No professional position, aside from perhaps police officer and horny pizza delivery boy, is more frequently misrepresented in film than archaeologist. In movies, archaeologists are all dashing figures, risking life and limb in the pursuit of knowledge while arcane artifacts and ancient traps besiege their efforts. Or else they’re perpetually opening sealed, cursed tombs and stumbling into the haunted caves of unspeakable evils in the name of science. But in reality, we all know archaeology is nothing like that. Obviously.
It’s way more terrifying.
#7. The Screaming Mummies
In 1886, Gaston Maspero, the head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, was doing like he do — just taking mummies out of their sarcophagi, unwrapping them, dictating all kinds of boring notes — when he came across an unusually plain burial box. Unlike the kings and queens he’d been working with for most of his career, this particular box didn’t give any information as to the identity of the stiff inside. Even stranger, the body was wrapped in sheepskin, which was considered unclean by ancient Egyptians. When he finally uncovered it, Gaston also found that the corpse’s hands and feet had been bound for some unspeakable reason. And then, as he slowly panned his gaze upward — presumably while violins screeched out a dramatic, building score — he found this screaming, undead face looking back at him:
The 7 Most Terrifying Archaeological Discoveries
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