Egypt lends much of its Fayoum mummy portrait collection abroad for the first time

Fayoum portraits were painted mostly on thin wooden panels and placed over the faces of the dead inside their mummy wrappings, combining Egyptian funerary tradition with artistic influences from the Greco-Roman world ^[3]. According to the Associated Press report, experts consider the Tondo unusual for its circular shape and for showing two people instead of one. They also rank it among the most vivid portraits to survive from Roman-era Egypt ^[7].

Its pigments were mixed into molten wax ^[8]. That paint layer sits on wood, and here the wood had been damaged by termites. Aly Abdel Halim, director general of the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, said both the wooden support and the painted surface were fragile, so the conservation required careful intervention ^[10].

The size of the loan is less clear than the size of the show. Officials describe Egypt's share as a major part of the collection ^[4]. The firm number belongs to the exhibition as a whole. Tomaso Radaelli, chairman of the organizer MondoMostre, said it will bring together more than 110 objects ^[12]. Those include painted panels, funerary shrouds, masks, marble portraits, plaster casts and ancient jewelry ^[12]. Marble portraits and plaster casts are not painted panels, so the 110 is not a count of Fayoum portraits leaving Cairo ^[13]. The report does not say how many objects Egypt is lending, or whether the newly restored Tondo is one of them ^[13].

Sherif Fathy, Egypt's minister of tourism and antiquities, put the restoration in bilateral terms. "The restoration of the Tondo of the Two Brothers is an important example of what can be achieved through international cooperation in the preservation and study of cultural heritage," he said ^[5]. He went on: "Egypt and Italy share deep historical and cultural ties, and this project brings together Egyptian and Italian expertise to preserve an exceptional work of art for future generations" ^[6].

We think the evidence supports reading this as heritage diplomacy with Italy. The minister describes it in those terms, the conservators came from Rome, and the collection's first trip abroad ends in Rome ^[2][4][11].