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About

Just over a thousand funerary portraits from Roman Egypt, most of which were separated from their interred mummified remains, survive in museums around the world. These fascinating ancient paintings offer an unparalleled opportunity for viewers to come face-to-face with people who lived and died some two thousand years ago.

The international collaboration known as APPEAR (Ancient Panel Paintings: Examination, Analysis, and Research) was launched in 2013 to promote the study of these objects and gather research findings into a shared database. This second volume of Mummy Portraits of Roman Egypt contains seventeen scholarly papers from the APPEAR conference hosted in 2022 at the Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam. Conservators, scientists, and scholars presented new research on topics such as technical imaging; non-destructive analytical techniques; provenance and collecting; treatment histories; connoisseurship and forgeries; comparisons of works across institutions; and scientific studies of woods, pigments, coatings, and binders. With the most up-to-date information available about the production, materiality, function, and history of these painted funerary artifacts, this volume will be a valuable resource to all who research ancient art.

Citation Information

Chicago

Cartwright, Caroline R., and Marie Svoboda. Mummy Portraits of Roman Egypt, Volume 2: Emerging Research from the APPEAR Project. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2026. https://www.getty.edu/publications/mummy-portraits-2/.

MLA

Cartwright, Caroline R., and Marie Svoboda. Mummy Portraits of Roman Egypt, Volume 2: Emerging Research from the APPEAR Project. J. Paul Getty Museum, 2026, https://www.getty.edu/publications/mummy-portraits-2/. Accessed DD Mon. YYYY.

Permanent URL

https://www.getty.edu/publications/mummy-portraits-2/

Revision History

Any revisions or corrections made to this publication after the first edition date will be listed here and in the project repository at https://github.com/thegetty/mummy-portraits-2, where a more detailed version history is available. The revisions branch of the project repository, when present, will show any changes currently under consideration but not yet published here.

February 3, 2026

  • First edition

Other Formats

This publication was created using Quire™, a multiformat publishing tool from Getty.

© 2026 J. Paul Getty Trust

The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. All images are reproduced with the permission of the rights holders acknowledged in the captions and are expressly excluded from the CC BY-NC license covering the rest of this publication. These images may not be reproduced, copied, transmitted, or manipulated without consent from the owners, who reserve all rights. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. All images are reproduced with the permission of the rights holders acknowledged in the captions and are expressly excluded from the CC BY-NC license covering the rest of this publication. These images may not be reproduced, copied, transmitted, or manipulated without consent from the owners, who reserve all rights. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

Published by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Getty Publications
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 500
Los Angeles, California 90049-1682
getty.edu/publications

  • Rachel Barth, Project Editor

  • Katrina Posner, Amanda Sparrow, Courtney Johnson Thomas, and Leslie Tilley, Manuscript Editors

  • Greg Albers, Digital Publications Manager

  • Erin Cecele Dunigan, Digital Project Lead

  • Jenny Park, Digital Production

  • Alex Hallenbeck, Digital Assistant

  • Jeffrey Cohen, Cover Design

  • Victoria Gallina, Production

  • Danielle Brink, Image and Rights Acquisition

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  • Names: APPEAR (Project), author. | Svoboda, Marie, editor. https://id.oclc.org/worldcat/entity/E39PCjxBrwpcypqprDtxxJmWpd | Cartwright, Caroline, editor. https://id.oclc.org/worldcat/entity/E39PCjxVxPC6MTTKdB78BDyjRX | J. Paul Getty Museum, issuing body.
  • Title: Mummy portraits of Roman Egypt, Volume 2: emerging research from the APPEAR Project / edited by Marie Svoboda and Caroline R. Cartwright.
  • Description: First edition. | Los Angeles : J. Paul Getty Museum, 2026. | Proceedings of a conference held at the Allard Pierson in Amsterdam in 2022. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “Publishes the papers delivered at the 2022 APPEAR (Ancient Panel Paintings: Examination, Analysis, and Research) conference, which present research on and discoveries about ancient Romano-Egyptian funerary portraits preserved in international collections”—Provided by publisher.
  • Identifiers: LCCN 2025018648 | ISBN 9781606069967 (paperback) | ISBN 9781606069998 (epub) | ISBN 9781606069981 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781606069974
  • Subjects: LCSH: Mummy portraits—Expertising—Congresses. | Mummy portraits—Egypt—Congresses. | Portraits, Roman—Egypt—Congresses. | Portraits, Egyptian—Congresses. | Egypt—Antiquities, Roman—Congresses. | LCGFT: Conference papers and proceedings.
  • Classification: LCC ND1327.E3 A673 2026 | DDC 757.0932/09015—dc23/eng/20250619
  • LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025018648

Front cover: Mummy portrait of a man, Greek/Roman/Egyptian, second century CE (detail, fig. 13.6)

Illustration Credits

Every effort has been made to contact the owners and photographers of illustrations reproduced here whose names do not appear in the captions. Anyone having further information concerning copyright holders is asked to contact Getty Publications so this information can be included in future printings.

All papers collected in this work were peer reviewed through a single-masked process in which the reviewers remained anonymous.

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