This chapter uses Alain Corbin's theory that smells were neutralised by modernity to understand how the mummy—a remnant of the past—is strongly associated with smell within the Egyptian gothic genre. Modernity is characterised by sterilised, odourless bodies and societies, while ancient Egypt is depicted as alluring, pungent and hypnotic. Engaging primarily with sensory and sociological historian Constance Classen and literary historians Janice Carlisle and Catherine Maxwell, in this chapter, I argue that the alluring smells of the Egyptian gothic—which stem from forgotten occult knowledge—disrupt the idea of progress as linear by presenting a forgotten form of power channelled through the bodily power of smell. By surviving across millennia, the mummy undermines the idea of the increasingly deodorised fin-de-siècle as the pinnacle of modernity through what Carlisle refers to as a ‘comparative encounter’ between two unequal parties where ‘those who have substance smell; those who smell them do not.’ By actively continuing to smell they offer a form of substance that is more pungent and therefore more powerful than deodorised modernity. Smell operates subconsciously and therefore offers the truest perception of the mummy, if only one can understand what they are smelling.