The Mummy Congress:
Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead
by
Heather Pringle
Author . Discussion Questions .
Reviews
About
this Guide
The following
author biography, critical praise and list of questions about this book are
intended as resources to aid individual readers and book groups who would
like to learn more about the author and this book. We hope that this guide
will provide you a starting place for discussion, and suggest a variety of
perspectives from which you might approach this book.
About this Book
When
acclaimed science journalist Heather Pringle was dispatched to a
remote part of northern Chile to cover a little-known scientific
conference, she found herself in the midst of the most passionate
gathering of her working life -- dozens of mummy experts lodged in a
rambling seaside hotel, battling over the implications of their
latest discoveries. Infected with their mania, Pringle spent the
next year circling the globe, stopping in to visit the leading
scientists so she could see firsthand the breathtaking delicacy and
unexpected importance of their work.
In The
Mummy Congress, she recounts the intriguing findings from her
travels, bringing to life the hitherto unknown worlds of the
long-dead, and revealing what mummies have to tell us about
ourselves. Pringle's journeys lead her to the lifelike remains of
medieval saints entombed in Italy's grand cathedrals, eerily
preserved bog bodies in the Netherlands bearing signs of violent and
untimely slaughter, and frozen Inca princess glimpsed for the first
time atop icy mountains. She learns of the extraordinary skills of
ancient Egyptian embalmers capable of preserving bodies, in the
words of one mummy expert, "until the end of time"; of the
horrifying sacrifices made by ancient South Americans to pacify
their gods; and of the weird mummified parasites, preserved in the
guts of millennia-old bodies, that still wreak havoc across the
world today.
Ranging
from the famous excavation of Tutankhamen to tales of ascetic
Japanese monks trying to mummify themselves, and from the Russians'
terrified attempts to embalm the body of Stalin to the fleeting
craze for public mummy unwrappings in nineteenth-century New
Orleans, The Mummy Congress demonstrates that our own
obsession with the preserved dead has a long and bizarre history.
Packed with extraordinary stories and narrated with great humor and
verve, The Mummy Congress is a compelling and entertaining journey
into the world of the everlasting dead.
About the Author
Heather Pringle is a journalist and writer who has written on
archaeology and ancient cultures in numerous magazines including Discover,
National Geographic Traveler, 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.
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Discussion Questions
1. Does science have the right to destroy an ancient body when
it seeks medical knowledge to benefit the living? Or is science obliged to
respect a human being's inherent dignity even after death?
2. Why are we
so fascinated by mummies today? What is the source of this fascination?
3. What do the
ancient preserved dead have to tell us about ourselves today?
4. Why have so
many cultures revered and venerated mummies over the ages?
5. Is it
morally defensible to put perfectly preserved mummies on public display in
museums or on television? We wouldn't dream of doing this with a modern
cadaver. Does time make a difference? And if so, why?
6. In the
nineteenth century, Europeans apothecaries pulverized entire mummies to
make medicine and paint pigment, while antiquities dealers hawked the
withered bodies as souvenirs. Is mummy commerce alive today?
7. And if so,
have we learned anything?
8. Why do you
think Victorian audiences in England were content just to unwrap a mummy's
face, leaving the rest of the body shrouded in linen?
9. Why did
communist officials go to such trouble and expense to mummify the bodies of
their leaders during the Cold War?
10. How have
bigots and demagogues used mummies for their own prejudiced ends?
11. Would you
want to be mummified after death? Or would you consider having a family
member preserved for eternity? How about a pet?
12. In The
Mummy Congress, Pringle describes modern plastic surgery as a form of
self-mummification. Do you think she is right? Are there other ways that
we indulge in self-mummification in modern society?
Copyright
© 2001 Heather Pringle. All Rights Reserved.
Reviews
"Fascinating
and lively reading; this book is sure to have, as they say, a very
long shelf life." --Publishers
Weekly, starred review
"An
engrossing discussion . . . the author has done her homework,
revealing a subject far more complex and interesting." --Kirkus
Reviews
"I
never imagined that a book about mummies and mummy-inspectors could
be so engrossing. Heather Pringle has done a remarkable job. I read The
Mummy Congress with scarcely a pause." --Evan S. Connell,
author of Son of the Morning Star
"A
fascinating survey of the different aspects of mummy studies."
--Bob Brier, author of The Encyclopedia of Mummies
"Using
the last World Congress on Mummy Studies as an entry point to 'our'
world, Heather Pringle admirably manages to convey the results of
various studies of mummies, as well as the more personal side of
mummy research. It has been joked that mummy congresses are meetings
of mummies, not about mummies. Heather Pringle certainly dispels
that notion." --Niels Lynnerup, co-organizer of the upcoming
World Congress on Mummy Studies
"Science
writing at its best. The riveting story of intrepid researchers who
reconstruct the dead." --Paul Hoffman, author of The Man Who
Loved Only Numbers
paperback:
June 2002;
$13.95US;
0786884630
Available at your favorite bookseller.
