ancient Egyptian helicopters and planes crocodile contraceptives etched warnings of Supernatural Vengeance did you know that Cleopatra was born closer to man landing on the moon than she was to the construction of the Pyramids of Giza it's true Cleopatra Queen of the TOA Kingdom of Egypt ruled from 51 to 30 BC the last to do so stretching ahead of her across 2,000 years of History was the first Pizza Hut opening its doors in 1958 the Twin Towers falling in 2001 and Steve Jobs unveiling the iPhone in 2007 in fact Cleopatra was nearer in history to sitting
down to write her homework on chat GPT than she was to the first bricks being laid at the base of the Pyramids of Giza and it's not even close it won't be until year 2500 that this fact stops being true so you can continue to tell all your friends about it for the rest of your lifetime and your childrens and your grandchildren's and so on we'd like to consider Cleopatra's life as being well in truly ancient history but to her the Egyptian Empire that she ruled over would have been even more ancient than that so
much information has been lost to the sands of time we have to piece together the lives of peasants in our own country from just a few centuries ago using artifacts and theories all of the details of ancient life the daily routines the culture habit slang jokes Wars romances Technologies the boredom of day-to-day life have been worn Away by time What would life have actually looked like for an ancient Egyptian what Monumental events have history hisory books failed to remember what surprising technologies that we assume are modern were actually invented Millennia ago and what Horrors lurk
in the shadows that perhaps everyone has chosen to forget what demons are buried in the tombs of the ancient pharaohs let's take a look at the hieroglyphs on the wall and see what we find starting off with a question so ridiculous that it couldn't possibly be true did the ancient Egyptians invent flight to uncover this mystery let's go to one of the oldest cities in all of Egypt the Modern English name is abidos which was borrowed from a Greek renaming but the ancient Egyptians would have called it abedu it can be found about 7 Mi
to the west of the Nile near the modern Egyptian towns of el araba al- matuna and El balana Abu is an enormously significant site for egyptologists as it's home to a whole host of incredibly well-preserved buildings including the tombs of a number of early pharaohs one of the most famous of these tombs is the tomb of Sati the he was the second pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty and ruled for 11 to 15 years before dying in 1279 BC he was a warrior king the Empire that he inherited had lost a lot of its territory on
all sides as Egypt ruled over the Canaanites and syrians had been put under pressure by losses to the hittite armies the hieroglyphs along the walls of the tomb of Siti the tell us the stories of his victories and battle as he clawed the Lost land back over the course of his Reign but that's not what we're here to look for in one corner of the Tomb high up on the wall is a set of hieroglyphs that count the attention mention of archaeologist Dr Ruth hover at first glance you wouldn't separate them from any of the
other countless icons carved into and painted onto the walls but when you really stop to look at them you can't help but recognize what they are a boat streamlined and curved like a modern-day yacht a rounded submarine what could be a glider plane and most infamous of all a helicopter with what looks like a blade on top a cockpit tail and a rear fin it's hard to see it has anything other than a car carving of a modern-day helicopter what is perhaps most strange about these carvings is that they're all side by side tucked away
in the corner of the Tomb and they seem just like a kind of hidden message none of the images at first glance match up to any known Egyptian hieroglyphics so what could they mean how have they ended up there before we get to that question there's another even more fascinating Discovery to talk about in 1898 the supposed Golden Era for egyptologists which led to much of Egypt's tombs being cracked open and the contents shipped to foreign museums Across the Western world one extraordinary Discovery went almost completely unnoticed and Sakara archaeologist discovered the tomb of P
Amen in this tomb were all of the usual exciting finds mummies hieroglyphics coins paintings and so on but one little wooden toy sat unnoticed on the side it was a little wooden bird made from the wood of a popper tree carved and sanded down it had one long curved piece of wood resting on top as it unfurled its wings in a Glide and a long tail which ended in a rather strange tip you see if this was just a regular toy carving of a bird the flattened end of the tail would be horizontal just like
every other bird in the natural world but it wasn't the tip of this tail was a vertical it was a Rudder a modern Observer would recognize the shape of the Sakara bird instantly an airplane specifically the Sakara bird matches up closely with the shape of a modern-day prop plane like a cirrus SR20 for example so why wasn't it noticed at the time this was 1898 5 years before the Wright brothers achieved man's supposed first flight they wouldn't have seen it as anything other than an artistic rendition of a bird's taale for years the Sakura bird
lived in a quiet corner of a display in the museum of Cairo until 1969 when a historian happened to cross it and was stopped in his tracks Dr khil messia was a professor of anatomy for the artists at helwan University in Egypt not only that but he was also a member of both the royal aeromodelers club and the Egyptian aeronautical Club the bird was quite unlike any of the others in the exhibition most of the other birds had feet and carved feathers intricately painted patterns and lifelike proportions the Sakara bird had none of these things
its form was all it had the form of a small toy plane there was only one thing for it he had to test it out to see if it could fly except well it's an artifact from an ancient civilization sitting in a display case in one of the world's most prestigious museums you can't just unlock the cabinet and start throwing the artifacts around but Dr msia was undeterred instead he went away and recruited his brother a flight engineer to build his own replica of the bird scaling it up to be larger than the original very
quickly it became apparent that there was a problem while the bird did have a Rudder to help it fly in a straight line it was lacking another crucial component of modern-day plane Tales a horizontal stabilizer it was all well and good having the vertical fin but without the horizontal one the glider would tip forward or backwards in the air and then plunge to the ground but Dr Messiah had an answer for that too upon closer inspection of the original Sakara bird he could see that there was damage to the tail a part was missing in
the exact spot that a horizontal stabilizer would be in his view it would not be unreasonable to conclude that there had once been such a part on the rear of the bird that had broken off at some point in its thousands of years of life in his scale replica he added a stabilizer himself and sure enough the bird flew it wasn't setting any distance records but the glider could stay airborne for several meters it was a stable flight albe it with a poor center of gravity that hampered its ability to stay in the air for
too long could it be that the ancient Egyptians had discovered the secrets of aerodynamics thousands of years ago have we been arrogant to assume that only modern man could have created such an invention Dr msia was filled with excitement his mind went down a rabbit hole quicker than he could stop it what were the objects in ancient tombs therefore well the belief was that when you entered the afterlife you would take the objects in your tomb with you coins clothing utensils and tools were common place as they were needed when you made the journey to
the afterlife larger Essentials were not able to be placed in the tombs directly a ship for example would be incredibly useful but you couldn't fit it into the tomb so Carpenters would carve miniature versions of them which would be sufficient to represent The Real Thing Once the person left the Mortal Earth for Dr msia the logic was clear the Sakara bird was not a toy after all it was a model it was a miniaturized substitute for the real thing the deceased would have needed it in the afterlife so perhaps it was something that they used
regularly in their real life could it be that the Egyptians had full-sized gliders that they used for transport or Recreation could it be that the Wright brothers were actually thousands of years behind it would explain the mysterious hieroglyphs that Dr hover discovered in the Tomb of safety the maybe those were actually depictions of Advanced vehicles that have been lost to the sands of time there are so many gaps in our knowledge of History entire Wars and people groups that we didn't know existed we're still not certain how the pyramids could have been built so many
thousands of years ago maybe these inventions are buried somewhere in the Egyptian desert waiting to be discovered realistically not flight is and has always been one of Humanity's closest held obsessions from the myth of Icarus Flying Too Close to the sun all the way through to Iron Man's suit in the Marvel Cinematic Universe there is something about the magic of flying through the air that captures our imagination across people groups and time periods in a way that few other things do we inherently want to fly if the ancient Egyptians were leaping from the tops of
pyramids and soaring through the air on humanized gliders we would know about it there are countless walls of hieroglyphics all across the country with many from the eras where this theoretically would have been happening not one of them so much as implies the existence of gliders let alone people flying on them moreover the ancient Egyptians were not the only civilization in the region at the time we've already mentioned the Canaanites the syrians and the Hittites if their oppressors had invented flight they would talk about it in their own writings the story of the Bible weaves
in and out of Egyptian history throughout the Old Testament not one mention of flight so what about those hieroglyphs in the Tomb of sa the what are those images if not modern-day Vehicles unfortunately the answer is what you would expect it to be they are hieroglyphics or rather they are two sets of hieroglyphics when the tomb was first decorated an inscription dedicated to safy the first was written there it says powerful of citar who suppresses the nine bows or enemies of Egypt men Matra which was the throne name of seti the but seti the had
a son Ramsey II who took the throne after his father's death ramsy reigned for around 66 years until his own death when it came time to bury him he was placed in the the same tomb the Royal inscription of his father's title was filled in with plaster to create a blank slate over the top was written two ladies protector of Egypt who repels foreign lands us MRE setepenre which was the throne name of rames II plaster being what it is erods over time in the thousands of years between the inscription and the discovery of the
Tomb the plaster had disappeared entirely leaving two lines of writing both written over one another the result just so happens to take the shape of a helicopter a boat a submarine and a plane conspiracy theorists the world over would dispute this explanation and cling to the theories that had swirled around the discovery of Dr Hoover's hieroglyphics the ancient Egyptians had super advanced technology it was the only way that they could have constructed the pyramids perhaps it wasn't the Egyptians at all but the aliens that had brought those vehicles to Earth the historical Community was covering
up all this to protect the global conspiracy that and so on and so on what we see playing out with these hieroglyphics is a prime example of the pitfalls that many historians fall into looking at the ancient world with a modern lens you could discover an object that looks like something you're familiar with and assume it is that object and served the same purpose thousands of years ago from there you can project all kinds of theories and myths around what a people group was like all based on a logical fallacy and assumption in your reasoning
is that what the Sakara bird is are we projecting our modern experiences on the ancient world perhaps or perhaps not ancient Egypt was advanced in a number of surprising ways first century Roman Egypt is arguably the birthplace of steam power a device called the neoli pile or Heron's device was a basic radial steam turbine water would be heated over a fire in the base and it would evaporate into steam the steam would be forced out of two little tubes on either side of a kind of wheel causing it to spin around and around it would
not be unreasonable to claim that they might have created small toy gliders in the shapes of birds but sadly that is likely where their for rays into flight ended so those are some of the fun and curious findings that archaeologist have discovered in these ancient tombs but what about the horrific what bone chilling discoveries will you make as you delve into the deps of ancient Egypt's most sacred spaces crack open the doors to a sealed tomb and you likely to be greeted with the same thing almost every time lice ancient Egypt was overrun with lice
for centuries there were all kinds of homemade remedies to fight them off date meal and water chewed up and then rubbed over the infested sight was one solution offered but far more disturbing were recommendations to cover your entire body in cat's fat one cat alone might not have had enough fat on it to cover an entire person and definitely not multiple occasions so who knows how many cats were executed for this very purpose cats were supposed to be sacred in ancient Egypt which just goes to show you how desperate they were to get rid of
the problem most Egyptians gave up entirely and went totally bald if you've ever wondered why so many depictions of Egyptians are bald you've got your answer other historians would argue that it had more to do with the extreme heat conditions and trying to keep your head cool Cleopatra herself was actually bald choosing to wear wigs in public notoriously the most beautiful woman to have ever lived there are apocryphal accounts that claim she actually had alopecia these often have little to know evidence whether she was actually as beautiful as they claim is also dubious Cleopatra likely
had one of the best propaganda Mills in the world at the time and lived in an era where not many people would have had the opportunity to see her face to face let alone document it what went into being a woman in the Egyptian era you may well have heard that Cleopatra was the owner of the first adult toy unfortunately that was not true her device a small container of bees that would jostle around angrily when shaken has no basis in historical evidence such a device has never been found and likely wouldn't work in reality
no mention of it can be found from before a niche book in 1992 which just stated it as if it were fact a far more interesting fact about female sexuality comes when you look at their methods of birth control and brace yourself because this really is a horrific Fact one method of contraception that ancient Egyptian women used was to smear their nether regions with a mixture of honey and crocodile dung to create a kind of spermicide this was not done after the act as you might expect but in the buildup to it it let's get
back to the tomb shall we aside from the dead lice covering every surface the next thing to catch your eye will be the warning slashed across every wall Egyptian tombs were not meant to ever be opened the dead were sealed in and left to peruse the afterlife going in there defies the wish of the Pharaohs and the natural order of the world hieroglyphs warned tomb Raiders of the wrathful Vengeance of the Gods on anyone who enters during the egyptology obsession in the west as archaeologists cracked open tombs across Egypt rumors s around entire Crews of
people dying just weeks after entering these sacred spaces again there is very little evidence to prove this is the case the most deadly things inside the tombs would have been the presence of fungi and their spores on some surfaces but not in any significant enough quantities to kill anyone more deadly would be eating the mummies which was a craze sweeping Europe for much longer than you might expect mummies were believed to have medicinal qualities and so they became a highly sought-after medicine claiming to cure a number of ailments from as early as the 11th century
all the way through to the 15th Europeans would grind up parts of Egyptian mummies and eat them the reason a mistranslation in Persia there was a certain type of wax that seeped out of rocks on a specific Mountain Side the local name for it mum westerners translating Arabic failed to see the difference and started to cannibalize ancient corpses wondering why they weren't getting any better and instead Contracting Cher getting these mummies was a life-threatening Excursion however or at least that's what pop cultures taught us pitfalls beds of snakes false doors and boulders rolling after you
as you dive out of the way Indiana Jones style all of these things actually existed in these tombs except they were never meant to be traps due to the hysteria around egyptology and the sacredness of the tombs early archaeologists again misread what they were seeing and applied their own understandings to them those Bottomless Pits to trick you into falling down those were actually Wells used in religious rituals the beds of snakes more likely just a number of snake paintings or mummified snakes in tribute to wette the Egyptian cobra goddess who was the guardian of childbirth
and children the false doors were actually depictions of doors again for religious purposes the Egyptians were very literal in their view of the afterlife the dead person would need a way out of their tomb and into the Afterlife so they would create a carving of a door that once the tomb was sealed was thought to come alive and open up into the underworld and as for those giant Boulders they were found at the end of grooved tracks blocking doorways this was a method of sealing the doors to the tomb so that no one would enter
grave robbing was taken seriously in Egypt rich people would be buried with their wealth can't take it with you when you die not according to ancient Egyptians so there was serious money to be made by breaking into the tombs as you look around this ancient tomb wondering if you should come here you start to notice more horrifying details all around you there's not just the dead body of the rich man who died here but another lying next to him covered in rags slavery was a big part of the Egyptian Empire and it allowed them to
prosper and build as much as they did slaves were seen as the property of their masters just like a pouch of coins or a beautiful piece of artwork so when a rich person died it was not uncommon for them to take a servant with them into the Afterlife we say man here because male and female bodies were treated differently to one another a man would have been embalmed as soon as possible to preserve them in the best state possible women however particularly beautiful women were left to decompose for a few days the reason was that
Egyptians unfortunately for good reason could not trust the embalmers alone with the corpses of attractive women many Egyptians died young you've already seen some of the incredibly poor health practices they had but that was just the tip of the iceberg Egyptians believed that all genders menrad for example the reason was that schistosomiasis a condition that causes blood in the urine in stool affected almost all of them so they just assumed that their bodies were supposed to be like that you would think that the elite of the elite the Pharaohs would be above all of these
things access to better food healthc care and a population trying their best to keep them alive but the Pharaohs had the worst health of them all the Egyptian pharaoh dynasties were likely some of the most inbred people to have ever lived believed to be descended from the gods themselves they could not Sully their bloodlines with anyone other than their own family Osiris and Isis the gods of the underworld and of healing and Magic respectively were siblings and lovers sibling marriages were the norm both in the ruling classes and the poor there are also a number
of instances of parents marrying their children in the pharaoh's Bloodlines this generational inbreeding led to severe health issues deformations mental and physical disabilities weakened immune systems ugliness and obesity tuned anamon himself possibly the most famous of all the Pharaohs was a particularly Grim example famed as a boy King who lived a fierce but short life full of action the reality is that he was a very sick disabled child who died incredibly young scans of his sarcophagus reveal he had a cleft pallet a club foot and elongated skull as well as symptoms of malaria he was
obese even at his age and would have had to walk with a Cain since his immune system was so poor it was likely he died from the necrosis in his foot in combination with malaria yet he still managed to have a child himself with his own sister who did not survive what are the horrors of the ancient Egyptian tombs perhaps they aren't so much the curses and traps that we've all been led to believe for so many years in reality the true Horrors were the sad sickly and painful lives of the bodies that lie preserved
in the middle still waiting for the fake doors to open and welcome them into the underworld now check out 50 astonishing discoveries about King tutt's tomb and life you never knew or watch this instead