These are even cooler. The paintings don't necessarily "modern" as much as the people in the paintings look modern.

I've never seen something so old that was so effective at bringing people to life in a way that I could relate to so immediately.

They must have been tremendously effective in their original function as funerary portraits. I was lucky enough to see several of these at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and I stood there looking at them for a very long time.