Egypt is considered by many historians to
be one of the first great civilizations, and modern Egyptians can trace a national heritage
that stretches back thousands of years. At its prime, Egypt was a true ancient superpower
and a center of art, culture, and education. Many of its ancient monuments still rise up
from the desert sands, and the pyramids are considered some of the oldest, and grandest,
human structures still standing. The tombs of its long-dead pharaohs continue
to mystify us with the allure of untold riches and priceless artifacts buried under the shifting
sands, and the curses that protect them terrify people around the world. But Egypt was also a pretty crazy place, and
today we're going to find out just how nutters the Egyptians really were and some of the
crazy things they actually did. Lice is one of mankind's oldest companions,
but today young children and their parents are the only ones at real risk of getting
a lice infestation. Even if an infestation occurs, treatment is
typically as simple as an over-the-counter shampoo that'll kill the tiny invaders and
their eggs. Yet in the Bible they might as well have included
a plague of lice as one of the great plagues that struck Egypt, because lice were literally
everywhere. To cope with this human-scalp munching infestation,
the Egyptians would shave every inch of body hair they could put a sharp knife to. That's the reason why the egyptians sported
the cue ball look- but it wasn't just the men, it was the women as well. To cope with losing all their hair, the women
would wear fashionable wigs that once infested, could be easily tossed away. At least in ancient egypt you could be sure
that the carpets did indeed match the drapes- because they were both infested with lice. In today's society women have been for years
making it pretty clear that they're fed up with being randomly catcalled on the street-
and we can't blame them. Here's a pro-tip for our male viewers: no
woman ever thinks its a compliment for you to leer at her or randomly tell her how beautiful
she is, in fact it's downright creepy. Yet the problem of catcalling is hardly new,
and the Egyptians were as prolific catcallers as any modern sexually frustrated and socially
inept male. The Greek historian Herodotus watched as Egyptians
prepared for a religious festival in the city of Bubastis and gathered together with their
families onto boats. As they cruised down the Nile, the men on
the boats would jeer at women and shout at them, pulling up their garments to expose
themselves. We guess that much like modern catcallers,
ancient Egyptian men also held on to the hope that a random catcall would woo a woman so
thoroughly that she would jump straight into their arms. After swimming across a crocodile-infested
river of course. At least modern women don't have to worry
about men exposing themselves at them as they catcall- that's what texting is for. In 1922 famed Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered
the long-buried tomb of Tutankhamen. Descending down a shaft dug into the desert
ground, he and his financier Lord Carnarvon encountered a sealed portal, which Carter
immediately began to chisel through. Making a small hole, Carter stuck his torch
inside and craned his head to peer into the darkness, as behind him the impatient Lord
Carnarvon asked him, “Can you see anything?”. Carter's reply quickly became one of the most
famous quotes in history, saying, “Yes! Wonderful things!.” A tomb filled with gold, jewels, and precious
artifacts, Tutankhamen's final resting place had lain undisturbed for three thousand years,
and as glinting riches met Carter's eyes, something else did too. Something... peculiar. It was Tutankhamun's erection. Unlike any other ancient Egyptian pharaoh
discovered to date, for some reason King Tut was found buried with his genitalia at a ninety
degree angle. Theories abound amongst archaeologists, but
we here at The Infographics Show are pretty sure we know why the ancient king asked to
be buried with a full-on hard on: I mean, c'mon, of course he did. You can't have a bunch of boys becoming god-pharaohs
and dying young without at least one of them demanding to be buried with a stiffy. Even more controversial though is the fact
that some researchers suspect that his embalmers switched his real member with a more impressive
specimen, which raises a whole host of questions we're not ready to start answering. The ancient Egyptians weren’t just skilled
at working on the bodies of the dead, they were also quite advanced in the fields of
medicine for their age, for example, women had an ancient type of pregnancy test where
they would moisten a sample of barley and emmer wheat with their urine every day. If the barley grew then that meant that the
woman was pregnant and it was likely going to be a boy, and if the emmer wheat grew then
the woman was pregnant with a girl. If neither grew, then the woman wasn't pregnant. I might sound like like snake oil, but the
test has been confirmed by modern science to have been surprisingly effective. But what about when women didn't want to get
pregnant in the first place? By 1350 BC the Egyptians were using condoms
made of specially colored linen that was soaked in olive oil. Like most other cultures, the Egyptians also
made do with condoms made from the intestines of sheep, which might put a crimp in your
love life today. For the most cutting edge birth control though,
Egyptian doctors would tell women to mix together crocodile or elephant excrement along with
honey, dates, or other pleasant smelling substances and then they would shove this inside themselves
to create a sort of plug. Crude, but effective at stopping sperm at
the source- though we wonder if it wouldn't take less dung to simply plug the hole on
the male side of things? Egyptian women were often written about by
travelers and described as having a beautiful, foreign mystique to them, and it turns out
the Egyptians found their own women just as alluring as the foreigners did. During his stay in ancient Egypt, Herodotus
recorded that when the most beautiful women had died, the Egyptians would allow their
bodies to decay for several days before being taken to the embalmer. This had less to do with saying goodbye or
some weird ancient ritual, and more with the fact that ancient Egyptians didn't trust their
embalmers to not get down with the corpses of their dead women. Herodotus recorded that an embalmer was once
caught in the act of necrophilia with a recently deceased woman by a co-worker, and thus the
Egyptians decided to ensure that there would be no more unrequited lovemaking with the
dead by making sure that their most visually pleasing women were a little overly ripe by
the time they got to a potentially horny embalmer. It seems some men aren't content to stop at
catcalling and exposing themselves. We've all seen pictures of ancient hieroglyphics
portraying the ancient god-pharaohs of Egypt as muscular and perfect specimens of humanity-
after all, as the living incarnations of gods how could they be anything short of physically
perfect? Yet the reality is far from what was portrayed
on ancient walls. We're all familiar with tweaking a selfie
to get our good side, and if we were completely honest on our dating profiles we'd admit that
maybe we don't look exactly the way we do in our photos. It turns out that the most egregious offenders
in the fake selfie category though were the pharaohs, who ordered their artists to portray
them as physically perfect while being massively obese. With priests ordered to prepare three banquets
each day, and with each banquet overflowing with meats, wine, and all matter of cakes,
the pharaohs grew to rather rotund proportions. Today their mummies have been discovered with
clogged arteries, giant bellies, and huge fat folds. The Egyptians were so familiar with obesity
that they produced medical texts on its dangers as early as 1500 BC. Slim figures however were still the beauty
standard of the day, so Egyptian royals would take laxatives three times a month. This would be in the form of castor oil, after
which they would spend pretty much the entire day on the toilet. Sadly this isn't how weight loss works and
it did little to curb their obesity, though the real tragedy lies in the fact that plumbing
hadn't been invented yet. We'll let your fertile imaginations paint
that picture. As one of the most medically advanced ancient
cultures, the Egyptians placed a premium on health and had doctors for every part of the
body, much as we do today. Dentists worked on teeth, optometrists cared
for the eyes, and naturally, the ancient Egyptians also had proctologists. Yet the Egyptian word for proctologist translated
as “shepherds of the anus”, and despite all our advancements in modern medicine, we
one hundred percent need to go back to calling proctologists the shepherds of our anuses. With their limited understanding of medicine
though, an anus shepherd had a pretty simple job, as giving enemas was pretty much the
only solution available to what might have ailed you back then. Stomach problems? Stick some medicine up your anus. Constipated? Let's shepherd this concoction into your backside. Wife left you and took the dog in the divorce? Anus medicine. Enemas were all the rage in ancient Egypt,
and they were so revered that they even had their own origin myth. The Greeks believed that the titan Prometheus
stole fire from the gods and gave it to man- and for the Egyptians their god Thoth developed
the enema and then gave it to man as a gift. As far as usefulness goes, fire's done pretty
alright by us... but I guess, um, thanks for the enemas? Schistosomiasis is a disease caused by a parasitic
flatworm which is brought on when the worms latch themselves to the intestines. The parasite enters the human body through
contaminated water, and once inside the human body the worms develop into maturity and release
their eggs, which get flushed out of the body and back into the environment to repeat the
life cycle. To say that the worms were endemic to ancient
Egypt would be an understatement, as it's believed that the vast majority of the population
was playing host to dozens of worms living inside them. One of the symptoms of infection is blood
in the urine, and the parasites were so widespread amongst the Egyptians that it was believed
men also menstruated along with women. In fact, blood in a man's urine was seen as
a sign of fertility, and we suppose in a way the ancient Egyptians were right, for the
man was in fact full of life. Just the creepy-crawley, deep-in-your-guts
type of life. Christians believe that God simply spoke the
world into being, and many religions around the world share a similar creation myth. Ancient Egyptians however had their own spin
on things. For them, the world before creation was much
like in the book of Genesis: a formless void without shape. Here however is where the similarities end
and the Egyptians take a very sharp left turn with things. In their creation myth the bisexual god Atum
masturbated into the void and gave birth to a twin pair of gods by spitting them out of
his mouth, and from there all creation follows. We’re not sure why the masturbation was
necessary, and we're not even going to comment about what that insinuates about the real
nature of the world around us. To honor this act of creation though, Pharaohs
had to routinely engage in a fertility ritual that would ensure their land remained rich
and their crops bountiful. To do this, Pharaohs- whom remember, were
nearly all very obese- had to shuffle down to the banks of the Nile and, again masturbate
into the water. The Egyptians saw this as a powerful act of
symbolism, and in fact the ancient Egyptian word for semen, progeny and the floods of
the Nile were all the same word What other crazy things have you heard of
the Egyptians doing? Let us know in the comments! Also make sure you check out our other video,
how rich was Cleopatra! And as always if you enjoyed this video don't
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