Mummies

Mummies are a type of undead first found in fiction of the 19th century and made a definite part of the horror scene with the 1932 movie The Mummy. Usually, "mummy" is understood to mean the Egyptian royal variety, but any dead body of which the soft tissue has been preserved is qualified to be called a mummy.

Etymology
The word "mummy" comes from "mummia", a collective term for any substance used in the Ancient Egyptian mummy-making and any substance made from Ancient Egyptian mummies. "Mummia" itself comes from the Persian word "موم", "mum", which means "bitumen", "asphalt". Bitumen was thought to be used in the mummification process due to bitumen being black and mummies having blackened skin, but research has revealed that if there's even bitumen in the mummy, it most likely got there coincidentally, not intentionally. Bitumen was, however, popularly used in the second millenium to produce fake ancient mummies.

The word "mummy" originally (ca. 1400) referred to the process of mummification, but around 1650 it came to refer to the mummified body too.