Additional Resources

First Dutch exhibition about mummy portraits opens at the Allard Pierson in October July 5, 2023 in Archaeology – Science Magazine (November 2023)

Archaeology Magazine (January/February 2022) Egyptian Mummy Portraits Reimagined

Reviving the Art of Ancient Egyptian Mummy Portraits in Cairo and the Faiyum: a curatorial,conservation and community collaboration (2021)

Unraveling the mysteries of ancient Egypt's spellbinding mummy portraits (April 2019)

The APPEAR Project: Sharing the Secrets of Ancient Funerary Portraits

Face to Face - The people behind mummy portraits. Catalog for the Exhibition. Allard Pierson published 2023.

Golden girl, sarcophagus Hawara, 2nd C, Museum Cairo FAYUM db (28 June 2022)

Ankh or Ansa – Fayum type mummy shrouds and portraits: amulets, ancient jewelry, ancient polychrome, jewelry on paintings, jewelry on sculptures, (30 January 2022)

Faces of Roman Egypt: Google Arts and Culture (March 2021)

Science reveals secrets of a mummy's portrait, Paul Gabrielsen, University of Utah (November 2020)

Depicting the dead: ancient Egyptian mummy portraits, C. Cartwright, The British Museum blog (October 2020)

Findings from an Examination of Two Mummy Portraits, Hae-Min Park, Amaris Sturm, Glenn Gates, and Lisa Anderson-Zhu, The Journal of the Walters Art Museum, Volume 74 (2017)

Portrait of a Child: Historical and Scientific Studies of a Roman Egyptian Mummy Northwestern University Press

Egyptian Blue: The Mysterious Color in Mummy Portraits Rachel Sabino (November 27, 2019)

Gilding the Dead: Mummy Portraits in Roman Egypt (Art Institute of Chicago) Rachel Sabino (October 23, 2019)

Unraveling the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt’s Spellbinding Mummy Portraits By Alexxa Gotthardt (April 16, 2019)

Imperial fashion victims in provincial Egypt: re-dating Egyptian mummy portraits By Joy Kremler. National Gallery Victoria (June 2, 2014)

Mummy Mysteries: International Science Project Uncovers Ancient Egyptian Secrets at the CMA

Getty Podcast

Getty podcast interview with Marie Svoboda

Brooklyn Museum Blogs

Brooklyn Museum Tumblr post on APPEAR

Penn Blogs

APPEAR Project – Reflectance Transformation Imaging of the Fayum Mummy Portraits

APPEAR Project – X-Ray Radiography of the Fayum Mummy Portraits

APPEAR Project – Portable X-Ray Fluorescence on the Fayum Mummy Portraits

Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum

John's Hopkins University Mummy Portrait

Walters Art Museum

Findings from an Examination of Two Mummy Portraits

Kunst Historisches Museum Wein

Ägyptische Mumienporträts - das Leuchten aus dem Grab

Mumienporträts: Antike Passbilder für die Reise ins Jenseits

Wüstenporträts in der Tiefenanalyse

Videos

The “Mummy Portraits” of Roman Egypt: Status, Ethnicity, and Magic. Related exhibition at the Harvard Art Museums: Funerary Portraits from Roman Egypt open through December 31,2022. Speaker: Lorelei H. Corcoran, Professor of Art History; Director, Institute of Egyptian Art & Archaeology University of Memphis

In this video, Dr Lucy Wrapson senior conservator at the Hamilton Kerr Institute recreates the ancient painting techniques used in the mummy portrait of Demos, a woman who died in Hawara, Egypt around the 1st Century AD.

Painting of a Mummy Portrait – Fitzwilliam

Smith College Museum of Art Conversations: Mummy Portrait (recorded on July 15, 2021)

Other Resources

The International Round Table on Polychromy in Ancient Sculpture and Architecture or the “Polychromy Round Table” is a series of meetings dedicated to the study of the polychromy of ancient sculpture and architecture. Recent interest in this field has once more been reinvigorated by the advent of new scientific techniques and methodologies, as well as by a community of diverse and interdisciplinary scholars, dedicated to the study of the polychromy of ancient sculpture and architecture.

Orbis: A Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World from Stanford University. A site that proposes how the Roman's traveled in antiquity and how long it would have taken them to bring materials across trade routes based on time and practicality.

Portraits of El Fayoum is a database that aspires to contain all known "Fayoum Portraits,” with photographic images and extensive information about each of them. On the main page you always have printed the number of records currently available. Each record is composed of a fixed number of fields, including one called a "code" that is unique to each record and identifies it so that it can be easily tracked. (Site in Spanish)

Encaustic, History, Technique and Research Conference 2017 Website where you can order a pdf of the proceedings.

Art technology and meaning of flesh tones in panel painting from 200-1250 in the Mediterranean area Conference 2017 included research on mummy portraits in German collections. The project was sponsored by the German Ministry for Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung). Papers published in an anthology (see: attachment with the table of content, the abstracts of the articles are in English) and in an exhibition in the internet.

Interactive viewer exploring a mummy portrait from the Getty: 81.AP.29 - Mummy Portrait of a Young Woman. Six technical images.

Imaging methods:

1. Color visible image using a modified Nikon D90 camera with a Peca 916 filter and the Mini-CrimeScope** 400 unfiltered light source. Image for reference, not color corrected but aligned for overlay with other images.
2. 555 nm. Image capture at a narrowband pass, using a modified Nikon D90 camera with Peca 916 and a red filter, illuminated with the Mini-Crime Scope 400, filtered at 555 nm. Processed as a monochromatic image. The organic pigment on the tunic luminesces.
3. Infra-red reflected image (IR) using a modified Nikon D90 camera with a Peca 904 bandpass filter, illuminated with halogen light sources. Carbon black used for the hair, eyes, eyebrows and mouth are visible.
4. Infra-red false color image (FCIR) created by combining the visible and infrared images and rearranging the color channels in Adobe Photoshop. The presence of indigo is represented as magenta, seen on the clavi and the folds of her tunic, pale yellow identifies the madder lake and the red iron based pigment appears a darker golden yellow.
5. Ultra-violet image using a Canon Rebel EOS and Peca 916 filter, illuminated by a Wildfire Long throw series UV light source at 365 nm. The pink tunic exhibits the typical orange/pink fluorescence characteristic of organic lake/madder. The necklace, earrings, whites of her eyes and sketch-like details on her face exhibit a bright fluorescence suggesting the use of a calcium based white.
6. X-ray, at 28 KV 6.25 mA 2.5 foc –2 minute exposure. There is no evidence for the use of a lead based pigment which would appear as white (opaque) details. Material identifications were corroborated through scientific analysis.

**Thanks to the UCLA/Getty conservation training program for the use and guidance in using the Mini Crime Scope for imaging this mummy portrait and to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for imaging assistance.

Online, interactive viewers based on the figures from volume I of the Bosch Research and Conservation Project’s Bosch Monograph. Discover Jheronimus (Hieronymus) Bosch's paintings in intimate detail using a new synced viewer technology to reveal the paintings and what lies beneath.