Frank James Bonarrigo

Granodiorite cube with relief of Nebnefer, an official of the 18th Dynasty during the reign of Amenhotep III. The goddess on the front is Hathor.

Imagine if you will, being a dying Egyptian lady. I mean not dying right now but soon to be dead. As such you arrange your burial with the local priest of the mortuary cult and the various officiants present you with the furniture for the grave, the sarcophagus and all that stuff. Money is tight so you agree to use recycled linen to be used as mummy material and they present you that shit.

That shit is the single existing liber linteus to date. It's a book, not an Egyptian one, but an Etruscan one from Italy. Not much is known about the book, if not that is some sort of sacred calendar. We (arguably) don't know much about the Etruscan language, being this one the longest text we have found to date, translation is not the easiest task. Nevertheless this find was extraordinary.

Now what I truly find interesting is not the book per se (that's not true I find it very interesting) but the fact that a mummy was bandaged in it. Considering the fact that Egyptians' belief attributed an immense power to written words, why this lady agreed to be mummified in a damn book with lots of foreign words on it?

One could argue that, given the dates, this lady was factually Egyptian, but more Hellenistic than anything. Or that she was poor AF and had to get whatever she could get to be mummified properly. I also heard somewhere that she might have not seen the writing upon the linen sheet because it would have been whitened before using it. Sadly, since we don't know shit about the mummy, because it was for sure legitimately excavated with incredible legitimacy and care, we will never know.

What I like to think instead is that the local embalmer just successfully bullshited this lady.

- What are those symbols on the sheet?

- Just some writings, don't think about them

- And what do they say?

- Good things about the mummy and the afterlife

- Wdym? Are those magical words?

- It's a good fortune enchantment

- I don't recognise the language

- it's Roman (????)

- Wtf Is a Roman???

Lou, hair brushed · Canon AE1 & Agfa APX400

© Chill

Passion (Greverade) Altarpiece (left wing), 1491, Hans Memling

Portrait of Charles the Bold, 1460, Rogier Van Der Weyden

Medium: oil,panel