The Ipswich Mummy

In the East Anglian town of Ipswich is a very average provincial museum. The red–brick Victorian building near the arboretum houses a variety of badly stuffed animals, a Narwhal's horn (which until recently was labelled as belonging to a unicorn) and a favourite amongst local children the small Egyptian collection.

Here in glass cases can be found a model Nile boat, canopic jars, sarcophagi and most exciting of all to the young and morbid the Ipswich Mummy – a wizened brown husk of a corpse its limbs twisted, eyes sewn shut, its mouth open as if in some silent scream. The left hand of the emaciated cadaver is missing but a little hair still clings to the scalp.

It was in this dusty corner of England that Susan Blake, a Californian postgraduate student of Egyptology from nearby Cambridge University laboured alone in that hot summer cataloguing the collection. The museum didn't have the reputation of larger institutions and Susan was of the opinion that all of the artefacts should be returned to Egypt but here was a very rare opportunity to study objects from the distant past at first hand.

The items had not been examined by an academic since the nineteen sixties and so perhaps there was also a chance of using modern knowledge and techniques to learn something new. And where to begin? Why with the mummy, of course, the most celebrated and mysterious of all the relics.

She started with the provenance of the Mummy. It had been brought to Paris by a French Hussar by the name of Lieutenant Lucien De Bie after Napoleon's Egyptian adventure. The cavalryman had died with tens of thousands of others in Bonaparte's disastrous invasion of Russian but his widow had lived a long life. The mummy had been auctioned upon her death and bought as lot No. 249 by Edward Bellingham an English medical student. The mummy then later appeared photographed at a number of King Tut parties in the roaring twenties, the body often (Susan shuddered with academic horror) dressed up and posed amongst the frivolities. Finally, it was entrusted to the museum by an anonymous donor in 1932. 

There were no grave goods accompanying the body so who the Mummy had been in life, what period they had lived in or even if they were an Ancient Egyptian at all was unknown. It had been speculated that the hand had been severed by medieval grave robbers to sell to a sorcerer but that was guesswork based on other examples.

Susan put on her mask, hairnet and gloves and set to work starting with the basics. She unlocked the case and gently lifted the light, shrivelled, brittle cadaver onto an examination table she had erected in the Egyptian room. Susan then picked up a surgical torch and began using her eyes and hands to minutely explore the body. From the skull, teeth and pelvis, she quickly ascertained they had been an adult male. There were some of the bindings still intact that might hold some clues – taking a sample for carbon dating would be a good start.

Suddenly she stopped. Shining a torch into the cavity of the open mouth she could see something in there – a foreign object stuck at the back of the throat. Susan selected a pair of tweezers and very, very gently tried to prize it out.  If it was stuck or too delicate she would have to wait for an x–ray. To her surprise, it loosened easily and came fully intact out with the tweezers. Her heart skipped a beat as she could clearly see it was a scrap of rolled–up papyrus. Professionalism told her to stop and contact other more experienced academics, but ambition drove her on and so as if performing heart surgery on a newborn she worked with two tweezers to open this tiny ancient scroll. 

Selecting a magnifying glass Susan could see to her delight extremely minute and faded but very neatly written hieroglyphics. It was composed in one of the most ancient forms but it must have been the work of a skilled scribe for the language was so clear that she could with very little effort to understand the marks.

The scroll read:

"I Ankhmahor, high priest of Nyarlathotep, servant of the Pharoah Nephren–Ka" – Nyarlathotep, it sounded like the name of a demon but given the title of a god thought Susan.  And Nephren–Ka an obscure ruler of the sixth dynasty. Nephren–Ka must have made himself unpopular because his name had been struct from almost all of his monuments by his successors. She continued reading. 

"–bids he whosoever should read my words–" ah the arrogance of men to assume the first person in the future to understand the scroll would be a he. "Let their body become as but an empty vessel to receive my seven souls."

"I have built thy temple to house the (something here about a shining gemstone of some kind) and slain the captives as the sacrifice, answer now my prayer oh my master the dweller?" No not dweller, Susan corrected herself more like a noun used for evil spirits – haunter would be a better translation. "Oh, my master the haunter of the dark aid me now so I may walk the earth again."

It's a spell or a curse thought Susan elated with the find. Also, we now have a name and some sort of date. Even if this was a hoax it was certainly something very exciting indeed. Just as she began to reach for the camera to take photos Susan started as she realised the time. 

That afternoon she had a date with Anna a hot Spanish nurse she had met in the one gay pub in Ipswich. They were meeting at the art cinema to watch Psycho – not Susan's sort of thing but Anna loved classic horror movies. If she didn't leave right away she'd be late. Quickly tidying up Susan glanced one last time at the mummy as she closed the door.

Impossible as it was Susan was almost certain the time–worn thing had moved, the right hand nearer the face and the head tilted back at another angle. Shaking her head to clear it she switched off the lights and locked the door. Quickly she hurried through the museum past the vases and stuffed animals. The place was completely deserted for who would visit such a stuffy place on such a glorious hot summer day?

Susan was glad of the sunshine and fresh air as she crossed Christ Church Park heading for the cinema. As she took in the glorious view of the English oaks and the Tudor mansion she daydreamed about her discovery and the papers it would allow her to write. The day was very hot indeed and as she tried to walk faster she soon became tired and dizzy. She increasingly felt light–headed and faint. Suddenly darkness covered her eyes and she stumbled forwards falling. A group of friends playing frisbee on the grass nearby saw her collapse, her body spasming and twitching on the floor and ran towards her to help.

Susan did not author any papers that summer but she was the subject of one. The monograph did not appear in any publications of Egyptology or archaeology but instead in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

The paper described a patient – Susan Blake, a young woman who had suffered a suspected seizure in a park. An ambulance was called and Ms Blake was conveyed to Ipswich General Hospital. Upon regaining consciousness the patient was unable to speak English, her mother tongue, but instead spoke in an unintelligible, perhaps invented language. CT and MRI scans showed an undamaged healthy brain and all other signs were normal.

When handed a pen and paper Ms Blake could not write in the Latin alphabet at all but instead drew long streams of intricate pictograms in the style of Egyptian hieroglyphics. This is not as strange as at first it might seem since the patient was a Cambridge postgraduate student well–versed in the arts of the ancient world. Ms Blake's university supervisor Dr Dorothy Heywood confirmed that the symbols were indeed part of a dead language. What is more, Dr Heywood explained that Ms Blake was attempting to convey in the writings that she was feeling in good health and eager to relearn the linguistic skills she had lost.

Psychologically the patient presented as well, despite having some long–term memory loss and having developed some eccentric phobias of modern technology.

With a speech coach and fellow academics helping with translation Ms Blake's English skills began to return and it was hoped that with more therapy she could return to normal life within a year.

Indeed after a year, Susan Blake was recovered enough to plan an extended trip to Egypt to see at first hand the monuments she was so familiar with. It should also come as no surprise that she wished to leave the Ipswich at that time for a shadow hung over the town. There had been through the winter a string of murders the victims including three sex workers but also that of a young Spanish nurse.  With the killer still at large and rumours of mutilations and black magic rituals, Ipswich had become a place of fear.

The last victim a local homeless man was slain a week before the young Egyptologist left the country and to this day the crimes have remained unsolved. Ipswich Museum remains open and you can still see the hideous and withered Mummy in its glass case, the body twisted and the mouth still open as if in agony. You can see it but you cannot hear the real Susan Blake silently screaming imprisoned for eternity inside that withered husk.