Allamistakeo (Poe's Creation)

"Some Words with a Mummy" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe that was first published in the April 1845 issue of the American Review.  Contrary to Poe's usual macabre tone, the piece is humorous and satirical. With a mummy named "Allamistakeo" it could not be in the least bit sinister.

The story concerns the unwrapping and dissection of a mummy which doesn't go as planned. A voltaic pile is used to generate electricity which startlingly reanimates the mummy. The observers and the mummy settle down to cigars and drinks and discuss the history of ancient Egypt, the state of the world at present and the mummy's observations that the people of that time are woefully ignorant of world history, religion, politics and government.

The description of the mummy and coffins do not match with any contemporary sources, so it is not certain from where Poe drew his inspiration. Jasmine Day has explored the different types of coffins mentioned in the story and she determined that Poe's description of Allamistakeo’s burial suite "combined features of different, if successive, eras: an archaising Late Period outer box coffin, two concentric Third Intermediate Period or Late Period inner anthropoid coffins, a Third Intermediate Period body cartonnage, Late Period bead net and Roman Period gilded skin. Also he describes the outer, box-shaped coffin as being of cartonnage (incorrect, it was only used on the innermost level, and Allamistakeo also has an innermost cartonnage). Poe says the mummy has a bead collar (including solar elements usually seen on the upper portion of whole-body bead shrouds) and a bead belt. Overall, the description of the suite elements seems like a pastiche." This miscellany might have been inadvertent, as the evolution of Egyptian funeral assemblages was not yet fully understood. As was mentioned before, he may have seen Padihershef in Richmond during his travels there. Poe was also well-read and could have derived his mummy from any number of published sources.

In this drawing for the story, the mummy appears decidedly non-Caucasian, which is in direct opposition to the ethnological researches of the time which endeavored to prove that the ancient Egyptians were not black.

In any case, the mummy is not scary, evil, or menacing, but erudite, clever, and quite social.

Among the onlookers is George Gliddon, who helped decipher the mummy's name. It is eerily prescient that the name is "Allamistakeo" when Gliddon makes a mistake in a mummy's name and sex when he unwraps one in Boston in 1850!

Although Poe's mummy Allamistakeo is a genial enough character, within a few years that would change with the mummy becoming more menacing and more dangerous.

The artist is unamed but is probably the publisher, Henry Vizetelly as he was trained as both a printer and a wood engraver. His younger brother, Frank, was a well-known Civil War field correspondent and artist, but as he was born in 1830, it would have made him only 15 at the time this book was published and not likely to be the artist.