AN EXAMINATION OF FIFTEEN SPECIMENS OF MUMMY WRAPPINGS.
By W. W. Midgley, Curator, retired, The Museums, Bolton.
“So far back as 1834, Mummy cloths occupied the attention of James Thompson, F.R.S., who, after researches into their characteristics and structure wrote a paper on the subject, which appears in the London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine, Vol. V., page 355. From that time until quite recently, little additional knowledge on the subject has appeared. In the early part of 1910, Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie, F.R.S., expressed a desire that the writer should undertake microscopic investigation of the body-wrappings of cloths of the III. and early IV. Dynasties (circa 2980-2750 B.C.) which he had brought home from excavations made at a cemetery near Meydum, Upper Egypt. The report upon them forms part of the “Historical Studies,” Vol. II., of the British School of Archæology in Egypt.
When Mr. Ling Roth suggested that some of the examples of Egyptian Mummy cloths in Bankfield Museum should be examined on similar lines, describing the construction of the fabrics and yarns, together with the characteristics of the fibres used, I undertook to carry out the work and forward to him the results for permanent reference.
Each of the fifteen cloths submitted was first examined by mounting about ¾" × 5/8" (20 mm. × 16 mm.) of the cloth on 3" × 1" (76 mm. × 25 mm.) glass slips, and covering with thin glass, so as to find out its plan of composition and the number of warp and weft threads per linear inch. Afterwards, a little of the warp threads as well as of the weft, was untwisted and the fibres separated, and these mounted apart on another 3" × 1" slip (76 × 25 mm.), so that the kind of textile fibre used and the diameter of the fibres could be measured. These microscopical preparations will be kept in Bankfield Museum, as they may be of interest to microscopists in the locality.
The cloths are from three sources:—Nos. 1 and 2 being from the private collection of Dr. Wallis-Budge, who has given the specimens to Bankfield Museum; Nos. 3 to 8 are from the old Meyer collection in the Liverpool Museum (unfortunately the origin of them is unknown); and those marked 9 to 15 were taken from a mummy of the XXVI. Dynasty, brought to this country by Lord Denbigh, and now also in the Liverpool Museum.
A.—Specimens of Mummy cloths from Theban Tombs date about B.C. 1400, presented by Dr. Wallis-Budge.
1. A plain “one-up-and-one-down” linen cloth. The yarns in this example are more irregular in diameter than usual—the warp strands varying from 1/25"th to 1/71"st (1 mm. to ·2/8 mm.) The warp has about half its strands doubled (that is twined together), whereas the weft has only about one in twenty doubled. See [Fig. 26].
2. This is a coarser fabric, has been dyed with saffron, and is somewhat brittle to tease out the fibres. Both these cloths had evidently absorbed some of the gums or balsams used in the process of embalming, and hence the difficulty of separating the fibres for identification is increased. The structure of the fabric is peculiar, and, indeed, the only instance I have seen in Egyptian cloths. A portion, near the middle of the piece sent, has the warp strands in pairs parallel to each other, a few of them being double yarns, while all the remainder are doubled. Of the weft, nearly half are double yarns. See [Fig. 27].