Mysterious Fayum Portraits

by Doxiadis, Euphrosyne

• ISBN13: 9780810933316
• ISBN10: 0810933314
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-10-15
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams

Summary

In the first three centuries A.D., in a fertile district of Roman Egypt called the Fayum, a diverse community of Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, Syrians, Libyans, Nubians, and Jews flourished. These people, and many of their contemporaries throughout the Nile Valley, embalmed the bodies of their dead and then placed over the faces portraits painted on wooden panels or linen. These paintings, today known as Fayum, or mummy, portraits, were created to preserve the memory of each individual.
The Fayum portraits are by far the most important body of portraiture to have survived antiquity. Reproduced in this arresting book are some 180 of the finest of the more than 1,000 extant images - of men, women, and children, young and old, plain and beautiful - all of whom seem uncannily alive. A few of these faces have become familiar to scholars and museum-goers, but as a whole they have been neglected by art historians and will be new to most readers.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Introduction
Acknowledgments
Graeco-Roman Egypt
The Social Context	p. 34
The Religious Context	p. 39
The Portraits
The Pictorial Tradition, from Apelles to Icons	p. 82
Methods: Scale, Materials and Colours	p. 93
The Find-Sites
Memphis and Saqqara	p. 122
The Fayum or Arsinoite Nome, 'the Garden of Egypt'	p. 126
The Necropolises of Philadelphia: Er-Rubayat and 'Kerke'	p. 129
The Necropolis of Arsinoe: Aueris, or Hawara	p. 135
The Necropolises of Antinoopolis	p. 147
Other Sites	p. 153
Commentaries on the Portraits	p. 185
Maps of the Fayum and the Nile valley	p. 226
Problems in the Dating of the Mummy Portraits	p. 229
Costume, Hairstyles and Jewelry	p. 234
Notes	p. 236
Bibliography	p. 241
Indexes	p. 244
Photo Credits	p. 247
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