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The Mummy (novel)
Encyclopedia
The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned, is a 1989 standalone historical-horror
novel by Anne Rice
. Taking place during the early twentieth century, it follows the collision between a British
archeologist's family and a resurrected
mummy
. Though the novel ends with the statement, "The Adventures of Ramses the Damned Shall Continue", no sequel
has yet been published.
in 1914, a wealthy shipping-magnate-turned-archaeologist, Lawrence Stratford, discovers an unusual tomb. The mummy inside, in its left-behind notes, claims to be the famed pharaoh
Ramses II
, despite the tomb's dating only to the first century B.C. (the historical Ramses II died in 1224 B.C.). Before he can fully investigate this claim, Lawrence unexpectedly falls dead, and those around him fear he was the victim of a curse
placed on the tomb. Nonetheless, the mummy and other belongings are shipped off to London
, and placed on temporary display in Lawrence's house before they are taken by the British Museum
.
Lawrence's daughter Julie Stratford is the designated heir to her father's shipping company, as well as the dysfunctional family
that surrounds it. Her cousin Henry is an alcoholic and gambling addict who has been draining the family fortune with the aid of her uncle. Julie is engaged to marry Alex Savarell, a viscount
and son of Elliott, the current Earl
of Rutherford. Although the marriage is a standard alliance between the wealthy Stratfords and an impoverished family of nobles, Alex truly loves Julie, though she is unable to return these feelings.
Into this unstable situation comes the mummy Ramses, who awakes shortly after his sarcophagus
is placed in Julie's house.
and, with the help of an eager Julie, is given a tour of modern London and new technology that had arisen during the past two thousand years. While Henry's accusations are passed off as the rantings of a drunkard, the elderly and ailing Elliott Savarell suspects that it may be the truth. He trails Ramses and comes to believe that he is who Henry claims him to be.
During Ramses's reign as pharaoh, he had learned from a Hittite
priestess the formula for an elixir that grants eternal life. The potion not only made him immortal
, but also allows his body to regenerate from damage that would kill a normal human, such as multiple bullet wounds. He requires neither food nor drink nor sleep, and only the sun's rays to maintain his life. However, he still craves food and certain other physical pleasures, like sex, smoking, and alcohol.
Ramses nurses a deep secret. Prior to the Roman
conquest of Egypt
, he had served as an immortal advisor to its kings and queens, and the last person to awake him for consultation had been Cleopatra, the last ruler of Egypt. Although he served as Cleopatra's counsel (and encouraged her to romance Julius Caesar
in a bid to keep the country independent), he had also fallen in love with her, and had revealed to her the secrets of the elixir. Having fallen in love with Mark Antony
in defiance of Ramses's advice, Cleopatra refuses the elixir and chooses suicide upon Antony's death. In his depression, Ramses had given himself the name "Ramses the Damned", and had Egyptian priests seal him away underground.
With Julie's encouragement, Ramses begins to recover. While Henry is convinced that Ramses is an evil monster ready to kill the entire family, Elliott reads Lawrence's notes and chases after Ramses to learn the secret of the elixir of immortality. Eventually, Ramses and Julie decide to visit Egypt one last time so that Ramses can say good-bye to his past. Although Ramses appears to be coming to terms with his past, upon visiting the Cairo Museum, he unexpectedly recognizes an unidentified mummy as being that of Cleopatra. Breaking into the museum later at night simply to see her, he impulsively pours some of the elixir onto the dead body. Cleopatra is revived, but by Ramses not pouring the entire vial of elixir on her, the restoration is incomplete; she is a half-formed monstrosity, awake and conscious yet with parts of her face, hands, and torso still gone. Her incomplete brain restoration leaves her not totally coherent; though Ramses later repairs her body with more of the potion, she appears to be insane and kills a number of people, including Henry. Cleopatra unexpectedly falls in love with Elliot's son Alex though realizes a life with him cannot last because of his mortality and his innocence. Because Ramses would not give her long-ago love Mark Antony the elixir to save his life, Cleopatra holds a passionate hatred for him and seeks to even the score by killing his current love: Julie Stratford.
Cleopatra ultimately falters before killing Julie, realizing that the girl should not be punished for Ramses's actions. She also comes to regret the other murders she has committed. In an attempt to escape Ramses, Cleopatra "dies" when her car is hit by a train and is consumed by a fiery explosion so hot that it "could kill even an immortal." Ramses later gives the elixir to Julie after she attempts suicide in her grief for her loss of him, and he promises to stay with her for eternity. To thank him for his help in covering up all the unusual events, Ramses also gives the elixir to a dying Elliott, who drinks it after serious consideration of the consequences: dying miserably, or living eternally even when wishing for nothing but oblivion. Cleopatra has secretly survived the crash, and awakens under the care of a British doctor in Sudan
. She vows to find Ramses again someday for revenge.
, those who take the elixir become immortal, inhumanly strong, and unable to die from normal means. These individuals could even be said to be "reverse vampires" since they derive their strength from the sun, and cannot live without it. Unlike vampires, they are able to eat, drink, and function as normal humans.
However, this immortality comes with a strange price. Those who drink the potion are constantly driven to sate their senses. They constantly crave food and drink, although they need neither to survive. They have an extremely heightened libido
. Moreover, their bodies continually blunt drugs that give humans pleasure. For example, Ramses constantly drinks and smokes because the "buzz" the alcohol
or nicotine
would normally give him fades after a few moments.
But perhaps most importantly is that the elixir causes any organic substance to become invulnerable and self-sustaining. Having once tested it upon livestock and crops in his own time, he was horrified to find that such things made this way by the elixir cannot be digested and continually regenerate even inside one's intestines after having ingested them, and cause bloody and gruesome results. And once this elixir is used, it cannot be undone and should one pour it into the fire to be rid of it, it would become dust, awaiting a fresh rain to wash it into the rivers or the oceans, creating immortal fish and sea creatures, or watering plants to become invulnerable. Therefore, the elixir, once brewed, cannot be disposed of by any other means than deliberate consumption.
For this reason, the elixir's formula is strictly hidden by Ramses; although the ingredients are common and easily-obtained, he does not want to create too many ravenous creatures. His feud with Cleopatra began when he refused to create an "immortal army" for Mark Antony's use.
As with many Rice novels, sexuality
tends to be fluid. Both Elliott and Lawrence are described as bisexual - when younger, they were lovers, but both eventually married and had children (Elliott even has sex with Cleopatra at one point). In the past, Henry had an affair with Elliott as well, but his only reason may have been a failed blackmail
attempt (at the time of the novel, Henry has at least two mistresses).
As always, Rice employs considerable irony
. For example, after his death, Henry's corpse ends up in a "mummy factory" (during the Egyptian craze of the early 1900s, natives often took modern corpses and made them into mummies for sale to gullible tourists). Elliott, his nemesis, gets the last laugh when a merchant tries to sell him Henry's mummy.
and H. Rider Haggard
. England during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries fell under a fad
for Ancient Egypt
, a phenomenon also known as Egyptomania
; this movement created many works of fiction which Rice could draw from.
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
novel by Anne Rice
Anne Rice
Anne Rice is a best-selling Southern American author of metaphysical gothic fiction, Christian literature and erotica from New Orleans, Louisiana. Her books have sold nearly 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history...
. Taking place during the early twentieth century, it follows the collision between a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
archeologist's family and a resurrected
Resurrection
Resurrection refers to the literal coming back to life of the biologically dead. It is used both with respect to particular individuals or the belief in a General Resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The General Resurrection is featured prominently in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim...
mummy
Mummy
A mummy is a body, human or animal, whose skin and organs have been preserved by either intentional or incidental exposure to chemicals, extreme coldness , very low humidity, or lack of air when bodies are submerged in bogs, so that the recovered body will not decay further if kept in cool and dry...
. Though the novel ends with the statement, "The Adventures of Ramses the Damned Shall Continue", no sequel
Sequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
has yet been published.
Plot introduction
During the Edwardian periodEdwardian period
The Edwardian era or Edwardian period in the United Kingdom is the period covering the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910.The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 and the succession of her son Edward marked the end of the Victorian era...
in 1914, a wealthy shipping-magnate-turned-archaeologist, Lawrence Stratford, discovers an unusual tomb. The mummy inside, in its left-behind notes, claims to be the famed pharaoh
Pharaoh
Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace...
Ramses II
Ramesses II
Ramesses II , referred to as Ramesses the Great, was the third Egyptian pharaoh of the Nineteenth dynasty. He is often regarded as the greatest, most celebrated, and most powerful pharaoh of the Egyptian Empire...
, despite the tomb's dating only to the first century B.C. (the historical Ramses II died in 1224 B.C.). Before he can fully investigate this claim, Lawrence unexpectedly falls dead, and those around him fear he was the victim of a curse
Curse
A curse is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to some other entity—one or more persons, a place, or an object...
placed on the tomb. Nonetheless, the mummy and other belongings are shipped off to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, and placed on temporary display in Lawrence's house before they are taken by the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
.
Lawrence's daughter Julie Stratford is the designated heir to her father's shipping company, as well as the dysfunctional family
Dysfunctional family
A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior, and often abuse on the part of individual members occur continually and regularly, leading other members to accommodate such actions. Children sometimes grow up in such families with the understanding that such an arrangement is...
that surrounds it. Her cousin Henry is an alcoholic and gambling addict who has been draining the family fortune with the aid of her uncle. Julie is engaged to marry Alex Savarell, a viscount
Viscount
A viscount or viscountess is a member of the European nobility whose comital title ranks usually, as in the British peerage, above a baron, below an earl or a count .-Etymology:...
and son of Elliott, the current Earl
Earl
An earl is a member of the nobility. The title is Anglo-Saxon, akin to the Scandinavian form jarl, and meant "chieftain", particularly a chieftain set to rule a territory in a king's stead. In Scandinavia, it became obsolete in the Middle Ages and was replaced with duke...
of Rutherford. Although the marriage is a standard alliance between the wealthy Stratfords and an impoverished family of nobles, Alex truly loves Julie, though she is unable to return these feelings.
Into this unstable situation comes the mummy Ramses, who awakes shortly after his sarcophagus
Sarcophagus
A sarcophagus is a funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved or cut from stone. The word "sarcophagus" comes from the Greek σαρξ sarx meaning "flesh", and φαγειν phagein meaning "to eat", hence sarkophagus means "flesh-eating"; from the phrase lithos sarkophagos...
is placed in Julie's house.
Plot summary
Henry murders his uncle Lawrence with a poison found in the mummy's tomb. When Henry tries to poison Julie in the same manner, Ramses comes to life in attempt to kill Henry, but succeeds only in scaring him away. After his awakening, Julie and Ramses are instantly attracted to each other. Ramses quickly adopts a pseudonym, "Reginald Ramsey," and claims to be an Egyptologist to throw off the accusation made by the frightened Henry that a "bloody mummy" rose from the crypt to harm him. With superhuman intelligence and the ability to learn quickly, Ramses quickly learns the English languageEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and, with the help of an eager Julie, is given a tour of modern London and new technology that had arisen during the past two thousand years. While Henry's accusations are passed off as the rantings of a drunkard, the elderly and ailing Elliott Savarell suspects that it may be the truth. He trails Ramses and comes to believe that he is who Henry claims him to be.
During Ramses's reign as pharaoh, he had learned from a Hittite
Hittites
The Hittites were a Bronze Age people of Anatolia.They established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia c. the 18th century BC. The Hittite empire reached its height c...
priestess the formula for an elixir that grants eternal life. The potion not only made him immortal
Immortality
Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...
, but also allows his body to regenerate from damage that would kill a normal human, such as multiple bullet wounds. He requires neither food nor drink nor sleep, and only the sun's rays to maintain his life. However, he still craves food and certain other physical pleasures, like sex, smoking, and alcohol.
Ramses nurses a deep secret. Prior to the Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
conquest of Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, he had served as an immortal advisor to its kings and queens, and the last person to awake him for consultation had been Cleopatra, the last ruler of Egypt. Although he served as Cleopatra's counsel (and encouraged her to romance Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
in a bid to keep the country independent), he had also fallen in love with her, and had revealed to her the secrets of the elixir. Having fallen in love with Mark Antony
Mark Antony
Marcus Antonius , known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general. As a military commander and administrator, he was an important supporter and loyal friend of his mother's cousin Julius Caesar...
in defiance of Ramses's advice, Cleopatra refuses the elixir and chooses suicide upon Antony's death. In his depression, Ramses had given himself the name "Ramses the Damned", and had Egyptian priests seal him away underground.
With Julie's encouragement, Ramses begins to recover. While Henry is convinced that Ramses is an evil monster ready to kill the entire family, Elliott reads Lawrence's notes and chases after Ramses to learn the secret of the elixir of immortality. Eventually, Ramses and Julie decide to visit Egypt one last time so that Ramses can say good-bye to his past. Although Ramses appears to be coming to terms with his past, upon visiting the Cairo Museum, he unexpectedly recognizes an unidentified mummy as being that of Cleopatra. Breaking into the museum later at night simply to see her, he impulsively pours some of the elixir onto the dead body. Cleopatra is revived, but by Ramses not pouring the entire vial of elixir on her, the restoration is incomplete; she is a half-formed monstrosity, awake and conscious yet with parts of her face, hands, and torso still gone. Her incomplete brain restoration leaves her not totally coherent; though Ramses later repairs her body with more of the potion, she appears to be insane and kills a number of people, including Henry. Cleopatra unexpectedly falls in love with Elliot's son Alex though realizes a life with him cannot last because of his mortality and his innocence. Because Ramses would not give her long-ago love Mark Antony the elixir to save his life, Cleopatra holds a passionate hatred for him and seeks to even the score by killing his current love: Julie Stratford.
Cleopatra ultimately falters before killing Julie, realizing that the girl should not be punished for Ramses's actions. She also comes to regret the other murders she has committed. In an attempt to escape Ramses, Cleopatra "dies" when her car is hit by a train and is consumed by a fiery explosion so hot that it "could kill even an immortal." Ramses later gives the elixir to Julie after she attempts suicide in her grief for her loss of him, and he promises to stay with her for eternity. To thank him for his help in covering up all the unusual events, Ramses also gives the elixir to a dying Elliott, who drinks it after serious consideration of the consequences: dying miserably, or living eternally even when wishing for nothing but oblivion. Cleopatra has secretly survived the crash, and awakens under the care of a British doctor in Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
. She vows to find Ramses again someday for revenge.
Major themes
Like the vampires of Rice's Vampire ChroniclesThe Vampire Chronicles
The Vampire Chronicles is a series of novels by Anne Rice that revolves around the fictional character Lestat de Lioncourt, a French nobleman turned into a vampire in the 18th century....
, those who take the elixir become immortal, inhumanly strong, and unable to die from normal means. These individuals could even be said to be "reverse vampires" since they derive their strength from the sun, and cannot live without it. Unlike vampires, they are able to eat, drink, and function as normal humans.
However, this immortality comes with a strange price. Those who drink the potion are constantly driven to sate their senses. They constantly crave food and drink, although they need neither to survive. They have an extremely heightened libido
Libido
Libido refers to a person's sex drive or desire for sexual activity. The desire for sex is an aspect of a person's sexuality, but varies enormously from one person to another, and it also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time. A person who has extremely frequent or a suddenly...
. Moreover, their bodies continually blunt drugs that give humans pleasure. For example, Ramses constantly drinks and smokes because the "buzz" the alcohol
Alcohol
In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....
or nicotine
Nicotine
Nicotine is an alkaloid found in the nightshade family of plants that constitutes approximately 0.6–3.0% of the dry weight of tobacco, with biosynthesis taking place in the roots and accumulation occurring in the leaves...
would normally give him fades after a few moments.
But perhaps most importantly is that the elixir causes any organic substance to become invulnerable and self-sustaining. Having once tested it upon livestock and crops in his own time, he was horrified to find that such things made this way by the elixir cannot be digested and continually regenerate even inside one's intestines after having ingested them, and cause bloody and gruesome results. And once this elixir is used, it cannot be undone and should one pour it into the fire to be rid of it, it would become dust, awaiting a fresh rain to wash it into the rivers or the oceans, creating immortal fish and sea creatures, or watering plants to become invulnerable. Therefore, the elixir, once brewed, cannot be disposed of by any other means than deliberate consumption.
For this reason, the elixir's formula is strictly hidden by Ramses; although the ingredients are common and easily-obtained, he does not want to create too many ravenous creatures. His feud with Cleopatra began when he refused to create an "immortal army" for Mark Antony's use.
As with many Rice novels, sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
tends to be fluid. Both Elliott and Lawrence are described as bisexual - when younger, they were lovers, but both eventually married and had children (Elliott even has sex with Cleopatra at one point). In the past, Henry had an affair with Elliott as well, but his only reason may have been a failed blackmail
Blackmail
In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...
attempt (at the time of the novel, Henry has at least two mistresses).
As always, Rice employs considerable irony
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
. For example, after his death, Henry's corpse ends up in a "mummy factory" (during the Egyptian craze of the early 1900s, natives often took modern corpses and made them into mummies for sale to gullible tourists). Elliott, his nemesis, gets the last laugh when a merchant tries to sell him Henry's mummy.
Allusions/references to other works
Rice credited authors of numerous turn-of-the-century mummy stories with her inspiration, including Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
and H. Rider Haggard
H. Rider Haggard
Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. He was also involved in agricultural reform around the British Empire...
. England during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries fell under a fad
FAD
In biochemistry, flavin adenine dinucleotide is a redox cofactor involved in several important reactions in metabolism. FAD can exist in two different redox states, which it converts between by accepting or donating electrons. The molecule consists of a riboflavin moiety bound to the phosphate...
for Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
, a phenomenon also known as Egyptomania
Egyptomania
Egyptomania was the renewed interest of Europeans in ancient Egypt during the nineteenth century as a result of Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign and, in particular, as a result of the extensive scientific study of ancient Egyptian remains and culture inspired by this campaign...
; this movement created many works of fiction which Rice could draw from.
This novel is dedicated with love to Stan Rice and Christopher Rice
And to Gita Mehta an instant inspiration
And to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for his great mummy stories "Lot No. 249" and "The Ring of Thoth"
And to H. Rider Haggard who created the immortal SheShe (novel)She, subtitled A History of Adventure, is a novel by Henry Rider Haggard, first serialized in The Graphic magazine from October 1886 to January 1887. She is one of the classics of imaginative literature, and with over 83 million copies sold in 44 different languages, one of the best-selling books...
And to All who have brought "the mummy" to life in stories, novels and film.
And lastly to My father Howard O'Brien who came more than once to get me from the neighborhood show, when "the mummy" had scared me so badly that I couldn't even stay in the lobby with the creepy music coming through the doors.