Mummy

Over the centuries, mummies have figured prominently in popular literature and film. By the 17th century, mummies, and curses upon anyone who disturbed them, served as story lines in many Gothic novels. During the early 20th century, stories associated with mummies continued, such as one tale about the 1912 Titanic disaster, which blamed the sinking of the ocean liner on a mummy that was supposedly being transported on the ship. Another unfounded legend recounts that everyone associated with the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun died unnatural deaths.

The first major film concerning mummies, The Mummy (1932), featured Boris Karloff as the threatening but sympathetic title character. Later films, however, portrayed mummies as violent and murderous. These treatments obscured the fact that in ancient Egypt the mummy was a reassuring and soothing reminder of the deceased, who had passed on to a carefree existence with the gods.

Although other ancient peoples used embalming practices, the only nearby culture that adopted the Egyptian form of mummification was in Nubia, a region south of ancient Egypt. Several Nubian kings during the 8th and 7th centuries bc were buried in Egyptian-style coffins and entombed in pyramids.

But mummies have been found in other regions of the world, including North and South America, Europe, Syria, Yemen, and Asia. In 15th-century Peru, the people of the Inca empire preserved mummies by drying them with smoke in the cold, dry climate of high altitudes. After embalming the body in a fetal position, the preparers placed the body in a large beehive-shaped jar with clothing, gold jewelry, personal items, food, and a corn drink called chicha. The bodies of dead rulers were among the holiest shrines in the empire. The Inca treated these rulers as if they were still alive, providing servants to attend to them and consulting them for advice on daily affairs.

Not all mummies were intentionally prepared. So-called accidental mummies have been found in desert areas on the coast of Peru, where hot, dry sand helped the mummification process, and in the western region of China, where salt acted as the preserving agent. Mummies in Alaska and Greenland have been found stored in caves, where the cold, dry climate slowed the rate of tissue deterioration. Mummies in Scandinavia were created from bodies deposited in peat bogs, where natural tannin and lack of oxygen prevented decay. Other accidental mummies have been found in mud and under glacial ice.