The Anatomy Shelf Issue #16 (August 2022)
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CONTENTS:
UPDATES:
A note from the Editor, Lauren (@gothicbookworm)
FEATURED:
Handling Human Remains: ‘The Small Skull’ and a Change of Perspective By Emmet Jackson (PhD Candidate, History of Egyptology)
NEW BOOK RELEASES:
Life Between the Tides: In Search of Rockpools and Other Adventures Along the Shore by Adam Nicolson
Fantasy: How It Works by Brian Attebery
UPCOMING BOOKS:
The Medieval Bestiary in English: Texts and Translations of the Old and Middle English Physiologus by Megan Cavell
Undoctored: The Story of a Medic Who Ran Out of Patients by Adam Kay
CFPS:
The Subterranean Anthropocene: Excavation, Extracting, Uncovering
From Classical to Contemporary Literature
UPDATES
A note from the Editor, Lauren (@gothicbookworm)
If you have been keeping up with my social media pages, you will see that I attended the IGA conference in Dublin at the end of last month and visited some fascinating places. I will be publishing some anatomy-themed articles soon regarding various places during my visit, including the Marsh’s Library ‘skull casting,’ the mystery of the mummy at Trinity College Dublin, and the display of mummies in the National Museum. These will be spread out throughout the remainder of the year, so keep your eyes peeled!
The featured article in this issue has been written by my good friend, Emmet Jackson. This piece is incredibly poignant, personal, and thought-provoking. I am deeply honoured to be publishing such an important article in The Anatomy Shelf which contributes to the conversation surrounding how human remains are perceived in today’s society.
FEATURED
‘Handling Human Remains: ‘The Small Skull’ and a Change of Perspective’ By Emmet Jackson, PhD Candidate, History of Egyptology
[This piece contains no images of human remains]
Standing in an unused anatomy museum having been presented with a cardboard box with the words ‘mummy parts’ written on it was the day my perception of ‘mummies’ changed unequivocally. Earlier that day I was very excited to be travelling to my alma mater to view a mummy which I knew lay in the old, unused Anatomy building at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). My previous research at other museum collections had exposed me to animal mummies and mummy wrappings, and even a couple of mummy hands, so I didn’t think this visit would be any different. Having studied science, I was used to approaching research and objects in a logical and analytical fashion. I approached these ‘objects’ like any other, as if I was documenting a taxonomic collection - I took images, measurements and made notes.
Image: Emmet Jackson. (Jackson is working on a future project which looks at the problematic nature of being handed a box labelled ‘mummy parts.’ At the time the photo was taken, no human remains were in the box. There are no images of human remains in this article.)
My work began inspecting the mummy I was there to see - which had been nicknamed Maurice (don’t get me started on naming mummies, that’s a different blog post!). The Anatomy Department of Trinity College, founded in 1711, moved to the new Anatomy Building at the southern end of the college in 1825. Like many anatomy departments of the time, they also held a collection of medical, archaeological and anthropological specimens. The mummy in TCD was a recent enough addition to the collection; as Harbison et al. (2014) states ‘there was an institutional memory that somewhere under the floor supporting the banked searing of the old lecture theatre was an Egyptian mummy’. After carefully clearing the area of the debris in the 1990s the Anatomy Department found, propped against a wall, the mummy in its coffin, amongst jars, specimens and other equipment. It had a note with it saying it had been interned in 1948.
(Newspaper report on the Marsh’s Library Mummy, British Newspaper Archive)
The anatomy department set about trying to find out as much as they could. What is known is that the mummy dates from November 1888 when it was found in a cupboard in Marsh’s Library by the then keeper Revd. Dr George T. Stokes. It was found with a large number of documents that were 70 years old, so it was assumed that it was at Marsh library from at least 1818. The mummy was given to Dr Ninian Falkiner for removal and he brought it to Trinity. He had been a graduate of TCD and the then Professors of Anatomy, Daniel John Cunningham and Edward Halleran Bennett seem to have been happy to take it off his hands.
As the mummy was in a fragile state a decision was made to do a high-resolution CT scan with assistance from the Department of Archaeology and the Diagnostic Imagine Department of St. James’s Hospital. The scan revealed that the head and the right humerus were missing. The scan confirmed that it was a young man. Without the head no definite age could be attributed to the mummy but from other anatomical features the team estimated that the mummy was between 25 and 40 years old. There are several mummy heads in the anatomy department, but none seem to be a good ‘fit’ for this mummy. The provenance of the mummy is also not known.
The missing head was possibly taken to be sold separately when it was initially taken from Egypt, or it was lost in another anatomical collection. This physical detachment probably served as a mental detachment for me too: this was an object - not a body. The mummy was kept in a medical body bag, and this modern physical item associated with death jarred slightly, not just with concerns about the conservation status of the mummy, but also highlighting that this was a human body. I worked on taking my notes and measurements while being observed by the countless skulls that sat peering from the wall of cabinets standing behind me, in what is referred to as the skull corridor.
Outside of the Anatomy Building at TCD, University Times
When I finished with the mummy, I moved my attention to the box - I had no idea what I would find. The museum catalogue had a number of entries for mummy heads and other mummy parts, but you never know what will have survived in a collection. The box contained multiple plastic bags of what appeared to be an array of human remains. When all documentation had been done, the box had contained five heads, a tibia, two hands, and a lower leg. I worked through the material slowly and methodically and though I tried to remain objective and focussed, it became increasingly hard to do so. Even though I had some sense of detachment from the objects as human remains, reinforced through the years of mummymania culture that somehow masked their real nature, I was starting to feel odd about handling these objects - my plastic gloves covered in mummy dust.
The heads were of varying quality (in terms of mummification processes and preservation), some had bandages still in place, some had signs of gilding and one still had its false glass eyes in situ. There was one skull that jolted me out of my methodical and detached note recording. From one bag I took out a small perfectly formed and preserved child’s skull. The small skull with preserved nose, ears and lips stared back at me with empty eye sockets, its face covered in remnants of mummy wrapping. The fact that the small skull of a child reminded me that these were human remains more than any of the other body parts was most likely down to having two small children of my own. At once I felt the grief the parents of this child might have felt when the child died. They planned for this child’s proper mummification and burial, they cried, they comforted each other over the loss of their child and now it lay in a cardboard box far from its homeland. The reality and horror of this child’s body being dismantled to have its head sold to a European collector became all too evident. What was more shocking was that the skull was presented to the Anatomy department by a Harry Banks as recently as 1920. I can only assume that the skull itself was collected much earlier in the 19th Century.
Anatomy room, photo by Emmet Jackson
It seems ridiculous that while examining mummies you have to remind yourself that these are human remains, but it’s needed – these are the remains of ancient Egyptians. We view mummies in museums, they appear on our TV screens in documentaries and movies, in books and comics. The overexposure masks the reality of their identities - we often see them as objects – object of fear, curiosity or grotesque horror. For me, the mummy and the mummy parts I had been viewing fell into all of these categories. It’s hard to admit that. It’s hard to admit that I thought going into the Anatomy building that morning I was going to do something ‘cool’, I was going to look at a ‘mummy’. It took the skull of that child to jar me back to the reality of the fact that I was handling human remains, and while we are trained to deal with these human remains objectively, there is room to be subjective; to remind ourselves that these were people facing the same challenges and hopes and dreams as we are.
Author’s biography:
Emmet Jackson studied Egyptology at the University of Manchester where he developed an interest in the history of Egyptology and Egyptomania in the Irish context. His research interests centre on the travels and the associated antiquarian collection and artwork of Lady Harriet Kavanagh, history of Egyptology and Egyptian collection in Ireland. He holds a B.A. (Mod), M.Sc., H.Dip, and PG.Dip. in Zoology and related fields and is a part-time Ph.D. candidate at Cardiff University. He works full time for the Irish Seafood development agency.
Emmet also runs a fantastic website titled Irish Egyptology, CLICK HERE to visit
Irish Egyptology: Exploring the history of Irish Travel, Exploration and Archaeology in Egypt
The Irish Egyptology research project was initiated by Emmet Jackson in order to document, in biographical essays, the contribution of Irish travellers and academics to the study of Egyptology. While many of these are not, by modern definitions, Egyptologists, their interest in ancient Egypt and the varied ways in which they expressed this curiosity are part of the history of Egyptology and Egyptomania. The function of the ‘Irish Egyptology’ project is to trace and document the collections, correspondences, diaries, photographs, and paintings of these ‘Irish Egyptologists’ and to shed light on the social history surrounding these people.
- Taken from Irish Egyptology
NEW BOOK RELEASES
Life Between the Tides: In Search of Rockpools and Other Adventures Along the Shore by Adam Nicolson (Harper Collins) ISBN: 9780008294816 384 pages, Paperback, £8.49
Science - Biology - Development - Marine Animals
The author of The Seabird’s Cry pays eloquent tribute to the intertidal wonders of the sea in this lovingly written and exhaustively researched volume about the creatures that live beneath the waves.
Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month for August 2022
Few places are as familiar as the shore - and few as full of mystery and surprise.
How do sandhoppers inherit an inbuilt compass from their parents? How do crabs understand the tides? How can the death of one winkle guarantee the lives of its companions? What does a prawn know?
In Life Between the Tides, Adam Nicolson explores the natural wonders of the intertidal and our long human relationship with it. The physics of the seas, the biology of anemone and limpet, the long history of the earth, and the stories we tell of those who have lived here: all interconnect in this zone where the philosopher, scientist and poet can meet and find meaning.
In this blend of fascinating, surprising ecology and luminous human history, Adam Nicolson gives an invitation to the shoreline. Anyone who chooses can look beyond their own reflection and find the marvellous there, waiting an inch beneath their nose.
Previously published as The Sea is Not Made of Water.
More information: https://www.waterstones.com/book/life-between-the-tides/adam-nicolson/9780008294816
Fantasy: How It Works Brian Attebery (Oxford University Press) ISBN: 9780192856234 208 pages, Hardback, £20.00
Fantasy - Academic - Genre - Narrative
An exciting and accessible study of the genre of fantasy. One of the dominant modes of storytelling in the twenty-first century, fantasy can mirror contemporary experiences and convey our anxieties and longings better than any representation of the merely real. It is the lie that speaks truth. This book addresses two central questions about fantastic storytelling: first, how can it be meaningful if it doesn't claim to represent things as they are, and second, what kind of change can it make in the world? How can a form of storytelling that alters physical laws and denies facts about the past be at the same time a source of insight into human nature and the workings of the world? What kind of social, political, cultural, intellectual work does fantasy perform in the world-the world of the reader, that is, not that of the characters? Focusing on various aspects of fantastic world-building and story creation in classic and contemporary fantasy, from the use of symbolic structures to the way new stories incorporate bits of significance from earlier texts, this book shows how fantasy allows writers such as Michael Cunningham, Hans Christian Anderson, Helene Wecker, C. S. Lewis, Ursula K. Le Guin, Nnedi Okorafor, Nalo Hopkinson, George MacDonald, Aliette deBodard, and Patricia Wrightson to test new modes of understanding and interaction and thus to rethink political institutions, social practices, and models of reality.
More information: https://www.waterstones.com/book/fantasy/brian-attebery/9780192856234
UPCOMNIG BOOKS
The Medieval Bestiary in English: Texts and Translations of the Old and Middle English Physiologus by Megan Cavell (Broadview Press Ltd) ISBN: 9781554815180 186 pages, Paperback, £20.95
Release: 30/08/2022
Medieval - Animals - Historical - Humanity
First penned in Egypt between the 2nd and 4th centuries, the Physiologus brought together poetic descriptions of animals and their Christian allegories. Translated into a wide range of languages from across North Africa and much of Europe, each version of the Physiologus adapted the text in culturally specific ways that yield fascinating insights for those who delve into this truly global tradition of representing and interpreting animals. This edition provides the texts and translations of the only two surviving English versions: the Old English Physiologus from the late 10th-century Exeter Book and the Middle English Physiologus from the mid-13th-century MS Arundel 292, as well as translations of a range of Latin, French and Old English sources and analogues. Underpinned by a commitment to both the fields of medieval studies and animal studies, this book provides an accessible introduction to the literary history of the Physiologus and the politics of animal representation, asking the vital question: how can we understand humanity's relationships with non-human animals and the environment today without understanding their past?
More information: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-medieval-bestiary-in-english/megan-cavell/9781554815180
Undoctored: The Story of a Medic Who Ran Out of Patients by Adam Kay (Orion Publishing Co) ISBN: 9781398711761 Hardback, £18.99 304 pages
Release: 15/09/2022
Memoir - Medical - Medicine - Reflective
The medic and author of the mega-selling This is Going to Hurt reflects on what happened after he left the NHS frontline in this characteristically sardonic and laugh-out-loud follow-up destined to become a modern classic.
Adam Kay's secret diary from his time as a junior doctor This is Going to Hurt was the publishing phenomenon of the century. It has been read by millions, translated into 37 languages, and adapted into a major BBC television series. But that was only part of the story.
Now, Adam Kay returns and will once again have you in stitches in his painfully funny and startlingly powerful follow-up, Undoctored: The Story of a Medic Who Ran out of Patients. In his most honest and incisive book yet, he reflects on what's happened since hanging up his scrubs and examines a life inextricably bound up with medicine. Battered and bruised from his time on the NHS frontline, Kay looks back, moves forwards and opens up some old wounds.
Hilarious and heartbreaking, horrifying and humbling, Undoctored is the astonishing portrait of a life by one of Britain's best-loved storytellers.
Signed Edition which contains bonus content exclusive to Waterstones
A Standard Edition is available here
More info: https://www.waterstones.com/book/undoctored/adam-kay/9781398711761
CFPS
CFP: The BSLS Winter Symposium – Deadline 30 September
BSLS Winter Symposium 2022: The Subterranean Anthropocene: Excavation, Extracting, Uncovering
From Classical to Contemporary Literature
12 November 2022 — Online via Zoom
Keynotes TBA
“Blue marble” images of earth are often synonymous with environmental campaigns and anthropocentric thinking. But by always thinking of earth from above, have we forgotten earth from below? In recent discussions of the Anthropocene, geographers Maria de Lourdes Melo Zurita, Paul George Munro, and Donna Houston argue that “the role of the underground has been discursively absent from contemporary debates about the Anthropocene”, reminding us that “the challenges of the Anthropocene are very much entangled with the underground’s past, present and future” (2018).
By excavating the subterranean, we can unearth long-held ideologies of knowledge, value, memory, and fear. And literature has long engaged with this too. The subterranean in fiction, from Dante’s Inferno, to Alice’s descent into Wonderland, to Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, represents underground space in myriad ways - as the stratification of the mind, as encountering the repressed, as the invisible labour of the working classes. Literary analysis, too, engages with a subterranean vocabulary of “mining” meaning, of processes of “discovering”, “uncovering”, and “bringing to light”. The specialisation of the sciences across the nineteenth century popularised the idea of the “quest narrative” being a process of seeking truth underground, as geology, palaeontology, anthropology, archaeology and new ideas about “deep time” located epistemologies beneath the surface, yet literature on both sides of this period imagines underlands as spaces of knowledge, history, value, and fear. This symposium will uncover the subterranean anxieties present in the intersection of literature and science and unbury narratives of extraction, depths, delving, and excavation.
The BSLS Winter Symposium will be free and open to all. We welcome 20 minute papers and panels of 3-4 speakers. We particularly encourage submissions from PGRs and ECRs. Topics may include (but are not limited to) the following themes and their intersections with science and literature:
Mining, minerals, and extraction
Tunnelling and travelling underground
The subaquatic subterranean
Water and ice subterranea
Soil, plantlife, roots, fungi
Oil, gas and ‘petrofictions’
Excavation, uncovering, unearthing
Burials and disinterring, bones, fossils
Stone, geology, caves
Subterranean life - mammals, birds, insects, aquatic life, worms
Subterranean, ‘centre of the earth’, and hollow earth fiction
Subterranean ‘hell’ and the afterlife
Please email your bio(s) and abstract(s) to BSLSSymposium2022@gmail.com no later than Sep 30th 2022. Please limit each abstract to 250 words and each bio to 150 words.
More information: https://www.bsls.ac.uk/2022/08/cfp-the-bsls-winter-symposium/
Thank you for reading this month’s issue of The Anatomy Shelf.
If you have anything you would like me to include in the next issue, please DM me on social media, email theanatomyshelf.gmail.com or message me on Substack by Monday 19th September to guarantee its inclusion.
Please also send me your submissions! If you wish to submit to The Anatomy Shelf, please read the submission guidelines & contact information via the link below:
I am looking for written pieces, reviews, articles, short fiction, images, photography, art, and more, all related to the body in history, literature, and art, so please get in touch theanatomyshelf@gmail.com
For more updates, please visit my social media:
Twitter: @gothicbookworm @theanatomyshelf
Instagram: @gothicbookworm @theanatomyshelf
Best wishes,
Lauren, The Gothic Bookworm