"Recycling the Dead", With Discovery Channel Host Dr. Kara Cooney

Inside the Ancient Egyptian scheme to strip Royal Tombs while Keeping It Sacred. Interview with Dr Richard Marranca

Dr. Kara Cooney is a professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture at UCLA, where she serves as Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. With a Ph.D. in Egyptology from Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Cooney specializes in craft production, coffin studies, and ancient economies - particularly during the Ramesside era (Nineteenth through Twentieth Dynasties). She hosted two Discovery Channel documentary series: Out of Egypt, and Egypt’s Lost Queen, which also featured Zahi Hawass. She has authored several books on ancient Egypt and served as co-curator of the renowned exhibition “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.”

In this interview with Richard Marranca, Dr. Cooney explores the fascinating world of Deir el-Medina, the specialized village of craftsmen who built and decorated the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Drawing on her research in her book Recycling for Death, she discusses how these same artisans who created the royal tombs were later employed to systematically dismantle them, removing treasures while maintaining religious propriety through ritual reburial.

The conversation reveals the complex economic and ideological tensions underlying ancient Egyptian burial practices - from the positioning of tombs and the management of labor, to the cycles of taking and giving back that sustained the Theban elite for generations. Dr. Cooney draws striking parallels between ancient power dynamics and modern displays of wealth, illuminating how the need to simultaneously reveal and conceal power has remained constant throughout human history.