Talk Like An Egyptian

After an incredible run exploring the world of Ancient Egypt, Chris Naunton and Iszi Lawrence are pressing pause on Talk Like an Egyptian for a while. In this short announcement episode, Chris and Iszi explain why the podcast is taking a break. This is not goodbye forever — just farewell for now. Stay subscribed for future updates, possible specials and news about when the podcast may return. Life...

Its the end of series questions episode! Go to our patreon to find out when we will be back!  https://www.patreon.com/TalkLikeAnEgyptian you can watch this episode on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/4ehgopP_v2A  Egyptologist Chris Naunton and author Iszi Lawrence discusses Chris's recent trip to Egypt, his preference for communicating about Egyptology over excavation, and the diverse roles within t...

Economic strife, migrating peoples, and potential climate issues led to the decline of the Egyptian Empire. The Valley of the Kings was abandoned, and the mummies of kings from the 17th to 20th dynasties were reburied in a secret cache to protect them from tomb robbers. This cache, discovered in the 19th century, contained the mummies of numerous kings, including those from the 18th, 19th, and 20t...

Support the podcast and get extra content: https://www.patreon.com/TalkLikeAnEgyptian  Ramesses II is not known as 'the great' for no reason: his life and reign were exceptionally long, he had an enormous number of wives and children, he built on a grand scale up and down the country and beyond his borders. And he was renowned as a great warrior - all great pharaohs were, to some extent, but at Qa...

You can watch a video of this podcast here: https://youtu.be/Xz_x-QEli0Y Support the podcast and listen to bonus episodes: www.talklikeanegyptian.com/ Hatshepsut features in The Cursed Tomb, Iszi's historical fiction novel for 9+ https://amzn.eu/d/1g3QNOX In the 1820s scholars began to notice something strange in the inscriptions of the great temple of Deir el-Bahri - some of the royal names and t...

You can watch this episode on youtube: https://youtu.be/a58Yopf6yfE To support the show/get bonus content: patreon.com/cw/TalkLikeAnEgyptian/home In this episode of Talk Like an Egyptian , Iszi Lawrence and Egyptologist Dr Chris Naunton explore the life and legacy of Nefertiti, one of the most recognisable yet enigmatic figures of ancient Egypt. Beginning with her first appearances alongside Akhen...

If there's on period of Egyptian history that Egyptophiles want to hear about it's the short period (less than 20 years) of pharaoh Akhenaten's reign. Very early on the king who had been crowned as Amenhotep ('the god Amun is satisfied') IV set about changing things. The worship of the traditional gods bar was forbidden leaving just one – a manifestation of the sun-god called the Aten. He built ne...

WARNING: we do talk about creation myths and mention onanism. It isn't explicit, but then again, it isn't an episode for children or suitable for the classroom. This episode explores ancient Egyptian religion, focussing on the creation myth, the significance of the Nile River, and the influence of gods and goddesses. We highlight the fluidity of Egyptian religion, with regional variations and the...

It occurs to us that in order to prep for some of the deep-dives we have coming up, a quick run down of the major aspect of Egyptology might be helpful. And in act Chris has found it quite the challenge to think about what Egyptology is. And here is his attempt to explain what he does… Where was Egypt (silly questions perhaps) but were its boundaries exactly where they are today (nope)? When was i...

This is a mildly edited recording of the livestream we broadcast on youtube on 11.11.25. Thank you for all those who made it. You can watch the broadcast from our patreon page where you can also download loads of extra content. Please go to https://www.patreon.com/TalkLikeAnEgyptian If you are looking for iszi's books find them here (or on your favourite shop) https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/author/...

Big thank you to Bill, Temika, Tini, Amy and Danny.  All your support means the world to us! We hope to be back for another series as soon as possible, please subscribe and follow us on Patreon to make sure you do not miss an announcement. https://www.patreon.com/TalkLikeAnEgyptian Meanwhile do please check out our books. For those interested in Medieval England, Iszi has a new novel, The Domesday...

Tutankhamun is now very famous of course but ironically he was relatively insignificant right? We know that Tutankhamun was the 'boy king' and ruled as a child and so didn't - couldn't have - done much… In this episode we challenge this view, and show that in fact Tutankhamun ruled at the most interesting of times and may have been responsible for restoring the traditional religion after the brief...

The greatest archaeological discovery of all time. Even now, it's difficult to comprehend the full extent of what Howard Carter found in Valley of Kings tomb no. 62: the intact tomb of a pharaoh who turned out to have been a little boy when he came to throne, and possibly still in his teens when he died, containing more than 5,000 objects, almost all of them made of the finest materials and exquis...

Why are we so obsessed with Ancient Egypt? All children study it, museum galleries displaying Egyptian objects are always full, documentaries always do really well, and we've had a couple of waves of Egyptomania – in the 1800s and following the discovery of the tomb of   Tutankhamun. We talked a lot in this episode about the historical background to the development of Egyptology, in particular col...

The pyramids, particularly those at Giza, are pretty famous right? In this episode we ask: What were they? Where were they? When were they? Were the all the same? (No). How did they differ, how did they develop? What was inside? Are you sure they're tombs? Not power stations or spacecraft? When weren't they? Why did the Egyptians stop building them? What's the significance of the shape? They had t...

The Nile   In this episode we're trying to explain how fundamentally important the river Nile was to the presence of human beings in what we now call Egypt, and how this allowed civilisation to flourish there at such an early moment in human history, and to endure for such a long time. We talked about people settling along the banks of the Nile where the water and silts allowed plants and animals...

The ancient Egyptians' beliefs in the afterlife were many and varying, weren't the same for pharaohs and commoners, and changed over time but in this episode we did our best to cover the main bases including: the journey made the sun / the king through the netherworld (the 'amduat'), the main groups of texts including the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts and 'Book of the Dead', the decoration of tombs,...

So, it's easy – if you an Egyptology pedant – to pick holes The Mummy, which the two of us have done several times at the British Museum. But actually, being more generous about it, a lot of what's in the film is clearly inspired by good evidence and in this episode we tried to cover what seemed to us to be the most important themes: including the way ancient Egypt appears – architecture, landscap...

LAUNCHING SEPT 2025! Talk Like An Egyptian with Dr Chris Naunton and Iszi Lawrence. To support the podcast join us on Patreon.com/talklikeanegyptian and unlock bonus content. Get in touch talklikeanegyptianpod@gmail.com or use #TLAE. We need your questions for the end of the series so please don't hold back. Remember to leave us five stars (of Nut) and share this episode with your friends. Find ou...

LAUNCHING SEPT 2025! Talk Like An Egyptian with Dr Chris Naunton and Iszi Lawrence. To support the podcast join us on Patreon.com/talklikeanegyptian and unlock bonus content. Get in touch talklikeanegyptianpod@gmail.com or use #TLAE. We need your questions for the end of the series so please don't hold back. Remember to leave us five stars (of Nut) and share this episode with your friends. Find ou...