Impressive photograph of an Egyptian mummy seller in 1875.

Impressive photograph of an Egyptian mummy seller in 1875.

During the Victorian era of the 1800s, Napoleon's conquest of Egypt extended its history to Europeans. At that time, mummies did not receive the respect they deserved from European elites, and in fact, mummies could be purchased from street vendors to be used as the main event for parties and social gatherings.

The elites of the time used to hold "Mummy Unpacking Parties", which, as the name suggests, had the main theme where a Mummy would unwrap in front of a noisy audience, clapping and clapping at the same time. During this time, the well-preserved remains of the ancient Egyptians were routinely ground into powder and consumed as a medicinal remedy. In fact, the pulverized mummy was so popular that it even instigated a counterfeit trade to meet the demand, in which the meat of beggars was sold as that of mummified ancient Egyptians.

As the Industrial Revolution progressed, Egyptian mummies were exploited for more utilitarian purposes: large numbers of human and animal mummies were ground up and shipped to Britain and Germany for use as fertilizer.

Others were used to create mummy brown pigments or were stripped of their wrappings, and then exported to the United States for use in the papermaking industry and the mummies were even burned in Egypt as fuel for locomotives.

As the 19th century progressed, the mummies became valuable display objects, and dozens of them were purchased by wealthy European and American private collectors as tourist souvenirs. For those who could not afford a whole mummy, disarticulated remains, such as a head, hand, or foot, could be purchased on the black market and smuggled home.

The mummies trade was so fast that even after looting tombs and catacombs, there were not enough ancient Egyptian bodies to meet the demand. And so, fake mummies were created from the corpses of executed criminals, the elderly, the poor, and those who died of horrible diseases, by burying them in sand or filling them with bitumen and exposing them to the sun.