The government of Egypt has just announced that archaeologists were able to uncover portraits of Egyptian mummies that are fully colored. These findings are the first to be sighted in more than a full hundred years.
Science Alert notes that the archaeologists were able to find two complete Egyptian mummy portraits as well as portrait fragments. These findings were spotted in the Gerza excavation spot within Fayoum, Egypt. These groundbreaking portraits are the first type of artworks to be found in the last 115 years.
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Last Egyptian Mummy Portrait Discovery Was in 1911
Before this discovery, archaeologist Flinders Petrie was the last one to find something similar. According to Artnet News, back in 1911, Petrie found 146 different portraits of Egyptian mummies in the Roman cemetery.
Two More Egyptian Mummy Portraits Found
These discoveries were spotted in an excavation site located within Philadelphia's ancient city ruins. This area is around the corner of Fayoum in the northeast, which is around 120 km southwest of present-day Cairo.
The investigators of the Gerza site also found other artifacts. They found a funerary structure, papyrus records, coffins, and pottery that date all the way from the Ptolemaic time. This period spanned from 305 BCE to BCE and all the way to the Roman time that took place from 30 BCE up until 390 CE.
Science Alert notes how the Egyptian government mentioned that these findings show interesting insights about the religious, social, and economic situation of those who lived in Philadelphia around 2,000 years before.
Fayoum portraits, the painting collection, show some of the wealthiest residents of these ancient factions. For a period of 600 years, Philadelphia hosted Egyptians and Greeks.
According to the project head of the Ancient Philadelphia Excavation, Basem Gehad, there is no one who actually knows the context behind the portraits. He, however, adds that it is now possible to know their roots and gather more information.
While the portraits that were previously gathered ended up with art dealer, collector, and entrepreneur Theodor Graf, the recently discovered Fayoum portraits will stay in Egypt for further research purposes.
Terracotta Aphrodite Statue and Other Artifacts Spotted
Other than these discoveries, Artnet notes that the researchers were able to find several coffins of multiple styles. The mummies inside such coffins reflected how important money was in prehistoric Gerza. Some of these mummies were cautiously embaled while other were simply left to rot naturally.
Interestingly, archaeologists also uncovered a sparse statue of terracotta that mirrored the Isis Aphrodite goddess, the love and fertility goddess. This statue was found within a coffin made of wood.
Gehad shared how this statue showed how much the Greeks influenced Egyptian art that resulted from the Greeks' residing in such an area.
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