Egyptian Mummies: From Sacred Vessels to Scary Undead

- A mummy is defined broadly as any well-preserved cadaver and as a history that extends to almost every continent on the globe.

But when we're talking monsters, it's hard not to picture anything that's not your gauzy, wrapped, upright human.

Why did the Egyptian mummy become the poster child for mummification, and how did an ancient common funerary rite turn into the shambling, silent, linen-wrapped, undead corpse monster of popular culture?

(spirited upbeat music) I'm Dr. Emily Zarka, and this is "Monstrum."

Mummification was a sacred, transformative practice in ancient Egypt.

Directly linked to the gods, Isis and Osiris, the ritual process made one's body and soul fit for existence in the afterlife.

Part of the mummy's journey into the stuff of horrors began with the early commodification of Egyptian human remains, and a little etymological confusion.

In early modern Asia and Greece, bitumen was a common medical remedy.

The Persian word for "bitumen" became the Latin "mumiya" and later "mummie" in medieval Europe.

And with the word "mummy" came the mistaken belief that mummified human corpses had the same medical properties as bitumen, thus creating a corpse trade where human mummies were harvested for use in pharmaceuticals.

By the 16th century, the controversial trade became increasingly popular as people use dead human remains as medicine.

One English merchant's account of his handling of an Egyptian mummy illustrates the kind of treatment the remains were subject to in this bizarre trade industry.

John Sanderson writes that he "broke off all parts of the bodies to see how the flesh was turned to drugge," bringing home more than 600 pounds of remains for trade in London apothecaries.

Some of these specimens were wholly intact, and pharmacies would unwrap the bodies for scientific study.

In 1763, John Hadley unrolled a mummy in his home at the behest of the British Royal Society.

His documentation helped lead to the first systematic study of Egyptian mummy necropsies by German physician, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, in the late 1700s.

For centuries, ancient Egypt was a subject of intrigued to Europeans, and Napoleon's 1798 to 1801 invasion of Egypt brought back an influx of pillaged artifacts and firsthand accounts, fueling intrigue and sparking a field of study, Egyptology.

This marked the first grips of Egyptomania in the 19th century, a term used to summarize the robust popular interest in ancient Egyptian culture.

Ancient Egypt continued as a fashionable pursuit in the first decade of the 19th century, mostly in Britain.

The British government built its own Egyptian hall, which housed artifacts transferred to Britain as part of Napoleon's surrender.

The public even started to collect cheap replicas of Egyptian furniture, China patterns inspired by Egyptian designs, and other commercial items.

The 1820s brought significant contributions to the mummy monster as well.

Former circus strongman Giovanni Belzoni's recreation of an Egyptian tomb in Piccadilly's Egyptian Hall in 1821 drew crowds, as did his invented marketing techniques, which included public mummy autopsies.

He was occasionally assisted by the surgeon and antiquarian, Thomas Pettigrew, who would become a famous Egyptologist and celebrity mummy autopsist the following decade after his 1834 publication, "History of Egyptian Mummies," considered the foundational text in modern mummy studies.

In 1822, Jean-Francois Champollion translated hieroglyphics for the first time using the Rosetta Stone.

Desire to better understand all aspects of ancient Egyptian culture, including its dead, grew.

Attempts to identify the name and social status of mummies became increasingly important.

In 1825, Augustus Bozzi Granville performed the first modern medical autopsy of a mummy.

The mummy continued to turn up in hospitals, artist studios, dissection theaters, universities, and on the drawing room tables of the upper class.

Unrolling or unwrapping mummies was both an academic pursuit and a form of titillating entertainment.

Members of the public who could not attend such a spectacle in person had their appetites whet with detailed reports of the experience in newspapers.

When you consider how the removal of the corpse from its intended resting place turns it more object than person, the treatment of the mummified corpse as entertainment is significant in understanding the mummy.

They are made uneasy representations of culture, history, and personhood, something fiction responds to by making them monsters.

Jane Loudon is the first author to write these tensions into a fictional text.

Her 1827 science fiction novel, "The Mummy!

Or, A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century," is the story of a reanimated Egyptian mummy.

In the long, bizarre tale, the Mummy Cheops serves as a terrifying, yet instructive undead character.

The book was incredibly commercially popular and reprinted multiple times.

The influence of imperialism contributed to the commodification and fetishization of the mummy in Britain.

Colonial territories and other distant countries provided museums and private collections with a steady stream of exotic items, including bodies.

By mid-century, the unwrapping of a mummy had become both formulaic and highly performative.

The body would be laid surrounded by other Egyptian artifacts and funerary images.

A lecture about the practice of mummification and Egyptian history would serve as a prelude to the real show, the removal of the textiles and other items on the body.

Some of these items, an amulet, a fragment of bandage, a piece of bone, might be passed around for the audience to touch, smell, even taste.

In some cases, particularly at private unrolling parties, the guests may keep the objects as souvenirs.

We see this trend dramatized in mummy fiction of the time.

In French author Theophile Gautier's story, "The Mummy's Foot," a man buys a mummified foot, and later, a woman hopping on one foot arrives at his door.

She's an ancient Egyptian princess searching for her lost appendage, apparently unable to rest until her full body is restored.

Edgar Allen Poe's 1845 short story, "Some Words with a Mummy," sets the reanimated Egyptian corpse in an all too familiar place, the white man's unwrapping party.

The mummy at the center of the story is brought back to life with an electrical charge to the outright terror of the guests.

Louisa May Alcott is responsible for what many consider to be the first mummy's curse narrative, "Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy's Curse."

Penned in 1868, a mummified Egyptian sorceress curses anyone who dares to disturb her grave, which, of course, two British men do.

Famous mummy fiction at the turn of the century, like Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Ring of Thoth" and "Lot No.

249," or Bram Stoker's "The Jewel of Seven Stars," helped bolster the already mysterious and mystical popular perception of the Egyptian dead.

The rise of the film industry continues to reinforce the mummy as foreign antagonist.

In the 1899 silent film, "Robbing Cleopatra's Tomb," the Mummy makes its first appearance on screen.

A man chops a female mummy into pieces in order to resurrect her.

In 1911's "The Mummy," a female mummy comes to life after exposure to an electrical current.

The Egyptian princess is infatuated with the male protagonist and aggressively pursues him, reinforcing the whole Egyptian mummy as fetish commodity thing.

The 1920s popularized the idea of the mummy's curse.

Although 19th century writers had already used this trope, now the idea was supported by rumors of a real curse.

The rumor of King Tutankhamun's curse is notorious, in part, because some people associated with the excavation did die in mysterious ways.

When archeologist, Howard Carter, and his patron, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, unburied the immense tomb of King Tut in November, 1922, it was an immediate global sensation, sparking a new period of Egyptomania that would grow into a fever pitch in 1923 when Lord Carnarvon fell ill from an infected mosquito bite, after rumors circulated that he had stolen a hoard of valuable items from the dig.

Even before the lord's eventual death from complications of the infection, stories circulated that he was suffering a dire punishment for opening and robbing the Egyptian king.

While not the first rumored mummy's curse, King Tut's was the curse with the most bodies attributed to it, at least 12 if you include some unfortunate pets.

Real warnings do adorn the walls of Egyptian tombs.

Meant to deter thieves and keep the resting place of the dead sacred, these hieroglyphics never translate to vengeful on dead corpses.

In fact, in ancient funerary tradition, the bones of the deceased would be broken to prevent them from rising and walking among the living.

Life after death was one thing for the Egyptians.

Disturbing the living in this realm, however, was not encouraged.

Besides the fact that rumors of mummy curses make for profitable tabloid fodder and easy inspiration for gothic tales, it's important to note that during this period, Egypt was actively seeking independence from British colonial rule.

Painting the physical and bodily remains of the ancient Egyptians in a negative way attempted to discredit and demonize the living Egyptian population.

While the film can be read in several ways, it's hard to deny the cultural impact of Universal Pictures' 1932, "The Mummy."

Inspired in part by the preceding decades' events, as well as 19th century gothic and horror tales, the film tells the story of an undead Egyptian priest desperate to secure the woman he believes to be the reincarnation of his one-time lover.

"The Mummy" is an interesting commentary on the curse controversy around the opening of King Tut's tomb, one that places science as a dangerous pastime, at least when it comes to disturbing corpses.

Included with the remains of Imhotep, the mummy at the center of the film, is a box emblazoned with a curse.

Archeologist Wemple ignores occult scientist Professor Muller's call for caution, declaring, "In the interest of science, even if I believe in the curse, I'd go on with my work for the museum."

Although it is the archeologist's assistant, who inadvertently brings the mummy back to life, the commentary on the selfish pursuit of scientific advancement and the folly of youth cannot be missed.

And in the end, it is magic, or rather, the movie's warped interpretation of ancient Egyptian spiritual practices that defeats the mummy.

But what really made the movie iconic, Boris Karloff's bandage form.

Even though the titular mummy in the movie only spends a few minutes on screen wrapped in linen bandages, appearing in the rest of the film as a modern Egyptian historian, the compelling image animated the mummy's public form in a way unseen since those early 19th century necropsies.

Yet, it wasn't until the 1940s that the mummy became a true horror monster.

Where the Egyptian undead had before been more moralistic, romantic, or profound, even if they were placed in tension with Western protagonists, this decade of horror films made them something to fear.

Their decay was made more profound, often with wrapping still in place, and they ambled about seemingly void of all emotions other than anger and revenge.

We see this trend take hold in Universal's second foray into mummy horror, "The Mummy's Hand."

Unable to secure Karloff for an official sequel to their 1932 film, Universal gets creative with the story, and the costuming.

With an aim to capitalize on audience recognition, they put the new actor in a rubber mask, made the mummy mute, and kept him wrapped in bandages for most of the movie.

The odd shambling walk that the Egyptian mummy would become known for?

The replacement actor, Tom Tyler, had arthritis.

They gave the mummy a new backstory to partially explain these physical changes, getting rid of the articulate mummy and replacing him with a silent thief, cursed to be an uncontrollable monster.

The movie's sequel, "The Mummy's Tomb," in 1942, reinforced the silent shambling version of the mummy, and Universal will double down on the image in the 1950s, but for the first time, throw in some humor as well with "Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy."

Just like the advent of Egyptology and the medical autopsy provided inspiration for tales some hundred years before, scientific advancements in the 1950s also found their way into mummy myths.

The greater prevalence of x-rays in archeology and the use of chemical testing meant that the Egyptian mummy could be examined in a way previously unheard of.

Gone are the spells or galvanic batteries that bring the mummy to life.

Science's ability to solve the mysteries of life and death become paramount, not that such scientific advances weren't again met with trepidation.

"Curse of the Faceless Man" claims radiation from x-ray exposure is what revives the mummy.

Another trend that arises, conflating the mummy with other undead monsters.

In the "Pharaoh's Curse," the disturbance of the remains of an Egyptian priest leads to a character being possessed by the soul of the mummy.

The character, aided by a shapeshifting cat woman, begins rapidly aging and starts sucking people's blood before becoming the mummy himself.

Since then, the mummy has been a familiar horror figure in the pages of fiction, children's cartoons, movies across genres, and on the front of cereal boxes.

They've been made frequent characters in comic books, ravenous zombie-esque flesh eaters and Brendan Fraser's sinewy nemesis.

The Egyptian mummies that stalk the pages and screens of horror, science fiction and fantasy are in a way justified for their behavior.

Rarely does a mummy animate without outside provocation, and many of those bodies are exposed to modernity by the mistakes or greed of the living.

They threaten to literally consume or kill those who see them as objects ready for commercial consumption or scientific investigation.

Part of what makes the Egyptian mummy horrifying or monstrous outside of its intended context is a lack of understanding associated with a death practice few people are familiar with, and mistreatment of those bodies by outsiders.

Dramaticized.

- [Staff] Dramatized.

- Dramatized.

Okay.

Oh, is it Thoth?

I did it right!

What?

(groans) Carnav, Carnarvon.