Living Images

Egyptian Funerary Portraits in the Petrie Museum

Janet Picton, Stephen Quirke, Paul C Roberts, Janet Picton, Stephen Quirke, Paul C Roberts

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781138405059
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315425238
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

The haunting funerary paintings on wood coffins found in Roman Egypt still represent some of the most vivid images that come to us from the ancient world. These paintings were first discovered by Flinders Petrie, father of modern archaeology, in his excavations in the Egyptian Fayum during the 1880s and have rested at University College London for over 100 years. Now, the Petrie Museum is bringing this corpus of paintings to the public in a stunning catalog. Living Images is a beautiful and authoritative presentation of the restored collection that will be an essential reference for scholars and a fascinating read for general audiences. Central to the volume is a complete catalog of the mummy portraits uncovered by Petrie, including full color illustrations and descriptions of technical and stylistic features and iconographic characteristics. To add to the value of the volume, articles describe the process of finding the mummies, explain the place of funerary assemblages in the history of Egyptian burial customs, offer an introduction to Egyptian portrait painting, and explain the conservation issues presented by the coffins. Petrie's own reflections on his finds are also included. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Egyptologist Barbara Adams and co-sponsored by the Petrie Museum.

PART I

The Archaeological Context of the Portraits

Recovery and Rediscovery

CHAPTER

1

An Archaeological Context for British Discoveries of Mummy Portraits in the Fayum

Paul C Roberts

The late 19th and early 20th century saw considerable archaeological activity in the Fayum, in particular that of British and German scholars, which led to the discovery of numerous mummy portraits and other artefacts. In this paper, a shorter version of which was first presented in Portraits and Masks (Roberts 1997) and in German in Augenblicke (Roberts 1999), I intend to review the archaeological context of the work of British excavators in the later 19th and early 20th century. I first summarise the campaigns of Hogarth, Grenfell and Hunt at several sites in the Fayum, drawing primarily on the work by Bierbrier (1997), then concentrate on the best-documented discovery of mummy portraits anywhere in Egypt—namely the excavations by Petrie at Hawara in 1888–89 and 1910–11. This reexamination has resulted in some new discoveries and authentication of portrait contexts.

Sites other than Hawara

Er-Rubayat (Philadelphia)

It was the portraits from a site known as er-Rubayat, which, passing via Cairo dealers into the hands of Theodor Graf in Vienna, first triggered a widespread interest in the portraits and contributed to the zeal of excavators such as Grenfell and Hunt, Hogarth and Petrie (1887–88 Journal: 18). Yet in spite of the portraits’ importance, the nature of their discovery and the relative ignorance of the topography of the ancient (and modern) town names at the time caused considerable confusion as to the exact location of the cemeteries from which they were obtained. Doxiadis (1995: 129–131) gives one of the most satisfactory discussions of the problem, while Bierbrier (1997: 16–17) has presented conclusive proof that portraits of definite er-Rubayat type, now in Dublin and Edinburgh, were among finds discovered by Grenfell and Hunt (1901) in 1900–01, at a site that they called er-Rubayat. There now seems little doubt that the site should be seen as the cemetery of Philadelphia (Kom-el-Kharaba-el-Kebir). Er-Rubayat, the nearest settlement of any size at the time of the discovery of the portraits, would have been the obvious point through which they passed en route to Cairo, and the name continued to be used by future excavators, collectors, scholars and dealers.

This is not to say, however, that the term ‘er-Rubayat’ is either correct or helpful. It is possible that some portraits were found elsewhere than Philadelphia, but were given a find spot of ‘Rubayat’ for reasons of convenience and ‘product recognition’ rather than for any intention of scientific recording. An example of this may be evident in a group of portraits collected by W J Myers (now on display at Eton College), which I suggest may have come from Hawara. One of these portraits, Myers 1473, shows a man in military dress and, together with others such as the well-known portrait of an Antonine lady (British Museum EA 65346), forms part of a group of portraits which stand out from the bulk of er-Rubayat pieces. Both in the quality of their execution and in their encaustic technique, they are very different in feel and accomplishment to the vast majority of portraits, which are in tempera.

It is, of course, possible that the portraits are indeed from er-Rubayat, but it is conceivable that the outstanding features mentioned above might point to another find spot, namely Hawara. Petrie, writing in his journal in late October 1888 says ‘old Faraq the Arab dealer was allowed to work at Hawara … but he got only four or five portraits’. Unfortunately, it may never be possible to resolve the problem, since the provenance of Myers 1473 is known only as er-Rubayat. Even careful examination of the surviving journals of Myers by Dr Stephen Spurr of Eton College (pers comm) has failed to reveal any further information. Susan Walker has gone so far as to postulate a familial link between the two portraits above on the basis of their date and facial features and has suggested that they ‘belonged to a family of unusual refinement’ (Walker and Bierbrier 1997: 96).

As Doxiadis demonstrates (1995: 131, fig. 61), the find spot of Graf’s portraits was, even at the time, acknowledged to be linked to the mound which later came to be identified as Philadelphia. A map drawn in 1889 by P Stadler, an Austrian engineer, shows in the east of the Fayum the settlement of ‘Rubbayyat’. Quite separate from it, to the east across a canal, is an ancient site clearly marked ‘Grosse Ruinen Stadt’. Immediately to the east of this site is written ‘nekrop’ then, below this, ‘Fundort der Grafschen Bilder’. This pinpointing of the find spot of the Graf (er-Rubayat) portraits is very reliable, given that Stadler himself visited the sites on the map and brought back antiquities including portraits. Grenfell and Hunt wrote ‘we proposed to place it [Philadelphia] at the mound five miles east of Rubbayyat, which is a well-known source of papyri’ (Grenfell, Hunt and Hogarth 1900: 11).

There is a slight possibility that they were intending the mound at Kom-el-Kharaba-el-Saghir (perhaps the ancient Bubastos) and it is interesting that in the map on plate XVIII of Fayum Towns and Their Papyri (Grenfell, Hunt and Hogarth 1900), the site ‘PHILADELPHIA’ is placed next to a mound on the west bank of the canal, while underneath the ancient name is written ‘Rubayyat’, without any accompanying dot to mark the modern settlement as is given, for example, for Seila or Hawara. In the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) reports for 1900–01, however, Grenfell and Hunt (1901: 7) tell of ‘a short examination of the Roman cemetery at Rubayyat, which yielded a few more portraits, and of the town site, which proved, as we had supposed (Fayum Towns p. 11), to be the ancient Philadelphia’. By 1907, a map in Tebtunis Papyri II correctly shows the site of Philadelphia on the east bank of the canal, with its cemetery farther to the east (Grenfell, Hunt and Goodspeed 1907: pl. 3). German excavations in 1908–09 conclusively proved that Philadelphia was indeed the mound on the east bank (Doxiadis 1995: 131).

Figure 1.1

Aerial photograph taken by the Royal Air Force in 1925, showing the site of Philadelphia, its cemetery and the modern canal (from Edgar 1931).

As Dominic Rathbone has pointed out, an air photograph taken by the Royal Air Force in 1925, published by Edgar (1931) (Figure 1.1) shows the modern canal running almost due north-south, with the cultivated area on the west bank and the ancient site in its correct place on the east bank, beyond the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Museum Collections Referenced in this Volume
• Donors and Subscribers
• Part I The Archaeological Context of the Portraits Recovery and Rediscovery
• Part II Conservation of Mummy Portraits Technology and Techniques
• Part III Catalogue of the Panel Portraits in the Petrie Museum
• Part IV Barbara Adams
• Part V Illustrated Index of Hawara Portraits
• Portrait Index
• Index