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About Fayoum

A majestic desert, expanses of luxuriant land, lakes and waterfalls: let yourselves be captivated by the beauties of the Fayoum Oasis, ‘Little Egypt’. If you have always dreamt of losing yourselves in the immense Milky Way while lying among the desert dunes, listening to the stories of the dynasties of pharaohs that have marked the history of a civilization thousands of years old, guided by the skilled hands of young artisans, the ‘guardians’ of the ancient handiwork techniques, then Fayoum is the destination for you. Continue reading About Fayoum

Fayoum Portraits

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Mummy portraits or Fayum portraits are the most astonishing body of painting to have come to us from the ancient world, they are remarkable for their  social importance and for their quality as art.

In the late 1880s some mysterious portraits started to reach Western Europe and the United States of America. They came from Egypt’s Fayoum. A large collection was possessed by an Austrian man, Theodor Graf but the better documented ones were found at Hawara by the British archaeologist ,  W.M. Flinders Petrie.

” Fayoum Portraits ” is the name which has given to describe them because more have been found in the Fayoum Oasis than anywhere else in Egypt.

Portrait_du_Fayoum_01a Fayum-46

In technique ; some are painted in encaustic and some in tempera; some are on panel and some on linen ; some show heads only and some entire figures. Some seem to have been painted from life and hung on the wall in frames.