Mummy Portraits Of Roman Egypt

This publication presents fascinating new findings on ancient Romano-Egyptian funerary portraits preserved in international collections. Once interred with mummified remains, nearly a thousand funerary portraits from Roman Egypt survive today in museums around the world, bringing viewers face-to-face with people who lived two thousand years ago. Until recently, few of these paintings had undergone in-depth study to determine by whom they were made and how. An international collaboration known as APPEAR (Ancient Panel Paintings: Examination, Analysis, and Research) was launched in 2013 to promote the study of these objects and to gather scientific and historical findings into a shared database. The first phase of the project was marked with a two-day conference at the Getty Villa. Conservators, scientists, and curators presented new research on topics such as provenance and collecting, comparisons of works across institutions, and scientific studies of pigments, binders, and supports. The papers and posters from the conference are collected in this publication, which offers the most up-to-date information available about these fascinating remnants of the ancient world. The free online edition of this open-access publication is available at www.getty.edu/publications/mummyportraits/ and includes zoomable illustrations and graphs. Also available are free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBI downloads of the book.

From the first major discoveries a century ago, the painted portraits of Roman Egypt were a revelation to scholars and the public alike, and the recent finding of a new cache of these gilded images, which made national headlines, have only heightened their mystery and appeal. Published to coincide with a new major exhibition of these portraits, Ancient Faces is the most comprehensive, up-to-date survey of these astonishing works of art. Dating from the later period of Roman rule in Egypt, shortly before the birth of Christ, the painted mummy portraits are among the most remarkable products of the ancient world, a fusion of the traditions of pharonic Egypt and the Classical world. They are historical and cultural objects of outstanding importance and beauty, superb works of art that represent some of the earliest known examples of life-like portraiture. Though the subjects of the portraits believed in the traditional Egyptian cults, which offered them a firm prospect of life after death, they also wished to be commemorated in the Roman manner, with their fashion of dress and adornment signaling their status in life. Despite their ancient history, these portraits speak to the modern eye with a beauty and intensity that would be lost to portraiture until the Renaissance.

Herakleides was a young man who lived and died in Roman Egypt almost 2000 years ago. This multidisciplinary study of his mummy highlights the funerary practices and religious beliefs of his world.

The Graeco-Roman mummy portraits remain one of the British Musuem's popular and intimate collections. This compact book presents glorious colour photos of some of the best, alongside commentary and a more general introduction to the techniques and practice of the portraiture.

The result of a major colloquium on burial customs in Roman Egypt, these papers cover the reasons behind the development of mummy portraits and the society from which they emerged, as well as the artistic techniques employed.

The Fayum portraits were created by the people of a flourishing district of Roman Egypt during the first three centuries AD. In the old Egyptian tradition, these people embalmed the bodies of their dead, but then they placed over the mummy, a painted portrait to preserve the memory of each individual. Over 1000 portraits have so far been discovered of men, women and children.

From the first major discoveries in the 19th century, the painted panel and shroud portraits of Roman Egypt were a revelation to scholars and the public alike. Though the subjects of the portraits believed in the traditional Egyptian cults which offered them a firm prospect of life after death, they also wished to be commemorated in the Roman manner, the portraits focusing on their status in life. The images reveal the adoption of Roman fashions in dress and personal adornment by persons remote from the centre of the empire, but likely to have been actively engaged in its local administration. Many of the best known mummy portraits come from the Fayum, but portraits in various media are known from sites in the Nile Valley and along the Mediterranean coast. This text presents a wide range of examples, showing Roman influence coexisting with traditional Egyptian ways of commemorating the dead.