I can’t believe it! I just can not believe it! They say you learn something new everyday, but I was not expecting to learn THIS!
Okay. I will start from the beginning.
Yesterday Grandpa T was up for a visit, and decided to take Aiden, Mika, and I on a trip to visit the National Gallery.
I know art is more Mika’s things, but I am always up for a visit to the National Gallery. Some of the art had really neat stories behind them, and also there is this beautiful area to eat lunch at that overlooks the river. That spot alone makes the trip worth it.
We were going to the gallery to see an exhibit of Pre-Raphaelite art that was visiting. They are one of Mika’s favorite group of artists, so we thought it would be fun to take the drive into the big city.
Mika and Grandpa T were engrossed in the art, having deep conversations about all the little details that go right over my head, so Aiden and I were kinda just doing our own thing and letting them nerd out about the paintings. Then I overheard Grandpa T saying: “Yeah, that is an interesting colour. It is called Mummy Brown.”
I heard the work ‘mummy’ and my little archaeologist in training ears totally tuned into their conversation.
“That is an odd name for a colour: Mummy Brown.” Mika told Grandpa T quietly.
Then he said it.
You have to understand, info like this is why Grandpa T is my hero. “Not really. I mean what else are you going to call a colour that is made from Egyptian Mummies?”
Wait what? I thought to myself, wandering over to join them. He did not just say what I think he said.
“Tell me everything!” I demanded of Grandpa T, and boy did he deliver.
So strap in and let me tell you about the paint colour that took Europe by storm.
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Europe and Egypt has a long shared history: Alexander the Great, Anthony and Cleopatra, Sultan Salah ad-Din and King Richard I. So, it is not easy to pin-point when Europeans became aware of the existence of ancient Egyptian mummies.
What we do know is that mummies began to be imported into Europe in steady numbers starting in the Medieval period. I mean, there were a few crusades during the Medieval period, so it kinda makes sense that soldiers were bringing back anything that they thought they could make money off of.
And what did European want with mummies?
To display them in museums? Nope
To study them and learn about the culture that created them? Maybe a little.
To use them in magical ceremonies? We are getting a little closer.
To ground them up and eat them a medicine? You got it!
Yep, European used to grind up mummies and take them in drinks or in pill form as medicine. I don’t know about you, but I think that counts as cannibalism. Well okay, some of the mummies were animals, but not all of them. So, I stick with my cannibalism comment.
Grandpa T didn’t really want to talk too much about mummy medicine with us at the gallery, but if you guys are interested, maybe I will do my own research into it for another post. Anyway, back to the topic…
Just when mummy medicine was losing its appeal. Which, surprisingly, took few hundred years. Napoleon conquered Egypt and peoples fascination with the country started all over again, and the import of Egyptian artifacts took off. This included to mass import of mummies.
This time people didn’t want to make medicine out of mummies; they wanted to show their friends how cool they were by having unwrapping parties, and showing them off in the curiosity cabinets. Also, they wanted to make paint out of the ground up body parts. This paint was called Mummy Brown.
Okay here is a tangent… if I may. Who looks at a mummy and goes “I want to grind that thing into a fine powder”? I mean really! This wasn’t just some weird guy in the basement of a castle doing this. This happened over hundreds of years all over Europe. I have said this once and I will say it again… people are weird.
Oh, and to answer my own question: colourmen. Colourmen, are the people who looked at a mummy and said “I can grind that up and make paint out that.” They called the pigment Egyptian Brown, Caput Mortuum, or Mummy Brown; which is the name most people know it as. The pigment was made from mummies, white pitch, and myrrh. If you want to imagine what it looked like, imagine the colour of the oil your parents put in their cars. It kinda looks brown or black, but when you see it moving and it gets on your hands, you can see other colours in there; like yellow, or red, or even green. That is kinda what mummy brown looked like.
Because artists didn’t write down what colours or pigments they used for each of their paintings, we don’t really know which paintings have mummy brown and which ones don’t. Grandpa T said there was only one painting we know for sure has it and that is a painting by Martin Drolling called Interior of a Kitchen. We also know that the paint was very popular among a group of artists called the Pre-Raphaelites. Which are the artists we went to the gallery to see.
I am guessing that people in the mid 1800’s were starting to realize how creepy it was to be using human remains in art. The paint might have been popular with the Pre-Raphaelites, but I think it is pretty clear that they had no idea it was made from real human mummies.
There was this one story of the artists Edward Burne-Jones. His good friend Lawrence Alma-Tademand, who was an artist as well, was visiting him for lunch one day when he started telling Edward about how neat it was to see a mummy in his colourman’s workshop before it was ground up into paint. Edward didn’t believe him, he has always thought the name came from the colour of the paint, not the ingredient. Edward told Lawrence that it was not a funny joke and to stop being weird. But Lawrence was insistent, saying the late 1800’s equivalent of: “No dude really, it’s made from mummies.”
When Edward realized his friend was serious and that mummy brown was actually made from human remains he kinda freaked out. He went to his studio, got his only tub of the colour, and insisted on giving the tub of paint a proper burial.
He gathered his and Lawrence’s family together, dug a miniature grave in the green grass of his lawn, and everyone watched him lay the tub to rest in its little grave. One of the daughters even marked the spot by planting a daisy as a grave stone.
Edward Burne-Jones had a funeral for a tub of paint… again, people are weird.
This seemed to be the start of a trend. More and more people started to think that it might be dis-respectful to grind up dead people and make them into paint, and mummy brown fell further and further out of popularity. But, it was only in 1964 that colour-maker Roberson’s of London states that they were all out of the pigment, and had sold their last tub a few years earlier.
And that was it, mummy brown was gone. So, the next time you go to an art gallery, and you think some of the painting looks just a little too haunting. That they seem heavy, creepy, and sad. Well they might have been painting using real humans remains, and who knows what curses they now contain.
History is so weird, but so wonderful!
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Sources
Dolan, Maria. The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine. Smithsonianmag.com. May 6, 2012
Doughty, Caitlin. A Corpse a Day Keeps the Doctor Away. The Order of the Good Death. May 9, 2012.
<http://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/a-corpse-a-day-keeps-the-doctor-away>
Eveleth, Rose. Ground Up Mummies Were Once an Ingredient in Paint. Smithsonianmag,com. April 2, 2014
<https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ground-mummies-were-once-ingredient-paint-180950350/>
FSU Department of Art History. Mummy Brown. Florida State University. August 16, 2019.
<https://arthistory.fsu.edu/mummy-brown/>
McCouat, Philip. The Life and Death of Mummy Brown. Journal of Art in Society.
<http://www.artinsociety.com/the-life-and-death-of-mummy-brown.html>
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