Preparing to Exhibit Padihershef

Metal Padi ouside.jpg Metal Padi inside.jpg

At the same time, Warren wrote up a report of the description of his examination the mummy  which he had made for the Massachusetts General Hospital,  as well as a general account of embalming, especially for the first volume of The Boston Journal of Philosophy and the Arts, published by Cummings, Hillyard and Co. in 1823.  It was probably, at that time, the most complete description of a mummy anywhere. Warren wrote:

“The results of this investigation, together with two drawings made from the outer case, I now beg leave to send you for publication in your journal if you find them likely to be in any way useful.”

Cummings, Hillyard and Co. accepted his offer, and also published a thirty-four page pamphlet of extracts, with the two plates of engravings, which they marketed as a reprint from the journal. A  bill  for the artwork (from the collections of the bills in the Massachusetts General Hospital) done by the Boston firm of Annin & Smith, shows that the engraving of two views of the coffin of the Egyptian mummy cost $70. The printing of sixteen hundred and twenty-eight impressions cost $16.28, and used eight and one-half gross of paper at a cost of $6.80, making the total $93.08.

Padioputerstanding.jpg

The original drawings were of course printed in black and white as there was little color printing at this time. How much more spectacular would the advertisements have been had then been shown in color, as demonstrated by the modern photographs of the coffins and their illustrations.

Padiouter2.jpg Padi outer coffin.jpg

Padihershef and his coffins have been cleaned and conserved numerous times, most currently by Mimi Leveque. Some of the cleaning was so delicate it was done with cotton swabs and saliva! The mummy itself had a gray encrustaion about its head which testing confirmed was salt leaching out from the mummy itself. This damage was caused by the mummy being displayed under very bright television lights during on of its travels outside in the real world. The lights were hot enough to partially melt the bitumen preservatives and release the natron in the form of salt.

Originally displayed upright, the coffins and mummy are now displayed supine so as to minimize tha damages of gravity.

Padiouter2.jpg

As this still was an era of scissors and paste-pot editors, other newspapers and journals, such as Zion’s Herald of 29 May 1823, the Boston Recorder of 31 May 1823, and even the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post of 7 June 1823, copied the whole report, or parts of it, for their advertisements and commentaries on the mummy.  Included with the reports was an illustration of the outer coffin of the mummy, which was woodcut, This was then later made into an early stereotype plate for the 25 October 1823 issue of the Minerva and used in subsequent newspaper advertisements. The records of the Massachusetts General Hospital do not reveal who the artist was for this illustration but it may have been Williams.

The illustrations of the coffins are very exact, and can be read from the drawings. In a time when Egyptian iconography and hieroglyphs were almost completely unknown, it is hard to understand how such an accurate copy could be made without some  external aid such as a camera lucida. The drawing for the woodcut would have to be made in reverse, the carved into the end of a block of wood in such a manner as to leave the lines which were to be dark raised and the white areas cut away. This created a block which could be used in the same manner as type. To make a stereotype plate, the woodblock would be immersed in a tank of very fine chalk solution which would be allowed to settle and completely cover the image. When dry, this cast would be carefully removed and lead poured into it to create a duplicate of the image, called a "stereotype plate." Many copies could be made in this way, thus providing for multiple newspapers to run an advertisement for the exhibition at the same time.