The terrors of Egypt were created largely out of ignorance. With centuries passing before the decoding of hieroglyphics, we had plenty of time to come up with our own silly ideas of what the Egyptian believed. Even when we knew we loved the stories of cursed tombs and doomed archaeologists.
It strikes me as amazing that the mummy became one of the great classic monsters without a novel to cement its fame, like Dracula (1897) did for the vampire. Certainly there were stories, long before the Pulps and the Universal movies starring Boris Karloff.
In Weird Tales, Harry Houdini and his ghostwriter, H. P. Lovecraft, brought the Egyptian pantheon into the Cthulhu Mythos with “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” (May-June-July 1924). It was really Lovecraft protege, Robert Bloch, who did the heavy lifting with a number of early stories set in Egypt.
It was a short trip from the Pulps to the comic books. Early horror titles like Adventures into the Unknown as well as superhero mags saw the visual appeal of mummies and giant pyramids. I’ve gathered them by theme for better comparison.
The Sphinx
Mummies
Sorcerers and Queens
Other Terrors
