(The unedited chatter-filled transcript will be posted soon…ish… life has been busy. ~ Your Salonista)
Welcome all to my presentation regarding a little known aspect of Victorian Egyptomania: Mummy Unwrapping Parties. The Victorian era had a decided taste for the macabre, including propping up their recently deceased loved ones for photographs, wearing jewelry containing their hair, and holding séances to contact them.
Thus, it should not be all that surprising to learn that Victorians were deeply fascinated by the dead of other cultures as well as their own.
Soon after Napoleon’s incursion into Egypt in the 1790s and the publication of his historical guidebook “Description de l’Egypt,” Egyptomania swept throughout Europe with a furor. Tourists, as well as soldiers, diplomats, and collectors, began flocking to the newly publicized exotic locale, and like tourists throughout history, they brought back extravagant tales and unlikely souvenirs.
Many tourists left graffiti behind, either carved or painted on the ancient rock. In these examples, we can see Belzoni’s markings, as well as Salt (consul to Egypt), Burton (gentleman author and traveler), and a list of soldiers from Napoleon’s army.
Quickly the mummy market became so commonplace that French aristocrat and Trappist monk Abbot Ferdinand de Géramb wrote in 1833, “It would be hardly respectable, on one’s return from Egypt, to present oneself without a mummy in one hand and a crocodile in the other.”
Mind you, bringing back an entire mummy, especially if still encased in one or more sarcophagi, was a significant and clumsy endeavor. A popular gift for family and friends upon returning was a wrapped hand or a foot, which fit more neatly into one’s luggage. With the advent of photography in the latter half of the 19th century, tourist snapshots became the latest fad:
One of the earliest of these eager visitors to Egypt was Giovanni Battista Belzoni, an Italian-born explorer and pioneer archaeologist of Egyptian antiquities.
His early career was somewhat chequered (he was best known in England as a circus strongman). Even so, he managed to parlay his early training in hydraulics to good advantage, securing employment with the British consul in Egypt.
In 1817 he organized the removal of the colossal bust of Ramesses II from its temple, down the Nile River, and on to England.
It took him 17 days and 130 men to transport the 7-ton statue across the desert to the Nile. The statue is still on display at the British Museum in London.
Belzoni continued his investigations in Egypt, opening the tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings, entering the Pyramid of Khafre in Giza, and clearing the sand from the Temple at Abu Simbel.
Belzoni left graffiti of his own behind.
Note that below Belzoni’s name, you can see “Salt” in a circle (maybe imitating a cartouche). Henry Salt was Britain’s Consul to Egypt at the time.
Some of the graffiti was elaborate, as in this painted inscription announcing that Belzoni “discovered” this tomb in 1818. (Discovery being a relative term in this case.)
Upon returning to England, Belzoni set about recreating the tombs and monuments that he had plundered.
As part of his marketing campaign, Belzoni called in a medical man to examine the mummies in his collection. Dr. Thomas Pettigrew, surgeon-turned-antiquarian, became the premier celebrity mummy unroller of his time, thus earning the nickname “Mummy” Pettigrew.
Pettigrew presented numerous public unwrappings as well as private events held in the homes of those with mummies in their personal collections. These events appealed to science and morbidity, both preoccupations of Victorian sensibility.
His early exhibits took place in medical hospitals and halls of learning, performed for the advancement of science, medicine, and archaeology.
However before long, the events became gruesome spectacles, appealing to the public’s desire to be frightened and entertained in equal parts, with tickets for sale to the general public. Pettigrew was acknowledged to be a knowledgable and skillful unroller, having conducted an estimated 40-50 of these unrollings himself.
The manner of these mummy unwrappings, or “unrollings” as they were called, were described in various publications of the day, from scientific proceedings to newspaper articles.
Pettigrew usually began his presentations with general comments on the history and manner of mummification while the mummy rested upon a table, surrounded by Egyptian funerary objects. Next, the textiles and any other artifacts were removed, and fragments of the wrappings, pungent with resins and spices, were often passed around the audience along with any amulets or other artefacts found therein.
A running commentary accompanied the unrolling, pointing out what might be ascertained of the name, gender, and social status of the deceased from the physical evidence available. Pettigrew often ended his events by “sawing off part of the mummy’s skull, showing how the brains had been removed, and, for his big finale, would raise the mummy to its feet, as though it was still alive.
**Quotes from contemporary documents:**
The Morning Post of 8 April 1833 recounted:
“The general interest now became very great, and every step was watched with the utmost curiosity. …. During Mr. Pettigrew’s various remarks and his unravelling of the mummy there were frequent strong expressions of the great satisfaction and gratification which he had afforded.”
Sometimes, it must be said, the event itself would be somewhat smelly. At other times, the remains crumbled to dust.
In June of 1848, The Literary Gazette reported on an event in the studio of the Scottish orientalist painter, David Roberts.
“A load of other ‘trappings’ were successively removed, including circular and longitudinal pledgets, broader and coloured transverse tapes, and at last sheets rather than rollers… Altogether, the specimen was a fine one, in perfect condition to demonstrate a mode of embalming of a third or fourth rate class of persons.”
In 1857, French writer Théophile Gautier witnessed a mummy unrolling. He reported,
“The outer envelope, of stout linen, was ripped open with scissors. A faint, delicate odor of balsam, incense, and other aromas spread through the room like the odor of an apothecary’s shop.”
As the wrappings were removed, “numbers of these small trifles,” such as necklaces and amulets, were revealed, covered in a “turquoise-blue enamel.”
In 1852 Pettigrew was called upon to reverse the process of unrolling. That year he accepted a commission to embalm the body of the 10th Duke of Hamilton in strict recreation of ancient Egyptian methods. Hamilton loved all manner of antiquity.
The Duke’s mummified remains were placed in an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus which he had purchased 30 years earlier, which was chiselled out to fit his frame.
Afterwards his grace was entombed in a vast Roman-style mausoleum on the grounds of his Scottish estate, described by The Times as “The most costly and magnificent temple for the reception of the dead in the world – always excepting the pyramids.”
As the century progressed, treasures from ancient burial sites poured into Britain. Reproductions included statues in the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851.
Egyptian Avenue at Highgate Cemetery built in pseudo Egyptian style.
Carreras Black Cat Cigarette factory incorporated statues resembling the Egyptian cat goddess, Bastet.
The unique beauty of Egyptian relics created a demand for copies, and the trend influenced tastes in clothing, jewelry, furniture, and architecture.
Buttons depicted pharaoh’s heads and sphinxes. Sarcophagi flanked shops carrying Egyptian tobacco. Travel companies offered package tours down the Nile with guaranteed stops for mummified souvenirs. Ladies wore brooches shaped like scarab beetles and dressed for costume parties in golden headdresses. Egyptian motifs adorned everything from settees to biscuit boxes.
A fitting place to end this brief overview of the Victorian preoccupation with the ancient glories of Egypt is the poem Ozymandias (another name for Rameses) written by Percy Bysshe Shelly in 1818:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
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