Today in History—October 2: Mummy Brown Paint Sales End

The October 2, 1964, issue of Time carried some bad news for artists who liked their brown paint with a bit of the macabre mixed in: famed London color-making company C. Roberson & Co. was out of mummy brown.

The company’s managing director apologized, with an extraordinary explanation: “We might have a few odd limbs lying around,” but they had, literally, run out of mummies from which to make the paint. Supply had been dwindling for decades, and the final tube had been made.

The color was made from white pitch (resin from a spruce tree), myrrh, and, yes, ground-up mummies. The depth of the color derived in part from the minerals—such as bitumen—used in the embalming process, and it gave the color its distinctive hue. It became known as mummy brown, Egyptian brown, or caput mortuum (“dead man’s head”).

Discover the fascinating events that shaped the world, straight from our editors.

SIGN UP

By clicking “Sign Up”, you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

It’s hard to believe—and even harder to stomach—but by the 16th century, mummy powder had become a huge commercial export. The illegal trade operated mostly outside the Egyptian government’s attempt at oversight, between merchants and foreign buyers, and hundreds of mummified bodies (both human and feline) were shipped abroad to be broken up and ground.

The resulting powder was applied to skin or mixed into drinks and consumed, as it was thought to have medicinal properties. (It didn’t. It doesn’t. Don’t do this.) Mummy powder was one of the top-selling items at apothecaries across Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. The world was fascinated by mummies, but that did not lend itself to reverence.

The pigment was a rich, warm brown, and the art world took note. European painters, especially the Pre-Raphaelites, notably Dante Gabriel Rossetti, really loved the color. The paint was soon being mass-produced in Europe, inspiring shady dealings that even included outright grave robbing to acquire as many mummies as possible. There was money to be made, after all.

By the 20th century, the use of mummy brown had begun to decline, with more people becoming aware of its grisly origins. By the time C. Roberson ran out, the world had largely accepted that human remains make a pretty terrible ingredient.

The color exists today, in a form made entirely of (nonhuman) minerals.