volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

392
The Mumfny-Cover No. 22,542.
And, whilst expressing no opinion as to the probabihty
or possibiUty of the views of Mr. Douglas Murray^
^ To the good offices of Mr. Douglas Murray we owe the presentation
to. the British Museum of the mummy-board, or mummy-cover, No.
22,542. This valuable and interesting object is commonly described
as the " haunted mummy," but this description is fundamentally
wrong. It is not a mummy, but a beautifully painted wooden board,
with a woman's face in relief at one end of it, and it was placed on
the mmnmy of the priestess for whom it was made when that was
laid in its coffin. The name of this priestess is unknown, for it does
not appear on the board. But the cartouche containing the prenomen
and nomen of Amenhetep II, which is painted above the feet, suggests
that she was descended from a kinsman or kinswoman of this king,
and was a priestess in the temple of Amen-Ra, and was on one of the
royal foundations connected with the great confraternity of Amen-Ra
at Thebes. The mummy of this priestess never came to the British
Museum, notwithstanding all assertions to the contrary. It was
broken up by the natives of Kurnah, and they obtained from it a
very fine necklace of cornehan beads with heavy gold pendants.
From enquiries which I made in i88g, soon after Mr. A. F. Wheeler
presented the board to the British Museum, I learned that the
mummy and its coffin and the board were obtained from the tomb
of Amenhetep II, which was not cleared out by M. Loret until ten
years later, by which time the natives had abstracted every portable
thing of value. The board came to the British Musemn with an evil
reputation for bringing down calamity, disease and disaster on everyone
connected with it, and in the minds of many people it has maintained
this reputation ever since. Innumerable stories are told of it,
or rather of the mummy that belonged to it, e.g., that the mummy
had actually been acquired by the Trustees of the British Museum,
and was sold by them surreptitiously to an American, who shipped
it in the " Titanic " and thereby caused the loss of the ship. These
stories have taken such a hold on the imagination of a certain section
of the public that contradiction is in vain. The following extracts
from two letters addressed to me will suffice to show the sort of notions
that are entertained
I. April 3rd [1914]. " Dear Sir,—I was in the Egyptian Gallery
a few weeks ago with the Students Ass., on a Saturday afternoon.
The following Saturday in the night I was suddenly seized with internal
neuralgia. I wondered if it had anything to do with the Mummy in
Case 4, but as I had been intensely interested in her in a very kindly
manner, it seemed to. me improbable. However, a few days after,
when the pain was not so intense, during the night, I felt a hand
press against my side (not the one which was in pain) and in a few
moments, agonizing pains, which left me as suddenly as they came.
In my heart I have been loving that Egyptian Lady. The only
conclusion I can come to is that she is doing all she can to effect