TIDBITS

A MASK OF MIDDLE EGYPT

Roman goldsmiths belonged to organized guilds with Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, this last being a Hellenistic Greek city, with all three being the main centers of production for the empire. The work produced there was widely dispersed throughout Europe, taken by officials and their families to distant provinces. There, the wealthy wore ornaments similar to those of the fashionable original families of that region in Rome. All this brings me, and you, to the ventral and back image of a Mummy Mask of a Woman. She is laden, front and rear, with jewels of those times. Bracelets, rings, necklaces, head gear, and more accessories adorn her from head to toe. Jewelry of those times developed along independent lines. Simple metalworking skills were achieved at a very early date, and burial ornaments were achieved at a time sometime around 4000 BC. As you can see, the jewelers of those past times had ultra great skills. But let us leave that as it is for now. A question now arises. Is our model the beauty she is most probably purported to be? Greta Garbo perhaps? Marilyn Monroe? Brigitte Bardot? Queen Cleopatra? Well, you know what they say. Beauty is in the eyes of the who he or the she who is doing the viewing. Or some words to that effect. Which brings us to the mummified lady of the day. I shall call her Maree. Maree was thought to be found in such a fashion so that she was found as if lying flat on her back in her casket upon her beir. A beir, for those of you who do not know, or for those of you who yearn for this knowledge, is a frame upon which dead bodies rest in their coffins and are taken to their grave sites.chastity is, to me at least, a bit more than just a bit of an oxymoron.