A key problem for the Ptolemaic royal house was how they presented themselves to their powerful but minority Greek audience. A major cultural difference between the Egyptians and Greeks was the issue of divine status for living rulers. The Egyptians had long accepted that their ruler held a form of divine status through his role as the embodiment of the god Horus. The Greeks followed no such tradition, although it is fair to say that Alexander the Great experimented with the concept of his divine status as a Macedonian ruler and that he was declared the son of a god during his visit to the oracle of Amun at Siwa. The ruler was subsequently deified fully by his successors upon the establishment of a personal cult. Initially, the Ptolemaic royal house deified its members posthumously and by associating the living ruler with deceased divine ancestors. It was not long, however, before the royal house fully embraced the concept of living gods. This development was only really of any consequence to the development of the Greek-style royal statue. Early rulers and their consorts were shown as Hellenistic royals, wearing a diadem or fillet rather than the crown of a god. Unfortunately, few provenanced Greek-style representations survive. Perhaps one of the most significant examples is the triad from the Alexandrian Sarapieion, now housed in three different museums. Here, Ptolemy III and Berenike II appear with the iconography of Hellenistic royals, but their over life-sized effigies in an idealized style of portraiture hint at a divine status. During this period Ptolemy III began to appear on coinage with divine attributes, thus cementing his own status by association and paving the way for future generations and their presentation to the Greeks in Egypt.
Greek-style statues of the Ptolemaic rulers are usually identified by comparison with coin images. Although this method has its limitations, it has, nonetheless, enabled scholars to identify statues of members of the royal family. Greek-style representations were typically made from imported marble or copper alloy. The stone examples were completed by a method known as sfumato, which entails the use of plaster to finish features such as hair rather than carving them out of the stone. In some cases the backs of statues were completed in this manner, perhaps suggesting that there was a shortage of marble from which to carve. As an alternative Egyptian limestone was often used for royal and divine representations, and, since the statues were heavily pigmented, the base stone would be of little consequence beyond the ease of carving. These stone or metal heads were then typically slotted into a body made from another material and now lost. Only two complete stone statues of Ptolemaic rulers in the Greek-style survive; both housed in museums in Egypt (Ashton 2001: 58, no. 1.9). The male statue is housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and stands over 2 m in height. Carved from limestone, and perhaps originally finished in stucco, the sculpture represents a late Ptolemaic ruler, naked apart from a cloak and aegis on his right arm. It is likely that the raised right arm once held a spear. The figure is athletic in appearance and can be dated to the late second to mid-first centuries bc on account of the wide diadem that he wears. Some scholars have suggested that the statue represents Mark Anthony. However, the royal insignia would make this identification unlikely. The second statue was also carved from limestone and found in Alexandria, but it represents an early Ptolemaic queen. It has been suggested that the subject, who is seated and veiled, is Berenike II, on account of the child who stands by her side (Tkaczow 1993: 189-90). The daughter of Berenike and Ptolemy III, princess Berenike, died as a child and was deified and, since the larger figure wears a veil over her head, a sign of mourning, it is possible that the statue was commissioned in memory of the princess’s death.
There are two important groups of Greek-style statues that survive from Ptolemaic Egypt. Both groups date to the third century bc. One group was found at Memphis, a major Egyptian religious center and a Greek settlement site. The Memphite group is carved from local limestone and is in a poor state of repair. It was discovered by the French Egyptologist Mariette near the Serapeum at Saqqara and published in 1950 by Lauer and Picard. Twelve statues were found; they are life-size and a mixture of seated and standing figures. There have been a number of interpretations of the group, which is purely Greek in style and seems a little out of place in this traditional Egyptian site. The group was placed in a semi-circle at the end of an avenue of sphinxes in front of a Thirtieth Dynasty temple. Visitors would have passed the group on their way to the sanctuary of Sarapis and the burial vaults of the Apis bulls. The group appears to represent Greek playwrights, mathematicians, philosophers, and a ruler, most probably Ptolemy IV or V. It has been suggested that the identity of the members of the group was carefully planned to include Greeks who had had contact with Egypt (Ashton 2003). If this interpretation is correct, what we find at Memphis is an equivalent to the dedication of Egyptian-style statues of Ptolemaic rulers at the Alexandrian sanctuary ofSarapis. Both dedications aim to bring the two cultures together and to demonstrate the dual character of the royal house.
The second is a group from Tell Timai (Thmuis), a large settlement site in the Delta. The site was founded in the Ptolemaic Period but today is dominated by later Roman industrial surface debris and mud-brick structures. The sculptures, published by Edgar in 1915, are made from marble and include two male portraits and four female rulers. Only the heads and necks survive, and it is clear from the base of the pieces that they were slotted into statues that were most likely made from a different material. The male rulers can be identified as Ptolemy II and Ptolemy III. However, the former was originally identified as Hermes. The head of Ptolemy III has a mitra across the brow, which links the ruler to the god Dionysos and is an example of the ruler’s early affiliation with an established deity in order to elevate his status. The four female statues are more difficult to identify with any certainty but are likely to represent Arsinoe II and Berenike II. One of the heads probably representing Berenike has its hair styled in locks rather than tied back in the usual bun. This hairstyle was later associated with Isis during the Roman Period, but it is here an alternative used by the Ptolemaic royal women, which increased in popularity in the second century BC.
The early representations depict the rulers as mortal or heroic. The facial features are idealized and, although distinct portraits have been identified, it would be wrong to see the classical genre as taking us any closer to the actual appearance of the subject than the idealized Egyptian form. In the second century BC, however, there was a change. Ptolemy VIII adopted a new style of portrait, which was copied by his sons Ptolemy IX and Ptolemy X. Instead of an idealized portraiture Ptolemy VIII, who was nicknamed Physkon (‘‘Pot-belly’’) on account of his size, adopted an image to represent his real physical appearance. Scholars have made reference to the Hellenistic characteristic of tryphe or luxury, and it has been suggested that this particular ruler’s appearance represented excesses in an ideological rather than literal sense, but the fact that his sons adopt a similar but individual version of this portrait type would seem, at least, to suggest that artists may well have drawn from the physical characteristics of the rulers for their representations.
Figure 42.2 Fragment of a Greek-style marble statue of Berenike II. From Naukratis. The FitzwilUam Museum GR.22.1899. Courtesy the FitzwilUam Museum.
The representations of royal women paralleled those of their consorts (Kyrieleis 1975; Smith 1988: 86-98). Such was their importance that their images were produced in equal, and possibly greater, numbers than those of their male counterparts (figure 42.2). Although idealized, the queens in the third century bc had distinctive portrait types, often associating them with existing Greek goddesses such as Aphrodite or Artemis. The surviving heads indicate a variety of different sizes of statue, ranging from colossal, heroic, life-size and under life-size. Iconographic attributes were often added in metal and have subsequently been lost. Fortunately the holes that were drilled to support objects such as a diadem or crown remain. It is also possible to track the developments in iconography through the coinage. Coin images show that only posthumous queens were deified until the reign of Kleopatra I at the turn of the third century bc.
In order to link the two cultures, the Ptolemaic royal house, or perhaps its advisors, attempted to merge the Greek and Egyptian traditions ideologically. Furthermore, these developments included iconographic associations between the Egyptian and Greek-style representations. This was particularly true of the presentation of royal women in statuary. Arsinoe II, sister and wife of Ptolemy II, is a prime example of how this acculturation worked. Not only was a link with earlier Egyptian icono-graphic traditions made, but artists also adopted an equivalent to the double uraeus
For the queen’s Greek-style representations - a double cornucopia, or horn of plenty. This particular symbol is found on the reverse of the coins bearing Arsinoe II’s image and also on statuary and on faience cult vases.
The number of Greek-style royal representations diminished substantially after the third century, and it seems likely that this is reflected in the practice whereby some Egyptian statues of male rulers incorporated the Greek portrait features of the kings and, in one instance, a queen. Once the second century had arrived the royal women become more powerful, sometimes ruling in their own right, and this is echoed by the adoption of a more masculine type of representation on a Greek-style statue of Kleopatra II or III (Walker and Higgs 2001: 59).
Private representations in a Greek-style are far fewer than in the Egyptian style. Women dominate and adopt the facial characteristics and hairstyles of their queens. As noted above, they can be distinguished from royal or divine representations by their lack of insignia. A large number of smaller-scale female representations survive, and it is difficult to know if these statues represented royal or private women, or indeed a traditional Greek goddess. Images at this scale were doubtless private dedications and so probably came from a workshop less closely linked to the royal house. Evidence for this particular group of sculptures is minimal, but there are examples throughout the period of Ptolemaic rule, suggesting that there was an audience for the manufacture of Greek-styles images for the duration.
The main innovation with regard to divine statuary was the introduction of the god Sarapis to the Greeks in Egypt. Sarapis was a composite of two existing Egyptian deities - Osiris and Apis - and, as such, was the celebration of the cult of the dead Apis bull, who resided at Memphis. Two sanctuaries are known from the Ptolemaic Period - the aforementioned Sarapieion in Alexandria and a second at the site of the home of Apis at Memphis. The majority of statues of Sarapis are Roman in date. One of the few sculptures that can be securely dated to the Ptolemaic Period is the aforementioned head of Sarapis that was dedicated alongside statues of Ptolemy III and Berenike II. Sarapis was shown with a beard and with his unkempt hair parted down the center. Later in the Roman Period the god is found with a kalathos or grain measure, on his head and typically wears his fringe in ringlets. It was only really during the Roman Period that the god enjoys more global recognition. The Ptolemies appear to have lost interest in promoting the Greek form of the god as they themselves became keener to be associated with the more traditional Egyptian gods and religion, and, as rulers, maintained their duality through the adoption of Greek portraits on traditional Egyptian statues.
World History
