For millennia, people have sought to immortalise themselves in portraits. At the distance of centuries, we cannot assess the accuracy of any likeness, especially when the artistic conventions and the purposes served by this form of art were so varied. Even the apparently lifelike statues, intended to perpetuate the Egyptians’ existence in the next world, portrayed them in stylised form, forever free from blemish and the ravages of age. We are now so familiar with recognisable images of named individuals, in the shape of painted or sculpted portraits and photography, that we forget that most people in ancient societies rarely had the opportunity to see themselves as others saw them.
In ancient Egypt, the best most people could hope for was to catch a glimpse of their reflection in water. A shallow bowl of a dark-coloured stone, such as schist or basalt, filled with clean water, could serve as a primitive form of mirror, though having to keep the bowl horizontal makes this an impractical instrument. A roughly rectangular polished flake of selenite (a crystalline form of gypsum), found in a Badarian grave (c.4400-4000 BC), has been interpreted as one of the earliest Egyptian mirrors. This item, now in the British Museum, was found alongside other cosmetic equipment, including that most popular of Predynastic grave goods: a simple mudstone palette. Principally used for grinding cosmetic pigments, the smooth surface of a cosmetic palette made of slate or schist, if wetted with water, could also provide a reflective surface, however fleeting, to aid the application of eye-paint.
As Egyptian metallurgy developed from the First Intermediate Period onwards, mirrors of polished metal became regular inclusions in burials, both male and female. These prestigious objects were valuable because of the weight of metal they required. The usual shape was a flat disc, with a tang enabling the attachment of a wooden, ivory or bone handle. The finest examples have handles cast in metal, commonly in the form of a papyrus umbel.
Excavating the CA archive: Major church buildings