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- Egyptomania was so pronounced in England during the Victorian Era that mummy unwrapping became a popular pastime in lecture halls, hospitals, and even private homes in the 19 th century as British men returned home from archaeological expeditions, colonial postings, or sightseeing tours with bodies they’d looted from Egyptian tombs.
www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/mummy-eating-medical-cannibalism-gory-history
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- Marcus Harmes
- Mummy mania. Faith that mummies could cure illness drove people for centuries to ingest something that tasted awful. Mumia, the product created from mummified bodies, was a medicinal substance consumed for centuries by rich and poor, available in apothecaries’ shops, and created from the remains of mummies brought from Egyptian tombs back to Europe.
- Mummy’s medicine. Not all doctors thought dry, old mummies made the best medicine. Some doctors believed that fresh meat and blood had a vitality the long-dead lacked.
- Dinner, drinks, and a show. By the 19th century, people were no longer consuming mummies to cure illness but Victorians were hosting “unwrapping parties” where Egyptian corpses would be unwrapped for entertainment at private parties.
- The mummy’s curse. Mummy unwrapping parties ended as the 20th century began. The macabre thrills seemed in bad taste and the inevitable destruction of archaeological remains seemed regrettable.
- Overview
- How did people start eating mummies?
- Medical cannibalism
- Victorians and Egyptomania
Due to a series of misunderstandings and mistranslations, medieval Europeans believed that consuming embalmed bodies could cure them of disease.
Feeling ill? In 15th-century Europe, the remedy for your headache, stomach ailment, or cancer might come with a side of Egyptian mummy.
The practice of consuming parts of ancient Egyptian mummies—and, later, embalmed corpses of all kinds—began in the 11th century. What started it all, writes historian Karl Dannenfelt, was a series of mistranslations and misunderstandings.
The gory story hinges on one word: mumia. Prized for its healing qualities, mumia was a substance found on a single Persian mountainside where it seeped from black-rock asphalt. Named after the local word for wax, “mum,” the substance was used for a variety of medical purposes and gained a reputation in the Arabic world as expensive, precious, and effective.
But when Western Europeans began encountering the Islamic world and translating its texts, a single mistranslation led to widespread confusion about the meaning of mumia. According to Dannenfelt, a variety of 11th- and 12th-century translators incorrectly identified mumia as a substance exuded from preserved bodies in Egyptian tombs.
(How Egyptians made mummies in 70 days or less.)
Mistranslation and medical misunderstandings now combined with another fallacious, but longstanding, belief: that the human body contained properties that could heal other humans.
For generations, humans had practiced what is now known as medical cannibalism in a bid for better health. From the belief that gladiators’ blood could heal epilepsy to the use of human fat in homemade remedies, medical cannibalism was alive and well in medieval Western Europe. With the arrival of mumia, by then also called mummy, medical practitioners believed they’d hit upon a new source of healing products made from the human body.
Mumia was prescribed for everything from headaches to heart attacks—and a run on mummies followed. Suddenly, people were ransacking Egyptian tombs not just for jewelry or pottery, but for the bodies within, and canny salesmen began collecting and selling mummies. Demand quickly outpaced supply, leading to a brisk trade in fake mummies. Bodysnatchers and unethical tradespeople began turning fresh cadavers and the bodies of executed criminals, enslaved people, and others into “mummies” in an attempt to capitalize on the craze.
(Meet the mummies you've never heard of.)
Though skepticism about mumia grew throughout the centuries, the fascination with mummies only rose.
Egyptomania was so pronounced in England during the Victorian Era that mummy unwrapping became a popular pastime in lecture halls, hospitals, and even private homes in the 19th century as British men returned home from archaeological expeditions, colonial postings, or sightseeing tours with bodies they’d looted from Egyptian tombs.
(What was the mystery message written on this mummy's wrappings?)
Despite a ban on the export of antiquities, Europeans continued seeking out mummies both to satisfy their curiosity and provide components for medical remedies. It wasn’t until the late 19th century that the use of mumia finally died off.
Gravediggers robbed and sold body parts. “The question was not, ‘Should you eat human flesh?’ but, ‘What sort of flesh should you eat?’ ” says Sugg. The answer, at first, was Egyptian mummy,...
Oct 13, 2014 · These practices, however strange, are just some of the many ways people have made something useful out of death. A Gross Misunderstanding. The eating of Egyptian mummies reached its peak in Europe by the 16th century. Mummies could be found on apothecary shelves in the form of bodies broken into pieces or ground into powder.
Nov 3, 2016 · Presumably, it eventually dawned on Victorians that unwrapping mummies — and treating human bodies as entertainment — was perhaps not the best way to preserve or even appreciate a given culture, especially for purposes of scientific inquiry.
Mar 3, 2024 · In Rites of Passage: Death & Mourning in Victorian Britain, Judith Flanders explores the commercialisation of grief and those who resisted the era’s conspicuous consumption.
Sep 3, 2021 · How do people interact with the bodies of the dead? Do they fear death? Is death sacred and religious or profane and secular? By examining how culture interacts with death, we can develop a more complete image of what those societies valued in life. While some of the specific changes in how Victorian London negotiated with
