Free Resurrecting Pompeii by Estelle Lazer Page A

graves of comparatively recent Egyptians, whose bodies were oven dried, disarticulated and sold as mumia . 1
    Complete mummies were transported to Europe as collectors ’ items from the seventeenth century. Popular belief has it that the first such mummy to arrive in England was the property of Nell Gwynn, the mistress of Charles II. This mummy is now allegedly housed in the British Museum. The first reliably documented case of a mummy finding its way into the British Museum collection, however, was one that was transported from Egypt as a curiosity in 1722 by a Mr William Lethieullier. 2
    The 1798 campaign to Egypt, led by Napoleon Bonaparte on behalf of the French Republic, is generally considered to have created the impetus for mummy studies in the European world. In addition to soldiers, Napoleon included 167 scholars in his entourage. He founded a Commission of Science and Art and an Egyptian Institute to guide the documentation of the monuments, technology, geography, flora and fauna of the country. The Description de l ’ Égypte , the Commission’s ten-folio-volume illustrated account of the country, played a major role in the development of Egyptomania. This was manifested in the production of arts, crafts and a general fascination with Egyptian culture, which, in turn, promoted the growth of Egyptian collections in major museums, such as the British Museum. Associated with this was an increase in tourism to the area. And with tourism came the need to return home with an authentic piece of ancient Egypt to amuse and delight one’s friends. 3
    Mummies were possibly the most sought after trophies. It was practically de rigueur for visitors to Egypt in the early nineteenth century to souvenir a portion of mummy, or even better, a complete mummy to display in a prominent place as a conversation piece. Unfortunately, for pilferers, the export of mummies from Egypt was beset with problems. One man, for example, was nearly arrested for murder when a mummy was found in his possession on a train as he tried to transport it across Europe. Sometimes modern bodies were mistaken for those of Ancient Egyptians as in a case reported by Flinders Petrie, when a tourist discovered that they had, in fact, souvenired the body of an English engineer who had perished in Egypt. Pettigrew documented the case of an Egyptian who made his living by manufacturing mummies for gullible buyers. 4
    As with house re-excavation in Pompeii, the mummy industry was associated with the seeding of areas with mummies, to ensure that no really important tourist went home disappointed. As in Pompeii, ‘special excavations’ were arranged for the benefit of noble visitors. A good example was the 1869 visit of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), who was treated to the unearthing of about 30 mummies in a tomb in Western Thebes of the 25th and 26th dynasties. The sarcophagi and mummies were transported to England and dispersed in various collections. It was later discovered that these bodies had been brought together from different sources and placed in a previously excavated tomb that had only yielded one sarcophagus in the 1830s. A further parallel can be drawn with Pompeii in that this type of fakery was continued, but on a lesser scale for mass tourism by people like Thomas Cook. 5
    The first real divergence from Pompeii was in the way bodies were treated once they arrived in the European world. For the most part, human remains in Pompeii were not considered an essential souvenir, though parts of skeletons certainly were collected (see Chapter 5). Mummies did not just serve as conversation pieces. Many formed the basis of theatrical after-dinner amusements. Mummy unwrapping became a popular form of Victorian parlour entertainment. A number of unwrappings were performed to a feepaying audience as a cynical, money-making exercise.
    One of the earliest unwrappings was in 1698 when Louis XIV ’s consul in Cairo performed the honours for a group of