Mummies on the Road

P.T. Barnum was not only famous for his New York City Museum, but also for his traveling circuses and sideshows which criss-crossed America during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Animate and inanimate curiosities and wonders were exhibited at the circuses and sideshows that Barnum owned and promoted.

Advertisements in newspapers and in Barnum's Advance Courier programs which were distributed at the exhibitions show two mummies which appear to be an adult and a child, as well as two coffins, one large and one small.

The details of the drawings are crude and  make no pretense as to actually depict the mummies which are being shown. The coffin illustrations are also very sparse and certainly not as elaborate as the coffin illustrations of Padihershef, Lee's mummy or even Turner's mummy. According to Egyptologist and mummy coffin expert Aidan Dodson, the more elaborate coffin is probably a typical "yellow coffin" and the other coffin an example of an "every day life" coffin The decoration down the front is very similar to Brooklyn 37.47E (Weretwahst), although this has the arms the opposite way around.

It doesn't seem to matter if the drawings are accurate or not. What IS the big draw is the announcement that one of the mummies is ROYAL!

This was not an unusual occurrence--no one wanted to see an ordinary human being, even if it were a mummy. How much more exciting to portray it as a HIGH PRIEST, PRINCESS, or other member of a ROYAL family. Some mummies were falsly described as "the daughter of the pharaoh who saved Moses."

Also a draw was the "extraordinary" age of the mummy.  America could boast few native things of that age to exhibit and so the antiquity of a mummy was sure to entice interest.