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Magical Creatures
The Mummy and Miss Nitocris A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension
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184 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1906
38 people are currently reading
109 people want to read
About the author
George Chetwynd Griffith
197 books10 followersGeorge Griffith (1857 – 1906), full name George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones, was a prolific British science fiction writer and noted explorer who wrote during the late Victorian and Edwardian age. Many of his visionary tales appeared in magazines such as Pearson's Magazine and Pearson's Weekly before being published as novels. Griffith was extremely popular in the United Kingdom, though he failed to find similar acclaim in the United States, in part due to his revolutionary and socialist views. A journalist, rather than scientist, by background, what his stories lack in scientific rigour and literary grace they make up for in sheer exuberance of execution.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 10, 2023
A professor manages to get his hands on a real authentic mummy, the mummy of Nitocris no less, the Egyptian queen he named his own daughter after. He quickly realizes his daughter not only carries the same name but also shares the same appearance as the former Egyptian queen. Strange things quickly start to happen and the barrier between past and present starts to fade.
That all sounds pretty interesting, right? Well, there is more to this story than that. A lot more, unfortunately. There’s also a mysterious Egyptian miracle-worker showing up using what seems like actual magic, a duo trying to steal the mummy, the vanishing of said mummy, the fourth dimension, elements of a spy thriller, traces of a romantic drama, …
The best way to describe this book would be: too many cooks spoil the broth. It’s like an army of cooks all got together to make one batch of tomato soup. Everyone put in their own special ingredients to spice up the soup but when it is done, there are so many other ingredients in there that you can’t even taste a hint of tomato anymore. There is simply so much extra stuff going on, you quickly forget the core of the story.
That all sounds pretty interesting, right? Well, there is more to this story than that. A lot more, unfortunately. There’s also a mysterious Egyptian miracle-worker showing up using what seems like actual magic, a duo trying to steal the mummy, the vanishing of said mummy, the fourth dimension, elements of a spy thriller, traces of a romantic drama, …
The best way to describe this book would be: too many cooks spoil the broth. It’s like an army of cooks all got together to make one batch of tomato soup. Everyone put in their own special ingredients to spice up the soup but when it is done, there are so many other ingredients in there that you can’t even taste a hint of tomato anymore. There is simply so much extra stuff going on, you quickly forget the core of the story.
September 30, 2025
I've recently loaded up my e-reader with a large selection of early science fiction and fantasy titles from Project Gutenberg, after a binge on classic mysteries from the same source. I've often steered clear of early SFF, because it has, let's say, very different strengths from current SFF - it might as well be a different genre in many ways. But there is some good stuff out there - I know, from having read some now and again - and I'm going to explore and see if I can find some more.
The thing about reading hundred-year-old fiction is that the preoccupations and the tropes and the stock characters are very different. (And the prevailing ideologies, naturally.) Anything involving science, too, is liable to involve what we would think of as pseudoscience. That's certainly true of this one.
The central characters are an English professor of mathematics and his daughter, who he named Nitocris after an ancient Egyptian queen, since he's a keen amateur Egyptologist. But it turns out that she is in fact the reincarnation of the ancient queen, and he is the reincarnation of a priest who fell in love with the queen (don't think too hard about them now being father and daughter, or things will become more like ancient Egyptian royalty than modern minds are generally comfortable with) and helped her avenge herself on the murderer of her husband. Of course, the murderer and his associate, another priest, have also been reincarnated, and set out to play their villainous role over again.
Meanwhile, though, the professor, musing on a proposition of Euclid, comes to a gnostic realization of the nature of the fourth dimension, which gives him superpowers. He can become invisible, see into the past and great distances away, and so forth. He confounds his learned peers and rivals by demonstrating three supposed impossibilities: trisecting the triangle, squaring the circle, and doubling the cube (all of which, by that point, had been proved to be impossible with the ancient tools of compass and straightedge, though mathematical cranks continued to try). And then Nitocris, his highly intelligent and well-educated daughter, is raised to a knowledge of her heritage and gets superpowers too, and they decide to use them to solve the mystery of the disappearance of a possible future elective Tsar of Russia, depending how the revolution goes (this is 1906, a couple of years before World War I and several more before the Bolshevik victory). Of course, one of the villains, the reincarnation of the murderer of original-Nitocris's husband, is involved in that disappearance; he's a rival for the imperial throne. His sidekick, the reincarnation of the wicked priest, performs wonders similar to those performed on the music hall stage of the period, some of which were rumoured to be performed by Indian fakirs, but does so out in the open and in the middle of a circle of scientific skeptics, to their extreme annoyance and puzzlement.
Meanwhile, Nitocris wants to marry a naval officer, which her father (who, like many intellectuals of the time, believes in eugenics) opposes, being bitterly opposed to war and warriors. She also manages to pair up an unsuccessful suitor of hers with her American friend, who's the daughter of the professor's chief rival - though the two academics are friends of a sort when they're not trying to tear down each other's arguments.
So, we have: reincarnation (presented by the author as if it was a pretty obvious truth), superpowers arising from the understanding of abstruse mathematics, mystery, international politics, academic politics, two romances, and the plot of the reincarnated villains against the reincarnated Nitocris and her priest, now father. All of these are intertwined like a ball of snakes.
It's a complex way to approach a plot, and should only be attempted by experienced authors. This one, I think, largely pulls it off; he was at the end of his life when he wrote it, and although critics considered his powers were waning (under the influence of alcoholism, which killed him), he does juggle and intertwine the various strands capably. Having so many of them does mean that some remain underdeveloped, notably the romance subplots, which barely get any time devoted to them - not only on the page, but in the lives of the participants. The disappearance and reappearance of the mummy of the title is never explained in any way whatsoever; it just falls under "a wizard did it".
He's not the greatest prose stylist, and his characters and descriptions can be thin and stereotyped. Nitocris, for instance, is simultaneously a nice early-20th-century Gibson girl from a prosperous English background and a ruthless ancient Egyptian, and the contrast is sometimes jarring, because neither side of her has much depth, and so it's simply a contradiction with no bridge in the middle. Griffith also shares the usual anti-foreign bias of his time; practically anyone who's not English is automatically and obviously a villain, with an exception granted for the Americans (who are, however, portrayed as odd people talking a slangy dialect). He conveys the distinct impression that simply by being born English, the professor had taken a big step up from his previous incarnations.
Overall, it's an interesting idea but a less-than-amazing execution, and just makes it into the lowest tier of my annual recommendation list.
The thing about reading hundred-year-old fiction is that the preoccupations and the tropes and the stock characters are very different. (And the prevailing ideologies, naturally.) Anything involving science, too, is liable to involve what we would think of as pseudoscience. That's certainly true of this one.
The central characters are an English professor of mathematics and his daughter, who he named Nitocris after an ancient Egyptian queen, since he's a keen amateur Egyptologist. But it turns out that she is in fact the reincarnation of the ancient queen, and he is the reincarnation of a priest who fell in love with the queen (don't think too hard about them now being father and daughter, or things will become more like ancient Egyptian royalty than modern minds are generally comfortable with) and helped her avenge herself on the murderer of her husband. Of course, the murderer and his associate, another priest, have also been reincarnated, and set out to play their villainous role over again.
Meanwhile, though, the professor, musing on a proposition of Euclid, comes to a gnostic realization of the nature of the fourth dimension, which gives him superpowers. He can become invisible, see into the past and great distances away, and so forth. He confounds his learned peers and rivals by demonstrating three supposed impossibilities: trisecting the triangle, squaring the circle, and doubling the cube (all of which, by that point, had been proved to be impossible with the ancient tools of compass and straightedge, though mathematical cranks continued to try). And then Nitocris, his highly intelligent and well-educated daughter, is raised to a knowledge of her heritage and gets superpowers too, and they decide to use them to solve the mystery of the disappearance of a possible future elective Tsar of Russia, depending how the revolution goes (this is 1906, a couple of years before World War I and several more before the Bolshevik victory). Of course, one of the villains, the reincarnation of the murderer of original-Nitocris's husband, is involved in that disappearance; he's a rival for the imperial throne. His sidekick, the reincarnation of the wicked priest, performs wonders similar to those performed on the music hall stage of the period, some of which were rumoured to be performed by Indian fakirs, but does so out in the open and in the middle of a circle of scientific skeptics, to their extreme annoyance and puzzlement.
Meanwhile, Nitocris wants to marry a naval officer, which her father (who, like many intellectuals of the time, believes in eugenics) opposes, being bitterly opposed to war and warriors. She also manages to pair up an unsuccessful suitor of hers with her American friend, who's the daughter of the professor's chief rival - though the two academics are friends of a sort when they're not trying to tear down each other's arguments.
So, we have: reincarnation (presented by the author as if it was a pretty obvious truth), superpowers arising from the understanding of abstruse mathematics, mystery, international politics, academic politics, two romances, and the plot of the reincarnated villains against the reincarnated Nitocris and her priest, now father. All of these are intertwined like a ball of snakes.
It's a complex way to approach a plot, and should only be attempted by experienced authors. This one, I think, largely pulls it off; he was at the end of his life when he wrote it, and although critics considered his powers were waning (under the influence of alcoholism, which killed him), he does juggle and intertwine the various strands capably. Having so many of them does mean that some remain underdeveloped, notably the romance subplots, which barely get any time devoted to them - not only on the page, but in the lives of the participants. The disappearance and reappearance of the mummy of the title is never explained in any way whatsoever; it just falls under "a wizard did it".
He's not the greatest prose stylist, and his characters and descriptions can be thin and stereotyped. Nitocris, for instance, is simultaneously a nice early-20th-century Gibson girl from a prosperous English background and a ruthless ancient Egyptian, and the contrast is sometimes jarring, because neither side of her has much depth, and so it's simply a contradiction with no bridge in the middle. Griffith also shares the usual anti-foreign bias of his time; practically anyone who's not English is automatically and obviously a villain, with an exception granted for the Americans (who are, however, portrayed as odd people talking a slangy dialect). He conveys the distinct impression that simply by being born English, the professor had taken a big step up from his previous incarnations.
Overall, it's an interesting idea but a less-than-amazing execution, and just makes it into the lowest tier of my annual recommendation list.
October 7, 2022
🔻 Genre: Supernatural/occult fiction.
✔️Published in 1906.
👁 Point of view: Third person.
🖊 My review: I find The Mummy And Miss Nitocris to be one that I can read quickly. The story has a smooth plot and the characters, although sometimes over the top in their actions, are well enough developed for this genre. No matter how many times I read this story, it always is a fun sort of fictional novel that has some clever plot twists and dialogue. It is good escapism, à la turn of the century style.
🔥 Dénouement: Melodramatic.
🔲 Excerpts :
🖋 The writing style: Melodramatic, and that makes the story more interesting.
🗝 What I learned: Anything goes in supernatural and occult fiction.
💫 What I like best: The ancient Egyptian theme, of course.
📌 Would I read this again? Yes. And I have.
🤔 My rating 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
◼️ Fun fact: Ancient Egyptian themes are one of my favorite genres.
🟣 Media form: Kindle version.
✔️Published in 1906.
👁 Point of view: Third person.
🖊 My review: I find The Mummy And Miss Nitocris to be one that I can read quickly. The story has a smooth plot and the characters, although sometimes over the top in their actions, are well enough developed for this genre. No matter how many times I read this story, it always is a fun sort of fictional novel that has some clever plot twists and dialogue. It is good escapism, à la turn of the century style.
🔥 Dénouement: Melodramatic.
🔲 Excerpts :
🔸 “Two bodies cannot occupy the same space. It is ridiculous, impossible!"
🔸 Miss Nitocris Marmion, the golden-haired, black-eyed daughter of one of the most celebrated mathematicians and physicists in Europe [exclaimed], "Oh, what a perfectly lovely mummy! Just fancy!—the poor thing—dead how many years? Something like five thousand, isn't it? And doesn't she look just like me! I mean, wouldn't she, if we had both been dead as long?"
🔸 Her lips returned his kisses—kisses that were curses—and then for many minutes they conversed in hurried whispers. At last she slipped out of his arms and left him, his lips burning from the clinging touch of hers, and his heart cold with a fear that was greater than the fear of death.
🖋 The writing style: Melodramatic, and that makes the story more interesting.
🗝 What I learned: Anything goes in supernatural and occult fiction.
💫 What I like best: The ancient Egyptian theme, of course.
📌 Would I read this again? Yes. And I have.
🤔 My rating 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
◼️ Fun fact: Ancient Egyptian themes are one of my favorite genres.
🟣 Media form: Kindle version.
September 3, 2021
Pure fun. Written around the turn of the 20th century, the author imagines the 4th dimension, a type of time travel that allows one to experience the past by thinking about it intensely! The plot bounces from ancient Egypt to "modern" times, exposes scholastic and scientific competition to the judgement of the times, and meddles in Russian politics as the revolution nears. All with a highly educated heroine who is ahead of her times.
December 12, 2023
Interesting but flawed
Very much an early science-fictional romance, and as that it’s pretty good. Conceptually jumbled — the fourth dimension is simultaneously a spatial one and a temporal one, and reincarnation is added in. The denouement is a bit of a letdown—after a buildup in which great and dire consequences are promised, it’s all over in a few paragraphs.
Not sorry I read it, as it does have some charm, but overall not good enough to reread.
Very much an early science-fictional romance, and as that it’s pretty good. Conceptually jumbled — the fourth dimension is simultaneously a spatial one and a temporal one, and reincarnation is added in. The denouement is a bit of a letdown—after a buildup in which great and dire consequences are promised, it’s all over in a few paragraphs.
Not sorry I read it, as it does have some charm, but overall not good enough to reread.
March 21, 2020
Absolutely nothing like what I was expecting! A fantastic read from beginning to end.
March 23, 2014
Boring. Gave up on it early.
March 8, 2016
Is it a horror story? A political commentary? A spy thriller? A story of Ancient Egypt? A romance? This 1906 novel has elements of all these things, but fails to fully engage.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews