FIRST

Fayum mummy portraits: The oldest modernist paintings.

March 31, 2021

⌛ Reading time: 8 minutes

Have been a fan of ancient photography for a while by now and each day i surf the Internet can't stop marveling on how humans have evolved the art of painting and photography since old days to recent days giving, from time to time, touches of reality closer and closer to the reality itself.

Today, digital photography has made us forget those efforts made by early pioneers in the field of transmitting reality through paintings but; by fortune, there still some examples that remind us that in early days, there were people worried about this idea and they gave the best of themselves trying to show us real faces, faces that convey feelings, feelings that make us think today that today human beings are not so different than people living 2000 years ago.

Mummy portraits are real people portraits

Archeologists have gotten used to discover all kinds of mummies spreaded all over Egypt. It seemed that nothing they could discover in the arid sands of that country could alter the original mummified burial concept that has always been had of the Egyptians through history. So what a BIG surprise for the British archaeologist W.M. Flinders Petrie when excavating around the Egyptian city of Fayum in the late 1800´s he discovered the first mummmmies with a living portrait of the mummy inside incorporated into the part of the deceased's face.....Whaaaat!? **:o**

Fig 1. *A Fayum-style mummy with its typical portrait in the front of the face (https://classicalwisdom.com)*

This was a totally different concept of what was believed until that moment the usual mummification and burial process among common egyptians took place. It was a mystery? Why those mummies had those portraits? Who painted those portraits?

The history of the Fayum mummies can be traced even years before Mr. Petrie excavated around the city of Fayum when first Fayum portrait mummies were found by Pietro della Valle in 1615. Years later, an Austrian businessman and art collector named Theodor Graf (1840-1903), bought several of those portraits taken from the cemeteries at er-Rubayat and elsewhere, exposing them across Europe raising people's curiosity around those so uncommon artifacts. Then years later Mr. Petrie led a british expedition for the Egypt Exploration Fund excavating cementeries near the site of Hawara finding several of those mummies with such portraits...He was amazed by his discoveries and fascinated by the ancient eyes staring back at him: the rest of the world would be too.

Fig 2. A portrait of a Fayum mummy: a look from the afterlife (https://egiptologia.com)

Most of those mummies and their respective portraits can be dated back to the Imperial Roman era, from the late 1st century BC or the early 1st century AD onwards. They belong to the time when Egypt was starting to become a roman province and many Romans citizens began settling there and adopted local practices including the mortuary ritual of egyptian mummification, mixing ancient egyptian myths with their own funerary traditions.

Fig 3. *The evolution of Egyptian coffins: from the coffin of Henutmehyt, New Kingdom between 1550-1070 BCE to complete painted Fayum portrait and mummy of Artemidorus (https://www.thecollector.com)*

The study of several of those portraits tell us a lot about the people depicted there: 75 percent of the panels studied were painted on linden wood, which wasn’t native to Egypt. So mummy painters, apparetly, imported the material all the way from Northern Europe. A manufactured red pigment identified in the works was traced to southern Spain. And the use of indigo across the paintings potentially indicates that the deep-blue pigment was mass produced.

Fig 4. *A portrait of a Fayum-style mummy of a young woman where we can see a wide use of red pigments that are believed to have been brought from southern Spain (https://classicalwisdom.com)*

Some conservators even noticed small fibers embedded in the dye, which suggests that it was recycled from Egypt’s textile industry. This kind of information clearly indicate that not everyone could have had that kind of portrait in their mummy as those imported materials were extremely expensive, so the people buried in the Fayum cementry must have been important (or rich) people in their time.

Many experts have debated about the real use case of these paintings beyond accompanying the deceased to the afterlife. It is assumed that when one of those people died, his relatives before burying him, preferred to keep his mummified body for some time in their own homes and then ordered this type of mortuary portrait that would serve first as a way to give some life to those inert bodies, as a reminder of who he/she was, or what he/she looked like in life. After a time the deceased was buried according to Egyptian funerary rites, always accompanied by the painting that represented the person in life.

One of the key aspects of such kind of portraits is the fact that they show us not only a wide diversity of the people who once lived in Roman Egypt but also the intricacies of hairstyles, clothing, and jewellery that were popular two thousand years ago helping archeologists to develop their work uncovering the customs of people who lived by that time. Those portraits also represent a great percent of the few preserved examples of ancient Greek-style paintings we have nowadays. They are a rare type of mixed art between the Egyptian, Greek and Roman styles, one of a kind.

For generations amazing many people around the world; many those paintings are so real that the creator of such artworks perhaps inadvertently ended up transmitting even feelings, something that the flat Egyptian painting never dreamed of producing or transmitting.

Fig 5. We can see the quality of those paintings, reaching the point of transmitting feelings even (https://www.smithsonianmag.com)

Today we can find several of those paintings with their respective mummies spreaded around the finest history museums around the whole world. For the history, only about a thousand Fayum-style mummies have survived centuries of vandalism and looting, which is often considered a really small amount of those rare artifacts given the fact that Rome ruled Egypt for centuries.

Final thoughts...by now

There are still many unanswered questions about the Fayum mummies and their portraits: ...did the portraitist paint from memory when death had already arrived? ...was he inspired by the corpse and added a few touches of life? ...was the model the person still alive, who had himself portrayed so that in the future that face would serve other people to remeber them as they were?

The truth is that we may never know, but the fact is that these types of portraits are truly incredible artworks, preserved for posterity thanks to the aridity of the desert where they were discovered. By looking those so realistic paintings, we cannot avoid to think on that ancient society so far in time and, at the same time, so close in feelings; a proof that despite the passing of the years humanity is still one.

If you are an enthusiast of historical photograph and amazing discoveries and stories do not forget to follow me at https://coil.com/u/deyner1984 because i will be releasing soon new and impressive contents about it!!!

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*✰* Incredible #FIRST photographs of all times(Series) – Part 1.

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*✰* Amazing old photos of rare sports that you will never believe existed! – Part 2

Incredible #FIRST photographs of all times(Series) – Part 2.

September 29, 2020

⌛ Reading time: 6 minutes

Hello dear readers! :) Coming from the first part of this interesting, mystical and weird series of articles dedicated to those very first photographs af all times, we will find ourselves facing a second volley of photographs depicting some of the very first moments and places ever taken by any known photographer.

As said in the first part of this series of articles ”...remember is to live again”, so we will see and remember here how some important cities like Chicago and Boston look like in the past, what were the first photos taken in wartime and... the earliest meteorological photo ever taken. Join us on this incredible journey through the history shown by ancient photographers to learn a bit better about aspects of our past lives that shaped the future we live today.

Without further delays...let's go!

*❶* The very first photo of Chicago, 1855

Fig 1. *Daguerreotype of the Cook County Court House and City Hall of Chicago, 1855 (https://www.dnainfo.com/)*

The oldest-known photo in Chicago history was taken by Alexander Hesler. This photographer is best remembered for taking a series of photographs (daguerreotypes) of a beardless Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Hesler was a “quebecois”, a native from Canada, but moved to Chicago in 1855 and he stayed in the city until after the Great Fire of 1871.

This oldest daguerreotype depicts the courthouse and City Hall of Chicago. The building was erected in 1853 from plans by John M. Van Osdel, Chicago's first architect and for photographic purposes it served as both: as an objective of the lens of Mr. Hesler and as a place to take another pictures from the surrounding buildings of the Chicago city in the year of 1858. A curious data is that the building was destroyed in the 1871 fire. This old daguerreotype shows the northwest corner of the building at Randolph and LaSalle.

❷ The first photo of Dublin, 1848

Fig 2. *A group pose in front St. George’s Church, 1848. (https://mymodernmet.com)*

Not much is known about this photo. It is widely recognized as the first(surviving) photograph taken in Dublin, Ireland. It shows a group of victorians posing in front of St. George’s Church, a former Church of Ireland parish church located in Hardwicke Street. The building still stands today and is used as office space.

❸ The earliest aerial photo, 1860

Fig 3. *Aerial view of Boston, 1860. (https://www.widewalls.ch)*

Is been said that the very very first aerial photograph was taken back in 1858, in Paris by Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, however, that photo has been reported as missing or destroyed as well as the equipment used to take it, so all the evidence that could prove that is no longer with us.

The next gem of aerial photography corresponds to the American continent. The earliest aerial photo known to exist (and preserved) is a view of Boston, named “Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It”. Taken from 2,066 feet in the air by James Wallace Black and Samuel Archer King. Mr. Black is best known for his photographs of Boston after the devasting fire of 1872 and launched his solo career in 1860 with the production of a series of aerial photographs taken from Samuel King’s hot-air balloon the “Queen of the Air”.

❹ The first photo taken in a war scenario, 1847

Fig 4. *American troops ride into the city of Saltillo during the war with Mexico.(https://militaryhistorynow.com)*

This is the very first know photo taken in a war scenario but not the very first photograph of an ongoing battle, that honor belongs to another photo we will see in next section.

This photo shows the American general John E. Wool and his staff riding through “La Calle Real” in Saltillo, Mexico, in early 1847 after his troops captured the city during the American-Mexican war. The war was fought between 1846 and 1848 and was one of the earliest human conflicts recorded using photography. The United States took Mexico City during the war, and, in the treaty that followed, Mexico conceded uncontested control over California and what is now the American southwest to the United States.

❺ The first photograph taken in battlefield, 1870

Fig 5. *Battle of Sedan: an episode of a combat at La Moncelle. (https://militaryhistorynow.com)*

Yep this is a real photo of the Battle of Sedan (widely accepted). This battle is famous for many reasons. The Battle of Sedan was fought in the Franco-Prussian War from 1 to 2 September 1870. And it was a disaster for the French side: Emperor Napoleon III and a large numbers of his troops were captured and it effectively decided the war in favour of Prussia and its allies.

This image shows a line of Prussian troops as they advance(in the background) while a line of French defenders were trying to hold the Prussian advance. In perspective, we can see that the photographer shot the image as he stood with French defenders.

There has been a lot of discussion of this photograph online about whether the photograph is authentic or not, mainly because of the exposition times needed to take a clear image with the technology of that time, not to talk about the motion been captured with a technology incompatible with the same motion. However experts in photograph field agree in the possibility of the authenticity of this photograph...split decision...while evidence arrives this is still recognized as the very first photograph taken in the middle of a battle.

❻ First Photo of a Tornado, 1884

Fig 6. *A tornado moving slowly on Anderson County, Kansas. (https://mymodernmet.com)*

Maybe is a coincidence but the very first photo taken of a tornado was shoot in Kansas **:)** Was taken on April 26, 1884.

According to Kansas Historical Society the tornado’s slow progress allowed Mr. Adams, who was a local fruit farmer and amateur photographer, enough time to assemble his cumbersome box camera and capture this singular image. Positioned near the United Presbyterian Church in Garnett, Adams was standing just 14 miles from the cyclone. Modern meteorologists consider Adam’s photograph to indeed be the first image, corroborated by Signal Corps(an early precursor to the National Weather Service) weather maps and the newspaper account containing a physical description of the storm.

Final thougths...by now

The second part of this series of articles show us a piece of history surrounded mainly by bravery...bravery shown by those men who risked somehow their lifes to be in the center of conflicts like wars and natural disasters even, to take with their rudimentary cameras the first pictures ever taken on those places. Besides, we have seen the beginnings of what we can call the born of architectural photography even from the sky, in times where the mankind could only dream of having planes.

One way or another the historical value of such photographs cannot be denied and we can only thank those early photographers for a job well done. As always, i hope you, dear reader, have enjoyed this second burst of historic photos...more on their way!!!

If you are an enthusiast of historical photograph and amazing discoveries do not forget to follow me at https://coil.com/u/deyner1984 because i will be releasing soon new and impressive contents about it!!!