Mummy Costume For Men? Top 50 Best Answers

Do you want to do mummy movements this year? Of course you do. A mummy costume is one of the most classic and traditional Halloween costumes you can wear. As Halloween experts, we recommend everyone to try it at least once. To become a mummy, you must keep your identity completely under wraps. (Hey, got it? “Locked Up.” We know we’re hysterical.) Toilet paper is a supposed must-have and can achieve a mummified look, but we’ve found something better: the mummy cloth accessory.

Put the TP down (you’ll be glad you did later when you come home from the Halloween party and realize you’ve had way too much punch). The Mummy Wrap Accessory is a practical costume in a small, stylish package – it’s everything you need to start embalming yourself and trust us, it’ll be more enjoyable than it sounds.

PRODUCT DETAILS

Officially licensed by Universal Studios, the single roll of gauze covers bodies approximately 5 feet tall. So if you are taller you may need two rolls. Or even three! It is the perfect accessory to complete any type of mummy costume.

KEEP YOUR ENERGY

Picking up this gauze accessory will save you tons of time and energy (and toilet paper, too). Don’t forget to check out all our mummy accessories too.

Mummy paper is paper said to be made from the linen wrappings and other fibers (e.g. papyrus) of Egyptian mummies imported to America around 1855.[1] The existence of this paper is not definitively confirmed, but much has been discussed.

history [edit]

The history of mummy paper in America is closely linked to the history of both American papermaking and papermaking in general.

Supply bottlenecks[ edit ]

It can be said that paper was used in ancient Egypt around 3000 BC. with the invention of what the Romans called “papyrus” based on an earlier Greek name for the material. Papyrus is not paper in the modern sense of the word, being formed from compressed reed stalks rather than wood pulp. Paper made from shredded plant fibers can be attributed to Ts’ai Lun of China in AD 105 when he first presented the emperor with a sheet of paper made from the inner bark of a mulberry tree. When papermaking technology found its way to Europe, paper was not made from trees but from a pulp of cotton and linen fibers. This papermaking technique first came to America in 1690 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, when William Rittenhouse founded the first paper mill. Rittenhouse was a papermaker in Amsterdam, Netherlands, before coming to America and bringing European techniques with him.[2]

Papermaking in America reached a critical point in the 1850s. America produced more newspapers than any other country and its paper consumption equaled that of England and France combined. According to an 1856 estimate, it would take 6,000 railroad cars, each containing two tons of paper, to transport all the paper used by American newspapers in a single year.[3] This equates to a requirement of 405,000,000 pounds of rags for the 800 paper mills then in operation in the United States.[4] Most of these rags were imported from Europe, with the largest source being from Italy. However, by 1854 Italy also began exporting rags to England, reducing the supply to American papermakers. That meant finding a replacement or a new source for rags, and fast.

Isaiah Deck[ edit ]

At the same time, Egyptian mummies were reasonably well known to the American public. Many mummies have been part of exhibitions and have been displayed in museums and traveling exhibitions across the country. In fact, dr. Pettigrew ran one such show in which he would unwrap or unroll mummies in front of a crowd for their entertainment.[6] The impetus for a new source of supply for scraps of paper could come from Dr. Isaiah Deck, a native of England, a New York resident, a geologist by profession, an archaeologist by hobby, and a determined explorer. On a previous copper prospecting trip to Jamaica, Deck had evaluated other sources of paper, including aloe, plantain, banana, and dagger grass, but none were acceptable.[7] Already busy with paper and paper sources, Deck embarked on a journey to Egypt in 1847 in search of Cleopatra’s lost emerald mines. Deck’s father, also called Isaiah, knew Giovanni Belzoni, a famous Italian robber of Egyptian tombs; Deck the Younger inherited some Egyptian artifacts from his father, including a piece of linen from a mummy.[8]

In searching for the lost mines, Deck couldn’t help but notice the abundance of mummies and mummy parts that turned up in communal burial sites known as “mummy pits”. He wrote: “So numerous are they in some places off the usual beaten track of most travelers that after the periodic storms whole areas are seen stripped of sand, leaving fragments and limbs exposed in such profusion and variety.”[9 ] Deck did some calculations: suppose two thousand years of widespread embalming, an average lifespan of thirty-three years, and a stable population of eight million. That would leave you with about five hundred million mummies. Add to that the number of mummified animals, including cats, bulls, and crocodiles, and the number is increasing dramatically. Deck also says, “It is by no means uncommon to find over 30 pounds. Weight of linen wrappings on mummies… A princess from the late Mr. Pettigrew’s collection was wrapped in 40 thicknesses, yielding 42 yards of the finest texture.” [10] Deck further calculated that the average paper usage in America is about 15 pounds. per person and year. This meant that supplies of Egyptian mummies could keep pace with American demand for about 14 years, by which time a substitute source of supply or material would likely have been discovered, obviating the need for rags.[11]

evidence [edit]

Whether the American paper mills took Isaiah Deck’s suggestion seriously can neither be conclusively proven nor rejected. However, some evidence remains.

Dard Hunter[edit]

Dard Hunter is a noted paper researcher and cataloger and a proponent of handmade paper. His book Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft describes the experiments of I. Augustus Stanwood with both groundwood paper and mummy paper. Hunter received his information from Stanwood’s son Daniel, a professor of international law. According to Daniel, during the American Civil War his father was under pressure to get materials for his Maine mill. As such, he imported mummies from Egypt, stripped the bodies of their coverings, and used this material to make paper. Several shiploads of mummies were taken to the mill in Gardiner, Maine, and used there to make brown wrapping paper for grocers, butchers, and other traders. Professor Stanwood goes on to report that the rags allegedly caused an outbreak of cholera among the workers because there were no standards for disinfection at the time. However, since cholera is actually a bacterium, it is unlikely that active disease cells could have survived for centuries in the packages, meaning the outbreak at the factory was likely due to either poor personal hygiene by workers or dirty rags recently found by deceased Europeans, mainly French and Italian, rather than the mummy scraps.[12]

Hunter also writes in a lengthy footnote to a letter he received from a Mrs. John Ramsey of Syracuse, New York, telling the story her father’s friend told her of his days in a paper mill in Broadalbin, New York. told. He worked there from 1855 to 1860 and was one of the men responsible for unrolling the old linen casings from the mummies that the mill received. She wrote to Hunter that “the rolled-up robes retained the shape of the mummy, so that when the workers attempted to flatten or unroll the ‘cocoon’ … it immediately snapped back into the shape of the mummy it had encased for so long.” “[13] She also describes the material as cream-colored linen that still bears fragments of embroidery along the edges.

Hunter also writes and quotes from Deck’s proposal to import mummies. However, Hunter refers to the work as a manuscript and leaves it to Joseph Dane to dismiss the work offhand, stating that the work could not be found and implying that Hunter invented it for his purpose. This claim by Dane must also be rejected as authors both before and after Dane, including Deck’s contemporaries and modern authors including both Wolfe and Baker, have been able to find copies of this work. Dane also rejects Deck’s writing, and thus Hunter’s, on the grounds that it is Swiftonian satire. He cites Deck’s notes on thrift, concern for relieving bottlenecks, and his accuracy in his calculations as further evidence that he is writing in the vein of Book 3 of Gulliver’s Travels. Dane also writes that Hunter should have realized Deck wasn’t serious, questioning Hunter’s own authority in this area.[15]

Evidence from journals[ edit ]

There is evidence that rags were imported from Egypt during this period. Joel Munsell was a prolific printer and publisher from Albany, New York, and he kept a scrapbook of articles related to his trade. This eventually became the basis for his book Chronology of the Origin and Progress of Paper and Papermaking. For an 1855 entry, Munsell reports that a shipment of 1215 bales of Egyptian rags arrived and was bought by J Priestly & Co. at about 4 cents a pound. Its source, the Paper Trade Reporter, stated that the final purchase price for the transaction was $25,000.[16] The next year, the New York Tribune reported that about two and a half million pounds of rags had been imported from Egypt.[17]

Articles on the practicality and financial implications of importing mummies for paper for the Egyptian government and American paper mills were also published in the July 7, 1847 issue of The Friend, the June 19, 1847 issue of Scientific American, and the June 17, 1847 issue December 1847 edition of the Cold War Fountain published.[18] Although none of these articles confirm the manufacture of this paper in America, they prove that the concept was both widely disseminated and discussed in well-known and respected journals of the time.

Another article appeared in the April 1873 issue of The Druggists’ Circular and Chemical Gazette, describing a visit to Alexandria by a New York businessman in 1866. There he bought “mummies from the catacombs” and “exported them to the United States to convert into pulp for papermaking.” This article also pointed out that due to the various oils and botanicals contained in the rags, mummies are not ideal for printing on paper, resulting in discoloration of the paper.[19] This confirms Hunter’s account that Stanwood’s mill used the mummies to make a brown butcher paper.

On July 31, 1856, the Syracuse Standard ran a notice in its newspaper informing readers that it was printed on paper made from rags imported directly from Egypt. The rags were made by Mr. G.W. Ryan and were processed in his Marcellus Falls facility.[20] Munsell adds that the rags were stripped from mummies.[21] Hunter reports that he cannot find a copy of this edition,[13] and Dane takes this to mean that the paper was not supposed to have been printed on mummy paper, just rags from the mummy region.[22] ] However, Baker has located a copy of the paper at the Onondaga Historical Association and has confirmed both the wording of the notice and the physical difference of this edition from previous ones.[23]

Evidence against mummy paper

Dane argues that mummy paper cannot possibly exist because all references to the paper are either vaguely documented or the product of oral tradition. He also argues that they have an aura of Swift about them and that all of the original authors have the intention of being satirical. Dane also states that neither the copy of the standard can be found on mummy paper nor Deck’s article, both statements having been clearly proven false.[24]

In fact, there are some facts that make proving the concrete existence of mummy paper impossible. First of all, the paper of the Standard and Norwich Broadside cannot be chemically tested to prove it came from mummies, as the test would only prove it was made of linen. They also cannot be dated to carbon-14. This test requires burning the material, which means that items that only exist in one or two copies would have to be destroyed to complete the test, which is clearly not possible. Also, mummies were made in Egypt for over 4,000 years, so even a time frame for the paper product would not limit the age of the material to a useful window for solid inference. In addition, the percentage of mummy cloth to every other rag in a given pulp blend could skew the results of the test. DNA testing would also prove inconclusive, as that test would only confirm that the material had close contact with a human at one point.

Aside from scientific testing, there is no record of paper mills buying mummies. If there were any records or ledgers, they have either been lost or have been recycled for more paper by the factory itself. There are no photos of mummies or mummy packaging in any paper mill. Shipping records and customs records are also gone. However, these may not have proved anything conclusively either; Since rags were duty-free for paper at the time, the cargo would not have needed to be declared. Even if the mummy scraps had been declared, they would probably have been declared as scraps of paper without specifying the provenance.[25]

Other Industrial Uses for Mummies

Perhaps the most famous claimed use of mummies in industries other than papermaking appeared in Mark Twain’s novel Innocents Abroad.[26] He writes about the practice, then common on the Egyptian railways, of using mummies as fuel to power the locomotives.

I won’t talk about the railroad because it’s like any other railroad – I’ll just say that the fuel they use for the locomotive is three thousand year old mummies bought by the ton or from the graveyard for this purpose , and that sometimes the profane engineer can be heard pettingly crying out: “T–n these plebeians, they don’t burn worth a penny – make a king swoon…[27]

This masterful storyteller spoke with a wink. He lets the reader in on the joke in the next passage, which is: “Stated to me as fact. I’m just telling it as I understood it. I’m ready to believe it. I can believe anything.” This story has been mentioned by a number of seemingly reliable secondary sources, including an article in Scientific American in 1859 and, more recently, an article published for BBC News in 2011.[28] As Heather Pringle observed in her authoritative book The Mummy Congress,[29] “no expert has ever been able to corroborate the story…Twain appears to be the only published source – and a rather suspicious one at that.”

There are many sources relating to the use of ground mummies (mummies) in medicines. In fact, Merck & Company sold mummies until 1910. Ground mummified bodies also produce a brown pigment, still referred to as “mummy brown” or “Egyptian brown.”[30] The color is no longer produced by mummies.[31] Other by-products of mummies include the distillation of the bodies to produce aromatic oils such as olibanum and ambergris, which can be made into machine oils, soaps, or even incense.[32] Mummies were clearly a multi-product import of choice, much like the buffalo or whale had been before them.

See also[edit]