The answer is probably yes, though there aren’t many recorded incidents of it happening. The story though illustrates just how commonplace Mummies were in Europe from the 15th-19th centuries.
Let’s unwrap what happened. Mummies were imported into Europe in huge numbers as far back as the Middle Ages where they were ground up and used in medicines. While Italian merchants initially went to Egypt for spices, mummies quickly became a profitable side business. Ground mummy was a staple of the medieval and early modern apothecary and was used to treat a wide variety of different conditions. The evidence is limited but people likely believed that mummies contained part of a person’s life force or energy which could be harnessed to benefit them. At the same time Europeans were berating American natives for cannibalism they were practising it on a massive scale. Francis Bacon commented that “mummy hath great force in staunching of blood” while Robert Boyle, the man generally regarded as the first modern chemist, suggested ““one of the useful medicines commended and given by our physicians for falls and bruises”. King Francis I of France was even known to carry an amulet containing ground mummy and rhubarb.
As an interesting aside other forms of medicinal cannibalism were widespread during the early modern period. Thomas Willis a 17th century Oxford doctor mixed a anti bleeding medicine made from powdered skull and chocolate while his monarch, King Charles II, a man whose bizarre food was ambergris and eggs, also enjoyed drinking powdered skull mixed with alcohol.
Now back to Egypt. The mummies destined for export were procured by Egyptian traders who worked on an industrial scale, while some were uncovered by builders or farmers, others came from what were termed ‘mummy pits’, huge excavations at historic sites across Egypt. John Sanderson, an English merchant here describes his visit to the largest mummy pits at Memphis in 1584 “[W]e were let down by ropes, as into a well, with waxe-candles burning in our hands, and so walked upon the bodies of all sorts and sizes … they gave no noisome smell at all .. I broke of all the parts of the bodies to see how the flesh was turned to drugge, and brought home divers heads, hands, armes and feet, for a shew; we brought also 600 pounds for the Turkie Companie in pieces; and brought into England in the Hercules: together with a whole body: they are lapped in above an hundred double of cloth, which rotting and pilling off, you may see the skin, flesh, fingers and nayles firme, altered blacke.”
While there was a fairly secure supply of actual mummies when times stocks were low. Alexandrian merchants were known to supplement their stock with homemade mummies of executed criminals.
In the 16th century the trade began to steadily increase as mummies began to be used as the base ingredient in a paint called ‘Mummy Brown’. The pigment was employed until the 20th century, reaching its greatest popularity in the mid 19th century when it was a favourite of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. Surprisingly many artists were shocked to discover the paint contained actual mummy, for example the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones “said the name must be only borrowed to describe a particular shade of brown — but when assured that it was actually compounded of real mummy, he left us at once, hastened to the studio, and returning with the only tube he had, insisted on our giving it decent burial there and then.
Mummy brown was last recorded as being produced around 1964, though had not been widely used since the 1920s.
Throughout this whole period mummies were unwrapped with varying degrees of care for the entertainment of crowds. Thomas “Mummy” Pettigrew became famous for his unrollings in the 1830s though the practise is recorded in England as far back as the 1660s. Some wealthy people even held there own private unrollings at home. The stories of burnings probably originated with these private investigations when collectors disposed of the remains which weren’t of interest. Mark Twain also records mummies being used as locomotive fuel in Egypt during the 1870s, though this is likely a tall story to entertain his readers. The amount of mummies needed to power a train would be astronomical. Rural Egyptians have burned mummies for fuel at various points in history, although the practise appears to be very rare. As I’ve established they were far more valuable as export commodities.
Finally, animal mummies which were considered to be of lesser value were commonly sold as fertiliser or ship ballast. Many fields of Victorian England were fertilised by nitrogen from crushed cat mummies. The most notorious example of this was in 1890 when 180,000 cat mummies dedicated to the goddess Bastet were uncovered in middle Egypt, shipped to Liverpool and crushed into fertiliser.
The amount of artefacts which were lost during the centuries of destruction was astronomical and untold amounts of information was lost forever. While looting and destruction is not a thing of the past in Egypt (and recent unrest has furthered this) it is dwarfed by the widespread commercial plundering of the 15th-early 20th centuries.
Sources:
The life and death of Mummy Brown by Philip Mcouat
Do Egyptians burn mummies as fuel? By Cecil Adams
Bandages, Bitumen, Bodies and Business - Egyptian mummies as raw materials Chris Elliott