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Limestone Bust from a Funerary Relief
Egypt, mid-2nd century A.D.
H. (preserved): 31.0 cm (12 3/16")
Gift of Frederick Stafford, 60.14
This architectonic relief shows a woman with her hair parted in the middle,
swept back from her face and falling in long spirals down her shoulders.
She wears a V-necked stola, earrings, a necklace, and offers a hint of
a smile. Such idealized portraits, characteristic of funerary art in Roman
Egypt, are known mainly from Alexandria and its surrounds, where they were
elements of larger relief compositions on the door lintels of tombs. The
pictorial motif ultimately derives from the masks used to decorate Egyptian
mummy coffin lids.
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