James!â Then, pointing to me, âAnd this is my acolyte.â I didnât mind at all. I was able to spend ten days with this marvelous gentleman, quizzing him for a wealth of insights on Egyptological matters and visiting such wonderful places as the Wadi Rum and Petra in Jordan and sites in the eastern desert of Egypt. Many of the passengers, too, were quite fascinating, including Countess Tauni de Lesseps, the granddaughter of the man who built the Suez Canal, and I would have readily signed up for more, but it was time to move on. I was once again pleased to return home and find Sherry relieved that Iâd been off on anarchaeological adventure rather than something more precarious in the mountains.
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D ESPITE MY ENTHUSIASM and growing experience, I wasnât qualified to direct my own archaeological expedition in Egypt at this stage in my career. A Ph.D. and a formal affiliation with an appropriate institution such as a museum or university are among the criteria, and I had a good ways to go before I would achieve either. Apart from continuing my graduate-school education, which I wasnât interested in pursuing for a while, there were other things I could do to keep myself well involved in archaeology, including fieldwork and the constant study of subjects that somehow piqued my interest or just came my way.
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O NE DAY WHILE READING the newspaper in Tacoma, Washington, I learned that there was a mummy being examined with modern medical technology by a local physician named Ray Lyle. I immediately called Ray to see if I could get a piece of the action. I was welcomed aboard Lyleâs team as a âconsultant,â since I was one of only a few in the Pacific Northwest with a background in ancient Egypt, and it was a fascinating experience. The mummy and its accompanying coffins were examined every which way. While physicians scrutinized his physical characteristics, I helped organize and investigate some of the contextual information regarding his identity and place in time.
The mummy was acquired in Egypt in 1891 by a Tacoma businessman named Allen Mason. Although it might seem strange today, back in the nineteenth century, tourists could buy mummies and coffins, or the two together, and bring them home asexotic souvenirs. Antiquities dealing was big business, and there was a seemingly endless supply of dead ancient Egyptians to satisfy the customers. As a result there are mummies and pieces thereofâhands, heads, et ceteraâto be found in museums, in antiques and curio shops, and even in private homes all over Europe and North America. When you consider that mummification in Egypt was practiced for perhaps three millennia, there were plenty of dead folk whose bodies were embalmed, wrapped, coffined, and interred.
The ancient Egyptians were interested in preserving the actual body because it served as a physical home for a manifestation of the soul known as the ka . Not everyone, though, got the same treatment. The average Egyptian laborer was probably wrapped in a mat with a few personal items for the afterlife and buried in a pit. But those who could afford it could have their body prepared by experts to survive the ages in a state that more or less resembled them in life. There are very few Egyptian texts that describe the process of mummification, but the Greek historian Herodotus provides a few insights, indicating that there were three different methods of preparation. His description of the deluxe procedure is morbidly fascinating:
They take first a crooked piece of iron, and with it draw out the brain through the nostrils, thus getting rid of a portion, while the skull is cleared of the rest by rinsing with drugs; next they make a cut along the flank with a sharp Ethiopian stone, and take out the whole contents of the abdomen, which they then cleanse, washing it thoroughly with palm wine, and again frequently with an infusion of pounded aromatics. After this they fill
Â
D ESPITE MY ENTHUSIASM and growing experience, I wasnât qualified to direct my own archaeological expedition in Egypt at this stage in my career. A Ph.D. and a formal affiliation with an appropriate institution such as a museum or university are among the criteria, and I had a good ways to go before I would achieve either. Apart from continuing my graduate-school education, which I wasnât interested in pursuing for a while, there were other things I could do to keep myself well involved in archaeology, including fieldwork and the constant study of subjects that somehow piqued my interest or just came my way.
Â
O NE DAY WHILE READING the newspaper in Tacoma, Washington, I learned that there was a mummy being examined with modern medical technology by a local physician named Ray Lyle. I immediately called Ray to see if I could get a piece of the action. I was welcomed aboard Lyleâs team as a âconsultant,â since I was one of only a few in the Pacific Northwest with a background in ancient Egypt, and it was a fascinating experience. The mummy and its accompanying coffins were examined every which way. While physicians scrutinized his physical characteristics, I helped organize and investigate some of the contextual information regarding his identity and place in time.
The mummy was acquired in Egypt in 1891 by a Tacoma businessman named Allen Mason. Although it might seem strange today, back in the nineteenth century, tourists could buy mummies and coffins, or the two together, and bring them home asexotic souvenirs. Antiquities dealing was big business, and there was a seemingly endless supply of dead ancient Egyptians to satisfy the customers. As a result there are mummies and pieces thereofâhands, heads, et ceteraâto be found in museums, in antiques and curio shops, and even in private homes all over Europe and North America. When you consider that mummification in Egypt was practiced for perhaps three millennia, there were plenty of dead folk whose bodies were embalmed, wrapped, coffined, and interred.
The ancient Egyptians were interested in preserving the actual body because it served as a physical home for a manifestation of the soul known as the ka . Not everyone, though, got the same treatment. The average Egyptian laborer was probably wrapped in a mat with a few personal items for the afterlife and buried in a pit. But those who could afford it could have their body prepared by experts to survive the ages in a state that more or less resembled them in life. There are very few Egyptian texts that describe the process of mummification, but the Greek historian Herodotus provides a few insights, indicating that there were three different methods of preparation. His description of the deluxe procedure is morbidly fascinating:
They take first a crooked piece of iron, and with it draw out the brain through the nostrils, thus getting rid of a portion, while the skull is cleared of the rest by rinsing with drugs; next they make a cut along the flank with a sharp Ethiopian stone, and take out the whole contents of the abdomen, which they then cleanse, washing it thoroughly with palm wine, and again frequently with an infusion of pounded aromatics. After this they fill
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