Fayum portraits

Today, about nine hundred burial portraits are known. Most of them were found in the necropolis of Fayum. Due to the dry Egyptian climate, many portraits are very well preserved, even the colors look fresh in most cases.

The funeral portraits were first described in 1615 by the Italian explorer Pietro della Valle during his stay in the Saccara - Memphis oasis . He brought two of them to Europe, today they are in the collection of the State Art Collection of Dresden . Despite the constant growth of interest in ancient Egypt , funeral portraits again attracted attention only at the beginning of the XIX century. So far, no information has been preserved where the first finds came from: perhaps it was again Sakkara or Thebes . Thanks to Leon de Laborde in 1827, two new funeral portraits appeared in Europe, allegedly found in Memphis, one of which is stored today in the Louvre , and the other in the British Museum .

Back in 1820, Baron Minutoli, on the order of the German government, acquired several funeral portraits, which, however, disappeared along with other Egyptian artifacts during a shipwreck in the North Sea . Ippolito Roselini brought to Florence from the expedition of Jean-Francois Champollion in Memphis in the years 1828-1829 a burial portrait of unknown origin, similar to the two portraits brought by Laborde from Memphis. In the 1820s, through the British Consul General in Egypt Henry Salt, several portraits came to Paris and London . Erroneously, some of the people depicted in the portraits were considered family members repeatedly mentioned in written sources by Thebes archon Pollios Zoter.

It took a lot of time before there was information about new finds. The first such message appeared in 1887 and was more of a regrettable nature for science. Daniel Marie Fouquet found out about finding portraits in one of the grottoes. A few days later he set off to check this information, but arrived too late. Almost all the portraits discovered were already used for kindling fires on cold nights in the desert. He got only two of the fifty found portraits. About the place of discovery is also not known. Probably we can talk about er-Rubaya, where the Viennese antiques dealer Theodor Graf some time later found several portraits and tried to draw public attention to them in order to raise their price. He managed to interest the famous Leipzig Egyptologist Georg Ebers to publish scientific articles about his findings. Based on publications, he tried to sell his finds across Europe. Although little was known about the place and time of the find, he attributed the found portraits to famous rulers from the Ptolemaic dynasty and their relatives on the basis of other objects found - primarily coins with portraits. Although his statements were not supported by any facts, the portraits attracted attention due to the support of some scholars, for example, Rudolf Virchow . About the portraits started talking. At the end of the 19th century, thanks to their special aesthetics, they enjoyed great success as collectibles and were widely sold throughout Europe.

Scientific research also did not stand still. In the same year of 1887, Flinders Petrie began excavations in Hawara , where he discovered, among other things, a necropolis , from which 81 burial portraits were extracted. Many of them today are represented in the exposition of the Museum of Egyptian Archeology Petrie in London ^[1] .

The funeral portraits were the focus of the London exhibition. Later, Petrie continued excavating at the same place, but was faced with competition from German and Egyptian art dealers. In the winter of 1910-1911, during the excavations, Petrie discovered 70 more funeral portraits, which, however, were in poor condition. The findings of the Petrie are, with a few exceptions, until today the only example of a systematic approach in the excavation of funerary portraits and the subsequent publication of the results of these finds. Although these publications from today's point of view leave many open questions, they are still the most important source for studying the circumstances of the discovery of funeral portraits. In 1892, the German archaeologist von Kaufman discovered the so-called Alina Tomb , in which there were some of the most famous today funeral portraits.

Although many of these images were found in the Fayoum Oasis (Hawara, also called Arsinoe or Crocodilopolis ), the portraits on mummies were also found in other necropolises, including the necropolises in Memphis ( Saqqara ), Philadelphia (Er-Rubayat and 'Kerke'), Antinopole, Panopole ( Ahmim ), Marina El Alamein, Thebes and El-Hibe (Ankironopol). However, all of them are now known as Fayum portraits.

Early Fayum portraits were made using the encaustic technique (I burn out the Greek word ἐγκαίω), which was very common at that time. This is wax painting with melted paints, which is distinguished by the bulkiness ( pastoznost ) smear. The direction of the strokes usually follows the shape of the face: on the nose, cheeks, chin and in the contours of the eyes, the colors are overlaid with a thick layer, and the contours of the face and hair are written with more liquid colors. The paintings made in this way are distinguished by the rare freshness of color and they are surprisingly durable. It should be noted that the dry climate of Egypt contributed to the good preservation of these works.

An important feature of the Fayum portraits is the use of the finest gold leaf . In some of the portraits, the entire background was gilded , in others only wreaths or headbands were made in gold, sometimes jewels and details of clothing are emphasized.

The basis of the portraits is wood of various species: local ( plane , linden , fig, yew ) and imported ( cedar , pine , spruce , cypress , oak ).

Some portraits are made on grounded canvas.

From about the second half of the second century, wax tempera began to prevail in portraits. And later portraits of the 3rd — 4th centuries were painted exclusively with tempera, a technique in which colorful pigments are mixed with water-soluble binders, often using animal glue or chicken egg yolk. Tempera portraits are made on light or dark backgrounds with bold brush strokes and the finest shading. Their surface is matte, in contrast to the glossy surface of encaustic paintings. Persons on tempera portraits are usually shown to the front and the study of chiaroscuro is less contrasted than in the encaustic panels.

In addition, some groups of portraits were created in a mixed technique of tempera and encaustic.

A significant part of the population of Fayum were Greeks . They appeared here after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great . As a result of natural assimilation, they adopted much of the customs of the Egyptians, as did the Romans, who arrived here after Cleopatra’s death and the annexation of Egypt by Rome in 30 BC. er

Although the population of the city was mixed - Egyptians, Greeks, Syrians and Romans - but the Egyptians were mainly traders, artisans, servants and slaves. The rich and notable part of the inhabitants were foreigners, some of whom were Roman officials, and others - descendants of the Ptolemaic Greeks. This is evidenced by the preserved graves and mummies, covered with gilded masks; Greek and Roman names, such as Artemidorus, Demetrius, Titus, etc., are mainly written in them.

On the funeral portraits you can see various hairstyles. They provide invaluable assistance in dating. For the most part, all the dead were depicted with hairstyles that correspond to the fashion of their time. Numerous analogies exist in the hairstyles of sculptural portraits.

The Fayum portraits are the best preserved examples of ancient painting. They depict the faces of the inhabitants of ancient Egypt in the Hellenistic and Roman periods in the I-III centuries of our era.

After the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, the time of the rule of the pharaohs ended. During the reign of the Ptolemaic dynasty - heirs of Alexander's empire, there were significant changes in art and architecture. The funeral portrait — the unique art form of its time — flourished in Hellenistic Egypt . Stylistically connected with the traditions of Greco-Roman painting, but created for typically Egyptian needs, replacing the funeral masks of mummies, the Fayum portraits are strikingly realistic images of men and women of all ages.

• “Farewell Look”, film by from the “ Palette ” series (France, 1998).

• Coffin portrait in baroque Rzecz Pospolita
• Easel painting

• Ancient Faces. Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt / Susan Walker (Ed.). New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; Routledge, 2000.
• Fayum portrait. M, 1965. (about the collection of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts)

• Decay of the genome of the Fayum mummies
• PORTRAITS FROM FAYUM
• Fayum mummy gold