The Spitalfields sarcophagus

During the 1990s, archaeologists excavating the site of the former vegetable market at Spitalfields, just east of the City of London, retrieved the remains of a close contemporary of Egeria.

After 1,700 years, even a body encased in lead has long ago lost all its flesh. The forensic anthropologist has only bones and grave goods with which to reconstruct something of her life and milieu. The Spitalfields woman died in her twenties. She was 1.6 metres (5 ft 3 in) tall and, according to Rebecca Redfern, curator of human osteology at the Museum of London, she was light-boned, like a dancer. There is no skeletal indication of the cause of her death at such a young age; apart from some very severe disorders or traumas that leave traces on bone, we are left guessing at the sorts of diseases rife in busy towns – influenza or smallpox, perhaps – that may have caused her fatal illness.^§

Death from disease in one’s twenties is quite unusual, even in ancient populations. It is a common misconception that in the pre-modern period ‘everyone died young’. A woman like the one found at Spitalfields, having survived infancy and adolescence, might expect to live into her sixties or seventies – so long as she did not succumb to the dangers of multiple childbirths. It is not even clear from her skeleton if this woman had borne children.

The evidence of her funeral rite is more illuminating. She had been buried in some sort of silk shroud embroidered with gold thread. Silk was not produced in Britain; it must have come from much further south and east – as an heirloom, perhaps, or a special import: this woman was not poor. Bay leaves had been placed or scattered about her; objects of jet and glass lay around the sarcophagus. Most intriguing of all was the presence of a fine glass container, similar to an example excavated in a grave in France that had contained wine. Archaeologist Julian Richards, who studied and filmed the excavation and analysis for his series Meet the Ancestors, speculates that this woman identified herself with a cult of Bacchus, one of many competing Eastern mystery religions with adherents during the late Empire. Even on the cosmopolitan streets of Roman Londinium, she may have been an exotic sight.

The face of the Spitalfields woman was reconstructed by forensic artists for the programme, using a cast of her skull. I must say I am sceptical of the results of such blending of art and science. It seems to me that there is too much potential for projecting the modern imagination onto the ancient subject. If we want to know how Roman women saw themselves or were seen by their contemporaries, we may find inspiration in the evidence of the mummy portraits of Fayum.

The Egypt of the first three centuries of the Common Era (CE) was culturally highly diverse, reflecting African, Greek and Roman influences. The Fayum portraits come from a fertile, well-watered lakeland area some 96 kilometres (60 miles) south of Cairo. Here, between the first and third centuries CE, men and women, generally but not exclusively those of wealth and rank, were interred as mummies, their bodies embalmed and wrapped in the traditional Egyptian manner. In many instances, portraits of the deceased were painted onto thin board and attached to the front of the head above the outermost wrapping.