The use of ground mummies as a pigment began in the 16th century and continued shockingly late — the London colourman C. Roberson reportedly said in 1964 that they had just used up their last mummy and "had only one Egyptian left." The pigment was prized for its warm, transparent brown quality — not realising (or not caring) that it would cause paintings to crack over time as the bitumen content dried.

The most ethically disturbing colour in art history. Mummy brown forces a confrontation with the commodification of the dead — ancient humans were literally ground up and spread across canvases for aesthetic purposes. The Pre-Raphaelites' horror upon discovering its source reflects a moral awakening about what art materials actually are. Every colour has a story; mummy brown's story is one of the most unsettling.

The story of mummy brown encapsulates the colonial relationship between 19th century Europe and ancient Egypt — a culture reduced to raw material for Western art. The craze for Egyptomania following Napoleon's Egyptian campaign (1798–1801) created demand for Egyptian artefacts of all kinds, including ground mummies. This context makes mummy brown not merely macabre but a specific product of colonial extraction. The contemporary art market's ongoing reckoning with provenance and ethical sourcing has deep historical roots.