Mummy

We dug and dug and swept away the sand

And kneeling down to peer into the cave

We saw a body wrapped from strand to strand

A mummy in its royal grave

We came to resurrect the ancient Pharaoh

Not with ancient arts, magic spells, nor necromancy

No, no nothing quite that fancy

We ground his bones and made a poultice of the marrow

Then sold the morbid mess to an apothecary

Who mixed the potion with a leaf of golden yarrow

And an ounce or two of Andalusian Sherry

Lady Marymount and her husband, Sir Fitzhugh

Were prescribed a daily dosage of the Pharaoh’s nectar

So her headaches might relent

And the nectar might his gout subdue

But in the night there roamed the Pharaoh’s specter

Floating through the mansion’s silent gloom

And no power nor priest nor pleading rector

Could stay the Pharaoh from his tomb

And he took the Lady and the Baron

His essence flowing through them like a pus

And like the dreaded ferryman, Charon

The raging Pharaoh came for us

Now we lie there with the Pharaoh side by side

There in Egypt in that self same cave

The two of us, the rotting Baron and his bride

Preserved forever in the Pharaoh’s fetid grave

Charon, the Ferryman to the Underworld, Jose Ben LLiure y Gil, 1919

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For several hundred years, peaking in the 16th and 17th centuries, many Europeans, including royalty, priests and scientists, routinely ingested remedies containing the remains of mummies stolen from Egyptian tombs.