Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister, and you are listening to Betwitster Sheets. Hurrah! I like talking to you. I'm so glad that you've come back, but before we can go any further together, I have to tell you, I have to let you know, I have to give you the fair do's warning, and here it is. This is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults, about things in an adulty way covering a range of adult subjects and used to be an adult too.

I'm sure you knew that. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's the reason you're actually listening.

But just in case it's not, now you know. Right, on with the show.

I am taking a look around the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Egypt.

She lived 3,000 years ago. That is a long time ago.

And wait, what is this graffiti on the wall?

Well, it's got all the markings of the kind of drawing you might see scrolled on the back of a toilet door

at the local pub. It looks slightly out of place in this sacred temple, but I'm sure the

people who drew it knew what they were doing. Or did they? But I will leave it to the episode

for the full description of what I'm looking at, but let's just say this. It does rather

put Queen

Hapshet Sut in a different light and hints at a real scandal during her reign. That saucy

bitch. And what else do we know about ancient Egyptian attitudes to sex and sexuality? How

much of it is informed by the entire cast of the 1999 film The Mummy?

Oh, don't tell me you didn't have an erotic reaction to that one too.

I know you did.

But let's move away from fiction and try and get to grips with some facts.

Music Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister.

The ancient Egyptians suffer from what I like to call, Victorians fucking it up.

That's not a scholarly term, but it'll do.

It's no fault of theirs that our understanding of them comes through a very

judgy white colonial gaze and a group of people who projected a lot of their own anxieties and morality

...