There are few Egyptianising elements in this novel by Argentinean author Mariana Enríquez. Even when some common motifs of Egyptomania, such as mummies, are evoked her reference to ancient Egypt is not explicit (it even seems improbable). Two points, however, are of interest to us.
Firstly (553), when Gaspar meets Marita, she is described as a modern Cleopatra:
“La luz del encendedor le había iluminado los ojos muy oscuros, delineados de azul, como una Cleopatra punk” (trans. The light from the lighter had illuminated her very dark eyes, lined with blue, like a punk Cleopatra).
The make-up, as well as the attitude of a self-confident, independent, and even unfaithful and promiscuous woman, as described in the last part of the book, create an image that is linked to the Cleopatra of popular culture.
The next example (565-566) is a reference to a mummy, which could be Egyptian but, equally, has nothing to do with it. Pablo and Julián, homosexual characters in Argentina in the early 1990s, go to a place where all kinds of homoerotic fantasies take place. Both go through different rooms and dark corridors, where they observe and take part in different sexual acts. The darkness of the place awakens in Pablo memories of the past linked to a ‘haunted’ house in Villareal where he and his friends mysteriously entered and lost Adela. Thus, the gloomy and unreal dimension of the house in Villarreal in Pablo's memory begins to repeat itself, transforming his current view of the place of sexual enjoyment and the individual therein. The narrator describes the atmosphere of these spaces as follows:
“Y ahora en vez de pelos y pieles y culos veía a un hombre en el piso con la cabeza entre las piernas de otro, pero ese otro era una momia; veía una botella rota en las manos de una mujer sin ojos; veía a un hombre con una cuerda alrededor del cuello: le faltaba un brazo. No quiso ver más. El pasillo era una fiesta de muertos.” (trans. And now instead of hair and fur and asses he saw a man on the floor with his head between the legs of another man, but that other man was a mummy; he saw a broken bottle in the hands of a woman with no eyes; he saw a man with a rope around his neck: he was missing an arm. He didn't want to see any more. The corridor was a feast of the dead).
The fact that this place is located in an underground cellar helps to emphasise the connection between sex and death, where the beings from beyond the grave manifest their promiscuity. This is explicitly expressed in the depiction of the sexualised character of the mummy who participates in this macabre erotic performance:
“En los pasillos Pablo recordaba ese sótano, al hombre sin brazo, a la momia con una erección” (trans. In the corridors Pablo remembered that cellar, the man without an arm, the mummy with an erection.)
In short, whether or not it is an Egyptian mummy (something that only the author will be able to clarify for us), the usual sexualisation of mummies is reiterated. This is a motif explored is various entries in the database and in my article with Marc Orriols-Llonch, who cites previous studies by Lynn Meskel in this respect, among others.

Author: Abraham I. Fernández Pichel