Comments on: Give Mummies Some Respect

By: Martin

Martin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:09:29 +0000

I totally just bought Jewel of the Seven Stars today before reading this! It was in the kid’s section at a second-hand bookshop, but it was the lurid cover art that got me.

A wrist had been pinned to the floor with a sword and was oozing blood, a cat shrieking in the background. Being by the author of Dracula was a nice bonus, and even if it’s as bad as you say I look forward to reading it.

Bram Stoker also tried his hand at, believe it or not, fairy tales for children. Think of the children!

I think you answered why mummies aren’t very popular: they come with the same story each time, lacking the openness of vampires, werewolves and zombies to other types of story and genre. Or maybe no-one’s tried hard enough yet.

You might enjoy this clip of Frank Lloyd Wright on early (1956) TV game show ‘What’s My Line’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbZliXx8kIQ

By: Matthew Belinkie

Matthew Belinkie — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:52:44 +0000

@Katie – You definitely need to get in touch with us about a guest post. Anyone who can bring some academic analysis to a Brendan Frasier movie is a friend of ours. Email us at “editor AT overthinkingit DOT com”.

I’d certainly be curious to know if the ancient Egyptians had any beliefs about mummies rising from tombs to terrorize the living. Were mummies scary things to them? Or were they just dead bodies?

@Josh – I had no idea that Bram Stoker and Louisa May Alcott wrote mummy stories. Craziness.

And I would go to see the Frank Lloyd Wright horror movie. Proposed title: “Frank Lloyd Wrong.”

By: Katie

Katie — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:52:14 +0000

Thanks! Mummies need more representation. As (I’m guessing) the only Egyptologist/regular reader, I have just a few additions.
1) The Greeks were tourists before the Romans; there are plenty of Greek graffiti in tombs and on temples. In fact, the Hellenistic period was full of Greek-speaking tourists in Egypt, like Herodotus and Manetho, to name a few famous examples. Of course the Romans took the tourism to a new level, and even brought some nice fads like the Isis cult home with them.
2) Fascination with Egypt didn’t quite “dry up” before the 18th century; there were some really quite amusing Renaissance attempts to decipher hieroglyphs, etc. The Romans had brought plenty of Egyptian stuff home, and that wasn’t really forgotten. (For example the obelisks in Rome or Istanbul, which was there before 400 CE.)
3) The Mummy’s Foot is a pretty awesome story, which inspired a lot of spin-offs in the movies and other literature. You can find a copy here: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/MummFoot.shtml It’s a good read!
Of course, there is also the Poe classic (living in Baltimore, I have to represent!) “Some Words with a Mummy” which can be found here: http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/eapoe/bl-eapoe-some.htm

I have a lot to say about the transformation of the mummy movies from including decent scholarship alongside the horror plot and moralizing, and in fact will be teaching a course during our January term about just that. Maybe I can put together a guest post for you…