Hi Angel,
You told me you thought mummies were very rare, but you’re wrong.
It’s estimated that around 70 million were embalmed during the 3000 years of ancient Egyptian history and over a million mummified animals have been found, mostly cats. Herodotus describes three different methods of mummification, although some doubts have been cast on his reliability.
The oldest specimens discovered are however not Egyptian. The Spirit Cave mummies from Nevada have been dated as 9,400 years old and other mummies over 5000 years old have been found in Chile. There are also a few relatively modern mummies including the philosopher Jeremy Bentham.
I’ve been shocked at the fate of vast numbers of mummies. During the Middle Ages they were thought to have healing properties so were ground into powder for medicine, although when they were in short supply the desiccated bodies of criminals and slaves were often used as substitutes by unscrupulous merchants involved in the trade. This practice continued into the sixteenth century in England and for two hundred years after that artists used ground up mummies for “mummy brown” pigment which was a favourite of the Pre-Raphaelites.
Thousands of mummified cats were also shipped to England and turned into fertilizer. One company alone imported 180,000 cat mummies weighing 19 tons for this purpose.
Mark Twain writes that mummies were even used as fuel for locomotives, although this may have been a joke. In the American Civil War they are alleged to have been turned into paper. Some wealthy people used mummies as interior décor and a Chicago candy store in 1886 attracted customers by displaying a mummy described as “Pharoah’s daughter who discovered Moses in the bulrushes.”
Ramases II was the first mummy to be given a passport (over 3,000 years after his death) so he could be transported to France to treat a fungoid growth. It listed his occupation as “King”. But the most famous mummy is of course Tutankhamun who died at the age of 18 and whose penis was unusually mummified in an erect position.
So altogether mummies have had a rough time of it and it’s no surprise that that they might want to take revenge by cursing a few of their oppressors. But it wasn’t until Boris Karloff’s film ‘The Mummy’ in 1932 that they started to star in horror films.
Well that wraps that up. Hope it’s helpful.
Zhu ni cheng gong
Ming