The Infinite Monkey Cage - Egyptian Mummies

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Brian Cox and Robin Ince peel back the layers to explore mummification and the science of Ancient Egypt. They are joined by comedians Russel Kane, Lucy Porter and bio-medical Egyptologists Rosalie David and Lidija McKnight from the University of Manchester, as they learn about the scientific techniques that are helping to uncover the lives of Ancient Egyptians, including that of a woman who died running away from an axe murderer. They find out that much of modern western medicine was built on the Ancient Egyptians sophisticated pharmacology, though they should probably avoid the treatment for migraines which involves being slapped in the head by a fish. Producer: Melanie Brown Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcast. You're about to listen to The Infinite Monkey Cage. Episodes will be released on Wednesdays wherever you get your podcast. If you're in the UK, the full series is available right now, first on BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robin Ince and this is The Infinite

Monkey Cage from the Nair Centre in Hume, Manchester. Now, this building is truly historic. It was opened in 1902 as the Hume Hippodrome, a theatre for the mill and factory workers. From 1929 to 1950, it was a cinema, then a playhouse theatre, until it was bought by the BBC in 1955. Ken Dodd.

Ken Dodd, you got a favourite Ken Dodd joke, Russell? Just when he got that with his teeth. That won't translate. That won't translate. Is there anyone listening to this that did not know what face I just paused? Yeah. Ken Dodd.

I don't even know the one about the cucumber being put through the letterbox. No, go on, tell us. I'm not going to tell you that anyway. Go on. Oh, you know that one. What a day. What a day.

What a day for putting a cucumber through the letterbox and saying, oh, the Martians are coming. And there's another 17 hours of that, if any of you have ever seen a Ken Dodd show. Hold on. Knock the doors. Do you get that joke, Liz? Am I being thick?

What's the joke? I don't get it. It's basically the idea that Ken there at that point is imagining that the cucumber itself, being green and very often it's basically the idea that ken there at that point is imagining that the cucumber itself being green and very often it's been considered that martians though as we know will in fact only be microbial life but should they not be microbial life and they should be of human size their penises may well also be green so what ken is imagining is that by placing the cucumber the martians are coming. What a day!

Ken Dodd-Ledgerton. They're putting a cucumber through your neighbour's letterbox and saying the Martians are coming, the Martians are coming. I love a Martian penis joke, I love it. Can we do this as a voiceover? Oh, it is a voiceover, that's how radio works.

And when the BBCc left the building was transformed into a center for afro-caribbean arts and music opened by nina simone in 1991 the building was closed again in 1997 but was reopened 21 years later by niamos a collective of artists and residents we're very proud to be the first bb BBC broadcast from here since the 25th of August 1986. Yeah, it is an amazing building. Because it is, the University of Manchester is here, and of course where Brian regularly lectures. We put a straw poll out and said, what would you most like to talk about? Because it's the home university of Brian Cox.

And we thought it was going to be things about graphene. And actually the main question we got is, how is Brian Cox and we thought it was going to be kind of things about graphene and actually the main question we got is how is Brian Cox so well preserved and what innovations can I put in place to stop the speed of my own personal physical entropy which is why today we're doing mummification and explaining the resins that we regularly use on the face of the current Brian Cox. Also I wanted to know as one his loyal servants, if I will get buried with him on the pyramid that's going to be built on Saddleworth Moor, or if he just wants his cats. Just your cats? Just your cats. Anyway, today we're looking at how the science of mummification gives us a window into the

innovative minds that were preserving bodies almost 4,000 years ago. Not only does it allow us to gain a greater understanding of the past, but also of ourselves now, with technology including radiography, X-rays and CT scans. And we're joined by two biomedical Egyptologists, a mastermind champion, in fact, two mastermind champions, but one of whom is also an expert on evil geniuses. But is he also evil himself?

We're about to find out, because they are... I'm Rosalie David. I'm Emeritus Professor of Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester. And my life work really has been developing medical and scientific techniques to be applied to Egyptian mummies so we can learn more about their life and their death, their diseases and their whole existence. I have a favourite death ritual, which is the opening of the mouth. And when the individual was mummified, the mummy was stood up at the tomb entrance and the priest would come along with a carpenter's tool called an adze and would touch the mummy on the mouth, the hands and the feet.

And that, it was believed, would bring it to life, the spirit to life, for eternity. So all those mummies where the ceremony has been performed are still alive and well. My name's Lydia McKnight, and I'm a lecturer at the University of Manchester in biomedical Egyptology. And my favourite death ritual is an ancient Egyptian one, of course. It's the letters that the Egyptians wrote to their dead relatives, recently deceased dead relatives. And they would not only say how sad they were at their passing, but also how they would like them to do a little favour for them

in the afterlife. So maybe put in a good word or ask for something in return. So they always had a bit of an ulterior motive um i'm lucy porter i am a comedian my death ritual if i die especially if i die before my husband i would like a new orleans style jazz funeral because my husband really hates jazz so i just think it will torment him also and i won't have to hear it because I'll be dead hooray I'm a stand-up comedian and I'm one of the three Russells

still allowed on Radio 4 but for how long? since I get into Russell Howard's hard drive I'll be the only one and my favourite death ritual is to attempt stand-up comedy For how long? As soon as I get into Russell Howard's hard drive, I'll be the only one. And my favourite death ritual is to attempt stand-up comedy at the Reading Festival's alternative stage, where I immediately die. And this is our panel. Rosalie, we want to start with a definition or an overview,

because everybody's heard of ancient Egypt, but could you define for us that time period? What do we mean by ancient Egypt? So basically what we're asking is, when did it just become Egypt? Is there a specific day when it stopped being ancient? Yes, well, ancient Egypt started probably about 7,000 years ago, And from 3,000 BC, they began to read and write. And that goes down into the early centuries AD. So 5th, 6th century AD. So you've got a whole period of maybe 5,500 years of history.

And in answer to the second question, it ceases to be ancient when it becomes medieval. So that would be in about 6th century AD. So the monumental architecture that we know about, so the pyramids for example, when were they built? Most of the pyramids were built around 2800 to 500 BC, so they're very early in the scheme of things. So they were there from almost the very beginning. People were living in mud dwellings, but in their funerary beliefs, which they were the centre of all their beliefs, they built these magnificent monuments. Why did this civilisation, it always fascinates me,

why did it seem not to move so much? I mean, as you said, they were building these incredible things. Well, they believed in creation, and they thought that the world was created by an island coming up from waters surrounding it. And everything happened on that island of creation. The gods gave the laws, everything you needed for life. So perfection was the beginning of the world. And the old kingdom, the time when the pyramids were built was the time when they created the most beautiful art the architecture the medical profession and so on so thereafter they were always harping back to try to grasp

that moment of the beginning so russ so what's it what about for you the uh you know were you a child who would go to the museums and rush straight to the mummies and the shrunken heads was that kind of if you could just leave it as was I a child that went to the museum my daughter is currently studying Egyptology at school she's eight so we're sort of learning about it together and I've done Cleopatra for I mean how what what year was Cleopatra that's the only thing I didn't get straight in my head. When was she? These are very, very late at the end of... Is she still ancient?

Yeah, she's right at the end. Could you imagine being the last day? What's happening tomorrow? It's medieval. You've got to change your watch, change your currency. I'm ancient. I'm never going to fit in. You might want to put that dog head down. That's not going to be welcome tomorrow.

What do you think it is, Lydia Lydia about that particular civilization yeah that has captured our imagination but also when did it capture our imagination well there was a massive trend in wealthy people wealthy British people especially going on what they called the grand tour so they'd go abroad they'd experience strange and exotic lands and see different things and they'd come back and tell everyone about you know how fascinating it was and how they picked up all these souvenirs people were over there and they wanted to purchase something and we know a lot of stories about mummies that have been brought back um animal mummies all sorts of jewelry and bits of sculpture you know everything had a price i suppose and it was if you were going to pay it

then you could have it that's what you need to learn russell as a master criminal is it's all about wealth if you've got it already yeah if you take your big diamond down to the pawnbroker you'll get arrested but if you just put it in a big magical hat and then have it put on your head in westminster um can everyone all just fall down in front of you i'll just i'll just move to essex and wear it, stand and wear when you're out on a night out. Do you want to sign Boko with that hat, Gary? I suppose, Rosalie, when we think about ancient Egypt,

mummies, that's central. So could you describe what a mummy is? What is that process? Mummies occur not just in Egypt. There are preserved bodies from around the world but the egyptians perfected a technique the earliest ones were natural mummies because they had such a narrow area of cultivated land they had to take the bodies outside the area for burial so they were buried in the desert and this dried the

bodies out so they were naturally preserved. Now eventually they realized when they built a different kind of tomb which was brick lined and the body was no longer surrounded by the sand these bodies deteriorated and these were the, so this was a real problem. So they then developed a chemical method of preserving the body. And there are two stages to it. First of all, you eviscerate the body. So you remove all the internal organs, with the exception of the heart, which they believed was the place of the soul or the emotions,

and the kidneys. We don't know why, but probably they were difficult to identify and remove. So evisceration and then dehydration using a substance called natron, which is a naturally occurring salt found in Egypt, and this dried out the body. And if it was properly done to the highest standards, it would last, as many of them have, of course, right down until the modern day. And why did they want to preserve the bodies? They wanted to preserve the body because when they believed a death,

the person's soul or spirit went on into another existence. So in order to have food and drink and all the good things of life into eternity, you actually needed the body preserved as an interim stage or agent in that. So the afterlife basically was just, oh, do you know what, I just want to finish that pie. The afterlife was a continuation of this world and i always think it must have been a wonderful life because how many people

today could really say i want my life for eternity but that's what they were saying well i suppose if you were the pharaoh you probably would but if you're someone who built the pyramid yeah you'd go this will do this. This 20, 30 years is more than enough. I'm 19. I've had a good evening. I like that. It's like an all-inclusive wristband for the dead. We're well up for that. But they all wanted eternity from the lowest to the highest.

So that was the idea that you would have this world, but without the problems, without illness, without difficulties of any sort you would stay young beautiful fit and that would be eternity it is really interesting i think what rosalie's saying that the idea that because i love my life and i you know i but yeah not forever mate not you know there's there comes a point where you know i've eaten enough angel delight i don't need it in the next life as well but I'm trying to think what I would

if I had to be buried with I mean my cats well they went with them yeah that I'd like it depends on where the cat's positioned because you know when you wake up and the cat that's not a good eternity is it

cat's butthole in your face yeah yeah that's it can you see the light no oh my god oh no no no no so you i know went to you you've been to egypt on three occasions to study haven't you my mom and dad were obsessed with egyptology but they were very devout catholics so in our house we had the Virgin and Jesus and then we had Anubis and I had a very I wasn't sure what we believed going up to be honest so we went to Luxor and we went to the Pyramid Store and we went on a Nile cruise on which nobody died do you get your money back if that happened? If there was no real murder to solve for Christy Cruz's, I'm so sorry. When do we start seeing the scientific investigation of mummies?

Well the scientific study of mummies I guess from my point of view really started at the very end of the 19th century when the x-ray was discovered and mummies were a brilliant thing to be test cases because they're already dead you can't kill them so you know put them in that new fancy man-fangled machine and blast them with some x-rays and they'll look the same afterwards. So it's pretty comforting, I think, for the scientists. So the first x-rays were actually taken of small animal mummies and child mummies from Egypt. So I think that sparked the start of the interest in what these sort of quite strange objects were and what was going on inside.

So was there, but did they you know before that was there investigation would people i mean i i realize obviously ethically and things like this it might have been very problematic but would people have just gone right well we need to carefully take the bandages off and see what lies underneath not so much carefully oh okay um like a two-year-old at christmas Yeah, a little bit. What's in it? Oh, it's just another old wrinkly thing. Oh, I've got the head. I hate it. It hasn't even got a brain in it.

18th century England, it was a pastime of the wealthy, was to come to a venue such as this, and a mummy would be wheeled out, and the officiants of the ceremony would get down to just chopping it open. So extremely destructive and we know many mummies were lost in that way and that's why today we're very, very careful about how we study mummies because of course, although there are a lot of mummies surviving,

we have to be very careful to look after the mummies that are in our care, especially ones in museums because they're irreplaceable. What are the best preserved mummies that are in our care especially ones in museums because they're irreplaceable what are the best preserved mummies that we see well i think you'd get different answers if you ask different people because you could look at a mummy that's been unwrapped so you can physically see the remains and they look perfectly preserved they look like they're asleep literally just they close their eyes and they're asleep but then you get fully wrapped mummies or mummies that are in coffins or containers that are decorated with the most amazing artwork with hieroglyphic inscriptions and they look blingy for want of a better word

so is that a better preserved mummy or is the beautifully preserved, just looks like they've fallen asleep, is that mummy better preserved? It's a very modern debate, that, really, isn't it? But that is, again, that idea. Because you mainly work with mummified animals, don't you? I do. How different was the process then? Are we still talking about the removal of the same things?

Was the brain removed? What happened when it was the mummification of an animal? Well, animal mummies come in different categories. So we have very, very important cult animals who were very important during their lives. So they would be worshipped a bit like the pharaoh. And when they died, they'd receive elaborate burials. They'd be mummified, And when they died, they'd receive elaborate burials. They'd be mummified, almost like the pharaoh would. There are not many of those. We get mummies that are food.

So food offerings, as Rosalie said, were placed outside tombs for the deceased to gain sustenance for the afterlife. So those are usually animal parts that have been mummified in a rudimentary way. Then we have pet mummies. So we have animals that were interred with a human as their beloved pet because they wanted that pet to accompany them to the afterlife. Not many of those. But the largest group of animal mummies are the votive mummies. So these are ones that were made in millions. And we have many, many thousands of them in museums around the world and they were not so much worshipped as animals they were a physical form of prayer so you could purchase an animal mummy and it became kind of a conduit to take your message to the gods the Egyptian gods are

all connected to the animal world so different gods are connected to different animals. And you would choose an animal, mummy, depending on which god you wished to send a message to. So it's a way of communicating. It's a little bit like we would light a votive candle in a church today. So those animals, the ones that were preserved as votive offerings, were very much a quick conveyor belt production line approach it was an industry basically because they were trying to supply this demand for offerings and that the people had at the time so those ones are not eviscerated the organs are usually still inside

but of course because we're talking about animals that are usually quite small, like birds or cats or small crocodiles, it would dry before it had a chance to rot. So the processes such as evisceration and exeribration, where you were taking out all the gooey bits which might rot, you didn't need to do that. What was the most expensive animal? Because there must have been a particular god you think, I really want to get a message to them.

So what was the high-end market of votive offering well that's an interesting question because we don't really know a lot about votive animal mummification apart from the fact that we have a lot of mummies because the egyptians didn't write any of this down they didn't draw anything there's no artwork that shows us very much about votive animal mummification so we really only have the mummies to tell us so we have millions of cats birds dogs fish crocodiles absolutely millions but to put them into sort of a ranking we don't know so that's what we really anyone who wants to be an archaeologist what we're really looking for is the price list. That is now even more than that.

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are travelling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. Rosalie, you mentioned about the old kingdom and one of the things you mentioned initially

was medicine, pharmacology. So was that linked to the techniques of mummification? So how advanced was the civilization understanding the physiology? Yes, I think because they mummified the dead, they knew the anatomy of the body. And therefore, that gave them insight into the medical problems although they didn't see the body alive and again in the old kingdom you get the beginnings of medicine written down they'd obviously practiced this for centuries thousands of years maybe before but it's now written down you have doctors who are specialists in different areas and it is along

with the the medicine in mesopotamia which is modern syria iraq one of the very earliest medical systems in the world and we actually get our western medicine from ancient e. It comes down through the Greeks and the Romans on the one hand, the Arabs on the other, into Europe, into European medicine, and then into what we would call today Western medicine. So many of the aspects of ancient Egyptian medicine are still with us today. And so how advanced was it? Well, we had a project some years ago on pharmacy in ancient Egypt in our centre at the university, and we looked at the pharmaceutical treatments

that the ancient Egyptians had had. And these were analysed from the medical papyri, which are 12 very important documents with recipes for treatments for different conditions. And 64% were valid as therapeutic treatments down to the modern day. Now, until this study was done, it had been said, oh, the Egyptian pharmaceutical remedies are simply magic. Well, yes, they did have some magic. For example, the treatment for migraine was to tap the patient lightly on the head with a dead fish. That's still available on the NHS.

Fish is alive on the NHS. We haven't got the budget to kill it. The idea was that the headache would go into the fish, you see, to transfer. But anyway, 64% of valid actual remedies that have been used right down until the modern day. So that's the pharmaceutical side. The other side was surgery. And although we don't think that the surgery was as advanced,

they had treatments. For example, they had amputation of limbs, which were successful because the people lived beyond that. And we have evidence of this from work that our colleagues in Egypt have done on the pyramid workmen at Giza. So it was a really a very, very advanced system. But the pharmaceutical treatments of the ancient Egyptians were 1800 years before the Greeks. So that's where it all comes from. And could you give us an example of some of those treatments that we know work today? Yes, honey was widely used in ancient Egypt and this was used to treat wounds because of course it dries out the environment of the wound and this stops the bacteria growing. They also had a remedy for schistosomiasis which is a parasitic infestation. And we had another very big project on this.

And we found that 70% of the tissue samples we looked at were positive for this disease. It's very debilitating. And if these people had had that disease and not been treated, you would not have got this dynamic civilization. So we looked, therefore, for the pharmaceutical treatment, if it existed. And there it was, balanitis oil, which was used until about 50 years ago as the treatment for the disease today. So can you sort of look and tell what people were dying of? Was it mostly being slapped round the head with fish? LAUGHTER and tell what people were dying of? Was it mostly being slapped around the head with fish?

It's quite difficult when we've examined mummies all over the world, really, to find the exact cause of death. But there are a number of examples we've looked at. The most recent was a mummy in the Belfast Museum, the Ulster Museum, a woman called Takaka Buti. And she was young, beautiful in her 30s, and she died. And the evidence is there, she was struck from behind with an axe. And we were able to identify the kind of axe that went into her back, and she would have died almost instantly. And another study we do on proteomics

identified in the muscle tissue that she was probably running, so possibly running away from the assailant, and the assailant hit her from behind with the axe and she died. So there you have an immediate cause of death. Another example we have of a mummy in the Leeds Museum we examined. And he, poor man, his tongue was incredibly swollen. So he choked to death on his tongue, probably the result of an insect bite. So you do get these dramatic deaths, if you like.

But generally, we can just look at the pattern of the diseases and we sometimes of course can't see the evidence of disease at all and therefore they probably had infectious diseases which killed them off. I suppose it's interesting isn't it because something like you we might possibly learn something about being asphyxiated by your tongue and learn something medically from that case but generally human beings have always known that having an axe in the back of the head yeah so it's interesting some of them you learn more from than others the fish isn't going to work gary give me a couple of minutes um i've got a pharmaceutical

question i don't know if this is a documentary i watched years ago is it myth or fact that in some of these tissues they found thc or weed and also cocaine and and drugs is this a myth or were they yes we were we were involved in that project i bet you were should we get some pizza and have a break? It was a study carried out in Germany on a group of mummies there. And it was maintained that they found evidence of nicotine and cocaine. We have looked at lots of examples of mummies and found no evidence of either. The nicotine, it's suspected, was early Egyptologists examining mummies smoking. So what were they doing lines of them as well?

There must be so many questions remaining about that civilisation. I mean, it's so long ago. But for you, what are a few of the questions that you would love to be answered by this research? So we're very fortunate that the Egyptians preserved so much of their civilization, and that the environment preserved so much. But we still only have a tiny fraction that we can analyze so it's almost like we can pose a question but whether you'll ever find the answer when you go looking for it is another thing but you might find another 10 things that are really fascinating but it might not be what you set out to find and other things that we know uh biased by the fact that for example we when we think of mummies as we discussed that they tended to be

the the the richer people the more well-off people the people had the rather nice lifestyle that we have access to so is our view of the civilization yeah is there a selection bias yes totally because we're what we have access to now is determined by what archaeologists found, what they chose to keep, and where that material then ended up, because material was distributed after excavation. So if wealthy people paid into a pot for an excavation to take place, they would get things from that excavation in return. So material went all around the world to different museums, to schools, to hospitals, depending on how important it was deemed to be.

So we're very, very biased in what we've got to look at today. And it goes back a little bit to your earlier point about what is the best preserved mummy or thing it's what's appealing to somebody else's eye 250 years ago and what they felt was most valuable and that's completely tainted our museum collections around the world but also in terms of the mummies that the human mummies that the ones that have survived, that we have, do they tend to be the more well-off in Egyptian society? Or is there a reasonable cross-section all the way through so we can begin to understand the lifestyles of the workers

in this civilisation as well as the pharaohs? Yes, we have far more mummies of the upper classes, middle classes, than the peasants. But we have, of course, with Egypt, this cross-section of early bodies, late bodies, poor people, rich people. We've got the mummified tissue, as well as the skeleton, so you can use a whole range of techniques on these you've got the plant remains to look at for the pharmaceutical treatments you've got the documentation in the medical papyri so for a period of 3 000 years you are looking at really a whole society although in a very snapshot ways as Lydia has said but it gives information which is vital to understanding modern diseases because for example we found atherosclerosis

in some of the mummies which is furring of the arteries of course thought to be a modern disease but there it is in the ancient Egyptians but in the priests and their families now the priests would offer food to the god in the temple of course the god didn't eat it so the priests and their families oh spoiler alert and it was amazingly rich beef wine beer sweet, all the things you should not eat. The other people were on basically a vegetarian with fish diet. So you've got two populations side by side on different diets.

And the result is atherosclerosis in one and not in the other so you can look at ancient egypt and see how it goes on the epidemiology of it into modern times so it's useful in the modern day we are looking at the basics of disease and indeed medicine which we are experiencing today of course i told you brian you've got to cut down your venison. It's fascinating to me because, as you said, so we have really a 3,000-year continuous record. Yes, there is a continuum right the way through. There was something I read where,

is this true that people at some point ate powdered mummy or that this was a health giving it's absolutely true the the mummified remains can be ground up and it was believed for hundreds of years that mummy was a very good ingredient and it was said that Francis I of France carried a little pocket of it round with him to take a bit whenever he didn't feel quite well. So, yes, mummy was an ingredient in medicine. What you did in the toilets there, Gary, it's dead person. You were tempted there, weren't you?

What we're saying is if there's a break-in in Manchester Museum tonight, you will find Russell Kane there, just all town centres devastated by people on mummy. Yet again there with his freeze-dried cannibalism in action. But one thing also I wanted to... Because, you know, Lydia, you mentioned x-rays. What else... Now, I presume, you know, the speed of change

in the way that we're able to analyse a body without actually, you know, going into the body itself physically, what are the new tools, the new methods which have changed our ability to do that? Well, we've got lots, really. Radiography has come on a long way since its early days of the X-rays when mummies were the subjects. So by the 70s, 1970s, the computed tomography scan had been developed, so that's CT scanning to you and me.

And at that point, radiography had made a massive leap because going from a two-dimensional picture of a three-dimensional object to a three-dimensional moving, a data set that you can manipulate it's given us a lot of flexibility to look at bodies in much finer detail using techniques that are used in clinical medicine today so the mummies that we use radiography to study are all studied at the hospital so they all go to the hospital don't make any jokes about the nhs i'm just saying you would poo your pants if you saw that being wheeled i want to see the independent report

for the first time let me tell you um so we take the mummies to the children's hospital just down oxford road which is next door to the university. That's too far. I'm sorry. No, they're fascinated. They all come to have a look. If I was going with my daughter to the children's hospital, I'd look away. You wouldn't, though, would you? It's like you saying, oh, I can't believe it.

They've got a stegosaurus in the exit. Kids would love that stuff. Well, if you're a kid and you see a mummy, you've been watching Scooby-Doo, you go, it'll be a caretaker in that. That's it. Kids especially are fascinated. And, you know, if kids are in the children's hospital,

it's because they're poorly or they've hurt themselves. So it's a bit of light relief usually when we take our... Who wants to see a corpse? Yay! It's amazing how excited they are. No, no, I believe you. I'm with you, totally. I think that is absolutely fantastic.

That's not necessarily a good thing, just to warn you. But it's not just radiography, of course. We have a lot of other techniques which are at our disposal now. A lot of those can be applied to mummies, to mummified remains, and they provide a way that we can learn things without causing any damage or causing only tiny bits of damage or taking samples from things that are already damaged which is far more ethically acceptable than what our ancestors were doing two three hundred years

ago which was dissecting mummies to look for what was inside each new level of being able to interrogate through these different techniques what are the revelations that come from that? If you look at the development of the techniques we've produced in Manchester I mean apart from the radiology we've had histology where you look at the tissue sample we've had immunological techniques where it picks up in the body if that person has had a disease in life so you don't need to go to hospital for the x-rays you don't need to find the parasite or the egg in a bit of tissue you can just have any tissue from that body and these techniques will show up that the disease was present. And we're now into something called proteomics, which is a further

advancement and it was pioneered here in Manchester on the mummies. And this again will pick up diseases in the body to a very high degree. And it's based on the technique used for living patients, which is called discovery proteomics. And this is what it gives us. We can see the diet they ate, where they lived, what their diseases were, sometimes the cause of death. We can reconstruct the face. So they are individuals. And I think this is really important that they're not just bodies. They're not just mummies. They are, and they were, and they still are, individuals, often with a coffin with the name on it and the title. We know what they did. So you're looking at an individual and seeing how they lived and what their world was like.

an individual and seeing how they lived and what their world was like. It's relating back to the human ideal I suppose of always wanting to know about other people and I suppose that's why I like looking at the animals is because they tell us something about what the humans believed and what their belief system was all about and in ancient Egypt it was absolutely vital that this whole system of gods and animals and the natural world and mummification it all worked together in some kind of big symbiotic hole that was going to make everyone's life perfect especially after death when you were in this perfect afterlife big question then is at the end of this listen so how do you feel now about mummification uh for you or your husband uh or are we sticking with the jazz torture that you uh initially suggested i'm going to sign up tonight i'm going to get rosalie to do it because she seems tender and caring

my little question is do you like have favorite mummies that you feel particularly affectionate towards or well i think you get to know them by their name and the work they did we had uh one at the museum called azru and she was a chantress or singer in one of the temples and um there's evidence that she dyed her hair red uh and that she um lived a long life actually uh had lots of diseases but still survived. So there are special favourites I think. Do you ever talk to them when no one else is in the room? No, no. Come on Azrael, let's do a duet. Ross, so what about mummification for you? Well that's, you know, the part of the world I grew up in Essex, that's essentially what we're going for with filler and Botox. It's yeah the part of the world i i grew up in essex that's essentially what we're

going for with filler and botox it's just a matter of time so you can have a vajazzle mummification on your pelvis so you're thinking there's going to be a comeback but in essex i think so yeah has anyone seen leanne hold on i'll be out in a sec can you move a bandage candy oh that's a beautiful image as well where the actual the thing seals you is the tanning booth as well yes exactly like a pharaoh shaped tanning booth that would be nice done for tenerife well we'll do that together we'll do tanning waxing and mummification i mean it's a business idea well a heavy eye makeup is something that the two cultures have in common as well, isn't it? Yeah, exactly.

We asked the audience a question. Who do you think should be preserved forever and why? And they said... What have you got there, Bram? I'll start with Keith Richards. Wouldn't take much effort. That's from Mark Hurst. Frank Spencer, because some mummies do have them. Nice.

Brian Blessed, to scare the crap out of the Howard Carter of the future. I'm Imhotep, you little bastard! I'm Imhotep! I'm dead! Yeah. I'm deadhotep, you little bastard! I'm Imhotep! I'm dead! Yeah. I'm dead and alive! What does that one say? A life-sized Barbie doll

to really confuse future scientists. Just dawning on you that's what Azrul is, isn't it? Not going to work. Thank you very much to our wonderful panel who have been Rosalie David Lydia McKnight Lucy Porter

and Russell Kane next week we're going to look at the Psychologist well I say next week not necessarily next week because obviously a lot of people

listen to this streaming back to back so whatever time frame that you're using to listen to this, then the next time, then you might have even listened to them in the wrong order, so I hope you enjoyed last week's episode about magic. Is it magic next week? Yeah, it's magic next week or last week,

or it's currently at the same time, because someone else might be listening to it in the other room while they're... I don't know, right? This is... You're the physicist. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

In the infinite monkey cage. Turned out nice again. Hello, it's Zand van Tolikken here, and I'm back with my twin brother, Chris. That's me. In the third series of our Radio 4 podcast, A Thorough Examination.

And we're going to be talking about exercise. Now, I really love it. And this has been really annoying for me. In fact, it's gone beyond annoying. It's more like you've joined some sort of cult. But I think Chris needs to do more. In fact, I think everyone needs to do more. There is a general crisis of inactivity in the UK that we should all be worried about. So in this series, we weigh up

whether exercise really is the miracle cure for all that ails us, or whether it's been oversold and actually lounging around is just fine. Listen to us resolving the argument on BBC Sounds. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet,

we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. you