How I Became a Mummy; Lost in a Pyramid & Other Classic Mummy Stories
Margaret Powis
Leena Pekkalainen; Andrew Smith, ed.
2016, AUC Press, 978-9-77416-811-6, $18.95 pb; 2016 British Library, 978-0-71235-617-6, £8.99 pb.
These books' original views of ancient Egypt will captivate a wide range of readers. How I Became a Mummy, a book "for children and Egyptologists of all ages," follows the death of a pharaoh and the mummification process through ample cartoon-like illustrations. The narrative is very easy to follow, making it a perfect book for a parent or grandparent to read to a curious child who wants to know how mummies are made. The procedure is described in detail through the dispassionate eyes of the dead pharaoh in chapters concerning subjects such as washing, gutting, the brain canopic jars and coffins. Lost in a Pyramid & Other Classic Mummy Stories is a collection of tales published between 1869 and 1910. The stories vary from horror, to romance, to comic, painting a fascinating picture of how Egypt was viewed through Western eyes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—a period of great archeological and geopolitical interest in the country. Readers will recognize some authors, notably sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Louisa May Alcott.
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