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?