tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/tutankhamun-28081/articlesTutankhamun – The Conversation2024-03-14T19:24:37Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2239702024-03-14T19:24:37Z2024-03-14T19:24:37ZFrom malaria, to smallpox, to polio – here’s how we know life in ancient Egypt was ravaged by disease<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581183/original/file-20240312-29-m4tny7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=55%2C30%2C3338%2C2234&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The mention of ancient Egypt usually conjures images of colossal pyramids and precious, golden tombs. </p>
<p>But as with most civilisations, the invisible world of infectious disease underpinned life and death along the Nile. In fact, fear of disease was so pervasive it influenced social and religious customs. It even featured in the statues, monuments and graves of the Kingdom of the Pharaohs. </p>
<p>By studying ancient specimens and artefacts, scientists are uncovering how disease rocked this ancient culture. </p>
<h2>Tutankhamun’s malaria, and other examples</h2>
<p>The most direct evidence of epidemics in ancient Egypt comes from skeletal and DNA evidence obtained from the mummies themselves.</p>
<p>For instance, DNA recovered from the mummy of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun (1332–1323 BC) led to the discovery he <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20159872/">suffered from malaria</a>, along with several other New Kingdom mummies (circa 1800 BC). </p>
<p>In other examples:</p>
<ul>
<li>skeletal and DNA <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11289521/">evidence found</a> in the city of Abydos suggests one in four people may have had tuberculosis </li>
<li>the mummy of Ramesses V (circa 1149–1145 BC) has scars indicating smallpox </li>
<li>the wives of Mentuhotep II (circa 2000 BC) were buried hastily in a “mass grave”, suggesting <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9186437/">a pandemic</a> had occurred</li>
<li>and the mummies of two pharaohs, Siptah (1197–1191 BC) and Khnum-Nekht (circa 1800 BC), were <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10072-016-2720-9">found with</a> the deformed <a href="https://www.shorelineortho.com/specialties/foot_ankle_equinus.php">equinus</a> foot which is characteristic of the viral disease polio.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Signs of a disease-ravaged people</h2>
<p>Amenhotep III was the ninth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, and ruled from about 1388–1351 BC.</p>
<p>There are several reasons experts think his reign was marked by a devastating disease outbreak. For instance, two separate carvings from this time depict a priest and a royal couple with the polio dropped-foot. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577699/original/file-20240224-30-9gt04r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577699/original/file-20240224-30-9gt04r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577699/original/file-20240224-30-9gt04r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577699/original/file-20240224-30-9gt04r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577699/original/file-20240224-30-9gt04r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577699/original/file-20240224-30-9gt04r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577699/original/file-20240224-30-9gt04r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577699/original/file-20240224-30-9gt04r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This 18th dynasty panel depicts a polio sufferer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Polio_Egyptian_Stele.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Statues of the lion-headed goddess of disease and health, Sekhmet, also <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33227516/">increased significantly</a>, suggesting a reliance on divine protection.</p>
<p>Another sign of a potential major disease outbreak comes in the form of what may be an early case of quarantine, wherein Amenhotep III moved his palace to the more isolated site of Malqata. This is further supported by the burning of a workers’ cemetery near Thebes. </p>
<p>Grave goods also became less extravagant and tombs less complex during this period, which suggests more burials were needed in a shorter time frame. These burials can’t be explained by war since this was an unusually peaceful period.</p>
<h2>Did disease trigger early monotheism?</h2>
<p>Amenohotep’s son – “the heretic King” Akhenaten (who was also Tutankhamun’s father) – abandoned the old gods of Egypt. In one of the earliest cases of monotheism, Akhenaten made worship of the Sun the official state religion. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577700/original/file-20240224-26-gurcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577700/original/file-20240224-26-gurcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577700/original/file-20240224-26-gurcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577700/original/file-20240224-26-gurcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577700/original/file-20240224-26-gurcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577700/original/file-20240224-26-gurcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577700/original/file-20240224-26-gurcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This panel (circa 1372-1355 BC) shows Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters adoring the Sun god Aten.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:La_salle_dAkhenaton_(1356-1340_av_J.C.)_(Mus%C3%A9e_du_Caire)_(2076972086).jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.thecollector.com/akhenaten-monotheism-plague-egypt/">researchers think</a> Akhenaten’s dramatic loss of faith may have been due to the devastating disease he witnessed during his childhood and into his reign, with several of his children and wives having died from disease. But we’ve yet to find clear evidence for the role of disease in shaping his theology.</p>
<p>There’s also no direct DNA evidence of an outbreak under his father, Amenhotep III. There are only descriptions of one <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2021/01/these-pharaohs-private-letters-expose-how-politics-worked-3300-years-ago">in letters</a> Amenhotep III and Akhenaten exchanged with the Babylonians. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580627/original/file-20240308-16-mt400i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580627/original/file-20240308-16-mt400i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580627/original/file-20240308-16-mt400i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580627/original/file-20240308-16-mt400i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580627/original/file-20240308-16-mt400i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580627/original/file-20240308-16-mt400i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580627/original/file-20240308-16-mt400i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580627/original/file-20240308-16-mt400i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">These clay tablets (circa 14th century BC), inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform, were sent to Amenhotep III or Akhenaten from the ruler Abdi-tirshi of Hazor (modern-day Israel).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Museum</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To confirm an outbreak under Amenhotep III, we’d need to first recover pathogen DNA in human remains from this time, has been found in other Egyptian burial sites and for <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21993626/">other pandemics</a>.</p>
<p>Also, while many ancient epidemics are referred to as “plagues”, we can’t confirm whether any outbreaks in ancient Egypt were indeed caused by <em>Yersinia pestis</em>, the bacteria responsible for bubonic plague pandemics <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Black-Death">such as the Black Death</a> in Europe (1347-1351). </p>
<p>That said, researchers <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3554655">have confirmed</a> the Nile rat, which was widespread during the time of the Pharaohs, would have been able to carry the <em>Yersinia</em> infection.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579796/original/file-20240305-24-p439xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579796/original/file-20240305-24-p439xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579796/original/file-20240305-24-p439xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579796/original/file-20240305-24-p439xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579796/original/file-20240305-24-p439xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579796/original/file-20240305-24-p439xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579796/original/file-20240305-24-p439xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579796/original/file-20240305-24-p439xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This 1811 etching depicts the ancient Plague of Athens (circa 430 BC), which may have been caused by <em>Yersinia</em> or a disease with similar symptoms such as smallpox, typhus or measles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/image/1047063001">The British Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How were outbreaks managed?</h2>
<p>Much like modern pandemics, factors such as population growth, sanitation, population density and mobilisation for war would have influenced the spread of disease in ancient Egypt. </p>
<p>In the case of war, it’s thought the Hittite army was <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9186437/">weakened by</a> disease spread when it was famously <a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/world-history-beginnings/ancient-egypt-hittites/a/the-hittites">defeated by</a> Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses the Great in the battle of Kadesh (1274 BC). </p>
<p>In some ways, Egyptian medicine was advanced for its time. While these outbreaks occurred long before the development of antibiotics or vaccines, there is some evidence of public health measures such as the burning of towns and quarantining people. This suggests a basic understanding of how disease spreads. </p>
<p>Diseases caused by microorganisms would have been viewed as supernatural, or as a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1121911/">corruption of the air</a>. This is similar to other explanations held in different parts of the world, before germ theory was popularised in the 19th century.</p>
<h2>New world, old problems</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579797/original/file-20240305-28-cqzgoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579797/original/file-20240305-28-cqzgoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579797/original/file-20240305-28-cqzgoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579797/original/file-20240305-28-cqzgoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579797/original/file-20240305-28-cqzgoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579797/original/file-20240305-28-cqzgoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579797/original/file-20240305-28-cqzgoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579797/original/file-20240305-28-cqzgoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The funerary mask of Tutankhamun, who died as a teenager.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CairoEgMuseumTaaMaskMostlyPhotographed.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Many of the most widespread diseases that afflicted the ancient world are still with us.</p>
<p>Along with Tutankhamun, it’s thought <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(17)30261-X/abstract">up to 70%</a> of the Egyptian population was infected with malaria caused by the <em>Plasmodium falciparum</em> parasite – spread by swarms of mosquitoes occupying the stagnant pools of the Nile delta. </p>
<p>Today, malaria affects about 250 million people, mostly in developing nations. Tuberculosis kills more than a million people each year. And smallpox and polio have only recently been eradicated or controlled through vaccination programs.</p>
<p>More work is yet to be done to detect individual pathogens in Egyptian mummies. This knowledge could shed light on how, throughout history, people much like us have grappled with these unseen organisms.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/did-everyone-in-bridgerton-have-syphilis-just-how-sexy-would-it-really-have-been-in-regency-era-london-180581">Did everyone in Bridgerton have syphilis? Just how sexy would it really have been in Regency era London?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Jeffries does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Beyond the tombs and riches, life in ancient Egypt wasn’t so luxurious, after all.Thomas Jeffries, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1937662022-11-03T16:55:07Z2022-11-03T16:55:07ZWhy Tutankhamun’s curse continues to fascinate, 100 years after his discovery<p>The discovery of <a href="http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/discoveringtut/">Tutankhamun’s tomb</a> in 1922 was a monumental event for archaeology. It was the first largely intact ancient Egyptian royal tomb to be found and hence provided major insights into the burial practices of royalty. It also gave a glimpse of what other undiscovered, lost or robbed tombs of pharaohs might have been like. </p>
<p>Tutankhamun was a relatively minor pharaoh. He died young and did not get the chance to leave a larger legacy, so such a lavish funerary provision for him implied even greater treasures in other tombs of more accomplished pharaohs.</p>
<p>Interest in the burial practices of the ancient Egyptians was well-established, with the deciphering of hieroglyphs in 1822 creating a watershed moment for Egyptology, but the discovery of the tomb built on this and brought ancient Egypt to the masses through media reports.</p>
<p>The discovery came just after the first world war, in a period of deep mourning for the losses in conflict. The story of a young man with a family who had died before his time resonated with many. Tutankhamun was a burst of glorious colour in a dark time, which came with the extra draw of the mysteries of the tomb and eternal life. It was also found in a <a href="https://archive.org/details/discoveryoftutan0000burt/page/n23/mode/2up">last-ditch attempt to locate it</a>; Howard Carter had been searching for it for years, and his success made a compelling story of hope, persistence and reward.</p>
<p>It was also a discovery full of mystery and intrigue. An ancient king in a long searched-for tomb full of fascinating objects laden with mystical and primeval meaning. The story captured the public’s imagination and papers at the time capitalised on that interest with a tale of a curse. </p>
<h2>The famous fake curse</h2>
<p>The oft-quoted curse “Death will come on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the king” <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/was-it-really-a-mummys-curse/">does not actually appear anywhere in the tomb</a>. There are <a href="https://www.rom.on.ca/en/learning/activities-resources/online-activities/ancient-egypt/religion/tomb-inscriptions-curses">real ancient Egyptian curses</a> but this was not one. Tutankhamun’s curse stemmed from a media battle for readership. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/curse-of-pharaohs-tomb-was-invented-by-rival-reporter-z7gnkw7xg">The Times had the exclusive rights</a> for reporting on the excavation, so speculative stories were published by other newspapers, including the rumours of a curse. This again played on post-Victorian familiarity with <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-tutankhamun-became-a-popular-spirit-at-seances-in-the-1920s-193762">spiritualism</a>, an interest in the gothic in literature and the trend for travellers’ souvenirs, which often included mummified remains or other objects from tombs. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-tutankhamun-became-a-popular-spirit-at-seances-in-the-1920s-193762">How Tutankhamun became a popular spirit at seances in the 1920s</a>
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<p>Readers <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=kMo8ROSpOW4C&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=tutankhamun+curse+not+in+tomb&ots=usxg3fJhES&sig=A0YPd3O2ouPjse1_bS0Ad20_f2c#v=onepage&q&f=fals">bought into the idea of a curse with relish</a>. There were also a series of illnesses, accidents and other events the papers attributed to the opening of the tomb. The most notable was the death of Lord Carnarvon, who funded the excavation, on April 5 1923. The cause of death was an infected cut, but the opportunity to connect this with the curse was irresistible.</p>
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<p>Students of Egyptian mysticism … attribute sickness and death to curse laid by Ancient Egyptians on any who dare disturb the rest of a Pharaoh". (Allentown Morning Call, April 5 1923).</p>
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<p>Research since, has, however, <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/325/7378/1482">thoroughly debunked</a> the idea that those present at the opening met an untimely end. Only a handful of people who were there at the opening died within the next decade and Howard Carter, who would have been a primary target for a curse, died in 1939, aged 64.</p>
<p>Despite us all knowing that curse was fabricated, it has had a long-term effect on the discovery of ancient relics and the perpetuation of such myths. The idea that human remains must be dealt with carefully has been present since the early days of excavation. However, archaeology today is concerned more than ever with the ethics of working with human remains, their interpretation and how they are kept. </p>
<h2>Tutankhamun today</h2>
<p>The discovery of the tomb, the boy king and the myths that surround it still fascinate us today. We now know more about ancient Egyptian culture than a century ago, but a lot of answers still elude us. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/discoveringTut/burton5/burtoncolour.html">The objects</a> in the tomb are beautifully crafted and full of symbolism and meaning, painted or inscribed with hieroglyphs that in their mystery inspire wonder and intrigue. However, much of the tomb’s contents have never been fully published and there is still ongoing work to catalogue the objects and research the excavation itself. Discoveries continue to be made, including new evidence that suggests <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/aug/13/howard-carter-stole-tutankhamuns-treasure-new-evidence-suggests">Carter stole some artefacts</a>.</p>
<p>Tutankhamun and the dig remain in the cultural consciousness. The <a href="https://www.egyptianmuseumcairo.com/egyptian-museum-cairo/artefacts/mask-of-tutankhamun/">golden funerary mask</a> is often the first, or the most memorable, image of ancient Egypt that the public encounters. Many people have become archaeologists or Egyptologists because the striped gold and blue mask captured their imagination so firmly.</p>
<p>The dig also remains the benchmark of excavation, discovery and exhibition. The British Museum’s display in 1972 of selected treasures from the tomb, including the gold funerary mask, is still the Museum’s highest-attended exhibition (<a href="https://twitter.com/britishmuseum/status/699540119657828352?lang=e">1.6m</a> visitors) and arguably the one against all others are compared. </p>
<p>This centenary year has seen hundreds of events associated with the discovery, Tutankhamun himself and his times. With the heritage sector’s increasing focus on <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/research/directory/decolonising-archaeology">the ethics of past and present collectors and excavators</a>, the story of the tomb is in the public eye once more, as a focal point for revisiting histories as well as reaffirming Tutankhamun as the most famous face in antiquity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193766/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Isabella Gilmour does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From the curse that the papers latched on to new research suggesting that Howard Carter stole objects from the tomb, Tutankhamun’s discovery continues to grab attention.Claire Isabella Gilmour, PhD Candidate, Anthropology and Archaeology, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1937622022-11-03T16:49:51Z2022-11-03T16:49:51ZHow Tutankhamun became a popular spirit at seances in the 1920s<p>It has been 100 years since the discovery of the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, the boy king who ruled in the 14th century BC. Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovered in November 1922 by a team of predominantly Egyptian excavators led by the British archaeologist Howard Carter. </p>
<p>Carter’s published account has dominated public understanding of this historic find. His three-volume publication <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/tomb-of-tutankhamen/00D375EA253B09047D52253B2C7E79F3">The Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen</a> is responsible for immortalising his purported response to his patron, Lord Carnarvon’s question: “Can you see anything?” To which he responded, “Yes, wonderful things.” It also made famous the image of “everywhere the glint of gold” as he first peered into the tomb.</p>
<p>There was a lot of interest in the discovery at the time, which led to a slew of <a href="https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2020&context=rtds">newspaper coverage</a>. One story that constantly re-emerged, and remain popular, concerns the story of a mummy’s curse plaguing those involved in the excavations – though the notion that those present at the tomb’s opening met untimely ends has been <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139048/">thoroughly debunked</a>. </p>
<p>There are other stories and legends about the discovery, the subsequent excavations and their legacies, all of which contribute to a fuller understanding of the sheer and wide-ranging impact of this event.</p>
<p>One such little-known cultural consequence was how the pharaoh started to regular emerge in spiritualist circles after his tomb’s discovery. </p>
<h2>Tutankhamun makes an appearance</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/spiritualism/ataglance/glance.shtml">Spiritualism</a>, a religious movement that believes in the survival of the spirit after death and that the spirits of the deceased might communicate with the living, had its heyday in the 19th century. </p>
<p>It had declined in popularity after several high-profile mediums (people who were understood to facilitate this communication) had been exposed as <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/69973/rise-and-fall-5-claimed-mediums">frauds</a> at the end of the 19th century. But then Spiritualism saw a resurgence during and after the first world war as people attempted to reach lost loved ones.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="An ancient Egyptian funerary mask" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493259/original/file-20221103-26-5hzyge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493259/original/file-20221103-26-5hzyge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493259/original/file-20221103-26-5hzyge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493259/original/file-20221103-26-5hzyge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493259/original/file-20221103-26-5hzyge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1062&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493259/original/file-20221103-26-5hzyge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1062&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493259/original/file-20221103-26-5hzyge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1062&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tutankhamun’s funerary mask..</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Tutanchamun_Maske.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1920s, a new celebrity spirit started making contact at seances, where a group of people, often in a circle around a table, attempt to contact the dead. Tutankhamun began to transmit messages from “the other side” according to believers, showing up at seances globally. <a href="http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/light/light_v44_mar_1924.pdf">People speculated</a> that he had not made himself known in psychic circles prior to his tomb’s discovery because “the spirit [was] drawn back to thoughts of earth by the attention concentrated on him.”</p>
<p>In one instance, Tutankhamun was said to have been channelled by a medium named Blanche Cooper who worked at the British College of Psychic Science. According to one account, from her mouth came “<a href="http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/light/light_v44_apr_1924.pdf">a deep male voice</a>” which “spoke in a foreign tongue, soft and musical.” Tutankhamun’s communication supposedly listed what might be found within his tomb. The tomb’s discovery stimulated such a proliferation of messages purportedly from the boy king that seance-goers complained that they were “<a href="http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/light/light_v44_apr_1924.pdf">getting a little tired of Tutankhamen</a>.”</p>
<p>Tutankhamun was not always a positive presence, however. <a href="http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/international_psychic_gazette/international_psychic_gazette_v16_n188_may_1929.pdf">The International Psychic Gazette</a> reported a more hostile encounter in 1929:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Violent supernatural happenings have occurred […] in the studio of Mr Folt, a well-known sculptor who possesses a superb mansion at Vinohrady, […] Prague. Many persons celebrated in intellectual and artistic circles attended a Spiritualistic seance there. Everything proceeded calmly until the conclusion, when a sitter asked that the spirit of Tutankhamen […] should be evoked. </p>
<p>The medium thereupon sank into trance and announced that that spirit was approaching. Then he uttered a cry of pain, accompanied by unearthly shouts of furious anger. And immediately there was let loose in the studio a fearful uproar, with a tempest of wind so powerful that it broke most of the window panes. </p>
<p>The witnesses of this sudden storm were terrified. They rose at once from the table and put up the lights. Before their eyes the studio lay completely devastated. All the statues of Egyptian figures sculptured by Folt had been broken. One of them, in bronze, had been thrown through the window into the courtyard. Another was lying on the floor bearing traces of blood on the lips and forehead. […] These extraordinary perturbations took place with such rapidity that they did not last more than 30 to 35 seconds.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What such reports indicate is that, for believers,, Tutankhamun’s spirit appeared in a variety of ways from benevolent force to vengeful destroyer; from an individual undisturbed by the penetration of his tomb to an entity driven to rain down havoc upon the heads of those who had violated this sacred space. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-tutankhamuns-curse-continues-to-fascinate-100-years-after-his-discovery-193766">Why Tutankhamun’s curse continues to fascinate, 100 years after his discovery</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>With the name Tutankhamun very much in the public consciousness again, we are reminded that this is a pharaoh bound to periodically “return” – whether as a ghostly apparition or in research. His manifestation in Spiritualist circles of the 1920s is just one such way in which popular fascination with the pharaoh has manifested itself over the years.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193762/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eleanor Dobson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some spiritualists in the 1920s moaned that Tutankhamun appeared almost too often.Eleanor Dobson, Associate Professor in Nineteenth-Century Literature, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1864302022-11-03T09:57:06Z2022-11-03T09:57:06ZFive things science has told us about the mummy of Tutankhamun<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481779/original/file-20220830-18781-mg08a1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=49%2C21%2C4696%2C3137&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Statues of pharaoh Tutankhamun and mythology jackal</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/still-life-statues-king-pharaoh-tutankhamun-1656968518">JK21/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One hundred years ago, our understanding of ancient Egypt changed forever when the tomb of King Tutankhamun was <a href="http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/discoveringTut/">found</a> on November 4, 1922 in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Valley-of-the-Kings">Valley of Kings</a>. Born around 1305BC, Tutankhamun only <a href="http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/learning/learn/discovering-tutankhamun-education-resources.pdf">ruled Egypt</a> for about ten years. Yet his tomb was furnished with never-before-seen riches. </p>
<p>Our fascination with mummies is understandable. Gazing on the face of a prehistoric Egyptian king makes these ethereal and majestic rulers seem more real. The discovery of Tutankhamun in his original resting place, complete with all his possessions, makes us feel a connection to a primeval past. It transports us back in time to the funeral of a young king.</p>
<p>Studies of Tutankhamun’s life are often overshadowed by the sensational rumours that surround the discovery of his tomb, such as persistent whispers of a <a href="https://www.history.co.uk/articles/the-curse-of-king-tutankhamun-and-the-mummy-s-tomb">curse</a>. But if we allow the gossip to get in the way of seeing Tutankhamen the person, we’ll miss out.</p>
<h2>1. Tutankhamun’s death is still a mystery</h2>
<p>It’s difficult to find out why someone who lived a long time ago died. Tutankhamun is no exception. People in ancient Egypt lived <a href="https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/researchers-in-museums/2015/03/02/old-age-in-ancient-egypt/">shorter lives</a> because they didn’t have the same healthcare as we do. But Tutankhamun died at around 19 years old, which was young even for ancient Egypt. </p>
<p>Recently, studies using x-rays, CT scans and <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-thought-ancient-egyptian-mummies-didn-t-have-any-dna-left-they-were-wrong">DNA testing</a> showed Tutankhamun had malaria, along with some other medical conditions such as a cleft palate. He also broke his leg just before he died. This information helps us build <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260685191_Purported_medical_diagnoses_of_Pharaoh_Tutankhamun_Ca_1325_BC">a picture of Tutankhamun’s health</a> before his death. It doesn’t tell us exactly how he died though, except that there is no sign he was murdered.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481780/original/file-20220830-27480-gwf5rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481780/original/file-20220830-27480-gwf5rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481780/original/file-20220830-27480-gwf5rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481780/original/file-20220830-27480-gwf5rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481780/original/file-20220830-27480-gwf5rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481780/original/file-20220830-27480-gwf5rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481780/original/file-20220830-27480-gwf5rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tomb of Tutankhamun, Luxor, Egypt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/luxor-egypt-november-16-2018-tomb-1280363467">Nick Brundle Photography/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. He was buried with flowers</h2>
<p>When Tutankhamun’s tomb was opened in 1922, he was wearing a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337547952_SACRED_FLORAL_GARLANDS_AND_COLLARS_FROM_THE_NEW_KINGDOM_PERIOD_AND_EARLY_THIRD_INTERMEDIATE_PERIOD_IN_ANCIENT_EGYPT">collar made of flowers</a>. They were in good condition because they were sealed inside the coffin with him. <a href="https://www.deseret.com/2006/6/29/19961174/tomb-reveals-ancient-flowers">Funeral bouquets</a> have been found on other mummies. But this is the only royal burial where all the flowers were found just as the ancient Egyptian mourners left them.</p>
<p><a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/13235969.pdf">Flowers were important</a> to ancient Egyptians, who painted pictures of flower gardens on the walls of their tombs. Flowers were admired for their beauty, their perfume and for symbolic reasons. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/14647690/The_Botanical_Treasures_of_Tutankhamun">Studies</a> of the flowers and fruits used in the collar show that Tutankhamun was buried between mid-March and late-April. Preparing his body for burial would have taken <a href="https://www.si.edu/spotlight/ancient-egypt/mummies">70 days</a>, which means Tutankhamun most likely died in wintertime. </p>
<h2>3. Tutankhamun’s appearance was preserved by special techniques</h2>
<p>The ancient Egyptians followed a “recipe” when they mummified a person. After removing the brain and internal organs, a salt called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natron">natron</a> was used to dry the body out. This produced a mummy that could survive for thousands of years but had a shrunken, gaunt appearance. </p>
<p>Ancient Egyptians believed the <a href="https://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/7158/1/Dewsbury17PhD_Redacted.pdf">soul, or Ka</a>, needed to return to its body to exist in the afterlife but the Ka had to be able to recognise its body. So, to make his face appear more lifelike, substances such as resin were pushed under the skin of Tutankhamun’s face to plump it out.</p>
<p>Until recently it has been assumed that Tutankhamun was embalmed quickly and poorly because he died suddenly. But <a href="https://phys.org/news/2005-01-tutankhamun-ct-scanner.html">the most recent CT scans</a> show this is not true. Packing out the face would have taken time and skill. </p>
<h2>4. Tutankhamun had company on his journey into the afterlife</h2>
<p>It is hard to escape the mental image of Tutankhamun lying in his tomb in splendid isolation. He was not, however, the only person buried <a href="https://thebanmappingproject.com/tombs/kv-62-tutankhamen">in the tomb</a>. Two miniature coffins were found in a wooden box in the tomb’s treasury. </p>
<p>A study published in 2011 showed these coffins contained two female foetuses. One was around five-to-six months gestation, the other was around nine months gestation, dying at or around the time of birth. It is most likely these are the <a href="https://www.ajronline.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2214/AJR.11.6837?src=recsys">daughters of Tutankhamun</a> and his wife Ankhesenamun, and that they died before their father. </p>
<p>It is rare to find a mummified foetus. The ancient Egyptians <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/3-d-reconstruction-reveals-child-mummys-face-180975909/">did mummify some children</a> but even this was uncommon. The loss of his children was obviously very important to Tutankhamun, so he wanted them with him in the afterlife.</p>
<h2>5. Fame has not always been kind to Tutankhamun</h2>
<p>As many of our celebrities today will testify, fame isn’t always good for you. This is certainly the case for Tutankhamun, whose renown has brought overzealous scientific study and damage to his body.</p>
<p>Tutankhamun is probably the most studied mummy in the world, with the possible exception of <a href="https://www.iceman.it/en/the-iceman/">Otzi the Iceman</a>. The most recent studies of Tutankhamun using sophisticated CT scans have shown that <a href="http://etudesettravaux.iksiopan.pl/images/etudtrav/EtudTrav_otwarte/EtudTrav_26/EtudTrav_26_1/et_26-V-1-26-Ikram.pdf">his body is no longer intact</a> or even complete.</p>
<p>The first study took place <a href="http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/discoveringtut/journals-and-diaries/season-4/journal.html">in 1925</a>, very soon after he was discovered. In their eagerness to see Tutankhamun himself, the anatomists who studied him forcibly removed him from his coffin as he was stuck to it with resin. The rough handling separated his limbs and head from his torso. </p>
<p>Tutankhamun is the only known royal mummy to remain in his tomb in Egypt. At some point, possibly during the second world war, his tomb was again entered by an unknown person or people. Some of Tutankhamun’s <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/131106-king-tut-mummy-death-mystery-solved-archaeology-science">ribs were cut and removed</a> in the search for amulets or jewellery.</p>
<p>Science has helped us understand more about Tutankhamun’s health, life and preparation for the afterlife. His legacy is not just a study of his personal life. It is a record of how science fuels our fascination with the boy king.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186430/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenefer Metcalfe works for The University of Manchester, UK.</span></em></p>The discovery of Tutankhamun’s ancient Egyptian tomb in 1922 thrilled the world. But people know more about rumours of a curse than the amazing things science revealed about the boy king.Jenefer Metcalfe, Lecturer in Biomedical Egyptology, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1775512022-06-07T02:30:11Z2022-06-07T02:30:11ZWhy did people start eating Egyptian mummies? The weird and wild ways mummy fever swept through Europe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467335/original/file-20220607-15494-oycleu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4000%2C2994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Why did people think cannibalism was good for their health? The answer offers a glimpse into the zaniest crannies of European history, at a time when Europeans were obsessed with Egyptian mummies.</p>
<p>Driven first by the belief that ground-up and tinctured human remains could cure anything from bubonic plague to a headache, and then by the macabre ideas Victorian people had about after-dinner entertainment, the bandaged corpses of ancient Egyptians were the subject of fascination from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.</p>
<h2>Mummy mania</h2>
<p>Faith that mummies could cure illness drove people for centuries to ingest something that <a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/mumia-the-strange-history-of-human-remains-as-medicine">tasted awful</a>. </p>
<p>Mumia, the product created from mummified bodies, was a medicinal substance consumed <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-history-of-eating-corpses-as-medicine-82360284/">for centuries</a> by rich and poor, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2540910?seq=1">available in apothecaries’ shops</a>, and created from the remains of mummies brought from Egyptian tombs back to Europe.</p>
<p>By the 12th century apothecaries were using ground up mummies for their otherworldly medicinal properties. Mummies were a prescribed medicine for the next 500 years. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467332/original/file-20220607-15946-mee6wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467332/original/file-20220607-15946-mee6wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467332/original/file-20220607-15946-mee6wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467332/original/file-20220607-15946-mee6wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467332/original/file-20220607-15946-mee6wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467332/original/file-20220607-15946-mee6wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1306&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467332/original/file-20220607-15946-mee6wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1306&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467332/original/file-20220607-15946-mee6wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1306&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A jar used for storing mumia, a medicine made from the ground up remains of mummified humans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a world without antibiotics, physicians prescribed ground up skulls, bones and flesh to treat illnesses from <a href="https://hauntedwalk.com/news/why-did-people-eat-mummies/">headaches</a> to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2101801/pdf/procrsmed01192-0163.pdf">reducing swelling</a> or curing the <a href="https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/opinion/using-a-mummy-as-a-medicine">plague</a>.</p>
<p>Not everyone was convinced. <a href="https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/mummies-and-the-usefulness-of-death">Guy de la Fontaine</a>, a royal doctor, doubted mumia was a useful medicine and saw forged mummies made from dead peasants in Alexandria in 1564. He realised people could be conned. They were not always consuming genuine ancient mummies. </p>
<p>But the forgeries illustrate an important point: there was constant demand for dead flesh to be used in medicine and the supply of real Egyptian mummies could not meet this. </p>
<p>Apothecaries and herbalists were <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2101801/pdf/procrsmed01192-0163.pdf">still dispensing mummy medicines</a> into the 18th century. </p>
<h2>Mummy’s medicine</h2>
<p>Not all doctors thought dry, old mummies made the best medicine. <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-history-of-eating-corpses-as-medicine-82360284/">Some doctors believed</a> that fresh meat and blood had a vitality the long-dead lacked. </p>
<p>The claim that fresh was best convinced even the noblest of nobles. England’s <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(18)30330-2/fulltext#:%7E:text=After%20having%20a%20seizure%20in,hopes%20of%20a%20speedy%20cure.&text=Death%20by%20doctoring.">King Charles II</a> took medication made from human skulls after suffering a seizure, and, until 1909, physicians commonly used human skulls to treat neurological conditions.</p>
<p>For the royal and social elite, eating mummies seemed a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/aristocracy-ate-human-flesh-2287174.html">royally appropriate medicine </a>, as doctors claimed mumia was made from pharaohs. Royalty ate royalty.</p>
<h2>Dinner, drinks, and a show</h2>
<p>By the 19th century, people were no longer consuming mummies to cure illness but Victorians were hosting “unwrapping parties” where Egyptian corpses would be unwrapped for entertainment at private parties. </p>
<p>Napoleon’s <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2021/01/napoleons-military-defeat-in-egypt-yielded-a-victory-for-history">first expedition into Egypt</a> in 1798 piqued European curiosity and allowed 19th century travellers to Egypt to bring whole mummies <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1345912?origin=crossref">back to Europe</a> bought <a href="https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/egyptian-mummy-seller-1865/">off the street</a> in Egypt. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467333/original/file-20220607-24949-7fwow4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467333/original/file-20220607-24949-7fwow4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467333/original/file-20220607-24949-7fwow4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467333/original/file-20220607-24949-7fwow4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467333/original/file-20220607-24949-7fwow4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467333/original/file-20220607-24949-7fwow4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467333/original/file-20220607-24949-7fwow4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467333/original/file-20220607-24949-7fwow4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Egyptian street mummy seller in 1875.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Félix Bonfils/ Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Victorians held <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-for-the-history-of-science/article/abs/unrolling-egyptian-mummies-in-nineteenthcentury-britain/56BF3B3408D2E13EB839FFD58CF738B4">private parties</a> dedicated to unwrapping the remains of ancient Egyptian mummies. </p>
<p>Early unwrapping events had at least a veneer of medical respectability. In 1834 the surgeon <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-party-people-unrolled-mummies-for-fun">Thomas Pettigrew</a> unwrapped a mummy at the Royal College of Surgeons. In his time, <a href="http://www.hogarthonline.com/cruelty4.html?javascript=display(%271-1%27)%3B">autopsies and operations </a>took place in public and this unwrapping was just another public medical event. </p>
<p>Soon, even the pretence of medical research was lost. By now mummies were no longer medicinal but thrilling. A dinner host who could entertain an audience while unwrapping was rich enough to own an actual mummy.</p>
<p>The thrill of seeing dried flesh and bones appearing as bandages came off meant people flocked to these unwrappings, whether in a private home or the theatre of a learned society. <a href="https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/egyptian-mummy-seller-1865/">Strong drink meant</a>audiences were loud and appreciative.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467341/original/file-20220607-26-dmbt3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467341/original/file-20220607-26-dmbt3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467341/original/file-20220607-26-dmbt3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467341/original/file-20220607-26-dmbt3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467341/original/file-20220607-26-dmbt3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467341/original/file-20220607-26-dmbt3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467341/original/file-20220607-26-dmbt3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467341/original/file-20220607-26-dmbt3p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Examination of a Mummy by Paul Dominique Philippoteaux c 1891.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The mummy’s curse</h2>
<p>Mummy unwrapping parties ended as the 20th century began. The macabre thrills seemed in bad taste and the <a href="https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/disrespect-desecration-victorian-mummy-unwrapping-0010129">inevitable destruction</a> of archaeological remains seemed regrettable. </p>
<p>Then the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb fuelled a <a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2017/05/26/desecration-and-romanticisation--the-real-curse-of-mummies.html">craze</a> that shaped <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170420-where-does-the-legend-of-the-mummy-come-from">art deco</a> design in everything from the motifs of doors in the Chrysler Building to the <a href="https://www.artdeco.org/origins-influences">shape of clocks designed by Cartier</a>. The sudden death in 1923 of Lord Carnarvon, sponsor of the Tutankhamen expedition, was from natural causes but soon attributed to a new superstition – “<a href="https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/civil/egypt/egtut04e.html#:%7E:text=The%20belief%20in%20the%20mummy's,mosquito%20bite%20that%20became%20infected.">the mummy’s curse</a>”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467338/original/file-20220607-16-senkyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467338/original/file-20220607-16-senkyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467338/original/file-20220607-16-senkyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467338/original/file-20220607-16-senkyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467338/original/file-20220607-16-senkyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467338/original/file-20220607-16-senkyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467338/original/file-20220607-16-senkyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467338/original/file-20220607-16-senkyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Howard Carter opens the innermost shrine of King Tutankhamen’s tomb.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The New York Times photo archive/ Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Modern mummies</h2>
<p>In 2016 Egyptologist John J. Johnston hosted the first <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbqagn/uncovering-dead-victorian-mummy-unwrapping-party">public unwrapping</a> of a mummy since 1908. Part art, part science, and part show, Johnston created a an immersive recreation of what it was like to be present at a Victorian unwrapping.</p>
<p>It was as tasteless as possible, with everything from the Bangles’ Walk Like an Egyptian playing on loud speaker to the plying of attendees with straight gin. </p>
<p>The mummy was only an actor wrapped in bandages but the event was a heady sensory mix. The fact it took place at St Bart’s Hospital in London was a modern reminder that mummies cross many realms of experience from the medical to the macabre. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467336/original/file-20220607-15990-r9cfbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467336/original/file-20220607-15990-r9cfbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467336/original/file-20220607-15990-r9cfbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467336/original/file-20220607-15990-r9cfbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467336/original/file-20220607-15990-r9cfbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467336/original/file-20220607-15990-r9cfbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467336/original/file-20220607-15990-r9cfbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467336/original/file-20220607-15990-r9cfbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Egyptian conservators clean a female mummy dated to Pharaonic late period, (712-323 BC), in the conservation centre of Egypt’s Grand Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amr Nabil/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, the black market of antiquity smuggling – including mummies – is worth about <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-21/egypts-3-billion-dollar-smuggling-problem/10388394">US$3 billion</a>.</p>
<p>No serious archaeologist would unwrap a mummy and no physician suggest eating one. But the lure of the mummy remains strong. They are still for sale, still exploited, and still a commodity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177551/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marcus Harmes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From unwrapping parties to grinding-up mummies to make medicine, Europe has a long and strange relationship with Ancient Egyptian remains.Marcus Harmes, Professor in Pathways Education, University of Southern QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1172532019-05-22T19:48:16Z2019-05-22T19:48:16ZHow we solved the mystery of Libyan desert glass<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275324/original/file-20190520-69169-1pwuxu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C216%2C2945%2C1819&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A collection of raw Libyan desert glass.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Linnas/Shutterstock </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the remote desert of western Egypt, near the Libyan border, lie clues to an ancient cosmic cataclysm. </p>
<p>Libyan desert glass is the name given to fragments of canary-yellow glass found scattered over hundreds of kilometres, between giant shifting sand dunes. </p>
<p>Interest in Libyan desert glass goes back more than 3,000 years. Among items recovered from King Tut’s burial chamber is a <a href="http://gem.gov.eg/index/Gallery%20-G1_3.htm">gold and jewel-encrusted breastplate</a>. In the centre sits a beautiful scarab beetle, carved from Libyan desert glass.</p>
<p>Libyan desert glass – raw and carved – is <a href="https://www.ebay.com/b/Libyan-Desert-Glass/3239/bn_55190490">easily available today</a>, but how the glass formed has long puzzled scientists.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/570318/overestimation-of-threat-from-100-mt-class" title="Overestimation of threat from 100 Mt–class airbursts? High-pressure evidence from zircon in Libyan Desert Glass">research</a> has found the answer.</p>
<h2>The heat is on</h2>
<p><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1945-5100.1996.tb02017.x" title="New fission‐track age determinations on impact glasses">Studies</a> show the Libyan desert glass formed about 29 million years ago. The glass is nearly pure silica, which requires temperatures above 1,600°C to form, and that is hotter than any igneous rock on Earth. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274879/original/file-20190516-69204-dttve2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274879/original/file-20190516-69204-dttve2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274879/original/file-20190516-69204-dttve2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=257&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274879/original/file-20190516-69204-dttve2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=257&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274879/original/file-20190516-69204-dttve2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=257&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274879/original/file-20190516-69204-dttve2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274879/original/file-20190516-69204-dttve2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274879/original/file-20190516-69204-dttve2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Optical light images of a thin slice of Libyan desert glass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aaron J Cavosie</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But few mineral relics survived from whatever caused the melting. Within the glass are rare occurrences of high-temperature minerals, including a form of quartz called cristobalite.</p>
<p>There are also grains of the mineral zircon, although most have reacted to form a higher-temperature mineral called <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-disappointing-earring-and-the-worlds-hottest-rock-zirconia-97084">zirconia</a>.</p>
<p>Ideas about how the glass formed include melting during meteorite impact, or melting caused by an airburst from an asteroid or other object burning up high in Earth’s atmosphere.</p>
<p>Despite many studies, definitive proof about which origin is correct has been elusive, until now. </p>
<p>One problem is that no impact crater from any object hitting the ground in the area has been identified as the source of the glass. Another was the lack of evidence of damage from high-pressure shock waves caused by any impact. </p>
<h2>Evidence of impact</h2>
<p>Our research, <a href="https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/570318/overestimation-of-threat-from-100-mt-class" title="Overestimation of threat from 100 Mt–class airbursts? High-pressure evidence from zircon in Libyan Desert Glass">published in the journal Geology</a>, reports the first evidence of high-pressure damage, showing the glass formed during a meteorite impact.</p>
<p>Meteorite impacts and airbursts are both catastrophic events. Large meteorite impacts, such as the one that <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/dinosaur-extinction/">killed the dinosaurs</a> more than 65 million years ago, are rare.</p>
<p>But airbursts occur more frequently. An <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131106-russian-meteor-chelyabinsk-airburst-500-kilotons/">airburst over Chelyabinsk</a>, Russia, in 2013 caused extensive property damage and injured people.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tq02C_3FvFo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Boom!</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Chelyabinsk airburst <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/06/chelyabinsk-meteor-russia">deposited 0.5 megatons of energy</a> into the sky. Despite the damage, that event did not cause melting or shock damage.</p>
<p>In contrast, Libyan desert glass is thought by some to have been caused by a 100-megaton airburst, an event 200 times larger than the Russian airburst.</p>
<p>The airburst idea arose from modelling atmospheric nuclear explosions. Like a nuclear bomb, a large airburst deposits energy into the atmosphere that can melt surface materials. And an airburst does not leave a crater.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/target-earth-how-asteroids-made-an-impact-on-australia-92836">Target Earth: how asteroids made an impact on Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The ‘smoking gun’</h2>
<p>The new “smoking gun” for understanding the origin of the Libyan desert glass is evidence of an unusual mineral called reidite. Reidite only forms during a meteorite impact, when atoms in the mineral zircon are forced into a tighter arrangement.</p>
<p>Such high-pressure minerals are a hallmark of a meteorite impact, and do not form during airbursts.</p>
<p>Zircon is a common mineral in granite, sandstone and other rock types. It is known from Earth, the Moon, Mars, and various meteorites. It is widely used for dating when rocks formed.</p>
<p>Zircon is also useful when searching for evidence of shock deformation caused by a meteorite impact. At low shock intensity, zircon deforms by bending of the crystal. It is like bending a plastic spoon to the point where it deforms but does not break.</p>
<p>As the shock intensity increases, zircon further responds in several unique ways and at extreme pressures, reidite forms. </p>
<p>If the rocks then get hot, zircon will recrystallise. This results in the formation of a network of new, tiny interlocking grains. Above 1,700°C zircon ultimately breaks down to zirconia. </p>
<p>Libyan desert glass contains many zircon grains, all smaller than the width of a human hair. While most reacted to zirconia due to the heat, about 10% preserve evidence of former reidite. But the thing is, reidite is no longer present.</p>
<p>Reidite is not stable when hot, and reverts back to zircon above 1,200°C. It only gets preserved if shocked rocks do not melt. So it takes a specialised technique called electron backscatter diffraction to nut out whether reidite once existed in shocked zircons that got hot. </p>
<p>The key to finding evidence of <a href="https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/46/10/891/548169/" title="FRIGN zircon—The only terrestrial mineral diagnostic of high-pressure and high-temperature shock deformation">former reidite</a> lies in analysing the crystal orientations of the tiny interlocking grains in reverted zircon.</p>
<p>Similar to turning a Rubik’s cube, the initial transformation to reidite occurs along specific directions in a zircon crystal. When reidite changes back to zircon, it leaves a fingerprint of its existence that can be detected through orientation analysis. </p>
<p>And we found the reidite fingerprint in samples of the Libyan desert glass. We examined zircon grains from seven samples and the critical crystal orientation evidence of former reidite was present in each sample.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275583/original/file-20190521-23835-10b4w9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275583/original/file-20190521-23835-10b4w9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275583/original/file-20190521-23835-10b4w9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275583/original/file-20190521-23835-10b4w9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275583/original/file-20190521-23835-10b4w9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275583/original/file-20190521-23835-10b4w9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275583/original/file-20190521-23835-10b4w9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275583/original/file-20190521-23835-10b4w9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A closer look at Libyan desert glass: The colors indicate the crystal orientations of tiny interlocking grains of recrystallised zircon. A recrystallized zircon with no history of reidite would be the same color.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aaron J Cavosie</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A meteor impact</h2>
<p>Reidite is rare and only reported from meteorite impact sites. It is found in material <a href="https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/43/10/899/131727/" title="Precambrian reidite discovered in shocked zircon from the Stac Fada impactite, Scotland">ejected</a> from craters and in shocked <a href="https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/43/4/315/131844/" title="Nanoscale records of ancient shock deformation: Reidite (ZrSiO4) in sandstone at the Ordovician Rock Elm impact crater">rocks</a> at craters.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-disappointing-earring-and-the-worlds-hottest-rock-zirconia-97084">A disappointing earring, and the world's hottest rock: zirconia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Prior studies have found evidence of former reidite within zircon from <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703718306513" title="A new U-Pb age for shock-recrystallised zircon from the Lappajärvi impact crater, Finland, and implications for the accurate dating of impact events">impact melt</a>, similar to how it was identified in Libyan desert glass.</p>
<p>A 100 megaton airburst should occur <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576513003500" title="Airburst warning and response">every 10,000 years</a>. If this size event is supposed to have caused Libyan desert glass to form, the geological record does not support the idea. The reidite fingerprint points to a meteor impact as the only option.</p>
<p>Outstanding mysteries about Libyan desert glass still remain, such as the location of the source crater, its size, and determining if it has eroded away.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117253/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aaron J. Cavosie receives funding from the Australian Research Council for work not related to this study.</span></em></p>The origin of Libyan desert glass found scattered in an Egyptian desert has puzzled scientists for years. But a new look at the glass structure reveals its meteoric formation.Aaron J. Cavosie, Senior research fellow, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/795192017-06-30T10:35:06Z2017-06-30T10:35:06ZThe Mummy: what our obsession with ancient Egypt reveals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176087/original/file-20170628-31335-f60pva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=598%2C0%2C2322%2C1491&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With another version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-mummy-struggles-with-the-chemistry-but-gets-the-physics-right-with-a-crash-78997/">The Mummy</a> menacing cinemas, the “curse of the pharaohs” is back. Again. Hollywood’s determination to put marauding mummies in our sights suggests we still haven’t reached “peak curse”, almost a century after the <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(03)13576-3/fulltext">sudden death of Lord Carnarvon</a> made headlines.</p>
<p>So why was the idea of ill-fated Egyptology so alluring in the 1920s, when Carnarvon and Howard Carter found Tutankhamun’s tomb – and why does it keep returning to haunt us? One answer is that our obsessions are never really about the ancient past. They arise from the perspective people develop at a given moment, as they use the ancient past to express their own anxieties – and aspirations. </p>
<p>The 1920s offers a case in point, as I explore in my <a href="http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781780237268">new book</a>. At the same time the treasures of Tutankhamun and the curse of the pharaohs caught the imagination of mainstream culture, two modernist movements (Pharaonism in Egypt, the Harlem Renaissance in America) were interpreting ancient Egypt in a very different way. To them, ancient Egypt was an inspiration to take seriously, not turn into a fun, or a fright, show.</p>
<h2>King Tut</h2>
<p>In November 1922, backed by the Earl of Carnarvon, Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings. To the British press, it was the first positive news from Egypt in years. (Egypt had been a difficult “veiled protectorate” since 1882, and earlier in 1922 Britain had decided to let Egypt elect its own government while keeping hold of foreign affairs and the Suez Canal.) And so the world went mad for “King Tut”, as he was quickly dubbed. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176093/original/file-20170628-31302-v1kyq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176093/original/file-20170628-31302-v1kyq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176093/original/file-20170628-31302-v1kyq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176093/original/file-20170628-31302-v1kyq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176093/original/file-20170628-31302-v1kyq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1020&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176093/original/file-20170628-31302-v1kyq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1020&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176093/original/file-20170628-31302-v1kyq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1020&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon opening the wall to the burial chamber of the tomb of Tutankhamun, February 1923.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photograph by Harry Burton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In England and America, popular songs, stage shows, and fashion design all celebrated Tutankhamun, as did advertising for everything from biscuits to cigarettes. There were Tut-themed balls in New York, student hi-jinks at Cambridge University, and a life-size recreation of the tomb’s antechamber built for the British Empire Exhibition in 1924 and seen by more than 27m people at Wembley Stadium, which was built for the purpose.</p>
<p>Call it Tut-mania, as many people do, but there was a certain method beneath the madness. The more King Tut could be treated as “one of us”, with “us” being white Euro-Americans, the more it seemed like he belonged to “us”, too, along with the rest of ancient Egypt. What better way to make a claim on culture than commodify it? Even news coverage and photographs of the tomb were for sale: Carnarvon gave The Times (of London) exclusive access to the find in return for a share of its profits. That riled other news outlets – including the thriving Egyptian press, suddenly banned from reporting a discovery in its own back yard.</p>
<h2>Other Egypts</h2>
<p>But neither Carnarvon nor Carter had thought about how much this rare find – the only royal burial discovered more or less intact – would mean to modern Egyptians. Poets and playwrights lauded the resurrection of Tutankhamun, comparing it to the rebirth of Egypt itself after centuries of slumber. The movement for an independent Egypt went hand-in-hand with an artistic and literary movement known as <a href="http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.5743/cairo/9789774166891.003.0004">Pharaonism</a> (<em>Fir‘awniyya</em>). No one could dispute the might of the Egyptian pharaohs. Rulers such as Ramses or Cleopatra, plus symbols such as sphinxes and pyramids, were harnessed to express the ambitions of the new state – and the antiquity of its roots.</p>
<p>Nobel prize-winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz, who had witnessed street uprisings against Britain in his childhood (and visited the Cairo Museum), used ancient Egyptian themes in his first novels, while the Paris-trained sculptor Mahmoud Mukhtar raised public subscriptions for his colossal sculpture <em>“Nahdet Misr”,</em> “Egypt’s Renaissance”. Carved, like the lid of Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus, out of red granite from Aswan, the sculpture pairs a sphinx and an idealised image of Egyptian womanhood. It now stands outside <a href="http://cu.edu.eg/Home">Cairo University</a> – an institution whose founding the British administration had opposed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176094/original/file-20170628-31312-17h0nm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176094/original/file-20170628-31312-17h0nm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176094/original/file-20170628-31312-17h0nm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176094/original/file-20170628-31312-17h0nm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176094/original/file-20170628-31312-17h0nm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176094/original/file-20170628-31312-17h0nm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176094/original/file-20170628-31312-17h0nm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176094/original/file-20170628-31312-17h0nm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Egypt’s Renaissance, 1919-28, Mahmoud Mukhtar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zerida / Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The antiquity and independence of ancient Egypt spoke to other 1920s cultural movements, too – including the group of African-American writers and artists known as the Harlem Renaissance. “Egypt” and “Ethiopia” were both synonymous with an Africa free of European control: Egypt because of its ancient history, and Ethiopia because it had fought off an Italian invasion in 1896. </p>
<p>“<a href="http://collections.si.edu/search/tag/tagDoc.htm?recordID=nmaahc_2013.242.1&hlterm=Fuller+Meta+Vaux+Warrick">Ethiopia Awakening</a>” was the title of an Egyptian-themed statue by Philadelphia-born Meta Warwick Fuller, who had studied with Rodin in Paris. It represents a woman with a beatific expression, black physiognomy, and a pharaonic head-scarf, unwinding herself from the constraints of mummy bandages. Cast in bronze, the statue featured in the “Colored Section” of the America’s Making Exposition in New York in 1921, organised to celebrate immigration. Although African-Americans had been forced migrants in slavery, organiser WEB DuBois saw a chance for the exposition to promote their contribution to the US. Meta Warwick Fuller turned a mummy into a force for good: there is no curse or vengeance in her Ethiopia sculpture, just freedom – or the longing for it.</p>
<h2>Egyptomania</h2>
<p>We admire the 1920s as the Jazz Age, an era when what we think of as modern Western mores sprang from the ruins of war. But what looks more sophisticated in retrospect: Britain’s imperial adoption of Egyptology and the Western commercial mania for mummies and King Tut, or the creative output ancient Egypt inspired in Egyptians and African-Americans, in the same decade? </p>
<p>“Ethiopia Awakening” looked to a future based on dignity and equality, as did <em>“Nahdet Misr”</em> – while the British Empire Exhibition, with its Tutankhamun replicas, looked to the rapidly setting sun of British imperialism. Perhaps any curse in Carnarvon’s untimely death wasn’t from what he and Carter discovered, but what they overlooked – that theirs was not the only “ancient Egypt” out there. </p>
<p>It’s a useful caution that we should look for the method that might lie behind any Egyptomania today, whether that entails movie franchises or museum displays. Turning sacred objects (which is what mummies were, to the people who made them) into light entertainment hardly flatters any of us. Nor does imagining the Middle East as an origin-place for horror and a threat to white masculinity, this time in the guise of Tom Cruise. If we are doomed to rehashing The Mummy, in other words, it’s a curse not of Egypt’s making – but ours.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79519/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christina Riggs explores obsessions with ancient Egypt through the centuries in her book Egypt: Lost Civilizations, published by Reaktion on July 1 2017. She has received funding from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust for research on the photographic archive from the 1920s excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb.</span></em></p>Tut-mania reigned in the 1920s – and keeps returning to haunt us.Christina Riggs, Reader in Art History and World Art Studies, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/795322017-06-22T06:01:57Z2017-06-22T06:01:57ZWhy we love (and fear) mummies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174243/original/file-20170616-545-burvo4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Mummy, in its 2017 rendition, rehashes an 80-year-old franchise focused on revived Egyptian corpses.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-207060/photos/detail/?cmediafile=21366208">AlloCine</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Somewhere in Iraq, the tomb raider Nick Morton (a never-ageing Tom Cruise) flies over the desert. This is where Egyptian queen Ahmanet lies in her tomb for eternity. Or so we thought.</p>
<p>The plot of Alex Kurtzman’s latest Hollywood blockbuster, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2345759/">The Mummy</a>, which cost <a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/news/mummy-box-office-tom-cruise-thursday-opening-1202459373/">US$125 million</a> to make and was released on June 14, brings back a classic cinematographic and literary theme: mummies unleashed.</p>
<p>In Kurtzman’s film, the desiccated queen, played by French-Algerian actress Sofia Boutella, is exotic, sensual and, in turn, monstrous. Enraged at her unearthing, she chases Morton and his cohort to the other side of the world with a millennium’s worth of pent-up resentment.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IjHgzkQM2Sg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for The Mummy, 2017.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kurtzman’s flick <a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/news/box-office-wonder-woman-the-mummy-tom-cruise-1202457429/">revives a long-standing franchise</a> dating back to the 1930s, this time with the novel twist of a woman playing the role of desiccated protagonist. Generally telling tales of forbidden love, terrible curses, eroticism and death, mummy flicks have entertained generations of spectators. </p>
<p>Why this fascination for Egyptian corpses?</p>
<h2>Enter Egyptomania</h2>
<p>It all started in the 19th century.</p>
<p>In 1822, the French scholar Jean-François Champollion, who’d been awed by Egypt since <a href="https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/articles/the-campaign-in-egypt/">Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 military campaign</a> there, cracked the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/decipherment_01.shtml">mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics</a>, and the whole world became fascinated with this ancient north African civilisation. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173977/original/file-20170615-23537-1witqri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173977/original/file-20170615-23537-1witqri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173977/original/file-20170615-23537-1witqri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173977/original/file-20170615-23537-1witqri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173977/original/file-20170615-23537-1witqri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173977/original/file-20170615-23537-1witqri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173977/original/file-20170615-23537-1witqri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ramses II, photographed in 1889.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Ramses_II_-_The_mummy.jpg?uselang=fr">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A few decades later, the Romance of the Mummy, by French novelist <a href="https://camillesourget.com/en-8898--the-romance-of-the-mummy-by-theophile-gautier-illustrated-by-alexandre-lunois.html">Théophile Gautier</a>, associated for the first time eroticism and death in the form of the mummy. </p>
<p>The 1857 book, in which archaeologists discover the body of <a href="https://books.google.de/books?id=y6jpAAAAMAAJ&q=queen+Tahoser+reign&dq=queen+Tahoser+reign&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwlP-YnczUAhXJIlAKHbKEBroQ6AEILjAB">Queen Tahoser</a> (inspired by a real queen from the 12th century BC) – a magnificent young woman who also happens to be perfectly preserved – became an instant bestseller.</p>
<p>By the 1880s, European archaeologists had discovered the mummies of pharaohs Ramses II, Ahmose and Thutmose III and their research had a huge following in Europe and North America, nourishing the West’s growing <a href="https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/2944207">Egyptomania</a>.</p>
<p>The public was particularly fascinated by the sophisticated techniques used to preserve the ancient bodies. When the 3,000-year-old mummy of <a href="http://www.mummiesexhibition.co.uk/egyptian-pharaoh-seti.html">Pharaoh Seti I</a> was discovered in 1881, it looked like he’d only just fallen asleep. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173886/original/file-20170614-21345-8i1o9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173886/original/file-20170614-21345-8i1o9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173886/original/file-20170614-21345-8i1o9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173886/original/file-20170614-21345-8i1o9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173886/original/file-20170614-21345-8i1o9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173886/original/file-20170614-21345-8i1o9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173886/original/file-20170614-21345-8i1o9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tutankhamun has inspired many legends and cursed more than a few on-screen archaeologists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/fr/toutankhamon-pharaon-masque-or-king-509752/">Sriom/Pixabay</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1892, best-selling author Sir Conan Doyle published <a href="https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=Lot_No._249">Lot No. 249</a>, in which a mummy bought at auction is revived by an Oxford student who then uses the creature as a weapon. This theme would go on to inspire horror films into the 20th century. </p>
<p>Egyptomania reached its peak with the <a href="http://mashable.com/2015/11/04/king-tut-discovery/#C2gUfxxFWPqS">discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, in 1922</a>, in the Valley of the Kings. When Lord Carnarvon, the wealthy British amateur Egyptologist <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/10973256/Why-the-world-went-wild-for-King-Tut.html">who had funded the excavation of the tomb</a>, died the following year, the Western press was quick to spread the rumour <a href="https://www.livescience.com/44297-king-tut-curse.html">of a fatal curse</a> that would kill all European archaeologists associated with the expedition. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173981/original/file-20170615-23508-1gx9cdr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173981/original/file-20170615-23508-1gx9cdr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173981/original/file-20170615-23508-1gx9cdr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173981/original/file-20170615-23508-1gx9cdr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173981/original/file-20170615-23508-1gx9cdr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173981/original/file-20170615-23508-1gx9cdr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173981/original/file-20170615-23508-1gx9cdr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Meet with the kings at the Mummy Room in Cairo Museum in Egypt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://travellergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/egyptian-museum-cairo-mummy-room.jpg">TravellerGroup</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Thus a legend was born.</p>
<h2>Mummy fever</h2>
<p>Films clearly engender and play on a fear of mummies and their ancient curses. But mummies also fascinate us, making us feel we can vanquish time by preserving the most perishable part of our bodies: the flesh. </p>
<p>Ancient Egyptians developed <a href="http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/mummies/story/page2.html">the art of embalming cadavers</a> to ensure eternal life, emptying the body of its viscera, removing the brain via the nostrils using bronze hooks, and placing the body in a bath of natron, a sodium carbonate mix, for approximately 40 days, which desiccated it completely.</p>
<p>Only the heart, necessary for the deceased to be resurrected <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/ancient-egypt/videos/journey-to-the-afterlife">in the afterlife</a>, was kept in its place. Is it any surprise, then, that other leaders with dreams of reigning eternal should want their bodies to be embalmed, too?</p>
<p>When Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, his mummy was placed in a mausoleum at the centre of <a href="https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/1710904">Alexandria</a>, the city he founded, and worshipped. Luminaries such as Julius Caesar and Augustus visited to his tomb.</p>
<p>The communist era also saw its share of mummifications too. Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao were both embalmed, and Lenin’s mummy, on display in Moscow’s Red Square, is considered a sacred relic. A team of scientists maintains and retouches it so frequently that the 147-year-old leader actually seems to be <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3053265/How-Lenin-s-corpse-looks-better-age-Scientists-reveal-experimental-embalming-methods-used-Soviet-leader.html">getting younger</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qnvmsbTTcls?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Lenin’s mummy, which has been kept in Red Square since 1924, is ‘freshened up’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>When cinema takes over</h2>
<p>All of this has proven irresistible for filmmakers. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the last copy of an 1899 French mummy film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000234/">Cleopatra’s Tomb</a>, directed by Georges Méliès, disappeared in the 1930s.</p>
<p>In 1932, Universal Pictures made the first major mummy film in <a href="https://www.leblogducinema.com/critiques-films/critique-universal-monsters-momie-39870/">cinematic history</a>. Directed by Karl Freund, The Mummy features the inimitable <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000472/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm">Boris Karloff</a>, who had played Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein the year before. As the undead Im-Ho-Tep, Karloff’s make-up was inspired by the head of Pharaoh Seti I.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173984/original/file-20170615-23559-1j75550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173984/original/file-20170615-23559-1j75550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173984/original/file-20170615-23559-1j75550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173984/original/file-20170615-23559-1j75550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173984/original/file-20170615-23559-1j75550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173984/original/file-20170615-23559-1j75550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173984/original/file-20170615-23559-1j75550.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Boris Karloff, 1932 in The Mummy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mummy_(1932_film)#/media/File:The_Mummy,_Boris_Karloff_(1932).jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173887/original/file-20170614-15456-1p1m7bn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173887/original/file-20170614-15456-1p1m7bn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173887/original/file-20170614-15456-1p1m7bn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173887/original/file-20170614-15456-1p1m7bn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173887/original/file-20170614-15456-1p1m7bn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173887/original/file-20170614-15456-1p1m7bn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173887/original/file-20170614-15456-1p1m7bn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Head of pharaoh Seti I’s mummy, Cairo Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9thi_Ier#/media/File:Pharaoh_Seti_I_-_His_mummy_-_by_Emil_Brugsch_%281842-1930%29.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Universal would go on to produce another <a href="http://www.vodkaster.com/listes-de-films/la-momie-au-cinema/944164">five mummy films</a> between 1940 and 1955, including the slapstick <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047795/">Abbott and Costello meet the Mummy</a>.</p>
<p>In 1999, the studio produced a remake of their 1932 blockbuster, <a href="http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-mummy-v179644">The Mummy</a>, directed by Stephen Sommers, and released its sequel <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209163/">The Mummy Returns</a> in 2001. Both were major hits.</p>
<p>This, despite the fact that the plots rarely diverge from the obvious: illicit love between an Egyptian queen and a layman; an embalmed victim buried alive in a tomb for eternity, sometimes with beetles inside; a long awaited revenge.</p>
<p>These horror films are often not B but Z movies, and apart for a few exceptions – Kurtzman’s latest attempt not among them – they generally receive bad press. Still, audience interest in macabre fantasies and thrillingly dark stories has not faded. </p>
<p>Egyptomania remains very much alive on the big screen. </p>
<p><em>Christian-Georges Schwentzel is the author of <a href="https://www.babelio.com/livres/Schwentzel-Cleopatre--La-deesse-reine/784074">Cléopâtre, la déesse reine</a> ( Payot).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79532/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christian-Georges Schwentzel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mummies are scary but they also fascinate us, giving us the feeling that we can vanquish time by preserving our most perishable feature: flesh.Christian-Georges Schwentzel, Professeur d'histoire ancienne, Université de LorraineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/774762017-05-25T20:26:03Z2017-05-25T20:26:03ZFriday essay: desecration and romanticisation – the real curse of mummies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170900/original/file-20170525-13190-pt8e8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sofia Boutella rises from the dead in The Mummy. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This June Hollywood’s tomb of old ideas will creak open yet again and present the tale of an ancient Egyptian tomb disturbed by a bumbling archaeologist and/or action-adventure hero, who inadvertently and unwittingly unleashes a curse. </p>
<p>This curse will resurrect a mummy seeking either vengeance or a lost lover, wreaking havoc on contemporary society until our hero can stop it. This year <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2345759/">The Mummy</a>, directed by Alex Kurtzman, will see Hollywood pharaohs Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe face off against a female mummy played by Sofia Boutella. </p>
<p>Heard it before? Kurtzman’s film is just the latest in a staggering line of mummy-mania and Egyptophilia predating even the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. While popular culture has delighted in mummies for over two centuries, in that same time real Egyptian antiquities have been looted, lusted after, and desecrated. In the 19th century, it was even fashionable to host “unwrapping” parties, where mummies were <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=OZFECgAAQBAJ&pg=PA213&dq=mummy+unwrapping+parties&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjohuXmg4XUAhVFmZQKHRz3CqIQ6AEIQDAF#v=onepage&q=mummy%20unwrapping%20parties&f=false">revealed and dissected as a social event</a> within Victorian parlours. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sCdV3esMr9M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>A mummy is a deceased human or animal whose skin and organs have been preserved. This can either be done deliberately, through chemical embalming processes, or accidentally, thanks to the climate. A number of ancient cultures practised deliberate mummification, such as the <a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/1995/03/chinchorro-mummies/arriaza-text">Chinchorro people</a> of South America, and most famously, the desiccated bodies of ancient Egypt, which were <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/egyptian-mummies-science-or-sacrilege-9399191.html">meticulously prepared for the afterlife</a>. </p>
<p>Mummy studies has become a major <a href="http://www.centromallqui.pe/mummycongress/">academic discipline</a> and more continue to be found. Within the last month we have seen the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/14/egypt-archaeologists-find-17-new-mummies-in-necropolis">discovery of 17 mummies</a> in a necropolis near the Nile Valley city of Minya and the finding of a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-19/egypt-discovers-3000-year-old-tomb-of-nobleman/8452084">New Kingdom nobleman’s tomb in Luxor</a>. Despite this level of scholarly attention and meticulous archaeological investigation, sadly illicit looting and smuggling of antiquities from Egypt, including mummies, continues today. </p>
<h2>Everything really old is new again</h2>
<p>With a reported budget of $125 million, filmed principally in Oxford and the British Museum, The Mummy is a big budget investment for Universal Studios. History suggests that the movie will be a major success. </p>
<p>Still, the mother of all mummy movies remains the 1932 original Universal film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023245/">The Mummy</a>, starring Boris Karloff; it sets the template for the others to follow. Egyptian priest Imhotep, sympathetically played by Karloff, was mummified alive for attempting to revive his forbidden lover, the princess Ankh-es-en-amon. Discovered by archaeologists who resurrect him by reading from the Scroll of Thoth, Imhotep believes that a modern woman Helen Grosvenor (played by Zita Johann) is the princess’ reincarnation and hunts her through modern London. Not so much a monster then as a misunderstood lover. </p>
<p>More than a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Mummy_in_Fact_Fiction_and_Film.html?id=HNntKoypshsC&redir_esc=y">dozen films</a> followed, from the 40s-era (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035096/">The Mummy’s Tomb</a>), the 50s (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053085/">The Mummy</a>) the 80s (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080402/">The Awakening</a>), and culminating with the 1999’s box office smash, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120616/">The Mummy</a>, which spawned two sequels and a spinoff prequel franchise. </p>
<p>Each of these films has fundamentally the same plot. In the 2017 version, a woman is raised from the dead rather than a man, but even this is not new. Hammer’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068290/">Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb</a> (1971) featured a female mummy (Valerie Leon), who is revived and then walks around in far-too-few clothes for a London winter. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169454/original/file-20170516-11941-iwonx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169454/original/file-20170516-11941-iwonx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169454/original/file-20170516-11941-iwonx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169454/original/file-20170516-11941-iwonx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169454/original/file-20170516-11941-iwonx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169454/original/file-20170516-11941-iwonx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169454/original/file-20170516-11941-iwonx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169454/original/file-20170516-11941-iwonx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Valerie Leon in Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Of curses and kings</h2>
<p>Why is the mummy such a popular trope in horror cinema? The mummy, it can be argued, symbolises some of our most basic fears surrounding mortality.
The mummy’s enduring appeal can also be traced to the one archaeological dig everyone on the planet has heard of: Tutankhamun’s tomb. The discovery of this tomb by <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=25Y2fiAWpWkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=discovery+of+tutankhamun%27s+tomb&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiM_JGu1_PTAhWLi7wKHQGIAUQQ6AEIJzAB#v=onepage&q&f=false">Howard Carter</a> in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 made international headlines. The resulting Tut-mania influenced all manner of popular culture from Art Deco design and fashion, to pop songs and <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-28403598">advertising</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7ZWB5-aXMXQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Archival footage of Carter’s excavations at the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A recent exhibition at Oxford’s <a href="http://www.ashmolean.org/exhibitions/discovertut/">Ashmolean Museum</a> explored just how famous Tutankhamun was during this key period of mummy-mania. Media coverage of the excavations was insatiable. Carter had an exclusive deal with the Daily Express newspaper, which led other reporters to embellish their stories. This led to reports of a supposed (but non-existent) curse on the tomb, “Death comes on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the King”. It was nonsense of course, but once the financier of the archaeological project, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=JUciSsErVcMC&pg=PA4&dq=Lord+Carnarvon+and+the+curse&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjltvD-1_PTAhVFUbwKHSDGDBoQ6AEINTAD#v=onepage&q=Lord%20Carnarvon%20and%20the%20curse&f=false">Lord Carnarvon, died in Cairo</a> thanks to an infected mosquito bite, the curse story took off faster than any real news. In popular culture, mummies and curses became irreversibly linked. </p>
<p>The discovery of Tutankhamun by Carter’s team has itself inspired a number of fictionalised retellings, of varying degrees of fidelity to history, including the movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080582/">The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb</a> (1980), a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0464799/">TV movie remake</a> of the same name in 2006, and the 2016 British TV series <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5193662/">Tutankhamun</a>.</p>
<p>While Tut perpetuated the Hollywood craze for mummies, the public fascination for curses predates Carnarvon’s unfortunate death. A series of silent films with mummy themes were made in the first years of cinema, including <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000234/">Cleopatra’s Tomb</a> (1899) by pioneering film-maker George Melies, and 1911’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409066/">The Mummy</a>. Unfortunately most of these have not survived. </p>
<p>There was also a rich 19th-century tradition of mummy literature. Mummies appeared in everything from serious works to penny dreadfuls. A number of famed writers told stories that cemented the curse story, including Louisa May Alcott’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=B4GxDAAAQBAJ&dq=Lost+in+a+pyramid&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjc0Iuj2PPTAhUIxbwKHc52AaUQ6AEIKTAB">Lost in a Pyramid: or the Mummy’s Curse</a> (1869); Bram Stoker’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=RhK0AwAAQBAJ&pg=PT242&dq=Jewel+of+seven+stars&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjwn5jZ2PPTAhWK2LwKHfslB28Q6AEIIjAA#v=onepage&q=Jewel%20of%20seven%20stars&f=false">Jewel of Seven Stars</a> (1903) and Arthur Conan Doyle’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=uJ3qsgEACAAJ&dq=Lot+No+249&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiU_vK_2PPTAhWJXbwKHZtMDeAQ6AEILDAB">Lot No. 249</a> (1892). </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170501/original/file-20170523-8895-1x3432l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170501/original/file-20170523-8895-1x3432l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170501/original/file-20170523-8895-1x3432l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170501/original/file-20170523-8895-1x3432l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170501/original/file-20170523-8895-1x3432l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170501/original/file-20170523-8895-1x3432l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170501/original/file-20170523-8895-1x3432l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170501/original/file-20170523-8895-1x3432l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Modern Antiques’ was an 1806 caricature by Thomas Rowlandson which satirizes the British enthusiasm for ancient Egypt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other works went beyond curses. Edgar Allan Poe’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=9AXKCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=some+words+with+a+mummy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjciLz-2PPTAhULQLwKHXaiB7sQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=some%20words%20with%20a%20mummy&f=false">Some Words With a Mummy </a>(1845) was a satirical comment on Egyptomania. There were also romance novels, perhaps best typified by the 1840 story <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=GKB-CgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+mummy%27s+foot&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=The%20mummy%27s%20foot&f=false">The Mummy’s Foot</a> by Théophile Gautier, in which a young man buys a mummified foot from a Parisian antiques shop to use as a paperweight. That night he dreams of the beautiful princess the foot belonged too, and the two fall in love only to be separated by time. </p>
<p>A number of scholars, notably <a href="https://www.academia.edu/331388/The_Mummys_Curse_Mummymania_In_the_English-Speaking_World">Jasmine Day</a>, have been investigating the role of mummies in 19th-century fiction, and one interesting aspect is the number of female writers of these tales.</p>
<p>One of, if not the earliest, mummy story, was Jane Webb (Loudon)’s The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty Second Century (1827), which charts the revival of Cheops in the year 2126. Other female writers provided an interesting subtext and perspective.</p>
<p>The tombs of real Egyptian mummies had been violated and exploited by looters, and a rape analogy is clear within the earlier curse fiction of female writers. In contrast, male writers like Gautier often presented more romanticised or eroticised views of the dead.</p>
<h2>The rape of the Nile</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170484/original/file-20170523-8913-39skqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170484/original/file-20170523-8913-39skqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170484/original/file-20170523-8913-39skqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170484/original/file-20170523-8913-39skqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170484/original/file-20170523-8913-39skqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170484/original/file-20170523-8913-39skqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1306&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170484/original/file-20170523-8913-39skqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1306&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170484/original/file-20170523-8913-39skqu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1306&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">18th century apothecary vessel with the inscription MUMIA from the Deutsches Apothekenmuseum Heidelberg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>European fascination with Egyptian mummies began centuries ago: crushed mummy was sold in apothecaries for a variety of medical and aphrodisiac purposes (<a href="http://search.proquest.com/docview/1290873505?pq-origsite=gscholar">Shakespeare</a> has the witches mention mummies in Macbeth’s cauldron scene).</p>
<p>Meanwhile “mummy brown”, a colouring pigment partially made from ground up mummies, was used in European art (it was particularly favoured by <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ground-mummies-were-once-ingredient-paint-180950350/">the Pre-Raphaelites</a>. </p>
<p>But Egyptomania really began in earnest in the 19th century. Italian-born British explorer <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=rxk_AQAAIAAJ&q=Belzoni%27s+Travels&dq=Belzoni%27s+Travels&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiSq5HG2fPTAhWGvrwKHb3IA5YQ6AEIIjAA">Giovanni Belzoni</a>’s accounts of his 1815-8 adventures in Egypt became legendary, as were the mummies and other antiquities he brought back to London. </p>
<p>His accounts spoke of breaking into tombs and the crunching sounds made beneath his feet as he stood on mummified bodies. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169456/original/file-20170516-11952-1w9h4xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169456/original/file-20170516-11952-1w9h4xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169456/original/file-20170516-11952-1w9h4xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169456/original/file-20170516-11952-1w9h4xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169456/original/file-20170516-11952-1w9h4xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169456/original/file-20170516-11952-1w9h4xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169456/original/file-20170516-11952-1w9h4xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169456/original/file-20170516-11952-1w9h4xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">G.B. Belzoni, Forced Passage into the Second Pyramid of Ghizeh, 1820, hand-coloured etching. UA1992.24. University of Sydney Art Collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sydney University Museums</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scientists accompanying <a href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/description-de-lgypte-ou-recueil-des-observations-et-des-recherches-qui-ont-t#/?tab=navigation">Napoleon’s Egyptian campaigns</a> would discover the <a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=117631&partId=1">Rosetta Stone</a>, which would later in the UK lead to the <a href="https://archive.org/details/prcisdusystmehi00chamgoog">deciphering of hieroglyphs</a>. Egyptian tourism took off by the mid-19th century. All of this saw a growing interest in Egypt. Mummies, or at least mummified remains, became valued items in national museum collections and personal cabinets of curiosities. </p>
<p>The desire for owning mummies and other Egyptian artefacts, coupled with European colonial expansion and a fascination with Orientalism drove a massive market for human remains and other antiquities. Famously described as <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=CI84DgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+rape+of+the+nile&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwic49je2fPTAhUCWrwKHSi3D6cQ6AEIIjAA#v=onepage&q=the%20rape%20of%20the%20nile&f=false">“the rape of the Nile”</a>, this looting was on a monumental scale, literally in the case of obelisks and giant sculptures. Entrepreneurial Egyptians established antiquities shops to supply the insatiable desire of European visitors to own the past. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169457/original/file-20170516-11952-qiog15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169457/original/file-20170516-11952-qiog15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169457/original/file-20170516-11952-qiog15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169457/original/file-20170516-11952-qiog15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169457/original/file-20170516-11952-qiog15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169457/original/file-20170516-11952-qiog15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169457/original/file-20170516-11952-qiog15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169457/original/file-20170516-11952-qiog15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mummy of a boy, early second century AD, from Thebes, Egypt.
NMR26.1, Nicholson Museum, The University of Sydney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sydney University Museums</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many of the mummies ended up in museums intended for scholarly study, even here in <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/after-2000-years-scan-solves-mummy-mystery-20090617-chw9.html">Australia</a>. From <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/museums/collections_search/?record=eevents.123">university museums</a> to <a href="http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/explore/museum-galleries/ancient-egypt">state collections</a> to <a href="https://mona.net.au/museum/introduction">private institutions</a> such as MONA, a surprisingly large number of mummies have made it to this country. </p>
<p>Others ended in the hands of private European and American collectors where both public and private unwrapping parties became popular. Surgeon Thomas Pettigrew’s unwrappings in a Piccadilly Theatre in the 1820s were the first of what became a popular event by the middle of that century. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169461/original/file-20170516-11924-u950x9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169461/original/file-20170516-11924-u950x9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169461/original/file-20170516-11924-u950x9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169461/original/file-20170516-11924-u950x9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169461/original/file-20170516-11924-u950x9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169461/original/file-20170516-11924-u950x9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169461/original/file-20170516-11924-u950x9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169461/original/file-20170516-11924-u950x9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Dominique Philippoteaux, Examen d'une momie - Une prêtresse d'Ammon, oil on canvas, Egypt, c.1895 - 1910.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Nahum at the Leicester Galleries</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was partially the scale of this loss that drove Egypt to develop one of the world’s first antiquities laws. Enacted by an 1835 decree, it aimed to prevent unauthorised removal of antiquities from the country. </p>
<p>This was followed by the creation of the <a href="http://www.sca-egypt.org/eng/sca_history.htm">Supreme Council of Antiquities</a> in 1858 and the opening of the Cairo Museum five years later. The flood of Egyptian antiquities abroad did not halt, but it definitely slowed and, combined with the rise of the academic discipline of archaeology, saw a gradual shift in the understanding of the importance of context for antiquities. </p>
<p>Subsequent tightening of legislation in Egypt and elsewhere, followed by the <a href="http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13039&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html">1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property</a> has created the modern environment for <a href="https://theconversation.com/mummies-have-had-a-bad-wrap-its-time-for-a-reassessment-48729">ethical archaeological investigation</a> and legal exportation of antiquities.</p>
<h2>No end to Egypto-mania</h2>
<p>However looting still remains a major problem in Egypt today, particularly with the decline in tourism and economic hardships that has come with the political turmoil following the 2011 Arab Spring. The number of antiquities looted and smuggled out of Egypt remains extraordinary high. An estimated <a href="http://www.livescience.com/55687-children-dying-in-egypt-looting.html">$26 million worth of looted antiquities</a> were illegally transported to the US from Egypt in just the first five months of 2016. </p>
<p>According to the website <a href="http://www.livescience.com/55687-children-dying-in-egypt-looting.html">Live Science</a>, antiquities guards have been “gunned down” while protecting an ancient tomb and “mummies have been left out in the sun to rot after their tombs were robbed”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169459/original/file-20170516-11959-1nskhhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169459/original/file-20170516-11959-1nskhhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169459/original/file-20170516-11959-1nskhhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169459/original/file-20170516-11959-1nskhhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169459/original/file-20170516-11959-1nskhhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169459/original/file-20170516-11959-1nskhhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169459/original/file-20170516-11959-1nskhhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169459/original/file-20170516-11959-1nskhhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Looting and destruction of mummies at the site of Abu Sir Al Malaq in Egypt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">HBO</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The problem is ongoing, and ranges from systematic international smuggling syndicates through to locals attempting to raise some extra money on side. <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5615/neareastarch.78.3.0196">Satellite images</a> demonstrate large areas that are being systematically looted. </p>
<p>Unsupervised excavation can be dangerous. Two illegal excavators were <a href="http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/266921/Egypt/Politics-/-Two-men-killed-in-house-collapse-as-they-dig-ille.aspx">killed this month as their house collapsed</a> on their tunnel, the latest of a number of incidents. It is a tragic reminder of how close we are to the past, and how the lure of mummies is as great today as it was for Belzoni. </p>
<p>As we eat our popcorn and enjoy watching Tom Cruise battle with the reanimated dead it is worth remembering that the real curse of the mummies is not what they can do to us in fiction and film, but rather the way we have desecrated and treated them in real life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77476/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Barker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe, is the latest manifestation of our centuries old fascination with Egypt. But beneath this obsession is a darker story of looting and destruction.Craig Barker, Education Manager, Sydney University Museums, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/604082016-06-03T11:22:29Z2016-06-03T11:22:29ZWhy did Tutankhamun have a dagger made from a meteorite?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125109/original/image-20160603-11598-1l0h6qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fallen star sword</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniella Comelli/University of Pisa</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Scientists have long speculated that the ancient Egyptians used metal from meteorites to make iron objects. Now an <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/02/africa/king-tut-dagger-meteorite/">analysis of a dagger</a> found in Tutankhamun’s tomb has given us <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/maps.12664/full">strong evidence</a> that this was the case – and that the Egyptians knew the iron had come from the sky. But why did they use such an unusual source for the metal when there’s plenty of iron here on Earth?</p>
<p>Until recently, we didn’t think that the ancient Egyptians were particularly good at producing iron objects until late in their history, around <a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/metal/metalinegypt.html">500 BC</a>. There’s no archaeological evidence for significant iron working anywhere in the Nile Valley. Even the large amounts of iron-rich smelting waste products found in the Delta region could actually have been produced by attempts to make copper. When Tutankhamun died – 800 years earlier – iron was a rarer material than gold.</p>
<p>The most common natural source of metal iron on Earth is iron ores – rocks that contain iron chemically bonded to other elements. These <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/499136?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">need to be processed</a> by heating them with other materials (smelting) to extract a low-quality form of iron, which is then beaten with hammers to remove impurities. This requires considerable know-how, effort and tools that we have no evidence for in ancient Egypt.</p>
<p>There were <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Vj7A9jJrZP0C&pg=PA166&lpg=PA166&dq=ancient+egyptian+iron+ore+pigments&source=bl&ots=zt20tivJJy&sig=Q9o-4ArxAbGaKW8scfMLybideqc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwim-aC-uYvNAhWI8RQKHXlLC3wQ6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=ancient%20egyptian%20iron%20ore%20pigments&f=false">abundant supplies</a> of iron ore in both Egypt and the Sinai peninsula and textual sources indicate that Egyptians were aware of the metal from early in their history. But the ore was mostly used to create pigments for art and make up. One explanation for this may be that the readily accessible iron ores were of poor quality so couldn’t be worked into more useful metal.</p>
<h2>Interstellar source</h2>
<p>But iron doesn’t just come from iron ore. We have evidence that numerous prehistoric societies worldwide which did not have access to ores or knowledge of smelting made use of metallic iron found in <a href="http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/science/geology/iron-the-sky-meteors-meteorites-and-ancient-culture">occasional meteorites</a>. This precious gift from nature still required shaping into a useful form, often resulting in very basic iron objects, such as small thin metal pieces that could be used as blades or bent into shapes.</p>
<p>If ancient Egyptians knew that iron could be found in meteorites that came from the sky – the place of the gods – it may have been symbolically important to them. As a result, they could have seen all iron as a divine material that wasn’t appropriate to work into a practical, everyday form and that should be reserved only for high-status people.</p>
<p>Meteorites may have even played a more direct role in state religion. For example, the “Benben” stone worshipped in the sun temple of the god Ra at Heliopolis is thought to have possibly <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/may/14/humanities.highereducation">been a meteorite</a>. The word “benben” is derived from the verb “weben”, meaning “<a href="http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/benu.htm">to shine</a>”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125110/original/image-20160603-11593-5g0a8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125110/original/image-20160603-11593-5g0a8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125110/original/image-20160603-11593-5g0a8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125110/original/image-20160603-11593-5g0a8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125110/original/image-20160603-11593-5g0a8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125110/original/image-20160603-11593-5g0a8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125110/original/image-20160603-11593-5g0a8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The earliest known ancient Egypt iron object: a meteorite iron bead from a prehistoric cemetery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Diane Johnson/The Manchester Museum</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ancient language also offers clues as to how how iron was perceived by Egyptians – and that they knew meteorites were a source of the metal. The earliest hieroglyphic word for iron was greatly debated by translators, who frequently confused the words for copper and iron. The word “bi-A” was eventually translated as “iron”, but could easily have referred a range of hard, dense, <a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1973Metic...8...91B">iron-like materials</a>.</p>
<p>The word was used in many texts including the funerary Pyramid Texts, early religious writings dating from approximately 2375 BC but likely to have been composed far earlier, carved on the internal walls of <a href="http://www.pyramidtextsonline.com">some pyramids</a>. These textual references to iron connect it with aspects of the sky and with the bones of the dead king who will live for ever as an undying star in the sky.</p>
<p>From the beginning of the 19th Dynasty (approximately 1295 BC) a new hieroglyphic word for iron appeared: “bi-A-n-pt”, which literally translates as “<a href="http://www.ironfromthesky.org/?p=366">iron from the sky</a>”. Why this new word appears in this exact form at this time is unknown but it was later applied to all metallic iron. An obvious explanation for the sudden emergence of the word would be a major impact event or large shower of meteorites.</p>
<p>This would have been witnessed by much of the ancient Egyptian population, leaving little uncertainty as to where exactly the mysterious iron came from. One possible candidate event is the Gebel Kamil meteorite impact in southern Egypt. Although its exact date remains unknown, based upon nearby archaeology we know it occurred within the past <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1945-5100.2011.01222.x/abstract">5000 years</a>.</p>
<h2>Ritual significance</h2>
<p>Iron is also connected to ritual artefacts such as those used in the <a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt//religion/wpr.html">Opening of the Mouth ceremony</a>, a ritual performed at the entrance of a tomb designed to transform the mummy into a latent being with the potential for life. Later texts, including temple inventories, that reference the equipment used in this ceremony refer to the iron blades used as “<a href="http://anees.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/2596/RothFingersStars.pdf">the two stars</a>”. It may be that iron was allowed an important role in this ceremony because of the association of iron with meteorites, powerful natural phenomena whose own inherent power might increase the potency of the ritual.</p>
<p>We also know that iron dagger blades were important enough to be mentioned in diplomatic correspondence. The <a href="http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/amarnaletters.htm">best-known example</a> is a letter from King Tushratta of Mitanni (today in northern Iraq and Syria) detailing a dowry of his daughter who was to be sent as a bride to Tutankhamun’s grandfather, king Amenhotep III. This letter intriguingly refers to a dagger blade of “habalkinu”, a poorly documented word derived from the ancient Hittite language which some linguists have translated as “steel”.</p>
<p>Only further detailed analysis of the chemistry and microstructure of other artefacts will tell us if meteorites were a common source of the iron that the ancient Egyptians produced. We also need to determine when where and how the smelting of terrestrial iron ores started in Egypt to further guide us in our knowledge on the origins, evolution and specific techniques of ancient Egyptian metalworking technology. By combining this with our knowledge of the cultural importance of iron, we can start to develop a realistic understanding of the true value of this metal in ancient Egypt.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60408/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diane Johnson works for the Open University. She receives funding from STFC and is affiliated with the Egypt Exploration Society. She has recently collaborated with Prof PT Nicholson, Cardiff University, Dr J Tyldesley, University of Manchester and Prof MM Grady, Open University, studying the presence and perception of iron in ancient Egypt.</span></em></p>Research has confirmed a knife found in the ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb was made with metal from the heavens.Diane Johnson, Post Doctoral Research Associate, Department of Physical Sciences, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.