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Discovering Ancient Egypt in Minecraft with Charley - Ep 33
767 Plays3 years ago
In this episode, we talk about Egypt in Minecraft with a Minecraft connoisseur, Charley! Tune in as we talk about Egyptology, Minecraft, and even Avatar the Last Airbender.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to the iDicket Podcast, a podcast where we talk about the student perspective of navigating the world of archaeology and anthropology. I'm your host, Michaela. And I'm your host, Alyssa.
00:00:21
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Welcome back. We're here with a special guest, Charlie. He goes by He-Him, and he is currently working on a complete recreation of Egypt's archaeological and historical sites in Minecraft for everyone to explore. So welcome, Charlie, to the podcast. Hello. It's me, Charlie. Yay. So Charlie, tell us a little bit about your project and how that got started.
Charlie's Minecraft Journey Begins
00:00:49
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I've always enjoyed
00:00:52
Speaker
I guess recreating stuff in Minecraft started back in middle school, I think. I built a small-scale recreation of the Giza pyramids based off what I knew. I did that a few more times over the years, getting a little bit more complex until I started this project a few years ago, I want to say about
00:01:15
Speaker
three years ago. And it was just going to be another small thing like the other ones. But I decided to start from the beginning with pre-dynastic times with King Norma or the First Dynasty, all that. And just kind of expanded as I went further, culminating now where I'm in the New Kingdom currently. Wow. So do you have multiple time periods on one server? Is that how it works? Yeah.
00:01:45
Speaker
That's cool. How do you visualize all the different time periods? Or are you just doing major monuments of each time period? Kind of both, I guess. I remember just building it all in one world. So whenever I need something from a time period, I guess I'll just build it. And depending on how old it is or whatever, it'll look more and more ruined, I guess.
Future Plans and Technical Challenges
00:02:11
Speaker
Is it a, do you have like a discord server or anything where it's open world for other people or is it mostly just yourself right now? Uh, it's just me right now. I'm a planning one, releasing it soon at some point, or at least a one version of it. And once the whole project itself is done, then, then yeah, I'll release it for people to see. That's so cool. When would it be done? Like done done for you?
00:02:39
Speaker
I don't really have a set goal. I never really have. I just kind of work on it when I feel like it, which sometimes is a lot, sometimes not that much. It's definitely been a lot more lately now that it's gaining some traction. That's cool. And you said you were also doing streaming for it, I think, in a message before or something like that. I've been considering it.
00:03:06
Speaker
I don't really, I mean, I do have a computer that can stream it, but it's kind of clogged up right now. I'd have to clean it out and I just never really gotten around to it. Yeah. It takes a lot of space to do that stuff. Bandwidth. My internet definitely can't handle streaming. Cut out every five minutes.
00:03:26
Speaker
Yeah. I have this weird latency lag that happens like every five minutes. And so it just goes in and out. So I'm like, I don't know how it looks for other people, but for me, everything just like becomes a robotic and I'm just like, Ooh, I don't like it. Yeah. Kind of annoying. I don't know. So Charlie, you're in undergrad right now.
Charlie's Academic Interests
00:03:50
Speaker
Yeah. I'm currently in my freshman year of college. Nice. How's that been going?
00:03:56
Speaker
It's going all right. I'm still trying to figure out where I want to go with everything. And you're doing archaeology? I started doing history. I still don't know if that's really the path I want to take because Egypt is one of my main interests in history as a whole, but I have other stuff outside of that.
00:04:25
Speaker
Yeah, what are you thinking? What are the options? I'm considering something science-based, astronomy maybe. Ooh, that's where I started. Then I figured out I was really bad at math, so I switched out of it. Yeah, same here. I'm sure you could figure it out though.
00:04:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think just a lot of the like, base courses are pretty math heavy. But once you get through those, I think it's a little easier. Maybe, I don't know, I never got through them. So I'm dull. Yeah, I really loved astronomy growing up, though, in history also. How'd you get interested in Egyptology? So I think it started
00:05:15
Speaker
I think it started when I saw the mummy when I was really young. The real one, the Brendan Fraser one. Of course.
00:05:25
Speaker
And, uh, yeah, I've always, always kind of been interested in, I guess, Egyptian funerary stuff since never really exploded until I was in about middle school. Um, yeah, I caught a few documentaries on Netflix. I believe one of them was about the, uh, great pyramid and the, uh, Queens chamber shafts inside. That was when they were drilling the hole in it and looking through.
00:05:54
Speaker
And that's when I started recreating these things in Minecraft, because that was when I was getting into Minecraft too. Oh, that's cool.
Minecraft Modding for Historical Accuracy
00:06:02
Speaker
And yeah, everything just kind of expanded since then. I'm always so impressed with how detailed Minecraft buildings can be. Michaela and I were following this one that was recreating the Avatar the Less Airbender world. That was so cool, having all the buildings life-size in Minecraft.
00:06:25
Speaker
crazy. Do you use any mods? Not mods? What are they called? Shaders? Shaders? I literally just tried them out yesterday. I couldn't get them to work on my world. But as for mods, I use
00:06:44
Speaker
Well, until very recently, I wasn't using any mods. Just fill commands and stuff to make some of the bigger stuff. But I finally figured out what world that it is, so I started using that. Just made everything a lot easier. What reason would shaders not work in a world? What determines that? It's just file stuff that I haven't really figured out yet how all of that works. Oh, OK. Yeah, that makes sense.
00:07:11
Speaker
I had to follow a few YouTube tutorials to get some shaders cause I was like, Oh, you need this and this. It's like, how do you get those? And so I just kept Googling and following different YouTube instructions. Yeah. So it's a really steep learning curve trying to figure all that out. Yeah. So have you only been using one specific map or server or have you made several?
00:07:35
Speaker
Um, there's definitely much older versions of, uh, of Egypt that I've made. None of them are near nearly as comprehensive as this one. Um, so mostly just some, some pyramids, uh, a few Valley of the Kings tombs that aren't that accurate at all. Yeah. It was, it was this one where I decided, okay, all in for, for accuracy. You're going to try and do this as best I can.
00:08:03
Speaker
That's cool. Are you just pulling up like reference photos from Google or what's your main? Wherever I can get them, basically. I usually start with Wikipedia, but sometimes I go try to find the old excavation documents from the actual sites, like the published documents on the excavations of the Amarna tombs, usually on archive.org or something.
00:08:33
Speaker
Do they have any 3D walkthroughs of Egyptian tombs yet? Oh yeah, there's a bunch on mine. Okay, yeah, that's what I figured. Yeah, I bet those are useful to look at too. It's usually the more famous ones, of course. That's cool. Wow, so cool. Yeah, we've been seeing some of your... You were making King Tut recently, King Tut tomb? Yeah.
00:08:55
Speaker
Yeah, those have been really cool. It's crazy how accurate you can get with blocks. I was looking forward to the archaeology inclusion for Minecraft, but it seems like they've discontinued their work on releasing that. Yeah, they see it's gonna, I think it's gonna come out later, something like that. What's it supposed to involve?
00:09:20
Speaker
I think they were trying to make like an archaeology system for Minecraft, just like a basic one, I guess. I mean, yeah, my world won't be compatible with that. It only works in 1.13 and before. What makes it like archaeology? I think I had something to do. I'm going to look it up. Yeah, I read that you could use a brush to like, I guess, brush away dirt and stuff and reveal pots and stuff like that.
00:09:51
Speaker
Oh, so they randomly hide stuff around the world? Looks like it. Archaeology is a feature in 1.17 Caves and Cliffs that allows players to find items with the copper or a weathered copper brush by using it on sand, gravel, dirt, and possibly other blocks found in new structure, the archaeology site. Yeah, I just hope it doesn't make mine look bad.
00:10:16
Speaker
Possible items found include diamond blocks, emerald blocks, and ceramic shards of any color. Ah. Can you put the shards together to make a pot or? Wonderful question. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think they put a little designs on the pots, too, of like clothers and stuff. Whoa.
00:10:39
Speaker
I wonder if they're trying to be accurate with any sort of civilization or if they're just randomizing it. I think they're taking influences, I guess. I mean, they already have the jungle temple and the desert temple, which is obviously based off an Egyptian pyramid, but historically not really anything like it.
00:11:04
Speaker
Yeah. It's like, oh, we liked the idea of this, so we're just going to put it into the sand area. Yeah. I mean, I don't know of any pyramids that had explosive BB traps at the bottom. They have Indiana Jones and the mummy on their minds. Yeah. Typical media archeologists.
Ethical and Practical Issues in Archaeology
00:11:28
Speaker
There was that, wasn't it like a, I forget what it was, sarcophagus of black sludge or whatever. That was a few years ago. Yeah, they found that in Alexandria, I believe. I think some sewer water got into it. It was just a few skeletons inside. Oh, I see. Yeah. You're like, don't drink the black sludge. Do it. I should eat whole spirit.
00:11:57
Speaker
Have you ever been to Egypt or no, not yet? Uh, no. Yeah. It's on my bucket list. It's kind of hard to get over that way. I have been to a room and, uh, Athens. So I've seen some Egyptian obelisks in person. Which one was, uh, your favorite place to visit? Uh, yeah, I'd say Rome was pretty good.
00:12:24
Speaker
Did you get to go to all the archaeological sites and do all the touristy, fun stuff? Yeah, most of them. The Coliseum Vatican City went to the historical museum in Athens and took some photos before they yelled at me to stop. Are you not allowed to take photos there? Yeah, I don't think so. Oh.
00:12:48
Speaker
It's always confusing. I know some places have a lot of signage of saying like no photographs, but in some areas it's just hidden or they just don't really like publicize that. And then as soon as you start taking photos, you get yelled at and then just like, wait, no, I don't want to get yelled at. Can you expect me to be in this beautiful place and not take photos? No flashes. I can understand that. Yeah. Someday we'll have eyeball photos.
00:13:18
Speaker
Wasn't Google trying to come up with something, the Google Glasses? Oh yeah, something like that. Something similar. Privacy concerns or whatever. Yeah. There was a cathedral or something in England, in Durham, and originally you weren't able to take any photos inside the cathedral or the chapel, but they filmed, I forget which Avengers movie,
00:13:46
Speaker
I think it was Avengers Endgame. They're filming one, either Endgame or Infinity War. It was filmed in there and it was like replicating some part of Asgard. And ever since then, they opened up the place to have photographs inside. I think because of just it being like a touristy type spot that they want, like, oh, you guys can take photos now. It's fine that the church like changed their minds for that. Just because it got popular. It got popular.
00:14:15
Speaker
Yeah, like what? So I can't take a photo in here, but Marvel can film a movie. Exactly. So they probably paid a lot of money and I just shook in. And then they just asked for donations. But where does the ethics lie? What's the point? In this essay, I will be discussing.
00:14:35
Speaker
I had a really cool art history teacher in high school who had some stories about visiting Egypt and the pyramids and everything and he talked about how he went like after tourist hours so there like wasn't a whole lot of people there and there was a guard like right by one of the pyramids and apparently the guard like
00:14:59
Speaker
took him up on top, like climbing up the pyramid a little bit and like pulled out some weed and they like got high on top of the pyramid. And he told us that story in high school and I'm like, I don't know if this is true, but like it sounds like it could possibly happen. But the guards of Egyptian size, just like give them some pocket change and they'll do, they'll let you do whatever is what I heard. Heard similar stories. Yeah.
00:15:29
Speaker
Alright, cool. Confirmed. Not a liar. Those blocks look huge though. They look really hard to climb up in the first place.
00:15:41
Speaker
You always see photos and stuff, but I just can't. Until I go there eventually, someday in the future, I will not be able to wrap my head around what it actually looks like in person. It's like I have a VR headset, and unless I do the Google Earth, because they have Google Earth and VR, I should do that. Oh my gosh. I've never seen that.
00:16:05
Speaker
Yeah, there's always a video on YouTube of some guy with a GoPro climbing up one of the Giza pyramids. A lot of people in the comments section arguing about it. Like whether it's legal or not. Yeah, whether it's respectful, I guess. I feel like I faintly remember this video. We'll have to look it up again. There's a lot of interesting conversations that go around do not touch signs of
00:16:33
Speaker
just like historic sites and just being out in public somewhere and just like, do not touch this rock, even though it's been touched for like thousands of years. And it wasn't until like 10 years ago that they put this sign on it because of more tourist interaction with it. So it makes sense, but also it's like, to what degree should we touch or not touch things? Yeah, there's all pictures of people having tea parties on top of the Great Pyramid, all that stuff. That sounds so nice.
00:17:03
Speaker
So whatever you can do to it, somebody's probably done something worse. I mean, a lot of them have been looted anyway, like in the past. So I feel like those are kind of on like the worst scale of things. It's interesting like where like modern people try to like stop the history of things from happening, like degradation. How do you say that word?
00:17:31
Speaker
They try to stop the degradation. I can't say that word. They try to stop things from becoming worse, but that's like the natural life of use and everything. It's an interesting concept. I think a lot of people freaked out by curses and all that. I don't really know how long these things have been around.
00:17:59
Speaker
how much people have really messed with them. Like if you disrespect a royal mummy and it comes to life, you're probably the last person on their hit list. And I'd say if there was any time they would have been angry enough to come to life, it would probably have been when Emil Burch was messing with them in the 1880s or when the Theban priests were taking off all their gold and putting them in a hole in the ground.
00:18:27
Speaker
I was like, excuse me. I was buried with this for a reason. They have a long list of people they'd mess with before you probably. It's funny. I was going to say it's also a good way to keep people from messing with any of the artifacts and remains. It's like you will be cursed. Yeah, there's definitely a hundred people who are already cursed.
00:18:54
Speaker
as we've seen in The Mummy. We should do another movie night for that, though. I haven't seen that in so long. Shoot, Melissa's doing a movie night in 20 minutes. Probably can't make it. She's watching Gods of Egypt, unfortunately. Oh, unfortunately? Yeah, it's not a good movie.
00:19:11
Speaker
Oh, really? I've never heard of it. Why does it matter? $150 million trying to recreate some Egyptian mythology. It was not that great. Wait, I think I have. Gerard Butler. Oh, yeah. Did they make a second one? No.
00:19:32
Speaker
No, it was a box office bomb. No way they're going to make a second one. I mean, I see 15% on rotten tomatoes, 25% on Metacritic. I just remember all the talk being like, yes, let's cast all these white people to be the main Egyptian cast. Yeah, well, they cast one black guy, so I'm bad. Oh, yeah, that clears up everything else. Oh, man. It's always...
00:20:00
Speaker
It's a blessing and a curse to have knowledge in general, I guess, because you can't, if you try to watch movies like Gods of Egypt, I mean, I mean, it flopped for a reason, but it's hard to like go into these movies without just over analyzing things. So it's just like, they're not doing that, right? It's like, it just, you are your own fun sucker.
00:20:25
Speaker
But also the fact that they have that much money and couldn't look up how it actually was. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, and as much as I love the mummy movies, they definitely weren't perfect either. Yeah. Yeah. They put, uh, emo tep in Monocsuna moon in a, in a loving relationship. You know, they lived about a thousand years apart. Not possible. Yeah.
00:20:52
Speaker
They try. They like to romanticize things in Hollywood. I wonder why. It's just what they do.
00:21:00
Speaker
I mean, I've liked Indiana Jones as a kid, but of course, you have a love-hate relationship with that movie franchise, especially with the last one that actually does not exist, so I will not speak of it.
Adaptation and Storytelling in Media
00:21:16
Speaker
Is that the one with the aliens? I don't know what you're talking about. Oh, okay. There's no fourth Indiana Jones in Ba Sing Se. Exactly. There's no Avatar movie either.
00:21:27
Speaker
No Avatar movie. Oh, the one with the blue people though, right? That's the only Avatar. That's the only Avatar that exists. Yeah. I really wish they would make an Avatar movie. The Last Airbender, of course. They're doing the Netflix thing, right? I think they're still working on that. They just released the ages of the characters.
00:21:50
Speaker
and the ethnicities that they're casting. I think the creators just walked out of that. So yeah, they did like sometime last year and then everyone was like, Oh no, now it's going to be awful. Oh no. But they were going to make Katara older than Sokka. So that Katara could be in a thing with Zuko, like would be old enough to be anything. Okay. I'm just going to say the standards are not that high.
00:22:19
Speaker
I know I always have trouble like judging these things because on one hand, I'm like so excited to have more of the Avatar universe come to life. But on the other hand, I just know it's going to be like not great, but it's fine.
00:22:34
Speaker
It's like you always want to go in being like, okay, this is just an adaptation. But it's like, you can mess it up so much. Just like pronouncing Aang as ung. Even if you hadn't seen the source material beforehand, that one was like,
00:22:52
Speaker
That was a no brainer. I think he purposely did that for some reason, like to make it more ethnically precise or whatever. I don't even know what his excuse was. It was something like that though. It was something along those lines. Have you seen any of the fan made ones on TikTok that have been going around recently?
00:23:16
Speaker
I think I've seen, I've only seen the ones on YouTube. I think I did see a recreation of the final acne Kai between Zuko and Azula. Yeah. I think they're putting it on YouTube too, but a group on TikTok is like doing recreations of avatar. It looks super cool.
00:23:34
Speaker
I've seen some of their behind the scenes videos of them just doing some fighting in a forest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. That's about it. I also love how in the movie, the firebenders couldn't firebend unless there was fire nearby. It's like, how would you take over the world if you could only firebend with fire nearby? If I've heard it said before, that's what makes them
00:24:00
Speaker
so dangerous is that they're the only ones that don't need a nearby element to control. They can just spit fire out of nowhere. Same with airbending, air everywhere. I saw a theory like airbenders are actually the strongest, but they took the peaceful route, which is why they're not like world dominators, but they could have been because you can just like suck the life out of people, you know, like they did in Legend of Korra and
00:24:30
Speaker
Yeah. Crazy. Yeah, Monkey Otsu. You took on a whole bunch of, yeah, basically suffocated a bunch of firebenders at the height of Susan's Comet. I mean, that took a lot probably. Do you guys like this archaeology podcast so far? I am okay with this sidetracking. This is my favorite type of sidetracking. I love that universe so much.
00:24:57
Speaker
I had a friend in my undergrad who wrote a paper and I think even presented about it at a conference about Avatar Last Airbender and something about anthropology with it. I don't necessarily remember, but they went off and I was so proud of them. I want to hear it. I know. I'll message them. It did prove at the very least you can make a nice world building series that's not based off medieval Europe.
00:25:25
Speaker
Yeah, very true. You know, like, you know, you see something like this based off East Asia. That's pretty nice. And it opens the possibilities, something maybe ancient near Eastern, something African, native. That would be really cool. Yeah, I'd love to see some, I guess, mainstream interpretation of Egyptian magic, something like that. Something more not, not like gods of Egypt, where they tried to
00:25:55
Speaker
make something and make it really glorified or romanticize it, but white and have something more digestible and along the lines of Avatar Glass Airbender.
00:26:08
Speaker
and even like Shira and that too. Yeah. I took, um, ancient African religion class and undergrad. That was really cool. And I, there's like so much you could do with like an animated series based off of those cultures. I think that would be really cool to be able to see that representation on screen. Yeah.
00:26:34
Speaker
Yeah, you could probably make one with, make it one out of any culture. As long as you got, you know, good writers, the right circumstances that the last airbender had. Get people actually from the culture to be involved with it. Take the lead. You hear that world? Go make it. We want it. We are the people we want. I am your target audience. I think most of it just revolves around pitching to producers like,
00:27:02
Speaker
can't just go up to a producer and say, hey, give me some money. I got a movie starring Mr. Al Muhammad. I'll never heard of this guy. But at the same time, doesn't mean like everybody needs to be this white Hollywood star. Yeah, yeah.
00:27:19
Speaker
I think that's something cool about modern days.
Charlie's Projects and Social Media
00:27:23
Speaker
People are getting big on their own accord off of the internet, which is kind of cool. And then you can get signed by other places to help you out. But it's cool how everyone kind of has that chance to go viral without having come from anything. If you have enough talent and persistence, you can make something go viral, which is pretty cool.
00:27:47
Speaker
I don't have either of those things. So even on TikTok, you can just have that like one post wonder where all of a sudden like your one post goes extremely viral out of nowhere because of the algorithm. So I guess it's the luck of the algorithm. Yeah, definitely. Pretty cool. Yeah, it's about it. And TikTok's algorithm is more wild than most.
00:28:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's a lot wrong with it also. Have you ever thought about posting some screenshots or footage from your Minecraft world onto TikTok or any other social medias? TikTok, not really. It's mostly just Instagram and YouTube so far, maybe Twitter in the future. Oh, cool. What's your Instagram for?
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's called Egypt in Minecraft. So I've been posting this to my stuff so far. So I've started another story thing and haven't posted again in a week. So I should probably do that.
00:28:54
Speaker
Sometimes social media is just so hard to keep on top of as well. It's just like, wait, I haven't done that. I don't really want to post, but I will. It's not even that hard. I just need to like write something. Yeah. Wow, this looks so good. What's next on your building agenda?
Archaeology Simulator and Collaboration
00:29:16
Speaker
right now. So I'm trying to create a version of it that I can release as an archaeology simulator really soon, which means I haven't done anything past the 18th Dynasty yet. So I had to kind of invent this scenario where it could still end there, but you can still go in and excavate the place sort of. Okay, cool.
00:29:42
Speaker
So, kind of created this alternate timeline of history where the end of the 18th Dynasty went a bit differently, kind of collapsed into civil war between Akhenaten and his brother, and then this plague came in and wiped out the
00:30:02
Speaker
Wipe down most of the human population, which leaves Egypt abandoned for a few thousand years until you come in and you get to excavate the place, rebuild it kind of. Dang. Oh, I'm so excited to do this eventually. I'm working on it.
00:30:22
Speaker
I was just looking through your Instagram and it's so cool with the like higher glyphs on the walls like the different paintings you've done. How do you do that? Do you like post an image of it or is it like individual painting on the blocks?
00:30:37
Speaker
Okay, so the textures, yeah, that part wasn't all mine. I started with a texture pack made by The Mint Mermaid, and I've gone in and made a lot of my own edits, but a good chunk of it is still her work, so I do want to give a bit of credit to her. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, some of the paintings though, that was my stuff, some of the chests too.
00:31:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's cool being able to fill in the walls instead of just having them be dirt. Wow, I'm so impressed. People are so creative. Yeah, just ignore the really weird looking statues. That was the best I could do. Oh, wait, I want to see them. Oh, I see. Oh, they look good. Little, little block man.
00:31:24
Speaker
Except for the ones in Tuts Tomb, they were kind of special, so made them a bit better. Yeah, I just realized the ones in the Tuts Tomb picture have the wrong head type on them. Which one is Tuts Tomb? The fourth one down, I believe. One, two, three, four. Oh, I see. Oh, yeah, they're totally actual people. Yeah, there's reference photos, too. Wow.
00:31:52
Speaker
That's so cool. I'm so impressed. Makes me want to go do something creative. Yeah, well, definitely don't try this unless you're willing to sink a lot into it at the same time. But yeah, at the same time, it is a good way to learn.
00:32:10
Speaker
I think the majority of what I know about Egypt has been just researching for this project. It really helps that information stick when you're looking through stuff, trying to recreate it, I guess, hands-on sort of. And it's only you doing this? Yeah. That's crazy. 300 plus explorable tombs only by yourself? Yeah. That's crazy. Very impressive. You are so persistent. I am so impressed.
00:32:40
Speaker
How long would you say it takes you to finish? It's hard to say just a tomb because everything's so different, but like usually like how much time do you spend on one thing?
00:32:51
Speaker
Yeah, I guess it depends on the tomb. Again, a pyramid would obviously take a lot longer, but a lot of the pyramids I made a long time ago, so they're not that accurate or great. Yeah, every named king that we know of, well, has a tomb and is going to have a tomb in the future. And a good chunk of the Theban Necropolis I've made, all based on actual tombs. All the Amarna tombs I've built,
00:33:20
Speaker
a good chunk of the Giza mastaba fields and some of sakara too. That's insane. It's so impressive. Great job. I love what I'm singing. And are they all like accurately spaced out between each other too?
00:33:38
Speaker
Not at all. There's a map a bit further down. So if I was going to start this all over again, I probably would have made a more accurate Egypt layout.
00:33:53
Speaker
The way it is now, it's just a custom world desert with big rivers. But I guess it kind of worked out for the best. It's a bit more squished than what Egypt is actually like. But at the same time, I guess it better translates into a Minecraft map. It's going up and down all the time. Easy for people to move around to. Yeah.
00:34:16
Speaker
It's kind of like when you're going in a museum and everything's just kind of next to each other, even though that's not supposed to be. You're just like, oh, this is nice. Let's go in here. Oh, cool. And then you go into the next one.
00:34:27
Speaker
Yeah, so the map you're looking at now, I assume, obviously you can see the Giza pyramids. Memphis is a bit north of that. And then all around it, there's labels, but I don't think you can read them. Yeah, they're kind of small. I want to go explore in it. I can't wait till you release it. I'll go get Minecraft just for this.
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, Melissa got Minecraft just for this and she's had a lot of fun so far in the regular game. Did you guys know each other before? Or where do you meet Melissa? I met her on Instagram. It was a little bit after I started my account and she was just starting up too. I saw her in my recommended and then I thought, hey, other upstart archaeology account you want to collab?
00:35:19
Speaker
That's awesome. I love social media. Yeah. And then we live right near each other too. So that didn't make it much harder. Oh, that's so wild. It's a small world. It's even smaller with social media. Have you been able to meet in person and hang out? No. Okay. But you could if you wanted to. Yeah, probably. I've really found a reason though. Yeah. Especially when you both just hang out online.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah. I think this episode will come out in a month from now. Yeah. So in that case, I might have this out by then. I might not, but, uh, oh, cool. Yeah. Hopefully I will. It should come out the second of July.
00:36:01
Speaker
It's definitely nearing completion. I've gotten most of the world stuff done. I just need to do a lot of writing for the in-world stories and explain what's going on. That'll be cool. Do those just appear on signs or how does that work? I've never really played with Minecraft, so I don't know how this works.
00:36:25
Speaker
Yeah, Minecraft has written books that you can open and look at. And yeah, early on, I started giving things these little, I guess, diaries, like I'm writing down stuff about their their reign and what they did, and all that stuff. And since then, I've gone back and kind of rewritten a lot of them to be a bit more, I guess, professional and informative.
00:36:47
Speaker
And a few times I just make stuff up, especially for kings we don't know much about, like Kamudi, the last king of the 15th dynasty. I gave him this big, long, I guess, arc about getting dethroned and regaining it, starting a war, all that. I try to make it work as much as possible with the archaeological and historical stuff that we have. I'm sure you're close to accurate.
00:37:17
Speaker
And also in the end, it's always about interpretations and everyone has different interpretations about different things. So yeah, it sounds like it's going to be a really cool experience and can't wait to explore it and make all my other Minecraft playing friends explore it. I'll be like, you download this right now. I won't yell at them, but I'll very kindly yell at them. I mean, it would be a great, no, tell them. Look at it. Look at it. Exactly.
00:37:44
Speaker
Yeah, some of that might be a bit too much for kids, though. So I might make another version, I guess more kid friendly and appropriate. Are some not kid friendly? Well, it was ancient Egypt. It wasn't exactly all sunshine and rainbows. Okay, so you mean like death and dying and
00:38:05
Speaker
Yeah, plus I find it hard to write about anything that's not super gray and gritty because that's literally all the media I consume. Yeah, fair enough. Just add a smiley face at the end of everything. It'll make it. Yeah, that would help her too. This little hehe. Yeah, I do have I did put some funny stuff in there. Mainly, have you heard the theory about the Hall of Records underneath the Sphinx?
00:38:35
Speaker
No. It's just one of those conspiracy theories. They think that there's some Atlantis Hall of Records or whatever underneath the Sphinx, like this great library.
00:38:46
Speaker
Uh, I made that and I'm mostly just filling it with random stuff, I guess, references and silly things. It's like, might as well. Yeah, there, there was an avatar reference since we were talking about that. You hear that? That's more avatar. Send it to me. You gotta find it first, Alyssa. It's an Easter egg. Gotta go find it. Send the discord somewhere. Oh, is it?
00:39:28
Speaker
I won't be able to implement that in this version, unfortunately, since that one is 19th Dynasty, but he was the fourth son of Ramses II. I decided to give him a little story arc of him exploring the world of the Bronze Age in about 1200 BC. He goes through nomadic Europe, through ancient Near East over to Shang Dynasty China, meet some figures there.
00:39:36
Speaker
I will find it.
00:39:55
Speaker
And a lot of it lines up pretty well. I think Emperor Fu Hao was Emperor of the Shang Dynasty at the time, and we have one of his wife's tombs intact from that. So it's nice writing about that. I post that on Tumblr too. I bet people would love to read that, some sort of blog. It was super nice chatting with you about Minecraft and your Minecraft world, Charlie. Yeah, thanks. You'll have to let us know when you release everything so we can share it. Yeah.
00:40:25
Speaker
I already planning on asking some archeology YouTubers if they'd want to showcase it. I mean, they probably won't, but it doesn't hurt to ask. Doesn't hurt to ask. Well, we'll email them to see if we can get you in there. You know, let us know. Do you want to drop any social media shout outs or anything that people can follow to see what you're up to?
00:40:49
Speaker
Yeah, my main one, I guess, for this project is Egypt and Minecraft on Instagram. And the YouTube channel that I never post on is History with Charlie. History with Charlie? Yeah. Awesome. Thanks so much, Charlie. And we'll see you on the Discord. All right. Thanks. All right. See you soon. See you all next time. Bye.
00:41:26
Speaker
This show is produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle, in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.