The Fayûm mummy portraits are the best preserved paintings of Antiquity. They are amazingly lifelike paintings of both males and females ranging from childhood to old age that were fastened to linen wrappings and placed over the faces of Egyptian mummies. During the 1st to 3rd AD Egypt, painted panel portraits evolved as a funerary art form unlike no other. They depicted faces of the inhabitants of ancient Egypt at a period influenced by Greeks and Romans. Although many of these portraits were found in Fayûm (Arsinoe a.k.a. Hawara), other mummy portraits have also been discovered in various necropoli including Memphis (Saqqara), Philadelphia (er-Rubayat and Kerke), Antinoopolis, Panopolis (Akhmim), Marina el-Alamein, Thebes and el-Hiba (Ankyronopolis). However, they are collectively referred to as Fayûm mummy portraits.

The word Fayûm (also spelled Fayyum, Fayoum or Faiyoum) relates to the Fayoum Oasis, a region extremely rich in archeological sites. Fayoum is located about 70 km southwest of Cairo and is easily found on the map because of its proximity to a large body of water, Qaroun Lake. The old city of Fayoum, or Crocodilopolis as it was originally known, rested in a natural basin in the desert linked to the Nile by the Bahr Yusuf, an ancient subsidiary of the Nile. The Bahr Yusuf was widened and deepened by Amenemhat IV of the 12th dynasty to substantiate the “Mer-Wer,” which to the ancients meant “the great sea.” The huge salt lake was also known as Lake She-resy and was thought to be the last vestiges of a prehistoric ocean. In Greek it became Lake Moeris. In Arabic it is called Qaroun Lake.

It was W. M. Flinders Petrie, an English Egyptologist, who discovered the first Fayûm mummy portrait in March 1887 in an ancient cemetery on the Labyrinth plateau, the residue of the Hawara Pyramid complex originally built by Amenemhat III, who ruled during the Middle Kingdom (ca. 1844-1797 BCE). Petrie was overcome with emotion when he perceived, still fixed to its mummy, the first portrait, "... a splendidly drawn girl, in of sweet grey tints." There were hundreds of mounds of rubble when Petrie came to Egypt, some so insignificant in appearance that no one had considered them worth the trouble of excavation. Petrie's dig at the remnants of a little town situated in a corner of what used to be the Hawara pyramid is an example of what the mounds of Egypt held in store for explorers.

A definite association with traditional Pharaonic religion is evident from the popularity of the Hawara plateau as a burial place for panel portrait mummies. At the entrance of the Fayoum Oasis, the Hawara mortuary complex stood in glorious splendor. Originally built during the Middle Kingdom by Amenemhat III, and mostly likely modified or added to by several royal successors thereafter, the Hawara temple complex was situated near Crocodilopolis, the City of Crocodiles, cult center of Sobek, God of Crocodiles. Filled with monstrous statues, crocodile- and other animal-headed deities that were still standing when Herodotus, Strabo and Diodorus Siculus visited in the 1st century AD, the city was renamed Ptolemais Euergetis after it passed to the Ptolemies and then renamed again, this time Arsinoe by Ptolemy Philadelphus to honor Arsinoe II during the 3rd century BCE. The desire of the Greco-Roman populace to be buried near such a place implies not only reverence for Egyptian deities, but also a strong propensity to follow cultural and religious mores. Unfortunately, nothing is left of this extensive temple complex, the famous Labyrinth, so named by Herodotus. The story of its demise becomes the story of profound discovery. The rubble of what was once the Hawara pyramid complex became a burial ground filled with many splendid mummy panel portraits.

"It has twelve covered courts — six in a row facing north, six south — the gates of the one range exactly fronting the gates of the other. Inside, the building is of two storeys and contains three thousand rooms, of which half are underground, and the other half directly above them. I was taken through the rooms in the upper storey, so what I shall say of them is from my own observation, but the underground ones I can speak of only from report, because the Egyptians in charge refused to let me see them, as they contain the tombs of the kings who built the labyrinth, and also the tombs of the sacred crocodiles. The upper rooms, on the contrary, I did actually see, and it is hard to believe that they are the work of men; the baffling and intricate passages from room to room and from court to court were an endless wonder to me, as we passed from a courtyard into rooms, from rooms into galleries, from galleries into more rooms and thence into yet more courtyards. The roof of every chamber, courtyard, and gallery is, like the walls, of stone. The walls are covered with carved figures, and each court is exquisitely built of white marble and surrounded by a colonnade." Herodotus, Histories, Book II

To understand the phenomenon of the Fayûm Mummy Portraits, we must briefly delve into Egypt's history. After the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, the independent rule of Pharaohs in the strictest sense came to an end. Under the Ptolemies, who followed Alexander as rulers, significant changes took place in art and architecture. A unique art form, mummy portraiture, becomes popular in Hellenic Egypt.

A flourishing metropolitan community in ancient Egypt, the Fayoum evolved over time to boast a diverse population. Egyptians, Greeks, Syrians, Libyans and Romans began to live side by side. The Greek population was small at first, soldier veterans from Alexander's conquest of Egypt and elite military officials who were settled by the Ptolemaic kings on reclaimed lands. They intermarried and eventually adopted many of the customs of the Egyptians, as did the Romans who arrived in the area following the death of Cleopatra and Egypt's annex by Rome in 30 BCE. Not surprising, a series of art and architectural changes began to take place. The Egyptians continued with their artistic traditions a few centuries longer, but eventually they converted to more Greco-Roman art forms as time passed. The evidence of this conversion, most appropriately, comes from their graves. When Petrie discovered a cemetery filled with decorated mummy cases, he found intact tombs with sixty mummy panel portraits.

"... an immense cemetery of Roman time with rooms brick-built tombales still containing the bodies of their owners," W. M. Flinders Petrie

The cemetery resided on the outskirts of what was once a small Greco-Roman town situated in the southwest corner of an immense artificially raised quadrangular platform - the gigantic "grave" of The Labyrinth with a tragic story of its own. It seems that under orders of the Roman government The Labyrinth was quarried for materials.

The Site of The Labyrinth, 1888

One thousand feet long and eight hundred feet wide, this platform heaped six feet deep with tens of thousands of tons of sand, granite and limestone chips was all that remained of The Labyrinth, the ancient temple complex of which Herodotus wrote was "larger than all the temples of Greece put together, and more wonderful than the pyramids." As the most magnificent building complex of the ancient world was systemically razed, life went on ~ the townspeople lived and died and used part of the land to bury their dead. Years passed and the last traces of the Labyrinth disappeared, but the people remained for several generations. It was during this time that burial customs were changing.

Although the residents were a mixed population of Egyptians, Greeks, Syrians and Romans, for the most part much of the Greek population comprised either Hellenized Egyptians or people of mixed Egyptian-Greek origins. The naturalized foreigners, resident Roman officials and descendants of Ptolemaic Greeks, were the aristocracy. The Egyptians were the artisans, tradesmen, servants and slaves. This group of resident foreigners and indigenous peoples mummified their dead, like many of their contemporaries throughout the Nile Valley. Such is the tale told by their graves: the ornate cartonnage mummy cases some covered with gilding were mostly inscribed with Roman and Greek names, such as Titus, Eutyches, Diogenes, Artemidorus, Demetrius. A portrait of the deceased, painted usually on wood or linen, was placed over the mummy as a memorial. These portraits are the only surviving works of this type from antiquity. They are notable for their freshness of color, which is most likely due to a combination of protection from the wax process and Egypt's arid climate.

Fayum Mummy Portrait of a woman, Antinoopolis, End of the Reign of Trajan, 98-117 A.D.

The technique used in creating the majority of mummy portraits is known as encaustic (derived from the Greek word enkaiein – to burn into), a term used to describe a painting medium in which the binder for the pigment is beeswax or wax and resin. Encaustic art was practiced by the Greeks as far back as the 5th century BC when heat-colored waxes were used to decorate walls of tombs and hulls of warships. Homer wrote of the painted Greek warships in the Iliad. In the lst century AD, Pliny the elder wrote about encaustic paintings that were already hundreds of years old. He wrote about a variety of encaustic art such as portrait and mythological scenes painted on panels, the tinting of marble statuary, and the decorating of terracotta trims in homes. However, this term as used by these ancient authors is somewhat misleading because heat is not absolutely necessary to attain the effects seen in the encaustic panels. Therefore, encaustic has come to mean any painting method in which pigment is mixed with beeswax. Researchers have found that a great variety of methods were used to achieve the desired effects in encaustic paintings: hot or cold wax, under-painting with various colors and a variety of soft or hard tools used either heated or cold.

Another painting technique used in mummy panel portraits was tempera, in which pigments are mixed with water-soluble binding agents, most frequently animal glue. Tempera portraits are painted on light or dark backgrounds in bold brush strokes and fine hatching and cross-hatching. Their surface is matte, in contrast to the glossy surface of encaustic paintings. Tempera painting has antecedents in ancient Egyptian painting of Pharaonic times, and has been described as "calligraphic." The faces in tempera paintings are usually shown frontally and the treatment of light and shadow is less prominent than in encaustic panels. Therefore, the tempera paintings may be more closely linked to indigenous Egyptian artistic traditions. However, there are many indications that the mummy portrait painters using the tempera technique were strongly influenced by the encaustic paintings. In addition, some panels were created in a mixed encaustic and tempera technique. It is not known if the same painters used all of the methods (encaustic, tempera and mixed).

An important characteristic of encaustic mummy portraits, besides the durability of the medium, is the use of wafer-thin gold leaf. In some panels, the entire background was gilded, while in others, wreaths and fillets were added, and jewelry and garment decoration embellished. The panels themselves were derived from a variety of woods: indigenous sycamore; imported cedar, pine, fir, cypress, and oak; and possibly imported, but also growing in Egypt at the time lime, fig and yew. Some portraits were painted on linen shrouds stiffened by glue.

Fayum Portrait of a young woman, A.D. 110–20. Encaustic on wood.

The Fayûm Mummy Portraits owe their existence to the truly multicultural populations in Roman-Egyptian cities. Their artistic style and technique followed the Greek painting tradition while embracing Egyptian funerary customs. Since no other panel paintings from ancient Greece have survived, the mummy portraits are singular artifacts of an art form that ancient literary sources identified as among the highest artistic achievements of Greek culture. The Fayûm mummy portraits became the early roots of portrait painting, which can be traced from Egypt through the Renaissance to the present. Their stylized, contemporary appearance is reminiscent of icons in the Russian Orthodox Church and modern artists, such as Modigliani and Matisse. When viewed closely, part of the appeal of encaustic paintings is their similarity to oil paintings. The wax medium was applied in thick layers showing a great variety of tool marks and free brush strokes and produced an ethereal quality to the painting.

Besides technique and style, the portraits illustrate sociocultural trends popular at the time. Hairstyles, clothing and jewelry portray what was fashionable in Rome and Greece. Some eastern Mediterranean influence is seen as well, notably, the profusion of curls in a few female portraits. Traditional Egyptian styles and fashions of the time are notably absent. Considered separately, the encaustic mummy portraits appear to have no connection with Pharaonic Egypt. However, when viewed in their original frame of reference, the complexion of the painted portraits alters. The Fayûm mummy portraits clearly establish that the Greco-Roman individuals depicted in the paintings followed traditional Egyptian beliefs concerning the afterlife. With their direct full gaze and strong presence, the portraits bring alive the inhabitants of Greco-Roman Egypt. They look back at us with lifelike, somewhat compelling eyes, with expressions and features full of character, portraits in the truest sense, windows into millennia past.

Portrait of a youth, A.D. 130–50 Encaustic on wood with gold leaf background.

View a beautifully photographed video of selected Mummy Portraits: Gaze into Eternity
An outstanding collection - includes excavation site information for each portrait: Portraits du Fayoum
An extensive collection of Fayûm Mummy Portraits at Wikimedia
A small collection at The Met: Ancient Faces - Special Exhibit

Main sources:
Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers, Amelia B. Edwards, New York: Harper & Brothers
Art in Egypt, Sir Gaston Maspero, New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1912
Fayum Portraits, Berenice Geoffrey Schneiter, Assouline, 2004

Online sources:
EL-Fayoum
Metropolitan Museum of Art
History of Encaustic Art
Encaustic Painting from The Artist's Handbook by Ralph Mayer
Wikipedia: Labyrinth

Credits:
Labyrinth plateau photograph by W. M. Flinders Petrie, c. 1887-89
Map courtesy of Egypt Travel Information with permission.