In 1799, a young French soldier named Pierre-François Bouchard happened upon a curious artifact in the sands of Rosetta, an ancient port city on the northern shore of Egypt. A large, dark-hued stone, Bouchard noticed that the object appeared to show the scripts of several different ancient languages, and called over his superior to inspect it further. Unbeknownst to the French militants, the large stone they had happened upon, which would come to be known as the Rosetta Stone, would prove to be one of the most significant discoveries of the late eighteenth century, unlocking the rich written history of ancient Egypt.
This discovery was the result of a military campaign launched by Napoleon Bonaparte from 1708 to 1801 into the Middle East and North Africa, which resulted in an era of intense European exposure to ancient Egyptian culture. This period of interest in and focus on ancient Egyptian culture and society sparked what would eventually come to be known as the field of Egyptology. The rediscovery of the Rosetta Stone was perhaps the most catalyzing event during this period, as its existence prompted the deciphering of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, opening up opportunities for further academic research in the field.
“Egyptomania”
“In its crouching position, with bent joints and craned head, there was a suggestion of energy about the horrid thing which made Smith’s gorge rise. The gaunt ribs, with their parchment-like covering, were exposed, and the sunken, leaden-hued abdomen, with the long slit where the embalmer had left his mark; but the lower limbs were wrapt round with coarse yellow bandages. A number of little clove-like pieces of myrrh and of cassia were sprinkled over the body, and lay scattered on the inside of the case.”
– Lot No. 249, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Following Napoleon’s campaign and the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics, Europeans became enamored with Egyptian culture. Architecture, art, and literature inspired by the far-off lands of mummies and mysticism captured the minds of countless across Europe, most especially in the United Kingdom. The expense and exclusivity of travel to Egypt allowed only the wealthiest of citizens to be able to afford the journey, further feeding the desire of those less fortunate to experience the region’s wonders through art and culture.
This rampant craving for all things Egyptian supported the careers of those who wished to capitalize on the popularity of “Egyptomania,” including authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Lot No. 249, a short story published by Doyle in 1892, plays off of the aura of mysticism that surrounded the exclusive Egyptian culture in the late nineteenth century by weaving the tale of an Egyptology student who becomes too absorbed in Egyptian magic. In his zealous study of Egyptian culture, he learns how to revive mummies from the dead, resulting in the assault of the story’s protagonist by a reanimated mummy. The story concludes with the Egyptology student destroying the mummy and his other Egyptian artifacts, having decided this would be the only way to free himself of the horrors of Egyptian dark magic.
Lot No. 249 is a prime example of the many orientalist works of literature that permeated Victorian England. With similar stories and poems published by other famous authors, such as Louisa May Alcott and H. Rider Haggard, the field of orientalist writings on Egyptian culture was well established by the end of the eighteenth century. Orientalism, or the portrayal of Asia and the Middle East through a stereotyped, colonialist lens, ran rampant in Victorian England, where only elite, educated, and imperialist citizens were able to undertake the expensive journey to Egypt. Their reports of Egypt, colored by their own colonialist beliefs, created and sustained an exoticized image of Egyptian culture and history in the minds of the British public. It was not only their words, however, that they took back with them.
Dehumanization
“It would hardly be respectable, on one’s return from Egypt, to present oneself in Europe without a mummy in one hand and a crocodile in the other.”
– Traveller Ferdinand de Géramb to Muhammad Ali of Egypt, 1833.
Felix Bonfils, “Momies Egyptiennes (Egyptian Mummies)”, c. 1870.
A term which often comes hand-in-hand with “Egyptomania” is the “mummy craze.” As European travellers voyaged throughout Egypt, they created a market for items they deemed worthy of bringing back to their home countries in order to demonstrate their wealth and cultured nature. While ancient Egyptian art and artifacts, looted from tombs by either themselves or local Egyptians, satisfied their need for souvenirs, another sort of object rapidly captured their attention. Also looted from their final resting places, European tourists became enamored not only with the belongings of the deceased, but also the deceased themselves. Mummies amazed European tourists with their death-defying nature and seemingly exotic decorations. Recognizing the market opportunity, Egyptian locals set up shop selling exhumed mummies on the streets of major cities such as Cairo to the eager tourists. Upon their return to Europe, the elites paraded mummies in their social circles and exposed them in various orientalist rituals.
Mummy Unwrapping Parties
One of these such rituals was that of the mummy unwrapping party. Having returned from Egypt with their various souvenirs, many European travelers felt the desire to share their experiences in Egypt with their fellow elite friends and families, which often lead to exploitative and imagined exotic rituals. In a mummy unwrapping party, Europeans would quite literally strip the mummy bare of its wrappings, removing any items observed to be of fascination or of note:
“The format for a mummy unrolling was by this point well established: the mummy rested upon a table surrounded by Egyptian funerary images, objects and texts. Following a lecture on Egyptian history and religion the lecturer and his assistants would gradually remove the textiles and other materials that encased the mummy. Fragments of the wrappings, pungent with resins and spices, were often passed around the audience along with the amulets and other artefacts encountered within them.”
– Gabriel Moshenka, “Unrolling Egyptian Mummies in Nineteenth-century Britain.”
Mummy unwrapping parties were not just for watching, but were rather a full sensory experience. The host of the party would often employ incense during the “ceremony,” attempting to evoke the ever-elusive nature of imagined, orientalist Egyptian culture. Accompanied with the smell of the spices gathered from the bandages of the deceased, the smell of this spectacle would have been quite overwhelming. Authors, such as Louisa May Alcott, painted the smell of mummies as sort of intoxicating substance, capable of affecting the mind of its recipient:
“A dull blaze sprung up, and a heavy smoke rose from the burning mummy, rolling in volumes through the low passages, and threatening to suffocate us with its fragrant mist. My brain grew dizzy, the light danced before my eyes, strange phantoms seemed to people the air, and, in the act of asking Niles why he gasped and looked so pale, I lost consciousness.”
– Lost in a Pyramid, Louisa May Alcott, 1869.
As Eleanor Dobson states in her work “‘Drunk on the dead’: Intoxication, Perfume and Mummy Dust,” “literary bodies invaded by ancient dust were susceptible to experiencing aphrodisiac effects, rousing sexual fantasies of Salomes, Cleopatras and other serpents of the Nile.” In this way, mummy unwrapping parties take on an eroticized connotation, connecting to the often over-sexualized portrayal of Egypt in the eyes of orientalist Europeans.
Mummia
Where the supposed intoxicative effects of mummy unwrapping parties were more symbollic than literal in the human body, consumption of mummies and their culture was not always a metaphorical notion to nineteenth-century Europeans. While some travelers elected to parade the mummies they retrieved from Egypt in unwrapping parties, others found themselves lining the shelves of apothecaries with them. Mummia, or simply mummy, was a powder created by finely grinding mummified human flesh. This powder, sold in apothecaries across England and the wider European world, was believed to hold restorative and healing properties. According to a poem by English author Rupert Brook titled Mummia, Victorians also believed the powder to hold the properties of an aphrodisiac:
“Interior of a Kitchen” by Martin Drolling is one of the many paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite era that utilizes mummy brown, a paint which uses mummia as its primary pigment.
“As those of old drank mummia
To fire their limbs of lead,
Making dead kings from Africa
Stand pandar to their bed;
Drunk on the dead, and medicined
With spiced imperial dust,
In a short night they reeled to find
Ten centuries of lust.”
– Rupert Brooke, Mummia.
This literal consumption of mummia by Victorians speaks to the level of dehumanization mummies had received in eighteenth-century Europe. Mummies were not perceived as people, but rather as commodities to be consumed, traded, and paraded. Fully detached from their original temporal and cultural concepts, mummies had become objects of amusement for Europeans, which bore a direct impact on their treatment in the museum display case.
Exploring a Mummy Unwrapping Party
This late nineteenth-century work by French artist Paul Dominique Philippoteaux offers a window into the popular Victorian event of a mummy unwrapping party. Titled Examen d’une momie – Une prêtresse d’Ammon, or, Examination of a Mummy – The Priestess of Ammon, this painting portrays the unwrapping the mummy of Ta-Uza-Ra, a priestess whose body European archaeologists exhumed at Deir El Bahari, an ancient tomb complex near Luxor, Egypt. Click the information hotspots to learn more about this Orientalist practice through the painting’s subjects.
