© Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University. Photo by Peter Harholdt.

ClassificationsAncient Egyptian Art

Mummy Mask

Place CreatedEgypt, Africa

CultureEgyptian

PeriodRoman Period

Date3rd Century CE

MediumLinen, plaster, pigment

Credit LineCharlotte Lichirie Collection of Egyptian Art

Dimensions7 1/16 x 6 5/16 x 2 3/8 in. (17.9 x 16 x 6 cm)

Object number1999.001.143

Label TextIn the later Roman Period, mummies were no longer placed in decorated anthropoid coffins but were merely covered with painted shrouds. The face of the shroud was made of plaster, molded into a three-dimensional mask, with details of the upper torso rendered below in two dimensions. Two groups of mummies adorned in this manner were discovered at Deir el-Bahri, the first by Edouard Naville in 1895 and the second by H.E. Winlock in 1924.

The mask shown here is typical of the late Roman funerary style found in and around Thebes, with its theatrically painted details. The staring, heavily rimmed eyes, curling lashes, and hair modeled in plaster all characterize the masks that Winlock uncharitably described as "atrocities of hideousness".
Exhibition HistoryMCCM Permanent Collection Reinstallation, September 2001 - June 1, 2013
MCCM Permanent Collection Galleries, June 26, 2013 - Present
Published ReferencesPeter Lacovara, "The New Galleries of Egyptian and Near Eastern Art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum," Minerva 12 (2001): 9-16.
Peter Lacovara and Betsy Teasley Trope, The Realm of Osiris (Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, 2001), 57.
Sophie Griselle, "Deux Masques Funéraires d’Époque Romaine au Musée Dobrée de Nantes," Revue D’Ègyptologie 70 (2020): 4, plate II.
Asja Müller, Ägyptens schöne Gesichter : die Mumienmasken der römischen Kaiserzeit und ihre Funktion im Totenritual (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2021), 334.

ProvenanceEx coll. Niagara Falls Museum, Niagara Falls, Canada. Purchased by MCCM from William Jamieson (1954-2011) [Golden Chariot Productions], Toronto, Canada.

Status

On view

Collections