Archaeology Magazine - January/February 2022 - 41

Svoboda was able to see that, for a portrait of a young boy on
linen, the painter layered a madder-based pigment under a
darker red pigment to create the soft, fleshlike pastiness under
his eyes. " The artist wasn't just rendering with flat painting, "
she says. " They were really trying to create shading, depth,
and a subtle beauty in their style. "
E
ven though commissioning a mummy portrait was
largely the preserve of the wealthy in the Roman period,
the range of materials used and the variety in the quality
of painting reflect differences even within the privileged ranks
of society in Lower Egypt. For example, the expert painting
and expensive pigments on the encaustic portrait of Isidora
reveal that she was a woman of great financial means and
social standing. " She is painted exquisitely and represented
wearing very high-quality jewelry, " Svoboda says. " The artist
had mastery of the materials and knew how to manipulate
While most men are depicted wearing Greek-style garments
that were common for prosperous, landowning men of the era,
Roman citizens are painted in their traditional togas. Women
are often shown with popular Roman hairstyles of the time,
wearing vibrant clothing and lavish jewelry. Men, women, and
children are often portrayed with various objects of personal,
family, or religious significance. For example, many hold a pink
flowered wreath to identify themselves as members of the cult
of the goddess Isis; others show their affiliations with Serapis,
the Greco-Egyptian god of the sun.
Although artists painted their subjects with some individualized
facial features, they appear to have employed a relatively
narrow range of stylistic conventions and characteristics in
nearly all extant portraits. These include portraying people
with a front-facing posture and large, prominent eyes. In many
ways, the portraits represent idealized, aspirational depictions
of individuals. Gates-Foster explains that the opulent jewels seen
on women in the paintings, for example,
certainly do not reflect accessories they
wore on a daily basis. In fact, they might
not even have owned such items. " In
Roman Egypt, people constructed their
mortuary iconography to meet certain
criteria that, in the Egyptian understanding
of the afterlife, were meant to
preserve the body in its most beautiful
form, " Gates-Foster says. " We're not
looking at a life portrait, but at an image
that was intended to predict and support
a reborn form of the individual. "
This, and the lack of actual bodies,
A portrait of a boy on a linen shroud seen under visible light (left) and using a CrimeScope
(right) shows how hidden brushstrokes created the effect of softness under his eyes.
the wax. " By contrast, a roughly contemporaneous portrait of
another woman is painted using tempera on a recycled wood
panel. " Here we see a more simplistic style that indicates she
was of a different class, " says Svoboda. " But the artist was
still very creative with the pigments they used. " Instead of
the gilding seen on Isidora's portrait, this woman's jewelry is
painted with orpiment, a much more cost-effective pigment
made from a mineral that looks and reflects like gold.
Although the identities of most of those represented in
the mummy portraits are unknown, the individuals whose
names are recorded are mostly Greek, including Herakleides
and Isidora, and their portraits emphasize their Greek identity.
At the same time, the paintings often underscore the
mix of cultures that defined the communities in which they
lived. " People are presenting themselves on a local stage, "
says Gates-Foster, " but also desire to show themselves taking
part in the broader provincial culture of the Roman Empire. "
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makes it difficult for researchers to
determine a person's age at death simply
by looking at their portrait. " Some
studies have claimed that the portraits
were painted in the prime of people's
lives, in their twenties or thirties, and
were incorporated into their wrappings
when they died, " says Svoboda.
She does not think this was the case, however, at least not in
every circumstance. There are surviving portraits of children
and a handful of paintings depicting older individuals, with
graying hair and wrinkles. CT scans of several mummies with
portraits still attached, such as that of the 18-to-20-year-old
Herakleides, have shown that the ages of those deceased
individuals match the approximate ages at which they are
depicted. " Most likely, " Svoboda says, " these portraits were
painted at the time of death and represent a reflection of the
person's life. " Although scholars continue to debate the extent
to which the paintings are intended to be accurate portrayals,
they agree that they present a version of the deceased. " They
can't just be anybody, any face or individual, " Gates-Foster
says. " There has to be something essential that they communicate
about a person for their journey to the afterlife. " n
Benjamin Leonard is senior editor at Archaeology.
41

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Archaeology Magazine - January/February 2022

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