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Masks of deceased people are part of traditions in many countries. The most important process of the funeral ceremony in ancient Egypt was the mummification of the body, which, after prayers and consecration, was put into a sarcophagus enameled and decorated with gold and gems.
These death masks were taken from bodies and kept in a home altar. Besides wax, masks were made from bronze, marble and terracotta. The molds for the masks were made directly from the deceased, giving historians an accurate representation of typically Roman features.
New Orleans authorities moved their death mask in 1853. During the tumult that accompanied the Civil War, the mask disappeared. A former city treasurer spotted the mask in 1866 as it was being hauled to the dump in a junk wagon. Rather than return the mask to the city, the treasurer took the mask home and put it on display there.
Nefertiti bust, from the 18th dynasty, New kingdom Egyptian death mask from the 18th dynasty. Louvre, Paris portrait of Meritamun, 19th dynasty of Egypt. Portraiture in ancient Egypt forms a conceptual attempt to portray "the subject from its own perspective rather than the viewpoint of the artist ... to communicate essential information about the object itself". [1]
Schliemann claimed that one of the masks he discovered was the mask of King Agamemnon, and that this was the burial site of the legendary king from Homer's Iliad. [4]The masks were likely direct representations of the deceased, symbolizing a continuation of the dead's identity in death, similar to funerary statues and incisions, immortalizing an idealized depiction of the deceased.
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