Fellow conspiracy realist. We are returning to you with a classic episode. This is the first of a two part series Famous Lost Tombs.
Do you guys remember this one?
Ah?
Yes, I could we forget the famous lost tomb of Djengis.
Khan and those other guys.
And those several other people, so many that this is a two part episode. I think we're all a little fuzzy on the exact details here, so we'll be exploring it along with you. I can't wait to hear what you think.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nolan.
They call me Ben.
We are joined with our returning guest super producer, Casey the Khan pegro Kh a n Yes, very important. Also, most importantly, you are you. You are here that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Today's episode is a bit of a rabbit hole for us. I mean every episode's a bit of a rabbit hole for
everyone involved. But we have a little bit of backstory here in a previous episode of this show, we explored this strange, ongoing and likely doomed quest to find the grave of Jengis Khan, and we also discovered that as the correct pronunciation.
Yes, Genghis Khan is now Jengis Khan, like like Djenga, like the game No No, No, that's Carl Tart.
And along the way, we learned that not only is it's nearly impossible for anyone to find the cons actual resting place, not only is it maybe possible that people know where it is and will never share that information, but we learned a lesson that Matt, you and I learned years and years ago when we looked at lost civilizations, and that is that this species on the whole is
just terrible at holding on to or remembering anything. We've lost the location of tons of other immensely important historical figures. And sure, sometimes that's through honest, boneheaded mistakes, moments of instability and confusion as empires rise and fall, and in some other cases it's on purpose, it's through purposeful obscucation. But before we explore all the famous, incredibly crucial historical figures who have disappeared from the modern day, we have to.
We have to admit that there's some deceptive number play at work here. When you think about it, folks, most people's tombs are lost. Over ninety percent of people's tombs are lost in the big picture. But what do we mean when we say that here are the facts.
Well, it's a combination of quite a few different factors. But overall there are two really important things that really are stick in the craw of your Laura Crofts of the world.
Right.
First, tombs were expensive, and honestly that's not any different today. If you want like a fancy burial or some kind of mausoleum or a plot. You know, land is scarce, lots of people die. You know, it's quite an expense unless you just want to let go the cheap route. And even then you got to pay for a damn arn.
Yeah, funerals are a racket in this I can't recall whether we've done an episode on this yet, but funerals are very much a racket, at least in the West.
And you know, if your family is in the funereal business, I know there's the whole notion that it is a comfort, it is a service you are providing. That's one way to look at it, but there is absolutely money to be made, and people are often kind of swindled into overpaying four things in memory of their loved one or as some kind of tribute to them when I don't know.
It's it's the old Brenees thing that we talked about in episode one. Guys create the need, well, yeah, create the need and then don't be swayed. As the consumer or the person going through some kind of traumatic emotional thing, you can't be swayed by those pleas to your emotion.
So a point being this remains true today, but throughout the course of history, the vast majority of people were buried in much more modest structures, or in some cases the body was just burned. That was back when you could burn your own loved ones. Now you can't do that anymore.
I mean you can't get hot. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair, man.
Geez, that smell really gives it away.
Or there were things like sky burial, you know what I mean, where the funereal process becomes more important than the physical resting site.
Isn't that kind of coming back. Isn't there such a thing as like green burials or modern sky burials.
I don't know about modern sky burials, but green burials are definitely huge. And in our home state of Georgia here in the US, there is a nearby Catholic monastery that practice that's one of the only two places I
believe in the United States that practices green burial. And that's a good observation to know, because with green burial, the idea is that ultimately everything involved in the burial, from the box, to the wrappings around the corpse, to the corpse itself will just become part of the.
Soil, leave no trace, no gravesite left behind.
And that's how many many people ended their lives, right. They were maybe in some cultures, thrown into the sea, were in some unfortunate places.
People just rotted where they fell, that's right.
And as we said a minute ago, there's also the issue of scarcity of burial sites because there are just so many people.
There are so many people, especially if we look over the long term. All right, let's do something very cheerful and dive into some of the death statistics, the statistics of morbidity or fatalities. We were able to find, in a very rough way, the number of people who have died ever, Like, not from nineteen fifty on, not from seventeen seventy, whatever on.
But it's up until twenty fifteen.
It's up until twenty fifteen. But I messed with the math a little, oh okay, got it to twenty eighteen.
Oh awesome.
So, according to the Population Research Bureau, modern Homo sapiens, meaning people who were more or less like all of us listening now, are this hot, new fangled Homo sapien stick to the earth about fifty thousand years ago, and since then, more than one hundred and eight billion members of our species have been born. That's a rough number because again, we have virtually no demographic data for ninety
nine percent of the span of human existence. Forty nine thousand years ago, people weren't like, hey, let's get the tribe together and figure out everybody's average age, interest and preference for you know, type of food, type of leisure.
Yeah, they weren't so much into analytics back then.
Surprisingly not these days.
We can't get enough of them, correct, but we did. We did find a pretty accurate number, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Man.
If we do a little simple math, we can find some astonishing things so let's take a fairly accurate number of people living on the planet today. That's seven point seven billion. Again very rough, because longtime listeners, if you remember an Earth earlier episode, Matt, you actually pulled up the world population clock and we looked at how many people were born and died just in the forty five minutes that we spent doing the episode.
I can't remember the exact number, but it was somewhere around ten thousand that were added while we recorded the other.
Yes, yes, that's true, that's true. So welcome if you're listening. So all we have to do is a little bit of subtraction. Take that seven point seven billion away from the one hundred and eight billion who have ever been born, and we arrive at this.
Number around one hundred billion, three hundred million human beings that have died on this.
Planet overall, just on the in the course of this ugly brutal thing called human life on Earth. And so with this in mind, we can we can easily see that we don't know where all one hundred billion, three hundred million graves are, right, and many, many, many many of those people didn't get a grave at all, you know, like you said, no many were probably burned or disposed of according to the cultural values or moray's of the time.
And when we think about this, it means it's reasonable to assume that many people got lost in the historical shuffle. As we said, empires rise, they changed names, the rulers change families, names of cities change. It's Istanbul, not Constantinople. And that's nobody's business, but it's sort of everybody's, et cetera. And not for nothing did Shelley write the poem Osymandias, which is great?
Oh yeah, look on my works, ye mighty, and disperse all of this sand, look at it.
Yes, yeah, that's a poem that I hope is familiar with a lot of people. It's quoted to great effect in the Ballad of Buster Scrut recently debuting on Netflix.
Oh, in the Super Bummer episode right, Super Bummer vignette.
But the guy does a great excerpt of it, he really does. Yeah.
I say this every time we bring up Ozzy Mandius. It was my grandfather's favorite poem, and he would recite it all the time because he was beautifully obsessed with his own mortality, and he would just constantly talk about Ozzy Mandias.
Were you ever like grandpa? You're kind of freaking me out.
No, it was this, I don't know. It was a really charming thing about him in a weird way.
Did he have a good voice for it?
Oh he did.
My grandpa just drank and grunted.
Well, perhaps he was reciting something.
Too in his head was happening. He didn't share it with me.
So so we know that. Unfortunately, we're never going to find the resting place of most people on the planet. That's that's just the way things have shaken out for us so far. But what about the people who were a big deal? This is interesting what you're saying, Matt, about your grandfather having this fascinating obsession with his own mortality. Because virtually every culture in our history, in one way
or another, venerates the dead. Death is up there with birth one of the huge inexplicable things.
Right.
Tons of people personally believe that they know or have an inkling of what happens, right, and some people agree and many people don't. But no one has come up with something that everyone can get on board with, right, So it's this mystery, and we do our best to honor or remember our loved ones, or in some cases and some gory cases, to vilify the people we despise. And each year hundreds of millions of people make pilgrimages to one resting place or another. It could be like
Jim Morrison's grave in Europe, right, it could be. It could be a resting place of lenin you know.
Or yeah, And it's usually a famous or powerful person, or a famously powerful person, yes.
Yes, or a powerfully famous person. So it seems reasonable then that, since since our species pays so much attention to this, it seems reasonable to assume that we can at least keep track of, if not everybody, the most important people who ever lived.
Right, you'd think, of course, Nah, it turns out no, okay.
End of show, Well credits.
We'll tell you why this is the case after a word from our sponsors.
Here's where it gets crazy.
Not even counting the normal people like you and I, like everybody who's ever.
Lived, the over one hundred billion normal people.
Right right, we have lost tons and tons and tons of incredibly influential historical figures over the ages. We can divvy it up into a couple of rough categories. Spoiler alert, we do not have the wherewithal to go into every single famous person who has disappeared or been hidden from history, but we can touch on some interesting stories that are not Jengis Khan. We've got stories of misplaced corpses, stories of rumored burial sites, and these are old, old rumors too,
as we'll find. And then we also have stories of people who were purposely buried in secret.
So let's get let's get it started with all. Alexander the Great, let's get it started in here. Yep, Alexander the third of Macedon, Is that correct? Great?
Is that is a different way of saying Macedonia.
It became Messay's age Masadon. It was one of the world's This this gentleman was one of the world's greatest military minds. We've probably heard of him just from classes way way back in the day. Maybe you're in one right now listening to this. If so, shame on you put your phone away.
Confused with our amazing cohort alex the Great.
Yeah, correct, But in this gentleman Alexander the Third's short life, he established the largest empire the ancient world had ever seen up to that point, and it lasted that way for a while it was the Great Empire.
Yeah, it's so weird when you read about these people. His his moniker is not ironic. He was Alexander the Great. It was not like a little John name. And I think about conquerors like this every time I do something really dumb, like this guy was died in his thirties, took over most of the known world at the time, and two weeks ago I fell asleep trying to put on a pair of pants.
You know what I mean. It makes you think, it.
Really really does.
I just recently learned, you know how much I love acronym's goat Greatest of all time. Yeah, so he could have been alex He's the original goat. Alexander the Goat. That's what I'm gonna call him.
This is it, This is it. Well, here's the thing. Alexander the Great was just a regular old guy doing all this conquering with his giant armies, you know, his numerous giant armies that roamed the planet.
Died feeling like a failure. Yeah, even though he did name a city after himself.
Just goes to show, just goes to show. We all have imposter syndrome. All of us. No matter what you know, no matter how much you achieve, how much you conquer, it's never enough unless you get right with yourself and love yourself.
And so far everybody has died no matter what they do. It turns out life is a terminal condition.
Except for that one guy. You remember that's a different years ago or so. You remember we're talking about spatist one guy. I can't remember his name, all right, So oh and Henrietta lax Ah, there you go. Immortality via cancer cells. Okay, So here's here's one of the big things. It's not exactly known, or at least as debated, how he died, but it is known when he died.
M Yeah, yeah, three twenty three BCE and Babylon. But but you're raising an interesting point, Matt. We don't know too much about how we died. Was it malaria, was it poisoning? Was it West Nile virus. There's a somewhat idealized, romanticized account that says he died of heartbreak.
Oh my gosh, that's not a thing.
People have died of heartbreak.
They need to suck it up, and you know, start going to the gym.
You know, you've got all this advice for these ancient people, they.
Really do in this time, in this time in human civilization, just surviving was like being at the gym all the time.
That's what I'm saying, though, Like, you know, with everything that was getting thrown at you, how are you gonna die of a broken heart? That just sounds like giving up to me.
That's surprisingly cold.
Man.
Hey, listen, I've been through the ringer this year, okay, last year.
Yeah, okay, I see, I see what You're.
Come out the other side though, hear knew me.
What's that quote, be kind for everyone is facing I'll do it again, be kind for everyone is facing a great battle. It's one of Chuck Bryant's favorite quotes.
Actually, that's a good point.
It's also one of those things about being It's like you could rephrase that to be nice to the person everyone you meet, because they could be dealing with something that you do not know.
About, yeah, or you know the golden rule, Just treat them like you want to be treated.
Yeah. So what happens?
So okay, So there's this idea debatable probably not true, that he died of good old fashioned grief over the death of his best friend ifestion.
I don't know. I heard via the internet that the h is silent, but I know Hefestianfestian expert.
So what happens though, like I, regardless of how he dies, he dies around three twenty b CE.
So what happens after that, Well.
I mean his corpse. He's the guy that conquered most of the world, at least in the known world, as we said, and his body is going to be venerated in some way in probably some you know, grandiose fashion. That's just what's going to happen. No matter what. His body's going to be an artifact for what comes after him now that the leader is dead, because there's going to be a power struggle, right.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, because in this case, his body becomes a symbol. In some ways, possessing his body gives an implicit endorsement of your right to rule.
Almost like oh that is so strange treat it almost has an air in a way, or being an heir to it because you have it.
Yeah, yeah, possession being nine tenths of the law, and so on.
There you go.
So first his body's mummified and for two years it lay in state in a golden sarcophagus, and eventually the people were fighting about where he should be placed, where he should be buried, make a decision, and they decide to bury him in Greece, in the first capital of the Macedonian kings, whoa in.
A place called Egay. And I again the Internet says I should pronounce it that way. It's spelled ae Gae. We're just going with it.
But the plan goes arise, isn't that correct? Oh?
Yeah? According to ancient sources, his his hearse that was actually you know, his body was traveling in was hijacked of all things near Damascus, and his corpse was taken to Egypt, and it was first I guess it was first taken to Memphis in Egypt, not the home of the other king.
Right away before Elvis.
Yeah.
And then from there things start to get fuzzy. Sometime between two ninety eight and two eighty three BCE, his body is taken to Alexandria, the city we mentioned earlier that he founded and named after himself, and then from there he gets disinterred and put in at least two other places, the most famous being a mausolem called the Soma.
The Soma which I believe is a isn't that an herb that kind of makes you sleepy? And I think there's a antipsychotic medication called Soma, or at least it's some kind of Valium esque type drug.
It's a drug in Brave New World by Aldus Huxley.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Maybe it's not even real. I wonder if the real drug was named after the drug in Huxley, Because there really is a drug called Soma.
I think the real drug is a muscle relaxer. I think you want to say, I've been prescribed it before but didn't take it. It's also it's also a wonderful, wonderful I like. I like using this word for this horror game, like a psychological horror game.
It's also a quite good Smashing Pumpkins song from before Billy Corgan lost his damn mind.
Is a brand name of a real drug.
It's Kara Sofra Doll. That's the one that is the one to.
All that aside drugs, Smashing Pumpkins, imaginary drugs. This is where in this mausoleum, the Soma the looting began, as is wont to happen with graves. It's basically like a big old target in the ground saying hey, free stuff, Yeah, if you want to get your hands dirty and possibly your soul.
Yeah.
Well, and you know, Alexander found himself or his body at least inside a giant golden sarcophagus. I believe we mentioned very inconspicuous. Yeah, and what do you do when you have a giant thing made out of gold? You melt it down, of course you do. And that happened, but it got replaced with like a glass sarcophagus, or at least a glass container or some kind of crystalline container, which is fascinating to me. I really would have liked to have seen that.
Yeah, it's it's strange because you have to wonder did they decide did they decide that gold, being you know, a currency at times today, is decide that was just asking for trouble to make another golden thing, and they decided, well, glass is nice, and glass and crystal are expensive, but no one will steal it to try to pay for things.
That I mean, that makes a lot of sense. And also, you know, whoever is running the show now, you need a lot of gold and money to pay for all the war that you're waging, right, because we're empire building here people. Yeah, I mean it's not cheap.
It's game on.
Even Cleopatra, who don't worry, shows up later in this story, took gold from this tomb to pay for her war against Octavian. There you go, and the things continued to get worse, which is kind of the story of humanity.
Oh man, no question about it. In three sixty CE, there were a series of unfortunate events that included warfare, rioting, an earthquake, a tsunami. All of this threatened or possibly even destroyed the tomb. By the time Saint John Chrysostom visited in four hundred CE, the tomb was lost, and ever since then no one has been able to find the resting place of one of history's greatest conquerors.
And Alexander the Great rip is just out there somewhere. His remains exist because it takes a long time for bones in the human body to break down.
Yep, it's there, So traces of him may well be somewhere in some form, right, but he is now Also, it's fair to call him Alexander the Lost. Searches continue for his remains or his tomb to date, but no one has found it. One thing we can say, and I don't want to sound too cynical about this, is that this this makes a lot of careers. The search for these sorts of lost sites can literally change the
course of human history. And so as we're speaking, if you're an archaeologist or a budding archaeologist researching this or something like this, we want to hear from you. Let us know what your search, your particular search is, and let us know what you think your fellow listeners would be surprised to learn about it. In the meantime, let's fast forward.
I just right here before we get into it. I watched a movie with my wife last night, and I couldn't tell you the name of it right now. It just showed up on one of the streaming sites and she had wanted to see it. It's all about this woman who goes back to college with her daughter to become an archaeologist, and I just happened. I had no idea that that was the plot.
Is it a heartwarming rom com it?
I guess it's kind of bad, but.
It is a psychological thriller. No.
I couldn't even tell you who's in it or what it was.
It was.
Not bird Bucks. Oh, I can't believe. I can't even think of it right now.
Is it police Academy for that's what it was?
Okay, anyway, it just happened to have an archaeologist archaeology B plot line that may be very happy nice.
It's fascinating. I have a subscription to Archaeology Magazine. Well, okay, look, I mind it for possible episodes in the future. I'm just gonna be honest.
I inexplicably have a subscription to Maxim. It just started coming. I can't get it to stop.
I think that's something that happens in the magazine industry that I'd love to look into, because I had a former girlfriend who inexplicably began receiving a subscribe to Moohair magazine, and Moohair Magazine is a lifestyle fashion interest thing for the Latino population in the US North America, I guess. And we couldn't get them to stop sending it. Like I emailed them. I sent an actual letter and they still kept sending Moohair.
Wow.
As far as I know, you know, the my ex and I are on good terms, so I could probably write to her and ask her she might still be getting mouhair like they locked it down.
There was no way out there.
It's like she's moved three times, still follows her wherever she goes.
Yeah, we have that with Rolling Stone. Somehow my wife still gets Rolling Stone sent to our house. We have not paid for that. I don't even know how long we should look into this. This is actually I think we might have just uncovered a new conspiracy. Is it worth sending us these magazines for the advertising that we are potentially looking at.
That just just to just claim circulation, right, just to boost That's fine, I'm fine.
I love magazines.
I canceled a lot of subscriptions because we receive them here at work and I read a ton of them. But uh but anyway, yeah, but anyway that that may well be a future episode. Tell us about the magazine subscriptions that you are non consensually receiving, please, and and we'll hatch this conspiracy with you if you need it. It's a bit unethical, but if you have a subscription that you want people to think you are non consensually receiving, right to us, and we will totally pretend that you
are non consentually receiving it beautiful? Someone's like, no, I hate a Horseback monthly.
So it's there's so many weird magazines. Yeah, gosh, okay, yeah, we're going to do an episode on that.
Let's let's let's definitely do that. And let's also jump forward to a really cool figure in history, mister Thomas Paine.
Yes, let's bring the pain, Matt. What's what's the gist about this guy?
Well, he's an He's an Englishman, an England born political philosopher. He's a writer. You certainly have heard about him. He supported the revolutionary causes in both America and in Europe. He's perhaps best known for the old seventeen seventy six essay Common Sense, along with other works such as The American Crisis, Rights of Man and the Age of Reason, which is a really great read actually, and I didn't expect it to be when I cracked that thing open.
Yeah, it's very readable.
It's strange because I think we sometimes have a stereotype about things written in English in that period of time, where they're going to be dry, and every sentence is going to be three paragraphs long.
Yes, and you're not going to understand most of it.
Largely responsible for the philosophy behind enlightenment thinking and also our monument buddies, the Georgia guidestones.
Yes, exactly.
Pain in flies on those guys huge.
They were huge and up pain that is a weird mixed accent. And again, my grandfather. The reason why I read it is because my grandfather, old Papa, brought it, brought it to my attention.
It's a it's a good read, you know, And I know I know these the idea. There are certain trigger words people here that make them not want to read things. One of those is essay ye. The other is you know, I think reason or rights. But he was writing to communicate with the common people, you know what I mean. He wasn't trying to do fancy acts of rhetorical gymnastics or acrobatics. But eventually, despite all the great things that he did, he also spoiler alert died.
Oh man, I was hoping it was going to go the other way.
He's outside of the studio right now, Matt waiting to talk to him.
I only wish.
About his multi level marketing scheme.
Oh god, it's kind of a good news bad news es Central oils again Pain. So he died on June eighth, eighteen nine, in New York City, and today he is the only founding father that does not have an official gravesite that you can go and visit. There Isn't that crazy?
I'm so surprised.
Why, let's talk about what happened.
Let's so, he was first buried in New Rochelle, New York, on his farm after the Quakers refused him, in a town that was very, very hostile towards this man.
Yeah, because he criticized the Quakers during his lifetime for their pacifism and for some of their other political beliefs.
That's right.
And in eighteen nineteen, a pain admirer named William Cobbett, himself a Democrat, a Democratic advocate rather from England, saw the disrespect that Paine received where he was buried and decided to dig him up. Took it upon himself to dig the man up. Just grabbed a shovel, just grabbed a shovel, heartwise, the heart ones, that's true, and to take him to England where he would be treated with more respect. And he wanted to help spur the movement
for democracy there. So I guess he saw this as sort of a symbolic act.
Yeah, again, using a dead body for almost for definitely a political reason, and.
Did it work.
Not really, There's still a monarchy in that area of the world. There's a parliament, sure, yeah, a House of lords and a House of Commons.
That should tell you what you need to know.
Well, here in the States we basically just have two houses of lords. So at least I don't I don't know. Isn't that kind of the same thing. The representative represented the people, which would be the commons, and then the senators are more like the lords.
Interesting, the senators on paper are also supposed to represent the people.
That's fair, haha.
Psych So, over the years, Pain's body was divided, it was split, the bones were circulated across the planet. People were making relics of his remains, and now we have we don't know where the bones are. We don't know where pieces of this guy's body are. There's a Thomas Pain foundation that has some of his hair and a
bit of his brain. They admit to owning that, but there were unverified rumors that some of Thomas Pain's bones were cut into get this guy's buttons and sold to finance the revolution nice, But thing is kind of like in the Middle Ages when people would unscrupulously sell, you know, slivers of the Jesus the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. There are enough slivers of that stuff to make a forest essentially.
Or it's like those Passion of the Christ necklaces.
Oh yeah, or any and all holy water ever.
Well, holy water, you can you could just make holy water.
That's what I'm saying.
Was it you we were having I was having this conversation with somebody about hunting vampires. In vampire films, there's almost always a priest, right, yeah, And the priest has the ability to bless water, making it holy and therefore dangerous for vampires. Why don't they just like bless a water treatment system or like a storm or something just a well, yeah, how does it work to start getting buckets?
Well?
Anyway, there, there you go, vampire producers, check out our show.
And now that now that the Universal Life Church of California exists, literally all of us have a massive defense of it against vampires because we can just get ordained with in a few minutes.
Isn't that where your ordination is from?
Yeah? Absolutely, and me as well exactly, it's the only one that is not ordained. Yes, we've talked about this.
Let's get on this train, but I guess I got to get on the ordained train.
Casey is ordained. Look at him, he's in he's in three or four different sects that he's a minister for. And I think a priest, a priestess, and what was the other thing.
A shaman?
A mage? He's a mage. What are you making this up?
Yes?
Yes, yes, So.
Back to this idea of counterfeiting relics very common in ancient days and surprisingly common still in the eighteen hundreds. There were more buttons that were purportedly Thomas Paine's bones that were sold than could have come from ten bodies. You could build a jam band off the amount of buttons sold, well, the skeletons of a jam band.
Yeah, I want It makes you wonder who else was in that jam band that ended up as a Thomas pain button.
Yes. These were also the days of resurrection, then, weren't they.
Do you think that any of those are still around and they're confirmed to be pain buttons around?
Yes? Confirmed?
No, because how could you, well you could there are some forms of testing could you to verify it, because there are rumors of a leg bone hanging in a wall of a tavern in England, and then there are other place that would be Thomas Pain rights large enough sample where you could try to do some investigatory thing.
You could probably at least narrow down the timeframe and the region.
Is that kind of what you're saying, right, You could do some analyses that would indicate that there are also some pieces that were claimed in Europe. It's possible that the skull has been located in Wales and then later moved to Australia, but to the point no testing has confirmed this, and today it seems that Pain's remains are largely scattered amidst various grizzly collections and some unscrupulous private collectors.
There are more of these people than you think. My friends.
Likely have pieces of Thomas Pain held in a secret collection today, sort of the way that a particular secret society here in the United States collects skulls that is wow, creatively named the Skull and Bones.
By the way, that's who we're talking about.
Yeah, that's true. Just sitting there, do you think maybe they have it?
I don't know.
I don't know, but you know what, honestly, I would not be that surprised if they had.
A piece of it.
It would make so much sense. Oh yeah, that's Yale. Oh dude, they totally have something in there. Hey. By the way, twenty three and Me, if you're listening, just whoever you.
Are, you are, I saw this news.
Just go ahead and just get on there and just start just testing them bones especially, go to the skull and bones first.
Oh then, I thought you were talking about the twenty three a Me news that just came out now here about what is?
Okay?
I super producers, could we get a breaking news sound cue? So twenty three and Me has teamed up with a drug manufacturer, pharmaceutical giant named.
Glaxo like Smith Klein.
Uh huh, Glaxo Smith Clin.
They're giving the they're giving away the DNA test results of the five million something customers of twenty three and Me. What Glaxos Smith Clein will use this data to create research and create new drugs.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
What called it called? It said it was going to happen.
Oh my god, I gotta tell Jason, our executive producer, because he totally just did that.
Well, go ahead and preemptively thank him for possibly contributing to important medical research.
There you go, there you go against his will. Well, I mean, yeah, he clicked the terms of service. You know, once you do that, it's like you don't know what's going to happen.
That's true.
That told us, They told us in their offices they wouldn't do this.
So should we take a little break before we get to rumored burial places?
Sounds good. Let's do it.
And we are back, as Matt would say, with no delay. He said it once and I was taken by it. I don't know what it means, but I like it very much.
Yeah, you can hear. This is a very dry track. There aren't a lot of effects on it. Definitely no delay.
Also, it means that we're getting right to it. Rumored burial places number one with a bullet on the list. The Queen Nephrititi of ancient Egypt. She was a queen of Egypt, the wife of the pharaoh Akanatan, who ruled
in the mid fourteenth century BCE. So before Nefertiti and Akanatan, Egypt had been a polytheistic civilization worshiping an entire pantheon of anthropomorphic animal deities, ranging from the crocodile god Sobek, who was depicted often as a man with the head of a crocodile, a staff in one hand and an ank that Egyptian symboled a little loop with the cross through it in the other, and with a weirdly a giant golden temple acting as some sort of larger than
life crown sitting atop his scaly head. And then you had like God's like Anubis, who has depicted the god of the Dead, who has depicted very much the same way as Sobec, was only with the head of a jackal and a last no golden temple headpiece.
Yeah, I love I love the idea of all the gods being a person with a different animal head. That is really I actually really like that. But here's the thing.
Akan Natan and his queen thought. This whole worshiping multiple animal headed gods was for the literal birds, not not to be confused with the ibis headed god of wisdom Thoth, which is so fun to say Thoth. It's just I got a thch on the front end and a thch on the back end.
Yeah, man, I love that. I really do. Like EBIs or what is it, Thoth is the god. I've seen that in so many different places. Anyway, the Pharaoh thought it would be a good, a better idea at least to stick with. Just let's call it one god. This will be easier. We can all, you know, know that there's one singular force that we can worship. Let's say, let's say the Sun, that giant orange thing that just shoots light at us all the time and it makes us warm and happy. That's a good thing to worship.
Let's do that seems legit.
It's important to note that the sun disc also known as Attan, had already held a place in ancient Egyptian religion and the state's way back to the Old Kingdom, where it was worshiped as an aspect of the composite god Raw A'mun Horus. And this is not to get too into the weeds about it, but Raw represents the daytime Sun I'mun, the son of the underworld Horus of course, the rising Sun.
I love the idea of a composite god.
That is so cool to me. It's really common in the ancient world.
Yeah, yeah, but it's something we don't really think about everything. Every god is kind of their own thing. Oh, although it is kind of similar to the Trinity, like the Trinity, right.
The Monotheism. That's they didn't make that up out of whole cloth.
Right, Monotheism being exactly where we're headed.
Right, So this is this is this is backstory that we promise will deliver. So what what happens next? Because you have to know this stuff about polytheism and monotheism, right.
Yes, Akannat and effort TD attempted with all their might to obliterate all traces of we're gonna go Game of Throne style and call them the old gods by defacing carvings, temples, and hieroglyphics that depicted them.
And you know, this didn't go over so well with you know, the general public that had been worshiping these gods for so long.
That's right. And neither did it last particularly long, right, Bem.
That's right, it did not. It did not.
It wasn't as unsuccessful as New Coke when that came out, but it was still pretty No, it was actually way worse than New coke.
Or crystal pepsi.
Because I believe that Akinnatin rained for seventeen years, and this whole worshiping the Sun god business came in about three or four years into his reign, So that's kind of a blip in ancient Egyptian history.
Right, And the people who came after Aka Natan did their best to erase him and Nefertiti herself from official history.
And this is important.
So we don't talk about this as much as we should in the modern day, but it is true that the victors write the history textbooks you read, and they are the ones who tell the stories of events in the past.
And it is at least back.
Then, it was alarmingly easy to erase people from history, and Stalin did it during his reign. These subsequent pharaohs did it as well, and you can see why they did it, whether or not you agree with them. It is true that this could pose a clear and present danger to their own legitimacy.
Yeah, absolutely, And Nefertiti went right along with this whole deal, because she actually disappeared from the historical record before her husband did, about twelve years into his so it's possible that she might have died. There was a plague, as we know, that swept through Egypt around this time. But there are some Egyptologists who believe that she was actually elevated to co regent and changed her name therefore kind of slipped out of the historical record into a new role.
And then the name Nefertia disappeared, and she was named something that sounded remarkably like Nefertiti. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was sort of a it was almost like a permutation of the name Nefertiti. And the thing is too, in a lot of the historical record, or a lot of the depictions of she and her husband,
they were very much on the same level. She already had a lot of power even before this possible elevation to literal coregient like vice president or really I think a co regent would be like fifty to fifty co ruler, right, oh, yeah, so that's one possibility, But there's more. Many archaeologists believe that she could have been buried in one of the tombs of what's now called Amarna, which there's a new capital city that Akanatan built during his reign.
Whoa, right, Yeah, these tombs were plundered after Akinnaton's death, so it is possible that never Titi could have been reburied in the Valley of Kings. The thing is, people will tell you that, no matter how much animosity there was for her and her husband, no pharaoh would normally deny a former ruler the burial accorded to their station, even somebody that everybody hated, like Acnon.
And here's something that we I don't think we've even mentioned this yet. She had a very important steps on. You may know himton Common Tuton Common, Yes, old king Tut that we have discussed and before on this show about the curse that existed for his tomb.
Oh yeah, and I think inbreeding was the curse of his lifetime. Have you seen the forensic analysis. Also, I like to think of him as the originator of the phrase tut tut.
There you go.
I'm a big fan, like I like the single tut that you do.
Ben. You said, that's very tout.
Yes, it is when something is very touch Yeah, when something's touch well.
And the idea that she had such a famous and powerful son in law that perhaps her body was actually you know, put in his tomb somewhere.
That's right. Not to mention the fact that he took over after his father in law died, and he is also the one that pretty much instantly started the process of going back, taking Egypt back to the old polytheistic ways and refurbishing all of those desecrated sites and monuments and hieroglyphs and all of that business. But yes, you're absolutely right this theory that Nephertiiti's body was possibly buried
in her son in law's tomb. There's one part of it that is super interesting, is this idea that that tomb may have actually been meant for Neffertiti in the first place, but that Tutenkommon died unexpectedly quite young, the boy king, right, because one piece of evidence behind this, it's all it seems a little conjectury, but it's that it was a much smaller tomb than some of the other ones, and that if it was for a woman they might have considered it diminutive less then, so they
might have made it smaller. But you could also argue that it was for a boy, and that you could say the same thing in that respect. But here's the thing. This theory was put forth by an Egyptologist named Nicholas Reeve, who's the director of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project. He commissioned some radar scans of the site of Tuton Common's tomb and they supposedly showed evidence of two secret chambers, complete with masonry walls and quote, metallic and organic substances.
But there are other experts who aren't so sure that this was definitive of what he wanted it to be.
Kind of yeah. And then of course, as soon as a theory like that comes along, you've got somebody else who comes along and says, well, I'm gonna do some scans, and we're gonna or we're at least gonna relook at the scans that we're done, see what we have here. And according to this other group of scientists in this case, it's Lawrence Conyers, who's at the University of Denver. He's
an anthropology professor. By the way, he's looking at these scans and he's saying it, quote, it does not appear that these GPR ground penetrating radar data have been processed or that any of the so called anomalies are visible in the raw data that are provided.
This guy, by the way, I saw this in every thing that cited this dude. He wrote the book on ground penetrating Radar.
There you go. It's gonna make a joke about penetrating the ground via that old poet laureate of the West. But we'll go back to Let's go back to the quote he says, My suggestion to those who are collecting it is that they release the raw data for some peer review by other GPR people before they allow the antiquities people to hold a press conference about all the
riches that might be in these supposed tombs. That peer review would cut down all the speculation and critiques that have been going on around the email for the last few days, as there might be, as there might be as many scientists who could reach a consensus in advance of the speculation in the press.
This was in twenty sixteen, By the way, I was not able to find any more recent updates to this. But in twenty sixteen Egypt's Antiquities ministry refused to follow Kanyer's advice or acknowledge another series of scans that were carried out by National Geographic Or with their assistance, saying they would independently test the site. Instead, Reeve and his co author were allowed to present their findings unchallenged within the Egyptology community in Egypt. So I don't know. Ben,
we were talking about this off air. It seems like the ministry here is protecting their like what tourism kind of booned this could produce. I'm confused as to why they would be so secretive or not allow other perspectives in this in this discussion.
Could it be grant money coming in from NGOs or some other.
Thing, or it could be grant money, It could be a unsc thing, It could be it could be any number of things. We do know that in some cases, state organizations like this are incentivized or incentive, depending on which word you prefer, to preserve a certain status quo. It happens. It happens as well in Central America and Mexico, where in some cases some countries don't want a lost site to be found because then they are responsible for
restoring and maintaining it. It also could, and this is somewhat depressing, it could just be a matter of corruption. They may have just not greased the right palms yet, but they did allow him to like they just didn't respond, right.
Yeah, No, I mean they definitely did. It wasn't even the father of GPR or whatever. He was just kind of weighing in on this, and I think he was even quoted at another time saying he was considering going and conducting some tests himself, but he's glad he didn't because the whole thing seems like a real debacle, and you know, didn't want to fly halfway around the world to be part of this kind of total ship show.
Now.
I know that as of twenty eighteen, professors were still fighting over a three D image that was constructed of someone who was presented as Neffer TD, a thirty four hundred year old mummy that was identified as the younger lady. But that was discovered back in eighteen ninety eight and then TV producers got a hold of it.
So oh boy, yeah, so I had drama trusted well.
Point being is this is still a hotly contested issue, and I think the backstory of this whole Neffer td Akanatan situation is really interesting and kind of points to how history can kind kind of obscure the truth, you know, based on ideological disagreements.
And although you didn't hear it through the magic of editing, we just had a break off air ourselves and we hope that you are enjoying this episode. Because time got a little bit ahead of us. We have more famous tombs, but we are going to have to save those for another day the second part of what has become a two part episode. We will rejoin you next time as we stay in Egypt and travel further throughout the ancient
and not so ancient world. In the meantime, we have to ask, while you're waging on part two, what benefits do you see these searches having for modern civilization? You know, some people, oddly enough, I don't know about you, guys, but this surprised me. Some people have argued, in a very utilitarian way, we should just let the past die
and focus on the future. Why spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars finding these long gone, long neglected tombs when there are people starving, you know what I mean, in the Middle World? Should we spend that money saving the people who are alive instead of finding the venerated corpses of people who have died.
Or you know, spend it on sending us all the mars.
There we go, There we go, in case Elon is tuning in, And secondly, do you think it's possible that someone alive today might know the location of one of these graves or some of these remains? And if so, why would they continue to keep it a secret?
Yeah? And have you ever come across bones that are purportedly from Thomas Paine? We want to know about it.
Tell us about your buttons.
Don't send it to twenty three and meters I guess, but you know, maybe send it to one of the other ones. You think ancestry is clean so far.
I think it's an inevitable situation.
Well send it somewhere.
I also don't think it's necessarily bad. I mean, what do you guys think?
This is valuable stuff? And we have episodes about that.
You can find them all on our website stuff they don't want you to know, dot Com or wherever you find your favorite podcast, and you can send us the answers to those questions via. I mean, we're all over the social needs right, We're on Instagram, Facebook.
Twitter, socialba ds, social needs.
Yes, social needs als and I pas yes.
As you said, conspiracy stuff on most conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. Uh, if you want to maybe, well, there's all those ways you can get a hold of us. Check out here's where it gets crazy. That's our fait one of our Facebook pages. It's our I guess more of our member group that you have to join. The only thing you have to know to get in is our names. And it is so surprising how many people get it so wrong when trying to join that page.
I don't know about you, Matt, but I really enjoy the thing is. Look, the question is, can you name the host of the show?
You know?
Yeah, then Matt Nole, super producer, Paul or Casey. Thanks for coming, by the way, Casey. We also just for peak behind the curtain. If we think the answer is funny enough, if we actually laugh, we'll be like, ah go come on let them in.
Yeah.
If we can tell it's an inside joke or something, they were like, okay, they know what's going on.
What are some of the weird nicknames you guys saw?
Mostly what I see is just strange pronunciations or writings of Nole's name, just really interesting.
N O A L n O L E and you U L.
I think I like that.
That's a good one.
There was also k n O W L.
Yeah. Yeah, that's that's one of my favorite things I think.
And so you can join the conversation with us, most importantly with your fellow listeners and we we we drop by there too.
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