Roman Afterlife

Catullus’ farewell poem to his dead brother;

By strangers’ coasts and waters, many days at sea

I come here for the rites of your unworldling,
Bringing for you, the dead, these last gifts of the living
And my words – vain sounds for the man of dust.
Alas, my brother,
You have been taken from me. You have been taken from me,
By cold chance turned a shadow, and my pain.
Here are the foods of the old ceremony, appointed
Long ago for the starvelings under the earth:
Take them: your brother’s tears have made them wet; and take
Into eternity my hail and my farewell.

A unique and fascinating art form are the Faiyum mummy portraits. A type of naturalistic painted portrait on wooden board attached to the mummified dead found in Roman Egypt.

Some authors suggest that the idea of such portraits may be related to the custom among the Roman nobility of displaying images of their ancestors, in the atrium of their house. In funeral processions, these wax masks were worn by professional mourners to emphasize the continuity of an illustrious family line, but originally perhaps to represent a deeper evocation of the presence of the dead.

The images depict the heads or busts of men, women and children. They probably date from c. 30 BC to the 3rd century AD. Done with delicacy and detail, the portraits appear highly individualistic. Therefore, it has been assumed for a long time that they were produced during the lifetime of their subjects and displayed as "salon paintings" within their houses, to be added to their mummy wrapping after their death.

The Royal museum of Scotland compared one such portrait to the reconstructed head, made from a copy of the skull found in the same mummy the results were uncanny;