From Egypt to Bologna
Federico Amici (1828-1907) was born in Rome to a noble Bolognese family and lived in Egypt from 1875 to 1890. He held important positions for the Khédive Muhammad Tewfik Pasha (1852-1892) the most prestigious of which was organizing the national statistical service of Egypt.
Amici donated various antiquities to the Civic Museum in Bologna, including the mummy of a child with three tunics.
It was presumably the fabrics that attracted his attention, as the body of the child was already in a precarious state of preservation at the time. In the catalogue of the Egyptian collection in Bologna, published in 1895 by Giovanni Kminek-Szedlo, the mummy is described as: “A child from the period following typical Egyptian embalming technique, 0.63 long; it is in a very neglected state and is missing its head and arms. The feet are uncovered, the rest of the body is wrapped in a corset and a kind of skirt of different fabrics.” The “corset”, superimposed over the three tunics, hid the arms from view, which unlike the head and feet, the mummy actually still retains. However, there is no longer any trace of the previously mentioned “corset”.
