Mummies In Nineteenth Century America

This work examines Egyptian mummies as artifacts in pre-1900 America: how they got here, what happened to them, and how they were perceived by the public and by archaeologists. Collected newspaper accounts and other documents reveal the progression of American interest in mummies as curiosities, commodities, and cultural lessons. Numerous mummies which no longer exist are identified, and commentary on mummy coffins and a discussion of methods of public exhibition are included.

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Dortmund (Institut f r Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Way down to Egypt's Land, 9 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The fascination with old Egypt, which came up in the western world after Napoleon's conquest of Egypt in 1798 and reached a peak in 19th century America, was uttered in a vast amount of novels and stories concerned with Egypt and its symbols. One of the most important of these symbols, among pyramids and Pharaohs, is the mummy - the human body, which has 'survived' not only centuries but millenniums. The interest of novelists with Egypt in general and the mummy in particular may have been in its zenith in 19th century, but it has never completely ceased, as the great variety of books about mummies recently published shows. In this paper, Louisa May Alcott's "little-known short story" (Trafton 2005:126) Lost in a Pyramid or the Mummy's Curse, which was published in 1869, will be compared to a novel by Anne Rice: The Mummy or Ramses the Damned, having been published in 1980, but having chosen a setting at the beginning of the 20th century (1914). This paper wants to show, that in spite of having been written with 111 years' time distance, the two texts, use a surprisingly similar set of themes and motives to develop their story. After a short exploration of the historical background of the two texts, I will try to identify and analyze these elements. The examination of the single motives will then lead to the question of a general classification of the two texts, answering the question if, or if not, they belong to the Gothic genre. This paper will also try to make clear, that regardless of the similarity of the set of conventions used in the texts, the means with which this set has been used differ very much.

"The Mummy!" is a novel written by Jane C. Loudon which was published anonymously in 1827. It concerns the Egyptian mummy of Cheops, who is brought back to life in the year 2126. The novel describes a future filled with advanced technology, and was the first English-language story to feature a reanimated mummy. Unlike many early science fiction works, Loudon did not portray the future as her own day with only political changes. She filled her world with foreseeable changes in technology, society, and even fashion. Her social attitudes have resulted in the book being ranked among proto-feminist novels.

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Neglected American Women Writers of the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Verena Laschinger and Sirpa Salenius, is a collection of essays that offer a fresh perspective and original analyses of texts by American women writers of the long nineteenth century. The essays, which are written both by European and American scholars, discuss fiction by marginalized authors including Yolanda DuBois (African American fairy tales), Laura E. Richards (children’s literature), Metta Fuller Victor (dime novels/ detective fiction), and other pioneering writers of science fiction, gothic tales, and life narratives. The works covered by this collection represent the rough and ragged realities that women and girls in the nineteenth century experienced; the writings focus on their education, family life, on girls as victims of class prejudice as well as sexual and racial violence, but they also portray girls and women as empowering agents, survivors, and leaders. They do so with a high-voltage creative charge. As progressive pioneers, who forayed into unknown literary terrain and experimented with a variety of genres, the neglected American women writers introduced in this collection themselves emerge as role models whose innovative contribution to nineteenth-century literature the essays celebrate.

Owing to their unique state of preservation, mummies provide us with significant historical and scientific knowledge of humankind’s past. This handbook, written by prominent international experts in mummy studies, offers readers a comprehensive guide to new understandings of the field’s most recent trends and developments. It provides invaluable information on the health states and pathologies of historic populations and civilizations, as well as their socio-cultural and religious characteristics. Addressing the developments in mummy studies that have taken place over the past two decades – which have been neglected for as long a time – the authors excavate the ground-breaking research that has transformed scientific and cultural knowledge of our ancient predecessors. The handbook investigates the many new biotechnological tools that are routinely applied in mummy studies, ranging from morphological inspection and endoscopy to minimally invasive radiological techniques that are used to assess states of preservation. It also looks at the paleoparasitological and pathological approaches that have been employed to reconstruct the lifestyles and pathologic conditions of ancient populations, and considers the techniques that have been applied to enhance biomedical knowledge, such as craniofacial reconstruction, chemical analysis, stable isotope analysis and ancient DNA analysis. This interdisciplinary handbook will appeal to academics in historical, anthropological, archaeological and biological sciences, and will serve as an indispensable companion to researchers and students interested in worldwide mummy studies.

For much of the nineteenth century, the nervous system was a medical mystery, inspiring scientific studies and exciting great public interest. Because of this widespread fascination, the nerves came to explain the means by which mind and body related to each other. By the 1830s, the nervous system helped Americans express the consequences on the body, and for society, of major historical changes. Literary writers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Harriet Beecher Stowe, used the nerves as a metaphor to re-imagine the role of the self amidst political, social and religious tumults, including debates about slavery and the revivals of the Second Great Awakening. Representing the 'romance' of the nervous system and its cultural impact thoughtfully and, at times, critically, the fictional experiments of this century helped construct and explore a neurological vision of the body and mind. Murison explains the impact of neurological medicine on nineteenth-century literature and culture.