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In a message dated 97-10-19 15:55:30 EDT, you write: > I presume that there was plenty of fake "mummy" around, even before > Hollywood got into the act. I have seen a recent reference, however, to > real mummies being shipped out; but I cannot recall where. > > tom > Interesting. It's hard to visualize how many people (and cats, and bulls) were mummified in 3000 years of Egyptian history, and how many mummies have survived. A common complaint against the Egyptian Museum in Cairo is that they don't take care of things very well, probably because they have much too much to take care of. An Egyptologist friend goes so far as to say (a bit extreme) that he's glad if anything is stolen from that museum, because it will eventually be sold to some other museum which will be able to give it better care. What you might find speaking to your point, Tom, is a passage in the book Thomas Hoving (former director of the Metropolitan Museum) wrote about Tutankamun's tomb. Near the end of the book, he mentioned going to the Cairo Museum and seeing seemingly endless glass cases with mummified bodies of pharaohs. He was shocked, and the mummies were deteriorating. He said they should be interred inside the Great Pyramid, which should be cemented over. Yes, a lot of the powder sold as mummy could have been just that. pat sloane %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%