Painting
Fayum Mummy Portraits
Anonymous (Romano-Egyptian), 1st-3rd century AD
Show the style
Classical · chronological order 2
Where to see it
British Museum
London · United Kingdom
There are about a thousand, spread between the British Museum, the Louvre, the Metropolitan, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and others.
Around a thousand portraits painted in encaustic on wooden panel, found in cemeteries around the Fayum region of Roman Egypt and dating from the 1st to the 3rd century AD. They were laid over the face of the mummified dead, as a painted funerary mask. They combine Greek and Roman naturalistic technique with Egyptian burial custom. Today they are scattered between the British Museum, the Louvre, the Metropolitan, the Cairo Museum and others.