Mummy of a Boy in Shroud

The mummified remains of a very young boy (aged approximately 2–5 years) survive in exceptional condition, enclosed within a painted shroud and a small vaulted wooden coffin. His body lies fully extended, the head inclined gently forwards, with the arms resting beside him and the open hands placed against the thighs. Both the skull and post-cranial remains are virtually complete, with surviving soft tissues, and no pathological conditions have been identified.

The painted shroud transforms the wrapped child into an idealised image of the deceased. He appears dressed in a himation and white sandals, holding a cluster of laurel leaves in his left hand while raising his right in a formal gesture. His hair is rendered in red with small white spots, while four dark locks fall across the forehead. The combination of classical dress and Egyptian funerary practice belongs to the richly blended visual world of Graeco-Roman Egypt.

His wooden coffin continues this language of protection and rebirth. Beneath the body, the goddess Nut is painted upon the base-board, enfolding the dead beneath the celestial realm she embodied. The curved lid is ornamented with a serpent and floral garland on a white ground edged in red.

Although the boy died in early childhood, his burial was carefully composed to secure both remembrance and eternal protection. Wrapped, painted and enclosed beneath the image of the sky-goddess, he was presented not simply as a dead child, but as one prepared to endure beyond death.

Side-Lock of Youth

A British Museum Curator writes that Egyptologist Salima Ikram draws attention to a twentieth-century Egyptian custom in which the heads of sick young boys were shaved, leaving only a few tufts of hair. If the child recovered, these remaining locks were later shaved as part of the celebration of his restored health.

Ikram compares this practice with Ancient Egyptian evidence, including locks of hair preserved within clay balls at Amarna, and suggests that the distinctive tufted hairstyle seen on some children may have carried a comparable ritual or protective significance, perhaps connected with illness, healing and childhood.

(S. Ikram, ‘Barbering the Beardless: A Possible Explanation for the Tufted Hairstyle Depicted in the “Fayum” Portrait of a Young Boy (J. P. Getty 78.AP.262)’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 89 (2003), pp. 247–251.)

Summary:

Mummy of a Young Boy (aged 2–5 years) in Shroud & Coffin

Roman Period, c. 230-250 A.D.

From Egypt

British Museum. EA6715