NARRATOR: The portrait of this smooth-faced young boy is particularly fine. It was made to be included in the wrappings covering his mummified body. Across the neck of his white tunic we see a painted inscription. The Greek letters seem to follow the folds of cloth. They tell us his name: Eutyches, and that he was a freed slave. Roger Bagnall is professor of Greek and ancient history at Columbia University.

ROGER BAGNALL: Only a small percentage of the mummy portraits have names on them; and Eutyches is an unusual portrait in that it not only has a name but an inscription that tells us something about who he was. What kind of a name is Eutyches? It’s Greek, actually, it means “Lucky.” And so you might say that Eutyches was a Greek, right? Well, it’s not actually that simple. For one thing he was an ex-slave and probably his parents didn’t give him his name, his owner did. For another, Eutyches is a name often used in Egypt to refer to the god of good luck, Shai, an Egyptian god but referred to in Greek translation.

NARRATION: By the time this portrait was painted— in the second century AD— the Greek and Egyptian cultures had been commingling for generations.