Shroud of a Woman among the Gods

The artwork

In the middle of the cloth a woman looks at us from the threshold of a painted doorway; all around, the gods of Egypt prepare to lead her into the afterlife. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The woman with her hands on her breast, the sacred birds, the gods and the scenes of the journey to the afterlife.
• A great ancient image that gives character to a sitting room or a study.
• A gift for anyone who loves Egypt, its gods and its mysteries.

It is a shroud, the large linen cloth that wrapped the mummy, one metre sixty long. It was painted in Roman Egypt around AD 125, in the same years in which other families had the portraits we call Fayum portraits painted on wooden panels. Here the woman's portrait stands in the centre, inside a frame shaped like a doorway, as if she were looking out from the world of the dead.

At the sides the painter placed, panel after panel, everything needed for the journey: pairs of gods, protective figures, sacred birds and animals, and the scenes in which the dead are guided into the afterlife by Horus, the falcon god, or by Anubis, the jackal-headed god. The face is that of a Roman woman of her time, while the gods around her are drawn in the Egyptian manner. The shroud has been in the Metropolitan Museum in New York since 1926.

In a sitting room it brings home the story, told in pictures, of a journey nineteen centuries ago. It is a gift for anyone who loves Egypt.

Unique quality material

Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 40 x 60 cm (15.7 x 23.6 in)
With frame: 42 x 62 cm (16.5 x 24.4 in)
Material: artwork printed on very fine handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass