Faience Theatre Mask in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sept. 2007

Faience Group: Ram with Lotus-Shaped Manger; Two Theatrical Masks
2nd century AD
Said to be from Medinet el-Fayum (Arsinoe)

Accession Numbers: 26.7.1019-1021

The masks are too small and brittle to have served as actual theater masks. They refer to the god Dionysus, patron of the theater and god of rebirth; in Egypt he was equated with Osirus. Terracotta theater masks are found in burials and sanctuaries in Greece, in sanctuaries and as garden decorations in Italy. In Egypt, they are known only from burials as offerings to Osirus/Dionysus. Terracotta masks from Antinoopolis in Middle Egypt probably originate in tombs, and a terracotta theater mask was found in a Roman Period chapel over a burial at Hawara.

The pieces on view here are said to have been part of a find of numerous faience objects at Arsinoe, capital of the Fayum region.

Text abridged from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.