IX. TWO MUMMY-LABELS IN THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM.* 

 By Professor Hamilton Ford Allen. 



(Plates XVI and XVII.) 



Mummy-labels, 1 which were attached to mummies for purposes of 

 identification, were used in Egypt mainly in the second and third cen- 

 turies of the Roman rule, though Krebs 2 assigns one to the fourth cen- 

 tury. Very few of the labels are dated, but, of those which bear a date, 

 the earliest is from the reign of Trajan and the latest from the " year I " 

 of the reign of Macrianus and Quietus. 3 These tickets were attached 

 to mummies sent by water to some necropolis, where they were kept 

 before burial, and, if more than the simple particulars were needed, a 

 papyrus screed was sent with the body. The majority of the bodies 

 thus tagged were those of Egyptians of the middle and lower classes, 

 and the labels are written mainly in Demotic, Demotic and Greek, or 

 in Greek alone. The Demotic form in addition to the particulars 

 which are also given in Greek, makes some mention of a god in a 

 prayer or ascription of praise. 



The fullest form of the Greek label is Ets (place-name) Ta<f>rj tov 

 (or tt}s) Seiva tov (ylov) or tt)s (Ovyarpb 1 ;) oelva fxrjTpb 1 ; Seiva airb (place- 

 name) £TO)v (ifiitDatv err)) td (or other letters to represent the number 

 of years). This is the fullest form of the label, but the form which 

 occurs most frequently omits the names of the places to which the 

 mummy is to be sent and from which it comes, and leaves out the 

 word Ta<f>r'] as well, so that there is left the name of the dead with the 

 names of the father and mother and the number of years lived. But 

 the name of the father or mother, or of both, may be omitted, and the 

 number of years lived may be left out, till nothing is left but the name 

 of the dead. 



When the word Ta</>r/ is omitted from the beginning, the name of the 

 dead may be in the genitive case, as ©eavous, 4 or Ta/3ai'a/3pios, or it 



* Read before the Areheological Institute of America, December 27, 191 1. 



1 H. R. Hall, Proceedings of the Society for Biblical Archeology, 1905, pp. 13-20, 

 48-56, 83-91, 115-122, 159-165. 



2 Krebs, " Griechische Mumienetiketten aus /Egypten," Zeitschrift fitr jEgypt- 

 ische Sprache und Alter himskunde, vol. XXXII (1894), pp. 36 ff. 



3 Spiegelberg, "^Egyptische und Griechische Eigennamen aus Mumienetiketten 

 der Romisehen Kaiserzeit," Leipzig, 1901, p. 3. 



4 This and the following are given by Hall, numbers 18, 22, 21, 5. 



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