The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875–1947

Abstract

"Egyptosophy" refers to "the study of an imaginary Egypt viewed as the profound source of all esoteric lore" and reflects the idea – prevalent since antiquity – that the ancient Egyptians were a race of mysterious sages. The academic discipline of Egyptology split from Egyptosophy in 1822 with Jean-Francois Champollion's decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. By identifying Mutemmenu as an "Egyptian Adept" equivalent to a Golden Dawn initiate of high degree, Florence Farr foregrounded the role of the priestess in modern Hermetic magic. Where Farr's encounter with Mutemmenu does echo the wider corpus of mummy fiction is in its occurrence in the British Museum, as museums are often the setting for mummy reanimation. Warwick Gould suggests that Farr may have either associated the last syllable of Nenkheftka's name with the idea of the ka, or else thought she had been the wife of Nenkheftka in a previous incarnation.

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