Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1882-06-29
Mummies as Bric-a- Brac.


The modern traveller is not content to
collect merely beads and funereal statu-
cites and such small game. He must
bring home an ancient Egyptian in pro-
OrSG persona. The amount of BUSINESS
done of late years in this grim kind of
bric-a -brac has been very considerable.
A foreign agent and wine merchant of
Cairo assured me, when l returned from
the Second Cataract in 1874, that he had
that very season already ''passed" and
shipped no less than eighteen Theban
mummies; and many other agents were
most likely equally busy and
equally successful. Amenhotep III.
artfully slowed away inside
crocodile, or Hatasu rolled up in the
folds of a sketching tent, may easily
have been slipped through the Alexan-
dria custom house by one of these gen.
tlemen. Mummies, however, are expen-
sive hobbies, only to be INDUCED in by
the wealthy. From ego to 9100 was at
that time the average price of a full
sized specimen, while from $40 to G19
was asked for a baby. must not be
supposed te imply that the general
mummy market was supplied by the
brothers Add er Rasoul. Their goods
were too precious and too perilous to be
parted from except under conditions
of elaborate secrecy and exorbi-
tant payment. The purchaser of
the Pinotem papyrus paid e4OO
for his bargain, and it may be assumed
that royal muiamy from the same
source would have cost at least double
that sum. That Rameses ii. was, as
lately as 1890, actually offered for sale
to a wealthy American who did not,
however, believe in tho genuineness of
the article as reported. and declined to
deal) is fact for which | have the au.
thority of one of that travellers compan-
ions. But the ordinary mummy soldpto
the ordinary tourist ia of quite another
class. He belonged in his day to the
lesser nobility that IS to say, he was
an architect, sacred scribe, a civil
or military official. Such mum.
mics, ranging chiefly from the
twenty-frst to the twenty.sixth dYnss:
ties, form the staple of Theban trade.
AS for the Theban fellah, mummy hunt
ing is his hereditary vocation, He passes
his life in digging, finding. hiding and
selling; his home 10 an empty sepulchre;
his shirt is made of mummy cloth; his
children's playthings and his wife's or
naments are the spoils of the dead. His
forefathers have subssted for genera
tons by this equivocal industry, and his
descendants will subsist by il for who
shall say how many generations to Gomez
Even now, after centuries of spoliation,
the soil needs only to be dug a little
deeper in order that the spade may
strike a lower stratum Of graves
And if this be true of mine
so long snd 50 persistently worked
as the Metropolis of Thebes, what
must be the sepulchral wealth Of thou
sands of other burial fields, some par
TALLY and some wholly unexplored? To
this day the mountain ranges and shift
ing sands of Egypt conceal some hun
dreds of millions Of mummies. DIR.
Birch-countinG from B. G. 1000, when
mummiAeation was supposed to have
been first practiced, down to A. d, 700.
when 1t may be said to have ceased
calculates the approximate number of
bodies embalmed during that period at
42O. 100000. But recent explorations
among the pyramids of Sakkara, and
the discovery of the mummied
corpse of King Merenra sixth
Dynasty, must henceforth compel us
to ascribe much earlier date for the be-
glnnings of the art. would venture, in
fact, to carry it back to b. G. $500, or
even to B. G. 1000, so assigning a period
OF 400 years for the observance of the
process, and approximately estimating
the gross number of mummies of all
epochs at not less than 731, 900, 000-a
gigantic total Yet when it is remem-
bered that the rites of naturalization
were performed not only for
every Egyptian man, woman, and
enid, gentle or simple, but
Tor every stranger, no matter what his
nationality or religion, for every captive,
for every slave. for every criminal. for
every leper and outcast, this presumed
total of 731 100000 falls probably far
short OF the actual number"
A celebrated doctor recently stated to ms