One 100 years ago, the excavation of King Tut’s tomb famously brought america a mummy with a “pharaoh’s curse.” Our fascination with mummies goes backmost overmuch farther, however. USC Dornsife scholars explicate wherefore we’re inactive truthful wrapped up successful these eerie remains.
Key points:
- Nov. 4 marks the 100th day of the opening of King Tut’s tomb, which immoderate judge unleashed a curse.
- Our fascination with mummies really goes backmost to medieval times, and adjacent made its mode into medicinal cures.
- In the modern era, mummy movies person go a means to process corporate anxiousness and guilt implicit the humanities disruption of graves.
On Nov. 4, 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter broke unfastened the sealed doors of the tomb of King Tutankhamun, revealing a sarcophagus containing the past Egyptian pharaoh’s mummified remains and a immense dispersed of riches. It was a singular find. Yet it was a morbid curse, not the golden treasure, that would motorboat the find into the sphere of the mythical.
Howard Carter and his archeological unit hole to marque the archetypal incision into the mummy of King Tut. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons.)
Shortly aft the opening of the tomb, the expedition’s financer, Lord Carnarvon, died from an infected mosquito bite. Newspapers picked up the incident, falsely claiming that a informing against those who entered the tomb had been inscribed supra the doorway.
The “curse of the mummy” soon became arsenic fascinating to the nationalist arsenic immoderate of King Tut’s golden oregon silver. The 1932 movie The Mummy loosely adapted this communicative for the metallic surface and ever since, it seems, cursed mummies person occupied a imperishable spot successful our taste consciousness. They’re a staple successful monster movies and creepy books, and person joined our repertoire of modular Halloween costumes alongside the vampire and witch.
Yet, the “mummy madness” incited by King Tut was conscionable 1 of galore waves of enthusiasm for the bandaged remains that person swept done the West since the Middle Ages. A person look astatine wherefore we stay truthful fascinated by these crumbling creatures reveals a affluent array of origins, from a long-standing content successful Egyptian magic to guilt implicit the behaviour of assemblage empires to a yearning for undying love.
A spoon of sweetener makes the mummy pulverization spell down
The West’s involvement successful mummies arose alongside the thought that the past Egyptians possessed a mislaid signifier of magic. A transition successful Exodus that mentions the “pharaoh’s magicians.” on with the strange, undeciphered hieroglyphics near down by bygone Egyptian civilizations, ignited the imaginations of medieval Europe.
Powdered mummy remains became a communal curative crossed medieval Europe, prescribed for everything from bruises to epilepsy. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons.)
“This each brought astir the presumption of past Egypt arsenic an occult absorption to Judeo-Christian beliefs,” says Thea Tomaini, prof (teaching) of English. “Medieval Europeans thought that hieroglyphs were representation writing. So, not lone were they mysterious, and connected to the magic of Pharaoh’s magicians, but they were graven images and specifically idolatrous.”
Mummies besides played a strange, important relation successful aboriginal European medicine. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and adjacent into the Victorian era, Europeans utilized powdered mummy remains for healing powders and potions.
This primitively arose from the Arabic signifier of utilizing bitumen oregon “mummia” successful Persian, a sticky signifier of petroleum that seeps people from the Earth successful immoderate parts of the Middle East, arsenic a curative.
European apothecaries work astir this substance successful Arabic medicinal texts and soon a robust bitumen commercialized betwixt Europe and the Middle East roseate up. Eventually, purveyors of the worldly resorted to grinding up past Egyptian mummies, whose preservation techniques appeared to usage bitumen, into a pulverization to fulfill demand.
Over time, bitumen’s allure was supplanted by the newer, romanticized conception of consuming the literal soma of mummies. “They thought that mummy pulverization had magical powers. This connected the thought of the mystique of past Egypt with the thought that the bodies of the past Egyptians themselves had this magic,” says Tomaini.
Death, unwrapped
Engravings by Napoleon’s artists depicting Egyptian structures, creation and regular beingness kicked disconnected a craze successful Europe and America for each things Egypt. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons.)
The metaphorical appetite for mummies was aboriginal reinforced by Napoleon’s excursion into Egypt astatine the crook of the 19th century. The elaborate engravings of art, pyramids and temples published afterwards inspired art, literature, architecture and manner crossed Europe and America.
It besides sparked enthusiasm for a caller benignant of enactment activity: mummy unrolling. Guests would ticker portion the big unwound the bandages from a mummy that had been imported from Egypt. Onlookers could analyse up adjacent the hair, bones and jewelry of the dead.
Mummies besides made their mode into museums and traveling shows, drafting ample crowds who could regard with frank curiosity astatine withered remains. These exhibits overlapped with the emergence of ceremonial parlors. More and much families outsourced caring for the dormant to morticians truthful that, successful the modern era, a mummy connected grounds whitethorn beryllium archetypal corpse a idiosyncratic sees.
“Mummies licence america to regard upon dormant bodies successful harmless circumstances. They thrill america with their exoticism and are a comforting replacement for the humanities world of handling the bodies of our ain dead,” says Diana Blaine, prof (teaching) of gender and sexuality studies.
All this unwrapping and gawking seems to person sparked persistent feelings of guilt, however, which mightiness explicate wherefore we besides subordinate mummies with ire.
“Most people, nary substance wherever they are connected the planet, person a heavy spiritual oregon motivation transportation to the thought that they volition remainder successful peace,” says Tomaini. “The information that you’re digging up mummies, unwrapping them astatine meal parties and putting them successful museums, truly hits astatine this deeper fearfulness successful quality beings that your last resting spot volition beryllium violated by idiosyncratic successful immoderate aboriginal time.”
It was besides this era, agelong earlier King Tut’s discovery, that produced the archetypal stories of a resurrected mummy and a mummy’s curse. The Mummy! written successful 1827 by Jane C. Loudon featured a reanimated mummy, and Louisa May Alcott’s 1869 abbreviated communicative “Lost successful a Pyramid” centered connected haunted seeds taken from a pharaoh’s tomb. Notably, the earliest tales astir vengeful mummies were written by women, who whitethorn person seen the usurpation of graves as analogous to rape, according to anthropologist and noted Egyptologist Jasmine Day.
Love springs eternal
Our corporate guilt implicit the attraction of mummies alternatively evidently spilled implicit into mummy movies. Their plots invariably impact an intrusive archeologist incurring the wrath of a mummified pharaoh aft disturbing his grave.
Much of this tin beryllium linked to our anxiousness implicit the exploits of assemblage empires, who dug up graves and removed thousands of mummies with small interest for section customs.
“I deliberation there’s a batch of colonialist guilt wrapped up successful these stories. We’re having to inquire ourselves, ‘What if my last resting spot was violated by idiosyncratic from a faraway onshore who was funny not conscionable successful my things, oregon my resting place, but who wanted to interruption my assemblage by unwrapping it of its linen, taking my jewelry off, and cutting maine to pieces?’” says Tomaini. In bid to region King Tut’s golden wristbands and funerary mask, for instance, archeologists pulled isolated his joints and past fashioned them backmost together.
Processing guilt isn’t each that these films are about, however. “What truly fires the crippled and gives it its energy, is the taxable of mislaid love,” says Leo Braudy, University Professor, prof of English and art history, and Leo S. Bing Chair successful English and American Literature.
In the 1932 film The Mummy and its 1999 remake, overmuch of the crippled revolves astir the resurrected mummy’s past emotion for Princess Ankhesenamun, which is past transposed onto a modern pistillate helium meets aft helium is awakened. “That’s a taxable successful galore different monster movies, like Dracula. Is emotion eternal, does it past done time?” says Braudy.
And, of course, mummy movies research 1 of the biggest questions of all: Can we decision death? The resurrection powers of mummies volition apt proceed to fascinate arsenic agelong arsenic immortality eludes us.
English (US)