Hermione: What can an Egyptian mummy
tell us about Roman influence?
By Dorothy J. Thompson MA, PhD, DLitt, FBA
Girton College
Hermione, the schoolteacher (grammatikê) whose mummy with its fine portrait is now housed in the
Lawrence Room, Girton College, University of Cambridge, is exceptional in many respects. Her name
and profession were written on her portrait in Greek (Ερμιονη γραμματικη, Hermione grammatikê),
which remained the main language of Egypt after its conquest by Alexander (the Great) in 332 BC until
the Arab conquest. As a female teacher at an advanced level in the Egyptian countryside, Hermione
is unparalleled. Through her portrait, painted on linen, she was memorialized in death as a learned
member of her community. Hermione’s mummy was excavated from the cemetery of Hawara in the
Egyptian Fayum by William Flinders Petrie in January 1911.
In life, she is likely to have come from Arsinoe, the capital city of the area, in the early period of
Roman rule around the mid-1st century AD. Beneath her elaborate wrappings, her skeleton confirms the
impression of her portrait. She met her end in her early 20s.
Portrait mummies like Hermione were introduced to Egypt only with the Roman conquest in 30 BC.
The practice of portraiture involved on this mummy is well illustrated somewhat later in the frescoes
from Pompeii. There, learned women were painted on the walls with writing tablets and pen in hand,
and serve as examples of the recognised importance of education and learning in the ancient world.
One couple is portrayed with writing equipment: she holds a stylus and open tablet, while her partner
has a papyrus in his hand. Elsewhere a woman, her curls constrained in a band, holds her stylus to her
lips in her right hand while her left hand grasps a set of wooden tablets bound with a ribbon. Education
was valued in Egypt, too, with tax-breaks granted to teachers and learning on display, as in the striking
wall paintings of the 4th-century AD Roman villa at Amheida in the Dakhleh oasis. (See http://www.
amheida.org/.)
The Lawrence Room at Girton College is the small college museum which houses a fascinating set of
different collections: Roman and Anglo-Saxon material from the Girton sites, Mediterranean material
including a fine set of Tanagra figurines, some early Mesopotamian eye-idols, items from the Far East,
and more. See http://www.girton.cam.ac.uk/girton-today/art-and-artefacts/girtons-museum-collection.
Dorothy J. Thompson is a retired College Lecturer in both Classics and History, and she was formerly the Newton Trust
Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. She is currently helping develop the Lawrence Room at Girton
College, a small museum holding a collection of Egyptian and Classical antiquities.