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This book considers ancient Egypt and its relics as depicted in literature across the Victorian era, addressing themes such as reanimated mummies and ancient Egyptian mythology, as well as contemporary consumer culture across a range of literary modes, from literary realism to Gothic fiction, from burlesque satire to historical novels, and from popular culture to the elite productions of the aesthetes and decadents. In doing so, it is the first multi-authored study to scrutinise ancient Egypt in nineteenth-century literature, bringing together a variety of literary methodologies to probe ancient Egypt’s complex connotations across this era. This collection scrutinises and illuminates the ways in which ancient Egypt was harnessed to question notions of race, imperialism, religion, gender, sexuality and the fluidity of literary genre. Collectively, the chapters demonstrate the pervasiveness of contemporary interest in ancient Egypt through the consideration of narratives and authors held as canonical in the nineteenth century, bringing these into conversation with new sources brought to light by the authors of these chapters. Discussing the works of major figures in nineteenth-century culture including Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, George Eliot, H. Rider Haggard, Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde, this collection extends beyond British writing, to European and American literature. It weaves discussions of understudied figures – such as Charles Wells, Louisa Stuart Costello and Guy Boothby – into this analysis. Overall, it establishes the richness of a literary culture developing across the century often held to have ‘birthed’ the discipline of Egyptology, the scholarly means by which we might comprehend ancient Egyptian culture.
13 Bread and beer in ancient Egyptian medicine Ryan Metcalfe The environment of ancient Egypt was ideally suited to the cultivation of cereal crops. Nile floods brought fertile sediments from upstream to reinvigorate the soil, and the water itself could be diverted and stored in a series of channels and basins to irrigate the plants (Butzer 1976: 17). The importance of these crops to the ancient Egyptians can be seen in their incorporation into many different parts of life other than just the diet. Grain in the form of bread and beer formed the basis of
25 The International Ancient Egyptian Mummy Tissue Bank Patricia Lambert-Zazulak The concept of tissue banking is well established, and has many applications in the medical field. Good examples are tissues stored for transplant surgery and also blood and blood product banking, all of which have contributed in many ways to modern medicine and research. Tissues are collected, stored, studied and distributed in a variety of ways appropriate to their uses, and each type of tissue bank has its own scientific and ethical considerations, which are complementary to
11 Trauma care, surgery and remedies in ancient Egypt: a reassessment Roger Forshaw I am pleased to be able to offer this new analysis of trauma care and surgery in ancient Egypt to Rosalie, as this is a topic of particular interest to her. Also I am grateful to Rosalie for inspiring me in my master’s and doctoral studies in Egyptology and for inviting me to join her team at the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester. Trauma can be defined as any bodily injury or wound caused by an extrinsic agent. Evidence for trauma in a
31 Making an ancient Egyptian contraceptive: learning from experiment and experience Rosalind Janssen It is a great pleasure to dedicate this chapter to Professor Rosalie David as an educator who has been at the forefront of university adult education. Having single-handedly set up her innovative Certificate in Egyptology at the University of Manchester, she then ran a consistently oversubscribed course for some twenty-five years, enabling successive cohorts of locally based adult learners to study Egyptology seriously for the first time. I was privileged to be
27 The evolution of imaging ancient Egyptian animal mummies at the University of Manchester, 1972–2014 Lidija M. McKnight and Stephanie Atherton-Woolham The Manchester Museum Mummy Project, established by Professor Rosalie David in 1972, pioneered the study of ancient Egyptian mummified remains using a multi-disciplinary approach. As Keeper of the Manchester Museum’s Egyptology collection, David set out to understand the lives of the mummified individuals, whose remains became part of the collection following its establishment as the Manchester Natural History
Combining approaches to ancient Egyptian religious expression, medical practice and the modern scientific study of human and material remains from Egypt and Sudan, this volume celebrates the multidisciplinary career of Prof Rosalie David OBE. The UK’s first female Professor in Egyptology, Rosalie David’s pioneering work at the University of Manchester on Egyptian mummies, magic and medicine has attracted international attention.
This volume presents research by a number of leading experts in their fields: recent archaeological fieldwork, new research on Egyptian human remains and unpublished museum objects along with reassessments of ancient Egyptian texts concerned with healing and the study of technology through experimental archaeology. Papers try to answer some of Egyptology’s biggest questions - How did Tutankhamun die? How were the Pyramids built? How were mummies made? – along with less well-known puzzles.
Rather than address these areas separately, the volume adopts the so-called ‘Manchester method’ instigated by Rosalie David and attempts to integrate perspectives from both traditional Egyptology and scientific analytical techniques. Much of this research has never appeared in print before, particularly that resulting from the Manchester Egyptian Mummy Project, set up in the 1970s. The resulting overview illustrates how Egyptology has developed over the last 40 years, and how many of the same big questions still remain.
This book will be of use to researchers and students of archaeology or related disciplines with an interest in multidisciplinary approaches to understanding life and death in ancient Egypt and Sudan.
Preserved human remains from ancient Egypt provide an unparalleled opportunity for studies in the history of disease and medical practices. Egyptian medical papyri describe physiological concepts, disease diagnoses and prescribed treatments which include both ‘irrational’,(magical) and ‘rational’ (surgical and pharmaceutical) procedures. Many previous studies of Egyptian medicine have concluded that ‘irrational’ methods predominated, but this perception is increasingly challenged by results from scientific studies of ancient human remains (including autopsy, radiology, endoscopy, palaeohistology and immunological and molecular analyses), and plant materials. This paper demonstrates the significant contribution being made by multidisciplinary studies to our understanding of disease occurrence and medical treatments in ancient Egypt, and considers the feasibility of developing epidemiological comparisons of ancient and modern data sets that will provide acceptable historical contexts for contemporary disease studies.
18 The biology of ancient Egyptians and Nubians Don Brothwell Since Napoleonic times, there has been a constant interest in not only the art and architecture of Egypt and Nubia, but also the mummies and skeletons discovered there. Early studies, such as Nott and Gliddon (1857), lacked scientific rigour, but by the end of the nineteenth century, there was concern to improve scientific accuracy in reporting and increase sample sizes. Examples of this improved standard of research are provided by Elliot Smith and Wood Jones (1910) and Oetteking (1908) on Egyptian