Romano-Egyptian sculpture is different from its forerunner and has received comparatively little attention by Egyptologists, largely due to the abundance of material produced and displayed in Italy. Some of the Egyptian-style pieces produced in Italy are so unconventional that they have been dismissed as modern forgeries, or eighteenth-century Egyptomania (Ashton 2004a). There are four discernable categories of sculpture produced during the Roman Period in both Italy and Egypt: firstly, those which adhere to the typical classical canons (Roman); secondly, purely Egyptian-style statuary found mainly in Egypt and often associated with private dedications but also including generic representations of an Egyptian ruler (Egyptian); thirdly sculpture made according to the classical tradition but which adopts an Egyptian theme (Egyptianizing); and finally sculpture that is made according to the Egyptian tradition, including the all-important back pillar, but which has elements that suggest it was carved by a non-Egyptian craftsman (Romano-Egyptian).
With regard to the continuation of Egyptian-style statues with Greek, or in this case Roman, portrait features, several examples without provenance have been identified as Augustus and Nero (Kiss 1984). There are three heads ofVespasian from Egyptian-style statues; one is now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, and so probably from Egypt. The other two, now in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Copenhagen and the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, are without provenance (Ashton 2004a 28-29) (figure 42.6). The earliest securely datable and provenanced examples during the Roman Period come from Italy during the reign of Domitian. At the sanctuaries of Isis at Benevento and the Iseum Campense in Rome we find the emperor appearing as Pharaoh but with a version of his portrait that was more commonly found on Roman sculpture. At Benevento there are two striding statues, one partially preserved sphinx, and two heads from sphinxes showing the emperor’s face. Two of the sphinxes are made from red granite, and here the sculptor has clearly struggled with the stone (Muller 1971). The features are not as cogent as on the third, which is carved from a hard dark stone, most probably basalt, which shows the Emperor’s characteristic overbite, especially in profile. This leads us to the question of the identity of the artists. In the Ptolemaic Period statues that were essentially Egyptian, but with Greek portrait features, were doubtless carved by Egyptian artists. This can be determined by
Figure 42.6 Egyptian-style fragment of a statue of Vespasian. The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge E.83.1954. Courtesy the Fitzwilliam Museum.
The proportions, which are comparable to contemporary purely Egyptian-style royal sculpture. The statues of Domitian are less securely attributed to an Egyptian school.
The two striding statues are important for identifying the artists. Muller identified one as Caracalla in his 1971 publication of the material from the site. Stylistically, however, the statue fits more easily into the first century ad. A more convincingly identified representation of Caracalla in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, shows the ruler with his beard and with characteristic curls of hair beneath the nemes headdress. The Benevento statue can comfortably be identified instead as Domitian, though poor preservation of the mouth and nose distorts the profile. The statue is also carved from what appears to be diorite and, as with the granite sphinxes, the sculptor has produced a finish which is less than sharp, probably due to difficulties carving the relatively hard stone. In terms of this statue’s ‘‘Egyptianness’’ the artist has produced a respectable copy of an original statue. This is illustrated best by the treatment of the back pillar - a feature common to all striding Egyptian sculpture - which, in this case, extends to the top of the head and is broad enough to have supported an inscription, had it have been required. In contrast the artist of the second striding statue, which can unquestionably be linked to Domitian on account of the strong resemblance to the emperor’s established portrait type, has struggled with the execution of the back pillar. Here the back pillar is more of an afterthought than a functional part of the statue. It is narrow and unevenly placed, twisting to the viewer’s left. This suggests two things: firstly, that the artist was not familiar with the Egyptian tradition and, secondly, that the statue was originally placed with its back against a wall. There are other features that also betray the artist’s non-Egyptian training. The belt of the kilt that the emperor wears sags at the front and is too high at the back; there is also the uraeus which is not of the standard form but is carved in a manner that is closer to relief rather than standing slightly proud of the headdress in the usual fashion. This latter feature would become a common feature of Romano-Egyptian sculpting.
At the Iseum Campense, a complete sphinx in red granite illustrates a close copy of Pharaonic originals but with the portrait features of Domitian (Lembke 1994). There were several lion-headed sphinxes from the site and an earlier import of a sphinx with the cartouche and typical stylized ‘‘portrait’’ of Amasis. The stone of the Domitian sphinx is highly polished in what became the usual Romano-Egyptian fashion, and the features are unequivocally those of Domitian. Like the two striding statues and one of the red granite sphinxes from Benevento the Iseum Campense sphinx originally had inlaid eyes - a feature found on many Ptolemaic representations, particularly those of the second and first centuries BC.
The adoption of portrait types more commonly associated with a Pharaoh’s Roman image is clearly a continuation of an established Ptolemaic tradition, but it is not a continuous practice. There is perhaps, however, a hint of the precise source from which the Roman artists took their influence. One of the statues from the Iseum Campense may well be a Ptolemaic original. The portrait, which is all that remains, was tentatively identified by Lembke as a representation of the Emperor Domitian in the Egyptian style. Unlike the aforementioned statues, however, this head has hair beneath the nemes headdress. The statue was identified by Ashton and Stanwick as Ptolemy VI on account of the styling of the fringe and also the portrait features, both of which occur on an inscribed statue now in the National Museum in Athens (Ashton 2001: 90-1) (figure 42.3). Like some of the Domitian statues, this Ptolemaic example has inlaid eyes and may well have provided a model for artists working in the first century ad. It is unlikely that the Romans recognized which of the Ptolemaic rulers this image represented, but its more familiar style of portraiture must have appealed to the Roman taste, being somewhat closer to the classical tradition that it shared with Greece.
A second Ptolemaic statue that is associated with the Iseum Campense was re-worked, possibly during the Roman Period. The colossal head, now housed in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, offers an interesting insight into the re-use of Ptolemaic sculpture during the Roman Period and is perhaps a case of mistaken identity. The original identity of this piece is easier to determine than its usurper. The recutting is most obvious around the hairline, where a sharp ridge delineates the original hair from the re-cut portrait. The problem with the piece is that the nose, mouth, and chin are modern restorations. The anastole (wreath-like treatment of the hair), cutting for a uraeus, and also the colossal size of this statue all point to the original subject’s being Ptolemy X Alexander II (Lembke 1994). There is, of course, the possibility that this head was appropriated in Egypt during the Ptolemaic Period. A head of Ptolemy XII, the father of Kleopatra VII, was also re-cut in the Ptolemaic Period and has a similar line along the forehead at the hairline. Perhaps the Romans mistook this statue for
Alexander the Great on account of the anastole treatment of the hair, which was typical of his portraits, and decided to bring the head to Rome. Whatever the reasons, we find two closely related Ptolemaic portrait types within the Iseum Campense. Both have inlaid eyes and hair styled according to a Greek coiffure. The Roman artists copied the idea of incorporating a recognizably classical portrait onto an Egyptian statue, but, for whatever reason, they declined to include the hair of their Emperor.
When we turn to the second century AD, we find two notable statues from Egypt, often identified as the Emperor Caracalla but perhaps representing Hadrian and dedicated during his stay in Egypt (Kiss 1984: 74-5, fig. 188 and 81, 89, figs. 205-6). Both are housed in the Egyptian museum in Cairo; one is sculpted from limestone or quartzite and the other carved out of granite. Both show a bearded emperor and are equivalent to the Ptolemaic royal statues with Greek portrait features. The limestone statue derives from Mendes in the Delta, and the granite statue comes from Sheikh Fadl near Beni Masar (Stanwick 2002: 130). There are a number of other fragments of this category of statue representing a bearded emperor (Stanwick 2002: 130; Kiss 1984), indicating that there remained an audience and need to portray the kings of Egypt as both Emperors and Pharaohs.
An innovative use for this category of bilingual statuary occurred in Italy during the reign of the emperor Hadrian and can be more tightly dated to the period after 130 AD, following the death of his favorite, Antinous, who drowned in the river Nile during an imperial visit to Egypt. The adoption of this form of statuary for a nonroyal or imperial subject is confusing to Egyptologists and, one must presume, to Egyptians at the time. Antinous is effectively shown as Pharaoh of Egypt. Perhaps the closest parallel to the cult of Antinous is the posthumous deification of Ptolemaic royal women. Such acts were distinct from the ruler cults, and in this respect Hadrian’s deification of Antinous is unique - he was neither his consort nor a family member but is treated as both on the obelisk commemorating his deification and the founding of the city that took his name (Grimm, Kessler and Meyer 1991). The text states that Antinous will be worshipped as Osiris-Antinous; in other words, the cult is that of the dead Antinous. The closest parallel for this is the cult of Osiris-Apis (the dead Apis bull), who became Hellenized as Osarapis and then Sarapis by the early Ptolemaic rulers.
Antinous does not, however, appear as the god Osiris, who was traditionally associated with the deceased Pharaoh of Egypt, as opposed to Horus who was the living king and son of Osiris. Osiris was murdered by his brother Seth and then dismembered, with the body parts spread throughout Egypt. The sister and wife of Osiris, Isis, collected the remains of the body and with the phallus in place became impregnated with Horus. Thus Osiris is shown as a mummiform figure. Antinous is shown with attributes that are associated with the king of Egypt or the god Harpok-rates (the young form of Horus); namely, the nemes head-cloth, the kilt, and, on occasion, the uraeus or royal/divine cobra. Both forms were commonly used in the Roman Period to represent the Pharaoh and the young Horus and so presented an established iconography. It could, of course, be argued that the statues of Antinous were merely fashioned in order to evoke Egypt, but this seems unlikely on two counts. Firstly, there is an example of an Antinous-Osiris statue from Egypt in this form, although its exact provenance is unknown; and secondly Antinous appears on the obelisk and in the Munich statue in the role of Pharaoh iconographically and ideologically. Fooling the Romans was one thing, but insulting the Egyptians with a skewed iconography was quite another. The text, which is written in hieroglyphs, illustrates that the obelisk’s origins are firmly within the Egyptian tradition, and it is also believed to have been originally displayed at Antinoopolis, being moved to Rome in the third century ad. Does the presentation of Antinous, then, represent a misinterpretation of a Ptolemaic tradition, or a development? The answers lie at Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, where we find a complex game between religion, affection, and selfpromotion played by Hadrian with Antinous as the subject.
Antinous appears in at least four separate groups in a variety of forms. Each statue shows the subject wearing the shendyt kilt, nemes head-cloth, and, on some of the representations, a uraeus (royal or divine cobra) acting in a protective role and representing the eye of the sun-god Re. The groups can be divided into Egyptian and Egyptianizing statues, in other words, those sculpted by artists working in the Egyptian and Roman traditions respectively and, as such, they provide an insight into the kinds of features that artists from each tradition considered to be peripheral.
Some statues are Egyptian, and here all of the features that one might expect are present: back pillar, stance (striding forward onto the left leg), costume, and uraeus. The only non-Egyptian feature is the portrait of Antinous. Two statues, from separate groups, show a Roman deviation from the usual in that one statue from each pair strides forwards onto its right leg, mirroring the more usual left. The first pair are often referred to as the telemones (male equivalents of caryatids) and, as their name suggests, they served an architectural rather than cultic purpose at the Villa. The left and right mirroring emphasizes their architectural role and is a Roman rather than Egyptian innovation; all striding statues in Egypt have their left leg forwards. The statues are carved from a single block of red granite and are colossal in size, measuring 3.35 m in height. They most likely served as a monumental entrance to a temple or cult area. Roullet suggests that this type of pillar was influenced by the Osirid pillars used in Egypt, but such colossal architectural representations of Pharaohs can also be found, perhaps most successfully at the temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel. There were problems in the execution of the pair: the sculptor has not allowed enough room for the stride with the result that the back leg on both statues appears to curve inwards, indicating that the sculptor was uncomfortable with the Egyptian tradition or that they were intended for a limited space. In style they are Romano-Egyptian because they include a back pillar. The portrait features are not a strong element; the double form of god is, however, paralleled elsewhere at the site.
The second pair of mirror statues constitute part of a much larger group of statues carved in bigio morato (a black Greek marble). In terms of their portraits they lack the usual features of Antinous, most especially the characteristic eyebrows, with diagonal cuts to indicate hair, also found on portraits of Hadrian. The facial features are also lacking the idealized form that is found on other images of Antinous, perhaps suggesting that this pair was not carved by imperial sculptors but a smaller workshop (Grenier 1990). The statues are very similar, with only three centimetres difference in their height; they both wear the nemes head-cloth and the shendyt kilt. Unusually, the two so-called Osiris-Antinous statues from the Hadrian’s Villa group do not wear the royal or divine cobra on their brow. The form of the statues is Egyptian, and the arms are held tightly by the sides; one holds a cloth in the palms of its hands (another non-Egyptian feature in terms of its form) rather than the usual bar. The two Osiris-Antinous figures are in many respects removed from the action of the ceremony, as stressed by their architectural mirror-imaging, and it is possible that they stood in a similar manner to the telemones of Antinous.
There is one further Egyptian statue representing Antinous from Hadrian’s Villa, which probably served a cultic purpose. It is made from rosso antico (a red Greek marble) and is today housed in the Egyptian Museum in Munich. Antinous is shown with a striped nemes head-cloth and uraeus, and the statue appears to be striding forward on the left leg and is supported by a back pillar to the mid-back. It is 2.26 m high. There are claw-chisel marks on the left arm and a dowel for slotting the arm into the shoulder, suggesting that the statue consisted of several pieces in antiquity. This is a common feature of Romano-Egyptian sculpture and one which the artists concealed well in the finished product. The facial features are easily identifiable as the young god and details such as the diagonal cuts to indicate the eyebrows are typical of Antinous’ Roman portraits. This statue is without any doubt a portrait of the youth. Winckelmann suggested that the find-spot for the statue was the so-called Kanopos (Scenic Canal), which is close to the find spot of the group that included the black marble statues of the god (Raeder 1983: 153-4).
One of the most skillfully carved representations of Antinous in this guise is made in red quartzite and measures 34 cm in height (Charles-Gaffiot and Lavagne 1999: 240). This fragment also shows Antinous wearing a striped nemes head-cloth and uraeus. The uraeus is extremely prominent, suggesting an individual sculptor or workshop and perhaps that this piece stood alone. There is also the fitting for a crown at the top of the headdress, a feature not found on the other statues of Antinous, and it is without a definite provenance. Antinous wears the divine uraeus on both the Munich and, if relevant, Dresden statues, and it, therefore, seems logical to conclude that he is the god attended by the priests. Perhaps the accompanying statues represent the Egyptian priesthood, established to tend to the cult of the dead Antinous. His image here is once again more closely linked to that of Harpokrates/ Horus than Osiris, and so he appears more as if a son of Hadrian, distinguished by his portrait but wearing the traditional Egyptian costume and regalia.
Grenier originally placed the red statues of Antinous in his reconstruction of the Serapeum (Scenic Triclinium) and suggested that the two groups of red and white marble represented Upper and Lower Egypt. The white marble statues of Antinous (figure 42.7) are, however, Roman interpretations of these Egyptian-style representations, and interestingly the artists have ignored the back pillar, striding stance, and uraeus. It was this particular stage of a version of a copy that artists in the Ptolemaic Period never reached, and its presence alongside the more traditional statues in the same contexts suggests that the two served different functions or purposes. The roots of those closer to the Egyptian tradition are firmly set in the Ptolemaic tradition. As for the function of the Antinous statues, although located in a villa, they may have been associated with the small temples that are currently being excavated by the Italian authorities on the site.
It is perhaps significant that one of the earliest Ptolemaic sculptures to have found its way to Rome was designed specifically for a Roman audience. The marble head of a
Figure 42.7 Statue of Antinous. White marble. H.2.41 m. Museo Gregoriano Egizio 22795. Photograph Marie-Lan Nguyen Wikimedia Commons. Courtesy of the Vatican Museums.
Queen wearing an Egyptian headdress and wig, now housed in the Capitoline Museums’ annex at Monte Martini, is the earliest example of a Roman interpretation of a Ptolemaic Egyptian sculpture (Ashton 2001: 118-19, no. 70). The statue is classical in form, consisting of a bust, carved in order to fit into a separate body, and made from Parian marble. Its portrait features copy those of Kleopatra VII and accord well with two heads that were found in Italy and show the queen as a Greek monarch (Walker and Higgs 2001: 203-7). It has been suggested that the head functioned as a cult statue, originally intended to represent Kleopatra VII, and was probably dedicated during her stay with Julius Caesar in Rome (46-44 bc). In terms of Egyptian iconography the statue shows a goddess, distinguished as such by the vulture headdress, which would originally have supported a small crown and vulture head, probably executed in a precious metal. It is an Egyptian parallel for the statue of the queen as Venus in the temple of Venus Genetrix and, like this statue, was permitted to remain during the rule of Augustus.
A small figure of the goddess Isis, dating to the Ptolemaic Period and showing the goddess in her traditional Egyptian form, was also found on the Esquiline Hill in Rome (Walker and Higgs 2001: 331). The statue measures 22 cm in height and, it has been suggested, served an apotropaic function, perhaps within a household or cult center. Like the Monte Martini statue, the Esquiline Isis wears a vulture headdress and appears in a traditional sheath-like dress. It was not long, however, before the Romans adapted the iconography of Isis and both used and created images to represent the goddess that had once symbolized Ptolemaic queens.
The main symbols that denote Isis in the Roman Period are a knotted costume and corkscrew locks. The attributes accompanying the goddess change but typically include one of the following: a crown formed from cow’s horns, sun-disc and plumes; a situla and sistrum (typically together), or a cornucopia (horn of plenty). The ankh also appears as an alternative symbol of her identity and powers.
The model for Roman Isis was pulled directly from the Ptolemaic repertoire. An inscribed statue in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, representing Arsinoe II as a goddess, shows the queen with a corkscrew wig, a knotted costume, and a double cornucopia (Ashton 2001:108-9) (figure 42.5). The inscription on the back pillar states that the statue represents the deified queen, and she is referred to as beloved of Amun; there is no mention of Isis. The Metropolitan Museum’s statue is important because the majority of these statues are uninscribed and, therefore, open to interpretation. There can be no doubt that, in this instance, the statue simply represents a Ptolemaic queen as a goddess in her own right. By the second century bc one of the forms of deification adopted by the Ptolemaic queens was their assimilation to Isis. Both Kleopatra III and Kleopatra VII believed that they were embodiments of the deity and, as such, adopted her name. Statues of these same queens, then, could be equated to Isis by association, but there is nothing to suggest that they were specifically designed, or used exclusively, to represent them in this role (Ashton 2001: 44-5; Stanwick 2002: 75 and 80, who advocates a connection). certainly the variety of poses adopted by the white marble Egyptianizing Isis figures suggests that the artists were trying to invoke the goddess’ many functions and roles; for this particular aspect of Egyptian theology seems to have confused the Romans, hence the suffixes to the name Isis which occur on a regular basis in order to indicate which aspect was being stressed.
Some of these changes found their way back to Egypt; marble representations of the goddess Isis were perhaps the most significant (Ashton 2004a). The Romans adopted the knotted costume, crown, corkscrew locks, and, on occasion, the cornucopia, that had previously been linked to Ptolemaic queens. These representations of Isis were executed completely in a classical style and were without a back pillar and free from the usual Egyptian striding stance. That they were accepted in Egypt is illustrated by the examples at the small temple in front of the main pylon at Luxor and at the temple of Isis at Ras el-Soda in Alexandria (Bianchi 2006). Traditional representations of the goddess continued to be produced on temple reliefs in Egypt, but the new marble representations in the style of Ptolemaic queens became popular throughout the Roman Empire.
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