Fayum portraits are a type of ancient Roman paintings crafted as funerary effigies in and around the Fayum oasis, southwest of Cairo.

The portraits, which were placed on mummies, are a funerary custom dating from the time of Roman Egypt, a period that took place from around the 1st to the 4th century AD.

"The practice follows in the tradition from Egypt under the pharaohs of representing the deceased but incorporates Greek and Roman artistic styles, says art historian Cline Trouchaud.

Fayum portraits, which depict men, women and children from the Greek and Roman society within ancient Egypt, are the first relatively realist portraits aimed at representing an individual in all their singularity, says Lucile Brunel-Duverger, a research engineer at the French museum's Centre for Research and Restoration. Brunel-Duverger, who has a PhD in chemistry, studies the material and techniques used to create the colour in these portraits.

AnInstagramaccount called the_archaeologist_official, which claims to specialise in archaeology, posted what they said was a Fayum portrait of a young man on November 14.

The young man depicted, with deep brown eyes and a calm, steady gaze, has watched the world for nearly two thousand years, the account wrote. Painted with extraordinary realism, his face still seems alive as if he might speak at any moment.

The account also mentions the portraits quiet grace. While some comments marvel at the image of the young man, most raise suspicions that the image is false.

A portrait created by Midjourney

They are right this Fayum portrait is, indeed, a fake. We ran the image through a reverse image search using Google Lens (check out how to do one yourself by followingour handy guide) and found the original image, which was generated by AI image generator Midjourney. We even found the prompt, the instructions used to generate the portrait, on the siteai-img-gen.com.

This prompt shows that a user asked Midjourney to generate a Fayum portrait showing an ancient Greek man. The image was meant to replicate the style of encaustic painting a painting technique using wax common during antiquity. It also had to use two other portraits, also created by Midjourney, as inspiration.

Too realist for paintings of the time

The fake image does, in some ways, model the style of a Fayum portrait. For example, the mans face is turned to the side. However, the portrait also features anomalies clues that it is a fake.

First of all, the backdrop. The account "the_archaeologist_official" claims that the image comes from a fresco. However, real Fayum portraits were painted on wood or canvas, says Trouchaud.

The historian adds that the AI-generated image is missing elements of the encaustic technique used in real Fayum portraits:

Brunel-Duverger adds:

The researcher concludes:

This article has been translated fromthe original in French.

Originally published on France24