The Mummy Congress

[The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession and the Everlasting Dead by Heather Pringle - 2002, Fourth Estate]

I kept spotting this book as I browsed the bargain books at the local mega-bookseller. I'm normally leery of books with mummies and Egyptian stuff on the cover as most of them seem to be pretty thin on content and real heavy on the same old sensationalist or quasi-New Age stuff with a handful of glossy and colourful images intended to get the rubes to buy in. The price seemed right (under $5.00) so I decided to see what the back cover had to say about the content. The back of the Fourth Estate paperback didn't tell me much, but on the other hand it didn't discourage me from looking inside the book either.

From the first page: Heather Pringle is a journalist and writer who has written on archeology and ancient cultures in numerous magazines including Discover, National Geographic Traveller, New Scientist, Science and Geo. She is also the author of two books, including In Search of Ancient North America. She lives in Vancouver, Canada.

That pretty much sold me - a solid non-fiction science writer.

The Mummy Congress starts with the convening of Third World Congress on Mummy Studies in Arica, Chile and gives us a good sense that this small field of study is made up of very dedicated people that share the same (almost maniacal) interest in mummies. Absent seem to be the snake oil salesmen, taking the liberty of calling themselves Egyptologists, we are more familiar with. Pringle uses the characters at the congress as her jumping off point for her narrative about the various kinds of mummies that exist, the way they are discovered, preserved, studied and at times desecrated for profit.

Some of the things you will learn about while reading:

• The dissection of mummies in Egypt where they are more plentiful than anywhere else and where the bits and pieces of those not fortunate enough to have celebrity mummy status end up.
  
• Studies of mummies for ancient drug use and parasites that inhabited them while alive.
  
• Origins of the "Bog People" and their ritual killing before being tossed into bogs.
• Controversies over Caucasian looking mummies discovered in Northern China dating from before Europeans officially made any trips that far east.
• The origin of the word "mummy" and it's roots in the for profit capitalization of ground up mummy bits packaged as medicines, elixirs and artists paint.
• Famous sideshow proprietors of mummified remains and their exhibitions.
• The Vatican's interest in the study of mummified remains.
• The mummification of Communist leaders.
  

An overall well written book that manages to convey lots of factual information (with a meaty bibliography and a good index) while keeping the reader entertained with colourful characters and vivid descriptions of this fascinating field of study that spans the entire globe. If you like non-fiction and/or mummies this is a great read. I didn't find any pitfalls in this book, except for the chapter on parasites which gave me the creeps while reading it in the middle of the night.