ABSTRACT
The Viennese antiquarian and dealer Theodor Graf first proposed a Ptolemaic date and a royal context for his collection of mostly tempera paintings stripped from the tombs of er-Rubayat in the north-east Fayum in the 1880s; in this he was supported by the Egyptologist Georg Ebers, both men impressed by the high quality of many of the paintings. Since the British exhibition of 1997, most of which was also shown in Rome with an Italian translation of the catalogue, exhibitions of mummy portraits using much of the material but not the catalogue have appeared in Greece, France and Germany. Painted plaster masks appear to show a similar pattern of development: those not sporting Egyptian wigs may be compared to panel and shroud portraits with an often striking correspondence of hairstyle, dress and jewellery.
