The Lost Art of Mummy Smuggling
WOMEN IN THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age, by Kathleen Sheppard Let’s say it’s 1873.
You’re an intrepid Englishwoman sailing the Nile in search of adventure and history and souvenirs. You’ve sneaked a painted sarcophagus onto your boat.
You open the lid, unwrap the occupant and admire what you declare to be a “festive object and not at all a funereal old frump.” The next day, cabin stinking of dried death and customs officials ready to impound your find, you have two choices: dump the mummy overboard or rewrap it and hope nobody asks about the smell.
This was the situation faced by Marianne Brocklehurst, an adventurer whose story is told in Kathleen Sheppard’s “Women in the Valley of the Kings,” a new history of Egyptology that prioritizes the women whose contributions, for good and otherwise, shaped the field.
