Roman Mummy from Egypt

Post -Mortem Facial Reconstruction

I’ve had the opportunity to work on some very interesting and challenging projects. One of my most exciting one was reconstructing the face of a 2000 year old Roman mummy from Egypt. It was to be displayed in the “Ancient Faces” publication for the Metropolitan Museum of Art (cover shown above). With the help of anthropologist Peggy Caldwell, we were able to reconstruct the face of this ancient Roman.

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As you see in the rotating gallery above, the mummy was CAT scanned to reveal the skull underneath. Unknown to Peggy and I, this ancient mummy had a Fayum Portrait or death portrait painted on the top of its wrappings. Ms. Caldwell estimated from just the skull images that the age of the deceased was in his forty’s. The Fayum portrait appears to be a slightly younger version of him. However, the reconstruction still appears to be quite similar to this long ago Roman man (see below animations).