European artists. To mix the pigment, ground-
up ancient bodies were mixed with pitch and
myrrh. At the time, apothecaries, who were
responsible for producing medicines made out
of mummies, would often double as mixers of
the pigment, making it easy to make the leap
from medicine cabinet to artist’s palette.
Historical records date mummy brown’s early
use to the Renaissance. Painters were said to
prize mummy brown for its richness and versa-
tility; they often used it for shading, chiaroscuro,
and, appropriately, flesh tones.
How often it was used and in what specific
paintings has been difficult for art historians to
ascertain, but the color remained in use until the
Romantic painters of the late 19th century. Many
artists did keep the color in stock, such as Pre-
Raphaelite painters Edward Burne-Jones and
Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Eugène Delacroix, one
of the greatest painters of France’s 19th-century
Romantic school, is known for the large areas of
shadow and gloom on his canvases, which have
struck scholars as likely candidates for the use
of mummy brown.
Superstitions
The economic demand for mumiya worked in
parallel with the equally powerful forces of fear
and superstition. Even though, from the classical
period onward, the occasional Greek or Roman
traveler returned home from a trip to Egypt
with a mummified animal, it seems that prior
to the 15th century, there was little interest in
transporting mummies to Europe as mementos
or collector’s objects.
Mummies were perceived as powerful spiritual
objects. This lingering superstition survived well
into the 20th century. Howard Carter’s 1922
discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun inspired
tales of the “mummy’s curse” that protected theIN 1881 a hidden tomb of royal mummies was discovered at Deir el
Bahri in the Theban Necropolis. The site known as the Royal Cache
(or tomb DB320) was found to contain the remains of many powerful
18th- and 19th-dynasty pharaohs, including Thutmose III, Seti I, and
Ramses II. Egyptologists believed they were transferred to this cache for
safekeeping sometime during the 21st dynasty (11th and 10th centuries
b.c.) in a successful attempt to elude looters.THE LOST PHARAOHS
Merenre I of the 6th dynasty could
be the earliest royal mummy
known to archaeologists.BRIDGEMAN/ACIMERENRE I, COPPER STATUE. EGYPTIAN MUSEUM, CAIRO