ROMAN PERIOD, CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.

Seen from the front, the facial features of this stucco mask of a young man mainly reflect Roman artistic traditions, especially portraits from the reigns of Hadrian (117-138 A.D.) and Antoninus Pius (138-161 A.D.). M.S. Vasques (Crenças funérarias e identidade cultural no Egito Romano: Máscaras de múmia, PhD. diss., University of Sâo Paulo, vol. 2, p. 46ff) has characterized this variety of male portrait as belonging to her Type 9, featuring straight hair falling forward and large eyes, often with a beard and mustache, as here. The eyes are inlaid in glass with pupils painted black, and the eyebrows and eyelashes are rendered in long black strokes. Traces of a winged sun disk painted in black and red at the top of the head as well as portions of a zone of further decoration in black provide a glimpse of the broader, Egyptian-style decoration of this man’s mummy case. The majority of parallels seem to derive from Middle Egyptian sites, such as Tuna el-Gebel (see the examples in Manchester, Berlin and Cairo, pls. 30, 4; 32; 39, 3 and 39, 4 in G. Grimm, Die Römischen Mumienmasken aus Ägypten). A mask in Brooklyn (see Grimm, op. cit., pl. 33, 2) has a similar goatee at the end of his chin, and straight hair falling forward in separate locks, as here.