Demeter

These isolated documents cannot testify to the existence of established and enduring cults (except in the case of Zeus). However, three Greek deities benefited from a privileged position at Alexandria. The first is Demeter. The foundation of her temple, the Thesmophorion, has to go back at least to the time of Philadelphus; her festivals, the Demetria and the Thesmophoria, are mentioned in the Zenon Archive (P. Cair. Zen. 59028; P. Col. Zen. 19). Terracotta figurines representing young women carrying cult objects, amongst them a piglet, may represent a ritual of the Thesmophoria: the pig played no part in the food offerings made to Egyptian gods. It was into the Thesmophorion that Oenanthe, the mother of Ptolemy IV’s favorite Agathocles, fled to escape violence in the troubles that followed the king’s death. This did not stop her being lynched by the mob along with the rest of her family (Polybius 15.27, 29, 33). It has been supposed that the Mysteries of Demeter and Kore could have been celebrated at Alexandria, because one of Alexandria’s quarters was called Eleusis, and because the Eumolpid Timotheus took the role of religious advisor to Ptolemy I. This cannot be proven, but the Eleusinian legend was clearly widespread in Egypt in the hellenistic period. Frescoes recently discovered in the Kom esh-Shugafa ‘‘catacomb’’ show, in two parallel registers, (1) the two goddesses Isis and Nephthys lamenting for the dead Osiris and (2) the rape of Persephone by Hades: two images of death and rebirth that clearly exhibit the coexistence (and not the fusion) of the cultures (Empereur 1998). The ‘‘Tazza Farnese,’’ a most beautiful cameo made in Alexandria towards the end of the second century, or perhaps at the very start of the first century BC, represents the king in the guise of Triptolemus, resting on the handle of a plow and accompanied by a Demeter-Isis who is queen both of the Nile and of the seasons, figures symbolic of the fertility of the ground and the abundance of crops. Imperial coins from Alexandria often portray Triptolemus in his chariot, snakes in harness, an image well known from Greek vase painting. But it is clear that, despite Diodorus’ claims (1.29), the Mysteries of Demeter did not originate in Egypt.