{"id":476,"date":"2022-10-28T14:05:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T21:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/stories\/magic-medicine-and-eternal-love-why-mummies-still-mesmerize\/"},"modified":"2024-09-23T14:55:19","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T21:55:19","slug":"why-mummies-still-mesmerize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/stories\/why-mummies-still-mesmerize\/","title":{"rendered":"Magic, medicine and eternal love: why mummies still mesmerize"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n    \n                                          \n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--article-hero \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--article-hero\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n<div class=\"inner-wrapper\">\n          \n<div class=\"f--field f--image\">\n\n    \n    \n    \n    \n    \n    \n              \n      <img\n                            data-src=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/04\/story-3780-768x432.jpg\"\n          data-srcset=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/04\/story-3780-768x432.jpg 768w\"          data-sizes=\"(min-width:1200px) 75vw, (min-width:768px) 83vw, 100vw\"          class=\"lazyload\"\n        \n                  alt=\"Magic, medicine and eternal love: why mummies still mesmerize\"\n        \n        \n                                      \/>\n\n    \n    \n  \n  \n\n<\/div>\n  \n      <div class=\"image-caption\">\n          \n<div class=\"f--field f--description\">\n\n    \n  Mummies are a staple of monster movies, usually featuring an angry mummy awakened from his rest by an intrusive archeologist. (Composite: Letty Avila; Image source: Wikimedia Commons.)\n\n\n<\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  \n  <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n          <nav aria-label=\"Breadcrumb\" class=\"breadcrumbs\">\n        <ul>\n                      <li><a href=\"\/news\/stories\/\">News<\/a><\/li>\n                      <li><a href=\"\/news\/stories\/\/?category=faculty\">Faculty<\/a><\/li>\n                  <\/ul>\n      <\/nav>\n    \n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--page-title\">\n\n    \n  <h1>Magic, medicine and eternal love: why mummies still mesmerize<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n    \n          <div class=\"subtitle\">\n            \n<div class=\"f--field f--description\">\n\n    \n  One hundred years ago, the excavation of King Tut\u2019s tomb famously brought us a mummy with a \u201cpharaoh\u2019s curse.\u201d Our fascination with mummies goes back much farther, however. USC Dornsife scholars explain why we\u2019re still so wrapped up in these eerie remains.\n\n\n<\/div>\n      <\/div>\n    \n           <strong class=\"author-field\"><span >By<\/span><a href=\"mailto:communication@dornsife.usc.edu\">Margaret Crable<\/a><\/strong>\n    \n          <span class=\"post-date-field\">October 28, 2022<\/span>\n      <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--social-share \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--social-share\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n  <div class=\"content-wrapper\">\n    <span class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list\" style=\"line-height: 32px;\">\n      <span class=\"title\">\n        Share\n      <\/span>\n                        <a class=\"a2a_button_copy_link\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"\/#copy_link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"Link\">\n            <span class=\"a2a_svg a2a_s__default a2a_s_copy_link\">\n              <svg height=\"19\" 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cc--article-highlights \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--article-highlights\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n<div class=\"inner-wrapper\">\n          \n<div class=\"f--field f--section-title\">\n\n    \n  <h2>\n          Key points:\n      <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n    \n      <ul>\n              <li><p>Nov. 4 marks the 100th anniversary of the opening of King Tut\u2019s tomb, which some believe unleashed a curse.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n              <li><p>Our fascination with mummies actually goes back to medieval times, and even made its way into medicinal cures.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n              <li><p>In the modern era, mummy movies have become a means to process collective anxiety and guilt over the historical disruption of graves.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n          <\/ul>\n  <\/div>\n  \n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--rich-text \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--rich-text\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n      \n<div class=\"f--field f--wysiwyg\">\n\n    \n  <p>On Nov. 4, 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter broke open the sealed doors of the tomb of King Tutankhamun, revealing a sarcophagus containing the ancient Egyptian pharaoh\u2019s mummified remains and a vast spread of riches. It was a remarkable find. Yet it was a morbid curse, not the gold treasure, that would launch the discovery into the sphere of the mythical.<\/p>\n<p>Howard Carter and his archeological crew prepare to make the first incision into the mummy of King Tut. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons.)<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 315px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/migration-uploads\/MummyMadness_InStoryA-3780.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of Howard Carter and his crew cutting the mummified body of King Tut. \" width=\"315\" height=\"490\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Howard Carter and his archeological crew prepare to make the first incision into the mummy of King Tut. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Shortly after the opening of the tomb, the expedition\u2019s financer,\u00a0Lord Carnarvon,\u00a0died from an infected mosquito bite. Newspapers picked up the incident, falsely claiming that a warning against those who entered the tomb had been inscribed above the doorway.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201ccurse of the mummy\u201d soon became as fascinating to the public as any of King Tut\u2019s gold or silver. The 1932 film <em>The Mummy<\/em> loosely adapted this story for the silver screen and ever since, it seems, cursed mummies have occupied a permanent place in our cultural consciousness. They\u2019re a staple in monster movies and creepy books, and have joined our repertoire of standard Halloween costumes alongside the vampire and witch.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, the \u201cmummy madness\u201d incited by King Tut was just one of many waves of enthusiasm for the bandaged remains that have swept through the West since the Middle Ages. A closer look at why we remain so fascinated by these crumbling creatures reveals a rich array of origins, from a long-standing belief in Egyptian magic to guilt over the behavior of colonial empires to a yearning for undying love.<\/p>\n<h2>A teaspoon of sugar makes the mummy powder go down<\/h2>\n<p>The West\u2019s interest in mummies arose alongside the idea that the ancient Egyptians possessed a lost form of magic. A passage in Exodus that mentions the \u201cpharaoh\u2019s magicians.\u201d along with the strange, undeciphered hieroglyphics left behind by bygone Egyptian civilizations, ignited the imaginations of medieval Europe.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 315px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 260px;\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/migration-uploads\/MummyMadness_InStoryB-3780.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"315\" height=\"490\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Powdered mummy remains became a common curative across medieval Europe, prescribed for everything from bruises to epilepsy. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThis all brought about the view of ancient Egypt as an occult opposition to Judeo-Christian beliefs,\u201d says\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/cf\/engl\/faculty_display.cfm?Person_ID=1008223\">Thea Tomaini<\/a>, professor (teaching) of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/engl\/\">English<\/a>. \u201cMedieval Europeans thought that hieroglyphs were picture writing. So, not only were they mysterious, and connected to the magic of Pharaoh\u2019s magicians, but they were graven images and specifically idolatrous.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mummies also played a strange, important role in early European medicine. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and even into the Victorian era, Europeans used powdered mummy remains for healing powders and potions.<\/p>\n<p>This originally arose from the Arabic practice of using bitumen or \u201cmummia\u201d in Persian, a sticky form of petroleum that seeps naturally from the Earth in some parts of the Middle East, as a curative.<\/p>\n<p>European apothecaries read about this substance in Arabic medicinal texts and soon a robust bitumen trade between Europe and the Middle East rose up. Eventually, purveyors of the material resorted to grinding up ancient Egyptian mummies, whose preservation techniques appeared to use bitumen, into a powder to satisfy demand.<\/p>\n<p>Over time, bitumen\u2019s allure was supplanted by the newer, romanticized notion of consuming the literal flesh of mummies. \u201cThey thought that mummy powder had magical powers. This connected the idea of the mystique of ancient Egypt with the idea that the bodies of the ancient Egyptians themselves had this magic,\u201d says Tomaini.<\/p>\n<h2>Death, unwrapped<\/h2>\n<figure style=\"width: 315px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/migration-uploads\/MummyMadness_InStoryC-3780.jpg\" alt=\"An engraving depicting a scene from Egypt. \" width=\"315\" height=\"490\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Engravings by Napoleon\u2019s artists depicting Egyptian structures, art and daily life kicked off a craze in Europe and America for all things Egypt. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The metaphorical appetite for mummies was later reinforced by Napoleon\u2019s excursion into Egypt at the turn of the 19th century. The detailed engravings of art, pyramids and temples published afterwards inspired art, literature, architecture and fashion across Europe and America.<\/p>\n<p>It also sparked enthusiasm for a new type of party activity: mummy unrolling. Guests would watch while the host unwound the bandages from a mummy that had been imported from Egypt. Onlookers could examine up close the hair, bones and jewelry of the dead.<\/p>\n<p>Mummies also made their way into museums and traveling shows, drawing large crowds who could gaze with frank curiosity at withered remains. These exhibits overlapped with the rise of funeral parlors. More and more families outsourced caring for the dead to morticians so that, in the modern era, a mummy on exhibit may be first corpse a person sees.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMummies permit us to gaze upon dead bodies in safe circumstances. They thrill us with their exoticism and are a comforting replacement for the historical reality of handling the bodies of our own dead,\u201d says\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/cf\/faculty-and-staff\/faculty.cfm?pid=1003110\">Diana Blaine<\/a>, professor (teaching) of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/genderstudies\/\">gender and sexuality studies.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>All this unwrapping and gawking seems to have sparked persistent feelings of guilt, however, which might explain why we also associate mummies with ire.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost people, no matter where they are on the planet, have a deep religious or moral connection to the idea that they will rest in peace,\u201d says Tomaini. \u201cThe fact that you\u2019re digging up mummies, unwrapping them at dinner parties and putting them in museums, really hits at this deeper fear in human beings that your final resting place will be violated by someone in some future time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was also this era, long before King Tut\u2019s discovery, that produced the first stories of a resurrected mummy and a mummy\u2019s curse.\u00a0<em>The Mummy!<\/em>\u00a0written in 1827 by Jane C. Loudon featured a reanimated mummy, and Louisa May Alcott\u2019s 1869 short story \u201cLost in a Pyramid\u201d centered on haunted seeds taken from a pharaoh\u2019s tomb. Notably, the earliest tales about vengeful mummies were written by women, who may have seen the violation of graves as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/331404\/The_rape_of_the_mummy_women_horror_fiction_and_the_Westernisation_of_the_curse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">analogous to rape<\/a>, according to anthropologist and noted Egyptologist Jasmine Day.<\/p>\n<h2>Love springs eternal<\/h2>\n<p>Our collective guilt over the treatment of mummies rather obviously spilled over into mummy movies. Their plots invariably involve an intrusive archeologist incurring the wrath of a mummified pharaoh after disturbing his grave.<\/p>\n<p>Much of this can be linked to our anxiety over the exploits of colonial empires, who dug up graves and removed thousands of mummies with little concern for local customs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of colonialist guilt wrapped up in these stories. We\u2019re having to ask ourselves, \u2018What if my final resting place was violated by someone from a faraway land who was interested not just in my things, or my resting place, but who wanted to violate my body by unwrapping it of its linen, taking my jewelry off, and cutting me to pieces?\u2019\u201d says Tomaini. In order to remove King Tut\u2019s gold wristbands and funerary mask, for instance, archeologists pulled apart his joints and then fashioned them back together.<\/p>\n<p>Processing guilt isn\u2019t all that these films are about, however. \u201cWhat really fires the plot and gives it its energy, is the theme of lost love,\u201d says\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/cf\/faculty-and-staff\/faculty.cfm?pid=1003128\">Leo Braudy<\/a>, University Professor, professor of English and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/ahis\/\">art history<\/a>, and Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature.<\/p>\n<p>In the 1932 film\u00a0<em>The Mummy<\/em> and its 1999 remake, much of the plot revolves around the resurrected mummy\u2019s ancient love for Princess Ankhesenamun, which is then transposed onto a modern woman he meets after he is\u00a0awakened. \u201cThat\u2019s a theme in many other monster movies, like\u00a0<em>Dracula<\/em>. Is love eternal, does it last through time?\u201d says Braudy.<\/p>\n<p>And, of course, mummy movies explore one of the biggest questions of all: Can we defeat death? The resurrection powers of mummies will likely continue to fascinate as long as immortality eludes us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n  \n        \n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--article-related-stories \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--article-related-stories\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n  <div class=\"inner-wrapper\">\n    \n                  <article>\n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--cta-title\">\n\n    \n  <h3>\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/stories\/scary-monsters-and-super-creeps\/\" \n                        class=\"\" \n      >Scary Monsters and Super Creeps<\/a>\n      <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n        <\/article>\n              <article>\n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--cta-title\">\n\n    \n  <h3>\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/stories\/halloween-ghost-folklore-morality-and-ethics\/\" \n                        class=\"\" \n      >Why believing in ghosts can make you a better person<\/a>\n      <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n        <\/article>\n              <article>\n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--cta-title\">\n\n    \n  <h3>\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/stories\/friday-the-13th-superstitions-and-luck\/\" \n                        class=\"\" \n      >Ideas of luck and superstition vary among cultures around the world<\/a>\n      <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n        <\/article>\n            <\/div>\n\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One hundred years ago, the excavation of King Tut\u2019s tomb famously brought us a mummy with a \u201cpharaoh\u2019s curse.\u201d Our fascination with mummies goes back much farther, however. USC Dornsife scholars explain why we\u2019re still so wrapped up in these eerie remains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,10],"tags":[124,123,122,71,103,75],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-faculty","tag-archaeology","tag-cinema","tag-egypt","tag-history","tag-holidays","tag-humanities"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Magic, medicine and eternal love: why mummies still mesmerize<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The excavation of King Tut\u2019s tomb in 1922 famously brought us a mummy with a \u201cpharaoh\u2019s curse.\u201d Our fascination with mummies goes back much farther, however.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/stories\/why-mummies-still-mesmerize\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Magic, medicine and eternal love: why mummies still mesmerize\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The excavation of King Tut\u2019s tomb in 1922 famously brought us a mummy with a \u201cpharaoh\u2019s curse.\u201d Our fascination with mummies goes back much farther, however.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/stories\/why-mummies-still-mesmerize\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"USC Dornsife News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/uscdornsife\" \/>\n<meta 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