Padihershef in Boston

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The exhibition was a success from its outset.  An article on the mummy and an advertisement appeared in the Boston Patriot & Daily Mercantile Advertiser under the Heading “The Egyptian Mummy” on 21 May 1823. Within two days, it was estimated by the newspapers that five or six hundred people had paid twenty-five cents a head to view this curiosity. 

Doggett’s advertisement in the Columbian Centinal on 28 May 1823  revealed the popularity of the exhibit.

“The Egyptian mummy will for the accommodation of the public, be kept open in the future until 9 o’clock in the evening. The room will be illuminated. “

On 30 May 1823 the New England Galaxy commented:

 “The Theban mummy. This specimen  of the wonderful preservative art of the ancients, and one of the most interesting curiosities ever exhibited here, attracts a crowd of visitors, among whom we gladly see the clergy, literati, legislators, and ladies, with which this city, at the time of election, abounds …”

The 13 June 1823 issue of the Christian Register reported:

"The mummy is now exhibiting at Mr. Doggett’s Rooms, Market Street. We are informed that it has been visited by upwards of three thousand people."

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In his diary for Thursday, 23 September 1823, William Slade, a young man from Sempronius, New York, wrote a description of the mummy and its exhibition at Doggett’s, which he saw while he was on a visit to his grandmother in Swansea:

"Walked a little south of the market and saw written over the door  “A live ostrich.” Inquired if they kept an ostrich there. Said “yes.” Asked them the price to see it. They said “9d.” Went in and saw it. Said to weigh as much as a middling size man, is 7 feet high. Saw her lay down. Curious looking tent there. Went in and saw the Egyptian mummy, a young lady three thousand years old, lately to arrive from the city of Thebes, the city with its hundred gates. She was found enclosed in two coffins made of sycamore, and on top of each coffin her profile is carved out of wood. The coffins smell very disagreeable indeed. She is said to be a real woman by the doctors who have examined her and no deception. She makes a ghastly and unlovely appearance. Has turned black. Said to be, when alive, red, just the color of the likeness on the coffin."

             There was very little public knowledge at this time of the iconography of Egyptian art, the canon of which usually prescribed that men were painted red and women yellow. The red color of the face on the coffin ought to have signified the occupant was male, but the presence of the wig and jewelry confounded the matter as they were more commonly perceived to be female accoutrements. As it happens, both male and female mummies were equipped with jewelry, or had it represented upon their coffins, and the confusion of female and male proliferated until the decipherment of hieroglyphics made it easier to determine the sex and name of whomever was in the coffin.