Although the most famous invocations of ancient Egypt's impact on modern minds are visual – such as Howard Carter's (1874–1939) ‘wonderful things’ – Egypt could enter the body and invade the consciousness by other routes, and not every sensation that conjured visions began from a visual stimulus. Inhalation or ingestion of exotic substances could call forth visions of Egyptian antiquity. Countless archaeological reports refer to the pungent smell of spices that were used to embalm the bodies of mummies, or perfumes that had rested undisturbed in tombs retaining their scent over the centuries, facilitating Egyptological experiences that approached the ancient Egyptian world as it was, its substances drawn inside, and affecting, the modern body. Especially during the first half of the nineteenth century, when the practice of unrolling mummies in lecture theatres was at its fashionable peak, ‘mummy fragments, associated artefacts and particularly the wrapping cloths impregnated with spices and resin were passed around audiences to be touched, smelt and tasted’. In fiction, close encounters with ancient Egyptian substances called forth hallucinations of the past, textual counterparts to opiated tinctures and cigarettes which themselves evoked a timeless decadence. These visions proved akin to reading processes, in which immersion within a text – whether factual, fictional or occupying an ambivalent space in between – stimulates images within the reader's mind. Ultimately, the material experience of ancient Egypt could provide something that the hallucinogenic text aimed to emulate.