Antiquities Exhibits

The iconography and style of depictions of Horus and other traditional Egyptian deities were influenced by Hellenistic and, later, Roman traditions of representation, often combining trappings of power in ways that are striking to modern observers. "Roman period depictions of  the falcon-headed Horus have been  found  in  a  variety  of   materials  throughout  the  empire,  from  Egypt  to  Oxfordshire.  Usually  dressed  in  Roman  military costume, falcon-headed Horus is sometimes depicted on horseback, but more often standing, while seated figures are rare. Although smaller figures may have been dedicatory, larger stone and metal sculptures were probably objects of  public or private devotion." - Polychromy in Roman Egypt: A study of a limestone sculpture of the Egyptian god Horus by Joanne Dyer, Elisabeth R. O"Connell, and Antony Simpson. Sir Harold Bell observes, "...a new reli...

When I saw this carefully detailed bronze sculpture of a common shrew from Egypt's Greco-Roman Period, I wondered why the ancients thought this creature worthy of such expense. Although this sculpture is part of the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art also has a similar, though less detailed example from the same period as does the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.   According to The Met, the ancient Egyptians named the shrew, "the voracious", because of its feeding habits. In ancient Egyptian mythology, the shrew represented the blind aspect of the solar deity, “the one with no eyes in his face” (Mechenti-n-irti in old Egyptian) that was complemented by the ichneumon, “the one whose eyes (the Sun and the Moon) are in his face” (Mechenti-irti in old Egyptian), a creature with very keen eyesight. This god with the dual nature was revered in Letopolis as one of the aspects of Horus, who, as myth has it, was blind at birth.  According to...

Yesterday I posted about incense and the types of incense required for each Olympian god or hero as specified in the Orphic hymns.   "Faced with the thought of a bleak existence in the Underworld, some individuals in the ancient Mediterranean sought to improve their lot while they were alive. Virtuous behavior might not be sufficient, and one way to obtain a happier afterlife was thought to be through initiation into mystery cults associated with Orpheus and Dionysos. Self-styled preachers offered followers transformative experiences that mainstream practice could not provide. Their rites were shrouded in secrecy and remain little understood today" - J. Paul Getty Museum Initiates were sometimes buried with thin sheets of gold, termed Orphic tablets by modern scholars, inscribed with guidance for their journey into the Underworld much like the Book of the Dead for ancient Egyptians, although much shorter. The text might reference landmarks along the journey, such as a spring,...

In my travels I have photographed a number of sculptures of Hadrian's companion, Antinous.  Over 100 sculptures of the tragic young man have survived to modern times and classicist Caroline Vout has noted more images have been identified of Antinous than of any other figure in classical antiquity with the exceptions of Augustus and Hadrian himself.  This is probably attributable to Hadrian's deification of the young man after his death and the subsequent cult of Antinous that became widespread throughout much of the Roman Empire.  Although officially, Hadrian announced that Antinous fell into the Nile and drowned, there have been a number of hypotheses about the young man's death.  Hadrian's entourage at the time is thought to have included  Lucius Ceionius Commodus, a young aristocrat whom Antinous might have deemed a rival to Hadrian's affections. In fact, soon after Antinous died, gossip quickly spread that Antinous had been intentionally killed.  Despit...

In the first millennium BCE, Osiris and Isis became the most widely worshipped Egyptian deities, and Isis absorbed traits from many other goddesses. Rulers in Egypt and its neighbor to the south, Nubia, built temples dedicated primarily to Isis, and her temple at Philae was a religious center for Egyptians and Nubians alike. Her reputed magical power was greater than that of all other gods, and she was said to protect the kingdom from its enemies, govern the skies and the natural world, and have power over fate itself. In the Hellenistic period (323–30 BCE), when Egypt was ruled and settled by Greeks, Isis was worshipped by Greeks and Egyptians, along with a new god, Serapis. Their worship diffused into the wider Mediterranean world. Isis's Greek devotees ascribed to her traits taken from Greek deities, such as the invention of marriage and the protection of ships at sea, and she retained strong links with Egypt and other Egyptian deities who were popular in the Hellenistic world, ...

Dancing Maenad 27 BCE - 14 CE Roman copy of a Greek original attributed to Kallimachos circa 425-400 BCE at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Maenads were mythical women inspired by the god of wine, Dionysos, to abandon their homes and families and roam the mountains and forests, singing and dancing in a state of ecstatic frenzy. This figure, wearing an ivy wreath and carrying a thyrsos (fennel stalk) bedecked wi th ivy leaves and berries, moves forward, trancelike, her drapery swirling about her. Maenads became popular as art subjects in the late fifth century B.C.E. with Euripides portrayal of the manic devotées of Dionysos in his play the Bacchae. In the play, King Pentheus bans the worship of Dionysus then the king's cousin lures him into the woods where he is torn apart by maenads including his own mother, Agave, who, in a trance tears off his head believing it to be that of a lion. The rites associated with the worship of Dionysus (Roman Bacchus) were chara...

Head of a Roman Imperial Period Priest from the late 2nd to early 4th century CE now on display at the Dallas Museum of Art. The conical headdress goes back centuries in Near Eastern religious art. Originally the mark of a divinity, by the time of the Roman Empire it was the regalia of priests of various Syrian and Anatolian deities. A priest of the Anatolian mother-goddess Cybele in the museum in Ostia, Italy, wears such a headd ress. The well-known frescoes from a synagogue in Dura-Europus, Syria, now in the Damascus museum, also show priests wearing such headdresses. However, the idealized nude Greek figures ornamenting the headdress on the Dallas Museum of Art head represent a complete fusion of Near Eastern beliefs and Greco-Roman style. The incised eyes, which give the figure a hypnotic intensity, are typical of such late Roman portraits and are often emphasized to suggest the spiritual state of the person represented. - Dallas Museum of Art Image: Head of an Imperia...