David Howell spends a lot of time underground, both physically and in his dreams. He lives with his wife in his grandmother’s basement in Belleville, Illinois, and he passes most of his days thinking about mummies. From the time he saw his first sarcophagus, when he was five, at the Saint Louis Art Museum, he has been obsessed. He spent his childhood reading every book he could find on ancient Egypt, pestering his folks to take him to traveling exhibits. “I remember sitting in the first or second grade just sounding out the name ‘Tutankhamen, Tutankhamen.’”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Howell spent three years as a grad student in Egyptology at the University of Chicago, then dropped out, though he continued to slake his thirst for mummies, traveling the country to visit them, photographing them and translating their inscriptions. In addition to Latin, Greek, and a bit of Sumerian, he can read any of the three languages likely to be inscribed on an Egyptian sarcophagus–hieratic, demotic, or Coptic. He estimates that there are 200 mummies in the U.S. He’s tracked down 137 and has actually seen 90. (He’s found a total of 69 in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin.)
“What usually happens is that someone will have a mummy in their private collection and when they die their heirs don’t know what to do with it. So it ends up in a place like the Ohio Historical Society, in Columbus. There,” Howell grins sardonically, “they have a mummy in a beautiful glass case from the turn of the century, surrounded by American Indian artifacts and mound-builder things.”
