Amenemhet III was the last great ruler of the Middle kingdom as numerous inscriptions on monuments from Syria to the third cataract on Nile testify
Hawara’s historical site is not only famous for its pyramid and its mortuary temple. It’s also famous because in 1888 professor Petrie discovered in the tombs around the pyramid, the first of the famous fayoum portraits, the incredibly lifelike portraits that were attached to the mummies of the deceased settlers of roman era in the fayoum. portraits were found in other parts of the fayoum and in other parts of Egypt but most of those we now see in museums around the world were found here at Hawara.
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.
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.
