the first participatory project on the ethics of human remains in museums; The Lyme Museum, an online museum making invisible illnesses and disabilities visible; Museum Takeover, an award-winning relabeling of museum collections by refugees and asylum-seekers.
Stienne applied the "Page 99 Test" to her 2022 book, Mummified: The Stories Behind Egyptian Mummies in Museums, and reported the following:
Page 99 of Mummified begins, satisfyingly for an author, with a new sentence; in fact, with a new story. The first line reads ‘An antiquarian enters an antique shop in Paris searching for a novel paperweight’.Visit Angela Stienne's website.
As I am also Parisian, and rather fond of antique shops, it is a favourite story of mine. But what the antiquarian finds, I personally have never found during my wanders in Paris. And I am rather glad of it. Because in this very antique shop, the man discovers, rather pleased with himself, a paperweight in the shape of a foot. But before too long, he realizes that it is not simply in the shape of a foot: it is a foot. That of a mummified body from ancient Egypt! And as if this was not unsettling enough, the foot comes to life! I won’t spoil the ending of the story for you; not simply because I want you to read the book, but because the story continues on page 100, which is outside of the remits of this exercise.
Page 99 tells an excellent story. I can say that with confidence, not because I have developed a bit of an ego as an author, but because I did not, in fact, write that story. The fantastic story of a mummified foot coming to life is from a short story titled ‘Le Pied de Momie’, published in 1840 and written by the famous French author Théophile Gautier, who also wrote the novel Roman de la Momie, published in 1858. Then, is a story that I did not write representative of the book I did write? Absolutely! Not only is it paradigmatic of attitudes towards Egyptian mummies in collections – it has displacement, romance and unequal power relationships, collecting histories, and even takes us to ancient Egypt – but it also was inspired by a very real mummified foot owned by the then director of the Musée du Louvre, Dominique Vivant Denon, who brought it from Egypt when he went on Napoleon’s expedition. Denon himself wrote a book about this story, and other adventures, in Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte (1802) and had individuals visit his private collection to see the foot… including Gautier! There is so much to unpack in this little story; and anyone who has attended a talk of mine knows that Denon is one of my favourite research areas. So, page 99 is simply perfect to me: it introduces both my personal research, and the topics of my book, without unveiling any part of my writing… an invitation to read my book, and to visit more antique shops in Paris!
--Marshal Zeringue
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