Tag Archives: Roman

Euhemeria Qasr Banat Archaeological Site

The village of Euhemeria is situated near to a modern village called Ezbet Afifi in the north-western part of Fayoum city between Philoteris and Theadelpheia archaeological sites, of which the exact locations are also known. Like most of the ancient Greaco-Roman towns in this part of the Fayoum, Euhemeria was founded in the reign of Ptolemy II (if not Ptolemy I) and was abandoned in the 4th century AD.

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Theadelphia (Batn Ihrit – Khawagat)

Among the sites in the former Themistou Meris, Theadelpheia sadly exhibits best the dramatic changes which have occurred in the ancient settlements in this part of the Fayoum since the beginning of the 20th century. When Francis Kelsey visited here in spring 1920. He walked along avenues which were lined by houses still standing up to their second floors.

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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.