In February, I visited the Metropolitan in New York and saw this magnificent Faience masks, discovered in Medinet-el-Fayum at Antinoopolis, Middle Egypt. It dates from the 2nd century AD. With reference to the The Metropolitan, 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 equated with Osiris.
Terracotta 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 Osiris, Dionysus.
More of my pictures of the Metropolitan can be seen
here.
