volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

388 Mummy as Pigment.
Another enemy of the mummies also was the European
artist who painted in oils. In order to produce certain
colours and effects he made use of a pigment called
" mummy," which was made of the bitumen and animal
and vegetable remains from Egyptian tombs. Some
artists used this mixture in preference to pure asphaltum,
or bitumen, both because it was less liable to crack and
because it did not move on the canvas.^
Within the last hundred years thousands of mummies
have been broken up by the native tomb-robbers in their
search for scarabs and amulets, and the remains of them
have been burnt or otherwise destroyed. My experience
has been that the natives would not sell any mummy
if they thought it likely to contain jewellery, amulets or
papyri, or any object that could be sold to the tourist or
collector. Every mummy they can get hold of they
unroll with the hope of finding amulets, etc., in the
swathings, and they search the inside of the actual body,
and sometimes find there gold plaques, figures of the
four Sons of Horus, fine scarabs, etc. Natives much
dislike selling mummies in unopened painted cartonnage
cases, for they usually contain many amulets, and sometimes
the mummy is wrapped in a shroud of papyrus
inscribed with many texts from the Book of the Dead.
It was only with the greatest difiiculty that I acquired
the mummy of a priestess in its unopened cartonnage
case, which is now in the British Museum.' On the
other hand, the bitumenized mummies which were
common at Akhmim were sold to anyone who would
buy them, for they were difficult to break up, and when
qu'elle s'observe, cela est faulx : d'autant que ceste region est seulement
habitee des Turcs, et des Juifs, et des Chrestiens, qui ne sont
coustumiers d'user de telle ceremonie d'embaumement, comme du
temps que les Roys d'Egypte y commandoient.
^ See Field's Chromatone (ed. J. S. Taylor), London, 1885, p. 160 ;
and see the articles " asphaltum " and " mummy " in Fairholt,
Dictionary of Terms in Art, London, 1854, PP- 52 and 300. On the
adulteration of " mummy " pigment see Merrilfield, Ancient Practice
of Oil Painting," vol. i, p. cxx ff.
p. 64.
' No. 20,744. See Guide to the First and Second Egyptian Rooms,