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]

Can You Upload Your Mind & Live Forever?

Divided government and gridlock in the United States | Khan Academy

View All

Apocalypse | A Pastor, A Rabbi and an Imam | The Story of God

Okay, so stop me if you’ve heard this one: a rabbi, a pastor, and an imam walk to a bar. Okay, so it wasn’t a bar; it was a diner to discuss my show, “The Story of God,” about the apocalypse. So the rabbi says, “Share with me a little bit about how the I…

Non-typical pay structures | Employment | Financial Literacy | Khan Academy

In this video, we’re going to think about all of the ways that someone can work or get paid or have employment. We’re not going to list out every occupation or how someone might do it, but the general categories. Now some of you might be saying, “Well, is…

The procrastination cure you don't want to hear

I think one of the most common problems that people have is not that they don’t know what to do to dramatically move their life forward in a substantial way. Like, you know exactly what you need to do right now. There’s probably something that you’ve been…

Elliot Choy asks Ray Dalio about his early goals

Was was that first step for you? Do you recall kind of some of your early goals? Was it simply to find some level of success, some level of security? Do you remember what those first steps were for you? Well, it was, um, it was more a passion, you know? …

Hummingbird Aerodynamics- High Speed Video - Smarter Every Day 27

Hey, it’s me, Destin. So to fly slow is one of the more difficult things to do because you don’t have as much airflow over your control surfaces. To fly at zero air velocity is the hardest thing to do of all. Over the past weekend, I’ve been making observ…

Live Below Your Means for Freedom

Any other big things you should avoid other than renting out your time? Yeah, there are two tweets that I put out that are related. So the first one is talking about queer or something like how your lifestyle, you know, has to upgrade. It shouldn’t get u…

The People Who Were Turned Into Paint

More Articles