Page 37 - 08_Oct-2025

THE
SECRET
LIFE OF
Horus
Tracing a mummy’s
strange odyssey, from ancient Egypt to Edmonton, and the secrets still entombed
The first time students asked Dr. Jocelyn Hendrickson
about an Egyptian mummy hidden in a basement at the University
of Alberta, she brushed it off. Apparently, a student had opened the
door to a storage closet somewhere on campus and — the horror! —
a mummy came tumbling out. Spooky campus legends are not really
Hendrickson’s thing; she’s a professor specializing in Islamic legal
history in medieval and early modern North Africa, not a scriptwriter
for Scooby Doo.
But a year later, when a different group of students came with the
same questions, Hendrickson decided to look into it. Poking around
on the Internet, she found a Reddit thread about “Creepy/Haunted
Places on Campus” that mentioned rumours of a potentially cursed
Egyptian priest. According to legend, a visiting researcher became
so obsessed with the ancient priest that he gradually retreated from
the world, refusing to leave the mummy’s side until he was forcefully
removed by campus security.
Now Hendrickson was really intrigued. She checked with her
colleagues and spoke to Christine Conciatori, director of University
of Alberta Museums. They all confirmed that there was indeed an
Egyptian mummy housed in an undisclosed location on campus. But
he — not “it” — wasn’t stashed away in a basement broom closet: he
was an official part of the university collections.
When discussing this venerable member of the university com-
munity, Conciatori chooses her words carefully, noting that in recent
years the term “mummified person” has increasingly replaced
“mummy” in Western museums. Others prefer the word “ancestor”
but, in the Canadian context, this could be misinterpreted as
referring to a deceased Indigenous person. “Egyptian ancestor”
may seem like a better fit; however, this is potentially problematic
as well, since the people and culture of modern Egypt are not direct
continuations of those from antiquity.
So, we are back to “mummy,” which, while accurate enough
(the word comes from the Persian/Arabic mūmiya, referring to the
bituminous resin used during embalming), unfortunately conjures up
spooky images of undead figures blindly ambulating about in toilet
paper wrappings. “We’ve lost the perspective that we’re looking at a
person,” Conciatori says. “We need to treat this person with dignity.
It’s not a freakshow.”
words by Russell Cobb and Sarah Brandvold ILLustration by glenn harvey
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