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Mummies in News and Pop Culture

This past week, Liverpool University Press released The Life and Times of Takabuti in Ancient Egypt: Investigating the Belfast Mummy edited by Egyptologist Professor Rosalie David and bioarchaeologist Professor Eileen Murphy. Takabuti originally lived in Thebes during the 25th Dynasty and died around the age of 20 to 30 years old around 600 B.C.  Since 1835, she home has been in Belfast, Ireland.  She was believed to have died from a knife wound to her upper left shoulder, but the wound is now believed to have been caused by the blow of an ax.  Hence, this woman was likely the victim of murder by an Assyrian soldier or by her own people.  

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The mention of animal mummies often conjure images of Ancient Egyptian mummified cats, ibises and other animals.  On IFL Science’s website, Rachael Funnell reported on a National Academy of Sciences study on mummified macaws found at burial sites in the Atacama Desert.  Dating back to 1100 – 1450 CE, these colorful birds were not native to the desert.  Their feathers were important symbols of wealth and the study revealed that macaws were transported alive to the desert and mummified at the burial sites, often in unusual positions.  Sadly, the study revealed that the birds were also not treated well while living. 

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Facial reconstruction technology helps visualize what KV55 mummy may have looked liked.  Smithsonian Magazine’s Isis Davis-Marks reported the mummy, which was discovered in 1907, is significant because it is speculated to be King Tutankhamun’s father, Akhenaten, known as the heretical Pharaoh for introducing monotheism during the 18th Dynasty.  DNA testing established the mummy as the son of Amenhotep III and the father of Tutankhamun, which would point the identity of the mummy as Akhenaten.  The mummy’s age has been ascertained to be around 26 years old, however the historical records suggest that Akhenaten died around the age of 40.  Given the DNA results, perhaps the mummy is Akhenaten’s younger brother, Smenkhkare, of which little is known. 

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And, in pop culture history….

March 29, 1916 marks the birth of cinematographer Jack Asher, who worked on Hammer Film Productions’ The Mummy directed by Terence Fisher and starred Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. In a 1976 interview between Jan Van Genechten and Fisher (printed in Little Shoppe of Horrors #19), the conversation touched on lighting and photography, providing some insight into Asher’s craft: 

JVG: The lighting and photograph are of course also very important in your films… What exactly is everybody’s function in that respect when you are directing? Of the camera operator, the director of photography, you yourself…

TF: In England directors of photograph don’t want to interfere with their operators, as they do on the continent.  Continental directors of photography want to have more control over their operators than they do in England.  It can work both ways, but I think it’s easier for a film director to work with the camera operator, without actually interfering.  But let’s take the director of photography, or let’s call him lighting camera man.  You’ve got to leave his style to him.  Different lighting camera men have different styles of working.  Within each one’s style you can get a certain type of mood if you tell him what you’re aiming at.  If you want for instance an actor not to be seen in features but in silhouette, you tell him so.  In  the first rehearsal he will work from that.  Then again it is a co-operative thing between the director and the lighting camera man.  But you can’t tell him to change his style.  Each lighting camera man has his own individual style.  Jack Asher, who did the early Hammer ones, had a very distinctive style of lighting, which was quite different to Arthur Grant’s.  He had a more realistic approach to the situation.  Jack Asher’s was almost theatrical lighting with little tricks, like color slides placed over the lights and so on. 

JVG:  I think Jack Asher was also very emotional…

TF:  Oh indeed he was.  Indeed…

JVG:  Much more so than Arthur Grant…

TF:  Arthur Grant approached it with a more realistic interpretation.  But Arthur would give a good job if you told what you were aiming at.  If you asked him not to see people’s features and to do it with back-lighting, which is very important at certain moments within the field, he could give you almost theatrical lighting like Jack Asher did.  Which of the two is the best I don’t know.  I don’t know exactly how audiences react to this.  

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March 30, 1998, saw the release of Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy, directed by Jeffrey Obrow.  Starring Louis Gossett Jr., this film is based on Bram Stoker’s novel, The Jewels of Seven Stars (1903). According to Rotten Tomatoes, this mummy film scored 15%. 

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March 31, 1973, George Woodbridge who placed P. C. Blake in The Mummy (1959, dir. Terence Fisher) passed away in London at the age of 66.  He started his acting career in the 1930s and made his film debut in 1940’s The Big Blockade (dir. Charles Frend).  He appeared in several horror films over the years. 

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April 3, 1872, Arthur Byron was born in Brooklyn, New York and he played Sir Joseph Whemple in The Mummy (1932, dir. Karl Freud).  In the film, he led the 1921 archaeological expedition that found the ancient mummy, Imhotep (Boris Karloff). This was his third film role (of a total of 27 actor credits) according to IMDB.  Byron had a prolific career on Broadway spanning 1894 – 1939. 

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April 4, 1976, George Pastell (birth name believed to be Nino Pastellides), who placed Mehement Bey in Terence Fisher’s 1959 The Mummy passed away at the age of 53 (heart attack).  Originally from Cyprus, Pastell’s Mediterranean physical appearance led him to be cast as “Eastern” characters, in other words, villainous characters.  He worked often in the spy genre at the height of its popularity in the 1960s including a role in the James Bond film, From Russia with Love (1963, dir. Terence Young).  He returned as “Hashmi Bey” in The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964, dir. Michael Carreras) another Hammer Film Productions and the second film in the production company’s mummy series of films.  In 1967, Pastell had a turn in another famous IP, Doctor Who, in which he played Eric Klieg in “The Tomb of the Cybermen” (episodes 1 – 4).