Golden Mummies of Egypt
Golden Mummies of Egypt was a hit, international exhibition from Manchester Museum, which ran from 2020 to 2024. Now, this digitised collection of objects featured in the exhibition allows you to explore each fascinating item like never before. Featuring treasures from the museum’s world-class collections, it explores expectations of a life after death during the relatively little-known ‘Graeco-Roman’ Period of Egyptian history (between 300 BCE and 300 CE).
The ‘Graeco-Roman’ Period was a time when a Greek royal family, known as the Ptolemies, first ruled Egypt. After three hundred years, this dynasty came to an end with the reign of Queen Cleopatra VI and the kingdom was then ruled by Roman emperors. Although it is often portrayed as being rather isolated, Egypt was always in contact with neighbouring cultures. Plentiful evidence survives for trade with Nubia, to the south of Egypt, and around the Mediterranean for centuries. Under the pharaohs, many non-Egyptians came to live in Egypt too. However, relations between peoples were not always peaceful and there were sometimes violent struggles for power. Some of this upheaval from the Graeco-Roman Period is recorded in papyrus documents.
The Ptolemies ruled Egypt from 323-30 BCE. Of Macedonian origin, they built the new capital of Alexandria on the coast looking towards their homeland. On temple walls across Egypt, they styled themselves as traditional Pharaohs. The dynasty developed farmland in the fertile Faiyum area, southwest of modern Cairo, to house new settlers from Greece. A wide range of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian were gods worshipped in people’s homes. Items buried alongside the dead during the period provide a fascinating glimpse into people's everyday lives.
In the popular imagination, ‘Ancient Egypt’ is often associated with mummies, gold, and an obsession with the next world. Wealthy members of multicultural Egyptian society made elaborate preparations for the afterlife. Combining Egyptian, Greek, and Roman ideals of eternal beauty, they created an image of the deceased as a divinity. In Egyptian tradition, the gods were immortal. In order to attain an eternal presence among the gods, the deceased had – in some sense – to become god-like too. Religious texts describe the flesh of Egyptian deities as made of gold. As a result, those who could afford to were sheathed in gold-leaf covered masks or life-like painted panels known as the ‘Faiyum Portraits’. Dead men and women could become one with Osiris, the god of rebirth. And, by Graeco-Roman times, deceased women could merge with Hathor, the Mistress of the West, where the sun set.
Manchester Museum houses one of the finest collections of this material outside Cairo. The objects were excavated at a time when Egypt was under British colonial rule. In the 1880s-1910s, Egyptian archaeologists worked for the British archaeologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie. At that time, it was possible for archaeologists to legally export a portion of their finds. Flinders Petrie was very interested in the ‘race’ of the mummified people his workers found, interpreting the appearance of the Faiyum painted panels and collecting the skulls of mummies to try to investigate this. He concluded that most were Greek settlers in Egypt, but we now know the elite population of Hawara was much more mixed. The Faiyum panels being displayed added to a Euro-Western fascination with Egyptian mummies and immortality during that era. Their depictions of male beauty even inspired Oscar Wilde to write his novel A Picture of Dorian Gray. Our responses to the objects in this collection reveal more about ourselves than about the people who made, used, and are depicted upon them.
Golden Mummies of Egypt travelled internationally between 2020 and 2022, before being displayed at Manchester Museum between February 2023 and April 2024. To learn more about the exhibition, visit the Manchester Museum website.
