Encaustic painting (from Greek 'enkaustikos': to burn in) uses pigments mixed with hot beeswax as the medium. The technique was mastered by ancient Greeks and Romans — most surviving examples are the extraordinary Fayum mummy portraits from Roman Egypt (1st–3rd century CE), in which the wax medium gives flesh tones a luminosity and plasticity no other ancient medium achieved. Encaustic then largely disappeared until the 20th century, when it was revived by American artist Jasper Johns, who used it for his iconic flag paintings of the 1950s. The wax surface preserved the marks of the process — brushstrokes, newspaper fragments, handprints — in a way that oil paint could not, creating a texture of accumulation and memory.