![]() ![]() Egyptian mummies were wrapped in linen because it symbolized wealth, light, and purity. Linen cloth was very valuable and sometimes used as currency. Women, men, and children were involved in linen production, but weaving is most closely associated with women. Although rarely done, linen thread could then be dyed (using ochre or organic colorants) before being woven into cloth. To produce linen thread, flax was dried, retted (soaked), beaten to separate the bast fibers from the stems, spliced, and spun. Two types of flax were cultivated in predynastic Egypt: Linum bienne (synonym Linum angustifolium) and Linum usitatissimum. A textile derived from the flax fiber, commonly used in but not originally native to Egypt, dating back to the Neolithic period (about 4000 BC). Without their names, an essential part of their identity, what survives is a constructed image-one that is heavily altered through the removal of layers of bandages and linen Citation: Linen (flax). ![]() We do not know to whose burials they once belonged, and we have scant information on where the patrons lived as well as when and how the deceased were buried. All have been stripped of their immediate contexts-that is, the mummy casings into which they were presumably inserted. ![]() of the five Budapest portraits is not known: we have presumed findspots for all of them but no information on their archaeological contexts. ![]() These concerns may be quite different from those encountered in larger museums and as such are lesser discussed perspectives in the highly topical debate on “who owns antiquity.” 2 The ownership history of an artifact., condition, and the date of their reworking-and also deals with specific features of private and, subsequently, public collecting. This paper concentrates on collection history, which sheds light on important aspects of the portraits-such as provenance Citation: Provenance. 1 Over the past few years, valuable new information has been revealed via both restoration and technical analyses performed in cooperation with the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, under the direction of Bettina Vak, and through research on the collection history of the five pieces-as well as a sixth portrait from a private collection that for a short while was deposited in the museum. The Collection of Classical Antiquities of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest owns five painted mummy portraits from Roman Egypt this essay aims to discuss them in light of recent examinations carried out as part of the APPEAR project. ![]()
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