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b'Our story begins in 1899, when two archaeologists \\u2014 Arthur Hunt and Bernard Grenfell \\u2014 were on an expedition in Northern Egypt in an ancient town once known as Tebtunis on a search for mummies and other ancient artifacts.
This was during a growing Western fascination with ancient Egypt that was later dubbed Egyptomania. Researchers hunted all things Egyptian \\u2014 especially human mummies, partly because they represented the Western obsession with bringing the dead back to life.
While the team were excavating the town\\u2019s cemeteries, they found something unexpected: crocodile mummies. Instead of being thrilled at the discovery, the archaeologists saw the reptilian mummies as getting in the way of what they really wanted. But a new generation of Egyptologists have a different view. They see these crocodiles as a means of understand Egyptians\\u2019 views of fear, strength, pleasing their gods, and even death. But those aren\\u2019t the only secrets they contain. To hold the mummies\\u2019 shape, priests would stuff the mummies with waste papyri that had writing on it that people didn\\u2019t have a use for anymore.
This waste papyri, plus other texts that were found in Tebtunis, reveal what daily life was like for the ancient Egyptians. It\\u2019s knowledge that\\u2019s invaluable to social historians today.
Joining the show to discuss these curiosities are Rita Lucarelli, professor of Egyptology and the faculty curator of Egyptology at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, and Andrew Hogan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri at the Bancroft Library. We discuss all the ways that the most unlikely of items can connect us to the ancient past and understand our predecessors.'