ancient Egyptian mummies Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

The Shocking Ancient Pagan Origins of Halloween Monsters

I’ve written an awful lot about how, contrary to popular belief, there is extremely little about the way people celebrate holidays in the United States in the twenty-first century that can actually be historically traced back to ancient “paganism.” (See for, instance, this article I wrote in April 2017 about how there’s very little about modern Easter that is legitimately “pagan,” this article I wrote in December 2019 about how there’s very little about modern Christmas that is legitimately “pagan,” this article I wrote about the history of Santa Claus, this article I wrote in February 2020 about how there’s nothing “pagan” about Groundhog Day whatsoever, and this article I wrote in April 2020 about how Easter has nothing to do with the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar.)

Until now, I have not published any articles about whether Halloween has any connections to “paganism.” This is partly because I think Halloween’s connections to ancient pre-Christian belief systems are much more substantial and complex than Christmas or Easter’s (which are extremely minimal). Although Halloween itself is nominally a holiday of Christian origin, there is an awful lot about how we celebrate Halloween today that is demonstrably influenced by genuine, ancient “pagan” ideas.

In particular, the most famous monsters that are most closely associated with Halloween today—including ghosts, werewolves, revenants, and reanimated mummies—have real and well-attested origins in ancient, pre-Christian belief systems. The association of these monsters with Halloween is a relatively recent development, but the monsters themselves have origins that go way back. In this article, I will explore the ancient origins of the monsters I have just named, using ancient historical sources as evidence.

Were the Ancient Egyptians Black?

There is a lot of public controversy over which “race” the ancient Egyptians belonged to. Western media has traditionally portrayed nearly all ancient Egyptians as having white skin. Unfortunately, some films are still portraying the Egyptians this way; the 2014 film Exodus: Gods and Kings and the 2016 film Gods of Egypt both received widespread criticism for the fact that nearly all the lead roles were played by white actors.

Nevertheless, I think that, with a few exceptions, nowadays, most people realize that the idea of the ancient Egyptians as almost entirely what we consider “white” is nothing but a racist fantasy. A great deal of controversy still rages, though, over whether the ancient Egyptians were what we consider “black.” A number of authors have tried to argue that ancient Egypt was exclusively or primarily a “black civilization” and that the ancient Egyptians defined themselves as “black people.”

Since the skin color of the ancient Egyptians is a matter of such great controversy, in this article, I want to take a thorough and honest look at the evidence. In this article, we will examine evidence from Egyptian iconography, from Egyptian mummies, from ancient Greek descriptions of the Egyptians, from genetics, and from the conquests and migrations of recorded history. We will discover that Egypt has always been a very ethnically diverse place and that the ancient Egyptians cannot be uniformly classified as belonging to any particular “race.”

No, Researchers Didn’t Really Reconstruct the Voice of a 3,000-Year-Old Egyptian Mummy

In case you haven’t heard, on 23 January 2020, a group of British researchers published a paper in the British scientific journal Scientific Reports claiming that they had reconstructed the voice of an ancient Egyptian man named Nesyamun, who worked as a priest, scribe, and incense-bearer at the temple complex at the site of Karnak in Upper Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Ramesses XI (most likely ruled c. 1107– c. 1077 BC). Nesyamun was probably of Nubian descent. He died in around his mid-fifties and, at the time of his death, suffered from severe gum disease.

The researchers used a CT scanner, a 3D printer, a loudspeaker, and computer software to reconstruct what they claim is what it would sound like if Nesyamun were to speak the vowel sound “eh.” Unfortunately, the claim of the researchers that they have reconstructed Nesyamun’s actual voice is highly dubious.