Unwrapping the Victorian's Obsession with Mummies

The Last Tuesday Society
August 18th 2025
18.30-20.30

Tickets include a complimentary glass of Devil’s Botany Chocolate Absinthe.

Before Tutankhamen unleashed his curse and Universal Studios’ mummy shuffled on our screens, Victorian society was swept up in Egyptomania.

At the end of the nineteenth century, people were feverishly consuming novels about ancient Egyptian revenants returned from the dead to seek revenge, cursed jewellery, and haunted museums. Originally more popular than vampire fiction, for forty years the mummy fiction trend (or Egyptian Gothic) was unstoppable. But sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and at the same time a magical secret cult formed in the galleries of the British Museum, the rich held mummy unwrapping parties, and the casual Egyptian tourist opted to bring more than a postcard back from their Thomas Cook trip.

When did we stop eating mummies? What was in mummy brown paint? Who had a secret stash of mummy penises? Did a mummy really sink the Titanic? Join Dr Jay Sullivan, author of Egyptian Gothic to unwrap the Victorians mostly-forgotten obsession with mummies.