Mummy paper
Encyclopedia
Mummy paper is paper
that is claimed to be made from the linen
wrappings and other fibers (e.g. papyrus
) from Egyptian mummies
imported to America circa 1855. The existence of this paper has not been conclusively confirmed, but it has been widely discussed.
and papermaking in general.
, circa 2000 B.C., with the invention of what the Romans called “papyrus
”, based on an earlier Greek name for the material. Papyrus is not paper in the modern sense of the word, since it was formed from compressed sheets of reed stalks and not a pulp. Paper made from a pulped plant fiber can be credited to Ts’ai Lun of China
in 105 A.D., when he first presented the Emperor a sheet of paper made from the inner bark of a mulberry tree. When the technique of papermaking found its way into Europe, paper was made not from trees but from a pulp
of cotton and linen rag fibers. This technique of papermaking first came to America in Germantown, Pennsylvania
in 1690 when William Ritterhouse established the first paper mill
. Ritterhouse had been a paper-maker in Amsterdam, Holland before coming to America, bringing European techniques with him.
By the 1850s, papermaking in America was reaching a crisis point. America was producing more newspapers than any other country and its paper consumption was equal to England
and France
’s combined. According to one 1856 estimate, it would take 6,000 wagons, each carrying two tons of paper, to carry all the paper consumed by American newspapers in a single year. This equals out to a need for 405,000,000 pounds of rags for the 800 paper mills then at work in the United States. Most of these rags were imported from Europe
, with the largest source being from Italy
. By 1854, however, Italy also started exporting rags to England, decreasing the supply available to American paper-makers. This meant that a substitute for or a new supply source of rags needed to be found, and quickly.
by trade, an archeologist by hobby and a determined explorer. On an earlier copper prospecting trip to Jamaica
, Deck had evaluated other sources for paper including aloe
, plantain
, banana
and dagger-grass, but none were acceptable. Thus, already preoccupied with paper and paper sources, Deck set out on a trip to Egypt in 1847 to search for Cleopatra’s lost emerald
mines. Deck’s father, also named Isaiah, had known Giovanni Belzoni, a famous Italian robber of Egyptian tombs; Deck the younger thus inherited from his father some Egyptian artifacts, including a piece of linen from a mummy.
While searching for the lost mines, Deck couldn’t help but notice the plethora of mummies and mummy parts that turned up in communal burial sites called “mummy pits.” He wrote, “So numerous are they in some localities out of the usual beaten tracks of most travelers, that after the periodical storms whole areas may be seen stripped of sand, and leaving fragments and limbs exposed in such plenty and variety.” Deck did some calculations: assume two thousand years of widespread embalming
, an average life span of thirty-three years and a stable population of eight million. This would leave you with about five hundred million mummies. Add to that the number of mummified animals including cats, bulls and crocodiles, and the number drastically rises. Deck also states, “it is by no means rare to find above 30 lbs. weight of linen wrappings on mummies…A princess from the late Mr. Pettigrew’s collection was swathed in 40 thicknesses, producing 42 yards of the finest texture.” Deck further calculated that the average consumption of paper in America is about 15 lbs. per person per year. This meant that the supply from Egyptian mummies would be able to keep up with the American demand for about 14 years, by which point a substitute supply source or material would likely have been discovered, rendering the need for rags unnecessary.
is a well-known paper researcher and cataloguer and a proponent of handmade paper. His book, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft, relates the experiments of I. Augustus Stanwood in both ground-wood paper and mummy paper. Hunter received his information from Stanwood’s son Daniel, a professor of international law. According to Daniel, during the American Civil War
his father was hard-pressed for materials for his Maine mill. As such, he imported mummies from Egypt, stripped the bodies of their wrappings and used this material for making paper. Several shiploads of mummies were brought to the mill in Gardiner, Maine
and were thus used to make a brown wrapping paper for grocers, butchers and other merchants. Professor Stanwood continues on to report that the rags supposedly caused a cholera
outbreak among the workers since there were no standards for disinfection
at this time. However, since cholera is actually a bacterium, it is unlikely that active disease cells could have survived for centuries in the wrappings, meaning the outbreak at the plant was likely either from poor personal hygiene of the workers or from dirty rags recently imported from deceased Europeans, primarily Frenchmen and Italians, rather than the mummy rags.
Hunter also writes in an extensive footnote of a letter he received from a Mrs. John Ramsey of Syracuse, New York
, relating the story her father’s friend used to tell her of his days in a paper mill in Broadalbin, New York
. He worked there from 1855–1860 and was one of the men responsible for unrolling the old linen wrappings from the mummies the mill received. She wrote to Hunter that “the rolled-up vestments retained the shape of the mummy, so that when the workmen tried to straighten or unroll the ‘cocoon’…it sprang back at once into the shape of the mummy it had encased so long.” She also describes the material as cream-coloured linen still bearing fragments of embroidery on the edges.
Hunter also writes about and quotes from Deck’s proposal on the importation of mummies. However, Hunter refers to the work as a manuscript, leaving Joseph Dane to dismiss the work off-hand, stating that the work could not be found and implying that Hunter invented it to suit his purpose. This claim of Dane must also be dismissed, since authors both before and since Dane, including Deck’s contemporaries and modern authors, among which are both Wolfe and Baker, have been able to find copies of this paper. Dane also dismisses Deck’s writing, and therefore Hunter’s, on the basis that it is in the mode of Swiftonian
satire. He cites Deck’s references to thrift, concern with alleviating shortages and his precision in his calculations as further evidence of his writing in the manner of Book 3 of Gulliver’s Travels. Dane also writes that Hunter should have realized that Deck wasn’t serious, thus questioning Hunter’s own authority in the field.
and he kept a scrapbook of articles relating to his trade. This eventually became the basis for his book Chronology of the Origin and Progress of Paper and Paper-Making. For an entry from 1855, Munsell records that a cargo of 1215 bales of Egyptian rags arrived and were purchased by J Priestly & Co. for about 4 cents a pound. His source, the Paper Trade Reporter, stated that the final purchase price for the transaction was $25,000. The next year, the New York Tribune
wrote that about two and a quarter million pounds of rags have been imported from Egypt.
Articles discussing the practicality and the financial implications of the import of mummies for paper for the government of Egypt and American paper mills were also published in the 7 July 1847 issue of The Friend, the 19 June 1847 issue of Scientific American
and the 17 December 1847 issue of the Cold War Fountain. While none of these articles confirm the manufacture of said paper in America, they do prove that the concept was both widely spoken of and under discussion in well-known and respected periodicals of the day.
Another article ran in the April 1873 edition of The Druggists’ Circular and Chemical Gazette that described an 1866 visit of a New York businessman to Alexandria. There, he purchased and “exported to the United States ‘mummies from the catacombs’ to be converted to pulp for papermaking.” This article also pointed out that mummies weren’t ideal for printing paper due to the various oils and botanicals included in the rags, which lead to the discoloration of the paper. This corroborates Hunter’s report that Stanwood’s mill used the mummies to make a brown butcher paper.
On 31 July 1856, the Syracuse Standard ran a notice in its paper that informed readers that it was printed on paper made from rags imported directly from Egypt. The rags were imported by Mr. G.W. Ryan and were processed at his plant in Marcellus Falls. Munsell adds the note that the rags were stripped from mummies. Hunter reports that he is unable to find a copy of this issue, and Dane takes this to mean that the paper didn’t claim to have been printed on mummy paper, but just on rags from the region of mummies. Baker, however, has located a copy of the paper at the Onondaga Historical Association and confirmed both the wording of the notice and the physical difference of this issue from those before it.
. He also argues that they have an aura of Swift about them and that all the original writers have the intent of satire. Dane also states that neither the copy of the Standard on mummy paper can be found, nor can Deck’s article be found, both of which statements have clearly been proven wrong.
There are indeed some facts that make proving the concrete existence of mummy paper impossible. First off, the paper from the Standard and the Norwich broadside cannot be chemically tested
to prove they are from mummies, as the test would only prove they are made of linen. Nor can they be carbon-14 dated. This test requires the burning of the material, meaning that items that exist in only one or two copies would have to be destroyed to complete the test, something that clearly cannot be done. Also, mummies were made for over 4,000 years in Egypt, so even a time frame for the paper product wouldn’t narrow down the age of the material to a useful window for solid conclusions to be made. Additionally, the percentage of mummy cloth to any other rag in a given pulp mixture could skew the results of the test. DNA testing would also prove to be inconclusive, as the only thing this test would verify is that the material at one point had close contact with a human.
Outside of scientific tests, there are no extant records of paper mills buying mummies. If there were records or account books, they have either been lost or recycled by the mill itself for more paper. There are no photographs of mummies or mummy wrappings at any paper mills. Shipping records and custom records have likewise vanished. However, these may not have proved anything conclusively either; since rags for paper were duty-free at this time, the cargo wouldn’t have needed to have been declared. Even if the mummy rags had been declared, they probably would have been declared as rags for paper, without the provenance given.
’s novel Innocents Abroad
. He writes of the practice then current on the Egyptian railroad of using mummies for fuel to power the locomotive
s.
This master story teller was speaking tongue in cheek. He lets the reader in on the joke in the next passage, which reads "Stated to me for a fact. I only tell it as I got it. I am willing to believe it. I can believe any thing." While this use cannot be substantiated with contemporary sources, this story has been mentioned by many reliable secondary sources. An article from the 3 December 1859 issue of Scientific American also reports of this unusual fuel source.
There are many sources relating to the use of ground-up mummies in pharmaceuticals. In fact, Merck & Company sold mummy up until 1910. Ground-up mummified bodies also produce a brown pigment, still referred to as “mummy brown
” or “Egyptian brown”. The color is no longer produced from mummies. Additional by-products of mummies include the distillation of the bodies to produce aromatic oils, such as olibanum and ambergris
, which can be made into machine oils, soaps or even incense for use in the Catholic Church. Clearly, mummies were a multi-product import of choice, much as the buffalo
or whale
had been before them.
Paper
Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, drawing or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....
that is claimed to be made from the linen
Linen
Linen is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum. Linen is labor-intensive to manufacture, but when it is made into garments, it is valued for its exceptional coolness and freshness in hot weather....
wrappings and other fibers (e.g. papyrus
Papyrus
Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....
) from Egyptian mummies
Mummy
A mummy is a body, human or animal, whose skin and organs have been preserved by either intentional or incidental exposure to chemicals, extreme coldness , very low humidity, or lack of air when bodies are submerged in bogs, so that the recovered body will not decay further if kept in cool and dry...
imported to America circa 1855. The existence of this paper has not been conclusively confirmed, but it has been widely discussed.
History
The history of mummy paper in America is intimately connected with the history of both American papermakingPapermaking
Papermaking is the process of making paper, a substance which is used universally today for writing and packaging.In papermaking a dilute suspension of fibres in water is drained through a screen, so that a mat of randomly interwoven fibres is laid down. Water is removed from this mat of fibres by...
and papermaking in general.
Supply shortages
Paper can be said to have been born in ancient EgyptAncient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
, circa 2000 B.C., with the invention of what the Romans called “papyrus
Papyrus
Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....
”, based on an earlier Greek name for the material. Papyrus is not paper in the modern sense of the word, since it was formed from compressed sheets of reed stalks and not a pulp. Paper made from a pulped plant fiber can be credited to Ts’ai Lun of China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
in 105 A.D., when he first presented the Emperor a sheet of paper made from the inner bark of a mulberry tree. When the technique of papermaking found its way into Europe, paper was made not from trees but from a pulp
Pulp (paper)
Pulp is a lignocellulosic fibrous material prepared by chemically or mechanically separating cellulose fibres from wood, fibre crops or waste paper. Wood pulp is the most common raw material in papermaking.-History:...
of cotton and linen rag fibers. This technique of papermaking first came to America in Germantown, Pennsylvania
Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Germantown is a neighborhood in the northwest section of the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, about 7–8 miles northwest from the center of the city...
in 1690 when William Ritterhouse established the first paper mill
Paper mill
A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp, old rags and other ingredients using a Fourdrinier machine or other type of paper machine.- History :...
. Ritterhouse had been a paper-maker in Amsterdam, Holland before coming to America, bringing European techniques with him.
By the 1850s, papermaking in America was reaching a crisis point. America was producing more newspapers than any other country and its paper consumption was equal to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
’s combined. According to one 1856 estimate, it would take 6,000 wagons, each carrying two tons of paper, to carry all the paper consumed by American newspapers in a single year. This equals out to a need for 405,000,000 pounds of rags for the 800 paper mills then at work in the United States. Most of these rags were imported from Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, with the largest source being from Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. By 1854, however, Italy also started exporting rags to England, decreasing the supply available to American paper-makers. This meant that a substitute for or a new supply source of rags needed to be found, and quickly.
Isaiah Deck
At this same time period, Egyptian mummies were not unknown in America. Many mummies had been part of exhibits and had been shown in museums and traveling shows across the country. In fact, Dr. Pettigrew was the operator of one such show, where he would unwrap or unroll mummies in front of a crowd for their amusement. The impetus for a new supply source of rags for paper may have come from Dr. Isaiah Deck, an Englishman by birth, a New Yorker by residence, a geologistGeologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...
by trade, an archeologist by hobby and a determined explorer. On an earlier copper prospecting trip to Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
, Deck had evaluated other sources for paper including aloe
Aloe
Aloe , also Aloë, is a genus containing about 500 species of flowering succulent plants. The most common and well known of these is Aloe vera, or "true aloe"....
, plantain
Plantain
Plantain is the common name for herbaceous plants of the genus Musa. The fruit they produce is generally used for cooking, in contrast to the soft, sweet banana...
, banana
Banana
Banana is the common name for herbaceous plants of the genus Musa and for the fruit they produce. Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple, and red....
and dagger-grass, but none were acceptable. Thus, already preoccupied with paper and paper sources, Deck set out on a trip to Egypt in 1847 to search for Cleopatra’s lost emerald
Emerald
Emerald is a variety of the mineral beryl colored green by trace amounts of chromium and sometimes vanadium. Beryl has a hardness of 7.5–8 on the 10 point Mohs scale of mineral hardness...
mines. Deck’s father, also named Isaiah, had known Giovanni Belzoni, a famous Italian robber of Egyptian tombs; Deck the younger thus inherited from his father some Egyptian artifacts, including a piece of linen from a mummy.
While searching for the lost mines, Deck couldn’t help but notice the plethora of mummies and mummy parts that turned up in communal burial sites called “mummy pits.” He wrote, “So numerous are they in some localities out of the usual beaten tracks of most travelers, that after the periodical storms whole areas may be seen stripped of sand, and leaving fragments and limbs exposed in such plenty and variety.” Deck did some calculations: assume two thousand years of widespread embalming
Embalming
Embalming, in most modern cultures, is the art and science of temporarily preserving human remains to forestall decomposition and to make them suitable for public display at a funeral. The three goals of embalming are thus sanitization, presentation and preservation of a corpse to achieve this...
, an average life span of thirty-three years and a stable population of eight million. This would leave you with about five hundred million mummies. Add to that the number of mummified animals including cats, bulls and crocodiles, and the number drastically rises. Deck also states, “it is by no means rare to find above 30 lbs. weight of linen wrappings on mummies…A princess from the late Mr. Pettigrew’s collection was swathed in 40 thicknesses, producing 42 yards of the finest texture.” Deck further calculated that the average consumption of paper in America is about 15 lbs. per person per year. This meant that the supply from Egyptian mummies would be able to keep up with the American demand for about 14 years, by which point a substitute supply source or material would likely have been discovered, rendering the need for rags unnecessary.
Evidence
Whether or not American paper mills took Isaiah Deck’s proposal seriously cannot be either conclusively proved or rejected. However, some evidence does remain.Dard Hunter
Dard HunterDard Hunter
William Joseph "Dard" Hunter was an American authority on printing, paper, and papermaking—especially by hand, using the tools and craft of four centuries prior...
is a well-known paper researcher and cataloguer and a proponent of handmade paper. His book, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft, relates the experiments of I. Augustus Stanwood in both ground-wood paper and mummy paper. Hunter received his information from Stanwood’s son Daniel, a professor of international law. According to Daniel, during the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
his father was hard-pressed for materials for his Maine mill. As such, he imported mummies from Egypt, stripped the bodies of their wrappings and used this material for making paper. Several shiploads of mummies were brought to the mill in Gardiner, Maine
Gardiner, Maine
Gardiner is a city in Kennebec County, Maine, United States. The population was 6,198 at the 2000 census. Popular with tourists, Gardiner is noted for its culture and old architecture.-History:...
and were thus used to make a brown wrapping paper for grocers, butchers and other merchants. Professor Stanwood continues on to report that the rags supposedly caused a cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
outbreak among the workers since there were no standards for disinfection
Disinfection
Disinfectants are substances that are applied to non-living objects to destroy microorganisms that are living on the objects. Disinfection does not necessarily kill all microorganisms, especially nonresistant bacterial spores; it is less effective than sterilisation, which is an extreme physical...
at this time. However, since cholera is actually a bacterium, it is unlikely that active disease cells could have survived for centuries in the wrappings, meaning the outbreak at the plant was likely either from poor personal hygiene of the workers or from dirty rags recently imported from deceased Europeans, primarily Frenchmen and Italians, rather than the mummy rags.
Hunter also writes in an extensive footnote of a letter he received from a Mrs. John Ramsey of Syracuse, New York
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...
, relating the story her father’s friend used to tell her of his days in a paper mill in Broadalbin, New York
Broadalbin, New York
Broadalbin may refer to:* Broadalbin , New York* Broadalbin , New York...
. He worked there from 1855–1860 and was one of the men responsible for unrolling the old linen wrappings from the mummies the mill received. She wrote to Hunter that “the rolled-up vestments retained the shape of the mummy, so that when the workmen tried to straighten or unroll the ‘cocoon’…it sprang back at once into the shape of the mummy it had encased so long.” She also describes the material as cream-coloured linen still bearing fragments of embroidery on the edges.
Hunter also writes about and quotes from Deck’s proposal on the importation of mummies. However, Hunter refers to the work as a manuscript, leaving Joseph Dane to dismiss the work off-hand, stating that the work could not be found and implying that Hunter invented it to suit his purpose. This claim of Dane must also be dismissed, since authors both before and since Dane, including Deck’s contemporaries and modern authors, among which are both Wolfe and Baker, have been able to find copies of this paper. Dane also dismisses Deck’s writing, and therefore Hunter’s, on the basis that it is in the mode of Swiftonian
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
satire. He cites Deck’s references to thrift, concern with alleviating shortages and his precision in his calculations as further evidence of his writing in the manner of Book 3 of Gulliver’s Travels. Dane also writes that Hunter should have realized that Deck wasn’t serious, thus questioning Hunter’s own authority in the field.
Evidence from periodicals
It is a verifiable fact that rags from Egypt were imported during this time period. Joel Munsell was a prolific printer and publisher from Albany, New YorkAlbany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
and he kept a scrapbook of articles relating to his trade. This eventually became the basis for his book Chronology of the Origin and Progress of Paper and Paper-Making. For an entry from 1855, Munsell records that a cargo of 1215 bales of Egyptian rags arrived and were purchased by J Priestly & Co. for about 4 cents a pound. His source, the Paper Trade Reporter, stated that the final purchase price for the transaction was $25,000. The next year, the New York Tribune
New York Tribune
The New York Tribune was an American newspaper, first established by Horace Greeley in 1841, which was long considered one of the leading newspapers in the United States...
wrote that about two and a quarter million pounds of rags have been imported from Egypt.
Articles discussing the practicality and the financial implications of the import of mummies for paper for the government of Egypt and American paper mills were also published in the 7 July 1847 issue of The Friend, the 19 June 1847 issue of Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
and the 17 December 1847 issue of the Cold War Fountain. While none of these articles confirm the manufacture of said paper in America, they do prove that the concept was both widely spoken of and under discussion in well-known and respected periodicals of the day.
Another article ran in the April 1873 edition of The Druggists’ Circular and Chemical Gazette that described an 1866 visit of a New York businessman to Alexandria. There, he purchased and “exported to the United States ‘mummies from the catacombs’ to be converted to pulp for papermaking.” This article also pointed out that mummies weren’t ideal for printing paper due to the various oils and botanicals included in the rags, which lead to the discoloration of the paper. This corroborates Hunter’s report that Stanwood’s mill used the mummies to make a brown butcher paper.
On 31 July 1856, the Syracuse Standard ran a notice in its paper that informed readers that it was printed on paper made from rags imported directly from Egypt. The rags were imported by Mr. G.W. Ryan and were processed at his plant in Marcellus Falls. Munsell adds the note that the rags were stripped from mummies. Hunter reports that he is unable to find a copy of this issue, and Dane takes this to mean that the paper didn’t claim to have been printed on mummy paper, but just on rags from the region of mummies. Baker, however, has located a copy of the paper at the Onondaga Historical Association and confirmed both the wording of the notice and the physical difference of this issue from those before it.
Evidence against mummy paper
Dane argues that mummy paper cannot possibly exist because all the references to the paper are either vaguely documented or are the product of oral historyOral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews...
. He also argues that they have an aura of Swift about them and that all the original writers have the intent of satire. Dane also states that neither the copy of the Standard on mummy paper can be found, nor can Deck’s article be found, both of which statements have clearly been proven wrong.
There are indeed some facts that make proving the concrete existence of mummy paper impossible. First off, the paper from the Standard and the Norwich broadside cannot be chemically tested
Chemical test
In chemistry, a chemical test is a qualitative or quantitative procedure designed to prove the existence of, or to quantify, a chemical compound or chemical group with the aid of a specific reagent...
to prove they are from mummies, as the test would only prove they are made of linen. Nor can they be carbon-14 dated. This test requires the burning of the material, meaning that items that exist in only one or two copies would have to be destroyed to complete the test, something that clearly cannot be done. Also, mummies were made for over 4,000 years in Egypt, so even a time frame for the paper product wouldn’t narrow down the age of the material to a useful window for solid conclusions to be made. Additionally, the percentage of mummy cloth to any other rag in a given pulp mixture could skew the results of the test. DNA testing would also prove to be inconclusive, as the only thing this test would verify is that the material at one point had close contact with a human.
Outside of scientific tests, there are no extant records of paper mills buying mummies. If there were records or account books, they have either been lost or recycled by the mill itself for more paper. There are no photographs of mummies or mummy wrappings at any paper mills. Shipping records and custom records have likewise vanished. However, these may not have proved anything conclusively either; since rags for paper were duty-free at this time, the cargo wouldn’t have needed to have been declared. Even if the mummy rags had been declared, they probably would have been declared as rags for paper, without the provenance given.
Other industrial uses for mummies
Perhaps the most famous claimed use of mummies in other industries than papermaking appeared in Mark TwainMark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
’s novel Innocents Abroad
Innocents Abroad
The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress is a travel book by American author Mark Twain published in 1869 which humorously chronicles what Twain called his "Great Pleasure Excursion" on board the chartered vessel Quaker City through Europe and the Holy Land with a group of American...
. He writes of the practice then current on the Egyptian railroad of using mummies for fuel to power the locomotive
Locomotive
A locomotive is a railway vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. The word originates from the Latin loco – "from a place", ablative of locus, "place" + Medieval Latin motivus, "causing motion", and is a shortened form of the term locomotive engine, first used in the early 19th...
s.
“I shall not speak of the railway, for it is like any other railway -- I shall only say that the fuel they use for the locomotive is composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose, and that sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, "D -- n these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent -- pass out a King …”
This master story teller was speaking tongue in cheek. He lets the reader in on the joke in the next passage, which reads "Stated to me for a fact. I only tell it as I got it. I am willing to believe it. I can believe any thing." While this use cannot be substantiated with contemporary sources, this story has been mentioned by many reliable secondary sources. An article from the 3 December 1859 issue of Scientific American also reports of this unusual fuel source.
There are many sources relating to the use of ground-up mummies in pharmaceuticals. In fact, Merck & Company sold mummy up until 1910. Ground-up mummified bodies also produce a brown pigment, still referred to as “mummy brown
Mummy brown
Mummy brown was a rich brown bituminous pigment, intermediate in tint between burnt umber and raw umber, which was one of the favorite colors of the Pre-Raphaelites.-History:...
” or “Egyptian brown”. The color is no longer produced from mummies. Additional by-products of mummies include the distillation of the bodies to produce aromatic oils, such as olibanum and ambergris
Ambergris
Ambergris is a solid, waxy, flammable substance of a dull gray or blackish color produced in the digestive system of and regurgitated or secreted by sperm whales....
, which can be made into machine oils, soaps or even incense for use in the Catholic Church. Clearly, mummies were a multi-product import of choice, much as the buffalo
African Buffalo
The African buffalo, affalo, nyati, Mbogo or Cape buffalo is a large African bovine. It is not closely related to the slightly larger wild Asian water buffalo, but its ancestry remains unclear...
or whale
Whale
Whale is the common name for various marine mammals of the order Cetacea. The term whale sometimes refers to all cetaceans, but more often it excludes dolphins and porpoises, which belong to suborder Odontoceti . This suborder also includes the sperm whale, killer whale, pilot whale, and beluga...
had been before them.
See also
- Ancient Egyptian burial customs
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