These were produced from around the time of the Roman annexation of Egypt in the late 1st century BC to around the Christianization of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century CE.
They were a continuation of the Egyptian tradition of funerary masks but rather than sculpting them and making them of precious metals, they began painting these lifelike portraits.
Itâs hotly debated whether this is an example of Greco-Roman realist style imposed on their subjects, or a home grown Egyptian development of their own ancient tradition. Those who say itâs more Egyptian than Roman point out that thereâs no surviving paintings in the rest of the Roman Empire that were this realistic. Those who say itâs more Roman than Egyptian point out the arid climate left these portraits intact, and beleive the others in the rest of the empire were lost.
Personally I think you can call them Egyptian because these people, whether of Roman or ancient Egyptian descent, are still the ancestors of the modern Egyptians today.
Despite the realism you can see a slight exaggeration of the eyes, smoothing of the skin and inclusion of certain important objects around the subjectâs head. Itâs a pattern that would get more and more pronounced until it became the style of Byzantine iconography in the Orthodox Christian Church
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