The portraits always depicted the subject from mid-chest level.
The head would be slightly turned towards the viewer and big soulful eyes gazing straight back.
The artistic style has been described as Greco-Roman.
Although not many paintings from this era have survived, scholars know what they looked like fromliterary descriptions.
Mummy portraits were first dug up from a graveyard in 1887 by British archaeologist Flinders Petrie.
Petrie was excavating at the pyramid at Hawara in the hopes of finding tombs from the third millennium BC.
Instead, he uncovered a first-century BC Roman-era cemetery.
Over the course of several months, Petrie recovered about eighty beautifully drawn portraits.
But Fayuum was a melting point of cultures.
The intermixing of culture is fairly evident from the portraits.
Inscription of names and professions, on the other hand, were made in Greek.
The tradition of painting mummy portraits came to an end in the 4th century.
