Among the many strange materials used throughout the history of painting, few are as unusual as the pigment known as Mummy Brown. During the 18th and 19th centuries, artists used a brown paint that was quite literally made from ground Egyptian mummies. While it sounds almost unbelievable today, the pigment was once widely sold by European colourmen and used by respected painters.
The origin of Mummy Brown lies in the trade of ancient Egyptian mummified remains. Egyptian mummies had long been exported to Europe for a variety of purposes, from medical powders to curiosities collected by wealthy travellers. Paint manufacturers eventually discovered that the resin-soaked wrappings and preserved remains could be ground into a brown pigment.
To produce the colour, fragments of mummified material were ground into a fine powder and mixed with binding agents such as oil or resin. Because the bodies had been preserved with substances like myrrh and bitumen, the resulting pigment produced a warm, transparent brown with a slightly glossy quality when used in oil paint.
Artists often valued Mummy Brown for its rich glazing properties. When applied in thin layers, the pigment created subtle shadows and warm tonal passages that were particularly useful in portraiture and atmospheric effects. Some painters appreciated the softness of the colour compared to harsher earth pigments.
However, the pigment also had significant drawbacks. Paint made with Mummy Brown could sometimes be unstable because of the organic material within it. Over time, certain passages could fade or behave unpredictably compared to more mineral-based pigments.
The practice eventually became controversial as awareness grew about the true origins of the material. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the use of real mummy remains in pigment production began to disappear. Supplies of actual mummified material also became scarce, and manufacturers increasingly replaced the pigment with mixtures designed to imitate the original colour.
One famous story illustrates the strange reputation of the pigment. When the painter Edward Burne-Jones learned that a tube of Mummy Brown in his studio contained ground human remains, he reportedly buried the paint tube in his garden as a small act of respect.
Today Mummy Brown survives mostly as a curious footnote in the history of artists’ materials. Modern versions of the colour are made using safer combinations of earth pigments rather than anything remotely resembling their original source. Yet the story of Mummy Brown remains one of the most unusual chapters in the long and sometimes surprising history of artist colours.
