"Some Words with a Mummy" is a satirical short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. It was first published in The American Review: A Whig Journal of Politics, Literature, Art and Science in April 1845. It is an important early portrayal of a revived Egyptian mummy.
The narrator eats a very large amount of Welsh rabbit, accompanied by "brown stout", and then goes to bed for a night's sleep. However, he is soon awakened and taken to Doctor Ponnonner's home to witness the unwrapping of a mummy.
They cut into the first sarcophagus, remove it and discover the mummy's name, Allamistakeo. The second and third sarcophagi are removed to reveal the body, placed in a papyrus sheath, covered in plaster and decorated with painting and gold gilt. After removing this, they examine the body. They find it to be in exceptionally good condition, although it does not seem to have been embalmed in the normal way as the skin is red and there are no incisions.
The doctor lays out instruments for the dissection, but the men suggest using electricity on the mummy and they begin preparations for this at once. The amount of electricity causes the mummy to awaken and condemn the men for their abuse. The men make their apologies to Allamistakeo, explain to him why they dissect mummies and the scientific importance of it. Satisfied with the explanation and their apologies Allamistakeo shakes hands with the men, who then proceed to patch up the damage caused by their incisions. They gather up proper clothes for Allamistakeo and sit down for cigars and wine.
Allamistakeo explains how he came to be a mummy – ancient Egyptians had a significantly longer life span than modern men, about one thousand years. They were also able to be embalmed – this process arrested the bodily functions allowing them to sleep through hundreds of years only to rise and go on with their lives centuries later. Allamistakeo again chastises the men for their ignorance of Egyptian history. He then explains that throughout time man has always been monotheistic – the pagan gods were symbols of the various aspects of the one true god. The men ask him, as he is over five thousand years old, if he knows anything about how the universe was created ten thousand years ago. Allamistakeo responds that no one during his time entertained the fantasy that the universe was ever created, but that it always existed, although, some believed that humans were created by spontaneous generation in a polygenic manner in different places.
The modern men get into an argument with Allamistakeo about whose civilization is superior, theirs or the ancient Egyptians'. He convincingly upholds the vast superiority of his own culture in all aspects, ending with gesturing at the clothes they have dressed him in and grinning when they mention costume. Finally, one of the men asks if the mummy was familiar with "the manufacture of either Ponnonner's lozenges or Brandreth's pills". To this Allamistakeo has to accept defeat and, in triumph, the men disperse. The narrator, having gone home and gone back to bed (or dreamt that he has done so), awakes the following morning, decides that he is unhappy with his own time and circumstances, and resolves to go to Ponnoner's to get embalmed for a couple hundred years.
In January 1845, Columbian Magazine listed "Some Words with a Mummy" as scheduled for publication; Poe likely pulled the article when he was offered more money for it elsewhere. [1] It was ultimately published in the April 1845 edition of The American Review, [2] which also included Poe's revised poems "The Valley of Unrest" and "The City in the Sea". [3] The story was republished without changes shortly after in the November 1, 1845, issue of the Broadway Journal . [2]
The story is significant for featuring the earliest known image of a revived Egyptian mummy. [4] [5] [6] In an 1852 anthology of Poe's works published in the UK, an illustration depicted a revived mummy. Poe and the illustrator challenged accepted racial stereotypes and European imperialism. [7] [8] [9]
 | This section possibly contains original research .(November 2010) |
This story is a satire of two things. First the popular interest in Egyptology and mummies during the time that this story was written. Secondly the prevailing thought that in the West humanity had reached the height of civilization and knowledge due to the scientific and industrial revolutions.
The story was adapted as a one-act opera, Allamistakeo, by Giulio Viozzi in 1954.
In 2004, the story was featured in Graphic Classics #10: Horror Classics published by Eureka in an adaptation by Rod Lott with illustrations by Kevin Atkinson. [10]
In 2019, a theater organ-based Electro Swing comic opera based on the story was debuted with music by Richard deCosta. The book and the lyrics were written by Thomas Cleveland Lane.
A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay further if kept in cool and dry conditions. Some authorities restrict the use of the term to bodies deliberately embalmed with chemicals, but the use of the word to cover accidentally desiccated bodies goes back to at least the early 17th century.
"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a distraught lover who is paid a mysterious visit by a talking raven. The lover, often identified as a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further antagonize the protagonist with its constant repetition of the word "Nevermore". The poem makes use of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references.
"A Descent into the Maelström" is an 1841 short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. In the tale, a man recounts how he survived a shipwreck and a whirlpool. It has been grouped with Poe's tales of ratiocination and also labeled an early form of science fiction.
"The Purloined Letter" is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe. It is the third of his three detective stories featuring the fictional C. Auguste Dupin, the other two being "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt". These stories are considered to be important early forerunners of the modern detective story. It first appeared in the literary annual The Gift for 1845 (1844) and soon was reprinted in numerous journals and newspapers.
"The Gold-Bug" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe published in 1843. The plot follows William Legrand, who becomes fixated on an unusual gold-colored bug he has discovered. His servant Jupiter fears that Legrand is going insane and goes to Legrand's friend, an unnamed narrator, who agrees to visit his old friend. Legrand pulls the other two into an adventure after deciphering a secret message that will lead to a buried treasure.
"Al Aaraaf" is an early poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1829. It tells of the afterlife in a place called Al Aaraaf, inspired by A'raf as described in the Quran. At 422 lines, it is Poe's longest poem.
"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" is a short story by the American author Edgar Allan Poe about a mesmerist who puts a man in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of death. An example of a tale of suspense and horror, it is also to a certain degree a hoax, as it was published without claiming to be fictional, and many at the time of publication (1845) took it to be a factual account. Poe admitted it to be a work of pure fiction in letters to his correspondents.
"The Mystery of Marie Rogêt", often subtitled A Sequel to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe written in 1842. This is the first murder mystery based on the details of a real crime. It first appeared in Snowden's Ladies' Companion in three installments, November and December 1842 and February 1843. Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination".
"Ligeia" is an early short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1838. The story follows an unnamed narrator and his wife Ligeia, a beautiful and intelligent raven-haired woman. She falls ill, composes "The Conqueror Worm", and quotes lines attributed to Joseph Glanvill shortly before dying.
The death of Edgar Allan Poe on October 7, 1849, has remained mysterious in regard to both the cause of death and the circumstances leading to it. American author Edgar Allan Poe was found delirious and disheveled at a tavern in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 3. He sought the help of magazine editor Joseph E. Snodgrass and was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he was treated for apparent intoxication. Poe had no visitors in the hospital and gave no account of how he came to be in his condition before dying on October 7 at age 40.
Graham's Magazine was a nineteenth-century periodical based in Philadelphia established by George Rex Graham and published from 1840 to 1858. It was alternatively referred to as Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine, Graham's Magazine of Literature and Art, Graham's American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art, and Graham's Illustrated Magazine of Literature, Romance, Art, and Fashion.
The Stylus, originally intended to be named The Penn, was a would-be periodical owned and edited by Edgar Allan Poe. It had long been a dream of Poe to establish an American journal with very high standards in order to elevate the literature of the time. Despite attempts at signing up subscribers and finding financial backers and contributors, the journal never came to be.
Politian (1835) is the only play known to have been written by Edgar Allan Poe, composed in 1835, but never completed.
"The Haunted Palace" is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. The 48-line poem was first released in the April 1839 issue of Nathan Brooks' American Museum magazine. It was eventually incorporated into "The Fall of the House of Usher" as a song written by Roderick Usher.
"Tamerlane" is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe that follows a fictionalized accounting of the life of a Turco-Mongol conqueror historically known as Tamerlane. The poem was first published in the 1827 collection Tamerlane and Other Poems. That collection, with only 50 copies printed, was not credited with the author's real name but by "A Bostonian". The poem's original version was 403 lines but trimmed down to 223 lines for its inclusion in Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems.
"The Imp of the Perverse" is a short story by 19th-century American author and critic Edgar Allan Poe. Beginning as an essay, it discusses the narrator's self-destructive impulses, embodied as the symbolic metaphor of The Imp of the Perverse. The narrator describes this spirit as the agent that tempts a person to do things "merely because we feel we should not."
Thomas Holley Chivers was an American doctor-turned-poet from the state of Georgia. He is best known for his friendship with Edgar Allan Poe and his controversial defense of the poet after his death.
"Lot No. 249" is a Gothic horror short story by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in Harper's Magazine in 1892. The story tells of a University of Oxford athlete named Abercrombie Smith who notices a strange series of events surrounding Edward Bellingham, an Egyptology student who owns many ancient Egyptian artefacts, including a mummy. After seeing his mummy disappear and reappear, and two instances of Bellingham's enemies being attacked, Smith concludes that Bellingham is re-animating his mummy.
The Poets and Poetry of America was a popular anthology of American poetry collected by American literary critic and editor Rufus Wilmot Griswold. It was first published in 1842 and went into several editions throughout the 19th century.
"The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade" is a short-story by American author Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). It was published in the February 1845 issue of Godey's Lady's Book and was intended as a partly humorous sequel to the celebrated collection of Middle Eastern tales One Thousand and One Nights.
Works related to Some Words with a Mummy at Wikisource
Some Words with a Mummy public domain audiobook at LibriVox