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Fayum mummy portraits is the name given to a large number of paintings from the first to third century. These are encaustic paintings, made with hot, pigmented wax on wooden, or in some cases cartonnage, panels, which were inserted into the mummies of the deceased. The surviving paintings are predominantly from the Fayum region in Roman Egypt, where the practice was common and the dry heat preserved many of the paintings until today. They are the only survivors of the highly prestigeous panel painting tradition of the classical world.

The subjects of the paintings

According to Britannica, the Fayum portraits represent mostly Greek inhabitants of Egypt and are some of the most interesting examples of surviving Greek art in Ancient Egypt. According to Irish's study of dental patterns, however, the dental patterns of the Roman-period mummies found at Fayum were closest to the seven dynastic samples he studied.

The surviving paintings are predominantly from the Al Fayyum region in Egypt and were completed during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The practice was common and the painters of the Fayum were either Greek residents dating from the Ptolemaic period of the late 4th century B.C. or those who had inherited the Greek artistic tradition.

Fayum became a cosmopolitan city during the Graeco-Roman period, where Egyptians and Greeks lived side by side. Some of its inhabitants were Greek soldiers who were settled by the Ptolemaic kings in reclaimed lands, but soon native Egyptians were brought from all over the country to settle and work, as attested by personal names, local cults and recovered papyri. The latter came from the Nile Delta, Upper Egypt, Oxyrhynchus and Memphis. Paul Stanwick, Cambridge University, and Britannica estimate that the province was of primarily Greek extraction, while Susan Walker estimates that the Greek population was closer to 30 percent of the province's total population, with the rest being native Egyptians. By the Roman period, much of the "Greek" population of Fayum was made-up of either Hellenized Egyptians or people of mixed Egyptian-Greek origins.

Most of the portraits depict the deceased at a relatively young age, and many show children. According to Walker (2000), "CAT scans of all the complete mummies represented reveal a correspondence of age and, in suitable cases, sex between mummy and image." Walker concludes that the age distribution reflects the low life expectancy at the time. The wax portraits were completed during the life of the individual and displayed in their home, a custom that belonged to the traditions of Greek art. After the person was deceased, the portrait panel was placed over the mummified individuals face, an Egyptian tradition.

Together with the surviving frescoes and objects from Pompeii and Herculaneum, and tomb frescoes in Macedonia, they are the best preserved paintings from ancient times and are renowned for their remarkable naturalism. It is, however, debatable whether the portraits depict the subjects as they really were. Analyses have shown that the painters depicted faces in a repetitive and formulaic way, albeit with a variety of hairstyles and beards. They appear to have worked from a number of standard types without making detailed observations of the unique facial proportions of specific individuals which give each face its own personality.

Many museums around the world have fine examples of Fayum mummy portraits on display, notably the British Museum, the Royal Museum of Scotland, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Louvre in Paris.

Gallery of images

• Fayum mummy portrait of a girl, early third century A.D.
• Portrait of a Boy from the Fayum, on display at the National Museum in Warsaw.
• Portrait of a young girl, on display at the Museo Egizio.
• Portrait of a man holding a plant, on display at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon.
• Portrait of a young girl, on display at the Louvre.
• Portrait of a young girl, on display at the Louvre.
• Portrait of a young boy, on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Portrait of a man with black curly hair, on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Notes

1. Encyclopædia Britannica Online - Egyptian art and architecture - Greco-Roman Egypt
2. Encyclopædia Britannica Online - Fayyum
3. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Julia de Wolf Gibbs Addison, L. C. Page & company, p.242
4. Irish JD (2006). "Who were the ancient Egyptians? Dental affinities among Neolithic through postdynastic peoples.". Am J Phys Anthropol 129 (4): 529-43
5. Egypt, Cherine Badawi, p.120
6. Restauração de Pinturas: aplicações da encáustica, Edson Motta, Maria Luiza Guimarães Salgado, p.93
7. The World Museums Guide, Barbara Cooper, Maureen Matheson, Barbara Rosen, Threshold Books Ltd, p.66
8. Portraits of the Ptolemies: Greek Kings as Egyptian Pharaohs, Paul Edmund Stanwick, University of Texas Press, p.23
9. >Bagnall, R.S. Susan Walker, ed. Ancient Faces : Mummy Portraits in Roman Egypt (Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications). New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 27
10. Walker, op cit.
11. Portraits of the Ptolemies: Greek Kings as Egyptian Pharaohs, Paul Edmund Stanwick, University of Texas Press, p.23
12. The Cambridge Companion to the Hellenistic World, Cambridge University Press, p.39
13. Encyclopædia Britannica Online - Fayyum
14. Walker, op cit.
15. Walker, pp. 28-29
16. Encyclopedia Of Ancient Greece, Nigel Guy, Routledge Taylor and Francis group, p.601

See also

• Gallery of Fayum mummy portraits
• Al Fayyum

References

• Walker, Susan (Ed.): Ancient Faces. Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt. New York, 2000. ISBN 0-415-92744-7.

External links

• Proportion and personality in the Fayum Portraits, A.J.N.W Prag, November 2002

• Art of ancient Egypt
• Roman Empire paintings
• Hellenistic art