This technique of portrait painting likely originated in ancient Italy. Each image was built up on a thin wooden panel using a mixture of hot wax and pigment, creating a life-like effect that appeals to modern tastes. Although the portraits have been found at sites all over Egypt, examples from the Faiyum region are especially numerous. Their discovery in the 1880s changed what people had thought about the development of art. Roman Period painted mummy panels – the so-called ‘Faiyum Portraits’ – are amongst the most striking images from the Ancient World. To fill out an enquiry form for school bookings ** If your school is interested in visiting Golden Mummies and the museum, please visit our Learn pages and fill in a booking enquiry form ** Excavated at a time of British rule of Egypt in the 1880s-1910s, our responses to these objects may reveal more about ourselves than about the people who made and used them. Manchester Museum cares for 18,000 objects from Egypt and Sudan.

Wealthy members of this multicultural society made elaborate preparations for the afterlife, combining Egyptian, Greek, and Roman ideals of eternal beauty. But how important were they to the Egyptians, and how long did they survive after the last of the Pharaohs? Golden Mummies of Egypt explores expectations of a life after death during the relatively little-known ‘Graeco-Roman’ Period of Egyptian history – when Egypt was ruled first by a Greek royal family, ending with Queen Cleopatra VII, then by Roman emperors (between 300 BCE and 300 CE). These concepts are all central to our image of ‘Ancient Egypt’. Mummies, gold and an obsessive belief in the afterlife.

Photos of mummies photos of gold