Egypt's past 2,000 years
The year 394 CE marks a tragic milestone: the last known hieroglyphic inscription was carved on a temple wall at Philae. After that, the ability to read the ancient language was completely lost.
The Murder of Priests and Scholars: Christian zealots, often backed by Roman authorities, actively hunted down the last remaining Egyptian priests, scribes, and intellectuals. These individuals were the sole keepers of the complex mummification rituals, temple records, and religious knowledge. If they didn't convert, they were exiled or killed.
Destruction of Temples: This era saw the systematic defacing of ancient monuments. Magnificent temples like the Serapeum of Alexandria were completely demolished. Statues were smashed or chipped away
Once the priests were gone and the old religion was criminalized, the ancient dead lost all their protection. For the next millennium and a half, the tombs were treated as nothing more than resource goldmines.
Desecration as Holy Duty: For centuries, both early Christian monks and later Islamic rulers viewed the ancient tombs not as historical heritage, but as nests of pagan sorcery. Breaking into them, smashing the statues, and scattering the remains was often seen as cleansing the land.
Tombs as Free Building Material: Cairo, Alexandria, and various medieval towns were built using the outer limestone casings of the Pyramids and stones stripped directly from temples.
Generations of Local Looters: Because the ancient rituals were forgotten, local populations under successive Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic rulers stopped seeing the mummies as ancestors. Instead, tomb-robbing became a highly organized, multi-generational profession to survive poverty.
By the time European traders and Napoleonic soldiers arrived in the 1800s, they weren't breaking into a pristine, respected ancient kingdom. They were scavenging the ruins of a civilization that had already been systematically dismantled, suppressed, and looted for a thousand years.
The practice of eating and drinking ground-up Egyptian mummies largely phased out of mainstream European medicine in the late 18th century, though it occasionally persisted as a rare folk remedy until the early 20th century.
The craze began around the 12th century due to a massive mistranslation.
For centuries, both rich elites and commoners consumed mummies. The preserved flesh and resins were scraped out, ground into a fine powder, and mixed into wine, water, or elixirs to cure internal bleeding, bruising, epilepsy, and stomach ailments.
By the 1800s, Europeans had stopped eating mummies for health, but a new craze took over. Victorians began buying mummies as macabre souvenirs and hosting "mummy unwrapping parties". Guests would gather in private parlors or public theaters to watch a mummy be unrolled for pure entertainment and curiosity. Additionally, pulverized mummies were used as an ingredient to create a popular rich brown paint pigment called "Mummy Brown," and were even sometimes used as fertilizer or industrial fuel.
Europe’s fixation with ancient Egypt—a historical phenomenon scholars call "Egyptomania"—did not happen all at once. Instead, it hit the West in a series of distinct, evolving waves over nearly a thousand years
1922 - ''Tut's'' tomb (really Matria;s).
