EGYPTIAN MUMMIES: 



MYTHS, Magic and Reality 



b/ Frank J. Yurco 

 Egyptological Consultant 



1 . Mummy of Harwa, 8th cent, b c , probably from Thebes. 87633 



A Mummy Mystery 



Among the more enduring favorites of the Field 

 Museum's Egyptian collection are the mummies. 

 Such popularity is part of a fascination that is long 

 extant, and which has been reinforced by various 

 media, especially in our century. Nearly every museum 

 with Egyptian mummies has a story to tell, usually from 

 the edge of reality, the twilight zone of human experi- 

 ence. 



The Field Museum has its legend too — char- 

 acteristically murky in detail and vague in description. 

 Long-time readers of the Field Museum Bulletin may re- 

 call in the October 1974 issue, in the "Field Briefs" sec- 

 16 tion, a short article, "The Case of the Screaming Mum- 



my." A photo of the mummy of an official named Har- 

 wa (fig. 1) is next to the story as if to implicate him. 



Having my own doubts about the story, 1 checked 

 the source of the item. The Track of Man, a 1953 auto- 

 biography of Henry Field, a member of the Museum's 

 curatorial staff from 1926 to 1941. There, the alleged 

 incident is more fully recounted, and we learn that it 

 took place in 1933. Field's text also establishes where it 

 was supposed to have happened: in "a case about 125 

 feet long, " with "a line of mummies . . . chronologically 

 arranged" — an obvious reference to the long mummy 

 case in Hall J, the old Egyptian exhibit. 



The story further states that the case had but one 

 door, and that the case was airtight and treated with 



