Ancient Egyptian Coffin.... in an Essex Living Room

[Edward]

http://metro.co.uk/2014/10/23/ancient-egyptian-sarcophagus-discovered-in-essex-living-room-4917753/

Fascinating story - it's believed that the piece originally cam to Western Europe from Egypt around the time of Napoleon's conquest. I'm rather shocked by the report in the story that "people used to have parties where they would unwrap mummies for entertainment." My old arachaeology professor would have called that vandalism.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There were several mills here in Maine where, during the mid-19th century, mummy rags were used to make paper. They'd be shipped over from Egypt in giant bales -- after they were peeled off the mummies, which were either burned as fuel for railroads or ground up for fertilizer. Because the corpses were so thoroughly impregnated with bitumen pitch, they made an excellent fuel.

There's an antique store in Wiscasset, about thirty miles from here, where the first thing you see when you walk in the door is a mummy in a glass-fronted display case. The Egyptian government tried to get it back about twenty years ago, but the owner refused, and threatened to toss it into the Sheepscot River before he'd surrender possession. Corpse of a long-dead Egyptian it may have been, but it was also a *tourist attraction.*

 

[Stanley Doble]

I don't believe mummies were ever used for fuel, that was a rumor started by one of Mark Twain's humorous stories.

Have also heard about the rag paper, don't know if that is true or not but I don't think mummies were ever in such plentiful supply as that.

 

[jamespowers]

Be careful what to believe and what not to.....
http://www.mummytombs.com/dummy/grave.htm

Page 421:
http://books.google.com/books?id=GU...cents+abroad&cd=1#v=onepage&q=mummies&f=false

National Geographic's Secrets of the Mummy - Revealed also mentioned several of the aformentioned uses for mummies as well.

 

[sheeplady]

Aren't these things supposed to be returned to their country of origin? Or is that not really a thing?

Grave robbing makes me *very* uncomfortable. I wouldn't want to be dug up for profit. I especially wouldn't want to be dug up, have my things cast to all parts of the earth, and *sold* if I had really strong beliefs that I needed those things to have a decent afterlife. I'm still somewhat upset after going to the U.B.C. Museum of Anthropology, looking at all the burial things stolen from the local nations. Not that it is any better here, or anyplace, but those are sacred objects.

"Mummies are neat" and all that nonsense, but when it comes down to it that was a person.

 

[Horace Debussy Jones]

Hmm,..maybe there were enough of them to burn as fuel for a while? Egypt had no coal reserves to speak of,..Also heard that they were ground up and used as a medicine! uke: Horrifying!

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the ultimate resolution of the Wiscasset mummy was that the Egyptians finally sent someone to examine it in person and they decided that it was of no cultural value. Probably just some poor schmuck of a pyramid laborer or something, not a king or a princess or a Grand Wazeer or anything like that, so they figured he wasn't worth the trouble to give him a proper burial. The one time I saw him, he was lying there naked in the box, stripped of his wrappings, and looking for all the world like some kind of weird chocolate statue. I didn't realize until the story hit the wires that he was an actual corpse.

When I saw Ramses at an exhibit in Montreal back in the '90s, I didn't think he looked any more impressive than the guy in Wiscasset. But I did think there was some small justice in the fact that even a Pharoah couldn't escape being shipped halfway around the world in a crate to be gawped at by a bunch of yucks.

Maybe our fine American entrepreneurs are missing a trick. Let's dig up Lincoln, slap him in a box, and send him out on a world tour.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Be careful what to believe and what not to.....
http://www.mummytombs.com/dummy/grave.htm

"One party of treasure seekers came across a tomb near some pyramids in Egypt around 1800, according to E. A. Wallis Budge. In it, they found a sealed jar that contained honey. Greedily, they began to eat the honey by dipping bread into it. Perhaps they thought that centuries-old honey might provide a splendid feast. One of the plunderers noticed a hair on top of the honey after they had eaten some. He tried to pull it out, but was surprised to find that something was attached to it. He pulled the hair firmly and up from the jar came the body of a fully dressed child, who had obviously been preserved in the honey."

:rofl:

Hmm,..maybe there were enough of them to burn as fuel for a while? Egypt had no coal reserves to speak of,..Also heard that they were ground up and used as a medicine! uke: Horrifying!

Ground up mummies were also used to make oil paint and now some of these mummies are part of some of the great works of art.

 

[Horace Debussy Jones]

I believe you are referring to a pigment called "mummy", otherwise known as asphaltum, as it was the actual petroleum based substance the Egyptians supposedly used. It was believed in the 16th century that mummy as a pigment had lost some of it's volatile hydrocarbons with age, and the ground up powder was better suited as a pigment than the coal tar stuff they called asphaltum. Not so. Paintings done with asphaltum are irreparably damaged, as the stuff never dries and so it ruins any paint film in which it is included.
Just another crazy idea for uses of ancient dead bodies that didn't pan out. :eusa_doh: