Object biography #5: A double-sided painted mummy portrait
Egypt

Object biography #5: A double-sided painted mummy portrait


Egypt at the Manchester Museum (Campbell Price)

With photos.

This delicate wooden panel (41 x 32.5 cm) is one of 13 painted mummy portraits in the Manchester Museum. Such panel portraits were produced during the Roman Period (c. 55-220 AD) and are amongst the most evocative images to have come from Egypt. Most were painted using an encaustic method, in which pigment is mixed with hot wax and applied directly onto the surface of thin wooden panels. The panels were attached over the head of the mummy, held in place with bandages around each edge. Whether they were painted during life, and if they were displayed prior to being attached to the mummy, has caused much debate.

The practice of creating portraits developed out of the Pharaonic tradition of covering the head of the mummy with an idealised image of the deceased. 







- Book Review: Herakleides
Bryn Mawr Classical Review (Reviewed by Jane Draycott) Lorelei H. Corcoran, Marie Svoboda, Herakleides: A Portrait Mummy from Roman Egypt. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011. Herakleides: a Portrait Mummy from Roman Egypt not only provides the results...

- Digital Information And Communication Technology Used In New Exhibition Organized By The Louvre
Art Daily The "Louvre - DNP Museum Lab" is a joint project, begun by the Musée du Louvre and Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) in 2006, which seeks to offer new approaches to artworks. Three portraits of women from Roman-Egyptian antiquity (2nd century A.D.)...

- Daily Photo - Hawara Mummy Portraits (petrie Museum)
The mummy portraits are lovely. It is almost impossible not to fall for them when you are face to face with the real thing, even if the Graeco-Roman period isn't really your field. Unlike the Pharaonic mummy masks these really make you feel that you...

- Living Images Book Launch - Comment On Phrenology
Otralala The authors of “Living images – Egyptian funerary portraits in the Petrie Museum” each spoke, giving context to the writing of the book and to the portraits themselves. The portraits were discovered while Flinders Petrie was looking for...

- The Second Wooden Panel
http://www.algomhuria.net.eg/gazette/5/Zahi Hawass's occasional comment on the Egyptian Gazette website, reproduced here in full: "As we continued to excavate Tomb 26, we found the most beautiful female mummy. She wore a gilded gypsum mask, and a...



Egypt








.