“The sarcophagus of the pharaoh Seti I, carved from a single vast block of translucent alabaster, cost [Sir John] Soane £2,000 after the British Museum turned it down … Almost 900 people trooped through his rooms and into the basement renamed ‘the Sepulchral Chamber’, where the sarcophagus glowed eerily, lit by candles placed inside. [His] museum recently recreated the experiment.”