Defining a Romano-Egyptian painting workshop at Tebtunis

Abstract

• The collections of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, include eleven mummy portraits excavated between 1899 and 1900 from Tebtunis, Egypt. This group constitutes one of the largest assemblages of Roman-period mummy portraits to remain both together and unrestored since excavation; as such, it presents a rare opportunity to explore the local practices of an ancient painting workshop. The group also contains, on the back of an effaced portrait, direct evidence of painting practice: a sketch with annotations detailing how the image should be completed. The APPEAR project inspired the collaborative technical study of the eleven Tebtunis portraits as well as a single, additional portrait purchased from Theodor Graf for the University of California, which provides a comparative example of a stylistically different portrait attributed to the site of Kerke.