|
?:reviewBody
|
-
The following tale sends chills down your spine, doesn't it? Ah, but it's only a ghost story: no mummy (cursed or otherwise) was carried as cargo by the ill-fated RMS Titanic on its one and only voyage. First of all, the tale is logically inconsistent. One of the few names quoted in the piece is that of Helena Blavatsky, a well-known occultist of the period. And we're told the dreaded Princess of Amen-Ra was purchased in Luxor, Egypt, by four foolish young Englishmen in the late 1890s, while later in the same piece we're informed of Helena Blavatsky's dire pronouncements to the private collector who supposedly had possession of the mummy right before it was shipped on the Titanic. These claims cannot both be true, because Helena Blavatsky died of influenza in 1891, but the Titanic's first and only voyage didn't take place until 1912. As for the facts of the matter, in 1985, Charles Haas, president of the national Titanic Historical Society, gained access to the ship's cargo manifest and cargo diagrams. Though the cargo included raw feathers, linen, straw, hatter's fur, tissue, auto parts, leather, rabbit hair, elastics, hair nets and refrigerating apparatus, not so much as one mummy was listed. Speaking to the legend that a cursed mummy was on board, Haas said, The cargo manifest throws those myths right out the window. Other experts have come to the same conclusion: no mummy — least of all one of the vengeful Princess of Amen-Ra — was shipped aboard the Titanic. (Of course, the fact that the ship's manifest listed no gold and no insurance claims were filed for valuable gems hasn't stopped people from believing that those objects went down with the Titanic as well.) Note that Amen-Ra isn't the name of a place; it's the name of an Egyptian god, one whose name means the hidden one. He was seen as the creator of all things and, with his consort Mut and their son the moon-god Khonshu, was worshipped in the great temples of Luxor and Karnak. In fact, the mummy to which this story refers (which was actually just the coffin lid, not the mummy, of the Priestess of Amun) never left the British Museum, and it is still there to this day. So how did this fanciful tale begin? This ghost story was concocted around the turn of the century by two Englishmen named William Stead and Douglas Murray. Stead was a well-known journalist and editor who crusaded on behalf of liberal causes and created a national scandal when he published an article entitled The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, describing how he was able to purchase the services of a thirteen-year-old prostitute for £5. Stead was also a believer in mysticism and spiritualism who consulted mediums, investigated psychic phenomena, and published a related periodical. We don't know much about Murray — he's been described as an Egyptologist and as the man who shipped the mummy in question to London in the first place, although he was probably neither. Stead and Murray crafted an elaborate horror story about a mummy that was brought to England and set up in the drawing room of an acquaintance of theirs. The morning after the mummy arrived, they claimed, everything breakable in the room was destroyed. The mummy was moved from room to room within the house, but each move resulted in the same destruction of all the breakable objects at hand. Wherever the mummy went, it brought sickness, death and destruction to its owner. Sometime after Stead and Murray invented their mummy tale, they were visiting the First Egyptian Room of the British Museum and noticed the coffin lid of the Priestess of Amun. They concocted yet another story that the look of terror and anguish in the face depicted on the coffin lid indicated that the coffin's original occupant was a tormented soul, and her evil spirit was now loose in the world. Stead and Murray told their fanciful tale to eager newspaper reporters who — then as now — weren't about to let the truth get in the way of a sensationally good story. The two stories were conflated into one and spread widely, and the Priestess of Amun came to be identified as the mummy whose mortal remains wreaked havoc wherever they were stored. This ghost story made the leap from London to the Titanic after William Stead went down with the ill-fated ship on 15 April 1912. Stead was traveling to America at President Taft's request to address a peace conference, and he took delight in relating his cursed mummy tale to Titanic passengers. He reportedly defied superstition by starting his narrative at a dinner party on Friday, the 12th of April, and drew it out so that he concluded the tale just after midnight on the 13th. A few days after the Titanic's sinking, one of the survivors recounted Stead's cursed mummy tale in an interview with the New York World, and eventually the ghost story Stead and Murray invented, Stead's presence aboard the Titanic, and reports of Stead's having related the mummy tale to Titanic passengers became jumbled together, producing a new legend about an actual mummy aboard the Titanic. The modified legend told of a cursed mummy the British Museum was so anxious to be rid of that they sold it to an American, who naturally sought to ship it back home via the Titanic. The presence of the cursed mummy (which had escalated the expressions of its wrath from breaking cups and saucers and making people ill to sinking passenger liners) in the Titanic's hold came to be whispered as the cause of the most famous maritime disaster in history. In an even more elaborate version of the legend, the mummy's American owner paid a bribe to have the mummy placed in one of the Titanic's lifeboats; it was then smuggled aboard the Carpathia when that ship picked up the Titanic's survivors and secretly landed in New York. When the mummy continued to wreak havoc at its new home, its new owner had it taken to Canada in preparation for shipping it back to England. The mummy was placed aboard the liner Empress of Ireland, which, while on its way from Quebec City to Liverpool on 29 May 1914, was struck by a Norwegian coal ship. The Empress of Ireland sank so quickly that only 7 of her 40 lifeboats could be launched, and 840 passengers went down with her. As to how widespread this curse of the mummy stuff is, some of the crew members on a failed 1980 expedition to locate the sunken Titanic spoke darkly of the famous mummy that was allegedly on board her, saying it transferred the curse of all who disturbed its grave to the vessel's maiden voyage and all subsequent search efforts. (Yeah. Like it couldn't have been plain bad luck. And what was the mummy doing back on the Titanic after having sailed on the Empress of Ireland?) In looking to blame their bad luck on an outside force they couldn't possibly have hoped to defeat, those crew members weren't all that unusual. They merely brought into play a standard avoidance technique employed to keep us from having to confront what a scary, random world this place can be. In the wake of any disaster, there's a strong urge to explain away the tragedy by ascribing it to some dark power beyond our control. As inconceivable as this might seem at first blush, it's easier for many people to accept that a cursed mummy was the cause of great loss of life than it is to co-exist with the knowledge that sometimes even unthinkable accidents will happen. Being at the mercy of the God of Random Chance is far more frightening a reality to face than any vengeful mummy will ever be. Ghost stories like this one reaffirm our faith in the world being a predictable (and therefore safe) place. If a great tragedy such as the sinking of the Titanic can be explained away as the direct result of the evil forces of the supernatural's being stirred up, we can again feel safe about placing our faith in the inherent safety of great ships, airplanes or even automobiles. Beyond the reassurance factor, such tales also make darned good storytelling. That too lies at the heart of their appeal. In case you're curious (and have some vacation time to spare), the coffin lid of the Priestess of Amun is still on display at the British Museum, just as it was when Stead and Murray created their infamous cursed mummy tale a century ago. Look for exhibit BM No. 22542, in the Second Egyptian Room.
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}