File:Fayum mummy portrait (190-220 AD) - British museum, EA74703.jpg

Portrait of a woman in encaustic on limewood: the panel is broken by vertical cracks and strips of paint are lost around them. The flesh surface (originally ivory) has been worked with a spatula. Traces of the mummy wrappings appear as diagonal lines at the upper and lower corners of the panel. The background is grey with a touch of cream. The woman wears a white tunic, the folds clearly rendered with broad brush-strokes, with dark red clavi. White stitches representing the shoulder seam appear below the proper right shoulder. The mantle is worn over the proper left shoulder and appears as a line above the right shoulder; touches of ochre are used to highlight this and the clavus. Round the neck is a gold chain with a pendant crescent, matched by gold hoop earrings. This, and the form of the dress, might suggest a date a century earlier than that offered by the hairstyle. The hair is black and curly, cut close to the head in African style, but markedly frizzy around the outer edge in the manner of later second- and third-century coiffures. It is possible that the subject was dressed (and perhaps even buried) in ancestral clothes and jewellery for the occasion of the portrait.