I present to you now my argument as to why you should cast suspicious glances at the Millennium Items, for perhaps their true origins aren't what you've been told all along.
This is all just speculation based on the information I've been collecting, but, well, Yu-Gi-Oh!'s time spent with the Millennium Items even being mentioned is long, LONG over, so I can speculate however much I want because canon isn't going to address what I'm saying to prove me wrong.
I'll cut straight to the chase. I'm pretty sure the Millennium Items aren't actually Egyptian in nature. Not really a big deal, I know, but I find it fascinating to consider.
The first of the reasons that I believe this is simply how averse the form, function, and method of production of the Millennium Items was to the fundamental nature of Egyptian magic and belief. Egyptian magic was tied so strongly to their religious beliefs that in many ways they embodied the same thing, and their religion had a huge impact on what effects their magic could actually produce and how it was performed.
Of particular note is the creation method of the Millennium Items, namely the requirement of human sacrifice. This isn't just something that would have to be hidden for political and morale reasons as is implied in the anime and manga; it would literally be impossible using Egyptian magical methods. Egyptians didn't believe in human sacrifice, or for using human souls to power magic. In fact, life and wholeness of body were considered extremely sacred to Egyptians, so even sacrificing livestock for magic would be considered generally unacceptable by the priesthood (though this is less of a concern, as I've seen no reference to a belief that animals had ba or ka). There was some concept of retainer sacrifice, but that died out over two thousand years before the Millennium Scripts were even discovered, much less when the Items were actually made, and more importantly it wasn't for even remotely magical purposes; some servants just sacrificed their lives (voluntarily, I might add) to continue to serve the pharaoh after death to help the Pharaoh maintain their status in life and secure themselves more comfortable afterlives. So, yeah. Sacrificing people shouldn't even work for Egyptian Magic, as it goes entirely against the foundations that their entire magical theory was built upon. (Seriously, they wrote a lot of magical scripts. It's trippy, bro.)
More importantly than just the fact that the method of making them was outside the realm of what Egyptian magic could conceivably do, however, is that the effects of several of the items run counter to the powers the Egyptians could or would have called even if they had a method of forging these items. Although calling forth other peoples' ka to do battle seems slightly out of place, that's actually something that seems possible within the confines of Egyptian magic, and I can forgive that the priests didn't immediately release the ka of dead people so it could meet up with their ba because that wouldn't have been much fun to read about.
The bigger issue with the Millennium Items' abilities is with certain Items like the Ring and Eye, because they did things even more offensive than sacrifice people: they trapped peoples' souls (their ba) and placed them in objects. For one thing, Egyptians couldn't even affect the ba while it was within a living body, but more importantly, trapping people's souls someplace and preventing them from enjoying the afterlife and returning to their own bodies would have been highly sacrilegious, to the point where the religiously-themed Egyptian magic wouldn't have even been able to do it; none of the gods would ever provide that type of power to people, and for that matter no god in the pantheon has a domain over an ability like that. Again; totally goes against the fundamental nature of their magic, and I don't think an Egyptian priest (or even the pharaoh) could have done that if they tried. For that matter, illusions weren't Egyptian either as their magic strictly focused on bringing about indirect changes to the natural world, despite such illusions being Atem's favored source of Penalty Game.
Now, I don't mean to rag on the creators for this. I did a whole lot more research than they probably bothered with, and a lot of the things I'm bringing up here would've probably detracted from the entertainment value of the series if they were considered when designing the abilities of the characters. But it's really fun to think about...
... Especially in the anime, where another magical tradition that focuses on the monsters in the cards is introduced. And as a matter of fact, this tradition has a very heavy focus on manipulating and trapping souls and using human sacrifices for power, creating mighty illusions and transferring visions, as well as being much more attuned to the summoning of monsters other than their own ka than Egyptian magic would have been...
Yeah, I'm just going to come out and say it. It isn't manga-relevant, but in the anime, the Millennium Items are a whole lot more likely to be Atlantean in origin than Egyptian. This brings a couple of questions to mind, such as why Yugi's Puzzle couldn't counteract the Seal, but we went over possible reasons for that in my last thread about older being better, and... For that matter, the Egyptian Yami Yugi couldn't do it, but the original Yugi did appear to break the barrier that separated his soul from Yami's with the Millenium Puzzle. The Orichalcos is a more pure form of intense, uncontrolled power, but the Millenium Puzzle could affect it in certain limited ways, as also shown during the final duel between Yami and Dartz, which lends even more credence to the idea that the Items and the Scripts detailing their creation may have been powerful Atlantean relics rather than products of high Egyptian magic.
Those are my thoughts on the subject, anyway. Hope you guys enjoyed the read.
Subject: The Millennium Items Might Not Be What They Seem... 
Wed Sep 17, 2014 11:19 pm
