Antiquities Exhibits

The distinction between servant, peasant, and slave described different roles in different contexts in ancient Egypt.  Forms of forced labor and servitude are seen throughout all of ancient Egypt.  There were three types of enslavement in ancient Egypt: chattel slavery, bonded labor, and forced labor. Chattel slaves were mostly captives of war and were brought over to different cities and countries to be sold as slaves. All captives, including civilians not a part of the military forces, become a royal resource. The pharaoh would then resettle the captives by moving them into colonies for labour, giving them to temples, giving them as rewards to deserving individuals, and giving them to his soldiers as loot. Some chattel slaves began as free people who were found guilty of committing illicit acts and were forced to give up their freedom. Other chattel slaves were born into the life from a slave mother. Ancient Egyptians were able to sell themselves and children into slavery in...

A servant waiting to escort his master home was a well-known sculptural subject during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. A Hellenistic terracotta statuette from the Fayum, Egypt provides the earliest known evidence for this type. The subject was particularly popular in Roman times, when marble examples served as fountain sculptures in villa gardens in Pompeii and Syria, and bronze and silver variations were made into luxurious household objects such as inkwells, pepper-castors, and oil flasks. The example of a bronze oil flask included here is from the Roman town of Isurium Brigantum, now known as the Aldborough Roman Site in modern Yorkshire. It was founded in the late first century or early second century by Julius Agricola. This Roman civitas was the administrative center of the Brigantes tribe, the largest and most northerly tribe in Roman Britain. Tacitus recorded that Isuer was the seat of Venutius, king of the Brigantes who was usurped by his wife, Cartismandua (also spelled Ca...

Beautifully detailed Greek funerary banquet relief at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia. The afterlife as a banquet, as depicted here, was a popular image in fourth-third century grave-reliefs. The iconography, borrowed in archaic times from the ancient Near East, was based on everyday symposia. Generic elements in this relief include the deceased, represented as a banqueter (symposiast), who holds out a libation bowl (phiale). His wife sits at the foot of his couch. In front of the couch is a table on which food (perhaps fruit or cakes) has been placed. At left, a serving boy stands beside a volute-krater holding a jug and drinking vessel with long conical body and ram's head end (rhyton). The krater is depicted on a stand, indicating that the artist intended it to be understood as metal. The startling horse's head above the serving boy may have aristocratic associations (horse-breeding and racing was the preserve only of the wealthy); ...