Mummy brown, Egyptian brown, or caput mortuum (literally, “dead head” in medieval Latin) was a rich pigment varying in hue from burnt to raw umber, made primarily from white pitch, myrrh, and ground-up ancient Egyptians and their pets.
Someone, at some point in history, thought, hey, here’s an idea—let’s make paint out of crushed up mummies. Mummy, or Egyptian Brown, peaked in usage during the 18th century, in British painting especially. The “raw materials,” however, were a hot commodity long before that, as mummy powder was believed to have all kinds of magical healing properties and were a mainstay in 16th century European apothecaries. “In the course of at least 300 years of trade, an unrecorded number of archaeological objects was destroyed in order to make pigment,” says Khandekar of the highly unethical practice, whose popularity finally petered out in the early 1900s.
The Creators Project has an excellent article, along with some wonderful photos, about Harvard’s vast collection of rare pigments in their conservation lab. I was aware of all the pigments except for Mummy. That one left me rather stunned.
They also used mummies for fertilizer. Boatloads of cat mummies wound up fertilizing fields in England.
Seriously? Mummies? Spores, ancient diseases, anyone…?
rq:
In the Harvard article, it’s mentioned that crushed mummy was a highly desirable and often used medicinal during the 1600s. Standard stock at the apothecary shop.
…
I have no idea who thought this was a good idea. Or how they came up with it in the first place.
I can imagine it easily enough. It’s the 21st century, and look how many people still buy into the mystery of anything Egyptian.
In the 1600s, it was mysterious, magic. The Egyptians were thought to have profound knowledge, including profound knowledge of ‘unknowable things’, the mystique surrounding Egypt was astounding. It’s still that way for a lot of people, look at all the silliness over pyramids (they’ll keep razors mysteriously sharp!).
While I think it’s on the extreme end to drink crushed corpse of anything, I can imagine people doing that today, if there was a supply of crushed mummy to go around.
That makes a lot of sense, but as you say, drinking crushed corpse is on the extreme end. :/ But I suppose the horror genre (and the desire to live it in some small way) has been a part of human culture for millennia. That, and the mysticism, of course.
Speaking of Egyptian mysteries, some potentially mystical stuff on King Tut’s dagger (not that one, silly). Fodder for the wooists, I suppose, but an extremely interesting piece of information. I guess Egyptian pharaohs, as descendants of alien colonists on earth, were trying to maintain their connection to the stars…?
Oh yes, the meteor knife. I expect the paradigm people will go nuts over that one!
rq:
I have no problem imagining someone like Gwyneth Paltrow hawking crushed mummy powder in your juice once a day!
Go?
Blf @ 10:
Point taken.
Extra nuts.
Covered in chocolate, please?
Or vanilla…
Or how they came up with it in the first place.
There were literally millions of mummified cats. They were an offering to the gods -- sort of imagine all the candles burned at Lourdes except stored in giant rooms. There are accounts of people falling into holes in the ground and finding themselves in huge rooms full of mummified cats. How do you empty such a room of the mummies? Simple: sell them.
It gets worse: in order to have dead cats to mummify and offer to the gods, the Egyptians basically farmed cats, clubbed their little skulls in, and mummified them for the gods! A typical example of how religious frightfulness gets industrialized.
With respect to the woowoos deciding a pinch of mummy is good, I’ve long suspected that’s how a lot of lotions and nostrums happen. Someone calls an oil importer that specializes in exotic-sounding oils from faraway places, “Hey Fred, whatcha got?”
“Oh, Joey. Good ta hear from ya again. How did that cat oil work out?”
“Aces Fred, we sold it all; Fresh Whole bought the whole lot for their homeopathic lotions aisle. We listed it as R. Felix.”
“Sweet! Well, I have a shot at 40t of bwungggi oil if you want it but you gotta move fast.”
“Bwungggi oil? What’s that?”
“Well, Joey, it’s this weird oil that comes out of this particular fish when it goes bad. The locals just burn it but we got a great deal on the stuff.”
“Awesome; when can you deliver it?”
I want a tee shirt with “caput mortuum” printed on it.