This portrait depicting the head and shoulders of a lightly-bearded young man is painted in coloured beeswax onto a piece of lime wood. It is a portrait mask which was found fixed over the face of a mummified body in the Roman cemetery at Hawara in Egypt. Also known as a 'Fayum Portrait', it shows how the man wanted to be remembered after his death. It was discovered by the British School of Archaeology in Egypt in the winter of 1910-1911. It is featured in W M Flinders Petrie's report 'Roman Portraits and Memphis IV' (1911) - see plate 5, no.34.
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