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Mummy Portraits: Investigating Regional Variations

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Mummy Portraits: Investigating Regional Variations American University in Cairo AUC Knowledge Fountain Theses and Dissertations Spring 6-2016 Mummy portraits: Investigating regional variations Maryan Ragheb Sobhy Ragheb Follow this and additional works at: https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds The American University in Cairo School of Humanities and Social Sciences Mummy Portraits: Investigating Regional Variations A Thesis Submitted to Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, and Egyptology In partial fulfillment of the requirements for The degree of Master of Arts in Egyptology by Maryan Ragheb Sobhy Ragheb (Under the supervision of Dr. Salima Ikram) May/2016 i Acknowledgment I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Distinguished Professor Salima Ikram, for her wisdom, patience, support, and perfectionism, and for always offering me advice every step of the way. I would also like to thank Professor Lisa Sabbahy, for her guidance, and for offering her assistance every time I needed it. I would like to thank Associate Professor Mariam Ayad for believing in me and encouraging me to be a better scholar, and for her valuable input on my work. I would like to thank Provost and Professor John Swanson for his enthusiasm for this topic, his valuable remarks, and for helping me deliver a perfect thesis. Finally, I would like to thank my loving parents and my caring sister, for supporting me throughout my undergraduate and graduate years in the study of Egyptology, and for encouraging me to achieve my dreams, even if it was against their better judgment. ii Abstract In Roman Egypt, a new form of funerary art known as "mummy portraits" emerged. As a development from the earlier funerary masks common in Pharaonic and Ptolemaic Egypt, mummy portraits, images of the deceased painted on wooden panels and inset into the mummy wrappings over the face, became a growing trend from the early 1st century AD and continued to be popular for the next 200 years. Even though scholars have adopted various approaches in studying mummy portraits stylistically in terms of hair, clothing, and jewelry styles for chronological sequencing, little stylistic analysis has been carried out to attribute specific portraits to specific sites using style of painting or panel shape as criteria. An exception is Lorelei Corcoran, who drew associations between the panel and the site to which it belongs, identifying arched panels with Hawara and angled ones with Er-Rubayat. These remarks may indicate that each site had a portrait-painting workshop, each with its own distinctive characteristics. This study analyzes portraits excavated from Hawara, Abusir el-Melek, Tebtunis, and Antinoopolis. These sites have been selected because they have yielded the highest numbers of excavated, and thus securely provenanced, portraits. These have been divided into two categories: the first consists of mummy portraits that are no longer attached to their mummies and the second includes those still in situ on the mummy. The variables examined are the material on which the portrait is painted, painting technique, panel shape, the presence of frames, the posture of the portrayed subject, presence of gilding, and areas gilded. For the second category, the decorative scheme of the mummy wrappings and the shape of the opening are added to the variables. The information has been entered into a database, and the results of the analysis provide a 'fingerprint' for each site. The 'fingerprints' can be used to tentatively assign portraits with unknown or uncertain provenance to specific sites, and thus has wide reaching implications to the study of Roman mummy portraits. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENT ............................................................................................................................................II ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................................................. III LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................................................... VIII LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................................................. XIII LIST OF PLATES ................................................................................................................................................. XIV LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................................................... XIX CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGY ................................................................................... 1 PREVIOUS WORK .................................................................................................................................................... 2 METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER 2: HAWARA .......................................................................................................................................... 12 BACKGROUND OF THE DISCOVERY ............................................................................................................... 12 THE CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE: ............................................................................................................... 13 JULIO-CLAUDIAN (AD 14-68) ................................................................................................................................. 13 Tiberian (AD 14-37) ....................................................................................................................................................... 14 Summary of the Tiberian Group ................................................................................................................................ 20 Caligulan-Claudian (AD 37-54) ...................................................................................................................................... 20 Summary of the Caligulan-Claudian Group .............................................................................................................. 30 Neronian (AD 54-68) ...................................................................................................................................................... 31 FLAVIAN (AD 69-96) ............................................................................................................................................... 38 Summary of the Flavian Group .................................................................................................................................. 46 TRAJANIC (AD 98-117) ........................................................................................................................................... 46 Summary of the Trajanic Group ................................................................................................................................ 57 HADRIANIC (AD 117-138) ....................................................................................................................................... 57 Summary of the Hadrianic Group .............................................................................................................................. 70 ANTONINE (AD 138-192) ........................................................................................................................................ 71 Summary of the Antonine Group ............................................................................................................................... 81 SEVERAN (AD 193-235) .......................................................................................................................................... 82 Summary of the Severan Group ................................................................................................................................. 87 TRENDS OF THE HAWARA CORPUS ................................................................................................................ 88 PORTRAITS RE-ASSIGNED TO CHRONOLOGICAL GROUPS .................................................................... 98 CHAPTER 3: ABUSIR EL-MELEK ..................................................................................................................... 100 BACKGROUND ON THE DISCOVERY ............................................................................................................. 100 CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE........................................................................................................................ 100 iv TIBERIAN (AD 14-37) ............................................................................................................................................ 101 LATE CLAUDIAN-EARLY NERONIAN (AD 41-54) ................................................................................................... 105 CONCLUSIONS ...................................................................................................................................................... 111 CHAPTER 4: TEBTUNIS ...................................................................................................................................... 113 BACKGROUND OF THE DISCOVERY ............................................................................................................
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