≪Der zierlichste Anblick der Welt. ...≫: Agyptische Portratmumien.

• Author: WILFONG, TERRY G.
• Position: Review

[much less than]Der zierlichste Anblick der Welt. ...[much greater than]: Agyptische Portratmumien. By BARBARA BORG. Zaberns Bildbande zur Archaologie; Sonderhefte der Antiken Welt. Mainz: VERLAG PHILIPP VON ZABERN 1998. Pp. 107, maps, illustrations. DM 68.

Mummy portraits, the panel paintings in encaustic or tempera found on many Egyptian mummies of the Graeco-Roman period, have become increasingly popular manifestations of post-pharaonic Egypt. In the past few years, they have formed the subject of several substantial studies and a series of major exhibitions; mummy portraits also appear on the covers of a wide range of books and in other contexts that show their increasing interest both to academics and the broader public. The appeal of these paintings is easy to understand: they were frequently done in a style both realistic and expressive and help to put a human "face" onto the otherwise remote inhabitants of Graeco-Roman Egypt. The recent discovery of thousands of Graeco-Roman-period mummies in the Bahriya Oasis is likely only to increase interest in the mummy portraits. The present volume is a welcome addition to the growing list of books on mummy portraits and related artifacts. Not only is it handsomely produced with beautiful photographs, it also cont ains a serious study of these portraits and their contexts.

The present volume is an outgrowth of the author's 1996 volume Mumienportrdts: Chronologie und kultureller Kontext, itself a revision of her 1990 dissertation. This technical study provided a detailed examination of the dating of the mummy portraits (a topic that has been much debated) and the contexts from which they came. The present volume benefits greatly from the author's earlier work and wide expertise in the subject, as well as from the substantial amount of work by other scholars that was not available to the earlier study. The result is not so much a popularization of the 1996 volume, but an elaboration of many of the author's important points in a different format. The present volume is an accessible and up-to-date consideration of the mummy portraits that packs a substantial amount of information and many images into just over a hundred pages.

The book opens with a fascinating account of the discovery of the mummy portraits and their reception in scholarly and popular realms. Finds of these portraits in the late nineteenth century created an enduring interest in them, and the author provides a readable account of...