Introduction

In the first three centuries of the Common Era, Romans living in Egypt began having portraits painted of their loved ones that would later be placed as a kind of funerary mask or shroud on that persons mummy when they were buried. Many of these portraits have been found in the Fayum Basin of Egypt, and are often referred to as "The Fayum Mummy Portraits." The realism of these portraits has awed scholars for decades. Their style and elegance are astonishing, so much so that the Smithsonian Magazine wrote an article calling them 'the oldest modernist paintings.' The portraits are just one of many examples of the melding of Egyptian and Classical cultures, and can give modern classicists a look into what life was like in Roman Egypt.