Mummy Congress [Paperback]

Mummies fascinate us. As we peer at their withered flesh, we are glimpsing a type of immortality. Heather Pringle tells the stories of some of these "frail elders"--and the scientists who study them--in The Mummy Congress.

Pringle details the tension between the preservationists, who want to protect the ancient dead and refuse to unwrap them, and the dissectionists, who see mummies as a repository of scientific data waiting to be studied. She also introduces the reader to the preserved dead from around the world--from the bog bodies of northern Europe to the mysterious Caucasian-looking mummies from China's Tarim Basin, from Egyptians in linen shrouds to incorruptible Christian saints, and from Lenin in his Moscow mausoleum to Incan children found on Andean mountaintops.

Peppered with fascinating snippets of information--for example, for centuries artists were sold on a pigment called "mummy," a transparent brown made from ground-up mummies--The Mummy Congress makes for lively, if somewhat ghoulish reading. Highly recommended. --Sunny Delaney --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Pringle's mummy experts are livelier than a crypt full of stacked corpses. This is high praise given how successfully the author animates the dead in this delightfully macabre piece of mortuary globe-trotting. The trip begins at the World Congress on Mummy Studies, held last in arid Arica, Chile. Arica's climate makes it the ideal place to bring your mummy as eccentric scholars do, by the busload. From South America, Pringle, a frequent contributor to magazines like Discover and Islands, departs for the global ateliers of this weird profession, from the makeshift morgue of Art Aufderheide in Egypt, where plastic bags full of brittle corpses are piled by the dozens; to the Peruvian mountaintops, where an American adventurer's discovery of a beautiful Inca girl named "Juanita," an ancient and flawless sacrifice to the gods, ignites a media frenzy; to the subterranean caverns beneath Red Square, where a team of mausoleumists tended to Lenin's lifelike remains, and freelanced their skills out to fellow communists wanting to see their own dead leaders under glass. Pringle's gifts as a writer and a journalist are evident on every page. In brisk, vivid prose she delivers the secrets of the mummy trade: mummies as medicine; the self-preservation techniques of Japanese monks; and the Vatican's modern-day practitioners of the temple priest's art. Pringle's mummies and the men and women who love them make for fascinating and lively reading; this book is sure to have, as they say, a very long shelf life. Agent, Anne McDermida. (June)Forecast: A five-city author museum tour and undoubtedly many positive reviews will help the book reach its potentially wide audience, way beyond the usual gallery of science fans.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

*Starred Review* Every three years, an unusual professional association convenes in a city not noted for tourism, such as Arica in northern Chile, which is where popular-science journalist Pringle encountered the Mummy Congress. This gathering of the world's foremost mummy experts, which is run and financed by its members, meets in Arica and other such places because they are near where the mummies are. Attendees are the likes of an academic pathologist who autopsies Egyptian mummies for the sake of present-day practical medicine; an archaeologist who became a superb high-altitude mountaineer to find the world's oldest mummies in the Andes; and an art conservator whose inquiry into the use of pulverized mummies as an artists' pigment immersed her in the 800-year history of trade in mummies. Pringle introduces more such researchers as she unveils other objects of their studies: the so-called bog men (and women) of northern Europe; the tall, blond mummies of northwest China; the connection between mummy exhibition and racism; the Catholic saints whose corpses were thought to be incorruptible or miraculously preserved; the Communists' obsession with preserving their leaders; the self-mummification of Buddhist monks; and the living mummification of cosmetic surgery. By balancing the eerie fascination for mummies and the colorful personalities of those who have made mummies their avocation, Pringle's book outclasses any Hollywood horror flick in entertainment as well as information value. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

If your image of a mummy is the shambling predator of a hundred Hammer films, prepare for a widening of your horizons. The odd title of Pringle's book gives no hint of just what a comprehensive survey of the subject can be found within these pages. From the Ancient Egyptians, through medieval saints and even the mummified remains of Lenin, Eva Peron and Kim Il Sung, the reader is taken through every possible aspect of a macabre subject. Pringle is particularly sharp on the popular culture aspect of mummies (which is, let's face it, how most of us encounter the subject), and she skilfully packs in the hard-core scientific info alongside blackly comic titbits. The historical aspects are assiduously detailed, with the significance of mummies for ancient cultures brought vividly to life. We are also taken into the bizarre world of mummy studies (including the mummy congress of the title), with characters as eccentric and obsessed as any played by Peter Cushing. Her engrossing book even manages to address key issues about our attitudes towards death, often suggesting we are not so distant from the ancients in this area as we'd like to believe. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the dusty origins of mummification in the deserts of South America and Africa to the latest technology hyped on the Internet by Utah's Summum Corporation (which promises mummification for millennia for a mere $62,000), "The Mummy Congress" investigates the allure of mummies. In 1998 Heather Pringle visited the remote Chilean port of Arica for The World Congress on Mummy Studies. This book introduces us to the eccentric world of the researchers and academics who investigate such phenomena as the child mummies of the Chinchorro, preserved over 7000 years ago, animal mummies from Ancient Eygpt, the 19th century Buddhist tradition of self-mummification to ward off decay, and the political mummification of 20th century demagogues like Lenin and Eva Peron. Pringle also looks at the uses of mummies for today's historians and scientists and how much they tell us about ancient cultures. This research is sometimes bizarre, but often reveals fundamental truths. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Heather Pringle is the author of one previous book, In Search of Ancient North America, and is a frequent contributor to Discover magazine. The winner of a National Magazine Award, Canadian Science Writers’ Association Award and two Canadian Archeological Awards, she has published dozens of articles on archaeology and paleontology for magazines including Science, Geo, Canadian Geographic, National Geographic, Traveler, Equinox and Saturday Night.

When Heather Pringle covers a meeting of mummy experts in northern Chile, she discovers a little-known yet fascinating world of science. In her book, she profiles several mummy researchers and a wide variety of mummies. Her quest leads to the tombs of medieval saints, the bogs of the Netherlands, icy mountaintops, and, of course, Egypt. She makes what could be a dry and dreary area of science come alive by presenting the science in an orderly way, one bite at a time. Fields presents the scientific material clearly and carries the author's enthusiasm. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.