Connecting Ancient Dots: Peter Coats, Egypt, and King Tut’s Curse

On January 20th, 2022, the Paisley Daily Express published an article (or, really, a ‘reminder’) about Paisley’s “strong links” to Egypt.

It’s an unlikely connection, given the 3,000 miles between here and there, but Renfrewshire ended up with artefacts from Ancient Egypt the same way many other places did. Somebody visited in the 19th century had ‘acquired’ certain items, which were later donated to local museums. In Paisley’s case, that person was Peter Coats. Let’s revisit this bizarre link.

J & P Coats

There’s a piece about the Coats Family in our history section, along with a campaign to save the Coats Memorial. In brief, the family patriarch, James, mastered the art of making silk yarn and spent his career producing crêpe – not the pancake, but a type of fabric with a unique texture.

His sons would later turn their father’s craft into the J & P Coats company, building a mill at Ferguslie. This all happened in the mid-1800s, about 1,800 years after the death of the last Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra VII. 

The Paisley Daily Express reported several links to Egypt in Paisley, including the presence of statues in the town’s churches. Isis and Horus reportedly inspired their shaping. The latter figure, Horus, keeps watch in Paisley’s masonic lodges.

Source: Pexels.

It’s a remarkable story, if true, although it’s a much less visible aspect of Renfrewshire’s ‘twinning’ with an Egypt long since fallen to dust. People looking for more tangible evidence can visit Paisley Museum. 

The Enduring Presence of Ancient Egypt in Popular Culture

It shouldn’t really be a surprise that Peter Coats made his donation of items from “most periods in Egyptian history” (to quote National Museums Scotland) all those years ago, as he did so back when the culture was experiencing a major heyday in the West, sometimes known as “Egyptomania”. Much of this was owed to Napoleon’s unearthing of ancient Egyptian artifacts during his exploration of the region, and then Jean-François Champollion’s subsequent translations of various hieroglyphs, including the famous Rosetta Stone, whiched opened up the doors for deeper understanding of the civilisation.

What Peter Coats might not have anticipated is the way Ancient Egyptian culture has remained so engrained in pop culture ever since. Movies like The Mummy (1999) walked a path left open by Indiana Jones in the 1980s, each influencing their own respective generations of budding archaeologists. Then, more recently, the Ancient Egyptians found digital prominence in 2017’s Assassin’s Creed Origins (coincidentally, The Mummy reboot starring Tom Cruise released the same year). 

There’s also a whole host of video slots like Cleopatra, Book of Atem, and Queen of Alexandria available on the internet. The cloud might seem an unusual playground for a culture that’s spent so long buried under sand, but jackpot slots feature all sorts of cultures from history, including ones that may never have exited at all, such as Atlantean Treasures.

All this is to say that if you weren’t already aware of Paisley’s Egyptian connection, the town may be missing a trick. After all these years, there remains a significant audience for the culture that’s always looking for esoteric tourist experiences, and Paisley would be wise to exploit whatever it has still locked away.

King Tutankhamun

Peter Coats visited Egypt in 1867 with local poet and reverend Alexander Wallace, another person with connections to Paisley’s silk-working industry.

Then, about sixty years later, the Express reports that the father of a local woman, Margaret Orr, of Lochwinnoch, entered the tomb of King Tut with her father, Arthur Mace, an early archaeologist. Mace would die shortly afterwards, reportedly to King Tutankhamun’s notorious ‘curse’, along with up to eleven others.

So, what’s in Paisley’s Egyptian haul? It’s hard to track down exactly what Peter Coats donated to the Paisley Museum, but there’s a beautiful blue shabti (a kind of statue) inside, unearthed during excavations in 1923. A mummy from 1,300BC and a cat that met a similar fate can be seen, too.

From fabrics to ancient curses, Paisley’s connection to Egypt is significant even 150 years after Coats first trod the sands.