Excavating a Burial Painting | Lost Treasures of Egypt

It's a breathtaking moment for me in the sands of the necropolis. Bassem has made an incredible discovery.

So what we are looking here is one fragment of a mummy portrait that is painted with the wax, the encaustic technique. Greek artists from Alexandria traveled south through Egypt along the Nile. People commissioned their portraits from the artists who painted with hot beeswax onto wood. The lifelike portraits were unlike anything in Egyptian art. People hung their colorful portraits in their homes. When they died, the portrait was put on their face before they were mummified in the hope their spirit would remember what they looked like in the afterlife.

It's really a masterpiece. Despite the layers of dust, Bassem can clearly make out the face of the woman it depicts. We can realize all the detail: the hairs, eyes, nose, lips, and even the necklace—the green necklace from emerald—and the tunic, the Greek tunic which is painted in purple. It's a beautiful portrait of a Greek woman who lived and died here at Philadelphia around the time of Cleopatra, some 2000 years ago.

Bassem thinks tomb robbers must have broken the fragile painting when they tried to remove it from the grave. When it's broken into small fragments or slides, for them it's useless; they could not sell it to the market. So most probably, they left it at the side for us as a treasure. I can't see any kind of object that could be more beautiful than this face.

It's a great discovery—everything Bassem has hoped for. The aim of the mission, we can say, is accomplished. This single piece makes our work here worth it because it's in itself unique. It's possible that Cleopatra too would have been buried with a lifelike portrait of herself.

We know very well that ancient Egyptians were very keen on keeping the picture of the deceased. It seems that the tradition continued during the Ptolemaic period. They kept the same tradition, but they did it their own way, using a new tradition of paintings. Then they put these wonderful, amazing, awesome portraits on the face, and then they wrapped the whole mummy in an Egyptian style.

Bassem's discovery suggests that even outside Alexandria, the Greeks of her reign followed Cleopatra's example and embraced Egyptian customs. Cleopatra's respect for the old ways won her favor with the Egyptians, allowing her to rule over a prosperous multicultural empire.