Is it true that Egyptians use mummies for fuel to heat their food?
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The story isn’t that Egyptians use mummies to heat their food now, it’s that they used them in the 19th century to fuel their locomotives. We owe this wonderful conceit to Mark Twain, who in The Innocents Abroad (1869) writes, “The fuel [Egyptian railroaders] use for the locomotive is composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose, and. . . sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, ‘D–n these plebeians, they don’t burn worth a cent–pass out a King!’” Lest anyone fail to realize it’s a joke, Twain then adds, “Stated to me for a fact. I only tell it as I got it. I am willing to believe it. I can believe anything.”
Didn’t help. To this day you can find reputable organizations such as the BBC solemnly reporting this “fact” as fact.
All that having been said, a couple points need to be made. First, Egyptian mummies really were–and are–available by the truckload. Originally reserved for the upper classes, mummification eventually became popular with the proles; by modern times, mummies numbered in the millions. A singular burial ground discovered not too long ago is thought to contain 10,000. Second, mummies really were used for bizarre purposes. During medieval times they were ground into powder and used as medicine. Later this powder was used as a paint pigment called “mummy brown,” a practice that persisted into the early 20th century. (Thanks to Carter Lupton of the Milwaukee Public Museum for this information.) So maybe Twain’s comment about a profane engineer should be attributed to a profane painter: “D–n these plebeians–pass out a King. I want to finish this job with one coat.”
