THE MUMMY, OR RAMSES THE
DAMNED
By: Anne Rice
Ballentine Books, New York
1989 (pb)
For this year’s "Halloween book review," I chose a
relatively early and relatively obscure novel by Anne Rice, an author
better known for her multi-volume "Vampire Chronicles" series.
In fact, I think it could be argued that The Mummy is actually one
of her very best efforts—a tighter, less sprawling and more focused book
than her more popular tales of the Vampire Lestat—and at times a lot
more scary!
The Mummy builds on the well-known basic plot of the Boris Karloff
1930s movies, which were then replicated in the mid-century Hammer
Productions versions starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, and then
most recently reiterated in the digitally enhanced special effects
extravaganzas starring Brendan Fraser (and in "Mummy II," the
Rock). But Anne Rice then spins the story in her own special way,
introducing complex and haunted characters that weave their way through a
dream-like landscape of 1920s England and Egypt. Sexual themes loom large
in Rice’s invented worlds and they tend to ambiguous in nature and often
violent in practice.
The book opens with the description of a Howard Carter/King Tut-like
tomb-opening by archaeologist Lawrence Stratford. The tomb is not,
however, made of cut stone but of Italian marble and the hieroglyphics
etched into the marble are, to say the least, perplexing. They read as
follows:
Robbers of the Dead, Look away from this tomb lest you wake its
occupant, whose wrath cannot be contained. Ramses the Damned is my name.
Once Ramses the Great of Upper and Lower Egypt; Slayer of the Hittites,
Builder of the Temples; Beloved of the People; and immortal guardian of
the kings and queens of Egypt throughout time. In the year of the death
of the Great Queen Cleopatra, as Egypt becomes a Roman province, I
commit myself to eternal darkness; beware, all those who would let the
rays of the sun pass through this door. (p.4)
This bewildering curse linked Ramses II and Cleopatra, who were
separated in time by a millennium, and it is on this puzzling conundrum
that Anne Rice hangs her story of eternal life, eternal passion, and
eternal madness. While the craft of archaeology is but an incidental
backdrop to this story of doomed lovers moving in and out of time, Rice
does evoke the ambiance of a by-gone era when archaeology—and especially
Egyptian archaeology—stirred the interests and imaginations of the
citizenry of America and particularly western Europe.
So as the nights grow longer and more blustery, curl up in front of the
fireplace and let Anne Rice transport you into the world of The Mummy,
or Ramses the Damned!
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