Month: March 2021

Categories
News

It’s a Wrap: Week Ending 03/21/2021

Mummies in News and Pop Culture

Nihal Samir with the Daily News Egypt reported that the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced that 22 royal mummies will be transferred from Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to Fustat’s National Museum of Egyptian Civilization on April 3 in a magnificent parade.  

Kahel El-Anani, Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, said of the upcoming event, “We want the world to see the beauty of Egypt’s civilization, with the procession set to be dazzling, different from any other celebration, and among the most beautiful celebrations that the people of the world will see.” 

Each Pharaoh and Queen will be transported in specially constructed cars, each bearing the royal’s name in Arabic, hieroglyphs, and English.  The parade will take approximately 90 minutes and will be televised. 

The royal mummies mentioned in the article are a who’s who from ancient Egypt: Ramses II, Seti I, Amenhotep I, Seqenenre, Thutmose III, Hatshepsut, Meritamun, and Ahmose Nefertari, among others.

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This past week Elizabeth Rayne at SyFy Wire wrote about the discovery of an ancient Roman Period pet cemetery in the once port city of Berenice.  Cats, dogs, and monkeys found revealed that they had been carefully buried, but had not been mummified or sacrificed.  Rather, the animals had died naturally.  Archezoologist Marta Osypinska explained the significance of the find: this cemetery supports that the concept of “pets” and an emotional bond that went beyond utilitarian/economic use in society.   

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And, in pop culture history….

March 15, 1945, Henry Victor passed away at the age of 52.  He has an interesting connection to The Mummy (1932, dir. Karl Freud) because he was cast as the Saxon Warrior in one of the past life flashbacks, but his scene was ultimately deleted from the film.  His credit however remains. 

March 15, 1967 saw the U.S. release of The Mummy’s Shroud directed by Englishman John Gilling and produced by Hammer Film Productions.  This was the third of the four mummy films Hammer produced.  

March 20, 1962, marks the birth of Stephen Sommers, director/writer of The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001).  He wrote and produced The Scorpion King (2002, dir. Chuck Russell).  Although he stepped from directing in The Mummy and The Scorpion King IP, Sommers has kept involved behind the scenes as a producer for a number of the subsequent films and The Mummy television series. 

Categories
News

It’s a Wrap: Week Ending 03/07/2021

Mummies in News and Pop Culture

University of Copenhagen: Ancient Egyptian Manual Reveals Details About Mummification

There were several articles spotlighting the discovery of new details about the mummification process practiced by ancient Egyptians, and I selected India Education Diary’s post as the most comprehensive one to share.  University of Copenhagen PhD student, Sofie Schiodt, has been studying the Papyrus Louvre-Carlsberg manuscript, an herbalist treatise that includes mummification details not known before.  It is known that the process takes 70 days, however, it wasn’t known that the process was divided into intervals of four days and finishing on the 68th day.  The manuscript also revealed the procedure for embalming the person’s face with red linen soaked in “plant-based aromatic substances and binders” and then applied to the face.  This process encased the face “in a protective cocoon of fragrant and antibacterial matter.” 

This manuscript dates back to 1450 BC and predates the two other embalming texts in existence by over 1,000 years. 

Mummy Reveals How Egyptian Pharaoh was Brutally Killed in Ancient War Caused by Snoring Hippos

In a Syfy article written by Elizabeth Rayne, radiologist Sahar Salem and Dr. Zahi Hawass conducted a non-invasive CT scan on the body of Pharaoh Seqenenre Taa II, who ruled during the 17th Dynasty.  “The Quarrel of Apophis and Seqenenre” tale documents Apophis, the Hyksos king, demanding Seqenenre to destroy the Theban hippopotamus pool, located hundreds of miles from Apophis, because their snoring kept him awake.  Of course, the hippo was a sacred animal to the Egyptians, so naturally, this insult by Apophis was likely answered with a military skirmish.  

The scan revealed the embalmers had meticulously reconstructed his face and were able to hide some of his injuries well.  Because of the severe damage to Seqenenre’s face, the Hyksos may have been trying to disfigure his body in his physical death as well as his Afterlife, similarly to erasing or striking out a person’s image and name from temple reliefs and such. 

Seqenenre’s mummy was part of the cache found at Dier el-Bahri in 1881 and identified when his mummy was unbandaged in 1886.  

And, in pop culture history….

March 6,1964, Edward Van Sloan, who played Dr. Muller in Karl Freud’s The Mummy (1932), passed away in San Francisco, CA at the age of 81.  Van Sloan was born in 1882 made his film debut in Slander (1916, dir. Will S. Davis) as Joseph Tremaine.  He has the distinction of having a role in the top three Universal monster films in the early 1930s: Dr. Van Helsing in Dracula (1931, dir. Tod Browning), Doctor Waldman in Frankenstein (1931, dir. James Whale), and Doctor Muller in The Mummy.  According to IMDB, Van Sloan’s last role was in The Underworld Story (1950, dir. Cy Endfield) in an uncredited role as a minister at a funeral.  In all, he had 90 actor credits. 

March 7, 1970, Rachel Weisz was born in London, England. She began modeling at the age of 14 and made her first on-screen appearance in 1992 on Advocates II, a television film.  She appeared in her first major role in Chain Reaction (1996, dir. Andrew Davis), but it wasn’t until 1999 as Evelyn Carnahan, the librarian turned Egyptologist in The Mummy (1999, dir. Stephen Sommers) that Weisz became renown internationally.  She returned to the franchise in 2001 with The Mummy Returns (dir. Stephen Sommers), but opted out of the third installment due to issues with the script.  She moved on to other projects and Maria Bello was cast as Evelyn.  While The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor yield a healthy profit, it was the franchise’s lowest grossing film.  If Weisz had stayed on for a third film, perhaps with a closer timeline to the first and second films, one wonders if the franchise would have continued with more installments? 

Categories
News

It’s a Wrap: Week Ending 02/28/2021

Mummies in News and Popular Culture

The Naked Scientists’ writer, Chris Smith, interviewed Dr. Nate Dominy (Dartmouth College) about examining the DNA of baboon mummies to locate Punt, an ancient Egyptian trading partner.  Baboon were not a native species of Egypt and in fact, Egypt was an exception of Subsaharan Africa, because baboons were deified.  Dr. Dominy studied baboon mummies in the Petrie Museum and British Museum, and in the latter, there was one baboon with a DNA signature not like the others.  The chemical signature of the oxygen stable isotopes in the water  the animal drank, resulted in narrowing the geographic location potentially to Eritrea and Somalia.  Research continues. 

English online Egyptian news website, ahramonline, reported that Egyptian film director, Shadi Abdel-Salam’s classic 1969 film, The Night of Counting the Years (also known as The Mummy), would be screened at Cairo’s Cinema Cultural Centre.  Based on the true story about the Abd el-Rasuls, a family of Egyptians who found a cache of 21st Dynasty artifacts, this film was the only feature length film from the director.  It was selected for the 43rd Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film category.  It was produced by Italian neorealist director Roberto Rossellini (Germany, Year Zero) as well as Merchant Ivory Productions.  In 2007, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina listed The Night of Counting the Years in the top 100 important films in its history. 

I just came across this article and I am thinking of watching through both franchises in the order recommended.  Late last year Looper’s Shane O’Neill posted the best order to watch The Mummy and the Scorpion King films.  Most fans probably watch the first two mummy films and the first Scorpion King film however, O’Neill shares Reddit user SilentDues’ chronological order: 

  1. The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior (2008)
  2. The Scorpion King (2002)
  3. The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (2012) – watch the pre-title sequence only
  4. The Scorpion King 5: Book of Souls (2018)
  5. The Scorpion King 4: The Quest for Power (2015)
  6. The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (2012) – now watch the rest of the film
  7. The Mummy (1999)
  8. The Mummy Returns (2001)
  9. The Mummy: The Animated Series (2001 – 2003)
  10. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)