The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead

Name: The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead
Rating: 4.1 (882 reviews)
Author: Pringle, Heather
ISBN: 9780786865512

Pringle, Heather

882 ratings by Goodreads

Language: English

Published by Barnes & Noble Books, 2001

0786865512 / 9780786865512

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First Edition, First Printing. Published by Barnes & Noble Books, 2001. Octavo. Hardcover. Book is like new. Dust jacket is like new, with some shelf/edgewear.

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Title: The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead
Author: Pringle, Heather
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Books
Publication year: 2001
Condition: Like New
Dust jacket: Dust Jacket Included
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
ISBN 10: 0786865512
ISBN 13: 9780786865512
Edition: First Edition.

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 lodged in 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 firsthand 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 princess 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, that still wreak havoc across the world today.

Ranging from the famous excavation of Tutankhamen to tales of ascetic Japanese monks trying to mummify themselves, and from the Russians' terrified attempts to embalm the body of Stalin to the fleeting craze for public mummy unwrappings in nineteenth-century New Orleans, The Mummy Congress demonstrates that our own obsession with the preserved dead has a long and bizarre history. Packed with extraordinary stories and narrated with great humor and verve, The Mummy Congress is a compelling and entertaining journey into the world of the everlasting dead.

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Review

You do not have to be a necrophiliac to enjoy this book, and the congress in question is not on the wrong side of the moral track, but The Mummy Congress was inspired by a kind of academic love-in for amateurs of preserved bodies. Heather Pringle, a science writer who lives in Vancouver, Canada, was inspired to write this fascinating book by attending the Third World Congress on Mummy Studies held in the Chilean town of Arica at the edge of the Atacama desert. She returned, as she says "almost feverish with excitement over the wonderful stories I'd heard there". The Mummy Congress recounts many of these extraordinary stories of the discovery of mummified bodies and the people who have spent their professional lives trying to recover as much information as they can about them. There are some great crime stories here such as that of the 2400-year-old Tollund man of Denmark and the other bog bodies of Europe, many of whom might have been human sacrifices. Our concern for the dead and for elaborate burial ceremonies date back at least 30,000 years. Over the millennia humans around the world have discovered that burial in peatbogs, deserts and ice can preserve some soft tissue--especially the skin and hair, even muscle and brains--almost indefinitely. But since there are few places in the world where such conditions persist, peoples since the Chinchorros of Chile and the ancient Egyptians have spent a lot of effort trying to replicate such processes of mummification and invent even better artificial ones. The scientific investigation of mummified bodies might not be for the fainthearted and is today very sophisticated, but according to Heather Pringle, those that pursue the cause "are unquestionably heroic... they debate earnestly... the ethics of putting the ancient dead on display... (and) ...never talk lightly or unfeelingly about their ailments... they show us that even the greatest kings and holiest of saints... once suffered the common toll of humanity-disease, injury and pain". The Mummy Congress is a great read and I suspect lots of friends and family will be subjected to many a "listen to this" or "would you believe" quote. There are 16 pages of illustrations including some spooky colour photos along with an index and bibliography and, by the way, the next Mummy Congress is to be held in Greenland. --Douglas Palmer

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