Last week’s piece on Tothmea, the mummy from ancient Egypt whose body reposed for years in the basement of the Schenectady Museum, brought a response from S.J. Wolfe who is on the staff of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass.
Wolfe’s book, “Mummies in Nineteenth Century America” is scheduled for publication this year by McFarland, and it contains a section on “Thothmea” culled from correspondence and material from Mary Hesson, who was curator of the museum in Round Lake, and from the booklet, “Round Lake: Little Village in the Grove,” by Hesson, David J. Rogowski and Marianne Comfort (Round Lake Publications, 1998).
Much of the history of the mummy was as I wrote last week, but there is fascinating information on her travels in this country and the reception she received on her arrival in Round Lake in 1888.
According to a story in the Aug. 2, 1888, issue of the Albany Evening Journal, the mummies were a gift to Samuel Sullivan “Sunset” Cox, United States minister to Turkey, presented to him by the khedive of Egypt in appreciation of Cox’s 1876 book, “Why We Laugh.” The newspaper account said the khedive told Cox: “I enjoyed your book exceedingly. And now I propose to present you with something as dry as your book. I will give you two mummies.”
Cox brought the treasures back with him to the States. One of them was sent to the Smithsonian Institution. The second was the remains of the mummy who came to be known as Tothmea, which Cox consigned to storage in New York City while he looked for a good home for the mummy.
As was the case nearly a century later when I wrote about Tothmea for The Knickerbocker News, there were many suitors for custody of the mummy. After much lobbying, Cox agreed to allow the George West Museum at Round Lake to acquire Tothmea. The director of the museum at the time was the Rev. Dr. H.C. Farrar.
The Aug. 5, 1888, issue of the Troy Northern Budget described the arrival of the mummy in Round Lake. The atmosphere was neither reverent nor dignified, but morbid and carnivalesque.
It was about 3 o’clock Wednesday afternoon last when two workmen lugged the mummy box from the Museum to the covered pavilion known as the auditorium ... The singers were in their seats, a group of thirty or forty pretty girls. Those in the front row jumped up and screamed “oh!” when the strange box was put at their feet. Those in the rear rows uttered a subdued “oh!” out of sympathy, and then they all became very still and blushed. Everybody in the community was in the main part of the auditorium except the singers and a few prominently identified with the summer school. Among the latter were Dr. Farrar, Bishop J.P. Newman, the Rev. Dr. William Griffen, rpesident of the association, Professor J.G. Lansing and an ex-senator C.L. MacArthur of Troy.
As the mummy entered the building, the organist played something lively, and afterwards the choir of pretty girls sang a hymn, beginning “AWAKE! AWAKE!” all of which the silent guest took in without a smile.
Then there was a prayer and a short lecture on embalming by Lansing who then donned an old coat and scarf and, with help, tipped the box upright and removed the lid. The newspaper account continues:
There stood revealed in the coffin a shapeless figure about four feet nine inches high, all covered over with what looked like chamois skin. It was really the linen with which the ancient Egyptians bandaged their dead after the process of embalming had been completed. There were many layers of the linen, and the first came off easily ...
To get at, and remove, the interior bandages, the hapless mummy was laid upon a table. Some of the professors yanked and pulled with their fingers while Professor Lansing jabbed viciously at the remains with a bright, new carving knife. As the work went on, the pretty girls in the choir hid their little noses behind handkerchiefs and some of the men standing about said “paugh!” and looked homesick. Several small boys ran upon the platform and made off with the stray pieces of the linen bandages until an indignant doctor of divinity chased them away.
The head of the mummy was uncovered first, and it was found to contain a complete set of perfect teeth. The mummy was that of a woman as the Egyptologist present had determined from certain peculiarities in the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the lid of the coffin. The remains were uncovered as far as the waist when the mummy was made to sit for another picture. Then the work was abandoned until the scientists of the school could be by themselves in the museum.
Farrar decided that her name must have been Thothmea after the kings Thothmes of that time, but Lansing “said with a smile” that her name was probably not Thothmea and that she was not a very extraordinary woman, anyway, except for her age. Her embalming, he added, was “badly done.”
Tothmea stayed at the West Museum until it closed in 1919, then went to a caretaker until 1939 when J. Franklin Clute loaned her to the Schenectady Museum where she remained until 1978. After several more stops, she was acquired by the Rosicrucian Society in California.
Today, restored and housed in a traditional Egyptian funerary vault, Tothmea is a star exhibit at the Rosicrucians’ Egyptian Museum in Curtitibia, Brazil.
Irv Dean is the Gazette’s city editor. Contact him at dean@dailygazette.com.
