Mummy of Herakleides, Romano-Egyptian, AD 120–140, tempera and gilding on wood; pigment and gilding on linen
The J. Paul Getty Museum
Transcript
Female Narrator: This mummy of a young man called Herakleides is a rare example of an intact red-shroud mummy. It’s from the Roman period, between 100 and 200 AD. During this time, there was a new practice of placing a painted portrait of the deceased into the mummy’s wrappings. This is one such portrait.
So who was Herakleides?
Marie Svoboda: We’ll never really know exactly who Herakleides is, but based on the preparation of his mummy, the high quality of his portrait, the use of gold, the use of imported materials// and the board on which he lies all indicate that he was a man of high social status.
Female Narrator: Marie Svoboda, a conservator in the Antiquities Conservation Department at the Getty Villa, studied this mummy in the conservation lab.
Marie Svoboda: Herakleides is covered in a red shroud…
Female Narrator: …which symbolized eternity and protection. It was colored using red lead…
Marie Svoboda: …a toxic pigment, and it’s for those reasons that it may have benefited the protection of the mummy into the afterlife.
Female Narrator: Conservators wanted to CAT scan the mummy to see if the body inside matched the portrait on the mummy case. It did - Herakleides was a young man when he died, like his portrait. And conservators found something they didn’t expect.
[Upbeat Egyptian oud with triangle plays]
Marie Svoboda: We discovered there was a mummified ibis wrapped within the shrouds and it’s placed just above his abdomen, and if you look on the exterior of the mummy you see a painted ibis in the iconography.
Female Narrator: The ibis represents the god Thoth, patron of the moon, scribes, and learning.
Marie Svoboda: The presence of a bird that represents this god may suggest that he was a worshipper of this cult, it may support the fact that maybe he was very ill, and he purchased a mummified ibis on his way to a temple to leave as an offering.
Female Narrator: The mummy shows the multiculturalism of Egypt during the late Roman period: it was Egyptian, Greek and Roman.
Marie Svoboda: Herakleides is a perfect example of the melding of all three of these cultures. His style of wrapping is Egyptian, the funerary iconography is Egyptian and the symbolism, the technique, and yet he has a portrait that is Greco-Roman in style.
[Music fades]