Made of painted and gilded cartonnage-which is like papier mâché-the mummy masks are not meant to hide or obscure the face of the departed, as the word mask implies.
Egyptian, from Hawara, Mummy mask, 332–30 B.C.E., plaster and linen, Manchester Museum, © 2020 Manchester Museum / Michael Pollard Photographer Instead, intricately wrapped mummies were decorated with images of Egyptian funerary deities and amuletic symbols that offered protection against the various dangers on the path to the afterlife as well as hauntingly beautiful portraits or arresting plaster or cartonnage mummy masks that gave the deceased the power of sight.
The millennia-old sacred art of mummification was still practiced, but the coffins that protected the mummies had largely fallen out of use. Wealthy members of this multicultural society made elaborate preparations for the afterlife, combining Egyptian, Greek, and Roman ideals of eternal beauty.
However, the Egyptian afterlife offered them the possibility of being reborn into a bright, perfected version of this world, to join Osiris, the god of rebirth and ruler of the underworld, and to live for eternity. Greeks and Romans had rather bleak expectations for an existence after death.
