Name: Al-Fayyum - Egypt - Portraits - Mummies - Editions FMR 1995 1/500
Brand: Librairie L'Ostal Arverne
Price: 600.0 EUR
Availability: OutOfStock

in Egypt and dating from Roman times. The realism of the faces and the quality of the pigments and the manufacturing

from the end of the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius until the 4th century. These are painted funerary portraits inserted into the bands at the face of the mummy.

The deceased is represented there in bust, the face of the face. The discoveries were numerous in the 19th century (collections of Henry Salt and Theodor Graf), but the first excavations did not take place until 1888 in Hawara, under the direction of the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie.

Although they seem to stand out in their naturalism, these “Fayoum portraits” continue the funerary tradition of ancient Egypt, enriched by foreign influences linked to invasions and immigration, Greek and then Roman in particular. Their technique varies, as does the quality of their realization.

The “Fayoum portraits” therefore did not have the mummy facing as their only function.

They have a commemorative function. Usually, this function is mainly performed by statuary, as evidenced by the Roman tradition of portraits. It is not improbable that they were carried in procession during the burial, like the ancestor portraits of the Roman era when a family member died.

The funerary function of the “Fayoum portraits” was enriched in Roman times by the search for resemblance of features inherited from Roman culture. The presence of the image of the deceased, idealized or not, directly linked to the body of the deceased already knows precedents continuously throughout the Pharaonic era. The deceased must indeed survive physically and spiritually, and his body serves as a physical attachment to the immaterial parts that compose him (ka and ba).