Although mummies can be traced back to ancient Egypt, the concept of them as zombie-like monsters is a 20th century fantasy. Accordingly, this week’s Creature Feature will be presented in a 20th century format – the celebrity television tell-all interview!

Interviewer: First, let me thank you for traveling all the way from the Valley of the Kings to meet with me today.
Tut: It’s my pleasure. One of the perks of being embalmed for 3,000 years is a resistance to jet lag.
I: Fascinating. I’ve always been interested in the whole embalming process – just the idea of preserving a dead body has always seemed a little strange.
T: It’s really quite simple. After death, priests, with Anubis’s help, remove your organs and place them in canopic jars. They fill your skull with resin, to keep you smelling your best, then dry you out with natron – something like salt – and wrap you in white linen to protect you from the elements. After about 70 days, you are ready for burial.
I: Excuse me for seeming nosy here, but is it true that your brain was removed…?
T: But of course! Everyone knows that the brain serves no useful function in the body. During the embalming process, priests removed my brain through my nose with special hooks.
I: I see…But why go to all that trouble simply to preserve a corpse?
T: Ancient Egyptian culture focused heavily on the afterlife. We believed that if a person’s body was not preserved after death, he or she would be condemned to wander for eternity in the next world.
I: How interesting. Along a similar vein, I’ve heard that Egyptian tombs are pretty elaborate. What use does a mummy have for books and jewels?
T: The objects in a person’s tomb serve two distinct purposes. Funerary literature, called “pyramid texts” for pharaohs and “coffin texts” for everyone else, was designed to help Egyptians pass the trials of admittance to the underworld. “The Book of the Dead” is the most well-known example. Everyday objects, including plates, bowls, combs, and jewelry, were added to tombs so that the dead could use them in the afterlife – which is really quite similar to life before death.
I: So they tax the daylights out of you there, too?
T: …
I: Uh – moving on….As you may be aware, some rumors have sprung up in recent times –
T: Not this again…
I: – about mummies that rise from the grave for revenge or to curse the living. Maybe you can set the record straight.
T: Look, I’ve heard all these outrageous allegations before. It began when some of your archeologists discovered that we had been buried with our mouths open. We just wanted to be able to breathe in the underworld, but you had to go and make up silly legends of mummy monsters. Now I can’t walk past a cinema or a Halloween store without seeing a cruel caricature of myself and my fellow mummies.
I: And the curses?
T: What can I say? People will believe almost anything. It’s only a coincidence that those explorers died after opening my tomb. You have no legal evidence of any wrongdoing on my part!
I: There you have it, folks – straight from the mummy’s mouth. Join us next week for an exciting two part expose: “Big Foot and Lock Ness: A Forbidden Love Revealed.”