What, exactly, makes a person a person? In this episode, Kara and Amber launch a new series exploring the anatomy of the ancient Egyptian soul. They begin with the ba—often translated as “soul,” but far stranger and more powerful than that simple word suggests. The ba is the part of you that moves, that transforms, that survives death. Drawing from art, funerary texts, and literary works like The Dialogue of a Man with His Ba, the Egyptians unpack how the ba functioned as a mobile, solar, and deeply dynamic aspect of the individual.

What emerges is an understanding that the ancient Egyptians did not view the self as singular. They saw it as layered and multifaceted—existing everywhere all at once: still and enduring, yet constantly in motion.

This episode begins a multipart exploration of the ancient Egyptian individual—from the ba to the ka, the name, the heart, and beyond—asking how this ancient civilization imagined identity, survival, and how the Egyptians sought eternal existence in a world where death is inevitable.

Notes

Allen, James P. 2011. The debate between a man and his soul: a masterpiece of ancient Egyptian literature. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 44. Leiden: Brill.

Janák, Jiří. 2016. Ba. In Jacco Dieleman, Willeke Wendrich (eds.), UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, Los Angeles. http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz002k7g85

Lichtheim, Miriam. 1973. Ancient Egyptian literature. A book of readings, volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

**Content and trigger warning: This episode contains images of sex and discussion of sexual themes, sexual abuse and exploitation, incest, and other related topics that might be inappropriate or upsetting to some listeners.

Kara and Amber discuss one of the most debated objects from ancient Egypt: the so-called Turin Erotic Papyrus (Turin P. 55001). Often viewed as an example of ancient Egyptian pornography or crass entertainment, this papyrus reveals far more about elite anxiety, dynastic survival, and the ideological machinery of patriarchy. Through close visual analysis and discussion, they explore what is behind the exaggerated and sexualized depictions of bodies and scenes of sexual dominance and performance—not simply as humor, but as expressions of a system of power struggling to reproduce itself and maintain dominance. These images expose an obsession with regeneration, haunted by aging and mortality, and shaped by fear of failing masculinity, in which an aging sun god—and an aging king—must be sexually reborn to keep the cosmos intact.

This episode connects sex, death, pornography, religion, ancient harems, and power structures both ancient and modern, asking why patriarchal societies so often turn to sexual control as ideology—and why these ancient images still feel disturbingly familiar today.

Show notes

More about the Turin Erotic Papyrus (Museo Egizio)

Selected Bibliography

Babcock, Jennifer Miyuki , Ancient Egyptian animal fables: tree climbing hippos and ennobled mice (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 128), Leiden; Boston 2022, p. 49–54, 107 e passim.

Bresciani, Edda, Sulle rive del Nilo : l’Egitto al tempo dei faraoni(Grandi Opere), Roma 2000, pp. 122–127, 139–141, fig. 13 p. 124-5; fig. 5-6 p. 140.

Flores Diane, “The topsy-turvy world”, in Egypt, Israel, and the ancient Mediterranean world. Studies in Honor of Donald B.Redford., 2004, pp. 234–235, 239, 246, 249, fig. pp. [21], [27], [37], [42].

Houlihan, Patrick F., Wit & humour in ancient Egypt, London 2001, pp. 67–72, 132–136, fig.. 57, 66, 67, 68, 136, 141-6.

Janák, J. And H. Navrátilová, 2008, “People v. P. Turin 55001,” in C. Graves-Brown (ed.) Sex and Gender in Ancient Egypt, ‘Don your wig for a joyful hour,’ The Classical Press of Wales.

Manniche, Lise, Sexual life in Ancient Egypt, in -, London 1997, pp. 106–115.

Omlin, Joseph A., Der Papyrus 55001 und seine satirisch-erotischen Zeichnungen und Inschriften (Catalogo del Museo Eg. di Torino - Serie I. - Monumenti e testi 3), Torino 1973.

Skumsnes, Reinert. 2025. A case study of the Turin Satirical-Erotic papyrus: historical bodies, mundane resistance, and alternative body worlds. In Pedersen, Unn, Marianne Moen, and Lisbeth Skogstrand (eds), Gendering the Nordic past: dialogues between perspectives, 235-250. Turnhout: Brepols. DOI: 10.1484/M.WOP-EB.5.144367.

Toivari-Viitala, Jaana-Toivari-Viitala, Jaana, Women at Deir el-Medina : a study of the status and roles of the female inhabitants in the workmen’s community during the Ramesside Period(Egyptologische Uitgaven 15), Leiden 2001, pp. 146–7.

In our latest live Q&A with podcast supporters, we discuss Kara’s progress on her latest book (about Nefertiti!!!!), the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, the challenges of pronouncing ancient Egyptian words (vocalization is hard and a task we try to avoid), whether or not Cleopatra really committed suicide (short answer: NO), our top-three favorite tombs (Sennefer, Ramose, etc etc and why is Osirisnet down!?), and more.

Read more about Kara’s perspective on the death of Cleopatra in her book, When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt.

Explore tombs in the Valley of the Kings via the Theban Mapping Project website!

Learn more about the Grand Egyptian Museum here. Someday we will visit, but not this day….

CW// self-harm and suicide

Kara and Amber take on the most famous death in all of antiquity—Cleopatra VII’s—and ask what “honor” really means when the sources are Roman, i.e. biased AF, and the stakes are imperial, that is Octavian is using Cleopatra’s fall to condense all power into the hands of one person, his own.

Starting with a timeline of events, Kara and Amber unpack Octavian’s propaganda about Cleopatra’s death by suicide, and Kara argues that the suicide story serves Rome far more than it serves Egypt’s last queen. Using David Graeber’s Debt as a lens, they consider the ways in which honor, debt, and violence travel together in patriarchal systems—and how those rules are gendered. Antony’s suicide reads as “honorable,” while Cleopatra’s is framed as hysterical and selfish and maternal abandonment—all the worst things a woman within patriarchy could do. They probe the politics of narratives about “honor” that trap women who rule (with nods to Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Zenobia). The result is a sharp, feminist read of Cleopatra’s end.

Or, as Kara likes to say: Suicide my ass… he straight up killed her and lied about it.

Fight me. :)

Show notes

David Graeber’s Debt

Check out our other episodes on Cleopatra:

Episode #57 – Reception, Ownership, and Race: Netflix’s “Queen Cleopatra”

Episode #60 – Part II: Reception, Ownership, and Race: Netflix’s “Queen Cleopatra”

Episode #82 – The Death of Cleopatra: Murder or Suicide?