Egyptomania by Rachel Louise Driscoll

 

When we think of the rise of Egyptology, I think our minds often turn to the Art Deco Egyptian Revival of the early 20^th century with Carter and Carnarvon’s hunt for King Tutankhamun’s tomb.  In truth, however, Egyptomania – the fascination for all things Ancient Egypt – actually goes back further than that to the 19^th century and beyond.  This was a time when the Rosetta Stone arrived at the British Museum, the hieroglyphs were deciphered in a race between Britain and France, Amelia Edwards published her travelogue about her journey through Egypt and Nubia entitled A Thousand Miles up the Nile, and characters like “Mummy” Pettigrew hosted their infamous ‘mummy unwrapping parties’.

Thomas Pettigrew, known by the sobriquet “Mummy” Pettigrew, was a 19^th century surgeon and antiquarian.  A founding member of the British Archaeological Association, he had a particular interest in mummies.  In fact, upon the association’s first meeting in 1844, he apparently unwrapped a mummy in front of his rapt audience.  At such events, Pettigrew was known to not only unroll the layers of cerement from the preserved corpse, but to also perform an autopsy.  His knowledge of Egyptian mummies was so vast that in 1834 he wrote a book called A History of Egyptian Mummies.  This work explored the ancient funerary rites of the Ancient Egyptians, including how sacred animals were worshipped and embalmed. 

Animals such as cats, dogs, ibises, crocodiles, and birds of prey were amongst the varieties of species that the Egyptians would embalm, usually through a connection to a deity.  For instance, Bast or Bastet had the head of a cat, and so cats were seen to be linked to the goddess.  Ibises were sacred and Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing, was often depicted with the head of an ibis.  Many of the Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses had heads of animals, or were said to be able to change their form into animals – like Isis and Nephthys, the sister goddesses who could shapeshift into kites.  Mummified animals would often be buried at the sites that held particular worship for the deity that was associated with that animal, such as the many cats buried at Bubastis, the centre of Bast’s cult.

The term Egyptomania, from the Greek ‘Egypto’ for Egypt and ‘mania’ for madness, came into existence around the end of the 18^th and start of the 19^th century, and this was really when we see the increased interest in this ancient land and its rich history.  Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign helped Egyptomania take flight, inspiring the hunger for antiquities.  There was such a cry for mummies and relics when travellers came to Egypt, that supply could not meet demand, and mummy snatchers and forgers became commonplace.  New laws arose to halt illegal digs and export, but the black market of antiquities continued as more travellers sought to own their piece of history, and the mummy unwrapping parties continued.

Despite this, there were many who came to Egypt with permits for legal digs, amongst them the Scottish archaeologist Alexander Rhind, and Margaret Benson, the first woman to be granted a permit by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities.  In cases such as these, when the excavations were carried out in accordance with local law and with historical insight, provenance was not lost and knowledge increased.

I’m not sure that Egyptomania has waned so very much over the years.  Even today in the 21^st century, Egypt is consistently ranked as a top tourist holiday destination, the Egyptian exhibits are often the busiest in museums, and we still feel a thrill of excitement over the mysterious hieroglyphs on obelisks and papyri.  The age of Egyptomania is far from over, although I’m glad to say we no longer host mummy unwrapping parties or have powdered mummy in our paints like the Pre-Raphaelites did. 

If you’d like to read more about the 19^th century fascination for Ancient Egypt, then I highly recommend Amelia Edwards’ book A Thousand Miles up the Nile.  For fictional writings from the era, you might like Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy’s Curse by Louisa May Alcott (quite a different read from her more famous Little Women series) and Some Words with a Mummy by Edgar Allan Poe.  And to investigate these themes further, especially those of mummy unwrapping parties and the preservation of Egyptian history, you might enjoy my debut novel Nephthys which explores the 19^th century fascination for Ancient Egypt in a gothic tale of adventure, mythology, and mystery.  Nephthys is available in hardback, with the paperback out with Vintage in February 2026, and you can purchase your copy here.  If you’re in the US, it is published by Penguin Random House under the title The House of Two Sisters, and is available here.

Instagram: @rachel.louise.driscoll

Mummy Pettigrew and Harry Griffiths, by Laurie Graham

Doctors, in spite of their long years of training, don’t always stick to medicine. I’ve known a few myself who’ve been tempted away into office jobs or lucrative pharmaceuticals or even journalism. Dr Thomas Pettigrew went into show business.

He started off conventionally enough. The son of a Navy surgeon, he seemed set to follow Pa. He walked the wards, rose to be Professor of Anatomy at Charing Cross Hospital, and built up a rather ritzy patient list that included Queen Victoria’s uncle, the Duke of Sussex. Then things unravelled little. He left Charing Cross under some unidentified cloud, but he seems not to have minded. He was a man given to enthusiasms  -  in fact the only reason I ever stumbled upon him was his memoir of Horatio Nelson which encouraged a campaign for the belated recognition of Nelson's daughter and the award of a pension for her  - and in Victorian England there was an enthusiasm ripe for his energies: Egyptomania.

In the early 1800s one could buy mummies. Pettigrew paid £23 for his first one, bought at auction at Sotheby’s. Many people bought them just to own them. Dr Pettigrew at least brought something of his medical training to his examination of the embalmed bodies. He became recognised as an expert in embalming techniques and published a book on the subject, though these days there’s some dispute as to how much his public unrollings added to our knowledge. But above all he was a showman and his Unrollings became hot tickets in the 1830s and 40s. ‘Mummy’ Pettigrew, they called him.

He carried out his first public unrolling at Bullock’s museum in Piccadilly. Yards and yards of bandages, so they say. Sometimes he’d unroll a mummy at his house in Savile Row. What an understanding wife! During one domestic unrolling a maid is reported to have overhead him exclaim that he’d found some hieroglyphics which might reveal the identity of the body. She ran down to the kitchen and announced, ‘Doctor Pettigrew has his name. It’s Harry Griffiths.’

Sometimes he unrolled in a more learned setting. A ticket for one of his Unrollings at the Royal Institution could set you back a guinea. Often though he unrolled at private houses. It was all the rage, a bit like Tupperware parties in the 1960s. Then attitudes changed. People began to ask was it right to disturb the dead in such a circus setting, and was anything being learned from the exercise? Unrolling parties suddenly became very ‘last year.’ But Dr Pettigrew has one final claim to fame.

The 10^th Duke of Hamilton, a man known in life mainly for the splendour of his wardrobe, was also keen on all things Egyptian. He ordered a mausoleum to be built in the grounds of Hamilton Palace and bought himself a Ptolemaic sarcophagus. Then, when he died, in 1852, Pettigrew hurried round to Portman Square as arranged and embalmed him. The body was then transported north to Lanarkshire in a regular coffin. At Hamilton it was transferred to the basalt sarcophagus. This had originally been the resting place of an Egyptian princess and so had to be chiselled out a little, to accommodate the duke’s more substantial body. There he rested for several years, but the estate fell into disrepair and the house and mausoleum were demolished in the 1920s. There's a sports' ground there now, The Duke and his sarcophagus ended up in a council cemetery. O tempora! O mores!

Horatia Nelson did get her pension however. But that’s another story.