Gazing at us across nearly two thousand years of history, the men and women of the Fayum portraits keep their secrets. However anxious they seem to speak: the young girl childlike yet melancholy, the severe matron with dark eyes and heavy jewels, the soldier confident of victory over death.

The cultured upper classes of Roman Egypt during the early centuries CE were marked by a complex mixture of peoples and beliefs, and the portraits allow us to glimpse that society. Aesthetically the images form a link between the lost art of ancient Greece and that of Byantium, and at the same time anticipate by many centuries the achievements of painters as diverse as El Greco and Modigliani.

Scattered now in museums all over the world, they retain their mystery, which modern research can only partically dispel. With 57 colour illustrations and a map.