Missing ink: Egyptians made their mark with tattoos 5,500 years ago
AS A young man, Ginger had a tattoo on his arm. So far, so ordinary. But Ginger is a 5,500-year-old Egyptian mummy, the oldest inhabitant of the British Museum’s public galleries, and the inkings represent a major scientific discovery that has pushed back evidence for tattooing in Africa by a millennium.
What had previously shown up as dark smudges on the mummy’s upper arm were revealed under infrared light to be two overlapping tattoos, thought to be of a wild bull and a Barbary sheep.
Tests on a female mummy from the same period (3351-3017 BC) identified what archaeologists believe to be a crooked stave, an object used in rituals of the time. Together, they are the world’s earliest figurative tattoos.
The mummies are officially known as Gebelein Man A and Gebelein Woman, after the town on the Nile where they were discovered in 1896.
The male mummy, who was aged 1821 when he died from a stab wound to the back, is affectionately known by staff and visitors as Ginger on account of his red hair. He has been on almost continuous display since 1901, but his tattoos were not clear to the naked eye.
Daniel Antoine, the museum’s curator of physical anthropology, said: “There were these dark smudges on his skin but no one really thought about them.
“We were cleaning and conserving the remains and as part of that we discovered the tattoos on Gebelein Woman, which showed up as very faint marks until they were put under infrared. Then we examined Gebelein Man using infrared imaging and found these designs.”
He explained: “It is the first time we have found evidence that people were putting imagery on their bodies that was also used in other art mediums, such as pottery.
“That is a big departure [for archaeologists].” Experts do not know what the images symbolised. “For him, there is a bull, and the bull later becomes a symbol of male power and virility, but we don’t know if that was true during this period. We don’t know what the sheep represents,” he said.
Both animals featured in pre-dynastic Egyptian art but scholars had no idea that they were also inked onto the skin. The pigment is carbon-based, believed to be some kind of soot.
Mr Antoine said: “The woman has a crooked stave on her arm often associated with scenes of ritual, so it may be that she was involved in rituals. But this period has no written records, so it is not straightforward.
“Out of seven mummies we have from Gebelein, two are tattooed so that may suggest it was more prevalent than we previously realised.”
The find represents the earliest example of female tattooing in the world.