Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Jefferson, N.C. [u.a.], McFarland, 2007
Description
In 1922, when Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen, much of what was then known about mummies came from the writing of Greek historian Herodotus and from the paintings on the walls of Egyptian tombs. Even before 1922, the mummy had been the subject of fiction, with such writers as Bram Stoker and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tackling the subject, and early films dating back to 1901. In this work, the authors present the religious, social and scientific aspects of mummies as well as an in-depth discussion of facts about them (largely Egyptian, but including other kinds of mummies). Then, how mummies are portrayed in fiction and in the movies is discussed, and stories and films in which the mummy is a focal character are listed.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member setnahkt
A popular account of world mummies – almost Egyptian, with casual mention of Scythian, Danish and other preserved bodies – followed by a review of mummies (again, mostly Egyptian) in movies and literature. The authors are Susan Cowie, an amateur Egyptologist, and Tom Johnson, a writer on horror
The authors cover the 1940s films which feature Kharis as the bandaged guy; unlike Imhotep, Kharis is not his own agent, instead under the control of various neopagan Egyptians, who use “tana leaf” extract to activate him. Once again his main goal is to recover the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian princess, in this case Ananka. In the 1960s the Hammer studio in England produced a number of mummy films: The Mummy, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Shroud, and Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb. These are stand alone, not a series, although the first more or less a remake of several of the Kharis films; it features Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and has reproductions of various Egyptian artifacts so authentic that they keep turning up in other films. Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb is loosely based on a Bram Stoker novel, The Jewel of Seven Stars; there was a reprise in 1997 with Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy. In 1998, The Mummy starred Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weiss; this copied the 1932 film in featuring Imhotep but his inamorata has a name change to Ankhsunamun.
Similarly the authors have tracked down a number of mummy stories in literature, going all the way back to Khaemwaset, a real person and son of Ramesses II, who acquired a reputation as a magician and turned up in a number later Egyptian stories (it isn’t clear whether Khaemwaset encounters “living mummies” or some other sort of spirit of the dead). There have been numerous stories and novels featuring mummies, the most famous recent one being Anne Rice’s The Mummy, or Ramesses the Damned.
Illustrated with standard depictions of ancient Egypt and stills from the movies; the bibliography is fairly pedestrian, with standard works on ancient Egypt interspersed with books about horror movies. I collect mummy films and novels (even pretty bad ones) and I’m grateful to the authors for tracking down many that I’d never heard of.
Show More
movies. The archaeological account is the same you would see in any popular book on Ancient Egypt. The movie and novel lists are fairly complete as of the 2002 publication date. I was interested to see how many early silent films featured Egyptian mummies; the authors found a couple of dozen (most are now lost, alas). The archetypical mummy movie is the 1932 The Mummy, with Boris Karloff as Imhotep, the High Priest of Karnak (sic) who benefits from an accidental reading of the Scroll of Thoth that restores him to life, then attempts to recover his reincarnated lost love, Princess Ankhesenamun. The authors note there really was a famous ancient Egyptian Imhotep, reputedly the designer of the Step Pyramid and later deified, and that there also really was an Ankhesenamun, wife of Tutankhamun. Despite an elaborate makeup job, Karloff appears only briefly as a mummy, spending most of the movie as the fully human Ardath Bey. (There is not, however, a “High Priest of Karnak” – Karnak is a place, not a god, and Karnak is the modern name).The authors cover the 1940s films which feature Kharis as the bandaged guy; unlike Imhotep, Kharis is not his own agent, instead under the control of various neopagan Egyptians, who use “tana leaf” extract to activate him. Once again his main goal is to recover the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian princess, in this case Ananka. In the 1960s the Hammer studio in England produced a number of mummy films: The Mummy, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Shroud, and Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb. These are stand alone, not a series, although the first more or less a remake of several of the Kharis films; it features Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and has reproductions of various Egyptian artifacts so authentic that they keep turning up in other films. Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb is loosely based on a Bram Stoker novel, The Jewel of Seven Stars; there was a reprise in 1997 with Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy. In 1998, The Mummy starred Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weiss; this copied the 1932 film in featuring Imhotep but his inamorata has a name change to Ankhsunamun.
Similarly the authors have tracked down a number of mummy stories in literature, going all the way back to Khaemwaset, a real person and son of Ramesses II, who acquired a reputation as a magician and turned up in a number later Egyptian stories (it isn’t clear whether Khaemwaset encounters “living mummies” or some other sort of spirit of the dead). There have been numerous stories and novels featuring mummies, the most famous recent one being Anne Rice’s The Mummy, or Ramesses the Damned.
Illustrated with standard depictions of ancient Egypt and stills from the movies; the bibliography is fairly pedestrian, with standard works on ancient Egypt interspersed with books about horror movies. I collect mummy films and novels (even pretty bad ones) and I’m grateful to the authors for tracking down many that I’d never heard of.
Show Less
Language
ISBN
9780786431144
Other editions
Mummy in Fact, Fiction and Film by Susan D. Cowie (Paper Book)