The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead by Heather Pringle (Hardcover)

When esteemed science journalist Heather Pringle was dispatched to a remote corner of northern Chile to cover an obscure scientific conference, she unexpectedly immersed herself in the most passionate gathering of her professional life. The conference brought together many experts in mummification, all lodged in a sprawling seaside hotel, engaged in spirited debates about the implications of their latest discoveries. Captivated by their enthusiasm, Pringle embarked on a year-long journey around the globe, seeking firsthand encounters with these dedicated scientists and gaining insight into their work’s remarkable delicacy and profound significance.

In “The Mummy Congress,” she recounts the intriguing revelations from her travels, breathing life into the previously uncharted realms of the long-deceased and unveiling the revelations that mummies can offer about our existence. Pringle’s adventures lead her to the lifelike remains of medieval saints interred in Italy’s grand cathedrals, eerily preserved bog bodies in the Netherlands bearing evidence of violent and untimely demises, and frozen Inca princesses, seen for the first time atop frigid mountain peaks. Along the way, she uncovers the extraordinary expertise of ancient Egyptian embalmers, capable of preserving bodies for what one mummy expert describes as “eternity.” She delves into the disturbing sacrifices made by ancient South Americans to appease their deities and the eerie existence of mummified parasites trapped in the guts of millennia-old bodies, still inflicting havoc on our world today.

From the renowned excavation of Tutankhamen to the tales of ascetic Japanese monks attempting self-mummification, from the Russians’ terrified efforts to embalm Stalin’s body to the fleeting craze for public mummy unveilings in nineteenth-century New Orleans, “The Mummy Congress” unveils the long and peculiar history of our collective fascination with the preserved deceased. Filled with extraordinary anecdotes and narrated with infectious humour and vitality, “The Mummy Congress” embarks on a compelling and entertaining voyage into the realm of the eternal departed.