Resurrecting Pompeii by Estelle Lazer

Egypt, mummies served as firewood as the population had little other fossil fuel at its disposal. Similarly, mummified arms and legs were claimed to make excellent torches. Mark Twain famously made the spurious suggestion that they were also burnt to power locomotive engines. 7
Mummies for science and entertainment
    Amazingly, large numbers of mummies survived the nineteenth-century onslaught and subsequently could be employed to better understand the people of ancient Egypt.
    As mentioned above, Napoleon ’s campaign inspired interest in ancient mummies, which led to organized expeditions to excavate and loot the ancient contents of tombs. This activity continued into the twentieth century.
    Politics obviously played an important role in the growth of the excavation and plundering of tombs. When Mohammed Ali came to power as the ruler of Egypt at the beginning of the nineteenth century, he encouraged a large European presence in his country, as he was anxious to gain access to Western technology and trade. He also was very enthusiastic about improved diplomatic ties with Europe. A number of diplomats took the opportunity to amass antiquities for personal, as well as national, gain. Two of the major protagonists in this area were Giovanni Battista Belzoni, who worked for the British representative Henry Salt and the Consul General for France, Bernardino Drovetti.
    Belzoni is the better known of these two characters, partly because he was more careful in his work and partly because of his remarkable history. He started his career as a strongman in a circus. He then trained as an hydraulic engineer and arrived in Egypt in 1816 to sell the new ruler of the country an irrigation pump. The demonstration of the pump was far from successful and Belzoni was forced to make an abrupt career change. His skills in moving large objects proved extremely valuable for his new role as excavator and tomb robber. He eventually returned to England with a large collection of mummies, some of which were used for very successful public mummy unrollings. 8
    Like Pompeii and other Vesuvian sites, the early history of Egyptian tomb excavation was marked by its similarity to a mining operation. The initial excavations primarily served to line the coffers of the people who excavated and commissioned such work. There were some notable exceptions and a more rigorous approach began to prevail by the middle of the nineteenth century.
    In the early years of the twentieth century, American-funded expeditions were carried out under the aegis of the Egyptian Antiquities Service. These expeditions were a forerunner to international expeditions to Egypt, which became fairly common as the century progressed. Projects were undertaken by American and European institutions as well as independent wealthy individuals who were able to obtain permits. Flinders Petrie, for example, led a number of expeditions both for the English-based Egypt Exploration Fund and the British School of Archaeology in Egypt. Petrie is generally credited as the founder of scientific archaeology in Egypt. He was responsible for the excavation of numerous tomb sites, some of which yielded important information in establishing the history of mummification. Other archaeologists, like John Garstang, who worked in the ensuing decades could be accused of expending far less effort on documentation and analysis of the human remains than the grave goods.
    Straight-out tomb robbing still continued throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries despite the fact that it was illegal. Objects obtained from tombs would always find buyers and major institutions, like the British Museum, were amongst the worst culprits when it came to making the job of the tomb robber worthwhile.
    Perhaps the single find that most influenced the popular imagination in the twentieth century was the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings by Howard Carter in 1922. As the first intact royal