Portrait and Mummified Remains of Demetrios
Description
Object Label: When the Romans ruled Egypt (30 B.C.E.–642 C.E.), some wealthy Greeks there were mummified. This mummy was made with expensive imported materials that show the wealth Demetrios commanded in life. It is wrapped in a linen shroud painted with red pigment made with lead imported from Spain. The mummy includes a Roman-style portrait of Demetrios painted on a wooden panel in the medium of encaustic, or wax plus pigment. (Compare it to the less costly portrait painted directly on Neferhotep’s shroud, nearby.) Artists added Egyptian divine symbols to the mummy shroud and the deceased’s name and age at death, recorded as fifty-nine years, all in gold leaf. A recent CT scan (or three-dimensional X-ray) of this mummy reveals that the individual suffered from gallstones during his life. [Text not currently in gallery] Caption: Portrait and Mummified Remains of Demetrios, 95–100 C.E.. Human remains, linen, gold, pigment, encaustic on wood panel, 18 3/8 × 14 × 76 in., 130 lb. (46.7 × 35.6 × 193 cm, 58.97kg). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 11.600. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano
Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
A painted, mummy-shaped figure (human remains) is shown standing upright, with a stylized head and a light-colored head covering or hood-like band over the forehead and ears.
The image presents a tall, mummiform object with a modeled human head and torso. The face has outlined eyes and eyebrows and a straight nose; the head is covered by a pale, hood-like textile/band. The body is painted overall in reddish/orange and yellowish pigments with areas of darker staining and abrasion. The lower portion appears wrapped, suggesting linen bandaging around the legs. No clear inscriptions, cartouches, or identifiable hieroglyphs are visible in the photograph. There are no clearly legible Greek, Coptic, or Arabic characters. The catalogued materials (linen, pigment, encaustic on wood panel, and gold) are partially supported visually: linen-like wrapping and pigment are evident, while gold and encaustic on a wood panel are not directly confirmable from this image alone.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 11.600 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3060 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.