The Victorian's Dark Obsession with Ancient Egypt

Summary

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After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

Episode: The Victorians’ Dark Obsession with Ancient Egypt

Date: January 19, 2026
Guests: Dr. Jay Sullivan, historian and author of Egyptian Gothic 1884–1920
Hosts: Anthony Delaney, Maddy Pelling

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Overview

This episode delves into the Victorian era’s fervent fascination with ancient Egypt—from “mummy unwrapping” parties in candlelit drawing rooms, to strange fusions of archaeology and occultism, and the disturbing intersections of colonial power, exploitation, and Orientalist fantasy. Historian Dr. Jay Sullivan joins the hosts to explore the origins of this obsession, its evolution in literature and popular culture, and its sinister legacies in both historical practice and the modern imagination.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Roots of Egyptomania: Pre-Victorian to Victorian Era

• The Victorian obsession with Egypt is foreshadowed by earlier, Georgian-era fascinations, some of them surprisingly dark.
  • Medicinal Consumption of Mummies:
    • "People were also eating mummies. They were taking it for medicine. Apparently it was ground up into powder and mixed with chocolate or alcohol, both of which I think absolutely rancid.”
      — Dr. Jay Sullivan [03:12]
  • Early obsessions stemmed from Biblical connections and a desire to verify religious stories via archaeology.
• Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt spurs a shift from mystical wonder to scientific endeavor.
  • “The more modern Egyptian mania as we would think of it, it's sparked by Napoleon's invasion of Egypt…They really push our knowledge of Egypt forward and it comes from there, really.”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [04:18]
• 19th-century travelogues and exhibitions made Egypt accessible to the British public.
  • “People go and paint there. They would bring back small mementos from their travels. It was the kind of thing that was really popular to read.”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [05:22]

2. Decoding and Appropriating Egypt: Hieroglyphics and Imperial Power

• British (and French) attempts to “know” and control Egypt were deeply intertwined with imperial ambitions.
• The Rosetta Stone’s translation unlocked the reading of hieroglyphs, intensifying the Victorians’ sense of closeness to ancient Egypt.
  • “It wasn't translated until around 1860 and the Rosetta stone was the cause of that…before that, they were just pretty pictures.”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [07:27]
• Egyptian aesthetics became part of Britain’s imperial self-image, as seen at the 1854 Great Exhibition.
  • “There's this feeling that it's a great empire in the same way that the British Empire is great…they're all about comparing imperial might and projecting that on…”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [09:34]

3. The Allure of Mystery and the Occult

• Egypt represented not only history but also mystery, magic, and the occult for the Victorians.
  • “The Victorians take up ancient Egypt as this quite alien othered thing that isn't… it's quite mysterious to them, it's quite unexplainable and it has that sensory element.”
    — Host [10:24]
• The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn epitomized this blend of esoteric magic and Egyptomania.
  • “They create this magical cult and there's headdresses, there's robes…There's naturally a whole load of sex magic because what else you can do?”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [11:07]
  • “It actually culminates…with Aleister Crowley trying to invade their headquarters in London…and he like scuttles off. So it is big student infighting drama. I love it.”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [11:58]

4. Mummies, Loot, and the Black Market

• The British occupation of Egypt (from 1882) accelerates the flow of artifacts (and body parts) back to Britain, despite legal bans.
  • “Instead of being able to take a whole mummy home with you…now people start breaking off bits. This is when we have a huge export in hands and feet and heads as well.”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [13:37]
• Mummies are simultaneously sacred relics and commodified objects—this ambiguity fuels both Gothic horror and colonial guilt.

5. The “Egyptian Gothic” and Mummy Mania in Literature

• Dr. Sullivan defines “Egyptianized Gothic” as a genre: “This is very much a white male creation of what Egypt is…There are no actual, well rounded Egyptian characters here.”
  — Dr. Jay Sullivan [18:10]
• ‘Mummy fiction’ flourished from the 1880s to WWI, even outselling Dracula at times.
  • “More popular than Dracula. There's a text called The Beetle which outsold Dracula… it's got a shape shifting beetle creature that terrifies a politician… Highly recommend.”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [18:36]
• Themes of exotic sensation, body horror, vengeance, and even “mummy romance” pervade—often with unsettling sexual undertones.
  • “An Egyptologist will go into a tomb, he'll discover a mummy…conveniently she'll be perfectly preserved. Always a woman, always a woman…as soon as they reach out to touch or to kiss or to possess, they always crumble into dust. And I have always read this as a kind of an escape.”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [20:34]
• These stories mapped Victorian anxieties about sexuality, race, and empire—projecting “safe” fantasies onto a foreign past.

6. Desecration as Entertainment: The Mummy Unwrapping Party

• “Mummy unwrapping parties” were both social spectacles and pseudo-scientific events.
  • “You bring a mummy over and some mates and crack open at it…There would be trinkets, like gems and jewelry…they would hand them out amongst guests, kind of like little party bags…”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [28:22]
• Public and private events alike blurred the lines between scientific inquiry and voyeuristic desecration.
• The practice often destroyed the mummies and “artifacts” were distributed or discarded.
  • “The body would have been completely destroyed…So the damage to the mummy at the end of it was no longer usable. You couldn't put it on display. So often these were discarded.”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [31:41]
• Some pushback emerged, but cognitive dissonance allowed participants to critique the practice even as they joined in.
  • “He both attended mummy unwrapping parties and wrote a four part series…saying the behavior...was absolutely disgusting, but at the same time…he was picking up bandages and rolling them in his hands…”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [30:38]

7. The Legacy: From Victorian Fiction to Modern Pop Culture

• The Egyptian Gothic falls out of favor after 1922 and the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, which remained in Egypt and whose press coverage shifted the terms of public fascination.
  • “When Tutankhamun's tomb is discovered...the objects that are found are kept within Egypt…and the genre does slowly peter out.”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [36:40]
• The idea of the “mummy's curse” emerges as a Victorian invention and persists in the 20th century as a fantasy with roots in colonial unease.
  • “The idea of the curse that steps off the page into real life is also arguably a Victorian invention as well.”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [38:04]
  • Entertaining story of a “cursed” British colonizer killed by an elephant, his body never recovered (39:13–39:29).
• Modern mummy films, such as the 1999 The Mummy, directly inherit these stories and themes.
  • “The 1930s Mummy borrows so heavily from the Egyptian Gothic genre…there is definitely a through line there, which is nice. It's nice that it continues on.”
    — Dr. Jay Sullivan [41:33]
• Persistent popular fascination is partly due to Victorian sensationalism and its ongoing echoes in films, books, and even cartoons (Scooby Doo mentioned).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “This isn't history. Its desecration masked as entertainment. The sacred dead reduced to spectacle.”
  — Podcast Host [00:39]
• “The most famous ancient Egyptian one is a laundry list of complaints. It's like a legal letter before action. So you could read these things…through that day to day minutiae...feel that feeling of closeness.”
  — Dr. Jay Sullivan [08:22]
• “There's no Egyptians writing this at the time…There are no actual, well rounded Egyptian characters here to add some balance.”
  — Dr. Jay Sullivan [18:10]
• On “mummy romance”:
  “You’ll be blissfully relieved…there's never a moment of consummation. As soon as they reach out to touch or to kiss or to possess, they always crumble into dust...they would rather be completely removed from existence than dabble in this romance.” — Dr. Jay Sullivan [20:34]
• “With mummies, there's a real blurring between what is subject and what is object, what is artifact and is body.” — Dr. Jay Sullivan [14:11]
• “It is both a social activity and a scientific activity...Instead of your murder mystery party, you bring a mummy over and some mates and crack open at it.” — Dr. Jay Sullivan [28:22]
• “There's a real desire to explore what is happening around them. This kind of rising up of supposedly governed forces...the idea of the past essentially coming back to bite you in the ass.” — Dr. Jay Sullivan [26:32]
• “If you're going to pick up one [book] from the end, that is the most batshit one of all. And I highly recommend.” (on The Beetle)
  — Dr. Jay Sullivan [43:25]

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Timeline & Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:12] | Origins and early dark fascinations (mummy medicine)
• [04:18–06:51] | Rise of Egyptomania: Napoleon, travelogues, exhibitions, print culture
• [07:27–09:07] | Deciphering hieroglyphs, the Rosetta Stone, British imperial display
• [10:24–12:40] | The occult: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, magic, and the British Museum
• [13:07–14:44] | Colonial appropriation, artifact bans, the black market in body parts
• [17:35–21:58] | Mummies and memory in literature: the Egyptian Gothic, “mummy romance,” and imperial anxieties
• [28:22–32:46] | Mummy unwrapping parties: mechanics, destruction, ethics
• [36:40–39:29] | Decline of the Egyptian Gothic: Tutankhamun, curses, changing cultural tides
• [41:33–43:50] | Modern mummy movies as legacy; persistent pop fascination

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Conclusion

The podcast offers a lively, unsettling, and sometimes darkly humorous exploration of the intersection between Victorian imperial anxieties and the cultural legacy of ancient Egypt. Through both scholarly analysis and anecdotes, Dr. Sullivan and the hosts chart how historical events, literature, magical societies, and acts of desecration fused into a uniquely Gothic popular obsession—one whose distortions and fascinations still inform how we imagine Egypt today.

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Transcript

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[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

London, 1842. In a Mayfair drawing room thick with heat and incense, a crowd gathers around a long draped table. The smell hits first. A sour, resinous sweetness rising from the 3000 year old body laid out before them, thousands of miles from where it was laid to rest. Silk dresses rustle. Gentlemen crane forward as the surgeon slides his blade beneath ancient linen. Layer after layer is peeled away. Greeted by murmurs of hungry fascination. A woman fans herself, eyes alight. A man pockets a bead torn from the corpse. This isn't history. Its desecration masked as entertainment. The sacred dead reduced to spectacle. Beneath the candlelit gasps, however, lurk much darker truths. The Victorians had a problem, a twisted fixation. In drawing rooms and lecture halls, society gathered for months, mummy unwrapping parties. As the empire expanded into Egypt, so did its anxieties and intrigue. Fears of revenge, of stolen treasures, of ancient powers that might strike back at their colonial thieves. And a macabre fascination. Today, we're diving into the obsession, the exploitation and the horrors Britain tried to keep buried. Was this the Victorian's darkest obsession? And helping us today on this journey into the Victorian fascination with Egypt is Dr. Jay Sullivan, historian and author of Egyptian Gothic 1884-1920. Jay, welcome to After Dark.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Thank you. Great to be here.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

We're very happy to have you. Let's start at the beginning. I suppose what sparked the Victorian fascination with ancient Egypt? And do we need to go a little bit further back to the beginning of the 19th century? That's my suspicion.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

I mean, you definitely know, as you're both Georgian historians, that it did not happened, that Queen Victoria stepped onto the throne and we were like, whoa, Egypt. Now I'm interested. There is exploration to Egypt way before this period. There's a huge amount of interest in Egyptian artifacts, in exploration of Egypt itself, even though it was quite an expensive and laborious process to travel, I'm sure We'll get to that later on. But at that period before the Victorian area is quite difficult to get there. There's a lot of fascination. Some of it is biblical. There's. There's a lot of belief that stories from the Bible were drew explicitly from Egypt. There's a lot of early archeology where they're trying to find out if those stories are true and find archaeological evidence for that. So there's that. That's one fascination. And at that period, there's also. We'll just skip straight into the dark stuff. In the Georgian period, people were also eating mummies. They were taking it for medicine. Apparently it was ground up into powder and mixed with chocolate or alcohol, both of which I think absolutely rancid. Don't know which one either.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

You're making each of those things much worse by adding more into it.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah, you never want surprise texture in either of those things. So, yeah, there's a big period of fascination before we get into Victorian Egyptian mania. And a lot of that is sparked, the more modern Egyptian mania, as we would think of it. It's sparked by Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. He brings in a huge amount of resources, big pet project for him. So loads of French archeologists go out, they make a lot of discoveries. They really push our knowledge of Egypt forward and it comes from there, really. That's where you start to see a movement from more like eating mummies and these pyramids are core. Maybe they should do with the Bible into more of archeology and as we were known today.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

And I suppose there's that kind of the exoticism in adverted commas of Egypt in the 19th century. You know, you talk about Napoleon invading and there's this idea that it's for a lot of people back home, either in France or in Britain, that it's this far off place. And there's a lot of. Of travel writing, isn't there, in this moment as well? So people are able to experience it through objects brought back, but also through people literally documenting their experiences and writing about this landscape.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah, definitely. It's a really popular place for travelogues and that is throughout the 19th century. You find that people will try. It's not quite your lads abroad Italy trip. It's a bit further than that. But many people would visit. There's a lot of drawings that come out of that period. People go and paint there. They would bring back small momentums from their travels. It was the kind of thing that was really popular to read Page. And that doesn't Go either. Like Amelia Edwards wrote A Thousand Miles up the nile in the 1880s. And this is a chunky travel log. It's thousands of pages, it's illustrated and these were high quality things that people would read and consume. And often the easier access to print magazines was great for this as well. You would find people would slice up their travel logs and they would appear in like English news, Illustrated, London News, as a way for people to read and record their experiences. So it is a really popular topic. And I would say, as it was harder to get there at that period, it's quite a long journey. You find that people do want to experience it through print and consuming it in that way as well. But there was also, as well as travel logs, a lot of exhibitions on Egypt as well. And Dickens writes about going to one where apparently you like sat in a boat and there was like a sensory experience where you would travel up the Nile.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

And that feels very modern.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah, it does, doesn't it? It feels like those immersive shooting car, Moon Pompeii things that the tune is constantly blasting me with. Yeah, yeah. At first you're like, cool. And then you're like, please let me go.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

How much of it?

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[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

Then it's like, how many of these things suddenly are there? Yeah, One of the things that intrigued me. But you said, you know, what are going from, oh, these are fascinating pyramids and actually. But let's find out a little bit more about them. And there's always this idea of control through knowledge as well, isn't there? When we talk about particularly British exploration, one of the things that's always struck me is, is this idea of hieroglyphics. And you see on the documentaries, they go into the tombs and they're just like. And there is the bull. And we know that the bull means X, Y and Z. And I'm like, how, who told you this? And actually you might be able to shed a bit of light on this kind of decoding the hieroglyphics.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah, it's a really interesting thing. So I think, as you're saying, we always think of this and in movies from like the Mummy to even things that are just set in Egypt, they do walk in, they go, oh, cursed will be the man who steps in here. And you're like, why is it imperfect gr. English syntax? What is this? But yeah, people had no idea. And it wasn't Translated until around 1860 and the Rosetta stone was the cause of that. So when Napoleon was defeated, one of the things that the British do is we like loot. We kept the Rosetta Stone in England and eventually it was translated. So there was Egyptian on there as well as other languages. So by translating that, we managed to translate hieroglyphs, but before that they were just pretty pictures. You would have the Egyptian hall in Piccadilly. This has hieroglyphs on the outside. They don't mean anything, they just look great. And there's a lot of Egyptian ized artifacts there which are in the Egyptian style, which just have pretty prints on them. And we didn't know what that meant. So it wasn't until we could translate things via the Rosetta Stone, so thanks again, Napoleon, that we could begin to feel closeness with these people because we could read their text. And then the most famous ancient Egyptian one is a laundry list of complaints. It's like a legal letter before action. So you could read these things. And through that, that day to day minutiae of people's lives, you can feel that feeling of closeness. And I do really think that is one of the reasons why we feel, as Victorians and I would say as modern people, closer to Egypt in a way than maybe like ancient Mesopotamia or somewhere where that language is Familiarity, of course.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah. And I suppose as well, thinking about sort of colonial overtones of this, I suppose thinking about 1854, when the Great Exhibition happens, you know, this great moment in Victoria and Albert's tenure, I suppose, and it's, you know, Albert's very much sort of in control of what's happening, that there's the Egyptian court there, isn't there, at Crystal palace, and that Egypt, ancient Egypt becomes explicitly part of the vocabulary of colonial Victorian Britain, doesn't it?

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah, 100%. And there is this feeling that it's a great empire in the same way that the British Empire is great and it's not just Egypt. The Victorians were really fascinated with ancient Greece and ancient Rome in the same reason. And it's all about comparing imperial might and projecting that on like there have been previous great empires and we are by extension a part of that. Which is why you have things like the Egyptian court and that's about scale as well. It had huge statues, some recreations, some genuine artifacts, and people could really immerse themselves in that. And one thing that my book talks about quite a lot is this kind of sensory experience and things like that are about overwhelming power. When you see something that's such a visual spectacle, it really is quite a powerful feeling. And that was definitely a moment for them.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

And I suppose, as well, maybe because the perceived version of ancient Egypt that the Victorians inherit and that they perpetuate themselves and create. In fact, in a lot of ways you're saying that it's very sensory and I think that's really interesting because a lot of the Victorian fascination, I suppose, tips over into the occult and this interest in sort of Egyptian magic. And maybe more so than ancient Roman or ancient Greek empires where, you know, everything is very sort of classical and more attuned to the 18th century and those ideas of sort of order and rationality. And the Victorians take up ancient Egypt as this quite alien othered thing that isn't, you know, it's quite mysterious to them, it's quite unexplainable and it has that sensory element. Do you think that's fair to say?

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

No, I definitely do. And one really good example of this is a group of people called the Hermetic Order of the golden dawn, who I always describe the worst bunch of theater kids you could possibly imagine. They are incredibly rich. They've got a real mixture of backgrounds. Aleister Crowley is one of them, like WB Yates is one of them. A woman called Florence Farr who was like a. Both a playwright and an activist. There's also Annie Horneman, who is daughter of Frederick Horneman, who founded the museum. So all of these people, they get together and they create this magical cult and there's headdresses, there's robes, there's different. A bit like Scientology, actually. There's different levels that you can progress up to through skills and magical spells. There's naturally a whole load of sex magic because what else you can do?

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Exactly.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

No other way. And it's all very dramatic. They have their photos taken in these long robes. They hang around in the British Museum reading room and naturally it all implodes. They all fall out. It actually culminates. Yeah, yeah. With Aleister Crowley trying to invade their headquarters in London. And there's a big hoo ha. And he gets booted down the stairs by one of them and he like scuttles off. So it is big student infighting drama. I love it. I'm so sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

But God, you wouldn't want to be.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

In a. Yeah, you wouldn't want to have a pint of. But it's really fun to think that while people are visiting the British Museum looking at artifacts, this lot are scuttling around creating their own magical world within the space. I'm sure it's really annoying for the security guard.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

Yeah, totally. Like, guess how Rich we are. Guys, we can do this. Speaking about visiting, this, of course is a time when Egypt is visited, slash invaded, occupied by Britain in 1882. This is surely going to influence the travel of items, of stories, of histories, of mythology from one country to the other. Is this. Do we see this as a real kind of cementing moment of some of the legacies that we're left with today?

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah, definitely. I mean, what's interesting about Egypt is, and this definitely bubbles over into fiction is the more that we try and contain it and control it, the more an imaginative otherworld bubbles up and there is a real space for. We tried. So there was a period where we banned export of artifacts from Egypt to the uk. So technically it was illegal unless there was archaeological purpose or some reason. This didn't help.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, probably adding the mystique of it.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

All, push it underground and make it more desirable. Except now, instead of being able to take a whole mummy home with you, you would be like, you know, I can't get all of that in my case without getting caught. So now people start breaking off bits. This is when we have a huge export in hands and fe and heads as well. Though I imagine that heads aren't that portable. I can't imagine they sold many. And then you get this.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

This is clearly before the age when your suitcase would be scanned.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah, clearly. I imagine it was just running on prayer at this point. If anyone even looked, I'm sure if you had enough money, you could slide it away.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, of course.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

So, yeah, small pieces of mementos, jewelry, bits of body parts, hands, feet will come back. And it's a very strange thing when you think that a mummy is essentially a corpse. But there is a real blurring between what is subject and what is object, what is artifact and his body. So we do have this trade coming back to the UK still.

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[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

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[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Um, can we stop at a bathroom?

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[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

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[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Let's talk a little bit more about mummies then. Because Jay, in your work you write explicitly about what you call the Egyptian Gothic. And of course you know we know about Victorian Gothic literature, your Draculas, your woman, why all of that? And that's all very Eurocentric and, you know, we have sort of the big hitters of that. Where does Egypt fit into that genre of literature and art in this period and specifically the mummy? In my notes it says there's a boom in mummy literature, which I'm so obsessed with. So what is that and how, how does that manifest?

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Sure. So first up, disclaimer in the book. I call it Egyptian Eyes Gothic and that's because it's an imagined space. This is very much a white male creation of what Egypt is. So there's no.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

This is not gothic literature coming from Egypt.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

There's no Egyptians writing this at the time. There is in the present day, but not then. There are no actual, well rounded Egyptian characters here to add some balance. It's very much like stereotypical figures.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

This is imperialism in literature.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah, 100%. But the weird thing about mummy fiction or Egyptianized gothic or imperial gothic, whatever you want to call it, is that it appeared in 1884. It bubbled up. It was hugely popular. More popular than Dracula. There's a text called the Beetle which outsold Dracula. Never even heard of the Beetle. Oh. And it's insane. It's got a shape shifting beetle creature that terrifies a politician. It like kidnaps his girlfriend and shaves her head. Really highly recommend. There's Penguin Classic Edition.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Wow.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

But there's.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

That was huge though, at the time.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Huge. It was way more popular than Dracula and they were huge. There was over 50 of these text. They were couple every year right through to World War I. Paper rationing didn't stop this. There was still three or four a year. And everyone that you know and love from the Gothic period had a turn on this. Arthur Conan Doyle's got a short story. Bram Stoker wrote one as well. Louisa May Alcott of Little Women fame. She was at like all these big.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Names were dealing in this genre. That's so interesting.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

And it was kind of a bit like now when last year every pop star, you know, decided to have a go at a country album or a children's book. Yeah, it was a bit like that. Everyone had a bosh at an Egyptian Gothic story, got it out their system and mostly moved on. Very unusual.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

I have a list of some of the themes that are explored here. And you know, they are sort of staples of, I suppose, the Gothic more generally. But there are things here that really speak to this sensory element of the imperial imagination of ancient Egypt. You know, there's something here about the sort of the sensory that speaks to the imperial imagination of Egypt, the version that is inherited by the Victorians. So we have things like the senses being explored, so things like touch, taste and smell, body horror more generally, which of course, you know, appears in the gothic genre across the board. But interesting to think about it in terms of the mummy element here in my notes. I have here vengeance of stolen goods. Okay, interesting. But also mummy romance.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yes. Stop it. What?

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

Mummies having romance with each other.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

No, no, no, no, no. Oh, you wish.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

Do you know I don't. Emily and all of us. Go on.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

No, unfortunately it is more Egyptologists having romances with mummies. No, because why not? I mean, this is definitely an imperial rapist colonization metaphor, but it's a trope.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

And it's deeply troubling when you actually stop and think about that.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah. Luckily none of these are illustrated. I thank my stars every day as that would have been an interesting PhD project. But what happens is genuinely an Egyptologist will go into a tomb, he'll discover a mummy, he'll open up that lid and conveniently she'll be perfectly preserved. Always a woman, always a woman. And she will be young and beautiful and fun like she just died. So I call them Sleeping Beauty mummies in the book. And this is a term that is used by other historians because of that kind of state of perfect preservation. And now you'll be blissfully relieved to hear that there's never a moment of consummation. So what happens is as soon as they reach out to touch or to kiss or to possess, they always crumble into dust. And I have always read this as a kind of an escape. So they would rather be completely removed from existence than dabble in this romance. Well, it's not really a romance, is it?

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

It's right, yes, very one sided.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah, very one sided romance. But they do crumble to just and remove themselves. So any kind of creepy necrophiliac prospect there is actually gone. But it's not a one off thing. It's not like one person was like, I know that there's a couple of them and they come up quite frequently and there's often scenes. So Bram Stoker in Jewel of Seven Stars has a scene where all of the explorers and medicine men and doctors, they gather around the mummy and they unwrap her and some a woman rushes out and is like, oh no, it's rape. Like, please, like don't expose her. You can't. It's, you know, she's a woman and they that she's not a woman, she's been dead for centuries. And so there is this really unusual sort of sex as domination that happens throughout these tracks.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

And you see that repeated in Hollywood films as well. I'm thinking of what's the latest iteration of the mummy that was the Tom Cruise film with a female mummy, you know, and it's very much like she's very sexualized and objectified.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

You know, Tom Cruise has a mummy film.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah, don't.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, don't.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

I won't.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Best escape. But I mean, that's so interesting just in terms of, I suppose, you know, what is going on there in terms of the colonial imagination. Is this about just the exoticism of the past of ancient Egypt in particular, and then sort of colonization as sort of rape fantasy? I suppose. But is there something as well about the otherness of Egyptian women that allows European men, in the context of this literature, to have that sort of desirous gaze and, you know, sometimes going beyond that and touching? That wouldn't be suitably expressed. I mean, obviously sex is discussed in all kinds of ways across Gothic literature. But is there something about this context, the colonial aspect, the otherness of the bodies themselves, these women, that allows for an exploration of sexuality, male, European sexuality, that wouldn't be acceptable were the context different.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

No, I definitely think so. And there's a couple of plot lines. Just another shout out for the Beatle because he gets himself in this sticky Beatilisque situation, because he goes into what they call the native quarter of Cairo and he peeps through the window in a bar and sees a singer in there and he gets irresistibly drawn into this space that he shouldn't be allowed in. I mean, the metaphor is not even subtle at this point. And because of that, that's what kicks the whole events off. And I would say this kind of sexuality is definitely about creating a safe space to explore these fantasies.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

A safe space for European men, of.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Course, as always, there's definitely that. But what is interesting in these stories is there's always like a caveat of whiteness. So she'll be perfectly preserved and oh so white, like Marvel. Very, very white. You know, there'll always be that kind of caveat. And like H. Rider Haggard, she. Which I arguably would say comes into this imperial romance horror fiction, she's described as both like Nubian, but kind of Greco Roman. So it's very much a projection of what. What they want to see. It's like a caveat of this is an acceptable body because she is Egyptian, but Egyptians at this period, we believe, are descended from white people because they couldn't possibly be descended from anyone else.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Right.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

And converse.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

Me idea that this is part of an expanding empire and also a dwindling empire at the same time. It's like it's expanding into Egypt, but it's also having trouble elsewhere. And the figure of death coming into it, like, are these people or are they bodies? Are they artifacts? Are they objects?

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

And it's moved into, like, a fantasy space. You talk about, like, the empire is sort of shrinking elsewhere, or there's, you know, rebellions in India and all of that in this century. There's a kind of. This is like, escapism from that. Even though the Brits really are in Egypt at this moment, like, it's very much like, here's a version that we can all enjoy that's safe. Nobody's rebelling against us in this version of it.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

It's really bloody unsettling.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah, definitely. And it is a very good place for these people, good arguably, for them to play out those kind of fantasies. Because at the end of it, the mummy is nearly always foraged. It's put back in its sarcophagus. The fret goes away and we all go home happy. So it is absolutely nothing like real empire, with rebellions popping up everywhere, with this sense that actually maybe this isn't a great method of expansion. There is nearly always a resolution at the end of it, and it neatly wraps things up in a way that real life just doesn't. And I do think that's part of the appeal in the way that it maps stability on what is a very end of Victorian era, very unstable time. But also at the same time, it shows that the popularity of these Turks implies that not everyone was like, yay, empire. There's a real desire to explore what is happening around them. This kind of rising up of supposedly governed forces. The idea of the past essentially coming back to bite you in the ass. Like, there's no. Yeah, there's no escape there at all. It's very much. You can reach out and take those artifacts, but the artifacts might reach back and take you.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, yeah. You mentioned earlier, just thinking beyond the literature now and into sort of real history, real events, I suppose that there was a trade, an underground trade in mummies. And you spoke about, you know, the. Just the sort of very early years of the Victorian period, when early travelers, usually richer men who'd done the grand tour and wanted something a bit more, you know, further afield, a bit more again. Quote, unquote exotic would bring things back. And then obviously, you get the kind of. You get the Suez canal opening in 1869, in the 1870s. You get the Thomas Cook tours of the Nile that are beginning, so there's more accessibility. And as you say, people are bringing back sort of little stolen pieces of mummies. But the mummies that are making it back home, or the pieces that are making it back home, they are presumably put on display. They are experienced and prodded and poked in all these different ways. I have something here in my notes called the Mummy unwrapping party. And I would just. I need you to explain this, Jay, because this. I can completely see this happening. I can completely imagine the context, the aesthetic of a gathering like this, but was this something that was really happening? Is this a social activity people are doing on a regular basis?

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

It is both a social activity and a scientific activity.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Okay.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

So these can happen in private residences if you want. Instead of your murder mystery party, you bring a mummy over and some mates and crack open at it. Or they're also taking place at places like ucl. So University College London hosts one. It's quite famous. H. Rider Haggard attends. So they're very popular activities. I mean, how widespread? Hard to know because mummies are quite difficult to unwrap because they're covered in sticky bitumen. It is not like the toilet paper Scooby Doo mummy. You don't just catch it on a nail and off it goes. It's not like that at all. So it's quite a messy activity. Apparently. It took an incredibly long time, but how it would go was you would attend this and slowly but surely some kind of person with a scientific background. Egyptologist, probably a bit too strong a term, but someone who vaguely knows how to get the wrapping. Science.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

A learned man.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yes. A figure of society.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

A local butcher.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Someone who's got some scissors. And they would slowly unwrap it. And as they did, they would talk through the revelations that they could find along the way. Like, oh, this is a woman, or this is probably a high priest. It's normally always an interesting figure. It's like reincarnation fantasies, isn't it? You're always Cleopatra, you're never a medieval sergeant.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Yes. Yeah.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

So they would unwrap that. And as they went, there would be trinkets, like gems and jewelry buried in the bandages. And if these came out, they would hand them out amongst guests, kind of like little party bags that kids might party, but I mean, jewelry.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

It's so interesting to think you Know, this is the 19th century, is the real serious birth of archaeology. You know, we have antiquarianism in the 18th century and even in the 17th century, but this is, you know, the beginning of people trying in some quarters to take archaeology seriously, to take antiquarianism seriously, to document what they're finding, to store, collect, curate things in a meaningful way, albeit with the overtones of colonialism. And, you know, it's not like this is happening in a sort of contextless way, but this just seems so at odds with that move towards historical understanding. Was there pushback against events like this in Britain at the time, or was this just accepted that rich people did this and they were allowed to get on with it?

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

So, yeah, there was some pushback on this, but to be honest, there was quite a lot of cognitive dissonance happening here. It wasn't as simple as museums and archaeology good and unwrappings and stealing hands bad. And so talking about H. Rider Haggard again, that famous author, he both attended mummy unwrapping parties and wrote a four part series for the Daily Mail called the Trade in the Dead where he said that the behavior of people in Egypt digging up tombs was absolutely disgusting, but at the same time disgusting English. But at the same time he was picking up bandages and rolling them in his hands and smelling them at ucl. So there's no clear set yet. You can feel the beginnings, but it's definitely not there.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

There'd be no point in me sitting here today going, isn't this awful? I would have been there. I absolutely would have been there. There's just no point in me saying.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Well, clearly there's, you know, people who are interested in history are attending these things. Yeah, yeah.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

Now can I ask as well, you know, so they've unwrapped, right, they've unwra up the body and they've taken items from the body. What happens to the body? Do we know?

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

The body would have been completely destroyed. So the stickiness of the bandages as you tear away from that, I mean, if you've ever removed a plaster from your own leg, but then Times that by 5,000 years, different materials, they completely got torn apart often. So the damage to the mummy at the end of it was no longer usable. You couldn't put it on display. So often these were discarded. I think now because we think of museums as keeping things preserved and behind glass, but that's not a Victorian attitude. Things were very impermanent, even sensory.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Right, yes. Coming back to this idea of this is an experience, this is an immersive experience. You get to experience the mystery of this unwrapping and get to partake in some of the jewels and, you know, go back to the moment this person was wrapped up and undo it, and then it's done.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah. There is no sense of your hands are covered in acid. Please don't touch that. It is, to be fair, as you said, I would 100% smell that bandage. I am one of those people who definitely drinks the wine found in ancient Egyptian tombs. I just know I am. So while I'm like, this is not Good, guys, I 100% can understand that need to touch the past in the.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

Context of that time. And you feel as if it's almost time travel, isn't it? It's too alluring. If you're kind of of that mindset. I have a name here which is dramatic, which is Thomas Mummy Pettigrew. Tell us a little bit about Tommy.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Sure. So that would be Pettigrew's mummy, and he is famous for launching the mummy unwrapping party. So he did more of these than I would argue anyone else recorded. But as well as this, this blend of. This isn't quite science yet. It's definitely showmanship. You get this early kind of theatrical, circus vibe. So you will see dramatic posters advertising these events, getting people to come on down. Step right up, step right up. And so he wasn't that popular with more serious types. So your Petri Museum society were like, absolutely not. This is terrible practice, but very popular the general public. So that is how he made his name, by unwrapping mummies.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

It's interesting, like you say, the dichotomy between sort of spectacle and performance and serious scholarly work, whatever that looks like in the 19th century. You know, it's so kind of interwoven, and there are obviously competing extremes, but there's a whole mess in the middle of people who are willing to go along with the spectacle in order to have that proximity and that experience.

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[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

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[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

OB was still very interested in mummies. And we've spoken to the brilliant Dr. Campbell Price before from Manchester Museum about, you know, he's the curator of Egypt and Sudan there, I think now that's his title. But he, you know, always tells us about it was seeing mummies in a museum that sparked his interest as a child. And that's so many people's ways in to think about history. But in the 19th century, going into the 20th century, is there a little bit of a fading of interest and sort of gothic fascination with Egypt and the mummy, does that go away? Because I'm thinking about things. Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile, which isn't explicitly about mummies, but, you know, has so much of that mystery and the sort of exoticism of the Nile and it surrounds that's still happening in the early 20th century. So is there a diminishing of that or is it still going strong?

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

I mean, there is a cut off point where I would say that the Egyptian gothic as a genre falls off a cliff essentially. And that is because you get to 1920, 1922 tomb is opened. And shortly before that, the occupation, illegal occupation of Egypt by the British had ended. So when Tutankhamun's tomb is discovered, that means that the objects that are found are kept within Egypt and the discussion of the discovery is tightly reined in by the press. How a cart makes an exclusive deal with the times and everything goes through the times. So the fact that you no longer have that tangibility, that accessibility to Egypt, I think that causes this kind of uneasy, squirmy feelings about empire and Egypt to end. And the genre does slowly peter out.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

It's interesting as well that with Tutankhamun you have the sort of story of the curse as well that comes afterwards. And I've always thought about that as just being sort of imperialist fantasy. But actually what you're saying about the sort of the squirmy unease of Empire and the sort of like, should we really be doing this? That's making more sense to me now to think about how people would say, you know, the objects in his tomb were cursed and people supposedly died or had terrible accents as a result, that there is a kind of a reassessment of Empire and what the role of the Brits is in this moment.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

No, definitely. But I mean, the idea of the curse that steps off the page into real life is also arguably a Victorian invention as well. So there's the unlucky mummy at the British Museum. It's not a mummy, it's a mummy board. But you can go see it.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

Wait, what's a mummy board?

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

A mummy board is the panel that goes on top of. I mean, no real Egyptologist here, but that is not imagined Egypt. Guys don't. But yeah, and the story of that was that the guy who took that, which happened during the Boer War, he exported it back to England. And people are like, oh, it's cursed, it's cursed, it's cursed. And he did end up dying. And I would say it's the closest you can get to a mummy curse. So what happened was he was told that his remains would apparently be swept away to sea and not retrieved. And then when he was out hunting, he got squashed by an elephant, a very angry elephant. He shot it. It didn't quite work out for him and it stepped on him. It kind of squashed him to a vicious colonizer jam. And then his friends were like, oh, we better get that body back. You know, I think his mum's gonna want that. And they couldn't. The elephant was fuming. He wouldn't let him anywhere near. And then there was a big storm and when they came back the next day, he been washed away. So that kind of Tutankhamun curse is rooted in other type imaginative curses.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

And he's killed doing other colonial activities.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

I mean, he sounds like not a great guy all round.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, interesting.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

But there's definitely roots in that way back to the Victorian era. So while we tend to think of Tutankhamun's curse as a standalone cultural thing now, it had a precedent. Yeah, there's definitely roots in the Victorian era.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

And you were saying, Jay, that yes, there was a bit of knock off on some of the more popular stories with the touch and commune tomb. But then you were about to say, but there was. It sounds like there's some form of longevity going on there as well.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

No, definitely. There's still Egyptian gothic in the present day a little bit. The cinema has killed this fiction almost entirely. Because now when we think of the sensorium and we think about sensory experience, we think of film. But there are a few. Anne Rice has a not very good Ramesses the Dams trilogy, which is. I haven't read all of them. Struggle to make it past the first one. But it still exists. Yeah, there's obviously Agatha Christie and there's a few others as well. There's a couple of, like, Gothic 80s horror nasties in the 80s that are called, like, things like Obelisk. So it does exist. But the frantic rate of fiction that was pumped out from 1880 to 1920 is completely not comparable.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Before we go, Jo, I think it would be remiss not to ask you this. What are your thoughts, therefore, on this proposed remake of the 1990s classic the Mummy?

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

I mean, I am absolutely striked.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Do you like the first?

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

I've never seen any of them. Do you like the Brendan. It's Brendan Fraser, right?

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

This is. Go home immediately. Like, leave now and watch it.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

I can't, but okay. I'd love to do it at some point over Christmas.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

No, I am really excited. I think it's going to be brilliant. I'm like, hopefully Brendan Fraser again.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Yeah, I think it's the same thing.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

I'm asking you, like, your casting pressure.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

I'm not Colin. If they need me to tell them what Victorians would look like, they can call me. Yeah, please.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Do you see that franchise as inheriting from the Egyptian gothic of the Victorian era? Because it has a lot of the same kind of colonial tropes and, you know, the casting is not exactly Egyptian. You know, there's. Everyone is pretty white in it. So, you know, is there a line to be drawn between those two things?

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah, definitely. And I mean, the 1930s mummy borrows so heavily from the Egyptian Gothic genre. And then mummy movies to date, Boris so heavily from the Mummy. So there is definitely a through line there, which is nice. It's nice that it continues on.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

It's so interesting, isn't it? Because we often, when we're talking with Egyptologists specifically about ancient Egypt, we are going, why is it so fascinating? Why does it so endure? Why do People are people so fascinated by this. And actually, obviously there's so much. There's a wealth of information to keep us fascinated from ancient Egyptian times. But this has a lot to answer for it, I think as well, in terms of why modern audiences still go.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

We've been trained.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

Yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

To be fascinating.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

What is that doing? I mean, you know, you even mentioned Scooby Doo. You do you grow up with the mummy being very close to you in terms of proximity of entertainment? I do have a question, though, about the beetle, because now I'm fascinated about this. Is the beetle a literal big beetle or small beetle, or is the beetle man or a man with, like, beetle features? What is the beetle?

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

It is a shape shifting person of indeterminate gender, which is the biggest horror for Victorians, obviously, because sometimes they describe them as an incredibly ugly woman or a very powerful man, and they have magical powers and stuff, but then they transform into a beetle. Presumably a large beetle wouldn't be very scary. However, there is scenes where a genteel Victorian woman feels the creeping of a beetle rustling up her skirts and obviously the only thing she can do is take all her clothes off.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Naturally.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Naturally. So there is, to be fair, if.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

I had a beetle crawling on me, I would absolutely do that.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Yeah. I mean, it must have taken forever, though. So many layers of our Victorian charges.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

I'm panicking here. It's got to take a while. Yeah.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

So, yeah, it's both. I honestly recommend, if you're going to pick up one from the end, that is the most batshit one of all. And I highly recommend.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

Do you think there's not for me to make this. Not my gig, but do you think there's like, you know, we see Dracula so often, we see Frankenstein so often and actually this comes into it, right? That galvanism thing and reanimating mummies. It's all part of this conversation as well. But, like, is there a movie in that? Is there a movie in that Beatle book or is it just too wild?

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Do you know what? I think if Del Toro's Frankenstein itch hasn't been scratched, he could definitely have a crack at it. But I think the problem with a lot of these stories and the reason that they don't really make it into cinema is that they're quite weird to us, that even describing the plots, they're funny, they're often. They're not scary anymore. The thought of being like, I'm not sure if that is a man or a woman is not terrifying for normal people. So I really not sure. I would love to see someone have a go at it though.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

It sounds like there's a lot of material there.

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Well, if you're out there and you're filmmaker and you're looking for a new project, get in touch with Jay, the.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Beatles and Richard Marsh.

[Co-Host / Guest Commentator]

Okay?

[Podcast Host (Interviewer)]

Okay. There we go. And if you need some light, totally normal reading, then sure, go for that. Thank you very much for joining us for this episode, listening along or watching on our YouTube channel. If you have future ideas for the show, anything Egypt related, Victorian related, or anything in between, you can get in touch with us after [e-mail] See you next time.

[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

Foreign.

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[Dr. Jay Sullivan]

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