Episode art: Portrait of a Woman on limewood, c. AD 55-70, British Museum. (Museum no. EA74716.)
https://amandabrightonpayne.com/how-art-works/egyptian-mummy-portraits
Show Notes:
2022 has been a big year so far for Egypt, with the spotlight on treasures and discoveries, new and old. It’s the centennial of Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb, and the bicentennial of Jean-François Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs, using the three-language cheat sheet known as the Rosetta Stone. This year, there have also been fabulous archaeological finds, including hundreds of intricately painted coffins in Saqqara, and a kind of lost city near Luxor, the site of Tut’s tomb. But in this episode we’ll be talking about something in its own way just as wonderful, and that is the thousand or more portraits attached to mummies in the first centuries of the Common Era, known as mummy portraits. It helps if you have visuals, so please have a look at the websites linked below to see examples. Interested readers can also peruse the books listed, as well. I also recommend visiting The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London.
Key terms:
Mummies: cartonnage/cartonage, bodyfield
Jewellery types: Medusa (local talisman), bulla (talisman for boys)
Painting types: tempera, encaustic
Physical traits: trachoma (eye condition), Morton’s toe
Tilia species = ‘lime’ or linden trees
Technology: CT scan = computed tomography. More modern term than CAT scan (computed axial tomography). Tomos is Greek for a cut or slice. Tomography ‘slices’ through objects in order to form images of them, top to bottom and end to end.
Links for visuals:
Art Institute of Chicago portrait and detailed description: https://publications.artic.edu/roman/reader/romanart/section/1966
Female mummy portrait: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA74706
Herakleides mummy: https://www.getty.edu/news/meet-the-portrait-mummy-of-herakleides/
The caption says that he was identified in Greek as ‘son of Thermos,’ but the book below suggests that it could have been a female name, i.e. his mother.
Boy’s part-shaven hairstyle:
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2000/mummy-portraits/photo-gallery
I didn’t mention it in the podcast, but this lady does have a delicate gilt wreath painted at the very top of her head. A beautiful finishing touch, and symbolically important for her transferral to the divine from the earthly realm.
Bibliography:
Mummy Portraits from Ancient Egypt, Paul Roberts (The British Museum, 2007).
Herakleides: A Portrait Mummy from Roman Egypt, Lorelei H. Corcoran and Marie Svoboda (J. Paul Getty Trust, 2010).
Portrait of a Child: Historical and Scientific Studies of a Roman Egyptian Mummy. Essi Rönkkö, Taco Terpsta, Marc Walton, eds (Block Museum of Art, Northwestern U., 2019).
‘Facing the Dead: Recent Reseach on the Funerary Art of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt’, Christina Riggs, American Journal of Archaeology, Jan. 2002, pp. 85-101.
Leonardo’s Nephew: Essays on Art and Artists, James Fenton (University of Chicago Press, 2000).