Antiquities Exhibits

  Eros, the Greek god of love, is shown as a beautiful youth with both male and female characteristics. The figure was originally part of a lamp holder and would have had an oil lamp on the tendril he holds in an outstretched hand. The sculpture shares in the expressive, dynamic qualities of later Greek Hellenistic art; it appears to be flying on the beautifully detailed wings. The lamp from which the figure came was probably made in the eastern Mediterranean for a wealthy house or villa in Italy. The bronze has been associated with a trove of Greek luxury goods recovered from an ancient shipwreck near the town of Mahdia on the coast of Tunisia. - Anne Bromberg, Dallas Museum of Art. A cult of Eros existed in pre-classical Greece, but it was much less important than that of Aphrodite. However, in late antiquity, Eros was worshiped by a fertility cult in Thespiae. In Athens, he shared a very popular cult with Aphrodite, and the fourth day of every month was sacred to him (also share...

This nobly restrained composite statue depicts a virtuous Roman matron of a distinguished family. She is commemorated as both a chaste wife and mother of children, and her portrait celebrates marriage as an enduring value and symbol of Roman life. This figure provides a notable contrast with the DMA's luxuriant Roman portrait head of a youth (1984.163) in both style and character. Whereas the boy exudes exuberant youth with his active gaze and foppish curls, the Roman matron embodies the discreetly refined dignity of an aristocratic lady.  She holds her mantle like a veil over her shoulder and stands in modest dignity, as though she were a priestess of the home. Often found in imperial female portrait statues, the body type is based on Greek draped figures from the 4th century BCE. Associated with the work of Late Classical sculptors such as Praxiteles or Lysippus, figures like this of the so-called Small Herculaneum type were frequently adapted in Roman art. Here the heavily drape...

 Greeks were aware of Egyptian deities, including Isis, at least as early as the Archaic Period (c. 700–480 BCE), and her first known temple in Greece was built during or before the fourth century BCE by Egyptians living in Athens. The conquests of Alexander the Great late in that century created Hellenistic kingdoms around the Mediterranean and Near East, including Ptolemaic Egypt, and put Greek and non-Greek religions in much closer contact. The resulting diffusion of cultures allowed many religious traditions to spread across the Hellenistic world in the last three centuries BCE.  Isis's cult reached Italy and the Roman sphere of influence at some point in the second century BCE. It was one of many cults that were introduced to Rome as the Roman Republic's territory expanded in the last centuries BCE. Authorities in the Republic tried to define which cults were acceptable and which were not, as a way of defining Roman cultural identity amid the cultural changes brought on b...

The Twelfth and early Thirteenth Dynasties comprised one of the most creative artistic epochs in Egyptian history.  Artists introduced many new sculptural forms - some that continued for centuries and others that were soon abandoned.  One of the period's most dramatic and long lasting innovations was the cloaked statue.  The cloak symbolized the god Osiris, whose corpse was wrapped tightly in bandages and who was eventually reborn to everlasting life.  Individuals shown with their bodies shrouded in a thick mantle thus expressed the wish to be reborn following their own physical deaths. - The Brooklyn Museum. Image: Cloaked Official, Middle Kingdom, early Dynasty 13, 1759-1675 BCE, red quartzite, that I photographed at the Brooklyn Museum in 2014.

 Although scholars argue about whether Roman Mithraism arose in the 1st century BCE or the 1st century CE, Plutarch mentions the pirates of Cilicia were practicing secret rites of Mithras in 67 BCE. Plutarch says these pirates were especially active during the Mithridatic wars (between the Roman Republic and King Mithridates VI of Pontus) in which they supported the king. The association between Mithridates and the pirates is also mentioned by the ancient historian Appian. The 4th century commentary on Vergil by Servius says that Pompey settled some of these pirates in Calabria in southern Italy. However, the unique underground temples or mithraea appear suddenly in the archaeology in the last quarter of the 1st century CE.   The earliest monument showing Mithras slaying the bull thought to have been found in Rome bears an inscription that tells us it was dedicated by a certain Alcimus, steward of T. Claudius Livianus, commander of the Praetorian guard in 101 CE. The firs...

Throughout the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty, a small group of potters, perhaps members of a single workshop, fashioned charming vessels in human and animal forms. They shaped the two halves of each container in open molds and joined the pieces along the sides. Complex details such as arms were created by hand and applied to the molded pieces. The potters then covered the vessel with a red slip (a mixture of clay and water) and polished the surface. This example depicts a servant woman carrying a small dog, perhaps the honored pet of her master or mistress. - Brooklyn Museum Note: I wonder what aspect of the figure points to the woman being a servant? (I'm not as familiar with Egyptian art as Roman art!) Image: Figure Vase of Woman Holding A Dog, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, 1479-1353 BCE that I photographed at the Brooklyn Museum.

One of the most remarkable paintings to survive from ancient Egypt, this depiction of the noblewoman Tjepu came from a tomb built for her son Nebamun and a man named lpuky.  Egyptian artists usually did not depict individuals as they truly looked, but rather as eternally youthful, lavishly dressed, and in an attitude of repose.  Tjepu was about forty years old when this painting was executed, but she is shown in what was the height of youthful fashion during the reign of Amunhotep III: a perfumed cone on her heavy wig, a delicate side tress, and a semitransparent, fringed linen dress. - Brooklyn Museum  Image: Portrait of the noblewoman Lady Tjepu, painted gesso on limestone, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Amunhotep III (1390-1352 BCE) from tomb no. 181 at Thebes that I photographed at the Brooklyn Museum.