London 1842. In a Mayfair drawing room thick with heat and incense, a crowd gathers around a long, draped table.

The smell hits first, a sour, resinous sweetness, rising from the 3,000-year-old body laid out before them,

thousands of miles from where it was laid to rest, silk dresses rustle, gentleman crane forward,

as the surgeon slides his blade beneath ancient linen.

Layer after layer is peeled away,

greeted by murmurs of hungry fascination.

A woman fans herself, eyes alight,

a man pockets a bead torn from the corpse.

This isn't history. It's desecration masked as entertainment,

the sacred dead reduced to spectacle. Beneath the candlelit gasps, however, lurk much darker

truths. The Victorians had a problem, a twisted fixation. In drawing rooms and lecture halls,

society gathered for mummy unwrapping parties. As the empire expanded into Egypt, so did its

anxieties and intrigue, fears of revenge, of stolen

treasures, of ancient powers that might strike back at their colonial thieves and a macab

fascination.

Today we're diving into the obsession, the exploitation, and the horrors Britain tried to keep buried.

Was this the Victorian's darkest obsession?

Music And helping us today on this journey into the Victorian fascination with Egypt is Dr. Jay Sullivan, historian and author of Egyptian Gothic 1884 to 1920.

Jay, welcome to after dark.

Thank you.

Great to be here.

We're really happy to have you.

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