Faces of Fayum

Mummy portraits from Roman Egypt, 1st century BC to around 300 AD. A majority come from the Fayum area, which is how they came to be called Fayum Portraits, but some have been found in other parts of Egypt. Hundreds of these survive. The quality varies from the clumsy and cartoonish to the extraordinary. We know more about what these people looked like than any other population that lived before photography.