{"id":359,"date":"2011-02-15T09:35:57","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T16:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=359"},"modified":"2011-02-15T09:35:57","modified_gmt":"2011-02-15T16:35:57","slug":"not-a-bad-mummy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=359","title":{"rendered":"Not A Bad Mummy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1932, there was a movie made called The Mummy<\/em>.\u00a0 It was remade in 1999, and the remake had a sequel a couple of years later.\u00a0 The subject of both these films was an ancient Egyptian named Imhotep.\u00a0 According to the remake–I haven’t seen the original–Imhotep assassinated his pharaoh because he and the pharaoh’s wife fell in love with each other.\u00a0 According to the movie’s introduction, no one was allowed to touch the pharaoh’s wife except the pharaoh, not even in the slightest way.\u00a0 Imhotep was caught and he along with his followers were punished severely.<\/p>\n

I can’t say I know about the wife-touching thing, but the real<\/em> Imhotep was nothing like this.\u00a0 His name is remembered after forty-five-hundred years not for being a well-respected man.\u00a0 Egyptians say he invented or improved the papyrus scroll.\u00a0 He designed his pharaoh’s pyramid, which was the first<\/em> pyramid of ancient Egypt to be built.\u00a0 He is even credited as being the founder of modern medicine by writing the equivalent of a modern journal-worthy paper with observations about the human body, sicknesses and their cures.\u00a0 In spite of being a priest of Ra, this paper he purportedly wrote is strictly scientific and contains no magical references.\u00a0 Admittedly, his status of author is highly questionable, but somebody<\/em> somewhere along the way felt he was worth of that attribution.\u00a0 His life as we know it reflected this acceptance of science in the face of strong religious beliefs.<\/p>\n

Imhotep is probably the most ancient historical figure I would like to meet.\u00a0 I would like to learn the language of ancient Egyptians so that we might converse.\u00a0 If what we know of him is true, it would be an interesting chat.\u00a0 He lived in what was arguably a golden age for his civilization.\u00a0 I think he was ahead of his time and saw things more as they were than how most imagined them to be.<\/p>\n

I have had Imhotep on my mind lately as part of a story idea.\u00a0 I have wondered what would happen if somebody went back in time and showed Imhotep some modern things like electricity and the things it can do.\u00a0 My impression of the man is he was quite the opposite of the mummy man of the movies.\u00a0 I think he would accept the gift of future knowledge and use it with wisdom.\u00a0 His pharaoh, Djoser, seems to have been a man of some wisdom as well.<\/p>\n

It’s interesting how history gets twisted sometimes.\u00a0 Imhotep was a man of science and true to his pharaoh, but I am willing to bet many if not most think he was a scoundrel thanks to the Mummy<\/em> movies.\u00a0 It’s just one example in a long list:\u00a0 Columbus did not appeal to Queen Isabella for funding on the basis of a desire to prove the world was round; this was already well-known to anyone with an education at the time.\u00a0 Paul Revere’s ride was actually that of several men and he did not shout out “The British are coming!”\u00a0 On an amusing note, Tarzan never said, “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”\u00a0 The list goes on and on.<\/p>\n

In any case, if Imhotep did come back to life as a mummy, I don’t think he’d be interested in taking over the world.\u00a0 He’d be more interested in learning about modern science, medical science in particular, I believe.\u00a0 He’d be a good mummy that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1932, there was a movie made called The Mummy.\u00a0 It was remade in 1999, and the remake had a sequel a couple of years later.\u00a0 The subject of both these films was an ancient Egyptian named Imhotep.\u00a0 According to the remake–I haven’t seen the original–Imhotep assassinated his pharaoh because he and the pharaoh’s wife […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}