yego.me
yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

The People Who Were Turned Into Paint

less than 1m read
·Nov 10, 2024

There are four people in this painting. Three of them are made out of paint. The fourth is the paint.

The interior of a kitchen was painted in 1815, and like many paintings from that time, one of the colors used in it was mummy Brown, a pigment literally made from the ground up dried flesh of ancient mummies.

Today, we hollow mummies as fragile time capsules, but in the 1700s, there was a thriving mummy trade between Egypt and Europe. Ground up mummy was believed to have mystic healing powers, and the oil paints that could be made from it were highly valued.

So, mummy Brown was used in countless paintings for hundreds of years. It wasn't until the late 1800s that people began to really question its use. The dwindling supply of mummies didn't help either, and so it began to fall out of fashion.

The people who were turned into paint didn't ask to be. What they wanted was immortality, and they may have got what they wanted, but they also got an afterlife they didn't expect. Not one for their personal souls, but one for the anonymous beauty of the rotten, tari darkness.

Anyone can become… [Music]

15 Things That Instantly Lower Status
HE'S FOLLOWING YOU! -- DONG!

More Articles

View All
The Declaration of Independence | Period 3: 1754-1800 | AP US History | Khan Academy
On July 4th, 1776, the delegates to the Second Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, and we know parts of it very well. For example, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” The Declaration of Ind…
Multi step addition word problem
We’re told that Joe started his math homework. He finished 23 problems by himself. He finished 13 more problems with help from Sal. I don’t know if they’re talking about me or not. And then they say there are nine math problems left. And then they ask us…
Alzheimer's and the Brain
Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. If you have a watch or a clock nearby, take a look at its hour hand. It moves, completing a trip all the way around twice a day. Its motion is too slow to see, but try really look at it right now. Watch how far it travels in on…
Example of under coverage introducing bias | Study design | AP Statistics | Khan Academy
A senator wanted to know about how people in her state felt about internet privacy issues. She conducted a poll by calling 100 people whose names were randomly sampled from the phone book. Note that mobile phones and unlisted numbers are not in phone book…
Hippos Eating Watermelon | Magic of Disney's Animal Kingdom
The sun shines at Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park, and at the Kilimanjaro Safaris, the hippos prepare for breakfast. Tequila lives in a blowout of six hippos, one of the largest in managed care. Every day when the hippos come out, we like to do a littl…
The Water Crisis | National Geographic
The following program is paid content for Finish. Fresh water—we can’t live without it, but it’s running out fast. We call this the bathtub ring, and the reservoir has dropped 120 feet in the last 20 years. Now I’m tracking down innovators who are trying…