Unrecorded artist, “Mummy Portrait of Aline” (1st–2nd century CE), tempera on textile, partially gilded, 16 1/2 x 13 inches (42 x 33 cm) (picture CC BY-SA 4.0 by way of State Museums of Berlin, Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Assortment)
Their faces draw you in — huge, expressive eyes staring out as in the event that they’ve been frozen within the act of remembering one thing essential. Painted on wood panels and positioned over the faces of mummified our bodies in Fayum in Greco-Roman Egypt, the work have been meant to information their topics into the afterlife whereas preserving their identities right here on earth.
Found 1000’s of years later within the nineteenth century, the portraits have sparked debates about who made them, who they have been for, and what they are saying concerning the period of cultural alternate and blended traditions. Even now, they’re shrouded by questions. What do these lifelike faces reveal about identification and standing? How do they match into the bigger image of artwork historical past? The Mysterious Fayum Portraits: Faces from Historic Egypt leans into this enigma, providing a contemporary alternative to mirror on how a lot we all know — and don’t know — about these extraordinary works.
The guide, a reissue of a publication by writer and artist Euphrosyne Doxiadis first launched 30 years in the past, affords a chance to reexamine and recontextualize these exceptional works by means of a contemporary lens. Egyptian author Ahdaf Soueif’s new foreword challenges readers to suppose past the confines of art-historical silos, asking whether or not it’s extra essential to categorize artwork or to contextualize it. By situating the Fayum portraits on the intersection of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Syrian, and Jewish traditions, the guide opens up house to know how cultural practices evolve and intermingle. This method echoes broader efforts to deconstruct and broaden the normal art-historical canon, reminding us that the act of categorization is, in and of itself, a deeply Western impulse.
The portraits are visually arresting, each timeless and private — akin to the connection you’d really feel a cherished household {photograph} or the fastidiously posed picture on this system of a Baptist funeral service. Take the portrait of Aline, additionally known as Ténos, painted round 69–117 CE instantly onto the linen shroud wrapped round her physique. Discovered alongside two others presumed to be her daughters, Aline’s portrait captures a putting immediacy, her gaze assembly yours with a quiet however simple energy. It’s intimate in a means that means it could have been painted from life — a preservation not simply of her picture however of her humanity, of her function as a mom and an individual made everlasting.
Unrecorded artist, “Portrait of a Youth with a Surgical Cut in one Eye” (c. 190–210 CE), encaustic on limewood, 13 3/4 x 6 3/4 inches (35 x 17.2 cm) (picture public area by way of the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork)
However their magnificence has additionally been a supply of competition. As Doxiadis explains, early students have been hesitant to just accept that such technically superior works might have been created in the course of the Greco-Roman interval in Egypt, talking volumes concerning the biases embedded in our understanding of artwork historical past and the boundaries of linear narratives of inventive development.
Although there are a number of essays all through The Mysterious Fayum Portraits, the emphasis is on the imagery: massive, full-color reproductions that permit readers to immerse themselves within the craftsmanship of the portraits. The guide is organized into three important sections, starting with an exploration of the cultural, social, and spiritual context of Greco-Roman Egypt and shifting on to the portraits themselves, offering detailed commentary on their iconography and methods. The ultimate part examines the discover websites, delving into the provenance of those works and their journey into the fashionable artwork world.
The guide doesn’t explicitly delve into the intricacies of looting or illicit buying and selling, although it does embody a piece devoted to Fayum portraits whose provenance is unknown, leaving room to think about the bigger questions concerning the European archaeological excavations of the work. A Fayum portrait housed on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, although not talked about within the guide, was seized by the Manhattan District Legal professional’s Workplace in 2022 as a part of an investigation into allegedly looted antiquities. The high-profile case highlights the murky histories tied to historical artifacts and their journeys into museum collections, underscoring the continued significance of transparency and accountability and including weight to the broader questions the guide gestures towards, regardless of not explicitly addressing them.
This guide notably resonates with me as an artist concerned in Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Historic Egypt, 1876–Now, an exhibition at The Met that explores how Black artists have engaged with and reimagined Historic Egyptian artwork, historical past, and symbolism over the previous 150 years. Whereas my work usually engages with Historic Egyptian signifiers just like the Nefertiti bust, I method these themes extra conceptually, contemplating their meanings in a broader international and historic context. This guide, in distinction, affords a centered examine of a particular inventive custom and its intersections with different cultures.
The preserved richness of the colours — the ochres, deep reds, and golds — really feel nearly magical, a testomony to the dry local weather that safeguarded these works for hundreds of years. Every portrait, whereas following a shared aesthetic custom, reveals one thing distinctive concerning the artist’s hand, the individuality of the topic, and the cultural second of its inception. Take, for instance, the portrait of a person from the late Flavian-Trajanic interval (81–117 CE). In comparison with Aline’s delicate, linear brushstrokes and the softness in her gaze, this portrait is daring, nearly commanding. Painted with Punic wax utilized chilly with brushes and combined with oil or egg, it has a textured, layered high quality that makes the person’s face sculptural, as if he might step out of the panel.
Unrecorded artist, portray of a person from the late Flavian-Trajanic interval (c. 81–117), Punic wax on wooden (picture courtesy Lucinda Douglas-Menzies)
What connects my follow to those works, although, isn’t the model or the methods — it’s the concept of cultural manufacturing as a dialogue. These portraits are half of a bigger dialogue, one which spans time and house, displaying how traditions evolve and adapt by means of the arms and concepts of the artists who interact with them.
The guide feels aligned with what Flight into Egypt goals to do: acknowledge how Egyptian inventive practices have impressed individuals all around the world, whereas asking how artists can interact them thoughtfully — reverently, even — as an alternative of exploitatively. Each the guide and the exhibition push us to think about what it means to take cultural symbols and make them your personal. Who has the fitting to do this? Underneath what circumstances? And what occurs when these symbols have been stripped away or reimagined by individuals who have been denied entry to their very own histories? Within the case of Flight into Egypt, it’s about how Black artists, usually working in methods the place their voices have been erased or minimized, reclaim historical Egyptian imagery as a means of constructing connections to a broader African previous.
On the identical time, each the guide and the exhibition power us to confront the tensions between honoring shared histories and coping with erasure. It’s not nearly celebrating the methods cultures combine and overlap — it’s about recognizing the individuals and communities who get sidelined within the course of. Whether or not it’s Black artists in up to date contexts or Historic Egyptian artisans overshadowed by Greco-Roman influences, there’s at all times a query of who will get remembered and who will get omitted.
In the end, what makes the Fayum portraits so fascinating is their skill to disrupt our understanding of artwork historical past. They problem assumptions about technical development in Egypt and open up potentialities for equally ignored improvements elsewhere. This disruption is a present, inviting us to know artwork historical past not as a sequence of remoted moments however as a tapestry of influences and collaborations.
The Mysterious Fayum Portraits, then, is about connection — throughout time, cultures, and geographies, all rooted within the gazes of these whose names and tales have been misplaced to historical past. It’s concerning the methods through which artwork can maintain house for a number of identities, a number of truths. And as I take into consideration my and my friends’ work in Flight into Egypt, I see that very same expansiveness, that very same refusal to be boxed in. It reminds us that identification is slippery, that possession is difficult, and that the act of creation — whether or not it’s 2,000 years in the past or at this time — is at all times a dialog.
Unfold from The Mysterious Fayum Portraits, that includes a c. 161–180 portray of a person from the center Antonine interval and a c. 130–161 portrait of a girl who was seemingly a member of the Aristocracy (photograph Lakshmi Rivera Amin/Hyperallergic)
Cowl of The Mysterious Fayum Portraits: Faces from Historic Egypt by Euphrosyne Doxiadis (picture courtesy Thames & Hudson)
The Mysterious Fayum Portraits: Faces from Historic Egypt (2025) by Euphrosyne Doxiadis is revealed by Thames & Hudson and is obtainable on-line and thru impartial booksellers.
