A History of the Undead: Mummies, Vampires and Zombies

By Charlotte Booth

A history of Western culture’s fascination with undead creatures in film and television.

Are you a fan of the undead? Watch lots of mummy, zombie and vampire movies and TV shows? Have you ever wondered if they could be “real?”

This book, A History of the Undead, unravels the truth behind these popular reanimated corpses.

Starting with the common representations in Western media through the decades, we go back in time to find the origins of the myths. Using a combination of folklore, religion and archaeological studies we find out the reality behind the walking dead. You may be surprised at what you find . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781526769084

Charlotte Booth

Charlotte Booth is a freelance Egyptologist with a PhD in Egyptology. She has had numerous books and articles published on all aspects of Egyptology.

Book preview

Introduction

In the modern West we are fascinated by reanimated corpses in the form of mummies, zombies and vampires, making them a popular addition to the media. In the following pages we will discuss all the ways in which the reanimated corpse is a fundamental part of literature, movies and popular culture and how this has changed over the past century. Why contemporary society is fascinated and entertained by the undead is not easy to pinpoint, but as a society we seem to revel in being scared by tales of things that go bump in the night.

This fascination with the reanimated dead, however, is not a modern phenomenon and has existed around the world for thousands of years. This ancient fascination was born out of superstition and a genuine fear of the dead returning rather than as macabre entertainment. This book will discuss in depth how these ancient origins have influenced the modern representation of the reanimated corpse. In a volume of this size it would be impossible to include every instance of the undead in world folklore so I have had to choose only those aspects that are relevant to the modern representation of mummies, zombies and vampires in the West. In much of the folklore the boundaries are blurred between the creatures, with the addition of werewolves and witches thrown into the mix. Unless they can clearly be identified as one of the three under discussion they have been omitted.

In pre-modern Fiji, for example, the fear of the dead was incorporated into a coming-of-age ceremony for young boys:

‘Beginning with puberty, boys were taken at night to an area where the adult men had placed a group of bloody supposedly dead and decaying bodies covered with intestines. The boys were forced to crawl through the dead bodies which suddenly came to life. Boys who showed fear were denied manhood.’¹

While a fascinating introduction to gender politics, superstition and a blatant disregard for hygiene, this case cannot be directly connect to common myths of vampires or zombies and therefore has been omitted from the discussion.

My own fascination with the undead came from my career as an Egyptologist and, therefore, a passion for mummies. I have even written about ‘The Curse of the Mummy’ in two publications (The Curse of the Mummy (Oneworld) and The Myth of Ancient Egypt (Amberley)) but wanted to explore mummies further as well as extend the research process to other reanimated corpses. However, the myth of the reanimated mummy is remarkably different from the myths of vampires and zombies. I found this extremely disappointing as the difference is such that it could almost be argued that they should not be included in this book. This is because the myth of the reanimated mummy is a modern Western construct taken from literature and adapted by the movies, whereas vampires and zombies have a far longer folkloric history. There is, therefore, less distinction between the Western media’s reanimated mummy (Chapter 1) and the origin story (Chapter 2). Everything is connected to the curse mythology devised from literature and perpetuated by the archaeologists themselves. There are in fact more people today who believe in the curse of the mummy and the perceived danger than a century ago when the myth was created; which in itself is a fascinating social observation.

For many years I have been an avid fan of horror movies and books and so it seemed a natural progression to combine my love of horror with my love of research and write a book about it. It is a great feeling to declare watching B-movie zombie flicks as ‘research’ and be able to state ‘I’m working’ while watching True Blood. I have learned, though, while writing this book that the undead genre is bigger than I anticipated and each section could be developed further into a book of its own. This book, therefore, could be considered an introduction to the history of the undead.

It is laid out in three sections: Mummies, Zombies and Vampires. Each section is divided into two chapters: the first outlining how the reanimated corpse in question is presented in the modern West in movies, literature and other media where appropriate; the second then investigates the history behind the modern representations, looking at folklore, mythology, religion and archaeology. Wherever possible, first-hand accounts and primary sources are used, but when dealing with folklore and superstition a lot of the evidence is hearsay.

The section on vampires also has an additional chapter. Chapter 6 investigates the modern vampire. Unlike the genre of zombies and mummies, vampires have inspired a sub-culture of society who choose to lead a vampire lifestyle. This extends to drinking blood, being nocturnal and having fangs created.

The objective of this book is to offer a deeper insight into the world of the undead. Hopefully it will offer information previously unknown, inspire questions and introduce new movies or literature to whet your appetite. The reanimated corpse is, strangely, a part of everyday life, included in our day-to-day language with easily recognisable imagery and characteristics known by all generations. How have such corpses in the form of zombies, mummies and vampires entered the twenty-first century; one that is governed by technology and science? Read on to find out.

Chapter 1

Mummies in the West

Introduction

Mummies are a relatively new introduction to Western media; only really making an appearance in the early twentieth century. They are inevitably associated with the mummified human remains from ancient Egypt and were therefore more prolific once Egyptology as a discipline became more mainstream at the end of the nineteenth century.

So what is a ‘traditional’ mummy in Western media? Essentially, mummies presented in literature, movies and television series are reanimated corpses wrapped in bandages. As Dendle commented in 2001, ‘a mummy is just a zombie with bandages,’¹ which to a certain extent is true.

Unlike zombies, how mummies are reanimated is not always considered that important to the plot. A typical trope in both movies and literature is that reanimation is often due to a curse cast upon the person by ancient Egyptian necromancers, making them victims rather than perpetrators.

It is an interesting twist to the mummy ‘history’ that the British were once thought to be such necromancers, as Egyptologist, Arthur Mace, wrote in his journal (February 6, 1900):

‘The Arabs have a very curious notion as to the reason why we take so many skeletons. They think that in England we are very short of men, and so being very great magicians we can take these bones and bring them to life again.’²

In literature and movies, however, Western necromancers are rarely the ones who bring mummies back to life, despite the Egyptians’ superstitions to the contrary. The necromancers are always represented as being Egyptian; often descendants of the ancients.

Although mummies are the product of such necromancers, when reanimated they are considered ‘evil’ and intent on causing harm even though they are under control of their masters. This adds fuel to the further popular theme of the ‘curse of the mummy,’ which is visited upon its unfortunate victims. This will be discussed further in the following chapter.

Mummy Medicine

Mummies, unlike zombies and vampires, have been embraced in an entirely different way in the West; possibly because they are ‘real’ and can be viewed in museums. They have also been used in a practical way due to their very tangible and real nature.

One of the most bizarre practical applications of mummies is as a medicament. For hundreds of years in the West people knowingly ingested ground-up corpse – known as mummia – for their health. Mummia has been recorded as a medicine since the tenth century and one of the earliest records is of a Persian physician called Avicenna (980–1037 CE), who claimed mummia was used for treating abscesses, eruptions, fractures, concussions, paralysis, epilepsy, vertigo, blood from the lungs, throat, coughs, nausea and disorders of the liver and spleen. It was mixed with herbs before being taken internally.³

Whether this early mummia had any connection to mummies is unlikely as the name mummia was closely associated with a type of bitumen that flowed from a mountain in Persia. When mixed with water it gave off an odour considered beneficial when inhaled. However, the practice of mummification in the later years of Egyptian history included coating the body in a layer of bitumen as an aid to preservation. It is therefore likely that as the name mummia was so similar it was soon to be considered as the same. The earlier records of mummia as medicine probably referred to bitumen whereas by the sixteenth century mummia was made with ground mummies.

Records of mummia being ingested by the rich and influential of Western society for their health become more prevalent in the sixteenth century. In 1549 André Thevat, chaplain to Catherine de Medici, queen of France between 1547 and 1559, is recorded as travelling on expedition to search for mummies for medicine in Saqqara.⁴

It is also recorded that the physician John Hall (1575–1635), Shakespeare’s son-in-law, used mummia to treat a case of epilepsy. He added it to a mixture of black pitch, benzoic resin and juice of rue and had his patient inhale the smoke when it was burned,⁵ perhaps closer to the original use of mummia bitumen.

Royalty were known to take mummia, with François I of France (1515–1547) mixing it with rhubarb to treat all manner of ailments from headaches to broken bones.⁶ Even Britain’s Queen Victoria was recorded as using it when the King of Persia sent her some from the mummy mountain in Persia.⁷ This was, however, more likely to be bitumen than powdered mummy.

Once the popularity of the medicine became apparent among the wealthy, there was a prolific trade in human and animal mummies from Egypt to Europe to meet demand. Thomas Pettigrew in his History of Egyptian Mummies (1834) said: ‘No sooner was it credited that mummy constituted an article of value in the practice of medicine than many speculators embarked in the trade; the tombs were sacked, and as many mummies as could be obtained were broken into pieces for the purpose of sale.’⁸

People were buying mummies in bulk for medicines and it is recorded that in 1564 Guy de la Fontaine, the physician of the king of Navarre (a Basque-based kingdom bear the Pyrenees), purchased a bulk order of mummies for this purpose. However, he was horrified to note they were not the genuine article and were, in fact, no older than four years.

The supply and demand disparity started the trade in unclaimed bodies of criminals and the poor. De la Fontaine investigated the trade and discovered that such ‘unclaimed wretches were treated with bitumen and then aged in the sun, producing a rather good likeness of ancient mummified flesh.’⁹ Pettigrew further added that one particular merchant stated: ‘he cared not when they came, whether they were old or young, male or female, or of what disease they had died, so long as he could obtain them … when embalmed no one could tell.’¹⁰

Indeed, even fake mummies were put together with so-called children’s mummies, being made of ibises or even the flesh of camels moulded into the right shape.¹¹ Such fakes had been in circulation from about 1200 CE onwards,¹² and there are numerous tales of people purchasing fake mummies believing them to be the genuine article.

However, they were not always the bodies of the poor and criminal classes. W.M.F. Petrie, the eminent Egyptologist, was told of a tourist who had bought a mummy from Aswan, which was eventually identified as the body of an English engineer who had died there.

This entrepreneurial idea was later adopted in Anne Rice’s novel The Mummy, where Henry Stratford, the well-born, gambling drunk was murdered and ended up ‘floating in the bitumen,’¹³ turning him into a lovely mummy for tourists to buy.

The practice, while a common one, was generally condemned, and as early as 1645 an apothecary admonished his staff for selling ‘arm or a leg of a decaying or hanged leper or of some whorehopper suffering from syphilis’ as genuine mummy.¹⁴

The threat of purchasing a fake, however, did not deter people from purchasing such a souvenir from their trip to Egypt. Many ended up as mummia until as recently as 1908 when it was still being sold as a cure- all medicine. It was advised that it should be applied to the affected area or ingested in water. It was not only in the West either that mummia was considered useful. In Egypt at this time it was mixed with butter as a cure for bruises.¹⁵

Surprisingly, using mummia in medicine was not considered quackery, and there were some distinguished members of Western society who advocated its use. Francis Bacon (1561–1626), for example, believed it ‘hath great force in staunching of blood’,¹⁶ and the Irish philosopher, chemist and physicist Robert Boyle (1627–1691) recommended it for falls and bruises,¹⁷ following the native Egyptian use of it.

It is likely that using mummia fell out of popularity, not due to the horror of consuming dead human flesh, but the growth in scientific thinking, as well as the rumour that it may have been instrumental in spreading the plague.¹⁸ Although the demand plummeted, as recently as 1973 a New York store sold powdered mummy as a witches’ supply,¹⁹ although whether it was the ‘genuine article’ has not been confirmed.

Art Materials

Medicine was not the only dubious use of crushed corpses. Artists were also prolific users of ground-up mummies in the paint colour known as ‘Mummy Brown’, caput mortuum or Egyptian Brown. This colour was popular from the early 1700s but by the 1960s it was falling out of fashion as the supply of mummies came to an end.

The paint was produced by London manufacturer, C. Roberson who stocked and sold ‘Mummy Brown’ throughout the 1920s and 1930s. By the 1960s, sales were declining and in 1964 the managing director said: ‘We might have a few odd limbs lying around somewhere, but not enough to make any more paint.’²⁰

It is recorded that one Egyptian mummy provided enough material to produce paint to satisfy their artists for two decades.²¹ To produce the paint, crushed mummy was mixed with white pitch and myrrh producing a rich colour which by the mid-nineteenth century was very popular. ‘The pigment itself wasn’t easily imitated. It wasn’t just made of regular long-dried out corpses. The mummification process involved asphaltum or bitumen, often in place of the removed organs. Whole mummies were then ground for commercial and just plain wrong use. Mummy Brown was a fugitive colour, meaning it faded easily.’²²

However, despite the name not everyone was aware of the grisly ingredients. Once these became common knowledge it contributed to the decline in popularity.

There is one well-known tale of the funeral of a tube of Mummy Brown, which is recounted by the widow of Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, Georgina. She recalls how Lawrence Alma-Tadema and his family were visiting them: ‘We were sitting together after lunch … the men talking about different colours that they used, when Mr Tadema startled us by saying he had lately been invited to go and see a mummy that was in his colourman’s workshop before it was ground down into paint.’ The artists did not believe the paint was made with real mummy, stating it must simply be a clever name. ‘When assured that it was actually compounded of real mummy, he left us at once, hastened to the studio, and returning with the only tube he had, insisted on our giving it decent burial there and then. So a hole was bored in the green grass at our feet, and we all watched it put safely in, and the spot was marked by one of the girls planting a daisy root above it.’²³

At the height of the use of Mummy Brown paint Isaac Augustus Stanwood, an American paper manufacturer, was also using mummy wrappings to make brown paper. This was then sold to butchers and grocers to wrap food for sale. When there was an outbreak of cholera the paper was no longer made or used, though whether the outbreak was due to the paper was never proved.²⁴

Although mummies were used as a commodity for both medicine and paint for centuries there were people who objected to the practice. As early as 1658, the philosopher Sir Thomas Browne stated: ‘The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummie is become Merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for Balsoms²⁵ … surely such diet is dismal vampirism; and exceeds in horror the black banquet of Domitan, not to be paralleled expect in those Arabian feasts, wherein Ghoules feed horribly.’²⁶

Mummies for Entertainment

The nineteenth century was the height of archaeological practice in Egypt and there was, therefore, a large supply of mummies which, as discussed, were used in medicine and paint production. They were also often the centre of an entertaining evening, disguised as education, in the form of ‘mummy unrollings.’

These were essentially upper-class soirées where the main entertainment of the night was the unrolling of a mummy, revealing the corpse within. These unrollings were not carried out by trained doctors or even Egyptologists but were instead carried out by the wealthy owners of the townhouse where the entertainment was being held, or the tourist who bought the mummy.

The earliest recorded unrolling was in September 1698 when Benoit de Maillet (1656–1738), the consul in Cairo of Louis XIV, unwrapped a mummy for a group of French travellers. He did not record anything other than a few of the amulets that were discovered on the body.²⁷ Trinkets such as these were considered one of the most important aspects of the unrollings.

In 1715 Christopher Hertzog, apothecary to the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, unwrapped a mummy and recorded some of his findings in his book Mummiographia, before he ground it down to be sold as medicine.²⁸

Such public unrollings became so popular that one held by Thomas Pettigrew (1791–1865) in Charing Cross in April 1833 was so crowded with antiquarians, excavators, Egyptologists, Members of Parliament, artists, authors, peers, princesses, military officers, statesmen and diplomats, that when the Archbishop of Canterbury showed up he was turned away. However, he was given a private showing at a later date.²⁹ At this period in history mummies were being unrolled regularly, which did little to expand knowledge of mummification and destroyed a lot of archaeological evidence.

A mummy has not been unwrapped since the unwrapping of ‘mummy 1770’ in 1975 at Manchester University Museum. This mummy was chosen to be investigated as it was unimpressive with no elaborate wrappings and was not in good enough condition for display in the museum. Despite the wrappings there was a gilded cartonnage funerary mask with inlaid eyes and eyebrows as well as gilded slippers over her feet. This scientific unwrapping and investigation of the body took two weeks to complete and everything was meticulously recorded.³⁰

Unlike the nineteenth-century unrollings, mummy 1770’s unwrapping was carried out scientifically and all pathology of the mummy was studied and recorded. Once unwrapped, the mummy was then x-rayed, identifying that the lower parts of both of her legs had been amputated. The left just below the knee and the right just above the knee. Bony growths at the end of the legs were minimal and suggest this amputation happened a couple of weeks before death. The embalmers had made prosthetics out of wood, which were splinted to the remainder of the limbs, and covered with a moulded layer of mud.

Upon completion of the unwrapping, the face of mummy 1770 was reconstructed using the numerous pieces of the broken skull. This was problematic as each piece had to be separately cast in methacrylate (a form of cold curing casting plastic) before attempting to rebuild the skull. When completed they discovered that large pieces of it were missing. These gaps were then modelled from wax and a cast was made of the completed skull in order to create a facial reconstruction.³¹

Reanimated Body Parts

As the sale of mummies became popular in the nineteenth century, so too did the sale of individual body parts: a mummified hand or foot for example. Mummy parts were cheaper to buy than a whole mummy, easier to export back from Egypt, and more widely available. They were considered interesting curiosities. Since 1968 Ripley’s Believe it or Not in San Francisco has had a mummy hand on display, and they created an interesting backstory to make it more appealing. They claimed it once wore a cursed golden disc causing the death of Walter Ingram, who acquired it.³²

WALTER INGRAM of London, England, brought back from Egypt in 1884 the mummified hand of an ancient Egyptian princess, which was found to be clutching a gold plaque inscribed:

Whoever takes me away to a foreign country will die a violent death and his bones will never be found!

4 years later Ingram was trampled to death by a rogue elephant near Berbera, Somaliland, and his remains were buried in the dry bed of a river but an exhibition sent to recover his body found a flood had washed it away.³³

It is believed that Ripley’s Believe it or Not have a number of mummified hands, always displayed alongside this particular story.

A mummified body part also became a useful tool for horror writers and tellers of tall tales as they could become reanimated and cause havoc. One such tale concerns the mummified hand of Meketaten, a daughter of Akhenaten. This hand was owned by a psychic called Cheiro who apparently warned Lord Carnarvon that he would die if he took anything from the tomb of Tutankhamun during the excavation (see Chapter 2).

This hand apparently became reanimated and oozed fresh blood. In an attempt to staunch the bleeding Cheiro soaked it in pitch and shellac although this only worked as a temporary fix. The hand was used by the psychic as a paperweight, and the day before the tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered he cremated it. It was after the cremation that Meketaten visited the psychic twice to warn him of the curse that would befall Carnarvon at the violation of the tomb of Tutankhamun.³⁴ Ironically, no curse fell upon Cheiro who had violated a corpse by using the hand as a paperweight.

The account Cheiro gives of the mummy’s hand is remarkably similar to Theophile Gautier’s short story The Mummy’s Foot written in 1840. The narrator goes into an old curiosity shop to purchase something to use as a paperweight. He chooses the mummified foot of princess Hermonthis, which at first he thought was bronze:

I was surprised at its lightness. It was not a foot of metal but in sooth a foot of flesh, an embalmed foot, a mummy’s foot. On examining it still more closely the very grain of the skin, and the almost imperceptible lines impressed upon it by the texture of the bandages, became perceptible. The toes were slender and delicate, and terminate by perfectly formed nails, pure and transparent as agates. The great toe, slightly separated from the rest, afforded a happy contrast, in the antique style, to the position of the other toes, and lent it an aerial lightness – the grace of a bird’s foot. The sole, scarcely streaked by a few almost imperceptible cross lines afforded