In Search of a Classic: The Mummy

The Mummy as a monster was created out of ignorance. The mystique of evil Egyptian sorceries was the vagaries of human curiosity. Hieroglyphics were not translated until the finding of the Rosetta Stone in 1799. That left millennia for people to come up with their own ideas about what all those drawing-letters meant. Why had those kings and queens been turned into bandage-wrapped manikins locked inside golden sarcophagi? What of curses and reincarnation? All those animal-headed gods…

Despite thousands of years of guesses the Mummy never had a literary classic to cement it into the public consciousness the way the vampire, the werewolf or the man-made monster did. The Mummy has no Dracula, no Werewolf of Paris, no Frankenstein. This isn’t to say there haven’t been Mummy novels. There certainly have been. Mummy! Or A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Jane Webb Loundun was published in 1827. Theophile Gautier’s wrote a novel The Romance of the Mummy (1856) and Guy Boothby had Pharos the Egyptian in 1899. Even Bram Stoker wrote one, The Jewel of the Seven Stars in 1902. Despite this, the Mummy remains more of a scientifically created creature.

It may be hard to believe that people went nuts for all things Egyptian in the 19th Century. Napoleon brought much of the ancient glamor to the public in the years between 1809-1828, with the publication of the 19-volume work called Description of Egypt. One hundred and sixty-seven scientists, artists and researchers produced observations, drawings and illustrations that fascinated Europe and America with all things Egyptian. The cities of Memphis, Tennessee and Cairo, Illinois were named in their honor. And just when things were quieting down after 1900, Professor Howard Carter opened King Tut’s tomb in 1922. His associate Lord Carnavon died seven weeks after the opening, spawning a whole rash of “mummy’s curse” stories. Famous authors like Mari Corelli and Arthur Conan Doyle fueled the belief with their support. Universal Pictures used the idea in The Mummy in 1932. After Boris Karloff’s portrayal, the Mummy joined the other creatures in Monster hierarchy. Like so many others, Hollywood gave us the final rendition.

Let’s go back before 1932. Here is the first glut of Mummy-ana, as well as tales were written in the second, after 1922. Not surprisingly, not much has changed for the Mummy in recent years. The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and the Tom Cruise The Mummy have been remade with great CGI effects like jackal-headed armies but still the basic idea of the ancient revived king hasn’t mutated like that of the vampire. That undead fiend has changed from a nosferatu-like corpse to a Byronic lover with super-powers. The mummy remains a shambling corpse in search of his lost love or vengeance or both. Nobody dresses in mummy-like garb and calls themselves a “mum”.

Unlike those other monsters, the vampire and the werewolf, mummies tend to fascinate their authors. Several of the writers wrote more than one mummy work. Not having a definitive image has helped to create a more usable monster, one the imagination comes to again and again.

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849), as in so many things, was miles ahead of the competition. He uses mummy images and the rebirth theme in his early horror tales like “The Case of M. Valdemar”. He would use similar imagery with Usher’s sister in “The Fall of the House of Usher”. It is interesting to compare this last tale with “Some Words From a Mummy”, which was written twelve years later. By 1850 the public was familiar enough with mummies for Poe to use one in a science fiction parody.

THEOPHILE GAUTIER (1811-1872) was a French contemporary of Poe’s, but unlike the American master, Gautier’s stories have a sarcastic flavor to them that reduces their horror effect. Gautier wrote “The Mummy’s Foot” in 1840 but it appeared in English in Harper’s, April 1871. At novel length, The Romance of the Mummy (1856) and another Egyptian classic called “One of Cleopatra’s Nights” in 1882. One version was been translated by Lafcadio Hearn, a horror master in his own right.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT (1832-1888) is known as the children’s author who wrote the classic Little Women (1868) and Little Men (1871). She served as a nurse in the American Civil War and wrote about that in Hospital Sketches (1863). Alcott had another writing career as a story writer for adults, producing several weird tales like “A Strange Island”, “The Abbot’s Ghost” and her Egyptian tale, “Lost in a Pyramid, or The Mummy’s Curse”. Alcott’s tale is one of modern people suffering the terrors left behind in the form of a killer flower.

GRANT ALLEN (1848-1899) was a Canadian who wrote for many magazines in the UK and America. He was an agnostic and socialist who penned the controversial bestseller, The Woman Who Did (1895), about a woman who has a child out of wedlock. Much of his fiction output was mystery or horror. “My New Year’s Eve Among the Mummies” was published in The Belgravia Christmas Annual 1878, under the pseudonym J. Arbuthnot Wilson.

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE (1859-1930) wrote two classic mummy stories, both very different and influential. “The Ring of Thoth” was one of the first horror stories to suggest a mummy could survive millennia and resurrect a lover. “Lot 249” was one of the first tales to feature a resurrected mummy on a killing rampage. Both of these themes have become standard parts of the Mummy story. Conan Doyle was a firm believer in psychic phenomena. His opinions about the reality of “The Pharaoh’s Curse” in 1922 helped fuel the media frenzy over Lord Carnavon’s death.

GUY BOOTHBY (1867 – 1905) was an Australian writer who made his fortune with a character named Dr. Nikola. Like Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu, Nikola terrorized a group of Englishmen through several novels. Pharos the Egyptian (1899) features mummies, Biblical characters and resurrections and appeared in The Graphic, December 10, 1894.

SAX ROHMER (1883 – 1959) was actually Arthur Henry Ward and is most often associated with China through his most famous character, Dr. Fu Manchu. This is a bit of a misnomer since Fu is actually from the East End of London. Rohmer may have made his name with Fu Manchu but he was also a fan of the Egyptian and wrote several tales and novels with Egyptian theme. The most successful was Brood of the Witch-Queen (1918). This novel features a sorcerer who uses the magic of Egypt against a group of Brits.

ALGERNON BLACKWOOD (1869-1951) created one of the great occult detectives in Dr. John Silence, a doctor who encounters the supernatural in his work. Algernon Blackwood, like Conan Doyle, was a firm believer in the paranormal and writes with authority is this longest Silence case features an Egyptian mummy in “Nemesis of Fire”. Like Rohmer and Doyle, the Egyptian magic has terrible consequences back in England.

H. RIDER HAGGARD (1856-1925) will always be the creator of Allan Quatermain, but he also dabbled in mystical stories, even within that series. One of his non-Quatermain tales was a novella called “Smith and the Pharaohs” (The Strand, December 1912-February 1913). In a dream, the archaeologist Smith must face the wrath of the ancient past for digging it up in the future.

H. P. LOVECRAFT (1890-1937) makes a fitting book-end here, being the 20th Century’s acknowledged master of horror. Edgar Allan Poe, who started us off, was his idol and influenced his style heavily. Lovecraft used mummy and resurrection images often in his work. (“Herbert West Reanimator”, “The Outsider”, etc.) In “Out of the Eons” a collaborative tale, a mummy is found on an iceberg and resurrected to do evil. “Nyarlathotep” features another such villain, published November, 1920 in The United Amateur. Lovecraft did more ghosting when he wrote “Imprisoned With the Pharaohs” for Weird Tales (May 1924) under the byline of Harry Houdini. Houdini may have suggested some of the ideas in the story but the writing is all Lovecraft. Lovecraft would inspire younger writers like Robert Bloch to tell new mummy tales in Weird Tales.