The Fayum Mummy Portraits

Introduction

The Fayum mummy portraits are paintings on wooden boards attached to mummies, which serve as great examples of Roman Egypt art. They belonged to the Coptic period during the Roman occupation of Egypt (Berman, Freed, & Doxey, 2003, p. 193). It is not clear when their production ended, but recent studies show that it was the middle of the 3^rd century AD. The portraits received their name owing to the place of the first major discovery in the Fayum oasis in 1887 by the British expedition led by Flinders Petrie. They portrayed the faces of the inhabitants of Ancient Egypt in the Hellenistic and Roman periods in the 3^rd-1^st centuries BC (Dorman, 2015). They became the basis for the iconography and the realistic tradition in European art as well. The Fayum portraits were usually performed on the board but sometimes, they were painted on canvas and then pasted on a wooden plank. The wood used for the portraits’ creation included pine, sycamore, and stone pine. The work was extremely difficult and time-consuming because encaustic painting required skills and dexterity since no corrections could be made. In the current essay, it is important to discuss how the Fayum portraits combine different cultural influences and represent both the socio-cultural background and the aesthetics of human characters.

Historical Response

For a proper understanding of iconography, it is always important to interpret the cultural context in which it emerged. The conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great ended the reign of the Pharaohs. The Greek state, formed after this campaign, created the ground for mixing the culture of the conquerors and the indigenous peoples. During the reign of the Ptolemaic dynasty, the heirs of Alexander’s empire, there were significant changes in the art and architecture. The Roman Empire, conquering most of the Hellenistic states, also borrowed the cultural traditions of Hellenism. Despite some regional peculiarities, the art of the Roman Empire was basically a continuation of Hellenistic art.

As a result, the Fayum mummy portraits presented a mixture of such ancient traditions as the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cultures (Dorman, 2015). First, funeral portraits flourished in Hellenistic Egypt. They stylistically related to the traditions of Greco-Roman art but also satisfied the needs of the Egyptian, replacing funerary masks of mummies. The reason ancient Egyptians made mummies is quite simple. They believed that death brings people into the afterlife, where they will receive an immortal existence (Dorman, 2015). Therefore, for the afterlife, it was necessary to preserve the dead body.

Critical Analysis

The influence of the Greek Hellenistic art on Egyptian artists was particularly noticeable in the Ptolemaic era. Previously, the Egyptian art was not realistic or naturalistic, but highly symbolic. During the Hellenistic period, the art became more naturalistic and lifelike and the figures were similar to real people. The changes were especially vivid in the naturalistic tendencies in sculpture and painting. At the same time, the artistic conventions of the Greco-Roman world were characterized by a wall painting, which was losing its popularity (Dash, 2014). Instead, the most prestigious type of art was panel painting, particularly tempera or encaustic technique on wooden panels, which paid special attention to the inner world and the character of the people. This tradition was also linked with sculptural portraits, which were mainly made for the emperors.

Consequently, the Fayum portraits connected and intertwined different cultural traditions, such as the Egyptian unshakable belief in the immortality of the soul, Hellenistic morality, and the Roman portraiture tradition. The most significant thing was that the Fayum portraits represented the synthetic and multicultural aesthetical Roman tradition, which also reflected the nature of ordinary human life. A portrait replaced the traditional funerary mask of the mummies. Thus, it was more realistic than it was in the Ancient Egypt (Dorman, 2015). 

The early portraits were drawn during the life of individuals from nature and could be inserted in a frame and hang on the wall in their houses (Dash, 2014). After the death of the depicted man, paintings were cropped and inserted into the linen bandages called mummy wrappers. Hence, the portraits were placed precisely on the face and replaced funeral mask. Their symbolism was sustained in a typical Egyptian spiritual style of painting and decorative flatness (Walker, 1997, p. 42).

A Young Man in a Gold Wreath is a great example of the Fayum portraits (See Appendix A). The painting was found in Fayum, Egypt and was painted in the 2^nd century AD. Now, it is exhibited in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. The author is anonymous. It represents the Fayum portrait realistic tradition with the linear style of painting. Its dimensions are nearly 40 x 20 cm. The media used include encaustic, wood, and gold leaf. It is a lyrical portrait of a young Egyptian man with big dark eyes, dark skin, and curly hair. Perhaps, he was from some higher social level because of the golden wreath. It is important, that “much attention has been devoted to the fashion choices of the subjects of the mummy portraits, and especially their hairstyles” (Dash, 2014). The author depicted a clear, bronze silhouette and accentuated the contrast in coloring, combining white, dark brown and black colors. This man looks directly at the viewer and it creates a real dramatic effect. It seems that he does not understand why he died at such a young age. At the same time, the image is idealized because the artist was guided by the laws of the human image that existed in the art of ancient Greece. This portrait reflects the real demographic situation of those times when many young people died at an early age. However, the aim was to emphasize the lack of time because it is a posthumous portrait.