Download Sample of Egyptian Mummy Portraits

EGYPTIAN MUMMY PORTRAITS IN THE TIME OF ROMANS
Leann Schneider
Ancient Art Independent Study
5 December 2014
Schneider 1
Bright burning sun, a great rushing river: these contradictory forces of nature defined
the cycle of life in ancient Egypt. Every year, the Nile River filled with melted snow from
central African mountains and flooded the Nile valley creating some of the most fertile and
farmable land on earth. The immense African dessert surrounding the Nile, meanwhile,
created the arid atmosphere of dry sands preferable for the preservation of paper, wood, and
linen artifacts. Highly sophisticated and deeply mysterious, the ancient Egyptians left behind
thousands of papyri, temple ruins, burial chambers, murals, statues, and even textiles1 that
have mesmerized modern society for hundreds of years. Following the arrival of Napoleon
Bonaparte in Egypt in 1789, the 19th and 20th centuries are filled with expeditions of scholars,
historians, curators and treasure hunters from the West interested in uncovering the secrets of
ancient Egypt. These expeditions unearthed such archaeological wonders as the Rosetta Stone
in 1799, a cache of royal mummies at Deir el-Bahari in 1881, Queen Nefertiti and
Tutankhamen’s tombs in 1904 and 1922, and twenty-five colossal statues of Akhenaton at
Karnak in 1925.2 It was the purchase of two painted mummy portraits by Italian explorer
Pietro della Valle from looting locals in December 1615, however, that first shed light onto
the unique realm of Egyptian mummy portraits.
Throughout the early 19th century French and British colonial excavations – probably
near Saqqara or Thebes – continued to discover painted portraits in the dry sands of the
1
Christine Lilyquist, “Egyptian Art,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, (Winter
1983/1984): 2.
2
Alice Cartocci, Ancient Egyptian Art, (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press,
2009), 332-335.
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Egyptian dessert associated with mummies or burial chambers. The mesmerizing painted
faces of ancients propelled Western looters to continue their search for these painted
treasures. The late 1800s yielded extensive discoveries in the Fayum Basin of meticulously
painted mummy portraits in a most realistic fashion, unlike the traditional Egyptian art from
the Pharaonic periods. These discoveries, like the ones made by Austrian businessman
Theodor Graf at er-Rubayat, are unfortunately very poorly documented, leaving little clue as
to their exact find-site; they were looted from their Egyptian home for Western collections.
Flinders Petrie discovered a major Roman cemetery in Hawara between 1887 and 1889 and
by 1914 significant discoveries of these complex mummy portraits had surfaced all over the
Fayum Basin and greater Egypt at Tebtunis, Fag el-Gamus, el-Hibeh, Antinopolis, and
Akhimim.3
One of the biggest conundrums surrounding the mummy portraits is their debatable
date of creation. Placing the portraits accurately within the timeline of Egyptian art is
paramount to understanding the portraits – their style, function and inspirations – but also to
gleaning insight about ancient Egyptian culture. Dating the portraits with great accuracy has
been hotly debated between historians, Egyptologists and various other scholars for decades.
Petrie and Graf suggested the portraits were made during the reign of the Ptolemies, however,
general current consensus has dated the bulk of the Fayum Portraits from between the 1st and
3rd centuries CE. That is, the first were probably made in roughly 30 – 40 CE, two generations
after the fall of the Egyptian Empire with the suicide of Cleopatra VII – the last Ptolemy –
and the imposition of Roman rule in Egypt. Scholars note that poorer quality portraits persist
3
Morris Bierbrer, “The Discovery of the Mummy Portraits,” in Ancient Faces: Mummy
Portraits from Roman Egypt, ed. Susan Walker (New York: The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 2000), 32-33.
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through the 4th century.4 It is the realization that the portraits were created during the height of
Roman rule in Egypt that makes the Fayum portraits so incredibly significant both historically
and culturally.
Easily identified as a group due to their shared characteristics, the Fayum mummy
portraits’ incredibly realistic, intimate, strikingly modern nature make the painted works on
panels or linen with tempera or encaustic the topic of much scholarly discussion for two major
reasons. First, the body of portraits is undeniably unique in condition and function. The
Fayum portraits are, generally, in near perfect condition considering their age. The condition
of this body of work is so fine because of the extremely arid Egyptian atmosphere; the dry air
and sand help to eliminate any potentially harmful moisture from settling into and degrading
works made of material sensitive to humidity like wood and textile.5 The majority of the rest
of the former Roman Empire suffered significant damage to its artifacts due to high levels of
humidity and fluctuating temperatures. Contrastingly, looters, iconoclasts and war inflict the
most serious damage upon ancient Egyptian artifacts and archeological sites. The portraits
were typically discovered in burial chambers or in cemeteries and, therefore, were essentially
protected from these outside forces. While the Fayum Portraits are astounding in their pristine
condition, they are also remarkable because the portraits represent a functional type of artistic
practice not seen elsewhere in the Roman Empire. While realistic portraits and even funerary
4
Susan Walker, “A Note on Dating the Portraits,” in Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from
Roman Egypt, ed. Susan Walker (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000),
34-36.
5
W. Stevenson Smith, The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt, (New York: Yale
University Press, 1998), 3-8.
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portraits were incredibly common, the use of Classical portraits with thoroughly Egyptian
mummies together in one tradition was unique to Egypt, particularly the Fayum Basin.
Secondly, the Fayum mummy portraits are of considerable import culturally and
historically because the style of the portraits shows an almost perfect unity between Classical
portrait painting traditions and ancient Egyptian spirituality. With some degree of scientific
certainty the portraits have been dated to the period when Rome ruled Egypt as part of its
empire. While ancient imperial Roman art is fundamentally different than traditional ancient
Egyptian art of the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms, after the conquest of Egypt by
Alexander the Great, Egyptian culture and art was greatly impacted and influenced by the
Hellenistic world.6 Egypt, over hundreds of years, became a fertile melting pot where cultures
collided creating artistic production of a unique caliber. The Fayum portraits demonstrate the
melding of ancient Hellenistic idealism, Roman verism, and traditional Egyptian ritual in near
perfect balance. Following the transitions between rulers and artistic developments in Egypt,
the Fayum portrait paintings represent the zenith of the Roman-Egyptian artistic style, one
marrying the verism and animation of Greek and Roman portraiture with the mystery and
depth of Egyptian burial traditions.
To understand the importance, uniqueness and artistic accomplishment of the Fayum
Portraits, their historical and cultural contexts must be explored. Ancient Egyptian artistic
traditions, before the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE, were technically
sophisticated and different stylistically from the Hellenistic arts. Alice Cartocci of the
American University in Cairo summarizes ancient Egyptian art as, “showing a world where
6
Euphrosyne Doxiadis, The Mysterious Fayum Portraits: Faces from Ancient Egypt,
(London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 1995), 39-43.
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humanity and its art represent the pinnacle of divine creation.”7 Egyptian art before the
Greeks was inspired by the portrayal of ideal divinity. Egyptian life revolved around religion
and religion revolved around life; the Egyptian every day was consumed with the idea of the
sun and its conquest over night as a representation on earth of life and death. Pharaohs –
Egyptian kings – were deified in various incarnations throughout the dynasties, but they
always kept the idea of an afterlife and passage into that afterlife in the highest regard.
Concepts of an afterlife and its importance have permeated cultures for millennia,
preexisting even written language, evidenced by the burials of the Naqada I-II and Badarian
cultures (4,500 – 3,300 BCE).8 After Egypt became a unified state in the 4th millennium BCE,
burial practices begin to reflect the hierarchy of their culture. Pharaonic rule held the Pharaoh
or divine king in the highest place of society, then other royalty, priests, scribes, scholars and
so forth. In theory, every Egyptian had the right and duty to perform the intricate burial rituals
demanded by their complex religious beliefs, however, in practice only the wealthy could
afford the tasks. Due to the ancient Egyptian fascination and concern with the afterlife,
complicated religious burial rituals developed to assuage the transition from the world of the
living to that of the dead. These burial rituals, over hundreds of years of development, became
as complicated as the religious beliefs themselves. The burial rituals associated with Egyptian
culture can be simply summarized as the careful preservation of the body (mummification),
inclusion of worldly goods or symbols of worldly goods in burial chambers and tombs to
accompany the dead into the afterlife, a long period of mourning and the display of a
7
Cartocci, 2.
8
James Breckenridge, Likeness: A Conceptual History of Ancient Portraiture, (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1968), 28.
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surrogate of the dead for those mourners. These diverse rituals required an equally diverse
array of funerary art including portraits, decorated tombs, mummy masks, and tomb
sculptures all with the distinct function of assisting the deceased into and in the afterlife.9
Dynastic Egypt is commonly divided into three major pre-Ptolemy categories: the Old,
Middle and New Kingdoms. Old Kingdom (approximately 2613 – 2160 BCE) burial ritual
developments include the beginning of true embalming and the transformation of the royal
tomb into immense complexes. During this period the mummification process had become
advanced enough to see the removal of the deceased’s organs, the body was then wrapped
with linens and placed in a tomb. It was between the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom
during the First Intermediate Period (2160 – 2025 BCE) that the highly idealized facemask is
developed as a representation of the deceased. This is considered the formative stage of the
anthropoid coffins that will become standard during the later Dynastic periods.10
Artistic traditions during the Old Kingdom encapsulate Egyptian cosmology and their
obsession with divine perfect creation, life, and especially death. The pyramids at Giza, for
example, illustrate the monumental place death and the afterlife had in Egyptian religion and
culture. Khafre Enthroned [Fig. 1 & 2] shows the idealism utilized by Old Kingdom Egyptian
artists to emphasize divine creation and the perfect divinity of the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh is
divinity on earth; the highly skilled – diorite is an incredibly hard stone and difficult to wield
– craftsmen create at once in Khafre a serene, stoic and serious personification of godly
9
Christina Riggs, “Facing the Dead: Recent Research on the Funerary art of Ptolemaic and
Roman Egypt,” American Journal of Archaeology 106, no. 1 (2002): 86.
10
John Taylor, “Before the Portraits: Burial Practices in Pharaonic Egypt,” in Ancient Faces:
Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt, ed. Susan Walker (New York: The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 2000), 10.
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perfection. While the statue is obviously a depiction of human form, Khafre sits as strong and
solid as the stone from which he is carved. His form is humanly impossible and his size is
colossal. His face is perfectly symmetrical; it is peaceful and beautiful but betrays no sign of
human emotion. The eyes are empty and see only the afterlife. Khafre epitomizes the height
of traditional Egyptian art.11
There is a transition in both burial rituals and artistic tradition during the tumultuous
Middle Kingdom period (approximately 2055 – 1650 BCE) and again with the rise of the
Golden Age of Egypt in the New Kingdom period (approximately 1550 – 1069 BCE). During
the 21st Dynasty (1069 – 945 BCE) mummification reaches its peak with sophisticated
techniques for removing organs and preserving the body, in addition to more elaborate
mummy coffins and burial chambers.12 Due to the political upheaval of the Middle Kingdom,
art becomes increasingly emotional and expressive, compared to the traditional art of the Old
Kingdom. Cartocci explains, “human beings became the focus of attention, with renewed
prospects for Pharaonic art and architecture as well as for the ruling classes.”13 Contrastingly,
the state had become incredibly stable and almost overwhelmingly powerful by the rise of the
New Kingdom around 1550 BCE.
Egyptian art of the New Kingdom was namely used as propaganda for demonstrating
the power of the state; this is also considered the most well known Egyptian art and Egypt’s
highest point historically.14 Religion in Egypt during this period codifies the various cults of
11
Cartocci, 52.
12
Taylor, 12.
13
Cartocci, 95.
14
Smith, 125 – 128.
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different gods under the preeminent Sun god cults of Re, Aton and Harakhte. The New
Kingdom’s wealth, beauty and power were considered manifestations of the Sun’s lifebringing power on earth. The Sun was also equally regarded as a purveyor of death due to the
natural necessity of the Sun for life, but also in Egypt’s dry desserts the Sun was a constant
reminder of the fragility of life. Renewed religious fervor for the Sun gods, divinely manifest
in the Pharaohs, caused an abundance of renewed relevance of funerary traditions. King
Tutankhamun’s opulent burial chamber [fig. 3] and remarkably impressive mummy mask [fig.
4] showcase the level of beauty and wealth attained in the New Kingdom. Mummy masks,
like this one covering Tutankhamun’s mummy and the forerunner of the Fayum mummy
Portraits, fall into disuse before it is reintroduced right before the rise of the Ptolemies in the
4th century BCE. It is also during this time that artists begin looking back at the Old Kingdom
traditions, as illustrated by Tutankhamnun’s mask.15 With perfect symmetry and a clear
disregard for any human realism or emotion, the mask reveals the artist’s inspiration from the
Old Kingdom tradition: one of idealism and perfection encapsulated in the surrogate image of
his Pharaoh.
By the time Alexander the Great officially conquers Egypt for Greece in 332 BCE,
Hellenist culture was already pervasive in Egypt. Egyptians and Greeks had fought alongside
each other against the Persians for years; many Greek soldiers and their families had
established themselves alongside Egyptians on the fertile land of the Nile. Additionally, Egypt
for centuries had been a thriving empire; massive trade with other lands brought Greek sailors
15
Taylor, 13.
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and merchants into Egyptian lands.16 Alexander – at 24 – was hailed as the liberator of Egypt
from Persian rule and he adopted Egyptian culture in an effort to properly assimilate himself
into the lives of Egyptians for the purpose of guaranteeing his place as their supreme ruler.
With the introduction of Alexander to the divine cannon and some 40,000 Greek soldiers into
Egypt’s landscape, the divine cannons of Hellenistic gods and those of ancient Egyptians
began to mix. The successors of Alexander – the Ptolemies – likewise “appropriated Egyptian
gods and adopted them into Greek religion and visual vocabulary,”17 thus prompting the
mélange of Hellenistic and Egyptian cultures.
Egypt eventually fell to Octavian Augustus in 30 BCE with the deaths of Cleopatra
VII and Mark Antony to became a province of the Roman Empire. Keeping with ancient
tradition, the culture and especially religion of the Romans melded with that of the GrecoEgyptians. This was easily accepted as the similarities between contrasting religions –
consulting oracles, ruler worship, and belief in resurrection – were exploited. While Ptolemy I
established the cult of Alexander and his successor Ptolemy II Philadelphus was deified in
both the Egyptian and Greek cannons, Plutarch writes that the Romans likewise absorbed
these practices.18 Doxiadis explains, “Augustus accepted his deification in several eastern
cities for political reasons – he needed to be treated as a god or Pharaoh in order to rule
rightfully in Egypt.”19 Augustus’ acceptance of this monumentally important Egyptian
16
Adriana Calinescu, “Egypt after Alexander: Art Under the Greeks and Romans,” in Aspects
of the Collection, (Indianapolis: Indiana University Art Museum, 2004), 2.
17
Calinescu, 2.
18
Plutarch, Makers of Rome, tras. Ian Scott-Kilvert, (London: Penguin Books, written in 9698 and first published in 1965), 347 – 349.
19
Doxiadis, 43.
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tradition illustrates how truly mutual the cultural exchange was between the conquered and
the conquerors. The Fayum mummy portraits personify this cultural merging of religious
beliefs and artistic traditions during the reign of the Romans in Egypt. The portraits showcase
a dichotomy not seen elsewhere in the empire in the arts, “the cultural and stylistic duality of
the objects as a whole – Classical portraits attached to Egyptian mummies – is a striking
phenomenon.”20
Ancient Greek artistic traditions, already somewhat popular in parts of Egypt, became
increasingly valued during Alexander’s rule and the Ptolemy Dynasty. The ancient Greeks are
known for their technically and artistically superior skills in the plastic arts. Wall painting,
panel painting and sculpture are three major mediums in which ancient Greek artisans
worked. Greek artists were in Egypt as early as the 7th century BCE and they were considered
the best painters in Egypt.21 A surprising amount of documentation from ancient Greece has
left clues to the great Greek panel painting tradition, but due to the humid and temperamental
atmosphere of the Mediterranean, no actual examples of ancient Greek panel painting survive.
Much of ancient art is concentrated on portraiture; recording visages of the great
emperors and deities was common across nearly all ethnic groups, religions and cultures
cohabitating in Egypt. Funerary portraiture was an extremely important part of the extensive
burial rituals of the Egyptians, and Greek painters were typically employed in connection
with…
20
Doxiadis, 40.
21
Doxiadis, 84.
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Bierbrer, Morris. “The Discovery of the Mummy Portraits,” in Ancient Faces: Mummy
Portraits from Roman Egypt, edited by Susan Walker, 32-33. New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.
Breckenridge, James. Likeness: A Conceptual History of Ancient Portraiture. Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1968.
Calinescu, Adriana. “Egypt after Alexander: Art Under the Greeks and Romans.” in Aspects
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Schneider 12
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----------------- “Mummy portraits and Roman Portraiture,” in Ancient Faces: Mummy
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