The migrations of early culture / A study of the significance of the geographical distribution of the practice of mummification as evidence of the migrations of peoples and the spread of certain customs and beliefs

by Grafton Elliot Smith

I am strongly of the opinion that there is a causal relationship between this gradual extension of the body and the measures for the reconstruction of a life-like model of the deceased, with the help of the mummy’s wrappings. In other words, the adoption of the extended position was a direct result of the introduction of mummification.

At an early stage in the history of these changes it seems to have been realised that the likeness of the deceased which could be made of the wrapped mummy lacked the exactness and precision demanded of a portrait Perhaps also there may have been some doubt as to the durability of a statue made of linen.

A number of interesting developments occurred at about this time to overcome these defects. In one case ([85]), found at Mêdum by Flinders Petrie, the superficial bandages were saturated with a paste of resin and soda, and the same material was applied to the surface of the wrappings, which, while still in a plastic condition, was very skilfully moulded to form a life-like statue. The resinous carapace thus built up set to form a covering of stony hardness. Special care was devoted to the modelling of the head (sometimes the face only) and the genitalia, no doubt to serve as the means of identifying the individual and indicating the sex respectively.

The hair (or, perhaps, it would be more correct to say, the wig) and the moustache were painted with a dark brown or black resinous mixture, and the pupils, eyelids and eyebrows were represented by painting with a mixture of malachite powder and resinous paste. In other cases, recently described by Junker ([40]), plaster was used for the same purpose as the resinous paste in Petrie’s mummy. In two of the four instances of this practice found by Junker, only the head was modelled.

The special importance assigned to the head is one of the outstanding features of ancient Egyptian statuary. It was exemplified in another way in the tombs of the early part of the Old Kingdom, as Junker has recalled in his memoir, by the construction of stone portrait-statues of the head only, which were made life-size and placed in the burial chamber alongside the mummy. It seems to me that Junker overlooks an essential, if not the, chief, reason for the special importance assigned to the head when he attributes it to the fact that the head contained the organs of sight, smell, hearing and taste. There can be no doubt that the head was modelled because it affords the chief means of recognising an individual. This portrayal of the features enabled any one, including the deceased’s own ka, to identify the owner. Every circumstance of the making and the use of these heads bears out this interpretation, and no one has explained these facts more lucidly than Junker himself.

[Since the foregoing paragraphs have been put into print a preliminary report has come to hand from Professor Reisner, to whom I am indebted for most of my information regarding these portrait heads—Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin, Boston, April, 1915.]

At a somewhat later period in the Old Kingdom the making of these so-called “substitution-heads” was discontinued, and it became the practice to make a statue of the whole man (of woman), which was placed above-ground in the megalithic serdab within the mastaba (see [94]). But even when the complete statue was made for the serdab the head alone was the part that was modelled with any approach to realism. In other words, the importance of the head as the chief means of identification was still recognised. Moreover, this idea manifested itself throughout the whole history of Egyptian mummification, for as late as the first century of the Christian era a portrait of the deceased was placed in front of the face of the mummy.

Thus in course of time the original idea of converting the wrapped body itself into a portrait-statue of the deceased was temporarily[8] abandoned and the mummy was stowed away in the burial chamber at the bottom of a deep shaft, the better to protect it from desecration, while the portrait-statue was placed above ground, in a strong chamber (serdab), hidden in the mastaba ([94]).