
point in its thousands of years of life. In his scale replica, he
added a stabilizer himself, and sure enough, the bird flew. It
wasn’t setting any distance records, but the glider could stay airborne for several
meters. It was a stable flight! Albeit with a poor center of gravity that hampered its
ability to stay in the air for too long. Could it be that the Ancient
Egyptians had discovered the secrets of aerodynamics thousands of years ago? Have we been arrogant to assume that only
modern man could have created such an invention? Dr Messiha was filled with excitement. His mind
went down a rabbit hole quicker than he could stop it. What were the objects in ancient tombs
there for? Well, the belief was that when you entered the afterlife, you would take the objects
in your tomb with you. Coins, clothing, utensils, and tools were commonplace as they were needed
when you made the journey to the afterlife. Larger essentials were not able to be placed in the tombs
directly. A ship, for example, would be incredibly useful, but you couldn’t fit it into the tomb, so
carpenters would carve miniature versions of them, which would be sufficient to represent the real
thing once the person has left the mortal earth. For Dr Messiha, the logic was clear. The
Saqqara Bird was not a toy, after all, it was a model. It was a miniaturized substitute
for the real thing. The deceased would have needed it in the afterlife, so perhaps it
was something they used regularly in their real life. Could it be that the Egyptians had
full-sized gliders that they used for transport or recreation? Could it be that the Wright
Brothers were actually thousands of years behind? It would explain the mysterious hieroglyphs
that Dr Hover discovered in the tomb of Seti I. Maybe those actually were depictions of
advanced vehicles that have been lost to the sands of time. There are so many gaps
in our knowledge of history, entire wars, and people groups that we didn’t know
existed. We still are not certain how the pyramids could have been built
so many thousands of years ago. Maybe these inventions are buried somewhere in the
Egyptian desert, waiting to be discovered. Realistically… not. Flight is and has always been one of
humanity’s closest-held obsessions. From the myth of Icarus flying too close
to the sun right the way through to Iron Man’s suit in the Marvel Cinematic
Universe, there is something about the magic of flying through the air that
captures our imagination across people groups and time periods in a way that few
other things do. We inherently want to fly. If the Ancient Egyptians were leaping from the
tops of pyramids and soaring through the air on human-sized gliders, we would know about it.
There are countless walls of hieroglyphics all across the country, with many from the eras where
this theoretically would have been happening. Not one of them so much as implies the existence
of gliders, let alone people flying on them. Moreover, the ancient Egyptians were not the
only civilization in the region at the time. We have already mentioned the Canaanites, the
Syrians, and the Hittites. If their oppressors had invented flight, they would talk about it
in their own writings. The story of the Bible weaves in and out of Egyptian history throughout
the Old Testament. Not one mention of flight. So what about those hieroglyphs in the
tomb of Seti I? What are those images, if not modern-day vehicles? Unfortunately,
the answer is what you would expect it to be. They are hieroglyphics, or rather,
they are two sets of hieroglyphics. When the tomb was first decorated, an inscription
dedicated to Seti I was written there. It says: “Powerful of scimitar, who suppresses the nine bows (enemies of Egypt), [...], Menmaatra
(which was the throne name of Seti I)” But Seti had a son, Ramesses II, who
took the throne after his father’s death. Ramesses reigned for around 66 years until
his own death. When it came time to bury him, he was placed in the same tomb. The
royal inscription of his father’s title was filled in with plaster to create a
blank slate. Over the top was written: “Two Ladies: protector of Egypt,
who repels foreign lands, [...], Usermaatre-Setepenre (which was
the throne name of Ramesses II).” Plaster, being what it is, erodes over
time. In the thousands of years between the inscription and the discovery of the
tomb, the plaster has disappeared entirely, leaving two lines of writing, both written
over one another. The result just so happens to take the shape of a helicopter,
a boat, a submarine, and a plane. Conspiracy theorists the world over would
dispute this explanation and cling to the theories that had swirled around the discovery
of Dr Hover’s hieroglyphs. The ancient Egyptians had super-advanced technology; it was the only
way they could have constructed the pyramids. Perhaps it wasn’t the Egyptians at all, but the
aliens that had brought those vehicles to Earth. The historical community was covering all of
this up to protect the global conspiracy that… And so on and so on. What we see playing out with these hieroglyphs
is a prime example of one of the pitfalls that many historians fall into: looking
at the ancient world with a modern lens. You could discover an object that looks
like something that you are familiar with and assume it is that object and served the same
purpose thousands of years ago. From there, you can project all kinds of theories and
myths around what a people group was like, all based on a logical fallacy,
an assumption in your reasoning. Is that what the Saqqara Bird
is? Are we projecting our modern experiences on the ancient world? Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Ancient Egypt was advanced in a number of
surprising ways. First-century Roman Egypt is arguably the birthplace of steam power. A
device called an Aeolipile, or Heron’s Device, was a basic radial steam turbine. Water
would be heated over a fire in the base, and it would evaporate into steam.
This steam would be forced out of two little tubes on either side of a kind of
wheel, causing it to spin round and round. It would not be unreasonable to claim that
they may have created small toy gliders in the shapes of birds, but sadly, that is
likely where their forays into flight ended. So those are some of the fun and curious
findings that archaeologists have uncovered in these ancient tombs, but what about the
horrific? What bone-chilling discoveries will you make as you delve into the depths
of ancient Egypt's most sacred spaces? Crack open the doors to a sealed tomb, and you are likely to be greeted with
the same thing almost every time. Lice. Ancient Egypt was overrun with lice for centuries.
There were all kinds of homemade remedies to fight them off. Date meal and water, chewed up
and then rubbed over the infested site, was one solution offered, but far more disturbing
were recommendations to cover your entire body in cat’s fat. One cat alone may not have enough fat
on it to cover an entire person and definitely not on multiple occasions, so who knows how
many cats were executed for this very purpose? Cats were supposed to be sacred in Ancient
Egypt, which just goes to show how desperate they were to get rid of this problem.
Most Egyptians gave up entirely and went totally bald. If you’ve ever wondered why
so many depictions of Egyptians are bald, you’ve got your answer. Other historians
would argue that it had more to do with the extreme heat conditions and
trying to keep your head cool. Cleopatra herself was actually bald, choosing
to wear wigs in public. Notoriously the most beautiful woman to have ever lived, there
are apocryphal accounts that claim she actually had alopecia. These often have
little to no evidence. Whether she was actually as beautiful as they claim is
also dubious. Cleopatra likely had one of the best propaganda mills in the world
at the time and lived in an era where not many would have had the opportunity to see
her face to face, let alone document it. What went into being a woman in the
Egyptian era? You may well have heard that Cleopatra was the owner of the first adult
toy. Unfortunately this is not true. Her device, a small container of bees that would jostle around
angrily when shaken, has no basis in historical evidence. Such a device has never been found and
likely would not work in reality. No mentions of it can be found from before a niche book in
1992, which just stated it as if it were fact. A far more interesting fact
about female sexuality comes when you look at their methods of birth
control, and brace yourself because this really is a horrific fact. One method of
contraception that ancient Egyptian women, was to smear their nether regions with a mixture
of honey and crocodile dung to create a kind of spermicide. This was not done after the act as
you might expect, but in the build-up to it… Let’s get back to the tomb, shall we? Aside from the dead lice covering every
surface, the next thing to catch your eye will be the warnings slashed across
every wall. Egyptian tombs were not meant to ever be opened. The dead were sealed in
and left to pursue the afterlife. Going in there goes against the wishes of the deified
pharaohs and the natural order of the world. Hieroglyphs warn tomb raiders of the wrathful
vengeance of the gods on anyone who enters. During the Egyptology obsession in the West, as
archaeologists cracked open tombs across Egypt, rumors swirled around of entire crews of
people dying just weeks after entering these sacred spaces. Again, there is
very little evidence to prove this is the case. The most deadly things inside
the tombs would be the presence of fungi and their spores on some surfaces, but not in any
significant enough quantities to kill anyone. More deadly would be eating the mummies, which
was a craze sweeping Europe for much longer than you may expect. Mummies were believed to have
medicinal qualities, and so they became a highly sought-after medicine, claiming to cure a number
of ailments. From as early as the 11th century all the way through to the 15th, Europeans would
grind up parts of Egyptian mummies and eat them. The reason? A mistranslation. In Persia,
there was a certain type of wax that seeped out of the rocks on a specific
mountainside. The local name for it? Mum. Westerners translating Arabic failed to see the
difference and started to cannibalize ancient corpses, wondering why they weren’t getting
any better and instead contracting cholera. Getting these mummies was a
life-threatening excursion, however. Or at least that is what pop culture has
taught us. Pitfalls, beds of snakes, false doors, and boulders rolling after you as you dive out
of the way, Indiana Jones-style. All of these things actually existed in these tombs…
except they were never meant to be traps. Due to the hysteria around Egyptology and the
sacredness of the tombs, early archaeologists again misread what they were seeing and
applied their own understandings to them. Those bottomless pits to trick you into falling
down? Those were actually wells used in religious rituals. The beds of snakes? More likely just
a number of snake paintings or mummified snakes in tribute to Wadjet, the Egyptian cobra goddess
who was the guardian of childbirth and children. The false doors were actually depictions
of doors, again for religious purposes. The Egyptians were very literal in their view
of the afterlife. The dead person would need a way out of their tomb and into the afterlife,
so they would create a carving of a door that, once the tomb was sealed, was thought to
come alive and open up into the underworld. And as for those giant boulders, they were
found at the end of grooved tracks blocking doorways. This was a method for sealing the
doors to the tomb so that no one would enter. Grave robbing was taken seriously
in Egypt. Rich people would be buried with their wealth. Can’t take it
with you when you die? Not according to Ancient Egyptians. So there was serious
money to be made by breaking into tombs. As you look around this ancient tomb,
wondering if you should have come here, you start to notice more horrifying details all
around you. There is not just the dead body of the rich man who died here, but another lying next to
him covered in rags. Slavery was a big part of the Egyptian Empire, and it allowed them to prosper
and build as much as they did. Slaves were seen as the property of their masters, just like a pouch
of coins or a beautiful piece of artwork. So, when a rich person died, it was not uncommon for
them to take a servant with them to the afterlife. We say man here because male and female
bodies were treated differently to one another. A man would be embalmed
as soon as possible to preserve them in the best state possible. Women,
however, particularly beautiful women, were left to decompose for a few days. The
reason was that Egyptians (unfortunately for good reason) could not trust the embalmers
alone with the corpses of attractive women. Many Egyptians died young. You’ve already seen
some of the incredibly poor health practices they had, but that was just the tip of
the iceberg. Egyptians believed that all genders menstruated, for example.
The reason was that schistosomiasis, a condition that causes blood in the urine
and stool, affected almost all of them, so they just assumed their bodies
were supposed to be like that. You would think that the elite of the elite,
the pharaohs, would be above all of these things. Access to better food, healthcare, and a
population trying their best to keep them alive, but the pharaohs had the worst health of them
all. The Egyptian Pharaoh Dynasties were likely some of the most inbred people to have ever lived.
Believed to be descended from the gods themselves, they could not sully their bloodlines
with anyone other than their own family. Osiris and Isis, the gods of the underworld
and of healing and magic, respectively, were siblings and lovers. Sibling marriages
were the norm both in the ruling classes and the poor. There are also a number of instances
of parents marrying their children in the Pharaoh’s bloodlines. This generational
inbreeding led to severe health issues, deformations, mental and physical disabilities,
weakened immune systems, ugliness, and obesity. Tutankhamun himself, perhaps the most famous of
all pharaohs, was a particularly grim example. Famed as a Boy King who lived a fierce but short
life full of action, the reality is that he was a very sick, disabled child who died incredibly
young. Scans of his sarcophagus reveal he had a cleft palate, club foot, and elongated skull,
as well as symptoms of malaria. He was obese, even at his age, and would have had to walk with
a cane. Since his immune system was so poor, it was likely he died from the necrosis in
his foot in combination with malaria. Yet he still managed to have a child himself,
with his own sister, who did not survive. What are the horrors of the Ancient Egyptian
tombs? Perhaps they aren’t so much the curses and traps that we have all been led to believe
for so many years. In reality, the true horrors were the sad, sickly, and painful lives, of
the bodies that lie preserved in the middle, still waiting for the fake doors to open
and welcome them into the underworld. Now check out “50 Astonishing Discoveries About King Tut's Tomb and Life You
Never Knew.” Or watch this instead!
