Do You Dig Mummies?

[Curator Kid]

Yeah - they're pretty cool.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7879366.stm

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

Anyone know why 'mummy' means both:
a-mother,
b-a dead body preserved by er...mummification?:face-huh::face-thinks:

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

Anyone know why 'mummy' means both:
a-mother,
b-a dead body preserved by er...mummification?:face-huh::face-thinks:

[trowelmonkey]

quote:Originally posted by Dirty Dave Lincoln

Anyone know why 'mummy' means both:
a-mother,
b-a dead body preserved by er...mummification?:face-huh::face-thinks:


Oh, I'm so sorry for what follows. I was innocently musing on how awsome a song on the theme would've been by Metallica in their heyday and then my inner pedant got out from the the triple-padlocked garden shed....

mummy: dead person from arabic mumiyah, meaning bitumen or mummy, from Persian mum- wax.

As for nice mummies, she says, sitting on the errant pedant, bashing it over the head with the PIE dictionary, there's a school of thought I rather like which says that it's onomatopaeic, immitating a suckling infant and therefore widespread across human societies.

Again so sorry. Will make pedant excavate gardenB)