Voices of Ancient Egypt

Melinda Nelson-Hurst, Ph.D. (Voices of Ancient Egypt)
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Welcome to Voices of Ancient Egypt — the podcast for people who don’t just want to learn about ancient Egypt, but want to understand it at a deeper, more meaningful level. Your podcast host, Melinda Nelson-Hurst, Ph.D., is an Egyptologist with years of experience teaching at the university level, working in Egypt, and training students around the world to read real ancient Egyptian texts. She’s spent decades studying this civilization in a traditional academic setting so you don’t have to — and so you can access knowledge that’s usually locked behind academic walls. With a blend of solo deep-dives and conversations with experts and everyday Egyptophiles, this podcast brings ancient Egyptian history, beliefs, and language to life — and shows you how learning hieroglyphs is possible, no matter your age, background, or schedule. Whether you want to read hieroglyphs in museums, on social media, or on your next trip to Egypt, you’ll find the tools, stories, and encouragement to make it real. Let’s hear the voices of the ancient world — together.

  1. 5d ago

    032: Do Egyptologists Believe in Curses? (AMA)

    In this first-ever Ask Me Anything (AMA) episode, Egyptologist and host Melinda dives into the vault of listener questions to separate fact from fiction in the world of Egyptology. From the legendary "Mummy’s Curse" to the sacred creative forces of the universe, this episode explores the deep-seated beliefs of the ancient Egyptians and the technical mysteries of their writing. Whether you are a curious history buff or a student struggling to master hieroglyphs, this episode offers a rare, behind-the-scenes look at how we understand this ancient civilization today. In this episode, you will learn: • The Scandal Behind the Curse: Discover how a 1920s media monopoly and a desperate need for new news led to the fabrication of the most famous curse in history. • Court Cases in the Afterlife: Learn why real tomb "threats" weren't about supernatural death, but rather a warning that the deceased would take you to court. • The Backwards Names of Kings: Find out why ancient scribes purposely wrote words in the "wrong" order and how 3,000-year-old diplomatic letters in Cuneiform helped modern scholars solve the puzzle. • The Real Power of Heka: Uncover the truth about Egyptian "magic" and why the Egyptians didn't see it as a separate practice from religion, but as the essential creative force that made the world exist. • Ancient Oracles and Oil Spills: Explore the fascinating ways Egyptians predicted the future, from swaying statues to interpreting patterns of oil in water. • Why You Should Struggle with Hieroglyphs: If you’re learning the language, find out why the struggle is actually a sign of progress and how the "50% rule" can fast-track your fluency. • Modern Archaeology vs. Treasure Hunting: Hear about the "scary" reality of working in tombs today – hint: it involves more bat guano than ghosts – and why documentation is more important than the artifacts alone. _________________________________________ Download my free guide, Half-Hour Hieroglyphs to get started with hieroglyphs now. Learning hieroglyphs is a challenge if you don’t have a tried and true system to follow. This free guide will teach you how hieroglyphs work and how to use them to write names the way the ancient Egyptians did. Grab the free guide at https://voicesofancientegypt.com/guide

  2. Jul 14

    031: The 50% Hieroglyphs Rule

    Have you ever felt like you can’t move on to the next chapter or lesson until you’ve mastered every single hieroglyph in the current one? You aren’t alone, but you might be accidentally slowing down your own progress. In this episode, Dr. Melinda Nelson-Hurst introduces her signature 50% Rule, a counterintuitive strategy designed to help you break through what keeps so many students stuck. By leveraging the way your brain actually processes new information, you’ll learn how to stop repeating the same exercises and start making meaningful strides toward reading ancient Egyptian texts in museums and on your next trip to Egypt. In this episode, you will learn: • The Secret to Escaping the All-or-Nothing Trap: Discover why waiting for 100% mastery before moving forward is actually a barrier to learning and how to finally get unstuck. • The Power of the 50% Rule: Learn the exact criteria you need to meet before giving yourself permission to move to the next lesson – even if you still feel a little shaky. • How to Use Spaced Repetition the Right Way: Understand why repeating the same lesson daily isn't as effective as moving forward and circling back later, and how this technique mimics how our brains naturally learn. • The Art of "Interleaving" Your Studies: Explore how mixing up different topics, skills, and types of practice creates a deeper resonance in your memory than focused, repetitive study. • Why You'll See Ancient Texts with New Eyes: Find out why returning to an old lesson after learning something new makes the material feel easier and reveals insights that were invisible to you the first time around. • Strategies to Prevent Burnout: Learn how the all-or-nothing mindset often leads students to quit entirely, and how the 50% Rule provides a sustainable path to long-term success. Ready to stop spinning your wheels and start hearing the voices of the ancient world? Tune in to learn how to apply the 50% rule to your hieroglyph studies now. _________________________________________ Download my free guide, Half-Hour Hieroglyphs to get started with hieroglyphs now. Learning hieroglyphs is a challenge if you don’t have a tried and true system to follow. This free guide will teach you how hieroglyphs work and how to use them to write names the way the ancient Egyptians did. Grab the free guide at https://voicesofancientegypt.com/guide

  3. Jul 7

    030: The Ancient Egyptians in Their Own Words: What Their Writing Reveals About Who They Really Were

    In this episode, we step beyond the cold stone of monuments to hear the intimate, living voices of the ancient Egyptians through their own letters, poetry, and songs. From a son "bribing" his deceased mother with memories of quail to a husband defending his track record to his late wife’s ghost, these texts reveal a people grappling with the same universal experiences we face today: the intensity of new love, the sting of grief, the bite of professional satire, and the humble plea for mercy in times of illness. Join us as we explore the Voices of Ancient Egypt and discover that while the civilization is ancient, the human heart remains unchanged. What You’ll Learn in This Episode: • The "Quail Bribe" and Letters to the Afterlife: Discover why a son named Shepsi wrote a letter on a bowl to his dead mother, reminding her of the seven quails he once caught for her – and the subtle veiled threat he used to ensure she’d help him from beyond the grave. • The Raw Reality of Ancient Parenting: Hear the surprisingly graphic advice from the Instruction of Ani, which details the physical toll of motherhood – from three years of nursing to the "disgusting" tasks of childcare. • Lust and Lapis Lazuli: Dive into the vivid world of Egyptian love poetry, where a woman’s beauty is compared to the "rising morning star" and her hair to "true lapis lazuli" in a masterpiece of ancient desire. • Domestic Disputes Beyond the Grave: Listen to the story of a widower who sent a letter to his late wife, Ankhiry, listing every expensive physician and fine linen shroud he provided for her to prove he was a dutiful husband who didn't deserve the trouble she was causing him from the afterlife. • A Workman’s Encounter with a Goddess: Learn about Neferabu, a tomb builder who believed he was struck breathless by a goddess as punishment for a secret sin, and his harrowing journey toward finding mercy as a sweet wind. • Ancient Office Satire: Hear from a disgruntled colleague that pokes fun at a self-important "somebody" who struts like a peacock but is actually harming his own reputation. • The Ultimate Philosophy of the Harpist’s Song: Find out why the ancient Egyptians believed that because no one returns from beyond, the best course of action is to enjoy life. _________________________________________ Download my free guide, Half-Hour Hieroglyphs to get started with hieroglyphs now. Learning hieroglyphs is a challenge if you don’t have a tried and true system to follow. This free guide will teach you how hieroglyphs work and how to use them to write names the way the ancient Egyptians did. Grab the free guide at https://voicesofancientegypt.com/guide

  4. Jun 30

    029: The Question Changes Everything

    In this episode, we dive into the transformative power of questions and how they serve as the ultimate tool for mastering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Whether you are a beginner struggling to identify a "funky" looking sign or an advanced student grappling with complex verb structures, asking questions is the key to breaking through mental blocks. We explore the psychological barriers that keep learners stuck, the technical nuances that differentiate Egyptian from English, and why a community is essential for your success. What You Will Learn in This Episode: • The Two Silent Progress-Killers: Discover the two main reasons students get stuck and how these internal barriers can stall your progress for months. • The Mystery of Amun First: Find out why King Tutankhamun’s name starts with the god Amun in hieroglyphs, even though we say "Tut" first, and the concept of honorific transposition that explains it. • How to Read "Funky" Hieroglyphs: Gain insights into why signs on real artifacts rarely look like the pristine versions in textbooks and how an expert can help you visually trace the artist’s intent. • Breaking the Stuck in Your Head Cycle: Life often interrupts study – whether through illness or busy schedules. Learn how to overcome the difficulty of restarting and why an outside perspective is the ultimate cure for the "big hairy project" feeling. • The Ripple Effect of Curiosity: Discover why there truly are no stupid questions and how your single inquiry can provide an "aha moment" for an entire community of learners. • Your Chance to Ask Anything: Hear about a special, first-ever opportunity to submit your own questions about hieroglyphs, Egyptian history, or the life of an Egyptologist to be answered in a future episode. And here's your chance to ask me anything and I will make a podcast episode answering your questions that come in. Your question could be about anything on your journey with hieroglyphs; it could be something else entirely about ancient Egypt; it could be things you're nosy about in my life as an Egyptologist or about Egyptology in general. It really is the “anything” in “ask me anything.” Submit your question here: https://www.voicesofancientegypt.com/ama _________________________________________ Download my free guide, Half-Hour Hieroglyphs to get started with hieroglyphs now. Learning hieroglyphs is a challenge if you don’t have a tried and true system to follow. This free guide will teach you how hieroglyphs work and how to use them to write names the way the ancient Egyptians did. Grab the free guide at https://voicesofancientegypt.com/guide

  5. Jun 23

    028: The person who wrote those hieroglyphs had a name. And a lot of opinions.

    In this episode of Voices of Ancient Egypt, we go behind the brush to discover the real people who recorded history. While we often marvel at the texts themselves, this deep dive explores the identity, training, and status of the ancient Egyptian scribe. You will hear how literacy (a rare gift held by less than 5% of the population) opened doors to the highest offices in the land, from managing local contracts to supervising the construction of massive royal monuments. From the "school of hard knocks" (quite literally) to the specialized apprenticeships that followed, this episode reveals why the scribal profession was considered more precious than a heritage and "pleasanter than bread and beer." What You Will Learn in This Episode: • The Power of the (less than) 5%: Discover why literacy was the ultimate golden ticket in ancient Egypt, exempting professionals from taxes and manual labor while offering a path to becoming a king’s favorite. • From Commoner to Demigod: Hear the inspiring stories of figures like Amenhotep, Son of Hapu, and Imhotep, who rose from relatively simple backgrounds to become so respected they were eventually venerated as saints and gods. • The Scrap Paper of Antiquity: Learn about ostraca – discarded pottery and limestone chips – and how these "ancient sticky notes" were used for everything from school exercises to receipts for donkey rentals. • A Seven-Year-Old’s Nightmare: Imagine the challenge of a student in the New Kingdom trying to master Middle Egyptian, a stage of the language already centuries out of date, making it as difficult as a modern child trying to copy a medieval manuscript. • Discipline and Drama: Explore the "teaching methods" of the time, which often included physical beatings on the back, and why some bored students preferred the adventure of the military or hanging out in brothels over sitting under a shade copying texts. • The Gender Gap in Literacy: Uncover the evidence of literate women in ancient Egypt who, despite being excluded from formal administrative schools, acted as deputies and wrote their own letters. • The Secret to Learning Hieroglyphs: Find out why ancient teachers – and modern experts – recommend learning in word blocks and phrases rather than individual signs. • The Satire of the Trades: Hear about the ancient "propaganda" used to keep students in school by mockingly describing every other job as a miserable, back-breaking nightmare. • A Career for a Lifetime: Follow the 80-year career trajectory of Bakenkhons, who started school as a young boy and climbed the ranks of the priesthood until his 90s. _________________________________________ Download my free guide, Half-Hour Hieroglyphs to get started with hieroglyphs now. Learning hieroglyphs is a challenge if you don’t have a tried and true system to follow. This free guide will teach you how hieroglyphs work and how to use them to write names the way the ancient Egyptians did. Grab the free guide at https://voicesofancientegypt.com/guide

  6. Jun 17

    027: The Ancient Egyptians' Own Version of Their History

    In this episode, we dive deep into the evolution of Egyptian timekeeping, revealing the stark differences between how the ancient Egyptians viewed their own history and the modern systems used in museums today. You will discover how the Egyptians balanced linear and cyclical time, the origins of the dynasty system through the historian Manetho, and how the concepts of ma'at and isfet—divine order and chaos—were used to color historical records and royal propaganda. Finally, the episode challenges the idea of "Intermediate Periods" as dark ages, showing how these times of political disunity can actually offer the most fascinating insights into Egyptian society through a unique distribution of wealth and art. What you will learn in this episode: • The Hidden Truth of King Lists: Learn how those neatly ordered ovals of names in temples like Abydos were often politically motivated and full of intentional omissions rather than being purely objective historical records. • Time as a Circle and a Line: Explore how the Egyptians reconciled a modern-style linear history with the repeating cycles of the sun, seasons, and kingly reigns, creating a worldview where every new king was a fresh start. • Manetho’s Mystery: Meet the 3rd-century BCE historian who gave us our system of dynasties, and find out why his groupings sometimes ignore family lines in favor of political unity or the city from which a king ruled. • Ma'at vs. Isfet: Discover how the cosmic struggle between divine order and chaos was used as a powerful tool for royal propaganda, portraying past eras of disunity as "chaotic" to make current rulers look more successful. • The Invention of the Kingdoms: Find out why terms like "Old Kingdom" and "Middle Kingdom" are actually modern conventions from the last 200 years—and why the "Third Intermediate Period" wasn't even recognized until the 1970s. • Redefining the "Dark Ages": Hear how the "Intermediate Periods," often dismissed as times of decline, actually reveal a widening of social access to monuments, allowing more people to commission stone stelae than ever before. • Connecting the Past to the Present: Understand how our modern divisions of Egyptian history actually still align with the ancient concepts of ma'at and isfet, helping us make sense of a complicated and "alive" ancient civilization. _________________________________________ Download my free guide, Half-Hour Hieroglyphs to get started with hieroglyphs now. Learning hieroglyphs is a challenge if you don’t have a tried and true system to follow. This free guide will teach you how hieroglyphs work and how to use them to write names the way the ancient Egyptians did. Grab the free guide at https://voicesofancientegypt.com/guide

  7. Jun 9

    026: How the Rosetta Stone Actually Works — And What It Really Took to Crack Hieroglyphs

    After nearly 1,500 years of silence, how did we finally learn to read the "sacred carvings" of the Pharaohs? In this episode of the Voices of Ancient Egypt podcast, we dive into the high-stakes race to crack the code of Egyptian hieroglyphs. From the accidental discovery of a stone hidden in a military fortress wall to the obsessive linguistic rivalry between an English polymath and a French prodigy, we explore the breakthroughs that turned a dead script into a living history. Discover how a single realization about sounds and symbols shattered centuries of misconceptions and reopened the door to the ancient world. In this episode, you will learn: • The Fortuitous Discovery: How a "peculiar stone" reused as building material in a military fort became the most famous key in archaeological history. • The Symbolic Trap: Why scholars were stuck for over a millennium believing hieroglyphs were purely symbolic, and the specific names that finally proved them wrong. • The Battle of the Geniuses: The controversial rivalry between Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion—did the Frenchman truly work alone, or did he "borrow" the key to his success? • The Secret Weapon: How Champollion’s teenage obsession with Coptic provided the final, missing bridge to the language of the Pharaohs. • The "I’ve Done It!" Moment: The incredible true story of the man who worked himself into a five-day coma the moment he finally solved the puzzle. • Decoding History: How a name found at the Temple of Abu Simbel proved that hieroglyphs weren't used for sounds just for foreign kings’ names, but were the phonetic heartbeat of an entire civilization. • Unlocking the Code for Yourself: Why the decipherment of hieroglyphs wasn't just a win for 19th-century academics, but an open invitation for you to read the ancient texts today. _________________________________________ Download my free guide, Half-Hour Hieroglyphs to get started with hieroglyphs now. Learning hieroglyphs is a challenge if you don’t have a tried and true system to follow. This free guide will teach you how hieroglyphs work and how to use them to write names the way the ancient Egyptians did. Grab the free guide at https://voicesofancientegypt.com/guide

  8. Jun 2

    025: Three Seasons, No Winter: How the Ancient Egyptian Calendar Divided the Year (And Why It Actually Makes Perfect Sense)

    In this episode of Voices of Ancient Egypt, we dive into the rhythmic cycle of life along the Nile, exploring why the ancient Egyptians organized their world into three distinct seasons rather than the four we recognize today. We’ll journey from the letters of a disgruntled Middle Kingdom landowner to the bustling construction sites of the Great Pyramid to see how the rising and falling of the river dictated everything from farming and taxes to massive engineering projects. Whether you are looking for a sense of historical renewal or want to understand the logistics of moving massive stones, this episode reveals how the Nile’s flood was the ultimate heartbeat of a civilization. In this episode, you will learn: • The Secret of the Three Seasons: Why the Egyptians didn’t follow temperature-based seasons or solar divisions based on equinoxes and solstices, instead adopting an agricultural calendar focused on the Nile’s water levels. • The Mystery of the Five Extra Days: How the Egyptians accounted for a 365-day year using intercalary days, conceptualized as the birthdays of five major gods. • The Drifting Calendar: Why the "Flood Season" eventually ended up happening in the middle of winter and how the lack of a leap year caused their calendar to slowly shift through the solar year. • Ancient Office Drama: What the surviving letters of Hekanakht, a Middle Kingdom priest and landowner, tell us about how seasonal pay and food rations were managed during tough times. • Pyramid Building Logistics: Why the flood season was actually the prime time for transporting massive limestone blocks from Tura to Giza, as confirmed by the groundbreaking discovery of the Wadi al-Jarf papyri. • The Copper Connection: How King Khufu’s massive demand for copper tools led to unprecedented mining expeditions in the Sinai Peninsula during the construction of the Great Pyramid. • A Different Kind of New Year: Why the Egyptian New Year offers a unique perspective on renewal and hope tied to the return of the river's life-giving waters – a renewal that you can still tap into today. _________________________________________ Download my free guide, Half-Hour Hieroglyphs to get started with hieroglyphs now. Learning hieroglyphs is a challenge if you don’t have a tried and true system to follow. This free guide will teach you how hieroglyphs work and how to use them to write names the way the ancient Egyptians did. Grab the free guide at https://voicesofancientegypt.com/guide

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About

Welcome to Voices of Ancient Egypt — the podcast for people who don’t just want to learn about ancient Egypt, but want to understand it at a deeper, more meaningful level. Your podcast host, Melinda Nelson-Hurst, Ph.D., is an Egyptologist with years of experience teaching at the university level, working in Egypt, and training students around the world to read real ancient Egyptian texts. She’s spent decades studying this civilization in a traditional academic setting so you don’t have to — and so you can access knowledge that’s usually locked behind academic walls. With a blend of solo deep-dives and conversations with experts and everyday Egyptophiles, this podcast brings ancient Egyptian history, beliefs, and language to life — and shows you how learning hieroglyphs is possible, no matter your age, background, or schedule. Whether you want to read hieroglyphs in museums, on social media, or on your next trip to Egypt, you’ll find the tools, stories, and encouragement to make it real. Let’s hear the voices of the ancient world — together.

Information

  • Creator
    Melinda Nelson-Hurst, Ph.D. (Voices of Ancient Egypt)
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    32
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Voices of Ancient Egypt
  • Show Website
    Voices of Ancient Egypt

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