mummie ; man

Unknown artist

Harerem ; wade ; kruisbanden ; kralennet The mummy is wrapped in a shroud, the rear of which still shows the original reddish colour. The linen is a medium-fine warp-faced tabby weave (about 12 x 25 threads/cm2). The shroud is now much decayed and its sides are completely lost; however, the rear aspect still shows that originally it was folded around the sides of the mummy, leaving only a narrow gap over the spine. The shroud is held into position by a number of straps of folded linen, 2.5-4.5 cm wide and of the same quality as the shroud itself. There is one longitudinal band over the centre of the front, a stola crossed over the chest, and four transverse straps over the face, the hips, the distal end of the lower legs, and the ankles, with knots at the back. Where the shroud is lost, one can see the regular concentric bandages underneath, about 10 cm wide and with irregular edges showing that they were torn from a larger sheet of linen. There are some isolated fragments of dark brown linen on the centre of the belly and on the ankles; ancient photographs show that originally there was a whole sheet of dark linen wrapped around the ankles. The shroud and bandages show large brown stains under the body. On top of the shroud lies a rectangular bead net (66 x 35 cm), reaching from the sternum to half-way down the thighs. All edges consist of double or triple threads of yarn of a brown colour, part of which may be modern, and perhaps we should assume that originally the net was longer. The net consists of faience cylinder beads (average length 1.6 cm) forming lozenge-shaped cells, with yellow ring-beads at the crossings. There are alternating ranges of dark blue (or dark green) and pale blue beads, 40 ranges in total. The 16th and 32nd range, however, are formed of yellow cylinders. Four figures of the Sons of Horus are fixed on top of this net. They are antithetic in composition and have been made in mosaic-work of small ring beads. All faces are identical in shape and white in colour, with black wigs, and bodies striped white, blue, red, white, and blue. These figures are 9 cm long.