Community: bloggers@brooklynmuseum

To recap previous blogs, the mummy of Demetrios is wrapped in linen, then the entire surface of the linen is painted with red lead. On top of that are areas of gilded decoration. The next step in preparing Demetrios for exhibition was to check the stability of the surface paint and gilding. Where necessary, this was consolidated using an appropriate adhesive. Next, surface dust was removed with a soft brush into a vacuum on very low suction. Then the surface was cleaned with an appropriate solvent. A small area is cleaned at a time, using cotton swabs. We constantly check the swabs to make sure we are only removing surface dust and grime, and not any of the original material. When necessary, we work with the aid of a microscope, so we can see the effect of our cleaning in greater detail.

during treatment. the area to the right has been cleaned revealing the read lead paint and gilding

For the most part, the linens on Demetrios are in relatively good condition; however, the linens around the feet are unstable. There are large holes on the bottom and proper left side.

the condition of the linens at the feet before treatment

The BM does not have a textile conservator on staff, so we hired a specialist in this area to work with us. (Learn more about hiring a conservator through the American Institute for Conservation.) Kathy first patched the area with a piece of linen held in place with a piece of sheer material called Tetex (an open weave polyester material). While the linen material is very noticeable, it was needed to contain all of the powdering fragments of ancient linen. The Tetex material is very sheer - so you don’t really see it - but also very strong. By using Tetex to secure the linen (she sewed this to the new linen, then wrapped it around the feet and sewed the Tetex to itself) she did not have to sew through the ancient linen material which would cause further damage. Next, she covered the whole foot area with another piece of Tetex, also sewed to itself. Again, this material is strong enough to hold all of the loose linens in place, but sheer enough that you can see the underlying material. When you look at this object on display, it will not be that noticeable unless you are specifically looking for it.

the foot, after treatment

The next step was to create a display board that he could also travel on so that handling would be minimal. How objects are handled plays a huge role in their long-term preservation. A bed of polystyrene balls and polyester batting was sealed within a giant bag, and covered with display fabric. Demetrios was then placed on this. The polystyrene balls conformed to his shape, fully supporting him and helping to absorb any vibration as he travels. The installers can handle Demetrios by the support board rather than having to lift his actual body at each venue. This drastically reduces the possibility of damage to Demetrios. That’s it for the conservation treatment! Demetrios will then get crated by a special art packing company, and head to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Look for him there beginning July 13.

the support board

Demetrios on his support board

The mummy of Demetrios raises a large number of questions that can only be answered with the help of a team of scholars. Each of the team members brings a particular kind of knowledge to answer these questions. Their specialties include medicine, culture, language, and materials. I want to try to tie together some of the contributions made by all of the team members here.

I chose the mummy of Demetrios to include in the exhibition “To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum” from Brooklyn’s nine human mummies. Demetrios was one of two mummies never unwrapped in modern times, a prime consideration for presenting him to the public in a respectful way. His wrappings were also in better condition than the wrappings of the other candidate, a woman named Thothirdes who is on view in the galleries in Brooklyn. So Demetrios’ mummy could travel more safely than Thothirdes. But Demetrios posed certain problems for me in explaining to visitors who he was.

Demetrios most likely died in the first century of this era (called both A.D. and C.E.) Carbon-14 testing suggests he died in the year 39. He was an Egyptian, but perhaps he had a Greek ethnic background. He lived in the time when Greek was the language of government in Egypt, following Alexander the Great’s conquest about 300 years earlier. He probably was born during the time of Cleopatra the Great and thus witnessed the change of Egypt from an independent Hellenistic kingdom to the property of the Roman Emperor.

Demetrios’ mummy was prepared in the manner called a “red shroud portrait mummy.” This means that over his mummy bandages priests wrapped a linen shroud painted red. In addition he had a portrait in the Greek style placed over his face rather than an Egyptian-style mummy mask. Also, the inscription on the shroud was in Greek rather than Egyptian hieroglyphs as was typical for most of Egyptian history.

The CT scan performed by Dr. Larry Boxt’s team at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York in 2007 revealed some of Demetrios’ medical history. Dr. David Minenberg recognized the gall stone preserved in Demetrios’ gall bladder, a feature of the scan I initially thought was a scarab! Dr. Boxt was the first to suggest that Demetrios had to have died in his 50’s rather than living to the age of 89 as scholars had first suggested in 1911 based on a reading of the inscription. Dr. Boxt based his estimate on the condition of Demetrios’ spine.

Dr. Boxt’s observation led me to ask Dr. Paul O’Rourke, an expert in both the ancient Egyptian and the ancient Greek languages, to look again at the inscription on Demetrios’ shroud. He explained that the inscription recorded Demetrios’ name followed by a sign that resembles the letter “L.” The “L”-like sign indicated that the following letters should be read as numbers. In this case the first sign intended to represent a number was partially erased. The inscription showed two parallel lines that look like this: ІІ. Originally scholars interpreted these lines as the letter Π meaning “8” with the top missing. The following letter, Θ is complete and slightly raised from the line and means “9.” Together, scholars read his age as 89. But, Dr. O’Rourke pointed out, if the two parallel lines were understood to be the remains of Ν with the diagonal line missing, it would be the Greek writing of “5.” Thus Demetrios’ age could correctly be understood as 59, bringing it into line with Dr. Boxt’s observations of the spine. Knowledge of the aging of the spine helped determine how to restore the Greek inscription properly!

If you want to see Demetrios’ spine and his other bones for yourself, look at:

These web pages were prepared by Ed Bachta at the Indianapolis Museum of Art as part of the “To Live Forever” website. You can see Demetrios himself in Indianapolis beginning Saturday, July 12, 2008. Check with the Indianapolis Museum of Art for the details.

I’m back from leave, and during the last several months we’ve been busily getting all of the objects ready for the “To Live Forever, Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum“exhibition. In this post, I’ll talk about the conservation of Demetrios to prepare him for this show. Let’s start with a brief history of his past treatment. As I wrote in a previous blog, Demetrios was excavated from a Roman cemetery in Hawara, Egypt in 1911, and is believed to date between 30 B.C. and 395 A.D. After his excavation, he came directly to the Brooklyn Museum. It’s unclear if he went on view in the galleries in these early days of the museum or if he was placed in storage. In April of 1939, conservators noticed that a vertical crack had developed in the portrait. The portrait is painted with encaustic on a cypress wood panel. Wood is very susceptible to changes in temperature and humidity, which fluctuate with the changing seasons, and this causes the wood to expand and contract. The conservators at the time decided the best way to treat the portrait would be to remove it from the mummy. They did this, and stabilized the panel so that no further cracks would occur. A decision was then made to place the mummy back into storage, and just exhibit the portrait. When you see these so called “Fayum Portraits” at other museums, they are often no longer associated with mummies either. There may be numerous explanations for why this was done. While this is a larger topic for discussion than I want to address here, it may have been the convention in the early 20^th century to view these solely as beautiful portraits, rather than to think about them in a larger context and being associated with a mummified body. In addition, a small portrait is much easier to transport than the whole body. Whatever the reason, our portrait of Demetrios was then exhibited almost non-stop from this time forward, while the body of Demetrios remained in storage.

Today, there is a greater appreciation for the importance of these portraits in their original context so for this current exhibition we have decided to reunite the portrait with the body. In order to do this, objects and paintings conservators worked together. A silicone support was cast to conform to the shape of the back of the portrait panel. This provides a rigid support for the portrait that can help absorb any vibration that may occur while traveling and is easily reversible in the future. The portrait, on its new support, was placed back onto the mummy of Demetrios. Using the old photograph as a guide, some new linen fabric, toned with paints to match, was added to recreate how the portrait originally appeared on the mummy. As with any conservation treatment, we carefully documented this process and used appropriate materials so that future generations of conservators and scholars will be able to distinguish between the original ancient Egyptian materials and our modern additions, and be able to remove our additions if necessary. In the next blog, I’ll talk about the next phase of the conservation treatment - how Demetrios was cleaned and areas of torn linen repaired.

the portrait associated with the mummy, as it appeared in the 1930’s

the mummy with portrait removed

the portrait exhibited on its own Lisa and Carolyn hard at work

the portrait and mummy reuinted

A team from the Indianapolis Museum of Art including curator Theodore Celenko, designer Tim Hilldebrand, director of new media Daniel Incandela, and new media project administrator Despi Mayes, Gregory Smith, Technical Designer, and Naeema Jackson, formerly in the Education Department visited me in Brooklyn last week to prepare for the opening of the exhibition, To Live Forever on July 13, 2008 at their museum. At lunch we talked about progress on preparing the labels, the layout of the exhibition, and details of mounts and casework. Then we went to the Egyptian galleries where Daniel and Despi (pictured above) filmed me talking about the exhibition for the web site they are preparing.

Daniel and Despi were also able to film Brooklyn conservators Lisa Bruno and Carolyn Tomkiewicz as they worked on preparing the mummy of Demetris and the painted shroud of Neferhotep for the exhibition. These two objects show two options for portraits that Egyptians had during the period when the Romans ruled the country. A panel painting on wood could be wrapped in the mummy wrappings as in the case of Demetrius’ mummy. Or the portrait could be painted directly on to the linen shroud that covers the mummy as Neferhotep did, eliminating the expense of the wood panel. The exhibition looks at the choices Egyptians had in planning their funerals. The visit was a great success.

Photo by Adam Husted

Sorry for the delay in this post, but it was a long process organizing the CT scans. When we unpacked Demetrios, we were happy to find that the packing supported him well, and he had survived the trip on the LIE. We had a great time at North Shore Hospital with Dr. Boxt and his colleagues.

Photo by Adam Husted

First of all, we were able to confirm that Demetrios is an adult male. Next, we were able to tell that he was in very good physical condition when he died, indicating that he was probably a lot younger than we had previously thought. Dr. Boxt could find no indication of foul play involved in his death, and remarked that his bones showed no signs of degenerative disease. So for now, how old he was when he died and what he died from continues to be a mystery.

When you look at the cross section of Demetrios above, you can see some of the things we did find out. Two of his ribs were broken during the mummification process (#5). There is an unidentifiable bundle in his chest, and it is possible that the ribs were broken to place this bundle (#8). This could be anything from more linen to soft tissue of the body, to papyrus. And finally, he was buried on a wooden plank wrapped within the linens (#6). Within the next few months, we plan to work with other physicians and Egyptologists who can help us further decipher the CT scans. In the meantime, we also have to prepare Demetrios for loan. The next few blogs will discuss and track the conservation treatment of Demetrios. I’ll be on leave for several months, so my colleague Lisa will be taking over the blogs -enjoy!