Admire 12 stunning ancient Egyptian 'mummy portraits' dating back 2 millennia

These ancient "mummy portraits" offer a glimpse into ancient Egyptian life and culture more than two millennia ago .

According to Livescience, many mummies in Egypt are accompanied by lifelike portraits with soulful eyes, styled hair and extremely sophisticated jewelry of the deceased. Over the past few centuries, archaeologists have unearthed more than 1,000 paintings of these mummies, mostly from the city of Fayum, so many people call them "Fayum Portraits".

The enchanting, well-preserved portraits still held an attraction for the princess. Allard Pierson - a famous archaeological museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands currently displays nearly 40 Fayum portraits in the exhibition "Face to Face: The People Behind Mummy Portraits". The exhibition opened on October 6 and lasts until February 25, 2024.

The portraits, created during Egypt's Roman period (30 BC to 395 AD), often depict individuals of European origin who moved to the area after Alexander's rule The Great, the subsequent Ptolemaic dynasty (305 to 30 BC) led by one of his generals, and the Roman period, when the empire made Egypt a province.

"The portraits were often painted on wooden panels with the top two corners cut off so they could easily fit into the mummy's bandages," said Ben van den Bercken, curator of the Ancient Egypt Collection and Sudan at Allard Pierson, told Live Science.

Below are 12 portraits, each revealing hints about the deceased and their culture.

1. Portrait of Amonius

Photo: Museé du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Georges Poncet)

The recovered "Ammonius portrait" shows that they were painted on linen sometime between 225 and 250 AD. In the photo is a young man holding a cup in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other. According to the book "Portrait of a Mummy in the J. Paul Getty Museum" (Oxford University Press, 1982), the artist gave Ammonius several distinctive features, including large lips, prominent ears, eye bags and strangely curved fingers.

2. Pearl earrings

Photo: Museé du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Georges Poncet)

This portrait was painted on wood between 150 and 200 AD. In the photo is a young woman with brown doe eyes, a slim nose and thick eyebrows. Pearls, like the ones she wore, were among the "most popular" earrings in Fayum's portraits, van den Bercken said. He noted that jewelry and hairstyles can help researchers date the portraits. For example, women's hairstyles could be "very complex" and often reflected fashions and trends from Rome itself, "mainly from the queen ," he says.

However, the question is how long it took for Roman fashion to reach Egypt. In some cases, 'something fashionable in Egypt may be out of fashion in Rome ,' says Van den Bercken.

3. Bearded man

Photo: Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden

The portrait was painted on wood sometime between 175 and 225 AD. In the photo is a man with a beard, curly hair, wearing white clothes. This man's beard may imitate that of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (reigned from 161 to 180).

4. Luxury jewelry

Photo: Allard Pierson, Amsterdam

This portrait was painted on wood sometime between 175 and 200 AD. In the painting is a black-haired woman wearing a necklace and earrings of the same color. However, as with Fayum's other portraits, researchers are unclear whether it depicts the deceased when they were young or around the time of their death.

In some cases, the portraits were quite precisely timed, according to a 2020 study in the journal PLOS One. A team took a CT (computed tomography) scan of the mummy of a young boy from Roman Egypt, digitally reconstructed the boy's face and then compared the reconstruction with a portrait of the boy. boy. According to one analysis, the portrait makes the child look 3 or 4 years younger but still stands out.

5. Vivid eyes

Photo: Paris, Museé du Louvre, Département des Antiquités égyptiennes

This male portrait, painted around 250 AD on lime wood, was purchased in the early 1800s by Henry Salt, British vice-consul in Egypt. The portrait became one of the early Fayum portraits found in modern times, according to "Portraits of Mummies in Antiquity" . J. Paul Getty Museum'.

The earliest record of a Fayum portrait being collected dates from 1615, when a group of paintings was brought from Saqqara, Egypt to Europe by the Roman nobleman Pietro della Valle.

6. Girl with golden wreath

Photo: Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim

This portrait was painted on wood between 120 and 130 AD. In the photo is a young girl wearing a pearl necklace and a golden wreath in her hair. 'This wreath is a sign that she has 'overcome' death,' says Van den Bercken .

7. Man with golden wreath

Photo: Egyptian Museum Collection of Heidelberg University

Women were not the only ones with golden wreaths painted on their heads. This portrait was painted on wood sometime between 150 and 200 AD. In the photo easily a bearded man is wearing his own golden laurel wreath.

8. Realistic portrait

Photo: August Kestner Museum, Hannover

This portrait, painted around 150 AD, shows a man dressed in white and wearing a gold wreath. According to Allard Pierson, the compelling images of the Fayum portraits inspired artists to paint icons in the late Byzantine Empire, as well as artists in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Today, the style This practice is considered one of the earliest known examples of realistic painted portraits.

9. Man with curly hair

Photo: Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam

This man's beard helped researchers determine his portrait dated to the time of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Like other portraits, the man depicted here may have been of European origin. Many Greeks and Romans lived in Egypt, first during the Ptolemaic dynasty, which began when one of Alexander the Great's generals took over the region, and later when Rome made Egypt a province. after the death of Cleopatra VII.

10. Eyes and eyelashes

Photo: Allard Pierson, Amsterdam

This portrait was painted on wood around 300 to 400 AD, depicting a woman wearing a pearl earring. 'A lot of detail has gone into the composition such as the eyes and eyelashes,' says Van den Bercken . Several clues suggest that the deceased were middle or upper class, including the fact that many people wearing ornate jewelry were included in these portraits. Additionally, individuals or their families had to pay an artist to paint the portrait. Van den Bercken added: 'Those who placed the order must have had ample financial resources to do this.'

11. Fancy necklace

Photo: UCL Petrie Museum of Egypt and Sudan, Archaeology, University College London

The portrait of this woman was painted sometime between 160 and 190 AD. The majority of known Fayum portraits were found in the 1800s. But in 2022, archaeologists announced that they had discovered more portraits in a cemetery in the ancient city of Philadelphia in Egypt.

12. The woman has bright eyes

Photo: J. Paul Getty Museum, Mansion Collection, Malibu, California

This portrait, painted on wood between A.D. 170 and 200, was found in Egypt in the 1880s, according to "Mummy Portraits in the J. Paul Getty Museum." The woman wears pearl earrings, a necklace, a hot pink tunic and a black clavi or vertical decorative bands. Her curly hair was tied into a bun.