Mummy Power Redux
Comments: 2
Back in March I posted an entry called Mummy Power in which I quoted Nicholson Baker from his then recently-released book Double Fold. The quote that caught my attention concerned mummies being used as fuel for Egypt’s 300 miles of railroads (this was in the 19C). Baker cites a small article in the September 27, 1859, edition of the Syracuse Daily Standard as well as Dard Hunter’s Papermaking. I never thought to question the veracity of this amazing report (after all, this is Nicholson Baker, right?).
A comment was added to that post recently (I received e-mail notification of it late for some strange reason) by Karl Jones who wrote:
Locomotives? Burning mummies? Incredible!
So I searched Google and found this debunking @ The Straight Dope:
Karl’s comments deserve a new post all their own, but this is not that post. If you’re like me (with nothing better to do on a Friday night) this sort of thing is really fascinating, and it sets you thinking. I began to do some more digging and started to write a long continuation that picks up Karl’s lead, but then something got in the way.
That something was the kindness of Mr. David Pankow, the editor of The Journal of American Printing History in which Joseph Dane’s article appeared. I contacted Mr. Pankow when a reference to Dane’s article failed to appear in the Journal’s index and he offered to send me a copy of the article (he was also happy to oblige with his own thoughts on the matter). The copy arrived yesterday and I am now in possession of Cecil Adams’s sole source of debunkage for the myth in question. I now also have to re-read Baker, who is aware of Dane and has some thoughts on him and his article, so my original reply to Karl gets scrapped while I comb through Dane’s heavily-footnoted slap in the face to romantic mummy recycling fantasies.
I’m sure we’ll wrap up this burning issue in no time (ha ha).
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Posted to Oh, the Humanity • 2002.08.27 (Tue) • 11:18
Comments
Posted by Adam 2004.04.28, 00:15
Is it just me or did you never follow this up? Cheers though.
Posted by jh 2004.04.28, 00:48
You’re right —- I never followed it up. But I do still have a folder on my desktop called mummyLinks in which I started to collect any online references to the story I could find.
And the article that Mr. Pankow sent along really is fascinating, so I will try to post some thoughts on that when I can.
Sorry to leave this in mid-air.
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