A Mummy is a Mummy ...Right?

        In the Greco-Roman era in Egypt, there was an interesting split in funerary rituals. Mummification is still being practiced at differing skill levels, but the two camps have differing views on seeing someone to the great beyond. It is the Shrouds VS Mummy portrait and tight wrappings. 

    This is a Mummy in a shroud that, looking at her hairstyle said to reflect" Roman fashions of the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula (A.D.1443.) Interestingly, the upper part of the Mummy is quite fashionable, but the lower is pure indigenous Egyptian iconography. From the writing on the shroud of linen, we know her name is Ta-sherit-wedja-Hor, and the lower artwork is of Isis and Nephthys greeting Osirus. The Scrab with wings spread hovers above. 

The second panel is Anubis and Horus, with entwined plants that may symbolize lower and upper Egypt, or due to it being the Lotus, the connotation is resurrection. Ta-sherit-wedja-Hor, A blending of two cultures mimicking the fashions of the elite, with all the imagery but no funerary mask, only a painted scroud. 

    Compared to man's hairstyle, reminiscent of the emperor Lucius Verus (AD.161-169). These are 15 years apart and found in the same area, so why are the two so different? The artwork is reserved for a portrait. The rest is intricate bandaging forming a pattern with metal tac-like objects as decorative and to keep the wrappings tight and in place. 

    The answer is that the shrouds were products for the funeral industry that now encompassed not only royalty, priests, and officials who were in favor but anyone with money could merit some level of mummification... . What had been previously reserved for the elite didn't retain hundreds of years of tradition maintained by a priesthood. It became a reflection of a culture that had assimilated the greeks and, in turn, was assimilated by the Romans. The dead of Coptic Egypt could have a mixture of pantheons depicted on them, around them, hairstyles of the far away rules, and it was personalized.  

It reminds me of a phrase fashion historian Amanda Hallay often says, " Fashion is not an island; it's a response." The way mummies went from being remote symbols of once-living people,  royalty of the past, had been mummified naked in bandages showing opulence in grave goods and enormous tombs. Chambers would only be seen once, then sealed by the priesthood. Contrast this with the Coptic era's response. Even the lower classes could wear their best clothing and jewelry and be coffered most stylishly in the afterlife. The idea of living people returning to the tomb meant the commissioned panel painting of the deceased, the wall art, and the way they made a standing sarcophagus so that the dead became statuary art. It was a display to make sure you see the Mummy as human and with an individual personality. This new idea of how to modify an age-old death tradition only happened with the blend of Hellenistic humanism, Roman respect for wealth/power, and Egypt's idea that death was not an end and that the Ka or spirit was not lost from this world.