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This is a serious history focusing on the attitudinal shift of British thinking during the 19th century with regard to Egypt and the impact that it had on the popular culture of the time. Where originally the English reaction to Egyptian culture had been one of awe and respect in the wake of Napoleon’s conquest in 1798, over the course of the following ninety years, as the British role in the region expanded to encompass occupation in the region by 1882, various tales of lost knowledge and centuries-old curses of malevolence arose in the media. Specifically Lockhurst looks at three artefacts that lent themselves to wild tales of possession and malevolent behaviors:
(a) the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s Tomb (this story of the curse lives on even to today...)
(b) The Unlucky Mummy of the British Museum (#22542); otherwise known as the mummy of Sebek-Sa -- but again still largely known --even in the British Museum's catalog-- as the Unlucky Mummy
(c) Coffin of Nesmin -- an artefact owned at various times by 19th century celebrities, including H. Rider Haggard.

The Middle East was largely remote from the daily consciousness of the ordinary British citizen and exposure -- accurate and otherwise -- to ideas and items belonging to such foreign locales was of tremendous interest. Awareness of these foreign environments was fueled through the narratives created by museums and theatrical spectacles, even in the shopping experiences available to the middle class.There was the promise of great knowledge lost to the ages and subsequently restored through discoveries made by great archaeologists such as Howard Carter and William Flinders Petrie. There was however a gap in between the slow excavations by serious researchers and the shallow (frequently embellished) versions offered to English citizens elsewhere. In this space, various spiritualists and occultists succumbed to the imaginative impulse of putting themselves in the places of ancient nobility buried in pyramids, Great and small.

Luckhurst documents some interesting history, but overall, the fascination of a spooky mummy tale does not really make itself felt. That is unfortunate as it is that fascination that fuels a continuing interest. ( )