Mummies, corpses, and other gross things never fail to delight

Last year was a good year for ancient corpses. Three new titles from 2005 aimed at fourth- through eighth-grade readers, and all filled with fantastic photographs, make compelling booktalks on a topic that never fails to delight—dead bodies from long ago, frozen in time.

Zahi Hawass’s Tutankhamun: The Mystery of the Boy King (National Geographic) focuses on the man behind the mummy. “King Tut” wasn’t an important king, but he had one unique thing going for him. Because his tomb was never successfully robbed, Tut’s mummy remained in pristine condition for almost 3,000 years. When he was finally rediscovered in 1922, the world went “King Tut” crazy. Hawass tells us about the famous “Tut curse,” but he also tells us what the pharaoh looked like when he was alive; show your booktalk audience the picture on page 10. And then show the picture of the royal sandals on page 45. Wherever Tut walked, he crushed Egypt’s enemies, for he had their pictures painted on his soles.

Sandra Markle’s Outside and Inside Mummies (Walker) shows us what can be found inside a mummy. Before X-rays, bodies had to be cut open for examination. Now, modern scientists can scan ancient interiors to discover injuries and diseases, and learn how long the internal organs survived. With a special device called a spiral CT scanner, scientists can get a good idea of what a mummy’s face looked like in life. Three frozen mummies found in Argentina in 1999 were children who were probably human sacrifices. Researchers using modern technology are studying their DNA and hope to find living descendants of the mummified children’s families.

Not all mummies are in ancient Egypt, but they are certainly the best known. Markle explains that when an Egyptian body was prepared for mummification, the brain was taken out through the nostrils with a hook, bit by bit. Why? “In ancient Egypt, people thought all the brain did was produce the snot that drips out of noses.” A great gross fact for those boys in your booktalk group!

James M. Deem’s Bodies from the Ash: Life and Death in Ancient Pompeii (Houghton) is loaded with pictures of Pompeiian townsfolk caught at the moment of their deaths. On the morning of August 27, AD 79, a small cloud emanating from Mount Vesuvius formed over the Roman town of Pompeii. The residents weren’t worried until the cloud began to release ash and stones. The fallout continued at a rate of five to six inches per hour. By midnight, all the first floor buildings and windows were blocked with falling volcanic matter. Fires burned everywhere. Super-hot, super-fast gases roared down the mountainside. They did not reach Pompeii itself, but by 7:30 in the morning, it was over. Everyone who had not already escaped was killed, buried in various kinds of material from the volcano.

Those bodies are not real mummies, but plaster images. In the 1700s diggers picked through the rubble of Pompeii. Their methods were not remotely scientific, and they stole most of the artifacts they found, but along with the treasures they discovered skeletons. In time, they found that they could fill the holes around the skeletons with plaster and create almost perfect images of what the residents of Pompeii looked like as they were dying. Deem shows us these unfortunate Romans, and gives us a little frisson of horror as we gaze in fascination at these ancient bodies.

As a child, I saw my first mummy. Thrilled and astonished, I felt what I learned later was that same frisson. Today’s kids have seen more, done more, and been around more than I ever was. But judging from their reaction to books on the topic, their feelings are exactly the same as mine were, and still are.