The Victorian Obsession with Mummies: When Unwrapping a Corpse Was a Social Event

Victorians did many things with great enthusiasm—empire-building, tea-drinking, moustache-twirling—but few were quite as peculiar as their love affair with mummies. For a culture obsessed with progress and propriety, the British of the 19th century had a rather ghoulish side when it came to the dead. Especially the ancient, linen-wrapped, pharaonic kind.

Egypt was the perfect playground for Victorian sensibilities. It had grandeur, exoticism, a dash of danger and, crucially, a seemingly endless supply of dead bodies to poke, prod and proudly display. What followed was an era of mummy mania so strange it almost defies belief. Almost.

Why Did Victorians Love Mummies So Much?

They weren’t after spiritual enlightenment or respectful cultural exchange. They wanted artefacts, adventure and bragging rights. Egypt became fashionable thanks to Napoleon’s campaign at the end of the 18th century. By the mid-1800s, British high society couldn’t get enough of pyramids, papyrus and papery remains.

Shipping home a mummy counted as both a status symbol and a science experiment. The dead pharaohs of Egypt became party entertainment in London drawing rooms. There’s tasteful curiosity, and then there’s asking guests if they’d care for a canapé before watching you cut open a corpse.

Empire and the Spoils of Antiquity

Egypt sat squarely within Britain’s imperial sphere by the late 1800s. With influence came entitlement. British travellers felt free to dig up tombs, take what they liked and ship it home in steamer trunks. Mummies weren’t just museum pieces—they were personal trophies.

Egyptology, as a discipline, still wore its pith helmet and had more enthusiasm than ethics. The logic ran something like this: if it’s old, and foreign, and dead, then it probably belongs in Kensington.

What Was a Mummy Unwrapping Party?

These weren’t academic lectures held at museums. These were private events hosted in wealthy homes, complete with hors d’oeuvres, gossip and the occasional fainting guest. A recently acquired mummy would be laid out, usually on the dining room table, and carefully unwrapped to the wide-eyed amazement of the assembled guests.

The host—often a self-proclaimed expert or a surgeon with time on his hands—would narrate the process, point out amulets, read imagined hieroglyphs and pass round fragments of ancient bandage. No one seemed especially concerned that they were handling the remains of someone who’d been buried with spiritual purpose thousands of years earlier.

The Medical Side: Mummy Powder for Your Cough?

The weirdness didn’t end at dinner parties. Victorians also believed that ground-up mummy could cure ailments. Apothecaries sold powdered mummy—called “mumia”—as a remedy for everything from bruises to internal bleeding. Some thought the ancient embalmers had access to potent substances lost to time. Others just liked the idea of exotic medicine. Either way, bits of ancient Egyptians were consumed for health, not just spectacle.

It’s one thing to admire the past. It’s another to snort it.

Museums and the New Mummy Trade

As public interest grew, museums joined the fray. The British Museum led the way with increasingly elaborate exhibitions. Egypt became a permanent fixture in the public imagination. Mummies no longer appeared just at parlour parties—they occupied glass cases in every self-respecting institution from Manchester to Melbourne.

The trade flourished. Tomb robbers and local diggers met European demand with zeal. Entire tombs were looted to supply the insatiable Western appetite for antiquities. Middlemen sold mummies at ports, some complete, others already broken down for their linen and charms. One could literally buy a mummy at a market in Luxor and have it shipped home for Christmas.

Mummies in Literature and Pop Culture

Victorians couldn’t leave their fascination at the museum door. Mummies seeped into literature and entertainment. Gothic fiction turned the mummy from a curiosity into a supernatural menace. Long before Boris Karloff appeared in bandages on screen, mummy curses and reanimated priests stalked the pages of penny dreadfuls and popular novels.

Writers like Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker dabbled in mummy stories, using the wrapped undead as metaphors for colonial guilt and fear of the foreign. The mummy was exotic, dangerous, seductive and decayed—a perfect stand-in for everything the empire both desired and feared.

Was There Any Respect for the Dead?

Not much. While a handful of archaeologists showed genuine interest in preserving history, many saw ancient remains as objects to be collected, dissected and displayed. The idea that these were once people—with families, beliefs and funeral rites—barely registered.

A few dissenting voices questioned the ethics, but they were drowned out by excitement and the clatter of fresh shipments from Cairo.

Even those who approached with scientific interest often lacked context or restraint. Skulls were measured. Teeth were removed. Organs were pickled. The line between anthropology and grave-robbing grew extremely thin.

The End of the Party

Eventually, the mummy craze began to wane. Scientific standards improved. Attitudes towards cultural heritage shifted. Egypt began asserting greater control over its antiquities. The unwrapping parties stopped being fashionable and started being, well, horrifying.

Today, most mummies reside in climate-controlled cases, behind thick glass, accompanied by explanatory panels rather than canapé trays. Curators no longer treat them as puzzles or novelties but as people whose remains deserve care and dignity.

Modern Egyptologists, many of them Egyptian, now lead efforts to conserve what’s left and tell these stories from within the culture that created them.

What Remains of This Strange Obsession?

Walk through the Egyptian wing of the British Museum or the Louvre and you’ll still see the legacy of the 19th-century obsession. But the mood has changed. Reverence has replaced curiosity. Explanation has replaced spectacle.

Yet, part of that Victorian impulse survives in modern tourism. Many still travel to Egypt searching for ancient wonders, often forgetting that the pyramids are tombs, not backdrops.

There’s value in remembering how easy it was for one culture to turn the sacred remains of another into a parlour game. It helps us understand how we got here—and how much care it takes not to repeat the same mistakes in new packaging.