Christopher Frayling (ed.) - The Face of Tutankhamun

[dem bones]

Christopher Frayling (ed.) - The Face of Tutankhamun (Faber, 1992)

Cover photographs: Anthony Wornum & Robert Harding Picture Library

Preface
Acknowledgements
The Main Events
The Face of Tutankhamun

In the Footsteps of Howard Carter

Howard Carter - Autobiographical Notebooks [extracts]
H. Rider Haggard - She [extracts]
Amelia B. Edwards - One Thousand Miles Up The Nile
Lord Carnarvon - Five Years' Exploration At Thebes
Theodore Davis - The finding Of The tombs of Harmhabi and Touatânkhamanou
Percy White - Cairo

"Wonderful things ..."

Howard Carter - The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen (extracts)
Alfred Lucas, James Henry Breasted, Harry Burton, Arthur Mace, Minnie Burton, Acting-Sergeant Richard Adamson (various extracts)

The Pharoah Awakes

Théophile Gautier - The Romance of the Mummy
Théophile Gautier - The Mummy’s Foot
Edgar Allan Poe - Some Words with a Mummy
Bram Stoker - The Jewel of Seven Stars [chapter 20]
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Ring of Thoth
Sax Rohmer - The Valley of the Sorceress
H. P. Lovecraft & Harry Houdini - Imprisoned with the Pharoahs

Tutmania

[Punch Magazine] Comments on the latest craze
Arthur Weigall - The Malevolence Of Ancient Egyptian Spirits
Velma - The Fatal Curse From The Tomb
Cheiro - A Mummy's Hand That Came To Life
Frederick H. Wood - A Message From Ancient Egypt

Tutankhamun Today

Peter Green - The Treasures Of Egypt
Edward W. Said - Egyptian Rites
Dennis Forbes - Abusing The Pharaoh

Select Bibliography
List of Illustrations

Blurb
Fascinating in its every detail, Christopher Frayling's new television series presents the mysterious case of King Tut, to mark the seventieth anniversary of the opening of his tomb.

In his enthralling introduction to this collection of Tutmania, Frayling recreates the opening of the tomb, publishing for the first time extracts from the diaries of members of the expedition, including Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter who led the team.

The staggering wealth of their discovery and the legendary curse unleashed a craze for all things Egyptian, the fashion invading our culture and influencing everything from hair-styles to horror films.
This book peels back the layers of our fascination with the ancient Egyptians, both in fact and fiction, to get to the heart of it all: sex, death and the beyond.

In his Essential Guide to Mummy Literature, Brian J. Frost writes of this one; " ... the best part of the book is undoubtably the non-fiction material, which provides a fascinating insight into the effects the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb has had on popular culture." Dr. Frayling's opening chapter - concerning events of late 1922 - 1924 - notwithstanding, perhaps my favourite section is that devoted to "the wilder excesses of Tutmania."

Cheiro [Count Louis Harmon] - A Mummy's Hand that Came to Life: (Real Life Stories, 1934).

The Egyptian, as you may remember, had told me that the hand would be my protector and save me in moments of danger. I have not space in a book of this kind to tell how often escapes from death and other things appeared to happen, but I will give a few instances ..... On another occasion, when travelling in South America, the hotel I was in took fire. People rushed from their rooms and so did I. As I had in my fright forgotten the hand I hesitated, the elevator started without me; I ran back to my room to get my prized possession - as I did so the ropes of the elevator burned in the roof - it fell with a crash, and everyone in it was killed.
But I must hurry on to my final experience ...

While examining hieroglyphics in the Valley of the Kings, Cheiro is identified by an ancient guide as chosen among men to be the next guardian of a sacred relic - the mummified hand of the Princess Makitatan, seventh daughter of the heretic pharaoh Atennaten. Over the next thirty years, celebrity chiromancer and severed limb enjoy several exciting brushes with death until, late in 1922, the petrified flesh softens, the hand bleeds, and its owner's ghost materialises to warn via automatic handwriting that Lord Carnarvon was not to remove as much as a pebble from Tutankhamun's tomb. Disobey Makitatan's warning, and he "would suffer injury while in the Tomb - a sickness from which he would never recover, and that death would claim him in Egypt."

Cheiro duly notified his Lordship by telegram, but Carnarvon, notoriously stubborn, was unmoved. "If at this moment of my life all the mummies in Egypt were to warn me I would go on with my project just the same."

Velma - The Fatal Curse from the Tomb: (My Mysteries and My Story, 1927). "When the body of Tutankhamen was revealed to those who entered his tomb in the fateful Valley of Kings, a mark was found on his face. The mark left by the fatal mosquito bite on the face of the Earl of Carnarvon was in exactly the same position!" According to the palmist, before setting out for Egypt, George Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, consulted him for a reading. Velma saw tragedy in his lordship's palm and strongly advised he make his excuses and abandon the dig. It was accepted at the time that Herbert died from the effects of a mosquito bite, but Velma knows otherwise. Carnarvon was the victim of a Pharaoh's curse on those who violate the tomb of the dead.

Frederick H. Wood - A Message from Ancient Egypt: (This Egyptian Miracle - or the Restoration of the Lost Speech of Ancient Egypt by Supernatural means, 1940). 'Nona's thoughts on Professor Gunn, a vociferous critic of Dr. Wood's Ancient Egypt Speaks, as communicated via a medium named Rosemary, recorded to gramophone disc, then transcribed and translated by the slighted author. Wood maintains that Nona speaks the lost language "Xenaglossy," a form of Ancient Egyptian with which he is familiar through arduous study. Nona's opinion of the Professor is unfavourable:

"Aroóma de Gúnn .... oo-ê-ga .... ása! .... ása fóne ... toot a féren déen .... istia Gúnn! Kon! ."N.B. - Out of consideration for our critic, phrases 1217 to the end will not be translated here, but they are absolutely correct and forceful Egyptian"

[helrunar]

What a curious hodgepodge. I'm glad they included the stories by Conan Doyle (one of the sources for the original 1932 film The Mummy), Sax Rohmer and Lovecraft, all very good tales that, of course, have been reprinted numerous times.

I wonder if the Weigall contribution is about his attempt to perform a sacred drama/rite to lift the curse from the spirits of Akhenaten, Nefertiti and others... I recall reading a colorful paraphrase in some book years ago.

Hilarious that the rather earnestly stodgy professor Battiscombe Gunn was cussed out by that "medium"'s spirit guide. LOL!

The book sounds like something Vault Patron Saint/Sinner Peter Haining would assemble. Good stuff!

Hel.

[dem bones]

May 25, 2023 21:00:02 GMT helrunar said:

What a curious hodgepodge. I'm glad they included the stories by Conan Doyle (one of the sources for the original 1932 film The Mummy), Sax Rohmer and Lovecraft, all very good tales that, of course, have been reprinted numerous times.

I wonder if the Weigall contribution is about his attempt to perform a sacred drama/rite to lift the curse from the spirits of Akhenaten, Nefertiti and others... I recall reading a colorful paraphrase in some book years ago.

Hilarious that the rather earnestly stodgy professor Battiscombe Gunn was cussed out by that "medium"'s spirit guide. LOL!

The book sounds like something Vault Patron Saint/Sinner Peter Haining would assemble. Good stuff!

Hel.

The extracts make perfect sense in the context of Frayling's compelling narrative. For example, he includes the prologue from Gautier's The Romance of the Mummy because "it is so uncannily like the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb sixty-five years later (allowing for a considerable amount of poetic licence and the attitudes of Gautier's time) ..."

Peter Haining, of course, compiled his own glorious anthology on the subject, The Mummy: Stories of the Living Corpse.

Arthur Weigall - The Malevolence Of Ancient Egyptian Spirits: (Tutankhamen & Other Essays, 1923). Begins with author's apparently oft-repeated anecdote concerning the death of Howard Carter's beloved pet canary, swallowed by a Cobra on the same day discovered the entrance to the tomb. Tutankhamum, indeed all Pharaoh's wore the snake's symbol on their foreheads — could this be an early indication that the excavators had brought down a curse upon themselves? Apparently not. According to Mr. Weigall, curses were rare during the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties and were only laid to frighten off superstitious would-be tomb-looters and mummy-abusers of their own age. Treat the dead with due respect, and you'd be returned the same. Not that it prevents his keeping an open mind on such matters. Chapter continues with the persecution of the author and his butler by sinister casket of an embalmed cat; attack of the earthenware lamp; the cursed coffin-lid at the British Museum; the ghost in the photograph of the unwrapped mummy; the murderous, shrivelled woman of the desert who refused to remain dead; Sekhmer watches all; actress temporarily struck blind while performing in ghost play in the valley of the Tomb s of the Queens, etc. Mr. Frayling suggests Weigall's book was hastily compiled and rush-released to beat Carter's own into print.

[dem bones]

Bram Stoker - The Jewel of Seven Stars: Stoker's original, bleak ending, which made Heinemann so fearful for sales they suggested he replace it with a happier one. He complied.

The main players, live and dead, decamp to a cave beneath Professor Abel Trelawny's Cornish home to conduct their experiment in reanimation. First, Trelawny cremates the mummified remains of Queen Tera's wildcat familiar to prevent another vicious attack. His daughter, Margaret, is distressed on Tera's behalf — "Oh! It seems like murder! The poor Queen's pet!" — more so when Trelawny, his fellow Egyptologist, Corbeck, and Dr. Winchester set to work on the Queen. "Father, you are not going to unswathe her! All you men, and in the glare of light .... Just think, Father! A woman! All alone! In such a way! In such a place! Oh, it's cruel, cruel!" Trelawny reassures his daughter that all present, not least her fiancé, Malcolm the barrister, get to see plenty of unclothed females in their various lines of work.

The mummy is unswathed. To the relief of all, the Queen was mummified dressed in her wedding gown. She's in remarkably good shape — and doesn't she bear an uncanny physical resemblance to Margaret! Her father can't help it. "It looks as if you were dead, my child!" Tera is reverently laid on the couch. Margaret lays the hand severed by tomb-looters beneath her breast, and the jewel of the seven stars at her waist. The Professor lights the ancient lamps. Surely the hour of his greatest triumph has come!

The revised edition of 1912 sees the experiment fail, Queen Tera remain dead, the professor and colleagues continue with their lives, wedding bells for Malcolm and Margaret, etc. That is far from the case in the original, which works infinitely better as a horror story.