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What are mummy portraits?

less than 1 minute to read

Mummy portraits, which are also often called Faiyum portraits, are a type of lifelike painting on wooden boards that were placed over the faces of the mummies of wealthy people during the Roman period in Egypt (between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD). About 1000 still survive today and there are many examples in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Almost all of them come from Faiyum.

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