volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The Royal Mummies in Cairo. 393
and Mr. Stead being correct as regards the intercourse
between mummies and their souls in the British Museum,
it is impossible not to think that the royal mummies
in Cairo have been treated with careless disrespect by
the Service of Antiquities. After Maspero unrolled
them, every portion of their bodies was stripped bare
by the medical experts who examined them and
measured them and wrote reports on their physical
characteristics for incorporation in his great work " Les
Momies Royales de Der el-Bahari." In this state
they were replaced in the shabby, thin wooden coffins,
with which the priest-kings of the XXIst dynasty (who
repaired the royal mummies) had provided them, and
they were allowed to remain wholly unprotected in the
miserable workroom of the old Museum at Bulak for
a considerable time. After much delay, and then only
as the result of the pressure of enlightened European
public opinion in Cairo, large, cheap, light deal cases
were provided for them, and they were exhibited in the
Museum ; these cases were glazed with the commonest
glass that could be bought in the bazar, and in a very
short time many of the panes were cracked and broken.
The glazed covers did not fit the cases when
they were first made, and as the unseasoned wood
dried and shrank they were never in position and were
no protection to the mummies. In the winter of 1886-7
I saw the glass in the cases and covers coated with condensed
moisture—the result of the thick white wet
the removal of her body to her own native land. If she were kind
to me as I am in my heart to her—why one would only want to keep
her—but to all she shows some kind of cruelty, if I may say so, just
because she so intensely wants her desecrated body to be sent back
home. I have been here nearly two weeks, and only came a week
after I was able to be up again."
2. " Dear Sir,— ^Thank you for your kind note. The mummy case
I mean is in Room I, WaU-case 4, the one in the middle. A spirit
is intimately connected with this mummy case (I presumed that a
mummy was inside). Mummy or no mummy, the spirit is active,
and wants its belongings removed—taken back where it came from,
and it will not be satisfied until this is done. Thanking you again
for youi: letter," etc.