Fayum Portrait of a Man face swap

Where this one comes from

Flinders Petrie excavated cemeteries in the Faiyum in 1888 and found painted boards still attached to wrapped bodies, in quantities nobody had expected. They went into museums across Europe within a few years, and this one is in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. The people in them were buried by Egyptian rites, wrote in Greek, and cut their hair the way the emperor did.

What is in the picture

A short military-looking crop, a trimmed beard, a white tunic with a clavus stripe at the shoulder, and a steady unsmiling look directed slightly past you. The style of the hair and beard is the thing archaeologists date these by: fashion at the imperial court reached the provinces within a few years, so a haircut here pins the board to a reign. Under all of it, the body was mummified according to rites that had been performed in that valley for three thousand years.

When people use it

For a passport photo that outlived the country that issued it. It suits identity documents, profile pictures and jokes about how little the format has changed.

How your face lands in it

Frontal, symmetrical and filling most of the board, with soft even light and no obstruction. It is one of the simplest targets here. The short hair and beard mean your own head shape carries almost the whole result, so a straight-on photograph in flat light is worth taking care over.

Mummy portrait of a man — Unknown painter, Roman Egypt, 2nd century AD. The panel is roughly eighteen centuries old and therefore in the public domain, and the museum released its photograph of it under the CC0 public domain dedication. Source

Also in: Paintings · Fayum portraits