The Dummy Mummy
For decades children from Jackson and across Mississippi visited the state capitol and thrilled to the displays of Native American arrowheads, a menacing nineteenth-century Bowie knife, and a World War I machine gun. But one artifact surpassed all others in popularity—a small, mummified Egyptian princess. Generations of young people viewed the delightfully macabre figure in its red velvet coffin.
A public outcry arose in the late 1950s when the state decided not to include the mummy in the new Mississippi history museum being planned at the Old Capitol. Many letters to the editor decried the decision after it was relegated to a storage room when that museum opened.
The artifact was not exhibited because it did not pertain directly to Mississippi history, but in 1969 another reason to keep it hidden away was revealed—the mummy was a fake. University of Mississippi Medical School student Gentry W. Yeatman, who had been given permission to examine the artifact for a class project, discovered the deception.
Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) director Charlotte Capers wrote in a Delta magazine article titled “Dummy Mummy” the next year: “Last summer, the same summer that saw men walk on the moon, science ripped the veil from another mystery and left disillusion and distress in the wake of an x-ray beam.” Yeatman, Capers wrote, found that the artifact’s “heart was full of nails. Further, her shoulders were built of boards, she had a German language newspaper in her foot, and over her liver was a fragment of the Milwaukee Journal from 1898.”
The mummy came to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in 1923 as part of a large collection of “antiquities” purchased from heirs of Brevoort Butler Jr. of Yazoo City. Dunbar Rowland recommended its acquisition in 1910 when he served as MDAH director; his evaluation of the collection found it to contain nearly “every kind of implement, ornament, or weapon used in the daily life of the Indians.”
Because of its popularity among Mississippians, the artifact was officially accessioned into the MDAH collection in 2012. The Dummy Mummy often reappears in October at MDAH sites—with new interpretation that tells the full story of the artifact.
