Hellenistic Portraits, McFadden 1951George H. McFadden

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authority of Poulson, Pfuhl, and Rostovtzeff, and more recently of Cahn. The identification, though contested by Dickens in 1914, is generally accepted. The head came from Egypt. It is really more than a mask. The back was completed in plaster. This is generally considered to be none of which is extant. This is a technique peculiar to Alexandrian sculpture, although there was some reason to believe the same technique practiced elsewhere.

We see that there is no diadem. This, of course, may have been supplied in plaster. Or it may be a representation of Ptolemy before he assumed the diadem. The absence of the diadem does not prove that this portrait is not a royal one, but it does greatly widen the field of speculation. Unless, therefore, we see a striking resemblance between this mask and the certified portrait of Ptolemy on the coins, we shall have to discard the attribution for lack of confirming evidence.

We have, unfortunately, no better basis for comparison.

As the hair and almost all of the brow was supplied in plaster, we cannot compare these with the coinage. The fold of fat over the eye is absent. The nose, unlike the nose on the coinage, is arched. The tip could hardly be more unlike that of the coins. It falls in a wide circle down to a point beneath the nostril; here the profile drops vertically to the lip. Both noses are comparatively short. They are quite dissimilar in every other respect. The chin, too, unlike the coin portrait, is double and is not quite so round, firm, or protruding.

It is difficult to compare the mouth of the mask with the coin