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Clodia's Great-Grandfather fought for Napoleon Bonaparte in the Egyptian Campaign of 1798-1801. Like many who served in the emperor's Armee de Orient Clodia's Great-Grandfather vandalized and plundered many of ancient Egypt's monuments and artifacts. Like other warriors throughout time, many soldiers of Napoleon's Armee de Orient took home souvenirs.
The most popular being the mummy. Most were the crudely mummified peasants or workers of Egypt's wonderful monuments. So common was the practice that it became a popular rage in 19th century Europe to ingest the ground up corpse of an Egyptian mummy as a remedy for various ailments or as an aphrodisiac. Clodia's Great-Grandfather, being a common foot soldier could not carry much, so the only artifact he was able to smuggle out of the country was a small head of a mummy.
For years he proudly displayed his war time trophy, his grand children often gathering around the family hearth to hear his fanciful stories of the orient and cower in fear of the revolting head on the mantle. Sometimes, Clodia's father told her, it seemed as if the head turned or moved as if it was still alive and listening intently to the stories of the old soldier.
Years passed, as did Clodia's Great-Grandfather. The severed mummy's head was packed up in storage and forgotten, remembered only in family stories retold at the occasional get together.
Until 1922 when Howard Carter discovered the tomb of the boy king, Pharaoh Tutankhamen. The public attention to the discovery unleashed an unprecedented interest in Egyptology, and soon Ancient Egyptian decor and collecting 'artifacts' became the popular vogue. It became stylish to adore your house with an Egyptian motif accented with artifacts, real or fake. It was at this time when Clodia remembered all the hand me down stories of her Great-Grandfather and his adventures in the Egyptian Campaign. And she remembered the mummy's head.
Clodia had spent the good part of an afternoon rummaging through her Grandmother's attic, sorting through all the collected remembrances that her family had horded through the decades. The fruits of her labor eventually payed off, for in an old wooden box buried under a bag full of old clothes she found a metal tin marked with Egyptian symbols and pictures.Inside, wrapped in old musty cloth was the mummy's head.
It was smaller than she expected, about the size of a cantaloupe. Although there were some ancient cloth still attached to the skull, most of the face was uncovered. With empty eyes and no nose the cadaver's head was gruesome, but knowing that it had come from the time of the Pharaohs quelled any loathing she instinctively had for the object and instead instilled her with awe and wonder. With her Grandmother's blessing, she took the head home to her flat in Montoire and placed it on her bedroom dresser. She took the remainder of the day lying on her bed and staring at the gruesome artifact. Her mind wandered, imagining who the person was and what his or her world was like all those millenia ago. Her new decoration was the floodgate of inspiration.
But that night the disturbing dreams began.
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