The woman on this painted shroud appears to be wealthy and is adorned with luxurious jewels. She wears red socks of fine fabric, perhaps silk. Roman Egyptian and early Byzantine Egyptian art often juxtaposed Greco-Roman styles with indigenous themes; for example, here Egyptian deities flank the standing figure. The linen foundation might have been woven on a horizontal ground loom, a continuation of Pharaonic Egyptian traditions. The shroud is possibly from Antinoöpolis (modern Sheikh Abada), an important Hellenic, or predominately Greek-speaking, city founded in 130 by the Roman emperor Hadrian in Middle Egypt.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Shroud of a Woman Wearing a Fringed Tunic
Period:Roman Period
Date:A.D. 170–200
Geography:From Egypt; Possibly from Middle Egypt, Sheikh Abada (Antinoopolis); Said to be from Fayum
Medium:Linen, paint (tempera)
Dimensions:Textile: L. 230.2 × W. 110.8 cm (90 5/8 × 43 5/8 in.); Framed: H. 249.3 × W. 128.7 × D. 10.6 cm, 55.8 kg (98 1/8 × 50 11/16 × 4 3/16 in., 123 lb.)
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1909
Accession Number:09.181.8
Purchased from Maurice Nahman in Cairo, 1909. Previously sold at Drouot, Paris, April 12, 1905.
Lythgoe, Albert M. 1910. "Græco–Egyptian Portraits." In The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 5, no. 3 (March), p. 69.
Reinach, Adolphe 1914. "Les portraits gréco-égyptiens." In Revue archéologique, 4-5, p. 18, fig. 13.
Dimand, Maurice S. 1930. "Coptic Tunics in the Metropolitan Museum of Art." In Metropolitan Museum Studies, vol. 2, no. 2 (May), p. 239; p.241, fig. 2.
Strelkov, A. 1936. Faiumskii Portret. Moscow, p. 28, fig. 12.
Galassi, Giuseppe 1953. Roma o Bisanzio, 1. Rome: Librerio dello Stato, p. 580, fig. 398.
Stricker, Bruno Hugo 1962. "AUGOEIDES SWMA." In Oudheidkundige mededeelingen uit het Rijksmuseum van Oudheiden te Leiden (OMRO), 43, p. 22, no. 117.
Needler, Winifred 1963. An Egyptian funerary bed of the Roman period in the Royal Ontario Museum. Toronto: University of Toronto, pp. 14, 19, 29, 41, 43, no. 127.
Parlasca, Klaus 1966. Mumienporträts und verwandte Denkmäler. Wiesbaden: Steiner, pp. 41, 183, nn. 173, 182, pl. 13 [3].
Parlasca, Klaus 1969. Ritratti di Mummie, Series B Volume 1. Repertorio d'arte dell'Egitto Greco-Romano, Palermo, cat. no. 20.
Berger, Jacques-Edouard and René Creux 1977. L'oeil & l'éternité: portraits romains d'Egypte. Paudeux, p. 216, fig. 6.
Corcoran, Lorelei Hilda 1988. Portrait Mummies from Roman Egypt. Ph.D. dissertation. Chicago, p. 12.
Corcoran, Lorelei Hilda 1995. Portrait mummies from Roman Egypt (I-IV centuries A.D.) : with a catalog of portrait mummies in Egyptian Museums, 56. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization (SAOC), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 12.
Parlasca, Klaus and Hellmut Seeman 1999. Augenblicke: Mumienporträts und ägyptische Grabkunst aus römischer Zeit: Eine Ausstellung der Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 30. Januar bis 11. April 1999. Frankfurt am Main and Munich: Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, p. 226, no. 135.
Walker, Susan 2000. Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, pp. 91-93, no. 52.
Parlasca, Klaus 2011. "Ein römisches Leichentuch aus Ägypten in Genf." In Chronique d'Egypte, 86, Issue 171–2, p. 320, fig. 12.
Olson, Kelly 2022. "Fringed Clothing in Roman Iconography and Written Sources." In Textiles in Ancient Mediterranean iconography, edited by Susanna Harris, Cecilie Brøns, and Marta Zuchowska. Oxbow Books, p. 152, fig. 11.4. a–b.
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The Met's collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 26,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from the Paleolithic to the Roman period.
