In Search Of The Immortals Mummies, Death and the Afterlife [Paperback]

Howard Reid (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 1999

Everyone knows that the ancient Egyptians were great mummifiers, and their sarcophagi and bandage-wrapped corpses are familiar images to us all. Yet across the vast sweep of history, we find many other great cultures in which the bodies of the dead were preserved as a matter of course.

In coastal Peru were the Chinchorros, whose mummifying culture flowered several millennia before Egypt's, and in the Andes were the Chachapoyas, the 'Cloud People,' a lost civilization which has only recently begun to be understood. In China's Taklamakan desert, the oddly-Caucasian looking people who established the Silk Route, which made possible the first trade between East and West, have left behind stunningly lifelike mummies. The ritually sacrificed bodies preserved in the peat bogs of northern Europe give us an extraordinary insight into life in the Dark Ages. And in the Canary Islands, perhaps most surprisingly of all, lived the Guanches, whose sophisticated mummification techniques - and whose cultural links with the Egyptians - Howard Reid explores here for the first time.

Taking his extraordinary first-hand experiences of discovering and filming mummies all over the world as his starting point, Howard Reid brings these ancient cultures vividly to life. And in so doing, In Search of the Immortals comes to represent his personal quest to find an answer to that most epic and timeless of human problems: the meaning of death.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This vivid, sympathetic account of the world's mummy-making cultures contributes much to the mummy trade, which does such a brisk business these days in books and on programs like National Geographic Explorer and the Discovery Channel that it might seem that there is nothing left to say. Another recent contribution to the genre, Heather Pringle's outstanding The Mummy Congress (Forecasts, May 21), will likely garner more attention this summer, but for its freshness and sensitivity, Reid's should do very well also. Reid, a documentary filmmaker and anthropologist living in England, sets out for exotic regions and vivifies ancient mummy-making cultures, artfully blending living and dead voices. He cites ancient scribes like Herodotus, Tacitus and the Babylonian author of the Gilgamesh epic, alongside accounts of and by the living descendents of mummy makers. Primarily, he seeks to understand "the paths that [these cultures] may have intended to tread beyond life" by examining "the bodies themselves, their attire and tomb accoutrements." Reid visits with the Maku in the Amazon to unravel the mystery of the Chinchorros of Peru, whose mummifying culture predates Egypt's. At a winter camp in southwest Siberia, he learns about the burial rites of the Kazakh nomads' warlord ancestors. He investigates the bog bodies of northern Europe; the peoples who established the Silk Route in China, whose mummies show evidence of an ancient European influence in the East; and the Guanches of the Canary Islands, who shared unexpected cultural links with the Egyptians. This intellectual adventure story focuses as much on life as on death; indeed, the way a culture regards death, the author implies, says much about how it regards life. (Aug.) Forecast: The Mummy Congress might steal this book's thunder, which would be a shame, as this deserves wide readership.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The author, a documentary filmmaker and anthropologist, takes his readers to sites in Central Asia, Siberia, Europe, Morocco, Egypt, Canary Islands, Chile, and Peru, in his attempt to answer fundamental questions about why ancient peoples practiced mummification. He draws upon research from recent excavations at these sites and on the expertise of scholars who accompanied him at various stages of his journey. In the Canary Islands, for example, where the Guanches mummified their dead, he met with local archaeologists and with Thor Heyerdahl, who gave his views on the possibility of an Egyptian connection. In Chile, where the practice of mummification is the oldest on Earth, Reid draws upon the findings of physical anthropologist Bernardo Arriaza, whom he also consulted. With this book, Reid has accomplished the task of bringing little-known cultures to a wide readership. In striving, as he does, for the broadest perspectives "from the anthropological and psychological to the purely spiritual," Reid takes us on a personal journey written in an engaging style. This book should appeal widely to lay readers. For history and travel collections. Joan W. Gartland, Detroit P.L.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 307 pages
• Publisher: Headline Book Publishing (October 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0747275564
• ISBN-13: 978-0747275565
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,264,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This book fills a gap but opens another., March 20, 2002

By 

Alessandro Panzera (Bologna Italy) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In Search of the Immortals: Mummies, Death and the Afterlife (Hardcover)

Reid's work is precious because deals with mummification subject transversal approach. It doesn't focus on a particular civilization burial custom, but analyzes mummification methods and rituals of several ethnic groups around the world. From this point of view the Author filled a gap (at least in mass market books).
On the other hand I must point out that I expected (melius, hoped for) something more technical. Reid travelled a lot and saw mummies, things and places as well as read about them so, in his writing spent (in my opinion) too much time describing his journey experiences for a book of this kind: as pages increase, this book looks more and more a diary (even though a pleasant diary). Moreover, too many conjectures steal pages that could be used for physical descriptions of mummies instead only mentioned.
In the end I can say that was a pleasure reading this book, so interesting and well written. A MUST that leaves you with more lust for knowledge (good thing) and the hope that someone, likely Reid himself, will write on this subject with more data beside personal thought. Soon.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating tour of mummy cultures, October 28, 2001

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In Search of the Immortals: Mummies, Death and the Afterlife (Hardcover)

British anthropologist and documentary filmmaker Howard Reid leads a fascinating voyage of discovery through the mummy-making cultures of the world in "In Search of the Immortals." Calling on his own observations, visits with descendant cultures and the scholarship of numerous experts, Reid speculates on the "worlds [the mummies] once inhabited; into their lives, deaths and destinations beyond death." Beyond this, he hopes "to broaden our own perspective on mortality."

Reid begins with the amazingly lifelike Caucasoid mummies of the Taklamakan desert in Western China, especially known for their exquisite textiles. He describes the opening of a 3,500-year-old grave and the variety of professional, decorative and personal items buried with the mummies, including Cowrie shells 2,000 miles from the sea, a thousand years before the Silk Road.

Journeying to various desert sites he observes the habits of the present day Mongol nomads, noting that the woolen ropes which bind their yurts together are identical to those found in the ancient tombs. In Kazakhstan, his visits with nomads whose ways have persisted for 3,000 years, throws light on the lives of 2,000-year-old "ice mummies," buried in log houses adorned with felt wall hangings and illustrated woolen carpets, many of the bodies tattooed with mythical animals.

But the "Bog People," of Northwestern Europe "share one stark common characteristic: they all seem to have been deliberately put to death." Criminals? Sacrifices? Reid explores the possibilities, going back to the writings of Tacitus and the archaeological record, noting physical characteristics of the bodies which may indicate their status in life.

In Egypt - the only mummy-making culture with a written language - Reid concentrates on the religious beliefs and links with other cultures and from Egypt he moves on to the pyramids of the Canary Islands, where despite 1,000 years and the geographical distance, embalming techniques were amazingly similar to Egypt's, even to hairstyles and toenail bindings.

Exploring the possibility of trade links and echoes of commonality between these various cultures, Reid takes us to the New World where South Americans were preserving their dead 4,000 years before the Egyptians. Though many mummies were deliberately destroyed by the conquering Spanish, new discoveries have been made just in the last few years.

In Paracas, Peru, bodies were placed squatting upright ("in the way most contemporary native South Americans sit to relax, chat, and eat or chew coca") and were wrapped in layer after layer of specially made clothing, "some of the finest textiles ever found anywhere." One mummy bundle weighed 150 kilos. Further down the coast, the Chinchorro deconstructed and reconstructed their dead, making elaborate mummies, many of which show signs of repair, as if they were visited regularly. Mummy techniques in other areas include freeze drying and smoking. In some parts of Peru mummies were kept by their families (as recorded by shocked conquistadors), venerated, spoken to, even washed and changed frequently.

Reid's blend of personal and scholarly observation is highly readable and absorbing. His descriptions of mummies, tombs and artifacts is enthusiastic and visual, bringing these vanished cultures to life in all of their mystery. Sixteen pages of color photographs are a valuable supplement.

His anthropologist's view - Reid spent two years with the Maku, hunter gatherers of the Amazon rainforest, and visited other peoples whose cultures predate the Judeo-Christian tradition - informs his thinking, allowing him to fit clues from the archaeological record into a larger picture. His book is an excellent introduction to the world of mummies and, for those whose interest is piqued, Reid offers an extensive bibliography.