Mummification (Mummy with an inserted panel portrait of a youth)

• Odes memorializing the dead have been preserved in northern Africa’s dry desert climate for thousands of years
• In case the physical body did not last, a portrait would be buried with the body to serve as a substitute
• Embalming corpses

  Removal of internal organs except for the heart, packing in dry natron, washing, treatment with oils and ointments, wrapping with up to twenty layers of linen, filling out sunken areas of the body, adding false eyes, embalming organs, placing stomach, liver, lungs, and intestines in canopic jars, burial with the mummy
• Mummification is one key example of the ancient Egyptian belief system, highlighting their preoccupation with continued material existence in the afterlife
• To ensure the safe passage into the Kingdom of Osiris (the land of the dead), the deceased had to be physically preserved along with their earthly possessions
• The body was packed in dry natron—a natural compound of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate found in Egypt—which dehydrated the cadaver and dissolved its body fats
• To make the mummy seem even more life-like, sunken areas of the body were filled out with linen and other materials, and false eyes were added
• The Egyptians’ advanced technological processes of embalming were so successful that we can view the mummified body of an Egyptian today and have a good idea of what they looked like in life some three thousand years ago
• Ancient Egyptians believed that death was only the beginning of their journey into eternal life
• Much of the art and architecture that survives from ancient Egypt is funerary in nature
• Mummification

  The embalming and wrapping of the human body for preservation
• As the technological processes of mummification developed, more elaborately decorated coffins (sarcophagi) were built to house the embalmed bodies of the dead
• The seventy-two-day process of embalming corpses began with the removal of internal organs that might rapidly decay, except for the heart
• The portrait was believed to function as a container that could preserve the dead’s ka, or soul, which was believed to enter the surrogate of the portrait before journeying to the next world
• The corpse was washed, treated with oils and ointments, and wrapped with up to twenty layers of linen
• The organs were embalmed, with the stomach, liver, lungs, and intestines placed in special boxes or jars that are today called canopic jars, buried with the mummy
• Hundreds of Fayum portraits are preserved in museum collections around the world
• Professions depicted in Fayum portraits

  • Teachers
  • Soldiers
  • Athletes
  • Serapis priests
  • Merchants
  • Florists
• Encaustic painting technique

  An artist mixed colored pigments with wax (usually beeswax) and then applied the material to a smooth surface
• John Berger: 'Fayum portraits are the earliest painted portraits that have survived; they were painted whilst the Gospels of the New Testament were being written. Why then do they strike us today as being so immediate? [...Why do they] touch us, as if they had been painted last month?'
• In Portrait of a Young Woman in Red, the background of the panel would have been gilded with sparkling gold foil, suggesting the illusion of pulsating life
• The portrait of the youth in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York depicts a young man with large glittering eyes and a soft shadow of a downy moustache on his upper lip
• Region of Fayum

  • Mummified bodies routinely incorporated encaustic portraits on wood panels
• Roman conquest and colonization of Egypt began

  30 BCE
• Fayum portraits

  • Represent a sea change in the art of ancient Egypt
  • Convey the palpable psychology of their sitters
  • Represent the multicultural and multiethnic society of Roman Egypt
• Encaustic panels were usually painted directly from life and later cut down to fit atop the mummified body following the sitter’s death
• Mummy with an Inserted Panel Portrait of a Youth is a rare example of a Fayum portrait that remains intact on the mummy case it was made to adorn
• Names of individuals depicted in Fayum portraits

  • Aline
  • Flavian
  • Isarous
  • Claudine
  • and many more
• In Roman Egypt, the emerging moustache was an indicator of the young man’s coming of age into important social groups as well as evidence that he was in the prime of his sexual attractiveness and vigor
• The upper lip suggests his youth
• The population of Roman Egypt consisted of Roman citizens, citizens of Greek cities such as Alexandria, and native Egyptians
• Artists wanted to capture their sitters with a vibrant, certain presence during the period of deep uncertainty when Fayum portraits emerged
• The subjects of the mummy portraits in Roman Egypt were dressed and coiffed like Romans, and many of them bore Greek names or names that were Greek versions of Egyptian names
• The Fayum portraits are a hybrid art form, blending Roman and Egyptian visual traditions
• The immediacy of Fayum mummy portraits contrasts sharply with the cool precision of most pharaonic images
• The painting techniques that produced Fayum portrait panels were Greco-Roman in origin, but their use in adorning mummies was completely Egyptian
• The families of the subjects of the mummy portraits found consolation in ancient Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife
• Roman Egypt was ruled for three hundred years by a Greek (Macedonian) dynasty followed by more than a century under Roman rule, making it an extremely diverse civilization
• Producing a mummy portrait in encaustic

  Sketching outlines of the face and garment on a wood panel prepared with a special transparent glue or dark wax, applying a mixture of beeswax and powdered pigments called encaustic, using thinner mixture for the background and garments and thick, creamy, paste-like paints for the facial features
• Fayum panel portraits served a double pictorial function