LIFE Mummies

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MUMMIES. Those preserved human remains are powerful on several contradictory levels, sometimes simultaneously: They’re seductive, with an aura of mystery and rich antiquarian appeal; at the same time, mummies can be repellent because, well, they’re preserved human remains; and certainly they have the capacity to terrify as eerie avatars of mortality that have inspired a whole subgenre of horror fiction and film. Mummies are time capsules bearing secrets of the distant past and often stand as works of art; think of Egyptian sarcophaguses, with their elaborately carved and painted ornamentation. On a more modest scale, the 7,000-year-old mummies of South America, crafted by an early maritime community known as the Chinchorros, resemble small statues, hardly as grand as the Egyptians’ handiwork but with a kind of rugged…

IN THE EARLY MONTHS OF 2023, archaeologists in Egypt announced a flurry of discoveries, including a series of tombs dating back thousands of years. A 4,300-year-old tomb was found down a 50-foot shaft at the Saqqara necropolis, 25 miles southwest of Cairo, which served the long-gone ancient capital of Memphis. At rest was a man named Hekashepes, whose prominence in life is unknown but who proved most impressive in death. “I put my head inside to see what was inside the sarcophagus: a beautiful mummy of a man completely covered in layers of gold,” Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s former antiquities minister and the director of the excavation team, told the Associated Press, calling it the oldest gold-coated mummy ever seen. Down a second shaft were three other male mummies: Khnumdjedef, a…

IN MARCH 2023, ARCHAEologists working at the temple of Ramses II in the ancient city of Abydos un-covered a trove of mummified animals, including 2,000 ram heads along with wild goats, cows, gazelles, and mongooses. All are believed to have been votive offerings to the gods dating from the Ptolemaic period, which lasted from Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt in 332 BCE until the advent of Roman rule in 30 BCE. The dating of the animal mummies shows that Egyptians revered Ramses II at the site for 1,000 years or more after his death. Animal mummies were widespread in ancient Egypt. “The Egyptians believed animals had souls, so they mummified them as well as humans,” says Salima Ikram of the American University of Cairo. As she points out in…

THE NAPOLEONIC EXPEDITION OF ancient Egyptian sites triggered more than an international fad and hordes of souvenir-hungry tourists. It also inspired the beginning of organized excavation in the country, resulting in great archaeological discoveries as well as rampant tomb raiding and plunder. One of the first of the serious excavators was the flamboyant Italian Giovanni Battista Belzoni, who was a natural showman—a six-foot-seven onetime circus strongman-slash-hydraulic engineer. His sheer strength actually did come in handy in the course of archaeological work, and he also knew how to spin a ripping-good yarn and produced a real page-turner: Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries Within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia, published in 1821. Consider this vivid account of his visit to a tomb in Qurna, a…

BORN IN ENGLAND IN 1874, HOWARD Carter was a trained artist and had little formal schooling. He was fascinated with Egypt, and as a teenager he signed on to make copies of the wall paintings of Beni Hasan, an ancient cemetery about a dozen miles south of the modern Egyptian city of Minya, and went on to sketch at other tombs. Within a year or so, Carter began learning the art of excavation and couldn’t have found a more distinguished teacher: Sir Flinders Petrie, widely considered the father of Egyptology, who pioneered archaeological and preservation techniques, first described in meticulous architectural detail the Great Pyramid at Giza, and discovered countless artifacts in Egypt and the Holy Land. Carter worked at a number of excavation sites and by his mid-twenties was…

GEORGE EDWARD STAN-hope Molyneux Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, came to Egyptology by accident. An early automobile enthusiast, the mustachioed aristo-crat (whose family home, Highclere Castle, served as the set for Downton Abbey) delighted in whizzing past startled pedestrians at then dazzling speeds of 20 miles an hour. One day in 1903, however, Lord Carnarvon was driving in Germany when he swerved to avoid an oxcart and overturned, leaving him with badly damaged lungs and a damaged jaw. He spent the rest of his life in fragile health—which is why, when his doctors suggested he avoid the damp British winters, he headed for Egypt. There he developed a fascination for the country’s ancient heritage that would make him world famous for opening Tutankhamun’s tomb with Howard Carter on November 26,…