T HE HISTORY OF MUMMIES is a long and sad one. Had Egypt?s ancient civilizations been able to fathom the degree of shocking desecration to which their dead would be subject, they might have thought twice about embalming them for eternity. Mummies have been treated with the utmost disrespect: dug out, reburied, dug out again, sold, bought and even ground to make medicines or paint pigments. They have been shipped around the world and put on show ? their unwrapping staged as part of some circus-like exhibition.

Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, writes that, ?One of the earliest recorded mummy shows occurred in September 1698, when Benoît de Maillet (1656-1738), Louis XIV?s consul in Cairo, unwrapped a mummy before a group of French travelers.?

Then, during the 19th century, the ?discovery? of mummies became one of the necessary highlights of any respectable tour of Egypt. To avoid disappointment, the areas to be searched by tourists were literally sown with the corpses in advance. In 1869, in Western Thebes, the unearthing of some 30 mummies from a tomb was staged to please the Prince of Wales (who went on to become King Edward VII). They were offered to him as a gift to be brought back to England and showcased in several museums.

In Europe, the mummy show often involved another kind of ?discovery?: the public unwrapping of their bandages.

One of the most interesting figures in the history of mummy unwrapping is George Gliddon, the American vice-consul to Egypt in 1832. Gliddon was not particularly interested in the mummy business at first. The son of an English merchant, he had spent much of his childhood in Alexandria, where his parents often hosted dinners for famous archeologists including Sir John Gardner Wilkinson (known as the father of British Egyptology) and John Lloyd Stephens, an American writer and explorer of the ancient Mayan civilization. Young George absorbed their knowledge of Ancient Egypt and understood the intricacies of the antiquities trade.

As a young diplomat, Gliddon came to the attention of the Viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, who sent him to the United States to gather information on the culture of cotton and buy the relevant machinery. Gliddon particularly liked the institution of slavery in the South. By this time, he had come to suspect that the Ancient Egyptians believed that black people were inferior to white people.

Thus, when he met Samuel Morton, an American physical anthropologist who believed that the brains of black people are smaller than those of whites, Gliddon agreed enthusiastically to help him in gathering skulls for his experiments. Back in Egypt, he corresponded at length with his new friend and packed off nearly one hundred skulls to America. In short order, Gliddon began scouring Egyptian ruins for evidence that would support Morton?s theories, taking notes on temples that represented black slaves and white masters, thus learning a great deal more on Egyptian civilization.

This skill played right into his intention of emigrating to the United States, and by 1840 he had achieved his goal of becoming a renowned touring Egyptologist.

From Philadelphia to Savannah, halls were packed whenever Gliddon lectured ? always wearing black and peppering his presentations with pseudo-scientific words. Leading scientists attended; writers discussed his ideas. He even attracted the attention of Edgar Allan Poe, who made Gliddon a character in one of his stories. But Poe, who was not fooled by Gliddon?s pseudo-scientific jargon, pointed out that ?Mr. Gliddon?s discourse turned chiefly upon the vast benefits accruing to science from the unrolling and disemboweling of mummies.?

Gliddon, however, didn?t care about such criticism. He was more concerned about building a bigger and better show. Having traveled to England and attended lectures by a number of Egyptologists, he realized that the best way to pack the house would be to stage an actual mummy unwrapping. Accordingly, he organized a small shipment of mummies from a friend in Egypt to be used for a new grand show in Boston in 1850. To spice it up, Gliddon announced that he would unwrap the mummy of an Egyptian priest?s daughter ? information, he claimed, he had gleaned from deciphering the hieroglyphics that covered her sarcophagus.

The local press picked up the news, but for some reason, some of the papers wrote that the mummy was a princess, not simply a priest?s daughter. The Bostonians were so enthusiastic that Gliddon chose not to correct the mistake.

After having unwrapped a few of the princess?s outer bandages during his first two lectures, on the last evening of his show Gliddon proceeded to unveil her full beauty to an audience of 2,000 people. Attending were luminaries such as the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harvard President Jared Sparks, anatomist Oliver Wendell Holmes and famed Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz ? in sum, the crème de la crème of Boston?s scientific community.

They waited breathlessly as he theatrically sliced through the bandages and chipped loose the clots of resin. But as he tossed aside the last cloth from the mummy?s loin, the public in the first row gasped loudly. Whether the offspring of a priest or king, the mummified daughter was unmistakably a son.

Gliddon was in a state of shock. Everyone in the audience began to laugh, and the pseudo-Egyptologist?s career was ruined. Despite his humiliation, he staged another unwrapping in the South, hoping to redeem his reputation. But while this show came off without a hitch, it did not attract many scientists or journalists. And despite Gliddon?s boast to the audience that ?if some of Egypt?s savants could be resuscitated, they would conclude that we had been apt pupils; and that we knew and did some things which they, in all the pride and perfection of their art and learning, were not quite up to,? he knew deep down that he was finished.

For a while he tried to concentrate on other endeavors: After Morton?s death, he wrote an unsuccessful book about the superiority of the white race as divinely ordained, in collaboration with one of his mentor?s followers. Later, he moved to Central America, where he started working at the British-Honduras Railway, but he quarreled with his colleagues and was fired.

quote:

---

Mummies have been treated with the utmost disrespect: dug out, reburied, dug out again, sold, bought and even ground to make medicines or paint pigments. They have been shipped around the world and put on show — their unwrapping staged as part of some circus-like exhibition…

By this time, he had come to suspect that the Ancient Egyptians believed that black people were inferior to white people.

---