The Dead Guest
When unrolling corpses was the height of parlor entertainment
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Beschreibung
Enter the Victorian parlor where the wealthy entertained guests by unrolling ancient mummies while drinking tea.
"The Dead Guest – When unrolling corpses was the height of parlor entertainment" exposes the morbid obsession of the Victorian era: Egyptomania. In the 19th century, it was fashionable for the British elite to buy ancient Egyptian mummies at auctions and host "Unwrapping Parties." Guests would drink tea and eat cake while the host stripped the bandages off a 3,000-year-old body to see what treasures lay inside.
Author Arthur P. Crypt narrates the desecration that was considered high culture. The book also covers the use of ground-up mummies as medicine and as a pigment for oil paint ("Mummy Brown"), meaning many famous paintings are literally made of dead people.
"The Dead Guest" is a dark comedy of manners. It reveals a time when the past was not respected as history, but consumed as a commodity. It challenges our modern view of museums and archaeology by showing their roots in looting and spectacle.
Autor*in
Arthur P. Crypt
Author
Themen in »The Dead Guest«
Egyptomania Victorian Era Mummies Unwrapping Parties Mummy Brown Macabre Social History