S5E6 - Living in D'Nile with Isis and Osiris

stories featured in Greaking Out are usually original adaptations of classic Greek myths.

But today, we're sailing across the Mediterranean Sea and up the Nile River.

This week's story features sibling rivalry, playing stupid games to win stupid prizes, dying twice, being ripped into pieces, women doing all the work and getting none of the credit, and the original mummy.

gods and heroes, amazing feats.

Listen and you'll see it breaking

out.

All right, story lovers, this week we're once again leaving ancient Greece, so buckle up and slather on the sun block because today we're headed to ancient Egypt, land of the pharaohs.

The ancient Egyptians used rice bran, the outer layer of the grain, to protect their skin from the sun.

But But I do not need any.

Well, you might not, but I packed SPF 100.

Anyway, this story first appeared around 4,300 years ago in a pyramid text.

Pyramid texts were prayers and spells etched in tombs inside the pyramids.

These spells later appeared in the Book of the Dead, which could be placed in a coffin or burial chamber.

These funerary texts were meant to help guide and protect people on their way to the afterlife.

That's right, the afterlife.

Egyptians were obsessed with the Great Beyond.

They really liked living and wanted to keep the party going, you know?

So the ancient Egyptians needed a way to get folks from point A, being alive, to point B, being dead, and loving it.

That's why the ancient Egyptians put all this work into pyramids and tombs and mummies.

We'll get to that later.

But our story begins in the old, old days, when gods walked among the mortals.

But they didn't just, you know, regally parade around or anything.

Oh no, these gods liked to party.

And that's where our story begins with a party.

Let's start with the guest list.

The most important party goer, the guest of honor, was Osiris.

He was the king of the gods and the mortals.

You know, the Pharaoh.

The word pharaoh comes from the Egyptian for great house.

Great house, like a royal palace?

That's right.

Technically, these ancient kings each had five names with fancy titles.

Over time, the word pharaoh just sort of stuck around.

Huh, okay.

Well, let me introduce you to this pharaoh, Osiris.

He was a good ruler.

He showed his subjects, the mortal Egyptians, how to farm and how to worship the gods, including himself.

He taught them laws that would allow them to live peacefully together.

He was all about this idea of ma'at, which basically meant order, justice, and balance.

It kept the universe running properly.

Ma'at made the sun rise every morning and the crops grow each year.

Maintaining Ma'at was Osiris' most important job, and he did it well.

And Osiris had a wise and powerful wife, the queen Isis.

She also used her magic to help mortals, healing them from sickness and teaching them how to weave and bake.

Love a good sourdough?

Thank Isis.

Isis and Osiris are the Greek versions of these names.

Egyptologists aren't sure how ancient Egyptians actually pronounced the names because hieroglyphics don't include vowels.

Wow.

Oracle, you're saying you don't know something?

This is the first.

Experts think that Isis might have been pronounced Asset and Osiris Usir.

Okay, well, when in Cairo, you know.

You mean when in Menefer.

Right.

Well, we'll try our best to stick to the Egyptian versions of the names.

So Aset and Usir were kind and wise monarchs, and they absolutely adored each other.

But nothing lasts forever.

Not even the gods.

That is ominous.

Well, every story needs a little tension, right?

So anyway, you might expect that these two, Usir and Aset, would go to the party together, but Aset was off doing something else because she was way too smart to be attending a function hosted by Usir's brother, Seth.

Or as the ancient Egyptians call him, Set.

Gotcha.

Okay, Set.

Set was a god of storms, disorder, disagreements, and trickery.

He was Usir's exact opposite.

Where Usir was steady, Set was chaotic.

Usir wanted peace, and Set wanted war.

Seems all bad, right?

But having a god of disagreement can be really useful at times.

Sometimes, ancient Egyptians actually worshipped Set, asking him to create problems among Egypt's enemies.

Thank you, oh very scary god of everything terrifying and all that stuff.

But in this story, Set isn't helping anybody but himself.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.

Of course, Set envied his good and kind brother.

He was definitely jealous of the attention and love Usir got from the humans, and you know he wanted to boss the other gods around.

So Set invited Usir, Aset, who RSVP'd know, the other gods, a couple of mortals, and 72 of his own buddies to this bash.

Seems excessive, but okay.

The party had everything.

Delicious figs, warm breads, rock and music, fun games.

It even

archaeologists have discovered ancient Egyptian board games in tombs.

One game, sometimes called hounds and jackals, had game pieces with the heads of, you know, hounds and jackals.

Wow, those smart Egyptians always coming up with new ways to have fun, huh?

So for hours, these gods feasted, danced, gamed, and joked around.

Hey, great party, Seth!

Oh, did Asset bring this bread?

It's so good.

Limbo!

And then, late into the night, Set brought out a chest.

Hey guys, you want to see something cool?

Check out this box.

It was a beautiful chest, wooden, rectangular, covered in blue paint and gold foil.

But it was just a box.

Well, yeah, but when the gods beheld it, they each wanted it for themselves.

Well, they didn't have like PlayStation or Xbox or anything, okay?

The chest was a big deal.

Just go with it.

Oh, you all want this box?

Said said.

I guess whoever fits in it the best gets to keep it.

That sounds fair, right?

I totally just made up those rules, okay, right off the top of my head.

One by one, the gods wiggled and shimmied themselves into the chest, but none of them fit just right until Usir, the good king of Egypt, lay down inside.

It was a perfect fit.

Sake, it's a coffin, Seth said, and he slammed the lid down.

I'm certain they could have seen this coming.

Well, you'd think so, wouldn't you?

But apparently, Usir did not.

Maybe it was the first prank ever pulled or something.

You see, it was no accident that this chest fit Usir exactly, because Set had snuck into the Pharaoh's bedroom the night before, measuring him so he could build the perfect coffin to his exact specifications.

Set then had his 72 friends help him seal the box and throw it into the Nile River.

The Nile River begins in the lakes of the African Rift Valley in what is now Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya.

It flows north over 4,100 miles before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea.

Right.

The current carried the coffin box with Usir inside all the way to Byblos, an ancient city in what is now Lebanon.

At some point along the way, Usir died, and back home, Set became the Pharaoh of Egypt.

Now, you probably don't want the god of chaos and violence rolling over your land.

First, because, well, that sounds like a horrible way to run a country.

And second, it absolutely ruins Ma'at, that idea of order and justice that was so important to the Egyptians.

Without it, the sun might not rise.

The crops might not grow, which would mean they'd run out of food.

This wasn't how things were supposed to be.

It was bad news for everybody, the mortals and the gods.

Fortunately, we've got a hero who can swoop in and save the day.

Our queen of Jomo herself, Aset.

Jomo is an acronym meaning joy of missing out.

The feeling you get when plans are canceled at the last minute, when you were anxious about going in the first place.

Right, like FOMO and Joe Mo.

Well, thank you for explaining that.

Anyway, eventually, Asset learned what Set did and she was horrified.

She ran as fast as she could to the Nile and then raced all along the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea.

She ran and ran and ran, her feet sore, her legs aching until she reached Byblos.

Aset found the chest and opened it up.

She knew this was coming.

There was no way her husband could have survived this long journey on the river, but still, she was devastated to see that her husband, Usir, had died.

She felt so many things.

She desperately missed her husband and grieved his loss, but she was also a little bit angry with him.

I mean, how could he have fallen for such an obvious trick?

He should have known better than to trust devious and jealous Set.

I mean, come on, man, Set asked you to lay down in a coffin and you just did it?

Perhaps, she thought, her sweet and handsome husband hadn't been all that smart.

But still, she loved him and she had a job to do.

Aset needed to lay Usir to rest on Egyptian soil so his soul could move on.

She carried him back to their homeland and then hid his body in a swamp while she prepared herself for the burial rituals.

Leaving the body unattended?

Yes, she left the body unattended.

And while Aset was away, Set was sniffing around the riverbank looking for something to eat.

And I really mean sniffing.

Set could transform himself into an animal with a dog's body, you know, know, square-tipped ears and a long snout.

And well,

you can probably guess what happened next.

Of course, Set found Usir.

Hey, I thought I got rid of this guy.

I definitely remember sealing him in a box and sending him up the Nile and everything.

Well, I guess I'm going to have to get gross.

And Set did get gross.

He ripped his brother into 14 pieces and scattered them all over Egypt.

Without a proper burial, Usir could never cross over to the afterlife.

I five me.

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So once again, Asset arrived too late to rescue her husband.

When she got back to the riverbank, she was overcome with grief again.

And this time it hurt even more.

Without an intact body, her husband was gone for good.

Not just dead, but really and truly gone from this world and the world beyond asset cried until her tears made the nile river overflow its banks and that's when another goddess took pity on a set

meet neftis you mean nebet hut right that's her egyptian name i meant nebet hut

but this wasn't just any goddess it was the wife of set

himself Turns out, she didn't like her husband very much either.

Set is the worst.

Asset accepted the help and the two goddesses began an epic scavenger hunt.

Literally, they were scavenging for body parts.

See what I mean?

The two women transformed into enormous falcons and took to the skies.

Falcons sometimes eat carrion.

and so they can be seen flying above dead things.

Additionally, peregrine falcons can see approximately eight times better than humans, spotting prey more than a mile and a half away.

Well, they needed that extra vision for this mission.

The goddesses flew across the land to find Usir's missing pieces.

A toe in Thebes, an eye in Memphis.

After much searching, they finally managed to recover all of his pieces.

But at this point, Usir was still just a lump of loose body parts.

He couldn't cross over that way.

So Aset wielded her powerful magic.

With Nebet Hut's help, by the light of the full moon, the goddesses sewed up the pharaoh, anointed him in special oils, and then carefully wrapped his body in pieces of linen while they sang spells.

Sound familiar?

It was the first mummy.

Right.

Usir was the first mummy.

And Aset was the first mummy maker.

To mummify a body, ancient Egyptian priests would first remove the internal organs, which would otherwise decompose.

Then they dried out the body with natron, a type of salt.

Finally, they'd wrap the body in enough linen bandages to cover three quarters of a professional basketball court.

The whole process lasted seventy days.

That's what it took to make the human mummies.

Asset got to do the process a bit more quickly.

Ancient Egyptians also mummified cats, dogs, birds, crocodiles, monkeys, and mongooses.

Well, that makes me sad.

It's possible they allowed the animals, especially pets, to live out the rest of their lives before being buried with their owners.

Yeah, I guess that's nice.

I mean, I'd want my pets to come along with me to the afterlife, too.

Eventually.

After the death of a pet cat, ancient Egyptians would shave their eyebrows.

And you made it weird again.

But anyway, back to Asset.

Her magic worked.

She successfully made the first mummy because Usir woke up in the afterlife.

His skin was now a blackish green hue.

It was the color of the mud of the Nile where crops grew.

It was the color of decay, but it was also the color of new vegetation, the color of rebirth.

Kind of like how a mummy is reborn into the afterlife, huh?

Well, anyway, the green god became the good king of the underworld.

And hey, it wasn't a bad gig.

Usir's new job would be to judge the dead in a ceremony called the weighing of the heart.

A newly dead human would stand before Usir, his green body all wrapped up like a mummy, and have his heart placed on a scale.

The average adult human heart weighs between 8 to 12 ounces, less than a can of soda.

Well, they weren't really weighing for weight.

It was more for goodness.

They'd place the heart on one side of the scale and the feather of Ma'at, truth and justice, on the other.

If the heart was heavier, meaning you'd committed bad acts in your life, game over.

Your heart and your eternal soul would be devoured by a goddess with the head of a crocodile, the body of a lion, and the hindquarters of a hippo.

Yikes.

Her name was Ahmet.

No disrespect.

I mean, she sounds terrifying.

Now, on the other hand, if your heart was as light as the feather, because you'd done good things in your life, you could go on to the afterlife, a place called the Field of Reeds.

It was a lot like, well, ancient Egypt.

It had fields to plow, bread to eat, games to play.

Your pets and your family would be there for you and you get to hang out forever in a paradise where nobody ever got sick, felt disappointed, and of course, nobody ever died.

Sounds pretty nice.

You see, this is why the story of Usir and Aset was so important to the ancient Egyptians.

The tale explained how anyone, from the mightiest pharaoh to the lowliest commoner, could live again after death.

You just had to follow the steps that they created.

Live a good life, have your body mummified, follow the guides, and boom, eternal life.

So it's easy to see why Egyptians wanted to mummify their family and friends.

It just meant that they'd get to see each other again.

Death and mummies weren't spooky or scary to them.

It was all just part of the next step in a life well lived.

And it could be a whole lot of fun if you avoided Amit.

If you were an ancient Egyptian, you'd probably pray to Aset for her help guiding you, your family, and your friends to the underworld.

Forever after, she'd been known as a helper to all Egyptians as they crossed over.

And you'd likely hope to meet Usir one day, impressing him with your good deeds and your pure heart.

And that's where we leave Usir, working as 9 to 5 gig as the great judge of the underworld.

there's more to the story by the way way more remember set is still pharaoh ma'at is still out of whack but we've reached our ending today and we're setting sail back to familiar seas but i promise we'll come back up the nile again in another season greaking out thanks for listening to this week's episode tune in next week for some sibling fun it's greaking

out

this episode of national geographic kids greaking out is written by allison Shaw and hosted by Kenny Curtis, with Tori Kerr as the Oracle of Wi-Fi, audio production and sound design by Scotty Beam, and our theme song was composed by Perry Gripp.

National Geographic Explorer Nora Schowkey is our subject matter expert, and Emily Everhart is our producer.