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FAYUM PORTRAITS | |
| What are they? | The Fayum (or
Fayyûm) portraits were made during the period from the 1st to the 4th
century AD. Found in Egyptian tombs particularly at the oasis of al-Fayyûm,
they showed the head and shoulders of the dead person, and were painted on
wooden tablets using tempera or pigments mixed with liquid beeswax. They
were placed on the outer coffin (see below right). They give a good idea
of what wealthy Middle Eastern people looked like a century or so after
the death of Jesus.
Strictly speaking, they were painted outside the biblical period, at the time the Gnostic gospels were being written in the 2nd century AD. Gnostic Christian sects had developed their own theology about Jesus, based on the idea that all matter was evil and only things of the spirit were was good - which meant, to their way of thinking, that Jesus could not have really had a human body (matter) and therefore could not really have died. |
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