Mummified: The stories behind Egyptian mummies in museums

By Angela Stienne

Mummified explores the curious, unsettling and controversial cases of mummies held in French and British museums. From powdered mummies eaten as medicine to mummies unrolled in public, dissected for race studies and DNA-tested in modern laboratories, there is a lot more to these ancient remains than first meets the eye. This book takes you on a journey from Paris to London, Leicester and Manchester, from the apothecaries of the Middle Ages to the dissecting tables of the eighteenth century, and finally behind the screen of today’s computers, to revisit the stories of these bodies that have fascinated Europeans for so long.

Mummified investigates matters of life and death, of collecting and viewing, and of interactions – sometimes violent and sometimes emotional – that question the essence of what makes us human.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Jun 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781526161901

Book preview

Mummified

Mummified

The stories behind Egyptian mummies in museums

Angela Stienne

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Angela Stienne 2022

The right of Angela Stienne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 6189 5 hardback

First published 2022

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Cover design by Dan Mogford

Cover image: A mummy brought from Egypt. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain

Typeset by Newgen Publishing UK

In loving memory of

my beloved grandparents

Yvette Stienne et Michel Stienne

&

my dear friend

Helen Pike

Contents

Foreword by John J. Johnston

Prologue

Introduction: The mummy

1The mummy as medicine, the mummy in medicine

2The displayed mummy, the displaced body

3Mummies buried in a garden, and other incidents

4The mummy’s foot

5Mummies unrolled

6The White mummy

7The (White) mummy returns

8The mummy of the future

Epilogue

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

Notes

Suggested further reading

Index

Foreword

I am delighted to say that the book you’re holding in your hands is somewhat unusual: it concerns the reception of ancient Egypt in the modern world.

It is a publication blissfully unconcerned with ancient battles, court intrigues or exquisitely crafted funerary paraphernalia; there are no theories regarding the construction techniques of vast pyramid complexes, their alignment against astronomical points or the ways in which Egypt stood as the dazzling jewel of the Mediterranean for more than 3,000 years. It is, however, a book that presents an equally fascinating tale of how individuals scoured the necropoleis of Egypt for the mummified corpses of Egypt’s ancient dead, in order to transport them by land and sea, across thousands of miles, to museums and private collections in the West. It relates the manner in which the steady commodification of Egypt’s mummies, predating even the Napoleonic campaign of 1798, determined western attitudes towards these remains throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, as the mummies of the long deceased were utilised in the causes of scholarship; art; and, indeed, public entertainment. Primarily, Mummified is concerned with the ways in which we have connected, and continue to connect, with mummified human remains in both the somewhat rarefied surroundings of museums and, historically, in rather different settings. It is a book that shares tales about the ongoing engagement of the living with the ancient dead and allows us to consider the nature of that relationship.

As an Egyptologist, primarily concerned with mortuary archaeology, my own engagement with the ancient dead is considerable; however, I also find myself writing and lecturing a great deal on the reception of ancient Egypt both within academia and in modern culture, often, though not exclusively, in relation to the mummy as a cultural icon. The aspect that is most apparent from my research is how heavily influenced by contemporary convictions, concerns and circumstances Egyptianising cultural works are, and the same is apparent within the displays of museums and galleries. Whether in the 1920s or the 2020s, the ancient past is always, inevitably, overlaid with the realities of the present.

Reception, as applied to the study of the ancient world, is a somewhat fluid term. The reception of ancient Greece and Rome has been a well-established branch of classical scholarship for some decades now, substantially based upon the work in the late 1960s of German literary theorist Hans Robert Jauss (1921–1997).

By understanding the ways in which the culture, art, religion, philosophy and literature of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds have been comprehended by scholars and, subsequently, presented to the wider world, from the Renaissance onwards, our appreciation of the discipline in its current state is clarified. In order to move forward as a subject, it must retain a well-defined view of the past. There is, today, a greater acceptance of the fact that all historical enquiry is influenced by the cultural mores of the periods when that research was undertaken and disseminated. By way of example, it is clear that substantial differences would have existed between a stage production of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex mounted at London’s Royal Opera House in 1912¹ and the National Theatre’s production of 2008,² and not merely in terms of technology or stagecraft. Our appreciation of the creative choices – literary, artistic and academic – informed by the predominant culture and politics of the period substantially alters our experience of the ancient text.

Egyptology has been relatively slow to respond to the ideas of reception theory – unlike classics, it is a comparatively young branch of the humanities – but it is increasingly engaging with this theoretical field. Over the last two decades, a small number of significant books and articles have considered the ways in which our understanding of ancient Egyptian culture has been influenced not only by the prevailing attitudes of preceding generations of scholars, but also by the choices made by artists, writers and, ultimately, filmmakers and game designers in their portrayals of the ancient past. This is one of those significant books.

Mummified is the first book to focus solely upon the reception of the mummy within the context of museum collections – Egyptological, general and private – specifically in the UK and France, both of which are cultural contexts of which the author has vast experience. Through consideration of the reception of these preserved human remains over the last 200 years, this book addresses the ever-changing motivation and psychology of excavators, scholars and the public at large. The question of mummy unrolling is particularly pertinent here: when it became apparent that there was increasing press and public resistance to this formerly popular practice, it came, very swiftly, to an end. The final notable public mummy unrolling was conducted at Manchester University by the estimable Margaret Murray on 6 May 1908. The mummy in question, Khnumn Nakht, hailed from the twelfth dynasty and had been excavated at Rifeh. Photographs show the event to have been very well attended, though articles published in the succeeding days, including a heartfelt but rather clumsy poem, revealed a marked distaste for the whole project. Murray was incensed and somewhat hurt by the experience, as her publication on Khnumn Nakht’s tomb, two years later, reveals.³ She had been involved for the best of reasons, in a spirit of purely academic enquiry, and this volte-face by the media was a salutary lesson.

In the course of her wide-ranging exploration, the author also addresses the biographies of the mummies’ afterlives: not, however, the spiritual rebirths these individuals might have imagined for themselves but, rather, their corporeal afterlife of discovery, seizure and movement across the globe to cultures and circumstances they could never have imagined in life.

In choosing to concentrate upon mummified human remains, the author tackles the peculiarly privileged role that mummies play in our modern understanding of the culture of ancient Egypt, and the ways in which they capture the minds of scholars and the public alike. They inhabit a problematic, often awkward, liminal area between being the physical remains of living individuals, whose culture and history we study through material artefacts, while at the same time being themselves artefacts of forensic, artistic and archaeological study.

However, as Mummified shows, this is not an entirely new phenomenon. Mummies have been consumed, often literally, for centuries in a variety of ways, which strike us now as peculiar and, frequently, distinctly ghoulish. The public unrolling events and private parties that took place throughout Europe and the United States from the mid-nineteenth century are a perfect case in point. I can personally attest to the fascination exerted by such events, as I have, since 2016, led several lavish recreations of mummy unrollings at major institutions in the UK and beyond. In advance publicity, it has always been made clear that no actual mummified remains will be employed and that the purpose is merely to give modern audiences a flavour of the mummy unrollings undertaken by the likes of Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, of whom you will read more later. However, in the storeyed, glass-fronted atrium of the Ashmolean Museum, approximately 1,000 people watched with rapt, albeit slightly horrified, expressions as I spent an hour unrolling my ‘mummy’, discussing the funerary practices of the ancient Egyptians and what I was uncovering beneath the endless lengths of prepared and carefully stained strips of cloth, discovering an amulet here and a wrapping inscribed with hieroglyphs there. Of course, it was an entirely theatrical entertainment, but the fascination exerted by such spectacles was still palpably present. Smaller numbers, such as the 300 seated spectators at the Ny Glyptotek, Copenhagen, enabled me, after divesting myself of the fin de siècle trappings, to field pertinent questions from the audience and to ask them what so fascinated them about Egyptian mummies and what they had gained from witnessing such an unrolling, however fictitious.

I’m pleased to say that our genial author, Angela, has been able to attend these staged unrollings on more than one occasion, and I would like to think that she has been able to bring elements of this lost – but far from lamented – phenomenon of yesteryear to the present work.

As we have seen, mummies can represent considerably more than mere relics of purely academic interest; they have infested the imagination, in addition to the intellect, over the last 200 years. Egyptian mummies have become immediately identifiable icons of literature and film, recognised by children from the youngest ages, often before they have ever set foot within a museum or gallery. They are known through cartoons, toys, stationery and even sugary snacks. In the twenty-first century, the mummy – and fantasies thereof – has become part of our modern cultural landscape. In addition to horror films, there are boundless television documentaries filled with the latest ‘theories’ and new evidence direct from the field. The incredible parade of the New Kingdom royal mummies through the streets of Cairo in April 2021, from their galleries within the Egyptian Museum to their new display in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, in twenty-two specially designed golden hearses, live-streamed online throughout the world, provides ample proof of their public appeal, even when there are no mummies to be seen – merely Egyptianising modern vehicles marked with the cartouche and anglicised name of each royal personage. Indeed, the gleaming presence of these unseen mummies was sufficient to elicit tremendous national and international engagement. This lavish and visually striking event, funded by the Egyptian Government, allowed modern Egyptian voices to be heard as they expressed pride in their history and culture. It was an effective means of enabling the people of Egypt to engage with their ancient dead on a grand scale, without placing the mummies at any risk.

Mummified is far more than just a history of the accession and study of Egypt’s dead. It is also the author’s very personal and, at points, touching reminiscence of the many mummies she has encountered. I have a feeling that all Egyptologists recall their first encounter with a displayed mummy in a museum. My own was with the mummy of a tiny, unnamed but elegantly wrapped Ptolemaic lady on display in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow. Displayed in a wooden case dating from the early twentieth century, with three glass viewing panels, the mummy lay in the trough of her wooden coffin with an intricately decorated lid mounted above, enabling visitors to see her sweetly painted cartonnage funerary mask beneath a net of shining blue faience beads. I subsequently visited both museum and mummy many, many times during my formative years. The mummy and the magnificent pink granite sarcophagus, displayed at the entrance to the Egyptian Gallery, which once held the remains of Pabasa, Chief Steward of the God’s Wife of Amun, Nitocris I, are firmly etched into my memory. Unconnected, save for their proximity in Kelvingrove’s collection, they became to this small boy, at least, somewhat indivisible. As this book points out, in the minds of the public there is a degree of interchangeability between the terms ‘mummy’, ‘coffin’ and ‘sarcophagus’.

Today, the little Ptolemaic mummy has been transferred to another museum just a few miles away, while the sarcophagus of Pabasa retains a central place in the collection. I have continued to revisit and to study both; the connection remains.

Angela’s discussion of the mummies in this work is never mawkish, but she is at pains to remind us that these museum exhibits were once as quick and as vibrant as her readers. Our attitudes towards mummies have changed considerably in the past, and will continue to change as we move forward.

I am particularly delighted to have been invited to provide this brief foreword to Angela’s first book. We’ve known each other for more than a decade, first meeting while she was volunteering at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London, where I was delivering events, usually with a substantial reception component. We’ve lectured together on a number of occasions, most notably when Angela organised a memorable study day at Leicester Museum & Art Gallery for the Egypt Exploration Society. I have always been impressed by her tremendous enthusiasm and absolute dedicationpara to our discipline. In recent years, since completing her PhD, she has contributed to numerous panels and discussions regarding the display of human remains in museums. She is the ideal person to act as our guide through this incredible history of human interaction with the ancient dead.

John J. Johnston

West Dulwich

Prologue

A curator at the Musée du Louvre is cleaning the case where an ancient Egyptian man is resting. There is something stuck at the bottom of the case. Someone has attached a little piece of paper. On it is scribbled ‘reiveille toi!!!’ [sic] – wake up!

The handwriting and the mistake on the note indicate that it was most likely written by a child visiting the Egyptian galleries, who left a message for this mummified man. Clearly he had been lying far too still for this child. Wake up, they urged. Whoever wrote the note, it seems that they looked at the mummy and thought of him as alive, or as having been alive. Perhaps they instinctively recognised the mummy as the body of a human being – or, perhaps more likely, they had seen one too many films where a mummy in a museum case comes to life.

I know the man who was the recipient of this note very well. His name is Pacheri, although some have called him by other names.¹ The Musée du Louvre has been his home since 1827, and for the past two decades, he has been my silent companion. I have been visiting him since I was a teenager, when I wandered the rooms of the Louvre, dreaming of becoming an Egyptologist, trying painstakingly to read the ancient Egyptian script and to absorb the knowledge on display.

At the same time, I do not know him at all. He lived in ancient Egypt about 2,000 years before I was born, during Ptolemaic rule, and he has been lying, inert and silent, in this museum for the past two centuries. I can learn as much as I want to about the history of his time and the complicated circumstances that brought him to Paris, but I will never know him, not really. I stand in front of his glass prison, and I wonder about his life in Egypt, why he is here in Paris, and why so many people come to the Louvre and do the same thing as me: stare at him on display. In the same way that he has been with me through my personal journey, Pacheri is going to follow us on the journey that is this book. Because, like many displaced bodies in European museums, he has a story to tell.

*

I have been interested in stories about Egyptian mummies for many years. I grew up in the suburbs of Paris, and when, at thirteen, I decided I wanted to become an Egyptologist, my attention naturally turned to the closest collection of Egyptian material culture. The Louvre contained two floors of ancient Egyptian artefacts and one very impressive body: Pacheri. For years, I read all I could find about ancient Egypt; spent innumerable hours in the museum bookstore and various Parisian libraries; took hieroglyph classes on school breaks; and even interned at the museum when I was just fifteen, to get a better grasp of this gigantic institution. At nineteen, I finally got my dream job: I became a summer gallery attendant at the Louvre.

I would arrive at the museum at 8 a.m. and be in the galleries half an hour later, before they opened to the public. I wanted to take in the feeling of walking in the vastness of this museum, without anyone else around. Every morning, I would find out where I had been allocated: a new room every single day. I not-so-secretly wished to be allocated to the Egyptian galleries, to wander in the rooms I was still discovering and to learn all I could from the other gallery attendants, especially the senior ones, who were a living memory of the museum. It was during my second summer as a gallery attendant that I asked another member of staff, someone who was particularly knowledgeable about the history of the Egyptian galleries, about the lack of mummies at the Louvre. Why did the museum have so few?²

That is when they told me about the missing mummies.

It is a story that is so eccentric, unbelievable, and yet true to some extent, that I have dedicated a lengthy section of Chapter 3 to it. To uncover the truth about those mummies, I went on a quest for a missing document, wandering the museum looking for clues, even visiting the Church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, which faces the Louvre, and asking a bemused clergyman if he had Egyptian mummies in his crypt! It took a few years to locate the document – and the missing mummies. This curious tale is what launched my own interest in researching the stories of mummies, but it is not the only reason. As I worked in these galleries for a few summers, I witnessed visitors from around the world engaging with the mummy of Pacheri, and the diversity of their interactions really startled me. Some would turn away from the body, while some were mesmerised and would stay for lengthy periods. Some seemed bewildered, and then there were always the visitors who knocked on the case and told the mummy to ‘wake up’. My enthusiasm only grew, and I knew that I wanted to explore why we engage with Egyptian mummies, and why we engage with them in different ways. To do that, I packed up and moved to England, with little English, to take courses in Egyptology and Museum Studies. I thought I was leaving France for a year, but stayed in England for a decade, dedicated to understanding the stories of our interactions with Egyptian mummies. I returned to the Louvre on many occasions, doing my doctoral thesis on the history of its collection of Egyptian human remains, and this time studying the British Museum too. I have made these museums my professional home, and much of my life has been tied to these complex institutions and the ancient bodies that we call Egyptian mummies.

One day, as I was walking in Paris, on my way to the natural history museum, a sign on the side of a monumental fountain caught my eye. The street name was rue Georges Cuvier, and above it someone had tagged the word ‘racist’. I already knew about the disturbing race studies of ancient Egyptian and other African bodies that had taken place in the nearby museum, instigated by this man. I thought, someone else knows this story too.³ But how many people walk past rue Georges Cuvier, or the Denon Wing at the Louvre, or even Galerie Vivienne in Paris, and make a connection with Egyptian mummies?⁴ The landscape of Egyptian body-collecting in Paris, which I had learned about through years of research, captivated me – but I knew it was a relatively obscure history. On another occasion, as I was walking in Leicester in England, I passed the statue of Thomas Cook by the train station, and the copper heritage sign inserted into the pavement in the cultural area of this city, and asked myself: how many know the connection between Cook, Egyptian mummies and the local museum?⁵ Before long, I was seeing Egyptian mummies everywhere. Mummy stories are all around us, and yet the presence of Egyptian mummies in European history is so long and so much a part of the cultural furniture that we have stopped asking ourselves questions about them.

I wrote this book because I wanted to keep asking questions, and because I wanted you to join me on this journey, exploring stories related to Egyptian mummies in the European landscape.

*

Perhaps you have seen Egyptian mummies in museums too. You may have felt curiosity, fear, concern or nothing at all. You may have returned to see them, being drawn by these human bodies on display. You may feel torn by the viewing of the dead and the ways these remains are displayed, or you may feel deeply emotional about the connections to death and the afterlife that the bodies facilitate. Perhaps, as for me when I was young, the viewing of an Egyptian mummy stopped you in your tracks: you were meeting an ancient Egyptian, someone who lived and breathed in ancient times. You were making a connection with the past. You may have thought during your museum visits about the big questions that the viewing of these mummified bodies raises – questions that museum professionals often call ethics – or perhaps you didn’t: you just walked past them, and maybe had a curious look. It is very possible that you are not much of a museum visitor at all, and your interactions with Egyptian mummies have occurred through books, documentaries or movies. Either way, your initial emotional responses are valid. They are conditioned, in part, by your own feelings about life and death, but also by what you know about Egyptian mummies, whether you view them as a visitor or as a professional working in fields related to archaeology, museums or even forensics.

Your emotions are also conditioned by your experience of the museum. Museums can be places of enjoyment and learning for some, while for others they are places of trauma – physical manifestations of a history of violence.