EGYPTIAN MUMMIES AND THEIR TRAVELS IN THE U.S.

(Worcester, MA – February 13, 2003) With renewed public interest in Egyptian mummies with the recent transfer of “Padi” to the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum in Springfield, S. J. Wolfe, senior cataloger at the American Antiquarian Society, will speak at Worcester State College on “Padihershef and Friends: Mummy Mania in Victoria America.” Ms. Wolfe, who is documenting what happened to Egyptian mummies after they came to America, will speak to the public, free of charge, at 2:30 p.m., Thursday, February 20, 2003, in the Multimedia Auditorium (Room 102) of the Ghosh Science and Technology Center. She will also speak about her own unique role in “Padi’s” “life after death.”

“Padi,” or Padihershef, a stonecutter from Thebes who died about 624 B. C., was among the first mummies to arrive in the United States. “Padi’s” arrival in Boston in 1823 – and subsequent exhibition on the East coast in 1824 – touched off enormous interest in ancient Egypt and Egyptian artifacts. The stonecutter was one of the first mummies donated to an American institution and his early years in Boston were quite traumatic. After an autopsy at Massachusetts General Hospital, “Padi” was dispatched on a fund-raising tour, where patrons paid 25 cents for a peek, raising an equivalent $1 million in today’s dollars.

According to Wolfe, mummies became a part of almost every aspect of Victorian society, from religion to industrialization. Joseph Smith used five mummies as a model for his patriarchal, polygamous society. Mummies were publicly unwrapped in front of large audiences. And in the middle of the nineteenth century, mummies and their wrappings were imported and used to make paper in several Northeastern states.

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