Roman Mosaic Pearl Necklace

Nearly two thousand years ago, the people of Roman Egypt preserved something extraordinarily intimate: their faces.

Across Egypt, particularly in the Fayum region, painted portraits were placed over the faces of mummified individuals. Created mainly between the first and third centuries AD, these remarkable paintings combined Egyptian funerary customs with Greco-Roman artistic traditions. Their subjects gaze outward with extraordinary immediacy, their hairstyles, clothing and jewellery carefully recorded for posterity.

The portraits also provide a rare glimpse into the fashions of the Roman world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes that the jewellery, hairstyles and clothing represented in these paintings followed styles fashionable across the Roman Empire, while also reflecting the distinctive multicultural society of Roman Egypt.

Gold jewellery appears repeatedly. Necklaces, earrings and pendants were worn alongside pearls and coloured stones, communicating both personal taste and social standing. Surviving Roman jewellery confirms the same appetite for luxurious combinations: Roman necklaces incorporating gold, pearls and coloured gemstones survive from the Imperial period. A 1st–2nd century Roman necklace in The Met, for example, combines gold, pearl and beryl, while another Roman necklace combines gold, garnet and pearl.

One particularly evocative portrait in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, painted in Egypt around AD 120–140, depicts a young woman wearing multiple pieces of gold jewellery. Her lower necklace is a gold chain terminating in a crescent-shaped lunula, while her portrait belongs to the wider tradition of richly adorned women preserved in the mummy portraits of Roman Egypt.

Created exclusively for the British Museum’s Legion: Life in the Roman Army exhibition, the Roman Mosaic Pearl Necklace draws upon this world of Roman adornment — combining luminous pearls, deep red carnelian and ornate golden detail in a piece inspired by jewellery worn almost two millennia ago.