Resurrecting Pompeii by Estelle Lazer Page B

sees a whole collection of dessicated mummies – kings, their retinues and their mummified animals – returned to life. They all appear to be delighted that the princess is again intact. The Pharaoh asks our hero to name his reward. He asks for permission to marry the princess as it strikes him that it would be appropriate to replace her ‘foot with her hand’. 15
    Taken aback by this request, the old Pharaoh inquires about his age and provenance. He replies that he is 27 years old. The assembled masses are shocked that one so young could consider matrimony with a woman who is 30 centuries his senior. The Pharaoh informs him that the age discrepancy is just too great to allow the marriage even to be considered. Even a two-thousandyear-old would be a trifle on the young side for such a venerable individual. The ancient Egyptian bemoans the fact that youngsters like him appear to be unable to preserve themselves and he really thinks that his daughter should have a husband who has the capacity to last over the millennia. Our hero awakens and finds himself back in his own apartment but the mummy’s foot is no longer there. It has been replaced by a green clay statue of Isis.
    What separates Egyptian popular culture from that of Pompeii is that it really did not have a significant impact on research output. Popularizing ancient Egypt obviously increased interest in tomb sites and the collection of antiquities, including mummified remains. This would have had an impact on funding of expeditions but it did not determine the direction of research. It is in stark contrast with the considerable and continued influence of popular literature, especially The Last Days of Pompeii , on the interpretation of human skeletal finds from Campania.
Egyptian mummies and science
Initial anthropological studies on Egyptian remains were limited to mummy unwrapping and craniometric studies. The latter were the most common analyses performed on skeletal material in the nineteenth century and were undertaken to establish so-called racial types (Chapter 3). One of the key nineteenth-century craniometric studies Morton. Phrenological studies were also research was duly discredited. It is notable that this type of work did not take advantage of the research possibilities provided by preserved soft tissue. This was set to change. The emphasis for future work would shift from typology to more medically oriented research. 16
A fortuitous sequence of linked events provided the impetus for the first rigorous and systematic examinations of Egyptian mummies. Government on Egyptian material was by
    carried out until this type of reaction to public outrage over the construction of the first Aswan Dam in 1902 was a catalyst for this work. When the reservoir behind the dam was filled in 1903, the First Cataract on the Nile and Philae were lost and much of the valley of the Nile was flooded. Many monuments, burials and other artefacts were destroyed both as a direct result of the flooding and because of the ensuing seepage. There was considerable public resentment for these losses. This was exacerbated by a proposal from the Egyptian government to increase the height of the dam by a further seven metres in 1907, as it would result in massive flooding of a considerable area. To stave off criticism about the desecration of Egypt’s cultural heritage, the government made the politically sensible decision to commission a systematic survey of the region prior to the planned deluge. Under this scheme, all monuments were to be documented. Burials were to be excavated and their contents removed before areas were submerged. In addition, all burials were to be recorded in detail, photographed and their contents subjected to analysis. 17
    Another key factor that determined the direction of Egyptian mummy research was the combination of British dominance and involvement in the foundation of the English-language Government School of Medicine in Cairo. It also established the