Leseprobe

119 Mummy of a woman and a man with mummy portrait and shroud Late 3rd to mid – 4th cent. CE Linen, stucco, painted and gilt, mummified body; 175×29.5×40 cm and 164×37.5×29 cm Found in Saqqara by Pietro della Valle in 1615 Purchased from the estate of Filippo Antonio Gualtieri, Rome, in 1728 Inv. nos. Aeg 777 and Aeg 778 These two late Roman mummies were brought to Europe in 1615, centuries before the rise of modern Egyptology. Their cartonnages are elaborately decorated and embellished with gold leaf. They show the portrait of a man and a woman wear- ing elaborate jewellery, both in the costumes they would have worn while alive. A painted net of beads contains decorative panels filled with motifs and mytho- logical subjects, drawn from both ancient Egyptian and Greco-Roman traditions. The deceased each carry offering jars for wine and oil respectively and the ‘crown of justification’, marking their joyful entry into the afterlife. The Greek inscription underneath the man’s right arm reads ‘ ΕΥΨΥΧΙ ’ ( eupsychi ), meaning ‘farewell!’ CT scans revealed that the skulls and lower extremities of both are well preserved, while bones in the torsos and arms have clearly shifted after death. A number of circular objects were discovered in the woman’s torso, perhaps beads of a necklace. The man was between 25 and 30 years old, the woman between 30 and 40. The man was approximately 163 centimetres tall, the woman around 150 centimetres. The man suffered from caries; one molar even had a root abscess. The woman showed signs of arthritis in her left knee.  |  sz, sp, az, wr