The Book of the Dead

The Book of the Dead (2013) is a short story collection of nineteen works that explore one of the classic Victorian monsters: the mummy. Published under the auspices of, and with an introduction by, the Egypt Exploration Society (a British non-profit organization founded to excavate in areas of Egypt) the book features stories that range from humor to horror.

The collection opens with "Ramesses on the Frontier" by Paul Cornell, in which the Pharaoh awakens not in the afterlife he had been expecting, but, instead, as a spirit haunting an American museum. He embarks on a quest to find his son Seti, tracing the Duat – the ancient realm of the dead – by traveling through North American landmarks such as the White House, Nashville, Disneyland, and Cape Canaveral.

"Escape from the Mummy's Tomb" is a touching coming of age tale by Jesse Bullington, grafting the mythology onto modern-day London teens. Seth is bullied at school for his Egyptian heritage, so in his imagination, he retreats into the monster movies he loves. He imagines himself as a superhero take on the mummy, the boy he has a crush on becomes the wolfman, and that boy’s girlfriend is recast as a vampire.



In "Old Souls" by David Thomas Moore, the bittersweet endless return of Egyptian souls is overlain onto the premise of the movie Brief Encounter. Two reincarnated spirits meet by chance on a train, but only one of them remembers and can never shed their everlasting love from another incarnation.

Lou Morgan’s "Her Heartbeat, An Echo" tells the story of a museum security guard who refuses to treat the mummy of an Egyptian princess as an object, instead, imagining what she must have been like as a person. He falls in love with his mental image of her, and then he starts to hear her heartbeat. They develop a relationship, and the man finds himself suddenly interested in Egyptian history – in her world.

"Mysterium Tremendum" by Molly Tanzer gives us the aspiring librarian Marjorie Olenthiste, who is so fascinated by a neighbor’s collection of mummified animals that she agrees to go out on a date with the woman’s son just to get a peek. They happen to catch the show of magician Petar Zupan, whose magic is all too real – and depends on Marjorie’s participation to come to full fruition.



Many critics hold up “Tollund” by Adam Roberts as the collection’s highlight. In an alternative history narrative, it is Egyptians who come to Northern Europe in order to excavate bog mummies in Jutland in the year 1333. Annoyed by the barbarians who surround them, the party of archaeologists comes to regret their decision to mess with the dead.

In Gail Carriger’s "The Curious Case of the Werewolf that Wasn't, The Mummy that Was and the Cat in the Jar," we meet Mr. Tarabotti, a flamboyant Victorian secret agent in an England where the supernatural is real. Werewolves and vampires exist, but Mr. Tarabotti is interested in another kind of monster altogether, so he travels to Egypt with his valet Floate in order to have his aunt’s pet cat mummified.

In Jenni Hill’s "The Cats of Beni Hasan," a group of supercilious cats tells a story to a dog that belongs to an eccentric professor; the story revolves around several mysterious disappearances and four devotedly kept mummified cats.



In Maurice Broaddus’s "Cerulean Memories," a boy tries to sell his dead brother’s skateboard to a man who collects objects related to people’s deaths – and it turns out the boy knows more about his brother’s death than he lets on.

"Inner Goddess" by Michael West is a mummy-inflected rape revenge story about Elizabeth Wilson and her abusive professor.

"The Roof of the World" by Sarah Newton finds a group of explorers looking for Eden, but instead stumbling on an ice cave that houses Iksander, a seemingly immortal man – who immediately starts killing them, one by one.



"Henry" by Glen Mehn combines ancient Egyptian funerary practices with the Internet to tell the story of a man being resurrected as a kind of Facebook golem.

"The Dedication of Sweetheart Abbey" by David Bryher is a science fiction body horror story about the mummification of a particular individual.

In Den Patrick’s "All is Dust," a group of friends snorts cocaine laced with mummy powder stolen from the British Museum. Only one of them is affected, an Egyptian man who turns into a vengeful murderer.



"Bit-U-Men" by Maria Dahvana Headley tells the story of a person obsessed by his love for honeyed mummy – a surrealist American candy that is made from mummies.

In Jonathan Green’s "Egyptian Death and the Afterlife: Mummies (Rooms 62-3),” a faithful family retainer remembers the mistress to whom he was devoted.

"Akhenaten Goes to Paris" by Louis Greenberg is a funny take on the way family dynamics don’t change after death. Akhenaten is one of a group of mummies who live on in the modern world. As he travels to Paris to see his father, now an exhibit in a museum, Akhenaten pretends to be an object to be shipped in a crate, then pretends to be alive to get through airport security. When he is alive, he is harassed in racist ways on the street – but when he pretends to be a mummy to be in the museum with his father, docents talk about his importance in hushed tones. He seems more welcome in Paris as an object than a person.



"The Thing of Wrath" by Roger Luckhurst is a Victorian murder mystery in which obelisks depicting the ancient Egyptian deity Thoth are linked to a series of strangulation deaths.

The final story of the collection is "Three Memories of Death" by Will Hill. In it, we meet Anum, whose life is spent rising through the ranks of the Wetyw, the masked priests in charge of wrapping the dead. Thrice, he comes into contact with Ramesses II, whose attitude towards death changes dramatically as the two men age together – the Pharaoh goes from a defiant refusal to grieve in his youth, to heartrending grief when his beloved wife dies in middle age, to a quiet acceptance of death as the beginning of a new journey when his own death comes.