pharaoh’s tomb and killed several members of
Carter’s team.
This fear has deep roots in the European imag-
ination, and preyed on the guilty minds of tomb
robbers. Renaissance-era chronicles tell of Oc-
tavius Fagnola, a 16th-century Christian who
converted to Islam. He had been a tomb robber
in Egypt. While at work among the graves of
Giza, he came across a corpse with no internal
organs wrapped in an ox skin and containing
a scarab, a kind of amulet that was thought to
protect the heart.
Dodging the customs men and loading the
mummy onto a ship bound for Italy proved to be
the easy part. Halfway through the voyage, a vio-
lent storm rose up; it seemed like the ship would
be lost. “The corpses of Egyptians always stir up
storms,” reflected Fagnola, and he consigned his
mummy to the waters that night.
Such stories were commonplace in 16th-
century Europe, when the Christian world and
the Ottoman Empire were vying for control of
the Mediterranean. At the Battle of Lepanto
in 1571, the Holy League defeated the Turkish
fleet. Following this decisive victory, the news
raced around the Mediterranean’s bustling
ports, which were fertile ground for gossip. A
rumor circulated that the Turks were doomed by
having a mummy aboard one of their ships. The
defeat that followed only served to reinforce the
idea that mummies exercised a power to inflict
maritime disaster on the unwary.
Fear of such objects was not enough to cause a
drop in demand in Europe for medicine derived
from mummies. The 16th-century Ottoman
authorities who ruled Egypt enacted laws to
control the trade in mummies. This measure
backfired, creating a lucrative black market.Parties and Performance
By the 18th century, using mummies as medi-
cine had fallen from favor. European attitudes
toward mummies were shifting, and scholars
began to be more interested in what lay under
the winding sheets of a mummy’s wrap-
pings. Unwrapping a mummy would
become an event, one that could be
hosted in a private home or, later, inPAINTING
WITH
THE DEAD
EDWARD BURNE-JONES was one of England’s
leading Pre-Raphaelite artists in the Victo-
rian age. Like many of his contemporaries
he painted scenes inspired by mythol-
ogy, folklore, and the ancient world. In his
memoirs, Rudyard Kipling (Burne-Jones’s
nephew) recalled how fellow painter Law-
rence Alma-Tadema shocked Burne-Jones
when he told him that mummy brown was
made from real mummies. Burne-Jones
was skeptical at first but then grew horri-
fied at the idea. His widow, Georgina, wrote
in her biography of her husband’s reaction:
“When assured that it was actually com-
pounded 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.”“MUMMY”
PETTIGREW
Through his work
with mummies,
Thomas Pettigrew
(below, in an 1893
portrait) observed
that mummification
techniques changed
over time, which
became vital in the
dating of ancient
artifacts.
SCALA, FLORENCEAN EGYPTIAN WIDOW MOURNS HER
MUMMIFIED HUSBAND IN THIS 1872 WORK
BY LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA. DESPITE HIS
KNOWLEDGE OF MUMMY BROWN’S ORIGINS,
IT IS NOT KNOWN IF THE ARTIST USED THE
PIGMENT IN THIS PAINTING.
BRIDGEMAN