Egyptian Mummies as Commodities
The Many Uses for Mummies, from Medicine to Entertainment
Dec 17, 2008
Ancient Egyptians believed that after death their souls would survive, and that those souls would reanimate their bodies. This led to the need to preserve the deceased for the afterlife, but it’s doubtful the Egyptians ever fathomed the many other uses for their mummies.
Mummies as Medicine
Shipped across the Mediterranean Sea to apothecaries in large quantities, mummies were incorrectly assumed by Europeans to be embalmed with a type of bitumen (a black tar-like substance) believed to have healing properties in Asian tradition. Most mummies, in fact, were not coated with bitumen but dark resins, which lent to the dark tone of a mummy’s skin.
From the 1100s until opinions changed in the 1700s, powdered or chopped up pieces of a mummy were considered a cure for many different health problems, including diseases, poisoning, open wounds, and even broken bones. Mixed with other ingredients or used straight, mummy medicine became a popular drug in the West. King Francis I of France even took powdered mummy with rhubarb daily.
When Egyptian mummies became hard to acquire, a new market for the dearly departed opened up. Merchants substituted the corpses of slaves and others, “embalming” the bodies themselves and marketing them as genuine mummies.
Mummies as Paint
"Mummy Brown" or “Egyptian Brown” was a paint composed of powdered mummy. Most often used in watercolor and oil painting during the 1500s and 1600s, artists enjoyed its pleasing color and texture although it was prone to cracking. Mummy Brown abruptly fell out of use in the 1800s after its gruesome composition became known.
Mummies as Entertainment
In Britain during the 1830s and 1840s, mummy “unwrapping” parties were popular. Tourists traveling to Egypt would bring back a mummy and invite friends over to witness the unwrapping of the mummy, followed by refreshments. Victorians also found it interesting to keep the hand or foot of a mummy as a display piece.
Thomas Pettigrew, a trained medical doctor, also unwrapped mummies. Although he did so for more scientific purposes, many people still watched him at work. For twenty years he unwrapped and studied mummies and was later known as “Mummy” Pettigrew. The Duke of Hamilton was so impressed by “Mummy” Pettigrew’s work that he asked Pettigrew to mummify him after he died.
Other Uses for Mummies
There are stories of other uses for mummies, although most lack concrete proof. Mark Twain started the rumor that mummies were burned as fuel for locomotives, and the mention of mummy as an ingredient of witchcraft appeared in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth. Supposedly there were also claims in the 1800s of mummy wrappings used by butchers and grocers as wrapping paper, leading to an outbreak of cholera.
Just as strange but truer accounts include mummies used as firewood by travelers and the export of mummified cats to Europe as fertilizer in the 1800s. Fortunately for mummies today, these practices have stopped and people are working to better understand and respect the ancient Egyptian journey to the afterlife.
Sources:
Daly, Nicholas. Modernism, Romance, and the fin de siecle: Popular Fiction and British Culture, 1880-1914. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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