Mummies Converted into Paint.
Few persons are aware that veritable Egyptian mummies are ground into paint. In Europe mummies are used for this purpose—the asphaltum with which they are impregnated being of a quality far superior to that which can elsewhere be obtained, and producing a peculiar brownish tint when made into paint, which is highly prized by distinguished artists. The ancient Egyptians, when they put away their dead, wrapped them in clothes saturated with asphaltum, and could never have realized the fact that ages after they had been laid in the tombs and pyramids along the Nile, their dust would be used in painting pictures in a country then undiscovered, and by artists whose languages were unknown to them.