A Mystery from the Mummy-Pits - Frank L. Holt

As the world recently commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, our fascination with the pharaoh begs for a balanced view. Most Egyptian tombs are not royal; most were never carefully cleared and documented; most have not had their occupants treated with respect or returned to their sepulchers; and most recovered mummies have not escaped the modern trafficking in ancient bodies and body parts. The story of Ankh-Hap, a Ptolemaic-era mummy seized in the nineteenth century from the infamous mummy-pits of Egypt, provides a salutary example of what most mummies have endured.Like a detective, Frank Holt makes use of a robust combination of scientific tools and archival research to tell the story of Ankh-Hap''s life, death, and his mummified remains, which ended up in the back of an American college classroom. A Mystery from the Mummy-Pits takes the reader into a forgotten world of mummy trafficking by an American entrepreneur named Henry Augustus Ward (1834-1906). In Rochester, N.Y., his company''s shelves were stocked with mummies, coffins, and even ancient body parts such as mummies'' heads ($10 each), legs ($4 each), and arms ($5 each). Customers could piece together their own "Frankenmummy" with authentic wrappings and amulets sold separately. A Mystery from the Mummy-Pits contextualizes this fascinating information by surveying the history of similar mummies from antiquity to the twentieth century, moving from ancient tomb robbers and
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