Modern Mummification

Raised on a steady diet of mail-order esoterica, weirdos need to go the extra mile to impress me. Here's one: the cult of modern mummifiers called Summum.

Cat Mummification in Progress (Wikimedia)

 

Founded in 1975 in Utah by Summum Bonum Amon Ra ('Corky Ra' to his friends), Summum is a cocktail of neoplatonism, early 20th century hermeticism, and the special revelations Corky Ra received from small blue extraterrestrials. A bunch of his lectures are online, some with great titles like 'Mummification, Kung Fu, and Ale'. It's pretty good stuff as far as new age groups go. They also sell special meditation wine that is aged inside a pyramid:

The sacramental nectars of Summum are just such natural condensers of charged elemental energies. Based upon an ancient pre-Egyptian formula, these soma nectars are produced in a large pyramid in Salt Lake City, Utah. Within the pyramid, they are left in a creative state for seventy-seven days, then aged from one to fifteen years. The nectars are called "publications" because they contain spiritual concepts and information.

This paragon of infographics helps us visualize the process. This is definitely the world's only pyramid that is also a bonded winery.

This is what I really mean when I tell my wife that I'm working on a 'publication' (summum.org)

This is all very entertaining, but what we're really here for is the mummification. The 'modern mummification' process (which they call 'mummification of transference') is different from the ancient Egyptian equivalent:

“The ancient Egyptians turned people into a dried-out object like beef jerky. But our wet process keeps the body fresh and supple,” said Ra. “When, after several months, we remove the bodies of animals that have been kept in my special preserving solution in a sealed tank, their owners are surprised to find their pets have soft fur, eyes that look normal and healthy and there is a total absence of rigor mortis.“ The body being mummified is taken from the preserving liquid vat, cleaned, covered in soft lanolin cream. It's then wrapped in 27 layers of gauze, the only similarity to a typical mummy. The body is then encased in resin (like the natural amber holding dinosaur DNA in Jurassic Park) and then painted over and sealed in with a plastic paint. They are next covered in plaster used in broken bone casts and finally, if an animal, covered in gold leaf paint or any other color. 

Finally, they are put into solid metal mummiform containers, like the one holding 'Rooster', a bull mastiff (shown here as the gold leaf was being applied). Once finished, you can put the mummy on display in your home, or wherever.

This public access TV video has some great images of the process:



More video from Nat Geo (with some truly goofy moments) and Discovery (who get Corky talking about the little blue extraterrestrials).

It seems like Summum's bread and butter is pet mummification; so far it seems only Corky himself (who died in 2008) has been given the full human treatment. (He and his mummiform rest inside the pyramid, presumably not far from the wine.) According to an interview in Edit International, almost 1500 people have paid up in advance to be mummified after death, including British tycoon Mohammed El-Fayed! According to Corky,

We are dealing with 167 of the rich and famous and their children, some of them movie stars who want their bodies to last as close to forever as possible. They have contracted with Summum to be perfectly preserved with their genetics and DNA to become the advanced beings of the future. We had to sign special agreements with their lawyers that their names would not be used.

One of the implications of 'modern mummification' - or so everyone hopes - is that it will preserve the body and DNA well enough for later revival and pave the way for immortality. It's an archaeopop twist on cryonics and other flavors of 70s futurism - supporting my contention that archaeology and science fiction are more or less the same thing in popular culture.

Corky Ra with a friend (source)

I find myself totally liking these people. They're new age but in no way sinister, and provide a bizarre but interesting service. They seem so All-American. Hopefully one day I can make it to the pyramid!

Music to Dig By: Cut Copy, 'Pharaohs and Pyramids'

Australia's Cut Copy play with archaeology lately. Check out the video for 'Blink and You'll Miss a Revolution', featuring some medieval Planet-of-the-Apes dudes resurrecting the band via ancient rituals in an cave shrine. Wha!? It's off last year's album, 'Zonoscope'.

Cut Copy - Blink And You'll Miss A Revolution from Cut Copy on Vimeo.

I also dig 'Pharoahs and Pyramids':

  Cut Copy - Pharaohs and Pyramids by modularpeople

House is burning, she's so cold / Hands of silver, hands of gold / Rising from a pyramid
She'll take you where the pharaohs live / Neatly packaged, sleek design / Glossy pamphlet, neon sign / Borrowed like a cigarette / So that way you'll be good, I guess

That's Egyptological in only the most abstract way of course. 'Pharaohs and Pyramids' is the classic Cut Copy sound. I think this is their best album so far, including the tracks where they sound EXACTLY like Andy McCluskey from OMD!

Nefertiti Cigarettes

A 1970 TV ad from Egypt for Nefertiti cigarettes, posted by dianamherrera on Youtube.


It's got cartoons AND stop motion AND a funky song AND pyramids. 'Nuff said.
(Via Heritage Key)

Bert and Ernie Explore a Pyramid

Classic Sesame Street.

All these years later, I still totally relate to Ernie.

UFO Phil Wants to Build a Pyramid on Pike's Peak

I have to admit, Photoshop makes this idea seem almost cool.

'UFO Phil' is a comedian and writer of terrible songs about UFOs. He's been implanted with a "telepathy chip" that allows him to communicate with "Zaxon" and "Rogness", a couple of aliens from somewhere or other. Lately he's been eating out on an unlikely plan: building a replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza on top of Pike's Peak in Colorado (14,112'/4,302m). As AOL News reports, The pyramid will function as an UFO docking station. Denver's KMGH TV 7 is there with hard-hitting coverage:



Besides serving as landing stations, the pyramid will also generate free energy:

Hill alleges that the ancient Egyptian pyramids -- designed by extraterrestrials, of course -- were massive stone power stations. Through his ongoing otherworldly contacts, he's been singled out and gifted with secret blueprints and schematics. These plans, of alien design, of course, reveal how the pyramids can generate enough hydrogen gas to power everything on Earth.

Apparently one alien ship brings sand, and the other brings hydrochloric acid, and they mix it in the pyramid, and it makes hydrogen, then the spaceships take it "all over the galaxy". Phil explains it to a reporter at the Colorado Springs Gazette (free energy technique at 1:52):



Dude is pretty annoying, but has some funny jokes. Building the pyramid will create jobs, since it takes so many men to lug the stones up to the top of the peak. "I can't pay them much, but I understand that was how it was done originally anyway." Priceless.

The gift shop and restaurant will be moved to a deck on the side of the pyramid.

Phil obviously came up with this pyramid thing as a media stunt to sell some songs on iTunes and turn himself into a meme. But hey, he seems to have managed it all right. In case you're not sick of this dweeb yet, he's got a facebook page, too.

Music to Dig By: Sun Ra at the Pyramids, 1971

Sun Ra is one of the kings of archaeopop aesthetics and a major figure in Jazz and afro-futurism. In 1971 he fulfilled a lifelong dream and played at the Great Pyramid. This footage was taken there and on a side trip to Sardinia and used in the amazing 1972 film Space is the Place. (The rest of which was filmed here in Oakland and San Francisco!) It's magnificent.

Space is the Place is required viewing for Archaeopop readers, get to it!

I really wish I could have taken Sun Ra's class at Berkeley:

In early 1971 Sun Ra was artist-in-residence at University of California, Berkeley, teaching a course called "The Black Man In the Cosmos". Rather few students enrolled but the classes were often full of curious persons from the surrounding community. One half-hour of each class was devoted to a lecture (complete with handouts and homework assignments), the other half-hour to an Arkestra performance or Sun Ra keyboard solo. Reading lists included the works of Madame Blavatsky and Henry Dumas, the Book of the Dead, Alexander Hislop's The Two Babylons, The Book of Oahspe and assorted volumes concerning Egyptian hieroglyphs, African American folklore, and other topics.

Also check out this peculiar exhibition, "Sun Ra meets Napoleon: Fragments of the Alter-Future", which juxtaposes the pioneering Egyptologists Giovanni Belzoni and François Champollion with the music of Sun Ra. Belzoni in particular deserves the attention: he started life as a circus strongman and ended up as an Egyptologist!

Ancient Egypt in Georgia: Tama-Re

The always-excellent BLDGBLOG profiles Tama-Re, an ancient Egyptian theme city built by cult leader Dwight York in Georgia:

The Urban Dictionary's description of Tama-Re is amazing; it reads like every race-based fear of the white U.S. middle class summed up in one surreal location.

When York and his Nuwaubians moved there and began erecting pyramids and obelisks there was much curiosity about the group. However trouble started when the citizens became aware of the fact that York was an ex-Black Panther and a convicted felon and statutory rapist who was preaching the gospel that whites were mutants and were inferior to blacks. There is also a foam rubber alien on display in the compound that causes problems with public relations. Officials have had problems with the Nuwaubians failing to comply with zoning and building permits that coincide with what they have created. The Nuwaubians feel that this is a racist attack.

It's hard to top a "foam rubber alien," but the fear-factor nonetheless gets ratcheted up a notch:

Many children from upper middle class cities have left college to live in poverty at the cult's compound, Tama Re. This has caused a lot of turmoil in the lives of many families who can't accept the fact that their sons and daughters have left them to follow an alien messiah. Throughout the grounds speakers everywhere emit the humming sound of Egyptian chants 24 hours a day. Inside one of the pyramids you can buy books and clothes as well as a Dr. York doll. The people who live on the land dwell in a trailer park full of double-wides. York claims his people are Moors who traveled by foot from Africa to what is currently Georgia before the continental drift. The only problem with this "indisputable" fact is that the moors were Muslims who existed way after the birth of Christ which was only approximately 2000 years ago.

Ergo, there was no way in plate tectonics that they could have walked all the way to Georgia.

In June 2005, after the compound's governmental seizure, financial forfeiture, and ensuing sale for $1.1 million, outright demolition began. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at the time, the local sheriff was on the scene, "speaking with relish as he watched crews tear through the series of obelisks, statues, arches and buildings. Many of the dozens of structures were weathered and in disrepair. He said very few of the Egyptian structures or objects were worth salvaging. 'It feels good to tear down the SOB myself,' he said. 'By the middle of next week, there will be nothing but a couple of pyramids.'"

Nuwabia is another permutation of the idea that lost tribes of 'Moors' or Egyptians settled America, first promoted more than a century ago by Noble Drew Ali of the Moorish Science Temple and more recently popularized in the writings of Hakim Bey/Peter Lamborn Wilson, where the concept of 'Moor' is used in a more esoteric, metaphorical sense of persecuted 'other' condemned to wander and live on the margins of the Babylon that is American society. All combined, of course, with that uniquely American strain of Egyptomania found in a wild range of characters from Joseph Smith of the Mormon Church to Sun Ra's extra-solar odysseys.

One of the best and worst things about America is that people have treated it as a blank slate to build their own versions of the past - or their galleries of how the past ought to have been.

Old News: Zahi Disses Beyonce

(Via Objects-Buildings-Situations)

I'm late to this one, I admit. Back in November, Zahi Hawass and Beyoncé did a photo op at the Pyramids together. He gave her a personal tour and a book about Tutankhamun, but she was insufficiently excited about the honor. So he made some snide comments about her behind her back, as Bossip reports:

In a shocking display of poor diplomacy, Egypt’s chief Egyptologist Zahi Hawass allegedly called American pop-star Beyonce a “stupid person” during her brief tour of the Giza pyramids earlier this week. Writing in al-Shorouk newspaper, Summer al-Gamal said that Hawass became fed up with the pop star’s attitude after she did not show the interest Hawass felt was deserved of the pyramids.

A meeting of great entertainers, for sure, complete with celebrity ego flameouts. Can I get a reality show with Zahi Hawass teaching some pop singers to excavate? We could call it "celebrity archaeology camp." I would pay money to see that for reals.

Besides the amazingness of seeing a photo of these two together, the reception of the event on the blogs is fascinating: his insult to Beyoncé became a segue into discussions of his bad temper and insults toward archaeologists (see here, here, and here). As if Beyoncé was somehow the last straw!

(Bossip)

I wonder if Beyoncé is too busy with her occult rebirth to pay sufficient attention to archaeology?

Thanks to Kostis Kourelis' great blog for clueing me in to the story.

"Cave Complex Allegedly Found Under Giza Pyramids"; or, Why We Should Be Skeptical of the News Media

The Discovery Channel's website has recently posted an article about a series of caves that may exist underneath the Giza pyramids. It's hard to know where to begin with this one; it's semi-sensationalist articles like these that lead so many people to assume that the pyramid complexes contain untold mysteries and phenomena that the academic establishment is unwilling to reveal.

First, the individual who claims to have found the caves is cited as a "British explorer" - i.e., an interested amateur who may very well have fresh ideas about the nature of the Giza plateau, but who has no actual credentials for excavating there. But it's hard to determine what, exactly, he was doing on the plateau; Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities has very strict rules about who can excavate within Egypt, and rightly so. Long gone are the days when European adventurers ran unchecked in Egypt, sometimes dynamiting the entrance to a tomb if they so chose (something that did, in fact, happen in the 1830s). So how, exactly, did Andrew Collins manage to discover and explore these alleged subterranean caves, given that he is not a professional Egyptologist with an affiliation to an academic institution (as per SCA requirements)? The article does not ask this question; perhaps we have to wait for the inevitable tv special.

The article does state, however, that Mr. Collins was aided in his discovery by "British Egyptologist Nigel Skinner-Simpson". By his own admission, on his website, Mr. Skinner-Simpson is not an Egyptologist. He is a computer software developer who practices as an amateur in Egyptology and maintains a membership to the Egypt Exploration Society (membership is open to anyone who can pay £42 per year). This is not a trivial point that I argue: when the news media throws around the term "Egyptologist", assigning it to anyone who has a theory about Egypt, it is a gross misleading of the public. [Update: I have been kindly informed by Mr. Skinner-Simpson that the attribution to him of the title "Egyptologist" was an editorial error that they were unable to correct for publication.]

The article was relatively brief, but here are my first impressions regarding Mr. Collins' claims about his discovery. He allegedly found a massive natural cave under the Giza plateau. The pyramids were built on limestone bedrock and even incorporated some outcroppings of that bedrock into the lower body of the pyramid. I am not a geologist, but the fact that the bedrock might contain some natural caves does not strike me as necessarily problematic (though I would welcome some insight on this point from a geologist). However, this is where the article gets fuzzy; it's unclear whether Mr. Collins thinks he's found man-made tunnels and "catacombs" cut into the bedrock, or whether the alleged discovery remains simply that of natural caves. He does make clear that he believes these natural caves inspired the ancient Egyptians' beliefs in an underworld, and this is the point at which his claims become sheer speculation.

The Egyptian concept of the afterlife, and the journey to it, was exceedingly complex. The afterlife had a celestial sphere as well as a subterranean element, and it is often difficult to separate the concepts into distinct topographies; Egyptian religious and mythological concepts had a tendency to blur and blend together, built up as they were over thousands of years from disparate sources. Mr. Collins claims that the ancient name of the Giza and Memphis cemeteries, Rosetjau (meaning "entrance of the passages") is "unquestionably a reference to the entrance to a subterranean cave world, one long rumored to exist beneath the [Giza] plateau." In fact, the use of the word Rosetjau in funerary texts was not limited to referencing only the Giza necropolis specifically. According to Egyptologist John Taylor - who is the Assistant Keeper of Egyptian Antiquites at the British Museum - "The term Rosetjau denoted any hole or shaft in the ground (principally tomb shafts but also natural features) which was believed to be an entrance to the netherworld" (italics added).

In other words, Mr. Collins' speculation is interesting but so far is supported only by circumstantial evidence. And how did he obtain that evidence? You'll have to wait for his forthcoming book, apparently.

Music to Dig By: Egyptian Lover, 'Egypt Egypt'

Afrocentric archaeology is an amazing subject and frankly deserves a blog or three all by itself. Many white folks pooh-pooh the notion that ancient Egypt is a part of Black and African history. But Europeans claim all kinds of preposterous things about how they’re the spiritual heirs of the ancient Greeks, without the slightest hint of irony. Serious people even think the Elgin Marbles should stay in London!

The point is, it’s just plain fun to appropriate the past, especially when it gets you in with The Ladies. So when a DJ from LA with extremely smooooth ways wants to become “The Egyptian Lover”, I’ll just chill out and go along for the ride.

Download: Egyptian Lover - 'Egypt, Egypt' (1984)

"Pyramids are Oh so shiny
The women here are Oh so cute
The freaks are on the floor now
Dancing to beats that I compute"

This is a stone cold classic electro jam, no way around it. It has my two favorite things, 80s futurism and mysterious archaeological references, all together in one package. Buy the album “On The Nile” here.

Egyptian Lover was part of the early 1980s west coast electro and hiphop scene, hanging with the likes of Ice T, Arabian Prince, and Dr Dre. In this 1983 nugget from the YouTubes, Chris “The Glove” Taylor explains how to cut and scratch while Egyptian Lover spins and Ice-T raps.



Egyptian Lover’s been on tour lately, and his shows are supposed to be pretty good. He also gives funny interviews, check out the ones at West Coast Pioneers. (He claims 'Egypt Egypt' took him 30 minutes to create!)

I can’t write about the Egyptian Lover without mentioning his most incredible contribution to our understanding of LGBT issues. Click here, you won’t regret it.