The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession and the Everlasting Dead

by HeatherPringle (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.25

  Throughout history, from the Ancient Egyptians to medieval saints and the remains of figures like Eva Peron and Lenin, mummies have held a powerful place in our collective imagination. THE MUMMY CONGRESS is a riveting survey of the history, science and popular culture of mummies and of man's ancient quest for immortality. 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 crammed into 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 first-hand 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 princesses 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 and that still wreak havoc across the world today.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $3.25

  From the dusty origins of mummification in the deserts of South America and Africa to the latest technology hyped on the Internet by Utah's Summum Corporation (which promises mummification for millennia for a mere $62,000), The Mummy Congress investigates the allure of mummies. In 1998 Heather Pringle visited the remote Chilean port of Arica for The World Congress on Mummy Studies. This book introduces us to the eccentric world of the researchers and academics who investigate such phenomena as the child mummies of the Chinchorro, preserved over 7000 years ago, animal mummies from Ancient Eygpt, the 19th century Buddhist tradition of self-mummification to ward off decay, and the political mummification of 20th century demagogues like Lenin and Eva Peron. Pringle also looks at the uses of mummies for today's historians and scientists and how much they tell us about ancient cultures. This research is sometimes bizarre, but often reveals fundamental truths.