Search

Cults for Greco-Egyptian gods such as Isis, Sarapis, Anubis, and Harpocrates enjoyed great interest in the Greek world of the Hellenistic period. This article analyses the agency of women in these cults in Hellenistic Athens and Delos. It poses the question whether the agency of women can be directly compared to the agency of men. It identifies, first, reservations in modern scholarship about women in positions of religious power, and, second, institutional boundaries that excluded women from official priestly positions. It demonstrates the ways in which women nonetheless held agency within family networks, and, third, possessed ritual competencies beyond formal offices and a relationship to deities on a personal level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this philological study we establish and reckon with the fact that the name Carpocrates was exceedingly rare and strange in antiquity. The rarity, we argue, was due to the name being a variant spelling or (purposeful) misspelling of the Greco-Egyptian deity Harpokrates. We also show how bizarre and even comical the name would have sounded to Hellenephone audiences. Greek parents, so far as the evidence suggests, were not naming their sons Carpocrates. We further explain how both the rarity and strangeness of the name functioned as a polemical weapon in the hands of some early Christian writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Archaeological Institute with Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences keeps a bronze lamp shaped like a foot wearing a sandal topped by a boy holding a goose. Is it possible that this foot represents the so-called Foot of Sarapis? Lamps played an important role in the rituals connected to the solar aspects of the Egyptian deities Harpocrates and Serapis as well as in the Isis mysteries. The feet of Sarapis spread mainly during the Roman period were votive objects representing a part of the body of the god. Considered as part of Sarapis these foot images could become symbolic representations of the god and objects of veneration for Sarapis's followers. In addition, they were presented as magical objects and were considered to have healing properties. Like the footprints in the temples dedicated to Egyptian deities, these feet materialize the appearance of the deity in the temple and its beneficial powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines three Catullan references to Isiac divinities in the light of controversies over the restoration of Ptolemy XII Auletes to the Egyptian throne and popular struggles to establish sanctuaries of those deities on the Capitoline. It argues for connections between a mention of an eight-bearer litter in c. 10 and the lectica octaphoros belonging to the king, and between an allusion to a shrine of Serapis in the same poem and current religious disturbances. In c. 74 , an obscene joke about the child god Harpocrates is linked to conspiracy allegations at the trial of M. Caelius Rufus, but a comparable mention of that deity in c. 102 remains obscure. Catullus’ presentation of his translation of Callimachus’ “Lock of Berenice” as a gift to Q. Hortensius Hortalus might also be tangentially related to the Egyptian Question; certainly the project could have supplied him with a deeper background in Ptolemaic cosmological and religious ideology. Discussion of these references assumes that topical events would be at the forefront of Roman readers’ minds. The essay concludes, however, with speculations on whether the poet’s Bithynian sojourn might have exposed him to alternative perspectives on Isiac cults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the first excavation campaign of the Paphos Agora Project (3rd July – 6th August 2011), an interesting object was discovered. In Trench II, Area 2 (Room 5), in the upper, late Roman layer, an oval amulet was found (siltstone, 39.41 × 41.32 × 4.81mm). The layer is dated to the 6th century AD, partially due to the presence of ceramic objects of the Cypriot Red Slip Ware type (Hayes form 2, AD 450-550). The obverse of the amulet contains a schematic, simplified figure of a sitting Harpocrates and below the mummy of Osiris in a boat, as well as depictions of animals (a crocodile, a rooster and a snake) and symbolic astrals (a half-moon and a star). On the reverse, however, an eight-line text of the so-called ιαεω- palindrome, consisting of 59 letters of the Greek alphabet, was carved. According to the current state of knowledge, it was translated in the following way: “Yahweh is the bearer of the secret name, the lion of Re secure in his shrine”. Both the depiction and the text carved into the surface of the amulet clearly indicate the influence of the Orient and the context of solar ideas; the object may be dated to the 5th-6th century AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kunze has suggested that Hellenistic sculpture depicting themes of everyday activities that are traditionally classified as genre subjects may carry very different meanings. This note argues that, in Graeco-Roman terms, the chubby personage in depictions of the Boy Strangling the Goose is not simply a child but the personification of Dionysos/ Harpokrates; the goose is not a household pet but an evil spirit over which the Divine Child triumphs. The manner of the representation is Greek and can be read at a superficial level; the deeper content is Egyptian and contains a symbolic message of rebirth and victory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]