As Boris Karloff surely knew, the word mummy came to English via the Medieval Latin noun mumia, which means “embalmed body” and is itself a variation on mumiya, an Old Persian word for bitumen. Bitumen is a form of asphalt once commonly used in cements and mortars, so the Latin mumia was likely coined as an allusion to the gluey resins that the ancient Egyptians used in their embalming process. And one could say, then, that a mummy is merely a sticky stiff.
©2021 Michael R. Gates
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