Egyptian Mummy (the first object in Neil MacGregor’s radio series A History of the World in 100 Objects) Hornedjitef captains his coffin. Under the lid are a map of stars and a figured frieze – ship’s log of sailing through the underworld, using a grid of stars to navigate cold galaxies that fog his voyage to forever. In his cedar casque, his amulets about him, organs parcelled up inside, like post sent to the future, his eternal task is surfing heavens set before him, starry-eyed. The figured frieze unrolls like frames of film, showing him sailing to his own Byzantium, among protecting gods and useful slaves. This movie, going round inside the lid, plays to a packed house of one. Reclining, mummified with unguents and tars, Hornedjitef is at the pictures, watching stars. Hornedjitef has stopped in Bloomsbury instead of heaven. Among the lost and found a hundred years, he’s been dumped as luggage left here by the dead, enduring endless sample-takers, probes and smears. Excursions to a hospital, to get some rays, have taken him out of himself. Now, brought to earth, beneath his cartonnage of black and gold, he displays his browned bandages, looking like a tuber. Rebirth becomes a gruesomely forensic comedy, not ending happily beyond the furthest stars but here, exhibited half-dressed. The public see his name-cartouche, his mummy, no canopic jars but maps of naively shaped stars. Something that hope might see – or children draw – lacking a telescope. Jim Friedman