Fayum Mummy Portraits

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Fayum portraits are remarkably life-like depictions of men, women, and children that were painted onto thin panels of canvas, linen, or wood and placed on top of the outer wrapping of a mummy. Though this moniker is geographically specific to denotes the discovery of a large concentration of portraits in the fertile Fayum region in the late 1880s, these works have been found all throughout Egypt, spanning from the Mediterranean coastal city of Marina el-Alamein to as far inland as Thebes. Though the archaeological background behind the Fayum mummy portraits lacks in extensive depth, the unique stylistic detailing and realism surrounding such portraiture presents a fusion of two traditions: Greco-Roman portrait painting and Egyptian funerary

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