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The Curse of theMummy's TextMichael Delahoyde

The Curse of the Mummy's Text. The Curse of theMummy's Text. Michael Delahoyde. The mummy is a popularenough creature to show up usually at mad monster parties. Itserves as one of only four creatures in the U.S. Post Office'sHalloween 1998 merchandising of famous monsters from UniversalStudios, as well as in the children's book, How to Care forYour Monster(1970), where we are advised.
Main Characters Akharis - Mummy Amentut - Akharis' Vizier/Mummy Cleomina - Sabre-Toothed Tiger Cranno the Great - Legendary Thespian Don Huan Fernandez - Knight of Vastille Gordo - Fernandez's manservant High Priestess of Sithera Jerran Farr Lopar - Shaman Princess Nemset - Ghost Rhehotep - Ghost.

The mummy is a popularenough creature to show up usually at mad monster parties. Itserves as one of only four creatures in the U.S. Post Office'sHalloween 1998 merchandising of famous monsters from UniversalStudios, as well as in the children's book, How to Care forYour Monster (1970), where we are advised:

If your family is alwaystelling you to turn down the record player, and not to shout,giggle, or slam doors, then a mummy is the monster for you. Hemakes very little noise.. If your local monster store doesn'tstock mummy-monsters, you have a problem. Unless someone in yourfamily has stolen a Mummy's Hand. In that case, the mummy willfind you. (23, 25)

But despite their charitableinclusion among their more compelling kin at monster mashes, mummiesnevertheless remain second-rate monsters, seldom if ever the nightmarematerial of choice for 20th- and 21st-century dreamers. It seemsas if the conception of the mummy as a monster ought towork effectively; but it never really has. Despite potentiallysuccessful elements inherent in the construction of this creature,no text to date (literary nor filmic) has capitalized properlyon the psychological horror without blundering somehow. The fewmoments of frisson afforded by mummy texts always end byseeming far too incidental -- they never add up to an effectivehorror piece.

James B. Twitchell,in Dreadful Pleasures: An Anatomy of Modern Horror (1985),spends barely more than one of his 300+ pages on mummies. Twitchell,who rather convincingly rates the success of monsters in termsof psychosexual taboos being broken, and in particular by theextent of specifically incestuous elements hidden within the stories,finds the mummy lacking. Instead, he insists, the creature 'ishopelessly bogged down in a complicated story that involves capturinghis reincarnated girl-princess and returning with her to the worldof the dead'; he has 'never developed a coherent text,let alone a family' whereby the incest formula might be operative(260). 'Until the smoldering sexual relationships are madeexplicitly incestuous or forbidden, .. the [mummy] will probablymolder for a few thousand more years' (261). I doubt thatincest need invariably be the repressed taboo for successful horror,but for the mummy to be more gripping than it has been so far,it surely needs something more lurid than simply ignorance ofthe suggestion that when you're dead, lie down.

Vampires, werewolves,the Frankenstein monster, even zombies seem more effective infiltratorsof the imagination. Whereas vampires, for example, can serve representativelyas any force sucking your life away (your lover's brat kid, instructorshipstatus at the university you work for, etc.), it is more difficultto find resonant metaphoric meaning in being stalked by a giantbandage just because your archaeologist father defiled tombs inthe Nile region. Mummies may tap into some effective taboos andmay indirectly represent psychologically disturbing notions: thepersistence of their lumbering is bothersome; they are 'undead'-- but many monsters are more effective on these scores. And besides,these and a few other potentially disturbing qualities do notmake and have not made a unique and solidly successful monster.

The mummy arose as the dark side of Western culture's avid Egyptological enthusiasm,first prompted by the discovery just before the turn of the nineteenthcentury of the Rosetta Stone during the French occupation of Egypt,an artifact which (offering the same text in hieroglyphic, demotic,and Greek) allowed scholars to decipher the characters in Egyptianhieroglyphic inscriptions at last and therefore to uncover earlyEgyptian history and culture. Throughout the nineteenth century,scholarly work on ancient Egypt became gradually available toa general audience through translations and lectures, often presentingdiscoveries in comparison with biblical stories. From the secondquarter of the nineteenth century onwards, scholars, the press,and popular culture were immersed in Egyptology.

The first reanimatedmummy appears in horror-master Edgar Allan Poe's short story 'SomeWords with a Mummy' (appearing in the American WeeklyReview in 1845). Capitalizing on the Egyptian craze, he seeksonly to mock the fad of Egyptomania and satirize the smugnessof progressivism. His mummy, named 'Allamistakeo,' isrevived by a Frankenstein-like electrical hook-up to the slapsticksurprise of scholars. In ensuing discussion, Poe works his satireagainst cultural self-congratulation by way of a defamiliarizationtechnique through the perspective of the mummy: wigs and clothes,religious arrogance, 'progressive' science, architecture,politics, and so on. Thus Poe used the mummy for social satire,not horror.

Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-centurypotboiler and supernatural fiction cast about haphazardly tryingto unearth a meaningful plotline from the era's Egyptologicalinterest. Although weird, nasty Egyptians appear in creepy workssuch as Richard Marsh's The Beetle (1897), actual mummiesare rarer. Théophile Gautier's The Romance of a Mummy(1857) is impressive in its historical accuracy regarding Egyptand introduces the theme of hopeless love between the living andthe dead; but this is not a horror tale, and for the Egyptianqueen's remains, transported to England by an adoring archaeologistwho has read the sad tale of her life, the subject of reanimationis never broached. Ambrose Pratt's The Living Mummy (1910),although including an ambulatory mummy obedient to an evil mastermindand demonstrating a predilection for strangling his victims, istoo rife with embarrassing melodramatic sappiness, along withracism and sexism, to be an effective text. Equally sappy in styleis Burton Stevenson's A King in Babylon (1917), a novelabout filmmakers blundering upon a pharaoh's curse. The storyincludes the notion of reincarnation of a lost love, even thoughreincarnation is an oriental belief and plays little or no partin the religions of ancient Egypt. Bram Stoker's somewhat-admiredThe Jewel of Seven Stars (1906) only approaches an attemptedreanimation, despite a recent film's misleading title -- BramStoker's The Mummy (1997) -- an embarrassing attempt to cashin on the cheesy current trend of citing nineteenth-century authorsin film titles. The fact is that there is no reanimated killermummy at all in Stoker's tale.

Arthur Conan Doyle,responsible for launching the vilification of dinosaurs in allof twentieth-century popular culture with his The Lost World(1912), is actually responsible also for much of the key mummymaterial of fiction and film. His short story 'Lot No. 249'(1892) (adapted as a Tales from the Darkside episode) tellsof an Oxford student having bought a mummy at an auction (hencethe title). This student harbors personal grudges and sets thecreature on his perceived enemies. While townspeople fear a hypotheticalescaped ape, the protagonist, armed with an amputation knife,forces the owner to hack up the mummy and burn its pieces in a fire with an accompanying scroll, des

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