Thinking of Egypt

Yesterday— while I roamed around the Museum of Fine Arts, I watched people looking at the art. In the Egyptian gallery several boys stood in rapt attention staring at the tools needed for mummification. I think the fascination with Egypt is built into the DNA of boys.

When I taught in middle school one of the teachers read up on the embalming and mummification of a chicken. Mrs. Rooney felt that a hands on approach to learning was the best way to absorb new knowledge.

She started with a plump three or four pound chicken. Several youngsters washed the chicken and removed the innards— then dried the fowl thoroughly. The chicken was then placed in a large zip lock bag with two boxes of salt. According to the directions the salt needed to be changed in ten to twelve days. Sometimes this had to be repeated for four to six weeks—after all the chicken needed to completely dry out. The time frame worked perfectly since this procedure was performed just before winter break. If all went well when school reopened the chicken would be ready for a change of salt.

School reopened and as soon as you walked down the sixth grade hall the smell began its assault—not a gradual aroma, but a pervasive clinging stench. It’s not unusual to find that a sandwich left in a locker rots and sends a strong odor way beyond the confines of an individual locker. Lockers were cleaned out before the winter break so the smell came from some other source. The janitors had cleaned the school and had left a note on Mrs. Rooney’s door. There’s an odd aroma in this room. Since the posting of the note the smell—the olfactory perception— had ripened.

Because the class was intent on surprising the other classes with a mummified chicken —no one was aware of the mummification process taking place in the classroom. The chicken, instead of eventually being trussed with strips of cloth and residing in a shoebox sarcophagus decorated with hieroglyphics, sat in a zip lock bag filled with salt. Instead of reaching a glorified state, it simply turned a pasty color and let out a putrid aroma that pervaded the hallway and every niche of Mrs. Rooney’s classroom.

The zip lock bag was rushed outside, put into a double trash bag and thrown in the school dumpster.




Half a dozen art students copied paintings, a woman with a walker stood in front of a Greek statue of an androgynous young male, and a class of students with their teachers and chaperones rushed through the Assyrian gallery to reach the Egyptian exhibits.

“Do you think they have a brainhook?” said one young boy.