Couple’s quest unwrapped

ANDREW Hansen — known for his ability to make Australians laugh at politics as a member of The Chaser team — has just revealed his other calling.

Since 2009, Mr Hansen and his wife Jessica Roberts, an illustrator, have been working on a book which aims to help young Australian readers to see the funny side of ancient Egyptian history and, in particular, mummified animals.

The Melbourne couple, who were in Hobart yesterday for a booksellers conference, said a visit to the animal mummies section of the Egyptian Mu- seum in Cairo had sent them on an eight-year creative frenzy.

“We saw these weird freakish animal mummies, and thought they needed a story, to be told about their world,” Mr Hansen said.

“These Egyptians were mummy mad. They mummified anything that moved … we saw baboons, crocodiles, goats, bulls, shrews, beetles ... unhatched eggs.”

Ms Roberts said they had narrowed their book’s mummy cast down to Prong, a mummified ibis, and Scaler, a mummified fish, who lived in the city of mumphis with many other mummified species. The animals had been magically brought back to life, after a “smoothie of immortality” was poured over them.

The authors, who travelled on to Syria, named the book’s hero, Bab Sharkey, a 12-yearold boy, after Bab Sharqi, one of the seven ancient city gates of Damascus.

“We’ve tried to throw a lot of interesting details in about the world, and be true to what Egyptians believed,” Mr Hansen said.

While in Hobart, Mr Hansen also slipped into Triple M’s Hobart studios to create some more Chaser material for the radio network.

The book will be released in May.