ABSTRACT
It may seem strange that ancient Egyptian human mummies1 have received an inordinate amount of attention since their rediscovery by Europeans. They have accumulated significances within contemporary cultures even greater than those originally attached to them. Yet few people realize what mummies’ ‘phantasmagoric other life in the western imagination’ (Montserrat 1999a:20) means, know how it originated, or question the prejudices inherent in it. The passage of mummymania – the popular fascination with Egyptian mummies – through the underbelly of culture, from Victorian pulp fiction through horror films and into late twentieth-century children’s toys and cartoons – has caused it to be largely overlooked by academics and public alike, even now that the long history of conflict between Western and Middle Eastern nations has come to a disturbing climax. The story of mummies’ treatments in the hands and imaginations of English-speaking peoples has never before been told with sufficient depth of insight in conjunction with breadth of historical purview. It has the potential to persuade those who read it to reflect upon the insidiousness of
cultural stereotypes that seem harmless, and upon the power of the media to manipulate our thoughts.
