Amazing information. Of course I read a lot about Europe, terrible and unusual, but this! If the curse of the pharaohs existed, European civilization would have died out long ago. It is amazing how little respect people have for mummies, and how many uses they have found.
For example, this method …
Natural bitumen was one of the traditional means of Arab and Persian medicine. Outstanding scientist and physician Avicenna (Ibn Sina) in the 11th century described the treatment of abscesses, fractures, bruises, nausea, ulcers using a mummy (from "mum" - wax). Then the drug was noticed at the Italian University of Salerno, where the scientific works of oriental authors were translated.
In the texts of Arab and Persian scholars, the origin of the mummy was not explained. Local experts already knew what it was. But the Europeans, seeing the familiar word, got excited. They started adding their comments to the translations. "It is a substance that can be found in the lands where bodies are buried, embalmed with aloe, with which body fluids are mixed and turned into a mummy," wrote the Italian scientist Gerard of Cremona. Almost every translator has shown such erudition. The rest was a matter of time.
In the 13th century, it was already widely believed in Europe that the healing substance of the mummy could be found in Egyptian tombs. It should be black, viscous and dense.
Natural bitumen from the Dead Sea.
MUMMY ECONOMY
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It's 15th century. The bodies of the Egyptians are considered a medicine. The tomb robbers are involved. Poor, relatively fresh burials suffer the most. They really find bitumen. At the turn of our era, due to its cheapness, it began to be used for embalming instead of soda lye (a decoction of ash with an alkaline reaction) and gum (tree resin). The resin penetrated deeply into the tissues and mixed with them so that it is visually difficult to determine where the bitumen is and where the bones are.
By the 16th century, a mummy trade market was formed. An assortment appears: mumia vulgaris (common mummy), mumia arabus (Arabian mummy), mumia sepulchorum (mummy from tombs). Europe craves a miracle cure.
Merchant Johann Hellfirich from Leipzig is trying to buy in Egypt at least one of those correct "black as coal" mummies that "the locals seek with the greatest energy and sell to traders from Cairo." A certain Englishman in 1580 mentions: “The bodies of ancient people, not decayed, but whole, are dug up daily. These dead bodies are the mummies that doctors and pharmacists make us swallow against our will."
A page from "Universal Cosmography" (1575) by André Theve with an engraving illustrating the hunt of the local population for mummies.
Supply does not keep up with demand. The production of fakes from the corpses of criminals begins. In 1564, King of Navarre's physician Guy de la Fontaine was brought to Cairo to see a mummy merchant. He admitted that he was preparing the remedy himself, and was surprised how Europeans with their elegant taste could eat such muck.
FOR FOOD FISH
The mummy treats the nobility. The French king Francis I (1494-1547) never goes hunting without a bag of food. But an epiphany comes: the Arab mummy is not the mummy of the Egyptian! Amathus Lusitanus from Portugal blames inept translators. Valery Kord, professor at the University of Wittenberg, agrees with him.
The very fact of eating corpses for medical purposes does not horrify anyone, since it fits into the then medical practice. For example, the Danish king Christian IV was treated for epilepsy with a powder from the crushed skulls of executed criminals.
The main problem of the remedy is that the medicine does not work. According to the doctor of four French kings and one of the founders of modern surgery Ambroise Paré (1510-1590), he prescribed a mummy hundreds of times, but did not see the result.
At the end of the 17th century, scientists openly mock the mummy. The French botanist Pierre Pome (1658-1699) describes for a long time how to distinguish a real mummy from a fake one, and then notes that the substance is best suited for feeding fish. This was not a joke. In A Gentleman's Rest in 1686, Richard Blom advises luring fish with a mummy mixed with hemp seed.
In the 18th century, treatment with mummies was generally recognized as quackery. But in 1798 Napoleon sets out to conquer Egypt, and mania reaches a new level.
Pharmaceutical vessels for the mummy. Germany, 18th century.
ZAMORSKY SOUVENIR
Napoleon's campaign gave rise to a fashion for everything Egyptian in Europe. Papyri, talismans in the form of scarabs and, of course, mummies are eagerly bought up. On the streets of Cairo, you can find merchants of whole bodies, but fragments are much more often sold.
Tourists from the 19th century dig in baskets, from which the hands of the mummies stick out like baguettes. The most popular goods are heads, the most expensive are mummies from rich tombs.
Prices are minimal: a head can be bought for 10-20 Egyptian piastres. All this is illegally exported to Europe. For 30 years, on the desktop of the writer Gustave Flaubert, there was a mummified foot, which he obtained in Egypt, crawling "like a worm" through the caves.
Street vendor of mummies, Egypt, 1875.
The mummies were no longer eaten, they turned into an attraction. The unwinding of the bandages was the culmination of parties and paid shows, which culminated in popular science lectures.
“The uncovering work has begun. The top envelope of the coarse linen bandage was opened with scissors. The faint scent of balm, spices and aromas filled the room, reminiscent of those of a pharmacy. Then the end of the bandage was found, and the mummy was placed straight so that the unwinder could move freely around it … And now two white eyes with black pupils sparkled with their artificial life. These were enameled eyes, which were usually inserted into carefully made mummies, - this is how the writer Théophile Gaultier described the show, staged at the Paris Exhibition in 1855.
"Examination of the mummy".
MUMMY FOR FINE MASKS
Calls to respect the burials and ashes of the Egyptians sounded only at the end of the 19th century. But, before settling down in museums, the mummies still had to work for art. They paint pictures with them.
For two hundred years, European artists have used mummy powder as a brown pigment. It was believed that it has good transparency, it is convenient for them to work with thin strokes. Only in 1837 did the English chemist George Field, in a treatise on paints and pigments, conclude: "We will not achieve anything special by smearing the remains of some Potiphar's wife on canvases, which can be achieved with the help of more decent and stable materials."
Martin Drolling's painting “In the Kitchen” (1815) is often referred to as an example of the intensive use of the Mummy Brown pigment.
A symbolic end to art cannibalism was put by an incident that occurred in June 1881. The English painter Edward Burne-Jones gathered his friends for lunch in the garden. One of them said that he recently received an invitation to visit a paint workshop to look at the mummy before grinding it into pigment. Burne-Jones began to argue: “I guess the paint is named because of the color similarity! It cannot be that it is made of bodies! Friends convinced him otherwise.
The artist ran out from behind the table and returned with a tube of Mummy Brown paint. He stated that he wanted to provide this man with a decent burial. Those present dug a hole and solemnly buried a tube of paint. The owner's 15-year-old daughter planted flowers on the grave.
