Portrait of a Boy

Encaustic paint on wooden panel. Roman Period, C. 150 A.D. From Hawara. This beautiful panel encapsulates the choices of commemoration available to inhabitants of Egypt during the Roman period. The family of the boy shown, who must have been about ten years old when he died, has him wrapped and mummified in the pharaonic style, instead of being cremated as was the fashion for people who identified as Roman. The body was enclosed in the cartonnage mummy case, decorated with figures of the Egyptian gods. Over the face, however, they placed an image made in the classical medium of encaustic-painted in hot colored wax. It shows the boy wearing white tunic with purple clavi (vertical bands). Around his head a molded and gilded frame is decorated with vine leaves and grapes, classical symbols of resurrection which were shortly to be taken up by Christianity.