Egyptian mummy at Reading museum reunited with funeral mask kept at University of Pennsylvania

DON SPATZ
READING, Pa. — The mummy Nefrina came face to face with her funeral mask Wednesday, as the likeness that had been buried with her — but was separated the past 82 years — was returned to her in the Reading Public Museum.

Museum Director John Graydon Smith thanked the University of Pennsylvania for lending the mask to the museum for the next year.

It was scheduled to go on display Thursday in the Nefrina Gallery.

"We are delighted," Smith said. "I really think it's going to show people, especially kids, what they were trying to accomplish in the mummification process.

"I don't know that we'll see a huge influx of visitors. From a responsibility perspective, this is the right thing to do."

The university bought the mummy, its coffin and the mask from an antiquities dealer in 1893. In 1930, it agreed to let the Reading museum borrow the mummy and coffin for display.

But it insisted on keeping the mask, even after the museum bought the mummy outright in 1949. The museum has been trying to borrow the mask since 1993.

"It seemed like a good opportunity to reunite the mummy with the mask," said Lynn Grant, the university's head conservator, who with graduate student intern Tessa De Alarcon brought the mask to Reading.

The mask had been stabilized for storage, but De Alarcon's long assignment was to prep it for travel and display.


"The ancient Egyptians believed in an active afterlife, and they wanted their appearance preserved," Grant said. "They spent a lot of effort preparing the body for the afterlife, and the cartonnage was to give it a beautiful appearance."

She said she had to repair several tears in the hair, forehead and nose of the mask made of cartonnage — a mixture of linen, plaster, papyrus and other pliable materials — and covered in gold leaf. She also had to stabilize the paint, to keep it from flaking after more than 2,200 years.

"The workmanship is beautiful," she said.

Grant said the university plans to put it on exhibit in its own gallery when it returns from Reading. Otherwise, she said, the Reading museum could not have afforded all the hours that De Alarcon spent on it.

"The ancient Egyptians believed in an active afterlife, and they wanted their appearance preserved," Grant said. "They spent a lot of effort preparing the body for the afterlife, and the cartonnage was to give it a beautiful appearance."

Smith said the museum wanted the mask not only for display but also out of respect for the person — Nefrina, whose parents served in the temple at Ahkmim along the Nile, and who likely died about 250 B.C.

"These were powerful beliefs," he said. "They might not be our beliefs, but we still should be respectful
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