Making mummies

LITTLE ROCK — "Ankh-en-orange-en" is a dry subject - the name of a withered doll that helps teach about Egyptian mummies.

The crusty rind of a hollow orange is the manikin's torso. A shriveled potato makes do for the head, and wrinkled hot dogs take the place of arms and legs. Burial in a white mix of salt and baking soda has done the same for Ankh-en-orange-en as the hot sands of ancient Egypt did for the earliest mummies. All out of juice, Ankh-en-orange-en has become, well - a good question.

"Is a mummy an artifact?" Louise Palermo, curator of education, asks her class of 14 docents-in-training at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock. Their job is to be ready for pretty much anything people might ask about the museum's biggest ever exhibit, "World of the Pharaohs: Treasures of Egypt Revealed," Sept. 25 to July 5.

Some questions are easy to anticipate. (Which way to the restrooms?) Some are apt to catch even the experts by surprise, considering this will be the state's first exhibition of Egyptian art and culture, billed as "monumental," and drawing from the Boston Museum of Fine Art's world class collection.

People are bound to ask about mummies, the subject of today's class: how mummies were made, and why, and how a mummy feels to touch, and how to behave around a mummy.

Is a mummy an artifact? It's one of the most delicate questions a docent might encounter - an issue that has been up for debate ever since the first mummies came to light hundreds of years ago.

The answer is "yes and no," Palermo says. A mummy is a human body.But the Egyptians knew how to preserve a body to last for ages, mysterious as the Great Sphinx, dry as a bone.

Some people will say a body is a body, and age doesn't matter. It calls for reverence. Others will say a thing of such antiquity is a relic, a curiosity, something to see. And others are apt to see in the mummy's linen wrappings the look of a Halloween costume.

"Get rid of the mummy movies," Palermo advises - the ones where the mummy comes to dusty, shambling life, and goes on to menace Brendan Fraser in The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor ....

"Get the mummy movie out of your head," Palermo tells the class.

"Think like an Egyptian. Walk like an Egyptian. Be an Egyptian.

"But know that the person in front of you still has the mummy movie in mind."

Question from the class: Does it have to be a potato for the head?

The teacher's response: I have not found potato heads to be particularly fun to mummify.

These soon-to-be docents will join the museum's ranks of about 30 more volunteers already trained to meet visitors, lead tours, and demonstrate hands-on Egyptian activities.

Among the trainees, computer technician Brian Harvey says he and his wife, Dianne, a nurse, were looking for "something we could do as a couple." Enlisting as docents combined a variety of interests.

"I've always liked history," he says, "and she's always liked Egyptian stuff."

He likens the docent training class to a "self-paced, self-study" course equal to a college overview of Egyptian history, complete with homework assignments.

"I love this," he says.

Anissa Sonia-Williams found a new home in Little Rock, and a job in customer service, after leaving New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"The King Tut exhibit came to New Orleans in 1978," she says. "I was 10 years old, and I remember going through it several times."

The Boy King left her with a fascination with mummies, a devotion to The Learning Channel and the ambition to work in a museum.

As soon as the Arkansas Arts Center put out a call for docents to help with Egyptian show, she says, "I called as a volunteer."

Question from the class: What if you don't know the answer to a question?

The teacher's response: If you don't know, it's OK. What's not OK is to guess.

"You're going to get people who haven't been in [the exhibit] yet," Palermo tells the class, "and you're going to get people coming out," people of all sorts, all levels of interest in Egyptology.

This group is near the end of two months' classroom preparation for the display. They have studied 3,000 years of Egyptian history. They have learned how to make Egyptian papyrus ( paper) and jewelry, and how to write in hieroglyphics (Egyptian picture alphabet).

They know, for example:

The Egyptians made a big thing of myrrh. Myrrh is a fragrant resin, a perfume, but how does myrrh smell? The answer comes from a sniff of the yellow powder in a jar. Myrrh smells like a flowery bath salt.

The Egyptians said lots with symbols. People are going to ask: What does the hand mirror shaped whats it mean? (Ankh, a sign of eternal life.) The eyeball? (Eye of Horus, it means protection.) The beetle? (Scarab, a promise of resurrection.)

And they know what's wrong with any statement that begins: "The Egyptians normally ...."

"We don't want to use words like 'normal,'" the teacher says.

It's hard to call anything normal in the shifting course of a long and buried history - except, maybe, that people normally found sand in their food, and their worn teeth show the effects.

Besides, "normal" tends to mean what people think is normal right now, and practically nothing the ancient Egyptians did is normal by today's measure.

"Be careful of putting 21stcentury concepts into ancient Egypt," Palermo teaches.

Question from the class: Do we use the melon baller to scoop out the orange?

The teacher's response: Please remember, this is a boardroom. Try not to get juice all over it.

Now, all the trainees have to do is learn their way through the sprawl of the exhibit's more than 200 objects, including sculptures, amulets, furnishings, royal decrees, coffins ... and mummies.

One reason mummies last so long is that museums don't allow visitors to touch the exhibits. It's not that a mummified figure the likes of "El Hiba," famous in museum circles for the ghastly remains of her rotted teeth, invites hugs. But people generally like to feel the texture of things, and the sense of touch can be an important link to understanding.

"You'll see it, experience it," Palermo describes the exhibit. "You'll be able to touch. That's the goal."

Enter, then, Ankh-en-orangeen.

The doll shows, basically, how the Egyptians made human mummies - scoop the wet pulp out of the orange for a start - and people can make their own Ankh-en-orange-ens, and finger the leathery remains all they want.

In between giggles, the docents will have a chance to advise parents and the squeamish of any age that real mummies are on display, and a dried-up orange isn't the answer to everything.

Egyptian culture focused on elaborate preparations to meet death. The pharaoh demanded a mighty pyramid to enshrine his remains. The Egyptian of lesser means might have to settle for a coffin that didn't fit. The economy send-off is one explanation for the discovery of mummies with missing feet.

But who knows? The feet might have had some other meaning. Hands were important. The Egyptians took special care to keep a mummy's fingernails from falling out. The deceased presumably would need his fingernails in the afterlife.

He would face, for example, the nail-biting prospect of an encounter with Ammut, devourer of the dead, whose crocodile teeth would rend the heavy heart of a sinner.

The Egyptians had their own beliefs - their own set of gods, including the jackal-headed Anubus, god of embalming, watcher of the dead; and blue-skinned Amun, king of the gods.

Some people might take offense at a religion so unlike the churchgoing faith of the Bible Belt, the teacher acknowledges.

"Be honest and factual," she says. "Just say, 'This is what the ancient Egyptians believed.'"

Question from the class:Wouldn't people who are going to be offended just stay away?

The teacher's response: No.

"It's all going to happen," Palermo assures the class near graduation - the show, the crowds, the excitement, the commotion, the questions, the many chances to show and tell people what's so great about the Egypt of such along, long time ago:

"You'll be fine."

More information about "World of the Pharaohs: Treasures of Egypt Revealed" is available on the Arkansas Arts Center's Web site at arkarts.com, or by calling (501) 372-4000. Tickets for the timed entry exhibit are now for sale.

The arts center continues to seek volunteer docents to work during and after "World of the Pharaohs." The next class starts in February. More information is available by calling (501) 396-0351.