Mummies, wrapped in Egyptian tradition -- #3 in the series "Of Myth 'n Monsters"

Anyone ought to ace this pop quiz: What is the #1 psychological challenge facing a human being?

The answer is death.

Repressing, dodging or poo-pooing the answer isn’t going to change the answer. Death doesn’t care if you try to ignore it; death doesn’t care if you thumb your nose at it; death doesn’t care if you get cocky about being ok with it just because it isn’t on the foreseeable horizon (by “foreseeable horizon” I mean something like a psycho holding a gun to your head and preparing to pull the trigger, a circumstance that will swiftly put an “I’m fine with death” attitude to the test, big time). No matter how we slice it or dice it, death will be there in the end, regardless of our attitude toward it. Death is funny like that – omnipresent, non-judgmental, impartial, taking the prince and the pauper, the beauty and the beast, the sinner and the saint, the vainglorious egomaniac and the humble monk, the ant and the elephant, you and me.

The psychological influence of death can be found at the very root of angst, at the foundation of selfishness, greed, and hopelessness, yet it can also be found at the heart of compassion, empathy, and benevolence, at the core of selflessness, enlightenment and the human drive to make some sense of the world in which we live. While it would be a stretch to assert that the fear of death is the true foundation and main building block of every religion in the history of the world, it could be reasonably argued that addressing the mystery of death had a lot to do with why religion and spirituality evolved in the first place.

The ancient Egyptians would not have debated that point. Egyptian tradition is rich in history, detail, and lasting evidence of its importance to the culture of the Nile River Valley, fertile turf that flourished as a breeding ground for myth 'n monsters. It was there that the interplay of mind, body and spirit ran into roadblocks and contradictions, the strange duality of attempting to embrace the “let go and let God” element of death through the filter of mollycoddling the ego’s fear of death, taking aim at the heavens while keeping a lip-lock on the fanny of the physical. Sound familiar? It should. The history of humanity, from past to present, is loaded with that sort of thing. It never gets old; and the ancient Egyptians did it as well, or better, than anyone.

Across the span of a few thousand years, the spiritual and cultural focus of the Nile River Valley shifted like the sands of the Sahara, changing in both radical and subtle ways. The cultural changes that come with the passage of time included alterations to Egyptian funerary rites and rituals. In the main, however, these changes were superficial, with the underlying approach to death and the afterlife remaining very nearly unaltered.

There’s an old saying about the relationship between death and the material world: ‘You can’t take it with you.’ Try telling that to the people of ancient Egypt, who indulged in funerary rites that remain among the most over-the-top in human history – from mummification to elaborate tomb engineering and artistry, the construction and elaborate decoration of anthropoid coffins and sarcophagi, mummies buried with all the essentials including household goods, valuables and, in certain instances, unfortunate favorite pets, servants and family members. (One can practically hear the voice of a wife who would have preferred widowhood over joining her husband on the journey: “You are a god among lesser mortals, o’ magnificent and sickly Ramses, but would it be okay if I skipped this part of the trip and met you in the afterlife a little later? Please, o’ pretty please, with sugar on top?”) As any pack rat knows, letting go of material possessions can be difficult to do, and when the lines between material–centric living (ego) and the luminous lightness of being (spirit) blur as heavily as they did in ancient Egypt, walking the road of eternal life with one pair of sandals is unacceptable – and we may as well toss in some pet cats and slaves while we’re at it.

According to Egyptian spiritual tradition, the Ba (personality) and Ka (spirit) needed a body to inhabit in order to experience the right type of afterlife. If one yearned to enjoy the sweetest fruits of eternity, it was imperative for the body to be preserved as a mummy (details of the mummification process are widely available online). Mummification was the main step needed for an eternal life of the pleasant sort, and ancient Egyptians took that belief quite seriously. For approximately 3,000 years, almost every Egyptian who could afford to be mummified became a mummy. One estimate places the number at 70 million mummies in 3+ millennia. (That’s a lot of cursed tombs and buried loot.) Only the wealthiest of egocentric Pharaohs could afford to finance the construction of massive pyramids, the building of which cost countless lowly, never-to-be-mummified workers their lives. Had those grandiose, self-aggrandizing exercises in deification been more affordable, the skyline of the Nile River Valley would look much different than it does today.

Mummification, magical amulets, a funeral mask, heavy duty sarcophagus and hieroglyphs of protection were not enough to assure safe passage to a desirable afterlife. Don’t forget your copy of the Book of the Dead (spells and prayers written on papyrus scrolls), because on the journey from Here to There, you will have to pass through the underworld of Duat, where a bevy of nightmare monsters, pesky oversized cobras, and lakes of fire make for a perilous trek. (Should you find yourself lost in Duat, do not ask directions at a vacation home built on the shores of a lake of fire. It won’t turn out well.) The ultimate test in Duat was The Weighing of the Heart by the jackal-headed god Anubis and the ibis-headed scribe deity, Thoth. If the heart weighs less than the ‘feather of truth,’ you’re off to see Osiris in the afterlife; if the heart is heavy with sin, it is tossed as an eternity-ending snack to Ammut, a monster who is part crocodile, lion and hippo -- a trio of animals that common sense told me must have been responsible for the death of innumerable human inhabitants of the Nile River Valley, thus the perfect composite for creating a mythological monster like Ammut.

From a myth ‘n monster standpoint, what else would a storyteller have to work with, besides the points mentioned above?

1) The earliest Egyptian tombs were known as mastabas. They were flat-roofed buildings built near each other to form a necropolis (city of the dead). When a community of the dead resembles a neighborhood of the living, a storyteller has been handed a horror story (or six) on a silver platter.

2) The taxidermy effect: Whenever a culture goes out of its way to treat dead bodies like live bodies, the creepiness quotient rockets through the roof. Who among us isn’t ready for a finely preserved corpse to stand up and cause a commotion? Seems only natural, doesn’t it?

3) Curses galore: Grave robbers through the ages, and grave robbers operating under the guise of, ahem, ‘science’ and ‘archaeology,’ have been plundering tombs since the first time a wealthy fellow keeled over and gifted the world with a tomb worth plundering. Hundreds of thousands of Egyptian tombs have been ransacked without incident in the last few thousand years, but the moment a tomb raid led to someone’s death (a loose brick falling on a robber's head and killing him, etc.) then a curse must’ve caused it. Verily!

Hmmm, one wonders where the inventor of the Ace bandage came up with the idea…Well, I could ramble on and on, going so far as to travel the well-worn path of Hollywood mummy movie commentary, but that wouldn’t be healthy for any of us, so…...

…in conclusion, I pose this request: Someone please spin me and my twisted comrades a short story or poem of the mummified variety, whether humorous, Stephen King or Anne Rice-ish, Lovecraft-like, Kafkaesque or some fascinating hybrid.

Please bear in mind that a good storyteller does not require a wealth of facts in order to spin a pleasing yarn. A good storyteller requires a modicum of fodder, a bit of grist for the mill of imagination. So sally forth, damn it!

One final note: Enjoy this life first, and have faith in whatever additional life you happen to fancy. Have fun. Don’t make me come over there and mummify you for being a stick in the mud. It takes only 70 days to do the job right...