Although tempting, this is not a review of the movie The Mummy. Instead, we're going OG to give you a more complete picture of Egyptian mummies than you likely got in primary school. Organ gods, organ soup, The Devourer of Souls, and Egyptian excess at its most exquisite. Join us for some mummy talk.

 

For a general overview of the history of ancient Egypt:Bard, Kathryn A. 2007. An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.On Egyptian conceptions of the afterlife:Assmann, Jan. 2001. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt. Munich: C.H. Beck.For details on death, burial, mummification, and the cult of the dead:Reeves, Nicholas and Richard H. Wilkinson. 1996. The Complete Valley of the Kings. London: Thames & Hudson.Lehner, Mark. 1997. The Complete Pyramids. London: Thames & Hudson.Lacce, William W. 2013. Mummification and Death Rituals of Ancient Egypt. San Diego: Reference Point Press.Harrington, Nicola. 2013. Living with the Dead: Ancestor Worship and Mortuary Ritual in Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxbow.

In April 1981 at least three people were gruesomely and messily murdered in a California cabin. Neighbors as little as 15 feet away heard and saw nothing. Three people were even in the cabin and somehow slept through it. False and maybe not-so-false confessions. Poor police work. Anonymous phone calls about skulls. Also, what about Tina?! This week we bring you an unsolved case that's as confusing and baffling as it is brutal.

Everyone is a little stressed. Okay, most people are straight up panicked. But we at In the End are here for you. Today we bring you a disease episode that is both disgusting and a feel-good story. We'll walk through what smallpox did to people and how humans decided to not let it do that anymore.

 

Also, if you're interested in any of those outbreak scenarios the CDC put together, you can find them here: https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/bioterrorism-response-planning/index.html

This week we go to Hell! But at least we brought a guide. In this week's episode our guest host, Dalila Alberghina, acts as the Virgil to our Dante as she takes us through the historical context and importance of The Divine Comedy and then goes through all the nitty-gritty details of what this version of the afterlife entails.

Want a fun visual and some more information? Visit https://www.alpacaprojects.com/inferno/en/

You asked for it, and we're here to deliver. This week we dive into the infamous Donner Party, which set out towards the West Coast in 1846 to claim their piece of the American dream. What went wrong? Basically everything. How bad did it get? Cannibalism. 

 

For further reading:

 

Rarick, Ethan. 2008. Desperate Passage. The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brown, Daniel James. 2009. The Indifferent Stars Above. The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride. New York: Harper Collins.

Johnson, Kristin. 1996. “Unfortunate Immigrants.” Narratives of the Donner Party. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press.

It's an iconic, breathtaking marvel of modern engineering. It's also been an incredibly popular spot to jump to one's death basically since it opened. Today we're taking a surprisingly thorough dive into the history of suicide and The Golden Gate Bridge. 

If you're interested in an even more thorough history on the topic, might we suggest the book The Final Leap: Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge by Jason Bateson (2012).

Although many of our topics can get morbid, we recognize that suicide can be especially difficult for some listeners. If you or someone you know is struggling, please know there are resources out there to help.

United States: The National Suicide Hotline (1-800-273-8255) is available 24/7 for crisis intervention and to help you find resources near you. They are also available on live chat (suicidepreventionlifeline.org).

Canada: Crisis Services Canada is available 24/7 for phone, text, or online chats to help you through a crisis or connect you with resources near you. (crisisservicescanada.ca/en/)

International: An extensive list of suicide crisis lines around the world.

So, where do we go from all-day open pyres and dressing up bones? To the modern era of cremation! For the second part of our series, we follow the evolution of modern cremation (mostly in the US) starting in bucolic Pennsylvania, United States. Think it's boring? Well, we kick off with a "dirty old man," a pagan funeral, and a body preserved in arsenic for six months. Buckle up.

 

Want an even more complete history of cremation in America? Check out Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America by Stephen Prothero.

We've teased it. We've talked about it. It's finally here! This week, we take on the first part of our cremation series. Spectacularly specific rituals, bones in costume, and just enough gross stuff to make you remember you're listening to In the End.

 

Also, incredibly detailed resources if you want more info:

For Hittite royal cremations: van den Hout, T. P. J. 1994. Death as a Privilege. The Hittite Royal Funerary Ritual. In Hidden Futures. Death and Immortality in Ancient Egypt, Anatolia, the Classical, Biblical and Arabic-Islamic World. T. P. J. van den Hout, R. Peters and J. M. Bremer, ed. Pp. 37-75. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 

 

Article that talks about the links between Greek and Hittite cremations (since I specifically mention it):  Rutherford, Ian. 2007. Achilles and the Sallis Wastais Ritual: Performing Death in Greece and Anatolia. In Performing Death. Social Analyses of Funerary Traditons in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean, edited by Nicola Laneri, pp. 223-236. Oriental Institute Seminars, Vol. 3. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago.  

 

Article discussing the process of burning bodies on open pyres:  Williams, H. 2004. Death Warmed Up: The Agency of Bodies and Bones in Early Anglo-Saxon Cremation Rites. Journal of Material Culture 9(3): 263-291. 

 

And then some general books:  Kaliff, A., and T. Oestigaard. 2017. Cremation, Corpses and Cannibalism. Comparative Cosmologies and Centuries of Cosmic Consumption. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Thompson, T. 2015. The Archaeology of Cremation. Burned Human Remains in Funerary Studies. Studies in Funerary Archaeology 8. Oxford: Oxbow.

Devlin, Z. L., and E.-J. Graham. 2015. Death Embodied. Archaeological Approaches to the Treatment of the Corpse. Studies in Funerary Archaeology 9. Oxford: Oxbow.

New Year's resolutions are in full swing and that diet might be getting you down. We're not going to tell you not to diet, but we are going to talk about what happens if you go just a little too far with it. This week it's starvation - what it is, what happens to your body, and what the risks are.

It's the holiday season and so our present to you, our dear listeners, is a holiday-themed morbid mystery! A missing nurse, a secluded cabin, mystery clothing, magical barrels. This one's a weird, weird murder mystery from North Carolina, and we're going to try to unpack what we know and what might have happened to Debbie Wolfe in December 1985.