I'm skeptical, too. Let's see what Jerseyman has to say about it.
Gabe:
Thanks for your vote of confidence!
I read through the Wiki-Tiki article, which is probably one of the best, fully cited, entries I have ever examined on that website; then I proceeded to conduct my own investigation into the subject. I concur with the author of the Wiki-Tiki piece when that person writes there is no known primary source records from either papermills or importing/shipping companies that definitively record shipments of either mummies or mummy windings. However, there are a number of newspaper articles contemporaneous to the use reports, including the one cited about G.W. Ryan and his papermill in Marcellus Falls. I ran a quick census check on Mr. Ryan and he, indeed, operated a papermill in that locality. The newspaper article reports,
“What it costs the publisher does not say, but as there are thousands of bodies in Egypt wrapped up in linen folds, it is quite probable that the rags are as cheaply imported as those from any other country.” (
Delaware State Reporter, 05 August 1856, p. 2)
The Dr. Deck mentioned in the Wiki-Tiki article calculated, erroneously, that Egypt likely held millions of wrapped mummies. Two years after the article appeared about G.W. Ryan, the
Lowell Daily Citizen and News published an article in its 06 September 1858 edition, which stated:
“A Boston paper company recently threshed 13,000 pounds of clear sand from 60 bales of rags imported from Egypt, being 22 per cent. of the whole weight. The rags were taken from the mummies in the catacombs, and the sand sifted in by the Egyptian sharpers to increase the weight.” (p. 2)
Various newspapers published other articles, including these two from the 1860s:
“THE MUMMIES OF THEBES.—Messrs. Ayer & Co. have received from Alexandria a cargo of rags to pay for their medicines, which are largely sold in Egypt. They are evidently gathered from all classes and quarters of the Pasha’s dominions—the cast-off garments of Hadjis and Howadjis—white linen turbans, loose breeches and flowing robes. Not the least part of their bulk is cloth in which bodies were embalmed and wound for preservation three thousand years ago. They are now to be made into paper for Ayer’s Almanacs, and thus, after having wrapped the dead for thirty centuries, are used to warn the living from the narrow house which they have so long inhabited, and to which, in spite of all our guards and cautions, we must so surely go.—
Daily Evening Journal.” (
Daily Ohio Statesman, 04 May 1864, p. 3)
“A NEW USE FOR MUMMIES.—A few Sundays ago we heard a clergyman, in illustrating a point in his discourse, state that during the late war a New-York merchant at Alexandria, in Egypt, having occasion to furnish a ship with a freight homeward, was led partly perhaps through a fear of pirates, to load her with mummies from the famous Egyptian Catacombs. On arriving here, the strange cargo was sold to a paper manufacturer in Connecticut, who threw the whole mass, the linen cerements, the bitumen and the poor remains of humanity, into the hopper, and had them ground to powder ; and from this was made a fair white paper. ‘And,’ added the speaker, ‘the words I am now reading to you are written on some of these paper.’—
Bunker Hill Aurora” (
Pittsfield Sun, 15 February 1866, p. 3)
Finally, a squib from the 15 March 1918 edition of the
Daily Herald (New York) reported,
“Paper From Linen Rags. When paper was first made from linen rags is uncertain, but a writer of A.D. 1200 recorded that the linen wrappings round mummies were sold to the scribes to make paper for shopkeepers.” (p. 1)
While I would hardly consider newspapers to be primary sources for documentary historical research, the total number of articles published concerning the subject suggests that at least some trade in mummy windings existed and the most natural use for this linen (and cotton) material would be papermaking. So, in my educated opinion, mummy windings played a minor role, albeit a salacious and notorious one, in the history of papermaking in the United States and elsewhere around the world.
Remember, while advocational archaeology has existed for centuries, the scientific approach of professional archaeology, along with the allied field of anthropology, first flourished in the late nineteenth century. Prior to the rise of such activities, most people viewed mummies as a curiosity of ancient times and found no reason to handle them with reverence or respect. Many nineteenth-century museums exhibited both wrapped and unwrapped specimens to increase pedestrian traffic through the museum, thus raising ticket revenue. What we find repugnant today would not have even entered most people’s minds in past centuries.
Best regards,
Jerseyman
. 
